Alter Ego #10 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy T Thomas homas ’ Legendary Legendary Roy F anzine Comics F Comics anzine

Bonus! Rare Art & Artifacts by:

JOHN BROOME ROBERT KANIGHER JOE KUBERT FRANK HARRY ARTHUR PEDDY NICK CARDY GIL KANE

CARMINE INFANTINO talks about his life and times

5.95

In the USA

No. 10 SEPTEMBER 2001

(and wait'll you see This issue’s never-beforeprinted Carmine Infantino FLASH & GREEN LANTERN art! )

Vol. 3, No. 10 / September 2001

™

Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editor Bill Schelly

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editors John Morrow Jon B. Cooke

FCA Editor

Infantino Co. Section

P.C. Hamerlinck

Comics Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus

Jerry Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White, Mike Friedrich

Cover Artists

Carmine Infantino & Terry Austin Dick Ayers

Cover Color

Contents Writer/Editorial: Themes and Remembrances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Mailing Crew

“Irritate the Eye!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Bob Koppany’s 1996 interview with Carmine Infantino... profusely illustrated.

And Special Thanks to:

The Man Who Launched the Corps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Rich Morrissey on the life and career of John Broome—with a P.S. on Doc Smith’s Lensmen

Tom Ziuko

Russ Garwood, Glen Musial, Ed Stelli, Pat Varker, Loston & Carolyn Wallace

The American Association of Comic Collectors Terry Austin Dick &Lindy Ayers Mike W. Barr Dennis Beaulieu Bill Black Nick Cardy Dave Cockrum Jerry de Fuccio Al Dellinges Shel Dorf Bruce Edwards Don Ensign Tom Fagan Patricia Floss Ken Gale Jeff Gelb Jennifer T. Go Fred Guardineer David G. Hamilton Paul Handler Bill Harper Ron Harris Mark & Stephanie Heike Tom Horvitz Carmine Infantino Shel Kagan Robert Kanigher Gene Kehoe Bob Koppany Joe Kubert

Joe & Nadia Mannarino Richard Martines Jim McLauchlin Brian K. Morris Emily Nelson Eric NolenWeathington Joe Petrilak Ethan Roberts Rob Schmidt Julius Schwartz Dave Siegel Dave Sim Jim Simmons Robin Snyder J. David Spurlock Bhob Stewart Steve Stiles Marc Svensson Marc Swayze Maggie Thompson Jim Vadeboncoeur Murray Ward Hames Ware Len Wein Dylan Williams Marv Wolfman Ed Zeno Mike Zeno

This issue dedicated to the memory of Rich Morrissey

Written Off – 9-30-49 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Scenes from a never-published Infantino “Flash” story from the Golden Age. Who Created the Silver Age Flash? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Round up the usual suspects: Kanigher, Infantino, Kubert, and Schwartz. “What’s So Great about Comic Art?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Bill Schelly walks us through fandom’s other founding fanzine. Happy Anniversary to Us! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 A Fast Look Back at Alter Ego, Volume 1!

Comic Crypt, FCA, & ME, Too! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: It started life as a commission drawing, done by original Silver Age Flash artist Carmine Infantino for super-fan Ed Zeno—and that pencil version can be seen on Page 19. But, with inks by Terry Austin, it became the main focus of our cover, which harks back (or did you notice that already?) to Showcase #4 in 1956. See elsewhere in this issue for fuller versions of the rare Golden and Silver Age Infantino art from which the images in the film strip were taken. [Art ©2001 Carmine Infantino & Terry Austin; two Flashes, Green Lantern, Batman, and Adam Strange ©2001 DC Comics.] Above: Ed Zeno strikes again—or rather, Carmine Infantino does, but Ed’s the one with the commission drawing! And thanks again to Carmine, who back in November of ’99, when I had left a phone message asking if I could use a particular piece of his art in A/E, left a wonderful response on my answering machine: “Roy—anything you choose—whenever you choose!” You’re a classy guy, Mr. I.! [Art ©2001 Carmine Infantino; Adam Strange ©2001 DC Comics.] Alter EgoTM is published quarterly by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. Phone: (919) 833-8092. Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: Rt. 3, Box 468, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@oburg.net. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $8 ($10 Canada, $11 elsewhere). Eight-issue subscriptions: $40 US, $80 Canada, $88 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

Carmine Infantino

“Irritate The Eye!”

A Strangely-Titled Interview with CARMINE INFANTINO — But Read On!

Conducted and Transcribed by Bob Koppany [EDITOR’S NOTE: This phone interview took place on January 13, 1996. Bob Koppany was in Los Angeles, Carmine Infantino in New York City. It was printed in the Winter 1996 issue of CFA-APA #39, an “apa” [amateur press alliance] fanzine published by and for a membership composed of serious comic art collectors, with only about 60 copies being printed of any given issue. The interview, which has been slightly edited here for space by Roy Thomas, is ©2001 by Bob Koppany and is reprinted by permission of Bob and Carmine.] BOB KOPPANY: Tell us about your days growing up.

in. Now, the artwork was not very professional, I’ve got to admit, and they turned it down. I did six pages of work and they never accepted it. Later I got a call from Al Capp [creator of the comic strip Li’l Abner]. Someone had recommended me. I brought him my artwork, and he wanted me to come to Boston to work for him. My father would not let me leave school, thankfully. I was very upset, of course, but he said, “Naw, finish school. If you’re any good, they’ll want you after school just as well as before. An education is important.” And he was right. Much later on, Milt Caniff offered me his strip to draw. It was either Terry [and the Pirates] or Steve Canyon, I’m not sure which. But I turned him down, because I was much too busy doing my own stuff.

CARMINE INFANTINO: I was born in Brooklyn. My schooling BK: Does that mean you got into there was in elementary school, comic books at that time? and then I went to the High School of Industrial Arts. When I INFANTINO: As a kid, I used to began there, it was a new roam Manhattan, looking for conception... a vocational school artists to talk to. I met a guy for just art. They didn’t have Carmine in the glory days as editorial director of DC Comics. And, at top, from the named Charlie Flanders. He drew much hope for it, so they housed 1971 San Diego ComicCon program book, here’s a Cinemascopic CI illo, with thanks The Lone Ranger [comic strip] us in this old Civil War hospital and had an office across from to John Morrow. [Art ©2001 Carmine Infantino; characters ©2001 DC Comics.] building on 42nd Street. It has Grand Central Station. He was a long since burned down. Later on, I went to Queens College, the Art very sweet man. When I was 15 or 16, I would run over after school to Students League, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art. This was on my see him. He’d let me scribble a little bit around the office and watch him. own, much later. That was the initial step. I ran into somebody that knew Harry Chesler’s studio. Chesler had BK: What sort of work did you do once you left school? an old factory kind of warehouse on 23rd Street. There was a brokendown elevator, and he was on the fourth floor. He packaged comics for INFANTINO: When I was 16 or 17 I did a job for a minor publishing minor publishers. I went up there, and I hung around... and I hung company called Fox. They gave me a script and I brought the artwork

“Irritate The Eye!”

One of Carmine’s early benefactors was Lone Ranger artist Charles Flanders, shown drawing Secret Agent X-9. The Lone Ranger daily depicted is from March 4, 1939, the end of Flanders’ first storyline. (For a truly great book on the Ranger in every medium, ambush a copy of From Out of the Past: A Pictorial History of The Lone Ranger by Dave Holland, published by The Holland House, 1988. You won’t be sorry!) [Lone Ranger ©2001 Lone Ranger Television, Inc.; a subsidiary of Palladium Media Enterprises, Inc.]

around. He had a reputation of being hard-nosed and cheap to artists. But he was more than fair to me. He said, “Why don’t you come here after school and Saturdays, and watch the guys work and learn. And I’ll give you five bucks a week for carfare and eating.” Which is very sweet. And he got nothing from it. I did that for quite a while. BK: How did you get to meet Charles Biro and into Daredevil? INFANTINO: I kept bringing my work around to all the comic houses. I hit there, I hit DC, I hit everywhere that anyone—I just kept going around. And then one day at Biro’s [Lev Gleason Publications], he said he was running late with one of his strips and he needed someone to work on the backgrounds. So I said, “Fine. I’ll take on anything.” I went to his house to work, with a kid named Norman Maurer. Norman finally married one of the Three Stooges’ daughters. We worked for Biro for a while, and from there I went over to Hillman Publications. Ed Cronin, the editor, had me drawing, and then he had me writing. I wasn’t sure I could write. But apparently I did. I drew a thing called “The Heap” for him. I also wrote a number of them. I wrote some Airboy stuff for him, too—drew and wrote. I got fascinated by writing, and I started reading Somerset Maugham and Sam Clemens/Mark Twain. I picked up an awful lot about writing from those gentlemen.

During the last year or two in school, I met Frank Giacoia. We got to be very friendly. We would each get a quarter a day to go to school and have lunch. You could have lunch on 15¢ a day in those days, which meant scrambled eggs and potatoes and coffee. What we would do is get one lunch, and share it, and we’d buy a comic book with the other money. We’d keep a dime for travel back and forth. Some days we bought all comic books and we walked home from Manhattan. It’s a rough trick, but we did it. He walked to Astoria; I walked to Brooklyn. It would take a couple of hours, but we felt it was worth it. We enjoyed at the time Lou Fine and Reed Crandall and the like. And we would roam the comic houses, looking for work. Well, one day we went to Timely Comics, and Frank and I got a strip called “Jack Frost.” Frank was the penciler. I was the inker... my inking was never that great. But he was a fairly good penciler at that time. They offered us a job in house [i.e., on staff]. My father said, “No way,” but Frank took it. He left school and he began with Timely Comics, which later became Marvel. Joe Simon was the editor-in-chief in those days. BK: Now, when you said you were inking, were you inking for a long time? INFANTINO: Just one or two jobs.

(Left-to-right:) Some of Carmine’s earliest work was “Hell’s Angels” in Holyoke’s Sparkling Stars. Note his progression from #1 (June ’44) through the Caniff-inspired page in #10 (Feb. ’46)... and his signed pencil-and-ink work in Aviation’s Contact Comics #4 (Jan. 1945) and in Continental’s Captain Aero Comics #26 (Aug. ’46). With thanks to Jim Vadeboncoeur. [©2001 the respective copyright holder.]

Carmine Infantino

BK: You always preferred penciling? INFANTINO: Always. Always. I don’t know how it turned out, but our roles reversed as time went on. I was the penciler and he was the inker. And Frank was a wonderful inker. While I was there, I was studying the Fosters [Hal Foster, creator of Prince Valiant] and the Milt Caniffs.

In Hillman’s Airboy Comics young Carmine drew “The Flying Dutchman” (Vol. 3, #6, July ’46), “The Heap” (V5#3, April ’48), and finally “Airboy” himself (V5#6, July ’48). Thanks to Jim Vadeboncoeur. Jim, who kindly loaned Roy a number of comics he could scan for this article, runs Bud Plant Illustrated Books, 3809 Laguna Av., Palo Alto, CA 94306-2629, which focuses on illustrative, cartooning, comic, reference, and how-to art books from the 1880s to the 1990s. Books about illustrators are a specialty. Three catalogs a year, free search service for customers. Jim can be reached at (650) 493-1191; website: <www.bpib.com>. [©2001 the respective copyright holder.]

BK: Were there other artists you were interested in? You mentioned Lou Fine earlier...

writing. Ed Cronin, the editor-in-chief, was very kind to me, and he helped me grow as a writer and an artist. Then at night I began going to the Art Students League. I finished there, and went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. And later I went to Queens College.

INFANTINO: Crandall was another one. I adored his work. In the summer I got a job at Quality Comics, which is where Crandall and Lou Fine and that whole ilk were. I had a job erasing pages, whiting out around borders, and filling in blacks. I got a quarter a page for that, all summer long. I rubbed my fingers to the bone. But it was a good experience. I saw the originals of Crandall and Lou Fine come in, [Will] Eisner, and all kinds of wonderful artists’ work. I learned a lot just by looking at the stuff.

At about 19 years old, Frank was getting tired of working at Timely, so we took our work to DC Comics. There were two offices at that time at DC. One was Superman Comics, and in the back room, down the hall, was All-American Comics, that was run by Sheldon Mayer. But we went to the main office, and there was a [production] guy there named Eddie Eisenberg. I’ll never forget Eddie. He said, “We can’t use you, but do me a favor. Go down the hall and talk to Sheldon Mayer and tell him I sent you. He might be able to use you.”

BK: Did you have the chance to talk with any of the artists while you were there?

Shelly saw my work and liked it, and he liked Frank’s work. But he said to us, “You guys have raw talent. Now, I can hire you immediately and let you just hang on and maybe develop, or I really suggest you go home for six months and study. Go to school again. Study what you can. Come back in six months, and I’ll give you a job.”

INFANTINO: No. Crandall would mail his stuff in, and Lou Fine was kind of a recluse. I never met Lou, and I’m sorry I never did. I thought he was a genius. Absolutely brilliant, the man. Nor [did I get to meet] Eisner, either, until much later on. Meanwhile, Frank was working at Timely Comics. He was working as an assistant, and then he became a fulltime inker. And I finished school. And then I began with Hillman Comics, drawing and

Well, Frank wanted work now, and he got it. But I did what [Mayer] said. I went out, and I came back. And he was true to his word: he gave me work. At the same time, [Joe] Kubert came in, and [Alex] Toth came in. So there was a whole group of us coming in at the same time. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were the next group of artists-to-be in the industry. BK: What did you start doing once you were at DC? INFANTINO: “Johnny Thunder” was the first thing I did, I believe. He put us all on back features, Sheldon did. He knew how to take talent, mold it, and develop it. He was absolutely brilliant. I did a strip called “The Shining Knight,” then something called “The Three Ghosts.” It was a back feature. [NOTE: The actual name of this Flash Comics feature was “The Ghost Patrol.” Interestingly, if Carmine drew “Shining Knight”— something which would be news to most of his devotees—that would have been not for Shelly Mayer and the AA side, but for DC proper.—Roy]

Above: As crime comics proliferated, Carmine drew for Hillman’s Real Clue Crime Stories (our motto: “Commit a crime and the world is made of glass”). “La Savate” in Vol. 2, #8 (Oct. 1947), at left, gave him a chance to draw both mood and action. Courtesy of Jim Vadeboncoeur. [©2001 the respective copyright holder.]

“Irritate The Eye!” One day I went in and Sheldon said, “You’re ready for ‘The Flash.’ That was the old Flash, not the new one. BK: “The Shining Knight” and “Johnny Thunder”—was that penciling and inking? INFANTINO: Just penciling. Frank was doing all the inking on my stuff then. We were pretty much a team at that time. And after that, Mayer put me on “The Flash.” Frank and I did that for quite a while. A guy named Hibbard was the first one to do “The Flash.” Also, Lee Elias had been doing it. BK: Were you encouraged to go your own way? INFANTINO: Shelly was very emphatic about that. “Go your own way,” he would say. He always felt that imitation was nothing. He wanted all of us, Kubert, myself, Giacoia, and Toth, to develop as individuals. He liked individualism in his books. BK: Did you like working on “The Flash”? INFANTINO: It was a challenge in the beginning. I enjoyed it in the beginning. Then, after a point, after you got to know the character, it starts to become a drag. We did that for quite a few years. We all worked on super-heroes. I drew about a page a day, just penciling. BK: The pay at DC was pretty good, I assume? INFANTINO: It wasn’t that good, but for the field it was good. We were getting $15 a page. By the way, the two editors we dealt with in those days were Julie Schwartz and Bob Kanigher. But Shelly kept a real tough hand on these guys, and on everybody. You did it his way. He was very strong, a terrific editor. He knew how to bring out things in people. He was a genius. I owe so much to him. BK: Were you working on other characters at the time? INFANTINO: No, only “The Flash.” BK: Did you want to work on other characters?

INFANTINO: I never thought about it, because the truth of it is that we were eating, and that’s what counted the most. But what we did do—I, Kubert, and Alex—we

talked with each other a lot. We’d all be studying. We’d be studying Frank Robbins’ work [on the comic strip Johnny Hazard], [Jack] Kirby another time. Alex went off on Roy Crane [creator of the Wash Tubbs/Cap’n Easy strip]. He loved his work. I stayed with Foster. I loved Foster. I learned mostly from his Tarzans. Later I moved on to Milton Caniff’s work. I joined the National Cartoonists Society at this time. I think it was ’46 or ’47. The Society used to have outings once a year to [prominent musician] Fred Waring’s place. Fred Waring loved cartoonists, and he had a big hotel and golf course, and a big Carmine doesn’t mention “Black Canary” in this interview club in Delaware on as a DC feature he helped inaugurate, but he remembered the Hudson. And he her when he drew this sketch for Shel Dorf; it appeared in would invite all the the 1972 San Diego ComiCon program book. Thanks, cartoonists one day a Carmine and Shel. For the heroine’s entire 1940s run, see year. Everything was the recent The Black Canary Archives. [Art ©2001 Carmine on the house, and we’d Infantino; Black Canary ©2001 DC Comics.] all go up. He’d have a show at night, and all the food you could eat. It was just a marvelous experience. That’s where I met Hal Foster, on one of those outings. He was a shy, quiet man... a genius... a big tall guy. I was in such awe of him I just kind of went over and said, “Ah... ah... ah...,” you know, “Mister Foster. Thank you for being you.” And I walked away. [laughs] Milt Caniff I met once or twice, and I got to be friendly with him. For some reason, I guess he was easier to approach, in my mind. We used to talk every once in a while. And then he called me one time. It may have been for Steve Canyon. He got sick and wanted me to take over the strip for a while. I couldn’t. I was too busy with my work, and I reluctantly turned him down. And I was trying at the time to do many newspaper strips on my own, which was a constant flop, after flop, after flop. I never connected with those things. In those days, working for the News Syndicate or King Features was the epitome of life. They were the two biggest syndicates, and you could become pretty wealthy if they bought your stuff. They were a locked-in club. Very few got in. But we kept trying. We drew new things, and we’d send them up, and they would get rejected. We’d do it in a different way, and it’d get rejected. And we’d get together with writers here and there, and constantly keep trying. Never connecting. I think it was for the best, actually, for it would have been a dead end road. I never left DC, by the way, from when I was 19 years old until I was 50 years old. So it was thirty years, I guess. BK: Were they a good company to work for?

John Broome

The Man Who Launched The Corps A Look at the Career of Master Storyteller JOHN BROOME by Rich Morrissey There was a time when The Green Lantern Corps patrolled the universe, 3600 strong. They had fought for justice since before the dawn of life on Earth, their mission and their power given them by the immortal Guardians of the planet Oa. Among them were the avian Tomar-Re, the sinister Sinestro, the lovely Katma Tui, and above all, the fearless, heroic Hal Jordan. The man from whose typewriter emerged all the above—as well as Wally West, the current heir to the title of The Flash; the noble Atomic Knights of a future now safely in the past; the diabolical but delightful rogues’ gallery of the Silver Age Flash—now is gone, after three decades of commuting in happy retirement between Paris and Tokyo, painting and teaching advanced English to the Japanese. Yet his importance to the field of comic books is a matter of historical record, treasured in the memory of his fans and his long-time editor, and still persists today when the above characters and countless more continue their adventures on the four-color page, as well as in animated cartoons and live-action series.

I. Peggy, Fawcett, and Science-fiction Irving Bernard Broome was born in Brooklyn in 1913, and grew up with many interests, including literature, writing, jazz, and contract bridge. In college he joined the basketball team and there picked up the nickname “Long John” (probably after Long John Silver from Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel Treasure Island), and it was as John Broome that he would be known for the rest of his life. He also met a young woman named Peggy Siegel, who was not related to the man who was at that time changing the course of comic books forever by creating Superman, but with whom he had many interests in common, especially literature and the use of language. They were married in 1937, and remained a loving and mutually supportive couple for over sixty years. In the early 1940s one of Broome’s frequent bridge partners, Rod Reed, was an editor at Fawcett Comics, and invited him to write for the line. Starting out with a story featuring sailor Lance O’Casey in Whiz Comics, Broome soon was “ready for Captain Marvel” and wrote a number of early adventures of the legendary Big Red Cheese and other characters. Already interested in creating new and original villains for his heroes to battle, John Broome came up with Ibac, a small-time crook given the powers of four historical villains by denizens of Hell, much as

(L. to r.:) Julius Schwartz, Peg Broome, and John Broome in a photo taken by Julie’s future wife Jean Ordwein in September 1946—with thanks to Julie and Jon B. Cooke. Gil Kane’s pencil rough for the cover of Green Lantern #167 shows him amid the Guardians of the Universe, courtesy of David G. Hamilton. [Photo ©1999 Julius Schwartz; art ©2001 DC Comics.]

the gods had given Billy Batson the powers of six mythic figures. In the meantime, Broome was writing and selling prose fiction, at the suggestion of his friend David Vern, who would also become a prolific comic book writer in years to come. Vern introduced him to “the world’s first interplanetary agent,” Julius Schwartz, who represented Vern and a number of the top science-fiction writers of the day (selling, among many others, Ray Bradbury’s first story). Schwartz would eventually sell twelve of John Broome’s stories, and the two became close friends. But then came World War II, and Broome entered the Army and was sent to the Pacific theatre.

The Man Who Launched The Corps

II. Apes and Atoms

17 scripted all six issues of DC’s comic, The New Adventures of Charlie Chan, which were drawn by Sid Greene.

Leaving the service after the end of the war, Broome again sought out Julius Schwartz. Schwartz, now an editor for AllAmerican Comics (a company Around the same once allied with DC Comics, and time, a short-lived recently purchased by it), invited newspaper strip him to write for his company, in featuring Nero an attempt to upgrade the level of Wolfe was launched writing in the comics under his with John Broome control. Most of the books were (along with his then being written almost in their friend and fellow entirety by veteran DC writers DC writer Ed Gardner Fox, John Wentworth, Herron) scripting; and Ted Udall. Schwartz Fran Matera and Frankly, we’ve no idea whether John Broome wrote the never-published, Infantino-penciled continued to obtain stories from another long-time late-’40s “GL” story from which these panels are taken, but he’s as likely a candidate as anyone Fox (and, indeed, encouraged him DC artist, Frank else. Courtesy of Len Wein. For the story behind the “written off” stamp, see next article. to write prose fiction for the first Giacoia, handled the [Green Lantern ©2001 DC Comics.] time: a field in which he would art. Years later, ultimately become prolific and successful in a number of genres), but Broome recalled visiting the home of Wolfe’s creator, Rex Stout, to get largely phased out the others in favor of freelancers Robert Kanigher his approval on his handling of Stout’s corpulent detective. and John Broome. He has frequently referred to the latter as “the best— my best writer, my best friend, and the best man at my wedding.” Writers rarely received credit on comic book stories at that time, but an exception was made for Strange Adventures, one of two scienceBroome again started out with backups such as “Wildcat,” “Dr. Midfiction titles (the other was Mystery in Space) conceived and edited by Nite,” “Little Boy Blue,” and “Sargon the Sorcerer,” but was soon Julius Schwartz. (Schwartz would be the editor on almost all of scripting headline features like the original “Flash” and “Green Broome’s DC work, though occasionally Broome would write a Lantern.” His familiarity with all these heroes led to Broome’s taking “Batman” or “Vigilante” story, or a sequence of the Superman over the scripting of the Justice Society of America in All-Star Comics, a newspaper strip, for Jack Schiff or Mort Weisinger.) Like the prose sf feature he would continue to write until its demise in 1950. Broome magazines, Strange Adventures credited its writers, especially those created several memorable villains for the JSA and its individual with any experience in prose SF, including Edmond Hamilton, Gardner members, including The Sportsmaster and the original Evil Star and Key. Fox... and John Broome. But super-heroes were already on the decline by the time John Broome started at DC, and he was soon proving his versatility on new and different features. He and Kanigher shared the writing of comics such as Rex the Wonder Dog, The Phantom Stranger (although Schwartz recalls the latter as having been created by Manly Wade Wellman), and the licensed Western movie hero Hopalong Cassidy (featuring art by Gene Colan and later by Gil Kane), which he would later recall as one of his favorites to write.

However, to get a wider variety of bylines, Schwartz had his writers employ several pseudonyms each. Broome was also both “John Osgood” and “Edgar Ray Merritt”: the former name combining Broome’s own (adopted) first name with his mother’s maiden name, while the latter nom de plume was an amalgam of sf writers Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Cummings, and A. Merritt. The bylines faded out before long, but Broome remained one of the primary scripters of the two sf titles for the rest of Schwartz’ tenure on them.

Broome created a recurring backup for Rex’s title: “Detective Chimp,” with artist Carmine Infantino. The title character was a highly intelligent chimpanzee who solved the murder of his first owner and was then adopted by Florida sheriff Fred Chase, with whom he worked on many more cases. This series, often cited by Infantino as his all-time favorite, was the first time, but decidedly not the last, that he and Broome would collaborate on stories involving apes.

By and large, the two DC science-fiction comics ran individual, self-contained stories without recurring characters. But increasingly as the ’50s wore on and gave way to the ’60s they would feature continuing characters, and John Broome contributed three of these.

Bobo the chimp was not the only detective whose adventures Broome chronicled during the 1950s; he also brought to comics two of the most famous detectives of prose fiction. Charlie Chan was originally created by Earl Derr Biggers in six novels and later starred in a series of movies featuring Warner Oland and Sidney Toler as the Asian-American detective of the Honolulu police force. In 1958-59 Broome

We do know that Broome wrote the never-reprinted Justice Society adventure “The Man Who Conquered the Solar System” in All-Star #55 (Oct.-Nov. 1950), with its combined Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft touches. Art by Frank Giacoia. [©2001 DC Comics.]

“Captain Comet,” written by Broome (as Edgar Ray Merritt) and drawn by Murphy

Written Off - 9-30-49

by Roy Thomas

Part I The Day The Heroes Died

[Except where otherwise noted, all original-art reproductions accompanying this article are from photocopies courtesy of Marv Wolfman.]

i. Infamy There aren’t many dates I could rattle off instantly if somebody woke me up in the middle of the night, shone a flashlight in my eyes, and demanded to know when a particular event happened. My birthday, of course... the date of JFK’s assassination (maybe because it happened on my 23rd birthday)... oh yeah, and Pearl Harbor (you’re surprised at this?). Oh, and one more: I could, with only a couple of seconds’ thought, give a correct answer to someone who was yelling in my face: “On what day were hundreds of pages of vintage comic art ‘written off’ by DC Comics?” My reply: “September 30, 1949.” Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a little. Still, the above date has definitely been emblazoned on my brain in recent years—because I’ve seen it, over and over and over again, stamped on old pages and pieces of pages of comic art (or, more often, on photocopies thereof), as reproduced above.

In 1944 the 25¢, 128-page Big All-American Comic Book showcased virtually every super-hero in the AA lineup except Dr. Mid-Nite (and maybe he was originally scheduled to make a house call, since somebody’s name must’ve been in that blank space between “Bulldog Drumhead” and “Atom”!). But by 1949 none of them except Wonder Woman still appeared in a solo series. [©2001 DC Comics.]

On that long-ago Friday, DC co-publishers Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz, acting in concert with their lawyers and accounting department, decided the time had come to “write off” a huge quantity of original art and story for which they no longer had any use. By doing so, DC—then officially National Comics Publications, Inc.—could take a one-time tax deduction for what that material had cost them, anywhere from one month to more than half a decade before. Accordingly, a vast number of twice-up pages of finished artwork were rubber-stamped: “WRITTEN OFF - 9-30-49,” whether the actual marking was done on that date or a bit later. In all probability a goodly amount of comic book art (and probably some scripts, as well) was trashed at that time or soon afterward. Although that action reflected decisions that had been made a year, even several years, earlier, 1949 was a logical time for this wholesale dumping to occur. For, ’twas in mid-1948 that Wonder Woman, The Flash, and Green Lantern were evicted from the pages of the oversize 15¢ Comic

This half-page of “Dr. Mid-Nite” (by Peddy & Sachs?) was once scheduled for AllAmerican Comics #110; but unless Doc had donned cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat, he’d have been out of the running—because by then All-American Western was eight issues old! [Dr. Mid-Nite ©2001 DC Comics.]

Written Off - 9-30-49

Cavalcade, to be replaced starting in #30 (Dec. ’48-Jan. ’49) by The Fox and the Crow and a horde of (moderately) funny animals. Only a month or two later, the final issue of Flash Comics (#104) dashed onto sale, with a February ’49 cover date. Henceforth The Flash, Hawkman, The Atom, and Black Canary would be seen only as members of the Justice Society in All-Star Comics, and The Ghost

middle 1950s: Johnny Quick, The Vigilante, Robotman, Zatara the Magician, The Shining Knight, Green Arrow, and Aquaman. Indeed, the latter two have stuck around from that day to this. But why the preponderance of All-American characters on that late’40s hit list? By the end of 1950 every one of Max Gaines’ former superheroes except Wonder Woman was extinct—while various DC ones lasted for anywhere from a year to all the way up to the present? The survival of Superman, Batman, and (perhaps for a time) the Amazon princess was assured by sales of their solo titles; but what about the other seven?

ii. Mammon and the Archetypes Some months ago, when I referred in an e-mail to declining sales of super-hero comics in the late 1940s, a “fact” assumed even in statements by Gardner Fox and other pros who were around at the time, I received the following reply from Jerry G. Bails, founder of the original Alter Ego back in 1961—to which I’ve merely added a few bracketed clarifications: “There was no clear evidence that sales of costumed heroes were dropping after World War II. The decision to try new genres was Among the many “written off” tiers from 1940s DC!comics were these “Atom” panels by Joe Gallagher—this “Little Boy Blue” row by Frank Harry once earmarked for Sensation Comics #88—and this “Ghost Patrol” art by Arthur Peddy and (probably) Bernard Sachs, one of the few ’40s splash panels preserved. Why and how Marv Wolfman happens to have this 2/3-page piece amongst all his art tiers, he has no recollection! [All characters ©2001 DC Comics.]

Patrol would finally give up the ghost for good. (The scarlet speedster’s solo title, All-Flash, had already dropped out of the race after #32, cover-dated Dec. 1947-Jan. 1948). Green Lantern was extinguished with #38 (May-June 1949), while with #102 the flag had been lowered on All-American Comics, the first title ever published by the company of that name. With #103 (Nov. 1948) it became All-American Western, and all the features of the original monthly (except for the Johnny-Thunder-come-lately cowboy hero) wound up on Boot Hill: Green Lantern, Dr. Mid-Nite, even The Black Pirate. (Aviator Hop Harrigan had been shot down in flames after #99.) Over in Sensation Comics Sargon the Sorcerer and Little Boy Blue had faded to black with #83 (Nov. ’48), and Wildcat was finally put to sleep with #90 (June ’49); Wonder Woman would soldier on in Sensation for a bit longer—and of course her own solo title never was dropped. By coincidence—or maybe not; read on—the major casualties of that day of infamy 9-30-49 were heroes who had originated in the onceproud All-American Comics group—M.C. Gaines’ company which had been loosely allied with National/DC (because co-owned by Harry Donenfeld, and later Jack Liebowitz) before being purchased by DC circa 1945 and fully submerged into it by 1948. Admittedly, a few once-bright stars of the original DC-proper lineup fell to Earth in ’48-’49, as well: Air Wave went off the air after Detective Comics #137 (July 1948); The Star Spangled Kid twinkled out after Star Spangled Comics #86 (Nov. 1948); and even his upstart sister Merry, Girl of 1000 Gimmicks, turned out to have only enough gadgets to carry her through #90 (March 1949). Yet, besides Superman/Superboy, Batman, and even Robin in his Star-Spangled solo series, no less than seven other pure DC (as opposed to originally AA) super-heroes lasted at least into the early or even

based on hopes of increased sales because some titles like Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, Crime Does Not Pay, Roy Rogers, etc., were taking off. With Sheldon Mayer moving on in 1948, I don’t think either Julie Schwartz or Robert Kanigher especially cared about the costumed genre, and they were more than willing to try new lines of their own. The so-called ‘sales drop’ of the All-American titles was never confirmed in any sales figures I’ve seen.

Who Created The Silver Age Flash?

Who Created The Silver Age Flash? An Oral History in the Words of Robert Kanigher, Carmine Infantino, Joe Kubert, Julius Schwartz—and Robin Snyder ROBIN SNYDER [Summarizing in History of the Comics, Vol. 1, #13, Dec. 1990:]

Carmine Infantino penciled and inked the wraparound cover for the out-of-print 1991 hardcover The Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told, which included tales of both the Golden and Silver Age Flashes. Repro’d from the original art as seen in the Sotheby’s art auction catalog for June 18, 1994. [©2001 DC Comics.]

Compiled and Edited by Roy Thomas [EDITOR’S NOTE: Forget those interesting speculations concerning Captain Comet, Captain Flash, and The Manhunter from Mars. The Silver Age of Comics was born in July of 1956 when Showcase #4 went on sale, featuring two tales of a new/revived Flash written respectively by Robert Kanigher and John Broome, penciled by Carmine Infantino, inked by Joe Kubert, and edited by Julius Schwartz, technically under the direction of Whitney Ellsworth. Over the past decade, several of the above creators, beginning with Robert Kanigher, have gone on the record in Robin Snyder’s excellent monthly publication and “oral history” History of the Comics (now simply The Comics) concerning their memories of the origins of the Barry Allen Flash. [With the permission of all concerned, we have assembled those statements, plus a smattering of comments from other sources, to form a connected narrative. (We haven’t sought quotations by the late John Broome, as he was not involved in The Flash’s origin story.) It will come as no great surprise to any knowledgeable student of comic art—or of human nature—that in several key instances there are substantial disagreements between the parties involved. Our purpose is not to weigh in on the side of one creator or another in any disputed area—we are admirers of each of them—but merely to gather these statements in one place and let the reader make up his/her own mind... hopefully remembering that a fan, as readily as a pro, can be wrong. But first, let’s read what Robin Snyder had to say about the subject. It was his magazine, after all: ]

34 years ago, in Showcase #4, Sept.-Oct. 1956, Barry Allen/The Fastest Man Alive/The Flash first appeared, in a 12-page story, “Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt.” Today there’s a TV program bearing his name. Who is he? How did he come to be? Who created him? The publisher, DC Comics, has yet to give the creator or creators a byline as in the case of Superman and Batman. The producer of the TV series does not, either, though similar programs, from Batman to Tales from the Crypt, do carry such credits. Why the exception in the case of The Flash? Which standards are being used by the publishers and producers?

In my investigation of this puzzle, some have suggested the lack of creator credits is because the contemporary character is an updated and revised character. Yet the updated and revised Perry Mason movies are credited to the originator, Earle Stanley Gardner. In 1990 Batman bears little resemblance to the 1939 character created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, yet Kane rates a byline. (Why Finger’s name is omitted is for the publisher to answer.) The current version of Superman is nearly unrecognizable when placed beside the original, yet Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster are still credited with his creation. And so forth. The question of who created The Flash has been addressed. By Julie Schwartz, Robert Kanigher, and Carmine Infantino. In the beginning, Schwartz said, in The Flash #161, May 1966: “...Robert Kanigher (originator of The Flash in its Showcase tryout)...” A few years later, in The Comic Artist #1, May 1969, Infantino said, “Schwartz became editor, Kanigher—writer, and I, etc...”

Robert Kanigher, scripter of the Silver Age Flash’s origin. Photo courtesy of RK.

In 1975 Infantino said, “Julie called me in... We were going to re-do The Flash. Kanigher would write it. I would do the pencils, and Joe Kubert would ink it.” [The Amazing World of DC Comics, Vol. 2, No. 8, Sept.-Oct. 1975.] In The Comics Journal #85, Oct. 1983, Kanigher said, “I created the modern Flash. I wrote about him. I sat with him and listened to his hopes and despairs and dreams. He has my genes.” In 1986, in Ron Goulart’s Great History of Comic Books, Schwartz is quoted as saying: “I worked out a story with Bob Kanigher—new costume, new secret identity, new origin.”

Who Created The Silver Age Flash?

And in the History of the DC Universe, 1988, [Schwartz] had this to say: “The only thing he had in common with his predecessor was his speed. I wanted originality—and that became my watchword for everything I did: Be Original. I gave Barry (The Flash) Allen a new origin and an interesting cast of characters. The result was a runaway hit...” So. What have we learned? That Schwartz, Kanigher, Infantino, and Kubert worked on that first story; that Kanigher said he created the character; that Infantino said Schwartz was the editor, Kanigher the writer, and himself the penciler, and Kubert the inker; that Schwartz first said that Kanigher was the originator of The Flash and then that he “worked out” a story with Kanigher, and finally that he gave the hero “a new origin and interesting cast of characters.” And Schwartz was the editor. Does that make him the creator? If so, how? Kanigher was the writer. Did he bring the character into being? How? Infantino was the pencil artist. Did he originate The Flash or his costume or design his look based on the work of another? Kubert inked Infantino’s drawings. Is the inker a prime cause in the act of creation or a corollary?

CARMINE INFANTINO [Writing as “Cinfa” in History of the Comics, Vol. 1, No. 13, Dec. 1990:] Super-heroes had died off and we were stabbing at anything that might sell: romance, western, sci-fi... On one day I was delivering my work, Julie told me we were going to try The Flash. He said it was decided at an editorial meeting. He gave me a script by Kanigher. (I know Kanigher had a lot of input. It was in his style.) I was told to design a costume. I chose a stark bland one with lightning bolt accents. (Those belts would help in creating the speed effects for the character.) I always kept him slim, like a runner; wiry, too. Others bulked him up. Different strokes for different... The cover idea for the first issue was Kanigher’s—this I do remember. As the strip progressed, Julie kept after me to come up with something different. The multi-figure action sequences helped create the illusion of speed, and I later added the device of gesturing hands for decoration.

Finally, is The Flash the The three other gents behind Showcase #4’s Flash origin: [left to right, seated] Carmine Infantino, Julie Schwartz, and Joe Kubert—together again for one brief shining moment at same character as the one first the All Time Classic New York Comic Book Convention held in White Plains, NY, in June written and drawn by 2000. The guy leaning between Julie and Joe is Roy Thomas, who moderated the panel. Gardner Fox and Harry (Photo courtesy of convention entrepreneur Joe Petrilak.) Lampert in Flash Comics #1, Why Kanigher didn’t 1940? Or an updated version? continue on the strip, I don’t know. I don’t recall when Gardner came Or completely different but bearing the same name? aboard. Let’s find out. And, hopefully, finally recognize the creator of The Flash.

ROBERT KANIGHER

Lastly, Kanigher had a way with his scripts to make me stretch and grow. Thank you, Bobby.

[From History of the Comics, Vol. 1, #4, April 1990:]

[From History of the Comics, Vol. 2, #4, April 1991, as excerpted there by Robin Snyder from the various sources noted:]

One day, Mr. Schwartz asked me to write a new origin for The Flash. Gardner Fox had originated The Flash. He was, and in my mind would always be, the creator of The Flash. I merely reinvented The Flash. I wrote a completely finished script in every single detail, which he [Schwartz] gave to Carmine Infantino to draw. I am credited with creating the modern Flash. Flash Two. Never. I’m not like the scavengers of today who make up new origins for my Rex the Wonder Dog, my Ragman, my Black Canary, my Enemy Ace, etc. The minion is still is session.

The Flash was revitalized in Showcase in 1956. I went up to the office one day and Julie Schwartz said to me, “We want to try super-heroes again...” I thought they were dead and gone after they had fallen out of favor a few years earlier, but DC wanted to give them another shot, starting with a revamping of The Flash... I just went home and did the job from Bob Kanigher’s script and that was it. (“People at Work,” Direct Currents, ©1990 DC Comics.)

Flash forward: With the revision going on now turning genuine creatorship into entangled spaghetti to include people whose head is an empty balloon as far as creativity is concerned, I glanced at a copy of the first Flash 2, which was published as a re-invention. With a slight difference. Now I had as collaborators: Mr. Infantino, penciler; and Mr. Schwartz, editor, etc., etc., etc. [From History of the Comics, Vol. 1, #6, August 27, 1990:] [Gardner] Fox was a creator. A seminal figure. He created The Flash, etc. I invented Flash 2, the modern Flash. A world of difference.

And so we [Frank Giacoia and I] began our careers at National Periodicals [in the 1940s] and, more important, our working relationship with the genius of Shelly Mayer. During this period, he also fostered the careers of Joe Kubert and Alex Toth. This brilliant man molded, encouraged, indulged, and drew a talent from us that we never knew existed. I began with secondary features like “Johnny Thunder” (the one with the Magic Thunderbolt) and “The Ghost Patrol,” and graduated to one of the top bananas, the original “Flash.” In early 1956, during one of my weekly visits to Julie’s office—one he shared with writer-editor Bob Kanigher—I was informed that during one of their editorial meetings a decision was made to try super-heroes once again...

Title Comic Fandom Archive

“What s So Great About Comic Art ?” by Bill Schelly

fanfare, ado, or folderol, here’s an issue-by-issue stroll through the pages of Comic Art!

[In Alter Ego V3#9 we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the publication of Alter-Ego #1 (then hyphenated) back in March 1961 by showcasing a San Diego 2000 panel discussion by seven fans who were active in fandom’s Golden Age—the 1960s. One of the key members of that blue-ribbon panel was Maggie Thompson, who with her late husband Don edited and published a fanzine that appeared at roughly the same time as A-E #1, but with a very different tenor and mission. That fanzine was Comic Art. [We couldn’t let this year pass without observing the 40th anniversary of CA, looking back on the origins and highlights of that landmark publication. For, just as A/E was a vehicle for the interests of mostly-super-hero comics fans, many of whom had been comics readers in the 1940s, so Comic Art was a vehicle for the mostly-science-fiction fans who also enjoyed comic books and strips, and who comprised a major tributary into the river that became known as comics fandom—a separate and distinct phenomenon from science-fiction fandom. —Bill.]

COMIC ART #1 (April 1961)

Don and Maggie Thompson pose as if running off a fanzine page on their mimeograph in their apartment in Oberlin, Ohio. Astute readers will note that the protective cover is on the mimeo drum, rather than a stencil. The cover of Comic Art #1 was printed in the previous issue of Alter Ego, so below is the one for #2. [Photo courtesy of Maggie Thompson; Krazy Kat ©2001 the respective copyright holder.]

At a recent Seattle comicon, while discussing the fanzines of the 1960s, I found myself pausing for a moment when one cheeky fellow—no fresh-faced youth, either—posed the question, “What’s so great about Comic Art?” I paused because, while I could easily toss an answer back at him—and did—I suddenly realized I wasn’t as familiar with the contents of Comic Art as I was with other vintage favorites such as Fantasy Illustrated, Batmania, Star-Studded Comics, or Alter Ego. I hadn’t thoroughly revisited CA’s seven issues since reading them when I initially added them to the Comic Fandom Archive almost a decade ago. On returning home, I retrieved my copies of CA from the archive, and spent the remainder of a languorous Sunday re-reading them cover-tocover. When I was done, I was seized with the urge to phone that questioning fan and regale him with my refreshed knowledge. But unfortunately… frustratingly… I didn’t remember his name. Then an even better idea occurred to me: I would share what I had learned with fandom in general through A/E. As it turned out, that plan neatly dovetailed with Roy’s own desire to recognize the anniversary of Don and Maggie’s venerable publication. Therefore, without further

The first thing that struck me about CA #1 was its slim stature: It runs a mere sixteen pages. Though Don and Maggie had sent out their single-sheet Harbinger #1 around the end of 1960, announcing their intention to publish an all-comics fanzine (something that had heretofore been done mainly in admiration of EC comics), they obviously hadn’t been inundated with contributions. Yet that modest first issue served to give concrete form to their vision, and offered two important features, plus an editorial that re-stated the clarion call of Harbinger.

This issue, like all that followed, was printed via high-quality mimeograph in black ink on nice paper (not to be confused with ditto or spirit duplication, which prints mainly in purple.) Later issues would sometimes include a lithographed page, but only when absolutely necessary for art reproduction.

In their editorial, “The Word,” Don and Maggie wrote, “This is not meant in any way to be a science-fiction fanzine— although the bulk of the circulation will be among SF fans because most of our friends are fans. It is to be a comic art fanzine. Comic art, for our purposes, covers a wide field. Besides comic books and comic strips, it includes movie and TV cartoons, gag and spot and political cartoons, and the Big and Better Little Books of years ago. Subject matter ranges from horror and adventure to satire and gentle humor. This fanzine is not meant for kids, but for adults who appreciate, admire, or produce comic art.” At once, it was clear that Comic Art cast its net widely. At the 1960 Worldcon over Labor Day weekend in Pittsburgh, Don and Maggie and fellow fan Hal Lynch had not seen the copies of Xero #1 that Dick and Pat Lupoff were handing out free there, and which contained the first installment of “And All in Color for a Dime,” devoted to The Marvel Family. But they had attended the masquerade and admired the Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel costumes sported by the Lupoffs; and that spark, coupled with their own interest, had set them talking about

Comics Fandom Archive

forming a fandom just for comics fans. Thus it’s particularly fitting that the major contributor to Comic Art #1 was Xero editor Dick Lupoff, who speculated on the emergence of latent interest in comics. “Re-birth” is an article of inestimable value to anyone interested in the history of fandom. In its five pages Lupoff recounts step-by-step how he and his wife came to publish an sf fanzine, how that first issue included his “Big Red Cheese” article, how From CA #2, one of Maggie (then Curtis)’s cartoons of they attended that masquerade in those bright herself and near-future husband Don—juxtaposed with a red costumes, and how the reception the photo of Maggie and Dick & Pat Lupoff using the latter’s fanzine and their homemade outfits received fireplace as a spot to staple copies of Comic Art prior to seemed to precipitate or catalyze the interest in taking them to a New York City convention for distribution. [Art ©2001 Maggie Thompson; photo by Don Thompson.] comics. Lupoff wrote, “During this same general time-frame a number of fans have indicated a strong interest in comics and comics-oriented activity, ranging from the efforts of Tom Condit and Martha Atkins to form a Marvel Family Revival Association to Hal Lynch, Maggie Curtis, and Don Thompson’s efforts to start a general comics fandom, to simultaneous moves by Ted White and Don Thompson to publish comics fanzines.” Dick also put his finger on one of the most critical reasons why a comics fandom movement was so necessary: to preserve the history of the medium before it was lost forever. It seemed to Lupoff (and he wasn’t the only one, especially among those not cognizant of the DC hero revivals) that comics in 1961 were in a very bad way, perhaps even on the verge of extinction. Like the dime novels and pulps before them, it was possible comics had reached the end of their natural life span. Yet there was nothing—apart from the ridiculous Seduction of the Innocent—written about comic books, and precious little about comic strips. Lupoff asserted that the time had come when it was vital to do something about that lack. He concluded, “Yes, I enjoy old comics, but it’s a lot more than that. I care about old comics. Old comics matter— they count. And anyone planning projects to save them can count on me.” Don and Maggie responded to Lupoff’s semi-challenge in “Re-birth” by announcing their intention to produce a bibliography of the work of Walt Kelly, and a list of the Dell Four Color series which had had a different feature in each issue.

Thus were established the three themes that would dominate future issues of Comic Art: discussions of the inherent value of comics as a popular culture medium (with the debate becoming quite heated); research into the medium’s past with still-living creators; and the forwarding of plans to accumulate information on the field that would eventually catalog every comic book ever published. All these pursuits would be conducted in a noticeably more adult context than in many of the comics fanzines that would follow, primarily (though not entirely) because CA emerged from the ranks of mainly adult science-fiction fans. The other important feature of CA #1 was a printing of the entire Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America, Inc—i.e., the Comics Code—something most comic book fans had never actually read. It raised more than a few eyebrows, particularly in the amount of latitude it gave the censors. Oh, and one more thing: The issue sported a cover combining characters from Crockett Johnson’s Barnaby strip with caricatures of Don and Maggie themselves, showing that Maggie possessed a notinconsiderable cartooning talent, which would come more into evidence in later issues. Certainly the caricatures of herself and Don—reading comics, toasting a new success, overseeing the activities of their burgeoning family of pets and children—are one of the most charming aspects of the fanzine’s seven issues.

COMIC ART #2 (August/September 1961) Behind its neatly stencilled cover featuring George Herriman and characters from Krazy Kat, CA #2 offered a few more pages than #1 (20 compared to 16), but was still clearly in its developmental stages. Aside from the beginnings of what would be one of the most interesting letter columns of any comics zine (“Oh, So?”—a title derived from Donald Duck’s favorite expression), with missives from Carl Barks and Harvey Kurtzman, no less, this issue, too, is comprised basically of two articles: one on costumed- vs. super-heroes by Lupoff, and the other (much the more interesting) by Robert “Buck” Coulson opining on the value of comic books.

“A Glance at Comic Books, or: All Is Duller for a Time” by Coulson, partly a response to “Re-birth” in CA #1, is clearly— even playfully—intended to garner a strong response from the readership. The two-page piece begins, “At first glance, a reason for disliking comics would seem to be obvious. They’re literary trash. But a closer look reveals flaws in the idea. Comic books are trash, of course; that at least is open to no question. But, as regards my disliking them, I have the uncomfortable recollection that Planet Stories was trash, and I liked that, so

Roy Thomas ’ Overstuffed Comics Fanzine

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BOB POWELL

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RIDER AVENGER GHOST DICK AYERS

VIN SULLIVAN’S MAGAZINE ENTERPRISES

STRONG MAN

JIMMY DURANTE

TIM HOLT

CAVE GIRL

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CARL BARKS C.C. BECK WAYNE BORING DAVE COCKRUM MICHAEL T. GILBERT MARC SWAYZE Plus:

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DURANGO KID

JOE CERTA JOHN BELFI FRED GUARDINEER

FUNNYMAN

SHUSTER, SIKELA, & AYERS

No. 10 SEPTEMBER 2001 Ghost Rider is TM Marvel Characters, Inc. All other characters © respective copyright holders.

Vol. 3, No. 10 / September 2001

™

Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editor Bill Schelly

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editors John Morrow Jon B. Cooke

FCA Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck

ME FCA TO O! Section

Comics Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus

Jerry Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White, Mike Friedrich

Cover Artists

Dick Ayers Carmine Infantino & Terry Austin

Contents

Writer/Editorial: I Love ME—Meaning “Magazine Enterprises”! 2 “You Either Have It, or You Do Not!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Bill Harper looks at Vin Sullivan and ME.

Cover Color

Vin Sullivan: The ME Decades. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Excerpts from an interview with the company’s founding father and guiding light.

Mailing Crew

Fred Guardineer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 The artist of The Durango Kid— profiled by Bill Black and interviewed by Dylan Williams.

And Special Thanks to:

Dick Ayers: A Life in the Gowanus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Before Ghost Rider, there was— Ghost Rider! (Not to mention Funnyman, The Avenger, et al.)

Tom Ziuko

Russ Garwood, Glen Musial, Ed Stelli, Pat Varker, Loston & Carolyn Wallace

This issue dedicated to the memory of Rich Morrissey

Nuggets: A Letter from Bob Powell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 A 1965 missive to Jerry de Fuccio from ME’s most prolific artist. “Wayne Is Boring!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Michael T. Gilbert and Dave Sim take yet another look at Superman’s second artist. ACTOR Up and Running! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Jim McLauchlin on the new organization created to help comics people help themselves. The All-Star Compendium, Installment III. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 A few (hopefully final) corrections to the All-Star Companion. Paul Hamerlinck’s FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) #69 . 39 Dave Cockrum, Marc Swayze, and C.C. Beck co-star in a Fawcett fiesta! Carmine & Company. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: We couldn’t make up our minds as to whether our ME-related cover should feature quasi-super-heroes like The Avenger and Jet Powers— or cowboys like Ghost Rider and Redmask— or jungle stars like Cave Girl and Thun’da— so Dick Ayers solved our problem by drawing ’em all! Thanks, Dick— and thanks to his wife Lindy for keeping on his back about it! [Art ©2001 Dick Ayers; heroes ©2001 the respective copyright holders. Ghost Rider is now a trademark of Marvel Characters, Inc.] Above: This dramatic panel by Darlin’ Dick Ayers ended the first tale of ME’s mysterious masked hero in The Avenger #1 (1955). AC Comics’ version of the art, shown here, was restored and tone-enhanced by Bill Black and his talented crew for glorious black-&-white reproduction. [Art ©2001 AC Comics and the estate of Vin Sullivan.] Alter EgoTM is published quarterly by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. Phone: (919) 833-8092. Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: Rt. 3, Box 468, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@oburg.net. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $8 ($10 Canada, $11 elsewhere). Eight-issue subscriptions: $40 US, $80 Canada, $88 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

Vin Sullivan

“You Either Have It Or You Do Not!” A Brief Look at the Life and Times of VIN SULLIVAN—and at Magazine Enterprises by Bill Harper Vincent Sullivan’s introduction to the world of comic books came through his early love and appreciation for the Sunday funnies. “I always liked to draw and was always interested in cartooning,” said Vin (as he was usually called). He never had any formal art training. “I don’t think you can be taught to be a cartoonist; it is something you grow up with. You either have it, or you do not!” His determination and boldness led him to send his cartoon work to various newspapers and syndicates. After the New York Daily News bought several of his sports cartoons, he applied for the position of sports cartoonist when there was an opening. However, Gus Edson (creator of the popular strip The Gumps) got the job. “I think I might have been too young,” was how Vin figured it later. Still, he continued submitting and looking for openings as a cartoonist. He did not recall how he learned that Major Malcolm WheelerNicholson was forming a comic book publishing firm. After their initial meeting, Sullivan joined Nicholson and Whitney Ellsworth, also a cartoonist, as the first editors of National Allied Publications. Thus was Sullivan thrust into comics history by being in on the advent of the modern comic book when in 1938, as editor of Action Comics #1, he had a hand in debuting “Superman,” certainly the most important comic book series ever published, as the cover feature. Sullivan is also credited with encouraging Bob Kane to create a costumed hero; the result in that case was the debut of “Batman” in Detective Comics #27 (1939).

Vin Sullivan is thus organically connected to the two most popular and influential comic book characters of all time.

Vin Sullivan at the San Diego Comicon, 1998—flanked by his two most famous “discoveries.” But he was prouder of Magazine Enterprises. Photo ©Dave Siegel; provided by Bill Schelly. [Art ©2001 DC!Comics.]

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 5, 1911, he joined Nicholson in 1935 at the age of 24. Because there were no precedents or job descriptions at the time, Sullivan was forced to learn all the tasks of creating “comic” books, drawing fillers, marketing the books, and, most importantly, distributing the things. Nicholson, who was deeply in financial debt to his distributor, Independent News Company, suddenly found its owner Harry Donenfeld stepping in and redirecting his firm into a new organization: National Periodical. It was at this juncture that Sullivan was made a full editor, overseeing various titles, particularly Action Comics. With this acknowledged position and working experience, Sullivan was approached by Charles McAdams, president of McNaught Newspaper Syndicate (to which Sullivan had earlier submitted cartoons), and Frank Marky, owner of a smaller syndicate, with the proposition of forming a comic book publishing firm. Sullivan agreed, and in 1940 Columbia Comic Corporation was launched. His main interest in the new company was to be with a firm “progressive” enough to develop and publish new features, rather than relying primarily on reprints from newspaper syndicates. Columbia did publish new work, including the super-heroes Skyman and The Face; but Sullivan felt that the company’s heads were reluctant (or, as he put it, “dragging their heels”) to make original material the foundation of the firm. Thus, in 1943, he formed his own company—Magazine Enterprises— beginning with a comic titled The United States Marines, which featured all-new stories. Vin Sullivan had moved from editor to entrepreneur.

“You Either Have It Or You Do Not!” His dream of being a cartoonist had led him to helm a company where, ironically, business responsibilities forced him further than ever from his dream of cartooning, yet allowed him to make yet another mark in comics history and to employ many of comics history’s greats. He brought a level-headed business approach to Magazine Enterprises, as he had to the other organizations for which he had worked. Magazine Enterprises (ME), which had many different company names—Life Romances Publications, Complix and Sussex Publication Companies, etc.—did initially rely in part on syndicate reprints, but eventually its lineup was composed of books with all-original features. To free himself to handle the business side of ME, Sullivan sought an editor for his new firm. He found a most unlikely candidate in Raymond Krank, who at the time was employed at Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Krank wrote scripts, in addition to being very influential in the creative direction of ME. Many artists and writers interviewed in later years remarked on Krank’s editorial abilities. Interestingly, according to Sullivan, Krank never took a hand at cartooning. Unfortunately, very little is known about ME’s only editor. Under the leadership of Sullivan and Krank, ME supplied readers with fifteen years of one of the most creative, aggressive, and exciting lineups of comic characters. In 1944 ME introduced a comic book with the overall title A-1, in which many of the company’s successful series got their first tryout. The series’ numbering, as well as the A-1 logo, was discontinued after issue #17, with various features having numbers which corresponded to the times they had appeared as an issue of A-1. If a series broke away from A-1, the numeration would continue from that point. This system can make collecting ME titles maddening at times. With the success of ME’s Tim Holt series, depicting the adventures of a post-war cowboy movie star, Sullivan began to actively seek to license other popular culture icons. The two issues of Jimmy Durante, drawn by Dick Ayers and written by Raymond Krank, published in the A-1 series, were especially pleasing to Sullivan. He admired Durante, an amazingly popular stage and screen comedian of the period, known primarily for his big nose and raspy voice. This short-lived comic book had a single-story-per-issue format that was before its time.

ME is fondly remembered primarily for its western comics of the 1950s. After Tim Holt (and before it became Red Mask), a contract was penned to bring The Durango Kid (a Columbia movie series starring Charles Starrett as another masked cowboy) into a western lineup that would eventually include Straight Arrow (another secret-identity western series, based on a popular radio series) and Best of the West, which printed new stories of Straight Arrow, Tim Holt, The Durango Kid, and Ghost Rider (of whom more below). From radio, too, came From Tim Holt #41, one of Frank Bolle’s "3D Effect" comics about comedians issues; courtesy of Bill Black. Fibber McGee and [©2001 AC!Comics &!the estate of Vin Sullivan.] Mollie, and Bobby Benson’s B-Bar-B Riders (yet another western). Sullivan once remarked in a letter to the present writer that Straight Arrow, which had the longest run of any ME title, became the company’s best-seller, as well. A backup feature in all issues of Straight Arrow except the first was the Bob Powell-drawn “Red Hawk”; one solo Red Hawk issue was also included in the A-1 series. Both “Red Hawk” and Straight Arrow depicted Native Americans as heroes. In the late 1950s ME also put out an authorized Robin Hood comic, based on the TV series starring Richard Greene. In addition, ME packaged books as promotional giveaways. Major Inapak the Space Ace, drawn by Bob Powell for Inapak chocolate drink, and Little Miss Sunbeam Comics for Quality Bakers of America have been identified as two of ME’s promotional books. There was also a Strong Man, likewise drawn by Powell, listed as a complimentary comic copyright by Sales Promotional Publishers, under ME’s umbrella of companies. Recently uncovered was a Straight Arrow (#9) stamped “Compliments of Straight Arrow and Nabisco Shredded Wheat/FOR PROMOTIONAL USE ONLY - NOT TO BE SOLD” with a Nabisco Shredded Wheat “Injun-uity” card tipped in the center with “Sample Card” stamped on the back.

An adaptation of the movie biography of baseball star Lou Gehrig (Pride of the Yankees) and another based on the Ingrid Bergman-starring film Joan of Arc, both drawn by Ogden Whitney, appeared in 1949. Another innovative technique developed at ME during the early 1950s was the “3-D Effect” created by artist Frank Bolle in Tim Holt and continued when its matinee-idol hero donned a disguise and the book metamorphosed into Red Mask. The “3-D Effect” was also used in the Red Mask spinoff magazine The Black Phantom. Sullivan remembered fondly how this answer to the 3-D craze required no glasses, yet gave a (supposedly) similar effect without the adding printing expense.

The late Charles Starrett, who played The Durango Kid in the movie series (though most of his masked scenes were done by a stunt double), autographed this publicity photo for Bill and Teresa Harper. [Durango Kid ©2001 the respective copyright holder; photo courtesy of Bill Harper.]

ME also boasted a lineup of humorous comics such as Funnyman, initiated by Superman’s creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, which had a six-issue run.

Vin Sullivan

Vin Sullivan The Decades A Candid Conversation with the Godfather of Magazine Enterprises Conducted by Joe Latino, Rich Morrissey, Ken Gale, & Tom Fagan Edited by Roy Thomas Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

[EDITOR’S NOTE: On October 8, 1994, four knowledgeable comics fans videotaped an interview with Vin Sullivan at his home. Much of this interview dealt with Sullivan’s editorship at DC, and there are unfortunately several periods during which the video-camera was turned off, with the conversation then resumed midstream. Most of this historically important interview will see print in a near-future issue of A/E. For the purposes of this issue, the parts that deal with Vin Sullivan’s company Magazine Enterprises have been excerpted, along with a bit of contextual material.—R.T.] RICH MORRISSEY: Gardner Fox told us you were the one who got him into the business.

VIN SULLIVAN: Well, we went to grammar school—elementary school, if you want to call it—together. He became a lawyer. But he always liked to write anyway, so when I got into this business, I thought of Gardner. And I had seen him occasionally, and asked him if he would be interested in writing some stories. He said he would and that’s how he got started. [EDITOR’S NOTE: At a later point, the videotape is turned off. When it resumes, in medias res, Sullivan is talking about the World War II years at his own company, Magazine Enterprises, abbreviated ME, which he had founded in 1943:] SULLIVAN: I helped keep [artist] Creig Flessel out of the war. They [the armed services] would give a citation to certain publications that were helping the war effort. And so I had The Marine Corps. [NOTE: Sullivan is probably referring here to The United States Marines, the first title published by Magazine Enterprises when it

Seven of Magazine Enterprises’ greatest adventure heroes—clockwise from upper left: The Avenger, Strong Man, Cave Girl, Jet Powers, Ghost Rider, Funnyman, Straight Arrow—by the likes of Bob Powell, Dick Ayers, the Joe Shuster studio (probably mostly John Sikela), Fred Meagher. Straight Arrow art courtesy of Ethan Roberts (repro’d from original art); Funnyman from cover of Funnyman #5 (July 1948); other images courtesy of Bill Black, who has reprinted many ME tales in his AC Comics line; see full-page ad elsewhere in this issue. [Ghost Rider is a TM of Marvel Characters, Inc.; GR &!Avenger art ©2001 AC!comics &!the estate of Vin Sullivan; Funnyman ©2001 estates of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster; Straight Arrow ©2001 Nabisco; other characters ©2001 the estate of Vin Sullivan.]

The ME Decades

9 SULLIVAN: [examining a copy of Funnyman] This I lost quite a bit of money on. [laughs] It just didn’t sell. MORRISSEY: How did it come about? Did Siegel and Shuster come to you? SULLIVAN: They came to me and they had this idea. They were constantly coming up with new ideas, and I guess they didn’t show it to Donenfeld. I’m sure they didn’t. MORRISSEY: They just finished their lawsuit with DC and settled. They supposedly got a generous settlement and lost most of it. GALE: When you were doing this, did you do just packaging the comics or what role did you have?

was launched in 1943.—RT] This was like an unofficial magazine of the Marine Corps! I went to Washington, and some brigadier general gave me some sort of semiofficial book. And as a result of that, we got a plaque. I say “we”— I did. The company, Magazine Enterprises, they gave a citation; I think it was called an “E.” I don’t know why. As a result of that, I was able to have Creig Flessel not drafted because he was doing work on a publication that was helping the war effort!

SULLIVAN: I was the publisher. I was paying out the money. TOM FAGAN: Were you a hands-on publisher? SULLIVAN: I was still editing the thing, if you want to put it that way. I had this fellow, Ray Krank, who was presumably my editor, and we would both look at the thing and decide what to do with it.

The cover of Funnyman #1 (Jan. 1948) gets reprinted fairly often, so we decided to emphasize the first splash page and origin page, probably mostly the work of former Superman assistant John Sikela. [©2001 the estates of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.]

Fred Guardineer was drafted and he met [artist] Ogden Whitney, I think. They were both drafted at the same time. I think they were in the same organization. I’m trying to think of things that Fred was saying—they were together in the same platoon. But Fred said he was always very annoyed about Whitney because he was such a slob. [laughs] KEN GALE: “The Odd Couple.”

SULLIVAN: Fred was always very meticulous. MORRISSEY: Well, you seem to be doing quite well with yourself and with your friends. When you were a publisher, did you try to treat the people better than Donenfeld had? SULLIVAN: Well, I hoped I did. MORRISSEY: Did you let them [the writers and artists] often keep the rights to their characters if they came in with a new character, or did they give away ownership? SULLIVAN: I didn’t keep those things at all, no. [At this point Sullivan is shown a number of ME issues which interviewers have brought with them.] MORRISSEY: As a Superman fan, I was especially thrilled by Funnyman because it was by Siegel and Shuster after they left DC.

MORRISSEY: It’s obviously Joe Shuster layouts, but we see a lot of John Sikela on various stories. SULLIVAN: Now, they had another fellow working here, on Funnyman. MORRISSEY: Was that Dick Ayers? SULLIVAN: No. Jerry had somebody else. In other words, Joe Shuster didn’t do this. MORRISSEY: Weren’t his eyes very bad by that point? He was having trouble. SULLIVAN: They were not the greatest to begin with. He was almost blind. GALE: Did Shuster draw any of the stories? SULLIVAN: Of Funnyman? I don’t think so. MORRISSEY: Did they just bring in the pages to you the way they had done at DC? SULLIVAN: Yeah, same way. MORRISSEY: So they were probably getting it done by other people. Do you think he may have done very rough layouts and had someone else finish them, like Sikela?

Fred Guardineer

Fred Guardineer The Years A Brief Biography of and Interview with “A True Pareil” [EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: Fred Guardineer is one of the true pioneers of the comic book field. He is one of only two known surviving creators who contributed to the landmark Action Comics #1 in 1938, creating, drawing, and originally even writing the “Zatara the Magician” feature, which lasted until 1951. Because a 1999 interview with Guardineer conducted by Dylan Williams proved far too long to be included in an issue devoted in large part to Magazine Enterprises, we are reprinting below only portions of it. But first, by way of background, we are thankful to Bill Black of AC Comics for permission to reprint the ME-and-after-related excerpts from his article about the artist written years ago for Paragon #5, and ©2001 Bill Black:] Fred Guardineer returned to comics upon being discharged in 1944. Crime comics were big, and Fred worked for Charles Biro and Bob Wood on Crime Does Not Pay and other books. In 1952 Fred joined his old friend Vincent Sullivan, publisher of Magazine Enterprises: “ME... this was my favorite outfit, as I felt—and knew—I was among friends. Vin Sullivan, the publisher, was one of the first good friends I made when I came to the city looking for work. He is a fine gentleman, appreciative of good art and writing.” Fred produced The Durango Kid for three years, drawing all the stories, lettering, and covers! Gardner Fox wrote most, if not all, the scripts. In the waning years of the series, Fred freelanced wildlife illustrations for various outdoor publications. These full-page drawings often appeared in ME books as fillers, as well, and wildlife illustrations would enhance panels of the “Durango Kid” stories. Fred also drew “The Calico Kid” at ME: “I did my best for ME on The Durango Kid, but the onslaught of TV swept the comics off the stands.”

Fred Guardineer was born October 3, 1913, in Albany, New York, and at

Why should Ghost Rider have all the fun? A little touch of horror in ME’s version of the old west, served up by Fred Guardineer in a splash from Durango Kid #33 (1954). [©2001 AC Comics &!the estate of Vin Sullivan.]

the age of 73 summed up his life: “I am a survivor, making more good moves than bad.” Several good moves were marrying Ruth Ball in 1938, buying a home on Long Island in 1939, and starting a second 20-year career with the post office in his hometown after ME ceased publishing The Durango Kid in 1955. Fred continued freelancing his wildlife and fishing illustrations for such publications as The Long Island Fisherman, which allowed him to combine his talent with his hobby. Now retired from the postal service, Fred is still trying to “retire” from illustrating, but there is always “one more assignment.” He has been recognized nationally for his contributions to the “outdoors.” Recently, he was honored with membership in the Outdoors Writers Association of America and featured in the April 1987 edition of Outdoors Unlimited. Ron Goulart, in his excellent book The Great Comic Book Artists (St. Martin’s Press, 1986), remarked on Fred’s style: “He was a true nonpareil, an artist whose style was unmistakably his own, and there’s been no one remotely like him in the field since... His style was almost fully formed from the start. He seems always to have thought in terms of the entire page, never the individual panel. Each of his pages is a thoughtfully designed whole, giving the impression sometimes that Guardineer is arranging a series of similar snapshots into an attractive overall pattern, a personal design that will both tell the story clearly and be pleasing to the eye... His drawing style enabled him to create complex pictures by building them with simple elements.”

Fred Guardineer On ME

Fred Guardineer On ME Excerpts from an Interview Conducted by Dylan Williams [NOTE: In April 1999 collector Dylan Williams interviewed Fred Guardineer by phone. Guardineer currently lives in Northern California. The interview was originally edited by Emily Nilsson. A/E plans to print this very long interview in something like its entirety in a near-future edition; but for the purposes of this issue we have included and edited only those parts of it that deal with Magazine Enterprises and related matters. Even much of Guardineer’s relationship with Vin Sullivan, since it occurred at DC Comics, will be covered in the later version.] DYLAN WILLIAMS: What kind of stuff did you draw as a kid? FRED GUARDINEER: I loved to draw. From the earliest beginnings, before I could do anything else, I drew. My parents gave me a paper bag and a pencil and I lay down on the floor and I drew my brains out. Mostly cowboys and Indians... [NOTE: Later, after a mention of how much Guardineer liked to draw animals, as well:]

GUARDINEER: Oh, yeah! It changes your life. I get a call on Friday; they want a job on Monday. You know what you’re doing that weekend: You’re working. [NOTE: There follows a long conversation concerning Guardineer’s earlier life in and out of comics. Following his service in the Army during World War II, during which he saw action in the Philippines, the talk turned to what he did after the war:] GUARDINEER: I was getting work. My good friends were back, especially Vin Sullivan, Bob Wood, and Charlie Biro. They were the last ones you’d want to be with you [in a foxhole], but they were good friends of mine to work for. I did a lot of crime comics. I liked the work and I liked them and they paid well. DW: Jumping ahead a bit—did you know about the Senate hearings [in the 1950s] and problems with crime comics when they came down, or did jobs just dry up all of a sudden?

A group photo of an amazing conglomeration of Golden and Silver Age comics creators, taken by Bruce Edwards after the AACC dinner at the 1998 San Diego Comics Convention. [L. to r., seated:] Nick Cardy, Dick Sprang, Jim Mooney, Julius Schwartz, Vin Sullivan, Fred Guardineer. [L. to r., standing:] Russ Heath, Bob Haney, Ramona Fradon, John Broome, Paul S. Newman, John Severin, Roy Thomas, Joe Simon, Sheldon Moldoff, Murphy Anderson. Ye Editor wound up being the youngest person in the picture—but only because cartoonist Scott Shaw! accidentally got cut off at the left in Bruce’s Cinemascopic scene! Well, actually, this is two photos—skillfully combined by A/E designer Chris Day. The photos are ©1998, 2001 by Bruce Edwards and were contributed by The American Association of Comic Collectors. Check out their website at <www.aacc-info.com>.

GUARDINEER: I have always gotten into nature. It followed me the rest of my life. I was happiest drawing animals and stuff like that. DW: I have a Durango Kid where you drew a mountain lion that’s just wonderful.

GUARDINEER: I knew there was a lot of talk, people being upset about comics. Blaming everything that kids did wrong on comics. Like they do today. DW: Now it’s video games!

GUARDINEER: Drawings like pistols, rifles, and things like that had to be perfect. I kept a file going on that for years and years and years. No magazine went out of my house that hadn’t been clipped and filed. I had files all over the place. I could draw anything in this world. Took about five minutes. I could simply swipe it. It cuts a lot of corners.

GUARDINEER: [laughs] Yeah. I knew that was going on. It didn’t seem to touch me that much when it first started. Either way, I thought that crime comics were good. It was stories about what happened. It was just like what I like to watch on the TV. I like to watch them today still. My favorite is—there’s no way I’m ever going to miss Law and Order.

DW: Especially when the deadline’s down and you’ve got to get something in!

DW: You like that show, too? It’s really authentic, like a modern Dragnet.

Dick Ayers

Dick Ayers A Life In The “Gowanus” A Conversation with One of Magazine Enterprises’ Best and Most Prolific Artists Interview conducted by Roy Thomas

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris smile of his, it looked like Clark Gable’s, and he said, “It’s the garbage in the canal.” The Gowanus Canal is the canal in Brooklyn where they dumped the garbage at the time, and that’s what he referred to comic books as. And Burne went into it more, and I argued more about it. But he let me in, and he taught me nights. It was wonderful. Then Joe Shuster came in. Not just to talk; he came in and he sat beside you and chatted with you, real nice. He’d just come in and visit like a regular guy. And, also, Marvin Stein taught there. He was Joe Shuster’s top honcho of the studio. It was Marvin, really, who did all the work and he passed on everything. He gave out the assignments and Joe would come in, maybe once or twice a week. And then there was Ernie Bache, who was in my class; we had dinner together, and I would go down to the studio to visit him. And the next thing I knew, I was drawing. So I started out penciling. That would be the end of October, November 1947. RT: And so what did you start on?

Dick Ayers in 1949 at the drawing board doing “The Ghost Rider”—from Cartoonist PROfiles #59.—plus a 1994 illo of his most famous co-creation, the original Ghost Rider. [Art ©2001 Dick Ayers; Ghost Rider ©2001 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is projected as the first of at least two interviews with Dick Ayers on his career in comics. The second, longer one—including a considerable part of this interview which we didn’t have room to print this time around—will be published in a near-future issue of Alter Ego and will deal in particular with Dick’s work for Timely/Marvel.—RT.] ROY THOMAS: You actually wound up getting into Magazine Enterprises by the back door, didn’t you? DICK AYERS: I saw a poster—Burne Hogarth [artist of the Tarzan strip] was up on 89th Street, at a new school he started, Cartoonists and Illustrators School. This is like October. It had already started in September. Burne looked at my samples and he said, “Gee, Dick. You want to be in this comic book stuff?” And I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Don’t you know that’s the Gowanus of the industry?” RT: The what? AYERS: Yeah, the “Gowanus.” And my face went blank, just like yours right now. [laughs] And he laughed. That

AYERS: The Funnyman comic book. I’m doing that, and I guess around the first of the year, Joe tells me, “Vin Sullivan would like to see you.” So he sent me down to see Vin, and to take some samples. Vin had drawn a newspaper strip, Schnozzola, in the ’30s, about Jimmy Durante. My Jimmy Durante later is more or less modeled after what he drew. RT: You didn’t know that you were already working for Sullivan in a way— since Sullivan published Funnyman by Siegel and Shuster? AYERS: He did, but I never realized Funnyman was a Magazine Enterprises book. I never connected it, really. I thought I was working for Joe Shuster, which I was.

Dick Ayers

RT: Because they had their own special deal, with their studio supplying art and story.

AYERS: Well, he would make it sound like it was inventory. If things picked up, like the humor market, then he would go back in again. But he killed Fibber McGee by Phil Usgis. After that, he gave me a one-page feature in Tim Holt.

AYERS: It was under the Magazine Enterprises label, so Vin had me try out for Jimmy Durante. And I sent you a copy of the drawing that I made. And then I traced that onto illustration board and then I inked it and colored it.

Oh, I forgot—before I got to do Jimmy Durante, while I was waiting for Ray to write the script, he gave me a western. I don’t know how many pages. “Doctor of Fate - the Story of Doc Holliday.” That’s the first job I did... the first job that I penciled, inked, and lettered, that got printed!

RT: So did you ever meet Durante or was it all done through the mail? AYERS: No, I didn’t. I didn’t even get to know who Mrs. Calabash was. [laughs] Vin either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell me. I noticed the other night, they had on television an hour show on Durante. Oh boy, I really had tears in my eyes. It was terrific.

RT: Between Sullivan and editor Raymond Krank, ME was basically almost a two-man operation, wasn’t it? AYERS: That’s what it was. Vin would come in and sit down and describe what he wanted in The Ghost Rider. He told me to go see Disney’s Sleepy Hollow— Ichabod Crane, the Headless Horseman—and then he told me to play the Vaughn Monroe record, “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” And then he started talking about what he wanted the guy wearing.

RT: Of course, you were aware that Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, who were doing Funnyman, had created Superman and were going through this lawsuit. AYERS: Yes. We thought, “Oh, boy! We’ll get to do Superman. We’ll have it made!” We were very upbeat. But then I left, before the end came. They did a few more books. They went six books and I think mine was, maybe, #3, or something like that. RT: I’ll check my complete bound set of Funnyman. Were you aware that Sullivan was one of the people who discovered “Superman”?

Some of Dick’s first work on Siegel and Shuster’s Funnyman for ME seems to have been “The House That Funnyman Built!” in issue #3 (April 1948). Reprinted from Ye Editor’s bound volumes. [©2001 the estates of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.]

AYERS: No, I didn’t know that till years later that Vin was the one who more or less hired Siegel and Shuster. I liked Vin very much. He was really a very nice, outward person, a very good guy. He came and he sat with Ray Krank and me. I did three issues of Jimmy Durante as my first work for Vin. The third, he never did publish. I’m eating my heart out to see it, because that was just about when I was really into the character. Oh, God, I loved it. The first one, where Jimmy went to the circus—the whole book was one story. When he went west, we had an added feature in the book where he went to college, so that was, like, only maybe 5-6 pages. And in the third, he went to London. He became like Sherlock Holmes and it was a lot of fun. But I never got to see it. RT: That was pretty unusual for comics at that time, to have booklength stories. You sort of wonder why he didn’t carry that book-length policy over in the westerns or the hero books... only into a few movie adaptations. AYERS: Vin would go by percentages. If they didn’t do big in the percentages market, it would frighten him, or make him cautious. RT: So did Sullivan lay on the bad news about the book’s cancellation and give you another assignment right away, or was there a time between?

RT: So even though Krank was officially the editor, Vin Sullivan took a very big editorial part, too? That’s the thing he really liked the most, I suspect.

After the bad news that the Durante book was cancelled and you had only a filler to do, were you beginning to wonder whether you had a future at that company? AYERS: Well, I hung on because they always saw that I had something to do. But I was heart-broken that I lost Jimmy Durante, because I loved drawing him. That was the style I would have loved to keep, because you could tell adventure and you could also be funny, like Roy Crane. Then when they started up the westerns, I found out, boy, did I love doing those! [laughs] RT: You’d never thought about them before? AYERS: No, but as a kid I loved cowboys and I loved playing “Cowboys and Indians” and the movies and all that. RT: So the next big thing for you after Jimmy Durante was Ghost Rider? Well, I guess first came “The Calico Kid.” AYERS: Yes, “The Calico Kid” came first; he was just a few short stories. I did them all except one that I know of. Ernie Bache did that one and I didn’t know it until Bill Black told me. RT: It was very strange—and very inventive—to take this character that already existed, The Calico Kid, and turn him into another character, The Ghost Rider. Is that Sullivan?

A Life In The “Gowanus”

AYERS: Yeah. The Calico Kid, the “a.k.a.,” as you call it, was Rex Fury; that was a great name.

RT: Maybe that’s why Frazetta didn’t do a second Thun’da. He was still just a kid at that time. You said Ray Krank wrote the first “Ghost Rider” story. It’s usually been said Gardner Fox wrote most of the ME line. Did Gardner write much of “The Ghost Rider”?

RT: He had the same sidekick— Sing-Song—and it’s like the hero suddenly graduated to another strip. He got a secret identity and he was off and running. AYERS: Vin Sullivan, I remember, came and said, “And now we’re going to turn The Calico Kid into The Ghost Rider.” And so Ray wrote the one story. He was in Tim Holt first. RT: Yeah. I bought Tim Holt, too. But “The Ghost Rider” quickly proved popular enough to get his own book.

AYERS: I don’t remember seeing his name on the scripts, no. RT: Were the writers’ names usually on the scripts when they came to you?

A vintage Ayers rough of Jimmy Durante and crooner Bing Crosby on the golf green, with a chicken laying an egg in the hole (Jimmy’s trademark line was to be: “Ev’rybody wants ta get into the act!”). [©2001 Dick Ayers.]

AYERS: We went to a fancy dinner. We celebrated at the WaldorfAstoria and I was sitting at the table with Vin’s brother Frank, and he said—“You know, that Ghost Rider book [#1] you did sold 67%,” which was high in their eyes. Vin watched percentages and 45% meant it was doing bad and he would lay off for a while. RT: They must have felt that the series had been helping Tim Holt’s sales, or else they just thought it would do well on its own. How did the all-white costume come about? AYERS: I don’t know which one it was, Vin or Ray, thought that one up, but I know they thought of the white and also said it glows in the dark, so we had to think of what made it glow. [Laughter] All we could think of was phosphorescence or phosphorus. And even the horse, we had to have him painted with phosphorus. RT: And you did every “Ghost Rider” story that ever was ever done, didn’t you? Everything but the couple of covers Frazetta did. AYERS: For Magazine Enterprises, yes. I’d be jealous if anyone else touched it. [laughs] There were three covers Frank did, which made me focus on Frank’s work. And boy, did I love his Thund’a, and all that. So I would try to capture some of his style, which was impossible. I would rave about Frank’s work to Ray Krank, but Ray did not like all that scratchy—[laughs] He wanted it nice and bold.

AYERS: No. Over at Timely they were on the front page, but not from Ray Krank. I never knew Paul S. Newman wrote a “Ghost Rider”—“A Coffin on Snow,” I believe it was.

Most of the “Ghost Rider” scripts were by Carl Memling. I brought him in. I met him through one of my fellow artists who went to the Art Career School. He was working for some artist named Winter. They were doing a big mural of “The Last Supper of Christ” and I was visiting him, and I met Carl. I liked him, so I’m riding on the elevator with him, after I’ve seen him a couple of times, and I said, “Gee whiz, you should write for comics. I can get you with this Magazine Enterprises.” “I couldn’t write for children’s books. I don’t want to do that.” So I said, “Well, give me one of your things. I’m going to show it to my editor.” He gave me a page he’d written for a Street and Smith western and I took that in and, by golly, that got him started in the comic book business. And boy, he got adept at it. I went to visit him out on Long Island one time and he showed me how he kept a file of every synopsis that he ever sold and so he could write the same story over and over. [laughs] He did! RT: Did he write much else for Magazine Enterprises besides Ghost Rider? AYERS: Bobby Benson. I don’t know what else. But I talked on the phone with him often. And then he got with Classic Comics and with DC. He was going strong and he died young. I don’t know if he made it past fifty. But he was a loss. He was working for Charlton and he was knocking that stuff for $3 a page, or something. I was doing penciling,

A splash panel from “The Calico Kid”—the hero who, some months later, would become “The Ghost Rider”! Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Ethan Roberts. [©2001 the estate of Vin Sullivan.]

Wayne Is Boring!

by Michael T. Gilbert Welcome to the second part of two Superman-related “Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt” episodes. Last time we focused on artist Wayne Boring’s lesser-known comic strip career. In addition to his long run in the Superman comic books from the 1930s to the 1980s, Boring worked on some very famous newspaper strips (and a few deservedly forgotten). According to Jerry Bails’ indispensable Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Boring drew or assisted on Rip Kirby (1968), Davy Jones (1960-71), Prince Valiant (1968-71), and Superman (1939-41, 1942-50, and 1959-67). We printed a few examples last issue, and this time we’re

reprinting two unfinished sci-fi strips he drew in 1966. Boring pitched The Awful World of Ticker Tynn to the Toronto Star Syndicate, but it failed to sell. Too bad, because it looks pretty interesting. Then, by kind permission of Cerberus the Aardvark creator Dave Sim, we’re re-presenting an article he wrote in 1973 about Boring for the Now & Then Times, a Canadian fanzine—following a new introduction by Dave to put the piece in context. And of course any Wayne Boring article would be incomplete without one of his classic Superman drawings; luckily, Roy Thomas has a photocopy of a great Superman Sunday page to share with us.

Wayne Is Boring! by Dave Sim (2001) Well, that’s what Jeff and Mark Hoppe and I used to say during the summers of 1968 and 1969, when all we thought about was comic book collecting (DC exclusively—no Marvel). Though my thoughts had definitely changed by 1973 when John Balge and I were assembling the contents of the Now & Then Times’ second issue (of two: collect ’em all!), I carried a pang of guilt in my 17year-old breast at that memory when I found Wayne Boring’s address (can’t remember where for the life of me) and contacted him about the possibility of doing an interview. That’s not quite true. At the time I think I just sent my intended

victims... er... interview subjects a list of ten or twelve questions and asked if they would answer them and send me some artwork. The chutzpah of a 17-year-old. Anyway, that’s what I did with Mr. Boring—a list of numbered questions and a request for artwork, mentioning that I thought it would be interesting to have him draw some quick sketches of what the DC offices (the old 480 Lexington offices) looked like in the early days. Whose office was next to whose. That kind of thing. I still think it’s a good idea, but (now that we’re chronologically as far from Now & Then Times #2 as Now & Then Times #2 was from the end of World War II: a thought, as they say, to give sober men pause) it seems scarcely likely that there’s anyone around who still remembers 480 Lexington.

no. 69

in this issue:

Marc Swayze Dave Cockrum & C.C. Beck

We Didn’t Know...

[FCA EDITOR’S NOTE: From 1941-53, Marcus D. Swayze was one of Fawcett Comics’ top artists. He was the first artist to bring Mary Marvel to life on the drawing board, and the one who illustrated her very first adventures; but he was primarily hired to illustrate (layout, pencil, and ink) “Captain Marvel” stories and covers, as well as to write “Captain Marvel” scripts, which he continued to do while in the armed services during World War II. Soon after returning from military duty, he made his way back home to Louisiana and freelanced for Fawcett, in addition to drawing Bell Syndicate’s Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip, created by his mentor and friend Russell Keaton. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been an important and popular part of FCA since his first column appeared in #54 in 1996. Last time he discussed his post-Fawcett work and took us back to his days working for Charlton Comics in Derby, Connecticut. This issue, Marc returns to the time when he was illustrating and often writing Wow Comics’ “Phantom Eagle,” continuing the narrative from his columns in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #4-6. He also touches upon the genre that awaited him after Wow’s cancellation with the Fall 1948 issue.—P.C. Hamerlinck.] Shortly after I had begun drawing “The Phantom Eagle” in 1944, word came down the Fawcett pipe that the second or third story was to be a “crossover.” I wasn’t sure what that meant. “You’ve done them,” insisted editor Wendell Crowley. “When you were drawing Mary Marvel and the story called for assistance by Captain Marvel Jr.... that was a crossover. You drew the Captain and Mary, and Mac Raboy drew Junior!” (Captain Marvel Adventures #18, Dec. ’42.) So that was it. A crossover was when a hero, or heroine, moved over into the story of another, to lend a helping hand.

39 Artist Carl Pfeufer was a neighbor of mine... in Wow Comics, that is. At that time he was drawing Commando Yank, and Yank was appearing in each issue, right next door to The Phantom Eagle. The crossover didn’t mean that the creators pulled their drawing tables up side-by-side, chatting warmly about who would do this panel and who would do that. Pfeufer and I were 1500 miles apart and never spoke a word on the phone about the project. The story, “The Iron Gate” (Wow #33, Feb. ’45), featured the Eagle predominantly, and consequently came first to me. I merely roughed in the figure in pencil where Yank was to appear, finished my part around it, and shipped it that way. Carl Pfeufer was a solid, no-nonsense professional. There was no need for further concern. I never knew who wrote that story. As far as that goes, I wasn’t certain who any of the writers were. In those days it wasn’t common practice that the authors’ names be on the Fawcett scripts. But by and large the stories were

good. It was my assumption that the seasoned pros I had known in the Captain Marvel days were involved... Woolfolk, Messman, Millard, Wellman, Broome, et al. Toward the end of 1945 the scripts began to show a decided change... an air of uncertainty that hadn’t been there before. The underlying theme of the Phantom Eagle feature was stated broadly in the legend that appeared within the title panel of each story. But there was more to it than that. The scripts were revealing an unfamiliarity with the characters... their personalities, their expressions. It didn’t take long for me to realize... I was working with a new set of writers. Also a new editor! Mercedes Shull was a member of the comics editorial department when I joined Fawcett Publications in 1941. She was editor of Wow Comics when I took over “The Phantom Eagle” after returning from the military. We rarely corresponded. There was no need to. She was an if-itain’t-broke editor and, I like to think, completely confident in my ability to do the right thing. I was pleased when told some years later that Mercy and her husband had retired and were happily operating a vacation ranch. Deep down inside me I suspect there may have lurked an ugly little suspicion that the primary objective of all new editors was to make comic book writers out of untalented relatives. I didn’t say that in my letter to Roy Ald, but I did let him know that I held a high respect for the Phantom Eagle feature and was irritated when that respect wasn’t shared by anyone connected with it.

Crossovers, anybody? Previously unglimpsed Swayze sketches of the Shazam siblings, whom he occasionally drew in the same story in 1940s Fawcett stories. [Art ©2001 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel ©2001 DC Comics.]

On the right in the photo: Carl Pfeufer (artist for both Fawcett and Timely, where he succeeded Bill Everett on “Sub-Mariner”). On the left is Charlie Tomsey, who drew various super-hero strips for Fawcett in the early ’40s. Vintage photo courtesy of Marc Swayze. [Art ©2001 DC!Comics.]

I don’t have a copy of that letter to Ald, but I did save my rough preliminary notes. I quote from them: • Story very weak on p. 3. Insufficient motivation for PE’s movements. • PE’s plane is the Cometplane... is a feature in itself and should be written as such.

that, so I assumed the exchange of correspondence hadn’t hurt. Might have made better writers out of the new guys. And who knows? Might have made a better editor. I drew “The Phantom Eagle” in Wow Comics from issue #30, Oct. ’44, until Fawcett discontinued publication of the book with #69, fall of

• On page 1 the Phantom Eagle is sent on a mission. On page 2 he is “Pilot Malone”... with no explanation as to why he is flying as “Malone” or why he should be. We must guard against featuring Mickey. When he dons the costume he is The Phantom Eagle. • On page 3 there is no reason given why PE suddenly decides to land at this particular spot. • Captions that describe what can be seen in the illustrations are unnecessary. • PE doesn’t ordinarily carry a gun of any kind on his person. • Title panel should feature full figure of PE, not just a long shot in his plane. • Lengthy balloons should never appear in action panels. • “The” should be used before PE when referring to him, but dropped in addressing him. Ex: Here comes the Phantom Eagle. “Welcome, Phantom Eagle!” • PE should not be addressed as “Phantom”... There’s a newspaper strip by that name. • Okay for pals to call him “Eagle”... but with some restraint... the feature’s name is “The Phantom Eagle.” The scripts began to show improvement after

Fawcett editor Roy Ald’s letter to Marc Swayze—plus a previously unpublished illo (also circa 1946) of The Phantom Eagle by Marc from his personal sketchbook. [Art ©2001 Marc Swayze; Phantom Eagle ©2001 DC Comics.]

Dave Cockrum

“I Wish I Could Have Done More” Artist Dave Cockrum’s Short but Sweet Stint on Captain Marvel Jr. in Shazam! Interviewed by P.C. Hamerlinck FCA: Where were you born, and what did your parents do for a living? DAVE COCKRUM: I was born in Pendleton, Oregon, in November of 1943. My folks were both teachers, but my dad also had a reserve commission in the U.S. Army during World War II, then switched over when the Air Force was organized as a separate unit around 1949 or 1950. Dad was recalled to active duty for Korea, and after that ended, he decided to stay in until retirement. Consequently, we moved around a lot. FCA: Did you grow up reading comic books? If so, what were some of your favorites?

COCKRUM: Yes. There was an issue of Captain Marvel Jr. I remember vividly. I actually still have it, but I don’t recall the issue number. The cover features Captain Marvel Jr. bashing a giant flying eyeball. Green goo was flying everywhere! [laughter] FCA: How did you break into comics? Through the fanzines? What was your first professional work? What had you worked on prior to getting the Shazam! assignment? COCKRUM: I did some fanzine work; my first fan work was published in a tabloid fanzine called Enterprise Monthly. Later I did a lot of work for Gary Groth’s Fantastic Fanzine. My first paid professional work was for Warren Publishing in Vampirella #11. My early work at DC was “The Legion of Superheroes,” and I believe I’m generally credited for taking a dying feature and bringing it back to robust life.

COCKRUM: Some of my earliest memories involve comic books. I can recall my father bringing home comic books that he had confiscated from kids in his class. The first one I recall was “Crimebuster” in Boy Comics. Later, my folks bought me a subscription to Looney Tunes and Merrie FCA: How did the Melodies, rightly figuring it Shazam! assignment come would help me to read at an about? Were you asked by early age. My favorites as a DC to provide samples of boy just happened to be all Captain Marvel Jr. as well of the Fawcett Marvel A 1970 Captain Marvel painting done by Cockrum around the time he broke into the pro ranks. as of the entire Marvel Family titles. I caught the [Art ©2001 Dave Cockrum; Capt. Marvel ©2001 DC Comics.] Family? tail end of their 13-year run. I used to run around our yard with a towel tied around my neck, yelling COCKRUM: Actually, I got the job to draw Captain Marvel Jr. because “Scissors!” because I couldn’t pronounce “Shazam!” I pretended I was I shamelessly badgered Shazam! editors Julie Schwartz and E. Nelson Captain Marvel, of course, and my younger brother and sister were Bridwell about it. I would have been delighted to draw Captain Marvel Junior and Mary. or Mary Marvel, too, for that matter, but I felt my emerging style was more suitable to that established for Cap Jr. years ago by Mac Raboy. I FCA: Any particular Fawcett comic from your childhood that you can did three sample pages of a hypothetical “Junior” story to show that I recall?