MARK WAID
1 Roy Rogers’s Trigger (Dell Comics, 1951–1955). Radio and television star Roy Rogers was the undisputed “King of the Cowboys” for most of the 1940s and ’50s, so it made sense for this merchandising mogul to get his own comic. Not to be outdone, Roy’s equally famous wife, Dale Evans, “Queen of the Westerns,” headlined her own DC title from 1948 to 1952. But so hungry were kids for all things Rogers that Roy’s horse, Trigger, managed to capitalize on his owner’s celebrity in his own series—that’s right, a comic starring only a horse, no humans allowed—for even longer than Dale’s. Forget her manager, give me Trigger’s.
2 Bob Hope (DC Comics, 1950–1968). Comedian, actor, USO spokesman, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, uncle of a student at a high school run by Dracula. Wait, what? Certainly Bob Hope was famous enough in 1950 to earn his own DC Comics series; what’s befuddling is why ten-year-olds in 1968, at the height of the youth revolution in this nation and with a spinner rack full of Marvel “Pop Art Productions” and Batman books to choose from, were voluntarily spending their twelve cents on a comic about a cornball right-wing sexagenarian they knew about only through their parents. For sixteen years straight, The Adventures of Bob Hope recycled the same exact story every issue: Hope, ever the unbelievably clever young charmer, saves an impossibly hot woman from madcap nefarious circumstances, foils the villain, and gets the girl.
3 New Kids on the Block (Harvey Comics, 1990–1992). For about an hour and a half in the caliginous musical age known as “the late 1980s,” the New Kids on the Block were the biggest thing in music, reinventing and forever redefining the look and sound of the “boy band.” And even though, by that time, the American comic book had already begun its slow transformation from kids’ medium to nostalgic entertainment for developmentally arrested twenty-somethings, it wasn’t out of the question that some publisher would try to draft off the NKotB fame and star them in a comic series. Or two. Or, in the case of Harvey Comics, six of them. At once. New Kids on the Block: Backstage Pass. New Kids on the Block: Chillin’. New Kids on the Block: Comic Tour ’90. New Kids on the Block: NKotB. New Kids on the Block: Not Everyone’s a Wahlberg, which I admit I just now made up. Somewhere, the Incredible Hulk wept.
And the group that actually made sense…
KISS (Marvel Comics, 1977–1978). There aren’t as many differences between the Justice League and KISS as you’d think. Both are groups of characters possessing flamboyant costumes and masks, code names and secret identities. Both have legions of fierce fans and devotees who have been following their exploits for decades. Neither of them has made it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1977 Marvel Comics writer (and sometimes rock journalist) Steve Gerber convinced both his corporate masters and KISS front man Gene Simmons to let him pen a one-shot, magazine-size KISS adventure under the “Marvel Super Special” banner. It was an easy sell to Simmons, a longtime Marvel reader whose name peppered Marvel’s early fan-letter columns; reportedly, the Marvel brass were harder to convince. Nonetheless, the comic was a smash sensation, breaking sales records and making headlines (in part because, as a publicity stunt, the band mixed their own blood in with the printer’s ink). As newly minted denizens of the Marvel Universe, the four KISS rockers received superpowers, fought Doctor Doom, and proved so popular that they were called back on stage by Marvel a year later for an encore performance.
Mark Waid has written a wide variety of well-known characters, from Superman to the Justice League to Spider-Man to Archie and hundreds of others. His award-winning graphic novel with artist Alex Ross, Kingdom Come, is one of the best-selling comics collections of all time.