Meeting Stan Lee

I'm back talking with the fabulous Sandy Jimenez, creator of Marley Davidson: Bronx Exorcist and more. He had the opportunity to meet one of the gods of the comics universe -- Stan Lee. Naturally, I had to hear all about this!


Can you tell me a little more about hanging out with Stan Lee?
Is there anything in particular that he said or did that stands out?

I was introduced to Stan Lee in March of 2012 by Mike Carbonara who runs New York Comic Book Market Place. Lee had come back into New York from promoting the latest battery of Marvel movies, I think he had just come off of the press junket for the big Avengers movie of that year if I'm remembering it right.

He was very kind. I try to ease up on the questions with guys in the industry, because they get hit with a lot of questions from fans all of the time and he really did look exhausted. He was too tired to eat in fact.

He asked me about my work, I told him what I was up to. I asked him how he felt about where Marvel was now. He said he had always seen it as a character-based company that would be a springboard to other media, it just took decades to happen on the scale he thought it deserved, and admitted he didn't think it would happen on such a global scale -- they had tried TV and motion pictures before.

He said it was a shame Jack Kirby didn't live to see some of the movies, because the effects work was finally beginning to catch up to what Kirby was drawing decades ago.

When I asked him about the early days at Marvel, he told me that he was actually tiring of the comics business in those years and that he, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and others were of a generation working in comics who felt they had nothing to lose by doing things differently.

 I mentioned Black Panther, and he stifled a laugh waving it off.

He and Jack Kirby introduced the Black Panther, at the height of the Civil Rights era, a radical, and in my opinion, protest-driven concept at a time when just including any African American character took a certain kind of moral rectitude, and naming him after a Black revolutionary socialist organization [although some people say its the other way around, the point is they kept the name even after Huey Newton and Bobby Seale starting becoming active] was really an anti-establishment act and almost self destructive considering how conservative comic books and their supporting businesses like distributors and toy makers were in those days.

Stan admitted that he and Jack Kirby were trying to get into trouble, hopefully make a name for themselves on the back of some controversy and leave the company or even the business altogether. Stan said the more chances they took, the more the readers responded. He did offer the Hulk as an example. While he says the look of the character was inspired by a popular Aurora Frankenstein model kit (publisher Martin Goodman asked him and Kirby to come up with something that would capitalize on its popularity,) making him cognitively impaired, (or "mentally retarded" in the parlance of the time) was the angle that they thought would generate some heat, some notoriety, but somehow it never happened. Lee said people responded to the Hulk on a very human level, and that in turn made them go deeper with its stories as a nuclear-age Jekyll and Hyde story. So, I was really impressed with Stan Lee to say the least.

There's been a lot of controversy over the past decade and a half about who really deserves the credit for Marvel's explosive period of creativity in the 1960s and early 1970s and while that may never be sorted out to anyone's satisfaction, I'm convinced those comic books and those characters would not have had the impact, nor would they be as compelling as they are today if he had not been at Marvel during those years.

There's more to tell about our meeting, but I guess I'll leave that for another time.

 You can see more of our hero here at Vampryotechnic Studios and Sandy’s work can be seen now at at The Camden Center for the Arts at Rutgers University. The Compulsive Narratives: Stories That Must Be Told show is up through April 26th.

More Than Marley

Sandy Jimenez isn’t just the author/artist of Marley Davidson: Bronx Exorcist. He’s also the creator of the Shit House Poet series and more.

Can you tell us about Shit House Poet and World War 3 Illustrated? These are two titles I've seen associated with you.

The Shit House Poet is a series of comic book episodes that I began writing while I was in art school. It's my longest running series and the one most closely identified with me as a comic book artist. The stories are about the lives of a group of friends in the South Bronx and New York City told through a nameless narrator who is my stand in. 

Although largely taken from my life experience, I don't want to ever be referred to as a memoirist or someone who does autobiography (because that implies it's more about recording and having led an eventful life than it is about the act of writing.)  

In the 1980s there was no outlet for comic books at The Cooper Union, so those of us who worked on narratives did it outside of class time. World War 3 Illustrated, a comic book anthology magazine that was started in 1980 by Seth Tobocman and Peter Kuper  was the first publication to accept my work. They've published my work since 1991, and continue to do so to this day. 

A new issue has just debuted, gathering stories on the subject of death, and survival, and grieving from many talented artists. There is a Shit House Poet story in that one, I suppose this marks that series 23rd year in print since the first story debuted in 1991.

What other work (comics or otherwise) are you developing?

This year, there is a 15-page glam rock/new wave/new romantics-themed adaptation of Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea that I painted for Seven Stories Press latest Graphic Canon collection.

{Ed. note: SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE this sounds SO fun! Here’s another link to the Graphic Canon Collection. I do believe I’m about to make a purchase!}

Aside from that, Marley Davidson will finally return with a new issue in 2014 (I'm very late with that,) and another project I wrote called "The Innertube Mothership Connection" is hopefully going to get going for a 2015 finish. 

{Even more ed. note: but, but.... I want it NOW. Also too "The Innertube Mothership Connection?" LOVE this title. For some reason, I now have Embryonic Journey -- with the mas brill Jorma Kaukonen-- from Surrealistic Pillow spinning on the old internal turntable. Fabulous!}

Sandy’s work can be seen now at a show on the graphic novel down at The Camden Center for the Arts at Rutgers University.
What of your work is featured in Compulsive Narratives: Stories That Must Be Told?

It's a show of original raw art pages from the latest Shit House Poet stories and other excerpts from a story I did called Skips. Cheryl Harper curated the show, and there is some great work in there by other artists like Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware.

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Sadly, I was unable to make the opening reception (which would’ve been way cool) but the show is up through April 26.

ROAD TRIP!

The Conversation Continues

In my last chat with Sandy Jimenez, creator of Marley Davidson: Bronx Exorcist, I was sparked up by his answer to my question ‘How has he (Marley) evolved over time?’

‘With the Marley Davidson: Bronx Exorcist series I wanted to answer questions about power, exploitation, racism and class as it pertains to the fantasy world of monsters and monster hunters.’

So of course I had to ask:

Your social conscience makes me wonder -- do you find many artists and authors (comics or otherwise) with similar sensibilities? If so, why do you think that may be. If not, again, why?

I think there's less of it (social conscience) in mainstream comics, mostly because comic book publishers are afraid of alienating readers. Their business model is based upon getting kids (and adult males) to buy the next issue again, and again; so a lot of the same repetitive "dumbing down" that happens in corporate-backed network and cable television, has always happened in comics. Now obviously, based on what I relayed to you from my conversation with Stan Lee (ed. note: I promise I'll post this one next!) there have been various exceptions, but largely, those add up to moments across mainstream comic book history, not a sustained concern or posture. An artist (that I'm embarrassed to admit I forgot to mention when you asked me about my influences, because he was a very big one for me) like Spain Rodriguez  who created TrashMan is an example of somebody whose sense of outrage and politics was at the center of much of his work. Ultimately, there's only one magazine that was conceived and is continuously created by artists who dedicatedly explore the political and the social, in every single issue they publish and that's World War 3 Illustrated.  

Do you think this sensibility might be a coastal or urban artist mind set?

I think every single thing we do (as artists, as people) has a political relevance, a political importance, whether we consciously intend it to or not. I still think a lot of our divisions in this country are largely falsehoods that are mutually destructive. Everybody needs a job. Everybody wants their family and kids to be safe. We treat political parties and the legislation they propose like it's a Coke or Pepsi choice.

YES, what Sandy said!

I've got such a load of steam in my head over how we, the masses, are forever being distracted and separated by bullshit. While the 'right' screams Benghazi, tries to get everyone in the middle to believe that the poor are all shiftless, lazy and immoral, that Obama's a dictator who's going to TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS! and that women who use birth control or need an abortion are vile sluts who can’t keep their knees together, Big Corporate America and their Renfields are turning the US into a 3rd world medieval horror show.

(OK, now this is playing in my head)

If the bastards of Wall and K Streets can get us to take our eyes off the ball long enough, to blame our brothers and sisters for all the country's ills then, boyhowdy, the short con is fait accompli.

What’s ‘the ball?’ Justice and equality for ALL. Of course.

Michael’s snark laden words from an earlier post are ringing in my head:

Seeing as how I'm not much given to conspiracy theories, I continue to assume that the fact that Dr King was assassinated just as he started making a whole lotta noise about wholesale ECONOMIC justice was pure coincidence.

More ventilation with Sandy Jimenez: Bronx Artist/Author to come!

Sandy Jimenez: The Interviewening

Marley Davidson

Artemis Brown

On Sunday you met Marley Davidson: Bronx Exorcist. Today, meet his maker, Sandy Jimenez. Sandy's graciously agreed to The Maderer Inquisition.

Do you remember when you began drawing?

   I actually don't remember a specific age, it's as early as I can remember. My mother and relatives say it was from when I was a toddler, but although I had a compulsion to draw, I can distinctly remember not thinking I was good at it, or not being able to do it as well as I wanted to. I was frustrated by not being able to draw hands for example, and like most other kids my age in those early years (6-8 or so) I drew pictures that were pretty unremarkable, barely better than stick figures. One summer, in 1977 to be exact, I had a breakthrough, I was doing about 10-12 drawings a day and something came together in my mind. 

When did you became interested in comics?

Billy Mayhem

   That was love at first sight I'm sure, but whenever that was, I'm not sure I can pin it down to a year. My first comics were Popeye reprints, and some weird adult photo-comics that I don't think are made anymore.

In drawing comics?

Kenneth Brown

   The first movie I was ever taken to see was a sequel: 'Dr. Phibes Rises Again.' I must have been about 4 or 5. I couldn't get the images in that movie out of my mind, and I started creating picture books, just long single-page/image iterated illustrated stories based on what I had seen, so my mother bought an anthology of Popeye comic strips for me. It was early Elzie Segar stuff and after a while I started cutting up the individual panels and reordering them to create different stories. I started writing my own stories, mostly stuff about Pirates, Astronauts and Frogmen in early childhood.

Who were your childhood favs? How about now?

Sisters Graye

   Jack Kirby is the first artist I can remember recognizing at 100 paces. I really loved him and still do. It was years before I knew the names of people like Alex Toth, John Buscema, Curt Swan, Neal Adams, Joe Sinnott, Joe Orlando, Moebius and others whose work I could recognize no matter the material, but whose names I just never knew until later when I was in my teens. The writers and artists whose work I learned from  is long, but if I have to boil it down and give you a list of people I was knocked out by back in my childhood and teens, (and am still learning from today) it would be: Michael Golden, Bill Mantlo (writer), Jim Aparo, John Romita Sr., Marv Wolfman (writer), Gene Colan, Jack Kirby, Jim Steranko, John Byrne, George Perez, Chris Claremont and of course Stan Lee (writer) -- who I got to meet and hang out with a couple of years ago -- a dream come true.

How did Marley Davidson originate?

Don Lajarita

   Marley Davidson's birth is kind of a funny, strange story. Initially I had intended to do a comic book called "Vladek, Vampire Detective," a series of stories trailing the life of a vampire charged with eliminating the Undead. The Vladek series was intended to recount events across several decades in which Vladek kept outliving his sidekicks (most of whom were benevolent descendants of Frankenstein's monster) culminating in the late 1970s, when his last sidekick, "Marley Davidson" would finally take over the mission and the series would end. Marley was originally just a joke character, a lighthearted way to end a very heavy series. Well the funny thing is as I started writing all the scripts, mapping out all the pages, I started to generate a lot more material for Marley and his world. He turned out not to be such a joke for me after all, and really took over my writing desk for a couple of years while I developed his universe. Now, Vladek is a minor character in his story, not the other way around.

How has he evolved over time?

   My plan for Marley has always been that he would evolve from a bloodthirsty zealot and mature into someone more humane as the stories went on. I wrote Marley Davidson at a time when violence in mainstream comic books (this is the late 1980s and mid 1990s I'm talking about) had reached a comically irresponsible nadir. It wasn't that I was opposed to portrayals of violence, I just can't stand it presented as a thing without consequences or costs. Anybody who's ever been assaulted, or even punched in the face will acknowledge it's in no way fun or entertaining. It also seems like the current popular fascination with Zombie fiction centering largely around people fantasizing about dismembering, and battering people (again without any consequences because they're already dead, right?) As much as I love the Walking Dead movie and TV series adapted from it, the vast majority of independent horror movies, particularly zombie, and "maniac slasher" movies, don't do much to address anything other than the many ways a person can be brutalized. With the Marley Davidson: Bronx Exorcist series I wanted to answer questions about power, exploitation, racism and class as it pertains to the fantasy world of monsters and monster hunters. I have always wondered for example, what happened to all the Orcs at the end of Lord of Rings after the fall of Mordor. Did they just drop their weapons and go look for odd jobs around the countryside? What about the goblins? The trolls? They had to get on with life too didn't they?

Again, you can see more of our hero here at Vampryotechnic Studios. What other series and art has Mister Jimenez done and where can we see more of his fab work?  GREAT questions! I'll be sure to ask these and more for the next installment of Sandy Jimenez: Bronx Artist.

Marley Davidson: Bronx Exorcist

This is one of those fab, synchro-tastic intertooby type occurrences -- in an earlier post, I mentioned a comics character of whom I’m quite enamored. The artist/author saw my post AND got in touch with me. Not only that, he's willing to suffer the Maderer inquisition! How mega cool is that? (in case you’re unsure, the answer to that question is ‘very.’ You’re welcome)

Sandy Jimenez is the creator of Marley Davidson: Bronx Exorcist. For Bast’s sake, the title alone blows me back 12 feet at the same time it draws me in like an all you can eat veggie buffet at Elephant Walk.

In any case, Mister Jimenez has graciously allowed me to post the series’ understory.

Read on!

The Understory

Since the first landings of explorers in the fifteenth century to the waves of immigration in the twentieth century, people brought their hopes, fears, gods...

...and their monsters to America.

A nocturnal nation of accursed predators ignited secret pandemics in Colonial America. Monsters grew in untold numbers. By the 1900's, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens harbored a subterranean population of SATANIC WITCHES, DEMONS and the UNDEAD. This criminal class surpassed the venality and violence of early twentieth century organized crime. The monsters, GOBLIN GANGS and COVENS existed underneath the surface of everyday life. They trafficked in every aspect of American society and commerce. VAMPIRES were in involved in high finance and real estate. ZOMBIES, GOBLINS and GHOULS were habitually the muscle behind organized crime.

Manhattan’s glare and glamour made it an undesirable address for the monsters. The
undead simply found it easier to survive and feast on human beings away from scrutiny.

The undead monsters had always preferred the outer-boroughs because of their
remoteness. In the relative shadow and abject poverty of places like the Bronx, they fed.
The city’s poor had never disputed the existence of undead monsters. Some believed
the local authorities to be in collusion with the undead. The murder and slaughter was
tolerated and a sense of hopelessness permeated the city.

Three Satanic witches known as the SISTERS GRAYE ruled the undead crime world
until 1970. This unholy matriarchy was engaged in all manner of extortion, graft, and
body snatching. It seemed the sisters would have ruled New York forever but the
occasional rivalries between covens became increasingly internecine. The WAR OF
THE WITCHES threw the underworld into chaos. It left two undead crime lords standing.
It wasn't long before someone decided it was time to take the fight to them.

The story begins. War is declared and battle comes down.

Until now, the undead had nothing to be afraid of.
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A wee bio of our hero -- Marley Davidson:

Marley is 35 years of age, an ex-priest, fluent in 9 languages and an expert in long range and big bore caliber firearms. He is also a published authority on the world's religions. On tax forms he declares his occupation as EXORCIST.

Marley will never rest until every monster is dead and back in the grave. His mission has left no room for friendship or family. His crusade is an all consuming obsession.

You can see more of our hero here at Vampryotechnic Studios.

There will be more from Sandy and Marley soon. Stay tuned!

a little bio of Mister Jimenez from Wikipedia:

Sandy Jimenez is an American comic book artist, writer and director, most commonly associated with the New York city independent comic book scene of the 1990s, with work appearing in magazines such as Inner City Press and World War 3 Illustrated.