The last three decades the comics industry has had its own in-house satirist: Fred Hembeck, whose familiar self-caricature has appeared in fanzines, in Marvel and DC comics, and now on the Web. In February 2008 Image will publish an immense retrospective of Hembeck’s work, The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus, collecting his humorous takes on over 40 years of comic book history
PW Comics Week: How did you get started turning into “Cartoon Fred” and interviewing comic book characters?
Fred Hembeck: I'd always wanted to be a cartoonist, though my original goal was to do straight adventure type art for features like The Fantastic Four and Superman. When the portfolio I dragged around NYC in the summer of 1977 was judged not to be up to snuff, I was determined to keep drawing, and so I went home and kept doodling non-stop, even when I was writing letters to friends from college. That's how Cartoon Fred originated, and eventually, he found his way into some of the missives I sent off to the letter columns in Marvel and DC books. Bill Mantlo was rather enamored with one that I sent him, and had me redraw it for publication in an issue of Iron Man. Shortly after that, on a whim, I thought it might be fun to have my cartoon alter ego interview Spider-Man, and I sent a nine-panel strip doing just that, unsolicited, to Alan Light's weekly trade publication, The Buyer's Guide For Comics Fandom. Alan printed it, people liked it, I did more, and y'know, I never did get back to polishing my chops for that potential FF penciling gig!
PWCW: What do Marvel and DC, and for that matter, individual comics creators think of your work?
FH:Happily, they've been nothing but supportive. Fact is, after initially making the fanzines rounds, I eventually wound up doing my thing within the pages of the actual Marvel and DC books themselves, probably most notably as a part of DC's “Daily Planet” feature, a long-running feature in Marvel Age, hosting The Fantastic Four Roast, and presiding over the infamous Fred Hembeck Destroys The Marvel Universe. Most of the individual creators I've spoken with over the years have been very kind to me, and it delights me no end that the man who I consider most responsible for my life-long love of the medium, Stan Lee, was willing to write a foreword for my upcoming collection, The Nearly Complete Essential Hembeck Archives Omnibus! Man, I sure couldn't have predicted that back in '77!
PWCW: How did the Omnibus book come about?
FH: About three years ago, my buddy Al Gordon (long-time inker for both Marvel and DC) called up and tossed out an idea he had—why not collect all my Dateline:@#$! strips into one big book. I'll admit I was dubious at first, and it wasn't until Al got his pal—and Image Publisher—Erik Larsen involved that I began to realize, hey, these guys were serious!
PWCW: What can readers expect to see in the Omnibus?
FH: Besides all the Dateline:@#$! strips that appeared in The Buyer's Guide in the late '70s and into the early '80s, nearly two hundred strips from the feature’s mid-'90s revival are included, as is all the material from seven Fantaco books from the '80s—now all are long out of print. But it was Erik who suggested I open the flood gates and include all sorts of other stuff, so I included a number of my own characters like The Dog and Mr. Mumbo Jumbo in the mix. A fair amount of the material has either never seen the light of day, or only shown up in the most obscure of places (for instance, there's a whole section of strips done for an apa [amateur publishing association], an original audience of roughly forty). Cover redos, Christmas cards, Internet illos, commissions--even two page of nature art! It's all here—heaven help us, it's all here...
PWCW: How does it feel to look back on your career through this 900 page book?
FH: It's a bit sobering—where did those thirty years go anyway? And to be totally honest with you, I couldn't help but notice a few definite ebbs in my flow—by the time I was finishing up my first run on Dateline:@#$! circa 1983, I was clearly losing interest. But Al and Erik wanted all of those strips included, so there are a few grimace inducing pages in the book (but, I'd like to think, only a few. Really.). Otherwise, it might be fun for readers to see how often I repeat the same gags over and over during a three decade span—my sense of humor hasn't changed all that much, it would seem.
PWCW: What are some of your favorite pieces in the Omnibus?
FH: I really like Cartoon Fred's meeting with the cartoon doppelgangers of noted indy cartoonists Seth, Chester Brown, and Joe Matt, a mid-'90s strip based on actual events! The Dog has long been a favorite, and the free-flowing non-stop parade of characters in Abbott and Costello Meet The Bride of Hembeck is still impressive in a way-out wacky manner! And say, did I mention those nifty nature illos?
PWCW: Are you doing any new comics for the Omnibus or for other projects?
FH: While there are no new comics in the Omnibus, I did write about forty pages of background text for the book's various sections. Besides regular postings on my Hembeck.com site (and semi-regular episodes of "The Fred Hembeck Show" over at the Quick Stop Entertainment web page), I continue to take on commissions for my cover redos, as well as a number of small strips for several independent publishers. And—not to be too premature—there's recently been some discussion about me signing on to do the art chores for a brand-new, five issue series helmed by a writer whose name you'd all likely recognize. But more on that the (ahem) next time you interview me, Peter!
PWCW: Your book comes out the same month as Mark Evanier’s long-awaited Kirby: King of Comics. Is this a case of “When Titans Clash”??
FH: Actually, this is more likely more a case of “The King and the Jester”! Without Kirby, there'd probably be no comics, so you gotta have a King. But, I'm hoping, folks'll have a little love—and cash—left over for the Jester as well.
