Alter Ego #17 Preview

Roy T Thomas homas ’ Super-F Super-Fine ine Roy Comics F F anzine Comics anzine

SPOTLIGHT ON

Lou Fine!

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In the the USA USA In

No. 17

Plus Rare Rare Art Art & & Plus Artifacts by: by: Artifacts

MURPHY ANDERSON, ALEX TOTH, et al.

ON A GOLDEN AGE ARTIST YOU CAN REALLY SINK YOUR TEETH INTO!

NEAL ADAMS JIM AMASH MATT BAKER C.C. BECK E. NELSON BRIDWELL FRANK BRUNNER REED CRANDALL JACK DAVIS JAY DISBROW LUIS DOMINGUEZ

GEORGE EVANS MICHAEL T. GILBERT PAUL GUSTAVSON GIL KANE RUBEN MOREIRA JOE ORLANDO BRUNO PREMIANI KURT SCHAFFENBERGER ALVIN SCHWARTZ MARC SWAYZE DAN ZOLNEROWICH & MORE!!

The Ray TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

September 2002

Vol. 3, No. 17 / September 2002 Editor

™

Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editors John Morrow Jon B. Cooke

FCA Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck

Comics Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus

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

Cover Artists Luis Dominguez Lou Fine

Cover Colorists Luis Dominguez Tom Ziuko

And Special Thanks to: Neal Adams Murphy Anderson Henry Baba Tim Barnes Dennis Beaulieu Ray Bottorff, Jr. Bart Bush Pearl Cherry J.R. Cochran Teresa R. Davidson Fred L. deBoom Al Dellinges Jay Disbrow Luis Dominguez James Doty Arnold & Lillian Drake Gill Fox Elliot Fine Laurie Fine Shane Foley Ron Frantz Michael R. Grabois David G. Hamilton Paul Handler Bill Harper Hank Harrison Daniel Herman Bob Hughes

Steve Hurley Chris Irving John Jacobson Ken Kaffke Al Krackow Joe & Nadia Mannarino Richard Martines Tom Morehouse Michelle Nolan Eric NolenWeathington Joe Petrilak John G. Pierce Ethan Roberts Benno Rothschild Alvin Schwartz David Siegel Marc Svensson Marc Swayze Dann Thomas Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Hames Ware John Yon Ed Zeno Mike Zeno

— In Memoriam —

Robert Kanigher Tom Sutton

Contents Writer/Editorial: Well, This Is Another Fine Mess Youve ’ Gotten Us Into! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 “Dennis Lou Fine––A Comic Book Artist of Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Beaulieu on the colorful career of a true comics master.

A Fine Influence.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Jim Amash examines the long, long shadow of Lou Fine. ...And A Fine Family! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Three who knew and loved Lou Fine talk about his life—and theirs.

Murphy Anderson on Lou Fine and Fiction House . . . . . . . . . 34 The Golden/Silver/Bronze Age super-artist on two fascinating topics.

Toth on Fine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Alex Toth says Fine just got “better and better.”

Arnold Drake, FCA, Comics Crypt, & More . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: Our sincerest thanks to collector John Yon, who sent us a full-size photostat of the original art of Lou Fine’s fantastic “Ray” splash from Smash Comics #31 (Nov. 1941) so we could get the best reproduction possible for our cover. You can see the whole splash page on page 3 of this section. [©2002 DC Comics.]

Above: Shane Foley sent us the above “Black Condor” splash from a black-&-white comic published in Australia some years back. The story from Crack Comics #18 (Nov. 1941) was printed in full, along with a Fine “Ray” adventure as well, in the giant-size Superman #252 in 1972, which featured flying super-heroes. [©2002 DC Comics.]

Alter EgoTM is published 8 times a year 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@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $8 ($10.00 Canada, $11.00 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. Arnold Drake interview ©2002 Marc Svensson & Arnold Drake. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada.

FIRST PRINTING.

A Comic Book Artist of Quality

3

Lou Fine A Comic Book Artist of Quality

by Dennis Beaulieu [Text

©

2002 Dennis Beaulieu.]

Louis Kenneth Fine was born in Manhattan (New York City) in 1915. A sensitive, quiet youth to begin with, his personality became even more introverted during his early teens after his left leg was crippled as a result of a polio epidemic.

Since he could no longer participate in sports and other activities common for boys his age, Lou Fine channeled his youthful energy into developing his God-given talent to draw. He completely immersed himself in studying the great magazine illustration artists of his day.

Heinrich Kley, the German pen artist sensation, was one of his

A super-rare photo of Lou Fine, taken by his friend and fellow artist Gill Fox in downtown Stamford, Connecticut, circa 1942. (For pics of Fine and Fox together, taken on the same occasion, see our Gill Fox interview in Alter Ego V3#12 and p. 19.)

earliest—and most intense—influences. Fine was also very heavily influenced by J.C. Leyendecker and Dean Cornwell, as well as by Saul Tepper, Harvey Dunn, Frank Reilly, and John R. Neill. He also studied the paintings of Frank Brangwyn.

His formal art training came from attending the Grand Central Art School, the Art Students League, the Pratt Institute, and the New York School of Technology (where he was studying engineering at the time that he began his career moonlighting as an artist in the emerging field of comic books). It was during his time at Pratt that Fine began to truly master his ability to draw the human figure in action.

Transition As great a comic book artist as Lou Fine was, he worked in the industry for only a very brief period of time. From late 1938 to early 1943 he produced a prolific amount of covers and interior stories for Fiction House (’38–’40), Fox (’39–’40), and Quality Comics (’39–’43). Short in stature with red hair and steel rim glasses, he entered the comics field in 1938 when, as a temporary means to earn a steady ($10 a week) income, he began working for the Eisner & Iger shop.

The Eisner & Iger shop was a comics production When Gill Fox sold John Yon the original art to this Fine page from Smash Comics #31 (Feb. 1942), the one-time Quality artist/editor wrote: “The enclosed Lou Fine ’Ray’ splash is absolutely pure Lou Fine. ’The Ray’ title lettering is my lettering!” Undoubtedly so—but A/E’s associate editor Jim Amash is convinced that another, less polished artist did some of the penciling in the trio of panels at bottom. “Just look at the perspective in the first panel!” Jim insists—and indeed, that small table in the background couldn’t be standing in that relation to the desk in the foreground unless there’d just been an earthquake! Most likely Fine counted on tying the whole thing together with his inking. [©2002 DC Comics.]

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Lou Fine house (a “sweat shop”) that had recently been started by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger to create and produce entire comic books for publishers who would then print, distribute, and own the final product. Comic Magazines, Inc. (the official name of the entity otherwise known as Quality Comics), was one such publisher.

In 1941 Everett M. “Busy” Arnold, the owner and publisher of Quality Comics, hired Fine away from the Eisner & Iger shop by tripling his salary and giving him his Art by Heinrich Kley (1863-1945). own studio. It is well known among his many admirers that, during his comic book days, Fine was a slow, methodical draftsman. Because of this trait, he would often have to work overtime—frequently all night—to reach his required page quota at the Eisner-Iger shop.

“The Doll Man” started in Feature Comics #27 (Dec. 1939); even in #32 (May ’40) Fine was still drawing four rows of panels per page. In panel 8’s “stipple effect,” Darrel Dane’s body gives the visual appearance of turning to sand as he transforms into the diminutive hero. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Dennis Beaulieu. (A “saliva-drenched” page from Feature #32, referred to in this piece, was reprinted in A/E V3#12.) [©2002 DC Comics.]

Unlike the Eisner & Iger quota that had to be met on a regular basis, Busy Arnold did not demand that Fine produce any particular number of pages. This approach worked to Arnold’s advantage, as the artist proceeded to produce a very large amount of some of his very best work during his time as a member of the Quality staff. His beautiful interior stories and explosive covers for Quality are revered by both professionals and collectors as representing the ultimate in artistic achievement during the early years of the comic book industry.

Style In his History of Comics, Jim Steranko comments that “Fine... developed an uncanny knowledge of the human figure in action. His heroes were Olympian in stature, classically featured, and exquisitely, almost delicately, proportioned. Fine lavished a wealth of stipple, lineshaded, and cross-hatched detail with a brilliant brush-line technique [giving his work a spectacular, illustrative look of which many details were often lost in the final reproduction. —DB] not found in comics up to that point. An expert adept at nuance of character, he lingered over faces and hands to produce a gallery of expressive portraits etched in fear, hatred, avarice, and death.”

This circa-1943 Lou Fine-drawn Spirit page, repro’d here from a photocopy of the original art, is from the personal collection of Daniel Herman, author of the recent Gil Kane: The Art of the Comics and Gil Kane: Art and Interviews. For information, contact Hermes Press at (724) 652-0511 or e-mail <Geerherm@sgi.net>. [©2002 Will Eisner.]

Lou Fine had a gifted ability to draw the human figure in a number

A Comic Book Artist of Quality

5

of stylish poses and in a variety of unique and offbeat situations that were completely foreign to other comic book artists of his day. He embellished his characters’ anatomy with a kind of grace and beauty seldom seen—even today—in comic art. While most super-hero artists followed an approach that emphasized power, Fine’s figures stressed motion and energy. His drawings were often intensely detailed, and he would express the motion and energy of his full—and even partial— figures by using extensive cross-hatch feathering, line shading, and even stipple technique. This stipple technique enhances the simple yet beautiful image of Darrel Dane transforming into The Doll Man as seen in the accompanying page from Feature Comics #32 (May 1940). To this day Fine remains one of the most influential figures in the history of comics for his sense of anatomy and excellent draftsmanship.

A well known anecdote relating to Lou Fine’s style is the story of how Will Eisner, in an effort to save money, purchased a gross of Japanese brushes at five cents apiece instead of the typical Winsor & Newtons at 75¢ apiece. Eisner quickly realized that the needled-sized brush point and the stiffness of the bristles made the Japanese brush very difficult for his staff to control.

Therefore, they were unable to use these new brushes. The only two exceptions were Eisner himself and Lou Fine.

For Fine, these brushes enabled him to produce an extremely delicate inking style that allowed for more detailed cross-hatching and increased shading/texture lines on the smoothplate bristol board upon which he customarily worked. In fact, Eisner and Fine once competed as to who could draw the longest and thinnest straight line using a Japanese brush. By now it should be obvious who won.

In an interview with artist and one-time Quality editor Gill Fox which appeared in CFAAPA #29 (Jan. 1993), Fox excitedly remarked: “Lou Fine was absolutely superb.... Lou came up with a great way to draw a hood or a stetson on a man’s head. There were black shadows over both eyes, and the nose would be just a white spot sticking out. Lou created that, and I still use that today.” Fine’s hood technique can be seen in the nine-page “Black Condor” story from Crack Comics #17 (Oct. 1941), various pages and panels of which are reproduced in this issue of Alter Ego.

At one time Dennis Beaulieu owned the original art to the entire “Black Condor” tale in Crack Comics #17 (Oct. 1941). Both Dennis and current owner Henry Baba generously sent us photocopies of the original art— Henry at the original humongous size! [©2002 DC Comics.]

Another interesting fact about Lou Fine that relates to his uniqueness and creativity is that he was the first to introduce saliva to the comic book industry.

He did this to achieve an enhanced dramatic effect. Whenever Fine was working on a figure that had an open mouth (especially a villain’s, and usually during a very dramatic moment), he would draw a narrow thread of saliva between the upper and lower teeth. Fine’s dramatic use of saliva can be seen even in the mouth of an underwater shark in a “Doll Man” page from Feature #32 [and on the cover of this issue of Alter Ego. —Roy.] “Ghastly” Graham Ingels and Bernie Wrightson would later utilize this same effect with similar success.

Early Comic Book Work Lou Fine’s earliest documented comic book work appeared in Fiction House’s Jumbo Comics #4 (Dec. 1938). Coincidentally, it was in this issue that Fine took over artistic chores from a young Jack Kirby on “Wilton of the West,” “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and “Diary of Dr. Hayward” (also known as “Stuart Taylor”).

Even during this very early period, Fine’s skillful artistry and rendition of the human figure make his work stand out from that of his contemporaries. In the “Count of Monte Cristo” page reproduced here, Edmond Dantes, our long-suffering hero, patiently displays his confidence, grace, and skill as a master swordsman as he battles his archenemy Mondego in a dramatic fight to the death. In the same way, Lou

A Fine Influence...

9

A Fine Influence...

by Jim Amash

Notes on Lou Fine’s Style and His Importance to the Comic Book Field

There was a great sensitivity in the lyrical line work of Lou Fine that few ever equaled. If Fine had spent his all too brief comics career just inking, he still would be remembered to this day. Happily for us, he penciled and inked much of his own work (though he never wrote a script), influencing scores of comic book artists to follow. And not just by his ink lines. His approach to figure drawing and page layout set a new standard that others follow even today.

Lou Fine started in comics at the Will Eisner & Jerry Iger shop.

Fine’s storytelling was not up to the standard of the number-one man in comics history, Will Eisner, but his draftsmanship was. Fine wanted to be an illustrator in the tradition of John R. Neill, J.C. Leyendecker, Joseph Clement Coll, and Saul Tepper, as well as other past and contemporary artists. He also understood the dreamy imagery of Winsor McCay and the Art Deco movement. What Fine took from those artists

and passed down to other comic book artists was a graceful and naturalistic way to tell a story graphically.

Fine’s earliest comic book work, while exhibiting the roughness of a beginner, was functional and his superior design sense evident. Most comic book artists of the time were working off of the styles of newspaper strip artists, some of whom were entering the fledgling business. At best, most of these beginners were cheap carbon copies of the greats, while other old-time newspaper cartoonists hadn’t made the cut and needed whatever work they could find. Lou Fine, who had studied art since childhood, wanted more than that for himself.

Fine’s earliest work, as was employer Will Eisner’s, was in the old school tradition. However, the two men learned from each other and each fed off the synergy present in the Eisner & Iger shop. Eisner spent a fair amount of time trying to develop Fine into a storyteller. Fine, for his part, began developing techniques from his influences, which now included Flash Gordon artist Alex Raymond. His brush line became

Both Will Eisner (as “Willis Rensie”) and Lou Fine (as “Jack Cortez”) initially told stories in single-page dollops imitative of Sunday comic strips of the day, but appearing in early comic books. Jim Amash suggests the two of them learned from each other as they went along. This 1938 “Hawks of the Sea” page is repro’d from the Kitchen Sink’s 1986 hardcover collection edited by Dave Schreiner—while the final “Count of Monte Cristo” page, repro’d from a photocopy of the original art courtesy of Jerry Bails & Hames Ware, dates from 1940. [©2002 the respective copyright holders.]

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Lou Fine caused some of his heroic figures to stand taller than normal humans while still retaining their believability in the most energetic poses his mind could conceive. His flying figures floated and flew above the ground with astonishing ease, creating a new kind of aerial perspective that other artists still employ.

Fine’s usage of long, flowing, continuous lines added to the decorative style of his picturemaking, reinforced by delicate cross-hatching for added depth of field. Little touches, such as drawing saliva in mouths, added tension and mood to an expressive gallery of faces. Even inanimate objects appeared alive.

This new way of delineating the human form in motion became more evident in others’ work. Jack Kirby, a rough-and-tumble street kid from New York’s Lower East Side, sat near Lou Fine in the Eisner & Iger shop. In later years, Kirby expressed great reverence towards Fine’s work. They spent time discussing how to draw human figures, and Kirby’s approach to figure drawing began to show Fine’s influence, especially in those early days. The definition lines that Fine used to portray hands and musculature became A very early Lou Fine page of “The Flame,” for Fox Comics, courtesy of Dennis Beaulieu. Jim Amash obvious in Kirby’s style. Kirby points out that panel 2 has “good use of spotting blacks.” [©2002 the respective copyright holder.] adapted Fine’s fluid twisting of more organic in quality, utilizing solid black areas more and more for bodies in motion and made it his own. Fine’s work had an organic feel effect. His effective use of the trap shadow motif of rendering wrinkles that Kirby eventually turned into a hard geometry. in clothes was not lost on Eisner. It is hard to pinpoint which of the two Kirby also picked up on Fine’s ever-increasing habit of stretching started using this technique first (J.C. Leyendecker was using it before figures out of the panel borders. Fine was one of the first comic book they were), as it seems to appear with regularity in both men’s work artists to understand that breaking up page design by panel composition simultaneously. But there’s little doubt that Eisner’s ink line became added to the dramatic pace of the stories. His figures in motion created more fluid once Fine became his employee. Eisner’s forms became more sweeping visual arcs for the eye to follow. His decorative use of line expressive, even as he became more and more of a cartoonist, while Fine added the necessary contextual cues for this effect. Fine varied the sizes was steeped in the illustrative tradition. and shapes of his panels, rejecting the previous notion of uniform rows Fine’s figures were generally well proportioned and lacked the stilted and columns, creating a harmonic symphony between figures and page awkwardness of ones drawn by many of his contemporaries. His figures layout. Though Kirby carried these new ideas to different extremes, were graceful, moving across the picture plane with great ease. During Fine’s influence is still there, proving that other artists were watching. this period in history, most people wore loose-fitting clothes. Fine found Everett “Busy” Arnold, publisher of Quality Comics, was watching, a way to show the musculature of arms, torsos, and legs through the too. So were his editors, Ed Cronin and Gill Fox. Arnold hired Fine clothing, making his figures more monumental in stature. His approach away from Eisner and his style, along with Eisner’s, became the to drawing clothes became a standard. Wrinkles were drawn accurately, benchmark for artists who worked for Quality Comics. Artists such as but with a life seemingly all their own. Inked with a Japanese brush, they Al Bryant, Reed Crandall, Alex Kotzky, and Gill Fox (who did the accentuated the movement of the human form in a free-flowing yet covers for Smash and Crack Comics, while Fine drew the lead stories controlled attitude. inside) were among those who followed Fine’s lead. Kotzky, in As Fine became more interested in the movement of figures, he particular, came the closest to understanding the Lou Fine style—an occasionally stretched the human form to unnatural proportions. It advantage gained by sharing a studio with the master for a year. Kotzky

...And A Fine Family

15

...And A Fine Family!

Candid Interviews with the Son, Daughter, and Sister-in-Law of Louis K. Fine Conducted and Transcribed by Jim Amash JIM AMASH: When was your Part I: ELLIOT FINE father born?

[INTRODUCTION #1: For my money, Lou Fine was one of the greatest comic book artists and illustrators who ever lived. I’ve long been fascinated and influenced by his work, as have many other comics artists, including Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, and Murphy Anderson.

Until now, however, we have not had the luxury of knowing much about Lou Fine, the man... and that’s always bothered me. Now, thanks to his son, Elliot Fine, we have a chance to change that. I’m extremely grateful to Elliot for his time and for the opportunity to share with you a little history about an artist whose influence extends to today’s generation of comic book artists... whether they know it or not. —Jim.]

ELLIOT FINE: November 26, 1914. He was like Louis Armstrong in that we have different dates for his birth. At one point we weren’t sure. He was probably born in Brooklyn.

My father was very close to his mother. His father was a house painter and probably a Russian immigrant, though I Elliot Fine. [Photo ©2002 Elliot Fine.] don’t know where he was born.

His mother died when Dad was at Cooper Union, studying engineering. He went there because his father didn’t want him to be an artist.

After his mother died, my father decided he was going to do what he wanted to do. That’s the basic story.

His father’s name was Meyer. I don’t know what his mother’s name was, but my step-grandmother’s was Lena. I think the relationship between my father and his father was a bit difficult.

JA: Most parents don’t want their children to be artists because it’s a hard life and usually very little money in return.

FINE: Tell me about it! My father wanted me to be a banker.

JA: Mine wanted me to be a lawyer, but I wanted to be an artist. My father was an immigrant and had a practical outlook on life. Immigrants usually have it tough when they come to America.

FINE: My dad’s father probably had a tough life, too. My father had been drawing since the age of five, but part of that was due to the polio he contracted as a child. I think he had it from the age of two. It prevented him from playing ball and doing what other kids did.

JA: Your father had a brother, didn’t he?

FINE: Yes. His name was Sam, who was older than my father; he died in October 2000 at the age of 86. He also had a sister, but I don’t know much about her. My father came from a modest home in East New York, which was called Brownsville in those days, in Brooklyn. It was a tenement Jewish neighborhood back then.

If any of the Fine family had a tough life as immigrants or during the Depression, it couldn’t have been much rougher than that of “Hack O’Hara,” the New York cabbie drawn by Lou Fine in early ’40s Quality comics. Thanks to Ron Frantz and Bart Bush, who repro’d this 5-pager from photostats of the original artwork in the 1987 comic The Art of Lou Fine and in the 1987 Lou Fine Index, respectively. For information about the Golden Age artwork reprinted by Ron Frantz, contact him at <Magilla445@aol.com>. [©2002 the respective copyright holder.]

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Elliot Fine

JA: Even though your father had polio, he still went to public school.

Was he a good student?

FINE: He probably was, because he went to Cooper Union Engineering School, and that was a hard school to get into. Cooper was a publicly funded school and one of the best schools in the city. I think my father must have had some connections when he left Cooper, because he got into the comics field fairly easily.

JA: Did your father talk about his childhood much?

FINE: No. I don’t think it was a happy childhood. My grandfather was a stern character.

JA: Do you know when your parents married?

FINE: Written on a picture I have of them is “Second day of our honeymoon, June 1941.” They were up in Nantucket. My mother’s maiden name was Mary Sussman. [See photo on p. 20.]

JA: That must have been right before they moved to Stamford, Connecticut.

FINE: I think it was. You know, my father was involved in his comics work, but I don’t know if he connected to it the way some others might have. He was a pretty straight guy.

Lou Fine “was considered to be one of the top two artists at Quality”... the other being Reed Crandall. Part of the reason for Fine’s ascendancy was covers like this one for Hit Comics #17 (Nov. 1941), courtesy of Dennis Beaulieu. [©2002 DC Comics.]

JA: When were you born?

FINE: December 7, 1944. I have an adopted sister, Laurie, who came along after I did. In terms of my father’s work, my earliest memories are of our family living in East Rockaway, a suburb of Long Island. My parents did what many urban couples of the time did. After the Second World War, they moved to a new development. They bought a ranchstyle house that had a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright design in it—stone and natural material—so it was a little more interesting than the typical development type of house, and the neighborhood attracted artistic types. The neighbors were art directors and other artists, and initially it was a pretty close community.

It was a one-level house, but my father built an upstairs studio addition. It was really beautiful; it had red wood paneling and was very big. At least 800 square feet. He had his work area in one corner, and across from that was a living room area which I used to hang out in.

Against the adjacent wall was a huge picture file collection, which was housed in specially built cabinets. Those are my earliest memories... just hanging out there.

JA: Your father was considered to be one of the top two artists at Quality, and also one of the best in the comics business.

A Fox Comics ad spotlighted Fine’s cover for Fantastic Comics #1 (Dec. 1939).

Thanks again to Ron Frantz and his The Art of Lou Fine. Richard Kyle, in his great early ’60s fanzine article entitled “The Education of Victor Fox” said that Samson’s fur loincloth looked more like “pubic hair with delusions of grandeur”; you can learn more about Fine’s Fox work in Kyle’s study, still available in Hamster Press’ Comic Fandom Reader. [©2002 the respective copyright holder.]

FINE: Right. He did very well early on, but I don’t think he made his money from the comics. I think he made it from advertising, because he’d left comics long before this. We moved out there around 1950.

...And A Fine Family He was a great father, very warm and generous. I was a very spoiled kid. My parents really doted on me and I had a great childhood. We lived in an area that was suburban, but still kind of rural. We lived on a creek and my father had a boat and then I got a boat. All these “arty” guys got boats as soon as they moved there. It was a big adventure for these people to move from the city into this kind of life style. They saw themselves as pioneers.

Lou Fine and Elliot as a boy.

[Photo ©2002 Elliot Fine.]

JA: I assume, because of the polio, that he really couldn’t go out and play catch with you.

FINE: No, he could do that. He just couldn’t run or play a real game, but he had a great deal of strength. He walked with a limp but was quite mobile. We didn’t make a big deal about it. He didn’t use a cane, but it prevented him from being active in sports. He had a big physique and was very strong.

JA: People have told me that he had been a weightlifter.

17

FINE: That could be. He was very broad-chested, but that was probably before my time, when he was younger. He was around the house all the time. That was the huge difference. He worked at home in that great studio, and that’s where I developed my artistic eye, by osmosis, by his work and by looking at his picture collection, which was very extensive.

He had a ton of Big Little Books and an incredible file of Life, Look, and other magazines. He also had a darkroom because he was interested in photography, but at this time he was probably using it for making comps and blowing up photos.

JA: You’re a photographer, so I assume this was part of your early influence.

FINE: The picture file, yes. His darkroom, no. I had all these incredible diversions: other kids, woods, and creeks. And I was just out there having a blast. At that point, I had no interest in artistic things.

JA: What did you think about the work your father was doing? Did other kids express interest in your father because he was an artist?

FINE: That really wasn’t the case. I think I kind of knew that people had a certain regard for what he was doing, but I had no special interest in it. There are pictures of me drawing, but I don’t remember wanting to do what he did at that age. At that time, in that environment, we were really part of the new American materialism. I wanted to own stuff, and my friends were the same way.

JA: Did your father encourage you to do well in school?

FINE: Somewhat. Because his father was really strict, my father was more laid back, tolerant of whatever I wanted to do. He was supportive,

“He just wanted to draw.” And draw Lou Fine did—beautifully—as per these “Doll Man” splash pages. Thanks to Ken Kaffke. Incidentally, “William Erwin Maxwell” was a pseudonym of Will Eisner, who had conceived the Mighty Mite in ’39. [©2002 DC Comics.]

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Murphy Anderson

Lou Fine and Fiction House A Conversation with MURPHY ANDERSON Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash [INTRODUCTION: Murphy Anderson’s comic book career stands as a testimony to great comic art. He is also one of the classiest gentlemen I’ve ever met. In discussing Lou Fine and his influence on Murphy, I discovered that the subject intertwines with Murphy’s beginnings at Fiction House.

Murphy graciously agreed to expand the interview so that we could present a fuller picture of what Lou Fine meant to him... and to some others, as you are about to see.

Murphy... thank you for the insight. —Jim.]

I. “He Was Just Head and Shoulders above Everyone Else” JIM AMASH: Do you remember the first time you saw Lou Fine’s work?

MURPHY ANDERSON: Well, he didn’t sign his work, for the most part. Eventually, I figured out a name for him and I came pretty close. He was “Kenneth Lewis,” who was signing “The Black Condor”—and when I got it all figured out, he was Louis Kenneth Fine. Fiction House, Fox, and those companies had Will Eisner working there. Will had several pen names for himself, like Willis B. Rensie. Jack Kirby didn’t sign his work for Will, either; he was Jack Cortez, among other names. The use of pen names was a common practice.

Lou was doing covers and interiors when I was started seeing his work. He was also illustrating interior text pages. All this came from the Eisner & Iger shop. Jack Kirby, Lou Fine, Chuck Mazoujian, Dan Zolnerowich, and Bob Powell worked there. It must have been quite a place to be.

Murphy Anderson (seen above in a recent photo, courtesy of the artist), flanked by (somewhat fuzzy) splash pages of origins of “The Black Condor”— from that initial appearance, drawn by Lou Fine, in Crack Comics #1 (May 1940), and from Murph’s re-telling of same in DC’s Secret Origins #21 (Dec. 1987).

The late Dan Zolnerowich assisted Mr. A. on the Fine-style backgrounds. [Art ©2002 DC Comics.]

Lou Fine and Fiction House

35 had breakfast and sat around for a few hours, talking. As far as I know, it was the only interview Dan ever granted. He was influenced by Will Eisner and worked in his shop when Lou Fine was there. He was one of the artists that took over Blackhawk. He drew it almost until Dick Dillin took over the feature.

He worked for Hillman and did “Airboy.”

Ruben Moreira.

JA: What was it about Lou Fine’s work that attracted you?

JA: The main reason I do these interviews is so we’ll have more information on people like Dan, who never got much attention from the comics press.

ANDERSON: He was just head and shoulders above ANDERSON: And it’s everyone else. I even liked his nice to know about stuff in many, many ways, these people. They were even better than Hal Foster real people. The guy and Alex Raymond. Fine had who followed Dan on a flair to his work. Gil Kane the Fiction House called him the most lyrical covers was Joe Doolin. artist around. “Lyrical” is a He’s another guy no good word to describe his one really knows about. work. Fine had a light touch He was an old pulp to his work, nothing heavy. artist who came to When he had to do heavy Fiction House, Along with his work on such features as the long-running “Impossible but True!” drama, it wasn’t as believable primarily to work on series in Detective Comics, in 1946-47 Ruben Moreira spelled artist Burne Hogarth on as Will Eisner’s. When one of the pulps. He came the Tarzan Sunday strip, under the name “Rubimor.” At one time Moreira also drew the Will’s characters hit from Chicago. He did a “Kaanga” jungle-hero series for Fiction House. This photo and art are reproduced from somebody, he was knocked lot of covers and the excellent “Volume 15B” of Flying Buttress’ multi-volume series reprinting all the Tarzan flat. Same with Jack Kirby: work of Hogarth and Harold R. Foster. [©2002 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.] interiors for Weird you had to pick up the pieces Tales, among other of Jack’s characters when they landed. [laughs] pulps. Quite a few guys came from other fields and went into comics.

Some didn’t stay and some never got out.

Lou’s stuff had impact, but it was different. It was luscious and beautiful to look at. He did it with such detail and didn’t gloss over Like Ruben Moriera. I didn’t get to know him very well, but he was anything. Unfortunately, he wasn’t inking everything he penciled, good friends with Al Plastino. I remarked to Al once, “You know, you though I didn’t understand that at first. Later on, of course, I did. I remind me of a guy I met when I first got into the business.” Al said, could see that the buildings and trees and things were rendered more or “Who’s that?” I said, “Ruben Moriera.” He laughed and said, “Ruby and less in his style, but they weren’t quite the same as the main work. I’m I shared a studio.” I could see why they got along well, because they had sure Lou penciled them, but he had others assisting in the inks. a similar outlook and were both snappy dressers. They were fun guys to be around: always joking and laughing.

I penciled the “Black Condor” story for DC’s Secret Origins comic [#21, Dec. 1987], written by Roy Thomas. Dan Zolnerowich was still working with me, and he inked the backgrounds for me. Dan even penciled some of backgrounds, and we more or less copied what Lou JA: You started working in comics in 1944 at Fiction House. How did Fine had done in his version. I wanted it to be as close to Lou’s work as you get that job? possible. Then, when Dan inked them, I got to looking at them and I’d swear to this day that Dan did the backgrounds on Lou’s original stuff.

ANDERSON: I started school in the fall of 1943 at the University of Dan was a terrific artist and did many features after Eisner stopped North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In those days, the school was on the doing them, like Uncle Sam and “Black X.” Dan also worked with Will quarter system, but they had accelerated courses, so I had achieved on P.S. magazine for many years. credits for three quarters of work instead of two. I had been co-editor of High Life at Greensboro Senior High School and had visited New York.

JA: There hasn’t been much written about Zolnerowich.

Our school paper had won some awards from the Columbia Scholastic ANDERSON: You know Steve Duinn? He did that book Comics Press Association, and we were invited to a convention at Columbia between the Panels, and I set up an interview with him and Dan. We University. As editors, two of the paper’s staff went to receive awards

II. “Have You Talked to Anyone at Fiction House?”

36

Murphy Anderson he had a shop with Will Eisner. I just knew he had a lot of work in Fiction House’s comics and I felt that he was Fiction House. He looked at my stuff and said, “I don’t have anything right now, but if you come back in a week or two, it might be different.” I guess he sensed that I was getting desperate and wasn’t going to show any interest until I was really hungry. I said, “Okay, but I don’t think I’ll be around. If I am, I’ll come back.”

I called on Timely and they gave me some pages to pencil as samples, but I never got that done. My money was fast running out; it was costing about eight or nine bucks to stay at a hotel on Times Square. I had about another week before my money ran out.

On the Friday morning of that week, I was grasping for straws and remembered Harry Chesler. I looked and saw he had a place on 23rd Street. I went down and talked to Chesler and he liked my work. He said, “You have a knack for science-fiction. I’m not publishing now... otherwise I’d be interested in taking you on. Have you talked to anyone at Fiction House? They have a sciencefiction magazine.”

I said, “Well, Mr. Iger told me to come back in a couple of weeks.” Chesler said, “Iger? He’s not Fiction House.”

He said, “Wait a minute...” He knew what had happened.

He picked up the phone and called editor Jack Byrne and gave me a big build-up. He told me that Byrne wanted to meet me and asked how fast could I get up there. I said, “As fast as my feet can get me there.” [laughs] I went up there, Jack Byrne looked at my stuff and said, “You’re hired.” We talked about my magnificent salary of $30 a week. “Come in Monday morning.” It was a terrible weekend [laughs], but I came in Monday morning and they gave me a “Star Pirate” script.

JA: Was the work in your portfolio Lou Fine-influenced?

This Paul Gustavson-drawn page of "The Jester," a feature which ran in Smash Comics from 1941-49, was given to Murphy by Quality publisher Busy Arnold in 1941 when he returned his samples. As a general rule, Arnold had all original art destroyed! Courtesy of Murphy Anderson. [©2002 DC Comics.]

the paper had won for the school year... and participate in the convention. I took the opportunity to make some rounds, and that’s when I met Lou Fine and Jack Cole at Quality. This was in early 1943.

In the summer of 1942 I had corresponded with publisher Busy Arnold and he encouraged me by sending me a Paul Gustavson original, which I still have. On the strength of that, I went to see Quality but got nowhere. They were very nice to me there. Fine and Cole had their own cubicles there. I don’t know if they worked there every day, but they were very important to Arnold.

In early 1944 I talked to my father about dropping out of Carolina and looking for a job in New York. He thought the idea of working in comics was a terrible one, but he finally gave in. He gave me a hundred bucks, which was a lot of money then. He said, “When that runs out, you have to come back home.” So I was off to the big city by late March of 1944.

Well, I walked the streets for a week, calling upon everyone I could think of. One of the people I visited was Jerry Iger. I hadn’t realized that

ANDERSON: Oh yeah. I’d written my own “Ray” story and almost had it completed. There were a couple of panels I hadn’t inked. I didn’t quite have enough time to get it done, but it was good enough to put in there. I also had some of my high school work and a couple of characters I had thought up in there.

That very first week at Fiction House, I met all the pulp editors and staffers. Wilbur Peacock, who was the pulp editor of Planet [Stories], gave me some illustrations to do, in addition to my comic book work.

I don’t want you to get the wrong impression here. This was wartime and everybody was gone, except for people like George Tuska, who couldn’t hear. Artie Saaf, Lee Elias, and Ruben Moriera worked there.

They were the big talents I met in those days. They didn’t work on staff, but would come in and we’d chat some.

Six 75th Avenue was our location, which was where DC’s offices were for quite a while. I used to sit on the corner office of 53rd and Fifth, just a desk or two away from the window. I could see parades and things like that marching down the street from there. Directly opposite from us (we were on the fourth floor) was St. Thomas’ Cathedral, which is still there. There was a city street between us and them. The church bells would ring and we could really hear them. They’d knock you right out of your seat. [laughs] Now years later, when I was working on P.S. magazine, I’d occasionally visit DC’s offices. One day, I was sitting in an office with

Alex Toth

Toth on Fine Yet Another Comic Book Great Looks Back at Lou Fine [Editor’s Note: At the eleventh hour, we were overjoyed to receive the following letter of comment about Lou Fine’s work from none other than Alex Toth, whose work since the latter 1940s has always been some of comic’s finest. The Alex Toth in the 1970s. inverted-triangle look of much of the third “page” is because it was written on the outside of the envelope—some last-minute thoughts we’re glad Alex took the time to add. —Roy.]

(Above:) A pitifully inadequate b-&-w rendering of a great Zorro painting Mr. T. sent us; he drew Zorro for Dell/Western, of course. (Below:) A 1943 Spirit daily drawn by Lou Fine, courtesy of scripter Gill Fox. [Above art ©2002 Alex Toth; Zorro TM & ©2002 Disney; Spirit art ©2002 Will Eisner.]

45

PLUS:

5.95

$$

In the the USA USA In

No. 17

September 2002

Doom Patrol TM & ©2002 DC Comics.

Roy Roy T Thomas homas’ E Electrifying lectrifying Comics F anzine Comics Fanzine

DOOM PATROL/DEADMAN CO-CREATOR

Arnold Drake

SPEAKS OUT ABOUT THE SILVER AGE OF COMICS!

Vol. 3, No. 17 / September 2002

™

Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editors John Morrow Jon B. Cooke

FCA Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck

Comics Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus

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

Cover Artists Luis Dominguez Lou Fine

Cover Colorists

Contents

Luis Dominguez Tom Ziuko

And Special Thanks to: Neal Adams Murphy Anderson Henry Baba Tim Barnes Dennis Beaulieu Ray Bottorff, Jr. Bart Bush Pearl Cherry J.R. Cochran Teresa R. Davidson Fred L. deBoom Al Dellinges Jay Disbrow Luis Dominguez James Doty Arnold & Lillian Drake Gill Fox Elliot Fine Laurie Fine Shane Foley Ron Frantz Michael R. Grabois David G. Hamilton Paul Handler Bill Harper Hank Harrison Daniel Herman Bob Hughes

Steve Hurley Chris Irving John Jacobson Ken Kaffke Al Krackow Joe & Nadia Mannarino Richard Martines Tom Morehouse Michelle Nolan Eric NolenWeathington Joe Petrilak John G. Pierce Ethan Roberts Benno Rothschild Alvin Schwartz David Siegel Marc Svensson Marc Swayze Dann Thomas Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Hames Ware John Yon Ed Zeno Mike Zeno

— In Memoriam —

Robert Kanigher Tom Sutton

Writer/Editorial: What’s Sauce for the Drake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 My Greatest Adventures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Arnold Drake talks to Marc Svensson about life, Deadman, and The Doom Patrol— plus Drake on memos to Irwin Donenfeld, a Deadman graphic novel, and Western Publishing.

I,A 1965 Robotman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 fan-article by Roy Thomas about Cliff Steele’s boiler-plate predecessor.

EC Confidential, Part II: Jack Davis and George Evans . . . . . . 33 Michael T. Gilbert continues his series on the non-EC work of EC greats.

A Tribute to Dave Berg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 A Tribute to Vince Fago . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 P.C. Hamerlinck presents Marc Swayze, Jay Disbrow, Alvin Schwartz, E. Nelson Bridwell, and the ever-irascible C.C. Beck.

Special Section on Golden Age Great LOU FINE . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: As he relates within, Arnold Drake often sketched out cover ideas for comics he wrote, including for the first “Doom Patrol” story. Bruno Premiani made a few changes when penciling the cover of My Greatest Adventure #80, so artist Luis Dominguez painted this version a few years back; it’s closer to Arnold’s sketch (printed on page 3). [Art ©2002 Arnold Drake & Luis Dominguez; Doom Patrol TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

Above: Neal Adams drew this superb new figure for the slipcase of DC’s 350-page Deadman Collection; you gotta see it in color! [©2002 DC Comics.]

Alter EgoTM is published 8 times a year 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@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $8 ($10.00 Canada, $11.00 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. Arnold Drake interview ©2002 Marc Svensson & Arnold Drake. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada.

FIRST PRINTING.

My Greatest Adventures

3

My Greatest Adventures A Candid Conversation with ARNOLD DRAKE, Co-Creator of Deadman and The Doom Patrol Conducted by Marc Svensson Transcribed by Christopher Irving

[INTERVIEWER’S INTROcamera and drive down to NYC. I DUCTION: It was the San Diego was supposed to be accompanied by Comic-Con in 1999. I was out there my good friend Rich Morrissey, but with my whole family, which Rich had to cancel, due to work. I Our esteemed interviewee writes that this photo from years past is included our new baby Scott, who was alone on this one, but I was the of himself (at right), his wife Lillian, and their “good friend and was just a couple of months old. Per big Doom Patrol fan, so Rich great jazz pianist, Walter Bishop, Jr., who died far too young.” usual, I had brought along a bunch thought it was appropriate.

[Photo courtesy of Arnold Drake.] of video equipment to capture (Unfortunately, Rich has now left footage of the idols of my youth. us for good—a hard fact that still (Left:) Arnold’s pencil sketch for the first-ever “Doom Patrol” cover, from Shockingly, I had not paid close brings tears to my eyes. It has been which Luis Dominguez produced the painting used as a cover of this attention to the guest list for the over a year and I still have trouble issue of A/E—and (right) the cover of My Greatest Adventure #80 as convention, and had completely talking about him.) rendered from the sketch by Bruno Premiani (with an unidentified inker) failed to notice that Arnold Drake for that June 1963 magazine, and reprinted in The Doom Patrol Archives, [I should take the time to do a was attending. Worse—I had Vol. 1, published in early 2002. [Sketch ©2002 Arnold Drake; Doom Patrol couple of “Thank You’s.” Most of and cover TM & c 2002 DC Comics.] scheduled away the time when his my video stuff never sees print, but spotlight panel was going to appear. thanks to the indomitable David Siegel, I was able to meet Chris (I had to spend some time with my wife and our new baby in San Irving.

Chris, a multi-talented guy, is one hell of a transcriber, and I Diego—or face divorce proceedings!) I was in a fix, and I could not have him to thank for banging out this transcript from my videotape. get anyone to fill in for me—not even fellow video hound Mike I should thank Martin O’Hearn, whose expertise I am sure shaped Catron! This was painful, because I am a true Doom Patrol fan. this interview, even if not directly—and Rich Morrissey. The thanks Growing up, my older brother Chris and I used to pass around the to Arnold should be obvious. This tape is dedicated to Lillian Drake.

DP’s early adventures. DP villains like Animal-Vegetable-Mineral As much as I am an Arnold Drake fan, I’m a Lillian Drake fan. — Man became household names. (We especially took to AVM Man; Marc Svensson (who is recovering from an operation to remove a after all, our father was 100% Swedish—and this was the first cyst from his spine as he writes this.)]

Swedish super-villain we had ever encountered. We began wondering

if our dad could turn into a giant broccoli stalk.) Anyway, you could not be a Doom Patrol fan without being an Arnold Drake fan. What was I going to do?

[I took time out from taping and ran down to Arnold’s table at the con, explaining my dilemma, and that the only way I could make up for it was if he would let me come down to New York City where he lived and interview him on film for no less than two hours. Arnold must have thought I was out of my mind. Fortunately, he and his lovely wife Lillian agreed. (The next shock I got was when I found out that Arnold and Lillian lived less than five blocks from where I used to live in Manhattan.)

[A couple of months after the convention, I made my final preparations with Arnold, and my own lovely wife allowed me to pack up my

ARNOLD DRAKE: [holding up a copy of It Rhymes with Lust] This is one of Matt Baker’s very first commercial works. It’s something I invented along with a guy named Les Waller, an American novelist. We called it the “picture novel.” Today they’d call it a graphic novel. That was too fancy a phrase in 1950. I was still at New York University.

It’s black-&-white on the inside. The idea was that we created this to sell to literate people who just haven’t read books, and we thought this was a way to get them to read books. We also thought that, if you’d print it in color, it would look like a comic book, and we didn’t want it to. It was a crossover, and we didn’t think it’d cross over well if the insides looked like a comic book. One of the things we insisted on was that the insides be black-&-white, not color. We didn’t have to fight too hard when the publisher saw how much money he’d save on the inside.

4 MARC SVENSSON: Comic books were on the way out then. Were you worried about the Kefauver Commission [the Congressional commission which investigated comics very publicly and infamously in 1954].

Arnold Drake Arnold says this (color) sketch he did is a “3 a.m. mock-up I did that sold St. John Publishing on ’Picture Novels’ (“graphic” was too highfalutin’ a word in 1950).” During this period, he says, “while still attending NYU on the G.I. Bill, I earned pocket money freelancing: two pulp private-eye stories near the end of that era; The Steel Noose, a mystery novel, and some comics.” [©2002 Arnold Drake.]

DRAKE: No, I wasn’t. Comics were going down, but TV was the villain. I think everything was being affected, Hollywood in particular, by television. It was really starting to take a bite out of the box office in 1951 or ’52.

MS: It wasn’t censorship so much as television impeding?

DRAKE: I don’t think censorship means anything after about six months. That’s about how long those things last. Unless we’re talking about a totalitarian system. And we’re not. Also, if you want to get a kid

even in his early stuff. He was also probably paid below even the lousy pay scale of that time, because Matt was black. And there were hardly any black artists in the field at the time. A brilliant artist. Also one of the sharpest dressers I ever saw!

MS: He did incredible covers for Phantom Lady. You may be the only person with a copy of that!

DRAKE: I think there are at least two others.

MS: You were at NYU [New York University] at the time?

DRAKE: Yes. At that same time, anything for a buck, I wrote several stories in what I call “naughty comics”: Candid Tales and Bold Stories. I think the level of this is demonstrated by an ad on the back. These are not highclass advertising layouts. [holds up the two magazines] This was published by a guy named Red Kirby. We called him Red; I think his real name was John, but I’m not sure.

It’s probably most famous for the fact that it has a couple of Wally Wood’s first stories: “Ogre of Paris,” and “I Married a Freak.” These two books are also extremely rare.

MS: Wood was very fantastic, such a good artist.

DRAKE: Yeah, and this was very early. He was still to get about 200% better. It was issued in March 1950, meaning I wrote it in 1949.

Courtesy of Arnold: the front and back covers of the 1950 Arnold Drake-Les Waller opus It Rhymes with Lust...

to do something, tell him he can’t do it. They told the kids, “These books are bad for you,” so the kids paid an arm and a leg to get their hands on them. Anyhoo, that was when we thought we could turn former comic book readers into picture novel readers. But it didn’t get a long enough test. And then the publisher died.

MS: Who published that?

DRAKE: Archer St. John. I’m told that Archer died of an overdose, early on, but I don’t know that as a fact.

MS: So you got Matt Baker to do the art. After Phantom Lady, he was one of the top artists in the field. How did you meet him?

DRAKE: I didn’t; the publisher did. Archer apparently got Baker for a very low price, because I think Matt was really just getting off the ground. He was a great artist, and it shows,

...and a couple of pages from the interior. Arnold tells us that “Les(lie) Waller was the author of such novels as Hide in Plain Sight (from which a film was made) and The Family (a pre-The Godfather mafia novel).” Art by Matt Baker of Phantom Lady fame—or infamy, if you believed Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 1950s tome Seduction of the Innocent. [©2002 the respective copyright holders.]

My Greatest Adventures

5

LILLIAN DRAKE: Nice guy.

DRAKE: Real nice guy.

MS: When you say “we,” it was you and which other writers?

DRAKE: Ed Herron, Gardner Fox, Dave Wood, Bob Haney.

MS: You were actually writing at DC? DRAKE: Very often, before I took my own office.

MS: That was 575 Lexington?

DRAKE: Yeah. DC had moved. They had originally been down around 44th Street, and they moved to 49th, a new building.

MS: I think the advertising was 205 East 42nd. That’s not what it was?

DRAKE: It may have been, because it was around that part of town.

[Co-publisher Jack] Liebowitz had been most strongly in favor of moving; he thought it was good for the industry. I don’t think that [copublisher] Harry Donenfeld liked the idea; he thought it’d be too expensive. He was a very down-to-earth kind of guy; Liebowitz was not. I used to call Liebowitz “the Jewish Neville Chamberlain.”

Chamberlain (or “Chamberpot”, if you prefer, and I did!) was the British Prime Minister who handed Czechoslovakia over to Hitler: an ultra-conservative who was also ultra-proper. They said he carried his umbrella even to bed. Open! And that was Liebowitz.

Arnold’s says his script for the cover story for House of Mystery #51 was “my first DC story (or second, after ’Batman Meets Jules Verne’).”

Thanks to Michelle Nolan. [©2002 DC Comics.]

MS: This is when the covers were dated three months ahead?

DRAKE: If you bought a magazine that was cover-dated two months early, you would say, “I’m not going to buy an old magazine like this.”

MS: 1953 is when you showed up at DC Comics?

DRAKE: I think so.

MS: The first story you did was “The Second Death of Abraham Lincoln.” That was for [editor Jack] Schiff, or— DRAKE: Weisinger.

MS: You did work for Mort Weisinger! After that came the “Fireman Farrell” [The Brave and the Bold #1], and you did a couple of stints on “Tommy Tomorrow.”

DRAKE: That was a while later. There was a period where I refused to work with Mort, and so I worked with Schiff only.

So the first morning after the move I got in very early. Sitting at my machine, I hear Harry Donenfeld come down the hall shouting, “$280,000-a-year rent and I can’t even take a s***! They locked the executive bathroom on me!!” Harry was no “Neville” Liebowitz.

Anyway, those expensive new quarters made them a bit more professional. It was a separation from their early beginnings. Back then they never felt totally professional. It was like they were doing something sneaky.

MS: Given some of the characters around then, I can see why.

MS: You actually came into conflict with Mort? [laughs] Amazing!

DRAKE: Oh, yes, his attitude was very clear to me: “The only way I can stand tall is to kick somebody in the nuts, and that makes me a big man.” I decided I didn’t need that.

MS: But you did work in between on “Space Ranger” and “Tommy Tomorrow”?

DRAKE: We didn’t like “Space Ranger,” and when I say “we,” I mean all the writers. It was a Schiff invention, and Schiff inventions were much too tame. “Dial ’H’ for Hero” was a Schiff invention and was essentially the same thing. We weren’t crazy about it. We would have to flip a coin to see who was going to write the next damned “Space Ranger.” It would fall to me, and the entire afternoon I would sit at the typewriter, singing, “Space Ranger, I hate you, Space Ranger, you’re mine.” [laughter] MS: Did you know Jack Schiff?

DRAKE: Sure.

The covers of the two “naughty comics” to which Arnold—and a young Wally Wood— contributed. [©2002 the respective copyright holders.]

A Memo to DC’s Publisher

21

A Memo To DCs Publisher-A Window on the Silver Age of Comics

by Arnold Drake

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Some time after the preceding interview was taped by Marc Svensson, Arnold Drake located a carbon of the majority of the memo he had written to DC’s co-publisher, apparently on February 3, 1966. Arnold writes: “The memo to Irwin Donenfeld was 7 pages long, but this is all I’ve been able to find. It’s historically interesting if incomplete. Irwin’s reaction to my belief that Marvel was about to give DC real competition was, ’You’re full of s*** as a Christmas turkey! We outsell them 3-to-1!’ The man was not exactly a prophet.” Actually, as John Romita and Ye Editor were aware from their time at DC, the older publishing company had been having meetings about the competition from DC-distributed Marvel as early as summer of 1965—but had decided that Marvel’s secret was the ’bad drawing’ of guys like Kirby and Ditko. The fact that Drake’s memo was given short shrift even half a year later shows much about the mindset at the time.

[Now, without further ado, here is the text of the four (of seven) pages of the memo that Arnold Drake sent Alter Ego in 2002— 36 years after it was written, with Arnold’s underlining and other stylizations kept to retain the flavor of the original. The “he” referred to in the second sentence was obviously Stan Lee—and the subtitles are AD’s own. —Roy.]

The Marvel “Miracle” What Marvel was attempting to do began to be apparent about three years ago. They (or rather, he) were bringing “sophistication” to the comics. The antihero was lifted from the hardcover books and slick magazines and brought to the kids. The present idiom was applied, not the idea of bobby soxers and “swing” music and Betty Grable, etc. They combined iconoclasm with nonsequiturs and “in” jokes and got what we call (part of what we call) “camp.”

For Sick magazine, a long-running “shoestring-budget contender for the Mad market” originally started by Joe Simon, Arnold scripted—and did rough story breakdowns for—many features, including a several-part parody of a certain green-skinned Marvel hero in “The Incrudible SULK!” [©2002 the respective copyright holder.]

They succeeded for two reasons primarily. First, they were more with what was happening in the country than we were. And perhaps more

important, they aimed their stuff at an age level that had never read comics before in any impressive number—the college level (let’s say ages 16 to 19 or 20).

That second fact is important in view of the fewer titles that Marvel publishes. They could afford to aim all (with the exception of the Romance books— and the Westerns, which—by the way—are now “swinging” or beginning to “swing” also) of their titles at this age level and pull an equal number of readers from lower age groups happy to tag along.

If DC’s co-publisher in 1966 wasn’t taking Marvel seriously, his editorial successors were by the mid-’70s or so, as per this story for Sick magazine scripted by Arnold Drake and illustrated by Jack Sparling: a page from a chapter of “Ego-Man”—Stan Boreman, definitely a standin for Stan Lee—while the Marble “child-editor” could be Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Archie Goodwin— or a composite of all four.

Most prominent at the B.C. Comics meeting, from left, are caricatures of Joe Orlando, Joe Kubert, Paul Levitz, Murray Boltinoff, and Julius Schwartz—with production manager Jack Adler taking pics while dangling overhead. [©2002 the respective copyright holder.]

If Marvel had the number of titles that we have, they could not use this approach across the board!

(I believe, if Marvel continues to add titles and finds it wise to begin aiming at the 12 to 10, 10 to 8, and 8 to 5 market, they will not apply the same orientation to these books as to Spiderman, Fantastic-4, etc.)

Zeroing-In On Markets The idea that all our books should swing-like-Marvel is erroneous.

Superman and most of the Superman family is and should remain aimed at the lower age levels—5 to 10. Books like Batman and the Flash should be picking up the kids at age 9 or 10 and carrying them forward to 12 or 13. Beginning at about age 14 and carrying them right on up to college level should be books like Metal Men, Doom Patrol, Challengers, Metamorpho, etc. (Adult concepts, adult language; a little cheesecake, a little idol-breaking, a little “think” stuff now and then—plus the grotesqueries and the much-much-bigger-than-life villains, etc.)

There is lots of room for disagreement as to precisely which titles belong in which age groups—but that essential notion should be accepted and each book age-slotted in an editor’s mind. There is much to

Proposal For A Deadman Graphic Novel

23

Proposal For A Deadman Graphic Novel

by Arnold Drake [EDITOR’S NOTE: In 1999 Arnold Drake submitted his own proposal for a graphic novel [or “prestige-format book”] starring Deadman.

He himself feels “the aborted proposal... is of interest primarily for the flashback to Boston Brand’s origins as a circus aerialist.” However, we feel the whole proposal is of definite interest—after all, it’s by the man who first thought up the whole concept of Deadman... so we’re presenting it in its entirety, with only a bit of minor “bleeping” here and there of the original. It’s ©2002 by Arnold Drake, but of course Deadman is TM & ©2002 by DC Comics. —Roy.]

DEADMAN “Revenge is the purest human emotion— because it’s never watered down by mortality, ethics or humanity!”

Boston Brand (a.k.a. “DEADMAN”) Deadman is conceived here as a 96-page graphic novel. Some 20-25 pages are a retelling of the first two stories, the origin of Deadman and his first attempt to find his killer. (In the spring of 1967, I had actually conceived of the two as one story—and I might have squeezed it into 24 pages—but Jack Miller, a brand new editor, had inherited a lot of inventory that he had to dump. So only 17 pages were available.)

I briefly discussed with Miller a second development of Deadman’s saga, beginning with Book-3. He literally sucked wind and said, “Let’s do it!” But not until Book-4. He wanted Book-3 to repeat the basic proposition: Boston pursues his killer. (Bennet Cerf said, “If you know a good story, keep telling it.” Miller was an unconscious Cerfite.

And a lovely guy who left us 30 years too soon!)

The question was a simple one: where does Deadman hang his hood when he’s not violating other folks’ bodies? Obviously in some nether world—even if it’s just a stark, uninhabited plane. SOOO—let’s go deal with the afterlife, right? In 1999, a simple creative challenge. But in 1967 Miller was afraid even to submit the title, DEADMAN, to the Comics Code. With moral support from Infantino, I talked him into it.

Okay, there is the other plane to which Boston must constantly return and LITERALLY report-in: a stadium-sized room in black-andwhite with walls covered by 10,000 TV monitors—watching 10,000 places on Earth and constantly changing their subjects. The banks of high-powered computers, run by a vast staff dressed completely in black and white, can zoom in on a single man or woman. The only color there is brought by “visitors”—like Deadman.

The man to whom Boston reports (a thin-lipped pasty-face with a corporate ledger for a heart), officially titled “Number Nine,” is called— behind his back—TBC, The Bean Counter. We have met this suck-*ss in every corporation, graduating class, or army barracks we’ve inhabited.

Even the wisest bosses suffer him—because he gets the ugly jobs done.

He also gets his way—about almost everything. Is power his c*ck? Yes. But he also believes he is right about what’s good for everyone.

(As do all saints and dictators.)

Number Nine “knows” one thing well: Bostron Brand is a fake who should not have been granted Rama Kushna’s grace. But the department

This illustrated article about Deadman (it also covered Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzerwinning Maus) appeared, Arnold Drake tells us, in “a Russo-American newspaper.”

[Infantino, Adams, &!Roussos art ©2002 DC Comics; Maus art ©2002 Art Spiegelman.]

Go Western, Young Man

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Go Western Young Man A Memoir of Western Publishing by ARNOLD DRAKE [Reprinted from Robin Snyder’s The Comics! Vol. 12, No. 7, July 2001. ©2002 Arnold Drake.]

In 1971 I began writing at Western Publishing. My passport was nineteen years of writing “Batman,” “Plastic Man,” “Lois Lane,” House of Mystery, “Tommy Tomorrow,” The X-Men, “Space Ranger,” and creating the first graphic novel, It Rhymes with Lust (1950), as well as “Deadman” and The Doom Patrol. But Western proved to be another fish entirely. (We’ll dissect the fish later.)

The building at 3rd Avenue and 50th Street was named for Western.

(In New York, if you’ll guarantee rental of three floors or more, you can name a building after Adolf Hitler. Of course, you’ll have to keep replacing the windows.)

The editor-in-chief, he of apple cheeks, inch-deep dimples, and eyes that smiled behind wire-rimmed glasses, was Wally Green. His dad,

“Bud” Green, was a top lyric writer and early partner of Harry Warren (who had more songs on the Hit Parade than Berlin, Kern, Gershwin, or Porter; coincidentally, in 1979 I wrote Harry Warren’s Lullaby of Broadway, a musical blend of his life and some forty songs). Having two songwriting brothers helped personalize my contact with Wally, beginning a friendship that continued long after I left Western.

My first working editor there, Paul Kuhn, assigned me to write a “mystery” title: Boris Karloff’s Tales of Mystery, Dark Shadows, The Twilight Zone, or Grimm’s Ghost Stories. Pressure to fill that monthly menu was

Arnold writes that this cover for an issue of Western’s Grimm’s Ghost Stories is “a Luis Dominguez cover for a Drake story; original cover sketch by Drake. We have been working together for 35 years! Our secret?

Nobody else would abide either one of us!” [©2002 Western Publishing, Inc.]

In 1968-69 Arnold scripted various comics for Marvel, among them an eight-issue run of the original X-Men—including two stories illustrated by Jim Steranko (this scene is from #50, cover-dated Nov. 1968) and the tale that introduced Alex Summers, Cyclops’ brother (the future Havok), as per these panels from #54 (March ’69), with art by Don Heck and Vince Colletta. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Arnold Drake II (General Patton’s Third Army, Battle of the Bulge, etc.), I was more than sympathetic to the GI cause. I remained a volunteer for twenty years, seven of those as National Executive Director.

Soon after I got there, Wally suggested I take a crack at Little Lulu. I said, “Great!” I’d written most of the DC humor titles (The Fox and the Crow, The Adventures of Jerry Lewis, The Adventures of Bob Hope, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and my favorite, Stanley and His Monster). Wally urged I do storyboards rather than typed manuscripts. I didn’t need much encouraging. I’d been a cartoonist wannabe since boyhood.

For ten years I did almost all the Lulus, plus many backup features. I worked on “Heckle and Jeckle,” “Dudley Do-Right,” “Silly Disney,” “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” “Hashimoto San,” Bugs Bunny, O.G. Whiz, Tweety and Sylvester, “Peabody’s Improbable History,” Yosemite Sam, and some I’ve forgotten. I still have many of those storyboards—and 700+ comic books.

I grew smugly proud of my multi-talents, drawing Lulu with one hand, typing Star Trek with the other. That dumb pride forged one of my “great” lines. At a fan meeting in L.A., I told how, after I left DC, Murray needed three writers to replace me on the comedy books: one to plot, one for dialogue, a third on the gag lines. A voice rose from the audience: “That’s right! I was one of them!” “How does it feel to be one-third of me?” I chortled. Then I recognized the man I had just put down—the great Sergio Aragonés. See what I mean about “dumb”?

Though Western was richer than DC or Marvel, it paid us about 30% less. But, without competition from the editors, we worked much faster. Self-exploitation improved the rates. But the low pay spoke to Western’s conservatism.

Script and story breakdowns by Drake for a Little Lulu story done for Western/Gold Key. Arnold writes: “I often used Dad as the central character. When Marge Higgins created the original single-panel Lulus in The Saturday Evening Post, it was strictly mother-and-daughter. There was no daddy... at least, not to my recall. When John Stanley took over, he did a fabulous job of developing all the kids in the gang. But he didn’t often explore MomDad stories. When I succeeded him, gender consciousness ’women’s lib’ came a kind of ’men’s lib’: it was okay for me to depict Dad as being a good cook and enjoying it. (Previously, that would have been seen as a feminine trait.) And I could have Dad take his little girl to the office to experience that part of his life. ’Miss In-between’ was about the see-saw relationships of even the best marriages.” [©2002 the respective copyright holders.]

high. But Paul made it painless for writers. I met two kinds of editors in comics: those who, longing to write the stories themselves, dictated to the writer (Weisinger and Schiff, for example), and those who, once convinced of your skill, gave you lots of freedom. Murray Boltinoff was that kind of editor. So was Paul: non-competitive. Some writers prefer one, some the other. I was more a Murray/Paul writer. It’s less about editing talent than it is about style. But it’s too late to convince me that style is not crucial to content.

Wally and Paul had a friendship that reached beyond the office doors.

They had a mutual love of Verdi and Puccini and often attended the opera together. And it was Wally who introduced me to the Veteran’s Bedside Network, show-business people using music and drama as therapy in VA hospitals. Having served nearly four years in World War

For an interesting clue to the company’s 19thcentury nature, sniff this bit of symbolism: unlike National and Marvel, Western had no writers’ bullpen. You arrived on schedule, did your work in twenty or thirty minutes, and went on your way. That meant zero contact among writers and artists. No publisher promoted camaraderie among the creators. But Western discouraged it.

Again, that was symbolic of its whole corporate spirit.

Thus I didn’t get to know Al McWilliams, Frank Bolle, George Roussos, Mike Sekowsky, Walt Simonson, George Evans, and Reed Crandall. I did get to know Paul Newman (but not enough!), Joe Orlando (at DC), Jack Sparling, and Luis Dominguez, still a good friend and partner. (Luis and I now produce art based on my original cover sketches that I have retained.)

Eventually, I saw that what made Western a different fish was “Disneyitis,” a virus attacking any corporate body that holds licensing agreements with “ol’ Walt.” Beyond its normal share of self-protectiveness, Disney had a well-earned reputation for ultra-conservative labor and business practices. In 1940 the Disney colorists (mostly young

Go Western, Young Man women) won a long, nasty strike to improve their $15-a-week wages. also, early WD gave few creative credits. Did it want people to believe Walt drew, inked, and colored a zillion cels of Snow White all by himself? (If so, it failed. The day Walt died, Disney stock shot up $3.)

But the Disney licenses were precious stuff. That’s what Western’s anal retention was all about.

Disneyitis wasn’t the sole cause of Western’s conservative style. While other publishers originated most of their titles, perhaps 80% of Western’s books were licensed. To protect those licenses, Western adopted standards that made the Comics Code Authority look like a convention of hippies. It also handcuffed Wally. I know he’d have liked dreaming up new titles, with themes more dedicated to a changing audience.

Its distribution was also a key to Western’s fussiness. Comics were but a fraction of its line. Golden Books, coloring books, puzzle books, and TV/movie tie-ins were their main trade, and that meant chain store distribution. At newsstands, no Westerns snuggled up to DC and Marvel. But Woolworth carried the whole line. And, à la Disney, Woolworth was pure white bread—and don’t hold the mayo!

(Woolworth is now kaput but that bland taste isn’t.) And I think that, at chain stores, kids books were bought for the kids, not by them. So, with

Of O.G. Whiz, Arnold writes, “Issue #1 was a John Stanley idea. The rest were mine. O.G. could have worked with proper marketing. Western distributed primarily to chain stores (Woolworth’s, etc.), where their Golden Books sold well. But their reps looked down on comics (except for the Disney titles, of course). O.G. was short-lived, but went out with a blaze of glory: an uppriced issue devoted to a parody of Time magazine called Tike” [a re-spelling of “tyke,” of course]. [©2002 Western Publishing, Inc.]

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parents as buyers, Western’s books had to be purer than Snow White.

Despite the crotchety coloration of the above, I enjoyed my work at Western. It was the wide span of books that turned me on. In addition to animated, mystery, and sci-fi comics, I wrote some non-comics versions of Welcome Back, Kotter and Fat Albert, which was a great change of pace. So, even with the handcuffs, you could do work that was available nowhere else. I have no idea what Western is up to these days.

Perhaps it has graduated to the 20th century.

But, of course, we’re now in the 21st

Arnold and Lillian Drake.

Arnold: “J.T. and the Colonel was created for a start-up anthology mag at Western that (far as I can recall) never got beyond #1. The co-tagonists (don’t look it up in Webster’s; it ain’t there) let me do a black-&-white team. I wanted to introduce a black family into Little Lulu’s neighborhood but it was nixed. Still, a partnership between a black and a white bird was okay: J.T., the very practical hotdog-cart owner, and the Colonel, a W.C. Fieldsish piece of pure flim-flam. It was fun while it lasted. (About 15 minutes.)” [©2002 the respective copyright holders.]

[The EC!logo is a TM of William M.!Gaines, Agent, Inc.]

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34

Mr. Monster’s

JACK DAVIS When Harvey Kurtzman created Mad for EC in 1952, he gathered the best artists in the business to help launch the four-color comic. Jack Davis was among those chosen few. The two had already worked together on Kurtzman’s war titles, Frontline Combat and Two-fisted Tales. It turned out to be a smart choice.

Fast and versatile, Davis quickly perfected a loose, loony art style that was ideal for Mad. In his spare time Davis also drew classic covers and stories for Tales from the Crypt and other EC horror titles. Davis’ work proved to be immensely popular, even when illustrating stories for lesser EC titles such as Panic, Impact, Crime SuspenStories, and Incredible Science-Fiction.

After Bill Gaines’ Entertaining Comics comic book line died in 1956, Davis went on to enjoy a spectacular career in commercial art. Covers for Time and TV Guide were just a few of his many highprofile accounts.

But even the great Jack Davis had to start somewhere. In this case, “here” is “Varsity Romance”!

Davis by Davis, from the EC Lives! program book done for the EC Fan-Addict Convention held in New York in 1972. [©2002 Jack Davis.]

Davis created these “Varsity Romance” pages as art samples to be shown to prospective publishers. Editor after editor passed, until publisher Bill Gaines and editor Al Feldstein finally recognized Davis’ genius. In The Art of Jack Davis the artist laughingly states that he “showed the pages to Al Feldstein and he gave me my first horror story, probably because it was such horrible stuff.”

Jack Davis’ art samples for a story called “Variety Romance,” doubtless done in 1950-51, since his first published EC work had a 1951 cover date. [©2002 Jack Davis.]

Davis’ humorous comments notwithstanding, the pages are actually quite good. A quick glance at these and the earlier Bullsheet cover (reprinted on our title page) shows that Davis seems to have been born with his distinctive style. The early Davis style is also evident on the horror sample page reproduced here.

His hand-lettering on this and the love pages suggests that they were all part of the same comic art portfolio that convinced EC to hire him.

Though not as polished as his later work, this piece is historically important—and may well be Jack Davis’ very first horror page. It has never been printed before, and we are indebted to Joe and Nadia Mannarino of All Star Auctions for providing copies. We also thank Hank Harrison, who first published our other early samples of Jack Davis’ work.

No. 76

In this issue:

C.C. BECK MARC SWAYZE ALVIN SCHWARTZ E. NELSON BRIDWELL JAY DISBROW

[Art ©2002 Jay Disbrow; Captain Marvel TM!&!©2002 DC!Comics.]

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Marc Swayze

[Art & logo ©2002 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel © & TM 2002 DC Comics]

[FCA EDITOR’S NOTE: From 1941-42, Marcus D. Swayze was a top artist for Fawcett Comics. He designed the character Mary Marvel and drew her first two adventures, but he was primarily hired to illustrate Captain Marvel stories and covers, and also wrote numerous Captain Marvel scripts for Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures. After serving in World War II, he produced art and stories for Fawcett on a freelance basis from his home in Louisiana, where he created both art and story for The Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics, and also drew the syndicated newspaper strip Flyin’ Jenny, originated by his friend and mentor Russell Keaton.

After the cancellation of Wow, Swayze drew for Fawcett’s romance comics and eventually ended his comics career with Charlton Publications in the 1950s. Having covered the above aspects of his career in broad strokes since his popular ongoing column first appeared in FCA #54 in 1996, he now turns his attention to particular aspects of the Golden Age—beginning with this overview of the World’s Mightiest Mortal. —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

Writing or drawing, when we were busy doing our thing in the Golden Age, there didn’t seem to be much concern over the effects our efforts might have on the readers, the youngsters of the ’40s. There were no comments tossed around as to whether the work might result in a child’s growing up to be a better person… or the other kind. The sole

“A perfect guy for a kid to run around with.” A line from Some Bright Morning I’ll Fly Away by Milton Hartsell... and the first of several old rough sketches recently inked by Marc. [Art ©2002 Marc Swayze; Capt. Marvel TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

responsibility, as seen from my corner, was storytelling… with pictures and words… providing entertainment of a sort… relaxation, amusement, excitement… and, for the publisher, of course, money. There wasn’t a lot of teaching or preaching to it.

Eventually criticism did emerge… of the influence comic books were having on children... and the opinions weren’t all good. You know about that. Ended up with steps taken by the industry to control itself, à la the Hayes Office of Hollywood.

A comforting afterthought to all that may be the unlikely possibility of a kid getting into trouble…with his nose buried in a comic book.

There has never been much said about the “good” influence of the comics. But I’ll bet there was. A heartwarming novel, Some Bright Morning I’ll Fly Away by Milton Hartsell, tells of a little farm boy whose life changed when his uncle brought him a grocery sack full of used Captain Marvel Adventures comic books, the first he’d ever seen. “They must have cost Uncle Charlie well over a dollar.”

Author Hartsell’s young character goes on: “After absorbing a few of the super adventure stories, I knew when I grew up, without a doubt, I wanted to become ’Captain Marvel,’ or at least his side-kick. He was “The World’s Mightiest Mortal” and a very good guy, with no use for mean people. A person couldn’t miss seeing him.

His dazzling uniform featured an eye-catching thunderbolt across his chest.

“Captain Marvel could zoom across the horizon, like a shooting star. His dynamic cape fluttered in the wind with vigor. It was such a beautiful sight to behold, something akin to an American flag flailing proudly in a snappy

Mary Marvel landing and running. Recently rendered by her original artist, Marc Swayze.

[Art ©2002 Marc Swayze; Mary Marvel TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

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E. Nelson Bridwell

“ECSTATIC!” The E. Nelson Bridwell Interview Conducted by John G. Pierce E. Nelson Bridwell, drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger...

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

[Originally published in John Pierce’s fanzine, The Whiz Kids #2, 1981; text © 2002 JGP.] PREFACE

E. Nelson Bridwell lived the dream of many comic book fans: the opportunity to work on his favorite characters as editor (including reprint editor) and sometimes writer. Perhaps more than any other fanturned-pro, he worked diligently to keep his heroes in character and true. This was especially so of his work on Fawcett’s Marvel Family when they were transplanted to DC Comics. If he occasionally faltered, well, his successes outnumbered his failures. And when change was forced on him—as with the “new look” of Shazam! that took place in the final issues of that magazine and continued for a run as a back-up feature in World’s Finest Comics in the early 1980s—he made the best of the situation by remaining faithful to the characters.

Nelson suffered from illnesses and physical handicaps which limited his body, but never his mind. For all his vast knowledge of comics’ history, he was an incredibly well-read person who could recite poems and even entire Shakespearean passages from memory. In 1996, artist Kurt Schaffenberger told P.C. Hamerlinck that he referred to Nelson as “a walking encyclopedia.”

Although I never met Nelson, it was my pleasure to have some correspondence with him, both in the Shazam! letters pages, as well as in occasional personal replies. He was one of comicdom’s greatest and, sadly, overlooked talents. — John G. Pierce, 2002.

INTRODUCTION Back in the ’40s, E. Nelson Bridwell grew up reading comic books. By 1964, when Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, and other future comics notables were still editing fanzines, Edward Nelson Bridwell was already breaking into comics, as an assistant to DC editor Mort Weisinger. Over the next 15+ years, he would serve in many capacities at DC Comics. In the early ’70s, he became involved with DC’s revival of Captain Marvel as Julie Schwartz’s associate editor and subsequently as writer of the Shazam! feature. He also compiled the 1977 hardcover book collection Shazam!

From the 40’s to the 70’s.

INTERVIEW JOHN PIERCE: How old were you when you first discovered Captain Marvel?

E. NELSON BRIDWELL: I was probably about ten years old. It was around the same time the Captain Marvel movie serial was

released in the theatres—1941. I loved the serial as a kid… except when they removed Captain Marvel’s powers in the final chapter.

...and John G. Pierce, drawn by C.C. Beck in 1980. [Art ©2002 estates of Kurt Schaffenberger and C.C. Beck,, respectively.]

JP: Is Captain Marvel your all-time favorite comic book character?

BRIDWELL: I can’t rank any of them… but if I had to, he’d be right up there with Superman, Batman, and others.

JP: When did you first discover organized comics fandom?

BRIDWELL: I became involved in EC fandom during the ’50s.

JP: How did you get hired at DC? BRIDWELL: I’d been trying to break into the comic book field for several years. I did some writing for Mad. I continually read, obtained back issues, and wrote letters. However, I was living in Oklahoma at the time, so my prospects didn’t look too bright. Then, in December 1963, I got a letter from Mort Weisinger at DC, offering me a job as his assistant.

JP: Which task do you prefer: writing stories, editing, selecting reprints, creating text pages, or compiling letter columns?

BRIDWELL: Writing.

JP: Other than handling the letters pages and writing an occasional story, what was your specific function on Shazam! while Julie Schwartz was the editor?

BRIDWELL: Basically just editing and trying to keep the stories consistent with the Golden Age. JP: When did you first meet C.C. Beck?

BRIDWELL: After appearing as a guest of honor at the New York Comic Convention, he stopped by the DC offices before leaving for a vacation to his hometown in Minnesota. While at the office, he had to re-pencil the Shazam! #1 cover; he’d mailed one already from his home in Florida, but it “seemed” to have been lost, until he had the second one half-finished! Beck is a nice guy. Artistically, his passion for simplicity tends to be a bit extreme… but he’s good.

E.N.B., as he abbreviated himself, was “ecstatic” to be part of DC’s Captain Marvel revival. C.C. Beck art from a DC house ad announcing the return of the World’s Mightiest Mortal. [©2002 DC Comics.]

JP: Beck disliked all the Shazam! stories by the DC writers that he illustrated; however, he highly praised one of your stories, “What’s In a Name?—Doomsday!”

(Shazam! #7, Nov. 1973 ). Was your inspi-

The Creative Artist As A Prostitute

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The Creative Artist As A Prostitute

by C.C. Beck Edited By P.C. Hamerlinck [FCA proudly presents another previously unpublished essay written by the original Captain Marvel’s chief artist, C.C. Beck. The following piece was written in December 1988 for Beck’s debate-by-mail group, The Critical Circle, whose members included Dick Lupoff, Jim Amash, Trina Robbins, and P.C. Hamerlinck.]

Recently, I submitted several short science-fiction stories to the editor of Analog magazine. They were returned with a polite refusal and the advice that if I wanted to sell stories to Analog I would be better off reading a few of their current issues and then try to imitate the stories in them.

Several years ago I had contacted Fret, a magazine devoted to guitar playing, asking for their specifications of what the readers of the publication liked. In reply, I got a nicely-printed sheet detailing guidelines for articles submitted by freelance writers and a copy of the magazine itself. After looking over the material I decided that what I wanted to say about guitar playing was not what the publication’s readers wanted to hear—or more correctly not what the editor thought they wanted to hear—so I never submitted any material to this magazine.

The creative artist as a prostitute? Cartoon by Beck, originally printed in FCA #16 (FCA/SOB #5), Jan. 1981. [Art ©2002 estate of C.C. Beck.]

In the comic book world, it is a well known fact that I cannot bring myself to write or draw the sort of material that is being published today. The belief in ugly realism, in needless violence and sex, and in morbid and defeatist stories is quite against all I believe that comic stories should be… and I will not prostitute myself and my art just to please an editor who thinks that this sort of material is what the public wants.

There is always a certain portion of the public that will desire trash, drivel, and sleaze. Magazines like Penthouse and Screw have many readers, just as The Morton Downey Show and mud-wrestling have their followers. But does this mean that young writers and television actors should imitate the lowest publications and the worst programs and never attempt anything better?

Back at the dawn of the Golden Age of Comics, both “Superman” and “Captain Marvel” were different from what had, until then, been published in pulp magazines. They were alive, exciting, and totally unlike the dreary, mechanically written detective, confession, and adventure stories of the day. Both characters were in comic strip form, both were written and illustrated by people who wanted to do their own things and not simply follow the instructions of publishers who believed only in imitating the products of their competitors.

“Superman” was a big hit right from the start, much to the surprise of its publisher. As is well known, control was soon taken away from Superman’s creators and placed in the hands of editors, writers, and

artists who degraded the stories and art until “Superman” was a cranked-out, mechanical feature just as dull and meaningless as the stories in the old pulp magazines it had replaced.

Much the same thing happened to “Captain Marvel.” By the early ’50s both features were about ready for the junk pile, and Fawcett Publications discontinued “Captain Marvel.” National/DC Comics stayed in the business and is still one of the leaders in the field, but its sales are, like all comic book sales, far below what they were at the peak of the Golden Age. Should a writer or artist try to find a publisher who will accept the kind of stories and art that they produce, or should they try to produce the kind of stories and art that will please an editor who thinks he knows what the public wants? Haven’t all the outstanding successes in writing and art really been grand surprises to their publishers, who were intent on publishing whatever was popular at the time? Gone with the Wind was turned down by every publisher in the business and, when it finally appeared on the stands, became a best seller. The Tarzan books and movies, when they were in the hands of Edgar Rice Burroughs himself, were worldwide successes; but when certain producers got hold of the Lord of the Jungle, he became a miserable flop. Many other famous characters and stories followed the same route to oblivion.

One would suppose that nobody in his right mind would deliberately