Today we’re continuing our exploration of the history of the Dark Age of Comics, but we’re jumping around the timeline a little bit to look at a couple things written by Steve Gerber: The Legion of Night with art by Whilce Portacio, and Void Indigo with art by Val Mayerik.
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Credits:
Hosts: Klint Finley and John Ekleberry
Music: krudler.bandcamp.com
Mentioned in this episode:
Gerber’s Synopses for Void Indigo issues 3-6
The Legion of Night members who previously appeared in other Marvel supernatural comics:
- Jennifer Kale: A sorceress who first appeared in Gerber’s Man-Thing run.
- Dr. Katherine Reynolds: A supporting character from Gerber’s run on Damien Hellstrom, the Son of Satan.
- Chan Liuchow: The main character from the original Fing Fang Foom story by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in Strange Tales.
- Martin Gold: A journalist who originally appeared in Gerber’s Lilith: Daughter of Dracula stories.
The main character, besides Kale, was a new character Charles Blackwater, aka Omen.
Mandela effect (I called it the “mandala effect”)
James D. Hudnall (Passed away in 2019, not 2017)
Rush transcript:
0:07
7 seconds
[music]
Chapter 2: Welcome and ice breaker
0:14
14 seconds
Welcome to Super Mutant, the comic book podcast for weirdos like you. Our music is by Crudler, and I’m your host, Klint Finley, joined as usual by my co-host,
0:22
22 seconds
John Ekleberry. How are you today, John?
0:24
24 seconds
I’m great. It feels like it’s been too long. I’m glad we’re recording.
0:27
27 seconds
Yeah, it’s been way too long. So today we’re we’re continuing our exploration of the history of the dark age of comics. We’re jumping around a little
0:34
34 seconds
bit on the timeline to look at a couple different things. They’re both written by Steve Gerber. The Legion of Night with art by Will Portacio and Void Indigo with art by Val Mayor Rick.
0:47
47 seconds
Before we get into that, John, do you want to start us off with an icebreaker? Yeah, I got an easy one for you today.
0:52
52 seconds
All right. Pineapple on pizza? Yes or no?
0:55
55 seconds
Yeah, why not? I’m not dogmatic about what goes on pizza. Like anything can go on it. Good. We can still be friends. Okay. Excellent.
1:03
1 minute, 3 seconds
I know that’s a uh I know that’s a a contentious one. That’s probably a maybe our most contentious one yet. Yeah. So, it sounds like you you’re into it.
1:12
1 minute, 12 seconds
Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I’m pro- Hawaiian pizza.
1:16
1 minute, 16 seconds
Yeah. Yeah. I dig Hawaiian pizza. I I don’t eat it very much anymore because of the try to avoid processed meats, but uh so it’s more more about the Canadian bacon now than it is the pineapple.
1:26
1 minute, 26 seconds
Right. Right. Cool.
1:28
1 minute, 28 seconds
Yeah. So, let’s start with the Legion of Night. So, this is, you know, I’ve been having my own little like mandala effect
1:36
1 minute, 36 seconds
since we started talking about doing this where I feel like every time I look at it, it changes from being either Legion of the Night or the Legion of
1:43
1 minute, 43 seconds
Night. So, right now, last time I looked and put it in my notes, it’s the Legion of Night, but I think there’s Crisis on
1:50
1 minute, 50 seconds
Clint’s Earth and like the timeline continuity is is constantly changing.
Chapter 3: Introduction to Steve Gerber
1:55
1 minute, 55 seconds
So, I apologize if this isn’t the right version by the time the podcast comes out. So, yeah, this is written by, like
2:02
2 minutes, 2 seconds
I said, Steve Gerber. I best known as along with Mayer, who did the Void Indigo art as the co-creator of Howard
2:10
2 minutes, 10 seconds
the Duck. Uh Gerber also did noted runs on Man Thing and The Defenders. He co-created Omega the Unknown. He was a
2:18
2 minutes, 18 seconds
co-founder of Malibu’s Ultraverse where he wrote Sludge and Exiles. And then for people our age, you his best known work,
2:27
2 minutes, 27 seconds
even though a lot of people don’t know he did these things, is that he worked on Thunder the Barbarian, the 80s Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, the first
2:35
2 minutes, 35 seconds
season of the original G.I. Joe cartoon, and the third season of the Transformers cartoon. Legion of Night was a twoisssue
2:42
2 minutes, 42 seconds
prestige format miniseries which means it was perfect bound published by Marvel in 1991. Tells the story of the
2:49
2 minutes, 49 seconds
formation of a new team of characters in response to the imminent awakening of the demon Fing Fang Fume. So basically
2:56
2 minutes, 56 seconds
there’s a cult attempting to awaken Fing Fangfume and all these different characters kind of come together to try
3:03
3 minutes, 3 seconds
and stop it. Um, I say a little bit more about the characters in a minute, but John, maybe we uh talk about what? So, why did we read this? I think you
3:11
3 minutes, 11 seconds
ordered it and uh I don’t remember if you really suggested we do an episode, but you had seen a a post on Instagram
3:19
3 minutes, 19 seconds
from somebody else, somebody else’s comic book channel, and I had noticed that you liked it, and I saw the cover, and I thought, well, I’ve never read that. That looks cool. Let’s uh let’s give it a read. So, I I ordered a copy.
3:30
3 minutes, 30 seconds
It’s really funny though cuz this is a weird case where I like the cover of issue one, but I don’t really like anything else in the series. I don’t
Chapter 4: Why we read this
3:38
3 minutes, 38 seconds
like the art in it. I don’t like the writing in it. Like I it’s terrible. But that first cover does look really cool. It does seem pretty enticing.
3:46
3 minutes, 46 seconds
Yeah. And you know, I can now that we’ve read it, I can see why this is a book that um you know, people don’t talk about anymore. You remember Yeah. I when
3:54
3 minutes, 54 seconds
I saw that post, I had uh on Instagram, I remember seeing this cover. I think in a house ad, you know, back way back in
4:02
4 minutes, 2 seconds
the day like when it was first coming out or or whatever and I got that the image like really stuck with me and the
4:10
4 minutes, 10 seconds
the character Omen is on the cover with Jennifer Kale who’s a she’s actually one of the the few really recurring Marvel characters that’s in this and it’s like
4:19
4 minutes, 19 seconds
a really striking image of like this beautiful woman with this like really hideous monster and a bunch of other monsters and stuff and uh it’s really
4:27
4 minutes, 27 seconds
cool and so yeah, it always like kind of stuck with me. I had actually kind of forgotten like what was the book. So I saw that was like oh that’s that’s cool
4:36
4 minutes, 36 seconds
to kind of be reminded of that and so yeah it seemed like oh we can can jump in can check that out. Steve Gerber Wils
4:44
4 minutes, 44 seconds
Patacio how how bad could it be? Turns out it’s not great. We’ll we talk a little bit more about that. I I thought
4:51
4 minutes, 51 seconds
it was kind of interesting though like the the the assemblage of characters. Uh so I mentioned Jennifer Kale is in it.
4:59
4 minutes, 59 seconds
So, she was a uh she’s a sorceress type character who first appeared as like basically like a kid just dabbling in the occult in Steve Gerber’s Man thing
5:07
5 minutes, 7 seconds
run and then she and her brother kind of became recurring characters in it. Then there’s Katherine Reynolds who was a supporting character in Gerber’s run on
5:15
5 minutes, 15 seconds
Damen Hellstrom, the son of Satan. Then there’s Chan Lu Chow who is the main character from the original Fing Fang Fume story by Stanley and Jack Kirby in
5:24
5 minutes, 24 seconds
Strange Tales from 1961. And there’s Martin Gold who’s a journalist who really originally appeared in Gerber’s Lilith, daughter of Dracula stories. So
Chapter 5: Characters and story overview of Legion of Night
5:33
5 minutes, 33 seconds
it’s kind of this this mix of characters who are three of them are actually all like Gerber characters from other Gerber
5:40
5 minutes, 40 seconds
supernatural stories from the 70s and then yeah Chen Lynch. Then there’s a few new characters most notably kind of the characters the main character besides
5:48
5 minutes, 48 seconds
Kale is Charles Blackwater aka Omen. So I I actually liked the art in this but you said you you didn’t like it John?
5:55
5 minutes, 55 seconds
No, I hated it. Which is funny. I, you know, I don’t know. I don’t actually think I’m that big of a Will Spratasio
6:03
6 minutes, 3 seconds
fan like Mass. Like I I I’m an X-Men fan and so, you know, I I remember when I think of him, I think of the Bishop covers from when Bishop first appeared.
6:13
6 minutes, 13 seconds
But that all was a little bit before I started buying books off the stands cuz I started buying them right around the time the Image guys left. And so it was
6:22
6 minutes, 22 seconds
like a year later. and I was buying him when guys like Andy Cubert were coming into the books to to fill the void of the guys that were leaving. And so I
6:30
6 minutes, 30 seconds
don’t really have any affection for his stuff. I know he kind of became like a superstar artist on The Punisher and
6:38
6 minutes, 38 seconds
then went on to X-Men. Same thing for Jim Lee. But certainly out of those two, I prefer Lee. And out of the image guys,
6:45
6 minutes, 45 seconds
I I prefer Mark Sylvestri above all. But I and and the other guy, the image guys talk really highly of Willacio’s stuff,
6:53
6 minutes, 53 seconds
but I couldn’t really point to any of his stuff that I’m really really big on.
Chapter 6: Whilce Portacio
6:57
6 minutes, 57 seconds
So I had mixed feelings about the art here. So I I am actually I I I really love Will Portacio’s work on Uncanny
7:05
7 minutes, 5 seconds
X-Men. I it he might actually be for me like my favorite of the original image founders if you still count him as a
7:12
7 minutes, 12 seconds
founder cuz he ended up not being a partner though like what works which is his creator on book that he did for Image like I never really got into it
7:21
7 minutes, 21 seconds
but the stuff he did on on Uncanny I I think is really iconic and I I really like it and I like a lot of what’s here
7:29
7 minutes, 29 seconds
but I think like I think the problem is like when he’s drawing normal people of which there are a number of especially
7:36
7 minutes, 36 seconds
in like the first issue of like people who are supposed to kind of be like bystanders or like they’re like introduced initially as like kind of
7:44
7 minutes, 44 seconds
regular people like he’s just not good at drawing you know drawing civilians basically and but like when he’s drawing monsters it’s awesome. So like all the
7:52
7 minutes, 52 seconds
all the monsters are really great. It’s really cool when he’s drawing the Omen character. But then if you know he’s but but like half the drawings in this
8:01
8 minutes, 1 second
practically are of like you know just normal people and that’s really not his strong suit. It turns out when it’s when
8:09
8 minutes, 9 seconds
the book starts out it’s kind of this uh lawyer is investigating this cult that he’s supposed to be representing in court and he ends up getting him off but
8:17
8 minutes, 17 seconds
then he he keeps digging in because he knows that there’s something foul going on here even though he’s he’s helped them. And I don’t know, I just was I was
8:25
8 minutes, 25 seconds
hating on the art from the beginning, but there have been a few things that we read that I didn’t like at the start and then I stuck with it and I I ended up
8:33
8 minutes, 33 seconds
liking it as I got into it. And so I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt and and the story kind of reminded me of The Scene of the Crime by Ed
8:42
8 minutes, 42 seconds
Brewaker and Michael Lark. It kind of I don’t know just kind of the mystery of it. like it seemed like the whole thing was going to be about this guy
8:49
8 minutes, 49 seconds
investigating this thing, which really kind of only ends up being the first half. That’s like kind of the first issue and then they get more into the
8:57
8 minutes, 57 seconds
monster stuff in the second one. I didn’t even know there was a second one until we picked these up to read them. I thought it was just like a one shot, but
9:05
9 minutes, 5 seconds
uh it’s two prestige format books, so you get uh double the 48 pages, whatever that is, right? 96 pages. And yeah, I
9:13
9 minutes, 13 seconds
don’t know. I I I went all the way through the end and it just never connected with me at all. It seems like something I would like where they’re taking a whole bunch of different, you
9:21
9 minutes, 21 seconds
know, pre-existing characters from the lore and and turning them into a team.
9:24
9 minutes, 24 seconds
But like you said, it must not have really landed for anybody else either because they never use these characters again. I think that just one other appearance in one of the Midnight Suns books.
Chapter 7: Story and writing
9:33
9 minutes, 33 seconds
Yeah. Yeah. So, and I think that so for me like visually I think you know it starts weak because Port Cortatio’s like
9:41
9 minutes, 41 seconds
I said just not that he’s not playing to his strong suits and then in the second issue it’s a lot more of the monsters and supernatural stuff. But story-wise
9:49
9 minutes, 49 seconds
it’s the opposite. Like I I think when it starts off and it’s the guy investigating the cult, I thought that was pretty good. It was pretty interesting. I like stuff about cults. I
9:58
9 minutes, 58 seconds
like mysteries. So it you that that seemed good. But then like once like with then it flips and like I can’t even
10:05
10 minutes, 5 seconds
I couldn’t even really follow the second issue like what’s going on and it it really just starts to break down and so visually it got better but story-wise I
10:14
10 minutes, 14 seconds
thought it just got worse in the second part and just yeah it just ended up being like just yeah overall not something that I think there there’s much to write home about. I guess so.
10:24
10 minutes, 24 seconds
I’m glad you said that about finding it hard to follow because I sat down and I read it and then I got to the end and I just said, “What did I just read?” Like
10:32
10 minutes, 32 seconds
I don’t I didn’t really there’s some words and there’s some pictures but I’m like what what is the meaning of this and what has happened here?
10:39
10 minutes, 39 seconds
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s that’s also to the to the detriment of the art, you know, is like when it’s when there’s things happening that are just so
10:47
10 minutes, 47 seconds
abstract, like what is what’s to be drawn there? So I think yeah it just really kind of fell flat and I I suspect
10:55
10 minutes, 55 seconds
so you know Marvel did like a prestige miniseries of death lock that led to a death lock ongoing series like kind of around the same time that this happened
11:03
11 minutes, 3 seconds
I think a little bit before. So I’m guessing that this was like a try out for Legion of Knight to become an ongoing series like Ghost Rider was really big and they were probably
11:12
11 minutes, 12 seconds
thinking this would be their big supernatural team and it did not that did not end up happening. I I did you ever read Darkhold pages from the book of sins that ongoing?
11:23
11 minutes, 23 seconds
I did read a few issues of that. I I was collecting Ghost Rider kind of sporadically and then when all the
11:30
11 minutes, 30 seconds
Midnight Sun stuff started, they they had some crossovers along the whole line to try to get people to buy the other books, which worked, you know, because I
11:38
11 minutes, 38 seconds
bought I bought the crossovers. And uh I didn’t always buy all the issues, but I always bought all the crossover issues that went into Ghost Rider. And that
11:46
11 minutes, 46 seconds
seemed pretty successful for them for a while at least, cuz they made a whole family of books out of those. I think there were like five five or six books.
11:53
11 minutes, 53 seconds
They pulled Doctor Strange into it at one point, too. And um so I still own a lot of those. I’ve got those in the closet. The ones that I remember most
12:00
12 minutes
vividly are not that first crossover, but the the crossover the second year, they all had these just black covers
12:07
12 minutes, 7 seconds
with gold lettering on them. No art, just black covers with gold lettering.
12:11
12 minutes, 11 seconds
And they were supposed to look like the the Darkhold envelopes from the books where somebody’s delivered these pages
12:18
12 minutes, 18 seconds
from this ancient text and they they ream and they kind of go mad or they do crazy things or whatever. And so the
12:25
12 minutes, 25 seconds
Dark Hold book was people a team trying to like track down the pages and you know stop bad things from happening. But yeah, I think you’re right. I mean not
12:34
12 minutes, 34 seconds
only did this maybe fall flat, but also of course the artist left. So I don’t know. I mean, they could have put somebody else on it, but with him moving
12:42
12 minutes, 42 seconds
to Image, maybe they just decided that they’d go another way.
12:46
12 minutes, 46 seconds
Yeah. And he was also doing Uncanny at that point, too, I think. So, I don’t know that he was ever I I have the feeling he was never probably going to
12:53
12 minutes, 53 seconds
do the ongoing if there was if Yeah. I mean, if if that’s actually what was being tested there, but I think yeah, I I didn’t find any evidence to to suggest
13:01
13 minutes, 1 second
this, but I I have the feeling that the Darkhold book was or the Darkhold series was kind of a replacement for Legion of Knights since it I’m guessing it just
13:10
13 minutes, 10 seconds
really fell flat. And then they but they still wanted to have some sort of a team like a cult team book and they went with
13:17
13 minutes, 17 seconds
Darkhold instead. And Gerber, yeah, it did write one more Legion of Night story. It was in Midnight Suns Unlimited
13:24
13 minutes, 24 seconds
issue 9. It was just like a backup story. Uh, it was pencled by Alan Hopkins. I have already forgotten entirely what happens in it. Just felt
13:32
13 minutes, 32 seconds
like a real throwaway story. Probably Gerber had written it already and they needed some to fill some pages and Midnight Suns Unlimited and got him to
13:40
13 minutes, 40 seconds
send it over. Um, and then the only characters that have recurred, so Fing Fang Fume, you know, shows up periodically in the Marvel universe. And
13:48
13 minutes, 48 seconds
then Jennifer Kale also has been uh she was the character I think that had been used the most before this and has has been used the most since. She was even
13:56
13 minutes, 56 seconds
in the Agatha Allong TV show. So she’s had a good a good run as a character, but that that team has just never never
14:04
14 minutes, 4 seconds
came back. Never really worked. Midnight Suns Unlimited was a a quarterly book that was like doublesized and issue nine was the last issue. So like I feel like
14:13
14 minutes, 13 seconds
the the line was starting to cool down and so you’re probably right. They were like, “Okay, well what do we have to stick in this last one? This is, you
14:21
14 minutes, 21 seconds
know, maybe maybe something we had laying around or maybe something we can tie up.” Yeah. Yeah. So then this other book that
14:27
14 minutes, 27 seconds
we read, I kind of added this on is even though it’s the older title is Void Indigo. And so why this came to mind is
14:35
14 minutes, 35 seconds
Gerber’s reputation is a is, you know, more for Howard the Duck and I’m doing these kind of quirky almost more silly comics. And so Legion of the Night felt
Chapter 8: Introduction to Void Indigo
14:44
14 minutes, 44 seconds
like a real outlier to me in terms of what I my perception of what Steve Gerber did was. Um and and the actual
14:51
14 minutes, 51 seconds
comic once I read it, you know, it was a little bit more quirky than I, you know, than it the artwork would suggest that it is. But then I remembered Void
15:00
15 minutes
Indigo, which I came across when I was doing a lot of my research for on the Outlaw Comics series because it was this really controversial and violent uh
15:09
15 minutes, 9 seconds
comic. So, it first appeared in Marvel graphic novel 11 in 1984. So, we talked about Marvel graphic novel when we talked about the death of Captain
15:17
15 minutes, 17 seconds
Marvel. It was essentially a series of graphic novels. They’re numbered because I guess that’s just how Marvel felt like they had to do things back then, but
15:26
15 minutes, 26 seconds
they’re, you know, it’s not actually a series.
15:29
15 minutes, 29 seconds
Each one is a standalone book or an introduction to another series like the New Mutants I think was Marvel graphic novel number four and that introduced
15:37
15 minutes, 37 seconds
the New Mutants ongoing series and that’s the case here too. Void Indigo was the introduction to ongoing series from Marvel’s epic imprint but it only
15:46
15 minutes, 46 seconds
lasted two issues. So the story it’s a dark violent it’s about a barbarian warrior in the time before the oceans drank Atlantis. He and his partner are
15:55
15 minutes, 55 seconds
tortured and killed by four dark sorcerers, but things go wrong and basically everyone just ends up dying in a magic mishap, including the sorcerers.
16:04
16 minutes, 4 seconds
The sorcerers are eventually reincarnated on Earth. The barbarian is reincarnated as an alien starship pilot
16:11
16 minutes, 11 seconds
named Jagger, who crash lands on Earth and takes the name Mike Jagger as he seeks revenge on these sorcerers. So
16:20
16 minutes, 20 seconds
yeah, I I didn’t, you know, I I didn’t read this when I was, you know, back when I was doing the initial Outlaw Comics research. I noted it because of
Chapter 9: Controversy and reception of Void Indigo
16:27
16 minutes, 27 seconds
the controversy, but the reviews were all really bad. So, I just figured, you know, it wasn’t going to be very good.
16:34
16 minutes, 34 seconds
But then after reading Legion of Night and we were going to record on it, I thought, well, I’ll I’ll take a look at Void Indigo as well since it seems
16:42
16 minutes, 42 seconds
thematically similar. And I actually ended up liking it quite a bit. I I’m kind of surprised at how negative the response to it was. It’s a little bit of
16:49
16 minutes, 49 seconds
a a hidden gem. I wish it had I wish it had been completed or at least had gotten a little bit more a little bit more of it had come out. What did What
16:57
16 minutes, 57 seconds
did you think of it? I like the writing and the art. I just read Marble Graphic novel novel 11. I I the introduction I didn’t read the two standalone issues.
17:05
17 minutes, 5 seconds
Although I’m going to cuz I liked it enough to continue. The first half of it like makes it appear that it’s going to be like a little bit more dark fantasy
17:13
17 minutes, 13 seconds
kind of thing. But then when you get into the second half, it’s this weird quirky, but like it it works somehow. I don’t know. I I enjoyed it. Like coming
17:21
17 minutes, 21 seconds
off of Legion Night, it was nice because I thought, “Oh, no. I’m not going to have anything good to say on this podcast about anything.” And then you said, “Hey, let’s throw this second book
17:30
17 minutes, 30 seconds
in there.” And I was like, “Okay, so well, I like this one. This one’s this one’s pretty cool.” And uh it made me wonder if, you know, there’s so many
17:38
17 minutes, 38 seconds
revival of things now and so many continuations of things and finishing of things. I I wonder if they would ever
17:45
17 minutes, 45 seconds
like finish it off, like do a couple more issues or something.
17:48
17 minutes, 48 seconds
Yeah. Well, Gerber died in I think 2008, so he can’t finish it. There are he does he did write synopsis through issue six
17:57
17 minutes, 57 seconds
and you can find those online. I’ll put them in the show notes. So I And Mayor owns the other, as far as I know, he’s still alive, but he doesn’t work in
18:06
18 minutes, 6 seconds
mainstream comics anymore as far as I know. I I don’t know if he would ever have any interest in returning to this
18:13
18 minutes, 13 seconds
and I don’t know who you know you they would have to have somebody script it from the notes and so I I think it’s unlikely that we’ll ever ever see any more of this.
18:22
18 minutes, 22 seconds
Yeah, that’s too bad. I do like Merrick’s stuff. He’s got a pretty impressive resume of different different things he’s worked on and different companies he’s worked for. The only
18:29
18 minutes, 29 seconds
things I actually know that he did was like he was he worked on Man Thing with Gerber and that’s where they created
18:36
18 minutes, 36 seconds
Howard the Duck and he did this and then like more recently he’s been like a right-wing political cartoonist.
18:44
18 minutes, 44 seconds
Really? That’s interesting.
18:45
18 minutes, 45 seconds
Wikipedia says that as like as of 2010 he was doing that with James Hudnull who died in 2017ish I think. So um the
18:53
18 minutes, 53 seconds
Wikipedia entry doesn’t seem to be up to date. That’s why I say as far as I know he’s still alive, but uh it doesn’t seem like anyone’s keeping that page current.
19:01
19 minutes, 1 second
So, I don’t know. And yeah, I don’t know what else he did besides his these works with Gerber. I didn’t hate the art in
19:09
19 minutes, 9 seconds
this, but I didn’t really like it either. I think the color, especially in issue one of the of the ongoing series,
Chapter 10: Wrap up
19:16
19 minutes, 16 seconds
is not good. Like the the the second issue of the ongoing, I think, is the like is actually the best drawn of the of the three in my opinion. And then like the graphic novel is I don’t know.
19:27
19 minutes, 27 seconds
It’s like some of it’s okay, but a lot of it just looks awkward to me. I don’t know. Could be better, could be worse. It got the job done.
19:35
19 minutes, 35 seconds
It’s funny to me like we we talked a little bit about this offline of like there’s so many comics now that are just so much more violent that have so much
19:42
19 minutes, 42 seconds
more sexual content in them. But I guess in 1984 this was just like this blew people’s minds that you that this would
19:49
19 minutes, 49 seconds
be in a com like a semi mainstream comic book. So then distributors ended up refusing to even carry the ongoing
19:57
19 minutes, 57 seconds
series. So it it had a print run. Gerber said the print run was 30 or 40,000 copies which actually sounds pretty
20:04
20 minutes, 4 seconds
good. Um at least by today’s standards or or by independent standards, but it was not that’s not good for Marvel standards in the early 80s, I guess. So
20:12
20 minutes, 12 seconds
uh yeah, it didn’t did not last for very long. It’s it’s kind of got like a heavy metal kind of European feeling to it a
20:20
20 minutes, 20 seconds
little bit. the way that it’s I don’t know if it’s painted or if it’s just colored, but it has kind of those I don’t know. I guess a lot of the graphic
20:27
20 minutes, 27 seconds
marvels had those in that particular line. They kind of had that look. Yeah.
20:32
20 minutes, 32 seconds
To them. I was just looking through his resume while we were talking. I I had remembered that he had illustrated some of the uh the early Magic the Gathering
20:40
20 minutes, 40 seconds
comics when those first started coming out from a claim and I kind of wondered what else he had worked on as well. And he he done I think maybe some of the
20:48
20 minutes, 48 seconds
cards too. I see here that he did some Conan the Barbarian as well, which kind of makes sense. I mean, I feel like the barbarian character in in this story is very clearly, you know, a Conan homage.
21:00
21 minutes
They even have that line about, you know, before the sinking of Atlantis or whatever. And uh which kind of references back to to Robert Howard. But
21:07
21 minutes, 7 seconds
it’s funny, it does kind of appear that he stopped working in comics after those magic comics because it looks like the last one listed, at least on a Mike’s
21:15
21 minutes, 15 seconds
Amazing World, is in 1996. So I mean that’s a long time ago to not have that’s 30 years ago. So I don’t know if
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he worked in other commercial art after that or Yeah. I mean that is the industry implosion. So it makes sense that you
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know he might have decided that that was a good time to get out of the business.
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And yeah I you mentioned like that it kind of crosses genres and Gerber had been working on Bundar the Barbarian
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before this. So, I don’t know if you ever watched that, but it it was kind of like He-Man of this like science fantasy with like post-apocalyptic barbarian
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world with a mix of fantasy and technology. So, obviously that was kind of in his brain as he was going into all of this. But, yeah, it starts out as
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like kind of this straight swords and sorcery thing. Then, it turns into this like crazy cosmic trip with the and that’s where the the name of Void Indigo
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comes from. And I won’t try to explain it here. It’s but so it starts getting into the cosmic reincarnation stuff and
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then it’s alien sci-fi and then it becomes like almost like a grim street level story and then some other stuff
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starts happening in the ongoing with uh part of why I I think it might be kind of connected to legion of a night legion
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the legion of knight in a way is there’s a a little like a little kid character and a psychic And it just feels like
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some of the same elements from Legion of Knights start popping up there as well.
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And I wonder if Legion of Knight was a little bit of a spiritual sequel to this. And it almost makes me want to reread that second issue of Legion of
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22 minutes, 53 seconds
Night to see if it makes more sense with the context of Void Indigo. But I don’t I think I have better things to do with my time than to try to revisit that than
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read that terrible comic again. That’s funny. But but he does uh he did name drop Void Indigo in Legion of Night. Like he uses that phrase.
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Oh, he did.
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Oh, okay. On one on on one of the pages or whatever. And so I thought that that was kind of cool because I was like, “Wait, didn’t I didn’t I just read that?” And then I was like, “Oh, that’s
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the title of this other thing that he did before.” Kind of neat.
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Okay. Oh, I did I uh Yeah, I missed that even though I even heard of Void Indigo before. So maybe I am going to have to pick that up again and and look for it
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23 minutes, 31 seconds
cuz I I have the feeling that it will make a little bit more sense especially if it is the void indigo that they encounter in that second issue having a
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23 minutes, 39 seconds
little bit better idea of what that’s supposed to mean. Now another interesting bit of history of uh trivia that I came across Void Indigo actually started out as a Hawkman pitch for DC.
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23 minutes, 49 seconds
Oh that’s interesting. The idea was it was going to help unify the golden age Hawkman who was a a prince in Egypt who’s reincarnated, reincarnated as
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Carter Hall in the modern world. And then the silver age Hawkman who uh comes from the planet Thanar, I think. So the
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24 minutes, 6 seconds
idea was that the the space Hawkman would be a reincarnation of the Egyptian Hawkman and then he would come to Earth,
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but uh DC didn’t go for it. So they revised it heavily into Void Indigo. It got rejected by every other publisher
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besides Marvel. Pacific, who else was Eclipse, DC, no one wanted it. Gerber had just gotten done with a lawsuit over
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Destroyer Duck at with Marvel. And so I think he probably wasn’t necessarily excited to go back to Marvel initially, but he said that he and Merrick were
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24 minutes, 37 seconds
happy to go back because this was creatorowned. And they got to work with Archie Goodwin, who we talked about in the Manhunter episode. It was just, you
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know, one of the most beloved figures in comics. And so they were that that’s how the the book came about. Yeah, I noticed a good one on there, too, when I was
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looking at the at the credits. Speaking of credits, you pointed out to me that Andy Cubert lettered Void Indigo. He uh
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started out as a letterer before he got penciling and inking gigs, which is kind of neat. He’s a favorite of mine. And Valer must have done like basically
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25 minutes, 11 seconds
everything because he’s he’s like the only artist listed on the book. So, I guess he he either painted it or he penciled it and colored it and inked it,
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25 minutes, 18 seconds
but he he seems to be a oneman show. I was just poking through his website and there’s a lot of like story boards on there and there’s some portraits and things. So, it does look like he
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25 minutes, 27 seconds
continued to work in illustration, just not in comics.
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Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I think the graphic the graphic novel looks painted and then it seems like he may have tried to do painted colors in the
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25 minutes, 39 seconds
the epic issues. Like I said, the first issue is the color is really really bad in it and it it could even be like a
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25 minutes, 46 seconds
printing issue and not his fault, but it’s like it just looks awful. Was probably also part of what contributed to the that book not not working out.
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25 minutes, 54 seconds
Well, it’s probably hard to go from, you know, a prestige format like hard coverver line to just a regular floppy.
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And I mean, the years that it came out, they were still kind of figuring out all of the the coloring and all of that. We hadn’t quite gotten to digital colors
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26 minutes, 10 seconds
yet, I don’t think, there because it was what, like 85 when the the singles came out. Yeah.
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26 minutes, 16 seconds
So, yeah, I don’t know. It’s a weird weird transition period. And then and then when you get to that that series in ’91, uh, Legion of the Night, I mean,
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those colors are all pretty muted in that, but that’s like a whole different style than what we were looking at with the8s stuff. But it’s like a horror
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26 minutes, 32 seconds
book, too. So, like, there’s not there’s not like a lot of garish superhero costumes or anything. It’s all It’s all shrouded in darkness. But yeah, I didn’t
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I thought I would like it more than I did cuz I do like a lot of the horror stuff and I do like it when they try to mine the characters from the mythology.
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26 minutes, 46 seconds
Not only Darkhold, but there was another book in the Midnight Suns line called Nightstalkers that also took older characters. It got uh Frank Drake, who
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26 minutes, 56 seconds
was like the descendant of Dracula and Hannibal King, who was a vampire character from Tomb of Dracula, and Blade from Tomb of Dracula. It made
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27 minutes, 4 seconds
those guys into a team. And uh that was also really cool to like, you know, see those older concepts brought back in the ’90s. And for me, it was my first
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27 minutes, 12 seconds
introduction to all of that stuff. And then of course, I would pick up the reprints as they came out of the older Ghost Rider stuff and, you know, tried
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27 minutes, 20 seconds
to get some of the trades of the old Tomb of Dracula stuff. But it was neat to see a different side to the Marvel universe than just superhero stuff.
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Yeah. I I think you know there were probably a lot more people anxious to see Blade come back than to see Martin
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27 minutes, 34 seconds
Gold from basically like backup stories from Dracula. Like he was a car he was a a secondary character in Lilith which
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27 minutes, 41 seconds
was a backup in Dracula. So a pretty deep cut that probably didn’t have a ton of pre-existing fans. And by 1991 it was
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27 minutes, 51 seconds
did seem like it was more like Gerber kind of you know picking up some of his old toys and and trying to make them work again. that just wasn’t Yeah, there
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27 minutes, 59 seconds
just wasn’t a there there. It is interesting when you see writers kind of just champion their own characters wherever they can. I recently read
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28 minutes, 8 seconds
Death’s Head, which is always has the same writer, having him pop up in different books whenever he gets a
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28 minutes, 15 seconds
chance to do it. And uh I’ll I’ll write a little bit about that in our our sign that will be coming out soonish. Cool.
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28 minutes, 21 seconds
All right. Well, I don’t have anything else any anything else you wanted to to touch on on either of these these books?
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28 minutes, 28 seconds
No, I I don’t think so. I’m going to I’m going to read the other two issues of Void Indigo just to see where it goes, but I already know that there’s no conclusion. So, that’s, you know, not super satisfying.
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28 minutes, 38 seconds
Yeah, the synopsis for the remaining issues is interesting. It doesn’t completely wrap up everything because he did want it to keep going beyond six
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28 minutes, 46 seconds
issues, but it gives it it gives you a little bit more if you find yourself wanting more at the end of issue two.
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28 minutes, 52 seconds
Excellent. Yeah, I love that. I I took one look at that website that you sent me and I was like, “Oh, man. This is great. This is like some kind of like geocities quality website that somebody
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29 minutes, 1 second
made, you know, 30 years ago that’s still hanging out on the internet and we can we can go look at it and get some extra notes for these comics.”
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29 minutes, 9 seconds
Yeah. I got the impression that that Gerber had po had like originally posted this on like CompuServe or something like that like pre- internet and then it
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29 minutes, 17 seconds
got like preserved onto the internet in this ancient format. But yeah, it’s it’s so it’s interesting also just to like if
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29 minutes, 25 seconds
you I I had never not really read a writer’s synopsis for for issues that hadn’t come out before. So it’s just it’s interesting just just for that to
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29 minutes, 34 seconds
like kind of get that peak behind the curtain.
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29 minutes, 36 seconds
Very cool. I’m definitely gonna check it out.
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29 minutes, 38 seconds
Awesome. Well, listeners, we’ll be back again sometime in the near future. We’ve got more Elf Quest to read. We’ve got
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29 minutes, 45 seconds
more Gindle to read and lots of other comics that we might read. So, I’m not sure what to to promise you next. So, just tune in next time to to see what happens. Until next time.