I had drawn the issue as breakdowns, which was common for many pencilers at the time. So, business as usual.

Unfortunately, the week I sent in the pages coincided with Shooter’s Whim of Iron having declared breakdowns were no longer acceptable, and he insisted the pages be sent back to me for redrawing, adding more detail.

Roger Stern, the editor, protested. The reason why I had done breakdowns was that the issue was seriously crowding its deadlines, and Roger planned to use multiple inkers/finishers to get things closer to the clock. (Yes, there used to be a time when editors cared about deadlines!) The inkers would fill in the “missing” details, as usual.

Shooter would have none of it. His new rule, as was too often the case, had to be applied retroactively. The pages were bundled up and sent back to me and—for the first and only time in my career—the package was LOST IN THE MAIL. Never reached me.

In desperation Rog ordered the inkers to work on overlay on xeroxes of the pages and, as expected, they added shadows and textures and background details where needed. Exactly as they would have done with the original pages.

The issue was the second part of our Absorbing Man story.