Last
updated 7 February 2006. The latest version of this document can always be
found at www.enjolrasworld.com. See last page for legal & © information.
Additions?
Corrections? Contact Richard J. Arndt: rarndt39@hotmail.com.
Spider-Baby
Graphix
1. cover: Steve Bissette/back cover: Rolf
Stark (Fall 1988)
1) Introduction [Clive Barker]
3p [text article]
2) Censortivity Pin-Up [Steve
Bissette] 1p
3) S. Clay Wilson Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
4) The Kitty Killer Kids [S.
Clay Wilson] 2p
5) Alan Moore/Bill Wray Profile
[Steve Bissette] 2p [text article]
6) Come On Down [Alan Moore/Bill
Wray] 9p
7) Charles Vess Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
8) Scarecrow [Charles Vess] 5p
9) Tom Sniegoski/Mike Hoffman
Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p
10) Tooth Decay [Tom
Sniegoski/Mike Hoffman] 10p
11) Charles Burns Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
12) Contagious [Charles Burns]
4p
13) Bernie Mireault Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
14) Cable [Bernie Mireault] 13p
15) Jack Butterworth/Cam Kennedy
Profile [Steve Bissette/various] 2p
[text article, art from
various 1950s horror comics]
16) Eyes Without A Face [Jack
Butterworth/
17) Tim Lucas/Mike Hoffman
Profile [Steve Bissette] 2p [text
article]
18) Throat Sprockets [Tim
Lucas/Mike Hoffman] 12p
19) Eddie Campbell Profile
[Steve Bissette] 2p [text article]
20) The Pyjama Girl [Eddie Campbell]
4p
21) Introduction [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
22) Cottonmouth [Steve Bissette]
5p
23) Chigger And The Man [Keith
Giffen & Robert Loren Fleming/Keith Giffen] 10p
24) Chester Brown Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
25) Dirk The Gerbil [Chester
Brown] 2p reprinted from Escape #7 (?)
26) A Late Night Snack [
27) Pin-Up [Greg Irons] 1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: Publishers & editors:
Steve Bissette & Nancy O’Connor.
$9.95 for 112 pages, published in trade paperback form. This issue is dedicated to underground artist
Greg Irons. Taboo was an ambitious
attempt to expand past the 1950s EC foundations and rewrite the 1960s/1970s
Warren templates for graphic horror, as well as meld the style & sensibility
of the early underground horror comics with that of the more mainstream writers
and artists of the 1980s. Did it
succeed? Perhaps not completely but
still better than anyone had any right to expect at the time. By 1988, when Taboo premiered, prose horror
was boiling hot. Spurred by the enormous
financial and literacy success of Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker and
others, horror fiction was experiencing one of its biggest {even if
short-lived} booms ever. Yet in the
comic field, where horror had been a strong seller for at least two decades,
times were hard. All of the B&W
horror magazines were gone. None of the
major companies’ mystery books were still in print and the independents’ color
& black and white comics were either gone or going as well. Swamp Thing was still in print but it was in
the process of being neutered by DC.
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman was still a year away from seeing its first issue. Taboo looked much like the last stand and in
some way, perhaps it was. It was certainly
an ambitious and impressive looking magazine.
Printed in trade paperback form and running 100+ pages for each issue,
there was room for a number of different styles and story lengths. Artists and writers certainly made use of
that fact with stories that ranged from 1 pagers to {in future issues} 30 pages
and more in length. The quality of the
stories were generally high too. Rarely
did you see filler. For this first
issue, the stories themselves tended not to be as extreme as what appeared in
later issues but the quality was still quite high. Some of the stories {the Vess effort, for
one} could easily have appeared in other horror or fantasy titles but the
majority here {and almost entire issues, as time went by} could probably only
have only appeared in this magazine. The
proof of that is how very few of these stories have been reprinted, regardless
of their quality. To my certain
knowledge, only the Vess, Burns, Brown & Campbell stories have been
reprinted from this issue, and only in collections of their own works. Best art here would be from Charles Vess on
his solo tale and Mike Hoffman’s superior effort on ‘Throat Sprockets’. The best story is Tim Lucas’ gritty and
disturbing ‘Throat Sprockets’ as well.
Superior work also appeared from Chester Brown, whose ‘A Late Night
Snack’ is particularly good; S. Clay Wilson; Robert Loren Fleming/Keith Giffen;
Charles Burns & Bissette himself.
The Alan Moore/Bill Wray story was originally intended for the Harris
revival of Creepy and was done in 1985. A nice touch by editor Bissette was an
introduction page for nearly every story that profiled the creator, gave a
short essay on the story itself and provided a bibliographic entry on other
work the creator or creators had produced.
A fine way to spotlight the artists and writers, give the fan something
more to look for and an inexpensive way to fill pages with useful information
without resorting to dreary filler material.
An impressive debut, followed by even more impressive issues. Check out the end of the checklist for an
interview with Taboo editor, Steve Bissette.
2. cover: John Totleben/back cover: Charles
Lang (1989)
1) The Droolies [Clive Barker]
1p [frontis]
2) Eddie Campbell Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
3) The Pyjama Girl’s Big Night
Out [Eddie Campbell] 2p
4) Dave Marshall Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
5) Encore [Dave Marshall] 11p
6) Tim Lucas/Simonida Perica-Uth
Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
7) Sweet Nothings [Tim
Lucas/Simonida Perica-Uth] 16p
8) James Robert Smith/Mike
Hoffman Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p
[text article]
9) Wet [James Robert Smith/Mike
Hoffman] 8p
10) Rick Grimes Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
11) Hell’s Toupee [Rick Grimes]
6p
12) Sick Animal Pin-Up [Rick
Grimes] 1p reprinted from Parade of
Gore #1 (1977)
13) Tom Marnick Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
14) Check-Out Time [Tom Marnick]
6p
15) Saying Grace Introduction
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
16) Saying Grace [Steve
Bissette] 4p
17) Mark Askwith/Rick Taylor
Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
18) Sharks [Mark Askwith/Richard
G. Taylor] 7p
19) Cara Sherman Tereno Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
20) Life With The Vampire [Cara
Sherman Tereno] 25p
21) S. Clay Wilson Profile [Tom
Veitch] 2p [text article]
22) Black Pages [S. Clay Wilson]
4p [pin-ups]
23) Oh, Baby! Our Love Is Taboo
[Bernie Mireault] 1p
24) Michael Zulli Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
25) Mercy [Michael Zulli] 6p
26) Richard Sala Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
27) Hate Mail [Richard Sala] 5p
28) From Hell Introduction [Alan
Moore] 2p [text article]
29) From Hell: Prologue: The Old
Men On The Shore [Alan Moore/Eddie
30) From Hell, Chapter One: The
Affections Of Young Mr. S [Alan Moore/Eddie
31) Concrete Reads Taboo [Paul
Chadwick] 1p
32) From Hell Pin-Up [Alan
Moore] 1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: $9.95 for 144 pages. This magazine had to exist, if only to
provide a home for ‘From Hell’, certainly the most impressive story/serial that
Taboo would run. And that’s saying
something since Taboo ran an extremely high number of high-quality stories in
its lifetime. ‘From Hell’ gave many
readers {including myself} reason to return to Taboo, even after long delays in
publication might have caused attention to the title to drift. This lack of a timely appearance, coupled
with stories or artwork that were extremely offensive to some and pretty much
disturbing to everybody, probably hurt the magazine more than the format or
cost. For the first installment,
3. cover: Michael Zulli/frontis: Rolf
Stark/back cover: Simonida Perica-Uth (1989)
1) The Maternity Ward [Jack Venooker/Steve Bissette]
½p
2) Santa Sangre Pin-Up [Moebius] 1p
3) Bernie Mireault Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
4) Poker Face [Bernie Mireault] 11p
5) Rick Veitch Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
6) A Touch Of Vinyl [Rick Veitch & Jack
Weiner/Rick Veitch] 10p
7) Phil Elliott/Glenn Dakin Profile [Steve Bissette]
1p [text article]
8) Vulnerable [Glenn Dakin/Phil Elliott] 3p
9) Jim Wheelock Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
10) One Good Trick [Jim Wheelock] 6p
11) Tim Lucas/Mike Hoffman Profile [Steve Bissette]
1p [text article]
12)
13) Rick Grimes Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
14) Cactus Water [Rick Grimes] 10p
15) Rolf Stark /Marlene Stevens Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
16) Love In The Afternoon… [Rolf Stark & Marlene
Stevens/Rolf Stark] 15p
17) From Hell, Chapter 2: A State Of
18) From Hell Pin-Up [Alan Moore] 1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: $9.95 for 128 pages. Bissette & O’Connor are actually listed
as co-editors for the first time. Best
story is the new installment of ‘From Hell’.
Best art is Rolf Stark’s work from the haunting ‘Love In The
Afternoon…’. Good work also appeared
from Rick Veitch and Bernie Mireault while Tim Lucas & Mike Hoffman gave us
an excellent follow-up to #1’s ‘Throat Sprockets’. Strong, striking issue.
4. cover: Moebius/frontis: Nancy
O’Connor/back cover: Brian Sendelbach (1990)
1) Dreaming And The Law [Phillip
Hester] 2p
2) Phil Hester/Dave Sim Profiles
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
3) 1963 [Dave Sim] 1p [pin-up]
4) untitled [Charles Burn] 2p
5) Charles Burns/Neil Gaiman
& Michael Zulli Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
6) Babycakes [Neil
Gaiman/Michael Zulli] 4p
7) Matt Brooker aka D’Israeli
Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
8) Cholesterol [D’Israeli] 6p
9) Mark Askwith & Rick
Taylor Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p
[text article]
10) Davey’s Dream [Mark
Askwith/Rick Taylor] 11p
11) Moebius Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article w/photo]
12) Alejandro Jodorowsky Profile
[Steve Bissette/Moebius] 1p [text
article w/photo]
13) Eyes Of The Cat aka Les Yeux
Du Chat [Alejandro Jodorowsky/Moebius] 50p
originally
printed in
14) A History Of Alejandro
Jodorowsky [Steve Bissette/Moebius] 2p
[text article w/photos]
15) The Creators Of Les Yeux Du
Chat Discuss The Story’s Origin, Its Execution, And Their
Thoughts On
Today, Twelve Years Later [Jean-Marc Lofficier, Steve Bissette, Moebius
& Alejandro Jodorowsky]
4p [text article w/photos]
16) El Topo [Alejandro
Jodorowsky/Spain Rodriguez] 4p
originally printed in
17) S. Clay Wilson Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
18) Retinal Worm [S. Clay
Wilson] 5p
19) P. Foerster Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
20) La Fugue {The Escape} [P.
Foerster] 5p
21) Tim Lucas/Steve White
Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
22) Blue Angel [Tim Lucas/Steve
White] 5p
23) Charles Vess Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
24) Morrigan Tales [Elaine
Lee/Charles Vess] 18p
25) Rick Grimes Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
26) These Things Happen [Rick
Grimes] 5p
27) L. Roy Aiken/Mike Hoffman
Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
28) Neither Seen Nor Heard [L.
Roy Aiken/Mike Hoffman] 11p
29) From Hell, Chapter Three:
Blackmail or Mrs. Barrett [Alan Moore/Eddie
30) From Hell Pin-Up [Alan
Moore] 1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: $14.95 for 168 pages. Tundra Publishing is credited with
co-production. All of the Moebius pages
were printed on yellow paper. Charles
Vess’ ‘Morrigan Tales’ is a redrawn, rewritten and greatly expanded version of
the story originally published in Sabre #1 (Aug. 1982). The best artwork here is easily from the
French master Moebius. Steve White,
Charles Vess, Mike Hoffman & Michael Zulli also provided high quality
work. Best story is Alan Moore’s latest
chapter of ‘From Hell’, with Tim Lucas, Elaine Lee, Neil Gaiman, Phil Hester
and Alejandro Jodorowsky also delivering excellent stories. I find myself really disliking the work of
Rick Grimes and P. Foerster. Their
stories & art seemed like arid dead zones that blunted the appeal of the
stories that book ended them.
5. cover: Jeff Jones/frontis: Melinda
Gebbe/back cover: Michael Zulli (1991)
1) Seeing Is Not Believing
[Douglas E. Winter] 3p [text article]
2) Introduction [James Ellroy]
1p [text article]
3) 39th And Norton
[Tom Foxmarnick/Dennis Ellefson] 11p
4) Pin-Up [Jeff Nicholson] 1p
5) Jeff Nicholson Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
6) Through The Habitrails: It’s
Not Your Juice [Jeff Nicholson] 1p
7) Through The Habitrails:
Increasing the Gerbils [Jeff Nicholson] 4p
8) Through The Habitrails: Jar
Head [Jeff Nicholson] 8p
9) Lost Girls Introduction
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
10) Lost Girls [Alan
Moore/Melinda Gebbe] 8p [color]
11) Jeff Jones Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
12) Better Things To Do [Jeff
Jones] 2p [text story]
13) Matt Howarth Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text story]
14) Baby’s On Fire [Matt
Howarth] 6p
15) Rick Grimes Profile/Michael
H. Price-Adrian Martinez Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
16) Akimbo [Rick Grimes] 6p
17) Verse From A Viscera Vase II
[Michael H. Price/Adrian Martinez] 1p
[poem]
18) Michael Zulli/Ramsey
Campbell Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p
[text article]
19) Again [Michael Zulli]
27p from the story by Ramsey Campbell
20) S. Clay Wilson Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
21) This Is Dynamite [S. Clay
Wilson] 2p
22) From Hell Introduction [Alan
Moore] 1p [text article]
23) From Hell, Chapter Four:
“What Doth The Lord Require Of Thee?” [Alan Moore/Eddie
24) Dawn At The Crematorium #28
[Rolf Stark] 1p [color painting, on inside
back cover]
Notes: Steve Bissette now listed as
sole editor. $14.95 for 130 pages. The frontispiece depicts the ‘Lost
Girls’. The focus this issue was on erotic
horror stories and the reader wasn’t spared much in the way of twisted, kinky
and often disgusting horror fare. This
also was a particularly strong issue in terms of story, with even the most
disturbing tales being disturbing more for the quality of the story itself and
not for the shocks contained within. S.
Clay Wilson’s little two pager was nearly as controversial as his earlier
pin-ups from #2. Alan Moore &
Melinda Gebbie uncovered the first chapter of their strikingly beautiful sex
novel, ‘Lost Girls’, which depicted the grown-up escapades of literary
characters Dorothy Gale {The Wizard Of Oz}, Wendy Darling {Peter Pan} and Alice
Lindell {Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland & Through The Looking-Glass},
years before The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen appeared. Although Jeff Nicolson is probably an
acquired taste, the first chapters of his serial ‘Through The Habitrails’ were
quirky and interesting, a trait that lasted throughout the serial. Matt Howarth delivered a fine short story as
did the team of Tom Foxmarnick and Dennis Ellefson. Another lengthy and
well-done chapter of ‘From Hell’ appeared.
However, the best story and art belong to Michael Zulli’s superb
adaptation of Ramsey Campbell’s damn creepy short story ‘Again’. Don’t read this one just before dropping off
to sleep. I’d like to make special note
of Rolf Stark’s back cover painting and his work in general. Stark’s interests may have focused solely on
the Holocaust but his work was powerful and, while extremely grim and
disturbing, beautiful in its intentions.
1. cover & back cover: J. K. Potter/frontis:
Moebius (1991)
1) “I’ll Have A Zombie.” A Pit
Stop At Bissette’s Bar [Philip Nutman/Howard Cruse] 2p [text
article]
2) Let’s Go Shopping Pin-Up
[Mark Martin] 1½p
3) Mark Martin/Eddie Campbell
Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
4) Horror Story [Eddie Campbell]
1p
5) Glenn L. Barr Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article w/photo]
6) Cliff’s Wild Life [Glenn L.
Barr] 23p
7) Rick Grime Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
8) Glycerous Aquarium Footstool
[Rick Grimes] 3p
9) Wendy Snow-Lang Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
10) Want [Wendy Snow-Lang] 14p
11) Through The Habitrails
Introduction [Steve Bissette & Jeff Nicholson] 1p [text article]
12) Through The Habitrails: The
Doomed One [Jeff Nicholson] 8p
13) Rick McCollum Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
14) Fin de Salome [Rick
McCollum] 14p
15) Mark Bode Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
16) I Have A Dream [Mark Bode]
12p
17) Scott McCloud Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
18) A Day’s Work [Scott McCloud]
25p
19) Dick Foreman Profiles [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
20) Suburban Autopsies… [Dick
Foreman/Pete Williamson] 6p
21) Noel Tuazon Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
22) Obese Obsessor [Noel Tuazon]
8p
23) Jussi Tuomola Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
24) Neon Spring [Jussi Tuomola]
22p
25) Pin-Up [S. Clay Wilson] 1p
26) ‘Want’ cover [Wendy
Snow-Lang] 1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: While this was technically a
special and not a regular issue of Taboo, I’m including in the regular
numbering just ‘cause I want to. $14.95
for 152 pages. This issue was dedicated
to the then recently deceased actor Klaus Kinski while the frontispiece depicts
Kinski as Jack The Ripper. This issue
came with an insert ad featuring art by Steve Bissette & Michael Zulli from
which you could order Taboo #4-6 & the Taboo Especial from Tundra
Publishing. Scott McCloud’s work was the
first published result of the artists’ contest to write, draw & complete a
24 page comic in 24 hours. Best art here
is Wendy Snow-Lang’s elegant effort yet, while the stories are generally good,
there isn’t any I’d pick out as a superior effort. I also like Rick McCollum’s artwork. This is one of the milder issues of Taboo
{which means it’s still probably grosser than almost any other horror comic
ever published}. ‘Neon Spring’ is
printed sideways.
6. cover: Cru Zen/frontis: Mark A.
Nelson/titlepage: Steve Bissette/back cover: Mark Martin (1991)
1) Blood Monster [Neil Gaiman/Nancy O’Connor] 4p
2) Through The Habitrails Introduction [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
3) Through The Habitrails: Escape #1: “El Muerte”
[Jeff Nicholson] 8p
4) Through The Habitrails: Futile Love [Jeff
Nicholson] 11p
5) Charles Burns Profile [Steve Bissette] 2p [text article]
6) The Cat Woman Returns [Charles Burns] 20p
7) Lost Girls Introduction/Alan Moore & Melinda
Gebbe Profiles [Steve Bissette] 2p
8) Lost Girls, Chapters 2 &3 [Alan Moore/Melinda
Gebbe] 16p [color]
9) Rick Grimes Profile [Steve Bissette/Rick Grimes]
1p [text article]
10) Dolly & Withtina [Rick Grimes] 6p
11) From Hell Prologue/The Nemesis of Neglect Ad
[various] 1p [text article]
12) From Hell, Chapter Five: The Nemesis Of Neglect
[Alan Moore/Eddie
13) Holly Gaiman/Michael Zulli Profile [Michael
Zulli & Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
14) Holly’s Story [Holly Gaiman/Michael Zulli] 6p
15) Pin-Ups [S. Clay Wilson] 2p [2nd pin-up on inside back cover]
Notes: $14.95 for 122 pages. Charles Burns’ disturbing ‘The Cat Woman
Returns’ is a fumetti strip and was done in 1979. Holly Gaiman, Neil Gaiman’s daughter, was 5
years old when she wrote ‘Holly’s Story’.
The latest chapter of ‘From Hell’ is the best story, although ‘Blood
Monster’, ‘Lost Girls’ and ‘The Cat Woman Returns’ are also very good. Best art is Melinda Gebbe’s beautiful, lush
color work on ‘Lost Girls’ with good work also appearing from Michael Zulli,
Nancy O’Connor and Eddie Campbell. A
Sweeney Todd sampler pamphlet was included with this issue. This 16 page pamphlet provided an historical
and artistic overview of the legend of Sweeney Todd, the infamous “Demon Barber
Of Fleet Street” and was written by Neil Gaiman & illustrated by Michael
Zulli. As with the Taboo Especial, an
insert card/ad with artwork by Steve Bissette & Michael Zulli was also
included. The Bissette art is repeated
from the previous insert card but Zulli’s is a partial reprint of the Sweeney
Todd pamphlet’s cover. A special offer
for pre-ordering Taboo 7 was the intended inclusion of SpiderBaby Comix #0
which was to feature Steve Bissette’s entry into the 24 pages in 24 hours
contest, to be entitled ‘A Life In Black & White’. As it turned out, that Bissette tale was
included in the issue itself. {see the
Bissette interview for more details}
7. cover: Joe Coleman/frontis &
titlepage: Paul Komoda/back cover: Brian Sendelbach (1992)
1) Phil Elliott & Paul Grist
Profiles [Steve Bissette] ½p [text
article]
2) Monsters [Phil Elliott &
Paul Grist] 2p
3) Kenneth Smith Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
4) Odradek [Kenneth Smith]
5p from the story by Franz Kafka
5) From Hell Prologue [various]
1p [text article]
6) From Hell, Chapter Six:
September [Alan Moore/Eddie
7) Joe Coleman Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
8) A Good Christian [Joe
Coleman] 4p
9) P. Foerster Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
10) The Music-Loving Spider aka
L’Araignee Melomane [P. Foerster] 7p
[translated by R & J.
M. Lofficier]
11) Jeff Nicholson Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
12) Through The Habitrails: Be
Creative [Jeff Nicholson] 7p
13) Through The Habitrails:
Escape #2: The Dry Creek Bed [Jeff Nicholson] 6p
14) Lost Girls Introduction [Steve
Bissette] 3p [text article]
15) Lost Girls, Chapters 4 &
5 [Alan Moore/Melinda Gebbie] 16p
[color]
16) Rick Grimes Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
17) Breathing Is For Sissies
[Rick Grimes] 2p
18) Jack Butterworth/Eric
Vincent Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p
[text article]
19) Bad Things [Jack
Butterworth/Eric Vincent] 13p
20) Neil Gaiman/Michael Zulli
Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
21) Sweeney Todd: The Demon
Barber Of Fleet Street: Prologue [Neil Gaiman/Michael Zulli]
26p [story never concluded]
22) Aidan Potts Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
23) After Life [Aidan Potts] 3p
24) SpiderBaby Comix No. O: A
Life In Black And White [Steve Bissette] 26p
25) Those Wacky Cartoonists
[Steve Bissette/Matt Howarth, Jeff Nicholson, Mark Martin, Jim
Woodring & Kenneth
Smith] 1p [ad for various independent
comics & mini-comics]
26) Pin-Up [Tony Salmons]
1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: $14.95 for 158 pages. This was the last issue of Taboo in its
original format. Between this issue and
the next, years would pass and the biggest selling points of Taboo, the serials
by Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell & Neil Gaiman/Michael Zulli, would either move
on to their own series or simply go uncompleted. Only early orders had the Bissette
‘SpiderBaby Comix No. O’ included in the issue.
The ‘Sweeny Todd’ prologue is gorgeous in both story and art but the
story proper never actually appeared.
8. cover: Charles J. Lang/frontis:
Moebius/back cover: Michael Zulli (1995)
1) Introduction [Steve Bissette] 3p [text article]
2) All She Does Is Eat! [Jack
Butterworth/Greg Capullo] 10p
3) Satan And The Savior [David
Sexton/David Sexton & P. Craig Russell] 15p
4) President ‘Doosh’ Quimby
[Rick Grimes] 6p
5) The Disaster Area [Tim
Lucas/David Lloyd] 12p
6) Revenge [Matt Howarth] 30p
7) Johnny 23 [Al Columbia] 4p
8) Through The Habitrails: Cat
Lover [Jeff Nicholson] 29p
9) Twilight [Wladyslaw
Reymont/Alec Stevens] 6p
10) Bid Return [Jeff Jones]
1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: Now published by Kitchen
Sink Press. $14.95 for 128 pages. These stories were left over after Taboo
ceased “regular” publication in 1992.
{see the Bissette interview for more details}. ‘Through The Habitrails’ finally concluded
its run. The best story here is ‘Satan
And The Savior’ while the best artwork belongs to David Lloyd. However I also liked the work by Nicholson,
Butterworth/Capullo, Tim Lucas, & Al Columbia. Some high quality material appears here.
9. cover & back cover: Alan M.
Clarke/frontis: Paul Komada/inside back cover: Kenneth Smith (1995)
1) Introduction [Dave Sim]
1p [text article]
2) Taboo: A Chronology [various]
2p
3) The Vampire [Alec Stevens]
6p from the story by Jan Neruda
4) ‘Gator Bait: The Crimes Of
Joe D. Ball [Michael H. Price/Lamberto Alvarez] 12p
5) Dr. Miro’s Masterpieces [Jeff
Dickinson] 6p
6) …In The Garden [Stephen Blue]
4p
7) The
8) Grue Love [Rick Grimes] 3p
9) The New Ecology Of Death
[James Roberts Smith/Mike Hoffman] 10p
10) One Day In Hell, God Spoke
[Tony Salmons] 4p
11) After Life [Dave
Thorpe/Aidan Potts] 25p
12) The
13) Hunting And Gathering
[Phillip Hester] 5p
14) The Joys Of Childhood
[Angela Bocage] 4p
15) Circumcision [Phillip
Hester] 8p
16) Taboo Is Taboo [Steve
Bissette] 6p [text article] reprinted from Gauntlet (1990)
17) From Hell [Alan Moore]
1p [text article] reprinted from a 1989 Fantaco Enterprises
catalog
Steve Bissette entered the
comic field in 1976. He’s appeared in
Heavy Metal, Epic Illustrated, Bizarre Adventures, Scholastic Magazines’ Weird
Worlds and Bananas {illustrating stories written by R. L. Stine}, collaborated
with Rick Veitch on the adaptation of Steven Spielberg’s motion picture 1941
and is probably best known for his award-winning work with Alan Moore &
John Totleben on DC Comics’ ‘Saga Of The Swamp Thing’ from 1983-1987, where he
co-created the character of John Constantine.
From 1988-1995, he
co-founded, edited, published & co-published the controversial horror
B&W magazine Taboo. In the early
1990s he self-published his own comic Tyrant, a rigorously-researched portrait
of the birth and life of a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the late Cretaceous period of
Following the 1999
publication of a final “Swamp Thing” story, authored by Neil Gaiman &
co-illustrated by John Totleben, Bissette retired from the comic field and
pursued his writing and work in the video industry. His interviews, film criticism and articles
have appeared in Rutherford, Gadfly, Comics Interview, The Video Watchdog, Film
Threat, Animation Planet, Fangoria, GoreZone, Deep Red, Gauntlet, Ecco, Animato,
Vmag, and others as well as in special edition DVD sets. His video review column “Video Views” has
been published monthly in Vmag (1998-present) and weekly (Aug. 1999-Oct. 2001)
in various
His short stories have
appeared in Words Without Pictures (1990), Hellboy: Odd Jobs (1999), Working
For The Man (2002), Sex Crimes (2003) and elsewhere. His original novella ‘Aliens: Tribes’ won the
Bram Stoker Award for best horror novella in 1992. He continues to work as an illustrator within
the book field, illustrating special edition novels, novellas and short stories.
He has recently joined the
faculty of the Center for Comics Studies in White River Junction, VT {opening
in the fall of 2005}. He is currently
editing, packing, and writing for Green Mountain Cinema, a periodical dedicated
to the study of Vermont films and filmmakers, and writing ‘Moving Mountains’, a
book-length study of Vermont films.
Mr. Bissette lives with his
wife Marjory and son Daniel in southern
You can locate more
information at his personal website www.comiccon.com/bissette;
his Special Collection at
RA:
Let’s talk about Taboo. Where did the
idea for Taboo come from?
SB: The idea for Taboo came from for the latter days of
doing ‘Saga Of The Swamp Thing’. John
Totleben and I were frustrated over the fact that a boom period for horror was
occurring, but comics seemed uninvolved in this renaissance. From the end of the ‘70s and into the ‘80s as
we were doing Swamp Thing, there were amazing horror novels coming out. Clive Barker surfaced in
And in films,
there was an evolution in the genre, with some amazing work from directors like
John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, George Romero--but it wasn’t happening in
comics! The direct sale market had
reinvented the comics market and here’s Bruce Jones, over at Pacific
originally, then later Eclipse, doing his horror comic anthology Twisted
Tales--but it was all neutered. Anything
goes in the direct market but when Bruce Jones was doing Twisted Tales, it was
entirely imitative of EC’s style. I love
the EC comics but what worked in 1953, 1954 was pretty old hat by 1984.
RA: Yeah, I liked the books but one of the frustrations
in reading them was “Man! Do something
with the endings!” Those EC style twist
endings…
SB: Yeah, he was working with some of the best artists in
the field—Mike Ploog, Berni Wrightson, Richard Corben. Bruce Jones’ work in the
RA: Don’t forget his work with Russ Heath. That was pretty spectacular.
SB: Oh, yeah! And why did those stories work? Because Bruce Jones was writing…love stories. They’re all love stories, twisted love stories, and he was using the horror genre to push these powerful emotional wellsprings to their furthest extremes. They are among the most beautiful stories in the medium! They break your heart because of what would happen to the characters; Jones was getting himself [and the reader] invested in what they were doing. And then when he had his head with Twisted Tales, when he was able to run with it as editor and writer, he just fell back into that old, tired mold of what the EC comics had set out as the template. I love those EC comics but, again, what worked in the early 1950s was weak tea three decades later.
RA: And it’s noticeable that those stories that did work
in Twisted Tales and its companion SF anthology Alien Worlds were those stories
that didn’t go the EC route.
SB: Well, the best story he ran in Twisted Tales was the one that Libertore illustrated {‘Shut-In’ from Twisted Tales #7 (Mar. 1984)} in which an old paralyzed man, a baby-sitter and an overgrown boy are involved in a weird sadomasochistic trip which is all taking place internally, it’s just the old guy’s fantasy.
RA: Oh, that was a good
story. Just brilliant!
SB: Single most perverse story he ever ran in Twisted Tales and it worked!
RA: Yeah, it really was on the edge. Great story, though.
SB: And the fact that it was Libertore, the guy who did Ranxerox [in Frigidaire, translated and censored for US publication in Heavy Metal], took it completely out of the EC mold that was dominating Twisted Tales. When Pacific went under and Eclipse Comics picked it up, I knew from hard experience that it was going to be all downhill from there. Cat Yronwode, whom I worked with a couple of times…Cat HATED horror comics. She loathed the genre. She abhorred horror comics. She thought they were a baaad thing.
RA: Well, that’s
bizarre. She edited or was involved in
some capacity in at least three different horror anthologies while she was at
Eclipse and the Moore/Totleben series of Miracleman issues contained a heavy
dose of horror.
SB: I know. That
was one of the perversions of Eclipse at that time. I was never friends with Cat or Dean {Mullaney—Publisher
of Eclipse}, I mean, I liked them. I
always got along well with them but I
really butted heads with them and ended up on their shit list at the end,
primarily over missing a deadline on Tim Truman’s Scout. Cat wrote me a letter that would make you
think that I had arranged a gangbanging of a child. It was that extreme. I still have the letter in my files somewhere
[now in the Stephen Bissette collection at
Let me go back in time a bit—when Clifford Neal’s Dr. Wirthem’s Comix & Stories came out with my story ‘Cell Food’ in it, Cat was writing her regular column ‘Fit To Print’ for The Comic Buyer’s Guide. Cat reviewed that issue and ‘Cell Food’ and that column was written around [the idea] that she was tearing the book up and feeding the pages to her fireplace. It amounted to a review in which she said, and I’m paraphrasing from memory, “What kind of people can do things like this?” It was a judgment of our humanity, or lack of it, that we chose to work in the horror genre--and that we were not fit to be in her household, either personally or through our work. So I knew that Cat had an axe to grind with the genre as a whole. Fine! That’s her business.
But once Eclipse saw that there was money to be made, they changed their tune. I always had a problem with that because Eclipse very aggressively went after Steve Niles. Steve was doing the Arcane Publishing venture and they basically took from his control the rights to all the Clive Barker material.
RA: Oh, right, Eclipse
did ‘Tapping The Vein’, adapting Barker’s short stories into comics.
SB: Yeah, Marvel did the Hellraiser stuff, while Eclipse’s
‘Tapping The Vein’ adapted stories from The Books Of Blood. I remember a conversation with Dean Mullaney
at that time. Dean contacted me right
after their ‘acquisition’ or ‘absorption’ or Archane, and I knew Steve
Niles. He was a friend of mine. Steve was a very young guy at that time, 19
or 20 years old. Arcane Publishing went
under because he hired a business management team from the
Well, what happened was that Steve had the rights for a year to two years…it was a finite window that he had with Clive’s material. During that period of time, he ended up working with Eclipse. Eclipse kind of promised him an umbrella arrangement but what they did was basically push Steve out of the position of power and “acquired” the Barker material. Steve went along with it and I’m sure he put the best face on it that he could. But what ended up happening was that I got a call out of the blue one night from Dean Mullaney, asking me if I was interested in doing one of the Barker stories for them. Now I was doing Taboo at that time and I said “Dean, I know what you guys have done up there with Steve and Arcane. I mean, I’m familiar with what your publishing history, I’ve worked with you, I know what you’ve done and that you really have no affection for horror.” But for the sake of conversation, we danced around possibilities. Dean specifically asked me what Book Of Blood story I was interested in and I cited ‘Jacqueline S’. It’s the one about a prostitute and her lover, a good man who truly loves her. She has the ability to change her body on a cellular level , making her the most desirable of prostitutes--she can bring the greatest pleasure to her clients. Dean said that’s great, that they had the rights to that story. I told him “Dean, you would not publish what I would do with that story.” He said, “What do you mean?” I read him one of the concluding paragraphs of the story in which Jacqueline literally folds her body from the vagina, inside-out, to envelope her dead lover so that they will become one being: the ultimate consummation. This is her way of being one with him after he’s been needlessly killed under tragic circumstances. I said “Dean, I would draw that.” {laughter} He said “Well, couldn’t you just excerpt some of the text, have these blacked out shapes in the corner of the room?” I said, “Dean, why are you adapting Clive Barker material if you’re fundamentally afraid of the material?” The whole power of Barker, in the mid 1980s, was that he was pushing the envelope further than anyone else. He wasn’t doing it just for gore’s sake, like Shawn Hudson would. He was writing stories that had strong emotional contexts and substance. The horror element brought that emotional context to a threshold in a forthright manner that hadn’t been indulged before. He was making explicit what would traditionally remain implicit, thus reorienting completely what was possible in the genre--and he was doing it in a way that was just brilliant. All [Dean] saw was that Clive was a name, box office, MONEY. The Hellraiser movie was making money at the box office and they wanted a piece of the action. And they were chickenshit. They didn’t want to do the stories justice.
I remember a couple of years later, P. Craig Russell telling me his experience with one of the adaptations he did that Eclipse refused to publish. He showed me just a couple of pages, photocopies, and it was brilliant, just brilliant what he had done! They didn’t get that either. They were just afraid of the material. That was, of course, the point, [that the material should be frightening].
RA: That’s odd, since
Russell has the ability to make the most heinous things look ok in the context
of the story that he’s doing, simply because his art is so beautiful.
SB: It was a story about a man who lives in fast motion. He realizes he can consummate his sexual desires with anyone he wants to before they even realize what’s happened to them. It had a very aggressive gay component, as many of Clive’s best stories did, and [Craig] really brought that to the fore. He did a brilliant graphic adaptation of the story; based on just the few, two or three pages, that I saw photocopies of, it was a classic, really potent and ravishing work. And it scared Eclipse.
Don’t forget, I wrote the lead story for Eclipse’s first
issue of Tales Of Terror {which replace Bruce Jones’ Twisted Tales}. I had done a couple of pieces for
Eclipse. The one I’m fondest of is
‘Remembering Renee’, which David Lloyd illustrated. I remember Cat calling me one night, saying
they loved ‘Remembering Renee’. It was a
love story, a reflection of my own state of mind at that time as my first
marriage was dissolving. I took a card
from Bruce Jones’
RA: But that’s the best
kind of horror story! The kind that
gives you the creeps hours, days, years after you’ve read them. Not the gore stories but the ones that
unsettle you in ways that may take you years to figure out exactly why.
SB: Well, of course. Anyway, that’s my roundabout way of telling you where Taboo came from. Out of all that frustration. Because of Swamp Thing, every publisher was hitting up John Totleben and I to do horror stories for them. We were in demand. We had won awards for four years in a row for Swamp Thing and every publisher out there was making calls and overtures to us. Yet they’d send us wretched scripts, or whenever we’d hit them with something we wanted to do, if it scared them or freaked them out, they’d say “no, you’re going too far”. Well, we’d go, “what’s the fucking point?” Is there going to be a second act after Swamp Thing? That’s were Taboo came from.
Then Dave Sim approached John and I at one of the Mid-Ohio
Conventions--we always went to the Mid-Ohio cons every November--and offered us
carte blanche to finance and publish anything we wanted to do, a budget and
publishing venue for our own pet project.
That was during Dave’s experiment with Aardvark-One International. Steve Murphy and Michael Zulli’s Puma Blues
came out of that period, as did Taboo.
John and I said we wanted to do Taboo, although we didn’t have a name at
that point. We were calling it “The
October Project” for a time. My friend
Mark Askwith, who lived in
Taboo was going to provide a venue for everything that no one else in comics would touch. We had a manifesto, the Taboo Manifesto, which stated our intent, and specified that we wanted only the material “that disturbs you. If what you come up with doesn’t disturb or frighten or scare you in any way we not even interested in looking at it. We want the deepest, darkest stuff we can come up with. We want you to—to paraphrase David Cronenberg—‘to speak the unspeakable and show the unshowable’.” We wanted it to be able to go off the deep end by its very nature—an anthology in which anything goes. We really wanted to put between two covers, issue by issue, the cutting edge genre material. We wanted to smash the EC formula, that codified template.
RA: Geez. That’s almost exactly what I wrote down in my
notes for #1! The template stuff that
primarily EC--and to some extent--
SB: Well, it was said and done with great love and respect. We loved what EC had done, because they had done the same thing we were setting out to do when they started out. They had broken every template that existed before them, and we knew that had to be done for the 1990s. We had to see in comics the same disruption and eruption that was revitalizing horror novels, horror short stories, horror film, the genre’s permutations in music, in every other media. We were seeing this renaissance, this revolution, but we weren’t seeing it in comics. Taboo was going to be the venue for that.
RA: What happened to Dave
Sim in publishing the book? He seemed to
have vanished before the first issue had even come out.
SB: Well, Dave pulled out before #1 of Taboo and that is an amazing story. In the parameters of the comics industry, Dave was more generous to me in comics than anyone else has been since Joe Kubert. Joe Kubert was my first mentor, and Dave Sim was my second. When I came out of my years of working with DC on Swamp Thing, I was just destroyed. I mean, I had no sense of ethics left. I had been so reamed on a personal and business level by DC that I literally didn’t know up from down, left from right, for a number of months. It was such a disorienting and demeaning and degrading experience at the end that I ceased to enjoy drawing. It just disgusted me.
Dave really opened my eyes and the eyes of many of my
friends as to what was possible. That we
could make a living as cartoonists, but that we did not necessarily have to
prostitute ourselves to the highest bidder.
That it was possible to carve out your own body of work, to own it and
build and maintain a real autonomy. Dave
is the first person ever {at a Mid-Ohio Con} to say to John and I, “Dude, you
guys deserve to ride in a limousine.” {laughs} And silly as that sounds now,
we’d never had that. Every time we got
called into
Dave said “This isn’t right. You guys are winning awards for the company. You’ve turned this character around from nothing to one of their key titles and you’re not reaping any of the benefits.”
Now, it’s not just about the material levels. That’s not all it was about. He was really trying to impress on us that we could strike out on our own path, creatively. We could go our own way and have a real chance of making it work. And at that time, in the direct sales market, it was absolutely true. Dave was incredibly disappointed when he made the offer to us and we came back with this “We want to do an anthology title”. Dave was hoping we would do our own work. In the best of all worlds, I would have done ‘Tyrant’ at that time. But I wasn’t mature enough. I wasn’t thinking of it at that time.
But Dave supported Taboo every step of the way. He was a very generous benefactor. He bankrolled the entire first issue and much of the second. We had the full support of Aardvark Vanaheim and Aardvark-One International’s offices and contacts with printing houses. Karen McKiel was the secretary and bookkeeper up there at the time, and between her and Gerhard I really was taught the ropes of how the comics business works. Karen was instrumental in much of this learning curve, by the way, in terms of the nuts-and-bolts organizing of bookkeeping, etc. By the time I was done with that crash course and my first wife Nancy {who soon after this changed her name to Marlene} and I got out Taboo #1 & #2, I had gotten a fully rounded education in comics. I had worked every side of the bench. There were no more mysteries for me after that. No publisher could pull the wool over my eyes after that. Because I know how it works. There’s no magic to the business of comics. It’s just a business.
What happened to Dave is—everybody forgets this now—Dave reinvented the graphic novel. He is the great hero of the graphic novel form. Prior to the first Cerebus ‘phonebook’ edition—the expansive 500 page format--the largest graphic publication that any distributor would handle was a square bound book, that was about 100 pages, maybe a little more than that. This was before ‘The Dark Knight Returns’, mind you.
[Addendum: I recently found and filed the 1986 paperwork
relevant to this period for my collection of papers at Henderson State
University; there is no date on the document itself, but it was included with
material from Aardvark-One International and Aardvark-Vanaheim, Inc. dated late
1986. It’s interesting to note in a
comparative cost breakdown Dave had Karen McKeil send my first wife Nancy and I
at the time, Swords Of Cerebus, Vol. 5 from 1983 was 104 pages and cost $1.51
per unit for a print run of 10,000; CHURCH AND STATE, Vol. 1 was 592 pages, at
a cost span of $3.41 per unit {for 3000 copies} to $2.32 each {for 12,000
copies}. If anyone is interested, this
document is now in the Stephen Bissette Special Collection files,
RA: Usually it was considerably less, about 64 pages on
average. Basically an expensive annual.
SB: You got it, man. Everybody forgets, but I remember the chronology very clearly. Dave broke the glass ceiling and the first major book to come out after he did that was ‘The Dark Knight Returns’, collecting all four volumes of the series into one book. Dave’s the one who not only went out on the point but he fought all the battles with the distributors that broke that glass ceiling. And because he was a self publisher, those battles were ugly, very personalized, as I recall. The way it blew up in Dave’s face, it brought down Aardvark-One International, the spin-off of his own self publishing venture.
Diamond was pissed at Dave for putting out the first Cerebus ‘phonebook’. It wasn’t just Diamond, it was all the distributors, ‘cause there were a lot of them at the time, and most of the retailers. As I remember it, Dave had proposed the format to distribution, and they refused to carry the book—they decided “no, this is too expensive.”. Dave said, “Look, I’m putting out the first Cerebus collection. It’s going to run 500 pages and that’s how I’m going to collect the series.” And Dave was looking far enough ahead, fifteen years down the road, that he knew that when he got to Cerebus #300, that 64 page collections weren’t going to work to present Cerebus as the novel or series of novels that it was. He had to go with this more expensive format. He also said “Look, those little graphic novels you’re putting out from Marvel. Those aren’t novels.” They were short stories, a minor inflation of the ‘Giant Annual’ format. The density of content, a richness and depth of material, is what distinguishes a novel from a short story. A novel needs a larger canvas to exist on or it wasn’t going to breathe. We weren’t going to see the graphic novel realize its potential [in the format that existed for it at that time]. So step one--Dave announces he’s going to do the first 500 pages of a Cerebus collection. Step two—everyone ridicules him. Step three—the business people involved, the distributors and most of the retailers, say we don’t want it. You can’t do it. Step four—Dave, being a self publisher, with a printer, who owns all his own material, and has a subscription list and via Cerebus monthly a means of advertising directly to his readers, says you can’t tell me what I can or can’t do. If you don’t want it, I will advertise it in Cerebus and I will sell it directly to the individual buyer and it will cost $25.00. The first ad came out in Cerebus saying the first collection will be $25.00 postpaid and can be paid to this 800 number. He sat up a corporate number and account at Aaadvark Vanaheim for this new venture. It was an incredible windfall of income, too, sans the discounts to the middle-men who’d opted out. It was also the first 500 page format graphic novel. It had real weight, heft, an expansive read. Amazing.
The backlash against Dave was unbelievable. I was up in Kitchner at that time, visiting Dave. I used to go up there every year and spend a couple of days to a week with Dave and Gerhard. And if you were visiting Dave and Gerhard, you were drawing the same time as they were drawing. I’d bring up my work with me. And I remember Dave and I went out for dinner one night, and then went over to the local comic retailer in Kitchner, a very sweet guy who had been Dave’s first supporter. While we were there, a young couple, a man and a woman, were there dropping off books from a distributor. An idle backhand verbal swipe from one of them provoked Dave, and he responded in kind. It got ugly, fast. They got into such a violent argument with Dave that they were cursing him from a block away. At the top of their lungs. {chuckles} It was amazing to me. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. The anger that was suddenly being directed at Dave Sim, purely over a business decision he had made—it was as if he had betrayed everyone in the business. Mind you, this was well before the whole “Reads” gender issue backlash. This was all over Dave doing his own thing, his own way.
Dave was having a hard time coping with all this. He was not going to sway from his decision. Dave is nothing if not an absolutist. He makes a decision. He decides which way he’s going and then he’s going that way and nothing is going to stop him. But it was getting really painful for him, personally. I remember Dave calling me up drunk in the middle of the night. He was still a drinker at that time. At two or three in the morning and just ramble and rant, though it was all focused—all on the key issue of distribution. He just had to vent and I was one of the people he trusted enough to call. I remember him saying “Steve, repeat after me! A distributor is just a functionary.” {laughs} I didn’t really understand what he was talking about at this time. I hadn’t learned the ropes yet. In due time, I learned.
Well, Dave put out that first Cerebus book and the sales were tremendous. He sold out the first print run very quickly, sans middle-men taking a cut; a great success. Nothing changes a group of merchants’ minds quicker than when they see success that they opted out of. Suddenly they all wanted on board. The distributors all wanted to kiss and make up. They wanted the second printing of the book. The retailers wanted it and Dave just went NO. I’m going to continue selling it this way.
RA: If he was selling out
his printings, he was probably going to make more money that way anyway.
SB: Well, there was that factor—a hefty percentage of any publication is absorbed in distribution and retailer percentages, where self-publishers are selling their publications at 60% off—but it wasn’t that Dave was being a prick, trying to shut them out. It’s that Dave’s an absolutist. You make a decision and you have to live with it. Dave makes a decision, he has to live with it. They had made their decision. He made his. He was just standing his ground. Still, to this day, I admire him. He went against every fiber of the business. He went against tremendous ridicule and ire. He stood his ground. He proved he was right and he changed everything about how comics and graphic novels are published. And the first company to jump on board was DC Comics with that Dark Knight collection. That was a new creature, when it came out. Everybody today forgets that it was Dave who broke that glass ceiling but he was the man and I was there. I saw a lot of it first and second hand and my learning curve in the business was, in part, from that experience. I saw the best and the worst of it.
So, how did Diamond retaliate? How did they punish Dave Sim? They refused to carry ‘Puma Blues’. ‘Puma Blues’ was an independent comic that was coming out from Aardvark-One International with Michael Zulli as the artist and Steve Murphy as the writer. They were the first two individuals to take Dave up on his offer to back creative talent to publish anything the talent wanted to do. John Totleben and I saw in person Dave make that same offer to a number of other people, including Bill Sienkiewicz, Frank Miller…I mean Dave was extending that offer to many key people in comics at that time. Because he wanted to see everyone in the medium whose work mattered to him have the opportunity to extract themselves out of that servitude to the plantation mentality of working for Marvel and DC. He saw how we were treated. He knew we were getting the short end of the stick. He wanted to bring us all along—not with him, not to follow Dave or Dave’s example, but he just wanted us to have the opportunity to stretch our wings and do what we were capable of. Fortunately, a few of us could see the door he was opening for us.
So, Diamond refuses to distribute ‘Puma Blues’. They’re mad at Dave Sim. They see Dave as the publisher of ‘Puma
Blues’ and they punish Steve Murphy and Michael Zulli [because Diamond] is
angry at Dave Sim for not allowing them to have the distribution rights to the
500 page Cerebus collection that they hadn’t wanted in the first place! It’s a bit like 9/11, you know: Saudi
terrorists fly planes into the
So Dave quietly dissolved Aardvark-One International. He did so very ethically. He was very fair. He was very conscientious. He maintained our support until we were off the diving board and on our way. We were not just kicked off the diving board. But Dave made it clear that when Taboo #1 was ready to go we would be self-publishing. We would not have the umbrella of Aardvark-One International. But right up to publication day, we still had the help of Karen, of Dave and of Gerhard. He never pushed away the life-preserver until we were ready to swim. It was one of the greatest opportunities I was ever given in my life and it was one of the greatest lessons I ever learned as well. Dave was just an incredibly upstanding professional through the whole thing and a great friend.
People forget what happened back then. ‘Puma Blues’ got within three issues of concluding and Steve Murphy pulled out. There was more lucrative work available at ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ and, much to Michael Zulli’s frustration, they postponed completing ‘Puma Blues’, which was too bad. Here we are, 15 years later, and it’s never going to be concluded and they were that close to their completion. The whole Diamond debacle was a very public event at the time. There was a ‘Puma Blues’ benefit issue that a number of us contributed to. There was an Alan Moore story that I penciled and Michael Zulli inked. I also inked Michael Zulli’s pencils on a story that Steve Murphy wrote. The benefit book was to try to raise money to offset their financial losses from that period of time and it was three or four months where their income suddenly dried up because Diamond punished them.
RA: I’ve a copy of the
benefit book and it came out at almost the same time as Taboo #1. Perhaps a month or so earlier. Also about the same time AAARGH! came out
from Alan Moore’s company Mad Love.
SB: You got it, exactly. AAARGH! is what came out of Dave Sim’s trying to convince Alan that he could self publish. But that {and Taboo} lead to the key lesson that if you were going to self publish, the only viable way is to write and draw your own material. If you’re publishing the work of others, as in AAARGH! And Taboo, you’re not SELF-publishing, you are publishing, and there is a world of difference. Stupid us! Alan was put…well, I’ve already gotten into plenty of trouble over this with my Comics Journal interview. If you’re a writer who needs an artist, you’re suddenly an employer. There’s no way around it. Especially if you’re the one who is the publisher. Some writers NEED publishers. Period. I’ll leave it at that.
RA: Back to Taboo, as I
recall there seemed to be a awful lot of problems over censorship or lack of
distribution or printers not wanting to print the book , beginning with
#2. I believe there was some sort of
trouble over the pin-ups that S. Clay Wilson did for that issue. I was looking at them the other day and
thinking to myself, they are pretty grotesque.
SB: Yeah, they’re off the deep end! I’ve got to say that the distributors we worked with were always supportive. I never had major problems with distributors. The only speed bump I hit with distributors was one period where Capitol and Diamond both contacted me and asked about putting Taboo in their adult catalog. Now, bare in mind, that the only books in those adult catalogs at that time were titles like ‘Cherry Poptart’ or the beginnings of the Eros line from Fantagraphics, and I objected because Taboo wasn’t a sex comic and if that’s the context they were going to place it in, than we’re going to lose what few sales we’d sustained, as Taboo wasn’t a sexually-oriented publication. But it never got confrontational. They ultimately kept Taboo listed in their main catalog. Of course, I had a lot of big guns to bring to bear. In every issue we had Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell, Moebius in #4—I mean I really had a lot of top draw commercial cartoonists that Diamond and Capitol wanted to have out there. I also sent them a copy of…it wasn’t a Hellraiser comic, but something that Marvel Epic Comics had spun off from the Barker books…and it had a sequence where these demons are standing underneath a hung man, collecting his semen that was running down his leg. {laughter} And I said, “Look, if this can fly in your regular catalog, then Taboo is fine in your regular catalog because I’ve never published any image quite as graphic as this.”
RA: Yeah, I remember
writing a letter to DC after they objected to the Rick Veitch/Michael Zulli
Swamp Thing issue, which was pulled from publication, because Veitch and Zulli
had Jesus crucified on the wood of Swamp Thing.
Swamp Thing was the actual cross.
I reminded them that they had just run an issue of Green Lantern/Green
Arrow or maybe just Green Arrow when they had Black Canary or someone raped and
beaten and hung up on a cross. Images
and storylines which were, or at least should be, far more offensive,
especially to Christians, than the idea that Jesus would be nailed to a plant
elemental.
SB: It was a crazy time in publishing. They were all publishing material that was
pushing the envelope [of what was acceptable] yet they were all afraid of where
it was going to go. Don’t forget the
RA: Sad but probably
true.
SB: The mid 1990s were a strange time. My point is we never had problems with the
distributors on Taboo. We got a lot of
support from distributors. I had
problems with printers. Preney Print
& Litho, who printed Cerebus, was a tremendous printer. They printed Taboo #1 & 3 and I went to
them with Tyrant. They had to back away
from Taboo because they had a problem.
There was an episode in
Anyway the Chester Brown Yummy Fur sequences were showing a nude female with her throat cut and a guy bathing in her blood and she comes back as a ghost. It was a nude, pre-adolescent looking girl and it was a very objectionable sequence and this is what was used to wrap some community print job! {more laughter} It created a incredible furor in Preney’s local community and he had to back away from anything that was going to bring more fire down on them. Taboo #2 would have certainly done that.
RA: They should have been
wrapped in Chester Brown’s adaptation of Jesus’ life. {laughter}
SB: Yeah, exactly, but he wasn’t doing that yet in Yummy
Fur. That came a little later. So I went with a local printer, a
RA: Gun catalogs bring in
a lot of money. Imaginary fish that are reproducing
probably don’t.
SB: I’m not necessarily against the NRA, but guns can actually kill people and Taboo #2 is never going to kill anybody. The binding’s not strong enough! {laughter}
RA: That’s something else
I was going to ask you about. The cover and
contents to #2 separate very easily.
SB: Well, that’s the end of the story here. We struggled every step of the way, to make a
long story short. We had another
separation house object to printing the Alan Moore inside-back-cover
painting. It had a pentagram and they
thought it was satanic and that we were Satanists. We got through all that, at the cost of much
time and money. Once we got all the
separations done, and finally got the book printed, we could not find a binder
to do the binding.
RA: The pages themselves
hold together. It’s the cover that flops
off. I’ve never seen one that wasn’t
loose.
SB: Yeah, I know.
Taboo was always an uphill battle.
It was always a difficult project.
I really stuck with it. I mean, I
was tenacious. It just was a project
that was not viable. We were banned in
almost every country in the world at one point or another. The best review I ever got was from the
Which was something I believed from the start: I felt the introductions were critical, that they provided necessary context, lent weight to the entire project. My model was Dangerous Visions. I felt the introductions were necessary because I wanted every reader to have some sort of context to bring to the story. Whether it was an understanding of the artist or writer’s work or of the historical context that the story existed within or what have you. That came out of my years of reading science fiction. Alan Moore had reminded me of the important work Michael Moorcock had done as an editor [on New Worlds] over in England and I revisited the work Harlan Ellison did with Dangerous Visions, where the introductions totally enriched the entire reading experience.
RA: One of the things I
really liked about Taboo, at least relating to issues 1-7, was the
artist/writer profiles that helped point out where you could find other stuff
by these guys. If you liked their
stories, what they’d done in Taboo, you certainly might like to read or see
more.
SB: Exactly. My goal with Taboo was to help the reader ferret out anything of interest that a story might spark them to go read. I also felt it important for the creators who were contributing work to Taboo that they should benefit, if only via sales of more lucrative published or self-published work. People should be able to go out and find their work if they liked what they read in Taboo. I also felt that it was important to make it clear that Taboo existed in a much broader context in comics history and in the genre. That this was just a ripple in the stream, so to speak. Those introductions, those bibliographies, were all part of that.
Case in point, back [when I was working on Marvel’s Dracula issue of Bizarre Adventures, #33] and doing the story ‘The Blood Bequest’ with Steve Perry--if you look at the credits page, there’s a double-page splash where the story’s title’s presented. There is a credits scroll there with a big white empty space in the middle. That was because we had acknowledged that we were working in part from the story ‘That Dracula May Live’ by Marv Wolfman & Neal Adams. That acknowledgement was lettered where the white space was. Marvel was angry at that point with Marv Wolfman and Neal Adams and they whited out their names from that credits scroll. We objected. I remember Denny O’Neil holding this water pistol to his head and mocking pulling the trigger. {laughter} Denny said he understood but there was nothing he could do. That made a huge impression on me. I thought this was ridiculous. Marvel refuses to credit a story that they published and that they owned that we’re using material from. After that, it became really important to me, whenever I had control over it, to fully acknowledge the work of the people I was working with, that I had borrowed from, that I had drawn anything from, etc. and that really came together in that additional text material in Taboo. I wanted it to be the richest reading experience that I could muster.
I did the same thing three years later in Tyrant. The first footnotes I ever saw in comics were dealing with Tim Truman’s work on his book on Simon Girty, Wilderness.
RA: Oh, that’s an
excellent book. One of my
favorites.
SB: A tremendous book. Tim was the first cartoonist I ever recall {and if someone has another example I welcome it} doing a historically based graphic novel where he footnoted the material—though maybe Jack Jackson {Jaxon} was there first with Comanche Moon. Sorry if I’m wrong on this. Without having the books at hand, though, I think Tim was first to really get intensive with the details, do up proper footnotes, listed what he worked from, where he got his information., where he deviated from the records, where he had to invent because there were no records—all of which incredibly enriched the novel. I convinced Alan Moore to footnote ‘From Hell’. We could never find a way to do it in the context of Taboo but I was very happy when they started doing the collected From Hell books that Alan went with the footnotes. It was initially proposed to respond to some of Alan’s harshest critics, who claimed he was plagiarizing material. Footnotes seemed the most succinct method of countering those unfair accusations.
RA: The appendixes in
From Hell had some of the best stuff in those issues. Well, maybe not the best stuff because I
think the story itself is one of
SB: It was and it was crucial to the work. Also, to this day,
RA: It certainly wasn’t
as extensive as your work on Tryant or Truman,
SB: Certainly, but they’d be on the letters’ page, [not in a special section or on the page itself]. I’d love to
have annotations for the complete Two-Fisted war stories. [Anyway, the reason I suggested footnotes] to
Alan was that a certain British writer, whom I won’t name because I’m not sure I’m recalling the name
correctly, who
was quite outspoken, in the
literary source. Alan was not happy about this. He wasn’t distraught but he wasn’t happy so I said “Alan,
why don’t you just footnote?” I knew how rigorous the research they were doing was. I was privy to the
exchanges between Eddie Campbell and Alan. Whenever one sent a postcard or letter [to each other], they
would send me a photocopy of it. Eddie was catching Alan in certain errors in that would be corrected before
they got to the final art stage.
I famously remember this great postcard Eddie did of Gull and Netley on the coach suspended above the
bridge in his script. They were doing their research on this project in every way, shape or form. When they
couldn’t find out anything they’d contact me, if it had anything to do with American sources {specifically, the
identity of the
‘wild west show’ touring
his circle of friends and associates and find someone who could find out something. I just suggested to Alan
that the best way to counter this criticism was to footnote the story. Of course you’re working from pre-
existing material. You’re researching Jack The Ripper. It occurred in the 1880s. How could you not be?
RA: It’s
probably the most written about murder in history, with the possible exception
of Jesus Christ’s. It’s
simply not possible to write something about that
murder without referencing somebody.
SB: Exactly. What was being said was absurd, but it was being presented in the fan press as an attack on
Alan. The best way to counter it seemed to be the footnotes. When I did Tyrant, I’d have been a fool if I had
not done reading and research on dinosaurs.
RA: If you didn’t, you’d end up looking like an
idiot. Somebody would certainly call you
out on it.
SB: Well, of course. From day one on Tyrant, I made it a point not just to footnote but to engage my readers
with all the text pages. I wanted them engaged. I also wanted [to get] corrections from readers. This was to
be a learning experience for me and I engaged with it on that level. The footnotes on From Hell and my
introductions and bibliographies on Taboo came from very much from that same spirit. I wanted to engage
the reader, YOU, fully. Not just the experience of reading an issue of Taboo but the soup that Taboo existed
within. By all the creators. Look at all the wonderful stuff that they’ve done! Go buy it! Go read it! It’s
great stuff!
RA: Well, it worked, at least for me. I remember buying a lot of stuff based on
those bibliographic notes and intros.
SB: Good!
RA: Then Tundra came in as a publishing partner or
backing publisher…
SB: Taboo #4 was well underway, and almost completely done, when Tundra came into existence. We
completed all the production on Taboo #4 with Tundra. The physical production was done with my friend
Norm Kranpetz, who, unfortunately, passed away a number of years ago. Norm was a great friend and a
tremendous artist who rolled up his sleeves to do the paste-ups and mechanicals for the introduction text
pages, beginning with Taboo #1. Now, Taboo #4 was the issue that we had ‘Eyes Of The Cat’ {see the index
above} with the interviews with Jean Giraud {Moebius} & Alex Jodorowsky, and we provided extensive
examples of artwork from any story that was referred to in those interviews. Norm did all that work and did
a wonderful job.
Tundra rescued me on the printing end. I could not find a printer for Taboo #4. They rescued me on that,
which became the catalyst for working with Tundra and co-publishing Taboo 5-7 and Taboo Especial with
them. It was a rocky relationship. Tundra was a great idea and a very noble experiment but it was fraught
with peril from day one. I’ve gone through those problems at length elsewhere {see the famous Comics
Journal interview}. We needn’t go into that unless you have specific questions.
RA: Not really.
I’d like to stick to the book itself.
SB: I really was left alone to shape Taboo in the manner I wanted to shape it. There were two major
frustrations for me with Tundra. First, one of the difficulties of doing an anthology book was that you’re
often subsidizing other artists’ work and you don’t know when it is going to arrive. Some creative people are
a dream with this stuff. Jeff Nicolson remains to this day one of the most professional cartoonists I’ve ever
dealt with. Jeff understood 100%, because he had self-published for so long with Ultra-Klutz, the
opportunity that Taboo presented him through [his serial] Through The Habitrails. He never missed his own
self-imposed deadline. I didn’t set deadlines for the artists. They did. Jeff was always ahead of his own
schedule. The work always came in when he said it would. He was always in perfect form.
Other stories presented tremendous difficulties. Not necessarily because creators were creating problems.
Our biggest production difficulty in Taboo #4 that Tundra did help us with and see through was the
separations’ production on the Elaine Lee/Charles Vess story—very tricky and intensive because it involved
merging half-tones and line art. Some of that stuff had to be hand cut into the negative. Remember, this was
when computers were just coming into production work. A lot of that work could be done today much
quicker and much cleaner, but at that time it had to be done by hand. That particular story, which is still one
of my favorite Taboo stories, was a bitch, production-wise. It’s hard for a non-artist to understand that. If
you look at that finished work, you’ll see this very intricate interweaving of half-tones and, as sharp as we
could get them, of Charlie’s beautiful pen & ink work. It was a tough job. Sometimes the obstacles were
presented by the nature of the material and it was our goal to bring the best printing we could to the process.
But it was frustrating and constantly a struggle in working with Tundra in that they didn’t understand why I
just couldn’t assign deadlines to the artists and make them stick to them. They didn’t understand that Taboo
#7 wasn’t going to be what I thought it was while I was doing Taboo #5. It would be what it would become by
Taboo #7. This was nuts to them. They thought just lock in who was going to be in there and stick with it.
Of course, they had similar problems on a much grander scale with their entire operation, but let’s not go there.
RA: While I was going through Taboo, I noticed that
you used to put these little bookmark style sales ads in a
couple of your Taboos. They would give you advance
information on the next issue and what they announced would
change from what appeared on the bookmark to what
was in the actual issue. The contents of
an unpublished issue
were somewhat fluid and I remember at one point that
Taboo #6 or #7 was supposed to be accompanied by a 24
pages in 24 hours comic that you were doing and that
ended up in the book itself rather than as a separate comic
insert.
SB: My 24-hour comic was published in “some” copies of the book. There are two editions of Taboo #7: the
pre-order edition, and the ‘re-order’ edition sans the 24-hour comic pages. It was not an insert, per se, the
pages were an integral part of the book, bound and timed like the rest. Some copies of Taboo #7 featured my
24 hour comic, ‘A Life In Black & White’. The reorder copies did not feature that story. It was an idea to
boost the opening orders. It was probably not a good idea but we did it. We had another issue, Taboo #6, in
which the preorder copies were shrink-wrapped with a ‘Sweeney Todd’ pamphlet—a “Penny Dreadful”—
with it. If you didn’t preorder than you didn’t get that. The reorder copies were just the book. These were
all marketing schemes to try to boost the preorders for the book.
My other big frustration with Tundra was…I completely understood why Tundra wanted ‘From Hell’ to
exist as a separate book from Taboo. It was too good a property to lock up in this quirky, bizarre anthology
title. Dave Sim warned me back in 1987 that the problems with anthologies was always the temptation to
serialize a longer work. But that once you do that the longer work either transcends the anthology and
discards it or it drags the anthology down. It’s one or the other. There’s no exceptions. Dave was right.
‘From Hell’ transcended and, thank God, survived Taboo. It continued and was completed long after Taboo
ceased to exist. But Tundra unnecessarily cut the throat of Taboo to get there. When they released the first
collection in 1991, that was no problem because the Taboo issues in which those chapters first appeared
were out of print. There were no lost sales. From the start, I asked, I did not demand, that Tundra promote
Taboo in conjunction with the From Hell collection. I could see the crossroads that we were going to arrive
at: that the speed of the publication schedule that they wanted to maintain would eventually catch up with
and outrun the quarterly schedule that Taboo was on.
RA: As it turned out, Tundra’s collections didn’t
outrun Taboo. The original run of Taboo
ended in 1992 and the
second issue of the From Hell run didn’t appear
until 1994 or so.
SB: Well, yeah you’re in the minority for recognizing that. To this day, even Eddie Campbell says Taboo was
running behind Eddie & Alan’s schedule, which simply wasn’t true after Taboo #4 and our relations with
Tundra. Now, the reason Taboo Especial came out as a special one-shot issue was because Alan and Eddie
were still working on that issue’s chapter of ‘From Hell’ and I didn’t want to put out an issue of Taboo that
didn’t have ‘From Hell’ in it. So I put out Taboo Especial, so that we met our quarterly schedule. I really
designed that book to be a different beast from a regular issue of Taboo. It had a different tenor, a different
tone, much more playful.
RA: Much less graphic than a regular issue.
SB: The introductions, by and large, are lighter. It was really designed to be a primer for Taboo. But the
only reason it existed at all was because Alan and Eddie needed more time and I would never pressure the
creators. If the work wasn’t done for the issue at hand, no problem. It’d go in the next one. But ‘From Hell’,
being the serialized backbone of Taboo, became a problem that way. I saw where we were headed and I was
afraid as soon as the process started with Tundra collections that the train wreck was down the road. It was
visible. The train was coming and the cars were not going to be stopped. Sure enough, that, in large part, is
what did us in.
RA: Well, Tundra couldn’t
have been too much of a blow though, because, as I mentioned earlier, there was
a three year gap between the collected From Hell #1 & #2.
SB: There was, but immediately…well, this gets into what was going on within the company, and I’ve talked about this before in the Comics Journal interview. Tundra fostered a sort of ‘trench mentality’ that I saw take hold first hand. Earlier {in the Bissette interview that will accompany the Marvel B&W Horror Magazines page, Bissette discusses seeing the following two editors’ interaction with the freelancers that they had on the phone—see that page for more details} I told you about visiting Ralph Macchio and Rick Marschall…how they operated at the Marvel offices. There I was, a young freelancer in my early 20s, walking into the offices of Marvel! The Bullpen! What a dream house! And I’m seeing that the people working in the offices are basically in a trench. It quickly turns into them against the freelancers. That’s just how it is. It’s the reality of office life. If you work in an office, you see it. It’s human nature. I see it at the video store that I was the co-manager of and worked in for years. It’s just how people function. You’re in a room, every day of your working life, with a bunch of people and it becomes you {and your group} against the world, just to get your job done.
I saw it develop from scratch at Tundra. It was incredible to watch it happen. I watched at Tundra how it went to the guys in the back room becoming this virtual tribe with their own turf. They had their own business turf to maintain at Tundra. You could see from the developmental stages how these rifts occurred between editorial and marketing, the front office and the back office—not just that they’re there, but how they develop and how the friction and rifts come out of human nature. It’s just what people do. It’s always manifest in different ways, in different permutations but it’s just what people do. We can’t help it. We’re human beings. Part of what happened to Taboo grew out of that.
The guys in the back at Tundra--whom I won’t name because
there’s no reason to slight people or to make them feel badly now--were engaged
in a process of trying to control distribution.
They wanted to be in charge of the product. The guys in editorial were trying to shape
the product. You can see how those two
realities of the business would inevitably come to loggerheads. And of course, all freelancers were, by
definition, outsiders to both realms.
“The Other.” Here I am, a
freelance editor, outside of Tundra—editing Taboo. I’ve created it before Tundra even
existed. I’m bringing it in so suddenly
I’m adding a proprietary new wrinkle to this thing. When they decided to do From Hell as a
collected book, they suddenly assumed they had control of From Hell. Alan is in the
For them to land this sweetheart deal with Tundra to collect From Hell, which had already appeared in Taboo, meant Tundra’s collections would earn additional, and very sorely needed, income for them. It helped subsidize the work on the current chapters that appeared in Taboo. That all made sense to me. But it became problematic when I asked the people at Tundra at the meetings I was invited to if we could find a way to promote Taboo through the success of the From Hell collection. These should not be works that are competing with each other when they appear from the same publisher. There’s no upside in that sort of situation. Tundra lost money if I lost money. Cutting Taboo’s throat to elevate From Hell was just going to drag down the whole process. It got even more complicated {which Neil understood perfectly} when we introduced Neil Gaiman & Michael Zulli’s ‘Sweeney Todd’ serial in Taboo #6.
Tundra immediately assumed that, by proxy, because ‘From Hell’ had appeared in Taboo and was being
collected by Tundra that ‘Sweeney Todd’ was going to be the next serialized Taboo project that Tundra was
going to collect and publish.
RA: Well,
that sort of thinking really seems like a comic book mentality. Because with any other publishing venue,
a serialized magazine or story doesn’t automatically
appear from the same company unless it’s spelled out that way
in the initial contract. If, for example, Gregory
Bedford, publishes an except of an upcoming novel in Playboy, the
novel itself doesn’t necessarily get published by
Playboy Press, unless that was the deal to begin with.
SB: Exactly, and both Neil and Michael went, “No, we doing this for ourselves. It’s to appear in Taboo but
it’s our story. We’re not necessarily going to publish the collected chapters at Tundra. It might go to Tundra
down the road but it was premature to even think about that.” And Tundra got pissed. Certain people at
Tundra got pissed. Suddenly I was a problem. Neil was a problem. Michael was a problem. It was just
another example of that problem that Dave Sim was struggling over with Diamond back in the Aardvark-
One days. The assumption that as a publisher [you could and should do] X-Y-Z. In Dave’s case, a
distributor assumed that because Dave was the publisher of ‘Puma Blues’ we will punish him [over our
problems with Cerebus] by canceling ‘Puma Blues’. In this case, it was Tundra going “Wait a minute. We’re
able to collect ‘From Hell’ but we can’t presume we have ‘Sweeney Todd’? How dare you? “
RA: Didn’t Tundra sign a
contract with Moore & Campbell for the rights to republish and collect
‘From Hell’?
SB: I’m not privy to what contracts existed, what negotiations they went through. My agreement with every
single individual who appeared in Taboo was that I bought one-time publishing rights only. I didn’t want
any hooks in the material. That was absolutely essential to the Taboo Manifesto. We were simply providing
a one-time venue. I’ve had business people tell me I was stupid [to do that]. I could have had a big pot of
gold from the From Hell movie. I didn’t get a nickel from that and that’s fine with me. I didn’t create that
work. It’s not my property.
RA: I guess if you’d gone out and sold the property
to a movie studio, acted as an agent as it were, you might have
some claim of some kind.
SB: Maybe so but that wasn’t the nature of my relationship with Alan & Eddie. My relationship is that I
invited them into Taboo. They’d both had work appear in Taboo prior to ‘From Hell’. I’d published Alan
Eddie conceived of ‘From Hell’ for Taboo. As the editor of Taboo, I pulled Alan & Eddie together. I
suggested Eddie as the ideal artist when Alan first phoned me with the concept of ‘From Hell’, I placed the
“break the ice” phone call, and they took it all from there, They didn’t necessarily need me, but I was the
midwife. When Alan came up with ‘From Hell’, he wasn’t sure who to approach to draw it. Plus, it was this
giant sixteen chapter expansive novel.
Another thing to remember was that in 1988-89 when the work began and Taboo began to come out,was that
one of the things that was attractive to Alan was that I didn’t care what page length each chapter of ‘From
Hell’ was going to be. I wasn’t going to lock him into any specific page-count parameters. That was
something that Alan had never had available to him. Swamp Thing had to be 23 pages—each issue. Those
stories for the Judge Dredd comic had to be a certain length and that was it. From the start with ‘From Hell’,
the idea was that if chapter 6 was six pages or 56 pages, I didn’t care. Whatever it works out to, you write it.
From Hell was a true graphic novel. A novelist doesn’t not sit down and say every chapter in my book is
going to be 20 pages, unless it’s part of some esthetic they creating. To confine chapters in that way is an
artificial constriction that’s been imposed on serialized comics because of the nature of publishing
periodicals.
RA: It’s a 32 page pamphlet and that’s it.
SB: Exactly. Marv Wolfman and Gene Colon, who created the first and one of the greatest graphic horror
novels with ‘The Tomb Of Dracula’ still had to fit each chapter of that book into the page count of the
monthly ‘Tomb Of Dracula’ comic. That was the format they were publishing in. It was incredibly
liberating for Alan in 1988-89 to have no restraints of any kind placed upon him, period.
The content didn’t concern me. If it was going to go into sexual territory, into graphic violence—if it was
going to be one page long or 100 pages long, I didn’t care. The chapters were going to take their own shape.
The graphic novel was going to grow of its own volition into what it needed to be. In comics that was
something new. That hadn’t existed before.
I remember
being on a panel at some convention with Gary Groth and bringing this up and
me. He said that’s ridiculous. [Story length] was never a constraint on anybody. And I said “Tell me
where?” For Alan, it was an incredible freedom. It was just as liberating as the lack of any restraints on the
content.
So that was the agreement I had with Alan & Eddie. We didn’t have a formal written contract. It was their
property. My only right was to publish each chapter for the first time in Taboo, and that was it. After that
they were free and clear. I had no hooks into it.
It been very gratifying that every time Jeff Nicolson collects Habitrails, and I think he’s done two or three
editions, Jeff reprints my introduction and sends me a check for $100. Because the introduction is one page
long and I paid Jeff $100 a page [to publish it originally]. Jeff has always reciprocated in kind and that
means a lot to me. It’s more than a gesture. It’s Jeff upholding the agreement.
It would have been nice to have gotten some money when there was a From Hell movie but that was up to
Alan & Eddie. I don’t impose it on them and we didn’t have an agreement about it. It’s none of my business.
We carry ourselves how we carry ourselves in this world.
The whole rationale behind Taboo was that it was a kamikaze publication. {laughter} It was suicidal in
concept, that we were going to be a publication that was going to push the envelope to the point where it was
going to offend somebody somewhere, and most likely be banned. That was the absolute purpose of Taboo.
And that I would have no hooks into the properties that appeared in Taboo; hence, as a business entity,
unlikely to be self-supporting, sans any licensing or further revenues from collections. The properties, which
is how publishers look at this work, belonged to the creators. It was their work and I had no business getting
anything more from it. I was sustaining Taboo on good graces of the creators who were contributing. That
wasn’t a viable business model in the 1990s. Probably not a viable business model anywhere at any time but
that’s what I was doing at the time.
We pulled the plug on Taboo with #7. Relations with Tundra over Taboo eroded to the point where it just
wasn’t viable to continue. They didn’t want to continue and I didn’t want to continue. I saw to it that every
creator who finished his work was paid. If Tundra had not paid them, I paid them out of my own pocket. I
also saw to it in 1993 when I got my first royalty check from the 1963 project that I repaid Kevin Eastman the
sum of money that he named to reimburse Tundra, and Kevin personally, for the investment into Taboo.
That was $20,000, plus nominal office expenses that were itemized and invoiced. I paid it out of my pocket to
Kevin Eastman and I had him name the amount because I didn’t want him or anyone else ever to say I had
taken Tundra for a ride with Taboo. That was money paid out of my pocket. I tried to be as honorable and
ethical as I could every step of the way with Taboo. I ripped off nobody. [Addendum: all documents
relevant to this 1993 transaction, including cancelled checks, are now in the Bissette Special Collection at
Taboo #8 & #9 came out of the handful of stories that remained unpublished and that the creators really
wanted to see appear as part of Taboo. I contacted all the creators and informed them. Some of them went
and published their own material. Some of the stories we had paid for to appear in Taboo came out
elsewhere in other forms. But the stuff that appeared in Taboo #8 & 9 were specifically the stories that we
paid the $100 a page and the creators said that they wanted us to hold onto them until we could put them out
in some form of Taboo.
RA: Those last two issues basically came out with no
frills. No introductions or
bibliographies, etc.
SB: Yeah, there was nothing. I did an issue-relevant intro to #8, I asked Dave Sim if he’d care to write one
for #9, which he did, and that was it. I was working on Tyrant at the time and that’s where my heart was. I
felt duty bound, an obligation to get that material out as Taboo. Denis Kitchen and I had always had very
good relations. We discussed it and Denis said let’s do it. I didn’t even take an editing credit on it. I did
shape the material with the gentleman who was named as editor. He went on to work at Dark Horse, in part,
because he was able to get his editing credentials at Kitchen Sink. I certainly didn’t need to get any credit but
it was a conscious decision to not have the introductions. Taboo was behind me and Tyrant was my baby.
RA: There were some good stories in those last two
issues though. I particularly liked the
David Lloyd story.
SB: There were some great stories. The Lloyd story was the third installment of
Tim Lucas’ ambitious
‘Throat Sprockets’. He wrote three comic scripts in all,
expanding the conceptual territory with each
installment, and David illustrated the final
comic story of ‘Throat Sprockets’. It
was later completed as a
novel.
Dell published it in hardcover.
It’s also come out in paperback in a couple of countries. I’ve got some
Australian editions out in my garage. Tim is a tremendous writer. He’s got a new novel out this month {May
2005} called Renfield: A Dream Of
Dracula. Tim was a freelance writer for
magazines like Fangoria, Video
Watchdog, Film Comments. He and I struck up a friendship in the
1980s. We became very close friends—
long distance—as we both loved the same
films. We had a real affection for the Italian director, Mario Bava.
Tim and his wife are just about to put into
print his book on Mario Bava, called All The Colors Of The Night.
Tim took a real interest in Taboo. He always loved the comics and he asked me if
he could take a hand in it
and I said sure. It was interesting. It was a bit like the process I went though
with Alan Moore. He sent me a
script that was very good but it was
funny. It wasn’t disturbing in any way
shape or form. Alan had done
the exact same thing. Tim sent me a script called ‘Your Darling Pet
Monkey’ and it extrapolated on the old
comic book ads that featured a little monkey
in a cup or a little dog in the cup.
You’d mail order these
miniature pets, and Tim fantasized a sort of
worst-case scenario, but it was amusing, not unnerving. Alan
in my eyes reading that script. It was a great script! But with both Tim’s monkey story and Alan’s
vacation
story I felt they were great scripts but
neither was disturbing or scary. It
wasn’t Taboo territory or material.
I wanted them to dig deeper, find something
that bothered them. In Alan’s case he
came up with ‘From
Hell’.
He read me over the phone the outline for all sixteen chapters. In Tim’s case, he came up with a one-
shot story called ‘Throat Sprockets’, which
eventually grew into a canvas of comic stories, then the novel.
RA: I really liked that initial story. It was in Taboo #1. Very dark and creepy. A great title too, that had several
different meanings within
the context of the story.
SB: It was a brilliant story. The best story in Taboo #1. I love all the material in Taboo #1 but
‘Throat
Sprockets’ is the story I’d point to, to say
this is where Taboo is going. It, in no
way,resembled any horror
comic book story that had ever been
published.
RA: I don’t think it
resembled any prose horror story that I can remember.
SB: It was completely fresh. It had a fresh perspective on reality, on
sexuality, on what was possible with
comics…
RA: On midnight and
underground movies too!
SB: It was a story which, by its very
subject, involved the visual medium and engaged comics as a medium, on
a level that was profound and very
disturbing. It was about watching,
viewing—which is, after all, what the
act of reading comics involves, and the act
of viewing cinema. There is an innate
voyeurism at work in both
mediums.
It made perfect sense to explore this imaginary movie, this sex film,
that this guy found himself
secretly slipping away to view between-hours
showings at work and the effect it has on his personal life, on his
own sexuality. That could be explored and communicated
through the medium of comics more deftly than it
could in either the medium of cinema or
literature. Comics is the perfect medium
for some stories and
‘Throat Sprockets’ was the perfect Taboo
story. Tim continued it into two other
scripts, there were three
stories in all: the first two were
illustrated by Mike Hoffman and the third by David Lloyd. Mike is a
wonderful artist. I love a lot of Mike’s work. He did more stories for Taboo later on,
including one story that
he wrote.
I was always open for Mike’s work but he was so rattled by that second
‘Throat Sprockets’ story
that he drew that he couldn’t do it any
more. It disturbed him too much. So Tim was left adrift. He’s a
writer with an original concept that he owned
and he was cast adrift. He loses his
artistic collaborator.
RA: Well, David Lloyd was
a perfect replacement.
SB: David was perfect and yet David also
ankled the project. There was something
about the chemistry and
it wasn’t Tim per se. Tim is one of the most affable, likable
people you’ll ever meet. But he had a
hard time
with both Mike and David, for some
reason. And I’m not casting
judgment. I remain on good terms with
all
three of those people. But after the situation with David, I told
Tim he didn’t need Taboo and he didn’t need
comics.
“You’re a writer. Write Throat
Sprockets.” Tim ran with that and
completed it as a prose novel.
That was one of the many things that grew out
of Taboo.
I’m very proud of what came out of
Taboo. The very concept was to create
this sort of rich soil that all this
new stuff could grow out of. It’s one of the things I’m proudest of.
RA: I always had a feeling
that with the Nicholas Cage movie, ‘8mm’, somebody somewhere had read Throat
Sprockets.
SB:
Yeah, it’s possible. There were
also a number of novels that came out around that time—Flicker,
Ancient Images, a number of others…and ‘8mm’
is the least of the films or books.
RA: Oh, I know it’s not a
particularly good film but in some ways it evoked, or at least tried to evoke,
the
underground, secret movie
aspect that Throat Sprockets did so well.
SB: I always thought Dan Clowes’ The Iron
Fist In A Velvet Glove had, in a way, been inspired by Throat
Sprockets.
I don’t know that for a fact.
They were certainly linked, in some essential ways. A good story’s a
good story.
But out of Taboo came Charles Burns with his teen plague stories, Rolf
Stark did ‘Love In The
Afternoon’ and then went on to do his own
graphic novel, Rain, based on his Holocaust experiences and his
paintings.
There was From Hell, Jeff Nicolson’s Into The Habitrails, Wendy Snow-Lang’s
‘Want’ which
grew into her Night’s Children series, Alan
Moore & MelindaGebbe’s Lost Girls--which is scheduled to be
completed and published sometime this year
and I’m looking forward to it, because it’s brilliant. That serial
was another of the fracture points with
Tundra.
We had an all-day closed-door Tundra meeting,
a ‘state of the business’ meeting and they had a film crew
production outfit come in from
Valley Girls—version of Lost Girls. I went fucking ballistic. I was so angry, I remember closing my eyes and
counting to ten so that I wouldn’t lose it. A live action/semi-animated thing with Xeroxed photographs of
actresses
talking on the phone and one of them was
Valley Girl, contemporary revamp-pastiche of Lost Girls, called Lost Girls! My first question to Kevin at
that meeting was “Does Alan know about this?” Well, no, he didn’t. I found that an unconscionable breach.
I just found
that unthinkable.
RA: Seems kind of stupid, too. How could anyone think something like that
would be OK?
SB: Well, Kevin got very soft-voiced and said to everyone, “this doesn’t leave the room”. The production guy
didn’t understand what the problem was. I’m sure he had been told by whoever he spoke with at Tundra
that anything that Tundra published was fair game. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t understand how this could
go to production without a phone call to either Alan or Melinda. I don’t get it.
RA: What was the purpose of the tape to begin with?
SB: It was a promo reel for something they wanted to do. The same firm had done a promo reel of Flaming
Carrot but they had done that in conjunction with Bob Burden. Bob Burden had been involved in it. They
were trying to figure out how to spin Tundra into this multi-media conglomerate that would publish graphic
novels and feed the motion picture industry. It was, arguably, the correct mindset. That’s what comics have
evolved into. I know cartoonists personally, right now, that are drawing graphic novels that will not be
published as graphic novels. They’re being done solely to create a graphic novel that will be published, vanity
press style, to implement a pitch for a motion picture production. That’s the point we’re at in the year 2005.
And the people doing that are being paid an incredible amount of money. So what Tundra was planning on
doing is exactly where the comic community has gone. In business terms, it was arguably a very smart and
canny path, but not for a publisher claiming to adhere to the Creator Bill of Rights. They just went about it
incorrectly.
The film that was presented as a promo reel for Lost Girls was an insult. It was absolutely contrary to what
Lost Girls was. It was infuriating. I remember having a conversation during the break in that meeting, after
I calmed down, with Kevin’s attorney at the time. We were at the bar in the hotel where the meeting was at.
He said to me “You mean to tell me if the film production company wanted to do an anthology film with
Taboo you’d say no?” I said that’s exactly what I’m saying. Nobody’s going to make a film of Taboo. He
asked how I could say that. I said “They’ll water it down to Tales From The Darkside. What’s the purpose
of Taboo? It’s to do work that’s provocative, disturbing, [designed] to break barriers. Any motion picture
studio that’s going to pay for an option for something called Taboo is going to water down the material. They
cannot make a film that would measure up to the manifesto.” He asked me what I thought a movie of Taboo
would be like
and I told him it would be a movie that you couldn’t show in a theater in
not get an R rating. It would not be advertised in a newspaper. My dream film of Taboo would be you get
David Lynch, you get Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, Jorg Buttgereit [Nekromantik, Der Todesking, etc.],
the most insane Japanese filmmakers working right now, Shozin Fukui [964 Pinocchio, Rubber’s Lover] or
Takashi Miike [Ichi the Killer, Gozu, etc.], a weird mix of potential lyricism and outright assault. You match
them with other confrontational, in-your-face collaborators, and you turn them loose. You go for the
directors who are going to go for the throat. You give them their head and you give them the money and you
get out of the way—and you’ll end up with a movie that no one’s going to release because it’s too fucked up.
{laughter} That’s not a commercial venture.
RA: True. If
you’re going to put that kind of money into it, you want to make money off of
it. You want it to be
seen.
SB: That’s right. The movie From Hell validates everything we’ve been talking about. As soon as you put a
graphic novel like From Hell in the mainstream motion picture pipeline, everything is immediately stripped
away that makes From Hell unique—as we all saw.
RA: Movies need a hero and I don’t recall From Hell
necessarily having a real viable hero in it.
SB: Well, it does but it’s Gull. It’s William Gull. It’s the story of the dark spiritual journey of William Gull
and what he does to everyone in his circle and in his wake. How his actions affect everyone in his orbit, from
the prostitutes he kills to the inspectors who are trying to solve the crime to the coach driver, who is the only
human being aware of what Gull is doing. It’s Gull’s story, from childhood to his squalid demise in an
asylum and beyond. That’s the story of From Hell. It functions on a human level and on a cosmological level.
My favorite sequence of From Hell is that moment when Gull has his heart attack and sees the gods, the
Masonic gods and, suddenly, From Hell opens up into this Lovecraftian scale of cosmic awe. You suddenly
see what would seize a human being and drive him to those acts. Whether Gull was, in historical reality, the
perpetrator of the crimes or not doesn’t matter. That’s not what the book’s about. It’s about how a brush
with the infinite creates a monster. And whether you’re talking about such monumentous personal
transformations in real life, like Philip K. Dick, who had a similar brush with the infinite and it knocked him
off the deep end but in a spiritual way—or not, what Alan & Eddie told the story of was how a man became
this murderous monster because of his brush with the infinite. Whether it was real or not doesn’t really
matter.
The film wasn’t about that. The film became what every Jack The Ripper film becomes: “Who done it?” As
soon as you take away Gull’s story so you can set up a fictional narrative film where the mystery is “who is
Jack the
Ripper”--you’ve taken away everything that makes From Hell—From Hell. That’s what
does with these things. It’s rare when a film like American Splendor is made. That is so perfectly attuned to
its material, to its source, to its people and creator Harvey Pekar, that you want to dance. “They got it!”
There’s one more thing I’d like to mention. The ripples keep spreading from Taboo. There’s a filmmaker
here in
interviewed him
while working on a book about
meet creative people I gave him a care package of my work. You know, a set of Tyrant, a couple of Taboo’s
and so on. Ben contacted the creator of ‘Want’, Wendy Snow-Lang, and Ben’s just made a short film that
he’s editing right now, an adaptation of ‘Want’. So the ripples keep spreading and I never know where
they’re going to come from but it’s always interesting when they pop up.
One of my favorite comic series of the last five years or more is Black Hole, Charles Burns’ strip. The final
issue just came out. When I read that last issue, I went back and reread the whole series. It’s just kinda cool
that this originally was that little 4-page scene in Taboo #1.
We were also the only comic publisher publishing S. Clay Wilson at that time. Nobody touches S. Clay’s
work anymore. John Totleben and I thought that was criminal. One of the reasons behind Taboo was that
we were going to publish S. Clay Wilson. Anytime S. Clay’s got something we want we’re going to print it.
RA: I’m sure if Greg Irons had been alive you would
have published him too. I liked his
stuff.
SB: You fucking know it, man. In fact, one of the things that didn’t get published in Taboo was a previously
unpublished Greg Irons’ story that Tom Veitch had written. Tom and I were very good friends for a time.
Tom wanted me to ink it. All he had were Greg’s roughs. I think the story was titled ‘Frenk’s Last Tattoo.’
Pencil roughs on tracing paper and plain paper. I tried it but I just couldn’t do it. It was weird. I even had
dreams about Greg. It was a very troubling experience. I never met Greg. He and I had exchanged letters. I
have a sketch framed on my wall that Greg had sent me because I had left some books at his cabin in
been in Taboo in a heartbeat. I tried to ink the story and I just couldn’t do it. Whenever I’d start I’d be
trying to copy Greg’s brush line and nobody does Greg’s brush line but Greg. It was also kinda creepy. It
was kinda disturbing working on a dead man’s pencils.
RA: {chuckles} It would have been perfect for Taboo
then.
SB: We did put Greg in #1. One of his unpublished sketches is on the inside back cover. The penis-headed
flasher. So I found a way to get him in there. There were a lot of undergrounders I invited—Kim Deitch,
Spain
Rodriguez, Savage Pencil from the UK, whose real name is Edwin Pouncey.
the only thing
we ever ended up running was in conjunction with ‘Eyes Of The Cat’. I contacted
his permission
to the ‘El Topo’ script that had been in one of the rarest underground comix,
which was
actually a catalog for a record company.
It was a great strip. I mean,
four pages! Who can do that?!? {laugher} He could and he did! Whenever I could, I found a way to pay my
debt to the undergrounders because they’re what got me into drawing comics. I owe the world to those
underground comix.
RA: It would have been nice if you’d gotten Richard
Corben. He’d have been good there.
SB: I asked Richard repeatedly. In fact, Richard and I had, for a number of years, an exchange of numbers
and phone calls. At the time of Taboo Richard was just didn’t think he had anything to offer Taboo. At the
time he was reprinting his own work again and, if you recall, he was censoring his work.
RA: Yeah, I have those books. He was also complaining about censoring his
work, but he felt the marketplace
wouldn’t take his work as it originally appeared.
SB: Well, he felt he had to do it. Part of it was that market concern that Richard felt was very real but part
of it too, I think, was a personal struggle. That’s just me interpreting our handful of conversations. I would
have loved to have Richard. The invite was out there.
RA: It would have been great to have had Bruce
Jones, for that matter.
SB: Bruce Jones at that time was focused on writing for television and also writing mystery novels. In the
1980s & early 1990s you had top draw comic creators from Bruce Jones and Howard Chaykin who were
focused very intently on writing feature films and television. Bruce Jones and his wife, April, scripted a lot of
the episodes of
The Hitchhiker. Howard Chaykin was fighting
like hell to make his way into
scripted Flash episodes. He wanted to script feature films. Frank Miller was writing Robocop 2, which [the
original] I always thought was lifted wholesale from Chaykin’s American Flagg. The concept and the whole
tenor—the idea of using the TV commercials—that was American Flagg. No two ways about it. Anyhoot,
that was where Bruce Jones was working to get to. A lot of comic professionals, both artists and writers, were
trying to break into the big time.
RA: Yeah, it’s always bugged me that two of the best
comic artists ever were doing storyboards for movies and you
never saw their artwork anymore and that was Berni
Wrightson and Mike Ploog. Although
Ploog, thank God, is
back doing Abadazad and The Stardust Kid.
SB: Alex Toth. Toth has done more artwork for Hanna-Barbera than for the comics.
RA: And Hanna-Barbera’s stuff is mostly crap.
SB: That it is, but Russ Heath has done a lot of that work too. As did Jack Kirby and Dave Stevens for a long
while. It’s hard to make a living in comics. It really is. It was harder for the generation that came out of the
1970s than it was for the 1980s. I turn 50 in a week and a half. I was in my 40s when I was doing Tyrant and
the direct sales market closed down and I found myself in the very shoes of some of my teachers. I’ll never
forget Ric
Estrada coming to class—he was one of our teachers at the
tears because he had just been—there’s no other word for it—shitcanned by DC Comics. He’d worked for
them for decades. Mostly on the war books. He’d never missed a deadline, very conscientious and they
basically said “Ric, we don’t need you anymore. Don’t bother coming around.”
That all came back to me in my mid 40s and, after Tyrant, I couldn’t find a job in comics to save my life. It’s
just the turn of the seasons. It’s like what Bill Loebs is going through right now. Part of its age and part of
it’s the nature of the business and part of it is you’re put in a box—not just in comics but in the music
business, any business—and when it happens you deal with it. Sometimes it’s the luck of the draw.
Sometimes it’s the bed you made. In my case, I had a bad reputation for deadlines. I missed a lot of them. I
caused a lot of headaches. I’d been an outspoken advocate for creator rights. I was very outspoken in print
about the wrongs I saw in the industry. I made my bed and I had to lay in it.
When you work for 25 years in an industry to arrive at a point of autonomy that suddenly isn’t viable when
the business shifts around you—when the direct market collapsed and self-publishing Tyrant wasn’t viable,
where was there left to go? I wasn’t going to go back to doing work for hire for the publishers and they
wouldn’t have me if I was willing to. At that point you change or you die--and I changed. I changed
everything about my life. I’m still who I am but I changed how I make my living, and my kids and my family
are first and foremost. I had to feed them. I had to keep a roof over our heads. That’s it. By hey, it’s was a
great quarter-century in comics for me.
RA: Well, thanks, Steve Bissette. Both for the interview and the years of
enjoyment. It’s been a real
pleasure.
[Additional parts of this interview can or will be
found at the Marvel B&W Horror Magazines and The Early
Independents pages.]
--
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