Issuu

Roy Thomas’ SIMONized Comics Fanzine

6.95

No. 76

In the USA

March 2008

PLUS:

JOE SIMON FROM CAPTAIN AMERICA TO FIGHTING AMERICAN --AND BEYOND!

82658 27763

JOE SIMON CHANGED THE FACE OF COMIC BOOKS!

NOW HE TALKS TO JIM AMASH IN A FACETO-FACE INTERVIEW!

FACE IT! YOU DON’T DARE MISS THIS GREAT ISSUE!

Vol. 3, No. 76 / March 2008 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) Ronn Foss, Biljo White Mike Friedrich

Circulation Director Bob Brodsky, Cookiesoup Productions

Cover Artist Joe Simon

Contents

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko

With Special Thanks to: Jack Adler Heidi Amash Ger Apeldoorn Bob Bailey Tim Barnes Allen & Roz Bellman Dominic Bongo Teresa R. Davidson Craig Delich Anthony DeMaria Martin Filchock Shane Foley Janet Gilbert Roberto Guedes Jennifer Hamerlinck Bob Hughes Gene Kehoe Jay Kinney Dan Kurdilla Dominique Léonard Bruce Mason Harry Mendryk Robert Roy Metz Scotty Moore Lou Mougin

Mike Nielsen Barry Pearl Bob Rozakis Cory Sedlmeier John Selegue Howard Siegel Jim Simon Joe Simon Ted P. Skimmer Anthony Snyder Henry Steele Marc Swayze Greg Theakston Dann Thomas George Tuska Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Alfred M. Walker Steven V. Walker Jim Walls Hames Ware John Wells Robert Wiener Marv Wolfman John Wright

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

John Ryan

Writer/Editorial: Not-So-Simple Simon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Simon Says! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Master creator Joe Simon talks to Jim Amash about the comic book biz, Jack Kirby, & a few other things.

The Secret History Of All-American Comics, Inc. – Book I, Chapter I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Veteran pro Bob Rozakis does a fantasy reconstruction of comics history.

Comic Crypt! – Alfred J. Walker, Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Michael T. Gilbert & Mr. Monster showcase an innovative Fiction House artist.

John Ryan – A Remembrance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Bill Schelly & Howard Siegel celebrate the life of the late Australian fan/historian.

re: comments, correspondence, & corrections. . . . . . . . . . . 75 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #135 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 P.C. Hamerlinck presents Marc Swayze, C. C. Beck—& Bill Cosby? On Our Cover: He may not have lasted long, or led to a revival of the super-hero the way Showcase #4 did in 1956, but one of the greatest character creations of the fabulous ’50s was very definitely Simon & Kirby’s Fighting American! This issue’s center-ring star, Joe Simon, re-created several of drawings from that too-short-lived series for this edition of A/E. And, in case anybody’s wondering about the truth-in-advertising of that middle word balloon: while Jim Amash conducted the interview by phone, he and Joe have met a number of times in person—even if Jim was sorry to realize that he hasn’t a single photo to commemorate the occasion! [Fighting American ©2008 Joe Simon & Estate of Jack Kirby.] Above: We promised you Captain America as well as Fighting American—so no time like the contents page for keeping our promise. This Joe Simon illo was drawn not long ago for Belgian collector Dominique Léonard, who echoes the words of that illustrious 1930s entrepreneur Carl Denham: “We’re millionaires, boys! I’ll share it with all of you!” [Captain America TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Alter EgoTM is published 8 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. Single issues: $9 US ($11.00 Canada, $16 elsewhere). Twelve-issue subscriptions: $78 US, $132 Canada, $180 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.

THE

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW EVERYTHING ABOUT ALL-STAR COMICS AND THE JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA!

Companion VOLUM E THREE

a.k.a. ALL THIS AND EARTH-TWO! Ed ited by ROY THOMAS • STILL MORE sensational secrets behind the 1940-1951 JSA! • Fabulous new JSA-JLA cover by GEORGE PÉREZ, drawn especially for this volume! • Spotlight on the 1963-1985 JUSTICE LEAGUE/ JUSTICE SOCIETY Team-Ups! The 1970s ALL-STAR COMICS REVIVAL! The 1980s YOUNG ALL-STARS!

All characters TM & ©20 08 DC Comics.

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Article writer/editorial

Not-So-Simple Simon

oe Simon is one of the great innovators in the history of comic books. As both an artist/writer and the first editor for Timely (future Marvel) Comics, Joe conceived one of the most iconic of super-heroes—and he and partner Jack Kirby’s Captain America Comics instantly became an artistic trend-setter, establishing a style of headlong action that soon had virtually every other company in the field struggling to catch up.

Joe has told his own story in his and son Jim’s hardcover The Comic Book Makers, reissued a few years ago, and Alter Ego spotlighted him in passing in #13 and #36. But when Joe mentioned he’d be amenable to a longer piece for A/E, we were quick to take him up on it. And we’re fortunate to have been able to line up not only vintage art unseen in those earlier efforts, but also a number of more recent Simon sketches never before seen in print.

A year or two later, the team’s Boy Commandos was one of National/DC’s top sellers, giving Superman and Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Adventures a run for their money.

Of course, even a humongous Joe Simon interview isn’t the totality of this issue. For, besides such regular features as our letters section, FCA, “Comic Crypt,” and the too-long-delayed Comic Fandom Archive on Australian comics fan/historian John Ryan, there’s Bob Rozakis’ “Secret History of All-American Comics, Inc.”—or at least its first chapter.

Not long after the war, they revolutionized the field yet again with Young Romance for the Prize Comics Group. And, beginning at the turn of the 1960s, Joe turned Sick magazine into one of the most successful parody magazines in the Mad vein. Jack Kirby, an undisputed comics genius on his own, is sometimes lionized by certain over-stimulated fans to the point of trying to diminish Joe Simon’s contribution to their pairing; but much of what emerged in the early 1940s as the Simon & Kirby style, beginning with the second issue of Novelty’s Blue Bolt, was already inherent in Joe’s story introducing that hero in #1, before Jack came on board. The fabled duo of Simon & Kirby was even more than the sum of its parts—and those parts were formidable enough to start with!

Bob, a longtime writer, editor, and production director for DC, approached both Alter Ego and our TwoMorrows sister mag Back Issue with a notion for a “what if ” series. Both BI editor Michael Eury and I found the notion intriguing… so the two “Books” of the series will be divided between our two mags, with the first part of “Book Two” appearing in Back Issue #28, just a few short weeks from now, dealing with a later period than the A/E entries. (And wait till you see the artwork adaptations Shane Foley came up with to go with this first installment!) Bestest,

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Simon Says! JOE SIMON On The Comic Book Biz, Jack Kirby, And A Few Other Things Interview Conducted by Jim Amash Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

oe Simon’s comic book résumé alone is thick enough to choke an elephant, and that doesn’t count other aspects of his career. From newspapers to comic book creations like Captain America, Boy Commandos, and “The Newsboy Legion,” the invention of romance comics, a stint as a comic book publisher, Sick magazine, illustration, advertising, and political work, Joe’s seen it all, in every facet of printing. Hey, for all I know, Joe might’ve even turned on the printing presses a time or two! It may be true that Joe is best known to fandom for his partnership with Jack Kirby, but that’s really just one phase of his career. Joe has given interviews before, and has written the autobiographical book The Comic Book Makers with his son Jim Simon. He’s also frequently discussed in TwoMorrows’ flagship publication The Jack Kirby Collector, but none of that has been enough for me. Joe was kind enough to wreck his vocal chords (and his hearing, considering how much I talk), so that Alter Ego could present an indepth interview with him, covering some familiar bases, as well as aspects of his comic book days previously unseen in print. Special thanks go to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., for the loan of a number of comics, and for suggesting several pertinent questions. Thanks also to Hames Ware for suggesting the Worth Carnahan question… and to Joe’s son Jim Simon and to collector and Simon expert Harry Mendryck for their generous help in supplying materials and identifying Joe’s work. Most of all, I can’t thank Joe himself enough for his patience and graciousness in granting what turned out to be a longer interview than either of us expected. Good thing we both had a nice stash of cigars to smoke while we chatted! But now the smoke’s cleared away, and what’s left is Joe’s perspective on a rich and rewarding Hall of Fame career. —Jim.

Happiness Is Just A Guy Called Joe (Left:) Joe Simon with a young fan, plus a Simon rendition of The Fly, at the Big Apple Con in NYC, April 3, 2004. Thanks to Harry Mendryk. [The Fly TM & ©2008 Joe Simon.] (Above:) A few years back, beneath a late-’40s Simon & Kirby letterhead, Joe re-created one of the classic figures from the cover of his and Jack’s Captain America Comics #7 (Oct. 1941). A scan of this piece, autographed by both Simon and Kirby, was sent to us by Anthony DeMaria; it was drawn for a collector named Jerome Tepper, who passed away 15 or 20 years ago. [Captain America, Bucky, & Red Skull TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Sandman, Guardian, Newsboy Legion, & Boy Commandos TM & ©2008 DC Comics; Fly TM & ©2008 Joe Simon; other characters TM & © the respective trademark and copyright holders.]

“I Was Hired By Martin Goodman…” JIM AMASH: I recently re-read The Comic Book Makers, and I’d like to ask you things that weren’t in the book, and amplify things that were. For instance, when you were editing comics at Timely, were you also editing their pulps? JOE SIMON: I wasn’t editing the pulps, but I was putting them together. The pulps were fading away by the time we got there. They were nothing, though Jack and I did a few art jobs for them. I was putting together the detective comics—the romance, detective “flats,” as we used to call them. You know what a flat is? It’s a glossy magazine without the gloss. So we had the detective magazine, we had love magazines, and I was involved in all those. I was the art director. The editor was a guy named Levi. He was an older guy who put together the detective magazines and the love magazines; a pretty tame business by today’s standards. JA: How many people were working at Timely when you started? SIMON: Elsie was the receptionist and part-time secretary. She was a young woman from Wheeling, West Virginia, a very nice woman. We had a relationship for a while. Robbie Solomon was there, as were Martin

ithout Max Charles Gaines, it is unlikely that comics history would be what it is. From the earliest comic books collecting reprints of newspaper comic strips to the dawn of the Golden Age, and throughout the heyday of comic book popularity in the 1940s, Charlie Gaines (as he was generally called by those who knew him) was a driving force. At the beginning of 1945 Gaines split officially with National/DC and began issuing the adventures of Wonder Woman, The Flash, and Green Lantern, as well as Funny Stuff, Mutt & Jeff, and his favorite project, Picture Stories from the Bible, under the AllAmerican Publications banner, with an “AA” symbol replacing the previous “DC” sigil on covers. According to a notice in the Dec. 1944 issue of Independent News, the trade publiM.C. Gaines, The All-American Boy cation of Independent News, the distribution company basically owned by the Max Charles Gaines, circa 1942— same folks who owned National/DC, Jack and a 1945 ad displaying every All-American title except the Liebowitz was officially Gaines’ cotwice-a-year Picture Stories from publisher on the new AA line. [For details, the Bible. see The All-Star Companion, Vol. 3.] The AA “solo venture” was short-lived, however—lasting only about eight months—and sometime in 1945 Gaines sold his share of the company to his DC partners Liebowitz and Harry Donenfeld, and soon launched EC (Educational Comics, a.k.a. Donenfeld, in one of his typically impulsive gestures, gave his half of the Entertaining Comics) to publish Picture Stories and other, new titles. All-American group to his accountant, Jack Liebowitz. Suddenly, Max But what if things hadn’t turned out quite that way? Bob Rozakis, longtime writer and production director for DC Comics, has imagined a distinct version of what Alter Ego’s editor likes to call “Earth-22”—combining the notions of Julius Schwartz/Gardner Fox and Catch-22 author Joseph Heller—a parallel world on which events took a different, yet quite possible and not illogical turn. After all, in The Mad World of William M. Gaines (Lyle Stuart, 1972), the official biography of M.C. Gaines’ son, who became famous (and infamous) as the publisher of EC’s Tales from the Crypt, Mad, et al., author Frank Jacobs writes: “[A]ll was not roses within the new partnership, especially after

found himself partnered with Liebowitz, and they didn’t get along. Bill remembers that every afternoon his father would take a taxi to the uptown offices, where he, Liebowitz, and Donenfeld would scream at each other for two hours. Something had to give and that something was Max’s patience. In early 1945, he hurled out his ultimatum: ‘You buy me out or I’ll buy you out.’ They bought him out.” But what if he had bought Donenfeld and Liebowitz out, instead? In this opening installment (in which the art for all DC/AA characters depicted is TM & ©2008 DC Comics) of a new series which will be divided between the pages of Alter Ego and its TwoMorrows sister mag Back Issue, the author explores an alternate reality and reveals—

The Secret History of All-American Comics, Inc. The Story Of M.C. Gaines’ Publishing Empire Book One - Chapter 1 : Divide… And Conquer by Bob Rozakis

The Secret History Of All-American Comics, Inc.

first met Ted Skimmer when I started working at AA in 1973. At the time, Ted’s duties straddled the production and editorial areas… he worked in the film library and the stat room, but he also was the back-up proofreader and unofficial researcher. In the latter role, he had custody of the AA library, bound volumes of all the magazines the company had published, going all the way back to the very first DC comics in the ’30s. Ted’s tenure at AA began in 1944. Seventeen years old at the time, too young for the draft, he’d been hired as a fill-in assistant for “just a couple of weeks.” Thirty years later, he would joke, “I keep wondering when the weekend is coming.” Over the years, Ted taught himself the skills that would earn him freelance money: coloring and lettering. “The coloring came first. Some artwork got lost and they had to slot in a replacement story, but there were no color guides for it. They were going to print it in black-&white, but I grabbed a set of silver prints and some dyes and in about an hour and a half had a set of color guides. It was only a 6-page story and, frankly, looking back at it now, it was some pretty ugly coloring. But at least there was something.” After that, Ted got a story from time to time. “Mostly it was lastminute emergency jobs. They had me doing them on staff time, so they didn’t have to pay me extra.” The lettering came later. “Lettering looks a lot easier, but it’s really a pain in the ass. First you’ve got to rule in all the lines, then you letter in the words, draw the balloons, and erase all the pencil lines. There’s a more immediate turnaround needed, though, so if you can bat out a few pages overnight, it keeps an inker or two busy the next day.”

Okay, So Where’s Carol And Alice? (Left:) Author Bob Rozakis. (Above:) Theodore Paul (“Ted”) Skimmer, circa 1973. Photos courtesy of TPS & Bob Rozakis.

Ted Skimmer worked on staff at AA until 1997. He continues to do an occasional coloring job, but his hands are too unsteady to allow him to do lettering anymore. “I could never figure out that computerized stuff, anyway,” he says. To his delight, he was asked to recolor that first 6pager he’d done. “They were reprinting it in one of the Archive books and one of the kids thought it would be appropriate. I didn’t want to change it too much, since those books are supposed to be faithful reproductions of the originals, but I did tone down some of the garish solid colors.” Ted had a front-row seat to more than 50 years of the company’s history and was happy to share it with me… and you. —Bob.

It was late in ’44, maybe early ’45, when Charlie Gaines called us all together in the production room. That was the biggest space in the office back then. Nobody paid rent for conference rooms or anything like that. If you weren’t using the space all the time, you were throwing money away. Everybody was buzzing about what was going on. Gaines didn’t call us all together for anything small. Most of us figured it was bad news from the war front, that somebody we knew had been killed in action. There were plenty of guys—freelancers and staff people—who had entered the service since early in ’42. Our resident doom-and-gloom guy started saying that we were going out of business, that paper rations were being cut so that we wouldn’t be able to publish any more. As usual with this character, he professed to have read it in the paper or heard it on the radio and he was just passing along information. Some of the staff found these prognostications far more upsetting than any war news would have been. As it turned out, neither the doom-and-gloom guy nor the folks who were guessing about the most likely candidate to have been killed in action were correct. But by the time Gaines walked into the room, half the people were planning a memorial service for some fallen colleague, and the rest were planning one for us. Before Charlie could even say a word,

All-American Ad For All American Boys And Girls Paul Reinman’s cover for All-American Comics #64 (March 1945), the first issue of that title to sport an AA symbol, which went on sale no later than January of that year—juxtaposed with AA’s perhaps very first house ad, from its inside front cover. All-Star Comics #23, pictured therein, actually came out with a DC symbol; note that Starman and The Spectre are depicted in this AA mag after the split. Gaines was listed in the indicia as “General Manager,” Sheldon Mayer as “Editor”—and the name of the firm was given as J.R. Publishing Co.

The Story Of M.C. Gaines’ Publishing Empire

[Continued from page 57] I think it was pretty obvious [from the list of AA editorial assignments on pp. 60-61] that Gaines and Shelly were playing favorites with the editorial assignments. Julie already had control of the cream of the crop— the “Flash” and “Green Lantern” titles, which were our best sellers—along with All-Star Comics. People often ask why he was also editing Scribbly; well, he didn’t really edit it, since that was Shelly’s personal book. Julie just handled the trafficking of it through the production phase as a favor to his mentor; it was not the last time he handled an assignment like this. Bob Kanigher edited our remaining super-hero books and was also given the best-selling super-hero titles—Adventure and Star Spangled—that came over in the deal with DC. Weisinger and Schiff were left with the dying “Superman” and “Batman” books and a handful of odds and ends. Schiff had been hot on Real Fact Comics, so he got to keep that. Poor Murray Boltinoff seemed to get the bottom of the barrel—the funny-animal comics which were pale imitations of the Disney and Warner Bros. characters. We figured that, if overall sales continued to fall off and titles were going to be axed, it would be the ones that the former DC editors were handling. That meant they would be the first guys out the door. It didn’t happen that way, though… the editorial staff we had in 1948 was pretty much the same one we had until Mort retired in 1970. Don’t Miss Chapter Two In The Next Issue of Alter Ego. [NOTE: Meanwhile, though, you can read Bob Rozakis’ account of post1970 AA events in our TwoMorrows fellow publication Back Issue #28, in “Book Two, Chapter 1” of “The Secret History of AllAmerican Comics, Inc.”—then double back to A/E for that wonderful year 1949!]

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Not-Yet-Canceled Comic Cavalcade Word in the AA office was that its giant-size bimonthly Comic Cavalcade was scheduled to be metamorphosed into a funny-animal mag with issue #30 (Dec. 1948-Jan. 1949). However, CC skated on for years longer with its original trio of super-heroes, as per this cover for Comic Cavalcade #30 (Dec. 1948-Jan. 1949)—and instead Gaines turned World’s Finest Comics into a humor mag, a victim of the market-flooding by Man of Steel and Gotham Guardian. Artists uncertain. Thanks to Shane Foley for the scan.

One Small Voice Stories by Clifford Meth Art by Alex Toth, Jeffrey Jones, Gene Colan, Dave Cockrum, Frank Brunner, & others; cover by Neal Adams; Introduction by Roy Thomas; Intermission by Tom Spurgeon; Afterword by Bill Messner-Loebs "'Wearing the Horns' [the novella which is the book's cornerstone] is a gem, with scene after scene unwinding, unspooling to reveal facets of lives that make you feel as if you're not reading at all, but merely eavesdropping.... The extended after-sex dialogue between Little Herb and his wife is as heartbreakingly true as any you'll ever read anywhere.... [It] made me laugh out loud.... Read these stories yourself. They don’t need me or anybody else to explain to you how good they are." —Roy Thomas.

Comic Fandom Archive

Two industrious comics fans who helped the burgeoning new organized fandom go worldwide in the 1960s were a couple of Johns—J. Wright of South Africa, and J. Ryan of Australia. The former was profiled in Alter

Ego #35-36. In this issue and the next, two fans who were there— including John Wright himself—talk about their correspondence and friendships with the comics-history wizard of Oz. –Bill Schelly.

John Ryan—A Remembrance “Fountain Of Knowledge… And Friend” by Howard Siegel

ollectors considered him a fountain of knowledge. Professional artists and writers sought his advice. Publishers commissioned him to do books on comics. We called him dear friend. Righto on all counts,

mates! I first became acquainted with John in 1968 when I asked him to be the subject of a fandom profile. This segment of my “Comics Collector’s Comments” in the pages of RB-CC [Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector] highlighted some of the people who had made major contributions to the formation of organized fandom during what I considered the pioneer years. Here then, in John’s own words, is his history as a collector and authority…. “There is no disputing that my birthday allowed me to become one of that unique group . . . the first generation to be raised on comic books. Almost from their inception, US comic books were available in Australia. My Panel By Panel By Ryan research leads me to believe John Ryan and the cover of his book Panel that virtually every pre-war title, by Panel: A History of Australian Comics with the exception of the (Cassell Australia Ltd., 1979). Fawcett line, was available here. Unfortunately, John did not live long Like most kids on my street, I enough to enjoy the deserved plaudits for grabbed my copies of Amazing this invaluable reference work, as he passed away in December of that year. Mystery Funnies, Adventure, [Characters TM & ©2008 the respective More Fun Comics, trademark & copyright holders.] Wonderworld, Marvel Mystery Comics, Pep Comics, Silver Streak, etc., just as avidly as my American counterpart. Consequently it is not as strange as it may seem to find Australians of my age group with a fairly intimate knowledge of US Golden Age comics. “Up until 1941, the Australian comic book industry was very small, with almost the entire output devoted to reprints of US newspaper strips such as The Phantom, Buck Rogers, Sky Roads, Felix the Cat, Red Ryder, etc. With the curtailment of supplies from the US and reduced supplies from England, the local industry increased their output to capitalize on the market that had been virtually handed to them on a platter. Initially they increased the quantity of newspaper strips; but even these were hard to come by because of wartime restrictions. And soon these supplies were used up. This situation was responsible for the creation of the original Australian comic book, both drawn and written by local talent. “A large percentage of the material from that period was incredibly bad. It was crude in design, amateurish in execution, and totally lacking of any understanding of the field of graphic art. It might also help you understand why Aussie addicts paid up to 40 cents for an

American comic book that had, somehow, made its way into the country. [AUTHOR’S NOTE: Comic books were used as ballast in cargo ships during World War II.] And this was in the days when a comic book cost 5 cents and the average boy was lucky to get 10 cents per week pocket money. “While most of this original material plumbed the depth of mediocrity, there was a small group of artists whose work was of a high standard. Syd Miller, Syd Nicholls, and Hal English were mature men established in commercial art and the cartooning field prior to the arrival of the local comic industry. Anything they produced was worth reading. But it was the postwar years that brought into flower some of our finest comic book artists: Stanley Pitt (Silver Starr, Yarmak), John Dixon (Tim Valor, Crimson Ghost, Catman), Monty Wedd (Captain Justice, The Scorpion), and Phil Belbin (The Raven, Ace Bradley). These were some of the men who made 1946 to the mid-50s the Golden Age of Australian Comic Books. During this period, with few exceptions, I

John Ryan—A Remebrance

In The Merry Old Land Of Oz John Ryan at a 1976s gathering at his home, with several primo Australian comic book artists. (Left to right:) Phil Belbin, JR, John Dixon, Hart Amos, Keith Chatto. Photo courtesy of Howard Siegel. While all these gents became far more polished in later years, flanking the photo are images from their earlier work. (Clockwise from top left:) “The Raven” by Phil Belbin from Gem Comic #16 (1949)… “Catman and Kit” by John Dixon from Catman #12 (c. 1960)… cover of Climax Color Comic #8 by Hart Amos (1948)… and Twilight Ranger by Keith Chatto (1956). For lots more on vintage Australian comic books—and even John Ryan—pick up a copy of Alter Ego #51, still available from TwoMorrows Publishing. The “Catman” page, with gray tones added, is from the AC Comics reprint Men of Mystery Comics #26; see AC’s ad on p. 84. [Art ©2008 the respective copyright holders.]

Alter Ego #76