It's not Comic Con any more. It's this huge marketplace for the motion picture and television industry. And the toy manufacturer's and the game people. One of the problems with International Comic Con is that tickets go on sale for the next year's event and the place is full of thousands and thousands of kids who have scraped together every dime to get admittance because they want to get all the freebies.

I started out wanting to be a straight adventure cartoonist, but in 1979 realized what my real bag was.

I 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.

I'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.

There 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.

I assisted with Russ [Manning] for about eleven months and my day job for 5 days a week was credit manager and paint salesman for Sherwin-Williams.

In fact, sometimes when I look at something my memory does work. I remember the panel where Alex Toth told me, "Mike, if you really don't understand all that, you don't need to put it on there."