Weapon X

My Early Years

When I graduated college, I got a job at Marvel Comics. I started in production and stepped up to lettering. At that time, lettering was done on the art or on overlays that were pasted down onto the art with pens and ink. So, the job of the in-house letterers was to match the style of the lettering to make corrections that were needed.

We also would do cover copy and just about anything related to typography. If you look at any Marvel comics covers from about 1990-1992 you may see some of my cover copy or, without knowing it, corrections I made. I graduated with a degree in advertising and graphic design and took a number of typography classes, so I excelled at lettering and soon became head of the lettering department.

One day, assistant editor Kelly Corvese came up to my desk with a logo for a new series that was going to be running in Marvel Comics Presents—an ongoing anthology series—that they weren’t happy with. He asked if I would take a stab at creating a more interesting one. The title was called “Weapon X.” He told me it was a story about how Wolverine got his claws, etc. So, with that info, I went to work. I first looked at the Wolverine logo created by Tom Orzechowski and went from there.

I basically extrapolated out from that logo and created the logo that was used for the series. As a side note, being on staff, it was my job to do all this work on salary, so I never made any additional money for creating that logo. But, after that, I figured, my work was done.

It wasn’t.

Soon after, I was told that Barry Windsor Smith, the person creating the series, whom I was a fan of from my early days, wanted to tweak some of the lettering as he went along and they all agreed that I was the person to do it. The original letterer was Jim Novak, my lettering idol. He was one of the best to do it and I worked hard to letter like him, so they felt I could make it look seamless. I was used to making corrections, so no problem. But there was a catch.

Barry wanted to come to the office and direct me, personally, on any changes he wanted made. Oooookay. Also, he would only come in after 5 p.m. So, that meant that after working all day, I would then stay as late as Barry needed. Being young and looking to please, I agreed.

MCP was a weekly book, so for the next 13 or so weeks, Barry would come in once a week around 5 with original art pages, which were absolutely stunning, sit over my shoulder on a wall bench that was behind my desk and direct me on what he wanted. No pressure.

I can’t say I really got to know Barry much, in fact we didn’t really speak except about the work. Years later, I went up to him at a show to say hi and he didn’t remember me at all. To me, it was a cool thing that happened, to Barry, I’m sure I was just a means to an end. Totally understandable.

But soon after I left Marvel, I was freelancing and I started to get work from Valiant comics. Bob Layton, of Iron Man fame, was art directing and I think I was working on a book that Barry was drawing there. I told Bob the Weapon X story and he smiled until I mentioned that I felt like I went above and beyond my job to help him out and he never even thanked me and said he was thoughtless. That’s when Bob’s smile disappeared and I knew I made the oldest mistake in the book. “Let me guess…Barry’s your friend.” “My best friend.” So, I really put my foot in my mouth. The ignorance of youth.

These days, I’m amazed at the opportunity I had and, honestly, I probably should have thanked Barry for one of the coolest experiences of my career.