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1985 The Telegraph Wire #19

Arthur Adams Print Interviews

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This is an interview I've been wanting to do for a long time. Arthur Adams and Mike Mignola are, to coin a phrase, two local California boys who have made good. I first met them when I moved to the Bay Area about three years ago at a time when they were both young artists struggling to break into the business. Though still enviably young, their time has finally come: 1985 will mark Marvel's release of Mike's ROCKET RACCOON mini-series premiering in February and Arthur's six-issue LONGSHOT series beginning in June. Ironically, this interview took place not in California, but in New York City during Creation's '84 Thanksgiving convention, which Arthur and Mike attended as the out-of-town guest celebrities! And I'm doubly thrilled: first of all, to spotlight my friends this issue, and secondly, to see them get their long-deserved due. -Diana Schutz

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DIANA: Let's start with how Art got into comics.

ARTHUR: And Mike too, but Art first! Okay, well I just sent some Xeroxes to Marvel and they sat in Al Milgrom's office for a long time--

MIKE: Oh gawd, it's going to be day by day!

ARTHUR: No, it's not. And then when Al was leaving and Carl Potts was coming in, they were going through the Xeroxes and found mine and Al thought I'd be okay, so he gave them to Carl and Carl sent me some sample stuff. Ann Nocenti liked the samples I sent back and she was going to be starting the LONGSHOT series, so that was it. Louise [Jones] called and said, "Hey, want to draw?" and I said "Yeah!"

DIANA: So it was pretty simple for you, in other words. You just sent in Xeroxes and that was it?

ARTHUR: Yeah.

DIANA: What about Mike? You had to move to New York.

MIKE: I went through the long drawn out version, not the "quick step to success!" I had been doing some fan stuff for THE COMIC READER and I sent samples back to Marvel which Al Milgrom lost...understandable! Marvel contacted me finally about doing some inking and I did five pages of a DEFENDERS job, which were absolutely terrible. I mean, some of the worst stuff ever.

DIANA: You were sick at the time, weren't you?

MIKE: Yeah, but that's kind of a cop-out. I didn't know what I was doing. I was on pain pills at the time... [Laughter] Stoned out of my mind, inking Don Perlin! So about the time I mailed that job in I'd made plans to move to New York, and I called Al Milgrom to ask how he liked the job, and he said, "Well, um, um, we're not too impressed." But I went anyway, and I went through about two months without work, juggling from one place to live to another. Finally, I started picking up some inking work. I did some quickie MICRONAUTS stuff, I did some MARVEL UNIVERSE drawings, and then 1 picked up on the MASTER OF KUNG FU stuff. So I finished off that series.

DIANA: Just as it was getting cancelled?

MIKE: Yeah. So I had three issues running to do. I kind of learned a little as I went along. I definitely got better. It was amazingly tight deadline stuff, so it was gruelling. I moved in right near Marvel to finish the job. Then I moved back to California with the understanding that I'd be inking DAREDEVIL. So I did an issue of that, then they changed their minds. I did an issue of POWER MAN, then I did an issue of KA-ZAR. I was supposed to be the "regular" inker on all these different books, but things really got scattered. It was one job to the next--no connection going on. I was really frustrated with the inking career. The work wasn't very good. So, in '83, Al Milgrom finally asked me at the San Diego Convention about doing a story for MARVEL FANFARE. I said, "Gawd, I've got nothing to lose." Pacific had also asked me to draw a job. So, I did the FANFARE Sub-Mariner story, then I did the VISION/SCARLET WITCH stuff, which hasn't seen print. Then the ROCKET RACCOON series came up. The first time Bill [Mantlo] called me, it was about the Sub-Mariner story, and we talked and he said, "I've got this other book that I've been trying to do for a long time: raccoons in space. A funny animal along the Flash Gordon line." I said, "Gee, that'd be kind of fun." We talked about doing it as real animals, as opposed to funny animals, and that sounded great. So that shuffled back and forth for a long time. After two issues of the VISION/SCARLET WITCH, we went ahead with ROCKET RACCOON.

DIANA: Tell me briefly about both LONGSHOT and ROCKET RACCOON.

ARTHUR: Oh boy. You go first this time.

MIKE: Where was I?

DIANA: Raccoons in space.

MIKE: Yeah. Rocket Raccoon first appeared in MARVEL PREVIEW, as the back-up to a "Star-Lord" feature. The character was created by Bill Mantlo and Keith Giffen. I've seen the story and Rocket Raccoon only appears really briefly, but even back then Bill evidently had plans for this whole Rocket Raccoon world. He resurfaced in THE INCREDIBLE HULK a couple of years back--that issue of THE HULK appears in the Supergirl movie, bizarrely enough. So what I was working from were Keith Giffen's character sketches and Sal [Buscema]'s work on THE HULK, neither of which I was thrilled with. I really had my own ideas. I did some sample pages and I had a real different look in mind. I was given complete freedom to redesign anything I wanted. Plus, the bulk of the world hadn't appeared yet. I had character sketches for maybe five or six characters. Everything else was completely up to me. Basically, the series is set on a world that's half technological wasteland--all factory--and half forest. The forest side is basically a mental institution for 20th generation lunatics.

DIANA: Humans.

MIKE: Humans! The animals have been genetically altered so that they're intelligent, and they look after the humans. On the other half of the world, robots build machines and equipment, and then they work on their own secret project. The conflict comes in with two toy manufacturers--animals: one's a lizard, one's a mole. They're having a war to see who can monopolize this toy industry, because toys keep the humans pacified. Rocket Raccoon is kind of the sheriff of the whole place.

DIANA: His job is to keep the humans pacified and therefore avoid this toy war?

MIKE: That's right. His concern is for the humans.

DIANA: What about LONGSHOT?

ARTHUR: Well, LONGSHOT is Ann Nocenti's idea. He's basically a character who was a slave on his home planet, an extra-dimensional planet, where he was a gladiator type of the lowest class. There are supposedly three classes of aliens on this planet. Longshot's the lowest and the second is a race of what we would consider to be demons. The upper class are just gelatinous spineless guys in big robotic costumes, with spider chairs to carry around their. nasty weight...

MIKE: Pompous bulk.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Well, apparently Longshot got into some trouble when he was on his planet and got his mind erased. He escapes to earth somehow, through this strange portal. He can use the portal because he belongs to a cult that is sort of similar to Jedi Knights in that they're trained to make forces flow their own way. Longshot controls luck. He is the hero type, our just-wonderful-guy hero on earth with no memory of what he ever has been. That's the concept of the whole thing. So he's running around remembering things and some of these other aliens have come to earth and are chasing him, and he doesn't know why. That's the gist of the deal.

DIANA: Unlike Mike's situation, Longshot was an entirely new creation and not taken from a previous book. Did you have the freedom to design the character and costume and stuff like that?

ARTHUR: Yeah, the way everything looks is all mine. I tried getting some Giger stuff into it, but that didn't seem to work. It's all basically mine.

DIANA: Will we see Gumby in LONGSHOT? [Laughter]

MIKE: Yes.

ARTHUR: No.

DIANA: Admit it, admit it!

ARTHUR: There's a guy with a lopsided head in there. He could be Gumby, I'm not saying. [Laughter]

DIANA: Both books are kind of offbeat. Is that what you both prefer to do? If you had your choice of any character or any genre, what would you be working on?

MIKE: I'm much more comfortable doing a book that has no ties to the Marvel universe. ROCKET RACCOON was a lot of fun because I made up everything. I didn't have to worry about getting the action flowing and then having to draw New York street scenes behind it. I prefer doing a book like that. There's a project I'm looking forward to doing one of these days, an Epic comic I hope, that will be a book that takes place in the future, rather than on another planet. It would be based on a lot of medieval stuff, but modified, and strictly what I want to draw.

ARTHUR: The stuff I like best, what I just love to do, is the big heroic fantasy kind of thing where the hero always comes through no matter what...with loud music at the end and the hero rocketing toward sudden death and coming out okay! Raiders of the Lost Ark type stuff.

MIKE: Regular Marvel universe stuff?

ARTHUR: Sure. It doesn't matter what it is--I'm happy.

DIANA: You're just an all-American boy.

ARTHUR: Yeah. [Laughter]

DIANA: Mike, on the other hand, has a slightly sadistic, rather twisted bent.

MIKE: Well, I'm not really into superhero comics at all. My artistic influences aren't the people who did superheroes. Especially now, it's really kind of pulling teeth for me to do that type of stuff. The characters I tend to do, even in the Marvel universe, are the stranger ones.

DIANA: Does that go hand-in-hand with your love of spending time in cemeteries?

MIKE: I wondered how you'd sneak that in there! Yeah. The cemetery you're referring to...it's Barry Smith land. Lots of terrific trees with statues peeking over the tops of them. Tombs... I don't know what to say about that stuff.

DIANA: Both of you are based in California, and you, Mike, spent a year in New York then went back west--

MIKE: Five months.

ARTHUR: Seemed like a year!

DIANA: How does working in California affect your ongoing relationship with Marvel, given that Marvel is based in New York? Do you have any problems with that?

ARTHUR: I don't have any problems with that. That's how I started: without them ever having met me. Federal Express makes it quick and easy.

MIKE: It's definitely easier now, especially because of the way conventions are set up in the Bay Area. They almost always have an editor coming out. I like the way I started out, by moving to New York City for a while, because I got to know so many of the people --like Al Milgrom, who's been a terrific help. It's definitely easier once you get to know some of the people.

DIANA: If you were in New York pounding on Marvel's door, would more things be coming your way? Or is that not so much the case anymore?

MIKE: It would probably be too tempting, because when I'm in New York, for example, my name will come up for jobs and an editor might say, "Well no, he's doing something else." In New York I'd hear all this stuff and I'd probably get terribly confused. I've got more work now than I can possibly do.

DIANA: Though you both have established series coming out in '85, you're still relative newcomers to the field. Are there any special problems associated with that?

ARTHUR: I guess we're still the new kids, but we've been around almost two years. The pros know us, it's just the fans who haven't really seen anything yet.

MIKE: I have a hard time thinking of myself as a professional. It's easier the more times you come back to New York and you hang out with the other pros. Living in California, I don't hang around with that many professionals. The nearest ones are of course in San Francisco, and I don't have that much contact with them, really. I'm used to associating with people who have nothing to do with comics. So it's always kind of weird for me.

DIANA: Going back to this, you've said you've both been in the business for a couple of years, but fans haven't seen your work yet.

MIKE: Thank God!

DIANA: Well, you've both had cover jobs, and Mike, you had that Sub-Mariner story in MARVEL FANFARE plus your inking jobs. In a very real sense, though, you are both still newcomers. And yet all of a sudden, without either ROCKET RACCOON or LONGSHOT having hit the stands yet, both of you are finding yourselves involved with major Marvel characters. Arthur, you've got NEW MUTANTS and X-MEN annuals for '85. Mike, originally you were going to do THE HULK, and I guess you've done a few issues of that. Now you're changing over to ALPHA FLIGHT. Do either of you feel intimidated?

ARTHUR: Well, I'm an all-American boy, so no problem! We know the people we're working with and they're friends now. It's weird talking about it after being fans for so long, but they are friends now and we spend a lot of time talking. I'm still a little intimidated looking at the John Byrne X-MEN and all, but I'm looking forward to doing the annuals.

MIKE: In my case, I don't consider myself a superhero artist. I was conned into THE HULK. "It's not really a superhero. The situation there is he's on different worlds. You won't have to draw New York City. It'll be a fantasy book with a big green monster." I said okay, little knowing...well, I guess I was warned that the Hulk would have to come back to earth pretty soon. Now, with ALPHA FLIGHT coming up... That was really bizarre. The night Bill Mantlo called me about that, we talked for awhile and I said, "Okay." I'd read the first couple of issues of ALPHA FLIGHT. Nothing against ALPHA FLIGHT in particular, but I usually don't read superhero comics--or most. Arthur was staying in the same building at the time, and I asked him about ALPHA FLIGHT and he said it would be terrific to do. So I thought about it some more, then decided I didn't want to do it after all. So I called Bill Mantlo the next morning and told him I didn't want to do it, and he said, "Don't tell me that!" So he finally talked me into it. By this time, the editor didn't know what I was going to do! So this trip [to New York] Bill and I sat down with John Byrne and talked about the direction for the book, and it's not going to be a regular superhero comic. It can't be. My style is not a regular superhero style. To say the least.

ARTHUR: Last night he decided he wanted to get all the super-villains together and do one big job with a bunch of old Marvel villains versus Alpha Flight!

MIKE: That's scary. Here I am, Mr. Non-Superhero, and I'm getting these weird ideas from Jack Kirby AVENGERS. "Legion of Super-Villains," you know? Oh gawd! I was raised on comics, of course. I wasn't into it as much as some people. Sure, I'd like to do some of that stuff. I've never drawn real superheroes, so it'll be fun to do some of that. But the bulk of what I want to do is weirder kinds of things.

DIANA: What about drawing that many characters? In both cases we're talking team books: ALPHA FLIGHT, NEW MUTANTS, X-MEN.

ARTHUR: I think I'd get bored with a single character book. I think I prefer the group books. Even with LONGSHOT, which offhand seems to be a single character book, there got to be a pretty big supporting cast as it went along, so there were plenty of other characters I could grab hold of and have fun with.

DIANA: What about you, Mike? You'll be doing that many characters on a monthly basis.

MIKE: I haven't thought about it too much, seriously.

DIANA: You're trying not to think about it!

MIKE: Yeah. Again, that's a thing with ALPHA FLIGHT now. We want to make it a superhero team book, whereas John [Byrne]'s has been a lot of "this week we'll do this character, this week we'll do that character," which is an approach I would actually prefer. But it's supposed to be a superhero team book, like SECRET WARS: every character every panel. I don't know how I feel about it. I can't imagine myself doing it, until I guess I actually get around to doing it. I look at comics, THE HULK, ALPHA FLIGHT especially, as a learning experience. I want to do my own projects eventually. This'll be a hell of a learning experience for me. I might go nuts. But I have no choice. I told them I'd do it. It'll be fun.

DIANA: So both of you were weaned on comics. Are your influences primarily within the field?

ARTHUR: Mine, I guess, are pretty much. Jack Kirby, Mike Golden, Walt Simonson--people like that. My other comic book influences were people getting out of comics: Windsor-Smith, Wrightson, and Kaluta. Following their other stuff led to other things. As I've been in comics I've learned more and seen things that people have insisted I see. All of that's been influencing me. For the LONGSHOT Graphic Novel that I'm supposed to be doing later, I found an Alphonse Mucha book. That was terrific and I decided that that's how I'm going to do the graphic novel. I don't know if that's how I'll actually do it...!

MIKE: I'll believe that when I see it.

ARTHUR: Yeah, but that was a big influence. For the last couple of issues of LONGSHOT, I've been looking at Mucha all the time, just being amazed by his stuff.

DIANA: Did you have any formal art training?

ARTHUR: Nah--just sitting around the house, watching TV and drawing.

DIANA: Mike, what about your influences? You mentioned that the people that impressed you were basically not superhero artists.

MIKE: Well, in high school I was into comics. Then I went to junior college where I was basically out of comics entirely. It was a weird two years where every other week I was trying a different style. I was really into a lot of fantasy illustration and children's book illustration. Then art school got weird, too. But right before art school I found the Berni Wrightson book, A Look Back, and that's what made me decide I wanted to be an inker. I started by copying that book. My big influences are...actually, not so much Berni anymore. For a while I was almost a cripple, I was so dependent on Wrightson's stuff. Now it's so many people. I'm still a huge Frazetta fan. Everything I know about spotting blacks, I'd say, is from Frazetta. Working back Most from there, N.C. Wyeth was a big influence. of the children's book illustrators from that time period: Rackham, William Heath Robinson. I'm trying to bring in as much stuff from that into comics, the way Barry Smith does when he does that pre-Raphaelite look, which I love. Of course, there are still people like Walt Simonson and Bill Sienkiewicz who are huge influences. I'd say right now that Walt is one of my biggest influences in comics. It'll probably never surface, but his THOR is one of the very few books that I pick up every month and really look at and get excited about. There are very few artists in comics today that I get that excited about. Craig Russell's another one.

DIANA: It's maybe not a fair question to ask you right now, but are comics it for both of you? You've made it now, you've attained this plateau, do you want to stay in comics?

ARTHUR: I'd like to stay in comics, but I don't think I've attained any plateau. I like comics and all, but--

DIANA: What else would you like to do?

ARTHUR: When I was in high school I actually considered being a comedian. Then I realized I wasn't too funny! [Laughter] I had no jokes! I'd always I had drawn all my life, so I went ahead and... some old Mike Golden MICRONAUTS that just blew me away, so I said, "I'll do this." I guess there's not too much else I could do.

DIANA: But are there other things that you'd want to do that are related to the comics field?

ARTHUR: Anything that has to do with art, I'm pretty happy with. I wanted to be an actor for a long time, too. Sometimes I still think about that. Not too much.

MIKE: I never thought I'd want to stay in comics. My big influences, again, were the whole Studio crowd [Wrightson, Windsor-Smith, Jones, Kaluta]. They did comics, then they went off and did prints and portfolios. Sure, I want to do that, but part of me really likes doing comics. No one's more surprised about it than me. So I'd like to stay in comics. There's stuff I've talked to Archie Goodwin about for Epic. There's a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story I want to adapt for EPIC ILLUSTRATED, and I might do it within the next five years. I can see myself staying in comics to a certain extent. But I'd like to do a lot more painting, a lot more portfolios. Once I start getting into something like ALPHA FLIGHT, I realize, "Gawd, I'm not going to have time to do any painting." But there's a lot of illustration work I want to do, a lot of color work. I can't see it coming out in my comics.

ARTHUR: I guess working in comic books is sort of addictive, too, because it's just so much fun telling those bigger-than-life stories.

MIKE: Yeah. I've been basically a one-picture person for so long that I used to think, "Well, maybe if I do the inking work they'll let me do a cover every once in a while." Now, covers aren't as fun as actually telling the story. So I'd like to stay in the storytelling thing.

DIANA: The focus, now, it seems, is more and more on writer/artists, as opposed to dividing the labor. Mike, you've talked about adapting a Hawthorne story. Are either of you interested in writing your own stuff?

ARTHUR: I want to write my own stuff real bad, but there are a lot of things I'm committed to right now--which I'm thoroughly happy to be doing, since I do get input. What I'm doing is good, but yeah, I'd like to write my own stuff. There are a lot of things I'd like to write.

MIKE: No.

DIANA: No, not at all?

MIKE: I can't. Adapting something is about the closest I can see right now. Maybe someday. The relationship I have with Bill Mantlo is that we talk about stuff and I tell him what I want to draw. don't have whole stories, but I've got images in mind. To a large extent that's how Bill works, too. He's got images in mind. I tell him my images, he tells me his, and then he works them into a plot. I guess it's conceivable that I could work up some kind of plot and maybe someday do an actual script for something, but right now I can't see it.

ARTHUR: I did write a short story for BIZARRE ADVENTURES--which will hopefully never see print. That was my first Marvel job. Just before I turned twenty.

DIANA: It hasn't been that long since you were fans and not pros. I know you're both still fans, but in terms of the way people usually cast that dividing line between fans and pros, it hasn't been that long since you were fans. How does it feel now to have your own fans, to have people come up to you at conventions asking for sketches and talking to you about your work, being interviewed, and all that?

ARTHUR: This is our first interview and that's strange. I don't know if it sounds weird but I really don't care too much about the fans. I'm just doing this because this is what I want to do. I want the fans to enjoy the book, of course, and I want them to be involved in it, but I want them to have absolutely no control and I wish more of them understood that. I want them to be along for the ride, but not driving.

MIKE: I think it's neat. It always surprises me if someone comes up and says positive things. It'll be really weird when ROCKET RACCOON comes out--or it could be really frightening, I don't know. Again, like I said, it's really strange when people come up and want a sketch. You're a bit afraid: "Gee, do you really want this? You're going to really hate this, aren't you?" You get in a position where they really want these things and they really like this stuff, and you always think that they're just being nice. I guess somewhere along the line you've got to start realizing that they do like what you do and they get excited about it. I think it's great. I really love talking to them and I especially love seeing people who want to get into the business that are good, or have the potential for being good. I'm looking forward to seeing someone who comes along at a convention and whom I'm able to help, and see them get into the business. I showed my girlfriend Linda's stuff around, and there's talk of Louise Jones writing her a story--even Bill Mantlo offered to write her a story. And that would be real exciting to me. Since I live right near an art school, I get people coming over from the school, and I do a guest speaker stint at the school occasionally. So I like it. I'd never become a teacher, but I like helping people who are genuinely interested.

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Arthur Adams Print Interviews