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Contents
THE
STEVE SHERMAN TRIBUTE ISSUE! OPENING SHOT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 JACK FAQs Mark Evanier’s August 6, 2020 conversation with Steve Sherman. . . 4
ISSUE #84, SUMMER 2022
C o l l e c t o r
TRIBUTES Neal Kirby. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Lisa Kirby. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Mark Badger. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Greg Williams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Bruce Simon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Diana Mercer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Glen David Gold. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 FOUNDATIONS More unseen Link Thorne. . . . . . . . 40 INNERVIEW Steven Brower interviews Steve. . . 48 KIRBY OBSCURA Before Groot was cute . . . . . . . . . . 50 MOB MENTALITY Steve speaks out about Kirby’s In The Days Of The Mob. . . . . . . . . 52 KIRBY KINETICS Up on the roofs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 INCIDENTAL ICONOGRAPHY Crazy Quilt patchwork design. . . . . 66 GALLERY: STEVE’S JOBS. . . . . . . . 68 COLLECTOR COMMENTS. . . . . . . . 78 Front cover inks: D. BRUCE BERRY Front cover colors: TOM ZIUKO COPYRIGHTS: Avengers, Black Bolt, Black Panther, Bucky, Captain America, Crystal, Dr. Doom, Dr. Strange, Fantastic Four, Galactus, Groot, Hulk, Human Torch, Invisible Girl, Journey Into Mystery, Lockjaw, Mr. Fantastic, Orogo, Red Skull, SpiderMan, Starhawk, Sub-Mariner, Tales to Astonish, The Martian, Thing, Thor TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • Ben Boxer, Boy Commandos, Country Boy, Crazy Quilt, Demon, Flower/Spirit, Green Arrow, Guardian, In The Days Of The Mob, Jimmy Olsen, Kamandi, Kobra, Lois Lane, Losers, Manhunter, Newsboy Legion, OMAC, Orion, Rodney Rumpkin, Sandman, Sandy, Spirit World, Strange Adventures, Supergirl, Superman, Warden Frye, World’s Greatest SuperHeroes TM & © DC Comics • Star Wars TM & © Lucasfilm • Lone Ranger and Tonto, Incredible Hulk TV show © Universal Pictures • Truck Shackley & the Texas Critters TM & © Krofft Entertainment • Boy Explorers, Link Thorne, Stuntman TM & © Joe Simon & Jack Kirby Estates • King Kobra © Jack Kirby & Steve Sherman • Beardsley Bullfeather, Captain Glory, Captain Victory, GODS plates, Jupiter Plaque, Kirby Unleashed, Silver Star, Uncle Carmine’s Fat City Comix TM & © Jack Kirby Estate • The Fly TM & © Joe Simon Estate • Savage Humor © The Print Mint • The Curse of Frankenstein © Hammer Films • Spats and Splats © Barry Siegel • Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, LLC. • Tarzan TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. • Pee-Wee’s Playhouse TM & © Shout! Factory • O.G. Readmore TM © ABC Television • Beakman’s World, Men In Black TM & © Columbia Pictures • Happy © Bacchus Films • Star Trek TM & © Paramount Pictures
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[above] Jack drew this sketch inside Steve Sherman’s copy of Origins of Marvel Comics.
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The Jack Kirby Collector, Vol. 29, No. 84, Summer 2022. Published quarterly (you betcha!) by and © TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. 919-449-0344. John Morrow, Editor/Publisher. Single issues: $15 postpaid US ($19 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $49 Economy US, $72 International, $19 Digital. Editorial package © TwoMorrows Publishing, a division of TwoMorrows Inc. All characters are trademarks of their respective companies. All Kirby artwork is © Jack Kirby Estate unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter is © the respective authors. Views expressed here are those of the respective authors, and not necessarily those of TwoMorrows Publishing or the Jack Kirby Estate. First printing. PRINTED IN CHINA. ISSN 1932-6912
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Mark Evanier
JACK F.A.Q.s
A column answering Frequently Asked Questions about Kirby
[below] A photo from the filming of Spats And Splats, an 8mm silent comedy made by Barry Siegel, and starring LA Comic Book Club members. You can see the film here:
Mark Evanier’s conversation with Steve Sherman
https://youtu.be/ LXrYncpxIfI
Transcribed by Steven Tice Copy-edited by John Morrow and Mark Evanier
[left to right] Steve Sherman, Rob Solomon, Mark Evanier, Barry Siegel, Jules Kragen, Bruce Simon, Gary Lowenthal, and Sandy Friedlander. (Jules and Sandy were friends of Barry’s from school, and not members of the LA Comic Book Club.) Steve played the role of “Head Tough” and served as cameraman for the 1970 film. Mark Evanier was the hamburger-flipper.
was the vice president. Rob Solomon was the secretary or the treasurer. Mike Rotblatt was whichever one Rob wasn’t. We had a bunch of fun people in it— Bruce Schweiger, Steve Finkelstein, Bruce Simon, Barry Siegel—a lot of people, some of whom are still friends today, and some of whom haven’t spoken to each other for reasons that flowed from the comic club. One day this fellow named Steve Sherman joined the group, with his brother Gary. I don’t know how he joined or exactly when—we’ll get to that—but we became good friends. Shortly after that, Steve and I were both hired by a company named Marvelmania. We’ll tell you about that. That was around 1969, and some of you who sent money to Marvelmania are probably still waiting for your posters and decal sheets. Shortly after that, Steve and I were hired as the assistants to this man named Jack Kirby. Steve, like me, feels a great obligation to talk about our time with Jack because we were witnesses to a very important time in the life of a very important man in the comic book industry—probably the most brilliant guy who ever worked in the comic book industry, and certainly one of the people without whom there would not have been a comic book industry. So, I invited my friend Steve, who I’ve now known for over half a century, to join us here, and we’re going to talk about what it was like to hang around with Jack Kirby and work with him. Steve, come on in here now. Hello, my friend! How long have we known each other?
Conducted online on August 6, 2020
[Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, panels such as this one were featured online rather than in-person at conventions. You can view the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5f19VvIApE]
MARK EVANIER: Greetings! My name is Mark Evanier, and I am very pleased to have this guest on here today. In the late Sixties, around ’66 and ’67—there are fistfights still going on over what year it was—we started a club in Los Angeles called, brilliantly, the Los Angeles Comic Book Club. It met every Saturday at Palms Recreation Center, which is still over there on Overland Avenue in West LA, and I was the president of it. Rob Gluckson
STEVE SHERMAN: At least fifty years, probably 51, maybe even more. MARK: Do you remember when you first came to the comic book club? STEVE: Oh, sure, sure, sure. It all came about because Gary Owens did that show on Channel 13 about comic books, the history of comics. [My brother] Gary and I saw that and they showed Hollywood. They showed where the bookstores were. So, we said, “Oh, let’s go down there and take a look.” So we went, and we went into Bond Street Books, and they had Guts [#5 from 1969 shown above], the fanzine that the Glucksons put out. And there was a little ad that said, “Saturdays we meet at the Palms Recreation, blah, blah.” We lived in West LA, so we said, “Let’s go.” One Saturday afternoon 4
we went there, and it was just amazing. [Mark laughs] I liken it to— not having been in a fraternity, this was our fraternity, because I still know most of these people fifty years later. We had a blast. We really did. When you think about it, how much fun we had—I mean, we made movies, we had the Evening of Imagination before there were comic-cons. We insulted each other. We made fun of each other. [both laugh] And, of course, we read comics. I even remember the first time Sergio Aragonés showed up. He showed up at the Palms Recreation Center, and we were like, “Wow! Sergio Aragonés! What a great guy!”
hobby, and it wasn’t one of those, “Hey, look how much these old comics are worth” shows, and there was a minimum of “pow/bam/zap” or whatever. People are still looking for a copy of that—it’s a lost special. Gary [right] spent years calling KCOP saying, “Search the warehouse. You must have a copy of that someplace. It seems to be lost.” STEVE: Warehouse? I don’t think KCOP had a warehouse! [laughs] MARK: I think KCOP was a warehouse, or is one now. So, Steve and his brother Gary showed up at the meeting, and we met every Saturday in the afternoon and we played games. We used to play a version of Jeopardy that I designed which was like Jeopardy with comic book characters and comic book subjects. You know, it was like, “I’ll take Jack Kirby Inkers for twenty.” Things like that.
MARK: How many people do you remember were in that club meeting that day? STEVE: Maybe twenty, I would think? MARK: I thought it was more like forty. STEVE: Maybe forty. It’s hard to remember.
STEVE: SMASH.
MARK: Sergio remembers it being, like, five or six people, which I’m telling him, “No, it wasn’t.” We had a decent turnout for him that day. He was our first, and I think only, real guest speaker.
MARK: We also called the group SMASH, which stood for Society for Magazine Appreciators of Super Heroes, and I think I may have come up with that—
STEVE: I think so. But there were five people crowded around him, so that’s probably what he remembers.
STEVE: Probably. MARK: —in my stupider moments. The club was a lot of fun for a couple of years there. And there were no comic-cons. There were very few comic-cons anywhere then, but none in California. This is pre-San Diego Con.
MARK: Let me clarify here for people what Steve was probably talking about. Gary Owens, the great disc jockey, personality, did a show on Channel 13, KCOP local here, about comic book collecting. It was a special they did one evening, and it was a local station, but it somehow made us feel empowered because it was talking about our
STEVE: No. I think the only one was the science-fiction con in Santa Monica, which was the first one I went to. MARK: That was the Westercon. The Westercon was at the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica in 1969, and that’s where some of our members of the club met Jack Kirby, who had come down. Jack and Roz had just moved to southern California. They were living in Irvine at the time in a home, which was their temporary lodging until they could find a house to buy. Jack wanted to meet the local comic fans, and this was the closest he could come to a convention. And he and Roz showed up there, paid admission, walked in, and some of our officers who were at the club—I think Rob Solomon and Mike Rotblatt and Bruce Schweiger and such—met him there and said, “Oh, Mr. Kirby! Would you come speak at one of our club meetings?” And he said, “Sure.” He never did, but he said, “Sure. Why don’t you guys come down to our house in Irvine one of these days?” That’s how I wound up going down to see Jack Kirby. I
[left] A sketch Jack did for Gary Owens. Non-locals probably know Gary best as the announcer with his hand over his ear on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. [above] The ad that ran in TV Guide for Gary’s TV special on comics, courtesy of Mark Evanier. Sadly, no video copy of the show has yet been found.
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It was great. And then when we did the Toys for Tots thing, that really was something else. MARK: Yeah, the guy got the idea to promote his company somehow through Toys for Tots. STEVE: Because he was an ex-Marine, which I don’t know how this guy ever was a Marine, but okay. I mean, [gestures, laughs] he was about this tall and about this wide, you know? MARK: But he also discovered that he could call people and tell them he was working for the Toys for Tots campaign for the Marine Corps and ask them to donate things to him—which he used for his own benefit. People thought they were donating to Toys for Tots and they were really giving him stuff. STEVE: Yeah. You and I put that thing together from the seat of our pants at the Pan Pacific [Auditorium]. I mean, the Three Stooges showed up. Clayton Moore showed up as the Lone Ranger. Ruth Buzzi. And I think we were the only ones [who] CBS gave a print of A Charlie Brown Christmas, which you couldn’t see anyplace else, and we had a 16mm print of it that we showed. But remember, up until that point—not Baby Daphne, but who was the other one? MARK: Hobo Kelly [right]. STEVE: Hobo Kelly had the Toys for Tots thing. MARK: Hobo Kelly was a local kids show host in Los Angeles. She was on Channel 11, I think. STEVE: Nine. MARK: Nine, yeah. No, Baby Daphne was on nine. Hobo Kelly I think was on 11.
[above] Flyer for the Dec. 6–7, 1969 Pan Pacific event thrown together by Evanier and Sherman. An account of the event was presented in Marvelmania Monthly Magazine #1 (April 1970). [next page, top] Kirby’s poster for Toys for Tots. [next page, bottom] Jack appears at Hollywood’s Brown Derby restaurant for a Toys for Tots press event, with the three characters from his poster illo. Per Mark Evanier: “That Captain America costume was the one used in the Captain America movie serial in the Forties. They added the wings and cut holes for his ears, but it was really and truly the same costume, which happened to be in the giant warehouse of Western Costume, the big costume supplier in Hollywood back then.”
met Jack Kirby the second Tuesday of July, 1969. We went down there, and Jack recommended me to work at this company called Marvelmania that was in Los Angeles. It was not a part of Marvel. It was an outside company, if you can call it a company [Steve laughs], that licensed the rights to do mail order merchandise of Marvel comics. And can you imagine what that license would be worth today if he still had it? But the guy who ran it knew nothing about comics, knew nothing about honesty… STEVE: Nothing about marketing. Nothing about merchandising. Although I will say this: the posters were gorgeous. When it came to printing, he went all-out on that. But that was it. MARK: And that was about it, yeah. And how much did they not pay you for your services? When they went out of business, how much did they owe you? STEVE: Oh, geez. Well, I was not getting paid $2.50 an hour, so—but I was going to college at the time, so it was part-time. I’d come in after classes and do it. But yeah, nobody got paid. I mean, if we did get paid, it was every now and then I think we’d get a check, but other than that, it was always like, “Oh, once we’re on the way, guys, we’re going to really be something.” It was like, “Sure, sure.” But we were having fun! We were all there; you were doing a magazine. We were doing the photograph stuff with Bruce [Simon] as Doctor Doom. 6
STEVE: And 13, I think, at one point. MARK: Yeah. Hobo Kelly—the lady who played her— was married to the station manager. She was Sally Baker. Her husband was Walt Baker, and he was like the general manager of the station or something. STEVE: Yeah. But she got all pissed off that they had switched from her to the Marvel super-heroes as the Toys for Tots. She was not happy with that. I think she had her own parade or something after that. But that was fun. That was fun. MARK: Yeah. Now, Steve, we could fill hours with stories of working at Marvelmania, but the one thing I wanted to—I need a witness for this, and you’re my witness, okay? [Steve laughs] All right? I had told people that one of the 83 reasons that company went under is that the boss became enamored of the idea—and put all of his energy and money into another project—which was to rebuild Ancient Rome. STEVE: That’s right! Rome BC, to be built— MARK: Rome BC, yes! STEVE: —on the bones— MARK: He had this idea—he was going to rebuild the Colosseum in Italy as an amusement park. STEVE: But what he was going to use were the sets from some big Spanish production, some Italian film that had all these sets. And we tried to tell him, “See,
but those things are made of cardboard and wood. There’s nothing behind it.” He wouldn’t hear it. Remember, on his fake desk, he had all these soldiers and stuff all lined up, and one day I accidentally knocked them all over. He was mad! [laughs] MARK: He had these little toy soldiers. STEVE: Yeah! He was like, “I’m gonna rebuild Rome BC.” “But you don’t have 10¢! How are you even going to get to Rome?” MARK: Well, he managed to put it on credit cards and never paid them off. He was very good at avoiding creditors. But at one point, I remember one night he turned to me—the whole problem with Marvelmania was that the money that came in to order posters and decals and things never quite equaled the manufacturing costs. So, he was always behind. He was always in arrears. And orders were not getting filled because he didn’t have the money to make the merchandise. So, it was kind of like, a lot of people have ordered this item, and we’re waiting for him to have enough money to make them. Months are passing, and people are writing in angry letters. And then one day, while he was trying to rebuild Rome BC, he comes up to my little desk, my little cubicle, and he says, “What movie studio made Ben Hur?” And I said, “That was MGM.” And he said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” MGM was auctioning off the backlot at that time. They had a sale going on of all their props and costumes and things that were around. And he grabbed up all the cash that had come in that day to order Marvelmania merchandise, went out, hailed a cab because he didn’t have a car—he couldn’t afford a car—and he took the cab to MGM and started buying costumes for his Rome BC plan. And he was being bid against by Debbie Reynolds, who was buying stuff—
took her aside and he said, “Listen. If you’ll let me buy this stuff and you won’t bid against me, I’ll copy it all, use the copies for my purposes, and donate you the originals.” And she went, “Okay.” So, she stopped bidding against him. He got all this stuff. He spent all the Marvelmania money that wasn’t going to be used to print posters to buy these cheap costumes, which looked fine on the screen, but if you looked at them close up, they were—
STEVE: For a museum. MARK: You remember this stuff, right, Steve? STEVE: Oh, yeah! Yeah! MARK: She was buying stuff for the Hollywood museum that she always wanted to build, and she was bidding against him. So, he
STEVE: They were falling apart. MARK: They were falling apart, and he was walking around the office for several days wearing a Roman soldier breastplate, and he had—you mentioned his fake desk. His fake desk was not a desk. It was a box. He couldn’t afford a desk, so he bought some wood paneling like you would use to panel a den, and he just nailed the pieces. So, he had this box. It looked like a desk from the front, and if a visitor asked him for a pen, he leaned down, pretended he was pulling a drawer open or something, and he picked the pen up off the floor, and then he’d mime closing the drawer that wasn’t there. Anyway, after a while we got fed up with how badly he wasn’t paying people, how badly he was stiffing kids, and one day we went to him and said, “You’ve got to fill these orders. You’ve got to do something about this. You’ve got to stop putting the money into this 7
Thinking about Steve Sherman by Bruce Simon
T
ributes are always better given to the living while they can be appreciated, but I’m afraid we didn’t have the luxury of time in Steve’s case, as he left us quickly and unexpectedly—one of those cases of entering the hospital for one thing and, in a rapid course of events, having everything go south. I spoke to him by phone a couple of times a day while he was in the hospital, until his phone stopped picking up—a terrible, sad day. I’m perhaps being a little more personal that I probably should be here, but I’d like to just share some things about Steve and our friendship of over 50 years, beyond what he did professionally. When Steve and his younger brother Gary showed up on that Spring night in 1968 at Palms Park in West Los Angeles for an event we optimistically called The Evening of Imagination, the members of the Los Angeles Comic Book Club had no idea of the momentous events that would follow. Not quite the driving of the Golden Spike, but something important and lasting to us, at any rate. The Evening of Imagination was an evening event comprised of such antediluvian delights as 25-year-old comics exhibited in thick plastic bags and Orson Welles’ famous War of the Worlds radio broadcast being played from a reel-to-reel tape recorder, all designed to inveigle and attract new memberships to our Club, which met every Saturday at Palms Park to sell and trade comics, after a raucous meeting of adolescent oneupmanship disguised as parliamentary procedure. Steve would sit back and watch amusedly, as he was a few years older than the median age of our tribe—and Gary, being a few years younger, joined right in, loudly, joyously. For as reserved as Steve was, Gary was decidedly not. Steve had talents that made him the go-to guy in our circle; his father Eli was an electrical engineer and had taught Steve how to do just about anything about everything; this guy knew how the world worked, and in a practical sense, Steve could MacGyver his way in and out of any situation. Cars, cameras, printing; anything with moving parts or arcane instructions, Steve could master—a handy thing amongst a crew of dreamers, doofs and dullards. Secondly, Steve drove! His trusty Duster opened my world up beyond bikes and buses and shoe leather, as he made it possible for multitudes of adventures like ferrying me, Gary and Mark Evanier to attend the first San Diego Con, for just one example; and mundanely, but just as memorably, scouring art and paper stores in Downtown Los Angeles for the large sheets of two-ply Bristol board Jack preferred, as he detested the cheap paper DC provided him. It was an honor to source and trim the boards to their proper dimensions for Jack to use. When Marvelmania International, the successor of the M.M.M.S. as Marvel’s official fan club, opened an office in a tiny business court on La Cienega Boulevard in 1969, just about the 32
entire membership of the comic club the first and last of these departures in became employees of this grifter’s scam, format, leaving behind stillborn projer, mail-order business—something ects such as Soul Love and True Divorce, Marvel, Jack Kirby, and certainly we, and some that didn’t make it past the didn’t realize until later. Mark became presentation phase such as Superworld, editor of the fan club’s magazine (and conceived as a slick magazine with Steve was listed as Associate Editor) comics by Jack, Steve Ditko and a host which I wrote for and contributed to, of others; prose and articles by the as well as joining the ranks in the back likes of Harlan Ellison; and many other room filling orders for posters, stickers, artists and writers who were eager to portfolios, and other products, many work with Jack. They could have been sporting the work of Jack Kirby who, like contenders, all of them. Steve eventually most every other person or service prowent from assistant to family friend, vider connected to Marvelmania, wound confidant and collaborator with Jack, up stiffed for payment. Many more working on screenplays together that frustrated fans never received what they became the basis for Jack’s creatorpaid for with their hard-earned allowowned projects Captain Victory and ances, as Mr. Marvelmania was wont to Silver Star. just open up the day’s mail, shake out In those early years, Steve, Mark the bills and change, and leave the enveand I also worked constantly on our lopes in piles to be dealt or not dealt own comic projects, mostly to build with later. I especially remember that our drawing, writing, lettering, and day in 1970 that Jack and Roz walked technical skills for the future, but Steve into our office, dressed for an Eastern had interests and skills in other areas winter on a sunny spring Southern as well; he was mad for the world of California day (as they had just recently puppetry, stop-motion animation, and relocated to the West), and asked if I special effects for film. Steve could conwould kindly take down from the walls ceive and build in three dimensions, all the giant originals of the posters Jack [previous page] Steve discovered Kirby’s work with 1959’s Adventures of which led him to work with Mattel, the Fly #1. His early love of classic horror films is evident from this 1964 had drawn for Marvelmania and hand the Kroffts, Jim Henson and, with attempt at capturing Christopher Lee’s likeness (on his dad’s company them to him, as he had not been paid— stationary) from Hammer Film’s The Curse of Frankenstein [1957, top]. his friend and creative partner Greg which I gladly did. Williams, establish one of the premier [above] Early mimeo fanzine work by Steve. It wasn’t long after that, Steve companies specializing in the field, and Mark left Marvelmania to work as Jack’s assistants in his new Puppet Studio. position as editor/writer/artist on a group of new books for DC So many happy memories of goofy projects over the years: flurComics. One of the facets of this new arrangement most interestries of gag drawings skewering our pals and each other, Steve’s one ing to Jack was establishing new books in new formats beyond the piece of published comic art in my first underground comic (Savage regular comic books of the time. Along with writing letter columns Humor in 1973—collectors, take note!), and Greg and Steve hauling and articles for the comics, Steve and Mark worked with Jack on me in to help out and pitch in on a TV pilot they created that Sony features and photoshoots for the two magazines that actually made Television had optioned. It was a wild show about a gang of puppet it to the stands; In The Days Of The Mob and Spirit World. But with characters that ran a low rent TV station, utilizing and repurposing disappointing results in production and distribution, these were their library of TV shows, cartoons and serials to their own wicked
Savage Humor #1 (1973) from the Print Mint includes the one-page story “The Three Scuzzy Whores” with a script by Barry Siegel, and art by Steve Sherman.
“That’s probably Steve’s only piece of published comic art. When I was down in Los Angeles in August for his memorial, Diana and I were going through Steve’s art portfolios and found four or five versions of that same page. Steve was a very funny cartoonist, but he couldn’t ink or letter for beans, and there are multiple versions of that page that were ruined in the inking and lettering phase— I wound up doing both for him on that page. At that point Steve decided that drawing for print was not his thing, and confined himself to non-print work like character design and such from then on.” – Bruce Simon [l to r] Bruce Simon, Scott Shaw!, Steve Sherman, Mark Evanier, and Robert Solomon at Mark’s 60th birthday party. Mike Royer, Scott, and Mark were also involved with Savage Humor #1.
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We kept it pretty simple. We would plan our year around the BARGE thing every year. He just liked to do stuff together; I think he really liked being married, which made me sad because we didn’t get married until he was 48. And he liked doing stuff with his family and Gary. They also had a sister and a half-sister. TJKC: I assume with Steve working on different movies and TV projects, you had some interesting encounters with celebrities. At the Disney Legends ceremony in 2017, I was completely starstruck seeing Oprah, and Bob Iger, and Whoopi Goldberg and others. And Steve egged me on, like, “Just go over and talk to them! C’mon!” And it was no big deal to him. DIANA: Were you there when he talked to Oprah? And she’s like, “You’re so sweet!” and she gave him a big hug and a kiss. TJKC: Yeah, and he was like, “Oh, it’s just Oprah.” [laughter] I assume he had plenty of interactions with other celebrities during his career. There’s one story about Tom Hanks that Steve’s partner Greg didn’t tell us for this issue. DIANA: Meeting Tom Hanks was cool. I, of course, had to run an errand over to Steve’s office while they were there. And I’m in the outside room, and they’re using that as a craft service area, and I hear this voice, and I’m just like, “Whoa!” Tom Hanks comes out, and it’s just me and him, and he goes, “Hi, I’m Tom,” and I go, “Uh, I’m Steve’s wife.” And he goes, “Oh, I love Steve! Steve is the greatest!” He couldn’t have been nicer. His cousin is Will Scheffer, who’s married to Mark Olsen, and they did Big Love and Getting On; they’re TV writers. They had a deal with HBO and Playtone, and we also were invited to the premiere of Big Love. Steve saw Bill Paxton, who he’d worked with on Mighty Joe Young, so we said hello to him. I was standing in the bar line behind Harry Dean Stanton; it was pretty crazy. He really, really liked Dom DeLuise, and Fred Willard,
who he worked with on D.C. Follies. And he loved the Kroffts (Sid and Marty). There’s all these stories that just sort of trickle out. We’d been married awhile before he showed me that Paul McCartney thing. He wasn’t “Let me tell you a story—I’m the big guy in the room,” y’know? He would just kind of offhandedly talk about when Charlize Theron flashed him, and that kind of thing. [laughter] TJKC: In closing, is there anything else you’d like people to know about Steve? DIANA: He was just the sweetest, nicest guy, and it’s such a huge loss. And it was not expected at all. I mean, he had the kidney dialysis, but that was going fine. But he was always really sweet with fans too. And very self-effacing. H [top left] Oprah Winfrey at the 2017 Disney Legends private reception. [above] A thank you letter to Steve, following the cancellation of the Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters TV variety show. The Krofft Puppets appeared in 35 episodes. [left] Steve with Dom DeLuise while filming the 1983 TV movie Happy.
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the Ultimate Collector Story S by Glen David Gold
teve Sherman tried his best to not meet me, but I wore him down. It took years. But because he finally relented, he ended up telling me one of the best collector-mentality stories you’ll ever hear. I collect Kirby’s original artwork. Because I’m obsessive, long ago I started paying attention to people who’d been in Jack’s circle— artists, friends, allies—who had managed to pick up a piece or two. Armed with a mental list of folks, I’d run into them at conventions or make phone calls to them to talk about what they had, what oddball stories they knew about the work, if they’d ever sell, what the pieces meant to them, that kind of thing. Over the course of a few years, I managed to talk to pretty much everyone. Except one guy. It’s not that he wouldn’t take my calls—it was that he dodged any question about artwork. Lovely, friendly person with great stories about working with the boss at Marvelmania, and later working with puppets (I think the puppets were more humane than his prior gig), and a general friendly distancing, a closed door when it came to whether he owned anything. In 2004, I wrote an article for Playboy about collecting comic artwork, and in it I laid a diagnostic finger on how odd the passion is. More or less I confessed to being slightly insane, but I was also self-aware enough to be a human being first, collector second. I sent a copy to Steve and seemingly five minutes later, he called me, laughing about my insights. He invited me to come over and look at his stuff. So I did. And you know what? It was great, but greater still was getting to hang out with him. He had a gentle soul, and this quiet wit that made even the most devastating comment about someone’s nutty behavior seem kind. We ended up being friends. I called him sometimes to see if he might sell me something (no) but also just to get his take on the latest Marvel movie, or auction results, or museum show of Jack’s work. Ultimately I helped him sell a few small things, but he held onto the great white whales of his collection for a while. And then a couple of years ago this thing happened that put our friendship into focus: he had a series of heart attacks. One of them was so intense it in fact killed him, and he had to be brought back to life. On the other side of all that, he was okay but also diminished. We talked about the experience—I asked him if he remembered anything, looking I guess for “white light” or his long-gone relatives. And he said no. “But,” he added slowly, “when the worst one came, when I could feel myself slipping away for real, the last thing I remember was
this little voice saying, ‘Oh no, Glen Gold is going to get all my artwork.’” He added, “And that’s what brought me back.” This made me laugh about as hard as any collecting story ever has. He had his priorities straight! In conclusion, to anyone reading this who got to enjoy Steve’s company in the last couple years of his life; you’re welcome, I guess? But also: I’m so glad I got to know Steve. May we all have something we feel so intensely about, that it brings us back to life. H [Glen finally was able to get Steve to part with this Thor #159 page.]
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Mob Mentality
Sherman Speaks Out!
Steve discusses Kirby’s experimental magazine line with the Jack Kirby Museum on June 1, 2021
[right] Jack and Roz Kirby at Coney Island in 1941. Murder, Incorporated was active from 1929 to 1941, so Jack knew firsthand what they were capable of. [below, top to bottom] Rand Hoppe, Tom Kraft, and Steve Sherman.
[Tom Kraft and Rand Hoppe of the Jack Kirby Museum kept Kirby fans enthralled during the Covid lockdowns, by hosting a regular series of online video chats about Jack. This discussion was streamed live on June 1, 2021, and the transcript was copy-edited by John Morrow. Some deleted comments refer to images we didn’t show here due to space limitations, and would only make sense while viewing the full video, which can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=cz2VFiMzpuk&t=5s] RAND HOPPE: Hey everybody, here we are, it’s the Jack Kirby Museum. I don’t know, we’ve been gone for a while, but we’re doing the live thing again. It’s the beginning of the Speak-Out Series! This is it, it’s three events! This is the first one, and there’ll be two more, because that’s what “three” means. [laughter] We’re going to be talking about Jack Kirby’s magazines that he did at DC Comics and what happened... what’s on the screen next? Here today, we’re going to talk about In The Days Of The Mob, and we’re looking forward to having Steve Sherman join us. He’s not in the Green Room right now, but hopefully soon, and we’re gonna go through all the stories that Jack told and it’ll be really fun. These stories are wild—wild, I tell you! I am Rand Hoppe. I am the founding Trustee, acting Executive Director of our small 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center. And who are you? TOM KRAFT: I am, as the name says, Tom Kraft. I am the president of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, located in beautiful Hoboken, New Jersey. RAND: It’s true, yep. We’ve been doing some live streams for a while; I guess practically for a year now, I think, since the pandemic hit. We kind of really took to the live streaming and it’s been really fun, and we had a really good time. We did that whole summer of the Fourth World— but we’ll get to that. We’re gonna just do some set-up, some introductory stuff to kind of get moving, and we’re still hoping that Steve will show up in the Green Room. So let’s head off into the world here. So, it’s 1947, and what’s happening is that it’s post-war and—what was it, Stuntman at Harvey [Comics]? It didn’t really happen, so Simon and Kirby, the Joe Simon/Jack Kirby team ended up selling some stuff to Hillman, and Hillman had a comic called Clue Comics, and it was kind of just a boy’s adventure comic. But once Simon and Kirby got there, they started doing crime comics, because crime comics had become a trend. Simon and Kirby did not invent them; was it Lev Gleason or what’s his name: Mr. Daredevil [Charles Biro]? Anyhow, Simon and Kirby did some crime comics and I think this is their first one in Clue Comics [vol. 2, #1, March 1947]: “King of the Bank Robbers,” a True-Clue Crime Story. Now, the interesting thing about this is, that is the name of a chapter of this book, The Gangs of New York by Herbert Asbury, and that book came out in the late ’20s, and it’s filled with stories about the gangs. Oh, it says Steve is in the backstage... 52
Four gangster story, so we’re still not at In The Days of the Mob, but very soon. [The Godfather] came out in ’69 and it was very popular. It was a book, not a movie; the movie was in ’72. But Mario Puzo was a writer for Martin Goodman and what you would call his “men’s sweat magazines” or slick magazines, men’s magazines, adventure magazines for men, and he wrote this book. He actually lived in the town that I grew up in and mentions it in the book completely at random, so it just seems like a lot of this was just kind of building up to this. [shows DC house ad for In The Days of the Mob, above]. This first showed up in a 1971 Superboy comic that I found online. Steve, do you have any memories at all about the development and the challenges that Jack might have had with Carmine [Infantino] and making this thing happen?
okay Steve, we’ll be with you in a sec. So there’s The Gangs of New York with a lot of stories about the gangs of New York, and one of the stories was “King of the Bank Robbers,” so it makes sense that this is where they got some of their stories from. So they did a few stories in Clue Comics, but then guess what? It turns out in 1947 these things were hot and Simon and Kirby... turned their Clue Comics into Real Clue Crime Stories, and look who’s on the cover? It’s Ma Barker and her sons. Obviously Simon and Kirby knew that story, and thought it would make a great comic, so there’s the mother of crime all the way back then. TOM: I also should mention that Jack Kirby was born in 1917, so he actually was of a certain age when all the stuff was going on. So this was something that he lived through.
STEVE SHERMAN: It’s been fifty years; I can barely remember yesterday. [laughter] As I recall, it happened pretty fast. In fact, I think Jack turned all four of those magazines out in one month. He was doing the [Fourth World] comics at the time. He wanted to do something; he wanted to do dollar comics. He was trying to convince them that they should do bigger packages and get out of that, you know, 20¢ [format], and a lot of what these magazines turned out to be were because the distributor told them what they wanted. The distributor said, “Let’s do crime, let’s do horror”—shocker, whatever you want to call it—“divorce,” and he said the Black community was underserved, “So let’s do a Black romance comic.” Yeah, having Jack Kirby do a black romance comic, wow. [laughter] And so he knocked them out. I think we had a week to do each one. Mark and I wrote one of the text pages in one night. I shot the cover, Jack pasted it up. It was
RAND: That’s true, that’s one of the things about the context, about his interest in these stories, was he knew these people. They were who he grew up with. What did he always say? The easy way to grow up in his neighborhood was to become a corrupt cop or a corrupt politician or a gangster. TOM: Yeah, the gangsters were after getting nice suits. RAND: Right, but nobody messed with their mothers. [laughter] But the Hillman thing didn’t last very long, and they ended up going to Prize, where they did Justice Traps The Guilty. So there’s a story they did there, and Headline Comics #23, I believe, is the first issue they did. [Originally] it was just news stories or adventure stuff, but then it turned into a crime comic with Simon and Kirby... There was a period of time where Simon and Kirby did a significant amount of crime comics. I don’t know how long it really went on for, but I will say this: Get this book [The Simon & Kirby Library: Crime], because it’s beautiful. If you can find it, it’s one of the latter editions of the Simon & Kirby library that Steve Saffel and Harry Mendryk worked on, and it seems like by the time they put this one out, they really knew how to make the reproduction just beautiful. In the ’50s at some point, this book came out: The Story of the Syndicate: Murder Inc. We’re going to talk about this book a little bit later, but in 1951 this book came out, chock full of info. So, Star Trek [right, featured gangsters]—and then soon thereafter, we had this Fantastic Four gangster story which is pretty hilarious, with The Thing. And here’s Steve coming in again... yeah, he’s back! I just brought up these images of Kirk and Spock being gangsters and the Fantastic 53
Gallery
STEVE’S JOBS
Commentary on pencil art for issues with Steve Sherman’s involvement, by Shane Foley [right] Kamandi #29 (May 1975), page 5 And so Jack’s take on “Whatever happened to Superman?” is under way. Though the idea was prompted by Steve Sherman, the way the story is told— evocative, yet explaining nothing about Superman’s actual status in Kamandi’s world—is surely pure Kirby. What strikes me about this page is that, though Jack had drawn tens of thousands of fight scenes to this point, most, like this one, still feel fresh and from a slightly different angle than we’ve seen before. What a powerful and moving figure the ape Zuma is here. [next page] More Kamandi #29, pages 2–3 plus multiple panels Totally in character with other elements of Kamandi’s world, as conceived by Jack, names known to us have their true meanings lost or warped, making for some truly fun story aspects. Since the Superman legend is first told here in “comic strip terms” (page 3), and there are all these references to DC comics (shown here with panels from pages 7, 8, 9,13 and 15)—we, as readers from way back when, may have wondered if Jack was alluding to Superman being a legend only. It was not until the actual costume was revealed (top right panel, from page 18) that we knew Supes was a reality in Kamandi’s past. Other Superman references not shown here are spoken on page 1 (“not a bird or a plane”), 6 (kryptonite), 8 (“up, up and away,” and flying “higher than the tallest building”). And I love Kirby’s concept of the “daily planet” elsewhere in the issue—a massive, spherical rock!
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Twice-told Kirby covers, with commentary by Shane Foley
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