The Tom DeFalco Series Part 1 of 5

The Thing Of It Is

Tom DeFalco

The discoverer of “The Laughing Wallet” (hold your wallet in the flat of your hand, gently move your hand up and down and make a noise like a seagull about to dive on a slice of pizza).

“Blood prints!” Referring to the fact that the color red, appearing on a piece of original art, will be captured during the separation process… 

Universal Explanation Preamble: “The thing of it is…” –which is the signal to all Bullpenners in earshot, to sit down, perhaps get a pillow or a nice beverage and just relax…

“A break… give to me… a break!” To be said with rising exasperation.

“I’ve never been one to hide my light under a bushel basket.”

“I’ve got a lot of overhead.”

“Where are you working tomorrow?”

“(insert freelancer’s name here)’s got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel…”

“I tried _____ once—it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!” Fill in the blank– any subject appropriate from week-long poker jags to Smiler’s spicy fried chicken.

“It’s all-l-l smoke and mirrors!”

“I have found freelancers to be a cowardly and superstitious lot.”

‘—and I came to on a train heading for Canada and my wallet’s missing!” Part of a longer story of a bachelor party.

“The Bullpen was the heart of Marvel. As a freelancer, I was outside, on my own. Those guys were part of the company, on staff; they were there all the time.”

Some time in early 1980, Editor In Chief, Jim Shooter introduced us clowns in the back… typesetting guys Carl Gafford and Stan Aaron, ace on-staff colorist George Roussos, penciler/inker of yore, then, in-house correction artist John Tartaglione, Stat-Men Robbie Carosella and myself—honest, hard-working backbones of the company, Al Smith keeper of the well-ordered proof-roll storage room… introduced us, I say, to Tom DeFalco. We were told that Tom had worked all over the place, but recently at Harvey and Archie Comics.

Best of Arch Comics Book Four
©Archie Comic Publications, Inc.

I choked back a snicker. That struck me as hilarious. How could Casper The Friendly Ghost and Archie’s Fun Pages prepare you to work at a “real” comic workplace, like Marvel? Such was my ignorance and innocence back then. I smirked a bit and returned to my exotic Photostat brews. Tom was located in an office that was just down the hall— just before heading ‘round the bend to the Bullpen and further, to other editors. So far away from the established editors, I figured he was being put through the wringer to see if he’d crack. But he certainly was pleasant enough. Tom lived out on Long Island and was a slave to the Long Island Rail Road timetable. So he usually left the offices early. By that I mean we didn’t really get to know him out of the office for a long while. Tom was Editor to my chum, Assistant Editor Mark Gruenwald, so I got to chat now and then while visiting Mark.

A short time passed. Now it is early 1982. Then Team America (I know! Not the mega-puppet movie) struck. Hard. Shooter came bustling through the area with a clutch of art boards, calling for All Hands On Deck, we had a doozie! It was 5:15, well after “regular” hours and I was enjoying a pacifying cup of coffee, chewing the fat with my good chum, young Jack Morelli, Bullpen lettering correction artist.

As Tom tells this story, what occurred before was that this baying dog of a toy-tie-in comic rattled through the office, Jim was unhappy with it and so had a bunch of artful “deadline dodgers” work out of his apartment to fix it. Penciler/inker/creator Bob Layton, legendary inker Vinnie Colletta and the same young Jack as a rapid-fire letterer. Jim labored mightily on the script, calling out art changes, re-arranging panels and pages like some mad ringmaster at the big top!

The next day, uhhh… the day of this story… Jim was holding his head and moaning. DeFalco found him in such a state and, being the caring sort that he is, asked what was the trouble? Jim said he had this book that was so bad, after all sorts of work, that he was going to toss it. Tom asked, how bad could it be? We’ll fix it! He took the book, all barely held-together with tape and scraps of flesh, read a few pages then started panicking with a loud, Whoah… WHOAAAOH!!! What the hell IS this!? (When Tom tells the story, he puts in all the sound effects and sounds of human suffering. He pantomimes fainting and the room spinning around. Pretty funny.)

Team America was a “toy tie-in” comic book. Some company wanted a motorcycle toy line to have a “back story.” The success of the G. I. Joe toy line—with that wonderful (Larry Hama created) back story—and comic—may have been a goad or perhaps it was the playset featuring larger-than-life motorcycle dare-devil Evil Knievel. Whichever! They wanted a comic story about a band of outrageous motor cyclists to add to their conventional sales. Shooter himself helped plot/write that first issue along with Ed Hannigan—storied penciler whose specialty was genius cover designs. The first issue had made its way through production with only a few hitches, as stat-men, Robbie and I had seen the various pages a few times. But nothing out of the ordinary.

For Jim to call an “All Hands On Deck” was rare—he usually kept such things off-site. As he had done so for the first night’s re-working of TA #1. As I said, Jack and I were drinking our post-work coffees, mumbling incoherently at each other, when we heard the call. Jack and I ambled in to the Bullpen to see typing paper and art board all over the place. On the drafting tables, taborets and more alarmingly, the floor. Shooter was chewing his nails and staring at Tom. Tom was on his knees, shuffling paper around like a mad accountant, talking to himself. He was scissoring typing paper apart and sloppily Scotch Taping bits and pieces together. I noted swathes of typists’ correction fluid that had cracked off to sort’a reveal the text beneath, his “dying man” scrawl of handwriting all over.

“I got it… I got it!” Tom yelled. “Water on the knee?” I asked. “No!” Tom easily lobbed back at me, “We only need to rearrange 4 pages and add 6 panels of art!”

The light burned in his eyes. No one could rearrange 4 pages and add 6 panels of art, re-letter it and change the coloring in… um… 1 hour and 10 minutes! That was when the smiling but unstoppable FedEx man would walk out of the building to his idling truck on the sidestreet. No one.

I looked around for corroborative laughter and rolling of eyes.

What I saw was the Bullpen at its finest. Poised as if on starting blocks, Al Milgrom penciler/inker extraordinaire, legendary inker Vinnie Colletta (both Al and Vinnie were old-hand freelancers and good friends with Jim; if they’d been around earlier, it was easy to get them to stay) and Jack—whose inks and nibs were still fresh from his day’s lettering labors and myself, with stat-camera at the ready. Stalwart staff colorist, Andy Yanchus, brushes poised to efficiently re-work the color guides. Sheer madness, true; when you advanced or retarded a panel on one page, you had to re-order all the before and after panels or pages around it. If you have several moves, in conjunction with added panels, you had a mind-bending, Satanic puzzle. Yes, the Bullpen filled its day with single panel fixes, sometimes moving art around… but this… this…

It could be done. In fact, despite Al having to leave as soon as he’d finished penciling in some panels (Al could mimic anyone’s style, following Mike Vosburg’s– the book’s actual penciler– was child’s play) the fixes were done! Vinnie, with a few strokes, completed the inks—he had inked the book in the first place! Shooter with his usual generosity got us pizzas and sodas (the universal Bullpenners’ compensation) we managed to leisurely finish at 6:10! (The existence of FedEx back in those days allowed for such dancing around the Deadline Ultimate possible—if you got the package to Mr. FedEx by 6:25PM, he would get it to the desk of whoever-in-hell you wanted it by 9AM the next morning! Why, editorial could put stuff off to so close to the last minute, that we would run downstairs to the FedEx truck, throw our young bodies in front of it and hand over the package at the last-last second… no joke! If you really felt like poking the Deadline Ultimate with a chair, you could drive out to Newark International and drop off the package at their terminal by 8:59PM when the plane took off!!!) There we were… 6:10… slapping each other on the backs, already beginning to revert to our normal, lazy postures, squeegeeing the sweat off when a cry sounded.

It was Tom, who looked up from his last proof-reading of the “finished” book– making a high-pitched howl, sounding half man, half wild animal—or maybe 30/70. He wailed, “THERE’S NO START TO THE RACE!”

Of course, this was an origin story about a group of maverick motorcyclists. You know… ex-C.I.A., runaway rich kid and mystical master mechanic… Older friend of the family Standard Sidekick #1, Standard Sidekick #2 and distant-but-definitely-interested-Tom-Boy-ex-PhD Standard Female Character #1. The usual. In it was a race—again, good vs. evil, corporate goons who wanted to buy Team America and/or a love interest in the mix, whatever—but apparently only a finish was shown to the climactic “race for it all!” This was when it got fun, if you like fun such as banging your head on office walls—a common occurrence on paydays—then this was lots of fun.

Tom looked a little distressed.

This was a man who had fought bitter schedule wars with Virginia Romita, had torn late pages from the hands of every two-bit freelancer in Comicdom… his breathing was ragged, his collared shirt asunder, his normally flushed and ruddy face was more flushedy and ruddier. Tom again said, “I got it! All we do is shrink this panel,” he held up a heavily rubber-cemented and already-art-corrected page, his surprisingly slender and graceful finger menacing a panel, “and add a scene of the flag coming down over the front tires.” Again, the eyes were burning. No one was impressed now.

We all shifted into high gear, I photo-stated down a whole panel so it could be cut in half. The top needed to be left white so art could be restored—I stuck the back of an old take-out menu in place—boom, done. I believe it was Vinnie who penciled and inked something quick for the starting flag side and that was photo-stated down and chopped up and added by Jack. While the stating was done, Jack was lettering whatever was dictated to him on vellum tracing paper. The back was whited out (with Sno-Paque! Auto-body primer touch-up paint! Great stuff, head-spinningly vaporous with many chemicals known to make freelancers dizzy in the state of California) so it was no longer see-through and that was pasted down. I recall Jack retouching the background art that surrounded the balloons on the low side. At the same time, I jumped in and worked on the high side, up-side down.

The coloring needed to be fixed and that was done very quickly thanks to Andy and his pal, Xerography. The artwork reeked of rubber cement and I would not be surprised if some of the water colors used in the color guides were still wet— but when a book is out to the printers, it’s always a thing of beauty. Faster than you could say, is there another slice? – done. DONE! HAAAHah! Ha hah aaa ahahh…

The cheerful FedEx man held the artwork as we thwapped a rubber-band around it, the long-labelled box caught the bundle and he vanished as though through a trap door! 6:24:50PM UCT!

And that was our proper introduction to Tom DeFalco, thereafter known as “Two-Fisted” Tom DeFalco!

Next up, in Part 2: Origin

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