Here's a thread to discuss the new Howard Chaykin comic, Hey Kids! Comics!, and the stories behind the stories...
Probably something we might benefit from are a list characters, and who they might correspond to in real life. I don't think Chaykin's going entirely for a one-to-one correspondence with his three main characters -- I suspect they'll be involved in incidents that happened to a variety of people throughout the industry. But the bosses, and the supporting characters, might all suggest one person or another in particular. So I'll try to keep a tally here on the front page, and see if that informs our reading.
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I haven't gotten to V3 yet, but I'm rereading V2 to refresh my memory, and one character that I haven't seen pinned down is Dick Altman. He's Al Feldstein; in issue 2, we see him take over Wak (MAD) when Arnold Grossberg (Harvey Kurtzman) leaves to start Bah! (Humbug) and then Rummy (Trump) for Lyle Kenmore (Hugh Hefner).
Gianni Costa seems to be Vince Colletta: He can bang out 6 pages a day, he tried to get a secretary to pose for an adult mag (well, a "sex manual"), which I think I've heard he was involved with, and it's mentioned he had wiseguy friends, which I've definitely heard.
One more: Jimmy Rand is Johnny Craig -- the EC artist with the cleanest style, who left comics for advertising for a while, but then came back at Warren.
Also, Hector Menendez ("Funny, Fast, and Mexican" in v2 #6) is most likely Sergio Aragones.
Lee DeHaven seems more like Steve Englehart than Gerry Conway, given his association with early Luke Cage issues (here he's writing Bishop Midnight: Funk Warrior with Ted, who's now standing in for Billy Graham.)
A few more as I continue my way through v3:
Tex Hardesty is likely Tom Sutton.
Chuck Stillwell is definitely Jim Shooter.
I wonder if Elliot Saperstein is E Nelson Bridwell (although he's shown moving from DC to Atlas for a while, which ENB never did)?
Al Mandel is Joe Simon.
Ed Siegel is likely Paul Levitz.
Lotte Zanuck is Dorothy Woolfolk.
I'm guessing Tony Kramer is Steve Gerber.
Tony Kramer is an artist, my guess is he's supposed to be Bernie Wrightson (whom Kramer kind of looks like). The other reason I think this is because of the scene in v2 #4, where Kramer meets Nick Fontana (Joe Orlando), who compares Kramer's style to Peter Vance (Wally Wood) and Jeff Thomas (Jack Davis). Wrightson was an EC fan when he was younger and was definitely influenced by various EC artists. On the other hand Kramer is kind of negative about 80s artists but Wrightson has praise for Frank Miller in an interview
I think Lee DeHaven may be a composite of 70s writers. He is Verve's EIC for a brief time just like Gerry Conway was EIC of Marvel for a brief time. He does share similarities with Englehart like in the Bishop Midnight/Luke Cage comparison you mention, and also that he wrote Lord Nekros (which looks like a stand-in for Doctor Strange, a book Englehart worked on).
Sid Fine is JACK KATZ. The sequence is based on a story Howard Chaykin recollected about Jack Katz being on a panel that Gil Kane was on; Kane was praising Jack Kirby's work (but only referring to him as Jack) so Katz mistakenly thought Kane was referring to him.
Tom Hollenbeck is definitely more like Todd McFarlane in the final issues, though their histories are different when you take all Hollenbeck scenes into account; Hollenbeck worked on Evoluteens in the early 80s while McFarlane had very little involvement with the X-Men franchise. Plus it seems Hollenbeck is still working in comics with some disillusion as opposed to running a toy company with his own character (probably because in this world Vision/Image got sold to Yankee/DC as opposed to just Wildstorm).
I wonder if Jeanne Murphy isn't Cat Yronwode, of Eclipse Comics.
...and that's a wrap for me. We've got some obvious allusions to Alan Moore (Daniel Parkes), Rob Liefeld (Bo Tinker), and Jim Lee (Luke Nguyen) in these last issues.
This was a heck of a read. Great stuff.
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