Howard Chaykin’s Latest Project Features An Old Hero And A New Approach

In a half century of making comics, artist/writer Howard Chaykin has done it all: groundbreaking work for DC and Marvel, some of the earliest book-length graphic novels, caustic reinventions of traditional characters, an iconic independent series from the 1980s (American Flagg), and provocative creator-owned action thrillers and satirical work down to the present day. Though he is perhaps best known as the first comic artist to draw Star Wars (the huge sales of those issues in the late 1970s might have saved the American comic book business), when I asked him about his notable accomplishments, he notably left that one out.

But there is one trick this old dog is just now trying for the first time: crowdfunding. Chaykin and project producer Michael Stradford are hoping that fans can power Chaykin’s latest project, a historical adventure yard called Fargo, based on paperback potboilers by John Benteen, originally published in the late 1960s and early 70s.