To a great degree, I’m like that, too. That’s why I didn’t enjoy penciling so much. How long did I draw Spectacular SpiderMan? I did Spider-Man for twelve years, and I enjoyed a lot of it, but there was a lot of it I did not enjoy. JA: What led you to start inking for Marvel? SB: I wrote Sol Brodsky a letter. I wanted to find out who to talk to about getting inking work, and my brother said, “Talk to Sol.” So I wrote this very nice letter and told him all about myself, and that I could do anything with a brush or pen, and that I was also very disciplined and a very dependable individual. I told him there was nothing more that I would like to do than ink work for Marvel. He called me and said, “Sal, we don’t have anything right now, but hang loose and I’ll try to come up with something for you.” I called him a couple of times just to bug him a little bit
and let him know that I was still alive, and eventually the first job came through. It was a rush job. I knocked myself out to get it back to him real fast. It was a Western. I believe the character was called Gunhawk. He had two guns, and for some reason he grabbed the left gun with his right hand and the right gun with his left hand. I don’t know how that’s physically possible [laughter], but that’s what he did. I don’t remember who the penciler was, but I worked my fanny off on that to do as good a job as I could possibly do. JA: The reason I’m asking is that I have “Gunhawk” [Western Gunfighters #1] down as 1970, but Silver Surfer came out in ’69. SB: It can’t be 1970, because that was the first job I did for Marvel, and I remember the month. It was June of 1968. JA: Maybe it didn’t get printed right away.
27
(below) This early ’70s ad was obviously done for a comic convention program book — most likely one of the New York Comic Art Convention shows. Sal’s first inking assignment for Marvel was a “Gunhawk” story, but by the time of this ad the Western hero had picked up a partner. ART COURTESY OF WWW.ANTHONYSNYDER.COM/ ART
THE CAT, GUN HAWKS, MANTHING, SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL, SPIDER-MAN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. DOC SAVAGE ™ AND ©2010 ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS, INC. D/B/A CONDÉ NAST PUBLICATIONS.