Comic Book Artist #16 Preview

THE ATLAS/SEABOARD STORY ™

No.16 Dec. 2001

$6.95 In The U.S.

VENGEANCE, INCORPORATED! Grim Ghost ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

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

CELEBRATING

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

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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.

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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

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Alex Toth

‘Before I Forget’

The master artist remembers his Atlas/Seaboard work 6

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December 2001

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,

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“[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.”

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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

Above: House ad drawn by Ernie Colón featuring the new heroes (and villains) of Atlas Comics. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

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Above: Photo of Larry Lieber, Atlas Comics editor-in-chief. Courtesy of Larry.

Inset right: Larry’s cover art to Tales of Evil #1, courtesy of anonymous. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc. 16

on the business was welcomed by many creators who hoped to open up the venue of mainstream comics to more adult approaches. The popularity of Zap Comix and other undergrounds, as well as the prevalence of the medium in places such as National Lampoon, proved that young adults could—and would— buy comics so long as the books spoke to them. Jim Warren’s circumvention of the Code—by producing a line of black-&-whites (called “magazines,” as distinguished from the four-color periodicals deemed “comic books”) chipped away at the moral watchdog’s power, and the revisions initiated by Stan Lee’s infusion of drug themes into Amazing Spider-Man (sans the ubiquitous Code cover stamp) proved it was the publishers who were starting to call the shots, not the once-omnipotent censors. The conservatism of the Wertham-Eisenhower era was over; a new, decadent, permissive sensibility had taken hold. Death, decay, and despair permeated the content of comics; gone were the happy-go-lucky days of Batmania and the high-camp heroes. Now super-heroes gained relevance by embracing trendy causes and their sidekicks became self-indulged drug addicts. The Code, once a force feared and obeyed, had become simply irrelevant by the 1970s.

It was into this strange, alien environment that the fledgling Atlas/Seaboard was born: An industry in flux, a society in transition, and the status quo in disarray. Jeff Rovin, editor of the majority of comic titles in the beginning, wrote in The Comics Journal #114 (Feb. 1987), “Seaboard opened its doors on June 24, 1974, undertaking an ambitious publishing program that included not only a dozen color comics, but a line of black-&-white horror comics, confession magazines, a monster magazine, puzzle magazines, a game-show book, and an innovative Gothic story title [Gothic Romances].” As the comic line’s editors, Martin hired Rovin, a former DC and Warren staffer (who got the job through an ad in The New York Times), and Marvel writer/artist Larry Lieber, a man Rovin said, “Martin Goodman had long-wanted to transplant from out of the shadow of Larry’s brother, Stan Lee.” Initial reports stated that the company was set to produce eight color comic titles, and, according to The Comic Reader, “a number of the books are established characters—in fact, one book is planned as a 100page 60¢er with reprints from a former comics group.” (Apparently this was a reference to Tower Comics’ 1960s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents which Rovin sought— unsuccessfully—to license.) The number of books would eventually grow to 23 color titles, all told.

The Atlas Comics line was populated with artists and writers attracted by the innovative approach the publisher was taking. “Goodman’s David and Goliath strategy is insidiously simple and outrageous— possibly even considered dirty tactics by the competition—such as higher page rates, artwork returned to the artist, rights to the creation of an original character, and a certain amount of professional courtesy,” noted Mediascene. Some creators were offered the highest pages rates in the history of the business.

Such “dirty tactics” would motivate policy changes with at least one publisher. Carmine Infantino issued a memo on August 13, 1974 (a mere two months after the opening of the Atlas/Seaboard office) in an obvious attempt to counter the appeal of Goodman’s largess and stem the flow of defections. After mentioning a new program of bonus checks, rate increases, return of artwork, and reprint fees, the memo stipulates that the added benefits apply “only to artists, colorists, and writers who are currently working for us and who submit their work exclusively to us… effective with issues scheduled to go on sale during October, 1974,” the month before readers would see the release of the first wave of Atlas Comics. Soon, Marvel would also return original artwork, indicating a shift in the status quo due to the Atlas influence.

The threat of talent raids against the Big Two was also real enough. Some contributors recall Howard Chaykin standing in front of Marvel’s 625 Madison Avenue digs, directing artists to literally go around the corner to the 717 Fifth Avenue home of Atlas Comics. Mediascene reported, “Despite denials by both Marvel and [DC], Seaboard’s entrance into the comic arena is having a staggering effect on the business.

Audacious ‘raids’ in the competition’s bullpens have resulted in Seaboard’s rapidly assembling a staff of more defectors joining their ranks on almost a daily basis.”

As for the Atlas line’s content, Rovin initially sought recognizable, licensed characters (such as the aforementioned Tower super-hero group) and the editor pursued pulp characters The Avenger and The Spider; movie creature Godzilla and his Toho monster brethren; TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker; and the Charlton Heston film, The Omega Man. Martin Goodman deemed all the licenses to be too expensive and suggested a Timely-worn tradition to swipe. The Spider became The Scorpion, Kolchak COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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Target of Revenge

Making Theirs Marvel Roy Thomas on Marvel’s reaction to the “New House of Ideas” Below: Let us never forget that, for better or worse, it was through the efforts of Roy Thomas, in retaining for Marvel the comic book licensing rights to Robert E. Howard’s Conan, that the barbarian craze swept comicdom by the mid1970s. One of Atlas/Seaboard’s entries into that genre was the oddly compelling Ironjaw, created

by Michael Fleisher and drawn by the ever-capable Pablo Marcos.

Courtesy of the artist, here’s Pablo’s cover art to Ironjaw #4. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

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Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Roy Thomas is not only one of the best writers ever to grace a comic book page, but a hell of an editor, too. He served as Marvel’s editorin-chief during an especially fertile period in the early ’70s (of which we interviewed Roy about in CBA #2 and #13) and he is able to give us an intimate view of the goings-on in the comics industry of 25+ years ago. While still involved in comics as well as film, Roy currently is CBA associate editor and full-editor of his on-going (now eighttimes-a-year) mag, Alter Ego, also published by TwoMorrows. Roy was interviewed via phone in early October 2001.

CBA: Did Martin Goodman offer you a job as editor at Atlas?

Roy: I don’t know if he did personally, but Chip and I went out to dinner at least once.

CBA: Did Chip make you an offer?

Roy: Yeah. This was not at the very beginning of the company; this was after it had been going a little while. That was one aspect that made the offer even less attractive.

CBA: You might have had to replace somebody?

Roy: I’m not exactly certain, at this stage. It might’ve been if Larry Lieber was the editor from the beginning. Maybe this was when Jeff Rovin left. I just don’t recall. I just know it was an early stage. I have this feeling Jeff was still going to be there, because while I’d never had a problem with Jeff, I just felt that, he being rather territorial— and I can be territorial myself—it was going to be a bad situation to step into. Plus, despite what Chip told me at that dinner—that Martin was absolutely determined to make Atlas last at least two years—but, how long did it last? A little over a year? First of all, there wasn’t that much job security. It was one thing for Larry to leave Marvel, because, as Stan’s brother, he could leave on decent terms. But if I left, it would’ve really been bad. So I just didn’t see it as being a particularly great career move at that stage, so I thanked Chip, and that was about it.

CBA: Jeff seemed to recall that perhaps the money offered wasn’t good enough, and you might have wanted a contract.

Roy: I don’t know if I would’ve gone any way, but when I was feeling them out, I wanted a guarantee, and the idea of two years… I remember talking it over with my first wife, and we thought about the possibilities. The salary was one thing, but I don’t recall specifics being discussed at that stage.

The salary offered couldn’t have been much more than $30,000. I would have wanted a guarantee to be employed for several years from Martin personally. If the company would’ve gone under—which probably would’ve happened—and whether I would’ve been able to collect that, who knows? I don’t think they ever came across with any monetary offer, but that was my bottom line,. The two-year aspect didn’t really interest me very much. Now, five years, I might’ve taken a flyer, because fans would forget, and DC and other companies were around and so forth, so I might’ve considered it then. We didn’t get that far, I just know that was going to be my deal.

CBA: DC apparently took greater exception to the existence of Atlas than did the publisher Atlas tried to copy, Marvel Comics.

Roy: Hard to believe!

CBA: If a consumer were to grab a comic off the stands really quick, they COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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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.

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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

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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.

Above: Glorious Neal Adams cover art to Ironjaw #2.

Courtesy of Victor Lim. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

25

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.

44

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

December 2001

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

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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!

54

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

December 2001

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

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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.

55

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

December 2001

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

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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,

Above: Courtesy of the artist, Larry Hama’s cover rough for Wulf the Barbarian #1 (subsequently changed; see opposite page). Wulf ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

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CBA Interview

Sting of the Scorpion Howard Chaykin’s bittersweet Atlas Comics experience Below: Unpublished cover by Howard Chaykin to The Scorpion #2, which sported an Ernie Colón piece as published. The above is one of at least two versions by Howard that we know of.

Courtesy of Terry Austin.

Art ©2001 Howard Chaykin.

The Scorpion ©1974 Seaboard Periodicals.

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Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson One of the foremost designers in the history of comics, Howard Chaykin is also a helluva storyteller, having received numerous accolades for his fondly recalled American Flagg series of the 1980s.

CBA extensively interviewed the artist/writer in our eighth issue so we just jump right into 1974, the year of his big break with The Scorpion. Howard is now producer of the TV show Mutant X and he still dabbles in comics, most recently as creator/writer of American Century. Interviewed in Sept. 2001, he copyedited the transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Do you recall when you first heard about Atlas/Seaboard?

Howard Chaykin: Honestly, I don’t. Their office was diagonally across from Marvel, which used to be on 575 Madison Avenue, and I don’t remember what first brought me there. It’s been a long time.

CBA: Do you remember whether promises were made about some creator ownership of properties and the possibility of royalties?

Howard: No. I don’t recall any of that. What they were doing was paying more money. There was no talk of royalties or creative ownership in my memory.

CBA: Do you recall if it was a significant amount?

Howard: In retrospect, the primary impact that Atlas had on the comic book business was to raise rates considerably.

CBA: Was there any thought about Martin Goodman, who created Marvel Comics, was going in direct competition….

Howard: Martin Goodman “created” comics the way Victor Fox “created” his line. They were businessmen, they created by fiat. The word “created” is used very loosely in the comic book business, and I’m loathe to support the idea that the money guys created anything other than opportunity.

CBA: Was there any thought on why Goodman was doing that?

Howard: We also basically assumed Martin was doing it to piss in the soup, because he felt left out of the loop and didn’t get the attention he felt he probably deserved at Marvel, and he wanted to show he could do it again.

CBA: Did you hear anything about the rumor he started Atlas as an act of revenge against Marvel?

Howard: Absolutely. I seem to recall he was pissed off at Stan for getting all the attention.

CBA: Did you ever meet Chip Goodman? What was he like?

Howard: He was kind of invisible, and he didn’t have much of a personality. Chip just struck me as a void, there wasn’t much going on there. What little dealings I had with him—he was mostly there to edit Swank, and I think he was there to meet chicks. [laughter] I dealt more with his art director, whose name I don’t recall. The office was rife with story, they had good people who worked there, we had a good time being there, but it was a burp in my career.

CBA: Except for perhaps “Iron Wolf,” The Scorpion seemed to be one of the first real “Chaykin projects.”

Howard: I was called in to write by Jeff Rovin, the editor in chief at Atlas. They wanted to do a book called The Scorpion. I think what they wanted was The Shadow, and what I came back with was sort of more a combination of The Shadow, Justice, Incorporated and Doc Savage. A lot of the signature stuff that ultimately evolved into what I did for a living for the next 20 years or so did show up in that book.

CBA: So The Scorpion was the first initiation of this archetypical character that’s had various incarnations, as Dominic Fortune, Cody Starbuck, Monark Starstalker, etc.?

Howard: I’d say that’s true.

CBA: What happened with the book?

Howard: The company was built on rage and hostility, and they lied like a rug. Halfway through the second issue I found out that Rovin had told Alex Toth I was off the book, and Alex had carté blanche to come in and completely recreate and redo the book. The job that Alex did was ultimately published years later as “The Vanguard.” I was fired from the book, or I quit—I don’t remember which. Ultimately, Larry Lieber took over the book and turned it into an imitation of Spider-Man, which is what Larry does for a living.

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

December 2001

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

Below: An enlarged detail—the original hand colored by the artist—of a thumbnail page from Phoenix #1 by Sal Amendola.

Courtesy of the artist. Phoenix ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

78

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

December 2001

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

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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

Above: Dick Giordano’s cover art to Phoenix #2 which, according to Sal Amendola, is based on a layout Sal submitted. Courtesy of Marcus Wai. ©1974 Seaboard Periodicals.

79

CBA Interview

In the House of Goodman Canadian artist Jim Craig on his early days in comics Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson Perhaps best known for his three issues as penciler of “3-D Man” for Marvel Premiere (#35-37), Jim Craig began his career as assistant to Mike Ploog, venturing on to become a prolific artist for Atlas Comics in their waning days, and working for Marvel in the mid1970s, notably on Master of Kung Fu. Since those halcyon days, Jim has had a long and successful career as an animation storyboard artist and director, and still dabbles in the comics biz. The artist was interviewed on November 6, 2001 and he copyedited the transcript.

Above: Circa 1970s newspaper picture of Jim Craig and fans.

Taken from a Xerox. Note the “3-D Man” splash page!

Courtesy of Jim Craig.

88

Comic Book Artist: Jim, where are you from originally?

Jim Craig: Just outside of Toronto, in Mississauga, Ontario.

It would be like what Brooklyn is to New York City, that kind of thing.

CBA: Did you get interested in comics at a young age?

Jim: Yeah, I would say at probably seven or eight. I remember having to stay home one day from school, sick or something, and my mother bought me a Marvel Tales, #2 or 3, which I thought was really neat after I read it, and I started buying them in the stores. The way Marvel seemed to operate, the stories were like soap operas, so I had to get the next one to find out what happened, and I got hooked! I became a collector.

I was a bit ahead of my time, because I even put them in plastic bags long before plastic bags were invented for these things. Then I found out there was a second-hand shop in downtown Toronto—where my parents really didn’t want me to go there on my own at such a young age but then let me go eventually—and I started picking up comics fairly inexpensively. I went every Saturday morning, and waited outside until the guy opened, because if you weren’t there in the first 10 minutes, you missed all of that good stuff. There must’ve been a handful of us in the city that would be called true collectors.

CBA: Did you draw your own comics as a kid?

Jim: That’s a good question. I took art class, and the standard thing was to draw pots and pans—still lifes—and after a couple of years of that, they’d bring out the same old crap on a shelf, and they’d say, “Okay, draw this.” Of course, no art teacher ever taught art; they taught art history, but not how to draw. One time, when I was in grade 10, I said, “All right, I’ve had enough of this,” and I just drew a comic book story. I had a progressive teacher, and she said, “Sure, that’ll be your project for the whole term.” So I did a 20-page story in black-&-white on letter-size sheets, and lettered it myself, handed

it in, and I got 100%!

CBA: What was it about?

Jim: It was called “The Galactic Student,” and it was about a guy who came from another planet to Earth and was misunderstood.

One of the TV shows I watched back then was Then Came Bronson, and of course, I liked the Silver Surfer, so it was a combination of the two. He was a regular guy who rode a motorcycle, and he seemed to be good like the Silver Surfer, so….

CBA: [laughs] Then Came Bronson…

Jim: Yeah. You remember that?

CBA: It was about a guy traveling around on a motorcycle.

Jim: Yeah, that was a great show; I loved it, too. So, the next year, the teacher asked, “What are you going to do this year?” I had the same teacher. I said, “How can I top 100%?” She said, “Well, you can try! Why don’t you do what you did last year, but continue the story, because I’m really interested to see what happens.” So I did a sequel in color, and got 110%! That ate into my lousy art history mark, so I still did well in art…. [laughter] Then I debated whether should I go to college or go on to what we called Grade 13, which was pre-college. I went up to visit the college, and to make a long story short, I decided to go. I took an illustration course, and again, found out they were trying to train you to be a paste-up artist (an obsolete art right now). The college did that because they had to guarantee jobs for people when they finished the course, or a reasonable percentage had to have a job when they went out. So they didn’t really teach art, and that bothered me. They had a cartooning course, just an elective, and it was the one class I could take. Well, I transferred over, and got to do what I wanted, basically, and learned what I wanted. All my teachers were editorial cartoonists—there were no comic book companies in Canada—and they said, “You’ll never make it as a comic book artist, you should become an editorial cartoonist, yadda, yadda, yadda.” Anyway, we had guests, and I met Mike Ploog and Bernie Wrightson (who was doing Swamp Thing at the time). Anyway, Ploog called me up one day after I graduated, and asked me to come down and help him out on Planet of the Apes. This was 1974, I believe. I worked on several issues—but on one, I think it was number four, I wrote my last name on a highway sign and my age, which was 20. [laughter] CBA: Were these the renowned penciled stories that Mike did?

Jim: Yeah. I think the last couple of issues were inked by Vince Colletta, or somebody like that. I think the stuff I did got inked, because he did his own pencils for those books, which looked beautiful. They looked a lot better than the way they were reproduced.

CBA: What was Mike like?

Jim: He was the type of guy you’d find in a bar fight. [laughter] A biker-type guy, he was really cool. I like him a lot, he’s a pretty tough nut. He was friendly, got along with everybody, but you didn’t want to cross him. I recall he was really pissed off at a writer or an editor at Marvel when he was drawing Man-Thing, and he decided to quit. In his last issue, in the last panel, he drew himself walking away saying, “I quit.” Of course, they changed that panel in the final printing, and they rewrote it with the hero character walking away and saying something profound. [laughter] It was pretty funny.

CBA: Where was Mike living at the time?

Jim: In Denville, New Jersey.

CBA: So you moved from the Toronto area to New Jersey?

Jim: Yeah, I lived in his house for a while, then got a place of my own after two months. I ended up staying down there for about a year, and then got to the point where his wife was either sick of me COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

December 2001

or something, [laughs] and he said, “I think it’s time you went to Marvel and tried it on your own,” so I started going every week to Marvel. The only way I could get in was for the receptionist to hit the magic little button to get you through the doors. They had a tendency to send janitors out to the waiting room to check your artwork out and get rid of people. It was pretty wild! [laughter] So I got in by saying, “Hey, I’ve got a pile of stuff from Mike Ploog here he wanted delivered,” [laughter] so they let me in to hand it to Marv Wolfman, and I said, “Hey, I do stuff, too!” and I’d show him.

CBA: What was Orb? Jim: That was before I went down to the States. Orb was a magazine I contributed to in which I did a character called The Northern Light—because of which my work is in the National Archives of Canada and the National Library as one of the six or seven Canadian super-heroes—whom I didn’t create, but recreated.

Meaning it was the kind of character that really wasn’t going anywhere, and again, I asked if I could play with the character a bit, change him, make him a little more macho, and they said, “Sure,” and then it took off after I changed it. But in Canada, numbers are different, we didn’t then have the audience to buy the stuff.

CBA: Did you have any specific influences in your style?

Jim: A lot. In fact, when people say “style,” I’m probably the last guy to admit that I have a style, although I have a lot of people say that Jim Craig, they can tell my style—I guess I can, too, because I know I did it [laughs]—I would say anywhere from Wrightson, Ploog, Adams… I used to mimic Ploog very well… John Buscema was a big influence, I loved his stuff. Even John Romita, not drawing but more in storytelling, I guess.

CBA: Would you say Kirby?

Jim: Oh, yeah, Kirby. Definitely, I think that’s part of the way I learned to draw, I’d draw a rock or something, or look at a comic to see how they drew a rock, and I’d close the comic and try drawing it myself, then I’d open the comic and see how they drew it and correct myself. It was kind of a neat way to learn, doing it by memory. You start picking up styles, whether your remember it or not. There’s little bits where I can tell my Wrightson’s coming through, I can tell my Buscema’s coming through, I can tell… it depends on the situation.

CBA: What was your reception at Marvel?

Jim: They kept saying, “Next week, maybe there’s this. Next week, maybe there’s that.” That went on for a long time. They finally gave me some ads to do, so again, I think my first ad was in one of their black-&-white kung fu books. I also did an ad in their black-&-white Planet of the Apes—this is after Ploog—and they kept saying, “Next week, there might be some inking, there might be some of this, there might be some of that,” and I got to the point where I just said, “Guys, I’ve got five dollars in my pocket, and that might get me back up north, maybe. I’ve got a hole in my shoes, it’s November, it’s raining, just give me a yes or a no, no more maybes.” In the beginning, they don’t want to hurt your feelings, and you don’t want your feelings hurt, but after a while, you get pretty tough and say, “Yes or no? Are you going to give me a job or not? If you’re not, I’m going home.” At that point, I’d had enough of them. And they said, “Well, maybe next week,” again, and I said, “Fine, I’m going across the street to Atlas. I know Marvel inside and out, I know your stuff, I know your characters, and I only wanted to work for you guys, but I’ll go across the street.” So I went across the street and did the same thing, put my foot up on the guy’s desk, said, “I’ve got a hole in my shoes and five bucks in my pocket, don’t give me any crap, just tell me if you want to use me or not!” and they gave me two books.

CBA: [laughs] Was it Larry you dealt with?

Jim: Larry Lieber and Jeff Rovin, I believe. I started with Jeff, but spent most of my time with Larry Lieber. He used to give me Jack Kirby lessons for hours.

CBA: What was Atlas like?

Jim: It was neat to go into their office, because they also did Swank magazine, so it was cool to go by all the light boxes and see all the slides of their pin-up girls. It was an odd office, as opposed to Marvel. Marvel looked like a very artsy place inside, a lot of drawing boards and guys working away. Atlas looked more like an accountant’s office, or a normal business office, small, clean, you know, on the 18th floor of some building. It was literally across the December 2001

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street from Marvel, when Marvel was on Madison Avenue. It was around the corner. It was a strange place where everybody wore suits. It was different, I guess, from Marvel, where everybody was having trouble keeping their pants up and stuff like that.

CBA: [laughs] Did you get to meet Martin Goodman?

Jim: Oh, yeah. Martin Goodman, older fella. He didn’t have too much to say, he seemed to be a very business-type guy. He was pleasant, but so was Stan Lee. (I met Stan Lee a year later, and he said, “Yeah, you do good work.” I don’t think he’d ever seen my stuff, it was just the standard stock answer, whatever he had to say! [laughter]) Yeah, I met him, but I dealt mostly with Chip Goodman.

Because I was on a visa, I needed some kind of permit to stay in the States longer. I wasn’t doing anything illegal, but to stay there you should have a work permit, and the Goodmans looked into it for me as a favor, and Chip’s answer was, “Marry one of our Swank models.” [laughter] Of course, being 20 years old, I was pretty stupid back then, I could kick myself now… “No, I don’t want to get married!” [laughter] CBA: Well, you’d get a honeymoon out of the deal, anyway!

Were you given full-script assignments right off the bat?

Jim: Yep. I think Scorpion #3 was the first one.

Above: This b-&-w stat of Wulf the Barbarian #4’s cover appeared in Deadspawn #1. Art by Jim Craig. Courtesy of Mark Burbey. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

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Capsule Interviews

The Atlas/Seaboard Experience Contributors on the promise—and reality—of Atlas Comics EDITOR’S NOTE: The following reminiscences were culled from both phone interviews and written comments from the following contributors (and one almostcontributor!) to Atlas/Seaboard, all solicited in the Fall of 2001. Our thanks for their participation and our apologies to the many fine former-Atlas folks we neglected.

Below: Penciler Alan Weiss has mixed feelings about the inking job the late Jack Abel did on Alan’s single contribution to Atlas Comics, The Brute #3. Jack was a dear friend and supporter of many Young Turks of comics of the ’70s.

Here are three panels of the blue beast preparing a feast. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals.

Alan Weiss artist/writer Atlas was going to do a creator-owned line, and I sold them on one of my characters, but the company folded first. I got a lot of work done—plots for about six issues, one issue laid out. This would’ve been 1974. While they were putting together the contracts for a creator-owned line, in the meantime, they asked did I want to do something else for them? I said sure, because they were going to give me an issue of that barbarian Conan rip-off guy, Ironjaw. For some reason, that got changed into an issue of The Brute (#3), so I penciled that issue. Frankly, there isn’t a whole lot more, but I was really excited about doing a creator-owned character.

My concept was called Drastic Action Comics starring Skuff Ruffin, the Universal Sidekick. (Shooter had loved this idea, because I pitched this later to Marvel, too! I’ve sold it three, four times but it never gets to the finished stage.) This is a deal where I figured if this is the one that sells and this is the character I do, I want to do something I wouldn’t get sick of after two issues. So, I wanted something that could go from genre to genre, issue by issue, and so the set-up of the so-called character was that this guy’s a professional comic book character, except that he’s short and cute, so he always gets cast as a sidekick. So, every issue, he’s in a different comic book every adventure. He lives in the Village, wakes up and gets this phone call, for instance, that says, “We’ve got this science-fiction strip, come on down,” so he gets up, a little hungover. He’s about 33, but he looks 10 years younger. His name is Raymond Ruffin, but they call him Skuff, because it’s Skuff, it’s rough, he’s abrasive… he’s like Jimmy Cagney, except he’s got dark hair. He shaves before he goes down there, but by the end of the adventure, he’s usually got stubble on him. He has to sign this release form, just like if you were a stuntman, and then he goes to the weapons department, and to the costume department. The guy who runs the costume department

is named “Threads Edison,” and he says, “Here’s your barbarian suit,” or “Here’s your super-hero outfit,” or whatever he needs, various weapons. Then he goes into a room called the “splash room,” where the splash page is in this pool, but it’s reversed, so he dives into the pool, literally, and then you turn the page, and there’s the splash page, and he’s inside the adventure, So, that was the character I was going to do, and I was really excited about it. I had developed it because Jim Starlin, Frank Brunner, Steve Englehart and I were all talking about doing creatorowned stuff, that’s one of the reasons we were in California. We almost did these characters for Rolling Stone magazine, they were going to do a comic strip insert, but that fell through. Ultimately, they just wanted to do glitter rock band super-hero guys, and we weren’t too interested in that, and they never did it anyway. That’s why I had this guy ready and notched up by the time that Atlas came around. Jeff Rovin loved it, he said, “Let’s do it,” and I was just waiting for the contract when The Brute came along, and I figured, “Okay, I can have fun with that, it’s like drawing the Hulk with more hair,” and Jack Abel inked it. So if you’ll remember my Jack Abel page in Streetwise, there’s that one panel that shows the cover of The Brute, which is not the actual cover of the issue we did! That’s the only issue I did of any Atlas comic, and Kupperberg set it up for me because we were friends and he wanted to get as many of the guys he thought were good, especially of the new guys. We were still relatively new in ’74, so that was Chaykin, Mitchell, a whole bunch of us. Ernie Colón did a lot of work for Atlas, and of course they had those great covers. Neal did a bunch of covers, and Russ Heath did some nice artwork.

CBA: Did you like the job that Jack Abel did?

Alan: No. [laughs] I’ll tell ya what, though, as I look at it now, I don’t feel as strongly as I did back then. It’s a nice comic book, it’s okay, there were subtleties lost, to say the least. I love Jack, did then, do now. But especially back then, I wanted to show off my stuff, and I didn’t think that inking did that to its best advantage. The inking kind of flattened things and angularized things, and gee, I probably have Xeroxes of the pencils still from there. For instance, the female character was my girlfriend at the time, and I drew her kind of realistically, but Jack sort of homogenized it, like he did everything.

No, at the time I was pretty freaked out, but you know, looking at it now, I think, “Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s a good, solidlooking comic book, and it stands up with the rest of the Atlas books.” I said, “Well, you know, it’s only one book, and it’s 100 years ago now, so what difference does it make?” The main thing about it was that I got to work with Jack. I don’t know if the word ever filtered back to Jack on how much I disliked it at the time, but when I came back to New York, there didn’t seem to be any sour grapes. As a matter of fact, I got closer to Jack than ever during that period around 1976 to ‘80, when he was up at Continuity.

Walter Simonson

artist/writer I first heard about Atlas/Seaboard around 1974. They ran for about a year. I remember the first time I heard about them, I think everybody else knew about them once the company got under way. They were in New York, I was living in the city at the time, so I’m sure when the word got out, I heard about it immediately.

CBA: Sal Amendola did a comic book called Phoenix, and he said that you were the first artist to be considered for the job. Do you recall that being so?

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December 2001

Walter: No, I don’t at all! [laughs] CBA: Did you know Jeff Rovin at all?

Walter: Yeah, I knew Jeff before he became the editor over there.

CBA: Atlas/Seaboard was the first real challenge in the ’70s to the Big Two, DC and Marvel. Do you recall your feelings, or the feelings of your peers about the company? Was there heavy anticipation?

Walter: Most of the guys who were like me, the young guys in the business, had no problem working for Atlas/Seaboard. A lot of older guys who were already established (guys probably younger than I am today) were not interested in leaving their companies to go work for a new, untested company. Atlas was offering essentially what amounted to double rates. This was in the days when there were no royalties. My rate instantly doubled when I did any work for Atlas, so I was certainly happy to go work for them. No problem.

Archie Goodwin did a couple of stories for them. With Ditko, he created The Destructor, so I was close to some of the guys who were going there to work anyway, and of course, Howard Chaykin went over to do The Scorpion.

CBA: Were you living across the hallway from Howard at the time?

Walter: That’s probably right. This was ‘74 and we had a jam penciling job to help Howard out of a deadline problem. I remember Mike Kaluta, Howard and myself all sitting in this one room apartment, cranking out drawings for a bit for an issue of The Scorpion. It was probably #2.

CBA: Bernie was there, too?

Walter: Yes, he lived downstairs.

CBA: Howard said it was quite a jam fest.

Walter: It was! Well, that kind of stuff was always fun, back when we were all young and full of piss and vinegar.

CBA: Howard said you were the wise old man of the group.

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Walter: [laughs] Well, I was probably the old man of the group, because I’d gone to college twice, a shade older than most of my peers in comics by three or four years, But I hesitate to append the word “wise.” [laughter] I was pretty green. Howard was much more tempered than I was back in those days.

CBA: [Incredulous] He was? He called you guys the “Mild Bunch.”

Walter: That’s probably right. Alan Milgrom and I were roommates at the time, Howard was on the same floor of that building—in Regal Park, Queens—and Bernie was two floors below us.

CBA: Did you guys jam together a lot to get jobs out?

Walter: Not a whole lot, but whenever it was necessary. Most of us were able to keep up our end of the deadlines, but there were occasional times when one or the others would step in and do the work and help somebody out of a jam. So it did happen from time to time. It might’ve only been a panel here or a panel there. For The Scorpion, I remember drawing a cat on a wharf. I’m sure there were other panels—I could probably identify all of them now—but I remember having to draw that cat, and trying to figure out what a cat would look like in the absence of any reference on hand! [laughter] CBA: Did you do any inking on that job, too?

Walter: I don’t think so. I don’t remember doing any inking at this point.

CBA: Things collapsed pretty quickly for Howard with The Scorpion. He said that he walked into the office and saw concept drawings by Alex Toth, though Howard had yet to hear that he was going to be replaced on the book. Do you recall Howard’s state of mind, living across the hall from him?

Walter: I really don’t. I remember Howard in general being pretty cranky about what happened with The Scorpion, but I don’t

Above: Let it never be left unsaid that Walter Simonson is a mensch for all seasons! Not only has the “nicest guy in the comics biz” been extremely supportive of CBA and all of Ye Ed’s projects, but he also goes the extra mile when it comes to unearthing rare and unknown stuff! You’re our fave dude in the industry, W.S.! At the last minute, the artist/writer dug up the stats for this lost rarity, the unpublished “Gorgo vs. Rodan” story intended for an Atlas/ Seaboard black-&-white title that was never realized. Walter tells us he recalls solo stories of the prehistoric two antagonists completed by other artists, all apparently written by Gabriel Levy. Does anyone know what happened to Gabe, whose comicsscripting career appears to have lasted as long as his single client, Atlas Comics? Courtesy of and ©2001 Walter Simonson.

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CBA Interview

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

Below: Ric Meyers collaborated with Howard Nostrand on the wildly violent Atlas title Targitt for three issues. This is Dick Giordano’s dynamic cover art for #1. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Below: John tells it like it is!

Typical Nostrand panel of Targitt from the first issue. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

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CBA Interview

In the New House of Ideas Alan Kupperberg on the waning days of Atlas/Seaboard Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Brian K.Morris Alan Kupperberg is renowned, perhaps, for his rendition of Obnoxio the Clown, the host of Crazy magazine, but we shan’t forget the artist’s great work on many a National Lampoon comic book satire.

Ye Ed’s favorite Kupperberg work remains the outstanding—and hilarious—contribution Alan made to Streetwise. And, leapin’ lizards!

Kupp currently draws the Little Orphan Annie syndicated newspaper strip, written by Jay Marder. The artist was interviewed by phone on October 1, 2001, and he copyedited the transcript.

Above: Merely two panels from Alan Kupperberg’s hilarious contribution to Streetwise, albeit the pair concerning his Atlas Comics gig in 1975. To view the other 88 priceless panels, check out the still-available autobio comics collection, amigo! ©2001 Alan Kupperberg

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Comic Book Artist: Where are you from?

Alan Kupperberg: I was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1953.

CBA: Were you introduced to comics at a young age?

Alan: Yeah, at a pretty young age. I remember my mother’s younger brother, David, used to read DC comics and Mad magazine and he had a whole stack of them on the bottom of the metal closet in his bedroom. He lived in the apartment building next door to ours. So I used to go through his stack and really found myself liking them.

CBA: Were there particular titles you were attracted to?

Alan: Well, I really liked Superman an awful lot. I don’t remember watching the Superman show when I was a kid. I was a little bit older before I found George Reeves on TV and it kinda came as a surprise to me. I didn’t really know it existed.

CBA: Did you start drawing at a young age?

Alan: Yeah, they have photographs of me in my high chair, holding up a blackboard on which I’ve drawn the Man in the Moon. [chuckles] So yeah, I’ve always considered myself a third-generation artist as my grandmother was an artist and my father was a fine photographer. Classic ashcan school stuff.

CBA: Was he a professional photographer?

Alan: No, an amateur but he won a lot of awards. He had a real good eye for composition and storytelling. He met my mother at a meeting of the Lincoln Terrace Camera Club in Brooklyn. He used to drag me around to all the museums, starting at a very early age. So I

always felt as though I’d grown up in the Brooklyn Museum. [laughs] He helped teach me to begin to “see.”

CBA: Did you keep an eye on the newspaper strips?

Alan: Not an awful lot. I wasn’t a big fan of the newspaper strips. I don’t know why. I don’t even recall if we took a daily newspaper when I was young. So I certainly didn’t follow any adventure strips, or anything like that. I really loved Popeye cartoons when they debuted on television and then I discovered there were Popeye comic books to latch onto. Then I realized Popeye was just one amongst many titles in that big stack in the corner candy store. They kept them in a random stack on the back table of the store.

CBA: Did you become a collector off the bat?

Alan: I don’t think it occurred to me to collect until I ran into Marvel comics, maybe five years later, because their oldest title, Fantastic Four, when I started buying it, was #29 or 30, or something like that. I realized it was not like collecting Superman comics where if you really get the bug, you had to go back to the issues that came out in 1938 or ’39 and that was not doable back in those days.

CBA: Did you get on board with Marvel, pretty much at the beginning?

Alan: Well, the first month or two that my pals were showing them to me, I lived in Canarsie then, and my good friend, Scott Simonofsky would give me… probably Spider-Man. And I really thought Steve Ditko’s artwork was real ugly. [laughs] The coloring and the printing was really awful at Marvel in those days. I just didn’t get it. I was really turned off by it and it took me a month or two. And then I saw Amazing Spider-Man #14, Spider-Man fights the Hulk, and that grabbed me.

CBA: Were you previously interested in the Mort Weisinger-style comics of DC? Then, obviously, Marvel started a revolution.

Alan: Absolutely, although I still stuck with DC books too, and all that. You know, I sort of grudgingly read Batman because he costarred in World’s Finest with Superman. But it took me a while before I started in with The Flash and Green Lantern. I’m ten years old and those were a bit more sophisticated, obviously, and it took me a while to grow into that. But, eventually, I did; probably more for the artwork than the stories. I was enjoying The Flash art by Infantino more than Gardner Fox and John Broome’s writing. At that point, I guess they were more sophisticated than I was ready for. I really dug Mort Weisinger’s routine, and it was routine because it was all a formula.

CBA: Simplicity.

Alan: I’m very comfortable in a rut. [laughs] CBA: Did you aspire to be a professional artist at a young age?

Alan: Absolutely. When I slept, I used to dream about meeting Stan Lee and in my dream, he looked like Mort Weisinger, although I didn’t know what either one of them looked like at that point, but who can explain dreams? [laughs] But I just hoped I’d live long enough to draw The Fantastic Four. You know, I hoped I wouldn’t get hit by a bus before my dream could be realized.

CBA: And did you do your own comics at all?

Alan: Yes. I have a big, fat manila envelope full of the stuff that I did in school, sitting in the back of the room, instead of paying attention to the teacher. I must have done ten issues of The Hulk for myself.

Most kids were reading comic books behind the math text book. I was drawing them.

CBA: Oh, really? Did you do your own knock-off characters or just steal them outright?

Alan: It all depends. I don’t remember what month it was but when I decided to do The Hulk, I just picked it up wherever Stan and Ditko COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

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left it off that month, and I just took it off in my own direction. [laughs] I thought it was more interesting to have Bruce Banner be the Hulk, as Banner, just this super-strong guy, and I gave him a suit very much like Dynamo. So that was my Hulk. [laughs] I also did a lot of issues of Iron Man and I still have them. They’re all in #2 pencil on lined, loose-leaf paper.

CBA: Did you go to art school?

Alan: I went to the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan.

CBA: Did you frequent Manhattan as a kid?

Alan: As you probably well know from my Streetwise story, I started going up to National (DC Comics) around 1967 or ’68, at 575 Lexington Avenue. That was just the most thrilling experience. Neal Adams would sit in the production department at a spare desk and do covers and I could watch him. When I first started going up there, Carmine Infantino was just the cover editor. So he’d just sit in this tiny windowless room, with all the DC covers pinned up around him and do these scribbles which were his cover layouts, that he’d hand over to Adams and all. In those days, Neal was just starting his spectacular cover run at National, and his stuff just killed me. Just a whole new sensibility in mainstream comics.

CBA: Did you take the tours?

Alan: Yeah, that’s where I was on Thursdays at 2:00 or 2:30.

CBA: Did Mark Hanerfeld conduct them?

Alan: At first, it was a DC production room guy, Walter Hurlecheck.

He would show us around and then Mark Hanerfeld starting doing it and Walter went back to the photostat room.

CBA: So did you go up every week?

Alan: Sometimes. We all went up every week. It was always the same crowd, every week. Me, Hanerfeld, Marvin Wolfman and Len Wein. A couple of other guys. [laughs] CBA: Were you skipping school?

Alan: Absolutely, I was skipping school! I went to Meyer Levin Junior High School in Brooklyn (Meyer Levin was a bombardier in World War Two). I’d cut out every Thursday afternoon. You bet. [laughs] CBA: Did your parents find out?

Alan: I don’t think so, but on the other hand, I wasn’t hiding that I went to DC Comics because I’d probably gush about the quality time I was spending with E. Nelson Bridwell. [laughs] And I was, too! [in Bugs Bunny voice] CBA: So I guess you didn’t get in trouble?

Alan: No, I was in trouble all the time. [laughs] I was a rotten kid.

You know, this particular trouble wouldn’t stand out from any of the others that I got in. [laughs] CBA: Did taking frequent tours through that professional environment give you aspirations to work there?

Alan: Oh, sure, and that is actually what happened eventually. An editor, maybe it was Kashdan or Jack Miller, gave me old scripts that had been already illustrated, so I got to draw my version of those stories. They gave me one script—I think it was by Dave Wood— that eventually turned up in Star Spangled War Stories, called “The Phantom Flyer,” illustrated by my later-to-be dear friend, Jack Abel.

So I’ve got my version that I did from that script before it ever appeared in print.

CBA: They gave you discarded scripts?

Alan: Yeah, they were through with it because Jack had illustrated it and turned it in with the art. I did not see Jack’s version then, I saw it when it appeared in print.

CBA: When did you start professionally?

Alan: Not counting The Canarsie Kid, a gag panel appearing weekly in the Canarsie Courier in 1967, when I was 13? Well, I went on to the High School of Art and Design, which was around the corner from DC at 909 Third Avenue. You know, I watched them move the furniture into 909 and I remember the smell of wet paint when they moved in there. I was around the corner and really started doing some serious school cutting at that point. I just kind of moved in.

I’m probably exaggerating but I felt as though I’d moved in to the reception area at DC, just to ambush people. I spent an awful amount of time out there trying to get sketches from the artists passing through. I don’t recall anyone saying no, so I’ve got a nice Silver Age sketch collection.

CBA: Did DC take you on as an intern?

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

Alan: There was no such animal back then. Steve Mitchell and I graduated from high school, and he went to work at DC as production assistant during that Summer of 1971. He then started college in August or September and I took his place. They sat me at the last desk in the room, right behind Jean Simek Izzo.

CBA: Did you contribute to fanzines at all?

Alan: I did a couple of covers for The Comic Reader, I think it was, or Etcetera for Paul Levitz.

CBA: Did you attend the first comics conventions?

Alan: I probably went in ’70 or so to my first convention, a Phil Seuling convention.

CBA: What was the atmosphere like at DC? That was a very interesting time for the company.

Alan: Yes, Carmine Infantino was in charge and I worked under Jack Adler. Before I went on staff, I’d been getting freelance production work, like cleaning up the art on the Golden Age reprints. My first real comics paycheck was for cleaning up the Robin origin story for Crown’s Batman hardcover reprint. I also did a lot of modernizing and extending romance reprint art. We had to change the proportion on the reprints because National stopped using running heads in their books. Then when I first went on staff I started as a miscellaneous $100-a-week guy.

That was the legend on my check, “$100 miscellaneous.”

And that was the time of President Nixon’s wage and price freeze. So Sol Harrison was delighted to have me locked in at a hundred bucks a week. But I still did plenty of freelance work as well. On staff, I was doing art and lettering corrections and pasting up stuff. They had two regular correction guys who worked in the production department there, Morris Waldinger and Joe Letterese, and they were both mainly letterers, and they also did the corrections on the books. They had quite a

Above: Atlas/Seaboard production manager Alan Kupperberg at his desk, circa May 1975. Note the racked Swank magazines behind Kupp. The closed door on the right is the office of publisher Martin Goodman. Courtesy of Alan Kupperberg.

Above: When Paul Kupperberg teamed with Paul Levitz to helm Etcetera and the revived Comic Reader, he often relied on his brother Alan for cover illustrations.

Courtesy of Paul K., here’s #87 depicting the Marvel Family’s return to comics. Characters ©2001 DC Comics.

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A Closer Look

One Brief, Shining Moment Ditko, The Destructor and the comics of Atlas/Seaboard

by Nicolas Caputo

Below: Glorious splash page of The Destructor #1. Words by Archie Goodwin, art by Steve Ditko and Wally Wood. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals, Inc.

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In 1975, Steve Ditko returned to the world of super-heroes for what appeared to be a moment of glory. Joined by two familiar, respected veterans: Archie Goodwin (who had scripted several fantasy/horror tales illustrated by Ditko for Warren magazines in the 1960s, considered by many to be some of Ditko’s most stunning, inventive work in black-&-white) and Wally Wood (a friend of Ditko’s who was the first person to allow him possession of his creations in his self-published fanzine witzend. Wood inked Ditko’s pencils on a number of stories for Tower comics and—also in 1975—Stalker for DC Comics), they combined their respective talents on a character for

a company that, though new, drew its roots from the earliest days of comic books. Martin Goodman, longtime publisher of Timely/Atlas/Marvel comics, with son Chip, instituted a new line of comics, with a familiar name and many familiar faces. The opening page presented the red-&-blue costumed figure of The Destructor charging out at the reader, echoing the promise of another character Ditko brought to life over a decade earlier. Mainstream fans held high hopes that the essence of that character, one who had been damaged by regurgitations of past tales, over-saturation and neglect, could be resurrected in another form. With Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko once again at the helm, there was a chance to breathe life into a genre that was sorely wanting at times. Sadly, the promise of such a moment would never reach its apex.

While The Destructor was the first character that Ditko drew for Atlas, it may not necessarily have been the first project developed by him. In Jim Steranko’s Mediascene # 11, the news section features a preview of the then upcoming Atlas line. Along with illustrations of Ironjaw, Wulf, the Grim Ghost, Phoenix and Morlock 2001 there is a drawing of a character called Wrecage by Ditko. This leads to speculation that this character was either an entirely different idea by Ditko (one that he may have plotted or written) or that the character was retooled by Archie Goodwin and became The Destructor. Since there is no mention of The Destructor at the time, it’s very possible that Wrecage (later revised as Recage and published in Robin Snyder’s Ditko Package in 1988) was an early Ditko concept that the editors rejected (it would not have been the first time. The editors apparently vetoed a number of stories after they were initially approved, including one by Alex Toth).

The Destructor # 1 (cover dated February 1975) was titled “Birth of a Hero,” and contained a number of elements familiar to comics in general and Ditko in particular. Teenager Jay Hunter did not start off as a typical Peter Parker clone, though; he was a cocky punk who assisting the Mob in petty jobs. His father, Dr. Simon Hunter, was a dedicated scientist who spent his life trying to improve the human race. Inventing a serum to heighten man’s natural abilities, he becomes a casualty of his son’s Mob connections when they see him as a threat. The thugs shoot both father and son and leave them for dead. With his final breath, Dr. Hunter administers the serum to his son in hopes that it will somehow save his life. Clichéd though it was, it set up the premise for the series, as a guilt-ridden Jay Hunter dons the costume his father designed and seeks revenge on the Mob. There were a number of interesting elements involved, not the least being Ditko’s once again working on a teenage character that needed to grow and mature (the last such attempt was with brothers Don and Hank Hall, in the short-lived The Hawk and the Dove series for DC in 1968). Archie Goodwin, one of the better wordsmiths at the time, was able to produce strong dialogue and plot, as well as the ability to work to an artist’s strengths. The great Wally Wood, a spectacular penciler in his own right, was also one of the genre’s greatest inkers, enhancing Ditko’s art (as he had with everyone from Jack Kirby to Gil Kane) with vivid and detailed line work. The similarities to Spider-Man were obvious: The teenaged hero, the crime milieu (the Slaymaster was similar in style and appearance to the earlier Crime Master), the death of a loved one—but the series had the opportunity to be edgier, as well. The Destructor (in retrospect an uninspired sobriquet) was more brutal, à la Ditko’s self-published creations, and the villains were more likely to die than return each issue. The character of Jay Hunter also had the potential for growth. Unhindered by years of history and sanitization, The COMIC BOOK ARTIST 16

December 2001

Hero Index

Atlas/Seaboard Checklist The complete index to Martin Goodman’s 1970s comics line

What’s Happening with Atlas (text) 1 Note: Jeff Rovin, editor.

2 April 1975 Cover: Dick Giordano with Larry Lieber “Attack of the Reptile Men” THE BARBARIANS Mike Fleisher/Mike Sekowsky & Pablo Marcos20 1 June 1975 Cover: Rich Buckler 1/2 Ironjaw: “The Mountain Of Mutants” Gary Friedrich/Pablo Marcos10 What’s Happening with Atlas (text) Notes: Jeff Rovin’s last issue as editor.

Alan Kupperberg, letterer.

Andrax: “Andrax” Jorge Bernet/Jorge Bernet 9 “The Barbarians featuring Ironjaw” (text) David Anthony Kraft 1 3 July 1975 Cover: Pablo Marcos Notes: Larry Lieber, editor. “Andrax” is a reprint of a German “Live or Let Die” Gary Friedrich/Alan Weiss & Jack Abel19 comic book from the early 1970s and is copyrighted to “Rolf What’s Happening with Atlas (text) 1 Kauka” (the publisher) and “Bardon” (the art studio). Shelly Notes: Larry Lieber, editor. Alan Kupperberg, letterer and colorist.

Leferman credited as letterer on Ironjaw.

Uncredited penciling assists by Frank Brunner and Jim Starlin.

Three month lapse since previous issue.

BLAZING BATTLE TALES 1 July 1975 Cover: Frank Thorne THE COUGAR Sgt. Hawk: “The One-Armed Beast” 1 April 1975 Cover: Frank Thorne John Albano/Pat Broderick & Jack Sparling12 “Vampires and Cougars Don't Mix” “The Sky Demon” John Albano/Al McWilliams 6 Steve Mitchell/Dan Adkins & Frank Springer20 1/2 “Bronze Star Winner Pvt. William Swanson” What’s Happening with Atlas (text) John Albano/John Severin 2 Notes: Jeff Rovin, editor. Adkins pencils initial 10 pages with Note: Larry Lieber, editor.

Springer inks; Springer pencils & inks remainder. Issue dedicated to Dan Curtis, TV and film producer.

THE BRUTE 1 February 1975 Cover: Dick Giordano 2 July 1975 Cover: Rich Buckler & Al Milgrom “Night of the Brute” “A Walk With the Werewolf” Gary Friedrich/Frank Springer 18 Mike Fleisher/Mike Sekowsky & Pablo Marcos20 What’s Happening with Atlas (text) 1 Compiled by David R. McLallen & Jon B. Cooke

Atlas Comics

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Notes: Larry Lieber, editor. Sharon Iborn, letterer. Three month lapse since previous issue.

DEMON HUNTER 1 September 1975 Cover: Rich Buckler “The Harvester of Eyes” David Anthony Kraft/Rich Buckler18 What’s Happening with Atlas (text) 1 Note: Larry Lieber, editor. Shelly Leferman, letterer. Rich Buckler credited with concept and plot. Dedicated to Buck Dharma and the boys.

DESTRUCTOR 1 February 1975 Cover: Larry Lieber & Wally Wood “The Birth of a Hero” Archie Goodwin/Steve Ditko & Wally Wood20 What’s Happening with Atlas (text) 1 Note: Larry Lieber, editor.

2 April 1975 Cover: Larry Lieber “Deathgrip!”

Archie Goodwin/Steve Ditko & Wally Wood20 1/2 What’s Happening with Atlas (text) Note: Alan Kupperberg, letterer.

3 June 1975 Cover: Larry Lieber “In the Hands of the Huntress” Archie Goodwin/Steve Ditko19 Destructor Dispatches (letter column) 1 4

August 1975

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Cover: Larry Lieber

December 2001

Endgame

D.A.K. at the Demise David Anthony Kraft on the last days of Atlas Comics Hunter, which was already in suspension before the first issue ever hit the newsstands. Finally, Larry asked me if I’d mind leaving staff a Although he declined our request for an interview, former week ahead of my scheduled departure. I agreed to this, assuming Atlas/Seaboard assistant editor Dave Kraft suggested we reprint his that Shelly Leferman—who was to replace my position as Larry’s article on the fall of Atlas from Deadspawn #1 (July 1975) with his right-hand man, and whom I had spent some time with in an effort kind permission. The writer to familiarize him with my job—would now be secure in his position (renowned not only for his comics with Atlas. Imagine my surprise when, on stopping by the office the scripting but also his astonishing following Monday, I found that he’d been dismissed. The reason 150-issue run of his lauded Comics given was that it had nothing to do with his work, but rather owed Interview) originally scribed this as to the fact that somewhat more than half the Atlas line had been a letter to the editor of the slick suspended, and therefore they didn’t feel they needed the personnel. fanzine. Thanks to Roy Thomas and That left only Alan Kupperberg and Larry Lieber effectively Bill Schelly for help, and to Mark laboring on the office chores for the comics, and naturally Larry was Burbey for photocopying the very distressed at having to shoulder such a burden without any article. ©2001 Dave Kraft. editorial help whatsoever. During that week, titles continued to be dropped, and some two weeks later, I went in to find that—in a As you may be aware, I weird display of office politics—Kupperberg had been released as worked on staff as associate editor production manager and Leferman hired back in his place. Just before of Marvel for 11 months, before I left New York City in late May, I stopped by to speak with Larry and joining Seaboard/Atlas Comics on Shelly, and they had a list of approximately eight or ten titles presentMarch 3 of this year [1975]. Along ly in production—meaning already written and being illustrated, inked with Larry Lieber, who had recently or colored—which they were to complete. But after that, nil. been appointed editor-in-chief of The entire line had been suspended, but the Goodmans were the entire line, and Alan tight-lipped and it was anyone’s guess—including Larry’s—whether or Kupperberg and Shelly Leferman, I not they intended to resume publication as they had hinted. That’s IF“new YOUregime” ENJOYED THIS was part of the prettyPREVIEW, much the entire story, as I witnessed it.

CLICKAtlas THE LINK expected to salvage from its TO ORDER As for THIS who it affects—everyone who worked for Atlas, of IN PRINT FORMAT! deplorableISSUE initial venture into theOR DIGITAL course. From Larry on down through the writers, artists, colorists, letcomics field. terers and staff people. All of whom must now make the rounds of We proceeded to make the other companies, or suffer a collapse of income. Some of the some major renovations in close better or more well known freelancers were already working at coordination with Charles (“Chip”) several companies, and won’t be seriously harmed by the suspension.

Goodman, the publisher, to the end However, there are others who, lured by the higher rates and that he scheduled an informal cozier atmosphere of Atlas, where considered “traitors” by whichever cocktail party at the office on April companies they’d formerly worked for, and who will now be at the 25 as an opportunity for Atlas mercy of those very editors who felt miffed by their “betrayal.” But freelancers and staffers to mingle and celebrate. again, that was one of the risks inherent in casting one’s lot with a A few days before the party, Martin Goodman—Chip’s father, new fledgling company, so it shouldn’t have come totally unexpected. multi-millionaire and chief financier of Atlas/Seaboard—returned from I guess what made the suspension the surprise that it was is an extended stay in Florida. Prior to his return, Chip had been very that, just prior to the shut-down, Chip had expressed renewed cooperative and enthusiastic and gung-ho, even going so far as to enthusiasm in the line as it was being reconstituted and improved give us the okay on starting a couple new titles. However, Chip’s

by Larry, myself and the various freelancers, even to the extent of attitudes changed immediately upon Mr. Goodman’s and investingCOMICS in much needed expensive additional office equipment, and #16:return, ATLAS/SEABOARD COMICS with JEFF ROVIN, presently he became erratic and unpredictable’70s asATLAS publisher.

I HISTORY! Interviews approving those aforementioned new comic titles. He felt the books ROY THOMAS, ERNIE COLÓN, STEVE MITCHELL, LARRY |interpreted this as indication that there was some squabbling were looking professional and improving at a satisfying rate to the HAMA,family HOWARD CHAYKIN, SAL AMENDOLA, JIM CRAIG, RICGoodman.

MEYERS, and ALAN KUPPERBERG, Atlaswhere Checklist, HEATH, going on, presumably pressure from the senior point the Atlas line would be severely competitive—and WRIGHTSON, SIMONSON, MILGROM, AUSTIN, WEISS, and The week after the big Atlas Bullpen get-together, I finally hopefully, eventually, superior—to Marvel and National [DC].

STATON discuss their Atlas work, and more! COLÓN cover! reached a decision about my workload, New York City, etc.,(128-page and with Apparently, Martin didn’t agree. magazine) $6.95 Summer upcoming, I gave notice that I’d be leaving staff in two (Digital Edition) $3.95 I never actually saw sales figures on any of the books, but weeks (though still freelance writing for them).http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_56&products_id=532 My scripting schedule according to Marv Wolfman, with whom I spoke just before included four books: Demon-Hunter, Man-Monster, Hands of the departing New York, some of the titles were reputedly selling as low Dragon, and The Barbarians. as 13%… which is of course far below the 25-30% necessary for Then, abruptly, titles began to get “suspended.” Some of the bare survival in today’s comics market. very worst, initially, and I was not displeased by the decision to stop About my working for Atlas, presumably if they resume publication of “The Tarantula” [Weird Suspense], The Brute and like publication I’ll be doing some writing for them, but of course Larry books. The reason given for the purge was an attempt to improve the couldn’t make any commitments on a line which might be utterly line. dead. I still have some material coming out from them, But as the week wore on, more and more titles got axed, up to however—if they publish those books which were in and including new and as-yet-unpublished efforts such as Demonproduction, which I’m told they will.

by David Anthony Kraft

Above: While created by Rich Buckler, Dave Kraft would script the one-&-only issue of DemonHunter. D.A.K. would bring the character—after a fashion—to Marvel as Demon-Slayer. ©1975 Seaboard Periodicals.

Below: Cover of Deadspawn #1.

Courtesy of Mark Burbey.

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