Marvel Comics’ first official mention of the feature that would eventually become known as “Deathlok the Demolisher” seems to have been a brief blurb in the fourth issue of the company’s self-produced fanzine FOOM (cover-dated “Winter, 1973”, but bearing a date of “Winter, 1974” in its indicia; Mike’s Amazing World of Comics offers an “approximate on-sale date” of January 1, 1974). After hyping a 2-part adaptation of the movie The Golden Voyage of Sinbad that would be coming up soon in Worlds Unknown, FOOM‘s anonymous news columnist went on to add:
Cover to TV Guide, May 18, 1974. Cover by Bob Peak.
Cover to December, 1972 Paperback Library edition of Martin Caidin’s Cyborg. Artist unknown.
“Cyborg“? Sure, why not? In early 1974, the term was au courant, mostly due to the adventures of a fellow named Steve Austin. Austin had made his debut in Martin Caidin’s 1972 novel Cyborg, which had thereafter been adapted into an ABC television movie called The Six Million Dollar Man. That program, which originally aired on March 7, 1973, had in its turn spawned two sequels and, as of January, 1974, a weekly series. By the time Marvel’s new “half-man, half-machine” hero made his debut in May of that year, it can hardly be doubted that, even if the entire population of the United States didn’t yet recognize the word “cyborg”, a much greater percentage of it did than would have been the case just a couple of years before — and if we’re talking just about the younger end of the demographic spectrum, that percentage would doubtless be even higher.
Still, the word itself wasn’t exactly new, having first been coined by a couple of scientists in 1960, and then finding its way into prose science fiction within a few years after that. And the concept itself was clearly considerably older than the word; Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 short story “The Man That Was Used Up” offers what’s possibly the earliest literary example of a cyborg, and even if we limit ourselves to American comic books for examples, we have DC Comics’ Robotman character, the first iteration of which debuted in 1942.
So I don’t think it’s really all that hard to accept the word of Deathlok’s primary progenitor, Rich Buckler, that he first had the idea for his cyborg character some three years prior to the release of Astonishing Tales #25, meaning that he hadn’t originally been inspired by the success of Steve Austin, whether in print or on television. By his account, he’d initially planned to turn his concept into a novel; but after a couple of years had gone by during which he’d established himself as a successful comic-book artist, ultimately decided to pitch it as a series to Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas. Thomas was intrigued — probably at least in part because, well, cyborgs were hot* — but, given that the 24-year-old Buckler didn’t yet have any pro writing experience, he encouraged the artist to collaborate with Doug Moench to further develop the idea. One year older than Buckler, Moench was then working for Marvel as an assistant editor; he’d also already racked up a considerable number of freelance comics writing credits (mostly for Warren Publishing’s black-and-white horror books), but was just getting established as a writer at Marvel. The two young men evidently hit it off, and over the next several weeks, they together fleshed out the bare bones of Buckler’s concept until they were ready to make a formal presentation to Thomas… a presentation which would make it crystal clear that other than being a “cybernetic organism”, their protagonist had next to nothing in common with Steve Austin.
In later years, Buckler (who passed away in 2017 at the age of 68) liked to tell the story of how he’d named the new character “Deadlock”, only to have Moench alter the name to “Deathlok” in the written presentation — something Buckler said he didn’t learn until five minutes before the duo were scheduled to meet with Thomas. However, according to an editorial sidebar to an interview with Buckler that was published in Alter Ego #141 (Aug., 2016), Thomas himself later recalled that he was presented with both names and ultimately decided to go with Moench’s version. It’s a minor point, perhaps; still, it’s worth noting that at the time FOOM #4 went to press, the feature was still known only as “Cyborg”, which suggests that the final naming decision wasn’t made until some time after Buckler and Moench were given the green light to proceed with producing the series’ first installment.
Per FOOM #4, that installment was originally intended to appear in Worlds Unknown; but for reasons now lost to time, WU got the ax following its Golden Voyage of Sinbad adaptation, and the new feature was launched in Astonishing Tales, instead. Astonishing Tales had for a long time been home to Ka-Zar, Lord of the Hidden Jungle; but that loincloth-clad worthy had been spun off into his own title following issue #20, and since then, AT had been headlined by a feature called “It, the Living Colossus”. After just four issues of “It”, however, Marvel was apparently ready to try something else; and that something else was “Deathlok the Demolisher”.
For what it’s worth, my sixteen-year-old self had passed “It” by completely — giant monsters had never really been my thing — but “Deathlok” was something else entirely. I suspect that I decided to pick up Astonishing Tales #25 based on the promo that ran in Marvel’s Bullpen Bulletins column the month of its release…
…though it’s just about as likely that I made the call while standing at the spinner-rack, staring at the book’s arresting cover by Buckler and inker Klaus Janson. Whatever the case, I ultimately put down my quarter and took the comic home to read…
Going purely by the credits given on the opening page, one might presume that virtually every aspect of our story save for the specific verbiage appearing in its captions and word balloons originated with Rich Buckler. But there are good reasons to believe that Doug Moench’s creative contributions to “A Cold Knight’s Frenzy” went well beyond that, as we’ll see anon. Also, despite the fact that they’re not credited here, a text piece in the back of the issue states that Klaus Janson, Al Milgrom, and Mike Esposito assisted Buckler with the story’s inking.
In an era of Marvel Comics which rarely saw narrative captions break from the “omniscient storyteller” normt, the “Deathlok” feature’s reliance on a running interior trialogue between the protagonist’s warring selves was virtually unique. According to all accounts, this particular innovation originated with Moench (though the computer-style font, executed entirely by hand, was designed by letterer Annette Kawecki)
A bit of full disclosure may be in order here: I’m pretty certain that my younger self didn’t immediately get what was going on with that third voice — the one in the yellow-bordered green caption boxes that says things like. “See the hated human target stiffen in beautiful agony”. It may have taken me as much as a couple of issues to comprehend that this was in fact a different personality, and not just Deathlok’s “human” consciousness indulging in some particularly bloodthirsty ruminations.
The graphic storytelling technique Buckler uses in the last tier of panels above, artificially slowing down the narrative’s pace with a series of narrow, vertically-oriented panels, can be traced back to Bernard Krigstein’s work in the EC Comics classic “Master Race” (Impact #1 [Apr., 1955]) — which, probably not coincidentally, also uses a subway setting (though the older story’s themes are of course very different).
As we make the turn from the fourth page to its fifth, we arrive at the first of our story’s scene transitions — which, as we’ll quickly see, involves a temporal as well as geographical shift. The kinds of graphic and verbal devices that signal the transition — non-naturalistic use of color, similar figure positioning, overlapping dialogue — will also be applied in other such transitions going forward.
Major Simon Ryker’s reference to a war that’s been “going on since 1983” is our first direct indication that this story takes place in “the future” (i.e., the future as relative to 1974).
“We need super-soldiers…!” That’s a sentiment likely to put most Marvel Comics fans (then and now) in mind of Captain America — however, according to Rich Buckler, he originally had no intention of connecting Deathlok to the main Marvel Universe. (Of course, and perhaps inevitably, that eventually happened anyway.)
Something else that this particular fan wondered about in 1974 (and still does) is why Buckler drew Ryker to so closely resemble the long established Hulk supporting character/antagonist, General Thaddeus E. “Thunderbolt” Ross; as far as I’ve been able to determine, there’s no particular reason for it, so I suppose we just have to chalk it up to the artist liking that specific look.
According to Buckler, the appellation “the Demolisher” was foisted on him and Moench by Marvel; so it’s interesting to see Moench attempting to provide some justification for it in the last two panels above.
Whatever else the cybernetic future envisioned by Buckler and Moench might hold, it clearly still has a place for computer punch-cards.
Deathlok opts to ignore the last of Biggs’ henchmen (who, as “‘Puter” indicates, is now just trying to get out of the cyborg’s way), instead taking the most direct (if not necessarily easiest) route to his goal:
Readers might — or might not — have gotten a “crucifixion” vibe from the cover of Astonishing Tales #25. But it’s hard to imagine anyone not picking up on the symbolism after taking in this double-page spread. (It’s also interesting to note that this scene appeared only a month after a similar — and more overtly allegorical — one involving Adam Warlock had run in Hulk #177-178.)
The Bullpen Bulletins blurb promoting Astonishing Tales #25 had billed its star as being “part cyborg, part superhero, and maybe just a touch of monster”. After reading the story itself, there was clearly no reason to argue with the “cyborg” designation (though I suppose one might quibble with that “part-” qualifier; what part of Deathlok isn’t a cyborg, after all?), and his nasty/scary appearance and violent demeanor made a strong case for crediting him with having at least “a touch” of the monster in his makeup. But “superhero”? In my younger self’s experience at that time, ruthless, self-serving killers-for-hire didn’t normally rate that label. That said, the desperate, unjust plight of Luther Manning couldn’t help but make him a somewhat sympathetic figure; and even if Deathlok was in some sense a “bad guy”, Major Ryker was clearly much, much worse. I would definitely be back in two months for Astonishing Tales #26; and assuming that Buckler and Moench could keep up this level of quality in both the graphic and the literary aspects of their storytelling, I’d be hanging around for the duration.
Coming in at 15 pages, “A Cold Knight’s Frenzy” is three pages shorter than the standard Marvel “book-length” story of this era, suggesting that the creators anticipated that it would share space in AT #25 with a back-up feature of some sort. And, indeed there is a back-up strip (though it’s two pages, rather than three) — but before we look at it, I think it’ll be useful to peruse the two-page text feature that precedes it — a three-way conversation between Roy Thomas, Rich Buckler, and Doug Moench which gives some insight into the latter two men’s collaborative process — or, at least, how they (and Thomas) chose to present it for public consumption, back in the spring of ’74:
That piece certainly gives one the sense of an equal — or at least almost equal — partnership, doesn’t it? Yet, in a lengthy interview conducted for Comic Book Creator a few years before his untimely death (it actually saw print in 2018-19),** Rich Buckler made it very clear that he considered Deathlok to be his creation, and his alone:
For the record, Doug worked on that book as a writer for the first three issues, but he did not create the character. I did.
I know he is sometimes credited as that by well-meaning fans and on some comics fan websites he is listed as “co-creator.” But that’s a stretch too. In fact I don’t think Doug has ever laid claim to this. Not that I have heard about anyway. One need only to check the credits for Deathlok’s first appearance in Astonishing Tales #25. The credits read, “Rich Buckler, Plot & Concept.”
…I shouldn’t have to point out what seems to be obvious, but “concept” means created. The terms are practically synonymous. So where in that entire run in Astonishing Tales is there a credit that reads “Doug Moench, creator” or “co-creator”? Or “concept”? Don’t misunderstand me: I’m not belittling Doug’s contribution… Actually it was very cool working with Doug. He is one of my favorite writers. I’m just trying to be clear on this one point. The character and concept for Deathlok were from my imagination and it was my creation from the start. It was my show from the very beginning, even before I met Doug.
OK, that seems pretty clear, right? But here’s what Buckler had to say less than a decade earlier, in his 2009 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — Deathlok, Vol. 1, entitled “The Origins of Deathlok”:
For research [into developing his cyborg character idea], I had a handful of printed material from the library on bionics and a computer dictionary. That was it. The rest was extrapolation and applied imagination of Deathlok’s co-creators, Doug Moench and myself.
And here he is an interview conducted roughly ten years before that for CBC‘s predecessor, Comic Book Artist (it appeared in issue #7 [Mar., 2000]):
I’m usually considered the creator of Deathlok, but Doug was very heavily involved from the beginning. He came up with the name, and really co-created the character.
What changed for Rich Buckler over the years to sour him on the idea of Doug Moench being credited as Deathlok’s co-creator? Personally, I don’t believe it had much to do with the influence that “Deathlok the Demolisher” is often theorized to have had on the creators of such later (and much better known) properties as Terminator and Robocop, given that that notion has been part of the pop-culture discussion for several decades. But before I venture to offer a few tentative speculations of my own what might actually have been going on, here’s what Moench himself had to say on the subject in an interview conducted in 2015 (and published in Alter Ego #146 [May, 2017]):
I’ve always said that Buckler was the one who came up with the idea of the design and the character originally. When people ask “Did you co-create it?” …well, I was there. A lot of the ideas were mine. That three-way narration thing is all me. The name is me, but the design and character were already there before I had anything to do with it, so Rich Buckler’s name comes first in any credits. No doubt about that.
Now I’ve heard that he got quite angry at one point over that credit and then he gave an interview, which someone sent me, where he basically said, “Well, I’ve been a real a**hole. The truth is, Doug Moench did co-create Deathlok, and I was really nasty to him.” So when Marvel called and asked me if I’d created Deathlok, I told them the whole story about Rich already having the three or six pages drawn and that he’d had the character but that I contributed a lot of ideas to the concept. At that point, it became a co-creation in Marvel’s eyes, but he’d already had the pages drawn and designed. So Marvel said, “OK, you co-created it.” Then I heard he got really angry all over again. None of this was me running around claiming or declaring I co-created Deathlok. If somebody asks me, I tell them exactly what happened. Then they decide what to call that.
When he got real mad the last time, I asked David Bogart at Marvel if Buckler was angry because I was taking half of his money or something like that. I was told that reimbursements for the use of creator characters didn’t work that way. If someone co-created a character, then each creator got the same money. So I don’t know exactly why he gets so angry over this.
I don’t want to suggest that I might somehow understand this situation better than Doug Moench, but it does occur to me that the fact that “each creator got the same money” might actually have been a big part of the problem. Rich Buckler may have felt that as “the one who came up with the idea of the design and the character originally”, to borrow Moench’s phrase, he should get a larger percentage of Marvel’s royalty payments than Moench — even if it wasn’t actually more money, in pure dollar terms, than the two of them were each getting paid individually. It may have been more about the principle than about the bucks, in other words.
The problem, as I see it, is in seeing the term “co-creator” as implying an equally important role for each person who has that designation. Clearly, Rich Buckler had the original concept that eventually became Deathlok, and even worked out his visual design, all on his lonesome; thus, he should have primacy as co-creator. But even if all Doug Moench had contributed to the character was the idea of his multiple personalities, that alone is such a fundamental part of the character as he first appeared in print that I don’t see how anyone could deny that he helped create Deathlok as we know him. If we don’t call Moench a co-creator, then what term should we use?
Of course, once we start thinking in terms of multiple, but unequal, contributions to an act of “co-creation”, questions arise as to “how much” each co-creator contributed, and how that should be compensated. Should Deathlok be considered as 80% Buckler’s and 20% Moench’s? If we decide that’s a fair breakdown, should it be reflected in Marvel’s reimbursement payments? It’s not hard to understand why Marvel wouldn’t want to open such a can of worms, and has opted instead for a even split between those officially deemed “co-creators”. But it’s also not hard to understand why some creators — like, perhaps, Rich Buckler — would see this as inherently unfair.
Your humble blogger dearly wishes that he had a solution to this conundrum; unfortunately, he does not. Perhaps one will one day present itself; but until it does, I don’t think that there’s any good purpose served by pretending the problem doesn’t exist. (Looking at you, Wikipedia — which, as of the date of this writing, not only doesn’t credit Doug Moench as Deathlok’s co-creator, but doesn’t even mention him by name anywhere in its entire “Deathlok” article.)
And on that note, let’s return once more to May, 1974… a time when Rich Buckler and Doug Moench were still on the same page. Actually, they were on the same two pages — quite literally, in fact, as the “stars” of the back-up strip that brings up the rear of Astonishing Tales #25:
In early 1974, the 19-year-old George Pérez was working as an assistant for Rich Buckler. In Modern Masters Volume 2: George Pérez (TwoMorrows, 2003), he explained how this untitled humor piece became his first professional credit as a comic-book artist:
Rich gave me my first credited job when he produced the first story of “Deathlok” in Astonishing Tales #25. There was a gag strip he wanted to do in the back. He didn’t really want to draw it and because of the nature of it it didn’t require much drawing ability, so he had me draw a sequence with him and Doug Moench — who I hadn’t even met at the time, so all I drew was the back of his head — discarding ideas from the drawing board, and out of the trashcan emerges Deathlok. That ended up being my first professional printed work, but the Deathlok figure was drawn by Rich. The only really well drawn character on that two-page gag strip was drawn by Rich, not by me. [laughter]
Per Pérez’s comments, he never did actually get to draw Deathlok in Astonishing Tales, although he’d clearly taken careful notice of Buckler’s character design; something that came in very handy five or six years later, when he was called upon some six years later to design a bionic superhero for DC Comics’ New Teen Titans:
Cyborg borrows some of his design from Deathlok, particularly in the half-mask. Instead of the round cybernetic eye he had the slit. The garter belt that people criticized — I said, “Well something’s got to hold it to his hip.” [laughter] This was before I understood anything about bionics or how that type of science-fictiony construction would look. I was just doing something that looked a little different and trying to make it not look so much like Deathlok.
From Who’s Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe #5 (Jul., 1985). Art by George Pérez and Romeo Tanghal.
Buckler himself seemed to be of the opinion that, despite his former assistant’s efforts, in the end Cyborg still looked too much like Deathlok. From Comic Book Creator #20:
In the ’70s, at DC Comics, all of a sudden there is a character called Cyborg joining the Teen Titans. Shortly after my cyborg creation, Deathlok came about. Coincidence? I won’t even bother to comment on who the creators of this character were [Marv Wolfman and George Pérez], but they both worked on Deathlok. Coincidentally. Let’s just take a cursory glance at Cyborg. What’s immediately noticeable? I’m wondering — what’s with the half-metal face, the “chin guard,” and the big red eye? I wonder where that came from?… Amazingly similar character! Isn’t it more than a little bit obvious that this is a shameless knockoff? And another thing: “Cyborg” is a dumb name. It’s a generic term, not a proper name, and I’m not so sure that can even be trademarked or copyrighted. So I guess I have a lot to say on this subject.
Yeah, I guess he did.
As far as I’m concerned, the acknowledged influence Deathlok had on Cyborg’s design is just that — an influence, not a rip-off. Your mileage, of course, may vary. But either way, there’s something a little ironic in Buckler’s grousing about “shameless knockoff[s]”, considering the reputation he has among some comics fans as a “swipe artist” — a reputation that got its start, incidentally, from material he produced for Marvel’s Fantastic Four and Thor at the same time he was doing perhaps the most original and innovative artwork of his career on “Deathlok” … though we’ll need to postpone discussion on that particular topic to another, later post.
*Marvel evidently made a failed attempt around this same time to acquire the comics license for The Six Million Dollar Man (it eventually went to Charlton); if the company’s attempt had been successful, it’s a virtual certainty that Deathlok would never have seen the light of day (at least, not at Marvel).
**The interview, conducted by Michael Aushenker via email, ran in three issues of CBC: #16 (Winter, 2018). #18 Fall, 2018), and #20 (Summer, 2019). The portion quoted here appeared in #18.
Attack of the 50 Year Old Comic Books 
Captain America #124, cover dated dated April 1970, featured a one-shot villain called The Cyborg (created by Modok), back in the days when orders had come from Higher Up that all stories be contained in one issue…memorable it was not.
Astonishing Tales #25 grabbed my interest with its cover right away, and opening it up and perusing indicated me that Buckler was putting a lot more effort into this than he was with his concurrent work in the Fantastic Four title. I didn’t know the name Krigstein at the time, but there were many segments that were reminiscent of Steranko’s work. Similarly, Moench’s work would have been unfamiliar at the time, but the writing showed this 14-year-old would-be comics expert that his was a name to remember.
The bits of extra business at the back really made this seem different to the usual fare Marvel offered, and as someone who only ever watched the first episode of The Six Million Dollar Man (but had read Caidin’s novel, and later enjoyed Mad’s parody), this was definitely marked as a title to keep an eye out for.
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So glad to see that I’m not the only one who remembered the Cyborg from *Cap* #124!
Jarr and Tyrr briefly turned the Super-Adaptoid into the Cyborg Sinister in *Iron Man* #50-51 in 1972.
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I also remember Marvel Team-Up #10 from early 1973, where a giant robot from the future belts Iron Man, realizes he is a man in an armored exoskeleton and says something like. “You are a cyborg. this is sacrilege!” That was a week or two before the Six Million Dollar Man movie aired . . . .
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Great write up Alan! I have the entire run of these and thought they were very interesting.
I know very little about Rich Buckler and I’d love to have some things explained to me by the brillliant minds that this site attracts.
How did Buckler’s studio work? When we say ‘apprentice’ like Perez, exactly what does that entail – for example he George follows on from Buckler in FF credits but the art seems to show little Perez flourishes many issues before George’s first credited issue #164 (Buckler started with #142)…it looks co-pencilled to me but is often just credited to Buckler (wouldn’t that make the man a bit of a hypocrit)! Anyone know of an article/interview about this?
And speaking of hypocritical credits being taken…other than Perez I know of a man named Vince Marchesano (Based in Toronto) who pencilled FF #160-#162, once again, credited to Buckler. So I guess my question is, how many ‘assistants’ did he have and how much work did they ‘ghost’ for him? It explains a few things regarding Rich’s variance of output quality and opens up some questions regarding his stance of artistic credit in his later life, he doesn’t sound like he wanted to put the world straight about FF #160-162 when on his soapbox and Doug!
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Just a few sentences ahead of the passage from Modern Masters that I quoted in the post, Pérez had this to say about his time as Buckler’s assistant: “When I was working with Rich, I didn’t get to do all that much beyond look for Jack Kirby references for his Thor and Fantastic Four work.” 🙂 I suppose he could have been overstating things a tad, of course.
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I never got into Deathlok as a teen, though I occasionally skimmed an issue. I would probably have bought it if it had been DC. But I could tell it was interesting.
I concocted a head-canon story many years later in which Ryker turns out to be an apprentice to the cyborg Pierce of the Hellfire Club, who inspires him to see man/machine as the way to go.
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I liked this comic as a kid. It was thoughtful and well-drawn.
It seemed like Buckler, whose work I had liked on Avengers # 103 and 104 and the Black Panther series in Jungle Action seemed to be bringing his Kirby and Adams influences into better synch. I will cheerfully admit I was one of those fans who liked his Adams influenced things (like Malice By Moonlight in Jungle Action and his Kirby influenced work on Fantastic Four, Thor and Giant Sized Avengers #1 (even though it did NOT look like the Avengers work he had done almost exactly two years before).
I kept hoping he would come into his own style and I think he did in his Marvel work in the 1980s (The Death of Jean DeWolf stuff in Spider-Man and adjacent titles).
I had remembered George Perez drawing this and wondering who he was. When he started doing Man-Wolf in Creatures on the Loose with David Anthony Kraft, I really liked what they were doing. Perez seemed very Buckler-influenced then (especially when he started drawing The Fantastic Four and The Inhumane (minus Mr. Perez’s 1975 trendy fashion sense he tried to bequeath to Johnny Storm). Perez came a long way very fast, as did Keith Pollard and Arv Jones, who were both Detroit Comics Circles friends of Rich Buckler, who, likewise, came a long way fast, getting credited for a Thor/Galactus story in the summer of 1974 (when Buckler was probably drowning .in work (he did that Giant-Sized Avengers, a previous Giant Sized FF with the Hulk and Marv Wolfman’s Giant sized FF with the Four Horseman of the Apocalypses (that Jim Steranko says contains some of the most dynamic superhero art Steranko has ever seen AND Buckler took over Thor and launched Deathlok.,
Buckler was very talented. Buckler was very controversial and rumors indicate issues with Michelinie and Layton with Buckler on Star Hunters may have prompted their departure to Marvel just before the DC {implosion. Given how influential their work on Iron Man was that was a big loss for DC.
Finally, I would say (as a former US Army Major) a Major doing as much as Ryker was implausible, however, remembering what a US Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel (who was never selected to command a battalion) did in Iran Contra . . . . In conditions tantamount to war, under exigent circumstances things happen that shouldn’t where there is “plausible deniability.”
Finally, as someone who did not know Moench’s work from Warren, this impressed me far more than his more solid, but stolid and plodding work on Werewolf By Night and Man-Wolf.
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Probably, Bucker’s two major creations are Deathlok and Devil Slayer/nee Atlas’s Demon Hunter both have IP issues.
It was not completely unusual. :ook at Swamp Thing and Man-Thing. Neither Marvel nor DC went completely forward with Dave Cockrum’s Manphibian or Devil Fish 1970s hero-monsters who both derive from Universal’s Creature from the Black Lagoon. (Cockrum alerted both publishers to potential similarities.)
Cockrum was a great admirer of that film, as were film directors Guillermo del Toro (director of of The Shape of Water) and Ingmar Bergman (who screened the film every year on his birthday, but never cast Julie Adams, Whit Bissell or the Gill Man himself in any of his own films).
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I definitely agree that Buckler was capable of doing very good work. In addition to Deathlok, there was Black Panther and “The Death of Jean DeWolf” in Spectacular Spider-Man, both of which you mention. I also liked his Neal Adams-inspired work on the first few issues of All-Star Squadron. Buckler was definitely an artistic chameleon. I’m a fan, but I’ll readily agree that swiped Kirby in his work, and he apparently “borrowed” from various other sources over the years. I think sooner or later anyone working in monthly comic books engages in a little swiping, because the deadlines can be so unforgiving & the pay is so low. But Buckler was overly reliant on swipes, unfortunately.
In regards to Perez’s early work on Fantastic Four, he probably did do uncredited assists on Buckler’s issues. A lot of artists rely on uncredited assistants. It’s a longtime industry practice. I guess the question is, as you say, how much of the work was Buckler and how much was Perez and/or other people? When does it stop being assistanting and start being ghosting?
And as for Perez’s early *credited* work on FF looking like Buckler, that’s probably also due to the inking / finishes of the great Joe Sinnott, who maintained a uniform style on the series for a decade and a half.
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excellent point on Sinnott! What a service he did on that book. I refer to the issues of FF between Kirby and Byrne taking over as ‘the dead zone’ very unpopular at the moment – even during the boom they weren’t desired, I on the other hand, find them to be fun reading and inexpensive Perez art is a joy.
I kind of came by Vince Marchesano by knowing a comic book shop in Toronto and he does FCBD art for them, then heard an interview and I own Bat Man #265 – art by Vince but inked by Bernie Wrightson. That’s how I came upon this FF #160-162 piece of history…and when it comes to getting things past the comic code issue #161 has a villian bandishing the most phallic weapon I’ve laid eyes on…perfectly scripted with the Human Torch (with a look of shock over his face) saying ‘I’m betting that’s not exactly an EGGBEATER on it’s RIGHT ARM’ …brilliant!
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I never met Sinnott. He lived in a near-by town and our Town Librarian is a big comics fan and she often asked him to come over and talk about comics and his career on Saturdays after he retired. Given what a busy artist he had been, may be retirement did not come easily to him.)
Every time, I had to meet with a client out of town or there was a motion due, that had to go out on Monday.
Sometimes, you should make time . . . .
He was the last major artist of that Wally Wood, Murphy Anderson, George Klein School of very precise, pen heavy but never sketchy embellishers.
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A really interesting and insightful post as always, Alan.
Deathlok was one of the first American comic series I followed. The first one I read was AT#28, though I later managed to get hold of the previous three issues. I was only ten or eleven at the time and didn’t get most of the subtleties you’ve mentioned above but the series really clicked with me. I recently reread the whole run and enjoyed it on a different level, though story-wise it clearly started to flounder after Moench’s involvement ended.
The whole influence/ripoff/swipe/homage issue is a perennial one, with no real answer. Buckler got a stack of criticism for much of his career for swiping from other artists and there’s a prime example in this very story – the double-page “crucifixion” image looks awfully like a swipe of Salvador Dali’s Christ of St John on the Cross.
Digging deeper, though, I find an analysis that proposes Dali himself combined two earlier (much earlier) works for his composition:
https://www.thedrouth.org/a-triangle-and-a-circle-the-conception-and-execution-of-dalis-christ-of-st-john-of-the-cross-dmitriy-soliterman/
I suppose it comes down to the old artists’ adage: if you’re going to swipe, swipe from the best!
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It’s weird that Buckler would care about Perez allegedly copying his work when his unabashedly copying a cartoon’s spaceship for Star Hunters led to Michilinie leaving DC when editorial wouldn’t fire him. There’s also he didn’t really have his own style but badly aped Adams, Buscema, and Kirby in rotation.
Honestly, completism is the only reason I read this series. I bought the first issue so I kept buying it. I never really liked it and seeing the art again, adult me has gone past disliking to loathing over the years. I’ve long kicked the completism habit and today if an artist I disliked as Buckler took over even a beloved series I’d drop it like a hot potato.
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In fairness, there also seems to be a bit of Wally Wood in Buckler’s work, too . . . . (interesting when you consider he worked with Wood at least twice in 1976 at DC).
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Speaking of Wally Wood, it seems like Buckler too often epitomized Woody’s famous (infamous?) advice to artists: “Never draw what you can swipe. Never swipe what you can trace. Never trace what you can photocopy. Never photocopy what you can clip out and paste down.”
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Wood was a very talented artist but clearly he got very cynical over the course of his career and probably with some justification. Still, while I’m familiar with that quote, and I’ve read several articles on obvious examples of Buckler, as well as Dan Adkins, swiping, I don’t recall reading of any clear examples of Wood swiping. Maybe he was just better at hiding it within his own style or had sources that were harder to track down.
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Interesting write-up, as always, Alan. I missed the early issues of this title but did pick it up later (forget which issue, also why). I think what I most appreciated about this was the attempt to do something different – the intricate triple narration, the anti-hero protagonist. It was another sign – along with its horror/supernatural books and the rathe runconventional superhero work by McGregor, Gerber, and Englehart – that Marvel really was trying to do something DIFFERENT with comics.
But this was never really a priority book for me – interesting, but not something that made the pulse pound. I mainly brought it out of a sense of completeness. (You could do that when you could buy three or four books for a dollar…)
As far as the creator credits: In retrospect, they could have gone with the same compromise credit it only took 80 years to reach with Bob Kane and Bill Finger: “Created by Rick Buckler with Doug Moench.”
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I well remember the arrival of Deathlok on the ol’ comic spinner rack and was very excited about it. I too, had read Caidan’s Cyborg book at this point and was a big fan of the TV version of the character, even though it differed somewhat from the one in the book. In hindsight, such a creation was perfect for comics, being science-fiction-meets-superhero-meets-Frankenstein’s monster all in one package, and even though Perez’s Cyborg is the character that wound up having legs (heh, heh, see what I did there) as opposed to Deathlok, to me, Deathlok was an almost perfect creation for the time.
I was completely unfamiliar with Moench’s work at the time Deathlok came out. Buckler, I was aware of, mainly in regard to his substandard attempts to ape the work of Adams, Kirby and others, but also because of the accusations of swiping panels of other artists’ work. I don’t know if I definitely had an opinion on any of that at the time, but I LOVED the art on Deathlok. To me, Buckler had finally picked a lane and had come into his own as an artist in a big way. I loved the story-telling style of the three voices in Deathlok’s head (though, like you, Alan, I didn’t completely understand what the third one was supposed to represent) and the cinematic nature of the artwork was just perfect, especially at a time when we were already used to seeing cybernetic hijinks on the screen.
As to the various claims and counter-claims of creation and ownership, it doesn’t look like Moench ever tried to claim any further credit for the book than was actually due him and more like Buckler just over-reacted to various slights to his “genius” that appeared in the fan press over the years. As for claims that other people “copied” Buckler or ripped him off, that’s too much a case of the pot calling the kettle black and Buckler should have gotten over that.
Nicely to see you cover a comic I remember so well, Alan. Of course, any memory problems are on me and are not your fault at all. I look forward to more. Thanks.
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I’m definitely a huge fan of Deathlok. I feel it’s some of the best work that Rich Buckler did during his career. I read the feature when it was finally collected in a Marvel Masterworks volume a little over a decade ago, and I reviewed it on my blog:
Comic book reviews: Marvel Masterworks Deathlok – In My Not So Humble Opinion (wordpress.com)
In regards to co-creators, yeah, that can be a HUGE can of worms in comic books. I feel like you looked at the various sides of the debate quite fairly, and I agree, often there’s no easy answer for the question.
I’m looking forward to reading your upcoming posts about the subsequent chapters of the Deathlok feature.
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For all it’s advantages, I think the “Marvel Method” created more problems than it solved in clearly defining “who did what” in a particular comics story. Years after the fact, it’s too easy to re-write the personal history of how something happened and the muddied nature of Marvel story-telling only made it worse. Many of the writer/artist teams at Marvel have found peace with how their contributions are viewed through the lense of history and many…have not. Buckler was obviously one who did not. Since he’s no longer with us, I hope he was at least able to make peace with himself and that he and Moench didn’t end in anger or further vitriol.
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I didn’t get this issue and only got one later issue new off the racks, but in later years did get the series. I did enjoy that one issue I got — can’t recall the number of A.T. right off, but it began with Deathlok attempting to kill himself but prevented from doing so by his computer self. I was very intrigued but not quite enough to put later issues on my “must buy” list in later months, although my older self would regard the series as much better than many others I did get regularly back then.
Among the things I came to appreciate about the series was that despite superficial similarities, it was nothing like The Six-Million Dollar Man. Even in the days of my youth, I mostly resisted comics based on live-action tv series or movies. I gave in to the Star Wars mania, but even so I wasn’t over-awed by the comics. Deathlok was the latest Marvel anti-hero, a tradition going back to Sub-Mariner’s first appearance in 1939, and re-emphasized with the Hulk in 1962, and perhaps that had something to do with Buckler making Major Ryker look like a doppelganger of General Ross, but with an even nastier disposition. Deathlok was also a psycho-drama, with the “hero” in continuous arguments with different aspects of his revived self, and it was apt that Buckler made artistic references to Christ’s crucifixion as Luther Manning was a man reborn but hardly the same man he was before. Also of note, not only was Deathlok set in the not too distant future (now our past!), but the setting was a future that coldn’t possibly be the same one as the Marvel Universe as it stood in 1974 (or even 1939), never mind as it would be in 1985. As with the War of the World series, also then set in a future that is now our past, there were no references to any characters of the regular Marvel Universe. Gerber tried to tie the worlds of Deathlok and Killraven with that of the Guardians of the Galaxy in the pages of the Defenders, although that couldn’t work in a universe with so many superheroes as things were in the 1970s. It worked to the benefit of both Deathlok and War of the Worlds that they existed in their own reality without any attempt to explain what happened to all the superheroes of earlier decades.
Anyhow, enjoyed your overview of this unique entry in comicdom.
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There’s a multi-parter where Spider-Man meets Deathlok and Killraven in Marvel Team-Up. The best bit is his feeling that if the Martians attack and wipe out most of the world in the early 21st century, all the work he’s put in to save lives and make things better doesn’t matter crap. I’d argue it doesn’t unmake his work (saving a life now is good even if they die down the road) but I can understand the feeling.
Of course that’s one reason it makes sense to mark them as an alternate history, because who wants to think Spider-Man’s work doesn’t matter?
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I got that whole run of MTU time-travel stories by Mantlo. Of course, part of Spidey’s dilemma was that those “future worlds” weren’t all that far off in 1975 — even from the perspective of 15 year old Peter Parker in 1962, born in 1947, he’d still only be about 38 in 1985 and 64 in 2011; or for a 22 year old Peter Parker in 1975, only 32 in 1985 and 58 in 2011. Yeah, for a young man those would still seem way off, but not so far off that he’d think he and everyone else he knew would be long gone by then, as with the world of the original Guardians of the Galaxy. Spidey was seeing examples of big societal changes within relatively short periods as wrought by brutal dictatorships or devastating wars rather than normal, fairly peaceful developments. The Russia of 1924 was a very different place from that of 1914, as was the Berlin of 1924 from that of 1944. On the other hand, while there are many differences in the Jacksonville, Florida, I moved into in 1999, from that of today, 25 years later, none of them are so dramatic as to make think that if my then 37 year old self of 1999 was magically transported to the present of 2024, I’d surmise some horrible catastrophe must have happened and there’s be no point in trying to find my present 61 year old self because I must have been killed off years earlier! Hmm, thinking too much about time-travel stories can make ya a bit loopy!
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Regarding Buckler’s changing attitude to the creator credits – his earlier more easy-going “yeah, Doug definitely co-created it” comments came before the MCU became a multi-billion-dollar cultural phenomenon. Maybe there’s a correlation?
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Equally likely as Buckler got older he got more worried about his image and how he’d be perceived after his death: “No, I get sole credit for Deathlok! Do not let Moench tarnish my legacy!”
Other creative types get more relaxed. Lynda Carter was unhappy being stereotyped as Wonder Woman back in the 1970s and 1980s; now that it’s years later and she’s looking back at one role people absolutely love and remember her for, she’s much more happy about it.
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Then there was Leonard Nimoy’s evolving relationship with being Mr. Spock — first he was emphatically not Spock, but later he had been Spock all along! Or at least the actor who no longer minded being most associated with that particular character he had become famous for portraying.
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I met Rich a few times in the early 80’s when he opened a comic shop in a building owned by the grandfather of a friend of mine on Staten Island. He was one of the nicest guys I ever met. Unfortunately, and I could have told him even in my youth, it was not a great place for a comic shop. The area did not contain a lot of the comics-buying demo, and there was little parking in the area. It didn’t last long, and I hope he didn’t lose a lot of money on the project. Like I say, he was a real sweet guy, and I am surprised to hear how angry he got later in life over this creation credit.
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Please tell me Fred that you got a few of your Jungle Actions and Astonishing Tales signed (on the splash page where it belongs) whilst you were visiting?
Lovely story Fred, I like it when I hear about creators just loving the medium so much; Rob Liefeld is another example, I have no interest in his art/books but when he talks on his podcast about picking up Byrne X-Men issues you can hear the passion and love for the books.
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By the way, it’s worth noting that Moench would later do a different take on human/machine hybrids, in the pages of a DC series called Electric Warrior. It’s been years since I even thought of it, but I remember some wacky stuff, including a robot falling in love with a woman in her 70s.
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I remember liking Buckler’s style on Fantastic Four around the time , which seemed a mix of Kirby, Buscema, Steranko and probably others at the time but I would have been 11 years old in 1974 and knew nothing of any swiping or controversy until a few years ago, if at all.
It does feel that characters like Deathlok were of a more explicitly violent type, presumably because the comics code was more relaxed about depicting actual killing, gore etc . “Ray guns” seemed to be replaced with bullets. Most kids want to be more “adult” but I didn’t like that trend. I am not in the least squeamish but still don’t. Maybe also partly because “gun culture” is very different in the UK to the US.
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I recall reading somewhere that Roy Thomas requested that Bucker did the FF with the Kirby style. I always though Buckler’s pseudo Adams style much more attractive ( for example on Avengers #102), and his Kirby swipes not particularly effective ( for better swipes and mimicry see Ron Frenz’s take on Thor). I felt that Buckler was a big force at Marvel in the mid 70s, and was seen as the next Buscema, but then was less effective/ noteworthy after moving to DC. A couple of years ago the Jack Kirby Collector published a previously unseen Kirby page inked by Buckler, which I thought was particularly good. Other Buckler inks that I have seen ( Archie’s Blue Riband, an FF cover (#151), the original Thanos piece over Starlin) seem flat however.
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I thought he had several effective covers at DC and some very effective “special projects” stuff like the 1978 Superman/Shazam Collectors Edition with Dick Giordano and the Captain Comet/Tommy Tomorrow DC Special with Joe Rubenstein.
He also had a nice run on Secret Society of Supervillains.
I liked Micheline and Layton’s Star Hunters but they thought Buckler had plagiarized a space ship design from a a toy and left over it after Buckler replaced Don Newton. The last issue of the book was inked by Tom Sutton.
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Some crazy Buckler stories in this Al Milgrom interview. To be fair, he was wrestling with a crazy production system in mainstream 1970s comics. His Black Panther and other work was often very strong.
https://www.scottedelman.com/wordpress/2022/12/30/al-milgrom/
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