by Roger Ash

andEric Nolen-Weathington

M O D E R N M A S T E R S V O L U M E N I N E T E E N :

MIKE PLOOG

Table of Contents

Introduction by J.M. DeMatteis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Part One: A Cowboy in the Marines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Part Two: Where There’s a Will... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Part Three: Marvelous Monsters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Part Four: A Life in Film . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

Part Five: Creating Fantasy Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Part Six: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Modern Masters Volume Nineteen:

MIKE PLOOG

MODERN MASTERS: You were born in Minnesota in1942, correct?

MIKE PLOOG: Right. Mankato, Minnesota. It’s a pret-ty remote place. Well, not any longer. It used to be.

MM: Do you have any siblings?

MIKE: Yes. I had two brothers and a sister.

MM: When did you start drawing? Whendid you become interested in art?

MIKE: To be honest, interestwas different than starting todraw. The main entertain-ment as a kid was the radio. Ispent endless hours in the eveninglistening to the radio and the oldradio shows. That’s what stirredmy imagination. I needed tosee a face. I drew on every-thing. I drew on the walls.I drew on the radio. Idrew continuously.Sergeant Preston of the Yukonwas one of my favorites.I drew him over andover again. The day thatQuaker Oats brought out aQuaker Oats box with a picture ofSergeant Preston, I was absolutelyshattered because it didn’t look any-thing like what I thought he wasgoing to look like. I think the radiowas the first incentive to sit downand make a picture. It seems likeI’ve always drawn.

MM: What sort of radio shows did you like listening tothe best?

MIKE: Oh, dear! I loved the Westerns like Gunsmoke, andSergeant Preston. There was one called Bobby Benson B-Bar-BRiders, Red Rider, and Little Beaver. Things like that. Theother ones that I loved were the scary ones like InnerSanctum and Tales of Horror. And the detective shows. Ithink I pretty well covered the gamut. There was one

called Man of a Thousand Faces. I think Leo G. Carrollplayed the part of the guy. I loved that character becausehe was everyone. There was something magic about him.

MM: You mentioned in your Moonshadows sketchbookthat you used to draw pictures at the local store and geta grape soda, and you always drew the same picture.What was the picture you always drew?

MIKE: It was Roy Rogers. [laughs] Whoever was doingRoy Rogers in comic books at that time only drew him

from a 3/4 profile. Igot that down pat.Basically, I would drawwhatever was on mymind at that particular

time, but Roy Rogers was my staple.

MM: Did you see many comic books or comic stripsgrowing up?

MIKE: Not really. I saw a lot of comic strips. I don’t thinkwe ever really got a newspaper because where I wasbeing raised, I was raised in St. Thomas, Minnesota,there was just a church, two stores, and a very smallschool that I went to. People used to save the comicsfor me. I was quite a fan of newspaper comics, notcomic books. We didn’t get to town all that often and

the only books that were really on the drug store’s shelfwere things like Donald Duck and Archie and Roy Rogers,obviously. I can’t remember super-heroes. If they werethere, I had very little interest in them.

MM: What comic strips didyou particularly enjoy?

MIKE: I loved Li’lAbner. I liked Flash

Gordon and Hal Foster’swork on Prince Valiant. The goofy thing is that I cannever remember reading them. [laughs] I’d just sit andlook at the pictures.

MM: So it was the art in these strips that attracted you?

MIKE: Oh yes. Definitely. Still, to this day, I buy comicbooks and I don’t read them. I have a lot of friends whoare writers who’d probably shoot me for that. [laughter]

Part 1: A Cowboy in the Marines

6

MM: Eventually, your family ended upmoving to L.A.

MIKE: Yeah. My mother and father sepa-rated when I was about ten years old. Weleft the farm and piled into a brand newChevrolet. I’d never been in a new carbefore. When my mother and dad sold thefarm, mom bought a brand new Chevy andthe five of us piled into it and drove acrosscountry. A very leisurely drive, mind you.We stopped everywhere. Anywhere thattook our fancy, we stopped. I think that hasalways given me this strange wanderlustbecause the most exciting period of my lifewas that trip from Minnesota to California.

MM: What sort of places did you stop?

MIKE: Everywhere. We took turns choos-ing motels. Any time we saw a nationalmonument sign or something, we had tostop and read it and take our picture by it.Every state that we went through, at theborder where it says you’re now leavingIowa and going into Kansas or whatever, apicture had to be taken. The biggest mem-ory of stopping was in the Southwestwhen we got into Arizona and NewMexico because that was my fascination.That was Indian country. My first sightingsof an American Indian absolutely blew mymind because there they were, TheAmerican Indian. That wonderful personthat fascinated me all my life.

MM: Did you see the opportunity to seemany movies?

MIKE: I think Le Suer had amovie theatre, but I don’tremember going to it. St.Thomas obviously didn’thave one. It wasn’t until I gotto California. We went to a lotof drive-in movies. My poormother. She used to have tosneak us in because of thefact that we couldn’t reallyafford to go to moviesthat often. So what we’ddo is we would pop all ofour popcorn and put it inbuckets and big bags andhide under a blanket. Theyprobably knew that whenthey let us in the damn the-atre [laughter] because thiswoman is going to a movietheatre all by herself, andin the back seat onthe floor board, isthis lumpy blanketand the smell of pop-corn. Obviously the drive-in moviesat that time let us get away with it. We usedto go to drive-in movies on a regular basis.

Television was the thing that blew mymind. When we got to California, my moth-er acquired a used television with a roundscreen. There were pictures to these stories.For somebody that had tried all of his child-hood to picture stories, to actually see pic-tures with stories was absolutely wonderful.

MM: How old were you when you movedto California?

MIKE: I was about ten or eleven.

MM: Did you enjoy the same sorts ofmovies and TV shows as radio shows?Westerns, for example?

MIKE: Oh yes. The whole family was intoWesterns. We ran a relatively poor farm. Wedid a lot of horse trading and there were alot of animals through the farm. I loved thehorses, I really did. That was my first love.The whole family loved the Westerns andfrom the first time we turned the TV on, wewere seeking out the Westerns.

Previous Page: Mikeloves Westerns, so here’sone of his cowboy draw-ings.Above: Another cowboy, this time as partof a birthday greeting.Left: Okay, not quite acowboy, but the samuraigenre isn’t all that different from Westerns,really.

Artwork ©2008 Mike Ploog.

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MM: Did you ever get into the movie serials like FlashGordon?

MIKE: Oh yes. Definitely. They were absolutely fascinat-ing because of the imagery. A lot of these things I’d seenportrayed in comic strips, but to see people actually walk-ing around them and using them, you can only imaginewhat a thrill it was to see something like that. BusterCrabbe was doingFlash Gordon at thetime, and to see himcoming in and outof that spaceship,even though when itflew through the airsparks were justdropping off theback of it, it didn’tmatter to me. Itworked. It was a realspaceship. Andinside that space-ship, no matter howprimitive it was, hehad these levers anddials and everything.

MM: Obviously itwas a big change foryou moving from asmall Minnesotatown out to L.A.Did you have anytrouble fitting in?

MIKE: I didn’t fit invery well. There wasno two ways aboutit. You can’t comefrom a relativelypoor dirt farm andbe thrown intoBurbank, California.It was AmericanGraffiti time. It wasblack peggers andpink mandarin col-ored shirts and hot rodders. What did I know from that?That, and we were still kind of living on the cusp financial-ly. As opposed to putting me in Levi’s, my mother wouldput me in corduroys that were one size too big because sheknew I was going to grow into them. I don’t think I stillhave, actually. I wore my Uncle Harold’s shoes for severalyears because he was a very small man. We had a lot of hisshoes for some stupid reason. [laughter] I’m wearing an old

man’s shoes to school. Just like today, unless you’re cool,you don’t fit in. Obviously, I didn’t fit in very well.

MM: When you were in school, did you study art?

MIKE: No, but oddly enough, I did do some art becausethey had a school newspaper and I did do a little spotart for it. It wasn’t actually an art class, but it was a class

that you coulddraw in. Theteacher wasn’t real-ly an art teacher,but I could drawbetter than any-body else in theclass. That was myfirst taste, I think,of finding attentionthrough my work.And finding a wayof communicatingwith other peoplethat normallywouldn’t want tocommunicate withme.

MM: You eventual-ly joined theMarines. How didthat come about?

MIKE: A lot ofthings led up to it.Basically what it waswas I didn’t get onwith school at all. Ididn’t fit in. I justdidn’t feel like it wasa place that Ibelonged, althoughI did go to schoolfor quite a while. Iwent to school forsix or seven yearswhile I was there.During that period,

it was an absolute struggle. I had one or two friends andthat was about it. Going to a party was absolutely out ofthe question. I kind of drifted away from school and I drift-ed down to the river bottoms in Burbank, California, justoff of Riverside Drive, because there was nothing there butstables. Down there, I knew how to talk to people. I knewabout animals. I was a country boy. They liked me. I foundpeople that I could relate to. When I first got down there,

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MM: How did you end up at Filmation?

MIKE: I can’t tell you how it came about, I attribute it toan old friend at Leatherneck magazine named Duane Wells.He was a dear friend. He still is a dear friend. He kepttelling me, “Mike, you can really make a good living atthis. You’ve got the ability to make a living at this.” Thatwas always in the back of my mind. One day I decided.“That’s it. I’m going to try it.” I spent about a week put-ting together a portfolio of drawings. Obviously, duringa week you’re not going to put together anythingthat’s going to knock anybody’s socks off, but itwas an example of what the hell I could do.A lot of things I ripped off out of comicbooks. [chuckles] I stole things wherever Ipossibly could to put them in this port-folio. I went down to Filmation and Ishowed Don Christensen my portfo-lio. He said. “Okay. You’re hired.” Itblew my mind. It was that easy. Iwas hired. He put me in the backdoing cleanup where I would cleanup other people’s drawings.

Don did me a wonderful favor. Hesaid, “We want you to do other things,but you’re going to have to learn howto do them.” Don would stay late withme in the evenings and show me howto do layouts, which is kind of the nextstep up from cleanup; to actually do thelayouts yourself. He got me doing layoutswhich was absolutely fantastic because itwas more moneythan I’d evermade before inmy life. Thatblew me away. Ispent one seasonwith Filmation. That’show loyal I am. [laughs] I spent one season with them andHanna-Barbera offered me more money and so I left.

MM: What did you work on at Filmation?

MIKE: Batman and Superman were the things that I workedon when I first got there, then they put me off onto otherthings. The Batman/Superman Hour was the major thing.

MM: Was that one of the few times in your career thatyou’ve worked on super-heroes?

MIKE: As a matter of fact, it was the only time.

MM: Once you went over to Hanna-Barbera, what wereyou doing for them?

MIKE: I got over there and that season theywere doing all this goofy stuff. I worked

on Wacky Races and Motormouse andAutocat. The only good thingwas that towards the end of mytour there, they were doingthe pilot for Scooby-Doo and Igot a chance to do somedrawings for Scooby-Doo.Prior to that, I was doinggoofy cars and goofyairplanes and thingslike that. Anythingthat could carry

Autocat andMotormouse around.

[laughter]

MM: Were you still doinglayout for them?

MIKE: Yeah. It was mostlylayouts. Towards the end,

they were having me do moredetailed drawings for some of thedesigns on the cars and things. Buttalk about boring. [laughter]

MM: Did you happen towork with Alex Toth whileyou were there?

MIKE: No, I didn’t. I only met Alex on a couple of occa-sions and, for some strange reason and I don’t know what itwas, Alex took an instant dislike to me. At evening car-toonist meetings, we nearly went outside for a fist fight. Ifound Alex a very difficult man to deal with and talk to. Ionce called him for some advice, and he cut me off soquickly that I thought I must have said something terrible.He was his own man. I had an enormous amount of respect

Part 2: Where There’sa Will...

Previous Page:Caricature of Mike’s former boss, Will Eisner .Above: One of Mike’scontributions to PSmagazine, featuringConnie Rodd.

Connie Rodd, PS ™ and ©2008Department of the Army.

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for his work. He was a brilliant artist.Absolutely brilliant. Personally, he was a verydifficult man to get on with. And fortunately,I didn’t have to work with him. [laughter]

MM: Tell me about your move to PSMagazine.

MIKE: One day—I wish I could rememberthe guy’s name, he was a hell of a goodartist—a co-worker came in and said,“Mike, I belong to the NationalCartoonists Society, and we just got thisnewsletter where Will Eisner has put an adin saying that he’s looking for an artistwith military experience and who has atendency to draw in his style.” He showedme the letter and it had a Will Eisner PSMagazine drawing in it. I said, “I know thiswork.” Little did I know that I’d spent fouror five years drawing Will Eisner’s stuff. Hewas the guy who was doing PS Magazineand PS Magazine was like the Training Aidsstepping off point. Everybody went backto PS Magazine, so I was continuously emu-lating Will Eisner’s style without evenknowing who Will Eisner was.

He wanted somebody to come to NewYork. I didn’t send him any artwork, I calledhim up and said I’d be interested in doingthis. He said, “What have you been doing?”I told him that I had been working inTraining Aids, and the goofy thing was, I’dbeen drawing his stuff for years. He said,“I’m gonna be in L.A. in about a week. Canyou meet me at the Beverly Hills Hotel?”Somebody else must have been paying forit because Will wouldn’t have sprung for theBeverly Hills Hotel! Anyway, he said, “Bringsome drawings along.” So I met him at thehotel. I brought the drawings and I had todo some new because I had nothing toshow from my Training Aids days. Helooked at them. We sat and chatted for awhile. He said, “What day is it? It’s likeMonday or Tuesday, right? Can you be towork next Monday in New York?” And Isaid, “Sure!” [laughter] I was single. The ideaof going to work in New York nextMonday? You’ve got to be joking! This wasabsolutely amazing. So that’s what got mefrom Hanna-Barbera to PS Magazine.

MM: I think a lot of people have heard ofPS Magazine, but it usually doesn’t go

beyond the fact that Will Eisner wasinvolved with it. What is PS Magazine?

MIKE: PS Magazine was a postscript to themilitary manuals. The military manualscovered everything. There was a manualthree to four inches thick for every vehicleand every weapon that the military had. PSMagazine’s job was to break down thesemanuals into the simplest cartoon form sothat the actual guy in the military whocan’t even read this stuff—the people whowrote it can’t even really read it—couldunderstand what this manual was saying.You were literally doing a monthly book

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that was helping the average GI or Marineto understand what this vehicle that he wasresponsible for, or this weapon that he wasresponsible for, was really all about. Howto take care of it. How to repair it. How tomaintain it. That’s what PS Magazine wasabout. It was done in a cartoon form, but itwas done in a Will Eisner cartoon formwhich meant that the GIs you saw workingon these things were real GIs. The GIs

could relate to them. They could recognizethemselves in the characters. They under-stood the humor because it wasn’t puttingthe guy down. It was more aimed at theestablishment. “They say it’s a smoo.” “No!It’s not a smoo, it’s a smerack! Don’t theyknow their smoos from their smeracks?”[laughter] And a lot of times, if they wrotethose manuals, it was a smoo but, sixmonths later, they realized a smoo didn’t

work so they replaced it with asmerack, but they didn’t botherto tell the poor guy. It was ourjob to keep up to date and toportray this information to thelowest common denominator, theguy that really didn’t want to readthe manual and didn’t really total-ly want to understand hismachine. Suddenly, this cartoonwould get him interested. And itworked. It’s still running, I think.

MM: Did you do any writing forthe magazine or were you strictlydoing art?

MIKE: The only writing I woulddo for it was the gags. I would begiven a list of different assign-ments in the book, and I wouldhave to come up with a gag thatwould fit the situation. How tokeep sand out of an M-16, or howto check the oil pressure, thingslike that. What’s the pressure ofthe tires on your jeep whetheryou’re on a hard road or a dirtroad? You’d have to come up witha gag that would lead you intothat particular situation. Let’s justsay the tires on a jeep. You letsome of the air out if you’re insand. You pump the tires up ifyou’re back onto a hard road. Soyou’d have a GI standing therenext to an Arab on a camel. He’sasking the Arab, “What can youdo to get this camel moving fasteracross the sand?” Well, obviously,he’s got to have bigger feet, so youhave to have bigger tires and moresurface. It was goofy things likethat. I don’t know how goofy thatwas. [laughter]

Below: The second pageof Mike’s piece for PS. Next Page: Mike’s char-acter, The Artfull Dodger,introducing The Spirit.

The Artfull Dodger ™ and ©Mike Ploog. Connie Rodd, PS ™and ©2008 Department of theArmy. The Spirit ™ and ©2008Will Eisner estate.

Part 3: MarvelousMonsters

MM: What made you decide to approach Marvel forwork?

MIKE: I didn’t. Actually, they approached me. Theygave me a call and asked if I would be interested indoing some work for them. I thought, “Woah!” But I did-n’t know what it was going to be. So what I did is, I didup a presentation story and it was a Western, whichthey were obviously not interested in. [laughs] Westernswere dead in the water at the time. When Icame in there with this Western story they musthave thought, “This guy’s living in anotherworld.” They didn’t like the story. I went home.A day or two later Roy Thomas called me andsaid, “Hey, Mike! Sorry I wasn’t there whenyou came in. I loved your Western story by theway.” Still, Roy wants to do the damn Westernstory.

MM: Was the Western story “Tin Star”?

MIKE: Yeah! I ran into Roy about two or threeyears ago and he said, “God! We’ve got to dothat ‘Tin Star’ story.” I looked at him like,“What in the hell are you talking about?” Hesays, “The Western.” I thought, “God, I can’tremember that.” He told me the story becausehe remembered it. I thought, “Damn! Thatwould make a good book.” At that time, I wasreally hot on doing a Western because I lovedthe mountain man sagas: the JeremiahJohnson stuff and things like that. Managainst nature and the Wild West villains.That was one of my favorite subjects. One ofthese days I may do it. If it’s up to RoyThomas, I’ll end up doing it tomorrow.

Anyway, he says, “We’re thinking seri-ously about doing a series of horrorcomics. We’d like you to do one.” I said I’dlove it because I needed the work, and itwas either do comics or go back to L.A.and do animation. I went in and theypitched me this werewolf book. I thoughtit was a great idea. I went home and Igave it some thought. I took a look at avideo I had of I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Ithought, “That’s great. That’s perfect.” So

I started doing the werewolf book and everything else ismore or less history.

MM: The early issues of Werewolf By Night really had anoticeable Eisner influence. How much of that was yourstyle and how much of it was a result of working withEisner at PS Magazine?

MIKE: Oddly enough, my style of drawing was verymuch like Will’s anyway because of the fact that I’d

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copied so much of his workwhile I was in the military.Then working with him, hewas such a heavy influenceand it was such an easy stylefor me to slip into. The thingwas, I kind of fought thestyle. I didn’t fight it in thesense that I didn’t like it. Iloved it. It was easy and it wasflowing, but it was rather soft.I spent a great deal of timetrying to develop somethingthat was a little bit harder anda little bit more oriented tohorror, which is not easy. I’mkind of a natural cartoonist,and in horror, you have tohave a sense of reality to it tomake it believable. The onlyway I could really do that wasthrough acting. Somehow oranother involve the reader inthe emotions of the charactersand just hope like hell that Iwas pulling it off.

MM: Looking back atWerewolf, it was actually a fair-ly violent book. People diedin it quite often. Do you thinkyour style helped you to getaway with being that violent?

MIKE: I’m not real mad aboutviolence unless I can justify itwithin the context of thestory. I think my style helpssoften violence. I didn’t pullpeople’s throats out or any-thing like that. Most of theviolence was done over theback of somebody and youdidn’t actually see it. I’m areal firm believer that what you don’t see isscarier than what you do see. If you seetendrils and blood and guts and gore,where are you going to go from there?Nothing’s going to be more frighteningthan that. Then the second time you useit, it’s got nothing. You use it sparingly andI think it has more impact.

MM: Did you do any character designs forthe book?

MIKE: I did all of them. I just starteddrawing and they said, “Don’t stop. Justkeep drawing.”

MM: With this, and later with Frankenstein,were you given any direction to makethem look like the classic Universal ver-sions of the characters?

MIKE: That was more or less my idea;good, bad, or indifferent, I feltFrankenstein was a recognizable character

Previous Page: Statueby Night! Opening splashpage of the debut issueof Werewolf by Night.Above: Just a little violence from Werewolfby Night #14.

Werewolf by Night ™ and©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.

and he had his identity. To try to change his identity, I felt that was a big mistake.You can change his personality, you can change a lot of things, but the look ofhim—when people see him, they know exactly who he is. I felt that was neces-sary. Today, if I was doing Frankenstein I’d probably do him totally differently, butback then I thought that was important. The identification factor.

MM: And you carried that through with the werewolf as well?

MIKE: I wanted the werewolf not to look like your average, run of the millwerewolf. I gave him a face that I couldwork with. I gave him a shorter nose.He probably looks more like a pugthan he does a wolf, [laughs] but it

worked for me. Nobody complainedabout it so I just kept going with it.It fit more within the characterthat I was trying to give the

werewolf.There wassomethingsoft about

the werewolf, inmy mind any-way. It may

never have come across in any ofthe art or story, but I felt there wassomething there to him.

MM: Werewolf was your firstmonthly comic. Was that chal-lenging for you jumping intothat?

MIKE: Not really, becauseI’ve always been a bit of a workhorse. I enjoy having the dead-lines and having to sit down andgo to work. I’m an early morningperson. I get up early in the morning and I go towork, and sometimes I work into the evenings. Inthose days, I was working both day and night justkeeping up with those things.

MM: The story in Werewolf was set in L.A. Didyour growing up there help you with any of thesettings for the book?

MIKE: Roy decided to put it in L.A. because ofthe fact that I knew L.A. and it was somethingthey had never done. Marvel Comics is more orless based in New York City. L.A. and the palmtrees and the bikers and all of that stuff, it wasmore conducive to what I knew. It was kind ofan automatic thing to base it in L.A. for somegoofy reason, if I remember correctly. I have toadmit, my memory of the ’70s is rather vague. [laughter]

Above: Conventionsketch of Frankenstein’smonster.Right: Mike’s approvedfinal design for the starof The Monster ofFrankenstein.Next Page Top: Hoorayfor Hollywood, part ofthe werewolf’s stompinggrounds. Panel fromWerewolf by Night #2.Next Page Bottom:Dracula “vamps” it up inthe crossover issue,Werewolf by Night #15.

Monster of Frankenstein, Tombof Dracula, Werewolf by Night™ and ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

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MM: You left Marvel for a few years to work with RalphBakshi.

MIKE: When I left Marvel, I actually went to work witha guy by the name of Takashi who was doing an animat-ed film called Winds of Change. I’d worked with Takashi atFilmation many, many years ago, and now he was pro-ducing. I worked there for about six months, I guess.One day I got a telephone call from Ralph Bakshi. Ralphsaid, “Mike, I’m you’re biggest fan. I love ya. You’re thegreatest. [laughs] I want you to work on a special project.It’s right down your alley. It’s Lord of the Rings.” I said,“Wow. You’re kidding.” “We’re starting pre-productionon it. Get over here. I gotta talk to you. You gotta go towork for me next week.” I went over and I talked to him.He didn’t have anything done yet on Lordof the Rings, but I was going to start nextMonday on design and concept. I gotover there and he said, “Well,yes, Mike, I’d like you todo the Lord of the Ringsstuff, but first I’dlike you to helpme finish offWizards.”[laughs]

So it was kind of a trick just to get me over there to getme to work on Wizards. I wasn’t quite sure what I wasdoing. He called them “history drawings,” or somethinglike that. They were just still drawings. They would putvoice-over on it and then they just plugged the stilldrawings in. It was to fill in the story gaps he’d skippedover while doing the regular animated part of the film. Itwas great fun. I enjoyed it, but it was very strange.

MM: How long did it take you to do all of those?

MIKE: It didn’t take all that long. I worked on them offand on because we were holding meetings for Lord of theRings. I even did some background drawings. It tookabout six months, I guess.

MM: Once you did get going on Lord ofthe Rings, what was that like?

Part 4: A Lifein Film

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MIKE: [chuckles] It was like any otherRalph Bakshi production. It was geniuschaos. Ralph is one of the most creativepeople I think I’ve ever worked with,except that it’s totally unharnessed. It’stotally out of control. I really enjoyedworking with Ralph. Lord of the Rings wasgreat fun. I did an awful lot of differentthings on Lord of the Rings. I did characterdesigns. I did a lot of backgrounds. I didstoryboards. I even played the part ofGimli in several sequences. And I was aringwraith on horseback, which was greatfun. I enjoyed it because Ralph had no ideawhere to get these horses, so I went to alot of old friends and they brought in allthe horses. I designed the costume. Weshot it out on the Salton Sea on the saltflats so that there would be no back-ground. It was hot. Really hot. And Idesigned these things so that you weren’tgoing to see any face in the helmet. Therewas a big cowl that went way up, almost tothe horns of the helmet, so you never real-ly saw a face. They were made out of aheavy, woolen sort of material so that itwould flow when the horses were running.

Inside

that cowl, it was like an oven. Better menthan I were passing out from heat exhaus-tion in those damn costumes. Ralph wasabsolutely terrified of horses, so when allof the scenes with horses were shot, hewas directing from the trailer.

It was a lot of fun because I wasinvolved in a lot of different parts of theproduction. I really felt we were going tomake a damn good animated film, butwhat happened was that too many peoplestarted to influence Ralph. We’d takencharacters out because we didn’t have timeto introduce them properly and youwouldn’t know who in the hell they were.They’d just pop up and then disappearagain, which would make no sense. Itwould just confuse everything. But peoplewould say, “You have to have this characterin there. It’s a must.” So Ralph would comein the next day and say, “Okay guys, thischaracter’s back in.” And we’d go, “Oh,no!” [laughter] It was quite an experience.

I’ve got to tell you one story. We hadshot this sequence with this young bullrider. It was shot on a horse that wasn’tused to the particular bridle that wehad on it. The kid was Frodo and itwas the Flight to the Ford. Theringwraiths were chasing him. Hepulled up to stop in front of the

camera and, because of thebridle, the horse’s head

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Below: Some of Mike’scharacter designs forRalph Bakshi’s Wizards.

Wizards ™ and ©2008 RalphBakshi.

different worlds. The CreatureShop weren’t worried about whatthe creatures had todo in the movie. Wewere worried aboutthe movie and gettingthese things to do whatneeded to be done for thefilm. It was an experience.

MM: You did quite a lotof work with the Hensonpeople over the years.Were they enjoyable peo-ple to work with?

MIKE: They were won-derful people. They’revery creative and once theyknow what the problems aregoing to be, they’ll go to anyextreme to solve the problem.It’s like on Little Shop of Horrors, theHenson people did the plant. Therewere sometimes 30-some people operatingthis damn man-eating plant. They werefantastic to work with.

MM: You also worked on The Storyteller TVshow with them. Was there much of a dif-ference between working on the TV showversus the films?

MIKE: Not really. I was freelancing atthe time and I was working from home.They’d send me a script andI’d just send them back astoryboard. Basically,that’s all it was.

MM: Was it yourassociation withthem that leadyou to workingon Little Shop ofHorrors?

MIKE: Yes,because FrankOz was thedirector. That’sone of my all-time favoritefilms. That wasone of the mostenjoyable of my experi-

ences working on films. Frankwas just a jewel.That was one ofFrank’s big inde-pendent movies

where Frankjumped off on his own. Hewanted me to literally sto-ryboard the movie almostas if it was animated,because during the songsequences in particular,we had to do specialcuts to get the charac-ters in there. A lot oftimes the camera wasover-cranked. The plantcouldn’t move that fast,so we had to cut to getSeymour into it. Frankand I worked very closely

together on the song sequences. Itwas absolutely fantastic. I really enjoyed

working on that.

MM: What was Frank Oz like towork for?

Previous Page: More ofthe storyboard sequencefor Little Shop of Horrors.Left: Mike’s final headdesign for Shrek. Mikeleft the production aftertwo years on the job andwell before the moviewas finished, but hisdesigns still showthrough in the film.Below: Shrek storyboardwith Shrek and Donkey.

Little Shop of Horrors artwork©2008 Warner Bros. Shrek ™ and ©2008 DreamWorksAnimation, LLC.

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MIKE: He’s a gentleman among gentle-man. He and Richard Lester are the samekind of characters and approach film thesame way. Frank was the first person onany film production I ever worked on thatwalked into the art department and said,“Now listen folks. Family comes first. Ifyou’ve got something that is pressing athome, take time. Do it. Family comesfirst, movie comes second.” Never did Iever hear that out of anybody else’smouth. When you went to work on afilm, it was like committing yourself to amonastery. You had to shave your head.You had to wear gowns. [laughter] And youcouldn’t leave the premises. It was a totalcommitment. Nobody even got sick onfilms.

MM: Did you work with Frank on anyother films?

MIKE: Yes. I did some work on Dirty RottenScoundrels. We’ve been friends for a longtime. He sends me e-mails with goofyjokes all the time. I went and visited himon the set when he was filming his latestfilm, Death at a Funeral.

MM: You worked on Disney’s BlackCauldron, which, from what I’ve read, waskind of a mess of a movie. What can yousay about that?

MIKE: I think I can sum it up. I workedthere for about a year and we went to ascreening where they had partial animation.Some of it was inked and painted, otherswere just storyboards. As I walked out, theproducer, Joe Hale, said, “Okay, Mike.What’d you think?” I told him, “That wasthe best two movies I’ve ever watched.”They had two different directors working

Above: Design piece forShrek. You gotta love theBaba Yaga-inspired chicken hut.Next Page: Storyboardsof Shrek’s meeting withthe two witches.

Shrek ™ and ©2008DreamWorks Animation, LLC.

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MM: You didn’t do much comic work in the ’80s and’90s. Was that intentional or were you just really busyworking on movies?

MIKE: I was really busy with the movies. They all cameone right after another during that period of time. Infilm, it’s kind of a goofy thing. They kind of know whenyou’re coming to the end of your project and the phonestarts to ring. Which is good.

MM: What made you decide to get back into comics?

MIKE: The film industry changed enormously; aboutten years ago it really changed. It was changing prior tothat, but ten years ago it just

kind of went through the roof. Everybody’s taking them-selves very seriously. The films just weren’t fun to workon anymore. There were too many people in charge. Itwas nothing to work on a film to where you’d go towork on it and you’d find that they didn’t have a script.You, as the story department, and the director, more orless sat down and worked out the script, or at leastworked out the sequences. I worked on films wherethere were six producers, and each producer was lookingout for his own interest. As soon as you felt like you’dgotten someplace, then suddenly it would go beforethese producers and each one of them would have

something to say about it. Many times you’d have tostart from scratch again. There was so much moneyinvolved in the production of a film that everybodyjust kept their heads down. There was just no funon the sets. There wasn’t any fun in the art depart-ments anymore. Everybody was just taking every-thing very, very seriously. I guess when there’s thatmuch money involved, you have totake it seriously. It’s supposed tobe a job where you’re dealingwith an art form of some kind,but it doesn’t seem that way.

MM: One of the books you diddo during the ’90s was theClassics Illustrated version of TheAdventures of Tom Sawyer. Howdid that happen?

MIKE: I think I wasapproached by FirstPublishing and askedif I would be interest-ed in doing a ClassicsIllustrated. I said I wouldlove to do one, and I’dlove to do Mark Twain.They said, “Would youlike to do Tom Sawyer?” Isaid, “I’d love it, and I’dalso like to do HuckFinn.” Actually,I wantedto doHuck Finn

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Part 5: CreatingFantasy Worlds

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first, but they wanted me to do Tom Sawyerfirst. That was just great fun. I reallyenjoyed that because I’m a big Mark Twainfan. I think those two stories are justabsolutely magical stories.

MM: After hearing a bit about your child-hood, I’m curious if you feel an affinity forTom and Huck.

MIKE: Oh, yes. Definitely. I was relivingmy childhood. The funny thing is, when Iwrote and illustrated that book, I droveeverybody in the building nuts. I had a stu-dio above a coffee shop in a small town inWiltshire, England. I played “DuelingBanjos” over and over and over. I had it ona loop, and it just kept going over andover again. Believe it or not, I paced thatentire book—the artwork, the dialog,everything—to “Dueling Banjos.”

MM: You did some interesting layouts inthe book. In the whitewashing sequence,for example, you just had the fence in thebackground instead of traditional panelborders. What led to that experimentation?

MIKE: It really wasn’t experimentingbecause I did quite a bit of that when I wasworking on PS Magazine. That’s kind of anold Will Eisner stunt: leave the page openand just get into the acting. What alwayscomes to mind for me is that wonderfulSaturday Evening Post cover that NormanRockwell did called “The Gossips,” and it’sjust people’s heads. I like that kind of feel-ing. If you don’t have to confine the panel,it’s really great fun to do it. You have togive a lot of thought to it, so it does take alot more time.

MM: Why did Huck Finn never happen?

MIKE: First Publishing went out of busi-ness. That was about the size of it. I hadworked it all up, and broke it down. Thehardest part of it is taking a big story andbreaking it down to however many pagesyou had. They had even given me extrapages on that, if I remember right. I didwant to get in the hucksters who pickedHuck up and took him through town andthe old lady he ended up living with. I nomore got it broke down and was ready togo to work, than they went out of business.

MM: Around that same time, you also didthe adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s The Lifeand Adventures of Santa Claus. What attractedyou to that story?

MIKE: Santa Claus. I always wanted to doa Santa Claus book. That book wasbrought to my attention years and yearsbefore. When I read it, I found that it’s a

Previous Page:TomSawyer reads his story.Above : Queen Zurlinefrom Mike’s adaptation ofThe Life and Adventures ofSanta Claus.

Artwork ™ and ©2008 MikePloog.

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He had this Stardust Kid story, and he sent mean outline of it. I read it and I liked it. I juststarted doing drawings. I must have donemaybe 15 or 20 drawings of characters andstuff. I had a bunch of old drawings of char-acters as well. All together, I sent him a hugewad of drawings. Between the drawings andhis outline, The Stardust Kid was born. It was areal collaboration, which I enjoyed doing.

MM: Would you say that you had moreinput into the story on this than you didon Abadazad?

MIKE: It’s always a hard thing to say whenyou’re talking about a collaboration. Theartwork is a stimulus to the writer, and thestory’s a stimulus to the artist. It was prob-

ably a very equal collaboration, which isthe way it should be. Too many times,writers try to write to artists and artists tryto draw to writers, and it is just not a mar-riage made in Heaven.

MM: Stardust Kid is a bit darker thanAbadazad. Was that intentional?

MIKE: It just worked out that way.Abadazad was going to get darker, I’m sure,because we had a whole world to explore.In The Stardust Kid, we had only a few booksto do it in, so it seemed to get darker fasterjust because of the fact that it was dealingwith evil trees, and evil places, and younever knew what was going to turn up nextthat was going to try to harm the kids. Ithad that dark side. I enjoy the dark side ofthings because it’s a great contrast. It makesthe good even better. You need those con-trasts. The Stardust Kid’’s got plenty of that.

MM: Do you have a favorite characterfrom there?

MIKE: I think my fish man. I like him. Ithink we could have done a lot more withhim. He had a big role to play, but you’veonly got so much material you can stick inthe book.

MM: Both of these projects, and the SantaClaus book, were creator-owned. Was thatimportant to you?

MIKE: It wasn’t important, but it felt goodthat you were doing something that actual-ly was your material and belonged to you.Good material is good material whethersomebody else owns it or you own it.Right now, I’m working on The Spirit.Everybody under the sun seems to own theSpirit, but I love working on him. I put anenormous amount of work into the stories.

MM: Stardust Kid started out at Image thenmoved over to Boom! Studios. Why didthat happen?

MIKE: It wasn’t really at Image, it was atDesperado. At Desperado, Joe Pruett, who’sthe nicest guy in the world, just had toomuch on his plate. He wasn’t taking care ofthings properly. The books were printedway, way too dark. There would be big mis-takes in the copy. He wasn’t there to really

Above: Every storyneeds a villain, and “theWoman” certainly fit thebill in Stardust Kid(though, as with mostgood stories, thingsaren’t always what theyseem).Next Page: Pencils forStardust Kid #3, page 18and the cover of StardustKid #4, featuring Mike’sfavorite character of theseries, Ruchh the RiverGiant.

Stardust Kid and all relatedcharacters ™ and ©2008 J.M.DeMatteis and Mike Ploog.

look after it and nurture it the way I felt it should be.After the third issue, I thought, “That’s it. The color is wayoff. It’s way too dark. It doesn’t look anything like it’smeant to look.” Nick Bell was doing beautiful color workon it. We had the option to pull out if we wanted to. J.M.had been doing work with Boom! before that, so he said,“Let’s take it to Boom!.” I said, “Let’s take it someplace wheresomebody’s going to watch out for it and just do somechecks on the proofs.” So it went to Boom! and Boom! fin-ished it off rather nicely. We’re coming out now with thepaperback. We’ve collected all the stories, so now all five aregoing to be in one book, and it really looks good.

MM: And the colors have been corrected to look like youwant them to?

MIKE: The colors have all been corrected. Everything hasbeen corrected. It looks great.

MM: Do you plan to do more Stardust Kid stories, or is thatstory told?

MIKE: No story is ever really told, particularly if it’s a fantasystory. Fantasy lives on another world. There’s a good possibil-ity of doing more Stardust Kid. The thing is, we need to seehow it’s received once we get the album out. It should be outsoon. That’s what they tell me anyway.

MM: You obviously like this type of story. What’s the attrac-tion for you?

MIKE: Imagination. I like stories where I can actually put myimagination to work. It bores me stiff if there’s nothing inthere that I cannot create. I need my imagination to getstirred for me to really get behind it. I love things that haveimagination to them.

MM: You also had your own trading card set. How’d thathappen?

MIKE: I tell ya, that was one of the finest experiences inmy life. I loved doing those. What happened is I leftEngland in the late ’80s because the film industry just driedup. I had done the Santa Claus book. Mike Freelander, Godlove him, calls me up and says, “Mike, I have a companythat does trading cards. We do them on different artists.Would you like to do a trading card set?” I thought aboutit and I thought, “What in the hell would I put in it?” Isaid, “I would love to do a trading card set, but I haven’tgot any material.” He said, “I want you to do 90 or 100paintings.” I said, “You’re kidding!” He said, “No.” I said,“What do you want me to paint?” [laughs] He said,“Anything. Anything that comes into your head. But I dowant some of your monster stuff.” So I sat down and juststarted painting. I had a ball! I absolutely loved it. I neverhad so much fun in my life. To be honest with you, I’dnever painted that much in my life. I’m not really noted

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Part 6: Storytelling andthe Creative Process

MM: What artists influenced you?

MIKE: That’s always a trick question. It depends onwhat I’m doing. Painting-wise, I fell in love with N.C.Wyeth so long ago that he’s always been a big inspira-tion. There are so many other artists. If I’m doing water-colors, I look at different artists. If I’m doing oils, I lookat different artists. As far as line art and comics go, Ithink that Milton Caniff was a big influence. He usedthese great blocks of black, and everything was so dra-matic. I loved that. Even before I knew what itmeant, I loved it. And his story-telling was very good. Therewas a lot of emotion in it. Ialways have to go back toCaniff, but there have beenso many others that it’simpossible to name themall. Everybody influencesme in some way or anoth-er. It’s like I walked intothis life with no identityand I just borrowed itfrom so many differentpeople and so manyfantastic artists. Hopefully,one of these days I’ll find myown style. Then I’ll proba-bly be out of work, so itwon’t do any good.

MM: When you wereworking at Marvel, didyou mostly work Marvel-style off of a plot, or wereyou given full scripts?

MIKE: I was working offplots, which made it a lotmore comfortable for me.I’d worked in animation andfilm, so I had a good sense of laying outa story knowing that I needed a beginning, middle, andend. A plot would allow me to pace the book. I couldstart it off with the introduction of the story, and then inthe middle have them come into the conflict, and thenwrap it up in the end. I enjoyed working that way. Most

of the writers I worked with did it like that. Believe me,some of them took advantage of it. [chuckles]

MM: How so?

MIKE: Sometimes it wouldn’t even be a written plot. Itwould just be a telephone call. Most of these stories aremonster of the month or villain of the month. Theygave me an idea of what the villain did and I had to getto the villain and, somehow or another, defeat him. It

could be nothing more than a ten-minute tele-phone call and then I’d sit down and startdrawing. That’s not to say that any of mywriters were lazy, because they weren’t.They were damn good writers.

MM: Could you tell me a bit moreabout how you broke down the plots?

MIKE: I’m somebody that has to thinkwith a pencil. I’ll read a script or a

plot just to get the impressionof where it’s going, what it’sgoing to do, and what’sgoing to happen. Then Isit down with a penciland I go through onescene or situation or page

at a time and let it build,always keeping in mind where

I have to get to. I’m just buildingup to a point, then I build up toanother point, until I end thestory. So it’s all in thumbnails.

MM: Do you transfer the thumb-nails up to your completedpages?

MIKE: Sometimes I do, if I’vegot a good layout. Thumbnailsaren’t always good compositions.

What you’re doing is you’re just trying to tell a story inpictures. You’re not always thinking about compositionand how you’re filling the space. If you’ve got a goodone, you throw it on the computer, blow it up, and justtrace it off. Nine times out of ten, it’s not a good com-position. Something always has to be changed.

Sometimes you’ll do a panel and you’ll real-ize that it shouldn’t be one panel, it’s twopanels, so you have to re-lay out the entirepage just to get your storytelling. As far asI’m concerned, the story is everything. I puta lot of work into the art because of thefact that I want people to find it interest-ing, and I want them to like what they’relooking at. I’ve always believed that if Icould tell a story without any words at all, Iwould be successful. If you could do that,you did your job, and you did it very well.But it all starts with the thumbnail.

MM: How conscious are you of trying toleave space for word balloons or captions?

MIKE: I try to be. I even try to have theperson that’s speaking first in the right

place so that balloons don’t cross. It doesn’talways work out that way, but I try to keepit that way. I try to consciously make it sothe dialogue is going to work within thecontext of the drawing. Sometimes, it’s verydifficult because you realize, “My God! I’vegot an enormous amount of dialogue in thisparticular panel.” Then you think, “Well,maybe it’s not one panel. Maybe it’s twopanels. Wait a minute. If I do that, then I’vetrapped myself because now I’ve got to dosomething else.” It’s trying to think aheadand trying to keep the reader involved asmuch as possible without any difficulty.

MM: Do you prefer to ink your own work,or do you prefer to have someone else dothat?

MIKE: I prefer to do my own inking. WhenI put the pencil down and I’m making a line,it might not be the line that I really want.When I’m inking, I’m still drawing. I thinkwhat happens with some inkers is that theydon’t draw. The penciler is drawing and, ifyou’re a half-way decent inker, you continuedrawing when you pick up the brush or thepen. You never stop drawing.

MM: When you know someone else isgoing to be inking your work, do you domore complete pencils?

MIKE: Yes I do, particularly when I’mspotting my blacks. To me, the blacks on apage are very important. They have tolead from one panel to another. They haveto be positioned in a place where it helpsconvey whatever you’re trying to say with-in that panel. Within every panel there’s amessage, and you have to get that messageacross. That black ink is your best friendto getting it across because you canemphasize, you can push things back, youcan pull things forward, you can eliminatebackgrounds. There’s a whole lot of tricksyou can use to get that one little messageacross. Which is your job. Your job is toget the message completed within thatpanel. And it leads to the next message.

Right now at DC I’m doing the Spiritbook. For some goofy reason, which I can’tunderstand, nobody’s been able to explain itto me, if I’m writing it and penciling it, I can’tink it. [laughter] Have you ever heard of any-thing like that? I know there has to be some

Below:This inked Kullthe Destroyer page withthe word balloons onlypenciled in.Next Page: Anotherpanel from The Life andAdventures of Santa Claus.

King Kull ™ and ©2008 KingKull LLC.

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kind of a legal thing. Like I told Joey, “I just want to com-plete my work.” I’m putting an enormous amount of workinto the pencils on it because of the fact that the story thatI wrote has got a lot of characters in it. I want the personal-ity of the characters to come out. You’re very careful abouthow you pencil it so that it’s very readable. You’re puttingall the blacks that you want in there because, when you’reactually inking your own pencils, you don’t always followyour own layout. As you’re inking it, something else hap-pens. As you’re penciling, you’re drawing. When you’reinking, you’re drawing. And it’s two different ways of draw-ing. One drawing is rendering and you can see the lightsand darks, and even greys in there. When you’re inking, it’sstark black-&-white. When you’re doing that, suddenly yourealize that you’d treat something totally differently. Youdon’t ever stop drawing once you start inking. Hopefully.[laughs] I’m hoping my inker won’t stop drawing.

MM: Is Mark Farmer inking you on that?

MIKE: Mark inked the first one. I think they’re going togive me another inker on this. I’m not quite sure who I’mgoing to get. I’m very curious. Hopefully I’ve got every-thing in there and they could put anybody on it and theycould pull it off. I’m hoping to get somebody absolutelybrilliant. More brilliant than me, actually. You’re alwayshoping when you’re penciling that the inker is going tobring something to it. And he should. At the end of theday, he’s an inker and he’s also an artist. You feel that yourinker should be bringing something to that piece of art, asopposed to just merely doing the lines. They have to bringsomething to it so that there’s something more than what Iput in. I’m not so precious about my work that it has to bemy original thought and my original idea. I really love theidea of when somebody is finishing your work, whetherthey’re inking it or painting something that I’ve done, theybring something to it. Make me look good! [laughter]

I’ve got a lot of respect for good inkers. It’s kind of astrange job because you’re following in behind the “pen-

ciler” who is “the artist” and here you are. You’re gettingpaid a lot less than he is and you’re working your tail offto get the damn thing done so that you can pay the rent.And still to be expected to bring something to it. WhenAl Williamson stopped doing penciling, he decided justto ink. I thought, “Damn! That’s a great idea.” If nothingelse, it loosens you up and you’re using another part ofthe brain. Particularly if you’re working on someone else’swork that’s not really your style. I thought it was a bril-liant idea when he did that. Problem is, I never thoughtI’d like to do it. [laughs] Maybe one of these days.

MM: When you’re painting a book like Tom Sawyer or SantaClaus, do you approach the pages differently? Do you stopat an earlier point and say, “Okay, now I can start painting?”

MIKE: I approach them much the same as I would aninked book. Like in Tom Sawyer, I found a system where Iwas just doing very little blacks and just putting in a line.It was working better, and a lot faster, and it looked a lotcrisper. You can busy things up very easily when you’repainting a book. The system was all the same. Both TomSawyer and Santa Claus, I wrote. The hardest work, and themost work, was put into the thumbnails and working onthe dialogue so that things moved along and making surethat my page count was going to be alright. I had tobreak things down into acts and say, “I’ve got ten pages toget to here, so I have to eliminate this. I have to put thisin, so how am I going to put it in in just a half a page?”Actually, I find that fun. I find that a fun way of working.With Tom Sawyer, I had a big book that I had to breakdown and put it into a very small book. Santa Claus was abit of a nightmare because Frank Baum’s story was a bit onthe scattered side, so I had to make a lot of things up.The strange thing about it is that not that many peoplenoticed the things that I made up. With a lot of books,you read the book and you put it down. Two years lateryou think about it, and there’s a lot of things that are leftout in what you remember, but your mind fills them in.

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Everybody’s mind fills in different things. Ifyou meet them half-way, everybody’s satisfiedwith it. I had to fill in immediately. I couldn’twait. I filled in a lot of places and I had tomake things up in order to move the storyalong and give reasons for why things werehappening. Fortunately, they fill in in a waythat everybody felt wasn’t that far off of thestory and it made sense. It was like the gluethat took you from one situation to another.

I love adapting. I think it’s like making amovie. You’ve got a script by a writer, andyou have to adapt it because you’re takingthe written word and putting it into pic-tures. It’s a process that I really enjoy. Andyou’re editing all the time. You’re sittingthere editing as you’re going along, andmaking sure that the cuts are right and thatyou’ve fulfilled the information that needs tobe told within that particular scene. Andyou can very quickly jump something, andmove on to something else.

MM: Are there other stories you’d like toadapt?

MIKE: Oh, yeah. Hundreds of them. Oneof them that I would love to do is JamaicaInn. Have you read it?

MM: No, I haven’t.

MIKE: Do yourself a favor. It’s written byDaphne Du Maurier. It’s a story about a girl,which I like because there’s not that manyreally good adventure/suspense stories involv-ing a girl in comics. Jamaica Inn is so brilliant.Another one, much in the same period, is abook called Moonfleet by John Meade Falkner.It’s about ship wreckers. The coast and thepirates. It’s got great villains. I’m a big fan ofstories that have great villains. One of myfavorite books is Treasure Island. What bettervillain could you have than Long John Silver?You love him and you hate him. You wanthim to be your father, but you can’t trust him.

MM: When you are painting a book, whatdo you use?

MIKE: Watercolors. I’ll use some gouache ifI need a nice bright sky or something likethat. Now I’ve discovered these soft acrylics.They’re brilliant.

MM: What’s a normal work day like for you?

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Shrek ™ and ©2008 DreamWorks Animation, LLC.

Modern Masters:Mike Ploog

In the 1970s, horror comics werehuge—and no one drew werewolves,swamp creatures, and demonic motor-cyclists better than Mike Ploog!Though already well established in thefields of magazine illustration and ani-mation, Ploog endeared himself tocomics fans with his creepy yet beauti-ful artwork on such titles as Werewolfby Night, Ghost Rider, and Man-Thing.After an all too brief stint at MarvelComics, Ploog returned to the world ofanimation and film, working on suchclassics as Ghostbusters, Ralph Bakshi'sanimated The Lord of the Rings, DarkCrystal, and Labyrinth. Now he's backin comics with the children's fantasies Abadazad and The Stardust Kid, as well as TheSpirit, and proving he still has the chops. Roger Ash and Eric Nolen-Weathingtonproudly present a true Modern Master: Mike Ploog! This book features a career-span-ning interview and discussion of the artist’s creative process, complete with both rareand unseen art, including an enormous gallery of commissioned work, and an 8-pagecolor section!

(120-page trade paperback with COLOR) $14.95(Digital Edition) $5.95

http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=95_70&products_id=742

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