Mark Evanier discusses Blackhawk and Plastic Man

The writer on his turn with the Quality legend, and on the Plastic Man cartoon!

Conducted by Mike Kooiman on 17 November 2011

Visit Mark Evanier's web site, POVonline!

An homage to Mark Evanier, drawn by his writing
partner, Sergio Aragonés. The two have produced
The Spirit (for DC) and Groo.

Writer Mark Evanier is probably familiar—if not by name, then by the characters he has written—to many cartoon and comics fans, having written for various publishers, producers and networks since the early 1970s. He was a friend to Jack Kirby and was involved with Kirby’s "New Gods" comics for DC in the early 1970s. Evanier is also a frequent collaborator with Sergio Aragonés and a contributor to the Jack Kirby Collector. As a writer, his work for DC Comics is relatively sporadic, but he made a great impression on me and many other fans with his reinvention of Blackhawk in 1982, with artist Dan Spiegle. Over the course of the series, Evanier often revealed behind-the-scenes details about producing Blackhawk, but my talk with him unearthed some fascinating caveats, and other things that I didn’t expect to learn!

Mike Kooiman: Tell me what you’re up to now…

Mark Evanier: Right now the main thing in my life is that I’m writer/producer/voice director of the Garfield cartoon show, seen on Cartoon Network and hundreds of other channels around the world. I’m writing another "Groo" project with Sergio Aragonés for Dark Horse, and I’m writing another new comic that I can’t talk about yet and I’m writing a screen play… I guess all sorts of different things.

MK: How long has it been since you’ve done any work for DC?

Evanier: I’ve done a few forewords—introductions to reprint collections but I haven’t written any comics for them for about two years. I did The Spirit comic for them for a brief time …

MK: I confess I haven’t read the ones you’re written but they’re on my agenda!

Evanier: In those, the stories were all by Sergio Aragonés, I just did the dialogue. It was the same series that was begun by Darwyn Cooke.

MK: You first worked with Dan Spiegle on Scooby Doo... Mystery Comics at Gold Key?