Shakespeare For Americans

Shakespeare For Americans was an odd little strip that appeared for a while in Heavy Metal, and was by Howard Chaykin & Walt Simonson, ( with one insert by Peter Kuper ) from the time they shared a studio called Upstart, alongside Frank Miller & Jim Sherman.
According to The Art Of Howard Chaykin: 'Frank and I would compare death threats from our various fan bases, and overall, it was a great time to be working... Simonson and I came up with the idea on an afternoon when we were bullshitting in the office.'
Shakespeare For Americans is a lot of fun, and read in one go, has the feel of a jam strip, as Howie & Walt constantly try to outdo each other from month to month. Here's the whole run.

Archire Goodwin & Walt Simonson

Archie Goodwin was born today. Archie is my favourite comic book writer ever ( with Steve Gerber a very close second ), so I make no bones about talking about him, as I think people have forgotten just how great he was. Archie was a story man first, last & always and he always, always delivered. He was also, of course, a great editor. In fact, writers & artists would regularly work for companies simply 'cos he was there, knowing they'd always get treated fairly by him. Equally, as soon as he left a company, nearly everybody went with him. There are apocryphal stories of various sleazy publishers attempting to poach Archie, and his reputation, in order to attract better talent. They wouldn't treat anybody any better, understand, they'd just assume simply having him there would deflect attention from their low pay & bad practices.
The first time I became aware of Goodwin's greatness was while he was editing Epic Illustrated. Not only was it a great mag, with great art, but Archie clearly went out of his way to get new talent he liked in there. He'd regularly write stories specifically for artists on the basis of their portfolio's, and get them in Epic, as well as regularly buying paintings, and writing text pieces around them as well. Go back through those old Epic's, you might be surprised how much of it is down to Archie.
One of the dream team's of The Bronze Age was, obviously, Archie & Walt Simonson ( whose birthday I shamefully forgot last week. See how it all ties in? I don't just throw this shit together, y'know... )


Goodwin & Simonson's greatest hour together has to be their legendary, ground-breaking Manhunter, one of the greatest superhero pieces ever done by anyone, anywhere, at any time. If I achieve nothing else with this blog, I'll get everybody who's never read Manhunter to read it. Go ahead, scoot over to ebay and get a copy. I'll wait.


Just after they won every award going for that piece, the pair contributed The Temple of The Spider to the 2nd & last issue of Atlas' Thrilling Adventure Stories, and it too is brilliant. Walt's gorgeous, decorative style is in full flow here, bringing manga to the US long before anybody else had heard of it. There's a hint of Eisner here, but really I always thought Walt was kind of like Nino, just such a completely individual stylist it could only ever come from him. Archie too, as usual, contributes an airtight script. Note also how, unlike a lot of writers at the time, he lets the art and the artist breathe, trusting Walt to tell the story without redundant caption's or purple narration, and he actually did that most of the time. Sheer greatness.

Frank Miller / Howie Chaykin / Walt Simonson / Jim Sherman Interview

From the July 1981 issue of Comics Feature, here's a great interview with Frank Miller, Walt Simonson, Howard Chaykin & Jim Sherman from a studio the four artists were sharing at the time. At this point, Miller was just about to see the Daredevil 'Angel Dust' story printed, Simonson was working on The Star Slammers, while Chaykin had just completed his work for the Heavy Metal movie. Interesting that Frank slightly comes across as the eager young 'new boy' to Walt & Howie's seasoned pro's. And I really wish Jim Sherman had done more for comics, judging by that splash of Mongo-Man.

Manhunter-He Stalks The World's Most Dangerous Game!

Manhunter is one of those comics that just seems to get better with age. Written by Archie Goodwin ( one of comics' greatest writer's ) and with art by Walt Simonson ( almost at the start of his professional career ), it broke new ground in storytelling and art techniques, won six major awards ( for a series that ran only seven episodes ), is still talked about over 30 years after it's original publication, and, perhaps most interestingly of all, might just be the only series in comics where the lead character dies, and stays dead.
In comics, sooner or later, every character comes back, is revamped or retconned, or otherwise ruined by people other than the original creator's. You say Captain America's dead? Stick around, pal, he'll be back. ( If he isn't already. )
Not so Manhunter. No one's ever brought this guy back.
Now, you could be unkind and say, well, why would they? These days, who cares enough about this guy to bother? Maybe. But I don't think so.


Manhunter was introduced in July of 1973 in the pages of Detective Comics, as a back-up for the lead Batman strip, a simple little 8-page serial to fill some pages and maybe hawk a few extra copies. But pretty much from the first episode, it was clear something special was going on.



It's the story of Paul Kirk, a minor character from '40's comics thrust into the '70's.
A big-game hunter, spy & occasional superhero, Kirk is mortally wounded, presumed dead, in the african jungle. In fact, he's rescued, and put into suspended animation by a mysterious organization calling itself The Council, and eventually re-awakened in the modern day for what, at first, seems the best of reasons.


The Council, originally, was dedicated to helping mankind, but, natch, time & power has corrupted them , and now they figure, hey, who's better placed to run the world than us?
Meanwhile, while Kirk has been on ice, they've cloned him, hundreds of times, into an unbeatable army of assassins. The Council then wake him up, and suggest he might like to use his skills to lead their deadly cadre of killers on murder missions.
To the surprise of absolutely no one at all, Paul Kirk is not impressed.


Pretty soon, he's broken out of Council HQ, hitched up with sexy Interpol agent Cristine St. Clair & ninja Asano Nitobe, and is leading a world wide war against his former rescuers, blocking The Council's attempted political assassinations, and wiping out the clone army, one by one.


So we have an intriguing plot, a tortured hero, a cool heroine, and a global threat. Classic pulp adventure stuff.
BUT it's not the plot per se that makes Manhunter such a great strip, it's how Goodwin & Simonson told the story.
Firstly, Archie knew he only had 8 pages per issue to hook the reader and move the story forward. So, like Quentin Tarantino did decades later ( and far less skillfully ) he moved the narrative onwards by jumping backwards and forwards in time, delivering important information through various characters & various viewpoints, even to the point of occasionally making Manhunter / Kirk a secondary character in his own story.
Simonson too, reciprocated, by stretching the boundaries of what was possible on the comic page, sometimes placing as many as 20 panels on a page, and making it all not just coherent ( a feat in itself ), but making it interesting & exciting.
I can't stress enough how difficult it is to achieve what Goodwin & Simonson did on this strip, and how easy they made it look.
Plenty of people have told epic saga's in a miniscule amount of pages since, but no one had really tried it before, and no one's done it as well.



And it's the little things that add to Manhunter too: Like the completely impractical costume, that would never work in reality, but looks so cool on the printed page: Or the fact that Simonson clearly based Kirk on James Coburn, with that long, lean face & lanky frame ( wonder if Coburn ever knew he was a superhero? )

And as much as I'd like a sequel, I'm also kind of glad it'll never happen. Archie Goodwin sadly passed away in 1998, just as a fresh reprint of Manhunter was being readied. There was talk of an epilogue by the original team, but it came too late for Archie. So Walt did Paul Kirk's last appearance as a 'silent' strip, in honour of his friend. That story, along with the rest of the saga, is in this reprint:


But, whichever one you manage to get your hands on, do get it. It really is one of the great comic strips, and more than lives up to it's rep.