Comic Book Creator #37 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Satiate Your Sinister Side!

“Heh-heh-heh! It’s me again—the CRYPTOLOGIST—

All characters and properties TM & © their respective owners.

and my ghastly little band have cooked up a few more grisly morsels to terrorize you with! Amongst them is ROGER HILL’s conversation with diabolical horror (and superhero) comics artist DON HECK! For something even more gruesome, STEVEN KRONENBERG slices up his favorite severed hand films! BARRY FORSHAW brings back the otherworldly horrors of Hammer’s QUATERMASS, while TIM LEESE spends more Hammer Time on that studio’s output. Then, editor PETER NORMANTON prepares a viewing of horror-inspired covers from the Shadow’s own 1940s comic book! We’ll cover another Killer “B” movie classic: CONRAD VEIDT and “The Man Who Laughs!”, along with more preCode comic books, and PETE VON SHOLLY gives his twisted take on cartoon horror. So peer into the dark side with TwoMorrows Publishing’s latest terror—scribed just for retro horror fans!” (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99

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CRYPTOLOGY #3

CRYPTOLOGY #4

CRYPTOLOGY #5

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!

We dig up a few skeletons in the closet of our SKULL & BONES ISSUE! Ghost Rider from comics to movies, skeleton covers from Atlas Digests and pre-Code horror comics, HY FLEISHMAN’s 1950s skeleton covers and stories, Disney’s ’70s Pirates of the Caribbean models and Last Gasp’s Skull Comics, the films of William Castle, and Killer B films: House on Haunted Hill, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, plus our Hammertime section! It’s bone-chilling retro horror from NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!

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82 International 19 Digital Only

Winter 2025 • The Steve Englehart Issue • Number 37

T A STEVE ENGLEHART Portrait by KEN MEYER, JR.

Ye Ed’s Rant: Your humble editor on his obsessive/compulsive pathology, re: comics!..... 2

COMICS CHATTER

About Our Cover

The Miller Reconciliation: With the help of Barbara Friedlander, Ye Ed examines the accomplished if not completely unblemished life of DC Comics editor Jack Miller........ 3

Cover art by SAL BUSCEMA, Pencils JIM MOONEY, Inks Cover colors by GLEN WHITMORE

Read It in the Funny Papers: The tale of short-lived underground comix tabloid......... 12 Arnold Drake at 100: The final portion of CBC’s three-part interview with the legendary comics scribe on his creating Doom Patrol, Deadman, and post-Marvel/DC work ........ 16 Once Upon Long Ago: Steve Thompson name-drops plenty about comics pro chums.... 29 Ten Questions: Bob Fingerman yaks with Darrick about his loves (hint: his doggies!).... 30 Incoming: Missives on the tragic George Caragonne and also Gerber the Great.............. 32

Captain America TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

They Came from Missouri: Ken Steinhoff, news photog, on Show-Me comics scribes... 34 Dan DiDio: Part two of Greg Biga talk with the writer-editor about his DC exec years....... 38 Comics in the Library: Richard Arndt on Nell and some girl named Turtle..................... 47 Brown’s Bulletin: Comics fan Gary Brown and the journey of his old Lois Lane ish......... 48 Hembeck’s Dateline: We’ve got a good feeling about Fred’s force-filled installment!.... 49 THE MAIN EVENT Above: This issue’s main subject, Steve Englehart, hoped Sal Buscema might produce new cover art, but our pal Sal wasn’t available. But, to keep Steve happy, we found a scan of the original art for Sal’s great Captain America #155 [Nov. ’72], with inks by Jim Mooney! Man, I loved thish!

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BACK MATTER Important Announcement! Sick of waiting 90 days for each CBC? How’s 60 sound?... 73 Creators at the Con: Kendall Whitehouse shares comics pro “Personal Tales” portraits.. 78 Coming Attractions: Roarin’ Rick Veitch beckons us into his head come next April!....... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Valda skewers Master Rich by Ernie Colón...... 80 EDITOR’S NOTE: The Jack Butterworth interview in CBC #35 was transcribed by TOM PAIRIN. Apologies to our friend for the inadvertent omission.

Right: Swiping from the Heritage Auctions’ description of this John Romita, Sr., artifact: “This is the earliest original artwork we have ever seen of ‘This One’! Mantis was created by Steve Englehart and first illustrated by Don Heck in The Avengers #112 [June ’73] in what began the long-running ‘Celestial Madonna’ story arc. Romita, Sr., was made the art director of Marvel Comics in 1973, and had a hand in the development of new characters, such as Mantis.” PLEASE NOTE: Some imagery in this issue has been digitally enhanced with software. Comic Book Creator ™ is published bi-mothly 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. Six-issue subscriptions: $73 US, 117 International, $29 Digital. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2025 Jon B. Cooke/ TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. ISSN 2330-2437. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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

The Enlightenment of Steve Englehart From his Midwest upbringing to time in the U.S. Army to his start as an artist working for Neal Adams — as the very first Crusty Bunker! — (and dating Bob Oksner’s cute daughter!) Stephen Kerfoot Englehart talks about his breakthrough early to mid-’70s work, with emphasis on his daring Captain America run, trippy Doctor Strange sagas, and masterful achievement with The Avengers. Plus we find out about his treatment by the mainstream comics companies and early independent comics work................. 50

This issue is dedicated to the memories of JOYCE BRABNER, JOHN CASSADAY, BOB FOSTER, PETER B. GILLIS, BERNIE MIREAULT, ™

JON B. COOKE

Editor & Designer

JOHN MORROW

Publisher & Consulting Editor

GREG BIGA

Associate Editor

SAL BUSCEMA (pencils) & JIM MOONEY (inks)

Cover Artists

GLEN WHITMORE Cover Colorist

RICHARD J. ARNDT MARC SVENSSON STEVEN THOMPSON TOM ZIUKO Contributing Editors

J.D. KING

CBC Cartoonist Emeritus

TOM ZIUKO

CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON

CBC Illustrator

KEN MEYER, JR.

CBC Color Portrait Artist

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

GREG PRESTON

KENDALL WHITEHOUSE

CBC Convention Photographer

RICHARD ARNDT FRED HEMBECK DARRICK PATRICK STEVEN THOMPSON TOM ZIUKO CBC Columnists

Contact CBC: jonbcooke@aol.com Jon B. Cooke, P.O. Box 601 West Kingston, RI 02892 2

For the love of comics, Ye Ed.’s attention span issues have a benefit

When I was young, my mom will I’ve been at it for 25 years now, tell you I was a handful, all over collecting life stories, and my interviews the place and into so many likely number in the hundreds, if not things. I collected such strange thousands (if including email Q+As), and and unusual items, including old I’m nowhere remotely near being done. newspapers, and I’d marvel with So I reckon the rest of my life will include awe over my oldest sister’s shelf of producing as-definitive-as-possible Fantasy & Science Fiction, lined up histories of Heavy Metal, Métal Hurlant, in order, arranged by date. I was and the many imitators they spawned utterly fascinated with sequential over the decades; the aforementioned things and perhaps that’s due Catholic school comic series that spanned to seeking a semblance of order four decades, Treasure Chest, which is a far amid the chaos of living with five more interesting story than some might siblings all cared for by a single imagine; a narrative history of DC Comics mother in the crazy 1960s (my during their “Daring and Different” age; dad left the family around 1967). revisiting The Warren Companion, but as Or maybe it’s an affliction of some deeper a narrative history, maybe called The Book of psychological origin. I think about the nature Warren, maybe not; plus other secret plans… of being a collector, but it ultimately remains, This litany of projects is actually doable for me, a mystery. by a person of my age because I already have Anyway, for a while, my mania was books many interviews and artifacts “in the can,” in a series, particularly Doctor Dolittle and as it were. This almost compulsive need the Tom Sawyer books, and a great to “carpet bomb” subjects started back time-traveling serial in Boys’ Life in the first issues of Comic Book Artist, magazine that was collected into and became particularly acute when I hardcover volumes. But soon, was gathering material for my respective in 1971, I really paid attention Heavy Metal/Métal Hurlant and Weirdo to comics and, as I’ve recounted examinations — starting in 2000 or so with again and again, I maintained a the former and 2005 for the latter — where singular focus on funnybooks upon I would go through the issues, one by one, encountering Jack Kirby’s Fourth and compile lists of contributors therein, Steve Englehart by Ronn Sutton and then go about contacting as many as World. (I think part of the appeal of comics for me was not only the art, but that they were also there were available and willing to participate. easy to read, as I was a slow, easily distracted reader back then, I’m aware all of this obsessive work is connected to childprobably from undiagnosed ADHD.) hood, but I’m convinced, too, that it’s also part of a genuine So comics became king for little brother Andy and I and, desire to celebrate the achievements of people who toiled to while I, as a young adult, drifted from buying new stuff at create the comics I love so much, as well as to fulfill an insatiatimes, it’s remained important stuff ever since turning 12, so ble curiosity to know as much as I can about them. Maybe my it’s been 53 years thus far! But, though I do have the occasion- pathologies spring from some unhealthy compulsion to grasp al twinge to collect and I routinely buy new stuff at the store and hold onto things I fear will be taken and lost — it’s likely every week, my “condition” has shifted over to comics history, my seminal need to collect is connected in some way to that — as I’ve been manic collecting testimonials, anecdotes, and but, in reflecting on it, I think I manage this condition for the personal tales of those who created the comics I love so much. greater good and I’m where I’m supposed to be in the world. I grew of age in a terrifically diverse period when comics I wasn’t always in the right space and, in fact, it’s been permeated popular culture in print. The form was diversifying pretty much since my return to TwoMorrows — around 2010 to include underground comix and there was also a burgeon- — when, with wisdom shared by selfless others and a growing ing independent movement, along with classic, old material faith, the path before me has become cleared of the wreckage being reprinted, with great fanzines a’ plenty, and the first of my past, all damage of which I am responsible. And, with comics histories were being published, etc. Thus my interests a grateful heart and gratitude to all, my journey to be of stretched beyond the super-hero comics of DC and Marvel, service to this art form is not finished yet, but the way is clearly into less popular realms, whether Charlton Comics or Treasure mapped out before me, and I hope to have as many of you Chest, or even such bizarreness as the comics of Jack T. Chick. with me who care to join, so, beloved readers… ever onward!

cbc contributors

Ron Barrett Dan DiDio David Donovan Faye Dorman

Leslie Drubin Peter Drubin Steve Englehart Mark Evanier

Barbara Friedlander Floyd Hertweck Todd Klein

Paul Kupperberg Bob Levin Paul Levitz Ralph Macchio

— Y e Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com

Steve Mitchell Will Murray Cory Sedlmeier Ken Steinhoff

Alan Stewart Ronn Sutton Marc Svensson Eliot Wagner

#37 • Winter 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

CBC Contributing Photographer

Diverse Interests

LARRY TODD, MARY WINGS, and MICHAEL ZULLI

up front

The Miller Reconciliation

A look at the truth, lies, and tragedy that diminished the reputation of a DC Comics writer/editor by JON B. COOKE

Photo courtesy of Barbara Friedlander. Strange Adventures, Deadman TM & © DC Comics.

[NOTE: I confess I’ve been curious about the life and career of Mr. Jack Miller since reading his engaging scripts for early episodes of “Deadman,” in Strange Adventures, and noting he was also editor of that title at the start of the character’s celebrated run. His bio in the Deadman [2001] collection simply states Miller was a DC editor between 1964–69, had written for comics and other fields since the ’40s, and was dead by 1970. But a few years before that biographical sketch appeared, I had heard salacious rumors and mysterious references about Miller when I interviewed DC personnel for early issues of Comic Book Artist, yet, a quarter-century later, it came into sharper focus when I spoke with Miller associate editor and protégé Barbara Friedlander. I’d initially intended to name this feature, “The Miller Redemption,” but, in my investigation, I discovered a more complex story, one no less heart-wrenching and tragic). — JBC] Viewed from the inside, one could quip the “DC” on 1960s’ comic book covers at National Periodical Publications stood for “Decidedly Cruel,” at least in the offices of certain mean-spirited, sometimes crooked editors at 575 Lexington Avenue. Superman group editor Mort Weisinger was notorious for brutalizing his stable of freelancers. Jim Shooter, at the tender age of 14, suffered the most vile verbal abuse: decades later, the future Marvel editor-in-chief (no milquetoast, he) remembered Weisinger as “a monster.” Then there was Robert Kanigher, overseer of the DC war titles and prolific writer, prone to ridicule and scream at his artists. Gene Colan called him “impossible… very abusive… [and] he was a lunatic, in plain English.” (Artist Mort Meskin was said to have suffered a nervous breakdown because of Kanigher’s harangues.) Even the revered “Uncle Julie,” father of the Silver Age Julius Schwartz, had a reputation for impatience and wasn’t averse to barking frustrations in a freelancer’s direction. (And woe be the cordial young female who ambled near his — or, it is said, Kanigher’s, for that matter! – lecherous reach, but that’s a whole other story). In his 2017 book, Slugfest: Inside the Epic 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC, author Reed Tucker shared, “Kanigher, Weisinger, and Schwartz made up the core of DC’s editorial staff in 1960 — just one year before the dawn of the so-called Marvel age of comics — and they represented an old-fashioned mentality that would, in a few short years, find itself woefully out of step with the changing times.” One could also say DC stood for “Distressingly Corrupt,” given the extortion taking place in some offices, most blatantly from behind the desk of the company’s humor editor, a notorious gambler who demanded kickbacks from freelancers, as well as forcing them to work gratis on his outside projects. But evidence of DC veteran Lawrence Nadle’s schemes didn’t come to light until just prior to his demise from a heart attack, on December 26, 1963. Artist John Romita, Sr., who was a DC romance comics stalwart before defecting to become “Jazzy John” at the Marvel Comics Group in 1965, said, “I never gave an editor a kickback. I did get caught by Larry Nadle, but only for one story, and I like to think he liked me a little bit better than the other guys. Otherwise, he would have taken me for more than one story. You know, you’d get a check and then you’d sign a personal check over to him for that amount, and then you owed the company a story. And, when he died, I owed them one story, 360 bucks worth.” COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2025 • #37

MILLER’S CROSSING Discovery of more of Nadle’s unethical activity came to light just before his abrupt death at 60. Then-DC editorial director Irwin Donenfeld told me, “I caught a double-dip in our yearly audit and I found a whole bunch of scripts (not the originals, but copies). I asked him, ‘How come we have all these scripts, why haven’t we used them, and why are you sitting on all this inventory?’ I read a couple of them and said, ‘Boy, that’s familiar!’” The former executive then chuckled. “The titles were strange… At any rate, the editor died shortly thereafter; he went suddenly with a heart attack.” By early 1964, Nadle’s passing created an opportunity for longtime DC contributor Jack Miller to ascend to a full-time editorial position at the company. Miller had been a DC scribe since at least 1942, where, into the following decade, he was responsible for text pages and letter columns, as well as the oft regular series assignment, which included “Martian Manhunter” in Detective Comics, “Congo Bill” in Action, “Tommy Tomorrow” in World’s Finest, and “Aquaman” in Adventure. After a shakeup in the romance line in 1963, upon editor Phyllis Reed’s departure, Nadle had assumed her duties, which then passed onto Miller, who began editing the love comics titles, Girls’ Romance, Girls’ Love Stories, Heart Throbs, Secret Hearts, Young Love, and Young Romance. The saga of Jacob Edward Miller began 55 years before, on January 10, 1909, in Passaic, New Jersey, when the only son of Eastern European Jewish immigrant parents Morris and Ida was born. He had two sisters: elder Rose and younger Lillian (Lily). Son of a house painting contractor, Miller developed a knack for writing plays, which were often performed in area community theaters and, initially, north of the Catskills’ Borscht Belt. “In the late 1930s, before he was married,” Miller’s daughter, Leslie, shared, “he used to go to the Adirondacks and work at a camp putting on plays. That’s where he started first producing plays, it was the incubator for the Ridgewood Players. He loved the Adirondacks.” Upon graduating New York University, Miller married local Jersey girl Helen Tuckman, on November 18, 1936. During the time of their nuptials, according to the couple’s marriage license, he was employed as advertising manager for a newspaper out of Passaic. “There was also Movie Time, a weekly local publication he self-published through local advertisers for movie theaters,” Leslie explained. “Movie Time listed whatever movie was playing in Passaic or Patterson, and had ads from shops around the area. So he earned money from that, too.” For a spell, Miller weathered the Depression by working

Above: Jack Miller at Barbara Friedlander’s wedding, in 1969. Below: For a period, Jack was editor and writer of Strange Adventures. His caricature appears in the upper right of the word balloon on Neal Adams’s cover of SA #207 [Dec. ’67].

the drake dossier

The Comic Book Man

The finale of a three-part interview celebrating of the 100 th birthday of the late Arnold Drake Who is Arnold Drake?

For those who missed parts one and two: the Manhattan native, recipient of the very first Bill Finger Award, is celebrated as co-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 extensive career, Arnold [1924–2007] worked for just about every major comic book publisher in innumerable genres. — JBC. Below: Luis Dominguez depicts A.D. and he working on their 2002 Heavy Metal story, “Tripping Out.” Who’s that lady serving drinks…?

Conducted by JON B. COOKE [Editor's Note: When last we left the conversation, Arnold was discussing an increasingly nasty atmosphere in the late ’60s at DC Comics — arguably publisher of his best comics work — and his decision to jump over to Marvel for an (albeit short-lived) stay. That portion showcased his large body of humor work, which included notable scripts for The Adventures of Jerry Lewis and Stanley and His Monster. We pick up the interview to cover some other DC-related subjects, including what was a labororganizing effort among the writers . Note that footnotes are courtesy of Drake fan/friend Marc Svensson, who refers to his interview with A.D. in Alter Ego Vol. 3, #17 [Sept. ’02] . — Y.E.] Comic Book Creator: Was there, in fact, a writer’s strike at DC? Arnold Drake: There was never a writer’s strike. A bunch of the writers, led by Bob Haney and myself, got together. That would have been about eight of us, seven, eight, something like that. We wanted to be dealt with as a group rather than individuals, because the house was playing us off against each other. We had some real gripes. Everybody says that the “strike” was about health insurance. The strike was not about health insurance. What it was about was recognition, which is a lot more basic than health insurance. It’s about [DC Comics president Jack] Liebowitz being willing to say, “I will talk with one or two of you guys who will represent all the writers.” Well, the writers wanted to do it, but the artists

* The list of people involved in the failed attempt to unionize is consistent with my original interview and subsequent conversations over the years, with the exception of “Wood brothers.” There were three Wood Brothers: Bob, Dick and Dave. Bob, artist and publisher at Lev Gleason comics, was convicted of killing his girlfriend and was killed in a car accident shortly after his release in 1966 and most assuredly had nothing to do with the DC writers. Dick Wood is the unmentioned brother, although I suspect his involvement was minor. ** Interestingly other than here, I have never heard Arnold, Bob Haney, or anyone else bring up Leo Dorfman in reference to the failed union. Leo Dorfman wrote some of the zaniest stories printed in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen and some of the other Superman titles. He was incredibly prolific in the Mort Weisinger stable.

#37 • Winter 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Illustration © the estate of Luis Domiguez. Courtesy of Marc Svensson.

were not interested. The artists, almost to a man, said, “We’re not workers, we’re artists. Unions are for workers!” And when I said, “Look, I’ve been a member of the Screenwriter’s Guild for quite a while, and screenwriters who consider themselves both writers and artists are workers, or they wouldn’t have bought the guild.” That didn’t cut any ice. They were not interested in that kind of talk. I think they were just also kind of scared. CBC: They were just rationalizing. Arnold: Yeah, and I think they were convinced that, if they did that, they’d all be fired. CBC: Did you help lead this? This was you and Bob? Arnold: Yeah. Essentially it was Haney and myself, with a lot of back-up from John Broome. Unfortunately, John was out of the country most of the time, so we didn’t get all of the strength from him that we might have, but he was solidly behind us. [Bill] Finger was behind us, [Gardner] Fox was behind us, the Woods — Dave, in particular, was. Otto Binder was strongly behind us.* CBC: Edmund Hamilton? Arnold: No, he wasn’t. CBC: Who was Leo Dorfman? Arnold: One of the writers. I believe Leo was with us. I didn’t really get to know Leo very well. The only artist who went along with it was [Kurt] Schaffenberger.** CBC: Did George Kashdan play into this at all? Arnold: Well, he was an editor there and he was sympathetic. And I think that’s one of the reasons that they got rid of him. CBC: Was he the only sympathetic editor? Arnold: Oh, no. [Jack] Schiff was. But Schiff kept clear of us, even though he was very sympathetic to what we were doing. Kashdan did not keep clear of us, and made it evident that he thought that they ought to negotiate. I think he tried to make the point that I made in Liebowitz’s office, which is, “If you do this, you will bring great honor to the field. The field right now is looked down upon. If you recognize a guild like this, you will improve conditions and raise the image for everybody, including the publishers.” That was one of the seven points I tried to make. I think Liebowitz saw nothing but, “Unions, unions!” Years later, Infantino told me that the moment we left the room, Leibowitz called his Friday-morning-golfing-buddy, [Marvel president] Martin Goodman to say, “The writers are forming a union!”

Arnold Drake portrait © the respective photographer. Courtesy of Marc Svensson. My Greatest Adventure TM & © DC Comics.

Incidentally, at a private meeting, Leibowitz unconsciously insulted me by saying, “When I was your age, I was a socialist, too.” But when he was 40, nearly every first- or second-generation Jew was a socialist. So were lots of Germans, Italians, and Irish. Now [referring to the George W. Bush administration] Washington is in the hands of a thousand Christian fascists and corporate capos. CBC: Was that talk between Leibowitz and Goodman the reason you and Stan Lee (Goodman’s cousin) didn’t hit it off well? Arnold: Probably. Plus Stan’s unacknowledged guilt about stealing my Doom Patrol and calling it, “The X-Men.” To say nothing about switching my “Brotherhood of Evil” into his “Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.” CBC: Let’s talk about The Doom Patrol. What kind of guy was Bruno Premiani? Arnold: Very intelligent. He was a dedicated anti-fascist. He was forced to leave Italy because of Mussolini and then, some years later, he was forced to leave Argentina because of Peron. He had started as a political cartoonist in Italy when he was about 17 years old. And Mussolini didn’t like his cartoons.* CBC: Do you know roughly what year he was born? Was he your age? Arnold: Yes. He was about 10 years older than I am. My guess is he was born somewhere between 1912 and 1913, something like that. [Wikipedia states January 4, 1907.] CBC: And did you guys talk politics at all? Arnold: Oh, yeah. He came to my house one night for dinner and he started talking about McCarthyism, which was prevalent at that time. And he said, “You know, it’s like fascism. It could be the road to fascism.” And I said to him, “Bruno, you were chased out of Italy, you were chased out of Argentina. Don’t get chased out of this country, because you may have no other place to run to.” Bruno was a very different experience, I think, for all the editors at DC. They had never quite seen what he had brought, which was a great deal of intelligence and understanding of his time and place, a great respect for the work itself, and dedication to it. The wonderful thing about Bruno is that he had learned to get along. I don’t know how hard it was for him to learn that, but he had learned it, which means that… Well, when he had a disagreement, when [Murray] Boltinoff would say to him, “Bruno, would you do this?” Or “Would you do that, instead of what you’ve done here?” Bruno would look at it for a moment and then nod his head, and say [affects an Italian accent] “I will do it, Murray, but it will be very poor.” So he had learned to get along. * Arnold told this story to me a bunch of times, and I never got tired of hearing it. It is abbreviated for this interview and, please keep in mind, I am retelling an Arnold Drake story that he told in his own entertaining way. It is a story as telling of Arnold as it is of Bruno Premiani. Arnold’s long version went something like this, with the exception of my comment in the parenthesis: When Bruno was young and Mussolini was coming to power Premiani’s political cartoons were pointing out the true nature of Mussolini and his Fascist party. (I would like to quickly point out Premiani was there for the birth of the word “fascist” and contributed to our understanding of its broader definition. He was not just a “dedicated anti-Fascist”; he was the original anti-Fascist.) When the warrants for his arrest were issued, he had to flee, and flee he did. He next wound up in Spain. Premiani was soon in the same situation he was in Italy after criticizing Franco. He was also still too close to Italy and Mussolini, who were still COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2025 • #37

This page: Above is It Rhymes with Lust [1950], written by Drake and Leslie Waller and drawn by Matt Baker. Below: Drake pen-&ink portrait by Dominguez. Inset left: A very young Arnold Druckman, courtesy of his daughter Pamela.

I worked closely — and still do — after 40 years, I’m still working with Luis Dominguez, who was probably the artist closest to Bruno in style and personality and friendship. They came up here six months apart, from Buenos Aires, where they had worked together on the Argentinian version of Classic Comics, and things like that. And Bruno, as I said, learned to get along, through various (probably nasty) experiences. But Luis has never learned that in all these years. Luis will still blow his top and walk away from a job because it isn’t exactly the way he would like to do it. For the last 10 years, I’ve been his agent and he’s turned down more than one assignment that I’ve gotten for him, simply because… Well, for example, I got him an assignment to do some Christmas cards and they had religious themes. He didn’t object to that. (I mean, he did object, but he didn’t make a big noise about it.) But when I got him an as-

Above: Comic book great Arnold Drake on the balcony of his Manhattan apartment, circa 1999. The photographer is unknown. Below: The Doom Patrol, an Arnold Drake creation, debuted in My Greatest Adventure #80 [June ’63]. Art by Bruno Premiani.

i nterested in his affairs, so Bruno fled to Argentina. When he was in Argentina, he became an outspoken critic of Juan Peron, because Bruno was Bruno. He had to leave for another country, and Bruno soon found himself in the United States. Eventually Bruno felt he had to flee the United States and return to Argentina with the situation improved there. When asked why he had to “flee,” Bruno cited the rise of Ronald Reagan, stating, “I know a fascist when I see one!” 17

that guy from brooklyn

In the House of Superman

Dan DiDio discusses his executive editorship at DC Comics and his future in comics world Conducted by GREG BIGA [In our last issue Dan DiDio described his upbringing in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush; along the way, revealing his perennial love of movies, monsters, comics, and cartoons. He also shared how those pursuits brought him into contact with some luminaries of the broadcast world as he segued from frustrated accounting student into a producer of television content, including the glamorous realm of daytime soap operas. In this concluding segment, we pick up the conversation after Dan made his leap into DC Comics as the replacement for departing longtime DC executive Paul Levitz. — G.B.]

This page: Clockwise from above is cover to the Identity Crisis [2005] collection; splash to Jack Kirby’s gag three-pager in Fantastic Four Annual #5 [Nov. ’67], back when Lee and Kirby were having fun; and official DC company portrait of Dan DiDio shot by Mitchell Haddad.

CBC: Wow. That is that is a ridiculous number based on the freelance life of the comic industry. That’s amazing. Dan: Yeah, and remember, we’re churning out 60–70 books a month. That isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds. This included everyone, like inkers and colorists. Because ultimately, the reverse of this was people felt if they didn’t get put under contract that they weren’t respected. So, we’re putting people under contract not because you’re worried about them going elsewhere, but because you didn’t want them to feel bad. [laughs] I laugh about it, but what it really did was create a sense of family and belonging to everybody involved. Everybody became vested in what we did. Everybody felt like they were part of the family. Ultimately, it was that family feel that really creates that camaraderie which leads to content and better storytelling, and just a better energy all around. CBC: Your leadership style, from your belief system, is that something that was innate and made itself happen? Or was that purposeful for you to make that feeling happen? Dan: One thing I love about comics or even animation and things of that nature is, I love anything that’s collaborative and creative. You know, I approach the creative process as sort of like [Sam] Sheepdog and [Ralph] Wolf. [laughs] The constant churning and turmoil and the explosion of creational ideas that goes back to that piece of art of Stan Lee standing on top of the desk in the Fantastic Four Annual dictating a story to Jack Kirby. And that, for me, is what creative is. I love that. But I love the craziness that goes with it. And then #37 • Winter 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Identity Crisis, DiDio portrait TM & © DC Comics. “This is a Plot?” TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Photo by Mitchell Haddad

Comic Book Creator: Stepping back briefly, because you mentioned about your team-building: who were some of the folks that you immediately brought onto your team? Dan DiDio: I used the entire editorial department, really. Because, ultimately, they’re the guys on the frontline. They’re doing it, day in and day out. You’re not doing it. So you see the beginning to the end but, if it changes too much in the middle, by the time we get to the end, you’re not gonna have a chance to fix it. On the talent side, it was interesting, because as people used to say, I was the guy that started the talent wars in some ways. Because I kept on saying, “Marvel found ways to constantly poach our talent.” Because they were relentless. They would call the guys working for us every day. The guys were basically telling me, “I decided to go with Marvel.” I just wanted to stop fooling people. I’d say, “That’s not good. We’re trying to be respectful.” So what I wound up doing was saying, “Fine, if that’s the game we’re gonna play, how about I put you on contract? And then I can get you into the competitive rates Marvel is offering. And that way I remove any uncertainty from your life and give a guarantee of work. That way, your focus is only on work because you’re guaranteed X-number of dollars and X-page rate for the next few years. How does that sound?” And the first person to sign up that bought into the program was Judd Winick. I will always be grateful to Judd for being the first one to have enough faith and belief in the system and what I was trying to do, and join in. But, I tell you, by the time I get into 2007–08, we might have had about 140 people under contract.

Infinite Crisis TM & © DC Comics.

the ability to go out and have a drink and enjoy each other’s company afterwards. Because none of it is personal. It’s all about getting the best product. And that’s why I always say, “I only do the products that have to do with people.” And that came back to haunt me at times. But, at that moment, for that time, we were all in sync, we were all in that mindset. I would say that continued through for, really, the first five, six years that I was there, which is good. CBC: And you already mentioned two things, which I want to just get back to. One was Identity Crisis. That was Brad Meltzer who did that? Dan: Yes, he did. First of all, Brad is an accomplished novelist in his own right. He had no reason to be in comics other than the fact that he loves them. And he was writing Green Arrow at the time, and he presents that script, and it was a challenging script. But what I loved about it was how it took something that we remember from the past, and cast it in a new light, and still felt true to the past, but presented everything so much differently. I felt that was the template for what we needed to do moving forward, not to completely reject the goofiness or craziness of the past. But finding a way to contextualize it and make it feel like it’s something that’s relevant to people who were reading books today. And he knocked it out of the park. Quite honestly, I didn’t know whether we were going to go or no. And what we wound up doing is writing the entire book out. He wrote the entire series of books and presented it to [DC publisher] Paul [Levitz] for approval as a complete book. And I think Paul always respected strong writing, and challenges and things that thoughtfully explore issues and take you through a rigor perhaps, but also in a way that is not exploitive. And to Paul’s credit, he supported this. And when he supported it, we knew we had to deliver to that expectation. And I’m happy to say that we did. CBC: Was this kind of the timeframe when DC most purposely kind of raised the age limit of what they were expecting the readership to be? Dan: I’m not gonna say that we raised the age limit of what the DC was expecting the books to be. I’m going to say that DC finally acknowledged who was reading the books. CBC: Gotcha. It’s not eight-year-olds going into some dime store anymore. Dan: I had to deal with that in the animation business, too; the pretense that it was a bunch of kids watching cartoons and not adults. You know, that’s kind of the same thing here. I think everybody had to realize that we were an aging audience. So, in order to make this work properly, we had to be respectful of the age that we really were attracting. And that’s what we went after. And we weren’t going over the top and being exploitive, but we were being a little more mature. Which became interesting because it did start to blur the lines between what was a Wildstorm product and what was the Vertigo product. DC was inching up, so that we were all getting a little bit closer and COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2025 • #37

brushing against the other in themes and sensibility. CBC: How was the fan and sales response to that? Dan: Extremely strong. Each one of our launches were doing better than expected or better than what previous launches were to this. And you got to remember too, contextually, this is a post-9/11 world. So there’s a lot of angst at that moment, a lot of frustration, a lot of fear. Even from a New York point of view, you know, the simplicity and the fun and playfulness were lost after the Towers went down. You know, I think what you’re seeing is a reflection of that mood, playing out in the comics. CBC: What was the mindset or the plan going into Infinite Crisis or Countdown: Final Crisis? Dan: Well, first of all, a lot of my logic was finding all the successes DC had and finding ways to recapture or emulate the previous success. So I was only looking at characters with successful runs. They had established audiences. But I also knew that Crisis was a defining moment for DC. And Crisis was a word we owned. We didn’t want to lose it. That’s why, with Identity Crisis, we wanted to take that name and make sure we reestablish it. Just like Secret became Marvel’s word. We wanted Crisis to be DC’s word. So, we’re going down that road. And we didn’t know what the event was going to be. It started so dramatically different. There’s a couple of funny stories along the way.

Above: Portion of a double-page spread from Identity Crisis #6 [Jan. ’05], with art by Rags Morales (pencils) and Michael Blair (inks), which includes a controversial sequence of an enraged Batman, distressed that the villain of the mini-series was lobotomized by the JLA, is “mindwiped” by team members.

Below: Infinite Crisis [2005–06], written by Geoff Johns, centered upon a conflict arising between Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman, and it examined the notion of heroism, even of the misguided variety. This poster art used to promote the Infinite Crisis video game is by Edith Braim.

Photo courtesy of Steve Englehart.

You have to wonder what the frick was in the water when it came to the young

Little known fact: While still in the U.S. Army, Steve actually began his comics

writers at Marvel Comics in the first half of the ’70s. Roy Thomas, who had

career as an artist, working as Neal Adams’ very first “Crusty Bunker” (in all but

more hip and self-aware than Stan Lee’s sometimes over-eager, wink-wink

appreciation for the man’s storytelling, I’d been enraptured with “Stainless”

ascended to the editor’s desk, had ushered in new vibe to the scripting, a little writing, and the Rascally One opened the door for an amazing crew of talents

that smashed the paradigm. At the forefront was Steve Gerber, Don McGregor,

and — our spotlighted scribe this ish, one STEPHEN KERFOOT ENGLEHART — all whose experience and sensibility helped to launch Marvel’s Second Wave. 50

name), which you’ll learn about in our lively discussion forthwith. As for my own Steve’s Captain America during the Watergate and post-Nixon eras. The writer’s

take on the character perfectly captured the rudderless drift many Americans felt upon Tricky Dick’s resignation, which evoked not the expected jubilation over

finally being rid of a crooked president so much as angst for our country. — Y.E. #37 • Winter 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Interview Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Comic Book Creator: You were born April 22nd, 1947, and your middle name is Kerfoot…? What’s that from? Steve Englehart: We’re not exactly sure. It’s a family name, but not recognizably any language. So, you know, it just is. CBC: That’s kind of a cool name. Did you continue it? Steve: No, we did not continue it. We did find a town in Wales once named Kerfot, with just one O, but nobody there understood how that might connect to me, so I got no explanation. CBC: What’s your ethnic background? Steve: Well, I have the German name, but DNA stuff says I’m like 60% British Isles, you know… Central European whatever. CBC: Your father worked for the Louisville CourierJournal and the Dayton Daily News, right? Steve: Yeah, he was a journalist, starting out at the Dayton Daily News, and I lived in Dayton from age one to three. Then he got the job at the Louisville Courier-Journal, so I lived in Louisville from three to 13. Then they made him the Indiana bureau chief, because Louisville is right on the river between Kentucky and Indiana. And so we moved up to Indianapolis, where I lived from 13–18. Then I went to college back east. CBC: Do you have brothers and sisters? Steve: One each, yes. I’m the oldest. CBC: Were you a bookish child? Steve: There are actual books that I handmade, where I would type a story and figured out the pagination — you know, if you cut the pages and folded them together into a booklet, so that you read it in the right order, and so forth. So I was not only interested in stories, but also in the process, the actual physicality of a book. I will jump to comics at this point: I was really fascinated about how the four-color process worked. And, you know, how they did all that stuff in addition to liking the stories. CBC: That’s interesting. To what do you attribute that to? I mean, to be actually into the construction, to create signatures of a booklet and all that? Steve: I don’t know, it’s just something that fascinated me. Growing up in the ’50s, there was Superman, Batman, and whatever, but there was also the Dick Tracy reprints. And I loved them and still love Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy. I noticed as, as they did the reprints, that there was content that had been in the newspaper and then, in the Harvey reprints, when they reprinted the comic strips — this was after the Comics Code [was established] — they took out the violent stuff, but they only took the violent image out of the black plate. So there would be guys holding the shape of a gun that was colored blue, shooting a red blast, but there was no actual gun. You know what I’m saying? The black plate had been edited, but not the other plates. That was one of the intricacies, the secrets of the business… people think that because I write comics, I should be into science fiction, but I’m much more into mysteries and wanting to know the secret. I can’t say why I feel that way; it’s just what I like. CBC: Were you a precocious child? Did you start reading early? Steve: Yeah, I think so. I read The Hardy Boys, which my father had from when he was a kid. So I had Hardy Boys from the ’30s and had Hardy Boys from the ’50s. It was interesting how they had changed them over time, you know. I

can’t draw any overall conclusion from that, other than I like to see behind the scenes, here they were in 1930 doing something, and here they are doing it in the ‘50s… CBC: Those little booklets that you made…? What were they? Steve: A couple of them were Hardy Boys books and they still exist. My mom kept them. I would have to figure out what pages, how the pages would line up, and then I would type on the pages. To this day, I’m a two-finger typist, even though I’m a professional writer. I would type to the end of that page, and then I’d figure out where the next page would appear, and then I’d go continue the story on that. It was the process that was interesting. CBC: Did you borrow your dad’s typewriter or have your own? Steve: I don’t remember. I can’t believe I had my own. On the other hand, I can’t believe that my dad could loan me a typewriter because he was working on it, you know? So I guess we must have had a second one. CBC: What did you aspire to at that young age? Did you want to write? Did you want to be Franklin W. Dixon? Steve: I was interested. The thing that caught me into comics as printed was the art. Part of that is there weren’t groundbreaking stories in the ’50s. It was all pretty, pretty bland and, you know, Comics Code approved. But you did have Dick Sprang doing Batman art and that was fascinating… I only wrote because I was asked to write something, at the start of my career. I enjoyed the writing and they liked what I wrote. And so we went on from there. But no, at the time before that, I was pointed in an artistic direction. CBC: Did you visit your dad at the newspaper? Steve: Sometimes, yeah, sure. CBC: Did you like it? Did you get the sense of a bullpen? Steve: When he was in Louisville, he was the night city editor for a while. I don’t know if it was the whole time, but I remember going to see him at night, after my mom and my sister and I had been someplace, we stopped in, but he was busy being the night city editor. So we didn’t hang around or poke around or whatever. I’ve seen newspaper offices, but I don’t think it made much of an impression, one way or the other. CBC: Were you distant from your dad or able to bond with him? Steve: He was sort of a distant guy. I mean, we weren’t far apart, but we weren’t, you know, close either. So somewhere in the middle. CBC: Was he an FDR Democrat or Dewey Republican…? Steve: This is when newspapers were probably at their height, in the ’50s. He had his personal politics, but he never got into politics. I remember politicians would send him gifts at Christmas time and he would send them back, that kind of thing. I mean, he was he was very apolitical in his job. Politics were a personal matter. I think he was a Democrat, but he never slanted the news. I look back on that as the golden age of journalism, where Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite… when journalism was an honorable profession, trying to present the news accurately without fear or favor. I liken that a lot to the golden age of comics and, in my case, the bronze age. But things have deteriorated in both of those professions from when they were at their best.

Transcription by Tom Pairin • Portrait by Kendall Whitehouse COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2025 • #37

Previous spread: On left page are Steve and Terry Englehart from the 1980s. On the right is Kendal Whitehouse’s portrait of the writer, taken at San Diego Comic-Con in 2012. Above: Steve distinctly recalled being put off by comics for a time because of this lame response Superboy [#73, June ’59] editor Mort Weisinger gave to a reader’s question. Cover art by Curt Swan (pencils) and Stan Kaye (inks). Below: Steve’s brother, Tom, is 10 years younger, and here’s a pic of the latter’s arrival at Casa Englehart, when Steve was… (Ye Ed checks his arithmetic)… 10 years old!

#37 • Winter 2025 • COMIC BOOK CREATOR

Superboy #73 clipping courtesy of Marc Svensson. Photo courtesy of Steve Englehart.

of the guys that were posited as the bad guys in the world, you know? So, yeah, we didn’t like Communists particularly, but I don’t think it affected me very deeply being in Kentucky and Indiana… I wasn’t running into Communists, so I didn’t have to worry about it. CBC: How old were you when you moved from Kentucky? Steve: Thirteen. CBC: That’s an impressionable age. Did it have an effect on you to be yanked out of Louisville? Steve: Yes, to an extent. The Courier-Journal had a Washington bureau, so there was a guy permanently in D.C., but every year they would take one of their editors and send him CBC: Were you an informed as a youngster? Did you read the to Washington to gain larger experience, whatever. So, in ’59, news at all or were you… we moved to Washington for nine months, something like that. Steve: Yeah. We subscribed to both Time and Newsweek, And so I was yanked out of fifth grade and went to sixth grade and I read them both cover to cover every week. Again, reality in Washington, which was interesting to add to my experience, fascinates me, you know. What do people do? How does it but to be dropped into a whole other school system, new all work? You know, that kind of thing… Every week I would friends, all that good stuff, and then to be yanked out of it plunk down — we had big, big windows in the living room that again after nine months… So I went back to Louisville and, for faced the sun — and I would lie in the sun and read Time and better or for worse… I was always a smart kid. And that year, Newsweek and there were two newspapers a day back in those in the seventh grade in Louisville, they instituted what I guess days. I read everything. you would today call AP classes, where they took people they CBC: Coming into the 1960 election, what was that like at considered smart and put ’em in special classes. And so I was in your age? You were about 12, 13 years old. Did it look like “the with all the other people who were considered smart. And so we torch has been passed to a new generation,” so to speak? Was it had our smart group dynamic going on. an optimistic time? Then I was yanked out of that in the eighth grade to go to Steve: Yes, absolutely. The ’60s… I have to jump sideways to Indianapolis, and I had started studying Spanish in the seventh comics again because the ‘60s felt like a time of just unlimited grade, under a Cuban teacher who had fled Cuba. So I started possibilities. I mean, it started with the young president who studying Spanish in the seventh grade and, when I got to Indiavery quickly said, “We’re going to the moon before the decade napolis, they did not have any Spanish for the eighth grade. So was out.” And so, I think, that had a lot to do with Marvel I had to wait till the ninth grade to continue Spanish and then Comics getting on their feet… it was the time you could wear a the teacher was not a good teacher. I knew more Spanish than costume. There were the mods and the rockers, and just everyshe did… body sort of blossomed in the ’60s clothes-wise, comics-wise, So all that jumping around was disconcerting, in a sense. music-wise, all that stuff. So, yeah, it was a cool time to be 13. But, on the other hand, when you’re 13-years old, you just go And, of course, like everybody else who’s old enough to do it, I where your dad goes. I mean, you don’t need to parse it particcan remember when Kennedy got shot, which was a shock. But ularly. My wife was an Army brat and she talks about moving evthen, right after that, the Beatles appeared and we were off to a ery two years and so my situation wasn’t that terrible. But I was whole new thing. sorry, having been anointed as a smart kid and put in smart kid CBC: I actually had a friend track down that Superboy letter classes, it was weird to not have any access to that the following column, there’s a letter that says exactly what you said in an inyear. But you know, whatever… you do what you do. terview, where the reader asks the editor why doesn’t Superboy CBC: When you were in Kentucky, did you have neighborfight the commies and Mort Weisinger answers, saying Superhood kids that you hung around? boy doesn’t get political. So that actually had an effect on you? Steve: Sure. Yeah. Steve: Well, I just explained that my dad never got political, CBC: Did you maintain any of those friendships afterwards or but that was his job — not to be political — but, were the friendships all done? in terms of Superboy, any of those guys, it Steve: Yeah, they were all done. I mean, we had no internet. seemed like there were always obvious eneOnce we moved, you know, unless I was going to write letters mies in the world and it didn’t make any sense to people… Though I would do that, that was about my only to me that the super-heroes would just ignore option. that. I thought that at the time (and I’m not sure CBC: Were you close with your siblings? when I gave that interview where I talked about Steve: Yes. My sister was born two years and two days after that), but I can immediately connect that to the me. My brother was born ten years after me, so I was I was tight Captain America/Watergate stuff. So, when I with my sister. And so, you know, by the time he was eight, I had a chance to do something… was gone away to college. So that was just a different relationCBC: I think the timing would have been ship. But my sister and I obviously were close together… right around when the Cuban revolution had CBC: So did you watch a lot of TV? taken place. It was the June 1959 comic book Steve: Yes, I did. Loved TV. Louisville, in those days, had no and the Cuban revolution happened in January ABC station, so I would hear about things like 77 Sunset Strip of 1959. Were Commies the bad guys when you and Maverick, and I couldn’t see them except when I went to were a kid? Washington. We only had two network stations in Louisville, Steve: Yes, they were, but I don’t know that I back in the day. was ever right-wing, so I never thought of them CBC: Were the schools you went to, were they all-white or as demons or anything. But they were just sort were they integrated?

Steve: I honestly couldn’t answer that. I mean, there was certainly no policy that I was aware of that it had to be all-white or anything. I’m not sure when integration was first mandated. I mean, it was just school as far as I was concerned. I don’t remember Black people and I don’t remember the lack of Black people. It was just kids. CBC: So you weren’t really aware of the Civil Rights situation that was going on? Steve: No, not at that time. I mean if somebody said Louisville was extremely racist, I wouldn’t say no. But I would be unaware of any of that kind of stuff. And Indianapolis, I would venture to say that it was not “officially” racist. There’s a lot of racism in both of those states, that’s true, but again, I just went to school, you know, and whoever was in my class was in my class. I didn’t really categorize people. CBC: Did you have an awakening through into the ’60s? Steve: Yeah, I think so, sure. Well, you know, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly, but I don’t recall being “woke” while I was still in high school. Certainly when I went to college. I went to college at Wesleyan in Middletown, Connecticut, small liberal arts school. This was in the late ’60s, when stuff was happening. I am interested in reality so, by that point, I was seeing more aspects of reality, I guess, than had been visible to me before that. CBC: Do you recall the day that Martin Luther King got assassinated? Steve: Sure, and when Bobby Kennedy was shot. We shot a lot of people in the ’60s. CBC: What was your political stance by then? By the mid-’60s, when you graduated high school… You graduated in ’65, right? Steve: Right. Again, I don’t think that I had much of a political point of view in high school… And, well, I voted for Nixon in 1968. I think I was still just a normal product of my environment. I’ll put it that way, I guess. My father was a Democrat, but he didn’t make a thing of it and he didn’t want to make a thing of it. And I think I’d only voted for the president in 1968. By 1972, I had become a liberal Democrat, which is what I still am, so college was when I really got a political consciousness. I graduated in ’69 and, by ’72, I was working at Marvel and I was doing… I was going to say “political stuff,” but Captain America wasn’t quite there yet… When I graduated in ’69, I was going to be drafted into the Army. This was in Indiana, where Dan Quayle, who became vice president, had been offered a slot in the Indiana National Guard, so he didn’t have to go anywhere. But nobody offered me a slot, so I called up my draft board. I had actually got accepted at Michigan Law School and called up my draft board and said, “Do you think I can get a semester in?” And they said, “You got about six weeks before we come and get you.” So I ended up enlisting in order to be to get in the area of the Army that I was interested in, which was journalism. I was still not thinking of myself as a writer, but they didn’t have an art department. Once I was in, I was told, “We would have probably given you journalism, if you’d just been drafted”… “Probably,” so it wasn’t guaranteed. So I was theoretically in for three years, because I had enlisted but, on the other hand, I went to journalism school, which, oddly enough, was in Indianapolis. So I was right back home again. Then I was sent to Aberdeen Proving Ground, in Maryland, as a journalist. I wasn’t enthusiastic about going into the Army during a war. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to flee to Canada. That wasn’t part of my upbringing to think, “Oh, well, I’ll just flee somewhere.” So I accepted the fact I had to go in the Army and COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2025 • #37

had basic training at Fort Knox, outside of Louisville, which was weird. There was another guy from Indianapolis whom I did not know beforehand, but because we were both from Indianapolis, we bonded and went through basic together. And he used to give me sh*t because I was in for three years and he was only in for two. He was going to go to Vietnam, do his thing, and get out. And in fact, he did go to Vietnam and, in the first week he was there, he stepped on a land mine and died. That was the first time I came face to face with with, “Here’s a person that I know who just died.” I was, what… 20, 21, 22… somewhere in there…? CBC: What was his name? Do you remember? Steve: I don’t at this point, but it made an impression on me. I also have weird feet. Apparently, I have extra bones in my feet, and they’re flat, for vast amounts of time. Over the years, I’ve learned to accommodate. I’m not crippled, it’s just my feet hurt if I have to do a lot of stuff. And we were doing a lot of marching in basic, and I went to the doctor there and he took X-rays, and he’s the one who told me I had extra bones in my feet. He said, “Well, you don’t even qualify to be in the Army. You shouldn’t be in the Army.” And I said, “Good, let me out.” He said, “Well, no. Now that you’re in, I can’t do that.” So there I was. Then Kent State happened — I believe was in that timeframe (I could be wrong about that) — but, in any event, 16 months after I went in, I got out as a conscientious objector. And certainly that’s part and parcel of my liberal Democrat approach to life. When I was at Aberdeen Proving Ground, I had not gone to Vietnam and I never went to Vietnam, but I was dealing with people who had been there and come back. The stories they told about it gave me a pretty clear picture that it was it was completely f*cked up over there. So, sitting in the Army, it became very clear that I had no interest at all in going to Vietnam. I would have been a journalist, but journalists got shot at, too. So I researched and eventually went down the route of conscientious objection. CBC: Let me back up a little. When you were in high school, you were in the National Honor Society? You had scholastic awards… National Merit Scholarship finalist… So were you a nerd? Steve: Probably. Yeah, I think so. I think my friends were all nerds. I mentioned being in the in the smart group of people in the

Above: List of Steve’s high school accomplishments from his 1965 Yearbook. Below: School emblem.

Below and bottom: Steve’s sophomore and senior portraits at North Central High School.

Above: One of Tom’s rare pencil and ink jobs was “Pickman’s Model,” an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic story in Tower of Shadows #9 [Jan. ’71], which featured caricatures of the scripter, Roy Thomas, and artist atop the splash page. Below: One of the greatest creative teams in a long-running series of ’70s comics was the crew producing Tomb of Dracula, a team that included writer Marv Wolfman, penciler Gene Colan, inker Tom Palmer, and letterer John Costanza. Here’s a production stat of a cover by Colan/Palmer, #48 [Sept. ’76].

Above: The original art (from which we derived the line art for our CBC cover) for Captain America #155 [Nov. ’72], with art by Sal Buscema (pencils) and Jim Mooney (inks). Below: Spot illo by Sal.

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sense and I never expected it to look the way I envisioned it, but at least I knew it could be envisioned. CBC: Did you have an opinion early on about the “relevant” comics that were starting to come out and dealing with the real-life issues? Steve: Yeah, I liked them. I thought that the bandwidth for relevant issues was at some point… I mean, you could do Black rights, you could do Indian rights, you could do… but at some point you sort of run out of topics if that’s you’re going to specialize in that. So that was my only thought about it: how would they keep that going if they wanted to? But those were groundbreaking comics and I liked them. CBC: Was it glaring to you that Vietnam was ignored in comics? It was “hot stove” or something? Steve: I think “hot stove” is right. Vietnam was definitely on every young man’s mind but, as I said about my situation, you could either accept it or you could protest it or you could flee to Canada. But none of those made for much in the way of a story. When I did the conscientious objector guy in Captain America, that was definitely based on my situation. I wanted to show

an upstanding conscientious objector. The problem with Captain America was that it had been billed as the “Living Legend of World War II” and nobody gave a sh*t about World War II or was too thrilled about wars because of Vietnam. Fortunately, I was able to fix that. But I think “hot stove” is kind of the deal. They could do patriotic stories about, you know, fighting the Reds early [in the Marvel age]… Iron Man went to somewhere over there, back in the day, to fight Commies. So, early on, in Marvel, they had done sort of traditional “rah-rah” good-guy us/ bad-guy Commie stories. But it became such a hot point that I do think that comics tended to shy away from it. I’m trying to remember… I mean, there was Sgt. Rock and those guys in World War II. I’m trying to remember if anybody really did contemporary Vietnam stories. Larry Hama did later, right? CBC: Way later, yes. Charlton did, but they were actually Joe Gill’s pro-Vietnam War stories. Did you physically protest the war? Did you get were you involved in any of the marches? Steve: No, I was a good little Hoosier until I was in. CBC: I meant afterwards, after you were out of the Army. Steve: Oh, no. I was too busy. Once I was out, it’s like I didn’t even want to mess with it anymore, right? But I was also young. And being creative in New York City, in the ‘70s, that was, you know, filling up my time. CBC: You and Alan Weiss have told the story of you guys being with Starlin down in downtown Manhattan and having all sorts of almost hallucinogenic kind of situations. In retrospect, did LSD have an impact on your material and your generation’s material as well? Steve: Oh, I think so. My material, certainly. I don’t know about other people’s material. I’ve never shied away from telling people that I did all that stuff. To me, it was all just part and parcel of the creative process at the time. And we did have that night when Starlin and Weiss and Milgrom and I walked from midtown Manhattan down to South Ferry, middle of the night down through the warehouse district as it was… And we saw things that we then incorporated into the books. I can honestly say I never had a bad trip. I mean, I’m not going to tell you that people never did or any of that kind of stuff, but I always just enjoyed it and found it, you know, expanding my mind made for better stories. So I’m just the kind of person that doesn’t feel that I need to pretend otherwise. CBC: So did you leave it behind ultimately as a recreation? Steve: Yes, I did. To tell you the truth, I found that doing it over time, after a while, you kind of go, “Yeah, okay. I know what this place is. I know what this mind space is. It’s not amazing to me anymore.” So I got tired of doing it. CBC: “Been there, done that,” right? You’ve always expressed an appreciation for Roy’s attention to detail and bringing in old continuities and rejuvenating them within the comics. And for us as readers in the 1970s, I would argue that, bringing in the ’50s Captain America was you talking about Vietnam, in a certain way? Steve: Yes, I think that’s right. I would agree with that. CBC: What was it? Were you taking a ’60s sensibility and confronting the ’50s “kill the Commie” approach? Steve: Yes, pretty much. Well, it was my experience that shaped that story. At the same time, I don’t know that it was about Vietnam. It was about the ‘50s, which is McCarthy more than anything else. It was “we all hate Commies,” end of story. My decision to confront bigots and make them out as bad guys and all that, I think, was part and parcel of my general consciousness. But I would back up and say, maybe it wasn’t so much about Vietnam. It’s just Vietnam was… I guess we were

fighting Commies, but it wasn’t the same Commies. It was a different type of Communist. And racism certainly had nothing to do with Vietnam in that regard. Well, I mean, it was racism… CBC: It was the rationalization for the war. I mean, flat out we were there to fight Communism. That was the big threat. The domino theory and all stuff like that… Steve: But the thing was that, growing up in the ‘50s, there was a certain type of “We hate Commies,” right? That’s it. And I think it was that mindset that led to the war. But I don’t think a lot of people who were fighting the war were to… It moved on. I mean, this was a different sort. This wasn’t the evil Russian mastermind infiltrator, look-under-your-bed, kind of Communist. This was a bunch of guys across the ocean, and they might have been Communists. And that’s why we were fighting them, but I don’t think that the people who were actually doing the fighting thought in those terms. CBC: Did you invent Roxxon? Steve: Yes. Roxxon. Yes, I did. CBC: That’s kind of daring, right? You were taking on Exxon? Steve: Well, yeah, but I don’t think Exxon was going to come after me for it. I don’t know how daring it was…

[At this point, Steve regals the interviewer with an anecdote about “Studio Zero,” which we’re saving for next issue’s in-depth article on Englehart & Company almost getting in Rolling Stone magazine! — Y.E.] CBC: Well, my brother and I, we instantly recognized the double X as being play on Exxon. Steve: Oh yeah, sure. CBC: Just a curious question: did you receive, way back in the ’70s, did you receive comp copies of every single thing that was published? Steve: By Marvel and DC? Yes. I mean, not from Charlton or anything like that, but yes, we all got every book that both companies published. CBC: They sent you packages when you were out in California? You received a weekly package? Steve: Yes. So, as I said, I read everything on my way to becoming a professional. And then, after I got to be a professional, I got all the books for free, which was fine, you know, but I continued to read everything. I like to know what else is going on in, in whatever world I’m in. CBC: When I was a kid, I was truly annoyed at this idea of using one page of art and turning it sideways and printing it as two pages of art because it was just so obvious by the thick ink line from being enlarged and you’re like the only guy who remembered it and you’ve mentioned it repeatedly. It just seems outrageous to do something like that and cheat the freelancers (and readers). Steve: I’m totally with you on all of that. But you’re working for the company and they go, “This is what we’re going to do.” And you go, “Well, okay, then.” But I totally agree. You could tell that it was blown up. I think I would try to make it a double-page spread so that at least it could be one piece of art, but sometimes it was panels and you could see the panels were bigger and everything was bigger and all that. They didn’t do it for too long, but it was a dumb idea, but it was somebody in accounting somewhere going, “Well, look how much money we could save if we did this!” CBC: But it was also ripping off you freelancers. Steve: Yeah, but what are you going to do? CBC: Steve, you certainly did something by ’76. You walked. Steve: Well yes, you can do that. I have walked several times COMIC BOOK CREATOR • Winter 2025 • #37

over the years. But it’s not like I want to walk. “I think this would be really cool, let’s do that.” Somebody said to me once, “You think like a hero, which is why you write super-heroes” and, you know, whatever… But I do have a sort of sense of right and wrong, and making a page twice as big as it ought to be is wrong. But it’s not like “walkable” wrong. But there are things where I’ve said, “I can’t do that,” and then I leave. So I’m glad they didn’t keep doing that but, at the time, that wasn’t big enough for me to do anything drastic. CBC: But things were starting to pile up on each other. As a reader, I recognized there was an exodus from comics that just went over to alternative comics. You went to Europe and became a novelist at the same time there was this great exodus coming from comics. And your career really tracks that. Did you feel like you were at the forefront of that exit or was it just you amongst the other guys? Do you think your actions, perhaps, could have encouraged others to do things to their own benefit? Steve: I would say “perhaps.” I don’t know any specifically. When I did walk, there wasn’t a mass exodus behind me. So I don’t know that I encouraged anybody directly. Indirectly,

Above: Cover proof for Captain America #176 [Aug. ’74]. Art by John Romita. Below: Nomad by Sal Buscema.

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on, too, so… The Red Skull has weird sh*t going on. I guess my comic-book view of things is that those guys are just cool characters, you know? CBC: One thing I noticed too with the Mantis character: I think that’s really revealing that what you did is that you let the character grow on her own. You would repeatedly call her a “Saigon slut,” right? And, in the end, she was not anything like that. It seemed to be denigrating the plight of South Vietnamese women who were forced to work a life of prostitution during the Vietnam War and yet she shook that off. Steve: She was supposed to be a femme fatale. I’m sure you’ve read this in other interviews, but she was supposed to come in and create tension in the Avengers by sort of coming This page: Please don’t get snip- on to all of them. And that was her goal. That was what I had in py because virtually no attention mind for her. Something to shake up the team. was given in this interview to Steve But right after I introduced her, Roy said there weren’t goand Marshall Rogers’ great Batman ing to be any annuals that summer, and I had really loved the work in the ’70s. That extended annuals as a reader. So I said, “Well, I’m writing The Avengers conversation — which included a and The Defenders. Can I do a summer-long thing where they separate interview with the artist fight each other?” And he said, “If you screw up one deadline, — took place in Comic Book Artist everything will fall apart.” And I said, “I won’t screw up any Collection, Vol. 3 [2002], available deadlines.” And he said, “Okay, then go for it.” That was the at the TwoMorrows website (in the editorial thing. CBA Special Edition #2 PDF). Here’s So, all of a sudden, I had to do a story in which she particthe wonderful original and printed ipated and she had to be fighting on the Avengers side and artwork by the late, great Marshall doing stuff. And so the whole thing about her being a femme Rogers for Ye Ed’s compilation. fatale later came back in a minor sense with her and the Vision

and Wanda, but she suddenly took a turn becoming like a real teammate and not a distraction. And I said, “Well, that’s interesting.” Now I’ve got her in the book, but she’s different from what I thought she was going to be. I’ve told this story in analogy many times. You write, you come up with an idea, and the guy’s going to go to Chicago and then for whatever reason, he has to go to Cleveland, and you can force him to go to Chicago or you can say, “Okay, well, now that he’s in Cleveland, how does that change what I want to do?” And that was basically what I learned by doing her in each issue. I would do a story that moved the Avengers forward and concentrated on other Avengers and this and that and the other thing. But she was there and she’d have to do something. And last issue, she did this thing, so now she’s at this point. So now, in this issue, she’s going to move off of that point. She didn’t have to end at any point. It was not like, “Oh yeah, she’s eventually going to become the Celestial Madonna.” It was just, “Here’s a story and then here’s another story. And there’s a mystery about where she came from. And then there’s…” Every once in a while, I’ll read interviews with other writers and they’ll go, “My characters determine where the story goes.” And I go, “Yeah, then that’s the best way to do it, rather than try to force anything, try to make things happen, you know.” So that’s Mantis. CBC: It seemed to me with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Mantis is this sensual creature. Or at least, you know, this hyper-empathic character that seems to contain a germ of an idea from the original comics, and yet she was somehow transformed into this different character. Do you see any of your Mantis in the movie character? Steve: I’ve said for a long time the only thing those two have in common is they’re both female. All of the attributes of the comic book Mantis were jettisoned before you got the movie Mantis. But the empathy, the sensitivity? Yes, I can see that. I asked James Gunn why he brought in a character and then completely changed it. And he said, “Well, I needed a character like the one I had in the movie.” And, as a writer, I can understand that. You’re putting together a group and you need certain elements to kind of bounce off each other and so forth. I’ve been very vocal about the fact that I was disappointed. I spent a year-and-a-half creating this particular character and then it all got jettisoned. But, on the other hand, I’m not the kind of guy to go, “Well, James, you shouldn’t have done that.” He was making his movie. He needed what he needed. So, I like the Mantis on screen. I like those movies. I like Pom Klementieff as Mantis, etc. But it wasn’t my Mantis and I had spent a lot of time on Mantis, so I was naturally disappointed. The situation that exists with Disney and Marvel is, if they use Mantis, I get royalties, right? Even if it’s not my Mantis, which is kind of weird, but okay. I’m sure you’ve read those Hollywood interviews where they say, “What was it like working with that actor? Oh, that actor was great. I love that actor. Everything was fabulous all the time.” If I don’t think so, I’ll say so. But Disney doesn’t complain that I’m not totally on board all the time. So that’s cool, you know? So that’s the end of that. CBC: To be precise, they’re not royalties, right? They are gratuities. Steve: Yeah, I guess they probably are. CBC: Because Marvel is the “creator” of all things Marvel, right? Steve: But it wasn’t, “If we give you this, you have to kiss our asses all the time.” CBC: Were you a nut for Watergate? Did you watch all the proceedings that were taking place on a daily basis on weekday

TV, like a lot of people? Steve: I did and I think pretty much everybody did. I mean, there were only three networks… and PBS, maybe. So there might have been four options for you to watch this stuff. And, as far as I remember, pretty much everybody watched it. CBC: Every day, the hearings were on at daytime, when most people worked. Most people worked nine to five. But you were a freelancer, right? Steve: Yes, that’s true, but they did rerun them at night. CBC: That’s true. Good point. Steve: I was fascinated by Watergate. There was no way Captain America could ignore that. So I had to do what I had to do there. CBC: Let’s talk about the ultimate moment with the Secret Empire. That was basically the Commander in Chief who committed suicide. We lived under Richard Nixon, who was highly reviled by an entire generation and increasingly by the whole American population. And, you know, today we are rendered almost completely 50/50 down the line with perhaps deeper threats than what was taking place back in the ’70s… Steve: The thing about Nixon in the ’70s was that people would be called in front of Congressional committees and they would answer questions when asked. What everybody learned to do from that was to say, “I don’t remember.” And I know I read a number of years ago that everything that was illegal back then is now legal in terms of whatever Nixon did. So the political class found a way to get around all those pesky rules and shame and lack of honor and things like that. So, yeah, we’re at a tough time here. I believe that, in November, democracy will hold still hold fast. But there’s going to be a lot of sh*t before then. And after Trump loses, there’s going to be sh*t after that, and then since he will “never have lost,” it’ll probably go on as long as he’s alive. So that’s my political stance on all of this stuff that we’re talking about. CBC: What about Steve Englehart’s Captain America? Where

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would his head be at right now? Steve: He would be out there pushing hard for democracy. He would be out there doing stuff, you know, the whole war bond thing that he did in the ’40s. I mean, he’d be out rallying people for democracy, and I think he’d be a strong advocate and impetus for that. But, you know, Marvel has a thing now where they’re asking people to come back and do the things…do a mini-series based on whatever they did the first time. They’ve talked to me about it. My opinion is that doesn’t interest me at all. I don’t want to go back and revisit characters that I already did, and specifically it’s usually Captain America that people are talking about at Marvel. I would have to reimagine him for the current situation, and then it wouldn’t be the guy that I wrote in the ’70s anyway, because he’d been reimagined. So, you know, anybody could reimagine him at this point. It’s not anything that I need to do. If somebody held a gun to my head and said, “You have to do this,” it would be interesting. I would I think my Captain America would be far more engaged. As we’ve gone through various periods of right-wing bullsh*t over the last 50 years, I’ve been silently but internally critical that Captain America didn’t really get involved in that. I mean, sometimes, they’ve done stuff, but I know that the general theory now is we want to stay away from politics — blah-blah-blah — and I’m glad that it wasn’t that case back when I was doing it. CBC: Captain America has always been my favorite character because he’s tied to history and he’s inherently political (and

Top: Steve Englehart in the later 1970s, during a period he was writing his firtst novel, The Point Man, which he dedicated to his wife, Terry. Above: Published in Sept. 1980, the Dell paperback sported a cover by Richard V. Corben. And fabled science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon reviewed Steve’s effort, and he called it, “Full of reach and astonishment… Few working writers alive have his sense of sight and scene.” Left: Author Law & Strategies: A Legal Guide for the Working Writer [1983] chose Steve’s media solicitation letter, “hook sheet,” and follow-up correspondence as effective self-promotion. Below: We neglected to include any discussion of Steve’s creation of Star-Lord. My bad. Marvel Preview #4 [Jan. ’76] cover art by Gray Morrow.