NC Comicon's Bull City Con comes to Durham, NC on November 10 - 12, and Geek Brain plans to be there for the celebration! We even hope we can get well-known grump Howard Chaykin to crack a joke or smile. We won't hold our breath, but here's hoping.
Actually, Chaykin holds a very special place for me. As a child, one of my first obsessions in comic books was STAR WARS. I mean, I was 7 when I saw it, and we didn't have home video options to see it again and again. You had to go to the movies to see it. I remember the revolutionary moment when HBO aired it in the mid-80s, and how excited people were. Then came VHS, and the rest is history. Now we all get to keep the movies we love (and many we hate) forever, within months of seeing them in movie theatres. In my childhood, we could only dream of such things.
But I'm not bitter. I don't want to be like one of my comic book heroes, Howard Chaykin. At least not that much!
I collected STAR WARS obsessively. It was the only way to have the film on a repeat viewing level in some form.
I even got my start as a writer (and would-be artist) back in the day, when I elected to adapt the movie (and others) in a short novelization with illustrations by me. I still have STAR WARS and EMPIRE in my personal collection from those adaptations. (Lost to time, or deep storage at my parents's home are BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, JEDI and a handful of originals of my own doing).
But back to Howard and his grumpiness.
When I was 13, I discovered the Comics Buyers Guide and Amazing Heroes. Within those pages, I learned about First Comics and the projects of Mike Grell (Jon Sable) and Howard Chaykin (American Flagg!). Both Grell and Chaykin were the heroes of my childhood who drew those books I loved, and seeing these obviously "Adult" books from them, sent my 13 year old mind into overdrive. From the dealers' ads I ordered some back issues through the mail, sending a money order along to pay for the books. That first round of comics that arrived included a number of First Comics standard bearers like JSFreelance #6, #7, #11, #12, FLAGG! #3, #4, #5 and Mars #1, as well as Ms. Tree #1 -3 from Eclipse.
I felt like I was getting away with something at 13. All the grown ups around me thought they were just "funny books" for kids and had no idea that Howard Chaykin was teaching me about sex and dystopian futures. Grell taught me about Africa in the 1970s, as well as the 1972 Olympics and gritty crime drama. They were my teachers!
I've met Grell, and I've been personal friends with him since 2011. He's such a nice guy, and so much fun to hang out with.
I'm about to meet Chaykin in a few weeks, and I'm trying to set my bar low. By all accounts, he's not a nice guy, and he's even less fun to hang out with. I have a feeling a budding friendship is not in the offing at Bull City Con. But you never know.
I do know that I have things for him to sign. American Flagg! #1 chief among them. Also, the Marvel Super Specials for Raiders of The Lost Ark (he did the cover and fellow Bull City Con guest Klaus Janson did art in the book) and For Your Eyes Only, Black Kiss TPB (oh, what he taught me about sex in my late teens!) and a few others. I also plan to get a couple of sketches from him. Maybe Reuben Flagg, maybe Indiana Jones. And I'm thinking about getting a sexy Black Canary from him for my wife.
I'll be happy meeting him. I hope he will be too meeting me.
I've followed his career over the years, and he continues to be prolific in his work. Every time you look up, he's got something new on shelves. He swings for the fences constantly. Sure, many of those attempts falter, but he never lets it slow him. He's got a hot new book out from Image, called the Divided States of Hysteria, which is perhaps his best work since FLAGG! He did a 4 issue Buck Rogers book a few years ago that was cool. Less successfully, he has done books like American Century and Power And Glory. He brought Blackhawk back for DC in the 80s, and he has collaborated on many Elseworlds Batman books, and Twighlight, which he wrote with Jose Luis Garcia Lopez (I got Lopez to sign #1 at Heroes Con this past Summer).
Chaykin, unlike many of his contemporaries, jumped to TV writing in the late 80s and early 90s, with scripting credits on the 1990 The Flash, as well as the short lived (first) Human Target series starring Rick Springfield.
In recent weeks, EuropaCorp purchased the rights to make American Flagg! into a TV series, which has me pretty excited!
Chaykin never quits. Maybe his grumpiness is what fuels his passion. Maybe we should stop hoping for a shiny happy Chaykin, and realize that his surly ways are part of what makes him so damned lovable.
Maybe.
I'll let you know after I meet him at NC Comicon's Bull City Con!
http://nccomicon.com/bull-city/
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