The following biography is completely true, except for parts written in English:
Christopher Sandfog Eliopoulos was born in 1926, to a poor family in northern...I dunno, northern Canada, or something. His father was a welder and his mom was a person that does something with welded things once they've been welded. Sometimes Lil' Chris would go to school. When he did, he saw the teachers writing the alphabet on the chalkboard and thought, "Hey, I bet I could hire people to let me put those things on comic book pages."
And that's just what he did. He and his pals at Virtual Calligraphy letter more than 956 books per month here at Marvel. And when he's not doing that, he's plotting, drawing and lettering FRANKLIN RICHARDS: SON OF A GENIUS.
I sat down with Chris on a day that never existed to email back and forth with him...
NATE: So, as you know, the reason I like working with you so much is that you don’t really read comics…which is probably the reason we get along so well. That’s pretty accurate, right?
CHRIS: I think it’s because you worked at Disney World and I’m nuts for the place. Seriously, as if I ever truly am, I DO read comics, just not a lot of them and not super hero ones. There’s nothing wrong with them, they provide fun and escape for many people, but those aren’t the stories I like to read. Plus, I find that there’s just something wrong with people wearing their underwear on the outside of their clothes.
NATE: You read ‘em as a kid? I picture 10-year-old Chris Eliopoulos as more of a comic strip fan than a comic book fan…
CHRIS: I didn’t read comic books as a kid. I was totally into comic strips. My uncle owned a remainder book company. They would buy the overprints of books and sell them to libraries and stores. My parents would help him out on weekends and I would go along. They had these giant metal bins where they would throw in odd books. It was like this giant metal cage that held these books captive. I would climb in and find all the Fawcett comic strip reprint books and read them all day long. I would sit on a couch of books reading strips like Peanuts, B.C. Beetle Bailey, Wizard of ID and Mad reprints. It was close to heaven. The best part is I was able to take them home. They are sitting on the bookshelf right behind me as I speak.
NATE: Yeah, I was always reading strips instead of comics. I got my parents to buy this really nice, huge, shiny trash can from a design store. WAY too big for my room, and I filled it with Sunday comics. I’d read ‘em and put ‘em in there, never throw them away.
I was ridiculously neurotic, 'cuz I would get back from church on Sundays and grab the papers before I changed clothes. I’d take the comics out and read them in a very specific order. I’d read Blondie, Crankshaft, Dennis the Menace, all the ones I didn’t really like. And I’d save Peanuts, Foxtrot and Calvin & Hobbes for last, like dessert.
I’d get annoyed when I’d read a comic book and it wasn’t funny. Like, it’s been two pages. Why haven’t you told a joke yet? I was getting mad at Alan Moore for not putting more jokes in Watchmen.
CHRIS: I saved the comics section every week as well. When I moved out of my parents’ home, they threw boxes of those newspapers at me. They weren’t going to keep them. I would actually read the comics before church. I’d sit there with my Frosted Flakes and read them, but even back then I was studying them. What was done right, what could have been done better, how to time a joke better, how to draw something better. Peanuts was always my favorite. For a time Garfield was it. I really liked the clean lines of the art, if not the jokes. Then one day I found Bloom County and it was like living on milk your whole life and then discovering that they actually make chocolate milk. It’s the same thing but infinitely better. It was about that time I started buying every comic strip collection I could find. I don’t know what most kids did with their allowances, but I bought comic strip collections—all of them.
NATE: Yep, I got all the collections too. Blew every dime I had on Calvin & Hobbes. Bill Watterson was just so good at tapping into Calvin’s imagination and unlocking everything that was fun, scary, miserable about being a kid. He just got it…and then he stopped. He did Calvin & Hobbes for ten years, then just walked away.
That’s kinda how I’m hoping happens to you. I’m hoping you do Franklin Richards for ten years and then you’ll just fade away and go all Howard Hughes, locking yourself in your own movie theater and being scared of germs and fish.
CHRIS: Are you kidding? I’m already turning into Hughes. I don’t clip my nails or cut my hair and I walk around the house with tissue boxes on my feet. The only time I leave the house is to get Dunkin Donuts. It’s sad really. My best friends now are the UPS guy and the meter reader. I never leave the house. Instead of a screening room, I sit and read comic strip collections in my germ free zone. We’re finishing up 2 years on Franklin, so that gives me 8 more years of relative normalcy, right?
NATE: Hear that, kids? This is what you have to look forward to if you wanna be a successful writer/artist.
Since Marvel pays both of us to make comics, let’s say some nice things about them so people don’t think we’re whiny strip snobs (which we…well, you are). You run the biggest lettering company at Marvel right now, called Virtual Calligraphy. And you yourself letter some of the biggest books at Marvel right now (World War Hulk, Civil War, Daredevil, the Ultimate line). Do you feel you’ve sold out to The Man?
CHRIS: Never! The “man” as you call it are the people who control the world. Marvel has always been the underdog, the illegitimate one. Even though they are the top dog, they are always the rebel. In fact, comics in general is the outsider. Marvel has taken a chance on me a number of times and continue to. I know some people say that Marvel just keeps the status quo, but I respectfully disagree. Putting out a book like Franklin Richards into a market that probably wouldn’t embrace it was pretty gutsy. And lettering books for Marvel has been something I’ve done since I got into this business, so it’s not selling out if you’ve always done it and are proud of it. So, I didn’t sell out. I still have a mohawk in a room full of tux wearers.
NATE: Heh. Awright, Mohawk Jones, you’ve got kids (or Eliopoulites, as I have just decided to call them). What are they reading? What do you let them watch on tv?
CHRIS: Pokemon is the big thing for them right now. They and their friends sit around and discuss the different Pokemon characters like we would compare baseball players. They’re reading chapter books right now. They like Captain Underpants and books on dinosaurs. They can’t get enough of dinos. We have all the “Walking With Dinosaurs” videos which they watch over and over. They know all the names of the different species and try to quiz me on them all the time. An interesting turn has been their switch from animated shows, which they still watch, to watching some of the live action shows on Nick and Disney channels. My life is so sad that when friends ask if I’ve seen the latest episode of 24 I tell them I haven’t, but the latest Drake and Josh was hysterical. Sigh. Well, at least it’s no longer Teletubbies.
NATE: (I love Captain Underpants.)
Ohhhhh, you made the terrible mistake of mentioning baseball . Now I get to talk about sports.
Do your kids like sports? Now that video games are so realistic and you can play against your friends (and people you’ve never met) on the internet, has that taken the place of getting together and playing games outside?
CHRIS: My kids like sports...sorta. When they play baseball and soccer, they are like on-field spectators. They have their father’s athletic ability. They love just running around in the yard kinda play, but they are Mets and Jets fans. We just got a Wii and we all play sports and other games on that. We really work up a sweat jumping around with that game. It’s great fun. I try not to let them go on the internet without me watching them, but they also have PSPs which they play with against each other and online there as well. As for me, now that I’m losing my hair I must be ready to become a professional comics writer and now that I have 3 game systems in the house, I’m ready to be a professional comics artist. Score!
NATE: Oh, good. I was wondering when you were going to start missing deadlines (note: Chris has NEVER missed a deadline…which may explain why he’s losing his hair).
Wait…you’re letting them be Jets fans? You cruel father. Now they’re going to be die-hard fans for life, and their first recollection’ll be of a quarterback made of glass with a broken slingshot for a throwing arm.
CHRIS: Look. Life is hard and full of disappointments and my kids are going to learn early in life to get used to no goodness and light. But there is the moral part as well, the Jets may lose, but at least they try their best and don’t cheat to win. *cough PATS cough*
Just a joke to my New England readers!
NATE: Totally deserved, I think (even though I think Mangini knew what was going on because he probably cheated when he was with the Pats).
Well, let’s get out of here. You wanna plug what you’re working on right now?
CHRIS: What? No one wants to hear about football on a comic book website? Strange. Well, September 26th FRANKLIN RICHARDS: MONSTER MASH came out, then we have another issue out in November. Then hopefully we’ll have more Franklin coming your way next year!
NATE: Heck yeah! Whatchoo know ‘bout Franklin, SON!?!?
(sorry)
You gonna come back soon and talk about Frog Thor?
CHRIS: I’ve got a frog in my throat, but I’d love to talk about our upcoming story in Spider-Man Family #6! Hopefully I don’t croak before then.
NATE: Sigh.
Array
Enter a response to this blog post:
About this blog: By day, he’s a mild-mannered comic book editor! By night, he’s an obsessive sports fan!
By early morning, he drinks coffee and then runs! He’s Nathan Cosby, and he has thoughts about things.
This is them.
About the author: When Associate Editor Nathan Cosby is not thinking about football, he edits Marvel’s All-Ages books, including the Marvel Adventures line (Spidey, FF, Avengers, Super Heroes), X-Men and Wolverine First Class, Franklin Richards, Mini Marvels, and Power Pack, works on the Marvel Illustrated and Stephen King books, does the Custom Comics, and runs Super Hero Squad. There’s like 20 other things he does, but he’s bored with typing this.
)
)
)
)
save this link
