CBA Interview
A Piece of the Action Charlton’s Action Hero Line and the Folks Responsible by Christopher Irving Although considered a product of the 1960s, the Charlton Action Hero line technically had a root set back in the Golden Age of comics. The Blue Beetle premiered in Fox Comics’ Mystery Men #1, cover dated August of 1939. Over the next decade, The Blue Beetle was to shift from Fox to Holyoke Comics (another Golden Age company), and back to Fox, before his initial retirement with Blue Beetle #60, cover dated August, 1950. Charlton Comics gained the Blue Beetle property four years later, in Oct. -Nov. 1954’s Space Adventures #13, which featured mainly reprints of Fox material, and was perhaps their hope to cash in on the new super-hero craze influenced by the Adventures of Superman TV show, as well as their chance to use their new comic book press. The Blue Beetle was awarded his own series in February of 1955, picking up the numbering from the cancelled The Thing! with #18, lasting only four issues, ending with #21 in August of the same year. (Notably only the last issue contained new material. ) Super-heroes were once more revitalized by the mid-’60s, thanks in no small part to DC’s revamping of their Golden Age characters, as well as Marvel’s introduction of influential books such as Fantastic Four. Charlton had decided to hop on the bandwagon, by bringing back their earlier attempts at super-heroes, as well as introducing a new stable of characters. The editorial structure at Charlton was changed after the departure of General Manager Burt Levey, with the comics’ Managing Editor, Pat Masulli, promoted to oversee the entire magazine line and his one-time assistant, artist Dick Giordano, lobbied for the comics editor position. Getting the nod from management, Giordano took up the editorial reins on the entire comic book line in 1965, with the mandate to create a line of super-heroes. Apparently, Masulli was not known to interact with the creative people very often, something that would change when Giordano took over as comic book editor. As a result, opinions of Masulli tend to differ from one extreme to another. “Terrible,” staff writer Joe Gill answered when asked about Masulli’s job as editor. “Pat’s dead now, but he was a martinet, not a friendly guy that enjoyed amiable relations with the artists. He ruled it, and he and I co-existed.” “We tolerated each other,” Charlton Art Director Frank McLaughlin explained. “He was my boss and I worked hard so he had no complaints. Because he was not well-liked by others, part of my job was as intermediary between production and the engravers, typesetters, artists, press operators and free-lancers.” “At work, he was a very stern taskmaster, and absolutely perfect for the other (non-comic) books that he edited,” Giordano said. “His background was mostly as a colorist, but he was a great businessman. He and someone else started a coloring company in New York City that continued to work for Charlton after Pat moved out. He was a good business person, and he learned everything about the production process when he was running the comics. “When I took over the comics, and Pat was in charge of everything else, we had very little contact. We would go out to lunch regularly, he and I and a couple of other executives but, aside from that, we had no further or social contact after business hours.” As the new comics editor, it was not only up to Giordano to reevaluate the comics side of Charlton, but he also had to pick up the loose threads from Masulli. “The way that Pat Masulli was running the comic department was as an also-ran,” Giordano said. “He didn’t have any choice, and August 2000
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wasn’t being derelict on his duties, but he had too much to do with the music department, so they hired me to pay attention to the comics. “No one ever told me ‘Your job is to sell comics better,’ there was no question about it, I understood that. I started on a plan to find new talent and to come up with new books. At that time, we were doing Blue Beetle and Son of Vulcan. Those were the only two super-heroes there when I started, and a revival of Captain Atom, I think, was on the drawing board. It was clear that, if there was anything in the field, there was some activity in super-heroes, so we decided that we had to take that route.”
Above: Among the hundreds of silverlines Dick Giordano shared with me, there was this Blue Beetle cover lineart (from an unidentified issue—never mind their numbering scheme, the biggest pain in the butt collecting Charlton comics was their lack of a number on the cover to begin with!). Blue Beetle ©2000 DC Comics.
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