It’s been quite a summer for Act 4 Publishing. They released not one, but two grail worthy Artist’s Editions a week apart from each other: The Amazing Spider-Man by Steve Ditko and George Perez’s New Teen Titans. Both books are gorgeous to behold, each packed with full size reproductions of the original artwork of these two comics masters on the titles they are best known. Shortly before San Diego Comic Con, I sat down with Scott Dunbier, the head of Act 4 Publishing, to about the making of both of these books, and what’s in store for Artist’s Edition fans.
Billy Henehan: The Steve Ditko book is gigantic. I saw it in person at Forbidden Planet and then was very excited to get it in the mail. When it arrived, my daughter looked at the box and said, “What is that?” I said, “It’s a book.” And she said, “Like 8 books?” And I responded, “One book.” She looked shocked. Then the George Perez came the very next day. When the Ditko book came, I sent a photo of it to some friends, and they said, “Wow, amazing!.” The next day, the Perez came, and I sent a photo to the same friends and they’re like, “What is going on?” I responded, “Best mail week ever.”
Scott Dunbier: “Well, thank you very much.”
BH: This is an intense publishing schedule this year. What’s it like keeping all those plates spinning?
SD: It wasn’t intended to be one right after the other. There were a couple of delays on the Ditko book. Because of that, we had releases a week apart. On the one hand, I’m not sure it’s good for comic shops. On the other hand, it’s fun for me to see the reaction of people online talking about them.
BH: I did feel like Moses with the 10 commandments when I was holding both of them in my hands.
SD: Somebody actually made a mockup of me between a couple of books as Moses.
BH: Oh, that’s so funny! We’ve had a lot of Spider-Man Artist’s Editions: Romita, Kane, Andru, McFarlane. What was it about Ditko that took so long to bring this one to fruition? Was it tracking down the art? Was it getting the budget for a bigger book? Something else?
SD: It was because Marvel and the Steve Ditko estate had to work out an agreement to allow it to be published. It took a little bit of time, but luckily it was all finally resolved and I was able to do this book. This was something that I wanted to do since I began doing Artist’s Editions more than 15 years ago. Steve Ditko’s Spider-Man is a grail project for me.
BH: There’s four complete stories in the book. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. Amazing Fantasy #15, Amazing Spider-Man #20, 26 and 33. How important was it for you to get full issues in here, and specifically those issues?
SD: There are probably eight or nine complete Spider-Man stories that are still intact. These four are the ones that I could locate and scan. Luckily, all four of them are very important and beautiful. Obviously, Amazing Fantasy #15 is the first appearance. 20 and 26 are both great stories with the Scorpion and Green Goblin. 33 is the one I’m most happy with. It’s arguably the greatest Steve Ditko Spider-Man story ever.
BH: Oh, totally. I was so excited when I saw that was included in its entirety. I was going to ask what your favorite book is from this murderer’s row of releases that you’re putting out this year, but I’m guessing it’s the Ditko one.
SD: Yeah, I guess it would be. I guess it would be the Ditko book. I enjoy all the books I put out. The Wally Wood expanded EC book also. Wally Wood is probably my favorite comic artist at any given time. But how do you pick your favorite comic artist? It’s like trying to pick out your favorite Far Side cartoon or Norman Rockwell painting.
BH: School for the gifted.
SD: Yeah, push the pull door.
BH: Only because it seems to happen in my life way too often. That’s a good comparison though. With this publishing schedule of the books coming out a week apart from each other, was there any worry that one would overshadow the other? Though I don’t know which one would be overshadowed. It’s like two Titanics.
SD: They’re such completely different artists. The nostalgia factor weighs heavily on all the books that I do, but I think there might be a 25% overlap. The people who love Perez love Perez. The people who love Ditko love Ditko. I enjoy so many different kinds of comic art. I like variety. They’re so different from one another. I think they will mostly be different markets.
BH: Both the Perez and Ditko books remind me of the Stan Sakai and Jeff Smith Artist’s Editions. It’s just pure perfection on every page. Even Amazing Fantasy #15, I don’t see any white out marks on those pages. There is some on the lettering, but not really on the art itself. The execution involved, and to see those pages at twice up, it’s a beautiful book.
SD: Thank you very much.
BH: The Perez slipcase edition looked extra stunning. How quickly did that sell out online?
SD: In just over four hours.
BH: Wow, amazing. I’m on the newsletter, and I knew it was coming out. I happened to be bouncing around your site yesterday, and realized that I totally missed it. That painted slipcase is gorgeous. And that was such a heartwarming post that you shared of his widow with it.
SD: I was very happy that Carol liked it as much as she did. She is a very private person. I asked her if it was okay for me to share that, and she let me do it.
BH: It really was lovely.
SD: Thank you.
BH: For the Ditko and Perez books, which pieces of art were the hardest to get ahold of?
SD: They were both completely different kinds of searches. The Ditko book was more difficult because all of the art is so spread out. Luckily, I was able to get scans from the Smithsonian on Amazing Fantasy #15, and there were three collectors who had those other issues: 20, 26 and 33. Over the course of several years, I was able to scan them. The pages were scattered literally all over the world. Some of them I was able to scan at different art shows, either at Comic Con or various specialty shows. Other times, people were able to make scans, which is always sort of a crap shoot, because you never know what kind of scan you’re going to get. Then you ask them to rescan it at different specs. It took years. The Perez book on the other hand, there are a lot of collectors who have Perez art, he was very prolific. There’s one collector in particular based in Los Angeles who came over to visit me with five suitcases full of art.
BH: Oh my God!
SD: I dedicated the book to Perez and also to this collector. Because the book wouldn’t exist without him. It would be a much different book.
BH: Wow. That’s really impressive. Did he drive to you? I can’t imagine going to the airport with that.
SD: I occasionally go on trips to different places and have collectors come to me with their art. I was up in Los Angeles, and I had five or six different collectors coming to see me. I staggered it. This guy came on the first day I was there, brought the suitcases, left them, and over the course of three days, I scanned all of his art.
BH: Oh my goodness. What a passion project. That’s so cool. I saw your want list that you posted for San Diego. I was very excited to see ROM on there. I know Skybound has debuted ROM in the pages of the Energon Universe. I love this synergy that is allowing you to do a ROM original art book. I love that series.
SD: Oh great, well you should enjoy it. It will be from issues 1 through 75, as well as there were a couple of issues that were crossovers, like Marvel Two-in-One #99, and other things. There will be pages from many issues, and one complete story. There was one story that remained intact: ROM #3.
BH: Oh wow, so this is definitely happening? This isn’t a maybe?
SD: Yeah, I guess so.
BH: Oh man, that’s awesome. That really excites me. You made my day. I have all three of the ROMnibuses on my bookshelf at home. It was a series that I feel was very underappreciated. I got into mainly because I was a kid on a budget in the 1980s, and ROM issues were often in the quarter bin. Some of my favorite series are those because they are the ones I had the most access to. Also, DC/Marvel Early Crossovers was on your list. How has it been getting the art for that?
SD: It’s difficult and easy. With some of the stuff, it’s more findable than others. Walter Simonson kept all of his X-Men/Teen Titans, and the Garcia-Lopez Batman/Hulk are fairly easy to come across from time to time. The Superman/Spider-Man books are a little bit more hidden, but i’m tracking them down. I’m hoping that this book will happen, maybe in the next couple of years, knock wood.
BH: Do you think you would include any of the unpublished JLA/Avengers stuff?
SD: Probably not in this book. If this book happens, it will be focusing on the first five DC/Marvel crossovers. Here’s a trivia question for you. You know that there is X-Men/Teen Titans. You know that there is Batman/Hulk. You know there’s the two Superman/Spider–Mans. What is the fifth crossover that was actually the first one?
BH: I have no idea.
SD: Believe it or not, it was The Wizard of Oz.
BH: Okay. Explain, please.
SD: Marvel and DC did, I think it was called The Marvelous Wizard of Oz as a crossover Treasury Edition.
BH: Was this like a test or a tryout for them, to see how co-publishing would work?
SD: I have no idea, sorry.
BH: How dare you drop this trivia bomb and then be like, I have no follow up, ha. No details. It’s all good.
I noticed there were some oddities with the pages of Spider-Man #6. It appeared like there was some missing art.
SD: Funny you should ask. There’s an interesting story with that. It’s one of those hidden secret stories that no one knows in comic history. Back in the mid 1980s, Spider-Man #6 was a complete story. The person who owned the original art sold it to a guy in the Midwest for $4,000. The art was sent via UPS. When it arrived at the gentleman’s house, there was a gate, and there was a dog inside of the gate. Nobody was home. The UPS driver apparently didn’t want to take a chance, go through the gate and drop it off on the porch. Instead, he threw it over the gate into the yard. Apparently the dog was a Steve Ditko fan, because when the guy got home, the package was ripped open and the pages were strewn all over his yard, many of them in very tiny pieces.
BH: Oh my God. They feeling in the pit of his stomach, I’m sure.
SD: The guy called up the seller. The seller had insured it for the full $4,000. But if there was a claim made, it would have gone back to UPS, and presumably been destroyed. Instead, the seller had the art retuned to him. He refunded the $4,000 to the collector. When he got it back, he sold it to another comic art dealer for $4,000. That guy had the original box that it was sent back in. I visited him at his apartment in New York. I saw all the art that was remaining. Eventually, that dealer went to one of the top restoration people in the field and had the pages that were destroyed reconstructed. I think about half the pages were undamaged, but many of them had to be recreated. But there’s one page in particular in the Artist’s Edition from issue #6, where you’ll notice there is a piece of art missing from the bottom right corner. That’s the story behind that.
BH: That is fascinating. Wow! What a dramatic turn of events.
SD: I’m glad you noticed that detail.
BH: I wasn’t going to ask about potential because I’m guessing you’re saving those announcements for San Diego, but the ROM book happening thing makes me very excited. Do we think there will be another Act 4 Kickstarter in 2027?
SD: It’s either going to be in 2027 or 2028. I can’t reveal it just yet. The Danger Girl/Wildsiderz one was very successful. I think this one will be even more successful. Later on this year, I have three more releases. Paul Smith’s Doctor Strange is coming out next month. Then in September is the Jason Pearson Bodybags. That was a Kickstarter release, but there is also going to be a release through Skybound. Then in November is DC Silver Age Covers and Stories, which is the same size as Spider-Man.
BH: Oh wow. I knew about that coming out, but I didn’t know it was going to be a big book also.
SD: It’s got more than 60 covers. It has so many great things, like the cover to Flash #123, which is the first Silver Age appearance of Earth-2. It’s got The Brave & The Bold #34, the first Hawkman cover. It has tons of great covers. It has wonderful complete stories. It has the first issue of Green Lantern #1 by Gil Kane, both stories, the first and the second. It has a really nice Superman story. It has a Flash story by Carmine Infantino. It has pages by everybody. There’s Curt Swan, Murphy Anderson, Jack Kirby. It’s got a ton of really nice material. At Comic-Con, we’re going to announce three new books. And in February, we announced Beta Ray Bill by Daniel Warren Johnson.
BH: Yes, that is very exciting.
SD: Walter Simonson wrote the introduction for it. He wrote a great introduction, but he did have one complaint. He said he’s always annoyed when someone else does his characters better than he does.
BH: Ha! That’s the kind of gentlemanly thing I would expect Walt Simonson to be annoyed by.
SD: Exactly.
BH:I grew up in the same county that he and Louise used to live in, in Rockland County, and they were fixtures at the comic convention at the local high school each year. The sweetest couple in the world.
SD: They are the king and queen of comics as far as I’m concerned.
BH: Oh, 100%. 100%. He had a really nice panel at Heroes Con, basically just a conversation with Michel Fiffe. Louise came in towards the end of it. It was a really cute moment, because they were just ribbing on each other. It was really nice.
SD: I’ll tell you a funny story. Maybe five years ago, I was on the east coast on a scanning trip. I was there to scan a collection of Todd McFarlane art for the Spider-Man book that I did. I had dinner at Jean Scrocco‘s home. Jean is the wife of Greg Hildebrandt, who sadly passed away recently. But we were having dinner with Jean and Greg, and Walter and Weezy came by. We had a real nice time. Before dinner, we were sitting out on their patio with an amazing view of this gorgeous lake in New Jersey. We’re talking about Walter, and I said something to the effect of “Walter is doing the best work of his career. He’s been doing this for 50 years, and his work is as good as ever. His work is gorgeous. And Weezy, who has this devilish sense of humor, she knows that my favorite book of all time, my favoriate story of all time is Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson’s Manhunter. Weezy looked at me, and slyly said, “Better than Manhunter?” I looked at her, I laughed, and I said, “Yes, it’s better than Manhunter. But Manhunter will always be my favorite.”
BH: That’s how I feel about The X-Men and New Teen Titans comic. It is a comic that I cannot stop buying. I will see it in a bin in a convention and be like, “I could use this.” And a friend will say, “Don’t you own that?” “So many times. So many times.” That and the Excalibur Special Edition that Claremont and Davis did. We were at Heroes Con last year, and I bought it from a dollar bin. My friend says, “You own this. Many times over. I’ve seen you buy it.” And I said, “I just want to read it in the hotel.” I was like, “Dude, it’s a dollar. Give me a break.”
SD: I can completely relate to that.
BH: Will Act 4 be at NYCC?
SD: No. I’ve tried to submit panels at New York Comic Con and they’ve always been rejected. I’m not able to crack the nut. It’s kind of funny because the Harvey Awards invited me there a couple of years ago to induct John Buscema into the Harvey Hall of Fame, but they still wouldn’t give me a panel.
BH: Wow. I remember going to your panel, this had to have been about a decade ago. At New York Comic Con, you had an Artist’s Edition panel. That was a lot of fun. It was great to get a room of people together who are equally obsessed with these books.
SD: I’m very lucky because I have a small group of very loyal and intense fans. They’re great. I love them.
BH: Yeah, my wife was in Europe for 10 days when these two books arrived. And when she came home, she was like “Oh, two more. Great.” Those two books came, and then the next day, the John Byrne Elsewhen book arrived. I texted a group of friends saying, Look guys, three days in a row. It happened to be my wife’s birthday, and my friend Dave texted back, “Happy birthday, Julie?”
We had the Perez slipcase that just came out. I remember there was a limited Jeff Smith slipcase years ago. I love slipcases. What do we have to do to get more slipcases?
SD: There are going to likely be more slipcases for some of the the limited editions in the future.
BH: That’s really all the questions I have. I just want to put this out into the universe: Terry and Rachel Dodson book. Terry and Rachel Dodson book.
SD: I would love to do that. That’s definitely something on the list.
Both The Amazing Spider-Man by Steve Ditko Artist’s Edition and George Perez’s New Teen Titans Artist’s Edition can be found in comic shops and at online retailers right now. If you missed my first interview with Scott, you can check it out here.
