Quick Links: Fallen Angels, Gone to Amerikay, Orbiter
on November 3rd, 2010Comic Book Resources takes a look at my never-published Fallen Angels miniseries from Marvel! This 1980′s era project was to be a four issue, maxi series. I think each book was 48 pages. I am sure Allan Harvey will pop in and add details, because after all these years, they escape me. Someone in the comments thread postulates that deadline problems must have killed the book.
Heck, no. It wasn’t even on the schedule, and I waited nearly six months for script approval on issue 3 before I could start drawing. I drew one page of that issue, and the book was killed. And for crying out loud, that book was my bread and butter. There was no way I would delay turning in pages on that thing to kick back, lounge on the beach, and eat bon bons. I know some folks in fandom think we pros are just rolling in dough and crank this stuff out on weekends for kicks, but get some context, people.
Adult content that slipped by the initial editorial review killed the project.
The story was about child exploitation and child prostitution. One of the boy prostitutes got AIDS. Pretty extreme stuff for comics in 1988.
What the article doesn’t get into is that a major character named Pan was also to have been the focus of sexual interest from his father, that his father and mother were into S&M, and his father also had a rather intense interest in animals. As in furry love.
I hope I never have to draw another comic book panel which features a character looking intently at a horse’s rear end. (EDIT: I take it back. You will not believe some of the stuff I drew in Warren Ellis’s Stealth Tribes. Stealth Tribes is intended for grown-ups and very well written. Even if it’s pervy. About 20 pages left to ink on that one, so you’ll just have to wait to see how pervy.)
Actually, there are several panels like this, juxtaposed with pics of dear old dad looking at his kid. It’s kind of ick.
In this scene, Junior finds riding gear in mom and dad’s bedroom drawer. Get it? Passionate horse gazing cut to riding gear in the boudoir?
Anyway, this must have slipped by on first read, because when editor Bob Harras got a look at the finished art, he had a fit of apoplexy and wanted a rewrite. The writer refused. She later told me they never told her what to rewrite, but I didn’t buy that. It was pretty obvious what needed a rewrite. Bob called me up and asked me if I would stick with the book if Marvel dumped the writer. I said no. This was dumb, because Marvel scuttled the book. Something I never expected. It was an alien concept to my old small press self to toss $50,000 worth of work because about 10 pages of script make people feel funny.
And if you thought reading it made the editor feel funny, you should have seen me drawing it.
Anyway, at the time, I was PO’d, but Marvel was well within their rights and I was paid in full for my work. So no hard feelings, and I mean it. Meh. Stuff happens.
Bob Harras later made it a point to scare up work for me elsewhere, which was cool of him, but Fallen Angels set my career back a bit.
Years later, Keith Giffen got a look at the art and came up with a brilliant rewrite idea. He took it to Joe Quesada, but The Master of Marvel didn’t go for it. Bummer.
A few pages of art are at the link.
Over here, a big interview with writer Derek McCulloch, where he says nice things about Gone to Amerikay, the graphic novel we are working on for Vertigo.
Derek said they cut the part where he referred to me as “coruscant”, which I had to go look up. And now that I have, I approve.
Smart people choose the graphic novel Orbiter for academic study.
And because I am shallow, enjoy this look at the Ten Greatest All-Nude Fight Scenes in Comics. Some of them feature Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne.
This stuff used to sail past me as a kid. As an adult, I can’t overlook the subtext.
Am I a bad person?
Maybe kids reading Fallen Angels would have missed the subtext of dear old dad looking intently at a horse’s ass, but I doubt it.
Fallen Angels © ® Marvel Comics
ho boy, yeah, I remember when you put up some of that Fallen Angels stuff. It’s squicky even now, let alone the 80′s. So there was an Equus subtext going on. Yeah, no, not really interested but thanks…
Derek McCullough called you the Empire’s capitol in Star Wars? What? I’m not sure that’s a compliment, now I have to look it up too XD (I thought Lucas just threw that word together, didn’t now it was real…)
I vaguely remember nervous and embarrassed laughter while drawing FA. I guess I was just so excited to have a big Marvel assignment I was unable to be objective about it. Looking back, I really can’t blame Marvel. This was originally a quirky series about mutant kids, and some of the content just went way too far.
Back then, I guess Marvel had money to burn, so they could afford to let it die on a shelf. Still, I don’t understand why they just didn’t cut a few pages and hire another team to finish the project off.
I don’t know if I have the script anymore, but as I recall, the subtext didn’t really grab you until you saw the script and the pictures. Which may be how the editor missed it. Even I missed some of it, and I drew it.
It took me years to get the art back, but when I did it sold for next to nothing.
The art is worth a fortune now.
I’m waiting, happily, for Gone to Amerikay. The very little tidbits I’ve seen have been wonderful, and Derek’s comments tell me it’s all just as good. I believe I’m going to go “Squeeeeee!” when it finally comes out.
Wow, I wonder what else Marvel has buried deep in their secret archives?
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Marvel Comics Super Special #7)
Ozma of Oz treasury edition
Fallen Angels v.2
I remember Bob Harras’s exact words about the story: “It’s like reading a foreign film”.
Yeah, they were 48-page, double-size issues, presumably they’d've been in Marvel’s “bookshelf” format. It’s a very strange comic, but we like Jamie Madrox’s patterned sweater very much.
The relevant issue of Back Issue can be downloaded from the Twomorrows site. It has an overview of the series and an interview with Colleen:
http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=76_100&products_id=696
Torsten: both Marvel and DC have loads of completed stuff that never saw print — all of it more interesting that the Sgt Pepper book. The finest book never to see print was Nestor Redondo’s King Arthur treasury series. It’s worth inventing a trans-dimensional transporter just so I can get to a parallel world and see that in all its glory!
OMG, that Nester Redondo comic is the holy grail. I have spent many hours on the internet snatching scans of the art. It’s GORGEOUS!
Jamie Madrox and his patterned sweater may be the dumbest thing I ever drew in comics. Jamie the multiple man who multiplies every time he gets hit. So, I drew him in a fight scene in a patterned sweater.
In the days before computer art, that was masochistic.
see I told you plaid messes up things XD
I drew some kind of Scandinavian pattern or something. That was crazy drawing time.
I think even the kids might have known at their core something was a bit off when someone was stairing at a horses rear. But I guess if it wanted to stand out from the standard tales of Capes and Criminals it sure would have done so. But seems to be a little ahead of it’s time.
I personally can’t wait for Stealth Tribes(pervyness and all), and Gone To Amerikay, you tease me with the pormise of good comics that I have to wait for. The comic landscape is bleak, you are a beacon of hope, keep on shining!