"Aaargh!" Denis Kitchen Speaks Out!

Below are some select correspondence from my collection concerning the history of Megaton Man, particularly issues surrounding Megaton Man #11, a crucial turning point in the series and narrative. Scholars are encouraged to explore the Kitchen Sink Papers at Columbia University (which I have not consulted) for a fuller context.

Byron Starkwinter: Alan Moore's Self-Fulfilling Prochecy?

Shortly after I drew "In Pictopia" in1986, Fantagraphics forwarded a plot synopsis from the same author to consider illustrating. Unfortunately, Anything Goes, the fund-raising series for which it was intended, came to an end.

The Secrets of Dumbalmoore: Fantastic Bleats and Where to Find Them

This text began as a Facebook reply to Stephen Bissette, who was commenting on a link to Mikey Crotty's video, and somehow turned into yet another long-winded and self-serving blog post, rehashing the same tired, stale tropes as I've done elsewhere, on my insignificant collaboration with Alan Moore. Enjoy!

The Phantom Mommy: When Retcons Spoil Your Fanboy Escapism

There was a time when hoping for a comic book-turned-movie project to fail would be treasonous. Now the noxious far-right in comics openly disparages any creative alteration to an established property they disagree with, hoping for the downfall – and calling for boycotts – of whatever latest blockbuster. The ideology of this fringe is incoherent and confusing – and entirely selective. Impenetrable and completely irrational to outsiders, their world view makes perfect sense to them, however; everything they don’t happen to like in comics and pop culture at any given time can be blamed on some Phantom Mommy who wants to ruin their naughty-boy fun.

The Lies of Comicsgash!

The Culture Wars Comes to Funnybooks

One of the more insane trends to take place in recent years is a "movement" started by a small, irrelevant coterie of has-been comic book creators dubbed Comicsgate (which makes little associative sense to someone of my generation, unless its leaders are trying to lay claim to Nixonian paranoia - not exactly the most admirable moment in our Nation's history). But the present moment isn't particularly admirable, either.

Among their specious claims is a convoluted theory that various retcons and rebootings affecting entirely make-believe storylines involving stupid corporate-owned trademarks has something to do with the fact that these fairly lackluster and mediocre creators no longer are as actively employed on the superhero assembly line as they want to be. The result is these disgruntled hacks have taken to the internet (what else?) and started calling people hateful names, ordered bans and boycotts of particular creators, titles, and companies, and threatened violence against a number of innocent bystanders who by all accounts seem only to be doing their jobs.

Trying to give an account of their hopelessly muddled ideology end-to-end is impossible, so it's best to take their incompatible lies one by one:

Lie #1: The movement is a "consumer-led revolt." This is clearly false; it's a small number of vocal (which is to say, whiny) writers and artists who for a brief time drew prominent titles in the Marvel and/or DC pantheon, and now find themselves without gigs. They thought they were essential to the perpetuation of certain namby-pamby, vacuous and hollow franchises, but they found out this was not the case, and they resent it.

Lie #2: The talent brought in to replace the Whiners is inferior because the selecting criteria of editors and publishers was ideological and/or identity-based. False; there is little evidence that comics are any more or less hacked-out, mindless, and unoriginal as ever, or that the level of work is any more less inspired or insipid as it's been since the early 1970s.

Megaton Man visits the pretentious hacks on the superhero assembly line in Return of Megaton Man #2 (Kitchen Sink Press, August 1988). In those days, the Culture Wars was only a gleam in the eye of Morton Downey Jr. ...

Lie #3: Beloved characters and franchises are being ruined by inorganic, top-down imposed makeovers to conform to said ideology and/or identity-based criteria. False; no intelligent human being could possibly care less that Scuba Man used to be straight, WASP newspaper reporter Kyle Kildare and now is involuntarily celibate, ambidextrous, undocumented Dreamer and lesbian activist Fortuna Primigenia, or that his (her) mutant robot sidekick Willy has been replaced by a self-levitating smartphone that sounds like a Burbank voice actor doing a bad impression of Lin-Manuel Miranda doing a wisecracking, hip-hop Bugs Bunny. (Besides, Scuba Man has always been stupid, no matter what his/her/its creators have tried, and nobody really cares.)

Lie #4: The comic book industry is being taken over by Left-Wing Ideologues. False: the comic industry was started by left-leaning liberals and always run by them; read one of Stan Lee's Soap Boxes circa 1972, for Christ'ssakes. People with imagination and talent have always tended towards social compassion, inclusion, and just plain hanging out with other social misfits like gay people, free-thinkers, and other mild-mannered types. Some of these people actually embody understated Judao-Christian ideals without voting for billionaire rapists. It's called Art, not Fox News.

(If anything, the industry has been taken over by humorless haptics who stopped developing before the concrete operational stage, are severely repressed closet cases who get hardons from back issues of Soldier of Fortune magazine, and can't draw a woman who's more true to life than a mid-sixties Barbie doll.)

Lie #5: The Whiner's short-lived careers are the result of an engineered conspiracy by said Ideologues. False: writing and/or penciling corporate superheroes has been a career with the life expectancy of a gnat since the days since Kirby, Kane, Romita and Buscema. Gene Colan was famously fired by Jim Shooter while arguably at the height of his creative abilities; I attend comic book conventions with creators from the 1990s who could still be happily churning out monthly comics for Marvel and/or DC and still aren't even old enough to join AARP. The Comicsgate generation has been put out to pasture too soon? Sign up for food stamps and stand in line; it's a long one. If you want job security, next time become J.K. Rowling or George Lucas; i.e., originate something, don't just learn to cut out cookie cutter capes and cowls for a Big Company paycheck, then complain when your particular cookie shape is no longer in vogue.

The labor dispute metastasizes into an all-out assault on creative liberty! From Return of Megaton Man #2.

Lie #6: Having someone to blame for your plight will make things better. False; try reading some of the characters you helped perpetuate for the past few years. Did they gang up and pick on people and threaten violence? No, they were heroes - albeit make-believe; if they had to punch someone, it was out of self-defense or to right an actual wrong, not because Life dealt them a crummy hand this time. Conspiracy theories may be comforting (and make for entertaining storylines in fantasy material), but to actually believe them is to become unhinged, pathological, and dangerously disturbed. Grow up and create something that reflects positive human values, and stop hating.

Lie #7: Sales would be great again if companies would just go back to the classic formulas, i.e. manly (white) men and curvaceous babes. False: the print medium is dying, in case you hadn't noticed; and sales figures are bound to decline regardless. Marvel and DC would have gone out of business in 1983 if it wasn't for their media and licensing revenues; for decades, print comics have been a loss-leader and farm system for ideas for much bigger movie and TV series tie-ins, a break-even proposition at best. And they ran out of ideas well before 1974; if you think the cosmetic monkeying with identity politics has any more substance than mutants, robots, and the cloned Gwen Stacy, you have seriously lost touch with reality. Besides, editors and publishers have a fiduciary responsibility to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks; or have you lost your faith in the Free Market?!

Like everything else, at the bottom of every creative complaint is ... wait for it ... MONEY! From Return of Megaton Man #2.

Why doesn't everybody just sit back down and draw their little Men in Tights and fight their Culture Wars on paper (and in their ring-bound sketchbooks, if Marvel and DC won't send you their custom blue-lined Bristol board anymore)? And if nobody wants to pay you for the works of your imagination anymore, let alone cares, at least you've done something personally therapeutic and kept your poisonous hatred to yourself.

Morons.

___________
Update: See if you pass the Ms. Megaton Man Social Justice Warrior Litmus Test!

Whatever Happened to Megaton Man #11, or, The Limits of Creator-Owned Comics

Megaton Man: The Kitchen Sink Years, Part II | Read Part I

Between December 1984 and August 1987, I had created 17 consecutive, uninterrupted bi-monthly comic book issues for Kitchen Sink Press, each averaging 33 pages of all-new material (30 to 32 interior pages of writing, art, and lettering plus cover, and often including an inside front cover and/or back cover),[1] or roughly 500 pages of comics, a feat unparalleled by any creator for the Kitchen Sink imprint before or since. While sales of Megaton Man had remained remarkably consistent over its 10-issue run, averaging between 17-18,000 copies per issue (briefly flirting with the 25,000-range with issues #3-4), sales of Border Worlds, which started strong at over 20,000 copies with issue #1, sank in a nearly straight line to under 8,000 copies by issue #7, its lowest point, earning me the smallest royalty of any comic book I had created, one that could no longer feasibly support my extremely modest lifestyle.

My sketchy plot synopses for Megaton Man #11-14 were welcome by the publisher, with editor Dave Schreiner encouraging me to think of the character as more than a parody vehicle. “[H]e’s manipulated and used,” Dave observed, “Yet he still goes forth and faces what he has to face. None of the other characters in [Megaton Man] have these qualities.” [2] Publisher Denis Kitchen welcomed the sketch of the cover concept for Megaton Man #11, which featured The Man of Molecules snarling, “I’m Back! Now I Quit Again!” although he hinted that a new #1 on the cover might help sales.

I was already used to the idea of Megaton Man in black-and-white. Megaton Man #1, which I had created before I had ever contacted let alone secured a publisher was laden with dot screens to create grey tones; I half-expected #1 to be published in black and white if at all. Much to my surprise, it was published in color for ten issues. Later, when losses on The Spirit and Death Rattle led to the demise of the Kitchen Sink color line, I had been presented with the option of continuing Megaton Man in black and white or devising some new series better suited to a black and white treatment. I opted to go with Border Worlds, which had run as a back-up feature in Megaton Man since issue #6 in color, but which I thought would lose nothing and perhaps gain immeasurably in moody black and white.

Again, I was surprised when the publisher offered to publish the new issues of Megaton Man in color, since its experience with color had been rather mixed, although Megaton Man had been its one consistently profitable title in color. Since I had colored the covers and at least 1/3 of the interiors of Megaton Man since issue #7 (mostly the Border Worlds back-up feature and the entirety of issue #10), we planned that I would supervise the Cel-Vinyl painting of greylines in Pittsburgh.

More important than these technical logistics were the new ideas that I wanted to explore in Megaton Man. Whereas the first ten issues had largely centered on the characters located in the hyper-heroic environs of Megatropolis (New York City), #11-14 as I conceived it would follow the characters to a communal off-campus house in Ann Arbor, where Megaton Man’s ambivalent dual love-interests (Pamela Jointly, the critical journalist who had always spurned him, and Stella Starlight, the hitherto airheaded sex-object who was now pregnant with his child) had retreated at the end of Megaton Man #1. This would take the storyline from its more mainstream big-city setting to what I considered a more “underground,” quasi-Doonesbury or The Big Chill milieu. Complications would inevitably ensue as the characters’ Megaheroic pasts caught up with them and invaded their idyllic exile, dragging them back toward their usual costumed antics.

However, unlike the editor, who was excited by the narrative developments and who personally encouraged me to explore the potential of the characters and relationships more deeply, the publisher seemed more interested in maximizing profits. Over the course of that spring and summer, his less-than-subtle hint that my first new issue of Megaton Man be renumbered #1 became an increasingly implacable demand. As this sunk in, I grew more and more perturbed; from my point of view, maintaining the sequential numbering was important to my own sense of adding to an evolving body of work. Also, the publisher had already tacitly agreed to publish Megaton Man #11 as Megaton Man #11.

My expectation to maintain the numbering of my series was neither a prima donna demand nor some outrageous self-indulgence; it was an honored comics tradition. Earlier that year, Scott McCloud had followed up his 10-issue color series Zot! after a two-year hiatus with a black-and-white issue #11 at Eclipse Comics, and Kitchen Sink Press itself had a tradition of maintaining the numbering of even sporadically-issued series such as R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural (three consecutively-numbered issues over seven years) and the underground anthology series Dope Comix (five issues over six years). Kitchen Sink had even maintained the numbering of The Spirit Magazine when it inherited the title from Warren Publishing, beginning with issue #17. (An exception to this was Death Rattle, which was christened with a “volume 2, #1” when the black-and-white underground anthology was revived in color.)

From my earliest comics reading and collecting days, I was aware that numbering was maintained even when a series changed its title (such as Tales to Astonish becoming The Incredible Hulk with #102, and numerous other examples), and even after having been on hiatus for years (the gap between The Inferior Five #10 and #11 between 1968 and 1972). Granted, the reasons for this had more to do, historically, with postal permits, but it was part of comics collecting culture that emphasized continuity rather than the gerbil-wheel epitomized later by Groundhog Day.

In any case, it was important to me to maintain the numbering of Megaton Man so as to stress the organic unity of the unfolding narrative that I now sought to extend, more important than seeing new issues published in color. It may strike some as naïve in retrospect, but I wanted to resume the series somewhat under the radar, with little fanfare, or at least as a resumption of normal activity as far as possible, without emphasizing the interruption; I did not want a hyped-up, artificial event or the obligation to contrive narrative developments to justify a new #1 on the cover.

I’m sure I was delighted with the prospect of color, mind you; but I would have been just as happy with black and white if that was all the publisher thought possible; in retrospect, black and white could have served the more mundane Ann Arbor interlude quite well. In any case, it was never put to me that I had a choice between a black-and-white Megaton Man #11 or a color Megaton Man new #1; in Denis' mind, it could only be the latter.

I also had long been advocating that Megaton Man #1 and #2, issues that had sold out within weeks of their initial release, be brought back into print, and thought that the occasion of Megaton Man #11 would be the perfect time. Affordable reprints would allow new fans to read the unfolding narrative from the beginning without paying collector’s prices (issue #1 had commanded $12 and #2 as much as $9 in the summer of 1985, several times over the original $2 cover price), and grow the readership for the series. As Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and later Bone was to prove, multiple reprintings of early issues, even of quantities as small as a few thousand at a time, were key to growing the readership to quite large numbers, paying dividends of enormous print runs on subsequent new issues.

But these were black-and-white series, and Megaton Man #1 and #2 had been published in color. The publisher had rejected the idea of second printings for these issues during the original ten-issue run, citing color as too costly and black-and-white (at least for Megaton Man) as déclassé. Denis in fact believed that having two sold-out, high-priced back issues on the collectors’ market brought a certain prestige and cachet to the series.

Sidebar: The Summer of '85 and the Reprints that Never Happened

I was also concerned, given my experience with Border Worlds, that I might run into financial trouble while producing new issues of Megaton Man, and face the humiliation of placing another series on hiatus while I was forced to take on freelance assignments to keep a roof over my head. I therefore wanted to explore the possibility of some sort of guaranteed advance against royalty. I already knew from experience that Kitchen Sink couldn’t come close to matching even the “beginner” rates I was already earning at DC Comics for illustration alone. What I had in mind was less than half that, to cover not only writing, art, and lettering, but coloring as well, and to assure me of a roof over my head for the duration.

Above all, I was upset that the publisher had eagerly accepted Megaton Man #11 for publication when I first proposed it, but was now insisting on a new #1 on the cover, after having secured my commitment and setting me to work on writing and drawing the new material. In the fall of 1987, I wrote to the publisher that while production of the new art and story for Megaton Man #11 was flowing smoothly, the issues of renumbering, reprints, and revenue were bothering me. “None of them are major stumbling blocks or unreasonable, yet they have had the effect of dampening my enthusiasm for more Megs and generally slowing me down.” I wrote,

Foremost is this renumbering bullshit. If nothing else, continuing with #11 would give me the feeling of extending an existing work, of continuing an organic, life-long project. Let’s not forget I’m only 25, and feel very strongly about [not] establishing a precedent that every [new] episode of MM activity be somehow packaged with a new #1 every 2-3 years. [...] I can’t help believing that this #1 business just goes to point up your impotence as a publisher, not a feeling I cherish having.[3]

I also requested that long-overdue second printings of Megaton Man #1 and #2 (with new covers that I volunteered to draw) coincide with the release of Megaton Man #11, which would also assure me of more revenue. Further, I wrote, “I would like to explore the possibilities” of either an increase in royalty and/or cover price or some sort of guaranteed minimum advance so that I could confidently budget my life and guarantee uninterrupted production of the new material.

As I mentioned above, I was particularly wary of repeating the humiliating experience of Border Worlds in which low sales forced me to take on outside freelance assignments and ultimately suspend the series. I did not want to announce Megaton Man #11-14 and then once again be unable to see the project through to completion. Further, I noted that a T-shirt and promotional poster the publisher was discussing was not something I had demanded. While such promotional efforts were indeed welcome as evidence of their enthusiasm, I considered these “vanity items,” as I termed it in my letter, extraneous to the production of the book. Much as a new #1, I considered such efforts somewhat extraneous ballyhoo that I did not expect nor did I want to go through every time I “felt like” adding new issues to the Megaton Man narrative.[4]

The day before Thanksgiving, Denis responded to my concerns, scribbling “Aargh!” in Sharpie across the top of a photocopy of my letter, and composing a separate typewritten response. “Another confrontational letter filled with complaints and demands,” it began. Numbering as well as pricing, he asserted, were both considerations “that happen to fall under the traditional publisher’s domain,” and over which I had no right to expect any influence. “[Y]our blood lust for continuity” and “moaning over numbering is [nothing more than] prima donna posturing,” Denis declared, motivated only by “an enormous and insecure ego.” After a two-year hiatus, a Megaton Man #11 would be an excessively risky proposition, although the publisher might be open to inserting the number #11 into the indicia, or including it as part of some double-numbering scheme in which the new #1 took clear priority on the cover and in marketing. Furthermore, Denis wrote,

[Y]ou just dropped Border Worlds when you tired of it, without regard for those loyal Simpson fans we’re trying to sell the revived Megaton Man to. These poor saps invested $14 in the first 7 issues of the series you entered into so enthusiastically such a short time ago. They deserved better treatment. Normally a publisher cancels a title because of poor sales. I twice gave you “pep talks” when your spirits were lagging and I encouraged you to continue. Sales were actually starting to turn around and I wasn’t willing to pull out. It was not a good sign of your stick-to-it-tiveness. It’s twice now you’ve abandoned series and I can tell you that some of those diehard fans we touched on earlier are going to “think twice” themselves before they invest more of their dollars in a heralded new Simpson adventure series. Now, I can’t charge you up if you irretrievably lost the impetus to create the remainder of the Border Worlds saga, but you never gave us a single good reason for it. I feel cheated and I know readers will feel cheated.”

Further, Denis interpreted my request to discuss the possibility of some form of guaranteed minimum advance or royalty for new work, coupled with my warnings that these unresolved issues were dampening my enthusiasm and that production might be slowed in case I had to resort to outside freelance again, collectively as a blatant work slow-down or threat to withhold Megaton Man #11 altogether until my demands were met, actually the furthest thing from my mind. He likened this tactic to that of “star basketball players” trying to “blackmail club owners into altering legally binding contracts.” He scoffed at my aversion to “a new #1 every 2-3 years,” particularly seizing on my glib phrase of adding to the Megaton Man narrative “whenever I feel like [it],” remarking that by such a timetable, “we can expect Megaton Man #15 in 1991. I can see the lines forming already.”

He concluded,

I don’t want to prick your ego to be cruel, I just want you to look at the world in a realistic manner. You just killed a series for no good reason. It makes you and us look bad. You’re hacking out stuff for DC. That doesn’t make you a candidate for fanboy heaven. Your prestige is at a low point, man.[5]

I was not prepared for this monstrous barrage of verbal abuse, if only because I had not filled my letter with “complaints and demands” in the first place. I had been attempting to communicate honestly and deal in good faith, all within the context of having just completed 500 pages of material for the publisher and wishing to add more. The publisher had agreed to publish Megaton Man #11 and was flatly reneging on this promise; I wanted him to understand that maintaining the numbering was important to me creatively and to my sense of adding to a body of work. This sentiment did not deserve to be belittled. The matter of second printings of out-of-print issues and of guaranteeing financial compensation sufficient to enable the completion of the new Megaton Man material were completely reasonable issues to discuss, and as history has borne out in the case of other works, might have been a very wise move.

None of my concerns had been framed as demands constituting existential threats to Kitchen Sink Press, and particularly after completing 500 pages of comic book material issued 17 consecutive bi-monthly issues for quite modest compensation and making a good faith effort to secure the means of creating more, I did not deserve to be called a prima donna, a hack, or a spoiled athlete holding a gun to anyone’s head. It was unfair to characterize the end of Megaton Man, which had been extended from what had been a one-shot into 10 issues, and had been brought about as much by the demise of the color line as much as the fulfillment of my creative ideas up to that time, as “abandoning” the series. I above all did not deserve the extended and distorted lecture on my painful suspension of Border Worlds, the sales of which had not “turned around” but were still falling with its final issue, particularly since Alien Fire, another black and white series simultaneously published by Kitchen Sink, had been discontinued by its creators for similar reasons, and not been blithely “killed” because their respective creators had simply “tired” of it.

It is worth noting that it took Daniel Clowes fifteen years to create 23 consecutively-numbered issues of Eightball for Fantagraphics, (averaging 1.6 issues per year), and Mark Schultz nine years to create 14 consecutively-numbered issues of Xenozoic Tales/Cadillacs and Dinosaurs for Kitchen Sink Press (averaging 1.5 issues per year). Denis scoffed at the prospect of “Megaton Man #15 in 1991,” but 15 issues of Megaton Man over a six-year period beginning in December 1984 (averaging 2.5 issues per year) in fact compared very favorably to these other examples. If every new “episode of MM activity” consisted of 4 issues, as I had proposed with Megaton Man #11-14, this would have constituted a rate of 1.3 to 2 issues per year, very much in line with these other cartoonists.

In any case, in the retrospective view of the publisher, I had unilaterally “abandoned” Megaton Man, simply “tired” of Border Worlds, never finished a single thing that I had started, had intentionally cheated my publisher and fans, had turned to “hackwork” (collaborative experience from which I actually learned a great deal) on a whim, and was now attempting extortion, motivated by my insatiable ego. Never mind what any of this had to do with the publisher accepting Megaton Man #11 but going back on his word and now demanding a new #1.

I was so benumbed by this horrendous bullying and willful distortion of my motivations that I immediately capitulated on all issues. Renumbering no longer seemed important to me at all. I no longer lobbied for the company to reprint Megaton Man #1 and #2, [6] and I did not bring up the issue compensation. I resolved to fulfill my commitment as best I could under the circumstances. But instead of four more issues averaging 33 pages each as I had planned, The Return of Megaton Man would now be a finite, three-issue mini-series, numbered #1-3, with 24-page interiors plus a cover (a net loss of 57 pages). This shortened the length of my commitment to the publisher and made the prospect of completing the project without interruption more likely, and also allowed me more time to subsidize this work by accepting outside freelance. By keeping the same cover price and assuming sales approximating those of the original 10-issue series, it also held out the prospect of a slight raise for my labor. Moreover, my original concept for the cover Megaton Man #11, featuring my beleaguered hero exclaiming, “I’m Back! Now I quit Again!” was even funnier under a logo that emphatically proclaimed The Return of in the subhead, and at the same time had gained added personal significance.

“[H]e’s not in control of anything he does—he’s manipulated and used. […] Yet he still goes forth and faces what he has to face.” See previous post.

The three-issue mini-series was released in 1988, to modest success, achieving sales in the range of 90% of the original series, and my tense relations with Kitchen Sink eased somewhat. Again, I found that I had more Megaton Man ideas, and discussed these with the publisher in the course of completing the mini-series. However, there was no doubt that from now on, any new installment of Megaton Man had to feature a new #1 on the cover. As Denis wrote,

I do urge you to seriously pursue the ‘‘hit and run’’ parody one-shots we discussed. From talking to people at different levels of the comics biz, I’m more convinced than ever that this could result in very respectable sales and still permit you to do what you want, retain ownership, and sting some deserving targets.

Among the suggested “targets” were the X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, and Marvel’s Punisher (soon to become a Dolf Lundgren movie vehicle). Of the latter, Denis remarked, “Good excuse for lots of mindless excessive fight scenes between [Megaton Man] & [The Punisher].” He also suggested an actual crossover with The Teenage Mutant Turtles, since we both knew that Kevin Eastman was a big fan of Megaton Man. In Denis’ view, “The one-shots offer the best opportunity for maximum publicity” and “it’s another way to keep Megaton Man visible” in the public eye. He chirped, “You’ll make more money. I’ll make more money. My attorney will make more money.”[7]

Sidebar: Read the actual correspondence referenced in this post.

Presumably, these last remarks had been made half-jokingly. In any case, I went with the joke, creating the one-shots Megaton Man Meets the Uncategorizable X+Thems #1, Yarn Man #1, and Pteranoman #1, along with another Border Worlds issue (Marooned #1) and a dramatic superhero comic, Bizarre Heroes #1, all of which appeared in 1989 and 1990. Of these, the obvious allusion to Marvel’s X-Men was the most gratuitous; unlike earlier issues of Megaton Man, in which I had parodied the Silver-Age comics I had grown up reading, and in contrast to the later Splitting Image series, for which I studied early Image Comics issues, I had no particular feeling at all for Marvel’s ubiquitous mutants one way or another. The X+Thems were merely a generic team with only a few specific parodic gestures aimed its putative source.

Nonetheless, in The Return of Megaton Man and the subsequent one-shots, I was able to further the Megaton Man narrative and to deepen the characterizations and relationships of the core cast somewhat, much as Dave Schreiner had urged me to do, albeit at a much slower pace and in a more fractured way than when I initially plotted Megaton Man #11-14. Many of these post-Megaton Man #1-10 issues are fan favorites, and I had managed to create them while appeasing the publisher with a total of four new #1s and “lots of silly fight scenes.”

But over the long term, as I had warned, the renumbering dictated by the publisher had a detrimental effect on my sense of creating and adding to a coherent, ongoing body of work. I found the pretense of packaging each new installment of the Megaton Man narrative as a self-contained one-shot an additional hurdle to my imagination, one that quickly grew tiresome. It was becoming difficult for me to keep track of exactly how many of issues of Megaton Man I had created without resorting to my fingers and toes. Moreover, each new #1 to my mind was not merely an expedient marketing device, but presented a significant creative challenge requiring at least some kind of narrative justification within the storyline, if only in terms of deciding which character, such as Yarn Man, deserved a “solo issue” next.[8]

The unpublished, colored greyline for Ms. Megaton Man #1, planned as the next Kitchen Sink Megaton Man one-shot (see note 8 below). The Kitchen Sink logo in the upper left has been scratched off the film.

More significantly, the devastating verbal abuse that had been leveled against me, all because I had the temerity to stand up to Kitchen Sink’s reneging on its agreement to publish Megaton Man #11 as Megaton Man #11, while accomplishing the publisher’s short-term goals had, in the longer term, done far more lasting damage. I was a hack, I never finished anything that I started, my “blood lust for continuity” was not a legitimate creative consideration but simply “prima donna posturing.” More importantly, I was simply not in the league of Crumb, Eisner, McCloud, Clowes, Schultz, or any of the artists who was accorded the respect of consecutively numbering their series. Megaton Man was nothing more than a cash cow to fund other, more cherished projects, and if this potential could not be maximized, it simply was not worth being in the Megaton Man business.

I created Border Worlds: Marooned #1, a continuation of the previous series, and Bizarre Heroes #1, a dramatic superhero concept, both released in 1990. I had created a total of 25 comic book issues over a six-year period, averaging over 30 pages per issue, or more than 750 pages of story and art, a singular achievement by a creator under the imprint. It might have been a lot more, but I simply reached the point where I would rather have thrown the original art for my next comic book in the river than see a Kitchen Sink Press logo on it. Inevitably, I parted ways with Kitchen Sink Press, and the only wonder is that it took so long.

Needless to say, Dave and Denis each sought to emphasize quite different aspects of Megaton Man, and their advice to me, if not diametrically opposed, was certainly in stark contrast. While it is true that Dave never suggested that I eschew parody altogether, he urged me to consider the character(s) over the long-term, and to develop an organic supporting cast and believable world, while Denis advocated hit-and-run topical parodies with new #1’s on every cover, and plenty of “silly fight scenes” to make him and his lawyer maximum profits. (I hasten to add that it never occurred to me to enlist Dave’s support in the Megaton Man #11 debate, nor to place him in such an awkward position; after all, despite his minority ownership in the company, it was not named Schreiner Sink Press. I have no idea what he thought about Denis’ dictate to renumber the series.)

Unfortunately, I internalized Denis’ values for quite some time, regarding Megaton Man as my own personal cash cow, useful only in subsidizing my other, more artistic endeavors. This could be said of the team-ups at Image Comics, although The Savage Dragon vs. The Savage Megaton Man #1 with Erik Larsen and normalman vs. Megaton Man #1 with Jim Valentino (and several other contributors) are works of which I am extremely proud, and are highly regarded by fans. But it was even more true in the case of my self-published series Bizarre Heroes, which initially included Megaton Man as a guest-star in the early issues only as a kind of “booster rocket” to get the series off the ground.

It wouldn’t be until the Megaton Man narrative unexpectedly but inexorably had begun to supplant the Megaclone storyline mid-way through the 17-issue run of Bizarre Heroes, culminating in the doubly-titled Megaton Man #0 that brought my career full circle, that I realized Dave Schreiner’s insights were of far more lasting value to me than those of Denis Kitchen. Despite everything, I had formed long attachments to the characters in the Megaton Man narrative, ones that I wanted to continue to explore in the online Megaton Man Weekly Serial of 1996-2000 (which simultaneously ran as a back-up feature in The Savage Dragon #52-80).

For quite some time, the brutal suppression of Megaton Man #11 has not seemed a significant hurdle to my conception of the Megaton Man narrative as a coherent, unified body of work. For one thing, I chose to go back to college for a decade in order to earn a PhD, and in the wake of the internet and digital technology, the business model for the print comic book industry itself has changed almost beyond recognition, and those are no doubt bigger obstacles for a “come back” for either me or Megaton Man at this point. I admit I still can’t add up how many Megaton Man comic books I’ve done over the years, and I hope that collected volumes of Megaton Man, along with new material I am developing, will one day render that difficulty moot. Still, I can’t help but looking back at the Megaton Man #11 episode without recognizing a moment in which I might have been coaxed into returning to Megaton Man full-time, and instead was senselessly bludgeoned into curtailing production and ultimately ending what had been a productive collaboration with Kitchen Sink Press. Four issues every 2-3 years by 2015 would have added up to ... well, someone else can do the math.

As Dave Schreiner said of my hero, “he’s not in control of anything he does—he’s manipulated and used. And yet, he retains a “good heart”—he wants to do the right thing. […] Yet he still goes forth and faces what he has to face.”

Sometimes, creating the Megaton Man narrative has been like that.

Next: Part III: God and Megaton Man at Image Comics

Read also: Megaton Man #11 from Plot to Print

Read also “How Megaton Man Has Evolved in Thirty Years and Why I’m Still Creating Him”

Also: "Aaargh!" Denis Kitchen Speaks Out!
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[1] I also colored the covers of Megaton Man #7-10 along with the Border Worlds back-up feature in those issues, and all of Megaton Man #10.
[2] Dave Schreiner, letter to Don Simpson, February 15, 1987.
[3] Don Simpson, letter to Denis Kitchen, November 18, 1987.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Denis Kitchen, letter to Don Simpson, November 25, 1987.
[6] Kitchen Sink Press did eventually issue a black-and-white reprint of Megaton Man #1 in 1989, and later collected the first four issues of the series in a slightly oversized black-and-white hardcover and trade paperback in 1990 in the lavish format reserved for Will Eisner and Mark Schultz, but these measures came too little too late in my opinion to translate into audience growth, since the Megaton Man series by then had become hopelessly fractured and fragmented, much as I had predicted, into a bewildering plethora of #1s. In any case, it did not have the effect that I believe keeping all issues in print all along, or at least reprinting issues #1 and #2 in tandem with Megaton Man #11 in 1988, might have had.
[7] Denis Kitchen, letter to Don Simpson, October 19, 1988.
[8] Ms. Megaton Man #1, the next planned Megaton Man one-shot, was advertised as “Coming in April [1990] in a full page ad with the cover illustration in the back of Yarn Man #1 (October 1989), and is also mentioned in the indicia of Yarn Man #1. The back cover of Yarn Man #1, featuring Ms. Megaton Man and Megaton Man in a “Batman and Robin” pose with display lettering reading, “The Dork Nuke,” also functioned as a preview for Ms. Megaton Man #1. However, a complete Ms. Megaton Man solo comic book never materialized. Instead, the short story, “The Dork Nuke,” featuring Ms. Megaton Man and Megaton Man fooling around in The Dork Cave, was one of three short stories that made up Pteranoman #1 (August 1990), the final Megaton Man one-shot to appear from Kitchen Sink Press.

Update (January 30, 2023): I recently came across this document, a clipping from The Comics Buyer's Guide #717 (c. 1987), in which I rail about the renumbering (Denis, I think, replied in kind with a letter to CBG, but I have no record of it). As I predicted, by age 50 (and well before), I could no longer count how many issues of Megaton Man I had drawn. Hopefully, the forthcoming omnibus The Complete Megaton Man Universe (two volumes), coming from Fantagraphics Underground later this year, will solve that problem, collecting all of the Megaton Man and Bizarre Heroes comics and one-shots in publishing order.

Dave Schreiner on Megaton Man: "Yet He Still Goes Forth!"

Megaton Man: The Kitchen Sink Years, Part I

Megaton Man #1 was originally a one-shot comic book that I created over a 13-month period between early 1983 and early 1984, mostly while washing dishes at Union Street restaurant on Woodward Avenue in Detroit. I was 22 years old at the time, and although I had been drawing since the age of 5, and dreaming up characters since at least junior high school, Megaton Man was the new kid on the block in terms of my imagination, created only in 1982. Whereas previous creations had been mostly dramatic adventure characters of one sort or another that never left my sketchbook, Megaton Man was a humorous spoof of superhero clichés that seemed flexible enough to channel my various artistic influences, from Steranko to Neal Adams, which I was struggling to reconcile into my own style, and serve as the basis for my first full-length comic book.

Flying by the seat of my pants, I created Megaton Man #1 a few pages at a time, hoping the final result would demonstrate my skill and versatility as a writer and artist as well as my knowledge of comics lore, and still hold together as a single work. Overworked passages and stylistic self-indulgences which in another context might detract from and disrupt the reading experience could, in a satire, be passed off as comedic exaggerations and actually serve the underlying concept: a deconstruction of the superhero genre. As such, I did not have a 300-issue story arc in mind, or even much of an imaginary world mapped out for the character, and didn’t really need one. I relied on the structure provided by the standard superhero yarns I was parodying, and could count on the reader’s familiarity with formulaic plot structures and play on their programmed expectations to sustain the issue.

I really hadn’t expected Megaton Man #1 to be published, however. At most I hoped just to get my foot in the door with some publisher as a letterer or production assistant. However, much to my surprise, Kitchen Sink Press, a small publisher of underground comix and classic comic book and comic strip reprints, offered not only to publish inaugural effort (in color, no less), but also wondered if I could produce Megaton Man as an ongoing series! [1] Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity, with no clear plan in mind. It would be a learning experience for both parties, since the company was new to color publishing and had no prior experience issuing an open-ended comic book series by an individual creator on a regular frequency, and indeed had no track record of breaking in such a young creator. In any case, from late 1984 to summer 1986, I managed to cobble together a total of ten bi-monthly issues of Megaton Man.

Megaton Man was one of three color series published at the time by Kitchen Sink Press. The first had been Will Eisner’s The Spirit, debuting in 1983 to much fanfare, which reprinted the more artistically accomplished postwar stories of the classic character (a preview of Megaton Man #1 appeared in The Spirit #8). Painstakingly recolored by Pete Poplaski and Ray Fehrenbach using a lavish method of Cel-Vinyl paint on greylines with an additional shading overlay, The Spirit was successful in color but expensive to produce and publish by itself. (Indeed, it is highly implausible that an untested, unknown creator would be given the unprecedented opportunity to produce an ongoing, creator-owned color series on the strength of talent alone; more likely, a superhero parody could be seen as a pretty safe bet in the superhero-dominated marketplace, an yet at the same time did not violate the imprint’s bona fides as an alternative, non-superhero company.) Death Rattle, an underground horror anthology, revived as a rather tepid suspense series, was the last series to join The Spirit and Megaton Man in color. (Rand Holmes’ two-part Harold Hedd: Hitler’s Cocaine, an earlier, costly experiment in color, had already come and gone by the time Megaton Man #1 appeared.) Of the three titles, Megaton Man had been the only series to remain profitable for the publisher for the entirety of its run; the other two titles had started out strong, but sales for each soon fell to an unprofitable level. For more or less a year, in other words, Megaton Man had been propping up the flagging Kitchen Sink color line.

Around the time I was completing Megaton Man #7, Kitchen Sink decided it would discontinue publishing color comics altogether in the coming months, with Megaton Man #9 tentatively slated as the last color issue of the series. In Amazing Heroes Preview, a semi-annual Fantagraphics publication that forecast upcoming industry releases, we had already announced my intention of ending Megaton Man with issue #12, and I had already drawn covers for those issues, although the stories were little more than notes scribbled on a legal pad.  In a meeting with Denis, Dave, and Pete Poplaski (I was living at the Kitchen Sink offices at the time), I was given the choice of finishing out Megaton Man (or continuing the series indefinitely) in black and white, or creating a new series better suited to the black and white format. I already had in mind Border Worlds, an experimental back-up feature I had begun as a back-up feature in Megaton Man #6, as the project I wanted to tackle next, and thought that series would work better in black and white. I also felt that I could comfortably compress the remaining ideas I had for Megaton Man into three more issues instead of five, and we agreed at that meeting that issue #10 would be the last issue of the series and the final color comic book Kitchen Sink would publish for the time being. 

The Search Begins but the Color Line is About to End: A successful year of Megaton Man is not enough to offset losses on the color Spirit and Death Rattle. Megaton Man #7 (Kitchen Sink Press, December 1985).

Border Worlds, a brooding science fiction saga featuring a female protagonist living on a doomed space station, was altogether different in feeling and tone from the relatively upbeat and lively Megaton Man. No doubt, I was asking a lot of my audience to follow me from one series to the other. But sales of Border Worlds #1 were strong, and I was optimistic that I could win fans over, and I put my heart and soul into the series, tapping influences from Ridley Scott’s Alien to Moebius and Wally Wood, along with classic black and white cinema. However, as the series unfolded (and as the market experienced a sudden glut of independent black and white comics), sales of Border Worlds steadily declined, soon falling to a point where royalties could no longer support my extremely modest lifestyle. After seven issues, I made the very painful decision to place Border Worlds on indefinite hiatus while I accepted freelance assignments from other companies, primarily DC Comics and Mirage Studios (I was the only artist to appear in all 18 issues of John Ostrander and Del Close’s creepy proto-Vertico anthology Wasteland, and also drew a couple Flash stories; I also made some minor contributions to the early Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mythos).

As 1987 rolled around, I wanted to write and draw my own work again, and realized I had more Megaton Man ideas after all, sufficient for at least four more issues, comprising #11-14. I shared a sketchy outline of my ideas with Kitchen Sink Press. Even before the first issue of Megaton Man had appeared, in the fall of 1984 (and before I’d met him), the late Kitchen Sink editor Dave Schreiner (1946-2003) had remarked in an internal memorandum,

I’m optimistic about the character. When I read the initial issue I wondered how long the parody-satire could continue before the well ran dry. Comics’ “Silver Age” is a damn limited field. But I see that Mr. Simpson seems to be moving away from pure satire of comics into social satire. If he keeps moving in that direction, the character has an unlimited future. […] His [Megaton Man’s] naiveté combined with his downright stupidity makes him the perfect character for satire. […] You can do anything with a guy like that, as long as it’s believable within his own frame of reference. I’m looking at Megaton Man as a long-range character. [Continue to] Parody the movies and comic books, but keep looking at how we live in today’s world. [2]

Of my plans for new Megaton Man issues, Dave wrote directly to me in 1987,

I’m glad you’re thinking seriously about bringing him back. [...] I think it’s about time you stopped viewing the character as merely your vehicle to boff on the comics biz, and you should also stop viewing him as simply the comic relief with his “silly fight scenes.” What you have built, quite possibly unintentionally, is a very likeable character that people seem to care about—much more than they care about any of the other subsidiary characters. This is not to say that the other characters are not important, but it is time to give MM his due. He’s dumb; he’s a freak; he’s not in control of anything he does—he’s manipulated and used. And yet, he retains a “good heart”—he wants to do the right thing—and he has a lot of spirit. And, to top it off, he has an awareness that he possesses all the aforementioned buffoon-like qualities. Yet he still goes forth and faces what he has to face. None of the other characters in MM have these qualities. [3]

As I made clear to the publisher, it was important to my own sense of creating a body of work that the numbering of Megaton Man continue, despite the hiatus, with Megaton Man #11, and the publisher provisionally agreed. When I sent in a cover sketch and plot notes, Denis responded, “Your MM #11 cover Xerox and letter just arrived. I love the cover – it’ a great pose and gag.” However, he wondered if the new release should have #1 on the cover, possibly packaged as an annual. [4]

Next: Whatever Happened to Megaton Man #11?

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[1] In 1984, in response to my submission of Megaton Man #1, Denis wondered, “Is this a one-shot or can a continuity be maintained? If this is a one-shot, we can go for all it’s worth, and then maybe you’ll want to tackle something altogether different.” Denis Kitchen, letter to Don Simpson, March 1, 1984.

[2] Dave Schreiner, undated memorandum to Denis Kitchen, attached to Denis Kitchen, letter to Don Simpson, October 25, 1984).

[3] Dave Schreiner, letter to Don Simpson, February 15, 1987.

[4] Denis Kitchen, letter to Don Simpson, April 2, 1987.