Alter Ego #18 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy T Thomas homas’ Marvel-Laden Marvel-Laden Roy Comics F F anzine anzine Comics

TITANS of

TIMELY/ MARVEL! MARVEL AGE ARTIST/COLORIST

STAN GOLDBERG TALKS TO JIM AMASH ABOUT

JACK KIRBY STAN LEE STEVE DITKO JOHN ROMITA JOHN BUSCEMA JOE MANEELY BILL EVERETT JOHN SEVERIN MARIE SEVERIN CARL BURGOS AND MORE! Plus:

MICHAEL T. GILBERT ON

WALLY WOOD & DAN BARRY — speci al bonus—

5.95

In the the USA USA In

No. 18 October 2002

Vol. 3, No. 18 / October 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

Comic Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus

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

Production Assistant

Eric Nolen-Weathington

Cover Artists Marc Swayze Jack Kirby & Jim Amash

Cover Colorists Marc Swayze Tom Ziuko

And Special Thanks to: Dan Adkins Jeff Bailey Brian H. Baile Mike W. Barr Ray Bottorff, Jr. Jerry K. Boyd Mike Burkey Tony Carezo R. Dewey Cassell Teresa R. Davidson Jose Delbo Al Dellinges Roger Dicken Shel Dorf Roger Ebert Keif Fromm Carl Gafford Jeff Gelb Glenn Gold Stan & Pauline Goldberg David G. Hamilton Roger Hill Tom Horvitz Wendy Hunt Larry Ivie Robert Justice Robert Klein

David A. Kraft Richard Kyle Tom Lammers Larry Lieber Arthur Lortie Dick & Pat Lupoff Owen O'Leary Bill Pearson John G. Pierce Robert M. Price Richard Pryor Ethan Roberts John Romita Alex Ross Robin Snyder Britt Stanton Dan Stevenson Bhob Stewart Steve Stiles Joel Thingvall Dann Thomas Maggie Thompson Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Sylvia (Dees) White Bill Wormstedt

––In Memoriam––

Dave Berg & Vince Fago

Contents Writer/Editorial: Two Stans Are Better Than One . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Goldberg Variations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Stan G., the man who colored the first Marvel Age comics, talks to Jim Amash about a half century of a lot more than coloring!

Comic Crypt: EC Confidential, Part 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Wally Wood’s Flash Gordon examined by Michael T. Gilbert & Mr. Monster. Comics: The Department of Commerce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Robert Klein takes us on a tour of comics’ ups & downs. We’ve got graphs! Special Xero/All in Color for a Dime Section . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: Who better as the artist of a cover to an issue which spotlights the early days of Marvel than King Kirby himself? We’re not 100% sure exactly what’s happening in this circa-1980s Kirby drawing of the Fantastic Four and company, but we kinda liked it—so we asked associate editor (and pro inker) Jim Amash to ink a photocopy of it, and the result was a blockbuster cover! [Art ©2002 estate of Jack Kirby & Jim Amash; F.F., Silver Surfer, & Dr. Doom TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Above: And, for comparison purposes only (your mileage may vary), here’s Jack original pencil version of the illo. You’ll note that, in inking it, Jim made a few minor changes in faces and backgrounds. So now you’ve got twice as much to enjoy! [Art ©2002 estate of Jack Kirby; F.F., Silver Surfer, & Dr. Doom TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.] 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. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

Stan Goldberg

The Goldberg Variations An Interview with the Colorful (in More Ways Than One) STAN GOLDBERG about His Five-plus Decades in Comics—Especially at Timely/Marvel Conducted and Transcribed by Jim Amash

“Stan G.” at a Berndt Toast cartoon show at Nassau Community College, Long Island, NY, in 1995. Photo courtesy of SG.

[INTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: More than John Buscema, who’s on once, Stan Goldberg has stood at the crossroads of Stan Goldberg’s “short list” of best comics artists ever, comics history. He is one of the few human bridges penciled this cover rough between the Timely/Atlas and Marvel days, starting for Marvel’s Galactus the at Atlas in 1949 as a colorist through the late ’50s. Devourer series a few years Stan made major contributions to the 1960s Marvel back. At one time or Universe by designing the color schemes for all its another in the 1960s, Stan early super-heroes, while drawing Millie the Model colored just about every and other popular titles as “Stan G.” Years later, Stan hero depicted! Thanks to became important at a second company as the other Owen O’Leary. [©2002 “Good Archie Artist,” taking his place with Dan Marvel Characters, Inc.] DeCarlo as one of Archie Publications’ major illustrators. Stan Goldberg’s influence as a top Archie artist is a model for all who draw the Riverdale teenagers—and that includes me! —Jim.]

I. “I Can’t Remember a Time When There Wasn’t a Pencil in My Hand” JIM AMASH: Stan, what inspired you to be a cartoonist? STAN GOLDBERG: I was born in New York City, May 5, 1932. Fifth month, fifth day, and three plus two equals five. So five is my lucky number. Drawing always existed for me. I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t a pencil in my hand. Or brown paper to draw on. We had an extended family living with us. They said I was a nice, quiet, polite kid because I always sat in a corner and drew. My cousins always teased me about it. I was always interested in telling a story in either pictures or verbally telling stories or jokes. When I was very young, I’d poke a hole in the corner of several sheets of paper and tie a string around it, creating my own comics and characters. But I hated drawing women and funny pictures. My stories were like “Reid Jones, Soldier of Fortune.” Everybody looked like Clark Gable!

JA: Were you influenced by listening to radio shows? GOLDBERG: Oh, yes. Comics and art always influenced me, but not as much as radio. It was the greatest thing in the world. I ran home right after school and started listening: Don Winslow of the Navy, Mandrake, I Love a Mystery, and all the afternoon shows. I’d listen right up until nighttime to Lux Presents Hollywood and shows like that. I’d listen to Let’s Pretend on Saturday morning. They were all great stuff. I loved the voices and imagining what was happening. I’d draw pictures of what I

Stan writes: “Me at age 3 1/2. Check out the Skippy tie. I loved drawing even at that age. Percy Crosby’s Skippy was my favorite strip, and still is.” Photo courtesy of SG.

The Goldberg Variations

thought these people looked like. The Shadow, Jack Armstrong, and shows like that. I loved comics: The Human Torch, Captain America, Biro’s Daredevil and Crime Does Not Pay books (with great George Tuska art). I loved SubMariner! I went to the School of Industrial Art, which later became the School of Art and Design. It was a great training ground. John Romita, Frank Giacoia, and many other guys like us went there. When I started at Timely in 1949, I was also taking night classes at what became the School of Visual Arts. Steve Ditko was there the same time, and Jerry Robinson was one of our teachers. Robinson was one of my all-time favorites; he could draw rings around just about anybody. As an aside: Jerry later did work for Timely. And when we got his stories... well, coloring in comics at that time was very poor. You could get red and blue and trust your luck that you could get anything else right. And here was Jerry doing great war stories and we were using grays and shades of browns and other war colors. And it just wasn’t working out. Stan Lee didn’t like the way they looked. He told me to use more primary colors. Jerry said, “You ruined my stuff with all those colors.” But the books sold.

II. “That’s How I Got the Job” JA: How did you get your job at Timely? GOLDBERG: It was summertime and I had just got out of high school. I had a job at summer camp in New England teaching arts and crafts to kids. When I came home, I had decided to go to the School of Visual Arts. I called my friend Marvin up, and he had a summer job coloring for Timely. Marvin told me that he was going out of the country and said, “I didn’t tell anybody at Timely that I’m not coming back on Monday, so why don’t you go up there and sit in my seat? They’ll need somebody up there.” So I did. At that time, the coloring department was run by publisher Martin Goodman’s brother Artie. So Artie Goodman walked into the coloring room, saw me, pointed a finger at me, and asked, “Who the hell are you?” I said, “I’m taking Marvin’s place.” That’s how I got the job. I was seventeen, and there were the guys whose comics I had read: Carl Burgos, Bill Everett, and all the other guys. Holy smokes! These guys seemed old to me because I was so young, but they were good to me. There wasn’t anyone who didn’t want to help me or talk about things. I worked in the bullpen with letterers and proofreaders and the like. They didn’t let me color whole comics at first. I started out mixing flesh tones for all the books we were producing. We mixed a week’s worth at a time. The colors were in big pickle jars, and I’d take a jar of flesh tone and color all the people. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Then they showed me how they wanted pages done and I took to it quickly. It was a marvelous training ground.

“I loved Sub-Mariner!” says Stan G. And all real comics fans will love this late-August find by collector/dealer Mike Burkey—nothing less than the final page from the very first “Sub-Mariner” story, as it appeared in Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939)! As you probably already know, creator Bill Everett drew four additional pages when the 8-page Namor tale which had only recently been printed in the giveaway Motion Picture Funnies Weekly was included in Timely's first comic book ever. (Note that, just as he signed page 1, he signed this four-page addendum, as well—at the bottom of the secondfrom-last panel.) This final quartet of pages, in particular, have almost never been reprinted, except in the hardcover Marvel Comics Vol. 1 #1 volume published in 1990... and certainly never before from black-&-white art! Our thanks to Munificent Mike for making this page—almost by definition the earliest Timely/Marvel original art that ever can be discovered—available to us, even though he'd already traded it off—only one day after uncovering it! Mike, the reigning Romita collector and a buyer/seller/trader in all kinds of comic art originals, can be reached at <www.romitaman.com>. Tell ’im Alter Ego sent you! [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Stan Goldberg

Publisher Martin Goodman is caricatured getting a draft notice in “The Creeper and Homer” story from Krazy Komics #1 (Nov. 1943), drawn by Ed Winiarski and George Klein. The secretary’s identity is unknown; the “relax” sign was mentioned by artist Dave Gantz in A/E #13. Thanks to Jim Vadeboncoeuer, Jr. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Jon D’Agostino was Artie Goodman’s manager. He did that for the first couple of years I was there. Then he left about 1951 to go to work for two former Timely colorists—Pat Masulli and some other guy whose name I can’t remember—who formed their own coloring company. There was so much work to be had because of all the publishers in the business. I used to do some freelance work for them in the evenings after I quit for the day at Timely.

I became the manager of the coloring department. But I didn’t like dealing with Artie Goodman, and after six months or so, I went to Stan Lee, who was approving all the cover coloring for the books. I said, “I have to deal with you. Do I have to deal with Artie, too? You tell me one thing and Artie tells me another.” Stan had the final say since he was the editor. So he worked it out, and now I was under the payroll of Timely Comics, working directly for Stan and not with Artie. JA: Before that, Artie was paying you, not the company? GOLDBERG: Yes. Stan was approving the cover coloring but not the interiors. I don’t know what the exact arrangement was, but Artie got a certain amount of money for each book colored. Artie’s group was a part of Timely, but my checks didn’t come from Timely until I started working directly for Stan.

JA: Martin Goodman did other magazines besides comics. GOLDBERG: Oh, yes. Magazine Management, which was his company, put out all kinds of magazines: humor, men’s magazines, and more. It was a big part of his business. JA: What were your early impressions of Stan Lee? GOLDBERG: Stan was a real character. I’d go into his office and he’d be sitting on a cabinet, six feet in the air, and playing his recorder. And I’d have to wait until he finished playing his song. When he wanted to describe something for me, he’d act it out. I was 19 or 20 and trying to hold back a laugh, because he was very serious. Even though I was coloring, I wanted to be an artist. There was a lot of artwork to be done up there, like three-pagers for Marvel Tales, Strange Tales, other type books. They could hide you very easily if your work wasn’t top-notch. I kept showing things to Stan and he wanted to keep me happy, so about 1952 I started to draw a little bit. And I made about $25 to $30 a page for pencils and inks.

IV. “Things Were Going Good for Me” JA: Did you do the complete art job on those adventure fillers? GOLDBERG: Yes. Most of those kind of jobs were done by one man. I inked my own work. I didn’t have short deadlines, so I did them when I could. And I don’t think they used all those stories. Same thing happened to me at DC years later. I did sign many of those stories, but only I could tell where I did it. I had a tough time explaining to people that comics were legitimate. When I was young, people seemed to like the idea I was doing comics. When I got married and hung around married people, some of them looked down on my profession. I explained to them that there’s good comics and bad comics.

III. “Martin Goodman Had Three Brothers” JA: Would you give me some background on the Goodman family? GOLDBERG: Martin Goodman had three brothers. Artie was the youngest brother and Dave Goodman was a nice guy and was there, too. I don’t remember what he did, though. The other brother was Abe Goodman. Abe had his own publishing company and was very much involved in dime novels and pulp westerns and the like. Then he started a company called Humorama and I did freelance work for him. Humorama published these little digest cartoon books with sexy girls, and I did tons of stuff for him. JA: Humorama was not affiliated with Timely? GOLDBERG: Right. Abe’s relationship with Martin was nil. They didn’t even talk to each other. I started doing the cartoons in the late 1950s, and I’ve recently seen the cartoons Dan DeCarlo and I did selling on the Internet. I knew Artie forever. After he quit the coloring department, he put out a line of crossword puzzle books and early computer-oriented books. He did a lot of things. JA: Are all the Goodman brothers gone now? GOLDBERG: I don’t know. Martin Goodman moved to Florida and died from Alzheimer’s. I could never imagine him having Alzheimer’s. Artie also moved to Florida and went into the boat business. Abe was the most fascinating of the brothers. He did very well for himself.

Stan writes that this page is from “my first published story... UGH!” In this 3-pager from Marvel Tales #109 (Oct. 1952), an escaped convict hides in a cave, rolling a boulder to block the entrance. A week later, when he wants to emerge, he’s grown too weak from hunger to move it, so he’s doomed to starve to death. Marvel Tales, of course, continued the numbering of what had been, for 92 issues, the company’s flagship title Marvel Mystery Comics. Courtesy of SG. [© 2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Guide to Wood art on this page: (a) The first two panels above on the left are from “Flashy Gorgonzola,” from Sally Forth #2, 1977. [©2002 estate of Wally Wood.] (b) At left: a Flash Gordon cameo in Mandrain the Magician Topps mini-comic, 1967. [©2002 Topps.] (c) At middle right: the G-rated section of an X-rated plate from Wally Wood’s Weird Sex Fantasy portfolio, 1978. [©2002 Richard Pryor.] (d) At lower right: 1977 pic of “Flasher Gordon” from Wood’s Naught Knotty Woody collection, published in 2001. [©2002 estate of Wally Wood.]

Michael T. Gilbert

EC Confidential, Part 3 Introduction When Alex Raymond created Flash Gordon in 1934, his lush, sexy drawings inspired a legion of cartoonists—including young Wally Wood. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Raymond had plenty of reasons to feel flattered! Time and again throughout his career, Wood poked fun at Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zarkov, starting with his classic “Flesh Garden” parody in Mad #11. This dead-on satire, written and laid out by Harvey Kurtzman, appeared with a cover date of May 1954, two years before Raymond’s untimely death.

In the decades following, Wood drew numerous Flash takeoffs for Mad, Heritage, Sally Forth, and Topps mini-comics. Wood even did hardcore versions of Flash and Dale for the 1977 Wally Wood’s Weird Sex Fantasy portfolio and the second issue of his 1981 comic, Gang Bang! Wally clearly had fun making fun of Flash. But if you think he never took the character seriously, you’d be mistaken!

Few of Wood’s fans realize it, but in 1957 Woody briefly ghosted the actual syndicated Flash Gordon strip. Comic historian Arthur Lortie recently e-mailed me some background on Wood’s short stint: “The daily strip storyline came during a transition period of Flash Gordon. Dan Barry [then the strip’s regular artist] was moving to Italy and the art assignments were being coordinated by Sy Barry using DC personnel [Wood, Mike Sekowsky, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, Ben Oda, etc.]. Wood began 08/19/1957 and was relieved of his duties at the same time [Larry] Shaw took over as writer [probably early September].” Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who in American Comic Books states that Woody ghosted three weeks of Flash. Actually, Wood pencils appear intermittently throughout the eleven-week sequence. Wood drew most of the first strips, penciling the futuristic cities, children, and robots he did so well; he disappears during a later jungle sequence, then returns near the end to draw some spectacular robots. Flash and gal-pal Dale appear to be drawn (or redrawn) by Barry throughout. So Wood may indeed have penciled three weeks’ worth of dailies, but not straight through. Mac Raboy illustrated a separate Kurtzman and Wood’s storyline classic Flash parody from for the Mad #11 in 1954. [©2002 Sunday EC Publications, Inc.] pages, but Wood was not involved in these. The satirical story involves a group of interplanetary efficiency experts who decide to “improve” some Mongo natives by scientifically organizing their carefree lives. Not surprisingly, the plan Solo Kurtzman “Flash Gordon” cover eventually blows up in their faces! The for Snarf #5, 1972. [©2002 estate of Harvey Kurtzman.] Solo Wood art from Mad #56 (July 1960). Script by Frank Jacobs.[©2002 EC Publications, Inc.]

[continued on p. 37]

Robert Klein

Comics The Department of Commerce

by Robert Klein [NOTE: The following article may seem a bit unusual for Alter Ego, which tends to ignore both the current comics scene and the market value of back issues—i.e., the business of comics. However, Bob Klein, one of the gents who originated The Grand Comic Book Database Project a few years back, is dealing here with the history of the comics industry, simply viewed from a different vantage point. Not that that has prevented our tossing in a bit of vintage art amongst all the graphs that follow! —RT.] Comics are an entertainment business. If there’s no business, there won’t be any entertainment. Was it film mogul Louis B. Mayer who said something like that? No matter. All of us are fans because we enjoy the little drawings and few printed words that tell a colorful story. Underlying the printed page are commercial realities we rarely look at, partially because we hardly ever see the information that would make them comprehensible. This is a glimpse at the business of comics books over the industry’s first fifty years or so, from the beginnings of the Golden Age to roughly the late 1980s, as pieced together from various sources, with a little bit of judgment thrown in.

I. The Big Picture First, a look at the big picture. Figure 1 illustrates the total overall circulation from many, but not all, major publishers from 1937 to the early ’90s. Note that qualification: “many publishers.” Some companies didn’t submit figures to the yearly Ayer’s Guide (a principal source of circulation information for each publisher). So we’ll look at this as a guide for the major ups and downs of the comics business, and not as an exact profile. Even with that limitation, there’s a lot to be seen through this cloudy lens.

Three takes on economic aspects of the comic book biz. (a) If one reads between the lines, Harvey Kurtzman & Wally Wood’s “Superduperman!” in Mad #4 (Feb.-March 1953) was poking fun at the DC vs. Fawcett lawsuit which ran from the 1940s through—as it happened—1953! (b) The Severin/Trimpe cover for the color Crazy #3 (June ’73), thunk up by Mirthful Marie and Rascally Roy, dealt with the later rivalry between DC and Marvel, in which, by then, this depiction to the contrary, Marvel was pulling out in front. Marie colored both the EC and Marvel art shown here. Note how the $ sign has jumped from Captain Marbles’ chest to Stuporman’s! Thanks to Jon!B. Cooke for the scan. (c) Recently, the venerable British magazine The Economist used Wayne Boring’s Superman figure with color reversals and a touch of Captain America on the cover of its 7/13/02 issue. [Mad art ©2002 EC Comics Publications; Crazy art ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Economist cover ©2002 The Economist Newspaper Limited.]

Figure 1.

Comics: The Department of Commerce Looking at the industry from the beginning, the first noticeable feature is the sudden jump in the late 1930s. Guess who! It’s the arrival of Superman! The Man of Tomorrow’s impact on the fledgling business is very visible as it struggles to get off the ground. The early ’40s show a big jump in sales, but then there are no further improvements until after World War II, when sales improved again. The lack of circulation increase between the two periods of dramatic growth was probably the effect of paper rationing during the war. Paper was hard to get in the war years, and publishers had to cut back. After the war, when paper was again readily available, sales rocketed dramatically on the backs of the romance, crime, and horror trends in the late ’40s and early ’50s. Up through 1952, that is. That’s the peak, probably the all-time industry peak, for circulation. This 1948 house ad depicted National/DC’s top six super-heroes, licensed comic-strippers Mutt & Jeff, plus Brooklyn of the Boy Commandos. Ironically, one mag in which the ad appeared was All-American Comics #102 (Oct. 1948)— which by the very next issue would drop Green Lantern and become All-American Western! And Boy Commandos would be mustered out of the service by their 36th issue in 1949. But, though Dell/Western was gaining on DC, a combination of super-heroes, teen humor, funny animals, inoffensive crime comics, and westerns would keep DC on top of the heap for a little while longer. [©2002 DC Comics.]

The figure shown here is a top circulation of 56 million copies sold per month in that year. That’s probably understated by an additional 10 million, if for no other reason than the fact that Dell, one of the powerhouses of the ’50s, is not included in the total, because they did not furnish figures to Ayer’s Guide.

41 Figure 2.

circulation is about half the 1952 peak, and all but a few hardy publishers have left the field. In an effort to clean up its image, the industry establishes the Comics Code Authority; but note that the first comics under the Code seal appear in early 1955, well after the crash. Too late by far. Today, comics are a small market, marginalized and unimportant to the world at large. It is hard even to imagine the uproar over comics in the early 1950s. Looking over those figures again shows that the situation was wildly different in the ’50s; comics then were not marginal—not by a long shot. At 65 million copies sold per month, and a U.S. population of 160 million people, that means four to five comics sold each year to every man, woman, and child, on the average. Of course, “everyone” didn’t buy comics, but those who did certainly bought a lot of them. And the industry had a rule of thumb at that time: each copy sold was read by a total of five people, one buyer and four pass-along readers. In the early 1950s, comics were mainstream entertainment for at least some segment of the population. Comics were everywhere, and the industry excesses were perceived as being too much to ignore in such a popular medium. It was a different world. After the crash, the industry players re-formed around a gentler kind of subject matter, leaving fewer publishers, most with some established niche. Circulation stabilized somewhat, hovering generally between 25

In these days of anemic readership, when a comics title selling 40,000 is considered a success, consider the fan’s-eye view in 1952. With a circulation of roughly 55–65 million copies per month, and almost 3200 new issues on the newsstands that year (Figure 2), it must have seemed there was a virtual flood of comics. That’s nearly 65 new comics per week vying for rack space and sales. How could the buying public possibly absorb so many new issues each week? How could a neighborhood newsstand even display that many comics? The answer, of course, is—no way!

At the same time, adverse forces were converging. The furor over industry excesses in crime and horror comics was cresting. In some regions, selective boycotts by retailers, distributors, or parents choked off sales. Television was becoming mainstream, providing alternative entertainment for comics’ main audience, young children. Between the crowded market, boycotts, and the effect of television, comics were heading for big trouble. The net result would be seen in the next two years (Figure 1, again), where total circulation plummets. After the smoke clears, the total

The caption below this probably Norman Maurer-drawn house ad from One Million Years Ago #1 (Sept. 1953), which deals with the overcrowded newsstands of the day, may be hard to read; but it says just about what you’d think it says. [©2002 Joe Kubert & estate of Norman Maurer.]

Xero-Sum Roy T Thomas homas’ Xero-Sum Roy Comics F anzine Comics Fanzine

PLUS: PLUS:

5.95

In the the USA USA In

No. 18

MARC SWAYZE, C.C. BECK, & ROD REED With With

COUNTDOWN TO

THE FANZINE THAT BIRTHED THE LEGENDARY SERIES

“ALL IN COLOR FOR A DIME!” With Art Art and and With Artifacts by: by: Artifacts

DICK & PAT LUPOFF OTTO BINDER STEVE STILES BHOB STEWART KURT SCHAFFENBERGER DON & MAGGIE THOMPSON LIN CARTER MURPHY ANDERSON STEVE BISSETTE ALEX ROSS JOE STATON JAMES WARREN DICK DILLIN HOWARD SHERMAN DAN ADKINS ALGIS BUDRYS JON SMALL LARRY IVIE BILL SCHELLY ROY THOMAS &

ROGER EBERT

October 2002

Vol. 3, No. 18 / October 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

Comic Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus

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

Production Assistant

Eric Nolen-Weathington

Cover Artists Marc Swayze Jack Kirby & Jim Amash

Cover Colorists Marc Swayze Tom Ziuko

––In Memoriam––

Dave Berg & Vince Fago

Contents Writer/Editorial: Xero Hour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Nothing Less Than Xero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Dick & Pat Lupoff’s amazing 1960-63 fanzine—an awesome overview by Bill Schelly.. We Were Just Having Fun / I Had Tons of Fun / Xero Gravity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Forty years after: the Lupoffs and Bhob Stewart look back on Xero. The AICFAD Style Sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Learn how to write an article for Xero—in 1961! Special “All in Color for a Dime” Section–– inA potpourri Glorious Black-&-White. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 of comics-related treats from Xero, courtesy of Otto Binder, Dick Lupoff, Don Thompson, Lin Carter—and Roger Ebert!??

Xero -ing In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Roy Thomas remembers the Lupoffs’ fabled fanzine—and his own “All in Color” entry. FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) #77 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 P.C. Hamerlinck invites us all to spend ten tintinabulatin’ pages with Golden Age greats

Marc Swayze and Rod Reed (behind an interior cover by C.C. Beck).

Timely/Marvel & Wood Section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: Marc Swayze, who in the early 1940s drew “Captain Marvel” stories so perfectly in the C.C. Beck style that in later years even Beck sometimes thought he’d done them, created this bittersweet illustration for a collector a few years back. Thanks to P.C. Hamerlinck for sending us a scan of it; the moment Roy saw it, he knew it just had to be an Alter Ego cover! The original art is owned by Robert Ewing. [Art ©2002 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel TM & ©2002 DC Comics.] Above: And, while Roy’s in a Captain Marvel mood (and when isn’t he?), here’s some titlepage original art, autographed by C.C. Beck on August 26, 1947. Thanks to Keif Fromm for sending us a photo of it. [©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. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

Comic FandomTitleArchive Extra!

WHAT COULD HAVE JUMP-STARTED COMIC FANDOM?

Nothing Less Than

An Over, Under, and All-around Look at the Science-Fiction Fanzine That Helped Get Comicdom Rolling! Since Dick Lupoff’s nostalgic piece “The Big Red Cheese” in Xero #1 initiated the “All in Color for a Dime” series, it seemed only fitting to lead off with this C.C. Beck illo from Captain Marvel Adventures #22 (March 1943), which launched the fabled “Monster Society of Evil” serial that lasted more than two years. Repro’d from the 1977 hardcover Shazam! From the 40’s to the 70’s; naturally, this art didn’t appear in Xero. [©2002 DC Comics.]

by Bill Schelly

It was not to be.

Introduction To understand the significance that Dick and Pat Lupoff’s 1960s science-fiction fanzine Xero (pronounced “zero”) has for the serious comics fan, consider this: the first mass-market book ever to see print about the history of comic books was a collection of articles which had (with one or two exceptions) appeared in its pages. The name of that series, “All in Color for a Dime” [henceforth usually abbreviated as “AICFAD”], became the title of the Arlington House book published in 1970, edited by Dick Lupoff and Don Thompson.

In fact, had it been peaceful, it’s very possible that the seminal fanzine Xero—and the famous “All in Color for a Dime” series of comic book articles therein—might never have existed. For it was in strife that this progeny was midwived. As fans Walter Breen, Lin Carter, Ted White, Dick and Pat Lupoff, and a gaggle of others prepared to roast weenies, sip bad Bloody Marys (“Too much tabasco!”), and have a good old time in the spring of 1960, they were about to be confronted by… well, what used to be called a Juvenile Delinquent (yes, with capitals), who had his own post-simian agenda.

Even for those already well aware of the source and importance of the AICFAD book, this article (which will be liberally spiced with quotes from an interview I conducted with the Lupoffs several years ago) will reveal that there was a surprising amount of comics and comics-related material in Xero apart from “AICFAD.” A few of those pieces are reprinted in this issue of Alter Ego. I will be discussing them all, and even touching briefly on some of the noncomics stuff. In the process you’ll find out just what made Xero—one of the rarest and hardest to find of fanzines—such an important part of comics fandom’s history.

Prologue At a little after four o’clock, with the May afternoon waning, a group of less than a dozen members of the New York City science-fiction club called the Futurians rendezvoused in a public park under the George Washington Bridge for what they thought would be a peaceful, convivial picnic. The first page of The Rumble—the 1960 one-shot that led to Xero. [©2002 Dick & Pat Lupoff.]

Nothing Less Than Xero

Dick sent Alter Ego this photo of “me in my full Army regalia, taken in 1957, when I alone stood between a Free America and the sinister forces of the Red Octopus of Communism.” Unlike Billy Batson, he says, “I never was a captain. Actually, I served twice, once as an enlisted man (got as far as corporal) and once as an officer (got as far as first lieutenant). The photo is from my second tour of service.”

The disruptor identified himself and a cohort as members of the “Cavaliers,” an Irish Catholic gang in the New York City area. As recounted in Dick Lupoff’s narrative of the incident, “Both hoods spelled out how we’d better leave right now, because there was going to be a rumble, and any interlopers would be shot.” As the refugee from West Side Story (who had doubtless read too many lurid crime comics in his misspent youth) began brandishing a thick stick, the Fanoclasts “decided to cut out, though wondering if the promised rumble would ever be more than a lot of words.”

Well, words it became—of a different sort. Because The Rumble became the title of a one-shot that appeared shortly thereafter, consisting solely of a four-page account of the affair. That one-shot, co-published by Walter Breen (who published his own well-known science-fiction ’zine called Fanac) and Dick Lupoff—though inconsequential in itself—proved to give Dick and Pat Lupoff the push onto the slippery slope of full-fledged fanzine publishing. The fanzine they created was called Xero… and, as mentioned earlier, Xero begat “All in Color for a Dime.” Thank you, Mr. J.D., whoever and wherever you are!

Inspiration from the Mailbox If producing The Rumble got the printer’s ink in the Lupoffs’ veins flowing, the resultant letters that arrived in the ensuing days and weeks (for the ’zine bore their address, not that of Breen) twirled the knob. Maybe it’s hard to remember, in today’s world of instant and easy communication, that there was a time when getting mail could be an intoxicating experience. Finding fat envelopes in the box by the front door, or on the post out by the street, that bore not bills or ads, but letters from those who shared your interests made every day a potential Christmas—and could bring bounce into the stride of even the crustiest old-time fan. Imagine the thrill Dick and Pat got receiving letters from some of the leading lights in science-fiction fandom (Harry Warner, Jr., Ted Pauls, F. M. Busby) in response to The Rumble. You don’t have to imagine it … because the thrill became manifest. They called it… Xero. An odd name, that. “We were trying to think of something that would be a little bit interesting and unusual and attention-catching, and that would have some sort of fantasy connotation,” Dick recounted later. “We thought of Xanadu and somebody told us there was already a fanzine called The Xanadu Newsletter, so to avoid treading on someone else’s toes, we just looked in the dictionary for other words that began with the letter X. And we came across ‘xero.’ It’s a Greek root meaning dry, but that isn’t why we picked it. We picked it because it was short and interesting.”

Meet the Lupoffs Richard Allen Lupoff was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February 21, 1935. His father, a Certified Public Accountant, found himself

working in a food-processing business during the Depression, and continued in that field most of his life. Dick grew up in the New York area. “I remember as a small child lying on the floor of our living room looking at the Sunday comic strips,” he remembered. “I recall particularly that there was Flash Gordon, and there were these wonderful, glamorous pictures. But my older brother, Jerrold, could read the stuff that went with them, and I couldn’t… and this created an almost manic state on my part. So I started a campaign demanding that I be taught how to read and write. “One day my grandmother, who had the kindest heart in the family, I think, sat down with me and taught me how to do it… and, by dinner time, I knew how to read! People tell me that’s impossible, but other people tell me that they’ve had similar experiences. So whether the memory is accurate or not, that is the way I remember it.” Soon he’d discovered the wonderful world of comic books. “We went off to summer camp for a while as children,” he said, “and lots of kids would be packed off with great stacks of comic books. In the early 1940s I was exposed to Batman.... With the Batcave and the atmospherics, some of the Gothic imagery in that was very impressive to me.” As he grew older, a school librarian introduced him to the works of Dumas and Hugo and Verne. The first science-fiction book he read was 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. When his mother died while he was very young, Dick’s father sent him and his brother to boarding school. In high school he heard about science-fiction fandom, sent for some fanzines, and that’s when he decided he wanted to become a writer: “I thought ‘Aha! All right, I will get into these magazines, and from there I’ll move on and become a professional writer!’” He even published his own little fanzine, making his print run of eight copies using carbon paper. Dick also wrote for the school paper, and some of his sports reporting was picked up in regional newspapers. He was paid for his work, even if not very much. “They paid by the column inch, and a one-paragraph story in the Herald Trib might produce a check for 65 cents! But, I tell you, I was very proud of earning that 65 cents. It meant a lot to me.” Patricia Enid Loring grew up in Manhattan. Her father was a lawyer, then went into the metal fabrication business and did very well with it. Like Dick, Pat was a voracious reader from an early age. She liked a wide variety of comic books. “I did love all the Captain Marvel comics,” she said. “That was one thing that Dick and I had in common.” She also enjoyed “Mary Jane and Sniffles” in Dell Four-Color, and all the Walt Disney comics. “When I was older, I would read Classics Illustrated. Actually, although people put them down, I remember reading Oliver Twist, and that got me to read a lot of Dickens when I was twelve.” Sometimes she had to hide her comic books from her parents, because she was such a good reader that they thought comics were “beneath her.” Dick and Pat met while he was in the Army in the summer of 1957, stationed in the Midwest. She was attending summer school at Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois. “I was in between boyfriends, and I met Dick on a blind date. In the fall, I went back to college [in Connecticut] to finish up my senior year. Dick kept in touch with me, and came out again. We dated over Christmas vacation… fell in love, and he proposed to me. We were married the following August.” At first the newlyweds lived in Westchester, New York, then moved down to Manhattan. Once they lived in the city, they joined This photo of Pat Loring was taken not long before she became Pat a science-fiction club, and that brings Lupoff in August 1958. Courtesy of Dick & Pat Lupoff.

Nothing Less Than Xero us up to date to the spring of 1960 when the incident recounted in The Rumble took place. When the publishing bug bit the Lupoffs in the following weeks and months, it bit hard. Consider this excerpt from Dick’s editorial “Xerogenesis” in the first issue of Xero: “As I bent over the work I could feel something stir in my veins. Some longquiescent, nearly-forgotten thing, some substance, some force unfelt for nearly a decade began to insinuate itself through the edges of consciousness. “The sight of a stencil, blue, coolly lighted through a mimeoscope … the feel once more of a stylus between my fingers… the pungence of correction fluid in my eager, quivering nostrils…all this was too much to resist any longer.

5 In Xero #1, Pat wrote two book-oriented features: “The Insidious Mr. Ward” about Sax Rohmer’s Brood of the Witch Queen, and “The Worlds of Titus Groan” about the series of Titus Groan books by Mervyn Peake. Aside from the editorials, the letter column, and a review of Psycho by Harlan Ellison (he liked it, unlike most of the critics of the day), there remained a sizable number of pages to fill, if they were to put out the fat first issue that they wanted. Pat had done her part, and now it was time for Dick, the one who aspired most ardently to become a professional writer, to produce a substantial piece.

He already had something in mind: a nostalgic piece about his discovery of, and long-standing affection for, the comics starring Captain Marvel, the one hero who Dick says this is a photo of “my entire (immediate) “The ink flowed. The black, thick, viscous family, taken in Venice, Florida. I don’t know the had outsold Superman in the 1940s. Not that stuff coursed hot, fast, through veins and exact date of the picture, but I like to think it was he had any of the comic book collection he’d through arteries, in the heart, the hands, the the same day that I saw my first copy of Whiz Comics amassed as a kid; that had been disposed of, and became irredeemably hooked on Captain Marvel BRAIN and I was trapped again, caught, along with the furniture and whatever else and the whole Fawcett line. Personnel are Sylvia hooked, helplessly ensnared! was in the family home, when his father had Feldman Lupoff, Sol J. Lupoff, Jerrold Lupoff, Richard sold it upon sending Dick and Jerrold off to “After eight years of restraint, I would, I Lupoff. Alas, I alone survive of the happy quartet.” boarding school in 1943. Instead, he wrote If this was the day Dick bought what was actually must, I am pubbing. There is no hope, nor the entire piece from memory, which the first issue of Whiz, it would have been late 1939... possible salvation…” accounts for the evocative images that and he would’ve been pushing age five. emerge from his prose, in the first The format? Xero, like any self-respecting installment of the series then called “And All in Color for a Dime.” science-fiction fanzine (or later comics ’zine, for that matter), offered standard-type features which comprised a third to half of its page count. It began: “One balmy Winter’s day in the village of Venice, Florida, Each issue began with an editorial, and often ended with one, too, two small boys wearing tee-shirts, sneakers, and shorts wandered into usually by Dick. Mostly they were titled “Absolute Xero.” the only drugstore in town. It was, in addition to being Venice’s sole pharmacy, the town’s main source of beach goods, the local ice cream A science-fiction book review column followed, first “From the SF parlor, and the only newsstand short of Sarasota.” Shelf” by Larry M. Harris, and then simply “Books” by Lin Carter in the last few issues. With the 20¢ they had between them, they bought sweets and a copy of the first issue of Whiz Comics. Debuting in #4 was Robert “Buck” Coulson’s fanzine review column dubbed “The Silver Dagger,” which graced all the succeeding issues. Dick continued, “I quickly and sloppily dispatched my strawberry ice cream, and turned my attention to the colorful world of Whiz In the back of each Xero was “Epistolary Intercourse,” the letter Comics, where that day I made the acquaintance of a friend and advencolumn presided over by Pat. (To judge by the letters, very few strictly turing companion for years to come, whose eventual disappearance was comics fans wrote to the fanzine. Missives did appear from double-fans a real loss to many beside myself. like Don Thompson and Richard Kyle.) The remainder of each issue was made up of the pop culture gamut: movie reviews, serials, old TV shows, puzzles, articles about the future of s-f fandom, and … yes… comics. But—what would Dick and Pat put into that all-important first issue, the one which would—most likely—define the sort of publication Xero would become?

The Headliner Dick commented, “When a couple of fans decide to put out a fanzine, the first question is, ‘What are we going to do for material? How are we going to fill this thing?’” The answer, he wrote in an article called “Rebirth” that appeared in Comic Art #1 (April 1961), is that you “work, friend, work at turning plain sheets of paper into chicken-scratched sheets of paper until you have yourself produced enough material for your first issue.” Only in later issues can one expect to have much help from outside contributors.

“I refer, of course, to the greatest of all comic-book heroes, Captain Marvel.” In his article, Dick described the origin of “The Big Red Cheese,” discussed the whimsical flavor that chief artist C.C. Beck brought to the strip, and sketched in the rest of The Marvel Family. Since he had little or no reference material, he did make a number of unavoidable errors, including attributing the writing to “Eando Binder.” (This was a contraction of the names of Earl and Otto Binder when the two brothers had co-written some science-fiction; it was Otto who wrote the vast majority of the Captain Marvel scripts, though the original scripter was Bill Parker.) But the errors were not important, and would be easily cleared up at a later date; the important thing was that Dick had successfully conveyed the special appeal of Captain Marvel, and had evoked an almost palpable nostalgia for those innocent comic book tales of the not-so-distant past. The article ended on a rather plaintive note. After talking about the Captain Marvel Club, and the items that were available by mail, Lupoff

Nothing Less Than Xero

No, the Lupoffs didn’t win a prize for their costumes. They won more than that: they made history, and won the honor of being imitated.

Here, forwarded by Bill Schelly, is an oft-printed photo of Dick & Pat Lupoff as Cap and Mary at the 1960 World Science Fiction Convention in Pittsburgh. Just for kicks, it’s flanked by C.C. Beck’s 1981 recreation of one of his panels from the first issue of Whiz (courtesy of FCA’s P.C. Hamerlinck) and a drawing by “T.Hief” which appeared in Xero #1. This photo of the costumed pair first appeared in Alter Ego (V1)#5 in 1963, and was reprinted in the 1997 Best of A/E (Vol. 1); more recently, a variant photo was repro’d in A/E V3#11. [Capt. Marvel art ©2002 estate of C.C. Beck; “T.Hief” art ©2002 Dick Lupoff; Capt. & Mary Marvel TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

ended his article: “I wish I had a Captain Marvel beanie.” Dick recalled, “I invited all and sundry to contribute articles to the series. The response was just overwhelming! Because nobody was paying any attention to comics in those days, especially to old comics. There was this whole generation of people walking around who had grown up on them, so once the spark was lit, things just took off.” Lupoff had turned out what was not only a lead feature with substance, but the first of a series that became the “headliner” in the issues that would follow.

Xero’s Coming-out Party The 1960 World Science Fiction Convention, held over Labor Day weekend in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, served as the occasion when Dick and Pat’s fanzine was introduced to s-f fandom at large. They brought the ninety-or-so copies of that first issue hot off the mimeo to distribute to their friends, and anyone else who would take one. The Lupoffs were not, at this point, what was termed BNFs (Big Name Fans). While they were known in the New York City area due to their membership in the Futurians, the 1960 PittCon was the first major fan gathering they’d attended. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the debut of Xero that would cause the Lupoffs to be remembered in connection with that convention; it was their participation in its costume parade in the hotel ballroom dressed as Captain and Mary Marvel that brought attention their way. This appearance, which elicited a positive reaction from the onlookers, would come to symbolize the moment when interest in comic books emerged as the latest trend in s-f fandom. It would mean far more to comic book fans of the future, who would mark it as an important date in the genesis of comics fandom proper.

For, two years later, partly inspired by the 1960 masquerade, a group of some eight to ten science-fiction fans came costumed to the World Con masquerade (in Chicago) as members of the Justice Society, as well as other comic book heroes like Batman and Robin, and Ibis and Taia. The latter two revelers were actually Don and Maggie Thompson, who by now were friends with the Lupoffs and were publishing their own fanzine, Comic Art. There is also the fact that, though Detroit college prof Jerry G. Bails had already conceived of a publication devoted to the revival of the Justice Society as the Justice League before he saw Xero, his introduction to the fanzine in February 1961 at the hands of none other than DC editor (and longtime s-f fan) Julius Schwartz emboldened him to put together something more than the mere “newsletter” he had at first envisioned. In The Comic Reader #12 (dated August 20, 1962) Jerry recollected the weeks before A/E #1: “Julie had shown me copies of … Xero, which was running a series on the old comics. I was happy to learn that there was a segment of science-fiction fandom that was devoted to the old comic book heroes.” As Dick Lupoff himself wrote in “Rebirth” in Comic Art for April 1961: “[AICFAD] has been the most letter-provoking feature of Xero… All of this activity means something,

“Joe Sanders & Co.’s” cover for Xero #1—and the interior “cover” by “T.Hief” for the first installment of “And All in Color for a Dime.” It carried a Roman numeral “I” to indicate it was the start of a series. The word “And” was soon dropped for the most part—though it popped up from time to time as late as Xero #9. [©2002 Joe Sanders & Dick Lupoff, respectively.]

Dick Lupoff

We Were Just Having Fun by Dick Lupoff

A Memory of the XERO Years

Bill Schelly has done a remarkable job of reconstructing the story of Xero, the fanzine which Pat and I published between 1960 and 1963. Bill is a fine historian, but in case you’re interested in what it was like to be there four decades ago, weaving dizzily from the correction fluid fumes and getting mimeograph ink under your fingernails—well, here are a few recollections. Let me say, first thing, that we never meant to make history, to start a movement, or to do much of anything except enjoy ourselves. In 1960 Pat and I were barely out of the newlywed category. We’d married in 1958, shortly after I got out of the Army. I was a typical young businessman of the era, climbing into a three-piece suit every morning, knotting a tie around my neck, and heading off to work for a big A photo of a fedora’d Dick Lupoff in front of a bookshelf-ful of reading matter—plus a clean, corporation. Pat was a young homemaker. She had gone powerful illo of Captain Marvel by the late great Kurt Schaffenberger, courtesy of from college to marriage with hardly a hiccup of P.C. Hamerlinck. [Art ©2002 estate of Kurt Schaffenberger; Captain Marvel TM & ©2002 DC Comics.] disruption. The idea that a woman in her position should actually enter the job market on an equal footing with her Possibly the most intriguing was Fanac, published by Terry Carr and male counterparts was still a decade away from general acceptance. Ron Ellik; this was more of a newsletter than a fanzine in the traditional sense. By the time Pat had seen a few of these and I had tried to I’d been a science-fiction fan as well as a comic book enthusiast from “explain” fandom to her, she was intrigued, and my own interest, which childhood onward, and Pat’s curiosity was piqued when the day’s mail had faded to a faint glimmer, was rekindled. frequently contained odd little publications addressed to me, many of them crudely mimeographed on tinted, rough-surfaced paper. These We were living in a little garden apartment in Westchester County in were fanzines, of course. I’d subscribed to a lot of them in earlier years. those days. One day we received a postcard inviting us to a party being My fan connections had been important to me in my schoolboy and given by some science-fiction fans in Manhattan. We were ready to hop Army days, and they were still following me as I entered what might be into our cherry red and white ’55 Chevy Bel Air and join in the fun called the real world. when we both came down with a wild case of food poisoning. We took turns struggling from our bed to the bathroom, then crawling back as Pat was curious about those odd weak as kittens and as dizzy as drunkards. Fortunately the symptoms little publications. They included one didn’t last long, but as far as attending the party we’d been invited to, called Shaggy (short for Shangrithat was out of the question. L’Affaires) published by the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, one So that was the end of that—for the moment. called Cry of the Nameless (published by a Seattle club called The Nameless But it didn’t take long for me to tire of the commuter’s routine and Ones), and a good many others. for Pat to develop a dislike of the sterile life of suburbia. We gave up on Westchester. I sold the Bel Air to my brother for $150 and we moved to the city. That was more like it! Next time around we did get together with the local fan group, who were in the midst of reviving the onetime New York Futurian Society. In the 1940s this club had boasted a membership that included an astonishing number of people who went on to major careers in the world of literature. I could start with Donald Wollheim and Isaac Asimov, continue with Frederik Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth, James Blish, Virginia Dick writes re this cartoon from Xero #6: “It’s hard to read the signature... and it had been Kidd, and Damon Knight. And that’s just for starters! so long since we published it that I’d forgotten who the cartoonist was. Looked it up in the Xero Index and discovered that it was Algis Budrys. Yes, the Algis Budrys. What a surprise!” Budrys was a major science-fiction author of the period, and his novel Rogue Moon was acclaimed by fellow writer James Blish in a review in Xero. [©2002 Algis Budrys.]

The “new” Futurians included Ted White, Steve Stiles, Algis Budrys,

The “AICFAD” Style Sheet

The “All In Color For A Dime” Style Sheet An Interloping Aside by Roy Thomas As every magazine editor and publisher quickly learns, you’re only as good as your contributors—so you’ve got to make sure that talented folks send you things they’ve written and/or drawn, and that they know the needs of your mag. Dick touches on that ever-present problem as it related to Xero a couple of articles back, when he says he and Pat had to “scramble” for material, so this seems the proper time and place to talk about— —”The AICFAD Style Sheet”! But, before we get to that: In the “Epistolary Intercourse” (i.e., letters column) of Xero #2, Dick, rather than Pat, announced that issue #3 would feature Jim Harmon’s article about the Justice Society of America. Optimistically, he continued:

“...anyone in the New York area can use the small research facilities in my house. You might be able to talk Larry Ivie into letting you research in his collection, but I can’t speak for Larry. “But the point is, for all the enthusiasm the first article in this series engendered on the part of readers, it’s going to die but fast if you won’t write for it.” Elsewhere in that same “E.I.,” more s-f fans/proto-comics fans seemed ready and eager to grab the baton. Joe Sanders was quoted: “AICFAD is good.... Hey, perhaps—next summer—I might be able to write on Mickey Mouse. Not Mickey Mouse, cute TV star... not Mickey Mouse, suburban slob... but the Mickey Mouse of ‘Mickey Fights the Phantom Blot,’ etc.”

“Thereafter there’s The Spirit, recalled by Sylvia White, a longpromised and long-overdue Batman by Bill Thailing, possibly Wonder Woman by Lee Anne Tremper, and Villains by Walter Breen.... But of all those articles listed, only Jim Harmon’s is on hand. So, will the rest of you folks please send some word on progress, plans, etc., if you can’t send in the articles yet? And anyone else who is interested (Dick Schultz, research The Heap, willya? Check it back to its source, Sturgeon’s ‘It’ in the August ’40 Unknown... it’s been reprinted, though I don’t recall where just offhand) is welcome... urged... pleaded with?... to contribute to the series. Check with me first to avoid duplicated topics, though. Stiles went ahead and wrote a Spirit article after Sylvia White had got a goahead for hers. (Bill Thailing, please note: we’ve had another offer to write Batman. Turned him down on account of your article. Now please don’t you let us down.) Others I’d like to see in the series:

Even Bill Thailing, mentioned twice in Lupoff’s opening plea, was excerpted as saying that as of September 10 of that glorious year 1960 “the article should be ready in about 10 days.” (It never was published, though. Wha hoppen?) Thus, in Xero #3, Dick took the bull by the horns and devoted a whole page to “The AICFAD Style Sheet,” reprinted in full on the opposite page. As he said in 2002:

“1. Cap America—Human Torch—Submariner [sic] “2. Cap Midnight, Airboy, Phoenix Squadron, Skyman, etc. “3. Planet Comics and the characters therein “4. You tell me...

A page or two later, Tom Condit wrote that he and Martha Atkins intended to form the Marvel Family Revival Association “for the purpose of urging and aiding the revival of Captain Marvel, with Eando Binder hired at whatever fabulous salary he demands to write the continuity... There is only one membership requirement: that you write a letter to Fawcett Publications urging them to revive Captain Marvel. We’re considering making up a letterhead, etc. Why must we do it? Because it is not there.”

“Dick Schultz, research The Heap, willya?” pleaded Lupoff in #2—but if Schultz ever did, the results never made it into Xero. The Heap’s origin in the “Skywolf” feature in Air Fighters Comics, V1#3 (Dec. 1942) did indeed borrow mightily from Theodore Sturgeon’s classic 1940 tale “It,” with an added World War I aviation backstory (probably to justify its appearing in a mag called Air Fighters). The Heapster stayed in the mag when it changed its name to Airboy and dropped all the flyboys except the ever-youthful title hero, as per the above page from a 1950s English reprint, sent by Roger Dicken & Wendy Hunt. Anybody know the artist of this story? [©2002 the respective copyright holder.]

“Fans being fans (as we all were, of course), there was a lot of enthusiasm and raw talent available, but not very much know-how regarding the kind of writing I was looking for as an editor. I wanted a delicately balanced mixture of scholarship, criticism, and misty-eyed nostalgia. A lot of people wanted to write for

The “AICFAD” Style Sheet

When Dick and Pat Ellington wrote a few lines in Xero #4 about fetishism in the comics of a company that had titles like Jumbo and Jungle, Pat’s bracketed reply was: “A big birdie who needs a shave today tells me that outfit was Fiction House—Malcolm Reiss and T.T. Scott. They published Jungle, Jumbo, Rangers, Fight, Wings, and— forget it not!—Planet Comics, plus a couple of minor ones (Firehair, Movie Comics, Wambi) in addition to their pulps. And we have a stack of Planet Comics and will you do the AICFAD article on them?” As a matter of fact, Dick Ellington took them up on it, and his “Me to Your Leader Take” appeared in Xero #6. The Lupoffs were not only fanzine editors and publishers; they were also a lending library! (As Alter Ego’s editor would soon discover, when Dick volunteered to loan him a stack of Fawcett Comics if he’d write the article which became “Captain Billy’s Whiz-Gang” in Xero #9.) Lewis Forbes, in #5, didn’t offer to write anything, but made this, shall we say, overly pessimistic forecast: “As for how long this kick will last: someday you’re going to run out of characters to write articles about.” (Forty years and counting, Lew!)

Dick Lupoff’s AICFAD Style Sheet from Xero #3. Yes, Virginia, there really was a ‘Green Turtle’; he lasted the first five issues of Blazing Comics. The cover of Blazing #2 (July 1944) and of #3-4 featured virtually identical humorous shadows of turtles waving their paws. What were the good people at Rewl Publications thinking of?? [Style Sheet ©2002 Dick Lupoff; Blazing cover ©2002 the respective copyright holder.]

us but just didn’t know how to go about it. The style sheet turned out to be very helpful, and upon looking at it again for the first time in fortyplus years, I think it was pretty good. “Among the people who were going to write for Xero was my friend Lee Anne Tremper, who produced a splendid first draft of an essay on Wonder Woman. I don’t know what ever happened to Lee Anne’s manuscript, but it disappeared down some rabbit hole or other— probably my fault. Unfortunately, she had not made a carbon copy. She was going to do the whole thing over from scratch—truly above and beyond the call of duty—but somehow she never did. A real loss.” From time to time, throughout the fanzine’s history, mention would be made of potential features—or at least requests for same. In Xero #3 Ruth Berman asked wistfully if there was “anyone who has the ‘primary research material’ to do an article on the Captain Video and Tom Corbett comics,” particularly the former. (As we now know, they were drawn by the late great George Evans—and well scripted, too, partly by William Woolfolk.) When Redd Boggs defended the ludicrous origin of MLJ’s Steel Sterling (he got his powers by jumping into a vat of molten steel), Pat asked: “Hmmmmm. Would you consider doing an article on the psychology of super-heroes?” Under its editing partners, Xero was game for anything.

In the Xero Index Edition, after the fanzine itself had run its ten-issue course, the Lupoffs listed (in answer to reader requests) some of what might have been the contents of the “phantom Xero,” the issue(s) they could have published had they kept on going. The “All in Color for a Dime” section, they said, “might have consisted of any of the following: “‘Of (Super) Human Bondage’... by Larry Ivie and Lee Anne Lavell “‘Memos from the Boy Commandos’... by Harlan Ellison “‘Jingle Jangle Tales & The Pie-Faced Prince of Old Pretzelburg’... by Harlan “‘It’s Magic!’ by Don Thompson and Dick Lupoff “‘At Home in the Batcave’... by Laurence M. Jannifer and Marion Zimmer Bradley “‘Charles Biro and Mr. Hyde’... by Don Thompson. “‘Airboy and the Heap’... by Dick Schultz. “‘That Crazy Buck Rogers Stuff’... by Ray Beam.” Harlan Ellison’s piece on George Carlson’s Jingle Jangle Comics did make it into first-time publication at decade’s end, in the hardcover version of All in Color for a Dime—and in their followup The ComicBook Book Thompson and Lupoff teamed up under a pseudonym to write “It’s Magic!” incorporating much of Don’s earlier Xero offering on The Spectre and Dr. Fate. But the rest of the projected “phantom Xero” is as lost as— Well, as lost as Bill Thailing’s “September 10 for sure” article on Batman! And now, time for some actual previously-unreprinted pieces from the ten issues of Xero—a sort of short, informal second or third volume of All in Color for a Dime, so to speak—complete with the original title-lettering to each piece, and starting with a few choice paragraphs from Otto O. Binder, perhaps the best of the “Captain Marvel” writers....

At Home With The Marvels

[from Xero #3, January 1961; text © 2002 estate of Otto Binder] [2002 INTRODUCTION BY DICK LUPOFF: When I took that copy of Xero #1 up to the Space World offices, I was, believe it or not, terrified—I should say, awestruck—at the prospect of meeting the great Otto Binder. The publisher of the magazine, by the way, was Bill Woolfolk, who had been another “Captain Marvel” scripter among his other accomplishments. I believe Woolfolk invented Mr. Atom, a superb villain. I left the fanzine with the receptionist at the Space World office because I was too shy to ask if Mr. Binder or Mr. Woolfolk was even there. [When Otto sent me a gracious letter thanking me for commenting on the magazine, I was overwhelmed. Eventually, Pat and I became friends with the Binder family. We visited their home at their invitation. Later, when Chris Steinbrunner arranged a screening of The Adventures of Captain Marvel in our apartment, we prepared ourselves for the arrival of Otto, his wife Ione, and their daughter Mary. We dressed our infant son in a bright red diaper decorated with a yellow lightning bolt. In walked the Binder family, and we proudly handed Otto our own pride and joy, “Captain Marvel Baby.”]

In Xero #3 Sylvia White adapted a then-recent photo of Otto Binder from an issue of Bill Woolfolk’s Space World magazine. And above is a panel-drawing by C.C. Beck and company from an early-’40s ad for “the growing Captain Marvel Club.” [Xero art ©2002 Sylvia (Dees) White; CM art ©2002 DC Comics.]

You Lupoffs have had an experience I never did—seeing the complete run of the Captain Marvel serial. I only caught a few chapters. Where in the world do they run such things complete?

Now, let me sincerely commend you for a remarkable resume of the Cap’n’s adventures. Your insight into many of the reasons we did certain phases of it is almost psychic. We did deliberately decide CM mustn’t be too all-powerful for lack of suspense. Sivana was a comics-tailored Fu Manchu, although he was really modeled after the then-ubiquitous “mad scientist.” And we did rack our collective brains (Lieberson, Crowley, Beck the artist, and myself) to get the big twist of Mr. Mind being a worm. In fact, up till a couple chapters before this revelation, we hadn’t yet decided what he would be. The worm bit suddenly popped out of my mouth (I hope my memory is accurate that it was my mouth) and the others said crazy, man, that’s it. All of us had more real slobbering fun with that serial than anything else we did. Somehow, Mr. Mind just wrote himself once he appeared in Beck’s inimitable version with his rubber-faced frowns and leers. He became more real to us than such villains as Black Adam, Oggar, or even Sivana. The World’s Maddest Scientist, however, ran a close second in our book and he was good for reappearances through the eleven-year career of the Cap’n. [Note: Actually, Captain Marvel lasted fourteen years. —Roy.] You give me too much credit, however. To set the record straight, I did not dream up Sivana. When I began writing “CM” scripts, along about a year after his debut, Sivana was already there, plus Beautia. He was the combined product of Bill Parker and Charles C. Beck, the original writer-artist team that started the strip. Your comments as to “direct imitation” I will give a no-comment tag, as this was the basis on If only Otto were still around to see this! In 1989 the American Nostalgia Library (an imprint of Hawk Books Limited in London) published a gorgeous, giant-size, full-color hardcover titled The Monster Society of Evil, which reprinted all 25 chapters of the Mr. Mind serial from 1943-45 issues of Captain Marvel Adventures. The cover of a four-page advertising flyer, pictured here, is itself a collector’s item! This volume is a crown jewel in the collection of any Capfan. It deserves a DC!Archive edition all to itself! [Captain Marvel & Mr. Mind TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

Rog Ebert Breezes By

by Dick Lupoff [from Xero #9, 1962; text © 2002 Dick Lupoff] [2002 INTRODUCTION BY DICK LUPOFF: When we first met Roger Ebert, he was a talented and ambitious high school student. Pat and I were positively ancient compared to this teenager—we were in our twenties, and married! My recollection of young Roger Ebert is that of a round-faced, bespectacled, good-natured teenager. Not very different from Roger as we see him on TV these days. He was slightly slimmer and of course his hair was darker, but Roger is Roger, wonderful then and now and always. [Roger wrote poetry (of a sort) for Xero, then went on to contribute a short story or two to some of the minor science-fiction magazines before finding his true metier. A few years ago, he was in San Francisco, and the three of us held a joyous reunion in Roger’s hotel suite. My radio producer was present and couldn’t figure out why the famous Roger Ebert seemed in awe of Pat and myself. Hey, we were BNFs, as well as his editors and publishers, when he was a neofan!] June 15-18, 1962: There was a Fanoclast meeting June 15, and when Pat and I got home the babysitter told us that Rog Ebert had called. Rog Ebert! We hadn’t seen him since the 1961 Midwestcon, and had hardly heard of him since. He’d contributed several of his curious hybrid prose-poems to Xero, but the last of those had appeared in number 6, last September. The return number for Rog was the hotel at LaGuardia Airport, and by furious calling and calling back we managed to get in touch with him Saturday, June 16. That night Rog came over for a visit, as did, coincidentally, Coast Guard Al Lewis and For the Lupoffs’ follow-up to Larry Ivie, the latter carrying a Tarzan Xero in 1963, a look at Edgar Rice painting and John Carter painting Burroughs’ fantasy versions of which he was using as samples. Mars and Venus entitled The Reader’s Guide to Barsoom and Amtor, by David van Arnam, et al., Larry Ivie drew this illustration as part of his map of Barsoom (Mars). Soon Larry would be illustrating some of Canaveral Press’ ERB reprints— under editor Dick Lupoff! [Art ©2002 Larry Ivie; John Carter et al. TM & ©2002 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

Rog seemed to have matured considerably since that Midwestcon. Actually, meeting him at the North Plaza Motel had been my first contact with him. Prior to that, just from reading his fanzine material, I had conjured a slim and sensitive, tall sallow hypochondriac, slow of speech and manner. What a surprise! Rog is built like a football player, is full of energy, talks incessantly, and is forever telling bad jokes. At that Midwestcon he had turned a contour chair in the Seascape Room into a space-jockey’s bucket, turned his glasses upside down, and had half a roomful of people in hysterics. But on this trip he had calmed down. After all, he’s twenty now. Rog is terribly, terribly Aware Politically, full of the

usual liberal line. He is also an immensely talented young man, and a hustler on top of it. What was he doing in New York in June, for instance? Well, right after the end of the spring semester at the University of Illinois, Rog had engineered himself a job as publicity man for a team of paraplegic athletes en route to New York for the annual Wheelchair Games. From New York the team proceeded—Roger included—to South Africa, where they made a tour at the behest of a South African philanthropist out to start a rehabilitation program for injured persons in his country.

Gene Siskel (l.) and Roger Ebert (r.) made TV history, beginning in the late 1970s, as the most famous movie-critic duo of all time. Since Siskel’s too-early death, the show continues as Ebert & Roeper. But in the early 1960s “Rog” Ebert was a burgeoning science-fiction fan—among many other things, as Dick Lupoff observed in 1962. Photo from the Teegarden-Nash Collection; provided by Bill Schelly.

While there, Rog told us, he was going to do the research for an article on student unrest, already all but sold to The Nation. When he gets home, Rog will have to go to work to write an article for the longlost-but-now-rediscovered folk singer which is slated for Show. After a full evening of talk, we arranged to meet the following night at a Chinese restaurant in Times Square, following which Rog would get a tour of the two areas of New York he’s eager to see: Times Square/42nd Street, and Greenwich Village. By the time the crowd was assembled in the Chinese Republic (Nationalist, of course), it consisted of Walter Breen (who drew a small crowd on the sidewalk before dinner; people kept waiting for him to start a hellfire sermon), Lin Carter and his poopsie, Gary Deindorfer, Lee Hoffman, Ted and Sylvia White, Rog, Pat, and myself. It was a pretty good meal, full of plusdoublegood fannish talk, following which the group became unfortunately separated in the surging mob of 42nd Street. All right, so it was Sunday night. There’s always a surging mob on 42nd Street. Lin and his poopsie Claire, Pat and I, and Rog made our way back and forth on the Street for a while, but all that happened was that gay types kept trying to pick Rog up because he looked so wholesome and innocent. Then we gave up and went to the Village. Rog’s item, “Snippers” [not reprinted here, alas], is a faithful record of the evening’s events from that point onward, and if you don’t know the rest of the feghootling that keeps popping up every few lines, it’s to your benefit not to find out. Monday, Rog flew on.

[e-mail from Roger Ebert, June 3, 2002, to Roy Thomas:] It gives me great pleasure to authorize the reprint of anything from Xero. The glimpse of me in 1962 was priceless; my wife says I have not changed, except that I no longer look quite so much like a football player. I remember that Chinese restaurant in Times Square as if it were yesterday. Fandom was of incalculable influence in my life, at a time when its quizzical sensibility was more rare than now. I did a piece for Yahoo Internet Life some time ago suggesting that fandom in one way or another shaped the culture of the internet, since there was so much crossover. What was a fanzine but a web page? Best, Roger Ebert

Xero-Ing In

-ing In A Postscript by Roy Thomas

Win, Place, and Show: Xero, Alter-Ego, and Comic Art An Andy Reiss cartoon printed back on page 10 has as its punch line:

fault—like maybe I didn’t put enough stamps on the envelope, or something. I’m not sure if I was able to obtain personal copies of the first three issues of Xero from Dick and Pat Lupoff, but I did soon establish contact with them— with Dick, at least. In any event, I know I soon had a copy of #4, with Don Thompson’s “O.K. Axis, Here We Come!” Lupoff, Ted White, and Jim Harmon wrote well and interestingly, but there was an extra quality to Don’s prose that sang to me. It didn’t surprise me much that he was in the process of becoming a reporter at a Cleveland newspaper... or,

“Look at it this way—this is Lupoff’s ’zine.” And, since Alter Ego is my ’zine, I get to wind up our coverage of Xero with a few personal memories, since Xero has loomed large in my life ever since early 1961.

(L. to r.:) Roy Thomas, Bill Schelly, and Jerry Bails at the Fandom Reunion Luncheon, Chicago, 1997—and one of Roy's stenciling efforts for “Captain Billy's Whiz-Gang” in Xero #9, based on a Fawcett house ad. Photo by Dann Thomas. [Heroes TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

That’s when Dr. Jerry Bails, then a young professor of natural science at Wayne State University in Detroit, decided to launch what he tentatively christened The JLA Subscriber. It was to be mailed to any readers of the new Justice League of America comic whose names and addresses he could acquire from DC editor Julius Schwartz’s letters columns or elsewhere. Jerry, like me (his new 20-year-old correspondent in southeast Missouri), was unaware there had already been several issues of a science-fiction fanzine called Xero which contained an ongoing series called “All in Color for a Dime,” and which had just carried an article on our beloved, long-dead Justice Society. In fact, like most of the American public, neither he nor I had ever even heard the word “fanzine.”

However, during his visit to the National (DC) offices in New York City in February of ’61, Jerry was pleasantly surprised when Julie showed (and loaned) him the first three issues of Xero. The realization that a publication resembling a real magazine, not just a newsletter, could deal with comics was added to the mix of his conversations with Julie, comics writer Gardner Fox, and others; and by the time he returned to Michigan Jerry had metamorphosed his original concept into Alter-Ego, a fanzine to be devoted to comic book super-heroes of the past, present, and future. He quickly enlisted me as the other contributor to the first issue, with the overly generous title of “co-editor,” and by late March Alter-Ego #1 hit the U.S. mails, in an unsuspected dead heat with Don and Maggie Thompson’s Comic Art #1 to see which would hit people’s mailboxes first. Jerry also sent me Julie’s issues of Xero, which I read and savored. The existence of s-f fandom was of more direct interest to me than it was to him, since I had been a member of the Science-Fiction Book Club since the mid-’50s and had always liked s-f comics and movies. I fell in love with not just the comics-related material, but even the s-f and purely fannish aspects of the ’zine. Unfortunately, there has always been a vaguely star-crossed aspect to my relationship with Xero, and it didn’t take long to kick in. When I finished reading the issues Jerry had loaned me, I was to mail them back—to him or to Julie, I can’t recall which. It doesn’t much matter: the package went lost in the mail. I don’t recall this as disturbing Julie all that much, but it bothered me for years, since somehow I felt I was at

actually, that the three previous “All in Color” scribes likewise went on to become professional writers. When I wrote an article for A/E (Vol. 1) #2 about the single, not-quite-complete comic I had seen up to that date starring Timely’s All Winners Squad, I was measuring it against Don’s work and coming up short. So impressed was I by “O.K. Axis” that, a decade and a half later, I turned the house-ad phrase he had used for his title into the battle cry of The Invaders when I launched that retroactivecontinuity series starring the Timely super-heroes of the World War II years. I’m not sure I’d ever even seen the house ad itself; I just lifted the slogan from Don.

A Comic Book Stranger in a Strange Science-Fiction Land But, to return to something resembling chronological order here: One of the bright spots of my life for the next couple of years was the arrival of a new Xero. I was inspired to seek out a few primo books, like Rogue Moon and A Canticle for Liebowitz, and learned new names like Algis Budrys, James Blish, Walter Miller, Jr., Theodore Sturgeon, Avram Davidson, and Harlan Ellison, among many others. I reveled in the fannish jargon and the in-jokes and even the late-issue feud between Blish and Richard Kyle (“For, though Blish can write, he cannot read”). And the cartoons! Steve Stiles and Bhob Stewart and others intrigued me, even if I couldn’t always understand their punchlines. Inspired by the experience, I acquired copies of a few other s-f fanzines here and there, but even discounting the lack of comics material

No. 77

ROD REED REVISITED

Plus: MARC

We Didn’t Know...

[FCA EDITORS NOTE: From 1941-53, Marcus D. Swayze was a top artist for Fawcett Comics. The very first Mary Marvel character sketches came from Marc’s drawing table, and he illustrated her earliest adventures, including her classic origin story; but he was primarily hired to illustrate Captain Marvel stories and covers for Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures, as well as a few early Wow Comics covers. He also wrote many Captain Marvel scripts, and continued to do so while in the military. After World War II, he made an arrangement with Fawcett Publications to produce art and stories for them on a freelance basis out of his Louisiana home. There he created both art and story for The Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics, in addition to drawing the Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip for Bell Syndicate (created by his friend and mentor Russell Keaton). After the cancellation of Wow, Swayze produced an enormous amount of artwork for Fawcett’s romance comics such as Sweethearts and Life Story; he eventually ended his comics career in 1956 with Charlton Publications. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been FCA’s most popular feature since his first column appeared in FCA #54, 1996. Last issue, he discussed the impact, influence, and staying power of the World’s Mightiest Mortal. This issue, Marc talks about the long silent period between himself and chief Captain Marvel artist C.C. Beck. —P.C. Hamerlinck.] “To Swayze from Beck. The best pair of drawers Fawcett ever had!” There was warm, sincere friendship in the eyes of C.C. Beck as he handed me the inscribed Whiz Comics cover drawing on the night of my departure for the military in late 1942. What was it that a few years later left me wondering if he might have had other feelings along the way? Put yourself for a moment in his shoes: you’re the co-creator of a major comic book super-hero. You go along about a year doing the art virtually alone. Then your employers select a couple of high-ranking New York artists to produce a whole new book… featuring your character. The results are disappointing. “Terrible,” you say of the art, and you suggest that all future art on your super-hero be done in-house. So they bring in an unknown to draw the character. You propose a system whereby each story will be laid out by one artist, penciled in detail by another, inked by a third, and so on… called “assembly line” art. The new guy balks at the idea… prefers to go solo. And they let him get away with it because he emulates your style so closely even you have trouble distinguishing it. The guy writes… throwing in an occasional story… featuring your character… and he illustrates covers… featuring your character. It seems that such interruptions occur just when he’s needed most to help meet your super-hero’s deadlines. To top it all off, he plays the guitar… and said you were lousy… and relegated you to the bass fiddle in the combo!

Beck (above, in 1977) and Swayze (on right, in 1980). In happier times, C.C. Beck inscribed his original art for the cover of Whiz Comics #19 as a memento for Marc Swayze, departing for the Army. [Art ©2002 DC Comics.]

Rod Reed Revisited

Rod Reed Revisited An Interview with One of Fawcett’s Greatest Writers and Editors Interview Conducted by John G. Pierce

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

[Originally printed in Pierce’s multi-international Marvel Family fanzine, The Whiz Kids #2, 1982. A portion of the interview also previously appeared in Comics Interview #18, Dec. 1984. These sections of text are ©2002 by John G. Pierce and David Anthony Kraft, respectively.]

Binder, C.C. Beck, Kurt Schaffenberger. and some of the others who contributed to the Marvel Family saga, still, his was an important role in those early years at Fawcett Comics. —John G. Pierce, 2002.

Preface

INTRODUCTION

In the early 1970s, I began to make contact with several people who had contributed mightily to the original Captain Marvel canon. One of these people was Rod Reed, an early editor and later freelance writer for Fawcett Publications.

First, a few salient quotes about—and by—Rod Reed:

Rod Reed and his dog, Cobina, photographed at Malverne, Long Island, New York, 1942... and a Kurt Schaffenberger cartoon featuring Rod which appeared in Comics Interview #18 (Dec. 1984), reprinted courtesy of David Anthony Kraft. [Art ©2002 estate of Kurt Schaffenberger; Marvel Family TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

Rod was a fun, witty, articulate, and knowledgeable individual. During our correspondence he remembered many things about those early days at Fawcett… while other details he had completely forgotten or simply didn’t know about. But what he could and did recall filled in many gaps in my quest for Fawcett history. We discussed matters other than comics, too (such as jazz music, his greatest interest), for which I think he was grateful. After all, most of the pioneers of the comic book field had far less interest in their line of work than we fans do. Rod passed away in the late ’80s and, needless to say, he has been greatly missed ever since. While not as well known as Otto

“Although Rod Reed was employed for only a few years by Fawcett Publications—from 19411943—both the admiration that his co-workers such as Marc Swayze and C.C. Beck had for him and his attention to his craft made Rod one of the best-remembered talents of the era of the original Captain Marvel.

“Born April 15, 1910, in Hamilton, Ohio, Reed began his writing career with the Buffalo Evening Sun in 1929. In 1941, at Fawcett Publications, he was both comics editor and writer, scripting many “Captain Marvel” stories. He was the first person to edit Fawcett Comics after CM creator Bill Parker left to go into the military. In June, 1943, Reed chose to take on an editorial position with the jazz magazine Downbeat, but continued to freelance for Fawcett and became known as one of the best Captain Marvel scribes, specializing in some of the more humor-filled scripts of the World’s Mightiest Mortal. In 1951, he joined Buenos Aires artist Jose Luis Salinas to bring The Cisco Kid to daily newspaper strips. Rod and Jose never met; their 18year collaboration was via phone and correspondence. Rod also contributed one unpublished Fatman the Human Flying Saucer story towards the end of the character’s short-lived career in the 1960s, which briefly brought together again many of the old

Rod Reed Revisited and pride his ’40s collaborations with Beck on the early ‘Captain Tootsie’ strip advertisements for Tootsie Rolls. Reed said the Tootsie Roll people gave the duo full creative freedom and that the pay in advertising far outweighed that of comic books.” —P.C. Hamerlinck, Editor, FCA “Two of my best comics authors (Otto Binder not included) told me they would sit up all night with a bottle and script and finish both at once. I would not recommend that… but I’ll admit I’ve done some of my greatest writing after getting slightly looped at a Christmas party. Too bad I always forgot to put any paper in the typewriter. “After a recent game of golf, I stopped inside the clubhouse. A fellow called me to the end of the bar and introduced me to a girl. The fellow said, ‘This is Rod Reed who used to draw Captain Marvel Jr.’ I didn’t deny I was Junior’s artist. Why? I found out long ago that such denial is too complicated and of no use. My neighbor still proudly introduces me as: ‘This is my friend, Rod Reed. He draws Little Orphan Annie!’ People can’t believe that anybody has to actually write comics for a living.” —Rod Reed, 1977

Interview JOHN G. PIERCE: In addition to “Captain Marvel” and “Captain Marvel Jr.,” what other Fawcett features did you script? Did you write any of the four Captain Marvel Story Books? ROD REED: My memory of specific stories and characters ranges from dim to nil. However, I do recall that I wrote “Captain Marvel on the Planet Pazzoo” from Captain Marvel Story Book #1 (Summer, 1946). The story dealt with a modern-day Christopher Columbus whom Cap helped cross the Atlantic while taking a detour to an alien world. The story in Captain Marvel Story Book #3 (Spring, 1948), “Captain Marvel and the Bucket of Blood Murders,” was a collaboration of sorts with writer Jess Benton. I had written two-thirds of it when I was asked to go out of town with Woody A June 1944 “Captain Tootsie” strip-ad for Tootsie Rolls—written by Rod Reed, Herman’s orchestra. I asked Jess to finish it and he did. I illustrated by C.C. Beck. [©2002 the respective copyright holders.] never saw the finished product so I don’t know how the story turned out. Otto Binder undoubtedly authored the Fawcett/Captain Marvel staff. Rod retired in 1980 after the death of his other Captain Marvel Story Book stories. wife, Tucky. “Rod lived for years on Walnut Farm, which reportedly had been featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not in the ’30s for having the largest walnut trees in the world. The farm was sold when his wife passed away. At the time of his death on August 31, 1989, Rod Reed was living in Pine Bush, New York.” —Bill Harper, Editor, FCA & ME, TOO! “Rod was the most creative writer I’ll ever know. He was also blessed with a marvelous sense of humor… and he loved jazz music. As an early editor of Downbeat, he got to know many jazz musicians, and was Woody Herman’s road manager for a time. Rod’s jazz collection consisted of original 78-rpm records, which he still played. He couldn’t be bothered with ‘those newfangled cassette players.’” —Bernie McCarty, Editor, Fawcett Collectors of America “After getting his address from C.C. Beck, I corresponded for a few years with Rod Reed. Reed, a jovial and witty letter writer, was quite elated to hear from a teenager who actually knew who he was! His recollections of his years as an editor and writer for Fawcett Comics were often sporadic. However, he remembered with particular fondness

JGP: How did you become involved with Downbeat magazine? REED: When I was a radio columnist in Buffalo, I had some correspondence with New York press agent Ned E. Williams. After I moved to Manhattan and became a press agent myself, I looked him up. I guess we had good vibes… although that term hadn’t been invented yet. That is, I think he liked me and I know I liked and respected him. Subsequently, he went to Chicago to publish Downbeat. When I left Fawcett, he immediately hired me to take charge of their New York office. My technical knowledge of music is about zero Celsius, but I had been a jazz and swing fan, a record buff, and an interviewer of people like Stuff Smith, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Jimmy Lunceford, and Harry James. The New York office was staffed with young people who were long on enthusiasm but short on editorial experience. I was to be the Wise Old Hand who would guide them. I doubt that I guided them much, but the publication kept coming out on time. JGP: Which did you find easier to write, comic books or comic strips?