Rock Doc

You’re cordially invited to experience “The Green Rock of Terror”.

I’ve been a fan of Michael T. Gilbert’s for a quarter century now. My own personal
Silver Age of comics was aborning as the era of the independents caught steam in the mid 1980s, and features that pushed the boundaries of the kinds of superheroes that had mainly interested me until then — Gilbert’s Mr. Monster, Paul Chadwick’s Concrete, Scott McCloud’s Zot! — in turn pushed me to explore new publishers, genres, creators, and styles. MTG’s humor, versatility, and clear love of comics led me to seek out his stuff wherever it popped up; not only that, his obvious jones for collaboration introduced me to other creators when it wasn’t just reinforcing my great taste in reading comics done by someone with such obvious great taste himself.

Likewise, I’ve admired Ken Quattro’s Comics Detective blog since it debuted early last year, as I did his Comicartville site before it. Among my unpublished posts are more than one linking over to where Ken has unearthed plenty of absolutely fascinating material.

Michael has generously passed on the color roughs to this story — and its backstory — to Ken for presentation as a historical document. While a mere trifle compared to much of Mr. Monster and his nifty contribution to Legends of the Dark Knight, the 7-page “Green Rock” is sure to make you wish that the anthology for which it was commissioned had come to pass.