Favorite Comics Part Five: Coyote

Marvel Comics responded to the explosion of the Direct Market by launching a creator-owned line of comics under the Epic Comics imprint. The first book they published was Dreadstar by Jim Starlin. An introductory chapter to this, entitled Metamorphosis Odyssey, had already been serialized in Epic Illustrated, the Heavy Metal-like magazine Marvel had been publishing. I had read these, but quite honestly, Dreadstar just never really clicked for me (though I read quite a few issues before I realized this).

Their second book, Coyote by Steve Englehart, really grabbed me.

Englehart was an established comics writer by this time, having written many books for both Marvel and DC. His run on Captain America featured the Secret Empire storyline wherein Cap became so disillusioned with American politics that he briefly gave up his identity to become Nomad, the Man Without a Country. This was after witnessing the suicide of the villainous leader of the Secret Empire. While never made explicit, it was strongly implied that this man was Richard Nixon, president of the United States. This story appeared during the height of the Watergate scandal, and the issue with the suicide appeared about a month before the real Nixon resigned. Englehart went on to collaborate with artist Marshall Rogers on Batman, creating a seminal run that is still influential (collected in the Batman: Strange Apparitions TP). He left comics to write a The Point Man, a well-received fantasy/occult novel.

In various interviews I have read from that time Englehart had no plans to ever work in comics again, due to ongoing issues with creators rights. He did create the character of Coyote with Rogers for Eclipse Publishing, a Direct Market company that offered full ownership of properties to the creators.

Coyote was serialized in black and white in Eclipse Magazine, later collected in color as a trade paperback called I am Coyote, which is how I first saw this story. Roger's art Coyote was dark and creepy, layered with zip-a-tone gray tones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screentone... for you youngins who don't know what that is). In B&W it looked great, but reproduced pretty muddy when color was added.

Unfortunately, the art didn't really capture the spirit of what Englehart wanted Coyote to be. He was tired of the Batman-like dark avengers of comics, living in alleys and creeping around gothic rooftops. Coyote was a creature of the desert southwest, set in Las Vegas. Bright sun, bright neon and wide open spaces.

When Englehart was asked to contribute a new comic to Epic, where he would own his characters and stories, Coyote was the concept he chose. Rogers was not available at the time (and installments of the original series had run increasingly late).

Artist Steve Leialoha came on board with a much lighter style, more iconic in approach. Coyote himself seemed lighter, in mood as well as physical mass.

Wraparound cover for issue #1 by Steve Leialoha

Coyote was the modern incarnation of a god-concept. Sylvester "Sly" Santagelo was lost in the desert as a baby, found and raised by the Native American trickster god, Coyote. He was raised with totem animals and spirits in a world filled with magic. He entered the real world as a young man, seeing it for the first time. In spite of his upbringing he was enthralled by our mundane world, seeing the magic in it that most of don't. He was youthfully arrogant, filled with a sense of his own power (“Coyote is so sly,” he often said of himself), even when he screwed up. He was happy-go-lucky, filled with a sense of wonder. He believed anything was possible and that he had the power to make happen whatever he wanted. He was overtly sexual. His ongoing affair with NaTalia and Cassie was one of the first openly polyamorous, and interracial relationships in comics.

Is it any wonder he appealed to twenty-one year old Wayne?

Leialoha left after only two beautiful issues. Issue three was drawn by Butch Guice. His Coyote was bulky and muscular, looking much more like the standard superhero comic than what we had seen before, and the style really didn't work.

The rest of the series was drawn by Chas Truog, who went on to be the artist for Grant Morrison's awesome Animal Man series (which featured a story called Coyote Gospel). As much as I love Coyote, and as much as I love Animal Man, I'm not a fan of Truog's art. I find it serviceable, but fairly bland.

As an aside, Truog did a couple of covers for the Alien Nation: The Public Enemy mini-series I inked back in the day.

Coyote ran for sixteen issues, and in terms of plot it was, quite honestly, a clusterfuck. Englehart seemed to just be throwing whatever he could think of into the mix and seeing how his character reacted to it. There were evil scientists and magical threats and aliens from Venus, all working together as part of an international cabal known as the Shadow Cabinet. There was a middle eastern hero known as the Djinn, Israeli spy organizations and cyborg Soviet assassins. There was a man who had half his brain living in another dimension. It was gloriously weird and reckless fun and I loved it.

I have no idea if it was any good or not.

Like too many series, it ended with no real resolution. I like to think Sly Santagelo is still wandering around Vegas and the surrounding desert, getting into trouble and getting laid and not taking any of it very seriously.

Reading this series served to turn me onto Native American mythology. I found a book called The Trickster by Paul Radin that changed the way I looked at the world and mythology. There was a great book called A Magic Dwells (from a quote by Hermann Hesse), that detailed the Navajo emergence myth. Coyote led me to read a lot about the concept of the Holy Fool and the Puer Aeternis, which tied well into the Percival Grail stories I was discovering at the time. These kinds of connections happened more and more often with the things I read and the stuff I was interested in, one leading fairly seamlessly into another. That's still true.

I'm not as naïve as I was then, nor quite so youthfully arrogant. I still see our mundane world through eyes of magic (at least I try to). Sometimes I'm pretty sure at least half my brain lives in another dimension. I fully believe the world is gloriously weird and fun. I try to convey those ideas in whatever I do. Talking about Comics is a great way of tricking people into learning about something else.

I am so sly.

Podcast interview

I was recently interviewed by Jim Rugg and Jason Lex for their "Tell Me Something I Don't Know" podcast.


You can listen to it on their website at http://tmsidk.podbean.com/


Or you can download it for free from Itunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/wayne-wise/id516288911?i=114398878


While you're there check out the other interviews with Tom Scioli, Farel Dalrymple and Cecil Castelucci.


You should also really check out the pages for both Jim and Jason as well. Both are gifted artists with a whole lot of great work out there.


http://jimrugg.com/


http://www.awefulbooks.com/


You can listen to it here as well, but really... go check out all these other people too.

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Grey Legacy find in Amazing Heroes

In an earlier post (http://www.wayne-wise.com/2011/07/writing-part-5-comics-part-2.html) I talked about my experiences as part of the comics small press, black and white publishing explosion of 1986.


Recently, thanks to digging through the warehouse at Phantom of the Attic Comics where I work I've had the pleasure of looking through a lot of issues of Amazing Heroes. This was one of the premiere magazine about comics at the time, one of the place where you could read articles, creator interviews, and see previews of new series in the pre-internet age. It was bi-monthly publication. This has been an amazing bit of nostalgia for me, and seeing several years of comics fandom and my own experiences condensed into about a weeks worth of browsing issue after issue is a little mind-blowing. It's a great sense of perspective and gives a more concrete timeline than my mere memory allowed for.


So, while browsing I stumbled across the following in issue #116,  May 1, 1987, in the "Coming Comics" section. I had never seen this before.

This is fascinating to me. As I said before, we finished the entirety of Shadowlock #1 and mailed it in, but Showcase Publications went under before the book was ever printed. I couldn't find am announcement for it in Amazing Heroes, so either I don't have the issue or Showcase never submitted one. This announcement indicates the good faith from our publisher that there would indeed be a second issue. What I find funny is that we never discussed issue #2 with our editor at all, other than the contract we had for an ongoing series. While we certainly had plans, we never wrote or drew a single panel for a Shadowlock #2.

A month later, in Amazing Heroes #118, June 1, 1987, there is the following announcement. It pretty much tells the whole tale.

Favorite Comics Part Five: Mage: The Hero Discovered

As I said in some detail recently, I discovered the work of comics creator Matt Wagner through the black and white issues of Grendel. Because I was so enamored of it I picked up the first issue of his next series, Mage: The Hero Discovered without hesitation, even though it looked like a very different kind of project. In the course of my life in comics there have been very few that rank as highly in terms of ongoing influence, or simple enjoyment. Last year, when I had the opportunity to choose the graphic novels I wanted to write about for Salem Press's CriticalSurvey of Graphic Novels, Mage was my first choice. I was thrilled to get that specific assignment. The article is a more academic approach to the topic than I plan on going into here, but if you want to read it go to http://salempress.com/Store/pdfs/Mage.pdf. All of the details of the story and character are covered there.

So, what is it about this series, among all the multitude of comics that I have read, that struck such a chord with me, and continues to do so? Good question, with a lot of answers (or quasi-answers, anyway).

Matt Wagner and I are contemporaries, in terms of age (he's like three or four months younger than I am, if memory serves), if not career. We grew up, obviously reading a lot of the same comics and books and loving a lot of the same influences. I say obviously simply because of the ideas that show up repeatedly in his work.

Let me try to be more specific about something that is probably too big to be specific about. As I've said repeatedly, I learned to read from comic books. There was Archie, and Dennis the Menace, and other “kid-friendly” funny books, but there was a tremendous amount of superheroes as well. This interest in heroic fiction has been a through-line in my reading interests and in what I create ever since. I “graduated” from comics to books pretty quickly. The Howard Pyle version of Robin Hood was one of the first real novels I ever read (third grade, if I'm not mistaken). I can't tell you how much I was into this when I was eight years old. The sense of adventure, the fun, the action, all of it added up to enthrall my imagination. I think it's safe to say that this experience was instrumental in Hawkeye, the archer from the Avengers, being my favorite superhero (and why Hawkeye instead of Green Arrow, the more obvious Robin Hood archetype, is another blog).

I also remember reading tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I also read stories from mythology. I read a lot of historical fiction aimed at kids. And I read Comics. All of these ingredients went into the gumbo of my imagination, so it's evident to me why I have always seen them as connected. Superheroes have always been, to me at least, the 20^th century iteration of myth and legend, of heroic fiction.

So let's jump to the early 80's. I saw John Boorman's Excalibur in the theater in 1981. The imagery completely blew me away and reignited my interest in Arthurian fiction. At this time I was pretty immersed in fantasy fiction anyway, thanks primarily to Lord of the Rings. Even then I knew that some changes had been made to the Arthurian mythos, at least the one I was familiar with. In the film it is Percival who is with Arthur at his death, and who throws Excalibur back into the lake from which it came. While I loved the movie, this confused me, simply because in all of the stories I had read it had been Sir Bedivere in this role (read my ebook Bedivere for my take on the legend). I wasn't as aware then as I am now of how different movie adaptations are from their source material (and at times have to be). I also wasn't as aware of the wealth of Arthurian fiction available. In my mind there was only one story. I had no idea of how the King Arthur tales grew over centuries and had been written by many, many hands, each of which reflected the times they were written in. There is no one core King Arthur story, only a collection of different writings, all of which deal with the same characters, tropes and archetypes. The enduring longevity of these stories, I believe, is because the core issues they deal with remain core issues for people no matter where or when they are from. The eternal issues of duty versus personal interest, what it means to love, the quest for deeper meaning still ring true for people.

Of course, as the world moves on the stories need to grow in ways that still speak to the current world. All enduring myths go through this process (see the book Transformations of Myth Through Time for more on this).

The first comic book series that really opened my eyes to this idea was Camelot 3000 by Mike Barr and Brian Bolland, published by DC as a 12-issue maxi-series. In retrospect this series has a number of problems in terms of storytelling and themes, but at the time I really loved it, and it still ranks pretty highly in my echelon of comics, more for nostalgia of what it meant to me then, in full acknowledgement of its faults. In the big picture, Camelot 3000 was more important to me in firming up my interest in the Arthurian myths than in influencing me in comics. This story showed me how you could take the characters and themes and transplant them to a new setting and make them work. It also introduced me to the story of Tristan and Isolde. While I had heard the name Sir Tristan in conjunction with King Arthur, he was not one of the knights who stood out to me as having his own story. The subplot of Tristan/Amber March was my favorite part of Camelot 3000, and led me to researching the core story, and reading many more variations on it over the years. The romance of Tristan and Isolde has become my favorite of all the Arthurian tales. It resonates with some real-life aspects of my life and speaks to my sense of love and tragedy and sacrifice in ways that are probably too psychologically telling.

But, as much as I liked it, Camelot 3000 was primarily a retelling/rehash of the original stories that brought very little new, other than green-skinned aliens and transgender characters, to the tales.

Then I read Mage. The Arthurian connection was not made manifest in this series immediately, and though hints were sprinkled throughout the narrative, it was only revealed near the very end of the story. When the series began it was more of a tribute to classic superhero origins. Kevin Matchstick, who wears a t-shirt with a Captain Marvel lightning bolt symbol on it, gains superpowers thanks to an encounter with a magician, just like Captain Marvel. It was only later that the magician, Mirth, was revealed to be an incarnation of Merlin. He certainly didn't look like any standard version of Merlin (like the one in Camelot 3000 did).

Merlin by John Buscema,
from a B&W Marvel Magazine

Merlin, from John Boorman's Excalibur,
as portrayed by Nicol Williamson

The wizard SHAZAM looked
more like Merlin than Mirth.

Over the course of the series we saw the tropes of the superhero genre skillfully interwoven with classic Arthurian memes, creating, as a result, something new. This series accomplished what I had always believed... comics as modern myth.

There were certainly no shortage of precedents for mythic characters in comics. But for the most part, prior to this, the mythic characters succumbed to the tropes of superheroes more than the other way around. Thor, for all of the Asgardian trappings, was a Marvel superhero far more than he was ever really a god. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of the old Thor comics. But at Marvel, the character was stripped of much of his truly mythic resonance in favor of tights and fights. He was an old god in a new milieu, but, for me at least, he never spoke to my personal experience. The same was true for most of the “gods” that appeared as comic book characters (that includes Kirby's New Gods, an overt attempt to create a modern pantheon).

Mage spoke to something more personal. It wasn't a retelling of the Arthurian stories. It was a recognition of mythic patterns in modern life. The fact that the way Kevin Matchstick looked was based on Wagner said that the things that happened in the story were, in some way, fictionalized autobiography. It said that Myth wasn't just a collection of musty old tales from the past that had no relevance to modern life, but that it was something that was still alive, and that with open eyes, we could see these patterns in our own lives.

That idea alone brings a little bit of magic to the mundane (and isn't that what I was looking for in my interest in comics and speculative fiction anyway?).

Not long after that I was introduced to the ideas of psychologist Carl Jung ( I was a Psychology major, after all). The first book of his I read was Man and His Symbols (which is probably the best place for the newcomer to his work to start), and doggone if a lot of these ideas about the nature of myth weren't present in his work as well, long pre-dating either me or Matt Wagner. From Jung I went to the work of mythologist Joseph Campbell. I first heard of him from his famous series of interviews with Bill Moyers that appeared on PBS around that time. These were collected in print form as the book The Power of Myth. There have been very few books in my life that have been more influential. There are lots of books (many by Campbell), that cover the topics in far more exhaustive and academic detail. But, for me, this served to give me a specific framework of thought for a worldview I had always intuited but didn't have the words for. It's still pretty much my default framework for a lot of what I do.

The key idea I took from all of this is what I said in my article about Mage:

“Myth is not just a story, but a roadmap; the goal of one’s life journey is to discover the myth one is living. By being aware of these themes, readers can recognize and discover the hero within any life, including their own. Matchstick does not simply accept a destiny—he agrees to take an active role in creating it.”

And that's what Myth is to me. Since then I have read a bunch of psychology books that deal with this theme. But Matt Wagner was doing it in fiction, in a comic book, before I ever saw any of this. He was taking themes of mythology and folktale and weaving them into his personal life in a way that created art.

There are a lot of other aspects of Mage I could talk about. While writing the Salem Press article I thought of a number of things that deserve looking into in greater detail. But, this has gone on long enough, and those are probably bigger articles (or maybe papers).

Comics History blurbs

Not much to actually post here, but I wanted to redirect people.


While digging through boxes (and boxes and boxes and...) of stuff at the Phantom of the Attic warehouse I have been finding lots of old issues of mags about comics, like Wizard, Amazing Heroes, Comics Interview, The Comics Journal and other lesser known mags. These are a treasure trove of comics history, filled with articles and interviews. Eventually, these will be donated to the Toonseum for their comics research library...


But not before I look through them all.


In addition to the articles and interviews I'm finding all kinds of little tidbits that are interesting to the longtime comics fan. I want to share these and I've decided that months after I set up a Tumblr account, this is what I'm going to use it for.


So head on over to http://www.tumblr.com/blog/waynewise and follow me to see what I find.

Magazine Article

A couple of months ago I was interviewed for an article for a magazine insert in the Observer Reporter, my home county newspaper. The journalist who wrote the article, Tara Kinsell, is an old friend of mine from many years ago. I once worked as a counselor for the Upward Bound program hosted at Waynesburg College and Tara was one of the students involved, so I've known her since she was 14 or 15 years old.

Tara currently works for the Observer Reporter and contacted me to see if she could do an article. She came to my apartment and we spent two or three hours getting caught up with each other, reminiscing about old times, comparing notes on the fates of mutual friends from the Upward Bound days, and oh yeah... she interviewed me about the stuff in this article. It was a great day and I'm really happy with the way the article turned out.

I've pasted images of the article below. All content is copyright by the Observer Reporter (except the images of my stuff).

It's been a Banner Week!

I have several things to share this week.

First up, my ebook Scratch received a four-star review at http://akamaireader.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/review-scratch/

Thanks for the kind words!

Second, I was quoted in the newest issue of the scientific Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. Nothing scientific on my part I assure you. I would have guessed that my lifetime chances of ever being quoted in a scientific journal were more infinitesimal than some quantum particles, but I tend to have some sort of probability-altering field at work in my life, so...

Anyway, it came about like this. The author of the piece, Lynne Robinson, writes for the Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. In every issue, in addition to abstracts and articles with titles like A Materiomics Approach to Spider Silk: Protein Molecules to Webs and Tailoring Microstructure and Properties of Hierarchical Aluminum Metal Matrix Composites Through Friction Stir Processing (real titles... trust me, I couldn't make this up), they try to include a more fun and interesting piece. Lynne discovered that many of the scientists she worked with were comics geeks (imagine that), who were genuinely interested in the transforming some of the ideas in comics into real life science. Things like Captain America's shield and Iron Man's armor were of specific interest to them. She wanted to talk about how fiction, specifically Comics and Science Fiction, both influence and reflect the development of new technologies. As she wrote the article she realized that she simply didn't have the background knowledge of comics and comics history, so she cast about to find someone who did. She contacted the PittsburghToonseum, and they recommended she talk to me.

I spent about an hour and a half on the phone with Lynne last fall and covered a lot of ground. She was fun to talk to and genuinely interested in the topic. As a journalist, her style was remarkable. She asked really very good questions and zeroed in on some of the most important points in my sometimes rambling style of talking. I'm really happy with the way the article turned out and proud to have been included. There were a lot of things in the conversation that didn't make it into the article (Doc Magnus and the Metal Men, Jack Kirby and the New Gods and how we all carry Mother Boxes in our pockets and have Metron Chairs at home).

Anyway, you can read a PDF version of the article here:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/c705841j56v8h120/fulltext.pdf

And my week didn't stop there.

Last year I was invited to participate in writing entries for an encyclopedia of graphic novels to be published by Salem Press. Salem Press is primarily a publisher of reference books aimed at libraries and universities. The two-volume collection is now available (and it's really expensive in hardback). You can see the ad and announcement for the collection at http://salempress.com/Store/samples/critical_survey_gn_heroes/critical_survey_gn_heroes.htm

Out of literally hundreds of articles they could have chosen, my piece on Matt Wagner's Mage: The Hero Discovered is one of ten free sample entries available on the order page, along with pieces on Watchmen, Sandman and other more well-known books. The editors either really liked Mage or my writing. I'm kind of stupidly happy that they picked my article. The direct link to the pdf of it is http://salempress.com/Store/pdfs/Mage.pdf.

I was planning on writing about Mage in my ongoing favorite comics posts anyway. I still will, in a less academic form than this article.

Lots of good things this week. No wonder I'm tired.