I went into Hollywood and met Mike Aarons and went to Grantray-Lawrence Animation to work on the, by today's standards, extremely cheap and crude Marvel superheroes cartoons which basically consisted of taking stacks of the comic book art, taking parts of the art, pasting it down, extending it down into drawings and occasionally a new piece of art to bridge the comic book panels and limited animation and lip movement.
Mike RoyerI live in the past when it comes to movies, but my own career is a matter of remembering the nuts and bolts and things like eating chocolate cake and drinking milk with Jack [Kirby] in his kitchen, but that's all I remember.
Mike RoyerThere are different rules for comic books now. You've got prima donna's that are dealing with the direct sales market, so if they say it's going to be late, then that's what you tell the dealers and it's late.
Mike RoyerPeople ask me who my favorite inker is and I tell them my favorite inker was Joe Sinnott...but I was the best. Now I don't mean that as any kind of egotistical thing. It's just that I did what Jack wanted.
Mike RoyerI did get a nice compliment from Ramona Fradon a few years ago.She was talking about the one and only Plastic Man comic that I inked for her for DC and she said it was the only time that she'd ever had anyone ink her. Everyone else put in their own personality and changed it. In fact, bless her heart, she said if she were still doing Brenda Starr, she'd have me ink it.
Mike RoyerI've been very lucky with the people I've met over the years. Way back in the early '70s I went to [Phil] Seuling's conventions for something like three years in a row from '70 to '72 and I remember at the '72 luncheon with the Academy of Comic Book Artists and talking with John Romita about the kind of brushes he used. Pros ask pros the same questions that fans do. "What kind of pens do you use? What kind of brushes do you use?" I was so amazed that the wonderful work John Romita was doing was accomplished with a Windsor-Newton series 7 Number 4. Not a 2 or a 3, but a 4.
Mike Royer