First Comics News: Mr. Broderick, can you tell our readers when and where you were born and where you went to school?
Pat Broderick: I was born on November 26th, 1953, in Brandon, Florida, the youngest of three boys. At the time, it was a small rural town fifteen miles outside of Tampa, and I began my schooling there.
1st: Just for fun, I looked up 1953 calendars, online. Nov. 26th, 1953 was a Thursday. Assuming you were a comics fan, growing up, what was your first memory of discovering the existence of comic books, and however you become interested in them? That is to say, if you were/are a comics fan, as different from being an artist for them to make a living, only. What were your earliest and later favorite comic characters, and what other things, like TV series, movies, and actors were you interested in? This is my way of asking what other hobbies and interests do you have.?
Pat: It was my third-grade year that introduced me to comics one day while getting my monthly crew cut at the town’s barbershop. These comics were lying with a stack of various magazines. It was 1963, and I was introduced to The X-Men # 1 and Fantastic Four, Iron Man, The Hulk and The Avengers, Thor, and AAnt-Man All first issues, and all of them kept me distracted from what was going on in the world, like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Later, the Kennedy assassination. So yes, I was a fan, before I decided later on to be a comic book artist.
1st: How old were you when you first became interested in art? And, did you take any art courses, professional courses or otherwise, to learn how to draw, or go to any art schools, or are you entirely self-taught?
Pat: It was that year (1963) that I copied my first panel from X-Men # 1. It was the beginning of a lifetime of art. My early education in art was self-taught, until I later began my job at DC Comics, in the fall of 1973.
1st: How old were you when your first comics job was published? Do you recall what your first comic book story was, and what title and issue # it was published in?
Pat: My early education in art was self-taught until I later began my job at DC Comics in the fall of 1973. I had read an announcement on the letters page of an OAAW (DC Comics title ‘Our Army At War’) comic, about the DC Comics’ newly formed Junior Bullpen Contest being held at the Commodore Hotel, during the New York Comic Con that summer, and that it was open, looking for new talent that would train right there, at their office. I won. So, my very first comic book work was a November/ December issue back in 1973.
1st: I grew up as a teenager reading your comics, including your Sun Runners titles. Let’s see … that title started with four issues from Eclipse Comics, and later on, three issues from Pacific Comics – both titles from 1984. Then, there were two issues of Tales of The Sun Runners in ’86 from Sirius Comics, then a single issue of Tales of The Sun Runners (and) a Sun Runners Christmas Special, both from Amazing Comics, and both in 1987. That’s a total of eleven issues of Sun Runners total and from four different publishers. And nope, my memory isn’t that good from that long ago, although I still own all of those Pat Broderick Sun Runners comics. The Grand Comics Database is an internet site that I use quite regularly to look up older comics, online. Small press comics companies seemed to be folding pretty quickly, back then, alas. Just some other great small companies that didn’t last long, regrettably, were Comico, First Comics, ancient Comics, and Eternity Comics, to name only a few. There were, of course, numerous others. I loved your Sun Runners, and they are fondly remembered! And in terms of comics, I don’t get rid of anything. Did you create Sun Runners, the concepts of them, I mean, before the series writer took over, aside from your doing the art for them all?
Pat: Did I create the Sun Runners? The short answer is no. Roger McKenzie brought the concept to me. However, it was very basic in its conception. I had to visualize the characters and world in which it existed.
1st: It would be wonderful if, some fine day, all those Sun Runners issues you did were ever republished together, in a trade paperback edition! No one can afford, as a fan, reader, and collector, of course, to buy ALL comics titles, as they come out, but, interesting to me, is that I bought, read,d and collected pretty much everything you did in comics back then, although I likely missed a few Pat Broderick art appearances. Like, for example, your single Creature Commando appearance in DC’s Weird War Tales # 93, Marvel’s Doom 2099, and possibly just a couple of others, which are all on my Want List. I own everything you did on Batman and Detective Comics, Batman Family, Micronauts, Alpha Flight, Legion of Super Heroes, Captain Atom, Green Lantern, (back when Hal Jordan had gray temples), Fury of Firestorm, your four-partBatman Year Three issues, (in which you co-created the Tim Drake Robin character), and a great deal more, all bought new, as they came out! We’ll do our best to provide, at the end of the interview, as complete as we can make it, a Pat Broderick Comics Checklist, in addition to lots of color graphics of your work in comics, in the interview. But, let me ask you this: What are some of your favorite comics that you worked on, the ones you enjoyed doing, the most? We’ll most certainly get to your Lone Star western comics art, later on, but if that’s included, mention that, too!
Pat: Micronauts was my favorite series that I penciled from that period at Marvel Comics.
1st: Hmm. I just checked the Grand Comics Database online, and it turns out that the 1970s title Batman Family started later than 1973, and ran from (dated inside each issue) as # 1, September/ October 1975 through October/ November 1978, issue twenty, the final issue, although considering Lead Time, and the fact that all comics issues are dated inside months after they arrived at newsstands, it is certainly possible that the issue you worked on first, to start your comics career, could have been worked on some time late in 1973, I suppose. Anyway, the earliest issue that could have been the issue you referred to, would have been Batman Family, the November/ December issue of 1975, issue # 2, although there were later November/December issues in that twenty-issue run. Just for fun, I’ve attached a cover of # 2. Do you think this is the issue in question? I searched online regarding your innumerable comic-published credits but could find no entry of your work on the Batman Family title – which simply means they overlooked that one. Anyway, just in case that isn’t the issue, here is a link to all the overs for that series. Perhaps you can pick out the issue it was? I’m curious. Here is the link: comics.org/series/2213/covers/
Pat: It’s quite possible that I started in the fall of 1974. After all, you’re dealing with a 73-year-old mind, now. I’ve been surprised at shows with a comic or story that I’d completely forgotten I’d illustrated. I continued producing those pages and other illustration work in all of their family titles that year into early 1974, which is when I began my relationship with Neal Adams and Continuity Associates.
1st: Ah yes! An incredibly talented group of artists, I recall, collectively known as ‘The Crusty Bunkers!’ Ha, ha! That’s awesome! What was Neal Adams like to work with, or for? I’ve always likewise admired his work, too. And, like you, I seem to recall that he, too, worked in advertising, at one point, in addition to being a newspaper comic strip artist, on Ben Casey. Neal Adams, if I recall correctly, did some Iron Fist art page stories for the Danny Rand Iron Fist, back in the 1970s, or at least some covers. Very recently, just months ago, arvel killed off that character, in a one-shot Iron Fist Special, written by Jason Loo, in a particularly gruesome, grisly manner, in a manner in which it will probably be pretty much impossible for the character to ever be resurrected. It’s a damn shame because he was one of my favorite characters. In the 1970s, the same was done with Ulysses Bloodstone, another favorite character of mine; and again, in a grisly manner in which it’s probably impossible to ever resurrect the character.
Pat: It was while I first worked there, that I got my first comics break, (Atlas-Seaboard Comics’) Planet of Vampires. (Circa 1974/ 1975.) And then, over at Marvel Comics, Iron Fist, Captain Marvel, (Mar-vell), Weirdworld, and The Micronauts, which was my favorite series I penciled from that period at Marvel Comics.
1st: You know, I bought and read at the time, ALL of those, and The Micronauts was my favorite series, fa afavoriteI just realized that, unlike you, my (word) ‘favourite’ has a favorite it, the older British spelling, because, while the huge First Comics News site is American, I am, in fact, a Canadian, out here in Nova Scotia.
Pat: I returned to DC Comics from there and did The Fury of Firestorm with Gerry Conway, and a year of Detective Comics, amongst other series with Doug Moench, Legion of Super Heroes, Swamp Thing, Creature Commandos, the G.I. Robot, and Green Lantern, before returning to Marvel to illustrate Alpha Flight, and Doom 2099.
1st: Those were the days! I recall that, when you were working on Green Lantern, that was the period wherein Hal Jordan had gray temples. Out of all the titles you mention, thus far, that you worked on back in the day, I bought and read most all of them, every single issue, missing not a single issue of any of those titles, except for Creature Commandos, G.I. Robot, and Doom 2099. And, if I’d known at the time you had done those, I would have bought those, too, and I would still own those today, as well!
Pat: Then the bottom fell out of the comics industry in the mid-1990s and I began full-time work in advertising for a few years, worked on (the movie) Jimmy Neutron, and began a fifteen-year stint of teaching.
1st: The 1990s were a period in comics, around about the time of the so-called ‘black and white comics glut’, and at the same time, where a lot of Marvel Comics, in the opinion of many, was considered by many in the comics fan magazines, to be pure shlock, wherein Marvel also encountered its first bankruptcy. I of course do not mean your stuff. I was ALWAYS a Pat Broderick fan! While, these days, Marvel is a multi-billion-dollar online traded company. They sure came back from the brink!
Pat: I returned to comics after that, and, a long story short, illustrated a six-issue series for First Publishing, Shatter 2.0 with the late Peter Gillis, his last comics work. And now, my work with Mike Baron on Bronze Star, my western horror anthology. I’m doing my best work, ever.
1st: I couldn’t agree more! I’ve seen several original art pages of Bronze Star, and it is fantastic stuff! I’m going to order Bronze Star! Your pencils on those pages are dazzling, and so very detailed! And, between both yours as well as Mike Golden’s art on Marvel’s Micronauts series, Micronauts was a favorite of both mine and legions of other comics fans, readers, and collectors, as well! I bet that series sold like Hot Cakes, as the saying goes!! To me, it never even once seemed incredible that this particular comic series, originally based on a toy line, became such an enormous fan sensation favorite! There was just so much energy and excitement on every page! At the same time, both the writing and the illustrations on this title were not only always top-notch but the creativity and excitement in both the scripting and the art left the readers on the edges of their seats! Rom, Stheireknight was another toys to comics series that took off! Pun intended! Aside from the Silver Age Marvel western various titles, at that time, and earlier, I had (otherwise) never been a western nor war comics fan as a child, nor as a very young teen. Even though I had loved, even as a kid, various Western TV series, and, in terms of war pieces, I loved The Rat Patrol, as a very young boy! I still do! Much later still, after 
I moved to Toronto right after high school, a Toronto friend, an Italian named Dave Darrigo – who later became a (Canadian) comics creator, writer, and publisher of same, who I initially worked within a Toronto comics store named the Dragon Lady Comics Shop, (also known as Dragon Lady Nostalgia Press), he became a good, close friend. We had a thirty-five-year friendship, and he interested me and won me over, in terms of all Western (and) war comics, and vintage pulp magazines, as well. My interest in Western comics began a little bit, though, I think, with Marvel’s mid-1970s Caleb Hammer appearance, in Marvel Premiere # 54 (1980), and I was off and running as a Western comics fan! And Western tales in vintage Pulp magazines, as well! I think DC Comics was, for the most part, mostly better at westerns and war comics than was Marvel, back then. But then again, DC had Russ Heath, Robert Kanigher, Joe Kubert, and earlier, Gil Kane. Just my opinion, of course. Pat, your Bronze Starwestern pages meet those high creative criteria of the creators I mentioned above, as does most or all of your previous considerable body of comics work. When did you start Bronze Star? Has it been published, as yet? I think that it is still in the works. I’m also wondering if you will be doing it as a one-shot, as a limited series, or as an ongoing comics title. Has a publisher been finalized for the series, or is it a Kickstarter? I’m sorry; that’s a lot of questions, right there!
I agree that it is your best work ever, and considering the considerable amount of high-caliber decades of comic work you’ve turned in, in the past, that is saying a lot! I wouldn’t miss Bronze Star when it is published, for the world! When is it coming out?
Pat: Our Bronzestar book has been out since October, a year ago. We’ve got maybe fifty books left. We did two variant covers and also a Black and White Artists Edition Limited Number. I’m currently a third of the way into Volume Two, again, in a supernatural setting. This time, the windego comes to town.
1st: That’s fantastic! I’ve got to order those! I loved the 1975 Atlas-Seaboard Planet of Vampires. And, forgive me, I had forgotten that you worked on that! Despite the fact it likely was inspired by the Planet of the Apes movies, Planet of Vampires very quickly became its own unique thing! Along with Steve Ditko and Wallace Wood’s The Destructor (and) Demon Hunter, Planet of Vampires was one of my top favorite Atlas-Seaboard titles! I similarly really liked the moody artwork you delivered on the sole Dark Avenger story you turned in, in the backup story in Atlas-Seaboard’s Phoenix # 3. After Atlas-Seaboard Comics sadly went out of business after a single year (I heard it was due to possibly high-mismanagement problems, distribution problems, or both, possibly), were there any issues of Atlas-Seaboard Comics that were completed or at least started, to your knowledge, and ultimately not published, as a result of Atlas-Seaboard going out of business, after a single year? For example, possibly another issue of Planet of Vampires (or) a second Dark Avenger story you had perhaps worked on, either partially or finished? I am aware of some unpublished Atlas-Seaboard covers that I have seen online, of some of those mid-1970s titles never having seen print for at the time planned future issues, including the cover for a title produced, entitled ‘Wonderworld’, and a completed and fully inked and lettered Bog Beast comics story. Which, ironically, (only) saw print in not one, but in two different Australian comic book titles. And of course, the second Demon Hunter finished comics story ran in Rich Buckler’s one-shot title Galaxia, with only the hero’s hero name changed.
Pat: Atlas-Seaboard. As far as I’m aware there could have been, but not drawn by myself. I was asked to finish layouts by Larry Lieberman, but after seeing the style he wanted I couldn’t justify switching over to a Kirby look. #4 A Dark Avenger concept? Conspiracy theories abound.
1st: The next thing I’d like to ask, if I may, is regarding your Marvel Comics work on the 1970’s male Kree-born Captain Marvel series. A story that I believe (from memory) that you may have illustrated while doing that series (# 34), in which Mar-vell battled a villain called Nitro, laid the story groundwork and elements, upon which artist Jim Starlin much later used in Marvel’s very first ever graphic novel ‘The Death of Captain Marvel’, due to the character contracting cancer. Did you have any feelings or thoughts about the company killing off this character that you had previously worked on, for such a long time?
Pat: About Captain Marvel. I enjoyed what Jim Starling did with the character. How he (Captain Marvel) passed away lent a wonderful touch of reality. A realization that not all characters are untouchable. However, it opened up a floodgate to killing the main characters. And never done as well as Starlin’s. It should be a once-in-a-decade-only rule for both companies. I’m having the time of my life! If you need expanded areas, let me know.
1st: I sure will. By the way, those Bronzestar pages you ssentto my FB Msgesente are amazing, but I can’t download them from there to include them in the interview, from there. As I’m having a current tech problem with that particular computer. So, could ya kindly send them again, but this time, to my email address? It is philalatter1701@gmail.com I can then put them right into the interview.
By the way, is Bronzestar available in comic stores, or can it only be ordered through the mail? Although, that’s not a deterrent to my ordering it, of course. I’m just curious. I agree. I loved The Death of Captain Marvel (Mar-vell.) And, as much as I loved that book, I still lament that it is a shame that we could never again (but never say never) read any more new Kree Mar-vell comics stories. But speaking of ‘never say never’, since then, the Kree Mar-vell has been brought back to life (then killed off again), at least twice, that I recall reading about, and one of those times was in one of The Avengers titles. Thirdly, the character was still later brought back (sort of) a third time, in a Captain Marvel four-issue mini-series. But in the final issue of that series, it turned out that this was a Skrull, who’d turned physically, into Mar-vell, then later it turned, in that final issue, we finally learned he was a Skrull with amnesia, and not the real Mar-vell, who’d forgotten that he was not far-vell. I think that final issue, where I learned this, was the only time I recall that I threw a comic book at a wall! Ha, ha! I could almost HEAR Marvel whispering ‘Sucker’ in my ear! LOL Mr. Pat Broderick, thank you so very much for agreeing to discuss your comic book illustration career with me. I’m a huge fan of your work. Thanks again, Sir!
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