Nostalgia Age of Comics

Re-presenting a 1974 rarity: a trade journal article on DC Comics’ production department

by JON B. COOKE

Here’s a charming, informative, and rarely-seen item that Ye Ed discovered while surfing the interweb for something entirely different: a printing industry trade journal dated July 1974 that discussed the laborious process the DC Comics production department developed to reprint their Golden Age comics.

Included are some great staged pix of DC staffers, including Carmine Infantino, Sol Harrison, rarely-seen Gerda Gattel, and a kid looking over Plop! production stats — the late Alan Kupperberg!

Paul Levitz, who was editor Joe Orlando’s assistant at the time, remembered Wayne Seelal, the technician extensively photographed in the piece: “Wayne was the darkroom guy, running the stat camera in a space that would probably fail any modern OSHA ventilation standard.” (The only other reference we found in regards to Wayne was his name in the production credits in an issue of the Amazing World of DC Comics prozine, as well as in the Amazing World of Superman treasury edition (which gets a shout-out in the article). He also was thanked for his photographic skills by author Michael Fleisher in the writer’s Batman Encyclopedia and Great Superman Book

Of particular interest is Ms. Gattel examining the legendary bound volumes of DC Comics’ output from over the decades. Plus there are some tidbits of trivia about a seminal 1965 super-hero reprint book, as well as a certain short-run science fiction Broadway play art directed by DC’s then-top artist!

Of course, the star of the feature article was none other than production head Sol Harrison’s number two man, Jack Adler, who was well-regarded in the comics industry for his coloring innovations and particularly his fabulous “washtone” covers of the 1950s. If you take a gander at the last page of this piece, make note of stats of the DC mystery comics covers, including Weird Mystery Tales #2 [Oct. 1972], clipped up above the assistant production manager in the photo of Jack in his office, all covers of which he worked his coloring magic onto.

Below: Cover of the July 1974 edition of trade journal Industrail Art Method, featuring Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson’s Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, colored swinging ’70s style!