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Satiate Your Sinister Side!

“Greetings, creep culturists! For my debut

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issue, I, the CRYPTOLOGIST (with the help of FROM THE TOMB editor PETER NORMANTON), have exhumed the worst Horror Comics excesses of the 1950s, Killer “B” movies to die for, and the creepiest, kookiest toys that crossed your boney little fingers as a child! But wait... do you dare enter the House of Usher, or choose sides in the skirmish between the Addams Family and The Munsters?! Can you stand to gaze at Warren magazine frontispieces by this issue’s cover artist BERNIE WRIGHTSON, or spend some Hammer Time with that studio’s most frightening films? And if Atlas pre-Code covers or terrifying science-fiction are more than you can take, stay away! All this, and more, is lurching toward you in TwoMorrows Publishing’s latest, and most decrepit, magazine—just for retro horror fans, and featuring my henchmen WILL MURRAY, MARK VOGER, BARRY FORSHAW, TIM LEESE, PETE VON SHOLLY, and STEVE and MICHAEL KRONENBERG!” (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

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The Cryptologist and his ghastly little band have cooked up more grisly morsels, including: ROGER HILL’s conversation with our diabolical cover artist DON HECK, severed hand films, pre-Code comic book terrors, the otherworldly horrors of Hammer’s Quatermass, another Killer “B” movie classic, plus spooky old radio shows, and the horror-inspired covers of the Shadow’s own comic book. Start the ghoul-year with retro-horror done right by FORSHAW, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, RICHARD HAND, VON SHOLLY, and editor PETER NORMANTON.

This third wretched issue inflicts the dread of MARS ATTACKS upon you—the banned cards, the model kits, the despicable comics, and a few words from the film’s deranged storyboard artist PETE VON SHOLLY! The chilling poster art of REYNOLD BROWN gets brought up from the Cryptologist’s vault, along with a host of terrifying puppets from film, and more comic books they’d prefer you forget! Plus, more Hammer Time, JUSTIN MARRIOT on obscure ’70s fear-filled paperbacks, another Killer “B” film, and more to satiate your sinister side!

Our fourth putrid tome treats you to ALEX ROSS’ gory lowdown on his Universal Monsters paintings! Hammer Time brings you face-to-face with the “Brides of Dracula”, and the Cryptologist resurrects 3-D horror movies and comics of the 1950s! Learn the origins of slasher films, and chill to the pre-Code artwork of Atlas’ BILL EVERETT and ACG’s 3-D maestro HARRY LAZARUS. Plus, another Killer “B” movie and more awaits retro horror fans, by NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!

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Fa l l 2 0 2 4 • T h e To m P a l m e r I s s u e • N u m b e r 3 6

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About Our Cover Cover painting by TOM PALMER

COMICS CHATTER Wimmen’s Needs Marrs: Ye Ed profiles wonderful cartoonist Lee Marrs, famed for her hilarious Plop!, Wimmen’s Comix, Gay Comix, and Pudge, Girl Blimp work ............. 3 Once Upon Long Ago: Steve Thompson on his appreciation for Wallace Wood.............. 13 Public Servants: The meaningful comics of the Center for Cartooning Studies............... 14 Arnold Drake at 100: The second portion of Ye Ed.’s three-part interview with the legendary comics scribe on his comedic work at DC Comics, and more! ...................... 16

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Ten Questions: Darrick Patrick learns important writing lessons from David Pepose....... 28 Incoming: Jammin’ Jami reveals the real story behind CBC’s Howard the Duck cover..... 30 Dan DiDio: Greg Biga talks to the writer-editor about a journey from Flatbush to comics.34 Comics in the Library: Richard Arndt on Bea Wolf and Captain America: Ghost Army.... 44 Hembeck’s Dateline: Great Caesar’s ghost! It’s Daily Planet editor Perry White!............ 45 THE MAIN EVENT Above: CBC reader Jammin’ Jami Johnson shared a Comic Shop News article from 1987 that explained this painting of Captain America was one of four lithographs released by First Team Press. “A copy of the print was prepared by Tom Palmer and presented to President Reagan, where the work of art was accepted with their gratitude,” wrote CSN’s Cliff Biggers.

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BACK MATTER Creators at the Con: Kendall Whitehouse lenses multi-generational Marvel creators.... 78 Coming Attractions: Sterling Steve Englehart is our main event next time!................... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Tom Z. shares hand-colored Steve Oliff hues ..80 Right: We know, we know. You likely recognize this detail from the cover art of the recent Tom Palmer tribute issue of Alter Ego, #184 [Nov. 2023], our sister magazine, art which originally graced the last regular ish of The Avengers [#402, Sept. ’96] before all that “Heroes Reborn” numbering reboot nonsense. Still, ain’t it a beaut?

Comic Book Creator ™ is published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Jon B. Cooke, editor. John Morrow, publisher. Comic Book Creator editorial offices: P.O. Box 601, West Kingston, RI 02892 USA. E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Four-issue subscriptions: $53 US, $78 International, $19 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2024 Jon B. Cooke/ TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR is a proud joint production of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows

Tom Palmer: An Alchemy to His Art From an infirm childhood in Queens, when he fell in love with E.C. Comics, to his training as painter under a master’s instruction, to working with an E.C. legend in commercial advertising art, to his spectacular debut as inker extraordinaire at Marvel Comics in the late ’60s, and stellar career as among the very best in his profession, Thomas John Palmer talked about all this and more with our Greg Biga, covering a half-century in comics. Plus, in the wake of his 2022 passing, many of “Peerless” Tom’s peers share their memories and appreciation of the humble gent.... 46

the drake dossier

Stanley and His Maker

Continuing the celebration of writer Arnold Drake's centennial in part two of his interview Who is Arnold Drake?

For those coming in late, a little background info: the Manhattan native is the recipient of the very first Bill Finger Award, in 2005, and is renowned as the creator of The Doom Patrol, Deadman, and The Guardians of the Galaxy, as well as co-author of the graphic novel widely considered the first of its kind, It Rhymes with Lust [1950]. In his long career, the scribe worked for almost every major comic book publisher in innumerable genres. — JBC. This page: This pic was found in the 1974 Famous Monsters Convention book. The caption reads, “‘I surrender!’ cries writer Arnold Drake as Jim Warren (left) talks him into buying a ten-year subscription to Famous Monsters of Filmland.”

Conducted by JON B. COOKE

derful conversation with Alan Moore, the British comics writer, who thought that book seemingly connected a breakdown [Editor's Note: Last ish, Arnold regaled us with his earliest that Mort had in which what came out of it was this whole new years, time in the armed services during World War II, and post- universe for Superman. It was death-obsessed, but it was a real war work with Leslie Waller, fellow writer, with whom he created tapestry that was created from perhaps a sense of madness. Or It Rhymes with Lust, possibly the world’s first graphic novel, was it really the writers who created this intense… Supergirl, the featuring the art of Matt Baker. We pick up the conversation horse, and Kandor, all these… I guess if you sit down and you about his early years at DC Comics. Note that fellow Drakeophile really analyze it, it’s really curious stuff. Marc Svensson provides footnotes and Arnold annotated the Arnold: Yeah. It was a combination of Weisinger running interview with comments before his passing in 2007. — Y.E.] out of ideas… Weisinger used to say that we got a new audience roughly every three years, that we had to find new ways to Comic Book Creator: Do you think that there was a tell old stories to that new audience. That was the challenge. streak of self-loathing at DC Comics? CBC: So you didn’t particularly see a change that took place Arnold Drake: Oh, yeah. Throughout the industry. between, in the late ’50s and the early ’60s, with the Weisinger CBC: Was it mired with guilt? Was that because of the talent books, at all? exploitation? Obviously, the Siegel and Shuster court cases… Arnold: No, I had very little to do with that. Arnold: That contributed much to it. But more the remainCBC: So you were working with Schiff… ing image of publishing unsuitable material. They were bothArnold: And then [Murray] Boltinoff. ered by that, that hangover from the jailtime [Harry] Donenfeld CBC: Oh, so Boltinoff had the humor titles, right? had faced in the ’30s about selling sexy magazines. Arnold: Yeah. CBC: What, the Spicy pulps and that stuff? CBC: What was next? Arnold: Yeah, and there was a cloud of guilt from that. In Arnold: Well, I was doing a lot of House of Mystery and an interview like this a long, long time ago, I said that they had House of Secrets and “Mark Merlin” and that stuff, the “Space come to look at themselves as running a whorehouse, where Ranger” [in Mystery in Space]. He was a character that none they were the madams, and the writers and the artists were of us liked, so Space Ranger we looked upon as punishment. the girls. To a very great degree, that was true for many years. Whenever I was assigned it, you would find me in the writers’ I think in the last 10 years, bullpen typing away and singing, [sings] “Space Ranger, I hate however, they no longer felt you/Space Ranger, you’re mine…“ [laughter] I hated his little that way about it. But we’re Martian pet. I thought it was condescending to the readers. That talking the ’70s, that’s when was Schiff. He had a similar cuteness about him, which I think a they began to realize that the lot of kids liked. I didn’t care for it, but I think he probably had a post office regulations used pretty fair-sized audience for that stuff. against Harry were a betrayal CBC: Did you have any interest in working with Julie of the U.S. Constitution. Schwartz? CBC: Did you know Alvin Arnold: Yeah, but Julie seemed to have enough writers. I Schwartz? also attempted to work with Larry Nadel. Arnold: Yeah, sure. CBC: The romance books? CBC: He wrote a book that Arnold: The comedy. Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis, Dobie Gillis. discussed Mort Weisinger’s What the heck else was there…? Fox and Crow, I guess. But he worldview? said no, no, no, he didn’t need any writers. And it turned out he Arnold: I don’t recall really didn’t, because he was writing it himself or making the that. I have one of his books artists write the stories without paying them for it. that gets into the Superman CBC: I spoke to Johnny Romita, Sr., and he told me a story of character…* incidents that still anger him today about kickbacks with Larry. CBC: Right! Arnold: Yeah. Arnold: Yeah, I have read CBC: Was common just with him, or was it taking place within that. I don’t know whether I the office in general? recall Mort Weisinger’s point Arnold: He was the first one I knew of. And the irony is that of view or not. Alvin hated he was replaced by a guy who I think did pretty much the same Weisinger, but he was in a thing, eventually, and who was let go. very large club. CBC: Did Larry suddenly die? CBC: I just had long, wonArnold: Yup, a heart attack. If I recall correctly, he bent over to tie his shoelaces and bingo… * Arnold is referring to Alvin Schwartz’s “metaphysical memoir,” CBC: He didn’t get up. Arnold: Worse than that: he didn’t get the shoe tied! An Unlikely Prophet [1997]. #36 • Fall 2024 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Stanley and His Monster TM & © DC Comics. Professor Challenger TM & © the respective copyright holder.

[laughter] Larry’s problem was that he was in debt to the bookies. I mean hundreds of dollars a week on a very small salary. I knew this, because he used the phone in my office to make his bets. He didn’t want to be heard by the staff. We had a pay telephone in the writers bullpen. A real class act! [laughs] Then, one day, he said (apropos of what, I don’t know): “When I die, the sh*t’s gonna hit the fan.” And when he died, it did. The figure I heard was something like $75,000 or $80,000. CBC: He owed? Arnold: He stole. He would take a script that had been written two years before, and he’d put a new cover sheet on it and bill it again, things like that. CBC: Was it a snake pit? Jack Schiff notwithstanding? Arnold: Not particularly. As comic book houses went, I think it was pretty clean. CBC: Did you stay exclusively with DC, or did you moonlight at all? Arnold: Yeah, I did some work with Marvel. CBC: During the ’50s? Arnold: No, this was later. CBC: Right, with The X-Men. Arnold: Later in the ’60s, yeah. CBC: Did you write any romance material? Arnold: No, I did not write any romance material. Nobody asked me to. CBC: What editors were you working with in the late ’50s at DC? Arnold: It started with Weisinger. I had enough of him within the first three or four months, I guess, that I refused to work with him. He said, “If you don’t work with me, you don’t work.” So I didn’t work there for, I think, close to a year. CBC: What did you do in the meantime? Arnold: Oh, I wrote some of my own stuff. I had written a book and I was working on a screenplay. I was keeping kind of busy. And doing a lot of PR. I was writing stuff for AT&T and IBM, folks like that. I had a pretty good public relations agent, a guy who sold my writing to major corporations. And that paid a lot better than comics, but it wasn’t where my heart was. I wanted to tell stories. I became friendly with Jack Schiff during the time that I was working with Mort, and Schiff and I decided to see if we couldn’t have a crack at this new thing called “television.” So we began working on a play. As I recall, it was called The Mayor of Murray Street. And it was an interesting theme, it was about a guy who has become a successful lawyer and is now running for mayor, and is embarrassed by the fact that his father still runs a newsstand to put this guy through college. And he wants his father to close up the newsstand, because it just doesn’t look good that the mayor’s father is still running a newsstand, it’s like “I’m not supporting my old man,” or something. And the father explains that this is his life, and he wants to go on living his life as long as he can. It was an interesting theme. We never sold it, because we didn’t have a strong enough agent. That was true all of my life — not having a really strong agent. So we worked together on that — at night and after hours, of course. One night, Irwin Donenfeld came in and started chatting with us, and he says, “I don’t see you around here much anymore.” I said, “I don’t work here.” And he said, “Why not?” And I told him about my problem with Mort. And he said, “Well, if you didn’t have to work with him, would you work here?” I said, “In a shot! If you will order him to let me work with Schiff, COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2024 • #36

I would be happy to.” So that’s how I came back to DC, and I worked with Schiff for quite a while. CBC: Now, what were you doing? Arnold: Batman, House of Mystery, House of Secrets, “Space Ranger”… CBC: So you did a number of short stories. How’d you get your ideas? Arnold: I don’t know. Everybody has a method. I didn’t really have a method. Bill Finger, for example… Bill used to open up the Redbook, the telephone directory, and just wander through it and get ideas that way. “Batman… a travel agency… yeah… “ It was just a way of getting his wheels moving. I did it from observation. I would frequently get ideas sitting on a bus and looking out the window at things going past. A lot of my ideas came from the news. I’ve always been very news-conscious. And I was into science fiction pretty early in life. Shaped to a great degree, a lot of my work was, by Verne and Wells, the Tarzan series, and Conan Doyle, especially the “Professor Challenger” stories. I read all of “Sherlock Holmes” when I was 13. My brother Milton gave me the complete works of “Sherlock Holmes,” and that was an influence on me. Early on, I recognized that Professor Challenger came

Above: The charm of Drake’s creation and of Oksner’s art as seen in the cover of Stanley and His Monster #109 [May ’68]. Below: Professor Challenger from Strand Magazine, Vol. 70 #1 [July 1925]. Art by F.E. Hiley.

*Again, this is “The Return of Mr. Future,” from Batman #98 [Mar. ’56]. 18

#36 • Fall 2024 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Deadman, Super-Hip and associated characters TM & © DC Comics. The Flesh Eaters, Who Killed Teddy Bear? TM & © the respective copyright holders.

This page: Top is cover detail, Strange Adventures #205 [Oct. ’67], art by Carmine Infantino & George Roussos. Inset right, cover detail featuring Drake creation Super-Hip, The Adventures of Bob Hope #96 [Jan. ’66], art by Bob Oksner. Above, below: posters of movies for which Drake wrote screenplays.

before Holmes. Actually, he was Sherlock Holmes. I think that Conan Doyle decided, “I think maybe crime is more interesting to people than science fiction.” So he got into Sherlock and Challenger’s character. There are five or six [“Professor Challenger”] stories that are his earliest stuff. If you get a chance, read a little more of Challenger and you’ll find that he is almost Sherlock — two extraordinary minds that are extraordinarily aware of how extraordinary their minds are. They are both… smug. Smug is what they are. Holmes was smug, and so was Professor Challenger. They knew what they knew, and were very proud of it. At any rate, those were among my influences. So, on more than one occasion, I borrowed from them. I don’t recall deliberately doing it, but I’m sure I did. CBC: There were a number of stories, did you do a deliberate homage to Verne or to Wells? Arnold: Yes. CBC: Integrating them as characters within the stories themselves? Arnold: I did Verne in a Batman story. There was a problem in the present day world that Batman thinks only Verne can solve, because Verne had touched on the problem in some of his work. So Batman is able to go back in time to bring Verne forward, and Verne helps to solve that problem in the present day. And then, as kind of a departing gift, Batman takes him to see various things that he had predicted in his time, and then sent him back there with that enjoyment.* CBC: Was it fun? Arnold: The Verne story? CBC: Well, no, I mean writing. Was it a chore, was it fun, was it a mix? Arnold: It was a mix, yeah. I mean, some things you didn’t like. I didn’t like “Space Ranger” and the cutesy little animal, and things like that. All of us had things that we liked and things we didn’t. CBC: Did you want to do a character, something that you created yourself? Arnold: Yeah, I wanted to do that early on, but it wasn’t easy to do. The editors had to believe in you. If you worked with Weisinger, forget about it. Schiff might have gone along, perhaps, but they had to really believe in you, and I hadn’t been there that long that they were ready to turn over a magazine to me. CBC: Any concepts that you might recall that were not realized? Arnold: Well, there were things that I attempted to do that were rejected. A lot of these things were stuff that they thought they would

create trouble with the [Comics] Code. But also, things that were against the social-political scene at the time. I tried several times to get a Black into a story and was not successful. And that wasn’t the only place, I tried three different shops, including Marvel and Western, to try to do a little integration. And didn’t succeed at that. Before The Doom Patrol, did I ever submit an original concept… ? I don’t think so. I think it was pretty clear that they were not interested in original concepts. If there were going to be original concepts, they were going to come out of the editors. In particular, Weisinger. CBC: What was your view of the Code? Was it frustrating restrictions? Arnold: Well, yeah. I thought it was dumb. I was convinced that comics were not responsible for shaping the lives of young people and that the idea of attacking comics was, to me, a way of getting parents off the hook. CBC: Were you vocal about it at all? Arnold: Oh, yeah. Sure. I urged them to keep pushing the envelope. On a couple of occasions, I can’t remember which ones, but on one or two occasions, they did, as a result of my urging. On one occasion they didn’t, and that was an unfortunate one. I was in London at the time, and I was working on the third “Deadman” story. And I sent the first chapter to [Jack] Miller, who had been a friend, or at least I thought he was, and had just become an editor. And it turned out that, I wasn’t aware of it, nobody was telling me this, but “Deadman” was taking off. “Deadman” was a hit, and they were getting very interested in that character as a result. And I wrote this thing, and it had two strikes against it. One was, the guy that Deadman is going to replace in that particular story is the governor of the state. The governor is dying of cancer. You could not discuss cancer in a comic book. I insisted that you can discuss cancer in a comic book. It reminded me of my mother telling to me that, in her time, you couldn’t mention the word “tuberculosis.” In our time,

The Doom Patrol TM & © DC Comics. Painting courtesy of Marc Svensson.

“cancer” was a no-no. It was sort of like the belief that, if you say it, you’ll get it. Anyway, I had the governor dying of cancer. And I established that the governor’s right-hand man, a guy he went to school with, a guy who was the number one student in the school, was Black. And, at one point, the governor said, “That’s the way the cards are dealt,” or something like that. Miller wrote back, “There’s no action in this! We’re gonna run an entirely new third story.” He didn’t mention anything about cancer or anything about the Black man, but I’m pretty damned sure that that was a major consideration in the decision not to run that story. Also, Miller badly needed extra cash. So he wrote it himself. CBC: Do you feel, if you had been in the States at the time, do you think you might have had a stronger influence? Arnold: Oh, it would have been entirely different, I think. Of course, I don’t know exactly how different it would have been, because what was happening… Take the context: [Carmine] Infantino was taking over right at that moment, and I think the editors were all a bit insecure — all busy trying to make a score under the new management. Miller was going through a midlife crisis, having an affair with a much younger woman, and spending an awful lot of money on her. That’s why he needed money, so what he wanted to do was to write as much of his own stuff as he could. And rejecting my third story was an open sesame. He apparently went to Carmine and said, “We can’t run that one. I’d like to do a new one.” And Carmine sat down and helped plot it, as I understand. Because obviously Carmine had been quite interested in “Deadman,” being the first artist. And in the concept. Carmine was closer to understanding what I was trying to do with comics than almost anyone else there. CBC: Jack had his history there. Was it ironic — am I wrong? — didn’t he die of cancer? Arnold: Yeah. CBC: And he succumbed very quickly, right? Arnold: Yeah. A matter of weeks. CBC: And I guess there was desperation there? I’ve heard a number of stories about art being missing and him desperate for cash. Arnold: Yeah. It’s ironic, because he replaced Nadel, who stole something like $70,000 from the company. So they replaced them and, as I recall the story-and I’m not sure who told me this (it may have been Carmine) about a guy who later became a renowned comic collector or dealer. He came to Jack Liebowitz’s office and put a bound volume of either Superman or Batman, I’m not sure which, the first issues in a leather-bound volume. “Mr. Liebowitz, I just bought this for $400.” (Or whatever.) Liebowitz says, “From whom?!” And he says, “From your editor, Jack Miller.” So, at that point, Liebowitz called in Infantino… yeah, Carmine must have told me this story. He called in Infantino and said, “I want him out of here today!” And Infantino said, “Yeah, I will fire him as an editor, but I’d like to keep him as a writer, we could use him.” So he said, “All right, but I just don’t want to see his face,” or something of that nature. It’s funny, for a small industry it had a lot of melodramas in it. CBC: [Laughs] It sure did! When did you first meet Bob Oksner? Arnold: When I started to do Dobie Gillis, I think. I worked with two artists, primarily, on the comedy material: Oksner and Mort Drucker. I think I started with Mort, and then Mort decided that his future lay with MAD magazine and he didn’t have much time for anything else. So he went over to MAD. And then I was really lucky. I lost one of the best, and I got one of the best in his place. And that’s how I met Oksner. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2024 • #36

CBC: How long did you work with Mort Drucker? Arnold: Three, four months, I would say. He was about ready to go when I joined the comedy line. CBC: Did you meet him? Arnold: Yeah. CBC: What kind of guy was he? Arnold: I don’t know. He had a great sense of humor. Which is to be expected. But so did Oksner, who had a marvelous sense of humor. Both of them, because they were very well-developed in the head as well as in the hand, they both gave you more than you had expected. When I would turn in a script to

Above: Note, in this Green Lantern #27 [Mar. ’64] house ad, The Doom Patrol #86 was initially intended to be numbered #1. It was revised in subsequent comics featuring the ad. Below: Painting by Luis Domiguez, the cover to Arnold’s incomplete last project for DC Comic: the origin story of the Doom Patrol’s nemesis team, the Brotherhood of Evil.

that guy from brooklyn

Flatbush’s Problem Child

Dan DiDio shares about his eclectic career in this first portion of our two-part interview Conducted by GREG BIGA

[Dan DiDio is a quintessential New Yorker. Regardless of where his career has taken him, Dan remains the guy who will eat a hot dog at a Yankees game and scarfs a slice of New York pizza pie whenever he gets the chance. Simply put, the old neighborhood never left Dan’s heart. He’s forever a brash and purpose-driven so-and-so, who has never shrunk from an opportunity to take on a new professional challenge. In this interview, Dan describes his journey from his Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush to how he came to head the comic book company he had loved since being a boy, along the way working in N.Y.C.-based soap operas, This page: The world’s first and then developing Saturday morning kid TV shows. — G.B.]

glimpse of “Diabolical” Dan DiDio was as a “Monster of the Month” in Famous Monsters of Filmland #92 [Sept. ’72]. On the next page is the man himself, at Comic City, during Free Comic Book Day 2014, in a pic by our own convention photographer, Kendall Whitehouse. Below is young Dan dressing up as John Steed (seen portrayed by actor Patrick Macnee, at right), from the British TV series, The Avengers.

#36 • Fall 2024 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Famous Monsters of Filmland TM & © Lococho, LLC.

Comic Book Creator: We are all a part of those who brought us into the world. Who are your parents? Dan DiDio: My parents, you know, were pretty close to a middle-income, Brooklyn family. Both my parents were a second-generation Italian and it’s a rather normal, peaceful sort of life. For the most part… I mean, you got to understand they come from a large Italian family. So we always have a lot of people around us. In my family, too, I have one older brother and two older sisters. I was the baby of the family and it was 10 years between me and my next sibling. Just to show you, I was the late-in-life child. So I was a handful for my poor parents in their later days, I must say, but they seemed to enjoy it just the same. CBC: So was your name actually “damn” when they found out you were coming? Dan: My mother was very sweet about it. She always said I kept her young. I think that’s the code word for “exhausted.” CBC: What did your parents do for a living? Dan: My father worked for Transit Authority and my mother was a stay-at-home mom. So it was always good, because my father worked with the trains. We used to go visit him at the substation, down in Coney Island, and used to make a day out of it when I was a little kid. We’d go visit dad and then go to the beach, because his job was a block off the beach. I used to sit under the boardwalk, lay in the sand, they’d have lunch, and then he’d go back to work, and we’d go home. CBC: So it’s not necessarily

totally idyllic, but definitely a great time to be a youth back then, I take it? Dan: Yeah… well, you know, growing up in Brooklyn, in the ’60s and ’70s, is a lot different than it is today. It really is one of those things when you’re growing up and you’re a child of the neighborhood. So you’re the entire neighborhood’s problem. You’d be over somebody’s house, a different house every day with a different friend, different parents, nobody knows where you are. You leave nine o’clock in the morning, come back at nine o’clock at night. And, somehow, they knew you’re always okay. CBC: You were very much site-specific growing up? Dan: Oh yeah. I was very much in the in the area of Brooklyn where I grew up in. It covered a large section within Flatbush, Flatland, for those people who know Brooklyn. And, you know, it was an interesting area to grow up because New York, in those days, was a real melting pot, for all intents and purposes. The neighborhood I grew up in was, even though I was Italian, it was mostly an Irish neighborhood. So a real working-class neighborhood. CBC: Where you grew up was there a specific religion or a specific background? What was that like for you in those interactions growing up? How did that have an effect on you? Dan: I was a public-school kid in the Catholic school group. So I was always a little bit on the outside, you know. I actually liked just the exposure in the world and the different options of things that I used to be able to do and a lot of my friends growing up were… as I said, it was a real melting pot, a real mix. So it was a real fun group. I mean, when I was 13 years old, a lot of my school friends threw me a bar mitzvah, because I was the only non-Jew and they felt bad for me. CBC: And as far as working through your daily life with the group of friends you had, and with your parents, what was it about those folks and even those times that helped you become who you were going to become? Dan: It’s interesting, because the reality is my parents were a little bit older, and my brothers and sisters were older. I actually probably hung closest to my brothers and sisters than I did my own parents. So my oldest sister was handicapped at an early age. She was a textile designer. She loved movies and plays, and everything like that. She was the one that really did enjoy the arts. And I probably watched and stayed with her the most, and picked up so many of my interests through her, and through my brother and other sister, than I did through my own parents. You know, so because the things that they liked, were the things that were exploding in culture at the moment. CBC: As far as your neighborhood, what were the things that were exploding at that time? Was there anything in particular that was driving you? Dan: I’m a kid in the ’60s. What were the three big customs of the ’60s? Monsters, toys, and space, and I loved all three. You know, I remember the toys at the time, the movies, and TV shows, everything in that period is what I absorbed most. As a big kid — Famous Monsters of Filmland. My sister actually corresponded with [FMoF editor] Forrest J Ackerman, over a number

John Steed TM & © the respective copyright holder. Older DiDio portrait © Kendall Whitehouse. Used with permission. Young DiDio pic courtesy of Dan DiDio.

of years. Actually, when I was 10, she took me to meet Forrest. He happened to be in New York, so we met him in Manhattan. He let me wear — true story! — the Dracula rings Bela Lugosi wore in the original Dracula movie. I got a chance to wear it as a 10-year-old! You know, those days were before we were able to take pictures [with phones] and post every 15 minutes. But I remember wearing that vividly. And he actually took one of my school photos, and I was actually one of the “Monsters of the Month,” in Famous Monsters of Filmland [#92, Sept. 1972]. Coincidentally in the Lugosi issue. That was as a little 10-yearold. We used to go to conventions. I started going when I was 10, and I probably haven’t gone a year without ever going to conventions since then. CBC: What inspired you to start attending? Dan: It was a fun way to get out. Again, like I said, everything you did was in Brooklyn, in the neighborhood. So, if there was a chance to do something outside, to go into Manhattan or (as we like to say, “going into the city”)… When you went into the city, you jumped at the opportunity because they were few and far between. Little did I know that I’d be commuting there every day a few years later. A lot of the bloom came off the rose by then. CBC: What were things that were going on at that time that were kind of getting under your skin and starting to get the juices flowing? Was this like a James Bond or Man from U.N.C.L.E. thing? Dan: I was a big Man from U.N.C.L.E. fan. With my brother, we were The Avengers fans like nobody’s business, Steed and Mrs. Peele. There’s a picture of me at 10-,12-years-old dressed as John Steed, because that was the guy that was super-dapper, super-cool. That’s who I wanted to be. So that’s my first cosplay ever, possibly my last. But, you know, there were things like that which I really enjoyed. And my brother on the other side, he would take me to all the Godzilla movies and different horror movies that were out. Movies were the big experience. You know, again, going into what was the big event… going to see Planet of the Apes in Manhattan, before it made it into Brooklyn… Because, in the early days, a movie would premiere on limited screens in Manhattan and sit there for two, three months before they would play in the rest of the city. So you would see it out there almost within reach, but you weren’t able to see it yet. So you had to go into Manhattan when it first came

COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2024 • #36

out. That was a big deal. CBC: With those things being parts of your interest, what were the things that began to get you going creatively? Dan: Since I liked the monsters, we used to have, you know, Chiller Theater and Creature Features on Saturday nights. You always got your weekly dose of horror movies, things like that. And, when you see things like that depicted, you start to want to draw them and to tell stories of the monster you just saw on the screen. There weren’t 17 sequels in those days, there wasn’t streaming; the movie plays and it disappears forever. So the only way you can get any more of that is to start to do your own versions of those stories, and write them out yourself, and tell the story about the thing you just saw and now love so much. CBC: Did your interest start with illustration or the writing? Dan: I used to tell every artist in DC that I have trouble drawing a straight line. So it was about the storytelling. I like to tell stories. I used to tell stories and we had a lot of fun. And we used to create worlds and maps and things just to create environments and games, and play with them. And that’s what I enjoyed doing, really at an early age. I was a big fan of anthology. You know, I love [TV shows] like Twilight Zone and One Step Beyond. And probably my first comics buy, on a regular basis, are things like House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Tales of the Unexpected, Where Monsters Dwell… all of those type of books. I loved mixing up stories. I love that short O. Henry-style 35

Above: Doubtless, Dan was describing the Horror Comics of the 1950s hardback collection of E.C. Comics reprints published by Nostalgia Press, which was purchased by his sister and he read cover-to-cover. Dan described it as, “I just devoured it to death”! Below: New Yorkers of a certain age, including Ye Ed., remember the “Miracle Mets” of 1969. Here’s a humorous representation of the team by the late, great Jack Davis.

CBC: “If God is watching, I’m not doing it, I promise.” Dan: That was so hard, I can’t tell you. It was a phony ad in MAD magazine. I never forgot, as a kid, I was playing in Little League at the time I saw it. It was a shot of a kid at bat where what it was the parent was yelling at the kid, the umpire was yelling at the parent, was like, “What’s going on?!” It just made me laugh because I’d been at those games. And then, when I saw the original piece, I’m like, “Oh, my God! It’s here!” CBC: As you’re growing up, obviously, you’re taking in matinees, movies, watching shows… were you a social animal with other kids at that time? Dan: It’s funny. Like I said, I was a real working-class neighborhood, but everybody had their own interests. Everybody’s very big on sports. There are one or two friends of mine that had an interest in horror, or maybe a little bit of comics, growing up a little bit later. But, you know, for me, it was my thing, it’s something I enjoyed. So I didn’t really care if I shared it, because I got enjoyment out of it, participating by myself. I didn’t feel the desperate need to go out and speak about it to anybody else, because it was something that I probably was enjoying with the family, more so than with a friend. CBC: And you being a native New Yorker, I have to ask this question: what does it mean to you to be a New Yorker? Dan: It meant the pace, there’s a sensibility, there’s an attitude, a camaraderie, an anger… there’s a whole bunch of stuff that all just in this big, big stew. Any one of those emotions and that type of story. can bubble up to the top at any time. There are unabashed CBC: I know E.C. Comics get into the blood of a whole lot of people who are unafraid to speak their minds. And, you know, individuals, obviously, who would follow. Who were some of there’s a freshness to that. I prefer that, you know. I’m much the folks at E.C. then, and certainly thinking about that company more of a very direct, straightforward person. So I prefer that now, that you just say, “Dammit, that is how you do a book”? type of honesty and interaction. For me, it’s a bunch of people Dan: You know, naturally, with E.C., it’s the strength of the art squeezed into a space together, and we got to figure out how to even more so than the story. If the art wasn’t strong, the stories work and get along. Which, I think, sometimes is the best way would be very simplistic. to work things out. CBC: Pedestrian? CBC: With you being able to squeeze into that space, what Dan: “Pedestrian” is a perfect word. But when you put guys squeezed out? What are things that at this point in your life, you like Graham Ingels on there… or any of these other incredible think back and say, “Man, that was something I wish we would artists… Jack Davis, Jack Kamen, and all those guys. There’s just have kept doing.” What’s been lost? not a bad artist in the bunch. Wally Wood’s in there. Every story, Dan: That’s a tough one for me. Here I am, still talking side by side, was so high-quality that it about comics and I’m in my 60s. Nothing got squeezed out. raised an expectation that, when you If anything would have gotten squeezed out, it would have start to get other anthologies happened a long time ago. that did not have that same CBC: Do you still see it as keeping you youthful in your life? strength, it would almost Or is it just a matter of work? disappoint. Dan: You know, it’s funny. When I left DC, the first thing I said You didn’t realize that was is, “Now I gotta figure out what to do when I grow up. Now I gota book on a pedestal, the rare ta be a grown-up.” I grew up in a neighborhood where a lot of occasion when that you can be my friends were firemen, gas company workers, electricians… that good. It’s hard to be that labor jobs. That was the expectation, even for the guy who went good all the time, across multiple to college for certain degrees. When the jobs opened up, they titles, which I also learned by reading jump for whatever job they can get. For me, I always had a and by working. plan that I wanted to do something different. I almost got into I have a running joke: the art I arguments with people when I said, “I’m going to college not wanted to steal from DC was Jack Da- to become a city worker.” (That’s not fair, but it was what I was vis art. Going through the archives, thinking.) But, the truth be told, there were things that were the things that weren’t returned interesting me and, later on, I had to take a path or, “I’m going and I found a piece of Jack Davis art to be an accountant.” that touched me when I was a kid. It I started as an accounting major and that flamed out was that piece and I was looking at it, spectacularly! Because I like numbers, but not those numbers. like, you know, honestly, “Is anybody I sort of fell into things that were more about what I didn’t watching me? Will anybody know if want to do than what I did want to do. So I always get my mind it’s gone?” Everything got returned open to trying different things. Because I’d rather experience to his family, but that was the something new and see if I like it, and not have life make that moment. decision for me. #36 • Fall 2024 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

E.C. Comics TM & ©William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc. Mets © Sterling Mets, L.P.

ending. And those are the types of things I tried to write. CBC: So you’re going for — lacking of a better way to phrase it — Feldstein and Kurtzman ways of that shock ending? Dan: Yeah, I love that. I mean, one of the first books I was ever exposed to as a really young kid, which probably explained a lot… There was an oversized publication of some of the best of E.C. Comics, you know, and it was one of the funniest things you’ve ever seen in your life. My sister had bought it because they were fans of E.C. And I was the one who read it over and over and over again, because I just devoured it to death. And between that and Twilight Zone, and everything else, I think that really just honed to that real love of that medium

Len Wein photo courtesy of Alan Light.

CBC: How did all these things that you grew up with make you who you were when you were finishing high school? Dan: Well, even during high school, I was trying writing and trying different things. I liked comics a lot. You know, I was part of a couple of clubs at school, putting together the yearbook, and different things. So I always had an interest in participating in print and print creation. An interesting story is: one of my sisters was good friends with Len Wein’s aunt. So 14-year-old Dan wanted to get insight into what it’s like to work for comics. She was so sweet to set me up with Len, and Len, God bless his soul, was most gracious to this 14-year-old. His closing line was, “Don’t get into comics kid. It’s gonna break your heart.” And, when you flash-forward, because Len became one of my good close friends, working invariably from my days in animation into my days in comics. I used to repeat that story to him, and he goes, “And it’s still true today, isn’t it?” Yeah, it’s still true. CBC: That is a heck of a good soul right there, he and Marv together, bless their hearts. That was a crew who drove things forward without half the world knowing what they moved forward. They were pretty amazing. Dan: I met Marv at ABC, and then Marv introduced me to Len, and Len became sort of an unofficial mentor to me over the years, which I appreciated. CBC: How did you perform in school? What were the things you had an aptitude for? Dan: My aptitude was for losing attention quickly. I’m a bit of a procrastinator, you know, a last-minute kid who loved to do things on the cusp. I’m a really good listener, but not a good studier. There were a lot of things that were learned last minute. Jamming it all in seemed to get me through it pretty well. But I did well in school. Which is good because, ultimately, you had to do well in school. In those days, you were judged. In those days, not everybody won a trophy. Let me say that the better you did, the better things were for you. CBC: You’ve already talked about your acumen at that time was for math. Where did you go to college? Dan: Brooklyn College. Two primary choices: affordable and walkable. CBC: You go because you’re going to become an accountant. Or, at least, that’s what it looked like it was going to be. How did the stark realities hit? Or did that take a while? Dan: It took about a year-and-a-half before it sunk in. I have a very dear friend of mine who I made friends in an accounting class, and he’s a natural accountant and I was anything but. And he still keeps the Macro Accounting textbook that I gave him the day I quit. I think I wrote in the book, “You’re natural and I’m not. Best of luck with it. I’m outta here.” CBC: So you get punched in the face by accounting and decide it’s time to move on. What did you do at that point in time? Dan: Well, you know, you hit the panic button because, not only did accounting go away, but all the credits associated went away, too. Then you found yourself in this little bit of a hole that you had to make up. So, strangely enough, I found what was called the Brooklyn College Broadcast News Institute. It was an eight-credit class for six weeks over the summer. I thought to myself, “If I can lock up eight credits in six weeks, I can make up for lost ground.” So I took the class for no other reason than just to make up credits. And, lo and behold, I found that I truly love working in TV. And then the thing started to roll from there. CBC: What was the first legitimate career work that you did right there? Dan: Well, while I was still in school, I got a part time job with CBS as a page. You know, one of the basic temp service jobs COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2024 • #36

inside the company. So you get a chance to come across a lot of things, work in a lot of different areas. My first steady page position was actually working on a show — and this is really for the East Coasters, between New York and DC — called the Warner Wolf Show. Warner Wolf was, for 40 years, a sportscaster. He had a half-hour, locally syndicated show, and I was one of the assistants on that for a while. Then I worked on a thing called CBS Cable, which was rather interesting. CBS was involved in cable early. It stopped because, at the time, they got a new president that said, “Nobody’s going to pay for TV. So let’s get out of this business.” CBC: Such foresight. Dan: But, at CBS, I did get a chance to meet [CBS President] Bill Paley, of all people. Just in passing, but I had a chance to sit and listen to him speak one time. And that, on the other side of the coin, was a true visionary. It was fascinating for me to hear him talk about things in the early ’80s, like cable, and high-definition television, and all these things that now are mainstays, but were just in very nascent stages in the early ’80s, when nobody could even understand how you can even implement such a thing, let alone it actually become the standard. CBC: So, as you’re beginning that process, you’re falling in love with it. Is that something where you’re thinking, “Okay, that’s my life’s pursuit from here on out”? Dan: Well, I had two great loves of my life: comics and cartoons. And so, it’s either I was going to try to find a path for publishing and find my way into comics (which I don’t know if I would ever get there or not). That was a fun goal. At least I had a North Star. I also loved animation, so I got involved in TV with the hope that maybe somehow I would be able to get a spot involved in Saturday morning television, which was something that I really enjoyed and wanted to participate in. CBC: Working in New York, paging at CBS: how does that transition into a path forward for you? Dan: Well, it’s not any path that anybody can follow. I have a Family Circus career: it’s this little dotted line that goes around in circles before you end up where you want to be. (I like to date myself with references like that.) CBC: I like it because I’m sitting here, thinking, “Damn, I am old, because I know exactly what he’s talking about.” Dan: I say this to people in programs: it’s not about planning what you want to do, but eliminating what you don’t want to do. I spent a lot of time eliminating things I did not want to do. During my time as a page, I was exposed to a lot of areas that I knew… news wasn’t for me, sales wasn’t for me… and I worked in affiliate relations and did a lot of things with the stations, and that was interesting working and helping the stations. But I felt very pigeonholed. So, from there, I found an opportunity to move into publicity, and I worked in public relations for several years for the New York-based soap operas. I never watched, but it was interesting, a brand-new learning experience. And I always thought that, if everything ended in

Above: At 14, Dan sought the advice of writer/editor Len Wein, seen above at the 1982 San Diego Comic-Con in a photo by Alan Light, who told the youngster to stay clear of a career in comic books. Wein warned him, “It’s gonna break your heart.” Below: Because tuition wouldn’t break the bank and its proximity, Dan chose to attend Brooklyn College, though a career in accounting wasn’t for him. Bottom: Dan’s road to Manhattan took him across the fabled Brooklyn Bridge.

All characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Thomas John Palmer [b. July 13, 1941– d. August 18, 2022], better known

“But tell me something I don’t already know,” I can hear many of you saying.

to comic book fans as the extraordinarily talented inker, TOM PALMER, was

Well, allow me to explain that, despite his renowned status as one of the world’s

Most of those years were spent as yeoman delineator at Marvel Comics, where

Tom was also the humblest, always expressing awe at the artists over whose

among the very best in his field during a career that spanned over five decades. he was most recognized for adding his peerless touch to work by Gene Colan, John Buscema, and Neal Adams. His rich, lush, evocative work, particularly as inker on notoriously hard-to-ink Colan in Tomb of Dracula between 1972–79,

added a luster that elevated such already excellent artwork to sheer perfection.

best inkers — an alchemist, if you will, who turned India ink into liquid gold —

work he toiled, and gratitude at making a living in an art form he so loved. But

he was also a man very reluctant to have a spotlight shine on his achievements, shy even. So, while I wish Tom lived to see this, I am proud to feature such a

wonderful, affectionate tribute to the man by my pal, Greg Biga. — YE EDITOR.

#36 • Fall 2024 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

In full transparency, this feature was never meant to be a collection of

Walter Simonson, Howard Chaykin, Jim Steranko, Roy Thomas, Klaus Janson,

— were spent with him being genuinely delighted over the notion he was to

Khoi Pham, Sal Buscema, Ron Garney, Howard Mackie, Greg Wright, Neal Adams,

phone conversations with Tom Palmer — who sadly passed away two years ago be celebrated in this issue of Comic Book Creator as a living legend. Tom was

my friend, and I am humbled that he allowed me to be his and to be the teller of tales of his life. From his unique childhood until his last days, Tom Palmer exhibited class, quality, and perseverance. Thank you for everything, Tom.

Photos courtesy of Tom Palmer, Jr.

Heartfelt nods of gratitude for their words of appreciation regarding Tom to

testimonials to a fallen giant of the comic art world. Rather, my regular Friday

HOMETOWN KID Thomas John Palmer was born a scant five months prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, the calamity which pulled the United States into the already raging World War II. Being a wartime baby was not the only interesting aspect of Palmer’s life. There was also, specifically, a somewhat uncommon age difference between him and his dad, Leonard Daniel von Palmer. Tom was the last child born to Leo’s third wife. When Tom arrived, his father was 64 years old. With the first wife, his father had five offspring, three boys and two girls; none with the second; and then three with his last spouse. The boy had half-brothers and sisters from Leo’s first bride, who were frankly old enough to be his own parents, and nieces and nephews around the same age as him. “My father was born in 1867,* in [Danzig] Germany. His sister was already here and married to a man who had a German restaurant up on 86th Street [in Queens, New York]. You needed a job to come over in those days. So my father came over in 1893 and he had a job waiting for him at that restaurant. I know he was naturalized [in 1903], but I don’t think my father ever talked about Germany. He never spoke any German. During World War I, my mother said, he’d meet some people that were from Germany, and he’d say ‘Don’t talk to me in German. Talk to me in English.’” Tom continued, “I found out later, from my older half-brother John, that my father lied about his age at some point, so he could get insurance because he had these five children. His second wife became ill, something with her heart.” [A death notice relates that Frances Butz Palmer died on October 16, 1928, of pneumonia.] “Because my mother never talked about this, I had to put the pieces together later on. I assume her parents were gone when she came to live with her relative and my father. She was there to take care of the kids because my father’s wife was bedridden. My dad’s wife’s name was Frances and that was my mother’s name also… My mother was young, she was born in 1903. And, so out of propriety, I guess, my father and my mother got married [on October 10, 1929, two weeks to the day before “Black Thursday,” the start of the Great Depression]. “My father was making phonographs. You wound them up, as there was no electricity, and it was the cabinet that gave the sound. He opened up a cabinet store and then the Depression hit, and he lost his business. So then he went into a different business, doing construction, putting in new stoops on houses, and * The official record has Leo Palmer born in Danzig on Oct. 30, 1877, but Tom says, according to a half-brother, his father fibbed about his age to get insurance, so that’s suspect. COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2024 • #36

Bob McLeod, Pat Olliffe, Butch Guice, Graham Nolan, J.M. DeMatteis, Lee Weeks, and, especially, Tom Palmer, Jr. (who was an enormous help gathering art for this piece). Note that most conversations with peers took place before Tom’s

passing. And, finally, I could not be more appreciative of Ann Palmer, Tom’s wife and lifelong love, for her involvement in this celebratory effort. — G.B.

doing woodwork. And then he got into architecture as the Depression went on. The house we were in was one big house. He renovated the top floor and made an apartment upstairs, so he could get rental income. Anything to stay afloat.” Tom learned a thing or two from his much-older pop. “He was a talented guy, in that sense. And I always remember that: keeping yourself moving, whatever you can do to make a buck. He wasn’t stuck with one thing. He came over as a cabinetmaker and then he went to architecture school. When I knew him as a little kid, he had a big drawing table on his sun porch, and he’d be laying out blueprints of remodeling of houses and storefronts, and everything else. “My father and my mother had one son, William, and then they had another son, Ronald, who picked up some illness in the hospital. He came home and wound up dying around two weeks after he was born. I never knew about that. My mother just went into a blank, dark hole after that. My mother wouldn’t talk about any of this when I was a kid, so I knew nothing until I got older. My half-brother John, who was the oldest, told me all about it. Here I was, an adult at the time, and I never even heard [Ronald’s] name. My mother never spoke about him. She never even mentioned his name. “After some time passed, I guess my father said, ‘Do you want to try again?’ So guess who was born…? Me. When it came time for my mother to have me, she would not go to the hospital because of what happened to Ronald. Since my father had been doing work for… St. Pancras Church, in Glendale [in Queens], he had an in with them and they got my mother into a sanitarium for nuns instead of going through a regular hospital. And that’s where I was born. “My mother would say, ‘Remember when you were born.’ I was born on a Sunday morning… ‘The church bells were ringing.’ I was born and I survived. I had all these half-brothers and sisters and they’re all having children around the same time I was born, so I have nieces and nephews who are the same age as me or even older than me, if you can imagine that. I grew up with a lot of people in my family that I didn’t know exactly who they were or how we were related. I just thought they were, like, relatives that were older than me.” Facing a childhood infirmity, Tom found a creative outlet. “When you’re an artist, it’s got to be in you before you know what you want to be. I think seeing my father working on his blueprints… He had an apron and he had my mother make me an apron when I was little. He’d be drawing these things out; he would draw a house, he was drawing a lot of things. That was probably the beginning. That’s what led me into loving to draw.” 47

Previous spread: On left page is Tom and his children, Jean and Tom, Jr., during a late ’70s visit to the National Cartoon Museum, in Port Chester, New York. The Palmers are surrounded by costumed Marvel hero performers. Right page features young Tom on crutches during his childhood malady. This spread: Above, from left, is Tom’s father and Tom; with his mother and older brother. Inset right, Tom as high school senior. Below is photo of Glendale, Queens, in 1961, looking down 65th Street toward Myrtle Avenue, with map overlay. Next page has advertising artwork at top by Frank J. Reilly (pictured), as well as Tom’s recreated E.C. Comics covers which he drew and colored as a teenager for coverless but treasured copies.

trading out those comics at the time which allowed Tom to be introduced to great comic art. Specifically, for Tom, it was the E.C. Comics of the early 1950s which helped spur his lifelong love for the art of Jack Davis, Wallace Wood, and Al Williamson. “My brother had comic books all over the place,” he said. “And I used to take them down the avenue to a little store that, if you brought in a comic book, you could swap for another comic book or two. I went in and what caught my eye was Weird Science, Frontline Combat, and Shock SuspenStories.” Tom continued, “I look back on my upbringing, even though it was not the usual upbringing, with [an elderly] father. When I would be playing in the street, when I was younger, and my father would come to the front door and he’d whistle, ‘Come eat,’ the other kids used to say, ‘Who was that, your grandfather?’ And I’d say, ‘No, that’s my father.’ I didn’t know [any different]. You just grew up with what you’ve got. “I was still on crutches when he died. My mother said to watch my father [who was sitting] on the bed, because my mother had to go into the kitchen to do something. I guess he was not that comfortable sitting on the bed, he was swaying. I LEGG—CALVÉ—PERTHES remember that he was just sitting there, looking at me. I never “But then I had a problem with my hip when I was in the third thought about it until I got a bit older — what was or fourth grade in school. I was limping a lot, so my parents going through his mind at that point? He took me to the doctor, and they found that I had this softness had raised a whole other family, all the of the hip that was making me limp. I found out later it was different children he had. And he a disorder called Legg—Calvé—Perthes disease [a childhood bone condition]. I had X-rays taken and I went to an orthopedic knew, at that point, that he wasn’t doctor, and he said, ‘There’s really nothing you can do. You just going to live for much longer. “My father was in his 60s when have to stay off the foot. You have to stay off that leg. You can’t walk on it.’ So I had to walk on crutches for four years. I couldn’t he had me and he was in his 70s when he passed away. I had to play baseball, I couldn’t do anything, so I used to sit down in find my way because my dad died my backyard, and I used to draw. when I was young. I probably could “I’d actually draw comic books and draw everything. I got used to keeping myself entertained by drawing. I think that was have used more help. I might have gone to college, but when it got to be a big step in my growing into being an artist. I wasn’t bored. I wasn’t bored at all. I would do my own comics, but sadly, I threw my teen years, my father was gone. No one really tried to step in to say you should so many away. You get older and go, ‘What is this crap?’” Tom’s older sibling Bill would never let his kid brother look be going to school. I had to do it. I needed — and was always looking for — father figures. Whether it was John through his comics. However, one day, they got into a physical Buscema, or if it was [art instructor] Frank Reilly, there’s always fight where Tom was hurt. His brother felt guilty, and wanting somebody that I was looking for, an older mentor I could follow to keep Tom from telling their parents about the fight, Bill and I could listen to. I had older brothers, but they had their gave Tom his comic books to keep him mum. It was through own families.”

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Above three photos courtesy of Tom Palmer, Jr.

GLENDALE BUDDIES Growing up in the neighborhood of Glendale, in the New York City borough of Queens, was a fulfilling proposition for Tom, especially when his health improved. During his teens, he began making close connections through friendships. “My teenage years were rambling once I started walking. As I was going into high school, I got off the crutches. That was a big deal because I was on crutches for years. I remember, when I was first able to walk again, and I was on Cooper Avenue and I’m hearing stuff going through the trees. This ‘swish-swish-swish’ noise. I saw this guy, he’s got a homemade slingshot and he’s shooting ball bearings through the trees. And I’m saying, ‘What the hell was this?’ Well, we went on to be the best of friends for a lifetime. He was just a rapscallion; he was always doing something that was adventurous. There wound up being a bunch of us, each of a different nationality. You know, Germans, Italians, Irish, and Asian. My Italian friends called me ‘Palmeri,’ like I was an honorary Italian. But it was a great way of growing up. We just had a good time together. “This guy, Bob, he was the burly one, he kind of took care of me. If there was some reason we had to run from

Faux E.C. Comics cover renditions by Tom Palmer. Courtesy of Tom Palmer, Jr.

something, he would grab hold of me and pull me along because I couldn’t run fast because of my bad hip. It was just the camaraderie that you have through your teenage years and then you get out of high school and then it’s a whole different world.” That “whole different world” included Tom lending his artistic talents to some teenage shenanigans. “I used to be able to forge a driver’s license by using typewriter carbon paper. If you lay that down and you copied very carefully — which I was good at — you could take a stamped seal off of an existing license, and then put it on the sheet underneath, and then transfer it all very carefully, you could go and fill out a form and get a vehicle. Oddly enough, it wasn’t for guys to drive, it was so guys could get a drink who were 16. I was doing this and getting $25 apiece. But it was done innocently enough.” That nefarious business, however, wasn’t what put art school into Tom’s mind. That came from goofing off at work. “I remember, the first job I had, I’m sitting around drawing pictures, making funny pictures of people, and one of the guys came up and said, ‘Gee, you know, you’re really good. Why don’t you go to art school?’ And it was like a light bulb went on in my head. ‘Yeah, why don’t I go to art school?’” LEARNING FROM THE GREATEST Tom’s artistic journey began, in unfulfilling fashion, at Manhattan’s famous School of Visual Arts (renamed thus in 1956, from the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, the institution co-founded by Burne Hogarth). “I liked painting. First, I went to the School of Visual Arts and took their painting classes. There was nothing for me. The teacher just walked around and looked at what you were doing. There was no tutoring, there was nothing spoken about, no instruction.” Unsatisfied with what Visual Arts had to offer, Tom sought a different school and learned of Frank J. Reilly, an illustrator who had apprenticed with Dean Cornwell, taught at the Art Students League of New York, and COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2024 • #36

who recently established his own self-named art school. “Reilly had a program of learning color that focused on hue, value, and chroma. And damn it if you didn’t learn how to paint. You learned all the steps to painting. That fascinated me and drew me in even further. I remember, for some early class projects that you did at home, he had a line of paints with nine neutral values of gray, each with a number. You set your palette up based on those grays. Reilly had a drawing of an overhead view of a house on a road with a tree and the shadows on the ground, and the numbered values that it would be on a sunny day. Now we changed the value numbers, and it was a cloudy day. And then the values changed again for nighttime. I sat at home and looked at this thing and these pictures would emerge. It did look like a sunny day, a cloudy day, and at night. And that just sold me on how it was not a trick, but that there was a lot more to learn about color. And it was a lot more than color; it’s a lot more than just squeezing the paint out. “Reilly had a very structured process. His saying was that he could teach anybody to draw and paint as long as they were willing to learn. When I got into the business, I went to the Society of Illustrators, I was sitting at the bar one day at the Society, and I was new, and somebody noticed that I was there and asked, ‘Where’d you go to art school?’ So I said Frank Reilly. He said, ‘Oh, the mathematician.’ I was insulted, but also amused, at the same time.” Reilly’s classes at the Students League had long waiting lists in the years following World War II, lists that kept artists, including John Severin and Colin Dawkins, from gaining entry in a reasonable duration. But, by the time Tom enrolled at Reilly’s new school, he

Top: Pennsylvania Railroad, “This Fighter Weighs in at 8 Tons” (1944) Reilly - 011

Top: Street view of 1304 Glenwood Road, in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, where Byron Cary Preiss grew up and the mailing address he used for his early fan efforts.

Inset right: Byron’s senior portrait taken for the 1969 Midwood High School Yearbook.

Below: Byron is highlighted in this group portrait of the Midwood High School “commissioners,” presumably a student leadership group at the public institution.

back of his head… and he said he wanted me. That’s how I got back.” Like many who were frustrated with Marvel in the late ’90s, Tom took on assignments elsewhere. However, his heart always remained at Marvel. “That was my second time at Marvel. I stayed a while, too… I think the most frequent [job with Byrne] was X-Men: The Hidden Years [’99–’01]. We did 22 issues of that.” About Tom’s original X-Men run with Neal Adams, he said, “John, like many others, [loved] those X-Men books. People will send me commissions now, it will be something with the X-Men, and they’ll say, ‘Do it in this style you did for those X-Men issues.’ What they’re really saying is: do it in the style that looks like Neal. Neal had a very distinct style; the way he did muscles and the way he did clothing, wrinkles, and a few other things. So that’s all I do. I was the one inking it, so I knew what pen point I used and everything else.” Tom continued, “John grew up in Canada and I guess he had nothing else to do up in the Canadian north, being snowed in. He must have just devoured those X-Men books. So it was just a matter of him getting a chance to redo it. He always said he had an idea and he approached Marvel with it. “Why not fill in those years or issues, at the end of that run [X-Men #56–63, 65]?” Thus, on X-Men: The Hidden Years, Tom said, “I think it originally was 22 issues. And, Marvel being Marvel, John got the 22 and then they said, that was it. And it was selling, but they pulled it. John pulled the works, too, and left. We ended it. But it was John wanting to recreate that era. It was important to him. And I don’t know how close we came. You can only do it once.” Tom added, “I’ve worked on other things with him. John is good. The Silver Surfer [one shot, ’82] I did with him, I remember using Craftint and everything else on it… John was always good to work with.” Howard Mackie was fortunate to pair Byrne and Tom together during his first full-gig as an editor with the inker. “My approach to editing was that the hardest part of the job was to pick the right team. Because that made the rest of the job easy. Tom inked Byrne on Star Brand [#11–14, Jan.–July ’88]. That was probably the first thing I recruited Tom to do as a full editor. My first editorial gig was I inherited the failing ‘New Universe.’ I was able to connive/trick John Byrne into writing and drawing the book (or doing breakdowns). He said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it if you can get Palmer to do the finishes.’ That’s how that was able to come about.”

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BACK TO THE CANVAS While the work with John Byrne was short-lived, Tom always kept up with his TO WORK WITH A LEGEND first love: painting. Throughout the ’70s until the ’20s, he often indulged in that While doing the Marvel Comics version of the George Lucas science fiction film passion. “I love to paint, so I was painting advertising and doing other things. I franchise, Tom was able to transition into working on the Return of the Jedi was doing painted covers for Marvel. Whenever they had a movie cover to do, movie adaptation team with one of his heroes, magnificent artist Al Williamson. I was gonna do it. Not all of them, Bob Larkin was doing them, too. And there’s “There were a couple of artists that were asked to work on the book to help get it one that was never printed, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [intended for done on time, and one of them dropped out. So Archie Goodwin asked me and I the never-pubbed Marvel Super Special #7]. I still have the painting. They gave said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ It was penciling and inking. And, with that, he sent me a whole me the painting back, but they never used it. They canceled the book. It was bunch of photographs. I wound up using one of them for a painted cover for a printed in Europe, but not here. comic book we did further on, when Han Solo was released from carbonite [Star “But all of those paintings led into a lot of the commissions that I’m now Wars #81, Mar. ’84]. But in there were all these photographs of the scenes from getting. They’re not just Marvel stuff, they’re other things, like the Universal the movie and that’s what Al really needed. He needed the visual to do it all. It movie monsters.” Painting remained a purposeful pursuit for Tom during his was also very helpful to me, I really enjoyed that. There were some pages we entire work life. swapped back and forth. Whatever he was doing, I’d do some parts of it. I guess Something that was not as well-known was his penchant for creating humorhe liked doing certain shots and then he’d pass it on. I guess he had his fill with ous art and caricatures. “Jack Davis, he was a big part of my career also, because Star Wars. He was doing the [daily newspaper] strip at the time. I enjoyed that.” I started doing caricature paintings for ad agencies that were given as gifts for Tom added, “But Al was very protective. I think he had too many people [who clients who had a birthday or were retiring. And Jack Davis was my inspiration, worked with him] who were fans. And I tried not to be a fan. (I was, but I didn’t the watercolors and the ink drawings he did. What I did probably looked a little gush all over him or anything like that)… I got to see how he kind of put things bit like Jack Davis’ stuff, but the public that never even knew Jack Davis, MAD together. He was very accurate with everything. And I think it had a nice pattern magazine, or E.C., they loved it. Jack Davis, became somebody I really relied on look through it. So I didn’t help him so much as assist him.” for inspiration. I remember riding the subway, during the period where he was Where Star Wars had given Tom the joy of working with a personal artistic doing a lot of movie posters, and I was wondering if I could get one of them out hero and with people who would become longtime friends, it was a return to of the frame. I was always afraid that I’d get caught trying to steal a poster! Jack super-hero comics which brought him together, infrequently yet still memoraDavis must have done so many of those. Now of all the guys that were at E.C., bly, with another highly praised artist, John Byrne. “I did something with Byrne he must have been the most successful. He and Mort Drucker, I think, were the at DC, Wonder Woman,” Tom gratefully recalled of his one-shot inking over two best. I mean, there were other good ones, but there was something in that Byrne in Wonder Woman Annual #6 [July ’97]. “I was having fun there [at DC]. As artwork by both of them. Mort Drucker was unbelievable. In just a few lines, he a matter of fact, I always thank John, because John is the one who got me back was able to capture [everything]. So many people swiped him.” to Marvel. Marvel was trying to get John, and he had this Hidden Years in the One individual who received a painted cartoon from Tom was former Marvel

editor and writer Howard Mackie. “As we’re talking, I’m focused on a painting that Tom did of me for my 40th birthday. He did this for a few of us at one point. I think Terry Kavanaugh has one, as well. And it’s Tom’s version, it’s close to a caricature, except that it looks exactly like me. I think my wife provided a photo reference for him and then he just started asking all of my friends, ‘What does Howard like?’ I’ve got knives strapped to me in the picture“ — Mackie is a knife aficionado. — “There’s a Ghost Rider poster hanging in the background, and there’s this Spider-Man head there. Somebody mentioned to him that my favorite food at the time was chicken wings. So he’s got a chicken there. It was really sweet. My wife had done a surprise party for me, and Tom presented it to me at a party. It was just lovely.” THE BEAT GOES ON During his career, Tom brought his inking line to Silver Age and Bronze Age artists, many who were giants in the field. In turn, he also worked with emerging generations, where he found himself fitting in as a wise colleague and mentor. One such pairing showed how much legends still mattered at Marvel. As Tom noted, “John Buscema left The Avengers and they got different people in to do the book. The first one was someone who has passed away since, Paul Ryan. Paul was always good. Mark Gruenwald was the editor of the book and Captain America was his character, the one he just loved. Paul was a thin guy, he did a lot of exercising, he was kind of really taut. And he made Captain America look like he was half the weight. I remember Mark saying, ‘Can you make him look like what John Buscema was doing?’ He was looking for a bulkier Captain America and I did that. I know Paul didn’t care for that. I told Mark, ‘You should tell him.’ Then I went through the writer I said, ‘Tell him this is not me, it’s Mark Gruenwald.’ But everybody was trying to have that ‘Buscema look.’ And, when he left, I think they sorely missed him. John was indispensable.” An artist making a name during the ’80s and ’90s was Butch Guice. His teaming with Tom proved a special one, as was the back-&-forth conversation between the two of them, which grew from there. “Well, the first time Tom and I worked together was on a Rom cover years earlier [#60, Nov. ’84]. I don’t recall if I was even aware he was inking it until I saw it on the stands. It was one of my first times drawing the character and probably a dismal piece of dreck in the pencil stage, but Tom worked his usual magic on it, and I was over the moon having finally gotten the opportunity to work with him. “The first interior work was a number of years later. If my memory is correct, it was for Avengers Assemble #14–15 [June– July ’13], two issues during the big “Age of Ultron event,” at the time. I knew he was going to ink the thing and, once again, I was thrilled, if admittedly a little bit intimidated by the entire prospect of penciling for someone whose work I respected as I do Tom. So, if I had any expectations going in, it was that he would need to be saving my artistic bacon from my own ineptitude.” Over the course of their collaboration, Guice mentioned Apartment 3-G comic strip artist Alex Kotz ky. “Tom’s response was that, in all his years in the industry, he had never before had a penciler mention Kotzky, and we quickly realized we shared a mutual appreciation of a number of the older newspaper strip artists… Long story short, we continued to kibitz back and forth from that point… almost entirely, we chat about mutual artists whose strip work we admire and enjoy such as Kotzky, Ken Bald, Lou Fine, and others… Just two guys who love the comics medium, both book and strip, and the history COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2024 • #36

of it all, and chatting about some near forgotten greats.” Guice continued, “My favorite collaboration with Tom however has probably been the pages he stepped in and inked in Winter Soldier [#5, July ’12]… Tom just nailed those pages.” (Tom said, “I just enjoyed working with [Guice]. I don’t know if I helped him become anything.) Guice shared, I remember doing something for Marvel, and I had to get the thing done in an hour. It was a splash page and it was when I was scanning it and sending it in. And I used chalk, charcoal, white chalk, and a whole bunch of things. I thought it looked pretty good, but he just flipped over it. I think he saw the original of that page. I was not doing ‘comic book,’ I was aware that I was going to scan it and that I could do something in black-&-white, and that’s what I went for.” (Of working with Guice, Tom said, “Whenever we’ve been together, we’ve had a very enjoyable time working together. He’s my audience. He’s applauding.”) Howard Mackie shared his thoughts about his work with Tom after the legendary inker’s passing. “Tom is probably one of the first professional superstars that I became friends with, and pretty quickly. Because Tom was a great teacher. I mean,

This page: Above is the final page of the Silver Surfer one-shot [’82], with art by John Byrne and Tom. Below: Rom #60 [Nov. ’84], art by Jackson Guice and Tom.

This spread: The different stages Tom produced to painstakingly create a private commission featuring the Universal movie monsters of yore.

umbrella and I’d fall asleep on the sand because I was up late working while everyone was sleeping. And they’d have a ball in the ocean.” One of his favorite memories came by way of his son. After a lifetime of not truly knowing his heritage, a visit to Ellis Island by the younger Palmer closed a chapter of missing pages for his dad. “I went there when a friend from college came to visit me in the summer of 2001,” shared Tom Jr. “I was able to use one of the exhibits there to search the records and found the manifest for the ship my grandfather was on when he came to the United States. The dates on the records were different from what my dad knew at the time, so it placed his father in this country earlier than he thought. And being able to see the documents related to my grandfather definitely had an impact on my dad since he lost his father when he was still a kid.” During our conversations, Tom, Sr., would jokingly say he was “getting on the [analyst] couch” or “stepping into a confessional,” when sharing his story. As a way of coming full circle, Tom recalled the ailment of his youth and reiterated the need to repair his hip, the same hip which forced a young Tom Palmer to commit to drawing in his backyard, that same hip which bedeviled him for a lifetime. “That had followed me for years,” Tom said. “I needed a hip replacement. I had two young children, and I was a freelancer, I could not do it and spend a few weeks in the hospital. I couldn’t do it. So I just put it off and took a few Excedrin. And then finally, about 20 years ago, I heard about an orthopedic doctor who was doing hip replacements. He did them very quickly, with very few side effects to keep you walking. He said, ‘You’ll be walking the same day.’ I couldn’t believe it. I asked how long I would be away from my drawing board, and he said, ‘You’ll be back doing that the next day.’ He was a miracle worker. He put a little incision in my back, a small incision, and somehow he would go in there and pop the femur out of the hip and cut that off and put a new one in. And he was right. I walked out of the hospital the same day, 12 hours later.” #36 • Fall 2024 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

As Tom, Jr., related, “I didn’t notice he was putting effort into it, but then, looking back at it, he probably did, in his own way. He definitely worked a lot, but he also made sure he had time for the family. I’m sure he could have spent that time getting work done, but then that would have eaten up time that he could have spent with everyone else. I never saw him frazzled, in the sense of panicking for deadlines and stuff like that, because he kept a good balance to it and he really didn’t show that it was hard to manage. But doing all that meant that he spent a lot of nights working into the late hours while everyone else was asleep.” Tom, Sr., said, “I’m sitting here pining for the old days. They were a lot of fun. I was doing advertising and I used to be up half the night getting that work done. I delivered the advertising jobs in the morning and came back home, took a nap, and then I’d be doing comics on the weekend. “When I was painting, my hands would get chapped, so when I went to bed, I put hand cream on. My wife said, ‘Let me get you some gloves from the drug store.’ So the routine became that I would put lotion on my hands and then put gloves on before I went to bed at four or five in the morning after finishing up advertising work. My wife would get the kids ready for school and then told them, ‘Go and say goodbye to your father.’ I remember one day they came into the bedroom and I guess I took my hands out of the covers to say goodbye and the kids were laughing a little bit. My daughter said, ‘How come you look like Mickey Mouse?’ In my grogginess, it took 30 seconds to hit me that it was the white gloves. You know when you have that laugh where you don’t make a sound? To this day, I still remember it. I was in stitches.” Where working long hours were the norm for Tom, he greatly enjoyed being there with his kids on vacations. Even when work came along. “In the summertime, we’d rent a house down at the Jersey Shore, put the dog in a kennel for a couple weeks, and then I’d go down and sit in the kitchen and work on comic books. I’d wake up in the morning and go out on the sand on a blanket with an

LOVE FOR THE MAN Klaus Janson, along with Tom, a fellow luminary chiseled into the Mount Rushmore of Comic Book Inkers, has boundless appreciation for his colleague. “Tom was very unique in terms of bringing in a style that was a little bit more contemporary, and a little bit more modern. And some of that has to do with his solid education in art, and the teachers that taught him, and the regimen that he learned and was tutored in and was taught in school, that covered all of the aspects of art. It wasn’t about learning one discipline. He learned color theory, for instance. How many of us get a chance to learn color theory or how many of us that are working in the field understand color theory? So he has such a solid foundation, that he brought many, many disciplines and knowledge of those disciplines into his work. So he, like Neal Adams, was at a turning point in terms of the evolution of what comics looked like. “Tom was just an extraordinary influence on me. They reprinted the George Pérez Beatles book [Marvel Super Special #4, July ’78] that I had inked over George and, I swear to God, I looked at it and I thought, ‘Did I ink this or was this Tom?’ Because it was so influenced by Tom, it was almost line for line. So there was a period of time when I was really intent on mimicking him. Because I loved his work and still love his work. “Dick Giordano, way back, when I was a kid (so going back 40–50 years), told me that before he started inking or working, he would look at somebody else’s work to inspire him. And I do the same thing. And always invariably, Tom is in there. Always. You know, I have a stack of his work. ‘How do you solve this problem?’ You go to your favorite artists, and you look at how they solved that problem. And Tom was number one in that area. Just amazing work. And the body of work that he has; Walter Simonson, and Gene Colan, and John Buscema, and Gil Kane. Just incredible stuff. And the first time I saw Tom’s work was when he penciled a short story. I think it was in the House of Mystery or the House of Secrets. And he penciled a Doctor Strange story that was inked by Dan COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Fall 2024 • #36

Adkins. So, you know, I think I was very well versed in his body of work.” Janson compared Giordano’s work to Tom’s. “That’s something that I’ve been thinking about for decades. Let me say this, Dick was my mentor and I owe him so much. Truly, he was my second dad, like mentors can be. And, every day, there’s an argument in my head: who’s the better inker? And I have to say it’s Tom. And it is Tom because he had the ability to create a vision and follow it to an extent that Dick was not able to. And I think, to some degree, Dick would maybe even admit that. I’m not sure about that. Dick was a journeyman in the sense that he did what he had to do for the company and for the books that he was working on. And Tom was, I think, much more of a creative person. “And that’s not to, in any way, diminish Dick’s work. Because I’d be the first one to tell you that I am a combination of 90% Dick and Tom. There’s absolutely no doubt about that (and the 10% leftover is Wally Wood or Alfonso Font). But it’s 90% Dick Giordano and Tom Palmer. Those are the two best guys. Joe Sinnott would be the third one. But I think the difference between the two of them is that Dick had a straighter line, and he was very smart in the way he used angles, and a straight — in contrast with a rounder — line. And Tom, I think has a more fluid line, there aren’t that many edges to Tom’s inking. It’s a bit softer, if I could use that word. “And Tom invested a lot in backgrounds and Dick did not. Dick had a feeling that you only do what’s necessary. I’m of the school that I like to give the reader something to look at. And so I happen to believe in creating a spectacle, or creating detail, or creating Zip-A-Tone, or texture, or color effects, or color holes… all that stuff that Tom was exploring. All of that stuff, I believe, gives the reader something to look at, a little bit of spectacle. And whereas Dick was much more about only what is necessary, more of an Alex Toth approach, which, of course, is extremely valid. But I would layer the spectacle, as Tom, I think, would, at least that’s what I take from him, on top of what is necessary, so that you are able to do both. And I think that’s how Tom was able to be as versatile and holistic in 73