Early life and career '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:
Marvel Comics and Ghost Rider Eventually, at the suggestion of Eisner letterer
Ben Oda, Ploog broke into comics at
Warren Publishing, doing stories for the company's black-and-white
horror-comics magazines. 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, After three stories in
Marvel Spotlight, the feature spun off onto its own book. Ploog then helped launched the initial
Johnny Blaze version of the supernatural motorcyclist
Ghost Rider, in
Marvel Spotlight #5 (Aug. 1972), and drew the next three adventures. 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: '' #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). ==Bibliography==