Probably not. When the publisher, Comico, self-destructed in the late Eighties, I felt it was a good time to leave the Elementals and go on to other things. So I sold all rights to the Elementals, permanently, to the new owner of the supposedly resurrected Comico. Little did I know at the time that the new owner would never follow through on any of his announced plans for the series, even though - as part of the conditions of the sale - I produced an exhaustive bible on how to continue the series to its logical conclusion. This document, filling two of the largest three-ring binders made, was very probably the largest, most complex series bible ever produced for a single comic-book title. The last time I had any occasion to visit the Comico offices, one of the volumes of the series bible was being used (very effectively I have to admit) as a doorstop. Since then, the new owner of Comico was rather resolute in his efforts to drive the once popular series into the ground.

However, all is not doom and gloom. Not entirely anyway. In the last year or so, finding myself nostalgic for the old Elementals days I began to wonder what it would have been like to have been able to finish the series. Almost from the beginning (from issue #12 to be exact) I had a definite conclusion to the Elementals story in mind. I was as disappointed as anyone that the Elementals would likely never be completed. Since working on the original series was no longer an option, I did the next best thing. I created an entirely new superhero series, with entirely new characters, and immediately placed those characters in a situation very similar to what I had planned to do with the Elementals. Then I wrote the conclusion to the story. It's not exactly what I originally intended (the characters in the new series are different enough not to have direct equivalents among the characters in the Elementals), but it's close. And I also think it's a darn good story in its own right.

The name of the new series is PANTHEON. It's twelve issues long, with a one-issue epilogue. As of this writing, Issue #2 is on the stands and the third issue is about to be released. I wrote it, Mike Leeke (my old partner in crime in the Elementals days) is penciling it, and the publisher, Bill Williams is inking it. And yes, before you ask, I'm confident I'll be able to complete my part of this new series because all twelve issues of it (thirteen if you count the epilogue) were written before the first issue appeared. Pantheon will come to its conclusion, provided enough of you keep buying it so Mr. Williams can keep publishing it.

The first two issues of Pantheon are on sale in my Bill's Book Store section. So, if you haven't seen it yet, please pick it up. I hate to blow my own horn, but I believe it's a darn good superhero yarn.

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Yes and no. Except for a couple of character illustrations (which I hardly count), I've never worked for a Marvel. I've done quite a few illustration jobs for DC, but always an issue or two, here and there; never a sustained run on any title.

Over the years I've done quite a few Green Lantern issues, including annuals; some Justice League issues, including annuals; a two-part Huntress story in Showcase 93 (issues #9 and 10, I believe); an issue of Batman and the Outsiders; one of the issues of Bloodbath (which was DC's big crossover book one year when everyone decided to stop buying DC's big crossover books) where I had to draw just about every DC character in every panel. I know I'm forgetting a bunch of stuff, but this should be enough to start you rooting through the back-issue bins in your local comics shop.

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Ironwood, for those who were too young to buy it, or were old enough but chose not to, was an Eleven-issue adult fantasy series, published by Eros Comics. By "adult" I mean that it was as nasty as can be. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the characters and story in Ironwood, the trill of doing a sexually explicit book wore off pretty quickly, and I have little desire to do one again. However, I have done one or two very small Ironwood short stories which were not sexually graphic. Both stories were published in issues of Mythography (which you can find for sale at this very convention in the Bardic Press booth). One was a three-page comics story and the other was a short text story with a couple of illustrations.

It's not out of the question that I will do more stories set in Ironwood, but it's unlikely I will ever again do sexually explicit Ironwood stories. The Eleven-issue Ironwood saga has been collected in two deluxe square-back volumes, available now (and forever more) from Eros Comics, an imprint of Fantagraphics Books. In a few weeks, they will also be available in my Bill's Book Store section of this booth (but only to those eighteen or older).

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Once again, the answer is yes and no. Coventry was a series I was doing, published by Fantagraphics Books. Unfortunately it barely sold enough for me to make a reasonable living. That might have been okay, but month by month Fantagraphics (undergoing hard times in this shaky market) was becoming increasingly less able to pay me the small amounts of money the series actually earned (as of this writing they are still more than half a year late on payments to me). Finally it got to the point where I was going to have to get a day-job in order to survive. Well, I haven't had to have a day-job in seventeen years. I've forgotten what it's like to make an honest living, and I'm not fit for anything but cartooning. Therefore I had to put Coventry on the shelf for a while and go on to other, better paying, projects.

But Coventry's not entirely dead. In some form or another, it will appear again, probably self-published. Hang on if you can. It's not coming soon, but, barring unforeseen calamities, it is coming... someday. for those of you who bought the first three issues, thank you dearly.

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