Alter Ego #171 Preview

Roy Thomas' High-Quality Comics Fanzine

PAUL GUSTAVSON AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF QUALITY!

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No. 171

Jester, Midnight, Plastic Man, & Human Bomb TM & © DC Comics.

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82658 00442

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Sept.

2021

Vol. 3, No. 171 / Sept. 2021 Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editor Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

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FCA Editor

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

Comic Crypt Editor

Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll

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Contents

Writer/Editorial: A “One-Man Band”...? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Paul Gustavson—With An “F”! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Richard Arndt interviews the great Golden Age artist’s son, Terry Gustafson.

Cover Colorists

Tom Ziuko, et al.

With Special Thanks to:

Douglass Abramson Paul Allen Heidi Amash Richard Arndt Dick Arnold Bob Bailey John Benson Al Bigley Lee Boyette Chris Boyko Bernie Bubnis Aaron Caplan Nick Caputo John Cimino Shaun Clancy Comic Book Plus (website) Gerry Conway Aaron Couch Chet Cox Craig Delich DitkoCultist.com (website) Scott Edelman Wendy Everett Danny Fingeroth Shane Foley Four Color Shadows (blog) Joe Frank Sidney Friedfertig Stephan Friedt

C’mon citizen, DO THE RIGHT THING! A Mom & Pop publisher like us needs every sale just to survive! DON’T DOWNLOAD OR READ ILLEGAL COPIES ONLINE!

Janet Gilbert Mark Glidden Grand Comics Database (website) Terry Gustafson Bruce Guthrie George Hagenauer Heritage Auctions Tony Isabella Jim Kealy Jack & Roz Kirby Estate Robin Kirby Mark Lewis Art Lortie Frank Lovece Doug Martin Robert Menzies Mike Mikulovsky Bill Mitchell Brian K. Morris Martin O’Hearn Barry Pearl Warren Reece Al Rodriguez Randy Sargent Bryan D. Stroud Dann Thomas Irene Vartanoff Dr. Michael J. Vassallo

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Paul Gustavson, Joe Sinnott, Bob Fujitani, & Marty Pasko

“There Are Lies… And Damn Lies…” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Roy Thomas’ Hollywood Reporter piece on Abraham Riesman’s bio True Believer— plus “fact-checking the fact-bender.”

It’s All About Family! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Part XVI of John Broome’s 1997 Memoir.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Frankenstein Unstitched! . . . . 53 Michael T. Gilbert resurrects (and rearranges) a classic horror story by Bob Powell.

Tributes to Bob Fujitani, Joe Sinnott, & Marty Pasko . . . . . . 53 re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections . . . . . . . . . . 59 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #230 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 P.C. Hamerlinck showcases Sidney Friedfertig on Fawcett’s pint-size editions.

On Our Cover: Since featured artist Paul Gustavson produced some of his most noted Golden Age work for Timely/Marvel (“The Angel”) and for Quality Comics (“The Jester,” “Human Bomb,” et al., now owned by DC Comics)—and since we don’t have permission to “mix and match” properties from the two surviving companies on our covers, we decided to go with a montage of art from Quality, for which he wrote and drew a multiplicity of series. Depicted are splashes of “Midnight” (from Smash Comics #43, June 1943)… “The Human Bomb” (from Police Comics #6, Jan. 1942)… “Plastic Man” from Plastic Man #41 (May 1953)… and a never-before-published “Jester” sequence he wrote and drew as a special commission in 1973-74, and which was specially colored for us by veteran colorist Tom Ziuko. All three pages of that “Jester” art can be seen on pp.

22-24 of this issue, courtesy of Heritage Auctions. Thanks for the other scans to Jim Kealy, Michael T. Gilbert, Martin O’Hearn, Richard Arndt, and Doug Martin—and to Terry Gustafson for the photo of his father. [Jester, Midnight, Plastic Man, & Human Bomb TM & © DC Comics.]

Above: The Angel, a 1939 creation of Paul Gustavson, ranked up there in popularity with The Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner in the earliest days of Timely. Like the other two series, the “Angel” stories were often continued from issue to issue—e.g., the above splash page from Marvel Mystery Comics #20 (June 1941), which launches the third and concluding installment of an encounter with a female antagonist calling herself The Cat’s Paw. Thanks to Warren Reece for the scan. [TM & © Marvel Characters, 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: $68 US, $103 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.

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PAUL GUSTAVSON— With An “F”!

Paul Gustavson in a vintage photo that appeared in Jud Hurd’s magazine Cartoonist PRO-files #36 in the 1970s. Photo taken by Paul’s brother Nils. Thanks to Terry Gustafson & Shaun Clancy.

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son Of The Golden Age Great

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Conducted & Transcribed by Richard J. Arndt

NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: Paul Gustafson’s “comics name” was “Paul Gustavson,” although he also used the name “Paul Carroll,” or simply “Carroll,” for a short while at Quality Comics.

The artist was born in Finland on Aug. 16, 1916, and moved to the U.S. when he was five. His first professional work as a cartoonist was as an assistant to Frank Owen on the Collier’s Magazine strip Filbert, but he was soon writing and drawing his own gag cartoons for Collier’s.

In 1937 he gained entry to the comicbook world with a short stint in the Harry “A” Chesler shop. By the summer of 1937 he was producing filler material for Funnies, Inc., a comics studio headed by Lloyd Jacquet, which, in turn, led to his doing work for Centaur Publications (of which Jacquet was a co-founder).

While working for Centaur from 1937-1940, he became a quadruple threat, as he usually wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered his work. For Centaur he created several memorable characters,

including The Arrow, Fantom of the Fair, and Man of War. At the same time, his very early work appeared at National/DC Comics and Timely/ Marvel (where he was the creator of the hero called The Angel).

In 1940 he moved to Quality Comics, where he created The Human Bomb, Alias The Spider, The Jester, and Rusty Ryan.

His comics career was interrupted, as were so many, by World War II. According to

A Timely Quality Centaur!

Splendiferous splashes and covers from the three main comics companies for which Paul Gustavson drew (and wrote— including this trio of beauties!): “The Angel”—from Timely’s Marvel Mystery Comics #2 (Dec. 1939). Thanks to Jim Kealy for this and the following scan.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] “The Arrow” – the cover of Centaur’s The Arrow #3 (Oct. 1941). [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

“The Human Bomb” – splash page from the Quality group’s Police Comics #14 (Dec. 1942). Thanks to Doug Martin.

[Human Bomb TM & © DC Comics.]

Terry Gustafson Our intrepid interviewee, with his grandchildren (and Paul G.’s great-grandchildren) William and Thea (pronounced “Tay-ah”). Thanks to TG for the photo.

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An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Chop-ping Him Down To Size Chop Chop, who was somehow both a member of and mascot to the Blackhawks, was unfortunately drawn as a racial caricature for more than two decades—yet he was still an endearing character, popular enough to have his own humorous series for years in Quality’s Blackhawk title. This splash page from issue #40 (May 1951) was one of many illustrated by Paul Gustavson. Scripter unknown.

Thanks to Jim Kealy. [Chop Chop TM & © DC Comics.]

Jim Steranko’s The History of the Comics, Vol. 2, Gustafson was in the Air Tech Training Command from 1942-1945, where he also studied aerodynamics at Rutgers University.

Following the war, he also worked on such characters as Blackhawk (including a long run illustrating the adventures of Chop Chop), and Kid Eternity, among others. Circa 1953-54 he left Quality to work for ACG—the American Comics Group—doing a number of humor strips for its regular comics as well as commercial art for advertisers.

Gustafson left comics behind sometime in the mid-1950s. His last known comics work was a three-page story done as a commission in 1973-74, which is printed on pp. 22-24 of this issue. He passed away on April 29, 1977. This interview was conducted with his son, Terry Gustafson, on March 25, 2020. Brief comments were also taken from e-mails by Terry to either Roy Thomas or Craig Delich (the latter did a great deal of behind-the-scenes work with Terry prior to this interview) and are used by permission.

Martin O’Hearn’s website [www.martinohearn.blogspot.com] also provided useful information for this interview.

RICHARD ARNDT: We’re talking today with Terry Gustafson, son of Paul Gustafson/Gustavson. Thanks for agreeing to the interview, Terry.

TERRY GUSTAFSON: You’re welcome. I hope I have something useful to tell you.

RA: Well, why don’t we start with what you know of your dad’s early life?

GUSTAFSON: Father was born in Finland. He emigrated to the United States at the age of five in 1922 with his father Karl Gunnar Gustafson, mother Lydia, and his brother Nils and sister Elsa. Elsa died at a young age in New York City. Nils became a commercial portrait photographer in New York City.

My grandparents, father, and uncle used their middle names as their personal names. Sometimes, my grandfather Karl Gunnar was known as Gunnar. Grandmother Lydia Marie was known as Marie.

My father was known as Paul, although his full name is Karl Paul Gustafson, and so on.

My grandfather Gunnar and grandmother Marie were very strict on a few things. Everything had to be American. Only English was spoken at home. As a result of that, my father could only

understand some of what the relatives were speaking and could only answer them sometimes. I wasn’t taught Swedish, either.

When the relatives came to visit when I was a child, we were put outside or into another room.

RA: Wait, I thought your dad came from Finland. Where does the Swedish come in?

GUSTAFSON: Most of Finland speaks Finnish, but there are sections of the country, mostly on the coast or the Aland Islands, off the coast in the Baltic Sea, where Swedish is the predominate language. The family came from Bertby, Saltvik, Aland Islands, which were once part of Sweden.

RA: OK, that makes sense. Perhaps you can tell me why your dad’s name appears as “Paul Gustavson,” with a “v,” in the credits for all the comics he’s known to have worked on, but your name is Gustafson?

GUSTAFSON: I don’t know the exact reason why, but my father changed his name in the 1930s to Paul Gustavson for his comicbook work, although he used Gustafson for everything else. I’ve been doing genealogy research on my family, both here and in Finland, and the original spelling for my family is “Gustafson.” The spelling of the two names is similar but the pronunciation of those names in Swedish is different.

RA: That explains some of it, I guess. I have to tell you that, while doing some of the research for your dad’s work, following the ins and outs of the comicbook publishers involved was a bit like figuring out Charlton’s convoluted history of titles and the numbering of their issues. Titles of a comic would change at the blink of an eye. So could publishers. For example, your dad’s early humor fillers were mostly appearing in 1937 in a comic called Funny Picture Stories, put out by a company called Ultem, which had something to do with the Chesler Studio. After five issues, however, Funny Picture Stories is listed as a Centaur Publications title.

It’s in the Centaur comics that your dad moved from producing one-page fillers to full stories. His first full story appears to be a strip called “Phony Crimes,” where a detective called the Phony Detective solves crimes—one would suspect crimes dealing with fraud of some sort. His first super-hero creation—The Arrow—made his debut in Centaur’s Funny Pages, Vol. 2, #10 (Sept. 1938), which is actually the 21st issue of the comic. See what I mean about confusing?

GUSTAFSON: There were a lot of changes like that back then.

I sent in a lot of the details that appear on the Grand Comics Database, so a lot of the information there is actually from me. The Arrow was the first super-hero to use archery as his special ability.

He was dressed all in red. He appeared years before the rest of the archer-type super-heroes, including Green Arrow.

RA: Do you happen to know where your dad got the inspiration for The Arrow?

GUSTAFSON: I’m not sure. I know that he wrote and drew “The Arrow” for two full years, from his first appearance through the first issue of The Arrow’s own title.

RA: Bob Lubbers replaced your dad as artist in The Arrow #2-3 (Nov. 1940 & Oct. 1941), although reprints of your dad’s work appeared in #2.

There’s also a possible new story by your dad in #3, along with a new cover that’s also by your dad. A year’s gap occurs between #2 and #3.

It’s interesting to look at The Arrow’s hooded costume, which, based on the covers I’ve seen, actually appeared in a variety of colors: red, black—even an orange/green mix for The Arrow #1—and to see how closely design-wise it resembles the hooded Green Arrow costume of today, particularly as it’s seen on the TV show, as well as Howard Pyle’s drawings of the original Robin Hood. Your dad really did nice, lush artwork for that time period. It reminds me a little of Lou Fine, although

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An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

A Fantom Of Delight?

Gustavson’s “Fantom of the Fair” splash page for Amazing Mystery Funnies #19 (Jan. 1940). By now, the hero had lost his full face-mask and much of his, er, amazing mystery. By year’s end, this story would be reprinted in Fantoman #4 (Dec. ’40). Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Adventure Funnies #1, even though that title also had a #2. Like I said, tracking these titles and publishing moves can be a little dizzying. [NOTE: Further investigation confirms that the above speculation about the numbering is correct, as Fantoman #2’s cover mentions that it was formerly entitled Amazing Adventures Funnies—even though that title did indeed have a second issue (not featuring Fantom of the Fair or Fantoman) of its own.]

GUSTAFSON: You aren’t kidding. [chuckles] Whenever I come across something of my dad’s on the Internet that I haven’t seen before, I try to save the images or the information.

RA: It’s pretty likely that your father left “Fantom,” as well as “The Arrow” and any other series he may have been doing for Centaur, because he’d begun moving over to Quality in 1939. His first credits for Quality appear in Smash Comics #5 (Dec. 1939), a title in which Will Eisner had a big hand. Your dad was doing “Flash Fulton” in that title. That may not be a coincidence, as we’ve mentioned that your dad’s and Lou Fine’s art were similar and Fine did a lot of work for both Eisner and Quality. I suspect that anyone who could work in that same lush, energetic style as Eisner or Fine would have found a welcome home at Quality at that time.

GUSTAFSON: My father did “Alias The Spider” for Quality’s Crack Comics. Also “Rusty Ryan” in Feature Comics. Quality had a lot of comics either out or coming out at that point in time. My father jumped all over from title to title in those years.

RA: Rusty Ryan was a teen-age super-hero who apparently led a kid gang of other teens called the Boyville Brigadiers in battling crooks and the Japanese.

His costume looks like a combo of Captain America’s shirt and Blackhawk’s trousers and boots.

A Couple of Centaur Pieces Paul G. illustrated the covers of both Amazing Mystery Funnies #12 & 13 (Aug. & Sept. 1939—a.k.a.

Vol. 2, #8 & 9), which showcased features “Speed Centaur” and “The Fantom of the Fair,” respectively. Thanks to CBP. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Quality Goods Three of the Quality features the Finnish-born artist drew and wrote in the early ’40s were: “Quicksilver” (even if the strip continued to sport Nick Cardy’s byline), as per National Comics #14 (Aug. ’41)…

“Midnight,” Jack Cole’s physical clone of Will Eisner’s “Spirit,” whom Cole and others had turned into a distinctive character on his own, as seen in Smash Comics #48 (Nov. ’43)… …and the aforementioned “Rusty Ryan and His Boyville Brigadiers,” in Feature Comics #50 (Nov. ’41). Thanks to Doug Martin for the scans.

[Quicksilver & Midnight TM & © DC Comics; Rusty Ryan © the respective copyright holders.]

RA: Like a lot of artists, your dad joined the war effort in 1942…

GUSTAFSON: Yeah, he worked for Air Tech training at WrightCaldwell, drawing and drafting pages and blueprints for aircraft manuals and prototypes. The positions were so critical to the war effort that when the guy working in the next desk to my father’s wanted to enlist, they took him, but he was back in the same desk wearing a military uniform the next day. [chuckles] RA: Following your dad’s time in the service and his return to comics, he started doing humorous comics. Part of this would have been from the dropping popularity of the super-heroes from 1946-1949. Humor comics were the first effort launched by the publishers of the time to replace super-hero material, but there was another advantage to the artist. I’m told that you could get two pages of humor comics drawn in the same time it took to do one realistic page. So, more money for the artists. He did a lot of a character called “Honeybun” for a number of different titles. One of his strips was called “Slim Pickens.” He also drew “Midnight” for Smash Comics.

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An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Jest, Jester, Jestest In 1973-74, Paul Gustavson drew three pages of a new “Jester” story on private commision. Those art boards, reproduced on this and the following two pages of this issue of Alter Ego, were sold some years later via Heritage Auctions, under circumstances that still clearly bother son Terry Gustafson. Scripter unknown; may be PG himself. Copies provided by Terry G. via Richard Arndt. [Jester TM & © DC Comics; other art © 2021 the respective copyright holders.]

“There Are Lies…

And Damn Lies…”

And Then, Apparently, There’s STAN LEE!

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A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography

By ABRAHAM RIESMAN

by Roy Thomas

When Stan And Jack Made “True Believers” Of Nearly All Of Us (Left:) This splash page from The Fantastic Four #4 (May 1962) shows what the team of Stan Lee (writer/editor) and Jack Kirby (penciler, unofficial co-plotter) could accomplish together. A real departure from super-hero comics that had gone before. Inks by Sol Brodsky. Scan courtesy of Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Above:) This 2020 ad for Abraham Riesman’s True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee reveals, in advance, the point of view that the then-upcoming biography was going to take. Should anything inside, then, have come as a surprise? [© the respective copyright holders.]

AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION, MARCH 2021: The following article was written for the Feb. 23, 2021, online edition of The Hollywood Reporter—a publication which, as a print daily, I used to read avidly back in the first half of the 1980s when Gerry Conway and I were pursuing (with some mild success) a screenwriting career together.

To say that I was incensed by much of Abraham Riesman’s then-just-out biography of Stan Lee would be an understatement. But I’ll let the “review” below stand or fall on its own merits. I have no delusions that it will derail the (I feel) largely undeserved success saleswise and even review-wise that the book may have had; that is not its purpose.

The purpose of this review is simply to exist, to be an alternative to both

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A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By Abraham Riesman

the book itself, and to the quasi-fawning, wanting-to-believe reception it received from much of the press. So, simply by being published—by being “out there” for anyone interested to read and/or research, it has already achieved that purpose… and I thank my manager John Cimino and Aaron Couch, editor of THR Heat Vision Blog, for arranging for its digital publication. A poor thing, but mine own, as somebody once said.

(I’m also happy that my piece was written after reading a copy of the book that I actually paid for, and not the promised comp copy which John C. eventually managed to pry out of the author only by mailing him postage money with which to send it. Thus, I can in no way be accused of biting a hand that fed me even a crumb.)

What follows is, except for my preferred quasi-Mark-Twain title, a few words here and there adjusted for clarity, one scatological expletive which was fine for the THR but off-base for A/E, and the correction of one minor error (which was fixed online, later the same day it was published), the article as I originally submitted it to THR. I hadn’t been given any suggested word count, but I figured it would run a bit long for full inclusion even in the publication’s online edition. It was… and Aaron Couch did an excellent job of keeping the parts that were the most important. (Good enough that Guardians of the Galaxy director/co-writer James Gunn posted the article on his Twitter account for his zillions of followers.) However, since space is less of a limitation in Alter Ego, I’ve printed the full version below… followed by my own “fact-checking” of some of the errors or misjudgments I feel Riesman made in between his gratuitous attempts at character assassination in the guise of biography….

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omething like 95% of the time, Abraham Riesman’s True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee is a very good biography.

However, the remaining (and crucial) 5% of its content, scattered amid all that painstaking research and well-written prose, renders it often insidious and untrustworthy… i.e., a very bad biography. Because the author often insists, visibly and intrusively, on putting his verbal thumb on the scales, in a dispute he seems ill-equipped to judge.

As Marvel Comics visionary Stan Lee’s long-time employee and de facto protégé, and as a known student of the history of comicbooks, I suppose I would be expected to denounce Riesman’s book as scurrilous, a pack of lies.

But it’s both better—and worse—than that.

“In the New Jerusalem they called the United States, you could make it just fine as a bull****ter.”

Thus nakedly, on the third page of his introduction, does Riesman articulate what we soon discover to be the main thesis of his new book from Crown (an imprint of Random House), which chronicles the life and legacy of the talented New Yorker who was both the chief editor and a major writer from 1941 through 1972 for the company now hailed as Marvel Comics—and who, from the 1980s on, was more a spokesman (some claim a huckster) for Marvel, for comics—and, yes, I’d hardly deny it, for himself.

But, I contend, it’s primarily what he did between 1961 and 1972 that defines the importance of Stan Lee to popular culture— and that was a period of solid accomplishment.

In the quotation three paragraphs back, although he’s ostensibly writing about a Romanian Jew who in 1899 spouted what turned out to be tall tales concerning his achievements overseas in America, Riesman is, of course, really referencing Stan Lee—nee Stanley Martin Lieber—as anyone literate enough to be reading the book will garner at first glance.

In its remaining 300-plus pages, he attempts to bolster that debatable and not-so-subtle theme at every turn. He’d have

The Marvel Age Of Colorful Characters When Alter Ego published its first issue devoted to interviews with Stan Lee, it was graced by a great Kirby the-gang’s-all-here scene, which was apparently inked as well as penciled by the man Stan had crowned “King.”

Jack was the co-creator of every costumed cut-up in this illo except the Sub-Mariner… and, arguably, Spider-Man. Thanks to John Morrow and the Jack & Roz Kirby estate. [Heroes & Dr. Doom TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

been better advised—well, maybe not in terms of book sales but in the interests of historical integrity—to have confined such ill-considered judgments to his wastebasket and let the facts he’s gathered simply speak for themselves. He doesn’t do that nearly often enough.

That Stan Lee was the co-creator, and not the sole creator, of the key Marvel heroes from the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man through Daredevil and the Silver Surfer can hardly be in dispute at this late stage. I myself, back in the ’80s at a time when I wasn’t working for him, had a friendly argument with him on that score over lunch. I soon realized that, as much as he respected the talents and contributions of artists (Riesman would say “artist/writers” and he’s right, at least by his own definition) such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to the characters introduced in the 1960s, he could never really bring himself, in his own mind, to think of them as “co-creators.” The two of us had to agree to disagree about that, and I never saw any use in bringing it up again.

If I can judge from Riesman’s writings, and from other sources over the years, I’m sure I’d have encountered the same kind of blinders-on stubbornness in Jack Kirby, who (as oft quoted in this book) saw Stan as little more than the guy who scribbled a few words of dialogue and rode to unearned glory on his back.

Both men were, I think, wrong… and that’s why Riesman is so ill-advised to use nearly every opportunity he gets to weight things

“There Are Lies... Damn Lies...” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee!

in Jack’s favor and against Stan. (By the way, if someone objects to my referring to Jack Kirby as well by his first name, it’s because the two of us were indeed on a first-name basis from 1965 till the last time we met, sometime in the 1980s. I considered him then, and I consider him now, to be by far the greatest super-hero artist in the history of the medium, and, along with Stan, one of its preeminent pop-culture geniuses.)

You think I’m exaggerating when I suggest that Riesman finds gratuitous excuses to favor Jack’s vision of things over Stan’s? I’m not.

For one thing, just a dozen pages into the book, he waxes eloquent to inform us that Stan (apparently unlike Jack and one or two other people he covers) “lied about little things, he lied about big things, he lied about strange things”… adding that Stan quite likely lied about “one massive, very consequential thing” that, if so, “completely changes his legacy.” (By saying “quite likely,” Riesman puts the burden of proof on himself to demonstrate that Stan was lying about coming up with the basic idea for some, if not necessarily for each, of the early Marvel heroes—and that he never really does. He simply weighs Stan’s statements against Jack’s, without offering any real evidence that Jack’s memories are any more reliable than Stan’s. In fact, he will later cite a number of instances in which they are not.)

Then, on the very next page, he puts flesh on his earlier “bull****ter” depiction by writing: “It’s very possible, maybe even probable, that the characters and plots Stan was famous for all sprang from the brain and pen of [artist/writer Jack] Kirby….”

“Possible,” yes. Lots of things are “possible.” But—“even probable”? Why? Riesman never really makes a credible case for that. He merely piles up verbiage and quotations: “He said… he said.”

And he weights things toward Jack’s viewpoint with statements like the foregoing despite the fact, for instance, that partial synopses written by Stan for two of the first eight issues of the crucial Marvel flagship title Fantastic Four (including for #1)

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have been vouched for as existing since the 1960s. Riesman gives a lot more credence than he should to “a rumor that [Stan’s synopsis for the first half of FF #1] was created after the comic hit the stands” in August of 1961.

The sources of said rumor? The “significant reason to suspect the synopsis was written after Stan and Kirby spoke” in person about the FF concept? (1) A one-time teenage assistant of Kirby’s, who only went to work for him circa 1969, says that Jack “told me that it was written way after FF #1 was published. I believe him.”

Fine. The guy believes his old boss. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we should. Oh, and (2) Kirby is quoted as once saying of that synopsis: “I’ve never seen it, and of course I would say it’s an outright lie.” So on this occasion Stan Lee is apparently lying by coming up with that synopsis—but Jack Kirby, who Riesman points out told a whopper or three himself, isn’t lying when he says he never saw it? Or, giving both men the benefit of a doubt, couldn’t it be that Jack, after several decades, had simply forgotten it?

Okay—so Stan Lee personally handed this two-page document to me, as his editorial assistant, sometime in the latter half of the 1960s, only a few years after the publication of FF #1, at a time when virtually nobody, except I myself once in a while, was asking him how the Marvel Age of Comics had started, and when there’d not yet been any public or private disputes between Lee and Kirby about the creation of the Fantastic Four or any other Marvel heroes… …yet Riesman says it’s “maybe even probable” that the Fantastic Four (and everything else at Marvel) all came solely from Kirby’s admittedly fertile brain. Why is it “maybe even probable”?

No supportable reason is ever given.

As support for the likelihood that Stan wrote that FF #1 synopsis at a very early stage in the creative process in 1961, dare I suggest one extended proposition….

“Give Me Just A Plot Of… Not A Lot Of…” (Left:) The top half or so of the first page of Stan Lee’s two-page synopsis for The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961), reproduced from Alter Ego, Vol. 2, #2 (1998), soon after Roy Thomas received it by mail from Stan himself—although Roy had first seen and perused it sometime in the latter 1960s. Since it’s been reproduced a number of times, we’ve only depicted part of it here. Frankly, Ye Editor finds it ludicrous that anyone would believe that Stan would’ve bothered to fake such a document anytime… but especially back in the 1960s!

(Above:) In these two panels from FF #1, Sue Storm turns invisible for the first time, and her companions wonder (as per Stan’s synopsis) if she’ll ever be able to reappear. But in the very next panel, she does pop up in the visible spectrum—in line with Stan’s synopsis note to penciler Jack Kirby that they might have to rethink the original intention to have her remain invisible permanently. That subsequent panel isn’t shown here because these two are repro’d from Roy’s bound volumes, and the rightmost part of that row’s third panel would’ve been partly lost in scanning. Script by Lee; pencils by Kirby; inks (probably) by George Klein. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By Abraham Riesman

Addendum:

Fact-Checking The Fact-Bender

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rom knows, I’m sympathetic to errors made in the earnest attempt to relate history and/or biography. Every issue of Alter Ego contains a few mistakes; I try to acknowledge those I learn about in later letters sections. And the ink was scarcely dry on The Stan Lee Story, the massive (and expensive) tome I wrote in 2018, before Taschen Publishing and I were informed that, back in 1934, Timely Comics founder Martin Goodman was the employee/editor of Louis Silberkleit, not his partner as various others had previously reported (as did we)… and that a handful of other minor factual errors had crept in, thankfully mostly re Stan’s endeavors in the 1990s and after, a period for which the existing sources are less plentiful (and dependable) than those that deal with the Marvel Comics years. So, like I said… I’m sympathetic to honest errors.

Still, I feel the chief transgression of this book is how the author goes so far out of his way to undermine much of the received history and biography of Stan Lee. Thus, it behooves me to try to set the record straight wherever I can—sometimes aided and abetted by Barry Pearl’s 2-17-21 post to his online “Barry’s Pearls of Comic Book Wisdom.”

In what follows, I’ve made scant attempt to deal with Stan’s personal/non-professional life, let alone with the tribulations that became part of his story during the final two years of his life. But, just as I’ve worked with Taschen to correct a few missteps in a forthcoming edition of The Stan Lee Story, even so do I figure that (if there ever is a second edition) Riesman and Crown Books might wish to reconsider a few statements presented as “facts” in True Believer, when they are often at best ill-supported opinions.

To wit: Actually, although it might manage to get off on a technicality here, the book’s very subtitle—as more than one person pointed out to me as soon as they’d seen a copy—seems like such a stretch as to make one doubt the intent and honesty of everything one is likely to find within its covers.

The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee? Well, okay… so Stan died, as all humans must. If that’s the “Fall” Riesman and Crown are talking about, it might as well be part of the title or subtitle of every biography ever published. But its use here is extremely dubious.

Because, really, Stan never fell.

Sure, in his last couple of years on this Earth, various people were accused of stealing money from him (so that the poor guy died with a mere eight digits—and not in the low eight digits— in his combined bank account and estate)… or of “elder abuse” (though these charges are problematical, and largely unproven— and anyway, Stan was well cared for at the end, at least so far as I could judge the last time I saw him at his home, less than two days before his death)… or even a modicum of geriatric sexual scandal (charges which always sounded potentially frivolous, and now seem to be mostly gone with the wind).

Visiting Day An early Fantastic Four yarn that cracked, if it didn’t quite break, the fabled “fourth wall” was the lead tale in #11 (Feb. 1963), in which the latest issue of FF is being proudly brandished by a youngster (but not the youngest type of comics reader, note!) as the colorful quartet themselves come walking up. Script by Stan Lee; pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by Dick Ayers. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Into each life some rain must fall, and Stan endured a few thunderstorms very late in his; but the word “Fall” seems more designed to sell books than to complete an accurate picture of this particular man’s journey through life. As Barry Pearl pointed out on his blog: “While Mr. Riesman points out every perceived failure [of Stan Lee], he ignores Stan’s successes.” What kind of biography is that?

Stan more than once related how, when he was a boy and his family had to move continually from one low-rent apartment to another, he always seemed to wind up with a rear room whose window looked out directly on a brick wall across an alley, and that his greatest desire was “to one day be rich enough to have an apartment that faced the street.”

The day I saw him last, thirty-some hours before he passed away, Stan was seated well-attired on a comfortable chair facing a huge picture window that looked out on a spacious terrace and swimming pool… and past it to the sprawling city of Los Angeles, far below those famous and expensive Hollywood Hills.

I’d say that, by his own standards, Stan had pretty much made it… and, while he could have wished at that point for youth and

“There Are Lies... Damn Lies...” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee!

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vigor, he was otherwise just exactly where he had always wanted to be.

Some “Fall”!

But suddenly—I have a sort of epiphany: Maybe the “Fall” Riesman wants us to consider isn’t any that Stan Lee had in his lifetime—but a “fall from grace” that the biographer himself wants to bring about, if only posthumously, by accusing him, as that 2020 book ad back on p. 31 says, of “pull[ing] off one of the most daring acts of artistic theft in modern history.”

If that’s the “Fall” Riesman is talking about—and really, once you think about it, it’s almost impossible to imagine that it could be anything else—then I feel that, in any subsequent edition, Crown Books should change the book’s subtitle. Because he isn’t likely to have convinced anyone who has access to (or interest in) any facts or intelligent observations that lie outside its pages.

Well, let that go. Let’s move on to a few “facts” that are a bit more susceptible to objective “checking”… identified below by the page numbers of the book on which the dubious statement occurs: P. 14: “[A]t his core, Stan was a man whose success came more from ambition than from talent.”

So, can you see the problem, right off the bat? Riesman begs the question early and often, here simply assuming and stating that Stan’s talent was grossly inferior to his ambition. Of course, this isn’t the kind of “error” that can be dissected and refuted, because it’s really just a judgment call—one of what seems an almost infinite number that the author makes in this holier-than-thou tome. And anyway, if I stopped to nitpick over every nasty aspersion Riesman casually tosses off in the course of his book, I’d still be typing away here when the deadline rolled around for Alter Ego #172.

Let’s just say—the statement is of virtually no use whatever from a historical or biographical perspective. It’s just a value judgment, and a pretty worthless one, at that.

P. 42: “[Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s National Allied Publications] “put out New Fun, the first comic book to feature new material, but it lasted only a handful of issues.”

This is emblematic of Riesman’s generally poor knowledge of

Larrupin’ Larry Lieber (on right) with Roy Thomas at the East Coast Con in New Jersey, 4-28-18.

Taking care of business in the background is Sharon Rice of Desert Wind.

Photo by John Cimino.

(or research on) the field. New Fun wasn’t the “first comic book to feature new material,” just the first one of that type to be regularly published. Far more importantly, Riesman can write that it “lasted only a handful of issues” only because he didn’t bother to learn that, after six issues, the name of the magazine was changed (in a couple of stages) to More Fun Comics—after which it thrived for 121 more issues, being discontinued only in 1947, after a run of more than a dozen years.

P. 72: “The living arrangements [young Larry Lieber living with brother Stan and his wife Joan after their mother’s death] lasted only a few months before Larry opted to live with his cousins Martin and Jean Goodman.”

Through his friend Frank Lovece, Larry has recently corrected this bit of misinformation on Facebook. He says that, when he left Stan’s, he “moved into a hotel on the Upper West Side and lived there by myself until the Korean War, and then I went into the Korean War for four years.” When he returned to civilian life, he lived with an aunt and uncle for a time, occasionally visiting the Goodmans on weekends. It was actually about “six, seven years” after he had lived with the Lees that the Goodmans invited him to move into their home. Thanks to John Cimino and Robert Menzies for bringing this to my attention.

P. 73: “‘When my mother died, our life changed dramatically.’ The change was not born of grief but rather of logistics.”

More of the same as on p. 14, really… this time, a quotation from Stan, followed by a judgment by Riesman. But perhaps, rather than criticize the author, we should all simply marvel at his ability to look inside the mind and heart of Stan Lee and know precisely what he meant by that quote, when the man was known for playing his emotional cards very close to his vest.

The Doctors Are In! (Left:) Dr. Frederic Wertham (on left) on the TV series Firing Line, circa the 1960s or ’70s.

(Right:) Dr. Hilde L. Mosse, in an undated photo that appeared in Fingeroth and Thomas’ 2011 TwoMorrows volume The Stan Lee Universe.

In other words—not a verifiable error, just another cheap shot.

Collect them all.

P. 81: “There’s just one problem with these ‘Lee/Wertham debates,’ as Stan called them: They don’t appear to have ever happened.”

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It’s All About Family!

Part XVI Of JOHN BROOME’s 1997 Memoir My Life In Little Pieces A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: As we commence the last few installments of the self-styled “Offbeat Autobio” by Irving Bernard Broome (1913-1999), the author relates a number of brief anecdotes related to himself, his wife, and his daughter, now Ricky Terry Brisacque, who generously allowed us to reprint her father’s short book. “John” Broome wrote comicbook and pulps in the middle years of the 20th century, most notably later issues of the Golden Age All-Star Comics and early adventures of the Silver Age Flash and Green Lantern, co-creating the latter. This episode, as usual, is © the Estate of John Broome, and was retyped by Brian K. Morris….

Short Takes

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n the question how it came about that Marxist Communism first gained power in Russia of all places: “Fools Russian where Anglos fear to tread.”

The Broome Family Unit, Christmas 1956 Sigh… we most recently ran the above photo just a couple of issues ago, and before that when we launched this serialization in A/E #149.

However, it’s the only pic we have of John, Peggy, and Ricky Broome all together. Thanks to Ricky Terry Brisacque.

Early in this chapter, JB recalls how, when younger, he sold the ice-cream confection known as “Eskimo pies” at Steeplechase Park (in the Coney Island amusement park in Brooklyn, NY). Maybe it’s that memory that led him, collaborating with DC editor Julius Schwartz, to create airplane mechanic Thomas Kamalku—“a wizard with jet engines”—in the Silver Age Green Lantern #2 (Sept.-Oct. 1960), and to give him the nickname “Pieface” because he was an “Eskimo”—a now-outdated term for one of the Inuit or related peoples of northern Canada. The allusion to “Eskimo pie” was not a great joke, even back in the day… but Kamalku became a wellrounded and beloved character in the long-running feature, and was the first to be trusted with Hal Jordan’s identity secret. Pencils by Gil Kane; inks by Joe Giella. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

In 1987, Anchorman Dan Rather dealt rather harshly with Vice President [George H.W.] Bush in a CBS-TV interview, leading someone to say: “It’s clear Rather would rather be Rather than president.”

Before the Tiananmen massacre in Beijing, the same person was asked if he thought the students could win and replied: “They don’t have a Chinaman’s chance.”

Peggy and I read in the papers about a fellow Brooklyn College alumnus, Bernie Cornfeld, who had become a famous millionaire businessman, and who was quoted as saying that as a child, he had sold lollipops in Steeplechase Amusement Park.

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(Right:) Bob Powell’s “The Unbeliever” from Eerie Tales #1 (Nov. 1959). Writer unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Frankenstein Unstitched!

by Michael T. Gilbert

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kay, I’ll admit it. As a fan of old films, I love hearing tales about how a decaying print of some seemingly-lost-forever film is somehow discovered rotting away in some old barn or closet.

And maybe that sole existing copy is an incomplete print, horribly butchered by the movie studio or damaged by time. But somehow the digital wizards at Turner Classic Movies or Criterion Films somehow manage to reconstruct and restore the movies to their original splendor.

It made me think: “Why not comicbooks?” More specifically, “Why not ‘The Unbeliever’?”

“The Unbeliever” was a fun little story from Hastings Publications’ 1959 one-shot Eerie Tales, beautifully illustrated by Bob Powell. But it was clearly altered before publication to make a short story longer. As we discussed in this column’s introductory page, it was restored by cutting out extra panels and moving the remaining ones to different pages. I tried to be true to the original, but took a few liberties.

First, I decided to get rid of the clunky typesetting used in the original, replacing it with a conventional comicbook font in order to make the lettering more organic and readable. I’ll bet the Joe Simon studio would have killed to have Photoshop’s text-changing ability back then!

I also altered the title of my version to reflect what I believe was the writer’s original one, before it went through the editing process. Our new “Doubting Thomas!” title reflects back to the pun-ny punchline on the final page, typical of EC-style horror humor. Though it’s an assumption on my part, it makes more sense in that context than the published title. See if you agree.

In two instances, I also split a single word balloon into two, moving the second balloon to the following panel. This was done for space reasons, and for continuity’s sake. You’ll find those on page 2, panels 4 and 5, as well as the first two panels on page 3. Compare the top three-panel sequence on that page to the published version (above right) to see how powerful the original one was by contrast.

True “Unbeliever” (On this & previous page:) The 6-page “The Unbeliever” from Eerie Tales #1 (Nov. 1959). This is p. 3; pp. 4-6 are directly below. Art by Bob Powell, writer unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

And finally, please note just how much story the writer was able to squeeze into a short four pages. No wonder the editor thought he could stitch together an extra two pages and no one would notice!

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Miniatures and Midgets Big Things Came In Small Packages In The Golden Age Of Comics

by Sidney Friedfertig

D

iminutive in size, yet with larger-than-life heroes, the miniature-sized comicbooks—some which were referred to as “Mighty Midgets”—were published during the 1940s by the Samuel E. Lowe Company.

How Lowe Can A Comic Size Go? Samuel Edward Lowe (1890-1952) was a German immigrant who, shortly after World War I, went to work at the Western Printing and Lithographing Company of Racine, Wisconsin, where he moved his way up the ladder to assume the presidency of a Western subsidiary, Whitman Publishing Co. Whitman was a popular children’s-book publisher with genres that included Westerns, mysteries, science-fiction… and also published a brand of books called Whitman Authorized Editions, which featured fictional adventures starring popular movie actresses of the day. (Years later, in 1962, Whitman would brand the comicbook imprint Gold Key Comics.)

In 1940 Samuel Lowe left Whitman to start his eponymous company, which manufactured and sold inexpensive books and paper toys, such as cut-out books, coloring books, and puzzles. The Lowe catalog eventually comprised over 1,000 titles, retailing for between one cent and $2—with most selling at 5 to 25 cents each.

First appearing in 1942, the comicbooks many have come to

It’s A Small World, After All! (Above:) Whiz Comics Wheaties Mini Edition (1947). The exclusive giveaway comicbook series also had editions of Flash Comics and Funny Stuff (using DC Comics material) and Captain Marvel Adventures.

The books were originally taped to boxes of Wheaties cereal. This particular copy was obviously torn off the box by an overeager reader. Art: C.C. Beck, et al. [Shazam hero & Ikis TM & © DC Comics; Golden Arrow TM & © the respective trademark and copyright holders..]

(Left:) The original 1943 “Mighty Midget” comics display rack, with the 2-for-5-cents price tag pasted over the original 2-centsapiece price. Photo: Sidney Friedfertig.

recognize under the “Mighty Midget” umbrella began when Lowe obtained a license from Fawcett Publications to publish pocket-sized versions of its most popular titles. However, the comics were not yet called “Mighty Midget” by Fawcett or Lowe.

Miniatures & Midgets

The Number Elevens Lowe was a trailblazer in the publishing industry, and his company became one of the field’s first book packagers. For his first deal with Fawcett, four mini-sized comicbooks were bundled together in a label promising “128 pages of action” and were included in a “box full of books” together with other Lowe’s children’s books. The first series/iteration of these comics were all numbered #11. The titles and their contents were: Bulletman Cover by Mac Raboy; backgrounds by Bob Rogers (Bulletman #3) “Mr. Murder Comes Back” (Master Comics #27) “Bulletman Meets The Red Pirate” (Bulletman #7) “Meets The Mocker” (Bulletman #6) (Note: Overstreet reports that a second edition Bulletman miniature [#12] was also published; however, not a single copy has ever officially surfaced.)

Captain Marvel Cover art by C.C. Beck (Whiz Comics #22) “Captain Marvel and the Bumble-Brained Bridegroom” (America’s Greatest Comics #4) “Captain Marvel and the Alaskan Adventure” (Captain Marvel Adventures #16) Captain Marvel Jr.

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The 5” x 4” miniature comics containing previously published material from Fawcett’s 10 ½” x 7 ¾” regular-sized comicbooks attempted to appear larger by touting their lengths of 32 or 34 pages on the cover—a designation that would require quick thinking later on. The comics are all the same size in total cover-tocover pages—the difference is that some story lengths required the printing to extend to the inside covers.

The mini-comics had full-color front covers on heavy paper stock and black-&-white newsprint interiors, with some pages enhanced with a red tint. The back covers were blank, although some were printed with a World War II victory bond stamp.

Canadian editions of the initial series of minis were published in 1942-43 by Anglo-American Publishing—with the U.S. stories redrawn by Canadian artists. The entire books, including covers, were printed on newsprint in black, white, and red, and a Canadian war bonds stamp appeared on the back cover.

There was also another, much rarer version of this first iteration of the miniature comics.

In a gimmick unique among Golden Age comicbooks, some of the mini-comics were glued to the front cover of a small percentage of the print run of Fawcett’s flagship title, Captain Marvel Adventures—specifically issues #20, #21, and #23. Instead of leaving it blank, the back cover of these books featured a baseball bat-slugging Captain Marvel in a full-color advertisement for the Captain Marvel Adventures comicbook. It’s not known what exact percentage of regular-sized comics came with a mini-comic, as

Cover art by Mac Raboy; backgrounds by Bob Rogers (Master Comics #27) “The Iron Heel of the Huns” (Master Comics #29) [“Floda Reltih”] – ‘Sir Butch’ (Spy Smasher #7) “The Return of Mr. Macabre” (Master Comics #26) Golden ArrowIF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW,

CLICK THE LINK TO #1) ORDER THIS Cover art by Al Carreno (Golden Arrow

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“Mystery of the Lost City” (Golden Arrow #1) [“The Gun Ghost”] (Golden Arrow #1) Ibis the Invincible

Cover art by Mac Raboy (Ibis the Invincible #1) [“Origin of Ibis the Invincible”] (Ibis the Invincible #1) [“The Headless Horseman”] (Whiz Comics #30) [“The Return of Trug”] (Whiz Comics #31) Spy Smasher Cover art by Irvin Steinberg (Spy Smasher #4) (Note: This comic also had a rare U.S. Navy edition containing ALTER EGO #171cover and subtitle identical interior—but with a red patterned PAUL GUSTAVSON—Golden Age artist of The Angel, Fantom of the Fair, Arrow, Human Bomb,has Jester,aPlastic Man, Alias “Story of the Navy.” The U.S. Navy history of distributing the Spider, Quicksilver, Rusty Ryan, Midnight, and others—is comicbooks; in remembered 1944, a naval officer was assigned to work with DC by son TERRY GUSTAFSON, who talks in-depth to RICHARD lush comic the art from Centaur, Timely, Superman managing editor Jack ARNDT. SchiffLots toofrewrite text of several and (especially) Quality! Plus—FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, titles into editions for the troops.)

JOHNspecifically BROOME, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 “Once a Navy Man, Always a Navy Man” (Spy Smasher #6) (Digital Edition) $4.99

“The Island of Whanno” (Whiz Comics #34) https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_55&products_id=1618 As part of a package and not meant to be offered for sale individually, the comics did not have prices printed on the covers.

O Canada!

As an example of the Canadian editions of 1942 Fawcett Miniatures, here’s the Golden Arrow one (also #11) from that year, as published there

by Anglo-American. The reprinted books’ artwork, in accordance with Canadian law, was entirely re-drawn by Canadian artists! [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]