[energetic music] ♪ [energetic music continues] ♪ [energetic music continues] ♪ [energetic music continues] ♪ - Hello and welcome to Comic Culture.

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is writer Howard Mackie.

Howard, welcome to Comic Culture.

- Thanks for having me, Terence.

- So Howard, you are known for your work at Marvel Comics where you worked on titles like Ghost Rider and Spider-Man.

So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about stepping into a character like, let's say, Spider-Man who's had a long career or long history rather before you start writing and how you can kind of put your mark on a character that, at the end of the day, you've gotta return back to Marvel in like-new condition.

- Oh, absolutely.

And I would say when I first got that assignment, it was mildly terrifying for all of the reasons you just said.

Although at that point, I had been doing Ghost Rider for long enough that I think I felt confident enough [Howard chuckling] to step in.

And then, ultimately, what I found, and I think this was the approach with many of the characters that I wound up writing, sometimes did not really work out for me is, the character becomes you and I felt like the Spider-Man patter, you know, he's fighting the bad guys.

I know every time I fight bad guys, that's exactly how I talk.

But born and raised in Brooklyn on the Queen's border, pretty much the cemeteries that I hung out in, which feature heavily in Ghost Rider, they connect directly over to the cemetery in which Uncle Ben is buried.

So there were things about the character that felt familiar to me, aside from his sense of humor.

My dad died when I was six years old and I was raised by a single mom who almost felt Aunt May-ish, [Howard chuckling] if you would.

And so I felt that I quickly slipped in or pulled Peter's personality into my own.

I felt very comfortable with Peter, not just with the dialogue, but the way he was raised where it turned around early on, and I'm glad I caught it early in my career.

I was writing Ghost Rider, I did a Havok limited series in Marvel Comics Presents, and I was writing Web of Spider-Man at the same time.

And one day I got all three books in the mail, back when we used to do things with the US Post Office.

And I sat down and I read them, or maybe I was just reading proof copies.

What really disturbed me was that all three characters, Danny Ketch, Peter Parker and Havok, Alex Summers, they all sounded exactly the same, they all sounded like me.

And so that's why I actually left Web of Spider-Man for that reason.

Because I felt like I needed to figure out a way while not doing three monthly titles to hone my craft enough to be able to have the characters have their own voice.

And of course, a few years or I don't even think it was a year later, the Spider-Man editor, after I had quit Web, asked me to come back and take on adjectiveless Spider-Man as we refer to it.

And I remember looking at him and saying, "Danny, did you?"

This was Danny Fingeroth.

I said, "Danny, did you think the problem I had was with the adjective, the web part?"

But I wound up taking the assignment and then was on there for quite some time after.

- As a writer, they always say write what you know, and in some cases, being from New York, that gave you an advantage.

And you think that you're writing characters in the same tone or the same voice and you're not able to identify those characters, what do you do?

Is it a matter of, like you say, you just kind of pull back and let your brain solve those problems, or is it something maybe you start reading other books to see how other people are doing it?

How do you sort of solve that problem?

- A, I'm a big believer in always reading other people's work in every stage that you could.

Quite frankly, I read other people's work much more than read my own.

Up until very recently, and we can get into that later, once a book was in print, I never read it.

And in particular when once I stopped writing a character, I didn't follow the character anymore.

Not out of any sense of peek or anything like that, it was about, I do a lot of interviews and in the old days, they were print interviews and then podcasts and now people get to see my lovely face.

And I didn't ever want to be put in a position where I was asked a question about a writer's work who would've come after me and say anything, even inadvertently that might be viewed as critical of a writer.

'Cause bottom line is, no matter what, with Danny Ketch in Ghost Rider, I created that character, but I created it under a set of circumstances where I knew it was not my character.

It was work for hire for Marvel.

And until very recently, I didn't reread things.

It was so overt in that example that I gave and it was primarily because of the Alex Summers story, the Kavok story, being right in the middle.

And it was because he tends to be a much more serious character.

And I felt like everybody was starting to sound like Spider-Man or Peter Parker.

And it was pretty overt to me.

And even Danny Ketch was, you know, he went through a lot of things, serious things, as he took on the identity of Ghost Rider, the spirit of vengeance.

And spirit of vengeance, not necessarily somebody who's gonna be throwing quips out.

I felt like he was a good balance there for me to have Peter and Spider-Man with a rapid patter and to have a more serious character in Dan Ketch to allow me to work it out.

And honestly, just recently was rereading a bunch of the Ghost Rider series that I did, and I could see I was working on a lot of things on those pages at the time.

So, yeah, really just a matter of stepping back.

I probably also had conversations with some of my peers.

I would've definitely gone to somebody like Mark Gruenwald, who was my mentor at Marvel, and Tom DeFalco to just ask them how they did it.

But also, I have friends, I know a few people, so yes, there was never a shortage of somebody willing to waste time with me on the phone to work things out.

- Now, you mentioned Mark Gruenwald who was, of course, the great Marvel editor, passed away way too soon, but he was known as sort of, I guess, the heart and soul of Marvel during the eighties and early nineties.

And you served as his assistant editor.

So when you're in that capacity where you're working under somebody who becomes your mentor, what do you do in the day that helps him out but, at the same time, is helping you become a better communicator and a better writer?

- I was forced into, I mean, I stumbled into comics.

I fell into comics.

I've gotten smacked on panels when I tell this story.

A few years ago, literally smacked.

A few years ago I did a panel at a comic convention, it was how to break into comics.

Number one, I did it a few years ago, so what the heck do I know about breaking into comics today?

But I was on a panel with, I think, five other much younger writers than myself.

And I told the story of how I came into comics, which was I had no interest.

I read comics as a kid, then I had a gap.

And then a friend of mine wound up getting a job at Marvel Comics, a guy that I had grown up with and was really good friends with.

And when we both living in Brooklyn and Queens, we went out to concerts together and he wound up turning me onto this position, this editorial assistant editor position with Mark Gruenwald, because his name was Mike Carlin and he was Mark's first assistant.

And I don't know whatever happened to Mike, other than going on and becoming editor-in-chief of DC, but who knows.

Anyway, I really didn't think it was gonna be a long-term position for me because really the only thing I needed to do my job at the time was to pretty much have one working digit on my hands.

Because primary job was to take things to the photocopy machine and push the button to make copies of artwork.

And this was in the days before anybody had computers, so everything was done by hand.

I got to share an office with Mark and it was an office probably smaller than the office I work out of at my home right now, and the two of us with the desk.

And so you've really had to be pretty dense not to learn how to do things, even if it was just by osmosis.

But Mark took it upon himself to train me how to be an editor first.

He had Mike, then he had me and he was working at training me and then eventually he took all those notes of things and we would sit and just have to have conversations about what made a good comic book story and how to approach it and what I should read if I wanted to learn the craft.

And that eventually turned into Mark creating with Tom DeFalco this assistant editor school where he formalized it.

And I think it was once a week, they had an hour long meeting and they got assignments.

I never took place in the formalized version of this, but he really made an effort to teach me the craft of comic book making, which I greatly appreciated.

And then the other thing he did for me, and this is the thing that got me smacked.

Tini Howard smacked me across the back of my head when I told her my first comic book assignment was Iron Man number 211.

Actually, I'm looking at the splash page above my desk right now 'cause Alex Saviuk, the artist, was very kind to gift it to me because he said, "It's the first time your name will appear in writing with credit writer and I'm sure it won't be the last."

I consider that my good luck charm from Alex 'cause it turned out he was correct.

But what happened was, the previous writer on Iron Man was fired from Marvel, it was Dennis O'Neil.

And so he was fired from his editorial position and so he left his writing position.

David McClinney was gonna take it over, but Mark wanted somebody to wrap up the storyline.

And so we were having a little conference in our office and Mark said to me, "We need to find somebody to finish Dennis story."

And I said, "Yes, we do."

He said, "It needs to be somebody who knows what Dennis was thinking and is familiar enough with the storyline that can just jump right into it."

And I said, "Yes, it does."

He said, "It's going to be you."

[Terence chuckling] And I said, "Oh, no, no.

No, no, it's not."

'Cause at that point, I really didn't have any aspirations really to write.

I mean, I always liked to write, but I didn't really want people to read my stuff.

I had trouble enough turning in papers to my college professors.

And he gave me one of the best lines ever in response to my saying no.

And I used it both in my career as an editor, a full editor later on, and then as a dad of two daughters.

He said, "Oh, Howard, you're confusing what I just said with a conversation."

You know, he said, "You are going to be writing this."

And so I had to write issue 211 of Iron Man and he was brutal with me.

I think I had to rewrite that thing five or six times in various stages and it was great.

Basically, threw me into the deep end of the pool and let me work out the kinks.

And the editor-in-chief at the time, Jim Shooter, he approved of it when it came out.

And then soon as it got printed, other editors said, "Oh, we didn't know you could write."

And I said, "Oh, well, that's funny 'cause I still don't know that."

And that's when the other assignments started coming along.

And Mark was always a good sounding board for me, especially early on in my career with a number of the assignments that I received.

I did a lot of Hawkeye 12 page stories or 11 page stories back in the day in Avenger Spotlight and Solo Avengers.

- We think about people getting into comics and now a lot of writers get into comics because they want to be turning their products into screenplays or into the next animated series or something.

But you're getting into comics without really thinking that you're going to get into comics and there you are falling into it.

So, when you're working on something like an 11 page Hawkeye story, are you kind of having to say "This is the story and it's gonna appear in this many issues of Avenger Spotlight and in this, Hawkeye's going to do this and this and realize that."

Do you have to pitch that whole thing or is it something where it's just "Here's the seat of your pants and why don't you go fly by it?"

- Yeah, closer to the second than to the first.

And this is why it was a great lesson for me because those stories all had to be one and done.

So 11 page, there were very few plot threads that carried over to the next issue.

Every once in a while, there would be a minor one, but really it was a matter of, it was hero, villain, had a fight, and come up with good stuff in between to make it not just so flat.

And in the very beginning, Mark would just say, "I want you to do a story with," and he'd just throw some, usually, lamer villain out at me.

I think the first ones I did were Texas Twister and Shooting Star, I believe that's the name of the character.

And then because Mark knew I was a big fan of Ghost Rider, he wanted me to do an Orb story.

And so there were a lot of things like that.

And I did Plantman story.

There were just those kinds of stories until I got my feet under me and then I would just start pitching my own.

But they were all one shots, which was a really good training.

We didn't have this decompress storytelling these days where some writers, and I'm not criticizing anyone, mostly 'cause I haven't read most of this stuff because of the previous comment I made about not reading a character after I leave, but I do know that there are times when people have told the origin of Spider-Man over a five or six issue limited series.

And I remember that Stan did it in less.

Stan and Steve did it in far less pages.

So there was something to be said about learning to just get in there and tell the story.

But as I said, I just kind of fell into all of it or was, I guess, pushed into it, which worked out for me.

- It seems like being put on a lower stakes title, like Avengers Spotlight is kind of like if Chris Claremont's given the X-Men when it's really no one's expecting it to sell and then they turn into something bigger.

Your career takes off and you start working with some of the best artists in the business, folks like John Byrne, John Romita Jr., and Lee Weeks.

So when you're working with that sort of artist, somebody who's a master storyteller, somebody who's got a long career, how do you sort of work with them so that way, you're getting the most out of them, they're getting the most out out of you and the characters and the readers are getting the most outta the books.

- Again, this was the advantage to my having been.

I was on editorial staff for seven years exactly, to the day.

Because if you knew Mark Gruenwald, he would insist that those kinds of things, he liked it to have kind of squared edges.

So when I had decided to lead staff, when my career had ended, I had gone into DeFalco and I told him, he said, "Okay, you can come back anytime you want."

And they gave me a contract and I went in to tell Mark, I said, "I just gave my two weeks notice."

And he said, "No, no, no, no.

If you wait four more weeks," and he knew this off the top of his head, and then he checked his calendar.

"If you wait four more weeks, your last day will be the anniversary of your first day starting with me.

And so you'll always be able to tell people that you worked at Marvel on staff for exactly seven years."

So there.

And he was writing, all these years later, look, I got to tell you, and he was correct.

But I developed a lot of great relationships first as an assistant editor and then as a full editor.

And my philosophy as an editor was one of, nobody is working for me, they're working with me.

And as a result, all those names you mentioned, the artist I've worked with, I count them all as very close friends.

I mean, John Byrne, I met when I was an assistant editor for Mark.

He saved us countless times.

I mean, there was a day that we didn't have a cover for a book that had to go out.

Somehow it had just fallen through the cracks because I was wrapping the book up as Mark's assistant and I said, "Well, where's the cover?"

And he said, "Uh-oh."

And I got on the phone with Byrne and actually I handed the phone over to Mark, he and Byrne worked out a cover design, Byrne was living in Brooklyn at the time.

And John got on the subway and was sketching out the cover on the back of, you know, he had his portfolio on his lap sketching out the cover.

He showed it to Mark, Mark said, "Great, tighten it up and ink it."

And literally, in the period of two to three hours, John came in, penciled and inked the cover in the bullpen.

We had somebody color it on staff and it went out.

Not the best cover in the world, but better than starting on the splash page.

And so because of those relationships, it was a very comfortable.

I was Lee's editor before I worked with him on things like Gambit and it was all about relationships.

And the other part is, some of my colleagues disagree with me on this approach, and I didn't realize I did it until Tom Lyle told me.

He said, "When I found out I was working with you, one of the first things you did was you called me and you asked me what it was I liked to draw and what was it that I didn't like to draw."

And then in that conversation we came up, there was a character that he really wanted to focus on.

And I said, "That would never dictate story to me, but it informed story."

And I also had the luxury of knowing that, frequently, these were gonna be longer term relationships.

These days, people do five issued limited series and then they're done.

That's their working relationship.

Ghost Rider, I did for about five years and Spider-Man on and off, I did close to 10.

And so I knew when I was working with these guys that like J.R. and I had, I mean, biggest problem I have with JR is, once you work with him, you can't get the images out of your head of the way he would draw something.

So, the way I describe it is when I sit down at the computer to write a story, I have a movie running in my head and I'm just taking notes.

And more often than not, when you work with J.R. as much as I did, it's a J.R. movie and then sometimes it's not a J.R. page that you get to when you're working with another artist.

So I busted his chops about that all the time, which I guess it's a relatively good thing to bust his chops about.

I mean, you mentioned some of them, but I've been very fortunate with the artists that I've worked with throughout my career.

And starting with Alex Saviuk.

I say this at conventions all the time and I say it to Alex, and the other guy is Al Milgrom.

Those were the guys that taught me how to tell a story on the page.

Because Alex was the first artist on Iron Man and then we did Chuck Norris and his Karate Kommandos, and I'm sure everybody remembers.

And then he was the artist on Web of Spider-Man as well.

And then Al Milgrom was the artist on all those Hawkeye stories.

And they really are, hands down, two of the best storytellers in the business.

And the best compliment I could ever give to them is, I would open the envelope with the pages and I could see my story right away.

And there were times when I worked with some artists that that didn't happen.

Yeah, so anyway, I think I answered your question, but I tend to digress.

[Howard chuckling] - No, I think you did.

What's interesting, we have about two and a half minutes or so left in our conversation.

I just wanted to ask, you mentioned when those pages come in, you can see your story.

Is there a difference that you see in this style of script that you've gotta write for someone like J.R. where you might just go with the Marvel style as opposed to somebody who's used to that full script style that you gotta be a lot more detailed and break it down panel by panel?

- Yes, I would say 99% of my work has been done Marvel style.

And I was fortunate enough to work with artists straight through my career who could handle that.

There have been times when I've worked with people, recently, not so much.

I just signed a deal with Marvel to do a project for them right now.

And it's a five issue limited series with Ghost Rider.

And I will still write it Marvel style initially, but then depending on who the artist is, and the artist has not been chosen yet, I'll take that and translate it into a full script.

I find that the Marvel style, the way I was taught it, which is very different than the way Stan operated and all that.

There's a lot of wiggle room in that title, "Marvel style."

It lent itself much more to a collaborative creative process than full script.

Because who am I to tell J.R. what angle to use?

When John Byrne was writing Iron Man, there'd be times when he would just say, "Five pages fight" [Howard laughing] and that would be it.

So, that's how it works.

- Howard, they're telling me that we are out of time.

I wanna thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

- My pleasure.

Thanks very much, Terence.

- I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching Comic Culture.

We will see you again soon.

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