Tom DeFalco: Consummate Professional Part 2 with Alex Grand & Jim Thompson

Alex Grand and co-host Jim Thompson interview former Marvel Editor in Chief, Tom DeFalco in the second of a three parter, where we discuss his creative contributions to GI Joe, Transformers, Marvel Two In One Thing with Sandman, Peter-Porker/Spider-Ham, Machine Man with Herb Trimpe and Barry Windsor-Smith, writing Amazing Spider-Man with artist Ron Frenz, the Mighty Thor, working under Jim Shooter as Marvel as Editor-in-Chief, his replacement by Tom DeFalco, and the sale of Marvel to Revlon by New World, and Marvel going public. Edited & Produced by Alex Grand. Images used in artwork ©Their Respective Copyright holders, CBH Podcast ©Comic Book Historians. Thumbnail Artwork ©Comic Book Historians. Support us at https://www.patreon.com/comicbookhistorians

Transcript

Alex Grand:         All right, and then now tell us, you did something similar with G.I. Joe. I know that you worked with Hasbro in creating some backstories for some of those characters in G.I. Joe. I know Larry Hama also did, but tell us about your role in that.

Tom DeFalco:        All right. It’s not Larry Hama also did, Larry Hama mainly did.

Alex Grand:         Mainly did, there you go.

Tom DeFalco:        Mainly did. I was tasked with being in charge of the creative team and doing the first couple of issues, editing it.

Alex Grand:         Of the comics?

Tom DeFalco:        Of the comics book.

Alex Grand:         And that’s 1982, okay.

Tom DeFalco:        I guess so. I’m terrible with years, and Hasbro wanted to bring back G.I. Joe. The original idea was that it’s one figure that keeps taking on these different identities as Frogman, as this, as that, as a sniper.

Alex Grand:         Oh, like Captain Action or something, huh?

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. And you know, I remember we all looked at each other and thought, “Nah, how about we make it a team?” And they said, “But who’s Joe?” And we kept saying, “Well, we’ll come up with it.” And I don’t remember who came up with the idea, probably Larry, that G.I. Joe was the code name for the team. And Archie Goodwin came up with the idea that, “Well, we all wanted a faceless enemy, kind of like the stormtroopers on Star Wars. Faceless, unlimited enemy.” And I think Archie Goodwin came up with the name Cobra Command. All of the story Bibles, the character Bibles, that’s all Larry Hama. I’d love to take credit for his work, because Larry’s a genius, and we will all wish we were. Sadly, some of us are not. And I basically got to sit back and watch Larry’s genius at work.

Alex Grand:         Oh, that’s cool.  And we’re going to go back to 1981 right after this part, this is just more character creation. Tell us about being part of that creative team that introduced Transformers to the United States in 1984?

Tom DeFalco:        Hasbro was so happy with what we had done with G.I. Joe that they said, “Hey, we have a another project we’d like you guys to work on.” So, “Oh, terrific.” And they showed up, but this time they showed up with the nondisclosure agreements and stuff like that, and they brought their lawyer. And naturally, Marvel had to bring down their lawyer. The two lawyers discussed this thing, and argued about this thing to come up with a document that everybody could sign. And this one on for, oh, three, four, maybe five hours. I don’t know how long, until they finally got the document. And then they said to us, “All right, we want to show you something.” And they took out a couple of Transformers and they put them on the desk. And when they put them on the desk, Larry Hama and I was sitting opposite each other on the table, looked up at each other and said, “Could you excuse us a minute?” And Larry and I got up, we walked out of the room, we walked down the hallway. He went to his office, I went to my office. We both picked up Transformers that we had been bought at Forbidden Planet like a year or two earlier. The Japanese-

Alex Grand:         Oh, the Japanese one. Yes.

Tom DeFalco:        And put our Transformers down, and the guys look, “Where did you get those from?” “A local comic book store.” And our lawyer said, “Wait a minute, if these things are for sale in local comic books stores, why are we signing this document?” And the guy from Hasbro, gentleman by the name of Bob Cooperson says, “Give me all the contracts,” and our lawyer said, “No, no, I want the contract.” then he says, “No, no, no. Hand me the contracts,” so we handed him all the contracts. He took them, he ripped them all up, and he says, “Okay, we now have to … We’re now going to work on this stuff without the non-disclosures.”

Alex Grand:         Oh, that’s hilarious.

Tom DeFalco:        Now, once we found out what they wanted us to do, I had to absent myself from the meeting because I was working on another robot property for another toy company called Starriors. And I was working on that I think with Louise Simonson. She might’ve been Louise Jones at the time, I don’t quite remember. But Louise was working on the-





Tom DeFalco:        I don’t quite remember, but she was working on, did a great job developing the Starriors. So we went out, we worked on the stories, we put our comic book together, that sort of thing. And then I found out that they were still working on Transformers and I showed up then, and you know, to pitch in to help out a bit. I kept saying, wait a minute, why are we setting that? They first came in the past. Why don’t we just have it start now? No, no, no. We like the idea that it started that they crash landed, the Arctic years ago, but we ended up finessing it, getting it all together. And then Hasbro liked it and you know, Transformers went on to become another big success.





Alex Grand:         Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, I actually still like Transformers even now, but the original cartoons and comics, Marvel comics are my favorite. So then let’s talk about 1981 to 1983. You were actually editing quite a few books for Marvel. What If?, Spiderman and as editor now, did you get some pointers from Denny O’Neil, who you had a relationship with up to this point or did you kind of just from being edited, you got a sense of how to edit. How did that all work out?

Tom DeFalco:        I had always been asking questions. Like I said, I’m a very lucky guy cause I got to work with the Silberkleits and the Goldwaters. When I was over at DC I got to work with Joe Orlando, a great editor and also Sol Harrison who also understood a lot or created a lot of the business aspects of comics and I had worked with Denny and I just picked up a bunch of things. I became an editor at Marvel cause Shooter was reorganizing the editorial staff and asked me if I’d like to come on as an editor and I said to him, Jim, I haven’t had a full time job in so many years. I don’t even know if I could, you know, have a full time job at this stage of the game. I’m not constructed for that, I’m mainly a writer and I got comic book stuff, other stuff. And Jim said, come on, I just need you for maybe six months. You can do six months, can’t you? And I go yeah, I can. I can do six months.

Alex Grand:         That’s cool.

Tom DeFalco:        So it’s up, okay, I’ll do it for about six months or so. Yeah, six months became 20 years. And I remember when I expected to get all of the low sale and crummy titles at Marvel. He asked me what book did I think was the worst sell, the worst book Marvel was producing. And I said, I think Ghost Rider really, you know, it’s supposed to be motorcycle book, but I don’t think those guys have ever been on a motorcycle. I don’t know.

Alex Grand:         Right, because you wrote the two in one with Ghost Rider in it.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. I don’t know when I did that, but I thought, yeah, Ghost Rider, that that book needs help. And so naturally gave me Ghost Rider and he gave me the Spiderman titles and he gave me Spiderman, What If?, and Micronauts. And I remember getting the Spiderman titles and I said to him, Jim, is it really good idea? You’re going to give Spiderman, you know, the Spiderman titles that to your most inexperienced editor, a guy who doesn’t know anything. And he said to me, Spiderman is just like Archie, except with super heroics. Right? And I thought about it and said, yeah, you know, he’s kind of right out on that. All right, I’ll take a shot at it, what’s the worst that can happen? They’ll fire me, but I’m only going to be here temporary anyway. So who cares.

Alex Grand:         So that’s pretty cool. So, now one of my favorite, Thing stories you wrote, Ron Wilson penciled it, where the Thing and Sandman they fight but then they drink a beer together in the bar. Do you remember writing that?

Tom DeFalco:        Yes I do.

Alex Grand:         I love that. I love the cover to that. I love every page of that story. And I posted it once in the Comic Book Historians group and there’s so much love, fan love for that issue. What went into that? How’d you come up with the Thing and Sandman drinking a beer together?

Tom DeFalco:        It was time to pitch a story and Sandman had become that mud monster with the Hydroman and I thought, I’d like to cure Sandman and I was trying to think of a story and I thought, Oh, you know, we could do this and you know, have them cured and then they fight. And then the Thing and Sandman fight that sort of thing. And I started to halfheartedly pitch that story, one of those kind of standard story. And Shooter looked at me and said, you’re not interested in this story. And I said, no, I’m really not.





Tom DeFalco:        He said, well, why are you pitching it? I said, because you wanted a story. And I had to come up with something. He said, Well, what story do you want to really tell? And I said, I think you have to have to after becoming a mud monster, you know? Just really having the, you know, the stuffings kicked out of ya. It’s going to, it’s going to just shake you up and you’re just going to want to revisit who you are, where you are. And I said Jim, the only story I see is, Sandman and Ben sitting down having a talk and then realizing how much they’re similar characters and where one had gone bad, one had gone good and maybe they can come to terms. And he said Sandman and the Thing come to terms? I said, I think so. He said, well why don’t you see if you can make that a story, and then I went home and worked on it and you’ve seen the results. And I remember when I turned it in, Jim said to me, this is really a weird story for a Marvel comic book, but you know what? I think it really works.

Alex Grand:         It works. It works because they do have similar sensibilities at the end of the same kind of a rough, kind of blue collar sensibility about them.

Tom DeFalco:         You know, I love doing Marvel too, cause I love doing the stories about Ben and I got to do some really weird stories. You know the story with Sergeant Fury and his Howling Commandos and the Blue Diamond and the story with the Champion. Really goofball stories then.

Alex Grand:         I love those. And then now I also notice you edited some Fantastic Four that John Byrne was doing, is that right?

Tom DeFalco:        Yes, at a certain point I had gotten all my books on time and my deal with Shooter was once I got my books on time I could, I didn’t have to come into the office every day. So I started to come in a few less days a week. And Jim had a problem with one of the other editors, had to let him go and then took all of his books and gave them to me. Cause he says your books are all on time. Make these on time too. I said Oh okay, thanks. There’s more work and I got to work with John Byrne for a few issues.

Alex Grand:         Is he hard to edit? I mean just because of him?

Tom DeFalco:        No, not because of him. John is hard to edit because John has such a vision of what he wants to do. That if he sells you on that vision, you are totally sold. And you know, he knows what he’s doing. He’s a consummate professional when it comes to the artwork, comes to getting the work in on time, that sort of thing. You know, you might quibble with a sentence here or there, but you know he knows what he’s doing. So in that regard, he’s hard to edit. If you’re asking me, is he thick headed? Well yeah. But not in terms of the editing process. He’s just naturally thick-headed. So am I.

Alex Grand:         So then, so if you saw a sentence that you felt could have been phrased a little better, he was generally okay with that.

Tom DeFalco:        Oh yeah, yeah.

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Alex Grand:         Oh, that’s cool.

Tom DeFalco:        Whatever, anything that improved the story he would embrace.

Alex Grand:         Yeah. Now this next question is, is part of the merchandise items we talked about earlier, but also part of the 83 time is you wrote and created Peter Parker Spider-Ham, right? And I loved that as a kid. Well, what led into that, and this is an interesting question. I know Jim has asked, did Cerberus have anything to do with the look of Spider-Ham?

Tom DeFalco:        I don’t know if Cerberus had anything to do with the look of Spider-Ham because you know, I think, I don’t remember if it was Larry who started, did the initial sketch or, or if it was Mark Armstrong who did the original sketch. And I can’t tell you what their, what was going through their minds.

Alex Grand:         Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Tell us about how Spider-Ham came about. Yeah.

Tom DeFalco:        Spider-Ham, came out as kind of a joke. Larry Hama and I was sitting in his office as we often did and, and all sorts of crazy projects would come whenever Larry and I were sitting together and you know what we were talking and, and we’d just gone to some meeting with the comic book retailers. And comic book retailers were always convinced that Marvel was going to open up its own stores, kind of like the Disney stores that were for sale that were, you know, in Disney World and Disneyland and that sort of thing. Yeah. They were always waiting for Marvel to open up their stores. And Larry and I just laughed about that because you know, being a publisher is one business, being a retailer is a whole different business. And you know, we knew that nobody at Marvel had the expertise to open retail stores except for maybe me and Larry, and we weren’t doing that.

Tom DeFalco:        And, and we’re laughing about it, and Larry says, you know, Marvel can never open up its own stores because what sells in those stores are two, the two main items that sell in those stores are apparel and plush. And in those days, we had comic images would do tee shirts and that’s our, was our only apparel license. And we had absolutely no plush. And Larry said, we’ll never be, we’ll never be able to do plush and unless we have funny animals. And I said to him, give me like Peter Porker Spider-Ham. And Larry said, nah, I was thinking more of a Goose Rider. And then, and then the two of us, you know, trying to top each other, come up with an animal names for different Marvel characters. and we’re just throwing these names out at each other, just having fun. And somebody, I don’t remember who comes into the office, looks, listens to us for a few minutes as we what are you guys talking about? Is this some new book you’re doing? And Larry and I looked at each other and said, absolutely.

Tom DeFalco:        And then we put in a new project proposal. We took it up to Jim Shooter and say, Hey, we want to do this book called Peter Porker Spider-Ham. And I remember Shooter, looking at him, said, what are you guys out of your minds again? I said, come on man, come on. We just started to do this goofy thing, you know, plush with this and that. And he said, all right, I’ll approve it. And he signed off on it. Larry and I contributed I think a hundred bucks each. And he got a friend of his to make it a Peter Porker doll. We got together. We did the comic book, we sent it off the comic book back, got printed, we take the doll and the comic book, we go up to the licensing people and we say, Hey, we got this great idea for plush Peter Porker Spider-Ham, appeared in this comic for Marvel. The licensing guy looks and says, I can’t license Spider-Ham. How the heck am I going to license some stupid pig? Get out of here.

Tom DeFalco:        So he throw us out. We figured that’s the end of it. Couple of months later, I get a call from Shooter. Shooter says to me, Jim Galton, the president of the company wants to talk to you. Galton wants to talk to me. And I’d never met Galton before. He says, yeah, it’s your mess. Go fix it. Right. And I’m thinking my mess, what did I do? Yeah. So walk up the Galton’s office and knock on the door. And I says Mr. Galton, he says you Tom, I said, yes. Tom deFalco. Oh, nice meeting you Tom. He says, this man over here is Joe Walsh. He’s our distributor.

Tom DeFalco:        Curtis Circulation. Yeah. Joe Walsh in charge of Curtis Circulation. He’s got a question to ask you. And Joe says to me, you, you ever hear of a title called Marvel Tales? And I said, yes, it’s a title comes out every month that reprints old Spiderman stories. It’s been going on for a lot of years. And Joe goes, no, no, no. I know that Marvel Tales, I’m talking about T A I L S. And I go, Oh God. And I’m thinking, Oh, what do we do? Did we somehow screw up the distribution by naming this thing to close Marvel Tales? And I said, yeah, it was a one shot that featured Peter Porker Spider-Ham and Jim Galton goes, what? I said Peter Porker Spider-Ham. You mean like a pig? Yes sir.

Tom DeFalco:        And it was a one shot and, and Joe Walsh says, sold 60% on the newsstand, which was terrific numbers. Yeah. And Galton says to me, so when is the next issue coming out? And I said Mr. Galton, it was just a one shot. There is no second issue. Joe Walsh says, it sold 60% on the newsstand and Galton says, what is the next issue coming out? Still not getting it. And I say Mr. Galton was a one shot and Joe Walsh says, it sold 60% on the newsstand and Jim Galton says, Tom, you’re not hearing me. When is the next issue coming out? And suddenly the light bulb goes off. I said, in three months, sir and Joe Walsh jumps up, extends his hand, pleasure doing business with you son.

Alex Grand:         That’s it, that’s what he needed to get out of you.

Tom DeFalco:        And Jim says, you better get to work Tom. And I walked downstairs and Jim Shooter later said that Galton was always wanting to do some children’s things. And so this is an opportunity to do children’s things. But I always remembered that 60% at the newsstand, Tom, you’re not hearing me. Cause you always remember your first meeting with the president of the company. Anyway, I walked down and I said, Larry, I got good news and bad news for you. The good news is Marvel Tails sold 60% on the newsstand. Larry says, wow, that’s terrific. I said, yeah, here’s the bad news. It’s now a monthly book and you’re editing it. And he says, when can you get the first plot in? I said, Larry, I could do a one shot. I just don’t have time to do another monthly comic book. He says, well, that’s okay. I can get somebody to do it. He ended up getting Steve Skeates and I’ve never forgiven Steve for doing a much better job on Peter Porker than I ever did, so I’m still angry at Skeates for that cause he did a fabulous job on that comic book.

Alex Grand:         How’d you feel about seeing Spider-Ham in that Spiderverse animated movie? What’d you think of that?





Tom DeFalco:        I was caught completely by surprise. About two weeks before the movie came out, a reporter called me up that I dealt with before and he says, I want to interview you about Spider-Ham. I thought Spider-Ham? And he has asked me the question about the origin. I told them, listen, when he was done, I said I have to ask, why are you asking me about Spider-Ham? He says, you familiar with Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse? I said, yeah, it’s some cartoon movie that’s coming out in a couple of weeks. They invited me to the premiere, but I don’t have time to go. He says, did you know that Spider-Ham is going to appear in that film? And I said, what? Did Marvel tell ya? I said, no. Spider-Ham Is going to appear in it. And they had a Marvel showing and I went to the Marvel showing and that’s my favorite Spiderman movie.

Alex Grand:         That’s awesome. Great. Did you like the voiceover?

Tom DeFalco:        I thought the, the actor did a fabulous job. You know, I still can’t believe it, but weird stuff could come back to haunt you.

Alex Grand:         That’s funny. So now at 1984, 85  you returned to Machine Man and you wrote this four issue limited series Machine Man that had artwork with Herb Trimpe and Barry Windsor-Smith. And it was more of a hard edge take on that. How did that come about? And I mean, I love that story. I think it’s actually probably my favorite Machine Man story. Tell us about how that came about and then when you saw the pages, what did you think about them?

Tom DeFalco:        Well, it came about because at one point Larry and I were sitting in his office.

Alex Grand:         A lot of things start with this.

Tom DeFalco:        Red Sonja, Machine Man, all sorts of nonsense. So I was sitting there together and I was saying we should do something together. He says, well, is there a character you’d like to do? And I said, you know, I always felt bad that Machine Man ended too soon. I’d like to do some Machine Man again. And he said, yeah, but we don’t want to do the traditional Machine. We’ll want to do something different. Something far out, come up with something far out. And I said, all right, I’ll see if I can come up with something. So I sat down and I started work coming up with ideas, and I approached Larry and I said, so this is what I’m thinking that they put them in a box. I said, you remember the last scene of Indiana Jones where they they put the arc in a box and they lose the box. Well, they find the box, but in the box is Machine Man.

Tom DeFalco:        And he says, Oh, that’s an interesting start. And I said, ah, yeah. And he says, well, who do you think you know could do a good job on this? And I’d been speaking to Herb and Herb was kind of bored with what he was doing. I said, let me talk to Herb Trimpe. So I called up Herb and I started talking to Herb, and Herb really got into it because Herb was always game for any sort of crazy nonsense you could come up with and I put together the first plot. And I think Herb was originally thinking about inking it, but then he, he did this very full pencil on the first issue. And I said, Herb, you can’t ink this thing. And he said, why? I said, because you already put a tight full pencil on this. Every time you do a tight full pencil, you get bored inking. And he goes, yeah, I should have done this in breakdowns, right? I said, yeah, cause if you want to ink it, you know, it’s your assignment. If you want to ink it, you can ink it. But you know you’re going to get bored.

Tom DeFalco:        Cause you know, Herb would get bored if he did a full pencil. And he said, okay, we’ll find somebody to ink it. And then Herb and I started working on the second issue and I think it was about halfway through the second issue. And he said to me, you know, I don’t know if he said it to me or he said it to Larry. He said, you know, a friend of mine came by, saw the pages of the first issue and, and he said he’d really like to ink it and I figured I’d check with you guys to find out what you thought about it. And Larry said, well, who’s the friend? He goes, Barry Smith. And he goes, Barry Smith wants the ink this thing? And he says, yeah, Barry wants to ink it and we thought, sounds good to us. Yeah. And Barry said, well, you know this, I haven’t worked for Marvel in years. I’ll probably use a pen name, that sort of thing. We said all right. You want to use pen name, use a pen name, whatever you want to do. And in the meantime, Herb and I finished the second issue and started work on the third issue and, and then Barry started inking and you saw the result that was really terrific.

Alex Grand:         Yeah. Cause he’s kind of OCD and perfectionist. So it turned into like a whole other type of a visual display in a way.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah, and it was a fun goofball story and Herb and I finished the third issue, but by then Barry was, you know, OCD, he was looking at this as if it was his project and started to talk to Herb and eventually convinced Herb to let him pencil the last issue.

Alex Grand:         Wow. Incredible. And so now 1984, a lot happens in 1984. So you start writing Marvel Team Up and Amazing Spider-Ham. Then you team up with Ron Frenz doing Spiderman. Tell us about how that all came about and your first two issues of Amazing was over Roger Stern’s plots, I think.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. Somewhere along the line I had gotten promoted, I was editing the Spider-man titles and I got promoted to executive editor. And when I was promoted, becomes Shooter’s second in command and I said to Shooter, he said, I want you to read the second in command, you’ll be the executive editor. And I said, okay, do I still get to edit the Spider-man titles? He says, Oh, sure, yeah. And then I became the executive editor, that sort of thing. And he said, well actually we’re going to put you in charge of this new thing called Star Comics. So you don’t have time to do the Spider-man titles. We’re going to give them to Danny. So Danny is going to be editing the Spider-man titles,and one of my jobs as executive editor is to keep track of creative people, our writers and artists and make sure that people have work. And Danny comes in and he says, listen, Roger Stern has an opportunity to go and take over the Avengers, but he’s going to have to give up Spider-man.

Tom DeFalco:        And I said, Roger is going to give up Spider-man? I said, man, what idiot is going to replace Roger Stern? Cause as far as I was concerned, Roger did the best Spider-man since maybe Gerry Conway and Stan Lee.

Tom DeFalco:        And he said, well that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. And I said, okay, pulled down my list. And I started going through possible writers and making suggestions. So I’m rattling off three or four names to him to write Spiderman. I look up and Danny’s smiling at me with this goofball grin on his face. And he said to me, well actually I know who I want. And I said, well, if you know who you want, why are you wasting my time? He said, because you are who I want.

Alex Grand:         So Danny Fingeroth said that to you, right?

Tom DeFalco:        He said that to me and I said, Danny, I’m flattered, but I can’t write Spider-man. I can’t do that kind of voice, that kind of dialogue. And he said, sure you can. Who knows Spider-man better than you do? I said, well, yeah, I know the character, but I don’t think I can write that. Especially after Roger did such a great job, you know, I don’t think I can do it. He says, well, why don’t you try it. You do a couple. The first two you’ll script over Rogers plots. I said so I’m kind of like the fill in guy until you can find somebody good. And he said, yeah. All right, I’ll try it. And that’s how I got onto the Spider-man book. I thought of myself as the temporary guy.

Tom DeFalco:        Ron Frenz and JR Junior were doing Amazing Spider-man and he was also working on X-Men. And he needed some time off to get X-Men on time and the Spiderman books were ahead of schedule. Yeah. And so Ron Frenz came in, he was going to be the temporary guy. So two temporary guys did the black costume issue.

Alex Grand:         Yeah. I mean everybody remembers that issue.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. What people don’t remember is that before that issue came out, the fans had heard that we were going to change Spider-man’s costume and we got a ton of hate mail. Ton of hate mail. At one point, somebody from the mail room came in and dropped a sack of mail on my desk and said to me in a very unpleasant voice, I don’t know what you did, but don’t ever do it again. And stormed out.

Tom DeFalco:        Everybody was convinced this black costume thing was going to be the disaster. And yeah, everybody was swearing that they were never going to read Spider-man again and going to give up Marvel comics. And we were waiting for this disaster to come out. And I remember at one point Shooter came into me to what issue does he get the new costume? I say 252 and he says, I want you to get rid of it in 253. I said, Jim, we can’t do that. I said, cause he doesn’t, you know, he’s supposed to get it in Secret Wars but you guys can get it for eight issues. We have to at least wait until he gets it in Secret Wars before we dump it. Cause otherwise we’re going to look like fools. And he says, well listen, if Spider-man sales go down because of this, it’s your butt. Yeah. And I thought, Hey, I’m only on it temporarily anyway, so what, they’re going to fire me off the book they’re going to kick me off of anyway, what do I care? And you know, nowadays when people look back on that, they think of it as a brilliant marketing play and up-sales and all that other stuff. Yeah. We thought we were going to get killed.

Alex Grand:         That’s awesome. But you stuck to your guns. That’s great.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah.

Alex Grand:         So then how was working with Ron Frenz on that Spider-man run? Did you guys kind of gel from the beginning or how’d that work? Cause you guys worked together for a long time.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. Well we’re still working together. We just finished up a job last week.

Alex Grand:         That’s awesome.

Tom DeFalco:        We had met previously and he was working on Marvel Tales when I was the editor and we found out that we liked the same kind of comic books, the same kind of things. And we were kind of in tune on that. So when we first started to do our plots together, we were spending a lot of time discussing character cause we’ve, I don’t know, I still don’t know how it works out cause we discuss characters, what the characters are feeling and what they’re going through, all the emotional impacts. And then somehow or other, the stories come together. I always look back and try to figure out, “How did this all come together?” But Ron and I slowly started to gel and then more and more jelled more and more. He started contributing his ideas and his ideas are at least as good as mine; sometimes way better. Ron always comes up with better story titles than I do. He started suggesting bits of dialogue and I’m sitting thinking, “Wow, that’s a cool bit of dialogue. I want to steal that, put that into the story.”





Alex Grand:         Yeah.

Tom DeFalco:        It became a partnership that has… We said we started in ’84, so I guess it’s, was it, sorry, like 35 years now?

Alex Grand:         Let’s break our calculators, everybody.

Tom DeFalco:        35 years now.

Alex Grand:         That’s awesome.

Tom DeFalco:        This is ridiculous.

Alex Grand:         Nah, that’s great. You guys did a lot of interesting stuff together. I noticed that the aesthetic, because we’re going to talk about your guys’s Thor later, but the aesthetic on your guys’s Spider-Man has that Ditko kind of feel to it just as the Thor has a Kirby kind of feel. Was that part of the discussions or did that just naturally happen? How did that happen?

Tom DeFalco:        I think we went back to basics. Ron studied a lot of the early Ditkos. We wanted to get back into the essence of what that character was about.

Alex Grand:         There you go.

Tom DeFalco:        That’s a character who the stories are all about responsibility. Almost, I’d like to say we came up with very creative stories. We didn’t. We almost did the same story month after month. It was some sort of reflection on responsibility; a thing that you could do endlessly.

Alex Grand:         That’s cool.

Tom DeFalco:        We looked at Peter as a guy who could find a dark cloud behind every silver lining, that no matter how much he succeeded, he saw himself as a failure, which so many of us do. We struggle, we try to do the best we can but we see ourselves as failing because we can never achieve what we want to achieve.

Alex Grand:         Right. That’s basically how me and Jim are every day. Right, Jim?

Jim:                Yep.

Tom DeFalco:        Hey, listen. I keep looking at comics and I think I’m maybe two years away from really mastering this medium.

Alex Grand:         And you’ve been at it for a while. But I mean, I love everything you’ve done, honestly.

Tom DeFalco:        I appreciate that. But I’m still struggling to try to get it better.

Alex Grand:         You also co-created the Rose persona of Richard Fisk, Black Fox, Silver Sable during this. Are these discussions that you and Ron would have and start generating these characters? Because you guys, I mean, honestly, you created a lot of characters. You are not afraid of putting out new characters. I mean, when you create these characters, is that like you and him on the phone talking about it? “Hey, let’s try this.” “Let’s try that.” How does that work?

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah, that’s a lot of it. A lot of the characters, Silver, Sable, Black Fox, Puma, I had gotten this thing of animal cards which listed all animals and their characteristics and I was using that. I think that we’re being paid to create stories and we owe it to our readers to create new stories, new characters.

Tom DeFalco:        I look back on the early days of Spider-Man thinking every other issue they created a brand new character and we owed it to the readers to do the same thing. Ron and I did the same thing when we wrote Thor. Paul Ryan and I did the same thing when we were on Fantastic Four. We’re always creating new characters because it’s our job to chart the future, to move ahead.

Alex Grand:         Right, which is interesting because you go back to the basics but then you create new stuff. That’s interesting.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. Well, you’re using that as your basis but you don’t want to retell the same old stories.

Alex Grand:         Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tom DeFalco:        I sometimes get annoyed when I looked at somebody who comes out a book and you can tell he’s repeating his favorite top 10 stories, almost in order. “Are you going to do Captain America? You got to do a cosmic cube story.” No, you don’t. You should create something new for Captain America. I just like to create new things.

Tom DeFalco:        Now, granted, when we were coming up with new character after new character, people were writing back and saying, “We don’t care about these characters. We want to see Doctor Octopus. We want to see The Scorpion. We want to see all these old characters.”

Tom DeFalco:        Every time Ron and I would try to do one of those characters, I’d look and think, “Yeah, I’ve seen so many great Doctor Octopus stories. I don’t have anything to add.” I thought, “Ah, come on. Let’s create something new and chart new paths for our characters.”

Alex Grand:         Mm-hmm (affirmative), right. I think that’s why I always liked that that stuff has a kid, because there was always this new person, new thing. Then 1987, that’s a big year of change at Marvel for a couple of reasons. As far as Marvel corporate structure, Marvel as a company was sold to a new company.  New …?

Tom DeFalco:        New World.

Alex Grand:         Yeah, New World. Jim Shooter was removed as the editor-in-chief and then you became editor-in-chief. Well, okay. Let’s talk about that shift. First, why was Jim removed? How did you get picked to be editor-in-chief? Tell us about that transition.

Tom DeFalco:        Jim was having issues with the people above him and at a certain point, he thought he should be named publisher or whatever. When you go after the king, you got to make sure you succeed. It was basically corporate stuff. Jim was also having issues with some of his creative people and that’s been bandied about all over the place.

Tom DeFalco:        Around that time, I kept thinking that when they were going to get… I could see the handwriting on the wall. I knew that Jim’s days were numbered and I was convinced that they were going to get rid of Jim and me. I was trying to convince Jim that we should make plans for heading for California. Jim was pretty sure that Marvel could never fire him and I was pretty sure they were going to fire us both. When the day came and they informed me that they were letting Jim go and they were putting me in charge, I was kind of stunned because it never occurred to me.

Alex Grand:         Did Galton make that decision?

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah, Jim Galton made that decision. He checked with the people from New World and stuff. I found out many years later, years after Galton and I both left Marvel, probably about 10-15 years after we both left Marvel, that Jim Galton had been grooming me to replace Shooter for years but I had never noticed it. I didn’t realize it. Galton had decided that I was going to be the second-in-command.





Tom DeFalco:        At one point, he sent me to England. He lent me to England for a couple of months. I think it was because he heard that Shooter and I were disagreeing on matters and he was afraid that either I was going to quit or Shooter was going to fire me.

Tom DeFalco:        Jim Shooter did a lot of good for the creative people and a lot of good for the industry. He did have his issues. He was not a great people person when it came to creative people but he really is a creative person. I think like many creative people, you think that because you can do certain things well, you can do other things well.

Tom DeFalco:        I looked at the skills that it takes to be a good editor-in-chief and I look at the skills that it takes to be a good publisher. These are two totally different kinds of skills. One is more finance contracts, reading contracts, and working on distribution and that sort of stuff and one is in the creative end. Jim and I belong in the creative one. We shouldn’t be running companies, which is, over the years, I’ve been given the opportunity a few times to become a publisher and I passed on it every time because I’ve seen what a real publisher is like and I know I don’t have those skills.

Alex Grand:         Interesting. In 1987, you and Ron Frenz stopped doing Spider-Man and moved over to Thor. There was some question. Jim Owsley became editor of Spider-Man. He’s also known as Christopher Priest in modern comics. What happened? What made you leave Spider-Man and then move to Thor?

Tom DeFalco:        Well, we were ultimately fired. Jim Owsley, he was very young at the time. He wanted to prove that he had a great vision for Spider-Man. He was a big fan of Frank Miller’s Daredevil work and wanted Spider-Man to read more like Frank Miller’s Daredevil.

Alex Grand:         I gotcha.

Tom DeFalco:        At the time, we said, “Well, Frank Miller’s Daredevil should read like Frank Miller’s Daredevil and Spider-Man should read like Spider-Man. They’re different characters.”

Alex Grand:         Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tom DeFalco:        He decided that he wanted to get rid of me and Ron and the way to do it was by scheduling. He would give us a schedule and we would meet the schedule. Then the day we met it, he’d hand us a new schedule that showed we were two months late.

Alex Grand:         I see.

Tom DeFalco:        We were constantly pushing the clock back. I know that we were fired the week or two weeks before Spider-Man vs. Wolverine came out where he kills Ned Leeds. I think he did that deliberately because he knew we would be upset about that.

Alex Grand:         I see.

Tom DeFalco:        That came out the beginning of May. We had an issue drawn in May. I had half the script written and he fired us. I decided to eat that half a script. That was for a book that had to go to the printers in October. That’s how late the book was. It ended up missing shipping because whatever else we did for the May, June, July, August, September, those five and a half months, he didn’t get the book done. But that’s how late we were.

Tom DeFalco:        Some time after that, I ended up going to England. Ron and I weren’t working on anything for a while. Then when I came back from England, we heard that Daredevil might be open, so Ron and I started to put together some ideas to do Daredevil. I approached the editor, Ralph Macchio, and said, “We’d like to do Daredevil.” He was also editing Thor at the time and he said to me, “Yeah, yeah. I need to put a new team on Daredevil but right now, Thor is very late and I could use a fill-in. Could you guys do a fill-in for me?”

Alex Grand:         That’s his Secret Wars story, right?

Tom DeFalco:        I think so. We said, “Yeah, sure. We could do a fill-in for you.” So, we did a fill-in and we continued to put together our proposal on Daredevil. As we were finishing up the fill-in, he said, “Listen, you guys did a really good job. Could you do a second fill-in for me? Because this book is very late.”

Alex Grand:         That was the Dargo/Future Thor story?

Tom DeFalco:        I guess so, yeah. I always forget which order they came out in.

Alex Grand:         Yeah. Which I love those, by the way. But okay.





Tom DeFalco:        Thank you. So, we did a second Thor and then as we’re finishing that up, Ralph said, “Listen, I want you guys to do a monthly book for me because I really like what you’re doing.” We said, “Daredevil.” He said, “No, no, I want you to do Thor.” I remember saying to him, “Thor? We can’t do Thor. We don’t do cosmic.” He said, “You just did two issues.” I said, “They’re fill-ins. I could do a fill-in on any book in the line but I don’t know if I could do Thor.” He says, “Well, talk to Ron.”

Tom DeFalco:        I called up Ron. I said, “Ron, what do you think?” Ron says, “Well, Thor was always one of my favorite characters after Spider-Man.” We said, “Okay, all right. We’ll do Thor.” So, we started working on it. I thought, “Well, I don’t know if we can do cosmic, so let’s see if we can do a cosmic story.” We ended up doing that Celestial story.

Alex Grand:         I love it.

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Tom DeFalco:        Once we did that story, I said, “Yeah, I guess we can do cosmic.”

Alex Grand:         Yeah, because, I mean, you went into a Celestial’s brain.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah.

Alex Grand:         I mean, I remember that and I’m like, “Wow. So, that’s what’s in there.”

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah, we were always, even when we’re dealing with old things, trying to chart new paths.

Alex Grand:         Yeah, you were. Yeah. Also because on your first of the regular run of that you guys did, you introduced the Celtic Gods.

Tom DeFalco:        Celtic Gods, yeah.

Alex Grand:         Leir, the Lord of Lightning. I mean, I love that stuff.

Tom DeFalco:        Like I said, we were always wanting to add to the sandbox, add to the playground.

Alex Grand:         Yeah. Right. You created, what, New Warriors and then Thunderstrike into the whole Eric Masterson storyline.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. Yeah, that was kind of by mistake. Again. When we introduced Eric, we knew that ultimately he was going to die at the end of his story.

Alex Grand:         Oh, you did? Okay.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. The first time he meets store, he’s actually injured and that’s when he hurts his leg. Thor looks at him first time or second time and says, “I have a hunch things are not going to go well for this guy.” We dropped all these hints throughout the whole series that things were not ever going to go well for him.

Alex Grand:         Right. I mean, there were actually visions of death also around him, too.

Tom DeFalco:      Yeah. At one point, we introduced the Thor Corps, which was another bad joke that became something. Dargo had been kind of sticking it to Eric throughout the whole thing and then later on gets a vision of what was in store for Eric and all we could do is see Dargo’s face as he’s looking at the screen.

Alex Grand:         Yeah, deer in headlights, yeah.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. Then after that, he’s very nice to Eric and says to him, “Enjoy every moment.”

Alex Grand:         Yeah. Yeah, I actually was sad when Eric died. I got really invested in that character. I noticed that aesthetic had a lot of new stuff but again, there’s a return to the basics because there was a very Kirby aesthetic to the thing. Was that in discussions or did that just naturally come about?

Tom DeFalco:        Everything Ron and I did was the result of the discussions.

Alex Grand:         Oh, that’s how?

Tom DeFalco:        Because everything Ron and I do was… By then, we had honed the discussion thing. Even if one of us starts with an idea, it becomes a big discussion.

Alex Grand:         Right. Then now you’re editor-in-chief. Is it that you were chosen as editor-in-chief because you were seen as more flexible of a personality than Shooter? Is that the bottom line there, that the upper management felt you’re more flexible and the creative people felt you were more flexible? Is that what made that work?

Tom DeFalco:        I don’t know. I never asked about that. I think they targeted me early because I got my books on time. When I first joined the staff, the books were very late. They brought in Virginia Romita who had come up with something called the Virginia Schedule. I remember looking at that schedule thinking, “I don’t know how I’m going to reach this schedule.”

Tom DeFalco:        Mark Gruenwald was my assistant at the time and I said, “Mark, I can’t come up with a plan to reach Virginia’s schedule but I have come up with a plan that’ll get us on time.” He said, “What is it?” I said, “We’re going to produce a book every three weeks because these are monthly comic books and science says if you do one every three weeks, eventually you got to catch up on time and get ahead of schedule.”

Tom DeFalco:        Grueny said, “Yeah, how are you going to do that?” I said, “It’s easy. We’re going to start with the writers, going to call up all the writers and tell them that, ‘Every three weeks, I need a plot.’ If the plot is one day late, there’s going to be a fill-in. Don’t expect me to call you up. Don’t expect me to warn you. Just assume if you’re late, you’re going to get a fill-in because you are.”

Tom DeFalco:        All of my writers were such pros, they all rose to the challenge. Roger Stern, Bill Mantlo,  DeMatteis, they were terrific. They came up and they got the books on time and eventually, ahead of schedule. We got to the point where we would have two or three issues in the drawer as opposed to other guys who are just barely getting them out on time.

Alex Grand:         Barely getting that one in, yeah.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. When I was on the Spider-Man titles, I started working with this gentleman by the name of Ed Hannigan doing cover sketches. We started to play with the logos. We were blowing up logos and just doing weird cover cover sketches and pushing the limits and sales on the books.

Tom DeFalco:        I had great creative teams, so I got to get the content, content, content. That’s how you sell comics. Our content was great, the covers were great, the guys were all doing a fabulous job. I’m just sitting back, waking up occasionally to have lunch. The sales rose and we were on time. Management noticed that. I also got along good with Hasbro and a couple of the other toy companies.

Alex Grand:         I see. The toy people, yeah.

Tom DeFalco:        I got along good with those. I got along good with the publisher. The publisher, a gentleman by the name of Mike Hobson; a true gentleman in every sense of the word, a great publisher. Still a good friend of mine. We get together for lunch every once in a while. I’m a lucky guy. I managed to get, I’m still friendly with all my old bosses.

Alex Grand:         Mm-hmm (affirmative), that’s great. Now, you were editor-in- chief,  also during a couple of key corporate events. One was when New World sold Marvel to Revlon and then in 1991 when Marvel went public. How was being editor-in-chief during these corporate events? Did things change around you or did you always have to keep corporate things in mind as editor-in-chief? What were some particular stressors or was it business as usual?

Tom DeFalco:        It was pretty much business as usual. I always figured that as long as we were making money, they would leave us alone. I had a very bottom line mentality about that stuff: the comic books have to sell.

Tom DeFalco:        As a result, I made sure that all of the editors got sales reports, both direct market and newsstand sales so that they could track their sales. I thought it was very, very important that editors could track their sales. This way, if sales flipped up, they could look at the cover and say, “Wait a minute? Why did this flip up?” Stuff like that.

Tom DeFalco:        Gruenwald and I, we only looked at the books that weren’t selling. If a book was on a downward path, Mark and I would get all the latest issues back to the point where it started to fail, read them all, and try to figure out what was wrong and then go talk to the editor, sometimes his creative team, and try to get the book back on track. As a result, there are certain editors I almost never spent any time with

Alex Grand:         Because they were doing it because they were doing okay already.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. Bob Harras and the X books, I realize I very rarely spent time with Bob because his books were sellable.





Alex Grand:         Yeah.

Tom DeFalco:        I figured, “If a book was selling, all I could do is mess it up, so stay away from him.”

Alex Grand:         That’s cool. You actually probably gave some of the editors a little more freedom than Shooter did.

Tom DeFalco:        Yeah. I thought that it was important that the editors actually edit. I also think that by the time of book came to me, the next two or three issues are already predetermined. If I futz with this, I got to futz with the next three or four issues. Like I said, I only looked at books that weren’t selling.

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