BATGIRL

I have a fondness for this story for a few reasons. The first is that it definitely got me in the door at Marvel. Previously I was on the DC apprentice program with Dick Giordano, and then I'd left because I was offered a job doing storyboards for large NYC ad agency. So one day I run into an old Eisner classmate on the street, Mike Carlin, who was then an assistant editor for Mark Gruenwald, and he told me Marvel and Shooter were "looking" for new pencillers. So I went up there and showed Shooter the Hawkman stuff and some of the Batgirl stuff I'd done for Giordano. Eventually I hooked up with Spider-Woman because of that.

Sometime in 1981, I was just out of SVA and Eisners class and I wanted to start working on a sample story. So at that point I was obsessed with Joe Kubert's Hawkman, and I also wanted to include the Black Condor (and possibly The Ray!) because I had just found the Alan Light reprint book of Lou Fine's Ray and Black Condor,and I was definetely influenced by him as well. Another aspect of the story was World War 2. My father had an old picture book on WW2 with Nazi war criminals. I wanted to make the villain a Nazi war criminal. So this was the first time I'd attempted writing a story and I think it was successful because everyone responded well to the art and storytelling. I should start doing more writing for myself because i like having the control.