I think they were marginally supportive. My mom always wanted me to paint landscapes, or paint pictures of flowers. I actually did a few for her, just to show her that I could do that. She thought I was wasting my God-given talent on drawing Frankenstein and the Wolfman.
How did you get started drawing comic books?
I had gone to this convention in New York City, the World Science Fiction Convention, because I wanted to meet Frazetta. And there were some guys from DC Comics there. DC was interested in starting a sword-and sorcery comic book - and that was the stuff I was drawing, because that's what Frazetta did. And so they just met this kid at a show who was doing sword and sorcery stuff. And they were like, "It doesn't matter if it's good or not, this is what he does."
When did you realize that horror comics would be your specialty?
I always loved comic books as a kid, and during the 1950s, my favorites were the E.C. horror comics - they were the cream of the crop, there was nothing better. I was lucky enough, when I came along at DC, horror comics were beginning to come back, in a very diluted way. You couldn't even use the word 'horror' in a comic book title, and you had to be careful how often you used it inside the comic book.
There were a lot of very strict rules. Joe Orlando, who was one of the EC artists, he was now an editor at DC, he was editing House of Mystery. His idea was, "If we can't have horror comic-book content, we can make it look as creepy as possible." I was literally just in the right place at the right time. I was this kid. and I could draw creepy-looking stuff.
Is there a comic character or book or story of which you are the most proud?
That's hard to say. I hate to pick and choose from my work. It's like picking my favorite child. But I'm very well-remembered for Swamp Thing. We had the advantage of being first; we were the first with a monster for a hero.
You were pretty much out of comics by the end of the '70s, right?
Yeah, I found other things. I was doing prints and posters for a while, because that was a big trend; those things were pretty hot for a while.
For the past 20 years or so, I've been doing whatever I can to make ends meet. One of the reasons that I moved to Los Angeles was to get more movie work. The first movie job I ever had was for Ghostbusters. ...I've worked on Spider-Man and Galaxy Quest, most recently The Mist. A lot of pictures that I can't remember, and even more that never even got made. That's just the nature of the business, you do a lot of conceptual stuff to pitch the movie, but it never gets picked up.
The past few years, I've gotten back into comics. A couple of years ago, I did a story for "Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror." I worked with Len Wein on that. We redid the Swamp Thing story, but with Homer as the monster.
How does it feel to be back in comics?
I am not bothered about what I'm doing when I'm doing comics, as much as I'm bothered doing anything else. I have no art director, or anybody standing over my shoulder, editing me as I go. Sometimes I'll work very closely with the writer, sometimes I'll just get a script and hit the ground running. But it's mostly up to me. I can just sit here quietly. I can listen to recorded books, or put old monster movies in the DVD player, and just work all day.
