R. D. Bone and Lawrence Hubbard are a couple of black, thirty-something comic book collectors and b-movie aficionados. R.D. has processed hair, chews a toothpick, wears shades at night, and looks like Ted Lange. Lawrence is built like Chubb Rock, sounds like an AM disc jockey, laughs like a king and wears funky acid-wash Jeans or Zubaz-Buttafuoco beachcombers. In other words, they're the type of likeable, giggling maniacs you'd expect to be responsible for The Real Deal, the most outrageous comic book to appear in a long time, perhaps ever. The first issue came out in March of 1990 and it was only this past spring that issue #2 finally surfaced. But believe us, it was not only worth the wait...the wait was absolutely necessary because shit like this should come out only so often. For those of you who need a comparison: The Real Deal is like a cross between a Funkadelic album cover and an Iceberg Slim novel. But that's just a comparison. We spoke with Bone and Hubbard, in hopes of finding out what was really going on...
LAWRENCE: Just trying to get distribution is hard as hell. The first issue was real big, and people would say, "well, we like it, but its too big for our racks." That's why we made the second one the size of a Mad magazine, and that obviously worked because we got two distributors now already. It's a trip you know, just bustin' ass on it. Workin' regular jobs and stuff. Cos what's a trip is like, first we tried to get on with the other comic companies like Marvel and D.C. and all that shit and-
GRAND ROYAL: TO DO THEIR SHIT?
LAWRENCE: Well we tried to put our shit in. Like Marvel had some, what
was the name of that magazine?
R.D. They had a title that was like
Heavy Metal, and we thought we was gonna fit right in. So we submitted
some stuff to them, but they didn't go for it. They liked it!
But...
LAWRENCE: It's crazy. They give you letters like, "We love your
work, sorry we can't use it." And all that crap. They want you to
keep kissin their asses and keep sendin' 'em stuff. Then we said "we're
not gettin' anywhere with this, hell, let's do it ourselves, huh-huh."
[Lawrence gives one of his classic chuckles]. And so I draw, he writes
it and it just came together.
GR: DID YOU GUYS TRY TO LAY SOMETHING THIS HEAVY ON MARVEL?
LAWRENCE: Aw! well-
R.D. Naww!!
LAWRENCE: I'd
given 'em an "R Team" story cos they had a title that was tryin' to
get raw, I forgot the name of it. Usually they send you a form letter,
but they sent me a personal letter saying, "99 percent of the time we
send you form letters, but one percent of the time...blah, blah,
blah-and you're that one percent." I remember when I saw the shit
fall through the mail slot, with a picture of Spider Man on it, and I
was like, "This is it! This is it!"-
and then at the bottom... "Sorry, can't use it." HA HA HA! Shit! You
just have to struggle to get with them. Then after a while, they'll
get sick of you, and they'll give your title to somebody else. Cos
whatever you do for them, that's theirs. You could come up with great
characters, draw it for 20 years-and they'll say, "we're gonna
bring this young guy in-get out!!" Ha ha ha! And there's nothin'
you can do about it.
GR: SOUNDS LIKE A REALLY BAD BUSINESS.
LAWRENCE:
Yeah, it's rough, real rough. You come up with something you think is
good, and you gotta get somebody else and have THEM say its good,
too. Anyway, when we came up with it, we both worked at a savings and
loan. We used to go down to the basement, during lunchtime, and one
day, I was just sittin' down there, and Harold was drawing what? G.C.?
R.D. G.C.
LAWRENCE: Now what he do is draw the stuff first and I take
it and just flesh it out. Cos like he doesn't really draw, but you
know, he can get his point across. And you was drawin' G.C. and it was
like of some guy standin' on an island in the middle of the street,
sellin' fruit. And G.C. ran over the dude with his Cadillac!! Ha Ha!
And backed up over him! And then G.C.'s woman said, "Gee daddy, you
sure fucked him up!" And he says, "well that could be
you, too, bitch!"
R.D: Ha Ha!
LAWRENCE: And I saw this and I
just busted up! Haahahahaha!
GR: SO WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?
LAWRENCE: Hahahahahahaha!
GR: WHERE DOES G.C. COME FROM? IS HE BASED AT ALL ON, LIKE-
R.D. I have three or four friends, including my own brother,
that think they know who G.C. is. Actually G.C. is a composite of several people I've known throughout
my lifetime. Each one had their good faults, you know, and their bad
faults. The thing is, individually these people are boring. But put 'em all
together into G.C., he's an OK guy...
LAWRENCE: Hahahahahaha.
R.D. I think he's OK. Just don't fuck with him, he gets raw with you. And he
smokes a motherfucker. Dead. That's OK with me. He's just a composite
of several people.
LAWERENCE: He just takes things to that extra
level. He won't come to you and fuck with you, but don't get nothin'
started with him. We've both known people like that- either they're
gonna kill me or I'm gonna kill them, and I don't feel like going to
jail...
GR: ARE THERE MORAL PARAMATERS YOU SET FOR WHAT G.C. WOULD OR
WOULD NOT DO?
R.D. Yeah, I have to, because the only way you write a
good story is if you know your character. So there are certain things
G.C. won't do, and if he kept on doing these things, the character
wouldn't be real. One day his modus operandi would be this and another
day he be doin' that. So he does have parameters.
GR: IN THE FIRST
PANEL OF ISSUE #2, HE COMES ACROSS SOME GUY WHO IS BALANCING ON THE
RAILING OUTSIDE HIS FRONT DOOR, HIGH ON CRACK.
R.D. What his motivation is, if he has such a thing: he just got
back from the liquor store and didn't want to leave the party in the
first place. He don't stock ahead and get 9 million gallons of this
and 9 million gallons of that. He's gotta traipse down, go to the
Korean store and he's pissed off, walkin' up the steps thinkin' about
all his problems. The dude's a drug dealer!
LAWRENCE: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
R.D. He's got all this competition. Anyway, he sees this young
motherfucker balancin', and he knows damn well if the motherfucker
falls back this way, everybody's gonna run outta the party and say
"What happened?"
LAWRENCE: He'll break up the party.
R.D. And break up
the atmosphere. So he says "fuck this," and goes on about his way!
LAWRENCE: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
RD: He don't care, when the dude hits the
ground, whether he's dead or not, he just wants him out of the way.
[In fact the crack smoker falls two storeys into a junk-filled swiming pool and is impaled. G.C. then enters the party and, with the help of his pals Willie and Ace, kills or maims everyone except G.C.'s "hoe," Pork Butt. After saving Pork Butt's life, G.C. kicks her in the ass and says, "Roll three joints and cook us some breakfast." G.C. is out of food, so he breaks into his Hispanic neighbor's house, kicks the pregnant wife in her stomach and steals all their food. The second to last frame shows the three Macks snoring peacefully after breakfast and blunts. The last frame has Pork Butt "gaaaking" into the toilet.]
GR: NOW IS THIS REPRESENTATIVE OF WHERE YOU'RE FROM OR WHAT YOU'VE SEEN?
LAWRENCE: Neither of us lives anything like that, but
we know a lot of people live in a lot of places like that.
R.D. I used to know somebody in an apartment like that.
The only difference was, the swimming pool wasn't filled
with garbage.
LAWERENCE: HAHAHAHAHA! Just exaggerating.
GR: YOU CAN RECOGNIZE THE COURTYARD, THAT
KIND OF BUILDING.
R.D. '60s style. It's on Grammercy actually, off Pico.
LAWRENCE: Yeah, yeah, I've seen thousands of
apartments like that. I've also seen empty pools filled with
garbage, so I just filled it up.
GR: WHEN WE FIRST SAW THE REAL DEAL, WE
THOUGHT OF PEDRO BELL'S FUNKADELIC ALBUM
COVERS. AND YOU MENTIONED MAD EARLIER.
WHAT WERE YOUR INFLUENCES?
LAWRENCE: Oh definitely Mad. I started reading Mad
when I was a little kid in the early '60s. What else? Just a
lot of cartoons on TV, Warner Bros. and Tex Avery. And
I'd read, Marvel, D.C., you know, comics and stuff. Heavy
Metal. And I just started drawing when I was three. I've
always liked wild shit, even when I was a little kid, I used
to draw school bus crashes and stuff-
R.D: [Giggles].
LAWRENCE: And like, remember in the late 60s, when
the Black Panther movement was out, they used to have
a newspaper? And any time they drew a policeman, it
was a pig. They'd have all these things about gunfights,
people killin' pigs and all that- and I just LOVED that
stuff! I used to draw big shootouts and stuff. Shit blowin'
up. My favorite thing was car crashes. So I always liked
drawin' wild shit, and since I started knowin' him, he just
like had all the materials I needed.
GR: HOW DID YOU GET INTO THE WILD SHIT?
R.D. Oh well, I had always read comic books. I even had
a couple of 10 cent comic books when I was real young.
I'd always liked Marvel, more so than D.C., and I'd
always liked violent movies, people gettin' killed and stuff like
that-
LAWRENCE: Mm-hm.
R.D. I used to keep a collection of articles about people
making complete asses out of themselves. Cos the real
funny shit is the world. Some guy walks up to a guy with
a gun, the one guy tells him to put it down, and gets his
head blown off-
LAWRENCE: HAHAHAHAHAHA!
R.D. I personally really love that shit! And the thing is,
when we first started tryin' to break into comic books, I
went down to San Diego, to a big convention, to sell my
stories. So after we got dissed down there, I realized one
thing. I said, "No matter how good I draw superheroes,
the fact of the matter is, everybody's doin' superheroes
-and I'm just another face in the crowd." So then I just
created my own universe by saying, ain't nobody gonna
do this.
GR: IT SEEMS LIKE THE REAL DEAL CAN BE
COMPARED MORE TO A MOVIE SUCH AS MENACE
II SOCIETY THAN TO ANY OTHER COMIC BOOK.
R.D. The thing is, superheroes influence people.
Evevbody creates their own world.
GR: G.C. IS OBVIOUSLY A SUPERHERO
R.D.Well the fact that he can do all this stuff and he
never gets killed means he's above the norm. But the
thing is, it's not so much that GC's a superhero but the
whole universe I've created. Everybody in his sphere of
influence, and who knows him, they all do the same type
of thing. Those influences of the Marvel universe allow
me to do the Raw universe.
LAWRENCE: Another thing about Real Deal that's a trip
is people who don't normally read comics will read it. I've
given it to guys at work, and even people who don't like it
-"oooh this is horrible stuff"- read it all the way through.
GR: WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS? WE DON'T READ COMICS BUT WE READ THIS AND
LAUGH. IS IT WRONG TO LAUGH?
LAWRENCE: Nope, ha-ha!
GR: ITS ALSO REAL
HEAVY. THE ESSAY THAT ACCOMPANIES BOTH ISSUES NOTES THAT THIS IS HOW
CRAZY IT CAN GET!
LAWRENCE + R.D. Yep, hahahaha!
GR: BUT IT'S ONLY
RECENTLY THAT THEY'VE COME OUT WITH BLACK SUPERHEROES. WHY HAS IT
TAKEN SO LONG?
LAWRENCE: A lot of times people have it in their mind
that they want to work for somebody else. Sometimes you just have to
get up and do shit yourself. It was '85 when I got that letter from
Marvel. We could still be screwing around, here in '93, sending submissions in and waiting for somebody to hook us up. And I think a lot of
brothers are probably thinkin' they can get on with Marvel and DC. But
then you come in and say you want to do a black this, that 'n' the
other. And they might say, "well, you gotta be doin' Superman,
Spiderman and Aquaman. This is what we've had for 30, 40 years- you
can have your little black superhero there off to the side but this is
the main thing." Just like my job: I work there, they tell me what to
do, and I gotta do it 'n' shit. If you don't like it you leave. So,
finally, it's good to see that they [the guys who do comics like
Brotherman] probably sat down and say, "hey to the hell with this- the
only way we're gonna do this is if we do it ourselves."
GR: BUT WHY THE FUCK HAS IT TAKEN SO LONG?
R.D. It's like any business, you have
to be aware of everything that's around you. You have to know things
you don't think necessarily relate to your business. Like, with black
comics, its distribution. You have to market your own product. Most
guys have good intentions, BUT, they're strictly writers or
artists- they're not businessmen. If you rely upon the main boys,
it's gonna go under, just like any other business. Cos 98% of any
business goes under after the first two years.
LAWRENCE: You can't
just sit back and say- I'm an artist. I'm a writer." We're a case
in point: we hired this guy as a distribution consultant, but the two
distributors we have-- we got those ourselves and he hasn't gotten
shit!
R.D. It's just like the guy who created word processing
typewriters. He went to IBM, they didn't want it. So he took it over
to Japan and they took it. See, we know this
stuff is good due to one simple fact- and its nothin'
metaphysical- we made xeroxed copies of my stuff, the way I draw,
and just passed it out to everybody, and said, "would you guys buy
this?" Everybody said yeah! We know there's a market out there- but
it's that middleman, the retailer and distributor, who has his head
stuck in 1969, that can't see the financial possibilities.
LAWRENCE: All it takes is that one. We got this other, what's the name of that
other distributor?
R.D. Raw Comics.
LAWRENCE: Yeah, Raw Comics. We
were at a comic convention at the Shrine Auditorium. So Harold walked
by the guy's table and gave him the first Real Deal,
and said, "OK thanks, yeah."
R.D. I gave him the second one first,
and then gave him the original one, and that's when he was sold on
it.
LAWRENCE: Yeah. He said, "woa, you guys put this thing out, huh?"
And I said "yeah, we ain't fuckin around!" HAHAHAHAHA!
GR: ACTUALLY
THE REAL DEAL IS KINDA LIKE RAW, OR FRANK MILLER'S HARD BOILED. WERE
YOU GUYS INFLUENCED BY THAT STUFF?
R.D. Now to tell you the truth, the
original title of our magazine was Raw until I found out these other
guys in New York did Raw. I've read all the Frank Miller stuff, and
I've read Raw, and the thing that infuriates me about these guys is
the fact that they try to be raw, but either they're curtailing it on
purpose or they don't know what real raw is. See, that's what angers
me.
LAWRENCE: They don't take it to that next level.
R.D. I say, don't
sell people a cheap bill of motherfuckin' goods. If you say you're
gonna deliver hardcore, give 'em hardcore. People are frustrated
enough as it is. Good example- Wolverine and X-Men. He's supposed to
be so hard: he never shredded nobody!
LAWRENCE: HAHAHAHA!! Want to see 'em shredded!
R.D. That's it. People want the raw. You come home every
day, yo bitch is off spendin' money, your boss is a fuckin' asshole,
people want an outlet, and I get angry when they don't get that
outlet. So I made it my personal vendetta to give 'em an outlet. After
you read this, everything you ever wanted to do, you shoulda got out
of your system. If not, I can't help you.
LAWRENCE: Just like at my
job there's this guy, white guy, 30s, hair coming out, he's like an
accountant or something. You know, a quiet guy sitting at his desk all
the time. So I gave him a Real Deal, and he started talkin' like GC and
stuff. One day I say. "hey, So-n-So, where you goin'?" He said, "Huh!-
I'm gonna git me one of these bitches to take me out to lunch!"
R.D. See, what a motherfucker has to understand, is yo,
political correctness is fine and well, but let's realize one thing:
it's a false state of mind. Nobody really wants to be this nice. We all
have our personal prejudices. We all want to commit acts of violence
just for the hell of it. Fontunately, 98 percent of the time we
control it. But for those of us who want to see it on TV, or in a
magazine, or record, you ain't gettin' it anymore!
LAWRENCE: Huh-huh.
That's right!
R.D. Like this Last Action Hero bullshit. This
motherfucker's runnin' around- "oh yeah, it's raw, it's hard." I bet
it's some A-Team shit! Don't nobody get blasted, don't no bitches get
fucked over, and I'm sayin' "look, people are hostile and they want to
see some hostile shit." If more people were doin' shit like us, I
guarantee you the murder rate would go down. You said you were
surprised you hadn't seen anything like it before- well, you
probably won't!
GR: OK, BUT IS THERE ANYBODY IN MUSIC, FILM OR PRINT
THAT COMES CLOSE TO WHAT YOU GUYS ARE SHOOTING FOR?
LAWRENCE: Damn that's a hard one to answer.
R.D. I guess some of these guys in the b-movies.
GR: LIKE BLAXPLOITATION SHITS?
R.D. Not black ones, just regular b-type movies. Some of the stuff
you see on cable. It comes close, but they take too long to set it up
and never develop the character properly. Cos everybody has a certain
way of murdering somebody. And that's the shit I been
noticin'- these guys are helter skelter killers. After a while, I
just couldn't stand it anymore. Like The A-Team was talkin' all this
hard shit, and this B.A. motherfucker is walkin' around callin'
everybody "fool." But he never really whupped a motherfuckers ass so
he's in the hospital for six months and gotta learn how to walk
again-
LAWRENCE: Serious ass-kickin'.
R.D. That's the ass-kickin' I want to see!
GR: HAVE YOU SEEN THE HONG KONG FILMS BY JACKIE CHAN
OR JOHN WOO?
LAWRENCE: We used to see all those when they came out in
the theatre-
R.D: I like Bruce Lee- he delivered the goods. And I
like Steven Seagal.
GR: BUT YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE KLLER OR HARD BOILED
LAWRENCE: I've heard of 'em.
GR: COS I THINK THEY'D FIT YOUR CRITERIA.
[When told that everybody usually dies in John Woo movies, the Real Deal duo giggle with approval]
R.D. When we start making movies, we're gonna have a murder every
seven minutes.
LAWRENCE: You go and see movies that are supposed to
be raw, a fuckin' half hour goes by and nothin' happens.
GR: THAT
SHOULD BE THE FIRST OFF SHOOT OF THE REAL DEAL - "MURDER EVERY SEVEN
MINUTES"!
LAWRENCE: [Laughs with tonsils like Flavor Flav].
GR: WE WERE TALKING ABOUT BLAXPLOITAITON FLIX, AND IN THE SECOND TO
LAST FRAME OF YOUR COMIC YOU SEE G.C. PASSED OUT, HIS PLATFORMS AT THE
SIDE OF HIS BED. IS HE FROM THAT ERA?
LAWRENCE: Yeah. In the late
'60s, early '70s, he was in his 20s and 30s and stuff, and that's what
set him. So G.C.'s about 47 years old or so, and this is what he
wears. He loves these clothes and shit. I've seen guys like
that.
R.D. I'm glad you picked that up, most people never notice that.
LAWRENCE: Mm-hmm.
R.D. It's like an inside joke- he's locked in
1972.
LAWRENCE: HAHAHAHAHAHA! And what's so funny is we first came up
with this around '83 or so. And now people are wearing platforms and
bell bottoms again! It tripped the fuck OUT of me!
GR: YOU GUYS
WEREN'T TRYING TO START A '70S REVIVAL!!
LAWRENCE: No, no. It's just
that the character was an older guy and that's what he liked to
wear. Cos like when we first started doin' this, that stuff had just
ended a few years earlier. You got laughed at if you dressed like
that.
R.D. When I created this dude, like with any character, you
say, what would such and such do in this situation? Now G.C. likes all
this shit, that's why he wears it, and that's just it. And anybody who
talks about it, is gonna git what we call "gore-danced," which is
stomped to death-
LAWRENCE: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
GR: WHAT KIND OF MUSIC
DO YOU GUYS LISTEN TO IN GENERAL, AND IN PARTICULAR, WHEN YOU'RE
WORKING?
LAWRENCE: Usually I draw late at night, and I listen to a
lot of jazz. I like a lot of '70s stuff. Al Green. But a lot of times
I'll tune in a Top 40 station and listen to some rap. I like old jazz,
too, from the '30s. I got a whole buncha music. Now the music
G.C. likes-
R.D. Huh.
LAWRENCE: Like "Diamond in the back, sunroof down/Diggin the scene
with the gangster-
GR: SEE THAT'S WHAT WE THOUGHT, TOO. THE WILLIAM
DEVAUGHAN SHIT. THAT'S WHAT THE ORIGINAL GANGSTERS WENT FOR- THOSE
FALSETTO BALLADS. DRAMATICS, SHIT LIKE THAT.
R.D. That's
G.C. there. He has all his original 8-track tapes. 360 Degrees of
Billy Paul...
GR: NOW IS THAT WHAT YOU'RE LISTENING TO ALSO, WHEN YOU
WRITE?
R.D. Well I don't listen to music when I write that, because
the whole thing is, I just, I-
GR: YOU'RE AT A FEVER PITCH?
R.D. I'm at a fever pitch-
LAWRENCE: Huh-huh!
R.D. Because the
thing is, I meant to end it a long time ago.
GR: IT SEEMS LIKE YOU ARE
UPSET, COS YOU ALWAYS SAY "THE MOTHERFUCKING END!!!"
LAWRENCE:
HAHAHAHA! It takes a life of it's own, like I was drawing it almost
automatically, it was just so much fun doin'it. You want to see it done
and shit. That's how G.C. would think, anyway. I tell people don't
take this shit personally but if you had a character like him,
that's how he'd think. I've known a lot of them and shit. His
brother's one of 'em. And this is how these people think. They
don't give a fuck. They'll go to jail in a minute.
[SIDE ONE OF TAPE ENDS]
And so ends part one as well. Tune in next time for the rest of this interview and the (ch)illing conclusion to Jabbo The Blind Pimp. Meanwhile, do your homework and pick up issues #l and #2 of The Real Deal by contacting Amok Books at 1764 N. Vermont Ave., L.A., CA, 90027, (213) 665-0956 Or contact Real Deal Productions, P.O. Box 19129, Los Angeles, CA. 90019, (213) 938-6717.
