Ten questions for Mark Slade, Lothar Tuppan and Chauncey Haworth on The Marvelous Bronze Age: conversations with Marvel creators of the 70s and 80s.

1

What Inspired you to create a book about Marvel creators?


Lothar: Mark was the instigator of this project (like
so many of our projects) but I’ve been a lifelong comic book fan and was quite excited to be able to interview some of my favorite comic creators in this way.


Chauncey

As Lothar said, Mark was definitely the inspiration
behind starting the book. But, what kept me doing the book was my own stumbling through creativity in life. I find it inspiring to hear about other people's successes and failures, how they made it through, and what serendipitous moments paved the way. In
my own life there have been many an unfulfilled project, and it's nice to see that those projects can be stepping stones to other’s successes. The book is full of different ways that people got into, and stayed relevant, in the industry.


Mark

As a kid I would read marvel comics and would see the
bullpen in the back of the comics. I wondered if they were having a good time creating these comics. As I wrote in the intro to the book, two things started me to thinking about the project:

1: I listened to two podcasts that informed me of stories
about the creation of the comics of the 70s.

2:

I was at a Christmas party and someone stated Teen Titans
outsold X-Men. I had to ask Marv Wolfman.


2

What do you expect to achieve with this book?


Lothar

First and foremost, to learn more about a favorite subject
and to hopefully provide a vehicle for others to learn more when they read the book.



Chauncey

I suppose the achievement is to chronicle people’s thoughts
and lives. In a lot of projects that we do I am a creator, or in others, I am a publisher, in this project… I’m Barabra Walters, just trying to get a real story that we can remember and learn from.


Mark

To help people better understand and appreciate the
material that was created, something the movies in the MCU does not do. Also inform younger audiences that anything created before the 21st century is worth researching.


3

What were your favorite moments from the interviews?



Lothar

Unexpectedly, I really loved it when various creators
would talk about the non-comics aspects of their lives. It let us get to know them more as people and was fascinating.



Chauncey

I must admit that over the years I’ve come to enjoy
when social things go wrong. I’m not sure if I'm a masochist, or if there is some flaw in my programming. I figure that it stems from growing up playing in bands. It wasn’t uncommon that you’d play a show to an audience that thought you sucked, or worse yet,
wanted you to finish up so that they could wheel back out the pooltable and play Skynyrd on the jukebox. So I have to admit that some of my best times interviewing were when the interview went bad. I, of course, don’t plan on naming names, but there were a
few interviews that were like pulling teeth, and for some reason I really find those to be enjoyable. One example is that the internet is often wrong. So, you do your best to research the subject you’ll be interviewing, but in some cases the information you
find in your research is way off. Most people understand that, but some… especially some of a certain age, had no concept of misinformation. They expected you to already know everything. Some would even get ornery. Even though it wasn’t too often, I have to
admit, I love it when it goes bad. It’s a chance to turn it around, a chance to get some juicy info from an irate interviewee, and, if nothing else, a chance to get a pretty funny story to tell your buddies about.


Mark

Steve Engleheart talking about how he and Frank Brunner
would smoke a joint before coming up with stories for Doctor Strange and when Marv Wolfman nicely yelled at Chauncey for vaping, but graciously stepped back into professional mode for the interview.


4

Was it difficult to get Marvel creators involved with
the book?


Lothar

Most were really open to being interviewed. The contrast
between the creators we could reach out to directly vs. the ones where they had a manager or agent working as a co-between was interesting.



Chauncey

There are always people that turn us down, of course.
Sometimes they are too busy, sometimes they think they are too good for us, and sometimes they really are too good for us lol. But I would say the biggest headache was figuring out images. Marvel had a copyright lockdown before, and now with the financial
powerhouse of Disney behind them, they are all the worse, or better, depending on how you look at it.


Mark

There were a few who declined. A few snippy messages.
Mostly, they were all in for the book. I think the pandemic helped. Most comic cons were still closed.


5

The cover of the Marvelous Bronze Age Book represents
the 70s really well. Where did the idea for it come from?


Lothar

Mark and Cam. They are the cool inspiration of much
of what we do.



Chauncey

The idea came from Mark wanting it to represent himself
as a kid loving the comics he grew up with. Cameron Hampton took that Idea and did a great job of representing the comics, the fashion, the era, the psychedelia, all of it. I was really pleasantly surprised when I first saw it.


Mark

I found a photo of a boy in his pajamas reading a comic
book, it may have been Incredible Hulk. The other things, such as his outfit, came from our Artist Cameron Hampton. She also added the poster of the Martial artist, the wizard/magician poster, and the lava lamp, and the characters on the cover of the comic
book.

She's very talented and imaginative.


6

Why specifically the 1970s?


Lothar

The ‘70s is one of the best damn decades for Marvel
comics (and music, and films, and so much else).


Chauncey

Several reasons. One, children of the 70s are grown
up fans today that like to read books. But, moreover, the 70s was a time of massive change in a lot of genres. It was really the inception of the media world of today. There were big changes in movies and ratings, big ideas floating through science fiction,
new concepts floating around horror, rock was experimental, hell, due to drugs, I guess people were experimental too. Comics has always been a melting pot of genres and you can definitely see all of those changes in the comics of the time.


Mark

It was the time period I started reading, and specifically
reading comic books. So a few years later, late 70s, I would see these guys in the back of the comic books and thought they were the coolest guys, they always looked like they were having fun. When I was a teenager I read about all the situations they went
through just to get the books out of time. I became fascinated.


7

How did you go about selecting the interviews for inclusion
in the book?


Lothar

Mark really drove this aspect of the book and he’s brilliant
at organizing large collaborative projects like this.



Chauncey

To be honest, you just throw the net as far and wide
as you can and see what comes back. The goal is of course to get it all. People would have you believe that a project like this has some sort of crafted narrative, but they really don’t. The narrative, or at least the goal is, let’s get all we can, let’s learn
all we can.


Mark

Any of the creators that said yes! No, actually, any
of those creators had to work for Marvel from 1969-1984, the Bronze Age era. There was one creator who said yes, did his email interview with us, but had no interview answers we could use. None. In hindsight, he was not really a Marvel creator. He was a
DC or Indie creator.


8

Did you come across any particularly surprising or previously
unknown insights about Marvel's creators from the 1970s?



Lothar

The way that, for many creators, the specifics of how
the idealism/love of the stories and the pragmatic needs of the business synthesized in their approaches to getting the books out. Some of the specific stories were fascinating.



Chauncey

We asked just about all of them if they were into the
drugs at the time and surprisingly, next to none were. They were all just high on change and their imaginations… which personally I find really inspiring.



Mark

Several insights. Too many to list here. Like office
in-fighting, hilarious Steve Gerber, and how divided people are when Jim Shooter's name comes up. Some like Shooter, some hate him. Gerry Conway’s story about a coven of witches working at Marvel….


9


How has working on this project influenced your own
understanding and appreciation of Marvel Comics from the 1970s?



Lothar

By understanding the industry (at least during that
time period) it destroys certain “fanboy” illusions of how things work. Increased understanding both enchants and disenchants the subject.



Chauncey

It showed me how many of the marvel comics concepts
and origins that I thought had always been there were really established in the 70s.



Mark

Make no bones, Marvel comics was a machine churning
out books month after month. At the same time, it was their most creative time period. Trying different things, creating bizarre characters, amazing art. And the books were insanely weird, funny, surreal, and just plain great storytelling.



10

What's next for you guys?


Lothar

Lots of fiction (book collections,
Twisted Pulp Magazine,
and web-site content) along with the Outsider Comics book that Mark and Chauncey are leading up.



Chauncey

We have another book that we are working on about Outsider
Comic interviews. Recently we had an interview for that book with Rick Parker. He didn’t answer a single question that we wanted answered and totally derailed the process and it was cool. It was cool because what he also did was to inspire me to work on my
own comics and stories in whatever way I could. He is a very interesting and cool guy. I really appreciated what he had to say.


Mark


A lot of projects in the pipeline. Several things are
coming soon. For Bear Manor Media, we are wrapping up another comic book interview book titled Outsider comics: Essays and interviews.