Armstrong Comics: Larry Hama

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

My History in Comics, Part 8 – “Something that does not look like Porky Pig”

In 1983 I got the opportunity to create the visual design of Peter Porker, Spider-Ham.

Larry Hama called and asked me to come up with “something that does not look like Porky Pig.” He sent me some examples of what he did not want to see. One was the above imaginary cover by Joe Albelo depicting Peter Porker as Porky Pig wearing the top half of a Spider-Man suit. Another, shown below, was Marie Severin's take on Peter Porker, Spider-Ham, with a “heavy” emphasis on “porker”:

So I came up with something that did not look like Porky Pig.

There were two directives. From Larry came the directive to come up with something that did not look like Porky Pig. From Tom Defalco's series concept came the directive that Peter Porker was to be 4 heads tall and Captain Americat was to be 5 heads tall. I did my best to deliver on those directives.

I wish Tom had simply stated that Peter was to be shorter than Steve, or that Steve was to be taller than Peter. I always tried to design characters that would be easy to draw. In the instance of Peter Porker, Spider-Ham, I start by using a circle template to draw a circle that will be the foundation of the head, and then mark off three spaces below that for the rest of the body. But by having a mandated scale to adhere to, I was not able to design the character with proportions that wanted to come out of the pencil. When I draw the character, Peter tends to have either a head that looks too big, or a body that stretches out a bit more than 4 heads. So, even though I did the visual design of the character, drawing the character in a way where he comes out 4 heads tall has always been a challenge for me.

Also, I designed the character without muscles. I always viewed Peter as being made of Silly Putty. But Joe Albelo, in inking the character, always put in muscles. I don't know if he did it on his own initiative, or did it at Larry's direction. I never discussed it with them.

J. Jonah Jackal went through a series of name changes before the first script was finalized. In Tom Defalco’s series/story concept, the character was called Jackson J. Jawbone. In the initial script he was called B. Bowser Bulldog, Jackson J. Jawbone, J. Jonah Jacka_ _* [I’m doing my best to keep this a family-oriented blog for all ages], and finally J. Jonah Jackal. I designed the look of the character with J. Jonah Jacka_ _* in mind, and have always had that name in mind when drawing him, and would think of him as a braying donkey, not a jackal.

The homage panels were scripted in. Tom included with the script photocopies of specific panels from Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby stories he wanted in the story. Although I’m a fan of Ditko and Kirby, I'm not that much a big fan of doing homage panels. But the script called for it, and I did my best to include them and to put my own spin on them so that they wouldn't be mere copies.

I tried to insert as many nonverbal gags and background gags as I could. And there are at least two Easter eggs in that first Spider-Ham story. The “old army buddy” who slaps Steve on the back on page 6 was one of the characters in “Recondo Rabbit,”--the top sergeant who goes to Heaven. I turned his death into a temporary one that turned out to be near-death experience. And on page 16 Super Santa makes a cameo appearance on an arcade game called “Super Santa Sleigh Ride.” The stories of both these characters are discussed in earlier installments of this series of blog posts.

The “town crier” beagle on the front of the Daily Beagle building (as shown on page 5 and throughout the series) I added as I thought there should be a logical reason for the name of the newspaper. A town crier was the only explanation I could come up with for a paper named for a beagle.

It was my idea to have most or all villains smoke cigarettes, a tradition that I continued in subsequent stories. And as with most all of my stories, I penciled the title lettering and sound effects. I hope the letterer of the book didn’t resent my encroachment into his territory.

That first story, “If He Should Punch Me!” appeared in a one-shot comic called Marvel Tails #1. Later, Larry Hama told me that after it hit the stands the distributor asked when the next issue would be coming out—something that the distributor had never asked before. So the decision was made at Marvel to make this one-shot a series.

I’ll discuss the subsequent Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham series in the next installment of My History in Comics.

Saturday, August 14, 2021

My History in Comics, Part 7 – First Marvel Assignment, Bizarre Adventures

The year was 1981. I got a quick reply from DC. Once again I failed to break through the slush pile and got a form-letter rejection. Marvel took a few months longer to respond, though. When they responded it was in the form of a phone call, probably from Denny O'Neil, but perhaps from Larry Hama. They liked what I had sent and would be sending me a script for a story for Bizarre Adventures, a black & white newsstand comic magazine published by Marvel. The story, “Recondo Rabbit,” may well be the only funny animal war story ever done, combining funny animal humor and sight gags with the horrors of war.

I got the script by FedEx which was a fairly new service called Federal Express at the time. Most all my communications with Marvel would be by telephone and FedEx. The script, by Larry Hama, featured a rabbit with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after a tour in Vietnam. The script called for the first and last pages of the story to be mostly photocopies of the same panel. But being very gung ho and ambitious at the time, I asked for and received permission to do the first and last pages in airbrush.

The story was written by Larry Hama who would later become editor of the Spider-Ham comics, and the inker was Joe Albelo who would later become my inker on the Spider-Ham stories I penciled.

Larry Hama had been in service and had been to Vietnam, but I hadn't. The John Wayne movie “The Green Berets” was conveniently broadcast on television right at that time and I got some inspiration from that. Also, my father loaned me some souvenirs and memorabilia from his time in Vietnam, and I was able to use that as reference material. And, as I drew the story, I listened to the Country Joe and the Fish song “I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxEyg61LC4g . We didn't have YouTube in 1981, and I wouldn't get a computer until 1998, but I did have a Country Joe and the Fish record album I had gotten in a remainder bin for something like fifty cents. If you want to read the story with the same background music it was drawn to, read it while listening to “I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag.”

Bizarre Adventures #31 has a cover date of April 1982. In 1982 we had a big recession and I hunkered down and did a few other things.

The Hardboiled Animal Comics #1 containing the “Roger Buck” one-pager is dated 1982. “Roger Buck was actually done in 1981, and was meant for Dennis Budd's Surf City Comics & Stories, but Dennis did not put out any more issues of Surf City after the issue containing “Surfin' Neanderthals!”

Hardboiled Animal Comics was published by Tim Fuller, who did the cover story for the Charlton Bullseye #2. Tim aspired to be publisher, and asked me to contribute. I had that unused “Roger Buck” piece in unused inventory, and sent him that. I also contributed to the jam-art cover.

The jam-art cover was done by Tim sending the same piece of bristol board to a series of contributors. I think I was the last one it was sent to, and I had to squeeze Roger Buck into the background. Had I known I was to be the last one to work on it, I might have done more with it, but I tried to leave space for still other contributors. I did sign it at the lower left-hand corner, but apparently there was a mishap at the printers and only a last portion of my name appears—half of the O, and the NG.

Also in 1982 I did an airbrush cover for The Duckburg Times #14, which was a fanzine devoted to Carl Barks and published by Dana Gabbard. The cover featured the early Oswald Rabbit and the early Woody Woodpecker, and referenced the fact that Oswald did not start out as a Walter Lantz character.

I first learned of the existence of airbrush paintings as an art form back in high school. I used to build model airplanes of balsa wood, tissue paper, fabric, rubber bands, and small gas engines. In the back of a model airplane magazine was an offer for a brochure for Paasche airbrushes. I wanted an airbrush to apply “dope” (lightweight airplane paint) to my models, so I sent off for the brochure.

What I got back was a booklet that reproduced gorgeous airbrush paintings. Then, when I went to Daytona Beach with a youth group, I saw an airbrush in action where a guy was doing airbrush paintings on t-shirts at a shop close to the beach. I was hooked on getting an airbrush.

The university where I got my BFA in drawing had no classes on airbrush painting. However, one of the instructors, Bill Armstrong (no relation) was familiar with them. He advised me to get a Thayer & Chandler model A airbrush, as he considered the Paasche brushes to be junk. He also advised me to use compressed nitrogen rather than compressed CO2 as a propellant, as the nitrogen would be less harmful to one's health over the long haul. I found a book on airbrush in the SMS library, and also bought a book on airbrush at the National Art Shop, where I purchased the Thayer & Chandler. I bought an air regulator and rented a tank of nitrogen for quite a few years until I finally got an air compressor. And I did, later, get a Paasche brush with a motorized reciprocating needle for doing detail work.

Besides Bizarre Adventures #31 and the cover of The Duckburg Times #14, I did a color air bush painting of Jack Bunny that appeared on the cover of Critters #8, and a black and white air brush painting of Jack swinging from a Fit to Print logo for Cat Yronwode's TBG column. I probably would have done at least one air brush cover for Charlton had I continued on there.

I’ve never tried doing an airbrush painting either in Photoshop or in Gimp, mainly because you don’t get to have any original art doing it that way. But I’ll probably get around to trying it out some time if there is a good, usable, digital equivalent to friskets.

Next up in this series, I discuss Spider-Ham.