I began exploring the EC Comics library in late 2023 and early 2024, inspired by the passionate advocacy of these works by Jim Rugg and Ed Piskor. The deeper I waded into EC’s history, a handful of names kept cropping up: Russ Cochran, Roger Hill, and Grant Geissman. Grant had recently written the magisterial History of EC Comics, and as I looked up who he was, found that he had edited the most formative book of my childhood, MAD About the Sixties. I sat down with Grant in June of this year to discuss his life, his music career, and of course, EC Comics. -Joseph Antoniello
JOSEPH ANTONIELLO: You grew up in San Jose, California. What was the exposure to comics like in San Jose at that time? Was it primarily newsstand, or what did that look like specifically for you in San Jose?
GRANT GEISSMAN: There was a drugstore called West Valley Drug and some kids that were a few years older than me had shown me comic books, so I knew to go down to West Valley Drug. There was a spinner rack, and man, they had everything. I remember holding the first issue of Justice League on that spinner rack. The stuff I was buying when I was a kid—and we're talking like 1961; I was eight years old—it was mostly the DC stuff that I would buy, Superman, Batman, World's Finest, Detective Comics. At some point, also in 1961, the same kids showed me MAD. And I was like, “What is this?,” it was totally fascinating, I'm like, “where did you get this?” It seemed like some kind of contraband or something, and they're just, “go down to the drugstore.” From then on I was buying every issue.
What was it about MAD that really attracted you to it, over the DC work that you had been collecting up to that point?
Well, it was kind of like a window into some other adult kind of world. Obviously, there was Don Martin and stuff that you could understand, even as a kid. I got it and liked the artwork. In one of those early issues, they had done a parody of the soap opera, Peyton Place. No eight-year-old is gonna know about Peyton Place, but it had great Mort Drucker artwork, and it was like, “I don't know what this is, but it's really cool.”
I remember my first issue [of MAD]. It was issue 344, with Whoopi Goldberg with the Oscar and I was like, “That's the weirdest thing I've ever seen.” My uncle paid me four dollars to shovel all the dog crap out of the backyard, and I was able to go buy my first issue of MAD, but then MAD About the Sixties was sort of the same thing. It was the first collection of comics I ever had.
What goes into putting some of those compilations together? Was it just “these are the things that made me laugh the most as a kid,” or was it you went back and said, these are actually the very best?
The whole reason it came about is, the first book that I ever did is called Collectibly MAD (Kitchen Sink Press, 1995) Through that process I met Charlie Kochman, an editor at DC, he was in charge of MAD book projects and stuff like that. Because of Collectibly MAD, he hired me to do these books that you're talking about; MAD About the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties.
The Sixties was really easy to do because I was so familiar with all that material. I would go back and say “Yes, I think this is the best and I also think these certain things really reflect the time period.” We divided [each decade] into three: there's the early part of any decade that usually has a certain feel, the mid part has another feel, and the later part has yet another feel. I still had to interface with the MAD editors. I would pick everything that I thought was great. Way more than they could fit in one volume, and then they would hone it down to the best stuff.
So, who was editing MAD at that point in 1995?
Nick Meglin and John Ficarra.
The introductions to all of those volumes is this really tongue-in-cheek, back-and-forth with you and Nick Meglin. What was that like, writing those together?
I would write my introduction as [a] straight history, and Nick would interject his stuff. It was okay. It was sort of funny, but the stuff that he added wasn't really necessary. In fact, Al Feldstein, who was the editor for many years, he said, “What is Nick doing in there? None of that stuff matters. What you wrote is solid stuff and then there's Nick. Why is he there anyway?” But it was funny, and I guess it sort of fit the MAD concept.
You mentioned in another interview that your mom had thrown away a bunch of your comics. But you said, “Okay, but don't throw away my MAD magazines.” What was it about MAD that, over your [other] comics, you were like, no, this is the important one?
I had to draw the line somewhere, and MAD was more important than Superman and Batman. It just was. The other thing she threw away were two and a half sets of Mars Attacks cards. A buddy of mine showed me these things at school, and I went down to the five and ten where he found them, and they were gone. But then right after that, I found them in a little card vending machine at Shopwell Market. So, any time my mom would go to the market, I said, can we go to Shopwell? I would have a handful of nickels, and would keep buying cards until I got two and a half sets of Mars Attacks cards. Every now and then, she would go through my room and throw stuff away. I was like, “What are you doing? You know what? You are not to throw my MAD magazines away.” And I never put that on my daughter, I never made her throw away stuff. So she might have other issues with me, but that’s not one of them! [laughter]
In 1964 you came across the first Ballantine EC books. What was it that stood out for those? What was the process of even finding those books in 1964?
In San Jose there was a place called Town & Country Village, a really nice outdoor mall, and one of the stores in there was called Books, Inc. [where] I would find MAD paperbacks: The MAD Reader, MAD Strikes Back, all the early Ballantine ones, plus the Signet ones that were coming out at the time. So sometime at the end of ‘64, I went in, and sitting there right next to those MAD paperbacks was the Ballantine Tales from the Crypt paperback. I picked it up and immediately realized this connected to MAD in some way, since it had Jack Davis art. The second volume was Tales of the Incredible, it had some other MAD artists, Wally Wood, Joe Orlando. And reading an EC story, it was light years away from Superman and Batman, which are really pretty sanitized. 'Imaginary' stories like “Superman marries Lois Lane,” and stuff like that. For the next couple years a new Ballantine EC-related paperback would come out, there were five of them in all, and I was hooked.
Did you stick with it primarily because you knew these artists from MAD and already loved them from MAD, or was it the strength of the stories?
It was all of it. I loved the artwork, and I understood that Bill Gaines, who published MAD, and was responsible for these comics as well. For some reason, San Jose was one of the places in the United States that had the very first comic shops. The first thing that happened was in 1967 a classmate of mine, Mark Free, his brother Ken was a big Edgar Rice Burroughs fan. He contributed to some Burroughs fanzines, and he had tons of comics as well. In fact, that's where I first saw early, dittoed comics fanzines, at this guy's house. One time I went and told them that I was looking for old MAD comics and stuff. And I had never actually seen one, but I knew about them, and he said, “There's this guy in New York named Howard Rogofsky. His prices are higher than they should be, but if you want old MADs, he definitely has them.” So I wrote for a catalog , and Rogofsky had MAD number one for 15 dollars, and various other MADs for much cheaper, maybe three, four dollars. I was gonna send in three dollars, which I already had, to buy some later issue of MAD and my dad—bless his heart—goes, “Why don't you save up for a few weeks and just get number one for 15 dollars?” And so, I did that: I saved up 15 dollars, went and bought a money order, and mailed it to Howard Rogofsky. So, I had MAD number one, and then somebody told me—maybe Ken Free—that some guys had just opened up a little comic book shop in downtown San Jose. I would have only been 14, so I rode the bus to downtown San Jose and found this little hole-in-the-wall comic shop, and there I met Bud Plant, Dick Swan, and Jim Buser. There were six or seven guys, high school kids, that pooled their resources and opened this little comic shop. Then I had a local connection for buying ECs and old MADs and stuff like that, and I bought a lot of stuff from Bud Plant. We're still buddies, I do special tip-in sheets for Bud Plant Books, because he’s always supported all of our projects. I also got a lot of EC’s from Dick Swan. Then soon after that, Bob Sidebottom opened up a comic shop on the same street, and he always had great stuff.
How did you really track down EC comics in those days? Comics were definitely more ephemeral then—I feel like that must have been sort of work to track those down.
There was a fanzine called the Rocket’s Blast Comic Collector that I subscribed to. People were selling all kinds of old comics, stuff from the ‘40s, whatever. I ordered a fair amount of stuff from a guy down in LA. There were two brothers sell[ing] comics, [Jeff and Rob Gluckson] and Mark Evanier was buddies with him. They had a little comic club in LA, so I remember sending away for ECs from those guys. And just through ads, it wasn't impossible to find them.
So, as you started getting into high school, did comics ever take a backseat for you when it came to music?
I kept up with it, and in fact, my mom hated that I had old comics and was interested in this stuff. She thought I should do my schoolwork and practice the guitar, she thought that's all I should do. She would say, “This is garbage. This is never going to amount to anything,” and I'm like, “Okay, whatever.” Then I would just kind of quietly go about my collecting. I never threw the stuff away and I kept at it. I kind of got back at her years later, because my first book came out, Collectibly MAD. I amassed this big collection and pitched this book to Bill Gaines, and one thing led to another. When it finally came out I said, “Mom, look at this. You said it would never amount to anything!” [laughter] But she was actually proud of it, and she would go buy copies of my books from Dick Swan, who by then had his own comic shop.
You’ve said elsewhere that your mother was really supportive of your music. Was it more, this sort of California kind of libertine thing happening in the late ‘60s or was it more just your parents being supportive, saying “you can pursue your dreams, and you'll probably do pretty well at it”?
It was more like that. There was music running in my family. My father was actually a professional drummer before World War II. After the war, he got into other things. My grandfather was an amateur banjo player, as a hobby. My grandmother, she had stopped playing by the time I came along, but I heard that back in the 1930s she was a pretty good ragtime piano player. There was this music gene running through the family. The first music I ever heard as a kid in elementary school was, [from] some kids that had a surf music band around the corner from me. If I knew they were going to be practicing, I'd run home after school and go watch them play. I just remember the chrome glinting off these Fender Jaguar guitars and thought, “This is pretty cool. I like this.” When the Beatles came out it was like, “Okay, that's it, guitars are cool. I want one,” and I badgered my parents for probably six months. I'm sure they thought “He’s gonna outgrow this,” but then finally under the tree that Christmas, there was an acoustic guitar and that started me on my way.
So, my parents were very supportive of it. I remember, probably something like eighth grade, they had a career day. They presented all this stuff: You could be a doctor, you could be a lawyer, whatever. I went home and I told my mom, “I don't care about any of this,” and she goes, “You like to play guitar. Why don't you do that?” I'm like, “What? You can earn money playing the guitar?” She goes, “Yeah, you could play in a pit orchestra in San Francisco, or work on a cruise ship, or a nightclub.” She was just throwing out stuff and that was it. In high school I was involved in journalism with the school newspaper, I won some little awards, whatever, but the music thing was so strong that I never really pursued writing, but I always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to write a book about something.
By the late 1980s, I had a pretty big collection of EC and MAD. I had gone in to meet met Bill Gaines in 1988. I had gone to New York with this artist, David Benoit, to play Carnegie Hall. The bass player in the band and I started talking about MAD and he's like, “I think you can just go down there, and they'll give you a little tour,” He and I went and toured MAD,and I had brought some pictures of my stuff and the guy that was giving the tour goes, “Oh, you're a real collector. You got to go in and meet Bill.” So, we go in and I meet Bill, and I said, “I've eaten it at the Carnegie Deli, but I've never played at Carnegie Hall,” and he thought that was funny. That kind of opened the door, and I started thinking about my collection, rare stuff like the MAD Straight Jacket, Alfred E. Neuman busts and buttons, MAD records, pins, all the stuff they offered through MAD, and thought, “there's a book sitting here waiting to be written that no one has ever done.” I wrote this little letter to Gaines pitching this thing, didn't hear anything for quite a while and thought, I guess Bill doesn't like the idea. And then one day, his publisher representative called me and said, “Bill's intrigued with your idea and he wants to see some sample chapters.” I was like, “Oh, crap! Now I have to do this, because I can't disappoint Bill Gaines.” So, I stayed up late every night for about a week and put a couple sample chapters together. I had a buddy of mine come over with a camera and take a bunch of pictures of my stuff, and sent in that proposal. Bill liked the idea, and gave me a permission letter to shop the book around. If I could get a publisher, he would agree that there could be a deal there, and Kitchen Sink Press went for it. That's how that first book came out.
When was it that you first proposed the book to Bill Gaines?
It was 1989. Prior to the proposal, I had written a letter asking him questions like “How many MAD Straight Jackets do you think you sold? How many pieces of MAD jewelry? How many busts of Alfred E. Neuman?” No one had ever asked those kinds of questions about stuff that you had to send in directly through the magazine. Initially, I thought, “Maybe I'll write a little article,” then he wrote back, and he had very specific answers. He would write directly on your letter and send your letter back to you. And he puts a rubber stamp on it about his “speed reply.” When I got the letter back I realized this could be a whole book. Once we had the deal in place with Kitchen Sink, I arranged an interview with Gaines. I walked to the MAD office from my hotel, I had my little video camera and tripod, I was like, “Wow! I'm going to interview Bill Gaines right now! This is amazing!”
The book didn't come out until 1995, you mentioned that you sent Gaines a copy of the manuscript, that you had a bound copy of the manuscript that you sent to him, when was that?
I sent it probably in 1991. It had no pictures, just the manuscript, printed on an Apple dot matrix printer. He went through that and made his corrections, that's what I later had bound, and I still have it. But then there were hundreds and hundreds of images to be shot, someone had to design this thing and put it all together. It was Kitchen Sink Press, a small publisher, so there was really no money in it. Three or four different designers started working on it and then bailed out. It was too much work for no money. I realized if this was going to happen, I'm going to have to figure out how to do this. I bought a scanner and Quark Xpress for Dummies, by the seat of my pants, I figured out how to populate images, and how to move stuff around. I distinctly remember reading in the book about how to put a picture in a picture box. I could see it coming in from behind. It was like, “This is magic, I did it!” Anyway, I ended up putting a big part of it together at the end. Because I had to.
You moved from the Bay Area down to Los Angeles, there was a burgeoning mini-comics and fanzine culture popping up then. Because you had already had some exposure to that when you were younger, did any of that continue?
Yeah, for sure. There was a music store I used to go to in Studio City called Valley Arts Guitar. This would have been maybe 1975. I'm driving along Ventura Blvd. and see a sign for the American Comic Book Company, up on a second floor. So, I go up there and meet Terry Stroud and David T. Alexander, the owners of the shop. These guys actually coined a lot of the terms we hear now like “good girl art,” “injury to the eye motif,” and all that. They were just going through comics and identifying these genres that are now common phraseology. I joined Chuck Mangione’s band at the beginning of 1977, I'd go on the road and I was earning a decent living, then come home for a few weeks and I'd go into American Comic Book Company. I'd say, “Did you get any new ECs while I was gone?” I’d buy more ECs from Terry Stroud and David T. Alexander. Artist Scott Shaw also worked there for a while.
I remember seeing an ad for Squa Tront number two in 1968. Then by the time I got down here, I also discovered Collector’s Bookstore in Hollywood, a major hub for comic collecting. Those Squa Tronts were just stunning to me. Even the early Squa Tronts were beautifully done. They had half pages, double covers, just incredible stuff to see in a fanzine. When John Benson came in as editor, it was a much more scholarly approach. Benson has done just absolutely stunning research on EC writers, he dug up all sorts of arcane information that really no one else would have been able to dig out.
Do you think that EC fanzine culture played a significant role in the longevity of EC Comics, or do you think that it was just being kept in print by Ballantine that kept it alive?
EC really never went away. These fanzines kept the flame burning. In 1978, Cochran announced the first title in the Complete EC Library—and he announced his intention to create these box sets, complete EC titles. There was a fair amount of “He's never going to be able to do this. This is an impossible task.” But little by little, each volume would come out, Cochran did it. It took him like 30 years, but it happened. And that really is what kept EC going. There were more comic shops, and what that meant is a producer could go in, buy the entire set of Weird Science or Tales from the Crypt and go, “Hey, there might be a TV or a movie project here.” That's why the HBO Tales from the Crypt series happened.
How did you first meet Russ Cochran? And you two worked together on GC Press, correct?
I was participating a little bit in his auctions; buying MAD artwork. We only did two books, sadly. Russ, for as many great things as he did for EC, he was definitely an obsessive. I heard some horror stories from Wendy and Cathy Gaines, since both of them were at various times in charge of EC copyrights and publishing. They told me Russ would get fixated on an idea and call many days in a row, like 10 or 20 times a day, trying to get them to agree to something. He proposed that we start GC Press together, and it seemed like a great idea. Initially it worked very, very well, because he did the stuff that I don't like to do, like the administrative stuff. I did more the editorial side. At that point I had come to an agreement with Al Feldstein to do his coffee table biography. I'd nursed that project along for years, and it finally happened, through GC Press. I was also neck deep in TV work, I was incredibly busy and fairly stressed, but plowing ahead, working on the Feldstein book, but still kind of at the beginning of it. At some point, Russ said, “I don't think you can design this book. What you do is not good enough for Feldstein. I want this other guy to design it.” I'm like, Whoa. I had already designed Foul Play! The Art and Artists of the Notorious E.C. Comics!, and the Tales of Terror book.
I knew he was obsessive, but this book was my baby. I knew exactly what it was supposed to look like. I had interviewed Feldstein, had all this material. We were arguing back and forth, and he said, “Well, if I'm not a partner and I don't have a say, then maybe we should dissolve the company,” and foolishly, because I was quite stressed, I was like, “You know what, that's a great idea, because if this is the way my life is going to be for the next X number of years, I can't do it.” I was already so busy with TV stuff and then trying to work on books, I can't have this extra thing. So, unfortunately, that's what happened. Now looking back, I do regret not trying harder to make that work, but I just couldn't see my way out of it at that particular moment.
What do you think made Russ so obsessive on that point?
Russ was always obsessive, which is probably why he was able to do all those things with all the various EC reprints. I always loved the Kitchen Sink Press logo, designed by the great Dale Crain. I actually recommended Crain to create the GC Press logo, and really loved what he did. At some point early on, Russ was also working on a book on The Four Freshman, a popular group in the 1950s and early 1960s. They were using some 1950s cars, with all that chrome, as part of the imagery, and Russ got it in into his head that the GC Press logo should now look like it was made out of chrome, which obviously had nothing to do with EC! Russ really had that idea firmly in his head, but Dale Crain and I finally convinced him that that logo would work if we were doing a book about cars, but not for the EC books. Russ finally said okay. But Russ wanted Dale to design the Feldstein book, Russ then did an end run around me and went directly to Feldstein about it. Al asked Russ, “Does this guy know my work? Does he know the history of EC? Does he have the material?” The answer was no, and Al, bless him, told Russ he still wanted me to do it. But we ultimately came to a parting of the ways, unfortunately. When the Feldstein book finally came out from IDW, Russ sent me a nice email saying what a good job I had done on that book. Of course, it was exactly the same job I would have done if it was a GC Press book, but we had dissolved the company by then.
You guys did two volumes together-
One was The Haunt of Fear, and the second was The Vault of Horror. Originally when Russ did his Complete EC Library, he had Marie Severin redo all the colors on the covers. They couldn't use the old, original, EC hand-colored silver prints because the coloring codes were all different back in the fifties, so he had Marie do new watercolors, and calling out more modern color codes.
She had already done quite a number of these volumes. When they got to The Vault of Horror, she asked Russ, “Can I just color these any way I feel like now and not be restricted to the original coloring?” and Russ said okay. I hated that because the colorings of the covers were wildly different. I said, “I don't want to use these colorings if we're going to do our own Vault of Horror volume.” So, I proposed shooting the original comic covers and touching them up, that's what we did for that volume. Russ was happy with it, and the fans were happy.
What was it like working with Feldstein?
Well, I knew Al from before. I met him in 1992 at a convention in Los Angeles, and later spent some extra time with him through Jerry Weist, because Weist arranged this meeting between Al Feldstein and Ray Bradbury here in Santa Monica. He rented a hotel room and they shot video. It was the first time Feldstein and Bradbury had ever met in person. Jerry brought original EC art and books and reference stuff. I had been commissioning paintings from Feldstein for quite a while, one of them was an oil painting of the Weird Fantasy 20 cover, which is related to “I, Rocket,” a Ray Bradbury story. Jerry said, “Bring that cover painting down and we'll show it. We'll have Ray look at it and Al will be there, and he can show Ray what he's been doing with these paintings.” And then we all went out to dinner, and we even went to see one of Bradbury's plays. He would put on these little local kind of 99-seater plays based on his books.
For my Tales of Terror! The EC Companion book, in 1996 I had gone up to Livingston, Montana, and spent three days with Al just interviewing him. I borrowed a bunch of really early, pre-EC comics from Glenn Bray and had all this stuff to show Al. It was amazing, he had a tremendous memory at that time. I would pull up a Sunny or Junior or some other comic he worked on, and he would go, “Oh, this was a little mom and pop, husband and wife firm. And they were on Fifth Avenue, and I'd go up to the third floor . . .” It would trigger these memories, and it was so great. That became the backbone interview of the Tales of Terror! The EC Companion book.
I kept commissioning paintings and talking to him, and he had been wanting to get a biography, a coffee table book about his life and career. He was trying to get that to happen for many years. So finally he goes, “I think you're the only guy that can pull this off.” We did a deal memo, and I started shopping it around, it ended up being a co-pub with Fantagraphics and Gemstone. Working on that book was great. It came out, and coincided with the big EC Reunion dinner they had at the San Diego Comic-Con, in July of 2000. Virtually all of the surviving EC artists were there. The only surviving EC people that didn't come were Johnny Craig and John Severin, but that night was incredible.
You and Russ performed an original song on that occasion. Could you tell me about that?
We played two songs, but they weren’t original, they were parody lyrics sung to the tune of “Seems Like Old Times” and the “Ballad of Davy Crockett.” A number of weeks before the event, Russ proposed that we do this. A week before, Russ called and was getting cold feet about the idea. I said that it was going to be fine, so we got together the day before in my hotel room next door and wrote the parody lyrics. That was very surreal, playing for the EC gang! I distinctly remember Jack Kamen laughing at a reference to him, Feldstein beaming and smiling his approval, Jack Davis nodding in time to the music, and on “Ballad of Bill Gaines” I saw Bill’s widow Annie singing the chorus with us at the top of her lungs. It was truly an incredible night, with all that EC original art there, that amazing reunion of the EC staff. A once in a lifetime event.
How long did you work on that book with Al? What was the process of getting the facts and getting the biography down?
It's kind of a blur now. The Feldstein book, it was about two years. I had that big interview with him from 1996. I went back up to Livingston, Montana, for another three days and asked him all the questions that I never asked him in the original interview. I wrote it and designed it at the same time, I designed the front matter and chapter one, I’d have a picture of Al as a kid. Then I just started writing, and then I'd write a few pages and then write a little more and say, “Now I need this, now I need that.” And that's how I did it for the whole book. When I got a chapter done, I would make a PDF and email it to Al. Mostly, he loved it. He might have a few little suggestions or something, but primarily it was just like, “Great, move on.”
Tell me how The History of EC Comics book came together. Did you see that as the natural progression or maybe the final iteration of working on Tales of Terror! and Foul Play?
I have a very nice relationship with the Gaines estate because I've done so many books. And at some point Taschen went to them, and they were wanting to do this book, and the Taschen people already knew who I was. Both agreed that I should be the guy to do this book. Originally, they only wanted to focus on what we might say were the prime years of EC, basically 1950 to 1956. And I said, look, you have an opportunity to literally tell the entire history of EC Comics, starting with M.C. Gaines, totally on the ground floor of the comics industry and then take it all the way up to 1956, and even have an aftermath. Why EC is even still talked about, the underground people latching on to it, the Gary Arlington connection in San Francisco, turning all the underground artists onto the EC stuff. I saw it as this very long, entire history. To their credit, they let me run with it. And that book, I remember exactly, took three years. [After the initial 2020 publication] it went into a second printing. And you can still get copies at various places. I guess it might it be sold out from Taschen.
Taschen’s done a few, like the Jamie Hewlett Art book, reduced down from being oversized to almost a trade size or even just over mass market. Do you foresee anything happening like that with future editions of your book?
I would think so. They don't tell that kind of stuff. But I imagine since that's what they do, it wouldn't surprise me that there would be a smaller version at some point.
That was your fourth Eisner nomination. What's it like being nominated for an Eisner, getting that recognition from your peers in the industry? Because it's not just obviously book people, but even store owners and creators that are propping up the nomination.
Well, it's extremely flattering, especially when you consider that this is not my main career in a way. It's kind of this side thing that I do. And it's tremendously flattering to me. And it'd be like, “Mom, guess what? I've been nominated for an Eisner. You said this would never amount to anything!” I would love to show her this ginormous History of EC Comics. She passed away a few years ago at age 99 and a half, so I did get to rub a few things in her face over the years. [laughter]
You got to get a couple nominations in there and let her know about it. And speaking of peer recognition, you were also nominated for your first Grammy in 2022, for the album Blooz. What was the process of getting that together? Why do you think this album stood out among your peers, resulting in the Grammy nomination?
It was basically an album that I always wanted to make. It’s called Blooz because it’s my take on various aspects of the blues, more jazzy than a straight-up blues album. It had some amazing guest artists, like Randy Brecker on trumpet, Tom Scott on sax, and guitar-wise Robben Ford, John Jorgenson, Joe Bonamassa, and Josh Smith. I really loved doing that project!
I do want to go back to your main career a little bit because we sort of just glossed over that. You started working with Chuck Mangione in 1976.
Maybe you could tell me a little bit more about how you met Chuck and some of the precursor stuff. You were studying with Jerry Hahn, and then working with Chuck Mangione. They sort of feel like DC and MAD. They feel like they're very, very different from the outside. What was that process like going from working with somebody who's really introducing you to avant guard and hard bop stuff, to working with someone like Chuck Mangione?
Interesting observation. I started studying with Jerry Hahn when I was still in San Jose. I was a senior in high school, and my mom actually saw in the classified ads from one of the San Francisco papers saying “Jerry Hahn is offering guitar lessons. Here's the phone number.” We called him up and booked a lesson. He was teaching up in Marin County, which was like an hour away. So, every Saturday for about a year and a half—it was from senior year in high school through the first year of college—I drove from San Jose up across the Bay Bridge and up into Marin County and took a lesson with Jerry Hahn. And he introduced me to like all kinds of bebop stuff that I really wasn't aware of. Like Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, the Bird and Diz album, Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and really opened my head up. And he had a really unusual style of playing, which was so cool. He just really expanded my playing by leaps and bounds. He eventually moved away from there, so, no more lessons.
And then not too long after that, I moved down to L.A., I was going to Cal State Northridge, playing in their jazz ensemble. But it was reasonably close to Hollywood. So, a lot of professional people would come in and bring their music to have the jazz band play it like a free premiere. Just bring in a chart so they could hear it, and have the students play it so they didn't have to pay! Louis Bellson was one guy that did that. He was a very famous jazz drummer who also had a big band, and he would scope out who the good players were. I ended up playing in Louis Bellson's big band while I was still in college. Then the other thing that happened at Northridge, there was a very famous arranger-composer called Gerald Wilson, who also had a big band, and he would also scope out the cool students, and I ended up also playing in his big band while I was still in college. So, it was just an incredibly fertile way to learn and be exposed to professional players while you're still in college. It was pretty amazing. Then, because of playing around and whatever, one day out of the blue the phone rang in my little apartment in Van Nuys, and I picked it up and he goes, “Hi, it's Chuck Mangione.” And I'm like, “Hi.” And I already knew some of his music. It turned out that a former student of his recommended me. I guess Chuck asked, “Do you know any hot young guitarists around in L.A.?” And I got recommended. He hired me sight unseen for this gig at the Santa Monica Civic. We did one rehearsal, and I did the gig. He said, “Would you want to continue the rest of the week? We have some dates up in the Pacific Northwest, like Seattle and Portland, Vancouver.” And I said, “Yes, I would!” That was just with the small group. One thing led to another, and he asked me to join his group.
But you’re kind of selling Chuck Mangione a bit short, because he is originally a bopper. His idol was Dizzy Gillespie. And when musicians would go and play in Rochester, New York, which is where Chuck lived, his father would go and take young Chuck to these clubs and then invite all the musicians back for a big Italian dinner. So, Chuck was hanging out with Art Blakey and Dizzy Gillespie and all these people. Chuck and his brother Gap were total beboppers, so they could play. It's not like what now is sort of associated with smooth jazz. Chuck really had his own kind of genre, very melodic music, but still with a lot of improvisation happening. So it wasn’t that far removed, it wasn't going from avant garde to this completely other thing.
It was more fluid than that.
Yeah, and it was better than that.
So, working with him, of course you were on Feels So Good. Do you think that's going to be the thing that you end up being most remembered for as a musician?
It's certainly one of the things. What's interesting, and I don't want to oversell it, but I've made several little stamps on pop culture. One is the “Feels So Good” guitar solo, which people still talk about, which is kind of amazing, it has a life of its own. And then I co-wrote the music for Two and a Half Men, and I co-wrote the theme. And then my EC books, especially The History of EC Comics, which probably reached a wider circulation. Just because of Taschen being who they are, it might go a little bit outside comics and people might say, this is interesting. It might turn some people on to the EC stuff.
It's amazing to read your biography and see all of the things you've done and all the things you really had your hand on. Working with Chuck on Feels So Good, playing in the band, do you feel that the way your career has unfolded is owed maybe primarily to that, or do you think it's more like working as working as a session player and then your own solo music that's sort of cemented you as sort of a go-to guy for so many people. You've worked with Ringo Starr, Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello and even Shelley Duvall, just such a broad range of people. How did you become this kind of go-to session guy?
Well, I had to fight for it in a way. Because I was doing well with Chuck, and was with him maybe four years or so. And by that time, I was kind of tired of the road. And it seemed like I was definitely there at the high point. “Feels So Good" was a huge hit on pop radio. He sold out the Hollywood Bowl. We did a live album called An Evening of Magic: Live at the Hollywood Bowl, recorded in 1978, playing for 18,000 people. But by the fourth year in, I could see that the venues were kind of going down, we would never be able to sell out the Hollywood Bowl again. I could just see it. I wanted to do my own thing, do my own music. I never loved traveling to start with, and I was pretty sick of it by then. So, I came off the road and I actually had to reestablish myself, because I was known as the Chuck Mangione guy, jazz guy. But I'm much more a well-rounded a player than that. But when you go on the road and you go out of town, it's not like they wait for you to come back. It's like the seas kind of closing in behind you, and whoever is next on the list takes whatever little spot you had.
When I finally came off the road, I had to remind people, “Hey, I'm here. Remember me?” I would go do stuff for free, just to remind people that I'm around and start at the bottom again, getting reestablished in studio work. And it doesn't happen overnight. I had to work at it.
So, when you're grinding away in the eighties and nineties, are you doing mostly jingles? Are you doing commercials? What kind of things were you doing that started to cement you as this session player that people could reliably come back to?
Yeah, there were a lot of jingles at that time. There's really no jingles now, but there [were] a lot then. I did my share of albums for Latin artists. I played on a Placido Domingo album. I did a few Julio Iglesias albums. There were Latin producers that would hire me. I played on jazzy albums for David Benoit and Keiko Matsui. So, you're back in town but it's very competitive. There's incredible musicians in L.A. So, if you can carve out whatever little niche it is for yourself, you have succeeded as a musician in Los Angeles.
I had done my own albums starting in 1978. My first album I ever did was called Good Stuff, when I was still with Chuck Mangione. And then every few years I would do another one. By 2006 I had written a bunch of new tunes and I wanted to make another album, and I decided to start my own little label so that I could do literally whatever kind of music I want. So that first album on my little label was called Say That!, and I kind of likened the concept of it to what it might sound like if Wes Montgomery met Horace Silver met Jimmy Smith. Not that I achieved that necessarily, but that's what I had in mind. And then three years later, in 2009, I had more material ready to go and I did an album called Cool Man Cool. For that record, I wrote a tune called “Chuck and Chick.” Chuck Mangione and Chick Corea were old buddies, and they played together way back when in Art Blakey's band. Around the time we were doing Feels So Good, there was some talk that Chuck Mangione and Chick Corea might do an album together. That never happened, but that always stuck in my mind, like I wonder what that would have sounded like. So, I decided to write this tune called “Chuck and Chick,” where the first part of the tune might sound like something Chuck Mangione might write, and the second part of the tune might sound like something Chick Corea might write. And I flew Chuck out and he was in the studio with us playing live. And later, Chick Corea overdubbed his piano part. So, both those guys are actually on that tune, and it was super fun to reconnect with Chuck. He played on a couple other tunes on the record as well, and it was just great.
Was it just sort of a full circle moment for you then?
Yeah. Because I played only his music when I was with him, and now he's playing my music, and it is something that I wrote for him. So, it was pretty great.
Yeah, that’s pretty special. I did want to ask about the “Spy versus Spy” track on Say That. Was that intended as a reference to MAD? [CLARIFICATION: Because there is a whole sort of genre of “spy jazz” and “Spy vs. Spy” shows up as a pretty regular reference, even predating the MAD strip.]
Absolutely, yeah. I stole a few EC titles for song titles on some of my earlier albums. There's a track called “Pipe Dream,” which is just actually harp and an acoustic guitar. It's a meditative kind of a tune. So, I used the title “Pipe Dream,” which is an EC story about an opium den, illustrated by Bernie Krigstein.
Another sort of musical credit under your belt was that you put the compilation together for MAD Grooves. Was that just sort of a fun side thing? That came out in 1996, I think.
That sounds about right. Yeah, that was a fun project. I became very good friends with MAD editor Nick Meglin over the years, and Rhino wanted to do this compilation. And this other producer that I had worked for named Robin Frederick got put in charge of assembling this project. And between Robin and Nick, I ended up writing the notes for that. I was very proud of those notes because those records are very cool, and I could talk about music in the liner notes. Go back and look at the history for The MAD Show, there's one tune that Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics for, but he used a pseudonym called Esteban Ria Nido. He didn't really want to put his name on it, but they're brilliant lyrics. It's a parody of “The Girl from Ipanema” called “The Boy from…” and there's this incredibly long sort of Scottish-or-something word, a super funny lyric. And some of this MAD stuff, especially “Mad Disco,” which was originally a pull-out giveaway record in one of their annuals, some of that stuff kind of sounded a bit like Zappa to me.
Now, can we expect a complete reinterpretation of Mad Grooves?
[laughs] I don't think so. Been there and done that.
You mentioned working on Two and a Half Men. I did want to ask you how you first met Lee Aronsohn, and how your MAD collecting almost led directly to an Emmy nomination for the theme music.
That's [an] interesting story. I often say many of the best things that have happened to me are directly related to MAD Magazine. Nick Meglin had a writer buddy out here in L.A. called John Boni, who actually wrote the part of the MAD parody that was in National Lampoon. He wrote this parody called “Citizen Gaines,” it was brilliant. Anyway, Nick said, I'm coming out to L.A., we got to go meet my friend John Boni. And so, I met him, and he was super nice. And John Boni goes, “You need to meet my other friend, this TV writer named Lee Aronsohn, because he collects MAD magazine stuff and artwork.” So, I got his number, and I called him up. We got together strictly over collecting MAD, geeking out over MAD magazine stuff. But he knew I was a musician. So in 1998, he called me and he goes, “Hey, I'm working on this sitcom. It's going to be called Life… and Stuff, and it's going to have Pam Dawber and this comedian called Rick Reynolds.” He said, “You're a musician. Why don't you pitch a theme for it?” And I'm like, Okay. And he told me about it. It was kind of like a midlife crisis, coming-of-age thing about a guy in his forties reconciling that his life wasn't exactly what he thought it might be. It was kind of like a little bit of a throwback because the character was a sort of a child of the Sixties. So, I wrote this theme, and I recorded a demo of it. I brought it in on my little boombox and played it for Lee and the other producers. And they liked it. And so, long story short, that was my first TV theme that got on the air.
The problem was CBS hated the show and they pulled the plug after four episodes. So, oh well. But Lee and I stayed buddies and any time I got some cool, MAD-related thing, I'd call him up and I'd go show it to him, and vice-versa. About five years later, Lee called again and said, “Hey, I'm working on this TV show. I think we should get together and try to pitch a theme. I don't know what it should be, but it has to have the word ‘men’ in it, and maybe like a Monty Python kind of thing.” So, I wrote down a little melody and he came over, and he liked it, and we demoed it up. It ended up being the theme for Two and a Half Men. And Chuck Lorre kind of liked what I was doing, and he put me together with his longtime musical collaborator, a guy named Dennis C. Brown. We co-wrote all the music together on that show. And it turned out to be a great partnership and a really nice friendship. I still talk to Dennis all the time. So, we did Two and a Half Men. And we did Mike and Molly. We did a bunch of stuff, even for Big Bang Theory, some of those silly songs that Wolowitz or whoever would sing, goofy stuff. There was a show called Mom we did some things for, and we recently did something for this show called Bob Hearts Abishola, which was for the final season. So that's how all the TV stuff happened. But as I say, the whole reason any of that happened was MAD Magazine.
How does working on TV compare to working on an album or other session stuff?
In a nutshell, working in TV, or even on a recording session, you are in service to the greater whole. You do your best and try to bring something of yourself to the work, but the parameters are essentially dictated by the producers. If you’re talking about one of my own albums, the only person I have to answer to is me. The project is whatever I want it to be, which is obviously very liberating.
I feel like we see in MAD over the decades how everything changes, but everything really does stay exactly the same. Do you think any of that sort of material could fly now? Could MAD have a resurgence in 2024?
Nick Meglin says this in those intros, maybe in several of them, that the MAD magazine doesn't create the culture. It just holds a funhouse mirror up to the culture, and reflects it in a satirical way, or in a kind of a distorted way somehow. And that really is true. That is what MAD did, just make fun of stuff. But then, they exactly didn't cause any of it. Well, they kind of did in the fifties, because the underground guys said that MAD influenced them. I do think we can postulate that some of the counterculture stuff in the sixties can be traced to MAD, because it basically had been saying “You don't have to believe the politicians, you don't have to believe everything you read. Madison Avenue is lying to you.” And you asked if I think something like MAD could happen now. I don't know, because the problem is everything now is so immediate. Like something happens, and there’s hundreds of comedians commenting online, or just people commenting, making fun of stuff, or saying this is stupid. And MAD takes time to make. First, the editors have to figure out what the article is. They have to assign it to a writer, or get it from a writer. They have to assign it to an artist, who has to come back for editorial corrections. All this stuff takes time. Then they have to schedule press time, and print it, distribute the magazine. So, it's probably a three-month process from when they approve an article and when it finally gets on the newsstands. I don't know how that could happen now, when everything is so immediate.
Jim Lee is overseeing DC Comics and MAD. They just recently did that facsimile reprint of issue one [of MAD]. And the new issues are primarily reprints of older material. Then we also have from Oni Press, the upcoming new EC imprint, Epitaphs from the Abyss and The Cruel Universe. Do you think that there's any danger with those? [Of] the EC legacy sort of being tarnished, or do you think that they might just prove to be new starting points for growth and popularity of these older, maybe more accomplished words?
That's the hope, that it reaches a new generation, and maybe causes them to look back. There's a great quote from Stephen King. Let's say a bad movie got made [from] one of the Stephen King books. And people are like, “That movie sucks. That wrecked the book.” And Stephen King is like, “No, the books are still right there. They're just the same as they ever were.” So, it’s the same thing with EC. There have been other attempts to do various new versions of Tales from the Crypt. So far, none of these new comic attempts have been successful. So, who knows about this new one? But even if this new thing fails, the original ECs are still all there. They're still in print. They keep coming out in different versions. You can even buy some EC compilations on your tablet. I think as long as there are people around, there'll be EC Comics available in some form, and whatever the new thing is, it didn't mess up the originals.
What has the community response been to the new EC imprint news, especially among the older guard of EC fans?
Some people seem to be excited, and some are trepidatious, which is to be expected.
You did some work with Quincy Jones in 1995, and he bought the rights to MAD TV in ‘95 as well. Did you guys happen to have any overlap, any sort of discussion about MAD, or was that just something that cropped up that’s just pure happenstance?
I just did one session that ended up being on his album Q’s Jook Joint, it was “Let the Good Times Roll.” Anyway, Quincy doesn't say too much. When you're working for him, he kind of lets you do your thing and then later he decides if he likes it. So, I walked out of the session not really knowing if I was going to end up on the record or not, and I was really happy to find out that I was on the record. But before the session, I was kind of setting up and Quincy, he's sitting there in the control room right while I'm setting up, and he's on the phone and he's talking about, yeah, “I just sold another TV show this MAD thing, you know, MAD TV.” I thought, “Oh!” But I was too intimidated to say, “Well, I wrote a book about MAD.” I was just there in a different kind of capacity. I maybe should’ve, but I was too intimidated to bring it up.
Do you think another of the “Best of the Decade” series could happen for the last two decades that you haven’t covered for the 2000s/2010s?
I’m not sure. Our advocate was Charlie Kochman, who I mentioned earlier, my buddy who helped me on so many projects. We worked together on many things, including a whole series of reprints of the original MAD paperbacks. We did it for Byron Preiss’s iBooks, starting with The MAD Reader, and we went up through the 11th book, and we were supposed to do The MAD Frontier, which was the one that originally had the cover with Alfred E. Neuman as John F. Kennedy in his rocking chair. But sadly, Byron Preiss was killed [in] a car accident in 2005. That was the end of that series. Then right after that, Charlie left DC and went to Abrams. So that was the end of our MAD About the . . . series. It could have gone on further, these Best of the Decade books, but Charlie wasn't there. So, could it happen again? I don't know. I mean, I don't think it would ever happen in the way that we did it. They keep doing these compilations that Susie Hutchinson, the MAD art director now, puts together. But there's no historical notes, not like what we did. They don't want to kill MAD because it has a certain cachet as a brand. The new issues are only available in comic shops and via subscription, and are primarily reprints with new covers and a new Fold-In. Sergio Aragonés is still doing some marginals. There’s a few little things that are new, and they don't want to kill it entirely. So, I don't know. But they're doing these compilations for Barnes and Noble. The newest one is MAD Goes to the Dogs, which uses a Mark Stutzman cover, a parody of the “dogs playing poker painting,” you know that famous, kitschy painting? Yeah, I actually own the artwork to that MAD cover, and it's on display right now at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. I loaned a few pieces, and that's one of them. MAD still is kicking. It still has an impact. And whoever thought there would be a MAD art exhibit at the Norman Rockwell?! How does that happen? It's stunning, and people are super excited about it.
You were at the opening gala and opening of the gallery. Can you just walk us through that evening?
It was a reception from 5 to 9, with hors d'oeuvres and drinks, and it was a fundraiser for the museum. The people that were there had to pay extra to get in as part of the fundraiser. So, they were serious about being there. And it's [a] beautifully mounted show. It's a huge museum. I'm not sure how many galleries they have, maybe seven or eight possibly. But they gave over five big galleries to the MAD art show. So, it's ginormous. A bunch of collectors loaned material and it's like everything from MAD comics up through many of the classic Kelly Freas covers and Norman Mingo covers in the sixties, going into the seventies and even beyond. There's stuff from the 1990s era when you were reading it. Sam Viviano, who was the art director for many years at MAD was there, John Ficarra was there. He was the editor for many, many years after Al Feldstein left. He and Nick Meglin co-edited the magazine. And then when Nick retired, John took it over by himself. And a bunch of the artists were there. Johnny Sampson, who now does the Fold-Ins, he was there. Richard Williams and James Warhola were there. It was just a really lovely night. And it’s nice to think that MAD is still important, and people still want to see that work.
Yeah. I was flipping through the MAD About the Nineties and you get all these “If Norman Rockwell Painted the Nineties” sorts of paintings.
Yeah. They had a couple of those hanging there. Those are hysterical. One great thing they had, there's a famous Norman Rockwell triple portrait: it's a back view and he's doing a self-portrait. For the MAD Art book—Mark Evanier did that—Richard Williams did a parody of that painting with Alfred E. Neuman doing a similar triple self-portrait. And those two things are hanging side by side at the Rockwell Museum right now. And it's like, “This is so cool.”
That's pretty amazing. I'm hoping to make it out there. I'm not too far away, so I hope.
You definitely have to go. It’s so great.
Something we didn't really touch on was The Complete Junior and Sunny reprint book that you did with Feldstein. Could you tell me a little bit more about that, how that came about?
I finished the Feldstein book and that was out. And happily, he lived to see that book physically published. His health was kind of slipping at the end there, so he never got to go to a comic convention and promote it or sign copies of it for people. But we did have a signed, limited edition for that book, and that was his dream to have a coffee table book about his life and work. So, after that book came out, I said, “Well, we should do a book on Junior and Sunny.” And I borrowed all the comics from my buddy Glenn Bray, who’s a big art collector and has a ton of stuff. And I scanned them all, and I wrote the introduction and did the design. And Feldstein saw that book in progress, too. He saw everything, but he didn't live to actually have it physically come out. But he knew it was happening and was very happy about it. And it is some great stuff, originally done for Fox Publications. Victor Fox deliberately tried to make the books extra titillating. With super-tight tops on women with big headlights—“headlights” is another term that David T. Alexander and Terry Stroud coined—and very super short skirts, and extra salacious stuff. And it's kind of amazing that they got on the newsstands, really, because it's still pretty provocative even right now.
What makes Junior and Sunny stand out, aside from its salaciousness?
It’s just page after page of great, late 1940s Feldstein art. The stories are essentially Archie-style “typical teenage” stuff, but the artwork is great. If you’re a fan of Feldstein’s EC art, then this book is a must-have.
Would you want to work on a book similar to The History of EC Comics but about MAD?
Yes, absolutely. That would be a dream come true. Benedict Taschen, he mentioned like, “Well, who controls MAD?” I said, “Well DC,” and he goes, “Okay, my friends are there.” So it’s possible.
Well, I hope you get to do that because you have done a lot of historical work for MAD, not just because you have all the introductions for the MAD About the . . . series, you wrote all the introductions for the paperbacks. So, there is a lot of historical material that you've already done, and then all the Collectibly MAD stuff as well. I don't know, this seems like a great project. So, what is next for your writing and editing? Do you have anything on the horizon?
Yeah, I do have a couple irons in the fire. I have a deal with Dark Horse to do a complete Moon Girl volume and most of the book is assembled. I just finished writing the introduction, so it's pretty close to being finished. The other exciting—and sad—thing: my buddy Roger Hill, who was a tremendous EC art collector and historian, passed away. He had a Johnny Craig book pretty far along, but it needed someone to get it to the finish line. And I have an agreement with Terry Hill, Roger's widow, and also with Steven Craig, who's Johnny Craig's son, to step in and get that book to the finish line. So, I'm collecting material for the book. Roger had done tons of scans for that, and there's a lot of really interesting Johnny Craig artwork and paintings that the family has. That's going to be the next huge project. And then there's a couple of things in the works from Taschen that I don't think they want me to quite talk about yet.
Have you contributed to any of the Fantagraphics reprints? I know you have the foreword coming out for Foul Play.
I contributed to the Home to Stay book, the big Ray Bradbury book. I contributed a lot of artwork out of my collection for that book. But I've contributed in other ways. Like if they wanted a picture of somebody like some EC artist or, or some piece of art, or just whatever that they thought I might have. And for the Jack Davis volume, which is also called Foul Play, I wrote a little appreciation of Jack because I actually got to work with Jack. He signed virtually all of my tip-in sheets for my various books. He signed the tip-in sheet for Tales of Terror! The EC Companion, which is amazing really, because I look at the signed tip-in sheet and virtually every surviving EC artist agreed to sign. The only one that didn't want to sign was Jack Kamen. And they're all gone now, except for Angelo Torres. He's the last man standing. But all those guy’s signatures are on all the tip-in sheets for the signed limited [run] of Tales of Terror! I would contact one guy and I would say, “Well, can you sign these sheets, 500 of them? And when you're done, send them on to the next guy, send them to Al Williamson, or send them to George Evans or send them to Adele Kurtzman,” Harvey's widow. And it's kind of amazing that we did it.
So anyway, the bottom line is the little appreciation I did about Jack was about how he was so willing to sign tip-in sheets, and how he helped on the Mad about the Fifties book. He retouched some vintage MAD artwork of his that we couldn’t use, because originally there was a reversed MAD logo over this artwork. We wanted to put the MAD logo the proper way, but that left some holes around the art. So, he filled it in. And then I just talk about what a spectacular talent he was. He was just a great, really nice man.
I did want to ask you a bit more about working with Roger Hill. How did you meet Roger, and how'd that friendship develop?
I met Roger through Jerry Weist, and he helped me on Collectibly MAD. I had some questions, and he had some stuff that he shared for the book. And I would run into Roger at San Diego Comic-Con. He actually did some art restoration for me over the years. He was really good at that.
As far as actually working together with him, John Benson asked me to design, to lay out the final issue of his fanzine Squa Tront, which is number 14. We did that a few years ago, and Roger had a piece in there. He sent me images and so forth for that article in Squa Tront. And then we would trade emails and talk about “I got this thing, or I got that thing” or “can you believe how much money this or that sold for?” And in 2022 he answered one of my little emails and he said, “I have to tell you that I've been diagnosed now with stage four cancer and it's not looking good for me.” I was shocked. He kind of laid it all out there, and afterwards he asked me, “Would you be interested in helping me get another issue of my EC Fan-Addict Fanzine out? Because I don't know how up to it I’m going to be.” And I said, anything you need me to do, I'm happy to help.
salesman’s training manual, Here’s How (from EC Fan-Addict Fanzine No. 6, 2024)
So, we worked on it together. We were co-editors, and I did the layouts for the fifth issue, which came out last year. That was issue five, EC Fan-Addict Fanzine 5, and it really came out great. Fantagraphics published it, and Gary Groth loved it. And Roger, when we finished that issue, he's like, “Well, do you want to dive in on another one?” And I'm like, “Yeah, let's do it. Let's get another one going.” So, we did issue six, which was actually bigger than the previous issue. Sadly, Roger passed away on December 6th of 2023. And he didn't live to see the final issue actually printed, but he had seen everything. It takes six months to get a book back, once you're done with it and turn it in. Fantagraphics sends it to the printer and it takes six months from that day to print it, and then to have it come over on the slow boat. So anyway, that issue exists and it's just getting ready to come out right now, July 17 is the official release date.
Yeah. I did a signed tip-in sheet for copies sold through Bud. For the previous issue, Roger and I both signed the tip-in sheets. When I asked if he wanted to do it for the new issue, he said, “I'm really not up to it. My signature’s not looking good now.” So, we did a facsimile signature of Roger’s on the tip sheet, and then I signed them. There's going to be 250 signed sheets for the new issue, available only through Bud Plant.
It's amazing that Fantagraphics is out of print on it, meaning they can't get any more from their warehouse. But you can get them through Bud Plant, you can get them on Amazon. I imagine comic shops are carrying it, and various other places.
Yeah, it's a pretty big reaction already. What's the standout in this upcoming issue of EC Fan-AddictFanzine?
Well, there's several standouts. This was the thing about Roger, which I always mention: you sort of never knew what Roger had in his collection or didn't have in his collection. He held his cards very close to the vest. One article that we have in this new issue: In 1967, Dr. Fredric Wertham had a new book out, so he was appearing on TV, promoting it and whatever. Wertham appeared on the Alan Burke Show, and the publisher of Classics Illustrated was also on this show. Wertham was still bashing comics. And Classics Illustrated, it doesn't get any more clean and worthy, these comic-book adaptations of classic books. How can you object to this? But Wertham was still hammering away. And so anyway, Roger got his reel-to-reel tape recorder, recorded the whole show, transcribed it, and then sat on it from 1967 until now.
That's wild.
Nobody's even heard of this show. You ask people, and it’s “I never saw it. I don't even know who this host guy is. Never heard of it.” But it was just so Roger to quietly sit on this since 1967!
And only posthumously [this] comes out. Wertham even wrote about fanzines in the seventies. And it's like, “Yeah, these are good. Do fanzines.” And it was such a wild, weird career.
Yeah, right! But in more recent years, Carol Tilley, an ace researcher, went into all of Wertham’s archives and figured out that Wertham was a total con artist. It was a scam. He would put five or six case studies together into one “subject” that he claimed he had talked to. It was an amalgam of stuff. It was total bullshit. None of it was true. I mean, his premise for the whole thing was idiotic anyway, that comics were causing juvenile delinquency.
Do you think that Wertham’s campaign against EC Comics may have ended up bolstering their reputation among collectors and comics readers since that time?
It eventually made certain EC’s more notorious, as a result of being mentioned or pictured in Seduction of the Innocent. That is a great book title, by the way. It immediately creates the desired response.
Yeah. The Cartoonist Kayfabe guys had a T-shirt. I think you can still buy it. It says “Fredric Wertham Can Eat a Dick,” which was something. Yeah, I mean, this is really all a new world to me, EC. I stopped reading comics with any sort of regularity in maybe 2009, and then I didn't start back up again until 2020. And, you know, that's all of my 20s.
Yeah. Well, that kind of happened to all of us. At some point I stopped buying MAD on the newsstands. That National Lampoon parody, John Boni’s parody, “Citizen Gaines,” it so nailed what was wrong with MAD. Like there's one article in there, “You know you’ve really outgrown MAD when you can say what the articles are without even opening it.” Like ESP, you know everything in there without even opening it. So we all graduated to the National Lampoon and other stuff in the seventies. I still collected ECs and I never got rid of anything. And at some point, I just decided to go and complete my later MAD collection and try to track down all the stuff that I never had as a kid, like the MAD Straight Jacket and little busts of Alfred E. Neuman. I just decided it would be cool to get all this stuff. So, I would run ads in antique magazines and Comics Buyer’s Guide looking for stuff. And at this time, this would’ve been the late eighties, there were literally just a handful of people, and I really mean a handful of people, looking for this stuff. So, it was fun, and you could find it.
All the EC stuff is all new to me. So, I'm reading EC now in 2024 for the first time, it is of such quality, these perfect little tales. And there's a lot of tropes, and in some of it, it gets—I don't want to say it's recycled because every story is a little different—but you're like, “Okay, like, that weird monster was his son.”
Right, right! [laughs]
How do you still go back to picking up these books that you've had since you were a kid and go back and still continue to enjoy them? What is it about the EC stable of artists, or the MAD stable of artists that has remained relevant for you in your life?
Well, really, if it was good in the fifties, and it was stunning artwork, it's still good. Now, you mentioned Wally Wood or Al Williamson or even Feldstein, it was kind of stylized and a little blocky, but there's something that grabs you about Feldstein's art. So, if it's good, it's good, and it is good. And the thing that really is amazing, is this stuff was cranked out on a deadline. I mean, they tried to do good work and whatever, but they were up against deadlines. They had to turn jobs in. There was the next story to get out. It wasn't like they could spend months on one story like some guys do now. And the fact that so much of it is so good, given the parameters, and also the fact that this stuff was considered pure ephemera at the time. Entirely disposable entertainment. Cheap thrills. So given these parameters, the fact that so much of it is so good is just stunning.
Is that a mentality you've taken with you into your own work?
Yeah. You always try to do the best job you can [at] any given point. You always want it to be good. You don't always hit the mark, but yeah. And I love the thing where you ask an artist what their best work is, and they inevitably say “the next thing that I do is going to be my best.” Whether or not that's true, it's still something that you aspire to.
What are you working on in terms of your music? Do you have anything that you’re working on now?
That’s a good question. I haven't started a new album yet. I hate to say this, but lately, some of the music stuff is getting in the way of my book projects! I told my wife recently I don't want to do this gig. it's taking time away from getting this other stuff done. It's hard to wear multiple hats sometimes.
How does your wife get on with all of the MAD memorabilia and collecting stuff?
She's very understanding. Nothing in the living room, nothing in the kitchen, nothing in the bedroom. The other rooms are okay. The den’s okay. And she's not into this stuff at all. But she thinks Alfred E. Neuman is cute.
It’s true.
And she's become friends with various artists and MAD people. So, again, she's very tolerant and understanding.
Do you have any kids?
I do. My daughter's 35. And she just got her master's degree in architecture.
That's great.
That was a lot of work. I’m proud of her for that.
That's huge, yeah. Is she still up there in California?
Yeah, she is. She just graduated from USC, but there's a picture of her as a little kid in Collectibly MAD wearing this MAD T-shirt. It makes me laugh because it shows me how long ago this book came out. Let’s see, how old would she have been? When were we taking pictures, maybe 1991 or 1992? She was maybe four!
Has she picked up any of the MAD sensibility at all?
Well, she's got a very sarcastic sense of humor, and she's always been able to hold her own. Nick Meglin was my buddy for many years. He knew Greer when she was really little. And she could hold her own against him, sarcasm-wise. She picked it up from me, but I picked that up from MAD. So, there's kind of like a second generation.
Yeah. Co-parenting.
Yeah, exactly.
I really appreciate you taking all this time to speak with me about all of this. What are your hopes for the next generation of MAD readers, the next generation of EC readers?
I just hope that it keeps going. I'm happy they haven't killed MAD off entirely. Who knows what the future is for MAD, eventually. The EC comics will continue in some form or other, whatever technology comes along. I just think it'll just keep getting recycled and reprinted in whatever the new technology is. Because, even for people your age, it still resonates. Something that’s come from 1952. It still works.
(portions of this interview were edited for length and clarity)
The post “I’ve made several little stamps on pop culture” – Grant Geissman discusses his storied and varied career with Joseph Antoniello appeared first on The Comics Journal.
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
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