Joe Kubert

Oh yeah. It happened to people that I palled around with. A lot of things like that were going on around in East New York and that whole section of Brooklyn. That’s where Murder Incorporated started which was essentially made up of Jewish gangsters.

I’m in a very fortunate position because I can select what I want to do, how I want to do it and when I want to do it. This just struck me as an interesting story and something that I had some background with. It’s perhaps biographical to the extent that Ruby’s mother and father are patterned after my own mother and father. When I was a kid, my mother had a restaurant and we had the apartment in the back similar to the situation in the story. I had an older sister and in the story it’s a younger sister. The name of the main character, Ruby Kaplan, was the name of a guy that I used to pal around with. I felt I knew a little something about it since I grew up in that milieu. I hoped the other people who read it would find it interesting and it was a good change of pace for me.

Having lived a little I find that often doing good and doing bad things are a matter of circumstances. The most honest guys I know, if they found themselves in a situation where they needed to put bread on the table for their family, they would be prone to taking stuff if they felt it was a matter of life or death. One way or another you’d do what you had to do. If you’re lucky and you live your life straight, then you don’t have to worry about conscience as you get older. But very often most of us are not that lucky.

I guessed that from your name.

I knew some Epsteins incidentally back in Brooklyn.

Well good.

Yeah, when I was growing up in the early ‘30s, it was the Depression. Wherever you could make a buck, you scratched it out. But I was very lucky because from the time that I was a little kid, I was always drawing pictures. I was always content to go into a corner and just do my thing. That saved my life because during the Depression there weren’t a lot of things that young guys could do to make a dollar. Every kid sold newspapers but they cost two cents. So if you sold a paper, I think you got like a half a cent or even less for every copy you sold. That doesn’t add up to a lot. So any opportunity where you could make a buck, you would do it. Like I said before it’s hard to turn something down when you really need it. Some of the guys that I grew up with spent some time behind bars simply because they got caught trying to make an extra couple of bucks.

Most people who immigrated to the US wanted their kids to learn a trade so they could make a dollar. Most people from Europe would see a young kid spending an inordinate time drawing and would say, “Stop wasting your time. Learn to do something. Be a mechanic or an electrician. Or learn to be doctor. Or whatever you can make some money at.” I was lucky in that my mother and father recognized how much I loved to draw so they always encouraged me. I was extremely fortunate.

I haven’t been back to that section of Brooklyn in years, but I’ve got a half dozen or so more books on Coney Island and every section of Brooklyn. I always do a tremendous amount of research. The whole idea is to make the drawings as believable as possible. It’s absolutely integral to the acceptance of a good comic strip. Simply because most of the stuff in comic books is off the wall imagination, like superheroes, so in order to make them credible the backgrounds have to be believable. With a war story, if you put a gun in a soldier’s hand and it looks like a little pop gun, it destroys completely the illusion that you’re trying to create.

Very often I find that the subject matter dictates the kind of drawing I do. A lot of it has got to be intuitive.

[laughs] Things have changed in comic books, haven’t they? When I started out doing this stuff, I tried to learn as much as I could about every facet of the comic book and cartoon business. A very important part of the business is lettering. Lettering is an integral part of every illustration that you’re doing. It’s as important an element as any part of the drawing in terms of the composition of a panel. So I learned how to letter. Having done it over a long period of time I’ve taught a lot of guys how to letter. I was approached by the people who put these fonts together and they asked me if they could do this Kubert font. I was flattered as hell and that’s what we’re using.

Having that font eliminates the need for me to do the lettering. But it’s still a job of putting it together and setting it in the right place. The only saving grace is that you don’t actually have to dip pen into ink and do the lettering.

Yes the first issue came out in January. There will be six issues in all and I’m working on the fifth issue right now. I think they’re going to combine them all into a hardcover graphic novel after I’m finished.

Yes, I have. There was a time when Bob Kanigher was the editor as well as the writer and the creator of the Sgt. Rock character. He got the script all set and gave it to me to illustrate. Years ago there was a time when Bob was not feeling so hot so he gave up his position as editor. At that time, Carmine Infantino who was a very good friend of mine was also the head of DC Comics, asked me if I would take over the editorial position, which I did. Bob Kanigher continued to write most of the Sgt. Rock stories, but in the transition I probably wrote three or four stories.

Yes but my insistence now is that I do my own writing despite the fact that Brian Azzarello did a wonderful job on the Between Hell and a Hard Place book I illustrated. Just to satisfy myself for good or for bad, I want to do all the stuff myself.

The story that I’m doing now takes place in World War II. That’s like 60 years ago. But people find themselves in very much the same position today as they did then. The place where the fight is taking place is different but the men are the same. It is also about how I feel, I’ve spoken to a lot of the guys who were in the army and still are. We are the same people that we were 50 and 60 years ago. They find themselves in the army and it is not a place that anybody really wants to be. But they find they have to be and it’s lousy. There’s a camaraderie that occurs in the army that’s really hard to equal any place else. To a great extent your life depends on your buddy and your buddy’s life depends on what you’re doing. Very often that trauma of seeing somebody hurt that’s standing next to you is something that you live with the rest of your life. That doesn’t change. Maybe that’s what makes it relevant.

I think it’s a matter of necessity more than anything else. During the time that I got started in the business, which was in the late ‘30s, it was still very difficult for anybody to make a living. The guys who were coming into comic books loved to draw. A lot of them were illustrators. We had geniuses doing illustration at that time for places like The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s. When the comic book business opened up the fellows who had any predilection for drawing were starting to get jobs. It was a place to make a living.

Every artist is influenced by everything that they see around them that they admire. Whether they realize it or not they pull it into their own stuff simply because they admire it. Manga style and every other existing style, that’s any good, is taught at the school.

I don’t know about it being a trend. I know that many publishers would love to be able to handle that particular genre and make the money that Japanese Manga is making. But it’s a very difficult thing to do because Manga really comes from the inside of the country itself. It’s more than just a drawing. Also they’re slanted heavily towards the woman reader. There’s something beautiful about the stuff that’s being done. Once you get into it, it grabs you.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck