Sometimes creators of superhero comics are just as interesting (and frankly, bizarre) as the heroes they create. Among superhero comics creators we have chaos magicians, bondage enthusiasts, war heroes, grifters and supposed alien abductees- and that’s just scratching the surface. So let’s look at some of the most fascinating (and some of the strangest) comics have to offer. Are there any weird or unusual stories about comics creators you have to share? Say so in the comments!
William Moulton Marston
William Moulton Marston is probably the comics creator most famous for his eccentricity. The guy behind Wonder Woman had an unusual belief system and lifestyle for today, much less the 1940s. As most comics fans know, Marston was a bondage enthusiast, but he took his kink a lot farther than most people do, using it as a basis for both his psychology work and political ideology. His basic belief was that women were inherently tender and submissive by nature (okay, dude) but rather than being aggressive and violent, men should adopt that example and allow themselves to be dominated (often by women).
He even said of men “give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to and they’ll be proud to be their willing slaves!” He even straight up said that women should rule the world and believed they would within the next thousand years.
Obviously, Marston’s feminism was pretty flawed and reductive by modern standards (putting women on a bizarre pedestal is harmful in its own way, and we’re not even getting into his racism here) and his grasp on biology was pretty terrible- he seriously believed women had “glands” that gave them extra emotions or something.
However, Marston did listen to his wife, Elizabeth Holloway Marston, the breadwinner of the family, way more than most men of the era would. When he wanted to create a hero who won the day for love, he took his wife’s suggestion to make it a woman. They both believed that girls could use more representation and strong role models. He also listened to her when she noted that her blood pressure rose when she was angry or scared, and working with her eventually led to the systolic blood pressure test, which is the basis of the modern lie detector.
Marston was also polyamorous- in addition to his wife, he had several other partners, but the most notable was Olive Byrne, who lived with him and his wife, eventually getting into a relationship with both of them.
Grant Morrison
Art by Frank Quietly
Grant Morrison is well known for his bizarre, philosophical comics, like his versions of Animal Man and Doom Patrol. If you read his work, it’s probably not all that surprising that the man himself leads a pretty unusual life. He’s a practicing chaos magician and even wrote a book on magick and the occult. He often talked about an “alien abduction” he experienced in Kathmandu, but has clarified the “alien abduction” thing is a metaphor…but his description of the experience is pretty bizarre. He states “. I was Home in Eternity, far from my attachment to the little 'Grant Morrison' body I'd been using to experience the growth of the larval universe entity.”
He also describes “an encounter with Voodoo scorpion loas” and says that “frightening as it was at the time, I have to say that the ordeal was a breakthrough which changed my entire life - made me happier, freer, more creative, sexier and younger by the minute. I don’t do magic now, it does me. I feel like I'm living in one of my own stories.”
Alan Moore
The creator of the acclaimed stories Watchmen, The Killing Joke and V for Vendetta is both famously cantankerous and famously weird. He’s a ceremonial magician and believes writing to me a sort of magic itself saying that writers and artists are “the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman.” He primarily worships the roman snake god Glycon, despite acknowledging that this god was created as a hoax because “the imagination is just as real as reality.”
Religion is all well and good- in the end the truly weird thing about Alan Moore is the ridiculously nasty stuff he tends to say in interviews. He famously has a feud going with Grant Morrison and frequently gets pretty out there with his insults referring to Morrison as a “herpes like persistence in comics”. He even decides Morrison’s comics career was one big effort to get his attention and basically accused him of being in love with him. He’s also famously made huge rants tearing up the comics industry in general, basically stating that superheroes are dead and there’s no talent out there and everyone’s ripping off him. He’s also feuded with several other people, from creators like Jason Aaron to fans, and thrown several old friends under the bus. Grumpy doesn’t even begin to cover it!
Jim Steranko
From theEW.com
Jim Steranko is most famous for being the guy behind the 1960’s Nick Fury, Agent of Shield feature. He’s was also an escape artist and former criminal. He would often be buried alive at baseball games to attract the audience
.Steranko was born into poverty and as a teenager, he turned to crime- stealing guns, selling them in a parking lot, stealing 25 cars and two trucks and some armed robbery. However, Steranko was not apparently violent, as he was actually thwarted when one of his robbery victims realized he would never shoot that gun and refused to hand over the cash. After being arrested for his car thefts, he move on to being in a rock band, fire-eating, then advertising and eventually, comics.
Stan Lee
Stan “The Man” Lee was not a great boss, by all accounts. Even he admits that the famously cranky newspaper editor who plagues Spider-Man, J. Jonah Jamison, is based off him. His employees were reportedly so intimidated by him that when he said he didn’t like the color green, green was banned from Marvel. Recently, he was actually sued by his assistant, who claimed that Stan hurled abuse and insults at him all the time.
Lee also had a famously poor memory, which is why so many Marvel characters have the same letters for their first and last name (Bruce Banner, Peter Parker). He also totally forgot that the character he created, Iron Man, didn’t have a nose and so the artist had to…give him a nose, which looked pretty silly. And that’s not even getting into his feud with Jack Kirby and the time he berated children for hurting a fictional character’s feelings.
Jim Shooter
From The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe
Jim Shooter’s claim to fame is the fact that he became a writer for TheLegion of Superheroes, Superman and Supergirl- at age fourteen. He sent in his LoS stories to DC when he was 13 and the next year, the editor in chief called him to purchase the stories and commissioned him to do more. He later became Marvel’s editor-in-chief at the young age of 27, but many resented his strict deadlines and editorial control and he was later fired.
Jack Kirby
There’s no other way to say it, Jack Kirby, co-creator of Captain America, is cool as hell. The man is a literal war hero- he fought in World War II. His commander, banking on his artistic skills, used him as an advance scout, so he had to go out into war zones and draw anything unusual he saw and come back and report the enemy activity.
But on one patrol, he did something totally awesome, almost completely by accident- he was approached by a little old man who knew automatically that he was Jewish and burst into tears at the sight of him. He led his squad to German camp, and all the Germans fled upon seeing them. Kirby and his men found the stockades were full of Polish Jews and liberated the camp. He definitely lives up to the character he created. You can read more about his wartime tales here.
Mark Grunewald
From Emporer Doom
Mark Grunewald was an editor at Marvel and wrote and penciled for many comic titles like Captain America. He was known for his practical jokes while he was alive (he often cartwheeled down Marvel's hallways), but it’s really what he had done about his death that makes him unusual. Grunewald requested to be cremated and have his ashes mixed in with the ink used first paperback collection of his Squadron Supreme title. And his request was honored. So, if you own one of those books, congrats- you also own pieces of Mark Grunewald’s dead body.
Neal Adams
Neal Adams is best known as one of the best Batman artists, who revitalized the character along with Denny O’ Neil in the 1970’s. He also wrote the Green Arrow/Green Lantern Comics, most famous for the storyline where Roy Harper became a drug addict. He also has done incredibly important work as a creators right advocate and advocate for Holocaust survivors.
All that said, the dude has some decidedly strange scientific ideas. He’s a proponent of the expanding earth theory, which as it sounds, is a theory that earth is slowly growing, This is a theory that was disproven a long time ago, but Adams holds fast. His Batman: Odyssey story even uses it as a plot point, showing that a “hollow earth” has been produced thanks to this growth.
Steve Ditko
Steve Ditko, best known as the artist and co-creator of Spider-Man, is a staunch objectivist (his character Mr. A is basically objectivist propaganda) and famous recluse, declining interviews all over the place. So much of a recluse, in fact, that Neil Gaiman did an entire documentary devoted to his journey to track him down. He did eventually get to talk to him, but the meeting wasn’t recorded at Ditko’s request.
Frank Miller
Frank Miller is the creator of Sin City and 300 and was also behind The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, which are considered essential to the modern Batman. He also has a tendency to say jaw droppingly ridiculous, bigoted things. He’s virulently anti-Islamic. He tried to push throught a story where Batman fights Al-Queda called “Holy Terror” and was proud to call it a piece of propaganda that would offend just about everybody. That sounds…like a fun read? The book was eventually published sans-Batman and heavily criticized.
Even more bizarre were his statements about the Occupy Wall Street moment, which he called “a pack of louts, thieves and rapists”. Even if you disagree with the movement, you have to admit that’s a pretty gross thing to say. Millers works were always under fire for racism, sexism and homophobia and many would agree he’s just gotten worse as years go on. The most fascinating thing about him is how he’s still even given work.