Comic Book Artist #4 by TwoMorrows Publishing

EMPIRE OF HORROR: THE WARREN PUBLISHING STORY

No.4 Spring 1999

$5.95

In The U.S.

JAMES WARREN ARCHIE GOODWIN ANGELO TORRES AL WILLIAMSON ALEX TOTH WILL EISNER RUSS HEATH BERNIE WRIGHTSON RICHARD CORBEN

WILLIAM DUBAY LOUISE JONES SIMONSON ANNE T. MURPHY BRUCE JONES FLO STEINBERG THE SPANISH SCHOOL

Hi there, fellow fiends and Horror aficionadoS! You all know me but you kiddies just might not know the GORY and mal evol ent history of one of horroRdom’s great COMICS publishers, Warren Publications! So come on in and join us for a frightfully fun TOUR behind the scenes at Jim Warren’s Company, from the start of Famous Monsters IN 1958 to the end of 1994 in--er--1982. (don’t worry, we’ll give you all the bloody details inside!)

And if my provocative presence doesn’t entice you TO buY this special warren tribu te issue of COMIC BOOK ARTIST, how about unpublished art by Richard Corben, Russ heath, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, KURTZMAN, ROY KRENKEL AND OTHERS? NEED MORE? HOWZABOUT AN EXTENSIVE INTERVIEW WITH JIM WARREN? OR ARCHIE GOODWIN’S OWN ACCOUNT? HOPE THAT’S ENOUGH, EFFENDI, COZ YOU DON’T WANT TO ANNOY MY DARLING FIFI HERE!

conTenTs OUR COVER Courtesy of the artist, Bernie Wrightson, and avid Wrightson art collector Todd Adams, our cover features an unpublished Uncle Creepy drawing originally intended as a frontispiece for Creepy magazine. Colors by the newly computer-friendly Tom Ziuko! Uncle Creepy ©1976 Warren Publications.

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher TWOMORROWS JOHN & PAM MORROW COPYRIGHT NOTICE: Due to the ongoing legal battle between James Warren and Harris Comics over ownership of many of the characters originated by Warren Publishing (perhaps most prominently Vampirella), we have listed copyright notices as they stood, undisputed, at the time the original material was published. No infringement or support is intended to either party by our doing this.

Contributing Editors ROY THOMAS JOHN MORROW DAVID A. ROACH CAM VILLAR Proofreading RICHARD HOWELL JOHN MORROW Cover Art BERNIE WRIGHTSON Cover Colorist TOM ZIUKO

Contributors This Issue JAMES WARREN LOUISE SIMONSON • WILLIAM DUBAY BERNIE WRIGHTSON • RICHARD V. CORBEN ANNE T. MURPHY • BRUCE JONES • JACK DAVIS ALEX TOTH • AL WILLIAMSON • ANGELO TORRES WILL EISNER • DON McGREGOR • RUSS HEATH WALTER SIMONSON • JIM JANES • LARRY IVIE FLO STEINBERG • TRINA ROBBINS • AL MILGROM MICHAEL T. GILBERT (continued on pg. 2) CBA CORRECTIONS: I extend to Bob Layton my apologies for reprinting images from his fanzines in CBA #1 and #3 without his permission. It was purely a thickheaded oversight, and they should’ve been listed as ©1999 CPL/Gang Publications. I neglected to mention Kevin Stawieray (who graciously shared the penciled “War of the Worlds” page on pg. 33) in the list of contributors last time—sorry, Kev! And, though it’s probably ancient history by now, Scot McIntyre long ago noted that we were wrong to credit HannaBarbera with producing the Hot Wheels cartoon series back in CBA #1. The distinction goes to Ken Snyder Productions! Ta, Scot! Visit CBA at our NEW Website at: www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/ All letters of comment, articles and artwork, please mail to: Jon B. Cooke, Editor Comic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204 West Kingston, RI 02892-0204

ISSU E NO. 4 SPRING 1999

RANT: The Warren Experience 2 EDITOR’S The scoop on this “Empire of Horror” issue and our Summer con schedule! MEMORIES OF JOE ORLANDO 3 Cartoonist Lee Mars recalls that old rascal comic artist and editor extraordinaire! WINDSOR-SMITH: Storytelling Again A review of the artist’s new graphic novel from Fantagraphics, Adastra in Africa 4 BARRY SPRANG, COMICS MASTER A look at B. Koppany’s wonderful new book on the forgotten Batman artist 5 DICK COMMUNIQUES: Dick Giordano’s Rebuttal 7 CBA Replies to “Carmine Infantino’s Rebuttal,” and other missive missiles B-&-W WORLD OF WARREN PUBLISHING Archie Goodwin’s personal look and history of the great comic book company 8 THE DATELINE: @#!$?%! 12 HEMBECK’S Our Man Fred checks out the real “Collector’s Edition” of the Warren Days WARREN INTERVIEW 13 JAMES “Someone Has To Make It Happen,” and the emperor tells us how he did it TIMES Richard Howell waxes nostalgic about Warren’s Golden Age of b-&-w horror 44 GOODWIN TORRES INTERVIEW The great artist gives us a brief interview about his Warren work 46 ANGELO WILLIAMSON INTERVIEW Interview with EC fan favorite artist on his “Success Story” at Warren 48 AL T. MURPHY INTERVIEW 52 ANNE Archie Goodwin’s wife remembers the great writer/editor’s tenures at Warren I FORGET: TOTH’S WARREN DAYS 56 BEFORE Alex Toth uncovers the challenges of his black-&-white and tonal work SPANISH INVASION 63 THE David A. Roach’s amazing, in-depth investigation of Warren’s Barcelona Era DuBAY INTERVIEW Sharing memories of heaven and hell with Warren’s longest-running editor 78 WILLIAM WRIGHTSON INTERVIEW The master of the macabre arts recalls some of his finest work at Warren 86 BERNIE JONES SIMONSON INTERVIEW Weezie reveals the goings-on behind Warren Publishing’s Second Renaissance 92 LOUISE EISNER INTERVIEW The Father of Sequential Art reminisces about his Spirited Warren experience 100 WILL STEINBERG INTERVIEW 103 FLO A talk of errant monkeys and rubber bats with the “Captain” of the Company! JONES INTERVIEW One of Warren’s greatest writers discusses his work, Weezie, and Wrightson 104 BRUCE HEATH INTERVIEW 110 RUSS The master storyteller shares a little “Give & Take” on his Warren days

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published quarterly 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. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $5.95 ($6.40 Canada, $8.40 elsewhere). Yearly subscriptions: $20 US, $27 Canada, $37 elsewhere. First Printing. All characters are © their respective companies. All material is © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © their respective authors. ©1999 TwoMorrows/Jon B. Cooke. PRINTED IN CANADA.

The Empire of Horror

The Black-&-White World of Warren’s finest writer/editor, Archie Goodwin, gives us the history by Archie Goodwin [The following intimate overview of Jim Warren’s b&w magazines was written by that line’s greatest editor and writer, the late Archie Goodwin, who helmed Creepy, Eerie and Blazing Combat during their spectacular mid-’60s heydays. It was originally written for a foreign publisher’s history of comics in 1981 and first published in the U.S. in the horror anthology magazine Gore Shriek #5 in 1988, titled “The Warren Empire: A Personal View.” We thank Anne T. Murphy, Archie’s wife, for her permission to reprint this fine essay written by a wonderful writer, editor, and lover of comics who will always be sorely missed. Please note there are some dated references.—JBC]

Practically 20 years ago, Publisher James Warren held a dinner at the Cattleman restaurant in New York City. His guests were Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, Reed Crandall, Roy Krenkel, Angelo Torres, Gray Morrow, Joe Orlando, George Evans, Russ Jones, and Archie Goodwin. They were all sharing drinks and steaks to celebrate the launching of a new magazine. Its name was Creepy. Unlike any other magazine which Warren had published at that time, Creepy was entirely comics. Unlike any other comics published at that time, Creepy was in black-&-white and a magazine-size format. It was also done without the Comics Code Authority seal. The time was 1964 and the American comics scene was beginning to come excitingly to life again after a ten-year doldrum brought on by the McCarthy-era hysteria which marked comic books as a major cause of juvenile delinquency. Within a year Warren’s comic line had expanded to three titles: Creepy, Eerie, and Blazing Combat, with a fourth, Vampirella, to be added several years later. Warren was the first new publisher to seriously enter the field since the ’50s and the only one among a number who would follow to succeed. The Warren comics never seriously challenged larger companies such as Marvel and DC in sales, but they very successfully created their own special niche in the market and in comics history, providing an alternative to the mainstream emphasis on super-heroes and a showcase for promising new talent as well as some of the greatest names in both the U.S. and Europe. I was one of those at James Warren’s dinner, steak in mouth and drink in hand. I had written about half the stories in that first issue of Creepy and, by dint of knowing most of the artists involved in the venture, was sort of unofficial chief writer on the project. By the second issue I was declared story editor and by the fourth, I was the magazine’s full-fledged editor. For me, it was an extremely heady experience. I had been a comics fan since my early teens,

particularly of the EC line published in the ’50s. The Warren comics were initially an attempt to reincarnate that line and most of the artists who contributed to the early issues—as a reading of the dinner list shows—were strongly associated with the EC era and well-known and well-regarded by fans and professionals because of that association. As a fan, I had set my sights on becoming a comic book artist, but I believe I always harbored strong leanings toward becoming a writer and editor as well, even without any true knowledge or suspicion of what the latter even involved. I wouldn’t just draw, I would envision features which would fit into a whole comic book which in turn would be intended as part of an entire comics line. When my ability to produce in volume enough to fulfill these grand ambitions sagged well below the one-comic level, I began constructing imaginary comics and comics lines, drawing up lists of working artists I admired and assigning them to the various titles and features I intended my “company” (AG Publications, I believe it was) to produce. When EC actually used several of my choices, the entire process seemed justified—and though these lists never actually made the trek with me when I left my home in Oklahoma to seek fame and fortune in New York, the memory of doing them certainly influenced many of my choices of artists when I finally became an editor for Warren. I suppose a case can be made that teenagers often unrealistically nurture a fantasy, but you couldn’t prove it to me. Most of mine came true—and with the very first full-time job I held in comics. Had Warren attempted the plunge into comics a year or so later, it’s doubtful the remarkable group of artists who launched Creepy would have still been available. The long dry spell of scrambling for assignments that since the late ’50s worked their toll on comics was rapidly breaking up and a large variety of higherpaying work was materializing more and more rapidly to tempt them all—but it hadn’t quite happened yet when Warren began Creepy. Busy though they might have been, they still had the time—and, more importantly, the enthusiasm. Unlike other parts of the world, black-&-white comic books were something of a rarity in the United States. In an attempt to escape the comic book censorship imposed upon them, EC tried converting to a magazine format and eliminating dialogue balloons in favor of typeset text in what they would call their Picto-Fiction line. Distribution problems killed the concept, but the experiment did prove that their staff of artists could work well and with more variety than in the four-color comics. Other attempts were made by other publishers, but with the exception of Mad and several imitators, the black-&-white magazine format found no welcome in the marketplace. Again, if time favored Warren in being able to gather the right group of artists, it also favored him in terms of an available audience. Warren had already perceived it and was reaching it most successfully with his pioneer publication, Famous Monsters of Filmland. The early ’60s saw the release to television of the classic horror and monster movies of the ’30s and ’40s, usually in the form of a regular scheduled “Shock Theatre,” complete with ghoulish host to introduce the films and make bad puns and jokes about them. These won a whole new audience for the old movies and their classic Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman characters. Great Britain’s Hammer Films followed this success in movie theaters with their own new series of horror films and widened the popularity of the genre even more. In his efforts to broaden the range of products he was creating for the market, Warren began experimenting with visual adaptations of some of the most popular movies (and COMIC BOOK ARTIST

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Warren Publications behind the world’s greatest b-&-w horror magazines some of the deservedly obscure as well). Some of these were done in fumetti format, using comic book captions and balloons with photos from the films serving as art; others were done as actually comics inserts into his regular monster magazines. Russ Jones was packaging most of this material for Warren and he had managed to get both Wallace Wood and Joe Orlando to work with him; particularly impressive were two adaptations from Universal’s “Mummy” series done as comics inserts in Warren’s Monster World. Having done these, utilizing two of the most popular of the EC artists, it was not a great leap to the notion of producing the full magazine in the EC tradition. Larry Ivie, a publisher, writer, and comics historian, had already approached Warren with the notion of doing such a project, but before Warren had experimented with comics-related format and fan reaction to them. It hadn’t been something he was ready to act on at that time—but, a year later, when Russ Jones resuggested the idea, Warren was receptive. Jones then enlisted Ivie to work on the new project. Ivie contributed three scripts to the first issue of Creepy and would continue to make contributions from time to time as the magazine grew, but it was also through him that Al Williamson first met Jones and became interested in Creepy. Al then brought in many of his friends from the EC era such as Frazetta, Krenkel, Crandall, and Evans. He also brought Angelo Torres and Gray Morrow, who had come into the comics field just a bit too late to become popular EC staffers, but who certainly possessed the potential, had the line continued. Williamson also volunteered me as an additional script writer for Creepy. Al had met Larry Ivie and me when we were both in art school in New York and both rabid fans of both EC and Williamson’s artwork. He was responsible for starting the two of us comics writers by having us do scripts for him. Al continued to encourage us and was always ready to volunteer us for any likely project that came up. He was the same way with his other friends and fellow artists. This was particularly true at the beginning of the Creepy project and aided substantially in getting it started toward success. By the time the second issue of Creepy was out, Warren was already planning two more titles. The first was a companion magazine to Creepy, which—after much debate among Warren, Jones, and myself over such title possibilities as Ghastly, Spooky, and Macabre—became Eerie. The second was Blazing Combat. In addition to its successful horror and science-fiction comics, EC had done two magnificent and innovative war titles, conceived, edited and written by Harvey Kurtzman (who went on to do Mad and “Little Annie Fanny” and, in between them, a more obscure humor magazine called Help!, which was published by James Warren). Since our version of EC-type horror garnered a good reaction, Warren was willing to gamble on another EC-style project—but this gamble was not a commercial success. Blazing Combat lasted only four issues. Yet it is well-remembered even to this day. Though the material I wrote for Blazing Combat was done relatively early in my career, I still get fans talking about it at every convention I attend. One of the things most remembered is that the stories took an antiwar stance before protest over the escalating Vietnam war became popular or accepted in the United States. One story, “Landscape,” drawn by Joe Orlando, apparently caused the book to be banned from Army post stores since it portrayed U.S. and South Vietnamese forces being just as destructive to the life of an uninvolved peasant as were the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. With time, this has been blown out of proportion a bit, making it seem we were far greater crusaders than was actually the case. Basically, I was trying Spring 1999

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to write the same type stories that Harvey Kurtzman had in his EC war comics and to make those stories good enough to please and inspire the artists who were doing the book. In addition to Creepy regulars Angelo Torres, Gray Morrow, Reed Crandall, George Evans, and Joe Orlando, Blazing Combat also attracted the services of John Severin, Alex Toth, Wallace Wood, Russ Heath, and Eugene Colan, all of whom had an affinity for the material and managed to contribute some of their very best work to this short-lived title. Even Frank Frazetta, who is generally thought of as strictly a fantasy artist (perhaps the best fantasy artist), contributed four very striking and dynamic covers that lent the book an especially unique look. Eerie, which would last much longer than Blazing Combat, had a far more troubled beginning. Once we finally settled on the title, we began promoting it in Creepy. Then Warren discovered that another publisher who used his same distributor was bringing out an imitation of Creepy and intending to call it Eerie. In the late ’50s, there had been a one-issue attempt at a black-&-white horror comic; its title was Eerie. With its failure, rights to the title had lapsed. Now, whoever got their version of Eerie out first would have new claim to the title. Since Warren’s rival was going to be reprinting old horror comics material from the ’50s, there seemed little chance of beating them into print as all our stories for the first issue of Warren’s Eerie were still with the artists and none of them near completion. The distributor was after Warren to give in as the other publisher had a much larger line of magazines and was therefore considered a more valuable customer. Warren had one day before he was scheduled to meet with the distributor and the rival publisher to argue his case. He had me and letterer Gaspar Saladino meet with him and, utilizing some inventory material from Creepy as well as some material already printed, the three of us cobbled together a pamphletsized little magazine emblazoned with the Eerie logo already designed for us by our regular letterer, Ben Oda. Warren had simple line repro printing done on it overnight. By the next morning, there were 200 copies of “Eerie #1” in existence. Some were shipped to other cities where Warren had arranged for them to be displayed on sale. When he went to his meeting, Warren tipped the newsstand operator outside his distributor’s building so that several copies of our freshly printed “magazine” would be displayed. Entering the meeting, Warren handed a shocked distributor and competitor copies of Eerie #1 and announced that it was on sale downstairs. Confirming this, the pair capitulated (the rival publication wound up being something called Beware, I believe, and most buyers took it literally; it didn’t last long). Eerie was on its way and an instant collector’s item had been created. The hastily-assembled, wretchedly-printed little pamphlet that launched the title would

Above: The above drawing features the notation: “Original pencil sketch for Uncle Creepy (1964) done for Warren Publishing Co.” and is signed “J. Warren, 5/22/70.” Below: Original cover sketch by Larry Ivie as he envisioned the cover of “Creepy Comix” #1. ©1999 Larry Ivie.

CBA Interview

“Someone Has To The James Warren Interview: Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Who is Jim Warren? I had no idea other than unsubstantiated stories about a legendary publisher who rocked the industry over and over again in the ’60s and ’70s, by shear force of personality and the quality of the magazines he published: Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, The Spirit, and Blazing Combat. After he had utterly disappeared from the field in 1983 (when many thought he had passed on), I was astonished to find James Warren manning a booth at a Big Apple comic show in March 1998, and I worked up the chutzpah to approach him and ask him to write a tribute for the recently-deceased Archie Goodwin. Immediately he said yes—to a total stranger, yet—and since that moment we developed a friendship. I confess I like Jim Warren. He is energy personified, ever the salesman and always “on,” but also a man with true heart. His passion for excellence attracted such incredible talent… but, let’s hear him tell the story. The following interview took place during two long sessions (on October 17, 1998, and February 11, 1999) in the home of Jim and his paramour, Gloria (who joins in on the talk at times), located in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Jim provided the final copyedit (”Jim! We’re on deadline here!!!”). Comic Book Artist: It was mentioned in a Rolling Stone article that you had a wall plaque that read: “Someone has to make it happen.” What’s the significance of that phrase? Jim Warren: It means just what it says: Someone has to create the concept; someone has to see it through; someone has to get it into the hands of the public; someone has to make sure it’s accepted. Someone has to do it. The deed becomes much more difficult when it involves working with a number of other people. If something simply has to be done—like filling up the bird-feeder—I can do it myself. If it involves two or three people, it comes a little harder because you have to coordinate efforts. If it involves 25, 50, or 100 people it gets a helluva lot harder but it still means one person has to direct those efforts—and if 25 or 50 of those people happen to be writers, artists, editors—creative people—oh boy! You must never lose control, because if you do, you’re not going to make it happen. In this business (and it’s a marriage of business and the arts, as is the motion picture industry), having to work with creative people is a blessing, a joy, fun. It’s also a serious type of brutal torture—but no matter how bad the torture, one person has to see it through. It can’t be done alone, and it requires a lot of people with different disciplines—from the magazine wholesaler to distributor to retailer to any one of the artists, writers or editors. The difference between the business people and the creative people is usually light years. One person has to see it through, and has to deal with all those people. Someone has to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day. Someone has to eventually take the high ground—and the others will follow. Things rarely happen by themselves (except with very few exceptions—the sun rises, and the moon comes out, and even God does that!). Whew! Were you expecting a simple answer to this question? CBA: [laughs] Newsweek magazine called you a “monster mer14

chandiser par excellence.” What is it that defines you? Where does your relentless drive come from? Jim: “What makes Warren run?” Is that what you’re asking? Well, what makes people like Jon B. Cooke run after me? CBA: A desire to know, to explain. Jim: We’re driven by the same forces, but for different reasons. A lot of people have asked what makes me run. It’s particularly significant with me because it comes from the book What Makes Sammy Run? Bud Shulberg was the author (along with On the Waterfront and many other fine books and films). He was a friend and neighbor of mine for many years on Long Island. I’m getting ahead of myself, but there’s a quote by Gloria Steinem in that Rolling Stone article in which she likened me to Sammy Glick, the title character in What Makes Sammy Run? When you ask, “What makes Jim Warren run? Where did you get your relentless drive?” I have to be philosophical and say, “Yes, I run—but what makes guys like you run after me for interviews?” There must be something that makes you travel 300 miles for an interview—and, whatever that is, that’s what makes you run. (Sammy Glick, by the way, was not a very nice guy; he was a Hollywood-based hustler who knew how to make things happen even if he had to work two points south of decency, and sometimes below.) You either have a drive or a dream or you don’t. Some mens’ dreams are to just be happy, live happily, and not tilt at windmills. I never wanted to be passive; I always wanted to be in the arena. I never wanted to be Vice-President of anything, even if it was General Motors or MicroSoft; I always felt I could do more in the power seat. I’m not a team player and I never was per se, except in the Army. I guess I was born to be a solo operator, and always have been, most of my life. When Newsweek said I was a “monster merchandiser par excellence,” they were referring to the fact that I could see the great appeal our subject matter had to the readers, and could marry that editorial material to items that could be sold, because they belonged in the same neighborhood. I never thought I was in the magazine business; I always thought that I was in the youth business. Our average reader back in those days was between 10 and 18, and if they liked your product and were on the same wavelength—they’re going to like the products you sell. If you love ice cream, you’re probably going to like vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and other flavors—but you might not like Jell-O or pie. Our magazine was chocolate ice cream and the things we merchandised were vanilla, strawberry and other flavors—but it was still ice cream. That’s what Newsweek was referring to. CBA: Can you tell us about your background? You’re from South Philadelphia? Jim: I see written on this list of questions you ask if I was born “Hymie Taubman from South Philadelphia.” Do you remember where you got that reference? CBA: That was from David J. Skal’s book, The Horror Show, in his footnote references which cited a book by Bill Warren called “Keep Watching the Skies,” published in 1987. Jim: The name Bill Warren is familiar. [Bill Warren was an occasional scripter for Creepy and Eerie, and no relation.] Was he the one who said I was born “Hymie Taubman of South Philadelphia”? CBA: That was the footnote. Jim: I’ll give you some truth: I was not born “Hymie Taubman of South Philadelphia.” I was particularly curious about that reference. Did you know that “Hymie” is a derogatory term for Jews? CBA: Yes. Jim: Morons and sick people who want to make an ethnic slur refer COMIC BOOK ARTIST

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Make It Happen” The Emperor of Horror speaks! to New York City as “Hymietown,” so I found this particularly interesting and I’d like to track down who stated it as fact. I would like to look this guy Bill Warren right in the eye and say, “Why did you tell that lie?” I want to see him look back at me and lower his gaze because he won’t be able to look me in the eye. CBA: I’ll photocopy the reference for you and track down Warren’s book. Jim: Don’t go to too much trouble. Someday I’m going to bump into this guy. He’s been bad-mouthing me for decades, so I’m not surprised by his anti-Semitic reference. What he wrote was a made-up, deliberate lie. The name on my birth certificate is James Warren Taubman. I legally dropped the last name when I was 21. CBA: I was suspect of the reference, and that’s why I did it in the form of a question. Jim: That’s all right. Now I know where the Big Lie came from. In one of your questions, you said I’ve been described as “feisty, pugnacious, and a dynamo of energy,” and then you ask if I attribute my drive to growing up in the city. No. I think it came from confidence. Confidence gives both energy and strength. My confidence was given to me by my family. I had a loving family. A mother and father, both loving, plus aunts and uncles—five of them—living in one house in South Philadelphia. They were foreign-born, plus a few firstgeneration Americans. My grandfather came over from Russia and landed on a dock in South Philadelphia (instead of Ellis Island, which was crowded that day, so they routed the boat to South Philadelphia where they had a separate little Ellis Island). He settled there along with an entire generation of “tired, poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” He fathered five children: My mother and her siblings. I was the first-born son which in an Italian or Jewish family is a very big deal. My mother and those aunts and uncles surrounded me with tremendous encouragement, applause, support and enthusiasm for whatever the hell it was that I did. If I made a drawing with my Crayola, all five of them would rave about it and tell me how great it was and encourage me to do more. If I broke a window, they would all rally around me and say, “Okay, we’ll fix it—it’ll be fine—but here’s how to throw the baseball so you won’t break a window again—and it doesn’t mean you should stop playing ball.” I had all this great support. It gives you great confidence. I thought that I could do anything because they made me feel that way. My uncles would literally toss me around like a ball; they would stand in a circle (I was about three years old) and they would throw me—not hand me—but throw me to one another. One uncle would catch me and throw me to the next guy—and I loved it! I always knew that when one threw me, another was going to catch me. It gave me great confidence, and that’s what I think made me feisty. I never thought there was anything I couldn’t do if I really wanted to do it. CBA: Did you have any brothers or sisters? Jim: I had a younger brother and an older brother but they didn’t survive. I lived in the spotlight. I had no siblings to compete with—but I also had the disadvantage early on of not learning, when I was young, how to get along with people. CBA: What were your interests when you were a child? Did you have an interest in fantasy material, comics and movies? Jim: Oh hell, yes. It started with comics when I was about four, Sunday comics spread out on the dining room floor with my aunts and uncles. One uncle in particular was an artist—a brilliant guy. Every generation in my family has spawned an artist—my uncle and a cousin before me, myself, and my younger cousins. Each generation produced an artist, and I was the one for my generation. My uncle, who was 15 years older than I, was the artist of his generation and he Spring 1999

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was brilliant. He would sit down on the floor and read me the comics along with a shirt cardboard (when you got your shirt back from the cleaners, there would be a sheet of cardboard in it) and, with a pencil, he’d say, “Let’s draw this one—let’s draw The Little King,” and I would draw The Little King. He would then say, “I want you to sign the name of the artist because that’s very important, Jim. Always give the artist credit.” He would make me letter “O. Soglow,” for Otto Soglow, the artist on the strip. Comics were my first big thing. I learned to read them and draw them at the same time. CBA: Were you attracted to the adventure strips? Jim: You bet! As I grew older, my taste in comics changed. Like everyone else, I had my own favorites. The first one I remember in the adventure category was Hal Foster, because of the great art. CBA: His Tarzan or Prince Valiant? Jim: Prince Valiant. My favorite in the adventure category was Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy. Then I developed a great love for Roy Crane and Milt Caniff. CBA: Just to set a time for this, you were born in 1930? Jim: Yes. A great time for comic strips. They were my number one genre. Comics were everything to me because they encompassed a story that excited me, coupled with the art, which I would copy on any drawing surface I could find. After you copy a lot, you tend to do your own original stuff. It’s like writers—you read a lot, and it’s like filling up a pitcher with water: Eventually the water’s going to overflow, and the overflow means you’re going to start to write yourself. The more you read, the more you’re going to start to write; the more you see cartoon and comic book artwork, the more you’re going to draw.

CBA Interview

Anne & Archie A talk with Archie Goodwin’s widow, Anne T. Murphy Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Anne T. Murphy was the wife of Warren’s greatest editor—and quite possibly greatest writer—the late Archie Goodwin, and she is a lifelong editor herself for Redbook magazine (where she met Archie when they both served on staff in the early ’60s). In meeting the many artists and writers Archie worked with, Anne witnessed much of the history of American comics in the last 35 years, including the early days of Warren. She has keen insight into the inner workings of our art form and is, as you’ll read, an engaging conversationalist. The following telephone interview took place on February 9, 1999 and the transcript was copyedited by Anne.

Below: Archie Goodwin’s high school chum, noted poster artist Paul Davis, drew this cartoon of the artist/writer/editor for the EC fanzine Squa Tront. It depicts Archie working on Hoohah! (another EC fanzine) during the 1950s. Art ©1999 Paul Davis.

Comic Book Artist: Do you recall Russ Jones’ involvement with the formation of Warren’s b-&-w horror magazines? Anne T. Murphy: Russ Jones’ contribution seemed—to me— that he brought all these people together and managed to convince everybody there would be work for them with this guy Warren and to generally get things underway. Somehow, he didn’t carry through very well and many people ended up feeling he couldn’t be trusted— but he did set the stage in a way, and Archie, as the main writer, was in place when whatever went wrong went wrong. So Archie ended up as editor. It’s not the only job in his career that came to him this way. CBA: It seems that Larry Ivie might have been the one to initially put the bug in Jim Warren’s ear. Anne: That’s possible; I don’t know. I knew Larry Ivie as a comics fan and former art school classmate of Archie and Paul Davis. Larry also trained in Visual Arts and was involved in a lot of interesting things then—but I recall Archie dealing mostly with Russ when he started writing for Warren. I forget who drew Archie into working for Warren—maybe Al Williamson. Archie and I were dating at the time and he was also still working at Redbook. He did the writing in his spare time on nights I was at NYU getting my Masters and actually was able—even with his full-time job at Redbook and going out with me—to churn out two Warren stories a night in those years, a pretty incredible turn-out. CBA: What were the rates? Anne: I don’t remember— everybody recalls them as terrible rates. I don’t think they were working for the rates, because there hadn’t been much real comic book work available and they were all interested in doing this work. CBA: Did Archie always aspire to comics work? Anne: Oh, yeah. He talked about the fact that he never had wanted to do anything else—and he had to battle his father to do it, just like a lot of people in comics. As far as his

father was concerned, you couldn’t make a living doing it. He had also had to battle his father to go to art school and was made to put in several months at the University of Oklahoma first. He came home at Thanksgiving and simply told his father he was never going back, he was going to New York. His mother was supportive but his father never stopped arguing the issue. Archie had also taken care to make sure he wasn’t really passing his classes. [laughs] He was determined to do what he wanted and his father was determined that he wasn’t going to—but truthfully Archie was right, because what would he do in Oklahoma? His father had no real idea what he should do; his father just knew what he didn’t want Archie to do. His father was a truck driver and then a gas station owner and finally had a tire retreading place. Archie worked in the gas station for a half-year when they couldn’t pay to send him back to School of Visual Arts. I think his father wanted him to stay in Oklahoma and be like a normal person, only he wasn’t sure what he meant by “normal.” CBA: Was Archie a “born artist”? Anne: He was just one of those kids—and you’ll find a lot of them in comics—they weren’t jocks, who had their noses in books and lived in these private worlds and found a little circle of friends who fit their interests—they definitely weren’t friendless but neither were they all-American boys who grow up to be businessmen or lawyers like Dad. This is very common in comics, I think. Archie was born in Missouri and his family lived all around the Missouri/Kansas area his parents came from. Both his parents came off farms on the MissouriKansas border. They lived for a while in Coffeyville, Kansas, famous for the Dalton gang’s last shoot-out when they tried, and failed, to rob two banks at once. When Archie was in junior high, his father picked the family up and moved down to Tulsa, getting involved in a partnership in a trucking company. Tulsa was Archie’s first experience with truly segregated schools and movie theaters, and he mentioned how strange it seemed even though Kansas and Missouri didn’t exactly boast mixed neighborhoods. Archie didn’t make many friends in junior high because it was too short a time to really connect with anyone—but when he got to Will Rogers High School, he made a circle of friends who were all in art class together; Paul Davis the illustrator and poster artist was one of them and so was Russell Myers, who does the comic strip Broom Hilda. After graduation they all wanted to go to New York except for Russell who went to Kansas City to work for Hallmark Cards, and they all thought he was nuts. Then, years later, he pops up with a successful comic strip! They all shared a very good art teacher called Hortense Batehoiz. CBA: Did she help direct him to seek an artistic career? Anne: They always spoke well of her, so I would imagine so. Paul and Russell also went on to art careers; I always got the impression she was a teacher who brought out the best in the kids, and they did all go on to good art schools and to work in fields that interested them. I know, when our children went to specialized art schools in New York City—our son, Sean, to Music and Art and our daughter, Jennifer, to Art and Design—Archie did say he would have loved to have had somewhere like that to go to. CBA: So Archie came to New York and went to school and his first professional job was at Redbook? Anne: He may have had something before but Redbook was the first long-standing job. That, of course, was interrupted when he was drafted into the Army. He was in the Army from 1960 to 1962, or thereabouts, during the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisises. I met him after he came back to Redbook; I was in editing—in the fiction department and later in copyediting and production—and he was in the art department. So that’s where we met, although I was COMIC BOOK ARTIST

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very iffy about getting involved with someone at work. Archie had an interesting encounter in the late ‘50s while he was at Redbook: He got to turn down Andy Warhol, [laughs] which we often joked about—but he was quite right, because Andy’s work wasn’t right for the magazine and Archie had specifically been sent out because he was the junior art-department employee and no one else wanted to see Andy Warhol—they said, “He’s got lots of pretty good shoe drawings and other strange stuff on foil!” So Archie went out to look at the portfolio as a courtesy and to tell Andy they couldn’t use him because they had no shoe pieces coming up. Archie, fresh out of art school, had been exposed to “You don’t trace! “ in his classes so he actually gave Andy a little lecture on doing his own drawings instead of just tracing on silver foil, which he viewed as swipe. [laughter] We laughed about that for years. Like all Archie’s stories, it’s more a joke on him than one aimed at Andy. l shared this story with Jenette Kahn who used to be a friend of Andy’s. CBA: Way back when? Anne: Way back when Andy was still alive. [laughter] CBA: Did Archie talk about comics back then? Anne: Oh, sure. When I met him, I had no idea that people did comics. I never thought about how they came about, so it was a real revelation. Over the years, I met and got to know a lot of these makers of comics. I’m not interested in comics the way fans who avidly follow a book or character are but I am interested in the people who do comics and in certain things in comics, so I get very annoyed at the way they’re trivialized in America. Critics gave a wonderful review to something like Maus, which is wonderful, but insisted on adding, “Of course, this isn’t really anything like comics.” Which art spiegelman himself disputed in the New York Times. It is comics; in Europe there isn’t this hang-up that comics are junk and must be put down or apologized for. You have good comics and junky comics, just like you have good movies and bad movies, or great books and trashy books. It’s a legitimate form of communication; l’d take many comics over The Bridges of Madison County or Tom Clancy’s oeuvres, both best-seller list fixtures. Condemning an entire genre says more about the critic than the actual genre—it says ignorance, snobbery and probably passing judgment without even reading the material. So, I didn’t know comics but, when Archie asked which ones l read as a kid, he fell over laughing when I said Little Lulu and “American Eagle.” He, of course, was into EC and didn’t regard my choices as real comics, although in later years he admitted my taste had been vindicated. CBA: When you first met Archie, were his aspirations to get into the comics field? Anne: He talked about it. He was taking a story-writing course at the New School then and submitted the story written in class to Ellery Queen Magazine. They wrote back accepting it but barred use of that pen name—Archie Goodwin is the sidekick of Rex Stout’s fictional detective Nero Wolfe—and then were so delighted when he wrote back to say it was his real name that they used the anecdote as an introduction to the story, which ran in the July 1962 issue. [laughter] This was, I think, Archie’s first published prose work, unless you count the EC fanzine Hoohah that he worked on with Ron Parker. Archie, Paul Davis and Larry Ivie were all going to School of Visual Arts (renamed from Cartoonists and Illustrators during their student years) and living in the same dumpy rooming houses. Archie was first introduced to John Benson (editor of EC fanzine Squa Tront) by Larry Ivie at that time, although John already knew his name from reading Hoohah—and Larry also introduced Archie and Al Williamson then. So it was a little hotbed of EC fans. CBA: Did Archie seek out other EC artists to visit? Anne: If the opportunity came up—but Archie wouldn’t have just sought out or intruded on strangers; but they all moved in the same circles and artists weren’t huge stars as some of them are now, It was thin pickings as far as work and fan attention. No conventions, but they would hang around together. CBA: Was this at a fan level or was it camaraderie? Anne: I would call it camaraderie. There were no conventions or huge fan following, just other people interested in what interested you. We’d go to parties early on and Harvey Kurtzman or Wally Wood would be there and it wasn’t a big deal. To us, they were people like us, friends, not celebrities. Archie was doing some cartoons for a fishing magazine, Fishing World, which Al Williamson may have connected him with and a bit of writing for strips, including assisting Spring 1999

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Leonard Starr with On Stage. There wasn’t much comic work until this thing came up with Warren and Archie starting doing the writing. He ended up writing the bulk of the Warren stories, even before Russ left. So Archie just happened to be waiting in the wings when whatever happened happened—whether some big event caused Russ to leave or Warren was watching the whole situation and realized the artists were feeling iffy about Russ. I don’t remember the exact circumstances, if I ever heard them, but Archie was there and a discussion took place with Jim about taking over the editor’s job. We went out to an airport hotel in Queens to “take a meeting,” Hollywood-style, around the pool with Jim. CBA: How old were you when you met Archie? Anne: Me? Very early twenties. I’m just enough younger than him that I got rock ‘n’ roll, and he didn’t. [laughter] He was in the Army and remember, constant rock ‘n’ roll and Elvis in the barracks, and he just hated it all. Remember, he graduated high school in 1955, right before Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, all those people. He came of the era that listened to Patti Page, “Crying in the Chapel,” “How Much is that Doggie in the Window,” music like that. I was horrified! [laughs] But he was pretty funny, he didn’t have to like the same kind of music I did. Eventually, he came around and ended up liking the Beatles, Herman’s Hermit, the whole British invasion. So we weren’t stuck with this culture gap between us. CBA: Did Archie see himself foremost as a cartoonist? Anne: He originally planned to be a cartoonist and, because a lot of these guys, as kids, did their own little comic books—writing, drawing, creating their own characters—I think he envisioned himself as doing it all. He always said that when he went to Visual Arts he was too slow to turn comics out at a per-page rate and that his kind of stylized drawing wasn’t what fans wanted anyway—they wanted a more-realistic style. CBA: His cartooning seemed very in sync with its time, though. If you look at the animated shows of UPI and, for instance, the almost abstract cartooning of Virgil Patch, he seemed to fit right into that late ‘50s style. Did he ever approach Harvey Kurtzman to be part of his crew? Anne: I don’t know. Archie was in some ways a bit shy; I think he was already writing anyway, and he was always interested in writing as well as art. His ideal would have been to be able to do it all, control everything, self-publish (a nonexistent notion at the time) and be able to make a living from it. I think he felt he couldn’t do it with drawing alone. He felt he could write fast enough and he was very good at being able to tailor-write for particular artists. He didn’t just write a story for anyone; he wrote with particular artists in mind, keeping their strengths and weaknesses in mind. He knew what each

Above: Another high school friend, Russell Myers, went on to fame as the comic strip artist on Broom Hilda. Here’s the witch playing out Vampirella’s pose from the cover of the 1973 Comic Art Convention souvenir book. Broom Hilda ©1973 Chicago Tribune.

CBA Commentary

Alex Toth: Before I Forget The artist discusses the challenges of his black-&-white work at Warren Magazines

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Spanish Gold

The Spanish Invasion An in-depth look at Warren’s Spanish Artists by David A. Roach

Europe

Inset: Map showing the location of the Barcelona school of artists in Catalonia, Spain. There’s got to be something in the water, eh?

In early 1971 fans picking up the latest copy of Vampirella would have had no idea that they were witnessing the start of a revolution. Hidden deep in the pages of Vampirella #11, cover dated May ’71, was a story drawn by the artist Luis Roca which heralded an invasion of artists, not from America, but from Spain. In the magazine’s next issue, readers were greeted by a Sanjulian cover and a “Vampi” strip drawn by José Gonzales and, by #15, it was being drawn entirely by Spaniards. Over the next decade, Warren would come to use 45 different Spanish artists and transform his own fortunes in the process. For a while they also appeared at Marvel, Skywald and Charlton—but it was an invasion that was short-lived and left no lasting mark on American comics, no acolytes to carry on in its tradition. There is a saying that history belongs to the victors, and this is true of an American comics industry built on the success and dominance of super-heroes. On the rare occasion that historians have written about Jim Warren’s line of horror magazines, they have invariably been seen merely as an epilogue to the glory days of EC. The usual story goes something like this: Warren wanted to recreate the old EC horror books and gathered together as many of the original artists as he could find. After a few years of great comics, they all left and the company slid into the doldrums only to be saved by cheap foreign artists from Spain. They could draw pretty pictures but couldn’t tell a story and after a while Warren went under. The End. But the true story of Warren’s great Spanish experience is far more complex than that. It’s a story that has its roots not only in Spain but also in Britain. It’s a story of warring art agencies and it’s the story of a generation of artists that created something unique and then gradually disappeared. Almost all of Warren’s artists came from the city of Barcelona, the capital of the Spanish region of Catalonia, and were mostly born within a few years of each other. As the artist Marcel Miralles puts it: “The biographies of Spanish comics artists are almost always the same: Most are from working class families, and as they say in bullfighting, ‘A hungry bull is the meanest.’

Perhaps this is what leads these kids to get into comics. These artists are self-taught Catalonia, and they usually start Spain working when they are 12 or 13.” Spain in the 1950s was an isolated, repressed country, dominated by one of Europe’s last dictators: Generalissimo Francisco Franco. It had its own comics industry but it was small and woefully underfunded. There was an alternative, however: Britain. Working for British comics they could earn the relatively vast sum of a thousand pesetas a page and it gave them access to the sort of Western consumer lifestyle their fellow countrymen could only dream about—but to explain how the Spanish came to work in Britain, one first needs to

understand the history of British comics themselves. Comic books first appeared in Britain in the 1890s, a good 40 years before America; they were aimed at a young audience and dominated by two publishers, Amalgamated Press (later known as Fleetway) and D.C. Thomson. Up until the Second World War, it was an industry without a significant tradition of adventure comics, rather their strips were either humorous funny animal tales or stories of children that owed their origins more to the book illustrations of the day. In 1940, paper rationing severely curtailed the output of the big two companies, but also allowed a number of smaller, so-called “pirate publishers” to step in, offering gaudy, cheaplyproduced comics to a thrill-starved audience. In the ’30s, American comic books had begun to establish a foothold in Britain but the outbreak of war effectively brought that to a halt, allowing the pirates to step in. With a generation of artists at war, the pirates had to make do with whoever they could find and their resulting efforts were sometimes exciting but more often brash and crude. 1950 was to prove the key year in British comics. It saw the end of paper rationing which heralded an explosion of publishing including the first issues of Cowboy Comics and Schoolfriend from Fleetway, and The Eagle from Hulton Press. The Eagle’s editor was a priest, the Reverend Marcus Morris, who had been so appalled by one of the pirate comics, The Bat (published by Gerald G. Swann), that he became determined to create a more acceptable alternative. The Eagle, with its mixture of full-colour painted strips, informative features, and text stories was an instant success selling 750,000 copies a week. Its main appeal was the science-fiction strip “Dan Dare,” drawn by Frank Hampton and a small army of assistants (including inkers, painters, photographers and prop builders!), which set an almost impossibly high standard for the rest of the industry to follow—but follow they did and as more glossy tabloid-sized comics appeared, so too did artists like Ron Embleton, Don Lawrence, Frank Bellamy and John M. Burns to fill them. Eagle was in many ways the voice of the establishment, resolutely middle-class in its worldview and respectable in every way. So too were rivals like Junior Express, Boys World, Ranger, Look and Learn and T.V.21. Hulton soon expanded its line to include Swift and Robin (for young readers) and Girl (for the burgeoning female market created by the success of Schoolfriend). Fleetway’s Schoolfriend was a comics revival of an earlier story paper (Britain’s rather more genteel equivalent of the American dime novels or pulps) and it was aimed at an early-teens female audience. With sales of a million copies a week, it was the biggest-selling comic in British publishing history and naturally spawned a whole industry of imitators. The typical Schoolfriend story would involve plucky young girls, boarding schools, horses, ballet, and derring-do in endless permutations, a formula seized on by rivals like Girls Crystal, Princess, Diana, Tina and June. Schoolfriend’s format, roughly the same dimensions as a Warren magazine, printed mostly in black-&-white on cheap paper and usually 32 pages long became the industry standard. Boys weeklies like Valiant, Tiger, and Lion soon followed, all containing a mixture of war, suspense, sport, detective, and humor strips and at anytime COMIC BOOK ARTIST

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from the ’50s to the ’70s boys had the choice of up to twenty-such titles to choose from. The third major format had its roots in the story library tradition of the detective series Sexton Blake; 64-page digest-sized booklets with painted covers. In the late ’40s, Fleetway editor Leonard Matthews was contacted by a New Zealand firm to produce western strips. These proved to be so successful, Matthews reprinted them in Britain, adopting the story library format simply because there was spare capacity on the presses. The resulting title, Cowboy Comics, proved as successful in Britain as it had in New Zealand and Fleetways’ line soon expanded to include Super Detective, Thriller, True Life, Love Story, Air Ace, War and countless other titles. Rival D.C. Thomson responded with Commando, which is still being published today, well into its 3,000th issue! At 64 pages, the picture library format encouraged more considered, literate writing, and it was generally aimed at an older readership. Where most British comics were published weekly, these were initially published twice a month (though this gradually increased to eight issues a month for Battle and Commando and a staggering 12 a month for War). For every boys’ comic there was an equivalent (or two) for girls, for the under 10-year-olds and even those under five. Nursery comics like Playhour, Jack and Jill, and Pippin were intended to be read aloud by mothers to their children and is one of few areas of the industry still healthy today. The pre-war humor tradition is still very much alive as well and D.C. Thomson’s Beano and Dandy comics are both well into their seventh decades. American comics have always been reprinted in various formats and, in the ’50s and ’60s, a flood of repackaged strips appeared. Dell, Fawcett, Prize, Charlton, and Marvel were all extensively reprinted and even the most obscure titles (Silver Kid Western or Captain Flash anyone?) could have a British equivalent. For a country the size of Britain to support an industry that big is astonishing, but largely explained by the postwar baby boom that conveniently supplied an ever-expanding audience. For a nation only just emerging from a decade of rationing, and with television still a relatively scarce and expensive commodity, comics represented a cheap and exciting form of escapism. The problem facing publishers wasn’t finding an audience for their comics—it was finding the talent to draw them. Homegrown artists were assiduously sought out and cultivated but they were never going to be enough to cope with the demand so the industry turned to Europe. The first foreign artist to appear in Britain was Giorgio Bellavitis in Swift, soon Spring 1999

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followed by Jesus Blasco in Comet. The year was 1954. Soon after they were joined by Francisco Cueto, Ruggero Giovanni, Ferdinando Tacconi, and an avalanche of others. These first artists were invariably represented by the Belgian art agency A.L.I. and one of the peculiar features of British comics is the ubiquity of these agencies. In fact, until the appearance of 2000 A.D. in the late ’70s, almost all comic artists worked through agents or agencies, and this was particularly true of foreign talent. In 1955, Gino D’Antonio started drawing for Junior Express through Rinaldo D’Ami’s Creazioni Agency in Milan, and soon others entered the fray. One of A.L.I.’s artists, Jorge Macabich, suggested to Fleetway editor Barry Coker that they set up an agency together and Bardon Arts was created, with offices in London and Barcelona. A.L.I. soon faded from the scene but D’Ami and Barden were soon joined by Studio Giolitti of Rome, Luis Llorentés Creationes Editoriales of Barcelona, V.V. Arts, the Solano Lopez Studio and Selecciones Ilustrada (S.I.). Agencies such as Bardon, or the British Temple Arts, often paid the artist on completion of a strip, and then passed the work onto the publisher for payment. Knowing that they would get paid irrespective of the job’s quality (or the vagaries of the editor) must have given the artists a strong sense of security. Nevertheless, their lineup of artists was far from stable with artists swapping agencies in the pursuit of ever-more-favorable terms and agencies constantly stealing the top talent from each other. Events had grown so serious by the late ’70s, that the top three Spanish agencies—S.I., Bardon, and Creationes—held a summit meeting to calm things down and eventually traded off artists between them-

Above: Jesus Blasco page from the series “Invasion” as seen in 2000 A.D. #2, March 5, 1977. Panels two and three depict U.K.’s then-Prime Minister Jim Calaghan being hanged! ©1977 IPC Magazines Ltd.. 65

CBA Interview

The Big Push & Other Tales William DuBay reveals the real horror stories of Warren Conducted by Jon B. Cooke William DuBay (a.k.a. Bill or Dube) was Warren Publishing’s longest-running editor (whether as editor-in-chief, contributing editor, consulting editor, art director, story editor or managing editor—he was always running) and a prolific writer and artist to boot throughout the ’70s and early ’80s. He is probably best known for his creation of the time-traveling character The Rook (which received its own book in a memorable 14-issue run). William was interviewed via telephone on January 10, 1999, and he copyedited the final transcript. Before I even got an opening question in, Dube was off and running….

Above: A William DuBay self-portrait, “produced in those early days,” DuBay explains, “when I’d just opened the studio, was still going to college and drawing those freelance stories for Warren—including ‘The Frog Prince,’ ‘Devil’s Hand,’ and ‘Life Species.’” ©1999 W.M. DuBay.

William DuBay: We both know what you want to start off with. You want a Jim Warren story. Something fun. One of the legends you’ve heard so much about. Why else would anyone do a Warren Publishing special? Fine. Here’s my lead-off. I call it: “Boris.” I remember one morning when Jim and I were catching up—just chatting in his office after he’d been away a while. He was nonchalantly opening a huge stack of mail as we spoke. Not giving it his complete attention, he picked up a nice, padded, oversized envelope and slit it open. A huge spider virtually leaped out onto his lap. Jim shrieked like a banshee, bolted four feet into the air and came down stomping like a flamenco master… until the spider somehow managed to “skitter” safely under his desk. “Did you see that?” he screamed, pointing at the floor as he curled up cross-legged, feet perched safely on his plush executive rocker. “Did you see the size of that mother? That was one of those killer African tarantulas,” he gibbered, visibly shaken. “Get Donato and Jacinto in here,” he ordered, referring to his Captain Company shipping crew. “Tell them to bring something big and heavy to smash that steroided little bastard.” Nonplused, I walked out, afraid that I’d bust if I told him that the spider was simply a realistic toy… a sample sent by some manufacturer who wanted Captain Company to carry his product. I told Flo Steinberg (his Captain Company buyer) though. We rolled with laughter. Then, she ordered a gross of the little rubber guys. From there after, we dubbed the spider “Boris.” We figured that if anything could scare Jim Warren, it deserved a frightful name. To this day, I don’t know if Jim ever figured out that he’d almost been assaulted by a toy. That said, who exactly is this guy W. B. William Bill Dube DuBay you’re talking to? In a nutshell: A good Catholic boy, William DuBay grew up in a big family in San Francisco in the 1950s. He knew he wanted to write and draw comics early in life, and started with Charlton while still in high school. He was writing and drawing pieces for Marvel, Warren, and Sproul (Cracked) while in the Army and college. Before

receiving his degree, he opened his studio, The Cartoon Factory, and published The Bay Area Entertainer, a weekly S.F. newspaper. Joining Warren Publishing full-time in ’73 as editor/art director, he opened a Cartoon Factory office in New York and dabbled in advertising, animation and comics-related work. He drew several dozen comic stories, wrote several hundred more, and probably became best known for his humorous cartoon-style contributions to Cracked and Crazy magazines. His style has been categorized as a cross between Mad’s Paul Coker, Jr. and George Woodbridge. DuBay left the Warren magazines in 1982, a year before the company closed its doors. He kicked the Cartoon Factory into high gear and was inundated with television work—in animation, licensing and screen writing—for Twentieth Century Fox, Marvel, DIC, Saban and Disney. Still doing the same today, he has a lot to say about his first love, the medium of comics. Comic Book Artist: You’re from San Francisco, aren’t you? William: Born and raised. CBA: When did you develop an interest in comic books? William: Early on. My grandmother was a nurse in the children’s ward at San Francisco County Hospital. She’d bring comic books home from the hospital from about the time I was three or four years old. I always had a pretty vivid imagination, so I genuinely believed that some of those comics had comforted kids in their dying moments. With that viewpoint, comics seemed like a worthwhile and even noble career choice—at least to a four-year-old. Grandma didn’t particularly agree. She wanted me to study medicine or enter the priesthood. To avoid either, I let it be known, even at that tender age, that I was headed for comic books—and that was simply the way it was going to be. CBA: What comics particularly interested you? William: I loved Mickey Mouse’s adventures. The only trouble was, I always seemed to get the first half of a continued story. I really didn’t care for the super-hero stuff until much later. When I was eleven or twelve, I remember a friend of mine asking if I’d seen “this new Hawkman” character. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about—but, after I tracked down a copy of that first The Brave and the Bold issue, I was hooked. CBA: Were you interested in any specific artists? William: From early on, I felt that anything Joe Kubert drew was just fabulous. He captured a dark and surreal mood that seemed a nice fit with the comics of the period. I never really cared much for Dick Sprang or anyone who signed the name ‘Bob Kane,’ no matter who it was—though I later had the chance to meet and befriend Jack Burnley who was doing an awful lot of Superman and Batman work in the ‘40s. CBA: How did that come about? William: When I was in high school, our journalism class took a tour of the old San Francisco Call-Bulletin operation—San Francisco’s afternoon newspaper at the time. Though it was after hours and there was no one in the art department, I saw Jack’s name on the assignment board and, wondering how many Jack Burnleys there could be, I gave him a call the next day. Turned out, he was indeed the same guy who had created DC’s Starman and had been that company’s primary Superman/ Batman ghost artist. That was about ’64 or so, and we struck up an instant friendship. CBA: I’m surprised you recognized his name back in 1964. William: By that time, I was well into collecting comics. I had mounds, and had long since begun to recognize different styles of art and storytelling—even though most stories went uncredited. Some, like Kirby, Kubert, and Ditko, were uniquely distinctive. Others, like COMIC BOOK ARTIST

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Infantino, the Barrys, and Toth had a studio sameness—with enjoyably differing subtleties. I made a game out of identifying, studying, and emulating those differences. I also liked to think I could recognize those rare timeless treasures when they hit the newsstand. My buddy, Marty knew how, too. The day they came out, we stockpiled every copy we could find of Fantastic Four #1, The Flash #123 and Amazing Fantasy #15. Grandma thought we were nuts; but she saw the passion—and encouraged it. CBA: Is that Marty Arbunich, who worked with you on Fantasy Hero, Voice of Comicdom, All Stars and The Yancy Street Journal? William: Man, you don’t live anything down in this industry, do you!? [laughter] Yeah, we helped each other out, Marty always tackling the more anal aspects of the job. He used to justify type on his typewriter, just so the columns of his fanzine looked perfect! And bugs! “Stretch” (so nicknamed because of his 6’ 6” frame) could find the most decorative printer’s bugs devised by man—placing them with an almost artistic precision—just so his pages would look nicer for his readers. He also had a talent for making friends. He made one of Steve Ditko—and got him to produce the single best piece of art Ditko ever drew. We used it on the cover of All Stars #1, then Stretch tucked it in the back of a closet where it’s hidden to this day—a piece of work that should be in a museum; or on my studio wall. CBA: Were you obsessive about comics? William: I made a career choice, way early, and studied every aspect of it to the best of my ability. I’m from a long line of proud French Catholics. Oldest son of an oldest son. Strong, focused, (and I’d like to think) disciplined. Starting to see why comics looked a whole lot better than San Francisco General or St. Paul’s rectory? Obsessive? No—but, I was then and remain a good student. Did I keep any of my old funny books? Some. The fun ones. The rest I’ve brought to kids on children’s wards. Have you seen the price of today’s hospital stay? I always imagine that Grandma would find it somehow karmically bemusing. CBA: How did you break into comics? William: As I said, I worked hard at my studies. By the time I was sixteen, I was convinced I was the best comics writer/artist who’d ever lived. I started submitting my work to DC, Marvel, Charlton and Gold Key then, and it would come back to me with the standard form rejection. After two or three months, I couldn’t understand why I was having such a hard time breaking into the field. Jack, who’d become a friend by that point, explained that comics was an “old boys’ network” in those days, and not just anyone could walk through the door. That’s when I hit on the idea of sending my art and story samples to an editor using his name, coupled with a note saying, “I’d like to get back into it.” Sure enough [laughs], it worked. The first assignment was from Dick Giordano at Charlton— for Go-Go Comics, one of those really hot, cool sassy ’60s titles. [laughs] I completed the assignment, a simple four-pager, and turned it in with a note from “Jack”: “Didn’t have time to finish this, so I gave it to my assistant—Bill DuBay. Did a wonderful job, didn’t he?” Dick wrote back when he sent the first script intended for me. “Boy, he sure did!” [laughs] From there, I was off and running. CBA: So Dick published it? William: In Go-Go #4. My first professional work. Bylined and all—and I was still in high school—which just confirmed the fact that I was the best who ever lived! [laughter] I did a couple of assignments for Dick until I graduated. 30 seconds after that, I was awarded the earliest draft number imaginable and had to relinquish a budding career to join Uncle Sam. CBA: You had some fan art in Creepy #12. So, you were clued into the Warren magazines when they first came out? William: When Creepy debuted in ’64, I was already well into collecting those “ancient” ECs. Since Warren was using the same artists, I don’t think I was the only one who felt, “They’re back—and they’re better than ever!” CBA: With your prolific fanzine efforts, did you develop an early taste for magazine production work? William: Publishing was our life back then. Marty and I worked up four or five issues of Fantasy Hero, a half-dozen Voice of Comicdoms and maybe a dozen or so Yancy Street Journals. We received some excellent material from some wonderful contributors. People like Ronn Foss, Biljo White, Mike Vosburg, and Tom Conroy and Roger Spring 1999

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Brand—two guys that, if they’d lived, would’ve been among the industry giants. Like us, Roger was out of the San Francisco area. Throughout high school, he’d come around and we’d play a little basketball together. He was maybe four or five years older than Marty and I (and a pretty good hoopster, too). Besides comics, basketball was Marty’s, Rudy Franke’s, Barry Bauman’s and my main interest. We’d hit the court, play hard and talk comics. It was a lot of fun—and Marty’s still about the best center I’ve ever met. The social aspect of what we were doing was far more rewarding than any of the production work. CBA: Were you trying to attract professional talent with your fanzines? William: Wasn’t everyone? We were able to snag a few interesting contributions—most notably the aforementioned work by Steve Ditko. He did a few other spots for us along the way; but, for me, the fun was in tracking down Golden Age writers and artists for interviews, retrospectives and appreciations—and because I liked picking their brains. It was probably the most exciting part of my educational process. CBA: How did you begin working with Warren Publishing? William: I was in the Army and had been stationed at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina for about two years—editing the newspaper there, The Ft. Bragg Paraglide—when I took a trip to New York, walked into Jim’s office and introduced myself. Jim was always pretty confrontational, so the first words out of his mouth were, “So, what makes you think you’re good enough to work for me?” I shot back, “‘Cause I’m the best who ever was!” I then whipped a couple of pages from my portfolio and threw them on his desk. “That’s why I think I’m good enough.” [laughs] We struck up an instant adversarial friendship—and I walked out with a script. That was in ’69—and it was that regrettably forgettable story that appeared in Neal’s “Rock God”

Above: When the boss was away…. DuBay as the emperor-inabsentia. “I was just a boy feelin’ my oats,” DuBay professes meekly, looking back at embarrassing photos from that era. Alongside DuBay are (clockwise, standing) advertising production artist Sherry Burne, assistant editor Louise (Weezie) Jones and colorist Michelle Brand. Photo by W.R. Mohalley. Below: “As far as I was concerned,” DuBay said, “this magnificent Steve Ditko cover contribution to our fanzine All Stars #1 was the single most beautiful piece of art of his entire career. Now, you’d need a crowbar to get it out of Marty Arbunich’s closet.” ©1965 Steve Ditko.

CBA Interview

Weezie Jones Simonson Louise discusses her life & times as a Warren editor Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Though she’ll forever be immortalized as the model for the auburn-haired, well-groomed damsel on the cover of the first Swamp Thing appearance in House of Secrets #92, Louise Jones Simonson will also be remembered as one of comicdom’s great editors (especially for her tenure at Warren) and as a fine writer of fun comic book stories. Weezie (who was first married to artist Jeff Jones) is fondly recalled for her self-referential Power Pack comic for Marvel in the ‘80s and her current stint as writer on Superman. She is married to fan-fave artist Walter Simonson (who makes a cameo appearance during this talk). Weezie was interviewed by phone on January 25, 1999, and she submitted the final copyedit. Comic Book Artist: Did you have an interest in comics and genre material when you were a kid? Louise Jones Simonson: I read comics in the usual way that kids read comics. The most memorable comics story from my childhood, heaven help me, was in an EC comic—a Wally Wood story with two old couples sitting down to dinner. Aliens carried off the two women and neither man remembered it afterwards. The guys ended up as two old bachelors eating dinner together. That just blew my little child mind! I thought, “Oh man, what if that could happen? What if that were true? Whoa!” I read a lot of stuff but more books than comics. CBA: Where’d you grow up? Louise: Atlanta, Georgia. CBA: When did you meet Jeff? Louise: In 1964 at Georgia State College Art Department. I was an art/English major. Jeff was also from Atlanta. Above: Richard Corben’s original cover sketch to Eerie #77, featuring his and Bruce Jones’ great story, “Within You… Without You.” Art ©1975 Richard Corben.

CBA: What is your artistic forte? Louise: [laughs] I didn’t have much of a forte! I’m a better writer! [laughs] I was such a naive kid—I don’t think I thought of either talent seriously in terms of a career. It was like, “Oh, well, I like to draw. Oh, well, I like to write.” I had never met any professional artists or writers; in a way, that was far above anything I aspired to. I guess I thought that professionals were some sort of gods and I dared not look so high. [laughter] I knew that real people wrote books but…! [laughs] CBA: Was Jeff ambitious? Louise: Certainly. He knew he wanted to be an artist; whether it was doing comics or book covers. Though he had a more serious interest in painting. We got married during the Summer of ’66. CBA: What did you two do after college? Louise: We moved to New York. CBA: Were you looking for an editorial position?

Louise: Oh, no. I was pregnant at the time and looking to have a baby. Jeff was looking for art jobs—book covers were his main focus, though he did do a little bit of comic book work. CBA: Do you recall when he got his break with Warren and was first published? Louise: Gee, no, I don’t. [laughs] It’s bizarre but I don’t! I know he did something for Larry Ivie’s Monsters & Heroes. CBA: And he did about four stories at Warren. Louise: I have only the vaguest memory of those stories. Isn’t that funny? If you had asked me if he had done any Warren stories, I would have said no. So, there you go—that’s what my memory is worth. CBA: Jeff was obviously in the fan circles. So were you starting to socialize with other fans and comics professionals when you were in the New York area? Louise: Oh, yeah. Gee, we met everybody! At the time, there were “First Fridays” which were comic book meetings held on the first Fridays of every month when everybody got together; and quite often they would be at our apartment—maybe because we were centrally located but I can’t even remember why. CBA: Roy Thomas says he started First Fridays. Louise: Maybe he was out of the city by that time? I can’t remember why they were at our place, or why they were at other places other times. It’s been 30 years, give or take a few. [laughs] CBA: Well, I’m chronicling history here, Louise! [laughs] Louise: Yeah, it’s probably just as well that you get it down now because [laughs] memory is going to fade even more! CBA: Alex Toth might be contributing a regular column to the magazine and its title is “Before I Forget.” Louise: Fabulous title and quite appropriate. Alex’s memory is probably lots better than mine because obviously I’m fuzzy on a lot of stuff already! [laughs] CBA: Were First Fridays memorable get-togethers? Louise: Sure. You’re looking for names: Let me see: Archie Goodwin, of course. (I met Anne later through Archie.) Neal Adams. Bernie Wrightson. Mike Kaluta. Alan Weiss. I don’t remember if Woody was ever there. Bruce Jones, I think… Len Wein. Marv Wolfman. Bill Pearson. Allan Asherman. Roger and Michele Brand. Vaughn Bodé. Flo Steinberg. Marty Pasko, maybe…? There were lots more people. CBA: Word has it that you had a big apartment. Louise: We had a couple of bedrooms and a pretty big living room. It was in one of the old pre-War buildings on 72nd St. CBA: Would the parties go on into the wee hours? Louise: I suppose, though I don’t remember them running particularly late—but then I’m a late-night person so I probably wouldn’t have remarked on that. I don’t think they lasted till dawn, anyway! Ask somebody else! [laughs] We had a lot of fun and I remember enjoying them a great deal. CBA: Do you remember Roy Krenkel? Louise: Of course. What a character! He was cranky, talented, lazy (in his own way)—no, lazy is an ill-chosen word; what he wanted to do was what he wanted to do, and he didn’t want to do anything that anybody else wanted him to do unless it happened to coincide with what he wanted to do. That’s not lazy but just cranky. He was a bit misogynistic—which didn’t bother me at the time because he was funny about it so it was hard to take him seriously. It was pretty apparent, though, that he thought wives were a drag on an artist. He didn’t have a wife (as I remember—and we know what that’s worth—he lived with his mother) and was pretty much a COMIC BOOK ARTIST

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confirmed bachelor. His concept of wives (and women in general, I think) was that they allowed their husbands no creative freedom; that wives would say, “I want a new pink refrigerator.” And then their poor, benighted husbands would have to drop whatever important artistic endeavor they were engaged in and slave away to buy them a “new pink refrigerator.” It was absurd! [laughs] But in some ways, he was a mentor for the younger guys. He had a sense of himself as an artist but not as one who was better than they were. He enjoyed the company of younger artists and he enjoyed his influential role but he never talked down to them. He amused them and they amused him. Roy had ties to the science-fiction community and had a lot of stories of his own “good old days.” One was about Harry Harrison, who wrote the very enjoyable “Stainless Steel Rat” series. Back when they were both young, he told us, Harrison had needed chairs to furnish a new apartment. He couldn’t afford the chairs he wanted— until he spotted them furnishing a lobby… I believe of an ad agency in Manhattan. So Roy and Harrison donned coveralls, entered the lobby pretending to be maintenance people, and made off with the chairs. No one stopped them and the price was right. [laughter] It was a very “Stainless Steel Rat” sort of a caper. CBA: You read science-fiction and horror? Lovecraft, Poe…? Louise: Sure. I liked S-F better than horror as a genre. I read avidly as a child and a young adult. I especially loved the work of Robert Heinlein. CBA: Did you have an ongoing appreciation for comics? Louise: My introduction as an older person—as a college kid—to comics was through the Warren books. Particularly Archie Goodwin’s writing and the first couple of years with that incredible art that Warren had gotten, including Blazing Combat (which was just a terrific, amazing magazine). CBA: So you were appreciating it as it was coming out? Louise: Of course! I had seen it and was completely blown away. CBA: Did you express your admiration when you met Archie? Louise: Oh, sure. I was pretty impressed with meeting him because I enjoyed the Warren books so much. I probably would initially have been equally as impressed with the other creators I met at First Fridays, had I been more of a super-hero comic book reader. Of course, later, when I knew their work, they were all impressive. It was a pretty amazing crew. I was really impressed to meet the artists who had been in the Warren books though—Al Williamson, Frazetta, Orlando… that crew. CBA: What was Archie like? Louise: Very smart, in a laid back kind of way. A quirky combination of quiet and wildly funny. He could be any number of things depending on the appropriateness of the circumstances. He had a very wry sense of humor, and wasn’t above taking a pratfall to get a laugh. He was self-deprecating and not at all full of himself, not at all thinking that he was God’s gift to anything, which I think was sort of too bad, because he was such a talented man. I don’t know if he really appreciated his own talent as completely as other people appreciated it, y’know? CBA: Do you think he needed to? Louise: Maybe yes, maybe no. Archie was a real Renaissance guy, an all-arounder—talented as an artist, a writer, an editor. A lot of folks don’t know what a talented cartoonist he was. You can’t make people’s lives for them but I would have loved to have seen him do a newspaper strip where he could have used that wonderful artistic talent—creating stories he could have written and drawn. Which is not to denigrate in any way the wonderful memorable stories he wrote for other people. Still… maybe if he had been a little more full of himself and thought of himself as God’s gift to cartoonists, we might have seen more of his art. I think a little ego is important to creative types. Writers and artists have to think well of what they do or else they might not be bullheaded enough to push to do it! CBA: You and Archie hit it off? Louise: Yeah—but Archie hit it off with everyone. Archie was nine years older than I was, but we were all pretty young in those days— heck, Neal Adams was practically a kid when you stop and think about it—which is just a frightening thought! [laughs] We were all kids in the big city—and we were having a really good time. CBA: You liked the social life? Louise: [laughs] What’s not to like? You would have liked it too! Spring 1999

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CBA: Did Jeff find it frustrating trying to break into comics? Louise: Not really. He came to New York and got book cover assignments almost immediately. As you pointed out, he did several Warren jobs (and maybe something for Gold Key, as well…?) but painting was more his interest and book covers paid better than comics. Eventually he did several strips—”Idyll” and “I Mage” among them—but these weren’t comic books. The limited strip format appealed to him but I don’t really think that he would have been all that happy drawing big super-heroes hitting other big super-heroes for 22 pages every month. It just isn’t his thing. CBA: Making a living in New York at the time wasn’t difficult? Louise: It depends on how you define “living.” Nobody was rich but we ate, [laughs] no problem there. Kids don’t need that much to live on. The overhead wasn’t that high; the apartments were not that expensive on the Upper West Side. Wrightson and Alan Weiss lived in the same building as we did. For a while, Kaluta was there, too. CBA: When was your daughter born? Louise: Julianna was born in July, 1967. CBA: So when she was getting toward kindergarten age, were you looking to get a job? Louise: Yep. Soon afterwards, Jeff and I split up. I was hired by the circulation department of a magazine publisher and distributor, McFadden-Bartell. They published Sport magazine, Photoplay, Motion Picture, True Confessions. I had wanted a job in publishing

Above: Note the incredible realism in this virtually painted page by Russ Heath. The story, “The Shadow of the Axe,” (from Creepy #79) was written by a young Dave Sim (later revered for his work on Cerebus). Heath’s work for Warren in the ’70s is incredible—and underappreciated—work. ©1976 Warren Publications.