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Roy Thomas' Xtra-strength Comics Fanzine

THE POWER AND THE PANDEMONIUM OF YOUNG

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DAVE COCKRUM

In the USA

No. 163

Art TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

March 2020

82658 00376

Vol. 3, No. 163 / March 2020 Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editor Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck J.T. Go (Assoc. Editor)

Comic Crypt Editor

Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll

Jerry G. Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White Mike Friedrich, Bill Schelly

Proofreaders

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Rob Smentek William J. Dowlding

Cover Artist

Dave Cockrum

Cover Colorist

Glenn Whitmore

With Special Thanks to: Don Allen Paul Allen Heidi Amash Pedro Angosto Richard Arndt Bob Bailey Mike W. Barr Al Bigley The Charles Biro family Dominic Bongo Ricky Terry Brisacque Bernie Bubnis David Burd Aaron Caplan Nick Caputo John Cimino Paty Cockrum Pierre Comtois Chet Cox David Drake Doug Ellis Linda Fite Shane Foley Bob Fujitani Janet Gilbert Greg Goldstein Grand Comics Database (website) Gary Groth Robert Guffey George Hagenauer

Don’t STEAL our Digital Editions!

David Hajdu Heritage Comics Auctions Tony Isabella Eric Jansen Sharon Karibian Jim Kealy Jim Korkis Joe Kramar Mark Lewis Art Lortie Doug Martin Mike Mikulovsky Brian K. Morris Will Murray Peter Normanton Barry Pearl David Phelps Richard & Wendy Pini Frank Plowright Gene Reed Al Rodriguez Randy Sargent Jim Steranko Steve Stiles Dann Thomas Michael Uslan Ted White Kendall Whitehouse Marv Wolfman Andy Yanchus Mike Zeck

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Dave Cockrum, Malcolm Willits, & Manly Wade Wellman

& DON’T SHARE THEM WITH FRIENDS OR POST THEM ONLINE. Help us keep producing great publications like this one!

Writer/Editorial: The Red Planet—Mostly In Black-&-White! . . 2 The Genius of Dave & Paty Cockrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Joe Kramar’s 2003 conversation with one of comics’ most amazing couples.

Dave Cockrum—A Model Artist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Andy Yanchus take a personal look back at his friend’s astonishing model work.

“One Of The Most Celebrated Comicbook Artists Of Our Time” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Paul Allen on corresponding with young Dave Cockrum, ERB fan, in 1969-70.

From The Tomb: A Step Into The Unknown! . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Peter Normanton brings his celebrated horror-comics fanzine to the pages of Alter Ego.

John Broome: Letter To An Unknown Reader . . . . . . . . . . 50 We return to the 1998 memoir of the late great Golden/Silver Age comics writer.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! The Other Stan Lee, Part 3 . . . 53 Michael T. Gilbert winds up his compare-and-contrast of two of comics’ greatest.

Comic Fandom Archive: In Memoriam - Malcolm Willits . . 59 The final column prepared by the late Bill Schelly—Jim Korkis on a major collector.

re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 65 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #222 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 P.C. Hamerlinck presents R. Arndt’s talk with David Drake re Manly Wade Wellman.

On Our Cover: While there’s more space given in this issue to Dave Cockrum’s early Edgar Rice Burroughs-influenced artwork than to his later triumphs with DC’s “Legion of Super-Heroes” and Marvel’s X-Men, we felt this cover Dave drew for F.O.O.M. Magazine #10 (June 1975) would remind readers—if they needed reminding!—of his sterling contribution to comics. Drawn when Dave was just starting out on his journey as the first artist of the revived/expanded X-Men, it already displays the mastery that would skillfully bridge the gap between the 1960s mutants and their 1970s permutations. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] Above: A 1970s painting by Dave Cockrum of one of his favorite artistic subjects ever: ERB’s John Carter of Mars! Thanks to Paty C. [John Carter TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.] Alter Ego TM is published 6 times a year by TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: 32 Bluebird Trail, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Six-issue subscriptions: $67 US, $101 Elsewhere, $27 Digital Only. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in China. ISSN: 1932-6890. FIRST PRINTING.

The Red Planet— writer/editorial

Mostly In Black-&-White!

ave Cockrum was one of a number of artists I’m grateful I got to know at Marvel, at least slightly, near the start of their meteoric careers, either when I was Stan Lee’s associate editor or as the company’s editor-in-chief in the first half of the 1970s. Of course, by the time he deplaned at Marvel, Dave had already made a name for himself as artist of DC’s “Legion of SuperHeroes,” whose popularity he had boosted with his powerful Kirby- and Adams-influenced artwork. Dave threw himself into everything with an enthusiasm that was inspiring. At some early stage, though I’ve forgotten the incident myself, he apparently showed me his sketchbook full of DC-rejected proposed Legionnaires, some of whom would soon form the bases of Marvel heroes. I’m told one of the designs he showed me was for a guy he called The Wolverine—though, if so, I don’t feel it had any influence on my conceiving a Marvel character of that name a bit later, since I’d been intrigued by animals since childhood and was as knowledgeable as Dave about what a wolverine was. What is undeniable, though, though, is that Dave’s version of Wolverine’s head ere long became, in 1976’s X-Men, the look that lay beneath his mask; and certainly Logan’s distinctive visage was one of several aspects that helped propel the character to greatness. I do recall the 1974 day I took Dave out to lunch to talk with him about his drawing a projected X-Men revival. We went to a restaurant I liked, in the General Motors Building across the street from Marvel’s Madison Avenue digs—one in which you ate your lunch sitting in facsimiles of early 20th-century automobiles. Dave remembered me as eating a cheeseburger—no doubt accurately. I suspect he showed me, that day, still more drawings of what were now prospective mutants rather than Legionnaires. I was mostly content, however, to leave to him and the writer I’d designated (Mike Friedrich) to decide which costumed stalwarts would help

sell the new X-Men in foreign countries—the ostensible premise for the revival, after all. I could always weigh in later, if need be. Soon afterward, I left the editor-in-chief job, and after a brief hiatus, new color-comics editor Len Wein appointed himself the X-Men scribe, and he and Dave set about to people the upcoming mag with new mutants who had no relation whatever to countries where Marvel hoped to sell additional comics. Well, that was Marvel’s business now—and I knew Len and Dave would make a good job of it. What I didn’t know was that soon-to-be second scripter Chris Claremont, working with Dave for the mag’s first couple of years, would take the new X-Men to heights undreamed of by Lee and Kirby when they’d co-created the series in 1963! But I certainly wasn’t startled by what Dave achieved in his time on X-Men—and I’d have been even less surprised if I’d seen all the Edgar Rice Burroughs-influenced artwork he produced circa 1969-70 for a succession of fanzines, in particular one fittingly titled The Barsoomian (which means “The Martian” in ERB-speak). So I’m happy that, through the good offices of Dave’s one-time correspondent Paul Allen (and Dave’s wife Paty), we’re able to spotlight in this issue a cornucopia of ERB illustration from the artist’s early days. The only drawback? Since most of it was never colored, this issue becomes easily the least “colorful” edition of Alter Ego since we went to “full-color” more than fifty issues ago. But we weren’t about to let that stand in the way of your (and our) having a front-row seat to witness the early development of one of the 1970s’ most important comics artists—Dave Cockrum. So what say we all just sit back and enjoy the ride—while we add our own cataclysmic colors, in the privacy of our own marvelbeholding minds’ eyes!

Bestest,

164

COMING IN APRIL

MIKE FRIEDRICH REACHING FOR THE STARS!

Art TM & © DC Comics.

• Powerful vintage Justice League of America cover art by NEAL ADAMS! • MIKE FRIEDRICH tells RICHARD ARNDT about writing comics in the 1960s and ’70s for DC (The Spectre, Justice League of America, Batman, etc.) and Marvel (Iron Man, Ka-Zar, Captain Marvel, et al.)—then founding/editing/publishing the first true “independent comicbook,” Star*Reach! Featuring spectacular art by ADAMS • KANE • DILLIN • NOVICK • BUSCEMA • BUCKLER • STARLIN • CHAYKIN • BRUNNER & others! • Welcome to RURAL HOME COMICS Country—home base of The Green Turtle, The Bogey Man, & lots more hard-charging super-heroes you’ve never heard of—all courtesy of MARK CARLSON-GHOST! Art by BAILY, COLE, STARR, BOLLE, GIUNTA, et al.! • Plus—FCA—JOHN BROOME—MICHAEL T. GILBERT—& MORE!!

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The Genius Of Dave & Paty Cockrum A 2003 Conversation With One Of Comics’ Most Amazing Couples by Joseph Kramar

NTRODUCTION: Joseph Kramar is a student of comics history, film history, etc., as well as an artist, a convention promoter, a political journalist, and a small business owner. He is currently the historian for the local Sons of the American Legion. He feels fortunate, in his youth, to have met many of the great artists and creators in the comicbook field, including most particularly Dave and Paty Cockrum, who were guests of honor at several of his comic, film, and media expos. He feels it is vital to Dave’s legacy (he passed away in 2006, at age 63)

Dave & Paty Cockrum at a comics convention, probably sometime in the 1990s—and (below left) the Dave-drawn splash page of Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975), the comic that started it all over again for Marvel’s merry mutants. Script by Len Wein. The issue’s cover was spotlighted two issues ago. Thanks to Paty for the photo. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

that fans realize that he created or co-created X-Men characters Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Thunderbird, Mystique, and Phoenix, as well as The Starjammers, Deathbird, Llandra, various members of DC’s Legion of Super-Heroes, and a host of others too numerous to name. As Joe says, “The wealth of creativity from the imagination and genius of Dave Cockrum will endure forever.” In 2003, a month or two before the release of Bryan Singer’s X-Men 2 film, I made the trek up to Cragsmoor, NY, to visit with the illustrious renaissance couple Dave and Paty Cockrum. I brought them a peculiar gift: a gourmet omelet-maker set. I set up a primitive recording device and an archaic video recorder, and we spent the day and part of the evening discussing creators’ rights, office antics and politics at Marvel, DC, and Warren. We reminisced about the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Ages of the comics industry and our nostalgia for old film and the fantasy sci-fi genre. I asked Dave about his creative influences and about the inspiration and origins of the diverse plethora of innovative characters he created. Although members of the world-famous Legion of Super-Heroes and X-Men characters are the most prominent, the myriad others he created are equally fascinating. These fantastic characters may have their origins in primordial archetypes emerging from the vast depths and limitless vistas of David’s subconscious mind. I asked him about the inception, development, and genesis of the majestic matriarchal Storm, the goddess-like weather witch of The X-Men. Dave elucidated and elaborated on the creation of Storm. He explained that, while working on concepts for what would eventually emerge in 1975 as Giant-Size X-Men #1: “I came up with a proposed Legionnaire, a bird-lady called Ketzil with a beautiful face and long hair, and a proposed X- Men character called Typhoon with weather powers. There was another proposed X-Men character called The Black Cat [not the later Spider-Man character] who wore the Storm costume without the cape. She had a tufted hairstyle like Wolverine and could transform into a humanoid cat or house cat. There was a hiatus for some reason, and the project was put aside. In the interim all these cat characters popped up— Tigra, The Cat, Pantha at Warren—so it seemed as The Black Cat was gonna be redundant. Roy Thomas said, ‘Why not make the girl Typhoon?’ That sounded interesting, so I put this cape on her from

A 2003 Conversation With One Of Comics’ Most Amazing Couples

Batman will be 32 forever and Superman the same thing. DAVE: But, they don’t entirely value the history of their characters; after all, there was Crisis and Zero Hour.

Epilogue: David and Paty brought so much to the comics and fantasy genre. Their fantastic mythic characters immortalized in cartoons, comics, film, toys, and video games have brought joy to so many. The industry has reaped millions off Dave’s creations. His legacy is his art and imagination and all his illustrious contributions to the genre.

The Feminine Mystique (Below left:) Paty tells this story of the creation of the mutant seen here: “Between the two stints Dave did on The X-Men, Jim Shooter had him on staff, designing covers… so Dave had an office in the back halls there beyond JJ’s [Jumbo John Verpoorten’s] office. Dave liked to draw pretty ladies and often did. One that he drew, Andy Yanchus and I sat down to give colors to and came up with a set of colors we all liked. Dave took it and hung it in his office, and one day Chris [Claremont] came into his office, looked up at the wall, and said, ‘WHO IS SHE?!!! I WANT HER!!! WHO IS SHE??? WHAT’S HER POWERS???’ Dave created so many characters and mostly brought names and powers for them to begin with, so Chris figured this was another of Dave’s characters. Dave looked up from the cover he was designing and said, ‘She’s a pretty lady.’ Chris says, ‘Can I have her for The X-Men?’ ‘Sure,’ sez Dave. So Chris gave the powers and name and Dave the visuals to… MYSTIQUE. I’m not sure but I believe Dave may have given Chris the original drawing… we kept copies.” [Mystique TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Below:) Paty also informs us that Dave “had done this stunning piece of Uhura [from Star Trek] and was hoping to get actress Nichelle Nichols to sign it—for over twenty years!” Finally, Paty says, “at a Big Apple Con, she was there… [so] we came down from upstate [with his sketchbook], got in line, and paid the $5 for the photo they were selling for her to autograph. When he got to her, he said, ‘I don’t want your autograph on the photo. I want it on this sketch of Uhura I did… if you don’t mind.’ She looked at the art and then up at him with BIG eyes and said, “Oh, you don’t want to keep this… you want to give it to me!” Dave told her that yes, he did want to keep it and would she please sign it… which she did. When he told me about the exchange, I laughed and asked if he croaked could I give it to her, and he told me yes, cuz then he wouldn’t need it. So, after he passed, I arranged to present it to her at the Atlanta Dragon Con. She remembered both the exchange with Dave and the signing of it… and was pleased to know that Dave was now a world-famous comicbook artist. So the original is in Nichelle Nichols’ hands, but I kept this scan.” [Art © Paty Cockrum.]

DAVE COCKRUM A Model Artist

A Personal Look Back by Andy Yanchus

Dave Cockrum, Andy Yanchus, & Friends Dave (on left) in a circa-1980 photo taken by his father—and (at right) Andy Yanchus—above an unused Cockrum cover featuring his Creature from the Black Lagoon-style co-creation The Manphibian. Also seen, at bottom, is a montage of Dave’s model designs for Godzilla’s buddy Rodan, the Creature his own self, the Hulk, and Frankenstein’s Monster. Thanks to Paty and Andy for the personal photos, to Andy for the model montage, and to Mike Mikulovsky for finding the artwork online. [Manphibian & Hulk TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; Frankenstein’s Monster design TM & © Universal; Rodan TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

first met Dave Cockrum in 1972. I was selling model kits at some comicbook convention in Manhattan, and my friend Mark Hanerfeld brought Dave to my table and introduced us. Dave and I clicked right at the start. He was only about 6½ months older than I, and we shared a seemingly endless number of interests—comicbooks, model building, ‘50s science-fiction movies, military aviation (especially the early jets), Warner Bros. cartoons, Godzilla movies, etc., etc. To me, it was as if I had discovered a brother I never knew I had! I was working at Aurora in those days, supervising the development of new model kits. It was a no-brainer to hire Dave to design new dinosaur and monster kits for the company. As a fan, he knew all the details and had tons of reference. As a modeler, he knew what other builders would be looking for. As an artist, he dynamically posed the figures in ways never before seen in styrene.

Many of Dave’s designs added to Aurora’s legendary status as the leading maker of plastic model figure kits. Among them were the huge 1/12 scale Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Frankenstein Monster, Rodan and Ghidrah from Japan, and, of course, the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Unfortunately, too many of the new kits Dave designed never got produced. Gort, the Metaluna Mutant, the comic strip Phantom, the Phantom of the Opera, the Mummy, King Kong, Godzilla, and a Stegosaurus were some of a painfully long list of canceled projects—killed by a management that decided to invest more money into new toys and games and reduce model kits to reissues. Ah, but the Cockrum magic couldn’t be swept aside and forgotten.

PRESENTS

by Peter Normanton A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: For a decade, beginning in 2000, Peter Normanton published and edited the British horror-comics fanzine From the Tomb. It was a high-quality production that specialized in examining material from the (mostly later) 1940s through the mid-1950s, the haunted heyday of the genre in the U.S. Since his magazine’s, er, demise, two Best of collections have come out from TwoMorrows Publishing. Along the way, I offered Peter a spot to continue his awardwinning periodical in the pages of Alter Ego—if not necessarily in each issue, then at least in every issue in which I can find space! He recently sent me his first few contributions. And so, without further preface or pontification, I’ll turn things over to the ol’ Tomb-Tender himself....

~Peter Normanton.

Adventures Into The Unknown (Right:) The covers to the first two issues of the American Comics Group title (with cover dates Fall 1948 & Dec. 1948-Jan. 1949), which featured art by Edvard Moritz, left the reader little doubt as to what lay within. AITU became the first regularly published horror comicbook. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

t must have seemed like a real-life adventure into the unknown for editor Richard Hughes and his team when Adventures into the Unknown prepared to debut in the summer months of 1948, cover-dated for the fall of that year. At that moment in comicbook history Adventures into the Unknown was the only one of its kind, a bona fide horror comic, pre-dating its competitors’ more notorious output by just a few months. With the decline of the Golden Age super-hero following the Allied victory over the Axis powers, a combination of crime, comedy, and romance had come to the fore in a period of widespread experimentation, as the publishers sought the next big seller. Hughes had high hopes for this latest addition to the company roster, hopes that would very quickly transcend his wildest dreams, but, as we shall see, were not entirely without precedent.

A Step Into The Unknown!

During the winter months of 1947, Avon had released Eerie Comics #1, one of their earlier one-shot titles. While this issue can lay claim to being the very first horror anthology, it was in turn foreshadowed by several equally chilling entries. Amongst the most notable were Gilberton’s Classics Illustrated #13, which adapted Robert Louis Stevenson’s tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as early as 1944, with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein being similarly represented in issue #26 of this series a little over twelve months later. As war came to an end in the summer of 1945, the first issue of Yellowjacket Comics, published by The Frank Comunale Publishing Company (later Charlton Comics), sat inauspiciously alongside the legendary super-hero titles of the day. Sepulchred within was an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Black Cat,” in what would become the semi-regular horror series “Famous Tales of Terror.” “The Pit and the Pendulum” received a similar telling in this title’s third edition, with “The Fall of the House of Usher” following in #4 and “The Tell-Tale Heart” in #6. Alan Mandel was handed the creative reins for the last of these “Famous Tales of Terror,” the barely remembered “The Avenging Hand!,” destined to appear in issue #7, cover-dated January 1946. Sadly, the horror fans of the day were denied any more of these spine-tingling episodes as Yellowjacket Comics fell from the company’s schedule as of issue #10. Not long after these “Famous Tales of Terror” had premiered in Yellowjacket Comics, Halloween beckoned. Just to keep with the seasonal spirit, DC’s Comics Cavalcade #12 sported a pumpkin super-hero cover, but that was to be their absolute limit. Harvey Comics however, surprised the comic-buying public with another of those highly collectible one-off titles, Front Page Comic Book, introduced by an unusually chilling Bob Fujitani cover. This issue unveiled “The Man in Black” as the host to a supernatural mystery/war hybrid. There was an intimation of something strange at hand, but this unnerving air was not in attendance when The Man in Black returned in All-New Comics #11, during the early months of 1945. However, the tone for his next appearance in the pages of All-New Comics #14, cover-dated Jan.-Feb. 1947, was profoundly more atmospheric.

Signposts On The Road To Horror Comics (From top of page:) The Ken Battefield-penciled cover of proto-Charlton’s Yellowjacket Comics #7 (Jan. 1946) captured the essence of later horror comics while also playing host to the last of that title’s “Famous Tales of Terror,” written and drawn by Alan Mandel. Harvey’s one-shot Front Page Comic Book was the showcase for a macabre Bob Fujitani graveyard scene as early as 1945. Batman (as drawn by Bob Kane) had been on the trail of an actual vampire in Detective Comics #1 (Sept. 1939)—whereas by the fall of 1945 Comic Cavalcade #12 could only tease playfully with its Halloween-style cover by E.E. Hibbard. Classic Comics #13 (Aug. 1943) did far more than tease, unsettling its readers with a 53-page adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s time-honored chiller, behind an Arnold L. Hicks cover. [Detective & Comic Cavalcade covers TM & © DC Comics; Classic Comics cover TM & © Frawley Corporation and its exclusive licensee First Classics, Inc.; other covers © the respective copyright holders.]

THE WORLD OF TWOMORROWS 25 ANNIVERSARY BOOK TH

In 1994, amidst the boom-&-bust of comic book speculators, THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #1 was published for true fans of the medium. That modest labor of love spawned TwoMorrows Publishing, today’s premier purveyor of publications about comics and pop culture. Celebrate our 25th anniversary with this special retrospective look at the company that changed fandom forever! Co-edited by and featuring publisher JOHN MORROW and COMIC BOOK ARTIST/ COMIC BOOK CREATOR magazine’s JON B. COOKE, it gives the inside story and behind-thescenes details of a quarter-century of looking at the past in a whole new way. Also included are BACK ISSUE magazine’s MICHAEL EURY, ALTER EGO’s ROY THOMAS, GEORGE KHOURY (author of KIMOTA!, EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE, and other books), MIKE MANLEY (DRAW! magazine), ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON (MODERN MASTERS), and a host of other comics luminaries who’ve contributed to TwoMorrows’ output over the years. From their first Eisner Award-winning book STREETWISE, through their BRICKJOURNAL LEGO® magazine, up to today’s RETROFAN magazine, every major TwoMorrows publication and contributor is covered with the same detail and affection the company gives to its books and magazines. With an Introduction by MARK EVANIER, Foreword by ALEX ROSS, Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ, and a new cover by TOM McWEENEY! NOW SHIPPING! (256-page FULL-COLOR Trade Paperback) $37.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-092-2 (272-page ULTRA-LIMITED HARDCOVER) $75 • RESERVE YOURS NOW! Only 125 copies available for sale, with a 16-page bonus Memory Album! HARDCOVER NOT AVAILABLE THROUGH DIAMOND—DIRECT FROM TWOMORROWS ONLY!

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(Above top & bottom:) Charles Biro photo from Gleason’s Desperado #1 (June 1948) and Stan Lee from 1966. (Top right, first two panels:) Daredevil from Daredevil #44 (Sept. 1947). Art by Norman Maurer, script by Biro. (Last 2 panels:) Stan Lee and Wally Wood magic from Marvel’s Daredevil #5 (Dec. 1964). Maurer and Wood even made sitting at a desk look exciting! [© Marvel and Gleason Pubs.\]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Charles Biro—The Other Stan Lee! (Part 3)

by Michael T. Gilbert

n our two previous installments, we discussed notable similarities between Stan Lee and Charles Biro. Lee admired Biro’s writing and editorial expertise, abilities that helped catapult Gleason Publishing’s big three titles—the original Daredevil, Boy Comics, and Crime Does Not Pay—into some of the best-selling comics of the Golden Age. Lee would later do the same thing for Marvel in the 1960s, with the help of superstar artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. But for all of Lee’s success at Marvel, his detractors charged him with being a credit hog. Biro had similar accusations thrown at him.

“Bluff The Ending!” In personal correspondence with Glen D. Johnson (12/24/1996), Gleason artist Pete Morisi shared this tidbit: “Biro did some art (all Biro) early on. Steel Sterling, a few Daredevils, Sgt. Boyle, Corporal Collins, and then switched to writing and doing covers for all his books. Then, as the workload got too heavy, other artists did the pencils for some of his covers. Biro would change a couple of figures, ink the cover, and sign it with a big CHARLIE BIRO.” Morisi added this postscript in a letter of 1/12/97:

Morisi’s tale sounds quite similar to complaints lodged against Lee decades later. But for all his faults, Biro had a definite editorial viewpoint, one that made his books sell like crazy!

“A Little Piece Of The Brain…” “Charlie used to yell at me, ‘I don’t want art—I want detail!’”said Bob Fujitani. “That’s what people look for. That’s what impresses them. He published a cover that had a criminal shoving a woman’s face into a lit gas burner on the stove, and he showed it to me. He said, ‘Look at that! Look at the detail! See that gas burner? There were the little holes where the gas shot out of the burner and he thought that was magnificent. If you drew a guy being shot in the head, you had to have a little piece of the brain coming out of the back with little hairs sticking out of it. ‘That’s what sells!’” Crime Does Not Pay artist Tony DiPreta echoed Morisi’s observations, as related in David Hajdu’s The Ten Cent Plague. “Charlie didn’t want to know anything about symbolism or any of that. He wanted very precise realism, exactly the way things looked. What I learned to do, working for him, was, if there was a machine gun in the story, I went out to find a real machine gun. Now, a lot of people working for other guys, if there was a machine gun, they’d make one up. Well, he didn’t want us to do that. I remember… there was a gun dealer in New York that Charlie knew, and I went to the place and I got my hands on the guns I was supposed to draw.” DiPreta continued, “To Biro, realism and violence were inextricable. In addition to demonstrating this through the

“To clear up what I told you about Charlie Biro’s covers, let me say that most of them were all Biro. It was only during the end of his career (probably due to an increased workload) that he mixed and matched his covers with other artists. “I remember getting a script from Biro, with the last few pages missing. He told me to ‘bluff through the ending’—that he’d fix it when I returned it. Well, I wrote the last few pages of the script, and brought the criminal to justice and illustrated the story. “Old Charlie didn’t change a word of the script, printed it as is, and didn’t pay me for the writing, to boot. Such is the comic book business!!! I guess I could have yelled and screamed over the above, but by the time I saw the published book, it was months later, at a time when Biro’s books were failing, and I didn’t want to add to his problems.”

Twice-Told Torture! Biro was not above swiping a good cover idea. His gruesome cover to Crime Does Not Pay #24 (Nov. 1942) was clearly based on Allen Anderson’s cover for the pulp magazine Gangland Detective, Vol. 2, #3 (Sept. 1940). Biro likely came across it while searching for true crime stories for his comics. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Charles Biro—The Other Stan Lee (Part 3)

relentless savagery in the stories he produced, he articulated the idea explicitly to his readers in an odd meta-vignette in the Nov. 1943 issue of Crime Does Not Pay. Biro and Bob Wood appear as themselves, discussing the ‘Who Dunnit’ mystery tale in the reader’s hand. (Departing from realism on one detail, the drawing did not include Biro’s pet monkey). Wood asks, ‘Do you think this crime story is too bloody and gory, Charlie?’ Biro responds, ‘It’s bloody all right, but it’s true!’ That’s the important thing. We want our readers to see the horror of the crooked path to crime.’”

Biro’s Vision Though often gruesome, Charles Biro had a definite vision for his comic line, much like Stan Lee at Marvel. They were there to produce successful comics—which meant volume and consistency. At Marvel the product Stan most enthusiastically sold was Stan Lee. At Gleason, it was Charles Biro. But he took his work seriously. “Comics was his greatest love in the world,” said his daughter Denise Ortell in Jim Amash’s interview in A/E V3#73. ”He wanted to be remembered for his work in comic books. He wanted to be immortal. He felt that the work he was doing was very important. From day one, all of his stories were created to teach lessons or help people. Even though the comics might look a little horrifying on the surface, he was always going after the bad guy and helping the good guy.”

Lev Gleason’s Head Honchos Co-editors Charles Biro and Bob Wood from Crime Does Not Pay #30 (Nov. 1943), as reprinted in Dark Horse’s Crime Does Not Pay Archives, Vol. 3 (2012). Art by Dick Briefer. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Stan & Charlie Golden Age artist Bob Fujitani told an amusing anecdote in Alter Ego #23 (April 2013). Bob was a regular contributor to Biro’s books, and also worked for Marvel in the ’50s. A fan who interviewed Bob Fujitani wrote the following on comic historian Nick Caputo’s website, recalling ”…something Bob Fujitani told me on more than one occasion: Stan would call and ask Charles Biro for advice. I think the Biro influence on Stan is profound, and it is great to see Stan confirm the relationship. After Charles Biro left the industry, Bob recounts a story about Stan calling Biro for advice when comics were not selling. He asked Biro, “What does the industry need?,” to which Biro responded, “The industry needs ME!” Now that’s a statement worthy of Stan Lee himself! In A/E V3#23, Fujitani shared another Stan Lee anecdote: “He [Lee] used to call up Charlie all the time for ideas. I know, because I was there a couple of times when he called Charlie. Biro’d hang up the phone and say, “Gee, this guy wants me to do everything for him. Give him ideas for this, give him ideas for that.” That was when Crime Does Not Pay was riding high. He was very friendly with Biro.” And one Biro idea that Stan eventually used was a super-hero named… Daredevil!

The Daredevil Connection And then there’s the matter of the two Daredevils. The first Golden Age “Daredevil” story was tucked away in the back of Gleason’s Silver Streak #6 (Sept. 1940) and credited to artist Jack Binder. Plastic Man creator Jack Cole redesigned his costume the following issue. Don Rico briefly took over, and then it was passed on to Biro, who quickly made the character his own.

“Meet Bob Wood” Bob Wood bio from Daredevil #13 (Oct. 1942), probably written by Biro, or perhaps by Wood himself. Charlie was always effusive in his praise of his partner. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

In an interview in Alter Ego V3#73 (Oct. 2007), Biro’s daughter Denise described her dad as being a “five letter man,” in high school who did “track, tennis, football, boxing, hockey, golf.” She added, “He was driven. He had to win at whatever he did, and he would take each sport up to the point where he could win at the highest level. If it was ping-pong, he would keep going until he could beat the world champion. In tennis, he played the semi-professional circuit.

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Golden Age artist/writer/editor NORMAN MAURER remembered by his wife JOAN, recalling BIRO’s Crime Does Not Pay, Boy Comics, Daredevil, St. John’s 3-D & THREE STOOGES comics with KUBERT, his THREE STOOGES movies (MOE was his father-inlaw!), and work for Marvel, DC, and others! Plus LARRY IVIE’s 1959 plans for a JUSTICE SOCIETY revival, JOHN BROOME, FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY and more!

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Interview with JOYE MURCHISON, assistant to Wonder Woman co-creator DR. WILLIAM MARSTON, and WW’s female scriptwriter from 1945-1948! Rare art by H.G. PETER, 1960s DC love comics writer BARBARA FRIEDLANDER, art & anecdotes by ROMITA, COLAN, JAY SCOTT PIKE, INFANTINO, WEISINGER, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, and others! Extra: FCA, JOHN BROOME, MR. MONSTER, & more!

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MANLY WADE WELLMAN

David Drake Discusses His Friend & Fellow Writer Interview Conducted by Richard J. Arndt

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: Manly Wade Wellman (May 21, 1903-April 5, 1986) was already a major pulp writer when his first comicbook stories were published in Pep Comics #1 (Jan. 1940) for MLJ Comics, forerunner of today’s Archie Comics. Over the next fifteen years, he maintained a dual career, continuing his pulp/ literary career writing mostly fantasy and science-fiction stories as well as historical works, while also scripting for comics. During those years he scribed the adventures of such features as “Captain Marvel” and “Spy Smasher” for Fawcett Publications, “Captain America” for Timely Comics (today’s Marvel), “Tarantula,” “Aquaman,” and “The Phantom Stranger” for National Comics (today’s DC Comics), and, for Quality Comics, “Blackhawk” and “Plastic Man.” He also filled in, along with William Woolfolk and occasionally Jack Cole, on Will Eisner’s newspaper comic insert The Spirit after Eisner was drafted during the Second World War. Although most of Wellman’s known comicbook credits appear to be concentrated between 1940 and 1945, his journals show that he was making considerable money writing comics even in the post-WWII years. In addition to his comics work, Wellman is best known for his fantasy prose characters, including John the Balladeer, Judge Pursuivant, and John Thunstone. He is also the author of dozens of historical, science-fiction, and mystery novels, as well as nonfiction biographies—one of which, Rebel Boast, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize—and local regional history books.

Manly Wade Wellman during the Golden Age—juxtaposed with a page from Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Adventures #1 (March 1941). The entire issue, including this tale that takes place on the planet Saturn, was produced over one weekend by Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Dick Briefer, and others holed up together in a hotel room. [Shazam hero & Billy Batson TM & © DC Comics.]

David Drake, a noted author in his own right as the creator of the Hammer’s Slammers military science-fiction series, a co-founder of the small press publishing company Carcosa, and a longtime friend of Wellman’s, kindly agreed to be interviewed for this edition of FCA on February 19, 2019. RICHARD ARNDT: My guess would be that you’re more familiar with Manly Wade Wellman’s prose career in literature than you are with his comicbook work. DAVID DRAKE: Yes, that would be correct. I started reading Manly’s stories and novels at age thirteen. I’m not a comics person. I remember when Marvel Comics started making a big splash in the early 1960s, when I was an undergraduate. However, I never had any significant contact with those. The only comics I really remember reading on my own were the war comics of the 1950s— also the funny-animal comics. I was thoroughly familiar with Carl Barks, long before I had any notion of who he was. [laughs] RA: You certainly wouldn’t be the only reader who was thoroughly aware of Barks and his work on “Donald Duck” and “Uncle Scrooge” without actually knowing his name. His identity didn’t become common knowledge until the early 1970s, long after he’d retired from writing and drawing comics.

DRAKE: My mom didn’t really like comics, although, like I said, I was permitted to read funny-animal comics. The fact that Barks was doing a lot of really good ones at the time was noticeable. I perhaps wasn’t as handicapped in my comics background as I thought I was! RA: Let’s discuss your memories of Manly Wade Wellman. I understand that he was born overseas…

Fawcett Collectors Of America

DRAKE: Yes! He was born in Kamundongo, in what is today’s Angola. He used to tell me that it wasn’t called Angola then, but in fact it was, according to an 1890s travel book on Africa that I read. However, it was more commonly known as Portuguese West Africa. His father, Frederick Creighton Wellman, was a doctor there. He was not a medical missionary, but the Presbyterian Church started a hospital in the middle of Angola, and he was the doctor employed by the Church to work there. Manly was only the second white child born in that region. The first was his brother Paul, who was two years older than Manly. The eldest brother of the family, Creighton—named after his father—had been born in the States. Manly and Paul were very close, all their lives. Paul wrote mainstream bestsellers—novels like The Female and The Iron Mistress. Many of Paul’s novels were made into films. On the other hand, when Manly started writing fiction, it was pulp fiction. He was in his mid-twenties when his debut fiction story “The Lion Roared” was published in a pulp magazine called Thrilling Tales. However, both of them started out as journalists. When the family returned to the United States, they moved around the country, living for a time in Washington, DC, then in Salt Lake City.

Manly attended college in Wichita, Kansas, at Wichita Municipal University [now Wichita State University]. It was in Wichita that the two brothers started their journalism careers. Paul was the managing editor, while Manly was a crime and court reporter, for the Wichita Eagle. Then the ownership of the paper became Republican. Both the Wellman boys were staunch Democrats. At the same time, the rival paper in Wichita became one run by Democrats. The two papers were actually on opposite sides of the street, and there was an entire change of personnel between the Wichita Eagle and the Wichita Beacon. The brothers switched over to the Beacon and Manly continued working as a reporter for his brother, who remained a managing editor. Manly was also writing the film reviews for the Beacon. Paul began writing historical novels dealing with the Indian Wars and eventually moved to New York around 1934. Manly soon followed him. As mentioned, Manly had been writing for various pulps while still working as a reporter, but in New York he also began writing to a much greater extent for the horror and fantasy pulps, such as, among others, Weird Tales. His wife, Frances, also wrote horror fiction. In 1939 he moved to West Orange, New Jersey, and I think it was there that he began writing for the comics. He would send in what he called “squinkas” [pronounced “squink-as”], which was a term I think he coined, although other writers also used the term. RA: What did he mean when he called the comic scripts that? DRAKE: It just meant that he would send in to the editor in New York City, by train, these little plot-and-dialogue scripts to the comic companies, and then get the check back by return mail. Fifty bucks. The script would be given to an artist, drawn, and appear in a comic, usually very quickly. By this time, Manly was a fairly major pulp writer, particularly in fantasy and science-fiction. He did a lot of work for Astounding Science Fiction. Not that much for John Campbell, but quite a bit for the editor who preceded him, F. Olin Tremaine. He broke with Campbell over a book Manly’d written called Twice in Time, which was a Leonardo da Vinci novel involving time travel. Campbell told Manly that he, Manly, didn’t understand da Vinci and that Campbell was going to have to edit it massively. Manly told him to go piss up a rope. They didn’t work together after that. [laughs] Campbell had been trying to start a fantasy magazine… RA: Yes, Unknown, or Unknown Worlds, as it ended up.

What A Startling Development This Is!

DRAKE: No! That was the point. Campbell got Manly and L. Sprague de Camp, as well as Julie Schwartz, who was an agent for science-fiction and fantasy writers at the time, to a lunch meeting and told them that he was going to do a new magazine. He wanted to publish fantasy stories that would be in the same mode as the science-fiction stories in Astounding, which, at Campbell’s insistence, were often based on real science. He wanted the group to brainstorm a title for such a fantasy magazine. Manly suggested Tain’t So Stories. Manly was very clear when he spoke, at least when I knew him. [chuckles] He had a degree of contempt for Campbell, who was younger than Manly. Campbell, of course, came up with the final title, Unknown, I think pretty much on his own.

Before turning to comics, Wellman wrote first for the pulp magazines of the day. His book-length novel Devil’s Planet was published in Thrilling’s Startling Stories for January 1942—just one of MWW’s many pulp stories. Cover art by Rudolph Belarski. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

One of the things that Manly held against Campbell was that Campbell had invited Manly and Frances, along with—it may have been Sprague deCamp and his wife—to dinner at Campbell’s home. Manly was vastly irritated by Campbell opening a can of

David Drake Discusses Friend & Fellow Writer Manly Wade Wellman

Spirit. When Will Eisner returned to The Spirit in late 1945 after his military service in World War II, both Manly and Bill Woolfolk were gone from the strip. DRAKE: Right. RA: I read those wartime stories by Wellman, Woolfolk, and Jack Cole and realized that they had turned The Spirit into strictly a crime comic, which it wasn’t under Eisner, who crammed in every genre he could and where everything was possible from week to week. DRAKE: Manly used to talk about this character called The Green Claw, and I don’t think he was a character in The Spirit; The Green Claw was an Oriental super-villain.

There Were Giants In Those Days… This famous and oft-reproduced photograph shows a number of pulpmagazine (and future science-fiction, fantasy, and comicbook) legends at future Superman editor Mort Weisinger’s home in 1937. (Top row, left to right:) L. Sprague de Camp, John D. Clark, Julius Schwartz, Edward Weisinger [not involved with pulps], Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton, Otis Adelbert Kline. (Bottom row, l. to r.:) Otto Binder, Manly Wade Wellman, Frank Belknap Long. Mort probably snapped the pic. Photo source: Blackgate.com/Doug Ellis.

spaghetti for supper, which was all the five or six of them had for dinner. Manly considered that very strange. However, I’ve read Manly’s journals and checked the time for this dinner, and it was actually during the great hurricane of 1938. Campbell had obviously sent his family inland, out of harm’s way. Manly and Frances only drove a short distance, across the Jersey line into New York, to get to Campbell’s. Manly’s journal mentions “Hell of a wind! There were trees down all over the place!” Well, of course there were. It was a f---ing hurricane!

RA: The character was a Jack Cole creation who first appeared in Silver Streak Comics published by Lev Gleason, although I suppose that Manly could have ghost-written some of those stories for him. Both Wellman and Cole appeared to be working for the same companies at the same time during that period. It is known that Wellman wrote another Oriental character named “Fu Chang” for MLJ [today’s Archie Comics]. Fu Chang was sort of a Charlie Chan type of character. “Fu Chang” started out in Pep Comics #1 (Jan. 1940) and, interestingly enough, Jack Cole wrote and drew “The Comet” in that same issue. DRAKE: The character may have just been “The Claw” but when Manly talked about it, it was always “The Green Claw.” He liked to tell me about a particular story when The Green Claw has been defeated and all his acolytes are marching around his bier, slashing

According to those same journals, in 1946 Manly earned $8600 as a writer, which was an enormous amount of money in 1946 [Somewhere in the vicinity of $118,000+ in today’s currency—RA]. Almost all of those earnings were from his comics work. He was still writing comics when he moved to North Carolina in 1951. RA: That earnings statement for 1946 is significant because online records don’t show any known original comics work by him between the end of 1945 and 1951. Clearly though, he was writing stories, and apparently quite a number of stories, for someone! DRAKE: Yes. I don’t know who for, though. I know there are credits for reprints, but I have a feeling that reprints of comicbook stories wouldn’t be paid for. [laughs] He was working for, I think, the Gold Medal syndicate. RA: Gold Medal was a subsidiary of Fawcett, who published the Captain Marvel comic book that Wellman once wrote. Gold Medal, though, in my memory, published paperbacks. John D. MacDonald earned his fame as a mystery writer doing dozens of paperbacks for Fawcett Gold Medal before he hit the jackpot with his Travis McGee series. DRAKE: Fawcett was the parent company, but Manly worked for Gold Medal. He never mentioned anything to me about writing for Fawcett. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t, of course, but he never talked about Fawcett, only Gold Medal. He was also writing The Spirit for quite a while, three or four years, for the newspaper insert version. RA: Those stories were around a lot longer than between 1942-1945, because they were being reprinted for years after that by Quality Comics, both in Police Comics and Quality’s reprint comicbook version of The

The Spirit Of ’45 Along with William Woolfolk, Manly Wade Wellman stepped in to script The Spirit for creator Will Eisner while the latter served in the military during World War II. Above is the beginning of the Wellman Spirit tale for March 4, 1945. Artwork by Lou Fine. [TM & © Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

Alter Ego #163