Check it out, aspiring writers: another rejection letter from the archives! This one’s from around 1983, when I pitched a story idea to Archie Comics, home of that immortal high school teenager, Archie Andrews. Only I wasn’t interested in writing an adventure of Riverdale’s redheaded ladies’ man—it was Archie’s Red Circle line of superhero comics I had my eye on.
At the time, the Powers That Be had decided it was time to revive a line of superhero titles that had long been part of their character library, no doubt to compete with Marvel and DC Comics. Overall the series that Archie published—The Mighty Crusaders, The Fly, and Black Hood, to name just three—were pretty entertaining, and the lineup of talent included a busload of heavy hitters: comic-art legends Alex Toth, Carmine Infantino, Alex Nino, Jim Steranko, and Gray Morrow were just some of the major players they’d signed.
Foremost among these A-listers was Steve Ditko: artist and co-creator of Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man and Doctor Strange; creator of Charlton Comics’ (later DC’s) The Question and Captain Atom; creator of DC’s Hawk and Dove, Shade—The Changing Man, and The Creeper. For Archie, he was the writer/artist of the revived Fly comic.
But it was the Fly’s sidekick, Fly-Girl, who caught my attention. It wasn’t that she was drawn in a sexy manner—for all his incredible talents, Ditko is not an artist synonymous with “good girl” art—but because there was potential in developing a character I thought wasn’t getting enough spotlight time. (FYI: The art you see here isn’t by Ditko.)
Thus, “Return of the Junk King” as a pitch. In it, Fly-Girl—who, like the Fly, was a creation of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon (creators of Captain America)— would clash with another Kirby/Simon character, the little-seen Fly villain the Junk King (first introduced in a story called “The Master of Junk-Ri-La”). Hey—my first attempt at pitching a superhero story!
My two biggest obstacles? As you can see here, Ditko of course had his own ideas for the series (along with former DC writer/editor Robert Kanigher); and Robin Snyder, who sent this letter, was not only Ditko’s editor on The Fly but his collaborator/co-writer. Makes the line “as long as I control it” take on a whole new meaning, doesn’t it? 😉
Still, Snyder liked what I did, and looking back, it seems I was destined to become known for character-driven stories, as evidenced by my pitching a Fly-Girl story in which she wore street clothes instead of her costume. It was similar to an approach I used many years later when I wrote the X-Men: The Chaos Engine novel trilogy: taking the superheroes out of their costumes for large portions of the story and constantly referring to them by their real names, not their code names (“Scott” instead of “Cyclops,” “Logan” instead of “Wolverine,” “Ororo” instead of “Storm,” etc.). I felt it helped the reader identify more with the character.
Anyway, as with my Twilight Zone rejection, I took encouragement from the letter. I did have the talent to be a writer; I’d just have to keep at it.
