In the past, when an artist who had a big influence on me has passed away, I've done a sketch as a tribute. This week, Joe Kubert, one of the most talented and unique voices in comics, passed away. Instead of posting a sketch I thought I'd share a short story I wrote a few years back in a writing class I took at The Story Studio here in Chicago.
I once read an interview with Joe where he mentioned that the way his house was laid out he had to go through his sons' bedroom to get to his studio. It was just a little aside that was part of a bigger anecdote, but that detail stuck with me and became the genesis of this story, which is not intended in any way to be factual - it was just a chance for me to imagine living and working in the golden age of comics...
BLAME
IT ON ERROL FLYNN
Pav
Kovacic
It was almost
nine-thirty when the front door to the small New Jersey bungalow
swung open and Joe walked in, carrying a leather art portfolio and a
bundle wrapped in brown paper.
“Muriel! I'm
home!”
“Quiet. You'll
wake the boys.” Joe's wife Muriel threw a dish towel over her
shoulder as she walked in from the kitchen. “You know how hard it
is to get them to bed when you're not here.”
“Oh, Damn. Sorry.
I forgot how late it was.”
With a quick kiss
Joe handed his things to Muriel so he could take off his jacket.
“What's in this package?” she asked.
“They were
throwing out a bunch of old art boards at the office. I thought the
boys would get a kick out of looking at them. Most of 'em are junk,
but there are a few nice Superman pages by Curt Swan in there.” Joe
headed towards the kitchen. “What's for dinner? I'm starved.”
“Chicken and
dumplings. I've been keeping it warm for you. I hope the chicken
hasn't dried out, it was good when the boys and I ate.” Muriel hung
Joe's jacket in the front closet before following him. “Why are you
so late getting home?”
“Carmine cornered
me on my way out. He needed to vent and I became his exhaust pipe.”
As they passed
through the living room, Joe saw that the news was on the television.
The big story was Mickey Mantle's upcoming two thousandth game this
Saturday. Joe quickly calculated that he had drawn at least twice
that number of comic book pages in his career. Maybe someday they
would have Joe Kubert Day at Yankee Stadium.
“What was it this
time?”
“Oh, everyone at
the office is going crazy because Stan Lee's got a new book over at
Marvel with another one of his weirdo characters that's selling like
gangbusters. 'Spider-Man', this one's called. He's a little nebbish
that gets bitten by a radio-active spider and ends up crawling up
walls and shooting webs out of his ass or something like that.”
“Joe!”
“I don't know.
All I know is that Weisinger's driving Carmine up the wall, wanting
to know how we're going to compete with that, so now Carmine's
driving me up a wall. Sometimes I wonder if taking the art director
job was a mistake. When I was just freelancing I didn't have to deal
with all of this crap.”
“The problem is,
you took the job and still do freelance work at night. I keep telling
you that you can't do both.” Joe knew where this line of
conversation was going as he sat down to his dinner. Muriel leaned
against the sink, arms crossed, “I don't know why you stay with
these comic books. You could be making more money in advertising and
you wouldn't have to work eighty hours a week.”
“If I worked in
advertising, I'd be drawing packs of Chesterfields and Pepto-Bismol
bottles all day. No thanks, I'd hang myself inside of a week. By the
way, the chicken is not dry, it's perfect.”
Joe's compliment
temporarily deflected Muriel, who grabbed her towel, turned with a
sigh, and went back to drying the dishes. Joe went back to his
dumplings. He knew she was right, but he also believed what he had
said. He knew plenty of artists who had been lured into advertising
by the money, only to come back to comics a year or two later.
As his friend and
fellow artist Gil Kane always said, “Blame it on Errol Flynn.”
Just about everyone working in comics at that time had grown up
during the Depression, and they all had fond memories of the times
they could scrape together the money needed to spend a Saturday
afternoon at the cinema. They enjoyed the serialized exploits of
cowboys, interstellar explorers and G-men, but most of all they loved
the swashbuckling features starring screen idols like Errol Flynn.
Every time Gil, Joe
and the others put pencil to paper they were trying to recreate the
feelings of wonder and joy they felt while watching Captain Blood,
The Adventures of Robin Hood, and The Sea Hawk. The fact that Joe was
only twelve when he got his first paying job drawing comics made
these childhood connections even stronger.
By the time he was
finished with dinner, the tension between Joe and Muriel was gone.
Muriel had no complaints about Joe as a husband or father. It just
upset her to see him work so hard for so little reward, especially
now that their boys, Adam and Andy, were showing an interest and a
talent for drawing comic books themselves. She made Joe a pot of
coffee to fuel his late night work session before going off to bed.
Joe's studio was in
the small, third bedroom upstairs. Due to an architectural mystery
the Kuberts were never able to solve, Joe had to go through Adam and
Andy's room to get to it. When he was only doing freelance work, it
wasn't a problem since he worked during the day when the boys were at
school. Now that he had to take the train into Manhattan and put in a
full day at the office, there were many nights when he didn't sit
down at his drawing board until after the boys were already asleep.
Tip-toeing into
their room, coffee thermos and portfolio in hand, Joe looked in on
his sons. Adam was the oldest and took after his father physically.
He was short and stocky and enjoyed playing baseball as much as he
enjoyed comic books. Andy was fairer and slighter, and had been
wearing glasses since he was six. He was the dreamer of the pair.
On the desk that
the boys shared Joe noticed that Andy had been copying from the
anatomy book that Joe had given them. Both boys impressed him with
their desire to learn the craft. He tried to give them lessons
whenever he could to help direct their energies, but they managed to
fill up reams of paper with their drawings with or without his
guidance. He felt a swell of pride mixed with a little bit of regret
at the thought of his sons following him into such a demanding
business.
Joe clicked on the
big fluorescent light on his drawing table and sat down with the
script he brought home from the office. The story was about 'The
Viking Prince', a minor character from one of DC's older titles that
Joe thought had the potential to become a lead feature. He was a
Viking warrior who had offended the gods by falling in love with a
Valkyrie and was cursed with immortality, thus denying him entry into
Valhalla.
Joe was working
with Bob Kanigher, the writer who had first created the character,
and both of them were excited about the new project. Joe had been
building up his morgue files with Viking reference and had even
rented a 16mm print of 'The Vikings' with Kirk Douglas. He would stop
the projector whenever he found a shot he liked and Muriel would
quickly snap a picture of it before the heat from the bulb melted the
film.
Now, as he read
through the script, doodling layouts for the panels and pages in the
margins, he felt his enthusiasm drop a bit. He thought about all the
furor at the office over the new books Marvel was putting out. Even
though Stan Lee was the same age as Joe and the rest of their
contemporaries, he seemed to understand what the kids today were
interested in, what scared them, what got them excited. Even college
students were starting to read Marvel books. They said the stories
were 'hip' and 'cool.'
DC comics had never
been 'hip' or 'cool', they were the comics that parents felt safe
giving their children to read. It had been a long time since Superman
had fought the Nazi's or even a monster from outer space. These days,
he kept busy fighting off Lois Lane's matrimonial advances and taking
care of his stable of super pets. Joe was glad that he'd never had to
draw Beppo, the super chimp.
“Dad?” Lost in
his thoughts, Joe didn't know how long Andy had been standing in the
doorway between the boys' room and his studio. “Andy, jeez, your
mother's going to kill both of us if she finds out you're up.”
Andy walked over to
his father's drawing table and into the light. He was carrying the
drawings Joe had seen on the desk. “I wanted to show you my
drawings. I wanted to make sure you saw them.”
Joe picked Andy up
and set him on his lap and then spread his drawings out on the table.
“I saw them on my way in here. You did a wonderful job. Do you
remember some of the muscle groups I taught you? What's that one
called?”
“That's easy,
it's the biceps.”
“Okay, Mr. Gray's
Anatomy, how about this one?”
“That's
the...pic...pec...pictorial muscle!”
“Pectoral”, Joe
corrected him.
Andy knit his brows
and repeated the word quietly several times. Satisfied with his
critique, Andy gathered up his drawings so he could see what his
father was working on. “What's this, Dad?”
“Oh, just a dumb
story about a Viking.”
“Is he a good
Viking or a bad Viking.”
“He's a good
Viking, a very brave warrior.” Joe had Andy stand up so that he
could take some drawings out of his portfolio. “Here, you want to
see what he's going to look like?”
Andy plopped down
onto the floor, cross legged. “Yeah. Does he have a sword?”
“You bet.” Joe
joined Andy on the floor so that he could spread all of his design
sketches out. He had drawings all of the main characters, including
the Norse Gods, as well as some ideas for Viking ships, sea monsters,
and frost giants. He went through each one, explaining who everyone
was and how they figured into the stories. Each drawing produced more
questions from Andy, and soon Joe found himself retelling the entire
origin of Jon, the Viking Prince.
Just as he got to
the part about the curse from the Gods Joe noticed that Andy was
rubbing his eyes and taking longer and longer to blink. “Alright,
you. I've kept you up long enough. Time to get you back into bed.”
“But I want to
know what happens to Jon the Viking.”
“Tomorrow. I
promise I'll be home for dinner and then I can tell you and your
brother the rest of the story together.” Joe scooped Andy up off of
the floor.
“Promise?”
“Viking's honor.”
Andy was already asleep before he reached the doorway. Joe put him in
his bed and tucked him in. The clock on the wall said it was quarter
past one. “Muriel's going to kill me when she finds out about
this.”
Joe sat back down
at this drawing board, poured himself a cup of the now lukewarm
coffee and got back to work. He didn't think about Stan Lee, or
Spider-Man, or angry publishers for the rest of the night. He was too
busy dreaming about swashbuckling adventures on the high seas.
