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TOWER COMICS: YEARS OF THUNDER!

No.14 July 2001

™

$6.95 In The U.S.

WOOD ADKINS BROWN SKEATES IVIE DITKO PEARSON TUSKA STONE JONES

NUMBER 14

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

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher

TWOMORROWS JOHN & PAM MORROW Associate Editors CHRIS KNOWLES DAVID A. ROACH CHRISTOPHER IRVING Contributing Editors ROY THOMAS JOHN MORROW

JULY 2001

DEPARTMENTS: THE FRONT PAGE: LAST MINUTE BITS ON THE COMMUNITY OF COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS Remembering Hank Ketcham, gassin’ up the TwoMorrows’ hype machine for San Diego, and other stuff! ........1 EDITOR’S RANT: THE GREAT SUPER-HERO REVIVAL In the midst of the ’60s Marvel Age and Batmania, Wallace Wood makes an impact on American comics ........4 CBA COMMUNIQUES: LETTERS FROM OUR READERS Wolfman on Stephen King, Kupperberg on Duffy Vohland, Barr on Charlton’s “copyrights,” and more..............6 CBA COMMENTARY: ALEX TOTH—’BEFORE I FORGET’ The master artist discusses the work of the under-appreciated Ogden Whitney ..................................................8

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: $9 postpaid ($11 Canada, $12 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $36 US, $66 Canada, $72 elsewhere. All characters © their respective owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2001 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Cover acknowledgement: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents ©2001 John C. Productions. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

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Proofreader ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON Cover Art WALLACE WOOD, front DAN ADKINS, back Cover Color GRAY MORROW, front SCOTT LEMIEN, back Production JON B. COOKE GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS SAM GAFFORD Logo Designer/Title Originator ARLEN SCHUMER

TOWER COMICS: YEARS OF THUNDER! FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?* Our Man Fred raves about Manny Stallman’s Raven, T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s most underrated agent ..........................11 TOWERING ACHIEVEMENT: THE RISE & FALL OF TOWER COMICS New associate editor Chris Irving examines the impact of the memorable—if short-lived—comics company ....12 WALLACE WOOD INTERVIEW: TALKING WITH WOODY A vintage 1982 interview with the artist legend by fan legend Shel Dorf............................................................18 HERO WORSHIP: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS 101 Lou Mougin gives us a tutorial on the history of Dynamo and his fellow super-spy cohorts ..............................22 SAMM SCHWARTZ INTERVIEW: WORD FROM THE TOWER A light but informative 1966 chat with the late editor/artist on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents......................................30 DAN ADKINS INTERVIEW: DYNAMITE DAN’S DAYS OF T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Wally Wood’s onetime assistant (and the real killer of Menthor!) talks about his days at Tower Comics............32 LEN BROWN INTERVIEW: OF TOPPS AND TOWER On being named Dynamo’s alter ego, working at Topps and his tale of two Woodys ........................................40 ARTIST SHOWCASE: JERRY ORDWAY’S T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS CENTERSPREAD Wow! One of our favorite super-hero artists gives us a brand-new double-page pin-up of our fave agents! ......56 BILL PEARSON INTERVIEW: THE OLD WORLD HEROES The Wood friend and collaborator on his T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents work and life with Woody..............................58 CBA ESSAY: IVIE LEAGUE HEROES Larry Ivie discusses his contributions to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents in this 1997 article ............................................64 GEORGE TUSKA INTERVIEW: THE TUSKA TOUCH Mike Gartland talks with the legendary artist about his 1960s Tower contributions ..........................................70 LIGHTNING ROUND: UP IN THE TOWER Tower writer Steve Skeates on his wonky, wonderful script work for Wally Wood’s T-Agents ............................72 RUSS JONES INTERVIEW: A MAN CALLED JONES The Monster Mania Man on his days with Woody, Warren, and Tower Comics..................................................76 HERO INDEX: THE TOWER COMICS CHECKLIST With the help of Dan Adkins and others, a thorough listing of the line’s adventure titles with creator credits....90 TEENAGE TOWER: TIPPY TEEN AND TOWER, TOO! Terry Austin examines the history of the most popular character at Tower Comics ............................................98 ENDGAME: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. STRIKES TWICE! The trials and tribulations of the 1980s revival of Wally Wood’s unforgettable super-hero line........................100 DRAWING INSPIRATION: THUNDERSTRUCK! Jay Stephens, Dean Haspiel, Bill Wray, James Kochalka, and John Backderf render their T-Agent visions ........106 CLOSING SCENARIO: DON’T LOOK BACK IN ANGER! Blake Bell presents a CBA first: fiction depicting an imaginary meeting between Steve Ditko & Wally Wood ..108 FINAL ASSESSMENT: MY GUILTY PLEASURE John Hitchcock on enjoying the work and friendship of Manny Stallman, glorious artist/writer of the Raven..112

Mascot WOODY by J.D. King Issue Theme Song I’M LIKE A BIRD Nelly Furtado Visit CBA on our Website at: www.twomorrows.com /comicbookartist/

Contributors Dan Adkins • Shel Dorf John Carbonaro • Brian C. Boerner Bill Pearson • Larry Ivie Steve Skeates • Russ Jones Len Brown • Bob Layton George Tuska • Dan DeCarlo Terry Austin • Rocco Nigro Jeff Clem • Steve Cohen Michael T. Gilbert • Mike W. Barr Lou Mougin • Mark Evanier John Hitchcock • J. David Spurlock Jerry Ordway • Gary Brown Fred Hembeck • Brian K. Morris John Borkowski • John R. Cochran Alan Kupperberg • Daniel Tesmoingt cat yronwode • John Harrison Jeff Gelb • Bill Schelly • Alex Toth Chris Irving • Andrew Steven Paul Gulacy • Dave Gibbons Jay Stephens • Dean Haspiel Batton Lash • John Backderf Bill Wray • Marc H. Kardell J.D. King • Dave Elliott Roy Thomas • Jerry K. Boyd Ray Kelly & Kelly’s Comics Bill Alger • Mike Friedrich James Kochalka • James Guthrie John Workman • Neal Adams Mike Zeck • Mike Gartland Steve Mitchell • Ina Cooke Emil J. Novak • Buffalo Nickel David A. Roach • Merlin Haas Dedicated to the Memory and Artistry of the Great

WALLACE WOOD

Opposite page: Courtesy of Bob Layton & CPL/Gang Productions, Wally Wood’s great Dynamo frontispiece from Heroes, Inc. #2, 1978. Above: Detail from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #7. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents ©2001 John Carbonaro; opposite art ©2001 the Estate of Wallace Wood.

and in memory of

Rich Morrissey Henry Boltinoff Hank Ketcham

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

July 2001

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Towering Achievement

Rise & Fall of Tower Comics Chris Irving on the history of the short-lived comics publisher by Chris Irving Below: Courtesy of Larry Ivie, the original splash page to the first Dynamo story, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1, drawn by Wally Wood. Initially writer Len Brown named the character“Thunderbolt,” as evidenced by the logo, but he was subsequently renamed by Wally Wood.

Comic books have survived over six decades by being a resilient medium; despite any downfalls that may plague the industry and often devour whole companies, it seems that more companies sprout up in place once the industry hits another upswing. In the mid-1960s, the Marvel line of comic books made comics a commodity again, as even college students were now enjoying the exploits of super-heroes such as Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, and The Mighty Thor. Tower Books, a publishing line most known for

their inexpensive paperbacks, decided that the four-color medium may be worth pursuing. With the efforts of publisher Harry Shorten and editor Samm Schwartz, both formerly of Archie Comics, they started a new line of comics to hopefully cash in on the craze. The Tower paperback line had originally started under the World Publishing Company, a company acknowledged with the first book on Charles Lindbergh’s historic flight (titled Lindbergh, The Lone Eagle) in 1929. World was also the publishers of the Webster’s New World Dictionary. According to the World Publishing Web site, World established Tower Books in 1939, a paperback reprint line cover-priced at 49¢ each. The Tower line continued throughout the ’60s, when World Publishing was sold to Times Mirror in 1963. Although there is little information to be had on Tower Books, it is assumed Tower was part of a package deal with World. Whatever the case, the Tower line joined with Midwood Books, a publisher of mens’ paperbacks, in 1964. Midwood had published male-oriented books featuring scantily-clad women on lurid covers, many of which were beautifully painted by artist Paul Rader. Apparently, many of Midwood’s early novels featured pseudonymous works by established authors, such as Robert Silverberg, Lawrence Block, and Donald Westlake. It is very possible that, with an expanding base, Tower decided to do comic books, or was approached by publisher Harry Shorten. According to longtime Archie comic artist Dan DeCarlo, who worked for Shorten at Tower, the details were never very clear: “[Harry] was very secretive about that,” DeCarlo recalled. “We thought that it was his company and [that] he formed it.” The mid-’60s was also a boom period for comic books, the first one since the early ’50s, fueled on by the “hip” success of Stan Lee’s self-referential Marvel Comics. Tower apparently wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to join in this latest super-hero revival. “They decided to go into comic books in the mid-’60s, when other people decided to delve into them,” the late historian Rich Morrissey said. “With the Batman TV show and the Silver Age comics doing well, people were trying to get into the field. Publishers like Harvey and Archie, who had been doing non-super-hero comics, were trying to get back into the super-hero field. Tower’s superheroes were basically an attempt to combine the super-hero craze with the spy craze: James Bond and Man From U.N.C.L.E., and things like that.” The Tower Comics offices were located at 185 Madison Avenue, New York City, as part of the Tower Books office. Steve Skeates, one of the few remaining people involved with Tower recall the offices as a typical New York office. “There were one or two rooms in this wing of a floor where the Tower/Belmont books were done,” Skeates described. “Just a couple of rooms devoted to the comic book people. There were only two people there: Samm Schwartz, who was the editor of the whole line, and some assistant, a letterer.” Russ Jones, an infrequent freelance writer for Tower’s war title, Fight the Enemy, remembers, “The comics department was at the very end of a long dark hallway. Samm [Schwartz] and [his assistant Bill Vigoda] were the only two there all the time. It was not like any other company. Harry's father worked as the janitor. No kidding. This old guy with a broom and a mop and swab.” Shortly before Tower Comics’ inception, Shorten had served as a longtime editor at Archie Comics, a company formed in the late 1930s as MLJ with super-heroes such as The Shield and Hangman, characters who soon gave way to the company’s current flag characCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

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ter and namesake, Archie Andrews, “America’s Typical Teenager.” Shorten began his MLJ/Archie career as a writer, churning out hundreds of scripts for such characters as Steel Sterling, The Web, Black Hood, Wizard, and many more. In fact, Shorten co-created the first patriotic hero, The Shield, in Pep Comics #1 (Jan. 1940), with artist Irv Novick. “We met at MLJ, which is now Archie Comics,” Irv Novick said in a recent interview. “Harry was a nice fellow. We were very friendly. As a matter of fact,” Novick said with a chuckle, “he would come to our house and take a shower.... We worked together at MLJ for quite a while. After I came home from the Army in 1947, Harry and I created a syndicated strip called Cynthia. He wrote it, and I drew it and inked it.” Somewhere in this chronology, Shorten wrote the daily newspaper comic gag panel There Oughta Be a Law. How Shorten attained the status of publisher remains a mystery as do the precise identities of the company’s owners. Russ Jones recalls the publisher fondly. “Harry looked like he could have played gangsters in ’30s Warner Brothers films. Everything he did was a knock-off of something. Even his comic panel had a Jimmy Hatlo look about it... a total swipe.” Samm Schwartz joined Archie as an artist in the late ’40s, working on their flagship teenage humor titles. By the 1960s, Schwartz attained an editorial position at the company, but teaming with fellow Archie editor Shorten, the duo jumped ship in 1965 to help helm the fledgling imprint of Tower Comics. “They had been giving Harry Shorten a hard time at Archie,” DeCarlo said. “…Harry Shorten did quit but, in the meantime before that, he had gone into the comic book business with the Tower Corporation. He got me, Samm Schwartz, and [artist] Harry Lucey to work for him. It was funny the way we used to do it: We were all a little nervous about getting caught by Archie and canned. Harry [Lucey] used to do the layouts, and I would do the finishes for a story or two, and then we’d reverse it with my doing the layouts and [Lucey] doing the finishes. Samm was the editor, and the books were coming along good, and expanding…. “Meanwhile, Harry [Lucey] and I were still working for Archie, and they were furious. They knew we were doing something, but we kept denying that we were doing it. [The editor] told me ‘I know you’re tickling the stuff.’ I said ‘Not me, but if you think it’s me, it’s somebody imitating me.’” Lucey, DeCarlo, Shorten and Schwartz worked primarily on Tippy Teen, an Archie-like teen humor comic book that premiered in November of 1965, and its companion title, Tippy’s Friends Go-Go and Animal (debuting in June ’66). While Tippy Teen has become a mere footnote in comics history, it is Tower’s inaugural “Action Series” title that the company is now remembered by: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. While none of the titles would necessarily thrive as well as the Marvel or DC lines, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (and its spin-offs, Dynamo (August ’66) and NoMan (November ’66)) has been considered the resilient and the most celebrated of Tower’s books. This flagship title ran for 20 issues (debuting in the same month as Tippy— November ’65), while Tippy Teen surpassed it to 27 issues, Go-Go and Animal lasted 15, the war title Fight the Enemy (August ’66) lasted three, and Undersea Agent (January ’66) a mere six. Incidentally, except for an isolated filler story appearance in TA #13, Undersea Agent was never explicitly connected to the world of Dynamo & Co., even though its name hints at being a spin-off title. (Dynamo lasted four issues and NoMan reached two.) With neither Schwartz or Shorten versed in the super-hero genre, it was placed upon Wally Wood, the legendary EC Comics and Mad magazine artist, to develop and create a new super-team to compete with Stan Lee’s hipster heroes and DC editor Julius Schwartz’s resolute characters. Wood had only recently left a short but memorable stint at Marvel, redesigning Daredevil and inking Jack Kirby at the House of Ideas, and—when the Tower offer arrived—the artist was working on Harvey Comics’ newly-revived adventure comics, but Wood ran into editorial disagreements at Harvey. “Harry Shorten called me when he started to publish comics, and I had a dream setup,” Wood wrote J. David Spurlock. “I created all the characters, wrote most of the stories, and drew most of the covers. I did as much of the art as I could.” July 2001

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The agents of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. were a cross between conventional super-heroes and Cold War spy television (the most commonly attributed spy inspiration is the then-popular The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). The long-winded acronym T.H.U.N.D.E.R. stood for The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves. When a scientist was killed by armies of the villainous Warlord (who, by no doubt, happened to be a Communist), three secret weapons were found by the non-descript, machine-gun toting T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents: A belt to increase one’s molecular density, an invisible stealth cloak, and a helmet that gave the wearer telekinetic powers. The three weapons were given to costumed agents Dynamo, NoMan (who also possessed android bodies he’d trade off when one was killed), and Menthor, respectively. The non-super-powered espionage team, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad (a crime-busting quintet riddled with stereotypes) took the thankless role of second-string players. Costumed characters Raven and Lightning would soon join the ranks. A line-up of then-established artists were recruited to draw the features, including Gil Kane, Mike Sekowsky, John Giunta, Ogden Whitney, Chic Stone, Paul Reinman, and even Blackhawk legend Reed Crandall, with most of the stories apparently by Wood himself. According to DeCarlo, Tower offered better rates than Archie, yet not as high as those of Marvel or DC. The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents were conceived primarily by Wood. While serving as Tower’s art director in

Vintage Interview

An Interview with Woody Shel Dorf’s 1981 talk with the master comic book artist Conducted by Shel Dorf

Above: As artist Mike Zeck related in his CBA #12 interview, he was a frequent photographer of the master storyteller Wally Wood. An uncropped version of Zeck’s picture appeared in Alter Ego #8. (We’ll try not to be redundant with the images in A/E, but believe you me, pix of Woody are hard to come by!) Courtesy of Roy Thomas and Richard Pryor. Below: CBA’s mascot by J.D. King was designed and named for Woody in homage to the renowned artist. ©2001 J.D. King.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview by comics fan legend Shel Dorf appeared in The Buyer’s Guide #403, August 1, 1981, scant months before the death of Wallace Wood. While a mere two questions deal with our issue’s theme, a Wood interview is as rare as a honest comics publisher and we are delighted CBA compadre Shel Dorf contributed this most welcome piece. Shel’s original introduction follows. This interview is ©2001 Shel Dorf. “This interview with Wallace Wood is long in coming because every question and answer had to be carefully extracted from a very poor quality tape. My regular typist missed every other word in ‘Woody’s’ replies. Therefore I had to replay the tape myself, electronically strengthening the volume. It was of great importance to get every word, because I’d promised Woody it would be accurate. So with loving care I present what is an exclusive (he told me that his only other printed interview was in Marv Wolfman’s old fanzine) and I hope informative visit with one of our most admired craftsmen in the world of cartooning. “Wally Wood himself is very quiet-spoken and modest about his status in the field. He almost seemed embarrassed to speak about himself. Perhaps this prevented me from really probing, but we both enjoyed the interview. It was made the last day of the 1980 San Diego Comic-Con, and Woody was about to leave. He agreed to a 15-minute interview, but we stretched it to 45 minutes. I hope I have the chance to speak with him at greater length next time. There are always those ‘Damn! I should have asked him…’ thoughts. “So here it is, dear reader… just for you!”—Shel Dorf Shel Dorf: Thanks for coming to the San Diego Comic-Con, Woody. Did you enjoy it? Wallace Wood: Oh, it was nice. It’s the best convention I’ve been to! Shel: Were the fans polite? Woody: A couple of them asked for drawings. I told them I wasn’t doing any, and they just went away. Shel: I’ve never read much about your background, your early influences. Were there any artists in your family? Woody: My Uncle Wallace was an artist, but he was just a natural. Shel: Did he encourage you to draw as a youngster? Woody: I don’t remember. I think so. Shel: Where were you born? Woody: I was born in Minnesota, but I grew up in Wisconsin and Michigan. I’ve been living in New York now for about 25 years. Shel: How early in life did you show talent as an artist? Woody: I discovered cartoons when I was six years old, and I drew them. Shel: Which cartoons did you copy? Woody: Always liked science-fiction.

Shel: When did you start drawing in ink? The pros always called the kids “blue-inkers” because they used fountain-pen ink in their early attempts. Woody: Well, I did use a fountain pen! And without pencil—direct pen. Shel: Wow, that’s confidence! Did you impress your instructors in school? Woody: No, I always got bad marks in art. I always had the attitude toward art teachers that if they were such hot shots, why were they teaching art in a jerkwater high school? I guess it showed. Always got a “C” in art. Shel: Really? Well, I guess it’s true that, a bad art teacher can do damage to a budding career. Do you remember your first professional job? Woody: The first professional job was lettering for Fox romance comics in 1948. Shel: Did you have to move to New York for that? Didn’t you sell any work in your hometown? Woody: I came to New York right after I got out of the Merchant Marine. Shel: While you were in the Merchant Marine, did you do any drawings for the camp newspapers? Woody: Yeah, I did drawings for a couple of Army papers. Mimeograph stuff. Sexy gals. I still have a copy around somewhere. I got in trouble with my boss. Every issue in the camp was suppressed by the authorities. Shel: How long did your lettering work last at Fox Publishing? Woody: About a year. I also started doing backgrounds, then inking. Shel: And this was for the romance type of comic? What did it pay? Woody: Most of it was the romance stuff. For complete pages, it was $5 a page. Shel: Could you live on that? Woody: I was sharing a double room for three bucks a week. Shel: Did you develop speed at that point, so you could earn more money? Woody: Oh yeah. Twice a week I would ink ten pages in one day. Shel: When did you start doing the more creative work, where the Wood style came through? Woody: It wasn’t until EC with the science-fiction. Although I did finally get to draw some romance books for Fox. Shel: What was it like working for Bill Gaines in those classic days? Woody: It was always pretty good. Got paid right on the spot, got a check right away. He gave us presents at Christmas time. I remember once he gave us a movie camera and projector set, which I’m still using. Shel: I know Gaines kept all the original art, which Russ Cochran eventually used for his EC reprint volumes. Do you get a percentage of those book sales of your early EC work? Woody: Yeah. Shel: Then Gaines continues to be a great boss to his talented crew! It seems he’s always been a terrific publisher to work for. Too bad the comic book artists of recent days don’t have a better shake! Do you think you’d work for Gaines again? Woody: No, I don’t want to work for anybody else now…. Shel: Why not? Woody: I just do my own stuff. Publish it myself. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

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Shel: Has this been a successful approach for you? Woody: Yeah, we’re just about sold out of the first printing of The Wizard King; 8,000 copies at $10 apiece! Shel: Was it expensive to publish that book? Woody: Yeah, well, the binding cost the most: 60¢ to print it, but a buck for the binding. Shel: Well, it’s a beautiful product. In face, everything you do has a built-in quality to it. The Wood style of inking is so meticulous, so detailed—your figures took sculpted… I could go on and on! I know you were fast, but you must have spent hours and hours of careful work on your comic book pages. Woody: Well, I worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for years. Being a comic book artist is like sentencing yourself to life imprisonment at hard labor in solitary confinement! I don’t think I’d do it again. Shel: Really? It was enjoyable, though, wasn’t it? Woody: Yeah, but I couldn’t do anything else. Shel: Who were some of the people in the business whom you admired? Woody: Everybody. Raymond, Foster, Caniff, Roy Crane, Eisner, Hogarth… everyone. Shel: Did you know Alex Raymond? Woody: No, I never met him. I joined the National Cartoonists Society a couple of years after he died. Shel: Did you study anatomy very intensely? You have such a skill at figure drawing. Woody: I went to art school in Minneapolis for one term, and I went to another art school for one term, but I can’t say I learned anything about technique. I really didn’t learn to draw until I got into the Merchant Marine. Shel: So you’re basically self-taught, and you just observed your July 2001

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contemporaries. Did you ever work for Hal Foster? Woody: Yeah, I did one page of Prince Valiant in 1970. Shel: Why just one page? Woody: Well, I was just trying out for it. John Cullen Murphy and Gray Morrow were trying out for it, too. Murphy got it. Shel: Would you like to do a comic strip of your own these days? Woody: I want to make one of The Wizard King. Shel: That would make a beautiful Sunday-only strip, in full-color. What a treat that would be for the comic section. You certainly have a large following here for your work. Woody: Well, not only here… but in Europe, too. They’re translating Sally Forth into foreign languages, so it’s going to be worldwide yet. Shel: Didn’t you do Sally Forth and Cannon for The Overseas Weekly? I once had a subscription to that paper, as did many fans, just to get your work. How did you get the job? Woody: I think they wrote to me requesting a strip, so I worked up two of them. Shel: And now these are being reprinted in booklets. So far there are four volumes of each title. They were more for adult audiences, weren’t they? Woody: Yeah, bare breasts, more adult. Shel: What was it like to work for Will Eisner? Woody: Oh, he was okay. Shel: What did he pay? Woody: About $30 a week. Shel: For doing what? Woody: Lettering and backgrounds on The Spirit. Sometimes he paid me $40 when I did the drawings, too. Shel: That was when you were ghosting? Those stories are being reprinted with much fanfare in Denis Kitchen’s Spirit magazines.

Hero Dossier

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents 101 Lou Mougin’s history of Tower’s comic book heroes by Lou Mougin This fine overview of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and the Tower comics line appeared in slightly different form in The Comic Reader #197 back in 1982. Please note it contains some personal opinions some may not agree with—Ye Ed takes exception to Lou’s characterization of Manny Stallman’s delightfully bizarre artwork—but it is a clear and thoughtful retrospective of the high points (and low) of Wally Wood’s glorious super-hero comic books.—JBC

Above: Thundermakers. Panels from the first T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents story, “First Encounter,” from the debut issue, depicting the respective gadgets of Dynamo, NoMan, and Menthor.

Let us turn back the clock to that Wonderful Year, 1965. A new comics company was about to be born. DC had, for the past nine years, shown that super-heroes were once again a viable market. Marvel Comics had sparked a revolution that made their books prime college-age reading fodder. Archie had retooled its Adventures of the Fly title to feature an Avengers-like team of revived heroes. Best of all, news had leaked about a new TV show to debut in early ’66, featuring Batman. Nobody knew if it’d be a hit yet, but the fact of its existence proved that attention, favorable attention, was finally being paid to comic books. Considering the fact that the industry had almost gone belly-up ten years earlier and were only saved by the advent of the Comics Code, that wasn’t bad news at all. So, in this era of the Beatles, Sean Connery’s James Bond, Lyndon Johnson, and early renewed commitment to the Vietnam War, a paperback publisher named Tower Books decided to hit the racks with a new comic series. Its publisher was Harry Shorten and its editor was Samm Schwartz, both of them veterans of the Archie comics group. For a chief artist, they hired away a mainstay of the EC/Mad bullpen from Marvel, where he was winding up a short but acclaimed run of Daredevil. Given the freedom to write and design characters, Wally Wood came over, and brought others with him. And the product of their labors soon became available on spinner racks across the country, in a hope of challenging Marvel, DC, and the competitors who were shortly to flood the market with new super-hero books as soon as the Batman TV show debuted. Its title was T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents # 1, dated November 1965, hit the

ground running. With a 25¢, 64-page package of six superbly-drawn tightly-plotted stories, the book packed in three new super-heroes, a horde of secret agents, mystery men, super-villains, monsters and action, action, action! One look at the book and the reader could tell that here, indeed, was the king of the backseat comics; it was the only mid-’60s title to successfully compete with Marvel and DC super-hero fare. It set the pace for two years of giant-sized comics that most fans of that period recall as fondly as anything from the two major publishers. Basically, Tower Comics, which published T.H.U.N.D.E.R. and the several spin-offs, boiled down to one person: Wally Wood. As creator of the series, major artist and writer and self-admitted freelance editor, Wood produced his best commercial comics work of the ’60s while at Tower. The nearly twodozen books he worked on during the 196668 period showcase some of the finest superhero art of the Second Heroic Age, particularly his numerous Dynamo stories. As a result, Tower became the only third-force publisher to equal, and at times, surpass Marvel and DC in art quality. Others who wielded the pencil and brush at Tower were equally renowned. Gil Kane, Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko, Dan Adkins, John Giunta, Al Williamson. Few super-hero books would ever boast such a distinguished crew. “I was not only Tower’s top artist, I created the characters, and wrote most of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents stories,” admitted Wood. “As to why Harry Shorten (head of Tower Books) decided to publish comics, I don’t know. But he came to me and asked me to work up a super-hero book. I then functioned as a freelance editor and did as much of the art as I could.“ The concept of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. was a skillful blending of two separate genres that had each, in 1965, been proven sure-fire successes. Secret agents had ridden a wave of popularity since the first James Bond films of the early ’60s, and the Bond/Flint/Solo cult was never bigger. (The popularity of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in particular seemed to have the greatest impact on this book.) And superheroes were the rage in comic books; that went without saying. Well, then, why not a cloak-&-dagger type who wore a costume beneath the cloak? That line of thinking resulted in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1. The cover, drawn by Wood, introduced a triad of new arrivals to the super-hero biz: a blue-clad Superman-type lifted an armored villain overhead, surrounded by a complex of machinery. He was flanked by a cloaked, transparent man on his left, and on the right was a latecomer who apparently had ripped off the Atom’s uniform. The cover, colored only in various shades of red, blue, and yellow,and devoid of any blurbs, was perhaps less flashy than it should have been. Compared to Marvel’s slam-bang broadsides of the period, it looked positively static. But it served to showcase Dynamo, NoMan and Menthor for their first public appearance. And the greatest backseaters of the mid-’60s were born! Page one opened with a battlefield scene as we glimpsed a squad of landing UN paratroopers through shattered glass. A caption informed us: “A team of special U.N. agents lands at a remote mounCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

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tain lab…“ In the space of two pages we learned that the unit was on a rescue mission, intent on saving the life of Dr. Emil Jennings, the greatest scientist of the Western world. As fate would have it, the bad guys escaped unharmed in a helicopter, and Jennings was cold meat on his laboratory floor. “This has to be the work of the Warlord!“ muttered a squad leader. “Just who is this Warlord, sir?” asked a soldier, thus allowing us to be introduced to the villain of the piece. The Warlord proves to be the mysterious leader of a SPECTRE or THRUSH-like organization, with every available criminal and spy at his beck and call. His objective: The theft of every scientific development on Earth. Masked by a purple hood, the weird spy-chief held congress only with his top lieutenants, and not even they had seen his true features. “Now he’s gotten to this experimental station and our most advanced research, and since the professor never kept notes, all these devices will be his sole property… we can never duplicate them!“ finishes the officer. “They didn’t have time to get everything, sir,” says another crewman. “Look at these!“ The scene immediately shifts to a high-level conference room in New York. A wall is decorated with a figure of the Western Hemisphere and the words, “The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves.” T.H.U.N.D.E.R.’s Inner Council stands assembled, considering the three recovered devices from Jennings’ laboratory… a metallic belt, a blue-black cloak, and a rigid helmet in the form of a headmask. “The first is an electron molecular intensifier belt which will make the wearer’s body structure change to the consistency of steel!” says a speaker, holding up the belt. Next, he gestures to the cape, and explains its ability of becoming absolutely black, reflecting no light and rendering the wearer invisible. “And this one we’re not sure of,” he says, fondling the strange helmet. “It seems to be a cybernetic helmet… it could be dangerous, but it could amplify a man’s brain power many times over...” Quickly, the heads of the free world’s greatest semi-secret defensive organization come to an agreement. A full-scale assault must be led against the Warlord, spearheaded by three agents who will employ the inventions of Dr. Jennings against the man who ordered his murder. “…And so the search begins,” reads the final caption. The four-page introductory sequence fairly breathed clichés, from the doomed scientist who creates super-heroes to the opposed agencies locked in global Cold War conflict. But the plot was solid, the concepts didn’t stretch reality to the breaking point, and, of course, Wood’s art pulled the entire thing together. It set several conJuly 2001

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cepts that T.H.U.N.D.E.R. would follow to their final issue: Tight, pulp-like plotting, an economy of dialogue (word balloons were kept to two per panel most of the time) and believability. The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, rather than gaining power from radioactive spiders or gamma bomb explosions, were human beings whose abilities were augmented by mechanical devices. It was a welcome touch of conservatism in a comics universe already top-heavy with sorcerers, omnipotent entities, parallel dimensions and heroes with every super-

Above: A quartet of pin-ups from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #3 featuring the title’s main characters. Clockwise from top left: Dynamo, NoMan, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad, and Menthor, all drawn by Wally Wood and Dan Adkins.

CBA Interview

Dynamite Dan Adkins On his years at Tower and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. contributions EDITOR'S NOTE: Don’t miss Dan’s interview in the upcoming book (co-edited by yours truly) THE WARREN COMPANION, due any minute now from TwoMorrows Publishing! In this massive 288page tome, you’ll find spectacular Adkins art on some unfinished Warren assignments, as well as a lot of talk regarding Wallace Wood by Dan, and another former Wood assistant, NICOLA CUTI. Be there, comics fans!

Inset right: Dapper Dan and his future vivacious bride Jeanette (Strouse) in a 1956 photo, courtesy of Dan Adkins.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Daniel Adkins really went all out for CBA this issue and we extend our profound appreciation for his back cover illustration, Tower checklist consultation, and participation in yet another interview for our magazine (hot on the heels of his Alter Ego #8 cover and interview!). While we talked to the artist about his Marvel Comics tenure for our seventh issue, here we zero in on his experience working in Wally Wood’s studio during the 1960s, specifically his contributions on Tower’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. This conversation took place by telephone on January 11, 2001, and Dan copy edited the transcript. Comic Book Artist: Do you have any idea how Tower Comics came about? Dan Adkins: I don’t know exactly how Wally learned that they wanted to put out comics, but I assume he heard and took up a package to them. I don’t think he’d just approach them out of the blue. So, he must’ve heard they were looking to put out comics. CBA: Who was Samm Schwartz? Dan: He was a previous editor of Archie Comics, I believe, and he was the editor of the Tower Comics line. Samm was the guy I had to deal with. If Wally was busy, it was me that had to deal with Samm. “Well, Samm, I don’t know, Wally’s doing something. I think he’s taking a nap.” [laughter] Anyway, Samm called me up after the death of Menthor and gave me a dressing-down for killing him. I said, “Sam, you okayed the idea!” But he had a bunch of kids down there in the office that were after me, and he wanted to know what to tell them! “Tell them to get out of your office, Samm!” [laughter] CBA: They marched into his office? Dan: Yeah, they were gonna do something. They wanted to know who’s the guy responsible for killing Menthor! [laughs] CBA: Did you deal with the guys at the Tower offices? Dan: I was the freshman on the block, a kid working with Wally and the

guys in his studio, so I didn’t know any of the people at the editorial office. I never met Harry Shorten or Samm Schwartz in person. CBA: You just dealt with Samm over the phone? Dan: Yeah, I never met the guys at Tower. I was just Wally’s assistant, you know? I was never working for Tower. CBA: So you just worked for Woody? Dan: When I first got there, Wally was putting out the first issue, and the last story wasn’t done. It had been penciled, and Wally was redrawing it. I don’t know who that penciler was. CBA: Was it Larry Ivie? Dan: No. [laughs] It wasn’t Larry Ivie, but Larry was to blame for the mess at the beginning! We had to do the first four pages over. The last story, I never did find out who that penciler was, but it didn’t look like anything like Larry Ivie. It looked more like John Giunta, but I knew it wasn’t. Dick Ayers penciled “The Counterfeit Traitor.” It ends up looking like Wally Wood, but it was penciled by Dick Ayers. He didn’t want credit, because I guess he was still doing Sgt. Fury for Marvel. So we didn’t tell anybody Dick was working on the Tower stuff, and he wasn’t quite as bad as the guy who penciled that first Iron Maiden story. Anyway, I had to redraw it all over and did a little inking on it. The first story was messed up by Larry Ivie—the first four pages—the so-called “Introduction.” Larry had been down at the offices, and saw Samm, and Samm gave a call and told Wally about Larry. But Wally did not know Larry at this time, he never met him, so I don’t know how that fits in with the Creepy stuff, but I guess the Creepy stuff came later. Right? Creepy wasn’t along until about six months later, I guess. But I don’t think Larry Ivie and Wally Wood ever met, you know? I think all that stuff was done through Samm. Anyway, Larry was given the four-page script and the breakdowns by Wally for the first four pages. They were sent over to Samm, and Samm gave them to Larry. Larry gave the stuff back to Samm, but it came back to Samm penciled and inked! Well, the book was supposed to look like Wally Wood had drawn it, so we had to fix it up, you know? And we did it completely over. There was nothing left of the Larry Ivie in that story. CBA: I’ve seen Larry’s version which he sent to me. They were completely done, even lettered! Dan: He did the inking, but he wasn’t asked to do the inking! [laughs] He also did a cover of three of the characters running towards you, which we used later on. But there wasn’t anything new in that idea, because Mac Raboy and everybody had done covers of heroes running at you at that point. So, Larry took credit for that cover later on. On the layout he did of the first cover, he had a little banner across it that said “Crandall/Ivie/Wood.” We didn’t use the banner. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

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CBA: Did Larry come into the studio later? Dan: No, he was never at the studio. He wrote scripts which were given to Samm. CBA: I read an essay by Ralph Reese, and he was describing a time when Wally Wood was inking “Captain America”—which I ascertain must’ve been when Woody was inking The Avengers—and Larry Ivie took it upon himself to ink Cap as the Golden Age Captain America, without the stripes down his back. [laughs] Apparently, Woody was not too happy about that. Dan: But that wasn’t done at Wally’s studio. He was never up there. There’s only one room in the studio, and I had a desk there. CBA: Samm Schwartz was point central for Tower as editor of the books? Dan: Well, he was like the manager of Wally! [laughter] Wally was basically the editor of the book. CBA: Artists came to the studio with their finished assignments? Dan: Well, no... they dropped the stuff off down at Samm’s all the time or mailed it to Wally. Nobody came up to the studio! [laughs] Nobody bothers Wally. Ditko dropped stuff off down there, and Samm called up and says, “This guy is terrible, Wally! He draws weird stuff!” CBA: [laughs] Good old Samm! Dan: Yeah! And Wally says, “This guy’s got a great following; he’s very popular!” CBA: Ditko was never better than at that time! [laughs] Dan: Yeah, that’s true. It was real good stuff. In fact, we inked a couple of Steve’s jobs just to please Sam. CBA: Oh, really? [laughs] That was a beautiful job! Dan: Hell, Ditko drew “The Death of Menthor”… he’s the one that killed Menthor! CBA: [laughs] It’s all Steve’s fault! Dan: Wally and I just wanted to ink it. Of course, we wrote the script, too. CBA: But Wally would do breakdowns for Steve at times? Dan: Wally would for almost everybody, because he did a lot of the storytelling, so he did all the breakdowns. He would draw the breakdowns on this 81/2" x 11" typewriter paper. For us in the studio, he’d do the breakdowns on big sheets. We had to job a few stories out sometimes. The one about China is inked by Chic Stone, one of the stories we never had a chance to ink, but it was originally penciled by me. It’s the only story in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents that I penciled and somebody else inked. Wally did all the breakdowns on all the other ones. I don’t think Wally liked my layouts very much, and that was the reason we kept putting that story aside! [laughs] We finally needed a story, so we sent it to Chic Stone to ink. CBA: As far as you recall, did Steve Ditko immediately come over to Tower after he quit Marvel? Dan: Well, the reason he worked for Tower is Wally Wood asked him to. Samm insisted on seeing his work, so he went down to see Samm. [laughs] Samm didn’t like the art! But he gave him work, anyway. It was real good work, too. CBA: Did Gil Kane visit much? Dan: When I was up there—I don’t know who visited when I wasn’t there, you know—but the only people who ever came was Al Williamson and Leo Dillon, the science-fiction illustrator. CBA: If Woody was editor of the books, when did he see the final work? Did Samm send the finished pages over to him for approval? Dan: No. We didn’t see the finished work when Ditko would hand in a job, for instance. We did most of the jobs because we inked them. We inked Crandall, Dick Ayers, even Orlando did a story we inked, and we inked our own stories... there wasn’t a hell of a lot that was not touched by us. CBA: Oh, I see, all the stories came through the studio anyway. Dan: You know, we depended on Gil Kane. He would sometimes drop off a story. [laughs] It was a five flight walk up to Wally’s! You could take an elevator up to Samm’s, you know? So, I don’t think those other guys wanted to walk up five flights. [laughter] We talked to Crandall by phone—he lived out in Kansas—and we’d get his stuff in the mail, so that came to us first. CBA: Sometimes Reed would pencil and ink? Dan: Oh, yeah. CBA: Do you know what happened to the original art after the job July 2001

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was printed? Dan: Well, I don’t know what happened to the art, but I used to own some pages which I sold for peanuts—ten or fifteen bucks a page—but I don’t know where I got that stuff from. Anyway, I inked two Crandall stories that I can remember. The first one was where the story took place in the desert—Iraq or someplace—do you remember that? With dinosaurs in the front? The other was where they were under the Earth; where there were railroad cars. That’s the second one I inked. I remember being inhibited inking Crandall’s pencils. CBA: Those are your inks? Dan: Wood and me. Wood did the better stuff! [laughter] He did all the main figures. That doesn’t mean I didn’t do some of the muscles on them, like Dynamo, which I did. But I was mostly doing the guy’s hats! [laughter] Weed’s or something, or a train. CBA: Did you chat at any length with Reed? Dan: No, I didn’t. CBA: It was just pretty much it’s in the mail? Dan: Well, Wally had a whip, and if I talked long... crack! [laughs] Actually, I don’t even think we had music on in the studio, you know? CBA: Was he a taskmaster? Dan: Well, only by example. He constantly worked! That’s all he did was work. Geez, besides eating, that’s all he did.

Above: Splash page recreation (sans verbiage) by Dan Adkins of the Reed Crandall, Wally Wood and Adkins drawn story, “The Return of the Iron Maiden,” from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #4. Commissioned by John Harrison and courtesy of Dan.

CBA Interview

Len Brown, Dynamo! The Topps guy on his career and THUNDER experience EDITOR'S NOTE: CBA certainly hopes this interview isn’t the last word we get from Len Brown as we’d love to devote at least a flip-book section to the great comics-related art of Topps’ legendary trading cards (never mind their 1990s run of bona fide comics). If Jay Lynch is up for it, it’s a go, fair reader!

Below: Len Brown—the writer, not the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent—at age 18 (1958), just prior to his long tenure at Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. Courtesy of Len.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Sam Gafford Although you may recognize the name of Leonard Brown as the alter ego of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent Dynamo—you may not know there’s also a real human being with the same name, a guy who contributed to kid culture mightily from 1960 up to the ’90s. Only recently retiring from Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., where he spent over 30 years as a major creative force at the monolithic trading card company, Len worked on any number of series, from Mars Attacks to Wacky Packs to Garbage Pail Kids. Plus he had a brief and memorable career as a comic book writer. The following talk took place on April 23, 2001 via telephone and Len edited the final transcript. Comic Book Artist: Where are you from? Len Brown: I was born in Brooklyn, New York, back in 1941, but I’ve lived in New Jersey the bulk of my life. We moved down to the Austin, Texas, area about a year ago when I retired from Topps. So I’ve lived here for almost a year in a town called Dripping Springs. Great place to live! CBA: Why Texas? Len: I love the music. Over the last ten years, I’ve had a radio show in New Jersey playing traditional country music. I’ve also done a little radio down here and hope to do some more in my retirement years. CBA: Hank Williams, Sr.-type music? Len: Yeah, Bob Wills, Hank Williams, ’50s and ’60s kind of stuff. I don’t care for the current music but I love the old stuff. CBA: You grew up in New York City? Len: Yeah, in Brooklyn and I lived there for almost 30 years of my life. CBA: What kind of neighborhood was it? Len: Oh, it had a very nice kind of community feel. A small town kind of neighborhood. I grew up in an apartment building where you’d know everybody. You’d walk down the block and everyone would say hello. The block was almost like living in a small town even though it was in a big borough in a big city. CBA: Were you into comics at an early age? Len: Oh, boy, I loved comics from the earliest I can remember. I can clearly remember being six years old and discovering an issue of World’s Finest Comics that sold for 15¢ and being amazed at how thick it was, 98 pages for 15¢! I loved comics. Superman, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman were my three favorites. CBA: Did you draw yourself? Len: I tried. Whenever I got white paper I would try and draw. I never had any talent but I can remember doing a Dick Tracy-kind of strip when I was a little boy and thinking it was terrific. CBA: What were your

aspirations as a kid? Len: I always thought I’d want to be a journalist more than a writer, you know? Working on newspapers. I grew up in a time when there were seven dailies in New York. Into my early teen years, there were three or four that I’d want to get every day but I couldn’t afford it. Each paper had their own collection of comics and I loved comic strips. I used to cut and collect them for years, you know? Li’l Abner, Prince Valiant Sundays and all that. CBA: That’s dedication! Len: Yeah, I loved it! I always thought it was a little weird because I didn’t know anyone else who did it. When classmates would come over I’d show them these stacks of strips and they weren’t really interested. I had Joe Palooka, Steve Canyon, all the big strips of the day and I always thought it was a strange hobby. Then I read this article on Ray Bradbury when I was in my teens and it turned out that Bradbury used to do that, too! Vindicated! [laughter] My family used to get one daily newspaper and I would really look forward to Saturday and Sunday. The New York Journal American used to have color comics on Saturday, 16 pages of tabloid comics. Then, on Sunday, they’d have the full-size big comics section. They ran almost every King Features strip and in those days there were some great ones: Buck Rogers (which wasn’t King Features), Lone Ranger, Popeye and they’d run them full-page on the tabloid which was wonderful. The New York Daily Mirror was another of my favorite papers. CBA: What kind of strips did they run? Len: Steve Canyon, Joe Palooka, Li’l Abner… When I was very young, they carried Superman on Sundays which I liked. And then in the early ’50s they had Tom Corbett for a couple of years. CBA: Did you ever dream of doing your own strip? Len: Oh, yeah. I think at some point I thought that writing a comic strip would be just fabulous. Actually tried it once with Al Williamson. This is jumping ahead now into the ’60s. At one point, Woody Gelman who worked at Topps was the Above inset: Detail of Len Brown—the inspiration and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent, co-financed a not the writer—as Dynamo strip by Al from the Wood/Adkins and me; pin-up in TA #3. Woody COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

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paid Al to draw a couple of the sample Sunday pages which I wrote. We did a pretty ornate two-page strip which has appeared in print a number of times over the years called Robbie. It was a takeoff of Little Nemo but it was prime Al Williamson work. We shopped the samples around to the syndicates and a couple of them held them for a while and acted like they were considering it but who knows? Basically, the feedback was that they weren’t interested in a Sunday strip, they wanted a daily, which we didn’t want to do because we wanted big panels to show off Al’s artwork. CBA: Did you consider the grueling schedule involved with doing a syndicated strip? Len: No. I was blind to reality! First of all, the writer’s work is a lot easier than the artist’s on a daily basis. I could probably write a weeks worth in two-three hours and the artist would have to slave for the other six or seven days. This was before Al was doing his own syndicated strip [Secret Agent Corrigan]. CBA: Did you have favorite artists when you were growing up? Len: Oh, yeah. I guess it wasn’t until I was 12 years old that I realized specific artists worked on these comics. I was a huge EC fan once I discovered them, and the artists from EC were the greatest, in my mind. Wally Wood, Al Williamson, Reed Crandall, George Evans, Jack Davis—what a company! What can I say? CBA: You were the perfect age for that, right? You were ten when they first started coming out with the New Trend stuff? Len: Yeah. I don’t think I got into it right away. I remember discovering EC when I was in fourth grade so I guess that would be 1953, a couple of years later. A friend was telling me about the great science-fiction stories that were in these comic books and that was, of course, Weird Fantasy and Weird Science. So I latched onto those and then found out about the horror stuff and got those, too, and then Mad… oh, I thought Mad was the greatest! CBA: Did you get into the war material, too? Len: I wasn’t interested in the war stuff. I am now but I didn’t get into the Kurtzman books at the time, just his Mad and the EC horror and science-fiction. I wasn’t even picking up Crime SuspenStories or Shock at that time. It was just the three horror, two sci-fi, and the humor book and then Panic, of course. CBA: Because the artists were able to sign their work at EC, you were able to recognize their work? July 2001

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Len: Yeah, exactly. Whereas of the DC books, which I did read… I read a lot of comic books, I even read Dell from time to time, and there were Quality and Fiction House comics that I loved. I was around for the tail end of Plastic Man. CBA: Was Jack Cole still doing it? Len: I don’t think so; not at that point. It seems like he got involved with Playboy and once he got involved with that he left the books. I just know that I loved the character of Plastic Man and the look of it. A strip I loved—I don’t know if you know it—was in a comic called Big Shot and there was a strip in there called “Sparky Watts.” I forget the name of the artist who did it which I’m really ashamed about because I really love his work. Years later, when I met Art Spiegelman, he mentioned that he was a big fan of “Sparky Watts” and I couldn’t believe that anyone else knew it. In fact, Art got the rights and reprinted one of the “Sparky Watts” stories in Raw because he thought so much of it. CBA: Did you become an official EC Fan-Addict? Len: You know, for some reason I never joined but, boy, my heart was with them. It seems weird when I consider how much stuff I sent away for when I was that age. I guess money was tight when I was growing up. CBA: So were you non-discriminating in your taste? Did you like funny animal stuff as well as super-hero and other genres? Len: Yeah, absolutely. I hate to say “non-discriminating” but I loved comics! I loved the books that would reprint newspaper strips like Tip-Top and Sparkle, you know? They would do four weeks of Tarzan Sundays and other strips… I just loved the medium. CBA: How do you recall the Wertham era as a kid? Did you feel inklings about what was happening? What did your family think of your interest in comics? Did they care? Len: They never really encouraged it. When I was about ten or eleven years old, they found out that I need-

Above: The only picture Len Brown could find of his mentor and father-figure Woody Gelman is from the Topps’ magazine oneshot Soupy Sales. From left to right: Young Len Brown, goofy Soupy Sales, and stoic Woody Gelman. Courtesy of Len. ©2001 Topps.

Below: Photo of happenin’ bubble gum card writer Leonard Brown in the 1970s. Courtesy of Len.

CBA Interview

A Man Called Jones Talking with Tower scribe & monster maniac, Russ Jones Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Brian K. Morris The following interview with writer/artist/editor Russ Jones was originally intended to appear in the currently-available book by Ye Ed and David A. Roach, The Warren Companion, but due to certain complications, it appears here. Russ wrote for Tower Comics during its brief life and we feature a career-spanning look at this multi-talented man. Though T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, et al. are only briefly discussed here, Russ was associated with Tower art director Wally Wood for a number of years. This interview was conducted via phone on January 17, 2001 and was approved by Russ.

Above: Russ Jones at Chiller Con this past April. Check out Russ’s Website at www.horrorbiz.com where you’ll find Jones merchandise for sale. Courtesy of Russ and Dave of Horrorbiz.

Comic Book Artist: Russ, where are you from? Russ Jones: Ontario, Canada. CBA: What year were you born? Russ: 1942. CBA: When did you start developing an interest in art? Russ: As a kid. Back in those days, it was the wonderful Sunday comics and we had all the great stuff like the Alex Raymond strips and Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant. My favorite was Dick Tracy by Chester Gould. CBA: Did you read comic books as a kid? Russ: Yeah, I was very interested in them. CBA: You were just in time for the ECs, right? Russ: Oh, yeah. I bought those on a regular basis, as soon as they came out. CBA: What particularly attracted you to EC Comics? Russ: They were different. They felt different, had a very different look and, of course, the work inside was unparalleled, as far as I was concerned. It was just knockout stuff. I had no idea, of course, what Craft Tint or Zip-A-Tone was or anything like that at the time but I would look at this and, with a kid’s wonderment, say, “Wow.” It felt like special effects make-up or something. It was unlike anything I’d really ever seen. CBA: Were there any particular artists that you really liked back

then? Was it Wally Wood? Russ: Well, yeah. Woody would be right up there pretty much on the top of the list, I’d say. Of course, all of them were very good. I liked George Evans and Reed Crandall and, of course, Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta. CBA: So you were more attracted to art than the stories? Russ: Oh, no. You see, the story and art amalgamated so well. It was the perfect combination. CBA: Did you collect them all? Russ: No, I didn’t. I was never really a collector. CBA: Did you pursue an art education? Russ: No, my education was in the United States Marine Corps. CBA: When did you join the Marines? Russ: I started out in Second Recon and went to Korea for 18 months and came back to the States in Quantico where I was with Criminal Investigations and went through most of the FBI academy. From there I went to Marine Corps headquarters. CBA: What years were you in Korea? Russ: I was there in 1959. I did some work for the Marine Corps magazine, Leatherneck, out of Penderson Hall in Arlington. CBA: Did you have a vocation in print production? Russ: Yeah. As a matter of fact, that’s what my MOS turned out to be. It was a 1461 MOS but, of course, your primary in the Marine Corps is a grunt. CBA: Did you encounter any action at all? Russ: Yeah, but I had to take an oath on that. The outfit that I was with was running what they would call today Black Ops. But we referred to it just as Search-&-Destroy or whatever. CBA: This was during your time overseas? Russ: Yeah. CBA: What did you do for Leatherneck? Russ: Illustrations. CBA: Did you want to pursue a career in comic books or comic strips? Russ: Yeah, that had always been my goal but I didn’t know, exactly, how to get there, and I met this wonderful old timer that no one on Earth had ever heard of. His name was Wood Cowan and Wood had taken over the Our Boarding House strip from Gene Ahern. Wood was doing editorial cartoons out of Connecticut, I met him and he invited me out to his place. He was quite a character. He must have, like, been close to 80 at the time, wore one of the worst rugs I’ve ever seen. [chuckles] He was very funny and in his studio, he had this wonderful portrait that James Montgomery Flagg had done of him. So I said, “Gee, this Wood Cowan guy must have had some real history.” He taught me some tricks and introduced me to the people at McNaught in New York. That’s really how the whole thing got started. CBA: What did you do at McNaught? Russ: I did some work for some of the different artists. Oh gosh, I worked with Mark Bailey. Through Mark, he was doing stuff for Lank Leonard. They had another strip called Dixie Dugan… just some odd stuff here and there. CBA: Doing assists, backgrounds, and the like? Russ: Yeah, and learning. I was going to start my own historical strip, and I knew Jack Davis. I wanted that EC look. Jack was very busy. This was back in about 1962 or ’63, I guess. Jack was keen on working on it but at that time he was actually making the big bucks. He just started getting into the movie ads and the TV Guide stuff and he pointed me in the direction of Wally Wood and that’s how Woody COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

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and I got together. CBA: Where was Woody at the time? Russ: He was at 74th Street in Manhattan. CBA: Did he have assistants working for him at the time? Russ: No, he did not. CBA: Were you his first assistant? Russ: You know, I really don’t know. I think prior to me, I think it was probably Joe Orlando. CBA: Joe goes back, obviously, to the late ’40s. Russ: Yeah, and Woody, of course, had worked with Harry Harrison. CBA: You must have met a lot of people through Woody, right? Russ: Quite a few, yes, indeed. CBA: Who’d come by that you recall? Russ: Well, there was a guy by the name of Leo Dillon who was an illustrator who worked for Galaxy magazine. Quite remarkable guy. Leo and his wife, Diane, would come visit with Wally and often I would be, sort of, the odd man out, partially in the conversation because we had so much work piled up. [chuckles] I mean, it was this incredible factory going on, most of it through Vinnie Colletta. CBA: Oh, yeah? Did Vinnie have his own thing in town? Russ: Yes, Vinnie had a studio in the West 40s which was quite a place. You’d walk in and there would be Vinnie, no shoes on, sitting July 2001

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at the board; his little protege, Laida Edmond Jr., frumping around the place merrily. Joe Orlando was working there a lot and Maurice Whitman was there, a fellow by the name of Bob Simon, and there were just people just trundling in and out all the time. Vinnie had an incredible factory. CBA: Was most of the work for Charlton? Russ: There was a lot from Charlton, a lot from Dell, a lot from Marvel. CBA: There’s a legend about Vinnie that he would get his work done very early and then would scoot out in the middle of the day to do glamour photography. Do you know if that was true? Russ: He did a lot of photography, yes he did. Vinnie was very underrated. If you’d ever seen any of his earlier work, he almost could rival Stan Drake, and that’s no joke. I knew Stan very well and I saw some of Vinnie’s early stuff. Vinnie was really remarkably good but he got on this treadmill. I remember we were working on, I think, Lawrence of Arabia for Dell—the movie tie-in book—and I did a lot of penciling and had this incredible scene with all these camels and I think it was at Prince Feisal’s camp, or something, with these Bedouin tents. Vinnie decided that was a little bit too much to ink so he put a huge rock in the foreground. [laughs] And so 90% of the panel was a rock. CBA: [laughs] That sounds like Vinnie.

Above: What the heck does this Dan Adkins rendition of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent Dynamo have to do with Russ Jones? Not a goldarned thing, but it sure is a nice piece by the Dapper One! This originally appeared on the cover of the fanzine The Comic Artist #3, Winter 1970. Courtesy of John R. Borkowski.

Endgame

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Strikes Twice! The revivals—and troubles—of Wally Wood’s super-hero line Below: Though the inked version appeared as a background image in OMNI Comix #3, I wonder if anybody has seen these great pencils by Dave Gibbons drawn for the Penthouse comics title? Thanks, Dave. Art ©2001 Dave Gibbons.

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by Chris Irving Even though the original T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents title was cancelled in 1969, the characters have come back on numerous occasions, each one generating varying levels of interest. Despite their status in comics history as relatively minor characters, the 1980s brought about not only their first major revival, but also a major deal of controversy surrounding ownership of the trademark.

The Players JOHN CARBONARO got his start in comics when, in the 1970s, he co-published the prozine Phase with friend Sal Quartuccio, an alternative magazine featuring such contributors as Neal Adams, Rich Buckler, and Frank Brunner. After taking a ten-year leave from comics to pursue an accounting degree, Carbonaro decided to first pursue obtaining a licensing agreement for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents on a lark. “I was an accountant at an advertising firm,” Carbonaro recalled recently. “A young lady, Vicki Blum, dropped in to visit an artist on staff, and I discovered she had worked at Tower Paperbacks in the past. She made the introductions for me.” Meeting with Tower president Jeffrey Proctor in late 1980, Carbonaro obtained an oral agreement to license T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents by June 1981. Taking advantage of the rapidly growing direct sales market, Carbonaro gathered together former Warren editor Chris Adames (serving as scripter and consulting editor), writer Richard Lynn, artists Lou Manna and Mark Texeira, and Archie Comics editor Pat Gabriele (as editor and artist) to produce the first appearance of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents in nearly a dozen years, publishing the b-&-w magazine JCP Features #1, the only appearance of the title (which oddly had a cover date of February 1982, but dated December 1981 inside). The one-shot featured crude but enthusiastic T-Agent stories, drawn in a Jack Kirby-style. According to Carbonaro, Tower received a $1000 check on April 28, 1981 for licensing the characters. Soon after, Carbonaro found both a home for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. and an editorial job at Archie Comics, helping to reintroduce the Red Circle line of super-hero comics (reviving characters from the Golden Age and the shortlived Mighty/Radio Comics run of the 1960s). Carbonaro said his plan at Archie was to merge the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents with the Red Circle characters in a shared universe, a notion that fell apart for a variety of reasons. “I was working with [artist] Mark Texeira, and [Archie editor] Pat Gabriele,” Carbonaro explained, “[but] unfortunately some money was diverted, and I was upset about that, since it was payment money for the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents books we put out, the black-&-white comic that Pat Gabriele had edited [JCP Features #1]. I disassociated myself from Gabriele and, unfortunately, about 20 pages of Mark Texeira artwork,” of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents meeting The Mighty Crusaders remain unpublished. Carbonaro’s position with Archie apparently changed when he brought artist Rich Buckler in to draw the T.H.U.N.D.E.R./Mighty Crusaders story. Archie soon decided to only focus on the Mighty Crusaders portion for a regular-length comic book, and to replace Carbonaro with the artist as editor of the title. “They wanted to be fair to me and said, ‘Why don’t we do a joint venture with you and the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and we’ll work on that?’” Carbonaro recalled. “I went right over to the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and did a few reprints, and started up a TA comic book with new stories. They were shipped and billed over the Archie administration.” The new color T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents books featured a “JC Comics” imprint. Two issues (with stories continuing from the b-&-w magazine) were published, featuring art by Mark Texeira, as well as three issues of Hall of Fame featuring the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. All were printed between 1983 and 1984. The only Red Circle appearance of the Agents was in 1984’s Blue Ribbon Comics #12, which concluded the JC Comics’ series, which Carbonaro attributes to Archie’s needing the story for what Carbonaro refers to as a “blown deadline.” COMIC BOOK ARTIST 14

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DAVID SINGER was a fan-writer for such comic fan magazines as Amazing Heroes and his own short-lived Comic Times, and was hired by Archie as a Red Circle editor in the early 1980s. He and Carbonaro had met sometime in ’81 through Red Circle editor Pat Gabriele. Having obtained a law degree (though reportedly not yet passing a bar exam), Singer was qualified and hired to serve as legal consultant to Carbonaro. Singer received a check for $450 on May 6, 1982, for drafting written licensing agreements with Tower and Archie, as well as other companies that were approached by Carbonaro. “In early 1981, Carbonaro told me he needed a contract to be negotiated with Tower and asked if I could handle it for him,” Singer wrote in The Comics Journal #101 (August 1985). “He and I were already friends at that time… I agreed to represent him (not as an attorney, but as his appointed representative) and agreed to take only $450 for my expenses as well as my time.” Singer had denied acting as Carbonaro’s lawyer, claiming it was an informal relationship, for which he did not receive financial compensation for acting as a legal representative, as he “was not an attorney.” Meanwhile, Tower Books was undergoing a bankruptcy assets sale and, on August 18, 1982, Offset Paperback Manufacturer’s, Inc. gained rights to T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, which were in turn sold to Dorchester Publishing Company a week later. Dorchester orally agreed in December 1982 to sell the characters to Carbonaro, allegedly for $2000. Carbonaro feels that the turning point in his relationship with Singer was the result of a business proposition the latter was interested in. “David wanted to get involved in a deal with some buddy in San Antonio [who] convinced him that they would be able to sell comic books to the Armed Forces [through PXs] on a non-returnable basis,” Carbonaro said. “That would give them a fortune. Singer wanted to get into that [deal], and they told him that if he had something viable, like the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, he could get into this company. Wanting to make a fortune, David contacted me, and I refused. I thought it was a scam, and one of those too-good-to-betrue things. David said that he was going to go to Tower, based on information I gave him, and purchase the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, rather than licensing them from me.” Singer, after failing at his attempt to purchase the Agents from Carbonaro, apparently threatened to purchase T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents from Dorchester while Carbonaro was still in a transitional period before his purchase. “Even though [Singer] had worked as my legal rep and knew the confidential information that I gave him as a legal rep, he said, ‘You gave me information as a friend over a hamburger and a Coke. I did that contract for you years ago, so I shouldn’t be held to a fiduciary trust,’” Carbonaro recalled. “He also gave another reason later on, that he told people: He believed he was underpaid as a legal rep, although he was paid what he asked for. So being underpaid, he should not be held to the fiduciary trust, even though he was fully paid and paid what he had requested.” Carbonaro offered Singer a chance to license the Agents for $65,000, an offer Singer brought down to $50,000 and 3% cover price royalties, according to a Comics Journal article. Carbonaro agreed to a letter of intent, which stated his willingness to license the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents to Singer, so that Singer could use the letter to help secure investors. Carbonaro, however, claims to have not received an advance deposit on the licensing fee, causing him to send Singer a letter breaking off the letter of intent. Singer claimed, in a reply, that he was about to receive a loan to pay the initial payment to Carbonaro but, after the dissolution of the letter of intent, cancelled his loan. “[Singer needed to pay] timely payments for the rights, and he blew that,” Carbonaro recalled. “[N]ow that I owned the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and [had] given him the chance to make the payments—and his not making it—I felt in a business fashion, of disengaging from David. It had gone too far; he had threatened me and, in my mind, [that] violated a business trust as well as a friendship (a fiduciary trust); he was trying to force me into something I didn’t want to do. He could have satisfied the conditions if he made the payments. He had excuses for that; he could have borrowed the money, if only he’d asked somebody, but he didn’t do it, so I July 2001

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told him I’d take it to Marvel instead.” Upon his arrival at Marvel Comics on June 19, 1984, Carbonaro learned that Archie Goodwin of Marvel Comics was interested in licensing T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for the Epic Comics line, which Goodwin edited. Goodwin had been contacted by Singer, who claimed sole ownership of the property. Carbonaro said, “[Marvel] told me David Singer had been there a few days ago, and [they] showed me a copy of what he showed them, half of a letter of intent, not earmarking the payment he would have to make,” Carbonaro claimed. “He told them that this letter of intent was a contract (which by law it’s not, it was just intent to contract). It was also to help David get investors’ money to form a company.” “Marvel, being cautious, said to clear up the legal differences between David and I, and then come back,” Carbonaro continued. “They wanted to license the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and incorporate them into Marvel’s world.”

Public Domain The relationship between the two men had, needless to say, completely dissolved. Matters were further complicated when, in November of 1984, Singer’s Deluxe Comics began publication of Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, featuring work by the likes of Steve Englehart, George Pérez, and Keith Giffen. At that time, Singer claimed that T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents had been in the public domain since Tower hadn’t correctly copyrighted the series in its original incarnation. In order for material to be properly copyrighted, the publisher must include, somewhere in the publication: the © symbol, the word “copyright,” year of publication, and copyright holder. While

Above: Mark Texeira’s painting graces the cover to the first T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents revival, JCP Features #1, Dec. 1981, a b-&-w magazine.

Below: Keith Giffen art for a Deluxe Comics house ad, showing the unaltered George Pérez cover for Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #3. Note that in the final version, Menthor was replaced by another character. Courtesy of Brian C. Boerner, the art director for the Deluxe Comics run.

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