Who is that guy in the Joker costume? What is going on? This is a polaroid from a Marvel Comics Halloween party!. I think it might have been around 1993. I don't know what goes on in the Marvel bullpen these days, but back then you didn't need much of an excuse to throw a party. I was a freelance inker in New York at that time and this photo has some great memories attached to it!
I was dressed head to toe as the Joker and I was entered in the costume contest. There were other contests, like the Candy Corn, Mouth stuffing contest shown here. The contestant who could stuff his mouth with candy corn without barfing would win!
I had the biggest mouth so I won. Assisting me in my victory was my friend Laurie. It was all great fun. I wonder...Is the Marvel Bullpen this much fun today?
4 comments:
Is the Bullpen this much fun now?
No. There's not even a Bullpen. Just some cubicles.
Aren't cubicles fun? Tetris was fun--and that game was full of cubicles!
;)
I'll be honest, as a kid I would dream of one day being IN the Marvel bullpen. Heck, as an ADULT that is STILL amongst my fondest dreams! That just seems like the optimum environment for making cool comics. Sitting alone in an offive or cubicle certainly is not the best deal for me, I still prefer to draw in an environment that is bustling around me, like a coffee shop or an open studio. But the absolute BEST would be the bullpen. All them artists, on the top of their game, rubbing elbows, drawing on each other's stuff, egging each other on to better and better pages. I know there's something of a myth in that idea, but it's a potent myth, one that has always spoken to me. Imagine my disappointment when I learned that there isn't actually a bullpen anymore. I hear all they have at the Marvel office in New York are a bunch of Suits, Editors and Stooges. That just doesn't seem right...
Right now I have a studio in the upstairs portion of a used book store in Nampa, Idaho. They have a decent sized used comic section, and I've been noticing your guys' names all over those comics from the early 80's. Steve, didn't you draw an issue of Power Pack? I know you did, I found it! I might have to get you to sign it!
Oh, no, say it ain't so. No Bullpen?? Just cubes? So sad to hear that Marvel is now like any other place.
Although I did work at a software company where we had Nerf urban guerrilla warfare among the cubicles. So they can be good for something.
Alan, I remember that issue of Power Pack! Steve drew lots of friends into the backgrounds of the panels. Wonder if I'd still recognize any of 'em...it's been a while.
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