Before you read this, you probably want to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6…
Our story picks up with my longtime (and much-missed) friend Len Wein. Len was then a DC editor and he'd volunteered to take on the new proposed Blackhawk comic and select its creative personnel. I suspect the writer he would most have liked on the book was Len Wein because he truly loved the characters. And he'd have done great with it but he was just too overworked to take it on, lucky for me. He went looking for a writer who also loved the characters and he was looking for an artist who could draw a war-type comic and was really, really good at airplanes.
Dave Cockrum was the first choice as artist and he very much wanted to do it…but Marvel was then paying him a helluva lot more money than DC was paying him. There are times in the freelance business when you pursue certain passions regardless of the pay and times when you really can't. This was, for Dave, the latter and they weren't about to give him that kind of raise, especially to draw a comic they didn't expect to sell very well no matter who drew it. He did agree to draw some covers and to try and squeeze some short back-up stories into his schedule.
I'm not sure how many other folks said no before Len called me…and he wasn't even calling to offer me the writing assignment. Finding the right artist seemed like the tougher search so he phoned to tap that thing I fool people into thinking is my brain. He asked if I had any thoughts about who should/could/would draw a new Blackhawk comic.
I absolutely did. I said, "There is no one in the history of comics who draws airplanes better than Dan Spiegle." Len practically shouted, "You're right! Give me his phone number!" I had worked very closely with Dan on other projects and thought he could draw anything…but this seemed like a particularly good fit.
Len called Dan. Dan had never heard of Blackhawk but said that if it involved drawing airplanes, he wanted in. He asked who'd be writing it. Len said he didn't have anyone yet. Dan asked, "How about Mark?" Len said, "Hey, that's not a bad idea!" He then called me back, thanked me for suggesting Dan and asked, "Do you think the comic should be set in the present day or back in World War II?"
I said, "World War II, of course. Blackhawk in the present-day is just another of the eighty zillion super-hero teams running around these days. It was conceived as a World War II comic and it should remain one. And besides, no one, except maybe Jack Kirby, is going to come up with a master villain better than Hitler."
Len said, "How'd you like to write the comic?" I said, "I would very much like to write the comic." Just then, I had a Call Waiting beep and I told him, "I have Dan Spiegle calling me on the other line." Len said, "Take that call and you and I will talk tomorrow. But you're hired."
I switched over to Dan's call. He was phoning to thank me for getting him the job and to ask if Len had called me about writing it. I said, "Yes and we're already three months behind." Dan chuckled and asked me to tell him what Blackhawk was.
And that's how Dan and I got the job. Len and I talked the next day about what should be in the first issue. I wrote the first issue. I sent it to Len. He said fine. He sent it to Dan. Dan drew the first issue. The few folks at DC who read it liked the first issue. We did the second issue and the third and so on.
A working method quickly fell into place. I'd talk with whoever was the editor of Blackhawk that week — as you'll see, it kept changing — and we'd discuss what the next issue was about. He'd say "fine" and get someone busy drawing a cover…maybe Dave Cockrum if he was available.
I'd write the script and send it to Dan. He'd draw it with his daughter Carrie doing the lettering. She would usually leave the display lettering (like the story titles) for me to letter. Dan would send the almost-finished art to me. I would proofread and fix any lettering mistakes and do the display lettering. I might also, after seeing Dan's art, decide to rewrite or even remove a few captions or word balloons.
There was a clarity to his work that, in my opinion, few other comic book artists have ever attained. If I was writing a comic and I had a scene set in a mansion and if it was important to establish that the guy who lived there was filthy rich, I'd usually have some character say something like, "Wow! This guy must have so much money he has to scan it and store it on CD-Rom." Or hopefully a better line that that. But when Dan Spiegle drew such a scene, the picture he drew made it utterly clear the guy was loaded. I didn't need a line of dialogue like that and I'd sometimes take it out.
That he was brilliant at knowing what to draw to properly service the story was not just my observation. During the period we did Blackhawk, I was also editing and writing comic books for Hanna-Barbera and after Blackhawk, I did another comic with Dan called Crossfire. When I went to the H-B Studios, which was about twice a week, I'd often have Spiegle pages in my car as I made good use of the office copiers there.
And then on the way home, I'd sometimes stop off to visit Alex Toth, whose home was on my route. Alex would always demand that if I had Spiegle art in the car, I bring it in and let him study it. A lot of people hail Alex as the best "story-teller" in comics but he was openly jealous of what Dan was doing on some of those pages…and the sheer productivity. So were Gil Kane, Joe Kubert, Dave Stevens and many, many other artists with whom I worked.
Dan was also utterly reliable. I worked with this man for more than thirty years and not one single job was ever late. Not one. And not one single job ever looked rushed. In fact, Dan would occasionally finish a page, look at it, decide he could do it better, toss it out and redraw the entire thing. He was an absolute joy.
I just loved receiving finished pages from him. He made my silly ideas look less silly and he made the whole thing look like a professional comic book. As I said, I just made some lettering adjustments on those issues of Blackhawk and then I sent the completed issue off to DC in New York…and no, I am not omitting a step. After the first issue I did with each editor, he'd say, "I don't need to approve the scripts. Just write 'em and send 'em to Dan."
This was how we worked even after the editorship shifted from Len to Marv Wolfman and then to Ernie Colón. When Ernie decided to leave his editorial position, there was a brief meeting in New York to determine who should become the fourth editor of Blackhawk in something like fourteen issues. I heard it was Marv who said, "Evanier's already editing this comic. Why don't you just give him the title and the salary?"
They did that, whereupon I got a little more money and a few added responsibilities. One of them was to hire the artists who did the back-up features. I'll tell you all about that in Part 8.