MG: Before starting a career in comics, I had worked with Dale Messick On "Brenda Starr", done advertising illustration for an agency in Chicago, been an illustrator in the air force and created two unsuccessful unsold comic strips of my own. I was ready for anything...I thought. But there's nothing like the experience of doing. the more I drew, the faster iI got, the more I learned. In those first few months, under the mentorship of Julie Schwartz and Joe Orlando, I learned more than I had in the years leading up to my break.

AN: Would your concept of Savage Empire be a good concept for today's newspaper or has that era of sequential story telling passed?

MG: Sadly, the adventure comic strip all but died out somewhere around the 1970's when the perception of salability changed. An editor just wouldn't bother with a continuity strip because he could sell ten gag strips for every one adventure. Two generations have grown up on gag strips with very little exposure to the great adventures. Apart from Prince Valiant and the occasional movie tie-in (usually short-lived), most folks don't even pay attention to them any more. Which is not to say the adventure strip couldn't be resurrected by a syndicate willing to put serious effort into promotion. If local newspaper editors stopped and thought for a moment about how many of their readers not only grew up on comics, but were still avid readers, maybe they'd be willing to change the look of the comic's page.

AN: Who was your first contact at DC and why DC? Did you ever pitch or submit work for possible consideration at Marvel?

MG: Irv Novick pointed me toward Julie Schwartz, who introduced me to Joe Orlando, who gave me my first job and, in turn, introduced me to Murray Boltinoff, who put me on the Legion of Super Heroes.

I couldn't even get an appointment to talk to anyone at Marvel. Just before the big Marvel implosion of the '90s, I was asked to develop a Spider-Man project. Five months and five re-writes later the company caved in and the project evaporated. Too bad, because it was a hell of a good story.

AN: You mentioned earlier that Neal Adams work on Green Lantern/Green Arrow was a great influence, so was the Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow work was your strongest influence?

MG: Only in the beginning, which is not to discount Neal's influence And impact on comics in the '70s any more than you could discount Todd McFarlane in the '90's or anime in the millennium. Every generation has their influences. I got my break by being able to copy Neal's style, which was the hot style of the '70s, just like Neal copied Stan Drake ("the heart of Juliet Jones")and Leonard Starr ("Mary Perkins onstage").

But artists grow and change or they stagnate and die off. my next major influences came when I bought two books at the same time: "the pencil" by Paul Calle and "the magic pen of Joseph Clement Coll". somewhere in there came western and wildlife painters, illustrators and classic aritsts like Bob Kuhn, Bob Peak, Howard Terpening, Claude Monet and a bunch of others, who all had an impact on me.

AN: On your pencils and style or your story telling in general?

MG: There'll always be a little of Neal in my work, just like Neal's girls still remind me of Juliet Jones. You never forget your first kiss or your first big artistic influence. But in the spirit of credit where credit is due: I don't think I learned much about storytelling from Neal Adams, but I sure learned a hell of a lot from Denny O'neil. It was Denny's stories that brought Green Lantern and Green Arrow to life, and working with him as an artist was one of the greatest learning experiences Ii ever had as a writer. The only other writers who have had as strong an influence upon me are Mickey Spillane and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

AN: Do you follow comics that you once worked on? If yes what is your opinion of Green Arrow and the twists and turns there? The Legion has so changed it would require days of writing to ask about all the changes since the Crisis... sigh...

MG: Very seldom, simply because it's difficult to keep up. However I Did read the early issues of Kevin Smith's Green Arrow and liked it.

AN: Have you thought of putting out a sketchbook of some of his better (in your opinion) drawings, especially the animal stuff?

MG: I've been asked that question a lot in the last few years and have Always said I'd do it when I had something decent to go in it. I think subconsciously it's a bit like receiving a lifetime achievement award... I'm nowhere near done yet, and I always expect the next thing will be so much better.

AN: You are an expert swordsman/stuntman/stage combat guy and do jousting regularly at medieval/res fairs! What role does that degree of involvement in the truly martial arts bring to your work, first as an artist, then as a writer?

MG: Well, I can at least draw a horse without breaking his legs. My wife, Lauri La Sabre, and I raise Friesian horse, the big, black steeds you've seen in movies like "Ladyhawke" and "Mask of Zorro" (that's Lauri on her horse on the cover of Iron Man).

As a writer, Agatha Christie said a good story is "ten percent plot, Twenty percent characterization and seventy percent whatever the writer knows best." You can always write a better story about the things you know, which is why I wrote IRON MAN as a techno-thriller with a heavy human-interest angle, rather than focusing on sci-fi computer stuff, which I know absolutely nothing about.

Although I have incorporated my cohorts from the seattle knights (www.seattleknights.com) in the Iron Man series, and drawing on my personal experience and "expertise" factor heavily in the authenticity of the portrayals, my involvement in medieval action shows actually came about the other way around. When I was working on JAMES BOND: "PERMISSION TO DIE" I hired an artist named Dameon Willich as my assistant. Dameon had founded a group called THE FANTASY ALTERNATIVE, a live-action role-playing group which evolved into the seattle knights, one of the leading medieval action troupes in the united states. Dameon had been a big Warlord fan, which led him to both art and swordplay. He taught me to swing a sword and I taught him what I could about art. Eventually, he drew the Warlord miniseries for DC.

At the same time, Dameon founded the seattle knights and we began training hard. When I was a kid, my brothers and I used to make armor out of cardboard and bash each other with wooden swords. My love of swordplay is what inspired me to do the Warlord. Now I was living my dream. I used to brag that I had never fallen off a horse in my life... then I bought a horse. For nearly ten years now, I've been falling off three or four times a day, on purpose (and more than a few times by what we call a "spontaneous dismount"). I should point out that, unlike some medieval groups, our swords are the real thing and the armor is authentic - steel all the way, no wooden or aluminum swords or plastic armor. Everything is carefully choreographed, including the jousting, and safety is paramount. You'd never catch me risking my life on the field in full-contact jousting.

AN: Tim Truman told me that you used to do JON SABLE using just pencil on acetate instead of ink on bristol board. Could you explain why and how different a process that is?

MG: Many years ago I acquired a drawing by my old friend, Bonnie Shields (the official Tennessee Mule artist), that she did on mylar. I was struck by the detail she was able to obtain and saw that the lines were clean and dark, almost ink quality. It dawned on my that i could draw on mylar with pencil using the same linear rendering technique I would use for inking and come up with a reproducible drawing that took less time than inking. I should point out that, while I can and do ink fairly well, I don't enjoy it in comics work. For me the exciting creative part of storytelling is pretty well used up by the time I finish the pencils and the rest is just drudge work. That's the primary reason why I try to keep my pencil layouts as loose as possible, so there's more creative drawing and less drudge in inking.

Apart from the creative stimulation of developing a new method, the advantages of drawing on mylar were speed and detail without having to ink. I could make corrections with one swipe of a kneaded eraser, instead of using whiteout. The biggest disadvantage was that drawings had to be spray-fixed to prevent smearing, but the spray would actually fill in the "tooth" of the mylar and make the graphite slide instead of stick, so pages had to be completed one panel at a time -- top-to-bottom, left-to-right-- figures and backgrounds at the same time. If you're like me, you find that some days you're more in the mood for faces than figures or backgrounds, so it's nice to be able to work all over the page, wherever it suits you best.

Back in the "olden days" the mylar pencil drawings were then photostatted to higher contrast before the separations were made. Unfortunately, I was at the mercy of whoever was operating the camera that day, so some resolution was lost. Later, I used a high quality photocopier to do the same thing. These days, it's a mouse-click.

AN: Some artists felt threatened by the large roster of characters on Legion of Super Heroes, what was your outlook regarding that aspect of the book?

MG: I was damned glad to have steady employment on a regular book. It had never dawned on me that I had just gotten a job handing out towels in Satan's sauna in hell. Aside from all the different costumes, there seemed to be a mandate that every page had to feature as many characters as possible. It was nothing unusual to have thirty figures on a page. I never would have been able to manage if not for youthful exuberance and Dave Cockrum's sketchbook of character designs.

AN: What Legion character was your favorite, favorite to illustrate, least?

MG: Favorite and hardest to illustrate? Lightning Lad was my favorite. Cool costume, cool power. Least favorite was Matter-eater Lad, just because his power was every bit a stupid as his name. Hardest to draw was Shrinking Violet - all the frilly doodads on the front of her costume. Dave Cockrum admitted to me years later that he kept his own sketch-book of costume designs (the same one I had) next to his drawing table for reference. I think it was sometime last year before it dawned on me that the monogram "sv" is part of the design on the front of the costume.

AN: Of the many fine writers on the legion Mark Waid, Cary Bates, Dan Abnett and Paul Levitz, among many, which do you think was the most important to the title?

MG: For me it would have to be Cary Bates. a master visual storyteller who could meld a mixed cast into a good story in such a way that it didn't give me nightmares trying to figure out how to draw it. I can't speak for anything prior to my run on the book, but I do know that sales were marginal in the early '70s and the book was on the verge of cancellation. Under Cary's watch SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES became the top selling title at DC. I was just lucky enough to be on the book at the time.

AN: As a new artist at DC you became a popular artist as a result of your work on the Legion. To what degree did you take full advantage of new offers of titles? What would you have done differently with 25 or more years of hindsight?

MG: It definitely established me in the industry as an artist, and Legion fans are probably the most loyal fans in all of comics. If they take you to their hearts, they'll stay with you forever. I pushed to get onto Green Lantern/Green Arrow and they followed. That's part of what made it possible for me to branch out into my own titles like the Warlord and Starslayer. Sable was a quantum leap in a different direction, and I expected to lose about half my readers. I should have had more faith in them.

As for the rest, life's too short to spend it looking back... but I would have bought Microsoft stock when it was a couple of bucks. Who knew?

• A VIEW FROM A PEER:
  
  Mike Grell has allowed me to be both his friend and his editor for 30 years. There can be no greater testimonial to his resiliency than that simple fact. Our friendship has endured five marriages between us - if there's ever a mutual "next time," we're going for each other. Together, we have survived every dimension of the Crisis Of Infinite Deadlines, the traumas induced by shady publishers (please note the plural) and, oh yes, an attack by the Aryan Nations.
  
  Well, that last part's true only in the "what do you mean 'we,' Kimo Sabe" sense of the word. I kind of bated Mike into doing a story that would piss them off, knowing full well that he lived in their hometown. I figured he could save time on research. They tried to go after him, not me. They were exceptionally unsuccessful. It made for a great Jon Sable story.
  
  When it comes to our particular brands of trench warfare, there's nobody I'd rather have by my side than Mike Grell. If you get to the half-century mark with three or four honest, true and genuine friends, you are a lucky person. Mike is among that very small circle I cherish.
  
  The fact that he's one hell of a storyteller only makes it all the better.
  
  -- MIKE GOLD