  
SERGIO ARAGONÉS MASSACRES MARVEL
This was us doing silly versions of the major Marvel heroes. While Sergio and I were doing Groo for the
Epic department of that company, several folks said to us, "Hey, why don't you guys do a parody of us?" I think, but would not swear in court,
the first to suggest it was our then-editor at Marvel, Marc McLaurin. Anyway, it took a while — like, until after we'd taken The Wanderer
elsewhere — for us to get around to it. Sergio has always inked his own work but for this book (and the one below), we employed inkers
who usually do superhero comics and we asked them to approach his art the same way they'd handle conventional superhero pencilling. Not all
attempts were equally successful but some were...and how often do you get a comic where the inking is funny?
SERGIO ARAGONÉS DESTROYS DC
So when the folks over at DC heard what we were doing with Marvel, they called and asked us to do likewise with their stable and we said
okay. The original idea was to have both books go on sale the same day but one (I forget which) ran into production problems and wound up
coming out two or three weeks after the other. Like the Marvel book, this was a lot of fun, though I somehow wound up having to write both
practically overnight to meet the schedule. These books were quite popular, especially overseas. In fact, there were a couple of foreign
editions where both the DC and Marvel books were collected in one volume. In this country, they collectively won the Eisner Award for Best
Humor Comic of whatever year it was.
SERGIO ARAGONÉS STOMPS STAR WARS
We got lots of offers to destroy/massacre other properties (including a couple from companies so obscure, we'd never seen any of their books) but
none excited us until our editor at Dark Horse, who also edited their Star Wars comics, said, "Hey, how about doing Star Wars?"
Well, we couldn't say no to that. As with all these books, we had to find a way to get Sergio into the particular mythos as a character and let
him fraternize with, in this case, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Darth Vader and so on. In this case, Sergio accidentally got digitized and
inserted via computer into a digital-projection print of a Star Wars movie. I've never cared much for comics that depict the writer and
artist as characters but Sergio is such a human cartoon, these don't bother me.
  
CROSSFIRE AND RAINBOW
While we were doing Crossfire and DNAgents, a romance developed between the
former character and a member of the latter. By "popular demand" — which, in comics, means anything above around five readers — Dan
Spiegle drew and I wrote this four-issue mini-series about their relationship, with guest covers by Jerry Ordway, Howard Chaykin, Paul Gulacy and
Dave Stevens. The storyline in it kind of "buttoned" the DNAgents series which we had ended not long before but I'm not sure why we did
this as a mini-series. It should have just been four issues of the Crossfire comic...but the ways of comic book marketing have never
made a lot of sense to me. If you like the other books in this "universe," you'll like this one. If not, not.
WHODUNNIT?
This was kind of a cute idea — not mine, but it was a cute idea, anyway. We did three issues of this murder mystery comic where there
were all sorts of clues planted, some of which were red herrings, and you had to read the tale and figure out whodunnit. First person who did
would win $1000. The mystery in the first issue was only solved by one person, the second was solved by every single person who read the comic,
and the third was solved by a couple of people. The publisher sent the check for #3 to the person with the earliest postmark and, months later,
it came back: "No such person at this address." As far as I know, that individual was never found, nor was the cash for that one awarded before
the publisher went bankrupt.
SURGE
This was a four-issue DNAgents mini-series spotlighting the team's hot-headed member and featuring art by Rick Hoberg and Al Gordon, with
back-up tales drawn by Mike Sekowsky, Richard Howell, Steve Rude and Mitch Schauer. It introduced a super-character named Lancer who I was
hoping to do more with, but we never got around to that. Otherwise, things turned out pretty much as intended and it was a lot of fun, if only
because it meant working with Rick Hoberg, who's been a friend for a long time and one of those artists with whom I've always enjoyed
collaborating. The four guys who did the back-ups also fall into that category. I figure, there's no point in doing comic books unless
you like the other people who work on the project.
All the comics on this page are Copyright © 2007 Mark Evanier and Somebody Else
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