All e-mails sent to Bob may be published on this Letters Page unless withholding is specifically requested.

 

LETTER OF THE MONTH

 

My review of Iron Man: The Inevitable #1 last month sparked a lot of controversy here and on some of the Iron Man message boards. February's 'Letter of the Month' supports my opinion on Marvel's latest offering, as did most of the e-mails I received.

 

Hi Bob,

I'm glad I found your site.  It's good to hear someone in the industry speak out against the way Marvel characters have been mishandled under the current editors.  My feeling is that there is no knowledge of, or respect for, the established characters' histories.  Now I am hearing that Thor may be re-launched as 'teen Thor' or just another 'someone else as Thor' storyline.  When will they learn? 

I also agree with your assessment of the plodding storylines prevalent in Marvel's comics today.  I have been buying the New Avengers.  I want to like this series but...nothing happens.  Issue after issue, the storyline moves at a snail's pace.   Avengers fighting Ninjas??  Please.  And another point...why are we getting less story the more we pay for comics?  Something is wrong when I pay three dollars for a comic that takes me thirty seconds to read.  I have been enjoying the 'Winter Soldier' storyline in Captain America but even that is moving ploddingly slow.

I've been mostly a Marvel fan all my life, but I've been enjoying DC a lot more lately.  At least they still seem to remember what a superhero comic should be.  Sadly, I think Joe Q and his cronies are firmly entrenched in Marvel so I don't see things getting better for a while.  The only hope I see is that DC has been outselling Marvel in the last few months.  Maybe someone in the corporation will take notice.

Thanks for your time,
Ralph L. Angelo, Jr.
Author of "Help! They're all out to get me! The motorcyclists guide to surviving the everyday world."

 
Ralph,

You can rest assured that you're not alone in your disappointment at the current trends in storytelling.

The funny thing is that I wasn't saying anything new in my assessment.   

Through much of my career as a comic editor, part of that job was to critique the artwork of my fellow professionals and, sometimes, open their eyes to some glaring miscalculations in their approach to a character. 

I stand by my assessment of Iron Man: The Inevitable #1. It was poor in the storytelling department.  It's not simply an issue of personal tastes either--it's a matter of artistic esthetics.  Someone had to say it: "The Emperor has no clothes".

Thanks for the e-mail, Frank.

 

 

Bob

This is a little disconcerting to me. I only just found your website and I'm a little overwhelmed. I'm an Iron Man fan from the mid 70's. Your run as inker during that time IS Iron Man to me. Growing up, he was my favorite character. I read Avengers and Iron Man religiously. Any time I missed an issue due to the vagaries of newsstand distribution was a long, dark month.

The battle against the Hulk in issues #131-#134 were a huge hit with me. That's why I never cared for the concept of the Hulkbuster armor. The red and gold hip disc armor IS a Hulkbuster, IMO.

Definitely one of my favorite things about your work was the use of zip-a-tone. I don't know much about how it's used but I loved it. Just loved it and you are the master.

Copying your work on Iron Man was one of the ways I grew as an artist as a kid. These days, I'm a digital FX artist at Industrial Light & Magic. I've been there for 10 years, worked on all three Star Wars prequels, and about 60 other films.

I will definitely be putting in a request for a commission as soon as I can think up something special. The guy that asked for the Armor Wars II version of Uncanny X-Men #141 is brilliant. It's a beautiful piece.

Thanks for all your great work and for continuing to create.

Alan Travis

Digital Effects Artist

Industrial Light & Magic

 

 

Alan,

It's always pleasing to me to hear from fans from the "good ol' days" of Iron Man. Since I am a fan of ILM's work, I suppose we have a 'mutual admiration society' forming here, eh? :)

Seriously, my site is mostly for guys like yourself, who were true Iron Man fans, and I'm happy that you stumbled upon it.  I update at the first of every month, so be sure to check back in regularly.

I look forward to your commission.  I'll try my best to come up with something that'll knock your socks off.

Thanks for taking the time to write me and keep up the good work there at ILM.

Happy New Year,

 


 

 

Dear Mr. Layton,

I very much enjoyed your run on Iron Man and The Avengers back in the late 80’s.  Also your Ant-Man story, introducing the character Scott Lang was one of my favorite story-arcs (the demise of such short-story anthologies is one of the minor tragedies of the industry).  I found your web site almost by accident.  I just wanted you to know how much I enjoyed the chapters you included of both Deathmask and Freemind.

I gather from the fact that you list these issues as “unpublished” that they have never been distributed.  Is there a collection of the existing issues of these books?  If so, how many issues of each title would be included?  While I long since gave up monthly comics, I occasionally buy collected editions of story arcs and am interested in each of these.

My respects sir,

Frank Adams

 

Frank,

There are Future Comics aplenty available on my website. Just follow this link to listing of available titles: http://www.boblayton.com/futurestore.htm

Freemind #0-3 has been collected into a bound volume.  The other titles are available individually.

Thanks for dropping me a line,

 

 

 

 

Dear Bob,

One quick question regarding other artists.  Was there ever an artist you were assigned to, that when you got the assignment, you thought, "Oh Christ, not him!"

Or someone whose pencils were just so bad, or loose that you did a bit more than your fair share of inking to complete his work?  Anyone like that you got stuck with on more than one occasion? 

You hear a lot about great pencillers, and some stories about others, but I know inkers have faves and "not-so-faves" to work with. I’m curious about yours.

Your friend,

Larry Clay

 

 

 

Larry,

I won't get into the part about my least favorite pencillers. That just wouldn't be nice. Let's just say that there were several of them over my career that made me cringe a bit.

However, I will mention that there have been many great pencillers whom I have collaborated with that I loved to ink like Ron Lim, Barry Windsor-Smith, JR.JR., Dan Jurgens, Dick Giordano and Jackson Guice to name a few.

 

 

We have an extra-large version of Mike's Monthly Missives this month.  Enjoy!

 

 

 

1. Bob--from what I've read about you, you're an insatiable technology buff. Two prime examples. First is the Lockheed Martin VentureStar single stage-to-orbit vehicle Justin Hammer used to transport the Tony-Stark-created Evader armors up to his orbiting space station in IRON MAN: BAD BLOOD #3 (November 2000). I saw an ad for the ship in the October 1998 issue of SMITHSONIAN. (A friend had sent the magazine to me because it has a cover feature on old time baseball -- I'm a huge fan of our national pastimeıs golden age.) IM: BB #3 also featured Iron Manıs onboard solar sail, which safely guided him and his new space armor through re-entry upon crushing Hammerıs latest caper.
The second example is the science of Spintronics--harnessing the magnetic fields generated by the spin of electrons to power electronic devices -- used in FREEMIND. I read a little about Spintronics in William Illsey Atkinsonıs book NANOCOSM.
The above items, and other like them are why I appreciated your work on IRON MAN and Future Comics so much, Bob. You brought real-world science and technology concepts into the story.

How did you develop such a keen interest in science and technology and were there any other new, leading-edge science concepts, at the time, that you injected into IRON MAN during your two runs, and in FREEMIND and METALLIX?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

1.  I have NO idea where that interest originated. I've always had an aptitude for science as a kid--which is something of a contradiction for someone with an artistic leaning. I've continued to read scientific journals and such to this day.  That's probably why David Michelinie usually left the scientific stuff to me when we worked on stories together.  I've always been fascinated with certain aspects of science and I love applying what I read to my work.    I really want my contemporary stories, that have science as a theme, to be on the cutting-edge of the technological frontier. However, whether its Tony Stark or McKinsey Flint, remember that it's the man on the inside is what makes him special, not the electronic gadget he dons.

Oddly enough, in my upcoming web comic, COLONY--I'll be taking a different approach.  I'm deliberately setting this sci-fi series in a more, low-tech environment--in order to create certain contrasts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. These days, do you get any satisfaction in seeing other comics creators continuing on with a character, concept, or storyline you helped make famous?
For example:The Layton/Romita, Jr. "Iron Man Raised-Fist, Power-Riff Pose" as seen on the cover of IRON MAN #126 (September 1979), which you yourself just used for your 2005 Jolly St. Nick Christmas card and as an alternate cover design for ZOOM SUIT #1, due out in April. The Power Riff was most recently seen in SPIDER-GIRL #93 (February 2006): Mainframe, Tony Stark's automaton and leader of Avengers-Next, sports The Riff while discussing Spider-Girlıs behavior with Stinger -- also known as Cassie Lang, a character you helped develop with David Michelinie! Scott Lang also appears as Ant-Man in this continuity--a continuity by Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz, and Sal Buscema that, in my opinion, is the last semblance of a REAL Marvel comic. (Sadly, SPIDER-GIRL ends with issue #100.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Riff was also on display twice in IRON MAN #73/418 (December 2003). Artist Jorge Lucas did the honors.
Likewise, your original "Armor Wars"/"Stark Wars" motif has been used and reused... and to be AGAIN reused, or at least referenced, in the pages of IRON MAN, this time in an upcoming story arc by Daniel Knauf.

Same for the "Tony Stark, alcoholic" theme.
And, finally, Joe Casey reintroducing Spymaster and The Ghost in IRON MAN: THE INEVITABLE. (And I finally know what "Inevitable" means: turning Tony Stark into a mutant; which seems to be Marvel's ultimate plan for all of their characters. Bleh.)

 

Do you get any sense of pride from any of this...or harbor a grain of contempt that modern-day creators "borrow" rather than create?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.To be honest, I'm not that thrilled by the prospect of someone picking up an old storyline. More often than not, I wind-up somewhat disappointed. It seems to me that many in the current crop of writers have simply learned their craft from reading a lot of comics and are now merely regurgitating all their old favorite stories five degrees to the left or the right. So, when a storyline or concept, that I had a hand in creating, gets regurgitated--I'm generally not flattered because it tends to be watered-down.

To put a new slant on an old axiom, "Those who haven't learned to create a future-- are destined to relive the past."

 

 

 

3. Iıll be asking you about your involvement with issue # 78 of Marvelıs STAR WARS run probably next month. But in the meantime--STAR WARS. Youıre a HUGE fan, yet your DOCTOR TOMORROW series was full of STAR TREK references. Why the big fascination with STAR WARS and what did you think of EPISODES I, II. and III? I personally disliked them: George Lucas abandoned the reasons why the original three films were so popular -- Han, Luke, Chewy, et al., and a good dose of HUMOR. The three later movies, to me, had no story, no acting, no humor, and no familiar faces. Plus, the whole Darth Vader sequences were laughable (but not humorous): "Turn to the Dark Side", "No!", "Turn to the Dark Side", "No.", "Turn to the Dark Side." "Uhhh... okay..."

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. I'm not as big a fan of Star Wars as I once was.  I suppose, as I matured, I began to realize that there are disturbing inconsistencies with some of the concepts and characters. I recall that my pal and X-Men artist Paul Smith hated all the Star Wars films--exclaiming that "the Jedi are all pussies!" As I got older, I began to realize that he may be right.  Think about it--rarely, in any of the six films, did a Jedi ever win a fight.  For example: Obi-Wan gets killed by Vader, Vader chops off Luke's hand and he barely escapes, Vader saves a pussed-out, dying Luke from the Emperor, Qui-Gon gets killed by Darth Maul, Dooku beats the shit out of Obi-Wan, Anakin and Yoda.  Must I go on?  All the Jedi do in these movies is lose fights or run away from them.

As far as using Trek in Dr. Tomorrow--the Star Wars movies were not available in any form that could have been downloaded onto a PC when I wrote the series.

 

 



4. As Editor in Chief at Valiant, you created an atmosphere of learning among the artists; you and the senior creators tutored/mentored the younger members of the art staff. In addition, you also hired senior creators no longer enjoying regular gigs in mainstream comics. How and why did you develop such a "humanitarian" philosophy toward creative people, something that doesnıt seem to exist that much in comics these days?

 

4. Its an unfortunate tradition in the comic business that the powers-that-be tend to take a big dump on their predecessors, instead of honoring them.  We’re not very good as an industry in honoring our groundbreaking forefathers. Not while they’re alive, at least. 

One of the things that use to drive me crazy at Valiant was that, when answering a question concerning my training as an illustrator, I would mention Wally Wood's name.  Nine-out-of-ten times, the Knob-in-training would ask, "Who is Wally Wood?"  Is that a crime or what..?

We don't have retirement programs in the comics industry.  Generally, you work until you die...or are put out to pasture. I think this is one of the greatest injustices of our business because I believe that there is an enormous surplus of extremely-talented creators whose gifts are lying fallow due to politics and 'age-ism'.

Working against that attitude has always been in the forefront of my motivations in working with talent, either fledgling or veteran.

 

 


5. As Editor in Chief at Valiant, other than during the "fallout period," what was the most satisfying part of your job and the most frustrating? Is there anything you would have done differently?

 

 

5. There's a loaded question! The most satisfying part was training the folks in Knob Row.  I've always felt that teaching the fundamentals was one of my strong suits.  And, so many of those kids have gone on to have successful careers in comics or related-industries. I'm proud of them all.  But,  the most frustrating part was dealing with the fiefdoms that would spring up from time-to-time.  When you had that many employees (220 at the company's peak), inevitably, small camps with their own private agendas would form.  A lot of my time was spent struggling to correct certain individuals whose direction was in complete opposition to the company's interest. This is commonplace in most large companies, but it's an indicator of poor leadership on my part. I regret that I allowed things of that nature to grow within the organization and wish I had been wise enough to deal properly with those "bad eggs" when they reared their heads. Those fiefdoms contributed, in no small part, to the downward spiral of Valiant.
 

 

 

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