Comic Book Artist #11 by TwoMorrows Publishing

CELEBRATING THE ART & LIFE OF ALEX TOTH!

No.11 Jan. 2001

$6.95

Batman © DC Comics. The Fox, Jesse Bravo © Alex Toth.

In The U.S.

INTERVIEWS • ART • APPRECIATIONS • CHECKLIST

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NUMBER 11

Publisher

CELEBRATING THE LIVES & WORK OF THE GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE

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JANUARY 2001

DEPARTMENTS: THE FRONT PAGE: LAST MINUTE BITS ON THE COMMUNITY OF COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS On a new fanzine devoted to the Derby, Conn. publisher, Charlton Spotlight, and other stuff! ............................1

TWOMORROWS EDITOR’S RANT: ALEX TOTH—PICTURE PERFECT

JOHN & PAM MORROW

Ramblings on the subject of this very special issue and the glorious truths revealed in the artist’s work ............3

Guest “Sugar & Spike” Editor BILL ALGER

CBA REVIEW: IN WONDER OF THAT WOMAN Editor Jon B. Cooke takes a gander at Les Daniels’ latest, The Complete History of Wonder Woman ..................4

Contributing Editors ROY THOMAS JOHN MORROW

MARGINALIA: GOSSAMER WHITE, FILLED WITH FRIGHT In part two, David A. Roach concludes his look at the rise and fall of ’70s Gothic Romance comics ....................5

Associate Editors DAVID A. ROACH CHRIS KNOWLES Proofreaders JOHN MORROW ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON Cover Art ALEX TOTH Production JON B. COOKE GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS Logo Designer/ Title Originator ARLEN SCHUMER Mascot WOODY by J.D. King Issue Theme Song UKULELE LADY

ALEX TOTH—’BEFORE I FORGET’ SPECIAL SECTION FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?* Our Man Fred quizzes brilliant young scientist Bruce Gordon on his dark side as Eclipso!....................................7 HIS OWN WORDS: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY BY ALEX TOTH In his own irrepressible handwriting, the master artist discusses his early years as a budding professional ..........8 CBA INTERVIEW: A TALK WITH ALEX TOTH CBA talks to the renowned artist on his influences and opinions in a recent interview ......................................12 GALLERY: MUCH ADO ABOUT ALEX Rare art by the master storyteller ........................................................................................................................20 PROFESSIONAL COURTESIES: PAYING HOMAGE TO THE MASTER Joe Kubert, Walter Simonson, Jim Lee, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons and others pay their respects ..................30 CBA Q&A: “…SMOKE ACROSS A CLOUD”—THE TOTH METHOD Artist-to-artist, Paul Rivoche quizzes Alex Toth on the craft of continuity art ....................................................32 DEPT. OF ANAL RETENTION: ALEX TOTH—A COMIC ART INDEX Jim Vadeboncoeur shares his exhaustive—and definitive—checklist of the artist’s work ....................................46 APPRECIATION—ALEX TOTH, 1973: SUPER MENTOR Paul Power on learning from the legend..............................................................................................................53 TOTALLY TOTH: TOTH’S FORGOTTEN MAVERICK WORK A look at an Alex Toth treasure: The artist’s two-tone illustration for a 1959 TV adaptation children’s book ....54 SPECIAL SUGAR & SPIKE GIANT EXTRAVAGANZA! Our special flip section features a look at Sheldon Mayer and his most famous creation ..........................FLIP US!

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $6.95 ($8.00 Canada, $10.00 elsewhere). Yearly subscriptions: $30 US, $42 Canada, $54 elsewhere. First Printing. All characters are © their respective owners. All material is © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © their respective authors. ©2000 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. PRINTED IN CANADA. Cover acknowledgement: Batman ©2000 DC Comics, The Fox, Jesse Bravo ©2000 Alex Toth.

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Editor’s Rant

Alex Toth: Picture Perfect The difficult task of articulating the brilliance of the artist’s work ous to behold, for the first or five-hundredth time. This celebration of the master is woefully short. What it doesn’t contain could fill up another half-dozen issues: A comprehensive retrospective of Toth’s entire career; detailed surveys of his 1940s and ’50s art; spotlights on his animation career; succinct analysis of his magnum opus, Bravo for Adventure; more of his handwritten essays and doodles; and perhaps an anecdotal history of his life. But I hope that this issue will shed some light on the artist. I’m especially proud to feature probably the most thorough checklist of Toth work ever published, and I’m bummed not to include enough repros of his glorious ’60s-’70s Warren and DC work. (So, kind reader, just because CBA neglects to showcase his Creepy, Eerie, Blazing Combat, Star Spangled War Stories, Hot Wheels, Witching Hour, etc., doesn’t mean you shouldn’t seek out those treasures yourself!) I hope we’ve done the artist some justice and we hope you, whether you’re a Toth fanatic or one of those who wonder what “all the fuss” is about, enjoy this heartfelt tribute to the man I consider to be America’s greatest living cartoonist, Alexander Toth. My thanks most of all to the Hungarian comic book artist for allowing us to feature him in this most eagerly-anticipated issue. I’m not the easiest—or organized—magazine editor most times, and I hope Alex will forgive this issue’s shortcomings. I also appreciate the support and contributions of the many Toth fans and CBA friends who so graciously helped us out, primarily Mark Chiarello, Paul Rivoche, Mañuel Auad, Jim Vadeboncoeur, Andrew Steven, Steve Cohen, Don Mangus, David A. Roach, Terry Beatty, Phillip Hester, Lancelot Falk, John Hitchcock, Paul Powers, Terry Austin, and Richard Rowe. (I realize I must’ve missed a few folks here but please note I appreciate everyone who helped.) And, God willing, this is not the last we’ll see of Alex Toth in the pages of CBA. With Alex’s permission, we hope to continue his great column, “Before I Forget,” and no doubt we’ll be examining other aspects of his marvelous career in the future. Keep ye eyes peeled! Sorry this is late. Happy (belated) holidays and our best to you in 2001! Look for CBA #12 in March! —Jon B. Cooke, Editor ©2000 DC Comics

Oh, boy. Ask me to give a logical analysis of why Alex Toth is one of the greatest cartoonists of all time, and you’ll quickly suspect I’m hardly perfect for that job. The only way I can explain the excellence of his work is to try and relate to you how Toth’s art makes me feel and what the man means to me. It’s the quiet things I like best in his work; hell, I’d take a delicate, sensitive Toth romance story over a rock-’em, sock-’em super-hero saga by Alex just about any day (unless, of course, it was a Black Canary tale!). Filled with nuance, subtlety, honest, truth, clarity, joy, and simplicity, his work reveals a sensitive and caring artist, uncompromising and resolute. With Alex, the story is the thing (to paraphrase the Bard). Every detail, every line, every thought in drawing must be in service to the tale being told. No fancy chicken-scratching, no over-rendered anatomy, no slick showboating. Nope. In his essays, you’ll find an oft-repeated axiom, “Simplify, simplify, simplify!”—a phrase which might be shortened to a single “simplify,” surely—and his work is true to that declaration. Spartan, concise, and deceptively simple, Toth’s work is proof that less is more and of the maximum visual impact of his minimalism. Foremost Alex loves the art form and is as smart about the field as he is in his craftsmanship. A dyed-in-the-wool comics fan, as enthusiastic today about the artistry of any number of wonderful cartoonists, be they Jack Cole, Harvey Kurtzman, Lou Fine, Noel Sickles, etc., as any passionate aficionado, Toth is a vocal advocate for appreciating the great comics work of yesterday. Of the current scene, the artist is not silent. He cherishes truth in art, and vehemently abhors dishonest work, as apt to rigorously savage any slacking cartoonist (and rake the industry over the coals for its shortcomings, while he’s at it) as he is to wax emotionally about a contemporary’s work he may admire. For me, the startling aspect of his work is an overwhelming sense of perfection whenever I first come across an hitherto unseen Toth story. Nearly every approach he takes in the work feels fresh and unique, characters’ faces are unusually unstereotypical… oh, I could go on and on, so suffice to say Toth’s work is consistently joy-

Contributors Alex Toth • Merrily Harris Mayer Lanney Mayer • Mark Chiarello Paul Rivoche • Rocco Nigro Jim Vadeboncouer Beverly Martin • David A. Roach Fred Hembeck • Don Mangus Andrew Steven • Phillip Hester Joel Thingvall • Steve Cohen David “Hambone” Hamilton Lancelot Falk • Paul Powers Charlie Roberts • Robin Snyder Al Dellinges • Joe & Frank Giella Mañuel Auad • John Hitchcock Terry Austin • Tom Ziuko Tom Field • Dylan Williams Terry Beatty • Arlen Schumer The Mad Peck • Walter Simonson Joe Kubert • Jim Lee • Tim Sale Kevin Nowlan • Dave Gibbons Howard Chaykin • Adam Hughes Brian Bolland • Al Williamson Bill Sienkiewicz • Anthony Smith Tom Stewart • Rick Roe Dedicated to

Steve Cohen

and in loving memory of

Our Dog Kirby 1994-2000

Visit CBA on our Website at: www.twomorrows.com All letters of comment, articles and artwork, please mail to: Jon B. Cooke, Editor, Comic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 Phone: (401) 783-1669 • Fax: (401) 783-1287 • E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com

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CBA Interview

A Talk With Alex Toth CBA converses with a master of comic book art

Above: Paul Rivoche shared a ride with Alex Toth from the master’s Hollywood home to a San Diego comic convention in the early 1980s. Paul took this shot of the artist (beside Alex’s Impala rag top). Courtesy of & ©2000 Paul Rivoche.

In considering the most influential and important comic book artists of all time, Alex Toth’s name is never far from the top of anyone’s short list—indeed many of today’s industry professionals wouldn’t hesitate to call him simply the best there ever was. Few artists of his calibre contemplate and study the art form as intensely—and with such obvious love for the form—as our interview subject, as passionate (and often, angry) today as he was as one of the first true comics fans back in the late 1930s and early ’40s. CBA had the pleasure of interviewing the artist in his Hollywood home in February 2000 and Alex copyedited the transcript. Comic Book Artist: Is it fair to say that your great desire was to be a syndicated newspaper cartoonist? Alex Toth: Yes. Being a creature of my time, then, the big deal was, “God, I want to be Milton Caniff.” I didn’t discover Noel Sickles and what he did with strips until long after he’d left Scorchy Smith (for AP Features), and I found him in those little reprint pages in Famous Funnies, five tiers of much-reduced Sickles artwork. [It was]

succeeded by Bert Christman, who left the strip after a year or so for a stint at National Periodical Publications (DC) to do “The Three Aces” and “The Sandman,” and then left to become one of the first hundred AVG Flying Tiger pilots flying against the Japanese in China and Burma, and then died there in action—all this before Pearl Harbor, mind you! But, yes, it was my dream to do what Caniff, Raymond, and Foster had done, and to be an illustrator as well, because I loved what I saw in the Saturday Evening Post and Liberty, and all the other slick weekly and monthly magazines. CBA: Collier’s. Alex: And Collier’s. CBA: But you don’t regret that you toiled in a different medium? Alex: I do and don’t… as Charlie Schulz put it just before he died: “I didn’t want to let go, it was taken away from me.” Well, that’s what happened with strips (and slick magazine illustration, too!). By the time I was “ready,” they were already dying, being throttled, squeezed, and distorted, and the whole concept of hero/heroine/ adventure had been tainted, spoiled by the war. Gritty realism had shattered an awful lot of those fantasy dreams. The strip medium had changed. The Big Squeeze was on to force it out, not give it the area and respect it once had. CBA: But you were able to take your love of that and put it into the comic book medium. Alex: Well, it was a wonderful training ground. It was “on-the-job training,” is what it was. To be able to (during World War II) when the old-timers were drafted away fighting the war, and left slots open for others to draw these silly things, so I was given a chance, as a kid of 15, still in school. So it was an after school-hours thing for me, which was far better than schlepping wet bulk laundry or dry cleaning or some of the other odd delivery kid jobs I had. It was terrific, the ego thing, to see one’s name in print… my God! Who’dathunkit? But then, the appreciation for it came through the material and being paid. But still, a syndicated strip artist had a certain respected position in those days. It was a position of mystery. CBA: Also, Caniff was treated like a movie star. Alex: Well, he was very good at promoting himself, and the Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate helped a lot, too. Yes. It helped sell the strip to more papers. CBA: Why wasn’t Sickles received the same way? Alex: Well… from all I’ve heard, AP didn’t treat Sickles well. They cheated him when he found out how many papers… and income Scorchy Smith was bringing in, against his $125 a week (I think he finally got it up to that). In the ’30s, that was good money! The dailyonly strip was earning $1,500 a week! And he just got fed up with it. He might’ve stayed, had he been treated well, and that would be true for a lot of cartoonists and people, everywhere, in all kinds of jobs. So I missed having that goal, and reaching it, except as a “ghost” or as an assistant—the Warren Tufts thing, which was a few months, here, and there, then a brief stint on Roy Rogers, subbing for Mike Arens when he was ill. CBA: Young comic book cartoonists look at Caniff and Sickles, and COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

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don’t get it, don’t understand it. They think it’s antiquated! How can they see what’s really there? Alex: Well, they probably won’t, until maybe another 10 years of living and seeing: assessing things. Because their heads are filled with the hot artist in comic books, today. They can’t see beyond admiring [Jack] Kirby and [Neal] Adams and whoever else was the hotshot 30 years, 20 years, 10 years ago, that’s as far back as they go in time, and everybody keeps regurgitating Kirby/Adams! CBA: And Miller. Alex: And Miller… well, that’s another story. But Caniff, Sickles, etc., the syndicated strips’ best pastpasters’ works are quiet compared to comic book art, storytelling, characters and whatever. It’s unfortunate that because you like chocolate, you can’t like vanilla, that you can’t appreciate other things than what you happen to be very hot about at the moment. It’s a big blind spot that young people have about their favorite artists or whatever craze they’re locked into which turns them off and on! This tunnel-vision, which I find very strange. They see only that, and nothing else! “Don’t confuse me with facts, just let me do my thing, I love this type of art, and only that type of art.” When they’re older, more mature, if they’re lucky, they’ll come to appreciate a whole century of newspaper strip art, Sunday pages and dailies, to admire, to be entertained by, to just read… the funny stuff as well as the straight! CBA: And fine art, and photography. Alex: Of course! Yes! CBA: Sickles and Caniff are grouped together so often, can you distill the difference between them? Alex: The younger, Noel Sickles, was the teacher of the older, Milt Caniff. Illustrator/”reporter” is what Sickles was. He didn’t exaggerate. He didn’t cartoon things. He played it very straight. He was an illustrator! Period! He drew beautifully, had a great eye for perspective, aerial perspective, the whole ball of wax. What he did with figures and lighting and storytelling, the movie techniques he brought into his strip! Black-&-white photography, being 95% of movies in those days, excited him, and he adapted it into his work on Scorchy Smith, using one graytone in his b-&-w art to indicate patterns, light sources showing their effects, in snow scenes, night scenes… remarkable stuff. He was brilliant! Caniff, on the other hand, was more the

cartoonist, capable of the bigfoot stuff (although Sickles had that in him, too; both of them much appreciated Roy Crane from the getgo, admired what he could do with simple lines. But, also, that marvelous caricaturist/fantasy artist, T.S. Sullivant). What turned-on Sickles must’ve turned-on Caniff, re the works of certain artists, cartoonists, painters, because Sickles was keen about impressionists— Monet, Sisley, the political cartoonist David Low, who had lush, wonderful lines and spotting rich blacks, way of drawing and staging! His political cartoons were works of art! Sickles was strongly influenced by Sullivant’s distortions, realistic and fantastic, at once. Plus the influence of the Simplicissimus German artist-caricaturist-illustrator Thony and Blix, Gulbransen. He took it all in. Some of it infected Caniff’s work, echoes of that influence through Sickles. But Caniff was aware of self-promotion, and how important it would be for a strip, like Terry and the Pirates! I don’t know what he may have done to promote Dickie Dare for AP Features, ungenerous with its money or their own promotional material?! But he was helped by deep pockets of the Chicago Tribune/New York News Syndicate, when he got Terry, and they made the most of it. I’ve got clips from Mini-Cam Photography, a little slick magazine of World War II, and it’s spread with lots of photographs of Milt in Chinatown, New York, with his models for the Dragon Lady, Burma, and Pat Ryan. How he took his own photographs with his Rollie twin-lens reflex camera, at his High Torridge home in New City, New York. There was an issue of a fashion magazine, Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, a big spread. Some fashion designer had used Caniff’s drawings of evening-gowned women—from his strip, literally—made the gowns for models who looked like his characters! How Caniff drew them, and the gowned photo models! It was

Above: For Al Dellinges’ fondlyrecalled Near Mint magazine, Alex composed this tribute to the legendary influential cartoonist, Noel Sickles. Courtesy of Al Dellinges. ©2000 Alex Toth. Below: We confess to be featuring very little of Toth’s 1940s and ’50s artwork but we’d be loathe to forget his fine rendition of the Emerald Crusader in this panel from All-American Comics #92. ©2000 DC Comics.

Left: Alex labeled this drawing “The Cord that binds,” recalling both his devotion to aviation and the superbly designed 1937/38 Cord automobile (the latter so nicely celebrated by the artist in his opus, “The Case of the Curious Classic,” in Hot Wheels #5, a tale Alex also wrote). From the cover of APA #23. ©2000 Alex Toth. Jan. 2001

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Gallery

Much Ado About Alex

Below: We’ve dedicated this issue to contributor Steve Cohen because, despite severe health restrictions, he put in a lastminute, herculean effort to get us examples of his Toth and Mayer holdings. Thank you, Steve, and we wish you well. Kudos to Tom Field for his assistance. Above, courtesy of Steve, is an extraordinary example of Alex visualizing a sedate, mundane subject—here, a model sheet of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, Super Friends—and rendering it so vividly and handsomely. The artist has just awesome chops! ©2000 HannaBarbera and DC Comics. Right: 1972 drawing for Shel Dorf published in a San Diego Comic Con souvenir book. Courtesy of Paul Power. ©2000 Alex Toth.

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CBA Q&A

“…Smoke Across a Cloud” Paul Rivoche quizzes Toth on the craft of continuity art PAUL RIVOCHE, freelance advertising illustrator, animation storyboard guy, comic book artist, and graphic designer is the proprietor of Toronto’s Smash Design. In addition to recently rendering Batman in a “Batman Black & White” back-up story, Paul executed covers for DC/Vertigo’s Brave Old World series. Back in the day, he also drew Mr. X.

Above: Courtesy of John Hitchcock, a Toth wash drawing— reportedly cropped by the artist because he was dissatisfied with the drawing of Batman’s lower extremities. Art ©2000 Alex Toth. Batman ©2000 DC Comics.

Opposite page: Perhaps one of the best Batman stories of all time, here are two pages from the Archie Goodwin-scribed “Death Flies the Haunted Sky,” Detective Comics #442, featuring a quintessential Caped Crusader. Courtesy of Jim Amash. ©2000 DC Comics. 32

Conducted by Paul Rivoche As a boy, I had a sacred weekly ritual: The Great Friday Afternoon Pilgrimage, a fevered journey from home to spinner rack, in search of comic books worth buying. After school, Mom supplied me with just enough money for a few comics and a hamburger, and off I would go, anticipation building, the holy quest for the “good stuff” once more renewed. And so it was that I came across the artwork of Alex Toth. Even through the obscuring veil of crude printing, its truth and power was unmistakable. Enthralled, I collected every new story of his I came across: “Burma Sky,” “Soldier’s Grave,” “Dirty Job,” “The Glory Boys,” “The Tally,” and many others… a long list of titles, each unique, each still treasured.

Today, as a comics/illustration professional, I realize how much I owe Alex Toth: For setting such a consistently excellent example; for showing how to observe nature for lessons of truth, not merely copy the surfaces of others’ art; for communicating the raw graphic excitement of the endless wonders around us: the calligraphy of a face, the cascade of a wrinkled sleeve, the rhythm of raking shadows… And mostly, a debt is owed for Alex’s willingness to unselfishly pass on what he knows, to those willing to listen and learn, as he himself once listened and learned from the masters of his day. When you approach Alex for artistic advice, he is as direct, honest, accurate, and powerful as his artwork. That rarest of artists, Alex not only creates, but understands why and how he creates, and can explain it clearly to others. Unlike all too many “teachers” who only want ranks of imitators, Alex says: “Understand these principles, then go forth, and be yourself” …and that is why he can be trusted. The more one looks at his work, the more one finds. It is so well-crafted that it never bores. As anyone who has tried it discovers, it’s just about impossible to be as consistently excellent as he

was and continues to be. This, Alex Toth accomplished, through many years in a difficult business. This article, cobbled together from a Q&A correspondence I maintained with Alex over the last year or so, is for anyone who is interested to hear him speak, not about the ephemeral gossip of bygone days, but about the live inner workings of his craft of cartooning. Most of all, it’s for the student out there who just might give a damn…—P.R. Paul Rivoche: It seems that relatively few comics artists these days pay much attention to the overall design of a page. Many try to do flashy individual panels without looking at the page as a whole. What is your approach to laying out a page? How do you achieve the graphic unity that is a consistent feature of your work? Do you do many small breakdowns to sort out the graphic bold structures of the page in miniature? Alex Toth: Page design is, must be, very personal—it is always variable. No formula helps explain or create it. You can’t cobble up a template/overlay to impress upon any kind of story—ridiculous! Each story, type of story, each subject, each writer’s spelling-it-out in his own unique (or awful) way, needs special focus/care/thought/attention/styling shifts, to customize its art to serve it and ‘plus’ it. ‘A good script draws itself,’ sez me—love, romance, adventure, period costume, Western, futuristic, fantasy, sci-fi, crime, superjock or jill, mystery, suspense, horror, teen humour, kiddytales, spy, aviation, sea tales, ancient civilizations fare,historical, war, etc.… set in every corner of the world or universe, or undersea worlds, some more picturesque than others, demanding research, backgrounds, set designs (based on reality, fotoswipes, etc.) So, you see, trying to contain/ explain/display/exploit visual elements of all the above within a rigid, fixed, artificial framing of such stories, per panel or per page, in a “size 12EEEE,” is lunacy! A lazy man’s approach to the specific problems of our storytelling artform! “One size CANNOT fit all”!!! The cartoonist’s mind/imagination must be free to do the specific job at hand in its—and his—own way! In service to said story! ‘Genre,’ a word I loathe, so bloody effete and fey in the saying of it, explains “vivé là difference”! Tale to tale, writer to writer, subject to subject, approach to approach—finish to finish! We cast our characters like actors, make them personify a type (new or clichéd), and move them through gestural expressions, action, and emotional bits. We clothe/costume them to best define them as characters, we direct how they’ll act or be shown to best, worst, or telling advantage, to serve the story—tipping-off readers to the obvious, or (in reverse) being sly and subtle about them, their true or hidden character, motivations, and intentions. Thus, babyfaced bastards and bitches! Yes? Or ugly pussycats, nice good guys and gals! We design their settings, locations, light them, lens them, move them, to best advantage storywise, to reveal/conceal their characters—create interest in them— through word, deed, body language, expression, or lack of it—see? I used to make little page layouts per script page, up in the right hand corners, usually—in those long-dead days when writers could write out a six- or seven- or eight-panel page’s descriptions, dialogue, and captions on one double-spaced typewritten 8.5”x11” sheet— simple, yes? After two or three readings per page, I’d doodle my mini-layout for it. It was not locked down, but was up for grabs, later, during the actual full-page breakdowns. Every rereading deepened my savvy of the storyflow, scenes, shot to shot continuity, what to stress, frame for (or not), comparative yin-yang elements and how to balance them, add visual pique and interest, little asides/tips to readCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

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ers, have fun with characters, moods, set pieces, action, time of day‚ or night, body language, gestural bits— this would make it more fun for me, so I could make it more fun for readers—‘plus’ that script—surprise even its writer, for getting the point, or adding my own bit to ‘plus’ his—or see it just off center, revealing more meat in his stew! There’s no substitute for thinking time! Think more, draw less—and ‘less-is-more!’ Dig? Clichés are but old truths! I tapped into all the faddist nonsense in my time, used and abused ‘em—badly or not—I’d let go, try another. But, best of all was to just let go all suppositions and formulaic self-limiting layout garbage re mechanics, and allot a scene the space it needed—and no more!!! And I’d use angles, up, down, tilts, around/through/over/under/inside things, like a ditzy Hollywood tyro-cameraman/director gone bonkers, with zoom lenses and special effects, ‘til I got bored with its artifice—over-stressing the mundane—and just took it a panel at a time: backing, filling, redrawing, shoehorning a lot—’til all pieces fit/read smoothly! A jigsaw puzzle—my worst (comic book artists’/cartoonists’ worst) dilemmas were too few panels per page!!! I’d rather deal with 10, than three or four! Rarely did panel copy/picture content warrant such large panels, so few—the scripts didn’t support such space waste, nor the action—so I’d rather not ‘float’ panels in page-space, trying to justify slim fixin’s! No, I’d prefer more story, needing more thought/care to squeeze into pages, demanding more thought about continuity and flow, and how to shoehorn it all in and be inventive! With too much content to fill, build, compose, montage a page, rather than too little, it forces you to more skillfully learn to assess space per storytelling panel(s) and pages! Which, in service to script/story, gives such pages a bigger chunk of it per—reading smooths it out, too, with more of it to be read, framed in a story thusly—almost like an old 12-panel Sunday comics page vs. a three- to four-panel daily… Much more continuity—graphic goodies—interest! Uninterrupted by two-page spread’s gutter, such pages of eight, nine, to 12 or more panels squeezed much into them, and all the fat/waste/excesses of over-scaled art out of them!! Given reasonable, lean dialogue, captions, and copy, the art would force its cartoonist/creator to get down to business and deliver worthy storytelling panels, interlocking into a pageful of what ought to be damn interesting scenes, varied in type and scale! Again: per-panel space assessment is too personal, too dependent upon story, plot points, and continuity-flow, to be set to formula. Each cartoonist responds or ‘sees’ in his own way—decides every panel’s dramatic value, apportions more or less space, and decides the size, vertical, horizontal, or square formats of panels—to get us through them best, without a look of ‘squeezing.’ Mort Meskin, Jack Cole, and others such as Will Eisner, did ‘loaded’ 10-, 12-, 14-panel pages skillfully, with no squeezed look at all! Andre LeBlanc, ditto, in his fun-festive ‘Intellectual Amos’ five-, seven-page tales. But, many 1930s/’40s/’50s classic comic book writers and cartoonists did it as a normal event—we readers, then, got our dime’s worth, no mistake!! All this forced the simplification of figures and scenes to still ‘read’ clearly and well, with no sacrifice of quality at all, by true talents. No ‘cheating’—just a needed economy! The colorists could, and did, enhance and clarify (or muddle) smallish panel content. Cartoonists had no control of the coloring, but hoped that their simple black-&-white art would ‘read’ clearly, no matter how badly it might be colored! It did! More so then, than now… As for the abstract or functional ‘design’ of such pages—it’s a process of ‘seat of the pants’ cutting and fitting into the final composite. It’s personal, case-specific, unique—instinctual—subject to taste/needs/a ‘mind’s eye’ additive/subtractive building-block process. Though I’m repeating myself, I do it to stress the truth of it all—that no formulaic approach or mechanics or tricks does the job of covering panel/page continuity design. It’s too big a job for lazy minds—which dote on predictable, reproducible results, irrespective of input variables. Their reductive aims are to make top sirloin steak dinners, beef tacos, and chitlins, all come out the same—mush! Line up ten cartoonists to illustrate the same script page, and see the differences—or similarities! Fascinating? Mebbe— My own experiences, wins, losses, good and bad results over many decades, boil down to ‘seeing’ with a ‘third eye’, and intuiting when/how an assemblage of panels/a page will come together rightly—best. After lots of erasure, scrubbing away, redrawing, scaling-up/down, shifting P.O.V., recomposing, slanting emphases this way or that to link up with previous panel content, add variety, visual interest, and clarity—the jigsaw pieces do, at last, begin to fit. Copy flow, dialogue, captions flow, connect, link up—yin-yang—ham ‘n’ eggs—copy and art coalesce, join into a cohesive and connective ‘whole’— voilà! Revelation! Then, we had to learn to fit all storytelling elements together! Copy and art! But, for 30-40 years we’ve had damn Stan Lee/Jack Kirby’s Marvel collaborations, the peculiar post-art writing style Lee poisoned the water with. It was imitated by every writer there, and then at DC, by crossovers ‘spreading the method’: the post-art writing of dialogue, captions, etc., shoehorning it all in, over, around, and under the art (making a mess of it, in my opinion!), ruining graphic and textual continuity and balance—interrupting the flow! And, since the ’50s/’60s, everybody’s doing it!!! We’ve seen writers who no longer write, as writers of my time did, nor do cartoonists compose (non-existent) copy into the art—so both crafts are ill-served, and have been for decades! A big part of the cartoonist’s job is no more—to design copy and art to fit/work/tell their written/drawn story. They’ve abdicated responsibility for it—so no one understands/demonstrates continuity story and art anymore, in print—they’ve deconstructed the whole damn form! Dummies write/draw comic books! Which is comic adventure continuity’s last stand! Thanks to Stan Lee’s overproduction needs, with five-pages-aday Jack Kirby!!! It was madness! It spread! Look at what it’s wrought! Guys who draw—but don’t know what to draw! Or what word/picture Jan. 2001

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Above: Few concepts are as “pure Toth” as his own Jesse Bravo, a character written, drawn, lettered, and fullyowned by the artist. A fan drawing of the Erroll Flynninspired hero, courtesy of John Hitchcock. Below: An unused panel(?) from Bravo for Adventure. Courtesy of Manuel Auad. ©2000 Alex Toth.

EXTRAVAGANZA!

NUMBER 11

CELEBRATING THE LIVES & WORK OF THE GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

JANUARY 2001

DEPARTMENTS: GUEST EDITORIAL: MUSINGS ON SHELDON MAYER Visiting helmsman Bill Alger on the development of this Sugar & Spike issue ................................2-B CBA COMMUNIQUES: MORE CHARLTON CLARIFICATIONS Letters to Ye Ed clarifying Charlton copyright ownerships and discussing CBA #10 ........................3-B CBA COMMENTARY: ALEX TOTH—‘BEFORE I FORGET’ Our “flipside subject” discusses the importance of Sheldon Mayer, Toth editor and mentor ..........6-B SPECIAL SHELDON MAYER AND SUGAR & SPIKE SECTION: CARTOONIST CHRONOLOGY: SHELDON MAYER TIMELINE The year-by-year highlights of the great artist/writer/editor’s career ............................................10-B BEFORE SUGAR & SPIKE: SCRIBBLY JIBBLET, BOY CARTOONIST Rocco Nigro examines Mayer’s other masterpiece, his semi-autobiographical Scribbly ..................12-B MERRILY MAYER HARRIS INTERVIEW: SUGAR’S DADDY Bill Alger talks to the daughter of Sheldon Mayer on her father’s life and art ..............................14-B LANNEY MAYER INTERVIEW: SHELLY & SPIKE Candid and revealing talk by Bill Alger with Shelly Mayer’s son on his dad’s complex nature ......34-B COVER GALLERY: 99 ISSUES OF SUGAR & SPIKE Repros of the 15-year run of Sugar & Spike courtesy of Beverly Martin and Jon Ingersoll ............46-B A LIFE WITH SUGAR & SPIKE: …AND EVERYTHING NICE Longtime S&S fan Beverly Martin gives a personal take on our loveable duo of tiny tots ............50-B ALEX TOTH—’BEFORE I FORGET’ SPECIAL SECTION Celebrating America’s greatest living comic book artist with interviews, checklists & more! ..FLIP US! COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $6.95 ($8.00 Canada, $10.00 elsewhere). Yearly subscriptions: $30 US, $42 Canada, $54 elsewhere. First Printing. All characters are © their respective owners. All material is © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © their respective authors. ©2000 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. PRINTED IN CANADA. Cover acknowledgement: Scribbly, Sugar & Spike ©2000 DC Comics.

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Guest Editorial

Musings on Sheldon Mayer Guest editor & cartoonist Bill Alger on the story behind this ish

Above: Sheldon Mayer’s original April 25, 1976 artwork commissioned by Charlie Roberts shown with unaltered dialogue. CBA is eternally grateful to Charlie for sharing this previously-unseen treasure—thanks, C.R.! Read Charlie’s “Story Behind Our Cover” at right. Characters ©2000 DC Comics. Artwork ©2000 Sheldon Mayer Estate. Below: Sheldon’s December 1959 holiday greeting card featuring his two rascals. Sugar & Spike ©2000 DC Comics. Courtesy of Merrily Mayer Harris. Artwork ©20000 Sheldon Mayer Estate.

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This (somewhat massive) Sheldon Mayer section of this magazine began rather simply. I was speaking with CBA editor Jon B. Cooke about contributing to a proposed “kids’ stuff” issue and I off-handedly mentioned that I had been in contact with Mayer’s grown kids, Lanney and Merrily—reportedly the real-life inspiration for their father’s legendary comic series Sugar & Spike—and could see if they had any interest in being interviewed for the issue. Jon said, “Sure, that’d be great.” I got a call from Ye Ed shortly after that informing me that unfortunately the “kid’s stuff” issue had been indefinitely postponed, but did I think that I could gather enough material together for a flip-book just on Mayer’s Sugar & Spike? Of course, I could! It would be easy! Well, actually, I had no idea if I could fill up half an issue on Mayer, but why not promise now and scramble to make it happen later? I’d long felt that Mayer’s career had been unjustly overlooked and this was an opportunity to widen awareness of his achievements in the comics field and increase his fan base. Plus, it would be yet another chance to beg DC to consider reprinting some of Mayer’s long-unavailable work (a Scribbly/Red Tornado Archive Edition perhaps?). Both Lanney and Merrily graciously agreed to be involved in the issue and I began to interview Mayer’s co-workers in the comics industry. It soon turned out that the Mayer sibling interviews were going so well (and I had gathered together enough of Shelly’s art) that there might not be room for much else. Jon suggested that we narrow the scope of the issue to focus mainly on Sugar & Spike, while including enough information on other aspects of Mayer’s career to provide a pretty good overview of his non-S&S work. Hopefully there will be enough interest in Mayer in the future for someone (CBA?) to publish further interviews with Mayer’s friends

and associates to round out our knowledge of the man and his work. In the meantime, I hope that we have produced a heartfelt tribute to a man who, as an editor, was an instrumental force in the genesis of the comics industry and, as a cartoonist, produced some of the most beloved, endearing kids’ comics of all time. —Bill Alger

The Story Behind Our Cover If you were surprised to see the wonderful “new” cover by Shelly Mayer adorning this issue of CBA, you may have been doubly intrigued when you saw it inscribed to our magazine by the cartoonist, who passed away in 1992, six years before we debuted! Well, we confess a bit of Photoshop magic was committed on the piece (originally drawn and colored 24 years ago by the artist) and we beg your forgiveness for our indulgence. Contributed by Charlie Roberts, we feature the original at left, and we asked Charlie if he could tell us the tale behind this delightful artwork. Here are his comments: DC Comics decided to put on a special comic convention in February 1976. The almost-30 years of litigation against them by the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, had been settled a few months earlier. Jerry and Joe were in attendance at the con, as were Bob Kane, Curt Swan, Sol Harrison, and quite a few others involved with the company at the time. Sheldon Mayer couldn't have been nicer, to the point of doing a black-&-white sketch for my daughters. I inquired about a specialty piece. He said a color original would be $50 a character, so I requested Scribbly drawing Sugar and Spike, thus the cover you see here cost $150. He asked that the check be made out to a new charity, The Bill Everett Fund (the noted Marvel artist had fallen on hard times). The National Cartoonist Society had their Milt Gross Fund to help needy cartoonists, but most comic book artists didn't belong to the NCS nor did they have insurance as most were freelancers. Coming on the heels of the Siegel & Shuster settlement, Sheldon Mayer was at the forefront (along with Neal Adams and Jerry Robinson) in what was then a pioneering effort to not only see that those in the comic book industry received better pay but that they also got insurance and the return of their original art. Those involved in the business would finally see light at the end of the tunnel, and long overdue respect for their efforts. Shelly, the boy cartoonist, devoted his entire life to making comics better for readers and, in the end, for his fellow adult cartoonists. —Charlie Roberts

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cartoonist and introduces the series’ other characters. In the beginning, Mayer seems unsure if he should have Scribbly work for a comic book publisher (Rational Comics) or a newspaper (the character ends up with the newspaper). Scribbly wants to work on a popular comic strip called Terrificman (looking a lot like Superman) but they already had someone on the project. Her name was Red Rigley. Mayer is not afraid to use women in occupations that most comic book creators reserve only for men. Scribbly falls for Red in a big way, even though she’s a bit older than he. The editor, Mr. O’Hara, is already involved with her, which leads into many love triangle stories between the three main characters. (It should be noted that the editor also appears in the earlier “Scribbly” incarnation as well, though the two versions of the editor bare no resemblance. The first O’Hara looks like a character out of Mutt & Jeff, while the second is somewhat like Cary Grant, only sporting blonde hair.) Mr. Birdnest is the publisher of the newspaper. Scribbly’s mother is put through the same makeover as the editor. His brother looks the same and was still named Dinky but the title of his stories now went by the name “Lillul Snoony.” Dinky’s girlfriend was also the same and there were appearances by the family dog, Dizzy Dog! Scribbly does a little of everything at the paper and often becomes the news himself, with tales of Scribbly as cowboy, movie star, football hero, boxer, rodeo rider, and even a fighting pirate. He appears many times in Western stories, a theme that may have to do with Mayer’s real-life interest in American history and horse riding. Mayer even did jokes with Scribbly imitating Groucho Marx, Jimmy Durante, and Oliver Hardy. The first five or so issues of Scribbly are very animated in style and use exaggerated facial expressions lending to the visual humor of the stories. There is a quality at work here similar to the antics of a Preston Sturges movie. Some of the issues are full-length stories which was not the norm for DC at that time. A female character named Clover Cooley is eventually brought in as a real love interest for Scribbly (someone closer to his own age than Red). Their romance becomes the main focus of the episodes for the final few issues. In some ways, Scribbly becomes more of a regular teen comic at this point. O’Hara and Red totally disappear, and in fact, there are no more stories about the newspaper office. (This may be due to the success of teen titles like Leave It to Binky and Buzzy for DC, and Archie and Patsy Walker for rival publishers.) In order to establish that tried-and-true plot device, the love triangle, a male character named Bentley is introduced into the series. Bentley is romantically interested in Clover—not good for Scribbly—with Clover’s little sister also playing a part, adding spice to the love triangle. An odd thing (for comics, that is) happens with his romance with Clover, in that Scribbly starts growing up. Few comic book characters actually aged at the time and certainly none from DC come to mind. The first 13 issues of the title’s run are 52-pagers and the last two are 32-pagers. The final two issues appear inked by someone else, maybe Bob Oksner, though Mayer is always at his best when inking his own work. Even the Rudolph stories from the 1970s, while nice, would have been better if Mayer had inked the project himself. Mayer had a habit of doing the same story over again. This may not seem unusual if you take into account the time period. In those days it was a common practice to reuse a story or idea from years earlier. The thinking was: How many people would notice? Many who read a story the first time were, more than likely, no longer reading comic books anymore by the time of the “recycling.” (Today, with continuity and reprints, this recycling would probably not go over too well with the fans.) One story Mayer reused was a horse riding/rodeo tale. He even made it the cover feature when printed in Scribbly #5. The cover of Scribbly #2 is an old “Why Big Brudders Leave Home” gag. A story concerning Scribbly wanting his editor’s approval was done twice, as well as a tale about Dinky’s date with his girlfriend. Mayer would go on to do the same thing with Sugar & Spike. The 1980s digests and international stories have many recycled covers, story ideas, and ending gags to them. As far as I can tell from available sources, the first appearance of Scribbly is in Popular Comics #6 (1936) for Dell Publishing. Scribbly also appears in (at least) issues #8 and 9 of the same title. Many of these Dell comics are filled with strip reprints. “Scribbly” is set up to look like it was a full-page Sunday strip, with continuing stories. Jan. 2001

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Scribbly then appears in The Funnies #2 (Nov. 1936), also for Dell. He stays in that title for some time until Mayer leaves Dell for AllAmerican (DC Comics). Scribbly’s first appearance at DC is in AllAmerican Comics #1 (April 1939), with a long run in this title, ending with #59. There are also appearances in Comic Cavalcade #1-7. 1948 was the start of the 15-issue run of Scribbly. Issues #14 and 15 were 32-pagers. They may have been intended to be 52-pagers (as were the first 13 issues), but were, perhaps, cut back at the last moment and the overflow content was published elsewhere. Buzzy #32-34, 39, and Leave It to Binky #15 each have a “Scribbly” backup story, appearing after Scribbly’s title is cancelled. In Sugar & Spike #30, Mayer does a story for all the fans of Scribbly to enjoy, with the once-”midget cartoonist” appearing as a grown up with his hands full with his own son, Scribbly Jr.! Talk about crossovers! In 1988, Sheldon Mayer wrote and drew his last “Scribbly” story, a threepager featuring the Red Tornado, in Secret Origins #29. Even the renowned cartoonist/writer Jules Feiffer believes Mayer’s Scribbly work is worth investigating. Not long ago, The Comics Journal reprinted Feiffer’s notes from his groundbreaking ’60s book The Great Comic Book Heroes. Feiffer states his respect for Mayer and Scribbly and planned on featuring them in the book, though later deciding the inclusion didn’t fit the scope of the project. It has been far too long since most readers have had the chance to view Mayer’s early accomplishments. Let’s hope that DC will put some of Mayer’s classic work back into print for a new generation of fans to enjoy.

Above: As best as we can tell, here’s Sheldon Mayer’s greatest Golden Age creation’s first appearance in (ye ghads!) a non-DC comic book, from Popular Comics #6, 1936, published by Dell. Courtesy of Rocco Nigro. Scribbly ©2000 DC Comics.

CBA Interview

Sugar’s Daddy Talking with Merrily Mayer Harris, Shelly’s Daughter Conducted by Bill Alger I originally got in touch with Sheldon Mayer’s daughter, Merrily, a few years ago through her brother Lanney, who suggested that she might be able to help with some questions I had about their father. I was pleased to find that Merrily is an enthusiastic admirer of her father’s work and a limitless source of information pertaining to his life.When I began gathering material for this issue, Merrily supplied me with copies of family momentos including a cache of previously unpublished family photos, for which I am eternally grateful. This interview, copyedited by Merrily, began with a series of e-mails, was continued through the post and concluded with conversations conducted over the phone. Thanks again to Merrily for going well beyond my expectations in helping me to make this issue a reality.—Bill Alger Comic Book Artist: Let’s start by getting a little information about your father’s childhood. Could you tell me when and where Sheldon was born? Merrily Mayer: He was born on April Fool’s Day in 1917 in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Harlem, New York. He was born at home. His parents were separated at the time of birth (and I’m not really sure if it was in his mother’s or grandmother’s apartment where he was born), but I remember him telling me he was stillborn, and that it was his grandmother (his mother Jennie Grossman Greenberger’s mother) Hannah Grossman, who in desperation painstakingly brought him back to life. I think she wrapped him in wet, cold and then warm towels over and over until he started breathing. CBA: Was there a medical reason given for his being stillborn? Merrily: I don’t remember if a doctor ever showed up, or if there was a “medical reason” given for his being a stillborn. But I do remember him telling me that his mother was embarrassed and afraid when she was in labor and wouldn’t give into it, trying for some reason to keep him in there. Having been at that stage of delivery too long, he apparently ran out of air and just stopped breathing. CBA: Can you give me some background on Sheldon’s parents, such as when they were born and what they did for a living? Merrily: His mother’s name was Jennie (I’m not sure what that was short for) Grossman. 14-B

She would never tell anybody her real age, but one day let it slip that she was 18 when my dad was born. So that would put her birth date somewhere around 1899. My paternal grandfather’s name was Samuel Greenberger and he was a shoemaker in Lakewood, New Jersey. My grandmother remarried (when my dad was about four years old) to a man named Leo Mayer, and he was a meat-cutter in a butcher shop. Leo’s family was from Germany, but I’m not sure which generation it was that came over. My dad’s father remarried, and I think dad only saw him once or twice after that. I remember dad saying that his real father was very special and that he thought a lot of him, but to keep peace with his mother, dad didn’t make an effort to contact him. CBA: Was your father’s last name originally Greenberger? Merrily: I haven’t been able to find his birth certificate yet, so I don’t know if he was born Grossman or Greenberger. But I remember my dad telling me that the kids in his school teased him for having a different last name than his mother Jennie, Mrs. Leo Mayer. For that reason, and for the fact he had grown to love his new father, Leo, he wanted to let Leo adopt him. At that time not being able to afford an expensive adoption process, they just changed his last name to Mayer. Grandpa Leo died of cancer in around 1959, and it was after that when my mother looked up my dad’s real father, Sam Greenberger and went to visit him in Lakewood, New Jersey. I now regret never having gotten the chance to meet him, but when my first daughter was born (in 1967) I got a very nice letter from him, and shortly after that my dad called him and I got to talk (briefly) with him on the phone. In any interviews with my dad that you might read, when he referred to “my dad,” he was talking about Leo Mayer; when he said “my father,” he meant his real father, Samuel Greenberger. I never once heard my father refer to Grandpa Leo as his stepfather; he chose to use the words “dad” and “father” to make that distinction. CBA: What was Sheldon’s middle name? Merrily: I remember him telling me that he never had a middle name, and for some reason, when he wrote his full name out, he would include “N.M.I.” between his first and last name, which meant Sheldon “No Middle Initial” Mayer. I’m not quite sure why he took the trouble to do that, but those who knew him knew he was a stickler for details, and given his sense of humor, it wasn’t really all that atypical of him. CBA: Did your father have any brothers or sisters? Merrily: Yes, his mother and Grandpa Leo had one more son, Monroe. The baby brother was born when Sheldon was about eleven. He never once referred to Monroe as his half brother, he was his “kid brother” and he took the role of being a big brother very seriously. He also did mention to me one day that after his real father had remarried, they had a son, too. His name was Billy. Apparently, Billy had been seriously injured during World War II, and for some reason, wound up being institutionalized. I’ll never forget the day he told me about my Uncle Billy. He said, “You know, he’s just as much my brother as Monroe was” (but Sheldon never got to meet Billy). CBA: Was your father very talkative about his childhood? I was wondering what his relatives were like and if they influenced his sense of humor and his love of cartooning. Merrily: Yes, he talked quite a bit about his childhood and life in New York City in general. His family was quite poor when he was growing up, so at first they thought his drawing pictures everywhere was just a waste of time. (He did draw them everywhere—on the back of his homework assignments, on walls—everywhere.) As I COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

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understand it, my grandmother’s (his mother Jennie’s) parents were Hungarian immigrants. Life was a struggle for them. And from his accounts, his mother (unlike his grandmother) seemed to view everything as an obstacle rather than a challenge. So his being different posed a “problem” for her. I remember him telling me that when he was quite young, people noticed his talent and urged her to enroll him in an art school. I don’t know where she found this particular one, or whether it was part of a public high school that had an emphasis on art for those who qualified, but she was told that his talent was beyond what they taught there. Instead of being proud, she was furious. “Now what do I do with you?!?” was her screaming attitude. So no, I don’t think he had a whole lot of encouragement at that point. His mother meant well, but she was young, uneducated and scared—viewing most things as a threat. She was a bit volatile and would yell and scream in most instances rather than access a situation and then clearly deal with it. His grandmother Hannah became his hiding place, a sort of safety/comfort zone. I never got to know my real grandfather (Sam Greenberger) very well, but for the most part the rest of my dad’s family appeared to me to be ignorant and greedy. Did they possess any talent? None I ever noticed…. You asked me where my dad got his sharp sense of humor from and I really had to think about that one. He really was unique and unlike the rest of his family. His grandmother Hannah died when I was very little and I don’t remember her, but I do recall my dad telling me of the loving and playful relationship he had with her. Maybe that’s where he got it; I’m not sure. No one else in his family seemed to have as much going for them as he did, sense of humor or otherwise. CBA: What comic strips did your father enjoy as a child? Did any particularly inspire him to become a cartoonist? Merrily: I don’t remember him telling me about what he liked to read or whom he was influenced by when he was growing up, but he did love drawing cartoons at a very young age. Things were tough for him growing up in New York City. Money was tight and to his mother, any new thing was a problem that she wished she didn’t have to deal with. And the way she dealt with most situations, initially, was to get hysterical and then yell, scream and complain. My dad had an incredible sense of humor and found a way of making fun of the ridiculous. So for him, it was making fun of what could have been an uncomfortable situation and drawing cartoons became a kind of escape. CBA: Did your father ever joke about being born on April First as contributing to his sense of the absurd? Merrily: Oh, that was sad. He didn’t joke about it… well, yeah, he did a little bit. He said things like, “I was my mother’s April Fool.” But the thing that was sad—and he never talked about it, but I know—I remember he was very sensitive, and if you told someone it was your birthday, and it was April first, they wouldn’t believe you, and they were mean in those days. They were so mean. I know he had a hard childhood. He did joke a little bit about it. I think it was really sad that

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he was born on that day, because he couldn’t tell anybody it was his birthday… you’d say that, and then people in those days, not only wouldn’t they believe you, but they would do something mean. I think that was kind of sad he was born that day… CBA: So “Happy birthday!” and then they’d be cruel to him? Merrily: Well, no. It was like, “It’s my birthday,” and nobody would believe him. “Yeah, sure, right, yeah, here’s an April Fool’s joke for you!” And they’d do something mean. He was really sensitive. I mean, he really thought everything had to be so perfect and had to be a certain way. He didn’t like Archie Bunker, because he was really afraid people would believe that was the way to think. He didn’t think that show should be on TV because people might take it seriously. He was very worried about things, even in the comics. CBA: Was he also influenced by animated cartoons? In 1934, Sheldon worked as an opaquer at the Fleisher animation studio. Did he ever consider going into animation as a career instead of drawing comic strips? Merrily: When I was about sixteen and we still lived in Rye (not far from New Rochelle— about 25 miles north of New Yok City), most of my friends were

Opposite top: The brains of the tots (before Bernie appeared, that is), assertive Sugar Plumm in a detail from an unpublished Sheldon Mayer newspaper strip sample. Courtesy of Robin Snyder. Art ©2000 The Estate of Sheldon Mayer. Sugar ©2000 DC Comics. Opposite below: Young Merrily Mayer trying to keep within the lines in this 1945 picture courtesy of the budding colorist. ©2000 Merrily Mayer Harris. Above: Merrily, the inspiration for Sugar, exploring the wonders of life in a circa 1946 photo. Courtesy of and ©2000 MMH.

Above: Courtesy of Merrily Mayer Harris, here are (upper right) Shelly’s mother, Jennie Grossman Greenberger, (top) Shelly’s Harlem, New York City birthplace, and (above) Jennie and her young tot, circa 1918. ©2000 Merrily Mayer Harris.

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getting summer jobs as lifeguards at Rye Beach or at one of the local beach clubs. I asked him if I could opaque for the summer (it was about 1960) and his exact words were, “You can opaque your life away. There’s no future in it.” And that was that. So I don’t know how much he appreciated having done that, or if he just didn’t want me doing it. But I do know that for a time (and I’m not sure what year this was, or for how long) but he did ghost animate Felix the Cat for a while. I don’t know how many people knew that because of prior contract commitments and what not (or how much trouble I will be in for mentioning it!) CBA: He worked on Felix the Cat? Merrily: He did Felix the Cat and he did Mutt and Jeff when Ham Fisher couldn’t do it. He did all those things. I don’t know if he ghosted it because he was under contract or because they didn’t want anybody to know that Ham Fisher couldn’t do it. At any rate, when he did Mutt and Jeff, I liked it better than when Ham Fisher did it! CBA: Was this the Mutt and Jeff comic strip or the DC comic book? Merrily: I think it was the comic book. Yeah, and I don’t know what the deal was. My dad said something about Ham’s hand being shaky or something. Maybe Ham didn’t want anyone to know he wasn’t still able to do it, he’d hurt his hand, or he was getting older, or whatever it was, I’m not sure if he had Parkinson’s or what happened to him. I don’t know how many stories my dad did or how many issues, but he showed me one he had drawn and it was awesome. I wish I had some of those that he did, they were so good! He did do fill-ins for Felix the Cat, and I can’t remember for how long, or which ones he did. But when he did something, it was good, I mean, it was better than when the originator did it! I’d love to see him get his hands on Rugrats… [laughter] CBA: What type of work did he do on Felix? Merrily: He animated at least one episode for TV. CBA: This would have been in the late 1950s, early ’60s? Merrily: That sounds about right. CBA: Oh, so he was working on that while he was doing Sugar & Spike? Merrily: I think so. Someone asked me how much time he put in for DC each day, and I think it was from when he woke up to when he went to sleep. If he was on a picnic with us, he had a sketchbook with him. He would always pull out a piece of paper and write something down in a book. He was always working, it seemed to me. Even when he was having fun, he was working, because he was always getting ideas that he could use in a story. CBA: Did he contribute any writing to the Felix cartoons? Merrily: Well, I’d imagine he did. I think he wrote it and drew for it. I don’t know for how long and I don’t think there was a whole lot of it. I remember he was kind of proud that they asked him to do it. He did some things in New York, he went down to the city to do that, because that’s where they had all the equipment. I saw him draw

on great big pieces of Bristol board—poster-sized pieces. He’d pencil and then ink them, because he didn’t like the way they were inked when he just sent in penciled sketches. But I didn’t see him work on the animation. CBA: When your father was a teenager, he worked as an assistant to cartoonist “Ving” Fuller at the New York Mirror newspaper. In 1935, he joined the McClure Syndicate and ended up ghosting George Storm’s Bobby Thatcher in 1937. Did he ever speak to you about his early cartooning jobs and the struggles he went through to get established? Merrily: He did often mention the struggles—working for Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson and other people who had the habit of “misrepresenting the truth”—but the only one of those whom you mentioned I ever met and remember dad talking about was Ving Fuller. One particular story comes to mind: I was about ten-ish when I came across a picture of Ving. He claims to have invented—and managed to get a patent on—a little pink pig about a foot long and six or so inches fat. That was a piggy bank whose nose was a combination lock. The picture was of Ving Fuller standing next to President Eisenhower with his piggy bank on what I remember to be a big elaborate dinner table, with lots of people around it. This was about 1954 and at the age I was very impressed. Ving had given my brother and me one of those pigs—and here he was with one and the President! I remember commenting to my dad that Ving must be pretty important to be having dinner with the President! He then told me that it had been some kind of media event and that Ving just walked over there, put his pig down, and got someone to take a picture of them together with his pig. Security wasn’t as tight then, and that type of thing was easier to accomplish in those days. I remember getting the impression from my dad that the picture was a might bit misrepresentational and that Ving could be a little irritating and selfabsorbed. [laughs] I thought it was really cool, but I don’t think my dad thought much of it. CBA: Do you know what sort of work your father did for Ving when he was his assistant? Merrily: You know, I don’t. Dad didn’t talk about it too much. I don’t think dad liked him a whole lot, so I don’t know what he did for Ving. I just know he didn’t think a whole lot of him. He just looked at him kind of like a rude opportunist. Dad wanted genuine stuff out of people, and I’m not sure he always got that from Ving. CBA: Your father said that Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson and other people had the habit of misrepresenting the truth. Did he find that the people he worked for early on were less than honest? Merrily: It’s not that they weren’t honest, they were just so unfair to each other. He didn’t like people to take advantage of each other, and in New York, a lot of people were like that. I can remember a story he told me where he was with a friend—can’t think of his name—and they were talking with two girls. They were on a beach and one of the girls said, “I’m starting to get hungry,” The other guy said something rude, like “Bite your nails, baby,” or something like that. [laughter] And my dad was furious with him. The guy’s attitude was, “Well, you’re on your own with eating,” because men were supposed to pay for things. And this guy had the attitude, “Well, I’m not taking you out to dinner.” This upset my dad and I think he wound up taking them out to dinner to make up for that guy’s rude remark. CBA: Was he ever upset by DC’s treatment of writers and artists who contributed to the creation of major characters? Merrily: I think so, but I don’t remember specifics. Later on, he said that DC was very fair. He wouldn’t have stayed with them if it weren’t a good opportunity for him to do what he loved to do. CBA: Plus they seemed to treat him better in the long run than most of the other people who worked for DC in the 1940s and ’50s. Merrily: Isn’t that interesting? He was a leader and I think that helped. I don’t know if it was because they really liked him, or because they realized he was very valuable. Maybe they thought he was fair to them and they wanted to be fair to him. I’m not sure, but I know that towards the end of his life, they were very fair with him. Towards the end, DC had an agreement where they provided insurance for both my parents, who needed medical attention around the clock. They were very sick, and DC did wonderful things for both of them. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

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couldn’t. I think so. But he didn’t regret it enough to leave. I think if it wasn’t for capitalism, he might not have stayed. You know what I mean? He had to make a living, didn’t want to do something he hated, and I think he felt loyal to them. CBA: Basically he really liked working with them, but he had other dreams that he never achieved? Merrily: Yeah, he had dreams of doing other things that he would have liked to have done that he couldn’t get to. Yeah. I don’t know what they were, but there were things he wanted to do differently. CBA: So you have no idea what else he would have wanted to do in his career? Merrily: I don’t. He never complained about anything like that. He’d never say, “I wish I could do this or that,” because he never wanted us to feel guilty about being in his life. That it was because of us, that he had a wife and kids, that he didn’t do these things. I remember him telling me about a time when he went to a doctor and his blood test got mixed up with a person that had terminal cancer. He was told that he had six months to live. This was back when I was really little, maybe even before I was born, I don’t know. Anyway, he didn’t tell anybody about his supposed cancer. He said, “I feel fine,” and the doctor replied, “Well, you’re okay as long as you feel fine. And we don’t have to do anything until you start to feel sick. You’ll feel fine for a while. Just live.” He was waiting to feel sick and he never did. Then it turns out the guy made a mistake. So my dad thought he was going to die for a while and never said a word to anybody. That made me realize if there was anything really wrong with him, I’d never know about it. CBA: Do you think your father ever wished he owned the rights to Sugar & Spike and Scribbly? Merrily: I’m sure he did. I’d bet my life he did. I know he did wish he could just get it published and have that be his. Absolutely. He didn’t think he could afford to do that, and maybe because he had kids, he didn’t want to go out on a limb, and so he gave it to them. That way he’s working for them, and he’s not gonna starve. He was very, very glad to have the opportunity to do what he loved doing. They were good to all of us. When my parents were very, very sick, DC was good to them. They really were. He didn’t have any regrets for working for DC. He would’ve loved to have owned the stuff, but he was a practical person and in the end it paid off for him and them. CBA: What careers did you and Lanney end up with? Do you think that your father’s occupation influenced yours in any way? Merrily: I wound up working for a dentist, got married and raised five kids before getting a bachelor’s degree focusing on sociology, psychology, and journalism (from the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington). At present time, I’m freelance writing, and will be involved in social work for the state of Washington. My brother Lanney—I’m not even sure about all of the interesting things he’s involved with. You’d have to ask him. I do know that he has a Ph.D. in education and is involved in teaching and counseling on some level or another. But what and for whom, I’m not exactly sure. Much like our dad, he is a real humanitarian and very dedicated to his pursuits. CBA: Was your father ill for a while before he passed away? Merrily: Yeah, he was in a wheelchair. He was fighting cancer for many years and he was okay for a while. Then my mom got very sick. She was terminally ill with lung cancer and he started losing his eyesight. My mom was in bed all the time. He made sure she had round-the-clock nurses and everything. Then he decided to just slip away. He asked my daughter,”Do you need me anymore? Do you mind if I just go?” She said, “Yeah, that’s fine. I’m fine.” And then he just died. Well, I wouldn’t have said that. I wasn’t done with him. CBA: He died right after...? Merrily: Right after that, yeah. He said, “I’ve done everything I wanted to do,” and that’s not really true. There was a lot he really wanted to do, but he was just too tired to do it. CBA: Could he still draw when he was sick? Merrily: I think so. He couldn’t see very well, but he was drawing right up until the end. CBA: How long did your mother live after your father passed away? Merrily: She started to get better for a while. And then I guess she Jan. 2001

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got scared. She didn’t know what to do without him, so she just died four months after he did. They were together for almost 50 years, actually. CBA: You said you started getting closer to your dad when you went to college. Merrily: Yeah. He didn’t have the opportunity to go to college. He just worked. He was selling cartoons when he was 11 years old. It’s like I achieved something that he didn’t. So instead of treating me like I was a dumb kid, he kind of looked up to me as someone who knew as much as he did. Which, of course, I never could. He was incredible. He was a self-made man, really. And he knew who he was. He was a free spirit and really had a good sense of right and wrong and who he was. He was amazing. But he just thought it was really awesome that I went to college. “Well, now I don’t have to worry about her,” and we kind of became friends. We got to be pretty close about two years before he died. I just wish I’d gotten to spend more time with him, but I think everybody wishes that. I really wish I had owned a video camera. I could’ve videotaped him telling all of his funny stories. It would be nice to have videos of him, because he was so funny. He was as good or better than anything you can watch on TV. When he told a story, he was really captivating. He was a very good storyteller. His timing was good, and he was very interesting. People loved him. He was very funny. CBA: Well, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Merrily: Okay. I’m glad you called. I’m glad to be part of it. I’d love to help, because I think it’s nice that people still remember my father and his comics.

Left is his art to the cover of the first Rudolph Limited Collectors’ Edition (#C-20).

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CBA Interview

Shelly & Spike A Conversation with Lanney Mayer, Son of Sheldon Conducted by Bill Alger Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson I was able to contact Lanney Mayer a number of years ago when Robin Snyder (editor of the monthly newsletter The Comics) was kind enough to supply me with Lanney’s address. I wrote Lanney your average fawning fan letter concerning the impact his dad’s work had upon me and he responded with a wonderful letter and photocopies of an article he had written for Overstreet’s Gold and Silver magazine. At the time, I mulled over the possibility of someday interviewing him at length concerning his father, but went no further with it. After getting the go-ahead for this issue from Jon Cooke, I approached Lanney, who okayed the idea, and we conducted this interview over the phone on the morning of July 29, 2000. It was a pleasure speaking with Lanney, who I found to be friendly, intelligent and very frank with his opinions. He is justifiably proud of his father. My thanks go out to Lanney for providing us with these memories of his father and letting us get a glimpse into the creative process behind the genius of Sheldon Mayer. Lanney also copyedited the transcript.—Bill Alger.

Comic Book Artist: Thanks for speaking with me today. I wanted to start by asking about your dad’s childhood. Did he talk about this much? Lanney Mayer: What I recall is that his dad left home when my dad was about seven. Apparently, he was a fairly wellto-do guy in the shoe business. They had come out of Hungary, I think. That side of the family was leather-workers, and saddle-makers, and apparently quite well off. I don’t know how much you know about Judaism, but while that side of the family was certainly living in a village shtetl and was ghettoized, they were different from the socialistic mystics. The socialistic mystics wandered around, in some cases begging for money, and gave their life to religious experiences. I think my grandmother’s side of my family came from that. They were part of the Austria-Hungarian Polish conglomeration, and I’m not sure exactly what their ethnic roots are. The leather side of the family was the Greenbergers, and the other side was Grossmans. There was some tension between the two factions. The leather workers would say to the 34-B

socialistic mystics, “Why are you coming to our house begging for money? Go get a job!” [laughter] I would love to go back to Hungary and see if the village, Yedliva, still exists. I’m guessing they all went to Treblinka. It’s Hungary and early on in the Second World War it was pretty well devastated. Many of those villages were simply herded up and just vacated. When the leather workers came to this country, the use of the horse was in decline, so they got in the shoe business and apparently did quite well. That man—my dad’s dad— and his name is escaping me right now… CBA: Samuel? Lanney: Yeah, I believe that’s right. He kept watch over my dad from a distance, but I don’t think my dad saw him personally at all until my dad was fully-grown. And I think they only had two or three contacts over that period of time. I think that close to Sam’s death, probably when Sam was in his 50s or 60s, they had some contact. I don’t know a lot about that, except that it was important for my dad. I have no real knowledge of my dad’s life before his father left, except I have a picture of him as a two-year-old on a pony with his grandmother standing next to him. He looks remarkably like my fouryear-old today. I have three boys that are grown and I’ve started another family. I’ve got a six-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy, and the boy looks just like my dad. It’s almost reincarnation. [laughs] My dad was raised on the Lower East Side of New York City and moved once. I’m not sure how far up on the East Side they moved, but it was after my real grandfather left home. The things I remember most about my dad’s childhood have to do with his fondness for his grandmother. Grandma Grossman was his mother’s mother. She was the one that he found as a resource— from what I wasn’t able to articulate. I gather there was some tension in the family. His mother and her sister, Sadie Grossman, raised him essentially. Within four years, his mother married a butcher, Leo Mayer, and my dad took his name. And when my dad was 11 his younger brother Monroe was born. CBA: Was there any reason why his father didn’t have contact with Sheldon? Lanney: Well, I don’t think he wanted to interfere with the new home, once it was established. I think Jenny, in effect, drove him out of the house. But it’s always a three-sided coin, you know. CBA: How did your father relate to his younger brother Monroe? Lanney: Well, he was always the big brother. I think he took care of Monroe, and I think saw him through school and through law school. He’s successful today partly because my dad was a good big brother, who created a stable environment in which he could grow up. He was 11 years older and he was in effect not only a big brother, but in many respects a father. Although Leo was kind of a passive soul, but a good, nurturing soul, my dad was the breadwinner. CBA: Was your father very close with his mother? Lanney: Yes. As I knew her, she was a very kind lady. She was many-sided and I found her good company, and enjoyable, and she was something of a good resource for me. But I remember some tension, and I think a lot of my dad’s early years were lived under the kitchen table, drawing and playing, somewhat hiding out from the adults. I sensed that by the time he reached school, he was somewhat like my sister, a high-energy, creative soul. He had vision problems so he wasn’t able to get into the athletic side of things, which was often stickball and other games in the streets. He wasn’t able to do much of that because he didn’t get glasses until he was 12. So, I suspect that affected his social life in some measure, although he had a cadre of close friends through high school. Of course, there were COMIC BOOK ARTIST 11

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