Comic-Book Creator Aptronyms

Panelize yourself!

When I interviewed comics writer Mark Waid for the latest Journal of Wordplay, there was one wordplay-based question I didn’t ask, because it was easy enough to work out on my own. “Waid…wade…wading…done anything with Aquaman?”

Of course he has. Here’s two Waid-written scenes showing the character at different stages, one as an uncertain “fish out of water” learning English (JLA: Year One), another on the day of his wedding (The Brave and the Bold #10).

Comics continuity is ever-changing and Waid’s been doing this a while, so this recent frame from World’s Finest: Teen Titans shows Aquaman with a different personal history.

Waid hasn’t done as much with Marvel’s wader, the Sub-Mariner, but once described him, not inaccurately, as “comic books’ first antihero.”

Tom King and Clay Mann are two professionals who’ve done a lot with Batman. And both their names suggest prominent Batman villains—but, to my knowledge, neither of them has worked on those villains yet!

The “tom king” in Batman’s general orbit is sometime villain Catman.

However—a different Catman appeared on The Fairly OddParents, with storyboards by a different Tom King!

The “clay man” would be the shape-shifting sometime villain Clayface, set to get his own movie in the not-too-distant future.

(Then again, since Clayface can look like anyone, maybe Clay Mann has drawn him and we just don’t know it!)

Writer-artist Frank Miller is known for blunt and direct stories—so his writing was often frank, though later series like Sin City were more stylized. I couldn’t find any stories of his about mill work, but I did spot one panel where he rendered a beer that could’ve been a Miller.

You could also pour your Miller into this Frank Miller merchandise, and eat some franks with it.

Miller’s experience rendering the Punisher must’ve felt surreal. The Punisher’s name is also Frank—but this isn’t a “Charles Schulz/Charlie Brown situation.” Miller’s not the one who created the Punisher; Gerry Conway was. There are other cases of writers and artists working on their namesakes, but few as well known as “Frank on Frank.”

The aptest aptronym in comic books might’ve been Marv Wolfman, who spent some of his early career writing Marvel’s wolfman, the Werewolf by Night. Even the copy for his first issue on the series (#11) advertised how well the name suited the occupation.

And retroactively, it’s a fun fact that Stan Lee did more to foster devoted fandom than anyone else in comics history and often acted like a fan of his collaborators himself. Devoted, over-the-top fans weren’t called stans in Stan’s day, but they are now.

A few more instances: John Byrne drawing Superman’s heat vision, Amanda Conner rendering smooth-talking trickery in Harley Quinn, Carl Barks’ villains the Beagle Boys. Paul Pope has not rendered the Pope to my knowledge, but he did produce an anthology titled PulpHope.

Alan Moore was known for writing more words than most of his contemporaries, and that tendency got more pronounced with his novel Jerusalem, one of the longest ever published.

There are probably instances I’m overlooking—or maybe just some cool ones that haven’t happened yet. Don’t know if Darywn Cooke ever drew a cook, but his work always cooked, RIP. I remember a few comic books numbered “#½,” but I don’t think any were written by Matt Fraction. I thought Deniz Camp might’ve written a camping trip story, but if so, I couldn’t find it for this roundup.

Still, he did post this just a few days ago, riffing on his own initials…

How could it not? 😉 Darwyn Cooke could have done the same.