Welcome to the 887th installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine three comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. This time, our third legend is about how Keith Giffen quit The Defenders by sending in every other page he drew for his final Defenders story.
There are many strange stories of comic book creators breaking into comic books through all sorts of strange ways. Over the years, I've featured a number of them, from John Romita Sr. pretending to be the inker for a penciler while the "penciler" was actually inking HIM (so trying to explain that to his editor when he wanted a gig for himself was quite the tricky thing) to Steve Epting getting his big break from a fake comic book contest that he won. However, if Keith Giffen doesn't have the oddest story of breaking into comics, he certainly has the oddest story of breaking into comics, ruining his career in comics, and then "breaking in" all over again, all in just five short years!
During his turbulent early years in his comic book career, he decided to make his exit from Marvel Comics in a memorable way - by drawing his final story, but only sending in every other page to Marvel!
How did Keith Giffen break into comics?
Keith Giffen has explained his breaking into comics in a few different places over the years, but I'll use his interview with Eric Nolen-Weathington in TwoMorrows' Jack Kirby Collector #29 just because, well, it was already transcribed so it saves me some transcription time, okay? Nolen-Weathington asked Giffen when he started to develop a portfolio so that he could break into comics, and Giffen explained how it all went down:
I didn't. I broke into comics by doing everything wrong. I was working as a hazardous material handler and I took a week off and said, "Hey I think I'll break into comics." So I just drew up a bunch of pictures and slapped them together. I figured, let me call up the companies and find out how you do this. I didn't want to start at the top. I wanted to start at the bottom. I didn't want Marvel, I didn't want Charlton. Atlas was publishing then. So I called up Atlas and the woman was so positive on the phone. "Oh, yes. Bring you portfolio. Absolutely. We'll take a look at it. Blah, blah, blah. However, we're going out of business next week." [laughs] I said, "That's interesting," and after I hung up the phone with her I thought maybe I should just take the bit in my teeth and start at the top and get turned down all the way down. Just wind up someplace. Back then the top was Marvel. So I call up Marvel. I don't know who the secretary was then, but it was not the most positive—"yeah, um, bring your portfolio in and they'll look at it and you can pick it up tomorrow." I was stupid enough. I go into New York and drop off the portfolio and I go home. Next day I figure I'll go get it and I thought, "No that's not a good idea." So I let a day go by and rather than just go get it, I called. And the woman said, "Get in here now." So I go in and she's yelling at me, she's really pissed off at me. It took a while for it to sink in that apparently Ed Hannigan—prior commitments had forced him off this back-up strip in a b-&-w magazine called The Sword and the Star. And Bill Mantlo, who was the writer, happened to see my samples laying around and said, "I like him; why don't we get this guy?" And they couldn't contact me, because like the genius I am, I had dropped off my portfolio with my name on it and that's it. No phone number, no address, no way to contact me. So they needed me yesterday and that's pretty much how I got my start in comics.
Here's a page from that first story, from Marvel Preview #7 (which, as reader Stephen D. correctly noted, is also the first appearance of Rocket Raccoon, amusingly enough...well...sort of...)...
He didn't get steady work at Marvel, so he went to DC, where he was offered regular work on All-Star Comics (he actually drew the story that I just featured in the second legend in this CBLR installment), but as Giffen noted to Nolen-Weathington, "I bounced around and eventually went over to DC where they wanted to give me steady work, but I was so stupid I blew myself out of the business. They had me working with Wally Wood and I didn't see the benefit of that. Talk about idiot."
So he then returned to Marvel, where he became a standout drawing the Defenders. He was really good on that book. Look at this double-page splash from Defenders #50...
What went wrong with Giffen's final Defenders story?
However, Giffen just wasn't enjoying himself at Marvel, and wanted out. He explained to Nolen-Weathington that he didn't handle the Defenders well, explaining, "I think I made a 'balls-up' with it. Everyone talks about 'Marvel didn't treat me good when I broke in.' Well, I didn't treat Marvel good." When Nolen-Weathington asked him to elaborate, he added, "Never on time, full of excuses. Just an asshole kid off the street who thought he knew it all and didn't know anything. I had to leave the industry for a while. I had to get slapped down. I had to lick the bottom of the cistern before I could pull myself back up and say, 'Maybe guys like Carmine Infantino, and Joe Kubert, and Joe Orlando, and Paul Levitz, and Ernie Colon, and maybe these people, have a point.'"
However, before he left, he had one final Defenders story, which was so delayed that it had to be split over two issues (Defenders #53-54, with backup stories added to get the issues up to length), and the writer of the issues, David A. Kraft, recalled to Stephan Frieddt in TwoMorrows' Back Issue #100:
Keith had a beef with Marvel and I didn't know it. I love working with creative people, and I loved working with Keith...but to flip Marvel the finger, Keith would only turn in every other page of the issue. And that's what caused those two strange issues of Defenders. It definitely caused major challenges for me writing those issues, becasuse while I did the plot, scripting Marvel-style, you have to know what the last panel of the previous page is to dialogue the first panel of the next page. So here I was trying to dialogue every other pasge while Mike Golden and Dave Cockrum were trying to fill in the missing pages! But we were all younger back then and didn't always see what kind of collatoral damaged we caused - in this case, I've told Keith he still owes me a fine single malt scotch for that one.
Giffen had the issue penciled, but he would send the pages in willy-nilly, and out of order, skipping pages, so EVENTUALLY, when it was too late for the pages to be included, Kraft got basically all of Giffen's pages, and thus he actually could show people (which he did in Foom #19), what a page could look like plotted by different artists (by the way, the header for this article is from Dave Cockrum's first page to Defenders #53). Here is how Michael Golden did a page...
And here is how Giffen did that same page...
Here is Golden'a page...
Here is Giffen's version of that same page...
Fascinating. Thanks to the late, great David Kraft, as well as Keith Giffen for his amazing candor, and Eric Nolen-Weathington and Stephan Friedt for getting those awesome pieces of information.
And thanks to Keith Giffen for coming BACK to comics in 1980 and sticking around this time! The industry is better off because of it! Thank goodness Joe Orlando was a forgiving man, as Giffen explained to Nolen-Weathington, "And so I left and bounced around with odd jobs. I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners door-to-door, repossessed things. Then one day I just thought, 'I'm doodling these things on my own; I think I've gotten a little bit better.' So I called Joe Orlando, because I had screwed him over pretty bad and I thought at least I owe Joe hanging up on me—I owe him that much. He said, 'Come on in. You've been an asshole, we're going to put you on probation, but you're going to learn this time. We'll put you on the Ghost books.' And I gradually worked my way up until I landed on Legion." And we're all glad it happened!
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That's it for Comic Book Legends Revealed #8871 See you next time! Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com.