In the early months 1987 Silverwolf Comics kicked itself into high gear, publishing 13 new titles. One of the most unique of these new heroes was Victim.
Always finding himself in dangerous situations, Victim (Casey Lockley) realizes he has the ‘power’ to be where bad things are most likely to occur and decides to use this power for good, to ‘right some of the wrongs in the world’.
But would this power of coincidence be enough to keep Casey one step ahead of the bad guys, being at the right place and prepared…or would his ‘power’ lead him to more trouble than he could handle? We were given two issues to find out (#1 Feb. ’87, 8000 print run; #2 March ’87, 5000 print run) before Silverwolf folded.
In my ongoing search into the history and story behind Silverwolf and Greater Mercury Comics, I contacted Paul Schulze, the artist for Victim. I can’t say enough about how generous Paul was, he happily answered all the questions and even threw in a brand new drawing of ‘Vic’ to boot! That’s it right there to the right.
…Glad to help out!…Hadn’t drawn Vic in years! Kind of a kick to take a shot at him, again. This is more indicative of my cartoony style, which I do more of these days.“
In my humble opinion, I think the costume looks A LOT better in this form. So what do you think?
Many thanks to Paul for knocking out a new original, and for the following interview. I am very happy to have been able to contact Mr. Schulze, he’s easily one of the nicest persons I’ve interviewed so far.
Moby: What was it like breaking into comics with Silverwolf?
PES: I was living in San Jose, CA in 1986 when I met Kris at a SJ con. I’d taken a few sample pages there that I’d done earlier that year while in college, and he liked them. I was aware (vaguely) of SilverWolf comics, as I tended to pick up all sorts of indie comics, and had read Eradicators #1 a few months before.
About a month later I got a package from him in the mail, with a plot for Victim #1 and a request to do some designs for the character. I was hired! I did maybe a half-dozen designs, he picked out the one he liked best, and from there I pretty much started on the book.
Unfortunately, Kris wanted me to ink the comic as well. My pencilling skills were shaky, but my inking was downright abysmal. Worse yet, I was very, very slow at inking. I mean, downright glacial. Nations rose and fell while I was inking that first book. I bugged Kris several times about getting an inker, but no go. Can’t say that would have saved it, but darn it, at least I could blame all my shortcomings on someone else!
As far as breaking into comics…really, the late ’80s B&W scene basically replaced the (superior) fanzine efforts of the ’60s & ’70s. It was small press/self-published vanity work, for the most part. I was under no illusions, even then, that this was going to be anything huge.
The problem was…Kris really seemed to think otherwise.
What did you think of the characters you were asked to draw?
Ummm…not a lot, really. Victim was just a really silly name for a superhero. I think he was supposed to have precognitive abilities…? I was never quite sure.
A rogue hero prowls the midnight skyline of San Francisco. His name: VICTIM. Wealthy young Casey Lockley is a magnet for trouble…searching out and eradicating the darkness of man.”
Various pages from Victim #1. Click for larger image.
Scans originally posted on Power Comics
Did you help design the look of the characters, and did you have any plans for the characters future?
I did the Victim designs as mentioned above, and I did the design for Deathborg as well. Then it turned out that it was supposed to be a character in another book, and the artist of that book had created his own Deathborg (which blew mine away, if memory serves), so Kris turned around and decided that there were two of them.
I did end up writing the third (uncirculated) issue, and with the fourth I was going to make it a team book. Vic was going to make some friends! I’d actually introduced one of them in #3, an aquatic guy, and there was going to be more going on with whatever government agency was giving Vic his backing.
How did it all fall apart from your perspective?
Kris had big, big plans, but they were well beyond his reach. Now, he had a winner on his hands with Grips, and this was 99% due to Tim Vigil’s stunning art. Eradicators had some promise. Brandon McKinney was a very good straight-up superhero artist, so Legion-X looked really nice. Gary Shipman improved radically from one issue of Edge to the next. Fat Ninja was kind of cool, and Gary Amaro was a very good cartoonist.
Maybe…and it’s a big maybe…Kris could have weathered the coming B&W fallout if he’d stayed small and concentrated on his winners. And if he’d let other people write them. But he had these huge, grand plans that entailed graphic novels drawn by Bernie Wrightson, luring away Marvel/DC talent , etc. Those were really just daydreams, but he was intent on building this comics empire without the necessary resources to make it a feasible proposition.
Now, remember, I wasn’t in Sacramento, where SilverWolf was located, so the day-to-day stuff was not something I was involved in. My wife & I drove up there several times, and gave rides to Gary Shipman and Brandon McKinney on one or two occasions (Hey, now that I think about it, Kris may have hired me simply because I had a car! Hmm…), but we really weren’t as “in the know” as the guys who were up there.
However, one of the staff guys, Stephen P. Cook, would call me and clue me in as to what was going down, which I really appreciated. Stephen was a good guy, and I think he was trying to look out for some of the people that weren’t in Sacramento. He was also a writer himself, and I think was very frustrated working for Kris. He called me one time and we were talking about the books, and he said “Kris thinks he’s Stan Lee, man! He thinks he’s writing like the next Alan Moore.” My brain tried to process that, and I think in so doing I may have caused permanent damage… Stephen was also the guy to call me & let me know when things were tanking for good, and he kept me apprised of the lawsuit that later occurred.
The letters page from Victim #1. This gives us a basic idea of the character, and also welcomes Paul aboard.
When was the last time anyone asked about Silverwolf? 🙂
Ha! Umm…never…? It was such a small blip on the comics radar, and I think that it’s notable primarily for Ron Lim’s first work, and Tim Vigil’s work, especially on Grips.
Who were your influences?
Influences…Frank Frazetta. He was just a primal force as much as an artist, and I consider him to be one of the truly great American artists. Others…Kevin O’Neill, Ralph Steadman, Vaughn Bode, Frank Robbins (I loved his Invaders work as a kid…still do, actually!) I’ve always enjoyed Jim Starlin’s ’70s “cosmic” books, and I always admired the elegance of Gil Kane’s work, as well as that of his big influence, Lou Fine. I’m a huge fan of a lot of ’40s artists…Carl Burgos, Jack Cole, Bill Ward…and recently I just picked up the two Fantagraphics books on Fletcher Hanks, and that is some mind-blowing stuff!
Did you go on to work in the comics industry?
I never did anything else in the comics industry. Tried for a bit to get some work with smaller publishers…I was never that interested in being a Marvel or DC guy. Had a few conversations with Gary Carlson, who ran Megaton Comics…nice guy! He’d really liked a team-book proposal I had sent him, but he was already set to publish Rob Liefeld’s Youngblood at that time. Talked to Blackthorne Comics and had them interested…right before they went under. This happened several times, with different companies. My wife used to tell me that I could kill any small-press publisher, just by getting them interested in publishing me.
Any thoughts looking back at that time?
Looking back…I had a pretty good time in the ’80s! The SilverWolf period was up & down, but that was just a year or so out of a great decade. There was a lot of antipathy toward Kris, and I wasn’t really happy about not getting paid for the two unpublished books myself, but that kind of stuff happens. Publishers come & go, and I can’t be angry at things that happened 25 years ago (he said, feeling ooooold). And I definitely have less reason to be PO’d than, for example, Vigil, who really should have gotten his artwork back, as he was one of the few artists who could have made some good money off of it.
I asked, of course, if there was any original art from the series available, but sadly Paul did not have any of his original art returned. He did mention that he completed issue #3, and that the book had been sent off to the printer never to be seen again.
“Victim #3 was kept by the printer due to non-payment, along with several other books… I actually wrote Victim #3 and Hell Hounds #1, and did the text by hand…but again, those disappeared as the company folded.”
Again, a HUGE thanks to Paul Schulze for taking the time to share his thoughts, and also for being so darn nice about it too.
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Ha! Paul and I exchanged a few emails after he posted at the Silverwolfcomics.com forums. He sent me a then new drawing of a character he was working on (but I lost my computer to a virus soon after). Very nice guy.