Secret Origins

The Amalga-Mates: The World's First (and Second) Siamese Twin Superheroes!
Part 2
by Terence E. Hanley

Tim Corrigan penciled and lettered the first part of "The Case of the Nutcase" for Five Star Comics #2, published in Spring 2012. Larry Blake, Gary Gibeaut, and I, calling ourselves "Many Hands," inked it in February, shortly before publication. At about that time or a little after, Larry penciled the second part of the story and sent it to Tim for his letters and inks. Tim was fast and finished the job in short order, but we didn't get around to publishing Part Two until Spring 2013 in Five Star Comics #3. The script on both parts was mine, with changes and additions made by Tim Corrigan.

Each part of "The Case of the Nutcase" has a different look to it. You would expect that, knowing that different artists worked at different tasks on each part. For example, Tim used a fine pen for his inking of Part Two. His touch was light. That lightness of touch was helped by Larry's use of drawing board measuring about 11 x 16 inches. That gave Tim plenty of room to work. Larry's penciled art is about 10 x 15 inches, a standard size for comic book pages. Comic book publishers of course reduce their pages by about one-third for printing, thereby sharpening the image and making fine lines even finer. That's standard practice in Five Star Comics, too, and it improved the look of Tim's already very fine inking.

Tim, on the other hand, used board measuring 8-1/2 x 11 inches for Part One. His original art is about 7 x 10-1/2 inches. In other words, the original art is not much bigger than the printed size, which is about 6-1/8 x 9-1/8 inches. As I understand it, Tim always worked fairly small. That tendency is probably explained by the fact that, when he was a kid, Tim was unaware of the concept of photomechanical reduction. He thought artists worked at the size their art was printed. Maybe Tim's light touch was a result of working in smaller dimensions. If so, maybe we should thank childlike naïveté for the many fine lines that flowed from Tim's pen. For what it's worth, Franklin Booth (1874-1948) made pen-and-ink drawings that looked like engravings because, like Tim, he thought the artists of his childhood drew that way. He didn't know that the illustrations he saw in books, magazines, and newspapers at the time were printed from engraved blocks of wood.

Tim's small drawing paper on Part One was good for his own purposes, but it posed a challenge for us as his inkers. The surface of the paper Tim used is fairly glossy, too. It doesn't take a pen line very well, and the pencils are hard to erase. Also, we were rushed (as comic book artists so often are), and we didn't do what we would have considered our best work. In the end, Larry, Gary, and I are responsible for the coarse and heavy look of Part One of "The Case of the Nutcase." The gray tones I added using Photoshop--a first for me--only added to its heaviness. As you might guess, I prefer the look of Part Two to Part One, and I think the story in the second half works better as well.

About midway between the publication of the two parts of "The Case of the Nutcase," Tim Corrigan announced his retirement from comics and small press. That was in November 2012. I wonder now if "The Case of the Nutcase," Part Two, was Tim's last published comic book story. In any case, in retiring, Tim wanted to spend more time on his music and with his family. Last summer, on August 22, 2015, Tim died unexpectedly at his home in New York. He was only sixty-four years old.

Tim was Irish and I am Irish. He looked like he could have been one of my dad's brothers. I like to think that we had a shared heritage, not only going back to the Emerald Isle but also to a childhood love of the comics. He was funny, easygoing, good-natured, enthusiastic about comics, and supportive of other artists and of small press in general. Invariably dressed in a flannel shirt, with a long, gray ponytail down his back and glasses perched on the end of his nose, he liked to roll his own cigarettes and devour popsicles, one after another. He read a comic book I drew when I was about ten years old and, perhaps remembering his own childhood of drawing comics, treated it with tenderness. He called it charming. We might say the same thing of Tim Corrigan.

To be continued . . .

The first page of "The Case of the Nutcase," Part One, from Five Star Comics #2. Tim Corrigan penciled and lettered the story, while Larry Blake, Gary Gibeaut, and Terence Hanley inked it.

A page from "The Case of the Nutcase" Part Two, from Five Star Comics #3. Once again, Tim lettered the story, but those are his inks over Larry Blake's pencils. Note the fineness and precision of Tim's line. I meant "The Case of the Nutcase" to be a send-up of superhero comics, but that doesn't really come out until Part Two and the sequence about The Fantabulous Five . . . minus one, the unfortunate Human Scorch, who "died tragically in issue number 748," a "landmark issue" of "The World's Greatest Comic Book."

Art copyright 2012, 2016 Larry Blake, Tim Corrigan, Gary Gibeaut, and Terence Hanley

Script copyright 2016 Terence E. Hanley

Text copyright 2016 Terence E. Hanley

Secret Origins

The Amalga-Mates: The World's First (and Second) Siamese Twin Superheroes!
Part 1
by Terence E. Hanley

Five Star Comics began in 2011 as an anthology of Golden Age comic book characters that are now in the public domain. Our first issue included stories of Moth Man, Silver Streak, Marvel Maid, Flip Falcon, and Cave Girl. With our second issue, we began telling stories of our own original characters, first of which were a pair of Siamese twin brothers, code-named The Amalga-Mates. Their identities are secret. (That's part of the fun.) When they aren't fighting crime, the two are millionaire philanthropists Hemsworth V. Hemsworth (pun intended) and Semyon Hemsworth. For short, they call each other Hemi and Semi (more puns intended).

Hemi and Semi came into my imagination in a way I can't explain exactly. There they remained until a Saturday afternoon in April 2011, when Larry Blake introduced me to Tim Corrigan at the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo (S.P.A.C.E.) in Columbus, Ohio. Larry had shown Tim some of my work. I felt honored when Tim asked if I wanted to collaborate with him on a story. I said yes, but I didn't know what we would do for a collaboration. He said think about it, so I thought about it as I drove home that evening. The idea came to me as I was driving, one I had sketched three months before. The next morning I drove back to Columbus for the second day of S.P.A.C.E. When I saw Tim, I told him of my idea for a story about Siamese twin superheroes. "No one has ever done it before," I explained. "There's a good reason for that," he laughed, with tears coming into his eyes. But he agreed to it and asked me to send him a  script.

Things get away from us. Nearly six months passed before I mailed a script to Tim in November 2011. He called me on the day he received it. He had just finished reading it and was laughing again. Anyone who knew Tim knew his laugh and his great sense of humor. He liked the script and told me he would start drawing.

Tim and I agreed that our story of the world's first Siamese twin superheroes would be a true collaboration. Although I had written the script, I wanted him to feel free to add to it or make changes. One change came out just right. I had tentatively called my heroes "The Titanic Twins." "That's kind of a weak name," I admitted in a letter to him. Tim came up with something better, and that's how Hemi and Semi became The Amalga-Mates. Tim also changed the title of the first story from my original "Nuts to the Nut" to "The Case of the Nutcase." Tim was a great maker of signs, logos, titles, and sound effects. (For evidence of that, consider the "GA-JEEZ" and "SHAZEAMPPP!" on page 28 of FSC #2.) The Amalga-Mates main title is his creation alone.

Tim was a fast worker. Not long after the new year, 2012, began, he called to tell me that he was working on the story, but that he couldn't make it fit into ten pages, which was about what I had envisioned. He sounded a little worried. I confess that I get a little long-winded in my stories, and I always underestimate the number of comic book pages it takes to tell a story. I was just learning then. I still don't have a formula down. At the time I thought one page of script would equal about one page of a comic book story. Now I know that it's more like two to three pages of comic book story per page of script. Anyway, I told Tim that we could break the story roughly in half, run the first half in Five Star Comics #2 and the second half in issue #3. He sounded relieved.

Not that there was any reason to worry. Tim finished the penciling and lettering of Part One of "The Case of the Nutcase" in February 2012. Larry Blake, Gary Gibeaut, and I collaborated on the inking (I was supposed to have done the inking on my own), and the story went to print in time for S.P.A.C.E. in April 2012. I suppose it's only fitting that a story about Siamese twins would have two halves. The second half would have to wait until Five Star Comics #3.

To be continued . . .

The first drawing of the characters that would become The Amalga-Mates, by Terence E. Hanley, January 26, 2011. The drawing in black came first. Note that the twins have just two legs and that their arms are conjoined. The smaller drawing in green came next and is about how Hemi and Semi turned out in the end. In case you're keeping track of these things, The Amalga-Mates were born on today's date five years ago, so, Happy Birthday, Hemi and Semi!

My first finished drawing of the twins, from 2011. I sent a copy of this drawing to Tim Corrigan as a character sheet. As you can see, The Amalga-Mates wear masks so no one will know their true identities.

Hemi and Semi have distinct personalities. The easiest way to show that, I thought, was to draw them with different hairstyles. (How else are you going to tell them apart?) That difference shows up in this drawing, but in the final comic book story, the difference is even more pronounced, as Hemi (on the viewer's left) has dark hair, while Semi (on the viewer's right) has blond hair. So how do Siamese twins, which are by definition identical, have different-colored hair? Does one color his hair? Does the other bleach his? These are questions for another day.

To set them apart a little more, I was going to make one of the brothers a little more savvy than the other. In my original script, that was Hemi, the leader and the twin on his own right. Tim had other ideas. He made Semi, the brother on the twin's own left, at least an equal to Hemi, and maybe a little smarter. I asked myself why Tim had made that change. Then it occurred to me. Tim was left-handed. 

Art and text copyright 2016 Terence E. Hanley

Remembering Tim Corrigan

In 2015 we lost our friend and a very funny and talented cartoonist, Tim Corrigan. We here at Five Star Comics did not have an exclusive claim to him of course. Tim touched the lives of hundreds of writers, artists, readers, and fans. They remember him, too.

This is a time of year for remembering. Arnie Fenner, an artist, editor, and publisher, has made a list of cartoonists, illustrators, and other artists we lost during the past year. Tim Corrigan's name is on that list, joining those of Murphy Anderson, Jon Arfstrom, Roger Bollen, Mel Crawford, Alan Kupperberg, Earl Norem, Leonard Starr, Herb Trimpe, and many others. The names of the five cartoonists murdered in Paris in January are on the list as well. You can read Mr. Fenner's list on a posting called "In Memoriam 2015" on the website Muddy Colors: A Fantasy Art Collection, December 28, 2015, here.

Goodbye to 2015 and to Tim Corrigan, too.

Copyright 2015 Five Star Comics

Tim Corrigan (1950-2015)

Tim Corrigan has died and words fail us. He was a cartoonist, sign-painter, writer, editor, teacher, songwriter, and musician. More importantly he was a husband, a father, and a friend.

Born on December 2, 1950, Tim began drawing comics as a child as so many of us did and still do. "As a little kid I didn't have the drawing skills to handle human characters with all those complicated arms and legs," Tim remembered, "so one of my first efforts was a super-powered worm--Elasticworm!" Will Eisner said that a cartoonist is a problem-solver. Tim Corrigan demonstrated that an early age with his limbless cartoon hero.

Tim began collecting comics in earnest when he was a teenager. Soon he discovered fandom and began contributing to comic book fanzines. In the early 1970s he became involved in independent comics, a community in which he eventually became a leader. That community grew more interconnected in the 1980s with Tim's publication of a magazine called Small Press Comics Explosion or SPCE. "The purpose of SPCE," Tim wrote, "was to provide a central point where people making and marketing their own comics could get together, meet each other, and buy, sell or trade their publications." In time, SPCE had five hundred subscribers, no small feat for a small press title. (The term small press was his invention.) Tim also published comics under his own New Voice Media imprint. His titles included Tim Corrigan's Superhero Comics, Kiwanni, Final Man, Mightyguy, and Tim Corrigan's Comics & Stories. For his efforts, Tim Corrigan received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo--S.P.A.C.E.--in 2006.

In 2008, Tim started a new chapter in his career by writing and inking a Sunday comic strip called Allegheny Man. Larry Blake, penciler on the strip during its four-year run, explained: "It was supposed to be impossible to self-syndicate a comic strip, to do an adventure strip, and on top of that a superhero strip, but we broke all the rules!"

Tim retired from comics in 2012 and took up music as a family affair. The Corrigans--Tim with his wife Carol--made records and videos. You can see some of their performances and hear some of their songs on YouTube. The Corrigans' sons--Nate and Matt--are artists and musicians as well.

Tim Corrigan died on August 22, 2015. He was sixty-four years old. In 2008 he wrote, "[I]t seems I have had a wonderful life." We're glad of that and glad that we knew him. We wish he could have stayed longer.

Copyright 2015 Five Star Comics

Larry Blake Collaborations

Larry Blake and Hawaii's own Gerry Lee have re-teamed to continue their collaboration on Gerry's comic book, The New Sons of Thunder, after two years apart. This results in two current projects: 1) Gerry is putting out a trade paperback collecting the first three issues written by Gerry and drawn by Larry, with a full-color cover by Larry. 2) Gerry and Larry are also working on a fourth issue which promises to be just as much fun as the others.

The Sons of Thunder are Tempest and Maelstrom, two would-be adventurers from Gokuraku island, "a place halfway between heaven and earth" where "anything can happen, and any place and any time is a simple boat ride away." These two sword-wielding princes, who can call down thunder and lightning, are on "a mission from God" as "heralds of the Messiah," a task they pursue with more enthusiasm than knowledge.

Gerry composes his fun and funny stories with their very appealing extended cast as roughly drawn manga-style pages, which Larry then translates into finished art in his own cartoony style, sometimes using Gerry's layouts, sometimes not. Like Larry's work with James Rubino, this blend achieves a quality beyond any Larry and Gerry could achieve alone. There's never been a comic quite like The New Sons of Thunder. It's an all-ages fun-blast that isn't tied to any one time or place!

Larry loves collaborating with other cartoonists, as these past couple of entries show. He claims he learns something new from every team-up. Just recently, he completed a year-long project doing inks and finishes on a dozen stories of a character called Silverwolf, written by Kevin Yong and roughed out by artist Eric Jansen. Kevin and Eric have created a unique superhero who is fun and appealing to all ages. The stories tie together in an overall science-fiction-tinged way while covering a wide-surface look and feel of everything from science fiction, superheroics, fantasy, and horror. The Silverwolf stories are slated for release in a trade-paperback collection. Most have been previewed in rough form in the Alpha-Omega APAzine, issued by the Christian Comic Arts Society. Click here for their website.

Larry Blake is a busy artist, and he has another collaboration in the works for Five Star Comics #2. It is the second story in the saga of Larry's new superheroine, Missile. This time out, the story is ten pages and is scripted by Terence Hanley. Penciled and lettered by Larry, the newest Missile story will be inked by Larry's longtime collaborator, that living legend of small press, Tim Corrigan!

Art copyright 2012 Larry Blake

Text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics

Tim Corrigan Retiring

Veteran small-press cartoonist and Five Star creator Tim Corrigan has announced his retirement from drawing comic books. People throughout the world of small press have received the news with surprise, dismay, and sadness. Tim is a great cartoonist and can always be counted on to issue funny and well-drawn comics. We will miss him a lot. Tim's reasons for retiring are personal and professional and while we can understand, we wish it could be different. We wish Tim all good fortune and success.

Copyright 2012 Five Star Comics

Convention News Roundup

It has been a busy spring for Five Star Comics and the artists and writers behind this new title. Five Star creator Terence Hanley has driven all over the Ohio Valley, attending conventions in Lexington (March 24), Dayton (March 31-April 1), Columbus (April 21-22), Fort Wayne (May 12), and Athens, Ohio (May 26). Terence's Mothman, Aliens, and Flying Saucers Coloring Book and Monsters and Aliens of America Coloring Book continue to sell well to investigators of the paranormal and the extraterrestrial. Five Star Comics #1 is a hit with fans of Golden Age comic books. And Lucky Girl #1 has drawn the attention of discerning readers. Larry Blake, Tim Corrigan, and Gary Gibeaut have also been to conventions this spring and have sold their art, comic books, stickers, and other items.

The Lexington Comic and Toy Convention, a bustling show held at the Convention Center in Lexington, Kentucky, was a big success for its organizers. Over 4,000 people attended. In addition to selling his books, Terence drew convention sketches, sketch cards, and a commissioned drawing of a pulp cover featuring a previously unknown pulp author, Luke Dodd. Terence also met comic professional Bob McLeod and picked up Mr. McLeod's first children's book, the funny and beautifully illustrated Superhero ABC. The organizers of the show also published a convention comic book in which Terence's new character, Island Girl, made her debut--and in color. Island Girl is just one of a new line of superheroes and heroines Terence is developing for a future series.

Island Girl makes her debut in the Lexington Comic and Toy Convention comic.

Terence was back in Ohio the following weekend for the two-day Gem City Comic Con, held at the Student Union at Wright State University. Comic book dealers took up the big convention hall, while artists' alley was located in a smaller room across the entryway. It was an encouraging sign to see families and children at the show. Monsters and Aliens of America was the big seller, but Terence's sketch cards were popular, too. Wonder Woman was on hand to see herself depicted on a sketch card, and although the sketch card might be good, it can't compare to the real Wonder Woman. Terence also picked up a comic book page by Ohio artist Dan Davis.

The Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo--S.P.A.C.E.--was the big event in April. Five Star creators Larry Blake, Tim Corrigan, Gary Gibeaut, and Terence Hanley were on hand for the premiere of their second issue of Five Star Comics! Chock-full of art, Five Star Comics #2 is the work of five artists and writers, with five (or six) heroic protagonists starring in five stories. Attendees of the expo loved the comic and its predecessor, Five Star Comics #1. They also picked up original art by Larry Blake, Mothman stickers by Gary Gibeaut, and Tim Corrigan's Comics and Stories. Tim Corrigan's sons, Nate and Matt, were also on hand to sell their books. Unfortunately Matt Marshall, the cover artist and creator of the lead story, "Origin of The Black Bat," wasn't available for the public's first look at his first-ever comic book story. Comic book fan, reader, and writer Mike Tuz made the long trip from the East Coast to the Midwest to meet some of the creators he has known only by letter for so long. It looks like Mike could become a contributor to Five Star Comics in the not-very-distant future. Finally, one of the highlights of the show for Terence was his being interviewed by Ian and Kathleen, young creators of the brand new Glen Echo Review. If you haven't seen this fine publication yet, you should run out and get your copy today!

Five Star Comics #2 with cover art by Matt Marshall, new for S.P.A.C.E. 2012!

Terence returned to his home state of Indiana in May for the Summit City Comic Con, which took place in The Grand Wayne Center in Fort Wayne. This year's Summit City Comic Con was another family-friendly event (the best kind). There were lots of kids and lots of people in costume. The show's organizers continue to put on a good convention with plenty of room and good services for the artists and good attendance by the public. Terence drew a picture of the Froglodyte, a singular creature created by Sydney, and one to match her brother's Mist Dragon from last year.

Finally, this weekend, Larry Blake and Terence Hanley were at the inaugural Ratha Con, held at the Athens Community Center in Athens, Ohio. Once again, Larry's original art was very popular, especially his drawings of Ol' Shellhead. Attendance was not very high on a hot afternoon, but the room was cool and made all the cooler by the artists, dealers, exhibitors, attendees, and volunteers. Other Athens-area artists in attendance included Sandy Plunkett, Katherine Wirick, Ryan Spellman, and Steve Richter. Ratha Con was Steve's first comic book convention. Welcome to the club, Steve.

Next up: The Tri-State Comic Con--TriCon--scheduled for Saturday, June 9, 2012, at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena, Huntington, West Virginia. See you there!

Text copyright 2012 Five Star Comics

Art copyright 2012 by the respective creators of Five Star Comics