Optiks
Jack In 3-D Land by Stan Taylor, with thanks to David Folkman for material assistance
his story starts way back in 1954. A young boy about six years old is out with his mother, comes upon a revolving comics rack, and stares in fascination. On the rack are several of those new three-dimensional (3-D) comics. He stares and rifles through the books. He shows his mother and asks if she will buy him one. He already has some comics so it’s not an unusual request. His mother looks and when she sees the EC 3-D horror comic, she blanches. Rather than the crime and gore, she picks out a 3-D comic featuring Mighty Mouse by St. Johns. The kid is spellbound; he had never seen anything like this. The amazing rodent is flying and almost jumping out of the book. This was an excellent choice. Originally created in 1942 as a movie short, Mighty Mouse was a parody of Superman. We have a hit. He went through several mutations—beginning as Super Mouse—before becoming the mouse we all love. Mighty Mouse became the most popular of the many characters in Paul Terry’s studio. Not many could ever forget the stentorian operatic vocals of Mighty Mouse singing, “Hereeee I come to save the dayyyyyy.” Opera and farce played a large part of Mighty’s oeuvre, even the constant villain; Oil Can Harry occasionally breaks into aria. He was a natural for comics with Timely producing a short run in 1946. St. John’s took over the license and started making comics in 1947 with Mighty Mouse soon their top selling book. It was no surprise that this character was chosen for their first 3-D comic. Joe Kubert recalled: “We produced two sample proofs with the 3-D effect, a panel of Tor and one of the Three Stooges. When we showed them to Archer St. John, he flipped over the idea! We went to work on a Mighty Mouse book because St. John felt it would be the best vehicle for 3-D and get the best chance on the newsstands.” The first book sold out. Mighty Mouse later became one of the earliest TV characters in 1955 when the studio was sold to CBS. The 3-D effect left young Ray Zone breathless. Ray’s imagination and wonderment were on fire as he searched out and collected any and every thing he could find relating to 3-D. Hollywood was just beginning to flood the market with 3-D movies. Such great titles like Bwana Devil, It Came From Outer Space, and House of Wax captivated the young man who became obsessed with the concept of 3-D. One of his favorite comics was Captain 3-D by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby—a wondrous example of the 3-D concept. Ray came to this fascination as a consumer, but James Butterfield (below) was deep into the nuts and bolts of the industry. Even as early as the 1950s, he was producing a 3-D TV show in Mexico. He invented several 3-D set-ups
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(above) Get out your 3-D glasses, and you can see Ray Zone in the third dimension! (next page, top) Photo of Jack by Susan Pinsky. He’s working on the pencil art to one of the versions of the 3-D Cosmic Poster. Shown at center is Jack’s first try at it—it was apparently deemed too complicated to convert to 3-D, so an effort was made to simplify it (right) before abandoning it for a new image (see page 64). (bottom) One of Jack’s unused attempts at art for Battle for a ThreeDimensional World’s included 3-D glasses, with inset stereo photo of James Butterfield.
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