Brett Breeding has spent over 40 years as a comic artist, illustrator, and creator, who has inked over the pencils of creators like George Pérez, Fran Frenz, Kerry Gammill, and Dan Jurgens. At DC, he co-created Doomsday, Blaze, Lord Satanus, and Shadowdragon. He is well recognized for his work on Superman titles, especially the Death of Superman storyline, and on Spider-Man titles, The Mighty Thor, The Avengers, and West Coast Avengers. He also originated the idea that Steve Rogers could wield Thor’s hammer Mjolnir when he was working on Thor #390, and Ron Frenz and writer Tom DeFalco turned it into a key story. At Baltimore Comic-Con, Breeding spoke to Scoop about the show and fan interactions.
Scoop: Are you having a good weekend so far?
Brett Breeding (BB): Yes, Baltimore is always a great show.
Scoop: Which titles or characters are people talking about the most?
BB: With me it’s always Death of Superman, but Spider-Man #252 pops up a lot, West Coast Avengers pops up a lot. There have been a lot of old things that I haven’t even seen since I did them 40 years ago, so that’s been kind of interesting.
Scoop: Like what?
BB: It was a story I did over David Mazzucchelli, and if you had told me I had inked him at some point, I would have called you a liar because I had no recollection of doing that. But it was some Spider-Man story. I think it might’ve been a Spider-Man reprint of some kind.
Scoop: Are people gravitating more toward sketches or original art?
BB: There’s been some original artwork, and some of everything. Sketches have been popular. I’ve been turning them away because I can only do so many.
Scoop: How have your con experiences been since so many shows were cancelled due to COVID-19?
BB: We were in Mexico when the pandemic hit its peak for La Mole International Comic Con, which is a great show. Or used to be. We left there on March 16 and four days later the United States closed the borders. We came home to a whole different world than we left. That whole year all my shows kept getting cancelled or postponed as people tried to figure everything out. And then we finally started doing shows at the end of the following year. Staying masked, and driving to some to avoid airports. I guess in the last year or so I’ve been doing as many as I want to. I try to limit myself to one a month. It works out to about ten a year, that’s what I average. It’s always fun to come out and meet fans
Scoop: What do you like about Baltimore Comic-Con?
BB: It’s very close to home. It’s a 45-minute drive for me to come here. It’s a comic book convention. So many of the conventions these days are pop culture, multimedia conventions, they are involved more with celebrities, or media types, or wrestling. The last show I did have wrestling on display and most of the people coming to the show seemed more interested in that than the comic book people. You find a lot of shows these days still call themselves “comic cons” but we’re kind of an afterthought now, the artists and creators. They don’t even invite writers, which is an important part of our business. With Baltimore, it is a huge convention of comic book creators. A lot of professionals come here because it’s almost like a reunion every year. It’s a very social event for the comics industry. We get to hang out with people we haven’t seen in a while or certainly since last year, and catch up. It’s a reunion of sorts, then again, it’s comics-centric.
Scoop: What are you doing now?
BB: Trying to stay awake. [laughs] Right now I’m doing commissions. I’ve been doing a lot of covers for Marvel with Dan Jurgens and Ron Franz. I’m about to start working on Blue Baron at Sitcomics, it’s an independent publisher – comics done the old way. So fans who always tell me they don’t like comics today and “why don’t they hire us old guys” and “why can’t we do stories like that again” Sitcomics is trying to do that. The stories are fun, they’re engaging. I recommend people pick one up and give it a try and I’m sure they’ll be hooked. I’m waiting to start my first issue of that. I do a lot of licensing work for Warner Brothers and DC Comics, so I have a new Justice League style guide in the pipeline that I’ll be getting any day for a whole new series of things to show up on your cereal boxes and chocolate bars.
