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An Interview With Nancy Shores Karlebach
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NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: Syd Shores was born in 1913 and passed away on June 3, 1973. He began his career in comics as an art assistant for Mac Raboy while working in the shop run by Harry “A” Chesler. While there, he was also partnered with fellow artist Phil Sturm. He soon became an inker on Joe Simon & Jack Kirby’s Captain America Comics. When they left Timely Comics for National (DC) Comics, Shores was one of the artists chosen to replace them on “Captain America” stories. He soon also became Timely’s unofficial art director. After an interruption in his career for military service in World War II, he returned to draw Captain America. He also co-created and drew “The Blonde Phantom.” After Martin Goodman directed Stan Lee to fire the Timely bullpen staff in 1949, Shores also did work for comics publishers Avon and Orbit Publications, perhaps also for Lev Gleason’s Crime Does Not Pay. During the late 1940s and early ’50s, Shores moved from super-hero comics to Western, war, and jungle comics. When assignments in the field dried up from the effects of the Comics Code and Atlas’ distributor woes, he moved into illustrating men’s-adventure magazines for about eight years. In 1967 he returned to Goodman’s comics line, now called Marvel Comics, as an inker on Gene Colan’s Daredevil and Jack Kirby’s Captain America, among other titles. He also worked on Marvel’s war and mystery comics, as well as drawing non-Code horror stories for Warren, Skywald, and Major’s black-&-white magazine titles. When Marvel began publishing its own b&w horror magazines in the early 1970s, Shores was clearly poised to become a major part of that line. However, his work there was interrupted by a fatal heart attack at the age of 59. This interview took place on July 12, 2018. RICHARD ARNDT: We’re welcoming Nancy Shores Karlebach, Syd Shores’ daughter, to talk about her dad. Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Nancy. What can you tell us about him? NANCY SHORES KARLEBACH: His full name when he was born was Sidney Lawrence Schwartz. He changed it when he became an artist. RA: Was that change the same reason that so many other Jewish writers and artists changed their names? To have a name that sounded less ethnic? KARLEBACH: That could have been, but I think he just wanted a name with a little more of a ring to it. Schwartz was a common name in the area he grew up in, but an awful lot of people, not just Jewish people but immigrants in general, wanted an Americansounding name and changed their names or the spellings of their name to achieve that. And in comics, a lot of that was happening— Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Gil Kane—these men and a lot of others changed their names. I can’t say for certain why he changed it, but I know that he wanted it to stand out. RA: Sure, if you’re going to pick a new name for business reasons, you’d want to pick one that stands out. That makes perfect sense. Do you know where he got his education, particularly his art education? KARLEBACH: Dad went to Pratt. RA: That would be the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn? KARLEBACH: That would be correct. The Pratt Institute of Fine & Applied Art. He went to night classes there and graduated. He attended classes there for some time, perhaps as long as seven years before finishing up his coursework and receiving his certificate. He also had an art display at the Brooklyn Museum when he was a teenager. He had won an art contest and that was the prize. He also won an art contest sponsored by a dog food company, that may have been the first publication of any of his art. He drew a poster dealing with the mistreatment of puppies. I should tell you that while we talk I’m looking at a folder I have about him. My children never met him because he passed
away before I was even married. For years I’ve been thinking of writing up a whole book of stories about him and his life. I didn’t really follow his work when I was a kid because he was just my dad. [laughs] I knew what he did and so on, but I never followed the details of comics. In fact, my father discouraged my sister and I from reading comics because he felt books were better for The Shores Of Tripoli? (Or Maybe France?) our education, Although he may have contributed inking and not because comics perhaps even some penciling to previous Captain were bad but America Comics covers, this is the first one that is because we were definitively his: for issue #20 (Sept. 1942). [TM & © girls and I guess Marvel Characters, Inc.] he didn’t think there were many prospects for girls reading comics. So I thought I would write about his life for my children. Then I thought that, if it sounded OK, maybe it could be turned into a book, because a lot of artists have had books written about them in the last few years. So that’s on my to-do list. That why I’ve put material together in a folder. RA: That’s not a bad idea. Now, I know that before he entered comics he worked for his uncle in a whiskey-bottling place. KARLEBACH: Yes, that’s correct. I don’t know the exact name of that business, however. When he entered into comics, he was working for my mother, Selma’s ...well, she was his wife-to-be at the time... cousin, Phil Sturm. It was with Phil that he worked on his own debut story, “Introducing The Terror,” which appeared in Timely’s Mystic Comics #5 [cover-dated Mar. 1941]. I don’t know if “The Terror” became a regular feature or not. I think that Phil wrote the story and my father did the artwork. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: George Klein is credited with inking that story.] I always have a little hesitation when talking about this sort of thing, because I feel I should know all this stuff, but this happened, of course, before I was born. My father was the third person hired on staff for Timely. Joe Simon was his editor. This was working for Simon and Kirby, under Martin Goodman. My father was working as an inker on Captain America fairly early on. First over Kirby’s pencils in All Winners Comics #1 [Summer 1941], and then on the cover of the regular Captain America title, starting in #5 [Aug. 1941]. RA: He continued on Captain America for quite some time after that point, as I recall.
