Alter Ego Collection Volume One

Roy Thomas Collected Comics Fanzine

THE

COLLECTION

All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

VOLUME 1

Reprinting the first two issues of the acclaimed magazine, plus new material!

™

THE COLLECTION VOLUME 1

Compiling Alter Ego Vol. 3 #1 & 2–––Plus New Material

Celebrating The Golden And Silver Ages Of Comics (And Then Some!)

TwoMorrows Publishing • Raleigh, North Carolina www.twomorrows.com

Dedication: To

John Morrow & Jon B. Cooke without whom I’d never have re-launched Alter Ego, and to

Jerry G. Bails without whom there’d have been nothing to re-launch

The ALTER EGO Collection, Volume 1 Compiling Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #1 & 2 (1999), plus new material Editorial material ©1999, 2006 Roy Thomas & TwoMorrows Publishing • Other material ©1999, 2006 its originators

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com First Printing • June 2006 • Printed in Canada ISBN: 1-893905-59-4 Above art celebrating the history of Alter Ego depicts “maskots” Alter Ego, Alter, & Captain Ego with original A/E co-founders Jerry Bails (right) & Roy Thomas. [Art ©2006 Jerry K. Boyd; Alter Ego TM & ©2006 Roy & Dann Thomas; Alter & Captain Ego TM & ©2006 Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly, created by Biljo White; JSA & Captain Marvel TM & ©2006 DC Comics; Sub-Mariner TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.; The Eye TM & ©2006 Bill Schelly, created by Biljo White; The Human Cat TM & ©2006 Bill Schelly, created by Richard “Grass” Green; The Eclipse TM & ©2006 Bill Schelly, created by Ronn Foss; FCA is a trademark of P.C. Hamerlinck.]

Title page art penciled (probably by Carmine Infantino—inker unknown) for a never-published Golden Age “Flash” story “written off 930-49”—and featuring King Arthur!—with thanks to Don Mangus, Heritage Comics, & Dominic Bongo. Like the balloon says: “Read all about it” on pp. 160-165! [Flash TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

writer/editorial (2006)

Long Ago In A Galaxy Far Far Away

3

,

view) and the then-present (Wally Wood-drawn parodies of current heroes, etc.), but largely eschewed future comics. A single 11th issue from fellow comics scribe Mike Friedrich and me in 1978 continued that policy. Since 1965, I had figured any contribution I had to make to comics’ future would appear in the pages of Marvel Comics—or, later, DC or elsewhere. (The four issues of an Alter Ego super-hero comics series I did with Ron Harris in 1986 was, of course, one of those contributions.)

t all seems such a long time ago.

Along the way, I mentally consigned A/E to what I imagined was my own fondly-remembered past. But it refused to stay there.

I

No, not the Golden and Silver Age comics material in this gala reprinting of Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #1-2: that seems to me still as bright and gleaming as ever, like primeval artifacts forever encased in amber.

What seems somehow incredibly distant is that time, really just seven years ago, when, after a few upside-down segments of “Vol. 2” done as adjuncts to Comic Book Artist #1-5, I launched A/E as a full-fledged magazine again.

And if that seems a long while ago, viewed through the prism of the 60 issues of Vol. 3 published since—how much more ancient seem the issues of the original fanzine which I helped first Jerry Bails, then Ronn Foss, put out in the early 1960s!

Luckily, I’ve related A/E’s pre-1999 story, in digest form, in the editorial reprinted on p. 8, so that here I can concentrate on how my own motivations for doing A/E have evolved over the years.

In early 1961, I was flattered to be invited by a college science prof (Jerry) who was several years older than I to help start a newsletter to be titled The JLA Subscriber. It would promote DC’s Justice League of America, the then-new successor to our favorite comics feature ever, “The Justice Society of America” in 1940-50 All-Star Comics. That modest plan metamorphosed, before publication, into a full-blown fanzine named Alter-Ego, in the mode of the science-fiction fan-produced magazines which DC editor Julius Schwartz showed Jerry Bails in New York.

When Jerry relinquished the reins in 1962, I figured my major involvement with A/E was over. But, only a year or so (and two Foss issues) later, I found myself the publishing editor of Alter Ego. During all this period, my focus in the zine was very much as Ronn (and then I) phrased so succinctly on our covers: “Comic Heroes of the Past, Present, and Future.”

With the revival begun in 1998-99, yet another part of Ronn’s pithy slogan has been largely jettisoned. Alter Ego is now concerned primarily with comics and comics creators of the past. I chose as a rough cut-off point the year 1974, when I resigned as Marvel’s editor-in-chief and generally lost interest in current comic book product. Oh, the new A/E would still cover my own work done since then (Invaders, Conan, AllStar Squadron, Infinity, Inc., whatever)—and I’ll print new material if it deals primarily with Golden or Silver Age subjects.

But at this point, revere the comics medium though I do, I’m mostly content to leave the field’s “present” to Preview and Wizard and Comics Buyer’s Guide, et al…. and its “future” to whoever claims it.

There’s more than enough work for me to do with several decades’ worth of “past.”

Archaeologists and historians, after all, are in their own way every bit as important as futurists. We need to know not only where we are and where we’re going, but where we’ve been. For, every future instant will, sooner or later, become just another piece of that fabled past.

“The past is another country.” An undiscovered country. And, with the help of the generous, caring, and knowledgeable contributors represented in this issue, plus a number of others who’ve signed on since, I want to go on discovering it.

Since Alter Ego in its pre-natal stage was to be a newsletter called The JLA Subscriber, it seemed fitting to re-present the first two issues of Vol. 3 (plus two-dozen-plus pages of added material) behind a cover that depicts several of the early heroes of the Justice League…drawn by seven talented artists whose roots often reach back from the Silver Age into the Golden.

We’ve all come a long way, baby. And, hopefully, we’ve got a lot further to travel—even if, like Per Degaton, we’re doing it in the past!

Bestest,

Then, beginning in 1965, came more than three decades of being so busy with pro comics work that I barely squeezed out one more issue in 1969-70. It covered the past (Joe Kubert’s Tor, Gil Kane’s classic inter-

Jack Burnely, who's interviewed on pp. 146-159, drew these panels as one-quarter of a Sunday page for the Batman comic strip in 1946.

Repro'd from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of the artist. [©2006 DC Comics.]

4

THE

™

COLLECTION VOLUME 1

Table of Contents A/E COLLECTION, VOL. 1, EXTRA!

Writer/Editorial For Collected Edition: . . . . 3 Editor Roy Thomas

Associate Editor Bill Schelly

Original Design & Layout Chris Knowles, Rich Grasso, & John Morrow (V3#1) Jon B. Cooke (V3#2)

Design & Layout (New Material)

From Alter Ego V3 #1:

Covers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-7 The original covers of our first issue (in black-&-white this time) as rapturously rendered by Jerry Ordway and Irwin Hasen, respectively.

Writer/Editorial: Silver Age Forever! . . . . . . 8 Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly welcome you to the new Alter Ego.

Christopher Day

The Stan Lee Roast. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Consulting Editor John Morrow

The Man gets skewered by David, Buscema, Romita, Thomas, Claremont, Shooter, & Schwartz— but it’s all in fun, right, fellas? Right, fellas?

Production Assistant

A/E COLLECTION, VOL. 1, EXTRA!

Eric Nolen-Weathington

Comic Crypt Editor

Remembrance Of Things Past. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Michael T. Gilbert

More fabulous photos from the 1995 Stan Lee Roast.

FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck

Editors Emeritus Jerry G. Bails, Ronn Foss, Biljo White, Mike Friedrich

Cover Art (This Volume) Nick Cardy, Ramona Fradon, Joe Giella, Dick Giordano, Joe Kubert, George Pérez, & George Tuska

Cover Color (This Volume) Tom Ziuko

Contributors (To Original V3 #1-2): Neal Adams • Phillip Anderson Thelmon Baggan • Bob Bailey Mike W. Barr • Steve Billnitzer Mike Bise • Bill Black Ray Bottorff, Jr. • Jack Burnley Sal Buscema • Chris Claremont Ernie Colón • Pierre Comtois Carla Conway • Ray A. Cuthbert Peter David • Craig Delich David Delich • Al Dellinges Will Eisner • Nancy Ford Carl Gafford • Paul Gambaccini Jeff Gelb • Jean Giraud (Moebius) Ron Goulart • Richard “Grass” Green Martin Greim • Mark Hanerfeld Ron Harris • Irwin Hasen Roger Hill • Richard Howell Gil Kane • Robert Kanigher Jon B. Knutson • David Anthony Kraft Stan Lee • Larry Lieber Jean-Marc Lofficier Russ Maheras • Lou Mougin

Da Frantic Four! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Bill Schelly presents Grass Green’s classic 1962 FF parody.

The Secret Origins of Infinity, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 The 1982 creation of the JSA’s heirs apparent, courtesy of Thomas, Ordway, & Machlan.

Vive Le Silver Surfer!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Jean-Marc Lofficier on two 1980 issues of Silver Surfer—published only in France!

Writer/Editorial: Golden Age Forever!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 “So I Took The Subway And There Was Shelly Mayer!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 An interview with Golden Age (and newspaper comic strip) great Irwin Hasen.

Two Touches Of Venus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Never-seen Wonder Woman/All-Star Comics scripts from 1942—plus rare H.G. Peter art.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt: “There’s Money In Comics!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Michael T. Gilbert presents Stan Lee’s how-to article from the 1947 Writer’s Digest.

FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) #60 . . . . . 77 P.C. Hamerlinck showcases Marc Swayze—& that Brazilian Capt. Marvel/Human Torch crossover.

From Alter Ego V3 #2: Covers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88-89 In glorious black-&-white! Two cavortin’ covers—by Gil Kane and Jack Burnley.

Writer/Editorial: Silver Threads Among The Gold (& Bronze & Even Beyond) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90

Article

5 Will Murray • Jerry Ordway Jon E. Park • John G. Pierce John Romita • Arlen Schumer Julius Schwartz • Jim Shooter Jeff E. Smith • Robin Snyder Marc Swayze • Richard Deane Taylor Daniel Tesmoingt • Dann Thomas Joel Thingvall • Marv Wolfman • Lynn Wooley

Additional Contributors (To This Volume):

Splitting The Atom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Roy Thomas tells all (we hope!) about the 1960-61 origins of the Tiny Titan—starring Gil Kane, Julius Schwartz, Gardner Fox, and Jerry Bails.

A/E COLLECTION, VOL. 1, EXTRA!

The Justice League—Cheaper By The Dozen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Twelve great Silver Age artists’ takes on one of the great Silver Age concepts—the JLA!

Splicing The Atom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Pro writer Mike W. Barr talks about finding one of Gil Kane’s 1960 concept drawings.

“Stan Made Up The Plot…And I’d Write The Script” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 A conversation with artist Larry Lieber—one of the most important scripters of the Silver Age.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt: The Legendary “Lost” Spirit Story!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 About that ultra-rare 1966 Spirit adventure by the immortal Will Eisner.

A/E COLLECTION, VOL. 1, EXTRA!

The “Found” Spirit Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 A few tidbits from the “lost” story—and other Eisner goodies.

Hark, The Herald Tribune Sings! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 A most extraordinary 1966 issue of the Trib’s New York magazine.

Fandom’s FAN-tastic Past—from the ’60s To The ’90s . . . . . . 138 A guided tour of photos and other artifacts of comic fandom’s early movers and shakers.

re: [Letters From Stan Lee & A Few Other Folks] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 “It Was Only Starman I Paid Attention To!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Actually, interviewee (& Golden Age icon) Jack Burnley lavished attention on Superman & Batman, too!

How Marv Wolfman And Co. Saved (A Bit Of) The Golden Age . . 160 On how the future scripter of Tomb of Dracula & New Teen Titans did it!

A/E COLLECTION, VOL. 1, EXTRA!

“Written Off 9/30/49” – The Special Edition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Three more pages’ worth of 1940s DC art that escaped oblivion—never before printed!

The Sky Wizard’s Lost Origins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 Will Murray unearths the story of the creation of an obscure (but real!) Golden Age super-hero!

Kanigher On Kanigher! (And Everything Else!) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 The fabled Golden & Silver Age writer/editor writes—and Ye Editor responds.

FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) #61 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Captain Marvel artist/co-creator C.C. Beck—Marc Swayze—and an interview with 1940s Fawcett artist Richard Deane Taylor.

Jim Amash • Bob Bailey • Daniel Best Robert Weinberg • Dominic Bongo Jerry K. Boyd • Mike Burkey William Cain • R. Dewey Cassell Gary Colabuono • Shelton Drum Michael Dunne • Shane Foley Arnie Grieves • Heritage Comics, Inc. George Hagenauer • Denis Kitchen Larry Lieber • Ralph Macchio • Dan Makara Don Mangus • Edwin & Terry Murray Ethan Roberts • Robert Weinberg Marv Wolfman • Gregg Whitmore Eddy Zeno About Our Cover: For several years now, collector Arnie Grieves has been persuading Silver Age artists who’d done “Justice League” tales at one time or another to draw one figure each of a “JLA Jam” illustration. Arnie has his own vision, though: in lieu of Aquaman, he asked merman artists Ramona Fradon and Nick Cardy to sketch other heroes—in Ramona’s case, Black Canary instead of true charter JLAer Wonder Woman—and he asked Joe Giella to garb Green Arrow in his second set of threads. No matter. It’s a great illo, first printed in Michael Eury’s Justice League of America Companion, Vol. 1, a few months back—and now, for the first time, in full and fabulous color! Art by Joe Kubert, George Pérez, Dick Giordano, Nick Cardy, Ramona Fradon, Joe Giella, & George Tuska.

[Hawkman, Atom, Martian Manhunter, Flash, Black Canary, Green Arrow, & Green Lantern TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Art On Contents Pages: (Clockwise from top left:) Penciler John Romita, one of Stan Lee’s rhapsodic 1995 roasters, teamed up with inker Murphy Anderson for this sketch of Spider-Man playing buckin’ bronco with The Vulture, as per the program book for Shelton Drum’s 2004 Heroes Convention (Charlotte, NC). [Art ©2006 John Romita & Murphy Anderson; Spider-Man & Vulture TM & ©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Spidey (almost) meets the Hulk, in this panel from the Spider-Man daily comic strip for Oct. 11, 1989. Script by Stan Lee… pencils

by Larry Lieber… inker uncertain (maybe the late John Tartaglione?). Thanks to Larry L. [©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.] The Silver Age Atom’s getting smashed— could it be by his 1940s counterpart on the facing page? Art by Gil Kane (pencils) & Murphy Anderson (inks), from Showcase #36 (Jan.-Feb. 1962). [©2006 DC Comics.]

Yep—could be! Irwin Hasen’s Golden Age Atom swings a mean left, from the cover of All-Star Comics #43 (Oct.-Nov. 1948). [©2006 DC Comics.]

8

Writer/Editorial

Silver Age Forever!

D

espite having been the writer/editor of much of DC’s Secret Origins in its 1980s run, I don’t always find it easy to figure out where to begin when writing about the precise origins of things... and that includes Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #1.

In one sense, of course, I should start in March 1961, when college prof Dr. Jerry G. Bails of Detroit published and edited that first, 22-page, spirit-duplicator fanzine issue of Alter-Ego, with his 20-yearold correspondent/contributor Roy Thomas generously listed as “co-editor.”

In another sense it began in 1964, when I took over publication of the now unhyphenated Alter Ego from interim publisher/editor Ronn Foss and almost-publisher/editor Biljo White. That issue, #7, was my true baptism of fire.

(In 1965, however, I got happily waylaid by becoming a comic book writer and editor—for Stan Lee at Marvel for fifteen years, for DC from 1981-86, and since then as a freelance scripter for whoever’s left standing. The vicissitudes of that career pushed A/E into the background for years, although issues #10-11 rounded out “Volume 1” in 1969 and 1978. Bill Schelly and I told the tale of A/E ’s first life in the Eisnernominated 1997 book Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Comics Fanzine, so I won’t go into it further here.)

Onward: In a third sense, A/E was reborn when, in 1986, artist Ron Harris and I did four issues of an Alter Ego comic book mini-series for the now-defunct First Comics.

In yet another very real sense, the road to the magazine you hold in your hands was paved when I saw an ad for a forthcoming magazine called Comic Book Artist. It said CBA #2 would deal with the “overlooked” work of a number of “greats,” including—I blush to admit— myself. I noticed the new mag was to be put out by the publisher of the entertaining Jack Kirby Collector, so I dropped its publisher/editor John Morrow a line, wishing him well and saying that, if he was ever interested, I had some memories and materials I’d be glad to contribute from

time to time under some sort of Alter Ego masthead.

John passed my missive along to Jon B. Cooke, editor of the upcoming CBA, and within a few days I was the recipient of an enthusiastic fax from Jon, eager to discuss my participation in the magazine.

By his second fax, Jon offered me a regular slot in each issue for an “Alter Ego section.” By around his third fax, Jon and I had agreed that A/E would be treated like virtually a separate magazine, printed upside down to the rest of CBA and sporting its own cover.

All of a sudden, I had myself a new avocation.

I’ve now prepared five editions of Alter Ego, Vol. 2— even if the final one is coming out almost simultaneously with Our letters section got squeezed out this time, but this first issue of not this brand new drawing of “Alter and Captain Vol. 3. It’s been a Ego” by their 1963 creator, Biljo White. See the wonderful experiGolden Age section for A/E’s other pair of mascots. ence being part of Art ©1999 Biljo White; Alter & Capt. Ego TM & ©1999 CBA, a magazine I Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly. consider a major addition to the cause of comic book history. I’ve put my two cents’ worth into most issues of CBA—while Jon Cooke, for his part, has been an integral part of all five A/Es: doing the layouts, overseeing covers and coloring, providing extra artwork to supplement what I’ve come up with. John Morrow has been a true encouragement and help, as well.

Yet, in a fifth sense (we all have five senses, right?), this new volume of A/E began when I joined John and Jon at the San Diego Comic Convention last summer, the very day CBA #2 went on sale—and both guys suddenly hit me up with the idea of A/E becoming a separate magazine, a couple of issues down the line.

I was both flattered and a little flabbergasted. I liked the notion of doing A/E as an entire mag again; in doing it I’d found a joy in the comics medium I was in danger of losing. However, if A/E became a solo title, I feared I’d have to pay too much attention to commercial considerations instead of piggy-backing securely on Jon’s theme-based issues. More than one friend, in fact, advised me against “going solo” at any time in the near future, and that was my own inclination, as well.

However, I was eventually won over to John and Jon’s way of thinking, for reasons I won’t go into here; and the result is what John Morrow mischievously calls an “80-page giant”—though, for my part, I call it an 84-page giant, ’cause I always count the covers, just like DC did back in the days when each issue was heralded as “a 52-page magazine.”

More about that when you’ve finished this Silver Age section, and flip the book over to read the Golden Age segment of the issue. (Unless you started the other way around.)

Right now, here’s a word from our amiable associate editor... who might just come up with a sixth sense....

L to R: Julius Schwartz, Roy Thomas, and Bill Schelly sign copies of Hamster Press’ Best of Alter Ego volume at the 1998 San Diego Comic-Con. Photo by Jeff Gelb.

Writer/Editorial

9 Underworld Executioner. The Eye—Special Edition will hit the comics specialty stores about the same time as the magazine you now hold in your hands.

B

ill Schelly here!

Pinch me to make sure I’m not dreaming. Ouch! Okay—I believe it!

The real credit for the auspicious return of Fandom’s Favorite Fanzine as an independent periodical goes to Roy Thomas, for making the time in his schedule to devote to it—to John and Pam Morrow of TwoMorrows Publishing—and to Jon B. Cooke, editor of Comic Book Artist. Truer words were never spoken than TwoMorrows’ slogan “Bringing New Life to Comics Fandom.” Their philosophy (if I read it correctly) is amazingly congruent with the essence of Alter Ego: celebrating the comic art medium not for its investment value, but for its intrinsic enjoyment. I’m happy to be a part of the TwoMorrows family.

Alter Ego is finally back in full-blown form. Who says you can’t go home again?

When I wrote a brief historical perspective of A/E in the Hamster Press Best of Alter Ego tome, I never seriously thought the magazine would return in any form, much less with one of its original editors at the helm. If anyone had told me that The Golden Age of Comic Fandom (my fandom history book, now back in print) would help lead to this outcome, my skepticism would have known no bounds.

My role as associate editor of the new A/E will be a varied one. I’ll be assisting Roy in the editing, as well as contributing articles and art as inspiration strikes. I’ll share my collection of fandom memorabilia with the readers either through a “Comic Fandom Archive” or in other ways. I’ll also be keeping my eyes and ears open for top caliber contributions.

Maybe I should back up just enough to introduce myself to those who don’t yet know me. I was a fan of the original Alter Ego starting in 1964 when I joined the fledgling comic fandom movement.

One thing is for sure: With all the fantastic features Roy and I are planning, you won’t want to miss a single issue!

In partial imitation I published my own fanzines in the 1960s, with Sense of Wonder being the best remembered. When I re-entered comicdom in 1991, I began researching the history of those early years; the result was a series of four books on the subject.

Comic fandom forever!

The Eye—illo by Biljo White and Bill Schelly; inks by Bill Black. ©1999 Bill Schelly.

My current focus is on reviving Biljo White’s legendary costumed hero from those erstwhile fanzines: The Eye,

“Rob Lindsay, a boy from the real world who finds himself transported to the comics world and transformed into a super-hero! What comics fan wouldn’t love that?

NOW ON SALE

“’40s Nostalgia, ’80s Nostalgia, and Wish Fulfillment— A Wonderfully Fun Combination!”

—Jack Abramowitz, Comic Buyer’s Guide (Aug. 2005)

Collected for the first time as a trade paperback!

Roy Thomas and Ron Harris present their classic 1986 tribute to the Golden Age of Comics!

Full-color - 128 pages - $17.95 ISBN 0-929729-02-1 Can’t find it? Order it from: 6433 California Avenue Long Beach, CA 90805 Visit Our Website At: www.heroicpub.com

Concept & dialogue: Roy Thomas after Stan Lee.

10

Stan Lee Roast

The Stan Lee Roast Held at the ’95 Chicago Comicon Transcribed by Dann Thomas Edited by Roy Thomas Introductory Note by Nancy Ford: The Chicago Comicon, coordinated by Robert Weinberg, Gary Colabuono, Larry Charet, and me, had been running for many years before we started our own awards presentation. We decided to honor people who had been pivotal in the comics and related fields, and who had done their work in an entertaining and classy manner, so we instituted the toast/roast banquet. At first the other speakers at the banquet were nervous about the possibility of their remarks being interpreted as being mean-spirited, but we assured all who participated that they had the choice of what to say, and that all humor would be based in respect. Our first honoree, in 1993, was Julius Schwartz, followed by Harlan Ellison in 1994, and Stan Lee in 1995. Not only were the honorees spectacular, but the roasters were also in a class of their own. The awards were held for about four years, until the Chicago Comicon was bought and the awards dropped.

Note by Ye Editor: For the most part, I have not indicated when or to what extent the audience applauded, or laughed, or booed good-naturedly, or whatever, leaving that to the reader’s good sense.

Suffice it to say, there was a lot of applause and

laughter, in particular. The transcription has been abridged slightly, in the interests of space, although probably 75-80% of what the major eight parties involved said is included... no easy task, since the videotape of the roast was not intended for transcription. No official photograph of the dais where were seated the seven—eight, counting Stan Lee— people who composed the group seems to exist; but hopefully the accompanying photographs, generously provided by Nancy Ford, will give an added feeling to what transpired in late June of 1995.

Alas, Nancy was unable to recall the name of the photographer, but if he’ll make himself known, we’ll credit him in a future issue.

For the most part, the comments made by roasters and roastee need little explanation to a reasonably knowledgeable comics fan audience—and would often be utterly unintelligible to anyone else. Thus, the only elaboration we’ll make at this point is to say by 1995 the socalled “Marvelution”—read, “downsizing”— had begun, as Marvel’s market share eroded and its financial troubles moved into high gear (and onto the front pages). This was also the period during which it was wrongheadedly (but mercifully briefly) decided that many years’ worth of Spider-Man adventures had actually happened to a clone of Peter Parker; hence the various “clone” references. And now, without further ado....

[To applause in the packed banquet room, the seven roasters are escorted to their seats on the dais by young ladies. At this point SpiderMan enters, strides to the microphone.]

“I’d like to introduce a man who’s been like a father to me...”

11 SPIDEY: I’d like to introduce a man who’s been like a father to me. Ladies and gentlemen... Mr. Stan Lee! [Stan Lee is ushered in, to thunderous applause, and hops onto the dais.]

STAN LEE: Thank you... thank you! [Throws up his arms, shouts:] EXCELSIOR! [Sits. Gary Colabuono walks to the podium.]

GARY: Our master of ceremonies tonight is a dear friend of mine, who’s our guest of honor this year. [At this point Peter briefly falls off his chair, but regains it with reasonable aplomb.]

All of us in the business end of comics are envious of Peter David, because he started in the business end of comics, and now he’s doing what we’ve all wished we could do.

Peter David...

PETER: Ladies, gentlemen, disgruntled former Marvel employees—and we’ll be having a “Count the Former Marvel Editors-in-Chief Contest” after dinner—last year the Chicago Comicon had Harlan Ellison as the guest of honor, and they had a Harlan Ellison Tribute Dinner. This year I am the guest of honor... so naturally we’re having a Stan Lee Tribute Dinner.

I’m actually a “special guest,” which is kind of like “special Olympics,” I suppose. At any rate, ladies and gentlemen, try and have a fun evening.

[After dinner, Peter takes the podium again; he blows one of the noisemakers provided to each guest; its tongue juts out, then dips straight down] Look, it’s Marvel market-share toys!

[Mixture of groans, laughter, applause] We begin tonight’s symposium with my favorite Stan Lee anecdote. I regret that it is customary, indeed almost an obligation, that when you are telling a Stan Lee anecdote, you have to do a Stan Lee impression. This is actually fairly easy because, to get Stan, you do kind of a cross between Mr. Rogers and Maxwell Smart. You know, like [in high-pitched voice:] “Would you believe, three Peter Parkers!”

I was on a convention panel with Stan, and I was supposed to ask him all kinds of interesting questions, which, ideally, he would answer. And just before we start, Stan says to the audience: “I just want to tell you guys about this young, fabulous writer”—this is a few years ago—he says, “This young man has written one of the best graphic novels Marvel has ever published!” I knew I was in trouble, because at the time I had not written any graphic novels. And Stan drapes his arm around me and he says, “Ladies and gentleman, this young man, the writer of Greenberg the Vampire!”

The audience goes like this... [Imitates someone starting to applaud, then slowing his clapping, halting, puzzled] I’m sitting there dying, and I say to the audience, “Should I tell him?” And they say, “I think you’re going to

12

Stan Lee Roast podium]

M.C. Peter David: “When you are doing a Stan Lee anecdote, you have to do a Stan Lee impression....”

SAL: Thank you. What a night! Peter, I know a guy named Guido in Brooklyn that’ll pay you a visit. He’s got a nose like this. [Indicates broken nose] I was absolutely thrilled when I was asked to come here to this banquet honoring this living legend...

Hulk © 1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

STAN: He forgot my name!

have to.” And Stan says, ”What?” And I have to explain to him that I am, in fact, not Marc de Matteis.

Stan actually had a fairly good explanation as to why he’d screwed up, an explanation of which I think I speak on everyone’s behalf when I say: “WE DON’T CARE!” At any rate, I’d like to introduce, one by one, our speakers.

[Looks toward Sal Buscema] What can I say? When it comes to discussing master storytelling, dynamic rendering... when it comes to discussing the true artistic greats of the super-hero genre, what can I say that has not already been said about—Sal Buscema’s brother? I remember as a kid, many, many, many, many years ago, the first time I opened a comic and saw the name “Sal Buscema.” And I thought, “Wow! John Buscema has a sister!”

Ladies and gentlemen, a man who needs no introduction, and, I would hazard a guess, would have preferred none to this one... Ms.-ter Sal Buscema! [Sits down, as Sal walks to the

SAL: ...whatever his name is. I left Virginia, left my lovely wife and family to come here to make you laugh with some funny remarks about this guy. And believe me—believe me—there is nothing funny about this man! Absolutely nothing!

So where do I start? I guess at the beginning. Many, many years ago, more than I like to remember, I had an appointment with Stan, and I was very nervous. You know, when you’re going to meet a living legend, you get very nervous.

I was ushered into his office. He asked me to sit down, and proceeded to give me the Stan Lee Five-Minute Crash Course on How To Do Comics the Marvel Way. He started leaping around his office—on the chair, up on the desk, back onto the floor, back up onto the desk, super-heroes from the right, super-villains from the left—I was absolutely terrified! I didn’t know what was going on! Scared the hell out of me! Just about the time when I was ready to run out of the room, he was finished. But then, I had a vision... Can you imagine this man in a Spider-Man costume?

That scared me even more!

He asked me to step outside and talk to Sol Brodsky—the late Sol Brodsky, delightful man—about a page rate, and then to come back after we had settled on it. Sol and I bantered back and forth, and we came up with a figure.

I went back into Stan’s office, and he said, “What did you settle on?” And I told him the price. And he said, “Well, it’s probably more than you’re worth.” True story.

What a confidence-builder this was! Stan, it’s been 27 years. Can I have a raise now?

But, you know, in reality, I really have not worked with Stan that much! And from what I understand, this is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to my career! Look at the guys that he has worked with: John Romita... Roy Thomas... Tom DeFalco. These guys are still in their prime, and it’s all over for them! [Looks at John Romita] I think Guido’s gonna be paying me a visit!

A couple of years ago, Stan and I were both at a convention in Texas—it was part of a Marvel Megatour, and all the Marvel people were housed in the same hotel. And Stan and I sort of gravitated together, I guess because we were surrounded by a bunch of teenyboppers.

You know, Stan’s older than dirt, and I’m almost as old as dirt, so it was sort of the natural order of things.

STAN: And I had no one else to talk to.

SAL: And he had no one else to talk to. They were all ignoring him. So anyway, our host brought us to this very nice Mexican restaurant and we had a wonderful conversation.

“Conversation.” He talked... I listened. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I have been in the same room with this man that I’ve been able to say anything more than, “Hi, Stan, how are you?” I’ve never been able to get a word in edgewise.

Now we get serious. I think everybody here is familiar with this man’s credits. They’re a mile long, they’re endless, they go on forever, he’s done everything. To me, the thing that is most significant—the contribution that he’s made to this industry, this crazy industry that we’re in, his vision, his seemingly boundless energy, his considerable talents—I think what I’m trying to say is that there’s probably not anyone in this industry today—any artist,

Sal Buscema: “[Stan] started leaping around his office... I was absolutely terrified!”

Stan Lee Roast

13 John Romita, Senior! [Sits down; John walks to the podium]

JOHN: Thank you, Peter. I think I came out almost unscathed in that. 27 years for Sal... my God, I’ve got ties older than that! I’ve been in this business for 45, going on 46 years.

When I was 19 I worked for Stan, but he didn’t know it. A buddy of mine was getting work from Stan, but Stan never knew the guy couldn’t pencil; he was just an inker. So this guy hired me to ghost-pencil, and he took the work up to Stan and represented it as his own. So I worked for Stan for about 18 months without ever meeting Stan. Those were the best years of my life! I kid you not. I thought I was working hard. Those 18 months were bliss!

When my partner and I broke up, I went to Stan’s secretary, a beautiful blonde—he always had beautiful girls working for him—and I said, “I’ve been working for Stan, but he doesn’t know me; I’ve been doing such-and-such titles.”

She went in and talked to Stan, and came out with a script. What she didn’t know was that I had never inked professionally. The assignment was to pencil and ink, and that was the beginning of my troubles.

When I brought the job in, that’s the first time I met Stan. Now, I’ve been a rather insulated character in my time—I haven’t dealt with more than maybe four or five editors in my whole life, and that’s a joke for 45 years. Stan happens to be one of those guys that looks at the pages—carefully—and he would tell you what he thought, good or bad. He would compliment you. For the first year and a half that I worked for him directly, every time I went in there I got a $2 raise in my page rate. I started at $17 a page—I was up to about $40 a page by the time I finished. It was wonderful! That’s pencil and ink, by the way.

Just so people don’t think I was rich.

As I said, his attention to detail became the bane of my existence. It made me a dribbling moron. He wore me out. No matter how good I got, it was never good enough. He’d say, “You’re too good to do it this way, you should do it a little bit better. Now you need patterns on the clothes, now you need more hair styles, you’ve gotta look at Women’s Wear Daily, you gotta look at all of Sal Buscema’s pencils for Zarlok, from Marvel’s planned “Excelsior” line. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. these magazines.” Well, he wore me out. And like the masochist that I am, I stayed with him. writer, editor, whatever—that doesn’t owe a debt of gratitude to this That was only the beginning. We were doing westerns... now I had man. And the reason I say that... is because he told me to. to learn how to draw horses. We were doing war stories... I had to learn But seriously, 27 years ago, Stan gave me my start in this business. how to draw tanks. Stan doesn’t know that you’ve gotta learn these And I’ve probably had more fun than any human being deserves to things in the week he gives you an assignment. He wants to know that have, and it’s all because he had faith in me. And I just want to tell you you can do everything! that I am personally very, very grateful for that, Stan. [Sits down] [To Stan] I think I worked 25 years for you—because I did have eight years over at the Distinguished Competition, doing love stories. I PETER: Awwwwww... [Looks at John Romita] What can I say? Many, haven’t done as many things as Kirby did, because he was much faster— many, many, many years ago, when dinosaurs walked the Earth, Stan Lee faster than anybody—but I’ve done more stories, more plots, more covers needed a new artist for Spider-Man. Someone who could follow Steve with Stan Lee than anybody in the world, so everybody look at me and Ditko, the way a swine follows pearls. [nervously:] I’m insulting Italians see what happens to a man who—I’m a physical wreck. in Chicago. There’ll be a Hulk head in my bed tomorrow morning.

And when he took off and went to California, I inherited the job of Anyway, Stan needed someone who had his own unique style. giving the—it wasn’t five minutes by that time—the Stan Lee Spiel to After all, Spider-Man is no place for an artistic clone. After much thought every young artist. I didn’t jump around the furniture, but I would give and agonizing, the word finally went out. Stan said, “Get me John them all of his precepts: You don’t have anybody thump the table—no, Buscema—or his sister!” But they weren’t available, so they got this guy. you have him smash the table!

Ladies and gentlemen, the artist formerly known as John Romita... Mr.

14

Stan Lee Roast

John Romita:“I stand before you as a shell of a man....”

come in for lunch.”

He took me out for a three-hour lunch and gave me both barrels right in the face. He threw everything at me, including, “You want to be a little fish in a big pond? How about being a big fish in a little pond?” I wasn’t even a fish at all. And he’s calling the whole comics industry a little pond. Well, this was ’65, I’ll give him that.

So he talked me out of going to BBD&O. I had to call them up embarrassed the next day and tell them I’d changed my mind about taking the job. He’d conned me into staying in comics. So now I stand before you as a shell of a man who made half the amount of money I probably could’ve made if you hadn’t made me such a fanatic.

STAN: Don’t give away our secrets!

JOHN: I remember the first Daredevil story I did. I did it somewhat like a love story for DC. I had Daredevil getting dressed, he’s taking off his clothes, he’s putting on his Daredevil equipment, and Stan says, “Nah, you got it all wrong! The first three pages are a waste of time. Gotta get Jack Kirby. I’ll show you how to do it.” He calls up Jack that very minute. He says, “Jack, here’s the story, I want you to do ten pages of breakdowns. Send ’em in tomorrow.”

And Jack says okay.

I’m in there with Stan a couple of days later, and there are ten pages by Kirby of the wildest stickfigures or silhouettes, labeled “Daredevil”—“Matt Murdock”—“Karen Page”—but he had, in those few scribbled lines, the most dynamic—! The sequence that he tore apart of mine, he turned into: Daredevil grabs his billy club—out the window—didn’t even look to see if there was a ledge or anything—landed down on the street—jumped—and he’s going up the West Side Highway, not on one car—on two cars.

One foot on each car. If you look at Daredevil #12, you’ll see the scene, because I was too stupid to change it. I did it exactly the way he did it.

I learned more in that week than lots of comic artists learn in two years, because it suddenly struck me, “My God, yes, all you have to do is—whatever you were thinking of, was too dull.” Go ten times further than you thought you were gonna do, and that’s gonna be the one to be the Marvel way. So I lived through all of that. And later I had to teach young artists to do it Stan Lee’s way. He was in California, he was sucking up the sun, and I was breaking my back in New York.

STAN: As it should be.

JOHN: [to Stan] This July it’ll be thirty years since the day you talked me out of quitting comics. I left DC and I was burned out. I called Stan up and said, “I can’t make our appointment, I just signed up to work with BBD&O [Advertising Agency], doing storyboards.” He said, “Don’t do a thing until you

John Romita art over Jack Kirby layouts, from Daredevil #12. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Stan Lee Roast JULIE: Or working for DC! JOHN: I worked there for eight years; I got very little input from the editors. Very little. They took the job, they said here’s the check, come in next week with the story, fine. Stan never let that happen. So, to sum it all up, the only thing worse than working for Stan Lee—was to not work for him. That’s all I’ve got to say. [Sits down] PETER: [Looks at Roy Thomas] What can I say? When speaking of Roy Thomas, I’m reminded of the words of Steve Allen, who said, “Never trust anyone with two first names.” In his writing for Marvel and DC, Roy has made a reputation for being so knowledgeable that he can take the most arcane minutiae and inconsistencies from comics published 40 years ago and build entire stories around them—stories that make the fans stand up and say, “WE DON’T CARE! Stop it! Wake up and smell the ’90s, for God’s sake!” Ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to give you another recently former friend of mine... Mr. Roy Thomas! [Sits down; Roy walks to the podium] ROY: Thank you, I think. The convention only called me a week ago... too late to get a plane. I want to thank Julie Schwartz for suggesting that they ask me to drive 1500 miles. Personally, I think you can tell a lot about a guest of honor by the people they bring in to say things about him, so: First, there’s our genial M.C., Peter David. Peter has used his apprenticeship as a comic book writer as a springboard for a brilliant career as a fanzine writer. I’m just old enough to remember when it worked the other way around.

John Romita came back to Marvel two weeks after I got there in ’65. John’s made great progress. He started out as John Romita, and worked his way up to being John Romita, Sr. If John Jr. ever has a kid and names him John, there’s gonna be nothing left of this guy but an asterisk. He started off at Marvel in the middle ’60s penciling a whole Spider-Man book every month and worked his way down to sitting in an office chewing on a pencil.

Next there’s Julie Schwartz, the original editor of the Silver Age Flash, Green Lantern, and so forth. He was my first idol and inspiration as an editor in the field—the guy who helped me get to New York so I could jump ship and go over to Marvel. I think he’s a great guy, but he should loosen up a little bit.

There’s Sal Buscema—27 years in the field and he’s still known as John’s little brother. But he’s got the last laugh—he’s drawing Spider-Man, and John’s drawing Conan, and guess which one’s getting the big royalties!

There’s Jim Shooter, who started writing Superman stories at the age of six, and grew up to become the editor of several different companies... Marvel, Valiant, Defiant, Broadway... one more and he can yell “Bingo!”

And there’s Chris Claremont, the guy who made The X-Men what it is today: a book written by Scott Lobdell.

Thirty years ago next week, I was hired by Stan, ten or fifteen minutes after we first met. I became sort of his protégé and chief bottlewasher— “Houseroy,” if you’re old enough to remember that. He’s been just like a father to me, but of course we’ve all heard of child abuse.

At the age of 17, Stan got his job at Marvel the same way everybody got a job at Marvel—he was related to Martin Goodman. Martin had a brother named Abe, another brother named Dave, who did puzzle magazines—a couple more brothers and he could’ve started his own monastery.

But Stan was only related to Martin Goodman by marriage. Do you realize that if Martin Goodman had divorced in 1940, we’d be here roasting Julie Schwartz again? Julie thinks that would be a pretty good idea anyway.

Stan’s first job at Timely was as a gopher for Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and a lot of people think he peaked too early. The first story he ever wrote was a text story—“Captain America Foils the Traitors’ Revenge!” Catchy title, right up there with Fantastic Four #28, “We Have To Fight the X-Men!” and Strange Tales #125, “The Sub-Mariner

15

Must Be Stopped!” This is the guy that taught us all!

Stan Lieber made a name for himself, and that name was Stan Lee. He was saving his real name to use when he wrote the Great American Novel. We’re still waiting. But one pseudonym wasn’t enough for Stan; he had at least two more: “S.T. Anley” and “Neel Nats.”

Some of the first characters he made up were Father Time and Jack Frost. He’d just drag names out of anywhere! What was next? Mother Nature? Baby New Year?

His first halfway major hero was The Destroyer, who had a blue face, and a skull drawn on his chest... sort of the way most Teamster presidents end up. After Pearl Harbor Stan’s career got interrupted. He volunteered to spend the entire war writing training films in New Jersey. If the Germans came ashore, he was supposed to trip them up with reels of film.

After the war, when Stan came back as editor, super-heroes were doomed, so he tried The Blonde Phantom, who fought crime wearing a full-length evening dress and high heels. She stumbled into the crooks and got them caught in her zipper. There was Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal... lots of great stuff. Comics were growing into Fin Fang Foom and Googam, Son of Goom—those are the ones he should have saved “Neel Nats” for!

Everybody knows the story that in 1961 Martin Goodman went out playing golf with one of the big honchos at DC...

JULIE: [yelling from other end of table] That’s my story!

Roy Thomas: “Stan’s first job at Timely was as a gopher for Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, and a lot of people think he peaked too early.”

STAN: I thought it was my story!

ROY: You can’t have everything, Julie. Anyway, this guy starts bragging about how Justice League was selling real well... and three weeks later, Fantastic Four #1 is on the stands. It would’ve been two weeks, but Jack Kirby’s pencil broke. And the rest is something resembling history.

That book made a big impression on me as a brand new college graduate in summer of 1961. I bought two copies of #1. I sold the spare when the price went up to 50¢. Well, it was a 500% profit, what do you want?

Everybody knows what happened to Marvel after that. It was just one success story after another: Fantastic Four was followed by that fabulous success, The Incredible Hulk, which lasted six issues. That was followed by Ant-Man, who rode an ant into the sunset in every single story. And then there was Spider-Man, whose origin was stuck in the last issue of a dying book. With a start like that, it’s a wonder there ever was a Marvel Age of Comics!

But there was, of course, and the credit for that is due to one man,

16

Stan Lee Roast

sitting right here on this dais: Julie Schwartz! If Julie hadn’t made the JLA such a big success, none of this would ever have happened, and we’d all be standing up here talking about the latest issue of The Atom and Hawkman.

In closing, Stan, I want to say thanks for taking me away from being a high school teacher in 1965, and making me a comic script writer. My ex-students would probably thank you even more. If I’d stayed in teaching, I’d be like all my old teacher friends today—forced into early retirement. Instead we’ve got the Marvelution.

Maybe I’ve traded one thing for another, but what the hell.

I hope you’ll all join me in applauding one of the greatest people in comic books today—our guest of honor—Neel Nats! [Sits down] PETER: Thank you, Roy. That was dull, and yet somehow not remotely interesting.

[At this point, Michael Davis, former editor of Motown Comics, comes up out of the audience and becomes the unplanned eighth roaster. We wish we had room to reprint his comments here. Maybe another time....]

PETER: [Looks at Chris Claremont] What can I say?

Chris Claremont... another satisfied Marvel employee.

The man who launched a thousand storylines... and actually wrapped up one or two. Stan Lee started writing The X-Men, Roy Thomas continued it, but it took Chris Claremont and 17 years of hard work to make The X-Men what they’d eventually become: a worthy vehicle for Jim Lee. The Son of Stan. Both Jim Lee and Stan’s other son Jae couldn’t be here... but Chris is here. And so, without further ado—the man whose new title, Sovereign Seven, has readers everywhere saying, “Zzzzzz...” [snoring sound] ...the X-quisite Mr. Chris Claremont!

CHRIS: I sat there, and I looked out at the dais, and I thought, “Okay, Sal—that’s something”—but John— that’s a tough act to follow. Roy—three hours, four hours—I’ve had full conversations with Roy... two or three days at a time. And I thought, “This is going to be a tough act to follow.” But Peter faked me out. He called Michael. Where do I begin?

PETER: Try being coherent.

CHRIS: [rubs the balding top of Peter’s head] Torpedo-men in the navy used to do that before going into battle.

Unpublished two-page spread of the 2nd issue of Zarlok, prepared circa 1995 for Marvel’s “Excelsior” line.

PETER: God knows, you’ve been torpedoed often enough!

CHRIS: Let me start with a small history lesson. It doesn’t go back quite as far as Roy, but—okay. You see this stage up here? Add another five feet out, and you have the Marvel offices in 1968. The entire Marvel offices in 1968. It had a Madison Avenue address, but that’s only because the alley opened off of the street—in the aptly-named Vision Building, three floors up from The National Lampoon—which is interesting, because in those days they got the bomb threats, occasionally mis-delivered to us, because, well, “They do comics, right? We’ll take it up to these guys, and see what happens.”

So—picture the office in 1968. It has a hall. It has cubicles on every side of the hall. It ends with a cubicle, and an office with a door. Stan’s door. We knew it was Stan’s door because he took it home with him every night. As soon as he was gone, Roy would slip out to watch Dark Shadows. These were the days when we laid the foundation for the

Marvel that you know and love today. The days of “Stan the Man”...

“Rascally Roy”... “Jolly Solly”... “Jazzy Johnny”... “Happy Herb”...

“Mirthful Marie”... “Jumbo John”—and “Cheerful Chris.”

Stan puzzled a lot over that. “Careful Chris” didn’t work. “Cheerful Ch-ris” sounded like something Peter would come up with, for heaven’s sake. It was a happy-go-lucky time then. And here was I, a freshman in college, having gotten a job through... a relative... [A sidewise glance at Stan] ...working at Marvel as a gopher. Now, gopher is an honorable estate in journalism. It’s basically “go for coffee, go for this, go for that, go for whatever.” Today we call them interns; you get college credit. I got 25 bucks a week and trainfare. This is when, in New York, you could get a train for $25 bucks a week—that worked.

So I was there about two weeks. I had just got to the point where I realized I didn’t have to wear a tie and jacket, and I’m doing what every new arrival does at Marvel Comics: I’m reading the back issues. Mind you, this is 1968. We had back issues then. No one realized we could

Stan Lee Roast

17 said, “Yeah, what’s the problem?” You have to understand, I’m the punk of this assemblage. I’m the young guy, except for—[pats Peter on head]. Anyway, so I explained the situation, and Roy said, “Call Stan.”

“What?” “You found it, you fix it!”

I picked up the phone and I dialed Stan in his Upper East Side palatial apartment and said, “Hi, Stan.” “Hi, true believer!” “Hi, this is the punk kid down at the office. We have a slight problem with this issue of Sgt. Fury.” And I outlined it to him, and he said, “Okay.”

Long silence. “You found it, you fix it!” “How?” “Figure something out! What the hell do I pay you for?” Okay, so I actually fixed it, and that became my first writing contribution to Marvel Comics. And so I went back to school and time passed and...

ROY: How did you fix it?

PETER: I’ve got admit, I was kind of curious myself.

CHRIS: [deep, somber voice] He was... adopted.

[Mixture of boos and applause from audience] PETER: By Mary and Murray Fury.

CHRIS: The first operative alternatives were: he was a clone... or a malfunctioning Life Model Decoy.

Unfortunately, that plotline had already been reserved for another book, to be cashed in at a later date... thirtyodd years down the line. So I went back to school, I graduated, I came back to work for Marvel, I wandered the halls, and occasionally Stan and I would bump into each other, and Stan would say, “Claremont, right?” I’d say, “Yes, Stan.” “Doing what?” “Yes, Stan.”

So I achieved the pinnacle of my ambition: I became the editor of Monsters of the Movies. One issue. The reason why it is one issue is, I turned it in. I was proud.

This was my first editing job. I had visions of, “Today Monsters of the Movies, tomorrow The New Yorker.” I felt empowered. This was a magazine I was proud to have my name on the masthead of.

My phone rings. “Get in my office!” I went into the office. Slam! Onto the desk. “How long have you been working for me?” “Uh... two years?” “What the f--have you learned about comic books?” “Uh... they have pictures?” “What doesn’t this have?” “Uh... Pictures.”

For the next hour and a half, we went through “Intro to Magazine Editing 101”... starting from the proposition that “This is the worst piece of crap I have ever seen in my life—how could you consider yourself a professional magazine editor?” And going down from there. And I thought, “Oh, I’m 26... I can make it to Stan Lee, editor/creator; Roy Thomas, writer; Sal Buscema/Tom Palmer, artists. ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. Unemployment by 2:30....”

But Stan, in his infinite wisdom, says, “Oh no, steal them. So I’m sitting there reading the back issues of such great books we’ve been paying for two years. You’re gonna stay here until you get it as Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. This is fun! right... and we’re not gonna give you a raise, either.” “What raise? I Meanwhile, of course, the current issues are coming in, and one of haven’t had a raise in two years!” “Well, you don’t deserve one!” So we my jobs is to give them a cursory look, to see that the proofreading caught actually fixed the magazine, and it went out, and it got cancelled two everything. So I was looking through this Sgt. Fury—beautiful issue— issues later, and that was that. And then Stan went to the West Coast and Dick Ayers; John Severin; I believe Gary Friedrich wrote the script— all the fun went out of New York. And he’d come back and bump into Nick goes home to Hell’s Kitchen where he meets his kid brother Jake— me in the halls, and say, “You still working for me?” and I suddenly and his dear old sainted mom: “Hi, Mom!” Unfortunately, I had just realized that I could say... “Uh, not quite.” read Sgt. Fury #7: “The Court-Martial of Nick Fury!” where the base But to turn to a serious closure: We’ve had a lot of talk in the industry chaplain says, “Ah, yes, I’ve known Nicholas Fury ever since he was an the last few years about who did what, who is responsible for what, orphan in Hell’s Kitchen!” what counts in this business. I want to say a few words, purely partisan PETER: Roy! Another story! words, as a writer, as someone who in my time loved Marvel, and loved the ideal of Marvel, with a passion that today I find remarkable.

CHRIS: [to Peter] You are so far behind the curve! ...So I went in to There are some here who think they’re faster writers than Stan...

Roy, and I said, “Excuse me, I think there’s a problem here,” and Roy there are some who consider themselves maybe better writers than

18

Stan Lee Roast

Chris Claremont: “I picked up the phone... and said, ‘Hi, Stan.’

‘HI, TRUE BELIEVER!’”

months later and read the adventures of Ego, the Living Planet: “I am Tana Nile. I have come to claim your world!”

“Awright, take a seat over there, the desk sergeant’ll get to ya in a minute”— To a man whose contribution to literature is, “Only one of us is getting out of here alive, Red Skull, and it won’t be me!”— I just want to say, from the bottom of my heart... thank you. Because I wouldn’t be here without you... and I suspect a great many of us wouldn’t be here without you... and the last 25 years would have been a lot less fun. [Sits down]

Sovereign Seven ©1999 DC Comics.

PETER: I didn’t say you could leave. [Looks at Jim Shooter] What... can I say... about a man who, of all the men on this dais, could, probably without very much difficulty, break me in half? Diplomat... statesman... scholar... the idol of millions... a man who is to the creative community what Philip Morris is to asthma sufferers... a man who has done for the comic book industry what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen. What words of praise can I heap upon him that he has not already heaped upon himself? A man knee-deep in heap. I give you the man we call “Mr. Fun”...

Jim Shooter!

Stan... there are some who consider themselves better editors than Stan... and better cheerleaders than Stan... and better people than Stan. Well, all right, four out of five.

But the fact is, in the over 27 years since I first walked in the door at Marvel, about an hour and a half after Sal... no one I have ever found has combined the crafts of writer, of editor, of editor-in-chief, of cheerleader, in the way that Stan has. He is unique. He is the best. And, as I have before and I hope others will say after, we owe him a debt, as craftspeople and as an industry and as fans, that I’m not sure we should even hope to repay.

And for myself— For the kid who walked into the candy store in 1967 and picked up F.F. #49, and thought, “Whoa! Neat stuff! This ain’t that boring Superman! This is a hero whose reaction to the imminent end of the world is, ‘I’m gonna have a shave.’”

For the kid who walked in a couple of

JIM: Well, as you can see, I’m surrounded by comedians here. So I have a speech probably a little more serious than the rest. Again, it starts with a little history. When I was twelve years old, I was in the hospital for a couple of days, and in the kids’ ward they had lots of comics.

They had Batman and Superman... I was familiar with those. And they had this new kind of comics I’d never seen or heard of before, called Marvel Comics. And the Marvel Comics in this ward were kind of raggedy and dogeared. The DCs were in good shape. They’d hardly been opened.

So I took the road less traveled. I read the DC comics first. I hadn’t read them for a few years, and they were about the same as I had left them. Lois Lane was still trying to prove that Clark was Superman every issue... Batman was fighting the Penguin on top of the giant typewriter or toothpaste tube or something.

So I got bored with those after a while... sorry, Julie, it’s true...

JULIE: I didn’t do those!

JIM: Good. So finally I read these raggedy old Marvel Comics—and you know something?

They were revolutionary. And that’s something I think is lost on a lot of people, because people forget—or maybe they’re too young to remember—how amazingly different those comics were. A lot of things that were revolutionary then are taken for granted now, but 34 years ago, in the context of those times, Marvel Comics were startlingly different.

Almost all the Marvels were written by this guy Stan Lee. Man, I wanted to do that. I wanted to be like Stan. So I studied those books and I learned to do a pale imitation of Stan Lee... and that was good enough to get me a job at DC. The people I worked with at DC didn’t seem to understand why Marvel was succeeding... why the thing was taking off. Back in the mid-’60s, I remember being in discussions with DC people about Marvel, and they would say, “Look, he’s got two pages of Peter Parker talking to his aunt! Good God, the reader’s gonna be bored to tears!” But we weren’t, were we? And then they’d say, “Well, look, he’s got a page of the Angel just kinda talking about how cool it is to fly! Superman flies all the time—it’s no big deal!” And I thought to myself, “And if he doesn’t care about it, why should we?”

And that’s the point. See, Marvel characters did things like launder their costumes, they got sick, they had fun—they also screwed up. Now, the standard sound-bite that Stan used to say back in those days, because he was talking to newspapers and they wanted sound-bites, was that it was “heroes with hang-ups, heroes with problems.” But the fact is, it was a lot more than that. It was heroes with lives that we could identify with. And that was revolutionary.

Years later, I was hired as an editor at Marvel. I was there for twelve years, and while I was there I finally got to know the guy who had been my mentor by remote control... the man I wanted to emulate. Now, those of you who don’t know him probably think of him as sort of the ultimate pitchman... all hype, always exaggerating, sort of like the Crazy Eddie of comics. And especially after hearing all these tales about how bad he was, everyone must have a really strange opinion. But let me tell you a little bit about how he really is... and this is the truth, no jokes... well, maybe a few.

People think Stan’s incredible enthusiasm must be a put-on. But no—let me assure you, he is always like that, okay? I mean, this is sincere. This guy is an enthusiastic guy. He’s like the Energizer Bunny on speed. It’s not just when he’s talking Marvel. This is his life.

This guy walks like the back of his pants is on fire. He used to run up the stairs ten floors to Marvel’s office because he couldn’t stand waiting for the elevator. This is true! And he had to have an office with a bathroom, because when he wanted to go, he wanted to

Stan Lee Roast there for Tony Stark’s nose.

And people started drawing Iron Man with this pointy little triangular Tin Woodsman nose—it was like a can-opener. You could actually open a beer on it. A little later, Stan sees this and he wasn’t pleased, and everyone says, “See? He always changes his mind!”

Stan is living proof of how easy it is to be misunderstood, I guess, especially in creative endeavors. I was lucky. I got to spend a great deal of time with him, not only on Marvel Comics, but also assisting him on the Spider-Man newspaper strip for a little while. We worked with some Italian artist—Michelangelo, I think—and we did a few non-comics projects together. I got to know and, I think, understand him pretty well, and I want to tell you that, no matter what these bozos say, I found him to be sincere, honest, rational, thoughtful,

Magnus, Robot Fighter ©1999 Acclaim

go. He didn’t want to go down the hall! And that’s the truth.

Now, Stan tends to speak in hyperbole; it’s natural for him. You have to learn to interpret a little bit if you work with Stan. If he says, “Never do that!”—what he means is, “In this particular case, this idea doesn’t quite seem to work.”

I’ll give you an example. One time Stan told George Roussos—who is one of the best cover colorists in the universe, by the way— “Never use a green background on a cover!” I know what he meant, because most logos don’t show up well against medium colors like green, so it’s often a bad choice. But if you solve the logo problem, there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s fine.

So when I became editor-in-chief of Marvel, I called George in and I said, “Hey, George, I’d like this cover colored green.”

You’d have thought it was the Spanish Inquisition! He was not going to do it! But I twisted his arm and I made him do it, and I made sure it made the logo work, and I showed it to Stan, and he said, “Great!” So I said to George: “Stan loved it.” So you know what George says? “See? He always changes his mind!”

That’s another thing you’ll hear about Stan, that he changes his mind a lot. One time Stan was looking at an Iron Man book and he said, “Doesn’t he have a nose?” What he meant was that George Tuska was drawing the mask too flat; there wasn’t enough room in

19

Jim Shooter: “I’m surrounded by comedians here!”

considerate, and consistent. Oh, and by the way, brilliant.

I guess the point where I really felt like I knew Stan was about 1986.

We were standing on his terrace, looking out over Los Angeles arrayed out below us, and I said, “You know, Stan, somewhere inside me there’s still that 12-year-old who can’t believe I’m editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics”—well, I was for a while—“and I’m standing here with Stan Lee!” And he said he knew what I meant, and that somewhere inside him was the little kid he used to be, who was awestruck by all that had happened to him, and he couldn’t believe that big stars and Hollywood moguls would call him up, and some were even his neighbors.

Well, that may not seem like

much to you guys, but that little moment of rapport is on a highlight reel of my life, and sort of crystalized to me how important it was to keep that kid alive. You see, that’s where the joy is, that’s where the love is. Anyway, it wasn’t too long after that that Marvel went through a period of corporate takeovers, being bought and sold, and I got spit out like a watermelon seed.

I haven’t seen much of Stan since, but I’ve managed to use what he taught me to make a living at one place or another. I wish he’d taught me how to hold a job! Anyway, eight years have passed, and looking back, it’s interesting—I set out to emulate Stan—this is the serious part—and now it turns out we have more in common than I ever realized: We both started writing comics professionally in our teens. Stan was around forty when he did the work that made everyone marvel, and I was around forty when I did the work that got the most acclaim. Both of us suffered through being stabbed in the back by people we thought were close friends, people we trusted. Both of us have been lied about, misquoted, slandered, and misjudged by people who were ignorant of the facts. Both of us have been falsely accused of taking credit for other people’s work, and both of us have had credit taken away from us for things we did, things we created.

And Stan has borne all this with courage, grace, poise, and dignity. He’s been a gentleman, again and again, when it was difficult. I obviously wasn’t there when the Marvel Universe and its characters were created, but I’ve talked to most of the people who were— and I’ve worked with several of the key participants in that incredible collaboration, including Jack, Steve, Sol, Flo, Don Heck, Vinnie, and Michelangelo, to name a few.

And though their contributions were huge, indispensible, irreplaceable, it’s clear to me that Stan was the guiding force, the linchpin, and the most important creator of the Marvel Universe. I worked with him closely, I saw him in action. He was, and he is, The Man. One more thing I learned from Stan—I guess I really learned it from Spider-Man—that sometimes you just have to be content that you know the truth.

All right, one more thing—I just want you to know, Stan, that I’m still learning from you, although I’m sorry to say it’s again by remote control. You’re a hero to me—I’m still trying to emulate you—and thanks to you, I’ll never lose that kid inside. Thank you. [Sits down] PETER: [Loudly, to match Jim’s booming delivery] THANK YOU, JIM! THE PEOPLE ON THE 23RD FLOOR REALLY LOVED THAT SPEECH! [Looks at Julius Schwartz] What... can I say? After the end of the Golden Age of Comics, which we all know was named after Michael Golden, our next speaker spearheaded many significant changes: a new Flash, a new Green Lantern, a new look for Batman,

20

Stan Lee Roast

a complete overhaul of Superman... but that was many, many, many years ago.

And since then, he was shoved—[coughs] I’m sorry, he stepped aside so that young, superior editors could bring in young, superior ideas, such as a new Flash, a new Green—well, you get the idea. But he is a living legend. I know this because earlier today I mentioned the name Julie Schwartz and a young fan looked up at me and said, “Julie Schwartz?

Who’s she?” And of course I told him: “Sal Buscema’s lesbian lover.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Julie Schwartz! [Sits down; Julie walks to the podium] JULIE: Before I begin, I would like to thank Stan Lee. He sent me birthday greetings last week. And he made sure it would say, “From one living legend to another!”

Mention was made of the fact that my boss Jack Liebowitz was playing golf with Martin Goodman, and Jack Liebowitz boasted about how well a magazine was doing, called Justice League of America, and Martin Goodman said, “What kind of a book is it?” and Jack explained it was a team-up of super-heroes.

And I think Martin Goodman had heard enough. He rushed over to Mr. Stan Lee and said, “I want you to put out a comic book that has super-heroes teamed up together”—and thus was born The Fantastic Four—according to Stan, “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.”

So I was not only responsible for saving DC Comics—I saved Marvel Comics, too!

Now what I suspect no one knows is, there was a real-life “Fantastic Four” while all this was going on. There’s a high school in the

Bronx called De Witt Clinton, and attending that high school was “The Fantastic Four,” if not necessarily at the same time.

The first one was a fellow named Bob Kane. And of course we all know that Bob Kane created—or rather co-created—Batman.

Attending at the same time, the same class, a man full of spirit; his name was Will Eisner.

And of course he created The Spirit. That’s number two. Number three was Bill Finger, who not only co-created Batman, but co-created the Golden Age Green Lantern. And the fourth of this Fantastic Four was, of course, Stan Lee. And if we could encourage him, I’d love to get him to do that spirited school song he did with me on a panel in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1988, where I had the privilege of interviewing Stan Lee. I just want to take an extract out of that interview, and while I can’t imitate or emulate or do anything that Stan Lee does, I will do my best. I will ask one question and then he will talk from then on. No matter how I sound, it’s really Stan Lee talking. The light’s pretty bad in here, and these tired old eyes can’t see, so you’ll have to overlook my notes—[Holds up sheet of paper]—incidentally, written on DC stationery!

PETER: [as Chris Claremont momentarily holds a flashlight over Julie’s notes] “In brightest day, in blackest night...”

JULIE: I said to Stan, “When did you shorten your full name to Stan Lee, and why?”

This is Stan talking; I’m not going to imitate. He said, “I didn’t shorten it. It became Stan Lee. It’s because Stan Lee is no shorter than Stanley. I hated Julie Schwartz: “I was my first name, not only responsible for saving DC Stanley. I had a Comics—I saved Marvel Comics, beautiful full name. too!” (Hmmm... now that we I don’t know why I think about it, the covers of Brave changed it. I want you to picture this. and Bold #28 and F.F. #1 were Let the full pageantry kinda similar, weren’t they?) of this thing in. It was Stanley Martin Lieber. Which means ‘love’ in German.

“When I got this job in comics— and no one thought anything of comics in those days—that was the bottom of the artistic and creative totem pole. So I thought, gee, I was sure I would write the Great American Novel some day.

And I didn’t want to use up my wonderful name. I’ll say it again: Stanley

Martin Lieber...”

PETER: [singing, à la “West Side Story”] “Say it loud and there’s music...!”

JULIE: [reading] “Stanley Martin Lieber! I didn’t mind Stan on comic strips, so I shortened it to Stan Lee. What happened was this: I thought comics writing was a temporary job. I’d be working on this for a couple of months, and eventually it wasn’t a job for a man, you see.

“I was only sixteen and a half then”—I almost said ten and a half; my six looks like a zero—“I was only sixteen and a half then, so I wasn’t really a man. And then I went into the army and I was sure I wouldn’t come back to comics writing. But I was wrong, for there I was, back at the same comics company.

Finally, more people knew me as Stan Lee than as Stanley Lieber—” STAN: [correcting him] Martin Lieber!

Stanley Martin Lieber.

JULIE: [correcting Stan] You said, “Stanley Lieber.”

STAN: This sonuvagun writes down everything I say! I’ve gotta be careful with him!

JULIE: [reading] “I noticed I was using Stan Lee on all my stories, so to make life easy I changed it legally. Stan Lee’s about as dumb a name as anyone can have, and I’m stuck with it.”

That was the end of it, so I’ll now say as an afterword that I am happy to join in this fitting tribute to the marvel-less Stan Lee and to the marvel-more Stanley Martin Lieber.

[Throws up his hands] EXCELSIOR! [Holds up a Superman pin] It’s high time I gave Stan a Superman pin, ’cause that’s what he is! [Gives Stan the pin, which Stan accepts] PETER: Marvel Comics is a business. It has always been a business. But once upon a time, it seemed like more, and that was because of this guy here. He made comics fun, because it was clear that he loved comics in the way that many people nowadays in this colder, more cynical industry couldn’t even begin to grasp.

He made Marvel Comics, to us, a joyous place to be. A big clubhouse filled with grownups acting like kids, thrilled to be making comic books, and getting paid for it!

His characters had a style, a way of talking, a way of looking at the world, the Marvel Way. The House of Ideas. But this guy made it our house. He made us feel, in Peter Parker’s angst, or Ben Grimm’s angst, or Thor’s nobility, that comics and the world could be an incredible place. And in the text pages he made us feel that he was addressing each one of us, individually.

He made us feel special, and that’s tough.

That’s a very tough thing to do. Making people feel like crap is a snap. Making them feel special is one heck of an accomplishment. And he did it, and he made it look easy.

And we know now that it couldn’t have

Stan Lee Roast been that easy, because as adults, the blinders have fallen away. But nothing, not all the beefs we have with the way things are being done today, can or should detract from how he made us feel. The more aggravated we may get, the more we must realize how much we owe him, and the more poignant it becomes in the recollection.

He’s taken a helluva lot of crap himself in the past few years, and as Jim said, he hasn’t responded to it, he’s risen above it, because he’s a gentleman, and he’s a class act. In this industry there are very few class acts.

Back before Stan Lee presented Marvel Comics, Stan Lee was Marvel Comics—and dammit, I for one wish it had stayed that way. Ladies and gentlemen, we present... Stan Lee!

21

Peter David introduces Stan: “Before Stan Lee presented Marvel Comics, Stan Lee was Marvel Comics....”

[Standing ovation]

©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

©1999 DC Comics.

STAN: Thank you very much... true believers. Now I wish I knew this was going to be a roast. I thought we were just having dinner! Well, I will say one thing. I was so afraid of what this guy [indicating Peter] would say—and now I’m so touched, I think I like it better when he’s insulting me. This is harder to respond to.

But I guess I’m one of the luckiest guys in the world, to have people like these, with the talent that they’ve got, to come here and say nice— well, some nice things about me. Believe me, I’d like to think of funny things to say—as you know, I’ve got no sense of humor anyway. I just was sitting here enjoying it as much as I’ve enjoyed any hour or two in my whole life.

I have to be honest. When we were doing Marvel Comics—he says, trying to think of a speech—in the beginning, certainly, we never thought we were doing anything important and we weren’t trying to make a statement and we weren’t trying to reform the world or start a new type of comics. We were trying to make a living. We just hoped that the books we did would be well received, and would sell, so we’d get a paycheck week after week. It was only later, when we started getting fan mail from people saying, “Gee, we really like these books,” and so forth, that we knew we were onto something.

I think one of the things I’m happiest about—or maybe I’m not so happy—is that even after I left, the company got bigger and bigger and more successful. I’m not so sure I like that. But it’s been a wonderful few years. I’ve always felt a little bit guilty getting paid for something I enjoyed doing so much. I wouldn’t have minded if they’d paid me more, but I still felt guilty.

I’ve always felt a little diffident, also, about one thing, and that is splashing my name all over, and I just have to make a confession about that. I don’t think—I may be wrong, but I don’t think I’m the egomaniac I seem to be, but for some reason at that time the people who ran the company felt, for whatever reason there was, that it was to their benefit to play me up and to make me sort of a symbol of the company.

I swear to you, “Stan Lee presents” being splashed on everything was not my idea. Somebody had that idea and they did it and it’s always embarrassed me a little bit, especially since I present so many stories that I’ve never read, and have no idea what they were about. [applause] Probably the only honest thing I could do is change my last name to “Presents,” and then at least it would make some sort of sense. But then, again, I would be very proud of myself if I could stand up here and be nearly as funny as these guys.

Incidentally, you were all wonderful. I was worried about Roy, because while these two guys [Indicates Sal and John] were really being funny—two guys with no sense of humor!—they had me in the aisle, and poor Roy was sitting there looking so worried and solemn and I’m thinking to myself that he’s thinking, “How am I ever gonna follow those acts?” And then he gets up and he’s as funny as them! So you never can figure the body language of anybody.

And then Julie Schwartz, who suddenly has become the Don Rickles of our time... Jim Shooter,

22

Stan Lee Roast

And I will spare all of you: I’m not going to thank everybody I’ve who seems to be the industry’s conscience, and I gotta tell you I love worked with and my family and everybody like that. You’re all wonderhim for it. ful, and I’ll never forget this evening. Thank you very much.

And Chris—there’s nothin’ good you can say about Chris. No, Chris knows how I feel about him. Chris and Peter both—why I’m still [Standing ovation] friendly with them I don’t know, because both of them turned me down when I asked if they would write a couple of books for our new company, Excelsior, but maybe Stan Lee: “I wish I knew this was (We couldn’t score any photos of one day they will. going to be a roast. I thought Stan’s speech, so here’s a post-roast Peter—what can I say? I am amazed by photo of The Man with another we were just having dinner!”

Brother David here, because I told him I really Golden Age legend, Green Lantern think he should be writing a newspaper column, co-creator Martin Nodell, and his wife Carrie. We’re not sure if they and I mean a syndicated one in the top papers— believe him, either.)

JULIE: How about calling it “But I Digress”?

PETER: Nawwww.

STAN: Julie, we’ll talk later. But now, Peter, I’ve gotta tell you I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think you should waste your time writing a column. If you don’t become a professional comedian, a standup comic—! Of course, you couldn’t do a thing without these notes, which Chris probably wrote for you.

And of course you’re all aware that here I am, being totally professional with no help at all.

Anyway, once again, I really must thank you all for being here. I thank the—it took me a while to count—the seven of you. I never even realized I liked you. I don’t want to get too maudlin and sentimental, which I tend to do very often, but anyway, thanks a million, guys. It’s an evening I will always remember.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? * [*1999, that is!]

(In Alphabetical Order) Sal Buscema, who came to Marvel as an inker in 1968 but soon became the penciler of The Avengers, Sub-Mariner, Spectacular Spider-Man, et al., has drawn for DC since 1996. He recently returned to inking, his first love, and is now embellishing Ron Frenz’ pencils in several of the Superman titles.

Chris Claremont, the writer behind the glory days of The X-Men from 1977 through the early 1990s, scripted Sovereign Seven for DC Comics in the mid-’90s, as well as a novel with filmmaker George Lucas. In 1998 he returned to Marvel both as writer (Fantastic Four, etc.) and editorial director.

Peter David, raconteur and selfstyled “writer of stuff,” recently left The Incredible Hulk after a highly successful twelve-year run, and is now scripting Young Justice, Supergirl, and assorted Star Trek novels. He also writes a popular

column, “But I Digress...” for The Comics Buyer’s Guide.

Stan Lee, one of the primary architects of the Silver Age of Comics, has headed Marvel Productions in Los Angeles in recent years, and continues to write the long-running Spider-Man comic strip. In early 1999 he launched Stan Lee Media, which is making its presence known in cyberspace.

John Romita, whose art helped make Amazing Spider-Man Marvel’s #1 seller by 1967, officially retired in 1996 after being the company’s art director for nearly a quarter of a century, but continues to work on special projects. He is the father of a popular comic book artist whose name escapes us.

Julius Schwartz, another of the major architects of the Silver Age of Comics, also officially retired (in 1985) after more than forty years as an editor, and since then has been an unofficial roving ambassador

for DC Comics. He is collaborating with Brian Thomsen on his memoirs of a life of accomplishment.

Jim Shooter, who entered comics in 1965 at the age of fourteen writing Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and who was Marvel’s editor-in-chief for a decade before moving on to found several comics companies, is presently at work on new projects, which he prefers to keep under wraps for the moment.

Roy Thomas, who currently writes a few comics and edits Alter Ego while teaching at a tech college, says philosophically: “I’m back where I was in 1965— teaching, editing Alter Ego, and writing a few comics—except now I’ve got Dann, a 40-acre estate, two houses, and a pool to show for it. Who says there’s no such thing as progress in the arts?”

Stan Lee Roast

23

An Alter Ego Collection Vol.

Extra!

Remembrance Of Things Past Thanks to 1995 Chicago Con co-coordinator Nancy Ford and one or two other intrepid souls, we have dozens of other photos from the Stan Lee Roast (and cocktail party afterward) which we couldn’t squeeze into A/E V3#1. So we thought we’d share a few of them with you, more than a decade after that epochal event.

Hail, Hail, The Gang’s All Here!

At the time of the original edition in 1999, we hadn’t been able to score any photos of the Roastee and his seven roisterous Roasters together. Not long afterward, however, William Cain sent us this photo— just to prove that all eight were indeed in the same room at the same time! It first saw print in A/E #50.

Left to right: Peter David, Chris Claremont, Jim Shooter, Roy Thomas, Stan Lee, Sal Buscema, John Romita, Julie Schwartz.

Beauties And The Beasts The seven roasters were also caught on film as they waited for the grand entrance of the The Man himself, accompanied by the seven young lovelies who had escorted them to the dais. Somehow, though, the ladies in the photo at left wound up behind the gents.

Sadly, we don’t know the lasses’ names, but—just in case you don’t recognize ’em from the above shot—the lads (l. to r.) are: Julie Schwartz, Jim Shooter, Chris Claremont, Peter David, Roy Thomas, John Romita, and Sal Buscema. Alas, we’re not certain who sent us these photos—but as soon as we find out, we’re gonna send him a gratis copy of this book!

24

Stan Lee Roast

Incidentally, another gala photo from that evening—of Stan, John, Roy, and Golden Age “Green Lantern”/“JSA” artist Irwin Hasen—can be seen on page 90 of this book. And now for a few other mighty Marvel moments from that eventful night:

“He’s Got A Nose Like This!”

Sal Buscema gives roastmaster Peter David an idea of what “Guido” will look like when he shows up to break the writer’s legs.

“I Stand Before You As A Shell Of A Man” John Romita grimaces during his remarks.

Michael From Motown “From One Living Legend To Another” Julie Schwartz, a previous Chicago roastee and the other most important editor of the Silver Age of Comics, was not always shy about proclaiming his centrality to the era. And most fans wouldn’t have had it any other way!

Michael Davis, former editor of Motown Comics, happily hijacked the proceedings for a few minutes in a hilarious impromptu bit. We didn’t have a photo of him in A/E V3#1, but we’re glad to remedy that situation this time around.

“Never Trust Anybody With Two First Names” Peter David did such an exemplary job as the evening’s roastmaster that he richly deserves—well, we won’t say exactly what he deserves, but at least we can show you another pic of him at the podium.

Stan Lee Roast

25 The Way They Were

Julie, flanked by Mark and Catherine Gruenwald, at the cocktail party held in the hotel ballroom after the Roast. Sadly, Mark passed away, far too young, in 1996… while Julie left us in February 2004—and, even at age 88, that was far too young, as well, come to think of it. But both men bequeathed us a lustrous legacy in four colors—Julie at DC, and Mark as an editor and writer (Captain America, et al.) at Marvel.

Smiles They Left Behind (Left to right:) A sadly unidentified (but apparently happy) attendee—Shelton Drum, co-founder of the ever-popular Heroes Con of Charlotte, NC (see you there, Shel!)—and Gary Colabuono, Chicago Con co-coordinator who introduced Peter David at the podium that evening.

Green Lantern’s (Guiding) Light(s) Mart and Carrie Nodell, also seen on p. 22 with Stan Lee, at another moment in the evening. The always-effervescent Carrie passed away a year or two ago. Mart, as we said, was the first artist and major co-creator of the original “Green Lantern” in 1940—one of the greatest of the Golden Age super-heroes.

Matter of fact, so is Marty!

A Touch of Class—Or Something Your Very Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Spidey signs autographs for a couple of cocktail partiers.

We hate to be the ones to break it to you, ladies, but there’s a vicious rumor going around that that wasn’t the real wall-crawler. We wonder if he signed as “Peter Parker”!

Actually, we’ve no idea who these two guys are— but they gave the cocktail party a touch of class, don’t you think? Well, dontcha?

And a good time was had by all!

26

Comic Fandom Archive

You’ve heard of the Bestest League of America? Get ready to meet FUMIN’ SCORCH… INVISIBUBLE GIRL… THANG… and MISTER FRANTIC-otherwise known as…

Da

Frantic Four!

A fond look back at one of the silliest chapters in the annals of comic fandom

by Bill Schelly

T

here is a famous, and telling, anecdote about the death of a venerable actor. A man approached the bedside of his dying friend and asked, “What you’re going through... is it very difficult?” The actor opened his eyes and whispered, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”

Indeed. Whatever the medium—stage, screen, the printed page—humor rarely gets the same respect as serious material... yet the practitioners of these arts have always held that laughs are harder to evoke than tears. I submit that this is no less true for the comic book medium.

Consider the case of Richard “Grass” Green, one of the premier artists to emerge in the classic comics fanzines of the early 1960s.

Though he was well known for his funny stuff, it took the straight-ahead adventures of Xal-Kor, the Human Cat (in the pages of the long-running Star-Studded Comics), to cement his reputation.

In retrospect, however, it seems obvious to this writer that Green’s greatest talent— where he outshone all others in the super-hero fanzine field, and indeed could stand comparison to the great parodists in the pro comics— was his genius for comedy. And it was “Da

Frantic Four” comic strip that is presented here, and which originally appeared in the fanzine The Comicollector #8 (Oct. 1962), that introduced Green’s facility for parody to fandom in general.

Before we get to that, we must first back up to the early 1950s for some vital background information. We can’t discuss “Grass” Green or Da Frantic Four without discussing his boyhood friendship with another major artist from the Golden Age of comic fandom, Ronn Foss.

It was Ronn who, at some time during their days as junior high pals in Fort Wayne, Indiana, gave Richard the nickname Grasshopper, later shortened to just Grass. The nickname stuck, and so did their friendship, leading to many collaborations over the years.

Did the fact that Grass Green was an African-American make their relationship in

any way difficult? In a recent interview, Ronn stated that it was never a factor. “We were more like brothers than friends,” he said. “As soon as we discovered each other’s mutual interest in comics, and drawing, we were inseparable.

We would spend hours on the phone, excitedly talking about our ideas for comic book characters.”

When Grass completed a hitch in the U.S. Air Force and was discharged in Southern California, he naturally made his way north of San Francisco to visit his buddy Ronn, who had moved there with his young bride Myra Left: Fandom’s favorite Green creation: Xal-Kor, the Human Cat. Above: The first Frantic Four cartoon, by Ronn Foss, from the cover of The Comicollector #7.

Da Frantic Four

just months before. In the summer of 1962 Foss introduced Grass to comics fandom. It was perfectly natural that these two budding talents would collaborate on an idea for the fanzines. That’s exactly what happened, and the result was “Da Frantic Four.”

27

Grass, Ronn, and Myra, though evidently Myra did not actually contribute to this project.)

parodies in Mad magazine drawn by Mort Drucker were visually sedate affairs, relying principally on his uncanny caricatures of popular actors, along with clever scripting. Green clearly fell into the Kurtzman camp.

Within the realm of parody, many artistic approaches are possible. Harvey Kurtzman’s parodies in the early color Mad comics (laid out by Kurtzman, then finished by Elder, Wood, Davis, et al.) were broad and highly energetic, often getting laughs from slapstick. In contrast, by 1962 the movie

From Grass’ pencil flowed an FF who were like something out of the Keystone Kops.

Green worked quickly—instinctively—with little pre-planning, and the result was his highly spontaneous, farcical brand of lunacy. The strip is chaotic, even anarchistic, basically eschewing a semblance of narrative, or even conventional comedy construction. This is Grass at his unbridled, unselfconscious best:

Foss’ discovery of the infant comics fandom movement of the early ’60s had come when a friend had sent him a copy of Alter Ego #2 (June 1961). He shared this and A/E #3 (Nov. 1961) with Grass.

Those issues featured, among a number of groundbreaking articles on the history of comics, Roy Thomas’ Kurtzman-influenced parody of the JLA called “The Bestest League of America.” Is it unreasonable to conclude that Da Frantic Four was directly inspired by—a sort of answer to— Thomas’ BLA? If so, there is a certain symmetry, since the LeeKirby Fantastic Four comic was Marvel’s attempt to capture some of the lightning Julius Schwartz had found when he launched the re-tooled Justice Society in The Brave and the Bold #28.

Lightning had indeed struck twice. The self-styled “World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” became the sensation of 1962. The FF received the Alley Awards from fandom for “Best Comic Book of the Year” and “Best Group of Heroes” for that year, toppling the JLA, who had been the winners the year before. It’s a testament to the early impact made by Fantastic Four that the spoof presented here was understood by all, less than a year after Lee and Kirby’s team comic debuted.

“Da Frantic Four—The World’s Most Greatless Heroes!” began as a single gag panel in the form of a cover, drawn by Foss for The Comicollector #7 (Sept.

1962), Ronn’s first issue after taking over the editorial reins from Jerry Bails. Using that cartoon as a creative springboard, Foss and Green co-plotted a six-page strip for the next issue of CC. (The “Triad” credited on the strip itself was a name meant to include

Top: A 1998 self-caricature by Grass.

Above: Splash page to “Da Frantic Four”; the rest of the story follows. Just turn the mag sideways...

Da Frantic Four!

A Fandom Classic from the Alter Ego Archives, by Grass Green

30

Comic Fandom Archives story, Roy invited Grass to play around with both script and backgrounds, as Will Elder and others had done with Kurtzman’s layouts in Mad, with the result that several lines of Frantic Four dialogue and sight gags in the story are pure Grass. It was a unique and, I think, a highly successful project in every respect.

Despite his subsequent success at writing and drawing more serious fare, it was Grass’ funny stuff that earned him his first professional assignments at Charlton.

For editor Dick Giordano, Grass produced numerous light-hearted strips, including the semi-humorous one-shot 1967 feature called “The Shape,” which had been originated and visually designed by Roy Thomas.

Working from Roy’s outline, Grass got carried away and wrote the whole story, script and all; and Roy—who couldn’t put his name on the tale anyway, since he was on staff at Marvel—was happy to let Grass run with this alien Plastic Man, long before E-Man. Also in 1967 came Go-Go #5, which featured the Charlton version of the Bestest League, scripted by Roy’s longtime friend Gary Friedrich and illustrated by Grass, yet nearly unchanged from the BLA’s origins in Alter Ego. This was the first character crossover from fandom to professional comics. (It was another first: Grass’ first rendering of the BLA.) Did I say Da Frantic Four “never returned?”

While that’s technically true, they did come back in everything but name in the the very next issue of Go-Go, once again in battle with the BLA. With Roy’s blessing, Gary scripted “The Bestest League of America vs. the Marvelous Super-Heroes.”

Da Frantic Four returned only once after their appearance in Comicollector #8. In the Foss-published Alter Ego #6 (March 1964), Roy Thomas and Grass Green teamed up to produce “The Bestest League of America Meets Da Frantic Four.”

This ten-page strip, scripted by Thomas, was a Grass-and-Roy collaboration artwise,

with each drawing his own heroes. Thus, when The Cash grapples with Mr. Frantic, or the Martian Manhandler tweaks the Thang’s nose, it is Roy’s artistic chops versus Grass’ dynamic doodles. Once Da Frantic Four entered the

©1999 Roy Thomas and Grass Green

The reception to “Da Frantic Four” was nothing short of seismic. Fandom clamored for more... and, while Grass complied with a number of other humorous comic strips (appearing in early fanzines like Super-Hero, Countdown, and Komix Illustrated), he never quite got around to another solo adventure of Mr. Frantic, Thang, Invisibuble Girl, and the Fumin’ (not Human, as in Foss’ original conception) Scorch.

Front-and-center in the Charlton story were the newly named “Fantabulous Four,” basically Da Frantic Four except for a leader now known (obviously) as Mr. Fantabulous. Thang, Fumin’ Scorch, and Invisibubble Girl (note the more grammatical double-“b”) now teamed up with Scrap-Iron Man, Great-Big-Huge Man, and the Wisp, among others, to deal with Green Trashcan, Martian Manhandler, et al. The story owes a

Da Frantic Four

31

Top: “Stan” and “Julie” interrupt some comics-style mayhem in Go-Go #6, as drawn by Grass Green and Frank McLaughlin.

Previous page, bottom: Two collaborative panels by Green and Thomas from “The Bestest League of America Meets Da Frantic Four.”

(For the full strip, get the trade paperback Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Comics Fanzine, edited by Roy Thomas and Bill Schelly, from Hamster Press.)

lot to the Thomas-Green feature in A/E #6, and even ends with caricatures of Stan Lee and Julius Schwartz rushing in to break up the fight! (The Stan character threatens to have “Jack Curly” erase the “Marvelous” heroes.)

Oddly, while he had both penciled and inked its BLA predecessor in Go-Go #5, Grass provided only the pencils of this story; it was inked by veteran Frank McLaughlin.

By design or more likely by accident, nearly all the parody-heroes were colored incorrectly in the story (Green Trashcan mostly in yellow, The Hunk’s skin pink, the Thang’s green); but the fact remains that, in one sense, that four-pager in Go-Go #6 was the first professionallypublished meeting ever of DC and Marvel heroes!

And it had all started half a decade earlier, in the pages of Alter Ego and The Comicollector!

Associate editor BILL SCHELLY tells us that copies of Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Comics Fanzine (ISBN 0-9645669-2-3), which reprints “The BLA Meets Da Frantic Four” and lots more good stuff, are running low but still available. See the ad below for details, and see Bill’s ad elsewhere in this issue concerning the revised and updated edition of his 1995 award-nominated The Golden Age of Comic Fandom, just out. (Oh yeah—he’s also the guy who painstakingly touched up all of Grass’ Frantic Four art from the original fanzine!)

An Alter Ego Collection, Vol. 1, Bonus!

Just 'cause we've got this space to fill, here's the splash art & credits for the story that introduced "the Marvelous heroes" in Charlton's Go-Go #6 (April 1967), just in time to slug it out with the Bestest League of America. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

32

Two Co-Creators Reveal—

Two Co-Creators Reveal—

The Secret Origins

of Infinity, Inc.

by Roy Thomas (with the special input of Jerry Ordway) I. A Concept a-Borning The sons and daughters—the natural children and spiritual heirs—of the Justice Society of America!

Turns out this may be one of the oldest ideas in the so-called Silver Age of Comics, and I’m just lucky I’m the guy who got to write it first.

Luckier still that, when I got my shot, I had two of the most talented young artists around to do it with me!

Let’s backtrack a bit: In Bill Schelly’s 1995 book The Golden Age of Comic Fandom, Larry Ivie, a comics/ science-fiction fan as well as a talented artist and writer, reported that in the late ’50s he spoke to a DC editor about an idea he had: “Ivie’s great disappointment was that National wasn’t interested in his proposed revival of the Justice Society of America, to be called the Justice Legion of the World, which would be made up of the sons and daughters of the original JSA.”

America from All-Star Comics.

It was quite a different group from what Larry had envisioned, but his “sons and daughters” concept was an idea that was bound to surface again. It was, as they say, “in the air.”

In 1975, having resigned the previous year as editor-in-chief, I was still employed by Marvel as a contractual writer/editor (its first, after Stan Lee).

One night, at the Manhattan apartment of my friend Gerry Conway, who had recently stopped writing for Marvel to return to DC, the two of us were kicking around ideas, as was our wont. And suddenly I heard myself suggesting a few pet notions I’d like to see DC publish, even if I wasn’t free to write them myself.

Larry moved on to other projects, including his own magazine Monsters and Heroes, and has promised that one of these days he’ll tell Alter Ego the full story of his “Justice Legion,” a concept that was perhaps a bit ahead of its time.

In 1960, of course, under editor Julius Schwartz, National (as DC was then officially known) launched the Justice League of America, an updated version of its 1940s Justice Society of

This Mike Machlan-penciled, Jerry Ordway-inked illustration became the cover of Infinity, Inc. #1. ©1999 DC Comics.

The Secret Origins of Infinity, Inc. One of those ideas was the return of AllStar Comics, with the Justice Society of America.

Gerry sparked to the idea at once and carried the ball from there, with no further input from me. All-Star Comics #58 (Jan.-Feb. 1976), the first of the new series, was of course set on Earth-Two. And if you have to ask what Earth-Two was, you’re probably too young to be reading this, but: From 1963-1985, the JSA existed on a parallel world of that name, from which they made annual forays into the pages of Justice League of America. Writer/editor Gerry took them out of that limited guest-star sphere and into their own magazine again, though still set on Earth-Two. To add a youthful accent to a bunch of heroes who after all had been around since World War Two and before, he added to the JSA an “All-Star Super Squad” composed of three heroes who hadn’t been JSAers in the old days: the Earth-Two Robin, the Star-Spangled Kid (from 1940s Star-Spangled Comics)—and Power Girl, a new heroine he created as the cousin of that world’s Superman, and thus the alternate Earth’s equivalent of Supergirl.

Power Girl, named Kara (Gerry and Carla Conway would later name their only child Cara; she also happens to be my godchild), proved instantly popular. Of course, her stunning figure and cut-out bust, as drawn by Ric Estrada and Wally Wood, probably didn’t hurt any.

Later Gerry offered me a chance to ghostwrite an issue or two of All-Star. I thanked him, but told him that if I ever did a comic about the JSA, I wanted my name on the splash page.

He understood.

Soon afterward, when Stan and I lured Gerry back to Marvel, Paul Levitz of Legion

33

of Super-Heroes fame took over the scripting of All-Star. In issue #70 (Jan.-Feb. 1978), he and artists Joe Staton and Bob Layton introduced The Huntress. In the 1940s this had been the name of a Wildcat villainess, but this one was different: She was the daughter of the Earth-Two Batman!

Thus, the notion of the sons and daughters of the JSA picking up the torch from the older heroes was slowly and unconsciously taking form, even if Power Girl was Superman’s cousin rather than his daughter.

When the great DC Implosion of 1978 led first to cancellation of the revived All-Star and then of the Adventure Comics into whose many pages the JSA had retreated, Power Girl and The Huntress went mostly into mothballs.

But not for long.

II. Elements Assemble!

In 1980 I reluctantly ended my 15-year stay at Marvel and (not at all reluctantly) signed a writing contract with DC. Among other things, I was allowed to create a new title—All-Star Squadron, set during the World War II years—to utilize the many EarthTwo super-heroes of that era (including but not limited to the JSA). My longtime colleague Len Wein was assigned as the book’s editor and chose the artists, though it was understood that the story direction of the series would be left to me.

With art by Rich Buckler and inker Jerry Ordway, and a brilliant cover concept by Len, All-Star Squadron #1 (Sept. 1981) had a very good sale of 250,000+ copies; and while it soon fell from those lofty heights, the comic fared well for some time. A primary reason for that was Jerry Ordway.

Squadron. But as soon as I saw his embellishing of Rich’s pencils on the 16-page preview slated to appear as a teaser in JLA #193, I fell in love with his work.

As an inker, anyway.

Nineteen issues later, after Rich had long since departed and Jerry had spent more than a year inking the pencils of Adrian Gonzales, Len forced Jerry on me again—this time as penciler as well as inker. Since again I hadn’t seen specimens of Jerry’s work in this area, I back-pedaled, but it was Len’s decision.

(Jerry told me recently that actually he’d been trying to get penciling work from DC for some time. He once agreed to ink Joe Staton on JLA, being led to believe that he was being groomed to take over as penciler; but he quickly learned Staton wasn’t going anywhere, so Jerry left JLA instead. Finally, he says, he announced that if he wasn’t made penciler of All-Star Squadron, he would have to leave the title. He got the job.)

I’ll admit to initial misgivings when I pored over the first few pages of Jerry’s pencils for #19 (March 1983). Not that they weren’t good—in some ways they were very good. I was especially impressed by his renderings of the Trylon and Perisphere and other artifacts left over from the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. Still, I wasn’t quite 100% sold— —until I flipped over Page 8, and saw his powerful full-page panel of six All-Stars staring

I won’t go into rhapsodies here about Jerry’s talent, because I’ll admit that, no less than twice, he was thrust upon me by editor Len Wein.

Top: Gerry Conway’s 1976 revival of All-Star Comics featured an adult Robin, the Star-Spangled Kid—and a very pneumatic Power Girl, drawn by Ric Estrada and Wally Wood. © 1999 DC Comics.

First it was as an inker.

Now, I had nothing against Jerry—it’s just that Len hadn’t shown me any samples of his inking, so to me Jerry was an unknown quantity when he was made inker of All-Star

Left: Hippolyta Trevor had made her debut in Wonder Woman #300 only months before the confrontation with her mother (left) in Infinity, Inc. #1, as penciled by Jerry Ordway and first seen in Amazing Heroes #36, Dec. 1, 1983. © 1999 DC Comics.

34

Two Co-Creators Reveal—

wide-eyed at eight comatose but upright, tube-encased members of the Justice Society of America!

At that moment I fell in love with Jerry’s work all over again.

As a penciler, this time.

This isn’t an article about All-Star Squadron—although I’ll admit I’m toying with the notion of an ongoing series about that title and its 1980s offshoots in Alter Ego—but there’s no getting away from the mag, because it brought together Jerry and me—and, before long, Jerry’s friend and fellow Wisconsan Mike Machlan, who began inking Jerry’s pencils with #21.

Ere long, Jerry got restless again, and decided to move on from AllStar Squadron. But, at that point, being now a DC editor as well as writer, I had someplace he could move to.

It was called Infinity, Inc.

III. The (Watery) Road To Infinity In the fall of 1982 I made a working trip from Los Angeles to New York with my wife Danette. (No, I didn’t shoehorn in another wife between Jean and Dann; in the early 1980s Danette legally changed her first name to Dann.) While in the Big Apple, I remarked to her casually that, during the eleven years I’d lived there from 1965-76, I’d never gotten around to taking the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty. Next thing I knew, we were on the boat out to Liberty Island.

Now, Lady Liberty is impressive and all that. But after a while, there’s not much left to do but sit around staring up at her, while waiting for the next ferry to take you back to the mainland.

So, partly on the island and partly on the boat, Dann and I got to batting around the idea of a new, younger group that would take over from the Justice Society—their sons and daughters. A new generation of super-heroes, with a built-in potential for the generation gap to end all generation gaps.

My lovely red-haired spouse, whose parents hadn’t allowed her to read comics as a child and who’s never shown much interest in any since except Howard the Duck and Groo the Wanderer, nonetheless has had a number of good comics-related ideas over the years—plus her rightful share of bad ones. I’ve always figured my job was to figure out which was which.

I don’t recall many details of our conversation, but by the time the ferry docked in Manhattan we had made up the names, parentage, and powers of many (though not all) of the others.

Now, let’s see what concepts came out (or may have come out) of that ferry ride:

IV. The Young (Sea) Lions My wife and I had only recently co-written Wonder Woman #300 (to be cover-dated Feb. 1983), with “Danette Thomas” becoming the first female ever to receive scripting credit on the world’s foremost superheroine. For it, with penciler Ross Andru, we had created Lyta—short for Hippolyta—the vivacious and super-powered blonde daughter of the Steve and Diana Trevor of Earth-Two. In a sense, like others before us, we were gearing up subconsciously for the sons-and-daughters-JSA concept. To keep up the Graeco-Roman connection, we decided Lyta would become Fury, one of the members of the new group.

As a longtime Hawkman fan, I wanted Carter and Shiera Hall represented in the new group, even if not by a blood relative. After all, for an offspring of theirs to have real wings, we’d have had to jump through some hoops, since the Halls strapped on synthetic wings and belts of Ninth Metal when they went trolling for criminals. Instead, we settled on a godchild. For years I had been enraptured by the Gardner Fox/Joe Kubert Hawkman tale “The Land of the Bird People” in Flash Comics #71 (May 1946); so Dann and I came up with Northwind, a half human, half Arctic bird-person. (See Alter Ego, Vol. 2, #1, in Comic Book Artist #1 for scenes from that story. It would later be re-created by Kubert aficionado Al Dellinges in Infinity, Inc. #4.) Whether or not we decided that day that his human half was African-American, that addition wasn’t long in coming.

I quickly decided that this, rather than another long-forgotten notion I had at the time, was the idea I wanted to present to DC while in New York. I loved writing All-Star Squadron, set in the darkest days of the By including Superman’s cousin and Carter Hall’s godchild, we were Second World War, and Arak, Son of Thunder (Danette’s concept, actually), drifting slightly away from our concept of “the sons and daughters of set near the turn of the ninth century A.D.; but I wanted to write somethe JSA”—but only slightly, we told ourselves. thing that was definitely “Eighties,” as the expression Neither Dann nor I can recall if Hector Hall, then was. (And gee, didn’t that sound cool then— Hawkman tackles his godson Northwind in the real son of Hawkman and Hawkgirl, was a the way “Nineties” did through about, oh, 1993.)

Infinity’s premier issue. Pencils by Jerry Ordway. © 1999 DC Comics.

The Secret Origins of Infinity, Inc.

35

product of that ferry ride. At any rate, in his case we decided to use a different motif identified with his parents: ancient Egypt. (The Golden Age Hawkman was the reincarnation of an Egyptian prince.) Thus Hector became the Silver Scarab—no relation to the Scarlet Scarab, an Egyptian villain I’d created five years earlier for my Invaders series at Marvel, except that both were homages to the Nile-spawned, scarab-related, first Charlton Comics incarnation of the Blue Beetle, about whom I had written my second professional comics story back in 1965.

Somehow, though, the Silver Scarab never seemed to jell quite as well as most of the other characters in the group. (Jerry Ordway feels, perhaps rightly, that “when Brainwave Jr. was plugged into the group, it took a little away from Silver Scarab, because Brainwave seemed more dynamic.”)

Back to that boat ride—and the new group’s answer to the Earth-Two Atom—Nuklon: In All-Star Squadron #21, I’d had the non-super-powered Atom of 1942 knocked around by an atomically-charged villain I called Cyclotron. (An “atom-smasher,” get it?)

The artists were a couple of guys named Ordway and Machlan. It was hinted that radiation absorbed from Cyclotron would act slowly on The Atom—a subtle (?) foreshadowing of the atomic strength the Mighty Mite would gain in Flash and All-Star in 1948. Cyclotron was given a capeless costume otherwise nearly identical to The Atom’s ’48-’51 duds, thus retroactively establishing that Al adapted it from Cyclotron’s.

Brainwave Jr. ponders a time paradox in All-Star Squadron #26 (Oct. 1983). Art by Ordway & Machlan. © 1999 DC Comics.

By the time All-Star Squadron introduced Cyclotron’s newborn daughter Terri in its first Annual, the new teen-group’s comic was well in the works; the Squadron connection was done to establish that Terri’s radiation-altered genes would be passed on to her children. It had already been long enough since World War II that one of our new stars was going to be the grandson of a costumed character of that period—and a villain, to boot.

Cyclotron—Dr. Terry Curtis, who had been a supporting character in a very early Superman/Ultra-Humanite story—thus became the grandpa of Albert Rothstein, whom Dann and I named after science-fiction/comics fan (and friend) Alan Rothstein out in L.A. We thought it high time comic books had an overtly Jewish super-hero.

(Maybe we were first with that bit, maybe we weren’t; we didn’t know and didn’t much care.) And so was born Nuklon, who ultimately got his strength from the same source as The Atom—and whom we made a virtual giant to contrast with his godfather’s short stature.

Hector (Silver Scarab) Hall faces his Feathered Father.

Pencils by Jerry Ordway. ©1999 DC Comics.

Of course, Nuklon, too, was not strictly a son or daughter of a JSAer. Why didn’t we make him the son of The Atom? I can’t remember, but maybe Al and Mary Pratt had been depicted as childless

in one of those “Whatever Happened to...?” backup features I had hated in DC Comics Presents. (“Hated,” incidentally, because those fivepagers gave away information about a hero’s future for the sake of a mere one-shot story, which seemed dumb to me. God, was I glad I’d talked the powers-that-were into decreeing that no more 1940s super-heroes appear in that series after All-Star Squadron was originated!

Not that I wasn’t happy to write “Whatever Happened to the Black Pirate?” a couple of years later, you understand.)

To make up for Nuklon’s and Nightwind’s non-blood-relative status, Dann and I decided that Alan Scott, a.k.a. Green Lantern, would have two kids in the new group—twins, no less.

Coming up with Jade was the easy part: we loved (and figured our pubescent male readers would drool over) the idea of a greenskinned girl, who possessed from birth the powers her father gained only by slipping on a magic ring which had obviously affected his genes. Obsidian became the dark side of the ring’s magic, but that concept seems to have taken a bit more time to come together. (More on that below.)

Who was to be the mother of Green Lantern’s progeny? I’m not sure I considered Rose a.k.a. Thorn as a candidate from the start, or if we worried much about who the mother would be. Even Jade and Obsidian don’t seem to know in Infinity, Inc. #1, and I’m not sure I was just being coy there. I suspect I toyed with having Mom turn out to be Molly Mayne, The Harlequin, who had set her cap for GL in the late 1940s, only to later decide that was too obvious... too “on-the-nose,” as the more

36

Two Co-Creators Reveal—

Another member of the new combo, whether created that day or not, was also not the offspring of a JSAer, but of one of their arch-foes: none other than Brain Wave.

only—in a two-page spread drawn by Messrs.

Machlan and Ordway for All-Star Squadron #28 (Dec. 1983). There you’ll see her Wildcatstyle orange outfit (a throwback to her origins as The Lynx), riding a modern-day version of her mentor’s Catcycle.

would soon join the group, and would finally shed the “Kid” appellation for “Skyman,” a name I took from an old Gardner Fox character.

Spangles had been in the 1970s All-Star revival, after all.

Dann and I liked the idea of a hero with psychokinetic powers. In the second issue of the 1970s All-Star revival (#59), Brain Wave had donned a new body and a real costume instead of a scientist’s smock. Though I hated both body and outfit for Brain Wave “Pere,” I felt the garb would be perfect for Brain Wave “Fils”—or Brainwave, Jr., as we christened him.

(Being a “Junior” myself, I thought some hero besides Captain Marvel, Jr., should bear that burdensomely diminutive appellation, even though it never actually bothered me as a kid.)

She was soon dropped from the early mix— but of course, in 1985 one Yolanda Montez, daughter of a boxer pal of Grant’s, became the new but dark-clad Wildcat with our blessing in Crisis on Infinite Earths #6. I think it worked out a lot better that way. (And I’ve reserved a special place in hell for whoever killed her off in that Zero Hour mess a few years ago. But of course she and Dr. Midnight aren’t really dead.

Those were just clones that got killed... like the Hector Hall clone in Sandman’s dreamworld.

Didn’t you know?)

We didn’t need him, even though he’d once become a sand-monster in a Len Wein story, which would have enabled us to dredge up some super-powers for him. He’d have wound up as the DC equivalent of Marvel’s Sandman, thereby further confusing a situation that has been a minor irritant between the two companies from time to time.

obnoxious types in Hollywood used to say.

(Maybe they still do.)

V. They Also Serve...

We also decided, that day or soon after, that there should be a young female linked in some way to Ted (Wildcat) Grant. At first she was to be a Canadian called The Lynx.

Soon, we would instead make her a Mexican-American we christened La Garro— The Claw, in Spanish. La Garro appeared once

It was with a shock that, recently, eyeballing that pin-up of Infinity, Inc. in All-Star Squadron #28—already overcrowded with ten members, counting Power Girl and the Huntress!—I read the accompanying caption: “All this, plus the STAR-SPANGLED KID and SANDY THE GOLDEN BOY—in the comic-mag that tells what it’s like to be a super-hero’s kid—when you don’t wanna go into the family business!—DON’T MISS IT!” The Star-Spangled Kid?

This dynamic Machlan/Ordway pinup, planned for an Annual, was actually printed in All-Star Squadron #28. With this lineup, they’d have outnumbered any Golden Age grouping of the Justice Society! © 1999 DC Comics.

Sandman’s sidekick Sandy, for cripes sake?

Actually, the Star-Spangled Kid (who was still “young” only because of a time warp)

But—Sandy?

Anyway, with membership already “standing room only,” Sandy was quickly and quietly dropped.

So—why no new hero who was the spawn of Jay (Flash) and Joan Garrick? We could easily have explained why no heirs of theirs had been mentioned in any of the Two-Flashes tales. (Maybe he was away at boarding school.)

But there were so many speedsters around that we didn’t want to add another.

Dr. Mid-Nite? His power of seeing in the dark didn’t amount to much in the context of a super-hero group. La Garro would probably have had that ability anyway.

Hourman? What would be his heritage?

Drug addiction? Even the JSA had dropped his namesake after only a few issues in favor of Starman.

The Secret Origins of Infinity, Inc.

37 Jade and a couple of possible forerunners of Obsidian, as rendered by Mike Machlan, with notes and kibitzing by Jerry Ordway. More Machlan/Ordway designs follow. © 1999 DC Comics.

(Of course, later I’d yield to the temptation to add both a new Hourman and a Dr. Midnight to the group. I can resist anything but temptation.)

Johnny Thunder? Dann’s and my and Dick Giordano’s beloved Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt was still a year or two in the future, though she too would eventually pop up in Infinity.

Dr. Fate? The Spectre? Starman? As one who started buying comics in 1945, I’ll admit I thought of the JSA more in terms of the heroes who were JSAers from then through 1950, when All-Star was discontinued.

Besides, the Star-Spangled Kid had Starman’s Gravity/Cosmic Rod, which was all that made him special; while Dr. Fate and The Spectre were far too powerful (and ageless) for the new group. (If The Spectre had had a daughter, she’d have had to wear a bra over her white breasts. Hmmm... maybe a “Spectress” wouldn’t have been such a bad idea, at that.)

Anyway, by the time that ferry ride was over, Dann and I are certain that, at the very least, Fury, Nuklon, Nightwind, Jade, and possibly Obsidian had been conceived and named—and it’s quite possible that Brainwave, Jr., if not the Silver Scarab and La Garro, had, too. All in all, it had been a good day’s work.

I’m not sure if that name was Dann’s suggestion or mine. Of course, in my own defense, I had created the Scarlet Centurion in Avengers Annual #2 at Marvel, a decade before I even met my future second wife.

And I was familiar with Joseph Wambaugh’s cop novel The New Centurions and the movie made therefrom. The name had a strong, military feel I liked for a super-hero group.

Alas, a title search by DC’s attorneys would soon determine that a forthcoming TV animated series had already staked a claim on the name “Centurions.” (And Lord, what a series it turned out to be!) So Dann and I came up with, and discarded, many more names over the next few weeks. I honestly don’t recall any of them. It’s probably for the best.

My memory is that it was Dann who suggested Infinity, Inc. as the group’s monicker. It didn’t have the powerful feel I was looking for, yet it still appealed to me, suggesting a business-like approach to crimefighting in the dawning Age of Yuppies, with that “Incorporated” at the end (which many readers would doubtless pronounce “Ink,” and more power to ’em!). Infinity suggested that they would go anywhere—do anything— as part of their mission.

DC liked it too, so Infinity, Inc. was born.

VI. An Infinity By Any Other Name...

VII. Enter The Artists

Also on that boatride, we came up with the perfect name for the group.

Soon afterward, if Jerry Ordway’s and my memories are correct, he and Mike Machlan and Dann and I were all flown to New York to discuss the new series, more with each other than with the DC brass. Under the prompting of Jerry’s reminding me recently, I recall the four of us sitting in some restaurant, with one or both of them sketching away.

Wait for it.

“THE CENTURIONS!”

38

Two Co-Creators Reveal—

Afterwards, the lads went back home to really get down to work. I hadn’t made any attempt at sketching out these new heroes myself as I had in the past with The Vision, the Squadron Sinister, Union Jack, and a few others at Marvel. I had faith in my artistic collaborators.

Recently, for this article, Jerry generously spent time with me on the phone, reminiscing into my tape recorder. On February 25, 1999, he remembered the artistic development of Infinity, Inc., thus:

Society series I had proposed as a way to relate the biography of the JSA. Somewhere along the way, that battle plan got changed. Jerry became the penciler of Infinity instead, and Mike became its inker. Still, together they developed the visual look for the Infinitors, as we would gradually come to call them. (While others inherited America vs. the Justice Society, starting with a talented youngster named Rafael Kayanan.)

“Mike and I used to go out in Milwaukee on Friday nights—we’d go to the comics store, and then we’d go out, and we’d drink. And we did a bunch of the sketches, really in rough form, on cocktail napkins in the bar. We got the basics worked out, and Mike did the sketches and I did the tissue overlays [with comments and colors] and we sent them off to you for approval. The sketches were all by Mike, though we had talked them out together. I think the first time I actually drew the characters was on the cover of All-Star Squadron #25.”

VIII. The Machlan/Ordway Designs

Jerry also revealed to me an interesting anecdote about those early days: “With Jade, I remember you seemed stuck on the idea that she should have long hair, and we were concerned that she would look like She-Hulk, so we fought on it. Mike had originally drawn pretty much of a page-boy cut. It was pretty short, but it wasn’t like today, where you see people with the sides of their heads shaved. So we compromised, and we drew it a little longer in back.

Instead, and perhaps in his place, next to her is an African-American wearing an updated Hourman costume and listed as “Kronus,” referred to as possibly the “ward of the Earth-II Hourman.” In fact, there’s even a head-and-shoulders drawing of a second African-American, listed as “Black Spectre,” a “possible ward of Spectre.” (See preceding page for these two and Jade.)

“As a little in-joke, from the first appearance in All-Star Squadron to the last issue I did of Infinity [#10], I was trying to draw it progressively a little bit shorter each issue.”

And indeed, if you look over the first baker’s dozen comics in which Jade appeared, her hair does indeed “grow” in reverse. I never noticed.

Having pulled similar stunts myself on an editor named Lee, I can appreciate their stunt.

Originally, the plan was for Mike to be the penciler of Infinity, Inc.; Jerry would ink Infinity, and would also pencil and ink a four-issue, giant-size America vs. the Justice

Fury and—the Blue Dolphin?

More character designs by Machlan w/Ordway. © 1999 DC Comics.

Fortunately, nine character designs still exist from those Machlan/ Ordway sessions (as do, in fact, color overlays for each drawing, if we could but show them here). You’ve been enjoying them, hopefully, as you’ve ploughed through all this text.

Jade is there in the drawings, but no Obsidian, and I’m not sure why not.

Fury is there, of course, even if the color overlay has blue in it, not just red and yellow as would the final version. But next to her (see below) is “Blue Dolphin,” who would have been the daughter of— whom? Aquaman? More likely of Neptune Perkins and Tsunami from All-Star Squadron. None of that trio were ever JSAers, so I never warmed to that idea.

Next to Nuklon, who sports a tall Mohawk haircut which is the

The Secret Origins of Infinity, Inc.

natural equivalent of the crest atop the Atom’s post-1948 mask, there’s even a “Sandman,” colored in two shades of blue on the overlays.

(See above.)

In Jerry’s words: “a Vision type (the 40’s version) of character.” His costume lines are not unlike those that would end up on Obsidian, so maybe Obsidian was a bit slower to develop than I thought.

Whenever Obsidian came along, Jerry has a few strong memories of him: “I was the guy who put in the solid blacks on a few of the costumes, like Obsidian—a no-highlights type of black, which I always liked. I think Obsidian went through more changes, and earlier he looked more like the Timely version of the Vision. I think Obsidian might have had a couple of different names.

“I probably had a bit more input with Obsidian’s powers than Mike did, because I wound up drawing the book. I had fun with the shadow stuff. I’m sure that had been done by somebody else in comics, but it was kind of a fun idea to me to have him peel himself off the wall or something like that. It was very exciting

Sandman (a.k.a. Nightmare) and Nuklon.

Was Sandman, too, an early study for Obsidian?

Art by Machlan w/Ordway. © 1999 DC Comics.

to have a hand in co-creating characters. I hadn’t been in comics that long, and Mike had been in them an even shorter time.”

Northwind is shown—but at his side (see P. 33) is a new, young, male Harlequin, who Jerry’s notes suggest might become “comics’ first ‘gay’ character. Or we could just assume it.” Not a bad idea, and maybe we should have played it that way; but we were already going to have two Green Lantern-derived heroes in Infinity, Inc. We didn’t particularly need drawings of young Brainwave, Power Girl, and The Huntress, of course, since we already knew the look of those three. And La Garro would just be wearing a skintight Wildcat costume with her hair streaming—if she was in our minds at that time.

Jerry remains happy with the coloring he did, especially Jade’s white and green costume: “I think the temptation was always to use some sort of yellow in there, but it was a good choice to go with the white and the green.”

39

IX. The Overcrowded Arc The summer before Infinity, Inc. #1 came out, Jerry relates: “Mike and I were at the Chicago con, and DC had a big presentation where they were going to show slides, and we were supposed to get fifteen minutes to talk on stage. At that point all we knew was the characters’ designs and kind of who they were the children of, but we had no real conception of the book. And we did our presentation, which would up getting squeezed to about five minutes, and the slides were all upside down— Mike and I were winging it, and we thought it came off pretty well in a bad situation. I remember Bruce Bristow [DC marketing executive] saying something to us like, ‘Don’t give up your day job.’

“But,” Jerry goes on, “the fans were certainly enthusiastic about it, even just seeing the sketches, because it was a big deal at the time. There weren’t many second-generation characters then. The Teen Titans had been sidekicks, while these were the actual children of the heroes.”

40 What else went through our minds in those heady, halcyon days?

“One thing I remember,” Jerry told me, “was talking about having one of the characters become a turncoat in some way. We talked about using Fury as the person who goes bad— kind of swiping Jack Kirby’s idea where Dr. Doom isn’t really scarred up, he just has a little scar but it ruins his perfection. Of all people, the daughter of Wonder Woman, the goddess and all that—if she had somehow suffered some minor disfiguring, it could certainly lead to some sort of twisting in her brain.”

I myself have no recollection of our discussing that, but of course the idea of a turncoat hero is always appealing. On the phone recently, Jerry and I discussed how one potentially evil Infinitor who had been around fairly early in our discussions got knocked back a couple of years: Mr. Bones.

I had drawn a sketch of Bones—actually, I simply took the old Black Terror from 1940s comics and moved up the skull from the skulland-crossbones on his chest so that it became his face, leaving the crossbones as a chest symbol.

Some time later I turned that sketch over to Mike Machlan, who did a powerful Kirbyesque drawing of Mr. Bones, adding a couple of touches (such as thigh-high boots); that illus-

Two Co-Creators Reveal— tration was eventually printed in Infinity, Inc. #15. However, it was Todd McFarlane, a later Infinity artist whose work had almost literally come to me over the transom, who became the first to draw a story featuring Mr. Bones, one of my favorite co-creations from my DC writer/ editor days.

Another thing Jerry reminded me of— which I had totally forgotten—was that originally the plan was for Infinity, Inc. to get a bit of advance publicity by debuting in DC Comics Presents, co-starring in a full-length adventure with Superman. “But [editor] Julie Schwartz’ slate was booked up,” Jerry recalls. “He had plenty of inventory, and there would have been too long a wait. So you said, ‘If they won’t let us put it in DC Presents, we’ll put it in All-Star Squadron!’”

Of course, that made Infinity’s first appearance a time-travel story, with all the complications and time paradoxes that that implies, but somehow together we carried it off.

Jerry also feels that DC kind of “pushed” me to use Power Girl and The Huntress, “to have some recognizable characters in there at first.”

Perhaps they did. I don’t recall.

“I think maybe Brainwave Jr. wound up

in there for that reason, too,” Jerry says, “because at least he’d appeared before.” Or anyway, his costume had. Still, I suspect my own commercial instincts made me not unfriendly to the inclusion of Power Girl, Huntress, and Brainwave—it’s just that Infinity, Inc. wasn’t even out yet, and already it was getting overcrowded!

I liked Power Girl and Huntress as characters, so it was only the burgeoning size of the cast that bothered me. Jerry and I both suspect that La Garro was probably a victim of their coming in—even if she’d be back later as Wildcat. Even Power Girl and The Huntress found themselves relegated to the sidelines after the first year. Still, I wanted and needed them—and even the adult Earth-Two Robin— for the “Generations” storyline I had in mind for the first year of Infinity, Inc., which would pit the new, young super-heroes against their parents and mentors—the Justice Society of America.

“I think probably the most fun in doing the book was doing the first issue,” Jerry says, “with the backstory: here’s how these guys got together, etc.”

That ten-issue storyline, I think (and other people tell me from time to time), was a nice piece of work, and much of the credit goes to

Northwind and the male Harlequin. But since Green Lantern was already going to be represented by two Infinitors, a new Harlequin had to wait for the “Manhunter” super-crossover a few years later. Art by Machlan w/Ordway. © 1999 DC Comics.

The Secret Origins of Infinity, Inc.

41

Jerry’s exquisite penciling and Mike’s painstaking inking. For me, to revisit the Justice Society and the original Brain Wave and even the Stream of Ruthlessness (from 1947’s All-Star #36) was like living a dream.

somehow the past wasn’t worth looking at. I remember the feeling when I was doing All-Star Squadron, too—it was almost like, ‘Why are you wasting your time doing that when you could be doing Batman or something?’”

X. War Clouds

Possible royalties aside, and despite the fact that I’ve been a Superman and Batman reader since the 1940s, I had my own question for those scoffers:

Still, in comics, every silver lining has a cloud.

“There was a point,” Jerry feels, “when DC was looking down on these books [All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc.] because of their 1940s connection. I don’t know what it was, a weird snob thing. For some reason they’ve always seemed to have some sort of problem with that, like

Why would I want to write Superman or Batman when I could write All-Star Squadron or Infinity, Inc? “The same kind of thing,” Jerry feels, “happened with Captain Marvel [in the recent Shazam! series], where they say, ‘All right, give it up already and do something like Superman or Batman.’ I just hate hearing that. There’s enough Superman and Batman books. Nowadays every Golden Age character seems to end up being a Vertigo character, and I hate seeing it. I guess I’m just an old-fashioned guy.”

You and me both, Jerry... you and me both.

But with Infinity, Inc., for a year or so there, we had the best of both worlds... the old and the new.

Jerry Ordway, who shared with us his reminiscences of the creation of Infinity, Inc., has been in the comics field since the early 1980s; until late 1998 he was writer and sometime artist of DC’s Shazam! and a writer of Superman. He is currently writing and drawing an Avengers series for Marvel Comics.

Mike Machlan, who was unfortunately unavailable to be interviewed for this article, has done comic book inking in recent years and resides in Wisconsin.

Roy Thomas, co-creator of All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc., has been a comics writer and often editor since 1965. He currently writes Conan series for Marvel, original series for Dude Comics in Spain, and other Robert E. Howard tales for Cross Plains Comics, beginning with their first title, Robert E. Howard—Myth Maker, now on sale.

2006 NOTE: For the rest of those 1982 Machlan-Ordway sketches and more info on the origins of Infinity, Inc., get hold of a copy of Alter Ego #44!

(Left:) The last page of Jerry Ordway's breakdowns from Infinity, Inc. #10, his final issue—with Roy Thomas’ dialogue balloons indicated. Note the reference scribbled by R.T. to the “new creative team”—which was scheduled to include Don Newton (who would die far too young, after doing only slightly more than two issues).

Art courtesy of Jerry Ordway. © 1999 DC Comics.

Vive Le Silver Surfer!

An American Super-Hero In Paris (Well, Anyway, France)

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

A

freakish, wandering celestial body threatens to collide with the planet Earth. Even the Silver Surfer is powerless to divert its course. But his numerous acts of charity and mercy raise the spiritual level of humanity as it waits for the Day of Judgment.

This naturally upsets Mephisto, who dispatches his demons Belzebuth and Astaroth to spread new evil on Earth.

If you read every one of the eighteen original issues of The Silver Surfer when that Marvel comic was published between 1968 and 1970 and can’t recall the above plotline—and if you don’t recognize it from the hundred or so issues of the recent series, or even from the TV cartoon— Don’t worry, Frantic One! Seek not for a missing issue in your Silver Surfer collection.

For this adventure, entitled “La Porte Étroite” (“The Narrow Gate”), was published for the first and only time in two issues of a French comic book called Nova.

To understand how this came to be, we must now flash back to 1940s France.

I. From The Ashes of Defeat The Nazis had taken over most of France in 1940. Even though the Axis powers and the United States were not yet at war, a side effect of the German occupation was the discontinuation of the import of popular American comic strips such as Flash Gordon, Brick Bradford, Prince Valiant, et al. French publishers scrambled to replace this material, and quickly turned to native French talent—and Italian imports, despite the fact that Mussolini’s Italy was the ally of Hitler’s Third Reich.

In the French city of Lyons, during the War, a young writer named Marcel Navarro was asked by the president of the publishing company S.A.G.E. to translate some Italian comics. While working for S.A.G.E., Navarro met writer-artists Pierre Mouchotte and Robert Bagage, both heavily influenced by American strips.

These three men were later almost singlehandedly responsible for a publishing explosion that produced a myriad of inexpensive monthly or bimonthly comic magazines, intended to satisfy the demand for harder-edged, more violent, more fantastic, American-style stories.

In 1946 Mouchotte started his own publish-

ing company, but was ultimately driven out of business by a censorship law passed in July 1949 at the behest of Catholic educators and parents to monitor the contents of comic books. As a result of that law, most magazines were forced to go to a black-and-white, digest-size format and became known as the petits formats (small formats).

Meanwhile, Navarro had joined Éditions Sprint, for which he created the character of Secret Agent Z.302, drawn by Bagage under

the pseudonym “Robba.”

In 1946 Bagage left Sprint to create his own publishing company, the Éditions du Siècle (which would be renamed Imperia in 1952).

Artist J.Y. Mitton’s Buscema-cloned cover for Nova #25. The Surfer’s figure is a swipe from Silver Surfer #6 (June 1969), page 2, though with a bit more sheen.

Silver Surfer ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Vive le Silver Surfer

43

the first translations of Marvel Comics in France, in a magazine entitled Fantask.

Unfortunately, Lug had repeated run-ins with the censors, who objected to the super-hero violence, the bright colors (deemed “garish”), and the various monsters, creatures, and assorted super-villains. The French censors had the power to decide that material was unsuitable for children, and force it to be labeled “for adults.” In addition to keeping such magazines out of younger hands, the VAT (Value Added Tax) on adult material was twice that of material produced for children, making many marginal publications suddenly unprofitable. As a result of these factors, Fantask was cancelled after only six issues. In fact, it would seem the magazine was banned outright! (For a much fuller account of French comics censorship during this period, see articles in The Collected Jack Kirby Collector, Volume Two, published in 1998 by TwoMorrows.)

During these six issues, Fantask reprinted Fantastic Four #1, 3-10, 12, 14-18; Amazing Spider-Man #1-3; and The Silver Surfer #1-2, 4-6.

The latter series in particular (“Le Surfer d’Argent” in French), was tremendously well-received.

In 1947 Navarro, too, left Sprint, to go to Aventures & Voyages, another petits formats publisher, for which he created “Yak” and “Brik” for artist Jean Cezard.

Finally, in 1950, Navarro teamed up with would-be publisher Auguste Vistel to create Éditions Lug, which was also based in Lyons.

(Lug was the ancient Gauls’ god of commerce and trade, and the original Latin name of Lyons had been Lugdunum, “City of Lug.”) At first, Lug published the traditional mix of French and Italian series. But, unlike its competitors, Navarro (who used what he considered the American-sounding pseudonyms “Malcolm Naughton” and “J.K. Melwyn-Nash”) actually created many of the characters, which were then entrusted to Italian studios to script and draw.

II. O Bitter Victory In 1969 Claude Vistel, Auguste Vistel’s daughter, who had just returned from a trip to the United States, convinced Navarro to publish

Top: The cover of Fantask #4, utilizing the Buscema art for the cover of the U.S. Silver Surfer #5 (April 1969).

Silver Surfer ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc. Left: A comics convention sketch of an airborne Norrin Radd by renowned French illustrator Moebius.

See a near-future issue for more previously-unpublished Moebius Surfer art.

Art ©1999 Starwatcher Graphics Silver Surfer ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

44

Vive le Silver Surfer! entire series was reprinted in the pocket-sized edition of Nova (1978 to date unknown).

III. A Star Is Born Taking note of the public’s interest in super-hero stories, Navarro had already begun to produce his own brand of characters, relying on the talents of various Italian artists as well as French writer ClaudeJacques Legrand and French artists Jean-Yves Mitton, Cyrus Tota, and Yves Chantereau. Notable Lug titles had published French super-herolike material including the black-and-white Wampus (1969), which was released simultaneously with Fantask and was also discontinued after six issues because of censorship, Futura (1972-75), Waki (1974), Kabur (1976-76), Mustang (Series II, 1980-81), etc. (A future article in Alter Ego will explore in greater detail the various characters, especially the superheroes, that appeared in these magazines.)

By 1979, as Nova was approaching the end of its rerun of Silver Surfer material, Navarro, frustrated by the lack of new material and emboldened by the character’s ever-strong popularity, asked Marvel for permission to produce new Silver Surfer stories exclusively for the French market.

Permission was granted, and work began on “La Porte Étroite,” which appeared in Nova #25 (22 pages; February 1980) and #26 (20 pages; March 1980). Credited to “J.K. Melwyn-Nash” (Navarro’s pseudonym) and artist J.Y. Mitton, “with the permission of the Marvel Comics Group,” this two-part, 42-page story ran alongside reprints of Marvel’s short-lived hero Nova and of Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man. Which brings us back to the first paragraph of this article, which is basically the plot of Nova #25, and thus bears a bit of expansion here:

Noted science-fiction author Jean-Pierre Andrevon, who wrote the book on which the recent animated film Light Years was based, favorably compared John Buscema’s art to that of Burne Hogarth.

And the fascination of famed cartoonist Jean Giraud (Moebius) with the Surfer, which would eventually culminate in a legendary collaboration with Stan Lee twenty-odd years later, dates back to these groundbreaking issues of Fantask.

The undaunted Navarro re-launched the Marvel characters in Strange (1970 to present) and Marvel (1970-71), at first in a pocket-sized, duotone format, then switching back to magazine size and full color after a year or so. That was obviously careless, because it led to the cancellation of Marvel with issue #13, due again to problems with the censors.

The Surfer’s adventures continued in Strange, which ran Silver Surfer #7-17—and #3, which had been omitted in the Fantask run, presumably in an effort not to upset the censors.

The last issue of the first Silver Surfer series, #18, drawn by Jack Kirby (which Stan Lee had done in order to find a new, more actionoriented direction for the floundering Surfer comic), was thought to be too different in style and story from what had preceded it; it was not run in France until 1980 (in Nova #27, after “La Porte Étroite”), when the This and following pages: J.Y. Mitton à la Buscema art from the two “all-new” French issues of Le Surfer D’Argent. Art ©1999 SEMIC France/Lug; Silver Surfer ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Vive le Silver Surfer

45

motorcycles!) to counterbalance the Surfer and to spread evil on Earth.

Which they do, in spite of the Surfer’s admonitions.

In a scene reminiscent of the “Temptation of Christ” sequence in Silver Surfer #3, Mephisto tries to bargain with the Surfer. He will free him, if the Surfer lets the humans die as they are. The Surfer naturally refuses. Then Mephisto offers a trade: the Surfer’s soul against Earth’s four billion. But the Surfer rejects that, too.

He returns to Earth to help fight the tsunami caused by Ceres’ approach, but is instead blamed for it. Mankind still does not realize that it is doomed. The Surfer is struck down by lightning. (Mephisto’s doing, or just dumb luck? The story never says.) Fallen, he is stoned and buried (except for his outstretched hand) beneath rubble by an uncomprehending mob. He appears to be dead. The doomed humans shamble off to await Doomsday—while the gleaming surfboard hovers above the debris.

In #26’s “Deuxième Partie” (Second Part), the planetoid Ceres is getting ever closer to Earth. An almost unrecognizable President Jimmy Carter talks to a more recognizable Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev.

They decide not to tell their populaces the truth. Carter learns that the Surfer knew of Ceres’ coming. The authorities go looking for him, but his body is gone.

© 1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

For, meanwhile, a mysterious light (whose source is never revealed) shines down from the stars, takes the Surfer (board and all), revives him, and transports him past Galactus’ barrier to Zenn-La. There the Surfer meets with Shalla-Bal, but he tells her they have no time to spend

IV. “The Narrow Gate” The Silver Surfer detects a threat to Earth—the asteroid Ceres has mysteriously changed its orbit and is on a collision course with our world. Mankind doesn’t realize it because humans lack the cosmic awareness of the Surfer. The only folks to find out (in a space shuttle) die when Ceres’ gravity waves send their ship out of orbit.

The Surfer tries to alert the United Nations, but is scorned and hunted after he bursts into the General Assembly. He decides men can be reborn only if they die in a state of grace, so he decides to alleviate mankind’s suffering until the catastrophe comes. He sweeps across the world, transmuting molecules into manna for starving masses, bringing rain to parched deserts, healing the sick in hospitals, all with his transmutational powers. (Clearly, Navarro had chosen to eschew super-hero violence to concentrate on the morality of the Surfer.)

All this goodness naturally arouses the enmity of Mephisto, who was looking forward to the arrival of four billion souls of sinners in his realm, thereby defeating the plan for Earth of his adversary (God). So Mephisto dispatches his demons Belzebuth and Astaroth (on spectral

© 1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

The Surfer realizes that only Zenn-La’s anti-matter-based “Weapon Supreme” (from S.S. #1) can destroy Ceres. He begs Galactus to let him go through the barrier which the space god created to keep the Surfer on Earth. Galactus refuses, but points out that when Ceres destroys our world, the Surfer will be freed; all he is to do is wait! Nevertheless, the Surfer vows to try to save his adopted planet.

46

Vive le Silver Surfer! previous Silver Surfer stories, creating almost a collage effect. This, however, does not take away from Mitton’s obvious strength and ability when dealing with contemporary city scenes and futuristic space action.

As a result, “La Porte Étroite” reads as an enjoyable pastiche of a Lee-Buscema story that might have been.

V. A World He Never Made In spite of its qualities and promise, “La Porte Étroite” remained an isolated story, never to be followed by another. In an interview, publisher Claude Vistel revealed that Lug’s deal with Marvel required it to pay the American company the same amount in royalties, whether the story was a translation from an existing Marvel comics, or a new story created in France by French talent.

This economic stipulation did not take into account the creative costs of generating new material, and made it financially impossible for Lug to continue producing new Silver Surfer stories. Lug allegedly pointed out that Marvel would own the resulting stories and presumably could have amortized the creative costs by publishing them in the United States, not to mention selling them to other countries than France, but to no avail.

The Silver Surfer had once again met the only adversary he could never defeat:

© 1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

The Almighty Dollar.

together. He must obtain the Weapon Supreme, which is kept in a space station in orbit.

With Shalla-Bal’s help, he steals the Weapon and escapes in the ship that carries it. She is arrested for treason. The Surfer’s ship escapes the Zenn-La fleet by going into hyperspace. He rematerializes it near the Earth and blasts Ceres out of the sky in the nick of time.

Someone recognizes the Surfer (wearing a hat and trenchcoat) and tries to turn him in. The Surfer flees into the sky, but finds that he is again trapped within Galactus’ barrier. He blames God for having given him a taste of freedom and then abandoning him. His final line of dialogue is a paraphrase of Christ’s cry from the Cross: “Why have you forsaken me?”

The dialogue throughout this two-part adventure reads very much like Stan Lee’s own prose (in translation, of course).

For his part, Mitton, a talented artist who has, since then, created numerous series of his own, was specifically instructed to copy John Buscema’s style. Most of the figures were therefore taken directly from

© 1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

But the Surfer pays a price, of course. His ship is destroyed by the explosion, and he and his board topple down toward the Earth. He recovers, only to find that the uncomprehending New Yorkers (and presumably everyone else) blame him for the devastation caused by the space debris from the obliterated planetoid. The American and Soviet leaders plan to grab the credit and usher in a new era of world cooperation, and don’t want the Surfer to interfere. The leader of the CIA comes up with the idea of blaming the Surfer and offering a reward for his capture.

Writer/Editorial

47

Golden Age Forever!

W

ell, here I am again—or, here I am for the first time, if you’ve elected to read this issue’s offerings in chronological order, Golden Age first, then Silver Age and beyond. It really doesn’t matter, because both comic book ages are equally important to this third incarnation of Alter Ego. After all, it was the meeting of Golden Age and Silver Age in early 1961—when the Justice Society had only recently been superceded by the Justice League, and the Flashes of two worlds were on the verge of crashing head-on, and a new and improved Atom was about to smash onto the scene—that the original A/E was founded

by Jerry Bails with a bit of help from Yours Truly.

What’s more, it was Julius Schwartz, editor of All-Star Comics from 1944-51 and of the Justice League of America from its debut in The Brave and the Bold #28, who midwifed the fanzine—another case of Golden and Silver Ages intermingling in the early days of super-hero comics fandom.

It was a distinct pleasure to put this issue of A/E together, and there was plenty of serendipity to go around: Jerry Ordway faxed me a congratulatory note re the A/E section of Comic Book Artist #3—and quickly found himself drawing our cover, and being interviewed for his take on the creation of Infinity, Inc. Jerry Bails, founder of A/E, sent me the Fox and Marston scripts for the Wonder Woman chapter of All-Star #13, as well as a few other WW-related items; Al Dellinges drew a page approximating what the Wonder Woman splash of All-Star #13 might have looked like, if Fox’s script had been used instead of Marston’s.

Irwin Hasen, one of my favorite Golden Age artists, consented to be interviewed—and to look over beaucoup pages of his work to prepare him for my onslaught of questions. Fan/collector Ray Cuthbert sent me a copy of Irwin’s 1941 Christmas message to publisher M.C. Gaines—which Irwin himself hadn’t seen in nearly six decades!

Jean-Marc Lofficier prepared no less than two articles—and anything that didn’t make it into #1 will be definitely seen in the months to come. Michael T. Gilbert dug up several real treasures from the 1940s, for this and future editions of “Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt.”

Paul Hamerlinck agreed to include his excellent fanzine FCA in A/E for the foreseeable future—with happy results, we hope, for all concerned. Bill Schelly painstakingly hand-corrected the dim spiritduplicator lines of Grass Green’s great 1962 parody of the Fantastic Four, which has languished unseen for far too long. John G. Pierce parted with his impossible-to-replace Brazilian Captain Marvel comics, so that hardworking layout artist Chris Knowles could get the best possible reproduction.

A final note: Julie Schwartz is depicted on our cover beside Stan partly because the two of them together are the main editors of the Silver Age—and partly because Julie was originally to have been even more prominent in this issue, in an article dealing with the Silver Age Atom. However, that one got squeezed out till next issue—which merely gives us something to look forward to! As for Julie: he still figures this time around in both the Hasen interview and the Stan Lee Roast, as he celebrates his 84th birthday this very June! A zillion more of ’em, please, Julie!

Bestest,

Note: For the “Silver Age” half of this premier issue, flip us over—or else stand on your head. Your choice!

The super-hero called Alter Ego and teenage amanuensis Rob Lindsay were featured in the First Comics Alter Ego title in 1986. See the Silver Age section for A/E’s other mascots.

The graphic novel version printed in 2005 by Heroic Publishing is still available; see ad on p. 9. [©Alter Ego TM & ©1999, 2006 Roy & Dann Thomas; art ©2006, 1999 Ron Harris.]

This issue is dedicated to the memory of five men who, each in his own way, gave us Superman in 1938, and an industry for more than six decades: co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster... cheerleaders M.C. Gaines and Shelly Mayer... and Vince Sullivan (1911-1999), who as editor made the fateful decision to put Superman both in (and on the cover of) Action Comics #1. *A special thanks to Irwin Hasen for allowing us to use as our Golden Age cover his 1997 re-creation of the cover of All-Star Comics #36 from 1947. That cover was originally done by Winslow Mortimer, but utilized figures by Hasen, Joe Kubert, Lee Elias, H.G. Peter, and perhaps others.

(Art ©1999 Irwin Hasen; JSA ©1999 DC Comics.)

48

!

F

or most of the 1940s, with time out for World War II, Irwin Hanan Hasen was a major artist at National/DC Comics’ sister company All-American Comics. While he is noted mostly for his two stints as a primary artist of the Golden Age Green Lantern, between 1946-49 he also did some of the best work in All-Star Comics, before becoming the original artist (and later writer, as well) of the longlived Dondi newspaper comic strip. The following phone interview was done in late 1998.—RT ALTER EGO: In his Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Jerry Bails lists your nickname as “Zooie.” How did that happen?

IRWIN HASEN: I was working in the bullpen in the late ’30s—1939— with Charlie Biro, Irv Novick, Mort Meskin—for Harry Chesler, an entrepreneur type. I was a kid doing fill-in pages, and I sort of got friendly with the group, and Charlie Biro called me Zooie. To this day I have no idea why.

A/E: This must be an error in Jerry’s book. It says you were born in 1918. But you can’t be eighty years old.

IRWIN: I’m eighty years old.

A/E: That’s amazing. You don’t look it. You don’t act it.

IRWIN: I don’t feel it, thank God. A/E: Where did you grow up, and how did you get interested in art— comic book or otherwise?

IRWIN: I grew up on the West Side of Manhattan. We moved from Brooklyn to 110th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. And across the street was the National Academy of Design, a huge structure like a garage, an airplane hangar. One of the oldest art schools in America... one of the most prestigious. Classical art. I was always drawing. I was drawing in the backs, on the empty pages, of books. So my mother, God bless her soul, took me across the street and enrolled me in a course of drawing.

A/E: You had to go all the way across the street, huh?

IRWIN: Across the street. Honest to God. Around the corner. I was there for three years, every night during the week, drawing in charcoal all the statues of Michelangelo and all the Bernini and all the classics. And it was something that I couldn’t believe later on—how the hell did I get into that? Because during the day I would hawk, sell, drawings of prizefighters down in New York. That was my first job—boxing cartoonist.

I made a very small, very slight living. I was 19-20 years old. I sold my cartoons to the Madison Square Garden Corporation. They were printed all over New York, in different newspapers. It was like public relations for the fights.

A/E: What years did you go to the National Academy of Design?

IRWIN: 1939—when I got out of DeWitt Clinton High School. And after that came the Art Students League, in Manhattan. You know, so many of these young kids who go into comics never really learn how to draw.

A/E: You’ve said your influences, instead of the usual comic book and comic strip artists, are Gustav Dore, Heinrich Kley... and Willard Mullin. I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the last name.

IRWIN: Willard Mullin was the greatest sports cartoonist that ever lived.

He worked for the New York World Telegram from 1930 to 1935. And I loved him from afar. And then one day after I graduated, I snuck in their offices and I waited for the receptionist to turn her heard and I walked into the city room. And there was my hero sitting at his desk. He allowed me to come down there a few times. It’s funny—when you really want to do something, you do it. I had a lot of audacity as a kid. I was a pushy little fella. And I sat at his desk. We became friends. He liked my work, whatever. That started me off, and then I went in to DC—or National, as we called it then.

A/E: Joe Kubert tells me he and Lee Elias and Frank Giacoia and

Carmine Infantino all worshiped Alex Raymond and Hal Foster and Milt Caniff—but Caniff was the one they could copy easiest, because he had the most direct style for comic books. Did you have that feeling, too?

IRWIN: Yeah, absolutely. Caniff was one of my idols. He was a great transference into comic books because he kept it simple and he knew how to tell a story. But my greatest idol is Roy Crane, who did Wash Tubbs. He was the first adventure cartoonist in the newspapers. I think he is the ultimate cartoonist’s cartoonist.

A/E: You started out freelancing for comics shops like Chesler and Bert Whitman—and Lloyd Jacquet—that was Funnies, Inc., right? Did you know Bill Everett and Carl Burgos there?

IRWIN: They were there, but I didn’t deal with them. I didn’t travel in that company. And there was another shop—Phil McClide; that was for Archie Comics—MLJ, then. We all hustled in those days, Roy. It was the Depression. You had to try to make a living, a buck. We were selftaught when it came to comics, where today you’ve got these schools—

49

“So I Took The Subway And There Was Shelly Mayer...”

An Interview with Golden Age artist Irwin Hasen Conducted by Roy Thomas, transcribed by Carla Conway

the Joe Kubert School, the School of Visual Arts, etc.

Building in New York. We became very close friends.

A/E: Some of your earliest strips were for Holyoke and such companies, strips like “The Ferret” and “Secret Agent Z-2.” Were these through the shops, or were they direct clients?

A/E: You found out only in the past few years that you did the very first Cat-Man story for Holyoke, didn’t you?

IRWIN: Oh, that’s what I did with Bert Whitman and Lloyd Jacquet. I would go from one publisher to the other, but mostly through the shops at first. I did mostly sports fillers. At Chesler, guys like Novick, myself, Mort Meskin—we worked like schoolkids at desks, and he would sit at the front of the desks. He’d ask each of us to come up like a student: “How much do you need to live on?” That was the wonderful way he paid us. It was pretty rotten.

A/E: A lot of people started with comics shops, but within a short period of time figured they were better going off on their own. Who’s Who says you did a Green Hornet strip or two.

IRWIN: That was with Bert Whitman. I worked in his office at the Times

IRWIN: Yes. I saw it in a magazine. I think I was working with Whitman then, but I really don’t remember. But it’s my artwork.

A/E: Since the Batman, Superman kind of heroes obviously weren’t what drew you to comics, what did you think of the idea of drawing that kind of character? Did it make any difference to you?

IRWIN: No. All I did was take samples up to National at 480 Lexington— that was when Donenfeld owned it. Jack Liebowitz was the main accountant then. I’ll never forget, he used to wear shiny black suits. Jack was Donenfeld’s right-hand man, and my uncle knew Jack, so my uncle said, “Go down there. I made an appointment for you. Show some samples.” So I went to National and Jack looked at my work and he didn’t know. He said go down to 225 Lafayette Street, M.C. Gaines....

50

Irwin Hasen A/E: That was the All-American branch.

IRWIN: Right. So I took the subway and there was Shelly Mayer and M.C. Gaines, and that’s how I started in comics. And later they went up to 480, too.

A/E: You were the first artist after Martin Nodell to do Green Lantern regularly, though E.E. Hibbard did one or two in ’41, too. How did it come about that you wound up doing GL stories?

IRWIN: I don’t know. In those days, you didn’t ask. Bill Finger was the genius behind some of those characters, because he created the motifs. He did Batman.

He wrote all the stories and he practically created it in spite of what a lot of other people might say. He was the best of all of them. He died young. But a lovely talent. A very talented guy.

A/E: I met him once or twice in the 1960s. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know him better. It took years for him to get his proper due. One of the first times he had a credit on a strip was when you and he created Wildcat together for Sensation Comics #1 in ’41. He became the second most successful feature in it, after Wonder Woman.

IRWIN: Wildcat—Ted Grant—in real life was a prize-fighter.

And they knew I did cartoons for the prize-fight business. That’s the only reason I got involved in that. Shelly Mayer and I at that point became very close. In those days cartoonists weren’t stars.

We didn’t get our names on anything.

A/E: But it says “Irwin Hasen and Bill Finger” on Wildcat, for the first couple of issues.

IRWIN: I insisted on that. It was kind of a joke. Shelly said, “You want a byline?” I said, “Yeah, sure. Why not?”

A/E: Someone told me once that DC might have wanted to make sure Finger got a byline because they felt he’d gotten a little bit of a shaft by not getting one on Batman.

IRWIN: You’re absolutely right. So that’s why I was very proud to have my name with his.

A/E: After two or three years, when you went into the service, you were succeeded by Joe Gallagher as Wildcat artist. And then you sort of succeeded him when you returned to Wildcat for a little while after the war.

Did you know Gallagher?

IRWIN: No, I never met him. But he was a damn good artist.

A/E: He got sketchier and sketchier as time went along, but back from ’42-’44 he did some nice work. What kind of guy was Shelly Mayer to work for?

IRWIN: Shelly Mayer was almost—well, not quite a genius, but he was a brilliant, perceptive guy. A damn good editor. He baby-sat all the cartoonists and he sometimes became irrational. In other words, he would be—a character. He was a character.

A/E: I think it was Alex Toth who told how as a young man he was in Mayer’s office and suddenly you popped in, and you and Mayer began fencing with invisible swords for several minutes, up on furniture, all over the desk. Did this happen more than once, or was it just to impress Toth?

Top: The debut of Catman (here Cat Man, later Cat-Man) in Crash Comics #4 (Aug. 1941)—half Batman, half Tarzan. Art ©1999 Irwin Hasen. (Special thanks to Bill Black’s AC Comics for the vintage page.)

IRWIN: It happened a few times. Shelly would look at my work and he would sort of nurse me. He really was one of my great influences, and when I would screw off, he would straighten me out. But once he took my pages, looked at them, and threw them all up at the ceiling. And people—in those days the offices had windows, there were no doors. So everybody would look, and they’d see this little guy—me—standing there, and my drawings were all over the ceiling, floating down. That’s one of the worst things he did. He was an erratic, strange young man. He wanted to be a cartoonist.

A/E: He was a cartoonist.

IRWIN: He was a damn good cartoonist, but he was outdated. His heroes were

Irwin Hasen

51

Ed Wheelan and all those older types. He was—what is it called?—an anachronism.

But he was a great editor. And then in ’49 he left to become a cartoonist fulltime and live on a mountain. And you know, it’s funny, Roy—Shelly almost died when I got Dondi. You know he always wanted to be a cartoonist. That was his life. And when I got Dondi, we stopped being friends. He never once congratulated me. Never once called.

A/E: I believe he created Sugar and Spike to be a newspaper strip originally.

It didn’t work out that way, but it became a successful comic book for quite a few years. It lasted longer than a lot of strips. Not Dondi, but still, Mayer is very much respected by people who know comic books, though he’s not known by the more casual reader.

IRWIN: No, not by them. He was, as they say, an inside job.

A/E: The desire of so many people who went into comic books was to eventually do a comic strip. But Dondi wasn’t the first strip you did, was it? You did the Goldbergs strip at one time.

IRWIN: Yes, that was based on Gertrude Berg. It was in the New York Post, from ’44 to ’45. When I got out of the army I did The Goldbergs. But then I started to go on a rampage in my own mind. I started to create other strips for myself, and I took them up to syndicates.

A/E: Few achieved the goal of doing a comic strip, especially starting a new strip as opposed to taking over an existing one.

IRWIN: I’ll tell you, Roy, it’s not that they didn’t achieve it. Most of them didn’t really try. I tried. I have three weeks of dailies of strips I wanted to take to syndicates before Dondi. I had my eye on the star, I really did. It was a romantic thing. But most of the guys we’ve been talking about didn’t really work to that end. The work I put in! I swear to God, Roy, I don’t know how the hell I did it.

A/E: I didn’t see your early-’40s work until the ’60s, but I can understand why it went over. You have a nice, simple, clear style.

IRWIN: I can’t believe it when anybody compares my work to that of Mort Meskin and Joe Kubert and Infantino and Toth. I remember Alex Toth came to me when he was like sixteen years old, and he loved my work. This isn’t false modesty, but I couldn’t figure out how this guy went for my work. But like you gracefully say, I have a nice simple style. And Alex Toth was a kid then. He and I became very close. I was like a big brother image to him.

A/E: Even though he’s a little taller than you?

IRWIN: Oh, yes. He was a tall, skinny Hungarian kid. He became an iconoclast.

We used to talk maybe once or twice a year on the phone and he used to write me incredible letters. Hand-written. And then he went on to become the genius of all of them. I think Kubert is another of the great artists.

A/E: They definitely had two of the most distinctive styles up at DC. I looked for their work as a kid, along with Simon and Kirby. But your own work and that of Lee Elias and the early Carmine—there were a lot of good artists up there.

I know Toth and Kubert both denigrate their early work, but those 1940s Green Lanterns and Johnny Thunder westerns Toth did, and Kubert’s late-’40s Hawkman and of course his Tor from the early ’50s—those hold up well with any comic artwork you’ll see anywhere, anytime.

IRWIN: Oh yes, absolutely.

A/E: And your work had its own virtues. That’s why, even in the early ’40s, you wound up doing a lot of covers for Green Lantern and All-American.

IRWIN: All-Star, Green Lantern... I did about a hundred covers, and also Wonder Woman, later.

A/E: I think you were considered a cover artist the same way Shelly Moldoff and Howard Purcell were, earlier. There are certain people who have the right sense of design to do covers. I was telling Al Feldstein recently how, when Woody Gelman of Nostalgia Press wanted to put a Wally Wood or Al Williamson cover on the first hardcover EC collection back in the ’60s, Bill Gaines insisted it have a Feldstein cover. Gaines said, “Al’s covers always sold better! He’s the

Previous page and above: Two of Irwin Hasen’s greatest hits: Wildcat and Green Lantern.

Wildcat and Green Lantern ©1999 DC Comics.

Left: Hasen panel from All-American Comics #85 (1947).

52

Irwin Hasen Muriel. But Joe is a loner. And I think he’s the most focused cartoonist I’ve ever met. Now, of course, I teach for him as an instructor.

A/E: By the time you drew Green Lantern in AllAmerican and All-Star in ’41, you were already drawing some Green Lantern covers, too. You didn’t have any relationship with Marty Nodell?

IRWIN: No. Marty Nodell was only in the business a few years. Then he went into advertising.

A/E: A few times in the early ’40s you inked Nodell’s pencils. How did that happen?

IRWIN: I don’t remember. Jesus, you’re able to tell?

I can’t believe you could pick up on that.

A/E: I cannot tell a lie, it was Jerry Bails who pointed it out. You did the first story with Doiby Dickles, the cab driver, didn’t you? What was he—Lou Costello with a Brooklyn accent?

IRWIN: Yeah. Bill Finger made him up. But Doiby was really Edward Brophy, who used to be a fat little movie actor. He wore a derby in the movies in the 1940s, and that’s where I got the character from. Now, Stretch Skinner in Wildcat—I did that on my own.

A/E: What’s the genesis of that December 1941 piece you wrote and illustrated, which I first saw just a few months ago: A Visit from M.C. Gaines, a parody of Night before Christmas ?

IRWIN: When you sent that to me, I couldn’t believe it! It was an office thing. [Flash artist E.E.] Hibbard, I see. And [artist] Chester Kozlak, down at the bottom with a lot of hair, sitting at his desk.

A/E: Oh, with the pipe. And Hibbard is the heavyset guy sitting at his desk? And is that Shelly Mayer sitting next to him?

IRWIN: That’s him with me at the bottom. I’m tugging at his pants.

A/E: You always draw yourself preternaturally short.

Nodell pencils, Hasen inks, in the early 1940s. Hasen was the first artist to draw GL’s cabdriver buddy, Doiby Dickles. (Repro’d from original art, courtesy Joel Thingvall.) ©1999 DC Comics.

one who made money for me.”

IRWIN: That’s the bottom line. I guess I was bored working on the insides. And I loved assignments for covers. As a matter of fact, when I was in the service from ’42 to ’44 I was stationed in New Jersey. I became with my own guts the editor of the Fort Dix Post, and I did the strip Sgt. Round-Step O’Malley. The happiest day of my life—my creative life; notwithstanding anything—was working as the editor of that newspaper. I turned out a paper every week there. I turned it out alone, with the strip and columns. And I went to Philadelphia to set up type myself.

I tell you, it was the most wonderful, productive part of my life, those two years. And also I came out alive.

A/E: I suppose that Sgt. O’Malley was a precursor to the plainclothes detective of that name you drew in DC comics in ’44 or so. Were you and Joe Kubert close friends around 1947? That’s when the photo I’ve seen of the two of you roughhousing was taken. Or rather, Joe looks like he’s roughhousing and you’re being roughhoused.

IRWIN: We became friends. He introduced me to his wife-to-be,

IRWIN: Very much so.

Shelly Mayer wasn’t that tall.

A/E: There’s somebody else bringing you a ladder.

Who’s the guy pointing?

IRWIN: That’s Mac Liebowitz. He was Jack Liebowitz’s son... brother... maybe nephew....

A/E: Oh, he’s the “Mac who screamed out”? Do you know who the two women are, and why one has a halo?

IRWIN: I’m not sure.

One of them is Gaines’ niece, Evelyn.

A/E: Oh, yes. She wrote a few text stories for the

Sheldon Mayer, one of the most influential of early comic book editors. From The Amazing World of DC Comics #5 (1975). ©1999 DC Comics.

Irwin Hasen early comics. Who are “Harold” and “Frank Kieran”?

IRWIN: They were just guys who worked in the office.

A/E: I guess Orson Welles is in there because Citizen Kane was a hot new movie in 1941. Near the end you mention “Wonder,” which is obviously Wonder Woman, and you show the cover of Sensation #2, which came out at the end of 1941. Did you know H.G. Peter? I know he worked in a sort of shop that Marston set up, not at the DC offices....

53

two boxes of Wheaties, you got that comic. Kubert did Hawkman, and you did Flash and Johnny Thunder and the cover. The Flash story you drew was odd, because a couple of years later you drew two Green Lantern stories with almost exactly the same villain, only with a different name—a “last criminal” from the future. Do you remember that character?

His name was Andar, or Knodar, or...

IRWIN: Yeah. Knodar.

A/E: He had this prison costume with “P’s” all over it, very inventive.

IRWIN: I just met him a few times. He was a much older man.

A/E: So why didn’t you do more writing? You obviously had some ability to put words together.

IRWIN: No, I didn’t write—until Dondi.

Dondi, of course, was created by Gus Edson, who had been doing The Gumps. He wrote the Dondi strip for about ten years, until he died.

After that, Bob Oksner helped me with plots and I would do the dialogue.

A/E: After the war, a few artists have said they had trouble getting their jobs at DC back when they came out of the service. Did you have any trouble like that?

IRWIN: No. As a matter of fact, a few times during the war I’d come in on weekend furloughs on a Thursday or a Friday and I would do covers in uniform. I never left the States; I was always in New Jersey.

A/E: If the Nazis attacked Hoboken, they were sending you in?

IRWIN: I was a prison guard, walking prisoners.

And one day I passed with my bunch of seven American AWOLs, deadbeats—with an empty rifle, of course, wearing my uniform, and I’m 5'2"—and I’m walking past the German prisonerof-war camp in Fort Dix. And I see this group of POWs and they’re laughing behind the barbed wire. The sons of bitches are laughing at me! They’re saying, “Look at the little guy! This is America! This is a soldier!” They were laughing because these American AWOLs of mine were all 5'11" and 6'3", but when I edited the camp newspaper, I had to go on the rifle range and I had to do guard duty at night.

A/E: But you sneaked up to New York occasionally to do a cover?

IRWIN: Once in a while I would get a call from Sheldon Mayer: “Can you come in this week?

Can you get away?” And sure enough, I got away about three or four times. I think Julie Schwartz was my editor.

A special Christmas gift drawn and hand-colored on Strathmore by Hasen for publisher M.C. Gaines in 1941. The original is 20” x 16”. See the interview for “Who’s who” in this zoo.

(Repro’d from original art; special thanks to Ray Cuthbert!)

A/E: He came in in ’44. Some of your first postwar work was the Atom chapter in All-Star #31, that I sent you a copy of. Kozlak did the first page or so, then suddenly the rest of story is by you. Do you know how that happened?

And he’s almost exactly the same character as “Dmane” in the Flash giveaway two years earlier. Do you know who wrote either of them?

IRWIN: No idea.

IRWIN: Not now. Of course, whenever a script came, maybe the name was up on top. I did some stories with Robert Kanigher, and of course Finger.

A/E: You’re not in the next issue, but then, in #33, you suddenly started doing the covers and the openings and the conclusions. I also sent you a copy of that Wheaties giveaway issue of Flash Comics; if you bought

A/E: For a couple of years in ’46-’47, Green Lantern was drawn in AllAmerican by Paul Reinman. I liked his work. But when you came back, except for one or two Reinman GL stories probably from inventory, he

54

Irwin Hasen cover that had nothing to do with the insides. Did you ever do a cover where they just said, “Do a cover and come up with a scene?”

IRWIN: Yes. I did a cover with Doiby Dickles and Green Lantern walking in uniform.

A/E: You probably mean Green Lantern #4, back in ’41-’42. GL was marching as Alan Scott, with Green Lantern’s image towering over them. A great cover!

But of course that did have something to do with the story inside. You probably don’t remember because you didn’t draw that story. Martin Nodell did.

IRWIN: All I know is I’d get the order from Shelly or from Julie or whatever to do a cover.

A/E: Did Shelly describe them verbally? Did he ever draw a sketch?

IRWIN: I think he might have, sometimes. We’d sit at his desk. I lived in New York, so I’d go down there and have conferences.

A/E: Occasionally there’d be a splash page which used the same art as the cover. I suppose the splash page usually came first, because whenever anyone had a script to draw, it always had a splash page, right?

IRWIN: I would say so. I think sometimes Shelly would take the splash page and make it into a cover.

A/E: Did you know writers like Henry Kuttner and Alfred Bester, who did some Green Lantern stories?

IRWIN: I met Bester once or twice. He was a friend of Julie Schwartz. I met John Broome through Julie, too. And Lee Goldsmith.

A/E: I get the idea that if there was a halfway star writer at DC in the late ’40s, it might have been Bob Kanigher.

IRWIN: He was certainly one of the top guys there.

Above: One of Hasen’s rare Flash stories—for a Wheaties miniature giveaway edition of Flash Comics in 1946. It also features Johnny Thunder (by Hasen), Ghost Patrol (Frank Harry) and Hawkman (Joe Kubert). ©1999 DC Comics.

was suddenly relegated to backup features like Black Pirate. Do you know why he fell out of favor?

IRWIN: I have no idea. He was good. You know, when you were that young, you did what you had to do and you didn’t ask questions. Shelly Mayer would shut you up.

A/E: For some reason, several pages of the art from one of your first postwar Green Lantern stories, in All-American #85, which came out in early ’47, seem to have survived in the hands of various collectors. You signed the one I have a couple of years ago in San Diego. The story was “The Rise and Fall of Crusher Crock,” the guy who later became The Sportsmaster. Did you ever have a desire to get your originals back?

IRWIN: No. None of us ever did. Isn’t that crazy? Kubert, I think, was the only one. He was the only smart one of the bunch. And you know, when I go to conventions I sit next to Dick Ayers, and he has all his goddam originals!

A/E: In the early ’70s, Marvel and DC started giving the original artwork back. About the covers you did—sometimes you’d do a Green Lantern

A/E: He had a hand in creating a lot of the major villains after the war, when they went in more for super-villains. The one he is most associated with was The Harlequin.

IRWIN: Yes. I drew that. Kanigher created her. He was the most prolific of them all.

A/E: I’m curious—did you design that Harlequin costume with the little tutu, or did Kanigher?

IRWIN: I wish I could say I did, but I don’t remember. In those days we’d come down to the office, all of us. We’d sit around and talk. It wasn’t like one man creating everything. You’d have a joint effort. And he’d come up with the Harlequin, and I’d make suggestions. But this was all done in committee.

A/E: There was one issue of Green Lantern where you drew all three stories—and they were all Harlequin stories! She was in a lot of GL stories for about a year, and then she vanished, so I guess she wasn’t as popular as they’d hoped. But obviously Kanigher liked her and the editors liked her. I liked her, too. In fact, I had her and Alan Scott get married back in the ’80s, at age 60 or so. I thought with Molly Mann [The Harlequin’s secret identity] having chased Green Lantern around all those years, she should come back into his life and marry him.

IRWIN: That’s great.

Irwin Hasen A/E: You also drew the first Icicle story and cover. Icicle was also in an Injustice Society story you drew part of....

IRWIN: You know more about my life than I do.

A/E: Well, I know a little about your professional life. As you drew those last few Green Lanterns and All-Americans and Comic Cavalcades, did you have any sense that super-hero comics were on the way out, and that All-American would soon become All-American Western?

IRWIN: No. Never thought about it. I think that was when I was phasing out.

A/E: This was still ’49 or so. You worked for DC for another two or three years after that. What did you do for DC after the super-heroes faded?

IRWIN: Near the end, all I did was fillers. As I told you, in 1951 I was starting to be phased out. I really couldn’t hack it with the competition of all these damn good artists.

A/E: That boating accident....

IRWIN: Terrible accident. [ED. NOTE: When M.C. Gaines was killed in the forementioned accident in 1947, his son William inherited his second comics company, EC, and proceeded to develop horror and crime comics, and eventually Mad.] A/E: What about E.E. Hibbard, whom you drew in that cartoon?

IRWIN: E.E. and I were friends in the office. We never socialized. He was a tough guy to talk to, to get involved with. He was a strange guy.

A/E: You knew Carmine Infantino pretty well.

IRWIN: Yes. Since we were both single, we went out together. We socialized a lot. I met his parents. We got to be close. And we still are.

A/E: I recall this press conference in the Allied Chemical Tower in New York in the mid-’70s, when Neal Adams was beating the drum for Siegel

A/E: They weren’t all that great. When we’re talking about Toth and Kubert, anybody would have had competition—but they had a lot of losers at DC, too. And I don’t mean you.

IRWIN: I understand what you’re saying, but it was time for me to go. Thank God everything worked out for me. And I didn’t have a wife and kids to support.

One day Whit Ellsworth called me into the office, and he looked at me and said, “Ah, you’re a bachelor.

Why don’t you take a trip on a boat?” And I didn’t know he was firing me! So like an idiot I left and went to the Pierre Hotel, and I didn’t think anything about it. I had a couple of drinks. And I walked off to a travel agent, and I booked passage on the Liberty, and I went to Europe. That was the greatest decision I made. Ignorance is bliss. I didn’t know I’d been fired. It didn’t occur to me.

A/E: What did you do when you came back?

IRWIN: I came back and I was out of work. I tell my students, when you get fired, don’t despair. But I also tell them that I was in my thirties. If I’d been married, it wouldn’t have been that funny. I couldn’t have recalled this with jocularity. Because that trip to Europe was gorgeous, the best thing I ever did. I traveled to London, Paris, and Italy. But I would have been in despair if I’d had kids.

A/E: I notice that some of the late Green Lantern stories you did in ’48, ’49, had a slightly looser look.

Was this all still you, or were you working with another inker, like Bob Oksner or Joe Giella or Frank Giacoia?

IRWIN: Occasionally, but not often. I don’t know what changed the style. Maybe I was nearing the end of my tether.

A/E: Besides that cartoon you did in ’41, what was your impression of Max Gaines?

IRWIN: The only boss I ever had was Shelly Mayer.

Gaines would walk around the office and have other problems on his mind, and he didn’t even look over your shoulder. He had a small office on Lafayette Street. He was a grumpy old guy, but a square shooter. He was a very provocative guy in his business, a progressive guy. He died too young.

55

Above: At least three pages of Hasen’s Sportsmaster prequel have survived from All-American #85, May 1947. (Courtesy of Jerry Bails.) ©1999 DC Comics.

56

Irwin Hasen and Shuster to get pensions from DC because of the announced Superman movie. I was there representing the Academy of Comic Book Arts, and I read a statement on their behalf. Reporter Pete Hamill was there— and another thing that was there was your drawing of Dondi with a tear in his eye for Siegel and Shuster.

IRWIN: I made a statement which was broadcast all over the country—“Is it a bird?

Is it a plane? No, it’s a shame!” And two or three days later Carmine calls up. This is my friend, and he says, “You don’t know what’s behind all that. What are you doing? Why do you say a thing like that?”

A/E: Of course, Carmine wasn’t the guy who took away Siegel and Shuster’s rights. You weren’t attacking him.

IRWIN: I just felt, these guys created Superman. These two little guys from Cleveland are the reason why Warner is alive. Of course it’s a Above: A house ad for the shame. Carmine said “All-Harlequin” issue of Green Lantern in 1947. to me what he felt he The closeup is Howard Purcell’s, but the cover and Harlequin figures are pure Hasen. should, I guess. But all ©1999 DC Comics.

I could see was that we were all cartoonists, and I could see the shafting they were getting. But Carmine and I are friends again now, I’m glad to say.

A/E: It was a difficult period. Did you know Frank Giacoia well? He was buddies with Carmine and Gil in the old days.

IRWIN: A sweetheart of a guy.

A/E: Julie Schwartz—you once drew a picture of him and referred to him as a chipmunk.

IRWIN: Well, he looks like a chipmunk. His teeth hang out. And I still make fun of him. We have a love-hate relationship.

A/E: In ’49 Sheldon Mayer left the editorship, and Whitney Ellsworth was suddenly listed in all the books as the editor. There’s a change in the flavor of the books then, even though he evidently wasn’t that “handson” an editor. He was a guy who really despised working in comics,

from what I’ve heard.

IRWIN: He was more hands-on-the-bottle. Whitney was like the token WASP. He was a very elegant, tall, Hollywood-type looking guy.

A/E: And he ended up in Hollywood working on the Superman show. I get the impression that writers and artists worked on books with Kanigher or Julie or Weisinger, but not with Ellsworth himself. Yet they never put those guys’ names in the indicia as editors back in the ’40s or ’50s.

IRWIN: No, no. I think Ellsworth was a token name in a book.

A/E: How did it happen that you took over the All-Star assignment?

IRWIN: Whatever you did in those days, Roy, you were told. You weren’t asked. We were not the masters of our destiny.

A/E: DC had had Martin Naydel drawing the JSA chapters in All-Star.

He was actually more of a funny-animal artist, a fairly good one. He drew the Flash very stiffly, and did the same with the JSA, yet they had him on it for two or three years.

IRWIN: Marty Naydel, yeah. He was a sad sack.

A/E: I remember that when I saw your issues, starting with #33, I liked them better, even at age six and seven, and that’s still my judgment more than fifty years later. In that same issue Kubert came back to Hawkman, and the next issue Lee Elias began doing Flash, and Carmine and Alex Toth came along a little later, and suddenly the quality of All-Star and other comics jumped. In retrospect, I realize some of these artists were returning from the service, and the guys they were replacing had been the equivalent of those one-legged baseball players and the like who stood in for major leaguers during the War. You took over Green Lantern after two issues by Howard Purcell, and suddenly you were doing a lot of GL in All-American and Comic Cavalcade. Did you always know which book you were doing a Green Lantern story for?

IRWIN: No. You’d go in and get your assignment. You were very happy when they handed you a script. They kept me very busy for several years.

I can’t believe how busy, when I see some of the books I did. I always thought that I was having a good time in life. But mostly a cartoonist sits alone in a room.

A/E: How much work did you do on an average day when you were drawing things like Green Lantern?

IRWIN: I would say, maybe one page a day, pencil and ink. I think I got twelve dollars a page at first. I don’t know where that number comes from, in the back of my head.

A/E: Jack Burnley has said he hated drawing seven, eight, nine super-heroes in the Justice Society chapters of AllStar. How did you feel about that?

IRWIN: I don’t think I drew that many of those. All I did was Green Lantern and Wildcat.

A/E: Actually, you did the introductions and conclusions to a whole mess of Justice Society issues. One issue you did the entire 38-page JSA story, and that had eight heroes in it.

Editor Whitney Ellsworth fired Hasen circa 1953, thereby doing him a couple of inadvertent favors. From Fifty Who Made DC Great, 1985. ©1999 DC Comics.

Irwin Hasen

57

IRWIN: Jeez, you know more than me what I did in my life. It’s funny, there was so much work done in those periods, that you just didn’t keep track of. The only things I really remember that I did are the covers.

A/E: When you mention drawing Wonder Woman, wasn’t that just covers?

IRWIN: Yes. For Sensation and Wonder Woman. Bernie Sachs used to ink them sometimes. I inked a lot of them in ’53-’54.

A/E: After they got away from H.G. Peter covers. The first All-Star cover re-creation you did, you’ve said, was the one you did for me back in the late 1980s—the one with the hourglass, “The Day That Dropped Out of Time.”

How would a dramatic symbolic idea like that have come about? Would that have been your idea, or Shelly Mayer’s?

IRWIN: I have a hunch it was Shelly Mayer.

A/E: Although people like Julie Schwartz and Bob Kanigher and Ted Udall were editors of those books, you worked mostly with Mayer?

IRWIN: I didn’t work with any of those guys.

I worked with Sheldon Mayer, and Bill Finger would do most of the writing of the things that I did. We’d all sit together, Bill and Shelly and I. A/E: The All-Stars you drew were by a combination of Fox, Kanigher, and Broome, but you were probably just handed the scripts by Mayer.

IRWIN: That’s right. We were just a bunch of young kids. We got whatever they gave us, and they’d send us home.

A/E: You also drew me a re-creation of your Solomon Grundy All-Star cover for #33 and the Injustice Society one for #37, and the cover of #36, the one with Superman and Batman. Now, that cover was originally by Winslow Mortimer, wasn’t it? But it had some figures on it that were lifted from you—and from Kubert, H.G. Peter, maybe Lee Elias...

IRWIN: Lee Elias. He was a damn fine artist.

But a very troubled man.

All 38 pages of All-Star #39, “Invasion from Fairyland,” were illustrated by Irwin Hasen. ©1999 DC Comics.

whatever it is....

A/E: You’re the only artist who ever drew a whole issue of All-Star— #39. It was 38 pages long. I know you have no idea of why they assigned you the whole story, against their usual practice—but how long would it have taken you to do something like that, pencil and ink?

A/E: Green Lantern #29. That’s the issue I mentioned earlier with three separate Harlequin stories in it. You not only did the cover, but you drew the entire interior—all three 12-page stories.

IRWIN: Oh, I’d say—over a month.

IRWIN: Is that right?

A/E: You also did that big golden robot cover—#42. You re-created that one for me, too.... I’ve got a total of five of them. How many cover recreations do you think you’ve done?

A/E: There’s no connection between the three stories. It’s like DC had a whole bunch of Harlequin stories sitting around, and they said, “Hey, let’s put ’em all in the same issue!” I don’t think anybody besides you ever drew any of those eight or ten Green Lantern-Harlequin stories.

IRWIN: Oh, maybe fifty. I just sold another one. Big Apple had a convention, and somebody called me up and he wanted one, so I did it for him. A couple of years ago they auctioned one of them. I did a Green Lantern cover, of him and the Harlequin—he’s being swept away with a blonde lady, and The Harlequin’s swinging her banjo or ukulele or

IRWIN: The more you talk to me, the more I realize that I worked my ass off.

A/E: In All-Star #44, which was set in Hollywood, you did caricatures of stars like Bogart and Bacall, Hope and Crosby, Peter Lorre. And in

58

Irwin Hasen

another issue you drew someone who was obviously Walter Winchell.

IRWIN: He was my hero at the time. And I also imitated him. When I was nineteen, before I got into the business of comics, I wanted to be on the stage. If I’d had parents who’d have pushed me, I think I would have gone that way. I used to go on amateur hours. I don’t know if you remember them...

A/E: Oh, sure.

IRWIN: In New York they had a couple of them. So I went down one night to Nick Kenny’s Court of the Unknowns, a takeoff on Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour. Kenny was a radio columnist for a New York paper. I even remember the name of his conductor—Alfredo Antonioni. I didn’t even tell my parents I was going. I had a lot of guts in those days, I don’t know why. I’m sitting in there with all the other contestants, and time is running out, and I figure, ‘Well, I guess I’m not gonna get on.’ But sure enough, at the last minute, I go on, and I do an imitation of Walter Winchell: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the ships at sea!”

A/E: Hey, that’s a pretty good Winchell!

IRWIN: And I spouted off some gossip, you know, about different things in the world. You know I won first prize? A case of Lions Beer—it was very big then. I did it again, three years ago, at a Christmas dinner—and no one knew who the hell Walter Winchell was. They were all young kids.

A/E: If they did remember him, it would probably be from re-runs, as narrator of The Untouchables.

It’s hard for people today to imagine how big Winchell was at one time.

IRWIN: He was in the Dondi movie, as a matter of fact. He was a very bad article... but he was my hero then. I wanted to be on the stage, I wanted to be a newspaperman, I wanted to have my own comic strip. Of course, I got lucky. I had two or three strips that I tried. One was bought by the McNaught Syndicate—about a bachelor and his married friends. I was not emotionally ready to do it, and I just copped out. That syndicate wasn’t the most reputable one, so maybe God has a hand in some of these things. I just couldn’t do it—I backed out.

Mildred Bellah, the editor, said to me, “This is the biggest opportunity you’re going to have in your life—you’re making a big mistake!” I was intimidated, I just couldn’t handle it. And sure enough, two years later, thank God, Gus Edson came along.

A/E: So how did Dondi happen?

IRWIN: We went to Germany together for the USO, entertaining troops there, a group of cartoonists.

Gus was doing The Gumps, but that was finally dying, and he asked me what I was up to, and I said, “This and that.” I didn’t have a job, but I didn’t tell him that! And when we got back, he sent me a letter—on Waldorf-Astoria stationery—with a pen drawing of Dondi sitting on a duffel bag, with a big overseas hat. And he wrote, “Dear Kleine”—that means “little” in German—“this is the way the kid should look.” He didn’t explain anything else.

Left: This never-published page by Hasen is marked “Written off”—meaning DC opted to destroy it, probably when Green Lantern was cancelled in 1949—but a kindly fate spared it. (Repro’d from original art, courtesy of Jerry Bails) ©1999 DC Comics.

Above: Walter Winchell makes a guest appearance in All-Star Comics #47, 1949.

Irwin Hasen

59

A/E: Do you still have that letter?

IRWIN: Ohio State University has it, in their museum. The minute I saw the letter, I called him up and I said, “Gus, this is gonna be the best strip in America!” He said to me, “You’re kidding!”—he didn’t know what he had, but I knew. It’s like when you go to a party, and across a crowded room [laughs] you say, “That’s gonna be my next wife.”

A/E: It happens. And you were right. Maybe it’s just because the Korean War was so recent in my young memory in 1955 when the strip started, but I always thought of Dondi as Korean. He was really Italian, right?

IRWIN: Yeah. But everybody thought he was Korean—or Mexican.

Actually, the story was inspired by officers returning from Korea and adopting war orphans.

A/E: The strip, of course, lasted over three decades....

IRWIN: Thirty-two years.

A/E: You wound up in the Dondi movie yourself, as a police sketch artist, drawing him when cops were searching for him.

IRWIN: Worst movie ever made! It won a Golden Turkey award in that book. It was a terrible experience for me when I went out there, dealing with this producer, who was a Captain Queeg type... Alfred Zugsmith.

That name is so beautiful, for that kind of a man. Alfred Zugsmith!

A/E: How popular was Dondi at its height?

IRWIN: Very popular. We didn’t have a lot of newspapers, but we had the best. In other words, the highest priced. We started out with 46, and we went crazy, we were so happy. Because in those days, when you had the right 46 papers, you had 46 capital cities. Frank Robbins used to joke that we made as much as he made with 500 papers on Johnny Hazard, because King Features blanketed every small town paper.

Unfortunately, then, when you lost a paper, you lost a lot of income. We had to split it three ways—me, Edson, and the syndicate.

A/E: At what point wasn’t the strip worth doing anymore?

IRWIN: 1987. When I got my last royalty check, I looked at it and I said, “Oh Jesus, forget it,” ’cause I had to pay my letterer, and Bob Oksner, who was helping me with the writing. When he saw my check, he cried. At the syndicate they don’t give a damn, as long as they get enough money to pay for paper clips. It just wasn’t worth it any more.

And I was very proud that I made that decision. No regrets.

A/E: Over thirty years of anything is a lot.

IRWIN: Even of being married....

A/E: How did that strip you drew in the alternative comic Dr. Wonder a few years ago come about?

An Alter Ego Collection, Vol. 1, Bonus!

The last page of the last "GL" story in All-American Comics (#102, Oct. 1948) before it became All-American Western. Pencils by Irwin Hasen. [©2006 DC Comics.]

IRWIN: The publisher [David Allikas] called me... and Dick Ayers called me. I just did a couple of issues, but it was fun.

A/E: Of all the things you’ve worked on over the years, Irwin, which one are you proudest of?

IRWIN: Doing that whole newspaper, the Fort Dix Post, while I was in the army. I edited it, I published it, I took it to the printers, I learned how to set up type, I did the comic strip, I wrote the whole goddam thing, and I interviewed all the celebrities coming in from New York. I worked my ass off, and I wound up in the hospital. But that was my proudest time, editing that newspaper for a year and a half.

A/E: Even if it put you in the hospital.

IRWIN: I don’t care. It was yellow jaundice; I got it from an infection.

Even when I was in the hospital, I edited. And I got to be a corporal. See what you can do for love, not for money? I did it because it was put in my lap. The official editor was a sports writer named Jimmy Cannon.

He was very famous in New York, one of the great sports columnists. He just happened to be a sergeant and was editing the newspaper. So when I went into the army, I walked over there on a windy night and I told him, “I write poetry, I’d like to write for the paper.” And Jimmy Cannon says, “Oh, I got an assistant—good!”

A/E: Just like when you approached that sports cartoonist back when you were a teenager. You had chutzpa, right?

IRWIN: You just hit it right on the head.

Left: Dondi seems right at home with Roy and Dann Thomas’ baby goats, puppy, Basil the Fawlty Llama, and Carmilla the chinchilla, in this original illo by Irwin.

Dondi ©1999 Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate.

60

Two Touches Of Venus

Two Touches Of Venus Wonder Woman Gets “Shanghaied Into Space”—Twice Over!

by Roy Thomas

O

f the multitude of pages of comic book art produced since 1935, only a figurative thimbleful of original art still exists. This is particularly true of the period prior to the 1970s, when Marvel, DC, and others began returning the artwork to artists (and occasionally even to writers).

Of course, there are at least some hundreds of pre-’70s pages floating around out there in private collections—and wouldn’t it be great if somebody could inventory them all one day? But that’s still a pitiful percentage of the total pages produced. Pre-Code pages (i.e., before 1955) are rarer, naturally, than later ones, even allowing for the cache of EC pages put on the market a few years back by the late Bill Gaines.

Though less sought after, rarer still are comic book scripts, for obvious reasons. Once a story was drawn, there was no reason for editor or artist to hang on to them, and writers rarely asked for their return (and usually threw away any carbon copies they’d made).

So when a pair of comic scripts turn up from as early as 1942, it’s something of an historical find.

Back in the 1960s Dr. Jerry Bails, one of the founders of comics fandom (and creator of Alter Ego), began corresponding with Mrs. Elizabeth H. Marston. She was the elderly widow of Dr. William Moulton Marston, the man who had conceived the idea of Wonder Woman in 1941 and had written nearly all of the Amazon’s adventures until his death in 1947. In 1970 Mrs. Marston gave Bails a few items related to her husband’s comics career, which will be dealt with in a future issue.

Ride ’em, cowgirl! Rare, perhaps neverpublished Wonder Woman art by H.G. Peter, circa 1943. Courtesy of Martin Greem. ©1999 DC Comics.

[NOTE: In the original edition, this piece was mis-attributed as being by courtesy of Jerry G. Bails.]

Most significant was a matched pair of items: the carbon copy of Gardner F. Fox’s script for the six-page Wonder Woman chapter of the Justice Society of America story in All-Star Comics #13 (Oct.-Nov. 1942), and the carbon of a six-page script of Dr. Marston’s which was a total rewrite of Fox’s!

Two Touches Of Venus

61

One script by the co-creator of The Flash, Hawkman, Dr. Fate, the JSA, and other major early features—and another by the originator of Wonder Woman, the most successful female super-hero of all time—both written for one of the most influential titles of all time, the comic which the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide has rightly called “a break-through concept, second in importance only to the creation of the super-hero” in the history of the industry.

This is the meat which fanzines like Alter Ego were created from 1961 on to devour.

As everybody who is anybody knows, Wonder Woman burst upon the comics scene in late 1941, her origin shoehorned in after the 56-page JSA story in All-Star #8 (Dec. 1941-Jan. 1942).

Her creators were Dr. Marston (under the byline “Charles Moulton”) and artist Harry G. Peter.

She was also the cover feature of Sensation Comics #1 (Jan. 1942), which went on sale only a few weeks later.

I have a theory, based on analysis of internal evidence, that Wonder Woman’s nine-page origin may actually have started out as a 13-pager slated for Sensation #1, and then been truncated so she’d get advance exposure in the popular JSA title—but that’s a speculation for another day and issue.

Be that as it may: By All-Star #11 (June-July 1942), Wonder Woman appeared in an actual JSA story as “guest star in a national emergency”—this being the first issue written after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Following the Sheldon Moldoff-drawn Hawkman chapter came a one-page interlude (drawn

by Jack Burnley, not by Moldoff, as credited in the generally excellent All Star Archives, Volume 3), in which Diana Prince meets fellow army nurse Shiera (Hawkgirl) Sanders and Hawkman himself on board an American convoy ship. Immediately afterward, Wonder Woman has a sixpage, H.G. Peter-drawn battle with Japanese troops assaulting the Philippines. At issue’s end, Dr. Fate tells the other JSAers she ought to be a member of their group.

In All-Star #12 (Aug.-Sept. 1942), she is named and pictured on the cover, but isn’t mentioned on the splash page roll call, which even lists honorary members Superman, Batman, Flash, and Green Lantern, none of whom so much as appears in the issue! Nor does she have a solo chapter in #12.

With the Amazon at his side, Hawkman tells his fellow male JSAers she has volunteered “to be our secretary while we are at war.”

This suggests the DC bigwigs were still uncertain whether or not she should become a full-fledged “fighting member” of the Justice Society (which had been re-christened the “Justice Batallion,” allegedly for the duration of the War).

An unused mid-40s Wonder Woman cover. The original was sold at auction by Sotheby’s in 1997. ©1999 DC Comics.

With All-Star #13 (Oct.-Nov. 1942), Wonder Woman is again shown and named on the

Above: This just in—from The Key Reporter, Autumn 1942, the official publication of the Phi Beta Kappa! Wonder Woman ©1999 DC Comics., Text ©1998 Phi Beta Kappa.

62

Two Touches Of Venus

cover; and in the splash page roll call she gets her own separate line: “Wonder Woman, secretary.”

“Shanghaied into Space” is reprinted in the forementioned third volume of the All Star Archives. (DC, contrary to the most common usage in the 1940s, persists in spelling “All-Star” without a hyphen.) In it, all eight JSAers attending a meeting are gassed by German agents, tossed into eight individual spaceships, and launched toward the eight other planets of the solar system.

Forget about the bad science, not to mention the Nazis’ wasteful use of rocket technology during wartime. What concerns us is Wonder Woman.

The author of All-Star #13, as of all Justice Society tales to date, was Gardner Fox. Also as per usual, the JSAers were together only at the beginning and end of the book-length story, with most of its pages given over to solo adventures of the eight individual heroes. (Dr. Fate was absent this issue.)

Thus, with editing and apparently co-plotting by editor Sheldon Mayer, Fox scripted his second six-page chapter starring Wonder Woman. Since the other seven solo segments for #13 were written at roughly the same time, it was probably Mayer and/or Fox who came up with the idea of sending her rocket to the planet Venus. Unless Mayer consulted Marston before deciding on that destination, it’s either a happy coincidence (since Wonder Woman was always touted as being “lovely as Aphrodite,” the Greek predecessor of Venus, Roman goddess of love)—or else Mayer and/or Fox, too, instinctively saw the “love connection” between Wonder Woman and the second planet from the sun.

Wonder Woman was owned by the All-American Comics line, which at this time was loosely allied with Detective Comics, Inc., under the common “DC” cover symbol. However, whether a particular story was for Sensation or Wonder Woman (or, soon, for the giant-size Comic Cavalcade), her exploits were produced in a manner a bit different from most DC/AA comics.

Briefly: In 1941 Dr. Marston, a noted psychiatrist, had written a magazine article somewhat critical of current comic books. Contacted by AA co-owner M.C. Gaines, he soon wound up as an official advisor to the DC/AA line, and shortly thereafter sold Gaines on the idea for Wonder Woman. (Conflict of interest, anyone?)

One suspects he really snowed the comics folks, few of whom had Ph.D.’s in those days—or in these, for that matter. Because of his exalted status, Marston was empowered to produce the Wonder Woman stories outside the AA/DC offices, overseeing both scripting and artwork under something not unlike the “comics shop” system which was common in the field at the time (though less so at DC/AA).

Most readers would count artist H.G. Peter as the co-creator of Wonder Woman, but that doesn’t seem to be the way Marston (or his wife) saw it in the old days.

When Jerry Bails mentioned Peter in a letter to Dr. Marston’s widow in 1970, she responded: “Re Harry Peter—think you must be referring to the Marston Art Studios located in the building on the southeast corner of Madison & 43rd in N.Y.C. Bill personally handled every aspect of production up to the point of sending to the printer. Harry Peter worked there, plus several young commercial artists who drifted in and out. These were usually women. There was a young man there for a short while. Lettering was done outside by a commercial firm. I knew Harry Peter very well but the youngster I met only in passing.”

With this proprietary attitude, which treats Peter as merely an artist who worked for Marston (rather than for AA), small wonder Marston was less than ecstatic when Mayer showed him a Wonder Woman script for All-Star prepared by another writer. We don’t know what his reaction had been to her Philippines foray in #11; perhaps he rewrote it, perhaps not. But when he received Fox’s script for #13, he objected to its handling of Wonder Woman. Mayer seems to have invited him to rewrite it, and Marston responded with an entirely new offering:

The “Horses” phrase was apparently a Marston equivalent of “Yours truly” (though the carbon is unsigned); and “Mr. G.” was obviously M.C. Gaines. Clearly, it appealed to Marston to give Wonder Woman’s earrings a useful purpose, such as her shackle-derived bracelets had.

The Marston script ran twelve double-spaced pages for the six-page chapter. (Fox’s had run less than five, but then he typed his on extra-long legal pads, a holdover from his days in law school.)

Marston had his own style of writing a script. First comes a twoparagraph splash page caption. This is followed by the description of the action to be drawn in the panel, written as just another paragraph, except that it’s placed between parentheses. Panel descriptions in this era seem generally to be preceded by a panel’s captions, and followed by its dialogue. With Page 2, Marston’s script style moves closer to the usual style of the time, though retaining the parenthesized panel descriptions.

All-Star #13 uses Marston’s script 100% and resembles the Fox/Mayer storyline only in the broadest outlines. The changes underscore the uniqueness of Wonder Woman in the comic book pantheon of the day.

Fox’s script was very much in the vein of the other solo chapters of All-Star #13. In each, a JSAer awakens as he reaches a planet (Mars, Pluto, wherever). Finding it inhabited, he discovers a way to speak the language of the locals and saves them from some menace. By chapter’s end he has triumphed—and not only has he managed to refuel his rocket (if he needs to), but the grateful denizens have presented him with a gift which will be of value when he gets home. Hawkman gets radium “to combat disease on earth,” Dr. Mid-Nite receives “a complete set of books describing our secrets of plant growing and surgical work” (don’t ask!), and so on.

In his Wonder Woman segment, Gardner sends the Amazon to a jungloid, cloud-covered world right out of the Carson of Venus novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, a writer whose works he admired. Carson Napier would have been quite at home among all those “trees and ferns and vines.”

She finds Venus a primitive, “still young” world, where humanlooking soldiers ride about in “war chariots.” She realizes Venus’ women are slaves to the men, and is enabled to speak the native tongue via a crystal globe, which teaches language by hypnosis.

Two Touches Of Venus

63

Without further ado, Wonder Woman overcomes first a guard, then spearmen, then the king himself, and finally another huge warrior. Awed, the king grants freedom to the planet’s women, and sends her back home carrying some “vegetables that contain all the vitamins that you know of on Earth.”

Fox’s Wonder Woman chapter is no better or worse than most of the other solo episodes in #13, although he doesn’t seem totally comfortable yet writing this new super-heroine.

Still, he’s done his homework: He refers to her “golden lasso of persuasion,” to “bullets and bracelets,” and to “Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons,” even if there’s no acknowledgement that Hippolyte is Diana’s mother. With artwork by Peter, Fox’s script, illustrated, would have looked like just another Wonder Woman story—albeit one lacking the underlying philosophy of Marston, who was a professed believer in the natural superiority of women to men.

At this point less than a year old as a character, Diana was a rising star in the comic book firmament. Wonder Woman #1 went on sale around the time Marston read Fox’s script, and he wasn’t about to let anything undermine her growing popularity if he could help it. All-Star was a top-selling AA title, and what readers saw of her exploits therein might well influence them to buy (or not buy) Sensation and Wonder Woman.

Thus, Marston must have asked (or insisted) that he be allowed to rewrite Fox’s script.

A man with an academic/medical background now hobnobbing with the often self-(or un-) educated early artisans in the comics field, Marston was far from shy about lecturing them on “touch[ing] certain universal truths” and such like.

This professional self-assurance had obviously impressed Gaines from the start, and whether editor Mayer was equally

Left: The 1942 carbon copy of Gardner Fox’s Wonder Woman script for All-Star #13 is a bit tricky to read, but worth the effort as a piece of comics history. Fox’s Yonkers, New York, address has been partly obscured. (Courtesy of Jerry G. Bails) Above: Using H.G. Peter’s art as a basis, fan-artist Al Dellinges drew this version of the first page of the Wonder Woman chapter from All-Star #13, as it might have looked if based on Fox’s script instead of Marston’s. Wonder Woman ©1999 DC Comics.; art ©1999 Al Dellinges.

impressed or merely doing what he had to, Marston got his way. Whether he was paid for the re-write or not, it’s clear that Marston felt strongly about what he was doing in the Wonder Woman strip.

Did I say “self-assurance,” boys and girls? He was willing to bet Mayer that, if Wonder Woman stayed in All-Star for “a few issues,” he’d be able to make her the most popular JSAer of all!

(And he was right—for none of the other eight then-current All-Star regulars would ever get his own magazine. Superman and Batman were more popular than she, and even Flash and Green Lantern still held a temporary lead on her—but they were non-appearing honorary members. And indeed, a decade later, only Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman would retain their own DC titles, with the original Flash and GL going gently into that good night with the rest of the JSA.) Marston knew he must adhere to the basic outline of what Fox had written, lest he duplicate events happening to the other JSAers; but he handled matters with his own unique, fetishistic flair. (See the end of this article for the full scripts, retyped for clarity.)

First Marston has “the goddess Aphrodite herself” direct the rocket to Venus. Of course, since the other JSAers all made it to their destinations, one suspects Nazi super-science would have sufficed without her, but Marston wanted to stress the tie-in between Aphrodite and Venus.

64

Two Touches Of Venus

Left: The first page of W.M. Marston’s script for the Wonder Woman chapter in All-Star #13, reproduced from a carbon copy. (Courtesy of Jerry G. Bails) Right: Splash page of Marston and Peter’s Wonder Woman chapter, as it appeared in All-Star #13. © 1999 DC Comics.

He then proceeds to stand the Fox script on its head by having the women of Venus be not slaves but in charge when Wonder Woman arrives. He gives them butterfly wings and, in a poignant image, their queen Desira says, “Our men love us dearly. They obey us because if they did not, we would fly away from them and they have no wings to follow.” (This, of course, is very much in line with Marston’s views of female superiority.)

Rather than have the men rebel, as he often did in Wonder Woman stories, Marston has the Venusians conquered by “meteor men.” No native can overcome them or their leader, Solaris, but naturally Wonder Woman does—after being captured and bound with her own magic lasso. (She was quite prone to being tied up in her early tales.)

By story’s end, things are pretty much as they were in Fox’s script, except for one final Marston touch: He has Queen Desira kiss Wonder Woman’s earrings, magnetizing them so the Amazon can always hear her voice across space. As Marston explained to Mayer, the transformed earrings were not a gift of any practical use on Earth, since they were only a method of Diana’s “receiving messages, instructions, from one person, the Queen of Venus.”

Thus, of the eight JSAers who were “Shanghaied into Space,” Wonder Woman becomes the only one who doesn’t bring back “a scientific secret that will help humanity on our side of the fence,” as Hawkman phrases it to the Nazis over a shortwave radio. The boys bring back heat-making secrets, a mind-reading device, a formula to make metal invisible—and she comes home with magnetized earrings! (Too bad she didn’t bring back that crystal globe that hypnotized people into learning languages.

Generations of French II students would have erected a statue to her.)

Still, no one seemed to notice, and even though at story’s end Wonder Woman was given honorary member status (because she was getting her own comic, like Flash and Green Lantern before her), the JSA asked her to continue as their secretary. She accepted, and the guys wound up singing “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow” to her.

Knowing human nature, one has to wonder if Shelly Mayer and/or Gardner Fox weren’t just as happy to have Diana merely hang around the JSA for the next few years recording minutes of the meetings, and not having solo adventures over which they’d have to duel with Marston. Superhero groups are complicated enough without having to work in philosophies of female superiority and the joys of submission to authority.

Marston did indeed utilize Desira in “later adventures,” as he’d indicated to Mayer. In Sensation #11 (Nov. 1942) she sent Wonder Woman to a distant planet to help its “planetary mother and supreme judge” put down a revolt (by men, naturally). Desira appeared yet again in WW #12 (Oct.-Nov. 1945) and in WW #26 (Nov.-Dec. 1947). Wonder Woman was still one of DC’s most popular titles at the time of Marston’s death in 1947.

H.G. Peter, though his art grew stiffer and his figures ever tinier on the page, remained Wonder Woman artist until his death in 1958, working more directly for DC during his last decade. From 1941 through 1958, only the barest handful of the Amazon’s adventures did not feature his art—and even those few were done in a style imitating his.

Gardner Fox went on to write 21 more published JSA stories through the end of 1946. By the time Wonder Woman began to play a more prominent part in Justice Society adventures again in 1947, he was off writing other genres, and All-Star was being scripted by John Broome and Robert Kanigher—the latter having also succeeded Marston as Wonder Woman scripter. Fox would also eventually write the first 68 tales of the Justice League of America during the 1960s.

And Shelly Mayer? In 1946 DC bought out M.C. Gaines’ part-interest in the All-American group, and AA and DC were merged for good into one big company called National. A couple of years later, Mayer decided it was time to toss away his editorial blue pencil and go back to being a writer/artist. Scribbly and eventually Sugar and Spike were the unqualifiedly excellent result.

Don’t you just love happy endings?

Gardner Fox Wonder Woman Script

Gardner Fox Unused Script for All-Star Comics Number Thirteen Gardner F. Fox 52 Crotty Avenue Yonkers, N.Y. ALL STAR #13 Wonder Woman PAGE 1 Box 1...Splash panel: A heavy mist is seen covering a section of the planet Venus, whose plains are covered with fertile growths.

Through the mist shoves the nose of the rocket in which Wonder Woman is. No stars are seen through the mist that covers Venus.

LEGEND: VENUS, veiled in an enveloping blanket of mist which hides the stars and other planets, is between Mercury and Earth in the planetial system. Brighter than anything in the heavens but the Sun and Moon, Venus reflects sunlight from the clouds that swathe her.

Because of this mist, the markings on Venus cannot be seen. Scientists agree that Venus MAY contain life...

Sub-Legend: Wonder Woman is still unconscious in the rocket that noses its way through the clouds and drops swiftly...

Box 2...The rocket hits the lush ground as the door pops open and Wonder Woman is thrown onto the ground.

Wonder-W: Ohhh...what happened to me ?

I feel lifted out of the world!

Box 3...Wonder Woman brushes back her hair as she stares at the trees and ferns and vines of Venus: bizarre and strange.

Wonder-W: Say, maybe I AM out of the world! This doesn’t look like any place on Earth!

PAGE 2 Box 1...Wonder Woman runs her hands over the rocket as she stares up at the low-hanging clouds above her.

WW: A rocket. Those clouds. Oh, my goodness! I—I think I’m on another planet!

Venus, judging from those clouds!

Box 2...Wonder Woman goes racing off down the forest trail. She is in full costume, with her golden lasso over her shoulder.

WW: Now I know I am! Look at the way I can run here, even faster than on Earth, due to Venus’ lesser gravity!

Box 3...Wonder Woman peers from around the bole of a tree and sees a couple of chariots that go past a road, the men tall and strong, with spears and such, not unlike the Assyrian war chariots.

WW: Hmm. This is a world still young!

They use war-chariots and spears. I’ll follow them!

Box 4...The chariots are seen in the distance passing by a field where women are working.

In background, along the road, comes Wonder Woman.

WW: Women working in the field! Why, they’re practically slaves here!

CAPTION: The cavalcade passes a line of tilled farms...

Box 5...Wonder Woman speaks to a pretty girl in farming costume, who looks up from the hoe she wields.

WW: If I could only speak to you!

Girl: Naga. Naga wrel!

Box 6...Wonder Woman sees a bent old woman approaching, who bears in her hand a crystal globe, pointing to it.

WW: She wants me to look at the globe. What can I lose ?

Woman: Gavra! Gavra sed norton!

Box 7...CAPTION: The little globe begins to glow brightly. Staring within its depths, Wonder Woman becomes aware that she understands what the old woman says!

VIGNETTE the globe with Wonder Woman staring down at it. Rays from the globe reach up and strike here eyes!

WW: She’s telling me to gaze deep, to open my mind to her...!

PAGE 3 Box 1...Holding the globe in one horny hand, the old woman stares up at Wonder Woman and smiles.

Old woman: Our language is simple. We teach it to our young by hypnotism. Why not to you, daughter of another world?

WW: You know me?

Box 2...The old woman walks with Wonder Woman down the tilled fields.

Woman: Legends have foretold that one would come who would bring the women of Venus to freedom. Now—we labor for the men, like slaves!

WW: I thought as much!

Box 3...The old woman sits in front of a little hut as Wonder Woman sits in front of her, leaning on her knee with an elbow as she looks up at him.

WW: What can I do to help?

Woman: The men of Venus admire strength.

65 Their heroes are their strongest men. If a woman could only match their feats of might...

Box 4...Wonder Woman is seen as she smiles, and pats the old lady on the hand.

WW: Then leave it to me. On Earth, thanks to my training by Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons, I am considered very strong!

Old-lady: I hope so!

Box 5...CAPTION: Later that day, Wonder Woman knocks at the great Gate of Visitors of the city Venus... Wonder Woman is seen in front of the great gate as she lifts it.

WW: Let me in! I am a visitor! I wish to see your ruler!

Box 6...A huge man with a shock of black hair, is seen as he lifts a whip as Wonder Woman steps within the gate.

Man: Back, woman! Don’t you know that no woman can enter the Gate of Visitors?

WW: Well, here’s one woman who’s entering it!

Box 7...Wonder Woman grabs the whip away from the man as he is about to bring it down on her shoulders.

WW: And don’t play “snap the whip” with me, because I don’t like it!

Man: Oww! My wrist!

PAGE 4 Box 1...The man is seen as Wonder Woman grabs him by the arms and lifts him up in the air. The man stares down at her with awe in his eyes.

Man: Who are you that you can toss me around like a sack of meal ?

WW: I am Wonder Woman, come to free the women you make slaves of! Now take me to your king!

Box 2...Wonder Woman and the guard of the Gate walk toward a couple of spearmen who balance their spears, ready to throw.

Man: I will lead you, but his spearmen will kill you for coming along this road!

WW: We’ll see if they do!

Box 3...CAPTION: Sunlight glints on speeding lances, as Wonder Woman lifts her bracelets to fend them off... Wonder Woman leaps forward toward the guards, her bracelets dropping the spears that hit her bracelets and deflect off.

WW: After playing “bullets-and-bracelets”, these spears are easy to deflect!

Box 4...Wonder Woman leaps right through the guards, sending them flying away on all sides.

WW: I never played football, but this is what they call a line-plunge!

Guards: Owww! And this is a woman doing this to us!

66 Box 5...Wonder Woman races into a courtyard and garden where the tall and handsome king is seen rising from a bench where he is surrounded by courtiers and soldiers.

King: A woman! This is inconceivable! Kill her!

WW: You men are mighty hard to convince, but I’ll do my best!

Two Touches Of Venus Man: What’s this? A woman? Slay her!

WW: Another bully!

Box 6...The dark-visaged man scowls down at Wonder Woman as King rubs his chin and looks on.

Man: Bah! Don’t listen to her! You know she’s only telling you tall stories!

Beat a man, bah!

Box 6...Wonder Woman races past the guards, twirling her lariat.

CAPTION: With her golden lasso of persuasion sparking, Wonder Woman speeds forward...

King: You’ve convinced me that a woman is just as good as a man! From now on, they take their places beside us!

WW: You’ll never regret it!

Box 5...CAPTION: The day has come when the women of Venus enter the Gate of Visitors, Wonder Woman at their head... VIGNETTE the Gate as Wonder Woman leads the women down the street.

PAGE 5 Box 1...Wonder Woman swoops under the king’s swinging sword and picks him up by his waist.

WW: From now on, all Venus is partly yours!

WW: Mind if I cut in?

Box 6...Wonder Woman speaks to the king and to another woman as they stand beside her rocket. The woman hands her some herbs.

King: Ooops!

Box 2...Wonder Woman races along the street in the city, as she bears the King over her shoulder.

WW: Let’s take a little trip, shall we?

Woman: In gratitude, receive these vegetables that contain all the vitamins that you know of on Earth!

King: What—what are you going to do with me ?

King: You come from Earth! You would make me think women are treated as men’s equals?

WW: I’m right here—but you won’t be in a minute!

Box 4...King shakes Wonder Woman’s hand.

King: They’ll be mighty few— from you! I’ll have to kill you myself!

Box 4...The king stares down at Wonder Woman.

Box 2...Wonder Woman, grasping the man’s ankles, lifts him right off his feet, head flailing backwards.

WW: Over the fence is OUT!

WW: That’ll hold you while I have a few words with your king!

King: I—I’m confused!

Man: Where did she go?

King: Zounds! What a woman!

Box 7...Wonder Woman has a lot of the soldiers wrapped around by the [line on carbon copy missing] his sword in his hand.

WW: You let these women slave for you!

You men of Venus think you are strong!

I’m a woman, and I can beat any one of you men...any ten for that matter!

WW: And if I fall right...you’ll go for a little fall yourself!

Box 3...CAPTION: Exerting her great strength, Wonder Woman heaves the burly Carta right over the wall... Wonder Woman is seen whirling, heaving the man as a hammerthrower hurls the hammer. He is seen going over the wall, as king stares.

WW: If I’ve got to lasso the lot of you, I’ll do it!

Box 3...Wonder Woman stands with the king as she points to the women who are working the fields.

for the man’s ankles.

WW: My thanks! I’ll have to leave you now that I have fuel in my rocket...

WW: I’ll beat you, without any weapons!

King: If you beat him—I grant freedom to all women!

Box 7...The dark man leaps at Wonder Woman, his dagger reaching toward Wonder Woman’s chest.

Man: Then die, woman! No one can stand against me, man or woman!

King: If you ever return, be sure that you will always be welcome!

Box 7...CAPTION: Back through space whirls Wonder Woman! What will she find...?

Have the Justice Battalion members all safely returned? Have the Enemy launched their offensive?

Shot of space with the rocket sailing toward Earth.

WW: Then I won’t stand—I’ll fall!

WW: Exactly!

Box 5...King and Wonder Woman walk back into the courtyard as a huge man comes toward them. He bristles with weapons.

King: If that’s the case, I’ll have to think it over!

PAGE 6 Box 1...CAPTION: Moving with eye-blurring speed, Wonder Woman darts in under the downward moving arm... Wonder Woman slips under the man’s dagger-hand and reaches

Above: Page 2 of Gardner Fox’s unused Wonder Woman script, typed on legal-size paper.

William Moulton Marston Wonder Woman Script

Wm. Moulton Marston Script for All-Star Comics Number Thirteen William Moulton Marston All Star #13 WONDER WOMAN PAGE 1.

1. Display panel Legend: Venus, planet of mystery, is forever veiled beneath shimmering, iridescent mists. Because of its brightness and loveliness in the dark reaches of interstellar space, this shining world is called ‘Venus’, the Latin name for Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty. Since Venus is 36 million miles nearer the sun than our own planet, Earth, its climate is warmer and its verdure more tropical.

The Goddess Aphrodite herself directs the rocket which carries Wonder Woman, still unconscious, through uncharted skyways and bewildering space jungles of meteors, comets, and planetoids. As Wonder Woman’s hurtling carrier penetrates the golden atmosphere of Venus, Winged Women soar upward like beautiful butterflies to meet their strange visitor from Earth.

(Aphrodite in semi-material form at the top of panel directs W.W’s rocket which is heading down from the sky toward the surface of Venus below. Rising from the planet and flying toward the rocket are a flock of winged women, with bright colored wings like butterflies.

Some are pointing at the rocket and some are swooping around it, examining it.)

her own, for that is the gift of tongues “bestowed upon every visitor to Venus.”

(W.W. still wrapped in the gold net stands before the Queen’s throne. Winged Women guard W.W. on both sides. The Queen is a gorgeous creature dressed in the style of Flash Gordon’s queens, Tropica, the Witch Queen, etc. Desira has wings like her women.

She leans forward eagerly and looks W.W. over carefully.)

Queen: Who are you and where do you come from?

67 W.W.: I am an earth girl. They call me Wonder Woman.

3. (Queen gestures to her guards to remove the net from W.W. The Guard girls are unwinding it and W.W. stretches her arms in relief.)

Queen: Wonder Woman! The oracle of Aphrodite, whom we worship, foretold your coming. Guards, free this girl! We need her help desperately!

W.W.: I’ll bet you are having man trouble!

4. (W.W. is seated on a stool at the Queen’s feet. They are talking together.)

Queen: No, our men love us dearly. They obey us because if they did not we would fly away from them and they have no wings

2. CAPTION: The Venus women find a door in the rocket and open it. (Closeup of the door of the rocket being opened by Winged Women. One or two girls are peering into the rocket through the door and they see Wonder Woman.)

First Winged Woman: Oh look! There’s a pretty girl inside!

2nd Winged Woman: Let’s get her out before this flying cylinder lands—the shock would kill her!

PAGE 2 1. CAPTION: The winged Venus girls wrap Wonder Woman in a net of gold metal and fly away with her.

(Several Winged Women on each side hold W.W. between them as they fly along. W.W. is still unconscious.)

1st Winged Woman: We’ll take her to the Queen!

2nd Winged Woman: Yes, she may be dangerous like those terrible meteor men!

2. CAPTION: Wonder Woman is brought before Desira, Queen of Venus. To the earth girl the Venusian language seems exactly like

The published page 2 from the Wonder Woman chapter in All-Star #13, as scripted by Marston.

68 to follow.

W.W.: That’s a wonderful way to keep men in their place! But how can I help you?

5. (The Queen is weeping, her face is bowed in her hands. W.W. puts her arm around the Queen’s shoulders in sympathy and leans over her.)

Queen: The Meteor Comas Sola crashed into Venus! Giant Warriors are killing and capturing our men! We’ve had peace here for a million years and we possess no fighting weapons!

W.W.: Aren’t you women in danger, also?

6. CAPTION: But suddenly huge warriors spring from their hiding places!

(The Queen is stopped short in the middle of a sentence by giant men in leopard style jungle dress but with boots. They carry huge swords, long bow and arrows and some have spears. Their leader presses his sword point against the Queen’s side. He does the [last line on page cut off]

Two Touches Of Venus walks W.W. arms laced behind her from shoulders to wrists, with Solaris striding along beside her.)

Solaris: I am the strongest man in the Universe! I can beat anybody in any world!

W.W.: Pardon me if I doubt that!

3. CAPTION: Stung by Wonder Woman’s jibe, Solaris addresses the Meteor Men. (Closeup of Solaris, huge savage, his arm raised in a Nazi salute. Heads of his followers barely show at front or side of panel) Solaris: Comrades of Comas Sola, our fighting power has been challenged by a captive girl!

Let us show these women our strength!

Meteor Men: Yah! We’ll show them!

4. CAPTION: Solaris offers the prisoners an opportunity to fight.

(Semi long shot of Solaris addressing a group of Venus men prisoners. These men are very handsome tall and athletic, but on the slender side, not so husky as the Meteor Men. They are dressed Flash Gordon style—silk tunics, tights, cloaks, jeweled head bands and soft leather boots. They give more the impression of sporting gentlemen than serious fighters. These men are all chained to inform the reader that they are prisoners.)

Solaris: We will remove your chains and fight you man to man. If you win you get a captive girl and freedom—if you lose, DEATH! 5. (Semi-closeup. A Venus girl in chains, on wrists and ankles, her wings bound, stands

Queen: We women are safe because we have wings.

Leader: So? Let me see you fly away from this sword!

7. (The invaders draw their bows, threaten with their swords and force the winged women to bind each other’s wings and hands behind them with gold metal ropes. W.W. is binding the Queen and she leans forward and whispers in the Queen’s ear) Leader: You will bind each other’s wings tight or we will cut them off!

W.W.: Do not despair! I have a plan.

8. CAPTION: Solaris, leader of the Meteor Men, questions Wonder Woman.

(W.W. faces Solaris while another giant is binding W.W.’s arms behind her. He braces his knee in her back as he pulls the ropes tighter but W.W. pays no attention. Solaris questions her.)

Solaris: You are not like these other women, you have no wings. Did you lose them in war?

W.W.: No, I am an Earth Girl. At home I fly in a machine.

PAGE 3 1. (Solaris cuffs W.W. angrily on the cheek. She pretends to cower and be afraid.)

Solaris: Don’t lie to me, Earth Girl! Who could make a machine that flies?

W.W.: Oh! I would not dare lie to you— you are so big and strong!

2. CAPTION: Solaris walks beside Wonder Woman as the captive Venus girls are led away.

(Long shot of the Venus girls, hands and wings bound, marching down a road, guarded by huge Solarian spearmen. In front

Above: A mid-1940s trade-journal ad for the Wonder Woman newspaper comic strip, courtesy of Jerry Bails. A sample strip is shown on the next page. © 1999 DC Comics.

William Moulton Marston Wonder Woman Script

on a pedestal. At one side stands a huge Meteor Man, wearing only a loin cloth and sandals. At the other side stands a handsome Venus man dressed as in previous panel but without chains. The Venus man points at his prospective opponent while the savage grins derisively.)

Venus man: I challenge you, Meteor Man, to combat for this girl!

Meteor Man: Ho! Ho! Fight then, you fragile violet!

6. CAPTION: With a clever hold like Ju Jitsu, the Venus man hurls his opponent high in the air.

(The Venus man is in a pose showing that he has just hurled the Meteor Man several feet above his head. The husky giant is sprawled in the air and looks helpless and surprised.)

Venus man: Up you go!

Meteor man: Ugh! 7. CAPTION: But the giant Meteor Man lands on his agile enemy like a mountain on a stag.

(The Venusian is down on his back, the Meteor man on top of him choking him with a huge hand.)

Meteor man: Now I crush you, pretty man!

Venusian: Ah-ahhh!

8. CAPTION: Desira, Queen of Venus, pleads with Solaris to stop the tournament.

(The Queen in chains like the rest, kneels before the huge Solaris and with folded hands begs him to stop the contests.)

Queen: I and my women will be your willing slaves—only do not hurt our men!

Solaris: Ho! Your men are weaklings—we kill them all!

PAGE 4 1. (The Queen stands on the pedestal. Beside her is Solaris, his arms folded across his chest showing huge, muscles. W.W. in chains like the other women, steps toward him with upraised hand)

Solaris: I will fight any five of you for your Queen!

W.W.: I’ll fight you alone, fellow—I don’t need any help!

2. (Solaris has clapped his huge hand on W.W.’s shoulder and is roaring with laughter.)

Solaris: Ho! Ho! Ha! You, a woman, will fight ME? Very well. If you win I free all prisoners. But if you lose I shall kill you as I would a man.

W.W.: Fair enough! Let’s go!

3. (A Meteor man, at Solaris’ gesture of command, steps forward to remove W.W.’s chains. But she beats him to it and breaks them off herself, tossing the pieces in the meteor man’s face. The man puts his hands up to protect himself as the chain pieces hit him.)

Solaris: Remove this captive’s chains!

W.W.: Don’t bother—I’ll take them off myself!

Man: Aw-wk! Gu-unh! This woman uses magic!

4. CAPTION: Wonder Woman gives Solaris first choice of wrestling holds. But Solaris drives a huge fist at her unprotected body.

(W.W. stands with her arms raised above her head. Solaris swings a pile driving right into W.W.’s solar plexus. She takes it without wincing.)

W.W.: Take first grip—unh! My mistake.

5. (W.W. is toppling Solaris backward with a terrific uppercut to the button.)

W.W.: So that’s the way you want to fight, eh?

6. (W.W. lifts the huge Solaris above her head and gives him the airplane spin.)

W.W.: This is the way earth wrestlers keep ’em flying!

7. (W.W. lies on her back, one leg straight up from the hip with her foot planted in Solaris’ stomach. She holds his wrists down with her hands as she shoves upward with her feet and so tosses him heels over head to land

69

eventually on his back. W.W. is laughing) W.W.: When a man gets fresh with an earth girl this is the way she throws him over!

8. (W.W. has Solaris down on his face. She sits astride his back, holding his hands behind him with one of her hands. With the other she reaches to her hip for her lasso—only to find it gone.)

W.W. And now I’ll show you how Amazon girls bind their opponents—What’s this?

The magic lasso’s gone! Someone stole it while I was wrestling!

PAGE 5 1. CAPTION: Wonder Woman, seeking her lasso, releases Solaris. He points a spear at Queen Desira’s throat.

(Solaris holds a spear point at Desira’s throat.

W.W. stops in mid stride at the enemy’s throat.)

Solaris: Surrender, Earth Fiend, or I kill the Queen!

W.W.: I beat you in a fair fight—you promised to free us!

2. (Solaris in last panel. W.W. close to him with her hands behind her. A Meteor man is binding her arms with the Magic Lasso) Solaris: What is a “fair” fight? Tie her arms with her own rope of metal links!

W.W.: Oh no! Bind me with anything else— Meteor man: She knows she cannot break this chain!

3. CAPTION: While Wonder Woman, under guard, awaits Solaris’ pleasure, the other prisoners are confined in a stout stockade.

(W.W. stands with her hands still tied behind her back with the Magic Lasso. Beside her is a guard with a spear. Before her is a stockade of lots about 20 feet high.)

W.W. (thinking): This magic Lasso cannot be broken. But if I can get inside that stockade the Venus girls will untie me.

4. CAPTION: Acting swiftly Wonder Woman

Two Touches Of Venus

70 knocks out her Guard.

W.W.: This situation calls for a little foot work.

(W.W. is standing on top of the stockade wall. Desira flies toward her with Solaris dangling head down from the rope about his ankles which Desira holds. She passes the rope to W.W. who reaches out for it.)

5. (W.W. hands still tied behind her, is leaping over the stockade fence.)

W.W.: Good work, Desira! Now, I’ll show you the power of my Magic Lasso!

W.W.: This part is easy—but I’ve got to work fast!

3. W.W. dangles Solaris over the wall so that he hangs down just over the heads of his men.

The Meteor men are looking up at the upside-down Solaris and are throwing their spears and swords in a heap near the wall where W.W. points)

(W.W. kicks the guard under the chin, knocking him out.)

6. CAPTION: Queen Desira and Wonder Woman free one another.

(Wonder Woman is breaking the chains off Desira’s wrists. The Queen holds the magic lasso which she has untied from W.W’s arms) W.W.: Guards will come any minute! I’ll stay her and defend the captives. You fly with this Magic Lasso and capture Solaris!

Queen: Your plan is good!

7. CAPTION: The Meteor Man’s weapons clash harmlessly against Wonder Woman’s bracelets.

(The Meteor men are striking at W.W., one with a spear one with a sword. She fends them both off with her bracelets. Other meteor men are seen crowding up to attack.)

W.W.: This is child’s play compared to stopping bullets!

8. CAPTION: Tearing the heavy log door from its hinges, W.W. sweeps back an army of giant attackers.

(W.W. holds a huge log door horizontally before her and rushes against a crowd of attacking meteor men, knocking them all in a heap) W.W.: Stand back, boys, and don’t crowd!

PAGE 6 1. CAPTION: The Queen, meanwhile, lassoes Solaris.

W.W.: Solaris, while bound with this Lasso you must obey me. Order your men to throw down their arms and surrender.

Solaris: Something compels me to submit to Wonder Woman! Men do as she commands.

4. CAPTION: Venus men carry Wonder Woman triumphantly through the streets amid the cheers of happy crowds, while Winged Women scatter golden flowers in her path.

(W.W. rides in a sort of throne chair carried with poles on the shoulders of 8 men, 4 on each side. The men are Venusian big shots— dress them up. Winged women—give them shapes like mature women—fly overhead on their butterfly wings and drop big flowers like huge roses and chrysanthemums on W.W. and in her path. Squeeze in all the crowds you can and make them holds out their hands, palms up toward W.W.—like the girls of Old Rome adoring a Caesar. W.W. holds her hands out also, greeting her hero worshippers.)

Crowds: Wonder Woman! Aphrodite bless the Earth Girl! She saved Venus—Wonder Woman!!

5. CAPTION: The Queen shows Wonder Woman how Venus girls tame their prisoners.

(Venus girls are sitting around in throne-like chairs. Meteor men prisoners, in chains, are seated on cushions at the girls’ feet. The girls are feeding the men fruit, bread, etc. and holding golden goblets to their lips. The prisoners cannot use their hands which are chained to the floor but eat from the girls’ hands. The meteor men are laughing and look happy.)

Queen: Aphrodite has taught us how to make men loving and peaceful. Already these meteor men are eating out of our hands!

W.W.: They seem to love it!

6. (Close up of the two girls’ faces. W.W. is shown in profile, facing toward the reader’s left, so her word balloon will come first in this panel. Desira, the Queen, is pressing her lips to W. W’s earring which brings Desira’s face to the rear of W. W’s and in about 3/4 profile. The Queen’s word balloon goes off to the right.)

W.W.: If only we could make earth men peaceful!

Desira: You can! I will direct your efforts. I give you now the gift of magnetic hearing!

My lips magnetize your earrings and always you can hear my voice!

7. (Wonder Woman stands with her hand on the open door of her rocket. The Queen stands beside her, one hand on W.W.’s shoulder) Queen: Adieu, Wonder Woman! May you reach earth safely and visit Venus again soon!

Wonder Woman: Goodbye—and thanks for your wonderful gift!

TAG: Back through space whirls Wonder Woman! What will she find—have all the Justice Batallion members returned safely?

(Solaris is running toward the stockade, sword in hand. Above him hovers Queen Desira, her wings spread. She has thrown the magic lasso over Solaris. The loop is tightening around his ankles, throwing him forward, one hand thrust out in front of him in the position of a person falling.)

Solaris: By the Flames of Friction! What witching is this!

2. CAPTION: Desira delivers her prize to Wonder Woman who stands on the stockade wall.

An Alter Ego Collection, Vol. 1, Bonus!

Two panels of artist H.G. Peter’s “Wonder Woman,” from a (perhaps unpublished?) story, as repro’d from the original art, courtesy of All Star Auctions & Dominic Bongo. [©2006 DC Comics.]

72

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

There’s Money In Comics!

by Stan Lee, Editor and Art Director, Timely Comics, Inc.

W

ell, what are you waiting for? They’ve been publishing comic magazines for more than 10 years. They’ve been buying scripts for these magazines from freelance writers for that same length of time and paying good rates for them. There are 92 comic magazines appearing on the stands every single month—and each magazine uses an average of 5 stories. It’s a big field, it’s a well-paying field, and it’s an interesting field. If you haven’t tried to crack the comics yet, now’s the time to start.

No matter what type of writing you specialize in—adventure, detective style, romantic stories, or humorous material, there is some comic magazine which uses the type of story you’d like to write. And, once you’ve broken into the field, you’ll find that your assignments come to you at a fairly steady pace.

Stan Lee has been Marvel’s most famous editor and writer since the 1940s, when the company was still known as Timely. This article was written around the same time as Stan’s behind-the-scenes book, Secrets Behind The Comics, and was designed to show would-be comics writers how to break in. It first appeared in the November 1947 issue of Writer’s Digest.

The only piece of art illustrating the original article was Syd Shores’ Blonde Phantom page—a page chosen to demonstrate the correct way to write comics.

However, I find it a very odd choice. This page (not scripted by Stan, strangely enough!) strikes me as the perfect example of comics storytelling at its worst! If you can figure out where to go after panel one, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din! That minor quibble aside, the article is filled with solid information, and Stan’s infectious enthusiasm. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!

By the way if you have any rare old comics articles you’d like to see reprinted in future installments, please send copies to me at: Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, P.O. Box 11421, Eugene, OR 97440. Letters (or requests for my Mr. Monster back-issue catalog) can be sent to the above address, or via e-mail at jgilbert@efn.org ’Til next time, Michael T. Gilbert

The pay is good. A competent writer can write about 10 pages a day for $6 to $9 per page, depending upon the strip he is writing and the quality of his material. So, this comic field certainly bears a pretty close scrutiny from any writer who’s interested in receiving meaty checks, and in receiving them often. (And I’ve yet to see the writer who isn’t interested!)

“But I’m not good at drawing! How can I work with an artist on a comic strip?” How often I’ve heard that said by writers! Look! You don’t have to be able to draw flies! You do need an imagination, and the ability to write snappy dialogue and to describe continuity. And what writer won’t lay claim to those talents?

Comic strip writing is very comparable to radio writing, or to writing for the stage. The radio writer must describe sound effects in his script, and the playwright must give staging directions in his play. Well, the comic strip writer also gives directions for staging and sound effects in his script, but HIS directions are given in writing to the artist, rather than to a director. He must tell the artist what to draw, and then must write the dialogue and captions.

A sample page from a script of The Blonde Phantom follows. This is an actual page, just as it was typed by Al Sulman, the writer. You will notice that the page is roughly divided into two sections, the left-hand section containing the instructions for the artist, and the right-hand section containing the dialogue. There are no set rules as to margins and borders, the important consideration being to make sure that the script is written clearly and can be easily understood by the editor and the artist.

One interesting aspect of writing a comic strip is seeing how the artist finally interprets your script. Syd Shores used the above copy to draw one page for Blonde Phantom Comics, issue #15. As you can see, the artist relied on the instructions that Alan Sulman typed on the left side of the script.

BUT there’s more to comic strip writing than just knowing on which side of a page to type artist’s instructions. Let’s try to analyze some of the factors which go into the making of a good script: 1. Interesting Beginning. Just as in a story, the comic strip must catch the reader’s interest from the first. The very first few panels should show the reader that something of interest is happening, or is about to happen.

2. Smooth Continuity. The action from panel to panel must be natural and unforced. If a character is walking on the street talking to another character in one panel, we wouldn’t show him horseback riding in the next panel with a different character. There ARE times when it is necessary to have a sudden change of scene or time, however, and for such times the writer uses captions. For example, if we have Patsy Walker lying in bed, about to fall asleep, in one panel, and want to show her eating breakfast in the next panel, the second panel would have an accompanying caption

There’s Money in Comics!

73

Artist Syd Shores’ version of the instructions given to him by the author, Alan Sulman, whose play-by-play description of what to draw and what the characters are talking about, appears below.

Panel 1. Scene in office, as Louise clears up her desk.

Mark faces her.

1. Louise: (thought) He never notices me! All he ever thinks of is the Blonde Phantom!

Panel 2. Louise, hands outward, looking at the reader, as if her thoughts in the previous panel were just proven true by what Mark has said.

2. Louise: See what I mean?

Panel 3. Louise, ready to leave office. Mark sits on desk and smiles at her as if he has just thought of a wonderful idea.

3. Louise: Well, everything’s finished for today, Mark! See you in the morning!

Panel 4. Louise alone, suddenly looking interested and excited, expecting Mark to ask her for a date.

4. Louise: Huh? Yes, what is it, Mark?

Panel 5. Mark lights his pipe, expressionless, as if he has changed his mind. Louise seems plenty angry.

5. Mark: Well, I... er... never mind! It wasn’t important! Good night, Louise!

Panel 6. Door slams shut as Mark looks at it, slightly surprised and bewildered.

6. Balloon from Louise: Good night!

Mark: Gosh, if I could only find where the Blonde Phantom lives! We could have a night of it together!

Mark: Say, wait a minute, Louise! How would you like to...

Louise: (thought) That’s what I call a quick brushoff, you, you...

Mark: Huh? Now what’s she so mad about?

Sound effects: SLAM! reading something like this: “The next morning, after a sound night’s sleep, Patsy rushes to the kitchen to do justice to a hearty breakfast.” Thus, by the use of captions, we are able to justify time and space lapses in our panels.

3. Good Dialogue. This is of prime importance. The era of Captain America hitting the Red Skull and shouting “So you want to play, eh?” is over! Today, with the comic magazine business being one of the most highly competitive fields, each editor tries to get the best and snappiest dialogue possible for his characters. In writing a comic strip, have your characters speak like real people, not like inhabitants of a strange and baffling new world!

4. Suspense Throughout. Whether you are writing a mystery script or a humorous script, the same rule applies: Keep it interesting throughout. Any comic strip in which the reader isn’t particularly interested in what happens in the panel following the one he’s reading, isn’t a good comic strip.

All of the tricks you have learned and applied in writing other forms of fiction can be used in comic writing insofar as holding the reader’s attention is concerned. But remember, giving the reader well-drawn pictures to look at is not enough; the reader must WANT to look at the pictures because he is interested in following the adventures of the lead character.

5. Finally, a Satisfactory Ending. An ending which leaves the reader with a smile on his lips and a pleasant feeling that all the loose strings of the story have been neatly tied together can cover a multitude of sins. It has always been my own conviction that a strip with an interesting beginning, good dialogue, and a satisfactory ending, can’t be TOO bad, no matter how many other faults it may have.

One point which I can’t stress too strongly is: DON’T WRITE DOWN TO YOUR READERS! It is common knowledge that a large portion of comic magazine readers are adults, and the rest of the readers who may be kids are generally pretty sharp characters. They are used to seeing movies and listening to radio shows and have a pretty good idea of the stories they want to read. If you figure that “anything goes” in a comic magazine, a study of any recent copy of Daredevil Comics or Bat Man will show you that a great deal of thought goes into every story; and there are plenty of gimmicks, subplots, human interest angles, and the other elements that go into the making of any type of good story, whether it be a comic strip or a novel.

[©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

74

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

Another important point to remember is: The only way you can learn about comics is by reading them. So far as I know, there are no schools which give specialized courses in comic strip writing and no books which can be of too much help to you. Constant reading of the various comic magazines is the only way to develop a “feel” for what constitutes a good comic strip.

Another consideration of prime importance is: Decide which comic magazine you want to write for before you do any writing. The various magazines in the field have editorial differences which are almost amazing. A story which Timely Comics would consider exciting might be deemed too fantastic by True Comics, Inc., and Classic Comics, Inc., would have very little use for the type of story preferred at Fiction House! Each comic publishing company has its own distinctive formula and the only way to really grasp this formula is to read the magazines.

MOST everybody knows something about the organization and workings of an ordinary fiction publishing company. But to most people, writers included, a comic magazine publishing outfit is cloaked in mystery.

Let me tell you a little about how a comic house operates so that you’ll have a better general knowledge about this large but comparatively unknown field.

The guy you’re most interested in at a comic publishing house is the editor. “How does he differ from editors of other types of magazines?” Here’s how: The editor of comics is more of a coordinator. He not only considers the merits of a script, but also who is going to draw it and whether it is written in a manner that will suit the artist’s style of drawing.

interested in writing. And then slant your story in such a way so that particular style of art work will blend in perfectly with your story. The writers who concentrate on such details are the ones who attain top recognition and top rates in the phenomenal comics field.

Now then, here you are, a fairly accomplished writer interested in trying your hand at the comics. What type of writing is your forte? Is it adventure, teen-age humor, fantasy, true crime? At the close of this article you will find a list of comic publishers and the type of material they buy.

Just select your favorite from this list. Let’s assume you prefer teen-age humor and you have decided to cast your lot with Timely Comics. The next step is to write to the editor and get a list of the teen-age magazines he edits and, if possible, his story needs. After receiving the list of magazines he sends you, head for the nearest newsstand and look them over.

Select the one which appeals most to you and for which you think your style is best suited.

But up till this point your preliminary work is just beginning.

You’ve now got to read every copy of this magazine you can lay your hands on. Suppose Georgie is the magazine you selected. Get old copies of Georgie, get current copies of Georgie and leave an order for future copies. Read that strip until you can feel you’ve known Georgie personally for years, and can anticipate what each Georgie story will be about after reading the first page.

Live with Georgie for days— get the Georgie formula down pat—and then—

If the artist who draws Hedy De Vine has difficulty drawing crowd scenes and specializes in close-up shots of beautiful women, then the editor of that magazine must be careful not to buy Hedy scripts which call for many characters in each panel and for many long shots.

Should your synopses click, you’ll get an order for a Georgie story from the editor.

He will tell you how many panels to write per page, how many pages in length to make the story, and any other relevant information.

It’s the editor’s task to make sure that the scripts he buys are perfectly suited for the artist to whom they are given, and also to insure that the artist interprets the writer’s script exactly as the writer intended it.

Now it’s up to you. If you write a perfectly satisfactory story (and there’s no reason not to, if you’ve studied the magazines long and carefully enough) there’s an excellent chance you’ll be asked to do more stories on the same character and later on, perhaps, additional stories for still other characters. For once you’re “in,” there are many assignments which can come your way.

Of course, there are some artists who write their own scripts, but they are in the minority. The average artist, even though he may be capable of writing his own script because of his long-standing familiarity with the character he draws, would still prefer to have a writer write the script for him so that he can concentrate entirely upon the drawing.

Therefore, you, as a writer, should acquaint yourself with the style of artwork which is used in the script you are

Send some synopses of Georgie stories to the editor.

Make them the same type of stories which had been appearing in all the Georgies you read. Not the same PLOT, just the same TYPE of story.

“A study of any recent copy of Daredevil Comics will show you that a great deal of thought goes into every story.” ©1999 Lev Gleason Publications. (NOTE: This art didn’t appear in Stan’s original Writer’s Digest article in 1947.)

So, those of you writers who are itching to crack new markets have a market waiting for you which is just made to order. It may seem a little complicated, but the rewards are well worth any time you may spend learning the comic style. I’m sure you won’t regret spending the time—I didn’t!

There’s Money in Comics!

75

Comic Magazine Market NOTE: Write to the Editor to get his exact requirements and further details, before working on any scripts!

ARCHIE COMIC PUBLICATIONS, INC., 241 Church Street, New York, NY: Harry Shorten, Ed. Specialize in humor and teen-age. Six to 10 pages per story, some three-page fillers.

About six panels per page. Rates vary depending on writer and feature.

CLASSIC COMICS, 510 6th Avenue, New York, NY: Harry Adler, Ed. Uses one condensation per month of a classic, such as David Copperfield, Moby Dick, Les Miserables, etc. Back “Classic Comics, Inc., would have very little use for the type of story preferred at Fiction House!” Classics Illustrated © 1999 Gilberton page of the magazine Co., Inc. • Firehair ©1999 Fiction House (NOTE: This art didn’t appear in Stan’s original Writer’s Digest article in 1947.) lists all titles previously used. Runs 53 pages to PARENTS’ MAGAZINE, 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY: Eliot the story. All scripts are freelance. Pays $25 per story.

Kaplan, Ed. Educational, adventure, true historical, current events, teenDELL PUBLISHING CO., INC., 149 Madison Avenue, New York, age. All magazines slanted toward specific age groups: four to eight, NY: Oscar Lebeck, Ed. Work directly with writers and buy nothing on eight to twelve, and nine to sixteen. Five or six pages per story. $6.00 per the open market. page, with extra for research.

EDUCATIONAL COMICS, INC., 225 Lafayette Street, New York, STANDARD PUBLICATIONS, 10 East 40th Street, New York, NY: NY: Ivan Clapper, Ed. Four magazines in educational group: American Joseph Greene, Ed. Humor, animated, fantasy, jungle, detective. Seven to history, science, world history, and the Bible. Regular comics animation, 12 pages, about six panels per page. Pays about $5 to $9 per page, crime, adventure, family, magic, fantasy, western. Six to 12 pages per depending on writer and feature. story; approximately seven panels per page. Scripts bring $5 to $10; art, PREMIUM SERVICE CO., INC., 119 West 19th Street, New York, NY: $20 to $30 per page.

Robert D. Wheeler, Ed. Would like writers experienced in comic book FAWCETT PUBLICATIONS, INC., 67 F West 44th Street, New York, technique to submit samples. Adventure, detective, adventure are the NY: Will Lieberson, Ed. Buy practically everything on the open market. best bets. $5 and up.

Use adventure, humor, western, fantasy, teen-age, and jungle comics.

QUALITY COMIC GROUP, 25 West 45th Street, New York, NY: About $7 per page, about 8 pages per story. Are overstocked now.

George Brenner, Ed. Buy very little freelance work. Prefer to have synFICTION HOUSE, INC., 670 Fifth Ave., New York, NY: Jack Byrne, opses submitted.

Ed. All scripts are staff written.

STREET AND SMITH PUBLICATIONS, INC., 153 West 15th Street, LEV GLEASON PUBLICATIONS, INC., 114 East 32nd Street, New New York, NY: William De Grouchy, Ed. Teen-age, fantasy, and detecYork, NY: Bob Wood, Ed. True crime needed. Stocked on all other tive. Also have an All-Sport Comic which uses true human interest stomaterial. Five to eight pages per story, about eight panels per page. ries of sports figures and how-to-do-it stories. About eight pages per Average rate of payment $5 and up. story, 14 pages for the lead story, with four to six panels per page, paying up to $10.

HARVEY PUBLICATIONS, INC., 1860 Broadway, New York, NY: Leon Harvey, Ed. Teen-age, adventure, animated, detective, western.

TIMELY COMICS, INC., 350 Fifth Ave., New York, NY: Stan Lee, Ed. Number of pages vary. Rates vary with writer.

Adventure, teen-humor, and true crime. Quiz Dave Berg, Script Ed., on his exact needs before submitting.

HILLMAN PERIODICALS, INC., 535 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY: Ed Cronin, Ed. Buying only true crime on the open market. Six and A. A. WYN, 23 West 47th Street, New York, NY: Fredrick seven pages to the story. Rates vary.

Gardener, Ed. Teen-age, adventure, fantasy, detective.

Seven to 10 pages per story, six to seven panels per page.

NATIONAL COMICS PUBLICATIONS, INC., 480 Lexington Rates vary.

Avenue, New York, NY: Whit Ellsworth, Ed. Very light requirements at present. Only interested in working personally with writers.

A plea from the publisher of this fine digital periodical: TwoMorrows, we’re on the Honor System with our Digital Editions. We don’t add Digital Rights Management features to them to stop piracy; they’re clunky and cumbersome, and make readers jump through hoops to view content they’ve paid for. And studies show such features don’t do much to stop piracy anyway. So we don’t include DRM in our downloads.

At

However, this is COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, which is NOT INTENDED FOR FREE DOWNLOADING ANYWHERE. If you paid the modest fee we charge to download it at our website, you have our sincere thanks. Your support allows us to keep producing magazines like this one.

If instead you downloaded it for free from some other website or torrent, please know that it was absolutely 100% DONE WITHOUT OUR CONSENT. Our website is the only source to legitimately download any TwoMorrows publications. If you found this at another site, it was an ILLEGAL POSTING OF OUR COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, and your download is illegal as well. If that’s the case, here’s what I hope you’ll do: GO AHEAD AND READ THIS DIGITAL ISSUE, AND SEE WHAT YOU THINK. If you enjoy it enough to keep it, please DO THE RIGHT THING and go to our site and purchase a legal download of this issue, or purchase the print edition at our website (which entitles you to the Digital Edition for free) or at your local comic book shop.

Otherwise, please delete it from your computer, since it hasn’t been paid for.

And please DON’T KEEP DOWNLOADING OUR MATERIAL ILLEGALLY, for free. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, support our company by paying for the material we produce. We’re not some giant corporation with deep pockets, and can absorb these losses. We’re a small company—literally a “mom and pop” shop—with dozens of hard working freelance creators, slaving away day and night and on weekends, to make a pretty minimal amount of income for all this hard work.

All of our editors and authors, and comic shop owners, rely on income from this publication to continue producing more like it. Every sale we lose to an illegal download hurts, and jeopardizes our future. Please don’t rob us of the small amount of compensation we receive. Doing so helps ensure there won’t be any future products like this to download.

And please don’t post this copyrighted material anywhere, or share it with anyone else.

Remember: TwoMorrows publications should only be downloaded at

www.twomorrows.com TM

TwoMorrows.Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

no. 60 Featured Artist: MARC SWAYZE

78

Fawcett Collectors of America

26 Years... and Counting!

Welcome to FCA #60 and to our new home in Alter Ego! FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), the long-running publication devoted to Captain Marvel and the rest of the Fawcett Comics lineup and to the talented people who created them, was founded in 1973 by Bernie McCarthy.

As a 1940s kid and a member of the Captain Marvel Club, Bernie had consumed the adventures of Cap, Ibis, Bulletman, Spy Smasher, and all the rest. His FCA provided articles on rare Fawcett comics, superb interviews with Fawcett creators, plus want ads for other Fawcett collectors to connect and trade.

With issue #12 in 1980 the publication became FCA/SOB (Some Opinionated Bastards), with Captain Marvel’s chief artist, the legendary C.C. Beck, stepping in as editor.

Beck’s incarnation of the publication went beyond merely being a nostalgic zine to one filled not only with C.C.’s wonderful artwork, humor, and wit, but also his hard-hitting essays, commentary, and opinions—most of them concerning art, writing, and his views on then-current comics.

Beck’s health diminished, and with #31 in 1984 Bill and Theresa Harper became the editors, renaming the ’zine FCA & ME, Too, because of their inclusion and excellent coverage of Magazine Enterprises’ western comics alongside the Fawcett-related features.

I took over as editor with issue #54 in 1996, returning the zine to its original name and focus on Fawcett’s Golden Age. Fawcett artist Marc Swayze’s outstanding column sets the tone for each issue, as he recalls what it was really like back in the 1940s. During my tenure I’ve had the opportunity to interview, illustrate, and write articles about many fine individuals who played vital roles in the history of Fawcett and/or the Captain Marvel mythos.

This type of coverage will continue in our new home in A/E, in addition to presenting a wealth of unpublished material by C.C. Beck, with whom I enjoyed a great friendship during the last eleven years of his life. I would like to thank Alter Ego editor Roy Thomas and publisher John Morrow for the opportunity to present the world of the Marvel Family and their pals, and the history of Fawcett Comics, to a larger audience, young and old.

I promise you we’re in for a fun, magical ride.

—P.C. Hamerlinck

Marcus D. Swayze Education: NE Center LSU (music); Louisiana Tech (art, BA); NE Louisiana U. (art, MA) 1939-41: Assistant to Russell Keaton on syndicated comic strip “Flyin’ Jenny,” daily and Sunday 1941-42: Staff artist, comics dept., Fawcett Publications. Captain Marvel: story art, covers, some writing. Mary Marvel: first visual conception, early story art, covers 1943-44: Military. Freelance writing, Fawcett: Captain Marvel 1944:

Civilian, NYC. Freelance art, Fawcett: Ibis, Mr. Scarlet, others. Mary Marvel, paper conservation ads

1944-53: Freelance, Fawcett—all work produced in Monroe, LA. Regular assignments: The Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics, art, much writing, through #69, 1948, total 37 stories; romance titles, 1948-53, art only—10 titles, 80 stories 1944-46: “Flyin’ Jenny,” Bell Syndicate, Sunday page, art only. Daily strip taken also upon illness of Russell Keaton, creator. Contract for both daily and Sunday signed following death of Keaton, as a professional courtesy (i.e., no pay involved, as Swayze considered Keaton a best friend and mentor) 1954-55: Charlton Publications, Derby, CT. Editorial work, freelance work: mystery/suspense art and writing; romances, westerns, art only

Above: When Marc Swayze left his Fawcett staff job, C.C. Beck gave him this Beck-drawn original from Whiz Comics #19; note the inscription. © DC Comics Inc.

To the surprise of many, Marc Swayze left the comics field for good in 1955, despite finally achieving a lifelong goal: a syndicate contract (with Bell) to write and draw a newspaper comic strip he created, “The Great Pierre”

We Didn’t Know... It Was The Golden Age!

79

“C.C. Beck called us the unknowns.

Rod Reed had called us the forgotten ones. I am said to be the most forgotten of the unknowns, or the most unknown of the forgottens. Like the rest of the comic book people at the time I had no idea it would become the Golden Age. Had we known, would we have done anything differently?

I doubt it.”

—Marc Swayze FCA #54, January 1996

( )

d

“We Didn’t Know... It Was the Golden Age,” a regular feature in FCA, first appeared in issue #54, Winter 1996. Its previous installments have offered readers a view of the comic book field as it impressed its author, Fawcett staff artist Marc Swayze, in the 1940s and ’50s. They tell of his arrival at Fawcett Publications, meeting comics editor Eddie Herron, art director Al Allard, and others (including artist C.C. Beck), and his awe at the size of the company and its large art department, library, and location in Times Square. Marc has recollected chats with C.C. Beck on many subjects, particularly the drawing of Captain Marvel, and how he landed the job of drawing Cap, along with the myth of Cap’s likeness being based on actor Fred MacMurray... plus his apprenticeship with comic strip veteran Russell Keaton (Flyin’ Jenny) before coming to work for Fawcett.

Marc has also talked about his affiliation with Fawcett, and the friendships he developed there, and how he both wrote and drew Captain Marvel stories. He discussed covers he illustrated for Captain Marvel Adventures, Whiz Comics, and Wow Comics, as well as the tools and techniques he used to create those classics. Marc covered

such subjects as the day Keaton met Beck; the average work day of Beck’s longtime assistant Pete Costanza; the music combo he and Beck played in; the great increase in the Captain Marvel workload; the change of editors from Eddie Herron to Rod Reed (who also wrote many of Cap’s earlier, more humorous adventures).

In FCA’s 25th-year Anniversary Issue (#59, 1998), Marc gave tribute to his first editor, Eddie Herron, and told the inside story behind the creation of Mary Marvel; his ongoing syndicate ambitions; the baseball games the Fawcett staff played against the Jack Binder Shop (which supplied artwork to Fawcett); etc.

Which brings us to Marc’s latest installment! I hope you’ll enjoy reading his amazing first-hand accounts of the Golden Age of Comics as much as I have enjoyed presenting them. He and the others may not have known it was a Golden Age... but I know I love his column and I’m glad to know a true gentleman and to have a good friend like Marc Swayze.

—P.C. Hamerlinck

T

here could have been no better place to serve apprenticeship than with Russell Keaton. With a decade of comic strip experience behind him, and abundant talent to start with, he was an expert. He could do it all... write, pencil, ink, and letter. Furthermore, he was easy to work with... agreeable, considerate, patient, witty.

Now it was 1940. He had moved family and studio to a district where he could take flying lessons. When he suggested that I present Judi to the syndicates, he wasn’t kidding. “Take a week off,” he said.

“More, if necessary.”

When I boarded a bus in Memphis, Tennessee, bound for New York City, I had the artwork for eight Sunday pages of Judi the Jungle Girl tucked away in a homemade portfolio of brown corrugated board. I also carried a small, inexpensive suitcase. My budget was limited. Having never set foot in New York City, I had studied a map of the community, and a hotel register, and reserved a modest room near what I took to be the greatest number of newspaper syndicates.

I must have been the world’s worst salesman. I didn’t even know that a proper procedure in making a presentation was first to arrange an appointment. Instead, I barged into the offices of King Features so early in the morning the receptionist was still on her first cup of coffee. On the wall behind her was a beautiful painting of Prince Valiant, signed by Hal Foster. I wondered how a nice painting of Judi the Jungle Girl would look on the opposite wall, signed by you-know-who. When she looked up, I blurted that I had come a long way with a comic strip idea and wanted to show it to someone.

Marc Swayze on staff at Fawcett, circa 1941-42. Note the Bulletman page in the corner! Photo courtesy of Marc Swayze. Bulletman ©1999 DC Comics.

It worked. I was ushered into the plush office of Bradley Kelley, no less. Electric razors must have just come out, for he was sitting back in a red leather chair running a buzzing little gadget over his face. He continued

80 it as we talked. I am grateful for the attention and courtesy shown me that morning. I think I must have left King Features with my head a little higher, feeling as though I’d grown a couple of inches, all because of the cordiality of Bradley Kelley, the top banana at the top syndicate. I didn’t get a contract, of course, but I was encouraged to bring the Judi work back after I’d made the rounds. And it was suggested I consider a job on their staff... “rescaling,” he said. I knew he meant revising their comics to conform to the several popular newspaper formulas. I politely declined. My parting words were, “I’ll be back!” And I was, time and time again, for 12 or 13 years.

And so it went, syndicate after syndicate...

United Features, the New York News, McNaught, McClure’s... my list was long. So were the days... and Manhattan east-west blocks.

I became accustomed to the city buses and the subways, but not the taxicabs. Too expensive.

In the evening there were movies, stage plays, vaudeville shows, and big name bands, but my budget didn’t include them. Anyway, in the evening I was tired.

Marc Swayze created the original approved design of Mary Marvel’s costume.

Mary Marvel ©1999 DC Comics.

Fawcett Collectors of America Occasionally I made a few alterations to the Judi art, using an inverted dresser drawer as a drawing board—a trick I had learned from Russell Keaton. Generally my spirits were up, but now and then doubts nagged at me: “What am I doing here? Even with a college degree, I’m country. How comfortable life was... loading out a milk wagon... hitching up a horse... covering a regular route. Good old routine, that’s what it was! And more... old Dolly knew the way back to the dairy, and that enabled me to lay the reins aside and practice on my violin... oh, well...” And so to sleep.

Judi and I didn’t get our contract and I didn’t “leave the art,” as some syndicate suggested. Why? Because I had begun to realize I wasn’t ready. I had some learning yet to do... in both writing and drawing. Judi had been prepared for children, as one might expect Sunday comics to be, but already Sunday comics were being slanted to include an older readership. In the preparation of Judi I had been in a hurry... for success, I suppose... and I shouldn’t have been.

And there were some important principles to be learned about salesmanship... about perseverance... about downright persistence. My crude philosophy had been, if the work wasn’t good enough to sell itself, it just wasn’t good enough. That’s not the way to sell! I learned a few things about the syndicates. Some preferred to see daily strips, others Sunday pages. A few features editors liked the art I presented, but were cool toward the story, others just the opposite. It was confusing, but enlightening.

At one syndicate several assistants surrounded the feature editor at the presentation. One made a remark that stayed with me. “I notice,” he said, “that in some of your pictures of Judi her open mouth shows depth and teeth beyond the lips, while in others, after the lips there is nothing.”

I don’t know how I evaded the subject, but you can bet I did! The female mouth! The one subject on which I had disagreed with Russell Keaton from

The great Otto Binder in the early 1960s.

That’s Bill Ward in the background.

the day I went to work for him... but not openly, mind you. His portraits of Jenny, beautiful though they were, were toothless. It was simply the way he drew girls, and they looked great. I didn’t like them drawn that way, but being the assistant, that’s the way I drew them. I suppose in preparing Judi I swung back and forth between the two approaches.

Ironically, a few years later I drew a shot of Mary Marvel with her mouth open and for some reason never finished the mouth. It seemed as though any time I saw a picture of Mary after that, it was a reproduction of that shot, wide open mouth, no depth, no teeth.

On the ride back to Memphis, the decision was made to put Judi the Jungle Girl away... for good. But was I discouraged? I guess not, for on the bus I began to formulate my next syndicate try... a strip featuring her canine companion. I would call it “Jango.” When Jango emerged again, secretly, of course, it would be in a different world... the world of Fawcett Publications... the world of comic books... the world of Captain Marvel!

The Golden Age comic book guys were not a bunch of sissies. Rod Reed told of an incident on a subway train where a rider was creating a disturbance with loud, profane language. Soft-spoken Otto Binder, seated across the aisle chatting with a friend, cautioned him politely several times that in the sparsely occupied car were several ladies. Finally, his requests repeatedly ignored, Otto leaned across the aisle and, without a break in his conversation, delivered a neat right cross to the chin of the offender. Then, as the foul-mouthed rider slumped over, Otto waddled back into his seat, continuing his discussion as though nothing had happened.

When they left the car a few stops later, the cause of the disturbance was still sleeping peacefully.

I don’t know just when Gene McDonald joined the Fawcett forces, but he was around when I returned from the military in 1944. Mac was a squarely built man of medium height,

We Didn’t Know... It Was The Golden Age! who walked with a slight limp that gave him a rolling gait resembling a swagger. Where he came from escapes me, but he walked and talked like a westerner. There was an occurrence in the lobby of the office building one evening that explained his limp.

In the after-work hours and on weekends the Paramount Building, like most office buildings in Manhattan, I suppose, maintained in the street-floor lobby a security system where a guard stood at a lectern and a ledger. The full-dress uniform and obvious physical fitness of the guard said plainly that you did not enter or leave that building without signing the book.

Generally those guards were courteous and friendly. But guards are like the rest of us... some nice, some nasty. On this occasion McDonald came down, probably from working late, and got into words with the guard. The argument reached a point where the guard made the mistake of giving Mac a shove that sent him staggering backward across the lobby to the floor.

Then the reason for Mac’s rolling gait came to light. Like another comic strip artist most of us know of, Al Capp, Mac had an artificial leg.

Sitting there, he unstrapped the apparatus, then slid his back up the lobby wall to reach a standing position. Then, hopping around on one foot, with his “club” he proceeded to beat the guard senseless. When the police arrived, it was necessary to call for medical assistance.

I liked Mac. One evening he and I were on our way out to dinner and stopped by his apartment. While he was out of the room, I stole a peek at his portfolio... beautiful, full-color illustrations of cowboys and western scenes. I couldn’t help but notice the accurate detail.

This artist knew saddles, bridles, western gear... and he could paint them. In the comic book world of the Golden Age there were quite a few talented young artists whose hearts had been dead-set on big-time illustration. But big-time illustration was no more.

The situation existed also among the members of Al Allard’s art staff... men whose day-to-day performance consisted of page layouts... paste-ups... page composition... the arrangement of titles and bodies of copy, illustrations and designs... to create attractive magazine pages. I discovered it to be an unsung, specialized field of commercial art that included people trained and experienced in other artistic endeavors. Those at Fawcett were talented and competent... and they were smart. One day when I was doing an illustration that included

a tree, somebody, probably one of the old pros like Fred Ripperda, said softly over my shoulder, “That tree wouldn’t grow like that.”

I bristled. “It’s my tree,” I said. “I can grow it any way I like.”

“No,” he said. “It’s God’s tree... nature’s tree. You see, it was meant to grow in a definite way. That is, unless you are illustrating a story that features a distorted tree. If not, then good art, and good artistic taste, dictate that the tree not draw attention to itself, but stand quietly as backA 1970s ground support Mary Marvel for the main

by C.C. element.”

Beck. ©1999 DC Comics.

Wow! What an art lesson!

And for free!

Right there, in a few moments... by a man whom I have forgotten... as he casually donned his hat and coat to go home. From that experience I concluded that to be an expert staff artist you didn’t expect to go out and find a tree when the job at hand required one... you knew how to draw a tree... and clothing folds... and just about everything else you can imagine. Art is a lifetime of study. I’m still at it.

81 the work that had appeared in Whiz Comics issues of 1940... straight-away, story-telling art.

Pure C.C. Beck. It was a style not far removed from that with which I had become familiar in working with Russell Keaton. In the rendering of women, however, I suppose I had become somewhat set in my ways. Beck’s neat little doll-like, wide-eyed cuties were great, and fit well with the style, but I liked my gals. When a script came my way that included a female, I remained loyal to them and awaited comment from editor Ed Herron et al. No comment. I took that for approval, and continued drawing gals in my own style. Some years later, when I began illustrating in the Fawcett romance comics, I was glad I had stayed with the more realistic gal style.

It needs to be said here that the use of the word “gal” is not to be taken as disrespectful.

It is, and was, just a short, easy, and somewhat traditional way for artists of the Golden Age—and probably other ages—to refer to the wonderful, loveable members of the opposite sex. Even gal artists and editors used the term.

So there!

I never knew why Al Allard suggested that I move in from Jamaica, NY, where I shared an apartment with layout artist Irwin Weill.

“I don’t like to see a comic book hero with muscles all over the place,” said C.C. Beck in one of our early 1941 conversations. “Just a good, proportionate figure with some suggestion of power... that’s enough.” When Beck and I talked about drawing the human figure, it was not just any human figure. It was a figure who wore red tights, yellow boots and waist band, and a white, modestly ornate cape... Captain Marvel, of course. We spoke of the drawing in terms of the contour and the rendering necessary within the contour to indicate muscles and clothing details.

Beck went on: “A strong outline and a few selective suggestions of muscles... that’s all that’s needed.” I agreed. Then he said more: “The contour of the human figure, to my way of thinking, is a series of bulges. What appear to be indentations, or concaves, are where the bulges join.” I disagreed but said nothing. Ridiculous, I thought. I couldn’t imagine drawing a girl, or the male figure for that matter, without the use of the “s” curve... the line of beauty... or whatever the experts call it. I don’t think Beck did, either. Although Beck and I saw eye to eye on most matters, now and then we differed. But why argue? We were both drawing a character this man had originated.

We disagreed on gal art... the drawing of women... not verbally but on the drawing board.

In doing Captain Marvel art I was guided by

Some of C.C. Beck’s “gal art,” featuring Taia, companion to Ibis the Invincible. This panel is from Whiz Comics #2 (1940). © DC Comics.

82

Fawcett Collectors of America loons. And I thought I could give him a definite personality... a quality of dignity... poise. I wanted him to be like how I wanted to be.

Wish I’d asked. It was a good move, however.

The privacy of my new quarters near Columbia University, and the proximity of the big library at 47th and 5th Avenue aroused once again my interest in newspaper syndication. Interest? It was more like an obsession! I wanted desperately to create the characters, write, and draw my own newspaper comic strip.

The main character for the next effort had been running around in my head for weeks. It was Jango, the dog-pal of Judi the Jungle Girl.

I have been unable to pinpoint specifically why that dog kept coming back at me as a likely candidate for syndication. Possibly it was a serial my father had read to me from an adventure pulp magazine that I remembered: North Star by Rufus King. And of course there was Rin-Tin-Tin in the movies. At any rate, I had so much confidence in this canine hero that I tried another Jango idea years later. The name “Jango,” with a slight change in spelling, came from a favorite record star, Djano Reinhardt, guitarist with the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. I was never what you’d call a hero-worshipper, but heck, the guy was a fantastic jazz musician.

There was nothing new about a dog comic strip. There were at the time, and had been, several... but I remembered them as funny dogs... talking dogs... thinking-out-loud dogs. I wanted Jango to reason, but I wanted his reasoning to be conveyed in captions, not in dialogue bal-

Funny thing about comic strips... new ones, that is... with your hand, heart, and mind you plan them, with the young kid readers in mind.

But kids don’t buy newspapers, their parents do... grownups, right? And, getting down to it, those grownups don’t select the strips for their local papers... the editorial or business management does. But those folks don’t buy the raw idea from the comic strip creators, the syndicate does. And who at the syndicate makes that decision? Might be anybody. Of course, the upper management likely decides about the money involved, but some individual in the organization sparks the idea of including this particular number, out of all the features considered each year, in their stable.

Newsworthy events were all over the place, occurring daily. Not a good time to try to sell a comic strip. Certainly not a dog strip.

Presentation to the syndicates of a daily feature would require at least twelve strips. I had completed three. Clearly, the time was not right. I shoved Jango aside. It would be eleven years before he would come bounding onto my drawing board again.

And sometimes you wonder how the hell that individual got there in the first place. Could be a feature editor, or a top management official... even a board member. But the question remains: do they know anything about comics at all?

As the cooler months of 1942 began to close in on Manhattan, I began to wonder about other things. We were at war. Already there had been indications of a coming scarcity of newsprint... paper. And though the newspapers and syndicates might be confronted with a shortage of paper, there would be no shortage of news. Not during wartime.

Unconsciously... or out of habit... or both... I positioned a fresh sheet of bristol board before me: “Now what might the syndicates consider appropriate at this time? They must be open for something! Hey... how about a character in the military... a flyer? I’ll call him Bill... Lucky Bill....”

You see, it was like an addiction. I just couldn’t quit!

Ambition can be a tenacious tiger. But wonderful!

Examples of newspaper strip art styles used

by Marc Swayze. Top left: “Little Ug-Li”.

Center: Jango (1941). Top right: Unknown.

Left: Judi the Jungle Girl. Above: Unfinished “Lucky Bill” strip sample (1942). © Marc Swayze.

When Marvels Clashed!

83

When Marvels Clashed!

When The Original Captain Marvel Met The Original Human Torch!

by John G. Pierce

W

ith all the hoopla surrounding recent inter-company crossovers, starting with DC vs. Marvel (or Marvel vs. DC, if you prefer), it’s important not to lose track of an earlier effort in the same vein.

No, I’m not talking about the Superman/ Spider-Man team-ups of the 1970s, or even of the cross-company Wizard of Oz adaptation that preceded it. I have in mind a DC/Marvel crossover that took place much earlier than that—in 1964, to be exact—a team-up you probably never saw: The pairing of Fawcett’s original Captain Marvel with Timely’s original Human Torch!

Oh, I know what you’re going to say: That Captain Marvel was discontinued by Fawcett in 1953, and didn’t reappear until the early 1970s, when DC acquired the rights of publication of the World’s Mightiest Mortal— and Timely’s first Human Torch disappeared in the late ’40s, resurfaced briefly in the ’50s, then did not return until a totally new version debuted in Fantastic Four #1 in 1961.

You’re dead right, on both accounts.

But—you can be forgiven for not knowing that Captain Marvel and the Human Torch both lasted well into the 1960s, because it didn’t happen in U.S. comics.

Instead, both features enjoyed long lives in a country now garnering a bit of attention for having provided comics with such artists as Mike Deodata, Jr., and Roger Cruz, among others.

I refer, of course, to Brazil.

The Human Torch had his beginnings in Brazilian comics in 1940, in the pages of a comic book entitled O Globo Juvenil Mensal (which might be roughly translated from Portuguese as Kids’ World Monthly, or Kid’s World Monthly—take your pick).

In the years that followed, the amazing android creation of Professor Horton (and Carl Burgos) would also turn up in other comics titles there, as well as in the comics sections of Brazilian newspapers. Other Timely characters who could be seen in Brazil Just imagine—your favorite heroes— “Capitáo Marvel” and “Tocha Humana”— in one adventure together!

Captain Marvel © 1999 DC Comics.; Human Torch ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

included Sub-Mariner, Captain America, Sun Girl, Miss America, The Angel, The Patriot, and the Young Allies, among others. (By contrast, the Stan Lee line of heroes whom we know today as the Marvel lineup didn’t start in Brazil until 1967!)

Fawcett’s Captain Marvel enjoyed a 25year career in Brazil, beginning in 1943 and stretching all the way into 1968, which was 15 years after he had been discontinued in the USA as a result of declining sales and the DC lawsuit! (And, since DC revived the Fawcett

characters in late 1972, with Brazilian reprints thereof appearing in 1973, Brazilian readers were minus the Marvel Family for only about five years—not for twenty years as in the States.)

Captain Marvel first appeared in Brazil in Gibi Mensal #34, dated October 1943. Oddly, he was actually preceded one month earlier by his sister Mary Marvel, who had begun appearing in O Guri (which, ironically, translates as Oh Boy) #71, dated Sept. 1, 1943. Gibi, where the Captain made his debut, was a standard-sized 100-page book with most of its

84

Fawcett Collectors of America

features in black-and-white. It was one of the first Brazilian publications in comic book format, as well as one of the first to present complete stories.

The popularity of this publication was so great that even today the name Gibi is used as a synonym for comic books. There’s even an idiomatic expression, “Não está no Gibi!”

(“That isn’t a comic!”—or perhaps “You wouldn’t even find that in a comic book!”), to designate something fantastic.

Since U.S. features were purchased from a central agency, Agencia Record, it was not at all unusual to find strips from a variety of U.S. sources collected by one Brazilian publisher under one set of covers. Features as diverse as Pafuncio (Bringing up Father), HomemBorracha (Plastic Man), Zorro (the Lone Ranger!), O Rei da Policia Montada (King of the Royal Mounted), Dr. Kildare, Tim e Tom (Tim Tyler’s Luck), Pinduca (Henry), Don Winslow, and many others shared space in the Brazilian titles.

A Brazilian reader accustomed to seeing Captain Midnight, Captain America, and

Top: The cover of the 1964 issue of O Globo Juvenil in which Captain Marvel met the Human Torch. Captain Marvel © 1999 DC Comics.

Above: O Guri—“Oh boy!”—here comes the Mary Marvel Marching Society!

Mary Marvel © 1999 DC Comics.

RIght: Another splash from the Cap-Torch story; the Torch is the guy hanging! Human Torch © 1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Batman all in the pages of one magazine would think nothing of it, for no references were made to the original U.S. publishers (except, occasionally, in tiny, barely visible copyright notices). So the idea of a team-up between two characters from different strips, while perhaps a novelty simply because it was a crossover, would not strike the Brazilian reader as strange unless he happened to be acquainted with the originals.

The teaming of Captain Marvel and the Human Torch occurred in the 1964-dated Almanaque do O Globo Juvenil (“Kids’ World Annual” or “Kids’ World Special”). The cover gave no hint of the surprise within, featuring as it did simply a montage of various heroes from its pages, including Captain Marvel, Billy the Kid, Robin Hood, Wyatt Earp (by Stan

When Marvels Clashed!

85

of The Cobra’s gang rescue him with a submarine, the Big Red Cheese sheds his disguise and attempts to follow, but is stymied by underwater flora (“worse than the Amazon jungle,” laments Cap, providing what is obviously the best point of reference for the Brazilian readers).

In the second chapter, readers actually see The Human Torch for the first time, as Captain Marvel manages to locate The Cobra’s underwater hideout and begins freeing prisoners. (Why a villain called The Cobra should operate underwater and take prisoners is not quite explained.) One of these prisoners is the weak, flaccid-looking Human Torch, prompting those few readers who may have remembered the Torch’s origin to wonder what kind of a genius Professor Horton had been, to create such a realistic android that he could be reduced to such a physical state. More likely, neither the readers nor the unknown writer of this tale knew or remembered that the original Torch was not human!

Anyway, Cap rescues the Torch and the other prisoners, but The Cobra escapes. Cap takes the Torch to a doctor, who tells him the Torch would have succumbed in another few days, but that in a few weeks he would be well again. Yes, that Horton was a genius, wasn’t he?

Meanwhile, Cobra is making plans to launch something called Hyperbomb Z into the Van Allen Radiation Belt. According to the fiend, within 48 hours the Belt will be inflamed and the temperature will increase more than 150 degrees. “After a few days of insane work,” the text tells us, the bomb is ready to be launched.

Captain Marvel spots The Cobra’s sub and attacks, but is stymied again, this time by a release of black ink. Meanwhile, in the fleeing sub,

Lee and Al McWilliams), Don Chicote (Lash Larue), Jack Marlin (Davy Jones), and a British-based quasi-costumed hero called Aguia Negra (Black Eagle). The magazine was 100 pages thick, printed in black, white, and red.

The encounter of Cap and the Torch wasn’t a fight; the idea that two heroes should automatically battle each other when they met had not yet reached Brazil. Rather, it was an authentic team-up. The threepart Captain Marvel story, “Return of a Great Hero,” seemed to assume that Cap and the Torch inhabited the same world and had encountered each other previously.

The story begins with Billy Batson reading a newspaper account of the escape attempt of a villain called The Cobra (apparently an original villain, not taken from any U.S. stories of either Cap or Torch, as far as can be determined). Somehow, reading this article causes Billy to “remember a great friend who disappeared some time ago.” Readers aren’t informed as to the exact connection that Billy sees between The Cobra and this friend, but he resolves to investigate the disappearance without further delay.

Captain Marvel arranges to be imprisoned in disguise in the same cell as The Cobra (whose name is obviously derived from his facial features).

The villain makes another escape Two more pages from O Globo Juvenil, attempt, this time featuring both red-underwear heroes. successfully, but the Captain Marvel © DC Comics. disguised Cap follows Human Torch © Marvel Characters, Inc. him. After members

86 The Cobra lays plans to deliver an ultimatum to the world’s leaders.

As the temperatures climb, Captain Marvel consuls with Professor Edgewise (Matheus, here), a zany scientist who appeared primarily in numerous stories of Captain Marvel Jr., but who here seems fairly sane and logical. He informs Cap that a second bomb can be used to stop the action of the first one.

Military officials subsequently agree to build such a bomb.

Meanwhile, back in the hospital, the Torch awakens and notices the extremely high temperatures. It must be really hot—he’s sweating! His left hand bursts into flame, and before long his entire body is burning. He takes off in search of The Cobra.

High in the sky, Captain Marvel approaches the Belt and detonates the bomb he carries. Just as predicted, temperatures start to lower, and The Cobra begins to surmise what is happening. In order to verify what the instruments say, the sub heads for the surface.

While Cobra is making plans for another nasty trick, his submarine captain spots something coming from the sky.

Before they get a chance to submerge, the Human Torch descends and begins to destroy the sub. “I ought to have killed you!” screams The Cobra. “I’m paying now for my stupidity!”

Figuring the Torch can’t possibly follow him underwater, The Cobra dives overboard, only to encounter Captain Marvel’s right fist.

“Get back up there!” shouts Marvel. “My friend isn’t finished yet!”

A now-deflamed Torch completes the job by taking his turn at punching The Cobra, then sends Cap to get the rest of the gang.

Fawcett Collectors of America After the criminals have been turned over to the authorities, the two heroes confer.

“Thanks once more, Captain Marvel,” says the Torch. “My battle, however, doesn’t end here.

Now I have to find my friend Toro.” (Toro’s name is given in Portuguese as “Centelha,” meaning “Spark,” which is a more logical handle for the junior version of the Torch than his original name; “Toro” is the Spanish word for “bull,” and has nothing to do with fire.)

Captain Marvel wishes the Torch luck, and assures him that soon he will find his junior partner. The story ends with Billy Batson’s broadcast, over TV station WHIZ, as Billy holds up a picture of “Centelha” and asks that anyone seeing him get in contact with the Human Torch.

Thus ended what was probably the only time, to this point, that a hero from Fawcett met one from the Timely/Atlas/Marvel group.

In later eras, of course, such a tale would be surrounded by months of pre-publicity and who knows what other types of hype and promotion. In its own time and place, it was simply another story, reasonably well written (as noted, by an unknown scribe), and acceptably if not outstandingly illustrated

by Brazilian artist Rodriguez Zelis.

in common. And they’d probably have just wound up fighting instead of helping each other, anyway.

Still, in that best of all possible comics worlds, where any two characters might interact, either occasionally, regularly, or one time only, with no side effects (i.e., disturbances in regular continuity), well, who knows what might be happening?

Captain Marvel might be going up against the Torch’s old enemy/ally, Sub-Mariner (and that one should indeed be a battle!). Or he might be meeting that other most prominent captain of the comics, Captain America. He might— well, the possibilities are vast, aren’t they?

DC vs. Marvel might be a dream come true for many, but the dream possibilities won’t be exhausted thereby. We can still dream of others.

The modern versions of Captain Marvel and the Torch have not met in modern-day DC and Marvel crossovers, which is probably just as well, since apart from red suits and the ability to fly, they don’t have a whole lot

An Alter Ego Collection, Vol. 1, Bonus!

Here’s more Captain-Marvel-meets-the-Torch art—sort-of! In A/E #57, we reprinted a page from Marvel Family #86 (Aug. 1953), in which, to battle giant rats created by the Commies, the trio used lighted gasoline to turn themselves into what writer Otto Binder referred to as “human torches”—probably with tongue in cheek, since Binder had written those Timely/Marvel heroes in the 1940s. Here’s that panel and the next two, in which the blazing Fawcett Marvels put their temporary flames to good use. Art by Kurt Schaffenberger. [© 2006 DC Comics.]

COMING OCTOBER 2006: ROY THOMAS’

ROY THOMAS’ new 208-page sequel to the bestselling Volume 1—featuring still more startling secrets of the Justice Society of America and All-Star Comics, from 1940 through the 1980s!

• Fabulous wraparound cover by CARLOS PACHECO! • Still more amazing information and speculation on the classic All-Star Comics #1-57 of 1940-1951— plus rare art by JOE KUBERT, CARMINE INFANTINO, ALEX TOTH, IRWIN HASEN, H.G. PETER, et al.!

• Not seen in Vol. 1! Art from the unpublished ’40s JSA story “The Will of William Wilson”!

• Special portfolio of rare art from the 1963-1985 JLA-JSA Team-Ups & the 1970s All-Star Comics Revival—art by SEKOWSKY, DILLIN, STATON, WOOD, GIFFEN, ESTRADA, and more!

• Full coverage of ROY THOMAS’ 1980s series All-Star Squadron—Young AllStars—America vs. the Justice Society— & Last Days of the Justice Society—plus never-seen art by JERRY ORDWAY, RICH BUCKLER, ADRIAN GONZALES, TODD McFARLANE, RICK HOBERG, ARVELL JONES, RAFAEL KAYANAN, etc.! Plus—notes and illos on the original 1940s DC Comics sources of the 100+ All-Star Squadron stories!

• Special JSA-related art and artifacts by FRANK BRUNNER, ALEX ROSS, NEAL ADAMS, MICHAEL LARK, GIL KANE, MIKE MIGNOLA, RAMONA FRADON, & MORE! 208-page trade paperback • $26 US Postpaid • SHIPS OCTOBER 2006

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom.

TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

All characters TM & ©2006 DC Comics.

VOLUME TWO

90

Writer/Editorial

Silver Threads among the Gold

(and Bronze and even beyond!)

S

eems like only days ago that publisher John Morrow and I were as frantic as ferrets, trying to finish off the layouts and proofreading of A/E V3#1, after original layout man Chris Knowles had to withdraw soon after making a good start.

And here we are finalizing V3#2 already, with Comic Book Artist editor Jon B. Cooke now regularly handling the layout chores even as he prepares for CBA to go bimonthly. (Yea, team!)

While here I sit at my word processor—my “glorified typewriter,” to use Isaac Asimov’s pithy phrase—trying to come up with an editorial, because custom demands a few hopefully-well-chosen words up front to help orient the reader to the magazine to follow.

Custom is undoubtedly right, but our second issue is so chock-full of material that Ye Editor begrudges every page, every paragraph, that doesn’t contribute directly in some way to the history of comic books and comics fandom.

That’s why, though I did manage to squeeze in a letters section this time around (and will strive mightily to include one in each and every issue in the future), you won’t find any book reviews and the like. I’ll print such features now and then, if either a book or a particular review catches my fancy, but I’d prefer to leave such things to Jon Cooke and his thicker (and soon more frequently published) CBA. A couple more thoughts, tossed out under the gun literally an hour before this issue must be Express-Mailed en toto to Jon, and then I’ll leave you to it (with no apologies for the fact that there’s no Golden Age editorial as such this time— consider this it): First, I’ll confess I’m a bit puzzled whether Alter Ego should be

Four seasoned pros smile for the camera at the 1995 Chicago con which produced last issue’s Stan Lee Roast: (L.-to-R.:) Irwin Hasen, Roy Thomas (the baby of the group), John Romita, Stan Lee. Together this quartet has more than two centuries’ worth of professional comics experience! [Photo courtesy of Nancy Ford]

called a fanzine at this point, as we wrote on our first-issue cover.

The original definition of “fanzine” is, of course, an amateur magazine published by fans expressly for fans, and not for the more casual comics-buyer, let alone the general public.

If we do continue to use the term “fanzine” from time to time, it’s because, even though A/E (like CBA and TwoMorrows’ third mag, The Jack Kirby Collector) is professionally published and printed, it still retains much of the spirit of a fanzine.

That’s the way I always intended it, and that’s the way it will stay.

As I announced in Vol. 2, #1, when it ran as part of CBA #1 in early 1998, the revived A/E came about partly out of my offer to Jon and John simply to “spotlight the bits and pieces of artwork and information I’ve salted away over the years, particularly in three major areas: “(1) The Golden Age of Comics, by which I mean anything from the 1930s up to, say, the creation of the second Flash in 1956; “(2) Those aspects of the Silver Age and beyond, from ’56 till the day after yesterday, of which I have personal knowledge, either as active participant or as bemused spectator;

Writer/Editorial

“(3) Certain material from early comics fandom which I feel deserves a new audience....”

Still, perhaps I should have clarified things, to indicate that: (a) The special purview of A/E is, and will remain, the Golden and Silver Ages, even though I place the end of the latter vaguely somewhere in the early to middle 1970s; (b) I’ll cover anything else I feel like covering, though in consultation with Jon Cooke and John Morrow so that our three magazines don’t step on each other’s toes too often or too hard.

91

ed a couple of minor errors in) my article on the salvaging of DC art.

Stan Lee (who still does a lot more than just “present”) sent us a fax.

Even Ye Writer/Editor is still scripting a comic or three, but won’t let anything keep him from putting out an issue of Alter Ego every three months, even as he puts the finishing touches on The All-Star Companion, coming very soon from TwoMorrows.

We’re pros, yes...

End of Mission Statement Revisited.

But we’re all fans at heart, too.

Every coin has two sides.

By the way, when I said above that Alter Ego retains the spirit of a fanzine, I meant it.

And love of the comics medium is the coin of our realm.

Bestest,

For, even though the major thrust of this magazine has shifted from “Volume I’s” straight fan-oriented viewpoint back in the 1960s to a more professional, behind-thescenes approach, everyone associated closely or even peripherally with A/E (as with CBA and TJKC) is doing it out of love for the comics medium, not for any sizable commercial reward.

Take this issue, for instance: Michael T. Gilbert, though busy with his own comics work, not only contacted Will Eisner about our reprinting a hard-to-find 1966 Spirit story, but drew a two-page Mr. Monster introduction; Bill Schelly is a small-press publisher involved with comics-related material.

Marc Swayze, who continues his Fawcett reminiscences in the FCA section, was one of the most in-demand artists of the 1940s.

Jack Burnley, another top Golden Age artist, not only consented to be interviewed, but put together and mailed me a mountain of additional materials for inclusion; Larry Lieber, always pressed by those daily Spider-Man comic strip deadlines, did very much the same; Will Murray has written numerous novels under both his own name and that of “Kenneth Robeson” et al., but still loves to dig up historical info on comics and pulps (as does novelist Ron Goulart, who supplied us with a few pieces of art this time around);

Alter and Captain Ego—two of A/E’s mascots—in a brand new drawing by creator Biljo White. [Art © 1999 Biljo White; Alter & Capt. Ego © 1999 Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly]

Co r r e c ti o n Roy Thomas’ longtime fandom associate Marty Greim, who published the excellent Comic Crusader some time back, has pointed out that V3 #1’s previously unpublished H.G. Peter art of Wonder Woman atop a bucking bronco was from his collection, a copy of which

Gil Kane took time off from drawing a Superman prestige-format book for DC, among other projects, to sketch us a brand new Atom drawing to approximate one he did circa late 1960, and Julie Schwartz was gracious enough to talk with us at length, as well;

he sent Roy years ago. We

Longtime comics writer Mike W. Barr photocopied a number of much-needed pieces of Silver Age art to go with his own (and even with others’) articles;

Bails, who’d sent the actual

Even longer-time writer Robert Kanigher wrote us a long, long (and extremely colorful if potentially controversial) letter.

New Teen Titans co-creator Marv Wolfman read over (and correct-

apologize to Marty for crediting its source as Jerry WW scripts, Marston letter, and Phi Beta Kappa piece we also ran last issue.

Alternative version of Gil Kane’s cover art for this issue depicting artist and Atom. Thanks to Phillip Anderson and Fredericksburg Books for sharing this with us.

The Atom ©1999 DC Comics.

Splitting The Atom

93

Splitting The Atom More Than You Could Possibly Want to Know about the Creation of the Silver Age Mighty Mite!

by Roy Thomas

#34 (cover-dated Dec. 1961, but actually on sale several months earlier).

After appearing also in #35-36, he graduated at once to his own bimonthly magazine, The Atom (#1, June-July 1962).

L

AST YEAR AT RASHOMON DEPT.: Back in A/E V2#2, Ye Editor offered the classic 1950 Akiro Kurosawa film Rashomon, whose theme is the impossibility of ever knowing the whole truth about any event, as a template for comics (or any other kind of) history. Then there’s New Wave director Alain Resnais’ 1961 masterpiece Last Year at Marienbad, in which the male protagonist confronts the heroine again and again to insist the two of them had an affair “last year at Frederiksbad, perhaps at Marienbad.” In its own way, the French film plays with truth and memory every bit as much as does Rashomon—which, believe it or don’t, brings us to the creation of the Silver Age Atom.

Ray Palmer wasn’t the first DC hero called The Atom, of course.

The original one appeared from 1940-1951 in All-American Comics, Flash Comics, Comic Cavalcade, and All-Star Comics.

The Mighty Atom, as he was called in his origin in AllAmerican #19 (Oct. 1940), was a short, red-headed Calvin College student named Al Pratt who had been trained to physical perfection. Until 1948 this Atom had no superpowers, just a rather odd, leather-girdled outfit with a full face mask. Then, still early in the Atomic Age, DC decided a crimefighter with so timely a name needed powers to match; so The original, non-super-powered Atom, overnight, in a 1945 panel drawn by Jon Chester with no explaKozlak. [Art courtesy of Jerry Bails; nation, he Atom ©1999 DC Comics.] gained “atomic strength” and, soon afterward, a new costume with a stylized atom emblazoned on its tunic.

The first Atom’s last Golden Age appearance was in All-Star #57 (Feb.-March 1951).

A few facts about the creation of the second Atom are pretty much set in concrete: Scripted by Gardner Fox, penciled by Gil Kane (with Murphy Anderson inks), and edited by Julius Schwartz, he debuted in National/DC’s Showcase

The first Mighty Mite gained “atomic strength” in 1948: a detail from the cover of All-Star #52 (April-May 1950) by Arthur Peddy and Bernard Sachs. [Atom ©1999 DC Comics.]

Alas, almost everything else about the origins of the six-inch stalwart is up for grabs.

Fact is, a study of The Atom’s less than immaculate conception is a textbook example of how difficult, if not downright impossible, it is to reconstruct comics history—even when most of the people involved in a particular creation are still alive. Maybe especially then, because it’s harder for anyone to make sweeping assumptions without someone else arising to vociferously deny them!

Offered for your consideration:

Background image: Jerry Bails’ 1960 concept of The Atom— like the one that eventually appeared in this panel from Showcase #35—called for a hero who shrank from 6’ tall to 6”!

[Original artwork by Kane & Anderson courtesy of Mike W. Barr; Atom ©1999 DC Comics.]

The Silver Age versions of Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman, for all the science-fictional trappings which set them apart them from their 1940s forebears, were still basically “revivals,” as DC editors and fans alike called them back then.

However, the star of Showcase #34 was destined to have virtually nothing in common with the old Atom except his name. The new hero’s main schtick would be that he fought crime while shrunk to a height of six inches. For the first time, DC would take one of its “revivals” off in a radically different direction from the original, making him in effect a totally new character.

Ever wonder why?

In attempting to reconstruct the creation of the Silver Age Atom, we must examine the potential contributions of four principals. In alphabetical order: Jerry G. Bails, in 1960 a young associate professor of natural science at Wayne State University, Detroit, and soon to become the first editor/publisher of Alter Ego (Volume 1) and a founding father of comics fandom;

Jerry G. Bails, circa 1960-61. [Reprinted from Alter Ego V1#5 by way of the 1997 trade paperback The Best of Alter Ego.]

Gardner F. Fox (1911-1986), writer/co-creator of the Golden Age Flash, Hawkman, Dr. Fate, and Justice Society, among others—who by late 1960 had likewise co-created the Silver Age Justice League, Hawkman, and Adam Strange; Gil Kane, a professional comics artist since 1942, best known in late 1960 as the illustrator of the Silver Age Green Lantern—a perennial

94

Splitting The Atom in comics history.

Much as the four protagonists of Rashomon relate widely varying recollections of the same event, the saga of the Silver Age Atom is fraught with questions about precisely what was done when, by whom, and how important it was to the development of the new hero.

Fortunately, we don’t have to rely overmuch on current memories of an episode now nearly four decades old, because there exists a surprising amount of relevant correspondence from late 1960 and early 1961. Rarely before or for some years afterward was the development of any comics character so well (if contradictorily) documented. To wit:

In Strange Adventures #140 (May 1962), writer Gardner Fox and editor Julius Schwartz got caught up in one of their own stories. [Special thanks to Mike W. Barr; ©1999 by DC Comics.]

talent who remains active in the field even today; Julius Schwartz, in 1960 the editor and de facto co-creator of comics starring the new Flash, GL, JLA, and Hawkman, and a DC editor from 1944 until—well, I was about to say “until he retired,” but in 1998 he edited the first Green Lantern Annual ever, thus extending his editorship into a second halfcentury.

Quite a cast! With talents like those behind him, small wonder the Small Wonder has endured for nearly four decades! And certainly the last thing I’d want to do is denigrate any of them: I began corresponding with Julie, Gardner, and Jerry (in that order) in late 1960, several years before I met any of them in person; and Gil has been both collaborator and friend since 1969. For that reason, all four are generally referred to below by their first names.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should state here that I myself played a part in events, though hardly one to rank with these four fathers (forefathers?) of the incredible shrinking Atom. Think of me more as a spear-carrier, at most a supporting character with an interest

Jerry Bails saved most letters he received from Gardner Fox (beginning in 1953!), Julius Schwartz (starting in mid-1960), and myself (as of November 1960). He also kept carbon copies (remember them?) of some of his early missives to Gardner and Julie.

Gardner Fox, too, tended to save letters he received, though seldom carbons of those he wrote. Many of the former are now archived in the library of the University of Oregon (in Eugene).

Letters in this collection from Jerry and me were photocopied for us by Mr. Monster creator Michael T. Gilbert, bless him, while working on his own Fox-related pieces for A/E, Volume 2.

Gil Kane’s initial but crucial contribution to the Atom’s development was a series of conceptual illustrations, long since scattered to the winds; fortunately, we have access to 1961 comments made by Gil, Gardner, Julie, and Jerry about those drawings. I also discussed the hero’s creation with Gil by phone in 1998.

Julius Schwartz generally didn’t save correspondence, but he’s well represented anyway—by early-’60s letters squirreled away by Gardner and Jerry. In addition, he spoke with me at length by phone in spring of 1998 about the “Atomic Matter.”

And me? I saved relatively little correspondence, but luckily, in 1964, Jerry mailed back my early letters to him so I could use them to write a piece called “The Alter Ego Story.”

Among other things, that unfinished history of Roy Thomas circa 1961 A/E’s first incarna(not that he’s particularly tion recounted his proud of the photo). and my connection with The Atom’s genesis, then a mere 3-4 years in the past. Most of my article finally saw the light of day in the 1997 Best of Alter Ego volume from Hamster Press, but much of the Atom-related material was omitted there as irrelevant; so some of it is printed here for the first time.

Below: Detail from the cover of The Atom #1 (June-July 1962). [©1999 DC Comics.]

Splitting The Atom Unavoidably, there is more documentation still in existence from some of this quintet than from others. But sheer volume, of course, proves nothing in and of itself. I simply wanted to lay all the material I could find on the table, and let readers weigh the evidence for themselves.

So—five witnesses, counting myself.

Five blind men, trying to pin the tail on an elephant called Truth.

Where to begin?

For various reasons, let’s start at the earliest moment when anyone but a handful of people at National/DC’s New York offices learned there was to be a second super-hero called The Atom. And that means we start with: JERRY BAILS In Alter-Ego (Vol. 1) #1, a 22-page spirit-duplicator fanzine mailed in March 1961 to 150 or so comics fans, editor/publisher Jerry added the following postscript to other news he’d received from Julius Schwartz about upcoming DC comics: “And now, for what I believe is possibly the best news of all—the revival of another JSA hero. JLA author Gardner Fox and GL artist Gil Kane are teaming up with editor Julie Schwartz to create one of the most unusual heroes on the modern scene. I feel especially happy about this one, because I suggested the idea initially in a letter to Gardner Fox dated August 29, 1960. I followed it up with another letter to Julie Schwartz on December 8, but by this time this industrious gentleman had already taken up the idea and developed it along lines very similar to those that I suggested in my second letter. This new hero with a familiar name will be given a try-out in Showcase #34, which should appear in early August.”

Schwartz’s fledgling letters columns, naturally without the DC editor’s knowledge. (“You got me!” Jerry said, with a grin I could hear over the phone, when I asked him about the authenticity of the “poll.”) He says he did show copies of JLA to a few local kids for comment, but there was no true poll. Nor did he solicit their opinions as to which JSAers might be worth reviving after twenty years in limbo.

So it was actually Jerry Bails, not his “little friends in the neighborhood,” who no later than August 1960 came up with the concept of a “real small” Atom, patterned after the old Quality Comics hero Doll Man (the official spelling).

By the time Jerry ran across his carbon copy of this seminal letter in September 1998—38 years after it was written—I had spent months trying to track down the original. Of course, since Gardner had saved many letters sent to him, they’d probably be in the aforementioned University of Oregon collection of his papers, right?

GARDNER FOX Wrong.

For, in spring of 1998, when the ever-helpful Michael Gilbert perused the 1960 missives in the Fox archives, he found letters from Jerry Bails dated June 24 and September 11—but none dated in August.

What happened to Gardner’s copy of that letter?

The answer lies in this reply Fox sent to Jerry on September 1, 1960, which read in part:

Jerry added further information in a coded message which, when deciphered, read: “WITH THE ABILITY TO COMPRESS HIS BODY INTO SIX INCHES OF NUCLEAR FORCE, THIS MIGHTY MITE WILL TRULY BE THE ATOM.” This was the climax, or perhaps the anti-climax, of a campaign begun half a year earlier. That’s when Jerry had sent his favorite comics writer a letter that began with the following two paragraphs:

Interesting that Jerry had neglected to capitalize the name of his undersized hero suggested for revival!

Jerry readily admits today that he made up his “poll” out of whole cloth, with an eye to jazzing up Julie From 1941 to 1953, The Doll Man was one of Quality Comics Group’s most popular heroes. This 1943 panel was drawn by John Cassone. Doll Man ©1999 DC Comics.

95

It was probably Jerry’s bogus “poll” which caused Gardner to show the letter to Julie. It’s quite possible Fox didn’t consciously notice the suggestion of a “real small” Atom, in the vein of “the Dollman,” even though Jerry suggested that that idea be passed along to “the editors.”

For one thing, Gardner had entered the field in 1937 not as a comics fan, but as an adult with a law degree. And,

96

Splitting The Atom

though Doll Man had been one of the most popular heroes at the rival Quality group, it would surprise few who knew him if it turned out Gardner Fox had never even heard of the character.

Gardner’s next communication to Jerry is undated, but is typed on a small, square paper with “JULIUS SCHWARTZ” printed at the top (obviously a memo sheet, possibly even mailed while at DC’s offices), clearly an early follow-up to his Sept. 1 letter [see preceding page].

JERRY BAILS And, indeed, most of Jerry’s 8/29/60 letter to Gardner was printed in JLA #3 (coverdate March 1961), which contained the very story, “The Slave Ship of Space,” which the scripter had been writing on Sept. 1 [see left]: Julie printed the first four sentences of Jerry’s letter (adding exclamation points to the last one)— dropped the next four (which said the kids also read Jerry’s All-Stars and made the passFan letter by Jerry Bails and answer by editor ing sugJulius Schwartz as printed in Justice League of gestion of America #3. ©1999 DC Comics. a “real small,” “Dollman”- like Atom, a notion Jerry hoped Gardner would pass along to “the editors”)—then skipped to the alleged poll report.

To edit it thus, the entire letter had to be read, or at least skimmed, by Julie. Which is not to claim that Julie, either, consciously noticed the Atom reference. He had lots of other things on his mind.

In a Sept. 11, 1960, note to Gardner at his home in Yonkers, New York, Jerry thanked him for his part in getting him the art to The Brave and the Bold #30, and asked if Gardner could send him a JLA script sometime—but did not mention The Atom. On November 14 Jerry wrote Gardner again (to thank him for sending a JLA script), but again made no reference to a possible Atom revival.

In fact, ’twould seem that the second time Jerry mentioned The Atom in writing was in his second letter to his newest correspondent—myself—a missive I seem to have received on December 3, 1960. In 1964 I paraphrased and quoted from it in “The Alter Ego Story”: “Besides liking my idea of a ‘newslegion,’ [Jerry] had one of his own, which he had suggested to Gardner Fox already in a letter the previous summer: ‘I also think that D.C. should

revive the Atom as a character like the old Dollman. Do you remember him?’”

ROY THOMAS I certainly did, though Jerry had mentioned no more specifics.

Being small, as a kid I’d been a fan both of the 1940s Atom and of Doll Man, who had lasted from 1939 to 1953. But it had never occurred to me to give a hero the name of one and the attributes of the other, as it had to Jerry.

As I wrote in 1964 concerning a time then four years past: “The next day (December 4), I fired off a letter myself to editor Schwartz” concerning the notion of a pint-size Atom. I had also “dashed off a twopage synopsis of an Atom origin…. In my version, Al Pratt was a college student… who was given his power to shrink by MOM (Molecular Order Modifier), the invention of a physics professor with whom he was friendly, and who was killed in the first story by spies. I also included an idea which I wish to this day the Atom would incorporate on at least a sporadic basis—a non-talking parrot named Copernicus (Copey for short) who would serve as short-range transportation for the Mighty Mite. I had even created a host of subsidiary characters: a roommate, a girl friend, and a grandmother, who would now seem like a wealthy version of Spider-Man’s Aunt May.” Undoubtedly I also mailed a copy of my origin to— JERRY BAILS In the meantime, on December 8, Jerry had decided to approach Julie directly at last, with a detailed outline:

Splitting The Atom This letter contains the first known specific suggestion that The Atom be “six inches tall,” the height he would ultimately become. (Doll Man had generally been drawn between 8”-12” tall, not that it made that much difference.)

Jerry also sent me a copy of his full-blown concept, adding: “What I really wish is that I had the time to write an occasional Atom script for Showcase. Maybe you and I could collaborate in some way and submit a script and cover panel to Julie. How about it?”

friends—the Freedom Fighters.”

Jerry added an intriguing thought: Why not make it necessary for The Atom to use a wand similar to the defunct Starman’s Gravity Rod in order to shrink and regain his size? (“This suggestion,” I agreed in my ’64 piece, “was pregnant with possibilities, and it still seems to me that it makes more sense than having the Atom constantly get himself into scrapes where he can’t reach his own belt-buckle.”)

Jerry suggested, however, that my MOM (Molecular Order Modifier) be “changed to something like HIP (Heavy Isotope Producer), as ‘a machine that would modify molecular order would possibly upset the delicate chemical balance necessary for life.’” I willingly concurred; he was the scientist, not I.

As I wrote in 1964, “I immediately plunged myself into the project.” Thus, ironically, before comics fanzines in general and Alter Ego in particular were even a gleam in Jerry’s mind, he and I were thinking about trying to write a professional comic book!

Over the next week or so, Jerry sent me two more letters outlining his expanded ideas for The Atom. The “Newslegion” he’d mentioned to Julie referred to my pet notion of a kid group inspired by The Newsboy Legion in 1940s Star Spangled Comics.

Jerry had reworked it and incorporated it into his Atom proposal. I quoted from his letters in my 1964 piece: “From the four corners of the world come four young men to matriculate at a large midwestern university. Each one is a refugee from a war-torn country—one from a satellite country in eastern Europe, where he fought against modern tanks in an effort to win freedom for his people—one from a new African nation where a self-imposed ruler used fighter planes to suppress the people—one from a small nation in S.E. Asia where invading hordes used machine guns to put down resistance—and one from a Latin American dictatorship where uniformed police beat back the revolting students with clubs.

97

ROY THOMAS My 1964 mini-history continues: “At this point we also began to collaborate on plans for a costume for our Miniature Manhunter. Various drawings were sent back and forth through the mails for the next several weeks, ranging from near-copies of the old Atom (and even Dr. Fate) costumes to some almost as unwieldy as if the Mighty Mite had been carrying his shrinking machine about on his back. Our major point of disagreement was over the matter of the Atom’s headgear. I preferred a mask-less helmet similar to Starman’s, while Jerry—who desired to see the Tiny Titan occasionally battle criminals at his full six-foot height—felt a face-mask to be a necessary part of the costume.”

Whether Freedom Fighters or Tim (as here), young people were featured in early Atom concepts, as per this page from Showcase #35. [Original artwork courtesy of Mike W. Barr; Atom ©1999 DC Comics.]

“As part of World Refugee Year, the United States has admitted these four young men, who come together on the same campus, where they dedicate themselves to the cause of freedom and to the cause of the 15 million people who still live in refugee camps.

“It happens that, on this same campus, a professor of physics, Al Pratt, has just won a prize for his development of a peaceful use for isotopes. Al dedicates his knowledge to peace and actively opposes the use of atomic weapons. However, he faces a moral dilemma. His discovery has untold potential as a weapon. With it he can create an army of miniature super-commandos.

“When he hears that a gang of white-hooded men have terrorized the foreign students on campus, he decides to take action as the Atom.

In several chapters, he saves first one student, then another. In the end all four students join the Atom in a commando-styled raid on the headquarters of the gang. They discover that the gang has been responsible for spreading the poison of prejudice. The Atom dubs his four young

Also during December I sent Gardner a drawing I’d done of our proposed Atom, hoping he would show it to Julie. I costumed my version very much like the 1948-51 Atom, and had him

riding Copernicus.

Evidently Gardner replied quickly, because on Jan. 1, 1961, I sent him “thanks for the compliment on my drawing of the Atom and his parrot Copernicus. However, I’m not Joe Kubert, I know.” To say the least.

(Interestingly, Gardner would introduce a mynah bird named Major Mynah in The Atom #37 [June-July 1968], the last issue drawn by Gil Kane. The inspiration for the Major was doubtless a story Gardner would write in Strange Adventures #140 [May 1962]—the offbeat “The Strange Adventure That Really Happened!” in which he and Julie Schwartz were the heroes, with Gardner’s pet mynah Yakky inadvertently giving him a clue to save the world from alien invaders. However, Gardner’s daughter, Lynda Fox Cohen, doesn’t remember her family ever owning a mynah. In any event, a mynah isn’t a parrot.)

And then, a pair of letters sent from the New York area early in the New Year dashed some of our hopes, even while raising others.

98

Splitting The Atom GARDNER FOX

On January 10, 1961, the same day I mailed the above missive to Gardner, Jerry received a chatty letter from the veteran scripter dated January 1. It read:

and radiate energy. By radiating and absorbing cosmic energy, the Atom can compress his body or resume normal size at will, subject to two limitations: (1) an hour maximum in the miniature state, and (2) an hour minimum in the normal state. In other words, the Atom would have to wait an hour between compressions, but he could return to the normal state at any time.”

Jerry also wrote that we had given “our” Atom (now christened “Dr. Evan Sander”) “a group of boy companions”; he summarized an account of an initial story very much like the one he had submitted earlier.

Most likely he had sent Gardner his detailed Atom proposal at the same time he mailed copies to Julie and me, since his letter of 1/11/61 refers as if for a second time to his notion of the hero shrinking into a “subatomic world” if his way back to normal size was blocked by lead: “The idea of subatomic worlds was designed to give the Atom an occasional change of scenery. Our thought was that the Mighty Mite could have different and quite unusual powers on each occasion. On one subatomic world he might be lighter than a balloon; on another he might be a giant with all the troubles of Gulliver. Well, that’s our idea. I hope it offers you some suggestions.”

If Jerry ever received a precise response from Gardner to this particular letter, he has no a copy of it. But he hadn’t really asked for an answer.

CUT TO: In February of 1961 Jerry used a coincidentally-arising trip east as an excuse to visit the National/DC offices in Manhattan and to meet Julie and Gardner. Out of his discussions with Julie in particular came the inspiration to expand a projected “JLA Newsletter” he’d been thinking of doing into Alter-Ego, the first super-hero comics fanzine.

(Julie had co-founded one of the very first science-fiction fanzines back in the early 1930s.)

On returning to Detroit, Jerry mailed me what I phrased in ’64 as “inside information on the forthcoming Atom, who had been temporarily frozen by D.C., which

JERRY BAILS Jerry at once wrote me about Gardner’s letter and suggested we abandon our plans for The Atom and direct our energies elsewhere.

Like we had a choice?

JULIUS SCHWARTZ On January 6, 1960, the DC editor finally sent Jerry a direct response to his December 8 missive; probably Jerry received it very soon after he got Gardner’s. It’s reprinted at right.

JERRY BAILS With The Atom’s “revival” now out of our hands, Jerry decided his best bet was to try to influence the new hero’s scripter. So he wrote Gardner with complete sincerity on January 11 that he and I were “both happy to hear that the Atom will be revived and that you will handle the stories.”

He briefly outlined a combination of our ideas, which included Copernicus and a “neutron rod… to help him absorb

Splitting The Atom

99

The Silver Age Atom exploded on the scene in two stories in Showcase #34 (Sept.-Oct. 1961), with art by Gil Kane & Murphy Anderson, and scripts by Gardner Fox. Since the origin’s art was incinerated, art from the issue’s second tale is the earliest Atom art still in existence. But at least Fox’s origin script still survives. [Origin script (hand-edited and dedicated by Julius Schwartz) courtesy of Paul Gambaccini; Atom ©1999 DC Comics.; Showcase #34 art courtesy of Roger Hill.]

feared, he said, ‘flooding the market with costumed heroes’…. Jerry had seen Gil Kane’s preliminary sketch of the Atom, which pictured him astride a dog, but he didn’t know if the canine mount was to be a permanent fixture in the strip or not and said that the topic never came up in conversation.”

The Atom’s debut, of course, was not long delayed, despite DC’s concerns. Sales of Showcase #34 were evidently very good, perhaps helped by the inclusion of a drawing of the original Justice Society on a text page; and the Mighty Mite was given his own title almost at once, even if it was not destined to have the long run of The Flash and Green Lantern.

The new Atom had proven more popular to date than the revived Hawkman.

In my fanzine days the only public statement I ever made with regards to how I felt about our experience with the Atom “revival” was shoehorned into “The A/E Story,” though it didn’t see print until 1997:

After entering the comics industry in mid-1965, I never again discussed the Atom with Gardner or Julie. It was a dead letter. Truth to tell, since I worked for DC for only two weeks before quitting to join Stan Lee at Marvel for 15 years, I saw Gardner and/or Julie only rarely, though such contacts as we had were always exceedingly cordial.

Still, there was Dave Kaler’s 1965 comics convention, held in Manhattan’s decrepit Broadway Central Hotel over the weekend of July 31-August 1. Only a few weeks into my job as a writer and assistant editor at Marvel, I took part in a panel composed of fans and pros, called “Comics and Fandom: Where Do We Go from Here?” Sitting in the front row of the audience was Gil Kane, now Green Lantern and Atom artist. At this point he and I had met only in passing, if at all.

ROY THOMAS As I wrote in ’64: “It goes without saying that The Atom is today one of Jerry’s and my favorite comics—and not just for sentimental reasons, either— but I think we both heave an occasional sigh for what might have been.”

“Jerry (with perhaps a little extra help from me) had influenced National to ‘revive’ the Atom—a feat for which he was never given any recognition.”

Page 2 of Fox’s script for The Atom’s origin, as edited by Schwartz— plus a sketch by Fox of the dwarf-star lens, as a guide for the artist.

[Courtesy of Paul Gambaccini; ©1999 DC Comics]

When panelist James Warren, publisher of Creepy, sarcastically disparaged the very possibility of fandom contributing to the comics industry, I cited, as an example of a fannish contribution, that Jerry Bails and I had proposed a miniature Atom to DC, and had thus initiated a new and successful comic book hero.

100

Splitting The Atom

Right: Besides Hopalong Cassidy, Gil Kane had recently seen both Rex the Wonder Dog cancelled in 1959—and All-Star Western (for which he did a great Johnny Thunder) would end its run with issue #119 (June-July 1961).

[Original Rex art courtesy of Roger Hill; ©1999 DC Comics.]

To my surprise, Gil Kane began to vigorously shake his head in the front row. He mouthed or muttered words to the effect that “That’s not how it was.” Gil was soon invited to join the panel, but the subject of the Atom was not explored further. So I assumed Gil was simply unaware of how Julie and Gardner had been handed the concept for the new Atom, whose adventures he had been drawing for four years.

From 1969 onward, Gil and I collaborated on Captain Marvel, Warlock, “Iron Fist,” “Ka-Zar,” Amazing Spider-Man, Conan the Barbarian, plus a mountain of Marvel covers when I was editor-in-chief.

At some state during this time I learned the broad outlines of the reason behind his vigorous head-shaking that hot summer day in 1965….

GIL KANE But it was not until a phone conversation of April 7, 1998, that Gil and I really discussed the matter at length.

On that occasion he said that by late 1960 he had lost several DC assignments through attrition, and wanted to replace them. Hopalong Cassidy had been cancelled with #135 (May-June 1959), The Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog with #46 (Nov.-Dec. 1959). Besides Green Lantern (which after all was only a bimonthly in 1960), he did some work for Julie’s science-fiction titles and the just-being-cancelled AllStar Western; but that combination was not enough to keep him busy fulltime.

Alas for comics history, Gil understandably has no memory of even an approximate date when, at some time in 1960 (obviously prior to Gardner’s letter of January 1, 1961), the concept of an Atom along the lines of Doll Man—an old favorite of his—occurred to him.

Gil assumed that DC had purchased all the Quality heroes back in the mid-’50s, including Blackhawk, Plastic Man—and Doll Man. We have all since learned that DC actually bought only a handful of Quality titles then (with Blackhawk the only hero) when “Busy” Arnold’s longrunning company folded; DC didn’t purchase Plastic Man and other Quality heroes till the late 1960s. This matters little, however, since the point is that Gil thought DC owned Doll Man. Back to Gil: He recalls that, at this point, he executed on huge illustration boards what he termed “a series of drawings”—first, a depiction of his Atom on the back of a German shepherd—basically Rex the Wonder Dog, still fresh in his mind. (He was unaware that, circa 1950, Doll Man had likewise worked with a dog partner, a Great Dane named Elmo, before swapping him for the more comely Doll Girl.) He also recalls drawing a pistol firing at The Atom—with the bullet(s) bouncing off him. The hero’s costume, he says, was exactly like the one he later wore in Showcase #34, Gil Kane’s 1960 concepexcept it had no belt. Whether these two drawings were tual Atom drawings are both on the same board or on different ones he does not long since scattered to recall. (And see Mike W. Barr’s accompanying article for the four winds, but he yet a third Atom illo almost certainly done at the same graciously drew this time, which Gil seems to have totally forgotten.) approximation of the best-remembered of them especially for Alter Ego. Thanks, old buddy!

Art ©1999 Gil Kane; The Atom ©1999 DC Comics.]

Gil, who then lived in Jericho, Long Island, recounts that he drove over to the Hicksville, L.I. home of Tom Nicolosi, a DC production man. Nicolosi, who had a box of St. Martin’s dyes at his home, agreed to color the drawings, refusing any payment.

Splitting The Atom For a while after Doll Man #31 (Dec. 1950), a Doll Man’s best friend was Elmo—and yes, that Mighty Mite rode around on a dog’s back sometimes, too! [Doll Man ©1999 DC Comics.]

101

Having reviewed the letters exchanged between Jerry, Gardner, Julie, and myself in 1960-61, and even having consulted Gil, I still had not yet spoken directly with Julie about the matter in lo, these many years. So I phoned him on May 29, 1998. He was most generous with his time and memories, even while reminding me that it was a very long time ago.

Julie said that, after launching Flash, Green Lantern, the Justice League, and Hawkman, the next character he thought about reviving was The Atom. Only, he says, he didn’t want to do the “Al Pratt” version, because he was just some little guy who was fairly strong.

Around this time—and at this point Julie definitely does not recall asking him to do so—he says Gil Kane brought him a drawing of “a man on a big cat” called The Atom, who was to be a miniature superhero. Julie does not recall Gil at any time mentioning Doll Man, nor does he remember ever having heard, back then, of the Quality hero.

Since Julie has often related how he bought his first and only comic books en route to his job interview at DC in 1944, a total lack of knowledge of Doll Man’s existence is even easier to believe in his case than in Gardner’s!

As soon as possible, Gil showed the illustrations to Julie. Gil recalls Julie’s immediate response as favorable, though he insisted on adding a belt to the costume for size control. Gil never liked the belt, because “it broke up the costume lines.”

Gil insists he was never aware, then or later, that Jerry Bails and/or I had written Gardner or Julie about a miniaturized Atom. Nor has he any doubts himself about the origins of the character. As he stated unequivocally in the August 21, 1998, issue of The Comics Buyer’s Guide: “I created the Atom. No debate necessary. I needed some additional work when I was doing Green Lantern and I knew that DC owned The Atom. I also knew that they now owned the Doll Man title, so I created a new character based on the two. I made up a series of drawings and submitted them to Julie, who submitted them for the final approval from [publisher] Jack Liebowitz. I got the OK for it, and that was it. We were off and running.”

JULIUS SCHWARTZ Gil’s oversize “series of drawings” of Atom scenes are doubtless the same “art samples” and “sketches” about which Fox and Julie wrote Jerry in December 1960 and January 1961; Jerry saw at least one of them for himself in Manhattan that February.

But, as quoted earlier, Julie indicated in his letter that he himself “had already had some similar ideas on the same subject,” and that he had “even [gone] so far as to have artist GIL (GL) KANE do some sketches.”

Let’s get one thing straight up front: To quote the above is not, certainly, to accuse Julie Schwartz of mendacity!

For one thing, people’s memories of events often differ, even soon after the fact; and, after all, Julie was merely dashing off a hasty note to a fan. Also, as a DC editor, Julie may have known without consciously thinking about it that he should not state in black-and-white that anyone besides a DC editor had come up with the concept for a new Atom—not even a freelance artist like Gil. In 1960 the dire spectre of the late-’40s Siegel-Shuster lawsuit over Superman/Superboy still cast a very long shadow.

Why do you think credits disappeared from most DC and other comics circa 1947-48?

In the bizarre “work-for-hire” world of comic books, of course, the legal creator of the Silver Age Atom is DC Comics itself. Perhaps we should have named DC Comics a fifth claimant for the title?!

When I told Julie that both Gil and Jerry had told me Gil’s drawing had shown The Atom riding a dog, not a cat, I could hear him shrugging at the other end of the line: “Well, it was some kind of an animal.”

Science-fiction fan Julie went on to state that, shortly before Gil brought in his drawing, he had been reading about white dwarf stars. So it occurred to him that a fragment of a dwarf star might be used to reduce the hero in size.

Julie doesn’t specifically recall insisting that Gil add a belt to The Atom’s costume, but he says he never liked the notion of people having to change clothes to don their costumes, à la Clark Kent in that infamous phone booth. He wanted “his” Atom to be wearing his costume all the time, but for it to be invisible until he shrank. (Julie stated that he also originated the idea of Wonder Woman twirling her The Kane-Anderson cover for Showcase #35: “The Atom’s lasso around small size naturally made me think about what situations her to switch such a tiny character would be most effective in.” outfits, at the (Gardner Fox, quoted from a letter written in 1979.) [©1999 time when

by DC Comics.] she reapplied for JLA membership after her un-super-powered “mod” period.)

While we were on the subject, Julie said he and Gardner Fox plotted out all the early Atom stories together.

102

Splitting The Atom JERRY BAILS

Neither Jerry nor I ever nurtured any ill will toward anyone at DC over what happened with regard to The Atom. After all, Jerry had originally suggested the concept in passing in a letter to Gardner Fox—treating it as a notion of some neighborhood children, not his own—while my own intention had merely been to help Jerry convince DC to publish a Doll Man-like Atom.

As Jerry wrote recently: “I have no reason not to believe that Gil and Julie arrived at their concept of the Atom before our ideas reached them…. As I recall, Julie responded to me [i.e., to Jerry’s letter of 12/8/60] rather quickly, indicating that he had already been at work on a similar idea. It’s not like it wasn’t an obvious next step. Now that I think about it, he wouldn’t have been doing his job had he not been toying with such ideas. We were only part-time dreamers. He was getting paid to think full-time about the next hot idea. It’s interesting to demonstrate that historical events are not strictly linear, but emerge from interweaving threads.”

Jerry has also stated, “Clearly I wrote the 8/29/60 letter with the thought they [DC] might use it. If it sparked Julie’s thinking, he could certainly not be faulted for forgetting it.”

True enough, even if there was a period of weeks between Jerry’s Dec. 8, 1960, letter and Gardner’s and Julie’s replies (both dated in early January), making chronologies impossible to pin down. And of course Jerry had suggested a “real small,” “Dollman”-like Atom to Gardner on August 29, 1960—in a letter soon given to Julie—even though neither DC pro ever confirmed that he had consciously noticed the suggestion for a pint-size Atom.

GARDNER FOX In the last decade of his productive life, Gardner stated, in a letter to comics fan James Flanagan dated March 26, 1979, and printed in Robin Snyder’s History of Comics, Vol. 2 #2 (Feb. 1991): “I rather imagine the [Showcase] Atom sold very well, which would be its reason for being published ahead of Hawkman in its own book.

I enjoyed writing Atom, as I liked writing all the stories I did. The Atom’s small size naturally made me think about what situations such a tiny character would be most effective in, certainly.”

A paragraph later, after a few comments about his surprise at the extent of early comics fandom, he wrote— most likely in response to a query about the Atomic Matter: “I doubt that any feedback from Bails or Thomas had very much of an influence, though we always kept their ideas in the back of our minds.”

That’s all we ever asked.

SUMMING UP No, the full truth about the creation of the Silver Age Atom will surely never be known—not to Julie Schwartz, not to Gil Kane, not to Jerry Bails, and certainly not to me.

Gardner Fox, one of comics’ major creators and true nice guys, passed away in December 1986. As the original writer, he must certainly be counted as a co-creator of the 1960s Mighty Mite.

As editor of The Atom, Julie Schwartz, too, must be considered a co-creator; he even named the hero’s civilian identity (after his sciencefiction writer friend Ray Palmer) and came up with the dwarf star origin, at the very least.

And both Gil and Julie are clear nowadays that Gil Kane drew his first Atom illos totally on his own volition. Even if he hadn’t done that, Gil’s work on the seminal issues would earn him, at the very least, cocreator status on the minuscule hero. He may well have been his major creator.

In closing: After reviewing all the documents—and there are enough of them that we’ve probably told many readers more than they care to know about the origins of the Silver Age Atom—I submit that there are many scenarios possible, only a few of which are: 1.) Jerry’s letter of August 29, 1960, which Gardner showed to Julie a few days later, led Julie to toy (consciously or unconsciously) with the notion of a “real small” Atom—and some time later, while talking with Gil, Julie may have mentioned the concept to him in passing. Since Gil was familiar with Doll Man, the idea resonated subconsciously in him, too, and he soon executed his illustration, bringing it in to Julie.

Or— 2.) Jerry’s initial letter caused Julie to begin to think about a miniature Atom, even if he soon forgot the source of the idea—and Julie was mulling over the notion when, quite independently, with no prior consultation between them, Gil brought in his unsolicited but all-important illustrations.

Or— 3.) Jerry and Gil (and possibly even Julie) each came up independently with the idea of a miniature super-hero called The Atom, with Julie having never noticed the part of Jerry’s 8/29/60 letter to Gardner that suggested it. Even in this scenario, it’s unlikely that either Gil or Julie conceived the “shrunken Atom” idea before Jerry did; but of course that’s immaterial if Gil never heard about it.

Or— The reader, naturally, can easily compose myriad other possible scenarios in his own mind.

We’ll probably never know exactly what actually happened.

In one sense it hardly matters, even in terms of comic books, and even though The Atom was one of the early stars of what is now revered as the Silver Age of Comics.

For, in any sane scenario, Gil Kane and Julius Schwartz and Gardner Fox (at the very least) are co-creators of The Atom, albeit perhaps in varying degrees; while Jerry Bails, however great or minuscule his role, was never seeking self-aggrandizement or profit, but simply wanted to suggest a potentially good idea to DC Comics.

Or, as I said in that Writer/ Editorial in A/E V2#2: “Rashomon, Mon Amour.”

Atom meets Atom—in the classic Justice League of America #21, Aug. 1963. [©1999 DC Comics.]

103 An Alter Ego Collection Vol.

Extra!

The Justice League--Cheaper By The Dozen Twelve Great Silver Age Artists’ Takes On One of the Great Silver Age Concepts

T

he 1959-60 debut of the Justice League of America in The Brave and the Bold #28 and its own title helped inspire Dr. Jerry G. Bails to edit and publish Alter-Ego (Vol. 1) #1 in March 1961. Since All-Star Comics with its Justice Society of America was/is his (and “co-editor” Roy Thomas’) all-time favorite comic book, A/E’s first incarnation became a celebration of the JSA concept in its

Mike Sekowsky “Big Mike,” of course, was the very first penciler of the “Justice League” feature, originally with inking by Bernard Sachs, who had also worked on the late Golden Age “Justice Society.” Sekowsky JLA art that hasn’t been seen before is particularly scarce, since his entire run of the comic is on view in the nine volumes published to date of DC’s Justice League of America Archives—and he rarely did fan sketches and the like.

But here, so you can appreciate the Sekowsky-Sachs team in black-&-white instead of color for a change, is a page from issue #17 (Feb. 1963)—reproduced from full-size copies of the original art, courtesy of Edwin & Terry Murray. Note the directions to the colorist in the left and bottom margins. [©2006 DC Comics.]

revised JLA form, as edited by 1940s All-Star editor Julius Schwartz and written by JSA co-creator Gardner Fox. Thus, in honor of that team, whose Silver Age Atom was dissected in the preceding 1999 piece, we present this new 12-page section of rare artwork by an even dozen JLA artists—including the seven who contributed to this volume’s “JLA Jam” cover. So let’s get started with…

104

The Justice League

Dick Dillin Dick Dillin took over penciling of Justice League of America with #64 (Aug. 1968), and drew the feature until his death in 1980, spelled on only a very few issues. His pencils for two unused pages done for JLA #184 (Nov. 1980) were seen for the first time in Alter Ego #30. Specimens of Dillin’s uninked work are nearly as rare as Sekowsky’s, so here’s a wonderful page from JLA #150 (Jan. 1978), repro’d from photocopies courtesy of Lynn Walker, featuring more than a dozen Justice Leaguers! [© 2006 DC Comics.]

Cheaper By The Dozen

105

Murphy Anderson Murphy entered the ranks of professional comic book artists in 1944, and while currently retired, still does a special illustration now and then when the mood strikes him. He inked (and sometimes penciled) numerous early Justice League of America covers.

(Left:) After Joe Kubert had drawn the six Brave and Bold tryout issues, Murphy stepped up to the plate as the regular artist of the Silver Age Hawkman series. This page from issue #12 (Feb.-March 1966) is reprinted from a black-&-white Australian reprint, with thanks to Shane Foley. [© 2006 DC Comics.]

(Below:) Murphy was also famous as half of the “Swanderson” team when he inked the “Superman” pencils of Curt Swan, as per this page from Superman #248 (Feb. 1972). Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Curt Swan biographer Eddy Zeno. [© 2006 DC Comics.]

106

The Justice League

Carmine Infantino Carmine Infantino has done it all since he entered the comics field in the 1940s— including a long stint as DC Comics’ editorial director (and even publisher) in the 1960s & ’70s. One of his most important assignments ever, though, was the penciling of the Silver Age “Flash,” beginning with 1956’s Showcase #4, whose 50th anniversary is celebrated in June of 2006. This page (inked by Joe Giella) is from another classic issue, The Flash #123 (Sept. 1961), “Flash of Two Worlds”—though it shows only the second Flash on the trail of The Shade. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Mike W. Barr. [©2006 DC Comics.]

Cheaper By The Dozen

Gil Kane Gil Kane was most noted for his co-creation of the Silver Age Green Lantern and Atom, though he also drew tons of other great work for DC, Marvel, and others. You saw some of his “Atom” art in the preceding article. He rarely penciled the Justice League as a group, though he did draw a cover or two, but he often worked on stories of individual members. In the 1980s he also illustrated a memorable run of “Superman” stories, mostly (but not solely) with writer Marv Wolfman. Here’s a page he scripted as well as penciled and inked for Superman Special #1 (Jan. 1983), repro’d from photocopies of the original art, courtesy of Eddy Zeno. [©2006 DC Comics.]

107

108

The Justice League

Nick Cardy As “Nicholas Viscardi,” Nick—the first of our seven “JLA Jam” artists—drew some fine Golden Age stories for Quality Comics, as well as “Lady Luck” for Will Eisner’s legendary Spirit Section. In the 1960s and beyond, he became a favorite cover artist at DC—and also the longtime artist of JLAer Aquaman. Above is his autographed cover for Aquaman #44 (March-April 1969), repro’d from the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey—while at right is a pencil sketch of later JLAer Plastic Man, courtesy of TwoMorrows production assistant (and Modern Masters editor) Eric Nolen-Weathington. [Aquaman cover ©2006 DC Comics; Plas art ©2006 Nick Cardy; Plastic Man TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Incidentally, a new and extended interview with Nick Cardy will be appearing in Alter Ego in late 2006 or early 2007.

Cheaper By The Dozen

109

Dick Giordano Artist Dick Giordano, who entered the comics field in the 1950s, became chief editor at Charlton in 1965 and, a couple of years later, an editor at DC—to which he later returned as artist, editor, then managing editor. Luckily for us, he found time to keep drawing heroes along the way—various JLAers among them. The sketch at left was penciled in 2001 for collector Arnie Grieves (who provided our “JLA Jam” cover), then inked

by Alter Ego associate editor Jim Amash in 2004. [Art ©2006 Dick Giordano & Jim Amash; Green Lantern TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Below is yet another “JLA Jam” drawing, courtesy of Arnie— Green Arrow by Dick Giordano, and Black Canary by Nick Cardy (pencils) and Dick G. (inks). Clever of us to put it on the page facing Nick’s other entry, huh? [Art ©2006 by Dick Giordano, and Nick Cardy & Dick Giordano, respectively; GA & BC TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

110

The Justice League

Ramona Fradon Ramona Fradon is famed for her late Golden Age/early Silver Age work on “Aquaman,” mostly in the pages of Adventure Comics, then in the first issue of Showcase given over to the Sea King’s exploits. She left comics for some years around the end of 1960 to raise a family, and Nick Cardy inherited the art chores on Showcase #31 (March-April 1961), while that issue’s cover was drawn by Howard Purcell. A few years back, though, collector Dan Makara persuaded Ramona to draw her own version of that cover; Dan then colored it. And here it is—with Purcell’s version repro’d smaller at left.

To see both Purcell’s cover bigger, and a gorgeous passel of Fradon “Aquaman” art, seek out a copy of DC’s Aquaman Archives, Vol. 1! [Cover ©2006 DC Comics; re-creation art ©2006 Ramona Fradon; Aquaman TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Cheaper By The Dozen

Joe Giella While primarily an inker since he became a pro comics artist in the late 1940s, Joe is fondly recalled as a major inker of both Carmine Infantino’s Flash and Gil Kane’s Green Lantern. Here are two drawings he did as homages to his colleagues. The Flash art is courtesy of Arnie Grieves, the GL courtesy of Michael Dunne. Today, Joe is the artist of the daily-and-Sunday Mary Worth newspaper comic strip. [Art ©2006 Joe Giella; Flash & Green Lantern TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

111

112

George Tuska George, noted for his work on Lev Gleason’s Crime Does Not Pay in the 1950s, and Marvel’s Iron Man, et al., starting in the late 1960s, also drew an issue or three of the original Justice League of America series. In addition, he penciled DC’s The World’s Greatest Super-Heroes newspaper strip in the early 1980s—including this never-beforeprinted version of a very early Sunday page! It features Superman, Flash, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman—a JLA quorum, for sure—and apparently wasn’t utilized because a decision was made to take the storyline in a slightly different direction. It’s seen here from the collection of R. Dewey Cassell, author of the TwoMorrows volume The Art of George Tuska. [©2006 DC Comics.]

The Justice League

Cheaper By The Dozen

Joe Kubert Joe began drawing comics in the early 1940s, while still in high school—and is still drawing comics and graphic novels (when he can spare the time from his various other endeavors, such as the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, New Jersey). Some years back, he did numerous Justice League of America covers, but for our lights, we’re especially wild about the “Superman vs. Hawkman” chapter he drew for JLA #200 (March 1982). Here, repro’d from the comic itself, are that segment’s two powerful splash pages. With thanks to Daniel Best & Gregg Whitmore for the scans. [©2006 DC Comics.]

113

114

The Justice League

George Pérez George is that super-rare bird, an artist who actually likes drawing hordes of super-heroes, even in the same scene. 198586’s Crisis on Infinite Earths was, of course, the culmination of that effort. He also drew quite a few issues of Justice League of America itself in the 1970s, including this wraparound cover for issue #200 (March 1982). Thanks again to Daniel Best & Gregg Whitmore for the scan. [©2006 DC Comics.]

Splicing The Atom

115 15

Splicing The Atom

by Mike W. Barr [NOTE: This short piece serves as a footnote to the foregoing article—but what a footnote! —R.T.]

I

’m told that a 19th century scientist named John Dalton was the first man to gather evidence for the existence of the atom, although many had theorized of it for centuries.

In a way, I know how he feels.

In October 1977 I moved from my native Ohio, leaving my job as night maintenance man at a local Sears & Roebuck (which taught me the real value of a B.A. in English) to take a position as the staff proofreader at DC Comics in New York.

The hours were long; the pay was, to be diplomatic, meager ($125 a week—which, after taxes, shrank to about $99 a week— to live in New York? I was making less than that in Ohio, but the money went farther there); and the benefits weren’t much. But, like many before me, I was glad to have made at least a foothold in becoming a fulltime comics pro.

I realized much later that I had come into comics at a crucial time. In 1977 the business of comics—printing, distribution, payment, rights—had remained essentially unchanged since the dawn of comics, over forty years before. It could not have been predicted with any reliability that within a few years the entire business—with the advent of the direct market, some tentative steps toward creators’ rights, the payment of royalties, among other, long-overdue innovations—was about to change forever.

(More to the point, several old pros were convinced the business was dying. And from the quality of the work they were turning out, you couldn’t say they were wrong.)

As remarked, my lowly job didn’t have much in the way of perks. I had to proofread the original art for each and every DC comic (which, in the days of This double-page pinup by Gil Kane from The Atom #26 (Aug.-Sept. 1966), Mike tells us, is quite similar to the late100-page all-new comics, 99 of which 1960 concept drawing which he returned to the artist while on staff at DC. (©1999 DC Comics.) often seemed cranked out by the aforementioned “old pros,” was not ipso facto a But the job did have its advantages, though none of them were of a bed of roses, though it was better than waxing floors at Sears), as well as financial nature. I really wanted to be a fulltime writer, so meeting make copies for the editors, fetch lunches, and run errands for the higher scripters I’d always admired, like Robert Kanigher, was a genuine thrill. echelon of the editorial staff. (Remind me to tell you the time DC art I was also in charge of returning original artwork, which I enjoyed, as it director Vinnie Colletta tried to get me fired because I refused to do his put me in direct contact with a number of pencilers and inkers who supjob by writing critiques on a seeming mountain of unsolicited art samplied a different perspective on comics from that of the writer. And if a ples and signing his name to them. [Hey, I guess I just did.])

116

Splicing The Atom red-and-blue costume, standing, hands raised above his head in a heroic Gil Kane pose, the soon-to-be-familiar “atomic rings” effect around him. I don’t believe a bullet was bouncing off him, but I know he wasn’t riding a dog, a cat, a mynah bird, or anything else (except maybe the coattails of the unfortunately-named Doll Man, the Golden Age hero who was the first comics “shrink”).

I returned the drawing to Gil Kane, who was both astonished and glad to see it, the next time he came into the office. I asked Gil about the only uncertain element of the piece—the belt on The Atom’s costume, which seemed added in haste and somewhat carelessly. Gil agreed, explaining that he had conceived The Atom without a belt, preferring the lines of his costume that way. But taskmaster Schwartz wanted the character to have a belt, so one was added, albeit grudgingly.

As a number of us staffers—mostly the younger guys— listened to Gil and Julie reminisce about the piece, it occurred to me, for the first time (but by no means the last), that comics is a business that has very little sense of its own history; that the self-contempt which many comics pros hold for their chosen field of endeavor will always mean that the most important piece of past fact always becomes, somehow, less important than whatever aggregation of fight scenes or movie tie-ins is due tomorrow.

Which is why I thought someone should write all this down, someday.

An Alter Ego Collection, Vol. 1, Bonus!

Atom co-creator Gil Kane drew this caricature of himself (left) and Spirit creator Will Eisner for the April 1981 issue of Will Eisner's Spirit Magazine. Thanks to Bob Bailey for the scan. [©2006 Estate of Gil Kane.]

Talk about bite-size bonanzas! Mike Barr owns the art to the entire second Atom-starring issue of Showcase (#35)! [©1999 DC Comics.]

big-name artist, eager for a pile of originals to sell at an approaching convention, offered me a page or a sketch for putting him at the front of the line... well, who was I to say “no”?

Since the concept of returning art was a relatively new innovation, begun due to the lobbying of Neal Adams, among others, DC had several years of old art sitting in a hot, dusty, windowless room. Needing the space for some poor schlub (and fearing it might be me), I nonetheless dove into my task with gusto, wondering what oddities the pile might hold.

I was rewarded by uncovering an original All-Star Comics cover that hadn’t seen the light of day since before I had been born—and I still remember the look on the artist’s face when I presented it to him. I found several stories whose artists had thought them long since stolen or (perhaps worse) destroyed.

And I discovered one of the original conceptual drawings for The Atom.

It was on a large piece of art board, larger than even the “twice-up” size of early comic page originals (that is, twice the size of the printed page). It was clearly the work of Gil Kane, the modern Atom’s co-creator; that much would have been evident even without the signature.

Editor Julius Schwartz quickly identified it as one of the first visualizations of the updated revival of the Golden Age Atom.

I recall for certain that it showed The Atom, already in his familiar

117

“St “Stan an M Made ade U Up p the the Plot Plot... ... and d Write Write tthe he S Script cript... ...”” and I I’d

A Conversation with Artist-Writer Larry Lieber Conducted & Edited by Roy Thomas, Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

118

Larry Lieber

I

t’s hardly a secret that Marvel’s premier writer/editor, Stan Lee, was born Stanley Lieber… or that Larry Lieber, early Marvel artist and writer, is his younger brother. The splash pages of a number of major early-1960s Marvel super-hero tales give Stan credit for “plot” and Larry credit for “script.” However, what this actually means, and the brothers’ method of working together, has only rarely been touched upon, even in passing. Over the years, even after becoming the artist of the long-running Spider-Man newspaper comic strip written by Stan, Larry has preferred to keep a low profile, but I will readily admit that, besides liking Larry on a personal basis, I have always felt a certain kinship with him because he was the only person besides Stan to write any real volume of Marvel stories before I wandered in in July of 1965. Alter Ego is grateful for the privilege of interviewing Larry. —R.T. ROY THOMAS: Larry, when did you decide—if you ever did, exactly—that you wanted to be an artist?

LARRY LIEBER: Oh, God, that would be years before I was doing it professionally. I must’ve been a kid, a teenager, in school. I guess it was when Stan was a young man, first working for Timely Comics. I knew my brother was a writer for that company, and I was interested in comics—all the kids were. It was during the war, and I remember Kirby, when Captain America began. I remember having a “Sentinels of Liberty” card

and badge.

As a kid I liked to draw, and for most kids, liking to draw then—maybe it’s the same thing today— I turned to comics.

So that was the beginning of it.

RT: Where were you born?

LIEBER: In Manhattan, in 1931. Six months later we moved to the Bronx. I lived there A sketch of our friendly neighborhood wall-crawler, by the man who’s drawn his newspaper comic strip adventures longer than anyone else. [Spider-Man ©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

until I was about ten and a half, then we moved back to Manhattan, up in Washington Heights. During that time, Stan went into the Army, and I was just going to school and drawing. When I was in junior high, I tried to get into the High School of Music and Art, but I couldn’t. I asked the teacher why, and he said something about my attendance not being good. It wasn’t true; I was always there. Anyway that was a big disappointment, because I felt I could probably draw as well as the other guys. So I went to George Washington High School in Manhattan, and the years passed….

RT: It’s been reported you did your first professional work around 1950, when you were nineteen or twenty.

LIEBER: In 1951 I went into the Air Force, for four years, during the Korean War. I spent two of them on Okinawa. Before I went in, I was working for Magazine Management….

RT: When I walked in the door there for the first time in 1965, I’d never heard the name “Magazine Management.” Turned out that was the umbrella name for Martin Goodman’s company, which included Marvel Comics, which then was at most one-third of the company… but also men’s magazines, true confessions, detective, puzzles, movie mags, a little bit of everything.

Larry may have had a Sentinels of Liberty badge, but within a year or two Uncle Sam—who outranked even Captain America—had commandeered the metal in them. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

LIEBER: Right. Back then Marvel was Timely Comics. At the time I worked there, Magazine Management was big when the comics were big… it was small when the comics were small. At one time in the late ’50s it was just an alcove, with one window, and Stan was doing all the corrections himself; he had no assistants. Later I think Flo [Steinberg, secretary] and Sol Brodsky [production manager] came in. But a few years before, I was working for Magazine Management, doing paste-ups,

Larry Lieber

119

Three splashes from Strange Tales #99 (1962)—by Kirby & Ayers, Heck, and Ditko. Only the latter had a writer’s credit for Stan Lee, so the other two were quite probably dialogued by Larry Lieber. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

and I wanted to be an artist, an illustrator. I was working during the day, and I went to Pratt Art Institute the evening.

RT: In ’50-’51, would you have been drawing or writing or both?

LIEBER: The writing I didn’t do. When I came out after the service, I went to the Art Students’ League, and I still wanted to be an artist and do comics, but I had in mind to eventually become an illustrator. I was drawing, but I was slow. I didn’t have the skill to draw quickly, and in 1958 I had to earn a living. And Stan, at the time—well, things were bad. He had almost nobody working for him.

doing the lead story, and Don Heck was there. Ditko used to do the story at the end of the books, and later he and Stan did Amazing Adult Fantasy. At the time I had a room in Tudor City, and I was writing stories for Jack to draw. Jack was so fast, and I was learning to write. You can appreciate this, I’m sure: I didn’t really know how, and Stan was giving me a writing course!

RT: That was right after the American News collapse, when Goodman’s comics almost closed down for about a year.

LIEBER: Just in general. The change in his style really came, I think, with Fantastic Four and Spider-Man. Before that, he didn’t have that kind of style; and with me, it was just the principles, you know: just how you write, and “This is too many words” and “Put in less words, because even if it’s well-written they won’t want to read it,” that kind of thing. I learned a lot of the basics.

LIEBER: Wait a minute—I did do some comics then. I did some romance comics. I was penciling them. And there was a point where I did writing, because I remember Stan saying to me, “You write romances really well,” so I must have written some. In 1958 Stan said he wanted somebody to help him write, and he had nobody then; he was doing it all himself. I said, “I’m really not a writer.” He said, “Oh, I’ve read your letters.” So I probably wrote the romances sometime after that.

Later on, he got his style, and I didn’t particularly want to go with that style myself. I continued to write whatever way I did write. Later, when I did the westerns, they were not written in Stan’s style. I remember that Kirby was so fast he could draw faster than I was writing! Stan would say to me, “Jack needs another script!” I was on 41st, and I used to sit there Saturday and Sunday, and there was the Grand Central Post Office that was open all the time.

RT: When the comics were just getting started up again.

LIEBER: Well, they were putting out… let’s see… Journey into Mystery… Tales to Astonish.… I remember Jack Kirby was usually

RT: I had that advantage, too—as only one or two other people did—of working closely with Stan, in the mid-’60s. I got the impression that, as he was developing this new mutation of his style, he just had an irresistible impulse to teach you to write in his style, or just in general.

In 1961-62 Amazing Adult Fantasy became the outlet for the LeeDitko “O. Henry”-style tales. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RT: I used to take cab rides down there from the East 80s at midnight or later,

120

Larry Lieber

hoping Special Delivery would get to Sam Rosen in Brooklyn or Artie Simek in Queens by the next morning. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t.

You were a few years ahead of me in that department. You mentioned earlier that Stan would say to you, “Jack needs a story now.” Did you plot some of those lead monster stories, as well?

Henry Pym is Ant-Man. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

LIEBER: No. Stan made up the plot, and then he’d give it to me, and I’d write the script. Tudor City had a park; and when it was nice, I’d sit there and break the story down picture by picture. I was unsure of myself just sitting down to write a script. Since I knew how to draw, I’d think, “Oh, this shot will have a guy coming this way… this shot we’ll have a guy looking down on him,” and later I’d sit at the typewriter and type it up. After a while, I’d just go to the typewriter. I would follow from Stan’s plots.

RT: Would Jack have already penciled the story?

LIEBER: No. These were all scripts in advance.

RT: So this wasn’t “Marvel style” yet? I asked Stan recently just how that style started. He felt maybe Fantastic Four #1 was the start of it, but I wondered if, by 1961 and before, he was already doing some things plots-in-advance for Jack and others.

LIEBER: No, I think it started with Fantastic Four, or around the time he did the super-heroes.

RT: So you’d turn Stan’s plots into a full script for Jack or whoever?

LIEBER: Or for Don Heck, or someone. Stan liked writing his own stories for Ditko. Jack I always had to send a full script to. Also, what Stan liked was that I made up names. As a matter of fact, I made up the name “Henry Pym”….

RT: That would be in the “Man in the Anthill” story in Tales to Astonish #27, which led to Pym returning as AntMan. You probably made up a lot of names that people assume Stan or Jack coined. Didn’t you make up “Don Blake” when you scripted the first Thor story?

RT: Killing you with compliments, huh?

LIEBER: Right, it was sort of a compliment. With me, he had no other writer to compare me to, except what he remembered. So whatever faults he saw in me, he just felt I wasn’t as good as he was. So he took things very easy: “Well, why don’t you do this?” But as it went on, he got better with me. Jack had been drawing Rawhide Kid, and he gave it up.

RT: That western had a nice feel, which is probably one reason it was the most successful of the westerns for several years.

LIEBER: I don’t remember why I wanted to do it, particularly. I think I wanted a little more freedom. I didn’t do enough of the super-heroes to know whether I’d like them. What I didn’t prefer was the style that was developing. It didn’t appeal to me… but it appealed to everybody else!

RT: Was it the fact that it was more melodramatic, or was it the realism?

LIEBER: Maybe there was just too much humor in it, or too much something. I don’t know. But, of itself, it wasn’t bad. I remember, at the time, I wanted to make everything serious. I didn’t want to give a light tone to it.

When I did Rawhide Kid, I wanted people to cry as if they were watching High Noon or something. The writers I used to love were Rod Serling, Paddy Chayevsky, Sterling Siliphant. So I was trying to write that kind of thing.

RT: Your first super-hero work seems to be Thor in Journey into Mystery #83.

That came out in the summer of ’62, so you’d have done the script in the Spring, if not before.

LIEBER: One incident I remember with you and me was: I was in the office, and you came in. You’d been poring over Bulfinch’s Mythology or something, and you said, “Larry, where did you find this ‘uru hammer’ in mythology?” And I said, “Roy, I didn’t find it; I made it up.” And you looked at me like, “Why the hell did you make it up?” You went and found the hammer’s original name, Mjolnir.

LIEBER: I probably did. I wrote a full script and sent it off to Jack. When was it you came there, or when Stan started writing the super-heroes?

RT: Fantastic Four came out in summer of 1961, and I started working at Marvel in mid-’65. By then, I believe you’d abandoned super-hero writing maybe a year before. Stan told me he always liked your scripts, but that you didn’t write a lot of stuff. You seemed better off concentrating on the westerns, especially Rawhide Kid. LIEBER: Stan was critical sometimes, and he knew I hadn’t written before I started writing for him. He thought back on writers he had known in the

past—he had a couple of them he tried out, some of the old pros, and then he said to me, “Your stuff isn’t that good, but you know, you’re better than these guys!”

RT: But I kept your name for it, too, because I thought “uru” could be the metal it was made of.

Henry Pym must have thought his encounter in an ant hill was just a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Wrong! [© 1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

LIEBER: I kind of liked it; it was short.

It’s easy on the letterer; they’re going to be using it all the time. I don’t know

Larry Lieber where the hell I came up with it.

121 ciled. A full script is the only way I know how to write. No, wait… I remember that I did write at least one story from the artwork, but that was in the ’70s. I remember that the penciler had left me a lot of empty space to fill up with dialogue, and I didn’t want to use it all… so I drew in some more art to fill up the space!

RT: Stan said he always thought you got it from a mythology book.

I’d been trying to track it down before I talked to you.

LIEBER: I used to get names out of the back of the dictionary, from the biographical section where you have foreign names, Russian, this and that. I used to go to it and gets parts of names to put together.

RT: Stan plotted the early stories, but still, the person who turns a plot into a full script RT: “Uru” sounds like a has to add things. For little town in Pakistan. example, Journey into There’s probably an “Uru” Mystery #85, the third somewhere. Even after all Thor story, introduced these years Mjolnir’s been Loki and Balder and around, anyone who’s ever Thor’s stories carried no credits till Journey into Mystery #86, but even #83’s origin Asgard and the Rainbow was dialogued by Lieber. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.] read the old issues still knows Bridge. And #86, with the “the uru hammer.” By that Tomorrow Man, was the stage, of course, Stan was doing the plots and Jack was breaking down first with credits: “Plot—Stan Lee; Script—Larry Lieber; Art—Jack the stories. Did you realize your career was entering a new phase with Kirby; Inks—Dick Ayers.” Maybe Stan made up the name Tomorrow all these super-heroes, or was the Thor origin just another story to you?

Man, but would you have made up his real name, Zarrko?

LIEBER: Thor was just another story. I didn’t think about it at all. Stan LIEBER: It sounds like it could have been one of my names. Stan said, “I’m trying to make up a character,” and he gave me the plot, and would make up the big names, like “Colossus” or “Grogg”—that’s a he said, “Why don’t you write the story?” helluva name. He gave me the title, and I’d write the story.

RT: You were still writing full scripts when you did Thor? I know it’s RT: Why would Stan have not written the whole Thor story, which was got to be hard to obviously the thing—if anything was—that was going to sell the magaremember after zine, and yet he’d write backup stories drawn by not just Ditko, but by almost forty years.

Don Heck, Paul Reinman? I’ve never quite been able to figure that out.

You wrote the first Of course, he did plot the Thor story. half dozen or so Thor stories.

LIEBER: He thought LIEBER: I wrote that many? I thought it was just two or three; but I remember AntMan. I think I wrote that the same way I wrote the other scripts, with a full script.

RT: I never knew that.

Stan probably doesn’t remember. I always assumed Jack broke down the stories, because that’s what he was doing for Stan.

Larry Lieber’s Rawhide Kid retained an actionistic Kirby flair. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

LIEBER: Let me put it this way: I wouldn’t swear to it, but I have no recollection of ever writing a story that had already been pen-

of it. The only thing I can think of is that he didn’t know it was going to be that big a feature. Remember, Stan wasn’t writing dialogue for the rest of Tales of Astonish; he only did that for the Ditko story.

When we had “Colossus,” a creature of stone, that was me writing from Stan’s plot.

RT: So you and he were continuing the method used in the monster books. The only difference is that, when Stan did start writing full stories himself, he

122

Larry Lieber

would get Jack or someone, or later Ditko on Spider-Man, to break down the story.

equally good or even better way to do it.” But I still feel that 80-90% of what he said was the best way to do it. Now I’d like to ask you about a few other Marvel scripters in the early ’60s. There was Bob Bernstein, who wrote as “Robert Burns”; he’d been an oldtime comics writer. Ernie Hart wrote a couple of stories as “E.E. Huntley,” and one Iron Man story—the one that introduced the Black Widow—was scriptcredited to “N. Krok,” who I guess was really Don Rico—who later used his real name on a Dr. Strange story. Do you know why they used pseudonyms?

LIEBER: When he saw that the strips had potential, he started writing them, and he was working with Jack. Then, I think he was doing so much that he found it was better—and also, when you’re working with a guy like Jack— Jack was very creative, and wanted to put a lot of things into it. Jack always welcomed doing it, I’d imagine, to some extent. Some artists you wouldn’t have let work that way. They weren’t all particularly good at it.

LIEBER: No. At that time, I lived in Tudor City, and I would just drop off my work at the office and go back home.

I didn’t know what the heck was going on. I just want to say one thing about Stan: I was able to take the criticism from him because he was always right!

Even if the things he would say didn’t feel good to me. In a way it was almost like I was playing out a scene in the movie Scaramouche. Have you seen that movie?

RT: Some liked it, some hated it. Some hated working “Marvel style” at first, but then they got to like it, and later they’d get upset if someone gave them a full script to draw!

LIEBER: But Jack was so creative, and he probably welcomed it. It was easier for Stan, once he had the pictures there, to fit in copy. I remember he’d say, “Oooh, there’s a little space, I can put a word balloon there. This would be good.” It was very easy for him, and it worked beautifully.

RT: Stan spent a lot of time with me in the mid-’60s on placing balloons, because it was so important. Did he ever work with you on balloon placement—where to put the word balloons?

RT: Only when it first came out, when I was a kid. I know it comes from a book

by Rafael Sabatini….

LIEBER: Only when I started drawing the syndicated Spider-Man strip, years later. When I start a week of the strip, it’s not where to put the balloons, but I go nuts with the lettering, trying to make the words come out. I have almost no space to work with.

RT: Placing balloons got so ingrained in me that after a few weeks of writing for Stan, I’d be watching TV and I couldn’t help imagining where the balloons would go if the screen were a panel in a comic!

LIEBER: Oh, he was very fussy about the balloons and the pointers. Even now, it’s “Don’t put the pointer there—look at it there.”

RT: I absolutely agree with his theory, after thirtysomething years.

In any particular case, I might think, “There’s another,

LIEBER: Scaramouche starts off where somebody is killed by the greatest swordsman in France, played by Mel Ferrer. Stewart Granger tries to protect the victim, but he doesn’t know how to duel, and Ferrer is just toying with him. Later, Granger becomes a swordsman, and they fight to the death at the end. But sometimes I would think, with Stan—with somebody who knows how to write well and you don’t know how to write—“Well, you could’ve said it this way!

Well, you could have said it that way!” And you didn’t think of any of those. At least I agreed with him, which was a lot better, because sometimes you work with people who tell you things you don’t agree with.

Others besides Larry Lieber dialogued Stan’s early stories.

Here, Robert Bernstein masquerades as “R. Berns.” [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RT: That can be hard.

Larry both scripted and drew backup features in the early ’60s. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

LIEBER: I remember Stan saying years ago, “Look, I don’t care—you don’t have to write in my style. I don’t care about that. Just make it correct.

Don’t make mistakes. Just know what’s

Larry Lieber good writing, what’s decent.” It wasn’t even that he was looking for great writing. Just don’t write badly; he would settle for that. Also, I must say that his criticisms in the artwork were usually right. They might annoy you sometimes, but he doesn’t tell you to take something and make it ugly when you’re supposed to be making it pretty.

RT: It may not have much to do in every case with art, as such, but after all, in comics, you’re not talking about art; you’re talking about a certain kind of commercial art.

LIEBER: To enhance the story, he wants it to be this, he wants it to be that—and I’ll tell you, I have met at various places artists who have said, “Oh, I remember working for Stan years ago, and he’d get on the desk and act it out, and this and that, and he made me a better artist.”

123

there was a Dr. Doom story where you wrote and penciled the first half; I wrote and Frank Giacoia penciled the second half, probably because you were busy on the westerns. Did you always like westerns in particular?

LIEBER: Not particularly, but I did like them more than super-heroes, because I felt the western was a real story, and the super-heroes were more fanciful. The westerns were more grounded in reality, at least more grounded in reality than a guy who could fly. I liked that, and I tried to make it as real as I could. If I were writing it, I tried to make it a combination of Wuthering Heights and High Noon if I could, and I was just limited by my own abilities.

RT: You did the Human Torch series in the beginning, didn’t you?

RT: There are other people who resent it, still; but most people did feel they got a lot out of it.

Maybe it depended on whether they wanted to get a lot out of it.

LIEBER: Yes, I did a few with Johnny Storm. I’d forgotten that. Somewhere along the way, I also did The Watcher.

LIEBER: He may have told me things where I might have thought, “He makes a fuss over things that aren’t that important.” But I never felt that he was saying something that was incorrect and I knew better. He appreciated when you did something well, too; that’s another thing. He’d say, “Hey, that’s good!” At any rate, I’m a little unclear about leaving the super-heroes and going to Rawhide Kid. I know that at the time I wanted—what’s the expression?—a little space for myself or something, and I wanted to do a little drawing again.

LIEBER: “D” is my middle initial. Maybe there wasn’t room to sign my full name.

RT: Because in Rawhide Kid you could handle the whole book, you could write it, and you could pencil it.

RT: I remember my favorite of all the Ant-Man stories was the one with The Scarlet Beetle, who was a giant insect with superhuman intelligence. You always signed your name “Larry Lieber,” except in one case you signed “L.D. Lieber.”

RT: A bit later, you started doing backup features in Tales to Astonish, after Ant-Man became Giant-Man. You were writing mystery stories, but you also started increasingly drawing those stories. This would have been ’63 or ’64, before you did Rawhide Kid. There were some five-page Wasp and Watcher stories. It was as if Stan realized the day of the backup was ending, and that one way to extend it was to have “Tales of the Watcher,” who of course was a character from Fantastic Four. So all of a sudden the comics have the same backup stories as before, except now The Watcher is narrating them.

LIEBER: I wasn’t even that ambitious to handle the whole thing. What happened when I started doing it was, number one, the westerns weren’t that important, because once they In the case of Iron Man, Larry shared credit from the start (in Tales of Suspense #39) started with Fantastic Four, with Stan Lee and Don Heck. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.] “Thor,” Spider-Man, and all LIEBER: I don’t remember that—the westerns, who cared about them? much about them. I did them, but I don’t remember my feelings and RT: So you were trying to work yourself into a nice corner of obscuriattitudes, because it was sort of a transition between my early years ty? when I did Tales to Astonish and the like, and doing The Rawhide Kid. LIEBER: I don’t know that I did it deliberately. But it came out that way. None of the westerns sold all that well. Years later, I would meet someone sometimes who would say, “You know, I read your westerns and I liked them.” Which was odd, because nobody wrote fan letters to the westerns. But it was always very gratifying to hear that.

RT: Once in the late ’60s I finished off a Rawhide Kid story you’d penciled and then had to quit writing partway through the dialogue. And

RT: You even inked one or two of those stories.

LIEBER: I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t like doing it.

RT: One of the strangest inkers you had was Matt Fox. LIEBER: I hated that stuff! Oh, God, and years later, I learned that Matt Fox is considered one of the greats by some people, and his artwork brings a buck or two.

124

Larry Lieber

John Romita quickly became the best-selling Spider-Man artist. This poster was done in 1979 for Scholastic magazine. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RT: Yeah, but not in comics.

was so strange—his line just deadened everything.

LIEBER: I hated his stuff because I struggled with drawing, and I was trying to make the drawings look as real as humanly possible, and I had a tough time. I remember I once had Don Heck inking me on a fivepage western, and I remember saying, “My God, he’s good at making my stuff look better than it is,” and he was. Matt Fox—if my stuff was a little stiff, he made it even stiffer; he made it look like wood cuttings!

LIEBER: One of my traits was that I was reluctant to say anything bad about anybody, because everybody has to earn a living. I wouldn’t complain, no matter who they put on. But one day I was working in the office penciling a western, and Stan walked by. He saw my pencils and he said, “This is your penciling?” And I said, “Yeah.” Stan said, “This is pretty good. I’ve been looking at the finished stuff, and that looks terrible.” And he removed that inker—it wasn’t Matt Fox—and gave me a better one. But I, of my own volition, wouldn’t say a word about it.

RT: Fox had been in advertising.

He’d done lithographs, pulp illustrations; evidently he did some covers for Weird Tales, the magazine that published H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, including Conan, back in the ’30s. Fox did color wood cuts; he was a real artist, but his comic inking Though pulp fans may have collected his work, Larry detested the heavy inking style of Matt Fox. These two panels are from Strange Tales #110 (1963), the same issue which saw the debut of Dr. Strange. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RT: Fox obviously had a style that just didn’t translate well into comics.

LIEBER: Then there was a period—I don’t know when it was—when I just did writing. But maybe that came after the westerns, because I had the experience of writing scripts for different artists.

RT: Well, I know in the early ’70s we had these mystery stories. And you were sort of a liaison working with some of the writers for a while there, too.

LIEBER: I learned there’s no script that is so good it can’t be ruined by somebody. Once I was doing a western script, and my artistic inspiration as always was Jack Kirby. When Kirby drew something, he made it as interesting as you could get. I had Indians chasing the hero. I figured this would be colorful on the title splash, thinking the way Kirby would do it. He would do an Indian, and it wouldn’t matter if it was the correct tribe….

Larry Lieber

125

RT: He wasn’t a researcher, but he was always dramatic.

LIEBER: It looked like Cecil B. DeMille, right? Okay, this artist gives me the hero riding his horse—and between the hero and the Indians he puts smoke and dusk from the horses. Over the dust there are a few feathers! That’s when I realized, as I was sitting there racking my brain, that no script is artist-proof.

RT: I remember Sol Brodsky telling me of a case where an artist penciled a bunch of cavalrymen on horses in the background, and the inker put a huge hill in between most of them and the reader, so he only had to ink a couple of horses coming around it. But that would be very frustrating to you as a writer, to feel your story is being judged on something you didn’t intend. Now, you also did the finished script for the very first Iron Man story. Did you name Tony Stark, too?

LIEBER: That I remember.

RT: And you did the first handful of stories, when he was in the big, clunky armor. Would you have done a full script on that, too, from a plot by Stan?

LIEBER: Yes. Every one.

RT: One reason I’m curious about that is that, although Don Heck is the only person listed as artist for that first Iron Man story, some people believe Kirby laid it out, and I just wondered if that was all Don. LIEBER: I don’t know.

I think I recall Jack having something to do with it, but all I really know is that if my name was on it, then I wrote it. I’m safe there.

Larry Lieber covers for two of the 1975 Atlas titles he also edited. [©1975 Atlas Comics]

RT: Sometimes your name wouldn’t be on a story. Then, after two or three stories in a series, the credits would gradually start creeping in, and your name would be on the stories, so fans would sort of work back from that.

Back then, Stan didn’t sign all the stories, either. There’d be issues with super-hero stories up front, but only the

For a year in 1974-75 Martin Goodman’s Atlas Comics flooded the field with both color and black-&-white comics, as shown by this house ad drawn by Ernie Colon. Can you name all the heroes? We didn’t think so. [©1999 Atlas Comics.]

backup Lee and Ditko story had credits.

LIEBER: When I was doing the stories, I remember Stan telling me, “Jack can do five pages a day of these monster-story pencils… no, six pages a day. When he does a western, he can only do five a day, because of the gunbelts.” The gunbelts slowed him down or whatever.

RT: Not even the horses? The gunbelts? Anyway, in 1964 or ’65, the staff started to increase. First Sol came on staff as production manager….

LIEBER: When you started there, where were we? On 57th Street?

RT: It was on Madison Avenue.

LIEBER: Madison Avenue, near the bank on 57th Street. Okay. When I started, we were a couple of blocks up, on 60th Street. That’s the place where I said there was no room, when Stan worked in this little alcove.

RT: Magazine Management was always moving around. I remember someone joking that the company moved up and down Madison Avenue, depending on how much walking Martin Goodman’s doctor told him to do. When I arrived in ’65, Stan had a nice big office that took up at least half the space that was given over to Marvel. Did you ever consider inking other artists?

126

Larry Lieber LIEBER: That was a very tacky business. Maybe I shouldn’t go into it.

RT: I don’t know much about it.

But Atlas was certainly paying great rates, because Goodman wanted to get everybody away Letters page heading featuring new color comics editor Larry Lieber. from Marvel if he could, I guess.

I’m not asking you to bad-mouth LIEBER: I inked a page of Kirby once, in a book anybody, Larry, because Atlas was a job like everything else. I do which had different feature pages, puzzles and so remember that Stan appreciated the fact that you came in and told him forth. I did ink years ago, when I started… I’m going ’way back, before you’d accepted an editing job at Atlas, because you knew there were bad I was in the service in ’51. It was Tessie the Typist, I think. As a matter feelings between Stan and Goodman at that stage. of fact, around then, I did some teenage inking, Millie the Model or Tessie or something like that for a while. I was never very confident LIEBER: I told him. There had been a period where I couldn’t get any about my inking. I was always spilling the ink bottle. I only started inkwork at Marvel, and I had to go to National. And National wouldn’t ing “for real” when I started doing the Spider-Man strip some years ago. give me work because they were mistrustful….

RT: Steve Ditko left around the end of ’65, beginning of ’66. You were soon working on the Amazing Spider-Man Annual.

LIEBER: I remember doing a couple of annuals of Spider-Man. Here’s a story: The way Ditko drew didn’t appeal to me. I thought his stuff was very stiff, you know what I mean? I did like the way John Romita drew, which was very pretty and flowing and so on with the figures. So at that time I did a lot of my drawing in the office, and I was drawing under John’s direction. Do you remember those days? People would comment about it, I think—my showing John every picture I was drawing.

RT: It’s amazing you couldn’t get more work going at Marvel.

LIEBER: It wasn’t such a nice thing, but I won’t go into it. I don’t want to go into all the Atlas thing, except to tell you this, which was a basic fact: When I went there, Martin put out two kinds of books. He was putting out color comics, and he was also going to put out black-&white comics like Warren and Marvel. Now, I knew nothing about black-&-white comics, right? My only experience was in the color comics. And Jeff Rovin came from Warren, and he knew nothing about

RT: John very quickly became a sort of informal assistant art director to Stan.

LIEBER: So I get all through with a Spider-Man story and I bring it in, and Stan looks at it and says, “I like it. It’s got that nice ugly feel that Ditko had!” So, no matter what I drew, there was a lot of frustration. I was trying to get away from it, but I couldn’t. Ditko in his own way is actually very good, but I just felt it wasn’t the kind of drawing I wanted to do.

RT: As good as Ditko was and is—and I’ve been a big fan of his since his Captain Atom days at Charlton—within six months after Romita became the artist, Spider-Man finally passed Fantastic Four in sales. It had been gradually creeping up in sales, and it might have become #1 under Ditko, but it was only #2 until Romita took it over. He had that golden touch. Earlier, when he’d taken over Daredevil from Wally Wood, it had instantly shot up to be Marvel’s best seller in percentage terms. John didn’t have as much overt style by the ’60s as when he’d been doing his half-Kirby, half-Caniff Captain America in the ’50s—that style had sort of been washed out of him doing love comics at DC—but he drew dramatically, he told a great story, and he did pretty people.

And the readers really responded to that.

LIEBER: Yes, he did attractive people, he told a story, and also he could work with Stan very well. He knew what Stan wanted. He was very good. And he was busy later fixing up everybody else.

RT: By the early ’70s, of course, Martin Goodman had sold Marvel, and in ’74 he started his own competing line. I know you and Stan were related to Goodman by marriage, so of course you’d known him forever. How did you come to work for Goodman at his new company?

LIEBER: I was working for Marvel, but I had difficulty sometimes getting work. It wasn’t a very easy period. They needed super-hero reprint covers, and I could do them somewhat in Kirby’s style. And then Martin Goodman went into business.

RT: Right. Seaboard, a.k.a. Atlas. You were one of two editors there… you and Jeff Rovin.

Atlas definitely did attract some top talent for a brief time, among them Archie Goodwin and Alex Toth. [©1999 Atlas Comics.]

Larry Lieber color comics. And Martin unfortunately put Jeff in charge of all the color comics, and put me in charge of the black-&-white books.

RT: That is a backward approach.

LIEBER: It was an unfortunate thing, and basically what happened was that Jeff’s books didn’t turn out so well.

RT: But there sure were a lot of them!

LIEBER: Yes. And, as you said, Martin had to pay high freelance rates, because otherwise nobody would work for a new and unproven company.

RT: You know, Chip [Martin Goodman’s son, who had briefly been Marvel’s publisher] offered me a job at Atlas as an editor. I had nothing against Jeff Rovin, but I just had a feeling that to step into the middle of that situation would be more trouble than it could possibly be worth—even in the unlikely event that Atlas was going to last longer than a year or two.

LIEBER: It didn’t work out too well, and Jeff finally left angrily or something, and I had to take over all his books. At this point, business was bad, and I tried to do what I could. One of the things I had to do was to cut rates and tell people they were going to make less money, which was not an enviable position. I had one guy, who’s probably gone by now—a nice guy, but he had a drinking problem, and was also a gun collector.

RT: Great combination.

LIEBER: And he was going to come in, and I had to tell him that we weren’t going to give him work!

It was quite an experience. But in the end it was just that Martin lost too much money. There was nothing I could do to help out. I wasn’t a genius, too much was lost, and so they gave it all up, except for Swank [a Playboy imitation] and a couple of magazines, and Chip would continue with them.

RT: Any other funny stories you can tell me for print?

127

Chip?” Now, I get off the phone; she hasn’t told me what it’s about, but I figure, “I bet this means they’re going out of business.” So I start getting very nervous, and I go back in the jury box, and a policeman is testifying, and as he starts talking, I’m so panicky about going out of business that I think I’m going to scream. I just remember being there, thinking, “I don’t want to scream and cause a mistrial.” And sure enough, I was right. When I went back there to see Chip, he said Atlas was going out of business.

RT: Maybe if they had just done a few titles and nursed them along. But they tried to enter the field with thirty, forty books right away, and as a result they couldn’t— LIEBER: It was more than that. For instance, Jeff put out one issue which had a very dull cover, all gray. A zombie coming out of the water. And when it was mentioned to him that this was a dull cover, his reasoning was, “That’s why it’ll stand out, because all the books are brightly colored in the store, and if you have one in gray, it’ll stand out.” It didn’t work out that way.

RT: Did you find it easy to come back to Marvel when Atlas folded?

LIEBER: What happened was, Martin and Chip gave me six months’ severance pay. I was trying other things; I was trying to make up a newspaper strip… and after a while, Stan offered me a job as editor of Marvel’s British department. I remember that the previous editor had given demerits to people. He’d say, “Frank Giacoia is late,” and he’d tell him, “You’re getting a blue dot,” or “a yellow dot.” Can you imagine how Frank reacted to getting a dot? Still, it was a nice department, and gee, the people and names I haven’t thought of in years.

Duffy…?

RT: Duffy Vohland. And Dave Kraft.

LIEBER: Yes. Mike Esposito came in occasionally, and Danny Fingeroth.

And Bob Budiansky. They became my assistants. The only thing in that department we did that was original was Captain Britain. Buscema drew it at first, and Tom Palmer inked it. And during that time, in the late ’70s—that’s when Stan had Spider-Man come out in the newspaper.

LIEBER: I’ll tell you one because it’s only about me: Near the end, Atlas was maybe going to go out of business, and I got called on jury duty. At that time, I used to sometimes get anxiety attacks, and I used to take Valium to prevent the attack. So when I had RT: So how was it you eventually wound to go down to the jury, I called up the up penciling the Spider-Man strip? company and I said, “Are we still in busiWhat’s in a name? Early Captain Britain stories were totally ness?” And the secretary said, “I don’t produced in the U.S. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.] LIEBER: Well, even when John Romita did know; Chip hasn’t made up his mind yet,” it, I was helping a little sometimes. Jim or “Mr. Goodman hasn’t made up his mind yet; just keep in touch with Shooter sometimes did breakdowns for Stan for the script, and after Jim, us and you’ll find out.”

I did some, also. I sat in on story conferences with John and Stan.

So here I’m going—it’s like a Woody Allen thing—I’m going on jury RT: Later there was Fred Kida, and different people…. duty, I’m nervous to begin with, and I’m trying to keep calm, and during a break on the jury I call up and the secretary says, “Tomorrow LIEBER: Kida, right. In the early days, there was also a Hulk strip. morning, before you go on jury duty, or after, will you stop up and see

128

Larry Lieber the television, because I didn’t want to duplicate anything. Later on, I did a story down South with a werewolf and The Hulk that was interesting.

And then finally the strip died. I remember there was a point where they wanted me to pencil the Spider-Man dailies, and I tried, but I wasn’t fast enough, and I gave it up.

Then I was doing Spider-Man Sunday pages for a while, and then that stopped. Stan left for California, and Jim Shooter was there….

RT: He became editor-in-chief at the very end of ’77.

LIEBER: I was having a very tough time because he wanted a kind of drawing that was difficult for me to do. You know, different artists tell stories in different ways.

Me, I was pretty good with closeups. I wasn’t good if you gave me a scene with forty people in it, big things like Kirby would make all interesting and wonderful. If I did it, it might look a little dull. Yet Jim wanted those kinds of shots, full shots. It was difficult, and I was slow, and I struggled with it, Left: John Romita was the first artist of the Spider-Man daily strip. Here are the first three dailies from January 3-5, 1977. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Right: For a while Larry Lieber wrote and penciled, and Frank Giacoia inked, the Incredible Hulk newspaper strip. Here’s a three-day continuity, dated January 11-13, 1979. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RT: Right. I was part of that period, too.

Conan the Barbarian started in newspapers at the same time as Spider-Man and Hulk, and a little before Howard the Duck. I have a complete collection of the early dailies of all four strips. I told the Des Moines syndicate I needed them for “research.”

LIEBER: I remember doing The Hulk, with Frank Giacoia inking. I recall we had problems because Frank was late, and we tried other inkers on it, and maybe I was late doing it. And then there was a point where it wasn’t selling that well, or Stan didn’t want to bother with it, and he let me write it.

So I started writing and drawing it, and Frank was inking it again. I enjoyed that very much. I remember doing a story about a boxer and The Hulk, and I was very inspired by what was on television, with Bill Bixby. I remember going out with a camera, getting photographs to try to make the strip look authentic. They had just come out with VCRs then, and I would have my late wife, before we were married (I guess it was), tape it for me off

Larry Lieber

129 After John Romita resigned the strip, Golden Age artist Fred Kida had a memorable run.

Here’s a daily from June 18, 1982. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

and then what happened was that Fred Kida, who had been doing Spider-Man at this point, retired, and Stan tried somebody else out on it… Dan Barry, I think… and it didn’t work out between him and Stan.

There was a conflict. Stan wanted this, Barry wanted that….

RT: Barry had done Flash Gordon for years, so he probably wasn’t too used to working for a writer.

LIEBER: And so Stan asked me, or I asked him… anyway, we spoke about it… “Do you want to try it?” And I said okay. And this time I stuck with it, and I was able to do it. I’ve been doing the dailies now for… it’ll be thirteen years.

RT: That’s probably a record for you!

LIEBER: It is! I’ve been drawing Spider-Man longer than anyone else.

RT: How did you manage to come to terms with turning out six dailies a week? That may not sound like a lot to some people, but it really is.

LIEBER: I did even better than that, because after a while I wanted to do my own inking. I wasn’t really that experienced as an inker, but I wanted to do it because I felt that only I could keep what I put in the pencils. There are certain inkers who would have enhanced what I drew, but I wasn’t getting that kind of inking. I did that for a few years, but it was very hard. I’d end up sitting up all night inking it out, and I was always afraid, because you’ve got that deadline there from the syndicate. So finally they said, “No, let’s have somebody else,” and I agreed. And they said, “When you get caught up, Larry, you can do it again.” Well, Larry has never gotten that far ahead!

RT: But still, that’s a pretty good amount to do every week.

LIEBER: You know, people will say to me, “How many hours do you put in to work that way?” A year and a half ago, my wife died. I was married for almost seventeen years. And since then it’s been a bit harder for me, getting the work out. I work alone here in the apartment, except for my For a time in the late ’80s/early ‘90s Larry not only penciled but even inked the Spider-Man dailies. From top: December 29, 1988; May 26, 1989; May 11, 1990; and February 1, 1991. [©1999 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Yorkshire terrier.

Stan gives me full scripts, which tell me exactly what to do. Stan is very good at visuals, thinking what would look good. I’m only glad that Peter Parker or Spider-Man only has two arms, because if he had more, Stan would have something for him to do with

every arm every day!

RT: Yeah. When Stan did give Spidey four extra arms in the last panel of Spider-Man #100, he turned #101 over to me and I had to write those issues! So I know what you mean. If Peter had several arms, Stan would say, “Well, the left hand is doing this, and the right hand is doing that….”

LIEBER: “He’s going out the door, he’s putting on his hat, he’s turning

130

Larry Lieber

around with a wry smile—not just an ordinary smile, but a wry smile… and Mary Jane, who looks at….” But of course we’ve only got one picture that I can draw in any one panel.

RT: At least you’ve got three panels a day! Mary Worth a few years ago went to two, and now there’s nothing in the stories at all!

LIEBER: I like the stories, and it’s challenging. I’m just glad it keeps going, so I have work.

RT: Spider-Man has been going for about twenty years now. They should do more collections of the strip. It’s one of the few success stories among dramatic comic strips in recent years. They tried bringing back Terry and the Pirates… Zorro… Tarzan… and none of them really worked, but somehow Spider-Man does! Do you think it’s partly because of the emphasis on Peter Parker’s life, instead of the super-heroics?

LIEBER: Maybe so. Stan does put a lot of that in there. They’re always talking about SpiderMan, but there are periods where there’s a lot of Peter Parker. As a matter of fact, one of the things about the strip that makes it a little hard is because there’s Peter Parker and Mary Jane, and so he’s writing it like a romance strip… you know, the pretty girl, the goodlooking guy… and then it shifts to the villains, and Spider-Man. It’s not just a super-hero strip, and it’s not just a romance strip. It’s both.

RT: It must have the right combination to have kept going for more than two decades.

LIEBER: I think so. And I try to give it whatever I can, and I’ll tell you why—I’ve learned while I’ve been doing it. Going back to when I worked for Shooter, and he wanted full scenes—that forced me to try to grow as an artist. It wasn’t a question of whether I approved of it, or didn’t approve of it; I had to do it. And I had to go back and re-learn perspective. Then, because I was slow, I said, “I’ve got to get faster with this,” whether I was doing The Hulk or Spider-Man. I said, “How the hell do I get faster?”

And one day John Buscema gave a lecture at Marvel Comics on “How to Draw Fast.”

RT: He should know!

LIEBER: So I took notes, and John had a whole bunch of steps. Later I even went out to his house, and he showed me. Well, I don’t know if it helped me to draw faster, but it helped me to draw better, and to see what mistakes I was making. John said, “This isn’t how you draw— this is how you draw fast.” There was a lot in the process that helped me to draw with more substance; it Larry Lieber in a photo apparently from the ’70s, a decade when the writer also became editor-in-chief of the shortlived Atlas/Seaboard comics line.

was just better.

And I had to face things I hadn’t faced as an artist in those years. I’ve been studying. I took up anatomy, I tried to train myself to see threedimensionally, which I hadn’t been very good at. My construction I felt wasn’t very good, and so on, and so on. I was looking at the work of other artists, not only Buscema, but Kirby and Gil Kane and this one and that one… and it’s been a constant process of learning, which maybe is one reason I can keep doing it. It makes it interesting. I keep trying new methods, and new this and new that… to try to get better. And meanwhile I’ve seen the whole field change, two new generations from the people that I knew.

It’s interesting, because when I look at some of the current art, the characters don’t look like humans to me. The faces look more like designs of faces than faces. Yet, if you take a page by the new artists and put it up against the old artists, the new page looks a lot more alive and interesting, in a way, and the old page looks dull and old-fashioned. To me, it does, at any rate. So it’s an interesting thing; the whole world has changed, and I say, “What am I still drawing for? What am I trying to learn?”

It’s all passed me. It’s all gone….

RT: Come on, Larry, we can’t end on that note! Doing something successfully for thirteen years, you must have learned something.

LIEBER: Let’s put it this way: Now, when Stan asks me to draw something new, I don’t get as nervous. I used to say, “Oh my God, how do I draw this! The guy is on the wall, and he’s doing this, and he’s doing that, and he’s carrying Mary Jane, and… how the hell do you…?”

And now it’s “I’ll do it! I’ll figure it out!”

RT: Good for you!

LIEBER: So, I feel more confident. Also, I feel closer to Stan since I’ve been doing SpiderMan than I was before, in a way.

Which is good, because doing a strip, you don’t get much feedback. If I get a fan letter, half the time they’re just asking for a sketch or an original daily or a signature.

But Stan is the only one who really looks at my stuff, and if I do anything good, he appreciates it. He’ll look at a strip and say, “Well, I know that must’ve been hard,” or he’ll say, “Gee, that’s a good expression you’ve got on that girl; you ought to be directing movies,” or something like that. It’s been a nice working relationship all these years.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

131

132

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt presents—

133 An Alter Ego Collection Vol. 2 Extra!

The “Found” Spirit Section W e very definitely wanted to reprint the two preceding pages prepared by Michael T. Gilbert in this Collection—as well as the short piece by Ye Editor which appears on pp. 136-137.

However, we aren’t re-presenting the five-page 1966 Spirit story itself, because Denis Kitchen, on behalf of the Will Eisner Estate, has

[Spirit story & art ©2006 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

informed us that DC Comics intends to reprint it as part of its excellent ongoing Spirit Archives. So we’re featuring just a tantalizing foretaste of panels from that epoch-marking tale below—and, on the following two pages, some additional Eisner art that wasn’t in A/E V3#2….

134

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt presents—

Will Eisner––– A Man of Quality And Spirit

Wasn’t That Also The Name Of A Hitchcock Movie?

In the October 1938 issue of Quality’s Feature Funnies, writer/artist Will Eisner inaugurated a series called “Espionage”—later to be known as “Espionage, Starring Black X.” (The hero’s name was originally rendered as “Black Ace.”) Here, since a quasi-splash page was seen in A/E #12, are two story pages from that series, whose art style was clearly influenced (and what comic book wasn’t, in those days) by Milton Caniff’s newspaper strip Terry and the Pirates. Repro’d from photocopies of the original art, with thanks to Ethan Roberts. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

The “Found” Spirit Section

135

The Cristo Kids In early issues of Jumbo Comics, Eisner also wrote and drew part of an adaptation of Alexander Dumas’ novel The Count of Monte Cristo, before handing it over to an equally young Jack Kirby.

Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Ethan Roberts. [©2006 the respective copyright holders.]

I’ve Got You Covered (Above:) The original pencil-and-ink art to the cover of the 11th issue of Warren Publishing’s The Spirit magazine (Dec. 1975) was reprinted in an art catalog, and was sent to us by Jerry K. Boyd. The cover was then painted, with considerable detail added. The magazine itself contained reprints of vintage Spirit stories in black-&-white, with gray tones added. [©2006 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

The Spirit Meets The Wolfman (Left:) Eisner drew this sketch of his always hard-pressed hero for comics writer Marv Wolfman at a week-long comicon in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1985. With thanks to Marv—and to Denis Kitchen for permission to use this Spirit drawing. [©2006 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

136

Hark, the Herald Tribune Sings!

Hark, the Herald Tribune Sings!

A Look at a Very Special Issue of New York Sunday Magazine

by Roy Thomas [An Informational Addendum to What Has Gone Before]

B

y the start of 1966, the New York Herald Tribune was nearing the end of a long and colorful career as a daily newspaper, but it was still a force to be reckoned with.

The so-called New Journalism, for example, was represented in its pages by the irrepressible Tom Wolfe, whose 1965 article about Hugh Hefner’s life style and revolving round bed had made a strong impres-

sion on neo-Manhattanite R.T. (not to mention a lot of other people).

The paper’s Sunday supplement magazine New York, in fact, would—after the Herald Trib itself folded its U.S. tents a few years later, leaving only its famed International edition— spin off into a separate and influential monthly magazine.

But on Sunday, January 9, 1966, as documented earlier by Michael T. Gilbert, New York discovered comic books in general… and The Spirit in particular.

Will Eisner—“reasonably young and still reasonably grand,” in Marilyn Mercer’s pithy phrase—in 1965.

“The Great Comics Revival,” heralded the Trib’s cover, although the photo there was merely of a New York skyline.

There were six comics-oriented pieces in that landmark issue, and all but three of them—articles on the campy Batman TV show set to debut the very next night, and on the upcoming Broadway musical It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s SUPERMAN, set for a March 29 opening, and the infamous Lee-Kirby interview reprinted in The Jack Kirby Collector #18—had at least a tangential connection with Will Eisner’s quirky plainclothes super-hero, who had been out of the public limelight for a decade and a half.

The magazine’s lead article, accompanied by a photo of “Batman” reading a newspaper on the subway, was written by cartoonist/satirist Jules Feiffer, whose groundbreaking 1965 book The Great Comic Book Heroes had made writing about old comics almost respectable in some circles. His “Pop-Sociology” listed Jerry Siegel, Bob Kane, Jack Cole, and Will Eisner (“authors” of Superman, Batman, Plastic Man, and The Spirit, respectively), as “the writers who influenced me,” in contrast to the usual list of respectable men of letters such as “Blake, Lawrence, Emerson, and Whitman.” Simply stated, Feiffer’s theme was: “To know the true temper of a nation’s people, turn not to its sociologists, but to its junk.” He maintains that “there is room, important room, for junk in our culture… But good Lord, let’s not make it respectable!”

Nowhere in Feiffer’s article, however, does the playwright of Little Murders and the future screenwriter of Carnal Knowledge bother to mention that he was once Eisner’s assistant on the weekly Spirit strip.

The Spirit just goes on… and on… and on. Roy Thomas’ wife Dann bought this cover for him because of his own love-hate relationship with his aracari toucan, Gonzo. [1990 Kitchen Sink Spirit #67 comics cover ©1999 Will Eisner; from the collection of R.T.]

That was left to his and Eisner’s onetime colleague, Marilyn Mercer, who may well have been the catalyst for getting the old

Hark, the Herald Tribune Sings!

137

gang together again in New York.

Marilyn Mercer continued a distinguished career as a New York writer and editor. She was an editor at Glamour magazine through the early 1970s. If we (or Will) knew where she is today, we’d have tried for an update.

Does any one of our readers, perchance, know her whereabouts?

The first page of her article “The Only Real Middle-Class Crimefighter” basically serves to introduce the five-page Spirit story you have just read.

Mercer, it seems, worked for Eisner between 1946 and 1948, along with Jules Feiffer, in a five-man shop at 37 Wall St., where they turned out a weekly Spirit section, including the lesser “Lady Luck” and “Mr. Mystic” backup strips.

The 1965 New York City mayoral campaign itself has long since faded into the mists of local history, since the victorious candidate—43-year-old “maverick Republican” (i.e., a Democrat in all but name) John V. Lindsay— did not go on to bigger and better things nationally, as pundits who hopefully compared him to the late John F. Kennedy predicted.

Lindsay presided over the Big Apple for a couple of terms, then drifted slowly into the footnotes. So did his campaign slogan: “He’s fresh while everyone else is tired.” (It sounded a lot

“As I remember it,” she wrote, “I was a writer and Jules was the office boy.

As Jules remembers it, he was an artist and I was the secretary. Will can’t really remember it very clearly. It is his recollection that Jules developed into an excellent writer and I did a good job of keeping the books.

Neither one of us could, by Eisner standards, draw.”

Michael T. Gilbert did this illo for the 1990 San Diego Comicon book, in celebration of The Ms. Mercer had recentSpirit’s fiftieth anniversary. [The Spirit ©1999 Will Eisner] ly discovered that Eisner was currently living in New better in ’65, honest.)

York, turning out PS, a monthly maintenance manual for the U.S. Ironically, one of two men he defeated, diminutive city comptroller Army. Given the growing notoriety of comic books in the aftermath of Abe Beame, was elected mayor in the 1970s, as Lindsay’s Democratic a 1965 story in Newsweek (as well as the Spirit episode reprinted in successor.

Feiffer’s book), Eisner had been getting requests to revive The Spirit, but was reluctant to do so. Mercer was less willing to take “no” for an Even more ironically: Of the trio of 1965 mayoral hopefuls, today answer: only the Conservative candidate—William F. Buckley, Jr., the tart-

“Couldn’t, I asked, the middle-class crimefighter come back? The old tap dancer [Eisner] looked doubtful, although he allowed that a West Coast television outfit had been after him with that very request.

‘It would be fun,’ he said. ‘The Spirit to me is like an old mistress— you hate her, but you still have a yen for her.’”

tongued editor of the National Review, host of TV’s Firing Line, and author of bestselling non-fiction and spy thrillers—might still be recognized by a statistically significant percentage of people if he walked down the street in broad daylight.

Far as I can recall, Buckley was never elected to anything.

Long story short: Eisner drew his first new Spirit story in fourteen years, which led to all those Spirit comics from Harvey and Warren and Kitchen Sink and all those wonderful Eisner graphic novels which have come our way since.

The New York effort, incidentally, was a rare black-&-white Spirit story, which was introduced by a typeset paragraph on the preceding page:

Such are the vicissitudes of life.

Will Eisner and The Spirit, too, are still very much with us, and we thank Mr. E. most sincerely for yielding to Michael T. Gilbert’s and Alter Ego’s blandishments by allowing us to reprint the foregoing “lost” Spirit section for the first time ever.

“Now that Mayor Lindsay has been safely inaugurated, Will Eisner reveals how The Spirit returned from Limbo to combat backstage skulduggery during the recent campaign.”

Who knows?

Just to bring things full circle— maybe one of these years Alter Ego will even be up for an Eisner award.

(Lindsay’s inauguration had taken place only eight days earlier, on New Year’s Day, 1966.

So had the onset of the usual everysecond-year citywide strike of subways When he saw the two-page preface MTG had prepared for his 1966 Spirit story, the effervescent Mr. Eisner responded in his customary manner— and buses. Call it an omen.) with a cartoon. [art ©1999 Will Eisner]

If so, we hope we do at least as well as William F. Buckley, Jr.

138

Fandom’s FAN-tastic Past!

Fandom ’s FAN-tastic Past... from the ’60s to the ’90s Photos and Other Artifacts of the Founders of Comics Fandom Commentary by Bill Schelly

I

f few people once thought that old comic books would ever be sought after as prized items, fewer still ever anticipated that photographic images of the early gatherings of comics fans would be treasured as they are today—let alone that these photos, often taken with early portable cameras “on the fly,” are studied like rare artifacts of an ancient culture.

Almost forty years have passed since Jerry Bails set in motion the twin wheels that became comics fandom and Alter Ego. Before this, no one except the late Don Thompson seems to have imagined that a fandom for admirers of comic art could exist apart from science-fiction fandom—let alone that it would become a self-sustaining phenomenon, with sufficient impetus to propel us into the next millennium.

Such photos provide a portal to a time before anyone had heard of price guides, autograph fees, or signed editions—or the word “comicon”! In the early 1960s, just bringing together a handful of fans from different cities was an unbridled thrill. A new fraternity of comics aficionados was busy being born.

Or, as a well-known troubadour of the day sang, “The times, they are a-changing!”

Let us begin our travels back in time with…

Spring 1963. Bill J. (“Biljo”) White was visited at his new home in Columbia, Missouri, by fan-artist Ronn Foss, who showed him a Grass Green drawing which inspired Biljo to launch his own super-hero, The Eye. (Ronn and writer Drury Moroz’ creation, The Eclipse, would debut in the Foss-edited A/E #5, which was at the printer even as Ruth White snapped this photo.)

In the cinder-block “White House of Comics” built in his backyard to house his collection of rare comics and art, Biljo showed Ronn the original Kubert cover of The Brave and the Bold #35.

Only a few days later, Biljo hosted the first face-to-face meeting of A/E cofounders Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas. This photo appeared postage-stamp size in Voice of Comicdom #4 (Apr. 1965) from Golden Gate Publishers. Reproduction is far from ideal, but it remains the only photo of the three and their ladies together.

(L-to-R: Roy Thomas, Linda Rahm, Jerry & Sondra Bails, Biljo & Ruth White.) Surprisingly, Biljo also has home movie footage of the visits of Ronn, Jerry, and Roy!

[Above] As Jerry and Sondra examine the White House treasures, can you identify the pieces of original art adorning the walls?

(Biljo ruefully informs us he has parted with most of this artwork in the ensuing years.)

[At right] “Fannish Love in Bloom.”

Ronn Foss and Illinois fan Coreen Casey married in 1965 and co-edited the fanzine Pandora: The Romance of Adventure. Their own romance produced two talented children, Scott and Alexandra, now grown and living in Oregon.

Fanzine writer Glen Johnson lounges on the porch of Magnus artist Russ Manning in 1964, soon after assuming editorship of The Comic Reader from Jerry Bails. Then a school teacher, Glen now makes his home in Brigham City, Utah.

Fandom’s FAN-tastic Past!

139

Like other cities across the country, Chicago spawned its own comics club in response to the fan movement spearheaded by Alter Ego, Comic Art, Xero, and a few other early fanzines. The 1962 World Science Fiction Convention held in the Windy City also helped bring area comics fans together.

Don Glut (later the writer of novelization of The Empire Strikes Back and creator of Dr. Spektor, et al., for Gold Key) and his friend Dick Anderson (right) flank Forrest J Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, at the ’62 ChiCon. Forry’s probably displaying a copy of Don’s movie fanzine Shazam!

[Above] Many out-of-towners were drawn to Chicago’s fan meetings. (L-to-R:) Bob (Keith) Greene, Bob Butts, Alex Almaraz, Chuck Moss, Russ Keeler, and Larry Raybourne. Those who visited Ross and Larry in Cleveland never failed to be shocked upon meeting their pet python!

[Left] Don Glut was known for his Captain America costume, but here’s a rare look at him garbed as another Golden Age hero. Yet another publicity shot for his fanzine Shazam!?

{Above] Members of the Chicago Comics Club, 1964. (L-to-R:) Ed Navarrete, Bob Noga, Paul Thompson, Greg Feldoman, Ronn Foss, Ann Foss, Ross Kight (behind Ann), Marti Beck, Bill Placzek, John-somebody (behind Bill), and (kneeling) Alex Almaraz.

[Left] The Eclipse (created by Drury Moroz & Ronn Foss; TM 1999 Bill Schelly)

[Left] Later Warren/Marvel/DC writer Doug Moench at a mid-’60s meeting of the Chicago Comics Club. Like just about everyone else, Doug published his own fanzine, called Review. Copies are as scarce as hen’s teeth!

[Right] Bill (then Billy) Placzek and Ed Navarrete pose with some vintage comics, circa 1964. Bill had been given a huge collection by a family friend, and his small attic couldn’t accommodate many people at one time, lest someone step on a vintage issue!

140

Fandom’s FAN-tastic Past!

The Alley Tally Party, held at the Bails’ Detroit homestead on March 21-22, 1964, was the first sizable gathering of comics fans from a multi-state area. Nineteen fans from as far away as Nebraska and Ohio gathered to count the 1963 Alley Award ballots. This meeting is recounted in detail in my book The Golden Age of Comic Fandom, but to the best of my knowledge, none of the photos on this page has ever been fully published before.

The Tally’s host, the debonair (and rail-thin!)

Jerry G. Bails, holds a copy of his Alter-Ego #4, which cover-featured Alley Oop, since, being a caveman, he was “obviously” one of the earliest possible “superheroes.” At least, that had been Roy Thomas’ reasoning in naming the fandom awards the Alleys.

Grass Green poses with the original redwood Alley Award carving by Ronn Foss, and some plaster duplicates painted gold and silver (for pro and fan awards). Photo by Chuck Moss.

[Left] The Human Cat (TM 1999 Richard “Grass” Green) [Below left] The Viper (TM 1999 Ronald E. Foss)

[Above] Arrivals include fanzine editors Bob Butts (Fan-to-Fan), Jim Rossow (Countdown), and Ronn Foss (A/E, Comicollector). (That’s Grass Green half-cropped on the left.)

[Left] Talliers in Jerry’s basement gather around Don Thompson (center), who keeps track of the votes on a handy chalkboard. (P.S.: Maggie T. was there, too.)

[Right] Day Two of the Alley Tally saw a surprise appearance by Rocket Man—actually Ronn.

Fandom’s FAN-tastic Past!

Flash forward more than a third of a century—to the 1997 Fandom Reunion Luncheon held during the Chicago Comicon. The Pine Grove Restaurant was the site for a gathering that included six participants of 1964’s Alley Tally Party, as well as numerous other members of Fandom Past:

Jerry Bails and wife Jean are obviously having a good time. Or maybe those smiles are because Jerry had recently retired from his teaching post at Wayne State University?

(L-to-R:) Roy Thomas, J.E. (Jeff—“Not the Bone Guy”) Smith, Tony Isabella, Bob Ingersoll. The latter pair would soon collaborate on the novel Captain America: Liberty’s Torch; both write popular columns for The Comics Buyer’s Guide. Jeff presented Roy with a beautiful color poster of his Bestest League cover from that first 1961 issue of A/E.

Longtime Chicago fan Ron Massengill meets up with artist/writer Jerry Ordway, who began his professional career in the early 1970s with his zine Okay Comix.

Dann Thomas (Roy’s better half, or maybe 2/3), Yours Truly, and CBG’s Maggie Thompson—with Y.T. shamelessly plugging his and Roy’s then-forthcoming Best of Alter Ego volume.

A Jerry Ordway Captain Marvel sketch done for J.E. Smith at the con, as seen in the latter’s one-shot Reunion fanzine Fandom Come. [Art ©1999 Jerry Ordway; Captain Marvel c 1999 DC Comics.]

141

142

Fandom’s FAN-tastic Past!

As a wraparound cover for his Fandom Come special, J.E. Smith drew no fewer than 29 super-heroes created by fans for fanzines, from the ’60s through the ‘90s. Next issue, we’ll present the key to who’s who. [©1999 J.E. Smith and their respective creators.]

Mike Touhey, who assisted Jerry with production on A/E #2-3 in 1961, holds up the original ditto master (i.e., the original art!) to #3’s cover.

Howard Keltner and Grass Green.

Howard, one of early fandom’s Texas Trio which published StarStudded Comics, had been seriously ill for some time, but was determined to make the trip from Chicago to meet his one-time collaborator Grass, Jerry Bails, and other fans he had known for years—but never before met. Sadly, Howard passed away a year later, leaving as his legacy a monumental Index to Golden Age Comic Books.

Jon E. Park, a ‘90s fan who came to the luncheon with Jeff Smith, generously volunteered to give Roy and Maggie a ride back to the Rosemont Convention Center— and later recalled that experience in this cartoon. [Art from Fandom Come ©1997

by Jeff Smith.]

Others who attended the 1997 Fandom Reunion Luncheon but aren’t shown in these pages included: Reva Keltner, Jay Lynch, Bob Beerbohm, Ray Bottorff Jr., Dwight Decker, Jim Engel, Mark Heike, Russ Maheras, Bob Butts, Mark Heike, Mark Edmunds, Gary Carlson, Ed DeGeorge, Jim Rossow, Joe Sarno, Joel Thingvall, Mike Tiefenbacher, and John Canfield. In all, 33 fans got together for these two hours, to re-visit those memorable days of fandom’s first decade.

No one who attended will ever forget this magical event.

[NOTE: Our thanks to Russ Maheras for many of the Reunion Luncheon photos, and to J.E. Smith and Jon Park and Jerry Ordway for permission to use material from Fandom Come.]

re: Letters to the Writer/Editor

143

Dear Roy, Regarding your exhaustive comments on your collaborations with Neal Adams over the years, I must add my thanks. Although I don’t pretend to know what was really going on behind the scenes, I thought I found too many inconsistencies in his interview in Comic Book Artist #4 to take his comments at face value. I wrote a letter to CBA pointing out the obvious bias of the interviewer toward his subject and his failure to follow up contradictory statements. You addressed those very contradictions in such a way as to leave the least offense.

I think you’re in a unique position to clear up a lot of misconceptions and conjecture about how things were really done at Marvel (and heck, maybe even at DC, too!) during the ’60s and ’70s, and although I don’t expect you to harp on it constantly, I would like to see you bring your experience to bear when it’s appropriate.

Pierre Comtois 18 Desrosier St. Lowell, MA 01850 Of course, anybody who writes a piece attempting to “clear up… misconceptions and conjecture” opens the door for someone to disagree with him/her, but that’s as it should be. Often, there isn’t a real conflict, merely a desire on all sides to learn the truth behind an event in comics history. Can we ever reach our goal 100%? No. But on some occasions we can, perhaps, come closer than on others.

Joe Gallagher’s cover for All-Star Comics #24 (Spring 1945), as rendered by Al Dellinges. [JSA ©1999 DC Comics.]

Because the issue we refer to in shorthand as “V3#1” was published before “V2#5” (which of course was part of Comic Book Artist #5), we trust readers will forgive us if we include letters to both in this letters section. Onward: When Bill Schelly first executed the title illustration for “The Stan Lee Roast,” advance copies were sent to several of the participants. A few days later, we received this fax from The Smiling One:

Hi, Roy, I just wanted to say I’m looking forward to the All-Star Companion. I’ve been a fan of the JSA since I was nine and bought JLA #113 in 1974. All-Star Squadron is my favorite series of all time (with Infinity, Inc. a close second). I periodically re-read it every few months. 1983-84 is my favorite period, especially the JSA stories you wrote, including the 1984 Annual. I hope you do more work with DC’s Golden Age characters.

One of my favorite characters ever is the Golden Age Fury [from Young All-Stars]—she just rocked! Aside from whatever Goyer & Johns decide to do with her character, I was wondering what your original plans were concerning “Whatever Happened to the Golden Age Fury?” I don’t know why, but I just love that character. I always assumed the Furies of myth abducted Helena after she conceived her daughter and maybe kept her in stasis, until somehow Helena escaped, gave birth, and took the child to Joan Dale. I think it’s one of comics’ greatest unsolved mysteries.

Mike Bise via e-mail

144

re: Letters to the Writer/Editor

One which will not be solved by any current creative team, Mike. May Ye Editor be perfectly frank? Since, as the co-creator of the All-Star Squadron/Young All-Stars concepts, he is ready, willing, and able to write new exploits of same anytime DC gives the okay, and has submitted plans for such to DC editors at various times, he summarily rejects the validity of anything done by others with those concepts. Does that help you imagine how he feels about others’ plans for Fury, Jade, or whoever... or about what’s been done to the heroes of Infinity, Inc. over the years?

If it’s desired to utilize heroes/concepts a co-creator conceived while he’s still around, ’twould seem that he, not others should write the stories. Ye Editor was reminded recently of how co-creator Bob Haney was denied a chance to script a new Metamorpho series a few years back, so that a young “cutting-edge” talent could do it; the new version sank without a trace—and deserved to, just on general principles.

Ye Editor certainly has no grudge against DC (for which he has worked off and on since 1980, or actually since 1965); but this is one area where few companies these days—and we don’t mean just DC and Marvel—have their editorial heads screwed on straight with regard to respect for creators. But, as long as readers don’t object, such policies will continue.

Dear Mr. Thomas, Through a mishap by the comics shop, I didn’t receive issue #3 [of Vol. 2] until after issue #4, thus reading your response to Neal Adams’ recollections of his and your collaborations at Marvel before reading Mr. Adams’ interview. One thing Mr. Adams said in regard to his Thor issues was that Stan Lee asked him what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to do a story about Thor and Loki switching bodies. The stories which Neal illustrated were Thor #180 and #181.

But—that story was a three-part story, which had started in issue #179, by Lee and Kirby! In #179 Loki had a clay model made that would switch personalities from one body to another. Balder and Sif were searching for Thor and ended up battling the ThorLoki until he persuaded him that he was actually Thor. I haven’t seen this comic since I was a kid, but I remember the story.

Thelmon Baggan 710 East 60th St. Long Beach, CA 90805 Thanks for the information, Thelmon. We’d forgotten the lead-in in Thor #179 as thoroughly as Neal seems to have.

Dear Roy, Irwin Hasen produced a number of strips for Robert Kanigher: “General Little,” “Khaki-Yaks,” “Route-step O’Malley.” These appeared in All-American Men of War, G.I. Combat, Our Army at War, Our Fighting Forces, and Star-Spangled War Stories, 1952-57. In addition to all of the above, Irwin also drew the covers for Wonder Woman and produced all the issues of Here’s Howie in the same period.

As wonderful as all of the above are, I’m most partial to the delightful “Chicken Hearted Hare” he did for Yosemite Sam, his scifi/fantasy cover I published on Revolver, RK’s sparkling little dream sequence starring Honcho the Wonder Dog in Frisky Frolics, and his work in The Comics!

Ever enthusiastic, Hasen is always energetic and entertaining.

Robin Snyder Bellingham, WA

Another page of Jerry Ordway pencil roughs from Infinity, Inc. #10 (1983), this one showing the original Wonder Woman fighting Nuklon, and Infinity’s Fury fighting the Golden Age Atom.

[Art ©1999 Jerry Ordway; characters ©1999 DC Comics.]

Irwin Hasen tells us all the “filler” humor strips you mention were done before he was summarily detached from DC in the early/mid-’50s.

So the name of one feature was “Route-step O’Malley,” not “Round-step,” eh? Thanks for straightening us out. Guess it’s superfluous to point out that Ye Editor was classified “1-Y” by his Manhattan draft board during the late ’60s, huh? (And A/E strongly recommends Robin’s The Comics! See information elsewhere in this issue.)

Dear Roy, In Alter Ego V2#4 you said the first official naming of the KreeSkrull War was, per Avengers #97 cover copy, “The Skrull vs. Kree War.” That may not be so. Re-reading Conan the Barbarian #14 today, I came across the Mighty Marvel Checklist entry for Avengers #97, and it clearly promises “The cataclysmic conclusion of the Kree-Skrull War!” So, if the Checklist saw print before the comic, you nailed it the first time.

Steve Billnitzer via e-mail

re: Letters to the Writer/Editor

145

Sonuvagun! Since the cover of Avengers #97 was drawn (and thus its cover copy was written) at the eleventh hour or even later, it’s quite probable that the Checklist entry you mention was written first—and most likely by Ye Editor, who was handling those chores for Stan Lee by that time. Still, we were clearly still ambivalent, at best, about the name of the interstellar conflict. But thanks for the research!

Dear Roy: In A/E Vol. 2, #5, in discussing the American Airlines giveaway that featured Bob Kane, Sheldon Moldoff states: “I think there was an article in Comic Book Marketplace about a little giveaway that he did for [American Airlines]. He described to the interviewer how he worked up this giveaway. Well, he didn’t do any work on it. I did it.”

Rarely seen Neal Adams art from the French satirical magazine, Fluide Glacial #80.

[Courtesy of Daniel Tesmoingt; art ©1999 Neal Adams.]

I wrote the article that appeared in the July 1997 (#49) of CBM. I did not interview Bob Kane for it, but wrote it based on my own speculations of how it might have come about: First, the time period, 1966, would have been in the early era of the “New Look.” It’s my understanding that Kane was still doing some penciling at that time, and to me, the art had an “early Kane” look. Second, it just didn’t look like Moldoff to me. Third, it was my opinion that Kane’s enormous ego would have led him to do the work himself for something that would be seen by a wider, more adult audience.

However, since Kane signed every damn piece of Batman art of the period, it’s sometimes hard to know for sure. If Shelly says he drew it, then so be it.

Those who’ve seen this piece may agree with me, though, that it is quite interesting and very collectible. In the piece Kane tours two young boys around New York. In one panel he takes them to a studio and says, “This is where I draw Batman and Robin for the comic books.” In one fell swoop, he ignores the Robinsons, Schwartzes, Sprangs, Moldoffs, and so many others. At that time, Infantino and other new artists were adding to the canon, but Kane was clearly taking full credit for every Batman panel ever drawn.

Lynn Wooley 2805 Creek Side Drive Temple, TX 76502 Thanks, Lynn. We know only too well that getting credits straight is a difficult task. What’s amazing isn’t that things occasionally get mis-credited—but that so much stuff gets credited right!

Left and below: The really secret origins of The Joker and The Penguin, as narrated in Real Fact Comics #5 (1947). Other panels from this kurious klassic were shown in A/E V2#5. With thanks to Arlen Schumer.

[Art by Winslow Mortimer; ©1999 DC Comics.]

“It Was Only Starman I Paid Attention To!”

A Conversation with Jack Burnley Conducted & Edited by Roy Thomas Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

A

s a kid in the late 1940s, I ran across an “old” (i.e., 1942) copy of Superman #19 at my grandparents’ farm. Inside were advertised the covers of other DC comics—including All-Star Comics #13, wherein the Justice Society were “Shanghaied into Space.” I spent years yearning to see the comic that went with that ad. But it would be more than a decade before I’d see it—or would learn that the artist of that stunning cover (and, as it happened, of quite a few pages inside) was one Jack Burnley… who was also responsible for some of the most beautiful Superman, Batman, and Starman artwork ever done, including much of the 1940s Superman and Batman newspaper comic strips.

In the final, 150th issue of his pace-setting Comics Interview magazine in 1995, David Anthony Kraft presented a lengthy talk with the artist, ably conducted by Lou Mougin, and I urge readers to seek out a copy. I was tempted to reprint it here, with Dave’s permission, but decided that, because I had a few questions of my own, it would be better to accept Jack Burnley’s kind offer to be interviewed again.

However, Lou’s interview for CI blazed the trail I followed, and I hereby acknowledge that debt, with thanks.

Thus, on July 10, 1999, I phoned Mr. Burnley (who quickly insisted I call him “Jack,” which I found a bit difficult, given my upbringing) and taped the following interview.—RT.

ROY THOMAS: You were born Harden Burnley. How did you get “Jack” out of that?

JACK BURNLEY: Well, my middle name is John, so I used Jack.

Harden Burnley’s a family name. When I first became a syndicated sports cartoonist with King Features, I was eighteen. That sports cartoon, which was syndicated to the Hearst newspapers, or to any newspaper throughout the country, used the name “Harden Burnley” for a year or two. But then I had them change the byline to just “Burnley.”

By two years before I went into comics, I was using the name “Jack Burnley” professionally.

RT: Where were you born?

BURNLEY: New York City. We lived in a large apartment house on Riverside Drive, just across from Grant’s Tomb. It’s been torn down, and now there’s the Riverside Church there.

RT: You were born in 1911. Your older brother, Depree, who was called Ray….

BURNLEY: I’d like to correct that, if I may. His name was Dupree.

With a “u.” It’s pronounced “dew-pray.” It’s a French name. He didn’t use “Ray” until he went into comics with me.

RT: I understand both of you got into comics around the same time, in 1939.

BURNLEY: He never settled into any particular art line. He was interested in fine arts. He liked the French impressionists, and he liked to do This page: Superman, Batman, and Starman—the Big Three of Burnley’s comic book career. [Superman-Batman illo ©1999 Jack Burnley; Superman, Batman, Starman ©1999 DC Comics.]

Jack Burnley

times after that. I didn’t see his actual fights—I was too young—but I saw him work out in the gymnasium.

illustrations, but he was never really successful. When I left King Features and went into comics, I took him with me, and he worked as my assistant.

He did penciling and inking of some of the backgrounds.

RT: Jim Steranko’s History of Comics says you got into sports cartoons professionally because your sister took you up to King Features.

RT: He was never interested in a separate comics career for himself?

BURNLEY: Her name was Martine. My other sister, Elizabeth—who goes by the name of Betty—did the lettering for several years.

BURNLEY: He just got into it with me; he didn’t have a regular job otherwise, and it just turned out he was able to become a successful inker. But that was only through the association with me. He knew nothing about comics otherwise.

RT: So you were an artistic family.

RT: Comics Interview mentioned that some of your influences included one of my favorites, George Herriman, who did Krazy Kat, and Billy DeBeck on Barney Google… also Alex Raymond on Flash Gordon, and William Gould….

BURNLEY: Will Gould was a sports cartoonist. He spent a A past master holding a past masterpiece: This photo, taken a few years ago, shows year at King Features before I Jack Burnley holding a copy of the 1940 edition of World’s Fair Comics—the first time Superman and Batman appeared on a comic cover together, and containing took over the job. He later did his first Superman story. a Dick Tracy type of strip called Red Barry. But his influence on me was only as a sports cartoonist. apprenticeship.

RT: You also mentioned Bill Ripley….

RT: Was it your idea, BURNLEY: He was originally a sports cartoonist with the New York or your sister’s, to Globe in the ’20s. I was still a sports cartoonist when he started doing show your cartoons?

Believe It or Not, which started out as a sports cartoon. But it became so Were you pushing popular that he dropped the sports part. this, or was it just something she RT: You did a lot of boxing cartoons. Was boxing a special favorite, or saw and said, did you like all kinds of sports?

“People ought BURNLEY: When I was quite young, I was interested in boxing and to see this”? baseball. I’m one of the only persons around who can say they saw Ty BURNLEY: Cobb, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker, and of course Babe Ruth. I used to I wanted to go to ballgames at Yankee Stadium; we weren’t living too far from there. be a cartoonIt was the old Polo Grounds where the Yankees played, and from the ist!

I wanted time I was around nine or ten years old, I used to go there, sitting in the to get out of bleachers. school! I felt I RT: The 1920s are often called “The Golden Age of Sports.” Do you could go right agree that it was a particularly golden time? in and start a comic strip BURNLEY: I think it was probably the most colorful time….

RT: You’ve said you saw Jack Dempsey fight.

BURNLEY: I saw him work out in an open air stadium, when he was training for a fight with Bill Brennan in 1921, and I saw him a number of

147

Jack Dempsey, heavyweight champion 19191927, as drawn by Jack Burnley.

BURNLEY: I guess. Martine had done some modeling for an illustrator who used to do work for The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, which had short stories with some illustrations. She showed an artist some of my cartoons when I was about thirteen. He liked them and suggested she take them to Jack Lait, who was an editor at King Features.

Lait liked the stuff. He said, “Just sit in the art department there, and do whatever you want. Watch the cartoonists work; eventually you’ll learn and go on from there.” It was just like an

148

Jack Burnley possibility Ham Fisher saw those strips, before he created Joe Palooka?

BURNLEY: That can’t be proved, but I had given some of those strips to Harry Hirschfield, the cartoonist. Hirschfield was a very good friend of Ham Fisher. Fisher at that time was a salesman, but he wanted to be a cartoonist. He’d go in to see Hirschfield often, and I’m sure he saw those strips. He might have claimed he already had the idea before he saw the strips, but it is a coincidence.

RT: Quite a coincidence. Did you remain a sports fan as you grew up, or did you just get more interested in drawing?

BURNLEY: I was a sports fan. Originally I was doing the humorous strips of the ’20s, not the adventure type of thing. I switched to sports cartooning, which would be more serious, not a cartoony thing, but an actual drawing of the athlete.

Burnley’s 1948 farewell to The Babe.

right off the bat. I was pretty pugnacious at that time.

RT: One of your cartoons they printed in Comics Interview was a “So long, old pal” to Babe Ruth.

I presume this was done when he died, around 1948?

BURNLEY: Yes. After I left comics in 1947, Hearst offered me a job as staff sports cartoonist for the Pittsburgh SunTelegraph. So that was easier for me than comics.

Comics were always a difficult thing for me.

RT: You also illustrated some Damon Runyon short stories for newspaper syndication….

BURNLEY: That was around ’37 or ’38, just about the time my sports cartoon was discontinued at King Features. My wife Dolores was a very good friend of Damon Runyon’s. She was a famous dancer and musicalcomedy actress. She was a big star in the ’20s. I recently wrote a book about her that you might be interested in seeing.

RT: I read mostly history and biography, so I’d love to read it.

RT: Well, you had to draw six pictures on every page….

BURNLEY: It was difficult, and I wanted to get out of it, so when I had the offer to go back to the newspapers, I took it.

RT: I was surprised to read in Comics Interview that you did up samples for a strip called Charlie and Joe, whose boxer hero had the last name “Palooka”— it was Charlie Palooka.

When was that?

BURNLEY: I was 15 or 16 at the time, so it would be around 1925 or 1926.

Anyway, it was before Joe Palooka.

RT: And you think there’s a

Illustrations by “the brilliant Hardin Burnley”—that’s “Jack” to us—done to accompany syndicated stories by Damon Runyon, today remembered primarily because of movies, including the musical Guys and Dolls, based on his fiction.

Jack Burnley

Gallery of sports and entertainment cartoons by Jack Burnley

149

150

Jack Burnley

Jack’s illustration of a Damon Runyon short story.

back in the early ’80s, in a comic called All-Star Squadron, which was set in 1942 and had Starman and other heroes in it. I did a whole issue almost entirely devoted to Starman’s origin; I had him inspired by seeing Batman in action. Not that it was necessarily a great story—probably neither is the new one—but that was the first origin ever done for Starman. I’ve read you did your first comic book work for the Hillman The artist and his lovely bride holding choice Burnley-drawn collectibles.

BURNLEY: It’s an authentic story of the Roaring ’20s, and she was right in the middle of it, and was involved in some very interesting stories. I’m not really interested in publication of the book; I just wanted to write a personal record.

RT: So you’ve written this book fairly recently, and you obviously wrote your sports cartoons. But you never had any desire to write any comic book stories?

BURNLEY: No, although I did write some of the Starman stories. Or, rather, I rewrote whole portions of some of them, particularly some of the early ones I didn’t like. For instance, Gardner Fox wrote some Starman stories later on, and I would change them, and he would get very mad and he refused to write any more.

Anyway, the first Starman story—I don’t know who wrote the script. I thought [DC editor] Murray Boltinoff did, but he didn’t remember doing it when I spoke to him much later. So I really don’t know who wrote the first script, but I didn’t like the last half of it, so I rewrote that.

Destined for stardom? The Astral Avenger (as he’d be called during the Silver Age) debuted in Adventure Comics #61 (April 1941), without benefit of origin. [©1999 DC Comics.]

RT: Well, now we know at least one writer of the first Starman story. He didn’t start out with an origin like most heroes.

BURNLEY: A friend of mine sent me some new stories in which they give him an origin.

RT: I wrote the first origin for Starman,

Gag cartoon from Jack’s newspaper days.

Jack Burnley

151

RT: Your only other comic book work that wasn’t for DC was evidently some sports cartoons for McKay from ’39 to ’45.

BURNLEY: McKay was associated with King Features. Bob Dunn, who was a cartoonist in King’s art department, was cutting out the main figures from a whole stack of my old sports cartoons, adding a couple of other cartoons around it, and selling it to McKay! McKay had a contract with King Features; their King Comics was just reprints of King Features stuff. I didn’t know what was going on until I sent a postcard to Dunn.

RT: DC didn’t mind that?

BURNLEY: I explained to them that I didn’t actually do any new drawings. I just pasted them up in different ways, put them together, and let my sister Betty do the lettering.

RT: I understand King Features had been your connection for getting to work for DC, too. Hadn’t DC editor Whitney Ellsworth worked for King Features?

BURNLEY: Yes. He knew who I was the minute I walked into DC, and he welcomed me with open arms. He said, “Great! Come on in!” He gave me a job without any question.

RT: The first super-hero you did there was Superman, so you started out right at the top… with the second World’s Fair Comics, the one for 1940.

A Burnley/Gardner Fox/Starman page from All-Star #9, reproduced from art being sold by Christie’s. Courtesy of Joel Thingvall. [©1999 DC Comics.]

company, but that it wasn’t published for two years?

BURNLEY: After I ended the sports cartoon, I was looking around for something to do. A friend at King Features, an editor named Chester Weil, suggested I go to a friend of his who was publishing comic books.

I don’t remember the name of the fellow or the outfit—I just remember that he was kind of an odd-looking, shifty fellow. That was when I first got my brother to help out. We made up a series called “Bullet Bob.” The publisher gave me a check, but I didn’t see the story printed for a long while. And then, a couple of years later, while I was at DC, I was surprised to see it come out—published by Hillman, in something called Miracle Comics. I don’t know whether the guy I sold it to was originally with Hillman, or whether he sold what he had to Hillman. The DC editor showed it to me and asked, “What are you doing, working on the side for somebody else?” I tried to explain it had been done a year or two before, but I don’t know if he believed me.

RT: Did DC discourage you from taking other work, even though you were technically a freelancer?

BURNLEY: I was not a freelancer. I wasn’t under contract, but I was on a regular salary.

RT: In that case, I guess they would get a little upset when they recognized your work.

BURNLEY: Sure. But “Bullet Bob” was just a one-shot, about six or eight pages.

BURNLEY: Right. That was really a historic issue in many ways. It was the first time Superman, Batman, and Robin were ever together in one scene—and the first time they were ever drawn by somebody other than their creators.

RT: The Shuster studio had nothing to do with your story?

Jack Burnley’s cover art to the historic 1940 edition of World’s Fair Comics, featuring Superman and the Dynamic Duo, together for the first time. [©1999 DC Comics.]

BURNLEY: Neither Shuster nor Kane had anything to do with me. I worked independently.

RT: Did they bear you any ill will because of this?

BURNLEY: They had nothing to say about it, because DC had the rights to the characters. They may have resented it, but they had to accept it.

RT: It’s odd that, when DC published its very welcome World’s Finest Comics Archives recently, it neglected to even mention the two World’s Fair Comics, even though they were the impetus for World’s Finest! A weird oversight. I’m a big fan of the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair.

Jack Burnley

153 You can see his first attempt at Superman wasn’t very good; it was fairly crude.

He did the figure of Superman on the cover of Macy’s Superman’s Christmas Adventure. But he soon got very good.

My great dream, though I was only born in 1940, would be to go to that fair.

I’ve collected lots of material about it. Did you ever get out to that fair?

BURNLEY: No. RT: You did a famous comic associated with the World’s Fair, but you never actually went?

RT: People like you, Fred Ray, Shelly Moldoff, Howard Purcell, Irwin Hasen… you were sought out by DC in the early ’40s to do covers. What do you think makes a good cover artist? What quality is it that a lot of other comic artists, who may be good at telling stories, don’t have when it comes to covers?

BURNLEY: That’s right.

And, you know, that issue also had the first Superman story I ever drew.

RT: You also did one of the first, if not the first, independent Batman stories that Bob Kane didn’t oversee in any way… although he still signed it, right?

BURNLEY: I don’t see why there should be much difference. Sometimes they even used a panel from the story as a cover. I don’t see why there should be some special quality for a cover artist.

BURNLEY: Yes. All the stuff I did was anonymous at that time, because Siegel and Shuster and Bob Kane did have the right to have their names on the strips.

RT: Didn’t Whitney Ellsworth do crude pencil sketches for you to follow when you drew covers for him?

RT: After that, I take it you started doing Superman and Batman stories occasionally in the regular comics, starting with Action #28, and some covers. Wayne Boring and others were working on Superman earlier than you, of course, but they weren’t doing independent “solo” work.

BURNLEY: Yeah. I wasn’t interested in thinking up ideas for covers. I did do the ideas for the covers of Starman, but I didn’t particFinal page of Jack’s first Superman story, Action Comics #28 (Sept. ’40). ©1999 DC Comics. ularly like doing it.

Ellsworth would just send me a very crude dummy pencil thing, showing what he wanted the figBURNLEY: Boring did draw Superman more realistically than Shuster ures doing, just getting the theme of the cover. did, but that was long after I had RT: Do you have any idea of how you came to be the artist on Starman? started doing those covers, Were you looking for some strip to do besides Superman and Batman? and Fred Ray was the second after me, but before BURNLEY: I didn’t care one way or the other what I did. But they Boring alone. decided they liked my work so much that they thought they could make RT: You and Fred Ray did some of the truly classic covers of the early ’40s.

another big feature out of a character drawn by me, and they had a conference. That was covered pretty well in the article that I did on Starman that was published in the Gold and Silver Age Annual by Overstreet, about five years ago.

BURNLEY: Several interviews have published lists of most of my covers. Fred’s stuff was similar to mine in many ways, but he came after me.

RT: I understand that the late science-fiction writer Alfred Bester wrote some of the Starmans. He was one of the best Green Lantern writers, too. Do you know which writer made up The Mist, Starman’s most memorable villain?

Preceding page: Jack Burnley’s art for the Macy’s department store giveaway, printed as a Sunday advertising supplement in the New York Journal American, November 24, 1940. [Superman ©1999 DC Comics.]

BURNLEY: I think it was Bester, but I’m not positive. I think he wrote the best Starman stories.

RT: Why do you think Starman, who was such a good-looking charac-

154

Jack Burnley position of advertising the name of an artist whom they wouldn’t let sign the other strips he drew!

Jack at the drawing board during his days in the newspaper business.

BURNLEY: One ad said, “We’re positive this feature will be as popular as Superman and Batman!”

RT: If anybody could ever really be that positive, we’d all be rich. As screenwriter William Goldman once famously wrote, “Nobody knows anything!”

BURNLEY: I wrote an article explaining the reasons why I think Starman failed for Robin Snyder’s magazine. It was later reprinted.

RT: Robin’s The Comics! is a fine publication. Very soon after you started Starman, you drew the introductions and conclusions to the Justice Society stories in three issues of All-Star Comics—#11 through #13. I presume you didn’t volunteer for such a backbreaking task.

BURNLEY: I didn’t volunteer for anything. Shelly Mayer, who edited All-Star, liked my work and asked Ellsworth for permission for me to do some of his All-Star features. Ellsworth said okay. But it got to be too much work, drawing all those characters!

ter—even if red and green don’t usually go together as colors except at Christmas—failed to catch on? DC obviously thought he’d be a big star, because as soon as he came along they booted another Adventure Comics hero called Hour-Man out of All-Star and put Starman into the Justice Society in his place. But somehow Starman never took off.

BURNLEY: They had high hopes for Starman. I’ve seen copies of other DC comics that had big ads for Starman, with my name in very big letters. One of the people who sent me those said they’d never seen any artist’s name featured that big in the old comics.

RT: That is odd, especially since you hadn’t signed any of your Superman or Batman work. So DC was in the

RT: You obviously felt each hero should look exactly the way he did in his solo stories, which was not the way the JSA chapters had been handled previously. In your three issues The Atom looked as if he’d been drawn by Bill Flinton, Hawkman by Shelly Moldoff, Dr. Mid-Nite and Johnny Thunder by Stan Aschmeier, and so forth. Of course, Starman was easy for you. But everybody looked as if he’d just walked out of his own strip.

BURNLEY: That’s what I tried to do, but it was too much hard work. Finally I got one script which had a splash page with a whole bunch of these characters all charging together in some big panorama, and I said, “That’s it! I’m not going to do any more of these!” So I told Ellsworth I was through with that.

“Take me back to Batman and Starman!”

This Batman and Robin re-creation features The Penguin— whom Burnley saw as a Jerry Robinson sketch before the villain appeared in a story. [Courtesy of David A. Stepp; art ©1999 Jack Burnley; Batman, Robin, Penguin ©1999 DC Comics.]

Jack Burnley

155

RT: Often in those days the covers had nothing to do with the stories inside. On All-Star, though, the covers always did have something to do with the stories. I was curious, since you worked with a number of editors, what you thought of some of them. Whitney Ellsworth, for example. A lot of people liked him, and a lot of people didn’t.

BURNLEY: Whitney was very, very nice to me all the time; we were quite friendly. In fact, he’d take my wife and me out to dinner at a steakhouse occasionally when we came in to the office. We were good friends.

RT: What about Shelly Mayer?

BURNLEY: He was always very pleasant to me; I never had any problems with him. He was kind of short-tempered, and tended to get into arguments with some other artists. But he never bothered me at all. I knew Jack Schiff well, too. The only one I didn’t like was Mort Weisinger. And I don’t think anybody liked him.

RT: You probably don’t know this, but I worked my first two weeks in comics for Weisinger. I was hired in 1965 to be his assistant editor on Superman. But after two weeks I left to go to work for Stan Lee at Marvel. I just couldn’t work for Weisinger, so I can understand your feelings.

BURNLEY: You had the same reaction I did. Any contact I had was unpleasant, so I just avoided him.

RT: What about some of the other editors of the early days, like Julius Schwartz or Robert Kanigher? Did you deal with them at all?

BURNLEY: I knew Julius Schwartz. I didn’t know Robert Kanigher.

Starman fights for hemispheric solidarity in wartime Bolivia! A caption has been cut off the bottom right of this page of original Burnley art from All-Star Comics #9 (Feb.-March 1942). [Courtesy of Joel Thingvall.

Script: Gardner Fox; art: Jack Burnley. ©1999 DC Comics.]

RT: Let’s see… you drew the JSA chapters in #11, where they all joined the armed services… #12 with the Japanese Black Dragons… and then #13, where they were gassed by Nazis and sent in rockets to other planets. So the next issue, #14—that must be the one you turned down! And it does indeed start out with a splash page of all nine heroes, counting Wonder Woman, all charging at the reader.

That was the one you didn’t want to do?

BURNLEY: I don’t know. But I was faithful to the rendition of each one, and that took some work!

RT: E. E. Hibbard drew the earliest JSA chapters in his own style. And the artist who took over the JSA with #14 was Joe Gallagher, who had a much cartoonier style than yours. You were the only one who ever made it look as if these eight or nine separate comics features had had a head-on collision. But it was very effective in its own way. I go on at length about that because All-Star is my favorite comic; I’m writing a whole book about it that will come out ere long. Your work is prominent in it, of course. In All-Star #13 the cover and splash page were the same drawing. You’d have done the splash page first, wouldn’t you, and then they decided to use it as the cover, as well?

BURNLEY: I’m not sure which came first. Usually the covers were done independently of the stories. There’s some confusion about my first Superman story in Action Comics, because the previous issue, before they printed my circus story, had a cover of Superman riding a lion or something, like with a circus.

Commissioned illustration.

[Batman ©1999 DC Comics.]

156

Jack Burnley

Another beautiful commissioned piece by Jack of the Caped Crusader. [Batman ©1999 DC Comics.]

RT: It’s interesting that DC didn’t then have anybody called “assistant editors” or “associate editors.” They were all called “editors.” Shelly Mayer was an editor, Julie Schwartz was an editor, but Julie worked for Mayer. Did you often work in the DC offices, or did you just come by to deliver work?

to any of the other comics.

RT: Did they send you copies of comics with your own work in them, or did you have to pick them up at the office?

BURNLEY: I never worked in the offices, in what they called the bullpen. I worked at home all the time, and I would either bring work in or send it in by my fatherin-law or my brother.

RT: So you didn’t know the other Batman artists, either—like Dick Sprang, Jerry Robinson, Winslow Mortimer?

BURNLEY: I would see Jerry Robinson whenever I would come into the office. He’d say hello, I’d say a couple of words. The only thing I remember is, one time he showed me a pencil drawing of The Penguin, and asked me what I thought of that character. That’s before The Penguin was introduced, and he’d done a pencil drawing of him. I don’t know whether he or Kane had originated the character. But I do remember him showing me the drawing.

RT: DC knew your brother Ray was working with you, didn’t they?

BURNLEY: Yes. He was on salary, too.

RT: Did you socialize much with other comics people?

BURNLEY: No. I didn’t know any of them at all. Just to say hello.

RT: Did you look at other comics, to see what else was being done in the comics industry?

Batman & Robin in the spotlight. Commission piece. [©1999 DC Comics.]

BURNLEY: I didn’t pay attention

BURNLEY: They’d send me proofs.

RT: Charlie Paris inked a few of

Jack Burnley

Great Sunday page by Jack featuring former Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent in his classic guise as Two-Face. [©1999 DC Comics.]

157

158

Jack Burnley

your covers. How did it happen that you ended up collaborating on a few covers?

before you sent it in, or did you always send the pencils in, and they’d decide if they wanted you to ink it?

BURNLEY: I didn’t collaborate with anybody. I sent my penciled stuff in, and they’d give it to whatever inker they wanted to do it.

BURNLEY: They would just send me the pencil dummy, and it was either understood I would ink the thing, or they would tell me just to pencil it and they’d take care of the inking. They found out I was pretty slow at doing both, but they liked my pencil work, the creative work, so they figured it’d work better if I just did the pencils and they had a fast inker do the inking.

RT: But didn’t you ink quite a few yourself?

BURNLEY: Yeah, most of the early ones. I didn’t ink many of them.

The penciler drew the drawing, the inker just executed it. With me particularly, I was penciling every detail. All the inker had to do was just follow it. He didn’t have any creative input at all.

RT: When you both penciled and inked, did you do the whole thing

Seeing stars all over again! In 1990 Burnley re-created his classic cover for Adventure Comics #67, Oct. ’41.

(Re-creation art ©1999 Jack Burnley; Starman ©1999 DC Comics.]

Jack Burnley RT: You’ve mentioned liking Alfred Bester’s writing on Starman.

Were there any other writers whose scripts you especially liked to illustrate?

bothered to get into the business of doing re-creations, as some artists from the 1940s have. You’ve said you prefer not to bother doing them, and you never go to comics conventions.

BURNLEY: I didn’t pay much attention to the scripts on Superman or Batman. It was only Starman I paid attention to.

BURNLEY: I never do. I’ve done maybe eight or ten recreations since I retired. But I haven’t done any drawing for the past four or five years.

One re-creation I did was the World’s Fair cover, which was auctioned off at Christie’s New York auction for $5000.

RT: Did you ever consider during that period the possibility of working for one of the other outfits, like Fawcett?

RT: But that clearly didn’t tempt you to do any more.

How did you first come into contact with comics fans?

Back in 1977 Jerry Bails and Craig Delich printed your first new Starman drawing in decades in their All-Star Comics Revue—the illustration you and they have been kind enough to let us print in color for the first time as one of this issue’s covers. Did they track you down?

BURNLEY: I was happy at DC. I didn’t want to switch.

They had the biggest outfit, anyway.

RT: During the mid-1940s you did several years’ worth of Superman and Batman newspaper comic strips. I could’ve asked you a lot about those, because it was such excellent work; but that was covered so well in the hardcover reprints that I decided not to. What do you think of the fact that they’ve collected all of your and other people’s Batman and Superman work in those lovely books over the past few years?

BURNLEY: They must have.

I didn’t contact them. Jerry asked me to do a re-creation of the All-Star characters. He wanted me to do a bunch of them, but I just did the drawing Jerry loaned you…

BURNLEY: It was nice to have them with a credit line.

RT: The Starman.

RT: I presume you don’t have copies of all those strips otherwise, or any of the original art from the strips or books?

BURNLEY: I had a number of black-&-white proofs of the Batman Sundays. But all the original art got lost over the years, unfortunately.

159

BURNLEY: …the Starman, and that’s it.

This page from the first All-Star issue (#11, June-July 1942) produced after Pearl Harbor shows Burnley’s penchant for drawing every JSA hero in the style of his regular artist.

The bottom quarter-inch, set off by a black line on the art from which this illustration was reproduced, was not printed in the comic; this page of original artwork has been valued as high as $11,500. [Courtesy of Joel Thingvall; ©1999 DC Comics.]

RT: So how did you decide after the war to get back into the newspaper business?

BURNLEY: As I told you, in ’47 I got a call from Hearst. Lou Green asked if I wanted to go back into sports cartooning, and I said yes.

He said, “Well, we have an opening for you in Pittsburgh,” and that was it.

RT: So after you quit comics, both comic books and strips, you did primarily sports cartoons. I notice that you retired from that in 1976, and that’s just about exactly when you would have turned 65. Did you just figure enough was enough?

BURNLEY: Oh, sure. I wanted to retire. I had no ambition to keep working in the art department. The sports cartoons were all over by that time.

RT: You must have done okay out of them, because you haven’t

RT: Is there anything else you’d like to say to close out this interview?

BURNLEY: Well, it may have been said before in other interviews, but I don’t think it was pointed out that I was the first to do both Superman and Batman completely independently of the creators, and the first to work on both newspaper strips, both the Sundays and dailies, and the first to do both Superman and Batman on both covers and in comic book stories.

RT: That’s quite a few firsts. Thank you… Jack. It’s been a pleasure talking with you.

[NOTE: In a near-future issue of Alter Ego Jack Burnley will share more of his reminiscences with us, written in his own hand. We can’t wait!]

How Marv Wolfman & Co. Saved (a Bit of) the Golden Age

160

You’ve Heard of the Book Titled “How the Irish Saved Civilization.” Now Read—

How Marv Wolfman and Co. Saved (a Bit of) The Golden Age

by Roy Thomas

W

e can’t get around it. We have to begin with what seems like an unabashed plug. And maybe it is:

In the works is a new book from TwoMorrows Publishing: The All-Star Companion, compiled by Ye Editor with the help of several other prominent fans of the Justice Society of America.

One of the highlights of that volume will be more than a dozen pages’ worth of art panels from a never-published JSA story written and drawn circa 1946: “The Will of William Wilson,” with script by JSA co-creator Gardner Fox, and art by Martin Naydel, Jon Chester Kozlak, Stan Aschmeier, and Paul Reinman.

The story of how so many pages of this story—and literally hundreds of other pages of Golden and even Silver Age art—came to be salvaged and preserved is virtually a comic book epic in and of itself.

It’s a story that deserves telling.

Circa 1967-68, a young New York fan named Marv Wolfman was just edging into the comic book field. Such scripting triumphs as Tomb of Dracula and The New Teen Titans still lay several years in his future. In the late ’60s he worked for a couple of summers as an “intern” (gopher) at DC Comics, performing whatever odd jobs needed doing around the offices.

One of which was to cut up original comic book artwork to prepare it for incineration.

For, believe it or not: Until the early 1970s, DC (and doubtless other companies, as well) routinely burned all original art once it had been printed, presumably so that no unscrupulous artist or writer (or editor!) could sell entire covers and stories to some Godless foreign land which might re-publish same without paying for the privilege.

Also incinerated on such occasions was unpublished artwork, which was often stamped “WRITTEN OFF”: i.e., DC had decided not to print it, either because a feature had been canceled or for some other reason.

Actually, we need to back up a little, because the

This “Written Off” page of a 1940s Dr. Mid-Nite story, most likely by Arthur Peddy (pencils) and Bernard Sachs (inks), is unusual in having four tiers rather than three, but was rescued during the episode recounted here. Only one piece at the bottom right was missing from the photocopies sent to A/E by Mark Hanerfeld. [Dr. Mid-Nite ©1999 DC Comics.]

How Marv Wolfman & Co. Saved (a Bit of) the Golden Age

161

Get a grip! Two Green Lantern panels by Paul Reinman from the long-lost Justice Society story. They and several more of GL—plus another dozen pages’ worth of this never-printed JSA tale—were printed in Roy Thomas’ and TwoMorrows’ All-Star Companion, Vol. 1—and still more will appear in Vol. 2, on sale in fall of 2006.

[Green Lantern ©1999 DC Comics.]

1967ish act of rescue heralded above wasn’t the first time Marv Wolfman, among others, had become engaged in saving original artwork from the flames of perdition.

A year or two earlier, Marv tells us: “Several fans and I were on one of DC’s regular Thursday afternoon tours when production manager Sol Harrison came wheeling a huge postal cart past us, filled with ‘Written Off’ artwork, mostly from the ’40s. He was bringing the pages to the building’s incinerator to destroy them; obviously, the small office DC had at the time was running out of space and they had to clear away room.

“Sol asked the fans on the tour if we wanted any of the art. As fans, we all knew artwork was important, even if the professionals didn’t. We all dove into the postal cart like Uncle Scrooge into his money bin and took everything we could, then scurried downstairs and traded in the building’s lobby.

“I had so many pages by the end of the day that I had to take a cab home from Manhattan to Flushing, Queens, which was very expensive for a kid. I don’t remember if every page was stamped “WRITTEN OFF,” but most were.

“The pages we got then were full pages, and uncut. I realized early on that I had gotten almost all the pages of a 12-page never-published Siegel and Shuster Superman story and managed to trade for the other pages. I still have that story and it has never been printed. The pages have “WRITTEN OFF” stamped on them, as well as editing notes which were never corrected in the story. It has an incredibly good splash page with a full-page Superman shot on it.

“Later, when I went to work for DC, I went through their library to try to trace the time period of that story. As best I could figure out, it must have been done about 1942. In 1947, I believe, the story was rewritten as a ten-page story and then redrawn by Wayne Boring and was published. Why the Siegel and Shuster version wasn’t used, I don’t know.

“It is called ‘Too Many Heroes!’”

CUT TO: The 1967-68 period, when Marv was an “intern” at DC. Part of his job, as directed by production manager Harrison, was to slice pages of artwork into several pieces—diagonally, from an upper corner to the lower opposite one—so that they would fit more easily into the incinerator chute. From time to time, however, Harrison would allow him to keep a small amount of artwork—as long as it was properly sliced first with the large paper-cutter, so that Marv would have only pieces of pages and panels, not whole pages, let alone whole stories.

Marv readily admits that, as soon as Sol left the room on other business, he immediately commenced to slice the pages he wanted to keep in a more creative way—horizontally—in between what were usually three rows (or “tiers”) of panels, rather than diagonally. That way, no panels were mutilated. If one just happened to save all three tiers on a normal page, one could eventually tape them together again, and have a complete page.

Marv says that Harrison returned once or twice, noticed him cutting the pages the “wrong” way and insisted that he got back to doing it the “right” way.

Naturally, as soon as he was left unattended, Marv went back to his preferred method. And more power to him.

“My hope,” Marv says, “was to preserve as much of this art as possible. Many of the 1940s pages [that exist today] exist only because they were rescued from incineration.”

Most of the artwork that passed through his hands, alas, wound up being destroyed. Among the treasures he specifically recalls having to consign to the flames were pages of Alex Toth art, a Neal Adams Deadman story, and the Gil Kane-drawn origin of the Silver Age Atom from Showcase #34. (Though, curiously, the second story in that landmark issue—the first in which he appears in costume—somehow survived intact, not even sliced into thirds!)

Over the long haul, Marv estimates that he managed to depart with perhaps five hundred pages’ worth of original art—some complete pages, many individual tiers.

162

How Marv Wolfman & Co. Saved (a Bit of) the Golden Age

“In terms of what I still have,” Marv says, “a quick look shows many ‘Written Off’ pages from Flash Comics (up to issue #110, which shows how far ahead they were working), Green Lantern, All-American, Comics Cavalcade, and assorted other strips.”

(The significance of the “Flash #110” reference, of course, is that Flash Comics was discontinued in 1949 after issue #104.)

Later, at a meeting in Queens of the comics fan group to which he belonged—T.I.S.O.S., or The Illegitimate Sons of Superman—Marv let the other members, including future comics writer/editor Len Wein and other future pros, take home 25 pages each; he kept a mere two hundred or so for himself.

One of the real prizes of Wolfman’s haul consisted of more than a dozen pages’ worth of artwork (both complete pages and parts of pages) of what would turn out to be a never-printed 1946 Justice Society story, “The Will of William Wilson”—all cut up into nice horizontal tiers.

Still extant from this tale, so far as we can determine today, were: three tiers of Green Lantern drawn by Paul Reinman; four Atom tiers

by Jon Chester Kozlak; at least one Dr. Mid-Nite tier by Stan Aschmeier; fourteen Flash tiers by Martin Naydel (out of a possible seventeen, counting the missing splash as only one tier); and fifteen (out of a possible eighteen) tiers of the concluding JSA chapter!

Apparently, no splash panels (which would have consisted of 2/3 of a page for each of the six solo chapters) were preserved. No doubt those had been too large for Marv to avoid slicing, and he hadn’t saved any artwork he’d sliced in two. And nothing whatsoever of the first (JSA) chapter or of the Hawkman and Johnny Thunder segments has ever turned up—though they were probably drawn.

Not that everyone in T.I.S.O.S. instantly recognized these pages as part of an unpublished issue of All-Star Comics. All but the JSA pages would have looked like parts of mere solo adventures of Flash, Green Lantern, Dr. Mid-Nite, and The Atom from DC’s monthly anthologies Flash and All-American, or perhaps from the giant-size bimonthly Comic Cavalcade. And anyway, some of the group, Marv included, were far more interested in other features than in the JSA.

But one T.I.S.O.S. member—Mark Hanerfeld, later an assistant editor at DC and the original model for Abel, host of the House of Secrets comic—seems to have recognized at once that much of the artwork belonged to the same JSA story.

And he wanted it all!

Mark promptly traded with his fellow Illegitimates to get the rest of the All-Star tiers, just as Marv had earlier traded in order to obtain the entire 1942 Superman story. For some reason, however, Mark seems never to have had any Dr. Mid-Nite tiers; that turned up later from other hands.

Mark hung on to the JSA art for years before selling it to Ye Writer/Editor in the 1980s. In 1985 the first page of the JSA finale, forty years late but in full color, was finally printed in the one-shot The Last Days of the Justice Society of America.

Thus, at least a baker’s-dozen pages of an otherwise “lost” AllStar—and of some five hundred other Golden and Silver Age DC pages floating around today in one private collection or another—owe their survival to those heady days in the late 1960s when Marv Wolfman and Mark Hanerfeld became the super-heroes who rescued much of a “lost” adventure of the Justice Society.

But just think: If DC’s incinerator opening had been a bit larger, so those pages hadn’t needed to be sliced up in order to slide down the chute, all five hundred of them might well have been forever and irretrievably lost like their brothers!

For a full printing of all surviving art from the unpublished “The Will of William Wilson”—for the first time in its more than half a century of existence—see The All-Star Companion, Vol. 1 & 2.

President Harry S Truman was fond of saying: “There’s nothing new under the sun, except the history you don’t know yet.”

I used to wonder what my fellow Missourian meant by that.

Not any longer.

An Alter Ego Collection, Vol. 1, Bonus!

Our special “Written-Off 9/30/49” section officially begins on the next page, but we had this space to fill, so—the tier at left is from the writtenoff “Happy Valley” story whose splash (as well as a couple of other panels) was published in earlier issues of A/E. Pencils by Irwin Hasen; inker uncertain.

Thanks again to Don Mangus and Heritage Comics, and to Dominic Bongo. [Green Lantern TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

163 An Alter Ego Collection Vol.

Extra!

The Special Edition

G

olden Age DC pages (or, for the most part, thirds of pages) that were rescued from the paper-cutter and incinerator by a young Marv Wolfman (and occasionally, we’ve learned since, by other intrepid souls) continue to surface. Sometimes these pages or tiers are from stories that survived intact, either in original art or Photostats—long enough for DC to utilize them in its invaluable

reprint comics of the late 1960s and early ’70s; more often they’re from tales that were never printed and for which much of the art may well be lost forever. Here’s a sampling of a few previouslyunpublished tiers of DC art and story from the 1940s that deserved salvaging:

Back In A Flash!

After the article in A/E V3#2, we took up the theme again in #10, with the first of a multi-part series we call “Written Off 9-30-49.” Its first installment featured half a dozen pages’ worth of Infantino-penciled, Sachs-inked “Flash” art—including an atypically-intact splash page—for a story titled “The Garrick Curse!” On this page are the bottom tier of p. 6, plus two more panels from that tale, reprinted from photocopies of the original art graciously supplied by Don Mangus on behalf of Heritage Comics, with special thanks to Dominic Bongo. Check out their website at <www.HeritageComics.com>.

And A/E V3#10 is still available from TwoMorrows, if you wanna read more of the story! [Flash TM & © 2006 DC Comics.]

164

Written Off 9-30-49 –– The Special Edition

The Green Party Here’s a pair of panels from a Paul Reinman-drawn mid-1940s “Green Lantern” story of which we printed several pages back in A/E #12. With thanks to Don Mangus, Heritage Comics, & Dominic Bongo. [Green Lantern TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Ghost Of A Chance At right are a page’s worth of panels (which may or may not be from the same page) of a “Ghost Patrol” story that was at one time scheduled to appear in Flash Comics #110—only that mag was canceled with #105!

We kinda suspect the artists are Arthur Peddy (pencils) and Bernard Sachs (inks). Thanks to Marv Wolfman. [Ghost Patrol TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

Written Off 9-30-49 –– The Special Edition

Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue?

“Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys” were juvenile fare even for comic books, but they lasted a long time in Sensation Comics behind cover feature “Wonder Woman”—all the way from issue #1 through #83! Unfortunately the story from which the above pair of panels was taken was scheduled to appear in #85—by which time they’d gone into limbo. Is this LBL himself (nee Tommy Rogers) in mufi? Art by Frank Harry.

Thanks to Marv Wolfman. [Little Boy Blue TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

I Got A Right To Sing The Blues This is more like it! The Blue Boys in action—in an ice cream parlor. But no, this apparently isn’t from the same story—it was marked for “SENSATION 88 A”—whatever the “A” means. By the way, Little Boy Blue was differentiated from his two all-in-blue buddies by sporting a red mask, yellow sleeves, and yellow-topped red boots. Art by Frank Harry; thanks to Marv Wolfman. [Little Boy Blue & The Blue Boys TM & ©2006 DC Comics.]

165

166

The Sky Wizard’s Lost Origins

The Sky Wizards ’ Lost Origins The Golden Age Hero That Time—and Everybody Else—Forgot!

by Will Murray

C

ontroversies aside, the stories behind the creations of the major Golden Age super-heroes are pretty well documented. We know how Superman, Batman, Captain America, The Human Torch, and The Sub-Mariner were created, among others.

But what about the also-rans and the second-stringers?

Come on, admit it. Wouldn’t you just love to have been a fly on the wall when they were brainstorming the likes of The Red Bee or Spider Widow? Bulletman or Bob Phantom? Not to mention The Claw and The Comet?

We’ll probably never get the inside scoops on the more minor super-heroes of that era. But once in a while, we do get lucky.

It just so happens that the lost origin of one obscure super-character of the Golden Age of Comics was documented.

The Sky Wizard, Master of Space, had a relatively short run as a comics character. He debuted in Hillman’s Miracle Comics #1 (Feb. 1940). The strip was signed Emile C. Schnurmacher. The Sky Wizard was not exactly the most illustrious creation of the Golden Age. He lasted only four issues—the entire run of that brief title, which happened to mark Hillman’s first, brief foray into the four-color field.

But The Sky Wizard’s origin has come down to us, thanks to an article Miracle Comics #1 cover. penned by Schurmacher himself—not an artist, as you might expect from his prominent signature, but a forgotten writer of that period who scripted large chunks of Miracle Comics.

In “Action, and How!” (Writer’s Digest, Feb. 1940), Emile C. Schnurmacher gives his contemporaries a glimpse of what it’s like to be

a comic book scripter during the early Golden Age: “After some fifteen years of freelancing on four continents, doing features for newspaper and magazines, I thought, reasonably enough, that I knew what action meant. I’ve bumped guys off in anything from 500-word shorts to 7,500word features, depending on what the traffic would bear.

But that was before I began writing for the action comics, a field which during the past year or so has zipped along almost as fast as the contents of its own publications.

Miracle Comics #2 cover.

“Take that phone call this morning from Tony Feldman. Tony, who ordinarily seems like a nice quiet gent, edits the new line of action comics for Hillman Publications, 7 East 44th Street, New York, an outfit which started with Crime Detective a couple of years ago and has branched out plenty. “‘That last installment of Sky Wizard is static, no action at all,’ Tony growled. ‘Hop over and fix it up!’ “‘Look here,’ I answered indignantly. ‘On page one the terrible giant Snow Men abduct the heroine. On page two, three of them are blown to bits by sky mines. On page four the villain makes a 50,000foot parachute jump, and on...’ “‘Yeah!’ hooted Tony. ‘But page three! What about page three?

Whatcha trying to do, cheat our readers?’

“Incredulous? A couple of months ago I would have said so, too.

But that was before I discovered this new and fast-moving market which pays decent prices and pays ’em promptly for reasons which I’ll point out.”

Tony Feldman was one of the many pseudonyms for the improbably-named Anatole France Feldman. In his pulp days, Feldman created the notorious Gangster Stories hoodlum-cum-hero, Big Nose Serrano, as

The Sky Wizard’s Lost Origins well as having ghosted The Phantom Detective pulp magazine. He also did some radio work and edited a tony of true-crime magazines for Hillman-Curl throughout the early ’40s.

Schnurmacher goes on to relate how he fell into comics writing—a fate that doubtless befell many pulp writers of his time: “When I became interested in this new market a couple of months ago, I learned that Lionel White, for whom I had written we he was editor of True, was going to publish two or three of the action comics.

“I was writing fact features for both his Crime Detective and Crime Confessions and suggested that he let me submit an action comic strip. He murmured something about it being my headache but said he’d look at a synopsis. I found out what he meant about the “headache” gag pretty soon.

He had been reading so many synopses that turtle neck men snapped at him as he walked down the hall, rocket guns were shot at him in his sleep, and strange leprechauns stalked head downward across his ceiling. Pretty soon they were doing it to me, too.

That’s the frame of mind you get into when you’re writing stuff for the action comics.

167

Even after more than fifty years, it’s still possible to identify the mysterious “Eddie.” After duly conferring, Jerry Bails and I decided that he could only be Ed Kressy of Lone Ranger and Power Nelson fame, possibly inked by his studio mate Norman Fallon. It’s generally believed that the early Hillman comics were products of the Harry “A” Chesler shop, but nowhere does Schnurmacher mention this. He goes on to recount how his new hero was designed: “I told him my idea about Sky Wizard, an athletic young man who was one of the world’s greatest scientists living on a helium-filled island in the sky. He became enthusiastic and drew a series of sketches.

Starting with the first, S.W. looking like a knight of the Middle Ages, he was modernized, streamlined, then futurized in five succeeding sketches until he took on the appearance and personality he now bears.”

Fortunately for posterity, Writer’s Digest saw fit to reproduce Kressy’s six-step evolution of the character design. Regrettably, this rare glimpse of Golden Age conceptualization is of a character whose adventures few read then, and fewer still remember now.

Sky Wizard’s origin documented, his creator goes on to tell other would-be comics scribes how he gets his ideas:

“It was about that time that Sky Wizard began to take shape in my mind. Talking to kid readers of other comics, I had ’em discuss what they “After working out a liked and what they didn’t like synopsis and throwing in most in an action comic hero. They of the pseudo-scientific material liked one to be almost invulin my fields, Sky Wizard’s nerable, but not totally so. adventures began to take shape.

This, the lone graphic which accompanied Schnurmacher’s Writer’s Digest article, Otherwise there would be no About this pseudo-scientific depicts the varied stages of development of the lost hero Sky Wizard. risk in his adventures. They material, the daily newspapers liked him to have some pet are full of it. For example a gadget like a rocket gun or a paralyzing dagger. And they preferred him story that an explorer had seen footprints in the Himalayas which an to wear the minimum of clothes to show off his beautiful, streamlined old legend said were those of a race of giant snow men, gave me both body. Whatever else the action comics may be doing to the imagination locale and villains. Very considerately I added wings to the snow men so of youngsters, they’re stimulating a healthy desire for strong, athletic that they could attack airplanes. Another dispatch from the Western bodies.”

Front which said that the Germans were planning to mine the skies against invading airplanes gave me a swell action situation in which Sky Wizard could destroy the flying snow men with sky mines filled with Market research finished, Schnurmacher took his nascent concept triplenitro. That explosive naturally would be three times as strong as to an artist: nitroglycerine.”

“Having assimilated this data, I sought out an old A.P. cartoonist friend of mine, Eddie. I found him hard a work turning out action comics for a couple of competing publishers. Because of this, I’m not mentioning his last name.”

Considering that he thought nothing of sticking wings on Yeti, Emile C. Schnurmacher was surprisingly concerned about maintaining a factual basis for his fledgling strip:

168

The Sky Wizard’s Lost Origins “I worried a bit as to where Sky Wizard would get food on Sky Island.

Then I read a scientific feature on hydroponics—the new method of growing giant vegetables in water— and my problem was solved. I mention these things because they illustrate how actual news features serve as a springboard to dive off into the realm of the pseudo-scientific and fantastic and to show that there’s plenty of this sort of material available for every writer who wants to tackle this market.”

Miracle Comics #3 cover.

Schnurmacher mentions going on to script other strips for Miracle, including “K-7, Secret Agent” and “The Scorpion” with Ed Kressy. He also penned “Dusty Doyle, the Circus Cyclone,” and one I can’t place, “Captain Hazard.” He apparently signed “The Scorpion” with a variant of his own name, “Carl Sherman.”

I wonder if the “Rocket Riley, Prince of the Planet” lead strip in Rocket Comics wasn’t his Captain Hazard under another name. There was a Captain Hazzard pulp, and a rights search of the name might have suggested a prudent change. Ed Kressy also drew Rocket Riley. Another possibility is Rocket’s “Buzzard Barnes and His Sky Devils.”

Whatever the truth is, there’s no doubt that Emile C. Schnurmacher was Hillman’s main comics writer from the start. He may have singlehandedly scripted all of Miracle and Rocket, though I wouldn’t put it past editor “Tony Feldman” to have pitched in.

Writing the other strips was no picnic, Schnurmacher admitted to Writer’s Digest readers: “With Sky Wizard safely on the drawing boards I began to submit other strips. And as they were accepted I began to realize more and more what Lionel meant when he said ‘my headache.’ I’ve got one script running, for instance, which features Dusty Doyle, the Circus Cyclone.

I was enthusiastic about the locale and thought I could hold a lot of interest with it. But when it got on the boards, I found that the artist was drawing mostly tent canvas backgrounds. So I’ve had to pull Dusty outside of the Big Top for many of his thrilling exploits.

“Then again there was K-7, Secret Agent, the radio dramatizations of which you may have listened to. K-7 got into so many complications as a Secret Agent that a lot of explaining had to be done in panels and dialogue. This detracts from action and so I’ve had to simplify the plots.

“As a result of this rather intensive experience, I’d suggest that if you’re going to start submitting scripts to the action comics you follow these simple rules. They’re easy enough to follow when you learn ’em, but believe me learning ’em was quite a job. Here they are: “1. Have your hero almost invincible, but not entirely.

“2. Put him in an exotic locale.

“3. Use a chase theme. There’s more action in a continuous story than one of those “in the meantimes” which are difficult to handle.

“4. Make most of your action take place out of doors. That gives the artist a chance to do his stuff.

“5. Keep wordage to absolute minimum.

“6. Ditto love element.

“Mebbe this sounds like a lot of fuss and dither over submitting a four, eight, or 16 page sequence to an action comic. But remember this.

If you do land, the $10, $20, or $40 check you land is but the first return. If your character is popular, the kids will want to read him every month. If he is above average, he may land in the movies, on the radio, or in a newspaper comic section, and take you, his creator, with him….

“Publishers prefer the shorter lengths [for stories] and pay you $2.50 a page for your stuff. If you can’t turn out at least an eight-page continuity in a day, worth $20 to you, you’ve never written any action stuff. If you sell it, it will go into a 64-page book which retails for a dime. You’ll probably never see the artist who draws it. He gets $10 a page for his drawings and good artists are turning out so many pages these days that they’ve got a regular conveyor belt system, with one man to do figure work, another to do backgrounds, a third to ink in, and a fourth to letter.”

Well, this was sound advice, good theory, but it was not to be—at least where Emile C. Schnurmacher and his Sky Wizard were concerned.

After only four issues, Hillman folded Miracle and Miracle Comics #4 cover. its sole companion title, Rocket Comics. Under the editorship of former Timely scripter John H. Compton, the company revived its comics line late in 1941 with Victory Comics and Air Fighters.

A market notice in Writer’s Digest pointedly noted that the new line would not feature “super-men” characters. But Hillman’s second attempt to elbow aside Superman and Captain Marvel from America’s newsstands died a quick and ignominious death as well.

It remained for editor Ed Cronin to relaunch Air Fighters for good in 1942, and to make Hillman Comics a “contender,” first with Airboy and later with The Heap.

As for Emile C. Schnurmacher, it’s not clear what happened to him.

I don’t know if he made the final cut. I wouldn’t be surprised if he worked on characters like The Crusader and The Conqueror for Victory, but that’s only a guess. After that, he vanishes in a puff of pulp flakes, both from comics and pulps.

[Special thanks to Jerry Bails and other members of the Grand Comics Database <http://www.comics.org:8000> for their kind assistance.]

WILL MURRAY is a longtime pulp magazine and comic book historian, the author of over fifty novels in the Destroyer, Doc Savage, and other series, and a professional psychic. His next novel, Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD: Empyre, illustrated by Steranko, is due out in November.

Kanigher on Kanigher

169

Kanigher on Kanigher (and Everything Else!)

A Long Letter from “RK”—and Ye Editor’s Response

O

ne of the foremost writers from the 1940s through at least the 1960s, no doubt about it, was Robert Kanigher, longtime DC editor and writer.

Recently, via e-mail, JSA expert Jerry Bails and I were discussing 1947’s All-Star Comics #36 (“Five Drowned Men”), when Jerry came up with a tentative theory about its authorship—generally attributed as one of three JSA stories scripted

by RK—as well as a few thoughts on what counts as “creating” a comic book hero. Jerry felt that internal evidence indicated that in #36 Kanigher might have been rewriting an earlier, unpublished Gardner Fox script called “The Men of Magnifica.” (For more about this, see TwoMorrows’ and my forthcoming trade paperback The All-Star Companion.)

I duly sent a copy of Jerry’s musings to RK, hoping to prod him into thinking a bit about those bygone days, and received a lengthy missive—a welcome one, despite some of its more arguable opinions. Here is that letter, followed by a few comments from Ye Writer/Editor.— R.T. Dear Mr. Thomas: I received your deluge of detritus yesterday. I’m restless. So I’m going to reciprocate in my own fashion....

work part-time. Later it became full-time. I supported them in their own flat (without their asking me), paying for everything from chewing gum to their coffins, 28 years later. I didn’t mind the money.

My wife Bern’s income as a principal of a NYC high school was always greater than mine.

What haunted me all those years was that I had become the parent of my parents. I was forced to make decision of life and death at any moment without warning.

Economic circumstances forced me to answer [Victor] Fox’s ad in the New York Times for a writer. After one sentence from me, he sent me to W.W. Scott, his editor, as he “liked a man who can think on his feet.” It was 1940.

I never plotted. One summer I wrote 100 pages a week. I never forgot to write poetry, short stories, plays, novels. And later to paint oils and water colors. Fox eventually folded, and I was introduced to Dick Hughes [at Better/Standard/Nedor/Pines]. All I knew is that he never rejected any of my ideas; but I grew tired of his having to go somewhere in the back and get permission to give me the assignment; so I left.

Snyder knows the name of the woman editor who called me to write for Fox again. We “plotted” in her Mr. Bails’ objection that creator-writers’ opinions about their brownstone apartment in the Village and had a merry time, work isn’t carved in stone and that readers can disagree segues with an with her hilarious tales of the people she lived with in the objection that Rich Morrissey raised in the latest Florida Keys, who became addicted to Coca-Cola edition that [Robin] Snyder sent me of his Comics. I and waited for each ship’s delivery like panting Robert Kanigher, as depicted by artist was moved to reply.

Ernie Colon. [Art ©1999 Ernie Colon] sheep dogs.

To Mr. Rich Morrissey: I read your highly intelligent and challenging question in Robin Snyder’s Comics—shot into the air like a bowman at Agincourt. Since of two writers you mention my name, and I had my first short story titled “The Night God Rode the El,” published in the Phoenix, a literary magazine in New York, when I was an American schoolboy of eleven and I have been writing ever since, I owe you this answer: I light the lamp In the darkness And leave the light behind me For you to see.

RK My father was destroyed by the Great Depression. At 12 I had to

Fox failed again, and I walked into Fawcett’s offices on Broadway. I wrote for Stanley J. Kauffman. Captain Marvel.

No plotting. He quit when Fawcett in an economy move made editors out of secretaries. And I with him. He became drama critic, temporarily, for the New York Times, and I don’t know how I wound up at the abbatoir that Harry Shorten conducted at MLJ. One day I came in—Shorten was hysterical. Irv Novick was on the phone. He hadn’t received his Steel Sterling script. Shorten asked me whether I could dictate a finished script over the phone to Irv. I said: “Give me a chair and a glass of water.”

The script is reprinted in my book on writing, asked for by my friend (whose name escapes me for the moment) who was the general manager for Cambridge House, New York, in 1943. My title was Breakthrough. The publisher changed it to How to Make Money Writing for Newspapers and Magazines, Radio, Movies, Stage, Comics

170

Kanigher on Kanigher waiting room at DC at the other end of the hall. Larry handled the funnies.

I wrote super-characters for Schwartz.

Less than two or three minutes for plotting. I don’t plot. I don’t use a computer. My mind is a computer. Ben timed me. I composed scripts at sixty words a minute. With two fingers.

Hardly any errors. Except when two keys came up at the same time and got entangled.

Bern said I could always get a job as a typist.

Yes, Larry mentioned to me that he had a brother he called Marty, a cartoonist, who died at the age of fifty from a heart attack. Larry followed in his heartbeats much later.

Everyone worshiped Shelly. I thought he was more of a performer than creator. When he wanted us, he blew on a police whistle. When he asked for more visual dramatics, according to my Comics Journal interview (on Page 70, illustrated): “Kanigher’s first use of a ‘cinematic device,’ a series of panels that is part pan, part zoom.”

On Page 7 [of that same interview]: “The triptych, another classic Kanigher cinematic device: three panels consecutive in time, but with a continuous background. (From Our Army at War #150.)”

We moved. Larry had an office to himself.

Schwartz and I shared the same office, our desks back to back. I erected a “Chinese Wall” of books so I wouldn’t have to see his lemon face each morning. But, unlike Mort and Schiff, we never quarreled. We simply had nothing in common. Except when he needed scripts. An Eskimo and a polar bear had more in common.

This page and next: Two pages from the unpublished third meeting of the Golden Age Flash with first Thorn, then her alter ego Rose, circa 1948. Alas, the glitches in copy and art exist in the photocopies which are all that remain of the story; they were printed in Robin Snyder’s The Comics! a few years ago.

Note that Thorn retains here original, scantier costume on p. 4, panel 4. Doubtless it would have been changed if the story had seen print. [Story by R. Kanigher, art by J. Kubert. Flash, Rose & Thorn ©1999 DC Comics.]

Magazines, Popular Novels. I could regurgitate when I think of the sheer nerve of it. And yet, each paperback sold out at one dollar each. And so did the following hardcover at three dollars for all of them. Robin told me some time ago that it cost him thirty dollars for a single tattered paperback. I loaned him my only copy until he could xerox it. I haven’t read it.

My friend Ben Raeburn quit and became general manager of Arco Publishers, whose offices were next door to National’s. Bails says they’re “AA” [All-American]. So be it. What did I know about comics?

I never heard of Marvel! Either Ben—or Ben induced one of the partners at Arco, Dave (whom I later met socially) to do so—introduced me to Shelly Mayer. Ted Udall had quit. His editors were Larry Nadle and Julius Schwartz. There were no assistant editors or secretaries or even a switchboard operator. We received our calls from Phyllis Reed, in the

We never co-edited a single book. Because I created and wrote the western Johnny Thunder and The Trigger Twins, and designed all the covers, fans thought we co-edited AllAmerican Western. But Schwartz was the editor. Toth illustrated Johnny Thunder. He used to come in at lunchtime for his check, when Schwartz was playing cards with Miltie Snappin. Toth’s check was in Schwartz’ desk drawer. It would have taken him two seconds to open it and give Toth his check. A yelling match ensued. Schwartz gave Toth his check and fired him. Thus did DC lose a great talent.

A demonology began to spring up about me. Fans thought I fired Toth. Schwartz kept a craven silence. Snyder finally questioned Toth about what happened.

Alex agreed with me. If the fans had a brain they would have seen I couldn’t fire Toth. (Schwartz was the editor, not I.)

Shelly asked me to write a Wonder Woman. I did. He threw it on the floor and jumped up and down on it. (My first rejection!) He did his Jumping Jack routine on my second and third scripts publicly. I said: “F—- you!” And left. He phoned me that night and said he and Liebowitz wanted to see me. I deliberately waited a few days and then came in.

Shelly and [co-publisher Jack] Liebowitz wanted me to be the editor and sole writer of Wonder Woman. They offered me the same salary as Nadle and Schwartz. I said: “I could make more money at home, writing, without getting out of my pajamas.” Liebowitz said: “We want

Kanigher on Kanigher

171

you to be a writer-editor! You’ll have two incomes! A staff salary as an editor and a free lance income as a writer!” I agreed, thinking I wouldn’t stay long. A month or two. Little did I know that fate was going to play an unexpected trick on me. I walked out twenty-two years later.

There’s been a lot of guessing why. They were all wrong. What lulled me was that I had complete freedom. I answered to no one. They never knew what I was going to come out with in the books I edited. In Kubert—the War Years, Joe said that the most astonishing thing about Kanigher was that “he never missed a deadline in his life!”

Do you think if I had told Liebowitz, an American Jewish manager of an American Jewish publishing house that an American Jewish editor would do something that had never been done before—create and write Enemy Ace, an enemy of America in two World Wars, and make him a sympathetic, tortured, but deadly character—that he would have allowed me to do it? Or Blitzkrieg? Or Panzer? The first anyone knew of Von Hammer was when I handed Joe Kubert a script finished in every detail. I even choreographed the aerial dogfights as if they were a ballet. Seven thousand complimentary letters came in. It’s been described as “a world-wide achievement.”

Flashback to Shelly before he took “early retirement.” Every Friday he drew an invisible circle around me and asked me to write a Wonder Woman. He was grateful for my taking her off his hands. He hated her. The [William Moulton] Marston family approved of my choice. I worked with [artist] Harry G. Peter. A white-haired elf who came in from Staten Island, who completely ignored my ranting and raving with his invincible silence.

Once, for a joke, I asked for one hundred Amazons in a single panel. He delivered. I counted them. He was right, in the end. His insane illustrations were mythic. Just what Wonder Woman needed.

I always wrote the characters I created. First, with Schwartz as the editor, The Gentleman Ghost, a whimsical ghost in formal attire, but a space where his head would be, except for a monocle and a top hat. I don’t know who illustrated it. But Kubert illustrated Rose and The Thorn. Successful. Until Liebowitz cancelled it saying it was too sexy.

Joe can’t draw women. His hookers look like princesses and his princesses look like hookers.

My origin story was that Rose, accompanying her botanist father in the jungles, was scratched by a strange thorn which turned her into a schizoid (the first in comics). Years later, [E. Nelson] Bridwell asked me to revive her. I completely forgot my initial origin. Rose became schizoid when she saw her detective father, murdered by the 100 Gang in his car, being pulled out of the East River. I didn’t plot, but she was successful again.

In the big hardcover [The Greatest Golden Age Stories Ever Told— R.T.], although Gardner Fox is named as the writer, I wrote [the first JSA-vs.-Injustice Society story reprinted therein]. Also, the wonderful Broome is listed by Schwartz as the writer of “Too Many Suspects”— until Broome denied it at the San Diego Convention. How many other

“mistakes” has Schwartz made? He still hasn’t admitted it. Isn’t he Saint Schwartz to the fans? Do saints admit mistakes? By the way, I never wrote a chapter of anything. Only complete finished scripts.

If you want comments about anything I’ve already done—doubtful. My work speaks for itself. I don’t speak for my work. But if your questions are provocative—perhaps. Although Robin has said more than once that I have a remarkable memory. But that memory isn’t about numbers. I’m not an accountant. My memory is visual, it’s about events: people, places, landscapes, actions, talk, emotions, passions that forever remain in the inner theatre of my mind.

Concerning Mr. Bails’ musings and revelations about “Five Drowned Men”—it’s his privilege. Let him enjoy himself. Although I am a fencer, I don’t consider him my opponent. I like his passion about the minutiae about every detail in comics. It’s not mine. All I can repeat is that I never rewrote anyone’s script. That’s a job for hacks. Or as Truman Capote succinctly put it: There are writers and typists. I am a writer. All my scripts are originals.

I’ve written a lot of material for Snyder’s Comics originally to start him off. Or when I was aroused by something someone wrote. As in the case of one of Steve Ditko’s lengthy philosophical articles; so I have fun

172

Kanigher on Kanigher

by answering him with a long article called “No Spinach for Socrates.” On the other hand, Robin recently told me that, in seven years or so, I was the only one who backed Ditko publicly, in his claim that he created Spider-Man.

spelling of the names of “Larry Nadle” and “Martin Naydel,” who were apparently brothers, one a comics editor and the other the major artist of AllFlash and the JSA in the mid-1940s. Can anyone enlighten us on this point?

There was a point in time in the past when I thought comics would become a legitimate medium in its own right, treated seriously by legitimate critics. I regret to say that typists like Len Wein and especially Marv Wolfman buried comics with their killings and parallel worlds until comics became a travesty of itself.

(c) Over a leisurely dinner during the 1999 Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC, Julius Schwartz told his own version of the long-whispered-about “firing” of Alex Toth referred to by RK. He says Kanigher’s version is correct as far as it goes: that he (Julie) didn’t feel like interrupting his card game (and lunch hour) to give the artist his check. But Julie maintains there was a second factor of which RK is perhaps not aware, which involved Julie giving Toth, after the lunch-game ended, a particular script to illustrate. According to Schwartz, the artist insisted he wanted to draw a different feature first, in the regular rotation he was accustomed to, while Julie persisted that, this time, the two features needed to be drawn in a different order for deadline reasons, and that this led to a flareup.

However, Julie may (or may not) prefer to tell this story more fully in his eagerly-anticipated autobiography, due out next summer, so we’ll say no more here. As is so often the case, there seem to be neither heroes nor villains in the incident—merely a disagreement between two people. (And of course we’d love to hear as well on the matter from the inestimable Alex Toth, one of the best artists at DC or anywhere else in the ’40s and ’50s—and since, now that we think about it.)

[And, from a second package received around the same time, came these additional RK comments:] I’m sending you my only copy of my interview in The Journal. Keep it as long as you need it. But don’t forget to return it. (My typewriter and I are locked in a deadly battle regarding spacing, etc. It’s the last of its kind and won’t surrender. So be it.)

John Broome is dead. This is my epitaph to him, which will probably appear in Snyder’s Comics.

To John Broome The Last Haiku He was a tree among men Tall with stellar wisdom His gaze fixed on an unseen horizon Until the clouds parted to welcome him.

RK

All-Star Comics house ad featuring promo for RK’s legendary Injustice Society story. [JSA ©1999 DC Comics.]

John analyzed my first haiku, which he said was better than most Japanese he read in translation.

A blind falcon lives inside me And dreaming of escape Sharpens his spurs on my heart.

It seems I’m an American Jewish writer who can write Japanese haiku poetry without ever having seen any. It all pours out spontaneously, instinctively, fast and finished. Some force is using me as a conduit.

Sayonara!

RK As the reader can imagine, it’s always a distinct pleasure to receive a communication from the man who wrote such great tales of the Golden and Silver Age Flashes, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Justice Society, Viking Prince, Sgt. Rock, Enemy Ace, et al.

A few necessary points of clarification, albeit a bit after the fact, since you’ve already read the preceding letter: (a) The female editor at Victor Fox’s company mentioned by RK was Mercedes Shull, who, Robin Snyder advises us based on earlier Kanigher letters, “may have come over from Fawcett” to a “resurrected Fox” in early 1944. Thanks, Robin! (b) Comics historians been trying for years to determine the correct

(d) Interestingly, RK confirms Ye Editor’s throwaway deduction (in V3#1’s Wonder Woman piece) that editor Shelly Mayer was probably not overly fond of having Wonder Woman in the Justice Society. RK goes us one better, saying Mayer “hated” the Amazon, by which we’d guess he means Mayer didn’t like having to deal with writer/co-creator W.M. Marston’s demands on how she was treated.

(e) Just to set the record straight: RK’s Hawkman villain The Ghost was never actually called “The Gentleman Ghost” until the 1960s version. The artist of all Hawkman/Ghost stories in the late ’40s, of course, was Joe Kubert. (f) Both Kanigher versions of “Rose and the Thorn” were winners.

See the accompanying pages from a third late-’40s Flash story (which DC never published in full) featuring that multiple-personalitied (not technically schizoid) villainess. (g) Joe Kubert “can’t draw women”? There may be a few readers who will disagree with RK on that one! (h) Marv Wolfman and Len Wein can hardly be “blamed” (or credited) for establishing “parallel worlds” in the Silver Age, whatever one thinks of the concept. That was done by Julie Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox in the famous “Flash of Two Worlds” story in The Flash #123 (Sept. 1961); the first such tale at Marvel was written several years later by Ye Editor/Writer in Avengers Annual #2 (1968)… and he hopes he can be forgiven for believing that none of the above-named fit Capote’s definition of “typists,” any more than RK himself does.

However, all the above demurrings aside, Alter Ego is always happy to hear from the supremely talented Robert Kanigher, and hopes (if he doesn’t mind our disagreeing with him as much as he disagrees with us) to conduct a major interview with him in a near-future issue of Alter Ego. We feel he still has much to offer the comics field as one of its living legends and spirited raconteurs.

An All-Star Sensation!

173

An All-Star Sensation!

An Examination of the First Two Wonder Woman Stories

by Roy Thomas When Wonder Woman burst upon the comic book scene in autumn of 1941, she quickly became one of the hottest tickets in the field.

the Golden Age, either before or after?

That move, after all, cost DC good money.

In a day when a dime was all it could charge for 64 interior pages, the page count of All-Star #8 was raised by one halfsignature to 72 pages.

As noted last issue, the amazing Amazon was conceived by Dr. William Moulton Marston, eminent psychologist who briefly held an official position on DC’s “Editorial Advisory Board” made up of educators, psychologists, specialists in children’s literature, and ex-heavyweight boxing champ Gene Tunney. Her exploits were drawn, in a studio operated by Marston, by H.G. Peter.

(A “signature” is a printing term which refers to a sheet of newsprint which, in the process of printing, becomes 16 different pages of a comic; thus, a half-signature would be eight pages. This is why most comics, by the early 1950s, had dropped from 48 interior pages to 32, and not 40 or some other number in between. When a half-signature was used, I’ve been told the other half-sheet of newsprint often had to be thrown away as wastage. Even if it weren’t, DC was definitely spending extra money to add eight interior pages to All-Star #8.)

The inclusion of Wonder Woman’s origin couldn’t have been done to “help” All-Star. Not only was the JSA-starring title one of DC’s new smash hits, but—even more tellingly—there isn’t the slightest mention of the Amazon on the cover, let alone a picture!

Her debut came in All-Star Comics #8 (cover-date Dec. 1941-Jan. 1942), as a nine-page backup to the lead feature, The Justice Society of America.

Within a few weeks at most, Sensation Comics #1 (Jan. 1942) went on sale, with Wonder Woman as the issue’s cover (and longest) feature. Sensation was the right word, because her rise was almost unprecedented. By spring of ’42 (with a “Summer” cover date) she already had her own fourstory Wonder Woman quarterly. She had started out a year or two behind The Flash and Green Lantern, but would soon have every DC hero except Superman and Batman eating her Paradise Island dust!

And yet…

Nor was there any announcement at the end of the 56-page Justice Society story about the backup feature.

You simply turned the page—and there it was. (Many a regular All-Star reader must have been quite surprised to see a backup feature of any kind in All-Star, since there had never been one before.)

So what does the lack of fanfare both on the cover and even inside All-Star #8 indicate?

Wonder Woman ©1999 DC Comics.

One lingering mini-mystery of Wonder Woman’s beginnings is that first story in All-Star #8.

Its existence raises several intriguing questions… and it seems that, at last, we may be able to answer some of them with a bit more than guesswork and farfetched surmises.

So why in All-Star, and not in some other comic?

The premier question about that origin has long been:

Well, for one thing, Gaines was partnered with DC publisher Harry A. Donenfeld in his All-American Comics line, which was published under the DC symbol. Thus, the pure-DC titles (such as the five Superman and/or Batman mags, but also Adventure, More Fun, and Star Spangled) were probably offlimits, since Wonder Woman (like Gaines’ two mainstays, The Flash and

If publisher Max C. Gaines truly believed Wonder Woman was going to be the hottest thing since sliced bullets, then why was her origin put into the back pages of another comic before her first regular story saw print—unlike any other “star” feature DC introduced in ©1999 DC Comics.

Most likely, that Wonder Woman’s origin was a last-minute inclusion, with no opportunity—maybe even no inclination—to change any cover copy or interior captions.

©1999 DC Comics.

174

An All-Star Sensation

Green Lantern) was strictly an AA character. All-Star had originally been created to showcase the DC/AA heroes who didn’t have their own titles, so it was an even more logical choice than Flash Comics or AllAmerican, let alone All-Flash or Green Lantern Quarterly.

If Gaines was hedging his bets by shoehorning the first Wonder Woman story into the back of one of his most popular titles, that suggests he had perhaps a bit less faith in the Amazon’s pulling power than he could have had.

I can see why.

After all, Wonder Woman wasn’t the first costumed heroine in comics: August 1941, for instance, had been the cover date of comics introducing (a) Quality’s Miss America (in Military Comics #1); (b) Quality’s Phantom Lady, as well, in Police Comics #1; and (c) Holyoke’s Miss Victory in Captain Fearless #1. Phantom Lady’s had even been one of several cameo heads featured on the Police #1 cover.

However, Princess Diana was the first super-heroine who would be the star of both cover and comic—the focal point, the obvious raison d’être of the new magazine.

emblazoned on its cover.

In addition, it may have occurred to Gaines and/or Mayer that Diana only appears as Wonder Woman in the origin story in the final panel. While, in 1940, Green Lantern hadn’t appeared in costume till the end of his first story (and The Atom not till his second one), Gaines may have wanted the readers to see more of Wonder Woman in her colorful costume when they picked up Sensation #1, not a lot of derring-do by Steve Trevor and some nondescript Amazons running around chasing deer and stopping bullets with their bracelets.

Okay, so let’s say the decision to forcefeed Wonder Woman’s origin into All-Star #8 was made more or less along these lines—and that Gaines figured the extra expense for the eight-page half-signature was a necessary business expense.

Let’s assume he didn’t even mind that, because of a 1/3-page ad for a Lionel Trains Catalog, for the first time the house ad for DC’s monthly anthologies had to take up less than a full page— in the very month that those house ads plugged Star Spangled Comics #1, “featuring The Star Spangled Kid!!

by Jerry Siegel, creator of Superman!”

Still, why that particular Wonder Woman story?

Why her origin, which naturally belonged in Sensation Comics #1 (and would be fully told later in Wonder Woman #1), not as what radio’s Hit Parade called in those days “A Lucky Strike Extra.”

She might well bomb. Gaines and company could hardly have failed to know that the main audience for comic book super-heroes was young boys.

That’s where my theory Would they relate to comes in. a super-heroine— Last issue, amid comespecially since, in mentary about the Fox and those days, she Marston scripts for the couldn’t be drawn Splash page from a (never-published) Wonder Woman story circa 1943-45.

Wonder Woman chapter in [Art courtesy of Jerry Bails; ©1999 DC Comics.] with her eagle and All-Star #13, I wrote a star-spangled panties throwaway line: barely covering what the law disallowed? DC clearly had no intention of trying to appeal to the possible prurient interests of pre-adolescent “I have a theory, based on analysis of internal evidence, that (or even older) males, as Phantom Lady and others would do a few Wonder Woman’s nine-page origin may actually have started out as a years hence.

13-pager slated for Sensation #1, and then truncated so she’d get advance exposure in the popular JSA title….”

Ah, but if those selfsame little boys just happened to stumble upon Wonder Woman’s origin in the same book as the all-male JSA, they To my own shock and delight, I have even more faith in that theomight get intrigued by her before they had a chance to think, “Hey, ry now than when I voiced it three short months ago. she’s a girl!”—let alone “Hey, she’s only a girl!”

And for good reason!

This, in turn, might make them more predisposed to purchase, shortly afterward, the first issue of Sensation, with Wonder Woman First, though, let’s take a fast look at the “internal evidence” I

An All-Star Sensation

175 the caption and word balloons take up 75% of space in the panel—suggesting that the picture area may originally have been a bit larger.

(5) A single caption accompanying Panel 7 on Page 8 covers several more “tests of strength and agility,” “until each [of the final two masked candidates] has won ten of the gruelling contests”—which suggests, though it does not prove, that some art and story may have been dropped out.

(6) On the final page, Panel 5 and 6 overlap some of what should have been the art area of Panels 3 and 4—something very rarely done at DC during this period.

(7) The story ends with a dialogue-less pose of Diana in costume for the very first time as Wonder Woman—with the caption that would naturally have gone above (or even under) that picture instead placed to its left—beneath a panel in which Hippolyte hands Diana the outfit, in yet another panel in which the characters’ dialogue takes up 3/4 of the panel area.

My conclusion: The script for “Introducing Wonder Woman”—with or without finished art, but quite possibly with—was originally of the same standard 13-page length as every Wonder Woman story would be in early issues of Sensation; but the story was truncated—cut down—to nine pages by a combination of an untypical several-panel splash page, one four-tier page (all other are three), the re-formatting of several pages of backstory into two typeset pages, etc.

Of course, none of the above bits of evidence—not even

Two slightly marred photocopies of Marston’s script for what became the Wonder Woman tale in Sensation Comics #1.

believe I had found for the story “Introducing Wonder Woman” originally being intended for the first issue of Sensation, not for All-Star #8 where it actually appeared.

I based my hypothesis on the following observations of the origin, which can easily be checked by looking at the first volume of the Wonder Woman Archives (or your own personal copy of the actual Sensation #1, if you happen to run in those circles): (1) The Wonder Woman figure which is the only art in the splash panel is exactly the same as that on the cover of Sensation #1, and thus is probably just a photostat thereof.

(2) The splash pages of each of Marston and Peters’ Sensation WW stories for the first several years has exactly the same format: a big splash panel, plus one panel. The All-Star story, however, has three panels besides the splash.

(3) After two pages of straight comics, Pp. 3 and 4 of the origin—except for a big introductory panel—are suddenly typeset to show Queen Hippolyte’s narration to Diana, though with seven additional comics-style illustrations. At least two of these—depicting mother and daughter—simply cry out for word balloons.

(4) Page 8, which commences the tournament to decide which Amazon will return to Man’s World with the downed Captain Trevor, abruptly has four tiers (rows) of panels, while all previous comics pages in the story had three tiers. In at least one of those panels (Panel 3) the artwork is so crowded that

176

An All-Star Sensation!

all of them taken together—conclusively proves the conclusion I drew. It was still very much speculation, argued after the fact, with no corroborating evidence.

Until recently.

A few weeks ago, I was happy to receive—from a source wishing to remain nameless—a copy of William Moulton Marston’s script for the 13-page lead story that appeared in Sensation Comics #1.

I was, of course, floored that any copy of that script existed. This script is even older, by a full year, than the Fox and Marston All-Star chapter scripts we ran in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #1—and older than any other comic book script on which I personally have ever laid eyes.

The story in Sensation #1, of course, follows directly after the tale from All-Star #8, and indeed synopsizes the earlier story in a long splash-panel caption.

(Alter Ego here reproduces the first two pages of that script, as a genuine archive and landmark in the history of comic books.)

I was intrigued by several minor changes which had been made in the script as it was lettered. For instance, the last sentence in Marston’s script reads: “Here on Paradise Island, on which man had never before set foot, the Amazon maid, Diana, fell in love with Captain Trevor, and decided to come to America with him to wage battle for freedom, democracy and womankind!”

Whether changed by Marston or by editor Sheldon Mayer, “come” has been replaced by “bring him back.” Far more interestingly, an additional phrase has been tacked on behind the last word of the typed caption. Diana and Steve will now “wage battle for freedom, democracy, and womankind thru-out the world!”

A minor blow for clarity, since it would have read a bit odd to boys, especially in those days, to say that Steve Trevor would fight for “womankind.” Adding “thru-out the world” subtly de-emphasizes that, since it no longer ends the caption.

However, the most important aspect comes at the top of the first page of the script.

It’s moderately interesting that the words “WONDER WOMAN,” typed in all-upper-case at left, are crossed out, with a “#1” and “Sensation” handwritten in. This probably just means that, when he wrote the script, Marston didn’t know the precise name of the new monthly comic in which she’d be appearing.

But the real kicker can be seen in the upper right.

There, in the phrase “Episode #2” as typed by Marston, the “#2” has been crossed out—and “#1” written above it—in Marston’s handwriting, I have been told. But even if it weren’t….

The lead story in Sensation #1, in other words, was originally written for issue #2—and only later graduated to the head spot in #1.

This suggests that the origin story that precedes it was intended for Sensation #1—and got bounced into All-Star #8 at the eleventh hour.

This makes considerably more sense than beginning Wonder Woman’s initial tale in Sensation with a long caption which relates events concerning Diana and Steve which no Sensation #1 reader could know in 1941—unless he/she had already read All-Star #8 cover to cover!

Incidentally, a few other changes were made in captions and dialogue of the Sensation #1 story between original script and printed comic, but these are mostly cosmetic.

E.g., the first caption on Page 2 of the script reads: “And at the controls is the Wonder Woman… Diana, the Amazon!” In the printed comic this caption reads: “And at the controls is an Amazon maiden, named Diana by her mother, queen of the Amazons, after her godmother, goddess of the moon!”

Hmmm… that last is a bit awkward. But at least it reads like something more likely to have been put in by Marston, rather than editor Shelly Mayer. Perhaps it was added on the original script, since what we have is a photocopy of the carbon copy originally typed by Marston.

There are numerous other minor changes, as well. A man ogling Wonder Woman’s clothes says (in the script): “Well, they certainly got my eye attracted all right!” In the published comic this comes out more euphoniously: “Well, they certain attracted my eye!”

One nice improvement occurs on Page 4, when Wonder Woman stands over fallen crooks as policemen rush up and ask what’s going on. In the script Diana answers, “A bank robbery… or should I say, an ATTEMPTED bank robbery!”

Someone seems to have decided Wonder Woman shouldn’t really be thinking in terms of “bank robberies” yet, since she just landed in America from Paradise Island, which has no banks, so her printed line is: “I don’t know. I heard someone say ‘It’s a hold-up.’”

Yet, in the next panel, when the cops try to question her, Wonder Woman’s scripted line (“Some other time, when I’m on a quiz program!”) has become “Some other time, when I’m on the ‘Quiz Kids’ program!” A vague reference to an American culture she could as yet know little about has been rendered even less believable by her mention of a specific popular radio program, The Quiz Kids!

Booking agent Al Kale has an interesting line cut, too. On Page 5 in the printed Sensation, he simply tells Wonder Woman that in a theatre her abilities “would bring you plenty of money!” In the original script, Kale goes on to say, “… and you wouldn’t have to wear that phoney jewelry. No rocks that big could be real!” Marston was still learning about the space limitations of comic books, and tried to crowd too much dialogue into that panel—though admittedly the lost line was pretty good. (On the other hand, it may simply not have fit: What “jewelry” exactly is Kale referring to? Her tiara?)

Beyond a doubt, however, the most important thing about the script carbon—besides the fact that it exists at all—is the fact that it points toward Wonder Woman’s origin as having been intended for Sensation #1, and shoved into All-Star #8 at the last minute.

How often do we get a chance to reinforce our pet theories about comics that were published well over half a century ago?

Or are there, perhaps, a few more such unexploded early-1940s bombshells out there moldering in attics or languishing in old trunks?

Not many, surely… but we can always hope.

After all, only weeks ago, I’d have laughed out loud if someone had told me that I’d ever see the script for the Wonder Woman story that ran in the first issue of Sensation Comics!

We’re never too old to believe in miracles.

no. 61

C.C. Beck

178

Fawcett Collectors of America

“C.C. Beck called us the unknowns.

Rod Reed had called us the forgotten ones. I am said to be the most forgotten of the unknowns, or the most unknown of the forgottens. Like the rest of the comic book people at the time I had no idea it would become the Golden Age. Had we known, would we have done anything differently?

I doubt it.”

—Marc Swayze FCA #54, January 1996

( )

d

From 1941 through 1953, Marcus D. Swayze was a major artist for Fawcett Publications, specializing in Captain Marvel and The Phantom Eagle, but also being the first artist to visualize Mary Marvel—as he details below. His ongoing professional memoirs have been an important part of FCA since #54 in 1996.—PCH

W

hen I was a schoolboy, I got a job with the city, painting signs.

An uncle, who just happened to drive along where I was creating some “Caution, Men Working” masterpieces, stopped with a little advice. All my uncles had advice.

“D—” (he called me “D”) “—when you paint a sign, first plan it.

Decide which word or words are of greatest importance and emphasize those most… then, the next in importance, and so on. That way you’ll have some parts of your message in big letters, in the more prominent locations, and others on down the line.”

Uncle Delly was right. He had never painted a sign or rendered a work of visual art in his life, but he was smart. He was talking about an order of emphasis. I finished my signs that morning with “CAUTION” in big red letters and “Men Working” in smaller black letters.

That incident has stayed with me. Some years later, in packaging graphics where the “order” was important, I translated it as: “Get the shoppers’ attention first… then tell them the good things about the contents.”

What does all this have to do with comics? Well, Uncle Delly’s advice came to mind when I was drawing Captain Marvel. C.C. Beck and I were talking about the heavy contour line… as it, in our work, took prominence over details within the contour. We got around to shading the figure. Beck, the number one proponent of the bold contour, said, “When too many muscles are put on the guy, he’s gonna look more like a Charles Atlas ad than a super-hero… and the reader is gonna pay more attention to the muscled figure than what the muscled figure is doing! Heh, heh, heh!”

Beck rarely failed to throw in that little chuckle.

My uncle’s advice carried with it another thought: “First, plan it!” In our business that translated to layout, preliminary composition… to thinking before you act.

you have to do it.

That was the case in the creation of Mary Marvel.

Creating Mary was a fairly simple task… a face, a figure, a costume… all influenced in one way or another by Captain Marvel. And right away she was plopped into her first story, then another, then another. There were no conferences, no joint skull sessions of any kind. I don’t recall ever being aware of who the first writer was. Everybody, however, seemed happy with the new feature.

Everybody but me. I wasn’t ready for it. Mary wasn’t ready. She had been hastily sketched for approval, but in my opinion she wasn’t ready for the road… wasn’t ready for panel after panel of appearances under inconceivable comic book circumstances.

Marc Swayze on staff at Fawcett, circa 1941-42.

Of course, there are instances where there is no time to plan… where you just have to do the best you can in the time

Marc writes: “This was

Call it methodical plandiscovered recently in ning. I never liked to let my old sketches of go of a character until, 1942… was never published.” Well, then, it’s through ample prelimiabout time… because nary sketches, I knew the character pretty it’s a real beauty! [Art well. I suppose it was a natural ©1999 Marc Swayze; desire to take care of probMary Marvel ©1999 DC lems likely to demand Comics.] resolution later. But, in Mary’s case, there wasn’t time for that. It was 1942.

Despite its being our first full year of participation in World War II, Captain Marvel was selling like the proverbial hotcakes. Things in the Fawcett comics department were hectic… but good.

My idea for Mary Marvel was that she be of light heart, light hand, light step… a wisp of a teenager, never a grim super-person who might joy in bashing an opponent into a senseless mass, but who pleasantly and gracefully clipped him with her dainty fist or foot into slumberland.

In the evenings at home… I called it home, my tiny quarters up Broadway… I began to sketch and make notes… Mary’s features, expressions, angles, lighting.

Her costume… that cape! During phone conversations I

We Didn’t Know... It Was The Golden Age! found myself doodling sketches of that confounded cape. I felt that Mary’s cape should serve as an identification with Captain Marvel… should therefore be displayed more prominently, particularly the floral design down the left shoulder. I pictured it as being of much lighter material than the Captain’s, and I attempted in my sketches to suggest that lightness with smaller ripples.

minute flight as a nervous guest in a Piper Cub. I was so naive as to begin the syndicate idea with an American bomber crew in action, over enemy territory, wearing dress uniforms with neckties! Oh well… who would have known?

Or cared?

I ignored the daily mail that lay on my little drawing stand that had once belonged to fellow artist Irwin Weill, to shuffle through the Lucky Bill work. I had six daily strips in various stages of completion, some panels inked and lettered, some partly inked, others only penciled. I had completed three weeks of scripts in longhand, with not the slightest idea how I would resolve the plot.

Her hair in the original sketches had been hastily done and offered very little to suggest how it might behave under different circumstances. I hoped in my nightly sketches to show it as billowing away from her ears at the slightest forward step or breeze.

Ironically, little benefit came from those efforts. All of us were so busy at the office that the notes and sketches of the evenings before were ignored or forgotten. I drew the first Mary stories and was doing my regular Captain Marvel work at the same time.

Writer Bill Woolfolk was heard saying to Mercy Schull of the editorial department, “Marc is in there drawing Captain Marvel with one hand and Mary with the other!” Not exactly accurate, but you get the idea.

179

Then I looked at the mail. Holy Moley, Billy would have said… here was a message from Whitehaven, Tennessee.

The Selective Service guys there had decided not to be so selective, and were inviting me to come on down and see what they had in store for me! I couldn’t refuse!

A page from Captain Marvel Adventures #18 (Dec. 1942)—the first appearance of Mary Marvel, drawn by Marc Swayze. [©1999 DC Comics.]

It was just not in the cards that I continue Mary Marvel. In the first place, my job was Captain Marvel. Secondly, I was a prime target for the military… healthy, unmarried. Perhaps executive editor Rod Reed suspected that, although he never mentioned it. Instead, he somewhat apologetically explained that I couldn’t be spared from the efforts to get the increasing load of Captain Marvel material to the presses.

It really didn’t matter all that much. Flying around in my head and landing on my drawing board on West 113th was my newest idea, with which I intended to stun the New York newspaper syndicate… “Lucky Bill”… an American flyer… stranded in Nippon!

During my years in comics I made about 14 stabs at the newspaper syndicates before finally getting the contract I wanted. Most of the features were, in one way or another, based in concept on my own experiences. “The Great Pierre,” for example, came from a hunting incident in a Louisian swamp, “Neal Valentine” from experiences as a professional musician, “Judi of the Jungle” from the profound impressions upon me by the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Lucky Bill O’Brien, on the other hand, got on the drawing board simply because I thought a background like his might appeal to the 1942 newspaper readers. My own flying experience consisted of a single 20-

In our family we’ve always tried to look on the bright side of things.

During my growing-up years there were many times when we had to… and, believe it or not, I’m thankful for those days.

Now, how could one, here in 1942, find anything to be thankful for in being yanked out of a civilian life he loved… to go into

A recent sketch of Mary Marvel by Marc Swayze. The master clearly hasn’t lost his touch! [Art ©1999 Marc Swayze; Mary Marvel ©1999 DC Comics.]

180

Fawcett Collectors of America

the military?

It didn’t take a lot of contemplation to realize that the hurry-hurry atmosphere of the Fawcett comics offices was getting to me… to the quality of work I produced. In looking through the old books of that period, it becomes obvious that I wasn’t getting better. I was… well, going the other way. I never felt the pressure of the workload to a point of depression… but who knows what more of it might have led to?

My writing an occasional Captain Marvel story had diminished to nil. I didn’t like that. And no more was there time to do illustrations for the non-comics magazines. I didn’t like that, either. As I went over these things in my mind, I almost… but not quite… felt like sending the draft board a thank-you note. Bless their hearts… their little invitation was quite clear… something like, “Be damn sure you show up as instructed!”

The 22nd floor of the Paramount Building rang out over Times Square… a Fawcett office party!

The comics offices and the art department were lavishly decorating for the occasion and a streamer near the ceiling of the reception room read: “We’ll Miss You, Marc!”

What the heck, the party was for me… a surprise party.

And was I surprised! I was also very, very flattered. I must have been more important to them than I had ever imagined. It was a nice feeling.

“Here’s something you can take with you to remember us by.” It was C.C. Beck as he thrust a gift at me. It was the original drawing of a Whiz Comics cover. Scrawled on it was: “To Swayze from Beck, the best pair of drawers Fawcett ever had.” I liked that.

I also liked the statement of Paul Pack, giant-sized member of Al Allard’s art staff: “Many a word of truth is spoken in jest!”

[ED. NOTE: See the reproduction of that cover, from the original art, in our previous issue.]

As they passed from view, Rod and Kentuck were howling with laughter. Then a voice from behind me: “It ain’t hurt!” A sailor stood holding the stained package upright. “Look! It’s still nearly full! Just broke off at the neck!” He was excited.

“No. May as well throw it out. It has broken glass in it,” I said sadly.

This sailor wouldn’t quit. “Naw, man! The glass in it is heavier than whatever this is….” He sniffed the wet paper sack.

“Southern Comfort,” I said. I could have cried.

“The glass, being heavier than the Southern Comfort, will sink to the bottom, and by pouring it off the top carefully….” He had a point.

I’ve always been afraid of swallowing broken glass, even a little bit, so as the train picked up speed toward Washington, D.C., I strained mine through a handkerchief… the first couple of times.

After that it didn’t make much difference.

A pair of GIs joined us and we got some pretty good barbershop harmony going before we reached Washington. So they told me. From Washington on down into the deep South I sat mostly alone and thought of what might be before me. I knew so little about military life I didn’t know what to expect… so I tried not to expect anything.

I guess that’s the way it was for most of us.

In the Army all the good cards seemed to come my way. While still a recruit I received an assignment to do some illustrations promoting military insurance and war bonds among servicemen. Before that was completed, I was asked about my experience in personnel work. “Absolutely none,” I answered.

Meanwhile, a member of headquarters company, a sergeant who Above: The first appearance of Captain Marvel Jr. as a Master Comics’ played neat jazz piano, said they were During the evening gifts were cover subject (issue #22). Opposite page: As a farewell gift (!), organizing a small combo and would legendary artist Mac Raboy gave the original art to Swayze when offered by others. Original art for a I be interested. Hot-zigetty-dog! I Marc left the Fawcett offices—note the inscription.

Master Comics cover was given me by was beginning to like the place! I was [Captain Marvel Jr. ©1999 DC Comics.] shy, soft-spoken Mac Raboy, who once asked again about my experience in had suspected me of being a bigot, and personnel work. “Come to think of it, then later became one of my best friends.

I’ve always had a deep interest in personnel work,” I lied. I was assigned to headquarters company as a classification interviewer.

I still have those gifts, as well as a small oil painting by Pete Costanza and a girlie drawing by Jess Benton, and others… some darkI wrote home for my guitar. ened a bit by age, but cherished nonetheless.

I don’t know whether Harry Taskey ever served in the military, but My pals from Malvernie, Rod and Kentuck Reed, went to Penn I recalled his having said as I left the Fawcett offices: “Take your guiStation to see me off and stayed until the train pulled away. They had tar… you’ll have a ball!” held their gift back until the very last moment, then handed me a brown Permanent assignment opened up another plus… an environment paper bag containing… a big bottle of Southern Comfort. The signifiwhere I could write. And did I write? cance was… well, me being Southern, you know. Kentuck said, “Excuse Captain Marvel stories, yet! the paper bag. But we thought maybe if you got thirsty on the train you could make it look as though you were sipping peanuts or something.”

[ED. NOTE: Look for more of Mark Swayze’s I was already on board, standing on the observation platform at the artistic reminiscences in the next issue of Alter Ego and rear of the passenger car. As the train lurched forward, the bag and its FCA.] bottle slipped from under my arm and fell to the metal floor with a sickening sound… the sound of breaking glass in a brown paper bag.

182

The Richard Deane Taylor Interview Conducted by P.C. Hamerlinck P.C. HAMERLINCK: Richard, tell me briefly about your upbringing, schooling, and when you became interested in art.

RICHARD DEANE TAYLOR: I was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1925, the youngest of three brothers and two sisters. I attended Brooklyn Technical High School, a 45-minute trip from my home in the Bronx. After the first two years of classes, studying mechanical and free-hand drawing among other technical subjects, my art teachers encouraged me to select the art program as my major for the remaining two years. Their arguments were all the more persuasive as they had rewarded me with numerous citations and a medal for my first two years of art.

PCH: How did landing a job with Fawcett Publications come about? Who were you interviewed by? How old were you? When did you meet C.C. Beck and the other staff artists?

TAYLOR: During my junior year in high school, a Dr. Aposdorf, having seen some of my illustrated and lettered notebooks, suggested I get in touch with Frank Taggart at Fawcett Publications and show him my work. Taggart was a former student of Dr. Aposdorf and a graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School where I attended. I called him a few days later and he invited me to come up and see him at Fawcett’s offices with samples of my work. He looked at my portfolio with great interest, but what caught his eye was my lettering. At Tech we were required to letter all our notebooks and, needless to say, after three years of lettering, I could letter faster than I could write.

proofread all his work and devote valuable time to correcting his many errors and omissions.

After this initial job, Allard began giving me more and more pages to letter. During this period, which was in the early spring of 1942, I met C.C. Beck and the Captain Marvel staff, as well as Captain Marvel Jr. artist Mac Raboy. As the months went by, I found myself spending more and more afternoons at the Fawcett offices, chatting with C.C. Beck and the staff, while watching and studying them closely as they worked.

Within a few months I got up enough courage to begin badgering Beck about the possibilities of joining the Captain Marvel staff. At first he scoffed at the idea, but after I wore him down, he acquiesced and gave me a tear sheet of directions to follow to take “The Captain Marvel Test,” which consisted of showing how I could handle a watercolor brush with India ink.

Beck wanted to see whether I could produce an interpretative contour line, and if I could draw a figure in action, etc.

I practiced at home until I felt confident in doing a finished brush-and-ink page. When I brought it in for Beck’s inspection, he was delighted and offered me a staff job just as the summer of 1942 began. This was my first job. I was only seventeen, and my Fawcett artist Richard Deane Taylor salary was to be $37.50 a week. Because of my —a recent self-portrait. age, an official from the state labor department came to check the working environment to Taggart was so enthused with the quality of my ascertain that the child labor laws were not being violated. work that he suggested we both go in and meet with Fawcett’s art director, Al Allard. Upon reviewing my lettering samples, he asked if I would PCH: After joining the Captain Marvel staff, what, besides lettering, be interested in doing some speedball lettering for Fawcett. He promptwere your exact job duties? ly handed me a set of eight penciled pages of a Whiz Comics Lance TAYLOR: My job duties with the Captain Marvel stories were working O’Casey story, along with a typewritten script. Since I was still a stuon foregrounds, backgrounds, villains, and minor figures, inking them dent at Tech, I did the lettering in the evenings and brought back the from approved pencil layouts, and proofing the lettering to correct any finished pages to his office the following week, after school. The next errors with opaque white. One of the stories I worked on and still afternoon I received a call from Allard expressing amazement and pleasremember was “Captain Marvel and the Lie Detector” [Captain Marvel ure at a job well done. What delighted him was the fact that there was Adventures #23, 1943]. I had a ball inking Captain Marvel tied up in not one error or correction needed on all eight pages. Their regular letrope from head to toe. This was such a memorable story that even C.C. tering man was so careless that they had to have someone on their staff

Richard Deane Taylor

183

The Captain Marvel art staff of Fawcett Comics—Paramount Building, New York City, 1942. Richard Deane Taylor (a.k.a.

Meyer Tuckschneider) is the gent seen front and center, drawing away… while fellow artist Jack Keats holds up a page of original Captain Marvel art for C.C. Beck to peruse. Marc Swayze is seen at left. This photo was originally published in FCA #54.

Beck remembered it much later, in a letter he wrote to me in the ’70s from his studio in Florida.

only seventeen when you started working for Fawcett, did you feel intimidated or pressured amongst the other, more experienced artists?

PCH: What were the commonly-used tools of the trade in creating the Captain Marvel character?

TAYLOR: As a teenager, I was somewhat intimidated by Beck and the rest of the very talented staff at Fawcett. I was in awe of everyone: Beck, Swayze, Raboy, etc. I was also very serious and conscientious and a little insecure, especially since Beck was situated right behind me and could observe my every move.

TAYLOR: As you can see from the classic photo of C.C. Beck, Marc Swayze, Jack Keats, and myself, I had a large drawing board at my disposal, with a taboret at my side containing a bottle of India ink, a water jar for rinsing brushes, a jar of clear water for opaque white retouching, Windsor and Newton No. 2 watercolor brushes, a palette, pencils, and a cleaning rag hanging from my lamp.

PCH: Did you enjoy working on comics, or was it merely breaking ground for higher aspirations?

TAYLOR: As a teenager I enjoyed that period tremendously. In fact, I was a fan of the comics during that period, even before my job at Fawcett. Although I was planning to continue my comic book career after my Army service, I found after the three years I spent at a reproduction plan in World War II, creating posters, training charts, and illustrated manuals, that I really began to waiver regarding the direction I wanted to take. When I was finally discharged in 1946, I began thinking seriously of specializing in commercial and advertising art.

PCH: What was it like working with Beck, Swayze, and others? Being

PCH: Who were some other Fawcett artists you admired?

TAYLOR: Ed Robbins, who was a terrific layout artist and sat directly in front of me. Every so often he would stop working, leisurely take out his pipe, ream it, put fresh tobacco in, and light it. For the next few minutes he would lean back and puff away and then put the pipe down and slowly get back to work. Carefully peering over my drawing board, I watched him for the next few days going through this same ritual.

It occurred to me that, although he looked very busy and completely occupied, he was literally going on five- to ten-minute breaks every so often. It hit me like a rock! Why not get a pipe and a tobacco pouch and do the same thing? I, too, could take an occasional break without appearing to be goofing off. Besides, I would look so much more mature, especially since I was very self-conscious about being looked upon as a kid. I got the courage to speak to Ed about what I should look

184

Fawcett Collectors of America

for in purchasing a pipe, and he was kind enough to offer me one of his; and to this day, although I have given up smoking more than 25 years ago, I still treasure it. Needless to say, I took my carefully-orchestrated breaks and learned to relax at the job and acclimate myself to the wonderful and creative atmosphere of a great bunch of talented guys whom I admired and looked to for advice and guidance.

Al McLean was another talented member of the staff with a great sense of humor and a handlebar moustache, whom I admired greatly. After I completed the “rope” panels of the “Captain Marvel and the Lie Detector” story, he honored me with a full figure brush and ink drawing of Captain Marvel tied up from head to toe and inscribed it, “To M’ol Pal, Tuksniffer, in Memory of Th’Lye Detector.—Al.” PCH: Tuksniffer?

TAYLOR: A month before I was to enter the service, I had my name changed from Meyer Tuckschneider to Richard Deane Taylor. C.C. Beck, in a letter dated May 31, 1973, wrote, “I could never understand why you wanted to change your name from beautiful, resounding Meyer Tuckschneider to plain-sounding Richard Taylor, which sounds like some third-rate British actor. But according to my own familiar history, my first ancestor from Germany was named Hans Yorg Pecker, so we’ve changed our name, too!” I must take exception to C.C.’s comment—second-rate, perhaps, but not third-rate!

PCH: Did you do any more comic book work for Fawcett after you returned from the service?

TAYLOR: When I returned to civilian life in 1946, C.C. Beck and Pete Costanza had formed their own studio with offices at 67 West 44th Street and were still doing all the Captain Marvel work for Fawcett. I did some lettering for them on a freelance basis, but had decided to fur-

ther my studies and head back to school under the G.I. Bill. I applied and was accepted by the École Des Beaux-Arts and the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere in Paris, and for the next three years (1946-1949) I spent the most exciting time of my life painting and exhibiting in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

PCH: After Paris, where did your art career lead you?

TAYLOR: Upon returning home from my art studies in Paris, I prepared a commercial art portfolio. After a few months at the drawing board, I began making the rounds, showing my work to art directors and art agents. Rejections were numerous, but some meetings were encouraging enough to make me get back to the drawing board to produce additional samples and begin my rounds anew.

After about a year of meetings and appointments, an art agent agreed to take me on and represent me. Within a few weeks he had gotten me a commission for a full color double-page magazine spread in Collier’s, illustrating a story about the Kentucky Derby and Bill Corum. That successful first assignment opened the floodgates and my career as a freelance artist took off.

Among some of the most important and noteworthy commissions I have had during my career were portrait paintings of Herbert Hoover, Winston Churchill, Margaret Truman and Princess Margaret, Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, and President Goulart of Brazil for the covers of Collier’s, True, and Newsweek magazines. Among some other important assignments were a series of portraits of sportsmen for Hiram Walker & Sons and Imperial Whiskey, which appeared as full-color paintings in Life magazine and on billboards across the country. Other major commissions for still-life paintings were executed for Air France, Pillsbury Foods, Gulf Oil Corporation, Eversharp-Shick, Johnson & Johnson, Folger’s Coffee, Esso/Standard Oil, the costumed marching

Richard Deane Taylor

185

Near left: Fellow staff artist Al McLean’s drawing to Taylor, referring to the inking of all the rope panels in “The ‘Lye [sic] Detector’ Captain Marvel story, 1943, three pages (all inked

by Taylor) of which appear on opposite page and at left.

[Captain Marvel ©1999 DC Comics.]

Scotsman for Dewar’s Whiskey, and the popular “walking fingers” illustration for the New York Telephone Company.

Acting Chairman of the Art Department of the High School of Art and Design, and after more than 25 years at the school I retired in 1989.

PCH: You mentioned doing a cover for True magazine, which was published by Fawcett. What year was this, and what was it like returning to Fawcett? The stark realism and intensity of your cover renderings are superb and amazing.

PCH: Thank you for your time today, and for your remembrances of the Golden Age, Richard. Any current projects? Are you still painting and drawing? Any final comments about being on Fawcett’s Captain Marvel staff in the ‘40s?

TAYLOR: I have returned to my first love— fine arts—and I am as busy now as I have ever been, painting. Since my work is of a very realistic nature, I have been exhibiting these past nine years in group shows which learn toward photo-realism. I enjoy working in all media, but find that I favor oils, gouache, and blackand-white pencil line and halftone.

TAYLOR: Thank you. It was a great feeling to come back to Fawcett and to greet Al Allard as a budding cover artist after starting out as a 17-year-old speedball letterer and inker on the Captain Marvel staff. The $1000 check I received for the Eisenhower and Stevenson True magazine cover painting in 1956 was a far cry from the $37.50 per week salary I started out with as a young cartoonist at Fawcett in 1942.

PCH: Did you continue creating commercial art, or did you move on to other areas?

TAYLOR: In 1963, while continuing my commercial art career, I began teaching art at the high school and university levels. In 1980 I was appointed

Taylor-made cover for True magazine, November 1956 depicting the two major Presidential candidates Eisenhower and Stevenson… his pride-and-joy commission for Fawcett art director Al Allard. [©1999 Fawcett]

Occasionally I’ll do a brush-and-ink drawing that will bring back those memories at Fawcett, where I became pretty adept at using a No. 2 watercolor brush and ink. It’s at that moment that I relive those wonderful memories at Fawcett with C.C. Beck, Marc Swayze, Al McLean, Ed Robbins, and the rest of the Captain Marvel staff of some 56 years ago. As a 17-yearold, that was truly the “Golden Age” for me.

186

The Captain ’s Chief The Original, Genuine, Golden Age Captain Marvel, the World’s Mightiest Mortal As Remembered by C.C. Beck, Chief Artist, Captain Marvel, 1940-53, Fawcett Publications Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck (with special thanks & love to Jenny) I. ABOUT MYSELF My first paying job as an artist was drawing cartoon figures on lampshades. Rather than print pictures of popular comic characters of the time (1928) on their custom-made lampshades, the company for which I worked hired artists like myself to draw figures taken from work by the top syndicated cartoonists, whose permission to do so they had obtained.

on his books disappeared.

III. CAPTAIN MARVEL CHARACTERS BILLY BATSON AND CAPTAIN MARVEL The first character to appear in the first Captain Marvel story in the first issue of Whiz Comics was Billy Batson, a homeless newsboy.

(Although Captain Marvel appeared in the title splash preceding the story, he didn’t appear in the story itself until later.) Billy Batson was, although the publisher wasn’t ever aware of it, the real hero of all the Captain Marvel stories from the first issue till the last.

A previously unpublished Captain Marvel head by C.C. Beck. [Captain Marvel ©1999 DC Comics.]

Actually, it was cheaper to draw the characters than it would have been to print them, for the work was done at rather low piecework rates. I made a very good living at the job, however, and got a good education in cartooning at the same time.

At one time, believe it or not, the publisher sent down word to drop Billy from the stories, saying that he was only taking room that could have been used to show Captain Marvel instead, and that he wasn’t

This education enabled me to get a job with Fawcett Publications later, working on their humor magazines Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, Smokehouse Monthly, and other titles. In 1939 Fawcett got into the comic book field and I was assigned the job of illustrating three stories in the first issue of Whiz Comics. These stories, featuring Captain Marvel, Ibis the Invincible, and Spy Smasher, had all been written by Bill Parker, and I simply put them into picture form.

When Captain Marvel was discontinued in 1953, I went back to being what I had always wanted to be: a commercial artist and copywriter. Over thirty years later, however, people still remembered me for my work on Captain Marvel.

II. FAWCETT COMICS Fawcett’s Captain Marvel was produced by writers and artists working separately. The scripts were prepared by the editorial department, the drawing by the art department. The writers, who worked under the supervision of a managing editor, had nothing to say about the art, and the artists, who worked under the direction of an art director, had nothing to say about the stories they were given to illustrate. In the thirteen years I spent drawing Captain Marvel, I wrote only one story (“The Temple of Itzalotahui,” Whiz #22), which had to be submitted in typed form and edited and approved before I was allowed to illustrate it.

As Fawcett’s writers, artists, and editorial and art directors were all professionals with years of experience in their trades, Fawcett’s comic books quickly took over the market, and Captain Marvel and his family of characters became famous all over the world.

Captain Marvel was a big hit for thirteen years. Then, as times changed, his style of comedy and old-fashioned storytelling went out of fashion. Loose morals and unrestrained behavior patterns took over, and Captain Marvel and all the editors, writers, and artists who had worked

Beck drew this page especially for the 1974 Orlandocon. See later in the article for references to Dr. Sivana’s penchant for transparent disguises.

[Captain Marvel and Billy Batson ©1999 DC Comics.]

The Captain’s Chief

187

Previously unseen (and still pretty darn hard to see) treasure: Unfinished C.C. Beck extraterrestrial panorama featuring Billy, the Big Red Cheese, Sivana, and the wicked (if loveable) Mr. Mind! [All characters ©1999 DC Comics.]

contributing anything to the stories. Fortunately, the editors paid no attention to so ridiculous a memo and Billy Batson continued to appear in every story.

Without Billy Batson, Captain Marvel would have been merely another over-drawn, one-dimensional figure in a ridiculous costume running around beating up crooks and performing meaningless feats of strength like all the other heroic figures of the time who were, with almost no exception, cheap imitations of Superman.

It was always Billy Batson who got into trouble and had to call Captain Marvel to the rescue by saying the magic word “Shazam!” As silly as this bit of childish magic was, it was accepted without hesitation by readers all over the world who really didn’t believe that comic book stories were actual accounts of events in the real world, but knew that they were nothing more than entertaining fiction.

As a fictional character, Billy Batson didn’t have to look like a real boy at all, but was definitely a cartoon character. He had dots for eyes in the best tradition of comic characters from Felix the Cat to Charlie Brown.

A March 1970 Beck sketch of Billy Batson, done for fan John Ellis.

[Billy Batson ©1999 DC Comics.]

When other artists than those under my supervision drew Billy

Batson, they never got him quite right.

Fawcett farmed out some of the early Captain Marvel stories and Billy came back looking like a wooden puppet or a witless imbecile.

In the DC Captain Marvel stories, and also in the movie and TV versions, Billy Batson appeared as a rather stupid young man about twenty years old.

Why he appeared this way I have never been able to understand.

Perhaps it was because A Beck drawing previously published only in other people didn’t the Legion Outpost fanzine. [Captain Marvel understand that the con©1999 DC Comics.] trast between a 14-yearold boy and a grown man was a more effective literary and artistic device than presenting the same character in disguise or two characters who didn’t look anything like each other.

188

Fawcett Collectors of America

Billy Batson was Captain Marvel—as a boy of fourteen. He had the same nose, cleft chin, and dimples as Captain Marvel. Only his eyes were different—and his hair became magically combed back when he changed to his adult form.

and wistful, like Tiny Tim in Dickens’ “Christmas Carol.” Personally, I thought Captain Marvel Junior to be a sickeningly sweet, non-comic, and dull character, but some readers who found Captain Marvel too “cartoony” for their tastes loved him.

And Captain Marvel, although he had the powers of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, and other great heroes, was really a small boy at heart.

He was merely Billy Batson grown up, not a godlike creature from another planet nor a Frankenstein’s monster sort of being created by a mad scientist or by a nuclear accident. He was just the World’s Mightiest Mortal, nothing more.

MARY MARVEL Mary Marvel, who was really Billy Batson’s twin sister, was created to attract girl readers.

As such, he was human, which few of the other comic book heroes of the time were, and therein lay his appeal to readers all over the world.

SHAZAM Bill Parker’s first Captain Marvel script gave me no description of the ancient wizard Shazam, whose magical powers Billy Batson inherited. I drew him as a combination MosesMerlin-good magician figure, sort of a benign semi-Biblical character. After giving his powers to Billy, old Shazam disappeared for good in the original story.

Later, Shazam was revived, or appeared in spirit form, or was seen in flashback scenes. When drawn by other artists, he sometimes appeared evil and threatening, or March 1970 was a busy time for like a madman. Nobody seemed C.C.! Here’s Shazam from the same to realize that I had drawn him as period. [Shazam ©1999 DC Comics.]

Captain Marvel as an old man. He had the same feature, just altered by old age.

SIVANA The evil scientist Sivana was based on a druggist I had once known.

He was bald-headed and had a big nose and ears, protruding teeth, and was short-tempered and nasty. He always wore a white lab coat and dark trousers and was definitely a comic figure, not a real menace, because readers could see immediately that none of his schemes to become Rightful Ruler of the Universe would succeed.

Many other villains appeared in the Captain Marvel stories, but Sivana was in the first story and he was never killed off, as other bad guys were. He was so strong a character that, no matter how poorly the other artists drew him, he was instantly recognizable, even when wearing one of the disguises he sometimes donned to fool Billy Batson (but not the readers).

Sivana by Beck, 1970.

[Sivana ©1999 DC Comics.]

Strangely enough, the publisher once wanted to drop Sivana from the stories along with Billy Batson, claiming that the old rascal was becoming a more interesting character than Captain Marvel. The editors paid no attention to so silly an order, and kept him alive and cackling away.

CAPTAIN MARVEL JUNIOR A teenage Captain Marvel was created, at the publisher’s orders, to capture the interest of younger readers and to compete with Batman’s Robin and other junior super-characters.

When I drew Captain Marvel Junior I drew him as a husky young fellow of about fifteen, but when Mac Raboy and other artists drew him he always looked more like an eight-year-old Peter Pan or, dewy-eyed

I always drew her to look somewhat like Billy Batson, but other artists, most notably Marc Swayze and Jack Binder, drew her in various ways. Her stories were usually fairytale-like and unconvincing.

In my opinion, Mary Marvel was a weak, synthetic character created on the order of the publisher. She never came to life the way Billy Batson and Captain Marvel did, but always seemed wooden and artificial.

SIVANA JUNIOR AND GEORGIA SIVANA These two characters were supposed to be Sivana’s son and daughter. Sivana Junior was tall and gangly and Georgia was short and ugly. Neither one had any brains at all—they inherited only their father’s looks. I could never stand these two characters, but Kurt Schaffenberger made a career of drawing them, both for Fawcett and DC Comics.

STEAMBOAT This character was created to capture the affection of black readers. Unfortunately, he offended them instead and was unceremoniously killed off after a delegation of blacks The controversial Steamboat, in an unpubvisited the Fawcett edilished 1981 sketch showing how he might have tor’s office protesting looked “today.” (The “W.W.” reference is to because he was a ser“Walter Wego,” an alias occasionally used by C.C. Beck.) [Steamboat ©1999 DC Comics.] vant, because he had huge lips and kinky hair, and because he spoke in a dialect. He was always a cartoon character, not intended to be realistic at all, but he was taken seriously by some, sadly enough.

IV. THE CAPTAIN’S CREATORS Fawcett’s artists were trained illustrators and, along with some very talented writers and editors, they brought to life characters that captured the hearts of readers everywhere and that have found their places in folklore and literature.

There were dozens of people who must be credited with helping to create Captain Marvel. First and foremost there was BILL PARKER, who, under the supervision of RALPH DAIGH, Fawcett’s managing editor, wrote the first story in which the World’s Mightiest Mortal appeared.

Parker based Captain Marvel’s powers on those of classic figures taken from mythology, not from science fiction sources. He created the word “Shazam,” which has now become part of our language, and also created the name “Sivana” by combining the name of the Indian god Siva with the word “nirvana.” He did not deliberately try to create something new and startling in his comic book characters and stories,

The Captain’s Chief

189

Cheers for Captain Marvel! (L.-to-R.:) Jack Binder, Charles Clarence Beck, and Otto Binder making a toast in the Golden Age.

but combined old familiar terms and plots in new and novel ways. This gave his work more lasting value than other Golden Age comic characters and stories had, as the elements in Parker’s stories were already familiar features in our culture. As the artist who first brought Parker’s character to life in drawings, I also stuck pretty closely to standard methods of illustration, never striving to impress the reader with displays of artistic talent which would have meant nothing to most people.

Parker belonged to the National Guard and left to join the armed forces in the early ’40s. When he came back after World War II, he was made editor of Fawcett’s Mechanix Illustrated and had nothing further to do with comic books.

I have always tried to give as much credit as possible to Bill Parker and Ralph Daigh and Fawcett Publications for starting Captain Marvel off in the first place. I certainly didn’t think him up; I merely made him visible in the drawings I made to illustrate his stories, all but one of which were written by other people.

York City office. Peter was an established illustrator at an early age, and I learned as much from him about story illustration as he learned from me about cartooning.

OTTO BINDER, who wrote the majority of the Captain Marvel stories, had been a successful science-fiction writer in the 1930s.

When he came to work for Fawcett, he brought his knowledge of science-fiction themes along with him, as well as an engaging sense of humor which he injected into the Captain Marvel scripts.

There was never any direct cooperation between the writers and the artists at Fawcett, but there did develop an interplay of ideas between the two departments which kept Captain Marvel changing and developing, instead of getting bogged down and repeating himself tiresomely after the first few issues, as so many other comic characters did.

When the writers saw what we artists did with their stories, they were always pleased. It was, Otto Binder once told me, like seeing your photos after they had come back from the drugstore. You saw where you had gone Soon after Otto O. Binder passed away on Oct. 13, 1974, wrong and vowed not to repeat your misthe following Beck drawing was published in the Legion Outpost. (“OOB,” as he sometimes signed himself, had takes. At the same time you were delighted to PETE COSTANZA was the first artist scripted the first Legion of Super-heroes story.) see where things had come out better than hired to assist me when Fawcett’s comic you expected them to and were inspired to try department started to expand in the latter new and more difficult approaches in your next stories. part of 1940. We later went into partnership, and Pete was in charge of our studio in Englewood, New Jersey, while I operated out of our New WENDELL CROWLEY was one of Fawcett’s very able editors. He

190

Fawcett Collectors of America

had started working in the Jack Binder studio, then had worked for me. After Fawcett had hired him as an editor of the Captain Marvel magazines, he became the boss of us all.

And a very able boss he was. Although Wendell was ten years younger than the rest of us (and twenty years younger than Jack Binder), he never bowed to our seniority but kept us all in our places. He knew his part in the production of comic books and took no backtalk from anyone.

JACK BINDER, Otto’s older brother, was an all-around artist and had been a printer, a painter, and an illustrator before he got into the comic book business. At one time he worked for me; then he took over illustrating Mary Marvel.

MAC RABOY was a frustrated fine artist forced to make his living in comic books illustrating Captain Marvel Jr., Dr. Voodoo, and various covers. He had little use for cartoonish tricks and distortions and always drew as realistic as possible, being a great admirer of such artists as Hal Foster and Alex Raymond.

Marvel stories to Jack Kirby, George Tuska, and the Harry Chesler shop. The work of these people was so substandard and so distorted from the way I had shown things in the early Whiz Comics that Fawcett’s art director Al Allard was moved to call all work back into his control and to set me up as chief artist to set the pace and standards from then on.

The introduction of the talking tiger, Mr. Tawny, and of the intelligent worm from outer space, Mr. Mind, turned some of the readers who didn’t like to see anything funny in their comics away from the Captain Marvel magazines. These people spread the belief that Captain Marvel was an overstuffed, stumble-footed clown who ran around with talking animals and cracked jokes, did pratfalls, and generally made himself ridiculous.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Captain Marvel himself was never funny—there were funny characters in his stories. They did the jokes and had the potato noses and comic makeup; Captain Marvel was their straight man. When DC Comics revived Captain Marvel in the ’70s, the editors and writers, some of whom hadn’t ever seen a Golden Age comic, proceeded to turn Captain Marvel into a standup comic spouting one-liners and making a fool of himself. I left DC soon afterward. Ignorance can be relieved, but stupidity is pretty hard to overcome.

These men were, like myself, experienced professionals, although none of the others had worked extensively in comics before coming to Fawcett. We used all the principles we had learned in other work Mr. Mind—the world’s wickedest when producing the Captain Marvel stories and art, worm! [Mr. Mind ©1999 DC Comics.] which we regarded as simply another form of popular literature. This attitude was, I believe, what enabled The most distorted beliefs about Captain Marvel are that I, C.C. us to surpass the other comic book workers of the day in the quality Beck, created him, and am now a retired millionaire. Those beliefs are of our scripts and illustrations. None of us needed to copy and steal totally false. I didn’t create Captain Marvel; I merely brought him to from other comic book work; after the first few issues of Whiz life in picture form. I received no royalties or percentages of profits; I Comics had appeared, other writers and artists copied and stole our was paid piecework rates for whatever pages I did myself or had material. other artists produce under my supervision. Since 1973 I have In spite of DC’s claim that Captain Marvel had been copied received one or two very small token payments from DC for reprints from Superman, after Captain Marvel had disappeared DC was of old stories. I never received anything from Fawcett other than the unable to reproduce the success of the original World’s Mightiest page rate I got back in 1941—no bonuses, no dividends, not even a Mortal (even with my help) when they tried to revive him in 1973. letter of appreciation.

They tried to turn him into a buffoonish, idiotic, revolting caricature of what he had never been in the first place, and seemed to be trying VI. CAPTAIN MARVEL, R.I.P. to pump life into a great comic character who had died an untimely Captain Marvel had his day of glory and so did I. Neither of us death over a generation ago. can stage a comeback; we are both entirely out of step with today’s Great comic heroes, like everyone else, don’t live forever. The trends and customs. lucky ones die at the peak of their powers. There’s something sad Whether today’s readers would appreciate Captain Marvel’s kind about a hero who is still around in an age when he’s getting short in of simple, old-fashioned story is doubtful. The world has changed too the wind and long in the tooth. Even old Shazam gave up at last, much in the years between 1940 and today. It’s too bad there’s nothalthough he had to wait 3000 years before he found someone to take ing of the kind on the market today. If one appears, it will take the his place! world by storm, as Captain Marvel and Whiz Comics did once long ago, quite to the surprise of a lot of people who never expected them V. THE MARVEL MYTHOS to amount to much when they first appeared.

In all of the years that have gone by since Captain Marvel disappeared from the comic book stands, many false impressions of his [NOTE: The foregoing overview of Captain character and his activities have been formed. The most harmful Marvel and Fawcett Publications was originally impression is that he was nothing but a baggy-pants comic bumbling written by the late C.C. Beck in the mid-1980s.] around like an oldtime vaudevillian or burlesque actor.

Very early, in the first year, Fawcett farmed out some Captain

Edited by ROY THOMAS

DIGITAL

The greatest ‘zine of the 1960s is back, ALL-NEW, and focusing on GOLDEN AND SILVER AGE comics and creators with NS EDITIO BLE ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS, A IL AVA NLY UNSEEN ART, P.C. Hamerlinck’s FOR O 5 FCA (Fawcett Collectors of $2.9 America, featuring the archives of C.C. BECK and recollections

by Fawcett artist MARCUS SWAYZE), Michael T. Gilbert’s MR. MONSTER, and more!

EISNER AWARD WINNER for Best Comics-Related Periodical

Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with issues at HALF-PRICE!

ALTER EGO #4

ALTER EGO #5

ALTER EGO #1

ALTER EGO #2

ALTER EGO #3

STAN LEE gets roasted by SCHWARTZ, CLAREMONT, DAVID, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, and SHOOTER, ORDWAY and THOMAS on INFINITY, INC., IRWIN HASEN interview, unseen H.G. PETER Wonder Woman pages, the original Captain Marvel and Human Torch teamup, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, “Mr. Monster”, plus plenty of rare and unpublished art!

Featuring a never-reprinted SPIRIT story by WILL EISNER, the genesis of the SILVER AGE ATOM (with GARDNER FOX, GIL KANE, and JULIE SCHWARTZ), interviews with LARRY LIEBER and Golden Age great JACK BURNLEY, BOB KANIGHER, a new Fawcett Collectors of America section with MARC SWAYZE, C.C. BECK, and more!

GIL KANE and JACK BURNLEY flip-covers!

Unseen ALEX ROSS and JERRY ORDWAY Shazam! art, 1953 interview with OTTO BINDER, the SUPERMAN/CAPTAIN MARVEL LAWSUIT, GIL KANE on The Golden Age of TIMELY COMICS, FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, and SCHAFFENBERGER, rare art by AYERS, BERG, BURNLEY, DITKO, RICO, SCHOMBURG, MARIE SEVERIN and more! ALEX ROSS & BILL EVERETT covers!

(80-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #6

ALTER EGO #7

ALTER EGO #8

Interviews with KUBERT, SHELLY MOLDOFF, and HARRY LAMPERT, BOB KANIGHER, life and times of GARDNER FOX, ROY THOMAS remembers GIL KANE, a history of Flash Comics, MOEBIUS Silver Surfer sketches, MR. MONSTER, FCA section with SWAYZE, BECK, and SCHAFFENBERGER, and lots more! Dual color covers by JOE KUBERT!

Celebrating the JSA, with interviews with MART NODELL, SHELLY MAYER, GEORGE ROUSSOS, BILL BLACK, and GIL KANE, unpublished H.G. PETER Wonder Woman art, GARDNER FOX, an FCA section with MARC SWAYZE, C.C. BECK, WENDELL CROWLEY, and more! Wraparound cover

by CARMINE INFANTINO and JERRY ORDWAY!

GENE COLAN interview, 1940s books on comics by STAN LEE and ROBERT KANIGHER, AYERS, SEVERIN, and ROY THOMAS on Sgt. Fury, ROY on All-Star Squadron’s Golden Age roots, FCA section with SWAYZE, BECK, and WILLIAM WOOLFOLK, JOE SIMON interview, a definitive look at MAC RABOY’S work, and more! Covers by COLAN and RABOY!

Companion to ALL-STAR COMPANION book, with a JULIE SCHWARTZ interview, guide to JLA-JSA TEAMUPS, origins of the ALL-STAR SQUADRON, FCA section with MARC SWAYZE, C.C. BECK (on his 1970s DC conflicts), DAVE BERG, BOB ROGERS, more on MAC RABOY from his son, MR. MONSTER, and more! RICH BUCKLER and C.C. BECK covers!

WALLY WOOD biography, DAN ADKINS & BILL PEARSON on Wood, TOR section with 1963 JOE KUBERT interview, ROY THOMAS on creating the ALL-STAR SQUADRON and its 1940s forebears, FCA section with SWAYZE & BECK, MR. MONSTER, JERRY ORDWAY on Shazam!, JERRY DeFUCCIO on the Golden Age, CHIC STONE remembered! ADKINS and KUBERT covers!

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #9

ALTER EGO #10

ALTER EGO #11

ALTER EGO #12

ALTER EGO #13

JOHN ROMITA interview by ROY THOMAS (with unseen art), Roy’s PROPOSED DREAM PROJECTS that never got published (with a host of great artists), MR. MONSTER on WAYNE BORING’S life after Superman, The Golden Age of Comic Fandom Panel, FCA section with GEORGE TUSKA, C.C. BECK, MARC SWAYZE, BILL MORRISON, & more! ROMITA and GIORDANO covers!

Who Created the Silver Age Flash? (with KANIGHER, INFANTINO, KUBERT, and SCHWARTZ), DICK AYERS interview (with unseen art), JOHN BROOME remembered, never-seen Golden Age Flash pages, VIN SULLIVAN Magazine Enterprises interview, FCA, interview with FRED GUARDINEER, and MR. MONSTER on WAYNE BORING! INFANTINO and AYERS covers!

Focuses on TIMELY/MARVEL (interviews and features on SYD SHORES, MICKEY SPILLANE, and VINCE FAGO), and MAGAZINE ENTERPRISES (including JOE CERTA, JOHN BELFI, FRANK BOLLE, BOB POWELL, and FRED MEAGHER), MR. MONSTER on JERRY SIEGEL, DON and MAGGIE THOMPSON interview, FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, and DON NEWTON!

DC and QUALITY COMICS focus! Quality’s GILL FOX interview, never-seen ‘40s PAUL REINMAN Green Lantern story, ROY THOMAS talks to LEN WEIN and RICH BUCKLER about ALL-STAR SQUADRON, MR. MONSTER shows what made WALLY WOOD leave MAD, FCA section with BECK & SWAYZE, & ‘65 NEWSWEEK ARTICLE on comics! REINMAN and BILL WARD covers!

1974 panel with JOE SIMON, STAN LEE, FRANK ROBBINS, and ROY THOMAS, ROY and JOHN BUSCEMA on Avengers, 1964 STAN LEE interview, tributes to DON HECK, JOHNNY CRAIG, and GRAY MORROW, Timely alums DAVID GANTZ and DANIEL KEYES, and FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, and MIKE MANLEY! Covers by MURPHY ANDERSON and JOE SIMON!

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

16

ALTER EGO #14

ALTER EGO #15

ALTER EGO #16

ALTER EGO #17

ALTER EGO #18

A look at the 1970s JSA revival with CONWAY, LEVITZ, ESTRADA, GIFFEN, MILGROM, and STATON, JERRY ORDWAY on All-Star Squadron, tributes to CRAIG CHASE and DAN DeCARLO, “lost” 1945 issue of All-Star, 1970 interview with LEE ELIAS, MR. MONSTER on GARDNER FOX, FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, & JAY DISBROW! MIKE NASSER & MICHAEL GILBERT covers!

JOHN BUSCEMA ISSUE! BUSCEMA interview (with UNSEEN ART), reminiscences by SAL BUSCEMA, STAN LEE, INFANTINO, KUBERT, ORDWAY, FLO STEINBERG, and HERB TRIMPE, ROY THOMAS on 35 years with BIG JOHN, FCA tribute to KURT SCHAFFENBERGER, plus C.C. BECK and MARC SWAYZE, and MR. MONSTER revisits WALLY WOOD! Two BUSCEMA covers!

MARVEL BULLPEN REUNION (BUSCEMA, COLAN, ROMITA, and SEVERIN), memories of the JOHN BUSCEMA SCHOOL, FCA with ALEX ROSS, C.C. BECK, and MARC SWAYZE, tribute to CHAD GROTHKOPF, MR. MONSTER on EC COMICS with art by KURTZMAN, DAVIS, and WOOD, and more! Covers by ALEX ROSS and MARIE SEVERIN & RAMONA FRADON!

Spotlighting LOU FINE (with an overview of his career, and interviews with family members), interview with MURPHY ANDERSON about Fine, ALEX TOTH on Fine, ARNOLD DRAKE interviewed about DEADMAN and DOOM PATROL, MR. MONSTER on the non-EC work of JACK DAVIS and GEORGE EVANS, FINE and LUIS DOMINGUEZ COVERS, FCA and more!

STAN GOLDBERG interview, secrets of ‘40s Timely, art by KIRBY, DITKO, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, MANEELY, EVERETT, BURGOS, and DeCARLO, spotlight on sci-fi fanzine XERO with the LUPOFFS, OTTO BINDER, DON THOMPSON, ROY THOMAS, BILL SCHELLY, and ROGER EBERT, FCA, and MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD ghosting Flash Gordon! KIRBY and SWAYZE covers!

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #19

ALTER EGO #20

ALTER EGO #21

ALTER EGO #22

ALTER EGO #23

Spotlight on DICK SPRANG (profile and interview) with unseen art, rare Batman art

by BOB KANE, CHARLES PARIS, SHELLY MOLDOFF, MAX ALLAN COLLINS, JIM MOONEY, CARMINE INFANTINO, and ALEX TOTH, JERRY ROBINSON interviewed about Tomahawk and 1940s cover artist FRED RAY, FCA, and MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD’s Flash Gordon, Part 2!

Timely/Marvel art by SEKOWSKY, SHORES, EVERETT, and BURGOS, secrets behind THE INVADERS with ROY THOMAS, KIRBY, GIL KANE, & ROBBINS, BOB DESCHAMPS interviewed, 1965 NY Comics Con review, panel with FINGER, BINDER, FOX and WEISINGER, MR. MONSTER, FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, RABOY, SCHAFFENBERGER, and more! MILGROM and SCHELLY covers!

The IGER “SHOP” examined, with art by EISNER, FINE, ANDERSON, CRANDALL, BAKER, MESKIN, CARDY, EVANS, BOB KANE, and TUSKA, “SHEENA” section with art by DAVE STEVENS & FRANK BRUNNER, ROY THOMAS on JSA & All-Star Squadron, MR. MONSTER on GARDNER FOX, UNSEEN 1946 ALL-STAR ART, FCA, and more!

DAVE STEVENS and IRWIN HASEN covers!

BILL EVERETT and JOE KUBERT interviewed

by NEAL ADAMS and GIL KANE in 1970, Timely art by BURGOS, SHORES, NODELL, and SEKOWSKY, RUDY LAPICK, ROY THOMAS on Sub-Mariner, with art by EVERETT, COLAN, ANDRU, BUSCEMAs, SEVERINs, and more, FCA, MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD at EC, ALEX TOTH, and CAPT. MIDNIGHT! EVERETT & BECK covers!

Unseen art from TWO “LOST” 1940s H.G. PETER WONDER WOMAN STORIES (and analysis of “CHARLES MOULTON” scripts), BOB FUJITANI and JOHN ROSENBERGER, VICTOR GORELICK discusses Archie and The Mighty Crusaders, with art by MORROW, BUCKLER, and REINMAN, FCA, and MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD! H.G. PETER and BOB FUJITANI covers!

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #24

ALTER EGO #25

ALTER EGO #26

ALTER EGO #27

ALTER EGO #28

X-MEN interviews with STAN LEE, DAVE COCKRUM, CHRIS CLAREMONT, ARNOLD DRAKE, JIM SHOOTER, ROY THOMAS, and LEN WEIN, MORT MESKIN profiled by his sons and ALEX TOTH, rare art by JERRY ROBINSON, FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, and WILLIAM WOOLFOLK, MR. MONSTER, and BILL SCHELLY on Comics Fandom! MESKIN and COCKRUM covers!

JACK COLE remembered by ALEX TOTH, interview with brother DICK COLE and his PLAYBOY colleagues, CHRIS CLAREMONT on the X-Men (with more never-seen art by DAVE COCKRUM), ROY THOMAS on AllStar Squadron #1 and its ‘40s roots (with art

by ORDWAY, BUCKLER, MESKIN and MOLDOFF), FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more! Covers by TOTH and SCHELLY!

JOE SINNOTT interview, IRWIN DONENFELD interview by EVANIER & SCHWARTZ, art by SHUSTER, INFANTINO, ANDERSON, and SWAN, MARK WAID analyzes the first Kryptonite story, JERRY SIEGEL and HARRY DONENFELD, JERRY IGER Shop update, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, and FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, and KEN BALD! Covers by SINNOTT and WAYNE BORING!

VIN SULLIVAN interview about the early DC days with art by SHUSTER, MOLDOFF, FLESSEL, GUARDINEER, and BURNLEY, MR. MONSTER’s “Lost” KIRBY HULK covers, 1948 NEW YORK COMIC CON with STAN LEE, SIMON & KIRBY, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, HARVEY KURTZMAN, and ROY THOMAS, ALEX TOTH, FCA, and more! Covers by JACK BURNLEY and JACK KIRBY!

Spotlight on JOE MANEELY, with a career overview, remembrance by his daughter and tons of art, Timely/Atlas/Marvel art by ROMITA, EVERETT, SEVERIN, SHORES, KIRBY, and DITKO, STAN LEE on Maneely, LEE AMES interview, FCA with SWAYZE, ISIS, and STEVE SKEATES, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Covers by JOE MANEELY and DON NEWTON!

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

17

ALTER EGO #29

ALTER EGO #30

ALTER EGO #31

ALTER EGO #32

ALTER EGO #33

FRANK BRUNNER interview, BILL EVERETT’S Venus examined by TRINA ROBBINS, Classics Illustrated “What ifs”, LEE/KIRBY/DITKO Marvel prototypes, JOE MANEELY’s monsters, BILL FRACCIO interview, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, JOHN BENSON on EC, The Heap by ERNIE SCHROEDER, and FCA! Covers by FRANK BRUNNER and PETE VON SHOLLY!

ALEX ROSS on his love for the JLA, BLACKHAWK/JLA artist DICK DILLIN, the super-heroes of 1940s-1980s France (with art by STEVE RUDE, STEVE BISSETTE, LADRÖNN, and NEAL ADAMS), KIM AAMODT & WALTER GEIER on writing for SIMON & KIRBY, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, and FCA! Covers by ALEX ROSS and STEVE RUDE!

DICK AYERS on his 1950s and ‘60s work (with tons of Marvel Bullpen art), HARLAN ELLISON’s Marvel Age work examined (with art by BUCKLER, SAL BUSCEMA, and TRIMPE), STAN LEE’S Marvel Prototypes (with art by KIRBY and DITKO), Christmas cards from comics greats, MR. MONSTER, & FCA with SWAYZE and SCHAFFENBERGER! Covers by DICK AYERS and FRED RAY!

Timely artists ALLEN BELLMAN and SAM BURLOCKOFF interviewed, MART NODELL on his Timely years, rare art by BURGOS, EVERETT, and SHORES, MIKE GOLD on the Silver Age (with art by SIMON & KIRBY, SWAN, INFANTINO, KANE, and more), FCA, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom, and more!

Covers by DICK GIORDANO and GIL KANE!

Symposium on MIKE SEKOWSKY by MARK EVANIER, SCOTT SHAW!, et al., with art

by ANDERSON, INFANTINO, and others, PAT (MRS. MIKE) SEKOWSKY and inker VALERIE BARCLAY interviewed, FCA, 1950s Captain Marvel parody by ANDRU and ESPOSITO, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY, MR. MONSTER, and more! Covers by FRENZ/SINNOTT and FRENZ/BUSCEMA!

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #34

ALTER EGO #35

ALTER EGO #36

ALTER EGO #37

ALTER EGO #38

Quality Comics interviews with ALEX KOTZKY, AL GRENET, CHUCK CUIDERA, & DICK ARNOLD (son of BUSY ARNOLD), art by COLE, EISNER, FINE, WARD, DILLIN, and KANE, MICHELLE NOLAN on Blackhawk’s jump to DC, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on HARVEY KURTZMAN, & ALEX TOTH on REED CRANDALL! Covers by REED CRANDALL & CHARLES NICHOLAS!

Covers by JOHN ROMITA and AL JAFFEE! LEE, ROMITA, AYERS, HEATH, & THOMAS on the 1953-55 Timely super-hero revival, with rare art by ROMITA, AYERS, BURGOS, HEATH, EVERETT, LAWRENCE, & POWELL, AL JAFFEE on the 1940s Timely Bullpen (and MAD), FCA, ALEX TOTH on comic art, MR. MONSTER on unpublished 1950s covers, and more!

JOE SIMON on SIMON & KIRBY, CARL BURGOS, and LLOYD JACQUET, JOHN BELL on World War II Canadian heroes, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on Canadian origins of MR. MONSTER, tributes to BOB DESCHAMPS, DON LAWRENCE, & GEORGE WOODBRIDGE, FCA, ALEX TOTH, and ELMER WEXLER interview! Covers by SIMON and GILBERT & RONN SUTTON!

WILL MURRAY on the 1940 Superman “KMetal” story & PHILIP WYLIE’s GLADIATOR (with art by SHUSTER, SWAN, ADAMS, and BORING), FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, and DON NEWTON, SY BARRY interview, art by TOTH, MESKIN, INFANTINO, and ANDERSON, and MICHAEL T. GILBERT interviews AL FELDSTEIN on EC and RAY BRADBURY! Covers by C.C. BECK and WAYNE BORING!

JULIE SCHWARTZ TRIBUTE with HARLAN ELLISON, INFANTINO, ANDERSON, TOTH, KUBERT, GIELLA, GIORDANO, CARDY, LEVITZ, STAN LEE, WOLFMAN, EVANIER, & ROY THOMAS, never-seen interviews with Julie, FCA with BECK, SCHAFFENBERGER, NEWTON, COCKRUM, OKSNER, FRADON, SWAYZE, and JACKSON BOSTWICK! Covers by INFANTINO and IRWIN HASEN!

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #39

ALTER EGO #40

ALTER EGO #41

ALTER EGO #42

ALTER EGO #43

Full-issue spotlight on JERRY ROBINSON, with an interview on being BOB KANE’s Batman “ghost”, creating the JOKER and ROBIN, working on VIGILANTE, GREEN HORNET, and ATOMAN, plus never-seen art by Jerry, MESKIN, ROUSSOS, RAY, KIRBY, SPRANG, DITKO, and PARIS! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER on AL FELDSTEIN Part 2, and more! Two JERRY ROBINSON covers!

RUSS HEATH and GIL KANE interviews (with tons of unseen art), the JULIE SCHWARTZ Memorial Service with ELLISON, MOORE, GAIMAN, HASEN, O’NEIL, and LEVITZ, art by INFANTINO, ANDERSON, TOTH, NOVICK, DILLIN, SEKOWSKY, KUBERT, GIELLA, ARAGONÉS, FCA, MR. MONSTER and AL FELDSTEIN Part 3, and more! Covers by GIL KANE & RUSS HEATH!

Halloween issue! BERNIE WRIGHTSON on his 1970s FRANKENSTEIN, DICK BRIEFER’S monster, the campy 1960s Frankie, art by KALUTA, BAILY, MANEELY, PLOOG, KUBERT, BRUNNER, BORING, OKSNER, TUSKA, CRANDALL, and SUTTON, FCA #100, EMILIO SQUEGLIO interview, ALEX TOTH, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more!

Covers by WRIGHTSON & MARC SWAYZE!

A celebration of DON HECK, WERNER ROTH, and PAUL REINMAN, rare art by KIRBY, DITKO, and AYERS, Hillman and Ziff-Davis remembered by Heap artist ERNIE SCHROEDER, HERB ROGOFF, and WALTER LITTMAN, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and ALEX TOTH! Covers by FASTNER & LARSON and ERNIE SCHROEDER!

Yuletide art by WOOD, SINNOTT, CARDY, BRUNNER, TOTH, NODELL, and others, interviews with Golden Age artists TOM GILL (Lone Ranger) and MORRIS WEISS, exploring 1960s Mexican comics, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and C.C. BECK, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom, and more! Flip covers by GEORGE TUSKA and DAVE STEVENS!

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

18

ALTER EGO #44

ALTER EGO #45

ALTER EGO #46

ALTER EGO #47

ALTER EGO #48

JSA/All-Star Squadron/Infinity Inc. special!

Interviews with KUBERT, HASEN, ANDERSON, ORDWAY, BUCKLER, THOMAS, 1940s Atom writer ARTHUR ADLER, art by TOTH, SEKOWSKY, HASEN, MACHLAN, OKSNER, and INFANTINO, FCA, and MR. MONSTER’S “I Like Ike!” cartoons by BOB KANE, INFANTINO, OKSNER, and BIRO! Wraparound ORDWAY cover!

Interviews with Sandman artist CREIG FLESSEL and ‘40s creator BERT CHRISTMAN, MICHAEL CHABON on researching his Pulitzer-winning novel Kavalier & Clay, art

by EISNER, KANE, KIRBY, and AYERS, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and C.C. BECK, OTTO BINDER’s “lost” Jon Jarl story, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom, and ALEX TOTH! CREIG FLESSEL cover!

The VERY BEST of the 1960s-70s ALTER EGO! 1969 BILL EVERETT interview, art by BURGOS, GUSTAVSON, SIMON & KIRBY, and others, 1960s gems by DITKO, E. NELSON BRIDWELL, JERRY BAILS, and ROY THOMAS, LOU GLANZMAN interview, tributes to IRV NOVICK and CHRIS REEVE, MR. MONSTER, FCA, TOTH, and more!

Cover by EVERETT and MARIE SEVERIN!

Spotlights MATT BAKER, Golden Age cheesecake artist of PHANTOM LADY! Career overview, interviews with BAKER’s half-brother and nephew, art from AL FELDSTEIN, VINCE COLLETTA, ARTHUR PEDDY, JACK KAMEN and others, FCA, BILL SCHELLY talks to comic-book-seller (and fan) BUD PLANT, MR. MONSTER on missing AL WILLIAMSON art, and ALEX TOTH!

WILL EISNER discusses Eisner & Iger’s Shop and BUSY ARNOLD’s ‘40s Quality Comics, art by FINE, CRANDALL, COLE, POWELL, and CARDY, EISNER tributes by STAN LEE, GENE COLAN, & others, interviews with ‘40s Quality artist VERN HENKEL and CHUCK MAZOUJIAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER on EISNER’s Wonder Man, ALEX TOTH, and more with BUD PLANT! EISNER cover!

(100-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #49

ALTER EGO #50

ALTER EGO #51

ALTER EGO #52

ALTER EGO #53

Spotlights CARL BURGOS! Interview with daughter SUE BURGOS, art by BURGOS, BILL EVERETT, MIKE SEKOWSKY, ED ASCHE, and DICK AYERS, unused 1941 Timely cover layouts, the 1957 Atlas Implosion examined, MANNY STALLMAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER and more! New cover by MARK SPARACIO, from an unused 1941 layout by CARL BURGOS!

ROY THOMAS covers his 40-YEAR career in comics (AVENGERS, X-MEN, CONAN, ALL-STAR SQUADRON, INFINITY INC.), with ADAMS, BUSCEMA, COLAN, DITKO, GIL KANE, KIRBY, STAN LEE, ORDWAY, PÉREZ, ROMITA, and many others! Also FCA, & MR. MONSTER on ROY’s letters to GARDNER FOX! Flip-covers by BUSCEMA/ KIRBY/ALCALA and JERRY ORDWAY!

Golden Age Batman artist/BOB KANE ghost LEW SAYRE SCHWARTZ interviewed, Batman art by JERRY ROBINSON, DICK SPRANG, SHELDON MOLDOFF, WIN MORTIMER, JIM MOONEY, and others, the Golden and Silver Ages of AUSTRALIAN SUPER-HEROES, Mad artist DAVE BERG interviewed, FCA, MR. MONSTER on WILL EISNER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

JOE GIELLA on the Silver Age at DC, the Golden Age at Marvel, and JULIE SCHWARTZ, with rare art by INFANTINO, GIL KANE, SEKOWSKY, SWAN, DILLIN, MOLDOFF, GIACOIA, SCHAFFENBERGER, and others, JAY SCOTT PIKE on STAN LEE and CHARLES BIRO, MARTIN THALL interview, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more! GIELLA cover!

GIORDANO and THOMAS on STOKER’S DRACULA, never-seen DICK BRIEFER Frankenstein strip, MIKE ESPOSITO on his work with ROSS ANDRU, art by COLAN, WRIGHTSON, MIGNOLA, BRUNNER, BISSETTE, KALUTA, HEATH, MANEELY, EVERETT, DITKO, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, BILL SCHELLY, ALEX TOTH, and MR. MONSTER! Cover by GIORDANO!

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #54

ALTER EGO #55

ALTER EGO #56

ALTER EGO #57

ALTER EGO #58

MIKE ESPOSITO on DC and Marvel, ROBERT KANIGHER on the creation of Metal Men and Sgt. Rock (with comments

by JOE KUBERT and BOB HANEY), art by ANDRU, INFANTINO, KIRBY, SEVERIN, WINDSOR-SMITH, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, TRIMPE, GIL KANE, and others, plus FCA, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY, MR. MONSTER, and more! ESPOSITO cover!

JACK and OTTO BINDER, KEN BALD, VIC DOWD, and BOB BOYAJIAN interviewed, FCA with SWAYZE and EMILIO SQUEGLIO, rare art by BECK, WARD, & SCHAFFENBERGER, Christmas Cards from CRANDALL, SINNOTT, HEATH, MOONEY, and CARDY, 1943 Pin-Up Calendar (with ‘40s movie stars as superheroines), ALEX TOTH, more!

ALEX ROSS and ALEX WRIGHT covers!

Interviews with Superman creators SIEGEL & SHUSTER, Golden/Silver Age DC production guru JACK ADLER interviewed, NEAL ADAMS and radio/TV iconoclast (and comics fan) HOWARD STERN on Adler and his amazing career, art by CURT SWAN, WAYNE BORING, and AL PLASTINO, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, and more! NEAL ADAMS cover!

Issue-by-issue index of Timely/Atlas superhero stories by MICHELLE NOLAN, art by SIMON & KIRBY, EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, AYERS, HEATH, SEKOWSKY, SHORES, SCHOMBURG, MANEELY, and SEVERIN, GENE COLAN and ALLEN BELLMAN on 1940s Timely super-heroes, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and BILL SCHELLY! Cover

by JACK KIRBY and PETE VON SHOLLY!

GERRY CONWAY and ROY THOMAS on their ‘80s screenplay for “The X-Men Movie That Never Was!”with art by COCKRUM, ADAMS, BUSCEMA, BYRNE, GIL KANE, KIRBY, HECK, and LIEBER, Atlas artist VIC CARRABOTTA interview, ALLEN BELLMAN on 1940s Timely bullpen, FCA, 1966 panel on 1950s EC Comics, and MR. MONSTER! MARK SPARACIO/GIL KANE cover!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

19

ALTER EGO #59

ALTER EGO #60

ALTER EGO #61

ALTER EGO #62

ALTER EGO #63

Special issue on Batman and Superman in the Golden and Silver Ages, featuring a new ARTHUR SUYDAM interview, NEAL ADAMS on DC in the 1960s-1970s, SHELLY MOLDOFF, AL PLASTINO, Golden Age artist FRAN (Doll Man) MATERA interviewed, SIEGEL & SHUSTER, RUSS MANNING, FCA, MR. MONSTER, SUYDAM cover, and more!

Celebrates 50 years since SHOWCASE #4!

FLASH interviews with SCHWARTZ, KANIGHER, INFANTINO, KUBERT, and BROOME, Golden Age artist TONY DiPRETA, 1966 panel with NORDLING, BINDER, and LARRY IVIE, FCA, MR. MONSTER, never-before-published color Flash cover by CARMINE INFANTINO, and more!

History of the AMERICAN COMICS GROUP (1946 to 1967)—including its roots in the Golden Age SANGOR ART SHOP and STANDARD/NEDOR comics! Art by MESKIN, ROBINSON, WILLIAMSON, FRAZETTA, SCHAFFENBERGER, & BUSCEMA, ACG writer/editor RICHARD HUGHES, plus AL HARTLEY interviewed, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more! GIORDANO cover!

HAPPY HAUNTED HALLOWEEN ISSUE, featuring: MIKE PLOOG and RUDY PALAIS on their horror-comics work! AL WILLIAMSON on his work for the American Comics Group—plus more on ACG horror comics! Rare DICK BRIEFER Frankenstein strips! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY on the 1966 KalerCon, a new PLOOG cover—and more!

Tribute to ALEX TOTH! Never-before-seen interview with tons of TOTH art, including sketches he sent to friends! Articles about Toth by TERRY AUSTIN, JIM AMASH, SY BARRY, JOE KUBERT, LOU SAYRE SCHWARTZ, IRWIN HASEN, JOHN WORKMAN, and others! Plus illustrated Christmas cards by comics pros, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #64

ALTER EGO #65

ALTER EGO #66

ALTER EGO #67

ALTER EGO #68

Fawcett Favorites! Issue-by-issue analysis of BINDER & BECK’s 1943-45 “The Monster Society of Evil!” serial, double-size FCA section with MARC SWAYZE, EMILIO SQUEGLIO, C.C. BECK, MAC RABOY, and others! Interview with MARTIN FILCHOCK, Golden Age artist for Centaur Comics! Plus MR. MONSTER, DON NEWTON cover, plus a FREE 1943 MARVEL CALENDAR!

NICK CARDY interviewed on his Golden & Silver Age work (with CARDY art), plus art

by WILL EISNER, NEAL ADAMS, CARMINE INFANTINO, JIM APARO, RAMONA FRADON, CURT SWAN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, and others, tributes to ERNIE SCHROEDER and DAVE COCKRUM, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, new CARDY COVER, and more!

Spotlight on BOB POWELL, the artist who drew Daredevil, Sub-Mariner, Sheena, The Avenger, The Hulk, Giant-Man, and others, plus art by WALLY WOOD, HOWARD NOSTRAND, DICK AYERS, SIMON & KIRBY, MARTIN GOODMAN’s Magazine Management, and others! FCA with MARC SWAYZE and C.C. BECK, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, and more!

Interview with BOB OKSNER, artist of Supergirl, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Angel and the Ape, Leave It to Binky, Shazam!, and more, plus art and artifacts by SHELLY MAYER, IRWIN HASEN, LEE ELIAS, C.C. BECK, CARMINE INFANTINO, GIL KANE, JULIE SCHWARTZ, etc., FCA with MARC SWAYZE & C.C. BECK, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on BOB POWELL Part II, and more!

Tribute to JERRY BAILS—Father of Comics Fandom and founder of Alter Ego! Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ, plus art by JOE KUBERT, CARMINE INFANTINO, GIL KANE, DICK DILLIN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, JERRY ORDWAY, JOE STATON, JACK KIRBY, and others! Plus STEVE DITKO’s notes to STAN LEE for a 1965 Dr. Strange story! And ROY reveals secrets behind Marvel’s STAR WARS comic!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #69

ALTER EGO #70

ALTER EGO #71

ALTER EGO #72

ALTER EGO #73

PAUL NORRIS drew AQUAMAN first, in 1941—and RAMONA FRADON was the hero’s ultimate Golden Age artist. But both drew other things as well, and both are interviewed in this landmark issue—along with a pocket history of Aquaman! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more!

Cover painted by JOHN WATSON, from a breathtaking illo by RAMONA FRADON!

Spotlight on ROY THOMAS’ 1970s stint as Marvel’s editor-in-chief and major writer, plus art and reminiscences of GIL KANE, BOTH BUSCEMAS, ADAMS, ROMITA, CHAYKIN, BRUNNER, PLOOG, EVERETT, WRIGHTSON, PÉREZ, ROBBINS, BARRY SMITH, STAN LEE and others, FCA, MR. MONSTER, a new GENE COLAN cover, plus an homage to artist LILY RENÉE!

Represents THE GREAT CANADIAN COMIC BOOKS, the long out-of-print 1970s book

by MICHAEL HIRSH and PATRICK LOUBERT, with rare art of such heroes as Mr. Monster, Nelvana, Thunderfist, and others, plus new INVADERS art by JOHN BYRNE, MIKE GRELL, RON LIM, and more, plus a new cover by GEORGE FREEMAN, from a layout by JACK KIRBY!

SCOTT SHAW! and ROY THOMAS on the creation of Captain Carrot, art & artifacts

by RICK HOBERG, STAN GOLDBERG, MIKE SEKOWSKY, JOHN COSTANZA, E. NELSON BRIDWELL, CAROL LAY, and others, interview with DICK ROCKWELL, Golden Age artist and 36-year ghost artist on MILTON CANIFF’s Steve Canyon! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

FRANK BRUNNER on drawing Dr. Strange, interviews with CHARLES BIRO and his daughters, interview with publisher ROBERT GERSON about his 1970s horror comic Reality, art by BERNIE WRIGHTSON, GRAHAM INGELS, HOWARD CHAYKIN, MICHAEL W. KALUTA, JEFF JONES, and others FCA, MR. MONSTER, a FREE DRAW! #15! PREVIEW, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

20

ALTER EGO #74

ALTER EGO #75

ALTER EGO #76

ALTER EGO #77

ALTER EGO #78

STAN LEE SPECIAL in honor of his 85th birthday, with a cover by JACK KIRBY, classic (and virtually unseen) interviews with Stan, tributes, and tons of rare and unseen art by KIRBY, ROMITA, the brothers BUSCEMA, DITKO, COLAN, HECK, AYERS, MANEELY, SHORES, EVERETT, BURGOS, KANE, the SEVERIN siblings—plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

FAWCETT FESTIVAL—with an ALEX ROSS cover! Double-size FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with P.C. HAMERLINCK on the many “Captains Marvel” over the years, unseen Shazam! proposal by ALEX ROSS, C.C. BECK on “The Death of a Legend!”, MARC SWAYZE, interview with Golden Age artist MARV LEVY, MR. MONSTER, and more!

JOE SIMON SPECIAL! In-depth SIMON interview by JIM AMASH, with neverbefore-revealed secrets behind the creation of Captain America, Fighting American, Stuntman, Adventures of The Fly, Sick magazine and more, art by JACK KIRBY, BOB POWELL, AL WILLIAMSON, JERRY GRANDENETTI, GEORGE TUSKA, and others, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

ST. JOHN ISSUE! Golden Age Tor cover by JOE KUBERT, KEN QUATTRO relates the full legend of St. John Publishing, art by KUBERT, NORMAN MAURER, MATT BAKER, LILY RENEE, BOB LUBBERS, RUBEN MOREIRA, RALPH MAYO, AL FAGO, special reminiscences of ARNOLD DRAKE, Golden Age artist TOM SAWYER interviewed, and more!

DAVE COCKRUM TRIBUTE! Great rare XMen cover, Cockrum tributes from contemporaries and colleagues, and an interview with PATY COCKRUM on Dave’s life and legacy on The Legion of Super-Heroes, The X-Men, Star-Jammers, & more! Plus an interview with 1950s Timely/Marvel artist MARION SITTON on his own incredible career and his Golden Age contemporaries!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #79

ALTER EGO #80

ALTER EGO #81

ALTER EGO #82

ALTER EGO #83

SUPERMAN & HIS CREATORS! New cover

by MICHAEL GOLDEN, exclusive and revealing interview with JOE SHUSTER’s sister, JEAN SHUSTER PEAVEY—LOU CAMERON interview—STEVE GERBER tribute—DWIGHT DECKER on the Man of Steel & Hitler’s Third Reich—plus art by WAYNE BORING, CURT SWAN, NEAL ADAMS, GIL KANE, and others!

SWORD-AND-SORCERY COMICS! Learn about Crom the Barbarian, Viking Prince, Nightmaster, Kull, Red Sonja, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, Beowulf, Warlord, Dagar the Invincible, and more, with art by FRAZETTA, SMITH, BUSCEMA, KANE, WRIGHTSON, PLOOG, THORNE, BRUNNER, LOU CAMERON Part II, and more! Cover by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

New FRANK BRUNNER Man-Thing cover, a look at the late-’60s horror comic WEB OF HORROR with early work by BRUNNER, WRIGHTSON, WINDSOR-SMITH, SIMONSON, & CHAYKIN, interview with comics & fine artist EVERETT RAYMOND KINTSLER, ROY THOMAS’ 1971 origin synopsis for the FIRST MAN-THING STORY, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

MLJ ISSUE! Golden Age MLJ index illustrated with vintage images of The Shield, Hangman, Mr. Justice, Black Hood,

by IRV NOVICK, JACK COLE, CHARLES BIRO, MORT MESKIN, GIL KANE, & others—behind a marvelous MLJ-heroes cover

by BOB McLEOD! Plus interviews with IRV NOVICK and JOE EDWARDS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

SWORD & SORCERY PART 2! Cover by ARTHUR SUYDAM, with a focus on Conan the Barbarian by ROY THOMAS and WILL MURRAY, a look at WALLY WOOD’s Marvel sword-&-sorcery work, the Black Knight examined, plus JOE EDWARDS interview Part 2, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #84

ALTER EGO #85

ALTER EGO #86

ALTER EGO #87

ALTER EGO #88

Unseen JIM APARO cover, STEVE SKEATES discusses his early comics work, art & artifacts by ADKINS, APARO, ARAGONÉS, BOYETTE, DITKO, GIORDANO, KANE, KELLER, MORISI, ORLANDO, SEKOWSKY, STONE, THOMAS, WOOD, and the great WARREN SAVIN! Plus writer CHARLES SINCLAIR on his partnership with Batman co-creator BILL FINGER, FCA, and more!

Captain Marvel and Superman’s battles explored (in cosmic space, candy stores, and in court), RICH BUCKLER on Captain Marvel, plus an in-depth interview with Golden Age great LILY RENÉE, overview of CENTAUR COMICS (home of BILL EVERETT’s Amazing-Man and others), FCA, MR. MONSTER, new RICH BUCKLER cover, and more!

Spotlighting the Frantic Four-Color MAD WANNABES of 1953-55 that copied HARVEY KURTZMAN’S EC smash (see Captain Marble, Mighty Moose, Drag-ula, Prince Scallion, and more) with art by SIMON & KIRBY, KUBERT & MAURER, ANDRU & ESPOSITO, EVERETT, COLAN, and many others, plus Part 1 of a talk with Golden/ Silver Age artist FRANK BOLLE, and more!

The sensational 1954-1963 saga of Great Britain’s MARVELMAN (decades before he metamorphosed into Miracleman), plus an interview with writer/artist/co-creator MICK ANGLO, and rare Marvelman/ Miracleman work by ALAN DAVIS, ALAN MOORE, a new RICK VEITCH cover, plus FRANK BOLLE, Part 2, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

First-ever in-depth look at National/DC’s founder MAJOR MALCOLM WHEELERNICHOLSON, and pioneers WHITNEY ELLSWORTH and CREIG FLESSEL, with rare art and artifacts by SIEGEL & SHUSTER, BOB KANE, CURT SWAN, GARDNER FOX, SHELDON MOLDOFF, and others, focus on DC advisor DR. LAURETTA BENDER, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

21

ALTER EGO #89

ALTER EGO #90

ALTER EGO #91

ALTER EGO #92

ALTER EGO #93

HARVEY COMICS’ PRE-CODE HORROR MAGS OF THE 1950s! Interviews with SID JACOBSON, WARREN KREMER, and HOWARD NOSTRAND, plus Harvey artist KEN SELIG talks to JIM AMASH! MR. MONSTER presents the wit and wisdom (and worse) of DR. FREDRIC WERTHAM, plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with C.C. BECK & MARC SWAYZE, & more!

SIMON & KIRBY and NOSTRAND cover!

BIG MARVEL ISSUE! Salutes to legends SINNOTT and AYERS—plus STAN LEE, TUSKA, EVERETT, MARTIN GOODMAN, and others! A look at the “Marvel SuperHeroes” TV animation of 1966! 1940s Timely writer and editor LEON LAZARUS interviewed by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, the 1960s fandom creations of STEVE GERBER, and more! JACK KIRBY holiday cover!

FAWCETT FESTIVAL! Big FCA section with Golden Age artists MARC SWAYZE & EMILIO SQUEGLIO! Plus JERRY ORDWAY on researching The Power of Shazam, Part II of “The MAD Four-Color Wannabes of the 1950s,” more on DR. LAURETTA BENDER and the teenage creations of STEVE GERBER, artist JACK KATZ spills Golden Age secrets to JIM AMASH, and more!

New cover by ORDWAY and SQUEGLIO!

SWORD-AND-SORCERY, PART 3! DC’s Sword of Sorcery by O’NEIL, CHAYKIN, & SIMONSON and Claw by MICHELINIE & CHAN, Hercules by GLANZMAN, Dagar by GLUT & SANTOS, Marvel S&S art by BUSCEMA, CHAN, KAYANAN, WRIGHTSON, et al., and JACK KATZ on his classic First Kingdom! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER’s fan-creations (part 3), and more! Cover by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “EarthTwo—1961 to 1985!” with rare art by INFANTINO, GIL KANE, ANDERSON, DELBO, ANDRU, BUCKLER, APARO, GRANDENETTI, and DILLIN, interview with Golden/Silver Age DC editor GEORGE KASHDAN, plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and a new cover by INFANTINO and AMASH!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #94

ALTER EGO #95

ALTER EGO #96

ALTER EGO #97

ALTER EGO #98

“Earth-Two Companion, Part II!” More on the 1963-1985 series that changed comics forever! The Huntress, Power Girl, Dr. Fate, Freedom Fighters, and more, with art by ADAMS, APARO, AYERS, BUCKLER, GIFFEN, INFANTINO, KANE, NOVICK, SCHAFFENBERGER, SIMONSON, STATON, SWAN, TUSKA, our GEORGE KASHDAN interview Part 2, FCA, and more! STATON & GIORDANO cover!

Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH madcap parody mag from 1967-69, examined with rare art & artifacts by ANDRU, COLAN, BUSCEMA, DRAKE, EVERETT, FRIEDRICH, KIRBY, LEE, the SEVERIN siblings, SPRINGER, SUTTON, THOMAS, TRIMPE, and more, GEORGE KASHDAN interview conclusion, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, and more! Cover by MARIE SEVERIN!

Focus on Archie’s 1960s MIGHTY CRUSADERS, with vintage art and artifacts

by JERRY SIEGEL, PAUL REINMAN, SIMON & KIRBY, JOHN ROSENBERGER, tributes to the Mighty Crusaders by BOB FUJITANE, GEORGE TUSKA, BOB LAYTON, and others! Interview with MELL LAZARUS, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more! Cover

by MIKE MACHLAN!

The NON-EC HORROR COMICS OF THE 1950s! From Menace and House of Mystery to The Thing!, we present vintage art and artifacts by EVERETT, BRIEFER, DITKO, MANEELY, COLAN , MESKIN, MOLDOFF, HEATH, POWELL, COLE, SIMON & KIRBY, FUJITANI, and others, plus FCA , MR. MONSTER and more, behind a creepy, eerie cover by BILL EVERETT!

Spotlight on Superman’s first editor WHITNEY ELLSWORTH, longtime Kryptoeditor MORT WEISINGER remembered by his daughter, an interview with Superman writer ALVIN SCHWARTZ, tributes to FRANK FRAZETTA and AL WILLIAMSON, art by JOE SHUSTER, WAYNE BORING, CURT SWAN, and NEAL ADAMS, plus MR. MONSTER, FCA, and a new cover by JERRY ORDWAY!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO: CENTENNIAL (AE #100)

ALTER EGO #99

GEORGE TUSKA showcase issue on his career at Lev Gleason, Marvel, and in comics strips through the early 1970s—CRIME DOES NOT PAY, BUCK ROGERS, IRON MAN, AVENGERS, HERO FOR HIRE, & more! Plus interviews with Golden Age artist BILL BOSSERT and fan-artist RUDY FRANKE, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and more!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

22

ALTER EGO: CENTENNIAL is a celebration of 100 issues, and 50 years, of ALTER EGO, Roy Thomas’ legendary super-hero fanzine. It’s a double-size triple-threat BOOK, with twice as many pages as the regular magazine, plus special features just for this anniversary edition! Behind a RICH BUCKLER/JERRY ORDWAY JSA cover, ALTER EGO celebrates its 100th issue and the 50th anniversary of A/E (Vol. 1) #1 in 1961—as ROY THOMAS is interviewed by JIM AMASH about the 1980s at DC! Learn secrets behind ALL-STAR SQUADRON—INFINITY, INC.—ARAK, SON OF THUNDER—CAPTAIN CARROT—JONNI THUNDER, a.k.a. THUNDERBOLT— YOUNG ALL-STARS—SHAZAM!—RING OF THE NIBELUNG—and more! With rare art and artifacts

by GEORGE PÉREZ, TODD McFARLANE, RICH BUCKLER, JERRY ORDWAY, MIKE MACHLAN, GIL KANE, GENE COLAN, DICK GIORDANO, ALFREDO ALCALA, TONY DEZUNIGA, ERNIE COLÓN, STAN GOLDBERG, SCOTT SHAW!, ROSS ANDRU, and many more! Plus special anniversary editions of Alter Ego staples MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA (FCA)—and ALEX WRIGHT’s amazing color collection of 1940s DC pinup babes! Edited by ROY THOMAS. (NOTE: This book takes the place of ALTER EGO #100, and counts as TWO issues toward your subscription.)

(160-page trade paperback with COLOR) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • ISBN: 9781605490311 Diamond Order Code: JAN111351

ALTER EGO #101

Fox Comics of the 1940s with art by FINE, BAKER, SIMON, KIRBY, TUSKA, FLETCHER HANKS, ALEX BLUM, and others!

“Superman vs. Wonder Man” starring EISNER, IGER, SIEGEL, LIEBERSON, MAYER, DONENFELD, and VICTOR FOX! Plus, Part I of an interview with JACK MENDELSOHN, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and new cover by Marvel artist DAVE WILLIAMS!

NEW!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #102

ALTER EGO #103

ALTER EGO #104

ALTER EGO: THE CBA COLLECTION

Spotlight on Green Lantern creators MART NODELL and BILL FINGER in the 1940s, and JOHN BROOME, GIL KANE, and JULIUS SCHWARTZ in 1959! Rare GL artwork by INFANTINO, REINMAN, HASEN, NEAL ADAMS, and others! Plus JACK MENDELSOHN Part II, FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and new cover by GIL KANE & TERRY AUSTIN, and MART NODELL!

The early career of comics writer STEVE ENGLEHART: Defenders, Captain America, Master of Kung Fu, The Beast, Mantis, and more, with rare art and artifacts by SAL BUSCEMA, STARLIN, SUTTON, HECK, BROWN, and others. Plus, JIM AMASH interviews early artist GEORGE MANDEL (Captain Midnight, The Woman in Red, Blue Bolt, Black Marvel, etc.), FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and more!

Celebrates the 50th anniversary of FANTASTIC FOUR #1 and the birth of Marvel Comics! New, never-before-published STAN LEE interview, art and artifacts

by KIRBY, DITKO, SINNOTT, AYERS, THOMAS, and secrets behind the Marvel Mythos! Also: JIM AMASH interviews 1940s Timely editor AL SULMAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and a new cover by FRENZ and SINNOTT!

Compiles the ALTER EGO flip-sides from COMIC BOOK ARTIST #1-5, plus 30 NEW PAGES of features & art! All-new rare and previously-unpublished art by JACK KIRBY, GIL KANE, JOE KUBERT, WALLY WOOD, FRANK ROBBINS, NEAL ADAMS, & others, ROY THOMAS on X-MEN, AVENGERS/ KREE-SKRULL WAR, INVADERS, and more! Cover by JOE KUBERT!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(160-page trade paperback) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $4.95

HUMOR MAGAZINES (BUNDLE ALL THREE FOR JUST $14.95)

ALTER EGO:

BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE

Collects the original 11 issues of JERRY BAILS and ROY THOMAS’ ALTER EGO fanzine (from 1961-78), with contributions from JACK KIRBY, STEVE DITKO, WALLY WOOD, JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, BILL EVERETT, RUSS MANNING, CURT SWAN, and others—and illustrated interviews with GIL KANE, BILL EVERETT, & JOE KUBERT! Plus major articles on the JUSTICE SOCIETY, the MARVEL FAMILY, the MLJ HEROES, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS and BILL SCHELLY with an introduction by JULIE SCHWARTZ. (192-page trade paperback) $21.95 ISBN: 9781893905887 Diamond Order Code: DEC073946

COMIC BOOK NERD

PETE VON SHOLLY’s side-splitting parody of the fan press, including our own mags!

Experience the magic(?) of such publications as WHIZZER, the COMICS URINAL, ULTRA EGO, COMICS BUYER’S GUISE, BAGGED ISSUE!, SCRAWL!, COMIC BOOK ARTISTE, and more, as we unabashedly poke fun at ourselves, our competitors, and you, our loyal readers! It’s a first issue, collector’s item, double-bag, slab-worthy, speculator’s special sure to rub even the thickest-skinned fanboy the wrong way!

(64-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 • (Digital Edition) $2.95

CRAZY HIP GROOVY GO-GO WAY OUT MONSTERS #29 & #32

PETE VON SHOLLY’s spoofs of monster mags will have you laughing your pants off— right after you soil them from sheer terror! This RETRO MONSTER MOVIE MAGAZINE is a laugh riot lampoon of those GREAT (and absolutely abominable) mags of the 1950s and ‘60s, replete with fake letters-to-the-editor, phony ads for worthless, wacky stuff, stills from imaginary films as bad as any that were really made, interviews with their “creators,” and much more! Relive your misspent youth (and misspent allowance) as you dig the hilarious photos, ads, and articles skewering OUR FAVORITE THINGS of the past! Get our first issue (#29!), the sequel (#32!), or both!

DIEDGITIIOTANSL BL AVAILA

E

(48-page magazines) $5.95 EACH • (Digital Editions) $1.95 EACH

These sold-out books are now available again in DIGITAL EDITIONS:

NEW!

MR. MONSTER, VOL. 0

TRUE BRIT

DICK GIORDANO: CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME

Collects hard-to-find Mr. Monster stories from A-1, CRACK-A-BOOM! and DARK HORSE PRESENTS (many in COLOR for the first time) plus over 30 pages of ALLNEW MR. MONSTER art and stories! Can your sanity survive our Lee/Kirby monster spoof by MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MARK MARTIN, or the long-lost 1933 Mr. Monster newspaper strip? Or the terrifying TRENCHER/MR. MONSTER slug-fest, drawn by KEITH GIFFEN and MICHAEL T. GILBERT?! Read at your own risk!

GEORGE KHOURY’s definitive book on the rich history of British Comics Artists, their influence on the US, and how they have revolutionized the way comics are seen and perceived! It features breathtaking art, intimate photographs, and in-depth interviews with BRIAN BOLLAND, ALAN DAVIS, DAVE GIBBONS, KEVIN O’NEILL, DAVID LLOYD, DAVE McKEAN, BRYAN HITCH, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH and other fine gents! Sporting a new JUDGE DREDD cover by BRIAN BOLLAND!

MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ most prominent and affable personality! It covers his career as illustrator, inker, and editor—peppered with DICK’S PERSONAL REFLECTIONS—and is illustrated with RARE AND UNSEEN comics, merchandising, and advertising art! Plus: an extensive index of his published work, comments and tributes

by NEAL ADAMS, DENNIS O’NEIL, TERRY AUSTIN, PAUL LEVITZ, MARV WOLFMAN, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JIM APARO and others, a Foreword by NEAL ADAMS, and an Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ!

(136-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $4.95

(204-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $6.95

(176-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $5.95

SECRETS IN THE SHADOWS: GENE COLAN

TOM FIELD’s amazing COLAN retrospective, with rare drawings, photos, and art from his 60-year career, and a comprehensive overview of Gene’s glory days at Marvel Comics!

MARV WOLFMAN, DON McGREGOR and other writers share script samples and anecdotes of their Colan collaborations, while TOM PALMER, STEVE LEIALOHA and others show how they approached inking Colan’s famously nuanced penciled pages!

Plus: a NEW PORTFOLIO of never-seen collaborations between Gene and masters such as BYRNE, KALUTA and PÉREZ, and all-new artwork created just for this book!

(192-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $6.95

ART OF GEORGE TUSKA

A comprehensive look at GEORGE TUSKA’S personal and professional life, including early work at the Eisner-Iger shop, producing controversial crime comics of the 1950s, and his tenure with Marvel and DC Comics, as well as independent publishers. Includes extensive coverage of his work on IRON MAN, X-MEN, HULK, JUSTICE LEAGUE, TEEN TITANS, BATMAN, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, and others, a gallery of commission art and a thorough index of his work, original art, photos, sketches, unpublished art, interviews and anecdotes from his peers and fans, plus the very personal and reflective words of George himself! Written by DEWEY CASSELL. (128-page Digital Edition) $4.95

23

OTHER BOOKS FROM TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING

PENCILER, PUBLISHER, PROVOCATEUR

COMICS’ FAST & FURIOUS ARTIST

THE ART OF GLAMOUR

MATT BAKER

EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE

Shines a light on the life and career of the artistic and publishing visionary of DC Comics!

Explores the life and career of one of Marvel Comics’ most recognizable and dependable artists!

Biography of the talented master of 1940s “Good Girl” art, complete with color story reprints!

Definitive biography of the Watchmen writer, in a new, expanded edition!

(224-page trade paperback) $26.95

(176-page trade paperback with COLOR) $26.95

(192-page hardcover with COLOR) $39.95

(240-page trade paperback) $29.95

QUALITY COMPANION

BATCAVE COMPANION

ALL- STAR COMPANION

AGE OF TV HEROES

The first dedicated book about the Golden Age publisher that spawned the modern-day “Freedom Fighters”, Plastic Man, and the Blackhawks!

Unlocks the secrets of Batman’s Silver and Bronze Ages, following the Dark Knight’s progression from 1960s camp to 1970s creature of the night!

Roy Thomas has four volumes documenting the history of ALL-STAR COMICS, the JUSTICE SOCIETY, INFINITY, INC., and more!

(256-page trade paperback with COLOR) $31.95

(240-page trade paperback) $26.95

(224-page trade paperbacks) $24.95

Examining the history of the live-action television adventures of everyone’s favorite comic book heroes, featuring the in-depth stories of the shows’ actors and behind-the-scenes players!

CARMINE INFANTINO

SAL BUSCEMA

(192-page full-color hardcover) $39.95

MARVEL COMICS

MARVEL COMICS

An issue-by-issue field guide to the pop culture phenomenon of LEE, KIRBY, DITKO, and others, from the company’s fumbling beginnings to the full maturity of its wild, colorful, offbeat grandiosity!

IN THE 1960s

(224-page trade paperback) $27.95

MODERN MASTERS

HOW TO CREATE COMICS

Covers how Stan Lee went from writer to publisher, Jack Kirby left (and returned), Roy Thomas rose as editor, and a new wave of writers and artists came in!

20+ volumes with in-depth interviews, plus extensive galleries of rare and unseen art from the artist’s files!

(224-page trade paperback) $27.95

Shows step-by-step how to develop a new comic, from script and art, to printing and distribution!

(128-page trade paperbacks) $14.95 each

(108-page trade paperback) $15.95

IN THE 1970s

A BOOK SERIES DEVOTED TO THE BEST OF TODAY’S ARTISTS

FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

FOR A FREE COLOR CATALOG, CALL, WRITE, E-MAIL, OR LOG ONTO www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows—A New Day For Comics Fandom!

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

All characters TM & ©2006 their respective owners.

$21.95 in the US ISBN 1-893905-59-4

Editor ROY THOMAS’ highly acclaimed magazine ALTER EGO first took the world by storm in the 1960s as the premier ’zine about comics.

After abandoning it for a twodecade career as a major writer and editor for Marvel and DC Comics, Roy resurrected it in 1999, and this trade paperback collects the first two issues, plus 30 pages of new material! Behind a new JLA Jam Cover by JOE KUBERT, GEORGE PÉREZ, DICK GIORDANO, GEORGE TUSKA, NICK CARDY, RAMONA FRADON, & JOE GIELLA, you’ll find: GIL KANE, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, & GARDNER FOX on the creation of the Silver Age Atom! “The STAN LEE Roast” co-starring SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN ROMITA, PETER DAVID, CHRIS CLAREMONT, JIM SHOOTER, et al.!

MICHAEL T. GILBERT on WILL EISNER’s 1966 Spirit story! ROY THOMAS, JERRY ORDWAY, & MIKE MACHLAN on creating Infinity, Inc.! Interviews with LARRY LIEBER, IRWIN HASEN, & JACK BURNLEY! Wonder Woman rarities, with art by H.G. PETER! How MARV WOLFMAN rescued Golden Age art! Plus ROBERT KANIGHER, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with MARC SWAYZE, C.C. BECK, MAC RABOY, & RICHARD DEANE TAYLOR—and more, including special NEW SECTIONS featuring scarce art by GIL KANE, WILL EISNER, CARMINE INFANTINO, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MURPHY ANDERSON, DICK DILLIN, plus all seven of our TwoMorrows Publishing super-star cover artists!

Raleigh, North Carolina