Marvel After Hours 2

The Dreaded Deadline Doom! Not a relative of Dr. Doom! Like death and taxes, in comics one deadline or another will catch up with all of us.

Fun fact: Prisons during the Civil War often had a ditch around the facility. If you tried to set foot in the ditch, riflemen were on the alert to shoot you. One of the reasons we know about this in popular culture today is The Andersonville Trial. It was a pretty big deal on Broadway as a play—for us geek/genre people, William Shatner was fresh from Star Trek when he starred in the movie version!

Dead-line! If only legendary Mom and noted Traffic Director of all things schedule, Virginia Romita, was so equipped with a rifle! I just feel in my bones she could not shoot straight. Alas, she had other lethal methods…

Here we are! September 7, 1990, a Friday night— all-things-Punisher Editor Don Daley, had dreamed up photo-cover for me to. This time involving some craft prop building. In an up-coming issue of The Punisher War Journal, the Punisher is doing something at a wedding (two guesses… toasting the groom (literally) or firing heavy machine guns!). Now, I was not given the story—Don just gave me some ideas. Which was all I needed.

Of course, this was a quick turn-around so I was in the office before closing time with my gigantic box of camera gear and monster tripod. I had spent time at Charrette picking up some foam core and maybe some black chip board. (Charrette started life as an architectural specialty supply outfit – I spent a lot of time there from “Day One” –in fact, my discount card was signed by one of the store’s founders! And—its second store was very close to Marvel’s Editorial offices.)

My pack-rat brain—filled with stuff and nonsense– took me to one of those wonderful New York City stores, The Last Wound-Up. In there was every cheap-jack or ultra-expensive wind-up toy known to Man. And! Party and wedding cake decoration gimmicks! It, too, was not far from the Marvel offices.

So I had everything I needed to build and shoot this prop in one night. I had to wait for the place to clear out. The place had gotten pretty big by 1990; there were a lot of people working after 5PM. But this was a Friday night after all and many people tootled off to have fun, I suppose.

You guys remember “Friday Night?”

As of right now, this is all about the reality of comic freelancers. You guys might think of Friday night as “Date Night!” Not freelance comic artists. Oh no—our Fridays are just as likely filled with the wails of Editors and the clear threats of Virginia Romita ringing in our ears as anything like a pleasant outing with some loved one.

In this case, this Friday night in the Marvel Bullpen belonged to myself and Mark Texeira! Or more correctly, Tex and me belonged to Punisher War Journal Editor, Don Daley.

I first met Tex not long after he stepped across town from DC to Marvel. I was Editor Tom DeFalco’s assistant on Buckaroo Banzai (or: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8^th Dimension (!). In case you don’t know about this cult fave movie—run, don’t walk, to your nearest source for movies—it is that much fun and that good. Starring Peter Weller and a huge pile of top-notch actors in the ensemble. No less than John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Chris Lloyd, it goes on—I mean, this cast is truly remarkable.) Tom heard about Tex and tapped him to do the comic that appeared in the movie.

Ultimately Tex also did the Limited Series of that movie adaptation.

Tex was this really talented fellow who just kept getting bigger and bigger. You may know him from his luscious painted renderings of Vampirella—arguably it was Tex’s painterly fine work that ushered in yet another rebirth of the character!

As 1990 ground on, Tex got caught up in the deadline follies and there he was, setting up shop at about the same time as I was. He was also working on The Punisher War Journal—though I’m pretty sure it was not the same book I was shooting the cover for.

Here’s that cover:

And here’s Tex and his posse!

Aside from Tex himself in red, the only person I can figure out is Redoubtable Mike Harris, leaning over to image right. It was standard practice to ask for help doing various parts of a job. Mike was a very talented penciler and inker himself—having a fellow like that in the mix made for a good time if for no other reason than one could rest easy knowing that the job would look good.

I have two exposures covering a period of time as little as a minute. They are so close that I could toss one and never miss it. The exposure is so long that the fellow standing is blurred to the same degree. Only Tex held still. The other fellows are deep in spiritual communion with their pages…

This is very much what you would see if you posted yourself at this end of the Art Correction area filled with artists known as Geiger’s Counters! (Formerly: Romita’s Raiders! Steve Geiger who is a sublimely gifted artist did two good things for Marvel apart from his comic book work. He was on-staff as the leader of the Counters and introduced us to his equally sublimely beautiful wife, Dawn Geiger, who also came on-staff in various Bullpen positions, eventually running the place!)

But I wasn’t in there with my enormous camera to take pictures of comic artists! Right after this, I dragged my rig off to a distant corner near a flat table and got to work. (A pitiable side note is that this damned 4×5 camera was such a beast that I did not bring a smaller camera to take in-progress pictures. Well, I wasn’t looking ahead to this day, just getting that cursed cake made!)

To make this three-tiered wedding cake, I prepared some foam core with X-Acto knife and sheet-rock joint compound (Spackle) as glue. If I’d had the sense God gave an architect, I’d have gotten some cake icing and piped it on the edges. On the other hand, what I did have was the sense God gave a freelancer and settled for slapping it together as quickly as possible.

I did not have sense to ignore Don and Kevin’s various suggestions, such as the one about having the bride “endangered” and hanging over the edge of the cake. So I carved off the bride’s arms and rebuilt them with the Spackle. NOT good sculpting material… Oh, she looks endangered all right. The reality was maddeningly flimsy but all it had to do was hold together long enough for a couple of exposures.

I had to paint up the Punisher’s own skull shirt and add the logo in blood to the cake. I was in the Bullpen, finding some paint of any color was no prob! I used Staff Colorist Paul Becton’s color set to add some flesh to the bride’s arms. All in a night’s work!

Well, not quite! New York City was a professional photographer’s best friend back in this day. To be sure, I never considered myself a ‘pro’ by any means; my equipment was bare minimum—my efforts were more to overcome budgetary limits. My use of 4×5 equipment at all had been underwritten by my gearing up for the cross-country jaunt that was taking pictures for Marvel’s first coffee table book, Marvel — Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics.

The equipment mandated a cab ride, but normally not far from Marvel was New York Filmworks on 21^st St. and Broadway! An amazing place that was open 24-hours a day and would –for a price—process your film while you waited. I made my way over there at around 9PM and dropped off my film holders. To be picked up the following Monday! Over the years I had made use of the place to the point I knew the staff. Jan, a wholesome and knowledgeable worthy, greeted me with her usual f64 smile!

A good way to end a freelancer’s night. Ooops, nope; another cab ride back home!