Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 7, July 2003
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Ex-journalist turns to 'first love':
writing comic books
By CLAYTON PARK
John Lustig can't remember a time when he wasn't crazy about comic books.
Lustig, a lifelong North Seattleite who grew up in the View Ridge neighborhood, began reading comics at a young age, starting with Disney and other humor titles before "graduating to superhero stuff."
While he never harbored dreams of becoming a comic book artist "my drawing skills are so bad, I never thought about it," he admits Lustig remembers making an attempt to break into the profession as a comic book writer as a teenager, when he was a senior at Nathan Hale High School (class of '71).
The occasion: his family's planned trip to New York City, which also happened to be the home of Marvel Comics, publishers of The Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk.
Prior to the trip, he rewrote the script to one of his comic books and, with the help of his then-girlfriend who had better penmanship than he did, he carefully pasted in new word balloons over the original text. He mailed the altered comic book to Marvel's editors along with a letter of introduction to inform them that their "next great discovery" would be visiting their city in a few weeks and would be happy to drop by for an interview.
Marvel replied by sending him a letter that politely thanked him for the offer, but said they didn't think they would be needing his services.
Lustig remained determined to become a writer, but switched fields by pursuing a career in journalism. In college, he began freelancing for local community newspapers and also managed to sell a story to Popular Science magazine.
Upon graduating from the University of Washington in 1977, where he earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in both journalism and English (composition), Lustig decided to give comics another try by submitting a script for a 5-page Daffy Duck tale to Gold Key, the publisher of a title featuring the popular Warner Brothers cartoon character.
To his surprise, Gold Key agreed to publish it and sent him a check for about $100.
He submitted a second script only to receive a letter from the editor asking for a complete rewrite. Lustig refused. "I was a little indignant" at the time, he recalls, even though he later realized the editor was right.
Instead, he turned his attentions to his new full-time job as a reporter for community newspapers. In 1980, he began writing a weekly column that was carried by several papers throughout the state.
When his wife got pregnant, he naturally began chronicling their preparations for becoming parents in his column as well. He even wrote a humorous column asking his readers to help him and his wife pick a name for their baby.
Unfortunately, tragedy struck on Nov. 29, 1982, when Lustig's wife unexpectedly suffered a stroke that put her into a coma, from which she would never recover. Both she and the baby died.
Devastated by the horrifying turn of events, Lustig did the only thing he could think of doing: he wrote a column in which he poured out his emotions. While he received a lot of acclaim for that piece, he decided to retire his column the following year to concentrate on writing a book that never got finished.
He continued to take freelance reporting jobs to help make ends meet, including an assignment from the Mercer Island Reporter to profile a local comic book writer/artist named Bill Willingham who used Mercer Island as the setting for his stories, The Elementals.
Lustig also profiled another local comic book writer/artist, Mike Grell, creator of a superhero comic book series called "Sable," which became the basis for a short-lived network television series in the mid-1980s.
Inspired by his interviews with Willingham and Grell, Lustig renewed his desire to pursue a career in comics. He began writing for an industry publication called the Comic Buyer's Guide and, through connections he made while attending a comic book convention, he became friends with a comic book artist in Vancouver, British Columbia named William Van Horn.
When Van Horn got a job as an artist for Gladstone, a company that had won the rights to publish comic books for Disney featuring characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, he encouraged Lustig to submit a script, which it accepted and printed.
In 1988, Lustig left journalism altogether to concentrate on his new career as a comic book writer. He became one of only three freelancers (and the only non-artist) to be hired by Gladstone.
Two years later, Lustig began writing comic book stories directly for Disney as well as DuckTales magazine. His assignments for Disney included adapting the DuckTales movie into a graphic novel.
From 1992 to present, he has been writing Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and occasionally Mickey Mouse comics for Egmont, a publisher of Disney titles in Europe.
In 1996, Lustig bought the rights to the artwork for a romance comic book series titled "First Kiss," which was published from 1957-1965 by the now defunct Charlton Publications company. "My idea was to take those stories, redialogue them and try to make them funny," he explains.
The result was a new comic strip he named "Last Kiss," which made its debut in the Comic Buyer's Guide. In 2001, Lustig launched a comic book version of "Last Kiss," which is distributed nationally, primarily to stores that specialize in comic books.
Today, Lustig, 50, lives with his family (he remarried in 1984 and now has two daughters) in the Wedgwood neighborhood on the same street that his father once had a grocery store called Gene's Delicatessen. (The store is now a restaurant, located at NE 65th Street and 27th Avenue NE, he says.)
He continues to write for Egmont as well as for Last Kiss. He recently published issue No. 4 of that series, which features, among other things, a spoof on home decorating maven Martha Stewart and her troubles with the government over her possible involvement in an illegal insider stock trading scandal.
The spoof, written by Lustig and illustrated by Vancouver, Wash., artist Anne Timmons, was published the same day Stewart was indicted. Lustig began working on the issue more than six months ago. The timing was purely coincidentally he says. "To be honest, I had my doubts that her case would ever go to court," he says. "I was afraid this would all be old news by the time my latest issue came out. ...
"It's too soon to say how Martha's indictment is going to affect sales," he adds. "The only thing I'm certain of is that I'd much rather have my money invested in a Last Kiss parody of Martha than in the real-life Martha's stock."
Copies of Last Kiss can be purchased for $4.99 at Comics Dungeon, a comic book shop located in the Wallingford neighborhood. Lustig also serves as president of Cartoonists Northwest (www.cartoonists.net), a Seattle-based group of professional and amateur cartoonists who have been meeting for over 20 years. On Saturday, June 28, the group will conduct a marathon at the Broadway Market (top floor) in which each participating member will set out to create a 24-page comic book in the span of 24 hours. The marathon will begin at 5 p.m. "Normally, it takes about a day for an artist to draw just one page of finished comic book art," Lustig says. "Drawing and writing 24 pages in 24 hours is going to require an almost superhuman effort!"
An exhibit of the members' works will be displayed at the Broadway Market from July 1-31.
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For details or to order a copy of Last Kiss, contact John Lustig at 525-6257 or e-mail him at: john@lastkisscomics.com.