Best Of FC by David Watkins

All characters TM & ÂŠ 2001 DC Comics.

The Best of

Editor

The Best Of

P.C. Hamerlinck

Consulting Editor John Morrow

Design and Layout Christopher Day Walter J. Grogan P.C. Hamerlinck

Front Cover Art Jerry Ordway

Cover Concept/FCA Logo P.C. Hamerlinck

Back Cover Art C.C. Beck P.C. Hamerlinck Alex Ross Marc Swayze

Copyright Acknowledgements Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel, Bulletman, Bulletgirl, Spy Smasher, Ibis the Invincible, Taia, Minute-Man, Mr. Scarlet, Pinky, Billy Batson, Superman, Batman, Golden Arrow, Lance O’Casey, Mr. Tawny, Mr. Mind, Dr. Sivana, Ibac, Captain Nazi, Mr. Atom. Oggar, Phantom Eagle, Commando Yank, Radar, Hoppy The Marvel Bunny, Dr. Voodoo, Mr. Macabre, Steamboat, Mary Broomfield, Beautia, Shazam ©2001 DC Comics. Cisco Kid ©2001 King Features. Captain Midnight ©2001 Ovaltine. Fatman ©2001 Milson. Nyoka The Jungle Girl ©2001 AC Comics. Flyin’ Jenny ©2001 Bell Syndicate. Little Ug-Li ©2001 Marc Swayze. The Spirit ©2001 Will Eisner. Captain Tootsie ©2001 Tootsie Rolls. Our Space Age ©2001 Bell-McClure. Willie the Worm ©2001 Chad Grothkopf. Isis ©2001 Hallmark. Kitz ’N’ Katz ©2001 Bob Laughlin. Tom Mix ©2001 Ralston. Torchy, Gabby Hayes, Ozzie & Babs, Don Winslow, Hopalong Cassidy, Captain Video, Vic Torry, Monte Hale, Mike Hammer ©their respective companies / copyright holders. FCA logo ©2001 P.C. Hamerlinck.

Published by TwoMorrows Publishing 1812 Park Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27605

Contents

(including original publication dates) Foreword By Marcus D. Swayze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Introduction By P.C. Hamerlinck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang (1996). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 “The Fawcetts Could Do It As Well, Or Better, Than Anybody” (1997) . . . .10 The World’s Mightiest Waste of Time and Money (1981) . . . . . . . . . .14 Comics Is A Funny Business (1946) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 “What’s Behind That Comic Cover?” (1940s) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 How The Comics Are Made (1942) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Fawcett Writing Rules (1942) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24 The Human Quality Of The Captain Marvel Characters (1983) . . . . . .28 Mary Marvel (1983) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 Those Darned Armbands and Cape Loops (1983) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 “One of the Most Real Characters Ever To Appear” (1998) . . . . . . . . .31 Master Man (1978) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 My Favorite Little Monster (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Captain Marvel & The Atomic War (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 The Marvel Family Feud (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 Captain Marvel’s Well Known Comics (1975) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Captain Marvel Thrill Book (1977) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Fawcett’s Dime Action Books (1976) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 The Captain Marvel Daily Newspaper Strip (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 The Smithsonian Book Of Comic-Book Comics (1982) . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Fawcett Comics’ Greatest Hits (1982) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Rod Reed—“I Was Proud” (1974) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 “I Chose To Be A Genius” (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 Otto Binder—“We Were More Or Less Inspired” (1974) . . . . . . . . . . .59 Virginia A. (“Ginny”) Provisiero—Fond Memories (1998) . . . . . . . . . . .65 Kurt Schaffenberger—“I Admire Craftsmanship” (1980) . . . . . . . . . . .68 Marcus D. Swayze—Southern Gentleman (1978) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70 He’s My Man By Mrs. Marc Swayze (1997) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76 “I Survived”—Fawcett Artist Ed Robbins (1977) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 “A Lushness of Line”—Bob Powell And Fawcett (1991) . . . . . . . . . . . .79 FAWCETT COMPANION

King of the Roost—Fawcett writer Joe Millard (1975) . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 Remembering Fawcett by George Evans (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83 Easy Money—Fawcett Writer Manly Wade Wellman (1976) . . . . . . . .85 Captain Lieberson (1952) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 “Visual Expression”—Will Lieberson (1975) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92 Legends Meet—C.C. Beck chats with Will Eisner (1983) . . . . . . . . . . .98 Al Allard—‘The Business Has Changed’ (1982) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 “I Never Read Them”—Fawcett Artist Pete Costanza (1980) . . . . . . .101 C.C. Beck Interviews Pete Costanza (1982) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102 “I Wanted To Draw Comics”—Fawcett Artist Robert Laughlin (1984) . . .104 Ralph Daigh—“Comics Opened The Doors” (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106 The “Ashcan” Whiz (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 Carl Pfeufer—An Original (1987) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108 The Legacy of Mac Raboy (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .111 Chad Grothkopf—“I Believed In What I Did” (1991) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112 Bill Parker (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115 John Jordan (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115 Dave Berg (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 John Putnam (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .116 “It Helped Pay The Mortgage”—Artist Edd Ashe (1986) . . . . . . . . . .117 Wendell Crowley (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118 Chic Stone (1997) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .118 Bill Ward (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 Jack Binder (1986) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120 Eric Jon Messmann (1986) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121 “I Felt I Would Be Impinging”—Shazam! Artist Bob Oksner (1996) . . .122 They Still Call Him Junior—Frank Coghlan, Jr. (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . .123 Captain Marvel’s Leading Lady—Louise Currie (1996) . . . . . . . . . . .125 “A Hero To Look Up To”—Actor Jackson Bostwick (1996) . . . . . . . . .127 C.C. Meets The Captain (1980) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129 “My Dad’s The New Captain Marvel”—John Davey (1998) . . . . . . . .130 Elders Fleet, Strong And Wise—Michael Gray (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . .133 C.C. Beck 1910-89 (1989) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135 The World’s Mightiest Opinions (1996) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136 I’ll Never Forget C.C. Beck (1979) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137 We Just Called Him “Beck” (1990) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141 Ask C.C. (1986) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143 Comic Books Are For Kids (1974) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .146 “We Were Considered A Bunch Of Idiots” (1974) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 Were Fawcett Comics Art? (1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .147 What Really Killed The Golden Age (1983) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .148 FCA Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .149 Fawcett Comics Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .157 CONTENTS

This book is dedicated to Jenny, my loving, supportive wife and best friend. I love you. I would like to thank and acknowledge, in no particular order, all of those who were a part of FCA's history—and those who continue to be a part of it—and who, without them, would have made this book impossible: Bernie McCarty, C.C. Beck, Bill and Teresa Harper, Marc Swayze, June Swayze, John G. Pierce, Jerry Ordway, Jackson Bostwick, Ken Haag, Glenn Musial, Dean S. Potter, Roscoe K. Fawcett, Eileen Fawcett, Dave Manak, Roy Thomas, Bill Black and AC Comics, Dan Fabrizio, Jay Disbrow, Eric NolenWeathington, Rod Reed, Klaus D. Haisch, Matt Lage, Otto Binder, Jack Binder, Pete Costanza, Bill Ward, Ginny Provisiero, Eric Jon Messmann, Bob Oksner, Frank Coghlan Jr., Louise Currie, John Davey, Michael Gray, Joanna Cameron, Will Lieberson, Kurt and Dorothy Schaffenberger, Ed Robbins, Dave Hunt, Bob Powell, Ed Lane, Joe Millard, George Evans, G.B. Love, Bob Rogers, Richard D. Taylor, Bill Woolfolk, Mike Mikulovsky, Manly Wade Wellman, Will Eisner, Al Allard, Bob Laughlin, Ralph Daigh, Henry Yeo, Carl Pfeufer, Helen Pfeufer Sheehan, Chris Day, Don Newton, Jerry Bails, Hames Ware, Mac Raboy, Chad Grothkopf, Bill Parker, John Jordan, Dave Berg, John Putnam, Jim Scancarelli, Nat Champlin, Edd Ashe, Ralph Muccie, Wendell Crowley, Jerry DeFuccio, Chic Stone, Carl Hopkins, A.J. Hanley, Ken Bald, Harry Fiske, Sam George, Alex Toth, Trina Robbins, Tony Santangelo, Peter Krause, Alex Ross, Walter J. Grogan, Shelly Moldoff, Mike Manley, Nostalgia Zone, Steve Rude, John and Pam Morrow, Willis and Ruth Beck, Ian, Trinity Chapel, Jesus Christ.

Foreword By Marcus D. Swayze, Artist and Writer, Fawcett Publications When Bernie McCarty began to assemble the pages of the first issue of FCA back in 1973, he made his objectives clear: He believed most collectors of the old Fawcett comic books wanted to buy, sell, and trade, and he devoted the early issues to that end. The title Bernie chose for his publication, Fawcett Collectors of America, was in itself a step toward unification. A letter to the editor in FCA #5 bore evidence of Bernie’s farreaching efforts: “I received a copy of FCA and can’t remember ordering it, can’t figure out how it got to me, am favorably impressed, and want to subscribe.” The letter went on with positive and negative criticism and in a friendly way chided Bernie for not taking into account the intellectual progress that had been made by young readers. It closed with: “Captain Marvel is now being translated and published in Arabic, where the name is pronounced ‘Cab-den Mar-fel’ since Arabic has no sounds for ‘V’ and ‘P’.” It was signed by Daniel Meyerowitz, Jerusalem, Israel. The “old books” were those issued by Fawcett Publications in a relatively brief 13-year period of comic book activity. The “kids” for whom the early creators insisted they wrote and drew had become moms and dads and another generation had taken their place, then another, and another. By and large, as though by some mystical force, they remembered those old Fawcett books and the stories they contained. It was Bernie’s FCA that opened the way, at least two decades later, for them to communicate. There had been endless speculation as to just what gave those books such staying power. E. Nelson Bridwell said: “The magic word was FUN! Everyone I’ve talked to who ever had a hand in the Big Red Cheese has used that word. Captain Marvel’s creators and the writers and artists who followed them put a peculiar magic into their work!” That pointed to the creative efforts, the art, writing and editing. The tales of parties, ball games and just plain fun did indeed reveal among those early creators a spirit that defied the times. It was as though they shared an unspoken refusal to permit the effects and after-effects of wartime to dampen their spirits, and thereby, those of their characters. One of the early artists insisted it was the writing alone that set the stories aside as unique and unforgettable. That theory, however, met with disagreement from the time it first appeared. Some have claimed that the distinguishing factor was the art, and there is little question that some of the most beautiful pages of comic book art were in the Fawcett books. But not all. Quite

Portrait of Marc Swayze by P.C. Hamerlinck. a number of the treasured stories did not include those pages. What about the editing? A lot of publishing wisdom must have accumulated in the executive offices since the days of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang. It would have been a responsibility of the editorial department at all levels to maintain company policies and philosophies as they were being fitted to the comic book world. That should be a consideration, but hardly as a factor in the question at hand. What, then, was it that made those particular comic books so memorable? Must have been the characters, of course. Led by Captain Marvel, the World’s Mightiest Mortal, who happened to be the world’s friendliest super-hero, when those Fawcett heroes and heroines stormed into the hearts of a new generation of readers, they came to stay. But those young readers were supposed to have grown up into perverts and criminals. That’s what a certain order of comic book critics assured the world. Instead, we had respectable citizens, even comic book collectors... and, yes, soldiers, sailors and Marines. The truth of the matter may be that an unwritten policy around the Fawcett offices was: “Comics are for kids!” True, they were written that way, they were drawn that way. As one creator spoke, “We have kids!” The first issue of Fawcett Collectors of

FOREWORD

Introduction By P.C. Hamerlinck I guess its true that your best remembered events are those that are accompanied by strong emotional impact. One of these experiences occurred in late Autumn, 1973. An elevenyear-old boy stood in front of a comics spin rack at the local Rexall Drug, trying to decide on his choice of literature for the week... which normally consisted of such stalwartly legends as Uncle Scrooge, Archie Andrews, and Sad Sack. As the boy vigorously flipped through the rack’s selections, he suddenly stopped; there, wedged in the back of the stack, was The World’s Mightiest Mortal... and he was smiling! Maybe it was that smile— that positive attitude—which made the boy want to take a closer look at the comic book and find out just who was this happy red-suited hero. At that moment, for the first time, the boy was transformed into the world of Captain Marvel and Fawcett comics via a reprinting of a tale from the Forties, which he read right there in the drug store. The tale was positioned towards the back of the comic—as if it were mere filler—in an issue of a new comic book called Shazam! The boy brought the Big Red Cheese up to the pharmacist’s cash register and read the rest of the book as he began to walk his threeblock journey back home down a puddle-filled alley. As he read about Billy Batson and that magic word of his, life somehow seemed a little more exciting for the still-impressionable young boy from a small midShazam #1, 1973. western town. [©2001 DC Comics]

The old stories about Captain Marvel and his Marvel Family had set my imagination on fire. These entertaining stories were filled with such vast variety: Adventure, science-fiction, light humor, whimsy, and satirical tales reflecting the human condition... tales which often bordered on sheer brilliance. While I was captivated by the stories, it was actually the clean and

simple artwork—by one particular artist—that had really drawn me to Captain Marvel... and whose art truly gave life to the character. The name of the artist was C.C. Beck. C.C.’s brand of uncluttered storytelling art had struck me with a force as powerful as Billy’s magic lightning—so much that I later sought out Beck, who was living in Florida. Thus began an eleven-year correspondence and friendship with one of the true masters and pioneers of the medium. There was often weekly communication (sometimes twice-a-week letters, sometimes by phone, sometimes via audiocassette) where C.C.’s goodwill, warmth, encouragement, strong convictions and high standards always came through. Our main topics of discussion covered Fawcett comics, DC Comics, the state of the comics industry, and such esoteric subjects as what was his favorite restaurant (Answer: Red Lobster). C.C. gave me art instruction through the mail along with the helpful advice (or strong warning): “Paul, don’t ever go into comics!” We did some projects together during and after his stint as editor of FCA, including The Critical Circle, where a small group of comic professionals and fans would debate issues brought up in C.C’s lively essays on comics and art. We finally met in person in 1980 and it is a day I’ll never forget. C.C. loved his fans and he made me one happy teenager when he said I could be his “assistant” that day. He also told me if I would have been alive in the Forties he would have hired me to be part of the Captain Marvel art staff. It was indeed a dark day in 1989 when he died, but knowing C.C. Beck was a tremendous blessing in my life. Before discovering Captain Marvel, I was never really interested in any of the caped, long underwear-wearing characters... and certainly none that were published by DC Comics. It was later that I would learn about the insidious lawsuits that DC Comics plagued upon Fawcett

INTRODUCTION

Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang Captain Billy Fawcett and the Birth of Fawcett Publications By Ken Haag and Dean S. Potter In the Minneapolis suburb of Robbinsdale, a legend was born shortly into the century. Wilford Fawcett began a venture in 1920 that would became a national giant. The venture was a small Readers Digestsized booklet titled Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, a publication of jokes and anecdotes which became a national monthly newsstand grabber at 25 cents per copy... and its annual for a buck reached 220,000 readers. Thus Fawcett Publications was born. Off-color humor, jokes, and cartoons in those days reaped big rewards. Captain Wilford Fawcett’s Army experience with their publication Stars and Stripes gave him the idea for Whiz Bang. By 1922, 400,000 copies a month of Fawcett magazines were circulated worldwide. Soon larger facilities were needed to house the publishing venture. In 1936 Fawcett Publications moved out east to Greenwich, Connecticut and New York City... where Captain Marvel was born just a few years later. Many people believed Whiz Comics to be an extension of Whiz Bang. Sure, one had “outhouse” humor, scantily clad (for the times) illustrations and photos of young ladies, and was published for adults, while the other featured a boy who turned into a superhero and became a role model for every kid in America. But there were similarities: Whiz Bang editorialized on God, country, mother and apple

Above: Portrait of Capt. Billy. Left: Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang #41, 1923. Below: The first issue of Whiz Comics, Feb 1940. [©2001 DC Comics] pie, and good versus evil... and wasn’t that what Captain Marvel and Billy Batson were all about? Both magazines were big adventures for Captain Billy, and he had many adventures in his lifetime. His first big adventure began at the age of 16 when he ran away from his Grand Forks, North Dakota home, and joined the Army just in time to fight in the Philippines Insurrection of 1899. Young Fawcett enjoyed Army life so well he continued to romance it. He joined the Minnesota National Guard, after starting his journalism career as a police reporter at the old Minneapolis Journal. When World War I came along, Fawcett again served his country overseas, being promoted from an enlisted man to the rank of Captain. He returned to civilian life with many money-making ideas, mostly related to the armed services and veterans. He opened a Minneapolis night club that catered to the whims of ex-doughboys and sailors, appropriately called “The Army and Navy Club.” Prohibition blitzed his night club out of business... forcing Captain Billy to retreat to a roadhouse in Golden Valley, Minnesota. But with Prohibition, the roadhouse proved to be too precarious a business, so Fawcett looked elsewhere. That elsewhere was again service connected: A joke magazine. Not an ordinary joke magazine, but one that would appeal to ex-soldiers and sailors; one that could easily be read by travelers; one that through its jokes, stories,

CAPTAIN BILLY’S WHIZ BANG (1996)

“The Fawcetts Could Do It As Well, Or Better, Than Anybody” The Roscoe K. Fawcett Interview By P.C. Hamerlinck Captain Wilford (“Billy”) H. Fawcett had a love for off-color jokes and stories. He collected many of them while in the military during World War I. When he returned from overseas, he worked the night shift as a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune. In the Fall of 1919, he self-produced a mimeographed collection of his favorite jokes and stories known as the fabled Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang. It was the beginning of the Fawcett publishing empire. Whiz Bang was a big hit. Captain Billy’s youngest of four sons, Roscoe K. Fawcett (born 1913), along with his brothers, would deliver copies of Whiz Bang to newsstands and cigar stores throughout Minneapolis in his red wagon. By the mid-’20s, Whiz Bang’s circulation was around 500,000. The first Fawcett offices were started in Robbinsdale, Minnesota (where a “Whiz Bang Days” festival is still held every summer) and later in downtown Minneapolis. Captain Billy built Breezy The Fawcett Brothers. From L-to-R: Roger, Buzz, Gordon, and Roscoe. Point Resort in northern Minnesota’s Brainerd 500,000 per issue its first year; by 1945 the figure had Lakes area where he enterrisen to 775,000 and raking in over $500,000 a year. tained many of Only one other Fawcett comic book title sold better: Hollywood’s top movie Captain Marvel Adventures, by the mid-’40s, was stars. A string of successful selling over 1,300,000 per issue, the largest circulation magazines followed for of any comic magazine, and was published every two Fawcett: Screen Play, weeks. Roscoe Fawcett is still very proud of those Motion Picture, Mechanix figures to this day, as I learned during a rare interview Illustrated, Real Life Story, with him in early October 1997. Roscoe was responTrue Confessions and many sible for Fawcett’s entry into the comic book field. others. The company moved According to Roscoe, he was one of the individuals, east in 1935 to Greenwich, along with art director Al Allard and editorial Connecticut and to New director Ralph Daigh, who helped plant the seed for York City in Manhattan’s Captain Marvel/Thunder along with the general Paramount Building. concept of having a young boy gain the ability to turn into a larger-than-life hero, before being placed Roscoe Fawcett became in the able hands of the creative team of writer Bill the circulation manager of Parker and artist C.C. Beck. Fawcett Publications, Inc. In late 1939, Roscoe sent out a “Captain Billy” Fawcett, died on Roscoe’s promotional flyer to magazine birthday, February 7, 1940. He lived long enough to distributors across the United see the first issue of Whiz Comics hit the States announcing the soon-tonewsstands, but not long enough to see Captain be released Whiz Comics Marvel’s phenomenal success. Roscoe and his three featuring Captain Marvel, brothers ran Fawcett Publications until it was sold “another character sensation in to CBS in the Seventies. the comic field!” Roscoe was right: Whiz Comics sold Comics] [©2001 DC

ROSCOE K. FAWCETT INTERVIEW (1997)

The World’s Mightiest Waste of Time and Money Ludicrous Litigation: The DC vs. Fawcett Court Battles By C.C. Beck “It’s absolutely incredible,” says David Weiss, a court reporter who has dug up documents and transcriptions of the famous DC-Fawcett lawsuit. “You wouldn’t believe the reams and heaps and stacks and rooms full of material that this trial produced. It’s absolutely incredible!” says Weiss. We are glad that the lawyers who worked on this case produced something for the money spent. Weiss informed me that court reporters are paid by the page and do very well. As we all know, lawyers make huge sums of money for their services—and even witnesses and jurors are paid for their time in court. Comic book writers and artists are paid by the page, too, but they unfortunately never make much money. What comic book writers and artists can say in a half-dozen pages, it takes a lawyer several hundred or thousand pages to say the same thing. I was called in to testify at one of the court hearings in 1944. Here is a transcription of the testimony:

Art: Dave Manak. DC LAWYER: All these conversations, I take it, took place in the Fall of 1939?

BECK: That is right.

what was said by Mr. Parker to you or to Mr. Parker about supernatural characteristics that this individual was to have.

DC LAWYER: Was there anything said about the supernatural characteristics of this individual at this time?

BECK: I don’t recall his using the word “supernatural.”

BECK: We called them “magic,” yes, sir.

DC’s lawyers tried their best to get witnesses to say that they copied or “stole” material from Superman stories. Here is the way Republic Pictures’ Morris J. Siegal answered such insinuations:

DC LAWYER: I did not ask you what you called them, I asked you

DC LAWYER: When and under what circumstances did you see any cartoon strips containing the figure or character Superman? SIEGAL: Well, we had purchased the rights to make a serial of Superman, and it was at that time I believe I saw some Superman strips. DC LAWYER: What happened in regard to the production of the Superman motion picture serial? SIEGAL: Subsequently, some several months later, I understood there was some legal problem involved, and we discontinued work on the serial. DC LAWYER: At the time of the production of the Captain Marvel serial were you then familiar with the story and characters portrayed in the Captain Marvel serial? SIEGAL: Yes, I discussed it and generally knew what the character was.

DC LAWYER: Do you recall whether the story or any of the characters or incidents in the Captain Marvel serial contained any material which had been prepared in connection with the proposed Superman serial?

THE WORLD’S MIGHTIEST WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY (1981)

Comics Is A Funny Business By Fawcett Comics Executive Editor Will Lieberson (Originally from Writer’s Digest, Vol. XXVI, #2, 1946)

FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND dollars. Doesn’t sound bad, huh? Well, that’s my estimate of what the comic magazine market will shell out to its script writers in the coming year and there’s no reason why part of it couldn’t be yours. But before we give you the moneymaking lowdown, let’s come up-to-date on the nature and history of the field itself. The name “comics”, of course, you know, is a misnomer. It is really a popular term used to describe the technique of telling stories in picture form rather than a description of the type of material found in the magazines. Comics include every type of story, ranging from straight adventure to human interest, right through slapstick, treated in both realistic and fantastic styles. The comic technique is also used politically. During the last New York mayoralty campaign, two of the candidates, William O’Dwyer and Jonah Goldstein, had biographical sketches drawn up as comics which they distributed to the voters. The medium, though, is still comparatively young and its possibilities will enlarge. The first comic magazine, in its present form, to appear on the newsstand was Famous Funnies, in 1933. Its contents were reprints of the Sunday newspaper supplements. Not until 1935 did comic magazines containing original story and art work make an appearance. Fun was the first one of these published. Use of original material nevertheless did not catch on strongly until the advent, shortly before the war, of the costumed alter-ego character such as Captain Marvel, Bulletman, Doc Savage, Superman, Batman, and a host of others. These captured the fancy of an unbelievably large audience, and the field skyrocketed into a bonanza which was curtailed only by the paper shortage. Comics grew up during the war. Their stories were transformed from the old thrill-a-minute, sock, slam-bang, action for action sake type with horrible villains and gory monsters into better-plotted, solidly characterized yarns dealing with heroes that had evolved into definite personalities who lived and breathed convincingly for their readers. Now that the restrictions on paper are at the end, comics are entering into a period of expansion and development. There are a great many writers in the field now, but you can count the good ones on your typewriter fingers. (We are referring to the touch system, not the hunt and peck.) Considering that there are over 150 magazines appearing on the stands every month now, and that there will soon be more, you can easily see that there is plenty of room for new talent to handle the tremendous volume of work. This is where you can come in for a slice of that $500,000.00. There is one thought you must get into your head: You cannot write “down.” We doubt if there is a more alert or discriminating audience in America today than the readers of comics. The slightest author or artist error is sure to bring an avalanche of letters from discerning readers.

ics

Recently, in a Captain Marvel story, a technical error in labeling isotopes brought an immediate correction from a college chemistry society in the Midwest. The winner in a Captain Marvel contest was 32 years old, and his runner-up was 70. The wide appeal was early recognized by the Writer’s War Board, which helped create one of the leading characters in Master Comics, Radar, the International Policeman. In addition to its primary function of being entertaining, this strip tries to show the importance of the eradication of fascism and the need to promote an organization for maintaining the peace. The Writer’s War Board considers the comics medium so important that they had Clifton Fadiman, Rex Stout, and Paul Gallico personally go over every Radar script before it was printed. The contents of the comics are also closely watched by leading educators, sociologists and psychologists. Sidonie Gruenberg, Director of The Child Study Association of America, Inc. says, “The comics have taken their place alongside newspapers, motion pictures,

COMICS IS A FUNNY BUSINESS (1946)

Fawcett Writing Rules The Actual 1942 Writing Guidelines For Various Fawcett Comic Characters (From The Files of Fawcett Comics Executive Editor Will Lieberson) CAPTAIN MARVEL

means we can put a lot of stories into CMA that couldn’t stand alone in Whiz. A Whiz story needs all the elements: Idea, character, comedy, action... each time. It should carry the explanation of SHAZAM, and be complete enough so that a brand new reader will understand everything. But in CMA we can run a weird or supernatural story, a detective story, also a harmless little whimsical story where we poke a little fun at ourselves, and one straight adventure story all in one issue. Wherever possible, you will be informed how the story you are writing is going to be used so that it can be aimed accordingly.

BILLY BATSON is now about 14 years old. He was 12 when the strip started. Don’t ever state his real age—that would spoil a reader’s conception of Billy as being his own age, or younger, or older, as he may prefer to believe. However, for our benefit, Billy has the reactions and characteristics of a boy of 14. BEAUTIA is really Sivana’s daughter. This was explained in Whiz Comics #15, but need not be explained in each issue. Just let it color your treatment of her and of Sivana so that he doesn’t treat her too mean, being his daughter. At the same time, she knows all about Sivana and can’t be too easily taken in by his evil tricks. Sometimes she helps him, sometimes she doesn’t. SIVANA is a real scientist... and a mad scientist. As explained in Whiz Comics #15, his mind is warped against the world, not Captain Marvel particularly against any individual. He’s really [©2001 DC Comics] pretty human and makes plenty of mistakes. He smokes a pipe at times, wears goofy disguises, and usually ends up in the soup, but always with something to show that he’ll be back again next time.

A total of six frames (panels) per page is now not obligatory. Whenever a scene warrants, it can be enlarged to cover half or even two-thirds of the page. Most desirable of course is a good smashing action shot of MARVEL which can be spread over the page. Next in order would be large objects such as battleships, buildings, etc. Third and last are scenics or other shots which add to the appearance of the artwork but don’t really put over what we’re selling: CAPTAIN MARVEL.

STERLING MORRIS has been with Billy since the first issue of Whiz Comics and must at least suspect by this time who Captain Marvel really is. In spite of his position as President of Amalgamated Broadcasting (station WHIZ), he’s not terribly bright, so he either never puts two and two together, or if he does he doesn’t say anything about it, or talks himself out of believing Billy is Captain Marvel. This also goes for other characters who have actually seen Billy’s transformation, such as WHITEY, STEAMBOAT, and others, as they work through a strip after the first time they hear “SHAZAM—BOOM—IT’S CAPTAIN MARVEL.” We don’t have to (as Superman does) keep everything a deadly secret from everyone. Superman still has to hide somewhere, take off his clothes, carry on as Superman, and then get back into his civvies behind a screen—all in time to emerge and have his friends never suspect a thing. This must be getting pretty tiresome to the kids—which is the theory we work on in having Billy’s changes into Captain Marvel often occur right in front of everybody. In contrast to Superman, Captain Marvel is tied down to no such artificial piece of machinery. He just swings into action so fast that most people haven’t time to suspect what has happened to Billy. But of course there is one person who knows: Wily old Sivana! Whiz Comics still carries only one Captain Marvel story. Captain Marvel Adventures has four stories per issue. This

Fawcett Comics Code of Ethics. From the files of Will Lieberson.

FAWCETT WRITING RULES (1942)

CAPTAIN MARVEL JR. FREDDY FREEMAN is a crippled boy about 14 years of age. He is an orphan and lives in a shabby attic room somewhere in the city. He sells newspapers for a living, and it is usually while selling them that dastardly things come to his attention which lead to the story. Freddy’s diary usually starts and/or ends the story. In the diary, he starts with “Dear Diary,” and then gives what amounts to a title caption for the story. Just as Billy Batson yells “SHAZAM!” to become Captain Marvel, Freddy Freeman yells “CAPTAIN MARVEL!” to become Captain Marvel Jr. The same “boom” and lightning flash result from his cry as from Billy’s.

thetic character in his own right. Being crippled for life, he is sensitive to other people’s hardships and troubles. The stories should deal in general with strong human interest plots, rather than just a gang of Nazis or thugs spilling blood left and right and fighting their nemesis. That is, have a story within a story whenever possible, where Junior and Freddy together solve some person’s problem or difficulty. In general, it might be said that the tear-jerker type of story is best suited for this character. Fantasy lends itself to Junior stories, but it should be a more serious type of fantasy than the light whimsical kind found in Captain Marvel. The boy angle should be played up whenever possible. That is, the people he helps and rescues can often be children rather than adults.

The origin of Captain Marvel Jr. occurred during a Captain Marvel story. Captain Nazi Captain Marvel Jr. [©2001 DC Comics] ruthlessly killed an old man and crippled his grandson for life. Captain Marvel took the dying boy down to old SHAZAM, the wizard who gave Billy Batson his powers, and asked Shazam to save the boy’s life. Old Shazam then gave Freddy Freeman the power to become Captain Marvel Jr simply by shouting the name of the great hero, CAPTAIN MARVEL.

The weird type of story goes well with Junior too... anything eerie and mysterious.

Note: It is necessary that Captain Marvel Jr. and Freddy Freeman never speak the name CAPTAIN MARVEL JR. aloud... that is, when no change of character is wanted. They can only think the name, in such cases. This is a tricky point in that the first two words of Captain Marvel Jr.’s name are the very two magic words that cause him to switch back and forth. For instance, if someone asks Freddy Freeman who chased the villain away, Freddy can’t say, “Why, it was Captain Marvel Jr.!” because he would instantly change on the spot. So in such a case Freddy would say, “Why, it was a strange flying boy in a blue costume!”

As in the Captain Marvel stories, it isn’t necessary for Freddy to sneak carefully behind buildings or something to shout CAPTAIN MARVEL and change into Junior. Where the action requires a quick appearance of Junior, Freddy simply yells it out, and the succeeding lightning flash usually confuses things enough for any characters nearby so that they do not know where Junior has come from, or where Freddy has gone to. And vice versa when Junior changes back to Freddy.

There are two continued villains who frequently pop up in Junior stories. One is CAPTAIN NAZI, who is the WORLD’S WORST VILLAIN, and has tremendous strength and power. He can make great leaps but can’t fly. The second villain is MR. MACABRE, a criminal master mind with a green face who always somehow eludes Junior at the end of the story after Junior has broken up his latest devilish doings. In character, Captain Marvel Jr. is a rather serious boy hero. He doesn’t make wisecracks, although he can say clever things. He shouldn’t be cheapened, however, by making a lot of corny jokes when batting thugs around. In such cases, let him either say exactly what he means, or nothing at all. He frequently returns to the role of Freddy Freeman to solve his problems, as Freddy is a pretty clever boy himself. For instance, if the presence of Captain Marvel Jr. would warn the villains in advance, it is crippled Freddy who would come and wait for the propitious moment to change to Junior and finish up. Spy Smasher Freddy Freeman is a strongly sympa- [©2001 DC Comics]

FAWCETT WRITING RULES

Note: Absolutely no one knows that Freddy Freeman is Captain Marvel Jr. He has no confidant at all. This is an important point because it typifies Junior as a lone wolf, confiding in no one and figuring things out for himself in all cases.

The panels per page should run six or seven, with more sixes than sevens. Somewhere within the story can be a page with as low as 3 to 5 panels, allowing room for one big splash of some climactic scene or action. In the captions, shorten the name to CAPT. MARVEL JR. to save space. He must not be called Marvel Jr. or Junior, although of course he can be referred to a “flying blue form” or “the mighty boy in blue” and such indirect terms for variety. And once in every story, a caption should use the tag line, “... and then the WORLD’S MOST SENSATIONAL boy leaped and... ” (Marvel Jr. is the World’s Most Sensational Boy, just as Captain Marvel is the World’s Mightiest Mortal). There should be at least three spots of action in each story. They should be built up. Variety is important. Stories can sometimes deal with Nazis and thugs (international intrigue), particularly now.

SPY SMASHER Spy Smasher may operate anywhere in the world, but his home base is Washington, D.C. He combats enemy agents, spies and fifth columnists. Time is the present. Spy Smasher is the alter ego of ALAN ARMSTRONG, a wealthy, young Virginia sportsman... a socially wellconnected idler who has an apartment in Washington D.C.

The Human Quality Of The Captain Marvel Characters By C.C. Beck One of the reasons that Captain Marvel stories were so successful during the Golden Age was that the characters in them were based on real people rather than being just two-dimensional, cardboard figures. They all seemed to be human, much more so than the super-human characters presented in other comic books at the time. Captain Marvel himself was based on the actor Fred MacMurray, who was known as a pretty down-to-earth guy. Captain Marvel was not an alien from another planet, living in disguise among us humans here on Earth; he was just every boy’s dream of what it would be like to be six feet tall and in possession of marvelous powers. Mary Marvel was based on Judy Garland, Beautia on Betty Grable, and Sterling Morris on actor Gene Lockhart. These actors and actresses were likable and very popular at the time. Making comic characters resemble well known people (without actually saying so) made them instantly acceptable to readers. Other characters, such as the three other Billy Batsons who turned into the Lieutenant Marvels, were based on real people, too: Fawcett art staff members Paul Pack, Ed Hamilton, and Frank Taggert were the inspiration for these engaging characters. Pack was well over six feet tall and thus became Tall Billy; Hamilton was a sort of rough, rural, likable chap and became Hill Billy; Taggert, who Mary Marvel, the ‘girl-next-door.’ was short and “roly-poly” Recent sketch by Marc Swayze. became Fat Billy. [©2001 DC Comics]

Pete Costanza, both as himself and as other characters, often appeared in the Captain Marvel pages. Jess Benton, another Fawcett artist, appeared as a college boy in a story. In turn, Mac Raboy and the other artists Otto Binder based Mr. Tawny often put me in the stories, and not on himself. always in a complimentary way! [©2001 DC Comics]

THE HUMAN QUALITY OF THE CAPTAIN MARVEL CHARACTERS (1983)

Master Man “The Wonder of the World” By Bernie McCarty Master Man was the lead feature of the first six issues of Master Comics, an experimental product called “The World’s Biggest Comic Book” and measuring 10 1/2 by 14 inches. The large-size format simply didn’t appeal to kids, and Master Man hardly compared with Captain Marvel, Fawcett’s other super-hero introduced a month earlier in Whiz Comics. On top of that, Master Man was clearly a copy of Superman and when National threatened to sue the brass at Fawcett decided the character wasn’t worth the hassle. The large-size Master Comics ran from March to September, 1940, then was switched to regular size, merged with Nickel Comics, and Bulletman took over as the lead feature. Master Man was competently rendered by artist-creator Harry Fiske. However, the stories lacked imagination and did little more than showcase the character’s physical prowess. The biggest drawback to Master Man’s chance of gaining a measure of success was the lack of a dual identity, a là Billy Batson. The writers had nothing to build a story around prior to the entry of the hero. Captain Marvel’s origin was a classic tale that hooked most kids right from the start. The origin of Master Man turned off most kids. In the space of a few panels on the first page of the first story, Master Man is introduced and his origin revealed: “Introducing to the readers of the world’s biggest comic book the world’s greatest hero: Master Man! Stronger than untamed horses—swifter than the raging winds—braver than mighty lions—wiser than Wisdom, kind as Galahad is Master Man, the wonder of the world! But as a boy young Master Man was weak until a wise old doctor gave the youth a magic capsule, full of vitamins, containing every source of energy known to man: The Vitacap. The boy becomes the strongest man on earth.”

MASTER MAN (1978)

My Favorite Little Monster By Bernie McCarty The most deliciously exciting moment of my youthful comic book reading occurred in the Spring of 1943 when I opened my copy of Captain Marvel Adventures #22 and saw a drawing of a movie screen at a kids matinee. After all these years I remember the wording on the screen: “A thrilling new serial, The Monster Society of Evil, starring Captain Marvel.” A double-page spread in this issue showed the heroic figure of Captain Marvel straddling the Earth while a voice from a distant planet thundered, “I am the most evil being ever to live! And you, Captain Marvel, though you are Earth’s Mightiest Mortal, I will crush you like an ant! Ha, HA, HAAAAA!!!” It wasn’t until chapter five that it was even hinted that Mr. Mind was of small stature. Then chapter six finally revealed that he was just... a WORM! A lowly, insignificant worm, but with a mentality so vast and powerful and evil that “he’s more dangerous than all of Hitler’s armies.” Otto Binder, the writer who created Mr. Mind, said later, “... Mr. Mind was a surprising contrast to all the other villains—always big, brawny, devilish hulks—so that a tiny, miserable worm, filled with more hate than all the other villains combined, simply tickled the readers’ fancies.” The Mr. Mind episodes always ended with a cliffhanger: Captain Marvel, Billy Batson, or Mr. Mind himself in dire peril of one kind or another. I was hooked... and so was every comic book reading kid of the time.

MY FAVORITE LITTLE MONSTER (1981)

Captain Marvel’s Well Known Comics by Dan Fabrizio Billy realizes that he is too young to vote and calls on Captain Marvel to answer the canvasser. Upon realizing that the canvasser is a Lousely man, Marvel refuses to sign, stating that he will vote instead for Morris.

Among one of the rare giveaway comics was a series called Well Known Comics, a 12-page booklet circulated at the height of World War Two by the advertising offices of Bestmaid dairy products. Six issues are known to exist: Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Bulletman and Spy Smasher, Golden Arrow, and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny.

When the canvasser reports the incident to his boss, Lem N. Lousely, the candidate hits upon a scheme to intimidate Captain Marvel. The Lousely group returns to the Batson flat to interrogate the good Captain. Marvel seems to recognize Lousely from somewhere in the past, but this thought is temporarily put aside when the candidate asks him his age and year of birth to determine if the Captain is eligible to vote. Marvel is at a loss to answer these questions. Lousely then accuses Captain Marvel of being an alien, and attempts to arrest him. Marvel resists; Lousely sees this as an excellent chance to eliminate one vote for Morris and shoots the resisting Marvel. Captain Marvel then proceeds to wipe the streets with Lousely and his cohorts, accidentally disrupting a Lousely rally in the process.

The booklets measured approximately 81⁄2" x 101⁄2" and were printed in one color on stock that was a little bit better than the coarse toilet tissue of the era. The Captain Marvel and Bulletman editions were printed in red, Captain Marvel Jr. and the other editions in blue and green. Samuel Lowe, the discerning entrepreneur of Bestmaid, sought to capitalize on the growing popularity of the only comic creations in America endorsed by Eleanor Roosevelt and Admiral Byrd, the hero of Antarctica. Consequently, in the presidential election year of 1944, Bestmaid released Captain Marvel Well Known Comics featuring a story called, appropriately enough, “Guardian of the Polls.” “Guardian of the Polls,” however, actually is an ineptly edited version of a story called “Captain Marvel’s Birthday” which had originally appeared in Whiz Comics #47, October 1943. The cover for this Bestmaid hodgepodge is taken Cover of Bestmaid’s Captain Marvel’s from the splash page of a [©2001 DC Comics] totally different story which ran in Whiz Comics #48; hence the incongruity of the Nazi submarine, WACs, and tent city for the cover of Captain Marvel Well Known Comics; these elements had nothing to do with its story “Guardian of the Polls.” Rather than to deal at length with Bestmaid’s edited version, I’ll discuss the original uncut story which appeared in Whiz #47, and I’ll note the variations from it in the Bestmaid version. The story: Sterling Morris, is running for alderman in the 14th Ward against one Lem N. Lousely, and the election is very close. A canvasser for votes appears at Billy Batson’s flat to drum up votes for Lousely.

Well Known Comics.

He is stopped by Sterling Morris who implores the Captain to use legal means, not force on Lousely. Morris then asks Marvel for his vote if the Captain can prove his age and citizenship. And so, Marvel’s search begins.

As Billy Batson, he learns that City Hall has no record of his birth and returns to the orphanage where he was raised. The orphanage also has no record of Billy’s birth, but an old crone-like nurse persuades Billy to let her tell his past through use of playing cards. Through the cards, we are treated (in flashback form) to a retelling of the origin of Captain Marvel, complete with Shazam’s death. The old nurse determines that Billy is 3004 years old since he gained the powers of Hercules, Achilles and the others who all lived over 3000 years ago. Billy realizes that this cannot be his real age, but it establishes, nevertheless, that “... Captain Marvel is a true member of democracy and

CAPTAIN MARVEL’S WELL KNOWN COMICS (1975)

Captain Marvel Thrill Book By Dan Fabrizio Although it had originally been planned as the first issue of a permanent series, C.C. Beck’s classic Special Edition Comics #1 was released as a single book immediately after Fawcett Publications received their first warning of copyright infringement from National/DC in mid1940. The idea was to give the impression that the title was not to be a continuous series while Fawcett marshaled their legal forces to find a way to appease DC and keep Captain Marvel alive.

in plot and interest; and it is assumed that their author, editor Ed Herron, was so involved with Simon and Kirby in creating the all-new Captain Marvel comic and Wow Comics that he hadn’t the time to properly supervise Captain Marvel Thrill Book. The lead story, subtitled “Flirting with Death,” presents Beautia, late the Empress of Venus, working undercover for Sivana as a newsreel photographer. In her capacity as a film documentarian, she is able to obtain scenes and information about top secret U.S. war weapons; the weapons are then built by Sivana and his group and used to destroy the secret installations and coast defenses of America.

However, the great success of Special Edition Comics that summer prompted Fawcett to plan other Captain Marvel oneshot “specials” to capitalize on the growing popularity of their bestselling character. Consequently, a new Captain Marvel book, tentatively entitled 64 Pages of New Captain Marvel Adventures, was prepared. This task was given to freelance artists Jack Kirby and Joe Simon who were also commissioned by editor Ed Herron to create a new hero called Mr. Scarlet as the lead feature for the debut of Wow Comics. In the meantime, Fawcett’s editorial staff was ordered to assemble another all-Captain Marvel special issue composed of existing stories from old issues of Whiz Comics. This magazine was to be released immediately to take advantage of the great demand for Captain Marvel, as shown by the August sales figures for Special Edition Comics. In order not to conflict with the title of Kirby’s Captain Marvel freelance project, it was decided to call this compiCaptan Marvel Thrill Book, 1940. Cover by C.C. Beck. lation the Captain Marvel Thrill [©2001 DC Comics] Book. Since the first six or seven stories of Whiz Comics were essentially continuous, the Fawcett editors were compelled to work with stories of more recent issues: Four complete tales were chosen from Whiz Comics #8, 10, 14 and one from the successful Special Edition Comics itself. Thus, we have a variance of only a few months from their initial appearance to the reprinting of the four stories in this Fawcett anthology. To save time in reaching the fans, Thrill Book was printed in black&-white; to compensate for its lack of interior color and thin page count (52 pages), the book was enlarged to 8 1/2 inches by 11 3/8 inches and given a new four-color wraparound cover by C.C. Beck. By coincidence, all four stories selected for reprinting had originally been drawn by Beck, making the Captain Marvel Thrill Book another great Beck showcase. Unfortunately, the stories chosen for Thrill Book were sadly lacking

Early in the tale, Billy Batson recognizes Beautia and disguises himself in sunglasses to inveigle his way as her assistant. He is subsequently captured by Sivana, gagged and left to die; but Billy escapes as Captain Marvel to defeat the selfproclaimed “rightful ruler of the universe,” and save the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The story is noteworthy only for the fact that Ed Herron and the Fawcett writers had not yet decided to change Beautia into the daughter of Sivana; thus, we have Sivana endeavoring to slay her when she takes pity upon the U.S. Pacific Fleet and warns them of his murderous intentions. Cap, of course, saves the day—and the beauty!

The story “Captain Marvel and the Haunted House” was an unimaginative choice from Special Edition Comics, and it is hardly worth mentioning here except for the moody night drawings used by C.C. Beck to evoke a feeling of mystery. The talents of Cap and Billy are totally wasted in this story of a town councilman who discovers that gold is hidden on the premises of an abandoned mansion and attempts to frighten away all prospective buyers. In this early transitional tale, Captain Marvel is shown as still susceptible to poison gas, a weakness he was to permanently overcome in later stories. “Captain Marvel and the Mysterious Captain Death” is as equally bland as the aforementioned story. The evil duo of Captain Death and Professor Skull work a fleecing scheme by kidnapping millionaires and defrauding their heirs of the inheritances that they subsequently receive when it is assumed by all that the missing victims are dead. Billy manages to get kidnapped and arrives at the prison ship to find the victims alive. As Captain Marvel, he frees the hostages and captures the villains, depositing their prison ship in the center of an empty stadium.

CAPTAIN MARVEL THRILL BOOK (1977)

Fawcett’s Dime Action Books by Dan Fabrizio Of all the Fawcett items issued during the Golden Age of comics, the four Dime Action Books of 1941 are among the rarest. The novelettes were initially printed in limited runs to capitalize on the popularity and sales of the Dell Fast-Action and Big Little Books of the 1930s. But where the other two companies were successful in finding distribution in bookstores and five-and-dime outlets, Fawcett was limited solely to newsstand and occasional drug store sales. The Fawcett Dime Action novels successfully matched the style and format of the Big Little Books; but though they carried brand new adventures, they had only half the number of pages that their competitor used; hence the stories were much shorter and less thoroughly developed.

free with his devastating secret! Perhaps the writer overlooked this fact by his distraction in creating lines like the following: SPY SMASHER: “Well, this is a fine kettle of pickles!” ALAN ARMSTRONG: “Why, I’ll be dipped in vanilla ice cream!” GARAGE MECHANIC: “Go on—you been readin’ too many o’ them Whiz comic books!” In any event, instead of satisfactorily concluding his tale, the writer has unwittingly left Spy Smasher open for more of the same.

The 192-page novelettes sized in at 4 x 51⁄2 inches, 5⁄8 of an inch thick, and sported four-color board covers with alternating pages of black-&-white illustrations and comfortable 11 point text. The cover illustrations were based on designs seen previously in the comic book line, and each novelette was devoted exclusively to one of the four Fawcett super-heroes: Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, Bulletman, and Minute-Man. Bernie McCarty advanced the thesis that comic books are created solely for children, and, despite the dissenting opinions of today’s collectors, this fact is never more clearly shown than in the quality of the stories used in the Fawcett Dime Action series. Virtually every cliché of the B-movie and pulp magazine of the era is used in the Dime Action tales; inconsistencies abound, and little is left to the imagination of the reader since little imagination was used in the writing of the stories. Only Otto Binder’s Captain Marvel story contains a semblance of plot and unity of action leading to a somewhat logical conclusion; whereas the other three tales merely have their heroes react knee-jerk fashion to a series of unsophisticated stimuli which were often used decades before 1941. In the “Spy Smasher and the Red Death” novelette, the underworld learns that Spy Smasher is actually Alan Armstrong, the rich playboy. Various attempts to assassinate him fail, and Spy Smasher soon has his antagonist, the Red Death—a double for Lon Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera—imprisoned. Yet a murderous cabdriver named Muggsy, who first discovered Spy Smasher’s identity, is never captured and remains

In “Minute-Man and the Mystery of the Spy Ring,” Army Private Jack Weston (alias Minute-Man, the One Man Army) is beset by Illyria, Queen of All Spies, who seeks to sell the American secret of thelium to a foreign power. Thelium is described as, “... one-fourth the weight of aluminum, twice the strength of steel, and absolutely bulletproof.” Minute-Man pursues Illyria across the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain to finally secure the thelium secret, but the murderous “queen of all spies” escapes to do battle yet another day. One glaring inconsistency in this story occurs when Jack Weston is thrown half-nude into a jail cell, yet manages to escape in full starspangled costume as the Minute-Man: “Hey, there he goes dressed like a

FAWCETT’S DIME ACTION BOOKS (1976)

The Captain Marvel Daily Newspaper Strip By C.C. Beck Although Captain Marvel was one of the biggest things in America in the Forties, he never made it into the syndicated strips. Around 1942 or 1943 writer Rod Reed and I put together some samples... and in accordance with Fawcett’s policy, our names did not appear on the work. The syndicates wouldn’t touch the World’s Mightiest Mortal. Why not? We were never told, but Rod believes that the syndicate’s refusal of Captain Marvel was based on the fear of becoming involved in the lawsuit which DC brought against Fawcett in 1940... which continued to wage until Fawcett had enough of comic books and settled out of court in 1953.

When Otto Binder and I tried to syndicate our own strips, including one of Mr. Tawny, we were told: “We don’t want that old comic stuff with the potato noses and the shoe button eyes anymore. It’s too much like the comic books. We’re looking for beautiful drawing and true to life stories instead. You fellows are way behind the times!” Perhaps we were. But so are the “fellows” who write and draw Beetle Bailey and Hagar the Horrible and the other top comic strips of today. Their comic strips are drawn in the style of Happy Hooligan and The Katzenjammer Kids... and, as you may have noticed, are doing quite well.

THE CAPTAIN MARVEL DAILY NEWSPAPER STRIP (1980)

Captain Marvel Battles The Plot Against The Universe Dr. Sivana, the greatest enemy of civilization ever known, makes a dread vow: To become the Rightful Ruler of the Universe. He knows, however, that Captain Marvel and Billy Batson, the boy that Captain Marvel changes back into, have always defeated his plots with their great powers inherited from the ancient wizard, Shazam. He decides to get rid of Captain Marvel and Billy through Shazam, but he doesn’t know how to find him. He therefore kidnaps Mr. Tawny, the talking tiger who is a great friend of both Billy and the Captain, and forces him to reveal the location of Shazam’s hideout. In Sivana’s time ship the two go back to 1940 and Sivana prepares to kill Billy before he gets his powers from Shazam. But he fails, due to Mr. Tawny’s bravery, and the two come back to 1949. Later, Billy goes to Shazam’s hideout and learns that the old wizard wears a bracelet made of “Shazamium” which keeps him alive. Billy starts an evil chuckle, then whips off his Billy Batson disguise, revealing himself as Sivana who now puts the bracelet on his own wrist. Shazam is powerless, and furthermore will now disappear into limbo in 24 hours and “there will be no more Captain Marvel,” gloats Sivana. He and the old wizard fly to the Rock of Eternity, which Sivana takes over as his new headquarters.

The real Billy now goes to Shazam’s hideout and summons the spirit of Shazam by lighting the magic brazier. But Sivana shows up instead. And now even Captain Marvel is powerless against the old villain! Sivana forces Captain Marvel to go to work in a secret laboratory making duplicate Sivanas of a living metal called “Sivanium.” Marvel makes a dozen of them and Sivana takes them to the Rock of Eternity where they start planning their conquest of the Universe. Time marches on, and soon there are only a few hours left until Shazam will die and Captain Marvel will disappear into limbo along with his creator. Desperate, the World’s Mightiest Mortal creates a third metal which he calls “Marvelium,” the “World’s Mightiest Element.” Then he goes to the Rock of Eternity, changes to Billy, and puts on a Sivana disguise and joins the others. Billy tricks Sivana into going back to Earth where, with the help of Captain Marvel’s new metal, he traps the old villain at last and then, as Captain Marvel, takes the Shazamium bracelet back to Shazam. At the very zero moment old Shazam is restored and all the duplicate Sivanas are reduced to fragments. Sivana is put behind bars and all seems quiet... until the next story, of course. With his evil chuckle, the World’s Maddest Scientist assures the reader that he’ll be back with new and better schemes to become Rightful Ruler of the Universe.

THE SMITHSONIAN BOOK OF COMIC-BOOK COMICS

Fawcett Comics’ Greatest Hits Bernie McCarty and Klaus D. Haisch Pick Their Favorite Fawcetts

Fawcett Top 10 Bernie McCarty SPECIAL EDITION COMICS #1 (1940) This early one-shot issue was all Captain Marvel and pure C.C. Beck (with some assistance by Pete Costanza). The drawing, inking, and lettering were all Beck’s. The character of Captain Marvel was still in a developing stage, but hints of the light humor which helped to make the World’s Mightiest Mortal the biggest selling character of the Golden Age were already there. The stories and their variety really knocked me out when I was a kid; there was science-fiction, fantasy and scary stuff... all well written. The villains were a grand assortment. There was superstrong Slaughter Slade and his giant gorilla, Dr. Allirog, who carried the President of the United States to the top of the Washington monument a là King Kong. There were two villains in neat stories, one about a haunted house and one about a track meet. Best of all, Dr. Sivana and Beautia were there in a great tale involving rocketships, a trip to Venus, a weather-making machine, a spacetraveling cyclone, and giant bugs. And the cover by C.C. Beck was outstanding! What more could a kid have asked for in 1940?

AMERICA’S GREATEST COMICS #1 (1941) This issue contained all of Fawcett’s top heroes: Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, Bulletman, Minute-Man, and Mr. Scarlet. Every story had dazzling action. Captain Marvel took on the “Ghost of the Deep”; Mr. Scarlet tangled with no less than seven costumed foes. Spy Smasher battled Nazi villain “America Smasher” and Bulletman and Bulletgirl faced the Invisible Man. The best story in this issue was “Minute-Man Vs the Fantastic Mr. Skeleton.” Mr. Skeleton resembled a long dead corpse with decayed flesh clinging to the bones. He was a blindly evil force, out to destroy American for his own mad reasons. In addition to a superb cover by Raboy, America’s Greatest Comics #1 truly was one of Fawcett’s greatest. [©2001 DC Comics]

BULLETMAN #1 (1941) Charles Sultan’s work on the early Bulletman stories was excellent, and in this issue he illustrated four marvelous stories in which Bulletman battled the Black Spider and Doctor Mood, rescued Bulletgirl from [©2001 DC Comics] a flaming pit, and was in turn rescued by her from a murder syndicate. The fourth story featured Bulletman’s battle against a “foe as big as a mountain.” The cover on this issue was special: Fawcett experimented with metallic ink on the covers of a few early issues. The experiment worked on the cover of Bulletman #1, as the silver color was perfect for the logo and Bulletman’s helmet.

IBIS THE INVINCIBLE #1 (1942) In this issue Otto Binder recreated an expanded version of the origin of Ibis which I believe is one of the best comic stories ever written. The villains in this issue were a remarkable lot: Black Pharaoh, Nightmare (a dream horse), Ching Fang against whom Hitler, Churchill, and Stalin joined forces, and Zoltic the Bat God. Add the presence of the ravishing Princess Taia— and a beautiful cover by Raboy—and you have another Fawcett classic.

WHIZ COMICS #25 (1941) This issue, which featured the origin of Captain Marvel Jr., is simply an all around great comic book.

MASTER COMICS #22 (1942) Master Comics #21 and 22 are top collectors items even among people who aren’t especially interested in the Fawcett line. I prefer #22 which has Bulletman, Captain Marvel Jr., and Captain Nazi in one smashing story.

FAWCETT COMICS’ GREATEST HITS (1982)

“I Was Proud” Rod Reed, Fawcett Writer and Editor Interviewed by Matt Lage Rod Reed was one of the most humorous of the Golden Age Captain Marvel writers and a Fawcett comics editor from 1941 to 1943 before taking a job as editor of the jazz music magazine Downbeat. FCA: Besides Captain Marvel, what were some other Fawcett titles that you wrote scripts for? What was your last piece of Fawcett work? REED: It’s been a long time ago and I don’t keep meticulous records like Otto Binder does. Some of my Fawcett comics credits that I can recall include Spy Smasher, Bulletman, Mr. Scarlet, Captain Marvel Jr., Nyoka, and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny. At the end of Fawcett comics I was freelancing and the last things I wrote were comedy-westerns such as Gabby Hayes Western and Andy Devine. I also wrote several short story text pieces for Captain Marvel Jr., Tex Ritter, Young Eagle, Tom Mix, Lash LaRue, Nyoka the Jungle Girl, and others. The last Captain Marvel work I did was probably two different issues of Captain Marvel Storybook; these were printed in comic book format but in straight story form with a page of text and a page of illustration alternating. I must modestly say that I was proud of all my Fawcett writing. FCA: You were a comic book writer who did many humorous scripts. But these scripts had to have some editorial guidance. What Fawcett editor do you believe had the greatest story sense? REED: Wendell Crowley was a marvelous comics editor. He was dedicated, a keen student of the field, a critic whose integrity was above suspicion and a warm and helpful man. But I shouldn’t bypass Will Lieberson, executive editor, who did indeed recognize humor. FCA: Did you enjoy your job as a Fawcett editor more than writing? REED: I did enjoy being a Fawcett editor. Great, wonderful place to work with fine people. Ralph Daigh, my immediate boss, was a fine gentleman. The Fawcett brothers were amiable. There were also a lot of beautiful women in the organization! When I bowed out the US Government had put a freeze on pay raises and I knew I could make more money as a freelance writer than as editor.

ROD REED (1974)

FCA: As a Fawcett editor, what were the grounds for a story to be rejected? REED: Stories were rarely (maybe never) rejected. Sometimes a writer would be asked to fix up his script, here and there. Understand, Rod Reed. each story was written from an outline that had already been approved. Any taboos being violated would have been discovered in the outlines. FCA: As a Fawcett editor, were you in charge of all the comics or just the main titles such as Captain Marvel Adventures, Whiz Comics, etc.? REED: Besides editorial director Ralph Daigh, the Fawcett brothers, and Roscoe Fawcett’s circulation department, I was in charge. FCA: In one of your letters you stated that the comic book story conference was overrated. How? REED: A giraffe is a horse put together by a committee. If I hire a real pro writer like say, Joe Millard, I know I’d be wasting my time and his if I sat down with him and went over panel by panel, word by word, what he was expected to write. My motto was to turn the writer loose and let him put his talent, imagination, and ingenuity to work without interference.

FCA: While you were the editor of Downbeat magazine, you were freelancing Fawcett comics scripts. Did you just submit them without the editor’s guidance?

REED: Procedure: An eight-page story about so-and-so is requested. Writer submits one or more outlines. Editor okays outline(s) with maybe a couple of penciled suggestions or changes. Writer does story and submits it, hoping to get a check pretty quick. All was usually done by mail, though there may be an occasional phone call. When I was with Downbeat, I often lunched with one or more of my old Fawcett friends but they were hardly business lunches except, possibly, on somebody’s expense account. FCA: Were you involved with writing any chapters of the Monster Society of Evil serial in Captain Marvel Adventures? You quit Fawcett in the middle of June of 1943, months after the serial started.

“We Were More Or Less Inspired” Otto Binder: An Interview with Captain Marvel’s Mightiest Writer By Matt Lage Fiction is not life. Fiction shows things the way they ought to be, not the way they are. —Otto Binder FCA: Otto, you must clearly remember what you were working on that day in 1953 when Fawcett comics folded? OB: Yes I do. The last story I wrote was a serial for the Marvel Family featuring the Sivana Family. When we got the bombshell news that all Fawcett comics were being discontinued, out of depression I wrote a parody of my serial in which each of the Marvels, in turn, get killed off. My Fawcett friends thought it was funny, but not that funny... it hit too close to reality.

Otto Binder with his wife, Ione, in the early Fifties. FCA: In DC’s Shazam! comics, Denny O’Neil brought back Mr. Mind’s Monster Society. C.C. Beck says that this was a big mistake. What are your thoughts about a feature which you and Beck both created and killed off and having it resurrected? OB: I thinks it’s a mistake too. You can’t recreate the mood of something done years before in an entirely different context as to what the world was like then. Mr. Mind just happened to fit into that era and catch everyone’s fancy, whereas today he will seem like just a silly worm written by even sillier writers. But I’m always amazed at the popularity of Mr. Mind. Even today, when fans who were kids in the Forties meet me they almost always mention Mr. Mind and how great a character he was. The only way I can figure it is that he was a surprising contrast to all other villains, who were generally big, devilish hulks... so a tiny miserable worm, filled with more hate than all other villains combined, simply tickled the reader’s fancy, I suppose. I was startled myself at the enormous amount of fan mail that came after the chapter which showed what Mr. Mind really was, resulting in many subsequent chapters. Beck really put in a labor of love on that work as the art attests. Editor Wendell Crowley told me it was my greatest work. FCA: Were you sorry to end the serial? Also, I’m wondering how you felt when Fawcett comics folded and what impact that had when you started to write for DC, Fawcett’s nemesis in court for all those years? OB: The sadness over killing off Mr. Mind was brief, along with the serial, but the sadness over Captain Marvel and friends being tossed into limbo was much more painful—particularly to my pocketbook. But money was not the only factor; I really had a lot of fun doing the Captain Marvel stories. When it all ended it took the sunshine out of my life for a long time. And my reaction to DC as being the executioner was hardly of a friendly nature. In fact, we were all pretty sore and bitter about it. It seemed so heartless and greedy; DC wanting to hog the [©2001 DC Comics]

OTTO BINDER (1974)

Joan Jameson, Ma and Pa Potter, Dexter Knox, and Steamboat?

market by killing off it’s closest rival... but then, that’s business y’know. It stinks. I didn’t take it personally obviously as I went to work for Mort Weisinger at DC for many years, becoming sort of the chief writer on the Superman gang. The memory of Captain Marvel faded, but not rapidly. FCA: The other serial you wrote in Captain Marvel Adventures was “The Cult of the Cursed” featuring Oggar. Was this serial as fun for you to write as the Mr. Mind serial? Also, was the Oggar serial art produced from the Beck/Costanza Studio?

OB: The Oggar serial was really a flop, to be frank. It was again one of my ideas and it seemed to be great in my mind, but when it came to writing and developing the theme, it just sort of went nowhere and it was quickly killed after six chapters. That was how it worked: For every good idea, there were a couple of so-so ones. I would say that if one out of three of my ideas/plots/stories were outstanding, that was a great average and something to be proud of. As for the artists who worked on the Oggar serial, I have the impression that it was Beck and Costanza’s shop who illustrated it and pretty much all of the Captain Marvel stories during that time period. I don’t blame any of the artists for Oggar’s failure as the scripts were no good in the first place. FCA: A question regarding some of Captain Marvel’s cast of co-stars: Who created The Marvel Family, Uncle Marvel/Dudley, Cissie Somerly,

OB: I’m pretty sure Uncle Marvel sprang from my mind, but I can’t be 100% certain. Wendell Crowley and I used to bat around ideas and it’s quite possible that Uncle popped out of one of our bull sessions and Wendell may have been the one who came up with the character. I know I did write the first Uncle Marvel story and develop the character, as I did with Freckles Marvel. We wanted the Mary Marvel feature distinctive from the other two... less heroics and more human interest. Mary was my pride and joy, an idea which originated from upstairs. The Marvel Family? I’m not sure but I think they also originated from upstairs. Or perhaps Will Lieberson was told simply to add another good title and suggested combined adventures of the three Marvels—a real blockbuster idea in those days. Again I was given the assignment to launch it all and Sivana was the logical villain, or rather, the Sivana Family. I think both Georgia and Junior (both concepts of mine) were already in existence so it was a natural to pit the two families against each other. Cissie Somerly and Joan Jameson were brought in, I think, through Beck’s suggestions. Ma and Pa Potter were my creations, as was Dexter Knox, to tone down the super-heroics. We were always creating new side characters, most of which became just one-shots if they turned out to have no appeal. Steamboat was the creation of Ed Herron, the greatest early Captain Marvel editor. Steamboat was dropped during a wave of criticism of any anti-minority leanings that came up in that period, with such as the word “niggers” being dropped from newspapers, movies, and all the media. I recall distinctly writing a story with a typical Swede character saying “by yiminy” etc., when orders came down from above to abolish all such dialects, and I had to straighten out his speeches. I was all in favor, actually, of anti-discrimination so it didn’t bother me, except that we did sigh once in awhile because it was fun to depict such dialect groups. We never meant to degrade them, merely play them for humor. We thought it was kind of sad that the public couldn’t distinguish between harmless well-meant-dialect-characters and true racial antipathy, just because we had Swedish people talking like Swedes do, or the famed Yiddish talk, didn’t mean we hated or looked down on them. The only dialect they allowed after the war were the “no solly please” Japanese and the “dumbkopf” from the Germans... until they became our allies and therefore “respectable.” All very ridiculous. FCA: Since you created Mary Marvel and your brother Jack illustrated the majority of her stories, there must have been many Binder-Binder collaborations?

Otto’s 1950 plot submission for “Captain Marvel and the Town of Perfection,” Captain Marvel Adventures #113.

OB: Yes, in fact, most of the time it was the case of it being a Binder-Binder collaboration. I think from about 1948 on, after Jack moved to upstate New York, he did all of the Mary Marvel stories until the end.

“WE WERE MORE OR LESS INSPIRED”

Fond Memories Former Fawcett Comic Book Editor Virginia A. (“Ginny”) Provisiero Interviewed by P.C. Hamerlinck FCA: Ginny, when did you begin your career at Fawcett Publications? GINNY: I went to work for Fawcett Publications in April 1943. If anyone had ever told me that I would be an editor of comic books, I would have laughed since I never read a comic book before, only the comic strips in the newspapers. When I was interviewed by editorial director Ralph Daigh’s secretary she told him I would be good for the comics department. That was the beginning of a wonderful association with a great company.

the best. The circulation department was always on our backs, and if a comic book fell in sales, the editor of the book would be called into Lieberson’s office. FCA: What were your main duties as an editor? GINNY: I was responsible from cover to cover for each magazine that carried my name as editor. This was also true of the other editors. I had to get the scripts for each issue, which meant the story synopsis, written script, and artwork. I would ask one of my writers if he had any plot ideas for the character. They would submit the idea to me, I’d read it and OK it, and then discuss it with Will Lieberson for his approval. Will, as the editor-in-chief, had to give the final OK for all the comics. If a writer didn’t have an idea, it was my responsibility to provide the idea. (I used to keep a file handy of story ideas). The plot was then given to the writer

FCA: Who were some of the other editors when you started and what was one of your first assignments? GINNY: When I started in the comics department, I was the “kid”... Rod Reed was the editor-in-chief and the editors were Will Lieberson, Stan Kaufman, Jane Magill, Barb Heyman, Mercy Shull, and later, Wendell Crowley, to name a few of them. I was given wartime Spy Smasher stories to re-write at home and when Barb Heyman left the company, they gave me the production of the comic books to handle. FCA: When did you become a full-time editor? What were some of the comic books you handled? GINNY: When Jane Magill left, I became editor of Whiz Comics, Master Comics, Spy Smasher, Golden Arrow, Nyoka The Jungle Girl, and Six-Gun Heroes. Soon after Jane left, Rod Reed left and Will Lieberson became head of the department as executive editor. Some time later, Mercy Shull left to run a dude ranch with her husband so I got her books as well. I also edited Bill Boyd Western, Hopalong Cassidy, Tex Ritter Western, Rocky Lane Western, and This Magazine is Haunted. I soon learned who the artists and writers were and what characters they worked on. FCA: Did you like working with Reed and Lieberson? Did they both give you a lot of creative freedom? GINNY: Rod Reed and Will Lieberson were nice guys, good bosses, and gave me the opportunity to be as creative as I wanted to be. Happily so, the circulation of the books I was editor of were very high. I had good writers and good artists and we all worked together to make our comics

VIRGINIA A. (“GINNY”) PROVISIERO (1998)

“I Admire Craftsmanship” Fawcett Artist Kurt Schaffenberger Interviewed by Matt Lage Kurt Schaffenberger was born in Germany in 1920. He came to the United States as a boy and got into the comic business by accident, as many did. He had studied illustration in art school but found that book, pulp and magazine illustration work had subsided due to the rise of the comic book. As an illustrator, Kurt is one who illustrates his comic book stories instead of drawing fancy pictures with no meaning. Like all experienced artists, Kurt has done commercial and advertising work and can handle a T-square and a rubber cement brush with skill and ease. He has no illusions about the comics field, which he has worked in since the early Forties. FCA: When did you start drawing? SCHAFFENBERGER: I have been drawing pictures for as long as I can remember. FCA: Were any of the artists of the early days influential on your style? Did you try to emulate any particular artist? SCHAFFENBERGER: I have never tried to copy any artist’s style. I admire craftsmanship in any field, be it art or plumbing, and such illustrators as Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker and Harold von Schmidt and such comic artists as Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff and Harold Foster were not only great artists but fine craftsmen. I admired them very much. FCA: What was your first job as a cartoonist?

SCHAFFENBERGER: My first job was inking backgrounds for a Captain Marvel story while I was an employee of the Jack Binder shop. FCA: Did you want to work in comics? SCHAFFENBERGER: When I graduated from art school I didn’t know there were any comics other than the syndicated strips. I really wanted to be a magazine illustrator but by the time I was ready to go to work practically all the illustrated magazines had disappeared and only the comic magazines were hiring artists. FCA: What was it like in the early comic book days at Jack Binder’s shop?

Kurt Schaffenberger self-portrait. SCHAFFENBERGER: It was quite a wonderful time for all of us. We were all young, just out of art schools (most of us just out of Pratt Institute), and the world was going to be our oyster. We had softball and touch football games, and all of us and our girls would go out as a group. We were at the Glen Island Casino on New Year’s Eve in 1941. That was just after Pearl Harbor. In June of 1942 I went into the army, along with many of the other fellows, and the Jack Binder Studio broke up sometime around 1943. FCA: After the war was over what did you do? SCHAFFENBERGER: I worked at the Beck and Costanza studio for a while. They were handling all of the Captain Marvel stories for Fawcett. Other artists were doing Captain Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel, and so on, although Beck and Costanza did some work on those features, too. FCA: Out of all the Fawcett artists, writers and editors, which were outstanding in your opinion? SCHAFFENBERGER: C.C. Beck was head and shoulders above the rest of the artists. Raboy drew exquisite, pretty, but meaningless pictures. As for the editors, if I got along with them they were great. If the writers didn’t give us too many impossible situations to illustrate, they were fine. FCA: For example?

SCHAFFENBERGER: Well, here’s a situation I remember: “Show the four horsemen of the Apocalypse riding roughshod over downtrodden humanity with the Marvel Family flying to the rescue.” This was a double-page spread and it took four days to draw the thing... a somewhat longer time than it took the writer to type it, I’m sure. That’s just one example.

KURT SCHAFFENBERGER (1980)

Southern Gentleman Fawcett Artist & Writer Marcus D. Swayze Interviewed by Matt Lage and Bernie McCarty Marcus D. Swayze is one of those special, multi-talented guys who make a lasting impression on everybody he meets. Artist, writer, musician, athlete... above all, Marc is charming and gracious, possessing that rare ability to make instant friends. This interview is primarily concerned with Swayze’s career as artist-writer for Fawcett Publications and will illustrate the fact that he was one of the top people connected with the Golden Age of comic books. But it would be unfair to the man if discussion here was limited only to Marc’s association with Fawcett. He was also a newspaper comic strip artist and writer. And he was, and still is, a professional jazz musician. When he learned Swayze was being interviewed for FCA, former Captain Marvel chief artist C.C. Beck commented: “Swayze is a remarkable person, a fine Southern gentleman, a great, great artist, and a beautiful guitarist, pianist and violinist. In addition, he has a beautiful wife and family, a fine Southern mansion, and a marvelous sense of humor. He’s an outrageous punster. Last time I saw him he was working as a gypsy fiddler in a tearoom and loving every minute.” Former Fawcett writer-editor Rod Reed gave Swayze just recognition for creating the pictorial concept of Mary Marvel. Reed noted: “Although Jack Binder is acclaimed for his work on Mary Marvel, Marc Swayze did the first portraits. I have before me the number one issue of her very own magazine and her garb is amazingly mod with short skirt and boots almost to the knees. Swayze, of course, wanted to do the whole Mary series himself and it was my distasteful job to convince him that he couldn’t be spared from the Captain Marvel team.” FCA: Steranko’s History of Comics credits you with working on a variety of Fawcett features. Which specific feature did you do the greatest amount of work on?

SWAYZE: It would probably be a toss-up between Captain Marvel and Phantom Eagle. I was hired in 1940 specifically to

work on Captain Marvel. Except for the time it took to do the original drawings for the Mary Marvel character and drawing the first one or two stories for that feature, plus an occasional illustration for the non-comics magazines, Captain Marvel was all I did until I left for the armed forces in 1942. In the service I wrote Captain Marvel stories on a Marc Swayze, Staff Artist, fairly consistent basis. I took over Fawcett Publications, Paramount the “Phantom Eagle” shortly after Building, New York City, 1941. my discharge in 1944, doing all the art and some of the writing until the feature was discontinued in Wow Comics in the late Forties. FCA: Of all the Captain Marvel artists, with C.C. Beck as chief artist heading the list, where do you believe you rate? Did you work on any other hero characters besides Captain Marvel and the Phantom Eagle? SWAYZE: Considering Beck the number one Captain Marvel artist, I considered myself number two, probably because they told me I was. While on the Fawcett art staff, from 1940 to 1942, nobody produced more Captain Marvel art than I did. And as I look back over the books that were published at the time, I am convinced that I contributed more Captain Marvel scripts than any other artist, and more than some of the writers. When I returned to New York after my discharge, I did not join Beck’s shop or the Fawcett staff because I was determined to continue my career from my hometown, Monroe, Louisiana. In a few months I had accomplished that, with an arrangement with Ralph Daigh, Fawcett editorial director, and executive editor Will Lieberson’s approval, to produce “Phantom Eagle,” and a contract with the Bell Syndicate to draw the Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip Sunday page. During the several months while these negotiations were being made, I drew two stories, one featuring Ibis the Invincible and the other featuring Mr. Scarlet and Pinky. FCA: Do you recall specific art, stories, or covers that you did at Fawcett prior to taking over “Phantom Eagle”? SWAYZE: I have several books from A Swayze Phantom Eagle sketch from the Forties. that era and [©2001 DC Comics]

MARCUS D. SWAYZE (1978)

heavy physical action of the super-hero/adventure comics. The plots didn’t bother me. I considered it my responsibility and privilege as an artist-writer to alter a story line here and there, to shorten dialogue and so on, when necessary to improve the feature. FCA: Were stories submitted to you with description by description of what should be shown in each panel, or were you given a general idea and told to take it from there? SWAYZE: Fawcett stories all followed the formal format of description plus dialogue for every panel. I believe it was strict policy that stories be submitted first in outline for approval, the completed script to follow. That was my procedure for writing for them. The writers varied in style and detail in the matter of descriptions. Naturally, some stories afforded more graphic challenge than others. Remember, though, a story had to go past the editor first before it reached the artist. There were some highly qualified, dedicated people on the comics editorial staff at Fawcett. Of course, the stories that I enjoyed drawing the most were those little “masterpieces” which I wrote myself. Wendell Crowley and I had a laugh at a remark one of the writers made about how he generally left the description blank on Phantom Eagle stories because he knew I was going to present the story the way I wanted anyhow.

Swayze Fawcett romance art from Life Story #2, 1949. from them have drawn a list of work I did (see below). It’s not a complete list by any means. Beck retouched all Captain Marvel’s whether they needed it or not, which was as it should have been for consistency of character. Also, while digging out the old comics I noticed that in one of the Fawcett romance comics featuring my work, Life Story #21, 1950, all three stories were done by me, except for the lettering which was done by my sister Daisy Swayze who did just about all my lettering from 1944 on. She was one of the greatest letterers according to Roy Ald, Will Lieberson, and other Fawcett editors. There were quite a number of Fawcett romance comics containing two stories an issue where I did the art.

FCA: To draw a feature such as the “Phantom Eagle” you had to have some knowledge of how to depict planes. Was research mandatory in your work, or was imagination the rule of thumb? SWAYZE: My approach was to rough in the planes the way I wanted them in relation to the story, then get out the file material for detail. I suppose that would be employing both imagination and research. I redesigned the Phantom Eagle’s plane after taking over the feature in 1944, endeavoring to create a small, easily identifiable jet that reflected Phantom Eagle’s character. Due to the volume of work I had taken on, which included the Flyin’ Jenny Sunday page and later the daily strip, time was of extreme importance. Therefore all the fussy detail was omitted from the plane.

FCA: Did you enjoy the romance comics work since it was such a change from superhero plots and situations?

SWAYZE: I enjoyed doing them except for their depriving me of the satisfaction of drawing my own writing. I never had any desire to write the romances. From the art standpoint they offered a number of challenges: More emphasis on and time for character development and emotional expression, more realistic art style as opposed to the

SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN

“I Survived” Fawcett Artist Ed Robbins Interviewed by Bernie McCarty ED ROBBINS: My parents were in the restaurant business, which got me into the habit of eating. When I got into the comic book business in the early Forties. I found that eating regularly was not exactly a big part of an artist’s life, alas! But I survived. Back in about 1935 or 1936 I saw some terrific girlie drawings in Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang. They were signed “BECK”. Who would have thought that six or seven years later Beck himself would come walking out of the Fawcett art department on the 22nd floor of the Paramount Building and hire me as an artist on the Captain Marvel staff?

story he drew about a “little man who wasn’t there” which he did a great job on. Also he assisted on some Mr. Mind/Monster Society of Evil chapters. Robbins is the only man I know with enough sense to get out of the comics business and into another. I hope he prospers and becomes rich, and sets up a home for old comic artists like myself.

Robbins self-portrait. ROD REED: The other day I committed some golfing with Ed Robbins who was one of the early Captain Marvel artists. He is in robust health and is a manager of a real estate firm. Eddie was one of the very best of the young artists who worked in “the bobbin factory,” which is what Jess Benton called the Fawcett Art Department. Later he wrote and drew the Mike Hammer syndicated strip, also written by Mickey Spillane (who also wrote for Fawcett comics). FCA: How old were you when you first started in comics? How did you get your first job? What year did you start at Fawcett comics and how long were you with them? Did you work in the Fawcett art department or in the Beck studio?

Beck started me at $50.00 per week, which was twice the amount of what I was worth and half of what I wanted. He was a good boss. I had gone to Pratt, to the Corcoran School in Washington, and to the Art Students’ League, but in comics I learned the real stuff from Beck, John Jordan (Tom Mix), and Bill Everett (Sub-Mariner and Human Torch). After a stint in Uncle Sam’s outfit I went to work for Marvel Comics and from there I went into total oblivion. Of course it has taken me some years to achieve this, but I believe I have succeeded.

ROBBINS: I guess I was 20 years old when I got my start in comics and got my first job as a result of a couple of friends who were working for Lloyd Jacquet at Funnies, Inc. I did up some (admittedly) crummy samples and Lloyd began feeding me some kind of work around 1939 or 1940. I didn’t start at Fawcett until 1942 and I worked under the supervision of Beck in the Fawcett art department and later on in various studio locations. The last work that I did on Captain Marvel was in the spring of 1946. Subsequent to that, I did romance and western comics (Bob Steele) for Fawcett and continued with them until about 1950. FCA: What were your main duties at Fawcett and what other characters did you draw? Beck said you were so good at doing layouts that you didn’t get the opportunity to do much finished art, is that correct? Did you do any writing?

C.C. BECK: Ed Robbins was one of the best layout men in the business. He was so good at storytelling and composition that we seldom allowed him to pencil and ink, keeping him busy laying out stories for other men to tighten and finish. During World War II Ed would come from Indiantown Gap where he was stationed and work in the studio on weekends. He was so fast at layout that he could make more in a day or two than other men made in a week... but he was worth it. He also worked for other companies where I believe he did more complete work. I recall one Captain Marvel The Mike Hammer syndicated strip, drawn by Ed Robbins.

ED ROBBINS (1977)

“Visual Expression” Will Lieberson—Fawcett Comics Executive Editor Interviewed by Matt Lage FCA: When did you first start at Fawcett Publications? Who hired you? Did you become the executive editor right after Rod Reed resigned? LIEBERSON: I first went to work for Fawcett Publications some time in the late Summer of 1942. I had been freelancing for Fawcett’s humor magazines such as Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang and Riot Squad which Rod Reed was in charge of as well as the comics. He asked me to come and work on the comics on a regular basis. The humor books were dying anyway and, with the paper shortage, Fawcett was dropping them in favor of expanding the comics line. Rod asked me if I would like to try my hand at a comic book. He asked me to handle the Don Winslow of the Navy comic book, which was based on the newspaper strip. So Reed was the one who actually hired me, although the final approval came from Fawcett editorial director Ralph Daigh. I became executive editor right after Reed resigned. This came as much of a surprise to me as it must have been a shock to everybody else on the comic staff since

Don Winslow of the Navy, Lieberson’s first assignment for Fawcett Comics. they were all working on the comics much longer than I had been. Up to that point I had only worked on Don Winslow. I remember the very the first story that I bought as a comic book editor was from Joe Millard. However, since comics were like a new toy to me, I decided to try something fresh. I contacted the Office of War Information for the official citations of the Navy men being decorated for bravery beyond the call of duty. The stories for Don Winslow were based on these and obviously it must have impressed everyone at Fawcett. As I said, except for handling the short text features which the post office required in comic books for second class entry, Don Winslow was the only comic book that I ever edited before becoming Fawcett comics executive editor. In speaking about oneself there is always a danger of sounding overly modest or conceited. Well, I guess the truth of the matter is that Rod Reed, and in turn, Ralph Daigh and the Fawcett brothers all felt that I had a great sense of story. Also, with my playwriting background, I was an ideal choice to head the comics since I thought in terms of visual expression rather than literary expression. FCA: Did you ever write any stories for Fawcett comics?

Will Lieberson outside of the Fawcett Comics offices, dressed for a company skit.

LIEBERSON: Not for publication. Fawcett had a rule that no member of the editorial staff would be paid for anything he wrote for in fear that editors might be buying bad stories from each other. Nevertheless, when I took over the comics from Rod Reed, I did write at least one story for each of our major characters, really to define in my own mind with their major characterizations and their differences. No matter how far removed from reality a character might have been it was essential that you kept him true to himself and that you never presented him in a story that made him do things that weren’t true to his character. The same is true for the villains that were created to go along with these heroes. In fact, in many of Fawcett’s comics the villains were actually more interesting than the heroes. While many of the writers, editors and readers can remember particular stories which they thought were great,

WILL LIEBERSON (1975)

it was actually the characters in the comics—the main characters or the villains—that actually brought the reader back to the stands each month. No one story ever made or broke a comic book. While we are supposed to be so much more sophisticated today, that’s a fact that still is true. If you look at television, you’ll see it’s a Rhoda or a Kojak that keeps the viewer coming back week after week. The same is true in the movies. A Paul Newman or a Steve McQueen are more important than any of the particular movies in which they appear. FCA: In my interview with Rod Reed, he said that subject to Ralph Daigh, the Fawcett brothers, and the Fawcett circulation department, the executive editor was responsible for all the comics. If sales were in a slump, was the circulation department on your back, especially during the Fifties? LIEBERSON: Things may have changed after I took over from Reed. The only one I ever reported to was Ralph Daigh. He was a stickler for protocol. My editors could only approach him through me and in turn, could only approach the Fawcetts through him. The only thing Ralph Daigh ever did on a regular basis concerning the comics was to okay the covers. Outside of that, he never Art: C.C. Beck. discussed them with [©2001 DC Comics] me except when we had an idea for a oneshot or some publicity promotion. As for the circulation department, we would hear from them indirectly through Ralph Daigh. Fawcett had a reputation for starting magazines very quickly and dropping them just as fast. A magazine had to really do well—and not just make a small profit—for Fawcett to continue publishing them. This was true in the comics as with the rest of the Fawcett magazines. Evidently, the circulation department had a very realistic approach to sales. Slumps usually were industry-wide and since none of our comics fell out of proportion to the rest of the field, we never heard about this. This was also true in the Fifties. However, it was the slumping sales, generally, and not the court battles with DC, that prompted Fawcett to give up publishing comic books. Many of our titles (such as the westerns) were royalty characters. These titles were holding their own, but a portion of profits were paid off in royalties and consequently they weren’t bringing in enough of a return to warrant Fawcett continuing the department,

“VISUAL EXPRESSION”

especially after losing the rights to publish Captain Marvel and family. FCA: Why was Mary Marvel’s wholesome look changed in the Fifties to a more “mature” look? Also, why the big trend toward the comedy westerns such as Gabby Hayes and Smiley Burnett?... Were they good sellers... as good or better than the super-hero comics that were still lingering around at the time? What were some things done in the Fifties to try to improve sales? LIEBERSON: Perhaps Mary’s mature change had something to do with her new editor. For a long time, Mary Marvel was edited by Mercy Shull who could have fitted easily into a 32A bra. When Mercy left to open a dude ranch, she was replaced by Kay Woods who would barely have fit into a 38C cup and consequently, Mary’s shape began to blossom. As to what was done to try to improve sales, you’ve got to remember that it was around this period that television began to really come into its own. Television now began competing for the kids’ time and took them away from the comics in many cases. But it also introduced them to a whole set of new heroes, particularly old Bwestern films which were being shown since there wasn’t that many kid programs being produced at that time. Sales on established western comics such as Hopalong Cassidy suddenly took a great shot upward... so it was obvious that the kids wanted to read about the characters they were seeing on television. Hopalong Cassidy movies hadn’t been made in many years before they starting re-running them on television; it made a brand new career for Bill Boyd again. In fact, Hopalong Cassidy did so well after being shown on television that we brought out a second book, Bill Boyd Western, to differentiate it from the Hopalong Cassidy character. As for the comedic westerns, Gabby Hayes had a show of his own for Quaker Puffed Rice on which he introduced western movies and he became so popular at the time that we decided to put out a comic of him. The book did very well and consequently we started to go after other secondary comic book characters such as Smiley Burnett. This wasn’t only true about western characters. It had to do with any character that would appear regularly on television that would appeal to kids, hence Fawcett

Legends Meet C.C. Beck chats with Will Eisner In late 1939, when Fawcett was starting its line of comics, Will Eisner started The Spirit, which is still one of the finest characters today, over forty years later. Eisner believes that heroes are secondary; that they’re really just “vehicles for telling a story.” He thinks that outlandish costumes and gimmicks are silly and unnecessary, that adding color or wash to cartoons is a waste of money, and that lettering is so important in comics that he does it himself whenever possible. When comics started Eisner got $5.00 a page, as did most cartoonists. He ran a shop, and worked day and night to meet

deadlines. Other artists inked his pencils (usually very badly) and filled in backgrounds and secondary figures. Eisner himself usually drew the heads of as many characters as possible to keep them of top quality. He developed the story lines and dialog himself. Still active today, Will Eisner says, “I have no desire to be anything but a storyteller. I see comics as a form of literature. There are comics that are a sensory experience and there are comics that tell stories using pictures as a language. To me, the story is paramount.”

LEGENDS MEET (1983)

The Legacy Of Mac Raboy By Jay Disbrow I first encountered Mac Raboy’s work when I was a child in the early Forties. The Green Lama from Spark Publications was the comic book that introduced Raboy’s art to me. Of course I had no way of knowing at the time who had drawn the story, for the work bore no artist’s signature. I was impressed by the grace and nimbleness of Raboy’s figures. The striking pattern of his blacks and whites, the subtlety of line and mass, the supple contours of muscular formations... all these elements left a deep impression on my youthful mind. On Captain Marvel Jr., the Raboy charisma shone brilliantly. His style of rendering on this feature was decidedly different from that of the strip’s parent feature. C.C. Beck, the visual originator of Captain Marvel, drew his stories in a “cartoonish” style. Raboy apparently would have nothing to do with this form of artistry. He was a serious illustrator, and all his work proved it. Throughout the more than 280 pages of the various Captain Marvel Jr. adventures, Raboy maintained a quality of art that equaled or surpassed the best of the illustrative comic book artists. A mere glance at one of his pages from this era will reveal the time, effort, and dedication that went into his work. Perhaps one of the outstanding aspects of his work was his facial construction. The Raboy heads were remarkable examples of artistic modeling. Mac Raboy left us with a great legacy of work that has enriched our memories of the Golden Age of comics.

The Fawcett Companion

THE LEGACY OF MAC RABOY (1981)

The Fawcett Companion examines the history of Fawcett Comics, publisher of Captain Marvel, The Marvel Family, Spy Smasher, Bulletman, Ibis the Invincible and other time-honored comic book characters! Editor P.C. Hamerlinck has compiled this volume, collecting the best material from the nearly 30-year history of the Fawcett Collectors of America Newsletter (which now appears as a special new section in each issue of ALTER EGO magazine). Presented here are interviews and features on C.C. BECK, PETE COSTANZA, MARC SWAYZE, WILL LIEBERSON, OTTO BINDER, ROD REED, GINNY PROVISIERO, and more, with behind-the-scenes looks at how the company operated from its 1940 beginnings until ceasing publication in 1953 in the wake of a legal battle with the owners of Superman! Also included is an index of all Fawcett comics published, plus rare and unpublished artwork by BECK, SWAYZE, KURT SCHAFFENBERGER, MAC Captain Nazi. RABOY, ALEX TOTH, GEORGE EVANS, [©2001 ALEX ROSS, & more! DC Comics] (160-page Digital Edition) $7.95 http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=207

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