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 »  Home  »  Culture And Arts  »  (E) Interview - Igor Kordey
(E) Interview - Igor Kordey
By Nenad N. Bach | Published  01/6/2002 | Culture And Arts | Unrated
(E) Interview - Igor Kordey
http://www.comicon.com/ubb/Forum12/HTML/000090.html 
 
Here is an interview with successful Croatian comic strip artist Igor kordey 
- just drawn top selling X-Men. Does anyone have a contact email for him? 
 
 
Brian 
 
 
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada is a long way from Groznjan, Croatia, and while 
Igor Kordey may miss his friends in Croatia, he doesn’t mind the peace Canada 
enjoys. Along with the change in location for Kordey and his family has come 
work – lots of it from American comic book publishers. 
 
While Kordey had made a name for himself with his work on Tarzan for Dark 
Horse and other publisher, as well as other comic work in the states and 
Europe, the 44 year-old Croat émigré has found himself in the comic spotlight 
recently, beginning with his stint as regular penciler on Marvel’s Cable, as 
well as being named a fill-in artist on New X-Men, and being tapped for a 
bevy of other Marvel projects. 
 
Newsarama caught up with Kordey in his Winnipeg home for a chat about where 
he’s been, where he is, and where he sees his future. 
 
NRMA: Over the past few years, the American market has seen a small but 
notable influx of Croatian comic book creators, which to many seems a little 
odd. How did you, growing up the former Yugoslavia, become interested in 
comics? 
 
IK: I was interested in comics since I started to think probably, when I was 
three or four. That’s when I found my first comics and fell in love with 
them. It’s a disease. I cannot get rid of it. 
 
NRMA: But that’s pretty young, right? To Americans who grew up during the 
Cold War, Yugoslavia was tucked behind the Iron Curtain, and, at least as 
many of us were taught, nothing from the West got in. Did you see Western 
comics? 
 
IK: Oh yes. When I painted Star Trek: The Gorn Crisis last year, I did some 
acknowledgements to two guys who were my biggest influences ever, two English 
artists - Frank Bellamy and Frank Hanson. When I was a kid, they used to 
publish a weekly youth magazine with comics in Croatia. Translated, its name 
was Blue Herald. It was a copy of the English magazine Eagle – which was a 
very influential magazine for comic creators in England throughout the ‘50s 
and ‘60s. Those two guys used to work on Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, a 
science fiction comic book. It was done with beautiful color – they were 
using the most modern and updated color possibilities for offset print at 
that moment. It had a greater impact than any Walt Disney cartoon or whatever 
at that time, because we didn’t have too much of an information flow from the 
West, and there weren’t popular television serials for the kids. 
 
NRMA: Among your generation of English creators, Eagle gets mentioned a lot… 
 
IK: When other guys my age remember this magazine, we can remember every 
single picture and every detail. It was an incredible comic book. The sad 
thing was that both of those guys they died without real recognition. In the 
‘50s and ‘60s, England didn’t have copyright protection, so both of them 
died pretty poor. I think Frank Bellamy, before he died, had arthritis, and 
couldn’t draw anymore – it’s a very sad story, just like the creators of 
Superman, Siegel and Shuster. 
 
Speaking of Siegel and Shuster and the early days of comics, I would like to 
recommend to all people who are into comics that they read The Amazing 
Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. It’s a beautiful book. It 
brings an amazing amount of fact and fiction together, especially in its 
portrayal of the comic industry in the early days using creators’ creativity 
to make piles of money. Lots of people got rich on behalf of the comic 
artists who remained relatively poor. 
 
NRMA: So, getting back to your career, the comics in Blue Herald and Eagle, 
pushed you into comics? 
 
IK: Right. Those are my biggest influences in comic books, and Harold Foster 
with Prince Valiant was also one of my big influences back in those days as 
well. Because I really wanted to read, I learned how to read and write and 
draw by copying them, and I made my own magazines out of these Blue Herald 
magazines. It was cute – I even invented my own logo. I called it Albatross, 
and it circulated among my friends at the school who had the same interest in 
comic books. We exchanged comic books, and started to exchange comics with 
the first Avengers, Daredevil, and Thor stories in them in the early ‘60s. 
 
Later, I forgot about the American comic books because in art school, we were 
rebellion oriented, and American comic books were sort of the symbol of 
rotten capitalists, so we switched to European stuff. It was very interesting 
– in the mid ‘70s, French publishers started to publish a number of 
magazines aimed at an adult audience, like Metal Hurlant, which was turned 
into Heavy Metal in America. It wasn’t like it looks today, oriented towards 
mild eroticism – in the ‘70s, it was really, really good science fiction and 
fantasy stories with excellent artists like Richard Corben. I was fifteen 
years old when I saw that for the first time, and I freaked out completely. 
 
NRMA: Since you were impressed by the Metal Hurlant and the art therein, did 
you begin your own move away from the Dan Dare-style of comic illustration 
towards a more illustrative approach, say, along the lines of Corben, 
Frazetta and other artists who made names for themselves in the ‘70s? 
 
IK: Yes. In my art school period, which corresponds to high school in the US, 
since we were between fifteen and eighteen years old, I wanted to be a big 
artist, so I forgot comic books for a while, and started doing paintings and 
posters. Later, around 1976 and 1977, some guys from Zagreb, the capital of 
Croatia founded a group called New Square [also translated as “New Frame”], 
and it was the most influential group of comic book creators for some twenty 
years. We created many comics for audiences all over Europe. In 1999, we had 
our twentieth anniversary, and it was fun – I saw all those old people for 
the first time in ten or fifteen years. 
 
This group, New Square, it was greatly influenced by the French, Italian, and 
Spanish magazines of the moment, in the late ‘70s. It was very much into 
comics for adults, and intellectually oriented comic books. 
 
NRMA: From New Square, and illustrative, more adult-oriented comic art, you 
were able to make the leap to the American Heavy Metal in 1989? 
 
IK: Yes. My cooperation with comic books in the United States began in the 
late ‘80s. My work was being published all over Europe, and I started to work 
for Heavy Metal magazine in ’89, with the black and white story, “The Wall.” 
In ’94, I entered the American comic book industry through the main entrance 
– on the painted ‘Marvels’ stories that Alex Ross and Kurt Busiek had 
started. Some of my first ‘official’ stuff was for Marvel. My first work was 
Tales of Marvels: The Wonder Years. 
 
NRMA: So you got your first big comics gig at Marvel when you said that 
earlier American comics were a symbol of rotten Western capitalism. What 
changed? 
 
IK: The ex-Yugoslavia was transitioning out of communism, and was a socialist 
government while I was growing up. Basically, it was a very open country, but 
communist oriented. We grew up and were raised to hate capitalism – well, not 
to hate, but to have a different approach to the Western world. Over the 
years, I grew out of it. Since I was fifteen or sixteen, I used to hitchhike 
all over Europe and England, and made contact with other young people from 
the USA. It was a normal part of the development of the young person to be 
curious about and learn things about the world outside your own borders, in 
my case, Yugoslavia. I learned that it wasn’t such an awful society to the 
West. 
 
NRMA: After you got your start at Marvel, which as you described was grabbing 
the brass ring, you pretty much moved exclusively to Dark Horse for your 
American output, and were there for years working on licensed properties. Why 
the move? 
 
IK: It’s because of Tarzan. Tarzan is my obsession over the years. Back in 
’83, there was one big publisher in Yugoslavia that had the Tarzan license 
for all of Europe, and my story-writer [Neven Anticevic] and I made a 
proposal called Tarzan: Rivers of Blood. The proposal was bought, but was 
turned down because it was too mature, too grown-up of a Tarzan story for 
what they wanted. They offered it to their European publishers, but still, no 
one wanted it. In ’91, a Swedish company, which was based in Copenhagen, 
Denmark, bought the publishing rights for Tarzan, and they were going to 
publish it for Malibu for the US market. Still, I didn’t have any luck – two 
teams, an American team and a Danish team had stories published through 
Malibu before me, and they were both flops, so they cancelled the complete 
project, although they paid me for the work I’d done. 
 
In ’93, Dark Horse bought the license for the Tarzan comic, and my ex-editor 
from Copenhagen sent all this existing Rivers of Blood material over – it was 
about 90 pages at the time. I got a call from Dark Horse in ’94, because they 
wanted to start publishing some of my earlier Tarzan work, particularly a 
short story called Tarzan: Mugambi, which was actually my first American 
comic published in a regular comic book format. It was also the first 
published work of Darko Macan, the writer. That’s how he started his career, 
and he’s really renown today. I like him a lot. 
 
 
[This message has been edited by mbrady (edited 11-27-2001).] 
 
IP: Logged 
 
mbrady 
 
Matt Brady 
 
Newsarama posted 11-27-2001 09:46 AM 
 
--------------------------------- 
 
NRMA: But ultimately, Dark Horse did publish some of Rivers of Blood, right? 
 
 IK: Yes. I was struggling for years for it to be published at Dark Horse, 
and finally, just before the Disney cartoon was released, Dark Horse decided 
to start publishing Rivers of Blood, so I started working on it again. They 
published four books, and cancelled it again at the beginning of 2000. My 
writer and I are in contact with Dark Horse all the time, but they refuse to 
get rid of the license, which prevents us from publishing it elsewhere. Over 
half of the story is still unpublished. Still, I’m very stubborn and very 
patient. The day will come in the future when we can publish the entire 
story. It’s beautiful and works perfectly without any problem. It’s a 
long story – it’s been going on for 18 years now. 
 
NRMA: Speaking earlier of Darko, it’s interesting that you, Darko, and Edvin 
Biukovic all entered the scene around the same time, worked at Dark Horse and 
were known for your intense storytelling. Do you think the passion with which 
the three of you drew from came from living through some very nightmarish 
times in Croatia/Serbia and the surrounding territory? 
 
IK: Wait – there is something you must not forget - we didn’t come from 
Serbia – we came from Croatia, and you shouldn’t mix them, because we had a 
war against them from ’95, and they were the aggressors. After Yugoslavia 
split in 1990, they wanted to keep it together as the biggest nation in 
Yugoslavia, so there was aggression on Croatia in 1991, and on Bosnia in 
1992. The Serb government was the bad guys – and that’s important to note – 
it was the government. I’m still keeping connection with some of my beautiful 
friends from Serbia, and they are having hard times right now. The people who 
want peace and mutual understanding are in a minority these days all over the 
Balkan area. It’s no wonder – the Balkans are such an area that a war can be 
provoked every ten or twenty years. We’re kind of used to it, to always 
expect some kind of turmoil and mess going around, and it does affect how you 
live, yes. 
 
NRMA: While we’re talking about your life in Croatia, in your editorial in 
Cable #89, in which you also spoke a little about your military service 
during the war, you explained to comic fans and creators alive that after the 
attacks of September 11th, we all must get back to the business of living, 
and maintain our families and senses of humor. Was this something that was 
learned through trial? 
 
IK: Yeah. Get back to life and take care of your families – that’s what 
really matters. There was a response on some website where the guy had very 
positive comments on the article, but said that where I felt the point of 
life is to reproduce and keep your family safe, it sounded depressing. I got 
pissed when I read that. It’s not depressing – taking care of your family is 
the only thing you have. 
 
It’s a larger story. They must learn to think that way. Family is something 
that is not popular anymore, but it’s not people’s fault, the system made 
them to think that way. The very core of the nuclear family has broken down, 
and people are left alone, and when they are alone, they get depressed, and 
when they are depressed, they are more obedient and turn toward money much 
more, and are therefore easier to rule. But that’s another story. 
 
If you have family, you are building your own foundation, your own security, 
and your own tribe. An oasis. Starting with mutual contact, family is the 
basis of society, and it’s completely broken down in Western society, 
especially North America. When you are alone, it is much harder to cope with 
a disaster like the New York tragedy. For me, family is extremely important, 
but look around – it doesn’t exist anymore. Grandparents live in New York, 
the son lives in Vancouver, the daughter lives in Texas, and the 
grandchildren live in Los Angeles, and they see each other maybe once a year 
for a family reunion, but it’s not “family” anymore. People don’t 
communicate anymore in a family way. That’s what I was talking about in this 
article – family is the basis of your existence, and it should be. That’s 
why I was pissed when that guys said that reproducing and taking care of your 
family was a depressing outlook. It’s part of the way of thinking – people 
want their lives, they want to make money, and the family is just a burden 
for them, especially if they have kids. 
 
NRMA: Speaking of your time with the military in Croatia, and the lessons you 
learned, in your essay you said that there were five million war stories in 
Croatia. Have you ever thought of writing and illustrating an 
autobiographical story about your time in the war? 
 
IK: I have one beautiful proposal, and I’ve offered it to publishers all over 
the USA over the years, but nobody wants to publish it. 
 
NRMA: Why not? 
 
IK: All of them want to put a bigger accent on the war side, and basically, 
my story, because a vampire is involved, and some other things, it’s more 
like fantasy than war. I went through it, so I didn’t make exactly the war 
stories, which is very understandable. For the people who have never part of 
a war, they want to hear more about war. For the people who have been through 
war, they don’t really want to talk about the war itself. It’s a catch-22. 
It happened especially in connection with DC Comics – an editor from DC 
wanted to cut out all these characters that were not part of the real war, 
like the vampires and ghosts and extra-material experiences. I didn’t want it 
to be shortened, and I refused to shorten it, so I cancelled it. The same 
thing would happen with all the publishers I contacted. 
 
NRMA: What is it about and what keeps publishers at bay? 
 
IK: It’s called Cross Roader, and it’s a story about a guy who is a natural 
born super-hero. There are such people all over the world, like witch doctors 
and shamans – they do possess some powers, and they know how to deal with 
them. I met such people in Europe. I’m actually talking about real things, 
but for people here, they don’t look real, they look like fantasy. 
 
The story is about this guy who is dealing with evil forces in his own way, 
and he became part of this war in Croatia, and fights, good against evil. I 
call it a super-hero story, but it’s not – it’s more complex. It’s about 
existing people and places, not made up heroes. This year, I started my 
company, by myself, and publishing will be included in it, and one day in the 
future, I plan to make and publish this comic completely on my own. 
 
NRMA: Since you mention the superhero set, since Tarzan is your admitted 
obsession, why the switch to Marvel from the more pulp-oriented characters at 
Dark Horse? 
 
IK: First, I heard about some changes going on at Marvel, and it corresponded 
with my miscommunication with Dark Horse. After they cancelled Tarzan, I was 
not interested in working with them anymore, so I had a transition period 
working with Wildstorm on the Star Trek book last year. Then, last year in 
October, I was in Spain to attend this beautiful convention, and there I met 
Howard Chaykin. He kind of liked my work, and told me that he had some 
proposals over at Marvel, and he would like to work with me, and would let me 
know when the time came what was going on. He also told me that they were 
bringing lots of good writers in to Marvel, as well as artists like Richard 
Corben, so I knew the situation there had to be changing from what it was 
when I was there before – I was not satisfied with the people who were 
working there while I was illustrating Tales of the Marvels. It was a breath 
of fresh of air at Marvel, and I was intrigued. I wanted to try something 
new. 
 
NRMA: So you weren’t keeping up with Marvel at the time? 
 
IK: No - I hadn’t read any superhero for years and years, so for me, it was 
going to be a nice change. Then, at the beginning of this year, Howard called 
me and said they had given him the green light on Cable, but David Tischman 
would be coming on as a co-writer. Because Howard was working on the 
television series, he had to step down from Cable, but would stay on almost 
as a ghostwriter, supervising the stories. Eventually, he dropped out of supe 
rvising too, leaving David as the writer. In early March, we started talking 
with Joe Quesada and Mark Powers. 
 
NRMA: From what you’ve said, it seems as if Cable, as envisioned by Tischman 
would be a good match for you. 
 
IK: Yes, Cable is something good for me, because when I began talking with 
David, he told me exactly what he planned on doing with Cable – turn him into 
a wandering priest/warrior who’s visiting every hotspot in the world, and is 
trying to make a difference by fighting the bad guys. At the same time, he 
works to spread around his religion, especially to young people as a way to 
help them cope with their problems. This combination of traits in a character 
was very interesting to me. He’s sort of a modern samurai. 
 
Later, we developed his special relationship with women, which allows us to 
put in a slight dose of eroticism. It coincided with Marvel’s decision to 
drop the comics code, which was good. We can pump up the amount of allowed 
eroticism in this book. All in all, it was a good combination – with the code 
gone, you have bigger possibilities to do good stories. The sensuality and 
eroticism that we might put in the book isn’t there just for the sake of 
being there, but it’s there to spice up the lives of these sweaty, stinking 
guys who seem to battle one another all the time. Look at it this way, Cable 
has this artificial arm, he’s big, handsome, and very wise and mysterious. He 
must appear very exotic to women. 
 
NRMA: Judging from your art first three issues, it looks as if Cable is the 
perfect book for you, and speaks to your strengths – many people, few 
costumes, and varied locations. 
 
IK: Yes. Especially, when talking about comic books, I always consider myself 
more of a black and white artist than a painted artist. I entered the 
American market in ’94 as a painter with Tales of the Marvels, and had a 
reputation for being a painter for a long time, but I wanted to get rid of 
it. I was doing black and white stuff occasionally, and didn’t have a chance 
to develop my black and white skills as much as I wanted. So Cable is an 
excellent opportunity because it is an ongoing serial, and it’s an excellent 
opportunity for me to work in black and white and try to do what I always 
wanted to do – got to the essence of black and white graphic art, and do 
whatever is necessary when it comes to purification and stylization of the 
art itself. 
 
I don’t know what I’m going to do with Cable, but I already realize working 
on it, I have become faster and cleaner. It’s like practicing piano every day 
– as you go, the contact between your fingers and brain is shorter and 
shorter and shorter. You can draw something in a split-second. You don’t need 
too long for an idea to reach your fingers from your brain, but you can only 
reach this point by practicing every day, and this is what I’m able to do now 
– draw twelve hours a day. 
 
NRMA: Along with the art, you’re also responsible for the new logo and 
covers, which have been distinctive so far. Is it gratifying to work in a 
work-for-hire situation and be given a rather large amount of freedom? 
 
IK: Yes. Very much. With Cable, they let me do whatever I want – they let me 
redesign the logo, and have a new approach with colors on he cover. They’re 
not painted, they’re not two colors – if you’ve seen the three Cable covers 
so far, you won’t find too much color – they’re very graphic and visually 
powerful. Marvel is very satisfied with this new approach, and so am I. It’s 
challenging and a big change when the company I’m working for trust me so 
much that I can do whatever I want. I have over 25 years experience of 
working in comics, and they know that I won’t go over the edge with 
something. There’s mutual understanding and respect. When you do this job for 
so many years, you have an inbuilt censorship, so you know what to do and 
what you can’t do. Even though the European market is much more open to sex, 
I know what can and can’t be done in this market. 
 
 NRMA: Are you pleased with the reception Cable has received so far? 
 
IK: Yes, very. I’ve been reading what some critics of Cable who used to read 
the book before I started have had to say, and 90% are satisfied with what I 
did on architecture and characters and the terrorists. One thing I like about 
this book is that no one is black and white – everyone is a different shade 
of gray, like normal people. They can kill, but they can love, they can be 
tough, and they can be gentle. They’re real people, jus like in life. No one 
is completely good, and no one is completely bad. 
 
NRMA: Moving away from Cable, and getting to one of your pieces that has 
struck an emotional chord in many people, your illustration for the Heroes 
book of the passengers on United Flight 93 rising up against the hijackers. 
While you had to have known that other creators were going to focus on the 
rescuers at Ground Zero, why did you focus on these people and this moment in 
time? 
 
IK: First, because it was a challenge. I wanted to deal with something that I 
knew nobody else would tackle, because it was something that was really hard 
to draw. Secondly, this story, if it’s true, it’s a very heroic act. The 
passengers decided to take over and fight the terrorists, in spite of the 
fact that they knew they were going to die, because some of them were in 
contact with their relatives and knew that the other two planes had crashed 
into the towers. In spite of this fact, they decided to do something about 
it, and try to take over the plane. 
 
NRMA: Something that has caused a little controversy though, is your image of 
an Air Force fighter seen through the window of the plane. Is this a 
statement on your part of what you think happened to Flight 93? 
 
IK: No, no. We still don’t know if it’s true or not, because, according to 
some other stories, this plane was crashed by Air Force fighters which were 
escorting George Bush’s airplane, which was very close to it at the time. 
This story about the passengers sounded very heroic to me, so when Joe told 
me that this book was going to bear the title Heroes, this was what came to 
my mind. This was a very heroic act. 
 
As for the plane and other things in my image, I had given up on watching the 
news, because they started saying the same things and showing the same video 
over and over again, so some of what was learned about the plane came after I 
was done with my picture, like the terrorists had killed one steward to show 
that they weren’t guys to fuck with. If I knew that before, maybe it would 
have looked better, but what I drew in this illustration was my impression of 
what I had heard about this Pennsylvania plane, and I tried to draw regular 
Joes traveling to their business, or whatever. Some of them were men, some 
were women, and all had a different reaction – some were standing up, some 
were praying, some were panicking. There are many different reactions. That 
was challenging – to draw a variety of behaviors in the face of a distressful 
situation. Unfortunately, I didn’t have too much time to draw it, but 
according to the reactions I’ve heard, I’m very satisfied because I managed 
to provoke such a reaction. 
 
NRMA: And you’re working on A Moment of Silence as well – whose story are 
you illustrating? 
 
IK: Joe Quesada’s. It’s an 11-page silent story, based on a true story in 
New York. I won’t tell you anything of how it ends – I want it to be a 
surprise. Roughly, it’s about a family coping with a loss – a disappearance. 
There will be many people that will never be found after the attacks – so 
many disappeared without a trace. There is always a spark of hope in such 
cases that they may show up some day, if they’ve never found the body. It’s 
interesting from a psychological point of view – you know someone died, but 
the body was never found, so part of you wants to believe they’re still 
alive. Then there’s the waiting. The period of waiting is what this story is 
about. 
 
NRMA: On to slightly happier topics, it appears as if the attention from the 
Heroes piece as well as the success with Cable is already beginning to reap 
benefits. From hearing Joe Quesada speak, you’ve become the pinch hitter for 
nearly the entire Marvel Universe. So, do you have a fill-in slot scheduled 
on every book? 
 
IK: Not quite, but I am getting more work. I think they announced already 
that I will be doing a full-length graphic novel hardcover on Storm. In the 
beginning, Chris Claremont wrote it to be a four issue miniseries, but it was 
so powerful and visually effective that I managed to negotiate with Joe and 
the other editors to add an extra fifty pages and do it immediately as a 
graphic novel. I want to do some experimenting with color in this book, so it 
will be exciting. Because of the length, it will run 144 pages and will 
resemble manga a little bit, but not in the style – just in storytelling, 
graphic approach and length. I would like to concentrate more on characters 
and their body language, and 88 pages is not a length for such a book. It 
will be something beautiful, and will probably come out in 2003. 
 
NRMA: You’re also replacing Greg Horn on the MAX Black Widow miniseries by 
Greg Rucka, right? 
 
IK: Yes. I’m just about to start on it. I need to finish this silent story, 
and finish inking X-Men for #120. After that, I’m clear to go for Black 
Widow, which is familiar ground to me, because it happens in Russia. Russia 
is not my country, but most of the people in the Balkan area are part of the 
Slavic tribe, and the Russian way of thinking is very familiar to me. Again, 
it’s challenging to do something appropriate within a Russian environment. 
 
NRMA: You enjoy working on something in a real world setting rather than a 
fantasy one, where you can take a few artistic liberties? 
 
IK: Yes. I started working this way on Cable – the first arc happens in Peru, 
and I spent a long time researching to find out about real people, the 
fashions they wear, and the environments they operate in. For me, it’s always 
very important to generate a complete picture, so they can get a complete 
impression as to what it’s about. 
 
So, in lots of superhero books, you can see when they showed Moscow, it’s 
always Red Square. Moscow is not just Red Square. That’s what I plan to do 
with Black Widow – to present a variety of architecture and people and stuff. 
Similar to in Cable – we’re doing the Macedonian story right now. People in 
the US and Canada probably don’t have a good feel for Macedonia and what it 
is about, so I’d like to present that to them. It’s a part of my European 
comic book heritage – we grew up with these French, Italian, and Spanish 
comic books, and they always paid attention to the backgrounds – the 
architecture, the fashion, and the vehicles. The French have had a long 
tradition of this since it began with Herge’s Tintin of showing detailed 
backgrounds. He was one of the first authors who started paying attention to 
environments, especially architecture. I think it’s very important for the 
reader to have a complete picture of everything that is going on. 
 
NRMA: Looking ahead, one could figure since Marvel is keeping you busy, 
you’ll be staying with them for the foreseeable future? 
 
IK: Yeah. Although, at a certain point, they started to pile up the offers to 
a point where I changed into a marketing way of thinking and told them that 
if they want me to do so much, they must like me, so they should be willing 
to raise my price a little. They thought about it for a short time, and 
offered me an exclusive contract. I agreed, because I have a big family to 
feed… [laughter] 
 
NRAMA: How big? 
 
IK: I have a wife and two dogs, and three girls – but not in that order. The 
dogs should come at the end. The girls are 4, 8, and 10 years old. This 
contract is for two years, so at least for two years, it will give me 
financial security. Now, for the first time since I came to North America, 
which was five years ago, I can plan something for the future. I can spread 
my tentacles on the local ground some more. This income I’m getting from 
Marvel right now will give me the possibility to open a gallery of my work, 
and my wife and I have always wanted to open a restaurant. 
 
Recently my wife and I leased a place here in Winnipeg that was an old 
Masonic Temple from the end of the last century. It was a restaurant for 
years and years, and we’ve now leased it, and are trying to renovate it to 
establish a lounge on the second floor with live music and lots of art. On 
the third floor is going to be a big, big gallery. We’re hoping for this 
building to be the center of all the cultural events in the city. It can be a 
gathering place for people who are involved in culture and art. One of the 
things I want to do for next year or for 2003 would be to start up a comic 
book convention, because there isn’t any in this region. Winnipeg is an ideal 
are for that, because in a circle of 2000 kilometers around, you can find all 
the bigger cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Vancouver, Seattle, 
and Portland. Winnipeg is basically the geographical center of North America, 
so if people want to get together for a comic book convention, they don’t 
need to go to San Diego or New York – they can travel a shorter distance, and 
come to Winnipeg. We’ll see. We also want to do theater shows, live music, 
and lots of other things. 
 
NRAMA: Sounds like you’ve got a full plate all around… 
 
IK: Right. And I will be able to do it especially because I have this steady 
income for two years and hopefully longer. That’s why this contract and my 
contact with Marvel are so significant. Things are going up. 
 
 
Addendum: 
 
When Igor learned that his interview would be following Jodorowsky’s the 
creator was compelled to offer up his own Jodo story or two, one that should 
especially pique the interest of fans of both Kordey and Jodorowsky… 
 
 IK: I worked with Jodorowsky at the beginning of this year on a project for 
the French publisher, Les Humanoides Associes [the parent of the American 
Humanoids]. The book was the second volume of Les Passion de Diosamante. It 
is supposed to be an ongoing story, but he doesn’t want to writer further 
stories, because he wants to see how the first book will be accepted by the 
market. He pulled out of it, because he was very busy with his theater shows 
and other things, along with writing comics. 
 
NRAMA: This would be a continuation of the original series by Gal, correct? 
 
IK: Yes. Diosamante is a fantasy story begun by Jodo and Jean-Claude Gal 
began in the late ‘80s, but Gal died after the first book was published. He 
died because of working too much. [laughter] it will probably be the same for 
me too. He was in bad health, but a great guy. I had met him once in France. 
He had glasses like beer bottles minus fifteen diopters, or something. They 
occasionally published his work in Heavy Metal – it was extremely, extremely, 
painfully detailed stuff. It was almost annoying in a way to read, it had the 
tendency to overpower the storytelling. 
 
They wanted to start it again last year, so they engaged Jodorowsky to begin 
work on it. Gal managed to finish ten pages of layouts of the second volume, 
and I was working on the script for the potential second book. 
 
NRAMA: There’s been some speculation that Jodo might be a target of Joe 
Quesada’s as he looks for talent to bring to Marvel. Speaking as someone who 
has worked with the man, do you think he would bite, if offered the chance? 
 
IK: Oh, no. He’s very satisfied with what he’s doing, because they treat him 
in France like a celebrity. He chooses his own artists and whatever he says 
editors obey. He wouldn’t have such an approach in the US. He’s a celebrity, 
a big deal in France, and he would like to stay like that. I doubt he would 
want to spoil it. They pay him very well also – every serial he starts is a 
big success in France and the European market. 
 
Speaking of him, this Juan Solo project- what’s coming out in America as Son 
of the Gun - I would recommend it to anyone. You can recognize his 
obsessions, as in all of his books – he’s coping with religion, with 
dwarves, with incest, Oedipus complexes, and all of it. Later in Son of the 
Gun it will all come out – trust me. It’s very good, probably my favorite 
Jodorowsky story. 
 
 
Brian Gallagher 
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