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| Thoughts and reminiscences from Don's archives All "Riding Shotgun" articles are also posted in the Don McGregor Forum. Come by and chat with Don! __________________________________________________________________________________________________ |
THE TANGLED TRIPS OF NATHANIEL DUSK, ALEXANDER RISK,
SEBASTIAN EDGE AND QUESTWORLD
The origins of series often have tangled histories. One trip starts and
suddenly dead-ends, as another trip unexpectedly appears in an area
where there appeared no openings.
There were just three words, printed in dark blue pen, lined up under
each other:
EDGE
DUSK and
RISK
Three words I had hand lettered on the back of a notebook, that
probably was for hand written portions of SABRE, or some other series.
Three words that were last names for three different series that I was
flirting around with in my head, not sure if we’d ever get on a first name
basis, or if the names would endure.
Some of you have experienced part of ALEXANDER RISK in a
magazine called FANTASY ILLUSTRATED that Peter Gillis was editing
way back around 1981, which was illustrated by Tom Sutton. I haven’t
tried to locate my yearly diary books to get exact dates on any of this, or
this Riding Shotgun piece will never get into a finished written stage at
this point in time. If I’m ever given a serious offer to write about my
personal history in comics, I’ll pull out all the diaries, and notes in
calenders, and start exploring through the files. But for now, you have
hear a little of the tangled trips that overlap one series or another, and
that are influenced by sources totally unexpected in your life, and why
one series makes it, and another, just as vibrant and important to you,
doesn’t.
Alexander Risk only saw 20 some pages printed. Tom Sutton actually
did breakdowns for the second installment in blue pencils. I still have
those pages somewhere, with, if I recall correctly, my penciled copy in
the panels.
Alas, that book never came out.
There was no second issue of FANTASY ILLUSTRATED.
Now in the beginning I had those three words, and I was placing first
names for the characters. I believe I first put the name Nathaniel for
Risk. But it just work for me. I didn’t like the soft ending for Risk. But it
was perfect for Dusk. I liked the soft “L” sound going with the hard edge
of the “D”. And Dusk fit the character and the series perfectly, just as I
felt Risk fit Alexander’s character.
One was a character who lived in a world that was virtually always at
dusk, if only morally and methaphysically, while Risk was someone who
had taken a risk with his life (and so had his wife, Penelope) in a time of
great risk, the early 1940s and the second World War.
Edge, most of you have probably never heard of, though Billy Graham
did draw one story with the character, back in the 80s. Edge was a
series about a psychic investigator, the sharp edges of his life defined
by the sharp line between the normal and paranormal, by his personal
history which shaped his professional attachment for paranormal victims.
You may now be asking about how a QUESTWORLD fits into all of
this. Thus the tangled trips.
When Alexander and Penelope Risk ceased to continue, I created a
fantasy series with that umbrella title, QUESTWORLD. It was a blend a
heroic fantasy quest and trek, spiced with a lot of parody on the genre,
and broad satire on different aspects of the world we live in. The cute
little creatures so often found in such stories were called Mugwumps,
but their main interest wasn’t in being cute, but sex. Well, I thought
they were kinda cute having sex, but that’s me, and they sure did seem
to be having fun, which was their main point. The woman who joins the
man in the Quest only does so because she hates the skimpy attire she’
s stuck in, so much a part of these faerie females in these worlds, she
joins the Quest because she wants a pair of jeans and shirt.
I wrote a sample page with a living ship with a lousy disposition who
takes our protagonists on the journey, complaining about it constantly,
especially in he thinks someone is going to have sex on him, of if the
seas get rough.
I haven’t looked up any of this material, but somewhere in all the things
kept over the years, somewhere that would take a major undertaken to
find, that sample, full-color page exists. It’s here somewhere, along with
the blue-penciled pencils with Alexander and Penelope that would have
taken the story near the 50 page mark.
I took the QUESTWORLD proposal and sample art to Archie Goodwin,
who was editing the creator-owned Epic line. Archie had magnificently
finagled both Craig and I into doing the last KILLRAVEN the fans ever
got to see. Not the last one I started to write, but that last story that
became a reality the readers could hold in their hands and experience.
And I had talked to Archie about ALEXANDER RISK, but he already had
a series underway that had a Holmesian connection, so despite the fact
that he liked it, it wasn’t feasible for Epic to be doing two series that,
while wildly different, had such an iconic connection.
At the same time, Gene Colan had arranged for me to meet Dick
Giordano at DC comics.
Dick and I spent time talking in his office, and I mentioned SARGE
STEEL, which Dick had done while at Charlton comics in the 1960s.
We were both talking about our passions for private eyes. I told Dick
about NATHANIEL DUSK. Dick said, Go work it up. I told him I wanted
to do a realistic 1930s hard-boiled private eye, no costumes, no powers,
my version of that kind of genre. He said, “What are you trying to do,
talk yourself out of a job? Work it up and let me see it.”
Well, now it was more than a concept, and I had to develop the entire
series as well as Dusk. I researched the time period, knew the tone I
hoped to accomplish, and plotted and structured the entire story,
working hard on the people who would populate that world in that time
and place, skeptically figuring DC is never going to go for this.
When I brought the thick proposal in, with all the scenes and all the
major characters, Dick laughed and said, “You didn’t have to do all this,
Don. I trust you.”
And I told Dick that yes, I did have to do it, because I did have to know
the story.
I left the proposal with Dick and DC.
In many of the tangled trips of a freelance writer, there often seems to
be feast or famine along the wayside of the journey.
Archie said yes to QUESTWORLD.
Okay, now I really have to put this all together! The mugwumps and the
leads and all the targets I wanted to lampoon in one fashion or another.
The phone rang. It was Dick. He had approval for NATHANIEL DUSK,
and they were ready to launch right away, with Gene Colan ready to
draw it, as soon as I had finished script pages. Sooner would be better
than later.
I really, really liked QUESTWORLD. Still do. Well worth my doing as
far as I was concerned. But I never thought I’d get to do NATHANIEL
DUSK as I saw it in my head, and certainly not at one of the Big 2
companies.
Dick had said the series wouldn’t have a editor that we didn’t both agree
upon. Alan Gold had recently joined DC, and we had known each other
before he was in comics. Alan had no rigid ideas about private eyes, so
I think on a genre like this he was more than willing to let me have my
head and do whatever it was I was going to do.
The problem was I couldn’t write both series at the same time. Even
with all the work I’d done on the proposal for Dusk, there was so much
more research to do, and Gene had a quota to fill at DC, and this series
would be part of that quota. And while I had ideas for the various places
that would be lampooned in QUESTWORLD, I had a long way to go
before knowing how those places would work, and developing the
balance between humor and outrageous satire and yet keep the
characters human, and when things got serious, making the audience
wonder if they could get out of a dangerous encounter, and care if they
did or didn’t. Al Capp, when he was at his best on LIL ABNER, as a
story-teller, did this in superb fashion, there often would be a real
question as to how is Capp going to get Abner out of this.
I called Archie and put QUESTWORLD on hold.
There were two NATHANIEL DUSK series, LOVERS DIE AT DUSK and
APPLE PEDDLERS DIE AT NOON.
As I neared completion of PEDDLERS, I already had a third plot in my
head, and a title, HOOKERS DIE AT MIDNIGHT.
I had a heart attack at the age of 40.
Okay, just from personal experience, I will state, I’ve come to the
conclusion you shouldn’t diagnose yourself when you’re feeling bad. I’
m not stating that I don’t still ignore those words and do it, just that
many times you might be better off if you didn’t.
I had a terrific time writing the second Dusk, everything went right where
things hadn’t during the first one. When I realized I would be far from
the Apple Peddler’s assassination I asked Bruce Bristow if we could
have a double-sized first issue. I thought that was a possibility because
it had been done with other series, and as long as it has been done
before you have a shot in hell of getting “Yes.” But Bruce not only
thought that was a good idea but thought the entire mini-series should
be double-sized volumes, and thus, I didn’t have to worry about room
mto fit all the themes and characters I wanted in the story. DC also let
me edit the book. I have no idea why, but that meant while I was
spending months researching the series I could voucher the editorial
fees and not have to worry about money coming in while I put the entire
series together. Everything in those books on the days that are
recounted are what the weather was like to what was happening in New
York City. I timed action sequences around storms. A horse lying dead
in the middle of Times Square on a hot day, it really happened right at
the time it is in the book, I just added Dusk chasing murderers right into
the chaos, the killer’s getaway car crashing in the steed’s corpse.
I had to come up with something to put Dusk through. I’d shot him up
with rat poison in LOVERS, and I knew a lot of the fans would expect
some terrible ordeal for Dusk to fight to survive. It should be something
memorable. But what? How do you top rat poison injection?
I’d had shortness of breath for awhile, which I put down to sinus
problems. I was going to a Jewish “Y” in those days, swimming in the
pool, and using the steam room to clear my sinuses. The older Jewish
men would spit cold water onto the steam room regulator and there was
so much steam you couldn’t see anything. And then I came up with the
idea of Dusk locked in the steam room. So, how would one get out?
I would try to record how that scalding heat felt. Good for the sinuses,
too, right? Day after day, I went through it, tried to get as close to the
reality of the heat as possible, drenched in sweat, skin feeling like
needle pricks jabbing in every part of your body at the slightest
movement. The hiss from the metal sphere chilled the heat with the
idea of death chambers.
Of course, I didn’t know I was heading for a heart attack, and steam
rooms probably weren’t the best regimen for that.
One night, I was in the pool and went to take a stroke. It felt as if a
muscle would tear apart from my rib cage! Reach too far, too fast, and
something would rip loose!
I told myself not to push it!
There were problems with the penciled artwork for Peddlers. The art
needed to be sprayed with a fixative so that the soft, dark pencils by
Gene wouldn’t smudge. Gene lived in an apartment in Manhattan and
said he couldn’t do it. DCs production department felt it wasn’t their
job. When I found out that there was a stalemate, and that the art stood
unprotected, with nothing being done to fix it, as the deadline neared, I
told them to find me a place to do it, and I’d come in and spray the
pages.
I did it after hours by the storage elevators in the back.
Sprayed almost 200 pages.
Thick mist. Sharp in the nostrils and eyes.
Playing Hell with my sinuses.
The fumes were so thick I had to keep running out the space every
dozen or so pages.
My shortness of breath was pronounced.
Damn sinuses!
I was gasping for air before I was a quarter of the way through. But it
needed to be done so Gene’s art wouldn’t be ruined.
I would plunge back into the fumes to add more.
The night I had the heart attack, I was really tired. I was turning over in
bed, ready to fall asleep, when the pain hit, and turned me right back
onto my back. Adrenalin pumped like wildfire! I was wide, staring in
the dark awake! Marsha was asleep beside me.
I thought, “What the hell is this? A heart attack?”
My body was soaked in the kind of cold sweat you’re always reading
about in hard boiled private eye novels.
A thought managed to get through the pain and panic, something like,
“Am I not going to see morning light?”
And absurdly, because I’m a writer, I guess, “Is this the last story I get to
write?”
I’d never get to finish ALEXANDER RISK? Or do another DETECTIVES
INC.?
I went out to the couch and picked up a copy of Jack Kirby’s War Dogs
graphic novel (I think that was the title) and tried to distract myself,
looking at comic pages and all the while convincing myself, hey, I’m
only 40, this can’t be a heart attack.
By morning, I’d convinced myself, sort of, by dawn light.
In the morning, I told Marsha to make a doctor’s appointment for me.
She knows me well enough to know I wouldn’t do that for no reason.
But I needed to get into DC and go over APPLE PEDDLERS before it
went to press. And I was supposed to meet Tom Carlyle at MGM on
some James Bond interviews I’d done for STAR LOG.
I had a Mantra: It couldn’t have been a heart attack. Part of me was
positive. Another part knew, yeah, it was, but rejected it, wouldn’t
accept it, couldn’t accept it. And if I did end up in the hospital who
would make sure Dusk got off, and nobody fucked with it. This was the
day the book went off to become reality, and all it needed was for me to
be there to check it out, make sure everything was right, all the
corrections done, and watch it make its way out of the offices.
I hope I would be smarter these days. I’m probably lucky to be writing
these words today.
I trekked into Manhattan and saw Dusk safely off. But it was as if my
feet were encased in cement. I had to trudge everywhere, with each
step I was on my way to meet with Tom Carlyle, who at that time was
Cubby Broccoli’s personal overseer on the promotion of the James Bond
films.
I had a wonderful dinner with Tom, who told me great stories about
working with George Stevens on SHANE, and about the early days of
the Bond films and trying to sell them in the United States, and about
Jane Fonda and B ARBARELLA.
I never saw Tom again. He died of Cancer.
The next day Doctor Adesman told me, “Don, you no longer have a
virgin heart.” His exact wording. I don’t have to look up no stinking
diaries for that.
Marsha thinks SABRE was to blame, because I’d said at one point, “This
book is breaking my heart.”
SABRE was being held for ransom in Spain. Another tangled trail. If I
ever do that book on comics I wrote about at the beginning of this trail,
I’ll go excavating through all the notebooks, all the scripts, all the
diaries, all the notes in calenders, including the Marvel one in 1978
where I hand-wrote the threat that someone was going to make SABRE
white!
Get me a deal, and the book is underway.
And now, some folks, if they read this, could wish it would never happen.
Anyhow, I was laid up for quite awhile.
Epic folded.
I worked up THE BATMAN: NIGHT OF THE CHILD STEALERS and I
think it was a strong story for the Batman, and might have helped some
kids, and familes going through this kind of thing. I came home to find
one of the DC elder statesman had called, yelled at my wife. I hadn’t
been paid a dime for the story. I told him you don’t ever scream at my
wife; you have a problem with me, you talk with me. Send the story
back.”
The learned head said, “Send me a Batman gimmick story.”
Gimmicks! People may love or hate what I do, but gimmicks isn’t one of
the things I do.
Now, QUESTWORLD did come back into play, because Dick decided
DC would do it.
Alan Gold would be the editor, but his comment was “Don doesn’t mind
people talking to him before he starts to write it, but once he does, he
doesn’t want anybody in the sandbox with him.” Probably pretty
accurate. The thing was Alan really loved this genre, and I was really
taken apart many of the sacred totems on that kind of story.
Tom Sutton drew a lot of the series. Alan left DC, not over
QUESTWORLD, I think he found some other kind of work he liked
more.
I’m not sure what happened after that. I know one time I was in DC
helping look for the art, because no one apparently knew where it had
been stored.
I think maybe about three issues had been drawn. Done! Which
means the scripts were totally written.
Or at least two issues. Those are the kind of details I would have to look
up. Who got me in there? Where we looked. That kind of thing.
One book was definitely finished. I think with lettering and everything,
but that, again I would have to check to make certain.
I suspect I have a Xeroxed version of that with my hand lettering so I
could check everything, with the copy shot down to comic book print
size so I could check how the eye tracked it when the reader finally saw
the book. I kept managing to find ways to make this more work. But it
lessened the chances of unforeseen screw-ups in the books.
I have no idea whatever happened to QUESTWORLD.
As I wrote, I think I have a stapled first issue of the art and copy
placement, although I haven’t seen it in years. The scripts would still be
in one of the filing cabinets, but some of them aren’t easy to reach.
As for ALEXANDER RISK, I would finish writing the series for Marvel’s
new Epic line, with Terry Kavanagh as editor. It had gone through three
separate approvals.
I believe it has at least 3 sequences as strong as anything I have ever
written.
It dealt with abortion as it was in the United States in the 1940s. It dealt
with sexual repression and the consequences. Dwayne Turner was set
to draw it. It was beautiful. I’d had such pleasure working with Dwayne
on PANTHER’S PREY. And with Terry, who always kept his word to
me, even when the pressure was on him for PANTHER’S QUEST.
And then Marvel cancelled it’s Creator Owned line and Alexander and
Penelope were adrift again.
In a later time, Mike Mayhew would draw sample pages of the series,
but I never managed to get it to paper reality. Mike did some superb
work on Risk and Pen.
You can see some of it on the donmcgrego.com website.
Mike and I had just come off doing ZORRO together. Two wonderful
artists at one time or another attached to a series I so dearly loved.
A finished script of nearly 200 pages and really, less than a half dozen
people in the world have yet to experience it.
Some of the tangled trips go on into a horizon that is never reached.
ALEXANDER RISK and QUESTWORLD were two unfinished tangled
trails.
I still look toward that horizon.
Copyright 2010 by Don McGregor
SEBASTIAN EDGE AND QUESTWORLD
The origins of series often have tangled histories. One trip starts and
suddenly dead-ends, as another trip unexpectedly appears in an area
where there appeared no openings.
There were just three words, printed in dark blue pen, lined up under
each other:
EDGE
DUSK and
RISK
Three words I had hand lettered on the back of a notebook, that
probably was for hand written portions of SABRE, or some other series.
Three words that were last names for three different series that I was
flirting around with in my head, not sure if we’d ever get on a first name
basis, or if the names would endure.
Some of you have experienced part of ALEXANDER RISK in a
magazine called FANTASY ILLUSTRATED that Peter Gillis was editing
way back around 1981, which was illustrated by Tom Sutton. I haven’t
tried to locate my yearly diary books to get exact dates on any of this, or
this Riding Shotgun piece will never get into a finished written stage at
this point in time. If I’m ever given a serious offer to write about my
personal history in comics, I’ll pull out all the diaries, and notes in
calenders, and start exploring through the files. But for now, you have
hear a little of the tangled trips that overlap one series or another, and
that are influenced by sources totally unexpected in your life, and why
one series makes it, and another, just as vibrant and important to you,
doesn’t.
Alexander Risk only saw 20 some pages printed. Tom Sutton actually
did breakdowns for the second installment in blue pencils. I still have
those pages somewhere, with, if I recall correctly, my penciled copy in
the panels.
Alas, that book never came out.
There was no second issue of FANTASY ILLUSTRATED.
Now in the beginning I had those three words, and I was placing first
names for the characters. I believe I first put the name Nathaniel for
Risk. But it just work for me. I didn’t like the soft ending for Risk. But it
was perfect for Dusk. I liked the soft “L” sound going with the hard edge
of the “D”. And Dusk fit the character and the series perfectly, just as I
felt Risk fit Alexander’s character.
One was a character who lived in a world that was virtually always at
dusk, if only morally and methaphysically, while Risk was someone who
had taken a risk with his life (and so had his wife, Penelope) in a time of
great risk, the early 1940s and the second World War.
Edge, most of you have probably never heard of, though Billy Graham
did draw one story with the character, back in the 80s. Edge was a
series about a psychic investigator, the sharp edges of his life defined
by the sharp line between the normal and paranormal, by his personal
history which shaped his professional attachment for paranormal victims.
You may now be asking about how a QUESTWORLD fits into all of
this. Thus the tangled trips.
When Alexander and Penelope Risk ceased to continue, I created a
fantasy series with that umbrella title, QUESTWORLD. It was a blend a
heroic fantasy quest and trek, spiced with a lot of parody on the genre,
and broad satire on different aspects of the world we live in. The cute
little creatures so often found in such stories were called Mugwumps,
but their main interest wasn’t in being cute, but sex. Well, I thought
they were kinda cute having sex, but that’s me, and they sure did seem
to be having fun, which was their main point. The woman who joins the
man in the Quest only does so because she hates the skimpy attire she’
s stuck in, so much a part of these faerie females in these worlds, she
joins the Quest because she wants a pair of jeans and shirt.
I wrote a sample page with a living ship with a lousy disposition who
takes our protagonists on the journey, complaining about it constantly,
especially in he thinks someone is going to have sex on him, of if the
seas get rough.
I haven’t looked up any of this material, but somewhere in all the things
kept over the years, somewhere that would take a major undertaken to
find, that sample, full-color page exists. It’s here somewhere, along with
the blue-penciled pencils with Alexander and Penelope that would have
taken the story near the 50 page mark.
I took the QUESTWORLD proposal and sample art to Archie Goodwin,
who was editing the creator-owned Epic line. Archie had magnificently
finagled both Craig and I into doing the last KILLRAVEN the fans ever
got to see. Not the last one I started to write, but that last story that
became a reality the readers could hold in their hands and experience.
And I had talked to Archie about ALEXANDER RISK, but he already had
a series underway that had a Holmesian connection, so despite the fact
that he liked it, it wasn’t feasible for Epic to be doing two series that,
while wildly different, had such an iconic connection.
At the same time, Gene Colan had arranged for me to meet Dick
Giordano at DC comics.
Dick and I spent time talking in his office, and I mentioned SARGE
STEEL, which Dick had done while at Charlton comics in the 1960s.
We were both talking about our passions for private eyes. I told Dick
about NATHANIEL DUSK. Dick said, Go work it up. I told him I wanted
to do a realistic 1930s hard-boiled private eye, no costumes, no powers,
my version of that kind of genre. He said, “What are you trying to do,
talk yourself out of a job? Work it up and let me see it.”
Well, now it was more than a concept, and I had to develop the entire
series as well as Dusk. I researched the time period, knew the tone I
hoped to accomplish, and plotted and structured the entire story,
working hard on the people who would populate that world in that time
and place, skeptically figuring DC is never going to go for this.
When I brought the thick proposal in, with all the scenes and all the
major characters, Dick laughed and said, “You didn’t have to do all this,
Don. I trust you.”
And I told Dick that yes, I did have to do it, because I did have to know
the story.
I left the proposal with Dick and DC.
In many of the tangled trips of a freelance writer, there often seems to
be feast or famine along the wayside of the journey.
Archie said yes to QUESTWORLD.
Okay, now I really have to put this all together! The mugwumps and the
leads and all the targets I wanted to lampoon in one fashion or another.
The phone rang. It was Dick. He had approval for NATHANIEL DUSK,
and they were ready to launch right away, with Gene Colan ready to
draw it, as soon as I had finished script pages. Sooner would be better
than later.
I really, really liked QUESTWORLD. Still do. Well worth my doing as
far as I was concerned. But I never thought I’d get to do NATHANIEL
DUSK as I saw it in my head, and certainly not at one of the Big 2
companies.
Dick had said the series wouldn’t have a editor that we didn’t both agree
upon. Alan Gold had recently joined DC, and we had known each other
before he was in comics. Alan had no rigid ideas about private eyes, so
I think on a genre like this he was more than willing to let me have my
head and do whatever it was I was going to do.
The problem was I couldn’t write both series at the same time. Even
with all the work I’d done on the proposal for Dusk, there was so much
more research to do, and Gene had a quota to fill at DC, and this series
would be part of that quota. And while I had ideas for the various places
that would be lampooned in QUESTWORLD, I had a long way to go
before knowing how those places would work, and developing the
balance between humor and outrageous satire and yet keep the
characters human, and when things got serious, making the audience
wonder if they could get out of a dangerous encounter, and care if they
did or didn’t. Al Capp, when he was at his best on LIL ABNER, as a
story-teller, did this in superb fashion, there often would be a real
question as to how is Capp going to get Abner out of this.
I called Archie and put QUESTWORLD on hold.
There were two NATHANIEL DUSK series, LOVERS DIE AT DUSK and
APPLE PEDDLERS DIE AT NOON.
As I neared completion of PEDDLERS, I already had a third plot in my
head, and a title, HOOKERS DIE AT MIDNIGHT.
I had a heart attack at the age of 40.
Okay, just from personal experience, I will state, I’ve come to the
conclusion you shouldn’t diagnose yourself when you’re feeling bad. I’
m not stating that I don’t still ignore those words and do it, just that
many times you might be better off if you didn’t.
I had a terrific time writing the second Dusk, everything went right where
things hadn’t during the first one. When I realized I would be far from
the Apple Peddler’s assassination I asked Bruce Bristow if we could
have a double-sized first issue. I thought that was a possibility because
it had been done with other series, and as long as it has been done
before you have a shot in hell of getting “Yes.” But Bruce not only
thought that was a good idea but thought the entire mini-series should
be double-sized volumes, and thus, I didn’t have to worry about room
mto fit all the themes and characters I wanted in the story. DC also let
me edit the book. I have no idea why, but that meant while I was
spending months researching the series I could voucher the editorial
fees and not have to worry about money coming in while I put the entire
series together. Everything in those books on the days that are
recounted are what the weather was like to what was happening in New
York City. I timed action sequences around storms. A horse lying dead
in the middle of Times Square on a hot day, it really happened right at
the time it is in the book, I just added Dusk chasing murderers right into
the chaos, the killer’s getaway car crashing in the steed’s corpse.
I had to come up with something to put Dusk through. I’d shot him up
with rat poison in LOVERS, and I knew a lot of the fans would expect
some terrible ordeal for Dusk to fight to survive. It should be something
memorable. But what? How do you top rat poison injection?
I’d had shortness of breath for awhile, which I put down to sinus
problems. I was going to a Jewish “Y” in those days, swimming in the
pool, and using the steam room to clear my sinuses. The older Jewish
men would spit cold water onto the steam room regulator and there was
so much steam you couldn’t see anything. And then I came up with the
idea of Dusk locked in the steam room. So, how would one get out?
I would try to record how that scalding heat felt. Good for the sinuses,
too, right? Day after day, I went through it, tried to get as close to the
reality of the heat as possible, drenched in sweat, skin feeling like
needle pricks jabbing in every part of your body at the slightest
movement. The hiss from the metal sphere chilled the heat with the
idea of death chambers.
Of course, I didn’t know I was heading for a heart attack, and steam
rooms probably weren’t the best regimen for that.
One night, I was in the pool and went to take a stroke. It felt as if a
muscle would tear apart from my rib cage! Reach too far, too fast, and
something would rip loose!
I told myself not to push it!
There were problems with the penciled artwork for Peddlers. The art
needed to be sprayed with a fixative so that the soft, dark pencils by
Gene wouldn’t smudge. Gene lived in an apartment in Manhattan and
said he couldn’t do it. DCs production department felt it wasn’t their
job. When I found out that there was a stalemate, and that the art stood
unprotected, with nothing being done to fix it, as the deadline neared, I
told them to find me a place to do it, and I’d come in and spray the
pages.
I did it after hours by the storage elevators in the back.
Sprayed almost 200 pages.
Thick mist. Sharp in the nostrils and eyes.
Playing Hell with my sinuses.
The fumes were so thick I had to keep running out the space every
dozen or so pages.
My shortness of breath was pronounced.
Damn sinuses!
I was gasping for air before I was a quarter of the way through. But it
needed to be done so Gene’s art wouldn’t be ruined.
I would plunge back into the fumes to add more.
The night I had the heart attack, I was really tired. I was turning over in
bed, ready to fall asleep, when the pain hit, and turned me right back
onto my back. Adrenalin pumped like wildfire! I was wide, staring in
the dark awake! Marsha was asleep beside me.
I thought, “What the hell is this? A heart attack?”
My body was soaked in the kind of cold sweat you’re always reading
about in hard boiled private eye novels.
A thought managed to get through the pain and panic, something like,
“Am I not going to see morning light?”
And absurdly, because I’m a writer, I guess, “Is this the last story I get to
write?”
I’d never get to finish ALEXANDER RISK? Or do another DETECTIVES
INC.?
I went out to the couch and picked up a copy of Jack Kirby’s War Dogs
graphic novel (I think that was the title) and tried to distract myself,
looking at comic pages and all the while convincing myself, hey, I’m
only 40, this can’t be a heart attack.
By morning, I’d convinced myself, sort of, by dawn light.
In the morning, I told Marsha to make a doctor’s appointment for me.
She knows me well enough to know I wouldn’t do that for no reason.
But I needed to get into DC and go over APPLE PEDDLERS before it
went to press. And I was supposed to meet Tom Carlyle at MGM on
some James Bond interviews I’d done for STAR LOG.
I had a Mantra: It couldn’t have been a heart attack. Part of me was
positive. Another part knew, yeah, it was, but rejected it, wouldn’t
accept it, couldn’t accept it. And if I did end up in the hospital who
would make sure Dusk got off, and nobody fucked with it. This was the
day the book went off to become reality, and all it needed was for me to
be there to check it out, make sure everything was right, all the
corrections done, and watch it make its way out of the offices.
I hope I would be smarter these days. I’m probably lucky to be writing
these words today.
I trekked into Manhattan and saw Dusk safely off. But it was as if my
feet were encased in cement. I had to trudge everywhere, with each
step I was on my way to meet with Tom Carlyle, who at that time was
Cubby Broccoli’s personal overseer on the promotion of the James Bond
films.
I had a wonderful dinner with Tom, who told me great stories about
working with George Stevens on SHANE, and about the early days of
the Bond films and trying to sell them in the United States, and about
Jane Fonda and B ARBARELLA.
I never saw Tom again. He died of Cancer.
The next day Doctor Adesman told me, “Don, you no longer have a
virgin heart.” His exact wording. I don’t have to look up no stinking
diaries for that.
Marsha thinks SABRE was to blame, because I’d said at one point, “This
book is breaking my heart.”
SABRE was being held for ransom in Spain. Another tangled trail. If I
ever do that book on comics I wrote about at the beginning of this trail,
I’ll go excavating through all the notebooks, all the scripts, all the
diaries, all the notes in calenders, including the Marvel one in 1978
where I hand-wrote the threat that someone was going to make SABRE
white!
Get me a deal, and the book is underway.
And now, some folks, if they read this, could wish it would never happen.
Anyhow, I was laid up for quite awhile.
Epic folded.
I worked up THE BATMAN: NIGHT OF THE CHILD STEALERS and I
think it was a strong story for the Batman, and might have helped some
kids, and familes going through this kind of thing. I came home to find
one of the DC elder statesman had called, yelled at my wife. I hadn’t
been paid a dime for the story. I told him you don’t ever scream at my
wife; you have a problem with me, you talk with me. Send the story
back.”
The learned head said, “Send me a Batman gimmick story.”
Gimmicks! People may love or hate what I do, but gimmicks isn’t one of
the things I do.
Now, QUESTWORLD did come back into play, because Dick decided
DC would do it.
Alan Gold would be the editor, but his comment was “Don doesn’t mind
people talking to him before he starts to write it, but once he does, he
doesn’t want anybody in the sandbox with him.” Probably pretty
accurate. The thing was Alan really loved this genre, and I was really
taken apart many of the sacred totems on that kind of story.
Tom Sutton drew a lot of the series. Alan left DC, not over
QUESTWORLD, I think he found some other kind of work he liked
more.
I’m not sure what happened after that. I know one time I was in DC
helping look for the art, because no one apparently knew where it had
been stored.
I think maybe about three issues had been drawn. Done! Which
means the scripts were totally written.
Or at least two issues. Those are the kind of details I would have to look
up. Who got me in there? Where we looked. That kind of thing.
One book was definitely finished. I think with lettering and everything,
but that, again I would have to check to make certain.
I suspect I have a Xeroxed version of that with my hand lettering so I
could check everything, with the copy shot down to comic book print
size so I could check how the eye tracked it when the reader finally saw
the book. I kept managing to find ways to make this more work. But it
lessened the chances of unforeseen screw-ups in the books.
I have no idea whatever happened to QUESTWORLD.
As I wrote, I think I have a stapled first issue of the art and copy
placement, although I haven’t seen it in years. The scripts would still be
in one of the filing cabinets, but some of them aren’t easy to reach.
As for ALEXANDER RISK, I would finish writing the series for Marvel’s
new Epic line, with Terry Kavanagh as editor. It had gone through three
separate approvals.
I believe it has at least 3 sequences as strong as anything I have ever
written.
It dealt with abortion as it was in the United States in the 1940s. It dealt
with sexual repression and the consequences. Dwayne Turner was set
to draw it. It was beautiful. I’d had such pleasure working with Dwayne
on PANTHER’S PREY. And with Terry, who always kept his word to
me, even when the pressure was on him for PANTHER’S QUEST.
And then Marvel cancelled it’s Creator Owned line and Alexander and
Penelope were adrift again.
In a later time, Mike Mayhew would draw sample pages of the series,
but I never managed to get it to paper reality. Mike did some superb
work on Risk and Pen.
You can see some of it on the donmcgrego.com website.
Mike and I had just come off doing ZORRO together. Two wonderful
artists at one time or another attached to a series I so dearly loved.
A finished script of nearly 200 pages and really, less than a half dozen
people in the world have yet to experience it.
Some of the tangled trips go on into a horizon that is never reached.
ALEXANDER RISK and QUESTWORLD were two unfinished tangled
trails.
I still look toward that horizon.
Copyright 2010 by Don McGregor
Gene Colan
poses as
Nathaniel
Dusk
poses as
Nathaniel
Dusk
Letters to Don on this article:
From Malcolm Deeley, June 6, 2010
A tangled trail indeed, Don, and a fascinating one. QUESTWORLD sounds like a lot of fun...I wish it
had seen the light of day. And I was one of the few people who was there at the right place and the
right time and bought FANTASY ILLUSTRATED #1. I loved the Alexander and Penelope story...it's
become one of those tales that stays in your mind (for decades, now) that I hope someday, somehow,
I live long enough to read completed. (Along with AN EROTIC PRIORITY, HOOKERS DIE AND
MIDNIGHT, and DRAGONFLAME: CARNAGE AND CRUSHED CARNATIONS). You know what I liked
most about RISK? I was fascinated by Penelope. Obviously clear-headed and intensely intelligent
herself, she seemed to both encourage and ground Risk in his own somewhat delusional behavior...a
psychological puzzle that to me echoed many relationships in the real world. Alexander is a
marvelous concept, but for me, I long to learn what mysteries and personal history are layered into
Penelope's mind.
Dusk, of course, was a revelation to me when I followed both series. As you say, it was dead realistic,
no gimmicks, no powers, and at that time in my life (when I was moving into the field of writing myself,
and wanted to do stories and poems about "real people"), I was so thrilled that you were there blazing
the trail in the comics medium I so loved. In those days of course, long before the internet, I waited
and wondered for years without any means to find out if the third story, HOOKERS DIE AT MIDNIGHT,
would come out. But those battered copies of the first two DUSK tales have followed me through
tumultuous decades of my own life -- I still find nuances in them that surprise and astound me every
time I read them yet again.
Your account of the heart attack is harrowing, particularly as you worked so hard to rationalize it away
so you could take care of Dusk (knowing that everyone else had basically said "that's not my job"). I
once heard Tarantino in an interview say that he knows a project is going well if he feels he would die
for it. Well, you almost did.
Someday, like you, I hope those not-quite forgotten horizons are reached. What a joy it would be to
see at least one complete Risk tale, or wonder of wonders, the third Dusk story. If it doesn't happen,
I'll be saddened, but will still treasure the glimpses of them you planted in my mind and heart.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
From Jason Sacks, June 20, 2010
As always, your notes bring so many thoughts to mind...
I would have loved to be able to read Questworld back in the day - heck, I would dearly love to read it
now. The series sounds so fun and still so fresh - heck, it seems more relevant now than ever before,
what with the Lord of the Rings films and other fantasy adventures being so popular. A series like
Questworld seems like an even better fit for these times, now that I think of it, than the '80s and '90s.
There are lots of instances of parodies of fantasy adventures, but not very many that I know about
which are twists on the genre.
I love the idea of the living boat, complaining about the waves and of people having sex on it. Or the
woman who joins the quest being anxious to get out of her skimpy clothes and into jeans (and really,
why would a female character wear the kinds of clothes that Red Sonja wears - it makes no sense!).
It's a shame that the series has gotten close to being published several times but never hit the stands
- but there again is that fabled McGregor luck.
I shouldn't be surprised that you have trouble writing more than one series at a time. Your attention to
detail and intensive research definitely come through every panel of Nathaniel Dusk, and of course all
that stuff is incredibly time-consuming. I think I remember a contemporary interview about Dusk
(maybe for my old employer, Amazing Heroes?) about how every moment was researched, and I was
impressed at the time about how every incident fit the exact time period you were depicting. It made
for a much more satisfying comics story, and one that really jumped off the stands in the '80s.
It's an amazing, and for you, unprecedented story about how DUSK II made it to the stands with a
minimum of editorial interference. Of course, that helps to explain why the series feels so thoroughly
interesting and moving, why it feels so much like a perfectly preserved labor of love that seemed to go
straight from your head to the printed page.
So it was ironic that DUSK was a bit of your downfall both in terms of keeping Questworld alive and of
your health. You didn't draw a straight line from DUSK to your heart attack, of course, but how can
anyone argue that breathing all those fixative fumes didn't come back to hurt you badly. It's so sad
that your passion for your work literally came back to hurt your health, but then again how can one
ask for a more perfect metaphor for the creative process, especially your creative process? Every
idea comes with a cost and a deep investment of energy, and that price needs to be repaid on some
level, it seems.
Or maybe I'm just being too glib, and it was just a real near-tragedy and we should just be glad that we
still have you around, my friend.
I wish I had the money or connections to help facilitate the new RISK stories you mention, or
"Hookers Die at Midnight." We're weaker as comics readers for their not appearing. But at least we
have your essays on these topics. I almost find them as interesting as the actual stories themselves.
Almost.
From Malcolm Deeley, June 6, 2010
A tangled trail indeed, Don, and a fascinating one. QUESTWORLD sounds like a lot of fun...I wish it
had seen the light of day. And I was one of the few people who was there at the right place and the
right time and bought FANTASY ILLUSTRATED #1. I loved the Alexander and Penelope story...it's
become one of those tales that stays in your mind (for decades, now) that I hope someday, somehow,
I live long enough to read completed. (Along with AN EROTIC PRIORITY, HOOKERS DIE AND
MIDNIGHT, and DRAGONFLAME: CARNAGE AND CRUSHED CARNATIONS). You know what I liked
most about RISK? I was fascinated by Penelope. Obviously clear-headed and intensely intelligent
herself, she seemed to both encourage and ground Risk in his own somewhat delusional behavior...a
psychological puzzle that to me echoed many relationships in the real world. Alexander is a
marvelous concept, but for me, I long to learn what mysteries and personal history are layered into
Penelope's mind.
Dusk, of course, was a revelation to me when I followed both series. As you say, it was dead realistic,
no gimmicks, no powers, and at that time in my life (when I was moving into the field of writing myself,
and wanted to do stories and poems about "real people"), I was so thrilled that you were there blazing
the trail in the comics medium I so loved. In those days of course, long before the internet, I waited
and wondered for years without any means to find out if the third story, HOOKERS DIE AT MIDNIGHT,
would come out. But those battered copies of the first two DUSK tales have followed me through
tumultuous decades of my own life -- I still find nuances in them that surprise and astound me every
time I read them yet again.
Your account of the heart attack is harrowing, particularly as you worked so hard to rationalize it away
so you could take care of Dusk (knowing that everyone else had basically said "that's not my job"). I
once heard Tarantino in an interview say that he knows a project is going well if he feels he would die
for it. Well, you almost did.
Someday, like you, I hope those not-quite forgotten horizons are reached. What a joy it would be to
see at least one complete Risk tale, or wonder of wonders, the third Dusk story. If it doesn't happen,
I'll be saddened, but will still treasure the glimpses of them you planted in my mind and heart.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
From Jason Sacks, June 20, 2010
As always, your notes bring so many thoughts to mind...
I would have loved to be able to read Questworld back in the day - heck, I would dearly love to read it
now. The series sounds so fun and still so fresh - heck, it seems more relevant now than ever before,
what with the Lord of the Rings films and other fantasy adventures being so popular. A series like
Questworld seems like an even better fit for these times, now that I think of it, than the '80s and '90s.
There are lots of instances of parodies of fantasy adventures, but not very many that I know about
which are twists on the genre.
I love the idea of the living boat, complaining about the waves and of people having sex on it. Or the
woman who joins the quest being anxious to get out of her skimpy clothes and into jeans (and really,
why would a female character wear the kinds of clothes that Red Sonja wears - it makes no sense!).
It's a shame that the series has gotten close to being published several times but never hit the stands
- but there again is that fabled McGregor luck.
I shouldn't be surprised that you have trouble writing more than one series at a time. Your attention to
detail and intensive research definitely come through every panel of Nathaniel Dusk, and of course all
that stuff is incredibly time-consuming. I think I remember a contemporary interview about Dusk
(maybe for my old employer, Amazing Heroes?) about how every moment was researched, and I was
impressed at the time about how every incident fit the exact time period you were depicting. It made
for a much more satisfying comics story, and one that really jumped off the stands in the '80s.
It's an amazing, and for you, unprecedented story about how DUSK II made it to the stands with a
minimum of editorial interference. Of course, that helps to explain why the series feels so thoroughly
interesting and moving, why it feels so much like a perfectly preserved labor of love that seemed to go
straight from your head to the printed page.
So it was ironic that DUSK was a bit of your downfall both in terms of keeping Questworld alive and of
your health. You didn't draw a straight line from DUSK to your heart attack, of course, but how can
anyone argue that breathing all those fixative fumes didn't come back to hurt you badly. It's so sad
that your passion for your work literally came back to hurt your health, but then again how can one
ask for a more perfect metaphor for the creative process, especially your creative process? Every
idea comes with a cost and a deep investment of energy, and that price needs to be repaid on some
level, it seems.
Or maybe I'm just being too glib, and it was just a real near-tragedy and we should just be glad that we
still have you around, my friend.
I wish I had the money or connections to help facilitate the new RISK stories you mention, or
"Hookers Die at Midnight." We're weaker as comics readers for their not appearing. But at least we
have your essays on these topics. I almost find them as interesting as the actual stories themselves.
Almost.