DORIS DANGER!

Here is a detail from a sketchbook page that shows my first drawing of “Spluhh, the Thing who Burst from an Exploding Volcano!” It’s from the only page of a dozen mostly-very-loose preparatory sketches I did before diving straight into creating the published pages for Doris Danger, which Dick Ayers inked.

Below this detail is the full page of this first and only prelimary sketch work I did, before just jumping in and drawing direct-on-the-page, the Doris Danger comics that were published. Notice the head sketches were really not Jack Kirby looking at all. They were my early studies for creating Kirby-style monsters, but not in style – in exploring head shapes, eye and mouth and fur or horn placement.  Kirby made so many great giant monsters, I was looking for “the magic one” for my story and just quickly jotted down with a stream-of-conscious head-eyes-mouth exercise. You can see I started with a sort of Gossamer from Bugs Bunny (see below). After zipping out a number of these quick, experimental head shapes, at the bottom right-most head of the page, it looks like I landed on something I liked – the big eyes and “ooh” mouth. I immediately did one fully realized Kirby-style sketch which would become Spluhh in my first story. At the bottom left. I wrote “Where Monsters #2,5 Taboo for globbiness.” At the time I began this project, the only references I had to Jack Kirby’s 1950’s-1960’s GIANT MONSTER comics were the 1970’s reprints by Marvel, in such comics as Where Monsters Dwell, Where Creatures Roam, and Creatures on the Loose. I flipped through my stack of these, and noted a globby monster named Taboo in issues two and five. My Spluhh monster is really very much just a swipe of Taboo.

Sorry to disappoint you, fans!  This isn’t so much a script as a reminiscence of what went through the envisioning of what the cover would be.  i.e., Where the image was swiped from.  The obvious source is this:

Above: The Brute that Walks, page Seven, Panel Two, originally printed in Journey into Mystery #65 (1961, Atlas Comics, which later became Marvel Comics), drawn by the great Jack Kirby, the King of Comics.  It was reprinted in 1970 in Where Creatures Roam #1 (Marvel Comics).  I had a small stack of these 1970’s reprints of these late 1950’s-early 1960’s comics, and while writing and drawing my Doris Danger comics, I flipped through them for my “inspiration” (swipes).  Notice in my version, I wrote “After the King.”  This is in reverence, deference, and acknowledgement of my parody and homage of Jack Kirby’s work.  I regularly post in the comics as well, my acknowledgement of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s “Atlas Comics” giant monster work, in addition to a suggestion of buying these classic quaint compendiums. And I do so now as well!

The Brute that Walks was a scientist who drank a potion he had concocted, hoping it would make him more manly, because his girlfriend thought he was a wimpy science nerd.  It turned him into a humongous ape creature.  The Kirby image above, in my opinion, is “inspired” (swiped) from THIS famous movie scene:

Above: King Kong (1933, directed by Merian C. Cooper).

In the 1970’s, right at the same time Marvel was reprinting these 1960’s Kirby monster comics, DC was releasing a lot of horror comics, most of them (the ones I enjoyed most) with covers signed LD.  These covers invariably had images of people who had no clue of a situation they were in, but WE saw the horror and terror right behind them, just out of their view.

I loved these pretty obvious, kinda cornball “shocking twists,” and the amount of story these “right-before-the-instant” images conveyed.

Stan Lee, writing the Giant Monster stories with Kirby for Atlas, has commented about including what he called “Henry James” style twist endings to his stories.  So for example, in The Brute That Walks story above, the scientist turned into a giant monster trying to make himself manly so that his girl friend wouldn’t think he was a wimp, then he went after his girlfriend and scared her, because he was a giant monster now, and then he turned back into a man, and his girlfriend said, You’re so manly for saving me from that giant monster.  “Gasp! What a twist!”

They’re both enjoyable in their way, but I probably enjoyed the twists of the DC comics covers better than the stories of Stan Lee, so I cheated my genre a bit, by swiping the language of giant monsters and the art style of Jack Kirby, but the twist-style of DC covers – for THIS cover, which you can see if you click the “Published” link below.

COMMENTARY:

PUBLISHED DORIS DANGER BOOKS

[NOTE: I speak about a lot of different Doris Danger books in this commentary.  For the complete illogically complex list of all the comics and books where Doris’s adventures were printed AND reprinted, and what’s in them, please peruse Doris Danger Publishing History]

By the time I had made (basically) this cover image (with some slight text alterations), Tabloia issues 572-576 had been released (June 2004 to June 2005), and each featured a five 5-page story of Doris Danger as a back feature.  Each were written and penciled by me, and inked by Dick Ayers. In February 2006, I put out a trade paperback to collect these Doris Danger stories, Doris Danger Seeks… Where Giant Monsters Creep and Stomp.

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 then, so the book seemed bigger. I published a 56-page, humongous 9″x13″ book that collected those five Ayers-inked stories and fifteen giant monster pin-ups from the Tabloia issues (three per issue – Mike Allred, Gene Colan, Thomas Yeates, Bill Sienkiewicz, Irwin Hasen, Sam Kieth, Los Bros Hernandez, Steve Rude, Ryan Sook, John Severin, Ramona Fradon, Tony Millionaire, and Mike Mignola), and a new six page “origin of Doris Danger” story.

Part of the reason for including the new, 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 “just have to” buy this trade.

HISTORY OF GIANT MONSTER COMICS

Here’s a commentary video on Doris Danger’s Giant Monster Inspirations (Public).

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, Spider-Man, 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, Journey Into Mystery, 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.”  I filmed a commentary video about this HERE.

CREATION OF DORIS DANGER

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.

MAKING THE PAGE

The black-and-white Pre-Edits image (at top) was my original inked drawing, hand-lettered.

I drew the image in two days, if I can trust my notes. August 28 and 29, 2005.

I can see two kinds of ink on the paper.  I’m guessing I used a brush for the bulk of the page, but the window pain – I’m guessing – I colored in with a Micron 1 – which makes sense, because then I could use a ruler to get the clean lines.

PAGE LAYOUT

By the time I began drawing this image, I had done the six covers for the six stories contained in the book, and a seventh story, Muh Muh Muh (which I penciled in 2004, assuming it would be a sixth story for Dick to ink, but which never happened), and an eighth pin-up, Dabba Doo, that sat in a drawer for two years before I did anything with it (I had originally assumed, even before I did the Muh Muh Muh story, that it would be a sixth story that Dick Ayers would ink, and then I didn’t ever come up with a story, and that was the beginning of creating my “bonus splash pages” of giant monsters).

In all THOSE giant monster splashes, I left a little space for the names of the monsters, and some text for the petrified onlookers to cry out.  In the old Atlas giant monster comics that my Doris Danger comics are based on, the cover of the book would often be the exact same image as the first page of the comic, which was a title page for that first story (and then there would be a couple more stories after).  I decided that I didn’t want to do this.  I didn’t want to use a scene from one of my stories for the cover, and I didn’t even want to use one of the same monsters from inside.  And I decided I didn’t want to have the monster’s name, or very much text, BECAUSE I had decided on the name “Doris Danger Seeks… Where Giant Monsters Creep and Stomp,” and I knew that would take a lot of space.  And I ALSO knew I needed to leave enough space to include names of all the great pin-up artists who I knew would be included in the book.

So looking back on the Pre-Edit page, at the top image in black-and-white, you can see I hand lettered the logo at the top.  This was an important step for the layout of the page.  It would help me see how much space I would have left for an actual image.  You can see, based on this image, I didn’t leave enough space for all the text I wound up wanting to include at the bottom.

All this text covering the top and bottom determined how much space I would have left to draw the image.  And it wasn’t a lot!  It’s less than half the page!  And if you scroll down that  Pre-Edit page to the bottom, you can see that the published cover of Doris Danger Seeks… Where Giant Monsters Creep and Stomp only has that image take up about ONE THIRD of the height!  Looking back, these are not good cover designs, but they’re definitely different than what a comic cover is supposed to look like.

INSPIRATION (SWIPES)

For the idea of a monster’s eye through a window, be sure not to miss the Script page.

NOT “PHOTOSHOP SAVVY”

You’ll notice the text is all different. This was before I had any of the vague, minimal “Photoshop savvy” I now flaunt. I hand-lettered the logo, then typed the rest of the text in a Word document, printed it on a piece a typing paper, cut it out, and glued it to the original art page before scanning it in.

DORIS DANGER SEEKS…WHERE GIANT MONSTERS CREEP AND STOMP

This second Pre-Edit image (middle in full-color), was the actual cover for the 9″x13″ 56-page treasury collection that was released in 2006.  Wesley Ruff colored the front AND back cover, AND designed the Doris Danger logo.  Wes is a friend of mine who lives in my home town of Davis CA, and we met through our mutual enjoyment of comics and wanting to get into the industry.  He also moved the text around from my original black-and-white layout, picked the fonts, and altered everything accordingly.

LOGO

You’ll notice the “Salt Peter Press” logo with a stick of dynamite. The tag line was “We’re dynamite!” This was my self-publishing label, which I found to be humorous and appropriate for the theme and style of my stories. Salt peter is an ingredient in gunpowder – NOT dynamite. So we already got it wrong. It’s also something that used to be fed to prison and “insane asylum” inmates, which prevented them from getting an erection, so that no “trouble” could result. So I liked this idea of the magazine symbol being both something that helps you shoot your gun, but also ironically prevents you from “shooting” your “gun.” I liked that the symbol suggested we thought we were hot shit, but that maybe we were actually kind of flaccid and ineffectual. Limp.  I used this logo for all my self-published comics, including all those first appearances of Doris Danger in Tabloia issues 572-576.

SLG Publishing

In 2009, SLG Publishing invited me to re-print all the stories of Doris Danger I’d done up to that time.  The third, lowest, black-and-white Pre-Edit  image is how I re-printed the image in this (bigger 96-page) (smaller 5.5″ x 8.5″) black-and-white SLG collection, Doris Danger Giant Monster Adventures.  Since it was no longer a cover for a book, I chose to change some of the text to add additional gags.  The book wound up containing every story of Doris Danger so far collected EXCEPT KKK-K, The Monstrosity Who Loves Climbing (ish 222), which due to space constraints,  I wound up putting in Monstrosis (Doris Danger vol. 2).

The Published color image of this page is the most “ultimate” version, as the colorized version of the black-and-white SLG reprint.  At the time of this writing, it has not seen print except HERE IN THIS WEB COMIC, you lucky reader, you!

INTRO   Chpt. 1

Giant Monster Inspirations (Public)
SPLASH PAGE ($4 Patrons) 

Chris Wisnia visits Eagle Falls near South Lake Tahoe CA (where he grew up), to talk about the Altas Giant Monster comics by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko, that influenced his Doris Danger comics. Apologies for the shakiness of the image – It was COLD out there, and he had trouble holding the camera still while shivering!

 

NOTE: videos listed “Public” are free for EVERYONE to enjoy!
All the other videos are available to my kind $7 Patreon supporters!)

Doris Danger’s Publishing History (page ooo)  (Public!)
– Chris’s home in sunny Davis, CA

Meeting the artist, Shag (page ooo) (Public!)
– Mount Shasta, CA

Chronology in Doris Danger Comics  (page 000b)
– San Diego, CA

Creation of Rob Oder, fictitious editor  (page 000b)
– Valley of Fire State Park, in Overton, NV

Mimicking the retro art style  (page 000c)
– Somewhere on Hwy 87??, SD

GIANT MONSTER inspirations (page 001) (Public!)
– Eagle Falls near South Lake Tahoe, CA

Meeting Dick Ayers and Deciding to Make Doris Danger Comics  (page 002) (Public!)
– Joshua Tree, Southern CA

Hating Jack Kirby (page 002) 
– Grand Canyon, NV

The Old 1970’s Marvel Reprints  (page 002)
– Tahquitz Canyon, Palm Springs, CA

Naming Giant Monsters  (page 002)
– Meatpacking District, Manhattan, NY

Doris Danger’s name  (page 003)
– Bryce Canyon, UT

Doris’s VERY first appearance  (page 003)
– Luther Place Memorial Church, Washington, D.C.

Three Star Army Generals  (page 003)
– Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.

Doris Danger’s Story Format  (page 004)
– First draft and alternate take: Laguna Beach, Southern CA
– Second draft, Griffith Observatory, Hollywood Hills, Southern CA

No Men in Black (page 004)
– Upper Falls of Yellowstone Park

Toxic Gasagina   (page 004)
– Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, WY

Monster Liberation Army and G.I.Joe  (page 005)
– National Cathedral, Washington, D.C.

Monster Liberation Army and the A-Team (page 005)
– French Quarter, New Orleans, LA

Lettering by Hand (page 006)
– Shasta Lake, Northern CA

Fezzies (page 006)
 – Apple Hill, CA

Any Crazy Thing (page 006)
– Gibbon Falls, Yellowstone National Park, WY

Cramming in the Monster Names (page 007)
– Whitney Museum Outdoor Patio, New York City, NY

“Originally Published in Issue Number” (page 007)
– Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.

In “Africa” (page 007)
– Yellowstone National Park, WY

Childhood Comics Chronologies (page 008)
– Chris’s studio, Davis, CA

The Stan Lee Writing Style  (page 008)
– along the I-70, UT

Unmasking Robots (page 011)
– Lower Falls, Yellowstone National Park, WY

Eiffel Tower (page 012)
– New York, NY

Humanoid Shaped Monsters (page 012)
– Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.

Felk’s “Get Me” (page 013)
– North Lake Tahoe, NV

Felk’s Look (page 013)
– Yellowstone National Park, WY

Giant Monster Size (page 015)
– Battery Park, Manhattan, NY

Brainstorming Giant Monster Names (page 024)
– Andreas Trail, Indian Canyon, Palm Springs, CA

Preaching Peace (and Riots) (page 025)
– the National Cathedral, Washington, D.C.

Telling not Showing (page 026) (Public!)
– Bryce National Park, UT

Asterisks and Footnotes (page 028)
– Sunny Davis, CA on a foggy morning

Generic, Uninformed, Exotic Settings (page 032)
– National Botanical Gardens of Washington, D.C.

Exotic Splash Pages (page 032)
– Zion National Park, UT

Exotic Settings Inspired by Hollywood (page 032)
– near Vernal Falls, Yosemite, CA

Exotic Settings NOT like Hollywood (page 032)
– Yosemite Valley, CA

MLA’s unshocking surprise appearances  (page 033)
Takes One and Two
– Cape Mendocino, CA

Inks His Own Stories (page 037)
– Somewhere West of Cody, WY

Alan Moore’s Letters Pages (page 043)
– Washington, D.C., Overlooking the White House and Washington Monument

Alan Moore’s Letters Page Influence, Continued (page 043)
– San Francisco, CA

Christian Tracts (page 046)
– Ashland, OR

Dr. Souseman (or Mondell Klute) (page 057)
– along the Mississippi River in New Orleans, LA

At last, we meet Dr Souseman…again (page 057)
– St. Joseph’s Cemetery, Sacramento CA

Hillbillies and the Jefferson Memorial (page 057)
– Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Hillbillies – Their Politics, Their Goals (page 057)
– Central Park, New York, NY

Luke Luggash’s first appearance (page 059)
– 10,000 feet above sea level in Yellowstone National Park

The MuhMuhMuh Outer Space Story (page 074)
– Badlands National Park, SD

Doris Danger goes to Outer Space (page 075)
– Ol’ Faithful, Yellowstone National Park, WY
– plus BONUS Ol’ Faithful Geyser footage, Yellowstone National Park, WY

Outer Space, Robots, and ACTORS! (page 076)
– under Yosemite Falls, Yosemite, CA

Changing the title to “Monstrosis” (V2, page 000)
– Cancun, Mexico

written as 1-3 page sequences (V2, page 000)
– Jones Bar, outside Nevada City, CA

Doris Danger’s last comic book (V2, page 000)
– at the site of the 1878 fires of goldrush-era Shasta, CA

Subway Monsters (V2, page 035)
– deep down in the subways of New York City

Monsters Under Bridges (V2, page 036-037)
– at the site of the 1878 fires of goldrush-era Shasta, CA

Not Harry Potter (V2, page 152) (Public!)
– Los Angeles, CA

Jack Kirby’s Rushed Errors (V3, page 3-006 and 3-007)
– Mt. Rushmore, SD

Parachute Sequence (V3, page 3-008)
– Somewhere West of Cody, WY

Steve Ditko style pages (V3, page 3-020)
– Black Sands Beach in Whitethorn, CA

The Last 39 pages of Doris Danger vol. 3 (Apr 2019)
– Chris’s home in sunny Davis, CA

Get a Closer Look at the Last 39 pages! (Apr 2019)
– Chris’s home in sunny Davis, CA

The Last 39 pages – UPDATE! (Jun 2019)
– Chris’s home in sunny Davis, CA

Get a SECOND, NEW, CLOSER Look at the Last 39 pages! (Jun 2019)
– Chris’s home in sunny Davis, CA

NOTES: back cover for Doris Danger Seeks… Where Urban Creatures Creep and Stomp! Salt Peter Press, 2007, 64 pages, black and white, 9″x13″.  Cover image by Shag

[NOTE: I speak about a lot of different Doris Danger books in this commentary.  For the complete illogically complex list of all the comics and books where Doris’s adventures were printed AND reprinted, and what’s in them, please peruse Doris Danger Publishing History]

I’m going to use this page as an opportunity to talk about how I’ve managed to get so many BEST FRIENDS, who kindly give me QUOTES OF ENDORSEMENT from all my favorite comics artists.

In June 2006, I released a trade paperback called “The Lump,” which collected the main feature story from my first self-published comic, the five-issue “Tabloia Weekly Magazine” (a book containing four different comics series inside its covers). Because the story had come out in previous issues, I had a stack of decently favorable reviews, which I decided I wanted to quote from, for the back cover. When I picked and chose lines to quote from these reviews, excising anything unfavorable the reviews had to say, and just focusing on the “hit” phrases and words and lines, I wound up with what I felt was a nice page of positive endorsements, and it made me feel like maybe the book was a decent one.

During my formative years as a comics reader, it struck me how Frank Miller had gotten quotes of endorsement from so many great comics creators in the industry, which he published a few at a time on the backs of his DC “Ronin” mini-series. Each new issue, more fantastic artists and writers were praising his book, and the onslaught of support made me feel intimidated that it must be a great book, and I’d better like it too. I loved this about the book.

So I thought it might be fun to try and do something like this for my own work. Obviously, Frank Miller and I are similar, in that we’re both comics professionals of a similar vision and style, who produce a like quality of work, and share a similar fame and respect within the industry. And I’m being sarcastic. But despite this, I had a couple tricks up my sleeve in attempting to accomplish this goal.

Since 2002, I’d been getting in touch with all my favorite comics artists who I could find online or at comics conventions, and showing them my Doris Danger work in the hopes of convincing them to create pin-ups of giant monsters that I could publish in my giant monster books. And I had incredible luck. While going through this process, a number of them said kind words about the work (perhaps out of sad kindness). Much of these compliments I’d received in emails. So in 2007, I began writing to these artists to see if they would mind if I quoted them for promotion purposes. Many asked that I not quote them. Some just didn’t respond at all. But a number of them very kindly acquiesced.

Some artists altered their quotes for better “quotability.” For example, in April 2004, I wrote a letter of introduction to Matt Wagner, in which I included a few pages of my comics to share.  We’d never met, but he was going to be at a comics convention I would be attending. He replied, “Yer book looks like a buttload o’ fun!”

Here’s me with Matt, a la San Francisco Wondercon 2007:

In February 2007, upon my asking if I could use that quote, Matt wrote back:

How about–

A big, bristling, bombastic, black&white, blockbusting buttload o’ fun!…”
Matt Wagner

So I began to collect and gain permission for quotes such as these. Dick Ayers inked the first five 5-page Doris Danger adventures for me (first published in “Tabloia”, collected in “Doris Danger in Where Giant Monsters Creep and Stomp” and now in the SLG book, “Doris Danger Giant Monster Adventures”) so I’d had a number of correspondences with him. In one complimentary letter, he told me, “I rank you with the so-called King, Chris.”  When I asked for permission to publish his quote, he responded, “I rank you with the very best of pencillers, Chris.”

Here’s Dick and I at the Baltimore Comic-Con, 2005:

I’ve been trying to see if Tim Bradstreet might have time in his schedule to make a giant monster pin-up for me, I think since 2002. He actually said in a correspondence, “Dude, you know I love the magazine and think it rocks…”

Here we are at Comic-Con in 2006:

At one point, he actually wrote a big letter, explaining his stance on doing a pin-up for me:

In an amendment to my letter dated 1.27.05 OK Cree (that’s what I call Chris’ that I like –Not the ‘OK’ part, the ‘Cree’ part . . .) Anyway. It should be stated for clarification that when I mentioned (in the aforementioned letter) that “I’m so not a monster guy”, I’m not suggesting that I don’t like monsters, nay. Only that it’s a challenge to draw them. And I’m talking big, nasty, monster type monsters like Godzilla, Mothra, a giant stone Golem, or for that matter even werewolves. It’s that photo ref thing you see. A lot of artists who do not admit to using photo ref call this dilemma “limitation” or “restriction of the media”, or simply a “lack of talent”. Petty technical jealousies aside, I call it plain laziness. You see normally I’d just do a little research and find out where the closest possible giant stone Golem was hanging out terrorizing some townspeople or villagers, but I’m lazy see? I mean everyone knows there are Werewolves in Bakersfield and even in El Centro, but who wants to go there, right? So you see my problem. I apologize if my earlier generalization was not totally clear. I write it off to sleep deprivation.

Now normally, if you were paying me a huge amount of money like those movie people who talked me into drawing a big poster for a Werewolf film, I’d somehow find the time or summon up the guts to drive up to Bakersfield for a clandestine photo op. And the bitch of it is you have to wait until the Lunar cycle is in full to make the trip, otherwise you’re just wasting your time talking to Native American medicine men and the occasional alleged witness to a sighting. So it’s true, money talks. But flattery and tenaciousness certainly has it’s upside. It just takes longer. Anyway stay in touch on this.

I may be doing a scout for Lion’s Gate for an upcoming Succubus thriller called “Dear Vlad”. I have a special relationship with the Vampires so maybe, just maybe I’ll have something for you soon.

Eternally yours – Tim

Dave Gibbons had produced a pin-up for one of my books. I naturally sent him a copy of the book, when it came out (“Doris Danger in Outer Space”, then republished in the trade, “Doris Danger in… Where Urban Creatures Creep and Stomp” and now in the SLG book, “Doris Danger Giant Monster Adventures”.)

When he received the book in February 2006, he said, “A fantastic hoot! Great pin-ups, too…”

In February 2007 I asked if I could quote him. He replied, “As I’ve had a full read now, rather than just a quick skim-through, and the opinion still stands!”

That totally cracked me up, so I immediately wrote him back asking if I could quote THAT too. He replied,

LOL
Do it!

We had met at the Bristol Con UK in 2005. My wife and I took a photo with him at San Diego’s Comic Con 2005, when he stopped by my booth, to give me the pin-up of a giant monster I had commissioned, included in this book.

I sat near Mike Mignola at Wondercon 2006, and as he passed by he said something like this of my book, “It’s the ultimate Kirby-style monster comic,” or something like that. This photo is taken probably at the moment he gave me the quote:

A year later, I emailed to ask if I could quote him. For some reason, I had in my head that he had said, “It’s the ultimate Kirby-style monster comic.” He replied, “I don’t believe I’ve ever actually used the word “penultimate” but it makes for a good quote.” So we used that quote on my second Doris Danger trade, “Where Urban Creatures Creep and Stomp.” The image is posted in page 000a Back Cover – Pre-Edits.

Getting ready for the Doris Danger SLG trade, it was brought up that “penultimate” means, “second to last,” for example “the penultimate stanza of the poem.” I had mentioned this before to Mike, and wanted to see if he wanted to change the quote at all, so the published book for Doris Danger (vol. 1), page 000a Back Cover – Published ultimately contained the quote , “(I don’t believe I’ve ever actually used the word ‘penultimate’, and I’m pretty sure I’ve used it incorrectly, but I like the way it sounds.)” What a sport that guy is!

With such good luck getting quotes, I soon gained the confidence to begin writing to artists I knew, to see if any of them might be willing to offer me a quote. Many didn’t respond.

But Adam Hughes sent me his quote, “This book has giant monsters that outshine even the ones from WUTHERING HEIGHTS! Enjoy!”

This photo is from when I first got to know him, at Orlando’s Mega-Con 2006:

 

 

I saw Steranko at the New York Comic-Con in 2007, and asked if he might give me a quote of endorsement. He kind of went, Gee, Chris, I don’t know… But when I emailed him to follow up, he sent me “A MONSTERous thrill on every page! How could I live without it???”

I tried to convince Jim to let me take a photo with him for years, and finally, in 2011, I got this beauty while filming my Diary of a Struggling Comics Artist Documentary:

 

And last of all … Stan Lee!

This family portrait of us with our “Uncle Stan” was taken at Emerald City’s Comic-Con 2010:

I’d been going to San Diego Comic Con since 2001, and exhibiting since 2004. We got to know one of the security guards a little, and in 2006, I mentioned that there are often guests of the con who I’m unable to hunt down, because they’re such sensations.

He said, “Like who do you have in mind?” I told him, for example, Stan Lee, Moebius, and some others.

He said, “Well tell you what, if I’m put on duty with any of them, I’ll pop over here to your booth, and bring you to meet them!” WOW!

I said, “Well for example, it says Moebius is doing a signing at the Activision booth, but it doesn’t say when.” So he sends one of his fellow guards over to the Activision booth to find out some information for us. UNBELIEVABLE! While we’re visiting, he suddenly says, “Hold on just a second,” and starts listening and talking into his headset for a moment. “Yeah? Yeah. Okay. All right. Thanks.” Then he says to me, “Moebius is signing at the Activision booth right now. Let’s go.” INCREDIBLE! So we march all the way to the opposite end of the convention together, and when we get there, STAN LEE IS SIGNING AT THE SAME TIME! FRIGGIN’ AMAZING!

The place is a madhouse. There are mobs and mobs of people swarming the area, and there’s just a feeling of tension.

I follow my security guy, and he goes around and says a quick hello to the security guard manning a station, and then walks through a roped-off area. I try to follow him, but this new security guard stops me. My pal turns back and says, “No, it’s okay. He’s with me.” And next thing I know, I’m coming through, into the inner circle, just outside where Stan Lee is signing. My buddy is talking with various people, who are pointing back and forth, and finally he comes back to me and says, “Stan is really busy, and as soon as he’s done signing, he’s got to get somewhere. Did you want him to sign a book? Because we can leave it with his rep, and get it signed, if you want.”

I told him, I didn’t have a book to sign (I did, but I had left it at my booth). I said what I wanted was to give the esteemed Stan Lee a copy of my giant monster book. My friend stepped me over a few steps (because we were in an extremely tight, cramped area) and said, you need to talk to this man. He’s Stan Lee’s representative.

I introduced myself and told him I’d been doing Kirby-style giant monster stories inked by Dick Ayers. The representative said, “Oh, I haven’t seen Dick in a long time. How’s he doing?” I gave him a very quick update, and told him I’d also had a chance to spend time with Larry Lieber when he came out to see me at a convention in New York a couple years ago. (Larry is Stan’s brother.  Stan’s real name is Stanley Lieber.)  I told him I’m too young to have met Jack Kirby, but I would love for Stan to see what I’ve been working on. I gave him a copy of “Doris Danger Seeks… Where Giant Monsters Creep and Stomp” and was was assured Stan would receive the book. As I left, I asked if there might be any chance, if he enjoyed it, that he could write a quick blurb that I could publish with my next book. The rep said that would be a possibility, and he gave me his card, and told me to ask for Stan, and that would put me through to him (the rep). Wow, I couldn’t believe it!

When I got home, I did as he said, and spoke with him on the phone. He assured me that he had gotten my book into Stan’s hands.  I asked if there might be any chance to get a blurb from Stan, and at first he said he didn’t think so, but then he rethought it, and by the end of the conversation he was asking me, So if Stan called me and just said something about my book, could I use that?  I was dumbfounded.  I told him, Well, you could just email me a sentence or two, if that would be easier.  He said he’d check with Stan and get back to me.

I assumed I would need to call back in a couple weeks, but before I had a chance to even think about it, I got a call saying Stan would do a blurb for me, and could I please send an email with an idea of what I might like Stan to say, and then Stan would rewrite it in “his own inimitable style.”  Uh…okay…  He wanted me to just send a couple sentences.  Man, what a lot of pressure.  So let me get this straight, I’m just going to write whatever I’d like Stan to say about my book, and then he’ll change it so that it sounds like something Stan said.  Yes, that’s right.

At first I thought maybe they had actually just lost the book or thrown it out without looking at it, and that’s why they wanted me to give them a sample of what to say.  Upon looking at what Stan wrote, though, I see he must have seen the book.

So I thought over my dilemma for a while, then I finally sat in front of my computer and basically just brainstormed a bunch of outrageous, self-congratulatory, pretentious, pompous compliments about myself.  I ended up sending a full paragraph of what I thought Stan “The Man” Lee should say about my work, and here’s what I wrote:

“Quirky, kitschy, hilarious, odd, full of Lee-Kirby energy…and I know!  A loving homage full of bizarre and random characters, plot twists that don’t make much sense, kooky giant monsters, and a whole lot of exclamation points and fun!  Takes me back.  Kirby and I did giant monsters better, but Chris’s “Doris Danger Giant Monster Adventures” are next up on the list.  A great package, full of pin-ups by all my favorite artists, in a gorgeous over-sized format that makes me feel like a kid.  The truest, most heartfelt homage I’ve seen to my work.”

Oh, man, it makes me gag to think Stan “The Man” Lee, my idol, saw me write this stuff about myself and knew I wanted him to say these things about me.  But the following week, I had a blurb from my idol, and the man who wrote the stories I grew up with and loved so much that I dedicated a book to ripping off his style…Stan “The Man” Lee wrote me a blurb about my monster books!

“The title alone, ‘Doris Danger Seeks Where Giant Monsters Creep and Stomp’ should have warned me off, but I read it anyway. Somehow, Chris Wisnia had performed the amazing feat of taking the minor masterpieces that Jack Kirby and I had done and looking at them through a carnival’s distorting mirror. I wanted to write the sort of thoughtful, philosophical blurb about “DDSWGMC&S” for which I’m so justly famed, but after getting caught up in its weird and wacky contents, no mere words of mine could truly do it the injustice it deserves. Therefore, I’ll just add the one sentence that applies to any horror or monster tale—’Read it at your own risk! ” – Stan Lee

You can read TONS of very kind quotes from tons of fantastic comics artists (who are all my BEST FRIENDS) by clicking the TESTIMONIALS link at the very-top menu.

INTRO   Chpt. 1
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