Comic Book Artist #9 by TwoMorrows Publishing

THE CHARLTON COMICS STORY

No. 9 August 2000

$6.95

In The U.S.

GIORDANO • MORISI • APARO • GILL • BOYETTE • FRANZ • GLANZMAN

T H E

C H A R L T O N

C O M I C S ’

NUMBER 9

1 9 4 5 - 1 9 6 8

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

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher

S T O R Y :

AUGUST 2000

DEPARTMENTS:

TWOMORROWS THE FRONT PAGE: LAST MINUTE BITS ON THE COMMUNITY OF COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

JOHN & PAM MORROW

Associate Editors CHRIS KNOWLES DAVID A. ROACH Contributing Editors ROY THOMAS JOHN MORROW

Ye Ed sez he’s sorry (again), Jim Kochalka’s Monkey vs. Robot, and laments on the passing of Fred Himes ........1 EDITOR’S RANT: NICE GUYS CAN FINISH FIRST The Giordano and Nick Cuti influence on making comics better, and the Saga of S.A.G. ....................................4 CBA COMMUNIQUES: LETTERS FROM OUR READERS

Proofreader JOHN MORROW

Kyle on CBA’s abuse of Steranko, Groth on Don Simpson and Buckler, Bruzenak on Steranko’s History V.3 ......6

Cover Art DICK GIORDANO

COMICS COMMENTARY: THE QUESTION OF STEVE DITKO

Cover Color TOM ZIUKO Production JON B. COOKE GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS

Why there’s so little Ditko in these pages—out of our respect for the artist—and his meaningful work ............10 THE BACK PAGE: GOOD-BYE TO DICK SPRANG AND ALFREDO ALCALA, AND THE BIG APPLE CHARLTON SHOW Plus an East Coast send-off to Cliff and Tim, The Notorious Huja Bros, on their sojourn west ........................108

Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS Logo Designer/ Title Originator ARLEN SCHUMER Mascot WOODY by J.D. King Issue Theme Song BACK ON THE CHAIN GANG The Pretenders

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $6.95 ($8.00 Canada, $10.00 elsewhere). Yearly subscriptions: $30 US, $42 Canada, $54 elsewhere. All characters © their respective owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2000 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Cover acknowledgement: Charlton Action Heroes ©2000 DC Comics except Peter Cannon: Thunderbolt ©2000 Peter A. Morisi. All characters used with permission. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

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THE CHARLTON COMICS STORY: 1945-1968

Contributors Dick Giordano • Joe Gill Peter A. Morisi • Pat Boyette Frank McLaughlin • Will Franz Sam Glanzman • Jim Aparo Charles Santangelo • Burt Levy Ed Konick • Roy Thomas Dennis O’Neil • Steve Skeates Bob Layton • Bill Black • Jim Amash Alan Moore • Dave Gibbons Keith Giffen • Paul Chadwick Ken Bruzenak • Robert Greenberger Mickey Spillane • Bhob Stewart Bill Pearson • Glen D. Johnson Pat Bastienne • David A. Roach Arlen Schumer • Mike Carpinello Fred Hembeck • Les Daniels Bob Beerbohm • Don Mangus Christopher Irving • Rocco Nigro Fred Himes, Jr. • Mark Pacella Mike Collins • Andrew Steven

FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?* Ye ghads! Has Fred dug up an enormous array of character portraits from Charlton’s Action Hero Line! ..........11 CHARLES SANTANGELO INTERVIEW: THE HALF-DOLLAR MAN Charlton Co-Founder John Santangelo’s eldest son talks about his father and the company’s roots ..................12 HISTORY LESSON: THE CHARLTON EMPIRE Ye ed & Christopher Irving dig deep to find the history behind the Derby, Connecticut comics publisher ........14 JOE GILL INTERVIEW: MR. PROLIFIC Christopher Irving chats with Charlton’s perennial staff writer, perhaps the most prolific writer in history........22 CHARLTON’S ACTION HERO LINE: A PIECE OF THE ACTION Just what the heck is this “Action Hero Line,” anyway? Christopher Irving gets the story ................................25 DICK GIORDANO INTERVIEW: THE ACTION HERO MAN A long conversation with Mr. “Thank You & Good Afternoon” on his legendary Charlton editorship ..............30 STEVE SKEATES INTERVIEW: “WARREN SAVIN” SPEAKS From the Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves to Thane of Bagarth, Steve talks about his Charlton days........................52 DENNIS O’NEIL INTERVIEW: SERGIUS O’SHAUGNESSY, SCRIBE The writer of “Children of Doom” and “Wander”about working for Dick in Derby, Conn. ..............................53 ALTER EGO EXTRA! MAKE MINE CHARLTON!: ROY THOMAS ON SON OF VULCAN Our esteemed fellow editor tells us about his short, brief career writing for the Derby publisher......................54 PETE MORISI INTERVIEW: PAM, MAN OF THUNDERBOLT! The creator of Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt talks to Glen Johnson about his 50+ years in comics ......................60 JIM APARO GALLERY Spotlight on the artist of Nightshade, Wander, Tiffany Sinn and Bikini Luv at Charlton ....................................69 PAT BOYETTE INTERVIEW: THE BRILLIANCE OF BOYETTE Don Mangus in a 1997 interview talks to the artist of Peacemaker and “The Children of Doom” ....................73 FRANK MCLAUGHLIN INTERVIEW: THE MCLAUGHLIN REPORT The artist/writer/creator of Judomaster on his days at Charlton and in Connecticut’s comics art community .. 78 SAM GLANZMAN INTERVIEW: GLANZMAN’S DERBY DAYS Our Man Sam tries to recall his Charlton work, from Hercules to “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz” ..............84

Special Thanks to: The Derby Historical Society DC Comics • Patty Jeres Paul Levitz • Neal Pozner Scott Dunbier • WildStorm America’s Best Comics

WILL FRANZ INTERVIEW: THE LONELY WAR OF WILLY FRANZ War writer Will Franz on “Willy Schultz,” “The Iron Corporal,” and his departure from comics ......................92 ALAN MOORE INTERVIEW: THE CHARLTON/WATCHMEN CONNECTION ABC writer/mogul tell us who he was watching when planning Watchmen: The Charlton Action Heroes ......100

Dedicated to

DEEP BACKGROUND: PROJECT BLOCKBUSTER Insider Robert Greenberger gives us the scoop behind DC’s planned (later aborted) All-Charlton Weekly ......106

Dick Giordano Mister Nice Guy

Background image previous page: Okay, a few aren’t the Charlton versions of the Action Hero Line, put this penciled panel by Mike Collins (from an issue of Justice League Quarterly) features (left to right) Judomaster, Thunderbolt, Nightshade, Captain Atom, and Blue Beetle. Thanks to the artist for sharing this with us. Art ©2000 Mike Collins. Characters ©2000 DC Comics, Inc. Visit CBA on our 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 Phone: (401) 783-1669 • Fax: (401) 783-1287 • E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com

N E X T August 2000

I S S U E

—

S I M O N S O N

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W O R K M A N

W O M E N

I N

and in loving memory of

Alfredo Alcala Fred Himes Dick Sprang

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History Lesson

The Charlton Empire A Brief History of The Derby, Connecticut Publisher by Jon B. Cooke & Christopher Irving

Center inset: 1958 aerial shot of The Charlton Building from the July, ’58 issue of Newsdealer. The caption states, “This huge publishing-printing-distributing organization occupies a modern 7 1/2-acre plant in central Connecticut. Courtesy of Bob Beerbohm. 14

The Charlton Publishing Empire’s humble beginnings stretch back to the 1930s, when an Italian immigrant named John Santangelo began selling unauthorized printed song lyric sheets in Central Connecticut. Though clearly involved in copyright infringement as the sheets were sold without the consent of the music industry, Santangelo’s business eventually became profitable enough for him to end his regular job as a New York City bricklayer. After a few years, the entrepreneur was pursued by organizations such as ASCAP for copyright infringement, the law eventually caught up, and he was sentenced to a year in the New Haven County Jail. “My old man was an immigrant and he didn’t know anything about copyright laws,” Santangelo’s eldest son, Charles, said. “It certainly wasn’t terrible or intentional, but he did violate the law.” Former Charlton head staff writer Joe Gill presented a view of Santangelo that differed from a July, 1958 Newsdealer magazine article that likened the founder to be “latter-day Horatio Alger.” Gill said, “He was wealthy, a very cunning man, and a friend of mine. But a lot of people didn’t like him.” While serving out his sentence, Santangelo met fellow inmate Edward Levy, a disbarred attorney incarcerated because of his involvement in a Waterbury political scandal. The two became fast friends and, with a handshake deal, started a business partnership to establish a legitimate publishing concern after their release. Levy and Santangelo both had infant sons named Charles, inspiring them to name their newfound business Charlton Publishing. Making up for lost time, the partners secured licensing rights, and launched their magazine line with the song lyric magazines, evolved versions of Santangelo’s bootleg sheet called Hit Parader and Song Hits—the latter purchased from another company, according to Charlton Business Manager Ed Konick, who started working for the company in 1952. “When Charlton started,” Konick explained, “the song lyric publications didn’t include any features at all. Best Songs and Popular Songs followed, and they started adding features, fillers, and photographs to the magazines in 1945. By 1949, we came out with Country Song Round-Up. We also branched out later into the black entertainment field with Rock & Soul, and we also did a pop standard book, Songs That Will Live Forever.” After years of sending out the printing to New York shops, in the late ’40s Charlton set up operations in a 150, 000 square-foot building in Derby. The partners’ philosophy, unique in the publishing industry, was that the cheapest and most efficient way to produce periodicals would be to to establish an “all-in-one” operation; that is, have everything under one roof—editorial, printing, distribution— eliminating any middle-man expenses and maximizing profit. The Charlton Building housed three sister companies: Charlton Press, Charlton Publications, and Capitol Distribution, with an off-site auxil-

iary concern, The Colonial Paper Company. Charlton first published their song lyric magazines starting in 1935, only adding comics to their line-up by the Autumn of 1945 with the release (under the Children Comics Publishing imprint) of the funny animal title Zoo Funnies #101 (the #101 giving an indication of the odd numbering systems Charlton would use up till the mid-’60s with annoying regularity). Between 1945-50, Charlton published few titles (Zoo, Tim McCoy, Merry Comics, Cowboy Western, Pictorial Love Stories), with the work out-sourced to freelance editor and packager Al Fago (brother of Timely/Marvel editor Vince Fago), who jobbed-out the assignments from his Long Island home. Perhaps realizing the set-up of the comics division contradicted his all-in-one Charlton philosophy, Santangelo created an in-house comics department by early 1951, eliminating the line’s reliance on freelancers, hiring staff artists (among them, future Managing Editor Dick Giordano), and bringing in Fago as on-site managing editor. The company also beefed-up the comics’ output considerably, and (maybe envious of their rivals’ successes) content delved into more earthy fare as Charlton debuted Crime & Justice, Racket Squad in Action, Sunset Carson, Space Western, and perhaps the most notorious Charlton comic ever published, The Thing!—all between ’51-’52. The Thing!, a series reviled by Dr. Fredric Wertham for its gore and explicit mayhem (The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide notes issue #5 and up contain “excessive violence, severed heads, injury to eyes common,” plus lingerie and extreme torture panels, wrapped in “headlight” covers) also is notable for the appearance of the company’s most important (and longest-staying) artist, Steve Ditko. Though still riding the EC horror coattails with like titles, the publishing outfit also found rack space for Managing Editor Fago’s forté, the funny animal genre, by releasing his Atomic Mouse in 1953, but the following year saw the elimination of the explicit horror books and the

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entire comics industry entered Bad Times. But due to its all-in-one set-up, Charlton apparently thrived regardless of the anti-comics atmosphere of the time. The house continued to churn out titles, and notably Charlton scooped up inventory and titles from a number of folding comics shops. Between 1954-55, the company acquired titles from Superior Comics, Simon & Kirby’s Crestwood/Mainline, St. John, and most significantly, Fawcett Publications, as the house of Captain Marvel threw in the comics towel for good. Al Fago, reportedly angry at the company, left Charlton in the mid-’50s to set up his own imprint, and the managing editor position was given to Fago’s assistant Pat Masulli, who held the job for 10 years or so. The comics output settled down to pretty standard Comics Code-approved fare of genre material—romance, war, westerns, kiddie, science-fiction, “Unusual Tales,” though super-heroes were represented by a lone entry, the four-issue revival of Blue Beetle in 1955. Churning out the work in often pedestrian fashion were the staff artists reporting to work in Derby on a daily basis, among them Dick Giordano, Steve Ditko, Rocco “Rocke” Mastroserio, Sal Trapani, John D’Agostino, Vincent Alascia, Charles Nicholas (possibly the creator of The Blue Beetle in 1939), and Bill Molno. The primary writer of virtually all the Charlton books was Joe Gill, ever-present at his desk with typewriter, who is arguably the most prolific writer in the history of comics, producing as much as 100 pages in scripts a week, stories often as pedestrian as the artwork. At approximately 10:00 A. M., Friday, August 18th, 1955, a natural disaster struck that changed everything for the staffers at Charlton, and even threatened to close the company’s doors down permanently. The aftermath of Hurricane Diane cut a swath of destruction through the Carolinas, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and, of course, Connecticut. Eleven inches of rainfall caused massive flooding that claimed the lives of hundreds of victims in the Connecticut Valley area. All 129 acres of the Charlton grounds were submerged in 18 feet of water. $300, 000 worth of paper inventory, mats, comics art work, and plates, among other things, were destroyed by the flood in minutes. “When the flood came through,” Burton N. Levey, cousin to co-owner Ed Levy and Charlton executive, said, “we had to get on top of the building because the water was rising, and a helicopter landed on the roof and took us off—that’s how I got out of there! I watched my car float down the river.” “The press was entirely underwater, the building was underwater,” Joe Gill said. “[Artist] Maurice ‘Reese’ Whitman had to be taken off the roof by helicopter. Cars were washed away. When the smoke cleared, Santangelo called a meeting of the artists and myself. He was

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an inspired speaker in his broken English, and said he was going to carry on (though, in the meanwhile, the guy had gotten umpteen dollars in flood relief from the government, for free; this was an enormous boost for him), but he couldn’t continue to pay us the same ‘high rates. ’ He said that we could all continue working at half of what we had been working before. I was dropped to two dollars a page [a quarter of what the major companies were paying at the time].” According to the Oct. 1955 issue of Newsdealer, the springing-back of Charlton was “a story of employee personal contribution which defies the imagination.” The article says how the employees and community dug Charlton out of the wreckage, ultimately running the presses again in ten days, though staffer Dick Giordano doesn’t recall “it being that quick.” Nor did Burt Levy: “It was a disaster and it took us a long time to get going again.” “No,” Ed Konick said, “it took several months to recover; we were operating but using outside printers. It took a long time to clean up that mess.” Despite notice that the company maintained “a full payroll,” there is no mention of either Santangelo’s disaster relief money, or the pay-cut employees suffered. “If I didn’t write fast, I wouldn’t be able to get along under that price structure,” Gill said. “So, we were working for those rates, and the artists were only getting $13 a page. What could you expect from an artist with a wife and child, and how much time and care could you expect him to put into a page? There was the pride of doing good work, but it was impossible to do our best work consistently over a period of time. I did a lot of garbage, and some good work—not much, but some. Charlton got a helluva lot more than they paid for out of me. People who are critical of Charlton artists and writers have to remember that the price structure of the company was a big factor.” Giordano said the regular rate for art—pencils and inks—was $13 a page. “After the flood, it was halved to $6. 50; later it went up to $10; later still back to $13.” In 1956, Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel briefly packaged titles for Charlton, bearing the eclectic names Mr. Muscles, Zaza the

CBA Interview

Joe “Mr. Prolific” Gill The Phenomenally Productive Writer Speaks Conducted by Christopher Irving

Holy smokes! Has Joe Gill produced a lot of comic book stories! The mountain of Gill scripts quite possibly surpasses the output of the late Paul S. Newman as the most prolific comic book writer of all time. A regular Joe with quick typing fingers, the writer remained at Charlton Comics virtually throughout its forty-year existence. While in his eighties and slowed down a bit since his days hitting the town with best buddy Mickey Spillane, Joe still plays cards now and then, still soaking in the good life in Central Connecticut. CBA hopes to have a longer chat with Joe in our sequel covering the Gentile/Wildman years of 1969-83, due early 2001. Christopher Irving: When did you work at Charlton? Joe Gill: I’ll tell you how it started: John Santangelo, the publisher of Charlton, was buying packaged comics from a couple of editorial services in New York, and the main one was Jacquet’s Funnies, Incorporated. I wrote comic books for Charlton, through Jacquet for a couple of years. Jacquet was a wonderful woman to work

for; she used to call me up in the morning and say, “Can you write a book for me this afternoon?” I’d say yes, go over and use the typewriter in her office, and she’d give me a check for $200 before she went home. That’s the reason why I wrote as many pages as I did: I had no critical editors, and that makes a big difference. Santangelo had his printing press in Derby [Connecticut], and a very good editor named Al Fago (Fago and his wife ran a comic book department). Santangelo wanted all of the artists and writers, the entire publishing operation, to be under one roof. He brought up a stable of artists like Dick Giordano, John D’Agostino, Pat Masulli, Charlie Nicholas, Don Campbell, Chic Stone, and they hired some outside people, too. I was the principle writer, and I wrote everything. Chris: Frank McLaughlin told me you wrote up to 100 pages a week at times. How many pages would you say you wrote per week, on average? Joe: In the beginning, for the first couple years, I’d write as many as I could get to write. I always had the capacity to write 30 or 40 pages a day. In the beginning, Fago needed scripts, and Santangelo didn’t want to pay a lot of money—he was only paying $4 a page; I was getting $10 in New York. The difficulty of being a comic writer in New York, and working for some of the “better” publishers like DC and Marvel, is that you’d have the ego of the editors to pander to. One editor would call me up and say that he needed a romance comic, and could I come over for a story conference? A romance story doesn’t warrant a conference! I can knock out a seven- or eight-page story in an hour-and-a-half, without any conference! When you’re working for a New York publisher, you have to go and kiss the editor’s ass. I lived in Brooklyn and had to take a subway over. After seeing that publisher, you might have to go halfway across town and see someone else. It’d be a very tiring and expensive day. When you got through, the editor would feel duty-bound to do a critical job of it and change this and change that. I’ve had an editor at DC call me in Derby to come to New York to change a couple balloons. I had some editors at DC who were good editors, and they bought my stuff and used it as is, with no compulsion to show what brilliant editors they were by changing things. At Charlton, John was underpaying artists and writers, and practically anything that artists and writers did was acceptable. There was very little criticism. The idea was to get the books out, and nobody at Charlton seemed to give a damn how good they were! When I say I wrote between 100 and 150 pages a week, you’ve got to realize that there was no one I had to please. If I had to work in the usual editorial structure, it’d be a lot less than that. Chris: You said before that you hated writing super-hero comics. Joe: That began in 1945 to 1946, when comics were first going in that direction. There was a choice as to what category you could work in. The western category was bigger than the super-heroes, and I wrote Kid Colt, Two-Gun Kid, and a million things for Marvel. I was Stan Lee’s favorite boy for a short while. Comics collapsed with the end of World War II, though it took a while to trickle down. By January or February of ’46, it was getting very difficult to get assignments. Mickey Spillane was forced out of writing COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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comics. He wrote a book because he couldn’t get any writing assignments. The book, I, The Jury sold seven million copies. As he wrote it and it’d come out of the typewriter, I’d read a page of it and say. “It’ll never sell.” [laughter] Chris: You never know... About the Action Hero books at Charlton, did you enjoy working with any of the artists? Joe: I enjoyed working with many of the artists, like Pat Boyette, and I enjoyed working with Sam Glanzman—he is a very good war artist who also did a very nice Tarzan [in Jungle Tales of Tarzan]. Sam was a really good artist, and could interpret a story very well. He’d do a World War II story, and he made an old freighter look like an old freighter. His characters weren’t that glamorized: They were dullfaced and real. I enjoyed working with Sam, and we did a great Tarzan together—Charlton did a Tarzan better than any other; we used a block text instead of a lot of balloons, and I tried to keep the flavor of Edgar Rice Burroughs in that, and I did. Even at the speed we worked at, I was quite proud of Tarzan. Chris: How was working with Steve Ditko? Joe: He was all right, we were good friends. We’re not the same kind of people, but he and I were both living in Derby, in the same hotel. Steve has ethics and stern beliefs, and he kept them. He wouldn’t do bad work just because he was getting bad pay. He tried to do just as well for Charlton as he was for Marvel. He is a fine guy, and a good artist. I just don’t like his [art] style. Chris: I think there’s a difference between an artist and a draftsman; he didn’t draw pretty pictures. Joe: He did everything the Ditko way, but he did a good job; he made Spider-Man. Chris: What was the atmosphere at Charlton? Joe: We had our own area in the building, and it was easy-going. When Pat Masulli was first editor, we’d knock off for an early lunch, get sandwiches and a couple beers, and go to a lake or beach and sit around and shoot the sh*t. It was pretty fun, and we got around pretty good. The artists and myself were a little clan. I’m still friends with a lot of them. Chris: Frank McLaughlin told me how Eichmann’s son popped in to Charlton. Joe: Yeah. [laughter] I wrote something that told the story of Eichmann, and what a murderer he was, and it was on the front cover [of a magazine]. Eichmann’s son was up there two weeks later, coincidentally. There was no confrontation, but I don’t know if he knew about the article, or that I did it. I think the president of the distribution company, a guy named Adams, brought him up. It was a prestige thing. You’ve got to remember that John Santangelo was Italian, from Italy, and he was a Mussolini Italian. He didn’t necessarily hate Eichmann, but I don’t know what his feelings were. Eichmann was up there as a guest, and one of the Jewish editors had to be restrained. Chris: How was Pat Masulli to work for as an editor? Joe: Terrible. Pat’s dead now, but he was a martinet, not a friendly guy that enjoyed amiable relations with the artists. He ruled it, and he and I co-existed. Chris: What other books did you write? Joe: Every book that Charlton had. Fago started this when I got there: I’d get a shopping list every Friday, it might be 15 pages of Confessions, two eight-page westerns. In the beginning, they didn’t August 2000

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know how much I could do. After we got in the swing of things (from the mid-’60s on), the editors would give me a shopping list with one confession magazine, 23 pages, like First Kiss; another love story… we had about eight romance comics, and I’d get two or three of those to do a week, a couple of westerns, a Fightin’ Navy, and it’d be a total of 125 pages. If they needed something suddenly, I might do that. On Friday, I’d get a list of the things I had to do, and the work would be completed and in by [the next] Friday morning. Friday at noon, you’d get the check for the previous week’s work. The wonder of Charlton was that you’d get paid for your work after a week. Any publisher in New York, you’d practically have to take half of them to court; they may start out with good intentions, but then they’d get caught in a squeeze and can’t pay their printers or writers. Getting the work, getting paid for the work, and the mechanics of going to the office and going home and back was too much of a hassle. Chris: When you’d write, would you just sit down and start typing? Joe: That’s all. I’d have the worksheet in front of me and, if it said Kid Colt, I’d say “Where’s Kid Colt?… ‘In a mining town, and the bad guys are going to take away a shipment of gold. ’” If it was a romance, I try to pick an interesting background of interesting characters. The thought process would take as long as it would take to type the first line. I was proud of a lot of the things I did, especially working that fast in the amount of hours I did. In order to do that amount of pages, I worked in the office and then came home and worked some more. I had a mortgage, a wife and child, as well as some bad habits, so I’d often work when I was uninspired. You’ve seen the books; you’d say that they weren’t always high quality. I wasn’t crazy about writing Blue Beetle. I only did a couple and then told Pat to give it to somebody else. Chris: What didn’t you like about it? Joe: The character was too shallow. There wasn’t anything to him, and I wasn’t taking the time to make anything out of him. He wasn’t mine, he was somebody else’s. Chris: Did you ever feel any of the Action Hero characters were yours? Joe: I liked the comic book I once did called Doomsday +1; it wasn’t a super-hero strip, but it was a fantasy of sorts. I liked Captain Atom to a certain extent, and I enjoyed things like Gorgo, Godzilla, and some characters from movies. We published some terrible trash. Ed Levy, a partner of the publisher, was in a restaurant, and had his fortune told by a tea-leaf eater named Zsa Zsa, so he decided she’d make a wonderful character for a comic book. Nobody gave a sh*t about somebody named Zsa Zsa, but we ran that for a couple years, it was awful! [laughter] We had Fightin’ Navy, Fightin’ Army, and Fightin’ Marines. We did Medal of Honor, and the partner who decided (it was a minor partner) insisted the stories be authentic, so he got a hold of a Congressional library

Left: Fuzzy picture of Joe Gill with his trusty typewriter, which saw him through thousands of script pages at Charlton. Forget the computer keyboard! The writer still uses this trusty ol’ Royal in writing his correspondence. Courtesy of the writer.

CBA Interview

The Action Hero Man The Great Giordano talks candidly about Charlton Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

Below: Okay, maybe you saw this same shot in the Neal Adams interview featured in CBA #5, but Dick tells us he has very few pix of “Himself.” This was from a modeling session for the fumetti story “The Great American Dream,” in Crazy #1. Courtesy of Dick. ©2000 Marvel Characters, Inc.

In the history of Charlton, few loom as significant as Dick Giordano, managing editor of the comics group from 1965-68, where he developed the oft-recalled “Action Hero Line,” a memorable run of books noted for their sense of fun and especially the contributions of Steve Ditko, just late of his Marvel heyday. But the artist-editor’s days with the Derby company stretch back to New Year’s Day 1951, when a young Richi Giordano began freelancing for Charlton Comics, and an association persists as recently Dick and Bob Layton “covered” the Action Heroes in the limited series The L.A.W. Charlton ink must run in Mr. G’s blood! This interview took place at Dick’s Connecticut home and a local restaurant on May 6, 2000. Dick copyedited the transcript. Special thanks to Pat Bastienne for her support. Comic Book Artist: Dick, where were you born? Dick Giordano: Bellevue Hospital, New York City, which is noted for psychiatric care, but at that time, they also managed to do child care. We lived in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In those days, it was a decent neighborhood (a lot of it is slums today). When I was still a young boy, we moved to Queens, then to the Bronx, where I lived until I was married. CBA: Were you an only child? Dick: Yes. I was born during the Depression. I was also sickly as a child, and that’s how I got into comic books—I had nothing else to do, so I was reading, because I was in bed all the time. I had a great many allergies, and suffered from asthma—which I still do, it’s just not as bad as it was when I was a kid. My family really couldn’t afford another child, so I was pretty much it. CBA: What did your father do? Dick: I guess a cab-driver is the easiest way to explain it. My father always owned his own cabs, he didn’t work for a company. I learned a lot from him without his even realizing it. He would take care of his own cars, especially during World War II, when you couldn’t buy another car, and he’d put on 100 miles a day or more on his cab. So, some days it’d be both of us downstairs in the garage, to try to keep the car running for another week. [laughs] He was a very good mechanic. As a matter of fact, he had this very strange Italian first name, which was Graziano, but he was called Jack by his friends. They were referring to “Jack of All Trades.” And my father really was: He could do carpentry work, fix up automobiles, he was a musician, later learned photography (had his own darkroom), and he shot a couple of weddings… he did a little bit

of everything. That’s why I’ve said the common thing would be to call him a cab-driver. Later on, he opened up a garage where he fixed cars, because he thought that was better than driving 100 miles a day! [laughter] CBA: Was he a mechanic before the Depression? Dick: Before the Depression, he was driving a cab. My mother was born in Italy, and she came here when she was a young girl, about 10 years old. My mother and father went to school together. Then my mother’s mother passed away (her father never came here, he stayed in Italy until he passed away), and then my mother and father got married because she couldn’t live alone. They took in her younger sister as well, so there was three of them for a while. My father did a lot of other things, but he actually earned his living driving a cab. They got married in ‘31, and went on their honeymoon, and when he came back, was when the Depression hit the cab business. He had to give up their $18 a month apartment and get one for $12. He was making about $6 a week, driving a cab, occasional music gig added a bit to that. It was very, very tight… or so I’m told, I wasn’t aware of it, I just laid in my crib and sucked on my bottle. [laughs] CBA: When did you start becoming interested in comic books? Dick: My father used to read me the Sunday funnies, and the week between was a long wait for me. He happened to find Famous Funnies on the newsstand one day and brought it home. He read me that whole book for the rest of the week, instead of just on Sundays—it was the Sunday funnies all wrapped together in 64 pages. Yeah, that’s when I got started, and in fact, I started drawing from some of those issues. I think The Little King was one of the features, I don’t know if anybody remembers that. That looked simple enough, so I started copying the art which was the beginning, and as they say, the rest is history. Later, when I moved to The Bronx, I went to an elementary school where I had a great art teacher who impressed me. My mother (who was a very good artist when she was younger) was delighted that I was able to draw. I think my ability was inherited. The teacher encouraged me, and when I was ready to graduate, she suggested I try getting into the School of Industrial Arts, which was a vocational high school in New York City available— free—to anybody who could get in. I took the test, passed, and spent four-and-a-half years there (the extra half-year was because I got sick with the illness that always plagues me, and lost about a half-year). CBA: What year did you go into SIA? Dick: I got out in January, 1950, so it must’ve been ‘44, ‘45. When I went to my graduation, it was snowing. [laughs] My father was driving me down in the cab. Angelo Torres started with me, and Tony Tallarico graduated with me. There’s a number of people who are still active in the business, one way or another, who were in that school the same time I was. And then, as time went by, a lot of professionals went there… Neal Adams went to that school, and quite a few people went there. CBA: Any renowned instructors, teachers? Dick: No. I was influenced greatly by some of the instructors who were quite good at what they did, but I don’t think there were any names there you would recognize. There were a number of celebrities. Tony Bennett went there to study—you know that Tony Bennett was an artist, and he graduated a couple of years before me? CBA: Did you meet him? Dick: No, and I wouldn’t have known I was meeting anybody special if I did. At that time, he was Tony DeGrannidetto (or somesuch), and he was one of the kids in school, and he wasn’t a singer—that we knew, anyway. There’s been a few people of some note who’ve COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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graduated from there. Most of the teachers were paid professionals, so they weren’t fooling around. Yesterday, I related a story about one of the instructors by the name of Stanley Rose: He was a little bitty guy, but he worked us hard—incidentally, we had to wear a shirt and tie, and something over the shirt every day. The feeling was, “You’re studying to be professionals, you’d better start looking it now.” No jeans, regular clothes with a shirt and tie, and either a sweater or a jacket over the top. If you got caught without any of the necessary apparel, you were sent home, unless you kept one… I always kept extras at the school, just in case. [laughs] Anyway, Stanley Rose used to allow you to bring in these weekly assignments, he’d give you an assignment, the one in particular I’m thinking of is “landmarks of New York,” so I decided to do a shot of the Third Avenue “EL” [elevated train]. I spent a whole day working on a drawing of it, but I didn’t finish it. I went to class, and he called out the name of each student, one by one, and each would bring up their assignment, he looked at it, and maybe make a comment, but just piled them on his desk to grade later. When it was my turn, he said, “Giordano?” And I said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Rose, I didn’t finish yet.” He says, “Yes, you did. Look in your portfolio. You wouldn’t dare come to my class and not be prepared.” This was on a Friday, and he said, “Okay, what you’re going to do is give me two separate assignments by Monday.” I had a weekend coming up, planning to spend time with my friends, but I spent the whole weekend at the drawing board, finishing up the one I didn’t have on Friday, and coming up with a new idea and sitting down and drawing that to get it in for Monday’s class. As luck would have it, his class was the first one of the day, so… [laughs] there was no fooling around. I learned something from that, that if something’s due on Friday, it’s due on Friday. You don’t argue about whether it’s really necessary to get it in on Friday, you just do it. I learned that from him. So that’s how I learned about making deadlines. [laughter] That’s something that stands with me today, I have a reputation for making deadlines, no matter how dumb they are—I make them. Sometimes I get help, but I make deadlines. This situation was the reason why. At SIA, there were a wonderful bunch of instructors, and I learned how to be a professional from them. CBA: So, what happened after you graduated in 1950? Dick: Well, that’s a funny story. I wanted to be an illustrator—illustrations and advertising seemed to be the way to go. When we graduated they gave us a list of advertising agencies, and I went around with a fellow classmate, Murray Tinkleman, to try and get a job. We’d get tired from knocking on doors all day, trying to break in the field. One day, we walked into an office that said on the door, “Art Studio,” or something like that. It turned out the studio had just moved out, and in the middle of this room, there was just a desk, with a man sitting at it working away on a typewriter. He was a comic book writer. I’d always been interested in comic books (although I didn’t take the comic book course at school because they advised us the business wasn’t good, you won’t make any money at it), so I took advertising and illustration courses—instead of comics— but I’ve always been keen on comics. I had some black-&-white stuff in my portfolio, and the writer looked at it and said, “Why don’t you go down and see Jerry Iger? Maybe he can use somebody like you.” So, we went down, and showed Jerry our portfolios. Initially he said, “Okay, I’ll hire you both, you work two days, and you work three August 2000

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days.” Then, when it came time to start, he said, “I’ve changed my mind: I only want one of you now.” So I got the job full-time. They hired Murray eventually and the two of us were there together full-time six months later. Will Eisner had just split up with Iger when I got there, but the outside door still said, “EisnerIger.” I was there about nine months and I learned a lot. CBA: You worked on Jungle Comics? Dick: Yeah, Jungle, Wings, Planet, all of the things from Fiction House. Plus work for two or three other smaller companies—Superior Comics, whose standards weren’t particularly high. The interior work for the comics was done on staff, and that’s what Murray and I were doing there. I’d come in the morning, and there’d be a drawing table about this high with pages on it that had to be inked, and we’d pass the pages around… somebody inked the heads, somebody inked the figures—whatever it was—and by the time Murray got them, he’d erase and clean up the pages. I was doing that before he came in. It was quite a learning curve… we learned a lot. CBA: Just from looking at the art, and…? Dick: Yeah. Ken Battenfeld was a really great penciler working at Iger at the time. Johnny Thornton was the one who used to pencil a lot for Superior Comics, a Canadian company. Jack Kamen was one of our most accomplished pencilers. CBA: Were they horror or crime? Dick: Mostly horror at Superior Comics, if memory serves me. A guy named Bob Webb did something called “The Hawk,” a pirate

Above: Dick Giordano really went to town with his Fightin’ Five covers! Here’s his work on the cover of an unidentified issue. The Fightin’ Five—America’s Super Squad—were a sorta knock-off of Marvel’s Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, but more importantly was an aspect of Dick’s Action Hero approach touching even war titles. The characters are (from left to right) Frenchy the Fox, Hank Hennessy, Irv “The Nerve” Haganah, Granite Gallero, and Tom-Tom. Dick must have liked these palookas, as he used them as a back-up strip in Secret Agent (Sarge Steel) after their title’s cancellation. You can also spot them, real tiny, plus a Sentinel or two, in the background of Dick’s fantabulous cover for us! Our thanks to the Great Giordano for giving us one more take on his beloved Action Hero Line! ©2000 the respective copyright holder. 31

Charlton Chat

Make Mine Charlton! (At Least for a Little While!)—Roy Thomas’ Anecdotes by Roy Thomas

Below: Maybe the first cover acknowledgement by a comics publisher of the existence of fanzines, this issue of Son of Vulcan (the last) featured Roy’s first professional sale. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

Call me crazy, but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart (and maybe my head) for Charlton comics group—and not just because they (it?) bought the first two comic book stories I ever sold. At least, I think they (it) did. What happened, roughly, was this: In early 1965, Pat Masulli, Charlton’s executive editor, sent out an open letter to various comics fanzines which he hoped they would print and publicize. I believe copies of that same letter may have been sent out to a few prominent individual fans, as well, but you’d have to ask Tom Fagan and others about that. In the letter readers were invited to try their hands at writing 20-page scripts for the super-hero comics Charlton then published: Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, and Son of Vulcan. As then editor/publisher of the first volume of Alter Ego, I (along with a number of other fan-eds, as that amateur breed were often called) had a natural advantage, in that I had the opportunity to see the letter before the bulk of comics fans did. Matter of fact, since A/E was coming out only two or three times a year despite its optimistic “quarterly” schedule, I used very little “dated” material in it, and I never did get around to publishing Masulli’s missive. What I did instead was to sit down almost at once and write a story for the most obscure of the three heroes: Son of Vulcan. But why Son of Vulcan? After all, Captain Atom was a character I had liked (as I had Steve Ditko’s artwork) since 1960; and Charlton’s first 1950s Blue Beetle was just an updated version of a hero I had read on occasion in the 1940s and ’50s, albeit now he had a far better backstory and origin (if even worse artwork). I suspect the primary reason I dashed off a Son of Vulcan tale was that I figured others receiving Masulli’s letter would be more likely to go for C. A. and/or B. B., so I might have a better chance of success if I wrote a story for a hero who wouldn’t be the first choice of many others. Also, despite the decidedly primitive artwork by Fraccio and Tallarico (working, as I’d soon learn, for wages far lower than most other companies paid), I liked Son of Vulcan because he smacked not only of his most obvious source, Marvel’s Thor in Journey into Mystery, but also of Captain Marvel, once the World’s Mightiest Mortal and a childhood

favorite. Maybe reporter Johnny Mann saying “Let me become the Son of Vulcan!” was a few steps down from Billy Batson saying “Shazam!” or Don Blake slamming his wooden cane on the ground, but Son of Vulcan had possibilities, and I wanted to see if I could dream up anything to do with him. By then there had been about a half dozen SOV stories; the feature had begun in Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds, then graduated to its own title, and I had purchased them all, as I then collected most of the relatively few super-hero comics published (though not much Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman). Perusing the back issues quickly for ideas, I immediately decided to do one which exploited the mythological origins of this hero who was basically the adopted heir of the Roman god Vulcan (who of course was the Latinized form of the Greek blacksmith god Hephaestus). And, since one of my favorite works of literature is The Iliad, it was but the work of a moment to come up with the notion of a “Second Trojan War,” as I titled my story. A movie studio would be filming a screen adaptation of Homer’s epic, and Johnny Man/Son of Vulcan would get involved to save them from the villain. I suspect I chose Dr. Kong, who I believe had already been called “the meanest man alive” in a previous issue (written by Tom Gill?), because he reminded me of Captain Marvel’s old nemesis Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana nearly as much as Son of Vulcan himself reminded me of Fawcett’s Big Red Cheese. As an homage to my frequent correspondent Otto Binder, who had scripted many of the original Captain Marvel’s greatest adventures, I gave Dr. Kong a servant: “a robot with perhaps too many tubes, wires, and transistors crowded into one human-sized metallic shell.” The robot’s name was Adam Klink, and of course his/its inspiration was Adam Link, the wonderful robot hero Otto had created a quarter of a century earlier for Amazing Stories science-fiction pulp magazine (and whom I had first encountered in EC’s comics adaptations in Weird Science-Fantasy). Homage or no homage, Adam Klink is, I suppose, the first super-normal character I ever “created” for comics. I guess I peaked too early. As I look over Son of Vulcan Vol. 2, No. 50 (Jan. 1966), I’m struck by a few other things, as well: First, Pat Masulli really meant to get some mileage out of the fact that a comics fan, as opposed to one of Charlton’s regular writers, had scripted the story. On the cover, a big yellow burst trumpets: “ATTENTION, FANZINE READERS!!! Charlton’s challenge had been answered... The story in this issue was written by one of YOU!!! DON’T MISS IT!” (It is highly unlikely—but I hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong—if the word “fanzine” had ever before appeared on the cover of a comic book. I’m even a bit curious as to whether that word, coined in the early 1940s by science-fiction fans, had ever even appeared on the cover of an s-f mag. ) Secondly, despite my preceding point, the credit for the script was merely “written by R. Thomas.” After all that fanfare on the cover, Charlton couldn’t be bothered to print my whole name—an entire nine letters! Perhaps it had sometime to do with the fact that the pencils were credited only to “R. Fraccio” and the inks to “T. Tallarico,” but that’s begging the question. Well, at least the names were written in small open letters, and colored in red... that’s something, anyway. Third, I see that, less to be true to my background as a Missouri high school teacher for the past four years than to my sincere philosophy that comic books should educate as well as entertain whenever COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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possible, I made certain to work in as much of the original legend of the Troy as I could. Whatever its literary merits or lack of same, my five-panel summary of the Trojan War was reasonably thorough, given its length. Already in 1965 I wasn’t sure I was telling the truth when I said that “every schoolboy knows” the story of the Trojan horse, and nowadays, sadly, that statement is even less true. In the next panel I had the movie’s director further enlighten both reporter Johnny Mann and the reader, saying “So we came to Asia Minor to film our movie near Hissarlik, site of the historical Troy.” Even the River Scamander gets mentioned later, in a scene which basically repeats an incident in The Iliad. (Well, at least I resisted the temptation to relate the “real-life” story of Heinrich Schliemann, famed “discoverer” of Troy’s ruins. I’m especially glad of that nowadays, since Schliemann has in recent years been pretty much unmasked as a fraud who mostly stole the glory from Troy’s true discoverer, one Frank Calvert. ) Fourth, I decided to take from Captain Marvel the idea that Sivana knew that Billy Batson “was” the captain. When Johnny Mann, facing Dr. Kong, says he’s got to escape “and, uh, find Son of Vulcan,” Kong responds, “Give me credit for some sense, at least! I am well aware that you, in another identity, are Son of Vulcan.” Like Sivana, Kong intends to keep Johnny’s secret, simply because he revels in being the only other person to know it. Fifth, even my first comics story ever couldn’t make it into print without a major typo. On page 13 I had Son of Vulcan swear “By the Twelve Immortals!” This got machine-lettered as “By the Twelve Mortals!” Not quite the same thing. Son of Vulcan’s climactic battle is with a version of the Trojan wooden horse which has been designed by Dr. Kong to replenish its own body (like a living tree, only far more quickly) when SOV knocks off a splinter or two. But our hero eventually destroys the rampaging monster by firing a flaming arrow into its wooden throat, burning it up from within. I’m certainly not going to make any great claims for my Son of Vulcan script. Still, Pat Masulli liked it well enough that, only about a week after I mailed it to Derby, Connecticut, I received back a letter from him saying Charlton was accepting it and would pay me $4 a page for it, a total of $80. I’ll admit, I was more than mildly surprised to learn how little Charlton paid for writing, even to first-timers. I’d been thinking of something more in the range of $10 a page—which, as it turned out, was the rate at which I would start at DC and then Marvel a few months later. However, since I was then making only about $100 a week as a teacher in the St. Louis area (though that sum went a lot further in 1965 than it does today, of course), getting $80 for something that I not only enjoyed doing but which had taken me only a weekend to write was definitely a step in the right direction. It nearly doubled my income for the week! In that same letter, Masulli asked me to try my hand at writing an issue of Blue Beetle. So I did, happily writing the story the very next weekend at the home of a high school friend and fellow teacher, Albert Tindall. (“Bud,” as he was called in the days before he became an attorney in Potosi, Missouri, even took a couple of photos of me soon afterward, including one for Alter Ego V1#9 with two Aurora “Phantom” models I had customized into Son of Vulcan and Blue Beetle; I still have the Beetle one, as a matter of fact. ) For this second script I again went to legends—this time, to the Egyptian mythology which formed the backdrop of that Blue Beetle series, since archaeologist Dan Garrett had gained his super-powers from a magical Egyptian scarab icon. Once again I utilized a character from an earlier story (in this case, Luri Hoshid, a fellow archaeologist who knew Garrett was “the invincible Blue Beetle”); also once again, I related a myth in a brief flashback. This time it was the story of the giant Eye of the god Horus, that “once ravaged the countryside until a trick put it to sleep.” In the climax of the story I took the reader on a trip through August 2000

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Amentet, “the land of the dead,” which I located “within the mind of man himself.” (A sort of early head trip—and no, I wasn’t doing any of those 1960s drugs at the time!) In that subterranean realm “the great blue serpent Apep... battles the sun-god Ra each night, and which Ra must defeat in order to rise in the morning!” Hey, I even threw in the Bennu bird (“the Egyptian version of the famous Phoenix”) and Amenit, the Devourer, who was a hybrid composed of crocodile, lion, and (if I recall correctly) hyena, or was it a jackal? Here I was following my own muse, as well as the Egyptian backstory inherent in that Blue Beetle series. Only half a year or so earlier, after studying Egyptian hieroglyphics on my own for several months with a retired professor after attending a lecture at Washington University in St. Louis, I had been accepted (with my “tutor’s” recommendation) to study Egyptology at the University of Chicago’s famous Oriental Institute, but I had had to give that a pass because I couldn’t afford to become a full-time student. Messrs. Fraccio and Tallarico again did the artistic honors for this story, and did a rather creditable job on the Eye of Horus itself. A bit trickier were the people whom the Eye turned into his hawk-headed slaves. The scene of a hawk-headed Luri hitting Dan Garrett over the

Left: Perhaps the most overtly Marvel-like Charlton strip was “The Sentinels,” created by Gary Friedrich and Sam Grainger (who would later both work for the House of Ideas. Here’s a panel detail from their debut in Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt #54. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

CBA Interview

Pete Morisi, Man of Thunderbolt Talking with PAM about his long brilliant career in comics Conducted and transcribed by Glen D. Johnson Pete Morisi is one of the most prolific artists of our time. To the best of my knowledge, he worked for all the major comics publishing outfits. I have corresponded with Pete since 1964, when Ronn Foss first made me aware of his work. At this time I was editor of the fanzine The Comic Reader, having taken over from Jerry Bails. Ronn showed me a sample of art from an issue of the Fawcett Lash LaRue comic and asked if I could identify the artist. It required only a quick glance to confirm that the artist was Golden Age great George Tuska. “Wrong!” Ronn said, and he proceeded to show me the initials “PM” on the splash page. Ronn told me the artist was Pete Morisi. During our interview, Pete proved both very knowledgeable about the field of comic art, and helpful when asked about his own background. —GDJ Glen D. Johnson: Pete, today it is very common to have comics fans break into the profession of comic book writer or artist. Weren’t you a fan before you became a pro? Pete Morisi: I don’t think there were any comic book fans when I was growing up. I was the only one on my block who saved some of those early titles. I loved comic books and newspaper strips. So I guess the answer is, “Yes, I was a fan before I became a pro.” Glen: I’ve noticed that you have a few nice pages of original comic book artwork. One is a Silver Streak cover by Jack Cole, and another is a Simon & Kirby cover featuring The Guardian from StarSpangled Comics. How do you happen to have such rare pages of Golden Age artwork? Pete: You got that wrong, kiddo. The Jack Cole original is a Claw vs. Daredevil splash page, done in colored inks, and it is a beauty. Probably done for Silver Streak Comics. I was working part time as a delivery boy in Manhattan, when one of those deliveries was next door to Lev Gleason Publications. After my delivery I knocked on Lev Gleason’s door and told him I was an art student, and did he have any old originals he could give me. He said, “Sure, son,” and gave me the Cole original and a costumed hero strip called “13.” I think that was drawn by Jerry Robinson. As for the Simon & Kirby Guardian cover, I traded a fellow student for it, but don’t remember any details. All three of those originals are gems. Glen: As a youngster, did you like to draw? Pete: I can’t remember not having a pencil or piece of chalk in my hand. I’d draw on paper bags, the cement ground of alleyways, and sometimes make up my own strips in my school copybooks. Glen: Who were your early influences? Pete: Caniff, Sickles, Robbins (although I didn’t know Sickles was doing some of Terry and the Pirates). My family couldn’t afford to buy the higher-priced Journal-American newspaper, so I never got to see Prince Valiant or Flash Gordon. August 2000

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Glen: When did you decide you wanted to be an artist? Pete: Somehow, I guess I always knew it, but the thing that pushed me over the edge was Superman. I was ten years old in 1938 [when Action Comics #1 hit the stands], and the thought that a man could fly, leap over tall buildings, and have bullets bounce off his chest fascinated me. I wanted to be a part of a business that could capture my imagination like that. I had to be part of it. Glen: As a young fan interested in comics, who impressed you the most? Pete: In one word: Kirby! I liked Blue Bolt, but not the Simon version. It was the Kirby art that drew my attention to the strip. I knew, even then, that I was seeing something special. I’ve been a fan ever since, although I don’t always agree with some of the stuff he did. To me, Captain America will always be Kirby’s most interesting art. Lou Fine could draw a superb figure, Reed Crandall could draw it with power, Will Eisner could tell a fantastic story with art that was his style… but only Jack Kirby could draw action. Raw, wild, boisterous action that would splash across the panel borders and make you say, “Wow!” When I look back at those Captain America stories, I see a lot of bad art, a lot of faking and bluffing; but the action, the mood, and the comradeship were there. A new concept in comics had been born. Simon and Kirby went on top of the world. I also enjoyed The Guardian [in “The Newsboy Legion”], “Sandman,” “Manhunter,” Stuntman, and Fighting American… but not as much. Also, The Boy Commandos and The Boy Explorers. I spoke to Simon once and asked him who inked Kirby years ago. He said that he was involved in everything… which means I wasn’t going to get a straight answer. And I didn’t. Glen: When you say you didn’t agree with some of the stuff Kirby did, what didn’t you agree with? Pete: I liked the lean, mean, and sleek look that Kirby created for his costumed heroes. That look was meant for action, and Kirby delivered

Above: Often the only clue as to the identity of a Morisi-drawn story was the initials “PAM,” leaving many admirers wondering just who the heck the artist was! Opposite page: Great T-bolt commission piece by the master! ©2000 Peter A. Morisi. Left inset: Couple of issues of Pete’s memorable Charlton series, Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt, a character the artist owns the rights to. ©2000 Peter A. Morisi. Below: The Staten Island resident still finds time now and then in his retirement to knock out some of his handsome artwork. Courtesy of Pete Morisi.

CBA Interview

Glanzman’s Derby Days Our Man Sam discusses his Charlton work in the ’60s Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

Below: The artist in repose. Sam takes a break from all of his DC war work in this shot from 1976. Courtesy of the artist.

Sam J. Glanzman has been in the trenches of the comics industry for about 60 years now, starting with Funnies, Inc., where he worked alongside his brother, Louis (later a renowned painter), as an artist. His most memorable work include Kona for Dell; Hercules and “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz” for Charlton; “U.S.S. Stevens” and “The Haunted Tank” for DC; a stint on the “It Happened to Me” for Outdoor Life magazine; and inker for various Jonah Hex mini-series over Tim Truman’s pencils for Vertigo. Sam might also be characterized as the father of mainstream autobiographical comics with his use of the form to express his World War II Naval experiences in the “U.S.S. Stevens” back-up stories, culminating with his Marvel Graphic Novel, A Sailor’s Life. The artist was interviewed by phone on March 17, 2000, and he copyedited the transcript. Comic Book Artist: After you got out of the Navy in ’46, did you try to get back to work in the comics? Sam Glanzman: Not at first, no. CBA: Why was that? Sam: Well, because my first comic strip, “The Fly Man,” I did before the war, I was getting $7. 50 a page for the whole damn thing, pencils, inks, story, and coloring. So, when I got out of the service, I figured, “Hell, that’s not much money.” So I started working in cabinet shops, lumber mills, and boat yards. I kinda bummed around. CBA: Pretty physical labor. Sam: Yeah. Then I got married. CBA: You were installing machine guns? Sam: Yeah, that was in the mid-’50s, I think. I got married, and I started work at Republic Aircraft installing .50 caliber guns in their Sabre jets. CBA: Where were you living when you got married? Sam: I was living in Rockaway, later Valley Stream, then we got a home in Masapequa Park where I started at Republic. Sometime later my wife saw an ad in The New York Times looking for comic artists, so I scooted into New York with a portfolio. Somewhere along the line, I was also doing some illustrations for hardcover books, because that was paying $750 a book, instead of $7. 50 a page. And I only had to draw six or eight illustrations in the book, but I wasn’t getting enough books to work on. CBA: What kind of books were they, do you recall? Sam: Children’s books. One of them was a pocket book, a thing on scouting, and I did some stuff for Grosset & Dunlap. I did some ghosting for my brother, too. CBA: Louis Glanzman? Sam: Yeah. Let’s see... something that’s got my name on it... Jet Cadet, I think. It was a series of hardcover books. CBA: For kids? Sam: Yeah, for kids. I think I got a byline on that. Anyway, like I said, I wasn’t getting enough jobs, so then I went to Republic Aircraft and worked steady, because I was married, and children would come later. And then, I finally went into comics. My wife saw the ad, and I took my samples over to Pat Masulli [Charlton’s executive editor] in New York. CBA: Oh, they had a New York office that you recall?

Sam: Yeah, that’s where I went. There were a bunch of guys outside with portfolios, and they’d go in and come out with sad looks on their faces, something like that, I couldn’t figure it out. Anyway, I went in, I found out it was because they were paying very low, but I said, “I don’t care, as long as you give me a lot of work.” I figured I’d learn comics. I didn’t know comics then; still don’t. So Pat gave me a lot of work, and that was that. CBA: So you were doing war material—Fightin’ Army, Fightin’ Navy, etc. ? Sam: Yeah, all war stuff. Then I got started doing Hercules, and I had a lot of fun on that. CBA: Who were you working with on that? Sam: Joe Gill was the writer. CBA: Did you get to talk to Joe at all? Sam: Oh, yeah. We played cards a couple of times. I played cards with Pat Masulli... I don’t know if Dick was there or not. Pat used to carry a pistol in his belt, you know. [laughter] He didn’t have a holster, but carried it tucked in back, beneath his jacket. CBA: [laughs] So, did you deliver your work once a week? Sam: I can’t remember whether I mailed it in, or messengered it, or what. CBA: Do you think you visited Charlton a lot? Sam: Their office in Connecticut? I don’t believe I went there very often. Three times, probably, at the most. CBA: Hercules was a fun strip, and you obviously were having a ball. Sam: Oh, yeah, and I had a free hand in it. Boy, you guys call it experimenting, I didn’t call it that, I was just having fun with it. I was squeezing in thought words, emotional words, around figures. Stuff like that... if you pick up some particular Hercules, you’ll find it. I was doing that, and I was having a lot of fun with the splash pages, layouts. CBA: So at the same time, you also began to freelance with Dell for Kona and Classics Illustrated? Sam: I think it was pretty near the same time I was working both outfits. My Charlton art was real crummy crap. When I see it now, I could die. Except for Hercules, which looked fairly decent. I did a Tarzan, that wasn’t so hot, either. But everybody seems to like it somewhat. CBA: Did you ever hear the story that the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ people noticed the sales on your unauthorized book, Jungle Tales of Tarzan, were better than the authorized version, and that somehow led to the title going over to DC? Sam: No, I don’t know anything about that, Jon. I lived in a cave then, and I live in a cave now. Murray Boltinoff used to say I lived in an ivory tower. [laughter] I don’t even know how the damn books are printed or sent out! All I know is I would do the work and give it to the editor, and I don’t know who he answers to, or what he does, COMIC BOOK ARTIST August 2000

or what happens. CBA: Do you recall how many pages you could do in a day? Sam: Oh... I don’t know, I don’t know. I was doing full books, covers and everything. CBA: Oh, yeah, you were producing a great deal of work. Sam: But dammit, I wasn’t making anything! I was doing a lot of work, but I wasn’t making nothing! CBA: Working hand to mouth? Sam: Yeah, that’s the way it was: Robbing Peter to pay Paul. CBA: Do you remember dealing with Dick Giordano at all? Sam: Yeah, he was the editor, I think. [laughs] When he went over to DC, he didn’t bring me over like the other guys. Joe Kubert picked up on me. CBA: How did the transition go between primarily working for Charlton, and then going over to DC? You must’ve visited Joe Kubert. Sam: Joe Kubert was the editor at DC, but before DC I was with Dell. Len Cole was the editor over at Dell, I remember that. My memory is so god-damned bad! Anyway, I can draw! I can still draw! CBA: You sure got it! [laughs] Sam: And I’ve still got my reference, so I can do anything. CBA: You did a fine strip, “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz.” Sam: Willy Franz wrote that. CBA: Do you remember what the story was with Willy? Was he a really young writer? Sam: Yeah. Well, first of all, he was a fan, and he wrote to me. He liked my stuff, and he sent me some of his sketches. Geez, the sketches were great, I’ve still got some of them! I wrote back to Willy because I wanted to get ahold of him and find out where he was getting his reference from, and he wrote back to me that he was getting his reference from me! [laughter] Anyway, that started it up with August 2000

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us, and I don’t know how he got hooked up with Charlton. I may have helped. I can’t remember. He’ll remember. CBA: I don’t know if he continued with comics. Sam: No, no, no, that was it: I think he also penciled maybe two stories that I inked. One was “Hertegen Forest,” or something like that, and I can’t remember the other one. He’ll remember it, he’s still young, he’s still got his brains. CBA: What was the general concept behind “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz”? Sam: I don’t remember if he was a Private or a commissioned officer, but Schultz was accused of shooting a General’s son, and he escaped, they were going to do something with him, I forget. He escaped, and got into the German lines somehow or another, and acted like a German, and hid that way. CBA: Ah, so he worked against the Germans undercover? Sam: Oh, yeah, eventually he does. He was working with them. I can remember one deal where he was the driver of a German tank, and they were supposed to run over an American soldier, and he did something to avoid what he didn’t like. He would avoid killing or trapping or anything of that towards the American soldiers when he was in the German uniform. CBA: And that lasted for a while? Sam: Yeah, that lasted for quite a while. I did the compete job, except the script, of course. CBA: Were you particularly happy doing war strips? Did you enjoy doing war strips over, say, Hercules? Sam: No, I enjoyed Hercules more than the war stuff, as far as enjoying it.... I was just doing a job, Jon. That was my problem: I should’ve looked at it as a career or a profession, something like that, maybe I would’ve learned something. But I didn’t. Maybe I’d be somewhere now.

DON’T FORGET: Sam Glanzman is a contributor to the TwoMorrows’ autobiographical anthology, STREETWISE with a 10-page story, “Cook’s Tour.” Ye ed immodestly asked the artist if the story’s title was an acknowledgement of a certain Streetwise co-editor. Our Man Sam just winked. Check out Sam’s tale! 85