Announcements!

Fans! What a treat! When we released “DORIS DANGER GIANT MONSTER ADVENTURES” (SLG Publishing, available at your local comics shop or WWW.AMAZON.COM) we also offered a BONUS FEATURE: A FREE Creator’s Commentary CD (available at SLG’s website!)

Just for our extra-special, extra-dedicated fans (who are too cheap and lazy to pick up this FREE BONUS), we are publishing here the TRANSCRIPT of that BONUS CREATOR’S COMMENTARY! Enjoy!

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transcript of

“DORIS DANGER GIANT MONSTER ADVENTURES! SLG Publishing”
CREATOR’S COMMENTARY CD
The following is a TRANSCRIPT of the CREATOR’S COMMENTARY CD which will be available through the book at SLG’s website.

Today is Monday, August 10, 2009, and you are listening to a creator’s commentary for my comic book, “Doris Danger Giant Monster Adventures,” graciously published by SLG. SLG used to stand for Slave Labor Graphics, but I think they prefer to be called SLG now.

My name is Chris Wisnia. I’m the creator, writer, artist, etc etc etc. Most likely this is the first you’ve heard of Doris Danger. But the release of this 96-page digest-sized trade marks her fifth year in print, and collects all her adventures thus far, except one. So long as this book doesn’t lose money, it will be followed up with a second volume of brand-new material, so I hope you’ll support it and tell your friends to do the same.

Doris’s stories began as somewhat of an exercise, when I was only an aspiring comics creator. I’d spent a lot of time doing portfolio reviews, and Alex Sinclair gave me a review at a DC booth at my first San Diego Comic-Con in 2001. He recommended I try doing some stories in a four page format, because it’s not a big commitment (for an editor to look over, or for me to write and draw it), but it will show editors my quality of artwork, my storytelling technique, and my narrative understanding.

This sounded like a fun format to play with, because I’d always been trying to pitch three or seven issue stories, so I did a few stories with a couple characters I’d been mulling over.

I brought these samples to San Diego in 2002, but this time, I didn’t wait in line for portfolio reviews. I was tired of getting rejections from publishers, and decided by then to try to self-publish my work.

All my stories by then were tabloid in nature, so I thought it would work thematically to make a pseudo-anthology package, and I decided to call it “Tabloia Weekly Magazine.” The word, “Tabloia”, is combination of “tabloid” and “paranoia.” That subject, I realized, could be a vague enough umbrella title for basically any story I can conceive that I might want to tell, still, right now.

Then I took it a step further. I imagined Tabloia as an actual magazine, and its creators as part of the narrative package, an extra layer of depth to the stories the book contained. I envisioned Tabloia as a sort of parody of the old Marvel Bullpen, being run by the ever-positive-sounding, all exclamation-point sentences Rob Oder, who ran his stable of unappreciated, underpaid hack artists and writers like slaves. I imagined disgruntled fans, furious that they accidentally bought such an awful, low quality book, and Rob shrugging off the insults with a smile and friendly anecdote. The name “Rob” is short for Robert, but “Bobby” is also short for Robert, so I figured his close friends knew him as Bobby Oder.

I of course have to give credit for all these types of ideas to Alan Moore, whose 1963 series for Image was doing all this a lot earlier and better than me.

Rob has graced the introductions, letters pages, text features, and margins of every book I’ve done since my first self-published comic in July 2004. You can read his informational interjections throughout this book’s stories, and also on the inside cover, letters pages 43, 55, 72, and 89, and history of Doris Danger pages 17 and 79. You’ll notice the multiple references to these stories having originally appeared in “Tabloia Weekly Magazine,” and also that the newspaper Doris works for, on page 38 and 39, is Tabloia.

Going to San Diego Con 2002, I thought it might be a nice feature of my book if I could convince some artists to draw pin-ups of my characters and let me publish them in my books. It would give potential readers a reason to flip through the book of an unknown creator and maybe give it a try, but also I wanted to show a connection with comics and creators who had influenced my work, and a sort of respect for comics history. Mike Allred’s Madman book was a key inspiration of this for me. All his comics just bulge with his love of the medium, in my opinion.

Dick Ayers was at the con, and was one of the few artists who gave me his contact info when I asked if he’d do a pin-up of one of my characters.

On the trip home I started fantasizing, because it didn’t seem achievable, about all the artists I thought it would be just impossibly cool to somehow find and get pin-ups from. And then, in a flash of dazzling clarity, I had this crazy idea, and it made me literally jittery at the thought of it. I couldn’t sit still, and had to get up and pace around for a while.

When I was young, I would look at Jack Kirby’s comics and think, This guy can’t draw! He has no understanding of anatomy. All his women look like barrels. Why is everything so shiny? And if I accidentally bought a comic and got it home and realized Jack Kirby drew it, I’d be livid that I’d wasted my money.

But after college, when I started looking at comics again, I started thinking. Well, I enjoy abstract art. And I learned that photo-realism isn’t everything. There are other aspects of art besides its photo-realism. Other aspects of realism, for that matter. And I began to look at Kirby with new eyes, and realized just how much ENERGY every single line conveys to every panel, and suddenly thought it was actually the best comics work ever!

So of all the comics out there, even of all the Jack Kirby comics out there, there’s just something magical for me about those Kirby giant monster stories. The strange, humongous, awkward anatomy, square-fingered, lumpy creatures with their weird flat teeth and finger nails and scales and bumps and hair and piercing eyes, wearing underpants … I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t get enough of them. And there were so many of these stories!

So knowing Dick inked tons of this work, and now having his contact info, I fantasized, hey, if I tried to write a energetically Stan Lee-style giant monster story, and then drew it in a Kirby style … wouldn’t it be just absolutely amazing, if just maybe … Dick would ink it for me.

Right after the con, I started to brainstorm my giant monster story. On August 8, 2002, I began jotting down all the concepts. At the top of the first sheet were a bunch of names of monsters. I added to it all the time, eventually on multiple sheets, and pulled all the monster names in the stories from these lists.

On that same sheet were a list of QUOTE “Warring factions”. Most of these went into greater detail, but here are some excerpts of what I’d written:
1. Fundamentalist Religious Sect – pro-humanity militant Christians out to hide evidence
2. Tabloid News Reporters Pro-Alien, out to falsely plant fake evidence.
3. Alien Keepers of Peace, fez-wearing, helping alien life hide here on earth
4. Government G-Men They use numerous scientific devices to destroy film footage, brainwash believers into forgetting what they saw, kidnap those who speak out the truth, scare people into not sharing what they know
5. Agricultural hippy commune – militant, use guns, terrorists out to convince public aliens exist.
6. Government moles
7. army
8. underground commune, wear berets, steal evidence, tamper with data, cover footprints.
9. scientists, try to prove existence and push funding

I also wrote the recognizable emblems each wore or carried, such as sun glasses, fezzes, badges, coats, symbols of their organization.

Two days later I wrote,
A “There is a split within the Christian sect in interpreting scripture, so they become warring factions.” B. An underground band of mercenaries framed for crimes they didn’t commit, they’ve gone underground … Enemies of the government and military, they wear ball caps and skin-tight muscle t-shirts. C. NRA lovers … people who wanted to be cops, but who failed the physical or mental requirements. Many were security guards at malls … banned together with rifles and grenades, wearing plaid lumberjack hats and jackets.

A week later I listed different kinds of aliens I wanted in the stories:
1. shape changing aliens
2. aliens who wear masks to look like humans
3. giant aliens every issue
4. robots made to look like aliens.

I constantly went back and referred to, and added to, all these notes, and most of these early elements have found their way into the stories, although many of them morphed as I went. I’ll discuss that more page to page.

So where did my book’s title come from? Here’s a quick, simplistic comics history lesson. In the 1940’s, superhero comics were huge, but by the 1950’s, people weren’t interested in superheroes anymore, and comics creators moved to different genres to try to sell books. They dabbled with war, western, comedy, funny animal comedy, romance, crime, horror, and giant monster horror, which, as far as I can tell, came from the bad 1950’s teen films about giant ants and locusts and sea creatures and such.

The original Lee-Kirby-Lieber-Ayers giant monster comics where just one of many genres published by Timely, or Atlas Comics in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, right before the hero craze came crashing back. They changed their company name to Marvel and created the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, The X-Men, the Avengers, Thor, and basically the whole Marvel Universe. Originally, the giant monster stories had appeared in books with titles like Tales To Astonish, Tales of Suspense, and Amazing Fantasy, but in the 1970’s, Marvel began reprinting the stories in books titled “Where Monsters Dwell,” “Where Creatures Roam,” and “Creatures on the Loose.” So I was thinking about these 1970’s titles, and about things monsters and creatures might do besides Dwell, Roam, or be on the loose. I wrote down this title for my book, “WHERE GIANT MONSTERS, CREATURES, AND MARTIANS DWELL AND CREEP AND ROAM AND STOMP”. I later shortened it to the still lengthy “Where Giant Monsters Creep and Stomp.”

During this early stage, I’d written the name, “Dirk Danger.” I did decide early on, with this project, that I wanted a character who believed in giant monsters, who would spend the series trying to prove their existence, and when I decided it would be a woman, my wife came up with the name Doris Danger.

The general premise and all this craziness of multiple factions lurking everywhere is my interpretation and influence from the X-Files tv show.

For me, this project is an experiment with the serial format (monthly comics, 1930’s movie serials, tv shows like the X-Files or whatever JJ Abrams is doing, soap operas, professional wrestling…)

I wanted to convey catching a random serial episode, maybe because there’s been a lot of hype and you’ve heard how good it is, and not having any idea what’s going on, but getting the gist of the basically simplistic archetypal characters and plot-lines and music cues. And being intrigued enough to want to understand it all better. So you watch a second episode, but this week it’s a rerun, so it’s out of sequence. You recognize a couple characters (but that guy was good and now he’s bad, and she’s still not telling something, but what?). So, starting to see a couple connections, now you want to watch another episode, but you forget until a couple weeks later, and now the characters have gotten out of that last cliff-hanger (but how?), and this sixth sub-plot is beginning to make sense (Look! There’s that armless race car driver again!). And the show runs for years, and now that actor’s been fired, and this new character looks different and has a different name, but he fulfills the same basic role as the previous one. And writers are fired and replaced, and story arcs disappear without being resolved, but it all just trudges on and on without a beginning, without any signs of resolution, but generally revealing more and more of the “THE BIG PICTURE”.

And as we put in our time to try to understand what’s going on and where it’s going, even if we think the show sucks, we realize we’ve become psychologically invested. And we’ve gained a feeling of ritual, and of secret, intimate understanding and therefore … of BELONGING. And this, at its core, is the pseudo-intellectual exercise that excites and drives me most about making Doris Danger comics.

So with this said, I knew, creating stories that I hoped Dick Ayers would ink, that I wanted short, quick, serialized adventures. And I wanted to throw continuity absurdly out the window, so that every episode began with completely different characters trying to get out of a completely different cliffhangers.

And now with all this thematic preparation floating in my head, I timidly wrote the legendary “Darlin’ Dick” Ayers, and he was totally up for inking a five-page story. I couldn’t believe it. I got to work. And in two weeks I’d written, penciled, lettered, and put in the mail “Spluhh … The Thing who burst from an exploding volcano,” which begins on page two of this book.

This is how this first five page story was done. I pulled out all my seventies reprints of Kirby giant monster comics for reference, and just flipped through them. When things caught my eye, or sparked ideas, I made notes of them. I made lists of “monster splash pages”, such as these:

Number 3 on the list. Mt. Rushmore – which is now page 18 and 19.
5. Underwater, scuba divers, fish – page 30
6. India – pagoda, Buddha statues – pages 32 and 34
7. in space – monster wearing astronaut clear dome over head – page 74 and 75
8. Egypt – pyramid, sphinx – page 31
9. army attacking – full battle – I plan to do many more of these, but look at pages 45, 52, 53, and 54.
10. one lone shirtless commando vs. monster – page 44.
14. laboratory – giant monster with head hooked up – breaking free! Page 37.
19. Africa – page 7.

Again flipping through books, I made a list of different kinds of giant monsters Kirby had drawn: ape, ant, crab, abominable snowman, big foot, mummy, spider, cyclops, bee, robot, blob, Easter Island, reptilian, tiki, hairy, caveman, big forehead, striped, bird, 2-headed, and I would reference issue and page numbers so I could find them if I decided I wanted to do one of these kinds of monsters. I made lists of settings and elements – jungle, desert, lake, swamp, outer space, carnival, police officers, army men, hillbillies, again with issue and page numbers.

I don’t tend to do preliminary sketches, or much work in sketch books. What little I’ve done of them, I find when it’s time to apply the studies to the comics pages, I just copy the sketch into the work as best as I can, and then it’s time consuming to try and capture what I achieved in the sketch, which I often can’t, and then I duplicate the same mistakes but lose the energy of the original.

However, I did find a mere ONE PAGE of prep work sketches for this project. It’s got a dozen monster faces – none drawn in a Kirby style, but just positioning different eyes and mouths, and then three body shots – two are just sketches of monster postures, and one is Spluhh, basically, how he looks on page 2, but a little squarer and less fluid.

I copied this three inch sketch of Spluhh onto an 11″x17″ Bristol sheet. I went over my notes, chose an island as the setting (because I thought it would make a good splash, and so I could have a volcano erupt at the story’s climax). Then I flipped through all my comics and found stories that took place in a tropical setting, copied natives in peril, palm trees, and Oceanside cliffs. I had already come up with plenty of monster names, so I picked one from my list. Then I made up a slogan, and some natives-in-fear text, shouting the name “Spluhh”, and that was that.

I thought it was funny to have a soldier pointing in shock at my signature. You’ll notice this page is signed “Wisnia and Ayers.” I told Dick I wanted the pages signed this way, and when I drew up a contract for him to ink the story, it actually stated as a condition that the story would be signed “Wisnia and Ayers.” The reason this was so important to me was that the Atlas giant monster stories were signed “Kirby and Ayers.”

I asked Dick about those signatures once in an email, and he told me when he got the pages to ink, he never knew who wrote them, but he always knew Kirby drew them, so he would sign both their names to the pages.

My original page is actually signed “Wisnia and Dick Ayers,” so I actually edited Dick’s signature.

It was always part of the page’s composition to add the “originally presented” blurb at the bottom, because the seventies Kirby-Ayers reprints always had these. And as I said, I’d planned to pretend my fictitious magazine had been running for decades.

You’ll notice I dated the original issue 1953. When I later showed my story to Kurt Busiek, he said, “But you got your dates wrong.” He was right. I thought that the giant monster stories had come out throughout the fifties. But when I found out they were early 60’s, I left the ’50’s concept, explaining that all Doris Danger’s exploits had happened throughout the fifties. I even had editor Rob Oder address this issue on a letter on page 55. And this is a technique I used regularly. Whenever I did something wrong, whether purposely or accidentally, or felt insecure about something, I would have an angry fictitious reader call attention to it on a letters page and have Rob make flimsy excuses about it.

All the stories I’d written before Doris Danger, I fully wrote the scripts, start to finish, before thinking about drawing anything. But “The Marvel Way” of telling a story was for Stan Lee to give the artists just a general plot. Then the artists would draw that, and finally Stan Lee would look over the art and decide what the characters say, depending on what still needs to be vocalized and how much space there is for dialogue. Or in the case of the giant monster stories, his brother Larry Lieber would often write the finished text. So I thought it would be a fun exercise to try this.

I basically threw as many disparate elements as I could fit into this story. Page three has the army looking for giant monsters but not admitting it, and superstitious tribesmen. Page four adds an agent of FBI “G” Division, and astute readers will notice the “G” on the army men’s uniforms. Page five introduces the Monster Liberation Army, or MLA. Page six introduces what I later named “Fezzies,” as well as a mad scientist, and UFO’s that go “zwee.”

Page three begins the very first Doris Danger story, and my first drawing ever of Doris – I didn’t do any preliminary sketches beforehand. I of course fashioned her after Sue Storm, but with the addition of cat eye glasses and bangs. Her boyfriend’s name is Steve Wonder. I already knew he was a former astronaut, but because I drew the pages first, and then fit text where I could, I ran out of space to include this.

You’ll notice on panel three that Doris is trying to prove the existence of “giant alien creatures”, not just generic giant monsters. This is a small hint of how the perception of the story changed for me after I began it.

A friend pointed out to me that every army man in this story has three stars, which designates them all as three-star generals. I just thought three stars made a nice decoration. I think that’s a fantastic accident, and Rob addressed this entirely three-star general army in a letters page response.

I assume “G Division” originally came from the term “G-Man”, which is an FBI agent, with the “G” short for government. I liked the sound of “G Division,” I started calling the FBI FBI “G” Division, and the army, army “G” Division. I didn’t worry too much about what these departments were, or whether they were related in some way.

My original brainstorm for the G Men was basically to be men in black. In conspiracy theory theory, men in black go where aliens have been sited and contain witnesses, brainwash them, and clean up the site, because the government would allegedly not want the public to know. I quickly pulled away from this direction, even though I haven’t seen the “Men in Black” movie or read the comic, so as not to be accused of just doing the same-ol-same-ol.

First panel of page four, we see Doris holding her camera. I thought this was a great shot of her, and when someone asked me to draw him a sketch of Doris at a convention, this was the image I chose. Later, I redrew the image as a pin-up, and that image is on the back front cover of this book.

The appearance of the monster on page four was inspired by the Incredible Hulk first turning into the Hulk in his first issue. There was a Geiger counter that kept clicking, so I wanted a gasagina meter to start clicking louder and louder, signaling the approach of Spluhh. And when we finally reveal him, we also reveal his cryptic “Foo foo” is not monster language … it’s a stutter, and he’s trying to say “fools.”

When I was lettering the page, I had actually written more than what appears. I didn’t have room for one of the army men to say, “THIS IS WHAT WE’RE TRAINED FOR, BOYS!” and “IT WAS A MONSTER ALL ALONG! WE’VE FOUND HIM AS G DIVISIONS’ RESEARCH SCIENTISTS EXPECTED! RIGHT WHERE G DIVISION PIN-POINTED HIM ALL RIGHT!” This was a result of my writing in the Marvel way. Usually, fully written, the lettering is the first thing I put down, and then that determines how much space is left for the picture. And when I write, that doesn’t leave much room for picture. It makes me think of the comics of Robert Crumb’s brother, in the documentary, Crumb, where the text gets so heavy, you just see a tiny head crammed against the bottom corner of each panel.

I want to point out that by page four, we’ve seen multiple names for the monster. My thinking here was that I’d be lucky to come up with ten stories, and if each story has one monster, I would never possibly be able to use the hundred or more monster names I’d come up with, so I had to pack them in anywhere I could.

First and second panel of page five, I tried to give the sound effects a similar kind of humor to what I was attempting with the monster names. You know when you’re a little kid, and you’re playing with toy army guys or whatever, and you always come up with the coolest sound effects for your guns. So in my original script, I brainstormed maybe twenty or so sound effects. In addition to what you see on the page, I also listed :

ZWAZWAZWA!
CUNCH!
CUNCH!
COO! COO!
COCKACOCKA!
POOP! POOM!
POOP! POOSH!
And SPAH! SPAH!

Jumping to the last panel of page six, all text. I had planned to do this from the beginning. In fact, it was the first thing I wrote in my notes, after the text for the splash page. It was important to me to reiterate as many of the mysteries in the story as I could, since a reader, hopefullyl, couldn’t possibly follow it all. And the thought was, most likely I’d never explain any of them.

I sent the pages to Dick Ayers on 11/1/02, Basically having completed the five page story in a month. They came back in the mail 11/11. When I got the inks back from Dick, I really enjoyed what he’d done. On the giant monster splashes, page two and four, he added all those cross hatches and blackness in the sky. On page three, first two panels, he added all the black in the background. Generally he blacked more areas out and used more feather-lines to shade. It was interesting to see the choices he’d made.

When Dick returned the first story, he included a note that said how much he enjoyed inking the story, and how it took him back. He said if I wanted to do any other stories, he’d be up for it.

I immediately replied I’d put two more five page stories in the mail as soon as I could finish them.

On December 2002, I wrote out the script for “Terror Lurks in Africa,” which begins on page 7. I’d already stopped trying to write “The Marvel Way.”

You’ll notice that the Africa splash says the story was originally from Tabloia #149, whereas the first issue Spluhh story is from Tabloia #136. I randomly picked these issue numbers and dates to insure they weren’t in sequence, weren’t chronological, and in fact the dates can’t match a calendar. And we have no idea how our characters got out of the previous cliffhanger or into the current one.

The monster here is based on one of MANY Easter Island stories Kirby did. But I decided to make it a five-headed monster. Of course you only see a three-headed monster with five names. I was trying to suggest heads are on the side of him we can’t see as well. This was another excuse to include as many as I could per story.

Many people comment that this is an Easter Island monster. So I like that for some reason it’s in Africa.

I originally signed this issue between the monster’s legs, with the tribesman pointing in fear at the signature. I wrote “Wisnia +”. When Dick returned the inked pages, he’d erased my signature from this place, and re-signed “Wisnia + Ayers, bottom left, in the tribesman’s skirt. So when you look at page seven here, you’re seeing an edit of an edit of the signature.

On page eight, I began the story. I wanted it to begin something completely new and different from the first story. But to tie it in somewhat, I reintroduced Doris, Steve, a man with a Fez, and the perennially dueling army and MLA from the first story. Then I added the scientists working for the government, a beret-wearing man trying to destroy evidence, robots disguised as tribesmen, and different kinds of UFO’s – flying cigar-shaped ones.

I wrote the third story in April 2003, and finished the pages in a few weeks.

The splash page of the Eiffel Tower, page 12, was a lot of fun to draw. It was the first image I drew that wasn’t a swipe from a Kirby comic. For those who don’t speak French, the people are saying, “My God,” “I love the lavatory,” “Long live France,” “with,” and “are you sleeping, are you sleeping,” from the French song, “Frere Jacques.”

You’ll notice the issue number and dates are still impossible, and the story once again begins with a new cliffhanger, with no mention of the previous story.

I reintroduce the French beret-wearing evidence destroyer of the second story, the giggling scientist of the first, and the MLA. And then we meet Agent Mull the mole, the eye-patch-wearing Felk, and a pile of mannequins. It may be difficult to notice, because I use footnote references so spastically to previous issues that don’t exist, but on page 14, first panel, I reference the Africa story, specifically, page 8. This suggests that there is some continuity. And this is how I chose to handle continuity.

I randomly choose a page number whenever I make a reference to a “QUOTE previous issue.” Sometimes, by coincidence, I’ll randomly choose the same number for different incidents. And then when I’m writing a story, if I decide to cover a subject that was footnoted in another issue, I number the story based on the previous footnote, and include any subject that I’ve said will turn up in that story.

The humor is, if you were to put all these issues in “order,” they wouldn’t make any better sense.

Jacques’ shirt on page 13 says, “My name is Jacques.”

After I finished the first three stories, a friend read them, and was trying to make sense of the stories, and piece things together. And I loved this, and knew I wanted to push that, but also to actually tie things together in interesting ways.

So if I re-read the stories and something didn’t sit well with me, or if it left questions unanswered, I would think to myself, Well what is the answer? or what could I do so that I’m okay with this? And then new stories would kind of invent themselves in my mind.

So this format has forced me to brainstorm some interesting plotlines. Because I’m just writing anything that comes to mind, and then, AFTERWARDS, seeing if I can make it a cohesive story ANYWAYS. And you only see hints of that in this volume, but it gets worse, as it unfolds.

On page 15 panel 5, people are shouting the names of French films or books. On 16, people are shouting “pants,” “cheese,” “What is it? That’s life?” “What time is it?” And again, lines from “Frere Jacques.”

Now I had three issues of Tabloia Weekly Magazine to submit to Diamond Comics Distributors, with Doris Danger as a back-up story, and they ccepted the book for distribution.

I’m going to take another break from the stories now, and talk about all these amazing pin-ups of giant monsters I was able to collect for this project.

I continued trying to contact artists while I was working on the stories with Dick Ayers. There are only so many ways you can draw a pin-up or cover for a particular character before it gets boring to look at, but giant monsters … everyone could draw any kind of giant monster they wanted, in any setting, and who doesn’t love drawing giant monsters? This was a fun pin-up project.

Mike Allred was the first person I was able to get a pin-up from, and when his pin-up, on page 20, came in the mail, I just thought it was fantastic. I couldn’t believe he drew Madman in the image for me – a Madman cameo in my book! Wow!

Gene Colan was the second pin-up I commissioned, but the third I received in the mail. Originally he’d asked for a price much higher than I could afford, and I asked if he could do a smaller one for less expensive. He wrote back that he could do an 11″x17″ – which made me think, just how big was he planning to make it at first? When this one on page 23 came in the mail, it was still 14″x22″! Before he made it, he actually called me on the phone to confirm and discuss exactly what I wanted from him! Talk about excitement, a punk kid who’s never even published a comic, getting a phone call from Gene Colan!

I went to San Diego Comic-Con in 2003 with my three Dick Ayers-inked Doris Danger stories and showed them to more artists. Previously, when I’d shown my non-Doris Danger pages, artists just kind of shrugged and went, eh. Now, I walked up and said, “I’m doing Jack Kirby-style giant monster stories,” and they’d perk up a little, and then I’d say, “Dick Ayers inked them,” and they’d go, “HMMM?” And actually look up and give me a little attention. What a change in attitude.

So in 2003, I’d gotten contact info from all the Hernandez Brothers, who soon did pin-ups for me, pages 63-65, and Bill Sienkiewicz, whose pin-up is on page 22. And then I continued hunting for contact info of artists online as well.

The following year, San Diego Comic-Con 2004, I self-published my first issue of Tabloia. But instead of showing it around to artists, I continued bringing photo-copies of my Dick Ayers-inked Doris Danger stories, and now including a stack of copies of the pin-ups I’ve received too. So I had all the pin-ups I’ve already mentioned, as well as ones from Sam Kieth, Thomas Yeates, Irwin Hasen, and Ryan Sook.

Now it was getting easier and easier to get artists interested in doing pin-ups. The more fantastic artists they saw getting involved, the more comfortable they felt about contributing. And they often even said, the more pressure they had to do something really nice-looking.

The pinnacle of seeing this change of attitude toward me was while showing this work to Mike Mignola. I’d shown him the Ayers-inked stories in 2003, and I was surprised he kind of shrugged and that was it. This time, looking at all the pin-ups in great detail, he finally put them down and said, “How can I be a part of this?” Wow! So he’s on page 21.

Stepping back a bit, I’d sent the second and third stories for Dick to ink both at the same time. I assumed Dick would use my pencils as a model, and then bold them up with a 1960’s style of really thick brush line inking.

I met the fantastic inker, Mick Gray, shortly after I received them, and mentioned this, and how on the fourth story, I was actually penciling all the lines really thick, to show Dick exactly what I had in mind. Mick said that’s exactly what I should do, because that’s how the inker knows what you want. Who would have guessed?

When I received the fourth issue back from Dick, which begins on page 24, Dick wrote on a note how much more dynamic the pages looked for this story.

It was important to me that each time the honking thing honked, he made a different honking noise. I included six different honks in the story.

Page twenty five, my wife came up with most of those sign slogans – all the funniest ones. She’s very good with that stuff. Notice too, the eerie appearance of a mannequin in the store window. That’s no coincidence!

In the second story on page 11, I enjoyed the tribesmen unmasking to reveal they were robots so much, I wanted to do it more, and thus page twenty-seven.

On the same page, panel 2, you’ll notice both monsters are saying the same honking noise. This was a typo. I accidentally pointed the sound effect at the wrong monster, then accidentally only half fixed it. But I thought it made for a good foreboding of how they may both have been projected with a movie projector and microphone.

Page 28 panel one, I don’t know if anyone can tell. But that’s supposed to be a bicycle horn on a stand, being held up to a microphone.

After I finished the fourth story, “When Plopsplu Collides with the Honking Thing,” I was thinking that the stories aren’t in a chronological order anyways, and planned to put the third story (page 12) in the fourth book, and this story (page 24) in the third book. I thought this one was a stronger story, and that it introduced some elements that would space the stories better. And I still think it would probably read better in that order, except for one thing:

And this is how surprises sometimes happen. I realized, even though there is no chronological order to the stories, there is sometimes a joke delivery, a comic timing in the order.

In story three, page 13 panel 4, Agent Mull tells Doris he’s a mole of G Division, and he will help her. But in the fourth story page 25 panel 4, he tells Felk he’s a triple agent. And I decided these had to be read in that order.

As an unknown indie comics publisher, even all these great artists contributing did not help the sales of my comics. When the third issue of Tabloia came out, my representative told me Diamond would be canceling my distribution. I was crushed. I wrote back, pleading that it was supposed to be a six issue run, and would they be willing to let me put out issue four, and then a double-sized issue five to finish the series, and they agreed.

I had planned for Dick to ink the outer space issue, on page 74, for issue six. But now there wasn’t an issue six, so I shelved the story after penciling it.

By this time, I had pages of little notes and ideas for Doris Danger stories. And as I mulled them over for days or months, I’d come up with new ideas to fill in the blanks of the initial ideas. To write the stories, I would just go through the notes and pick a few story ideas that I thought were funny, or that needed to be filled in.

So I wanted to show the MLA in a different setting than just attacking the army. I hadn’t shown the zwee UFO’s from the first story (page 6). And I wanted to give more clues about the giant monsters. But I had written a note about a traitor in the MLA codenamed Chokey. And I’d jotted down a sequence of Steve watched by villains, who were watched by Doris, who was watched by a special agent (pages 34-35).

In the original script it was even worse. The working script was from October 2003. In the original notes of the day before, the plot included Doris sneaking aboard the UFO before it took off. I’d written this:

“Meanwhile, Doris INSIDE UFO, hears aliens in control room: Ha ha ha! That puny earth-man took the bait and saw our “Made in USA” sticker! Now those stupid humans will believe we DON’T really exist, and that will make our conquest of their world that much easier! To Be Continued! Can Doris stop what appears to be the beginning of an alien invasion?”

The only reason I didn’t include this in the story was that I’d run out of panels to do so.

The Tabloia issues had come out from June 2004 to June 2005. In February 2006, I put out a trade of the Doris Danger stories.

I decided I wanted it to be tabloid sized, because I was a huge fan of the Marvel Treasuries from the 1970’s. I thought it would feel more like reading a comic as a kid – because you were smaller, so the book seemed bigger. I published a 56-page, humongous 9″x13″ book with the five Doris stories from Tabloia, the fifteen giant monster pin-ups (three from each Tabloia issue), and a new story.

If you go back to page one, this was basically the cover for my 9″x13″ 56-page treasury collection.

Part of the reason for including this extra story was to bulk up the page count, and of course part of the reason was so that people who owned the Tabloia comics would still have to buy this trade.

Even though I had my outer space story, which only needed to be inked, I decided it was more important to include Doris’s origin instead. This story begins on 37.

But for you history buffs out there, the space story technically came first – I wrote and drew it first. So it’s an example of a story that I felt worked okay out of “sequence.”

I would often try to make title pages with the same monsters as in the story, but completely different scenarios. This wasn’t uncommon back in the ’60’s, especially DC books, it seems to me, to have a grabber for a cover, even if nothing like that happened in the book. Or maybe the cover was solicited, but then due to deadlines, a different story had to be included instead. I liked this not-quite-accurate feel to my splashes. Even though it’s a lot more work, because I have to come up with a story for the story, and then I need to come up with a completely other story for the splash. I still think it’s worth it, for the potential confusion it can cause readers. And so this is what I did on page 74, came up with this idea that Muh!Muh!Muh! must not speak its full name, and also that it’s going to get sucked into a black hole.

Page 78 was another excuse to list more than one monster name in the story.

I also want to mention that some of the story threads the characters bring up on page 77 and 78 are pretty vague. I never get into exactly what Mull does to be a double- or triple agent. I don’t go into detail what lies Doris has caught Mull telling her. Why are the Fezzies protecting giant monsters? And exactly WHY was Dirk Doole disguised as a robot? I was unclear about a lot of this in my own head. I rationalized that none of it really mattered, but I realized I WANTED answers to a lot of these questions. All this unsettled me.

I’d felt similarly about other vague references I’d made on other pages in the first five stories.

And so I began brainstorming and coming up with solutions, and the more absurd, the more properly I felt they belonged in the story. And of course solutions often brought up new questions for me to answer. And this was a process I enjoyed with delight. In 2005 and 2006 I began making lists of stories I had to tell to get some of these answers out. I’d solved many puzzles in my mind, but I still find myself making lists of questions I have right now in 2009, and I’m still sorting out details.

It’s an interesting exercise to take the clues already presented and force them to fit a storyline. And after finishing this outer space story, I decided I needed to get at these kinds of answers and specifics. And thus I began the origin story.

This desire to fill in the narrative gaps became a new task, a new brain teaser, that drove me and invigorated me. It was my new inspiration to produce more stories. I wanted each page of each story to be one piece in this bizarre overwhelmingly complex puzzle, revealing the overall picture slowly and in strange magically odd ways. Like how Willaim Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch, then cut all the pages into tiny scraps and threw them in the air, then made the book those scraps of story in the order he picked them up. The difference is, he had an actual story that he dissected, while I had to come up with one as I went.

My pin-up of a giant monster destroying computers on page 37 was what I told Herb Trimpe I wanted him to draw me for a pin-up. I would do this periodically with pin-ups I requested from artists: ask them to draw something specific, and then draw the same thing, but with the composition I envisioned in my head, which is always different. I was very proud of the tag-line – “he defied all science – by punching!”

What Doris’s boss says to her on page 38 panel 2 is something I came up with very early in the creation of the project – that she was a child prodigy tabloid journalist, and the publisher wanted to cash in on it, so he made an absurd basically lifelong contract with her.

Same with Steve’s speech on page 39 panel 1 – that Steve was not only the heir to the Tabloia Weekly Magazine fortune, but also a former astronaut.

In fact, here are excerpts of the first character description I wrote of our lead hero – at this time still envisioned as a man. These are from notes dated way back in August 2002:

“BOSS: Always pissed he’s paying too much and not getting any work. Our hero made a big splash as a youth photo journalist, and his boss hired him from another company by signing a one-year contract with a salary, unlimited expense account and the freedom to pursue any story he wants … But after the contract was signed, our hero turned to stories attempting to prove the existence of non-human intelligent life forms hidden or hiding or visiting our planet. He suspects his father was an alien, and his vision/memory makes him desperate to learn the truth.”

“GIRLFRIEND: Always complaining the hero should stick around with her. She’s the boss’s daughter, and he would marry into a fortune, and could pursue his passion without being a tax on the paper. But our hero knows it wouldn’t be right, and he can’t take advantage that way of the woman he loves.”

Obviously, some big changes happened since then. Gender, for one. And Doris doesn’t suspect her father was an alien. And Steve HELPS Doris trying to pursue her quest.

Page 40 I was trying to bring back some elements of the first story. Maybe not answer much, but at least show I haven’t forgotten it. And suggest things were happening on the island before that first story.

Of course, on page 41, we realize the only person who says “Get me” is Felk, so Doris is dreaming he was abducted when she was.

Now I finally want to talk about the text on the bottom of many of the pages. This is something Marvel Comics did in the 1970’s. It would tell you what other Marvel Comics were out that month and why you should buy them. And it always told you what pages to skip to continue the story. I always thought this funny, as if a reader would turn a page and see an ad, and then just not know what to do next.

In the Tabloia books, I wrote”Doris Danger wants YOU to read the great monster stories of Lee, Lieber, Kirby and Ayers!”

In the fifth issue, I also included the footnote about teensy weensy mini-men, which you can find on page 35. And when I published the treasury-sized trade of all these stories, I just began adding more and more footnotes. Continued next page, continued second page following dull text, keep reading fans, all that stuff.

In this volume, if you bother to follow up with the absurd instructions I give, such as “flip ahead … thirty-one pages.” Few of them are accurate, as if some intern just placed them periodically, and no one proof-checked them.

In fact, some of the bottom instructions were placed on proper pages in the original prints of the books, but when I put this volume together, I had to move pages around. And I liked how it read this way, completely wrong, so I left it, then added even more of them.

The giant-sized tabloid ended with a word search, similar to the one on page 96. I thought this was a great way of getting all these monster names out in print.

Don’t spend too much time trying to find any of the names in the word search, because if any of them are in there, it’s a coincidence. However, what IS in the word search is a secret message. If you read from the top left down each line, it says, “Hi fans! This is Rob Oder! I am the notorious editor in chief of perhaps the single greatest, most amazing and controversial work of comic book non-fiction in the last two thousand years!” and so on.

The back cover of the humongous treasury had the picture of Doris Danger you see on our inside front cover.

I knew I wanted to do more Doris Danger stories, and I decided to do two 16-page comics, because I thought I could put them out quickly and have a little more visibility on the comic shop shelves this way. What hadn’t crossed my mind is that the books were so small I had to charge a small cover price. So small, that once the stores and distributor and shipping were paid for, I made a profit of zero cents on the book. Not my most mathematically sound business plan, but I planned to collect the stories into a second humongous treasury too.

I thought outer space and war stories would be good themes for these two books. I’d gotten four war pin-ups from artists (Russ Heath’s is included on page 50-51), and four outer space pin-ups (see page 80 and 81 for the Dave Gibbons and Peter Bagge.) The books’ stories were only moderately themed, but had hints of the titles at least.

The army book was released in November 2006, and the space book in December 2006. Each contained two stories.

The image on page 44 was originally the back cover of the war book.

Notice all these mannequins on page 46. Astute readers will notice the name “Panky” on the delivery truck, which was also on page 36, the license plate Steve may or may not have seen, claiming ownership of the UFO.

Page 47 I had a general plot to have a private come back to base and share his horror story of facing a giant monster. Somehow, I got really caught up on this sudden idea for the general trying to keep his men from asking questions, and next thing I knew, I had a three-page sequence. Of course, we hear about how people in the military should follow orders, not ask questions, so this all seemed particularly appropriate to me.

Page 48 panel three, I’m very proud of these sound effects.

Page 57, I talked about Dr. Souseman, who is referred to in this issue as Dr. Mondell Klute. I knew I wanted a wise sage always giving Doris advice. X-Files had it, Dracula had it. It’s just a stereotype that belongs in this kind of story. Over the years, if a name came to mind while I was brainstorming, I would write it down. I figured I could make it all consistent later on. So I had two names for Dr. Souseman. And then I started thinking about how in serials that run for ten years or whatever, sometimes mistakes just crop in. Or changes, for that matter. Maybe Doris had a couple wise sages. Maybe he changed his name. Who cares, it’s the same archetypal character, and you can still recognize who he is, so I’m going to use multiple names on characters, periodically, as if it’s either a mistake or a different person who fulfills the same role.

If you look on the last panel of page 57, there’s a blender and a mixer, supporting the statement of panel four about needing a knowledge of kitchen appliances.

Page 58, I had a heck of a time trying to draw the Jefferson monument in a Kirby style. It was also difficult, but a lot of fun drawing those hillbillies going off on what I envisioned as a Grapes of Wrath style road trip.

Way back on one of the pages Dick Ayers had inked, there had been a bit of a smudging accident, which he touched up, but a friend and I joked that as he was inking it, the shocking secret revealed in the panel must have surprised him so much he jumped out of his seat and knocked his ink bottle over. So I included this bad joke on page 59, panel 4.

On panel six, the idea of this commander burning musical instruments began as a spontaneous joke inclusion to the script. But it’s developed into quite a story. It surfaces again on page 68 and 69, as Luggash lights up his Bic.

On page 60 panels 5 and 6, I like the idea that the man in charge admits that his army is just about shooting big guns. Panel 4, Choopeepoo, son of Choopoo makes a brief appearance, if you read the fine print of the television. I always like small details like this, that you may not notice the first time you read a comic. I try to do way too much of this, and my fans bring it up periodically with me, that they love re-reading my work because they realize how much more is in the panels than they picked up the first time.

Page 61, you’ll notice all the MLA members look identical for a change. The honest reason is that I was getting tired of coming up with all these MLA costumes, and wanted a break. But of course, I had editor Rob Oder explain an even better reason for this in his letters pages. Unfortunately, that explanation didn’t make it into this issue. This is it: In the early days of the MLA, they had stricter uniform guidelines, but later, they began to assert their individuality.

For the outer space issue, I finally inked and included the story we’ve discussed. Then I threw in the story on page 66, which has nothing to do with outer space. I was very proud of the Professor Panky raid of pages 68 and 69, and mixing it with a return of Luke Luggash.

Writing these stories, I never necessarily knew which characters would pop up in which scenes. I’d have all my notes, and decided I wanted to do a sequence with professor Panky and the mannequins. And I’d know I wanted more Luke Luggash scenes, and then I would say, Well, I can combine those two elements for this sequence, and then just kind of sit back and see how it all fits itself together.

I was also pleased with the “origin” of the MLA, and the brief appearances of some of its members. On page 70, I like that the monster is shrieking, Why? Foam gives better support than feathers! And if you read the small print, it says, “Warning! Absolutely do not use foam mattress.” I liked that on panel six, the FBI agent says he’s always wanted to use a cheer-leading baton.

Overall, I felt this was a strong story, with the laughs hitting more consistantly than many of my other stories. It was something to aspire to.

On page 73 is the back cover image of my 16-page Doris Danger in Outer Space issue, followed by the finally inked outer space story.

Now I had two new 16-page comics worth of material plus front and back covers and letters pages, so I was getting close to putting a second humongous treasury-sized trade out.

I will say I felt, and still, feel guilty about the story titled “All in Urban New Mexico fear … Kockh!” I am Kockh! Son of Kockh-Ah! Distant Progeny of Chock-o-Kockh! I suppose a cock is just a rooster, so I shouldn’t feel so ashamed, but it’s one of the jokes I felt on the fence about including, and still wonder if I shouldn’t have done it.

I think page 83 is very strong.

I’m very proud of the rift between Christians on page 84, arguing whether they should try to make everyone believe exactly the way they feel through fear or denial. And just like in real life, this battle of wills between peaceful Christians and peaceful hippies can only lead to pipe bombings and mayhem.

Page 86 panel 1, I don’t know what kind of camera Doris uses that she could break it in half like that. I suppose that will warrant an explanation at some point or another, because otherwise it doesn’t sit well with me.

Panel four, the fact that a tracking signal would power the holding device … that absurdist science and logic is pretty basic to Doris Danger stories I suppose, but again it doesn’t quite sit well with me. And those kinds of uncomfortablenesses are what drive the story on, I guess. Basically using a stream-of-consciousness brainstorming approach to the writing, and then hoping to make sense of it or rationalize it, on the go.

Page 88 was my first commissioned giant monster pin-up. I did it for Andrew Gregory’s comic, “She’s A Super Freak #2.” At the top, I had drawn his character, and for this book, I guiltily replaced her with the logo and dialogue you see.

I think we’ve basically gotten through the book now, so let’s look at this gorgeous cover, graciously provided by Shag. I used this image for the second trade’s cover, and Shag generously allowed me to reuse the image, slightly altered, for this book.

Shag was always an artist I dreamed would contribute to my book, but whom I assumed I’d never have the chance to meet. So I was extraordinarily excited to see him listed as a guest at 2006’s San Diego Comic-Con. I assumed he’d make a short, difficult-to-catch appearance and basically be unapproachable, but it turned out, to my shock, he just had a table at artists’ alley. There was a small, fast-moving line, where everyone just said hi and bought a postcard or print and then moved on. I handed him a Doris Danger comic and asked if he ever read comics. He smiled at me and said: “Nope. But I’ll definitely read this one.”

I was just poking around in that area again the next day. There was a line in front of his table again, but he wasn’t there yet. And behind the line, all by himself, just standing around, unbeknownst to his thronging fans, there was Shag!

So I walked up and said hello again, and he remembered me. After visiting a bit, I asked if he might consider doing a monster drawing I could publish in my comic. He said he stopped doing commissions a few years ago. I’d heard his paintings are so popular, he just draws whatever he wants, and buyers are on a list to pay for whatever painting he does next, unseen. If that’s the case, why would he do commissions? Talk about successful!

But I knew he’d drawn a number of giant monster images. Tikis, abominable Snowmen, things like that. I asked if he might consider giving me permission to publish one, and got his contact info.

Since my book is black and white, and his work is color, he gave me permission to use his painting for the cover! Wow! He emailed me FOUR options (!!!). I picked this one because it was my favorite, but also because the woman the monster is carrying actually looks like Doris Danger!

The Doris Danger logo was designed by my friend Wesley Ruff. I love the cursive for her first name.

If you enjoyed this comic, or these stories about making it, please visit my official website, www.chriswisniaarts.com. And that’s all I have space to talk about, for now. Thanks for listening, and hopefully we’ll see you soon for volume two.