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(A day or so after the first installment of this thrilling narrative appeared, Neil Gaiman let me know that it was he who originally recommended Kate and me for our assignments at Tekno Comix. According to Neil, he wasn’t aware then that Kate and I had become a couple. Given the fact that Kate was much better known than me at the time, I can finally stop wondering if I’d ridden into that job on her coattails. All corrections are welcome, as long as they’re as flattering as this one.)

So it’s late 1994, and we’re back in Minneapolis. Kate has been told to start work on the first Primortals script; the Jakes project will be scheduled later. We both assume the reason for that is sheer box office. Though John Jakes is a hugely popular mainstream writer, the core comics readership is infinitely more likely to open their pocketbooks for a series with Leonard Nimoy’s name attached to it. And since Nimoy’s concepts have been blended with ideas by Isaac Asimov, Kate’s more than happy with the decision. How often does anybody in comics get the chance to write serious science fiction that doesn’t smell like Superman or Flash Gordon?

As for me, I’m trying to flesh out Neil’s brief notes for Mr. Hero. As a series bible, those notes could have been seen as annoyingly skimpy or unbelievably generous. I’ll admit to leaning toward the “skimpy” take on my first reading, but it quickly dawned on me that Neil had laid out a few interesting set-up points and then gotten the hell out of the way. His notes gave a skeletal run-down of how a Victorian automaton is discovered in a crate by a young woman who works at a museum and picks up spare change as a street mime. (Yes, this was the ‘90s.) Apparently, the automaton was once the property of real-life stage magician John Nevil Maskelyne, who named the steamed-powered robot in honor of the ancient Greek inventor Hero (aka Heron). Oh, yes, and Mr. Hero would eventually have two different heads, each of which gave him a distinctive personality.

And that was about all there was. I got to name the young woman who’d be Mr. Hero’s companion, I got to invent her personality and her circle of friends. I got to create Hero’s twin personalities and speech patterns. I got to not only tell the stories, but also to decide which stories we would tell. Best of all, it was clear that I didn’t have to take either myself or the series too seriously. Neil, best known at that time for the predominantly serious Sandman, had given me permission to have a romp.

By this time, I’d learned that Mr. Hero would be tied in with another Gaiman creation, Teknophage, which would be written by Rick Veitch. My impression was that Rick’s book would be the more serious of the two, and that worked for me. I found myself thinking of the way Jack Kirby had used Jimmy Olsen as a sort of comic relief companion title to his early ‘70s New Gods material, providing a ground-level perspective on all the cosmic hoohah going on in the other books. I knew we were on the right track when I called Rick to kick things around and it turned out that he’d been thinking of the very same parallel. He wasn’t going to screw with fistfights in space any more than I was going to drag Don Rickles into my storyline, but the relationship was clear, and I was happy.

Veitch had joked about turning his gag “Whorin’ Rick” persona into the real thing for this gig, but only a fool would have believed that the man who’d written Brat Pack was going to crank out generic mainstream oatmeal. As far as I was concerned, the more gonzo he wanted to go with his book, the more room I had to push at the edges, too.

If my mandate was to create a humorous adventure strip, I wanted to do something a little more interesting with it than the standard slapstick superhero parody of the day. Overwrought and underwritten material like Spawn and Youngblood was on the ascendant then, and I could see having some fun with that stuff from time to time – but I didn’t want to drive myself crazy by hammering on the same note over and over. I started outlining a concept that would allow me to drop some sympathetic characters into a series of situations that would slowly become a progression of surrealistic non-sequitors while still maintaining the illusion of series continuity. All these years later, the best description I can come up with is sort of a marriage of Bob Burden’s Mystery Men and Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol – gentler and more accessible than either of those, but equally out of left field.

I took special care to ease into the approach gently, making sure that the human point-of-view characters were well defined and entertaining on their own. The oddball element was soft-pedaled in that first script, consisting of a tongue-in-cheek take on the super-stealthy ninjas that had infested comics like cockroaches in those days. (Mine were the Urban Ninjas, able to blend in seamlessly with any brick-and-mortar city landscape, but pathetically visible and vulnerable anywhere else. Not exactly cutting edge satire, but as I said, easing in to the good stuff.)

I created a narration-heavy prologue calculated to appeal to readers who’d picked up the book because of its connection to Neil, and incorporated all of Neil’s notes into that first script to make sure that the folks who were paying the bills could see that I was playing ball.

So off the script goes to the Tekno offices, and while I’m outlining the next one, I get a call from editor Ed Polgardy. Ed tells me that I need to insert a scene that firmly connects Mr. Hero to Teknophage, to be drawn by that book’s artist Bryan Talbot. I’m a little surprised – I’d thought that we were going to break the relationship in gradually as part of the unfolding storyline – but I suppose I can reduce one of the existing scenes by a page or two and make room for the new stuff. But isn’t losing these pages going to cost Mr. Hero artist Ted Slampyak money? No, says Ed, we want to up the page count to have Teknophage in the book, so Ted won’t lose out; he’ll do his full complement and Bryan will draw six more. Oh, yeah, and we want to open the book with the new material.

Okay, I know that work-for-hire has its own rules, and none of this stuff is worth bursting into tears and storming off – but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it. In the first place, I know by now that Rick’s approach is going to have a much harder edge than my own, and if I’m to do justice to what he’s doing, it’s going to make as much artistic sense as editing snuff scenes from My Bloody Valentine into A Fish Called Wanda. (Remember, this was 15 years ago; I really have been to the movies since then.) As Bryan Talbot’s style doesn’t mesh at all with Ted Slampyak’s, I’m also less than thrilled with the prospect of giving readers whiplash as they turn the page. (Learning that Rick isn’t being asked to bend over backwards to plug my book in return is an irritation of a pettier kind.)

But what disturbed me most of all was the sensation that Ed was embarrassed to be telling me all this. He was Tekno’s editor-in-chief and a guy with solid credentials; there was no reason for him to feel reluctant to ask for any changes that he believed were for the good of the project. But this felt very much like the case of a man under duress doing his best to carry on like a pro. I told him that I didn’t think it was a good idea and it didn’t make me happy, but that I’d do my best to make it work.

So back to the script, write a three-page Teknophage prologue, find a way to link it to my existing prologue (which is now page 4, structure be damned), massage the already-written stuff here and there so I can insert three more pages for Talbot to draw, send it in, shrug and move on.

A week or so goes by and I hear from Tekno again (Ed again, I think, though at this late date I can’t say for sure). It seems that I’ve done the job too well, and the new Teknophage prologue is too disturbing, too reminiscent of Auschwitz. I point out that what they’re objecting to is all in the mood of the descriptions, not in any essential action, but I offer to talk to Bryan Talbot and make sure he doesn’t get carried away.

So I make the transatlantic call on my own dime to tell the guy who gave us Luther Arkwright that he should tone it down, only to have Talbot assure me that he’s already heard from Tekno and that he won’t be doing anything to frighten the kiddies. He also mentions in passing that he’s fixed a mistake in the script, changing “Bill of Fare” to “Menu.” I point out that they’re the same thing, but Bryan is certain that “bill of fare” refers to the bill for payment. I know he’s mistaken; the gaudier phrase was deliberately chosen as an illustration of the fastidious facade which the Teknophage has built for himself, and the change has transformed a minor though valid bit of characterization into a Will Elder sight gag. But at this point, I’m really not in the mood to split hairs and I simply drop it.

Back to work on the second script, and the phone rings. It’s Martin Greenberg, the well-known editor of anthologies, who has the title of Senior Editor of Tekno’s corporate (not publishing) end. He’s heard that I’m unhappy with the changes I was asked to make, and wants to know if it would help for him to fly into Minneapolis, take me to lunch and talk it over.

I tell Marty, which he insists I call him, that I’m flattered to hear from him, I have a lot of respect for his work, and I’m sure that I’d enjoy having lunch with him. Even so, nothing’s going to make me think a bad idea is a good idea, but that hasn’t stopped me from doing the best job I could on the material nonetheless. So it might be a better use of everyone’s time for me to just get on with the next script and put the last one behind us. He ultimately says okay, we end the conversation amicably, and I hang up wondering why a senior corporate officer would be asked to get involved in a minor difference of opinion over a few pages of comics. I’m also no longer wondering if it had just been my imagination that Ed Polgardy was passing along orders from upstairs. But whatever the hell’s going on at the Tekno offices, at least nobody’s actually screwed with the material I’ve written, so I can proceed as planned.

Ha, as they say, ha ha.

There’s one more phone call about the first script. Like the old gag about the mummy movie, I’m told to lose the ninjas. Ninjas, I’m told, are too over-exposed. That, I reply, is the point, and did anyone actually read the scene? – but I quickly realize that I’m in the no-win position of trying to explain a joke. I’m starting to wonder if I’m ever going to stop writing Mr. Hero #1, and I express my concern that this book’s not going to get finished on time if we keep fooling around with it. In the end, we agree to fix it by leaving the art alone and changing the dialogue. The Tekno solution is to turn my goofy ninjas into menacing shape shifters and change their name, God help me, to the Dark Chameleons. So now I suddenly have super-powered bad guys with a name right out of a fanzine strip added to the mix. Seeing my plans for the book’s idiosyncratic tone swirling down the drain, I say okay and crawl away, nibbled not quite to death by ducks.

At that point, the phone calls stopped and I was able to get some uninterrupted work done on the next script. Peace reigned in our apartment…until the fax machine in Kate’s office began to grind out pages. A few moments later, I heard a sharp intake of breath, followed by some truly impressive nautical-level swearing. It was Kate’s turn to be micro-managed by the suits; but while my experience had really been little more than a series of pointless annoyances, what was about to happen to her would be ugly.