Hey, everybody, Welcome back time for word Balloon the Coup Conversation show John Sanchez with you.

It was Jerry Ordway's birthday this weekend, and to celebrate, I wanted to play for you my very first conversation I had with Jerry, where we did a deep dive on Superman, the JSA and so much more.

It was a good get to know conversation.

We talk about his additions to the Superman mythos like Bibbo and Kat Grant and a whole lot more in a very fun talk.

Happy birthday, Jerry Ordway.

We're celebrating today on word Balloon.

His paintings redefined comic book heroes.

His vision inspired a generation.

The Legend of Kingdom Come is the definitive documentary on Alex Ross, known as the Norman Rockwell of comics.

It almost looked like run as On paintings, except for superhero.

He makes them look like Olympian gods.

We go behind the scenes of his definitive graphic novel Kingdom Come Now on Blu Ray, packed with exclusive interviews and unseen artwork.

Order today at Legend of Kingdomcome dot com.

Really excited to welcome Jerry Ordway to word balloon.

I'm a long time fancer and thank you for talking to that.

Thank you very much.

Absolutely, let's get started with the origin story, because you got to fund, you gotta fun origin story.

Then I will go ahead, No, you go ahead.

I was just gonna say, I, as I understand it, your your big break at DC, and I know that there's a little backstory leading up to that.

But came at a Chicago Comic convention.

Yes it did.

I had gone.

Actually, my friend Mike maclin and I had driven to New York like a couple of years earlier and gone through the interview process up at d C right before the DC implosion, and I came back to Milwaukee very depressed, and I thought, well, if comics don't want me, I won't I don't want them.

So I went into commercial art and worked my way up at this art studio and eventually wound up drawing like some coloring book and activity books for DC characters and Marvel characters.

But apparently the DC characters were actually more important than to me getting work at a talent search at the nineteen eighty Chicago Comic Con, I still had to wait a whole day It was one of those wonderful at the The pic Congress Hotel still exists.

It was a beautiful old building, but it had a wall full of glass windows in the upper level that they used for these conference rooms, and the sun was just coming in.

It was like, you know, July fourth.

These these rooms were kind of like little microwaves.

And I sat in a hallway with probably fifty Doctor Who costume contestants as well, so there was you know, we were just a whole line in this hallway and the Doctor Who thing was obviously separate, but it was the days of Doctor Who with the big heavy scarf and the hat.

And the coat.

Yeah, yeah, you could you could only imagine what the smell of humanity was like.

On top of the normal.

Absolutely then, right, So that was the whole day of waiting, and I kept seeing Joe Orlando, you know, he was he was the guy who was doing the talent search.

He kept you know, getting interrupted by Paul Levitz, who I knew had just you know, was like pretty new at DC, and Paul was Joe's assistant.

So Paul just kept coming over and saying, Joe, you got to take a break, You got to take a break.

You've been doing this since said in the morning, and he's going, no, no, no, these people are waiting.

I'm gonna keep going.

So I kept, you know, had the suspense of am I going to get to see him because I'm still five people away at like you know, three point thirty in the afternoon, and uh, I just each person.

Then Paul just kept coming up and you know, telling him you got to go.

Now, we have to go to dinner.

You got to go get something to eat.

No, no, no, a couple more people.

So I get up to Joe and Joe looks at my stuff, which was all samples from the coloring book okay, work that I'd done and activity book, and he's looking at this wonder woe picturing.

He's got this puzzle look on his face.

He's like, where are the stars on our pants?

Was like, well, no, you see the stars are in the background and the kids are supposed to and he was like, I don't get this.

What is this?

And then I'm thinking my fate is sunk.

And Paul Evitz comes back to tell him to go to you know, to take a break again.

And Paul comes by and goes, Joe, we got to oh.

He looks down at the work at the artwork and he goes, oh, cherryod Way, We've been trying to get a hold of you.

And I'm like, well, after all this whole day.

So I went home with they had my number and I had their number, and probably the Monday after the show, I got a call from Paul with an eight page tryout story to ink over Carmine Infantino cool.

So it was like, oh my god, Yeah, couldn't you give me somebody really bad?

So I was totally and I was still working a full this full time job at the commercial art place, so I was faced with trying to do the eight pages after work and on the weekend, and I got it done, sent it in, they were happy.

They sent me another and another, and then then they start offering me, you know, full time work.

So I think by the end of nineteen eighty.

I actually accepted to do All Star Squadron in December of them and went freelance full time in February of nineteen eighty one, and haven't looked back.

That's excellent man.

And well, first of all, a couple of things regarding that story.

Am I right was the publisher for the coloring book.

Was it Western?

Yes, so in Racine, Wisconsin, which is kind of halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago.

I guess, oh, okay, because I wasn't sure if it was Dell in Western, that company which I know also did comics but also would do licensing things.

So is it the same they were separate, Yeah, it was the same company, but they were separate entities.

Dell was based in New York City and Western was there.

They did pub they did puzzles, yeah, games, coloring books, and those magic slates were their big thing.

Yeah, sure they remember anybody old enough through well the slate they had this step plate, Well, they had this thing where they they These must have been money makers for them, because I did quite a bit of magic slate work over you know, the couple of years at the studio, and then when I got out and was working at DC, I still would get calls from them to do some freelance stuff.

So I wound up doing a bunch of toy property magic slates, which were really difficult because they had they were printed in such a way that they they must not have wasted any cardboard because it was like a U shaped frame and the artwork had to run very it was you know, they'd ask for all this artwork, but it was it was such a weird shape, like I said, it was.

It was more of an upside down you but they would want art running up the you know, the left side across and then down.

And it didn't matter what the property was, because sometimes the properties were you couldn't you couldn't do any bleed if anybody knows what bleed is, you couldn't bleed there.

So you know, you had no you had to end your figure in the in that live space.

And sometimes you get a car, you know, in the car is like okay, that's how am I going to draw this car?

Unless it's straight on?

But then you had to have some kind of flow.

These things were really tricky design wise, and I guess I was able to figure it out for them because, like I said, that was one I think I'd wound up doing a couple extras for over the years, Like Gobots was the Transformers.

That was the other Japanese property that they I guess the Western thought would be a hit, a big hit.

Yeah, And uh, it's just funny.

You know, there's like a like a battlefield of toy properties that were kind of cool but never got traction back in the eighties.

Oh yeah, absolutely, am I right, Magic slates were kind of you had the styluss and you would is that where you'd like kind of trace or you know, draw things.

Right right, there was a plastic sheet over a kind of a wax board and you draw in the plastic would stick to the wax, and then you'd pull it up in a race and you could you know, clearly as long as you didn't engrave or rip the plastic, you could keep using those indefinitely.

Yeah, they were great.

Oh no, man, especially in that low tech era.

Oh yeah, absolutely, man, And it was a great way for kids to learn how to draw.

And you know, again you make a mistake, you pull up the plastic and you got the blank slate again and you start over.

Plus it's a it's a perfect thing for for that period of time because nobody's artwork was saved, so all their terrible magic slate ranks are gone kind of like that's just sketch.

They were, you know, intentionally meant to disappear, like the snapchat of the Nice game.

Absolutely, that's awesome, you're right, low tech snapchat that's fantastic, very funny.

Man.

So yeah, so all Star Squadron.

I gotta tell you, man, I am one of those kids, I think because I grew up at the very end of the eighty page giants and the one hundred page spectaculars.

So you'd get those Justice League hundred page oraculars and stuff, and they would have the reprints of the Justice Society stories and just the costumes and the look.

I mean, I remember reading in one of those a reprint of the Showcase story where was doctor Fadan Auerman and Alan Scott.

His green lantern shows up at the end of the story and It's like, oh, here's Green Lannard and I'm like, wait a minute, that's not Green Lanner.

He's got blonde hair, he's got a purple and red outfit with a cape.

What the hell?

Who is this guy?

And it was fantastic because like wow, and then you meet all the other you know, in the crossovers, the JLAJSA crossovers and just those great costume designs for Starman and you know Braven Bolds with Wildcat and stuff.

So yeah, man, I was a huge fan.

And then you know obviously Roy, you know, being and certainly knowing Roy Thomas's history and his love of the JSA.

Did you have that lover or was it just hey, great first assignment.

I'm in, well, my familiarity, I was.

I think it's inter Remember I discovered Marvel Comics when I was probably it was in sixty seven, sixty seven, so I would have been nine years old, I guess.

And once I discovered Marvel, nobody else existed up until I mean I made I made a few exceptions, and it's kind of funny to think back on this, but I remember buying Captain Action that d C did because I loved the toy.

I had the Captain Action figures, but for the most part it took until I would say, when Kirby came over to d C in seventy or seventy one.

I guess it was that I broke my you know, my rule and it was like, well, some of these DCS are cool, and I discovered Neil Adams and my my JSA moment really was with the when they did the I think Paul Evitt's and Joe Stayton and Bob Layton did the the JSA story where they were where they kind of disbanded the one with the Spirit of Destiny.

It was a special remember that.

I remember well the last days of the Justice Society, right, and I.

Think I'm pretty sure, and maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I'm wrong here, I'm actually trying to remember the timeline.

But it was either that or the Wally Wood Rick Astrata All Star comics that they revived in the seventies.

And I was a big Wallywood fan, so that was, you know, like again, I probably saw Wallywood first in Captain Action, you know, so funny how toy property can draw you over that, But yeah, those those were cool.

And my favorite thing in the Wallywood run of that was the Golden Age Superman because it was like, wow, this is a Superman who looks kind of kind of different, white hair, and I also remember our Man Standing out of course Power Power Girl.

But what was the other one, because Wallywood just did a great hour Man.

It was just what he did with the blacks on the costume and the mask and stuff.

So those were elements that that definitely appealed to me.

And when I got two All Star Squadron, I mean Roy's enthusiasm and his you know, I mean, this guy was like the book that he wanted to do since he was a kid.

So absolutely, yes, you.

Know, those those are often fraught with problems because you're almost you know, I mean, you love it too much that then the company has too much leverage over you, r whatever.

You know, it's it'so easy to hurt your feelings.

I don't know, but I was able to learn kind of on that on the job, and Royce sent me a box of literally a cardboard, you know, box full of xeroxes of nineteen forty stories with each of the characters, the versions or the type of costume, and the artist that he liked from his childhood.

So that was my way, my reference for because I was doing finishes, and it finishes are always hard to kind of hard to explain.

But Rich Buckler technically was doing layouts, okay, and layouts means in some ways layouts is like the guy would put in all the storytelling and draw the figures, but wouldn't necessarily put the shading and you know, the costume details were supposed to be there, but shading and stuff was usually not.

But in Rich's case, it was more like he did kind of I don't mean this in a bad way.

But there were more like sloppy pencils rather than you know, he didn't do it some some spots were left, a lot to be added in, but a lot of it was just pulling it together from He had this thing where he would do Neil Adams swipes.

And I'd heard from Joe Staton, who was one of the first pros I think I had contact with.

But Joe had said, oh, you know, Rich has got like a bunch of kids working for him, and he just basically has cutouts of all these comics with poses and then he pass he pays them on the page and says here, put this here, put this here, almost like art directing, and then these kids would light box these poses onto the pages and then he would go over it and you know, like maybe unify it somehow.

Sure, but he was do you know that was his method, like his Henry Ford assembly line method to do what amounted to like maybe four or five pages a day under his DC contract.

Crazy, So, but.

Yeah, so that was that was basically the deal was.

I was I was supposed to kind of unify everything and and double check costume details because he was, you know, moving fast, and and Roy was very particular.

So I would get these pages with tiny handwritten margin notes that Roy would put in change you know, change robot Man to Liberty Bell.

I mean, stuff that really wasn't in the realm of a finisher even you know, a lot of redrawing and stuff, but it was.

It was exciting and scary.

You know.

That's all I can say is I've told this to Roy too.

Roy was really hard on me because that was the new guy and they basically, you know, his the first thing he told me, which and it's like I took about people with no filters, and it was in a nice I mean, you know, I don't have any bad feelings, and he and I have friends.

We always chat and have fun at conventions and stuff.

But at the time it was very difficult because the first thing he told me with this, he sent me to single space pages and I mean multiple pages, panel by panel of the whole first job that I did, which was the preview that ran in Justice Justice League.

Oh yes, it was like a panel by panel thing telling me what I got wrong.

But he prefaced it with I thought Dicjordanno was going to be the finisher on this book, so you know, Obviously I'm still adjusting, and I think there's something to work with here.

But here's what you got wrong.

And it was a single I mean single space.

Two pages is a lot.

And that went on for pretty much every issue that I did up until I think I started penciling the book.

By then, he kind of trusted, he knew I wasn't going to screw up the Golden Age Green Lantern is left handed, you know, et cetera.

There's not a lot of details, but it was I always look at it as it was like going through the gauntlet, you know, it really was.

And all the while this was going on, technically, Len Ween was the editor, and Len was the guy who put me on the book, so Lenn would try to run interference for me, you know, in ways that made it worse for me in a way.

So I was kind of caught between, you know, Len, who had written the JSA characters and the Golden Age characters, was a huge fan of those sure, and Roy, who definitely had butted heads over what this book was going to be, you know, DC, and I think Len really wanted a Justice Society book and Roy wanted All Star Squadron to be these second string characters that he built up into something and sales wise, that Justice Society book might have done better.

But I think from Roy's perspective, he basically reinvented by to second string characters and made people.

Like them absolutely.

Yeah.

I mean that was the strength to me.

And I enjoyed drawing Liberty Bell and Robot Man and Johnny Quick.

They were all yeah man, so yeah, they were.

It was.

It was an interesting time, though, I can.

Appreciate it was a retro book.

Yeah, yeah, well, yes, it was set during World War Two, and you know, Roy had already you know, shown his ability to write great World War Two stories for the modern era, doing The Invaders at Marvel yep.

And yeah, I was.

I was a fan of that stuff absolutely with oh my god, and now I'm blanking Johnny Hazard's creator Frank Robbins.

Oh yeah, yeah, Frank Robins In.

Yeah, I mean the problem with those the problem with those things is even back then, there is a an industry kind of bias.

It was the era where superheroes kind of really squeezed out everything.

I mean, you still had Sergeant Rock and you had Weird War Tale.

Yeah, and DC was publishing some you know the mystery books and stuff.

But that has that comics or situation opened up, a lot of that other stuff disappeared and it was pretty much just superhero stuff.

So market kind of killed the other genres.

Yeah, no, I firmly believe that because the direct market at the time was pretty much rabid superhero fans.

I mean, you know, if you went on a newsstand, you would get people who weren't necessarily fanatical comic fans, but they liked you know, Tarzan, or they liked Sergeant Rock or what have you.

But once once that comic market, you know, became prominent, you could tell what they were buying, and they were buying superheroes.

So I mean DC for years went through that with I mean even with like some of their mainstream Batman always seemed to have some juice in that market, but Superman was a character that you could not sell in the direct market.

And it came down to at that point, I mean, people didn't used to order through previews.

You would just go into a comic store.

So the comic store owner was the most important man in that chain because whatever he ordered is what his customers got.

And you know, in DC's case, they were lucky that they still had substantial enough newsstand presence because Superman always sold you know, probably two thirds on newstand one third in the comic stores, whereas a lot of books were almost immediately fifty to fifty or what have you, or even you know, maybe sixty forty.

As the comic stores got more, you know, more there were more of them or whatever.

But understood.

Yeah, well, and also you had those Baxter Paper direct market products, and then you know, two months later or whatever, then you'd have the news rag or whatever, you know, stock paper on the rise stands and everything too.

Yeah.

No, that was you know, that that really was kind of my high school and early college kind of experiences when the direct market was brand new.

And I've heard you in other interviews say it was interesting that Superman sold better on the newsstands versus the direct market, and that's really interesting.

And of course today it really is kind of still the same case, where even though you do order your comics through previews, owner store owners really do dictate what they stock, and certainly in today's Creator Own World and stuff, along with DC and Marvel and the other main publishers and stuff, no, it very much is the store owner's taste that dictates how well a book sells, are not.

And I mean in the beginning, of course, the stores had no historical information on what would sell, I mean, other than they knew their fans liked X Men and they liked you know, the Maybe, like I said, Batman always seemed to have an appeal because people always saw that was I guess maybe the darkening of the era, you know what I mean that started.

Probably it was probably hand in hand with the seventies, you know, movies becoming more dark and the pressure really for Batman was a character that probably could go a little bit more adult as well, where a Superman is pretty firmly fixed as a or was always fixed as all an all ages character.

You know, you could pick up you know, and that's important too, because you could pick up a comic book and give give a kid here's here's a comic to my nephew who's on a long drive or whatever, and you could not feel like he was going to be somehow corrupted by by something horrible, you know, So that all that fits into into the market.

But yeah, All Star Squadron being set in the forties was kind of a even though in that era it had at least had other books, you know, companion books set in the World War two or or the Old West or whatever.

It's still kind of went against the grain.

So I think the market kind of pressure on a to do more of a current day type of book is feels like that was at work, and do an Infinity Ink to a degree as well, Yes, because the characters were it was set in the present day, and it was you know, we had already but I think by that time i'd drawn All Star Squadron through issue twenty I want to say twenty seven to twenty eight somewhere around there were or maybe twenty six is wre I forget where Infinity Inc.

Was was where we debuted it, but we had been working on it for developing costumes and stuff.

I think from about eighty I want to say eighty three, but it could have been.

Yeah, it was probably eighty two eighty three, and I think Infinity Inc.

Was came out in eighty four, but yeah, so that was The sales on All Star Squadron had also leveled out fairly early.

I think the first issue sold a respectable like two hundred thousand, and then DC actually implemented royalties in between, like the month that the royalty their royalty system, which was a new thing, and you know, we're giving artists and writers and everybody a piece of the sales that happened with this an issue of All Star Squadrant, which you know generally there's always a big drop off.

Even back then, everybody would kind of buy a first issue or buy even two copies of first issue.

You know, the hardcore comic fan would you know, plunk down there their money and maybe that issue would be worth something two years later or three years later.

So there was always like an inflation.

So the first one sold really well, if he had gotten a royalty on that, I think we'd all been like really thrilled.

But the second one, I think it had really dropped to maybe one hundred and thirty or something, And so we only made royalties on the thirty thousand that sold over one hundred, because that's that was the threshold.

That's deal.

Yeah.

Wow.

So by by issue four, I believe or five, we were hovering around one hundred, which again and you know you look back on that and you think, well, that's one hundred thousand sales.

That's pretty good.

That means you're reaching one hundred thousand people as opposed to you know, like nowadays where some of these books sell fourteen thousand or whatever.

Yeah, I mean, it was a larger audience.

But I think that's when Rich left.

He left around that time when maybe sales numbers indicated, yeah, this isn't going to have a royalty.

And at that time, you know, I mean, that was a valid thing.

People would would try to get on a book that was good selling because it meant that their income was going to be supplemented beyond a page rate.

You know.

I unfortunately was never wired that way.

I always tried to do things that I enjoyed or that I felt were, you know, going to be fun to do or you know whatever.

I didn't really ever follow the you have to draw x men to get popular thing, you know meant.

I always felt like that was and again, everybody's got their own, you know, their own rules.

But I always felt like pandering was one of the worst things you could do.

And that felt like a pandering thing to you know, I'm going to do X men or I'm going to do whatever, you know whatever.

It was like when I did the f F with with Burne.

It was like, well, I was a big Fantastic four fan, but I was also a big John Burne.

What was How long were you on Fantastic for With John?

I did eight issues of Inks and finished it started out his finishes, and then I just said, look, you need to pencil this because the book is selling on you.

It's not selling on me.

I was.

I was just feeling a little uncomfortable, you know, you know what I mean.

It's like I was the I was the guest star in the TV show and John was the star and his look, his look was a big part of it.

He started when he started doing breakdowns it, you know, I was left to put in some of the the surface details and stuff, and and I felt kind of like I was.

It was the very first issue I did that that I experienced this.

I said, you know, I'm I'm working too hard.

I'm not sure I'm getting him.

So from that point on he went to pencils, which was it was all mutually agreed.

I was happier that way too.

But eight issues and then I went to Crisis.

Wow.

Yeah.

And then and yet you did a lot of finishes for for Georgia on that right.

Yeah, yeah, well, I mean it was funny, because these things always are.

When you look back on them, you think it's it seems kind of amusing.

At the time, it's always like kind of stressful because you're thinking, well, gee, the reason I left d C.

I left I bailed on Infinity Inc.

I did my what I was contracted for, which was twelve issues.

The DC told me they counted the All Star Squadron, the one issue and the annual that I did as part of that twelve.

So I was done by ten.

Okay.

That was my That was to fulfillm to fill the contract and to get my character equity in those in the book itself.

The character equity meant that if they ever made a movie or they made a toy or whatever, of the Infinity in group, Roy Thomas, Mike Macklin and I would each share like a percentage of I think it was like ten percent of any royalty money or I mean licensing money.

Okay, So it was worth it to fulfill that, But yeah, I was.

I was just a little bit disappointed because I couldn't get a page rate increase.

It was really simple.

It was one of those stupid things where it was really over I think I was at eighty something per page for pencils and I wanted more and I was like, no, that's where you're at for the level.

And then I got a call from Marvel and they said, hey, what's your page rate?

And I told them, I said, but I'm looking for a raise.

Well, we'll give you one hundred.

So Marvel was willing to pull me up one hundred and then bump my ink rate up as well to get me.

And then the minute I told DC, I said, hey, they're offering this, I'm just going to go.

And from that time on then they spent, you know, a lot of effort to try to get me back.

So all my rates went up the minute I left.

That's always the way.

That's always the way it is.

They don't appreciate it until you threaten to leave or do leave.

So no, I I come from radio, it's the same thing, man, absolutely, you know well.

And that's that's one of the things that I look back with a little regret in my career is that I think I always followed my my heart in a way, and I work with the people that I liked, and I think I pretty much lost that negotiating power especially when you know later on with d C, I just basically should have left when I was unhappy, and instead it was like, well I like DC, I like the characters, et cetera, et cetera.

So there's you know, when you're younger, I think it's easier to do that than when you have kids and you're looking at kids in college and what have you.

The pressures change, But ultimately, I think the best thing for your career.

I tell that to anybody said, Look, you can be loyal, but ultimately you have to you have to be valued, and sometimes most times you're valued if you leave or you have another offer.

You know, that's I guess the lesson.

That is harder to do when you're freelancing, because you know, when you're in a job that pays a salary, it might be easier to negotiate something than if you're a freelancer, because you can be easily replaced as a freelancer.

So you can have always I mean, you always are a little bit more insecure about your your standing because you don't you're not you don't.

None of it's guaranteed.

I agree, though, yeah, no, it's and especially today in today's gig economy where really really people are kind of, if not freelancers, contractors and are always looking by you know, yeah if if Now you mentioned if I may, and it's if this is too personal forgive me, but I'll ask the question anyway and take the consequences.

You've created a lot of characters that have kind of made their way into television and film, and I think of Kat Grant, Obs and Supergirl and are you aren't you a co creator of Kat Grant?

Yeah?

Are they taking care of you?

And I'll just leave it at that.

Well, here's the deal is as a I mean, it's kind of a weird deal.

So here's how it works.

For example, if it's a movie, here's what it comes down to.

When when d C was part of Warner that they weren't necessarily part of Warner Movies.

DC could sell a property to any studio.

And this actually gets back to negotiating and threatening to quit a job, because when when d C was able to sell Superman as a property, Warner Brothers probably retained like first DIBs.

But once you get past Superman, there was always like, oh uh, try Star Pictures or these other different the other other production companies could license this, and that licensing money went into d c's ledger whatever rather than Warner Brothers because DC was still a separate run company.

So there was more negotiating power back then because multiple studios could negotiate to do whatever.

It was firestorm.

Not that any of these happened, but money paid in that more competitive situation was better.

So the licensing fee that was paid, for example, even for Lois and Clark, which was done through Lauramar I think, and then Warner might have distributed, but it was I think it was Lauramar was the production company.

The licensing deal on Lewis and Clark paid a percentage to myself and to Marve Wolfman as co creators.

Can't grant we each got a like a fee of Again, I'm just gonna spitball.

I remember it being like three hundred and seventy three hundred eighty dollars per episode first run, so she was only in the first season, but it was, you know, three hundred and eighty times twenty two episodes.

Sure was a good chunk of money at the end of that.

You know, you didn't get it as it went along.

You got it at one in one thing then, But then once Warner Brothers in compass d C, there's all the properties have to be spun out of Warner Brothers, so there's no competitive bidding for the right right so the right money has gone kind of definitely has fallen.

So for example, Supergirl TV show produced by Warner Brothers, the amount of money per episode for Kat Grant probably dropped by at least one hundred dollars, so that means two hundred dollars, you know, and there was Marvin I.

Both probably took a hit of one hundred dollars from nineteen you know, nineties.

Ye.

So and it's really just because these companies are not only controlling the properties, but they're they're generating the you know, the creations or whatever, the spin offs and TV and movies.

They're generating them themselves.

So the licensing money had dropped off, and it's you know, it's not a I mean, they're still paying it.

And these things are by contract.

When you get an equity letter for a character there there, you know there they have to pay you.

But no one's getting rich from for example, like even that Cat Grant thing that wasn't it was a nice extra money.

You can't ever you know, complain about that.

But for having a character guest star on a show, it's you know, maybe you go out to dinner on a forty dollars payment, it's not a lot.

Now if you're in a movie, the movie payment's going to be in the thousands of dollars.

This is where it works.

If your character is in a movie like they had.

Professor Hamilton was a character that Marv Wolfman and I created for Adventures of Superman right in the first storyline, and he was It doesn't matter if the character's in for ten seconds or you know, it's the second coal or whatever.

The amount of licensing money is the same.

So we probably each got you know, in the i'd say maybe thirty thousand dollars range wow, after like a year after the movie.

Because Richard Shiff from l Yeah yeah WESTD played Hamilton.

Yeah right, So that's like that's a one time payment and then maybe you get residual stuff from some other you know, money from the movie.

It's not I guess I don't even know how that works, but you'll get like a smaller amount later on because it's still I think a licensing fee is still paid for.

So DVDs or or when it runs on cable things like that.

Right, okay, right, So I mean it's and again it's nothing that you could retire on.

You know, that's the problem is you you you you don't know what's happening.

It's the type of thing that maybe is found money and it's great, but it always screws up your taxes because you don't know it's coming, you know, and then when it comes, it's like, oh wait, we have to change our asimated tax payments or whatever.

It's always it's always hard to adjust to.

And again that's I'm not complaining because it's a dumb thing to complain about, but it it's just not regular.

That's that's why people keep working.

I understand.

Well, and hey man, you know obviously when you're ready to retire, that's fine, but you know, yeah, we want you work in and we want you to employed.

And I mean, like I said, so, yeah, it's interesting to hear that it is a double edged sword and it's a curse and a blessing.

I guess.

Well, the cool thing is, I mean, it's still pretty pretty thrilling to have a character pop up on TV or in a movie.

I mean, it's it's anybody who says it isn't it would be lying.

Even if it's not exactly the way you envisioned it, you can be disappointed, but still you know, like, wow, this is kind of nice.

And the one thing that you don't get though, is you really get you know, you don't get much acclaim outside of that small circle of comics, you know, I mean, people who remember are the only ones that.

But that's still as a personal thing, it's like, wow, this is cool that this character somehow has you know, thirty years later whatever, people still remember it enough to put it on a TV show and other people then get to enjoy it.

So that's still still a neat thing.

Absolutely, man.

No, And you know, as an older reader and stuff, sure, that's a that is totally a thrill when these TV shows suddenly do dig deep and it's like, oh my god, look, I mean even while before the Suicide Squad movie, Hey look, Pam Grier is Amanda Waller.

That's fantastic, right, and the cartoon certainly too.

You know, I don't know if Kat ever made it to the Bruce tim universe or anything like that.

I think she did, did she?

I mean she's popped up.

Yeah, it's funny because there's another character that at the time when we when I was doing the Adventures of Superman with Tom Grummitt drawing as Jeanette Kahn, who was publisher at the time, Jeanette had said, and this is something I was always aware of.

I don't know that.

I don't know if the other creators were really thinking this way.

But I grew up in Milwaukee.

I grew up in mostly Hispanic neighborhood, so my friends were Mexican and Puerto Rican, and you know, you were part of that neighborhood.

And I used to when I got on Superman, I said, this is this, this whole property is really white.

And now you know, I felt like, because you could you see it?

You don't?

You don't.

I guess a lot of people don't realize.

But when you're when we were kids, we're reading the comic, Superman could be us or whatever.

I mean, we could see it in there.

But for for some black kid or some you know, Puerto Rican kid or whatever, they're looking for a character, and they may say, we'll gravitate to Wolverine or whatever character, but it's not really reflective of them.

Yeah, So I've always felt I mean, I've always been sensitive to that, and when we did basically had to force Gangbuster into into the Superman stuff.

But Gangbuster, to me was there really weren't very many Hispanic characters.

You know, that was a big deal, and I made him a very important part of it.

So Gamebuster existed.

But then, you know, Jeannette had said, are there.

She had just talked, I mean, she was she always traveled in these great circles, but she said, oh, I just came from some meeting with like it was someone either an alumni or someone who is connected with Brown University, and they said, you know, could you do you think you could add some character to the Daily Planet staff who might be a Brown University graduate or whatever.

So I said to Mike Carl and it's like, well, sure we can add.

There's you know, there's always room a lot of reporters there, and a lot of them are background characters and you develop them after a while, or they just always exist in the background.

You go, hey, what's that guy's name?

He's always in their background.

So we came up with this Ronnie Troop.

It was ron Troop and we wrote some you know, stories around him and everything.

And the funny thing was I basically borrowed the name from a guy who was doing Cheat Rock when we you know, did some renovations on the house.

It's like Ron Troop.

That sounds good, you know, that's a good name, and yeah, so I used the last name.

There's a Troop, sounded good and that character weirdly enough, even though I don't know that anybody has done anything with him after I left Superman, but I used I did a bunch of stories with him and his family and stuff, interacting, and after a while I noticed Jeff Johns may have used him, I think in his Superman Secret Origin thing.

And I did see him.

He popped up on I want to say he popped up on one of the TV shows at one point.

But he's been in cartoon stuff as well, just like he'll pop up half a few lines or whatever.

So that's also a licensed property in a way.

But it's that's kind of fun.

I wish Gangbuster had a better run after I left, But you know a lot of times you either they fall by the wayside, which I don't know which is worse if they if no one uses them, or if someone uses them like they did with Professor Hamilton, and he's turned him bad again and killed him.

You know, Well, the whole point of this guy was he was supposed to be, you know, the bad guy who reformed, and he's reformed.

It's not that he's going to then betray everybody and then get killed or whatever.

I just always hated that.

But yeah, No, he was great.

And also I was rereading the lead up to Doomsday and he's the one who kind of isn't he the one that tells Superman, hey, you know, your your body is kind of like a battery where you kind of collect solar energy and if you don't replenish it, you could like be at a very low energy level or whatever.

And No, he was great or coming up with his space apparatus, so when he was in exile, and which was such a great visual of I mean, you do love Superman being cosmic and running around the universe and everything, but I did like the way you guys all scaled back his powers that he would kind of need a breathing apparatus and it was kind of more astronauty in the way that he was traveling through space.

I thought that was cool.

Well, I think.

I mean, it's one thing to be able to be in vulnerable and be able to fly in space.

But it always felt like for us.

I mean, I know, like when I got on the book, when I got an Adventures Superman, it was me and Burne was doing the two other books.

Marv, I think again, I don't, Marv.

I think never really found his way there because of that.

Maybe there was too much.

You know, it's hard to it's hard to be like the second guy if you used to being the first guy.

I suppose big thing.

So and John was definitely the guy leading it because he's a guy.

Did the relaunch, he did the retailing of the Origin, et cetera.

But but so, my goal was always to try to have him scaled back.

I didn't I didn't want him pushing planets.

I didn't want that type of thing because to me, it was not relatable.

I always wanted to make him as human as possible, which is why I love the fact that Berne had reintroduced the Clark as you know, the way he was where he was pretty much ninety eight percent based on what his parents put into him and what his growing up was all about.

Because you know, I always felt like that was a valid thing.

No matter what.

If someone told you when you were twenty years old that you were an alien, I mean, it could screw you up, but I think ultimately you are what you what you're imprinted with as a kid.

Ang he had loving parents and he had, you know, all these all these adventures in smallville, and that that was always an appeal to me because being a Midwestern boy, I moved from Wisconsin from Milwaukee, I moved to Connecticut, which then gave me access to New York City, and I always had that like, wow, I'm like Clark, can't go into the Daily Planet except I'm working, you know, going to DC Comics or whatever.

And I did that after I'd I think i'd been maybe within six months of starting the draw Superman.

And that was that was my way of also getting more involved in the stories because I knew I had a really hard time offering story input from long distance, especially in the days of pre internet.

You had to call somebody and you know, you never knew if they were liking your idea or not, you know.

So once I moved east, I was able to attend the very first story conference, which was John Byrne, George Perez, Andy Helfer, myself, and I think I'm not even sure who else might have been their editor wise, but it was at John Byrne's house and we discussed the action comics.

I believe it was six hundred where wonder Woman and Superman were going to have a possible crossover, maybe a little romance because Perez was doing wonder Woman or launch he had started wonder Woman at that point.

And then we also did one for Millennium, which was another crossover where I was able to actually offer valid you know, these these things when you're when you're like a little I'm not.

I was never a very confident person, and when you're throwing out ideas, I was always like in school.

I would throw like good comeback lines or joke lines to my friends to say so that I didn't have to say them, and then they either got laughed for them or not.

But I always knew that was my line.

So when I got into the sitting in a room with John Byrne and George Perez, I was, you know, definitely not on equal footing because these guys were both superstars and comics.

But I'd throw out ideas and they'd be like that's pretty good.

Yeah, okay, that's good, and I'm like, wow, I'm gonna you know, you run with it.

Basically, so by the time of millennium.

But when we're talking about Millennium, I remember Burne had a plan that and he came he came to this meeting with this plan.

He said, here's this idea, and I think it's great.

Kat Grant is a man Hunter agent because the concept was that man Hunters were had been planted years and years at the beginnings of all these characters careers or their childhoods.

They were planted there to observe them.

And the Manhunters were I think legion of superhero villains or whatever, some ant to some race or whatever.

The Green Lantern universe.

Right, So they were like they were like sleeper age.

Right, right.

So so Burne says Cat Grant and I'm like, oh, wait a minute.

You know, Cat Grant's only been around for a year at most, or it was maybe even Yeah, it was about a year when we were discussing it, and I said, that feels like not enough time if you're a sleeper agent.

I said, here's my idea, and you can say no, but I think this is actually makes perfect sense and it's not going to affect the books that much because Lanna Lang is not really in the books.

She's a she's a past part of Clark's history.

I said, Lana Lang as a man Hunter agent makes much more sense because she knew him as a kid.

And it was like, you know, suddenly it got really quiet in the room, and I thought, I thought this is good or bad, and it was like, wow, you're right, that's much better.

You know, in the space of that comment, I saved I saved Caad Grant from whatever her fate would have been.

But it made you know again it was a story thing, and it just popped in my head like this, this makes more sense.

If you're going to watch somebody and you know the person you're watching is from Krypton or whatever, then you're going to put somebody in their childhood and maybe that person subtly influences or what have you.

So they were they were, and that that was really the I think the beginning of that getting a little confident or more confident as far as pitch and stuff, because I always threw ideas at Roy.

I threw ideas at Marv, you know, but most times you're at the mercy of well, I don't want to do that, or they'd come up with a reason why it couldn't work or something.

So, you know, and then Kat Grant became a very complicated character.

She was kind of an aggressive you know, and I really appreciated that they kind of kept a lot of that in Callista Flockharts portrayal.

Yeah, as well in Supergirl.

And you know, she had a was it a special meats kid that Kat had in the comics.

No her I mean again, this was nineteen eighty seven.

Yeah, but her big dark secret, which Marv had hinted at at the beginning.

I don't know that he ever totally knew.

Sometimes you just come up with something and then you go, I'll think of it later, which happens a lot.

But he had when he revealed her deep dark secret.

It was just that she was divorced and she had a kid, Okay, and that you know, in a situation like I guess, the way it works is if you're dating, obviously, and you're young and you're dating and you have kids, it could be a problem for dating, but it also is a problem for work.

If you have a so she had like a little maybe eight or ten year old boy or something in the story, and that became and her you know, her ex husband.

I think we did more with it after Marv left, but I think he set up the Morgan There was like a name had a similar name.

It wasn't it wasn't Morgan Edge, but it was something some guy who was like a rich guy who basically you know, had taken the kid or something in the divorce, or was just given her trouble, you know, something like that, right, Yes, yes, but I felt like again with each of these characters that the key at that moment when I was working with Marv, but especially after when Burne took over and let me co plot officially, so I got my name on there as a co plotter.

One of my things was always that Burne had run or had approached Lois Lane a little bit to nineteen forties Flaisher Superman, and it made it anybody I talked to the fans that were like, wow, she's really not very nice.

She's mean to him.

And so the point of Kat Grant, which you know, I think Marv even wanted to do, was to upend that triangle of Lois, Superman and Clark by having you know, we did much more of this later, but having Kat Grant like Clark more than Superman, which then forced Lois to go, wait, was I wrong about Clark?

So she was.

She was an important part of getting Clark and Lois together in a logical way where you go, yeah, now I can see why he loves her rather than Wow, he's like a masochist because she hates him, you know, is he why is he pining over?

So that was the whole point, was to kind of upend that, and we we orchestrated this thing again.

It were my input, mostly with even with Burne, was to to get Lois with Jose Delgado, yes, to kind of give her a relief from the Superman and you know, pursuit of Superman.

But both of those breaking up that, you know, Lois and Clark and putting each of them with another romantic partner was meant to kind of give them both perspective on the other person, you know.

So that was our that was our forward thinking on it.

But and Kat Grant, after the first I think the first two times I drew Cat, I realized that I didn't really have a physical hand handle on her.

And I I remember meeting or John Beatty had his sister, Jane had He had sent me a picture and it was a picture of him and Jane or whatever.

I went, hey, would Jane be willing to be a photo model for Kat Grant?

And John said, well, I'll take a bunch of pictures.

She'll be happy to do it.

So I used Jane Batty.

John's sister.

Jane was and she was super attractive, but she had the distinct hairstyle that became, you know, note the Cat Grant style or whatever, and that helped.

It always helps to write stuff for a character when you have a feeling for what that character might be or how they might be different.

That's you always have to unlock a character.

And I'm jumping ahead.

But when I took over writing on Superman when Burne had left, I had a lot of trouble initially trying to figure out how to write for Lex Luthor, you know, to not make him just a mustache whirling bad guy.

It was like he had to have some depths and what would his voice sound like to me?

And as funny as it is, and again, it's no reflection of John Byrne because John and I he was so great to me.

It wasn't like, oh, Lex John Burne is Lex Luthor.

But John has this very distinct way of looking at the world and the very somewhat slightly inflexible, like he would create rules about certain things, yes, you know then and he would adhere to them like and it was he was just like, this is the way things will be from now on.

And so I thought, wow, you know what, I'm typing dialogue and I started hearing his voice speaking the lines, and it made it.

It just unlocked it for me, you know.

And John's not an evil genius.

I mean he's a genius, but he's not an evil genius.

It was just his speech pattern helped me break away from thinking lex luthor via Gene Hackman because that's kind of limited, you know, it was limited.

Go on, well it's limited in that.

Yeah, I mean, he's you know, there was only really one good perform or you know, the really one good performance in the to me in the first movie, and then the other ones were a little bit less.

But but yeah, so for to do to do a character and have a have a voice in your head is really important when you're writing.

So it helped me define who Lex Luthor was.

And Roger Stern always, you know, focused a lot of the on the Lex stuff.

And I never told Roger that I was hearing John voice when right, but that was it.

And and Morgan Edge was the other evil business guy.

And Morgan Edge, I always felt like the difference between him and Lex Luthor was that Lex Luthor had he left power and he he would do anything to get power and to keep power, whereas you know, Morgan Edge was the type of guy who probably pulled the wings off of flies as a kid, and you know, just just and I illustrated that in one story where I had him run over a raccoon on the side of the road when he was driving in the country and he actually swerves into it to run over it.

And that was that was meant to show the difference.

It's like, yeah, Lex Luthor's not a serial killer or a total deviant, whereas Morgan Edge is somebody that you wouldn't want your twenty year old daughter in an elevator with because he's probably not going to act nicely.

Wow, you know, yeah, And now all that helps, I mean, it all helps in building story because you can find stories that fit that you.

Know understood absolutely man, No, and you know it's true.

And I'm really glad you point out Ron Troupe.

I forgot you had co created Ron because also, like you said, Jose Delgado, Uh you know, and now I'm blanking and what was this?

What was his Uh we're just talking about Gangbuster, thank you.

I was gonna say Crimebuster Gangbuster, of course, no.

Uh yeah.

I really appreciated him as a street level hero and also his love and devotion for Lois and that he was human and when he would you know, fight his villains and stuff that you know, he he wasn't he like?

Uh not?

Was he paralyzed?

Yeah, he got we had him.

Uh he was paralyzed fighting a character with Superman.

Wasn't there basically in a movie theater and he fought a guy he was overmasked with or and uh he wound up paralyzed, which you know we Uh again, I required a lot of reading and the funny thing and again I don't know how you how this stuff happens, but Jose Delgado as a name of a character kind of sprung out of my childhood.

So I had a friend whose name was Juan del Gato, and I thought Delgado's I mean, there's no ambiguity about the you know, it's a Hispanic name.

And yes.

Uh So, anyways, when I started reading on reading up on paralysis, and I knew I wanted to have a subplot of Luther or somebody coming up with some kind of way to stimulate his nerves and get them like exoskeleton or what have you.

But I looked, I started reading up researching quadriplegics and the research that was being done at the time with you know, nerve stimulation and stuff, and it turned out there was a very prominent doctor, his name was Jose Delgado, who was involved in this research.

I'm reading this research, I'm thinking, wow, that's really weird.

That's kind of cool.

Yeah, but yeah, so, I mean, each of these things, there's a mechanics to all the stories, you know, mechanical aspects, because you're still you need to get a story from point A to point B, or from point A all the way to point Z.

And with with Jose Delgado, part of the one of the key things was for him to be paralyzed, and that played into also the Superman identity crisis.

Storyline because Gamebuster shows up and it's like, well, wait, he can't be showing up because this guy's paralyzed.

And that was our you know, storyline where Superman basically had to developed a little split personality thing going after killing the Phantom Zone guys.

So that became, and that was a really fun story to reread many many years later because I wrote the introduction to a recent omnibus that DC did with that and the Exile and Space storyline.

So I read was reading the Identity Crisis part and I thought, you know, this really does hold up.

I mean, I don't I don't like to pat myself on the back too much, but Roger and Carlin and I did that with Kerry Gammel, I think drew most of the issues, and Dennis jank he inked and and I think maybe even John Beatty was part of it at that point, maybe Brett.

I think it was before Brett might have been.

But yeah, just as a story, it held up, and that was the seeds of that were went back to burn because John had had had the idea of doing something.

I don't think he was going to do it as a as a reaction to killing the Phantom Zone stuff because the guys, because I think that came up kind of organically while he was drawing that issue.

But he had we had talked about this Superman somehow, maybe a villain creating some split thing in his head, maybe brainiac or something at the time, and he had wanted He said, well, I've got the perfect name alter ego.

And I was like, thinking a little protectively of Roy.

I was thinking, well, Roy's got altered character.

Yeah, I think he has a trademark.

And I said, you know, John was like, well that doesn't matter.

It's not a comic book character.

And I was like, well, why don't we just use Gangbuster?

And again it was like it fell into place because here's a character you didn't have to you didn't have to introduce a new character.

People would go, oh, Gangbuster, Yeah he was.

Wasn't he around you know in Suicide Slump?

So they didn't, you know, the characters within the story could know who he was.

It wasn't like having to, then, you know, devote time to introduce yet another character.

So having Jose be paralyzed played into that as a as a more organic aspect.

And then when when John quit, that was you know that was going to be our next storyline pretty much anyways, and it just changed into uh, you know, I remember talking to Carl and it was like, well, we all had discussions about John killing having these Superman killed the Phantom Zone guys.

And it's pretty controversial at that time.

Yes, and it was a kind of an impulse thing for him, because I don't think he initially had that in his plot that Superman was going to kill these.

Really it was then again I want to give backstory for people who may not know about that period because it was it was a long time ago, but yeah, it was the there was a Pocket Universe.

They were alternate universe versions of Zod and Jack Surr and I don't remember if or So was the third Phantoms of Kryptonian.

But there was that amazing cover of Superman as Jailor and you know, going that one step further than Joe l where I sentenced you to death and yeah, all of a sudden because that you know, of course, that's the knock on the Man of Steel movie.

Wait a minute, Superman doesn't kill And us older readers are like, well, there was that one time, so he said, John really didn't you know, that really wasn't a big like emotional moment.

Is as John was concerned in terms of what he was doing.

Well, I think it was he knew it was a big thing.

And I believe, like when when we first talked about the Pocket Universe story, that that story existed to begin with, that that existed to appease kind of appeased the Legion of superhero fans.

Right, how did work with the if Superboy?

They gave him, right, they gave him a super Boy for the for the Legion contuity and it was tied into the Time Trapper, who was another Legions villain guy.

So but but clearly, I mean John had gotten clearance to have him kill the guys because the cover would have been done at least, you know, in advance of the interior of the issue.

So obviously that was was set.

But it was still kind of shocking.

And the thing that Mike Carlin because that when Burne left, Mike knew that he was going to bring in Roger Stern because Roger had done some fill in stuff and we both worked with Roger.

Both loved Roger, but Mike and I were pretty much like the guys we walked among ourselves and then we would loop Roger in on a conversation or whatever.

And again, the advantage of being within driving distance or trained distance of New York allowed me to do that, which was important.

But the idea was, Okay, John did it, and John does you know he again making rules?

Basically, here's why Superman would do it.

And I know John had always felt like in the release version of Superman two, Superman dispatches all three Phantom Zone villains and if you're watching the movie and you haven't ever ever seen those extras that they cut, those guys are never seen again or referenced again.

It's like, did he just kill this because he depowered him and then they go down a chasm right into the ice.

So he was always like of a mind that that precedent was set in Superman two.

So he didn't think he was breaking a big, a big rule because that is how he read that.

And there, you know, so that's the you know, build on that.

It did make sense from his point of view.

He's on a different world and these people are more powerful, like three characters who were as powerful as he is, and once he had him weakened, Okay, I'm going to just take him out.

So again, none of this was done capriciously.

I mean it was.

It was very very much a part of that story and and all that.

But you know, in a nineteen sixties, seventies whatever Superman comics, Superman would have just found a way to rebuild the Phantom Zone projector and send him into the zone.

So this was an era of you know, Rambo and Arnold Schwartzenegger and all this stuff where people just took took things to hand, you know.

So when when, anyways, we inherited that situation, because then John quit, I mean it was that was his last issue.

We inherited it.

And the thing between Mike and myself was Mike had said, Superman's got a code against killing, But how do you have a code against killing unless you've done it?

In other words, that became that became the hub of that was that he, you know, had experienced this and had regrets and obviously, like anybody would have, who would torture him.

Sure, So you know, on top of that torture part is that he then wound up having this split personality where he became Gangbuster as a vigilante kind of more hard nosed Batman, eighties, you know, that type of character and that side of his personality allowed him to vent that that that stuff.

And when he realizes, you know, the that he's he's been doing it, he doesn't trust himself and that's why he exiles himself into space.

So I mean, all of that was very much organically grew out of you know that a lot of everything we ever plant seeds for in these stories, they all have an end goal.

And of course DC at any point above us could have said no, that's stupid, don't do it, and then we would have had to change our mind to do something else.

But they gave us.

You know, they really did trust us to do this stuff.

And I think it paid off for them, you know, maybe a couple of years after that point.

It was a great story man.

No, and and and it really again, sometimes I think people who have trouble figuring out writing Superman, it's like, you know, how do you how do you?

You know?

Where are the flaws?

Where are the where the things that can hurt him?

And it is always internal and and Greg Rucka always says, you know, you can break Superman's heart because he is such a compassionate person.

And I know you guys found a great way to break him down and really doubt himself because I think, especially in Smallville and even in the Snyder films, they almost try to make Superman into Spider Man, where he is more embarrassed by his powers, rather than embrace the lessons of the Kents.

Of no, we help people.

That's what the Kents do.

And I think, you know, that's that's the strength of that's the man part of Superman.

I mean, it's obvious to those of us who think of Superman that way.

So yeah, you know, I I.

Well, I think, go on, Yeah, I'd say that speaks also though to the decades between the you know, nineteen seventies eight Superman and you know, Man of Steel.

Even though I liked I've liked the Zach s Andy, I like the two Superman, Superman, Batman, Man of Steel.

I really really enjoyed that.

Really, go on, yeh, at least I would have taken I would have taken like just a few little things, and I think I could have appeased the fans who found certain stuff abhorrent, you know, because both Ultimately, the first story is an origin story, you know, it's his first time in costume.

It's his first time really doing Superman stuff in public.

And I would argue with people after a Man of Steel, I said, here's the thing.

He killed Zod because Zod put him in the position of I'm not giving up, right.

And if there was one brief moment at the end of that battle after he kills him.

And this is me as because when I was a kid, I wanted to make movies.

Everybody does.

I would have I would have just taken that one scene where after he kills him, and I would pulled back, pulled back, back back, like a really distant shot to where you see just two little him and the figure of Zod surrounded by all of this destruction of Metropolis, and would have just had him, oh my god, you know, just some kind of sense of what, yeah, I was protecting, but what what happened is, you know, just something to reflect on that I was part of this, you know.

Yeah, And I think it would have it would have appeased people who, you know, felt like it went right from him killing Zod to suddenly the joke he scene with the military guys and the Eye in the Sky or whatever, the satellite that he throws at their feet.

It felt like that was that could have still worked, but maybe you just need that one moment in reflection of holy crap, what did I do?

Because people go on, now I was gonna say, I mean, I think that would have been that would have been a natural reaction, and it seemed like the type of scene that should have been in there, at least on the DVD or Blu ray.

It should have been a cut scene at the very least to have him reflect on this.

Because the reason we never did we always tried to steer clear of big fight stories is because every time in a big Marvel fight story, it was an abandoned warehouse or an abandoned district or whatever, and it just you know, someone would destroy tons of buildings, but you never had a sense of casual.

The whole point is doing Doomsday was like, okay, Dan Jurgens wanted to do a big fight issue because what Marvel did, and we were always trying to get people to buy the book and we've had a hard time selling it to, like I said, the comic stores.

So Doomsday was okay.

Nobody in the room wanted to do the big fight story.

That's what Marvel does.

That's not what we're doing on Superman.

We're doing the character stories.

Blah blah blah.

So after his idea initially was dismissed and nobody came up with anything really better or substantial, I revisited.

I said, hey, let's go back to dance thing.

If we did this thing and we did a big destructive fight, we'll do it our way.

And we wound up crafting pretty much that into You got to see people homeless.

You have to accept the fact that there's casualties.

All these things are important because that's what happened.

You know, there's no war without people dying and being displaced and all that.

So that was important and that became the focus, and that became then when we decided he's gonna die, that became the focus of you know, funeral for a friend and World War Krypton.

It was like like we were doing a little bit of a you know, here's what the comic stores think of Superman.

They don't appreciate him, and once he's gone, it's like, oh man, that's a big hole in my life.

This guy did this, and he did that kind of like what happens when most people die, you know, people reflect and it's all stuff that maybe should have been said when they were correctly to the person before they passed away.

Absolutely, oh my god, you guys put us through hell.

Truly.

That was so great.

It really was.

And also the build up to that, that that issue if it was Superman seventy five or six, when the final fight between him and Doomsday, and you know, you would slowly reduce the panels, and you know, we had four panels and three to two and then the final issues splash page after splash page.

Oh my god, it was absolutely and then like you said, funeral for a friend, it really did it.

Good lord.

And then also to cancel the book with Jonathan having his hard episode and it's like, wait a minute, what are you doing?

Man?

That was great?

Like you no, you guys played us well well.

Once we had that point, I mean it was we had we'd come up with the idea of the death of Superman idea, and we were all working towards that.

And once it started getting much more acclaim, I mean before it even came out, we started getting all this publicity and became a huge, huge thing, building building building, Mike Carlin said, Okay, we're going to have another meeting, another story conference, and we're going to try to unlock this thing and make it because at that point it went from being just a Superman story that we'd hope would get comic stories to buy it to being like a bit of a phenomenon before it even came out.

So we went in, sat in the meeting and worked out and made it much better and much more involved because we knew it needed to be more involved.

You know, it wasn't going to be like we discover Clark in the rubble alive, you know, a month later or whatever.

I mean, we had those ideas initially, but it was like the idea became so big.

And I also argued for the here's the way comics were sold and they're still sold.

This way is that you give a description of the content of the book, and they usually show the cover in an order form for previews, which is a comic distributor.

I said, here's your one chance where people won't know what Superman will look like when he comes back.

So you got to do blackouts or something, and then Carlin came up with, Okay, we'll do top secret and it'll just be blank, you know, for the issues afterwards because I had and again I know I can lay claim to that idea because when I first got on Superman, I knew I wasn't doing the Man of Steel thing with Burne, the relaunch, actual the mini series that was going to be his thing, and at the time he was doing that, I was finishing up on penciling a couple issues of Fantastic Four while I was waiting to start on Superman, so I filled in for him when he left Marvel.

I did like three issues of Fantastic Four while I was waiting for Superman to start up, and the editor on Man of Steel was Andy Helfer, and Andy was sending me pencils photocopies of pencils of Burns Man of Steel issues so I could kind of get up to speed or see what was going on.

And the one thing that cracked me up was I think there's a he missed, either didn't send me a page or something.

But the way I read the photocopies, it looked like the issue the first issue ended without Superman because it was like, here's what he's going to be, and then I didn't maybe I didn't get the last page, the splash page where he flies up or whatever out at the reader.

I just it just ended.

The last page I saw was maybe he was with Ma Kent and she was trying to figure it out.

And I thought at the time, I thought, wow, that's and are brilliant to actually end your first tissue without showing Superman in costume, because it's the first time.

At that time, that was the first time in almost fifty years where you didn't know what Superman would be or what he'd look like.

So, you know what I'm saying, it was it was going to be the ground floor thing.

So then when I realized later it's like, oh no, we forgot to send you the last page, it was like, oh, oh, that's kind of a missed opportunity.

Then, so I revisited that.

I thought of that again when we were after the death, I thought, well, we knew we were always going to bring him back, but this is the first time that we can do this and have people not know he could show up as a guy in a black costume.

He could show up however, and then that led to well, we're going to do multiple Superman.

You know Superman.

Yeah, yeah, So that's that was kind of cool, but it really kind of came out of this idea that you know, the audience after having that book canceled, they would not know what what the at his quote would be, and we would use that as a marketing lever, you know, because that's the only time you can do that with a known property.

Sure, did you were you you know, the four different Superman How involved were you in terms of you know, did was one of those your specific idea or no?

No, No, I knew I was.

I knew Carl Kesel was taken over.

But I was part of the meeting when we first, when we reconnoitered, we we we we got together to do the return my as I recall, my daughter had just been born.

She was about a month old, and I went to the they had a meeting the like a conference center in White White Plains, New York or somewhere in Westchester, the White Plains.

I went to this and worked for the first day on how we're bringing them back.

And I had all my ideas and you know, the whole story of kind of in the you know, the on the edges of of heaven and Hell kind of thing, which also plays off of Clark being raised a god fearing midwestern, yes, without without being denominational.

It was like it was it felt like that would be a kind of good way to also make Pauw Kent heroic because Paul can't basically forces himself into that position to kind of try to.

Find Clark's a great story.

Absolutely so the part of the four the four characters had become part of that because each of the writers came to the meeting with their pitch for what Superman would be, and Carlin heard all the pitches.

I heard all the pitches too, I mean it was again and and very quickly it became like, well, what if it's all of them and we don't know?

I love mystery stuff.

I love that.

Again, it just felt like, you know, I don't know that I would say I was, you know, integral to anything that happened after that point.

But we did.

I mean a lot of the big strokes were discussed.

And then I left, went back to my wife and daughter, you know, and then they they continued the next day to work out the at least the next part of it, where the four characters get in, you know, not get introduced, but where the four characters you know, go in and ultimately end up with the with Mongol and destroying.

Yeah, as a reader, that was really thrilling to read that whole you know, Reign of the Superman story.

I was.

I was just again just from that point of being a reader, it was really thrilling.

It's like, Wow, these guys really brought it.

It was it was a really good, you know, a good way to relaunch the character.

Agreed.

Did you ever hear the audio adaptation of Doomsday and being, Oh, yeah, I really thought, especially as you mentioned the ut Kent and and Superman's Kryptonian funeral and everything.

I always they really handled that.

It was beautiful in the comic.

But also, yeah, so you would you would stopped before the Reign of the Superman you had left the book for a while.

No, yeah, I'd always stupidly, I guess, I said.

I told Carl, and I said, I'm ready to move on, because I was.

I was working on I had been doing pages for the Powersh's am graphic novel.

Course they were full, full color, and it was going really slowly, and I'd been writing the super Adventures Superman, but I wasn't drawing it for the previous maybe, I'd say, maybe I don't know, at least a year, maybe a little more.

And with my daughter being born, I was thinking, you know, I want to cut back on my workload.

I had all these reasons, and it felt like Adventures five hundred was a good point to step off, knowing that Carl keesl was was taken over on my Adventures because Carl and I had known each other for years and years and I knew he had great ideas and stuff, so I just I took it as an opportunity to step off.

But that was, of course, before we were selling like multiple millions of copies, and I kind of I will I would be I would be stupid to lie about it that I didn't think, gee hmm, what am I walking away from?

You know?

But I did, okay, because I did a wild Star pretty much immediately after that, and you know, I was ready.

I was ready.

I was.

I never felt like I was done with Superman.

I still always kept my file of ideas.

You know, I'd read read multiple newspapers and I would always put down little ideas springboards or clip articles that I thought would be and I always maintained that that file, and I always kind of thought I would come back to it, but it never really happened.

I mean, I I helped out Carl Kesel a little bit when he was doing another project.

I dialogued Superman for maybe a I don't know if it was a year, but it was something like that back in that while I was doing Shazam and in maybe ninety six seven, I think ninety seven and ninety eight maybe, and then when a new editor took over, I was going to go back on adventures as an artist and writer because Carl was ready to leave and he thought it was just kind of fun to pass the book back to me, and the editor that I was working with at the time was like, you know, this sounds great.

I'll get the contracts going.

And then within the space of maybe a week or two weeks of him, he was gone.

Basically they replaced him with a different editor, and then the different editor base pretty much had his own ideas and fired everybody.

So that was the end of my Superman for a long time, especially for up until I think, you know, doing Action one thousand.

I always felt bad about it, you know, but you don't want to work for somebody who wants to fire you bad enough to do it.

When when his boss was on vacation, which is what ultimately happened.

Well, that guy got his, and we're all pretty happy about that advance.

I think everyone can figure out which Superman editor who was of recent uh you know, ill repute got his.

So yes, screw that guy.

Okay, I did say that.

I said, it's like, you know, it was for something else, but you know, karma.

Karma does come around, and that's that's something.

But it's unfortunate that he, I guess.

I mean, this guy thrived, and you know, for better or worse, he he thrived for twenty years after this, you.

Know, yes, No, I understand, and yeah, I uh yeah, well again he got his and.

I even worked with him.

I mean I had to basically hat in hand.

I had to.

I had to work with him after that point.

And you know what do you do?

You know you just yeah, I said this holding a grudge was hurting me more than it was hurting him, clearly.

So I basically said, in the if I want to work at DC, I gotta do something.

I gotta I have to do this aside.

No, I understand, man, And again those of us who've worked in the corporate world, Yeah, they're they're that you have to work for sometimes and try to make the best of it.

Well, let's move to a positive thing, because also I've kept you long and I want just very quickly, I want to acknowledge that your Shazan stuff was fantastic.

I loved it, and absolutely you know I will let you go because I mean, good lord, we've almost been talking for an hour and a half.

I wanted to mention that you're going to be a terrific one at Mohegan Sun and I will be there as well.

I don't know if I'm moderating one of your panels or not, but regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing you there and also letting the fans know that you will be there in August or Do you have any other convention plans?

No, not before then.

I'll probably go to Baltimore Comic Con because I did that last year and that was a lot of fun.

But other than that, I just did Heroes Con in North Carolina and that was It's a big show.

Yes, it's I don't know if you've ever been to Heroes, but Heroes has got a real good fan vibe.

It doesn't feel like a media show, which is Fun in Baltimore the same thing, and also so terrific On.

I think is terrific On is the smallest of those, but it the first year I did when Mitch finally that Mitch Hallick had who runs terrific On, had done a big show in Bridgeport, and it was the first time I had done all three days of a comic show in a long time.

So I was like, at the first day, I said, Wow, the vibe in the room is just good.

It's comic fans.

Yeah, and the lists and everything that that's the vibe going for go on please.

No, I was going to say just that that's the type of show that we used to go to before it became oh, look we can see the star of Captain America or whatever.

I mean, there's a valid point to that, but when you do a show like that, people generally your audience is split.

So you have a standard number of people who are there to see the stars and they're in a different section, and the people who were there to see the comic creators are in a different group, in a different section, and there's not a lot of overlap.

And there's physical reasons for that, because if you're going if you're paying big bucks for a photo op with movie stars, you're gonna be waiting in line like half of your debt, you know what I mean?

You could they just they just put you in lines to do this, and then you move to another line to do that.

And if you have multiple photo things, you're never ever going to get on the convention floor and buy anything, you know what I mean.

So it's it's it's fun to be at a show where people are like looking to you know, get their books signed and uh and interact.

And I always when I when I do these shows, it's performance for me.

You know, I'm not putting on an act or anything, but I do the whole point.

I work at home, you know, when I'm out, I'll talk to the people I'm signing or drawing a sketch for because it's interesting to me.

These are people I wouldn't normally meet.

You know, what do you do for a living?

I mean, if people laugh at it in a way some of my friends.

You know, you could do more sketches if you did less talking.

And I said, the point of this, seriously, the point of it is, I know that I'm not going to be We're not going to be best friends, but I always want to It's how else are you going to find out what people's lives are like outside of your own little circle, you know?

So I'm always intrigued by people, you know, like because you can look at somebody and say, Okay, what does this guy look like?

If I were stereotyping his job, what would it be?

And most times you're wrong?

And I don't know.

I don't think it's just me.

I think it's just easy to to visually try to find a cue for someone, Like I mean, I find it interesting to find out what people do, you know, like, how can you afford to come here and spend this much on sketches?

You know what I mean?

I mean that's a valid thing.

It's like, if you're working at Starbucks, chances are you're not going to have that extra money to spend on on a photo op with movie stars for five hundred bucks, you know.

I mean that that makes me, That's that interests me, just because again, you lose you do lose touch when you're work in at home, you know, you just don't have that same experience of being given even in an office where you have a group of people that you might interact with and find out their woes or whatever, you know, do well.

And also, like you said, there is this divide of the people that go to meet the stars, the movie stars and the TV stars and the comic community where you know, and again maybe because we're older or something, but I just think it is a more enriching experience getting to meet you people that have been writing and drawing these characters and you've got all these stories and you know, we we know the names.

We learn a little bit from the letters pages in previous years.

But it really that is the great thing about the comics community that everyone is approachable and we get you know, you get our stories, but we get your stories as well.

And just like the the you know time you've just spent with me right now talking about some of these behind the scenes scenes stories that inspired what you guys put on the page.

You know, that's that's great.

And I would rather spend you know, hours at a convention in artists sally than waiting three hours for you know, if you're lucky at two minute experience of standing next to Chris Evans.

And I think two minutes is probably generous, you know, because I know that you whip them in and out of there.

My favorite story about that is my buddy went to get a photograph for his for her boyfriend of him and William Shatner, and his eyes were closed in the photo, and so they go back to the people doing the photos.

They're like, hey, we'll wait at the end of the line, can we redo the photo?

Like oh no, no, no, we'll fix it.

And they literally went in photoshop and put dots on his closed eyes so he looks like olive oil in like a mix flesher thing, and yeah, what was supposed to be this great keep saying for her boyfriend is like this sad.

You know, Yeah, we spent three hundred bucks on William Shatner and yeah, our eyes are closed.

Do we look stupid?

So well I did.

I went to the Ace Comic Con show.

It was in the Long Eye, that's and for.

Listeners, that's the the guys who used to run Wizard magazine, garreb Seamus's show.

So yeah, tell me about this show please.

And they did a Justice League signing event where they had pretty much everybody except Ben Affleck signing as far as the group of Justice League characters.

I went to the show and I went with Mitch from Comic Con because he was driving.

We went up for one day and I had drawn Henry cavill as Superman as a gift because I was told that I could give it to him, and it wasn't looking for a photo thing.

I just thought i'd be able to hand it to him, say here's a drawing from you know Superman artist drawing you as Superman.

I also did one of gal is it Galagado?

Let's call?

We know you're talking about Wonder.

I did one of her as well, and I just thought they're at the show, there must be some way to just go hand it to him.

And we got to the show and found out, oh, that that's not going to happen, so I've Mitch then got mad because we had He felt that we had like some agreement that we're going to get to do this.

So he went into into his mode that he started using all the people that he knew from other shows where he'd done shows.

He saw, he recognized people who did the photography, and he recognized the guys that the guards were, you know, some of a couple of them were policemen that he knew who did this through this crowd control at other conventions, So we kind of talked our way up to getting to meet with Henry Cavell and then leverage that somehow to get Gal And then while we were standing in line with waiting to get to get the Wonder Woman, you know that picture moment moment we saw Garreb Seamus and walking by, and Garab came up to me and said, Jerry, thank you for coming to the show for the day, really appreciate And he was like, well, is there any chance to the Justice League signings right next to any chance we can get in there?

He goes, sure, So he just waved us over to stand in the special area and we wound up getting the group shot.

And trust me, the experience everybody was super nice.

Sure, the actors were very very gracious, very very nice.

But it's virtually a ten second interaction interaction.

It's very cool.

I mean, you can say something to them.

And as opposed to the William Shanner thing there, I've seen all the pictures posted after that event, posted on Twitter and on Facebook, and there's not a bad I did not see a bad picture of any of the actors.

There's definitely a level of professionalism to be on like that, because each one of them smile is perfect the eyes and you know the rest of us we don't have that training.

So I'm looking at the picture and it's like, I guess they should have extended my neck a little bit.

But it was fun and it was I've never done that before.

And I think the only reason I wouldn't have done it if Mitch hadn't been there, because I would have just accepted it and said, Okay, I guess that's the way things go.

And I would have just gone back to my table and signed and sketched.

But he was like, no, no, this is we're going to make a point of this because they said that we could do this and now we're not gonna It was just funny, so I went along with it.

I'd need more.

I think I need more more friends like Mitch.

He reminds me a little bit of Mike Carland, because Mike Carlin was also pretty uh he was very is a very feisty guy and uh not from the Midwest.

And I think the key there is I'm you know what I mean, I'm just I'm a little under self effacing, you know, self effacing, and it just well whatever.

You know, there's that some Midwest thing where you you know, you just kind of put up with it, and you know, do I deserve that?

Do I deserve a picture with them?

It's not that big a deal.

But but I'm glad Mitch had the tenacity to make that happen.

And also, as you just said, and I agree with you, it's never the actors.

The actors are very happy to and they understand that, like you know, it's the fans that make them what they are.

But no, it's it's the layers of security and again the way this is set up.

And also I do understand, but it's it's it does it grates on me as well, and it kind of and I'm like I said, I'm glad Mitch had the tenacity to help you get and then you guys up there and make it happen.

Well, it's all about math too though.

That's the thing that a lot of people don't get is if they're paying someone three hundred thousand dollars, literally, they're paying them.

Really, these actors all got big bucks.

And I think the group shot that we got for free because you know, somebody that Garub knew the group shot is one thousand dollars.

I think it was one thousand dollars buy in.

So I mean these packages, if you want, the whole thing was expensive stuff.

But at the same time, you know, to pay seven or six or seven actors big bucks, they have to they have to do, you know, a certain number of them a minute.

Really, I mean it comes down to that and that that it does.

It's not like you're going to show up and paid money and become someone's best friend.

You're in and out, you walk away, walk over to a place where they hands you a picture.

So and I think in their you know, if it's if it's smoothly run, a well run machine like that, they're going to try to do everything they can to not get those bad pictures, you know what I mean.

So, I mean the the Shatner experience was probably just somebody who screwed up or who wasn't prepared well enough or something.

Because they would have whoever standing with us.

You could see the people next to the cameraman.

They would give it a yes or no.

So if there was something they saw it, when that snapped, yeah, they would immediately do a second.

Well, because well, again this was this was like ten or twelve years ago.

So I'm sure in that time the people that runs.

Become a smooth running business that'bsolutely differently.

But yeah, well go ahead, no, I'm.

Just going to say now, I mean that the changes in the in that timeframe too are different in that in need, even back in the like San Diego Con when I would go in the eighties and early nineties, you would see celebrities walking around and you could just stop them and get a picture with them.

But you were, you know, you were holding the camera.

That's the only way you had to guarantee to get a picture.

You're holding I always carried my camera with me at the at these shows.

I put it on a little fanny pouch on the side of my belt, and I always had it handy, so you know, that's how you you you would get There was no we're going to take a picture and it's going to cost you forty dollars type.

So a lot of that business has and and the business of comic cons has changed a lot in those years.

You know, the the bigger that you know, bigger crowds some of these shows, the more the more opportunity that people see too.

So well it's all.

It's all business and then a lot of it, most of it doesn't, you know, feedback into comic readership, which is that's the one regret it doesn't.

I don't think I think people feel like I watched The Avengers.

I did my duty.

I don't need to read Avengers com.

You know, No, I understand.

And and yeah, it's it's an interesting time and it's again another double edged sword.

And yet, so where do you Where do you shop in Chicago?

Oh?

I live right.

I go to a couple of shops, but I live by Chicago Comics.

Uh right there at Clark and Belmont, not too far from Wrigley Field for people listening who may not know the geography.

Pretty cool.

Yeah, and that's a great store.

And you know, Challengers is a great newer store that is in wicker Park and right off one of the L train stops, the Blue line right at uh oh god, no, I'm blanking what's not but it doesn't matter.

But they're a great that's a great store.

My friends aren't and Franco who work with DC occasionally on tiny talks and stuff.

Yes, all yeah, comics.

I go to their Chicago store in Skokie, and I know you've been in there, Harry since Straham Cracker Crackers used to be.

It still is.

I lived, I worked downtown at the CBS news station and walking distance from Grand Downtown.

So yeah, there's a lot of great stores.

That's the life that's the lifeblood, you know.

I mean, that's it's good that that Chicago's got a thriving enough Yeah, I mean that's that's again that that really is what keeps comics alive is having that because people don't necessarily have to travel super far to find the store.

Agreed, That's that's important.

And and having that competition I think brings everybody up.

I agree with that as well, everybody's level.

No, it's yeah, we're very we're very fortunate in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs to have such an active store community.

And no, it's it's it's a huge help.

And I'm looking forward to seeing you terrifica.

I'll let us wrap up, man, because like I said, I didn't want to take too much of your time, give you at least part of your what's left of the late afternoon back, but I hope you'll come.

Back as long as I have time to get pizza on Friday.

Here you go, all right, good deal, but yeah, please come back, because man, we haven't talked about Hizam.

There's still a ton more to talk about Superman.

Hell, even more to talk about regarding the All Star Squadron Infinity and the Justice Society as well.

But Batman movie comic.

The Batman movie comic, indeed.

I have I have stories about that too.

Well, man, all right, we'll get in, all right, Jerry, and then we're gonna yeah, well I hope we'll uh well, I'll definitely look you up at terrificon and Mohegan Sun.

But yeah, let's uh let's try and and maybe you know, yeah, either later this year or as we get closer to the Shazam movie.

You know, that's a good excuse to have another conversation with you.

But thanks for talking

Today, absolutely well, thank you very much, John,