Comic Book Artist #22 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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THE TREASURES OF GOLD KEY COMICS

™

TRIBUTE No.22 October 2002

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MANNING • SPIEGLE • EVANIER • ROYER • GLUT • SANTOS

CBA’s Jon Cooke is back in April! Make ready for COMIC BOOK CREATOR, the new voice of the comics medium! TwoMorrows is proud to debut our newest magazine, COMIC BOOK CREATOR, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics, focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. Behind an ALEX ROSS cover painting, our frantic FIRST ISSUE features an investigation of the oft despicable treatment JACK KIRBY endured from the very business he helped establish. From being cheated out of royalties in the ’40s and bullied in the ’80s by the publisher he made great, to his estate’s current fight for equitable recognition against an entertainment monolith where his characters have generated billions of dollars, we present Kirby’s cautionary tale in the eternal struggle for creator’s rights. Plus, CBC #1 interviews artist ALEX ROSS and writer KURT BUSIEK, spotlights the last years of writer/artist FRANK ROBBINS, remembers comics historian LES DANIELS, sports a color gallery of WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, showcases a joint talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL on their unforgettable collaborations, as well as throws a whole kit’n’caboodle of other creator-centric items atcha! Join us for the start of a new era as TwoMorrows welcomes back former Comic Book Artist editor JON B. COOKE, who helms the all-new, allcolor COMIC BOOK CREATOR!

80 pages • $8.95 All-color • Quarterly Digital Edition: $3.95 COMING THIS JULY: COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2 (double-size Summer Special) Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured through FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, rememberreturns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured through FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembertures: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY ing LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $6.95 • Ships July 2013

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NUMBER 22

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

OCTOBER 2002

THE FRONT PAGE: LAST MINUTE BITS ON THE COMMUNITY OF COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS CBA scores our second Eisner, the new Hal Foster book, and unknown Kubert work discovered!........................1 EDITOR’S RANT: MINING FOR GOLD Ye Ed waxes on about those wild, wild Western books of his childhood and a feeling of belonging ..................5 KHOURY’S CORNER: READ, RIGHT AND COOL Our assistant editor takes a look at Marvel’s latest hardback anthology, Captain America: Red, White & Blue....7 CBA COMMUNIQUES: FILTHY, DISGUSTING PERVERTS R US? The meaning of Mitch O’Connell’s CBA #19 cover gets twisted all ’round, and more malevolent missives ........8 MICHELLE’S MEANDERINGS: DAYS OF COMIC BOOK CHAOS Our beloved columnist remembers confusing times during the Dell Comics/Western Publishing “divorce” ....12

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher

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

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published 10 times a year 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. ©2002 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Cover acknowledgements: Art ©2002 Bruce Timm. Magnus ©2002 Western Publishing, Inc. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

Proofreader ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON Cover Painting BRUCE TIMM Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS SAM GAFFORD LONGBOX.COM STEVEN TICE Logo Designer/Title Originator ARLEN SCHUMER Mascot WOODY by J.D. King Issue Theme Song NO SUCH THING John Mayer Visit CBA on our Website at:

www.twomorrows.com

THE TREASURES OF GOLD KEY COMICS LITTLE FREDDY: GROWING UP IN THE SILVER AGE OF COMICS BY FRED HEMBECK Our Man Fred remembers the confusion surrounding the debut of Gold Key back in the early 1960s................15

Contributors Bruce Timm • Shel Dorf Paul Norris • Don Glut Mark Evanier • Dan Spiegle Christopher Irving • Andrew Lis R. Robert Pollak • Alberto Becattini J.D. King • George Khoury Andrea Giberti • George Wilson Russ Manning • Robin Snyder Tom McKimson • Bill Janocha Jesse Santos • José Delbo Nevio Zeccarra • Alberto Giolitti Mike Royer • Mañuel Auad Scotty Moore • Richard Kyle Joe Caporale • Ed Rhoads James Van Hise • Biljo White Roy Thomas • John R. Borkowski Fred Hembeck • Michelle Nolan Chris Hunt • Ray Kelly & Kelly’s Comics Jeff Kapalka • Toni Rodrigues Ina Cooke and Mom & Pop’s Dan Forman • Gregg Hazen The Mad Peck • Scotty Moore Daniel I. Herman • Russ G. and the TwoMorrows Mailing Crew Bill Rosemann & Marvel Comics

WESTERN CIV 101: UNLOCKING THE MYSTERY OF GOLD KEY COMICS Chris Irving digs up the histories of Dell Comics, Western Publishing, and their child of divorce, Gold Key ......16 DORF’S DISCUSSIONS: MANNING THE MAGNIFICENT Superfan Shel Dorf visits the studio of Magnus maestro, Russ Manning, in this unpublished ’69 interview ......32 CBA TRIBUTE: ALBERTO GIOLITTI, “FATHER” OF TUROK The life of renowned Italian comic book artist of the Son of Stone is examined by Alberto Becattini ................38 DAN SPIEGLE INTERVIEW: THE SPLENDOR OF SPIEGLE The superb comic book artist talks about everything from Hopalong Cassidy to his current Boys’ Life work ......44 MIKE ROYER INTERVIEW: WRANGLIN’ MIKE ROYER TELLS ALL! The masterful inker discusses his early days in comics as Russ Manning’s assistant and Gold Key artist ............56 PAUL NORRIS INTERVIEW: PAUL’S GOLD KEY MEMORIES Artist Paul Norris discusses his illustrious career—from Aquaman to Brick Bradford—with Joe Caporale ..........68 GEORGE WILSON INTERVIEW: THE PHANTOM PAINTER Maybe Gold Key’s greatest cover artist—little-known George Wilson—gives his one and only interview ..........74 CBA PROFILE: THE TALE OF TOM MCKIMSON The life and career of the animator, comic book artist and art director as related by Alberto Becattini ..............76

This issue dedicated to

NEVIO ZECCARRA INTERVIEW: THE STAR’S TREK Andrea Giberti shares a brief interview conducted with the Italian comic book artist of Star Trek #1 ................79

Alberto Becattini COMICS LOVER SUPREME and all of CBA’s fine readers from Italy!

MARK EVANIER INTERVIEW: WESTERN GOES WEST The respected historian/writer/columnist on the origins of Gold Key and his experience at Western Pubs ........80 JESSE SANTOS INTERVIEW: THE ROMANTIC STYLINGS OF MR. JESSE SANTOS In a rare conversation, the superb Filipino comic book artist discusses his prolific days at Gold Key ..................88 DON GLUT INTERVIEW: OF DAGAR AND DINOSAURS The multi-talented creator reveals his prehistoric roots and thinking behind Dagar, Dr. Spektor and Tragg ........98 GOLD KEY GIANTS: THE TOP TEN ILLUSTRATORS OF WESTERN PUBLISHING Alberto Becattini gives us a list of superlative Dell/Gold Key comic book artists, complete with profiles ........116 Previous page: We believe this is a previously unseen Magnus illustration by Russ Manning, depicting the great Gold Key Robot Fighter. Courtesy of Biljo White (with assist by Roy Thomas). Above: Courtesy of Ray Kelly and friend, it’s a panel from Space Family Robinson #16, words by Gaylord Du Bois, art by Dan Spiegle. Magnus, SPF ©2002 Western Publishing, Inc. 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

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MACAB R E

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THOM PSON!

Editor’s Rant

Mining the Gold

A fond look back at the engaging comics of Western Publishing

I was born too late to be a card-carrying EC Fan Addict and the ranks of the Merry Marvel Marching Society appeared to be exclusively represented by my oldest brother in our household (as, under the threat of a painful wedgie, Richie would allow none of his siblings access to his treasured Marvel collection), so when I encountered Gold Key comics in 1968, I felt I finally belonged somewhere, at the ripe old age of nine. For a couple of years in the late ’60s, each issue produced by Western Publishing devoted three or more pages to the Gold Key Comics Club, one to pure hype about upcoming comics, another to drawings (of aliens or monsters, for instance) submitted by readers, as well as a “Jokes on You” section featuring reader riddles and gags, and usually capped with a dumb gag cartoon single-pager. Sure, the focus was silly and downright juvenile, but I was a silly juvenile (still am!) and their output was perfect for a sub-teen like myself. Gold Key, for that time in my life, was simply The Place To Be. None of DC’s oh-so-serious super-heroes or Marvel’s convoluted and complex continuity of the day for me! Nosireebob! Just books like Carl Barks’ superb Uncle Scrooge reprints, Russ Manning’s stunning version of Tarzan, Jack Sparling’s crude yet effective rendering on Mighty Samson, and more expert adaptations of favorite films and TV shows than a kid would ever dream of. Me, the comic book versions I dug were Land of the Giants, Time Tunnel, The Avengers (with Emma and John, not Wanda and Pietro), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Star Trek, and especially those two Movie Comics one-shots, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (hey, the author of James Bond 007 created that, dude!) and The Yellow Submarine, with the cartoon version Fab Four. Of the latter two, I probably most appreciated the groovy pull-out posters (which apparently justified the 25¢ price tag) most of all, which I distinctly recall fawning over while lying in the front yard of our Croton-on-Hudson digs during them fateful days. Sigh. But those golden days ended soon enough. The allure of changing times at DC was compelling… I mean, Batman was investigating the “death” of Paul McCartney, man! And, soon enough, after months of mysterious “Kirby is Coming!” blurbs, Jack did arrive at the House of Superman where I was introduced to his brilliant storytelling, and comics became an addiction forever changing my life, leading me to the more harmful “drugs” pushed by Marvel, the undergrounds, and even sinister Warren! And though by then Gold Key seemed somewhat innocent and quaint compared to the super-slugfests ensuing over at the Big Two, the comics of Western Publishing came back into the forefront at Casa Cooke when I discovered the unbeatable team of writer Don Glut and artist Jesse Santos working their magic on such titles as Dagar the Invincible, The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor, and even some book called Tragg and the Sky Gods (not to mention Jesse’s great work on Brothers of the Spear). Lemme tell ya, I really thought those books were IT for Gold Key, and can’t tell you how disappointed I was when those adventure books were cancelled by 1976 or so, and even more distraught that the pair pretty much disappeared from the comics scene for good. Now, of course, with the benefit of hindsight (and back-issue bins), Ye Ed realizes that much of Gold Key’s 1960s line-up featured some truly excellent material, the pinnacle probably being Russ Manning’s extraordinary run as artist—and sometime writer—of 22 issues of the line’s finest title, Magnus, Robot Fighter, a book that still takes my breath away. Bob Fujitani’s great artwork on the initial five issues of Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom (never mind those superb Richard Powers covers!), as well as Frank Thorne’s amazing art job on Mighty Samson and Dan Spiegle’s consistent artistry on Space Family Robinson are also notable achievements for that decade. And who October 2002

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can forget Wally Wood and his studio’s glorious work on Total War/M.A.R.S. Patrol #1-3? Maybe Marvel and DC garnered all the glory in that turbulent decade, but some major cool sh*t was coming off the presses in Poughkeepsie, New York! Now, as one may ascertain from the accolades expressed in the above paragraph, you’ll find there’s a distinct emphasis on Gold Key’s adventure material in this retrospective. While we hope the interview with Mark Evanier and Alberto Becattini’s focus on Tom McKimson, as well as A.B.’s “Top Ten” list of Gold Key/Dell funny book artists, give a degree of balance, I realize the super-hero prejudice is strong in this ish, so maybe we’ll conduct a more in-depth examination of their funny animal material in the future. But we make no apologies as often the adventure comics of Western Publishing are the ones worth checking out, and we’re proud to say that this edition of CBA is probably the most comprehensive survey of Gold Key comics ever attempted, however woefully short. (But give us credit for adding another 16 pages—at no cost to you—to add more material.) Chris Irving’s wonderful history lesson alone is worth the price of admission, as he digs deep to unlock the myriad mysteries of Western Publishing, beginning with its relationship with Dell Comics—dating back to the late 1920s!—and on to the 1961 advent of the Gold Key imprint (a “child of divorce,” as Chris will inform you) to their disappearance from the comic book scene by the mid-1980s CBA does beg forgiveness from José Delbo, artist extraordinaire, for having to bump his comprehensive career-spanning interview until next issue and we hope Alberto Becattini will understand that we had to limit his superb contributions this issue due to space limitations (but look for his Gold Key/Dell artist index soon hereabouts). Special thanks are due to Bruce Timm, the best comic book artist—besides Frank Frazetta and Dave Stevens—not actively working in the field today, who leapt at the chance to do his “painted Gold Key cover” version of Magnus; as well as J.D. King, for his “Woody” robo-drawing gracing this page, as well as for agreeing to come on board as permanent CBA “editorial rant” page illustrator! Along with the very special group of contributors herein, you guys make me feel like I’m a Gold Key Comics Club member all over again! —Jon B. Cooke, Editorman

Above: If he only had a clue! CBA mascot Woody—in his guise as an automaton from 4000 A.D.—gets recharged after a severe walloping by a certain Gold Key robo-hater in this piece by J.D. King. We’re happy to announce that the cartoonist—a friend of Ye Ed since the early 1970s—will be a regular contributor to our humble ’zine starting with this issue! Woody and art ™ & ©2002 J.D. King.

CORRECTION Our apologies to scribe STEVE DARNALL, author of the Alex Ross “Day in the Life” article in CBA #21, for misspelling his name throughout the issue. Our bad. 5

Buried Treasure

by Christopher Irving The Gold Key comic book imprint and its history are firmly rooted in the histories of other companies. Besides their licensed books (most memorably Carl Barks’ work on the classic Uncle Scrooge), Gold Key is best remembered, perhaps, for three distinctive and atypical adventure heroes: A man who gave new meaning to the term “kung fu” grip; a scientist always green around the gills; and a pair of Native Americans lost in a prehistoric land. Although Gold Key proper—as well as two of its memorable trio—didn’t come to life until the 1960s, the imprint’s genesis lies in the development of Dell Publishing, a company that dates back to the 1920s, in the time of the earliest comic books.

“Dell Comics are Good Comics” Dell, a company who would grow to be one of the largest book and magazine publishing houses in American history, was started by George Delacorte as a periodical concern in 1921, specializing in pulp fiction. By the mid-’40s, Delacorte owned more than 200 publications and his impressive comic line (once selling in the range of 300 million copies per year) had become the main supplier for powerhouse magazine distributor American News Company in 1942, when Dell entered the increasingly lucrative paperback book business. “My father started the company with a partner, a man who worked with the New York Sun,” George’s youngest son Albert Delacorte recalled in a recent interview. “My father was very sociable and he belonged to the

newspaper club and played pool with all the editors. He was still a very young man in his twenties. This man, named Johnson, put up $10,000, [George] put up $10,000, and my grandfather put up $10,000. His printing was either partially or entirely on credit and his distribution the same. [The printer and distributor] must have felt that he was an up-and-coming guy, and I suppose they wrote contracts that guaranteed venture capital: If the guy does well, they have a contract that keeps the business with the printer or distribution company. In other words, he can’t go to another company until that contract expires. “He started with only little unimportant pulp magazines: Famous Stories (just stuff taken out of short story anthologies, an imitation of a very successful magazine called The Golden Book), Cupid’s Diary, Sweetheart Stories, War Stories (tales of World War I, of course), and there were lots more of them.” Albert believes one of the venture capital partners in his father’s initial deal was American News Company, the distributor whose downfall in 1957 would adversely effect the magazine industry (significantly Martin Goodman’s Marvel imprint (then called Atlas Comics), leading that comics house to strike up a hobbling distribution deal with its’ nearest competitor, DC Comics). “In those days, my father did everything,” Albert continued. “He was his own circulation department, he sold advertising, and appeared on radio with his editors who were all women; they would dramatize the stories, and he’d be the male part. They would carry on these love stories in dialogue in a small radio program. “I can recall the only person he had helping him was an AfricanAmerican who was very able and wrote operas. His name was Valdo Freeman. I remember going down to a bindery, and seeing Valdo and my father trim magazines; it was one of these huge things where you pulled a lever down, and you’d see chips of this cheap newsprint paper flying all over the floor. The magazine was relatively trimmed.”

Witness at the Creation Amongst the relevant publishing landmarks George Delacorte is associated is the 1929 debut of The Funnies, the first collection of allnew original comic strip material in periodical form and thus regarded as the first so-called “Platinum Age” comic book. The format of the weekly Funnies was the same size as a Sunday comics newspaper tabloid supplement section until #5, and the odd size is most likely what contributed to the title’s initial failure, as it was often mistaken for—naturally—leftover Sunday comics supplements. (From a historical perspective, The Funnies featured the work of Victoria Pazmino, the first published female comic book artist.) Even reducing the 10¢ cover price to a mere 5¢ with #25 didn’t save the title, and publication ceased with #36, cover dated October 1930. After a few more hits and misses on the comic book newsstand, Dell released Popular Comics in February 1936 in the by-then-standard comic book format. What ensured Popular’s success was the newspaper comic strips reprinted within its covers: Chicago Tribune Syndicate’s Dick Tracy, The Gumps, Gasoline Alley, and numerous others. Within the year, Dell would release a revived Funnies comic book as well as The Comics, both being reprint titles. All three comics were packaged by the legendary M.C. “Max” Gaines, who would later help launch All-American Comics with DC, and the pioneer who founded Educational (later COMIC BOOK ARTIST 22

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of Gold Key Comics Western Publishing’s hugely successful comic book line renamed Entertaining) Comics—the mythical EC Comics of the 1950s. Dell would become more of a contender on the newsstand in 1938, when another publisher engaged in producing printed material for children, Western Publishing and Lithograph Company, came into partnership with Dell as the packager of licensed comic books. Before we continue chronologically, we need to take a look at the background of Western, the publisher who would create the Gold Key Comics imprint.

The Big Little Company In 1907, Racine, Wisconsin’s West Side Printing Company, was purchased by former employee Edward Henry Wadewitz with help from his brother Al for $2,504. By 1910, the printing house changed its name to Western Printing and Lithographing Co., after buying its first lithographic press. Three years later, Western acquired the Hamming-Whitman Publishing Co. of Chicago, creating the subsidiary Whitman Publishing Company. By the end of the decade, the publisher produced its first 10¢ children’s book and successfully distributed the new line to Woolworth’s and other “five-&-dime” department stores. Whitman published the first Big Little Book in 1932, The Adventures of Dick Tracy, featuring Chicago’s renowned comic strip crimefighter. Within a year, the publisher scored its most lucrative deal by signing a contract with Walt Disney, obtaining exclusive licensing rights to Mickey Mouse and all of Disney’s characters. The first Disney Big Little Book is published shortly after, reprinting Floyd Gottfredson’s Mickey Mouse syndicated newspaper strips. According to an essay on <biglittlebooks.com>, “In 1918, the company received its first printing order from a retail firm, S.S. Kressage Company, a major five-&-dime chain. The order was for dozens of children's books. A foreman working on the order confused the ‘dozens’ to mean ‘gross’ quantities, and twelve times the correct number of titles were printed. There were too many for S. S. Kressage to use, thus Whitman was faced with the decision of whether to write off the error or to try to sell the books. The decision to sell was made by Western's Sam Lowe. He persuaded F. W. Woolworth Company and other retail chain stores to experiment with the books by placing them on display year-round. The public's response led to long-term contracts and Western went into the development of materials designed for such a market. Lowe convinced Western to start a new 10¢ book line. The immediate success of low-priced books prompted Western to establish a separate Whitman book division for the purpose of developing such items for market. Sam Lowe was made president of the new division—the Whitman Publishing Company. “With connections to chain stores, Whitman's production began to extend beyond books. A box department was added to the firm in the early 1920s, thus bringing about the development of boxed games and jigsaw puzzles. “In 1932, Sam Lowe created a special book that would be bulky but small so that it could be easily handled and read by a young consumer. He made up three samples using cover and paper stock that would be used in the printing. He had the art department do black-&-white drawings and insert keyline text so that the dummy samples would serve as prototypes. Taking the prototypes to New October 2002

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York, he presented them as a 10¢ retail item, packed one dozen per title in a shipping carton. Retail buyers were intrigued with the concept and were particularly impressed with the titles. Lowe returned to Racine with more than 25,000 books pre-ordered.… All had hardboard covers and paper spines. They were called Big Little Books®. Rapid sales of the books through the five-&-dime chains led to the quick creation of other titles and a planned production of comic character, radio character, motion picture themes, and in-house pulp-type western, adventure, and crime stories. The books were produced at a rate of about six titles per month. This was the Golden Age of BLBs.” In 1934, Western buys a Poughkeepsie, New York printing plant, and soon the company begins printing books and magazines for such major American outfits as Simon and Schuster, Grosset and Dunlap, and significantly, Dell Publishing. Mickey Mouse Magazine #1 is published in 1935 by

Dorf’s Discussions

Manning the Magnificent Shel Dorf chats with the legendary Magnus and Tarzan artist Conducted by Shel Dorf with Rich Rubenfeld Transcribed by Jon B. Cooke

Above: Small pic of legendary comics fan and con organizer Shel Dorf, a most frequent and welcome contributor to the pages of Comic Book Artist. Courtesy of Mike Royer. Below: Superb comics artist Russ Manning at his art board in another photo courtesy of his onetime assistant, Mike Royer.

In the latter part of August 1969, Rich Rubenfeld and Shel Dorf took a trip to the Los Angeles area to interview Jack Kirby and Russ Manning. After getting his number from the phone book, the pair called Manning and asked to visit, and he replied that he would be delighted but had one condition: The artist needed to work on his Tarzan strip and would be ready for them at 4:00 P.M. Shel said, “It was very difficult to find his place, because Russ lived at the bottom of a canyon, and we had to drive on narrow, winding roads—like you see in the movies—with sheer drops on one side. It was exciting… and we finally found Russ’s house, set back in a wooded area, and I almost expected him to come out, swinging from a tree!… Russ is really a country boy at heart and is also a volunteer at the local fire department as fires are quite a hazard living in that canyon. We had a wonderful visit as you will hear.” Our thanks to Shel for his generosity in sharing this rare interview with a comic book master. Shel Dorf: If you could say a few words for the fans? Russ Manning: Sure! “A few words for the fans.” [laughter] Shel: Let’s get started: When were your very first inclinations to draw or paint? Can you remember back that far? Russ: Hmm, let’s see… No! [chuckles] The first time I can remember anyone being enthusiastic about something I drew was a sketch I made of a tree out in the yard, and my father said, “Keep it up. Something good will come of that.” I can’t remember how old I was but I remember the yard, the house, but the age I can’t remember. Shel: Where was it? Russ: Los Altos, California. Central California. Shel: That was where you grew up? Russ: Yup. Shel: That’s great. Did you have any formal training? Did you go to an art school?

Russ: Yeah. I had good training in high school where I had a wonderful art teacher. Then, during the first year of [junior college], she happened to move on into j.c., and she taught me there, and then recommended that I try an art school. I went to Los Angles County Art Institute in L.A. for a year-and-a-half. I happened to hear that a little film company wanted a cartoonist and I quit school and joined them. Six months later, they went broke and I went into the National Guard and over to Korea. Shel: Oh, wow. What year was this? Russ: I went to Korea in the mid-part of ’50, and I came out in ’52. I had already met Jesse Marsh [artist on the Tarzan comic book] and he took me down and introduced me to Western Printing Company and said, “Here’s a man who is just back from Korea and he needs a job. Have you got any work for him?” Tom McKimson, the art director, said, “Well, if you can prove to me he can draw, we might.” And I went home and just started drawing like crazy. As soon as I had anything at all to show Tom, I came back down from Santa Maria—Los Altos—California, and I showed the art director. He would take a look and say, “Uh-uh.” I’d go home, try again, get up another batch of samples and get back to him. Four times this happened! On the forth one, he said, “Here’s a ‘Brothers of the Spear.’ Take it home and start.” Shel: That’s marvelous, really something. You mentioned meeting Jesse Marsh. Did you seek him out? Did you just go to him with a portfolio of your work? How did the two of you meet if this was a turning point in your career? Russ: Well, in a way, that was through Vernell Coriell, well known Tarzan fan and creator of any number of Tarzan [fanzines, including the very first, The Burroughs Bulletin, established 1947], of course. I had received one of Verne’s fanzines and had written to him. If I remember rightly, he said, “Go see Jesse Marsh. He lives somewhere in the Los Angeles area,” and gave me the address. And, lordy, I was glad to! I called Jess and he invited me out, and I may have taken artwork—I don’t recall now, but probably, because I was already copying comic books, copying Jess, Hal Foster, and everybody that I considered to be great in the field, just to learn how to draw really, not with any idea of being in comic books. So I went out and saw Jess. He’s a wonderful gentleman and very enthusiastic, and he liked what I had taken (not that there was anything special about it, but I think he was just being nice). He was a fine gentleman. He showed me what he was doing at the time—a Johnny Mack Brown comic book, if I remember right—and he had a bunch of

Tarzans around. He said that if I were ever interested in it, he would take me down to Western Publishing Company and introduce me. Well, gosh, I went home and started drawing Tarzan and… John Carter of Mars. I started doing some John Carter of Mars with perhaps interesting the comic book company in it. It was just at this time when the little film company I was working with went broke and the National Guard called me. So, for a year-and-a-half, I wasn’t able to take Jess up on his kindness, but then, coming back out of the Army, why, I got back in contact with Jess and he took me down to Western. Shel: That’s fascinating. Maybe we’ll send a copy of this [tape] to Verne and maybe he’ll use this. Let’s get into Magnus a little bit: Magnus, of course, was the first time that we saw a full Russ Manning comic book… the one that I remember. [To Rich] You say that he did Sea Hunt and what else? Rich Rubenfeld: Rob writing—on what you think the story should be, draw some sketches, Roy… and bring ’em back. Shel: Rob Roy… [unintelligible discussion] Can you tell us a little If I recall, I went over to a nearby bar (where I happened to bit of the story behind Magnus? After this, I would like to kind of get know the bartender), and sat there, just grinning at everybody. Why, into how you work, the procedure, and so on. I here was a chance to come up with my own creation! A super-hero, know you told us that you have a dinner science-fiction, everything I was truly interested in, and it didn’t date at about 5:30 and it’s already ten after now, so we’ve got some time to squeeze in. Russ: Now, Magnus is a… I think I’ve written for a fanzine and the story’s there, but Magnus was the creation of Chase Craig of Western Publishing Company. But the Magnus that he had in mind was a very vague and morpheus subject; he had no concrete image that he wanted presented. He had just convinced the big shots back East that a comic book of a science-fiction super-hero would be the thing to try at the time. If I remember right, DC was beginning to boom a bit; Marvel hadn’t quite come into the picture. So, evidently, they felt that science-fiction [was a consideration] and they wanted to try a subject. I heard this from one of the other members of the staff and went running into Chase because I had this big love of science-fiction. I had read it all of my life and felt that I knew more than anybody there about science-fiction. I told Chase that I was interested, knew Above: The earliest existing presentation concept the subject, and art by Russ for the proposed Magnus strip (the initial version, featuring the robot fighter complete with would like to hammer, has yet to be found). Manning’s idea was for try it. He said, the character to basically be “Tarzan in the 41st “Good. Go Century.”Courtesy of Bob Pollak. Art ©2002 the home and do Estate of Russ Manning. Magnus ©2002 a couple of Western Publishing, Inc. pages— October 2002

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CBA Tribute

Giolitti, “Father” of Turok Alberto Becattini looks at the life of the premier Gold Key artist Inset right: Giolitti page from Have Gun, Will Travel (Four Color Comic #983, 1959), adapting the Richard “Paladin” Boone TV series. ©2002 CBS, Inc.

by Alberto Becattini Although Alberto Giolitti’s name is not unknown to Italian comic readers, collectors and researchers, few of them will be able to tell about the series and characters he drew during his 54-year-long career. The reason is that, unlike most Italian comic artists, Giolitti worked primarily for the foreign market, and for 33 years produced hundreds of stories for Western Publishing Company, under its Dell, Gold Key and Whitman imprints.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Giolitti was born in Rome on November 14, 1923. At sixteen years old, in September 1939, he started providing illustrations and comic pages to Il Vittorioso, a weekly magazine published in the Italian capital city. “My father had an ice-cream shop,” Giolitti recalled, “and after school I’d work there. When dad saw my first efforts, he allowed me to devote myself to drawing in the evenings, instead of making ice cream. I even convinced him to let me quit commercial school to join art school.” After high school, Giolitti attended the Academy of Fine Arts and then entered the faculty of architecture at the University of Rome. It was during this period that Il Vittorioso ran his first continuing story, “The Fearless Ones” (1943). The War was still on, but as a university student, Giolitti was drafted and discharged immediately after. Although he had also worked as a scenographer and movie poster artist, Giolitti had made up his mind. Determined to be a comic artist, he decided to seek his fortune abroad. “Comics belonged in the U.S.A., so that’s where I wanted to go,” Giolitti said. “The economic element was also very important. For a while I was a substitute teacher in an art school in Rome, and among those who were attending night classes there was one of Will Eisner’s assistants on The Spirit. He told me that one page of comic art, twelve panels on three tiers, was paid $70 in the United States! So I thought that if I was going to do that job, I’d better go to the place where it was paid best.”

To Pastures New After getting a passport, the young artist boarded a ship in Genua on December 31, 1945. The following day he was leaving for New York, where he arrived on January 15, 1946. The U.S. Immigration Office, though, did not allow him to stay, as he only had a transit visa to Venezuela. Three months later, he was leaving again. Rather than going back home, he decided to move to Argentina, where he stayed for three years, working for Editorial Lainez and Columbia Hermanos. In July 38

1949, he was finally able to go back to New York and to reside there. He showed his bulging portfolio to several comic book publishers, and eventually entered the East Coast offices of what was then called Western Printing and Lithographic Company, which for over a dozen years had been designing, producing and printing comic books, magazines and paperbacks for Dell Publishing (that went on until 1962, when Western parted company with Dell and became a publisher in its own right). Under the Dell imprint, Western produced a wide variety of comics, yet whereas their Los Angeles office mainly dealt with titles adapting animated-cartoon characters (due, of course, to the vicinity of Hollywood animation studios), their New York branch concentrated on realistic titles, most of them being adaptations of movies and TV series. Western’s editors immediately liked Giolitti’s bold style, which cleverly mixed an illustrative approach à là Raymond with a masterful, dramatic use of chiaroscuro. His solid figure drawing and his detailed backgrounds were also greatly appreciated, along with his ability to tackle a whole variety of genres.

Indians and Mounties The first strip Giolitti drew for Western was a 14-pager entitled “The Exile,” which appeared in the second issue of a Native-American series entitled The Chief (later known as Indian Chief), dated AprilJune, 1951. Giolitti did not stay on this title too long, as by 1951 he was assigned to illustrate Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. Written by Gaylord DuBois, the comic starred a mustachioed Mountie who had originated on the radio in 1947, later moving onto TV with a CBS series which lasted from 1955-58 (during those years, the comic had photo covers portraying actor Richard Simmons). “I had a problem with dog-drawn sleds, which were a mainstay of the series,” Giolitti COMIC BOOK ARTIST 22

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recalled. “Initially, the only reference I had was a cover from the Italian magazine La Domenica del Corriere that my dad had sent me, a great Walter Molino illustration. Shortly after, I decided to move upstate to Lake Placid and then to Lake George, near the Canadian border, in the Adirondack Mountains. That’s where James Fenimore Cooper set Last of the Mohicans. There I found all the sleds I needed. I also met a Frenchman who raised Malamute dogs and I bought one, calling him Kimo. ‘Kimo Sabe’ was what Tonto called the Lone Ranger in the TV series—that’s where I got that name from. I trained him and made him a team leader. Yes, later on I bought a whole dog-team and rode my own sled. I’d often stay away for days, and one time Western sent the police looking for me. They were worried about me—or rather, they were worried because they weren’t getting any work.” Anyway, in 1953 Giolitti left Lake Placid for a vacation in Rome, and when he came back he seemed to have had enough of the North, as he relocated down in Florida.

The Name is Adventure Although Sergeant Preston remained Giolitti’s main occupation until its demise in late 1958, the Italian artist found the time to produce other excellent work during those years. Worthy of note were the two 30-page adaptations he did for the short-lived series, Dell Junior Treasury. These were “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp” (#1, 1955) and “Gulliver’s Travels” (#2, 1956). Both stories employed dialogue balloons along with narrative captions under each panel, and the latter (scripted by Gaylord Du Bois) was the recipient of the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Award.

During the ’50s, Giolitti also drew several issues of Tonto—the Lone Ranger’s Companion, where he showed a remarkable amount of research in depicting the tribes Tonto interacted with. From 195961, Giolitti was the resident artist on Gunsmoke, visualizing the feats of Dodge City Marshal Matt Dillon, as portrayed by James Arness in what remains TV’s longestrunning western series (1955-75). Written by Eric Freiwald, Robert Schaefer and Paul S. Newman, the Gunsmoke comic was revived as a Gold Key title in 1969-70, with Giolitti once again at the helm. Still in the ’50s, Giolitti’s atmospheric art graced several one-shots in the Four Color Comic series, such as Alexander the Great (adapting a 1956 movie starring Richard Burton), Tales from Wells Fargo (later known as Man from Wells Fargo, from a TV series starring Dale Robertson), Jungle Jim and Zorro among others. Although Giolitti never lettered any of these stories, he did all of the sound effects (inside and outside panels), “drawing” each of them with a characteristic cast shadow. Although it employed neither sound effects nor balloon dialogues (only narrative captions were used), a remarkable effort was the 96-page Abraham Lincoln Life Story, scripted by Gaylord Du Bois, which was published as a Dell Giant in 1958. The following year Giolitti had a chance to once again show his talent at depicting horses and gun-slingers when he took over the drawing on Have Gun, Will Travel, which adapted yet another successful western TV series, starring Richard Boone (1957-63).

Back in Italy Meanwhile, in 1955, Giolitti had obtained American citizenship. “I’d married an American woman and I’d been living in the U.S.A. for six years, but that was not the main reason why I needed it,” Giolitti explained. “With a U.S. citizenship, I would be able to stay in Italy as long as I wished.” In 1960, because of his father’s critical health conditions, Giolitti, his wife and his daughter (a son was born shortly after) left for Rome, where they should have stayed for nine months. Instead, they never went back to the United States. That did not affect his collaboration with Western Publishing at all, as it would continue as smoothly as ever from overseas, through the mail. Well, sort of. As Wally Green (Western Publishing editor from 1959-84) recalled, “Italy would have these postal strikes, [and Giolitti] would have to run to the Vatican and have [the pages] sent to us by Vatican mail.” By 1962, Giolitti had set up his own studio in October 2002

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Above: Ye Ed needs to review materials sent to him by CBA contributors with a keener eye as he assumed these Turok dinosaur panels featured Alberto Giolitti’s pencil work for the series, yet as Ye Ed is setting captions—literally the same day this issue is going to press—Alberto Becattini’s copy reveal these panels were, in fact, penciled by Giolitti studio artist Giovanni Ticci. Sorry about that, chief! Art ©2002 Giovanni Ticci. Turok ©2002 Acclaim Entertainment, Inc.

CBA Interview

The Splendor of Dan Spiegle From his Hopalong Cassidy strip to current work at Boys’ Life

Below: Courtesy of the artist, here’s a self-portrait of Dan Spiegle surrounded by some of the best-known characters he has rendered. Art ©2002 Dan Spiegle. Characters ©2002 their respective copyright holders.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcription by the LongBox.com Staff

ing yet! This utterly captivating an charming gentleman was interviewed via phone in July 2002, and Dan copyedited the transcript.

Dan Spiegle is simply one of those rare comic book artists who, even into their golden years, just gets better and better with age. While he appeared like a bombshell on the syndicated comic strip scene with his renowned ’50s work on Hopalong Cassidy, and was well-regarded for his consistent artistry on the long-running Space Family Robinson in the ’60s and ’70s, it was his teaming with writer Mark Evanier in the ’80s—with Blackhawk and Crossfire—where he seemed to hit his peak as an artist. But, upon seeing his recent work in, of all places, Boys’ Life magazine, Ye Ed can firmly attest that we ain’t seen noth-

Comic Book Artist: Where are you originally from, Dan? Dan Spiegle: I was born in the state of Washington in Cosmopolis. We then moved to Southern California, then Hawaii, and then to Northern California where I went through high school. We came down to Los Angeles during the War where I joined the Navy. CBA: What year were you born? Dan: 1920 CBA: What did your father do? Why did you move so much? Dan: My father owned a drug store in Cosmopolis. He developed health problems and his doctor said my father should retire, so he sold the store, we moved to San Diego and then over to Hawaii because my aunt and uncle owned a couple hotels over there and they wanted us to buy a home there. We were living in a beach house near Diamond Head when the stock market broke in 1929. CBA: Do you remember the drug store? Dan: I remember the second one. We had moved to northern California where my father bought another drug store in a small town just south of Eureka. That’s where I went to high school. In fact, I’m drawing an interior of the drug store. I want to do this for my kids so I’m drawing the interior and lettering the different things that I remember about the drug store and how we used to wait for the Sunday papers. The comic section would come into the drug store on Thursday and then the rest of the San Francisco Examiner would come in on Sunday morning with the news. My dad would put the whole paper together. I remember that I could hardly wait for Thursday. [laughter] There was Flash Gordon and other comics that I enjoyed. CBA: Was your father a pharmacist by trade? Dan: Yes. CBA: By the time you were 15, comics were coming in pretty strong. Did you have any interest in comic books? Dan: Not comic books, but comic strips. I didn’t even know about comic books really. They didn’t have many at that time. My father had quite a magazine section and I used to read them all. I would read G-8 and His Battle Aces, Doc Savage, and all the World War I pulp magazines. I used to draw stuff. I had visions of doing a comic strip like Flash Gordon. Well, not exactly like Flash because while I liked the adventure strips, I hated super-heroes and stories of the future. I think there’s enough stories around us all the time to make life interesting and I just didn’t care for other types. I wanted just a good story. CBA: You were attracted to Alex Raymond’s rendering? Dan: Not so much. My favorite was Buz Sawyer by Roy Crane. I liked the simplicity of his drawing and yet the detail that he could put into it, like Alex Toth of today. I love Toth’s work because of that. Anyone who can tell a clear story is what I’m interested in and these guys were masters. CBA: Did you clue into Roy Crane’s use of benday? There was a lot of shading. Dan: That’s why I started using it on the Hopalong Cassidy daily strips. After the first year drawing the strip, when King Features bought it out from under the L.A. Times Mirror Syndicate, the new owners sent me to New York to see how King Features worked because they had a lot of questions and I also had a lot of questions. They helped me out and gave me about halfdozen of Roy Crane’s original daily strips and I so admired the COMIC BOOK ARTIST 22

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way he handled the Craftint that I started using it in Hopalong. CBA: Wash Tubbs, Captain Easy and Buz Sawyer are beautiful strips. Would you say Crane was the artist you admired the most? Dan: I would say overall because he could tell a story so clearly. It really impressed me. I also like Terry and the Pirates, that was great. I never tried to imitate their style because I felt like everybody has their own and I really didn’t want to be influenced too much by anybody else. I was having enough trouble with my own style and trying to develop something that would work for me. CBA: When did you first start drawing? Dan: From the time I could first hang onto a pencil I guess. I used to get these 5¢ drawing tablets with the rough scratch paper and I would draw a continued story. CBA: So you were creating a homemade comic book story, for all practical purposes? What was the subject matter? Dan: Whatever was popular. Mainly war stories and gangster stories, and anything with action. CBA: Did you go to the movies a lot? Dan: When they were available. CBA: Did you go to movie serials? You really came of age in the Golden Age of adventure. Dan: The Saturday matinees were great. CBA: Did you reach a point where you decided that you could draw for a living? Dan: I didn’t know if I could make a living at it, but I know I wanted to do it. Whether it was a living or not really didn’t bother me at that time. I drew a couple of Sunday pages, inked and colored them, and sent them to King Features. I said, “I’d like to do this, are you interested?” They sent back a nice letter that said, “Your story looks nice, but in the future, if you send something, don’t color it. We do the coloring.” I didn’t know how they printed that stuff. CBA: How old were you when you sent that Sunday strip? Dan: I was in high school, so about 15 or something like that. CBA: Were you known in school as the artist? Dan: Yes. In fact, when I graduated in 1939, under my picture in the yearbook, they put down, “Our Walt Disney.” [laughter] Not knowing years later that I actually would do work for Disney! CBA: Did you draw for the yearbook? Did the school have a newspaper? Dan: They didn’t have a newspaper and they didn’t do any artwork for the yearbook. It was strictly photographs as I recall. CBA: So you would draw in class? Dan: I was always drawing and then there was art class where I learned to watercolor. I enjoyed that. Art class was always the class that I hoped would bring up my grade average. [laughter] CBA: What did your parents think? Dan: My dad always wanted me to be a druggist. He was not really happy, but never discouraged it. My parents were both very supportive of whatever I wanted to do. He was very quiet, gentle, proper man who also dressed with a tie when he went to work in the morning. He thought that was the practical way to make a living. He thought cartooning was a pretty shaky business. CBA: How many brothers and sisters did you have? Dan: I had one brother and one sister. My brother was six years younger and my sister was two years older than me. CBA: Do they have any artistic inclinations? Dan: No, neither one was a bit interested. CBA: Was there anyone else in your family at all? Dan: No, but my father had beautiful handwriting. He was October 2002

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an instructor in college in penmanship and I remember him writing in a very fancy style with a lot of flourishes. That was the closest it came to any artistic ability. My mother was not a bit interested in that. CBA: Was there an advantage because your father owned the drug store with the pulp magazines? Did you always get the stuff for free? Dan: What I would do is pick up a couple of the magazines and was always careful to take good care of them. I would take them home, read them all, and then put them all back. [laughter] CBA: So you weren’t a collector, you were a reader. Dan: Also, at that time, if you didn’t sell the magazines, you could tear off the covers and mail it back to the company for a refund. I would take the old, coverless ones that I hadn’t read and then read those because otherwise my father would just throw them away. CBA: Did you have other friends who were of like mind who appreciated the adventure material? Dan: Not with the same interest in drawing, but I did have one good friend in our little town, Lolita. This friend of mine was really good at model airplane building and he ground them out like McDonald-Douglas and had them hanging in his bedroom by string. I used to go to his house and we would play with his airplanes. We would put firecrackers in them and blow them up. [laughter] CBA: Of course, the 1920s was also the Golden Age of Aviation. Dan: I remember when Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. That was 1927 and I was in San Diego where Ryan Field is located where they built the Spirit of St. Louis. I remember my father taking me down to the field. I don’t know why except they were having some performance because there were a lot of aircraft around. That’s all I remember about that because I was only seven years old.

Above: Portrait of a young man as syndicated comic strip artist. Dan Spiegle in his mid-twenties at the beginning of his professional career as artist on Hopalong Cassidy. Check out the schedule on the chalkboard at upper right. Courtesy of Dan Spiegle.

Below: Dan Spiegle drew up some Western strips upon graduating art school, a sample of which appears below. Dan tells us it was after viewing the classic movie Red River when he became determined to draw a syndicated cowboy strip. Courtesy of & ©2002 Dan Spiegle.

CBA Interview

Wranglin’ Mike Royer Tells All! The master inker on his days with Russ Manning and Gold Key Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice

Ye Ed has been an admirer of Mike Royer’s superb inking abilities since first encountering the artist’s work over the pencils of Jack Kirby back in the early 1970s on DC’s legendary Fourth World titles (and I still firmly believe Mike is the finest and most faithful inker the King ever had). Even more of a hoot was to meet the man in person as, at a recent San Diego Comic-Con, Mike turned out to be eminently friendly, talkative, and funny as hell. (Someday we hope to talk to M.R. about his work with Kirby, but for now the talk is on Western Publishing.) The artist was interviewed via phone on July 22, 2002, and he copyedited the transcript.

Comic Book Artist: So where are you originally from, Mike? Mike Royer: I was born and raised in a little town in Oregon named Lebanon. In high school, we joked about the Marines landing… the late ’50s and the other Lebanon. CBA: What year were you born? Mike: Oh, God, you want to know that? CBA: Well, roughly. [laughs] Mike: Aww, man! 1941… June. CBA: Were you into comic strips and comic books early on? Mike: At about eight or nine, I started clipping Vince Hamlin’s Alley Oop strip out of the newspaper. Like a lot of kids who collected comic strips, it didn’t make much sense to just put them in a pile, so I made a cardboard viewing device with hand cranks, and I’d sit down and run the strips, Scotch-taped end-to-end, through it. I learned this from the back pages of one of my comic books. Every comic had to have one text page in it, plus at least a four-page back-up feature, which was required to get second class mailing privileges. I remember in one of the Harvey comics a text page with the headline, “Take your favorite comic strips and make movies out of them.” It described how to construct the viewing box. CBA: Obviously, you love film. Does that go back to your childhood? Mike: Oh, yes. I was a Saturday matinee kid. In small town America in the ’40s and ’50s, every theater had double features, and the program usually changed three times a week. In our small town, the longest run would be Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then there was the Monday/Tuesday bill, and Wednesday/Thursday was always cowboy movies. I went with my Dad to see Joel McCrea in Four Faces West. I was hooked on movies from that point on… my earliest movie-going memory… my dad… and cowboys. CBA: Did you have any exposure to movie serials? Mike: Serials were winding down as far as popularity and quality in the late ’40s, and I have a conscious memory of seeing only a few in the theatres—which doesn’t mean I didn’t see more—but one that stuck with me as a kid was King of the Rocketmen, which would have played our area when I was nine or ten. I also fondly remember Columbia’s Superman at that age. There were two theaters in our town, and I went to the fancy new theater to see an episode of the Batman and Robin serial, and walked out on it. So I guess I had some kind of critical ability in those days. CBA: Well, it did suck. [laughs] Were you drawing at a young age? Mike: Well, my mother was a musician and an artist. Actually, I came from a family of musicians, but she also did a lot of drawing, painting and pastel work. From my earliest memory, she encouraged me to draw, so I drew a lot of things. I don’t know if I ever learned anything, but I was drawing all the time. I think it helped me get through high school, because for some reason I was not interested in anything in school except girls. My grades were so-so, but then I would do some sort of an art project for the teacher to help get my grade point up. I’m exaggerating… I was not a bad student, but I was always drawing. CBA: Did you draw comic strips or stories? Mike: In grade school, I absolutely fell in love with Frank Frazetta’s Thund’a, King of the Congo #1, and, of course, I was so disappointed that the series was continued by Bob Powell (who I think was a brilliant comic book artist. He knew how to lay blacks in. Everything of Bob Powell’s… look at it, and it just looks wet, such great brushstrokes!) because I wanted the Frazetta version. I still have old books from my childhood that on the fly pages have my own homemade COMIC BOOK ARTIST 22

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versions of Thund’a. Also, I don’t know how I came up with the name, it’s not that it’s a hard one to come up with, having probably appeared in half-a-dozen theatrical cartoons, but as a grade schooler I did my own little science-fiction/space opera that I called—get this—“Space Ace.” Boy, isn’t that an original name? [laughter] CBA: What a clever boy. [laughs] Mike: [sarcastically] Ohhh, yeah. Years later on television, I saw a Little Audrey cartoon, and she was reading a comic book called Space Ace. Maybe as an eight- or nine-year-old, I saw that cartoon and it just stuck with me. When you’re young and you want to draw comics, stealing ideas is not a foreign concept. CBA: I used to swipe my villain characters from Scooby-Doo. [laughter] Mike: When you’re young, you steal. I think sometimes when you’re old, you steal, too, under the legitimacy umbrella that it belongs to the company, so you use it. I’m sure over the years that Alex Toth’s models became springboards for innumerable characters in subsequent shows after he left his tenure at Hanna-Barbera. CBA: Oh, absolutely. He’s just the quintessential animation designer. I was looking at Birdman on Adult Swim and just contemplating that design, thinking, “That’s a neat design.” Mike: I inked a “Birdman” story for Gold Key and Sparky Moore penciled it. Sparky assumed that whoever inked it would be familiar with the character, but I was not supplied with any model sheets and he didn’t pencil any blacks or indicate where they were. So, of course, I didn’t ink any, I didn’t know who the character was. [laughs] Of course, as I recall, the editors didn’t do anything to fix it, so it was rather vapid when printed. CBA: Well, maybe sometimes it was a good thing Gold Key didn’t have credits. [laughs] So did you reach a decision at a certain age that you were going to go to art school? Mike: Well, I can find all kind of excuses for not having the right kind of ambition. I think my mother wanted to be a famous artist, and if she couldn’t be it, I would be it. So everything I did was “wonderful.” Now, when you constantly hear that everything you do is wonderful, it doesn’t put you in the mind set to be receptive to learning. I didn’t realize how little I knew until I decided to pursue a career. Then I realized, “I have to learn something first.” CBA: Did you go to art school? Mike: I went to art school for a short time in Seattle. It was The Burnley School of Professional Art, which was headed by Jess Cauthorn, a well-known Pacific Northwest illustrator. The school doesn’t exist anymore; it was absorbed probably 25 years ago by some chain of art schools. Coming from a middle-class family who did not have the funds to send me to school, I had to earn it on my own. I got a small student loan, and moved to Seattle, and I worked first at night as a doorman at the Coliseum Theater in downtown Seattle, and then got a job at the Ben Paris restaurant. Both a couple of nice jobs because I got to see all kinds of movies for nothing, and also got to eat two meals a day that I didn’t have to pay for. The rest of the time I was in school, trying to do the homework, and after six or eight months either I wasn’t dedicated enough or it was just an impossible load to handle. So I returned home and got an ordinary job. CBA: So when did you start pursuing your career? Mike: In late 1963 or early ’64, I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs fandom through one of the ads in Forry Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. CBA: These were the fanzines, ERBdom and Amra? Mike: Yeah, Camille Cazedessus, Jr.’s ERBdom. Through that fanzine I became interested in all the Burroughs stuff being printed by Ace Books. I had inherited my parents’ worn hardcover Burroughs Tarzan books and loved them. Then suddenly here was all of this other Burroughs material being published I’d never been exposed to. October 2002

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I embraced fandom. Although I thought they were great at the time, I look at them now and cringe, was a couple of pages adapting The Mad King which were printed in ERBdom. Through that fanzine, I found Russ Manning, whose work I greatly admired for years. I had finally learned his name because Magnus, Robot Fighter became popular enough that Western Publishing’s editors actually asked him to sign the work because they were getting so much mail asking, “Who’s drawing this book?” I wanted to meet and ask him if I could be his assistant. Don’t ask me where I got that idea… that he would at all be interested in some kid outta nowhere, but I decided that since Russ was a Burroughs fan that, of course, he would attend the Dum-Dum at the World Science Fiction Convention in Oakland, California, in the Fall of 1964. Another fan, Dale Broodhurst from Idaho, and I produced—with the blessing of Hulbert Burroughs—a black-&white amateur comic book adaptation of The Wizard of Venus. I did the art (if one can be kind enough to call it that) and we printed a few hundred copies, and went to Oakland. I felt this comic would be my “introduction” to Russ Manning. Well, Russ didn’t attend the con, but Caz gave me Manning’s address, some encouragement, so I drew up some more samples and I sent Russ the pages. Several months later, he wrote back and said, “Well, if I ever needed an assistant, I think you’d be able to handle it.” So that was all the impetus I needed to quit my job, pack up my family, and move to southern California. I had been working as a silkscreen delineator at a sign shop in Corvallis, Oregon, and told them I wanted to take a one-month vacation, borrowed five hundred bucks from a finance company (which in ’65 was a hell of a lot of money for a 23-year-old kid to borrow), took my wife and three toddlers... Another thing that people do when they live in small farm communities is get married early…. CBA: [laughs] I guess so! Mike: I packed up and, in essence, moved into Russ Manning’s backyard, probably to his chagrin. But, bless his heart, he gave me work. The first thing I did for him was the “Aliens” back-up feature in Magnus #12. He handed me the pages and half of the aliens were inked and half tightly penciled, and my job was to complete the unfinished pencils and finish the inks so that when it was completed, you wouldn’t know what I did. To me, that’s what real assisting is.

Inset left : Courtesy of James Van Hise (whose Rocket’s Blast Comicollector ’zine is looking mighty good these days!), here’s a panel detail of Magnus, Robot Fighter from the hero’s very first issue. ©2002 Western Pub., Inc.

Below : One tough hombre living the life out in the desert of the American Southwest. Get along, li’l Royer! Courtesy of Mike Royer.

CBA Interview

Paul’s Gold Key Memories

Conducted by Joe Caporale On April 26, 2002, Paul Norris turned 88 years young. He proudly has been called a protége of Milton Caniff, creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon and fellow Ohioan. Paul worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for the Dayton Daily News in the late 1930s. He moved to New York City in 1940, where he got a job with Prize Publications, producing such comic book series as “Yank and Doodle” and “Power Nelson, Futureman.” He joined National Periodical Publications (now DC Comics) later in ’40, where he co-created Aquaman with Mort Weisinger in 1941 and drew two episodes of “The Sandman” in Adventure Comics before Jack Kirby and Joe Simon took that strip over. Paul only drew the first ten stories of “Aquaman” in More Fun Comics before it was discovered that there was a clause in his contract to draw the newspaper strip, Vic Jordan, for the New York daily PM that prohibited him from doing comic books! He joined the service in ’43 and upon his return to civilian life in ’46, went on a work rampage that would continue until his self-imposed retirement in 1987. Paul worked on the following newspaper strips: Vic Jordan (194243), Secret X-9 (three months in 1943), Jungle Jim (1948-54), Flash Gordon (briefly in ’53), Secret Agent X-9 (1950-60), and Brick Bradford (1952-87) as well as the feature, Six Days a Week Mystery Stories (1947-50). Please note that he was producing the dailies and Sundays over a two-year period in 1952-54 for Jungle Jim and Brick Bradford as well as working on Secret X-9 while drawing comic books for Dell Comics from 1946 onward! Among the known comic books he drew for Dell were Jungle Jim and Flash Gordon. For Gold Key, from 1968-76, he produced Magnus, Robot Fighter, The Jungle Twins, Tarzan, Woodsy Owl, Huck Finn, Hi-Adventure Heroes, and Fantastic Voyage. Paul was married to his wife, Ann, for 61 years, who was his helper, partner, and best friend until her death. They produced two sons, one of whom, Reed, followed the artistic leanings of his parents and was an artist

for the toy company, Mattel, for many years. With such an amazing résumé, Paul was not concerned that he never signed his Dell and Gold Key work. He felt the work spoke for itself. He was awarded an Inkpot Award at the 1993 San Diego Comic Convention. He is a quiet, pleasant, and friendly man who did exactly what he wanted with his life and did it to the fullness of his ability. Proud of the fact that he never missed a deadline, he was very surprised to find out that he was listed on the Internet. Paul was almost embarrassed yet pleasantly surprised he had been found out. Comic Book Artist: When did you begin working for Dell/Gold Key? Paul Norris: I started working for Dell in 1946, I think. The latter part of 1946, I did Flash Gordon for Oscar LeBeck, who was editor for Dell at that time. I guess it was the 1950s when I started doing the Jungle Jim comic book for Dell. Matt Murphy was my editor then. I was also drawing the King Features [newspaper strip] Jungle Jim from 1948 until it ended in 1954. I guess my association with Gold Key started in 1968 when I moved to California and started working with Chase Craig there at Western Publishing until it all ended in 1976. CBA: Chase Craig also worked with Alex Toth, Russ Manning, and other artists on the West Coast. Was he a good editor and did you enjoy working for him? Paul: Oh, yes. To begin with, he was a cartoonist himself. Not too many editors were cartoonists. He knew the business. He knew it well. I enjoyed working with him. As a matter of fact, when Gold Key lost the contract with the Burroughs people on Tarzan (to DC Comics) that’s when Gold Key decided to do The Jungle Twins. That was a creation of Chase Craig and myself and we worked it out and then we got together with the man who had been writing the Tarzan stories. We got him to write The Jungle Twins. I don’t recall his name. He lived in Florida and was a fundamentalist minister, I understand. He wrote good, clean scripts that were easy to follow. There were some writers who would write a script and describe a scene from half COMIC BOOK ARTIST 22

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a dozen different angles. That would be confusing. This man in Florida was straight-on in his storytelling. Mark Evanier is straight-on with his storytelling, too. By that, you know where you’re going with the script. That makes it easier when you’re dealing with a script. [Interviewer’s note: Mark Evanier and Paul Norris worked together on a mini-series for Marvel Comics based on Hanna-Barbera’s Dynomutt cartoon character. Both men enjoyed the experience of working together. With Paul’s retirement from comics in 1987, it is doubtful they will ever work together again.—Joe C.] CBA: All of your work at Gold Key was done from full scripts rather the Marvel plot-first method. Is that correct? Paul: Yeah. The full scripts were handed right to me. I’d take them, lay out the pages, and send them in for lettering and they’d send them back to me (for inking). CBA: What sort of freedom did you have as far as script changes, changing the dialogue or scenes? Paul: That was not of my interest. They had the script all edited before they sent it to me. CBA: Were there any books that you would have liked to continue doing? Paul: Oh, yes, I would have liked to have continued The Jungle Twins. That was a personal favorite of mine. I think I was at my full stride when I was doing that book. CBA: The blacks on these books were pretty well balanced. The panels are open. The composition was superb, both panel and page-wise. It’s drawn like a movie. First the camera is over here, then it’s over there. Each panel has a different perspective. You’re not supposed to notice it but that’s good storytelling. Who did the lettering? Was that Bill Spicer? Paul: It could have been Bill Spicer at the office. That was a long time ago and Bill was around. I’m surprised when I look at it myself, sometimes. I don’t remember doing some of it. It’s the same when I look back at some of the proof sheets for Brick Bradford. I’m amazed at the story lines. Even the stories I did for Secret Agent X-9. “Did I really do that?” CBA: The stories have a free flow conscienceness. Once you get into the curve. Paul: That’s right. Once you get a story started, it sort of moves on its own, it takes on its own identity. It’s amazing what happens. CBA: Did you color your own Sunday pages? Paul: King Features had about five or six artists [whose only job was to] color the Sunday pages, with the exception of Hal Foster and Milton Caniff. I don’t remember when they cut back on the art department colorists, but they did, and it fell to the strip artists to do their own coloring. For the last ten years of Brick Bradford, I did my own coloring on the Sunday pages. CBA: Did you submit a reduced photostat and hand-color it or did you do it by the numbers or overlays? Paul: I did overlays and, then again, we had numbers (for the colors). We had a whole chart, we had to choose numbers for colors. CBA: If you wanted a certain green, it might be number 34 on the chart. Paul: That’s the way the chart worked. I think the chart might have been from American Color. CBA: At the same time from 1968 on, you were still producing Brick Bradford dailies and Sundays for King Features, what was your work schedule like? Did you, let’s say, devote part of your day to Brick Bradford and another part to your comic book work? Paul: I would do Brick Bradford first. When I started on a comic book, I worked on the comic book. I would pencil out the comic book, send it in for lettering and any editing that might take place. They might have edited the script, but I wasn’t aware of that. It only took me about three days to do the dailies and Sundays for Brick Bradford. It got to a place before I retired Brick Bradford (in 1987), the Sunday pages were so small, I couldn’t believe it! It kept getting smaller and smaller! It was hard to have a large vista [background] in a panel, it would have to go through all three panels of the strip to do it. I didn’t like to have less than two panels and usually I’d try to get three panels in a daily. The panels in the Sunday were pretty much specified and, not only that, there is a big panel, splash panel, in the Sunday that would be dropped off in a lot of newspapers and they would print what came after. It robbed a lot from the value of the feature having to draw so small. CBA: When assuming an on-going project, you had a rare ability to emulate the work of the previous artist that hasn’t been given the credit it deserves. For example, early on when you took over Magnus, Robot Fighter from Russ Manning, it was difficult to tell the difference between Russ Manning and your work. Was it that your styles were so similar or was it a deliberate attempt on your part to maintain the look of the book? Paul: Yeah, at least for a few issues I carried it through for a while. I did my first issue both penciling and inking. Those that came after that, Mike Royer inked them and I think he had worked with Russ Manning. CBA: Yes, Mike worked with Russ for many years. He would later become Jack Kirby’s principal inker for all the Kirby DC Comics, eventually working for the Disney people. Paul: That would make it easier, too, to carry on a similar style. Mike would ink it in the same style he had inked before when he worked with Russ. CBA: Did you work with several different inkers or did you do most of the inking yourself? Paul: I never had an inker with almost of all of my work on comic books. CBA: With exception of Mike Royer? Paul: Yeah, that’s all. I always did my own work. As a matter of fact, I was an inker on Mel Graff’s run of Secret Agent X-9. He had a terrible time keeping up with a syndicated strip. I October 2002

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Above and below: The Jungle Twins created by Chase Craig and Paul Norris only ran 13 issues from 1972 to 1975. Respectively, here are pages 1 and 27 from The Jungle Twins #13. ©2002 Western Publishing, Inc.