Howard Chaykin
Howard Victor Chaykin is an American comic book artist and writer. Chaykin's influences include his one-time employer and mentor, Gil Kane, and the mid-20th century illustrators Robert Fawcett and Al Parker. His career, which started out as a gofer for Gil Kane at the age of 19, spanned working for various comic book artists and writers, ultimately arriving at developing and drawing his own characters alone and in collaborations during the course of 50 years. He worked for nearly all the biggest publishers, including DC Comics, Marvel Comics, First Comics, and Epic Comics. Beyond the realm of comics, his work can be found in graphic books and television animated shows.
Early life
Howard Chaykin was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Rosalind Pave and Norman Drucker, who soon separated. Chaykin was initially raised by his grandparents in Staten Island, New York City, until his mother married Leon Chaykin in 1953 and the family moved to East Flatbush and later to 370 Saratoga Avenue, Brownsville, Brooklyn. At 14, Chaykin moved with his now divorced mother to the Kew Gardens section of Queens. He said in 2000 he was raised on welfare after his parents separated and that his absent biological father eventually was declared dead, although Chaykin, as an adult, located him alive. Chaykin's "nutty and cruel" adoptive father, whom Chaykin until the 1990s believed was his biological father, encouraged Chaykin's interest in drawing and bought him sketchbooks.Chaykin was introduced to comics by his cousin, who gave him a refrigerator box filled with them. He graduated from Jamaica High School at 16, in 1967, and in mid-1968 worked at Zenith Press. He attended Columbia College in Chicago that fall, but left school and returned to New York the following year. Chaykin said that after high school, "I hitchhiked around the country" before becoming, at 19, a "gofer" for the New York City–based comic book artist Gil Kane, whom he would name as his greatest influence.
Career
Chaykin's earliest work with comic books was under the tutelage of Gil Kane, whom he would later call his mentor.In 1970, he began publishing his art in comics and science-fiction fanzines, sometimes under the pseudonym Eric Pave.
Leaving Kane, he began working as an assistant to comics artist Wally Wood in the studio he shared with Syd Shores and Jack Abel in Valley Stream, Long Island. He worked there for a "couple of months", and in 1971 published his first professional comics work, for the adult-theme Western feature Shattuck in the military newspaper the Overseas Weekly, one of Wood's clients. He also "ghosted some stuff" for Gray Morrow: "I penciled a Man-Thing story he did , and I penciled a thing for National Lampoon called "Michael Rockefeller and the Jungles of New Guinea." He then apprenticed under Neal Adams, working with the artist at Adams' home in The Bronx. This led to his first work at DC Comics, one of the two largest comics companies:
The "one-page filler", titled "Strange Neighbor", was inventoried and eventually published in the Boltinoff-edited Secrets of Sinister House #17. His other earliest known DC work was penciling and inking the three-page story "Not Old Enough!" in Young Romance #185, and penciling the eight-page supernatural story "Eye of the Beholder" in Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion #7 and the one-page "Enter the Portals of Weird War" in Weird War Tales #9.
At one point Chaykin lived in the same Queens apartment building as artists Allen Milgrom, Walter Simonson, and Bernie Wrightson. Simonson recalls, "We'd get together at 3 a.m. They'd come up and we'd have popcorn and sit around and talk about whatever a 26, 27, and 20-year-old guys talk about. Our art, TV, you name it. I pretty much knew at the time, 'These are the good ole days.'"
1970s
Chaykin's first major work was for DC Comics drawing the 23-page "The Price of Pain Ease"—writer Denny O'Neil's adaptation of author Fritz Leiber's characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser—in Sword of Sorcery #1. Although the title was well received, it lasted only five issues before cancellation. Chaykin plotted and drew three issues of the character Ironwolf in the science fiction anthology title Weird Worlds for DC, which he credits as demonstrating the origins of his adult-oriented stories later in his career. In 1974, Chaykin did the pencils and inks for a 12-page Batman story written by Archie Goodwin and published in Detective Comics #441. In 2018, he looked back on this Batman story as one of the worst things he had ever drawn, adding, "Anything of value in that story was Archie's." Moving to Marvel Comics, he began work as co-artist with Neal Adams on the first Killraven story, seen in Amazing Adventures #18.After this, Chaykin was given various adventure strips to draw for Marvel, including his own creation, Dominic Fortune, now in the pages of Marvel Preview. In 1978, he wrote and drew his Cody Starbuck character for the anthology title Star Reach, one of the first independent titles of the 1970s. These strips saw him explore more adult themes as best he could within the restrictions imposed on him by editors and the Comics Code Authority. The same year, he produced for Schanes & Schanes a six-plate portfolio showcasing his character.
In 1976, Chaykin landed the job of drawing the Marvel Comics adaptation of the first Star Wars film, written by Roy Thomas. Chaykin left the series after 10 issues to work in more adult and experimental comics and to create paperback book covers.
In late 1978, Chaykin, Walt Simonson, Val Mayerik, and Jim Starlin formed Upstart Associates, a shared studio space on West 29th Street in New York City. The membership of the studio changed over time.
Chaykin penciled DC Comics' first miniseries, World of Krypton.
In the next few years he produced material for Heavy Metal, drew a graphic novel adaptation of Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, and produced illustrations for works by Roger Zelazny. Chaykin collaborated on two original graphic novels—The Swords of Heaven, the Flowers of Hell with writer Michael Moorcock, and Empire with Samuel R. Delany—and found time to move into film design with work on the movie version of Heavy Metal.
1980s
In 1980 he designed the album cover of The Legend of Jesse James, a concept album about legendary outlaw Jesse James.Chaykin had a six-issue run on Marvel's Micronauts series, drawing issues from #13 to #18. He went back to Cody Starbuck with a story in Heavy Metal between May and September 1981, in the same painted art style he'd used for the Moorcock graphic novel.
In June 1980, a story that he collaborated on with Samuel R. Delany, called "Seven Moons' Light Casts Complex Shadows" was published in Marvel's Epic Illustrated #2.
In 1983, Chaykin launched American Flagg! for First Comics. With Chaykin as both writer and artist, the series was successful for First and proved highly influential, mixing all of Chaykin's previous ideas and interests—jazz, pulp adventure, science fiction and sex. Chaykin made wide use of Craftint Duoshade illustration boards, which in the period before computers allowed him to add a shaded texture to the finished art. American Flagg! made a huge splash at the 1984 Eagle Awards, the United Kingdom's pre-eminent comics awards. Chaykin and American Flagg! were nominated for ten awards, eventually winning seven.
After the first 26 issues of American Flagg!, Chaykin started work on new projects. Chaykin's involvement in his original run of the series was that of writer for 29 issues, interior artist for issues #1–12 and 14–26, and cover artist for issues #1–33. He returned to full art and writing for the American Flagg! Special one-shot in 1986. In 1987, a four-issue run was released, then the title was cancelled and relaunched as Howard Chaykin's American Flagg!, which ran 12 issues.
The first new project was a revamp of The Shadow in a four-issue miniseries for DC Comics in 1986. Rather than setting the series in its traditional 1930s milieu, Chaykin updated it to a contemporary setting and included his own style of extreme violence. In a 2012 interview, Chaykin stated, "The reason I pulled him out of the period was because I thought it would be commercial suicide to do a period character at that point."
The American Flagg! Special one-shot introduced Chaykin's Time², a two-volume graphic-novel series with a heavy dose of jazz, film noir and a fantasy version of New York City: Time²: The Epiphany and Time²: The Satisfaction of Black Mariah ). In 1987, Chaykin described plans for a third volume, saying, "It's probably going to be grossly different from the first two, because I'm taking things in another direction... I want to do a story that is both very funny... and at the same time very, very ugly. Really nasty and unpleasant. Because frankly, it's the place to do that sort of thing." Although Chaykin hoped it would be available in 1988, the third volume was finally published in Time² Omnibus, released in February 2024 through Image Comics.
Chaykin has described Time² as the single work about which he is most proud. "To tell you the truth, my first interest would be to do another Time² because that was a very personal product for me," he said in 2008. "It's a fantasia of my family's story."
Before returning to American Flagg!, Chaykin revamped another DC Comics character with Blackhawk, a three-issue miniseries about a team of heroic aviators, set in the 1930s.
In 1987, DC proposed a system of labeling comics for violent or sexual content, Chaykin with Alan Moore and Frank Miller boycotted DC and refused to work for the company.
In 1988, Chaykin created perhaps his most controversial title: Black Kiss, a 12-issue series published by Vortex Comics that contained his most explicit depictions of sex and violence, with a story of sex-obsessed vampires in Hollywood. Though Black Kiss shipped sealed in an "adults only" clear plastic bag, its content drew much criticism. This did not stop it from selling well enough for Chaykin to describe it as "probably, on a per-page basis, the most profitable book I've ever done."