Mort Todd is a comic artist, writer, and creator who has been a major force in comic books since he was a teenager.

“I was always drawing as a youth and became editor of my summer camp newspaper,” Mort said. “I appropriated their mimeograph machine and started self-publishing comics by junior high.”

Moving from Maine to New York City , Mort met Dan Clowes and other teens and began Psycho Comics and other titles. He also sold stories to DC comics, Marvel, Fantagraphics, and Kitchen Sink before becoming editor of Cracked magazine.

“After that I started my own company, put out a Bill Ward magazine, a bilingual humor comic,” Mort said . “Later I launched the Marvel Music line working with bands like Alice Cooper, KISS, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Marley with work by Neil Gaiman, Kyle Baker, Gene Colan and other great talent.”

Currently, Mort has his own company Comicfix, which did newspaper strips (Speed Racer, Molly the Model) and is now focused on, but not limited to, the Sadistik photo novels, featuring the adventures of a Super Criminal. Mort is also working on a few scripts that are being considered for film and TV.

T.E. Pouncey: Can you tell us a little about how you came to be involved in Cracked magazine?

Mort Todd: Cracked had been bought by a new publisher and relocated from Florida to New York and needed a new staff. They had already hired a veteran of humor magazines to package the issues and I was hired to be an in-house assistant editor. The publishers were concerned that the editor they hired was a little too old to know what was “hip” to make fun of and I was only about ten years older than their target audience. I soon discovered the editor was recycling old stuff from Sick and other humor magazines (just pasting the Cracked logo on the pages) and getting kickbacks from contributors. Many of the Cracked regulars, like John Severin, would not work with this guy so it was up to me to get them back in the fold. The publishers considered me too young to take over the reins so as they searched for another editor I decided to put a few issues together myself and proved that I was up to the task and became Editor-in-Chief. Besides getting a lot of my favorite artists on board, like Severin, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, and others, I was able to give the first “pro” work to my friends Dan Clowes, Peter Bagge, and Rick Altergott.

TEP: You will go down in pop-culture history as the man who brought Don Martin from Mad magazine to Cracked. What was it like to work with Don Martin?

MT: Don wasn’t as wacky as his drawings but was a very droll guy. For some 30 years Mad had owned the copyright to Don’s work as well as his original art. By the time I was at Cracked he was legally blind and not happy that he didn’t have the rights to his legacy. I simply called him up, offered him the same page rate and let him keep his copyright and artwork so he skeedaddled right over to Cracked. Physically, he kind of reminded me of Lee Marvin. He was tall and slim, had a silver pompadour with lightning bolt sideburns and always wore shades. Cool!

TEP: You did animation for MTV back when it was at the vanguard of cool animation. What was your favorite MTV project?

MT: I worked on the pilot for Pete Bagge’s HATE! show, which was never aired. It was kind of fun and a lot of young and old cartoonists were working there after being frustrated working in comics. I pitched a few shows there but one bad thing is that MTV’s parent company Viacom wanted to own everything and not pay much. Since then I’ve mostly worked on projects that I have ownership of and license them out.

TEP: I think most comic fans agree the old EC comic anthologies like Tales Of The Crypt were the best ever produced. Is it intimidating to produce a new Tales Of The Crypt comic, knowing that fans will be scrutinizing your work and comparing it to a classic?

MT: EC was a big influence on me and my early work on Psycho Comics had quite the EC feel, in a snarky, underground way. And of course, at Cracked I was more inspired by what EC had done in the past as opposed to the contemporary Mad. While at Cracked I also launched a very successful mag called Monsters Attack! that was a hybrid of EC and Warren titles and used a lot of the same artists. I love writing short, shock stories so the new Tales from the Crypt, was a must-do. The editor of the new series, Jim Salicrup, is following the tradition in a good way and updating it for a new audience that has never been exposed to the original, having grown up on video games, gore, and a different appreciation of media. Jim has said I can draw one of my upcoming stories and I really look forward to mixing the classic with the new!

TEP: How did you become involved with the whole Sadistik/Satanik/Killing Super-Criminal phenomenon?

MT: I’ve done a lot of licensing with my company Comicfix and at times have had the rights to Speed Racer, Rat Fink, and novels like The Screaming Mimi. I’m always looking to get new properties and while I was investigating getting rights to the Italian Diabolik series, I heard the rights to Killing were up for sale. The wild tales of a skeleton-clad serial killer, told with photos instead of drawings, appealed to me and I snapped it up. Since he had different names in different countries, and I thought “Killing” may be too strange for a character’s name in the U.S., I re-dubbed him Sadistik and the rest is history. I produced an Italian documentary about the character titled THE DIABOLIKAL SUPER-KRIMINAL which premieres in Europe in November and am talking with American distributors. It features interviews with the original actors, who also appeared in many splatter and spaghetti “Euro Trash” films, and has interesting insight into the European political and sexual attitudes of the mid-60s when the photo comic first came out. I’ve also written a screenplay for a new live action film series set in a retro-futuristic 1966.

TEP: The adventures of violent criminals were popularized in the Fantomas, Dr. Mabuse, and Fu Manchu stories. What do you think draws audiences to stories featuring characters that are so throughly despicable?

MT: For the most part it started out a European phenomenon. As stated in the documentary, America was usually about heroes (and superheroes in comics) while Europe, having been shattered by two World Wars, was a little more cynical and hatched all kinds of super-criminals. I think American sensibilities have evolved (or devolved?) a bit since the 60s where we see characters like Hannibal Lecter, Michael Myers, and Jason become film protagonists. Twisted heroes have been the vogue in domestic comics for years and are now even showing up in films where Peter Parker was darker in Spider-Man 3 and the latest Batman films, so Sadistik is a natural for today’s audience! People seem to like seeing maniacs go wild, perhaps because they can live vicariously through their unbridled actions without consequence.

TEP: I’m a big fan of your Plastic Man homage, Protoplasman. How much input did you have in the creation of the character?

MT: Big Bang Comics publisher Gary Carlson had developed Protoplasman with comics legend Grass Green, but nothing more than development sketches had been produced before the cartoonist’s untimely death. I had enjoyed the Big Bang retro-comics for a long time and sent Gary some art samples and he suggested we work together on the character. I’m a second generation Plastic Man fan and had always wanted to work on the stretchable sleuth but that was hardly likely with what DC Comics had done to the character, especially after Kyle Baker’s redux, so I jumped at the chance. In the past I had created a hero named the Divisible Man (which was inked by Dan Clowes) as a response to create a character as nuttily visual as Plas and even had planned to introduce a character named Pliant Pal in direct homage. As an aside, when Dan and I did The Uggly Family for Cracked, I used the pseudonym “Unagi O’Brien” (Japanese for “Eel”) in reference to Plas’ alter ego. Anyway, Gary had a few ideas and let me run with it visually. I didn’t ape Jack Cole’s style but it definitely was an influence. Gray wrote some great scripts and let me edit them as I saw fit and I had a lot of fun!

TEP: Will you have any new Protoplasman stories before the end of 2007?

MT: As I write this in October, it sure doesn’t seem that way. I have one more script from Gary concerning the marriage of Protoplasman and I had plotted a “Whatever Happened to Protoplasman” guest-starring the Divisible Man but I don’t know when I’ll draw them, let alone when they may see print. I did all the Protoplasman stories in color although they ended up being published in black and white so Gary and I have talked about reprinting the stories in a collected edition in color with the marriage story.

TEP: You are currently working on a screenplay for Frederic Brown’s classic novel The Screaming Mimi. Which has been the most difficult character to write dialog for?

MT: The dog. No, actually it is a very straight adaptation of the book so I kept very true to the source. I plan to do a graphic novel of it first and later this month I’ll be in Italy talking to some publishers about releasing it there initially. Foreign publishers are more open to doing genres outside of super-heroes so I think it has a better chance of establishing itself there immediately than in America. One of Italy’s premier directors, Dario Argento, had unofficially made the film as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage in the 1970s.

TEP: I was a big fan of your magazine Monsters Attack!. Any plans to return it to a regular publishing schedule?

MT: Could be! My original stories from Monsters Attack! are being shopped as an anthology film or TV series so a comic collection would be in order and perhaps a new series will come!

TEP: You contributed to Ian Shirley’s book Can Rock And Roll Dave The World? Given the current music scene, CAN Rock And Roll Save The World?

MT: Music makes the world go around and soothes them savage beasts, so why not? Rock ‘n roll, and music in general, has always been a big part of my life and though I don’t play any instruments I have done a lot of record covers and band logos and hung out with a lot of groups. I recently co-directed a music video for the band Heavy Trash for their song “Way Out” and just produced an instrumental single “Beware: Sadistik!” for THE DIABOLIKAL SUPER-KRIMINAL closing credits. I see music being a big part of the Sadistik films and while Rock and Roll may not save the world, I can’t see how it would hurt it!

More info:
Comicfix website: www.comicfix.com
Sadistik website: www.goSadistik.com
Sadistik blog: themaskofdeath.blogspot.com

Related MySpace pages:

www.myspace.com/sadistik1966 (Sadistik page)
www.myspace.com/dskdok (Sadistik Documentary page)
www.myspace.com/dsksoundtrack (Sadistik Documentary Music page)
www.myspace.com/protoplasman (Protoplasman page)
www.myspace.com/teenbatlady (Bat Lady page)
www.myspace.com/mollythemodel (Molly the Model page)
www.myspace.com/morttodd (Mort Todd page)