COMIC BOOK BIOGRAPHY: Mike Cody

Mike, when FirstComicsNews.com owner and creator (and all-around great guy, Rik Offenberger) first asked me to interview you, I admit I was a little leery. For the reason that we Canadians (Rik is south of our lower border, actually), are allergic to titanium! Eek! Okay, I just completely made that up! More seriously, is this the first appearance of the good Captain Titanium?

Mike Cody: Thank You and Rik for the interview. No need for Canadians to worry, no actual titanium was used in the making of this book. This is the very first appearance of Captain Titanium, in print. I’ve been posting teaser pages and art on Facebook to get feedback and get the idea out there for people to see.

1^st: The pleasure is ours, Mike! What can you tell our readers about the story synopsis of this new comic book?

Mike: It’s an old-fashioned superhero story that has a worldwide organization – ION (International Operatives Network), enlisting the help of Captain Titanium to investigate a series of high-tech equipment robberies. They run into a strange opponent that has unusual resources, and unexpected tricks up their sleeves. There are robots, gangs of apes, and all kinds of surprises, along with some super fisticuffs!

1^st: Who is Captain Titanium, where did he come from, and what is the storyline about?

Mike: Captain Titanium came from an idea I had about how (MLJ’s/Archie’s) superhero The Shield could be done in an updated way, within the context of the Archie universe. I enjoyed the revival of the Shield in the 1960s under the Mighty Comics banner, and I always thought he was a character that had a lot of potential.

1^st: I enjoyed and still have all those, also. Are you referring to the original, first, Golden Age (1940’s) World War Two-era Shield character with the red hair (alias ‘Joe Higgins’), who was the very first stars and stripes-based character in comics, and who also had adventures in comics in the 1960s, or the second, later ‘Lancelot Strong The Shield’ character from 1959, that you got your idea from, to start? Or both?

Mike: My memories are from the 1960’s Mighty Crusaders comics are of the whole group of characters, including The Fly, The Web, The Comet, The Shield, and the rest. They were kind of viewed by other comic geeks as a third-rate line compared to Marvel and DC at the time, but I had a soft spot for them.

1^st: So did I. My First Comics News editor and friend Rik Offenberger is also a huge fan of them! He even has the largest ever Mighty Crusaders website on the net, at MightyCrusaders.net Rik and I both prefer the 1980s reboot Mighty Crusaders and other superhero titles from Archie’s Red Circle Comics banner better (he told me this when I interviewed him on the First Comics News site, just a year or two ago, but we both like their 1960’s comics adventures, as well! I re-read that interview just a few nights ago, so my memory is fresh, on that!

Mike: They were fun. I had grown up learning to read with 1950’s Batman and Superman, and there was a naïveté to them that I saw, in the Mighty Crusaders. I enjoyed this sort of fantasy element in them before comics in general started taking themselves so seriously. I think there’s room for both approaches and an intermingling of the two. Since following (Rik Offenberger’s) Shield G-man Club on Facebook, I’ve learned more about the history of the Shield character.

Mike: Fast forward to the 21st century, and I found there were a bunch of Shield fans out there. It allowed me to learn more about the character, and it started me thinking about how I’d like to see him done. A couple of other books that I enjoyed back in the 1960s were Marvel’s (Jim Steranko’s) Nick Fury and his Agents of Shield, and Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent, Dynamo.

1^st: I, too, grew up in the Silver Age of comics, and I also enjoyed Tower Comics’ (Wallace Wood’s) T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents! Did you have a favorite T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent? I liked Menthor, but that character was killed off, a first in comics, having a superhero killed off, except for The Comet at MLJ Comics, in the 1940’s. I liked the separate series Undersea Agent, too, and I have all of those. There is a lot of really good Gil Kane art in them! And, I remember that in the comics, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stood for ” The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves” Marvel’s (Jim Steranko’s version of) Nick Fury, Agent of Shield, these were great, also, and reminiscent of James Bond, TV’s Danger Man/Secret Agent/, and of course, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Were you a fan of James Bond movies?

Mike: I followed Tower Comics and the Thunder Agents because of Wally Wood’s involvement. Wood is probably my favorite comic artist of all time. I usually picked up anything he had work in. I enjoyed the main character, Dynamo, because Wood usually drew that feature. I also thought NoMan was a great concept, which I think is still valid, today. Everyone is a James Bond fan, aren’t they? The idea of having an organization as the base and backup for the character is a great story device. You see it is used quite a bit in comics, like the X-men.

1^st: I forgot about Noman, a robot with the engrams of a late human professor’s brain imprinted into the robot’s synthetic brain circuits, and with the ability to transfer his consciousness from identical robot to robot, or android to android’s cranium. Wonderful sci-fi stuff!

Mike: I had been posting drawings of my take on The Shield on the G-man Club, but I figured it would be impossible for me to ever get a chance to present my idea to the powers that be, at Archie Comics. But I got so into the idea that I did the next best thing, I created my own character! I had not tried doing a sequential comic, in decades. I love doing one-off drawings that I can labor over, but I remembered from the old fanzine days, that a sequential comic is a LOT of work. I decided to keep it simple and somewhat rough, to keep the project doable. I wanted to get the basic premise and feel down, and try to flesh it out. And this is the result.
It’s been a lot of fun!

1^st: Mike, I don’t want to take you off track or get in the way of your train of thought, but you said you remembered from the old fanzine days that a sequential comic is a lot of work. In the past, did you do work for comics fanzines, aside from just ordering/buying and reading them? And if so, what years were these in, what were the fanzine titles, and what work or feature names did you do in them? Did you do sequential comics work inside them, years ago?

Mike: I did sequential and pin-up work for fanzine comics, in the late 1960’s. I don’t remember all of them, but two of them were Graphic Showcase and Spa Fon.

1^st: I have heard of both of those vintage comics fanzines, and I have at least some issues with Graphic Showcase, but not Spa Fon. I am a writer and an artist, myself, and I spent decades, on and off, writing and doing art for numerous comics fanzines. My art has also been published in some pro magazines, and in two Zorro books, the character is all in black, with a hat, mask, cape, and sword. Zorro is my # 1 favorite fictional character in any and all types of fictional media. So, I think I am a cowboy, at heart, haha! In this case, sort of a southwestern masked hero!

Mike: Graphic Showcase was a great fanzine, back then. It had some of the very first works of artists like Wrightson, Kaluta, and Stephen Hickman. Spa Fon was a wonderful fanzine that dealt mainly with EC fandom and focused a lot on the work of (Frank) Frazetta. Fanzines in those days before the internet were one of the ways people found out about stuff going on, in comics. They were also a breeding ground for aspiring comic artists and writers. I do remember Zorro. I got to meet the actor who played him on television along with his sidekick, Poncho.

1^st: Zorro’s sort of side-kick, or manservant, was Bernardo. The Cisco Kid had a sidekick called Pancho, with an ‘a.’ That’s probably what you’re thinking of. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to acquire the complete vintage Cisco Kid TV series in a boxed DVD set. And I have numerous DVD sets of Walt Disney’s (1950’s) Zorro, from various companies, including Disney. The Cisco Kid was played by Duncan Renaldo. Disney’s Zorro was played by Guy Williams.

Mike: I got back into doing comics in the 1980’s, as part of the New Wave Mini Comics movement. That was a fun time, and lots of people from all over the place were collaborating, together. I corresponded with and did work for, and with so many people, I can’t remember them all. One sequential book I did during that period, Captain Space, got picked up by a children’s monthly magazine called Popcorn. It was during that period that I met Allan Greenier, my current publisher. SPAMAN #5, published by Allan Greenier in 1987. I drew the whole issue using mostly a tonal technique.

Mike: I figured it would have to involve at least several issues, to tell the story. As I go along, I can see more and more possibilities for storylines and characters. Being primarily an artist, I am driven by the opportunity to draw fun stuff, and that has a lot to do with how the story develops. I’m already well into the second issue, and I can easily see it taking three issues to complete the story arc. I do have ideas for another story, after this one. The possibilities are endless.

1^st: Is this the first comic you will have put out, or the very first comic you have done story and/or art in?

Mike: Well, I did several comics that I self-published in the New Wave era. I also self-published a digital artzine in the 20 teens called Codyzine, which featured articles, interviews, and portfolios of artists from all over the world, that ran about nine issues.

1^st: That’s great, Mike, thanks so much! Are you also the colorist and letterer of the Captain Titanium series?

Mike: I do the coloring for Captain Titanium in Photoshop, and the lettering is typeset.

1^st: Cool! You do it all! Is Captain Titanium Print On Demand, or will it ship to comics specialty stores, or both? Put another way, how does one acquire a copy of this first issue, just printed this month, mid-February of 2025?

Mike: Once I started posting pages of the book online, I was contacted by an old friend from the New Wave Mini Comics days. Al Greenier, who I had corresponded with years ago, was trading and collaborating on projects. Al has a small press publishing outfit named Useful Knowledge Press, that has been doing some interesting projects. Al has been professionally involved in printing for years, and he is also a fine art printer. Al Had seen some of my more finely rendered drawings, and he wanted to do a mini art book of some of them. Once that was done, he offered to publish Captain Titanium, in full color! I had never considered printing an actual physical copy of the book; I was happy just posting it, online. So, you can thank Al and Useful Knowledge Press for the physical book coming into being. You can order the book directly from Al via Paypal, by sending $11.00 to: greenier.allan@gmail.com, or mail $11.00 to Useful Knowledge Press, 1003 Whaley Ave., New Haven, CT 06515. (Be sure to include your name and address!)

He picked some really fine paper to print it on, and it brings out the colors! Useful Knowledge Press will be making the rounds of some of the small press conventions, with the book. As it stands, I don’t think there are plans to distribute it to specialty stores, but who knows; maybe if it takes off?

1^st: What were the New Wave Mini Comics that you mentioned? Were you involved with those, and when did they come out?

Mike: The New Wave Mini Comics movement happened in the 1980s, but it is still going on today. A network of people had developed, that corresponded through the mail, sending and trading their self-published mini-comics.

1^st: Yep. I still buy mini comics at my local comic book specialty stores, from time to time. This has been a most informative interview. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak to me about your life in comics, Mike!
I enjoyed it so very much!