Welcome to Exhibit A Press!

Interview conducted by Blake Bell for
"I Have To Live With This Guy!"
TwoMorrows Publishing, 2002

Part 3:
Comic-Con Grows Up in the 1980s
BB: Did it ever get too overwhelming?

JE: I quit the con in 1978. I said, "It’s too much, I’m taking on too much. I’m quitting. I’ll be the photographer." I became the Comic-Con photographer for the next few years.

BB: All this is still volunteer the whole way along?

JE: The photography I got paid for.

BB: Everything up to ’78 was still volunteer basis?

JE: Yeah. Then in 1982 program book was so bad, I said, "I have to come back to do the book."

BB: What about that one? I don’t have that one.

JE: It was on newsprint with green ink. (laughter)

BB: Like the early fanzines?

JE: I’m not even going to say who did it. It was just very sloppily thrown together, and I thought the con deserved better. Something else I was involved around that time was running an auction to raise funds for the Con. In 1979 all the proceeds from the Con were stolen. So David Scroggy and I were put in charge of a charity auction where we approached a lot of different people to contribute pieces that were then auctioned off through the Comics Buyer’s Guide. One of the joys of doing that was getting to visit Carl Barks at his place just outside of San Diego County in Temecula.

BB: What was his house like?

JE: It was a trailer home, but one of the really nice houses that happen to be in a trailer park. He and his wife Garé lived there. They made us lunch. He showed me his prized signed baseballs.

BB: What kind of guy was he?

JE: Just a doll, very robust, big, jolly, nice man—just a sweetheart.

BB: So his personality that came out in the books was the same as-

JE: Yes. He was just a great guy. He did a watercolor painting that he gave us for the auction. I have pictures of him giving it to us, just holding it. That was one of the things I did when I wasn’t officially on the Con committee. I did the program book again in ‘83 and ‘84. Then I said, "I’m quitting the Con again!" (laughter)

BB: How had things changed since the ’70s?

JE: The con had just gotten bigger and bigger. At this point, again, I was being the contact. I was the one everybody could reach. In 1984 I quit again, and this time I said, "It’s reached a point here where I’m not getting any work done because everybody in the world is calling me about the con all the time. You guys (the board of directors) better think about having an office or at least an employee." I said, "I recommend you hire a general manager and that you have a phone." (laughter)

BB: What is it with these guys that they didn’t have-

JE: It was a fan thing.

BB: They saw the con was purely a fandom thing and not a business?

JE: Yeah, but the Comic-Con board finally hired Fae Desmond as general manager, part time. She had a phone in her house that was the con phone. Eventually they got an office. That was mostly because of David Scroggy. David worked half time as an agent for artists and half time running the trade show for the Comic-Con, which was a paid position. He had an office in downtown San Diego and a space opened up for something like $100 a month. Convincing the board they should spend that exorbitant amount of money to have an office was hard, but they finally got the office, and today they have several full-time employees, including Fae as executive director, and several part-time employees, along with a volunteer committee that’s hundreds of people.

BB: All this time in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s are you and Dave still married?

JE: We split up in 1978.

BB: Who got the comics?

JE: We sold a lot of them. We really thought we were making a lot of money on those Barks and Marvel comics. Now of course, we’d be making a lot more. I kept select ones and I still have them.

BB: So, from ’78 onwards, you were supporting yourself on freelance editing?

JE: Yes. And at that time I got more seriously involved in photography. I took a lot of classes and studied the history of photography. I had my own darkroom, which is where I developed and printed up all the Comic-Con photos. And through all that I met another photographer, Steve Dunn, and we ended up living together for about eight years. He specialized in what’s called "street photography," and I learned a lot about that. One of my most memorable experiences was taking a week-long seminar from the famous street photographer Garry Winogrand, who was a real character and very opinionated. We spent a week in a bunch of cabins in Truckee, California and became completely immersed in studying all the greats and doing our own work. During that time I actually had a few one-woman shows of my color work, and some of my black-and-white photos were in a few group shows.

BB: What sort of photos did you specialize in?

JE: Well, for color I liked to shoot slides of amusement parks, store windows, interesting buildings—things like that. My interest was in composition, shapes, patterns, saturated colors. So I might do a real close-up shot of the scaffolding on a red-and-white wooden roller-coaster against a dark-blue sky, or maybe a bunch of wigs in a store window. For black and white, I shot a lot of the punk and New Wave music scene in San Diego in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Steve and I used to go to shows with acts like X, the Blasters, the Ramones, the Clash, the Go-Gos. It was fun taking pictures of the punk crowd.

BB: Were you a punk rocker?

JE: No, I just liked the music and found the scene very interesting. I’ve always been interested in lots of different kinds of music. I told you that Davey got me involved in jazz and that we had lots of records. Besides jazz, that included every type of American music, from ragtime and 1920s and 1930s popular music to blues, western swing, bluegrass, rockabilly, and of course my beloved 1950s music. In fact in 1986 I started taking ballroom dance classes, especially jitterbug and swing. I was even in a jitterbug performance group.

This photo of San Diego band The Penetrators is a good example of the sort of photography Jackie was doing in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

Many of my best friends today are people I met through dancing. One of my favorite things to do with them is go to New Orleans for the big Jazz and Heritage Festival. I love all kinds of Louisiana music—cajun, zydeco, brass bands, rhythm & blues, swamp pop—and the festival has all that and more. My absolute favorite is Fats Domino, and I got to see him live a couple of times.

BB: So you quit the Comic-Con in 1984. When did you come back?

JE: I got back involved in 1986. That’s when I came up with the idea of Artists Alley and was running it. Prior to then we didn’t really have one area for the artists.

BB: Where would all these guys hang out?

JE: They didn’t really have a place.

BB: They were kind of wandering around the convention? Going from their hotel room to hanging out in the convention hall?

JE: They were no publisher booths or anything like that. There would be a lot of cartoonists, sometimes they would buy tables in the dealer’s room. Or they would go sit at the tables near the snack bar. In the early 1980s the Con moved from the El Cortez to the downtown Convention and Performing Arts Center. The Exhibit Hall had some temporary side rooms. Chuck Rozanski of Mile High had one. Bud Plant had one. They could set up a mini-store in these side rooms. One year three rooms had been set up and the third room didn’t get sold, or whoever had bought it had backed out at the last minute. So there were just a bunch of tables in there. Suddenly, there was an artist at every table, drawing. (laughter) So, I said, why don’t we formalize this next year? Because this room was chaos. It was a great thing to have, but if one guy got up to go to the bathroom, then somebody else took his spot.

So in 1986 we had our first Artists’ Alley, and I was in charge. I ran it from 1986 to 1989. The way I set it up, artists had to pay for their Artists’ Alley spot, but then it was theirs. There were about 19 eight-foot tables, three chairs to a table, and I would assign five people to that table. I’d say, "You all have this table; work out amongst yourselves who’s going to be here at what time." Many of these artists hung out together anyway, so that was no problem sharing. You had people in there like Jim Lee, Scott McCloud, Larry Marder, Charles Vess, Jan Duursema, Evan Dorkin, Paul Chadwick, Steve Rude, Matt Wagner, the Hernandez Brothers, Stan Sakai, Bob Burden, Wendy Pini, Don Simpson, Donna Barr, Roberta Gregory—a lot of artists who later became big names but back then were early in their careers.

BB: What’s it like in a male-dominated industry to be a woman directing all these artists in their interesting temperaments and personalities? Did you get any flak or were you strong enough that you-

JE: I had no problem. The thing about the San Diego Con is that about half of the committee has always been women. (laughter) So, I think pros were used to the fact that they would be dealing with a lot of women at San Diego. Clydene Nee has been running Artists’ Alley since 1990; now there are something like 180 tables, but each person gets a whole table.

It was in 1986 that I also created the position of "pro liaison" so that there would be a separate registration area for professionals and they wouldn’t have to stand in line with everybody else.

BB: They really had to stand in line, like literally to get into the thing or what?

JE: Yes. All except for the official invited guests.

JE: Then I was involved in the Inkpot awards. I stayed on the awards committee throughout most of my off-and-on periods with the convention.

BB: When did you start getting involved in Inkpots? Don’t you have an Inkpot?

JE: Yes, I got an Inkpot in ’77. The Inkpots, which are the con’s own awards, started in ’75. I’ve also been involved in the con’s other awards like the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award and the Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award. Bob and Russ were both regular guests at the convention back in the 1970s and they loved Comic-Con. When each died, we created awards in their names.

BB: I understand you did some comics writing yourself back in the ’80s. You did some stories for Deni at Renegade?

JE: I wrote two stories for Renegade Romance.

BB: Looking back on that, what was that like?

JE: That was fun. I had never written any comic stories. I had met Al Williamson at the 1984 Comic Con, when he was a guest. Prior to that I had talked to him on the phone off and on over the years because I was always trying to get him to be a guest for San Diego. He finally came in ’84. At the con I asked him, "If I wrote a story, would you draw it?" And he said, "Sure, send it to me." So I wrote a story, it was nine or ten pages long. He said, "That’s too many pages, I can’t do that much. I hardly draw anything anymore. Can you make it shorter?" So I did some editing and got it down to about five pages and sent it back to him. He kept putting off drawing it, then finally he gave it to this guy named Jim Sullivan, who draws in a Frazetta style. Jim drew the story and I think Al redid some of the faces and put in some details. That was for the first Renegade Romance.

The second story I did, Barb Rausch drew. She did such a fabulous job with it. It was a story about unrequited love. Each page represented a decade in one woman’s life. It starts in the 1940s with the gal in high school in love with this guy.

A page from Jackie's Renegade Romance story drawn by Barb Rausch.

She doesn’t get him in high school, and in the ensuing years she fantasizes constantly about him. Each decade she’s like, "He’s going to leave his wife and be with me." Of course at the end, she reads in the paper that he’s died. In the last scene, she’s at his grave and she never did wind up with him. Throughout the story Barb drew in the style of the decade. We had popular songs of the era in the background. You could see little musical notes with the lyrics of the song. She did these very imaginative layouts. It’s a really interesting story. Barb died of cancer a couple of years ago; I really miss her.

BB: You’ve had a lot of experience with a lot of fans, creators. Speak about the male creator and the male comic book fan and what makes them unique. What strange things did you notice about them? What in terms of their personality-

JE: I think that’s too big or broad of a category to generalize about. Certainly I wouldn’t put the fans and the professionals in the same category.

BB: Okay, separate and talk about the male creator.

JE: I think the creators, the good ones, are compelled to do what they’re doing. It’s like they don’t even have a choice. They could be doing other things. They could be making a lot more money, but this is just what they have to do and they just love it. They love comics, they love the medium, it’s become their life.

BB: How about how they relate to women?

JE: I think that anybody who’s involved with a comic’s creator has to fit into that compulsive lifestyle where there’s not much of a social life because any minute they can be at the drawing board, that’s where they’re gonna be.

BB: Is one in danger of losing oneself when married to, or with, a comic book creator? Is that a danger that’s there?

JE: I suppose some people might have that problem, I don’t. I have my many, many other things I do.

BB: What about the male comic book fan, like the superhero fan versus the indie fan? You must’ve seen all kinds through out the years.

JE: My characterization of the "mainstream" fan is this guy who’s wearing a slogan T-shirt and talking about how great X-Men is. The guy at the other end of the spectrum, the artsy fartsy comic fan, is the guy with the slogan T-shirt talking about how great Eightball is. It’s like there’s not much difference between them. They have just picked their thing that they’re devoted to.

BB: Just a cross, a fork in the road at some point.

JE: Unfortunately, the comics I’m most interested in, and that my husband and I do, are in between those two ends of the spectrum. There’s a certain myopia on both ends such that the fans don’t even want to look at what’s outside of their chosen type of thing. It’s not an adventure/superhero book, and it’s not obscure and self-indulgent. It’s just a good read.

BB: What about fandom in the ’70s and ’80s versus like right now?

JE: It’s more diverse.

BB: It’s more diverse now?

JE: Well, just take the San Diego Comic-Con as an example. It reached a point where you got to see more and more normal people (laughter) there. In the earliest days, everybody looked like a fan. They had superhero T-shirts, they had hats with buttons all over them, or they wore costumes. They were walking billboards. Now, that’s the small minority. Now you see people that you would see at the mall.

BB: Do they have the same inner mentality, I mean, still so much dominated by superheroes?

JE: I think what you see now is more pop culture–oriented people rather than just comics fans. They’re just as likely to start talking about Buffy or about Hong Kong movies instead of, "Okay, let’s stop talking about the Hulk and start talking about the Thing." (laughter)

BB: So, I take it that’s a good point?

JE: Yeah. We now have a broader base of general interest in pop culture. So, writers can put more pop culture references in their comics and know that the readers are going to get them.

BB: How does San Diego get bigger every year, yet the comic industry seems to shrink every year? You said from the start there was always a media element.

JE: I think two reasons. One is the proximity to L.A. that draws not only guests and celebrities from the movie and TV industries, but also attendees. L.A. is a huge base of animation industry people who are big fans of comics who come en mass to San Diego every year. The other reason conventions get good attendance these days is that people no longer have nearby places to get what they want to get. They think, "if I save my money and go to the con, that’s where I can get these comics or these back issues or books or toys" or whatever it is they want to get that they can’t get locally. Plus, conventions have the appeal of getting to meet the creators. Fans know San Diego is going to have over a thousand comics creators and celebrities of other types. They bring their sketchbooks, autograph books. They can get original drawings in Artists’ Alley. It’s also an opportunity to see other people who are in your subarea of fandom. San Diego has a huge anime following. Gaming is a huge part. Everybody with a special interest can come and hang out with their friends.

BB: Everybody’s paranoid about the industry shrinking and yet San Diego, the convention itself, seems to get bigger and bigger.

JE: It gets a lot of publicity for the comics industry. A lot of journalists from all over the U.S. and even other countries come to the con and write about comics for their papers. And San Diego being a nonprofit is a huge advantage. With the for-profit conventions, you will not find art shows and masquerades and film rooms and a dozen tracks of programming and all these other things that cost money that don’t generate revenue.

BB: What about the dealers now versus ten years ago? Do you notice a shrinkage of the dealers in terms of the amount of comic stores that have been shut down over the ’90s?

JE: Publishers and other kinds of companies have become a bigger part of Exhibit Hall. You have things like the Sci-Fi Channel exhibiting. You have movie studios, gaming companies, and card companies. Back-issue dealers used to be what cons were back in the ’70s and early ’80s. It’s evolved to include people who just sell toys or videos or jewelry. The dealers who clean up are the ones with all the Japanese toys. At San Diego there’s always a waiting list of dealers wanting to have access to the 50,000 attendees.

Friendships
BB: What are the greatest friendships you’ve evolved? What are some examples from working related to the con?

JE: One is Mimi Cruz, who owns a store in Salt Lake City.

BB: How did that evolve?

JE: She was a judge for the Eisners in 1994, which is when we started publishing our comic. She read the first issue and loved it so much that she became a huge supporter of Supernatural Law. She invited Bat to come to Salt Lake City to do a signing, and we went and stayed with her and her husband Alan and been back a few times staying at their house. Most recently we’ve been sharing our Comic-Con booth with her.

We’re also good friends with what we call "our sons." Over the years we’ve "adopted" some younger guys that we’ve met in comics. One of the first was Jim Pascoe, who became the model for Toby Bascoe in our comic. Jim moved to San Diego from Pittsburgh to work for the Comic-Con for a while. Now he lives in L.A. and is in partnership with another of our "sons," Tom Fassbender. Tom worked for Capital City Distribution, then Motown Comics. Now the two of them have Uglytown, a book publishing company that specializes in mysteries, and they’ve written some mysteries themselves as well as the Buffy comic for Dark Horse. Tom is married to Samantha Sackin, who worked briefly in comics—for Deni, as a matter of fact. Bat has put characters based on both Tom and Samantha in our comic. Tom is Toby’s best friend, "Ben," and Samantha is "Bonnie," Mavis’s best friend. We also consider Paul Pope to be one of our "sons." We’ve shared booth space with Paul at Comic-Con and spent some time with him—we both consider him to be just a genius in his comics work. Interestingly enough, he’s a midwest boy who now lives in Bat’s hometown, Brooklyn.

BB: What are some of the other professionals you’ve met that are now your friends?

JE: There are many people who are sort of "annual friends." We may not talk much all year, but we are old pals whenever we see each other at San Diego. For instance, Lee Marrs has been a friend of mine since 1977. And I’ve had my share of experiences with various pros over the years. I considered the wonderful B. Kliban to be a very good friend and we had some great phone conversations. I adored Bob Clampett and I keep in touch with his wife Sody and their kids. I’ve slept on Michael Kaluta’s floor. I took Jim Steranko to see the house that Raymond Chandler lived in, here in La Jolla. I’ve done Dave Stevens’ laundry. I visited the "grassy knoll" in Dallas with Eddie Campbell and Bryan Talbot. We’ve had margaritas with Mary Fleener at an old-style cocktail lounge in San Jose. Bat and I once had a wild dinner at the Cedar Tavern in New York with Billy Tucci, Heidi MacDonald, Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner, Howard Cruse, Peter Kuper, Pauline and Alan Weiss, and a bunch of other folks who came and went. After some 30 years of Comic-Cons, I know a lot of people.

BB: Everybody is so spread out these days. There’s not that huge New York or California scene like it was in the early 70s. Now everybody’s just all over the map, all the way from Florida, up to Seattle all the way across-

JE: The wonders of e-mail. You can keep in touch with people on a daily basis if you want to.

BB: Who’s the dearest guy to your heart where you go, "Every year when I see this guy, I just love seeing this guy?"

JE: I’d have to say Al Williamson. I adore Al. And Bill Morrison from Bongo Comics is just a delightful person. It’s always great to get together with him.

BB: What kind of personality does Al have?

JE: Al is kind of an eccentric guy. I can’t see a Marx Brothers’ movie without thinking of Al because his voice is like Groucho’s. (laughter) He’s always amusing and likes to talk about old movies and jazz.

Enter Mr. Lash
BB: We can leave that for a while, because we should get to Batton before I run out of tape here. I read somewhere that your first meeting was through, like a postcard, or submission of his.

JE: What happened was, in 1990 I was editing the program book and he sent in a drawing. As I did with everybody who sent in a drawing, I sent a postcard saying, "Got your drawing." (laughter) "Thanks for sending it in."

BB: I can see him going, "Wow, geez, I got this postcard, it’s amazing. She loves me."

JE: Well, not quite. That year, the program book went to press at the end of June. Then Fae Desmond said, "I’m going to the Chicago Con." I said, "Are you going all by yourself?" She said, "Oh yeah, nobody wants to go with me." I said, "Oh, I’ll go with you." She already had her hotel and everything, so it was a last-minute thing. I decided to go t with her, which was July 4th weekend, as it always used to be. On Friday night DC Comics had a party for its professionals and we went to that. We were sitting at a table and this guy comes up to me and says, "Excuse me, are you Jackie Estrada?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, my name’s Batton Lash and I just want to tell you that I appreciate that you’re going to use my art in the program book. And thank you for sending that postcard."

BB: When you first received his art, did you have any idea who he was?

JE: No.

BB: What did you think of his art when you first saw it?

JE: I thought that he was like one of the older Silver Age guys. With a name like Batton Lash, he probably had to be in his 60s. He went off, and as the evening progressed, I’d go past him and wave to him. He’d just be standing around with his friend Russell Calabrese. In the course of the next day, Fae and I ran into Batton and Russell in a couple places and just chatted. Fae was helping Bob Chapman at the Graphitti Designs T-shirt table, so I spent some time there with her at the table. It was a small con in those days, and once you’d been around, there wasn’t much to do, so Bat and Russell kept wandering by and talking to us. And then we chatted in the hotel bar in the after-hours.

BB: What was your impression of him in your first meeting?

JE: One of the first things we talked about was Ditko. The fact that I even knew who Ditko was practically had him in shock. (laughter) And then when I said I’d corresponded with Ditko and had some original art, he was really impressed. The conversation naturally led to Rand, and it turned out he was also a Randian, although he’d never formally studied Objectivism. We had very pleasant conversations about comics and philosophy and all sorts of other things.

BB: What kind of guy was he back then? Was there an attraction right off?

JE: When we came home, I remember calling my friend Clydene and saying, "You know, Fae and I met these two really nice guys in Chicago. One in particular I thought was a really nice guy." Then I started finding excuses to call him because the San Diego Con was six weeks later and he was coming out for it. I started calling him every Saturday. I would say things like, "You know, since you’re in New York, there’s this place called Teuscher Chocolatier in Manhattan. So, if by any chance before you come to San Diego you could pick up a small box of chocolates for me that would be great, because I really love those and I don’t know when I’m gonna be in New York again." We had these long conversations and we really agreed on everything and had tons of things to talk about. We never ran out of topics.

BB: What made you want to be calling him every Saturday—what about his personality?

JE: He was funny. He just funny and clever and very nice—a very nice person, very deferential. He wasn’t a boisterous, obnoxious type of person.

BB: But you’ve still got a lot of energy. You guys are almost a yin and yang in terms of how you’re calm, cool and collected and he’s always "heey!" not in an annoying boisterous way, but …

JE: He’s from Brooklyn, so he talks with his hands.

BB: He looks like he’s got a fire behind his eye 24 hours a day.

JE: When he came out to San Diego, he came with his friend Mitch Berger. He had told Mitch, "Yeah, Jackie Estrada called me last Saturday." And Mitch said, "Oh, really?!" "Yes, but she’s really a nice person. She must just call a lot of people and just chat with them." Mitch was going, "I bet she’s not calling a lot of people." And Bat said, "Like what do you mean?" He was very naïve. (laughter) Mitch and Bat and Russell got to San Diego on a Sunday. Fae and I had arranged to stop by their hotel to get my box of chocolates, which Bat had indeed picked up for me. They said, "Well, let’s all go to dinner." So a group of seven or eight of us went to dinner, and Mitch saw that I was arranging to sit next to Bat. So he made sure that he sat on the other side of him. Mitch was totally aware that I was interested in Bat, and Bat was totally clueless. (laughter)

BB: You were the aggressor and Bat was like-

JE: When we walked back to their hotel, I said, "I need somebody to walk me to my car, because it’s in the dark over there." Russell goes, "I’ll do it." Mitch say, "No, wait, remember, we have that thing!" (laughter) He actually grabbed Russell’s arm and spun him around so they would walk into the hotel. So, Bat walked me to my car. Then two days later, I had a barbeque at my house that I invited them all to. This was my ace in the hole, because I showed Bat my five-page Ditko story. (laughter) It was the original art.

BB: You have original art? Which one was that?

JE: It’s a story from Journey Into Mystery. One of the early Marvel horror titles.

BB: How did you run across that?

JE: I bought it from Russ Cochran at the con back in the ’70s. I have a lot of original art.

BB: I don’t want to think about what you paid for those Ditko pages.

JE: I have a Frazetta Johnny Comet daily and a Pogo daily and a few other things hanging on my office wall.

BB: I can only imagine what you paid for some of that stuff.

JE: Cheap (laughter)…all of it.

BB: Thank you. Thank you.

JE: I made sure that he saw I had all this cool stuff, and after everybody else left I got to be the one to chauffeur him to the big party that night at the new Convention Center. Finally, with a little prompting, it dawned on him that he was interested in me. (laughter)

BB: And you guys carried on a long-distance relationship?

JE: For 3 1/2 years.

BB: How does that work? You hit it off so well that you guys were committed, or did it evolve over time?

JE: When he went back to the East Coast, we started talking on the phone constantly. I said, "There’s this thing I’m invited to in L.A., Grim Natwick’s 100th birthday party next month." [Grim Natwick was the legendary animator who created Betty Boop.] Bat flew out to San Diego, and we went up to L.A. together to go to the party, which was great. It turned out that Bat knew the guy in charge of the event, Tom Sito, because they had gone to school together. A couple months later, I went back to New York and stayed at his apartment in Brooklyn Heights and met his family. For the next three years we flew black and forth, met each other in the middle of the country for things like Chicago Con, spent a lot of time on the phone, and went hugely into debt.

BB: Why 3 1/2 years of all this? Who didn’t want to move out to where? Or was it mutual?

JE: He had never lived anywhere but Brooklyn in his life. And he didn’t really have the financial means to move.

BB: When you meet him in 1990, at what point is he in his career?

JE: At that point, he had a book out of his Wolff & Byrd comic strips from the National Law Journal. Besides writing and drawing the weekly strip, he was working for the weekly newspaper there in Brooklyn, where he was doing editorial cartoons, advertising art and illustrations, and things like that. So, that was his main source of income. He moved to San Diego in the fall of 1993.

BB: What was the final thing that convinced him to get out there?

JE: Well, he proposed. It had to be one place or the other. I have a house in San Diego. He had a fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Brooklyn smaller than my kitchen.

BB: What’s "New York" about Bat?

JE: Everything.

BB: Beyond the way he speaks…

JE: He’s a committed New Yorker. He loves New York. He had a studio in Manhattan for many years.

BB: How did he deal with moving out to San Diego?

JE: Not well.

BB: How did that manifest itself?

JE: San Diego’s too bright, too sunny for him. First of all, he doesn’t drive. He never had to learn how to drive in New York because there you can just take public transportation or walk. Everything is very compact. And any services you need, they’re open all night. My house is in a suburban area, and he likes tall buildings and people in the streets and activity—just the hustle and bustle. Here, it’s so quiet, he’s sure that some ax murderer is going to come running out of one of the houses screaming. (laughter)

BB: How long before you guys got married from the time he moved?

JE: He moved here in November, and we got married in January.

BB: He had two months to basically go, "Good Lord, this town stinks," and bail if he wanted to, but he didn’t.

JE: Well, prior to that he had come to San Diego and stayed for weeks at a time. He knew what it was like to be here. It wasn’t a shock or anything.

A Publishing Partnership

BB: When did Bat decide to do the actual comic book version of Wolff & Byrd?

JE: In late 1993. We launched our marriage and the comic book at the same time. In fact on our honeymoon, he was drawing the first issue.

BB: What were you guys thinking in terms of the planning stage? What made you think you could pull something like this off?

JE: Naiveté? (laughter) We just looked at ourselves and saw that here I had publishing experience and was an editor. He wanted to tell longer stories than were possible in a weekly strip, which had to have a gag and a synopsis in every 4 panels. So, we talked about it and decided it seemed like there was a receptivity in the marketplace at that time, in the direct comic book market, for the self-published book. Our plan was to publish it bimonthly.

BB: So who was around that was your inspiration in that regard?

JE: Bone—Jeff Smith. Of course, Cerebus and Elfquest both had a long track record by then. Don Simpson was doing his comic, Bizarre Heroes—a lot of people at that time were starting comics. There were several distributors at that time. There was something like seven distributors. There were several thousand comic shops. Figuring out the economics at that time, it seemed that if you sold a minimum number of comics you could finance the company. Plus we felt we knew that the comic wasn’t going to support itself for a while. We didn’t feel like this was going to be a big money maker. It was more of a way for Bat to tell the stories he wanted to tell and get a new audience.

BB: What were you doing at the time then?

JE: I was still editing.

BB: You were still freelance editing?

JE: Still editing college textbooks.

BB: Did you have to give that up?

JE: No.

BB: You could do that too?

JE: Yes, because it was all really Bat who had to do all the work. He had to write the issue, pencil it, and ink it. That would take him six weeks. In the last two weeks, we’d do the lettering and production.

BB: What was a typical workday in those days in the household? Was he an early riser, a late riser?

JE: In those days, he was a late riser. He worked in the middle of the night. I’d get up and have to wake him up at eleven or twelve.

BB: Were you working at home during that time too?

JE: I’ve always worked at home.

BB: What’s it like having your new husband there the whole time with you everyday?

JE: I loved it.

BB: It wasn’t too claustrophobic?

JE: Well, our way to get him to be able to live here was for him to have an office in downtown San Diego—a studio. That way he could go to an urban environment and have a place that was his. He could go out and walk around, go to the library, go to the bookstore, get copies made—have access to services where he didn’t feel like he’d have to say, "Jackie, can you drive me?" In fact, the building where the Comic-Con had their office is where he got his studio. It was still inexpensive then. A lot of other artists had studios in that building. So it was a nice environment.

BB: Was he highly disciplined in terms of his daily routine?

JE: Oh, yes.

BB: He would get up late morning, take off to the studio? When would you see him again?

JE: Yeah. He’d come home around seven at night. Usually I went to pick him up. We’d have our time in the car to talk about what was going on, plus we’d talk on the phone several times a day. And he wouldn’t go in everyday. He has two processes. One is the writing process and one is the drawing and inking. In the writing process, he needs to just walk around and think and make notes. He often does that here at home. When he’s doing the pencilling and inking, where he needs to be at the drawing board, then he goes to his studio. If he was spending a couple of weeks writing, he might not even be at his studio for those weeks.

BB: What’s he like in each phase, in terms of temperament? Does he rack(??) himself over one or the other?

JE: Sometimes he gets frustrated with his drawing abilities, like if he can’t get something onto the page that’s in his head. He loves what he does. When he’s writing, he’s often researching all kinds of things, reading books to stimulate his thought processes, and walking around the neighborhood just to let the creative juices flow. He usually comes up with lots of interesting plot twists in his stories. And he likes to work in lots of references to other things that might be related to the topic in the story. These little touches are rewarding to the more astute readers.

BB: Did you help him interpret his plots and scripts at that time?

JE: Not usually. For instance, the issue that he’s working on now, I don’t know anything about yet. What he’s going to do is sit down with me and—he’s actually drawn the whole thing—go through it and tell me what’s happening on each page. I might say, "Hey that’s great, that’s cool." Or I’ll go, "I don’t get it."
Sometimes he’ll say, "I’m trying to decide which way to go in this issue. Which do you like better, if I do this or if I do that?" I’ll tell him what I like or don’t like each way. Then he’ll say, "That gives me and idea for a third thing." Sometimes he’ll just discuss things in a general way about a character or a plot element. And just talking about it will help him decide what he wants to do. Or he’ll say something real specific like, "Come up with what could be the names for slot machines in a Egyptian-themed casino in a small Nevada town." (laughter) So I’ll brainstorm some names.
Our process is that once the issue is pencilled and inked, he makes xeroxes of the pages. Then he takes Post-it notes and puts them as if they were balloons on the layouts, so they’ll show what each person is saying or what the caption is saying. Then I use the Post-its to do the lettering for the issue. But first I will read through the whole issue, because he wants to get my reaction. "Was it funny? Did you laugh?"

BB: How much approval does he need from you?

JE: He hovers around to see what my reaction is going to be. Sometimes I’ll say, "Now, did this happen before that other thing happened or after that other thing, because it’s confusing. Can we add an explanation here so it will be less confusing?" As an editor, I get wrapped up in those kinds of details. But he’s like, "But was it funny?!"

BB: Does he need your approval, do you feel?

JE: He’s certainly more comfortable if he thinks he’s getting a good reaction from me. I’ll usually tell him the things I like the best. "I really like this sequence here." Or, "Wow, I didn’t see that twist coming!"

BB: Are you able to call him out on things that aren’t funny or are confusing without him getting emotional?

JE: Yes, he takes it in stride. He usually ends up changing things, although in a few cases, he’ll say, "Bear with me on this. This is the way I want it to be." I’ll just say, "Okay. But I just wanted to point that out."
As I do the lettering, every once in a while I’ll change things because maybe the wording sounds awkward, like it wouldn’t be the way somebody would say something, so I’ll smooth out the language. In one case he had this Alan Moore–type character who was supposed to speak with a certain British accent. I massaged his dialogue so it sounded more like Alan talks. I know he doesn’t say, "I’d," he says, "Oid." I’ll do things like that where I try to help make the character sound more distinctive.
I don’t really comment on the artwork. I comment more on things like plot elements or time sequences. As an editor, the one thing I think about is, "What is going to make the reader stop? What’s going to stop the flow of reading? Will it be because they don’t understand what’s going on, or because someone seems to be acting out of character?" That’s the kind of stuff that I pay attention to, where I try to make it flow as smoothly as possible so that the reader can get wrapped up in the story and not be distracted by anything, including typos.

BB: Is Batton insecure about his drawing ability?

JE: I think all artists are. Everything I’ve read about even really famous artists, they just look at their stuff and go, "Why isn’t this better?"

BB: How much support does he need from you in that regard in terms of just purely on the artwork? You say you comment a lot on the writing side.

JE: To me the important thing of the artwork is that it goes with the kind of story he’s telling. It doesn’t have to be the best drawing ever of a gavel, as long as people know it’s a gavel.

BB: So, you’re saying a lot of his insecurity may not necessarily be justified in terms of telling a story? But as an artist he’s obsessed over, or can be obsessed, over like details like that?

JE: He just wants to draw well, and he wants to improve his drawing. He does look back at the earliest issues and cringe. "If we’re going to reprint these, I want to have be able to go in and change this. I can’t believe I let that face be in there like that."

BB: Now, you’re an editor, so what do you say in response to that? You’re like, "C’mon, you’re just wasting time in terms of going back over this ground. You shouldn’t be bothering with it."

JE: I usually say, "If you have time to do that, fine." Lots of times I come up with ideas that I think are going to be time savers, and he finds ways to take twice as long to do them.

BB: What’s an example of that?

JE: When we put together our collection The Vampire Brat, the idea was that all we needed to do was put the issues in sequence and add page numbers and part titles. But the lead-off story, from Mavis #2 [Mavis, Wolff & Byrd’s secretary, has had three issues of her own comic] had been published with no zip-a-tone on it, unlike our regular issues. For the purposes of the book, Bat decided that that story, which was 27 pages long, needed zip-a-tone on it. Putting on the tones by hand turned out to be a very time-consuming process. We could have gone with it exactly the way it was in the original comic, because people were perfectly happy with it. But it came out looking better, so it was an improvement. Plus he added a couple of pages to to the story. He felt it needed some transitions. So instead of, "Okay we can take these issues, put new page numbers on them, and the book will be ready for the printer," it was much more complicated.

BB: How realistic is Bat in terms of "I’d love to be able to spend X amount of hours on every single page but If I ever did that, I’d never get a book out." Are you the one to drive him and say, "Hey, maybe…"

JE: That’s a constant difficulty, because he’s very bad at estimating at how long something will take. He gets mad at himself because it doesn’t take the amount of time he thought it would, even though the same task has never taken that little time in the past. For instance the laborious process of putting zip-a-tone on pages, which he is a master of. It’s the traditional way of doing tones and it’s going away because, not only are computers being used for that now, but you can’t get the supplies anymore. In his mind, Bat thinks he can do the zip-a-tones for a 21-page issue in one day. I’ll say, "But it usually takes you at least 2 hours a page; if you don’t want to sleep, that’s 42 hours." And he’ll say, "Well, I’m going to use a streamlined process where I only put it in just the right spots." Then, of course, I’ll go to bed at midnight and get up the next morning, and he’s still up and he’s only done 3 pages.
I just know him so well now that I can know that, no matter how much time he thinks something is going to take, it’s going to take longer. The frustrating part for me is that I can’t help. So, making a deadline is totally up to him. It’s often the case that we’ve already made the arrangements with the printer that we’re going to have something to them on such and such a day, and we’re just not going to make it. He thinks we are, and I know we’re not. So it’s a big relief to him when I tell him, "I’m gonna call the printer and say they’re getting it Monday and not Friday." He’ll say, "Really?! Do you think it’s okay?" "Well, it’s going to have to be okay, because that’s the reality."

BB: Does he disappear into his own world when he’s doing that, and you’re the one who kind of has to keep the hold on reality? I mean, people talk about Jack Kirby and Roz Kirby and how he would just disappear into his own creative world. Is there a part of that?

JE: Well, there’s a certain mode that I call the "Absent Minded Professor" where he gets into the creative phase and he’s so preoccupied with thinking about what he’s writing that he doesn’t pay attention to mundane things. Or he’s so intense in the production part that he can’t pay attention. He usually has on headphones and is listening to Howard Stern programs while he inks. Even to talk to him it’s like, "Yoo-hoo! Take off the headphones for a second while I ask you this question."

BB: How does that work? You go to bed and wake up and he’s still working?

JE: Only in the final days before we go to press does he end up doing all-nighters. Our routine these days is he gets up at 6:00 in the morning. I don’t get up till 8. He’s got a couple of hours where he’s sitting and working in what he calls "The Pit." Previously, it was a breakfast nook, but now it has his drawing board and his supplies where he can sit and work in the morning and go online—get e-mail and check out the world news. After I get up, he does his new thing, which is exercise routine. That’s good, because it helps him channel any anxieties and stuff into the physical world. Several days a week, he takes the bus and goes to a fitness center and does a work out there.

BB: Why did this come about, this interest in physical fitness?

JE: I’m not sure. He’d been saying for a long time that he wanted to go to a gym and start working out because it’s such a sedentary life to sit at a drawing board all day. Even before the fitness center, he had a routine where he was riding the exercise bike everyday in the morning and walking for 20 minutes at night. I’m the couch potato. I went through my era of aerobics and health club workouts. That’s now in my past. (laughter)

BB: Now he’s not a late-night animal at all?

JE: No. Now he’s the early guy. Sometimes he gets up at 5:30 or 5. He’ll wake up before the alarm goes off. If he’s in the production stage, then he heads from the health club down to his office. We have a new wrinkle in that he has a new assistant, Trevor Nielson, who’s helping him do the backgrounds and draw things like courtrooms and buildings.

BB: How do you get that to fit in the financial scheme? Does that pay off for itself easily?

JE: It’s called "slave wages." Well, Trevor wants to break into comics, so he’s willing to do this work for next to nothing, although he gets use of the studio space for his own work. Bat’s used assistants in the past, but they both had full-time jobs. When it was time to do production, they would do a couple days of work. Derek Ozawa would draw things like telephones, and Melissa Uran handled the more organic stuff, like foliage, landscapes.

BB: I gather Bat was a night owl when he first got out there. What I was intrigued by is that most of the artists and wives I talked to, it certainly seems they started out that way as night owls. What kind of effect does that have on one’s marriage?

JE: It seems like we’re always together. Even when he’s waiting for the bus, he calls me on his cell phone. We’re always in touch when he’s away some place, like down at his studio.

BB: So you don’t have any worries about him being married to a drawing board or a computer?

JE: No, because we talk all the time. If we haven’t talked to each other for a few hours, we have to share the information we learned in those few hours, whether it’s something I saw on the Internet or something he read in a magazine while he was on the bus. We never run out of things to talk about.

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