Not to go over my whole professional history, but in the 1980’s I was an intern for Marvel Comics. I then started doing backgrounds for Joe Rubinstein and other artists, as well as working under John Romita in his (and Marvel’s) Romita Raiders apprenticeship program. In 1987, I was inking backgrounds for Joe on Solo Avengers. By late 1987, Joe was moving onto other projects, and our editor Greg Wright offered me the book. After doing some single issues, pin ups, and other assorted jobs, this would be my first regular assignment. I was full-time in school at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (yeah, thats it’s full name on the letterhead), and Solo Avengers would be perfect since I would be doing the Hawkeye feature which ran ten or eleven pages. Easy for a full time student to squeeze in. In June of 1988 I graduated and was still on the book and assisting Joe. But soon after graduation, I received a call from DC Comics to work with Mark Bright on the Green Lantern feature in the newly revamped Action Comics Weekly. My memory says that I left Solo Avengers to work on Action knowing that as a newbie I wouldn’t be able to handle both projects. Around that time I had stopped doing background for Joe or anyone else, since I know had a full plate of assignments. As it name implied, Action Comics Weekly was a weekly and working on it was a real grind. I had to hit that eight page quota every week. No failing or the book ships late. With a weekly this isn’t possible. In six to eight weeks I was burnt out and exhausted, and I left the series. Thankfully DC filled the void with Haywire. Remember that one? No one talks
about that one. It’s never been reprinted. We’ll talk about that one later.
So anyway, here’s some of my early work flying solo. Some pages of Solo Avengers with pencils by Mark Bright and Al Milgrom, script by Tom DeFalco, and lettering by Jack Morelli. Everything was a learning process back then. I look at these pages now and wold certainly do some things differently, but on the whole, I think it’s good work for a twenty-two year old. Mark and Al aren’t the easiest pencillers to work over. Mark could be loose at times, and you’d have to do a lot of interpretation. Al’s work could be tighter, but he comes from the Jack Kirby school and I came from the Neal Adams/Tom Palmer/Joe Rubinstein school, so inking someone like Al is not a natural thing for me. This probably shows in places where I may have been fighting his pencils, something I wouldn’t do today. Again, I certainly do many things differently today.
Being my first regular assignment, Solo Avengers holds a fond place in my memories. Good times, and I worked with good people. Nice to know that thirty-six years later I’m still friends with them, and I think we can be proud of the work we did back then.
Thanks for your time
Jose