Mike Ploog

Michael G. Ploog (; born July 13, 1940 or 1942) under whom he apprenticed.

Biography Early life and career A typical spread from Will Eisner's U.S. Army publication PS, The Preventive Maintenance Monthly #224 (c. 1971), with art attributed to Ploog Born in Mankato, Minnesota, Mike Ploog was one of a family of three brothers and a sister raised, initially, on a Minnesota farm. his mother took the children to live with her in Burbank, California. Ploog entered the U.S. Marine Corps, leaving in 1968 after ten years. Toward the end of his hitch, he began working on the Corps' Leatherneck Magazine, doing bits of writing, photography and art.

Around 1969 he began working on Batman and Superman animated TV series at the Los Angeles studio Filmation, doing what he called "cleanup work for other artists." Moving to the Hanna-Barbera studio the following season, he worked on layouts for the animated series Motormouse and Autocat and Wacky Races, as well as "the first Scooby-Doo pilot; nothing spectacular, though. It was okay; it was a salary, y'know? ... I had very few aspirations, because I didn't know where anything I was doing was going to take me".

Eisner in 1978 recalled: "Mike came in working for me in 1967 [sic; Ploog was still in the Marines that year]. I was looking for someone who could work on the PS magazine ... and Mike sent me his material, or somebody sent it to me, I don't remember which, and I found myself in California, talking Mike into coming to work for us.... We had a very happy relationship for maybe two or three years, four years."

Ploog moved to New York City and remained with Eisner for just over two years. As Ploog recalled: Will had worked PS Magazine since about 1952, and [the owners] decided, 'We've got to put it out to somebody else.' You know, it's like he's got this dynasty going. So they said, 'Well, Will, you've got to do something. You've got to either back out of it altogether or find some way of doing this.' So Will came up with the idea: I picked up the contract, and Will became the shadow partner, and I moved across the street from Will's office into another office that he had. I don't know whether he had been leasing it, but we subleased it from Will, and we took over the book. Then it just got to be too much, because it's not that profitable without a partner, but if you've got a partner, then it becomes totally non-profitable. A Western sample he showed Marvel got him a callback to draw Werewolf by Night, which premiered in Marvel Spotlight #2 (Feb. 1972). As Ploog recalled, Somebody told me I should go to Marvel, so I got up a Western strip, oddly enough, called Tin Star. ... I went over there and they said the work was too cartoony and it wasn't Marvel-style. So I kind of gave up on it, and went back home, and less than a week later they gave me a call. Wanted me to come back in again. That's when I went in and talked to them about doing "Werewolf by Night."

The specifics of the character's creation are disputed. Roy Thomas, a Marvel writer and the editor-in-chief at the time, recalls,

Friedrich has responded that,

Ploog recalled, in a 2008 interview:

The Eisneresque Topaz: Splash panel, Werewolf by Night #13 (Jan. 1974). Art by Ploog and inker Frank Chiaramonte. Ploog and writer Gary Friedrich collaborated on the first six issues of Marvel's The Monster of Frankenstein (Jan.-Oct. 1973), the initial four of which contained a more faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel than has mostly appeared elsewhere; comics historian Don Markstein said, "It was faithful to the story even to the point of leaving the monster trapped in the ice at the end — so of course, the fifth issue began with him being rescued." In a 1989 interview, Ploog said, "I really enjoyed doing Frankenstein because I related to that naive monster wandering around a world he had no knowledge of — an outsider seeing everything through the eyes of a child." "Marvel and I were both changing. I finished off a black-and-white Kull book that was my last comic for many years."

Marginalia includes some work for Heavy Metal magazine in 1981, and three "Luke Malone, Manhunter" backup features in the Atlas/Seaboard title Police Action #1-3 (Feb., April, June 1975), the first of which he also scripted. The Lord of the Rings, and has storyboarded or done other design work on films including John Carpenter's The Thing, Superman II, Little Shop of Horrors and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and, he says, several Jim Henson Company projects, such as the films The Dark Crystal

Between movies, Ploog illustrated L. Frank Baum's the Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1992; ), a graphic novel adapting The Wonderful Wizard of Oz creator's 1902 novella.

With old colleague Steve Gerber, Ploog drew the Malibu Comics Ultraverse one-shot Sludge: Red X-Mas (Dec. 1994), but otherwise remained away from comics for another decade before teaming with veteran writer J.M. DeMatteis on the CrossGen fantasy Abadazad (May 2004).