Recently, someone asked me “Don’t you think that you’re protesting a little too hard that the Knight Watchman really isn’t Batman?”

I told him “No. We just use the character to tell Batman stories, drawn in the styles of classic Batman artists.”

“But doesn’t that essentially make him a Batman rip-off?”

“That’s what a lot of people think” I said. “To me, it makes him an avatar, filling in for an archetype.”

We never tried to pretend that we were reinventing the wheel – a cool new take on an old character. Nighthawk, Moon Knight, Midnighter, Catman, Big Daddy, Nightwing (Superman in Kandor), Night Thrasher and a bunch more I can’t think of are all based on Batman. Some are closer than others. A highly trained mind in a highly trained body.

After all, wasn’t Batman based on Zorro, the Shadow and the Scarlet Pimpernel?

The Big Bang retro stories were just for fun, told in shorthand recognizable styles. The real Big Bang was going to be the modern stuff, the second or third generation of heroes taking over for the archetypes. Guess what – – we never quite got there. The Knight Watchman stories “Graveyard Shift”, “Knight of the Living Dead” and “Skeletons in the Closet” were the closest we got to the modern continuity, plus the Free Agents story in the Caliber Press #4 issue.

When Chris Ecker first created the Night Watchman, he was thinking along the lines of Daredevil and Captain America. I suggested he add the “K” and it became “Knight” and started us down the road to creating a mythology based on a knight instead of a bat.

Chris never set out to ghost Dick Sprang or Shelly Moldoff in the way that latter Big Bang artists did. He nudged his style in the direction of those artists but wasn’t slavish about it. A lot of the guys were better ghosts than he was, but make no mistake about it: Chris Ecker really WAS Tom King. The KW was a stylized version of Chris’ own style.

One of my favorite memories is of Shelly Moldoff critiquing one of the early stories and telling Chris what he (Shelly) would have done differently for a Batman story. Chris took some notes, bit his tongue and later told me something along the lines of “It isn’t a Batman story – it’s the Knight Watchman.”

Very early on, we thought we would be telling the Watchman’s stories in the styles of all the great artists and writers of the past: Siegel & Shuster, Simon & Kirby, Will Eisner, Jack Cole. What could be neater than a Wayne Boring Knight Watchman story?

We ended up not doing too much mixing and matching of archetypes and creators , but today I’m sharing with you some of the ones we did have a bit of fun with, and some that maybe we should have pursued.

One of my favorite Big Bang stories is “The Camera of Doom”, a Knight Watchman yarn that appeared in Big Bang Presents #1 and was the last KW story I wrote prior to “Skeletons in the Closet”. It was a full blown Spirit story, with not a trace of Batman in it and Jeff Austin did a fantastic job translating it. I’ve always loved the splash page.

Also shown here is the Knight Watchman and Kid Galahad as drawn by Mark Lewis in Simon & Kirby style (or Simmons & Kingler in the BB universe). We should have done a full story this way, but Mark and I told some wonderful Badge stories instead.

And just for fun are some Ultiman pieces a la some not so Superman related styles. First up is a fun pin-up of the Ultimate Human Being as interpreted by John Thompson by way of C. C. Beck. Let’s not even get started on homages or rip-offs of the Man of Steel (who was himself descended from the Man of Bronze – Doc Savage, Gladiator and John Carter of Mars).

Here’s a sample page by Mike Kirsten done in a nice approximation of Alex Raymond and Flash Gordon. I wish we had followed up with a whole story. There just wasn’t time or resources to do everything we wanted to.

Finally, here is a great Ultiman cover by Jerry Acerno looking as if it were published by Timely (Marvel) Comics in the early Golden Age. More Captain America than Superman? Jerry is probably best known to Big Bang Comics readers for his gorgeous Shadow Lady stories.

That’s it. I’m done protesting. Jessica Rabbit said, “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.” My point is that the Big Bang characters were intended to take the readers on a trip through comics’ history and they did. The future – – it has yet to be written.

One of my favorite characters I’ve ever created is the Pink Flamingo. I had a lot of help from a number of artists in the early days of Big Bang Comics, especially my BB comics buddy and partner Chris Ecker, aka Tom King.

Within a week of deciding to develop the Knight Watchman strip along the lines of classic Dick Tracy and Batman, Chris had devised a complete Rogue’s Gallery of colorful villains to populate the strip. Some we got to use: Quizmaster, Mr. Mask, Grandfather Clock. Some we never got around to: Paper Doll, Cheshire Cat, the Card Shark, Count Fledermaus, Ma Doppel and her Doppel Gang.

None of those characters were directly based on any of Batman’s or Tracy’s foes. As with the heroes, we tried to give the Big Bang villains a unique origin of their own. Quizmaster got a little close to the Riddler, but he was based around the TV game show scandals of the 1950’s. His modern day incarnation is a much darker and scarier fellow, and I’m still hoping to get that story told one of these days.

All of which brings me back to the Pink Flamingo. When Chris showed me his list of characters and story titles, I said something along the lines of “Um, I have one character left over from Megaton that could work. He could be something of a visual combination of the Penguin and the Joker. Remember the Pink Flamingo?”I don’t know if Chris had ever seen the original design that Gary Thomas Washington drew during his two and a half issue run on Megaton. Pinky would have appeared in the second or third issue of the new color Megaton book. Unfortunately, even the first color issue never made it out. By 1987 orders were dismal.

We hoped that expanding to four or five books would make the distributors take us more seriously. Unfortunately, we contributed to and got mired in the glut of independent books and orders dropped to nothing.

Megaton Special #1 featuring Youngblood was solicited and received orders for about 1,000 copies. It was cancelled. Five years later, Rob Liefeld’s book sold millions of copies in its debut at Image Comics. (To be honest, Rob was a big, big star by 1992 though).

Chris loved the Pink Flamingo and we got to work fleshing him out. He became Pinkerton Fleming, a wealthy contemporary of Reid (Knight Watchman) Randall’s family with a scandal in his past. My original concept was that the Pink Flamingo was the criminal mastermind of Midway City, Moriarty to the Knight Watchman’s Sherlock Holmes. He was a decadent, seedy character who mostly worked behind the scenes pulling strings and controlling others like puppets, always maintaining an semi-honest appearance.

I just loved the name: Pink Flamingo. It brings to mind images of kitschy, gaudy, vulgar bad taste, from the plastic lawn ornaments to John Water’s classic movie. He would be a pop artist of crime, hiding in broad sight. But he would never dress up as a Flamingo.

Did I mention that Pinky is gay? That fact had nothing to do with his criminal life. He wasn’t a pervert or child molester. The Pink Flamingo is merely getting even with a society that ostracized Pinkerton Fleming.

 Chris started writing a pulp novel at that point in 1992 titled “The Feathers of Doom”. He set it aside at one point and I sort of stole it, adapting it as a 1938 era back-up story which ran in Image Comics first issue of Graveyard Shift. The back cover (Deductive Comics #30, shown here) was by Mark Lewis and the story itself was drawn by John Thompson.

Gary Washington’s Flamingo looked like a young, hip metrosexualish character. Ben Torres adjusted and aged the character for Graveyard Shift and Pinky got creepier, tackier and more evil. Since then, he’s appeared in every era of Watchman stories: Golden Age, Silver Age, 70’s, 80’s and beyond.

He’s been a pretty versatile character. We used Pink Flamingo in the Fagin role in “The Boys of Bad Town” which combined elements of Oliver Twist, Boys Town and the Bowery Boys, and he acquired a junior sidekick of his own in “The Pink Flamingo’s Kid Sidekick”. Chris Ecker says “He’s probably the one bad guy character who might have a chance at figuring out Reid’s and Jerry’s true identities, but I don’t think he really cares about that.” After all, the game is played out with the Knight Watchman and Galahad.

Wishing you all a fantastic Independence Day from all of us at Big Bang Comics,

including Mike Worley – pencils,

Jeff Austin – inks,

and Mark Lewis – logo.

Who the heck is Brother ‘Hood? I imagine that’s what many of you are wondering.

Lt. Bob Locke of the Midway City Police Department was mentioned on page 1 of Knight Watchman: Graveyard Shift #1 and didn’t reappear until issues 3 and 4. Locke was the bodyguard of Mayor Lionel Richards of Midway City, although Locke was MIA when the Mayor was blown up (along withMidway City’s favorite son, Galahad) in an assassination attempt. Deputy Mayor John Princeton assumed power and declared that Locke was part of the conspiracy and had him thrown into prison. You’ll just have to read Graveyard Shift to find out how it all turned out.

And wait a minute: Who the heck is Brother ‘Hood anyway?

You may have guessed by now that Robert Locke is Brother ‘Hood, and you would be correct. Graveyard Shift #1 was not Bob Locke’s first appearance though. Many of you know that Brother ‘Hood was the back-up story in Berzerker #4 from Caliber Press, the testing ground for Big Bang Comics. That first 8 page story was both a prequel and sequel to the 4 issue Graveyard Shift mini-series, and showed former cop Bob Locke returning to the streets of Midway City to wage an urban war against the most corrupt city in America.

The Brother ‘Hood concept was conceived by Chris Ecker. It was designed as an urban telling of the Robin Hood legend. Mayor Lionel Richards (originally Linus Richmond in the ashcan and Berzerker #4) was an avatar for King Richard the Lionhearted, John Princeton for Prince John, and Robert Locke for Robin of Lockesly (we used the name from the Errol Flynn movie). Father Tucker is obviously Friar Tuck.

I don’t recall any thoughts of bows and arrows. Our Brother in the Hood was an urban guerrilla more likely to use his fists. His plan was to aid, mobilize and protect the ghetto dwellers and downtrodden elements of Midway City. Unfortunately, only the one Brother ‘Hood story ever appeared. Graveyard Shift took a while to tell, and after that Ben was on to bigger and better things . Chris and I struggled to keep Big Bang rolling for quite a while, but I always felt like one of those urban camera stores in the 1980’s and 90’s that featured a “Going Out of Business Sale” for decades.

The Brother ‘Hood story wasn’t included in the Knight Watchman: Graveyard Shift trade paperback. It will probably be in the complete Knight Watchman volume 2, but that’s not for certain yet. If there’s any interest, maybe we will make it available as a digital ebook. Let me know what you think.

Oh, by the way, the events in Brother ‘Hood were printed almost a year before Graveyard Shift #1 but take place after GS #4. And just for the record, Berzerker #4 wasn’t Brother ‘Hood’s first appearance. There was a very limited edition promotional ashcan that was made available at the Chicago Comicon in the summer of 1993 and contained the entire 8 page story with a different cover, which is presented here for the first time in 20 years.

One last thing. The cool Brother ‘Hood logo was by Mark Lewis, who designed a boatload of logos for me. If you want to see some fun stuff, visit his blog at http://marklewisdraws.com/