Q) You started a comic book publishing company called Blue Moon Comics Group. What years did Blue Moon Comics Group publish comics?
A) I actually started Blue Moon in 1988. I put an ad in CBG and got dozens of responses. After whittling the talent list down to the ones I thought were the best, we started working on Awesome Comics, which was to be a 68 page anthology. Plans quickly changed to publishing a few standard sized black and white comics, but after about a year, plans fell through. During that time, Jonathan "A" Gilbert and I had hit things off really well, so we kept up with each other as pen pals. By 1997, with Jon and a few other friends urging me on, I decided to pull Blue Moon out of the mothballs. We had a pretty good run that lasted until around 2003.
Q) What were the names of the titles you published, and could you tell us about some of them?
A) We started out with Mystery Adventure Tales. It was a magazine-sized anthology that ran anywhere from 68 to 80 pages and lasted for, I think, six issues. Next came Infinite Tales, another magazine-sized anthology that lasted 2 issues. In 2000, I went wild and started publishing a whole line of digest-sized, 36 page comics. We had Infinite Tales (a sci-fi anthology), Vault of Shadows (a horror anthology), Blue Moon Super-Heroes (a superhero anthology), Blue Moon Spotlight (our Showcase style title), and my superhero team, Power Corps, got its own title. We also did Jon Gilbert's Golden Age style anthology, All-Smash Funnies and Steve Skeates and Friends (all Steve Skeates stories).
Q) Could you speak about some of the comic book creators who worked at Blue Moon?
A) Besides Jon, Steve Skeates, and me, we had tons of talented guys like Ed Quinby, Jamie Laurie, JP Dupras, Seppo Makinen, David Vance, Vatche Mavlian...man, we had a couple dozen folks at one time. If I still had all the comics I could name them all (don't get mad at me if I left you out!), but I only have a half dozen comics left, believe it or not. Oh, yeah, one of the highlights was when Dick Ayers inked a story for us.
Q) Did any of the Blue Moon creators go on to work for one of the larger comic book publishers?
A) Well, Steve and Dick were already pros with decades of experience under their belts. Seppo had worked for Marvel, as well as many indy publishers. Vatche did some Star Wars for Dark Horse as well as a Spider-Man/Daredevil mini and a Spider-Man/Wolverine mini for Marvel.
Q) What were some of your favorite stories or titles you published? Also, what were your favorite characters to appear in Blue Moon Comics?
A) I honestly loved everything we did. Every story, every title represented what I thought comics were all about. I was proud to be associated with each and every person at Blue Moon. For my own part, I was especially proud of Power Corps, my cosmic hero Ultimus, and Kragor, my homage to Robert E. Howard and Roy Thomas. Jon's mystic hero, Solomon Wyrd was great, too. My all-time favorite story we published, though, is probably Steve Skeates' "The Devil You Say", which he did in the style of his Plop! comics of the 1970s. I had to talk him into doing it, but when he saw what could be done, he absolutely nailed it!
