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The Busboy wrote:
'Werewolf By Night" Collection is out in stores now!
BlueEyesWolf wrote:
Perks your ears up, fellow werewolves!
Marvel Comics' Essential WEREWOLF BY NIGHT Vol. 1 is out now!
It's a big thick phonebook-thick B&W collection of Werewolf By Night comic-book stories.
The collected issues are: "Marvel Spotlight #2-4", "Werewolf By Night" 1-24, "Marvel Team-Up" #12. "Tomb of Dracula" #18 and "Giant-Size Creatures" #1.
All of this for $16.99. Check it out!NinjaWolf wrote:
Marvel Essentials had just released the vintage old "Werewolf by Night" comics into one big book. WOW!
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I have a copy of this waiting for me at the comic book shop by me, can't wait to pick it up this weeknd! October seems to be the month of the werewolf this year, as there is a lot of werewolf news this month!
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Yep! It makes good Halloween reading.
Yes, It sure seem that there's lots of Werewolf comics coming out now. Could be the full moon AND Halloween? Hmmmmmmmm.....
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There is so much werewolf stuff now, it's so fun! I got that "Werewolf By Night" today!
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COOL!
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THis is a straight compilation of the first 25 or so episodes (under various titles) of Marvel's "Werewolf by Night". There's no new material except for some narative about Jack Russell (Isn't that a cute name? Maybe he's really a Wereterrier.)
Anyway, I bought it for completeness because I don't like the look of the early Marvel Werewolves (They have the Talbot facial character - like the Werewolf that was chasing the car that braked). "Werewolf by Night" also has that whiney/angsty attitute that I hate in the other Marvel titles. I just don't care for soap operas - thankyewverymuch.
The book is about three inches thik and it'll take me awhile to actually read it but I've given it a cursory scan and, if you like Marvel - then you'll probably like this tome. If you aren't into the Marvel dramatic, you probably won't.
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Mike Ploog was the master of the game during that run! Have ya'll seen the statue out there? Rocks!! The comics are good anyway ya can find these. It really shows the dynamics of being hunted, hated and not really understanding what the heck to do or turn next. Real pathos.
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B-but it's whiiiiiiiiiiney.....I did like him better after he "got in touch with his wolf". But it was still a soap opera.
But that's okay, there's folks that like the Marvel melodrama.......it just gives me hives.
Can't really appreciate something well when I'm clawing myself (witness: poison ivy!)
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RealDealBubba wrote:
Mike Ploog was the master of the game during that run! Have ya'll seen the statue out there? Rocks!! The comics are good anyway ya can find these. It really shows the dynamics of being hunted, hated and not really understanding what the heck to do or turn next. Real pathos.
Yep! Mike Ploog sure was darn good in his Werewolf By Night run.
Statue? You mean that statue of Werewolf By Night's head and upper body? If so, YEP!
WolfVanZandt wrote:
I don't like the look of the early Marvel Werewolves (They have the Talbot facial character - like the Werewolf that was chasing the car that braked)
Well, it was probably because The Wolfman was still in people's minds before An American Werewolf in London went for a more realistic wolflike look like longer snout and running on all fours.
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I've got one of those statue minis, it does rock!
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Anyone who still needs that Werewolf By Night Essential and can't find one locally. I added it to the
www.rebelbasecomics.com
web page so you can now order it online through me with a 20% discount I might ad. Also have Night #3, Scratch 1&2 and Bubba 2,3,4 on the web page now too.
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Y'know, one thing that bugs me about (most?) comics that have Werewolves in them is that the Werewolves never shut their mouths. They always have their mouths wide open. Isn't that sorta dangerous. I mean, doesn't it dry out the enamle on your teeth or something?
Another twinge that I get, particularly about Marvel horror comics is that frequent plug on the front, "Possibly the most horrifying epic story ever illustrated" or some variation thereof. I've seen some scary comics but WBN ain't one of them.
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Well, I guess the artists wanted to make the werewolves more scary by opening the mouth so you can see all of the long sharp teeth all covered with flowing saliva.
Guess you have to be a kid back when the Werewolf By Night comics were new to be scared by them. The scarier stuff were yet to come so this was what we got then.
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One of my customers that is in his mid 30's now said he read WBN comics when he was a kid and it SCARED HIM NEARLY TO DEATH. If fact he said his father threw out all the offending comics because they frightened him so much. So, I guess the age thing would be a strong factor
I myself can't remember the last time I was "scared" while reading a comic....don't mind me...I'll just sit over here in the corner being jaded
:-)
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Hmmmmmm.....you might have a point.
I remember when adults considered Godzilla to be scary.
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Godzilla scary? Even when I was a kid, I thought he look odd and there was that zipper in the back.....
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I always though he was funny, especially in the later versions with that kung-fu tail thing that he did.
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I have Werewolf By Night 1-5(but not the originals), plus a Ghost Rider comic featuring the WWBN character. Good stuff really.
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I started buying WBN right around issue #9-10 when it came out. Mike was and still is a big influence on me...I'll always be a fan.......
That bust seems more in the Don Perlin vein and unfortunately , not Ploog.
Last edited by Tap_Legion (2006-05-20 03:48:23)
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jesterpress wrote:
I myself can't remember the last time I was "scared" while reading a comic....don't mind me...I'll just sit over here in the corner being jaded :-)
Same here. When I was a little kid I had some Satana comics that were disturbing, but not scary. Now, I've read ghost stories in book form that scared me, but only because the mind starts wandering and you think 'what if that happened here' and 'gee, it's dark'
With Werewolf By Knight being scary though - if you were reading it for the first time back then, it might have been. I remember my Dad saying that he was scared crapless by The Wolfman, when it first came out. And the Wolfman has a very similar look to Werewolf By Night. Personally, I love the movie, but I spend most of my time thinking 'But, wasn't Bela Lugosi's werewolf just like a real wolf?? Why the heck is this dude wandering around the victim of some peverse Rogain attack??'
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I just finished the Essential Werewolf by Night Vol 1 and I got one question ?? WHEN IS Vol 2 coming out ?? Jack Russell is the man!
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*Shrugs* Maybe this HOWL-oween?
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I just finished the Essential WWBN ......whew...I forgot how WORDY the 70's comics were.....makes me really realize how short our....attention....span.......what was I saying ?
HA! Anyway! Good stuff!!
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Interview I found online with Don Perlin (marvel's WWBN artist) By Daniel Best
Don Perlin isn't a name that automatically leaps into your mind when you're discussing the explosion of artists and writers at Marvel during the 1970's. Yet Don was there and made a very significant impact upon the art styles of the time. Don started out as an inker at Marvel and then moved onto bigger and better things - at one stage filling the very large shoes of John Romita as Marvels art director. After serving a long stint as one of Marvel's more under appreciated and under-utilised talents, Don moved to the then new company Valiant. Valiant had been started by Jim Shooter after Shooter had been fired by Marvel. In the process of starting Valiant Shooter tapped into the Marvel ranks for solid talent, and recruited people such as Bob Layton and Don, along with a genuine super-star in the form of Barry Windsor-Smith. Sadly when Valiant ran it's course Don decided to semi-retire.
At Marvel Don was best known for working on the horror titles - he did nearly thirty issues of 'Werewolf By Night', had an acclaimed run on 'Ghost Rider', and drew more issues of 'The Defenders' than anyone else (seventy one issues to be exact). He also worked on 'The Transformers' (over twenty issues) and drew fill in issues of virtually every Marvel title, 'Spiderman' and 'Captain America' amongst them.
Don has been active in the comics industry for over forty years now, and although he doesn't draw anything on a regular basis, he still keeps his pencil busy, and going on the quality of his most recent commission art, he's lost none of his skills. If he's not doing commissions, then he's busy with such worthy charities as the Tourette's Syndrome Association (check out the links for more information at the bottom of the page).
Don is a great guy. The conversation I had with him went for over two hours and I found him to be warm, open and very witty. There was a lot more that we spoke about that didn't make the final transcript - nothing overly malicious mind you ;-). As is the norm with some interviews the tape ran out just as Don told me an engaging story about a job that he had where he was told he wasn't good enough to draw the borders around the panels when he was starting out. In a way whoever told Don that was right - he wasn't good enough to merely ink in straight lines around a panel - he was light years beyond that, he was far too good for such trivial jobs. Thankfully Don never allowed such comments to slow him down and the world of comics is a far better place for it.
DANIEL BEST: What are your current projects these days?
DON PERLIN: Iâm semi-retired. I do some re-creations and commissions. I just finished a full- page colour illustration for the cover of a special sports section for the Jacksonville newspaper. Iâve been doing t-shirt designs and various projects, keeping myself busy and learning how to do artwork on the computer.
DB: And how is that going?
DP: I love it. The computer is great. You can colour pictures and paint and you donât get your hands dirty, you donât have to smell the turpentine - you donât have to worry about cleaning brushes. Itâs great.
Another recent project my wife and I have been involved with was a fund raising event for the Tourette Syndrome Association. My grandson has Tourette Syndrome.
DB: Where did you get started?
DP: Where? How did I start my interest in comics? Well, my father was what they called a âSunday painterâ, he had always wanted to be an artist but circumstances hadnât allowed it. When I showed up being able to hold a pencil the right way he was thrilled. So it was always planned for me to be an artist. We never figured out what kind of an artist I was going to be. I loved comic books. I would read comic books, I would collect them, trade them. In those days kids didnât save them like now, youâd read one and trade with friends so you didnât have to buy all the different ones. I was about fourteen when Burne Hogarth put an ad in some of the high school papers in New York City. He was going to open a class on Saturday morning for students who were interested in cartooning. I showed the ad to my father, he called Hogarth and we went to see him and I was accepted as a student. Then I knew comic books was the thing I wanted to do and everything then was focused to that goal.
DB: Dick Ayers also studied at the Hogarth School.
DP: Well, when I went to the Hogarth School it wasnât exactly a school. Hogarth had rented a loft in a small building up on upper Broadway in Manhattan and on Saturday mornings we had about half a dozen students. Then he got involved with the Stevenson School and then from the Stevenson School he opened up the Cartoonists and Illustrators School. Now that happened when I was about eighteen and had graduated from high school. Thatâs when Dick Ayers, Mike Esposito, Roy Krenkel, Ross Andru were there. When I was in high school I would go out with my samples, but I wasnât ready for professional work and all the editors would give me free comic books to encourage me. So, there I was fourteen years old and getting free comic books.
DB: Itâs a pity you canât do that now. <laughs>
DP: No, I donât think theyâd give me free comic books anymore. <laughs>
My first job was for a company called Fox Features. It was one of those cops and robbers stories. I pencilled it, Pete Morisi inked it. I had a bad time with those people because they were kind of not on the up and up.
DB: And how far back was that?
DP: Letâs see - it had to be around â48, the late â40s.
DB: Iâd always believed that you were an artist that came along in the early 1970s, but youâve been around for a lot longer than that. You go back to Timely, you go all the way back.
DP: Yeah, I go back to Timely. I worked for Timely, I worked for St John, and I did a couple of things for Hillman. I also worked for Harvey; I did a lot of work for them. I even spent three weeks working for Will Eisner aroundâ â53. I did the Spirit. He had a weekly insert for newspapers, seven pages or so, and I pencilled three of those. Then I did odds and ends, as things were getting pretty bad in the comic book industry. That was about when the psychiatrist Wertham came into the picture, and I was drafted. I went into the army and for a few months in the army I was doing stuff for Stan Lee, but things in comics got worse and I couldnât get any more work. When I came back out of the army I started getting a few things from Timely and then they went under. I wound up doing technical illustrating for five years, and working at night for Charlton Comics. Then after the technical illustrating I got a job doing box and package designing. I worked at that for about eight years. I also did comics on the side. I was working for DC doing Weird War and other horror stories; Murray Boltinoff was the editor.
DB: Did you ever do any superhero for DC at that time?
DP: I have never done any superhero for DC. The closest to a superhero for DC that I did was Scooby Doo. <laughs> Roy Thomas had seen my work for DC and called me. He said there were two books available; one was Werewolf By Night and the other was Mobius The Living Vampire. Mobius was bi-monthly and the other was monthly, so I took the monthly book. After that itâs just history. I started working steadily for Marvel until I went over to Acclaim.
DB: When you worked at Marvel you worked on pretty much everything.
DP: I started with the Werewolf, I had family and you get paid per page, the more pages you can do the more you earn. When I started with the Werewolf I was going to pencil and ink it. After I did the first issue, they came up with this great idea that they were going to do a double sized quarterly. A double sized quarterly meant eight more books, plus the twelve I was doing so thatâs twenty books a year that I had to pencil, so they decided to get an inker for me. They put Vinnie Colletta on it.
DB: Iâve heard mixed stories about Vinnie.
DP: Vinnie was a very nice guy and Vinnie could do great work. Some people were complaining about the books after I stopped inking them and I got all kinds of nasty letters. Then finally they decided to discontinue the quarterly so I went back to pencilling and inking the monthly. Then all the fan mail started turning around. I even got a couple of guys who said they were sorry they wrote me nasty letters, which was nice. And while I was doing Werewolf I would pick up extra pencil or ink jobs, so I could increase my income. Then after about two or three years, in 1976, they dropped the Werewolf and I was doing fillers until they decided to give me Ghost Rider.
DB: You had an excellent run on Ghost Rider.
DP: Ghost Rider was a bi-monthly when I got it. After about six months on the book they turned it into a monthly. I did three years on the Werewolf, I also did about three years on Ghost Rider, and I was also inking Sal Buscemaâs Captain America. When Sal decided he didnât want to do it anymore I was going to get the pencilling, but they decided I should do the Defenders instead. So I started pencilling the Defenders and I was pencilling and inking Ghost Rider. That kept my plate pretty full for a while. I left Ghost Rider because I couldnât keep up the pace. I was doing the Defenders and picking up extra jobs now and then. I did the Avengers one time, and a few other things here and there.
DB: You did a few Team Ups.
DP: I did some Team-Ups. Then after the Defenders was discontinued I went on to the Transformers. I did issues 13 through to 35, then while I was doing the Transformers Jim Shooter asked me to come up there and work as an art director. The senior art director at the time was John Romita, the executive art director. I was what youâd call the managing art director.
DB: What did that involve?
DP: Theyâd take three budding young cartoonists, who were a smidgen away from being professionals, pay them minimum wage, no benefits whatsoever, no sick leave or holidays. When you worked, you got paid. They stayed for a year to do the changes and corrections in the artwork. The editors would bring the pages and things that they wanted changed, corrected or fixed or whatever, and it was up to me to see that was done. I was training these young guys and after about a year they were ready to go out and get work. That was the primary purpose of that job. I was a teacher more or less. I left there to go over to Shooter when he formed his new company Valiant comics.
DB: What prompted you to go over to Valiant with Shooter?
DP: It was a more creative job. At Marvel Iâd oversee what somebody else had done, and show them how. To a guy who had spent most of his lifetime pencilling, inking and drawing and meeting deadlines, working around the clock this was very unsatisfying. When I got the offer, Shooter promised me that thereâd be more creativity; Iâd be in there creating comic books and characters. Iâd get to draw a books, Iâd get to edit books and Iâd get to do almost everything that needed to be done around a comic book. And more money. So I went and it was an adventure. Iâd never been in on the start of a comic book company and I have no regrets. We did some pretty nice stuff there.
DB: You'll get no argument here. Some of the Valiant stuff were, and still is, very good reading. Good artwork, good stories.
DP: There was a lot of thought and a lot of work that went into those things.
DB: There were some good artists and writers there. You had yourself, John Dixon, Barry Windsor-Smith, Bob Layton.
DP: We brought in a lot of newcomers. Joe Quesada started there colouring. We had a different way of colouring the comics. We took photo-stats and hand painted them.. We had camera- separated art for those books.
DB: When you were back in the â50s with the Wertham thing going on, what was the climate like to work in?
DP: EC was the leader at that time and everybody else was trying to imitate EC. No one ever quite reached that point. Then there were the hearings in the senate where they were trying to figure out why there were so many juvenile delinquents, and this Wertham came up with the brain storm that the comic books were at fault. The publishers figured it wasnât worthwhile to fight it, so they toned them down and it was a catastrophe, the books failed. I was there. That happened in about â53 and in the summer of â53 I was drafted into the army and that took care of two years where I didnât have to worry.
DB: So most of it passed you by almost.
DP: No, because when I got out of the army things were still bad and work was difficult to get.
DB: Did Stan ever ask you to come back to Marvel in the early â60s when they had that explosion going on?
DP: Thereâs a funny story about that. I delivered a job to Stan Lee in 1957. Heâd send out his assistant, or secretary to take the job into him and you just left. When I got home I got a call from his secretary saying that Stan liked the job very much, he thought it was one of the best jobs that Iâd ever done for him, I said great, can I get another one. She said weâll be in touch. And the next time I saw Stan Lee was eleven years later. They were trying to start some kind of comic book creators organization called ACBA; Stan, Neal Adams and Carmine Infantino.
DB: How did you find Stan?
DP: How did I find him? What did I think of Stan?
DB: Yes.
DP: How I found him, he was always sitting down. <laughter> Stan was a nice guy, he still is. He had a big job there, a lot of people wanted to work for him. Before I got drafted I was doing quite a bit of work for him. I had teamed up with an inker for a while and they werenât too happy about the inker and they withdrew some work, and after he and I split up I kept getting work on my own; I got more work that way.
DB: You pencilled and you inked other pencillers were there any preference on your side as to what you wanted to do?
DP: I always preferred to pencil because you got the chance to tell the story. Pencilling was more fun, was an interesting life and I enjoyed every minute of it. I worked at least 12 to 14 hours a day, because if you were a freelancer you were your own business and if you wanted to make more money then youâd have to do more work.
DB: Who were some of the people that youâve met, or worked with, that stand out the most?
DP: There are a number of them. John Romita is one guy. Bob Layton and Jim Shooter.
DB: What was Shooter like?
DP: Very tall. <laughs> Heâs about six foot seven I think. He was nice guy. As far as Iâm concerned I never had any problems.
DB: You worked with Will Eisner. What was he like?
DP: Well I kind of say that I worked for Will Eisner. What happened was I walked in to his office when the fellow that they had doing the Spirit left. I walked in with some samples and they brought them in to Eisner , he looked at them and hired me. At that time they had a publication that they were doing called PS Magazine, it was a mechanical maintenance magazine for the Army. They gave me a drawing board in the corner of the office and left me alone. Jules Feiffer was writing it. He, at that time, was in the Army stationed at Governorsâ Island, which is an island in New York Harbour and heâd come in on the weekend and write a story, lay it out roughly on the boards. Iâd come in on the Monday and Iâd pencil it. I never saw Eisner again after that first time. I mean while working there.
DB: You came to Marvel in the early 1970s. Marvel seemed to have two major explosions, the 1960s where you had the likes of Kirby, Ditko, Colan.
DP: That was the Silver Age right?
DB: Right.
DP: By the time I got there they had reached the Bronze Age. <laughs> I was there, John Byrne was there, Chris Claremont. Now Chris Claremont at that time was working staff, and then the first story he wrote I drew.
DB: Which one was that?
DP: Oh it was about this woman detective, who was given this job to hunt down the werewolf, and finally she catches this werewolf in a warehouse and he attacks her and finally she puts the silver bullet into it. And the werewolf turns out to be her husband. It appeared in one of those black and white comics that they used to put out. Then I worked with a writer named Doug Moench on Werewolf By Night. That was a very pleasant experience. Great guy to work with. Most of the writers that I worked with were pretty good. I enjoyed doing these characters, and creating some of this stuff, it was really nice. The only thing was I wish I were smarter about negotiating deals because Iâd probably have come out better financially, but you canât have everything.
DB: Did you retain much of your artwork?
DP: Iâve got some pages from the Defenders, Transformers, Beauty And The Beast. I have very few pages of Ghost Rider and I have maybe two or three pages of Werewolf. I also have pages of the work I did for Acclaim.
DB: Why was that? Were they given to you and youâve disposed of them over the years? The reason I ask is because there's always the stories of artwork that was never returned.
DP: That may be true because at first theyâd take the artwork and itâd disappear. They would warehouse the stuff. Then I think it was Neal Adams who said, "why donât you give the stuff back?â Then you wouldnât have the pay for the warehousing, if you reprinted it youâve got it on microfilm. There were people who would rather see it destroyed than given back, but then eventually they started giving it all back. It wound up being easier for them.
DP: I was the first guy, unwittingly, to put profanity in comics.
DB: The Kazar cover?
DP: No, it wasnât the Kazar cover, what was that?
DB: Issue one of Kazar, back in the early 1970s, on the cover the artist had the trees in the background spelling the magic word.
DP: This happened in one of the Defenders. There was a character in there who was a lawyer for the Defenders and his gimmick was that no matter where you saw him in his office, there had to be a TV set on - he was always watching TV. And while I was drawing one of the panels I was listening to a talk show and there was someone on telling how bad cereals for kids were - they were all loaded with sugar. So I drew a picture on the TV of a bunny rabbit holding a box of cereal and across the label where the name of the cereal would be I pencilled in 'shite'. <laughter> So I figured, because I used to write nutty comments in the borders and stuff I thought theyâd get a laugh out of it and change it. So they gave it to Pablo Marcos and I donât know if he knew how to read English or not but he inked it. I walked in one day and I said hello - everybody used to greet me at Marvel with smiles. And I came in there and they looked at me, boy, like donât go near him, something might happen to you. Shooter was looking for me and I went up there and Shooter started yelling, "What did you do? Look at it! They called me upstairs and showed me this" and I said, "Wait a minute. That thing goes through an assistant editor, an editor, a proof- reader and then youâre supposed to read it. And no-one picked it up so donât blame me." So what happened was he said fine, just donât write anymore comments on your pages. <laughter>
DB: Iâm not sure that many people know of that one because Iâve never seen it mentioned anywhere.
DP: Itâs right down near the spine so you might even pass by and not notice it. A friend of mine who had a comic book store called me up and he said, "I have a person who wants to buy the page for $100 At that time $100 was a lot of money. Do you have the page? I looked at what I got back and I didnât have the page, and I called Pablo up and said you can get $100 if you have that page. He told me he didnât have the page. Somebody stole that page.
DB: I never knew that and I used to read the Defenders when I was a kid.
DP: At that time there was no profanity in it. I didnât mean for that to be in it. I just thought hey, everybodyâs smart enough to take that out, câmon. <laughter> I guess my estimate of them was too high. <laughter>
DB: It was a good book, the Defenders, and the run that you were talking about featured a story-line that went through the issues in the 90s and culminated with Satan coming to Earth in issue 100. When I was young that just blew me away.
DP: Issue 100, thatâs got that big splash, the double page spread where Satan is sitting on the throne and the busses are overturned, a big bottle with all the superheroes in it. I got that page here somewhere.
DB: Iâll be frank - that scared the crap out of me when I was 13.
DP: Iâm surprised because when I first started they used to tell me âYouâve got to watch your work because your stuff tends to be cartoonyâ. I used to sit there and Iâd think up horrors for the Werewolf and stuff and I kept wondering whether this would be too cartoony, because Iâm looking at it and I thought some of it was pretty funny. But then when I started working for Acclaim I had occasion to hire somebody, a young fellow, and he says, "Youâre Don Perlin, you drew the Werewolf?" and I says, "Yeah" and he says. "You know that stuff gave me nightmares". <laughter>
DB: Ghost Rider was another one that used to give me nightmares.
DP: That was a little bit different. I was drawing him in the middle of the night, I had only one light on over the desk and somehow the hairs on the back of my neck kept getting stiff and I was afraid to turn around. I could have sworn I smelt fire and brimstone. So it gets to you after say half a dozen or more cups of coffee. I was good at that time for twelve cups of coffee a day. Iâd wash the No Doze pills down with them.
DB: Have you slept since then? <laughs>
DP: Hey, you know something? Iâve got so that I can sit here and drink a couple of cups of coffee fifteen minutes before I got to bed and Iâll be asleep in a wink. It doesnât bother me.
DB: Youâre immune to caffeine.
DP: Yeah, Iâve got an immunity to it. Are you familiar with Bloodshot?
DB: Yes I am. Out of all the Valiant characters the ones I liked the most were the Eternal Warrior for some reason, and Bloodshot - he even looked cool.
DP: He looked good until they made him look ugly. I donât think that character should have been ugly. He was supposed to be a ladies man; he should have been what we made him to be in the first place. But when the comic book sales started dropping they didnât know what to do so they started screwing around with it and thatâs what happened.
Did you ever see my favourite? The Bad Eggs? The two raunchy dinosaurs. Did you ever see Pulp Fiction?
DB: Yes.
DP: Thatâs what theyâre supposed to be. Theyâre supposed to be Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta. They were my favourites I think because I had a lot of fun doing that. There were no holds barred on page layouts, I could do funny stuff, but I like to piddle and put detail in so I could be funny and do as much detailing as I liked. It was a unique thing just that it came too little too late.
DB: What happened to the ownership of the Valiant characters that you created?
DP: Acclaim still owns them. Acclaim is not a comic book company; Acclaim is a video game company. They made video games and they bought Valiant so they could use the characters in their video games. One of the characters was Turok. The first video game Turok The Dinosaur Hunter, I did the designs for all the bad guys. They were going to call one of the bad guys the Hulk Monster. Fabian Nicenza was at that time the editor in chief told them, "You canât do that because youâll get problems from Marvel." So they said to him, "Well, what can you name him?" So he says, "Why donât you call him Pur-lin?" So theyâve got a Pur-lin Monster there. You get lots of points for knocking off a Pur-lin Monster. <laughter> Itâs an interesting world.
DB: Youâve worked on a lot of things obviously. Is there anything left that youâd love to work on?
DP: Anything Iâd like to work on?
DB: Yeah, say I owned either Marvel or DC and said you can have a shot at any character.
DP: Oh, I donât know Iâve never thought about that question. Iâve been thinking and pondering all kinds of questions, but Iâve never thought of that. People always ask me who my favourite cartoonist is, but if I could do any character what would I do? You know, off hand, I couldnât think of anything that I havenât done that would matter to me. Unless they let me create something of my own that Iâd want to do. That would be what Iâd like to do something on my own. Everything new seems to be all the same. All the characters have become the same, theyâve been running kind of cold on ideas and actually I donât think any of the publishers have figured out why comic books sales are in the basement now. There are a few hardcore fans. I have a friend who has a comic book store and I go in there every so often and I look at the stuff and there are so many different titles and they all look alike. I wanted to make a bet with somebody that I could take four comic books, cut the pages out, shuffle them, put them back in and mix up the pages and youâd have to read the story before you could tell what issue theyâre from. Theyâve lost the uniqueness. You used to be able to pick up a book and you could tell John Buscema did this, or Neal Adams did that, or Herb Trimpe did something, and it was interesting. Now you look at them and it looks all the same. The colouring is all the same. The main thing that seems to have gotten better in comic books is the technical end. They use better paper, and the printing processes and the computerization of the colouring and the lettering has gotten to be great, but the rest of it, they donât know how to do. Thereâs a lot competition other than comic books than before. People play video games and card games instead of reading a comic book.
DB: Your favourite character that youâve ever drawn.
DP: I think it would be Bloodshot. I had a hell of a lot to do with creating the character. I would say itâs Bloodshot, and then after that itâd be the two dinosaurs in The Bad Eggs.
DB: The one book that youâve done that youâve said, "Thatâs completely representative of me", what would it be?
DP: Thatâs hard, because I donât think there are any. People say I have a style but I donât know that I do or not. I think every time I draw something itâs a little different, itâs got a different strand of me, a different phase of me.
DB: As an inker, who did you prefer to ink over?
DP: There were two guys, well three really. I inked (George) Tuska, which was great. I inked Sal Buscema, which was over breakdowns and I had a lot of leeway in it. That was fun. And then I inked Bob Hall which was very good. His work flowed; it was very easy. There wasnât anybody that gave me problems. Because Iâm such a genius you know. <laughter>
DB: As a penciller who did you prefer as an inker?
DP: Besides myself, when I was doing the Defenders, Kim De Mulder. He was the first to keep my feeling of the work, but he added to it. Bob Layton did a lot of that Solar stuff that I did. He was good. I liked John Dixon. But John, no matter what you gave him, it came out looking like John. He had a very strong style. He is a good artist, so you know what you were going to get back. You werenât going to have to slink around corners to avoid anybody after theyâd seen the book. Gonzalo Mayo was another great inker he could do wonders with that black ink.
DB: One last question. Most unusual job that you did. Were you the one that pencilled the Ghost Rider issue over Jim Shooterâs breakdowns?
DP: I did.
DB: How was that as a job because Shooter isnât known as being an artist.
DP: Heâs not. <laughter> We had to do a lot of fixing up. But that wasnât my most unusual job - that was a book I did for a special commercial section of Marvel, Captain Midnight, for Ovaltine. It was a book about different kinds of sports and games, which had nothing really to do with comics. But the most unusual comic book job? I even did one for Classic Comics. That was Robar The Conqueror, a sci-fi book by Jules Verne.
There was a fellow putting out a series of comic books called Golden Legacy, which was a series of books on black history. I did a number of those books. I did one that Iâm proud of. It was about black cowboys. We were talking about other books heâd like to produce when he said, "How come when you see a cowboy movie, you donât see any black cowboys?" The period that they make the movies about was right after the American civil war and slaves were set free and a lot of them moved westward. And to be a cowboy, you didnât have to be John Wayne. You didnât have to know how to read and write, you just tended to cows. And in history there were a great deal of black cowboys because it was easier for them to get into that kind of a thing where you didnât need much of an education, which had never been available to them at the time. I had looked up a whole bunch of stuff and went through some history books and different things. I wrote a few stories about black cowboys and I pencilled, inked, lettered and coloured them. That was pretty unusual and I did a story on Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King and a few others in the series.
LINKS FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:
Don Perlins Commission Email: dperlin@bellsouth.net
Seen something on this page that you like? Or do you just enjoy Dons art and wish to get in touch with him in order to order a commission? Click on the above link and enquire! Tell Don we sent ya - it won't make a scrap of difference!
Cavalcade Of Comics: http://www.tourettesbenefit.com
Have a look around at the above site. It features regular auctions of classic comic art - the last auction had exclusive pieces by the likes of Joe Kubert, John Romita, Bob Layton, Joe Quesada and, of course, Don Perlin, along with original comic art of the Phantom and many more.
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This is one of my favorite books. They brought it back for a short while in the late 90's but I don't think the artist was right for it. But GOD! I LOVE the old stuff.
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