Blog

Sentinel 3: Spring, 1972
Editor and publisher: Randy Emberlin

This month we have yet another fanzine in Sentinel I had no clue existed…and by a major player in the formation and continuation of Dark Horse comics no less…a favorite company of mine for sure! As you can see above, it starts with a very professional cover, both in illustration and design. I also had no clue William Stout was doing fanzine work so early, and quality like that at age 19! Editor Randy Emberlin continues the sleek and spacious design style on the interiors, so it is a really nice package overall. Let’s jump into it!

Randy (seen above around the time this zine was published) was gracious enough to lend me some of his time and answer a few of my questions, starting with his beginning interest in comics themselves.

Comic books actually helped me learn to read early! I was reading them at age 4 !  My mother Isabelle and grandmother Theresa were the main reason why, since they bought me comic books and answered my questions about everything tirelessly!  I also had a huge desire to draw at the same age and I produced a tremendous amount of stick figures, rocket ships, planes, boats etc. The desire to know what was going on in the comics led to my success at reading so soon and opened up a whole world of creativity and imagining! Super heroes and science fiction were immediately my favorite subjects. I think one of my first comics was a DC’s Mystery in Space with Space Ranger and his sidekick Crell. I’m pretty sure I still have it somewhere. Reading comics and copying the characters, however crude, was great practice and so I began my first 10,000 hours! Lol! Right?  I stayed with DC for a few years reading Flash (Carmine Infantino), and Green Lantern (Gil Kane), and Justice League of America (Sekowsky or whoever it was), until one day when I was 8, (in 3rd grade) my friend Mark told me his mother was working at the school carnival that night and she was organizing a table that would have used comic books for sale at 5 for a quarter!  That night we got there early and Mark and I were introduced to Marvel Comics!!!  

We had first pick of hundreds of comics that were stacked on two 8 ft. tables! We fell in love with the Marvel books at first sight! The Jack Kirby covers were so powerful!  Needless to say, we made out like bandits garnering such treasures as Daredevil #1, Avengers #3, Spider-man #5, The Hulk #3, some early Tales of Suspense with Iron Man and Journey into Mysterys with Thor among many other gems!  We were thrilled with the plethora of Marvel’s giant monster books as well and I was able to buy Amazing Fantasy #11 to #14, but the holy grail, #15 was no where to be found. We knew nothing of it anyway at that time!  That began my Marvel madness and I became a serious collector immediately! Both of my best friends; Chris Warner [zombie Cap illo by Chris above -Ken] and Mark Montchalin were way into comics and drawing as well!  So we became “The Portland Trio” and eventually produced our own comic strips and fanzines later on down the road!

So many times we hear of people actually learning to read by reading comics, nice to see it reiterated by Randy!

The main subject of this issue of Sentinel is fantasy legend, William Stout (listed here as both “Bil” and “Bill” and seen at left). In addition to the cover you see at top, Bill contributes a back cover, several spot illos and a story (done at age 17, unbelievably.) I was surprised upon reading the interview to find out that Bill was on track to become a physician, but realized that the arts were his destiny. Having said that, he managed to finish college on a four year scholarship in math and english! While still in his teens, Stout became an assistant to Russ Manning on his Tarzan strip! (funny coincidence that I am painting a portrait of Stout for an upcoming issue of Comic Book Creator)

Below you can see a few pages from Quest of Thane, meant to appear in Creepy magazine as a follow up to a Jeff Jones strip, though it wasn’t to be. But, give me a break, this level of quality at age 17??? Check it out below.

As to how Randy scored an interview with the soon to be legend, he expounds on this and his long career at Marvel!

I met Bill Stout at that same San Diego Con in 1971 where I met Jack Kirby! He was easy to talk with and a very talented and intelligent artist who was starting to make some waves. We agreed to an interview by mail and he graciously did the beautiful Sentinel cover and allowed me to keep the original, which I still own and have on display in my studio! He also contributed 4 other original illustrations including a self portrait, plus an early comic strip that he wrote drew and had submitted to Warren Publications. It’s odd that years later, after I became a professional at Marvel and attended the San Diego Con for over 20 years in a row, I rarely came in contact with him, but I knew he was around. So, Thanks Bill…for encouraging me in my drawing and pursuing a career in comic art! Who knew I would find my way as an inker/artist at Marvel and end up working on Amazing Spider-man and other Spider-man books for over 100 issues?

Randy got introduced to fandom like many of us did…

I think that my friend Mark saw an advertisement somewhere for The Buyers Guide, a tabloid newspaper that was mainly composed of ads for other fanzines. We then subscribed to it to unlock the mysteries of fandom (from our homes in Portland, Oregon).  There were a lot of interesting fanzines that I cannot remember the names of, but Kenneth Smith’s Phantasmagoria was one, Roy Thomas’s Alter Ego, Wally Wood’s Wtitzend of course, Chuck Robinson lll and his “ditto strip zine” called Comique was something we contributed to several times, and lots of small informational fanzines with news of the comics industry and interviews with the pros at Marvel and DC. We knew that we could contribute and do our own fanzine!

And produce his own fanzine he did, obviously! More detail follows…

I had already contributed artwork and strips to some fanzines by middle school. And my friend Mark was doing his newszine, Overland Express, regularly because his dad found him an old Mimeo machine to print with.  My dad was a elementary school administrator and had given me access to Ditto or Mimeo machines at his school, but I wanted to do something bigger and classier with offset printing and feature our artwork with at least one or two superhero strips that we had created. Also, we wanted to interview some professional artists (comic book artists, fantasy painters, cover artists etc.) and feature them as well. We managed to throw in a short story and a Letters of Comment page by issue #2. This meant we had to go to a big comic con like the San Diego Con to meet the pros and other fans and amateur publishers like ourselves. I did it in 1971 traveling 22 hours by bus to get there that summer! It was the 3rd San Diego Con and Jack Kirby was the Featured Guest of Honor, because he was leaving Marvel and going to DC to start the New Gods and his 4th World Comics! That year I met many important fans and pros and purchased some unpublished sketches to use in my upcoming fanzines. It was an amazing,  unforgettable experience that sets the wheels rolling for my big 32 pg. offset fanzine Sentinel!

However, hardly any zine was published without some complications, as Randy emphasizes below.

The first 2 issues of Sentinel were printed on my friend Mark’s old 750 offset machine that his dad had donated to our cause! We printed them in downtown Portland at his dad’s furniture warehouse on one of the empty upper floors. It was challenging and a true learning experience running the 750 offset press with inks and fluids, burning the metal photo plates and printing on both sides of the paper. Sentinel #1 was primitive and was all about Jack Kirby, our hero! It featured a cover with Fighting American and some reprinted material about his history in comics and one of our comic strips. Sentinel #2 had a professional cover by Don Hazeltine, another one of our comic strips, articles on the DC character Bat Lash and a review of Norwestercon that featured Frank Herbert, plus a Letters section. Most of these two issues were done by communicating with other fans through the US mail system! It was always challenging and oh so slow!

Continuing to cover this issue, we are greeted by a short story entitled Spider, by David Anthony Kraft (later to run Comics Interview), followed by ongoing column, Sword and Sorcery (this time by editor Emberlin, covering a specific S and S anthology), and then another strip. Below you see a few pages from Don Hazeltine’s Sorcera. The art is very polished as far as the inking goes, and the layouts are dynamic enough without being hard to follow. However, at this point, young Don needed to practice his rendering of woman much more. I should add also that the lettering, usually a weak point in many fan strips, is very well done.

Randy and his buddy, Chris Warner (huge fave of mine!) were instrumental in the founding of Dark Horse, and he provides some great info on that below.

Chris Warner and I have been friends since the 1st Grade, reading and drawing together! I moved away, (not far) but went to another school in 3rd Grade.  However, we stayed friends and continued our drawing, collecting comics and pursued our interest in publishing work in comic fandom and fanzines. I introduced him to Mark Montchalin and with our similar interests, we became the “Portland Trio”, eventually joining APA 5. But that’s another story.  Chris helped me get my job at Marvel making it possible for me to submit my samples to his editor Carl Potts and ultimately I earned the right to be his inker on the Epic book Alien Legion.  Chris and I went on to work together on Dr. Strange as well. Somewhere in our second year working together, (1986) he introduced me to Mike Richardson, who owned at least 4 comic book stores called Pegasus Books. He told us that he was going to start a comic book company and call it Dark Horse and would we like to write and draw our own characters for the first four issues to launch the anthology book?? Of course we said yes!! He also asked Paul Chadwick, (Concrete) and Ron Randall, (Trekker) to round out the book! Chris did Black Cross, (which almost became a movie twice) and I did Mindwalk, a team of cyber-telepathic heroes that fought battles inside the mind, (inspired by movies like Dreamscape and The Dead Zone). I went on to do a few more installments of Mindwalk, but did a lot of inking to help launch dark Horse on things like Predator, Aliens, Star Wars, The Mask, The Mark, and a LONG run on their character Ghost inking penciler Ivan Reis, who has become quite famous at DC!!  All the while I kept up with my career at Marvel, inking Alien Legion and Dr. Strange/Strange Tales for 3.5 years each, GI Joe for 5 years and finally landing Amazing Spider-man with penciler Erik Larsen, which was a game changer!!

Randy also talked a bit more about early challenges at Dark Horse. (also, very early Dave Stevens art to the right!)

I remember going to Dark Horse in the early days and it was located in a small office space on the very busy 99E or McLoughlin Blvd. There was a crew of about 5 people doing layout, paste up, prep, editing and production.  Mike Richardson and Randy Stradley were the guiding force of the small company.  Dark Horse Presents #1-4 hit the stands and turned out to be a big success and so Dark Horse Comics was launched and began its climb to the top as an Independent Publisher! I enjoyed my long run on Ghost as an inker working with Ivan Reis and my only regret is that the Ghost movie never got made. Another movie called Ghost with Patrick Swayze had already been released and there were legal issues to overcome.

Randy forged an incredible career in comics, starting with that friendship with Chris Warner in the first grade! Of course, he has been very busy since, and he elaborates on that below.

I taught drawing, animation and sequential art for 13 years during and after my professional comics career, (which ended in about 2009 at Marvel).  My wife came up with the idea for doing Summer Comic Book Art Camps and getting the big publishers to be involved. Dark Horse, Archie, DC and Marvel all contributed comp comics, posters, book marks, buttons, cups, rings and lots of other swag to the camps each year. The camps were a lot of fun and a great success teaching character construction, sfx posters, comic book covers and sequential art in the form of a short comic strip.  However, all of my teaching and public speaking ended in 2020 with Covid19. I officially retired. Currently, I make many appearances at Comic Cons throughout the United States and Canada, doing sketching and signing for fans!  I am also taking some private commissions. Follow me on Instagram: @randyemberlin. See you at a Comic Con!

Below is proof that Randy Emberlin is human!

Finishing off the zine is the LOC column and a one page photo essay covering the San Diego Golden State Comic Con, showing some shots of Kirby, George Barr, Mike Royer and others. All in all, a very well done zine. Did I mention the paper stock is really nice as well? Way to go, young Randy! Hulk approves!

Thanks very much to Randy for answering my questions during a busy schedule and at the last minute! If you want to read more about Randy’s epic career, check out his site here! Also thanks to Alan Williams for letting me steal this zine away from him!

Tune in next month for another trip down memory lane, fanzine style. And of course, don’t forget to see the zine in it’s entirety in pdf form, accessed from the Ink Stains section of my site here.

Ken Meyer Jr.
kenmeyerjr@yahoo.com