Battle Flag Interview

Battle Flag #6

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1978. The Syndicate, Inc. Carrollton TX. [ober,ebay].
Publication for military enthusiasts. Also incl. Vaughn Bodé and Brad Foster. Articles incl. Sci-fi Games, the Arsenal of the Future, Bogart in Sahara, King Kong and the Military, and more.
Front Cover Art: “Fiend with Talons” (FiF, pg 197)
Pgs 55-60: Interview
Pg 58: “Alien Measuring Human Skull” (FiF, pg 189)

The Fantasy Report:

Interview with Richard Corben

Introduction:

Mention the name Richard Corben to any s-f fan and you get an instant response of: Hey, did you see his latest strip in HEAVY METAL? or “His film of NEVERWHERE was outta site!” or “Those erotic chicks…man, can be draw!”

Corben is perpaps the hottest artist around, with ongoing strips in HEAVY METAL and many of James Warren’s magazines, plus producing a stream of covers for the Science-Fiction Book Club. His latest triumph is the justly acclaimed book version of NEVERWHERE: An Illustrated Adventure of Fantasy and Magic, issued by Ballantine Books.

Recently the editors of BATTLE FLAG sat down with Richard and asked him to tell us his life story…

B.F.: Gee, I don’t know where to start! I suppose the best thing would be to ask about your background. Did you have any art training or other formal art instruction, or are you self-taught, or…?

R.C.: Well, like most other artists, we all were interested in art and drawing at a very young age. I do have some formal art training also… I have a degree from the Kansas City Art Institute.

B.F.: What was your first job or the first piece of artwork you had published in fandom?

R.C.: I believe that would be the strips I did for a fanzine called VOICE OF COMICDOM. That was ages ago!

B.F.: I remember that. It was called “When the Monsters Rule” and was quite a sensation in fandom. One of my good friends called me one day and said “This guy Corben is someone to watch! He’s going to be great!” So I read your strip and then wrote the editor a letter raving about it.

R.C.: Let’s see, what was that guy’s name?

B.F.: You mean the editor? Rudi Franke, wasn’t it?

R.C.: Yes, that’s right. A nice guy…

B.F.: And so then your work in fandom kinda’ snowballed from that?

R.C.: Yeah. About this same time I started doing some stuff for another fellow, a neighbor of Rudi’s. His name was Dennis Cunningham and his zine was called WEIRDOM. I did the work for him, but it didn’t get published for quite a while. His zine had a rather irregular schedule.

B.F.: And what was your first pro job? How long was it from the time you started working in fanzines until you got your first professional assignment?

R.C.: Well, this was all kind of overlapping. I actually did a pro science-fiction cover before I did the ‘zine work.

B.F.: Oh? What was that?

R.C.: It was a cover for the MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE-FICTION and that was some time back in 1967, I think. My first professional comic book stuff would be for Warren–I don’t recall what year it was, but it was a strip that I sent in on speculation.

B.F.: Ah, so the first comic work you did professionally was a strip, rather than a cover?

R.C.: Ummm, let’s see. I believe that’s right, even tho I had also sent them some covers around the same time. Warren did accept a couple of them, but they weren’t used until later.

B.F.: Richard, which artists have influenced your outlook on art?

R.C.: There have been a great many! In the comics, Alex Toth, Wally Wood, Neal Adams, oh, a great many others.

B.F.: Have you been influenced in any way by the so called “godfather” of fantasy artists, Frank Frazetta?

R.C.: Oh, yeah, yeah! Of course, his influence on me is more in my paintings. I’d never seen any of his comic stuff until much later in my career. His art influence on me was more for his cover paintings than anything else.

B.F.: Speaking of Frazetta, there’s something that I’ve always wondered about, and perhaps you can confirm or deny it. At some convention, years ago, I was told that Frank Frazetta was going to “take you under his wing and make you a star!” He was going to teach you all he knew about art and do oder wonderful things for you. Is that so?

R.C.: (laughing) Gee, that’s news to me!

B.F.: Okay, so that’s another fannish legend we can lay to rest! I heard this at the 1970 Multicon in Oklahoma City.

R.C.: Well, as I said, it’s all news to me…

B.F.: The 1970 Multicon was also the premier of your film of NEVERWHERE, wasn’t it? I saw it there and it really blew me away. How long did it take to film?

R.C.: Well, that was made over a period of about one year, I believe. It was a lot of work, with stacks and stacks of drawings all over–they took up all the storage I had! No kidding, there were stacks of drawings waist high here..there were about a dozen of ‘omi

B.F.: Was that animated at a local studio here in Kansas City?

R.C.: Yeah, sure was. I was working at Calvin Productions at the time, but the animation…strictly speaking…wasn’t done there. I did the animation at home. You see, part of my work at Calvin was to run the animation cameras, so I photographed it on their cameras.

B.F.: I see. Hey, there’s another story that I was told about you, that I want you to confirm or deny. This may be in the same class as that Frazetta story, but I was told that NEVERWHERE was…the very beginning of it…was autobiographical. You know, the hero gets fired because he’s daydreaming, and then gets himself into trouble…

R.C.: No, I think that is strictly a fabric of somebody’s imagination! There seems to be a lot of rumors going around.

B.F.: Returning to your background again, and in particular to your youth…did you read all the comic books and newspaper comics when you were a youngster?

R.C.: Oh yeah, I certainly did. When I was very young, I liked the super heroes–Superman was the, I guess. The best super hero, I mean. And I also liked Mickey Mouse and the funny animals, too. Later on, in my teens, I was really into the EC books.

B.F.: Did you read any of the newspaper comics like Flash Gordon and such? Do you collect any of the old Alex Raymond strips now?

R.C.: Yes, I read them, but I try not to collect anything very seriously, because it then becomes too important…it gets overbIown.

B.F.: What about the undergrounds, Richard? When did you get into doing strips for the underground comic books?

R.C.: Actually it wasn’t too long after I started drawing for the fanzines. Rudi Franke, who lives out on the West Coast, turned me on to the undegrounds and I decided that it was a neat place to be working. So, I did a strip for Skull Comics and had contact with Greg Irons and Gary Arlington at the time.

B.F.: How many strips have you done for the undergrounds, all totalled?

R.C.: A lot of ’em. I’d say between 20 or 30 strips, or pretty close. The total number of pages would run over 300, I think.

B.F.: Here’s another fannish legend you can confirm or deny for us…I heard that, at some point around the end of the big underground comics era,…you had become terribly disenchanted with the entire underground scene and that some publishers had ripped you off very badly, causing you to vow that you’d never work for them again. Is that correct?

R.C.: Well, that’s partially true. I was having a hard time getting any money from them. It was good at first, so I quit my job at Calvin on the hope of all this underground work I was going to do…and I did make a go of it for approximately a year, but then it started getting a little hard. I had to get some other work.

B.F.: Is that when you began relying more on Warren?

R.C.: Yeah, I started working for Warren, and I’ve done a number of dustjackets for the S-F Book Club. That assignment sorta’ came around by accident. I attended a World Science-Fiction Convention in St. Louis in 1969. I met this guy there, Jim Wnorski, who was an art fan and he bought a painting I had brought with me. Well, years later, he went to work for the Doubleday Science-Fiction Book Club, and through him, I got the assignments. He was their art agent or art director, or something, and that’s how he became my contact there and put me onto doing covers for them.

B.F.: Do they use your covers on the regular trade editions of these books, too?

R.C.: In some instances they do. If they like the book club cover, then they’ll make a deal to use the same cover on the regular trade edition. They did that on the book OX by Piers Anthony.

B.F.: You seem to be getting more and more into this kind of work. Is that what you’d like to concentrate your efforts on…dust jackets and the like?

R.C.: I dunno. My career is going back and forth a lot. At the very beginning of it, when I’d just gotten out of art school, that’s what I wanted to do…a lot of book covers, I mean. I didn’t do very well in my efforts towards that end, however, and so I got into comics. Now, more and more opportunities to do covers are showing up, and I’m turning a lot of them down. It’s all very ironic, because that was what I’d wanted to do, way back when. Yeah, I could probably do all the book covers and record covers I would wish to do, now!

B.F.: That is ironic. Do you make more money working in the comics field or…?

R.C.: It’s not all financial, see? I could still make more money doing the book and record covers, but the comics is something that I’ve grown to enjoy. That’s just part of me now, I guess.

B.F.: Would you eventually like to do your own comic book as far as the publishing end of it goes? That way, you’d have complete artistic and creative control…

R.C.: Well, I’d like to have the control, but not the publishing problems, because I tried to do that once and I was a total failure! That was FANTAGOR,…this was earlier when I was getting into the comics and undergrounds. I wouldn’t want to do that again!

B.F.: How much artistic and creative control do you have in your work now?

R.C.: A lot. I’ve started a new strip for HEAVY METAL and I’ve got about all the control I want. It’s the New Tales of the Arabian Nights and it’s based roughly on the old Arabian Nights. It’ll run for 12 chapters, one chapter per issue. I have all the control I want on it.

B.F.: What do you do for ideas when you’re writing a story, Richard? This is a standard question, I’m sure…where do you get those crazy plots from?

R.C.: Well, sometimes…as in the case of the Arabian Nights,…I have a particular theme I want to get in it, so it’s kind of easy. My friend in Wichita, Jan Strad, he’s helping me on it. But regarding ideas in general, I find that if I’m desperate enough for a plot or idea, I’ll come up with it, somehow. I think ideas just come, if they’re needed. And if I get a little lazy, I feel that I can afford to have someone else come up with them for me.

B.F.: Do you use models or photos when you draw?

R.C.: Yes, in some cases. I have used quite a lot of models in the last year or so. In this new Arabian Nights strip, I’ll be using less models, however, because it is a little more fantastic and has a lot of fantasy creatures in it.

B.F.: What kind of models do you use?

R.C.: Oh, sometimes they are professional models, and sometimes they’re just friends who happen to around.

B.F.: I expected the standard answer of “I use my wife.”

R.C.: (laughing) As a matter of fact, she’s NOT interested in modeling for me at all!

B.F.: Richard, what are your biggest gripes as an artist?

R.C.: The worst, thing I hate about being an artist is being ripped off by unscrupulous publishers. I really can’t go into the particular of this, because they’re still around and I have…well, really, if I had any solid grounds to sand on, I would have sued them long ago! Yeah, that’s my biggest gripe…the publishers who are rather ruthless. But having control over my own art,…well, that comes with success, finally. As I said, I have that in my HEAVY METAL work.

B. F.: What do you like about being an artist? Does that give you a great personal satisfaction in any way, or would you rather be doing something else to satisfy your id, say like digging ditches or something else?

R.C.: (laughing) No, I can’t see any particular career that I would have preferred, to being an artist. I do know that I spent so much time becoming an artist that I missed out on some other things in life. And when I’d try to go back…you can’t go back…

B.F.: What would you like to be remembered for? Let’s say, after Richard Corben is long, long gone, what would you like to be remembered for? Is there one cover or one strip that you consider your masterpiece?

R.C.: Ummm, no, that one hasn’t appeared yet. It’s not the one I’m working on…it’s one a little further down the road yet, I think.

B.F.: That’s interesting. What plans do you have now? Any big projects or ambitious undertakings in the works? Are you happy with the way things are going for you?

R.C.: I feel some of the things I’ve done have succeeded in a limited way. But they’ve failed in many other ways. I guess you could say I haven’t made my masterpiece yet.

B.F.: Back to the underground scene for a sec;…what do you think their future is? Are they all but dead?

R.C.: I talk to Dennis Kitchen and Ron Turner occasionally, and they’re still in the business,…but just barely, though. Kitchen still publishes about 3 or 4 new titles, and Ron Turner publishes, oh, maybe a couple titles a year. So they’re nothing like they were, obviously.

B.F.: Do you think the underground comics will just slowly die out?

R.C.: Well, actually, I thought they’d die out a long time ago, but they seem to be still hanging on. You know, I just don’t know how they’re doing it. I think Ripoff Press and the Print Mint are still in business due to the books they started out with. They don’t print anything new…they just keep reprinting Zap Comics! All the old Zaps! And the same thing with Ripoff Press…they’ve got the Freak Brothers going, and even if they have no new strips, they’d just keep on reprinting the Freak Brothers!

B.F.: What do you think about Jack Katz and his epic strip?

R.C.: That’s quite an ambitious thing! At the beginning, I thought that, well, he’s just another fellow with big ideas and he won’t get through two or three books. Well, he’s hanging in there and THAT is impressive…it’s impressive when he can say he’s going to do something big, and then stick with it!

B.F.: Are there any new artists that you admire, any who have come along in the last few years?

R.C.: Yes, I especially admire Alex Nino. I believe the strips In HEAVY METAL he did were great, but these things he’s doing for Warren are a little hard to see…

B.F.: I was told that you don’t particularly like to go to conventions. Is that correct?

R.C.: Well, yeah. I don’t like crowds and I don’t particularly like being picked out of a crowd…I don’t like to be noticed by a gooup of “wild fans”. But the thing is, I actually enjoyed the conventions I did go to. I enjoyed that Worldcon in St. Louis and the couple local ones we had, too. I like them if they don’t get too big.

B.F.: When someone else writes your scripts, as you mentioned Jan Strad doing, what do you like to see in those scripts? Do you ell Jan “I want to see this or that” or “I want a scene that does this,” or do you just give him a free rein?

R.C.: (laughing) It would have to be pretty free with Jan. He’s got his own ideas! I merely set the theme and give him some rough ideas about how it should go, and then he puts down all the particulars.

B.F.: Do you rewrite his stuff?

R.C.: (laughing) He’d kill me if I did! No, I like the way he writes,…and I still have some control on it. Like, he would write some sort of a synopsis and I would complete it. would do breakdowns and then send these back to him. These would be on typewriter-sized paper…I would draw or rough-in the panes, do panel breakdowns to show where the figures are and everything…and then write in what the dialogue is, so he can see how it’s working. I send those back to him, he goes over it and maybe deletes or adds some, and then he sends it back to me and I do the finished art from that.

B.F.: How long does it take you to do an 8 page strip, after you have the breakdowns completed?

THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW UNAVAILABLE!