Bill Mantlo

Some time ago, Johanna Draper Carlson posted a press release regarding Bill Mantlo. If you don't know, Mantlo was a writer for various comics published by Marvel in the late 1970s and into the 80s. Since I was such a comics junkie at this time, I naturally stumbled across his work quite regularly. Mantlo was an interesting guy; the writing gig seemed to be a sideline for him as he pursued (and eventually obtained) his law degree in the late 1980s. Then, in 1992, tragedy struck as he was hit by a car and suffered severe head trauma. While still alive, he has not fully recovered and will be most likely instutionalized for the rest of his life. That bites hard to put it mildly.

Now, my favourite Mantlo book was Swords of the Swashbucklers. A pirate comic set in space? Man, I was so there. I still have my originals of that series and they're a lot of fun. Not deep, but fun all the same. To help raise funds for Mantlo's care, WOWIO.com now has the complete run of Swords available as a free PDF download. As far as I can tell, revenue is generated through imbedded content in each PDF. I phrase it that way because, as a Canadian, I can't actually download any of the PDFs. Currently, WOWIO only allows readers based in the United States to read the PDFs. I believe that's due to copyright restrictions so if you're not a US-based reader you are out of luck. That all said, it is a worthy cause to a good guy who has gone through a pretty awful tragedy.

What's interesting in all of this is that aside from Swords I'm actually not a Mantlo-fan. Wha?!! Let me explain this as best I can but note that this will fall into some fanboy ravings. Consider yourself warned!

I was a big Marvel zombie back in the early to mid 1980s and my favourite book, hands down, was John Byrne's Alpha Flight. I was 9 or 10 years old when the title launched and it rocked my world. Why? Well, I don't think a non-Canadian can really understand how cool it was to have a super hero comic set in Canada that also felt Canadian. It was a team book that didn't feel like a traditional team book with characters that bickered and fought and didn't actually, y'know, team-up all that often. Now, in hindsight I realize that it's really not that different than what Lee and Kirby did with the initial launch of The Fantastic Four back in the early 60s, but it was certainly new to me. Toss in the Canadian setting and the uniquely Canadian vibe and the comic really started to jell. Add in the truly wonderful Eugene Milton Judd (Puck) and the reluctant hero James MacDonald Hudson (Guardian) and I was enraptured. Byrne caught me; really in a way that no other creator ever has (and yeah, that goes for Matt Wagner's Mage, too). The irony here, of course, is that Byrne himself didn't enjoy his time on Alpha Flight. Such is life.

Byrne left the title after issue 28. And his replacement, at least with the writing chores, was none other than Bill Mantlo. I still remember how hurt I was that Byrne was leaving but I still felt cautiously optimistic that Mantlo and the rest of the new creative team would do the job. Biting my lip all the way, of course, but still hopeful. It pains me to say that Mantlo truly screwed it up. Just monumentally. This is tough to say mainly due to the personal tragedy that Mantlo has undergone, but man did he ever make me hate him. I think part of it was that Mantlo truly didn't understand what made Alpha Flight work. Or rather, why I think Flight works. Looking back, I believe that Mantlo felt it was a team book with characters that rarely acted as a team and he wanted to "fix" that. Making those changes, though, destroyed the elements that made Alpha Flight so unique. His revamp of Puck was terrible, he butchered Sasquatch, he messed up the twins (Aurora and Northstar) and the mess just went on and on. I actually believe that it's a testimony to Alpha's fan base that the title still sold well enough through all of this that it wasn't cancelled 'til issue 130 in '94 - a full 101 issues since Byrne's departure. Mantlo's run only lasted from issues 29-66, but the series never recovered.

I'll never know why Mantlo's writing, at least to my mind, was so awful on Alpha Flight. I suspect, though I could be wrong, that it had a lot to do with the fact that he was working hard on his law degree and writing comic scripts was a way to pay the bills. His run lasted from late '85 to late '88 and that would fit the time period when he was studying and then passing his bar degree. Regardless, it was the low point for me as a comic book fan and my fan boy credentials never recovered. When I let Alpha Flight finally go (I stopped buying them some time around issue 90), it became very easy for me to let any title I wasn't enjoying go. Which sounds weird, phrased that way, but I wasn't just a reader at this point: I was a collector, too. I hadn't learned to be a reader at this point. So I was picking up a lot of stuff I didn't enjoy "just because." That stopped when I let Alpha Flight go. Claremont getting unceremoniously sacked on the X-Men after 17 years? Bye bye X-Men. DC kills Barry Allen? I never picked up the Wally West Flash comics. And so on. I think these type of events become jumping off points for readers and they certainly were that for me. And while I still love comics, I've never become a collector again.

What I realized, when it came right down to it, is that if the creators and/or publisher don't love the comics they create, why should I as a reader? And if I don't love them, why am I spending money on something I don't enjoy? Particularly when money was so scarce for me as a teenager. This, to me, is the heartbreaking lesson of Bill Mantlo. When a writer is just calling it in, readers can tell. Readers can always tell. If the creators aren't passionate, why should we be?

Now, that all said I don't want to leave this off on a negative note. The fact is that Bill Mantlo is a human being and, like all of us, was probably pulled in different directions. I suspect that becoming a lawyer was deeply important to him and something he was incredibly passionate about. Comics, from this point of view, may just not have been something he was able to focus all of his energy on. While deeply disappointing to me, I will not begrudge someone who was following their dreams.

Despite my feelings about his tenure on Alpha Flight, I don't want to forget how cool of a man he seemed to be. Colleen Doran perhaps says it best when she said the following (taken from the press release):

"Bill owed me nothing. I was not a good artist, and was not an important person. I was a beginner working on my first job for Marvel Comics, and all Bill knew about me was that I was in trouble and needed a hand. He was incredibly generous with his time and attention, and I will never ever forget that out of all the hundreds of people in the business, he was one of a small handful that stood by me and helped me when I was a complete nobody. He wasn't interested in sucking up, he wasn't interested in making a lot of money, he just wanted to do the right thing."

"My only regret is that I could not be a better artist for Bill. After all these years, I hope my small contribution to Bill's work can help him out in some small way to make up for the invaluable kindness he did me. I guess I knew what to say after all. Thank you, Bill Mantlo. I love you."

While I'll never be able to recommend Mantlo's writing on Alpha Flight, do yourself a favour and go read Swords of the Swashbucklers. I think you'll like these stories.  Quite possibly you'll fall in love with them.  And you'll be helping out a creator who needs it just by reading.