Comic Book Artist #9 Preview

THE CHARLTON COMICS STORY

No. 9 August 2000

$6.95

In The U.S.

THE ACTION HERO LINE COMES ALIVE! Watchmen badge, Action-Heroes ©2000 DC Comics. Peter Cannon–Thunderbolt ©2000 Peter A. Morisi. Used with permission.

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

CELEBRATING

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher

C

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S T O R Y :

LIVES & WORK

OF THE

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1 9 4 5 - 1 9 6 8

GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

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AUGUST 2000

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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

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

OF

STEVE DITKO

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

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ARTIST™

COMIC BOOK 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

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S I M O N S O N

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

&

W O R K M A N

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W O M E N

I N

and in loving memory of

Alfredo Alcala Fred Himes Dick Sprang

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CBA Interview

“The Half-Dollar Man” Charlton Founder’s Son Reveals the Roots of the Company

by Christopher Irving Editor’s note: Charlton Comics was partially named for our first interview subject Charles Santangelo, son of the Charlton Publishing-Press and Capital Distribution co-founder John Santangelo and himself a onetime Charlton General Manager. What follows is a candid and personal talk by Charlie who still resides in Central Connecticut. You want hitherto unknown history? Well, read close!—

Above: Mid-1960s Charlton ad promoting their song lyric books, the backbone of the company, in this ad from Newdealer magazine.

Courtesy of Bob Beerbohm.

Center background: The Capital Distributing Company icon, which graced the covers of the Charlton line in the 1950s and ’60s.

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JBC Christopher Irving: Is your father still alive?

Charles Santangelo: No, he was born in 1899, but he lived up to 80 and died in 1979.

Chris: What can you tell me about your father? What made him start Charlton?

Charles: He was a bricklayer and masonry contractor working on a big project about 15 to 20 miles from Derby. He had been in the country six or seven years. In the evenings, after work, he went to the Sons of Italy with the other fellahs. My mother was a young high school teenager who lived around the corner. He fell in love with her.

He was living in Yonkers at the time, and working in Connecticut.

When he met her, he asked her if she needed anything from New York. She said, “I’d love the words to the popular songs. I’m trying to write them down in shorthand from the radio, but I’m missing words.

Can you get me a magazine with the words to the songs?”

When he went back to Yonkers, he went to every store he could get to, but none of them had the words to the songs. He bought her sheet music to a couple of the songs, but she didn’t need the music notes. She said, “It’s too bad that nobody’s got it.” My mother typed the words to a dozen songs on one sheet. He knew another Italian friend who had a relative who owned a print shop, and said, “What’s it going to cost me to make 30 to 50 copies?”

The guy said, “It’s gonna cost so much to make 20 to 50 that you might as well make 1, 000.” The idea hit him, and my father said, “What’s it going to cost to make 1, 000?”

It was something like $20, so he had 1, 000 made with “10¢” printed on the front. It was a single sheet folded. The guy came up with 1, 000, and my father got my mother and went to the local cigar store and left 20 or 30 copies. Then they went to another store and left 15 or 20. They were driving up through Connecticut, leaving copies. He’d go to the store and say, “Can you just take these; try to sell them. Don’t give me any money, and I’ll be back in a couple of weeks. Whatever you sell, keep a nickel, and give me the other 5¢.”

The sheets cost him 2¢ each to make. (As a matter of fact, he had a saying many years later, when he’d become wealthy, that “I never made a dollar; I always made a half-dollar.”)

When my father went back to the job in the city, seeing my mother once or twice a week, he went back to the first store, where he had left 20. The owner said that they sold out in two days, and to leave 40. My father then got the same report from every store—they each sold every single copy they had.

He was used to hard labor and, all of a sudden, he’d made a couple hundred bucks, quick. This was around 1934, before I was born in ‘35. When there were new songs, my mother typed out the lyrics, and my dad went to the printer and made 2, 000. The same thing happened a couple weeks later, and things started booming.

That’s how he got started.

The problem was that he was an immigrant and didn’t realize or know anything about copyright laws. Before you know it, ASCAP was after him since he didn’t have the permission of the copyright owners, and didn’t know how to go about getting it. He finally got busted and went to New Haven County Jail. He got a year and a day in New Haven County Jail. While he was there, he met another inmate named Ed Levy, an attorney who was the Corporation Counsel for the City of Waterbury who got involved in a scandal having to do with phony billing. They met and got to like each other; they were the same age.

Levy was exceptionally sharp, a Yale Law School graduate. To make it short, my father said, “If you can get me permission, I’ll get a printer and we can put out this stuff.” They shook hands, and became partners when they came out at the same time. Ed went to the music publishers in New York to arrange for permission and pay the royalties.

They started a magazine called Hit Parader. (Ed and my father were the same age, and Ed’s son and myself were the same age. At that time—when this happened in about 1937—we were about two. ) Chris: They got the printing press right after they got out of jail?

Charles: Not right after. They continued to print in New York for probably five years. At that time, in 1945 I was 10, and remember going across the street from school, where they had a few little machines. They didn’t really get into printing until after World War II, around 1947 or 1948, when they went out to get equipment and print more. Now they had the presses going, and they were hiring and training people, and my father was good at bringing in people. He found out who ran the press before he bought it, talked to the guy and offered him a deal.

I was 16 in 1951, and he got his first real binding equipment: Sheridan’s Automatic Six-Pocket Stitcher. Sheridan sent their best man to set up the equipment. When he got there that Summer, dad told me to go work with this guy Emil Ivan, who’s in his eighties now. He set up all the equipment, and we had some obsolete stitchers which dad needed a good man for, so he hired Emil. He talked to Emil, had him up for dinner and, the next thing you know, Emil quit Sheridan and came to work for us.

My father did the same thing for a fella named Smitty in New York, and got several people that way. It really helped the company grow. Being in the small town of Derby, there were no printers. He was quite a guy who knew how to draft people like a team. He knew the right guys, got them and gave them incentives, and they worked their butt off for him.

So, my dad had been doing this for a few years and had gotten pretty big. He had several people going around in cars and leaving the magazines at places. He was distributing them direct—not through any distributor or wholesaler. He was a friendly guy who would talk, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

History Lesson

The Charlton Empire A Brief History of The Derby, Connecticut Publisher

by Jon B. Cooke & Christopher Irving

Above: Cover detail of Al Fago’s Atomic Mouse, from the cover of Atomic Mouse #1. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

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.

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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

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

CBA Interview

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

Below: Cover detail by Dick Giordano for a Fightin’ Five issue.

Joe Gill created and wrote all of the quintet’s adventures! ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

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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

August 2000

CBA Interview

A Piece of the Action Charlton’s Action Hero Line and the Folks Responsible

by Christopher Irving Although considered a product of the 1960s, the Charlton Action Hero line technically had a root set back in the Golden Age of comics. The Blue Beetle premiered in Fox Comics’ Mystery Men #1, cover dated August of 1939. Over the next decade, The Blue Beetle was to shift from Fox to Holyoke Comics (another Golden Age company), and back to Fox, before his initial retirement with Blue Beetle #60, cover dated August, 1950.

Charlton Comics gained the Blue Beetle property four years later, in Oct. -Nov. 1954’s Space Adventures #13, which featured mainly reprints of Fox material, and was perhaps their hope to cash in on the new super-hero craze influenced by the Adventures of Superman TV show, as well as their chance to use their new comic book press. The Blue Beetle was awarded his own series in February of 1955, picking up the numbering from the cancelled The Thing! with #18, lasting only four issues, ending with #21 in August of the same year. (Notably only the last issue contained new material. ) Super-heroes were once more revitalized by the mid-’60s, thanks in no small part to DC’s revamping of their Golden Age characters, as well as Marvel’s introduction of influential books such as Fantastic Four. Charlton had decided to hop on the bandwagon, by bringing back their earlier attempts at super-heroes, as well as introducing a new stable of characters.

The editorial structure at Charlton was changed after the departure of General Manager Burt Levey, with the comics’ Managing Editor, Pat Masulli, promoted to oversee the entire magazine line and his one-time assistant, artist Dick Giordano, lobbied for the comics editor position. Getting the nod from management, Giordano took up the editorial reins on the entire comic book line in 1965, with the mandate to create a line of super-heroes. Apparently, Masulli was not known to interact with the creative people very often, something that would change when Giordano took over as comic book editor. As a result, opinions of Masulli tend to differ from one extreme to another.

“Terrible,” staff writer Joe Gill answered when asked about Masulli’s job as editor. “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.”

“We tolerated each other,” Charlton Art Director Frank McLaughlin explained. “He was my boss and I worked hard so he had no complaints. Because he was not well-liked by others, part of my job was as intermediary between production and the engravers, typesetters, artists, press operators and free-lancers.”

“At work, he was a very stern taskmaster, and absolutely perfect for the other (non-comic) books that he edited,” Giordano said.

“His background was mostly as a colorist, but he was a great businessman. He and someone else started a coloring company in New York City that continued to work for Charlton after Pat moved out.

He was a good business person, and he learned everything about the production process when he was running the comics.

“When I took over the comics, and Pat was in charge of everything else, we had very little contact. We would go out to lunch regularly, he and I and a couple of other executives but, aside from that, we had no further or social contact after business hours.”

As the new comics editor, it was not only up to Giordano to reevaluate the comics side of Charlton, but he also had to pick up the loose threads from Masulli.

“The way that Pat Masulli was running the comic department was as an also-ran,” Giordano said. “He didn’t have any choice, and August 2000

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

wasn’t being derelict on his duties, but he had too much to do with the music department, so they hired me to pay attention to the comics.

“No one ever told me ‘Your job is to sell comics better,’ there was no question about it, I understood that. I started on a plan to find new talent and to come up with new books. At that time, we were doing Blue Beetle and Son of Vulcan. Those were the only two super-heroes there when I started, and a revival of Captain Atom, I think, was on the drawing board. It was clear that, if there was anything in the field, there was some activity in super-heroes, so we decided that we had to take that route.”

Above: Among the hundreds of silverlines Dick Giordano shared with me, there was this Blue Beetle cover lineart (from an unidentified issue—never mind their numbering scheme, the biggest pain in the butt collecting Charlton comics was their lack of a number on the cover to begin with!). Blue Beetle ©2000 DC Comics.

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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.

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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

August 2000

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

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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.

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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

August 2000

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

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

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.

61

CBA Interview

The Boyette Brilliance A 1997 Interview with the Late Pat Boyette, Texas Star Artist Compiled & conducted

by Don Mangus What follows is part-essay/part-interview with one of the more under-appreciated comic book artists of our time, the late Pat Boyette, who passed away earlier this year. A renaissance man involved in numerous different mediums (film director/screenwriter/producer, radio announcer, TV anchorman are just a few accomplishments), Pat was also a participant—by mail from his base in San Antonio—in Charlton Comics’ Action Hero Line with The Peacemaker, Spookman, The Phantom, and, significantly, “The Children of Doom” in Charlton Premiere #1. A comprehensive interview with the artist (conducted by Kenneth Smith) appeared in a recent Comics Journal, but no survey of ’60s Charlton would be proper without Pat’s presence, so many thanks to Don Mangus for pulling out his CAPA-APA article from 1997 and allowing us the opportunity to give Don’s talk a wider audience. —JBC

Below: Courtesy of J. David Spurlock, here’s a self-portrait by Pat done in 1998.

August 2000

Pat Boyette: I think I am very fortunate. In my lifetime, I have had the opportunity to do most everything I wanted to do. That isn’t to say I was successful at all of it, but I thoroughly enjoyed doing the things I was able to. I was born in San Antonio, Texas, but my awareness of things that would eventually control my interests began in the years that I spent in a little town called Junction.

My father had a business that was located right next to the weekly newspaper, which was just down the main street from the movie theater. I was fascinated by that weekly newspaper and the metals and the typesetting and the general feel of that little newspaper. It excited me more than anything you could imagine, until one night, because air conditioning was hard to come by in those days, I was walking down the main street with my family and I looked up over at the theater and I could see in the window where the projectionist was laboring behind these very hot arc lamps. He had a fan going and sweat was pouring off him, rivers of it off this man, and the atmosphere and the attitude of what was happening, this guy projecting motion pictures, was a big thrill to me. I remember trying very hard to build a projection booth in my garage. I built this box and cut holes in it for the projector to shine through.

Motion pictures held me in total fascination. So I had a thing for printing, and for motion pictures and they’re more closely aligned than you might think.

My closest friend in Junction, at the time, was also a kid that wanted to be an artist—no, a cartoonist not an artist—a cartoonist. We would spend hours drawing these cartoons which were

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

terrible things technically, but God, we loved them. And somewhere in the grade school days almost like a revelation, it dawned on me that words could be put together to convey the thoughts that were in my mind. I became aware that what really fascinated me was motion pictures, comics, and newspapers, and all these things were the basis for telling stories. So my primary interest really was not in art, nor in motion pictures, but in telling a story in some way or fashion and that guided me in all the things I did in the following years, because when I went into radio and into television, this was still telling a story. That was the key to my life and cartooning came only after my desire to write. It was merely a matter of being able to say, ”Gosh! Wouldn’t it be great if l could find graphically a way in which to express these words that I’m putting down?“ Then I learned to draw, to illustrate the words.

My grammar school years were taken up with drawing pictures, historical stories, on a long roll of canvas, which simulated a motion picture screen and it was a scroll that unrolled, you turned it and this drawing would pass in front of a little stage that I had built. There were two or three guys along with me, working on it, and for two years we worked on that bloody thing. Which is fine, except such important subjects as math and English suffered as a result of it!

Though I could draw pictures, being able to sign my name was a problem, but again it goes back to storytelling and that’s what it was about. At that time, l started thinking, “Well, if I’m going to be an artist, or a storyteller, or a writer, I should have some education in that direction.” At that point, there was an opening for a child actor on a radio program that was sponsored by Gebhardt’s Chili. I got the job, playing the part of a little kid on the commercials. The station itself started doing dramatic documentaries which required the story to be told through the eyes or experiences of a youngster and so I got that job. Well, let me assure you, that once I saw the microphone and all the lights buzzing on the control panels, and all of these wonderful things, drawing and writing and everything else went out the window, and I was determined what I was going to be was a broadcaster.

Looming up ahead was the coming of World War II. We all knew it, and we also knew that we were going to be the high school class that fought it. With the sudden drafting of many of the younger guys who were announcers and newscasters, openings started appearing all over the country. WOAI, which was an old home base for me, was a clear channel station, 50, 000 watts that was heard in 36 states and 11 foreign countries. It was a powerful station and was susceptible to my suggestion that I be given a spot on the news desk.

I became a news editor and very quickly after that, decided I wanted to read the news, not just write it. That opportunity presented itself at another station and so I went there. It was a disaster really, but it gave me a foot in the door. I returned to WOAI within a matter of just a few months, and I went back as a news editor, in charge of their 10 O’Clock News.

I was still not doing as much announcing as I wanted to do, living off a deferment, because radio was a vital industry, but I was getting antsy about it. I didn’t like the idea of not being in the service because everybody I knew was gone and I finally couldn’t stand it anymore. I took my displeasure at the condition I was in, plus the opportunity to go back to broadcasting the news as a sign to move to another station. I was living off WOAI’s deferment and knew when that deferment was up that Spring, in six months I would be gone, so that was my way of volunteering. WOAI asked if they should reapply for my deferment, and I said no. Sure enough, I went 73

CBA Interview

The McLaughlin Report Frank McLaughlin on Judomaster and Life at Charlton Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

Inset right: Cover of the first issue of Judomaster, #93, featuring our hero and his sidekick, Tiger. ©2000 DC Comics.

Below: Judomaster utilizing his martial artistry on this cover detail from Charlton Bullseye #3, the “Special Kung Fu Issue.” Art by Frank McLaughlin. Courtesy of Bob Layton & CPL/Gang Productions. Judomaster ©2000 DC Comics.

78

Frank McLaughlin inked two million issues of The Flash, a billion-and-a-half Justice Leagues of Americas, and has embellished Green Arrow since the Jurassic Age. Seriously, Frank has been in the industry for forty years but is still probably best renowned for starting the first martial arts comic, Judomaster, half a decade before the Kung Fu fad hit the States. A master of Judo himself, these days Frank continues to work in the industry. This telephone interview was conducted on March 15, 2000, and the artist copyedited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Did you have an early interest in comics?

Frank McLaughlin: Sure. I read whatever was available when I was a kid. That’s going back… early ’40s, you know?

CBA: Any particular artists that inspired you?

Frank: Actually, I was inspired mostly by the magazine illustrators of that time: Colby Whitmore, Joe Bowler, Howard Terpning, Joe De Mers, and many more. The earlier illustrators from the art noveau period, as well—Gustav Klimt, Alfons Mucha, and others. Later on, strip artists such as Alex Raymond and Milton Caniff.

CBA: Did you go to art school?

Frank: Yeah, I did. I went to University of Bridgeport, New Haven State Teachers’ College—we used to call that Strange Creatures College. [laughs] Most of what I learned about comics came from working with other artists, Maurice Whitman, Dick Giordano, and of course Stan Drake.

CBA: Were you assisting Stan Drake?

Frank: Yes. Tex Blaisdell was assisting Stan and left to take on the Little Orphan Annie strip.

Dick Giordano suggested I do some samples and so I did. When I met Stan (for the first time), I felt somewhat intimidated as one might

expect. He hired me on the spot after a quick glance at the samples. I was completely shocked and didn’t know what to say! We wound up hitting golf balls the rest of the afternoon at a local driving range. At that time, he was a “scratch” golfer and had won a few tournaments. We hit it off immediately.

CBA: I heard some stories about how tough it would be for him to make the syndicate deadlines.

Frank: Well, Stan worked very hard on the strip, it wasn’t like Peanuts; everything was researched, and he took pictures for a lot of stuff, and used a lot of reference. He took great pride in what he did. Sure, it took time to do a set of dailies and a Sunday. He was amazing, he could sit down and say, “I’ll be out of here in an hour,” and he would count up how many heads he had to do, how many hands and so forth, and he’d say, “20 minutes for this, 20 minutes for that,” and so forth, and son of a gun! Almost precisely, to the minute, he’d be done! I don’t know how he did that!

CBA: Were you doing backgrounds?

Frank: I would pencil and ink just about everything that wasn’t a main figure. Quite often we took Polaroid shots of each other. Stan felt a natural pose that was photographed always worked better than one that was “just made up.” We would turn a posed photo of Stan into an old woman, for example, and laugh and kid about it later.

There was a time when he was behind deadlines for months and months and months, and finally he got caught up, and we decided to celebrate. We finished in the morning, and we were officially caught up to deadline, so we decided to play a joke and we did an Xrated Friday strip, and then we did the regular one, and pasted the fake one over it, you know? So, we sent it in to the syndicate, and Stan said, “I’ll bet they don’t get the joke.” I said, “We’ll see.” Sure enough, the phone rings, and it’s the editor at King Features, and he says, “Stan, are you going to be home?” And Stan says, “Sure, I’m going to be home. Why?” He said, “We’re going to be in the neighborhood”—from 60 miles away—”and we thought we’d stop by and see you.” [laughs] They thought he’d flipped his wig! [laughter] Stan finally suggested that he peel the top layer back and he would find the “real” strip underneath. There was a long pause as he did so and then he responded, “Uh… okay! Thanks, Stan.” Click. We roared!

CBA: No sense of humor.

Frank: I’d love to have that strip back, though. It was hysterical.

The syndicate guy didn’t get it. So, that was a waste of time, I guess, but we had fun.

CBA: Stan was in Westport?

Frank: Yeah. It’s about a 20-minute drive from here.

CBA: Did you see John Prentice a lot?

Frank: Oh, sure! We used to occasionally have lunch together...

John, Stan, Bill Yates, Gill Fox, Curt Swan....

CBA: “The Westport Mafia,” right?

Frank: “The Westport Mafia,” right. [laughter] Occasionally, COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

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

Right inset: Cover to Joe Gill & Sam Glanzman’s Hercules book for Charlton. ©2000 the respective copyright holder.

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.

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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

CBA Interview

The Lonely War of Will Franz The Writer on “Willy Schultz” and Charlton Comics Conducted by Jon B. Cooke

Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson

Right inset: Cover of the first issue of Fightin’ Army—# 76—to feature Will Franz’s memorable war series, “The Lonely War of Captain Willy Schultz.” ©2000 Roger Broughton/ACG Comics.

Will Franz was a teenager when he first starting writing for Charlton Comics in 1967. By the few who “know,” Will’s Fightin’ Army series, “The Lonely War of Captain Willy Schultz,” about a German-speaking American officer masquerading as a German soldier behind enemy lines, is recalled as one of the finest war serials in comics, putting the reader in the shoes of the “enemy,” a rare occurrence in America’s usual gung-ho war comics. Working solely as a writer of war stories—mostly for Charlton but some for Joe Kubert’s “Make War No More” titles at DC—Will left the field by 1973. CBA thanks Will’s often artist-partner, Sam Glanzman, for getting us in touch with the writer. Thanks also to Fred Hembeck. This interview, conducted by phone on March 19, 2000 , was copyedited by Will.

Below: The writer Will Franz dressed up in his role as Captain(!) of the Newcastle Infantrie, the 16th century military reenactment unit, “Companie of the Shot.”

Phew! For a second we though this get-up was all the rage amongst New York civil workers!

Courtesy of the writer. Photo by Cynthia Farnell.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you from?

Will Franz: I’m from Brooklyn, New York. I met Sam Glanzman...

I think I wrote to him sometime in 1965 or ‘66. I used to collect the Combat series that he did for Dell, and I always wanted to be an artist myself, and I did my own drawings. I sent samples of my work to Sam care of Dell, and he sent me a letter back and critiqued my drawings, and wanted to meet me. So I went and met him, and one of the first things he wanted to know was, where were my swipe files, meaning my reference material. He was quite surprised to find most of my reference material was from his own work!

CBA: [laughs] That’s exactly the story he just gave me! [laughter] Will: He’s a character, you know? [laughs] You heard of balls of brass? He had iron balls! [laughter] I used to make up my own stories, and he was impressed with some of what he saw, and he said Dick Giordano at Charlton was looking to start up some

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series, and for me to write.

Sam showed me how he preferred a script executed—the format—and he said, “Get these together and send ’em out to Dick Giordano.”

I sent them off to Dick and he didn’t like them, and sent them back. He explained why, and that he’d like to see more.

CBA: What were the strips?

Will: They were short stories, like four pages each. I have them buried somewhere. Believe me, they were nothing to speak of. They were war stories. I specialized in warfare, and I put together some other thing, a horrendous little Vietnam thing called “The Sniper.” I wasn’t proud of it, but hey, I put it together, Dick loved it, and he made it the cover story on some magazine called Charlton Premiere, and that was it! From then on, he asked me to work up some series ideas, and I came up with “The Lonely War of Willy Schultz,” “The Iron Corporal,” and then a thankfully short-lived series called “The Devil’s Brigade,” about two rogue tanks in North Africa. Working with Dick Giordano was fun.

CBA: Oh, so were you living in Brooklyn at the time?

Will: Yeah, I was living in Brooklyn. I was 15 or 16.

CBA: You were born in 1950?

Will: Right. I developed Type 1 Diabetes just before my 14th birthday, and couldn’t attend regular school. I was really sick, still serious but under control now.

I guess I was coping with some of the problems of diabetes by writing and drawing.

CBA: What attracted you to war material?

Will: I really don’t know. There are no soldiers in my family.

A diabetic counselor said years ago that in a way, dealing with warfare, I was dealing with my own medical problems. I went on and became a fencing master years later, and I was very aggressive and meticulous, and again, they were saying, “This is your way of coping with the cruelties of your disease,” so to speak.

CBA: Were you into other comic books, too, or was it primarily war?

Will: No, I wanted to be an illustrator. To me, my skill—with the diabetes—there’d be times when I couldn’t control a pencil or pen properly. My reliability, I felt, wasn’t up to a professional level, and I didn’t COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

CBA Interview

Toasting Absent Heroes Alan Moore discusses the Charlton-Watchmen Connection Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson To admit I felt decidedly out of place calling one of comics’ best writers to discuss—ugh! of all topics!—comic book characters is a drastic understatement, but the sheer coolness of having a chat with Mr. Alan Moore eased the prospect considerably. The self-professed anarchist is plainly a nice guy and we spent more time talking about a real-life character—Steve Ditko—than, say, the relationship between Judomaster and Tiger. Alan currently rules the marketplace with his critically-successful and popular America’s Best Comics line, his and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell collection is flying off bookstore shelves, and life seems pretty good for the British writer. And, yes, good reader, there really is a connection with the wildly-popular scribe and Charlton Comics. This interview took place via phone on June 16, 2000. (Special thanks to JBK for the speedy transcription. )

Below: T-Shirt design by Dave Gibbons adapted from DC’s Who’s Who #5 featuring the cast of Watchmen. ©2000 DC Comics.

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Comic Book Artist: Did you read Charlton comics as a kid?

Alan Moore: Yes, I did. It was kind of pecking order situation, with the distribution of all American comics being very spotty in England. I believe they were originally brought over as ballast on ships, which meant there’d be sometimes a whole month of a particular comic, or even a whole lot of comics that I just missed. So, consequently, I’d buy my favorites early in the month, and then a little later, I’d probably buy my second favorites [laughter]... and by the end of the month, I’d be down to Casper, the Friendly Ghost just to keep my comic habit fulfilled. Somewhere along the way there, I’d see the Archie/MLJ/Mighty super-hero comics, the Tower comics that were around at the time....

CBA: Was Charlton at the bottom of the list for you?

Alan: They’d vary, it would depend. Charlton would be at some points low on the list, but then, there was a wonderful period which I later realized was when Dick Giordano was having a great deal of creative say in the Charlton books, when they became very high on the list. There’s still one of the books, Charlton Premiere— sort of a Showcase title—and I remember in the second or third issue of that, there was this wonderful thing called “Children of Doom” by Pat Boyette, who died recently. It was an incredibly sort of progressive piece of storytelling. He was obviously, I’d imagine, looking at artists like Steranko that were coming up and messing around with the form and sort of experimenting. Pat decided to pitch his own hat into the ring, apparently.

Prior to that golden period when Dick was editor, I very much enjoyed the Steve Ditko stuff—Captain Atom and the Charlton monster books—so the main rea-

son that I liked Charlton would’ve been probably Steve Ditko, originally. Not to say that there weren’t other great artists and writers, but the ace of it all was, Ditko was the only one that I really noticed, until that period when Dick took over.

I remember there was a very short-lived strip that I think was probably based on Harlan Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin! Said the TickTock Man” that was about a kind of futuristic jester character drawn

by Jim Aparo. He might’ve even been called the Harlequin or something like that, but I remember it was drawn by Jim Aparo, it lasted for a couple of episodes, probably written by Steve Skeates or somebody.

There were some very good little strips, and then of course, there was that big Charlton revamp where we got the new Blue Beetle, the new Captain Atom, and so forth, which was a shot in the arm. All of these things contributed in pushing Charlton higher up my league title of which comics to buy first. They never quite ousted Marvel or DC, but during that golden period, Charlton was up there with the best of them.

CBA: Do you recall The Question?

Alan: Yes, I do. That was another very interesting character, and it was almost a pure Steve Ditko character, in that it was odd-looking.

“The Question” didn’t look like any other super-hero on the market, and it also seemed to be a kind of mainstream comics version of Steve Ditko’s far more radical “Mr. A,” from witzend. I remember at the time—this would’ve been when I was just starting to get involved in British comics fandom—there was a British fanzine that was published over here by a gentleman called Stan Nichols (who has since gone to write a number of fantasy books). In Stan’s fanzine, Stardock, there was an article called “Propaganda, or Why the Blue Beetle Voted for George Wallace.” [laughter] This was the late-’60s, and British comics fandom had quite a strong hippie element. Despite the fact that Steve Ditko was obviously a hero to the hippies with his psychedelic “Dr. Strange” work and for the teen angst of SpiderMan, Ditko’s politics were obviously very different from those fans.

His views were apparent through his portrayals of Mr. A and the protesters or beatniks that occasionally surfaced in his other work. I think this article was the first to actually point out that, yes, Steve Ditko did have a very right-wing agenda (which of course, he’s completely entitled to), but at the time, it was quite interesting, and that probably led to me portraying [Watchmen character] Rorschach as an extremely right-wing character.

CBA: When you read some of Ditko’s diatribes in “The Question” and in some issues of Blue Beetle, did you read it with bemusement or disgust?

Alan: Well...

CBA: A mix of both?

Alan: Well, no. I can look at Salvador Dali’s work and marvel at it, despite the fact that I believe that Dali was probably a completely disgusting human being [laughter] and borderline fascist, but that doesn’t detract from the genius of his artwork. With Steve Ditko, I at least felt that though Steve Ditko’s political agenda was very different to mine, Steve Ditko had a political agenda, and that in some ways set him above most of his contemporaries. During the ’60s, I learned pretty quickly about the sources of Steve Ditko’s ideas, and I realized very early on that he was very fond of the writing of Ayn Rand.

CBA: Did you explore her philosophy?

Alan: I had to look at The Fountainhead. I have to say I found Ayn Rand’s philosophy laughable. It was a “white supremacist dreams of the master race,” burnt in an early-20th century form. Her ideas didCOMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000

Deep Background

Project: Blockbuster Bob Greenberger reveals DC’s Charlton Weekly Project adding a psychological twist to the proceedings. Later on, Paul Kupperberg played off the notion as the spirit of his father speaking Editor’s note: Courtesy of a tip shared by Chris Irving, I first to him in the Tod Smith-drawn mini-series. discover evidence that DC once planned a weekly tabloid featuring Dick’s old pals Pete Morisi and Frank McLaughlin were invited the Charlton Action Hero characters when my talk with Frank back and asked to start new serials with their creations, Peter Cannon McLaughlin reveals he drew a Judomaster story for the company and Judomaster respectively. Both would do everything: Write, pencil, around 1985. It was slated for use in something called Blockbuster, a and ink. proposed weekly that evidently was abandoned. That same day, I I was left to find talent for Captain Atom, The Question, and receive Ken Bruzenak’s sketchbooks (to illustrate his interview in Sarge Steel. Fortunately, we had a number of freelancers with fond CBA #8) and, lo! I find logo designs by Ken for the same aborted memories of the heroes so picking people was none too difficult. Of book. The mystery widens as Dave Gibbons then e-mails me a cover course, I was still meeting people and developing my own editorial to the unrealized (and hitherto unknown) Comics Cavalcade Weekly tastes, so I was open to everything and everyone. featuring the Charlton characters and Superman—and just what the Such a novice approach may have helped doom the project. hell is Comics Cavalcade Weekly?! I’m losing sleep pondering this After all, Dick had some notion what he wanted the book to be but I conundrum, and I hear that Pete Morisi possesses a T-bolt story still don’t recall getting an in-depth look at that notion. I was pretty much unpubbed. In desperation, I call Mike Gold (former DC staffer who left to my own devices, with Dick acting as cheerleader/consultant. In contributes a sidebar here on the name “Blockbuster”) but he knows retrospect, launching something as new and different as a weekly little and suggests I call Joey Cavalieri at DC. “Nope, can’t help comic should have been given to an experienced editor—neither me ya, ”Joey sez, “try Robert Greenberger.” Thank heavens, Robert is an nor IF YOU ENJOYED THIS Dick,PREVIEW, to be honest—one who could have devoted a lot more time electronic correspondent and, jackpot! Robert solvesCLICK for us the mysTHE LINK toTO THISBerger’s schedule was such that she could focus it, ORDER much as Karen tery of Project: Blockbuster. —JBC ISSUE IN PRINT OR on DIGITAL FORMAT! New Talent Showcase and developing people for DC’s use.

Mike Barr volunteered to write “The Question,” which got Paul Levitz made a gift of the Charlton heroes to then-Executive assigned to New Talent Showcase alumnus Stan Woch to pencil and Editor Dick Giordano in 1983. Dick was told they included Captain Rick Magyar to ink. Andy Helfer, still a Special Projects editor at the Atom, Blue Beetle, The Question, Sarge Steel, Peacemaker, Peter time, had been talking with Dick about working together on someCannon—Thunderbolt, and Nightshade. None of the other features thing so they cobbled together the idea of producing Sarge Steel. such as the Fightin’ Five or the one-off characters such as Denny Dick didn’t have the time to pencil his old feature but knew he could O’Neil’s Wander were included. That December, when I interviewed fit in inking. Trevor VonEeden, just walking off Thriller, got tabbed for to join staff, Dick spoke with delight of how he was developing the that gig. heroes into something special: America’s first weekly comic book.

“Captain Atom” was a little tougher to figure out. He was a Little did I realize that with some time on my hands, as both super-hero, similar to Firestorm but in need of an experienced hand. I Crisis on Infinite Earths and Who’s Who slowly geared up, that Dick turned to Paul Kupperberg, who clearly knew how to write superwould be asking for my help. Truth be told, the original project files heroes and could try something different. I finally settled on a neware long gone and we’re dealing with fuzzy memories at best so this comer named Paul Chadwick to pencil. If I have the chronology right, recreation is the best I can do. he had just done some Dazzler work at Marvel.

Dick needed my assistance in keeping this and some of his other The “Superman” feature, it was decided, would be reprints of COMIC BOOK ARTIST #9 editorial projects (such as The Dark Knight Returns and DC then-current newspaper strip which featured Superman and other Interviews with Charlton alumni the JOE GILL, DICK GIORDANO, STEVE SKEATES, ROY THOMAS, PETE MORISI, Challenge) moving along. He outlined plans to feature all the DENNIS O’NEIL,heroes, as produced

by Marty Pasko, George Tuska, and Vince JIM APARO, PAT BOYETTE, FRANK MCLAUGHLIN, SAM Charlton heroes in two- to four-page stories plus GLANZMAN, some sort plus of ALAN MOOREColletta.

It had Watchmen not been previously collected except as a single volon the Charlton/ Connection, DC’s planned and more!

Superman tale to identify the book as clearly set at DC. It would be a ALL-CHARLTON ume fromWEEKLY, Tor Books, so would be fresh, in color, and hopefully a DICK GIORDANO cover!

32-page newsstand comic and hopefully help change people’s readmust-have for comics fans. We formatted it so you would get a (80-page Digital Edition) $3.95 ing habits. week, complete with Sunday strip, in two pages. http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_56&products_id=525 Along the way, Marv Wolfman asked Dick how the Charlton Dick gave everything the green light and we got started. Some, heroes should be handled in Crisis and it was agreed that they’d be such as Giffen and Morisi, produced in very steady batches so their on their own world and wind up on the one remaining DC-Earth chapters started filling the cabinets. Others were tougher to get into when all was over. The heroes would be immediately integrated into the groove of producing weekly storytelling. We got a few chapters the continuity, included in the Who’s Who, etc. Any writer who done for “Captain Atom” but Paul Chadwick was not fast. In fact, hoped to guest star them in their own titles were told they were not Denys Cowan came in and started penciling the feature before we to be seen until Crisis. got too far. Thankfully, Chadwick still talks to me these days.

Dick had already made numerous assignments as he started to Dick kept calling it Blockbuster, a named bandied about for get a feel for what he wanted the book to be like. Blue Beetle, the some time but never used for a comic. Looking further back into DC’s light-hearted crime fighter, was given to Steve Englehart, David Ross, history, I chose to revive Comics Cavalcade (All-American’s answer to and (oddly) Alex Niño. One of the most interesting elements Steve DC’s World’s Finest) so logo designs from Ken Bruzenak evolved from introduced was having the Beetle married, his wife supportive of Ted Blockbuster to the unwieldy Comics Cavalcade Weekly. Had some Kord’s career. (Imagine an updated Elongated Man/Sue Dibny relasaner head spoken up, such as Paul or Bruce Bristow, it would have tionship. ) had a stronger name. Another tyro error.

Peacemaker went to Keith Giffen and Gary Martin. Keith I asked Dave Gibbons for the favor of his producing the first would write for the first time, and pencil the serial. It was Keith who cover but we never really thought beyond that on how the covers decided that Christopher Smith heard a voice from the helmet, should be handled after that—spotlighting one feature or all of them.

by Robert Greenberger

Background image: Promotional painting for DC Comics, heralding the acquisition of Charlton’s Action Hero Line. ©2000 DC Comics.

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 9

August 2000