First Comics News: Could you tell us a bit about yourself?
Josh Deck: I am a lifelong fan of comics and an artist with a deep passion for every aspect of their creation. I am proud of having had some comic book work published at the indie level and continue to work on the occasional project while also indulging my passion for collecting comics and original comic art.
1st: What are your earliest memories of comics?
Josh: I’m not sure exactly when I first became fascinated with comics, but I always had them given to me by family members from a very young age. Titles like Incredible Hulk, Batman & various DC horror anthologies like House Of Myster, among others, were always floating around my room since as far as I can remember.
I do specifically recall two very important experiences in 1982 that stand out strongly for me – around that time, I was spending my summers off school atgrandparents’ents house in a very small country community. They lived next to the general store, and I was always eying comics that were stacked on the little newsstand inside of it. Early that summer, I found an issue of Batman (#349) & Detective Comics wherein Batman encountered an evil vampire priest & was transformed into a vampire himself. It was both horrifying & thrilling all at once. It might have also been the first time I got hold of multiple sequential issues of any comics and got to read additional parts of a continuous storyline. I didn’t get the whole story, but the fact I had two parts of one left a huge impression – for years after I desperately wanted to know how that one got resolved.
Later that same year, I bought my first comic independently with no adult around to ask for it, using some spare change given to me for running an errand. It was #77 of Ghost Rider and it featured the first full origin of the demonic entity Zarathos that inhabited Johnny Blaze. That entire issue is etched deeply into my mind and remains like a fluid vision there to this day.
These two experiences helped galvanize my early love for comics and lock it in for life, but it wasn’t until the summer of 1986 that I began to get obsessed with the idea of building a collection of comics…
1st: Dare I ask what happened in the summer of 1986?
Josh: Two more critically inspiring comic book experiences happened to me that summer. At this time, I was 12 years old, and I had continued to receive random smatterings of comics over the year, with the very occasional one that I might have bought myself. I can’t recall any titles too specifically anymore other than getting a couple of those 3x sealed multipacks in my Christmas stocking a couple times – I do recall getting some A-Team comics and some very early GI Joe comics (I still have a very soft spot in my heart for issue #7 from that, it was a wild issue when I was a kid!). I enjoyed drawing a lot as a hobby growing up to that point, and I was beginning to mature a little bit (relatively speaking) in my childhood tastes.
So one key moment for me was that I got hugely inspired to start drawing comic book sequential pages for the very first time after getting a copy of Incredible Hulk #324 from that same local general store in the country (that was the issue where the grey hulk persona showed up, & where maybe for the first time we saw Banner do some really weird body morphing and projecting himself physically out of the body of the classic green hulk persona that most people are familiar with). I was obsessed with the imagery and kept repeatedly copying the art from one panel, where Bruce’s head and arms were coming out of the Hulk’s chest, and he was trying to stab himself in the neck with a piece of wood while the Hulk held his arms away. I also wanted to tell a different st, adding more to the things that were happening in that issue, and so I made my own mini comic story! It was the first inkling I had that I would really love to keep writing and drawing comics.
1st: And the second critical experience of 1986?
Josh: The other critical comics experience I went through that year was that I began to actively dedicate spending more of my weekly allowance money to buying comics instead of junk food. I was becoming more aware that I could keep re-reading my comics as many times as I wanted over time, which was starting to outweigh the fleeting rewards of eating candy and chips or pop. That was when I started accumulating a few more multiple issues of some of the same titles that I ked – many of which I was discovering for the first time. I was still just a kid scrounging from the general store newsstand options, which were always minimal & random-unaware that such a thing as comic shops existed out there in the wider world. I remember getting Iron Man #212 & #214 that summer, and being insatiably, frustratingly curious about what I had missed out on in #213. By that fall, I would also start laying out my pile of comics flat on the floor to see all the covers of similar series side by side. I loved doing that! Still didn’t have anywhere near enough comics to fill a storage box, and didn’t know those existed yet either – but the habit was forming!
One other very critical element of this overall experience of beginning to really obsess over comics on multiple levels from that summer of 1986 was the appearance of the Marvel New Universe imprint.
1st: What did you find special about the New Universe?
Josh: I’m sure a lot of people out there would laugh at the idea that New Universe comics might have a huge impact on anyone – I know they are not as popular with the general audience of comic fans. But for me (and maybe anyone else out there who was at the right impressionable age just like me), it was the ultra-realism (well, ultra-real to a 12-year-old, haha!) alongside the interesting character scenarios. I felt I could project myself into those stories and live right alongside Keith Remsen as he was travelling through dream landscapes, or Jenny Swensen as she struggled to fight for what she believed was hers while piloting (what I thought was) a cool set of powered armor. I believed what I was reading could happen in the real world, far more so than the traditional superhero books – and that was very thrilling to me.
Another aspect of it that had a big impact on me was that Nightmask & Spitfire were a whole new series that had just started up, and I had never experienced anything like that either. This was very thrilling to me, in addition to liking the stories, trying out a brand new thing right at the start. I had no hope in hell at that time that I might find any issue of Iron Man older than my prized copy of #212, but those New U books were just beginning, and I was THERE for it.
1st: You and I went on to start a Facebook group called NEW UNIVERSE COMICS FANS. It’s easy to find by simply searching for it on Facebook. When we started the group, the New Universe had been disparaged so much that I figured we’d be lucky to end up with five members. But that group has proven that thousands of fans love the New Universe, and I think it has changed the narrative that no one loved the New Universe. How would you respond to that?
Josh: I can’t take any credit for starting that Facebook group – that was all you, man! But I sure do love being so heavily involved in running it with you from the beginning.
I wasn’t sure how much we would be able to grow it either, due to that general sense that most comic fans from that time did not like the imprint. In all honesty, the comics have never gained much traction in the way of collector value – being easy to find in bargain bins and cheap eBay listings (with a few exceptions), and the ones who don’t like the books can be very loud about their opinions which tends to distort reality a little.
But fans of the New U are out there. It has been an absolute pleasure to have welcomed so many of them back into the fold of our Nuclear Family of Nukin’ New U Fans over the last 8 years or so. It is just a fantastic community of positive people united in their passion for the imprint. I also think the membership we’ve built up is probably just a slice of the New Uniphiles that exist out there who aren’t active users of social media and/or simply haven’t found our Facebook group yet.
1st: The number of New Universe creators who have joined the New Universe Comics Fans group on Facebook is fairly high. Who can you name off the top of your head (or the bottom of it if that works better) that worked on the original New Universe and joined that group, and how active have they been in it?
Josh: I am so proud of the fact that we’ve built such a welcoming community that we have attracted original creators of the line to our tiny-but-mighty group, and they have largely felt comfortable staying with us and interacting with the fans. It is a very solid list – Howard Mackie, Tom DeFalco, Gregory Wright, Mike Rockwitz, JayJay Jackson, Ron Frenz, Alex Saviuk, Geof Isherwood, Steve Geiger, Tom Morgan, Romeo Tanghal, Marc Siry, Joe Rubenstein, Mike Gustovich, David Wohl, Sandy Plunkett, Jose Marzan Jr, Tom Palmer (RIP), and I think there are a few others I’m missing who have snuck in there too!
I personally never pressure any of them to participate and keep ‘tagging’ to a minimum so as not to be too disruptive for them, but I am always grateful to those who freely join in conversations, welcome & answer questions, or even just take the time to like a post or two here and there. Folks like Mike Rockwitz, Gregory Wright, Geof Isherwood, JayJay Jackson, Steve Geiger, Alex Saviuk, and Tom Morgan have always been particularly friendly and interactive with the community, and it is all the richer for it. What a blessing to the group!
1st: Thanks for doing the interview, Josh!
Josh: Thanks for thinking of me for an interview!
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