Taboo Dancing with the Dead Or Taboo You

You’re home, all alone. It’s midnight—the proverbial witching hour when all the beasties and ghoulies of the night come forth and prowl (This, however, is the 20^th century; we know that there are no such things as vampires, werewolves, and goblins.  

Yet what was that creaking sound upstairs? That tapping at the window, is it1 branch blowing gently in the wind. or something more sinister’! Yes, perhaps all the “monsters” are gone, but in this hi-tech, post-nuclear, pre-apocalypse age, there is a new set of terrors to hound us and keep us awake at night.

The. media bombard us with the new lunatic fringe. Seemingly harmless neighbors that go ‘round the bend at the slightest provocation. Richard Speck slashes 10 nurses in Chicago; a young man climbs to the top of a tower in Texas and guns down innocent bystanders; a patron with an automatic weapon, snaps in a Burger King; a disgrun tled Postal Worker expresses his displeasure with the help of a handgun. And always the friends and neighbors appear on TV the next day mouthing the same inane expressions. “He was always such a good boy.” “He was such a nice kid.” “Never bothered anyone ...”

Of course there are no monsters, no demons crawling forth from the pits of Hell to ravage your flesh, and possess your undying soul ... or are there? In the cold clear light of day, we can laugh and joke about such things, but at night, when we are alone, down deep in our heart of hearts, we know that there are things that we can never know. Things that all of our science and advanced thought cannot explain, and we are afraid.

These may seem to be fairly morbid thoughts to place on the printed page (especially in a publication like Amazing Heroes); but they are even more unusual when you not only discuss them on a daily basis, but devote a fair portion of your life’s work to delving deeper into that portion of the unknown often termed horror fiction. Well, that is precisely what artist/writer (and now editor/publisher) Steve Bissette has been doing for the past decade. In a medium best and almost exclusively known for promoting the seemingly endless adventures of people who parade around in long underwear, Steve Bissette has never drawn a superhero comic.

No, not even once.

Perhaps best known for his work with John Totleben and the near legendary Alan Moore on DC’s Swamp Thing, he has, almost inadvertently, become first ah editor and now a publisher of what he hopes will become the cutting edge of horror in the comic medium. ‘‘The epitome of the horror genre,” Bissette told us, “Is about emotion. It’s about fear. And the epitome of fear is touching on or recognizing things that you would rather not touch on or recognize, hence they are taboo.’’

PLUMBING THE DEPTHS OF THE SOUL

To this end Bissette, under the guise of SpiderBaby Grafix, is compiling numerous horror short stories from a varied array of established and new creators to include in his ongoing anthology Taboo. “l would like (Taboo) to be a book that touches on the power and importance of the genre stories where people can confront , very unpleasant and yet very primal, aspects of living.”

Only when a person confronts his own fear or hate, puts it in terms that he can understand and actually hold in their hands, can he truly understand it. According to Bissette this is the power of the horror genre. “I think that that kind of vicarious involvement can ultimately be a very positive thing because then when you are confronted with dangero.us, life threatening, or disturbing situations it’s almost like you’ve had these little mini rehearsals that have prepared you for being more aware in those sort of situations.”

Bissette believes those things are important. So important, in fact, that he is committed to bringing them to the p11blic at large.

As one would expect, this is proving to be a monumental, uphill battle for Bissette. Aside from the oxymoronic nature of the very term “horror comic,” Bissette has to deal with the fact that nearly every other horror comic since the demise -of the classic EC line of books has merely imitated tile form without understanding the content.

“There are many horror films and novels, and especially horror comics, that I would call bad films, books, or comics, because rather than honestly dealing with these things (the crystalizing of our fears), they trivialize them or exploit them. The artists or creators who obviously have a passion, a vision and the imagination for this, and arc really skillful enough as writers or artists to actually take a reader by the hand and lead them through this vicarious experience and bring them back out the other end ...these are the people, and this is kind of the work that I would like to have Taboo embrace. It is out there, it is being done, but I’ve not seen anyone successfully put it under one cover.”

TRIPPING THE DARK FANTASTIC

To return to the roots of the project: in 1985, after over two years of pencilling Swamp Thing (most of that in collaboration with Alan Moore and John Totleben), Bissette left the strip. The grueling schedule of a monthly book had left him with a severe case of creative burnout-as had, oddly enough, the high quality of the collaboration. In a sense, Bissette had been spoiled: “After working with a writer like Alan,” he remembers, “none of the scripts l was working on (save for a couple I worked on with friends) even interested me.” Bissette even grew disenchanted with drawing. Desperately needing to recharge his creative batteries, Bissette started to take on writing assignments -scripting fill-in issues of Swamp Thing, writing articles for various film magazines, and writing stories for other artists to illustrate.

Then, about a year after he had left Swamp Thing, the idea of producing and packaging a horror book with John Totleben became a serious consideration. “Back when John and I were working with Alan Moore on Swamp Thing we bad a passion for doing horror in comics. When we were working with Alan, specifically around issue #29, we found that Alan was, as a writer, pointing us in a direction that we had never considered before. He was in my mind breaking ground, very simple ground, but breaking ground that hadn’t been touched on hardly at all in doing horror in comics.”

About that same time Pacific Comics was publishing Bruce Jones and April Campbell’s Twisted Tales, and Bissette and Totleben really became aware of the absolute lack of horror comics on the market. There was a brief period where (believe it or not) The X-Men was the closest thing to a horror comic, and another where Swamp Thing was literally the only horror comic on the stands. Both creators found that appalling, especially since horror in films, books and almost every other medium was flourishing. Yet, every time they attempted to approach a publisher, the companies would come back with the reply that horror doesn’t sell. “Trash is never going to sell,” is Bissette’s rejoinder.

According to Totleben, the original idea-an anthology along the lines of Berni Wrightson’s Bad Time Stories, to be entirely written and drawn by Bissette and Totleben -took form at a party. Later that year, at the MidOhio Con, they met Ce rebus creator/publisher Dave Sim and hit it off quite well.

At that time, Sim told them that he would be interested in publishing anything they wanted to produce. The deal that they eventually worked out was that Sim would front the printing expenses. and then, after the book began generating revenue, would take a portion of the profits for his efforts, with the lion ·s share to be split between Bissette and Totleben. This offer was attractive enough to get them seriously thinking about it.

When they got back to Sim, the two artists told him that a horror anthology was what they really wanted to do, proposing the Taboo project. Needless to say, this really wasn’t what Sim had in mind when he originally made the offer, as he would now be involved, even if only by proxy, with many creators. Nevertheless, he had faith in the project and gave the go-ahead.

Had Bissette and Totleben chosen to write and draw their own work (much the same way that Michael Zulli and Steven Murphy did with Puma Blues) then Taboo would have been a much simpler project by far. Making it an anthology only served to complicate the lives of everyone involved. Especially that of Dave Sim, who suddenly found himself being looked on as a publisher and began being bombarded with people’s pet projects and super-hero concepts.

As for Bissette and Totleben, they discovered how much they really did not know about their own profession. For the first time in their respective careers they were forced to think about per unit costs, printing, marketing, and all the million or so other things that their status of freelancers had thus spared them. “Here we were, professionals who had (at the time we began the project) worked in the industry for almost a decade, but we had always been working as freelancers. We never had to work with the nitty gritty of publishing.” Much to their surprise, not only were they forced to decide on matters for which they had little understanding, they were ill-equipped to make those kinds of decisions in the first place.

Thus, they relied heavily upon the vastly superior knowledge and experience of Sim, who had been self-publishing for close to 1O years by then (including a brief stint, publishing other people’s comics, most of which moved to California with his ex-wife, Deni Loubert, when they divorced and she founded Renegade Press). In a real sense, Sim became a mentor for the two men. While he did advise them on many matters, “Dave did not make the decisions on how the book was going to be printed or distributed or formatted,’’ Bissette emphasizes. “John and I made those decisions.” However. on at least two occasions they went to Sim with stories on which they could not agree and asked for his opinion.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

Things went along smoothly for a time. Then, as it is wont to do, disaster struck. In February of this year (1988), a dispute arose between Diamond Distribution and Aardvark-Vanaheim (AV). In brief, the problems were the result of Sim’s announcement that he was going to distribute a previously solicited reprint of the High Society trade paperback and the second printing of the Cerebus trade paperback by mail order only. Diamond, the nation’s largest comics distributor, retaliated by threatening to stop carrying Puma Blues, published by AV’s sister company Aardvark-One International. Recriminations on both sides were swift, with Sim accusing Diamond of “blackmail’’ (actually, extortion would be closer to the mark): “Puma Blues had been reduced to a bargaining. chip,’’ said Bissette. ;’It was like the schoolyard bully saying, ‘If you don’t give me your lunch money, I’m going to beat up your friend.’”

As the situation snowballed, creators rallied around Sim. There was a rumor of a threatened boycott of Diamond by 12 creators and self-publishers including, among others, Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz, Alan Moore, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle boys. Shortly thereafter Diamond announced that they would carry Puma Blues. This announcement was in turn followed by the “Toronto Sumit” which consisted of members of the “Gang of 12.” Eventually, when all the shouting died down, everyone appeared to be on cordial, if not entirely friendly, terms with everyone else. Yet the damage had been done.

GO YOUR OWN WAY

The short-term problems apparently solved, the long-term results were not long in following. Sim, after consulting with Bissette, Totleben, Zulli, and Murphy, announced that he had permanently dissolved Aardvark One International, and was returning solely to self-publishing. Never comfortable with public perception of him as a publisher (“Dave was just acting as a financial backer to our projects” is the way Bissette puts it), he opted out. Still, it was not just a simple kiss-off to the four creators and their two projects; Sim helped them out as much as he could. Puma Blues moved over to Mirage Studios (publisher of Turtles), and Taboo went the self-publishing route under Bissette’s newly formed SpiderBaby Grafix. By this time, Totleben had also bowed out of the project, first as co-editor, and then as co-publisher, for he too was uncomfortable with his dual role. “At first reading the horror stories was fun,’’ Totleben said, “but after a while it got boring. So, I told Steve that I didn’t want to edit the book anymore, which was okay with him because he was really into it.” Totleben also cited the great distance between them (Bissette lives in Vermont, and Totleben in Pennsylvania). “You really need to sit down face-to-face and discuss things. Over the phone just doesn’t work.” Accepting Totleben’s decision, Bissette geared up to take over the whole show. “Our relationship was, and still is, very strong and clear,” Bissette stated. “The Puma Blues situation realized Dave’s worst fears, which was someone threatening someone to whom Dave had extended an invitation, and who had accepted the invitation, and who was working in credibly hard on a project that they believed in. (Puma Blues creators) Stephen (Murphy) and Michael (Zulli) were being threatened as complete innocents.”

Even now rumors persist of in-fighting within the group. To this Bissette responds, “I stress that Dave, John, and myself, Steven, and Michael have worked this entire situation out between us and that we (Bissette and his wife Nanc,-y) are willingly taking on the role of publishing Taboo...We probably saved ourselves many problems because if Taboo had to switch from being a Canadian-based publication to being an American-based publication, we would. for one thing, suddenly be dealing with the enormous difficulties of international tax laws. So the fact that Taboo #I is starting as an American-based outfit is actually going to save us a lot of trouble.”

WHAT TO EXPECT

As one would expect, being new to the publishing game, Bissette has already made his share of mistakes-in spite of the guidance and council of Sim. Perhaps the most egregious of these has been the premature announcements made about Taboo ‘s release. Bissette’s initial intent was not to announce any story until the work was in hand. Unfortunately, some stories that were announced for issue #1 will not be appearing until later issues. One of these is a Steve Barron-John Totleben collaboration entitled “Space Invaders,” which Totleben now hopes will appear in the second issue: “If I don’t finish it Steve Barron will kick my ass,” he jokes. Bissette also regrets missing his two previously-announced ship dates (last October and this past May -current plans call for a late October release, hopefully by Hallowe’en). Although Taboos long lead time has come to be regarded by many as a typical example of self-publishers’ self-indulgence and disorganization, editors of prose short story anthologies will tell you that spending three years on a short story collection is not only not an inordinate amount of time, it’s almost considered rather rapid.

“I will stand by what we have in the first issue of Taboo,” Bissette said, “as being the cream of what we were offered and accepted over the two-year period. We would have had a very different book had we put it out a year ago. I don’t think it would have been as good a book. Some of the best stories we have in the first issue of Taboo only came in recently. By the same token, a number of the very key stories in the first issue were some of the first we received.”

Originally announced as having 176 pages, it was trimmed to 112 because this would a) allow for an accelerated publishing schedule, and b) they were getting into what Bissette refers to as the rock band syndrome. “If you have a rock band that has three members and you have a gig that pays $500, you all go home with a good paycheck. If you have a rock band that has 17 members and you have a full back-up choir and incredible percussion crew you all go home with $5.00.”

Similar in size and format to the Swords of Cerebus collections, each issue will be 10” by 7 ½” square and perfect bound. The covers will be varnished color paintings on front and back, with the front being by Bissette, Totleben, or another artis.t they’ve invited. The back cover will be dedicated to works by new artists or by artists who are unfamiliar to comic book readers. The interior pages will all be black-and-white.

WHY NOT THE BIG THREE?

Quite naturally, when discussing this project, the question came up, why independent? Why not present the idea to DC (where he had been working), or even Marvel, or First? Surely quitting full-time work to not only go freelance, but to self -publish as we”, is a chancy proposition. To this Bissette responded, “I can honestly say that had Dave Sim not extended the invitation tp John and I to publish anything that we wanted to do (which turned out to be Taboo) it never would have happened. Taboo, we hope, will stand as an alternative to the anthologies that have existed, and, as such we could have never done it with DC or Marvel or First.”

To illuminate his point, Bissette related that, at one point he was at the DC offices showing the 1aboo binder to some friends who were editors, and someone commented that DC was doing a horror book: Wasteland. Bissette dismisses the notion: “Wasteland’s not a horror book.”

At that same time DC was also producing Elvira’s House of Mystery where, according to Bissette, all they did was repeat every error they had made earlier in the ‘70s that drove their mystery line into the ground. “In a nutshell this is what happened, even with the quality horror anthologies, like Twisted Tales, the Bruce Jones anthology....First of all, they are all regurgitating the EC formula that Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein and their amazing stable of artists put together in the early ‘50s. At that time it was unique to comics. In the ‘50s, that was subversive.”

The EC formula generally consisted of taking a social wrong or some sort of injustice and trying to balance the scales of justice with some sort of supernatural intervention. One example of this is the classic walking dead story where someone has been murdered and the dead person comes back from the grave to exact revenge.

As a rule these were all wish fulfillment stories, the basic premise being that everyone sees injustices committed and there seems to be, in our lifetime, no adequate means of redress for many of these wrongs in our society. Thus, much of the power of the EC stories came from the satisfaction of seeing a wrong punished by a supernatural means. Or, to put it another way, “Whatever goes around, comes around.” Eventually (especially with the institution of the Comics Code in 1955), the law of diminishing creative returns took over, and everyone began repeating the same formulas over and over again.

This same son of thing occurred in the early ‘80s in the film industry: well-made ‘70s films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the original John Carpenter vehicle Halloween degenerated into slasher/hacker films like Friday the 13^th #s 1-1,006.

Joe Orlando, who started the horror revival at DC in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. came out of the EC school. He was one of the editors who passionately cared about doing quality horror anthologies but, according to Bissette, the editors that followed just couldn’t live up to his standards. “I’m not saying that they didn’t do their job, or that they weren’t professional-I don’t think they had any sympathy for the genre. I know that was the case with Eclipse’s Tales of Terror.”

Which is why someone like Alan Moore made such an impact on the industry at large. “It’s not just that Alan is an excellent writer, which he is, it’s also that he’s bringing life experience, as a reader, viewer, and Listener to the work that he was doing. He was not simply another snake eating his tail in terms of having been breastfed on and regurgitating the comics he was brought up with.’’ In AH #145 (Preview Special #7), Moore had this to say about Taboo: “For the first time I think that you might get a horror comic that is going to move a long way beyond EC .... Taboo, by its very nature, by its very tide, is pushing into territory that has never been touched before.”

THE CUTTING EDGE

For Taboo, Bissette wants contributions not only from the people currently working in comics, but from people both outside comic books and in other forms of horror fiction. People like underground canonist S. Clay Wilson, filmmaker Tim Burton, and prose fiction writer (and filmmaker) Clive Barker. By securing people of this stature, with names recognizable outside of the comic book field, Bissette hopes to add credibility to his book . “People’s ears perk up when they hear Clive’s name.”

Further, some of the best comic book horror material currently coming out isn’t in any of the horror comics but coming out in books like Raw and in regular anthologies and self-published books. Until now, Bissette says, “no one has assembled those people, put them together in one place. And they’re the people that remain on the cutting edge of doing won’t even say horror, of doing effective disturbing comic art.

“The only anthology that I saw that was beginning to pull those people together was Denis Kitchen’s revival of Death Rattle. They were very conscientiously trying to put together a very good anthology, and I think that more often than not they succeed.”

“I can’t say that the first issue successfully brings all those elements together, but I think it’s a good first step.”

To further widen the scope of his search, Bissette has recently joined the editorial staff of Fantaco’s Gore Shriek. He did this for two reasons; first, he enjoyed the title and wanted to lend a hand, and second, he wished to use it as a vehicle for placing good horror stories that had been submitted to Taboo but, for one reason or another, were unsuitable for the book. “I was first attracted to Gore Shriek as a contributor because they were trying to do something different, and they were giving people the freedom to experiment.”

THE FINAL QUESTIONS

One of the points that Bissette constantly stresses is that he is putting out a book called Taboo, and while he doesn’t think there’s anything in the first issue that could cause problems with obscenity trials and the like, he knows for a fact there’s stuff in the second issue that will cause some troubles. “In fact, that’s one of our goals. We’re not going out there as pornographers snickering, ‘Ha, this will get people pissed off,’ but part of the goal is to disturb people, to unsettle people. I honestly feel that that’s the goal of horror fiction, and art in general. There’s a quote by Franz Kafka that, ‘Good art should break the ice of the soul.’

“The only things that have ever mattered to me in my life that I’ve looked at or viewed, that were works of art or works of entertainment, were things that unsettled me or opened my eyes. It’s not just unsettling things that provoke you; it’s also things that are so beautiful or that touch on emotions that you can see expressed so clearly in your life...that move you in some way. I know for a fact that the comic publishers out there wouldn’t take that gamble. We had some interest from some publishers but as soon as they realized that we were serious about saying to people like S. Clay Wilson, ‘Hey, S. Clay, you can do whatever you want; they get very nervous.”

At the same time, that’s why Bissette wants Wilson in the book. Because Wilson has been doing comics since 1965 and yet he’s still one of the most provocative and disturbing artists out there. “He puts down on the page unflinchingly what’s in his imagination. I want that to be the core of Taboo.” In fact, after Wilson had submitted four plates to the first issue, he called Bissette and said, “I had this nightmare that I really want to draw; you guys into it?” Bissette enthusiastically responded yes, but what he got was far from what he expected. “It is this sort of Mark Twain piece of Americana. It’s light years away from that universe of bikers, and demons, and Mary giving blow jobs to Satan in Hell stuff that he usually does·

There is a very disturbing piece by Australian cartoonist Eddie Campbell entitled “Pyjama Girl,” which is based on an actual police case in Sydney. It seems that one girl disappeared and another was murdered but the body was never discovered. Later a body turned up but co ldn’t be identified. It was kept for years in a vat of formaldehyde in Sydney University. Finally, it was buried in an unmarked grave. This story in particular stayed with Bissette and Totleben for weeks after they read it, which is why it wound up in the anthology.

Other contributors to the first issue include Charles Vess, Alan Moore with Bill Wray, Charles Burns, Berni e Mireault (The Jam, Grendel), Jack Butterworth & Cam Kennedy (the

Light & Darkness war), Mike Hoffman, Tim Lucas, Tom Sniegoski, Ambush Bug creators Keith Giffen & Robert Loren Fleming (whose contribution “Chigger and the Man,” Totleben stated, is the sickest thing in the issue), Chester Brown (Yummy Fur), Rolf Stark, and Frank Miller.

Future contributors include Mark Askwith, Richard Sala, Toni Marnick, Cara Shennan-Tereno, Dave Marshall, Jim Wheelock (Screw), Tim Burton (yes, the director of Beetlejuice), Michael McDowell, Steve Perry, Tom Veitch, Greg Iro ns , Chet WiUiamson, and Tim Truman.

WHAT THE FUTURE WILL HOLD

For the foreseeable future, Taboo will be the only ongoing project for SpiderBaby Grafix. I’m not looking to build an empire of publications,” Bissette flatly stated. “I do not want people sending in all sorts of ideas for mini-series and such. I welcome any and all submissions of stories and art for Taboo. I have no plans of publishing spinoffs or other series.” Nor, he went on to say, is he really interested in any continuing features in Taboo, because of its proposed quarterly frequency. “It would be suicide to have continuing stories in a quarterly book.’’

In the long range SpiderBaby Grafix will prove to be an outlet for additional pet projects of Bissette’s (i.e., portfolios and the like). It is also his intension to have an annual of sorts for Taboo every fourth or fifth issue. (While he is hoping for a quarterly schedule, he is practical enough to realize that if he gets it out only three times per year, he will be doing quite well indeed.) The first of these proposed annuals will not re-collect material from the previous issues, but rather reprint older horror material that has never been reprinted.

One very important note: contrary to previous announcements, distribution of the series will in fact be handled through the normal channels of the direct sales market. (‘‘Actually

that’s the in-direct market; the direct market would be mail-only, from publisher to consumer.”) This decision to cooperate with the distributors was reached at the Toronto Summit. The members of that Summit jointly determined that, as of July 1^st of this year, everyone had a clean slate, and all previous “crimes” were to be ignored. It was felt that distributors had the right to carry or not carry any product they wished, and no one should be forced to carry any publisher’s entire line. Still, publishers had similar rights in that they had the right to choose how to get their products into the hands of the readers, and whether that was through the normal distribution methods. or mail order.

By way of conclusion, Bissette returned to the Clarens quote that began this piece, that horror fiction was, or should be determined, more by intent than by content: he pointed out that many of the pieces in the book will appear to be crude, or even primitive to the reader, but in many cases that look was deliberate. “The intent to disturb, unsettle, or scare people is really what defines the horror genre, says Bissette. “‘But the moment you tell someone this is a horror story their reaction is almost immediately, ‘Go ahead. scare me.’ Which naturally makes it that much tougher to do.

“But it’s

This Week in Comics

I’ve been reading comics since 1961. In the late ‘70’s I discovered fandom when some a fellow fan named Mark Earnst from New Hampshire reached out to me and asked me to join his amateur Publishing Alliance (APA) which I did, that APA became known as Phoenix. In 1981, I sold my first professional article, The Ditko Days, to Amazing Heroes; marking me the first person from Phoenix to go pro. By 1996 when the market crashed, I became the most prolific journalist in the field of comics, having contributed to nearly ever comic fanzine (as well as several of the major and minor comic publishers) that were being published at the time.

After the crash which took out virtually all of the fanzines, I switched over to the web, publishing reviews and articles to a number of websites. In the nearly 30 years since then, I’ve “outlived” half a dozen or so sites that have gone dark (one of which just announced this week that it is shuttering early in 2026), and yet I still continue to write about comics, films, TV, and other things which catch my fancy (including writing and publishing my own comics and books).

Yes, I love comics.

This past week I picked up some comics that I want to talk about. Topping off my list is the Marvel/DC Deadpool Batman team-up. Normally I rather enjoy cross-company team-ups, and over the years have collected quite a number of them, and, as a rule, have enjoyed them. Unfortunately, Deadpool/Batman isn’t one of them. While I understand why the two companied chose both characters for a team-up, (The purpose of the book is sales, so put two of the most popular/recognizable characters together for the biggest bang for your buck), still, they couldn’t be two more mismatched characters if they tried. (Batman/Moon Knight, Batman/Daredevil would be more evenly matched and/or logical pairings.)

To be sure, the story does sort of balance out as the Joker is the villain of the piece, thus clashing Joker’s brand of crazy up against Deadpool’s, unfortunately, Deadpool’s chaotic crazy simply doesn’t play well against Batman’s stoicism. (At this point in this essay, I feel it necessary to point out that while I do so enjoy Ryan Reynolds depiction of the Merc with a Mouth, I find the comicbook version not only excessively tedious, but endlessly overused.)

The story has Deadpool dropped into Batman’s Gotham as a hitman for hire tagged to take out the Dark Knight by none other than the Joker himself, who has concocted yet another scheme to kill hundreds of citizens of the city. As can be expected, even as the plan goes predictably array all three of the main characters seem horribly mismatched, as they are pretzeled into the mash-up required to make the story work. So, yeah, not my favorite team-up.

Fortunately, while the Batman/Deadpool story was the lead story, there were other team-ups in the book. Next up is a Captain America/Wonder Woman tale (which makes more sense as a team-up), Still, while this pairing makes more sense as both characters have strong patriotic themes running through their histories, the story itself has them crossing paths throughout their respective histories, as they bounce around through time periods, from WWII to the present day and into a far-flung future. It has them confronting Hitler in the bunker, fighting Galactus, the death of Supergirl during the Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline, opposing Maxwell Lord, and chilling on the JLA Satellite.

There is also a story teaming Krypto and Jeff the Shark that is, well, inexplicably whatever.  Following that is a teaming of Daredevil and Green Arrow (again, another unusual pairing, Green Arrow and Hawkeye would have been much better for obvious reasons, especially as this is not the lead talk, but four stories back). Then comes a two-page Rocket Racoon and Green Lantern short, followed by a three page Frank Miller Wolverine/Batman clash. The issue is rounded out by another three-pager staring Logo (and no, I have no idea who this is, save that it appears to be a mash-up of Lobo and Wolverine), who trashes an Iron Man stand-in, and chats with a substitute Thanos, in a story that make less sense than any of the others.

Finally, in a move that defies explanation, there is an ad in the book that is for the very book itself. The only answer we can consider as passingly rational is that the ad was placed in all comics produced that month, and wound up in the title it was pimping, by accident (because no one was pruning the ads).

I also picked a facsimile reprint edition of Batman #47 (1948) because I occasionally enjoy checking out Golden Age comics. As to why I do this, is often beyond me when I actually read the Golden Age stories. Even as a teen when I first started reading reprints of those Golden Age tales I’m always surprised that—given the level of storytelling itself—how comics manages to survive to even get to the Silver Age. Sorry kids, most to the stories from that era that I’ve read are, quite honestly, barely readable (a sentiment I’ve had confirmed by other comic aficionados (pros and fans alike).

And finally, I received two comicbook Kickstarter packages this past week, First a grouping of 10 books from G-Man Comics as well as a reprint collection from Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant (which I haven’t read as of yet but am excited to read both). I’ve previously read and reviewed two groups of G-Man Kickstarter comics, and while it’s been a while since I read any Heavy Metal comic mags, I’m familiar enough with what to expect from this and the other issues I’ve received (and yet still have yet to read).

Well, given that this is Thanksgiving weekend I’m sure that I’ll have plenty of time to red my ay through those comics.

Four (no, wait, five) new books of mine

I’ve been a writer all my life. It was in 1978 that I went pro. I started working at a local radio station as a copywriter. Over the next few years, I worked at a couple of different stations in Conn. Then, in 1981 I got my first print article published (Ditko Days, Amazing Heroes #5). From there I went on to spend the next nearly 20 or so years writing for virtually every comic magazine being published. In addition to all that I was also penning marketing and PR material for most of the major (and several mid-level) comicbook companies (Marvel, DC, Valient, Dark Horse, Extreme, others).

In ’85 I took over the writing the writing of a comic strip (Video Victor) in Videogaming Illustrated, the magazine for which I was then the managing editor. In ‘86 I was able to convince Deni Lobert (Renegade Press) to publish a comic concept of mine (Agent Unknown). In 2011 I began writing short, illustrated stories for several of Jim Main’s Main Enterprises publications. Between 2011 and 2021 I wrote 17 stories. Recently I gathered those stories together and compiled them into a massive omnibus, which is now available on Amazon. The book is called Funnybook City Omnibus: Jump the Shark Issue. The cover was done by my friend Scott Barnett. 

Also available on Amazon is Writers Unite! Dimensions of Superheroes, a prose superhero anthology that I not only designed and assembled, but where I had three short stories and wrote the forward. The book has 14 writers (including me, but more importantly, Gary Cohn, Paul Kupperberg (both of whom worked for DC and other comic companies) and William Patrick Murray, who not only writes amazing prose novels, but created Squirrel Girl for Marvel) telling 20 stories about a myriad number of superheroes, not all of them the kind you read in those funnybooks, wrapped in colorful spandex, and looking all pretty for the masses. These heroes come from all walks of life, and all have strange and unusual powers. It’s well worth the read, if you know what I mean.

Another book I recently assembled is Wings of Man, a comic that combines a number of stories I wrote about flying. Those stories include one about Gustave Whitehead, a German immigrant who flew two years before the Wright brothers, and lived in my hometown of Fairfield CT. I was originally told Gustave’s story by my high school science teacher. At the time, I was in high school and said that Gustave’s story would make a good comicbook. Then it took me 35 years to make it happen. This story was followed by me penning more stories about flight (some of them peripherally involving references to Gustave).

Earlier this year I learned about Ditko Con, which takes place in Johnstown, PA. I’ve been a fan of Steve’s work since I first saw it in Amazing Fantasy #15. Will was already attending the con, and I asked him to introduce me to the showrunner, whereupon I got myself invited. To prepare for the event, I took the first two articles I wrote for publication and combined them into a Spidey-mag. Those articles (from way back in ’81 & ’82) were about Steve Ditko’s and John Romita, Sr.’s runs on Amazing Spider-Man. (John’s article appeared in The FantaCo Chronicles, and it included a checklist to the first 120 issues of the comic, as well as all of the related Spidey titles being published at the time. Then for good measure I tossed in a review I wrote about a Ditko Kickstarter that he did with Robin Snyder. I’m hoping to sell a few copies of this mag at the con.

All of those books were produced over the past couple of months. Oh, and not to leave anything out, I also wrote a 500-word flash fiction story for Weird Fiction Quarterly. The writing prompt for this issue was The King in Yellow an H.P. Lovecraft-adjacent story. So I now have five new books to sell at shows.

Welcome to my funnybook column.

 

Look for me on the Web!

As some of you already know I've been writing professionally for several years. The thing is that while I have long been attributing the start of my professional writing career to the publication of Amazing Heroes #5 in 1981, the truth of the matter is that for three years prior to that article saw print I was working as a radio ad copywriter for a a few different radio stations in and around CT. Needless to say, I've actually been writing for 45 (not 42) years.

While the addition of a mere three years may not seem to mean a great deal, it actually alters our own personal perception of our understanding of our own legacy as a writer. And frankly, that's kind of a very cool thing for us. 

Needless to say, while the bulk of our writing has appeared in print (and a small segment was broadcast over the airwaves) over the past couple of years an even smaller (though growing) portion of our writing has appeared exclusively on the web. 

Thus, it is with this understanding, we have decided to gather in one place, a series of links where we can post those links so that anyone interested, and see and access them. Hence, in no particular order, here they are:

This first link is for a print publication called Government Technology where I (in my role as Deputy Registrar of Voters in my hometown of Norwalk, CT) wrote about how we utilized technology in our local elections.

Norwalk, Conn., Uses Technology to Better Run Elections

This next piece I wrote while I was living in Richmond, VA, and it was written for RVA Magazine

Comic Books and Creators Come to Richmond, Unite in Local Online Community

This first article  for Bleeding Cool where I reviewed Sean Howe's book, The Untold Story of Marvel Comics, The second one was a reprinting of an article I had written years earlier, while the third was to promote a then upcoming series.

Alternate Theories Add To The Secret History of Marvel Comics

Death of a Hero

Chasing Gods With Eddie Nunez And Stephen Lapin

This next article was written with my long-time collaborator, John A. Wilcox for Relix Magazine, and it was when we interviewed Frank Zappa for the 2nd tie (and he called us "The Wacky Guys").

Frank Zappa Meets The PMRC

All of these were articles I wrote, a second posting will be about a series of short fiction stories I penned over the past couple of years that are currently being hosted on a number of online sites. 

Just call me "storyteller"

I was first published in 1981. An article I wrote about Steve Ditko's Spider-Man which appeared in issue #5 of Amazing Heroes. My second professional published  article appeared in Marvel Preview, also in 1981. My first professionally published piece of fiction appeared in a Marvel Year in Review in the late 1980s/early 1990s (it was a short essay about either an imagined origin to the X-Men or the Avengers — I forget which as my writing partner (John A. Wilcox) and I submitted both but the editor only used one). 

(Prior to both of these, I had actually been previously been published in the newsletter (both fiction and non-fiction) from my local library, where I was working at the time.)

My first solo fiction piece was a comicbook entitled Agent Unknown which was published by Renegade Press in 1987. That particular comic lasted three of the six planned issues (the B&W implosion of the late ‘80s killed it). it wasn't until 2006 that I once again had a piece of fiction of mine published, this time in the comicbook series, Psychosis (Guild Works Productions). 

In between that first published article in Amazing Heroes and the publication of Agent Unknown (Renegade Press). I had literally hundreds of articles published. since then I have had hundreds more published, as well as a few books, and, well a handful of fiction short stories (both illustrated and prose. 

As I pen this piece, it is the beginning of March, 2022, and already I have had an article and three fiction pieces published online. An Illustrated story and a prose piece both slated for publication, as well as written a script for a second illustrated piece. I have more stories and articles in me, and I haven't slowed down. 

The best is yet to come. 

Hey, People want to talk to me!

So here's the thing. Back in 1981 I officially entered the professional side of the comicbook business with the publication of my first article in Amazing Heroes #5. Over the years since then, I’ve been published by virtually every comicbook publication in the business. Yep, that’s right, everyone from Amazing Heroes to Wizard, and everyone in between. I’ve even been published by several non-comics publications (Non-Sports Update, Ahoy!, Videogaming Illustrated, Relix, and many, many others.

I've even written articles for Marvel, DC, Extreme, Valiant, Dark Horse, and other comicbook publishers.

I've also written a book or three (Trivia Mania: Commercials and Ads, Kiddie Meal Collectibles, as well as contributed to other books including Stan Lee’s How to draw Superheroes and Stan Lee’s Master Class).

Well in ‘87 I created and wrote my first comic, Agent Unknown for Renegade Press. While it took me some 19 years to get back into writing comics, I did return to the field in 2006 in Psychosis #1 with my short story Never Judge a Book. Since then, I've gone to contribute stories to several small-press publishers including Main Enterprises, Red Anvil Comics, InDELLible, and others. I even produced three of my one comics for Pronto Comics; The Adventures of Hot Girl and Totally Hot Girl, First in Flight (The Story of Gustave Whitehead), and Perceptions (with more to come).

Needless to say (and for reasons I still don’t quite get) recently, a number of folks who run comicbook podcasts have chosen to interview me. Here are just some of the most recent interviews.

First up are the fine folks from Grawlix podcast:

Then Vera Sam interviewed me on his Catch the Craze podcast:

Next up were Ray Felix and Lance Mecaneck, on Bronx Heroes:

And most recently Michael Grassia and Miike Lopesz from IncrediCon Live interviewed me on their IncrediChat:

There have been (and undoubtedly) will be others, but here is a good look into my Funnybook history for now. Enjoy kids!

My Heroes Have Always Been Killers

One of the very first articles I ever wrote was this extended essay about why Wolverine should e allowed to be a killer. The article was my measured response to a statement from then Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter, who was reacting to an X-Men story written by Chris Claremont where Wolverine (apparently) killed a couple of thugs during an X-Man Op. Shooter took exception to the killing, stating that “Heroes don't kill” a sentiment to which I took exception. This then was my response. 

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John “Duke” Wayne, who was presented with a medal from the Congress of the United States proclaiming him to be “An American,” killed someone in every movie he ever made...or at least that is the way it had seemed to me when I was growing up. Charlton Heston portrayed several Biblical and historical figures, many of whom were killers. Jimmie Stewart and James Cagney were killers, as were Edward G. Robinson, Bogie, and Bruce Lee, and so too is Tarl Cabot of Ko-ra-ba (from John Norman’s Gor series). They are all killers, yet all are heroes of mine.

Americans have always been big on hero worship, and I am no exception. Killing is wrong, but so many of my heroes have been killers that it is often hard to separate the man from the act. I suppose that the myth that good guys wear white and do not kill is inbred in all of us (or that is what they would like us to believe). We are told that killing is immoral because it says so in the Bible. The fifth Commandment says “Thou shalt not kill.” That settles it. Except that it does not...not really.

A truer translation of that Commandment would read “Thou shalt not commit murder.” That is to say that one should not callously and maliciously take the life of another. And in spite of what anyone tells you, heroes do kill. At least all of my heroes have. But now, even that is changing.

Normally I am a Jim Shooter supporter, but he made a statement that is so foolish that it borders on the ridiculous. In an interview that was printed in FantaCo Enterprises’ The X-Men Chronicles, Shooter stated: “I don’t want the (Marvel) heroes killing people...“This was in reference to the fact that the character Wolverine has been described as a homicidal maniac and that he has been shown clawing up several people to the point of death. To this (which was also brought up in the interview), Jim responded “...one thing that I am forcing Chris (Claremont) and Louise (Jones) to do is to establish that Wolverine hasn’t killed anyone.”

This has been done in X-Men. As it turns out, the men that Wolverine slashed up (in X-Men #133) were “repaired” with bionic parts. While that lets Wolverine (and Chris Claremont) off the hook, I am afraid that it only begs the question at hand. Why is it that heroes cannot kill? As already established, heroes have already done so. As a matter of fact, the history of the Marvel universe is replete with heroes who are killers.

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, Combat Kelly, and Captain Savage all mowed down Germans during World War II as though the “lager-slurping goose-steppers” were wheat. Further still, Sgt. Fury came back as Colonel Fury, head of the international spy organization SHIELD, and he, along with his agents, cut down Hydra, AIM, and Secret Empire agents with equal abandon. There is also Marvel’s horde of Western heroes, Two-Gun Kid, Kid Colt, Night Rider, and the rest. These men would gun down owlhoots and polecats as soon as roll a cigarette. Granted, while Marvel publishes neither war nor western comics any more, they did publish, until very recently, the spy comic Master of Kung Fu. In MOKF there were several heroes that kill (Leiko Wu, Clive Reston, and Black Jack Tarr, just to name a few). As a matter of fast, in more than just a few of his martial arts confrontations Shang-Chi himself has taken the life of his foes.

I certainly agree that the medium should not portray graphic violence, and I am not suggesting a return to the “blood ‘n’ guts” of the early EC Comics. But heroes can kill. The most flagrant exceptions to Jim Shooter’s decree of heroes not killing are King Kull, Red Sonja, and Marvel’s number one selling killer, Conan the Barbarian. While Kull and Sonja no longer have regular comic books, Conan is still going strong. Now does Jim expect us to believe that Conan has neither killed, nor will he do so in the future? Somehow that seems more than just a bit far-fetched. Do you suppose that in the future Conan will be forced to carry a rubber “mercy sword” so as not to give off a bad image to the kiddies? He would be laughed out of the barbarians’ union.

What is the matter with killing? It is American as Mom and apple pie. And besides, there are still more killers at Marvel. Most of Marvel’s licensed characters kill; James Bond, Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo, and the rest of the Star Wars cast kill. Will Jim have all of them stop killing too? Still one can argue that licensed characters are just that...licensed, and that they were killers before they came to Marvel. Therefore, there is no reason why they cannot kill now. This would exempt everyone from Gullivar Jones to Indiana Jones. Somehow though, that does not seem right. If Wolverine cannot kill, no one else should be able to either. After all, the same kiddies who buy the X-Men are picking up Star Wars and Conan.

Jim’s attitude seems to be that portraying Wolverine as a homicidal maniac encourages young children to go out, have adamantium claws implanted in their wrists, and carve up their friends. To any rational person this seems hardly likely. Still, the issue at hand is violence, and violence is very much a part of superheroing...and killing is a part of violence. Bad guys kill, and sometimes (though not as often) good guys kill, too.

Much to his credit, Jim Shooter did say that when Chris is ready to have Wolverine kill someone, he would want Chris to, “... play it out, address that new conflict...have the guy brought to trial. Let’s see if it’s OK for him to kill someone. Let’s see if it was self-defense. Or was it not necessary? And if it wasn’t, what do they do?” What he had in mind was probably along the lines of what happened to Iron Man in issues #124-127 of his own book, when he blew away (literally) the Carnelian Ambassador. As it turned out for Iron Man, his armor was being controlled by Justin Hammer, and thus Shellhead was exonerated. Yet, what Jim has failed to realize is that Chris has already addressed the issue of Wolverine killing.

There are at least three specific incidents in which Wolverine has killed, or potentially killed; the first lime was in X-Men #116, while the X-Men were in the Savage Land. Wolverine, Storm, and Nightcrawler were attempting to save Cyclops, Banshee, Colossus, and Ka-Zar from Garokk and the High Priestess Zaladane. As they entered the citadel where their friends were being held, they chanced upon a guard. Wolverine stated “... this guy’s mine.” So saying, he stalked forward. In the next panel we saw Nightcrawler and Storm wince in horror as we heard the telltale “snikt” of Wolverine’s claws, indicating that he has cut down the guard. (One cannot help but to wonder if Jim will ‘‘force” Chris to have the X-Men return to the Savage Land and show that the guard never truly died, but survived, and was “rebuilt” with dinosaur parts.) The second lime he “killed” is the aforementioned time where he carved up those three goons at the Hellfire Club. The third incident took place in the X-Men’s 1981 annual (#5), when they went up against the forces of the Badoon in defense of Arkon’s world.

For the first killing, I would like to take as Wolverine’s defense the same as was taken by the writer of the letter column of the now defunct comic Shanna the She-Devil. In issue #2 of that book, Shanna was held prisoner by the Slavers. While in her cell she faked a fight with her pet jungle cats Ina and Biri (also taken captive), pretending to be in great danger. The guard, not wanting any harm to come to Shanna — as per his master’s orders — rushed into the cell to protect her. Once he was in the cell, Shanna had the cats turn on him and claw him to death. The fans were outraged. How. could such a thing come to pass?

Well, the person who answered the letters (I believe it to be the author of the book) put it this way: “We wonder...if, instead of Shanna and the leopards, it had been, say, Sgt. Fury pretending to get into a fight with Dum Dum (as Shanna did with Ina and Biri) in order to lure a Nazi guard into his cell (as Shanna did with the Slaver) and then shooting him in order to escape.” The answerer went on to say that “...in the last analysis, what Shanna did was necessary in her role as a SHIELD operative.”

The same can be said of Wolverine. He is, after all, a military man, and thus thinks along strategic lines. If he had merely knocked the guard unconscious, the guard could have regained consciousness and sounded an alarm, thus preventing the X-Men’s escape. Dead, the guard was resolved as a possible threat. In a combat situation (which this was), any military man would have done the same thing.

While I am on the subject, I would like to (belatedly) address a criticism of this event that was raised by Richard Howell and Carol Kalish in The Comics Journal #49. They had objected to the “moral” Storm’s admiration of Wolverine’s “immoral” act of killing. They seemed to have had overlooked just what she meant when she compared him to “...the great cats of the veldt. When he strikes there is no mercy in him.” She was not truly admiring him, but rather she realized that he could no more feel mercy for the guard (his foe) than could a cat for its prey. Storm could no more object to Wolverine killing than she could to the cat killing. Both only do so when it is necessary. Further support for this stance comes from, oddly enough, Shang-Chi. In Master of Kung Fu #97, Shang’s Siamese cat caught a dove, tortured it, and left it for dead. This upset Leiko Wu, and she mourned for the bird because it never had the chance to be “... what it could have been, what it should have been.” Shang’s reply was short and to the point: “... the cat, Leiko, never had a choice to be anything else.” Storm understood this of Wolverine. So too should Jim Shooter.

It is within this new light that we are better able to understand the second “killing” incident in X-Men #133. Four men with automatic weapons were stalking Wolverine. In the fight that ensued, Wolverine sliced up three of them and convinced the fourth one to drop his gun and tell him where the rest of the X-Men were. Was it wrong of Wolverine to kill the men? Perhaps; but as previously established, it is as much a part of his nature to kill as it is to breathe. Breathing is a necessary act to live, and sometimes to survive (especially against automatic weapons), it is necessary to kill. Once again, in a combat situation, Wolverine had to be sure that his foes would no longer pose a threat to him, and the only way he could do that (he felt) was to kill them.

Wolverine once defended these very same killer instincts in a conversation with Nightcrawler (issue #140) in this fashion:

Kurt, in my life l’ve been two things: a wartime soldier and a secret agent. As one, my government paid me to kill; as the other they licensed me to kill. I was very good at both jobs. They liked that an’ I got the medals and commendations to prove it. A man comes at me with his fists, I’ll meet him with fists. But if he pulls a gun — or threatens people I’m protectin’ — then I got no sympathy for him. He made his choice. He’ll have to live — or die — with it. I never use my claws on someone who hadn’t tried to kill me first. I call that self-defense.

No one condemns the cop on the beat for killing the armed assailant, yet Wolverine is being punished for the very same act.

In the third incident, the X-Men had been summoned to the aid of Arkon and his warrior world against the might of the Badoon. Once more, just prior to battle, Nightcrawler questioned Wolverine about the use of his claws. Wolverine responded thusly: “They ain’t here for show, ‘Crawler. Of course I’ll use them. This is war, pal, an’ I’m a soldier. The Badoon are the enemy. I’m gonna show them the same mercy they’d show me.” Kurt persisted with his objections and Logan responded by saying, “Lay off, Kurt! I don’t hear you askin’ Sashia an’ the warlords their intentions.” Then as if to add impact to this statement, not four pages later Sashia (one of Arkon’s warriors, and the one who summoned the X-Men) hurled a knife into the chest of a Badoon. If the Badoon did not die, it was not for the lack of trying on Sashia’s part.

Wolverine, it seems then, is the only hero who is being prevented from killing, for virtually every other new X-Man has killed, and not one objection has ever been raised. Colossus (under instructions from Cyclops — making Cyclops just as culpable) killed Proteus. To be sure, he did not use a gun or claws, but he stood there on that castle battlement in Scotland and landed a haymaker on Proteus with that organic steel fist of his, knowing full well that it would kill Moira MacTaggert’s son. Then there is Nightcrawler, who has attempted to dissuade Wolverine from killing; he, too, has killed. Twice.

The first time was related in a flashback in X-Men Annual #4: Kurt told how he slew his gypsy half-brother Stefan. Granted, it was done at the request of Stefan (Stefan foresaw the day when he would tum evil and extracted the promise from Kurt to kill him) and Nightcrawler really did not want to kill Stefan, but he did, in fact, do the deed. The second time Kurt killed was a year later in X-Men Annual #5. During the battle with the Badoon, they had engaged the stargate in an attempt to teleport more troops to aid in the subjugation of Arkon’s World. While the gate was activated (and when undoubtably troops were being transported). Nightcrawler fired a blaster into the matrix of the gate, causing it to explode. It was never specifically stated that anyone (on either side of the gate) was killed in the blast, but if no one was, it would have had to be a miracle of no small proportions.

Even the gentle Storm has killed. Though we have never seen the act, she refers to it in X-Men #152. After having had re-exchanged her and Emma Frost’s personalities to their own bodies with the persona exchange module, she cried out, “Hear me, Emma Frost! As a child I swore never again to kill. But tonight, I’ll break that vow.” (Emphasis mine.) Needless to say, she did not kill Emma Frost, but one must ask, whom, then, did she kill? And what were the circumstances surrounding the act? There is another who has killed, Professor X, mentor to the X-Men.

In a flashback related to Lilandra (X-Men #117), Majestrix of the Shi’ar Galaxy, he met and killed, in a psychic duel, the evil mutant Amahil Farouk. Unlike the killings of his students, this was no act of self-defense. The Professor actually sought out and challenged Farouk to the duel. Conceivably the Professor could have said to the offer to join Farouk, “No, but thanks for the offer,” and then left the bar and went home. But no, he had to not only refuse Farouk’s offer, but stay, pick a fight with him, and then kill him. Why could he not just have stripped Farouk of his powers? Perhaps it is as Wolverine stated in X-Men Annual HS, “Killing comes with the territory. It can’t be avoided.”

Jim Shooter has claimed that his heroes will not kill, and he has held up Wolverine to make an example of him...yet the killings go on. In issue #38 of Micronauts, Commander Rann related a story of when he was just Prince Rann. He told how he was assaulted by several assassins, whom he dispatched with a grim finality. And as long as the subject of the Micronauts has come up, all of them have killed, or at least potentially killed. In all of their high-pitched lasersonic battles with the forces of Baron Karza, and later the Force Commander, if no one has “bought the farm,” it’s again not for want of trying. For example, when the HMS Endeavor is involved in a dogfight at several meters (several kilometers to the Lilliputian Micronauts) and a ship is shot down, someone must die in the resulting explosion and/or crash. Just because the reader does not see any broken and twisted bodies in the ruins of the demolished ship, it does not make the deaths any less real.

In Thor #316 we did see the broken and twisted body of the Man Beast, thus we do know that he, at least, is dead. He was rendered into that state by the noble Thor and his honored companion, Iron Man. Now while it is true that in his guise of the Hatemonger, the Man Beast was definitely a threat to mankind, but did these two heroes (sworn to the protection of life) have to callously blow his aircraft out of the sky? Somehow, they seemed to feel that this oath only applied to human life, and not to other forms of sentient life.

If that, then, is the case, perhaps they should have a talk with Cyclops. For in X-Men #155 he refused to kill alien Sidrian Hunters who were menacing him, Storm, and his father Corsair (along with all of Manhattan in the process). “This is no. time for scruples, boy.” Corsair told his son. “They have no compunctions about killing you — or anyone else who gets in their way.” “It’s an act of self-defense,” then you would say. “The hero must kill to remain alive, to fulfill his mission and protect innocent life,” you cry out. “Kill them, after all they are only inhuman monsters...they don’t even look like us.” All these things and more the reader wants to scream at the reluctant Cyclops, but he still refused to kill. Thus, it fell to Corsair to do the dirty deed.

Still again, it is odd that Cyclops refused to kill the Sidrian Hunters, when it was so painfully obvious that they would kill him and that they had nothing in common with the human race. Cyclops seemed to feel no remorse when he ordered Colossus to “duke it out” with Proteus (with whom he had, had very much in common as both were human and mutants). Cyclops knew full well that Colossus in his armored form was lethal to Proteus (who was going to kill Cyclops just as dead as the Sidrians would have). This, then, seems to have become a serious character flaw in Scott Summers’s personality...as he sees nothing wrong with ordering others to kill, but refuses to soil his own hands. Upon closer inspection, the flaw is not in Scott’s personality, but in the logic (or lack thereof) in Jim Shooter’s edict.

Now, there is the argument that the genre of The Micronauts, Conan, Master of Kung Fu, or any of the other “killer” comics presumes that killing is okay; this is absolute nonsense. For the Micronauts, Shang-Chi, Leiko Wu, Reston, and even Conan in his own way, are every bit as moral as Wolverine and the rest of the costumed superheroes. Just because a hero is wearing “long underwear” should not mean that he is restricted from killing his foes, while his uncostumed cousins are free to slaughter at will. Now, while the world is not quite ready for Psycho-Killer Comics, (and I am certainly not advocating such a return), I do not feel that the distinction is not only arbitrary and unfair, but fuzzy at best. Especially when the only one who is being chastised is Wolverine, while everyone else’s killings — including those of his own teammates — go by unnoticed. Policy must be evenly enforced, otherwise it is just so much meaningless drivel.

Wolverine is a homicidal maniac and a soldier. It is the basic appeal of his character. It would be more shocking if Spider-Man were to kill a foe intentionally, because it is just not in his character. On the other hand, killing for Wolverine is very much a part of the game, and no one is more surprised when he uses restraint and does not slay his foe.

Then, by way of adding injury to insult we are force fed What If? #31, What if Wolverine Killed the Hulk? Claremont goes through great pains to establish the character of Wolverine as a psychopathic killer, then goes through even greater pains (by order of Shooter) to establish that Wolverine has not killed; finally, we, the readers, have to suffer through this travesty of a story. (A more believable storyline would have been perhaps, What If the Hulk Had Whaled the Living Daylights Out of Wolverine? “Killed the Hulk” indeed.)

Yet when all is said and done, the final defense of Wolverine’s actions rests ultimately with Wolverine himself. In his own words to Storm as she threatened to kill the White Queen (from X-Men #152):

“... anyone can kill, Princess. It’s easy, I know. What takes courage an’ strength-what separates the humans from the animals — is not killin’. Some people are warriors, darlin’ — born to kill. That’s me. And some exist to show us there’s a better way. That’s you. There’s so much beauty in you ‘Roro. It’d be a shame to spoil it for the likes of her.”

Thus, we see that while Wolverine is ever the killer, he kills neither capriciously, nor indiscriminately, but only with a purpose and with malice aforethought. He kills solely to protect his own life, the lives of friends, and the lives of innocents who are under his protection. Most importantly, he kills with the full knowledge that not only is the act of killing itself wrong, but that someday, somehow, he will be called upon to account for his actions by a higher authority. And when that clay comes — which surely it must — he will use as his defense that he did what he felt he needed to do, as each situation dictated, and furthermore he will accept whatever punishment or reward as that authority sees fit to deal to him.

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As a postscript to this tale, after this article appeared in print, I happened across Jeff Rovin Warren Publishing and Seaboard Periodicals at the time. When I showed Jeff my portfolio, he told me that he had just read this article in Amazing Heroes, and he offered me work on the spot. It was that meeting that (quite literally) launched my writing career into the stratosphere.