Alter Ego #67 Preview

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No. 67 April 2007

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& BOB POWELL Part Two Art ©2007 DC Comics

Vol. 3, No. 67 / April 2007

™

Editor Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck

Comic Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll Jerry G. Bails (founder) Ross Foss, Biljo White

Editor Emeritus

Contents

Mike Friedrich

Production Assistant Chris Irving

Circulation Director Bob Brodsky, Cookiesoup Periodical Distribution, LLC

In Memoriam: Leave It To Bob Oksner! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 “My Women Had Saturday Night Bodies And Sunday School Faces” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Bob Oksner talks to Jim Amash about drawing Angels, Apes, & everything in between.

The Powell/Eisner/Arnold Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Cover Artist Bob Oksner (with help from Bill Morrison)

Roy Thomas examines vintage letters from Bob Powell, Will Eisner, & Busy Arnold.

Cover Colorist

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! The [Bob] Powell Family Album!

Part II. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Tom Ziuko

With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Michael Ambrose Miki Annamanthadoo Marty Arbunich Dick Arnold Bob Bailey Jean Bails Mike W. Barr Alberto Becattini Allen & Roz Bellman Jack Bender Ron Berger Alyssen Bills Dominic Bongo Craig Delich Al Dellinges Jay Disbrow Don Markstein’s Toonpedia Bill DuBay Harlan Ellison Ron Frantz Janet Gilbert Kathleen Glosan Andreas Gottschlich Grand Comic Book Database George Hagenauer Jennifer Hamerlinck Irwin Hasen Fred Hembeck Heritage Comics Al Jaffee

Jonathan G. Jensen Denis Kitchen Ed Lane Karen Lane Dan Makra Jose Marzan, Jr. Bruce Mason Fran Matera Scotty Moore Brian K. Morris Bill Morrison Ken Nadle Kevin Nowlan Bob Oksner Joe Petrilak John Powell Kyle Powell Rob Powell Seth Powell Hart Rieckoff Dorothy Schaffenberger Jeff Smith Anthony Snyder Marc Swayze Dann Thomas Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Greg Vondruska Hames Ware Morris Weiss Alex Wright Cat Yronwode Eddy Zeno

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Bob Oksner, Sam Burlockoff, & Joe Gill

More photos & art featuring the Golden/Silver Age artist—continued from last issue.

Marty Arbunich And Bill DuBay Remember. . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Two prominent 1960s fans interviewed by Bill Schelly for the Comic Fandom Archive.

Tributes to Sam Burlockoff & Joe Gill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 re: [comments, correspondence, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 71 FCA (Fawcett Collectors Of America) #126 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Paul Hamerlinck presents Jeff (Bone, Monster Society) Smith, a Marc Swayze comic strip, and a feisty essay by C.C. Beck.

About Our Cover: This issue’s spotlight falls on Golden/Silver Age artist Bob Oksner, who’s noted more for drawing humor comics and beautiful women than super-heroes… “Supergirl” to the contrary notwithstanding. But recently I got hold of a photocopy of the original art of his cover for Adventure Comics #423 (Sept. 1972), on which the Maid of Steel crashes a meeting of the Justice League of America—literally. When I mentioned to Bill Morrison that I hoped to use that art as the cover of this issue of Alter Ego, but with Binky (from a 1948 issue of Leave It to Binky) and the late-1960s Angel and the Ape tossed into the mix, the Bongo Comics editor—though also busy with producing duties on an obscure little show called The Simpsons—volunteered to find just the right Oksner poses of those three and add them to the scene. He did it, too—and beautifully! Turns out Bill’s as big a Bob Oksner fan as are several other collectors who sent us a gaggle of goodies by the artist! Thanks a heap, Bill! 1950s photo courtesy of Ken Nadle. [Art ©2007 DC Comics.]

Above: Along with other scans of original and even never-published art you’ll admire in the pages that follow, pro artist Kevin Nowlan e-mailed us this scan of a penciled Supergirl figure by Bob Oksner, from the backside of a page from Adventure Comics #414 (Jan. 1972). Kevin writes: “It looks like he sometimes used a light box to refine his drawings in reverse.” [©2007 DC Comics.]

Alter EgoTM is published monthly by TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344.

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Single issues: $9 ($11.00 outside the US). Twelve-issue subscriptions: $72 US, $132 Canada, $144 elsewhere. 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 Canada. ISSN: 1932-6890 FIRST PRINTING.

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In Memoriam—& In Celebration

Leave It To BOB OKSNER!

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ob Oksner passed away on February 18, 2007… while this issue of Alter Ego, celebrating certain aspects of his life and achievements, was in the final stages of preparation. He was four months past his 90th birthday.

I’ve enjoyed his work since long before I knew who drew those early issues of Leave It to Binky, one of the better Archie-style titles of the late 1940s. As a youngster in the 1940s and ’50s, I must have purchased dozens, maybe hundreds, of comic books containing Oksner art, since he drew in so many genres: teenage humor (Binky)… licensed-celebrity humor (Bob Hope, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Sgt. Bilko, Miss Beverly Hills of Hollywood—even, Lord help me, Miss Melody Lane of Broadway)… science-fiction (Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space)… and of course Golden Age superheroes (one “Hawkman” and a “JSA” chapter in All-Star Comics #38, in addition to inking some “Flash” and “Green Lantern”).

As an adult, I continued to admire his output, particularly the zany “Angel and the Ape.” While he’s probably right when he says, in this issue’s interview with Jim Amash, that super-heroes weren’t his strongest suit—and he candidly admits that may even be one reason he didn’t like drawing them—he was more than up to the task. His contributions to the “Supergirl” series are especially noteworthy… and when I first ran across the Supergirl/JLA cover of Adventure Comics #423 which became the basis of this month’s A/E cover, I fleetingly thought it might consist of Irv Novick pencils under Dick Giordano inks. In his own way, Bob Oksner could do it all.

I don’t believe Bob and I ever met, but I enjoyed our few brief phone conversations over the past year. He was full of life and spirit, for a guy rounding out his ninth decade, and quite enthusiastic about the upcoming interview, volunteering to look over any art sent him, with an eye toward whether he’d done it or not. Jim and I took him up on that.

In fact, the morning Mrs. Oksner phoned to tell me Bob had gone into the hospital some days before, I was on the verge of calling him to ask about a feature called “Kid Click” which I’d found in a 1944 issue of the obscure Camera Comics. I had mailed him photocopies of the 4-pager, since Jerry Bails’ online Who’s Who attributes some “Kid Click” to him, and I wondered if it was his work—admittedly, only if it had been batted out on a bad day.

Mrs. Oksner informed me that, right before he went into the hospital, Bob asked her to call and tell me that he didn’t think he had done that particular story.

Now that’s a pro.

We’ll miss your tremendous talent, Bob… and we’ll miss you, even more.

Bestest,

COMING IN MAY

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Titanic Tributes To Two Stellar Phenomena!

JERRY G. BAILS— & STAR WARS! “The Father Of Comic Book Fandom”— & The 30th Anniversary of Marvel Comics’ Adaptation Of A Movie Masterpiece!

• Never-before-published JSA cover by GEORGE PÉREZ! • Spotlight on Alter Ego founder JERRY G. BAILS & his importance to comics fandom— & to pro comics! Accolades by DAVE GIBBONS, MIKE VOSBURG, PAUL LEVITZ, TONY ISABELLA, JOHN WRIGHT, JIM AMASH, BILL SCHELLY, et al.—plus rare art by KUBERT, two KANEs, INFANTINO, ANDERSON, SEKOWSKY, HASEN, KIRBY, DITKO, CARDY, DILLIN, TOTH, PETER, ORDWAY, BUCKLER, STATON, & many more!

• Bonus! Never-seen interviews with JERRY BAILS and co-editor HAMES WARE on the landmark 1970s Who’s Who of American Comic Books!

• Marvel’s STAR WARS Comic at 30! The full story of the adaptation that preceded the film! ROY THOMAS tells about working/interacting with HOWARD CHAYKIN, GEORGE LUCAS, HARRISON FORD, MARK HAMILL, STEVE LEIALOHA, DAVE STEVENS, RICK HOBERG, BILL WRAY, ALAN KUPPERBERG, & others!

• MICHAEL T. GILBERT on JERRY BAILS—FCA with BAILS, SWAYZE, BECK, etc.

Edited by ROY THOMAS ©2007 DC Comics.]

[Justice Society of America

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NOTE: IF YOU PREFER A SIX-ISSUE SUB, JUST CUT THE PRICE IN HALF!

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics.

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“My Women Had Saturday Night Bodies And Sunday School Faces” Cartoonist Par Excellence BOB OKSNER Drew Angels, Apes—And Everything In Between!

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Conducted by Jim Amash

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris humor. No one deserved an extended interview any more than Bob, and I’m sorry he isn’t here to see it, especially considering how much this meant to him. All of us who knew Bob will miss him. He was an extraordinary, gracious, patient man. Special thanks to our mutual friend, cartoonist Morris Weiss, for contacting Bob for me, and our deepest condolences to the Oksner family on their loss... and ours. —Jim.

ob Oksner was one of the best cartoonists in comics. He started out with the Lloyd Jacquet shop before moving on to Cinema Comics, where he became the shop’s art director. From there, he moved on to a 40-year association with DC Comics, where he drew Sgt. Bilko, Leave It to Binky, The Adventures of Bob Hope, The Adventures of Jerry Lewis, Angel and the Ape, and Welcome Back, Kotter, in addition to various super-hero features such as Shazam!, “Supergirl”, Lois Lane, and inking Curt Swan on “Superman,” among others. He also had several tries at newspaper syndication with Cairo Jones, Soozie, and I Love Lucy, as well as co-writing Dondi with his close friend Irwin Hasen. Bob could draw anything and do it with glamour and taste.

Unfortunately, Bob passed away the very day I proofread this interview I had done with him.

He was a true gentleman of distinction with a striking physical presence, and a quiet, gentle sense of

“My Mother Caught Me Outside With A .38…. I Think I Started To Draw Then” JIM AMASH: We have the tape running now, so please tell me the story you had started.

The Adventures Of Bob Oksner Bob Oksner—juxtaposed with examples of both his “silly” and ”serious” sides. (Left:) The cover of The Adventures of Bob Hope #84 (Dec. 1963Jan. 1964), sent by collector Bob Bailey. (Right:) The artist’s cover for Supergirl #10 (Sept.-Oct. 1974), repro’d from a photocopy of the original art; courtesy of dealer/collector Anthony Snyder, whose website is www.anthonysnyder.com/art [Art ©2007 DC Comics.]

Collector Bob Bailey writes of the snapshot: “This is the first photo I ever took of Bob Oksner. I took it in the fall of 1978, while Bob was teaching.

I was working at the K-Mart in Randolph, NJ, part-time and going to the [Joe] Kubert School (then in Wharton, NJ) fulltime. The picture may be a little washed-out due to the cheap K-Mart film I used. I stopped using it shortly after that.” Hey, we’re just happy you took it, Bob!

BOB OKSNER: All right. My last name is basically German, O-C-H-S-N-E-R, but my folks lived in Poland, and at that time, it was Russia and you spelled it that way with a “K”: O-K-S-N-ER. And that’s the difference.

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Bob Oksner Drew Angels, Apes—And Everything In Between!

When I was a little boy, I drew airplanes—biplanes, in those days—and soldiers. All my uncles were in World War I, and when they came back, they were unmarried. They were kids, practically—the oldest, possibly in his early twenties. They lived with my parents, but they were so young that they hadn’t set up a home for themselves, so they lived for at least a year or so with my folks until life settled down after the war, and they brought back their souvenirs. I had so many bayonets and gas masks and helmets, which I wore on Halloween. We had revolvers, too, until one day my mother caught me outside with a .38 and that was the end of the revolvers. So I think I started to draw then.

Let me tell you a very fascinating story at the very beginning. During World War II, we were the only Oksners in Manhattan, the only one in the phone book. And I was home with my wife in our apartment and a man came by and told me he had credentials to speak for the man he’s speaking for. It was a Nazi general that was captured— Joseph Ochsner—and he claimed to be a long-distance relative. And my father had told me this story about parts of our family living in Germany and converting from Judaism to Catholicism, and they were doing business together across the border in upper Silesia. Of course I would do nothing to help this captured German Nazi general, who claimed he had Jewish relatives in Manhattan. I regret having being so abrupt with this man whom I practically threw out, because now I want to know what the connection was. I was foolish... though not foolish at the time. It was wartime, about 1944, and sure enough, shortly afterwards in The New York Times, I saw Joseph Ochsner’s name on a list of captured German generals. I’m glad my wife was there, because nobody else would believe the story. [chuckles] As I say, now I could kick myself for not giving some time for this man and finding out what exactly what the connection was.

Also, there was an airfield, Teterboro, in New Jersey. Now it’s a private airfield for private airplanes. Fokker, which was a German firm, had a building there and manufactured planes, and there would always be a Fokker plane there. Of course that was the big plane during World War I for the Germans. My father would take me there every now and then on a Sunday, and we’d watch the airplane shows. So I would draw the airplanes. That’s the only way I could figure out how I got into drawing, because I had the material there and I think almost every boy draws soldiers at the beginning of—especially, it wasn’t that long after World War I.

“All These Classics” As a child, Oksner devoured such comic strips as Billy DeBeck’s Barney Google, George McManus’ Bringing Up Father, and Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland.

Here are samples of each from, respectively, 1923, c. 1930, & c. 1909. [Barney Google & Bringing Up Father ©2007 King Features Syndicate; Little Nemo in public domain.]

JA: Well, you had a human reaction to a vile...

OKSNER: Right, right. I’m not going to be too angry with myself.

JA: A lot of people would have done worse to him than you did.

OKSNER: [chuckles] Well, I’m a very sweet guy.

JA: [laughs] That’s what Morris Weiss says. Okay, let me ask you a very basic question. No peeking now... when and where you born?

OKSNER: That’s a very easy question. I spilled out at a very early age. [Jim laughs] I was born in Manhattan, New York City, 1916, October 14th. Want me to give you my Social Security?

JA: [laughs] Just the checks, Bob. OKSNER: Okay. We moved, before I was a year old, to Paterson, New Jersey, where I was raised, really, until I went to college. And I lived there when I went to college, but I spent more time in New York than I did at home.

When I was too young to read well, I’d get in bed on Sundays and my father read the Sunday comics to me. Barney Google and Bringing Up Father, all these classics. And Little Nemo... the great ones. But I never thought I would be drawing strips. You know, that was for entertainment.

I took a drawing course in high school. I was drawing in high school because I liked to draw. It’s as simple as that. By now, I wanted to be an artist. My parents had a four-family building, right in the best part of Paterson, right next to a hospital.

They wanted me to be a doctor and I had no ability, and no desire to be

“My Women Had Saturday Night Bodies And Sunday School Faces”

a doctor. Then they settled for me being a lawyer. [Jim laughs] They were very much afraid that I would starve... you know, being an artist in those days—first of all, it was at the beginning of the Depression. I went to high school in 1930 and my parents had a friend who was an artist in Greenwich Village and he was literally starving. He had to depend on his sister and his family to support him. My parents wanted me to have a profession so they sent me to college. I was sent to an art school.

“I’d Draw In The Evening And Then Do My Homework” JA: Was that New York University?

OKSNER: Yes, and I had gone out to St. Louis. I had a large family there in the summer of ’34 and they wanted me to go to Washington University in St. Louis, which was an excellent school. All my cousins out in St. Louis went there. That’s how I got into college.

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anything and arrange it so it sounded great.

JA: You went to New York University and got a Bachelor’s degree. Did you go straight to Columbia from there?

OKSNER: No, that was later. I got a Bachelor’s and then went to the Art Students League for two years.

My parents were not satisfied. They wanted me to be able to make a living, and I had majored in History and Economics and minored in Economics and English. They wanted me to be a teacher, so they sent me to qualify for teaching at Columbia at their school of education for an M.A. But I had no desire to teach. But to please my parents, who were laying out the money, I did that for a year and then I was living in New York. I couldn’t afford the dorms at Columbia. My uncle was manager of a hotel that my cousins owned on 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, which is right where the burlesque houses were.

Now I suspect it was more than I drew cartoons for a humor simply a place where burlesque magazine: N.Y.U. Varieties. But that Timely Terry queens stayed, because I was warned got me into art school because, Oksner says he created the “Terry Vance” feature, and even named its by my uncle never to speak to any having fulfilled my family’s hero after—well, read the interview. This splash from Marvel Mystery women on the elevator. [Jim laughs] requirement, namely the graduate in Comics #26 (Dec. 1941) was sent by Bob Bailey. Script by Ray Gill.

And he went around with a .38, Pre-law, and being a member of the [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] [more laughter] and he had set up a honorary Pre-law Society, they then target in the basement for us to shoot at. And then I learned about a allowed me to go to the Art Students League. But while I was in job opening, painting flowers on lampshades. I had no idea how to do college, I decided to become an illustrator. Illustration was very big at it, but I applied for the job and I got it. It was at the Hotel Mayflower. that time. Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s... all the magazines had illustrators who were magnificent artists. Anyway, I figured out a way JA: What year was that? to meet an illustrator. I was one of the editors of a magazine and I thought, “If I have a beauty contest and invited illustrators to be OKSNER: Either 1939 or ’40. I went to the Art Students league in ’39. judges, I’d get to meet them.” Which I did. I invited Russell Patterson Let me finish with the hotel. When I came home from school in the and Arthur William Brown, both of whom I admired very much. They evening, I would set up and draw comic book stories for Lloyd were both so nice to me. Brownie became sort of a mentor to me when Jacquet. Not for much money, but I’d draw in the evening and then do I went to art school, and Russell Patterson got me my first job. And my homework. I worked with Lloyd Jacquet at Funnies, Incorporated, they did pick a girl who wasn’t that beautiful, but what the hell. She from 1940, possibly, to ’42. I worked on several features with writer was happy and I was happy.

Mickey Spillane.

By the way, Sy Reit [creator of Casper the Friendly Ghost] was my co-editor on the magazine. He was a Philosophy major and I always was in awe of anybody who was a Philosophy major. He was very sweet, a wonderful guy. His father and uncle were both lawyers. His uncle was a judge and they worked for burlesque—Minsky. Sy would get passes to Minsky’s Burlesque. He wasn’t permitted to attend, so he gave me the passes, for a year at least. Every Friday, after the week was over, before I went back to Patterson, I would go to a burlesque and I got to know all these strippers and comedians.

In college, I played the piano at that time and I wrote songs for our class at the senior dance and things like that. At the dances, they had bands like Woody Herman’s. You ever hear of Larry Clinton? He’s a lesser—anyway, they would come in and make arrangements of the tunes I wrote and we’d dance to it. And it sounded so good the way they played it, you know. [mutual laughter] They would take

JA: Was Jacquet the man who hired you?

OKSNER: I don’t remember, but Jacquet was the only fellow I knew there. I never worked in the bullpen. I was there to pick up scripts and to deliver, so I didn’t get to meet people there. As for pay, it was maybe $7 a page, for pencils and inks, no lettering. I never knew where my stuff was going to appear. I did write some of my features, but no details come to mind now.

“‘Terry Vance’… I Created That One” JA: Well, I don’t expect you to remember all the features you did, but I’m asking just in case something here rings a bell. A lot of the work you did saw print in Timely’s comics.

OKSNER: Could be, since I didn’t read the comics and never got the

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Bob Oksner Drew Angels, Apes—And Everything In Between!

JA: So Cairo Jones folded in 1947, and you left Standard then.

over from there. And it didn’t bother me that I wasn’t allowed to sign the work. Doing the job was all that mattered.

OKSNER: Yes. I’m trying to think who recommended me to go to DC. It was a friend, obviously. It may have been Irwin Hasen, but I can’t vouch for it. I went to Whitney Ellsworth who was the main editor. He looked at my work and sent me to Shelly Mayer.

JA: You drew covers for Shelly.

Describe the process for me.

OKSNER: Shelly would give me the gag—or whoever was writing it or whoever was editor at the time—he’d give me the gag and I’d go home and draw it.

JA: What did you think of Shelly when you met him?

JA: So you never sat in the office and worked out cover roughs?

OKSNER: He was very easy to work for. We became very good friends in a short period of time. I think he left at the end of ’47 or early ’48. But, during that period of a few months when we worked on Leave It to Binky, we became very close and I thought, in some ways, [chuckles] he was very useful. He imagined himself to be a Hollywood director, and he’d walk around with a polo stick which he kept in a corner of his office. Later on, I found out that he would go through ranches and tourist ranches, and ride a horse with Irwin Hasen, who was his close friend at the time, and I guess take his polo stick. [chuckles] I had no idea what he’d do with it. Sometimes, he swung it around the office.

JA: Well, I know that he and Irwin sometimes would have like little swordfights, not with swords, but with T-squares.

OKSNER: I worked for DC from 1947 to 1986, and I never sat in the office and discussed anything with an editor. As a matter of fact, at one time, when I was working with Murray Boltinoff, I had a little red Alfa Romeo. I lived in Teaneck, New Jersey, which is about a half an hour or so from the DC offices. I would call up Murray, tell him I’d be in at 2:30, and he’d wait downstairs on the corner of 52nd Street. I’d drive up in my car, pull some of the finished work, and he’d give me a script for the next story. I think he liked the idea of getting out of the office. And I liked the idea of not having to park my car.

Everything Happens To Bob With Leave It to Binky a solid success, Oksner was assigned to a later but shorter-lived teenage title, Everything Happens to Harvey. Here’s his cover for #7 (Sept.-Oct. 1954), which inspired provider Bob Bailey to write: “It’s a great example of his fascinating sense of composition. That’s what he tried to drum into our dumb little heads at the Kubert school. He was a great teacher who really cared about the students. He probably ties Murphy Anderson for being the nicest professional in comics!” [©2007 DC Comics.]

OKSNER: That may be. Irwin complained that Shelly would take his pages and throw them up in the air and on the floor, but he never did that to me. I was bigger than he was. [Jim laughs] I remember once—I’ve forgotten why, but in front of an elevator, we had a little fight, and I hit him, and his glasses fell off. I don’t remember why, because I’m a very peaceful guy, so it’d be something most unusual and most hurtful that would prompt me to hit him. He picked up his glasses and we both got on the elevator.

JA: And he continued to hire you? [mutual laughter] OKSNER: Yes. He didn’t fire me, and that’s the only time, outside of public school, that I ever hit another guy, and I can’t remember why.

He was my only editor until he left, and then I dealt with Larry Nadle.

JA: In 1947, ’48, I have you as doing some work on “The Justice Society” in All-Star Comics. You might have penciled some stuff there, and also did inks on “Green Lantern” and “The Flash.”

OKSNER: Possibly. I remember working on that. I don’t know if that was 1947 or ’48. I remember working on “Green Lantern,” “The Flash,” and I did them later on, too, in the early ’70s. I may have done some inking on their solo features back then too, but it all runs together now. I do remember doing an All-Star cover. [NOTE: This is usually considered to be the cover of All-Star Comics #50 (Dec. 1949-Jan. 1950), but art-ID specialist Craig Delich now believes that its Arthur Peddy-penciled art was actually inked by Joe Giella.

But perhaps it was that, or another, JSA cover that Oksner inked.

—Roy.] That was the first time I inked someone else’s pencils.

JA: How did you feel about that? Did it matter?

JA: Shelly created Leave It to Binky, right? [Bob agrees] And you penciled and inked it from 1948 to 1949, and then ’55 to ’57.

OKSNER: No, they were very good artists. I loved inking Curt Swan in the 1970s, too. He was great.

OKSNER: Exactly. You know, this morning, I’ve been trying to think who wrote Binky, and I have no idea. He [Mayer] must have written the first few issues, because Binky was partly based on the “Scribbly” feature he’d previously created. Many items in Binky came almost directly from “Scribbly.” I artistically created the characters under Shelly’s approval, but he did all the writing at the beginning and I took

JA: Did you ink Carmine back then? Or Alex Toth or Irwin Hasen?

OKSNER: Not Carmine. I inked Irwin Hasen, I believe, at one time. I don’t know the name of the feature. It could have been “Green Lantern.”

JA: But nothing really comes to mind of that work, does it?

“My Women Had Saturday Night Bodies And Sunday School Faces”

OKSNER: No, except that I really despised working on super-hero stuff, because I didn’t like the super-hero books. One reason I left DC later on was that humor was out and I was inking super-heroes. Things like “Ghost Patrol” ring a bell with me, but that’s as far as my memory goes.

“In The Future, Never Work For DC Without Getting Paid”

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memories of his father in a near-future issue. —Roy.] JA: Did he have had a lot of power there?

OKSNER: I don’t know how much power he had. I guess he was a good con man. He certainly conned me. But he was so good, I liked him even though... you know, he’d have to be talented that way.

JA: Yeah. So you forgave him then?

OKSNER: I knew Larry very well. He had been in show business, though I don’t know exactly what he did. Vaudeville or burlesque? I have no idea. Larry was a gambler and was, in many ways, financially profligate, but a very sweet guy. He had a lovely wife [Sylvia] and we’d go and play cards together, and he’d come to my house and we’d entertain. He was a very nice guy.

OKSNER: Oh, yes. I’ll tell you whom I didn’t forgive: Robert Kanigher. Let me tell you the story about him. [After Larry Nadle’s death] it was discovered that Larry had somehow taken some money and had taken kickbacks, and that I had written stories for which I wasn’t paid. I was in an office with Kanigher and Irwin Donenfeld, who was much younger than both of us, but was the former boss’ son.

Kanigher said, “Fire him,” meaning me. “Fire him right now. Fire him.” [chuckles] And Donenfeld said, “Go back to your office.”

JA: I’ve heard that he took kickbacks from his freelancers.

JA: [laughs] Why did Kanigher want you fired?

OKSNER: Well, you heard correctly. I’ll tell you a story that happened with me. There was a fellow, Lin Streeter, whose work I loved. They did a syndicated strip for the [New York] Herald Tribune, I believe.

Larry told me Lin was in great debt to DC. Larry had told DC that Lin had written stories, but he hadn’t written them. DC had paid Lin for work that he hadn’t performed. And presently, Lin was out in Las Vegas and was ill. So I wrote Jerry Lewis, so that Larry could bring my stuff to DC and say, “Lin Streeter wrote this.” [Jim laughs] I wouldn’t be paid for it. You know, I liked Lin; he was in trouble, so I’d help him out. I did that until Larry died.

OKSNER: Because he assumed I’d stolen the money.

JA: Tell me about [DC humor editor] Larry Nadle.

JA: Conviction without a trial.

And then, searching through his financial records, they found out that I had done this work that had been paid for, but Larry got the money, not me. They called me in, thinking I was part of the plot.

Fortunately, I had all the [thumbnail sketches] that I had done at home on newsprint pads. Jack Liebowitz, who was the boss at that time, called me in, and I told him I did the work and I really wasn’t paid for it. He said, “Prove it.” I said, “Fine, I’ll bring it in tomorrow.” I brought in several pads of Jerry Lewis books. And he said, “In the future, never work for DC without getting paid.” [mutual chuckling] Of course, he didn’t have to tell me that.

JA: But he didn’t offer to pay you for the work.

OKSNER: No. [chuckles] And the truth is, I had fun writing it, because I could write what I wanted to draw.

JA: Irwin Hasen told me that he thought that Larry Nadle was like a haunted man.

OKSNER: I didn’t feel that way until after he died and I learned why he may have been a haunted man, because he was doing illicit things. Such a very, very good expression.

[NOTE: Ken Nadle, son of Larry N., will relate his own variant

Oksner Lights The Lantern Collector Craig Delich, who IDs art for DC’s Archives volumes, tells us that “Oksner drew the covers to Comic Cavalcade #25 & #26 (Feb.-March & Oct.Nov. ’48), inked the cover to #28, and inked [Irwin] Hasen’s GL story pencils in #29,” as per the page seen above. With #30, CC was mutated into a funny-animal title—but even Nutsy Squirrel and company never had any more fun than Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern did on their CC covers! “GL” scripter unknown… probably Robert Kanigher or John Broome. [©2007 DC Comics.]

20

Bob Oksner Drew Angels, Apes—And Everything In Between!

The Strange Adventures Of Bob Oksner Oksner was appearing in editor Julius Schwartz’s science-fiction titles from the beginning… in one way or another. He penciled (and Bernard Sachs inked) the story at left for Strange Adventures #26 (Nov. 1952), which was scripted by Gardner Fox… and the Murphy Anderson-drawn art above from SA #122 (Dec. 1960) features an Oksnerdrawn page from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis #4, which had gone on sale a couple of weeks earlier. Thanks to Bob Bailey for both scans and the info. [©2007 DC Comics.]

Got A Date With An Angel—And An Ape “Angel and the Ape” debuted in Showcase #77 (Sept. 1968), and was awarded its own mag in 1968. At right is the splash of Angel and the Ape #5 (JulyAug. 1969), repro’d from a b&w photocopy supplied by Kevin Nowlan.

The editor was Joe Orlando. [©2007 DC Comics.]

“My Women Had Saturday Night Bodies And Sunday School Faces”

21

OKSNER: Carmine was a great designer and a great composer of covers. I kept his layout to some degree, but not his figure work.

JA: Whose idea was it for you to follow C.C. Beck on Shazam!?

OKSNER: I don’t know. I think I was picked for the job because I was doing light stuff and “Captain Marvel” was really lighter than the super-heroes with all the muscles bulging. I liked drawing “Mary Marvel”; it was fun, but I know I wasn’t the best “Captain Marvel” artist there was.

I had no frame of reference with “Captain Marvel.” I never read it, never saw it, so I didn’t know Beck’s work. What they did was give me some magazines of “Captain Marvel” and they said, “This is our feature. This is good.” The implication was, do it the way that it had been done. I felt a little bit more at home with him than with “Superman,” because it was a lighter feature. “Captain Marvel” was more fun than “Superman.”

JA: You said you were friends with Irwin Donenfeld. How close were you before the Nadle incident?

OKSNER: We were very good friends. Irwin would come to my home in Teaneck and visit me. He and his wife would come, and when they were divorced, he would come. When he had a new car, he drove it over to show me. He came to my house, but I never went to his. When I first met him in the office, he was a gofer... just a kid. I think he either came out of the Army or he came out of college. He would bring coffee to people, the editors and such.

JA: Did you ever have any dealings at all with his father, Harry?

OKSNER: No, I would see his father around. I had more dealings with Jack Liebowitz. Liebowitz would say hello, and I’d sort-of pop into his office every so often to say, “Hello, Jack.”

JA: Did you feel that he was the guy really running the company?

OKSNER: Yes, without a doubt. If even Irwin Donenfeld called him “Uncle Jack,” and of course he wasn’t Irwin’s uncle, then you know he was running the company.

“I Shouldn’t Have To Introduce Myself To Kids Who Are Younger Than My Grandchildren” JA: You worked for romance editor Zena Brody.

OKSNER: Yes, Zena I knew. She was married to a physician, and she was a young woman when she died. I don’t know what she died of, but I know that she wasn’t there. She was a very nice girl. Ruth Brant also edited romance books. She was lovely. And, of course, Kanigher said he slept with her, too. But she went back to South Dakota. That’s where she came from.

JA: Okay, tell me about Murray Boltinoff. I know you didn’t have many dealings with the editors, but can you contrast him with the others?

OKSNER: I felt Murray was a very timid man. He was always fearful that something was going to happen to him in the office. His brother Henry told me that Murray was a very frugal man, and saved every penny he earned. As far as my working with him, I told you how compatible he was. He’d run downstairs to pick up my work. He wasn’t all business. He would talk about his problems. I think he had a son. I know he was very fearful in later years. And his brother Henry told me that Murray was “retired” from DC. So I guess he had something to be fearful about.

JA: Apparently they wanted younger editors, partly because some people are intimidated by those who are older than them and have

It Only Hearst When I Laugh Sam Simeon (whose name was based on San Simeon, the famous California estate once owned by William Randolph Hearst) in solo action in Angel and the Ape #5. Repro’d from a scan of the original art, courtesy of Kevin Nowlan. Script generally credited to Sergio Aragonés & Bob Oksner, sez Bob Bailey. [©2007 DC Comics.]

been at a place longer.

OKSNER: Right. Well, in the late ’70s, the early ’80s, when I went into the office, I’d wear, as my generation’s custom, a jacket, a shirt, and a tie. And I was told not to do that. I was told to come informally dressed, which I did. And then later on, when Julie retired, he told me I’d better look around to the other editors and introduce myself. And at that point, I decided this was it. I felt that, after working there for 44 years or so, I shouldn’t have to introduce myself to kids who are younger than my grandchildren. It wasn’t for me.

JA: What can you tell me about Henry Boltinoff?

OKSNER: Henry was delightful, funny, and humorous. You know he did cartoons, single- panel cartoons and single pages for DC. He was a much better artist than his work would let you know, when he wanted to really draw. He was totally different than his brother. As his brother was timid, Henry was outgoing and a socializer, a good tennis player.

He was an excellent cartoonist and he had a wonderful set-up with King Features where he would draw a panel of his own design, and his own gag, and send it to King, and they would delete objects that he drew and print their version and his version together and the reader had to find the seven errors or six errors.

37

The POWELL/EISNER/ARNOLD Connection A Treasure Trove Of Communications Between A Trio Of Golden Age Greats!

U

by Roy Thomas Present At The Creation

sually—not always, mind you, but most of the time—the best source for information about what happened during the Golden (or any other) Age of Comic Books is the testimony of the creators themselves: the artists, writers, editors, publishers, et al., who actually produced the material. Of course, human beings, being fallible, have imperfect and occasionally downright false memories of events, especially after many years… so the earliest records, when they exist, are generally the best.

Jerry Bails in 1971, around the time he began work in earnest on the Who’s Who of American Comic Books, which would be coedited by Hames Ware. With thanks to Bill Schelly.

Luckily for historians of comics, in the early 1970s Dr. Jerry G. Bails, founder of Alter Ego and prime mover behind so many comics

fandom “firsts,” began work on what would eventually become his magnum opus—the 4-volume Who’s Who of American Comic Books (1973-76), which evolved into today’s online Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999. Shortly after Jerry’s untimely passing this past Nov. 23, his wife Jean loaned us copies of numerous of his papers, many of them gathered in the course of collecting the biographical and publishing information for that monumental project. Comics researchers will reap the benefits of Jerry’s work, and of Jean’s generosity, over many future issues of A/E. For starters: we were astonished to find, in the very first batch of papers, copies of Jerry’s early-’70s correspondence with Everett “Busy” Arnold, publisher/owner of the Quality Comics Group (1937-56).

Almost equally amazing: also in this cache were letters exchanged in 1942 between Arnold, Spirit creator Will Eisner, and artist/writer S.R. “Bob” Powell!

Thus, as a postscript to last issue’s copious coverage of Powell, and as a companion piece to Michael T. Gilbert’s “Comic Crypt” which follows on page 45, we’ve printed below the missives concerning Powell and his relationship with the pair who were his employers at the time.

Everett “Busy” Arnold We begin with what seems to be the publisher’s very first communication to Jerry Bails, a response to the latter’s request for a summary of Quality’s personnel. Arnold’s compilation of the list was complicated by the fact that much of the work done for his company had been “farmed out” to the Eisner-Iger (later Iger) comics shop. We’ll let Arnold’s letter—and his list (in which the

Busy Arnold Was A Doll, Man Everett “Busy” Arnold circa 1941—and his Quality company’s very first super-hero, the dynamically diminutive Doll Man. The Mighty Mite debuted in Feature Comics #27 (Dec. 1939), apparently the creation (or at least co-creation) of Will Eisner, and was soon illustrated by Lou Fine, Reed Crandall, and others—including Fran Matera, who was interviewed in A/E #59. This new pencil drawing by Matera comes courtesy of both Fran and collector Greg Vondruska, who has built a Fran Matera website as a tribute to the artist’s career. Fran, who still does a few art commissions, can be reached via that website: http://penandbrush.net/MATERA. Arnold photo courtesy of Jay Disbrow. [Doll Man TM & ©2007 DC Comics.]

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Communications Between A Trio Of Golden Age Greats!

meanings of the abbreviations “a,” “w,” & “ed.” are obvious, while “adv. mgr.” probably stands for “advertising manager”)—speak for themselves, with their references to Powell, among many others:

“I’ve Got One Word To Say To You: ‘Plastic’!”

Quality’s most popular hero in the 1940s/50s was Blackhawk, but Jack Cole’s creation Plastic Man was ultimately the most enduring—and endearing. This panel from a 1964 Super Comics reprint of Plastic Man #21 (Jan. 1950) shows why DC’s Plastic Man Archives is up to eight volumes and counting!

[Plastic Man TM & ©2007 DC Comics.]

Arnold’s letter and personnel list, sent to Jerry G. Bails in 1972.

All correspondence accompanying this art is printed by courtesy of Jean Bails. Busy Arnold’s letters also appear courtesy of his son Dick Arnold, who was later a Quality editor and was interviewed in A/E #34. Hey, check out the reference on the list to high schooler “Joey Kubert”! (We only wish we could print all these letters bigger— but we think you’ll find them worth a squint!)

The Powell/Eisner/Arnold Connection

39

A few weeks later, doubtless at Bails’ prompting, Arnold wrote Jerry a second letter concerning the artisans of Quality:

Apparently, Jerry soon prodded yet one more response out of the very accommodating Busy Arnold:

when Eclipse Comics was reprinting Eisner’s Spirit stories, copublisher Cat Yronwode (pronounced “ironwood”) found the following letters in Eisner’s files; she seems to have both annotated them and sent copies to Jerry Bails. Her undated Powell-related paragraph reproduced below apparently refers to scripts done by Powell—not for the Mr. Mystic feature he drew and (mostly) wrote for the Comic Book Section from 1940-43, but to scripts for the lead Spirit feature. Here’s the relevant part of Cat’s note to Jerry:

Powell & Eisner, 1942 And now, working our way down the food chain, we reach a 1942 exchange between two talented men who were producing much of that work for and with Arnold—both for Quality Comics, and for the newspaper supplement officially known till 1949 as the Comic Book Section; the latter had been launched in mid-1940 in a partnership between Arnold and Will Eisner.

Unfortunately, Bob Powell didn’t date his letters. Luckily, Eisner did date his, which helps us place them in something approaching chronological order. Also: at some time in the 1980s or early ’90s,

Even if an error or two has crept into his list or recollections (and we’re not saying they have), comics historians owe the late Everett “Busy” Arnold a debt of gratitude.

A Spirit-ed Trio This early-1940s photo of (l. to r.) Will Eisner, Nick Viscardi (= Cardy), and Bob Powell was printed last issue—but where else are we gonna find Eisner and Powell in the same pic? Between them, at the time, this trio were producing all three features in the weekly newspaper Comic Book Section: The Spirit, Lady Luck, and Mr. Mystic.

From the 1982 Kitchen Sink volume The Art of Will Eisner, used by permission. [©2007 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

PHOTOS: Bob Powell (Pawlowski), age four, in 1921, and Bob with his parents that same year.

John Powell says this about Bob’s drawing: “His mother had it near her and displayed till the day she died. After Dad died she was heartbroken like any mother, but her grief was more intense since he was her only child.”

46

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

THE POWELL FAMILY ALBUM! PART II

by Michael T. Gilbert Stanley Robert Powell was a comic book dynamo. From 1938 until his death from cancer in 1967 at age 50, he brought life to high-profile heroes like The Shadow, Doc Savage, Sheena, The Spirit, the Blackhawks, Sub-Mariner, The Hulk, and Daredevil. But Bob Powell also put his stamp on lesser-known gems such as The Man in Black Called Fate (his signature character), Mr. Mystic, The Avenger, Shock

Gibson, The Scarlet Arrow—and a little lady called Atoma!

Atoma Atoma had a very brief career—precisely one story, hidden in the back of Joe Palooka Comics #15, in the spot usually reserved for Powell’s humor strip, “Chickie Ricks – the Flyin’ Fool.” But what Atoma lacked in longevity, she more than made up for in originality.

Powell’s basic premise was quite clever: Atoma, an historian from the future, befriends Dusty Rhodes, an ordinary 20th-century kid who accidentally blows himself 500 years into the future. Atoma’s waiting for him to arrive, having read his memoirs of his visit to the future—

(Above & below:) Previously unpublished “Atoma” plot and character sketches by Bob Powell. [©2007 Estate of Bob Powell.]

The Powell Family Album! Part II

memoirs he has yet to write! Together, they team up in Atoma’s first and only adventure to save the world of 2446 AD from a robot run amok.

Powell’s new character was innovative on a number of levels. Most obvious were the page layouts, each designed to form giant numbers.

Page 1 is shaped like a big 1, page 2 like a giant 2, and so on.

But that was just the start!

More impressively, “Atoma” may be the first “virtual” comics feature. I say virtual, because throughout most of the story, Powell draws absolutely no backgrounds. Atoma describes the magnificent “City of Peace” and the futuristic machinery within to Dusty, but Powell purposely refrains from illustrating what she describes.

“Here we are!!” Atoma tells Dusty, as they enter the city. “Let’s go in through this lower gate.” The two stoop to avoid an imaginary door. It’s a clever idea, reminiscent of the radio shows of the day that required listeners to fill in the blanks.

In lieu of backgrounds, Powell filled his empty panels with color, keeping visual clutter to a minimum and making the giant pagenumber designs pop out.

Though Atoma’s career began and ended with that single story, it unquestionably demonstrated Bob Powell’s brilliant imagination.

And this for a 7-page backup story in a Joe Palooka comic, no less!

The Atoma sketches on the previous page are printed here for the first time, courtesy of Bob’s son Seth Powell. Not surprisingly, there are some differences between this first draft and the printed version, including Atoma’s pal Dusty, who was originally named Rusty.

(Above & left:) Two pages from Powell’s only “Atoma” story, printed in Harvey’s Joe Palooka Comics, Vol. 2, #15 (Dec. 1947). The issue’s cover is seen below. [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

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Comic Fandom Archive

60

MARTY ARBUNICH and BILL DuBAY Remember The Good Old Days Of Comics Fandom Edited by Bill Schelly [NOTE: This interview is reprinted from the pages of Bill’s out-of-print 2002 volume Comic Fandom Reader. All photos & art provided by Bill Schelly.]

W

hen I initially got in touch with Marty Arbunich and Bill DuBay around Thanksgiving of 1994, during the process of researching my book The Golden Age of Comic Fandom, I found out that these two guys—who had teamed up to produce numerous comics fanzines in the early 1960s—were still the best of friends. Some of the publications for which they were known were: Fantasy Hero, Yancy Street Journal, Voice of Comicdom, Comic Caper, Fandom Presents, and All-Stars. Along with their friends Rudi Franke and Barry Bauman, they formed a publishing consortium called Golden Gate Features.

I think it was Marty who suggested that he and Bill sit down and make a taped interview for me. I would supply a list of questions, and they would do their best to answer them. The finished tape was a sheer delight, not only for the information imparted, but for the way it captured the free-wheeling spirit of their friendship. Thus, I’m very pleased to print the transcript here—with very little editing.

That way, their memories and repartee are presented in their most unvarnished and charming, form. I hope you enjoy it! —Bill.

MARTY: Hi, Bill [Schelly]… this is Marty, and this is how I sound.

BILL: …and this is how I sound.

MARTY: So it’ll be up to Bill [Schelly] to figure it out, because he’s gonna have to transcribe this, not me. Let’s see. His first question is, “How and when did you meet?” That’s an easy question.

BILL: Were you six or seven? Didn’t I kick your butt in the schoolyard?

MARTY: It was in St. Paul’s Grammar School, right?

BILL: That’s right.

MARTY: What grade did we start at together? When did you first go to St. Paul’s Grammar School?

BILL: First grade.

all boys’ school, and I wanted at least one year of dating girls in high school. As I recall, Marty, you didn’t have one date for the entire four years. [laughter]

[Marty as Sub-Mariner & Bill as Iron Man. Art ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

MARTY: No, that’s not true.

BILL: Okay, there was that one.

MARTY: I hope he doesn’t write all this stuff down as being fact. You can only tell the truth, Bill. Don’t exaggerate. Let’s make this real. Uh, so we answered question #1 for you. Question #2: “How and when did you first hear about comic fandom?”

BILL: I read about it in the letters pages of some comic book and wrote away for my first fanzine, Alter Ego #5, March 1963, edited by Ronn Foss. When that arrived, my search for old comics shifted into high gear. That’s when the ongoing treasure hunt began in earnest.

MARTY: Treasure hunt meaning…

BILL: …the continuous search for old comics. I’d go into old bookstores and scrounge around in any corner that looked like it might be even remotely harboring some dusty old periodicals. A lot of the old bookstores in San Francisco used to sell cast-off comics in cellophane wrappers, two for a nickel. I think the treasure hunt is really what got you interested in comics, Marty.

MARTY: Actually, it seemed like I got interested at the end of grammar school a little bit, ’cause I would come over to your house.

BILL: No, we didn’t really get tight until high school.

MARTY: You were living at 57 Chenery Street then.

BILL: Right. We were in the same upper class at Sacred Heart.

MARTY: Yeah, 9-B together. For me the thing that made it kind of interesting was, I guess you had brought up the idea of publishing our own fanzine. The idea of producing something… even though comics were kind-of interesting for me… it seemed that what was even more interesting was the production end of it—making something. Also, I quickly developed an appreciation of comics, and “collecting” fit into my lifestyle, still does to this day with other things. We had that common interest. I’m just trying to think, when we first started publishing, were you publishing something before I came along?

MARTY: So I guess we started out in first grade, continued all the way through 8th grade. We both graduated from that… establishment.

Moved on to a Catholic high school together, called Sacred Heart High School. I made it through four years, Bill made it through … two? That right? Before you got to the Big House? [laughs]

BILL: I’d just started publishing Fantasy Hero.

BILL: Three. I decided, enough parochial school. Sacred Heart was an

BILL: I don’t remember if I’d finished the first issue, or if we somehow came together in the process. I just remember that you had this intense

MARTY: Was it already out by that point?

Marty Arbunich and Bill DuBay Remember The Good Old Days Of Comic Fandom

61

fanzine envy. Then you said something like, “Wow! If you can do this, anybody can.” (I always loved your subtle compliments.) My take was, “This is hard work! And this boy sounds like he can be finessed into doing some of the grunt load.” I drew strips for that thing, and wrote it cover to cover on those awful purple ditto masters. It was eventually printed in the high school basement by your favorite journalism teacher, Richard Perkins. He thought it was great for a kid to be so ambitious.

MARTY: At the high school?

BILL: Yeah! Tom Sawyer had nothing on me! And that ditto machine—when I saw it working away, I knew I had to have one.

MARTY: We’re still talking about the first issue of Fantasy Hero here.

BILL: Exactly.

MARTY: Okay, let’s just take the questions in sequence. “Bill, you had a very unique art style. Who were your influences? Did you take art in school?”

BILL: [laughs] No. We didn’t have art classes at Sacred Heart. It was all college prep; hard-core math, Latin, and Bible study. I was just a very adept thief. I stole from Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino, Steve Ditko, then finally progressed to Wally Wood.

MARTY: So the answer is, you never took an art class or went to art school. How did you develop your style, then? How did you become so good at drawing?

BILL: Thank you for the compliment. I never considered myself to be any good. I just keep working on learning how to draw… for about thirty years now. There have been times when I’ve actually had delusions of adequacy… but then I’ve come to my senses. Mostly, I just try to keep art fun.

MARTY: “Were there any local clubs where you would get together with other fans in the very early days before comicons?” The only thing that I can remember that kind-of got me involved with other fans was the science-fiction convention that was out here, probably in 1964… there were a lot of comic book people there, a lot of sciencefiction people there, there were a lot of people that we eventually got involved with. And it was kind-of exciting because there was a buzz… there was something going on. That’s where we met Steve Perrin, if I’m not mistaken.

Bill Dubay’s cover for his first fanzine, 1963’s Fantasy Hero #1, which drew Marty Arbunich into “intense fanzine envy.”

[Heroes ©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

MARTY: And I think we did that with Steve; he was kind-of our hook to State College. That was probably in ’64 or ’65, if I’m not mistaken.

BILL: We did this all through high school, Marty. ’63 through ’66. We were always into something. Remember Roger Brand, Tom Conroy?

Then there was the other side, John Belfi and Jack Burnley. [sighs] We lived some adventures.

MARTY: This leads to the next question: “How did you meet Rudi Franke and Barry Bauman? Who was the oldest, and youngest, of the Golden Gate four?”

BILL: No, we actually met him after he bought a copy of that first fanzine. He was attending classes at San Francisco State and just called one day. We got on well, but he was on his way out of town… to some Eastern college.

BILL: Rudi was the oldest. You were the youngest. By days.

MARTY: This is in what year?

MARTY: Me, you, and Barry were about the same age.

BILL: I’m remembering stories here. Leeway on the chronology.

BILL: Rudi was a schoolteacher… 28, 29… livin’ across the Bay… a whole world away. All of us liked comics. They dug the value. We jizzed on the art. All of us liked basketball. They kicked ass. We loved to play.

MARTY: This was right after we started publishing?

BILL: Yeah. Sometime around then. I liked who he was, his ideas, the way he wrote. He knew stuff we didn’t. Especially about Burroughs.

He introduced us to some awesome artists. I wish he would’ve stuck around longer.

MARTY: We used to go out to SF State College to see the Captain Marvel serial.

BILL: Every week. One episode at a time. With every aspiring hippie in the city…and some awesome smokin’ air. We were a couple of virgin Catholic school boys getting a preview of San Francisco’s Summer of Love. [sighs] Not somethin’ I’ll forget.

MARTY: Yeah, but I think that was discovered afterwards. I think when Heroes’ Hangout #2 came out, we got in touch with them. We just arranged for a meeting. “Let’s get together.” Because we were in the same, uh …line of work [laughs] And if I’m not mistaken, I think we hopped on a bus and went over to Oakland. It seemed like we went on this long voyage, and we got together with Rudi and Barry, and just marveled at their comic collections, because by that point, they had discovered that store.…

BILL: Fort Knox.

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Comic Fandom Archive

books. And he was the best I’ve ever seen at it.

MARTY: It was weird. About three years ago, I ran into Barry Bauman down here on Clement Street in San Francisco, getting ready to audition for “open mike” at a comedy club! The guy was a nice guy back then and all, but I don’t remember him as being a card.

BILL: Barry was wry. I can see him doing stand-up. A second-string Lenny Bruce.

MARTY: As far as the publications go, I don’t think he had much input. Maybe he did more for the Heroes’ Hangout stuff. He was there when we met, but…

BILL: Barry liked to see his name in print. And I think Rudy didn’t like making that drive across the Bridge alone.

MARTY: I hope that answers your question there, Bill [Schelly]. Okay, “In 1964, you decided to merge Fantasy Hero and Heroes’ Hangout.

Why?” Bill and I still wanted to continue publishing on our own, which we wound up doing with Yancy Street Journal. But we wanted to see what it would be like. I guess for me, what was exciting was the idea of having four people together, and kind-of mix their talents together. And I thought it was really exciting, and especially the idea of Rudi and Bill drawing something together, which in reality sort-of turned out as kind of a disaster.

BILL: I wouldn’t call it a disaster. It’s an interesting memory.

MARTY: Your styles didn’t really go that well together, but in theory I thought it was going to be really exciting, and it kind-of was there for a while.

Golden Gate’s Fandom Presents (1964) attempted to provide an index of all the amateur super-heroes created in fanzines by that time. The DuBay/ Franke cover featured several of the most prominent: Ronn Foss’ The Eclipse, DuBay’s Gray Grasshopper, Black Scorpion, The Changling [sic], and Biljo White’s The Eye, among others. It was one of the thickest fanzines produced up to that time, with 100 pages! [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

MARTY: …a goldmine of comics in a store up in Sacramento called the Liberty Book Store. They wound up making a fortune off of that stuff, or at least they had a big enough collection that they could eventually make a fortune off of it. One of the things that we wound up doing is playing basketball, so Bill and I would be the San Francisco guys against the Oakland guys. I think Bill and I would win most of those games.

BILL: I remember getting my butt kicked more often than not. [laughs] Marty was Wilt the Stilt. I was a spastic Meadowlark Lemon.

Those East Bay boys were playground sharks that could tear you up on the court.

MARTY: I think I was about six-one by then. Through those meetings, I would borrow comics from them, which would give me a reason to go over there, and we’d say, “Hey, how about producing something together?”

BILL: Rudi wanted to collaborate. I smelled Tom Sawyer karma, but I still bit. He was a teacher, for God’s sake. I was a Catholic school boy, pre-programmed for a positive response to authority figures. I acquiesced. We published a few things.

MARTY: I do remember that obviously you were writing and drawing, I was doing some writing… Rudi pretty much was drawing. What did Barry do?? [laughs] I don’t recall Barry having a special talent, or actually even wanting to get involved in producing these things. He was always kind-of on the side selling stuff, y’know? Or he had some little scam going on, am I right?

BILL: Barry was dealing. He dealt in the commodity of old comic

BILL: Rudi and Barry expanded our horizons in a lot of ways. Whole East Bay opened up to the Catholic boys. The people, the scents, the journey. We were exploring.

MARTY: Well, yeah. But I also thought that that came about by way of our getting our hands on all those other fanzine publications, and we could see how other people operated, and I think that’s where we got some of our ideas.

BILL: Ideas were everywhere. We were growing.

MARTY: Pretty much. It was pretty contrived, I thought, but it was fun.

BILL: Fun. MARTY: Okay, next question. “The newspaper format of Voice of Comicdom and eventually Yancy Street Journal was unique. Who did the lay-outs and paste-ups?”

BILL: Look. I’m a Capricorn, a Catholic, first son of a first son from a long line of way-too-responsible Aristocratic French. The newspaper format looked clean, easy, do-able. And it intrigued me. Printing cost us 2H¢ a copy. We charged 50¢ or so. It all made sense to me.

MARTY: I hadn’t seen Yancy Street Journal for quite a while, but I thought that…

BILL: Marty typed up every column of every page in every issue of the Yancy Street Journal. Layouts and designs are all his. He was particularly proud of the little printer’s bugs that he put at the end of every article. He’d hunt new ones down as avidly as he hunted funnybooks.

MARTY: Really? I did the layouts on that?

BILL: Yes, you did. I remember going to your place one day and you being so pleased with what you’d done. You’d seen me pasting up type and designing pages for years and here, finally, you’d done a whole page, all on your own. You were in blushing hog heaven.

[Art Š2007 DC Comics.]

78

It wasn’t so much a matter of their coming out of their world and joining you … you joined them! That’s how I got to know this fellow Christopher Chance. And know him well. You could have put him into any kind of situation and bet your bottom dollar that I’d be ready to give you a fair idea of how he would act … what he would say. And he wasn’t really my character.

He belonged to Glenn Chaffin.

By

[Art & logo ©2007 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel © & TM 2007 DC Comics]

Glenn had come up with a proposal for a newspaper strip … the hero a roving reporter. Great idea … a newsman at large … the world as a stage … no limit to the story locales!

Correspondence, as we knew it in those days, was not by phone or wire … too expensive. Or by fax or e-mail … too yet unheard-of. We communicated by regular mail … between Louisiana and Montana … involving a bit more time than might be imagined. So it was through the exchange of letters that I got to know, not only the character, Christopher Chance, but the creator, Glenn Chaffin … and Harry, away at school … and Tommy, just beyond the typewriter waiting to go fishing. And, oh yes … Mae, nearby with steadfast assistance in every way … like my June.

[FCA EDITORS NOTE: From 1941-53, Marcus D. Swayze was a top artist for Fawcett Publications. The very first Mary Marvel character sketches came from Marc’s drawing table, and he illustrated her earliest adventures, including the classic origin story, “Captain Marvel Introduces Mary Marvel (Captain Marvel Adventures #18, Dec. ’42); but he was primarily hired by Fawcett Publications to illustrate Captain Marvel stories and covers for Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures. He also wrote many I don’t think I was ever more dissatisfied with my own efforts than Captain Marvel scripts, and continued to do so while in the military. in this case. Nothing like the familiar ease when developing my own After leaving the service in 1944, he creations … where a clear image of the made an arrangement with Fawcett to lead character was always fixed in mind produce art and stories for them on a with the concept … before a pencil was freelance basis out of his Louisiana raised.

I suspect, now, that Christopher home. There he created both art and Chance may have been fixed in another story for The Phantom Eagle in Wow mind … Glen Chaffin’s. In Glenn’s Comics, in addition to drawing the story outlines I saw in the character a Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip for Bell quality of maturity … an air of Syndicate (created by his friend and confident capability … considered mentor Russell Keaton). After the essential … but not easily drawn. cancellation of Wow, Swayze produced artwork for Fawcett’s top-selling line of After kicking sketches back and romance comics, including Sweethearts forth we eventually arrived at a starting and Life Story. After the company point … and took off into the land of ceased publishing comics, Marc moved Christopher Chance. And it was a over to Charlton Publications, where he pleasure … working once again with ended his comics career in the mid-’50s. one so professional … so talented … so Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs experienced in the business … so patient have been FCA’s most popular feature and considerate … as Glenn Chaffin. since his first column appeared in FCA About midway the project was #54, 1996. Last issue Marc set the interrupted by an accident in my record straight regarding his work on Chaffin At The Bit family, after which it seemed imposthe Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip. This Of Glenn Chaffin (pictured here in the summer of 1943), Marc sible to get back in stride. The correissue he looks back at Christopher writes: “It was a pleasure… working with one so professional… spondence began to dwindle … and Chance, the scrapped syndicated strip so talented… so experienced in the business… so patient and finally ceased altogether. considerate.” Photo courtesy of Marc Swayze. collaboration with writer Glenn Chaffin. –P.C. Hamerlinck.]

Glenn and I lost touch … but Christopher Chance still hangs around. He’s clearly seen now and then, standing before me, hands on Ever thought about it … the way the Golden Age of comic books hips, a slight scowl on his face. The dialogue balloon: “Well … what coincided with the war … WWII, that is? And the valor with which have you got to say for yourself?!!” those super-heroes fought their way up the ladder to top-rung reader attention … despite such competition as battlefront news? Tough I repeat … those characters are weird! Ask any comic strip writer or bunch, those guys. Oh … and gals. artist!!!

Tough bunchs also, those who worked in the trade, those artists and writers who kept banging away with their fictional adventures and Taking A Chance On Chance characters as if nothing were happening outside. I can assure you firstSometime during the World War II years, writer Glenn Chaffin and artist hand they were there … else how could the comic books have Marc Swayze teamed up to produce two weeks of dailies, plus a Sunday, survived?

It was peculiar. You couldn’t work on those comic strip characters very long without getting to know them pretty well. At least I couldn’t.

for the projected adventure comic strip called Christopher Chance.

Circumstances conspired to prevent more story and art from being produced, but the strips that survive are well worth a look—on the next 3 pages. [©2007 Glenn Chaffin or successors in interest & Marc Swayze.]

We Didn’t Know... It Was The Golden Age!

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82

Monster Mash!

JEFF SMITH On Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil Interview by Chris Irving

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

J

eff Smith is the award-winning writer and artist of the Bone comic book. Recently, he produced a Shazam! limited series—on sale even as these words are written—about Captain Marvel and Mr. Mind’s Monster Society of Evil, whose original 1943-1945 Fawcett serial was covered in detail in Alter Ego #64. —PCH. CHRIS IRVING: What was your initial goal with Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil?

JEFF SMITH: My goal was to look at what made Captain Marvel the most popular comic book character of all time. He was more popular than Superman, than Mickey Mouse comic books ... [he] was the most popular super-hero ever, really. I went back and read a whole bunch of the “Captain Marvel” comics, [watched] the Republic serial [and the Fleischer Superman cartoons], and thought what it was about comic books back then that appealed to people. I just wanted to get Captain Marvel back to being a super-power that just comes when you’re in trouble. When Billy’s in trouble, he’s a little kid, and kids can’t protect themselves, but suddenly he has a magic word and he’s the world’s most powerful man and can’t be hurt. That, to me, was the real essence of what Captain Marvel is: that ability to just be invincible with a magic word.

I Dream Of Genie Jeff Smith: “I view Captain Marvel as a genie. It’s an Aladdin story.”

Here’s Smith’s cover art for Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil #1. Thanks to Kathleen Glosan, who provided all the Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil art that accompanies this article. [©2007 DC Comics.]

CI: I think C.C. Beck once said that Captain Marvel was really a Billy Batson comic book that Captain Marvel appears in every once in a while, like a genie.

SMITH: I view Captain Marvel as a genie. It’s an Aladdin story. He is Billy, and they’re one and the same (or become one and the same). The “Shazam!” magic and the power of that word summon this guardian power for Billy. You will see a lot of Billy in my version. It really is a Billy Batson comic where Captain Marvel makes many appearances.

CI: Well, he’s a kid. Ever since DC brought him in after Crisis, they’ve made him a teenager, maybe even a preteen, at earliest. Your Billy looks like he’s eight.

Fairy Tales Can Come True…

Smith says that “the powers and mythology around the Captain Marvel character… it almost reminds me of a fairy tale.” Cover art from Shazam! TMSOE #2. [©2007 DC Comics.]

SMITH: I was shooting for around eight, without actually saying it. I looked at the very first Whiz Comics, and he looks pretty young there, an

Monster Mash!

83

orphan living on the street, and I ran with that. It plays with that polarization between being the mightiest human being on Earth who can fly and have bullets bounce off of him, and the opposite of that is being a boy who is homeless and orphaned [and] just trying to survive. I pushed it a little further. He looks pretty young in that first Whiz Comics, and it doesn’t say, but he’s not like Tintin, boy reporter.

CI: I think lots of people have forgotten that, over the years. My personal feeling is that he doesn’t fit into the DC Universe. In the Whiz material he’s almost like a parody of Superman and the superhero genre that was emerging. Where does your “Captain Marvel” fit? Is it in its own continuity?

SMITH: First off, I really don’t think they were poking fun at superheroes. I think they just had their own twisted view on super-heroes. It was a different kind of storytelling that was able to have its own humor. His powers are absolute and nothing hurts him … everything tickles. It’s so simple in terms of foundation, and the powers and mythology around the Captain Marvel character. It’s so clean that it almost reminds me of a fairy tale. They don’t really explain everything.

As far as the [shared] universe goes, I totally agree with that. My first question, when I was talking to [editor] Mike Carlin for the first time, was, “Would I have to have any other super-heroes in it?” When I was a kid, the kind of super-hero stories I liked were the ones where there was just that super-hero: just Batman and Robin, or just Superman. I didn’t like Superman and Batman getting together, and I definitely didn’t like the Justice League. I read them as a kid, but they didn’t really act like themselves when they were with the other superheroes … they were almost dumber. Any time someone worries about the continuity between the different characters in a universe, they lose me a bit. It wasn’t so much that I thought Captain Marvel had to be separated from everyone else; I just think all super-heroes should be separated from everybody else, or you just start getting bogged down. [laughs] CI: I think they got dumber because, in the solo story, the hero has to be the smartest one in the story. But, in order for a team dynamic like in JLA or Fantastic Four, they have to think together. For that to be feasible, they have to be dumbed down a bit.

SMITH: Yeah, they have to follow a pecking order of the club or society. Whenever there are big super-hero events with all the superheroes in it … that just feels like a big “Justice League” story. I just wanted a good old-fashioned [solo] super-hero story.

CI: Having said that, are we going to be seeing The Marvel Family in your story?

SMITH: I picked the ones I wanted … that were interesting to me. I really did just want to do a finite story with a beginning, middle, and end, and not do an ongoing series. I thought the four-issue prestige format series was a good format to jump into. As I looked at the characters, I thought that the ones that were interesting could be useful in a story with a 200-page life. Captain Marvel has to have his nemesis, so I picked Dr. Sivana … and I wanted to do a remake of “The Monster Society of Evil,” so you have Mr. Mind in there also. I love Tawky Tawny, who I think is the greatest. [laughs] It’s one of those things where people were saying, “You’re not going to do Tawky Tawny, are you?” But Tawky Tawny was one of the selling points for me. I also thought I would use Mary, because that would give me a story for Billy, who is searching for his lost sister. That way, at the beginning of the story he’s alone, and, at the end, he has a family.

CI: What time period is this set in? Is it an ambiguous time period, or modern day?

SMITH: It’s a bit ambiguous, but not so much that you can’t mistake it

Mary, Mary…

Smith: “I thought I would use Mary, because that would give me a story for Billy, who is searching for his lost sister.” Art from Shazam! TMSOE. [©2007 DC Comics.]

for the 1940s. It’s in present-day New York City (though I agreed not to call it New York City so that if it’s important for you to think it’s Fawcett City, you can), and it takes place mostly in the Lower East Side and Central Park. It starts off with Billy living in an abandoned building under the East Bridge.

CI: Is there any one version of Captain Marvel that you latched on to?

SMITH: Again, I cherry-pick. I took a little bit from everybody. I think the main model for me was the Golden Age Captain Marvel: a real stalwart super-hero guy. In Alex Ross’ version, he portrayed Tawky Tawny to look like a real tiger, so I took a cue from that, and Tawky Tawny looks like a real tiger. He doesn’t look like “Tony the Tiger.” There was an element from Jerry Ordway’s Power of Shazam! series that I loved, in that the big black-hatted stranger that lures Billy into the subway is Billy’s dad. I thought that was beautiful and suggested that it was Billy’s dad leading him in. I cherry-picked everything I liked. I didn’t like the loose-fitting shirt from [the] Jerry Ordway and Alex Ross versions, but I kept the flap. I just went and found all the elements that jumped out at me and kept them together to make him Captain Marvel.

CI: Do you have plans to ever revisit “Captain Marvel”?

85

Bob Newhart, Move Over!

by C.C. Beck Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck [A previously unpublished essay from 1985

by Captain Marvel’s co-creator and chief artist – from the vaults of PCH’s Beck estate files.]

I

was in a restaurant ordering lunch with a friend one time, and when I ordered a bowl of oyster soup he looked at me with some surprise. “I didn’t know you were so fond of oysters,” he remarked.

“I’m not particularly fond of them,” I said. “They’re better raw, on the half-shell, actually.”

“Then why order them in soup?” he asked.

“Because I’m very fond of hot milk with butter and salt in it,” I explained. “The only way you can get that in a restaurant is with oysters floating in it. If I ordered just a bowl of hot milk without the oysters, people would think I’m crazy.”

FCA editor P.C. Hamerlinck found this rough sketch along with the accompanying Beck essay. It shows C.C. My friend has since become very fond about to join comedian/actor Bob Newhart on a park bench. But, like the painting described in the piece, the of relating this incident to others as proof above illustration, too, never went beyond the preliminary stages. [©2007 estate of C.C. Beck.] that I really am crazy, or at least “a little touched in the head,” as people used to opinion, the picture was already overloaded with unnecessary elements, say. To me I seem more like comic Bob Newhart who, in a recent Time and that adding more would turn it into a hodgepodge of junk. I magazine article, said that he feels like “the last sane man left, reeling enclosed a detailed full-size tissue sketch of how I was going to handle against a world of crazies.” the finished painting, pointing out that I had used three vanishing Recently, a man who had grown up reading comic books back in the points in its construction, had done research on the planet Saturn as it Golden Age wrote to ask if I would make him a painting of his favorite is now known to look according to the latest photos from space, and as childhood comic character, Captain Marvel. He was especially far as I was concerned I had now completed 80% of the work involved impressed with the “clean” way I had illustrated the “Captain Marvel” in making a picture. stories and he assured me that anything I could do in the way of a He wrote back that he was “amazed” that I had gone ahead without painting for him would be acceptable. further consultation and help from him. The picture was way too small, I sent him some tissue sketches showing Captain Marvel in various he said; he had expected one at least a foot-and-a-half by two feet in scenes, just as he had appeared back in the ’40s at the peak of his career. size, and I was going to make one only eleven by sixteen inches.

He sent them back, asking me to make some new sketches instead.

My Captain Marvel was “too thin,” he complained; he liked the What he wanted, he explained, was a new picture, not an old one.

Captain Marvel from my “best period,” 1946 and 1947, when he was He then went on to explain that he wanted not only Captain Marvel much “stockier” (this was the period when other artists were still but Sivana, Mr. Mind, Billy Batson, the moon, the planet Saturn, a mad drawing him, by the way). “Sometimes,” he advised me, “artists are so scientist’s laboratory, a huge gun aimed at the earth, and a few other close to their work that they may not fully realize what makes it things (including a Nazi armband on Sivana) in the picture and sent me unique or what the fans and collectors appreciate most in their work.” a sketch showing me how to compose my picture for best results.

By return mail I sent the man a check for the amount he had sent me I sent him a sketch with most of the things he wanted in it, and he as a deposit ($300) and closed the account. Either he was crazy to think sent it back in the next mail. He had cut my sketch apart, pasted it that I would follow his instructions and make a painting that I would together in a new arrangement, and drawn in more things that he now have been ashamed to sign, or I was, for wasting my time trying to wanted—a space ship, some crystal mountains, an aurora in the sky, please him by catering to his irrational demands. some patches of ice on the ground, and a few buildings. If I could not Bob Newhart, move over. You have a friend. get everything in, he wrote, whatever I did would be perfectly all right, as he trusted my judgment of what would make a good picture.

I wrote back saying I could not follow his revised sketch, as, in my