Excerpt

New York City, 1972

THE BIRDS OF the swamp were the first to fall silent, followed by the frogs. The night air became unnaturally still, as if the creatures knew some-thing terrible was coming. When the monstrous form bubbled up from the primordial muck, even the insects stopped buzzing. A bony hand emerged, followed by a phosphorescent skull, until the whole figure rose out of the bog. William Elder, dead these last three days, strode out of the swamp, leaving bits of rotten flesh trailing behind him. When the dead man vanished into the ferns, the frogs and insects resumed their nocturnal songs.

Revenge! A single word burned through its liquefying brains, propelling the walking corpse through the swamp to the manicured lawn of a quaint bungalow that William Elder once called home. Inside the domicile were the co-conspirators, his charming wife, Marie, and his best friend, Howard. Through putrid eyeballs, he could see them now in the picture window, raising a glass to the horrific thing they had done.

Their cheery celebration is short-lived as the shambling, reeking thing that was once William Elder burst through the door and dragged his wife and her lover back with him to the oozing quicksand of the swamp. They had always gotten along so fabulously in life, the three of them. Now they would be together forever in the slimy pits of Bogeyman Bog!

***

My back is killing me. I sit up straight to stretch and the muscles scream in protest. This job will be the death of me yet.

I slide off the stool to take a step back for some perspective on the full page of comic book art I have just completed. A standard six-panel grid penciled out over seven pages, telling the story of "Return to Bogeyman Bog."

The artwork is nothing to write home about. Sufficient unto the day, as my dad used to say. As uninspired as the hackneyed story it illustrates. A run-of-the-mill rotting corpse revenge tale gleaned almost wholesale from the classic EC Comics that dominated newsstands two decades ago. The writer of this piece, Sonny Bronson, is one of the older hacks here at Capitol Comics. Bronson should have been put out to pasture long ago, but the editor keeps him around because he can churn out these little ditties like clockwork. Nothing fancy, the editor says. Just give the kids what they want.

When the muscles in my lower back stop shrieking, I scan the bullpen. A dozen guys just like me, hunched over their drafting tables, penciling or inking comic book pages. Like a scene from a Dickens tale, they toil over their work with a sweatshop intensity. The same chitchat every day. Pencilers complain about the scripts they work from while the inkers grouse about the penciled pages they have to embellish. Two fellas do the lettering, printing tiny dialogue into those little word balloons. The woman seated near the window does all the coloring. Sally Dillinger never complains as she paints the finished comic pages. Sally stands out here in the sweaty salt mines of men. A strawberry-blond knockout with a bright smile and fingertips stained red, yellow and green.

Almost every hack in the bullpen has asked Sally out, and every one of them has been shot down. Including me. Sally claims to have a strict policy against dating co-workers. Whether that's true or just a polite way to keep the office monkeys off her back, I don't know.

"Time to pay the piper," says a nasally voice behind me. "Dix needs his pages."

This is Gopher. His real name is Geoffrey, but nobody calls him that. Gopher is five feet of upper lip sweat and greedy turtle eyes. An aspiring comic book artist who is incapable of drawing anything outside of Captain America. Gopher is sort of the office boy who makes lunch runs and cleans brushes for the crew. On Monday mornings, he collects finished pages from everyone's desk to bring to Editor-in-chief, Hal Dixon. Dixon checks all the pages before they move on to the next stage of production.

"Ooh, sweet," Gopher says, eyeballing the pages I've inked. "Look at all that gunk dripping off the dead guy."

"Easy." I stop him from gathering up the pages. "The ink's still wet on that last page."

The grin on Gopher's face is almost obscene as he pores over the artwork. Envy or admiration? Hard to tell with this twerp.

"Nice job, Carson. The boss will be pleased with it."

That's me, Wally Carson. Comic book artist, pencils and inks. Go ahead and laugh at the name Wally. I agree it's kind of goofy, but Walter isn't much better, so I just go by Carson. It has a cowboy ring to it. Not that I'm a cowboy, mind you. The first and last time I tried to ride a horse, I fell off into a pyramid of road apples.

I'm originally from Ohio. Youngstown, to be exact. A quaint forgettable city in an otherwise forgettable stretch of flyover country. Moving to the Big Apple was a shock. Still is, to be honest. I don't think I'll ever get used to living in New York City. You can tell the difference between the people who were born here and the ones who parachuted in. The true bloods have this veneer to them, part indifference, part callousness, that allows them to navigate the streets like they own the place. Me, I'm still a magnet for every panhandler and chit-chatty lunatic out there. It's my own fault, really. I make eye contact with these overly loud people with the dark urine stain running down their pants, and they make a beeline straight for me. Some want spare change and others are desperate for an audience to their political screeds or tales of personal woe. But my pockets are empty and my sympathy dried up and blew away a long time ago.

I shouldn't be so sanctimonious about it, honestly. I'm living hand to mouth, even with a semi-stable job here at Capitol Comics. No savings, no cushion in case of an emergency. It wouldn't take much to knock me into the streets with the beggars and the 'Jesus-loves-you' people.

Gopher's blowing bad breath over the last page to dry the ink before stacking up my finished pages for the boss. He moves on to the other tables, gathering up the work from the pencilers and inkers. When Gopher gets to the last table on the end, he stops to ooh and ahh over the artwork. This is Johnny Valentine, star artist here at Capitol Comics. Whatever the genre, Valentine knocks it out of the park every time—superheroes, westerns, romance, war, crime. The guy does it all with a dynamic sense of action that makes the panels pop off the page. The comics he illustrates sell well and the little fan mail that comes into Capitol is often addressed to him. Good old Johnny Valentine is a bona fide star, but the worst part is that he knows it. The way he swaggers through the bullpen, I'm surprised he doesn't need a wheelbarrow just to carry his swollen ego.

If that sounds petty, well, that's because it is. I have no delusions about my own abilities. My work is capable, journeyman-like, but it doesn't leap off the page the way Valentine's does. Reliable, not a showboat. Valentine's ego often trips him up. The swagger puts people off and sometimes he pulls the temperamental artist card with week-long benders and blown deadlines. Dixon tolerates his behavior because his work is good and Valentine knows it. From across the bullpen, I can see Gopher fawn over Valentine's latest pages and the showboat just eats it up. A full five minutes of this revolting nonsense before Gopher gathers up the pages and runs the whole bundle into the editor's office.

I kill half an hour reading the script for my next job before Hal Dixon, editor-in-chief here at Capitol Comics, emerges from his office and hollers at everyone to pile into the big room.

We file in, artists and writers, and scramble for a seat. When Sally enters, two artists and one writer offer her their chair. Hal Dixon stands before the blackboard on the wall. Marianne, the secretary, has already erased last week's schedule so that Dixon can chalk it up with the plan for this week.

I like Dixon. He pretends to be gruff, but that's only an act he uses to keep his stable of monkeys in line. The bullpen would collapse into Bedlam without it, so Dixon barks and grouses, but I've never seen the man dis-respect any of his crew. Prod, but don't demean, he often says. Something he learned in the army. Along with that buzz cut of his.

If you look closely, you'll see that the little finger on his right hand is gone. Blown off when he was in Korea. Not in action, he's the first to tell you. He shot it off himself when he thought his rifle was empty. Sometimes a dumb thing can save your neck. He got shipped back Stateside because of it and survived. An acceptable barter as far as Dix is concerned.

Monday morning pitch meetings are when every lunatic in the bullpen gets to throw ideas at the wall until Dixon is satisfied. Each writer and artist is assigned to a comic book title, and Dixon sets the goalposts so that every title has a plan and a deadline. Dixon purposely schedules the Monday pitch at eleven and no one's allowed to leave for lunch until Dix is satisfied. The longer the meeting goes, the more stomachs growl. Dixon claims an empty stomach curtails the usual bullshit endemic to every meeting. Get to the point or go hungry. It's up to you.

Our editor-in-chief is like a batter over home plate as everyone flings ideas for their titles. He lets them fly or knocks them back and makes you pitch again. When he's satisfied with the story idea, he scratches it down on the blackboard. Down the line we go—pitch, crack, pitch again, until every comic book title has a plan for the week. Only then does he release us to storm the deli downstairs like a pack of ravenous dogs.

Something is off about this Monday morning session, and everyone senses it. Normally Dixon has us pitching before we're even settled, but today he's standing before the clean blackboard with a grim wash on his shovel-shaped face.

"What the hell's with Dix?" I hear Valentine whisper nearby. "Did one of you pee in his cornflakes this morning?"

"Dunno," wheezes Martin Whipple, a writer who pens our two western comics, The Remington Kid and High Plains Gunman. "He looks like his dog just died."

Dixon motions for everyone to pipe down. Normally this would be ignored, but the stoniness on his face forces everyone to shut the hell up.

"We have a problem," he says. "A big stinking problem."

He tosses three comic books onto the long table. Not Capitol Comic titles. The competition. Marvel and DC comics, the two publishers who have a lock on this market. The three funny books in question are Tomb of Dracula, Swamp Thing, and Ghost Rider.

"These bastards," Dix continues, "are about to hammer a stake through our effing hearts."