I got in with [Factor Unknown], but meanwhile Sal Quartuccio [now head of Sal Q Productions] had shown my stuff to [artist] Rich Buckler. Rich need an assistant and called me up with an offer. I was working as a bank teller at the time.

My first published pro work was on Rich's first issue of Deathlok, Astonishing Tales #25. He gave me a two-page cartoon sequence at the end showing how he and Doug Moench came up with Deathlok from discarded ideas in a trash pail. My art being what it was at the time, I penciled everything except the Deathlok figure.

By being Rich's assistant, people at Marvel got to know me. And people like [editor] Jim Salicrup and [writers] David Kraft and Bill Mantlo saw my work, liked it, and got me my first work under my own name.George Tuska needed a break on the Man-Wolf feature in Creatures on the Loose and Dave Kraft liked working with me, so he asked me to stay. Around the same time, I was given a fill-in on the Sons of the Tiger feature in Deadly Hans of Kung Fu #6, but Bill Mantlo asked for me to stay on as well.

Thanks to them, I was given regular work fairly quickly. That was around 1974, only two years out of high school. Within six months after that, Rich Buckler fell behind. Since I was Rich's assistant, they asked me to pencil what was supposed to be a Fantastic Four annual and turn into two issues of the regular book [#164-#165].