Alter Ego #188 Preview

“Greetings, creep culturists! For my debut issue, I, the CRYPTOLOGIST (with the help of FROM THE TOMB editor PETER NORMANTON), have exhumed the worst Horror Comics excesses of the 1950s, Killer “B” movies to die for, and the creepiest, kookiest toys that crossed your boney little fingers as a child! But wait... do you dare enter the House of Usher, or choose sides in the skirmish between the Addams Family and The Munsters?! Can you stand to gaze at Warren magazine frontispieces by this issue’s cover artist BERNIE WRIGHTSON, or spend some Hammer Time with that studio’s most frightening films? And if Atlas pre-Code covers or terrifying science-fiction are more than you can take, stay away! All this, and more, is lurching toward you in TwoMorrows Publishing’s latest, and most decrepit, magazine—just for retro horror fans, and featuring my henchmen WILL MURRAY, MARK VOGER, BARRY FORSHAW, TIM LEESE, PETE VON SHOLLY, and STEVE and MICHAEL KRONENBERG!”

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

#1 ships October 2024!

CRYPTOLOGY #2

The Cryptologist and his ghastly little band have cooked up more grisly morsels, including: ROGER HILL’s conversation with our diabolical cover artist DON HECK, severed hand films, pre-Code comic book terrors, the otherworldly horrors of Hammer’s Quatermass, another Killer “B” movie classic, plus spooky old radio shows, and the horror-inspired covers of the Shadow’s own comic book. Start the ghoul-year with retro-horror done right by FORSHAW, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, RICHARD HAND, VON SHOLLY, and editor PETER NORMANTON

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95

(Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships January 2025

CRYPTOLOGY #3

This third wretched issue inflicts the dread of MARS ATTACKS upon you—the banned cards, the model kits, the despicable comics, and a few words from the film’s deranged storyboard artist PETE VON SHOLLY! The chilling poster art of REYNOLD BROWN gets brought up from the Cryptologist’s vault, along with a host of terrifying puppets from film, and more comic books they’d prefer you forget! Plus, more Hammer Time, JUSTIN MARRIOT on obscure ’70s fear-filled paperbacks, another Killer “B” film, and more to satiate your sinister side!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95

(Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2025

CRYPTOLOGY #4

Our fourth putrid tome treats you to ALEX ROSS’ gory lowdown on his Universal Monsters paintings! Hammer Time brings you face-to-face with the “Brides of Dracula”, and the Cryptologist resurrects 3-D horror movies and comics of the 1950s! Learn the origins of slasher films, and chill to the pre-Code artwork of Atlas’ BILL EVERETT and ACG’s 3-D maestro HARRY LAZARUS. Plus, another Killer “B” movie and more awaits retro horror fans, by NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!

J.T. Go (Associate Editor)

Mark Lewis (Cover Coordinator)

Comic Crypt Editor

Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll

Jerry G. Bails (founder)

Ronn Foss, Biljo White

Mike Friedrich, Bill Schelly

Proofreader

William J. Dowlding

Cover Artists

Gil Kane & John Romita

Cover Colorist

Unknown

With Special Thanks to:

Heidi Amash

Henry Andrews

David Armstrong

Bob Bailey

Jean Bails

Rod Beck

John Benson

Ricky Terry Brisaque

Mike Bromberg

Mike Burkey

Nick Caputo

Dewey Cassell

John Cimino

Shaun Clancy

Comic Book Plus (website)

Comic Vine (website)

Pierre Comtois

Chet Cox

Daniel James Cox

Jennifer DeRoss

Leonardo de Sá

Craig Delich

Al Dellinges

Diversions of the Groovy Kind

Michael Dunne

Mark Evanier

Shane Foley

Julia Fox

Terri Fox

Joe Frank

Stephan A. Friedt

Jeff Gelb

Janet Gilbert

Grand Comics

Database (website)

Alex Grand

Jeff Hamett

Dan Hagen

Rob Hansen

Ben Herman

Sean Howe

Richard Howell

R.A. Jones

John Joshua

Jim Kealy Lambiek

Comiclopedia (website)

Tom Lammers

Tristan Lapoussiere

Dominic Leonard

Jean-Marc Lofficier

Art Lortie

Jim Ludwig

Eve Machlan Magnus

Doug Martin

Gustavo Medina

Mike Mikulovsky

Dusty Miller

Mark Muller

Jerry Ordway Palantine News Network (website)

Barry Pearl Pinterest (website) pulpartists.com (website)

Todd Reis

James Rosen

Allen Ross

Dan St. John

Ignacio Fernández Sarasola

Randy Sargent

Sasquatch Media

David Saunders

Cory Sedlmeier

Richard Seeto

Mitchell Senft

Craig Shutt

Walter Simonson

Derrick Smith

Emilio Soltero

J. David Spurlock

Dann Thomas

Robert Tuska

Dr. Michael J. Vassallo

Delmo Walters, Jr.

Mark Witz

Ignacio Fernández Sarasola on the influence of Captain Marvel on Franco Spain.

On Our Cover: It was publisher John Morrow who suggested we adapt the cover of The Avengers #141 (Nov. 1975) to front the “Marvel side” of this issue’s flip double-header… but he may have had A/E’s editor in mind, since Roy Thomas not only co-created the Silver Age Vision with John Buscema but actually designed the precise costumes of Squadron Sinister/Supreme members Hyperion, Dr. Spectrum, and the [other-Earth] Whizzer… and scripted the debut of Golden Archer and Lady Lark as well. Still, it was Gil Kane who penciled this cover, and John Romita who inked it, doubtless making a few of his own trademark alterations along the way. The Squadron was Roy T’s homage to DC’s “Earth-Two.” [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Above: Perhaps the last of several collaborations between two of this side’s intrepid interviewees—John Buscema as penciler and George Tuska as inker—took place in The Avengers #54 (July 1968), in a tale scripted by Roy Thomas. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“[The Comic Business] Gave Me Three Square Meals A Day”

A 2001 Interview with BIG JOHN BUSCEMA

Conducted by David Armstrong

Transcribed by Alex Grand

A/E

EDITOR’S NOTE: John Buscema, as most readers of this magazine (or of comicbooks over the past half-century) already know, was one of the greatest draftsmen in the history of the field, and one of Marvel Comics’ most prolific and important artists in the last third of the 20th century. This interview with him, conducted

by Dave Armstrong at the San Diego Comic-Con in summer of 2001, was one of the last that John gave, since he passed away of a returning cancer on January 10, 2002. At the time of this talk, however, the cancer seemed to be in remission and John was enjoying his retirement after so many decades in the comics industry.

John Buscema

A 2000 photo, sandwiched between the first splash page he ever drew for Conan the Barbarian (#27, June 1973) and the final splash he drew for any color comic starring the Cimmerian: Conan: Death Covered in Gold #3 (Dec. 1999), the finale of a three-issue mini-series that pretty much closed out Marvel’s Conan license, the first time around. Buscema’s artwork for CTB #25 & 26 was published before #27, of course; but the latter issue was entirely drawn before the other two. Buscema was inked by Ernie Chan (as Ernie Chua) in #27, and inked his own pencils in the ’99 series. Scripts by Roy Thomas. Thanks to Barry Pearl for the #27 scan. [TM & © Heroic Signatures, LLC.]

DAVID ARMSTRONG: When did you start drawing?

JOHN BUSCEMA: As soon as I was able to hold a pencil in my hand.

DA: Did your parents encourage you?

BUSCEMA: My mother did. My father thought I was wasting my time… [that] I should have learned a trade. Not a profession… a trade.

DA: What did he want you to do?

BUSCEMA: Anything to earn a buck.

DA: Well, at least you learned that lesson….

BUSCEMA: I never listened to him. I listened to my mother.

DA: What kind of training did you have?

BUSCEMA: I went to the High School of Music and Art, where they developed your appreciation of art. They took you to museums and they gave you a canvas or a watercolor paper and you painted. They put up a still-life in front of you and you copied it…. While I was going to high school, I went to Pratt at night for a couple of hours a week, and I had design and figure drawing. The Brooklyn Museum had a Saturday morning class for a couple of hours each week, and I learned some figure drawing there, and that was about the extent [of it]. Most of my training was right on the job.

DA: Were there any guys in your class that ended up in the same business as you?

BUSCEMA: I had a friend who was in comics, and he would give me addresses to apply for work, and I’d bring samples and no one would accept them. [Then] I saw an ad one day in The New York Times. They were looking for a comicbook artist, and it was Timely. And I went up there, showed him my samples. Stan was impressed, apparently, and gave me a staff job.

DA: And how did you like being on staff?

BUSCEMA: I enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun. We were kids. I was a kid. Gene Colan was a kid. Most of the guys were much older than I was, and it was a nice experience. I worked on staff for about a year and a half, and then they disbanded. There was no staff work anymore. It was just freelance.

DA: Did you have any influences from any of the people that you worked with?

BUSCEMA: No, but I was influenced by the syndicated strips: the Prince Valiants,

the Tarzans, the Flash Gordons, and all that. I love that stuff. And illustrators. The illustrators from The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, which don’t exist anymore. Do they exist? I don’t know….

DA: You started in the late ’40s.

BUSCEMA: What, comics? ’48.

DA: ’48. Could you tell at that point that the illustration business was not doing well?

BUSCEMA: Oh, that was the height of illustration at that time. ’48. Wow. That’s when I started clipping the magazines. I clipped them for years. I have a collection at home. Tremendous collection.

DA: Did you do various genres for Timely when you started?

BUSCEMA: Yeah, I did. Westerns, romance, crime. Crime was very popular. Crime Does Not Pay was the most popular comic. At that period we did everything. Super-heroes weren’t that popular. They were dying out at that time….

Didn’t Women Commit Any Crimes In 1950?

(Above:) An early John Buscema cover, for Timely’s Man Comics #2 (March 1950) already showed his command of the human body in motion. Because of the short-lived company symbol on this one, it might be said to be possibly Big John’s very first Marvel cover.

(Left:) One of the artist’s earliest crime splashes, from Man Comics #4 (Oct. ’50). Writer unknown. (Just in case you have any doubts that this is JB’s work, he snuck his initials onto the truck driving away, as pointed out by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. who sent us both these scans. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“Why Is She Doing Paste-Ups In Production?”

MARIE SEVERIN On Comics & Censorship

Interview Conducted by David Armstrong

Transcribed by Alex Grand

EDITOR’S NOTE: Marie Severin, one of the mostly unalloyed joys of the Marvel Bullpen in the 1960s and counting, unfortunately gave out relatively few interviews before her passing a few years back. We’re fortunate that Dave Armstrong cajoled her into one at the SDCC in 2000….

DAVID ARMSTRONG: …Okay. Marie, when did you start drawing as a kid?

MARIE SEVERIN: I don’t remember. It was very young, because everybody in the house drew. So we always had paper. It was the

Mirthful Marie Severin

Depression. Somehow my parents always had stuff for us to draw on, and we never had to turn it over and do on the other side. So we were middle-class Depression.

DA: Did you have any formal art training?

(as Stan Lee christened her in the 1960s) in a 2000 photo—flanked by examples of how well she could handle a certain green-tinged titan both seriously and humorously. (Below left:) Her dramatic cover for The Incredible Hulk #105 (July 1968), as inked by Frank Giacoia. (Below right:) The splash page of her

SEVERIN: Well, yeah, I went to Cartoonists and Illustrators School, but that was not like high-class stuff. I think I had what I thought was adequate at the time at home, because my father was a painter. He was a package designer in real life. I had been signed up to go to Pratt Institute, and my brother John was going to pay for that. But I said, “Heck, I want to go

hilarious Hulk takeoff in Not Brand Echh #3 (Oct. ’67), as scripted by Gary Friedrich. Photo courtesy of Alex Grand. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Tales From The Colorist

Marie’s color guide (done for the workers who actually prepared the color overlays for the comics) for a Jack Davis-drawn story from EC’s Tales from the Crypt #40 (Feb.-March 1954). Written by Bill Gaines & Al Feldstein. From the Internet. [TM & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.]

out and earn money,” you know? So I got a job down on Wall Street. And then when John was working at EC, they were dissatisfied with the coloring….

DA: When the company ended up folding, Mad stayed on as a black-&white book. What’d you do?

SEVERIN: Well, I thought Mad would never last. I could have stayed there. But, you know, how could it last? They’re going to run out of humor! They don’t have Harvey [Kurtzman] anymore. What are they going to do? And I was basically a colorist at that point. I wasn’t doing that much art. I wasn’t selling any art.

And so I went up to Stan Lee and worked with Stan Lee until he folded up because the censoring got so bad that you couldn’t even have a gun going off on a Western cover or somebody chasing somebody in a

terrible graveyard with some guy running up after somebody or a lady screaming with her dress maybe above her knee or something—the censor would come right down. Now, Al Feldstein maintains that this was a scheme solely by the other [comics] publishers. I think it was also political. I think Kefauver was a great help in getting that, making a name for himself…. But I can’t see that the publishers would be all for that, because they were getting censored, too.

I mean, I went up to Stan Lee and we couldn’t do anything, you know? And it wasn’t that we wanted to do bad things. It was the action of it… that’s what a kid wants… excitement. And they took that all away. Marvel—it was called Timely at that point—they went under and they fired the whole bullpen and everybody went their certain ways except the key artists like [John] Severin, [Joe] Maneely. Bill Everett was there. I think they did freelance then.

Of course, the real fast and professional and good styles always seemed to survive. But I was always very bitter, because so many of these guys came home from the war and stuff and their lives had been interrupted. And then they were working, trying hard, paying

Six-Guns? Hey, We Only Counted Three Of ’Em!

After EC Comics folded up shop except for Mad magazine, Marie’s older brother John soon got a staff job at Timely/Atlas Comics, as per his exquisitely detailed cover for Wyatt Earp #14 (Nov. 1957). Coming from a Comics Code era that wouldn’t let the Western heroes shoot anybody, this one sure features six-guns prominently! Thanks to Tom Lammers. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

John Severin

off houses, just getting married, and their business is wiped out. And I thought, “These scrounges that did this!”

And today, when you look back at what was done, all our stories had a good moral. They were comical. They were like Grimm fairy tales. The humor stuff was superb. There was nothing off-color with any of that stuff. Willie [Elder] will tell you the story of his Santa Claus story. I mean, it’s classic humor. It’s wonderful. And what he added was fabulous.

DA: Was Maneely at Atlas when you were there?

SEVERIN: Yes. Delightful. I had a crush on him, too. I had a crush on Graham Ingels. Had one on Johnny Craig. It’s okay now because they’re older, so I can tell. And then Joe Maneely, he was great.

DA: People have told me that Stan and Joe had a great relationship.

SEVERIN: Insofar as you pick the guy that you relate easiest to when you’re doing the most with him, like Stan Lee did later on with John Romita. You know, John wasn’t the fastest one in the Strange But True!

(Above:) We’re hopping a bit out of chronological order here, but we wanted to show you the very first splash page that Marie ever penciled (and which she inked, as well): “Doctor Strange” in Strange Tales #153 (Feb. 1967). Script by Stan Lee. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Plenty Of Room At The Top

(Above:) There was little doubt in Marie Severin’s mind (or in Ye Editor’s) that Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko would still have found plenty of work to do for Stan Lee during the original “Marvel Age of Comics” even if the super-prolific and super-talented Joe Maneely hadn’t tragically died in 1958. Marie (and Roy) had even less doubt that Maneely could have held his own as a super-hero artist during that era, as witness his dynamic cover for Sub-Mariner #37 (Dec. 1954). Courtesy of the GCD. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Joe Maneely

Courtesy of daughter Nancy Maneely.

“I Really Enjoyed Working As A Cartoonist”

GEORGE TUSKA On Crime Does Not Pay, Buck Rogers, Marvel, & DC

Interview Conducted by David Armstrong

Transcribed by Alex Grand

Genial George Tuska may be holding up a latter-day Superman drawing in this vintage photo, but he did his best-remembered super-hero art for Marvel’s Iron Man series. Case in point: the cover of issue #5 (Sept. 1968), inked by Frank Giacoia—George’s very first cover for Stan and the gang. Thanks to the GCD. [Cover TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

EDITOR’S NOTE: George Tuska was a real gentleman. You could sense it whenever you encountered him, even briefly. He was also one of those rare comicbook artists who have enjoyed more than one period during which they were successful and even influential. He was admired by most of the industry for his work on the Biro/Wood Crime Does Not Pay of the 1940s & ’50s… he achieved the common comicbook illustrator’s dream of drawing a major newspaper strip (Buck Rogers), and for several years at Marvel, he was one of the artists who could most be counted on to sell a comicbook—not just Iron Man but The Avengers, Sub-Mariner, and others. And he would top it all off with another comic-strip stint, on DC’s World’s Greatest Super-Heroes, starring Superman. This brief interview was conducted by Dave Armstrong at the 1997 San Diego Comic-Con.

GEORGE TUSKA: My mother was born in Kiev, Ukraine. She came into the United States in 1880, and my brother and sister were born in New York. My mother moved to Hartford , Connecticut, so I was born [there] on April 26, 1916.

When I was young, I was in a hospital for an appendix operation, and after the operation I was able to walk around the hospital, where an elderly patient showed me how to draw Uncle Sam, cowboys, and Indians. That was the start. Before working for comics, I went to the National Academy of Design art school. I did the cosmetic drawing for bracelets, planning design. I didn’t care too much for it; that was my first job, and I don’t think we can call it art, but it was not my thing. I went to school to learn painting, alternative media, because my biggest desire was to become an illustrator. Back then there was a lot of illustration art: Argosy, Saturday Evening Post, American magazines. But when I got into comics, it was just about the same thing. It was illustration. But later on the illustrators disappeared because the magazines had gone away. It became different.

DAVID ARMSTRONG: You went to school with Jack Kirby?

TUSKA: The first time I met Jack Kirby was at an art school downtown in Manhattan, and he did comical pencils, which is fast, and I enjoyed watching him do all that. We had lunch together; he

was from Brooklyn. I lived uptown, West Side, 200th Street.

My first job in comics was with Eisner & Iger professionally. I got it through a professional agency, and Iger called for me for samples. He didn’t explain what kind of samples, but I made individual cartoons and I showed it to him and they said that that is not the same way they do it. I asked him what it is, so they showed me a comicbook: “This is what it is.” I said, “Give me a chance.” He said, “Sure.” I went home and I came back with a package the following day… a completed story all lettered and everything, with borders. He liked it very much. It was a story about a Mounted Policeman and some criminal, and they bought it for five dollars. They asked me if I wanted to work in the office. I said, “That’d be fine,” and they showed me four fellows then. There was Bob Powell, Lou Fine and Jerry Iger and Will Eisner.

Later on, as time went by, we moved from 42nd Street to 44th Street and it expanded with more artists and cartoonists. I was together mostly with Eisner; we were both talking about stories. Will Eisner had a lot of imagination in what he was doing. I could say one thing, that he was a producer, director, and an actor on paper. There wasn’t much writing for artists then, and I got along with Eisner. He told me about when this guy should hit this guy and then throw a bomb at this guy, and I’d say, “Fine, I could

do that….” At most levels, Eisner was the one that really helped me with my work.

DA: Did he do layouts?

TUSKA: It was complete layouts, inking and drawing. Then you’d write the lettering in, but I don’t do the lettering and the ink. I complete the border… and how many panels per page. I write the story first, and then from there I put one panel, two panels, three panels, four panels. I would follow all that up and put it on the paper and then come to Eisner and show it to him. Then he would say, “This could be changed a little” or “that could be changed, but this is good.” That helped a lot and it brought my interest up more. I brought it back home; I fixed it over and I did it. I felt good about that.

DA: Did you see those folks outside of the office?

TUSKA: There were no other artists I knew, just the ones that were already in the office, but later on, there got to be more and more and more from a different office to another…. The more I did that, the more I got to know more artists and they got to know me.

DA: Where did you go after the Eisner shop?

TUSKA: I quit Eisner because Iger had about ten artists. Each one had about 5 or 6 stories to do a month. Pages were not much per story: 5, 6, something like 7, compared to today. Some artist dropped out. Iger can’t get another artist, so he takes his work and distributes it to another artist, and it makes more work for them to figure out in one month. And then another artist dropped out, and it would still get distributed again. There was one point when he came after me and said, “Hurry up with the deadline—you could take some home and work there.” It was a little too much for me. One day we all went out to lunch, and I told them I have to see someone.

I never returned to Eisner & Iger. I got along very well with Eisner, but I hadn’t done anything for two weeks. I just loafed around. I went into a cafeteria on 23rd Street between 6th and 7th Avenue. I met two fellows that worked with Eisner & Iger, Charlie Sultan and another fellow, David Glaser. We got to see each other feeling that we worked together at Iger and Eisner and… he says, “We quit a week after you did.” He said, “It was getting too much for all of us,” and he says, “Across the street is Harry ‘A’ Chesler, he’s got a studio.” I called him and he needs artists, “How about you coming up with me?” I said, “Fine.”

I went up there to the fourth floor and they introduced me to Chesler…. I enjoyed working for Chesler. It was close, there was no art director there or anything like that, but they had a nice group of artists: Charlie Sultan, Al Plastino, Joey Cavallo, Ruben Moreira. Ruben Moreira was into more of the fine arts. He didn’t care much for comics. He did Tarzan or something like that, but Chesler was more or less like

a father. Al Plastino was doing the Superman newspaper then and invited me to his place in New Jersey. We had a ball; it was a really good get-together.

DA: How long did you work for him?

TUSKA: About five years or so. Will Eisner separated from Iger somehow. I don’t know how or what, but he had a studio in Tudor City, 42nd Street. He wanted me to work on Uncle Sam and other things, and they were doing The Spirit, and once in a while I would help him with The Spirit. I got along together with Eisner again all of that stuff. It was kind of home, it was nice.

DA: And how long did you do that?

TUSKA: Two years or so. ’43, ’42, I think

DA: Before Eisner went into the service?

TUSKA: I was working at Fiction House, and the same artists were there... here and there. I was also drafted by the Army. I was in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, 100th Division. Artillery. They noticed my condition; I had a slight loss of hearing. They asked me to work in headquarters…. It was for me to make a large plan, so

Rumble In The Jungle

George T.’s cover for Fiction House’s Jungle Comics #13 (Jan. 1941)— juxtaposed with a commission drawing he did in later years of Shanna the She-Devil. He had penciled the first issue of her Marvel comic, cover-dated December 1972. Thanks to the GCD and Dominic Leonard, respectively. [Jungle cover TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; Shanna TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

the officer consulted other officers in the classroom: how the bullets would drop behind the mountain with the enemy inside, and so forth…. I enjoyed it very much, but I felt a little guilty about all these other fellows passing by after a long long day hiking or dead tired, and I’m driving a Jeep. I felt really really lousy about that... and then they released me and I went back to Fiction House. Fiction House wasn’t the same anymore. The fellows were not around. It was girls and older men. We used to kid around a lot, but now it was different. So I just told [the manager] I want to work freelance.

Funny thing about working at home. Nobody was around there, so you had to get used to it. It took me about a month or so, but working freelance I had more privacy; you know, all the visual references all around me. I was sort of contented by them, and I was making more pages a day, drawing out as much work as I can.

DA: So you liked working freelance?

TUSKA: Yes. If I ever go back to an office, I think it’ll take about two months to get used to it. Freelance I enjoy very much.

DA: What kinds of storied did you do at Fiction House?

TUSKA: There was “Sheena,” “Secret Agents,” something like that—I don’t recall too much….

DA: When you finished the job, did you go into the office?

TUSKA: I did return when my work was completed, and then they would give me another script and I would go to Florida and then come back or mail it back. But still, it was kind of empty with the fellows not around.

“Why?”

JIM MOONEY Discusses His High-Profile Work At Marvel & DC

Interview Conducted by David Armstrong

Transcribed by Alex Grand

A/E

EDITOR’S NOTE:

Besides being a talented artist, Jim Mooney was clearly a good talker as well. You want proof? By his own account, he talked his way into becoming an artist on “Batman” as his first DC assignment—then the company’s second-most-important feature—and later became one of the few Timely (future Marvel) artists who was counted as one of Stan Lee’s best friends. If he had contributed nothing to the field but “Batman” and “Spider-Man,” he would have earned a place in comics history… but there were plenty of other triumphs along the way. This conversation was videotaped by David Armstrong in San Diego in 1997.

Jim (Madman) Mooney in his prime, above iconic illustrations he did for two of the heroes with which he’s most associated:

His Batman cover for Detective Comics #151 (Sept. 1949), courtesy of the GDC [TM & © DC Comics]— —and the splash page of Amazing Spider-Man #69 (Feb. ’69), one of the first issues in which he is credited for “illustration” (over John Romita’s “storyboards” = layouts) rather than “mere” inking as in a couple of earlier issues. Script by Stan Lee. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Spreading Like Wildfire

Anyway, I stuck it out, and I was there for a couple of weeks and I had put in an application at Ace Magazines. They needed a cartoonist for their new comicbooks, and they called me and made me a fairly decent offer, a little bit more than I was making at Eisner & Iger. I took them up on it because, for one thing, it was freelance with Eisner Studios. It was working in a bullpen, and I didn’t care much for that. I didn’t have the freedom that I was used to. I worked there for, I guess, maybe a year and a half.

At that time, funny-animal comics were beginning to become popular, and Timely was publishing a Terry-Toons [comic] and things of that type. I took a walk over there and I thought, this might be kind of fun. It doesn’t seem to be too demanding. It pays fairly well. And I walked into the office and bumped into Stan Lee. Stan Lee was about 19 at the time and an office boy. Stan tells his story a little better than I

do, but he asked me what I did and I said, “Oh, I pencil.” He said, “What else do you do?” I said, “I ink and anything else. I letter, I color.” He said, “Do you print the book, too?” So we hit it off pretty well; it was a sort of a love/hate relationship at first. I guess it still is, in a way.

DA: Someone told me you used to hang out with Stan every once in a while and share dates. Is that true?

MOONEY: It was very difficult, because I was married at the time and my wife and I were living up in Woodstock. Stan had a great apartment in a hotel on Broadway and 70th Street, somewhere in there, sort of a resident hotel. And when I’d come in to deliver my stuff, I’d stay with him overnight. And, you know, the guy had two girls, so somebody had to escort the other one. But that’s as far as it went. That was my first wife, and she’s long gone.

When Worlds Collude

Jim Mooney & Stan Lee in later days—and JM’s splash page for a story in Timely/Atlas’ Journey into Unknown Worlds #42 (Feb. 1956). Scripter unknown. The photo was obviously taken some years after they met, of course—but Stan wasn’t really an “office boy” when he and Jim first encountered each other: Stan had become Marvel’s full editor in 1941, admittedly at the age of 18-19, following the departure of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for DC Comics. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

One of Mooney’s early assignments, probably through the Iger shop, was drawing the feature “Wildfire”—as in this splash for Smash Comics #27 (Oct. 1941). Script by Robert Turner. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Lash Lightning Striking Again!

DA: Did you hear about the job because you had been working in the pulps and Ace was a pulp publisher?

MOONEY: I forget how it came down the grapevine, but I had heard about it. I made an application [to Ace], and the only pulp I had ever worked for was Weird Tales. I did know they were a publishing house for pulps.

DA: Their super-hero line didn’t last particularly long, and there are a couple of books that only lasted 4 or 5 issues. Banner and Our Flag. But the covers that were done for those books are spectacularly patriotic… obviously a reflection of the times. Were you given specific instructions as to how to make the covers spectacularly patriotic? .

MOONEY: Actually, it was almost obligatory at that time. I mean, you felt that if you didn’t do that, you might be blackballed and they might even draft you sooner than you thought. Anyway, I did most of those covers and some of the interiors.

DA: And did you enjoy working on any of the specific features?

MOONEY: I liked doing the covers. I didn’t care too much for the interiors, but you know, it was fun. Those covers were kind of unusual… because there was a tremendous amount of bondage,

if you’ve seen any of them. They always had some poor damsel in distress strapped to a table with a buzzsaw coming at her, with some fiend pushing buttons to make it hit various spots that might be very sensitive.

DA: When you started working for Stan at Timely, I think you said you worked on funny animals. Was that quite a departure from doing super-heroes?

MOONEY: I loved it. It was easy…. The humor was pretty juvenile… but it was still kind of fun. And mainly it was the idea of doing something that bordered on humorous cartooning.

DA: And how old were you when this happened?

MOONEY: 21, I think. 20 or 21.

DA: Now, this is just about the time of the war. Did you get drafted?

MOONEY: No, actually, when Pearl Harbor came about, like everyone else, I was—you know, I’ve got to do something about this. And I went down and tried to enlist, first in the Navy, and I was rejected. I figured the Army was going to get around to me

How The Ginch Stole Terry-Toons

One of the humor features that Jim Mooney drew for Timely during the WWII years was “The Ginch and E. Claude Pennygrabber,” as per this sample from the film-licensed Terry-Toons #6 (March 1943). Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. But, far as we’ve been able to gather, there were no theatrical animated cartoons of those characters. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Mooney soon became the artist of the lead feature of Ace’s Lightning Comics, as per this splash from Vol. 2, #6 (April 1942). Scripter unknown. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

STAN LEE’s Dinner With ALAIN RESNAIS

The Writer/Co-Creator Of Fantastic Four Meets

The Director of Hiroshima Mon Amour

by Sean Howe

Our Colorful Cast

A/E

EDITOR’S NOTE: While reading Sean Howe’s groundbreaking and unauthorized 2012 comics history Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, I was intrigued to encounter brief quotations from a tape recording Stan Lee had apparently made on May 14, 1969, of himself, his wife and daughter, and renowned French “New Wave” film director Alain Resnais. Of course, I knew that, around mid-1971, I had wound up writing the first four issues of The Amazing Spider-Man not scripted by Stan… solely because Stan had taken four months off from scribing comics in order to write a speculative screenplay with Resnais, who was then residing temporarily in Manhattan. I met Resnais myself that year, lunching with him once (at his invitation) at a Chinese restaurant near Marvel… and dining one evening, along with my wife Jeanie, with Alain and his first wife at the apartment they were subletting from the novelist Vladimir Nabokov (or was it the novelist’s brother’s place? One or the other). But I had no memory of Alain having dropped by the Marvel offices two years earlier, though he clearly had. If I met him at that time, it had been only in passing, and I had forgotten it.

What interested me about the couple of paragraphs of Lee quotes from that 1969 evening in Howe’s book is Stan’s aggressively negative

assessment of the comicbook industry and of his place in it. This was a side of my boss and mentor that I had only rarely (and barely) glimpsed, and I longed to have a chance to listen to the entire tape.

I still haven’t had that opportunity—but, in 2023, Sean Howe wrote a lengthier account of the contents of that tape (to which he had obviously had access) for an online article… and we thank him for allowing us to reprint it below. Needless to say, Sean’s analyses and opinions in the piece are his own. It begins with Stan speaking at the commencement of the tape….

“…Now let’s try it. This is Wednesday, May the 14th, and here in the home of Stan and Joan Lee in New York we are privileged to have as our guest Alain Resnais, world-famous director and cinematographic great, who is just about to make a statement about his study of English as it pertains to Marvel Comics! And now, for all of our fans here and abroad, we present Mr. Alain Resnais!”

Stan Lee met the French filmmaker Alain Resnais in Manhattan in the spring of 1969. The director of Hiroshima Mon

(Left:) Stan, wife Joan, & daughter Joanie (now J.C.) Lee circa 1970 at their home in Hewlett Harbor, Long Island, NY. From the Sept. 9, 2007, edition of The New York Times Real Estate Magazine. [Photo TM & © Estate of Stan & Joan Lee.]

(Right:) French film director Alain Resnais, around the time these comments were taped. And, in the center: the cover of Sean Howe’s 2012 comics history Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, published by Harper [cover © the respective copyright holders.]

(Above:) A “Bentley” page from Pep Comics #38 (April 1943). [© MLJ]

From “Shazam!” To“¡Sarka!”

The Curious Influence Of Fawcett’s Super-heroes In Spain During Franco’s Dictatorship

by Ignacio Fernández Sarasola, Ph. D.

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

Censorship Of U .S . Comics In Spain

American comics arrived in Spain during the Second Republic (1931-1936) with the publication of comic strips such as Flash Gordon, Mandrake the Magician, Tarzan, The Phantom, Prince Valiant, Tim Tyler’s Luck, Jungle Jim, and Terry and the Pirates. Many of them came from Italy, through the publisher Lottario Vecchi, who had acquired the publishing license from King Features Syndicate. When Mussolini vetoed the publication of American comics in Italy, Vecchi saw his only option as publishing them in republican and democratic Spain, where there were not the same restrictions as in his country.

But all that changed with the coup d’état of General Francisco Franco (1936), the outbreak of the Civil War (1936-1939),

The World’s Mightiest Mortal(s) (Above:) Captain Marvel plays Sancho Panza— squire to Spain’s greatest hero, Don Quixote! From El Capitán Marvel #54, Hispano Americana de Ediciones, 1950.

(Left:) Superfuerte (“Super Strong”) is an alien with powers very similar to Captain Marvel’s, but he’s actually a robot who’s referred to as “the plastic man,” as per the translation of this cover title. From an issue of Superfuerte (Ferma, 1958). Writers & artists of both Spanish series unknown. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics; Superfuerte splash TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

J.T. Go (Associate Editor)

Mark Lewis (Cover Coordinator)

Comic Crypt Editor

Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll

Jerry G. Bails (founder)

Ronn Foss, Biljo White

Mike Friedrich, Bill Schelly

Proofreader

William J. Dowlding

Cover Artists

Carmine Infantino/Murphy Anderson

Cover Color and Restoration

Chris Fama

With Special Thanks to:

Heidi Amash

Henry Andrews

David Armstrong

Bob Bailey

Jean Bails

Rod Beck

John Benson

Ricky Terry Brisaque

Mike Bromberg

Mike Burkey

Nick Caputo

Dewey Cassell

John Cimino

Shaun Clancy

Comic Book Plus (website)

Comic Vine (website)

Pierre Comtois

Chet Cox

Daniel James Cox

Jennifer DeRoss

Leonardo de Sá

Craig Delich

Al Dellinges

Diversions of the Groovy Kind

Michael Dunne

Mark Evanier

Shane Foley

Julia Fox Terri Fox

Joe Frank

Stephan A. Friedt

Jeff Gelb

Janet Gilbert

Grand Comics

Database (website)

Alex Grand

Jeff Hamett

Dan Hagen

Rob Hansen

Ben Herman

Sean Howe

Richard Howell

R.A. Jones

John Joshua

Jim Kealy Lambiek Comiclopedia (website)

Tom Lammers

Tristan Lapoussiere

Dominic Leonard

Jean-Marc Lofficier

Art Lortie

Jim Ludwig

Eve Machlan

Magnus

Doug Martin

Gustavo Medina

Mike Mikulovsky

Dusty Miller

Mark Muller

Jerry Ordway

Palantine News Network (website)

Barry Pearl Pinterest (website) pulpartists.com (website)

Todd Reis

James Rosen

Allen Ross

Dan St. John

Ignacio Fernández Sarasola

Randy Sargent

Sasquatch Media

David Saunders

Cory Sedlmeier

Richard Seeto

Mitchell Senft

Craig Shutt

Walter Simonson

Derrick Smith

Emilio Soltero

J. David Spurlock

Dann Thomas

Robert Tuska

Dr. Michael J. Vassallo

Delmo Walters, Jr.

Mark Witz

This issue is dedicated to the memory of Tim Sale, Dan Green, & Mike Machlan

Jennifer DeRoss talks to the family and clan of Golden/Silver Age writer Gardner Fox. re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] .

On Our Cover: Two of this side’s interviewees, DC editor Julius Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox, conceived the Earth One/Earth Two “crises” way back in 1963. In Justice League of America #56 (Sept. 1967), the same editor-&-writer team were still hard at it, now aided and abetted by a calamitous cover by two more of this section’s spotlighted stars: penciler Carmine Infantino and inker Murphy Anderson. But did anybody in the DC offices really think the Justice Society team on this one was gonna last two seconds against Superman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Green Arrow? Cover art suggested by TwoMorrows editor John Morrow. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Above: Julie Schwartz edited, John Broome scripted, Carmine Infantino penciled, and Joe Kubert inked the second of the two “Flash” yarns in the landmark Showcase #4 (Sept.-Oct. 1956)— thus covering four of the five DC stalwarts interviewed for this issue. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“30¢ Was The Only Money I’ve Ever Spent On Comics In My Whole Life”

JULIUS SCHWARTZ On Being A DC Editor For Four Decades

Interview Conducted by David Armstrong

A/E

EDITOR’S NOTE:

The Silver Age of Comics really began with Julius Schwartz, editor of “The Flash” revival in Showcase #4 (Oct. 1956)—and moved into high gear with his subsequent reincarnations of “Green Lantern,” “Justice League of America,” “Hawkman,” and “The Atom.” By then, however, the self-styled “Man of Two Worlds” had already been active in the wacky world of comicbooks for more than twenty years—in the world of science-fiction fan and even professional life for a decade and a half before that. You won’t find out all that much about Julie’s life from the responses he gave Dave Armstrong in this August 13, 1999, interview… but we all may learn a thing or three, all the same….

Julius Schwartz as pictured on the cover of his 2000 (co-written) autobiography—framed between comicbook images representing the early days of his Golden and Silver Age careers:

(Left:) A couple of years after Julie went to work as Sheldon Mayer’s story editor at All-American, which was soon bought outright by DC, he would have storyedited this lead tale for Flash Comics #72 (June 1946). Script by Gardner Fox; art by E.E. Hibbard. Thanks to the Lambiek Comiclopedia website.

(Above:) The Silver Age of Comics would be launched—even if nobody knew it at the time—with the debut of a new Flash in Showcase #4 (Oct.-Nov. 1956). He assigned the script for the origin story to Robert Kanigher… the art to penciler Carmine Infantino and inker Joe Kubert. [TM & © DC Comics.]

DAVE ARMSTRONG: You started in the comicbook business in 1944. How did you get there?

JULIUS SCHWARTZ: Well, let’s see… I got into comics, I guess, from the day I was born… I didn’t know it. No, let’s be realistic. My getting into comics has its background in 1931, when I attended a meeting of a science-fiction club called The Scienceers, in the Bronx. And I met a fellow named Mort Weisinger. He and I became fast friends. We hung out together, we did nothing but talk science-fiction…. In due time, our interest in science-fiction paid off professionally. Mort became an editor of a science-fiction magazine, which is a wonderful goal to reach. It was a magazine called Thrilling Wonder Stories. That was about 1934 or ’5. He and I had started a [science-fiction] literary agency prior to that, but he went off editing a science-fiction magazine and I kept up the literary agency.

DA: Who were some of your clients?

SCHWARTZ: Well, when I started off, I had Edmond Hamilton, Manly Wade Wellman, Otto Binder. I don’t know if these names are familiar to you, but they’re familiar to science-fiction people. Otto Binder is a familiar name in science-fiction, but he’s more familiar for doing comics work. He wrote over 500 “Captain Marvel” stories, for example. But I’m getting too far away from me… let’s talk about me, not Otto Binder.

So I became an agent, and I was selling stories to Mort and other magazines. Mort decided to hold a contest to discover new writers. And the one he discovered, who would get top prize of $50, was a fellow he had never heard of called Alfred Bester. Mort predicted Bester would become a great writer and he wanted me to handle him. I was his agent, told him about the markets… what kind of stories editors wanted.

Alfie and I became fast friends and we socialized a lot, mostly in his house. And one evening he said to me, “Julie, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to go down to an editor at All-American Comics. They need an editor who can plot and proofread and do things to a script that would make it presentable.” So I said, “Don’t send me down to a comicbook man; I’ve never read a comicbook in my life. How am I going to talk about comics?” He said, “What you will do is buy some comic magazines, read them on the subway, and when you get to see this editor, who’ll be Shelly Mayer, he would know and you would know what to talk about.”

So, I bought three

comic magazines. In those days, they were ten cents—three comicbooks for 30¢. This was in 1944—February 21st, 1944—those comicbooks I bought for 30¢ was the only money I’ve ever spent on comics in my whole life, although I was involved for many, many years. I was interviewed by Shelly Mayer, who was the editor of All-American Comics, which would shortly join up with DC Comics. They were like branch outfits. My job was to plot stories and edit them; I was not involved in the artwork.

I neglected to mention that Alfred Bester, who I helped get started in science-fiction, also did comics. He was writing what is called the Golden Age “Green Lantern.” So I was hired for the job February 21st, and the editor said, “You must begin work immediately.” And we both agreed that you cannnot begin work

“…Born On A Monday…”

An even earlier—and more important—story that Julie probably story-edited under AA editor Mayer was the introduction of the gaunt swamp-monster Solomon Grundy in the “Green Lantern” lead yarn in All-American Comics #61 (Oct. 1944), with art by Paul Reinman. Script by Alfred Bester, who, before he moved on to fame as a science-fiction author and (at least a bit more) fortune as a magazine writer, is the guy who talked Schwartz into applying for the job. From Roy T.’s personal collection. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Alfred Bester

Sheldon Mayer

“It Was A Tough, Tough Way To Make A Living”

CARMINE

INFANTINO Speaks About Being

Artist, Writer, Editorial Director, & Publisher

Interview Conducted by David Armstrong

Transcribed by Alex Grand

Carmine Infantino

(on left) with his friend/associate David Spurlock in April 2000, at the first comics convention at which the artist had appeared since leaving the post of DC Comics publisher. Photo by Mark Witz.

Juxtaposed with it are the final Golden Age “Flash” solo splash that Infantino (or anybody else) drew, for the final issue of Flash Comics (#104, Feb. 1949), as inked by Frank Giacoia, and scripted by either John Broome or Robert Kanigher—reproduced from The Flash Archives, Vol. 1

—and Carmine’s cover for the very first Silver Age “Flash” appearance, in Showcase #4 (Sept.-Oct. 1956), inked by Joe Kubert and designed by Robert Kanigher. [TM & © DC Comics.]

A/E

EDITOR’S NOTE: Although he’d been a comics artist since the mid-1940s or so, Carmine Infantino became the first truly celebrated artist of the so-called Silver Age of Comics, since he penciled the “Flash” series that started it all in 1956, continuing on that feature for more than a decade. Later he became first in charge of DC’s covers, then the company’s editorial director, and then its publisher for several years. After that stint ended, he drew for Marvel, Warren, and even DC Comics again—but his heart clearly lay with the years when he was running things. And who’s to say he was wrong about that? Dave Armstrong conducted the interview on Aug. 14, 1999, at the San Diego Comic-Con.

DAVE ARMSTRONG: When did you start drawing?

CARMINE INFANTINO: I was a kid… I think seven, eight years old. I started to draw, and my father looked at the drawings and says, “You’re copying these things. Where are you getting them from?” And I didn’t. He never believed me. He never quite believed me. And from there, it just progressed onward.

DA: Do you have any formal training?

INFANTINO: Oh, yeah. I studied at the Museum of Brooklyn Art, the School of Industrial Art. I went also to the Art Students League. About 15 years I studied, you know, it was quite a bit. And then, later on, I went to the school I’m teaching at now, the School of Visual Arts. I studied there about three years, so I had quite a few years in.

DA: Who were the biggest influences?

INFANTINO: [Hal] Foster and [Milt] Caniff, to a degree, [Mort] Meskin and Jack Kirby, both. Edd Cartier… he was a big influence. I loved his work. Did you follow the pulps? I used to read The Shadow Doc Savage. And then [Hillman comics editor] Ed Cronin put me on to Somerset Maugham, and so on and so forth.

DA: When did you sell your first professional piece?

INFANTINO: The first one I did was rejected…. It was a place called Fox Comics, a tiny outfit…. I think I was 16 at the time and I brought it in and I was looking forward to my check, but [the editor] said, “I can’t accept this. It’s not professional,” and they turned it away. Then I got more determined, and the next job they took it. I think I was about 17½ or so. My first job.

DA: And what year was that? ’43? ’44?

INFANTINO: Just about that, yeah. I did one job [for Fox] and that was it. Then I said, No way, that’s it. I got even.

DA: Did you find out from the rest of the business that he was the cheapest guy in the business?

INFANTINO: Well, nobody else would hire me, so it was the only place I could go. So that’s the only reason I worked there. I made the rounds…. Joe Simon was the editor in those days of Timely Comics… Marvel Comics today.

And I got a little work off him, some inking, some penciling, not very much. And then they asked me to work on staff, and my father said, “No way, you’re finishing school.” So that took care of that.

And, a year or so later, Al Capp wanted me to come work for him in Boston. And again, my father said, “No way.” I didn’t think I was going to be a cartoonist, after all this went on. But I kept going. It was all right.

DA: Well, it was a good way to make money, considering. In fact, you were still in school…. You made money while you were still a teenager.

INFANTINO: Yeah I was making some money, but I wanted to go full blast. I wanted to get out of school. I wanted the works, you

A Heap Of Trouble

know?.... And in those days, you got to remember, if you finished high school, that was it. To go to college was just out of the question….

[After high school] I worked for a number of smaller companies. I worked for a place called Hillman Comics, a man [named] Ed Cronin over there…. And before that, there was a wonderful guy on 23rd Street. He called it a “factory,” where they had artists sitting there drawing day and night. Harry Chesler. Harry would give me five bucks just to come in, sit there, watch people draw, go back and forth and eat every day, which is very nice. Now, a lot of people hated him, but he was awfully good to me. I can never say a [bad] word about him.

DA: He treated younger artists who were getting into the business better than the guys who [were already working for him]?

INFANTINO: Yeah, the other guys—oh, boy! He was rough. And he was a character, with his little derby [and] the desk. There was a rickety elevator that went all the way up to the fourth floor, and you got out, and he’s facing you behind this old desk and puffing on a cigar. And he had a Milton Caniff drawing in back of him. That was his standard. And the other room was like a prison, really; artists were sitting. It was interesting. But I learned and I learned; that was important.

DA: When you were at Chesler, did you end up learning composition or layout from any of the guys?

INFANTINO: No, I went to the Art Students League. There was a teacher there named Jim McNulty, an elderly guy, but brilliant. He’s the one that taught me composition design, just a tremendous man. That’s where I got most of it from. From there, I went to Hillman Comics. That was editor Cronin. He was a great teacher. He’s the one that made me study writing. He kept pounding on me, and he made me write some stuff for him. I wrote things like “The Heap,” “Airboy,” a couple of crime stories for him, and then he put me onto Somerset Maugham and de Maupassant, et cetera, et cetera. So I began picking up my writing skills there, right? Early age. I was about 17 at the time.

DA: And where did you learn story flow?

The Tortoise & The Hero

We couldn’t find any evidence that Infantino ever drew the Golden Age “Johnny

feature, which wouldn’t have been for

INFANTINO: Oh, that’s adapting. Just doing and doing and doing. That’s how you got it. I was working for DC for a while, and then I got a call from Simon and Kirby: would I come work for them? I knew they were cheap…. But working with Kirby was worth it. So I went down there. I didn’t quit DC. I did that stuff at night, and I went there to work with Jack…. I learned a hell of a lot from him. I’ll never forget that fast guy. Tremendous. Tremendous. We got to be good friends over the years.

DA: And what kind of stories did you do at DC?

INFANTINO: I think I started on a thing called “Johnny Quick” or something. This was the whole transition period when Sheldon Mayer had taken over and he was moving the older guys out and he moved [in] people like myself. Kubert and Alex Toth were coming in at that time.

DA: And what was it like to work with someone like Shelly?

INFANTINO: I loved him…. Frank Giacoia—he’s gone now, he’s dead—we went to his office, very impressed with him. We’re sitting there, and all of a sudden, the door opens behind us and little [Irwin] Hasen comes in with a T-square, leaps on the desk. Shelly grabs a T-square, and they start dueling all around the room, and Frank and I look at each other. What the hell is going on? It’s supposed to be a business. And then they touch swords, they kiss each other, and Hasen walked out, and that was our initiation. National Comics. They were both crazy. Shelley was really mad.

DA: He was a cartoonist.

Quick”

editor Shelly Mayer in any event—but Mayer did put him on “The Flash” in such issues as Comic Cavalcade #24 (Dec. 1947-Jan. 1948). Inks by Frank Giacoia; script by Robert Kanigher. (NOTE: The “Johnny” series that Carmine was talking about was probably “Johnny Thunder.”) Thanks to Rod Beck. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“[Drawing] Is Almost Like Being A Magician”

JOE KUBERT As Artist, As Editor, As Teacher… & As Force Of Nature

Interview Conducted by David Armstrong

Transcribed by Alex Grand

EDITOR’S NOTE: This one is very special to me, because Joe Kubert has been my favorite artist since I was four or five years old, devouring his “Hawkman” stories in Flash Comics and All-Star Comics—never even rivaled by any other comicbook illustrator except Jack Kirby. What more can I say? Here is David Armstrong’s 1997 conversation with Joe….

JOE KUBERT: From the earliest times that I can remember… and I guess my family, my mother and father, have verified, very often… I started to draw as soon as I could hold a pencil. I was maybe two or three years old. And that’s not unusual. I

Joe Kubert

drew several iconic comicbook heroes at various times in his career, including The Flash and Tor the Hunter; but especially celebrated among Golden and Silver Age fans are his stints on “Hawkman”—first in the 1940s, as exemplified by the splash page at left from Flash Comics #94 (April 1948); then in the 1960s, as per the splash that introduced the revived Winged Wonder in The Brave and the Bold #34 (Feb.-March 1961).

Scripts by Robert Kanigher (maybe) & Gardner Fox, respectively. Thanks to Al Dellinges & Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

think most people who do the kind of stuff that I do start rather early. It’s not something that you just like to do. It becomes a compulsion.

I had just a natural inclination towards what was then newspaper strips, newspaper comics… people who really inspired me to do this kind of work. And I come to admire them more and more as I get older, they get better. Guys like Hal Foster and Alex Raymond and Milt Caniff—these were the people who generated the kind of push and enthusiasm and what I wanted to do. I don’t know why. I’d look at their stuff, and God, it seemed to create a whole world, a different world around me completely. To me, Tarzan, as done by Foster, was a real person. I can even today remember the smell of the newspapers when I was reading that stuff. Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon appeared in the New York Journal American. It was a large-sized newspaper. And I remember, on a weekend, I could lay down on the floor and practically wrap the whole newspaper around me, so that it really did almost physically reflect a complete world.

And I try to emulate this stuff. I try to. These were the things that influenced me, but more than influenced me, kind of encouraged me to want to do that same kind of work. And I copied and drew their material and tried to get a feel…. I didn’t realize it, of course, at that time, but I guess I was analyzing what the heck was going on underneath the drawing by doing just that. I’ve loved being a cartoonist all my life, and I guess that’s the way I was introduced to it.

DAVID ARMSTRONG: Did you have specific favorites in terms of stories, books or feature films—in terms of style, the writing style and the visual style?

KUBERT: I loved Kipling, especially Jungle Book, Mowgli and the tiger Shere Khan and all of that. I guess the correlation between that and Tarzan was something that I understood pretty early on. It was those kinds of adventure stories that kind of stimulated the imagination to want to draw these pictures. Yeah, I read a heck of a lot when I was in grammar school, going into junior high school and high school. I’d frequent the library, not so much to widen an education, but to see more stuff, to see physically, graphically, those things that perhaps at that age I couldn’t get to see firsthand. Looking at Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and Rembrandt’s paintings and a whole slew of stuff was absolutely inspirational. I realized very early on the gap between the kind of stuff that I was doing on the paper and the stuff that I was looking at, but it sure as hell was inspirational.

DA: How did you get into the business?

KUBERT: Well, I got into the business in a kind of a fortuitous fashion. I was in junior high school. I guess I was about 11 years old at that time. I’d always been doing the cartoons and doing drawings in school. And one of my buddies in junior high school at that time happened to be a nephew or a cousin, some sort of a relation, with some people that were producing comicbooks at that time.

MLJ, which was the forerunner of Archie Comics—they were on Canal Street in New York. I at that time lived in East New York, in Brooklyn, while I was attending school. All my buddies, the guys that I was with in school, kind of elevated me because I could draw. It’s almost like being a magician. Gee, I can take a pencil and draw a face and the other guys, my school chums, would be looking at me and saying, “Well, gee, I can’t do that. You can do it.” And so it put me at that level. But one of my buddies, as I mentioned before, was a relative to the MLJ group and said, “Hey, Joe, you do some really nice stuff. Why don’t you go up there and maybe do some work?”

Leapin’ Leopards!

Kubert

loved both Mowgli and Tarzan. Seen above is an image of the black-&-white cover art for DC’s Tarzan #236 (April 1975), one of his best. Thanks to the online Palantine News Network site. [TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

“I Had An Epiphany” JOHN BROOME Talks About His Life In & Out Of Comics

Interview Conducted by David Armstrong

Transcribed by Alex Grand

A/E

EDITOR’S NOTE: John Broome was long a sort of “mystery-man” among major comicbook writers of the Silver Age, because by the time we comics fans were trying to track everybody down in the interest of the history of the field, John was living and working first in Paris, later in Japan. He attended only one comics convention: the San Diego Comic-Con of 1998, where he was feted and admired, obviously to his great amazement… and where this interview, among a handful of others, was conducted. Sadly, he passed away about half a year later….

DAVID ARMSTRONG: Where were you born?

JOHN BROOME: In Brooklyn, New York.

DA: Did you get any formal training in writing?

Irving Bernard (John) Broome at the 1998 San Diego Comic-Con, in a photo courtesy of Comic Vine website (that’s retired editor/longtime friend Julius Schwartz’s hand on his shoulder, by the way). He’s flanked by the splash pages of stories that bookended his Flash-related work:

(Below left:) The Joe Kubert-drawn “Hawkman” splash for Flash Comics #104 (Feb. 1949), the final issue of the Golden Age title that had birthed the Scarlet Speedster. Courtesy of Al Dellinges. (Oh, and JB is reported to have scripted the “Flash” tale in #104 as well, though the DC Archives volume ascribed it to Robert Kanigher.)

(Below right:) Broome’s very first “Flash” tale during the “revival”: the second yarn in Showcase #4 (Sept.-Oct. 1956), as penciled by Carmine Infantino and inked by Joe Kubert. It was with that comicbook issue that the Silver Age can truly be said to have begun. Courtesy of Allen Ross. [TM & © DC Comics.]

BROOME: No. No.

DA: You just started writing?

BROOME: Yeah, right. Just started writing. No, actually, a friend of mine, a really remarkable character who is in my book—I wrote a book—and he was so good that one of his stories got him a job in Chicago in the Ziff-Davis company. Ziff-Davis was a publishing company then that published Amazing Stories and other sciencefiction [magazines]. He got this job, and he wouldn’t go to Chicago alone. So two of his friends, and I was one of them, had to go with him. And we lived together there.

And he taught me how to write. Or rather, he gave me a chance to write a story. He said he’d buy it because he was the editor. So I wrote this story and he bought it. That was the beginning.

DA: How did you get into comicbooks?

BROOME: My agent was Julie Schwartz. He sold maybe about ten of my efforts at science-fiction at about that time. Early on, he got a job at Detective Comics [DC] as an editor, and immediately I began selling him comicbook stories. It was easy to switch from sciencefiction to comicbooks. I liked it much better, [because] I didn’t have to do a lot of routine stuff, as you have to do in writing. You have to tell where the story takes place, what kind of a terrain, things that seem boring to me. Whereas, in comicbooks. I only had to deal with the action of the storyline and the dialogue, and that’s what I liked best.

DA: You worked for Fawcett before you worked for DC. What did you do there?

BROOME: The people that I knew in Fawcett were Rod Reed, Wendell Crowley, France Herron. All dead by now, I’m quite sure.

DA: Did you know Otto Binder?

BROOME: Yeah, yeah. Of course I knew Otto Binder very well. He was a pal. Binder was a very reliable type. He wasn’t like me, full of ups and downs and things like that. But he was a very regular guy who was very, very talented. Good storyteller, too.

DA: In the stories that you did, both in the ’40s and in the ’60s, you liked to do things that tied into science. The Atom shrunk down in size. The Flash sped up so fast that he would charge through molecules. Did you like using devices like that? [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Actually, Gardner Fox, not John Broome, scripted The Atom in the 1960s. But John Broome wrote the equally SF-oriented Green Lantern.]

BROOME: I think I preferred to do realistic stories like Hopalong Cassidy, which was a sort of humorous Western. I think I preferred those to super-heroes. Yeah.

DA: Did you do any romance books?

BROOME: No, I never did romance. I never had any feeling for romance.

DA: Science-fiction stories—Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space. Did you get a kick out of doing the science-fiction stuff?

BROOME: No doubt. But that’s a little hard to remember now.

DA: Do you remember, when the space race was on, with Sputnik and all those things?

BROOME: I remember that era very well. When Russia lofted the first Sputnik. Yeah, I remember that very well. That was in 1960-something, because Kennedy gave us ten years to catch up,

and we caught up before 1969. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: The USSR’s first Sputnik artificial satellite was launched in October 1957.]

DA: Did you have a lot of contact with the other writers in the business?

BROOME: Sure…. I was the leader—the ringleader, you might say—in the attempts to form a union among the writers—not the artists, but the writers. We couldn’t get the artists. They were getting too much money. But we had a chance with the writers, and I collected the six main writers, Otto Binder among them. It took a whole year and I got them into [DC co-publisher Jack] Liebowitz’s office in the right temper with the right feeling. And my whole idea was simply to gain reprint rights, which we didn’t have yet, and they [DC] were reprinting our material without paying us. And I thought that was kind of a crime. I was very happy when we finally marched into Liebowitz’s office and maybe I began to open my mouth. No sooner did he take sight of me than Liebowitz says to the boys, “I don’t know why you came in here like this. Because I’m just getting ready to give you a raise of $2 a page.” Well, at that moment, the whole union collapsed. Everybody was so happy to get $2 to pay bills. I was thoroughly disgusted and I couldn’t do anything. It just dissolved.

“Mr. Sandman, Send Me A Dream”

The Flash’s initial encounter with sand-beings in “The City of Shifting Sand!” from All-Flash Comics #22 (April-May 1946), reportedly Broome’s first-ever writing assignment for DC Comics. Art by Martin Nadle, who signed his last name “Naydel.” The splash page of this yarn was reprinted in A/E #149, to accompany the first installment of JB’s autobiographical memoir. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“[Working In Comics] Was A Dream Come True”

The Joyful (& Enviable) Career Of MURPHY ANDERSON

Interview Conducted by David Armstrong

Transcribed by Alex Grand

Murphy Anderson

Since the artist (seen here with his wife Helen in 2002 at the Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina) loved drawing science-fiction more than anything else, we’re bolstering him with images from three of his signal accomplishments in that area:

“Star Pirate” from Planet Comics #49 (July 1947)—writer unknown; A 1948 Buck Rogers promotional drawing sent out to newspapers when Murphy began drawing that already two-decades-old SF comic strip— —and the splash page of his and writer Marv Wolfman’s adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first John Carter novel, A Princess of Mars, from DC’s Weird Worlds #1 (Aug.-Sept. 1972).

Thanks respectively to Comic Book Plus website, the ever-lovin’ Internet, and Bob Bailey for the three comics images. [TM & © respectively by the respective TM & © holders, by the Dille Trust or successors in interest, & Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

A/E

EDITOR’S NOTE: By pure coincidence, artist Murphy Anderson is the only one of the five creators interviewed for this flip side of issue #188 who didn’t have a role in the “Flash”-debuting Showcase #4 in 1956. However, both before and after that event, he’s drawn such landmark series as Fiction House’s “Star Pirate,” the newspaper strip Buck Rogers, and DC’s “Captain Comet,” “Hawkman,” “Atomic Knights,” et al.—and that doesn’t even count his inimitable inking on many other series— including The Flash. This interview was taped on August 15, 1998, at the San Diego Comic-Con, where else?

DAVID ARMSTRONG: You were born in 1926. Where did you grow up?

MURPHY ANDERSON: I grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. My dad owned a taxi cab company. When we moved, he was the manager, but he had the opportunity to buy it out at some point in the late ’30s. He owned the cab company in Greensboro for many years.

DA: When did you get interested in drawing?

ANDERSON: I guess when I was maybe four, five, six years old, I ‘m not sure. Early, I was very interested in comics. I used to bug my mother to read the comics to me everyday. And she finally felt it was easier for her to just teach me how to read. She had been a school teacher. And so I started reading on comics.

I would say [I started drawing] when I was in the first grade, second grade. I have some memories of drawing.

DA: So, everyone obviously knew you had a talent for it.

ANDERSON: No, they all laughed a great deal at the drawings. [laughter]

DA: What was the first time that you had something that actually got printed so you felt like you were published?

ANDERSON: Oh, my first work was published in the Greensboro Record [newspaper]. They had a page every Saturday devoted to kids. Kids could write, send drawings, write poems, whatever. If they selected yours for publication, you got a dollar. So I had a motivation. My work appeared in there quite often, starting about 1937.

DA: Were you self-taught?

ANDERSON: Self-taught, really. Just studying the things that interested me and trying to copy them.

DA: And so what got you into the comicbook business? Obviously, you’d read comic strips and liked them when you were a kid.

ANDERSON: Right. Well, I liked comic strips, and I was around for the birth of the comicbooks, you might say. I picked up Star Ranger and comics like that by Harry Chesler. Picked up the first DC books before Superman, well before Superman. When Superman appeared, I was totally hooked with all the imitators and other people that came along after that, other super-heroes, particularly Lou

Fine. I was really awed by his work. He became a big influence, along with Will Eisner, of course.

DA: You started in the business in New York. How did you get to New York?

ANDERSON: Well, I had graduated, when I was sixteen, from high school and I started at the University of North Carolina in the fall. Went two quarters, but I’d had some contact with the people at certain publishers in New York who gave me some encouragement. I decided I wanted to make an attempt, before I went into the service, to get into the comic business.

DA: You did samples you sent up to them? I

While Murphy was a bit too young to be drawing professionally when the newspaper-stripreprinting Comics on Parade,Vol. 1, #1 (April 1938) went on sale just weeks before Action Comics #1, he was happy to re-create that cover as a commission drawing in later days, featuring Tarzan, the Katzenjammer Kids, Li’l Abner, and other favorites. Thanks to Mike Burkey, whose original-art ad can be seen on p. 18 of this issue’s flip side. The original artist is unidentified. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

ANDERSON: Well, in high school, I was the associate editor of the school newspaper. We belonged to the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. And we won some awards. One was for makeup, which was my department. So we were offered the chance to go to New York for this annual convention that the press association had. So I came up for that, with my friend… we were co-editors at the time. He came along and I made it a point to go downtown, from Columbia, to visit publishers. Of course, in my book, the best of all was Quality—they had Lou Fine, Jack Cole, and people like that working there. And at that point, I did meet Lou Fine and I met Jack Cole and a couple of other people.

DA: Did you go to any of the shops? The Eisner Shop?

ANDERSON: No. Later I did go, when I came back to look for a job. I did call on [Jerry] Iger. He told me to come back in a couple of weeks. I had enough money for a week, and at the end of the week, the money was almost gone. And I called on Harry Chesler, as a last resort. He informed me he wasn’t publishing, but he liked my work and he said, “Have you talked to Fiction House?” I said, “Oh yes, I talked to Mr. Iger.” And he said, “That’s not Fiction House.” He said, “Wait a minute.” He picked up the phone and he called Jack Bryne at Fiction House and gave me such a build-up that he said I should come up and see him right away. I went up to Fiction House, and probably within the hour I had a job. I started to work on Monday, right after that.

DA: Did you tell your father that you were almost out of money?

ANDERSON: No. He had said when the money was up, I had to come home—go back to school.

DA: So you ended up at Fiction House. Did you get to do a wide variety of strips there?

ANDERSON: Well, mostly science-fiction. They gave me the “Star Pirate” strip, which I drew for months, maybe twenty issues. It was a bi-monthly, so it covered quite a span of time. Even when I was in the Navy, they sent me work.

DA: Did you work at Fiction House? Did they have drawing tables?

ANDERSON: Oh yes, you’d call it a bullpen today. But they set me down next to George Tuska. He was an influence. And then I met Leo Lise, Artie Saaf, Ruben Moreira, you name it. Graham Ingels came in a couple of times… most of their star artists.

DA: I interviewed George last year, and it was interesting, because he’s a really robust guy. He must have been quite an athlete in his day.

ANDERSON: Yeah, I think he was.

DA: Did you socialize with the guys there?

ANDERSON: A little bit. Ruben Moreira became a good friend, and he invited me over to the Grand Central School of Art. He was studying there. And so was Lou Fine at that time. I had hoped to go over and meet Lou Fine again. But Lou didn’t show up that particular night. Ruby and I would often go out for lunch or what-have-you.

DA: Is this the one above the train station?

ANDERSON: Yeah. Harvey Dunne’s school.

DA: Exactly. Creig Flessel started out as a bouncer there.

ANDERSON: Right. I know he went to school there.

DA: Did you go into the service after that?

ANDERSON: Yeah, I knew that my time was very short. I’d had to sign up for the draft when I was eighteen. And I went back home to wait being called, and they didn’t call me right away. I was freelancing for Fiction House and I couldn’t stand the suspense, so to speak, so I went up and volunteered for immediate induction. And that’s what got me in the Navy, coincidentally. I tried to enlist in the Navy on about three different occasions, but I have 3/20 vision in my left eye. Lazy eye syndrome, they call it.

Forever Fox

The Family Of GARDNER F . FOX Speak Out About The Man They Knew & Loved

by Jennifer DeRoss

A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: In 2019, Portland [Oregon] native Jennifer DeRoss’ book Forgotten All-Star: A Biography of Gardner Fox was published by Pulp Hero Press (see ad on p. 2). Her painstaking research on this project had put her in touch with the surviving family of the late great Golden/Silver Age comics writer. Alas, that did not include his wife Lynda or their children Lynda and Robert, who had already passed away. For this special issue of Alter Ego, Jennifer prepared some annotated notes on photographs of the Fox family, with the kind cooperation of Gardner’s granddaughter Terri and other family members….

Before I started doing this work, I was like a lot of fans my age.

I knew Gardner Fox was the co-creator of The Flash and knew he wrote a lot of Justice League of America, but I had no idea just how prolific and impactful he was. This changed when I entered grad school and took a class on

Gardner F. Fox

19th-century archives. I had some prior experience doing archival work, knew the Gardner Fox Collection was located at the University of Oregon, and wanted to find a way to continue working on comics at the graduate level. I was elated when my professor approved my plan to work on the collection, but quickly ran into the wall when it came to outside sources. It seemed like the only time he would get a mention was in old fanzines.

The more I learned about Gardner Fox, the more I saw this as an injustice. And with Roy Thomas’ help and encouragement, I kept finding excuses to go back to the archive. In my heart, I had already agreed to take this project all the way.

in his later years, flanked by the splash pages of two stories he scripted of iconic characters for the first issue of Flash Comics (Jan. 1940): “The Flash,” illustrated by Harry Lampert, and “The Hawkman,” drawn by Dennis Neville. Photo courtesy of Comic Vine website; pages reproduced from the hardcover DC Archives editions. [TM & © DC Comics.]

I took every opportunity I could to squeeze in research time, poring over stacks of letters, digging into the stories Fox had written, and even reaching out to other archives.

Fox Family & Friends

When it came time to try and track down the family, I admit I was nervous. Thankfully, they were very supportive as well. They had previously resigned themselves to the fact that Gardner Fox was an unsung hero and saw this as the same corrective opportunity as I did.

In fact, while trying to gain access to some records from St. John’s University for me, Gardner Fox’s granddaughter Terri found a corrective project of her own. The process of accessing his records took a fair amount of time, and she had to come up with certain proofs of relationship that weren’t readily available. I remember being extremely thankful that Terri was willing and able to take on such a task. During that time, she mentioned to those she was working with that she was surprised her grandfather was not included among their notable alumni. When the matter was brought to the attention of St. John’s Registrar, it was agreed that Gardner Fox did indeed represent the school’s highest level due to his many accomplishments. Sudden awareness caused a buzz across the campus, and there were even plans to center an alumni weekend around his work. Even though the event was, unfortunately, one of many canceled plans in 2020, I was overjoyed to be able to include her success in the ending chapter of my book.

We stayed in contact after I finished writing Forgotten All-Star, and when Terri told me her daughter Julia wanted to visit the University of Oregon, we

excitedly made plans to meet for the first time. We, of course, decided on a visit to the Gardner Fox Collection.

Beforehand, Terri had some manuscripts pulled and we looked over them together, talking about the themes and such that come up across his work and quietly laughing at the awkwardness in reading editors’ notes asking her grandfather to increase the sexual content. It did not go unnoticed that her daughter was quite skilled, as she sat near us sketching.

The opportunity also gave me the opportunity to learn something new! Terri mentioned that Gardner Fox would mail comics to his nephew, John Fogarty. I was hoping this would help explain why, out of the over 600 comicbooks in this collection, only 20 were from the ’70s and none were from the ’80s. (The largest, noteworthy part of this small collection is Red Wolf #1-8. Created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, Red Wolf was the first title headlined by a Native American super-hero. Fox wrote issues #2-8 of the 9-issue series.) During my later talk with John, I discovered this was happening before he went off to college in 1968, so the timing doesn’t line up. Likely, this lack is reflective of Gardner’s waning interest in comics after being pushed out of DC due to his unionization efforts and never finding his footing writing comics in the Marvel method. Still, I loved hearing about how John gained a love of reading through comics, which he would devour both “parked” in his uncle’s study and in his own home.

This love of comics has continued within the family, with Terri now collecting comics written by her grandfather and attending premieres in order to represent the family as more and more of Gardner Fox’s characters make it to the big screen. This includes the recent Black Adam movie, which features both Doctor Fate and Hawkman as part of the DCU’s version of the Justice Society of America.

It Gets Kinda Crowded In The Hall Of Fame!

The splash pages of two of the most important comicbooks Gardner Fox ever scripted: for the first-ever “Justice Society of America” story, in All-Star Comics #3 (Winter 1940)—and the first “Justice League of America” tale, in The Brave and the Bold #28 (Feb.-March 1960). All-Star art by E.E. Hibbard (repro’d from the hardcover archive edition, 1991);

(Left to right:) Jennifer DeRoss, Terri Fox, and Julia Fox. Terri and Julia are Gardner’s granddaughter and great-granddaughter, respectively. Terri took this selfie to commemorate her and Jennifer’s first meeting a few years ago.