The Rascally One’s best Marvel tales, 1965-2000—as seen by John Cimino “Second Banana To Stan Lee” ........................
A Roy Thomas biographical podcast/interview, conducted by Alex Grand. The Lee-Thomas Spider-Man E-Mails – Part 2 ........... 39
More cyber-messages from Stan the Man to Roy the Boy—from the year 2004.
The Not-Really-Secret Origins Of Wolverine
How Roy Thomas, Len Wein, John Romita, & Herb Trimpe created a comicbook legend.
Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Didya Know? (Part 2) ........ 63
The little-known story of Book-Comics, the Sunday-supplement comicbook before The Spirit— by Eric Schumacher, as hosted by Michael T. Gilbert. FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #252 ..............
Fawcett’s “Girl Fridays” interviewed by Shaun Clancy.
The Top Twelve Greatest ROY THOMAS Stories Of The Marvel Years
According to John “The Mego Stretch Hulk” Cimino
Back in Alter Ego #170, 179, & 189, Roy T. invited me to write on what I felt were, respectively, the top ten Jack Kirby Marvel slugfests (1961-1970), Stan Lee’s top ten stories, and the top ten John Romita art jobs ever. Since this issue is a celebration of Roy’s 60th year in comics, I decided that, instead of a top-ten list, I’d go for a top 12 list! Well, why not? Roy’s still writing comics today. That’s what I’d call a legend, folks. Yeah, no pressure at all… Sheesh.
My own first exposure to Roy’s work came, ironically, the first time I ever saw a comicbook. In late 1978, I was about five and I was going up an escalator with my mother at a mall. I looked up, and the man in front of us had this rolled-up magazine in his back pocket. Something about its bright colors captivated me and reminded me of a Crackerjack box. The brown background and big white “O” with a grey sharp point at its bottom…and was that a horn below that? I couldn’t make out the details, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. A few years later, when I discovered comicbooks, I learned that the rolled-up periodical had been a copy of Conan the Barbarian #1, written by none other than Roy Thomas. Even stranger: Why did this guy have that issue stuffed in his back pocket—when it was already eight years old? Be that as it may, Roy was there with me from the very beginning of my comics journey— and for some reason, I don’t find it an odd coincidence.
Now, after that little Cimino history lesson, how do I rank Roy’s best of the best? He has been one of the most prolific writers in the history of comics. Roy has written so many timeless moments in so many comicbook pages for so many comic companies—so, I decided to base this list purely on Roy’s Marvel Comics stories, because it’s my contention that he was at his absolute best with Marvel (and that’s still more than 30 years of work), so give me a little slack.
Judging Roy’s stories in a list is, of course, strictly subjective. I based my decisions on how I felt when I was reading them, especially for the first time. I hope that you faithful frolickers of A/E fandom will have as much fun reading (and even disagreeing with) this countdown as I did writing it, because, regardless of what your favorite stories may be, Roy Thomas always kept us smiling and always kept us wanting more….
a certain Sorcerer Supreme, beginning with the 4-part manifesto he dubbed “The Faust Gambit.” Here, Dr. Strange discovers that his arch-foe Baron Mordo has optioned his soul not just to one demon, but to two—Satannish and Mephisto—forcing Doc to try to keep his old enemy from being physically sub-divided by the pair. Along the way he encounters a brand new threat—Mephista, the devilish daughter of Mephisto—as well as the classic caterpillar incarnation of Agamotto—and must stop the final face-off of the gargantuan forms of Satannish and Mephisto above the streets of Manhattan.
This storyline is noteworthy in part because it was the first time “Dr. Strange” was written as if Stephen had a sense of humor. When Roy saw Jackson Guice’s exquisite and humanistic pencils based on his synopsis, a light bulb came on over his head: as a surgeon, Stephen had been at least in his 30s before tragic events led to his becoming a sorcerer—so it occurred to Roy that he’d probably had, back in his pre-magical past, more of a sense of humor than he had previously displayed in the feature. Later, artist Guice told Roy
that, when editor Ralph Macchio had offered them both the series, he hadn’t really wanted to do it—but he said he’d have accepted more readily if he’d known how much fun he was going to have drawing it.
11) CONAN THE BARBARIAN #6 (1971) “Devil-Wings Over Shadizar”
Conan, seeking his fortune in Shadizar the Wicked, encounters an attractive wench named Jenna. When she’s kidnapped as a sacrifice for the bat-like Night-God, the Cimmerian saves her and kills the demonic beast; but, in the end, it’s Conan who’s left standing alone with no girl and no gold. By this point, Conan the Barbarian had become the comic to read every month, for fans and pros alike. By the end of 1971 the series won Roy two industry and fandom “Best Writer” awards (Shazam and Goethe)—artist Barry Smith (later Windsor-Smith) was nominated for “Best Penciler” by the Shazam-voting pros—“Devil-Wings” was Shazam-nominated for “Best Story”—while the mag itself won a Shazam for “Best Continuing Feature.” How could it not? Conan was a totally fresh take on comic storytelling that changed the Marvel landscape by moving away from super-heroes in New York City to heroic fantasy in other spheres. The series would not only expose the Cimmerian
Shadizar—The City So Wicked They Had To Name It Twice
“Second Banana To Stan Lee” A Biographic Podcast/Interview With ROY THOMAS
Conducted & Transcribed by Alex Grand
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
2023, I participated in a second Comic Book Historians podcast/interview with my historically minded colleague Alex Grand… the entirety of which is viewable online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v-PMpFRJdDW88&authuser=0
I was drawn to Alex’s podcast partly because of his thoughtful line of questioning, and also because he allows interviews to run to their own natural length, with no artificial limits of, say, an hour. (This one, like many of Alex’s, lasted roughly two.) Unfortunately, because I don’t have reliable Zoom and other such reception in the South Carolina hinterland, there are gaps in both transmission and transcription— which helped me decide to cease doing podcasts and visual interviews from my home. With Alex’s blessing, I have made changes of a few kinds in the transcription that follows: (1) It’s been edited for length, because there wasn’t room for its entirety in this issue of Alter Ego (2) I made corrections in the written record where I knew there were gaps—or where, occasionally, a succession of missing words (due to technical glitches) even gave the wrong impression of what I had said; and (3) I dropped an exchange or two that might well have led to ill feelings between myself and another living person, without serving any good purpose. In addition, because the first volume of my historically oriented autobiography, Roy Thomas: A Life in Four Colors, is scheduled to be published later this year, I omitted most questions and responses that dealt with my early life. Ellipses (…) often indicate where an omission of words or even sentences has been made. Oh, and special thanks to John Cimino for his off-screen help with the technical side of this podcast…
ALEX GRAND:
Welcome back to the Comic Book Historians Podcast. Today, we have a wonderful guest, Mr. Roy Thomas, former Marvel editor-in-chief. Essentially, Stan Lee’s protégé, also the creator of so many great things, especially in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, and in the ‘80s over at DC Comics, and more.
Roy and I have developed a friendship over the past six or so years, and he’s always so forthcoming with information about his career. I’m grateful he’s also found a few of our interviews here at Comic Book Historians fit to publish in his Eisner Award-winning magazine
Alter & Captain—Last Names “Ego”
Since, as Alex Grand states, this podcast transcription deals primarily with Roy Thomas’ career in the late 1960s and beyond, we figured we’d give a nod to RT’s work early and late—with an art spot by our resident “maskot” artist Shane Foley (and colorist Randy Sargent) of Captain Ego (at left), inspired by a figure in the Rascally One’s current online John Carter, Warlord of Mars strip for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., based on the artwork of “Pegaso”— —and Alter Ego (at right), utilizing a figure from Roy’s first-ever comics script sale, a Son of Vulcan yarn to Charlton in 1965… a pose by artists Bill Fraccio & Tony Tallarico.
Incidentally, the first new issue of Heroic Publishing’s Alter Ego comicbook in several years (#6) is currently in the works, from
Alter Ego that’s been around for more than 60 years. He actually joined us some time back for a Marvel power hour interview which basically covered 1966 to roughly 1971. Today, he returns for a more comprehensive biographical interview. Roy, thanks so much for being here with us today.
ROY THOMAS: Happy to be here. I saw some of the interviews that you have done with guys like Gary Groth, [Jim] Steranko, and so forth. I enjoy this long-form kind of thing, so I thought it’d be really nice to be on here. Thank you for having me.
Roy & Ron. See ad on p. 69.
Roy Thomas
Alex Grand
I should mention, we are broadcasting today from the Toucan Bedroom at our place. If you see all the toucans in the background... we used to have toco toucans, so of course people gave us a thousand things, so we have a whole room. John Cimino, who manages some of my activities, [sometimes] sleeps in this bedroom surrounded by several hundred toucan images [chuckles].
[RT INTERLUDE: Alex starts from the very beginning, so far as my life is concerned, asking about the first comics I ever read, in the mid-1940s— and the first ones I wrote and drew, beginning in 1947, around age seven. However, since those will be covered in depth in my forthcoming autobio, we felt it best to kick off with Alex’s inquiry about—a couple of comicbook text stories!]
AG: We clarified this by e-mail, but I want to just hear it from you, also. There [are two-page text stories in] Phantom Lady #14 in 1947 and in the British comic Eagle Annual #8, 1958. Both are by “Roy Thomas,” but those were not you, right?
THOMAS: [chuckles] [Since I was born in 1940] I would have been pretty precocious! No, I didn’t know about that other one you
mentioned, but I do have a scan of the one in Phantom Lady. [“Roy Thomas” is] not a name that nobody else ever had.
AG: In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was this super-hero revival, and Julius Schwartz and Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, all of the above, brought in a kind of humanism to the super-hero… more of a sciencefiction relatable super-hero era, especially in Marvel. Early Marvel geared more toward flaws, and realism, and what not. So when that stuff was happening, how were you reacting to that, in real time?
THOMAS: I got interested from the day in 1956 when I went into the local drug store to buy some fireworks, a day or two before July 4th, and saw Showcase #4. Here was a new version of The Flash, and I got very excited about that… even though it meant I probably wasn’t ever going to see the old Flash again. And of course, it took two or three years, which seemed an eternity at the time, for them to publish enough issues that they would decide to revive The Flash [as a stand-alone title]. Looking back, it appears as if this all came very quickly—The Flash, then Green Lantern, then the Justice League—but it’s actually three or four years spread out between 1956 and about 1960. And that’s a long time in a person’s life when you’re waiting two, three, four months to see a comicbook.
I became very enthusiastic about Julie’s comics… I loved them… but they were really just the same comics I had read growing up. I mean, they were a little more sophisticated, the art was on the average a little better, and so on. But they were still aimed to entertain a pretty young audience.
Marvel Comics made more sense… Stan and Jack’s Fantastic
Four. As soon as I saw that, I recognized right away that this was a different kind of comic. It’s not like I totally threw over my liking for Julie Schwartz’s comics… but I realized [the FF] had things like the arguing between the heroes on a serious level… the attitude toward costumes…. You could see they were trying for something different. It was not just an imitation [of the 1940s stories]….
See, when I read comics by Julie in the late ‘50s, [early] ‘60s. I always considered myself as sort of mentally slumming. Nine years old again, in one part of my mind. I knew those were the people that comics were aimed at, and I was willing to accept them on that level. When Stan started coming out with these books, it was like on a different plane, and I didn’t have to mentally slum to read them as much. I still had to accept some pretty weird stuff, and super-heroes are kind of ridiculous by nature. But it was still different. I was reading on two different levels and I can enjoy each of them….
Right after I got a job at DC, I’m writing a letter to Stan Lee at Marvel telling him how great the [Marvel] comics were. If [Superman editor] Mort Weisinger had seen that, he’d have probably fired me off my Superman job. [chuckles] Because if there’s one group of comics about super-heroes I wasn’t interested in, it was the Superman group. I was working for them, but I had no interest in them. I had to bone up by reading dozens and dozens of them in the month or two before I went to [New York], because I almost never bought one, at that stage. While they were intricate and well-done in their own way, they just weren’t anything worth my 12¢, I guess.
[INTERLUDE: Next, Alex asks me about my involvement with the nascent comics fandom movement, from 1961 to 1965 when I turned pro. Since that will be covered in so much more detail in my autobio, V1, I have omitted those few paragraphs’ worth of comments here.]
AG: Skipping ahead—I never was able to ask last time—did you ever have any relationship or conversations with Martin Goodman?
THOMAS: No, about the closest I came was when Stan had me write this memo [to Goodman[ saying we should [license a sword-and-sorcery character]. That was the first time, I think, I had any contact except maybe “Hello” to Martin Goodman, who had an office way down at the other end of the hall. Once [in the latter ’60s], when he went to Florida over Christmas, he sent everybody a bunch of oranges. I didn’t get any, so I figured, “Okay, he didn’t remember me.” [NOTE: My box of oranges arrived weeks later, actually, totally spoiled by the mail delay. But I guess Goodman was at least vaguely aware of me.]
Whenever I would see him later, for the next year or two, he would always mention this wonderful memo I had written about why we should do a sword-and-sorcery comic. He knew I was writing some comics for Stan; that’s all he knew….
AG: Right before you came [to Marvel], Larry Lieber was helping Stan a lot [by writing hero scripts]. Then you helped Stan with the writing. And then, as you enter the ‘70s, you’re really the premier writer guy. You’re the guy that Stan looked to. Was there ever any tension between you and Larry Lieber over this?
THOMAS: No. He was only writing and drawing Rawhide Kid and occasional other Westerns [by the time I came along]. I don’t think he ever really wanted to write the super-hero comics, but Stan had got him to do it to help him out because Stan didn’t have time [to do them all].
Stan—or wait, maybe it was Martin Goodman—I’m only repeating a story I heard—became upset in [an early Larry Lieber] “Iron Man” story when Iron Man got knocked over by a mere filing cabinet. And it is true that, soon after that, Larry disappeared as the writer of [the super-hero] stuff…. He was a very slow artist and writer anyway. Rawhide Kid was about all he could handle, [though he did a good job on that].
AG: When you were there, there was an announcement that Perfect Film & Chemical was buying Marvel and Magazine Management from Martin Goodman. What was your perception of that buy-out? Was there any
Martin Goodman and wife Jean, probably back in the late
Larry Lieber in the “British Dept.” at Marvel Comics in the latter 1970s or so. Photo via John Cimino.
concern that everyone’s jobs would change, or was it kind of business as usual on your end?
THOMAS: It was pretty much business as usual. Probably some [people] were a little apprehensive about becoming part of a conglomerate, even though Stan was lauding this as being an improvement: “We’ll have more money now. DC had all the money, and now we have a conglomerate behind us.”
But I knew that sometimes conglomerates don’t necessarily buy businesses to put money into, they also just buy them to take money out of. I think [Perfect Film] discontinued The Saturday Evening Post, if I’m not mistaken. And when that happened, that made us a little worried. If they could get rid of the Post, what if Marvel Comics dropped a little bit in sales?
The weird thing, too, is that this was 1968. That’s the year we turned all the books—well, when I say “we”, of course, it was Stan and Goodman’s decision—turned all the anthology books into their own separate titles. Tales of Suspense became Captain America and
A Spastic Colan
Iron Man & Sub-Mariner #1 (and only), dated April ’68, featuring one story of each hero, behind a cover by Gene Colan & Bill Everett. Inside, Colan penciled both yarns— with Archie Goodwin scripting
Iron Man. Soon afterward, there was a downturn in sales. What’s going to happen? So, I think it was a source of anxiety….
I don’t know about Stan. He probably went back and forth; he was a little manic that way. He’d be real excited one day, and he’d be real depressed the next, when the sales went down. Because, remember, he’d been through these bad times in the ’50s. He’d been through the Wertham and Senate hearing days… and the complete collapse of Marvel [in the late ’50s].
I was more like: Even though my parents didn’t have any money, I grew up feeling, “Oh, the world was basically a good place, if we could just stop the Reds from blowing us up.”
AG: When that was happening, Stan becomes publisher—and when that finalized, you became editor-in-chief. How was that transition in duties? Was there some anxiety there? How was that overall experience?
THOMAS: That happened four years later, in ’72. But it all came about because of situations I knew nothing about.
Stan was very discontented by that time with Martin Goodman. Goodman had made Stan promises when he signed a contract [in ’68]. Perfect Film evidently wouldn’t buy Magazine Management unless Stan signed a contract. I didn’t know any of this at the time. Stan had a little leverage, which he didn’t exercise. So, we’re just going on with business as usual.
He became increasingly unhappy under Goodman. And then came the worst: Goodman decided to retire after sticking around for three years. Stan had some respect for Martin Goodman. He thought he was good on covers, even if he had practically destroyed the company once.
I didn’t know this at the time, but evidently Stan even began to think about going to DC. I guess he held a meeting with some DC people once. Although, again, he didn’t bother to tell his lowly associate editor. He was just very unhappy, that I knew, under the [new publisher]. We all felt that Chip [Goodman, Martin’s son] didn’t know what he was doing with regards to the comics. We didn’t know [how he handled] the men’s magazines, necessarily.
So finally, one day [in 1972]… Stan tells me things have changed. Perfect Film, which was now called Cadence [Industries], was going to make him president and publisher of Marvel Comics as a separate company. We were going to have our own comptroller and several other officers, so we had a higher payroll, so we suddenly had to put out a lot more magazines.
He said I was going to be his story editor—not editor, but story editor. Stan didn’t like to give up titles. He had always been the editor. He had always been the art director. He didn’t want a full editor. And he didn’t want somebody else to have the title of art director, so he made Frank Giacoia, a good artist [inker], the “assistant art director,” even though there was no real art director at that stage. Stan didn’t have the title, nobody else did, so we have an assistant art director but no art director. John Verpoorten, by that time, was in charge of production. So we had this uneasy triumvirate [of Verpoorten, Giacoia, and me].
And I was thinking about quitting. I was really verging on making feelers to DC about quitting Marvel, because I didn’t like the fact that Stan refused to name me editor and [was treating me like] I was just there to do the stories and be his little troubleshooter. It annoyed me—and I hadn’t got much of a raise, either.
So I’m telling this to my good friend Gil Kane. Gil had been an artist I admired, and then he became a good friend after we worked on Captain Marvel together a couple of years earlier. I’m telling him,
When in 1968 Marvel’s three monthly anthologies were turned overnight into solo-hero titles, there was a need on the schedule for this one-shot:
she was terrible. She’s a nice enough person, though.
AG: You and Gerry Conway team up a lot in this period, and you also worked on a lot of licensed properties: Shazam!, Atari Force, Swordquest, the Conan movies, Fire and Ice, JSA crossovers, Captain Carrot… you and Gerry worked together a lot on licensed materials. [NOTE: Of course, the Justice Society and Captain Carrot were not “licensed.”]
THOMAS: Well, Gerry—he was 19 when he began to work for Marvel. Later, he’d show up at my wife’s and my apartment, doing a walking tour of Manhattan. Just happened to be passing by my building on this side of town.
But I really liked Gerry. He was not a nakedly ambitious guy,
though more ambitious than me. He was putting himself out there, networking. We got along really well. He became my best friend for a number of years. We worked together on projects. We decided to do the longest JLA-JSA team-up ever, five parts. That was fun.
I had moved out to LA by ’76. He moved out there around 1979. He was very eager to get into film. He’d done a bunch of sample screenplays. But he didn’t have an agent, and I was kind of lucky—by a weird set of circumstances I won’t go into, I had gotten involved with someone who got me in with her agency in New York… whose main branch, it turned out, was in LA.
When I got to LA, I’d never written a sample movie or TV script in my life, but [through my agent] I got hooked up with a place [Charles Fries Productions]. They had done the [TV] Martian Chronicles and so forth. [But that didn’t lead to any solid jobs.]
Later, when I got a chance to do something [in movies], I brought Gerry into the project. The first one was based on a book I had read as a teenager, called Snow Fury, which was about snow that eats people, basically. It was a sort of science-fictiony horror story. And we got commissioned to do it. We ended up writing seven or eight movie scripts together, two of which got made in some form, but we got paid for all of them.
Fire and Ice—this is at the beginning of the year, I don’t remember if it was ’80 or ’81, one of those two years… [I told Ralph Bakshi:] “I’d be happy to work on this movie, but I have a partner. I’d like the two of us to work on the movie.” That got us started, and led in a way… to the second Conan movie after I was story consultant on the first one.
AG: Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. There was a first version of Conan the Destroyer that you and Gerry did, then it got rewritten for the film. What was your involvement with Destroyer? What did you think of Arnold [Schwarzenegger] as Conan?
THOMAS: Arnold was one of the few good things about the Conan movies; I thought he was a good Conan. The first movie was more serious and closer in some ways to [Robert E. Howard’s] Conan, but I don’t think there’s ever been a good Conan movie, really. The first movie had almost no sorcery in it, whatever its other virtues.
The second movie had more sorcery, but between the approach and the budget—! I got a chance to write the second Conan movie because I had consulted on the first one with [writer/director] John Milius for all of one day, writing up my notes for $10,000. A pretty good deal—part of which was that I couldn’t write any other sword-and-sorcery film for a year, but that was okay. So, when they’re about to start working on the second Conan movie, I get a phone call from the producer, Ed Pressman. Dino De Laurentiis was not quite as involved with it yet.
Pressman says, “So what are you up to these days?” “Fire and Ice—it’s going to be coming out soon from 20th [Century-Fox], rotoscoped animation, sword-and-sorcery, and we’ve got a couple of other deals in the works. We wrote this other thing….”
Conway circa 1970s.
“Oh, that’s very interesting.” Pressman says. “You should come by and we should talk about the second Conan movie, maybe get you involved.”
That’s great, but I know this is not why he called…. And so, I’m talking to him about nothing and trying to figure out, why did he call? Then, all of a sudden, after this 10 or 15
minutes of conversation he says, “Oh, by the way—you remember that you got that check from me? You got that $10,000 for being story consultant on Conan the Barbarian.”
I said, “Oh yeah!”... “Oh my God,” I’m thinking, “he’s going to give me another $10,000 to be a consultant again and not write anything for a year. I’ll take it! I’ll take it! I don’t care if I never write another movie. I’ll just take the 10 grand.”
But no, he says, “Well, it turns out that Dino De Laurentiis is taking over more of the producing of the second film.” And I said, “Yeah?”
“Well,” he says, “Dino has to reimburse me for certain money I paid out for the first film, and that includes the $10,000 I paid you. So he’s sent me a check for that amount.” I said, “Fine.”
He says, “Yes—but the check is made out to you.”
Now I saw what it was! Ed Pressman has this $10,000 check he can’t cash. He thinks I’m going to hold him up and want some of that money… because it’s made out to me. But I told him, “Hey, you paid me, and I’ve got no further call on that money. Send somebody down with that check anytime, and I’ll sign it over to you.” Couldn’t have been a half hour later [chuckles], somebody’s at my door, “Could you sign this?” It wasn’t Ed; it was one of his flunkies. So, I signed it.
But in the meantime, I had gotten myself this appointment for me and Gerry to come in [to talk about] the second Conan movie.
AG: So you guys did multiple drafts. What’s that process called?
THOMAS: They call the second draft a “rewrite” of the first. After that, we did three other drafts, each one getting further away from what Gerry and I wanted to do. And then they brought in director Richard Fleischer. But he was near the end of his career. He was obviously just waiting for retirement and taking a paycheck. We did the last draft about the time he came in. He looked at it, said it was fine, took a few things from it, fired us, and got a new writer.
The Writers Guild does arbitration [re film credit]. The Guild decides what the screen credits are, not the producer. We found out Dino’s people had already done the credits—but they didn’t give us any screen credit because we didn’t do the final script. They’d only given them to Stanley Mann, who had written the final script.
The story had evolved through those five drafts [and Mann’s several], so we have to go to arbitration. Gerry and I went over [all versions of the script] and wrote notes showing how this is taken from our script, etc. We were actually trying to go for full screenplay credit. We didn’t get that, but the Guild decided we deserved full “story” credit, so we would get our names on the screen by ourselves, and Stanley Mann would get his separate “screenwriter” credit.
And I got a call from Dino’s right-hand man: “The credits have all been done. It’s going to cost us money to change the credits. So, here’s the thing: we’ll give you…” I don’t recall, it was either $5000 or $10,000 each, which was a lot more in 1984 than it is now. “We’ll give you that much to just not have your name on the screen. You’ll get money from the videotape, and all the rights as if your names were on the screen, but we won’t have to re-do the credits. We’ll save a lot of money and you’ll make some money.”
Edward R. Pressman (1943-2023) – film producer who hired Roy to be story consultant on Conan the Barbarian (1982), and later signed RT and Gerry Conway to co-write the film that eventually became Conan the Destroyer (1984).
Gerry and I took about one second, then we laughed: “Change the credits!” We didn’t win any friends in Dino De Laurentiis that day.
AG: You did some writing for the New Universe over at Marvel in ’86 or ’87. Was there some reconciliation with Jim Shooter at this time? Was there some awareness that his tenure there was coming to an end? Was there a transition toward Tom DeFalco as editor-in-chief? What was your involvement in that part of it?
THOMAS: Tom DeFalco was very much involved, bless his heart, but I had no concept that Jim Shooter, who’d been in charge for nearly a decade, would be leaving soon. I felt he’s there forever, and that’s okay. I understood that.
I wrote a letter to Jim. I didn’t beg, nor did I pontificate like, “I’m so great, you’ve got to hire me back.” I just said, “I wouldn’t mind coming back. We
The LEE/THOMAS Spider-Man
E-Mails – Part 2
More Cyber-Messages From STAN THE MAN To ROY THE BOY (2003-2018)
Annotated by Roy Thomas
Back in A/E #179, in my introduction to Part 1 of this obviously intermittent series, I explained how I was hired by Stan in 2000 to ghost the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper comic strip. At that time, although I also dealt with his assistant Michael Kelly, Stan was still very much a hands-on editor (and off-and-on re-writer) of the dailies and Sundays, and some of those critique sessions were carried on by telephone.
Increasingly, however, Stan was comfortable with just sending me his comments and corrections via e-mail… and, since I’d worked for him at Marvel from 1965 to 1980, in animation (The Fantastic Four) circa 1979, and on his sadly aborted Excelsior comics line in 1995, both of us felt comfortable bringing up other subjects as well, as the mood struck us. What always surprised me was that, no matter how busy or harassed he was, Stan nearly always added a humorous quip of some kind to his e-mails—and with very little repetition.
Several years ago, my wife Dann helpfully printed out virtually every one of the e-mails exchanged between Stan and me beginning in 2003, the year I purchased a particular PC hard drive. (Sadly,
our pithy exchanges of 2000-2002 are forever lost, to the undoubted detriment of literary history, as Stan might have said.) Longtime reader Brian K. Morris was kind enough to retype them all into a Word document so they could be edited for presentation in A/E. In #179 we presented Stan’s e-mails from 2003—with my paraphrasing my own missives that might have induced those responses (since my remarks were not always preserved).
This issue, we’ve just room enough to round up Stan’s 2004 e-mails to me. Often, they came with my most recent
script for Spider-Man attached (containing his corrections and changes, which lessened over time), and a “Hi Roy” or “Hey Roy” salutation which has generally been omitted here in the interests of space. So let’s get going with that wonderful year…
2004:
Goodman.
If my name was on any of the CA stories John Romita drew then I certainly wrote them.
As for Mort Lawrence, honestly, Roy, I remember his name, but that’s all. I can’t even bring to mind what his artwork looked like. I’m sorry to say I can’t recall how I felt about his work.
I’m guessing Martin would never have committed 5 titles to MEN’S ADVENTURES unless YOUNG MEN #24 had sold well. I don’t know that for a fact—I only say it because Martin would never publish anything unless something similar had been selling well.
That’s it. Hope it helps. Wish Wal-Mart sold memory.
Excelsior!
Joe Sinnott inked the Sunday Spider-Man from 1992 until 2019.
Actually, this first of Stan’s e-mails for that annum was sent in response to questions I sent him about the too-brief four-color revival of The Human Torch, Captain America, and the Sub-Mariner between late 1953 and 1955, for an issue of Alter Ego (#135, to be exact)—a period incidentally also covered recently in #192 by Mark Carlson-Ghost. I was trying to figure out the why and wherefore of that revival:
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004
To answer your questions as best I can…
If I were editor at the time, I MUST have had something to do with decreeing the way those three characters were brought back, although I don’t remember the situation. However, the one who would have decided to bring them back would have been Martin
Alex Saviuk penciled the Sunday Spider-Man strip from 1997 till the feature’s end in early 1919; he had taken over its inking in 2019. From 2003-19, he inked the dailies as well, and assumed their penciling in 2018 when Larry Lieber retired.
Stan
Don’t we all! Incidentally, while John Romita thought Stan’s name might have been on one or more of the “Captain America” scripts he illustrated in 1953-54, it’s been established with reasonable likelihood in recent years by comics analyst Martin O’Hearn that the author of all 16 “CA” yarns during that period was Don Rico, not Stan.
Later that day, probably in response to my mentioning that perhaps Stan’s name had been on a “Captain America” script because he was, after all, the company’s editor, he wrote again:
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004
That’s strange. If my name was on the script, it meant I wrote the script. My name wouldn’t have been on it otherwise. If the strip was the same as the script, I can’t imagine why my name wouldn’t have been on the strip, too, unless I just wasn’t paying attention to
The Not-Really-Secret Origins Of Wolverine
How Four Talented Guys Co-Created A Comicbook Legend In 1974
by Roy Thomas
INTRODUCTION: When I chose Tony Gray’s humorous and well-executed illustration as the cover for this issue, well over a year ago, it was with the idea that, when Alter Ego #194 rolled around, I would write a short piece therein about the origins of the Marvel-ous mutant, since I assumed that the story of his creation—or at least its general outlines—were already known to those comics fans and historians who are interested in such things, and were of no importance to those who aren’t. I’ve certainly told the tale often enough—and a lot earlier than some people want others to believe.
Roy Thomas at Dragon Con in Atlanta, GA, a few years back. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert.
Len Wein at a San Diego Comic-Con; date unknown.
However, since the morning before Easter Sunday 2024, as I related back on page 3 in this issue’s editorial, I’ve been assaulted and denounced because I requested (and Marvel, after due consideration, decided to grant me) screen credit as a co-creator of Wolverine on the then-upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine… the first Logan-featuring film done under the aegis of Marvel Studios (all previous ones having been made by 20th Century-Fox). I would share that creator credit, so far as I knew, with writer Len Wein and visual designer John Romita—and happily, as things turned out, artist Herb Trimpe. It would be the first time any of us were ever officially acknowledged on the big screen as the guys behind the most popular of The X-Men.
Then came the aforementioned firestorm, contributed to by several comics professionals who should have known better—and of course by various get-a-life amateurs whom nobody would have expected to know anything. The uproar was unjust and annoying enough that I decided that, in this 60th-anniversary “celebration” issue, I needed to lay out both what I remember as actually occurring back in 1974—plus what I and others had said about Wolverine’s creation between then and the past year’s onslaught. Henceforth, I dare hope that, if and when the ludicrous controversy rears its mutton-headed skull again, I can simply refer to the article below and spare everyone a lot of further argumentative babble.
What follows, thus, are my own carefully considered memories… succeeded by an accounting of what’s been said about Wolverine’s origins by his four co-creators during the past half-century. I won’t generally be quoting the opinions of fifth parties, because they are almost invariably ill-informed….
I. O Canada!
Spring 1974… or sometime thereabouts.
I had been the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics for approximately two years when I suddenly started thinking about… Canada.
Our sprawling neighbor to the north had, then as now, only about one-tenth the population of the United States. All the same, that amounted to millions of people… and a reasonable percentage of them, we knew, were actual or potential comicbook readers. Many of them already bought Fantastic Four and Avengers… Amazing Spider-Man and even Captain America.
And yet, the thought suddenly impinged upon my consciousness: Neither Marvel nor DC nor any other U.S. mainstream comics company was publishing, or had ever published, the exploits of a single super-hero who was Canadian.
It wasn’t like this was the first time I’d thought about making up a foreign-born character for Marvel. In 1966, as a fairly new pro scripter, I had imagined an Irish mutant villain called The Banshee; designed and drawn by Werner Roth, he had debuted in The X-Men #28 (Jan. 1967). Three years later, in X-Men #64 (Jan. 1970), I had scribed a tale, illustrated by Don Heck, that had introduced Sunfire, a Japanese mutant.
It occurred to me that, at that stage (’74), we were selling a helluva lot more comics in mostly-English-speaking Canada than we did in Ireland or Japan—so, without feeling a need to check with Stan, who was now Marvel’s publisher but left most day-to-day comics decisions to me, I began to conceive the character. I’m sure lots of notions flitted briefly across my mind… the speed of thought, and all that… but I quickly decided I wanted to utilize the name of an animal that was native to Canada (even if there were probably specimens of same in the USA as well).
If the concept/name “Moose” flitted across my mind (and how
could it not?), it was immediately dismissed. While a moose was a huge and powerful beast, the word was inherently un-heroic, even humorous, to most people. I didn’t want Canadians to think Marvel was making fun of them. Besides, Archie Comics had a Moose.
I swiftly narrowed my choices down to two beasts: “Wolverine” and “Badger.” Both were fierce carnivores, which was promising. However, the word “badger” was also used as a transitive verb, meaning to “annoy” or “bother” someone—not too glamorous a usage.
Ah, but “wolverine”! Having been intrigued by the animal world since I was a child, when my first role model was not a cowboy or a fireman but big-game hunter Frank “Bring-’Em-BackAlive” Buck, I knew the wolverine was a creature that was both fairly small and yet fearless enough that it had been known to attack (and sometimes kill) animals that were up to ten times its size.
So “wolverine” it was—however much or little I may have discussed my thought processes with my prospective writer.
Said writer was one of comics’ best: Len Wein, who had already co-created Swamp Thing for DC Comics and had been a major scripter for both DC and Marvel over the past decade and a half.
I had a number of reasons, besides his talent, for choosing Len for this assignment, which I considered of more than passing importance. One that I mentioned to him, though only
Present At The Creation
John Romita with his original 1974 concept sketches of Wolverine. Thanks to John Cimino.
half-seriously, was the fact that I’d been impressed by his rendering of a Caribbean accent when he’d scripted the origin of Brother Voodoo the previous year. Of course, Len had made Brother Voodoo a Haitian, and yet had given him an accent that was pretty much straight Jamaican—but it was a good Jamaican accent. Anyway, I knew that a Canadian accent varied little from a typical American one—a phrase here and there, and lots of the use of “eh?” at the end of sentences.
No, the main reason I chose Len—which I often neglected to mention when discussing Wolverine’s origins, probably because it seemed so obvious to me—is the fact that he happened at that time to be the regular scripter of The Incredible Hulk.
After all, most of Marvel’s heroes then spent much of their time in the environs of New York City, though maybe Daredevil was still knocking around San Francisco; I forget. Any of them, naturally, could swoop up to Canada in a flash, but the Hulk was the most peripatetic of our heroes, liable to be tearing up “abandoned warehouses” in lower Manhattan one issue and leaping about in the Southwest Desert the next. A perfect choice for hop-skip-andjumping off to the Great White North.
I had a conference with Len wherein I related the four particulars I wanted to see in Marvel’s Wolverine: the name, his Canadian origins, his short stature, and his excessive fierceness. There is no chance—no chance at all—that all four of the above attributes were not part of my instructions to him.
Also, where I was usually fairly non-directive as an editor, in this case I told Len that I wanted the story done in the earliest Hulk he could squeeze it into.
If Len had balked at introducing Wolverine, or if he’d insisted he was in the midst of a storyline that wouldn’t allow the new character to appear for several issues, I would’ve told him, fine, forget it, and I’d have called in Gerry Conway or Steve Englehart or another skilled writer, and the Wolverine would have made his debut in Amazing Spider-Man or Daredevil or even Captain America. (Introducing mainstream comics’ first Canadian hero as a foil for the Star-Spangled Avenger would have made logical sense, now that I think about it.)
Len, however, proved quite amenable, and from that point on I left the precise story and the hero’s other attributes to him. He led into the intro of Wolverine by bringing back a recent Hulk foe, the Wendigo—who might also be a Canadian but, as a man-eating monster, wouldn’t have been ripe material for the Marvel super-hero I was looking for.
Next, art director John Romita was asked to design the character—by me or by Len, John gave each of us that honor at different times. In any event, he made it clear that nobody gave him much direction on what to draw. He famously said, later, that he initially thought “wolverine” was a term for a female wolf, not a separate species, and he had to learn the truth from an encyclopedia.
I presume John showed me the finished art, because that was the way we operated then. Len probably viewed it, too, in advance of the story being drawn. John had made the character look fierce, with his decision to utilize a claw motif—and he had made him short (his notation “only 5 feet 5 inches tall” indicates he hadn’t forgotten my general instructions as to height). I doubt if I did anything more than indicate that what he’d drawn was fine with me. (It usually was.)
I doubt, too, that I did more than glance through Herb Trimpe’s finished artwork for Hulk #180, in whose final panel Wolverine
makes his debut. I knew Herb would do a good job of rendering the character as designed by John.
The next time I would have encountered Wolverine would have been when Herb finished penciling Hulk #181. I hadn’t bothered to check Len’s synopsis for that issue any more than I did most plots by him or by others; I figured Len knew what he was doing, and he knew what I required. When the interior penciling was done, Herb probably showed me a rough sketch for a prospective cover, as he generally did. His pursuant cover was fine (John R. had a part in it, too). And, as per usual, I wrote the cover copy, the first thing a prospective purchaser would read about Wolverine. Not I’m especially proud of that text:
“HE’S HERE! The world’s first and greatest CANADIAN SUPER-HERO!”
Naturally, if Wolverine is the “first” Canadian super-hero, he’s also unarguably the “greatest”—at least so far.
At that point, Wolverine stalked out into the world, going on sale in July or August with the issue’s “November” cover date.
Ironically, by the time Hulk #181 hit the stands, I was at most weeks away from leaving the editor-in-chief job, and the seeds of the “international X-Men” revival had been recently sown, with my having assigned writer Mike Friedrich and artist Dave Cockrum to develop it… without any thought whether Wolverine would—or would not—appear in it.
Previews Of Coming Attractions
which
The final panel of The Incredible Hulk #180 (Oct. 1974),
Still, it was quite conceivable that he would. After all, in scripting Hulk #181, Len had labeled Wolverine a mutant—and, as per Stan’s and my discussion with president Al Landau (described in more detail on p. 20 of this issue of A/E), Canada was one of those “other countries” where we hoped the resuscitated X-Men might sell well, making up for possible mediocre sales in the U.S.
After I segued into a writer/editor contract early that September, Len was named editor of the color comics and soon appointed himself to script the briefly stalled X-Men book, with Cockrum illustrating. Nobody can argue that the results weren’t a resounding success—with, by a happy happenstance, Chris Claremont waiting in the wings to become the series’ writer and, along with Dave, move it along its path to becoming one of the most popular titles Marvel ever produced.
With, as it turned out, Wolverine as its breakout star.
II. The Assault
Okay, so that’s the way I recall—and, with minor variations, have generally recalled—the creation of Wolverine. I’ve been telling pretty much the same story for decades now, whenever I was asked.
Skipping ahead for the moment: On the Saturday morning before Easter in 2024, I awoke to find a vicious attack on what I suppose I could call “my truth” erupting on the Internet, courtesy of a couple of folks I don’t recall ever meeting, let alone seeing in the Marvel offices in 1974. That spring day, and for weeks following, I found myself repeatedly being accused of a number of things that, by my lights, were far from true. To wit:
1. It was claimed that, as editor-in-chief in ’74, I did no more than suggest to Len the name “Wolverine” and his Canadian nationality. Everything else, according to this account by a couple of angry, self-righteous people who didn’t even meet Len Wein till years later, was Len’s doing.
2. It was maintained that I had only begun calling myself Wolverine’s “co-creator” after Len died, regrettably and much too young, in 2017. (I’ll explain below why that charge, too, is easily dismissed as untrue, except in the most limited, technical sense.)
3. It was suggested I had staked my claim in 2024 in order to begin receiving payment from Marvel as co-creator… money which, my accusers clearly wanted everyone to assume, would be deducted from whatever future payments Marvel might make to Len’s rightful heir(s) for his part in same.
4. And finally, it was bruited about that, no matter what I may have done re Wolverine, I should be denied co-creator status because I was “merely” the editor, and editors can’t be counted as co-creators, not even if they dream up a concept in the first place, because of some law that my detractors had “discovered,” apparently written on invisible stone tablets that Moses never quite got around to dragging down from Mount Sinai.
As far as I’m concerned—and I feel the evidence backs me up, to anyone with half a wit—absolutely none of the previous quartet of accusations is true.
So, let’s take a stroll back down Memory Lane—not just my memory, but the memories and statements of the only four people, ever, on the face of this Earth, who were in a position to have any real idea what occurred during those few weeks in 1974.
But first, re point 2 above, let’s get one thing off the table up front: It’s true that, back in the ’70s and for some years afterward,
I Never Forget A Face!
I tended not to use the word “co-creator” (let alone “creator”) to refer to my (or anyone’s) part in the origins of Wolverine or much of anything else. The reason for that, of course, was that I accepted, as did most comicbook people at that time, that everything I had done for Marvel Comics had been done under “work-for-hire” conditions. Marvel, understandably, would not have taken kindly to my shouting from the rooftops (or at comics conventions or in print) that I was the “co-creator” of Wolverine, the Silver Age Vision, Iron Fist, or whomever… and I by and large accepted that limitation. I had known the “work-for-hire” nature of the job (if not that precise phrase) when I had come to work in the industry in 1965, first for DC, then for Marvel; and since I didn’t challenge the idea then, I felt it would be hypocritical to do so later. I’ve never had any quarrel with the view that Marvel owns every story and character I wrote for its comics, with the exception of what I may have developed for licensed properties like the Robert E. Howard heroes, Star Wars, et al.—and those belonged to the trademark holders of those properties.
But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t actually the real-life co-creator of Iron Fist—and Zula, Last of the Zamballahs—and Jaxxon the green space rabbit.
In our last installment, we discussed the brief time in the early ‘40s when newspapers, anxious to jump on the profitable comicbook bandwagon, began including actual comicbooks as part of their newspaper comic section. Will Eisner’s Spirit Section was by far the most successful of this unlikely pairing, but didja know that publisher Victor Fox tried the experiment… twice?
Eisner’s Spirit Section newspaper supplement began on June 2, 1940, and continued until Oct. 5, 1952. Victor Fox had his Fox Syndicate Newspaper Strips, reprinting features from his comicbooks, four to a page. The first issue appears to have published in The Boston Evening Transcript of January 7, 1940, six months before the first Spirit Section. Fox’s comic section reprinted the first “Blue Beetle” story from Mystery Men Comics #1 (Aug. 1939).
Furthermore, the Heritage Auctions website revealed another Fox comicbook newspaper comicbook, called the Weekly Comic Magazine. That title may only exist as a single issue and two additional covers, created as a sales tool. It may or may not have been actually produced on a mass scale. Information on that is very slim, unfortunately. For that matter, the Weekly Comic Magazine may just be a retitled version of the Fox Syndicate Newspaper Strips. Who knows?
But didya know there was a comicbook newspaper section that came out even earlier than those three? One with stories by Will
Eisner, and produced by Everett M. “Busy” Arnold, his partner on the Spirit Section? A comicbook newspaper insert produced over three years before the first Spirit Section? It’s true. But don’t take my word for it. We’ll let comicbook historian Eric Schumacher give you the straight scoop.
Take it away, Eric!
WEric Schumacher
hat we have here is a true rarity, a whole series almost entirely unknown in comicbook history. The first issue from the Deadwood Pioneer-Times was discovered on Newspapers.com and shared at the Digital Comic Museum by bromichaelhenry on November 1, 2023, with issues #2-4 appearing
In 1943, when she was 20 years old, Edna C. Hagen was hired by Fawcett Publications as the secretary to executive comics editor Will Lieberson; she was later promoted to the comics production department. In later years, Edna was very surprised that anyone was interested in her time at Fawcett, and she did her best to remember those idyllic days.
Dagny Weste Crowley was the wife of beloved Fawcett comics editor Wendell Crowley. The couple met at Fawcett while Dagny Weste was employed there as Will Lieberson’s secretary from 1949 to 1951. Dagny was a joy to chat with, providing clarity as to the kind of man her husband was.
Looking back at the past 2½ decades of locating and talking to various people who were a part of the Golden Age of Comics, I often find myself wishing I had asked this or that question while they were all still with us. But when they were among us, they were just a phone call away, and always cordial, cooperative, and accommodating. —Shaun Clancy
EDNA C. HAGEN
INTERVIEWED APRIL 11, 2011
SHAUN CLANCY: When did you begin working at Fawcett Publications?
EDNA HAGEN: I started with Fawcett during World War II. At that time they had offices in the Paramount Building. I started in the comics department. The day that peace was declared, we happened to look out a window in the office and we saw what we thought were pigeons flying around … but it was confetti! People were celebrating because it was the end of the war.
SC: How did you know Fawcett was hiring in the comics department?
HAGEN: I was looking for a job, so I went to an employment
Maybe
It’s “Fly A Secretary To Lunch” Day
and Dagny Weste
the comics’ executive editor,
but we doubt if the Big Red Cheese flew them to work!
Otto Binder’s cover story “Captain Marvel Gets a Secretary” (Captain Marvel Adventures #67, Nov. 1946) introduced Joan Jameson as Cap and Billy Batson’s administrative assistant. Both of this issue’s interviewees, Edna Hagen
Crowley, began their careers at Fawcett Publications as secretaries to
(Left, from left to right:) Comics editor Virginia A. “Ginny” Provisiero and Edna Hagen from the comics’ production department celebrate Ginny’s 10-year anniversary with the publisher at the Fawcett offices on April 12, 1953. Photos from that event were originally published in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #3, provided by Ms. Provisiero.)
agency and they sent me to Fawcett.
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SC: Fawcett comics editor Ginny Provisiero helped FCA tremendously, and even supplied us with photos. Unfortunately, she passed away last year.
HAGEN: She was with Fawcett a little before I was. [NOTE: Provisiero came to Fawcett in April 1943.]
FILED FOR BANKRUPTCY IN JANUARY without paying for our December and January magazines and books, leaving us with enormous losses— and we still have to pay the expenses on those items, and keep producing new ones. Until payments from our new distributors begin in the Fall, we’re staying afloat with WEBSTORE SALES
SC: Do you remember Marc Swayze? He was an artist who later sent in his work from Louisiana.
HAGEN: Oh yes, I remember him! I was the one who was sending him his checks! [both laugh]
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SC: What was your first position in the comics department?
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HAGEN: I was [executive comics editor] Will Lieberson’s secretary, and then I was promoted to the comics production department. Ginny Provisiero used to handle the comics production before I took over when she was promoted to comics editor. I was in charge of sending material to the engravers and then on to the printers after everything had been proofread and edited, and I’d make sure we met the deadlines. When the comics ended, I went over to the production of Fawcett’s paperback books. Will was my boss while I was working on the comics, and [editorial director] Ralph Daigh was my boss on the paperbacks [Gold Medal Books].
SC: Did you also know art director Al Allard?
HAGEN: Yes. Both he and Ralph were still at Fawcett when I left there in the early ’70s to move to Florida… and I’ve been here ever since.
A
Clockwise Orange
(Or maybe red and yellow, given Captain Marvel’s primacy at Fawcett:)
Will Lieberson and his wife Jayne, cropped from the previously published group photo of Will’s 10-year anniversary party held on July 11, 1952. Lieberson joined Fawcett in 1942, took over for departing executive comics editor Rod Reed the following year, and remained in that position until the comics line was terminated in ’53. (An interview with Will Lieberson’s son Dennis will appear in our next issue.)
Fawcett Publications’ editorial director Ralph Daigh Fawcett’s art director Al Allard. This & the preceding photo from Fawcett Distributor magazine, February 1946.
“Wiped Out!”
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT!
HAGEN: Wonderful! He was a very nice person. He was a stickler, but he was nice. He and Al Allard came over with the Fawcetts from the Whiz Bang days. Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, which debuted in 1919, was the first magazine published by Fawcett.]
ALTER EGO #194
ROY THOMAS celebrates 60 years in comics! Career-spanning interview by ALEX GRAND, e-mails to Roy from STAN LEE, the history of Wolverine’s creation, RT’s 1960s fan-letters to JULIUS SCHWARTZ, and his top dozen stories compiled by JOHN CIMINO! With art by BUSCEMA, KANE, ADAMS, WINDSORSMITH, COLAN, ORDWAY, BUCKLER, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and cover by TONY GRAY! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 https://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=133&products_id=1818
SC: I was told that Ralph Daigh’s office was on a different floor than the comics department. Was his office on the floor below the comics?
HAGEN: No. As a matter of fact, he was on the same floor, but just on the other end.
SC: Were there Fawcett offices on the floors above you?
