Issuu

THE ATLAS/SEABOARD STORY ™

No.16 Dec. 2001

$6.95 In The U.S.

COLÓN ROVIN CHAYKIN MITCHELL AMENDOLA KUPPERBERG HAMA MEYERS

V E N G E A N C E,

NUMBER 16

I N C .: T H E

A T L A S / S E A B O A R D

S T O R Y !

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

DECEMBER 2001

DEPARTMENTS: THE FRONT PAGE: LAST MINUTE BITS ON THE COMMUNITY OF COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS Remembering Gray Morrow, the Golden Age of Illustration magazines, and Michael Chabon praises CBA! ......1 EDITOR’S RANT: MY MONUMENTS TO MEDIOCRITY On the mission of Comic Book Artist and the study of perhaps less-than-stellar funnybooks ..............................4 COCHRAN’S CORNER: CHECKIN’ IN WITH MICHAEL T. Columnist John Cochran chats with Mr. Monster’s maker, Michael T. Gilbert ....................................................5 CBA COMMENTARY: ALEX TOTH—’BEFORE I FORGET’ The master artist discusses his work for the shortlived comic book publisher Atlas/Seaboard ............................6

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published 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: The Grim Ghost ©1974 Seaboard Periodicals. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

December 2001

VENGEANCE, INC.: THE ATLAS/SEABOARD STORY! FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?* In the year 2001, Our Man Fred examines the man-plant borne of pod, the “hero” that was… Morlock! ........13 GOODMAN’S SECOND ACT: VENGEANCE, INCORPORATED A short history of Atlas Comics/Seaboard Periodicals; was it a publishing house built as an act of revenge? ....14 OBJECT OF REVENGE: MAKING THEIRS MARVEL Roy Thomas on the attitude of the original “House of Ideas” on the gambit of Martin Goodman ....................20 JEFF ROVIN INTERVIEW: THE RISE & FALL OF ROVIN’S EMPIRE The former Atlas/Seaboard Editor-in-Chief on his tumultuous tenure at the comics company ............................24 ERNIE COLÓN INTERVIEW: THE QUINTESSENTIAL CARTOONIST From Richie Rich to his graphic novel masterworks, the artist discusses his long career in comics ......................44 STEVE MITCHELL INTERVIEW: WHEN ATLAS SHRUGGED Atlas/Seaboard’s first production manager, Steve Mitchell, on the ups and downs of Goodman’s comics ..........54 LARRY HAMA INTERVIEW: YEAR OF THE WULF The artist/writer/editor on his first big break—Wulf the Barbarian—and on the value of friendship ..................64 HOWARD CHAYKIN INTERVIEW: STING OF THE SCORPION One of our favorite raconteurs on his first great creation and the many incarnations of Moro Frost ..................74 SAL AMENDOLA INTERVIEW: THE FLIGHT OF PHOENIX The bittersweet saga of the artist’s experience in the House of Martin Goodman ..............................................78 JIM CRAIG INTERVIEW: IN THE HOUSE OF GOODMAN The artist on his short but prolific Atlas/Seaboard days ......................................................................................88 CREATOR ROUNDTABLE: THE ATLAS/SEABOARD EXPERIENCE Wrightson, Heath, Simonson, Milgrom, Austin, Weiss, and Staton discuss their work at Atlas/Seaboard ..........92 THE DARK AVENGER/ARTISTS AS MODELS: A LITTLE HELP FROM THEIR FRIENDS A picture essay on Pat Broderick’s “The Dark Avenger” and a Terry Austin-directed photo shoot! ..................100 RIC MEYERS INTERVIEW: THE ATLAS AGE OF COMICS The Atlas/Seaboard assistant editor remembers the promise and perhaps the truth behind the collapse ..........102 ALAN KUPPERBERG INTERVIEW: IN THE NEW HOUSE OF IDEAS Working for editor-in-chief Larry Lieber as production manager in the twilight days of Atlas/Seaboard ..........108 A CLOSER LOOK: ONE BRIEF, SHINING MOMENT Nicholas Caputo’s essay on the Ditko, Goodwin & Wood gem among the rough, The Destructor ....................118 COMICS CHRONOLOGY: THE ATLAS/SEABOARD CHECKLIST A complete listing of the entire Atlas Comics and Seaboard Periodical line-up, all 72 issues! ..........................120 ENDGAME: DAK ON THE DEMISE Atlas/Seaboard’s last assistant editor David Anthony Kraft on the final days of the Great Experiment ............127 Opposite page: Howard Chaykin’s cover art to The Scorpion #1, perhaps the best title in the Atlas/Seaboard line. From the original art, courtesy of Steve Morger. ©1974 Seaboard Periodicals. Below: Detail of a dynamic panel from another fine A/S book, Wulf the Barbarian #2, penciled by Larry Hama with Klaus Janson inks. ©1974 Seaboard Periodicals. Please send all letters of comment, articles and artwork 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

Proofreader ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON Cover Art ERNIE COLÓN, front ALAN KUPPERBERG, back Cover Color ERNIE COLÓN, front TOM ZIUKO, back Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS SAM GAFFORD Logo Designer/Title Originator ARLEN SCHUMER Mascot WOODY by J.D. King Issue Theme Song THE SPACE BETWEEN The Dave Matthews Band Visit CBA on our Website at:

www.twomorrows.com Contributors Jeff Rovin • Ernie Colón Sal Amendola • Larry Hama Steve Mitchell • Ric Meyers Howard Chaykin • Al Milgrom Alan Kupperberg • Pablo Marcos Alan Weiss • Bernie Wrightson Terry Austin • Gary Friedrich Frank Springer • Alex Toth Walter Simonson • Russ Jones Anonymous • Jim Craig Roy Thomas • Steve Skeates Arlen Schumer • John Castaglia Marcus Wai • Andrew Steven Steve Morger • Peter Wallace Mark Burbey • Bill Schelly Steve Cohen • Thomas Drucis John Hitchcock • Mark Arnold Tom Field • David Anthony Kraft Bob Wiacek • Lee Nail Daniel Tesmoingt Dedicated to the memory & art of

Gray Morrow and in celebration of the marriage of

Steve Cohen & Susan Read N

December 2001

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

! 3

Goodman’s Second Act

Vengeance, Incorporated A history of the short-lived comics publisher, Atlas/Seaboard Editor’s Note

by Jon B. Cooke

Even though we’ve given you 16 more pages than advertised, we were unfortunate in not getting interviews with Larry Lieber, David Anthony Kraft, and Gary Friedrich. Larry and DAK declined as they were reticent to discuss days they’d rather not recall, plus lousy timing and faulty equipment cursed any for-print interview with Groovy Gary, who had wonderful things to say about Larry’s tenure as editorin-chief and scathing criticism of much of the Atlas line as initially conceived. Sorry about that, G.F., and our best to Larry and DAK.

Martin Goodman was pissed. The founder of Marvel Comics, recently retired from magazine publishing and fat with cash from the 1970 sale of the “House of Ideas” to Cadence Industries for millions of dollars, wanted to exact revenge from the new owners for their reneging on a promise to keep Martin’s ne’er-do-well son, Charles “Chip” Goodman, installed as Marvel’s editorial director. The comic book mogul’s solution? Go head-to-head with the publisher of Spider-Man, et al., and initiate all-out war in the comic book marketplace—raiding the Big Two’s talent pool; luring creators with promises of higher page rates, return of original artwork, and (gasp!) sharing character ownership; and even appropriating the “look and feel” of Stan Lee’s line of top-selling super-hero books (going as far as reviving the pre-Marvel name of Martin’s former imprint, Atlas Comics)— and the spoils of battle in the comic world would go to the victor, assuredly one, he doubtlessly hoped, with the surname Goodman.

Above: Les Daniels received this picture of Martin Goodman (For L.D.’s book, Marvel, Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics) from the publisher’s son, Charles “Chip” Goodman, who himself went on to the lofty profession as publisher of Seaboard Periodicals. This rare pic is from the earliest days of Marvel—then Timely—Comics, judging from the Captain America Comics #11 cover proof in Martin’s hands.

In the late Summer of 1974, the comics press eagerly anticipated the arrival of the upstart Atlas/Seaboard (a moniker settled on by comic book historians to distinguish it from the 1950s line of Martin Goodman, though officially it was Seaboard Periodicals, parent company of the new Atlas Comics). Inside Comics #3 (Fall 1974) speculated, “Seaboard seems to be off on the right foot and, if their plans succeed, we may be in store for a real treat.” Jim Steranko’s Mediascene #11 (Jan.-Feb. 1975) crowed, “Seaboard Periodicals has unleashed a tidal wave of events on the stunned comics industry. Quicker than you can say, ‘Jack the giant killer,’ the new publishing company… is establishing itself as a leading contender in the race for comics supremacy.” The Comic Reader #109 (Aug. 1974) gushed,

“[Martin] Goodman will undoubtedly use his contacts with distributors to Seaboard’s advantage, so this looks like a comics group that will make it, and big… We know that the line-up will be exciting as well as surprising….” Such was the hyperbole generated throughout the industry concerning the arrival of Seaboard Periodicals in 1974. Even the mainstream press caught the fever. “The forthcoming Atlas line,” wrote Philadelphia Daily News correspondent Jim Curtin (in the November 8, 1974 “Friday” section), “could herald a third Golden Age [the “Marvel Age” representing the second Golden Age according to Curtin’s thesis]. Other, smaller comics publishers have tried to challenge the Big Two (notably the Charlton line), but they have never had the expertise (and incentive) represented by Atlas. The new company might well be the Marvel of the 1970s.” Yet by mid-1975, after only ten months, 65 color comics, six b-&-w comic mags and five text periodicals, Atlas/Seaboard would be no more. The efforts of such comic luminaries as Neal Adams, Alex Toth, Steve Ditko, John Severin, Russ Heath, Wally Wood, and Mike Sekowsky (among many others) would be for naught. Only the recently-acquired Swank, a third-rate Playboy wannabe skin mag, would remain of the once-ambitious empire of Martin Goodman. What happened? How could one of the most successful comic book publishers in history, one who infused his new outfit with hundreds of thousands of dollars, attracting some of the best talent in the field with progressive, even revolutionary incentives, and—yes—with pristine contacts in the biz, fail so miserably? The state of the comics world before the arrival of Atlas/ Seaboard was tumultuous, to say the least. A dynasty was thrashed, revolt was in the air, and even the business’ moral watchdog was under attack. In response to a rapidly declining readership (a steady loss that had begun 25 years before—and would continue 25 years hence), publishers desperately sought new formats for their comics— digests, treasury editions, 100-page “super spectaculars,” black-&white magazines, king-size, giant-size, “bigger and better,” you name it!—to ferment excitement with the bored kids. But the writing was on the wall, and usurpation was in the air. One of Martin’s outrageously successful business moves during the last years of his tenure at Marvel was to trick the industry’s top company, DC Comics (then called National Periodical Publications), into committing an ultimately disastrous page-count and pricing change for the publisher of Superman, resulting in what then DC editorial director (soon to be publisher) Carmine Infantino characterized as a “slaughter” committed by Marvel upon his company. In an audaciously daring move, the House of Ideas raised the page count of its regular titles 75% from 32 to 48 pages, accompanied by a 75% price hike from 15¢ to 25¢ on its October and November 1971 cover-dated books. Immediately DC followed suit, though significantly increasing their page count 100%, from 32 to 64 pages. But within a month, in a move that sent shockwaves through the industry, Goodman immediately dropped page count back to 32 pages yet only reducing the price per book to 20¢, still a 25% price increase from two months prior. The results of Martin’s gambit? Marvel was able to give wholesalers a 50% discount off the cover price of their line, as compared to DC’s mere 40% price break. And whose titles would the retailers be more likely to push, do you think? Plus, what kid could resist getting five snappy, all-new Marvels for a buck, compared to four DCs, padded with moldy, old reprints? Also, as DC had to lock into ordering huge quantities of paper—a full year’s supply—the publisher was trapped at the 25¢, 64-page format for an entire year. (Historian COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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Carl Gafford has surmised that the Wage and Price Controls of President Richard Nixon’s Administration may have also played a factor in the DC debacle, a proposition CBA intends to examine with Gaff in the future.) Those 12 months were all the time DC’s competitor needed to come out on top and, for the first time in their decades-old rivalry, Marvel surpassed DC in sales, only rarely looking back in the quarter-century passed since that fateful year. The DC supremacy on the comics racks ended in 1972 after an astonishing 35-year reign, a dynasty suddenly in disarray, scrambling to get back on top, while Martin Goodman sat very prettily indeed, ensconced in his new role as the King of Comics in this New Marvel Age. But his role as Mogul Supreme would prove somewhat shortlived, as Martin took the money and walked (after serving as a consultant during an extended transitional period, leaving in early 1974), selling Marvel Comics—and the highly profitable sister company, Magazine Management, as well—though, on his departure, he elicited a promise from new owner Cadence to retain Martin’s son Chip as editorial director of the comics line. But in an apparent power move by Martin’s nephew-by-marriage, the legendary Marvel editor-in-chief Stan Lee, Chip had his executive washroom key confiscated and the boss’ son was unceremoniously booted from the company, onto the pavement of Madison Avenue and out of a job. Perhaps Martin felt betrayed and began to plot the destruction of his former company and a return to greatness for the Goodmans. Mediascene reported, “Obviously angered by the bizarre treatment accorded his son, Martin Goodman re-entered the comics field with an operation that has come to be referred to as ‘Vengeance, Inc.’ With his previous contacts, a sound financial status, an infallible business sense sharpened by a lifetime in publishing, and a reputation for fair play, Goodman’s position looks implacable.” Rancor and turbulence also prevailed among the creative rank December 2001

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and file of the comics business in those days. While the Academy of Comic Book Arts (ACBA) was established to be a kind of funnybook Motion Picture Academy—a self-congratulatory organization focused on banquets and awards—it quickly served as a soapbox for the Angry Young Men in the industry, primarily Neal Adams, Archie Goodwin, and their ilk of educated, informed and gutsy artists and writers, self-confident and filled with a strong sense of self-worth, attitudes sadly absent from the field for decades. If the shameless ill treatment of such as the poverty-stricken team of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, creators of Superman (the character that turned the industry into an undeniable success) by the very publisher they put on top would inform the ’70s workers, it was, “We’d better look out for what’s ours.” It was time to demand equity and respect from the publishers. (Jeff Rovin recalled, “I can’t tell you how many times Martin would listen to some of the things Neal Adams was saying and mutter, ‘Who the hell does he think he is?’”) Topping the creators’ agenda was a demand for publishers to return original artwork to artists as only reproduction rights of the pages had been sold to the companies (since the latter paid no sales tax on the material). Also, griping increased about the lack of health benefits and pensions, absence of any royalty or creator-ownership policies (as had been typical in book publishing for decades), and— the perennial complaint—low page rates. Though the phrase “workfor-hire” had yet to become commonplace, that condition permeated the entire industry. The only exceptions to these unsavory working conditions were in the penny-ante world of underground comix and with such unprofitable hybrids as witzend, Wally Wood’s creatorowned magazine. In the age of unprecedented political activism in the United States, the rights of the actual producers of comic book fantasies had finally come to the attention of the business. The erosion of the dreaded Comic Code Authority’s influence

CBA Interview

Rise & Fall of Rovin’s Empire A candid conversation with Atlas/Seaboard editor Jeff Rovin Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson I first encountered Jeff Rovin’s name when he served as an assistant editor at DC Comics in the early ’70s, and finally met the man himself within moments of also meeting Jim Warren for the first time in 1998. Since his stint as (co-?) editor-in-chief at Atlas Comics for a brief period in the ’70s, Jeff has done relatively little work in the comics field, but he is a highly successful writer, renowned for genre encyclopedias (e.g., The Encyclopedia of Superheroes), and his Op-Center series scribed for Tom Clancy. Jeff was interviewed by phone on Oct. 4 & 11, 2001, and he copyedited the final transcript.

Below: Recent picture of Jeff Rovin, onetime editor in chief at Atlas Comics. Courtesy of Jeff.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you from? Jeff Rovin: I was born in Brooklyn, in 1951. CBA: Were you attracted to comics at a young age? Jeff: Oh, sure. It was a wonderful time to grow up, in terms of the explosion of Silver Age characters… you had Zorro and The Adventures of Superman on TV and when your parents weren’t looking, you could immerse yourself in this stuff. CBA: Did you want to be a writer or an artist at a young age? Jeff: I always wanted to be a writer, and always wrote. I should also add it was a terrific time to read science-fiction, with the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels coming back into print, the Doc Savage novels being published by Bantam, and a lot of great science-fiction writers doing some of their best stuff. CBA: Did you read those paperback reprints of pulp material? Jeff: Oh, sure! CBA: When did you realize these things were from the ‘30s and the ‘40s, from an older culture? Jeff: When an uncle of mine saw the cover of a Doc Savage book I was reading and said, “That’s not what Doc Savage looks like!” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Doc Savage has wavy hair, not a plastered-down bronze widow’s peak.” He told me how he used to read the magazines as a kid, and I was flabbergasted. Of course, I read Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes and realized comic books went back that far as they did. Still, it was a revelation about Doc. CBA: So the wave of nostalgia hit at a prime time for you, when you were 14 or 15 years old? Jeff: Well, it was not nostalgia for me, [laughter] but it was nostalgia for a lot of people, and it was great to discover that. Of course, G-8 and His Battle Aces came a little bit later, and The Spider, and The

Avenger… it was just a flood of material. World-class material, because a lot of those guys knew how to write. CBA: And a lot of those guys didn’t. Jeff: Yeah… [laughs] touché! But they knew how to tell a story. You can fault their grammar, fault their characterizations, but they kept the pages turning. CBA: I remember getting into the Doc Savages as a kid, and then probably giving it up after about the eighth book, because there was just so much repetition in the descriptive passages. Jeff: I suppose those would be so easy to write today, because you could cut and paste huge paragraphs of text! [laughter] Back then, they had to type it all over. CBA: After a period of time, did you become more discriminating, looking for, perhaps, more literate fare? Jeff: If you call discriminating going from Doc Savage to The Avenger and The Shadow! [laughter] Of course, I looked for more sophisticated storytelling as my tastes changed. That was when I discovered Ray Bradbury, Issac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and writers of that nature. CBA: You were guided more to the contemporary science-fiction? Jeff: Correct, and it was kind of fun to notice that Gardner Fox had written some space operas, because there was a name I recognized from comics, and I’d say, “He’s also writing novels,” and pick up his books and see ads for Lin Carter and L. Sprague DeCamp and other authors. So you’d get a wide variety of styles and subject matter. CBA: Did you do creative writing in grade school? Jeff: I went to public school, made it all the way through high school, tried a couple of months of college here and there until the money ran out and the interest waned, got into comic books. There really wasn’t much of an airlock between reading and doing them. CBA: What was your first professional sale? Jeff: That was to Skywald comics, in late 1971. I was writing a column called “The Psycho-Analyst,” analyzing Psycho magazine [laughter] and doing odd jobs, proofreading, that sort of thing. CBA: What was Sol Brodsky [co-founder of Skywald] like? Jeff: Sol was very enthusiastic about what he was doing. He was in kind of a difficult situation because Herschel and Israel Waldman, the publishers, were pretty much calling the shots in terms of frequency and eventually whether the magazines would continue. Their main business was coloring books. But Sol loved those magazines and really wanted them to work. He was excited to be working with guys like Jerry Siegel and Bill Everett, and newcomers like [editor/writer] Al Hewetson, Augustine Funnell, and Pablo Marcos. CBA: Were [Skywald art directors] Mike Esposito and Ross Andru around the offices when you were there? Jeff: No, I was there maybe two or three afternoons a week. The only one I bumped into regularly up there was Bill Everett, who was extraordinary. CBA: Did you know of his illustrious past? Jeff: By then I did, sure, and I was not smart enough to get him to draw Sub-Mariner for me. Pablo Marcos was up there. Jeff Jones, of course, was doing covers for them, Boris Vallejo… there were a lot of interesting people. CBA: Do you recall a tentatively planned book called ScienceFiction Odyssey? Jeff: Yes, that was a magazine Jeff Jones had done a cover for, and I think Al Hewetson finally used it on Psycho or Scream, one of those. I remember we’d started to collect material for it and never did it for one reason or another. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

December 2001

CBA: Yeah, Gardner Fox and Jack Katz did a story for that title. Jeff: That’s right! But Jerry Siegel was really the one, of course, I wish I’d gotten to work with a little bit. He had done a script or two, and just holding them was sort of exciting! [laughter] I didn’t keep them, unfortunately, but holding them was fun! CBA: How did you get the job at Skywald? Jeff: I’d gone up there to interview Sol for a research paper for the week or so I was at New York University, and he offered me work as an editorial assistant. CBA: For that term paper, were you just focusing on Skywald, or did you also go over to Warren? Jeff: I went over to Warren. It was going to be about comic books in the early 1970s, mainstream comics as opposed to the undergrounds—which of course were exploding at the time—and I never finished it, because once Sol offered me the job, I said, “Okay.” CBA: Did you go to any other publishers? Jeff: I talked to Carmine Infantino, and at Marvel I talked to Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas. But again, my memories of that time are pretty much centered on Skywald because they gave me a job, and that made a big impression. CBA: How long did you last at Skywald? Jeff: Until October of 1972, because I really wanted to work in color comics. I think by that time Sol had discontinued his color line, and I went up to DC and couldn’t get in to see Carmine, so I sat in the lobby until Carmine came out. That was from about ten in the morning until about five or six in the afternoon. I assumed he would come out for lunch, but he didn’t, he sent out to Friar Tuck’s for a salad, so I missed him. But he told me to go see Dorothy Woolfolk, who was still there, and I went to see her. She was editing romance comics, and as it happened, her editorial assistant was leaving to get married so I took her place. CBA: Who was her editorial assistant? Jeff: Deborah Anderson. She was doing letters pages, proofreading, that type of thing, advice to the lovelorn, so I just took over all those jobs. CBA: What was Dorothy like? Jeff: She was about as animated as a person can be— always moving, speaking, acting… often, not in that order. She was very much a feminist, and wanted Lois Lane and the love comics to reflect that, and it was just a great learning experience, because I hadn’t been working with anyone—well, [laughs] I hadn’t worked with anyone except Sol, but it was fun working with someone who was that dynamic. CBA: Alan Kupperberg and Alan Weiss said she clicked with the younger generation. Jeff: Oh, yeah, she clicked, she just loved them, she loved us and the ideas, and I’m just sorry I didn’t get to know her better, because I got shuffled off to Joe Orlando, Joe Kubert, Bob Kanigher…. CBA: How long did you last with her? Jeff: It was maybe two months, and then Joe Orlando asked me to come over and help handle the horror comics and Swamp Thing, and who could resist that? Then Joe Kubert decided he didn’t want to come in every day, his assistant Marv Wolfman was leaving, and so he needed somebody to fill in, so I kind of rotated, mostly between the two Joes. CBA: Kubert was only coming in a couple of days a week? Jeff: Yes. He was deadline-challenged by the war books and Tarzan titles. That, of course, was the pinnacle of that era—working with Joe Kubert, learning about his storytelling and insights into comics. Then I spent a little bit of time with Bob Kanigher, who as I recall replaced Dorothy and did Wonder Woman, which he insisted on referring to as “WW,” even though I pointed out saying the initials had more syllables. [laughter] We just didn’t get along that well. Bob didn’t get along with too many people, although he got along well with Joe, December 2001

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even though Joe Kubert rewrote him extensively. But Joe used to do—and I have them here somewhere—these wonderful thumbnails for all of his artists. Even in those crude little pieces, the drama was so clear. CBA: Joe Kubert certainly has a reputation as a very heavy-handed editor, of extensively rewriting almost everybody’s stuff; whatever came across his desk, he really worked on. Jeff: I don’t know that I’d describe it as heavy-handed, I’d describe it as heavy, because his editing usually—in my experience—improved what he was working on. CBA: I think Bob Kanigher is one of the best writers comics ever had. Jeff: I really appreciated him more when we weren’t working together. At DC, Carmine asked me to edit reprint titles, including Legion of Super-Heroes (which, I believe, was the first time they had their own title), Doom Patrol, Metal Men, and I had to go back and look at the material Kanigher wrote, and I had to cut the page number down because there were more ads and fewer story pages.

CBA Interview

Colón of the Comics Chatting with the talented (and ubiquitous) funnybook artist Inset right: Besides his “straight” comics work, Ernie Colón is probably best recalled as the quintessential Richie Rich artist, a character who just might be, as E.C. says, the most successful comic book character in history, spawning more than 50 separate titles at Harvey Comics. As the artist mentions in this interview, Ernie was instrumental with the introduction of adventure stories into the titles, inspired by Hergé’s Tintin comics albums. Courtesy of Peter Wallace. ©2001 Harvey Features, Inc.

Below: Ernie Colón in the 1950s, a “Brooklyn punk” says the artist. Courtesy of Ernie Colón.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Ernie Colón certainly must be one of the most versatile—and under-appreciated—comic book artists in the business, able to adapt his stylings from his legendary Richie Rich mode to a quasi-comical National Lampoon approach to dynamic super-heroic adventure to all-out dramatic and effective illustration. He is also one of the most candid, insightful conversationalists CBA has ever had the enormous pleasure to spend time with. The artist was interviewed by phone on September 26, 2001 and he copyedited the transcript. Ladies and gents, from his start at Harvey Comics to his current work as a multimedia artist, we give you: Ernie Colón. Comic Book Artist: How do you pronounce your last name? Ernie Colón: Cologne [Ka-loan], with an accent over the second “o.” CBA: Ernie, you are an amazingly prolific artist who has been seen in wildly diverse publications. You’ve worked on everything from kids’ humor to adult fantasy work. You’ve been in magazines as varied as Penthouse Comix and Richie Rich! [laughter] You’re probably the most diverse comic book artist in the business. Ernie: Wow! I don’t know about that, but I’ll take your word for it. [laughter] CBA: As far as I know, there’s very little known about you in the public record. Ernie: Yeah, that’s true. CBA: So, if you’d like to tell us where you’re from originally, let’s start there. Ernie: I was born in Puerto Rico. I left there when I was 10 years of age, in 1940. CBA: Did you have an interest in comics as a youngster? Ernie: Always, yes. I started drawing, as far back as I can remember, at six years of age. My kindergarten books, school books were always full of double-wing airplanes from World War I. Yeah, I drew all the time, that’s all I wanted to do, I wanted to become an artist, a comic book artist. CBA: Did you have specific favorite strips? Ernie: Yeah, I had the usual heroes, and at this stage in my life I began to think of them as more of a burden, which is interesting. I’m 70 years old now, so I’ve got a whole different perspective on things. My heroes were, of course, Milton Caniff and Noel Sickles. Later on…

you name the really great ones, and I was a fan of theirs. Those guys were just absolute craftsmen. I really was fanatic about them and I loved their work. Now, I really think it’s a burden to emphasize art over storytelling. I have the feeling that drawing for many of the greats was more important than the story. But for me, at this stage in my life, the story has become much more important than the drawing! I don’t want to draw that finely, or that well… not that I was ever equal to those guys; I consider myself on a lower plane than them, but their influence was such that I tried to pattern myself, model myself and my drawings after their craftsmanship, and I was never happy with it, because my abilities never reached that high plateau. Again, I just want to tell the story, I’ve been experimenting lately with what I call “doodlemovies,” which is doodling on the page without the aid of rulers and T-squares or triangles or anything like that, I just draw panel lines freehand, and I start drawing a story. Sometimes I don’t even know where it’s going. [laughter] CBA: You’re talking freestyle! Ernie: Yeah, with ballpoint pen, and however it comes out, that’s the way it is, and I don’t worry about whether the gun in a guy’s hand is a Luger, where every screw, every notch is exactly the way it is in a real Luger, because that’s not really the story; the story is the guy’s got a gun in his hand; it doesn’t really matter what kind of a gun it is, it’s a weapon. So, taking it from that angle and just doodling it along and telling a story has been a great discovery for me, something brand-new, and I’m really enjoying it. CBA: You are a triple-threat, right? You pencil, ink, write, and letter… do you color, too? Ernie: Yes, I do everything—not as well as the best [laughter]—in each field. CBA: Your work is awfully good stuff. Did you do your own strips or comic books as a child? Ernie: Oh, yeah, sure. I used to hunt for those notebooks that have those funny black-&-white pattern on them, the ones that didn’t have blue lines on them. When I was a kid, they were very hard to find. But yeah, I’d hunt them down and make a comic book out of them. CBA: Was this super-heroes? Ernie: No, I never liked super-heroes, something which I also made plain when I was working at Marvel and DC, and I don’t think that was well-received. [laughs] I really like adventure stories, that’s why Terry and the Pirates was my absolute, top-notch favorite, because it had to do with adventure, not some silly guy running around in his underwear. I didn’t like it, and the more they developed the super-hero into what I call the “snarling brute era,” Wolverine and his ilk, they became even less attractive to me. In fact, when I was a kid, the only super-hero I liked was Captain Marvel, because the strip had a sense of humor. And when DC got it, they turned him into a snarling brute! CBA: [laughs] Can’t win, I guess. Ernie: They were riding the crest of a wave, and as usual, they really believed it was never going to end. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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CBA: Mainstream comics seems to have just about eliminated all the other genres besides super-heroes, even though historically the best-selling comic books—ones that really reached a mass market and had an impact—were always anthology comics, like horror, crime, romance, satire, containing perhaps elements that really pertained to people in real life to some degree, [laughs] and it’s as if today they’ve totally disregarded that, and niched their audience to such a small degree. Ernie: They didn’t try to bring comics to kids, so to speak, by giving them comics they could start with, to hook them into that reading habit, into accepting and buying comic books… and when the mainstream publishers did make an attempt, they did it really half-heartedly, because they just didn’t like kids’ comics. When I went into Marvel and DC, they used to call what I did “bigfoot,” which I really resented, because at that time, when many of the titles were struggling to put out, I don’t know, 100,000 in sales, Richie Rich was selling millions of comics! They had this contempt for so-called “bigfoot,” and I thought it was quite misplaced. CBA: Did you have formal art training as a child? Ernie: No, I’m afraid I was self-taught. It always sounds great when you say it, and not so good when you have to go through it; at some points, it’s very, very difficult. It’s like reinventing the wheel; it doesn’t work for you. CBA: When you moved from Puerto Rico, where did you go? Ernie: We lived in the South Bronx. CBA: Did you seek out professionals in New York City as a teenager? Ernie: I tried, but I was unsuccessful. In fact, I was taking a walk one day, and it was just unbelievable, I came upon this building, I’m passing by it and I did a double-take, and there was a guy on the ground floor drawing Sheena of the Jungle. To this day, I still don’t know who that guy was, [laughs] but I was so completely taken aback that all I could do was press my nose against the window, and he made an obscene gesture on Sheena’s body [laughter] to amuse me! I didn’t know what to do, so I just walked away in a trance, thinking I was so close to an actual cartoonist, but I couldn’t communicate with him! CBA: So you found the actual Fiction House! Ernie: Yeah, I ran across it by accident! [laughter] CBA: As a teenager, did you say, “I want to be a comic book artist as a career”? Ernie: All the way. When I finally left high school—with I can only charitably call an inadequate portfolio—that was when Wertham had put out his book and closed up quite a few shops, and no one was in any mood to hire a young, untried cartoonist. So I went right back to the factory where I worked, doing messenger boy work and all that stuff. I didn’t get a job in cartooning until I was 24 years old, which was at Harvey. CBA: How did that come about? Ernie: Actually, they advertised for a letterer, and I went anyway, and my lettering then was a little worse than it is now, [laughs] in fact, a lot worse. And they had Joe Rosen working there, he’s a master! So, Leon looked at it, and said, “You’re no letterer,” so I said “Okay,” and I started to leave, and Vickie Harvey—who I had known very briefly a few years before—ran over to Alfred Harvey and said, “I know that guy, don’t let him go! He’s a good artist.” So he took me back. I did paste-ups for a year while I practiced Richie and all those characters, and in a few years I went freelance. CBA: Who was Vickie? Ernie: Vickie was [publisher] Alfred Harvey’s wife. CBA: You had met her socially? Ernie: Yeah, she had been dating a friend of mine years before, so I had known her for a while, and she had seen my work, and she even liked it. She actually saved me from walking out altogether. CBA: Where was Harvey located? Ernie: At that time, they were at 1860 Broadway, just up the street from the Gulf-Western Building. That building, of course, was razed to the ground a few years ago. CBA: Can you describe the offices? Were they big, did they have a studio? Ernie: I think they were on the 12th floor, overlooking Broadway. They looked very much like… something like a newspaper office, December 2001

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because there were always papers around and everything like that, and they had an art department, and secretaries, that kind of thing. In the art department, you had the art director, two paste-up guys, and the ever-present Joe Rosen, who never said anything unless he was directly spoken to, and even then, he would only answer briefly. CBA: [laughs] His brother Sam Rosen was over at Marvel? Ernie: Yeah. I think I may have met him once or twice, about the only guy I knew at Marvel. CBA: What year did you go into Harvey? Ernie: Oh, good Lordy, if we had to do the math…. Well, I was 24, I’m 70 now, so…. CBA: Did you see Joe Simon around the office? Ernie: I saw Joe. He and Alfred Harvey were close friends. Joe had a great sense of humor, and was a great character. I was able to talk to him about Boy Commandos, which I read when I was a kid. He was one of those people who had been around forever, but didn’t look it. I couldn’t believe when I met him that he was the guy who had done Boy Commandos, he was just a young-looking guy. I was an adult at that point. CBA: Joe’s done everything! Ernie: [laughs] Yeah. CBA: So he was just showing up socially, or…?

Above: We sure wish we could’ve located the original art to the above graphic tour de force by Ernie Colón, but we could only scan the cover of The Grim Ghost #1 for repro’ here. Unfortunately, Ernie retains none of his Atlas Comics work—or Harvey art, for that matter—so we have to rely on the printed work for examples of Ernie’s superb artistry for those two companies. We are featuring a plethora of E.C.’s work for other clients though, though the black-&white reproductions hardly do his exquisite color pieces the proper justice. We will be covering the artist again in our forthcoming Harvey issue so if any of you kind readers have Colón originals from his illustrious career, please contact us soon! ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc. 45

CBA Interview

When Atlas Shrugged Atlas/Seaboard production guy Steve Mitchell speaks Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Comic Book Artist first interviewed artist (and occasional writer) back in #7 where he discussed his entré into the field at DC Comics in the early 1970s and his subsequently bittersweet experience freelancing during those formative years, most prominently for Marvel. The New York-raised artist was interviewed on September 25, 2001 via telephone and he copyedited the final transcript.

Below: Okay, maybe you’ve already seen this Jack Adler photo of Steve Mitchell (taken in the early 1970s) in CBA #5 but it’s the only pic we’ve got of Big Steve!

Comic Book Artist: The last time we left you [in CBA #7], you were working at Continuity? Steve Mitchell: I was working at DC Comics, and Jeff Rovin had asked me if I wanted to come over and work for this new upstart company, which I believe was called Seaboard, I believe that was the overall title, like Magazine Management was for Marvel. They were looking for, essentially, a production manager. I was working for Jack Adler at DC Comics as the production manager’s assistant—not to be confused with the assistant production manager [laughter]—and while I liked working at DC, and I liked working for Jack, there was an opportunity for me to spread my wings, and the money was slightly better, and I guess I was… I guess I had a bad case of “young Turk disease” or something like that, and I figured, “Well, here’s a chance for me to go make my mark on the world.” So, after having had an interview with Chip Goodman, I said, “Sure, why not? Let’s do it.” And that’s how I got my job over there as the production manager of Atlas Comics. CBA: Now, DC Comics was obviously in business since the early ’30s, and you had a situation there with an old, established company, and yet this new upstart outfit had started. Was it for the money? Steve: I was around 20 or 21 at the time, maybe 22, and when you’re young, you don’t think about the future, you don’t think

about longevity, you just think about what sounds good to you. I knew that if I stayed at DC, I probably would’ve had a very solid job, but I don’t know that I would’ve gone anywhere much past what I was doing… I mean, maybe I would’ve gotten a title, maybe I would’ve gotten more salary, but Jack Adler wasn’t going anywhere, Sol Harrison wasn’t going anywhere—because at the time… what year are we talking about? 1974? Around ‘74, Sol was the production manager, and Jack was the assistant production manager… I don’t remember the hierarchy, but nobody was going to go anywhere. So for me, I looked at it as—at the time—not a dead-end job, but a job where there wasn’t going to be a lot of forward movement. Martin and Chip Goodman had the Goodman money, and the Marvel/Magazine Management experience behind them, I figured these guys knew their way around, and if they were going to start a company, they weren’t amateurs, but seasoned professionals—well, Marty Goodman was a seasoned professional, I don’t know if I can say that about Chip—but they knew the magazine/comic book business. More to the point, it was just an opportunity for me to work with a guy I was chummy with, and maybe try something new and interesting. That, to me, was the real pull. The money was better, but not profoundly better. It was a chance to do something that might be new or different or cutting edge, all of those dopey, self-delusional things that you think about when you’re young and full of beans. CBA: Did you have any experience with Martin Goodman? Had you meet him previously? Steve: I met Marty Goodman probably after I was hired, and in the amount of time that I worked there, Marty was almost a ghost! He would come in every day, would make a lunch appointment with some old crony of his, and then come back from lunch and sometimes snooze on the Chesterfield couch in his office. He would occasionally pay attention to business, but it was primarily Chip’s company, and I heard it said—I don’t know if this is true—that Marty started the company just so he could have a place to go to the office and get away from his wife. [laughter] Granted, I don’t know who said that; I can’t attribute that to anybody, but that’s what I heard. I liked Marty. He was a crusty, old-fashioned New York magazine publisher, but he seemed to be a pretty nice guy CBA: What were your impressions of his son, Chip? Steve: Well, I was not a big fan of Chip’s, and I don’t think Chip was a fan of mine. There was somebody else Chip would’ve rather had in my job, and he couldn’t get them away from Marvel, and so Jeff Rovin and I knew each other—I met Jeff when he was working for Dorothy Woolfolk at DC, back at the 909 Third Avenue office— and Jeff and I had a lot in common, and we were both a couple of young Turks, and full of our own self-confidence and arrogance, and that’s why Jeff pushed for me, but Chip never really wanted me. Chip and I never really connected. I have to say I was never overly impressed with Chip’s intelligence or insights, and I don’t think he was terribly articulate about what he wanted. Chip really wanted to be a men’s magazine publisher, and they bought Swank—which at the time was a medium-sized men’s magazine—and so Chip, when he wasn’t busy paying attention to Swank business, would occasionally pay attention to Atlas/Seaboard business. I, personally, was not very impressed with Chip as a comic book guy. I mean, he might’ve been a good magazine business guy, but in terms of comics, I don’t think he really cared, personally, and because he was the boss, he was allowed to have opinions that I don’t always agree with. In general, that’s how I feel about Chip. CBA: How old was Chip, roughly, when you were there? COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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Steve: Chip didn’t have a whole lot of hair, having lost it fairly early on in the game, so he looked a little older than maybe he actually was. If I was in my early 20s, my guess was Chip was somewhere in his late thirties or early forties. I couldn’t really tell. CBA: Were you aware of a story, “The Boss’ Son,” in Playboy, written by Ivan Prashker, which was allegedly based on Chip? Steve: No, I wasn’t. CBA: It was written by a guy who was a heavy contributor to Martin Goodman’s “sweat” magazines, and he sold it to Playboy. It was reportedly a satirical jab at Chip, casting him as an ineffectual, womanizing businessman. Steve: I wasn’t aware of the story, but let me put it to you this way: Chip was the kind of guy that would probably inspire death threats. Like I said, the old man was a tough but fair, old-fashioned New York magazine publisher, and there seem to be a handful of those guys, guys who had companies and published “sweat” mags, movie and TV fanbook-type mags, horoscope mags, crossword puzzle mags. To use somebody else’s term— but I won’t necessarily disagree with it—Chip was the “retarded son” who was going to inherit the business. Now, Chip was not retarded, but like I said, I don’t think Chip was as bright as he thought he was, and he was only really interested in being the publisher of Swank. One other thing, as a complete sidebar: We published crossword magazines, and we actually had—believe it or not—it’s one thing to have comic book fans, but we actually had people calling us up over there wondering when the next issue of Fill-In-The-Blank Crosswords was coming out. [laughter] They couldn’t wait for those new crosswords, [laughter] which I always felt was a bit bizarre, actually. CBA: Did you do production on the crossword puzzle magazines? Steve: No, I didn’t do production on any of the magazines, the only stuff I did was the comics and the comics-related magazines like Weird Tales of the Macabre, Thrilling Adventure Stories, and Movie Monsters, which was our version of Famous Monsters. But ultimately, I had to do comics production, so we had guys who would come in to freelance art direct those magazines. I just couldn’t, I didn’t have the time, considering I was responsible for a line of comics. By the way, for the record, the Atlas “A” was my design. I came up with that design, with the Atlas symbol and the sans serif text—I don’t remember what the typeface was for the Atlas comics—but I came up with the rough and Gaspar Saladino did the final execution. CBA: Did you rely on your contacts for freelancers at DC in your new job? Steve: Both Jeff and I knew a lot of the people that we ultimately used from our other jobs; me from my experience at DC, and Jeff from his experience with Warren. We had that sort of mini-Captain Company, Warren’s merchandising outfit, which Jeff created at Atlas because of his Warren experience. There was an awful lot of money to be made, and I would say that ultimately we didn’t do nearly as a good a job as Captain Company would do, but I guess the Goodmans did make some money from it, enough to keep them alive and kicking for about a year. I took some heat from Jack Adler because I tried stealing some of his people. When we needed logos, I went right to Gaspar Saladino, because to me, he was the best logo artist in the business. I think Gaspar was also the best letterer in the industry at the time, certainly the go-to guy when you needed a logo. One thing the Goodmans had going for them was that they had a lot of money to spend—or seemingly had a lot of money to spend—because the rates we had over there were very good, and I guess either Chip or Marty realized that if they were going to get competitive talent from Marvel or DC, they would have to pay better than the competition. And then, of course, pay as quickly as Marvel and DC, I thought. We paid once a week. If you had your vouchers in by Wednesday, you had a December 2001

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check by Friday. CBA: There was a rumor that the company was created as an act of revenge against Marvel, because allegedly there was a promise that was made when Martin Goodman sold the company, Chip would be kept on as president of Marvel Comics, but was let go. Steve: I heard something about that. I couldn’t swear to it in court, it’s one of those things where that sounds like it made sense, and I believe it to be true, but I don’t know if it’s officially true. CBA: Visually, the look and feel of Atlas Comics was very similar to Marvel Comics. You had a similar banner across the top, and it was conceivable somebody could grab it off the newsstand and mistake it for a Marvel comic. Was there an edict that came down to make them look like Marvel comics? Steve: No, there wasn’t. It’s an interesting schizophrenic irony to it, because you had Jeff, who had a DC/Warren upbringing, and then of course there was Larry Lieber, Stan Lee’s brother (that’s how Larry would introduce himself, he’d say, “Hi, I’m Larry Lieber, Stan Lee’s brother… ” the world’s longest name) [laughter]—Larry was as

Above: Another fine Frank Thorne cover (sans logo and blurbs), this one for The Cougar #1, a book created and written by Steve Mitchell, a comic inspired by the famed TV movie, The Night Stalker. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

CBA Interview

Year of the Wulf Artist/writer/editor Larry Hama on his first big break Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson While most comic fans think of Larry Hama as a writer of countless of G.I. Joe, Punisher and Wolverine stories, he actually began his comics career as an artist, working as an assistant to Wally Wood and later as a freelancer for Continuity Associates, the legendary Neal Adams-Dick Giordano comics art agency. The writer/artist/ editor was interviewed by phone on October 29, 2001 and Larry copyedited the final transcript.

Above: Mediascene #11 contained a feature on the then-new Atlas Comics line and included repros of a series of covers that sported different logos than those finally used. Above is the initial Wulf #1 design, art by Larry Hama, logo presumably by Gaspar Saladino. ©1974 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

Inset center: For the glory of Wulfgar! Larry Hama poses for a Polaroid in the front room of Continuity Associates for Wulf the Barbarian #1 drawing reference. Depicts Stavro Dar Kovin in panel five, page five, as seen. Courtesy of Larry Hama. Wulf ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc. 64

Comic Book Artist: Where are you originally from? Larry Hama: Born in New York City, grew up in Queens. Been here all my life. CBA: Were you into comics at a young age? Larry: Yes. At that time, comics were an aspect of most kids’ lives in my neighborhood. We all read comics and, being kids with little or no money, comics were used for bartering, trading. Comics were a kid’s capital. [laughter] You’d load up the wagon with comics, go down the block, and trade with other kids. CBA: Were you old enough to read ECs? Larry: No. ECs were just sort of ahead of me. The first comics I remember having and owning were probably Walt Disney comics, mostly the Duck stuff. CBA: Did you like the Carl Barks material? Larry: I loved the Barks stuff! I vividly remember Barks stories I read as a kid, they were totally a major influence on me. CBA: Right after EC was a kind of lackluster period for comics, there wasn’t a lot that was going on. Larry: No, but there was a lot of them, a wide variety, and you could go to the corner candy store, there’d be two rotating racks full of comics—comics for everybody! Probably half the comics at the time were aimed at girls! There were Archie comics, Harvey comics, Little Lulu comics, and all my girl cousins—and every girl I knew—had a stack of comics as well, but they were very different from the type of comics boys owned. [laughter] The girls always had Little Lulu, Walt Disney and Harvey stuff. CBA: Romance comics? Larry: Very few girls I knew had romance comics. I think those sold to an older crowd. So, there was a wide variety, and there were comics that even as a kid struck me as being kind of odd. [laughs] I always thought the Charlton comics were weird. Even the paper seemed weird, you know? [laughter] There was something alien about them. But the stuff that really sticks with me as far as remembering actual stories and plots, and being able to picture entire scenes in my head, is the Barks stuff. Although, I was very much into the entire DC line at the time. This was when there was a huge slew of Superman titles: Superman, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Superboy, Action Comics, World’s Finest. All that stuff. Tons of it! Mr. Mxyzptlk, stories about the stupid dog and the horse with a cape. [laughter]

CBA: What was that horse’s name? Larry: It was Superhorse. There was Superdog Krypto… and there were all these sidebar things, like the bottled city and all that stuff There was an alternate world of Smallville that seemed to be taking place in the ‘30s and ‘40s. [laughter] CBA: Every few years it would move up a decade. Larry: I could never sort of figure out the time discrepancy in comics as a kid. Was it really taking place in our time, and how come Clark Kent always wore suits that looked like they were made in 1943? [laughter] CBA: Because in 1965, the folks at DC were walking around in suits that were made in 1943! [laughter] Larry: And Clark was always wearing snap-brim fedoras, too. Lois Lane would wear those little suits with the little hat. All that stuff. CBA: Starched blouse. Larry: Yeah, starched little blouse with a Peter Pan collar. CBA: So you obviously got into the Mort Weisinger universe? Larry: Oh, yeah. That’s it. Even then, I could sort of tell the difference in the art stuff. There was certain stuff I liked, I just didn’t know why I liked it. Such as, “Adam Strange” as drawn by Carmine Infantino, the early ‘60s Blackhawk stuff, Challengers of the Unknown by Jack Kirby! I couldn’t figure out why I liked it! [laughs] But I just knew I did. CBA: Did you get into the Atlas monster books? Larry: No, I didn’t even really know they existed until I was starting high school, or right before, when all that stuff really started to happen, though I liked that really weird Ditko mystery stuff. There was one story that really gave me nightmares, this guy went into another dimenCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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sion and there were all these weird sort of gnome-like warriors that had no legs, just these round bottoms that floated in the air—I don’t remember anything at all about the story, but that image sort of stuck with me. When Stan and Steve used to do these little eightpage stories, they were pretty simplistic, but they always had the same sort of twist ending, and Ditko’s art was always so distinctive. CBA: It’s funny how Marvel comics was almost the antithesis of what was going on at DC at the time. DC was a very orderly universe, and it just seems to me the Atlas comics were plain bizarre, with an otherworldly feel. You would be compelled by Kirby, but you didn’t know why! Larry: I know why now. Jack’s stuff is, more than dynamic, but emblematic… his stories are really iconographic, and they really hit certain strangely primal cores. He’s tapping into whatever the cavemen were tapping into when they were painting on cave walls in France 100,000 years ago. If you look at those French cave drawings, look at cave paintings from Spain and from the Urals or something, they are separated by thousands and

thousands of years and thousands and thousands of miles, and yet they’re remarkably similar, and it makes you realize there wasn’t a school of cave painting. [laughter] There’s a methodology for putting into two dimensions, in graphic form, representations of what you see in a three-dimensional world, that is probably weirdly hot-wired into us, and we’re not aware of how pervasive that is, and when somebody really sort of captures the roots of that, like Kirby or Picasso, you know? [laughs] It reaches across all sorts of boundaries. CBA: Certainly your average caveman had a pretty violent life, and Kirby had a brutal upbringing as a child in a ghetto of New York. I can’t speak for Picasso, but you look at Guernica, see the rage— Larry: It may relate to violence in that the primal stuff is rooted in that, but I think it really is just getting at something that is imprinted in us, rather than a learned appreciation. That’s the point. CBA: Did you start drawing as a child? Larry: Yeah, I drew as a kid a lot, just to entertain myself. I remember just drawing ships and tanks and airplanes and battles, the usual boy stuff. I would get bored drawing things like trees, but mechanical stuff interested me a lot, and I guess also dynamic figures. I was never really good at that. I could sit and figure out perspective on planes and things like that, try to figure out how to do a complex thing like an airplane— but, boy, drawing a human figure in dynamic action from many angles is still extremely difficult! [laughter] CBA: Did you do your own comics? Larry: The earliest I can remember drawing my own comics was about the fifth grade. CBA: Did you do knock-off characters, were they superheroes? Larry: I remember getting packages from relatives in Japan with these really sick Japanese comics—early manga—printed on paper that was like one grade above December 2001

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toilet tissue. [laughter] They were monochrome, not even black-&white! Some of the pages would be in purple ink! [laughs] Some of the pages would be in green ink! CBA: Were they samurai comics? Larry: They were giant robot comics, super-heroes, some of them were samurai, cartoon as well as quasi-realistic. Some of it was violent samurai comics with heads being cut off, done in this Crusader Rabbit type style! Sort of like Astro Boy with ultra-violence going on! [laughter] A very strange combination. Also, they had their own, totally alien repertory of signals and effects. There were all these things in American comics that we learned— like a dotted line around a balloon means somebody’s whispering, and wavy lines coming from somebody means they smell!—but Japanese comics are completely different, like Hindi (I have no idea what the original “sakan” was transcripted from!) movies, I have no idea what these things meant! These strangeshaped puffs of smoke would—never figured out half the stuff! A lot of it, if you’ve ever seen “Doctor Slump” comics, or—what’s it called—it’s a popular one, the kid with the tail— Dragonball. It’s a bizarre thing out of another culture. CBA: But it works! [laughs] Larry: It works, but we have no idea what it’s about. CBA: Your ethnic background—are you half-Japanese, full Japanese? Larry: Ethnically? I’m completely Japanese. I’m third generation, and I grew up in an American suburb, thinking of myself as an American. My mom was born in Sacramento! [laughs] She said things like, “Gee whiz!” [laughter] She actually said things like, “Golly!” [laughter] “Swell!” The weird thing was, when I was a kid, she would use the word “homeboy.” I mean, that’s how old that term is! We tend to think of it as a very current, in-the-hood coinage, but apparently it came from California in the 1930s! She would say, “Oh, he’s a Sacramento homeboy.” [laughter] She never said, “homey”; it was “homeboy.” CBA: The vast majority of comic readers put them aside when they hit a certain age. Did you continue to enjoy comics after puberty? Larry: Well, I put them aside to a degree, but I still own comics that I bought when I was 12 or 13. [laughs] Mystery in Space, “Sgt. Rock,” some of the early Marvel stuff, the early Fantastic Four, things like that. CBA: Did you stop buying comics at a certain point? Larry: Yeah, I think I stopped buying comics sometime during high school, but I would, as a regular thing, sometimes stuff would show up, and I’d go, “Okay, it’s worth picking up.” CBA: Were they increasingly Marvels that were worth picking up? Larry: Once the stuff like Fantastic Four, X-Men, Spider-Man and “Doctor Strange” came out, I lost complete interest in the DC line,

CBA Interview

The Flight of Phoenix Sal Amendola’s ups and downs working for Atlas Comics Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

In the short three-plus year life of Comic Book Artist, Sal Amendola has been an enthusiastic supporter and insightful contributor since issue #1. Most, perhaps, remember Sal’s artwork from early-1970s DC Comics, most prominently Detective Comics #439’s memorable Batman story, “Night of the Stalker,” a seminal tale inspired by Neal Adams and also plotted by Sal. Many may also recall the artist’s three-issue run on Phoenix, one of the better Atlas comics of their short run. Sal was interviewed via phone in September 2001 and he copyedited the final transcript. Comic Book Artist: Where are you from originally? Sal Amendola: I was born in Italy. CBA: When did you come over to the States? Sal: In 1948, three months after I was born. I’m practically totally American but I still can’t be president. CBA: Did you get into comics at an early age? Sal: At eleven years old I decided that that was what I wanted to do. CBA: Do you recall the first time you picked up a comic book? Were they always around? Sal: No, I can’t recall the first time. My mother used to take my sister, brother and I to a park here in Brooklyn and, to keep us quiet I guess, she’d buy comic books for each of us. So it was pretty much since infancy. My first memory, though, is of a Lone Ranger comic book, and the guy who used to draw that, Tom Gill, became one of my teachers. He was one of the cruelest teachers I ever had, but he’s my buddy now. CBA: What kind of comics were you into? Sal: Back in those early days, it was Westerns. Then I discovered super-hero comics, the “Superman Family” of comic books. By the mid-’60s, I was interested in everything that came out. Literally everything. And not just comic books. CBA: You obviously were too young for the ECs? Sal: Yes,

yes. I was not conscious of EC at all. Although, of course, I have seen them since. Those stories were great. The artists were fantastic. CBA: So you were into the DC comics? Sal: Yeah, DC and Dell. CBA: What made you decide to become a comic book artist? Sal: The drawings. There was something about the artwork that just got to me. But I always had a feeling to be an artist since I was very young. I don’t know where that came from, because my parents—nobody in my family—wrote or did artwork. But I was always drawing in the blank pages of my parents’ textbooks—even on the walls. As I think back, I don’t recall ever having been punished for that. I just vaguely remember my parents being worried that I’d fall and accidentally stab myself with the pencil. CBA: Did you do your own comics? Sal: Yeah, I did. Very crude but, yes, I was always trying to draw. CBA: Did you have your own knock-off characters? Sal: Uh-huh. Thinking back now. Not too sure I want to remember that! [laughs] Gee! “The Acro-Boys,” Jump & Leap. Ugh! [shudders] Crime-fighting acrobatic brothers. Inspired by Batman and Robin. Another character, super-hero by day, artist by night. His name was “Arthur Istowistowsky.” “Art Ist” for short. [shudders again] CBA: Through high school, were you drawing all the time? Were you known as an artist in school? Sal: Yes, I was. CBA: Did you draw for the high school yearbook, for instance? Sal: Yeah, in high school I did do some of that stuff but because, y’know, there’s that elitism and prejudice—when they understood my interest was comic books, they had this sniffy-nose attitude about what I was doing. Everything I did looked like a cartoon as far as they were concerned. You know what, though? Back then, everything I did probably did “look cartoony.” I did have one or two things printed in The Erasmian, my high school publication. Some posters I’d done hung in the classrooms. CBA: So you spent your entire youth in Brooklyn? Sal: Yeah. CBA: Have you lived there all your life? Sal: Just about. I lived in Connecticut for a couple of years. I lived in many parts of Brooklyn either with my family or by myself, so, yeah, mostly in Brooklyn. CBA: Did you go to Manhattan regularly? Sal: Once I started art school, I went to Manhattan as much as possible. I’d like to live there. CBA: Did you go to art school after high school? Sal: Yes. Starting in the Summer of 1966, between graduating from high school and starting art school, I went to the Brooklyn Museum art school, and then right to the School of Visual Arts. CBA: You always had your eye on the School of Visual Arts? Were you aware of how many comic artists had graduated from there? Sal: No, I wasn’t aware of that. But, somehow, in talking with the teachers at high school, they somehow made me aware that I should go to SVA. CBA: You’re teaching there right now, right? Sal: Yeah, since 1974. CBA: You graduated from high school in what year? Sal: 1965. CBA: Were you involved at all in fanzines? Sal: No. CBA: Did you know that they existed? Sal: Yes, I did. Around 1966 more or less, I realized that these COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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things existed and I just sort of wondered why I never got hold of them. I felt like I was an outsider. CBA: Did you become a regular reader of fanzines after that? Sal: No, I didn’t. I didn’t get hold of them until after I became a professional, then all of a sudden they were there. I went to my first convention where, I believe, I met Jerry Bails. I later met Roy Thomas. Those are the names that I remember associating with fanzines. CBA: There was a legendary tour of DC Comics. Did you ever take it? Sal: No. I used to give them though. I used to get stuck with that job when I was there as a pro. It’s not fun taking people around. I started getting repetitive, saying the same things over and over again and busting into writer-conferences with Julie Schwartz and “Whomever,” feeling really uncomfortable. They—editors, creators, staff—all knew it was part of the job but I really felt uncomfortable— like I was intruding. Also, I wanted to be an artist, you know? I just wanted to draw. Write stories. CBA: Who was your favorite artist? Sal: Everybody has had an influence on me. From the late ’50s to this day, Leonard Starr, was number one with me, absolutely no question, for his story strip, Mary Perkins On Stage. Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino. Joe Kubert was and remains a more profound influence on me than I’ll ever fully grasp. Truly a genius. Alex Raymond… but I loved pretty much everybody. One way or another, they all had an influence on me. CBA: How did you become a professional comic book artist? Sal: Through the School of Visual Arts. Creig Flessel was one of my teachers. Creig was mostly known for doing a strip called David Crane. Mr. Flessel replaced Win Mortimer on it. Back in the ’50s, Creig did do some Superboy stories and Superman covers and a lot of advertising art for Johnstone & Cushing [an ad agency specializing in comic-strip advertising art] and a lot of covers and artwork for Boys’ Life magazine. He also did “The Sandman,” back in the late ’30s or so. CBA: Did you remember any other prominent teachers? You said that Tom Gill was an instructor there? Sal: Yeah, Tom was head of the Illustration and Cartooning department there and was one of my Children’s Book Illustration teachers. Burne Hogarth was also there. I had him for Art History, and then for Anatomy, and then Cartooning. Bill Charmatz. Howie Schneider. While they were not teachers while I was a student, The School was lucky enough to have Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, Gene Colan, Joe Orlando, Tom Palmer, Angelo Torres, Klaus Janson, Walt Simonson…. CBA: What did you think of Burne? Sal: Really dynamic. He was a tornado. “Dynamic” is an understatement. I use that word because that’s how he titled his books! [laughs] He really was dynamic. He stomped around, was literally in your face, almost nose to nose with you. He’d be in the middle of teaching something and then suddenly I’d find him right in my face, on one occasion, asking, “What’s your favorite color?” I hesitated for a second and said, “Yellow.” He said, “Too late, too late. It’s not yellow.” Then he’d go off and ask someone else. I said, “No, it really is.” He replied, “No, you’re lying. It’s red. Everyone says it’s red.” (I didn’t want to argue with him but I am actually prejudiced against red—because it seemed that everyone, particularly Marvel, was throwing red all over the place. Superman-cape red all over the place like kids couldn’t see any other color. So I resented red for that reason. I remember at Marvel when I did do that, in any coloring I did— whenever anyone put that kind of red on something, I’d put shading film over it to mute it so it wouldn’t be that glaring. “Radiation color” I call it. So Burne Hogarth was something. There were two types of people there: Those who loved him and those who hated him. I don’t think there were many people in between. CBA: Where did you stand? Sal: I pretty much stayed on the positive end. I really liked him but he was tough. He could make you feel very inadequate all the time. CBA: Was he a contrarian? Sal: Yeah. And he would just make all these references that would throw everyone. He would make references to art history or current events. It would all tie into whatever point he was making but, especially then, because I didn’t know what he was referring to, I just shut down. I didn’t know what to say. I went silent. December 2001

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CBA: Humbled before the master! Sal: Yes, definitely. The last time I saw him was several years ago, with the National Cartoonists Society, in Arizona. He had gone there to receive an award and he was exactly the same! He started making all these references and I thought I knew stuff by then but my eyes blinked and my mind went blank and my mouth slacked open and I felt extremely inadequate. But he was great. He took me to breakfast and tried to convince me that I could do a young adult book all on my own. I was working on one at the time, in fact, but I never really believed I’d accomplish it. November 2000 I completed the first manuscript. A modern-day Hardy Boys-like fantasy/adventure story that’s really about bullying and child abuse. Gray Morrow agreed to illustrate this first one. Now I’m trying to find an agent who’ll pay attention to the manuscript and sell it for me. CBA: Did you overall get a realistic assessment or feeling that you were being prepared for life as a professional comic book artist? Sal: Yeah, I thought so. I thought I was being very professionally well educated. I still think so. There were those elitist type of teachers who thought that there was only one right way—one real art—and comic books was not anywhere near it, but, for the most part, I was very well educated. CBA: Often Neal Adams will say that in his generation, just prior to the influx of new talent that came in, in the late ’60s and

CBA Interview

The Atlas Age of Comics Atlas/Seaboard assistant editor Ric Meyers remembers Conducted & transcribed by Chris Irving

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Richard Meyers may not be too familiar a name with comic fans, but as an expert in martial arts movies, author of three paperback adventures of The Destroyer and of numerous pop culture reference books, his credentials in the world of the fantastic are secure. Ric served as Atlas’s assistant editor and notably collaborated with Alex Toth on “A Job Well Done.” The writer was interviewed via phone on August 3, 2001 and Ric copyedited the final transcript.

Chris Irving: Could you tell me about your childhood? Where did you grow up? Ric Meyers: I grew up in Fairfield, and then in Orange, Connecticut. When I was growing up in Fairfield, I distinctly remember going to the pharmacy around the corner from my house and picking up the latest Superman comics. I also remember my disappointment in the comics of that time, which was the late ’50s. It was a lot of the Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane stuff, and a lot of Red Kryptonite and “What if?” stories. I remember feeling the way that I imagine Stan Lee had felt, which was “This is bad.” I was enjoying the Archie comics, and that was about all I had to go on. I was also reading all the paperback versions of the Doc Savage and The Shadow stories that were coming out, and I was wishing that comics were more like that. When I got to Orange, Connecticut, I would take my bicycle down Racebrook Road and go to the Racebrook Pharmacy. Suddenly, there were these new comic books which my friends in Orange would show me, like Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. Chris: How old were you? Ric: I don’t know. My attitude was always that I was born a child, I’ll die a child, and I’m eliminating the middleman. [laughter] I was born in 1953, so whenever those came out is how old I was. Chris: You must have been about ten. Ric: I might have been. I was riding my bicycle and not in my car to get to them. I remember having the first 30 to 50 issues of Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Daredevil, and I remember distinctly going to college and having my mother throw them out. “Congratulations, dear, you’ve just gotten rid of your retirement.” She also threw out my collection of first edition mystery and sciencefiction novels as well. That’s a problem with moms, sometimes. It was a real tragedy. Chris: What about your high school years? Were you reading comics then? Ric: Mostly, I was reading books. I was a voracious reader. I’d read mysteries and science-fiction. I cleaned out the school library, and read an average of five books a week. I remember having large piles of books by my bed, and I would put them in order of mystery, science-fiction, mystery, science-fiction—I would alternate. I was also very lucky to be reading during the Golden Age of the paperback series. There were great science-fiction writers putting out great works, not only foundations of the industry (such as Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov), but in the mystery genre, all the series were coming out at that time: Johnny McDonald’s Travis McGee, and The Executioner and Destroyer series. I pretty much eschewed Executioner and stayed with The Destroyer. That was ironic, because the first novels I wrote were for The Destroyer series when I got out of college. Chris: You ghost wrote for them, right? Ric: Yeah, I was the first ghost writer. Chris: Did you have any particular favorites, aside from some that you mentioned? Ric: In the mysteries I really loved John D. McDonald, I thought he was a terrific writer, and I also enjoyed Dashiell Hammett. For science-fiction writers, it was Arthur Clarke. I read so much, I read everybody, though I stopped reading science-fiction with Samuel R. Delany’s Dahlgren. I figured that, once you read Dahlgren, that was as far as you could go. I stayed with mysteries and got into non-fiction and general books. I still read, I would say, approximately a book a week, if not two books a week. COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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I had dear friends with whom I’d trade off books—both mystery friends and science-fiction friends. We’d talk about what was new, get involved with whatever was coming out, and we just ate up everything. Between the bunch of us, we would pretty much read everything there was to read in the genres. Chris: Were you writing back in high school? Ric: I was going to high school at about the time when we were able to take advantage of what our older brothers were doing in college. They were fighting against the Vietnam War, and we took advantage of that by fighting against grammar and bad ziti in the cafeteria. The students and teachers went eye-to-eye with each other, and the teachers blinked. The educational system started to break down at that point. I took advantage of that. I would write fiction rather than non-fiction for my reports. I asked the teachers if I could put all the information in the form of a story. They said “Yes,” so in both my English classes and History classes, I’d be writing short stories rather than dry reports. Chris: Then you went off to college at Bridgeport? Ric: No, I actually went to Emerson College first, then Boston University, and then University of Bridgeport. I was looking for some educational system at that time that satisfied me. Emerson, at that time, had a first level program that was way too loose, and was mental masturbation. It was a “Whatever you do is brilliant,” kind of education. I didn’t want that in college; I actually wanted to learn something, so I transferred to Boston University. That was not too strict, but it was too dry, patterned, and ritualized. I felt like Goldilocks: One was too hot, one was too cold, but unfortunately I never found one that was just right. I went to Emerson and Boston University for theater courses, and was finding no satisfaction with either. I wound up going to the University of Bridgeport (prior to its being bought by the Moonies) for cinema. I found one terrific course on cinema, which was being taught by the technical columnist for American Cinematographer magazine—the one who talked about all the equipment of cinema. He did a wonderful course, and I learned more there than I probably did in my previous three years of college. Chris: From there you eventually landed your Atlas job? Ric: Yeah, I was writing comic book ideas at that point and was a great lover of comics. At one point, I had to appear in several roles in a production of The Three Penny Opera at the school. I was going to come in as the royal messenger at the very end on a gigantic swan. Unfortunately, since they could only build the gigantic swan out of papier maché, I had to stand on a little piece of wood while they built the swan around me. During that period, I would tell the stage crew stories to keep them entertained while they were building around me. One of them happened to be related to Jeff Rovin, I think it was his younger brother. At the end of the process, he said “You’ve got a lot of great stories, you should talk to my brother who’s starting up a comic company in New York.” I thought that was great, so we made connections and I went in to see Jeff. I sat in the Atlas/ Seaboard offices in the Steubens Glass Building, which is where Columbia Pictures was, on about Fifth Avenue. I was there between five to nine hours, waiting for Jeff. I had heard Jeff on the phone talking about all sorts of nonsense. He finally came out and apologized, and we both went to the men’s room. While we were standing in the stalls, I said “Look, you need a peon. A good 90% of the stuff you were talking about on the phone was a waste of time. You need a peon, and I might just be that peon.” What happened was that I gave him all the ideas for comic books that I had been writing in my room at the University. He would keep calling me back every week, and I would come in, sit in the office and watch how everything worked. Apparently, as I found out later, one of the ideas I had for a comic book was close to an idea he had for a comic book, so he liked it right away. Finally, on my birthday which, coincidentally is today— Chris: Happy birthday! Ric: This was about twenty-six years ago from today, that you are interviewing me, when he introduces me to the new art director, Steve Mitchell. He went “Ric, this is Steve Mitchell, our new art director; Steve, this is Ric Meyers, our new assistant editor.” This was the first I’d heard of it. Believe it or not, that’s how I got the job. December 2001

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Chris: How would you describe the Atlas/Seaboard offices? Ric: Like I said, they were in a wonderful building, the Steubens Glass Building. Again, it was the same building that Columbia Pictures and people like Otto Preminger had offices. When I first walked in there, I was thrilled. It was in a great location. Every time I walked into the building I felt really great and really special. This was the same building where the best French restaurant in the city was housed. I forgot what floor [the office] was, but you’d go up the elevator, go to the door and go in. From there on, it was very nice but rudimentary. You walked into the waiting room, where there’d be a receptionist. You went in through the doors behind the receptionist. It was a nice corner suite. Chip Goodman had his office right in front of you, Martin Goodman had his office on the opposite side on the corner, of course with the really great view. Jeff was in the opposite office, a much smaller office with no window. I hung out at a little desk in that office. In the whole area between those offices was the art director. Across the hall, and between Chip and Martin was Larry Lieber’s office. Larry, I think, is the brother of Stan Lee, and he had his line of books and Jeff covered his line of books. Chris: Exactly what did you do as the assistant editor? Ric: Basically I was under Jeff’s wing and stayed in Jeff’s office. He got me going and I did a lot of writing on the four magazines Seaboard put out: There was a variation of Famous Monsters, a movie monsters magazine. Jeff was also under the tutelage of James Warren both before and after. There were a lot of similarities in the magazines’ output. I got to write for them, and he taught me a lot about how comics were edited, and all those little details that an editor and assistant editor had to do. I was basically in a training

Above: Hey! It’s Ray Harryhausen again, only this time posing with Ric Meyers (right) in the mid1970s, while working on The World of Fantasy Films, which Ric says was, “the book Jeff Rovin was kind enough to let me write.” Courtesy of Ric Meyers.

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