Scott King writes with a question about the fine comic book artist, Jim Aparo…
In a recent post, you mentioned that Aparo was very reliable and delivered 214 pages per year, every year.
Doesn't this mean that if he was on a title for a year he would end up one-two issues short? Most comics are/were 20-24 pages which is 240-288 per year, so the editor would have to find a fill in for part of that years run? Or was this the accepted price for having a skilled and reliable artist for the majority of the year.
Actually, Paul Levitz mentioned that Jim Aparo delivered 214 pages a year…but yes. When Aparo was doing the Batman and the Outsiders comic with Mike W. Barr, there were a few fill-in issues by other artists and I think in an issue or two, Aparo penciled but did not letter or ink.
There were also a couple of issues where they had a fifteen-page lead story drawn by Aparo and an eight-page featurette by another artist. I'm sure everyone involved with the comic thought that having Aparo as the regular artist was worth the occasional need to work around him.
This may interest someone. During that period, I was writing or sometimes writing-editing Blackhawk for DC Comics and it was drawn by Dan Spiegle. Dan was fast enough that he could easily have drawn every issue but The Powers That Were Then occasionally wanted him to draw a different book for them…like, I think he did a Sgt. Rock special and he did some educational comics that few people ever saw and a few other things.
They also liked the idea of guest artists in Blackhawk so we did a number of eight-page stories drawn by folks other than Dan, including Dave Cockrum, Alex Toth, John Severin, Howard Chaykin, Mike Sekowsky, Will Meugniot and Doug Wildey.
At the time, a DC comic book was 23 pages plus a cover and almost every story then being published there was twenty-three pages in length. So the following situation would happen again and again and again…
I would get a call from some other DC editor and he would say — and this is a real example — "Mark, I'm in a jam. I need to give Curt Swan a story to draw starting next Monday." This was because Curt had a contract that guaranteed him that when he handed in one assignment, he would immediately get another. It also happened sometimes because a freelancer had an informal understanding with the company or the editor to get work like that.
The editor — in this case, it was Julius Schwartz — wanted to give Curt the next issue of Superman to draw but the writer was running late and the script might not be in and ready for Curt by next Monday. Julie might have had another script to give Curt or some other editor down the hall might have had one but it would have been a twenty-three page script that wasn't needed as urgently as that next issue of Superman.
It would take Curt 2-3 weeks to draw that which would mean 2-3 weeks before Curt got to that next issue of Superman and that was not good for the schedule. Which is why Julie called me. At that moment, those Blackhawk eight-pagers I was doing were just about the only stories being done at DC that were less than 23 pages. If I had one (or could quickly write one) that could be given to Curt on Monday, that would keep him busy for a few days until the Superman script came in. You follow?
I, of course, would say "Sure" and if I didn't have one ready, I'd sit down and write an eight-page Blackhawk story for Mr. Swan to draw…and right after I finished it, Julie would call and say, "Never mind! The Superman script just came in!" And then a week later, a different DC editor would call and say, "I need a script to give Irv Novick next Monday!"
This happened at least, I would guess, eighteen times. The one I wrote for Swan wound up being drawn by Don Newton because a script for whatever comic he was drawing then — Batman, I think — might not be in on time. But before it went to Don, it was going to be busy work for Novick and later for Jim Aparo.
Not all the Blackhawk shorts were done this way. Sometimes, I actually hired the artist and he drew the script I wrote for him. Still, a lot of them were written as per this scenario — because some other script was running late and another editor might have needed it so he didn't have to give some artist a twenty-three pager. Another Secret Behind the Comics!
