Creators' Year in Review Part 5: Weirdest Comics Fact
Fact gives way to fiction as future gives way to past. In stories, we learn. In stories, we grow. In stories, we become.
Welcome folks to the second Creators' Year in Review here at House of Ideas, Powers of Secrets, keeping the Multiversity tradition alive and well. The gist for anyone new is I send out five questions to comics creators from all the around the comics world. They come back with a list of answers that is every bit as eclectic as they all are and I compile them into articles. Part of the fun is: you never know what comics or other creators will be reified en masse and which ones will bubble up from the underground, catching you completely off guard.
For anyone who would like to see what 2024 held in store before diving into 2025, check out last year's lists!
So. Five Questions. Five Posts. Thanks for reading and I'll see you in the new year!
Weirdest comic fact you know!
Meredith McClaren (“Black Cloak,” “Hinges”): I think I heard once that for a while, Batman was not allowed to sit down in canon. Because it would be less masculine, or something.
Blue Delliquanti (“O Human Star”, “Across a Field of Starlight”): I don’t know if this is a “weird” fact, but anyone who’s been in my proximity long enough to hear me talk about Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein film will eventually hear about the visual homages to Bernie Wrightson’s illustrated adaptation from the 80s. We owe Hot Frankenstein to a comics legend!
Jose Pimienta (“Halfway to Somewhere,” “Suncatcher”): Comics is the only format where someone can write an entire book by hand and have it professionally printed and published.
Michael Grover (“Deeply Dave,” “Jake Spooky and the Wolves Within”): Mike Mignola's wife doesn't read his comics! Mignola credits his wife, Christine, for encouraging him to stick with Hellboy, and says she was extremely supportive and instrumental to its success. But, surprisingly, Christine says she has only ever read one Hellboy comic...and Mike doubts whether she has even read one! (See the documentary Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters, timestamp 1:25:42). I think this shows that you don't have to have the exact same interests as your significant other to be a supportive partner or have a successful relationship.
Reed Hinckley-Barnes (“Hero of Legend,” “Countless Little Deaths”): Did you know the massive appendix at the end of “From Hell” is a giant, passive aggressive fuck you to Grant Morrison?
Joe Corallo (“Dahlia in the Dark,” “The Never-Ending Party”): In DC Comics continuity, even though The Miracle Machine (which there are multiples of) has the power to turn thoughts into reality and is so adept at doing so that it would need to be locked away in a block of inertron to keep it from being passively activated, it can still be eaten by a bismollian!
Zach Weinersmith (“Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal,” “A City on Mars”): In the 1950s, Joe Shuster drew a bondage comic to pay the bills.
Clayton Cowles (“Die: Loaded,” “Wonder Woman Historia”): Nobody knows how punctuation works in this business. Myself included.
Zack Quaintance (“Death of Comics Bookcase,” “Macabre Valley”): That the first printing of the “Squadron Supreme” trade paperback had writer Mark Gruenwald's ashes mixed into the ink. Wild.
Brian Gonsar (“Dracula’s Brunch Club,” “Twisted Tales of Scary Stories: Werewolves”): Not really a weird fact, but I always loved Stan Lee’s cameo in Mallrats. I wasn’t really reading comic books when that movie came out, but him being in that movie gave comics a boost for me and I became more intrigued. I read that Stan Lee was not a trained actor, so he looked to the side to read cue cards in order to deliver his lines.
Kyle Starks (“Rick and Morty,” “Assassin Nation”): I don't know if this is the tone of what is being asked but the original USAgent costume was designed and sewn by Demolition Man, D-Man Dennis Dunphy!
Caroline Cash (“PeePee PooPoo,” “Adventure Time: The Bubbline Special”): I don’t think this is particularly weird, but I do think it’s funny (and charming) that Grimes was briefly an intern for Drawn and Quarterly before she started making music.
Michael Conrad (“Plague House,” “Wonder Woman”): The whole thing about Swamp Thing and Man-Thing is still my favorite nugget. Created by roommates, debuting mere months apart, and my own weird theory about how their faces are made to lock together to create a singular being of enormous power. I can go on at length about this, and if you find me at a convention in 2026 I’ll be happy to regale all who will listen about what is to be done with this revelation.
Derek Charm (“Toxic Summer,” “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl”): Santa Claus is an omega-level mutant (as I just learned in the 1991 “Marvel Holiday Special.”)
Ben Kahn (“Mr. Muffins: Defender Of The Stars,” “Heavenly Blues”): My favorite comic fact is that Marv Wolfman is the whole reason creators are given credits inside the comic. A comic wanted to include his last name as an easter egg, but the word Wolfman went against the comics code. So the compromise was that the CCA only let DC use it if they were explicit that Wolfman was the name of the writer. And it snowballed from there to writers and artists being given proper credits.
Michael Grover (“Deeply Dave,” “Jake Spooky and the Wolves Within”): Ok, here's another...
There is an animated Peanuts special called It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown, released in 1988. It's a live action/animation hybrid about Snoopy's brother, Spike, and his unrequited romance with a human woman (played by Charles Schulz's daughter, Jill). This is a wonderfully bizarre concept for a film. Despite being a huge Peanuts fan, I just found out about it this year. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be very good, and I only watched a few minutes of it. Schulz acknowledged the low quality himself, and said, "I wanted this to be my Citizen Kane, but it's not."
Murewa Ayodele (“Akogun: Brutalizer Of Gods”, “Storm” (2024)): Most original indie comics aren’t creator-owned. Extremely few comics are truly creator-owned.
Adedotun Akande (“Akogun: Brutalizer Of Gods,” “I Am Iron Man”): Originally, Storm’s early designs gave her feline features. She had fur, cat eyes, black hair shaped like cat ears which were, I believe, from a scrapped African cat goddess’ design.
Matt Hotson (“Wild West C.O.W.-Boys Of Moo Mesa”, “MMPR: The Return”): None of the weird gossip, secrets, or facts I know are repeatable here, so I’ll just say that l truly think it’s weird that there are so many people who don’t read comic books. What are those people even doing with their time? Comics rule!
Rye Hickman (“Hey Mary!”, “Bad Dream: A Dreamer Story”): I usually surprise non-comics people by explaining what a signature is and why sometimes there's blank pages at the end of a book, but I'm sure everyone here knows that already. Hm. I've been told that Sergio Toppi created a lot of his distinctive mark-making by grabbing 4-5 toothpicks, dipping them in ink, and then using all of them at once as if they were pencils. I hope that's true.
Cullen Bunn (“Autumn Kingdom”, “Harrow County): I dunno. I’m not super knowledgable when it comes to comics facts. At least not in a way that I can rattle them off. I think I know a lot of 80s “X-Men” information. I could probably name all the monsters who battled the Shogun Warriors in their 70s Marvel run. I might be able to tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the Marvel series “Blackwulf” or the DC series “Scare Tactics.”
Zac Thompson (“Cemetery Kids Don’t Die”, “Come Into Me”): In the 1980’s Canada had an indie superhero comic called “Captain Newfoundland” who fought bad guys through “the power of meditation” and believed that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians could save the world.
Andrew Wheeler (“Hey Mary!”, “Cat Fight”): One of my most cherished possessions is the original Apollo/Midnighter kiss by artist John McCrea, the one that was cut before publication! As far as I know, this cut panel has never been seen by the world at large!
Triple Dream Comics (Lauren Davis, Mel Hilario, Katie Longua) (“Agent Cupcake”, “Debian Perl, Digital Detective”):
LD: Marvel had a registered trademark on the word “zombie” for 20 years. They were publishing “Tales of the Zombie” and wanted exclusive rights to use the word “zombie” to sell comic books. By the time they were granted the trademark in 1975, “Tales of the Zombie” had already run its course.
MH: Not a weird fact, but one I didn’t know until Jane Goodall passed in October: not only was she not offended by Gary Larson’s reference to her in “The Far Side,” but she found it funny and ended up writing the foreword for his last compilation.
KL: “Akira” was originally published in America in full color and it was also the first comic to be colored digitally. There were pinups and comics by other popular artists included, one of my favorites is a Moebius piece. It’s a really fascinating version, especially if you’re into manga history.
Jorge Corona (“Transformers” (2024,) “Middlewest”): Ninja Turtles was actually a comic before it was a cartoon! Can you even believe that?!.... but seriously, this took me way too long to realize when I was a kid....
Taylor Robin (“Never Satisfied,” “Hunger's Bite”): I guess not weird but I suppose obscure--Frank Frazetta got into comics specifically because he wanted to draw Tarzan. That guy loved Tarzan.
Colleen AF Venable (“Junie B. Jones,” “Kiss Number 8”): More cartoonists own bunnies than any other profession. While this is not a researched fact all of us in the Comics Bunderground know it's true.
Der-shing Helmer (“Mare Internum,” “Quail Party”): Society WILL collapse without comics. To be safe, better support as many comics and creators as possible.
Violet Kitchen (“Allodynia,” “Crawlspace”): I’ll go with a fun historical one! Early in 1946, Harvey Kurtzman was working for Timely when they ran a contest asking readers to write in and vote for their favorite comic. It so happened the secretary assigned to tally the votes, Adele Hasan, had a crush on Harvey. She was so disappointed at the lack of votes for his comic that she faked the numbers and submitted the results to Stan Lee with “Hey Look!” at the very top. He went, “damn, we gotta give this kid more work!”
It’s idle speculation, but if Adele hadn’t stuffed the ballot box, it’s entirely possible we wouldn’t have had “MAD Magazine,” and the whole lineage of underground and alternative comics to follow would be unrecognizable. (She and Harvey started dating soon after and got married that same year.)
Rodrigo Vargas (“The Do-Over,” “Walking to Do”): I can only think of these very interesting and real quotes:
Editor's Note: The veracity of these quotes and their attributions cannot be determined by this humble editor. It is left to you, dear reader, to use your discerning eye and decide fact from fiction.
Elias Rosner
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