Hank Tucker is a Storyboard artist, producer, director, and most recently independent comic book artist and writer. I asked Hank about his comic book The Actual Roger, his productive career in animation and of course his time on the short-lived The Tick animated series. Based on the comic book by Ben Edlund . Spooooon! (read a book!)
How did you get connected with Alterna Comics and what was the inspiration for The Actual Roger?
Alterna was one of six publishers I submitted Roger to when I finished it. I got names from Wikipedia looked them up and followed submission guidelines. It was kind of fun. Out of the six, two got back to me at the end of the week with an offer. One of them was Alterna. I went with them because they actually included a contract and they had a New York Times bestseller to their credit (FUBAR! Zombies in History. Very cool…)
Roger was inspired by a dream I had when I was nine (Roger’s age). Just like in the book, I was lying on the floor, pushed up to get a snack or take a leak and kept going up! In the dream, I soared around the house about a foot and a half off the floor.
The overall “thematic” inspiration, I guess, was the sense of – my personal reaction to – how controlled, adjusted and “corrected” by the media and government (often hand in hand!) our lives have become. Even heroism! Heroic acts, it seems, have to be approved of and guided by people who’ve never done a heroic thing in their lives. Crazy. But also interesting…
Did you grow up reading comics as a child or did you discover them later in life?
I discovered comic’s when I was six at a children’s shoe store in Woodland Hills (or maybe Tarzana). They had a Superman comic laying on a table which I picked up and was totally bowled over by. My mom wouldn’t me keep it so I started drawing what I could remember of it when I got home. These were my first drawings. Hence my love of drawing hooked up directly to my then love of comics.
It’s funny, though, I read Superman, Superboy, and the Legion of Superheroes…most at the time drawn by Curt Swan. But the minute Swan stopped drawing them I stopped reading them. I didn’t touch comic’s again until ’94 when I became storyboard supervisor on Fox’s Spider-Man show. While there I picked up the McFarland Venom intro issue and became totally hooked. Up to then, I’d mostly avoided Marvel having been a DC (i.e. Swan) fan exclusively! It wasn’t the drawing in that one so much as the situation and characters that grabbed me. I kept up with the series for a while then moved on…I think when Spidey became a clone I lost interest.
Throughout my career I’d been literally surrounded by great comic book people and their work: Jack Kirby, Russ Heath, Mike Ploog, Doug Wildey and many others. Knew them and frequently worked with them. And the world we all occupied was all about comics even though the medium we were engaged in was animation. It was a world of Heavy Metal, Moebius, etc. Comic’s and comic artists were sort of hard-wired to animation then and now.
Wow! What was your experience like with Jack Kirby?
In ’79 Jack was working for Ruby and Spears in Sun Valley designing and helping pitch shows. Thundarr the Barbarian – my first storyboard gig in animation – was one of them. He’d mosey over to my supervisor John Dorman’s office now and then for a good natured ribbing by John (we all got one regularly, Jack no exception). I was pretty much a bystander, but we’d chat now and then…usually me asking dumb questions like, “oh you don’t like Stan? Why?” So he’d light up a cigar (we smoked indoors in those days), and he’d fume/riff on some recently published statement of Stan’s. Not having grown up a Marvel guy it all went a little past me. One thing, though, he seemed happy. Very at ease. Steve Gerber of Howard, the Duck fame, was there, too, on the same show. His office was across from mine. Unlike Jack he seemed pained most of the time. Partly the life of a story editor. Partly I think he was still in some kind of litigation with Marvel. Or he had been and lost…
Did you have any formal training or education for being an artist or were you self-taught?
I never went to a formal art school. In my last years of Taft high, Cal Art’s was newly opened, but I was advised against going there by people like Chris Jenkins (story man for Jay Ward) since it was run by avant-garde animator Jules Engles. I wanted to learn traditional animation. But Engles had no intention of teaching that. He was all about scratching images onto film and hypnotic light patterns, ala National Film Board of Canada; shoot-me-now-type stuff for a 17-year-old Disney nut. It wasn’t until the late 70’s -early 80’s that they started their character animation program and people like Lassiter and Burton showed up. I was the early bird that missed the worm. My education was handled by just getting into the business (with help from a mentor) and being surrounded by great artists.
It’s always great to hear stories about artists working for Fox or Disney without formal art school. Is that less common today or is your art still enough proof for big companies to consider you?
I think at this point if you’ve done it, in their minds, you can keep doing it. As to people coming in “off the street” like me, it depends on what the work looks like and who’s looking at it. I’d been in animation for five years animating and assistant animating. Then I decided to get into boards. So on my own, I storyboarded scenes from books I’d read. When a friend I’d met on Bakshi’s Lord Of The Rings (Art Vitello) saw it, he recommended me to Dorman at Ruby/Spears. Dorman liked it so I was in. But the same goes with someone coming out of a school. They have to like what they see. Having a degree is nice but if the portfolio sucks…well, good luck.
You have been involved with many classic cartoons such as Darkwing Duck, Spider-Man, G.I Joe and Bonkers, but the most iconic one (at least in my opinion) has to be The Tick. How did you get that gig?
Well, let me say first off, any gig of mine that was worth anything dating from 1979 on can be pretty well traced to Art Vitello. Again, Art recommended me to Ruby/Spears in ’79, then pulled me in the following year (’80) to Marvel – where we worked with Stan. Then in ’85 he pulled me back over to Disney, but this time, it was Disney TV when they started that division. Art left two years in, eventually going to Warners where he produced and directed Tiny Toons, then to create and Executive Produce Tazmania. Gary Kreisel at Disney tried to get him back but instead he recommended they try me as a producer. So they did.
I produced/directed 17 Goof Troop episodes and 4 Bonkers episodes (don’t even ask about that one!) before quitting to go to the “new” Marvel beginning ’94 (back with Stan and now Avi Arad) as a storyboard supervisor. While I was there, Art had quit Warners and went to take over the – how do they say it? “troubled” -production of The Tick animated series for Graz Entertainment and Fox.
The previous producer had been let go, and Art was brought in to supervise post on the first six episodes coming back from Korea, then to pre-produce and direct the next seven, including write a couple. When it came time to board his first solo episode he called in some of his favourite board guys – me one of them – to freelance on it. So I picked up the 1st half of his “The Tick Vs. The Tick” and did it at night while supervising on Spider-Man. It turned out they really liked mine in particular. When the first season aired and became a hit, Art left to develop and pitch his own projects. He recommended me to take over the show, especially considering how much they’d liked my board. I’d produced already for Disney so they (Stephanie Graziano, head of Graz Ent.) interviewed me then set up a meeting with Ben Edlund the show’s creator/head writer. We met at the Ritz Carlton in Pasadena and had a pleasant chat (no other kind of chat conceivable with Ben) mainly I think about directing and directors (I was a staunch Kubrick fan). Showed me some doodles on a pad he had just done before I’d arrived of what he called “a little wooden boy” -very insane drawing – and said it would be figuring into the first new episode. He seemed particularly impressed that I’d worked on Thundarr the Barbarian. Later he told me that was what cinched me as producer/director of The Tick.
Was it a fun ride while it lasted?
Two of the best years of my life…and that’s 59 years we’re talking.
Any new projects in the works whether with comics or storyboarding?
Right now I’m desperately (no exaggeration!) trying to finish the 5th and last issue of the Roger miniseries, after which there’ll be a print run of all five as a compilation trade paperback. Simultaneously I’m boarding on a very fun feature for Mike Johnson (co-director of Corpse Bride)…and Simul–simultaneously I’ve been asked by a small Shanghai-based production company to write a feature for them. They apparently read Roger, fell in love with the style, and there was the email one morning! I pitched three ideas, and they chose one and just sent me the contract. Very strange. So on it goes…
If you’re curious about Hank’s comic check out our review of The Actual Roger #1 by Tosin Alalade Here
You can purchase the first 4 issue digitally at Comixology
Hank’s IMDB Page
Follow Hank on Twitter @HTucker007
Twitter for The Actual Roger @theACTUALroger
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