Tripwire At 25: Joe Kubert

♦February 2017 marks the 25th anniversary of Tripwire, which began as a print magazine back in 1992. So every day this month, we shall be representing a classic interview or feature from our long history. Today it is the turn of our interview with late comics legend Joe Kubert, who we spoke to in Tripwire Annual 2009, out back in in July of that year…

King of The Stone Age

TRIPWIRE: This chat is predominantly about Tor with the hardcover out now. How did you feel returning to the character after quite a long time away?

JOE KUBERT: Well I find it challenging. I also find it interesting and I’m very happy with the opportunity to be a little bit more innovative, try to build a little bit more credibility into the character, stretch the story a little bit. I find it very enjoyable and I appreciate the fact that I had the opportunity to do it.

TW: How has the character changed? Did you sit down and make a conscious decision to flesh out the character? How did you approach returning to the character?

JK: In my attempt to make the character more credible and still inject some creativity and imagination into the story, I tried my best to give some rationale, some reasonable justification to the events that occurred. He’s coming into a different place that was completely and totally hidden. This new land that was encircled by mountains, I felt, gave me an opportunity to perhaps give some logical reason for certain animals to have still been existing at this time.It was like finding a lost world so to speak and that was the direction I took it. Again my attempt, since this whole story is taking place during a time that very few of us actually know what happened, was to make it as logical and as reasonable, therefore as credible and believable as possible.

TW: When you first created the character back in the 1950s, I presume that Burroughs and Tarzan were big influences on Tor?

JK: Well, actually the character gave birth as a caveman Tarzan. I had always been influenced very, very heavily by Foster’s handling of the Tarzan character which to me always seemed regardless of what he was doing, always seemed so completely credible and believable that the story and what happened to the character had an effect on me. The story communicated to me which is exactly what I tried to do with the Tor character, that is to give him emotional reactions that would seem reasonable based on that time, like his connection with the woman. As a matter of fact, there are stories historically documented of children who were born that didn’t look normal and they were shunned. They were put aside or left out in the open to die. So by injecting these kinds of elements into the story, I felt that they become meaningful, they become reasonable and therefore credible and believable.

TW: How much historical research did you do in terms of the flora and fauna?

JK:I’ve always been fascinated, as most children have, with dinosaurs and those creatures of that sort. I’ve always been fascinated by that and I’ve read many, many books and have practically lived in the Museum of Natural History for a long time. I’ve done preliminary sketches on that. I’ve always admired the illustrations done by Knight, the wonderful artist who did some of the early drawings of paintings of the dinosaurs based on the archaeological findings. That’s part of the joy of doing what I do, that I’m able to select those stories and the type of characters that interest me and put them down on paper.

TW: Because there was such a huge gap between the first run of Tor and the more recent series, did you sit down and think ‘I’m now going to do with the character and the series what I was perhaps not capable enough as an artist to do in the 1950s when I first did Tor’?
JK: You’re absolutely right, Joel. Hopefully we all grow and learn as we get older and I certainly thought that was one of the challenges and interesting things that I faced in doing Tor again. Very thankfully, Paul Levitz here at DC gave me the go-ahead to do it and I have pretty much free rein to direct myself at any area that I feel interests me. I’m in a very fortunate position.

TW: So you did everything except for the colouring?

JK: That’s an interesting point. The fellow who works with me is Pete Carlsson. He is in charge of production for the army books  that we’re also contracted for. We do the PS magazine and Pete is a whiz on the computer. I’m a dunce when it comes to working with the computer but he acts as an extension during the colouring of Tor. I actually did the colouring but I could never have done it without Pete’s help. The moment I touch something on the machine it just goes blooey! So Pete is just like an extension of my hand.

TW: I noticed that in terms of the colouring, it’s a lot more sympathetic with your linework than say the Sgt Rock book you did with Brian Azzarello. I presume that the colouring has become a little more sophisticated?

JK: Thank you. I appreciate that.

TW: Looking at Tor, the palette is a lot more subtle.

JK: I appreciate that very much. Those are my attempts at colouring because I’m at that machine working it. The longer I get into this stuff that I’m doing, the more I want to control every aspect of it for good or for bad. The lettering is a font that’s actually my lettering that was supplied to me mechanically through the computer but that’s my original lettering. The drawing, the story, the colouring; every aspect of what’s coming out as much as I can control it. I do it because I feel that what I’m creating as far as story and drawing is concerned should be judged on the basis that this is all my work. Deadlines are a constant that everybody lives with in this business, so it’s necessary under those circumstances very often to get one person to do the pencilling, another person to do the inking, someone else to do the colour and so on and so forth. But I feel very strongly that this dissipates the one direction that a piece of artwork should be taking.

TW: How has your speed changed over the years in terms for example of how long it would take you to draw an issue?

JK: That’s an interesting question because I don’t set a time slot when I sit down to work. My feeling, my sense is however that I feel a little bit more secure about what I’m doing now than when I was younger and so I believe that the work goes a little faster. I have gained a certain amount of surenes and commitment. I do barrel ahead on my work. I have no compunctions and no fears about what I’m doing. I don’t second-guess myself at this stage of the game. I feel quite certain about what I want to do, for good or for bad. I’m pretty certain about what I want to put down on the paper, what I want to communicate and I think because of that, I don’t think it’s a matter of physically working faster, I think it’s a matter of being able to make decisions a little faster that enables me to get the work done.

TW: But I presume that the Tor pages were hand-drawn by yourself and then scanned in?

JK: I know what I’m trying to do. I’m not quite sure how it communicates to others but nevertheless I know what I’m trying to do.

TW: Why do you think Tarzan and adventure still resonate,in light of the fact that it’s the eightieth anniversary of the character in comic strip?

JK: I don’t know. To me I can only gauge my personal reaction to old characters like Tarzan. As I said before a man I’d never met or even talked to, Hal Foster, was able to do things in his work that communicated to me very effectively. So very consciously I tried to create the same kind of effect in the work that I do. I think that there’s a spontaneity and a simplicity, in his work that I’m constantly trying to inject in mine. The other aspect to it is that I try to do enough in terms of finishing my drawings where the person who’s reading it actually finishes the art in their own mind themselves. I try to keep my work as simple and as direct as possible and as spontaneous as possible. This is difficult because it’s a lot easier to throw a lot of stuff into the work you’re doing than to try to simplify and bring the work down to some essence so that it not only communicates effectively but brings the reader into what’s happening, makes them part of the story. I think that’s a positive and a good thing in film, in books, in writing. Some of the best writers I think are those who are astute enough to select the proper words without anything extraneous.

TW: Your work, while it looks simple, is very bold  and you can see the lineage between your work on Tor and somebody like Foster and some of the newspaper strips. You can see a direct connection between you and their sensibilities…

JK: I appreciate that.

TW: I’m going to change the subject now. So you’re doing something for this Wednesday Comics series for DC? Adam [Kubert] is writing a Sgt Rock story that you’re drawing?

JK: That’s a very pleasurable deed for me because my son Adam wrote the script and I’m illustrating it and it’s 10 whole pages. I haven’t quite started it yet. But that’s next on the agenda.

TW: Did it feel strange, almost like the roles were a little bit reversed?

JK: Yes and I’m enjoying it very much. Every opportunity that I get to work with my son whose work I admire and respect I really enjoy.

TW: So you’ve also got another original graphic novel coming out. Who is publishing that?

JK: It’s a war graphic novel and the publisher is DC. It’s a story about the Vietnamese War, a story that occurred in 1965. I was fortunate enough to meet some of the principles who were involved in a particular battle in which the American Special Forces and other American soldiers and thousands of the South Vietnamese were routed. I met the people who were involved in it. I thought it was something that I really wanted to do and it’s in the process of being finished.

TW: So how many pages is that?

JK: The book will probably contain anywhere between a minimum of 200 and 220 pages. The actual story that I did is 155 pages and in addition to that, there are photographs. It’s all based on true events and there are very few variations from the truth.

TW: So they’ll be the photos taken by the soldiers who were actually there?

JK: Yes.

TW: It sounds like an incredibly ambitious project. It’s incredible that you still have this passion to produce something that creators a quarter of your age would balk at the length.

JK: As I said before, I’m a very fortunate person because I can pretty much pick and choose what it is that I want to do and what I get into. I’ve got several other projects that I may decide to do later but I wanted to get on this particular book. It won’t be out in 
the bookstores until probably the first or second month of 2010 but it is being put together now.

TW: How is it that you still have the passion? Is it just that you’re striving to improve your work or you’re constantly finding subjects that you’re still interested in that you’ve not been able to express?

JK: I really don’t know what the answer is except that I’m very grateful to the gods to still retain the sort of passion that pushes me to do these things. I still have the means by which I’m still asked to do a lot of work which I’m extremely grateful for and because of that situation, I’m able to be very selective of the work that I’m doing. And I must admit I guess it is that passion. I’m driven to do it and it’s not real work. I’ve told many people that, since I was twelve or thirteen years old, I’ve never worked a day in my life.

TW: Do you think that the comics industry is still a good vehicle for people to tell stories in a way that they can’t do in any other medium?

JK: Absolutely and when those books are done right, when there is a good marriage between art and story, there’s nothing like holding these things in one’s hands, being able to turn the pages back and forth. I’m fully aware of the advantages of the computer and being able to pull information up at will and all of those things. But I don’t think that that’s a substitute for actually holding something in your hand.

TW: Do you think the continued interest in Tarzan and Tor is that people still enjoy that sense of wonder that they get from being able to visit places that existed millions of years ago or never existed?

JK: I hope that’s the reason people are interested and want to see the things that I’m doing. I don’t hide the fact that Tor is just a caveman Tarzan. I just finished a seven page insert that will be part of a Conan book that I’m not sure when it’s coming out. I was asked by the editor, Phil Simon, to do it. I did a seven page Conan insert. I just sent it in last week as a matter of fact. It still has to be coloured. In addition to that Tim Truman who is the writer of  the Conan series is doing the rest of the book so I’ve done seven pages, Tim is doing fifteen pages and Tim is a graduate of my school, which was the biggest kick.

JOEL MEADOWS