TONY ISABELLA
by David O'Leary
After a short break welcome back to the nineteenth edition of 5 Minutes With... My guest this time is comic industry veteran Tony Isabella. Tony has written for Marvel and DC among others and worked on just about every major character either house had to offer. In a revealing look at the editorial dictation of the seventies and eighties, Tony guides us through issues he had with a Marvel editor who rewrote an issue of Ghost Rider due to Johnny's impending embrace of Christianity, DC's misuse of his creation Black Lightening, how he got writing jobs from Roy Thomas and much more besides. So read on...
David O'Leary: Hi, Tony. Many thanks for joining us here today on CR. You got your professional start in 1972 as Stan Lee's assistant. How did you make the leap to writing?
TI: Staff salaries, especially entry-level staff salaries, were very low in 1972. I was actually making a little less than I had made in Cleveland working for a newspaper there. Doing some sort of freelance was essential if I was going to survive in the more expensive New York City.
I'd written articles and comics stories for fanzines, so it wasn't long before Roy Thomas started giving me things to write for Marvel's magazines and comic books. He and others like what I wrote so I started getting more writing assignments.
That was a pretty standard path in those days.
DO'L: Had it always been a career ambition of yours to write professionally?
TI: Yes. I tried to sell stories to both DC and Marvel while I was still living in Cleveland, but my only pre-Marvel professional sales were to the Cleveland newspaper and to a NYC-based publication called THE MONSTER TIMES.
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"That friendship meant and still means a lot to me"
On his memories of recently deceased comic great Dick Giordano
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DO'L: Of your work at Marvel, your run on Ghost Rider has been one that has remained in the public consciousness after an editorial intervention on an issue saw a partial rewrite when Johnny Blaze was about to embrace Christianity to escape his curse. You have said it was one of the most arrogant and wrong headed actions you've ever seen from an editor. Why was this?
TI: Because three previous editors had already approved this two-year-long storyline. My intention was to having Johnny beat Satan and then get on with his life. The only religious overtones would have been his becoming more of a white hat hero - I always saw him as a modern-day cowboy, anyway - and maybe occasionally showing him going to church.
A lot of what I have done in comics stems from my sense of fairness. Satan was a very powerful force in the Marvel Universe, so I felt the other side should be represented as well. We had black readers, so I felt there should be more black characters in comics. We had Christian readers, so I felt they should see themselves in the comics as well.
Up until that rewritten final issue, the mail on my GHOST RIDER run was overwhelmingly positive. Many readers felt betrayed by the clumsy rewriting. I actually asked to have my name removed from the credits, but the same arrogant editor who did the rewriting refused that request. Over the years, I have spent a great deal of time explaining his actions to my loyal readers.
DO'L: Your move to writing at DC Comics came at a time when the company was going to have major cutbacks in the late seventies. Your Black Lightning book was one of those casualties, but it supposedly came close to avoiding the chop. That must have been a disappointment for you considering how invested you were in Black Lightning?
TI: I had quit the first Black Lightning series by the time it was cancelled because of DC Comics not honouring their partnership agreement with me. Shortly thereafter, I offered to buy out their share of the character, which is when they retroactively decided Trevor Von Eeden was the co-creator of the character. Anyone who read the credits in the original run of the series and BL's appearance prior to this retroactive change knows I was listed as the sole creator.
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"I have spent a great deal of time explaining his actions"
On a Marvel editor rewriting of an issue of Ghost Rider
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DO'L: Jefferson Pierce is a character that you wrote with a strong religious belief. Coupled with the Christian tone of the Ghost Rider story, why do you think it's important for characters to have a religious moral compass?
TI: Some characters should have a religious moral compass because some people have a religious moral compass. Others characters should not have this religious moral compass just as some people in the real world don't have it. Our characters should reflect the diversity in our real world. I think that makes for better characters and better stories.
DO'L: It's long and well documented how you don't agree with DC's direction of your creation on many grounds. I strongly admire you for standing up for what you believe is right, especially when it comes to a character that you created. With the long running legal battle over the Superman rights swinging in the favour of his creators to a large degree, would you consider something similar to regain partial or total rights to Black Lightning?
TI: I've considered it since the first time DC violated its agreements with me. But I always thought DC and I could work things out without going to court over this. So far, they've shown no interest in doing this.
Without saying whether or not such legal action is in the near or far future, though, I will say that such a legal undertaking would be very expensive. I wish we had a Comic Book Legal Offence Fund that would stand up for creators in similar situations.
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"Winnick just wasn't up to the job"
On Judd Winnick writing Black Lightening killing another person
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DO'L: You of course took exception and I think rightly so with a story that Judd Winnick wrote where Jefferson killed for the first time. At the time we didn't know that he would be but the first but since then Wonder Woman and Green Lantern have killed in the name of 'what is the better of two evils'. Now a few years removed from Judd's story has your stance softened at all towards what happened?
TI: Not really. Winnick never understood Black Lightning. There were better ways to handle almost everything he did with my creation, ways that wouldn't have violated Jeff Pierce's core character or values. Winnick just wasn't up to the job.
DO'L: You've worked on translating foreign language Disney comics for American readers. Have you worked with BOOM! at all considering the amount of material originally Italian, that they are now printing from Disney?
TI: I didn't translate those Disney comics stories. I was more of a "script-doctor." I'd be given a basic translation and rewrite it for the American audience, smoothing over clumsy dialogue, adding jokes where I could, correcting obvious mis-characterizations, etc. It was fun work and I would love to do more of that.
However, to answer your actual question, no, I haven't worked with BOOM! on their Disney comics or anything else. I'd love to work with them in the future, whether on Disney comics or some other projects. They are a terrific young publisher and I think they've brought a lot of good comic books and ideas to the marketplace.
DO'L: You have written prose novels in both the Star Trek universe and the Marvel Universe. How did those projects fall into place and would you like to write more in this medium considering that the Star Trek, for example, prose universe is a massive seller and a lot of what is written is considered canon?
TI: CAPTAIN AMERICA: LIBERTY'S TORCH was originally conceived as a graphic novel and/or maxi-series. Before I could pitch it to Marvel, they handed over the character to Rob Liefeld. But Bob Ingersoll, my friend and occasional collaborator, liked my idea and pitched it on my behalf to Keith R.A. DeCandido as a novel. Bob and I wrote the novel together. It remains one of my own personal favourites.
STAR TREK: THE CASE OF THE COLONIST'S CORPSE came about because one of the Star Trek people liked our Captain America novel and, because of the legal stuff in that novel, thought the Isabella/Ingersoll team would do a good job on a Sam Cogley novel. Using Perry Mason as our guide - the book is even designed to look like a Mason paperback - and with Bob doing most of the heavy lifting by virtue of his career as an attorney and his expertise in all things Mason - we wrote what I think it was one heck of a great book. We would love to write more Cogley books, but the Star Trek paperback market isn't as strong as it once was. Still, if we were asked to do a sequel, we would happily write one.
Barring any actual requests from book publishers, my next novel will be a solo effort and something very different from what I've done before.
DO'L: You wrote a nice piece on your blog about the passing of Dick Giordano earlier this year. You've mentioned a few times how fair he was to freelancers and how DC lost its heart when he left. Can you tell us a bit about your working relationship with Dick and how your friendship grew as a result?
TI: I didn't work directly with Dick, but he was always a big supporter of my work. This dated back to my pre-professional days when he took me out to breakfast at one of the New York City conventions of that era and gave me a lot of good information and advice about the industry. He and Bob Layton wanted me to work with them in a promotional capacity at Future Comics, but my circumstances did not allow that at the time.
Comicdom friendships are often long-distance with long gaps between communications. That's how it was with Dick and me. But we always had a good time when we were at the same conventions and tried to stay in touch via email. That friendship meant and still means a lot to me.
Tony Isabella
DO'L: What is keeping you busy right now? Will we see you on a credits page any time soon?
TI: Family stuff, such as major household repairs, my daughter's graduation and her graduation party, has kept me busy. However, once I hit July, I'll be able to get back to work on various proposals for books, comic books, and other things. I'd love to do more comics writing, either for comic books or comics strips, but, like many of my generation, my query e-mails go largely unanswered. Which is why I'll need to explore other options.
In the meantime, I continue to write "Tony's Tips" for COMICS BUYER'S GUIDE and my nigh-daily TONY'S ONLINE TIPS [www.worldfamouecomics.com/tony]. Though I haven't signed a contract with a publisher yet, I'm also working on a sequel to 1000 COMIC BOOKS YOU MUST READ. That turned out to be a very successful book, paying back its advance and also paying me a nice royalty after just two months.
DO'L: Tony, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today. I appreciate it.
TI: You're welcome.
That was a great talk with Tony and I encourage you to pick some of Tony's best works. With a massive back catalogue of stories under his belt, you won't be short of material. Please join me again soon for another edition 5 Minutes with...
Interviewer Bio
Name: David O' Leary
Email: idwfan@yahoo.co.uk
Bio: David has been with CR since June 2008 and started out as a reviewer and has expanded to do a couple of columns for the site also; starting with 28 Words Later with artist Declan Shalvey and later 5 Minutes With... where he talks with the industries best and brightest from Kubert to Moore.
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