Indie Darlings Who’ve Dared Dally With The Beast

Panter on Omega, most recently.

Indie-darling writers in the early 70s: would Harlan Ellison doing the occasional story for Marvel and Samuel Delany doing 2 issues of Wonder Woman count?

Jaime’s ill-fated stint on HAWKMAN

Wait, WAHT?!

Beto wrote DC's Birds of Prey for a while, I think.

Jaime’s ill-fated stint on HAWKMAN

Wait, WAHT?!

"Joshin'" is a bit of probably outdated slang I've always wanted to use, so yeah: just joshin' (as with the Beyer/DOC STRANGE, which I'll note for good measure).

Indie-darling writers in the early 70s: would Harlan Ellison doing the occasional story for Marvel and Samuel Delany doing 2 issues of Wonder Woman count?

Not quite-Sci- fiers writing funnies is a fairly common occurence, I think, e.g. Alfred Bester writing comics in the late forties/early fifties. I'm thinking more of Justin Green writing an Alien tie-in comic.

Or Jim Woodring writing a Jabba the Hutt miniseries! (Which he did.) Or Jon Lewis writing Robin for a couple of years! (Which he also did.)

There were those two Bizarro Comix anthologies DC did a while back, with Tony Millionaire, Jason Little, etc.

Jaime drew a Tesla story in Tom Strong's Terrific Tales.

There's a Wolverine story by Jeffrey Brown that has circulated unofficially (i.e. Marvel didn't commission it, he just did it for fun).

Although I think the trump card here may be Dave Sim's Howard the Duck one-pager!

Chester Brown did a bit in A. Moore's 1963. Can't remember if it was Veitch/Chester or Chester/Veitch, but it was pretty cool.

Didn't James Kolchaka do a one-page Hulk story?
Woodring also wrote some ALIENS stories, one of which I just picked up recently, though it remains unread.
Pope (is he indie enough?) did some SPIDER-MAN stuff for tangled web, but I suspect that's not quite in the spirit of this thread.
Oh, and Eric Shanower did some nice work for SMELLS LIKE TEEN PREZ, the Vertigo re-appropriation of Prez, with a script by Ed Brubaker.

On the 70s sci-fi tip, my mother, who was writing science fiction at the time, was recruited to pitch for Epic comics in the early 80s. They sent her a nice introductory letter and a pack of Epic comics to show that they weren't BIFF POW for kids stuff. If I'd been enterprising (and any good), I'd have thrown my pitches at them under her name.

Chester Brown did a bit in A. Moore's 1963. Can't remember if it was Veitch/Chester or Chester/Veitch, but it was pretty cool.

Just checked, and it was Bissette/Brown.

I was kind of surprised to see in my absence from the comic book world that Richard Corben had done some Hulk and The Punisher along with a stint on Hellblazer.

Terry Moore had an infamously bad, cut-short run of Birds of Prey. I think this was around the same time as Beto's, one of those weird transitional periods after Dixon or Simone leaving the book. It didn't help that he was following them, or that the new artists weren't good (Moore didn't do the art), but man, Oracle in a rocket-boosted wheelchair... no.

He also did an okay one-shot for Ultimate Marvel Team-Up that introduced a Katchoo-esque Black Widow to the Ultimate universe.

Actually with this topic I think there are probably tons of indie darlings (Jeff Smith, David Lapham, etc.) who parlayed their success into more stable, higher paying gigs with Marvel/DC. Do you guys remember this weird period like 6-7 years ago or so where both companies were aggressively courting indie comics people? I.E. the printings of stuff like DC's Bizarro World, and a lot more of those X-Men Unlimited/Spider-Man: Tangled Web kind of things from Marvel. Both compilation series, had tons of people I'd never heard of, doing wacky stories with established characters.

Peter Bagge's Megalomaniacal Spider-Man

Chester Brown told me, um, when the HC of Riel came out, that he was working on a Batman story, but, um, I guess nothing ever came of that.
Lapham!

Eddie Campbell wrote four issues of Hellblazer (immediately after the end of the first Ennis run).

Dylan Horrocks wrote...Batgirl, I think? Plus the second Books of Magic series.

Jim Woodring wrote a short story or two in Vertigo's various late-90's anthology titles.

That World's Funnest one-off that Evan Dorkin did featured art by Jaime Hernandez, Woodring, and prolly some other indie folx.

And then there's Comix Book, which Marvel only published two or so issues of in the early 70s. One of the early, unpolished Maus installments was featured in one of the issues. Among other underground stuff. Dunno if that counts, but it's interesting, anyway.

There's an upcoming Marvel indie anthology that has Dash Shaw penning
a Doc Strange comic. Chris Ware did that promotional Batman cut-out
model. Dan Clowes drew an unused cover for one of the Bizarro Comics
collections. The Ultimate Spiderman Super Ultimate Team Up Special (or
whatever) had Kochalka and Craig Thompson contributions. James Sturm
worked on Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules with R Sikoryak and Guy
Davis around the same time Richard Corben's Hulk and Peter Bagge's
Spiderman comics came out. Aside from the Panter pages, the new Omega
the Unknown series also has colors by Paul Hornschemeier.

And didn't Andi Watson co-write an Aquaman series with Bill Jemas or
something like that?

I think that Kochalka Hulk one pager was originally for Coober Skeeber
- I wish more stories from that would see the light of day.

God, if only I hadn't tossed or lost the CAPA-Alpha mailing that included a Clowes con sketch of Captain Marvel. It may be around here under a ton of paper -- if I ever find it, I'll scan & post.

Moebius drew a Silver Surfer story scripted by Stan Lee back in the nineties. Then again, Moebius isn't that far away from the more cosmic side of Marvel.

I always thought the format of Bizzarro Comics was weird, where they had to make creators who normally write and draw their own comics to team up into writer/artist pairs.

I'm pretty sure there's an unpublished Peter Bagge Hulk special, too.

Oh, and here's Ron Rege's seriously incredible Spiderman comic

http://ronrege.blogspot.com/2007/11/i-thought-that-it-would-be-fitting-and.html

That's from Coober Skeeber, too, and was the best thing in it.

- I wish more stories from that would see the light of day.

Er, they ALL saw the light of day! Kochalka's story was a four-pager, not one, and he re-did it from scratch for the Marvel reprinting.

I imagine there may be another tidbit or two out there…

Eddie also did a few pages in Gaiman's final issue of Action Comics Weekly, which came out 15 years later with a different title, and a segment of some landmark X-Men issue, like Uncanny #400 or something. I WDYLL in that Orion back-up.

Eddie Campbell wrote four issues of Hellblazer (immediately after the end of the first Ennis run).

Not immediately - there was a hilarious one-shot return by Delano in between them.

Although I think the trump card here may be Dave Sim's Howard the Duck one-pager!

Got it! Sim wasn't so removed from the mainstream world at the time though - he wasn't long out of dividing time on Cerebus with commercial work, and was seriously going to do the X-Men crossover with Claremont after the Howard offer (his one page was actually a try-out, and he got offered to take over writing the series).

Oh, and Eric Shanower did some nice work for SMELLS LIKE TEEN PREZ, the Vertigo re-appropriation of Prez, with a script by Ed Brubaker.

Shanower's done more DC than that, including some Wonder Woman stuff.

Actually with this topic I think there are probably tons of indie darlings (Jeff Smith, David Lapham, etc.) who parlayed their success into more stable, higher paying gigs with Marvel/DC.

I think earning literally millions of dollars on Bone and having it be continually in print for 16 years is both more stable and higher-paying than a four-issue work-for-hire miniseries!

And then there's Comix Book, which Marvel only published two or so issues of in the early 70s. One of the early, unpolished Maus installments was featured in one of the issues. Among other underground stuff. Dunno if that counts, but it's interesting, anyway.

Three issues. The OG Maus was a reprint, because Spiegelman didn't want to actually give up rights to anything new.

I'm pretty sure there's an unpublished Peter Bagge Hulk special, too.

http://bp0.blogger.com/_8ie37mgxIXA/RjLPnFLoUEI/AAAAAAAAAzY/VzKG4mo8LqQ/s1600-h/Baggehulk+1.jpg

^ that was meant to be a page from it

"Er, they ALL saw the light of day! Kochalka's story was a four-pager, not one, and he re-did it from scratch for the Marvel reprinting."

I meant a reprint of all the stories - I've never actually held the issue in my hands. I saw a scan from the Mat Brinkman story which looked pretty cool.

Although I think the trump card here may be Dave Sim's Howard the Duck one-pager!

I agree that I don't think of him as that indie, but surely his issue of Spawn counts for something.

Also I understand Lowlife's Ed Brubaker has been making something of a name form himself of late.

And so has Torso's Brian Michael Bendis. I suspect the reason Sim did Spawn, though, was that it was owned by its (then-)artist--his issue is all about why one should never dally with the beast.

I love that Ron Rege Spider-Man piece.

jeffrey brown's wolverine: http://dyingtime.googlepages.com/