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September 29th, 2003 You've heard the old saying about not judging a book by it's cover, right? Well, allow me an addendum to that--sometimes you can't judge a book properly by it's TITLE, either!?!... That's pretty much how I felt mid-way through Blake Bell's "I Have To Live With This Guy!" (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2002, $19.95 softcover). With the announced premise being to celebrate the women/lovers/significant others who've stood, generally unnoticed, by the sides of some of the comic book field's most celebrated cartoonists, it certainly sounded like the perfect recipe for light-hearted tales of life with Mr. Wacky, doesn't it? Well, while there still may be a tome floating around somewhere out there worthy of fulfilling that description, lemme tell ya, it sure ain't THIS book, folks!! It's filled instead with stories of relationships strengthened by sacrifice, united by necessity against a common enemy, that enemy being an uncaring comics industry--one that, incidentally, more often than not, wins a majority of the battles--and ALWAYS the war. Yup, buried beneath that cute little title (provided by Joanie Lee, perhaps the happiest and most financially satisfied spouse found within these pages--and why not? The woman's hitched herself up to Stan the Man, after all!!...), Bell's manuscript provides a sobering glimpse of what it's REALLY like to live life with a name found in the credit boxes of so many of our beloved classic comics of the not so distant past. The author has spoken with a widely far-ranging representative group of women (and in the case of the sole gay cartoonist included, one man as well) to get a hitherto untold take on their husbands' generally lauded--but previously examined almost exclusively in intellectual terms--creative careers that puts the struggle, rather than the artistry, up to the forefront. Fiercely devoted to their partners, a surprising percentage nonetheless don't even READ their hubbies work. That doesn't stop them from providing their unwavering support, however. Most all of the subjects included have been paired up with their talented companions for several decades at the minimum, with only a single case of divorce thrown into the mix. Basically, the ladies speak out in a manner that could only be termed "brutally frank"--and why not? What have they got to lose at this point? Just who do they owe, save their own partner? When Lindy Ayers complains that she used to get furious back when the early Marvel work pencilled by Jack Kirby arrived for her husband Dick to embellish because "It's just outlines", saddling the ink-wielding Ayers with what amounted to two jobs for the meager pay of one--well, with that sort of perspective, re-reading those old FF's will never seem quite the same, I assure you!?! Despite his role in the nascent transformation of Atlas to Marvel Comics in the early sixties, I must confess to never personally being much of a Dick Ayers fan. Still, abstract judgments concerning art tend to go right out the window when confronted with the heart-breaking vignettes Bell illuminates in the chapter focusing on both the Ayers and Loretta and Ric Estrada, two of what he terms the industry's "foot soldiers". When work dries up for Ayers at Marvel in 1974, he soon finds himself working as a night watchman to support his family. Luckily, Lindy's also found employment, as Dick is soon after felled by a severe gallbladder attack, ultimately confined to a bed in an ICU ward for an extended period. It was the insurance provided by Life Savers, Lindy's employer, that kept the couple financially solvent. But that, unfortunate as it is, isn't what REALLY pulls the ol' Hembeck heartstrings... Nope, it was this all-too-telling reminiscence contributed by the artist himself: while confined to the ICU, Dick says, "I even received visits from guards I served with, but Marvel? I had not one visitor or card." Thanks to the kind efforts of Neal Adams, Dick soon found himself working on three books for DC Comics, but despite the younger illustrator's generosity, the sort of Bullpen-shattering mythology that finds Ayers alone and ignored in a sick bed is what, sadly, predominates, particularly in the cases of pioneering individuals. Whether it's Adrienne Colan trying to fathom the insensitive treatment afforded her husband, Gene, by head Marvel-man Jim Shooter, or Josie DeCarlo's palpable dismay at the even more egregious treatment her husband, Dan, suffered in his declining years at the hands of the company he virtually single-handedly both artistically guided and sustained for near half a century, Archie Comics, well, there ain't a whole lot of warm and fuzziness included herein, gang. Sure, Virginia Romita has happy memories of her own tenure working in the Marvel offices, and along with Muriel Kubert, offers some fascinating insights into not only marrying a cartoonist, but actually SPAWNING them as well!?! And while life has apparently treated Ann Eisner--and especially Joanie Lee--well, there's more than a little melancholy surrounding Adele Kutrzman's recounting of her late husband Harvey's continual inability to turn almost unanimously held critical plaudits into any sort of lasting financial success. Bridging the gap between spouses connected to artists pre-dating the sixties and the more modern group is Archie Goodwin's widow, Anne T. Murphy. By the time this couple came upon the scene, the rules concerning a women's place in the societal arena were swiftly and radically changing, but Anne is here to tell you that a lot of Archie's colleagues most assuredly DIDN'T get the memo! As one of only two women featured in this book that I'd ever actually had the pleasure of meeting, after reading the chapter devoted to her, I now regret that I had little more than an opportunity merely to say "hi" upon that single occasion (and folks, it's not like I ignored her to speak instead to Archie, as our conversation was only slightly more in depth. Yes, he was indeed a great guy, but a combination of awe and shyness on my part prevented me from yakking it up any further. Unfortunately...). Anne is especially frank, and comes off as a strong-willed individual, one who despite a fully formed identity of her own wholeheartedly believed in her so-called other half. Dealing with the suits up at Marvel can be a maddening experience, even after one has departed this mortal coil, as when Anne is rudely informed that it is simply not the corporation's policy to pay reprint royalties to a creator--or more specifically, his or her estate--after they've passed on. Sigh. Add miserable treatment by the moneyed to their employees alongside death and taxes as things one can, sadly, always, ALWAYS count on... Bell's survey comes to a conclusion by investigating Melinda Gebbie and Alan Moore, Ed Sedarbaum and Howard Cruse, Jackie Estrada and Batton Lash, Julie and Dave Cooper, as well as the since-divorced Deni Loubert and Dave Sim. Being younger, these various pairings haven't weathered the nearly life-long topsy-turvey adventures the group of couples from earlier decades have already shared. The working landscape has changed significantly as well, though sometimes it's just as grueling. That's particularly noticeable as Howard Cruse's valiant struggle to see through the creation of his ground-breaking "Struck Rubber Baby" graphic novel is recounted by his partner, the duo enduring self-imposed financial hardships, all in service to his art. Jackie Estrada's description of hubby Bat's efforts to successfully self-publish his ongoing SUPERNATURAL LAW title, while not nearly as dramatic, succinctly sheds light on just how hard a job it actually is getting your own regularly published comic out onto the stands. If there was one chapter that felt somehow out of place in this collection, it'd have to be the one focusing on Gebbie and Moore. Without knowing the method employed in conducting their particular interviews one way or the other, their answers to Blake's queries came across as specially prepared email quips supplied to primarily portray the couple as a team of fun-loving, non-stop, wise-cracking gadabouts! Hey, the gags WERE cute, but the depth level was decidedly shallow. Oh well--at the very least, the opening page featured what has to be the only photo I've ever seen of the usually menacing Moore actually SMILING--as opposed to scowling--which has to count for something, doesn't it?!?... Then there's Deni Loubert. AND one of my inevitable personal asides. I knew Deni and Dave during much of the time period covered in her chapter, though not very well. There are several references to some conventions the pair--as well as their fellow independent star-couple, Wendy and Richard Pini--that I found myself also in attendance as a guest back in the early eighties, sitting either hither or yon from the (lower case) fantastic four. I claim no great insight for doing so--nor deserving of any sort of historical mention either, mind you--but it does add an extra resonance to her recounting of Dave's successful creation and marketing of his CEREBUS series for me. Beyond that, this was the chapter that motivated me to actually fish "I Have To Live With This Guy!" out from an extensive pile of unfairly ignored volumes and actually sit down and read it--but only because good ol' Rocco Nigro got to talking it up on the phone one night not so long ago. I couldn't believe my ears concerning some of the things he recounted Ms. Loubert sharing with author Bell. In addition to being seemingly alternatingly wistful and angry--if only a little--with her ex-husband, she spoke frankly and freely about some of the other artists she dealt with while running her own publishing house in the eighties, Renegade Press. As always, I was especially fascinated to get her take on the reclusive Steve Ditko, and as Rocco correctly informed me, she was far from shy about giving it... Time for yet another, even more meandering Hembeck digression. In case I haven't already mentioned it--and I'm reasonably certain I haven't--I know author Blake Bell personally. Oh, not well, mind you, but we've struck up a bit of an acquaintance over the last several years. As I've stated time and again, the enigmatic Mr. Ditko has long been my favorite cartoonist, and when I first became enthusiastic about the Internet--i. e., when we FINALLY got a fast connection--one of the sites that initially commanded my attention was Blake's Ditko Looked Up page. Soon after, with the full blessing of my computer bereft pal, Terry Austin, I submitted uninked copies he had shared with me of a Captain America Ditko job Terry had provided finishes for about 15 years previously, heeding Blake's call for rare examples of Ditko's pencil art. This led to a few cordial phone calls between us, mainly discussing our mutual interests. And then, late last year, he enlisted yours truly to help provide expert commentary for a full-blown Ditko coffee table book our Mister Bell was assembling for Fantagraphics publishing! Well, it's not every day I'm asked to lend my expertise, such as it is, to a project of such magnitude, so I happily and readily agreed. Blake in turn sent me out a packet of artwork spanning Ditko's entire career, and asked me to review it, either via prose or phone. My typing skills being what they are, taking a call on Blake's dime seemed so much the easier choice, so that's what I did. I soon realized exactly how serious he was about this artistic overview when our survey of a few dozen black and white xeroxes took nearly two hours!?! Yipes! Despite what you might think, it wasn't necessarily because of my running off at the mouth. Blake kept digging and prodding, looking to get as much out of me as possible regarding my thoughts concerning each and every page sitting there in front of me. An admirable approach--and one that no doubt got the spouses in his already-completed-but-not-yet-released first book to open up--but one that would have worked far better had I anything particularly constructive to say!?! When it comes to talking off the cuff or writing upon careful consideration, well, YOU figure out which comes across more substantially!?! As it was, I found myself saying lotsa dopey stuff like, "That sure is some swell cross-hatching at the bottom of panel 4, you bet it is!", and the like. I dutifully reviewed the transcript he kindly sent me, and figured, well, he'll probably only pull one or two quotes out of this fairly unenlightening morass, and that would be it. I was delighted just to be included, and awaited the finished product--though I knew better than to do so with any sort of bated breath. Good thing, too... Soon after this TwoMorrows book came out (and before I had an opportunity to read it), author Bell received one of the most vicious, negative reviews I've ever seen in the pages of THE COMICS JOURNAL, and that surprised me for two reasons--as you most likely know, firstly, Fantagraphics publishes TCJ. Well, I found it a bit unsettling that they'd savage a scribe who'd soon be releasing a tome under their aegis. And secondly, even for TCJ, this review seemed excessively nasty--and that's going some!?! I'm thinking, WHAT'S going on? While I have my own set of criticisms of this project--which, in the spirit of objectivity, I'll enumerate towards the end of this discussion--an awful lot about what was RIGHT about this book was conveniently overlooked. Soon after reading this curious slam, I got word from my pal Bill Alger that the Ditko book's a no-go, and while he sent me some specific info surrounding the circumstances that he garnered on the Internet, I was unable to open the file for technical reasons that continue to baffle me, so to this day, I remain ignorant as to the cause(s)--though my instincts tell me they just might have the initials of S.D., R.S., and/or G.G... Y'see, Ms. Loubert vividly paints as unflattering a picture of working with Stubborn Steve as I've yet to encounter in print. Additionally, she also paints Ditko associate Robin Snyder with much the same brush, calling him, at one point, "an oddball character", later adding that "he seems to have a personality that can deal with Ditko and that says a lot." Perhaps, for Misters Ditko and Snyder, she's already said TOO much? Or rather, author Bell has seen fit to include far too much of observations that are, admittedly, far afield of dealing with her life as the lady who co-launched CEREBUS? Oh sure, these acidic anecdotes were all part and parcel of her many memories of running Renegade post Dave, but, c'mon--had her less than warm feelings regarding her Ditko dealings been omitted, no one would have ever been the wiser, AND the subject of Bell's next book might've actually managed to sit still for his word portrait?!? And as for that mean-spirited TCJ review, could there have been ANY correlation between Deni's bitter little vignette portraying Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth as a morally deprived back-stabbing liar who cold-bloodedly stole the JOURNEY series right from under Renegade's noses, working from privileged information gathered under the supposed (mis)understanding of a mutual friendship, hmm? Could something like that ACTUALLY happen? Hey, just read this book, and you'll soon wind up being more surprised when it DOESN'T!... Let me stress that this is all pure conjecture on my part, as I have absolutely NO verifiable idea as to why the Fantagraphics Ditko book got derailed. It just seems to me that when dealing with such a famously difficult personality as Steve, one needn't make things any tougher for oneself than necessary, and with all due respect, Blake, that appears to be the case here. Quoting someone referring to him as "a very strange guy, and that's kind of an understatement" couldn't POSSIBLY endear the man to you--and THAT'S kind of an understatement, too, dig? I know the guy says he respects the truth at all costs, but odds are, Deni's viewpoint is not HIS truth! Well, anyway, who knows--maybe you'll manage to get the project going again somehow. After all, we certainly wouldn't want to deprive the world of my breathless insights into the way Ditko's drapery hangs ominously in his shadow-ridden backgrounds, now would we?... Enough with the personal counseling already. Now for those criticisms I promised. (Oboy! Blake's having fun NOW, isn't he?) Mostly, I found my problems to be in the areas of stylistic choice, not content (which I feel was generously abundant and extremely worthwhile). First of all, I wasn't enamored of Bell's attempt to write his connecting narrative passages in what passes for a present-tense, you-are-there type mode. Sometimes all this good stuff came off sounding like a cheesy scandal schlockumentary on the "E" Network. Regarding the DeCarlos, he writes, "Josie fears leaving home, but is anxious to reconnect with Dan", that being but one example of many. It adds a false sense of drama that these already dramatic tales hardly need. Plus, it's difficult to maintain this focus throughout the course of 208 pages, and despite best efforts, the ever-present past tense slyly slips in from time to time. And at times the prose can be nearly as purple as Prince's wardrobe: "The life of a freelancer in the 1950s is as turbulent as the Jersey shoreline." Still, for all it's occasional lapses wandering off into hard-boiled territory, the text is never boring, and does in fact contain some keenly rendered observations, downbeat though they may be. And while I saw the wisdom of pairing up Ayers and Estrada into a single chapter, I think the author overreaches himself in the fourth chapter, which combines, contrasts, and alternates between the Eisner, Lee, AND Kubert families over the course of 30 pages!?! A lot of solid information is undeniably contained therein, but the way it bounces back and forth between it's three sets of protagonists is, in the end, unnecessarily confusing. Interesting idea, but evidence that a sharper editing job could've made this an even stronger book. A curious aside regarding the introduction--while this book nicely serves as a confirmation as to both the spiritual and emotional advantages of the institution of marriage, our author nonetheless professes to be totally clueless as to reasons exactly WHY folks would ever enter into such a state in the first place!?! Read your own book, friend--it's all there. Lastly, there WAS one thing about the text that bothered me that fell outside the stylistic realm, and that was Bell's unfathomable decision to introduce each of the ladies as connected legally via surname to their eventual partners from the moment of their birth--as in, "It's 1942, and Forest Hills, N.Y. trumpets the birth of Adrienne Colan"!?! No, Blake, it DIDN'T! Any trumpeting that might've been heard surely didn't include the last name of the man she wouldn't even meet until several decades further down the road!?! Chapter after chapter, Bell chooses to identify the women solely by the names given to them by their eventual spouses (save Josie Dumont, whose tale of life with her family in war-torn forties France and her courtship with the American soldier DeCarlo, is too integral a part of the couple's history to blindly slough over) Even some of the women who hold onto their own names AFTER the wedding vows have been exchanged suffer this unfortunate glitch--Jackie Estrada, I was surprised to find out, inherited the "Estrada" from her FIRST husband!?! (Who, I should hastily clarify, WASN'T Ric Estrada...) What her name was before that, well, I have absolutely no clue, as the author doesn't chose to supply it. It's an odd decision, one that could easily be interpreted as a sexist oversight, if it weren't for the clear absence of any such additional taint to be found anywhere throughout the remainder of a very respectful manuscript. Let's just chalk it up as an inadvertently thoughtless gaffe, and leave it at that, okay? Should there ever be second printing, I think you owe it to the ladies to go back and include their actual birth names, okay, Blake? In conclusion, despite whatever small faults there may've been, I found "I Have To Live With This Guy" to be an engrossing examination of a heretofore mostly uncharted corner of the history of comics, and would recommend it to anyone who's interested in the way things REALLY went down in those fabled four-color funnybook factories. Just toss aside your rose-colored glasses before you crack open the covers, okay? It'll be for your own good, believe me... |