DICK GIORDANO SPEAKS OUT! (G.A.S.LITE interview, 1972)

DICK GIORDANO SPEAKS OUT!
an interview

G.A.S.: Could you give us an informal background on your schooling as far as artistry goes, and where you were raised and stuff like that?

DICK: Okay. I was born and raised in New York, born in July of 1932, a little quick arithmetic makes me 40 this year. I went to the School of Industrial Arts in New York between the years of 1946 and 1950. I think I graduated in 1950. The School of Industrial Arts was a public highschool. In New York City that had a full curriculum of art studies plus a full curriculum of academic studies, so that when you were finished with the course, you'd go on to college. If you desired, your academic credits would have been there and over course of the four years that we were there, we spent two years taking ten-week courses in every-thing. By everything, I mean Jewelry Design and Fashion Illus-tration just to see if we were suited for things other than we thought we were. I thought it was a pretty good course. They taught us about reproduction methods and so forth, though after a few years, we specialized. My specialization was Advertising and Illustration, which didn't at all prepare me for a career in cartooning, but I'd always done comics on my own. When I got out of high school in 1950, I went to work within a few months for Jerry Iger, who was originally connected with Eisner. Eisner and Iger did sort of a comic book factory bit a few years, and I started off erasing pages and eventually worked my way up to ink-ing backgrounds within the course of the year, uh, nine months really after I started at Igers I started doing freelance art for Charlton Comics and I've been pretty much in that bag since then. I believe the, uh, the first of the year in fifty two is when, uh, I thought of free lancing and I've been doing it ever since.

G.A.S.: As the editor of Charlton, how can you explain the demise of Charlton, that is, in the superhero line, in the simplest terms.

DICK: In the simplest terms possible is that they didn't sell. You wanna ask me why that's, you know, there is really no way . .

G.A.S.: Wasn't there a matter of distribution? Because you could hardly find them anywhere.

DICK: Well, distribution was a problem at Charlton and is certainly a problem with National and Marvel right now. The distribution has always been a major problem, however, Charlton Comics at that time, the distribution problem was over its entire line and if you couldn't find Blue Beetle, you couldn't find First Love either. Yet the love magazines were selling 40 to 50 per-cent and one of the Blue Beetles sold a horrendous figure of eighteen percent.

G.A.S.: Was that the last one put out which was on the shelf for a long time, because I remember it was a relevancy type of thing?

DICK: That was one of the early issues. By the time the sales reports on the last of the super heroes came in I was no longer over there so I don't know how those sold. I started losing interest in the Charlton line when I saw that that particular line, the super hero line, wasn't going anywhere. I was deeply involved in that line personally.

G.A.S.: When you went to National, what was your first assignment? Did they immediately assign you as an editor?

DICK: Yeah, I was hired as an editor, rather secretly for some reason; we sort of met behind closed doors for three or four months before the announcement was made. My first assignments were, y'know, one editorial of course, and y'know what titles they were. They asked me what ideas I had, while we were talk-ing about it of course, for Aquaman, they asked me what I might wanna do with Blackhawks and Teen Titans, they told me about Secret Six at that point. At the time we were talking the first issue of Secret Six hadn't been done yet. Y'know, hadn't been finished yet, so all they could do was tell me about it. I started it with the second issue. I didn't do the first.

G.A.S.: You were the editor of Secret Six?!
DICK: Yeah.

G.A.S.: Well could you tell us all who Mocking Bird was?

DICK: No. I haven't the faintest idea.

G.A.S.: Oh, Wow!

DICK: Everybody asks that question. It's wonderful! To see that people are interested in something like that. Uh, I got it after the first issue. I knew what their premise was. I knew what they had in mind when they started it and I had a choice; I could have, at that point, decided in my mind who Mockingbird was, and started working on that premise, or I could just ignore it all along. I just ignored it for a very good reason. I was afraid that if I knew who Mockingbird was, and if the writer did, we would unconsciously tip it off. If we had knowledge of it, we'd be working toward that way. We would keep him out of a scene where he shouldn't be in and so forth. We thought it better to not know just as the reader didn't know and as the members of the group didn't know so that we wouldn't, uh, with-out wanting to, tip it off. Unfortunately we did the reverse. We started excluding certain people from being Mockingbird--accidentally, none of them were intentional. I have to say that they were all accidents; they were all blunders. I think we only tipped off two of them or three of them, I'm not sure. But we narrowed it down without meaning to and I kinda felt that if we had narrowed it down to the one person, we would then start being careful to keep it consistent that one person was it. But we never had the opportunity to go that far, so I didn't have to worry about it. We just cut it off. There really was no Mockingbird as far as I was concerned. A little aside: we had considered after Secret Six was, just talk this was, just talk, talking in the coffee room kinda stuff, we kind of considered taking Mockingbird, trying to figure out from what was left, who Mockingbird might be and have that be a guiding force between a lot of the things that were happening at National. We were hoping to do something about getting the Doom Patrol back because of Mockingbird. About working the Teen Titans through Jupiter. That Jupiter hokeyness was gonna lead back to Mocking-bird.

G.A.S.: That would be good!

DICK: Yeah. We had a whole magilla worked out there but they kept dropping books. There was really no place for us to fit the think in anymore. It was just moving around. The Jupiter thing in itself was hokey but if it led back to Mockingbird, it would work pretty good. We talked about it. We had a couple of writers in on it. We had some ideas cooking but never got it off the ground.

G.A.S.: Could you make a comment on the tremendous chance in Teen Titans, because many people questioned the wisdom and success of that move?

DICK: Let me say this. I don't like changing characters like that. For one reason, to my way of thinking, it should indicate to everyone who reads this stuff, that the reason why we're making changes in scrambling is because the sales are going down on the book. Nobody fools around with a book that's selling! Guaranteed baby! If somebody starts fooling around with the book, it means sales have gone down. Gone down to the danger point! Or you wouldn't start fooling around with the character. We fooled around with Green Lantern and Green Arrow because Green Lantern is bombing. Y'know, I mean it wasn't done because we said "Hey we're gonna do a great new thing; it's selling well the way it is, but we're gonna do something different." The reason they went into relevancy was because Green Lantern wasn't selling. The reason I made the change on Teen Titans was because the old one wasn't selling. We sat around talking about it. We couldn't come up with anything we really liked. We didn't really like the changes that we came up with, but we thought we should try something. At the time, I have to admit, I was more enthusiastic about it than I am now looking back at it. I never was a costume freak. I never was a super power freak. If you will remember back to Charlton, none of those guys had the super power that National characters generally had. I'd like to stay away from that and get into characterization a little more. You may not like the question, but you knew what he stood for.

G.A.S.: Ooooohh yes!

DICK: Well, look! There's something to be said for that. He was a person, y'know. He may not be one that you like, but he was a real people compared to two-dimensional type super heroes who depended on some God-given super power to accomplish things and the writer wasn't required to give him a personality or a char-acter. So, y'know, it's, so when the opportunity came to change the Teen Titans, my first thought is always get rid of their powers and make people out of them, y'know. Make it possible for them to get hurt so they can think about those things and react to situations that they couldn't, didn't react to before. I always felt it was like a little unfair, I read Superman comics when I was a kid, and I knew he was gonna win when I bought it. Because he was invincible, there was no way that Superman could be beaten. That's why they ran Kryptonite into it, although that was after I stopped reading it, just to put a little sus-pense into it so my feelings always are, if you get rid of some of their powers or all of their powers or make it difficult for them to use it, you create just a little bit of suspense. As a premise, that's good. I wasn't able to do it as well as I'd like to because I didn't have the writer I would have like to work with there. Bob Kanigher did the scripts on it. I would have preferred to do it with a writer who I feel a little closer to. A guy like Denny O'Neal or Steve Sketes.

G.A.S.: Couldn't you control the writing situation?

DICK: To some degree. Y'know, office routine is office routine, and there are certain things that you can't get by. At the time. Denny O'Neal was tied up doing "important things" and he wasn't available for something like Teen Titans. It wasn't important enough for him. Steve Sketes was on something else at that par-ticular time. Bob Kanigher was available at that particular time. Bob, I have to admit, worked very hard to try to do my thing. You've gotta understand that, Bob and I, it's not a personal thing, his editorial approach just isn't the same as mine. So for him to try to write something that I wanted was difficult for him. It was difficult for me to accept it only because our ideas were so different. It's not any personal thing. And the people I would have liked to work with were not available.

G.A.S.: Did the change bring the sales up or did they stay the same?

DICK: On Teen Titans, yes. The first issue did go up. Let me say this, that we knew that we were taking a chance and we did the hokey thing that you always do when you're taking a chance. The first issue, if you recall, we put Superman on the cover. Put Superman on the cover and sales will go up. We kinda figured we'd drag people in to watch, and if there was any ac-ceptance of our new premise, they would continue to buy it. Sales continued to stay up for a couple of issues after that. It dropped each issue, but not by much. The first issue was a summer release which is, I think it was a summer release; I'm gonna take that back, I'm not positive. But it did have Super-man on it and it brought the sales up. The sales dropped a little bit over the next few issues, but not alarmingly so and I didn't get any reports beycnd that I think I read a memo at National in the last time I've been up there that it's been dropped and one of the next issues that's coming out is going to be the last, I don't know which one. Murry Boltinof took it over after that and I haven't read it since. I don't know which way it's gone.

G.A.S.: Is it true you wanted Reed Crandal for the Black Hawks?

DICK: One of the things I liked about the Black Hawks was Reed Crandal. Dick Dillan and Chuck Cudaira had done a Black Hawk for my predecessor, I think George Cashdin was the editor before, and I proofread that and while I was doing that my feelings were that the only one to do Black Hawk was Reed Crandal. I traced him down. He was out in Kansas somewhere. I ran him down and I called him up though we'd never met. And I said, "I wanna do Black Hawks and I want you to do it. You did the only Black Hawk that I really liked." And he seemed mildly enthusiastic. Y'know, he's kind of a low key character and I don't really think he was climbing the walls. But, okay, so I need the script. And I asked him, "Would you like to do a full script, or would you like to have a full script, or would you like to have a synopsis and break it down and we'll write copy later?" He said, "I'll try the synopsis." I sent it to him and I heard nothing for two weeks or so and I called and either got no an-swer or some woman saying that he wasn't in at the time and that he'd call back later and I never got called back. Now we're three weeks away from deadline, and I still haven't heard any-thing. And sometime after the three-week period I finally got a hold of him and he very guiltily told me that he didn't do anything on it and didn't want to. And I'm sure he had personal reasons. Reed has had some personal problems in his life. The upshot of it was that I had a synopsis and two weeks; as a matter of fact, it must have been even less time than that. What I did was I asked him to send the script down to Pat Boyette rather than back to me. I told him to send it to Pat Boyette who is in Texas which isn't as far from Kansas as New York is. Rather than have it go around I had him send it directly down. I called up Pat. I didn't even ask him if he wanted to do it. I called up Pat after I had told him to mail the script to him. And I said, "Pat, you're gonna have a script in a day or two. I want you to take the script and draw it and letter it and ink it and write the copy and send it back to me." By this time I was desperate. I had to have a book to put out. It was done like in five days; it looked it. Actually I was happier with it than I thought I was gonna be considering the time it was done in. Pat did a great deal on that one. He did most of the writing, he did most of the art work. And then, right after the first issue I did was done they told me,"Forget it. We're gonna scrap it anyway. Do one more issue then scrap it." So I just told Pat, "We're gonna do one more issue then scrap it." I think even in having failed in getting Reed Crandal, though I wanted to and doing it there, I think that we could have come up with a pretty good thing with Pat Boyette had we had the time to work along with it, y'know.

G.A.S.: Did you like the Dillan version at all?

DICK: You've got to understand that I was called in to National to do certain things, one of them was to try to save a book that is falling. It wasn't a question of whether I liked Dillan or not. The thing is this. When you are asked to try to fix up something that's failing, what you do is you throw out everything and you start somewhere else. It wasn't that I didn't approve of his approach, it's just that if that was failing there was no sense in my continuing with it and if you wanna make a change you have to call attention to that change by showing that there is something different inside. So if it looks like Dillan, no one would buy it if he didn't buy it last time. But if it looks like someone else, there's a possibility that he'll pick it up and look at it. Okay, with that in mind my first thought then was Reed Crandal. I'm gonna get away from Dillan, like, where do you go? Well you go to Reed Crandal, that's an obvious choice. In my opinion, I think anyone would as soon have made the same choice. So that's why we tried Reed. That didn't work out. Pat Boyette was definitely a second choice, but I think he did very well under the circumstances and I think that if we had the time we might have been able to do something with it.

G.A.S.: We're aware that there were problems with staff relations on Hawk and Dove, and the Creeper, but why didn't you continue them after certain people had left?

DICK: You mean after Steve left it?

G.A.S.: Yes.

DICK: Well as far as it continuing after Steve left, you gotta understand that a company's publishing schedules have nothing
to do with the people who are doing it. They're gonna publish the sixth issue, they're gonna publish the sixth issue. And if Ditko leaves that doesn't change their mind. They decided to continue with Hawk and Dove until the sales proved it was worth-less. It had nothing to do with Steve Ditko. In the publisher's head the creative people have nothing to do with the material. The material is separate from the creative people. I wouldn't necessarily agree with that point.

G.A.S.: Then the discontinuation had nothing to do with Ditko's leaving?

DICK: Oh no It had nothing to do with Steve Ditko leaving. The decision to discontinue is always and only based on sales re-ports anywhere! I don't care what any publisher tells you or any editor tells you about "This was selling good but we decided to try something else." A let of crap! If a book is discon-tinued, it's because it wasn't selling well enough. There's no other reason for it.

G.A.S.: What do you think of other artists doing Ditko strips? Like Tuska was doing Hawk and Dove in back of Teen Titans.

DICK: An artist who creates a character is always gonna be more emotionally involved with that character and he's probably gonna do it better than any other artist even if the other artist is better. I think that Steve Ditko could do the Creeper better than Neal Adams, even though I don't think he is a better artist than Neal Adams, because he is more involved with the character emotionally. I think that anyone else doing the character was second best.

G.A.S.: In Hawk and Dove there seemed to be some division in the intentions of the artist and writers.

DICK: Ditko's intention was to have a triangle with the Hawk on one point, the Dove on another, and their father on the third. That was moderation and two extremes. And his whole thing with doing that was the relationship between the three. His feeling was that if you took all of their attitudes and sort of swirled them up together you would be reasonably right. Whether I agree with that is quite beside the point, but that's what he wanted to do. And he and the writer didn't agree on how that could be best done, y'know, didn't always agree on it.
G.A.S.: Did you choose those books you did at National or were they given to you?

DICK: There was no choice; I was given the books. I did Specter for a couple issues. The editorial approach wasn't always my choice. That's one of the reasons I got out of it. There just wasn't enough freedom in it. You see as an artist I feel I am obligated to tell the story that I'm given to tell. It's a craft problem. As an editor I'm not getting the jollies I get from drawing and I feel that as an editor, the only way I can enjoy myself is if I have complete freedom. I'm not drawing, I'm not writing, all I'm doing is managing the traffic of the artists and writers. If I have complete freedom, I can enjoy it. If I don't, I can't. I don't argue with the necessity of there being a strong central agency and a publishing company that says "We'll do it this way; we'll do it that way." It's just that I couldn't fit into that bag comfortably. I couldn't do it unless I enjoyed doing it.

G.A.S.: Do you think the publishers restrict artists and writers too much?

DICK: Yeah! I don't think there are too many people who wouldn't. It's one of those things that's hard to change because nobody has said we should change it. The publishers have been doinc it in that one way without really stopping to think about whether it's the most profitable way. If we could show that our way was more profitable than their way, they'd be certain to listen. Unfortunately we haven't been. You see there have been very few occasions when artists and/or writers have been given free reian with material and it hasn't sold any better than the publisher's stuff. They haven't seen anything so far to indicate that we know more about what's good publishing than they do. Like Green Lan-tern is a perfect example of a labor of love on the part of Denny O'Neal and Neal Adams. This is what they wanted to do gang, and they got complete editorial freedom. Nobody interfered with them. They did anything that they wanted for those issues that they had. Julie Schwarts hardly read the scripts. It was being left completely up to these guys. Nobody bugged them. The only inter-ference they may have gotten at all was on the covers. And that's because Carmine Infantino likes to lay out the covers. But that's a question of art and even there Neal probably laid out more than half of them which is an unusual percentage. Okay. Now here we have two people who have editorial control and did, I think, fairly good material within the confines of the concepts that they'd set up, and it didn't sell. So now we can't go to the publishers and say, "If you let the creative people handle things, we're gonna make good money for you," because so far, our batting average isn't that good. No better than theirs. No worse, but no better.

G.A.S.: Have you ever had trouble with the code?

DICK: I haven't had too much because I have my own code which is probably a little stricter than theirs. If there is anything I do that the code may object to is I generally have a tendancy to draw busty women and the code doesn't like busty women.

G.A.S.: Have vou ever had trouble with that?

DICK: Not serious. Y'know, minor things, cut down the size of the bust a little. Generally they're right when they do it. I'm
not doing it with anything in mind. I don't sit down and measure it. It's just when I start drawing, it comes out that way. I just don't think about it all that much.

G.A.S.: What do you think of the rash of new artists and writers of the last three years, like Len Wien, Gerry Conway and Elliot Maggin? Have they improved comics or made them inferior?

DICK: I'm not gonna comment too much on whether they've made the work inferior. I don't think it's possible for there to be an influx of new young blood in any industry and for that to be a bad thing. I think that new influx is good in any industry and particularly ours where some of the older pro's have become sour through the years and are cranking out stuff for the sake of getting it out rather than getting involved in it. If the younger people show weaknesses, it's not through lack of effort but through lack of knowledge or ability. That will come with time. I think it's a really good thing, I think it was a necessary thing, I don't know where the next crop of comics, artists and writers would come from if we didn't have this in-flux in the last few years. Yeah, they go off on tangents that are bad to go off on, but they hadda do it sooner or later and they might as well get it out of the way now so they can settle down to doing what they're capable of doing. All of the people you mentioned have talent; I think all of them are capable of delivering good stuff over the next few years. I don't think they're gonna be Stan Lee types, but they're gonna do good stuff.

G.A.S.: Any you were particularly impressed with?

DICK: Well, over the years there's been a few. Of the ones that you've mentioned, I've been impressed the most with Gerry Conway at the outset, but Gerry has slowed down a little bit. Steve Engleheart certainly has come on with a bang. I think that some of them are more capable of doing, uh, extraordinary stuff than others are. Like Denny O'Neal certainly has the ability to do really good stuff. I think that Denny has been hampered by being so good that he has to do too much and has to water down his stuff. He needs a year's sabatical to get away from it and start new and get some fresh insights. We all do. At this point in time there isn't like anyone not working in this business to full capacity. There is so much work available that everyone is doing more than they're really capable of doing and it's hurting the quality of the material. But I can't blame anyone for it. I can't blame an individual like Denny O'Neal when the company he works for says, "Do this for us, do this for us, do this for us," and he tries to do it. I don't have the exact figures on this, but if he needs five days to do a twenty page story and he's forced to do it in three days, you know it's not going to be as good a story as he's capable of putting out. It just can't be. And that's what the problem is. We're all being pushed to do things Quicker than we're capable of doing well. Frank has to do things faster than he wants to; I have to work faster than I want to. Everyone in this business is right now.

G.A.S.: Do you prefer doing the whole job or just inking?

DICK: I prefer inking from the standpoint of making money. I prefer doing the whole job from the standpoint of satisfying myself. When I'm penciling and inking a job like Wonder Woman, I'm into it thoroughly for the time I'm working on it. For three weeks, it takes me about three weeks to get the book done, I sorta go down to my studio early in the morning and come home late at night. I don't shave, I don't wash, I just totally immerse myself in what I'm doing and enjoy it. I don't make anywhere near as much money at it as I do inking, but I really enjoy it. I enjoy the time I spend on it.

G.A.S.: Do you think comics will stay at 20e for the next few years?

DICK: Well, within the confines of what the price people say, y'know, Marvel had a little hassel with their 20c, I don't think it can logically stay at 20c over the next few years. As a matter of fact, we might get hurt if they insist on keeping it at 20c. I think they'll get hurt because there's gonna be a new union agreement with the engravers or the printers next year or the year after, I don't know when their contract comes up again, and when it does, we're gonna have an increase in our engraving rates and an increase in printing rates and there'll be an in-crease in the shipping rates because the teamsters will go get some more money. Right down the line, postal rates will go up and all this money goes out and the 20c is still there. Now that means that the publisher will be losing money. He either raises his price if he's allowed to, or he's gonna hafto get out of business.

G.A.S.: Then why did they cut back to 20c at all?

DICK: Baby, I wish I knew! That was my feeling all along that if they kept the 25c price. Well, I know why it happened, Marvel pushed 'em into it.

G.A.S.: Why?

DICK: You go talk to Goodman! How do I know? He made a move there which seems to me, this is just an opinion, it's not one that came from National. It seems to me that Goodman's move was based on a desire to drive National out of business. I can't think of any reason for him to do it. He decided to go to 25c at the same time that we did. He then cut back to 20c after a month of production at 25(t. He made an arrangement, I don't know when I say him, I'm not sure it was Goodman, but somebody made an arrangement with wholesalers to provide for a 50 percent discount on cover price. I mean they were selling the book for a dime which is a price that National couldn't work within, and it made it more attractive to wholesalers to sell Marvel books at 20c than to sell National's at 25e. They made more money on the Marvel books at 20c. Naturally that hurt our sale tremendously. Marvel was getting display and we weren't. The decision to go back to 20f was pushed on us. Don't necessarily agree with it, I don't know what else could have been done. But that's the reason for that occurence, I don't know what the future is. I think it would have been better to stay at 25f and then cut back to thirty-two pages when things got tight. Just keep raising the price for the same package.