Marvel must have gotten a good deal on a lotta paper, because in the late 80s they were cranking out all kinds of new b/w magazines with a volume not since their early 70s heydey.Definitely an odd choice of movies to adapt, the Nightmare on Elm Street film series was by 1989 on fire popularity-wise; they were cranking out a new one per year almost and Freddy Kruger had managed to evolve from the bad guy in the series to almost an anti-hero; he got all the best quips and he started finding his way into mass-merchandising.
First up, if you need a cover both brutal yet sexy, who do you call? Why, our pal Joe Jusko of course! I can't imagine what it must have been like, having to sit there and stare at Freddy Kruger's ugly face all the time it took to paint this. Yeesh!
Anyway, before we even get to the (book-length) story, we're met with the craziest intro any comic magazine ever had:
The story is called "Dreamstalker", and is written by Steve Gerber, half-penciled by Rich Buckler, half-penciled by Tony DeZuniga, and the finishes are by Alfredo Alcala.
I don't see much of Buckler or DeZuniga's style here, but it was a good choice to have Alcala do the finishes; his moody, doom-soaked work is perfect for this type of story. The tone is set by the creepy splash page:
We get to find out Freddy's gruesome origin intertwined with an original tale(not an adaptation of one of the movies), and I was a little shocked reading this how much Marvel and/or Gerber stuck to the tone of the movies(or some of them, at least): very, very grim and not much in the way of the easy laughs that a lot of 80s slasher films used to cut the tension.
Overall, I enjoyed this a heck of a lot more than I would have expected to; Freddy is definitely menacing in this story, and for the most part he's kept in the shadows and unlike the movies, I think it benefits from the less is more approach.
Apparently I am/was in the minority, Nightmare on Elm Street lasted only two issues, a shockingly quick demise even by comic book standards.
Update: The above assumption about poor sales by me was wrong; please read the comments section for some behind-the-scenes info by Nightmare's cover atist Joe Jusko!
5 comments:
Funny story here! This book was NOT cancelled due to poor sales. Quite the contrary, it sold GREAT!!!! What happened was, Mike Hobson, who was one of the upper execs at Marvel saw issue #1 AFTER it was printed. Having NO IDEA what the book was about, he decided to actually READ it! All well and good until he got to the part where the nun is gang raped by 1,000 maniacs in the asylum! OOPS! Being a religious man, he FREAKED!!! LOL He instantly ordered that the book be cancelled IMMEDIATELY! The only reason issue #2 ever saw the light of day is that it was already at the printer and Marvel would have lost a lot of money had they not let it come out. There were actually at least 3-4 subsequent issues already in the can, ready to go. Mark Texiera did a cover, where Freddy was coming out of a screen in a movie theater, and I had done a third cover to a story about demon Rock 'n Roll (!)
http://cafurl.com?i=7146
Marvel's magazine line was very successful during that period.
On another note; BOY! It really seems that I was painting every cover to every mag that Marvel put out at that point!! LOL
> On another note; BOY! It really seems that I was painting every cover to every mag that Marvel put out at that point!! LOL
Joe--If you don;t moind, can you talk about the workflow at that time, meaning: Did you get a layout or just an idea? What was the review process (how many different design idea would you submit)? Who made the final decision? And how long did you have from assignment to finished painting?
Thanks!
hmm, Joe, looks like we might need to do an unprecendented SECOND interview for the blog! :)
Most times there was a general idea tossed at me. I learned early on to submit ONE sketch at a time, because editors have a unique talent that makes them pick the one idea you definitely don't wanna do! For the first cover they simply wanted a good head shot so it was readily identified as Freddy Krueger. I suggested the pajama girl in his palm to not only add that "nightmare" quality, but because T & A was such and essential part of horror movies of the time and also ALWAYS helped sales! LOL
When I first started I would get sketches supplied to me by Marie Severin or whoever the AD was at the time. After a while I was left to my own devices. I would work up a sketch and either bring it up to the office (since I was local, and actually being in the office got me a lot of work based on me simply being there) or I would fax it over. Remember FAXING? Most times it was just a formality, but sometimes the editor would suggest a different angle or a closer in crop; things like that. If I was in the office I would just make the alterations there. Final approval was almost always made by the editor, though there were times John Romita (who was Marvel's in-house art director at that point) would be asked to either tweak my sketch or supply one of his own if I just wasn't "feeling" the idea to the editor's satisfaction. There were times JR would already have sketches done and they would say "Wanna do this?" :-) 'Nightcat' and 'NFL Super-Pro' were based on Romita sketches I just happened to pick up in the office one day.
The final paintings, on the other hand went through a chain of approval. When I first started ('78) Stan was still in charge up there and had final approval. After that whoever was editor in chief (Shooter, DeFalco, etc) had final sign off power. NOTHING got printed without their approval. I've only had one final painting killed during my entire career, and Stan killed that one! My first two covers ever at Marvel were Starlord covers, and Stan hated the second one so much that he reassigned it to Earl Norem! LOL Rightly so, too. It was dreadful!
As far as time goes, there was no direct market at that point, so you generally had 2-3 weeks on a cover, if you needed it. Nowadays, the cover is ALWAYS needed way earlier than the rest of the book because it's used to solicit the book in the Diamond catalog. It's always the very last thing commissioned, too, so turnaround time is MUCH shorter than in days past. I've actually gotten emails on Wed afternoon asking for a cover by Friday more often than you would believe!
Thanks, Joe!
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