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¦ Features ¦ Al Ewing
interview part 2
AE: Well,
I’m pretty sure it was him. Anyway, he was in the Get Stuck Inn, which was
a nudie-cutie-bar I was frequenting at that time, and he was bitching at his buddy
about – get this - how superheroes would be all right if they had problems,
like real normal people! Like how if, say, Superman had this sick mother he had
to keep an eye on, or if Batman couldn’t change out of his bat-costume and
he was always frightening people and getting called a freak? Or if Green Arrow
had some kind of heart problem and he could drop dead any second if he ran out
of special heart-fixing arrows to shoot into his own face?
JM: That’s
incredible...
AE: Damn
right it was! It was goddamned sedition! I was up outta my chair, walking over
to this scrawny asshole, telling him that if he thought the greatest heroes of
the USA had problems, maybe he had the problem! Maybe he needed another problem!
And then I smashed my beer stein right into his goddamned commie face! He didn’t
say much after that about Green Arrow’s ticker, I can tell ya! He just gurgled
and spewed blood all over – I remember he had a big ragged hole in his cheek
–
JM: Jesus
Christ!
AE: Only
then his buddy, short feller with a cigar, looked like he’d seen some military
service, he gives me this haymaker right in the face, knocks me through the window!
I tell you, it was like being hit by Captain America. It was only later I found
out who that guy was!
JM: Wait,
wait – are you saying Jack Kirby punched you through a plate glass window?
AE: No,
no, of course not. Don’t be silly. This was a guy called Archie Manciewitz,
but it turns out he married my second cousin! Is that a wild coincidence or what?
Anyway, that was how I met the man who I assume was Stan Lee! Mind you, Stan doesn’t
have any major scarring and he’s never mentioned being violently attacked
in Des Moines. Anyway, whoever that guy was, I didn’t forget him, or his
traitor talk. But when I saw the sales figures for Fantastic Four #1, I changed
my tune pretty quick!
JM: And
that’s...
AE: How
the Big Brother Era of Pulse-Palpitatin’ Pugilism was born, O Faithfully
Fervent Funnybook Follower!! As I’d say in my regular slot, Al’s Amphitheatre!
JM: I see.
AE: Yep,
Gerry took a little convincing, but he was always very receptive to what I had
to say, especially if I’d been drinking and he was standing near an open
window. Before you know it, Big Brother was the darling of the swinging superhero
set, scintillatin’ one – we had good old ‘Salacious Sal’
Salowski on THE THUNDEROUS THREE, for example. Where boring old FF only had one
tragic monster, we had two! And a dame for the tying-up scenes. And our two monsters
– Rockman and The Stone - were so miserable they tried to kill themselves,
or each other, every issue! While Transparent Lass had to decide which she really
loved, on those rare occasions she wasn’t bound to a chair by The Ogler.
Talk about drama! Sal really loved it, although the panels without Transparent
Lass in them looked kind of rushed. Then we followed up with MONSTERA, the blue
behemoth who devolved into shapely atomic scientist Dr Ruth Renner! Another Sal
classic – “why have gamma when you can have gams”, ran the house
ads –
JM: Yes, did
you not think about the possible legal – AE:
Legal, schmegal! We were untouchable! Although I guess we did push things a little
far when THE EVEN MIGHTIER THOR came out. That said, the character was obviously
public domain. And our masterstroke was his secret identity - Ron Drake, a handsomely
miserable veterinary surgeon with no legs, who was in love
with his comely
helpmeet Jenny Forrester – another Sizzlin’ Sal creation, in a nurse’s
uniform to boot! Hotcha!
JM: Were
all of these comics excuses for Sal Salowski to draw semi-dressed women?
 |
“Vorro,
Mutant Mexican Monster”, from THUNDEROUS THREE # 74. Richmond Institute
of Physics Comics Club |
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AE: Hell
no! Or are you forgetting THE AWESOME ARACHNATEEN? Obsessive Orwell Kopek’s
sinister spreads made that one a household name! Certain other characters might
fail to prevent the deaths of their uncles – but put-upon Patrick Porter
actually ATE his beloved Uncle Ted while the latter was dressed as a fly for Halloween!
Angst with a capital A! Not to mention that ol’ Pat had three different
aunts, all with a different life-threatening complaint! Oh, and that same year
we rushed out MAGNESIUM MAN, who had lung poisoning and could drop dead instantly,
unless he was in his special magnesium suit! Except because of the lung thing
he always had to smoke special cigarettes, so quite literally blazing action was
never far away. Needless to say, we were raking it in! And writing these things
was a snap! I’d do ‘em on cocktail napkins.
JM: I believe
things started to turn sour with CAPTAIN LIBERTY...
AE: Oh yeah.
After Captain America hit the stands, I decided we needed a similarly patriotic
hero of our own. We figured we’d make him look totally different to Cap
– so we gave him blue boots and gloves, and a red suit! A bold new vision
of patriotism! Anyway, for the symbol on the chest, and his big round shield,
we had a big, black ‘L’. Only then Sal said that there were Four Freedoms,
so we might as well have four ‘L’s! He drew these four black ‘L’s
in a white circle on Captain Liberty’s red chest, and I told him to make
it look more catchy... sort of join them together at the bottom and have them
go clockwise...
JM: The
new symbol didn’t seem familiar to anybody?
AE: No.
Not until they set the building on fire.
JM: A lot
of people said that fire was an insurance scam –
AE: Hey,
I nearly died in that fire! I saw Gentleman Gerry burn to death in front of my
eyes while the crowd chanted for blood! The fact that the company had that massive
life insurance policy on him was the purest coincidence! I’m just glad I
spent the extra getting him insured for fire as well as defenestration, that’s
all. Anyway, with Sal hiding out in Venezuela and Orwell in Spandau Prison, there
was nobody to claim that money except yours truly. Too bad I was in that coma.
JM: Yes,
you were in hospital for about...
AE: Ten
years. Spent every last dime of that insurance money on catatonic maintenance.
Eventually it ran out and they moved me across country to the New York Medical
School, which is why I don’t have a spleen anymore. Anyway, by the time
I woke up and learned to walk again and stuff, it was Christmas of ’74,
and let me tell you, the changes that had happened to the comics industry during
that time were... they were... well, they were absolutely...
JM: ...yes?
AE: It was
like waking up in hell! All the men had turned into girls and all the girls had
turned into my grandma! And the comics were packed full of communists who talked
the balls off you! I ain’t gonna waste the price of a good hooker reading
about the plight of the working man! Fuck the working man! In fact, that was the
only way I could make my living! As you can probably guess, any attempts I made
to get back into comics failed miserably and I eventually became homeless and
a sex toy for degenerate youth, who seemed to mock me by flying Captain Liberty’s
proud symbol in my broken face.
JM: That
was how you became involved with the New York Dolls?
AE: Pretty
much. I woke up in some kind of broom closet and Malcolm McLaren was micturating
on my beard. That was the start. I liked these kids – they were the kids
I’d written issues of CHAMBER OF VENTRICLES for back in the good days. When
I described some particularly gripping work I’d done, my eyes rolling in
my head on a massive amphetamine kick as I howled about hacksaws carving through
jawbones and syringes filled with a mixture of dope and phlegm, I could see these
crazy rock-n-rollers leaning forward and drooling like Pavlov’s dogs. There
was a market here!
JM: This
was when you decided to move to the UK?
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Ewing's
later Terror Tales showed that the old man still had it in him |
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AE: Damn
right. Whenever Malcolm wasn’t urinating on me, he was saying that this
whole ‘punk’ thing was going to hit Englandshire like a blitzkrieg
of boiling shit, and he was gonna be the guy selling the umbrellas. I wanted in.
Comics in the
US were one long stream of cosmic space assholes philosophizing about how heroin
is somehow a bad thing – United Kingdomville was about to explode into an
airbust of gore and severed spleens. I knew where I had to be.
After I’d
worked a passage over on a fishing vessel - where I acquired a taste for the tender
tang of dolphin eaten raw and still alive with a giant fork – I finally
got there on Valentine’s Day 1976, ready to show these effete British punks
what real comics were all about! So those lard-eating pricks wanted action, huh?
I’d give them all the action they could handle – an anthology comic
featuring sharks, pissed-off government agents with giant guns, blind boxers,
lame soccer players, suicidal submarine pilots and bullets blasting through the
guts of those goddamned New York flatfoots who’d busted up my favourite
little smackden on seventh and main! It’d be the ultimate festival of violence,
death, hatred and gore and the blood would be printed red – red –
red!! (slams fists into table)
JM: Ah.
AE: Well,
exactly. Someone had got there first. They even had all my ideas for LEG EATING
SHARK BASTARD all there in the main story. I tell you, that was probably the worst
moment of my life.
JM: That
was when Sir Arthur Winton recruited you to create a rival to ACTION comic?
AE: Well,
it was his car I jumped in front of. The first thing I remember is this guy with
a giant moustache pouring holy water on me as I lay bleeding in the street and
shouting that Jesu was merciful. I asked him to call an ambulance for my broken
leg, but he told me that penicillin was the semen of Beelzebub and I would be
cured by the healing power of God’s face. Then he tied me to the roof rack
of his Rolls Royce and sped off through the thunderstorm to Winton Grange, where
I spent the next six weeks in a state of extreme fever and delerium with Sir Arthur
flinging communion wine into my festering wounds and reciting the Bible in a screeching
voice directly into my left ear. It’s no wonder I started acting a little
funny.
JM: You
changed your name to Baptismal Pentecost.
AE: I may
well have done. I can’t really recall much from that time, except Sir Arthur’s
response to his first sight of ACTION, which was to climb on top of his roof naked
and deliver a sermon on ‘mockers’ to the kitchen staff. He was a highly
charismatic man.
JM: What
drew him to comics?
AE: He was
at that time using his inheritance to publish a series of tracts inspired by Jack
T Chick – simple little things that he drew himself with titles like SATAN’S
FACE EATING LOCUSTS and BURN, SEXUAL INVERT, BURN – homely stuff like that.
He was a hell of an artist, though he didn’t know much about classical storytelling.
There’d be a panel of two goat-faced women licking each other’s backs,
and then the next panel would be a sea of flaming skeletons with a little caption
saying how Jesu would flay the bowels from the sluggards with his mysterious claws,
with eight exclamation marks and a little skull. That would be the whole comic.
That said, he did
know how to reach his audience, although his entire audience consisted of myself
and even then I only read them because I’d been chained to a makeshift cot
for months under the influence of some appalling psychedelic fungus.
JM: Was
it him who first suggested creating a competing title to ACTION?
AE: It might
have been me. I still had quite a few vengeance issues to work out and in my state
of religious fervour I may have screamed something about my enemies being delivered
unto my hands, yea, even as Saul was delivered to the hand of Absalom for mutilation
according to the will of Baphomet.
That said, Sir
Arthur obviously had a firm grip on my reins. Quite literally. He figured we needed
to let everybody know that this comic wasn’t going to be like the others,
that it was going to deviate strongly from what was expected of adventure titles.
In fact, he became fixated on that, talking about us deviating from the dull,
well-trodden path of traditional weeklies, how our comic would represent a deviation
from anything that had gone before –
JM: Hence
THE DEVIANT.
AE: It seemed
like such a good idea at the time! And on the cover we announced in big letters
that this was the comic that would really reach kids, deep in their very souls
–
JM: “The
Comic That Touches Your Child In His Special Place.”
AE: We never
saw any of the warning signs! I mean, I was burned out, strung up on bizarre chemicals,
I just figured that a slight change of name would do for our version of Dredger
–
 |
Possibly
the only reprintable panel from THE DEVIANT |
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JM: “Tadger!”
AE: I wasn’t
a well man –
JM: “He’s
hard! Rock hard! Delving into the back-alleys to penetrate rings of criminals
– and bust them wide open!”
AE: Right
– if we can just forget the detective character, I thought we did pretty
well with our homage of Hook Jaw. I mean, that was only one shark, where we had
dozens, actually coming down from space –
JM: Was
that “Invasion of the Star-fish”?
AE: Yes,
dammit – look, maybe that’s not the best example. I did like our future
Death-Sport where the playing apparatus itself decided who lived or died -
JM: Ah yes.
“Up To The Balls!” I understand the protagonists in that were supposed
to play for The Dreamers?
AE: Only
we accidentally missed off the D - look, goddamnit, you can read something into
any comic if you look hard enough! What about our brilliant WWII epic, set in
a submarine constantly fighting off wave after wave of enemy craft under the water!
That was probably our crowning achievement – what was it called?
JM: “Lick
‘Em Down Below”.
AE: Shit
bastard cocksucker! Look, maybe there were a couple of balls dropped – I
mean – dammit, the fact is that comic sold 150,000 copies on its first issue!
If that rat bastard Archbishop hadn’t excommunicated us both, we’d
probably be in the history books! So what if heroic naval commander Jack Kinghoff
had a submarine shaped like a horse’s pecker? I didn’t draw the damned
thing! That wasn’t my art they were burning in those midnight rallies! It
wasn’t my double-page spread they poured caustic lime on and sealed in a
pit. It was all Winton! And besides, we sold a hundred and fifty thousand of the
damned thing! We didn’t hurl it through the gates of primary schools or
anything like that! I tell you, DEVIANT was a triumph! An unmitigated triumph!
JM: Although
there wasn’t a second issue.
AE: Well,
no. But that certainly wasn’t our fault. Let me tell you, Sir Arthur was
very capable of drawing an entire issue per week, especially after he did his
ritual of power in the toilet, so I’m convinced we could have gone on for
months, if not years. However, tragedy once again struck.
JM: These
were the events of October 23rd 1976?
AE: Yes.
We were sitting pretty and the future of our comic collaboration was assured,
and we’d been celebrating through the night in fine style. In fact things
were going so well that Sir Arthur had declared that, were he to pass from this
plane into the arms of Jesu, the mission of slicing the infidel with the holy
hissing blade of righteosity would fall unto my own hand.
JM: I see.
What did you take that to mean?
AE: I’d
get the mansion and the kitchen staff. Which appealed to me greatly, as I’d
come to enjoy it from the comfort of my wooden cot. It was then that we heard
shouting from the street – what seemed to be a crowd of children running,
screaming “They’ve taken away our comic! They’ve taken away
our comic!” Of course, they meant ACTION, which caused me to begin laughing
hysterically, while Sir Arthur ran to the window to hurl petrol-soaked bricks
at them, which he kept for the purpose of teaching the gardener the savage ways
of Saint Anthony. At that moment, it seemed that all my dreams were coming true
in that tiny, swirling room. I was close enough to give Sir Arthur a hearty slap
on the back as he leaned precariously out of his third floor window... actually,
I did think when I was looking at him –
JM: “Y’know,
he’s leaning out pretty far”?
AE: As a
matter of fact, I did. He fell right out of that window and broke his neck, which
was, obviously, a tragic, tragic... tragedy... but anyway - at that moment the
world was mine! Tragically mine! I had an immense mansion, a comic empire, and
a horde of bleeding children literally at my door, desperate for some unwholesome
comic they could latch onto like a flock of remora! How was I to know Callaghan
had commissioned a special anti-paedophile squad to keep watch from the bushes?
I’d done nothing! Nothing! I was just slapping him on the back! And when
I flung open the door, painted with blue woad, and screamed to the kids to come
to the cellar because I had thrills for them like they’d never known - I
was caught up in the moment! It’s a mistake anyone could have made! I was
innocent! Innocent! And I said so at my trial! I shouted it to the rooftops!
JM: Did
being sentenced to twenty-five years in Strangeways come as a shock to you?
AE: Yes.
JM: Do you
want to talk about it?
AE: No.
 |
Ewing's
last Terror Tale out of captivity (art by Shaun Thomas) |
|
JM: Right.
Moving on - recently, 2000AD has become your new home, with several Terror Tales.
How did that come about?
AE: Well,
I’d just got out of the hoosegow and any dreams I might have had of getting
work in comics again seemed pretty far away. I was a worn-out stinking wreck,
I had a spastic anus and I’d developed a worrying taste for shoe polish
strained through a hunk of bread. Plus I was into ‘Terry The Nonce’
for more than two grand in cigarettes, even if I was on the outside now. See,
I was what they call a ‘bottom bunker’, which means that every day
I’d have to give up a cigarette or I’d be taken to the showers and
have the slop bucket poured into – wait, I wasn’t going to talk about
that. Where was I? Oh yeah, 2000AD. Well, basically, I just started writing them
with little story ideas, laid out like in their how-to guide, and y’know,
I guess Tharg must have liked a couple. I know it wasn’t based on my previous
work – Tharg definitely doesn’t know about my comics career, OBEY,
CAPTAIN LIBERTY, all that stuff... thank God... and I’ve made totally sure
he absolutely definitely doesn’t know about Mort or Ricky or Winton or any
of the others...
JM: Though
he will now!
(long pause)
AE: What
did you say?
JM: Well, I mean, he will
if he reads this interview.
(another long pause)
AE: Have
you seen the view from this window? It’s really something – four stories
up. Come on over – yeah, now there’s a really great, uh, thing you
just gotta see. If you lean out a little further... a bit further... further than
that...
(At this point
the interview came to a sudden and abrupt end as the police broke down the door
and violently restrained Mr Ewing, although he alleges that all he was going to
do was give Mr Mackay a “friendly back rub”. The trial date is set
for the middle of January.)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to Bolt-01 for arranging access to so many private
collections, and to Richmond Clements for retouching many of these images.
Special thanks to Brian Walsh for smuggling comics from the
American Fighting Man’s Institute.
Ricky D’Agostino’s
work is carried on by his nephew and spiritual heir, whose gallery can be seen
here.
Grateful thanks
to W.R. Logan (he didn’t actually do anything, but it’s sort of contractual).
And finally, many,
many thanks to the West Hampstead police, without whose prompt actions this interview
might never have seen print.
A final script
was seized from Al Ewing’s room shortly before his incarceration. It will
appear in Futurequake #4, available soon.
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