Alter Ego #24 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

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No. 24 May 2003

SPOTLIGHT ON The Magnificent

MORT MESKIN

Vol. 3, No. 24 / May 2003 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

Mort Meskin Dave Cockrum

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko

Mailing Crew

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

And Special Thanks to: Ger Apeldoorn Bob Bailey Mike W. Barr Bill Black Jerry K. Boyd Tom Brevoort Mike Burkey R. Dewey Cassell Chris Claremont Dave Cockrum Teresa R. Davidson Arnold Drake Shane Foley Gary Friedrich Mike Friedrich Glen David Gold Mark & Stephanie Heike Tom Horvitz Michael Kelly Ed Lahmann Stan Lee

Don Maris Robert Marquez Paty Peter Meskin Philip Meskin Joe Petrilak Wilson Ramos, Jr. Charlie Roberts Ethan Roberts Jerry Robinson Randy Sargent Jim Shooter Craig Shutt David Siegel Marc Swayze Dann Thomas Alex Toth Hames Ware Dylan Williams Tom Wimbish William Woolfolk

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Biljo White (1929-2003)

MORT MESKIN: His Kith & Kin Section Contents Writer/Editorial: “Mort Be Nimble, Mort Be Quick!” . . . . . . 2 “He Raised the Artistic Bar!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Jim Amash’s Short Celebration of the Life and Legend of Mort Meskin. Alex Toth: Homage to Mort Meskin: Maestro . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 “He Thought He Was a Great Comic Book Artist!” . . . . . . . . 9 And he was right! Jim Amash talks with Mort Meskin’s sons Peter & Philip. Portrait of a Collector: Ed Lahmann Revisited! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Bill Schelly interviews a star of 1960s fandom—and remembers the late Biljo White. The Marvelous World of “What If?”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Michael T. Gilbert on some Marvel Age comics covers that never happened!

FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) #83. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 P.C. Hamerlinck proudly presents Marc Swayze and William Woolfolk. X-Men: From Silver to Bronze Section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover & Contents Page Illo: We wanted you to see it both in color and in black&-white. Collector Ethan Roberts, who acquired this great display drawing a few years ago (he says it belonged at one time to Meskin’s artist-friend George Roussos), believes it may be Mort Meskin’s original concept drawing—i.e., the first illo ever!—of the DC hero The Vigilante, who appeared for years in Action Comics and even had his own movie serial. We suspect Ethan may be right, for the original art is partly colored, almost certainly by Meskin, with a red bandanna mask—a light blue shirt (it became solid blue in the comics)—and white pants (colored light blue in Action). Our thanks to Ethan for letting us print this never-before-published piece. [Art ©2003 Estate of Mort Meskin; ©2003 DC Comics.] Alter EgoTM is published monthly 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 Canada, $11 elsewhere). Twelve-issue subscriptions: $60 US, $120 Canada, $132 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.

The Magnificent MORT MESKIN part one

“He Raised the Artistic Bar!” A Short Celebration of the Life and Legend of MORT MESKIN

by Jim Amash Mort Meskin started drawing comic books in the Eisner-Iger shop in 1938. His stay was brief, but he built up his skills to the point where he became the first artist to draw “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle,” proving that Will Eisner’s faith in him was justified. Meskin matured rather quickly as an artist. He had been well educated at Pratt Institute and had already done professional work for magazines, as well as a two-year stretch at a newspaper syndicate. He also studied some of the best artists of his time: Milton Caniff, Herbert Morton Stoops, Roy Crane, Alex Raymond, and Ed Cartier (whose pulp illustration influence was extremely evident in Meskin’s pulp work). Meskin left Eisner & Iger for the Harry “A” Chesler shop, but he didn’t stay there long, either. His work appeared in the comics published by several companies, including Timely, Lev Gleason, and MLJ (later known as Archie Publications), where he drew a variety of super-hero features, including “Bob Phantom,” “Captain Valor,” “Hercules,” “Captain Valor,” “Mister Satan,” “The Wizard,” and more. But he was still finding himself as an artist when he made his next stop, which was a long one, at DC Comics. It was at DC that Meskin found his artistic voice in comic books. He started there on the “Vigilante” feature, and was an immediate hit. “Vigilante” was really supposed to be a filler feature in Action Comics, but Meskin turned it into an artistic triumph. Every page was a visual treat as he refined his storytelling, which was strengthened by his dramatic compositions and his everincreasing use of black areas. His application of defined negative space to reinforce his scene staging only heightened his graphic imagery. Meskin’s compositional arrangements of grouped figures in a scene were always compelling, never contrived. People smiled a lot in his stories, as if to say to the reader, “Join in and have fun with us.” But, good as his drawing was, he never forgot to tell the story first. It was impossible a reader to stop and stare at just one panel, because Meskin knew how to draw the reader into the story and keep him there until the final panel. As experimental as his storytelling was on “Vigilante,” he raised the artistic bar once he was assigned to the “Johnny Quick” feature. While there were several comic book super-heroes applying super-speed as

Mort Meskin inking a page sometime in the 1950s—and a great “Johnny Quick” sequence from Adventure Comics #127 (April 1948) depicting multiple images of hands and arms or whole figures. Most Mort Meskin photos printed in this issue were sent by Dylan Williams, who works with Peter Meskin in running the <www.meskin.net> website, which we definitely invite you to visit! These photos are mostly from the personal collections of Meskin’s sons, Peter and Philip. [Art ©2003 DC Comics.]

their stock in trade, Meskin’s groundbreaking visual treatments of the hero in motion was a sight to behold. His utilization of multiple, fully-drawn images of Johnny Quick to portray rapid movement was inventive and effective. If Meskin was influenced by stop-action photography, his novel use of camera angles convinced any reader that Johnny Quick really moved that fast, leaving the company’s major speedster, The Flash, visually behind in second place. This approach to speed depiction required hard work with no shortcuts, which may explain why few others tried to duplicate it (Witness other artists like Ralph Mayo, who took the more conventional tack when he drew the feature... boring and lackluster by comparison.) Dan Barry, one of the great comics artists of the time, gave it a shot, as did Joe Kubert years later in the 1980s when he drew Johnny Quick on some of DC’s AllStar Squadron covers. However, these two great artists were the exceptions. With this body of work, Meskin became one of the most admired artists among his peers. Many compared his work, in quality and

Mort Meskin

quantity, to that of Jack Kirby. There were similarities in the work the two produced at the time, though it’s more likely Meskin was influenced by Kirby than the other way around. Inker Charles Paris once noted that both men would sit down in the morning and, by 5:00, individually produce four pages of complete art. Paris also observed that Meskin’s figures were not as exaggerated as Kirby’s, and usually his pages were more tightly finished. But sometimes Kirby would draw a page more than Meskin did, and he was also contributing to the final written product as he drew, frequently writing the script or rewriting a script scribed by others. Jack Kirby confirmed the often-told tale that Meskin was intimidated by Kirby’s ability, making it difficult for Meskin to draw in the DC bullpen when Jack was around.

Meskin’s pencils at DC. By this time, Meskin’s style had changed a bit. His staging was more urbane, less kinetic, though that may be due to the change in subject matter, since romance and horror comics demanded a different look than superheroes. He adopted a looser, roughhewn inking style, applying more crosshatching than before, which gave more of a mid-tone to the finished black-&-white art than in his DC days. Sometimes, facial features were suggested more than completed. It was top quality work, but perhaps not as aesthetically pleasing as it had been. Mort Meskin returned to DC Comics in the mid-1950s, staying there until he’d had enough of the comic book business. The industry wasn’t kind to Mort, who certainly gave far better than he received. His work lost some of its vitality and quality, often appearing rushed. Editors such as the tyrannical Robert Kanigher treated Meskin horribly, despite knowing about the artist’s previous emotional problems. It was shabby, squalid treatment of a former star, now on the downside of an impressive career.

It shouldn’t have mattered, because Meskin was nearly, if not completely, Kirby’s equal at the time. Artist and comics historian Jim Steranko, for one, believes Meskin equaled Kirby on many assignments during this period. DC had a giant in their midst, though they didn’t always appreciate him. Meskin was quiet and rather shy, due partly to a speech impediment and partly to emotional Some of the best of Meskin’s solo super-hero comics work—as well problems, which eventually led to a as his monumental teaming with friend and fellow artist Jerry Meskin left DC Comics for the series of nervous breakdowns. He left Robinson—has been restored and reprinted by Bill Black’s AC Comics comparatively safe haven of adverin beautiful black-&-white editions which allow the linework to be DC for a while and worked at other tising work at BBD&O around 1965. seen more clearly. This Meskin splash from Cressen/Spark’s Golden companies, such as Standard The insulting, shortsighted epitaph to Lad #2 (Nov. 1945) appears in AC’s Golden-Age Greats Vol. 13. Publications. He shared a studio with Meskin’s career at DC was spoken by Do yourself and favor and see AC’s ad elsewhere in this issue. partner Jerry Robinson, producing editorial director Irwin Donenfeld. [Restored art ©2003 Paragon Publications.] memorable comics like Black Terror When an artist asked about Meskin’s (previously a very dull, but leading departure, Donenfeld replied, ”We had to let Mort Meskin go. Mort quit company character), and The Fighting Yank, as well as Golden Lad for drawing fingernails.” Spark Publications. Meskin and Robinson were a great team, always transcending the scripts they were handed. Eventually, the two split up Mort Meskin never stopped drawing. His desire and ability to depict their studio, but retained their friendship and mutual admiration. the world as he felt it only grew. In later years, he painted hundreds of scenes in oil, pen and ink, and in watercolor, many of which reside in Meskin went to work for the Simon & Kirby shop, drawing a variety family members’ homes. He endlessly experimented with technique and of genres in books like Bullseye, Young Love, Young Romance, Justice style, always searching for his next artistic discovery. Traps the Guilty, Police Trap, and Captain 3-D (packaged by Simon & Kirby, but published by Harvey Publications). He also worked for a few To Meskin, creating art was a lifelong achievement. Even birthdays, other companies, such as Timely and Standard. Meskin also shared a weddings, religious holidays such as Chanukah and Rosh Hashanah and studio for a while with George Roussos, who had previously inked other events were dutifully and lovingly remembered in fun, well-illustrated cards. Bristol board, canvas, paper towels, napkins: anything that had white space was in danger of being covered with impressionist observations from his creative mind.

MONTHLY! Edited and published by Robin Snyder

Write to: Robin Snyder, 2284 Yew St. Rd. #B6, Bellingham, WA 98226-8899

Overall, the legacy of Mort Meskin is an important one. He brought a fresh, vital look to comics that entertained his audience for years. His unique and often daring storytelling, coupled with his dramatic use of positive and negative space, influenced people like Jerry Robinson, George Roussos, Bob Forgione, Joe Kubert, and Steve Ditko. An examination of the facial expressions on many of Ditko’s and Kubert’s characters betray the Meskin influence, as do several stylistic qualities of their inking. Meskin was an artist who tried to grow and change with the times. Whether one can easily dismiss his later work or not (or the varied reasons behind the changes), there’s no denying that the bright light of freshness that Mort Meskin shone on the comics field had a lasting effect on those who followed.

The Magnificent MORT MESKIN part three

“He Thought He Was a Great Comic Book Artist!”

And He Was Right! A Candid Conversation (or Rather, Two of Them) with the Sons of Golden Age Legend MORT MESKIN!

Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash [INTERVIEWER’S INTRO: Mort Meskin left a great comic book legacy, but that’s not what makes him so extraordinary. As most people know, raising children is the most special of achievements, even when things run on an even keel. Battling personal and professional problems, Meskin continued to be a wonderful parent and role model for his two son, Peter and Philip. As Meskin was reluctant to publicly discuss his career or personal life, it falls to his sons to tell us about him (in separate interviews which we’ve combined for the sake of economy). From our vantage point, Meskin’s greatest success was the sons he reared and the feelings he engendered in others. If the make of a man is measured by what he leaves behind him, then Mort Meskin proved he was one hell of a man. —Jim.]

“How Do You Draw, Dad?” JIM AMASH: When and where was your father born? PETER MESKIN: As far as I know, he was born in Brooklyn, May 30, 1916. His full name was Morton Meskin. JA: Sometimes he signed his name “Morton Meskin, Jr.” PETER: He made that up. He also made up “Mort Morton” and, I think, “Mort Morton, Jr.” JA: Why did he invent the “Junior” part? PETER: I don’t know. I guess he was young and thought that the “Junior” would be cool or something. [laughs] His father’s name was Joe. One of my earliest memories of my father was that he would bring home copies of his comics to my brother Philip and me. We’d beg him to do it. We would immediately read them, whether there were two comics or twenty. We’d memorize every single word in every single comic, reading his stories first. We were his biggest fans and had a set of comics that you wouldn’t believe. You could show us one panel from a story of his and we could tell you where it came from. But most of those comics disappeared years later.

Mort Meskin with his sons Peter (left) and Philip (right, and the splash from the superbly-drawn “Johnny Quick” tale in Adventure Comics #127 (April ‘48). Unless otherwise noted, photos in this section are courtesy of Peter Meskin, provided by Dylan Williams from the <www.meskin.net> website. Give yourself a treat and give it a look! We’ve only shown the tip of the Meskin iceberg. [Art ©2003 DC Comics.]

JA: Philip, what are your earliest memories of your father? PHILIP MESKIN: As you know, our nuclear family broke up early. I was in the third grade. I remember crawling around Prospect Park with my father and Peter. I remember living with my grandfather when I was about one or two years old. I also remember going to Paris with my mother and brother on a trip. My father didn’t come along. JA: Did your father have any siblings? PETER: Yes. He had a brother, Nat, and a sister, Muriel. They both passed away before he did, though. Uncle Nat was the oldest and Aunt Muriel was the youngest, so my father was the middle child. JA: What art education did your father have? PETER: He went to Pratt Institute. He never graduated but went there for two or three years. He really learned how to draw human anatomy. He was respected for that. I remember one of the sculptures he made at home. It was a plaster cast of Moses, a copy of the one with horns by Michelangelo, and he could name every muscle in the figure. He also

Mort Meskin He was trying to protect you from what he was going through. Your father sounds like he was a very sensitive person, and the deadlines probably got on his nerves, which might have contributed to some of his problems.

PHILIP: I think he had periods where putting out those pages was a struggle. I remember during his “Mark Merlin” years that he had troubles. My main memories of my father’s comic Under the house name “W. Morgan Thomas,” Meskin drew the first “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle” episode, whose U.S. book career are the House of debut was in Jumbo Comics #1 (Sept. 1938). At this point Sheena was very much in the mode of H. Rider Haggard’s She, Mystery, House of Secrets years. but that would soon change to the Tarzanic model. [©2003 Paul Aratow/Columbia.] I felt his later years in comics took some courses at the Art Students league, and he taught for a while. were not as good as his earlier years. I was proud of his work, but I He still spoke with a stutter at the time, so he was very uncomfortable knew the artwork he had done previously was much more detailed. talking in front of groups. There were more lines, less caricatured faces. I remember someone [Jim Steranko in his History of Comics. —Jim A.] writing, “So what if JA: When did you become aware that your father was an artist? Mort didn’t know the construction of a .45 automatic?” PHILIP: I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t, because he was always brining in art supplies and comic books.

I think it was an issue of Showcase where Dad drew this great story about a pilot who landed in the desert. A dust cloud came along and he was sucked into this other world where the Arabian Nights were. He fell in love with a beautiful girl.

PETER: I’m three and a half years older than Philip. I remember Dad’s studio, which was a room I loved to go in because that’s where magic happened. I’d stand on my tiptoes and look up at his easel and watch him draw and paint. I could smell all the paints and inks. I loved it. I asked him once, “How do you draw, Dad?” He shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” He’d point to his shoulder and say, “It comes down my arm and goes out my fingers and comes out of the brush.” He never wanted to teach Philip and me how to draw. He felt it was too difficult a life. I never learned to draw because he didn’t want us to. PHILIP: That’s true, though I don’t think he actively discouraged it. I once asked him about that when I was in high school. He said it was a conscious decision on his part not to encourage us in art because of the bad feelings he had towards making a career out of art, the struggles you have to go through, etc. JA: Art has never been an easy career path to follow.

My favorite comic book artist who ever lived was Barry Smith, when he was drawing the early Conan comic books. Barry Smith was intense, and he put a lot into his work. JA: You know, my editor on this magazine, Roy Thomas, wrote those comics. PHILIP: I didn’t know that. The reason I mentioned Barry Smith was because I didn’t think Pop was as good as Barry Smith. I think my dad reached his peak in comic book art around 1956. “Johnny Quick,” “Vigilante,” Black Terror... that work was good, but it was done before my time.

This DC page by Mort Meskin from what his son Philip calls “his ‘Mark Merlin years’” was kindly sent to us by Ger Apeldoorn of The Netherlands, who says he got it from the black-&-white British Blackhawk #27. Boy, is Alter Ego going international, or what! [©2003 DC Comics.]

JA: I wasn’t born until 1960, so my earliest memories of your father’s work were the reprints of House of Secrets and House of Mystery stuff. But when DC started reprinting “Johnny Quick” and “Vigilante,” I fell in love with Mort Meskin’s

A Conversation with Peter and Philip Meskin

problems with some of the people he worked with, and maybe they beat him down a little bit. PHILIP: That could be true. He was a lifelong stutterer and wasn’t very aggressive. JA: Did he have the stutter as a child? PETER: Well, no... maybe. As a young child, under the age of six, he was climbing on an icebox and it fell on him. It landed on his leg and he always carried a scar from that. I think that’s when the stuttering started. That was very traumatic for him. But when he sang, he never stuttered. He knew all of the old songs, and I know those songs today because he and my mom sang them to us. He was a good singer and a good reader. At bedtime, he’d make up very clever stories for us. He’d call them “100% Almost True-to-Life Stories.” He’d always feature Philip and me in those stories: “Once upon a time, on a far-off planet, Prince Peter and King Philip...” and so on and on. Great stuff! He eventually stopped stuttering in his later years, as he became more confident in himself. This was after he’d left comic books and was working for BBD&O. I forget who got him that job. JA: Was it [comic book artist] Marvin Stein? PETER: Yes, it could have been Marvin. I remember some of Dad’s friends from my early childhood, like Jerry Robinson. We used to go over to his house on Riverside Drive. Jerry and his wife Gro had a rabbit and I used to play with it on the floor. PHILIP: Jerry was a strong presence in our lives. I remember being in his apartment (where he still lives) as a child. Jerry was a good friend of my father’s and stood by Dad when he was hospitalized for emotional problems in the mid-1950s. I remember Jerry had a Scandinavian wife and a daughter about my age. I used to chase that rabbit around. While working on this issue, we received a scan of this art from collector Don Maris, who writes: “Bob Bailey says you’re doing an issue about Mort Meskin and he thought I should send you the first page from a one-ofa-kind comic. The comic is a 16-page 1940s giveaway called Weekly Comic Magazine. According to Overstreet, it was printed by Fox around 1940-41 and sold to stores that wanted comics to give to their customers or their kids. This is an 8-page story and, as you may be able to see, has a credit for ‘Meskin and Sundell.’” Many thanks, Don! “Sundell” is almost certainly early writer and editor Abner Sundell, whose 1942 article giving advice to aspiring comics scripters was reprinted in A/E V3#4. We caught Don just in time! His copy of WCM will be auctioned off by Heritage Comics in July at the San Diego Comic-Con. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

I also remember that my father was friends with Irwin Hasen, who did the comic strip Dondi. I had a picture hanging over my bed of Dondi saying, “Dondi says, ‘Hello to Philip.’”

work, and it influenced me. I used to copy your dad’s super-hero work. Later on, I saw the Black Terror and his work for Simon and Kirby. PHILIP: The “Mark Merlin” stuff was done after my father’s stay in the hospital. He wasn’t into the artwork as much as he had been before. Also, he was living then by himself in Greenwich Village in a one-room apartment where he had a bed and an easel. This was before he met my step-mother Molly, who had a major, positive impact on his life. George Roussos also lived in that building, and they were friends. JA: Roussos inked your father on “Vigilante” and also drew that feature after your father left it. PHILIP: I didn’t know that.

“100% Almost True-to-Life Stories” JA: You dad probably was more into making a living rather than having the passion for the artwork itself, perhaps. Also, he had

Mort Meskin and his first wife, Betty—the mother of Peter and Philip.

Title Comic Fandom Archive

In Alter Ego #6 (“Vol. 1,” April 1964), then-editor Ronn Foss featured a brief biography of A/E contributor Ed Lahmann, entitled “Portrait of a Collector.” Since forty or so years have passed since then, it seemed time to visit Ed again, in…

Portrait of a Collector

by Bill Schelly

ED LAHMANN Revisited!

Introduction: I’ve never had the good fortune to meet Ed Lahmann in person, but I feel as if I know him better than many of the comics fans I’m in touch with—mainly because of his penchant for phoning every month or two to chat. He began calling shortly after The Golden Age of Comic Fandom appeared in 1995, so we’ve covered a lot of ground in the past eight years. For me, a child of the 1950s, it’s been fascinating talking to a fellow who was nine years old when Superman #1 was published, the prime age to read and enjoy comics. Ed has given me a window into the first great days of comic books, as well as the early years of fandom, since he got in on the ground floor. On top of all that, Ed is a prolific artist, working mostly in colored pencil. The Comic Fandom Archive is proud to be able to show visitors some of the many portfolios that Ed has donated. It’s a shame we can’t run some of these marvelous illustrations, but our black-&white printing simply wouldn’t do justice to them. BILL SCHELLY: When and where were you born? ED LAHMANN: I was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on December 24th, 1930. SCHELLY: I always like to know something about the parents of the people I interview. How would you describe your folks? LAHMANN: My father’s name was Clarence Lahmann, and my mother’s was Beatrice. They were both college graduates. Dad was an industrial engineer. Mom was set to be a teacher of English literature and grammar. My mother was a genius and Dad wasn’t far behind. Dad was an employment manager for the G&J Rubber Company (later U.S. Royal); he lost that job due to the Depression, but managed to get another job at the Real Silk Hosiery mills, and it was at this time he met Mom on a streetcar ride home. They got married, and then I entered the picture. Things really got rough for the next three years until Dad landed the job with Roosevelt’s WPA during the war. After the war he went into real estate, but then had a major stroke in 1949—just as I was graduating from high school—and passed away just a few years later. He was just 64 when he died, but Mom lived to the age of 99. SCHELLY: Tell us about your early family life, and how you got into reading comic strips. LAHMANN: My father was a great reader of the comic strips. He subscribed to all of the local papers, and on Sunday mornings he would go to the local newsstand and also get the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Herald American. Practically every syndicated strip was

Ed Lahmann today (left), with his two favorite comic books—and in 1974, with a whole wall-full of colorful classics. Photos courtesy of Ed.

covered in our house. My father taught me how to read using these early comic strips. I was reading clearly by my third birthday. I really didn’t develop a favorite comic strip until I was about seven years old. It would probably have been Flash Gordon at the time, but I also liked Tarzan and Dick Tracy. SCHELLY: When comic books came along, how did you become aware of them? LAHMANN: I had an older cousin, Herbert Lahmann, who had the early Famous Funnies, More Fun, New Fun, Popular Comics, Tip-Top Comics and King Comics. The first comic book I ever bought myself was an early Tip-Top Comics. A gentleman lived next door to me who worked for DeWolfe News, a periodical distributor, who gave me all of his damaged returns, with half or no covers. I remember he gave me a nice copy of Marvel Comics #1. It only had part of the back cover missing. When my mom would go downtown shopping with her mother, she would always bring me back four or five comic books. My dad never bought me any comic books until, in the late 1930s, he brought me home Superman #3. From time to time he would buy me others, and when Gilberton’s Classics Comics came out, he bought me all of those up until I decided to buy them for myself. SCHELLY: What were your favorite comics during World War II? LAHMANN: My favorites were Popular Comics, King Comics, TipTop Comics, and in the hero genre, Detective Comics, Action Comics, Flash Comics and Whiz Comics. Plus my special favorite, Joe Jinks #12. During those early years of comic books, in my neighborhood we traded all the time. We also traded the Big Little Books. I liked all the genres. That’s why I had such an affinity for Popular Comics. SCHELLY: Of the comic book publishers during the Golden Age, do you have a favorite? LAHMANN: Looking at their entire outputs, I would have to say Quality is my favorite, overall. But I have to mention Dell, as Popular

[Molecule Man TM!& ÂŠ2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Michael T. Gilbert Shane Foley, 45, is an ambulance paramedic in Queensland, Australia. He also draws comics, some of which were published in Australia in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. His partner, 48-year-old Randy “Sarge” Sargent, has been a Marvel fan since 1964. Sarge plays music (drums are his weapon of choice!) and works at Criss Enterprises in Parkersburg, Ohio. Sarge says, “I enjoy very much the Silver Age of Marvel Comics. Especially Jack Kirby. To me he was the Silver Age of Marvel Comics.” These two Kirby nuts met electronically on the Kirby-L mailing list two years ago and began collaborating on a series of full-color “what if” covers. Shane draws the covers, freely swiping old Kirby comics to get that authentic “early-Marvel” feel. Then Sarge completes the illusion by pasting up authentic logos, character boxes, and so forth, before computer-coloring the art in a palette eerily similar to that of early Marvel covers. If you like these covers, keep your eyes peeled for more in future issues. Matter of fact, we plan to run some “imaginary” 1963 Hulk covers showing what “might have been” if the first series hadn’t been cancelled with issue #6. Until then, we hope these two will whet your appetite!

The Marvelous World of “What If?” by Michael T. Gilbert What if...? What dyed-in-the-wool comic fan hasn’t asked him- or herself that delicious question? Older Marvel fans still debate such world-shaking questions of comic book trivia as: What if Steve Ditko hadn’t quit Spider-Man after issue #38? Would it have ever been as popular as it became under John Romita’s brush? For that matter, what if Joe Kubert had taken over the strip, instead of Romita? Hmmm... Or what about Giant-Man? He was the big cheese main feature in Tales To Astonish—until the Hulk’s mag got cancelled in 1963. A year later, a ten-page tale of Ol’ Greenskin began sharing Astonish with 12 pages of Giant-Man, beginning with issue #60. Five years later he took over the book completely––kicking Giant-Man out of the mag in the process! That’s a fact. But what if The Hulk’s first run hadn’t been a failure? Well, there’s a good chance Tales To Astonish would’ve turned into a solo Giant-Man title. “What would that have looked like?” you might wonder. Well, wonder no more, frantic ones! Super-fans Shane Foley and Randy Sargent have the answer!

The comic book that never was! What if The Incredible Hulk hadn’t taken over The Wasp’s backup spot in Tales to Astonish #60? Well, instead of sharing the book with ol’ Jade-jaws, lead feature “Giant-Man” might have finally gotten his own title—and it might’ve looked like this! Art by Shane Foley & Randy Sargent, utilizing the artwork of Jack “King” Kirby. [Art layout/concept ©2003 Shane Foley & Randy Sargent; original art ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Giant-Man, Ant-Man, Kang, Wasp, & Sub-Mariner TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

[Illustration ÂŠ2003 P.C. Hamerlinck.]

No. 83

William Woolfolk The Human Side of the Golden Age Plus: Marc Swayze

Marc Swayze The executive and editorial offices of Fawcett Publications occupied the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th floors. In talking with the receptionist, I learned of the company having originated in Minneapolis, its growth, and the relocation to New York City. They published numerous magazines on a variety of subjects, she said… movies, confessions, photography, mechanics, and comics.

[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 the classic Mary Marvel origin story, “Captain Marvel Introduces Mary Marvel” (CMA #18, Dec. ‘42); but he was primarily hired by Fawcett Publications to illustrate Captain Marvel stories and covers for Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures. He also wrote many Captain Marvel scripts, and continued to do so while in the military. Soon after he left the service in 1944, he made an arrangement with Fawcett to produce art and stories 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 artwork for Fawcett’s topselling line of romance comics. After the company ceased publishing comics, Marc moved over to Charlton Publications, where he ended his comics career in the mid-’50s. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been FCA’s most popular feature since his first column appeared in FCA #54, 1996. In the past few issues Marc has talked about his pre-Golden Age of Comics period. Beginning with this installment, he returns to discuss his early days at Fawcett Publications, as he did when his column first started in the pages of FCA seven years ago, for a smaller and somewhat different readership. —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

In the art director’s office I was advised that officially I would be on the staff of Allard, but that functionally I would be responsible to Eddie Herron of the comics. Neither saw a problem with my contributing an occasional illustration to the non-comics magazines. My purpose in being there, however, was clear: to aid in getting out the growing volume of artwork made necessary by the phenomenal success of… Captain Marvel. So that was the name of the guy in the red suit! As Allard and Herron briefly related the history of the character, Beardsley left the room. He returned with a smallish, black-haired, clean-shaven fellow in shirtsleeves. “Marc Swayze, this is C.C. Beck,” he said. Joining the art department at Fawcett Publications was like entering another world. My first impression of the place was its size… huge… with some of the upper towers of Manhattan in view through tall windows along two sides. As we stepped in from the art director’s office, the somewhat loud, jovial, mingled conversations subsided, and about twenty or thirty heads turned our way.

The year was 1941. I rose from my seat in the reception room of Fawcett Publications as a big fellow approached with outstretched hand. It was France E. (Eddie) Herron, editorial director of the Fawcett comics group. With him was chief assistant, John Beardsley. We went directly to the office of an art director. “We liked your drawings,” Al Allard said. They had sent me several sketches of a flying hero in a red suit. I didn’t let on that I didn’t even know the name of the character. “Yeah,” said Herron, “We couldn’t distinguish your art from Beck’s.” “Who’s Beck?” I asked. I had arrived in New York the previous evening, had registered at a nearby hotel, and was in the lobby of the Paramount Building by 9 a.m. sharp. “What a place to work,” I thought. On the ground floor was the Paramount Theatre, where Glen Miller and his orchestra were currently appearing. On the corner was a huge Walgreen drug store. Across the street was the Astor Hotel where Hollywood stars stayed when in the city, and where The Three Suns opened their program nightly with their beautiful theme, “Twilight Time.” On the opposite side of Seventh Avenue was the Times Building, where current headlines in lights rotated constantly. This was Times Square!

Marc Swayze’s cover for FCA #54 (Winter 1996) marked the first installment of his column, “We Didn’t Know... It Was the Golden Age!”—and the beginning of P.C. Hamerlinck’s tenure as FCA editor. [Art ©2003 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

The Human Side of the Golden Age

The Human Side of the Golden Age Golden Age Writing Great WILLIAM WOOLFOLK Interviewed by P.C. HAMERLINCK [Introduction: American writer William Woolfolk’s career of 60+ years is still going strong today. An accomplished writer, novelist, playwright, essayist, columnist, and publisher, he was one of the highest-paid, most sought-after writers of the Golden Age of Comics, where some of his peers referred to him as “The Shakespeare of Comics.” His comics writing résumé is an impressive list of classic comics characters: Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Ibis the Invincible, Superman, Batman, Captain America, Blackhawk, Plastic Man, The Spirit… and the list goes on. [Golden Age Comics fan Shaun Clancy originally put me in touch with Mr. Woolfolk in 2000. A correspondence and friendship had begun, resulting in Woolfolk’s fascinating essay, “Looking Backward… from My Upside-Down Point of View,” published back in FCA #65 (Alter Ego V3#6). It was a joy to present the article by one of comics’ greatest writers, but I knew as I painstakingly edited Woolfolk’s 40+ pages down to 9 pages, that a follow-up interview would definitely be necessary. [I was honored to briefly meet Mr. Woolfolk (and his daughter, Donna, also an accomplished author) in person at the 2002 San Diego International Comic-Con, where he received an Inkpot award. It was Woolfolk’s first-ever convention appearance... and I’m glad I put David Siegel in touch with him, the man who was instrumental in getting Bill to the show. Bill resides in upstate New York, where he’s busy working on several projects. Our interview was conducted in late 2002 via e-mail. —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

Bill Woolfolk (at far right) and chums at the San Diego Comic-Con, August 1, 2002—Bill’s first! [Left to right in back:] Longtime “Aquaman” and “Metamorpho” artist Ramona Fradon... Donna Woolfolk Cross... David Siegel... Dick Ayers (among other things, a Timely/Marvel mainstay from the late ‘40s through the ‘70s)... and William Woolfolk. Center with hat: Lindee (Mrs. Richard) Ayers. [Photo ©2003 Charlie Roberts.]

WILLIAM WOOLFOLK: I feel like someone poised in the middle of a high dive into an empty swimming pool, but I’ll do my best to answer your questions. PCH: Thank you, Bill. First of all, I want to ask if you have a basic philosophy behind writing fiction?

PCH: Comic stories from the Golden Age were generally action and plot driven, yet your comic scripts always gave special attention to characterization, making for a better developed, wellrounded, and interesting story. Did you knowingly strive to expand the comic book story beyond its established, streamlined formula? Did you always go about treating the comics as a valid literary art form…or did you view it as simply another job that will help pay the bills?

WOOLFOLK: My basic philosophy in writing fiction is derived from whoever said that what was crucial in writing fiction is to achieve “a suspension of disbelief” in the reader. Until the reader is willing to at least temporarily suspend his disbelief, he will not willingly attend to your story or accept the actions your characters engage in. This sounds more formidable than it is. If you simply put interesting characters into interesting situations, you will hold the reader’s unskeptical attention. PCH: When preparing a story, specifically a comic book script, did you first write out a rough draft/outline containing the plot and sub-plots, or did you simply prepare it mentally without the use of extensive notes?

WOOLFOLK: In preparing a story for any medium, from comic books to novels to television or movies, I always work out a rough outline in advance. This outline is subject to change, often many changes, but at least it gives me a framework within which to operate. Without it, I’m like someone in free-fall without a parachute.

WOOLFOLK: I’m flattered by your description of my work. I did come from a writing background, in

William Woolfolk

“literary” magazines and slick magazines so I suppose I did try to expand the comic book stories to include what I had learned from previous writing. The chief secret in building a character: always ask the why of how. There was a decided scarcity of real writers at the time. Some publishers even left the stories in the hands of the artists to compose, which was roughly equivalent to leaving them in the hands of the Boston Strangler. PCH: You’re regarded as a major Golden Age comics writer who created few major characters but one who was called upon to keep great-established characters strong, even perfecting them. How did you adapt to all the different styles and characters? Was it difficult for you to juggle so many different ones at one time, or did you view one character pretty much the same as all the others?

experience in college, in which I was the darling of professors who persisted in reading my writing aloud to my bored classmates. And my ambitions were further fortified by the fact that I sold a few short stories to avant-garde literary journals that paid mostly in subscriptions. I earned lifetime subscriptions to journals whose lifetimes were considerably shorter than my own. Despite these literary pretensions, my own reading interests were more narrowly focused on science-fiction. I discovered H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and then Hugo Gernsback and his Amazing Stories magazine. I willingly suspended my disbelief in visions of the future. There was an obvious dichotomy between what I liked to read and what I wrote, a dichotomy that in one way or another has persisted to this day. I’m not sure I can explain this, but I suspect it was warring impulses: the desire for enduring fame versus the need for material success. All my writing life I have tried to marry the pursuit of excellence with the pursuit of money, and the two are not always compatible.

WOOLFOLK: Those who accuse me of creating few comic book heroes and villains are quite right. There were two reasons for this: I was always writing for three or four different publishers at a time, so I had to piggyback on their estabA page from “Captain Marvel and Bulbo the Whale,” scripted by lished characters. The other reason Bill Woolfolk, with art by the late great Dave Berg, before he became My friend Seymour Reit is that I never felt fully committed one of Mad magazine’s most popular writer-artists. From Captain (creator of Casper the Friendly to writing for comics. I had loftier Marvel Adventures #15 (Sept. 1942). [©2003 DC Comics.] ambitions. I was quite wrong, of Ghost) was a classmate in NYU, course, for comics have outlasted my writing efforts in other media… and suffered from the same ambivalence. We both hoped that if we shot and nothing upsets me more than being proven wrong. No, I don’t our arrows into the air they would come back to Earth with a golden think it was particularly difficult to juggle writing for many different goose in them. I have related previously in FCA how we had agreed if comic book heroes all at once. Basically the story requirements were after graduation we had not found gainful employment (it was a the same… and, fortunately, the checks I received were equally recession year) we would get into bed and draw the covers up over our cashable. heads and not emerge again until someone came to our rescue. PCH: Let’s backtrack for a bit. You were born in Long Island in 1917 and your family moved around frequently because of their profession as Vaudeville entertainers. How much of an impact, if any, did that have on your becoming a writer? How early did you know you wanted to become a writer? Did reading books and the pulps in your youth prove influential… or did other influences play a part? Also, was Seymour Reit’s suggestion that you try your hand at comics a suggestion you’re glad he made to you… and if he hadn’t, do you feel you would had stayed with the slicks, eventually moving on to writing novels? Do you feel comics made for a good training ground for future works such as The Naked Hunter, My Name Is Morgan, The Builders, Opinion of the Court, The Beautiful Couple, Maggie, The Adam Project, Thai Game, and your other novels? WOOLFOLK: Did you have to remind me of when I was born?! Why don’t you just say, “At the time when dinosaurs were still walking the earth…”? My family was mostly in show business and were even semi-famous in their own time. George M. Cohan was their patron saint. I might have followed in their footsteps except that their kind of show business was decimated by the advent of sound in motion pictures, so I had to seek another form of creative outlet: writing. This was reinforced by my

Sy Reit was an artist as well as a writer and found a job with Jerry Iger’s shop. He suggested I try to write for comics. I usually put off to tomorrow the things I should have done yesterday, but I finally got around to sending ideas to MLJ, where Harry Shorten was the editor. He had been a year ahead of me at NYU and was a football star, so I felt I had a tenuous connection. The upshot of that was that I began writing for MLJ, scripting The Wizard, The Shield, The Hangman, The Black Hood, and Steel Sterling as well as others, until Shorten proved obdurate about matching what I was being paid elsewhere. I had shot my arrow into the air, and by God it came back with a goose in it… and the goose laid golden eggs. In no time I was earning ten times what the average person was. What would have happened if I hadn’t got into comic book writing? I would have continued selling very occasional stories to Toronto Star Weekly and Liberty and secondary slicks, and probably eventually have tried to write a novel. But without the necessary experience and technique, writing a novel is something like the Laurel and Hardy movie in which they are pushing a piano up a steep flight of stairs and every time they get near the top the piano comes tumbling down to the bottom again.

MUTANT MADNESS MONTH!

THE MEN CALLED “X” Golden, Silver, & Bronze Age Art & Artifacts By:

DAVE COCKRUM STAN LEE ROY THOMAS GARY FRIEDRICH ARNOLD DRAKE MIKE FRIEDRICH LEN WEIN CHRIS CLAREMONT JIM SHOOTER PATY GIL KANE JACK KIRBY WERNER ROTH DON HECK JOHN BYRNE BRUNO PREMIANI JERRY ROBINSON MARIE SEVERIN MARC SWAYZE ALEX TOTH BILL WOOLFOLK MICHAEL T. GILBERT BILL SCHELLY JIM AMASH P.C. HAMERLINCK & MORE! X-Men TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

5.95

In the the USA USA In

No. 24 May 2003

Vol. 3, No. 24 / May 2003

™

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

Dave Cockrum Mort Meskin

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko

Mailing Crew

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

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Biljo White (1929-2003)

X-MEN: From Silver to Bronze Section Contents Writer/Editorial: The Men Called “X” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Stan Lee: “I Wanted Magneto to End Up Being Professor X’s Brother!” . 3 Roy Thomas: “I’m Proud of Both My Runs on The X-Men! ” . . . . . . . . . 6 Gary Friedrich: “I Was Never Really an X-Men Fan!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Arnold Drake: “Stan Loved Dialogue!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 The X-Men: “A Cool Concept!”–-– A 2000 Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Craig Shutt with Dave Cockrum, Jim Shooter, Roy Thomas, & Arnold Drake.

Mike Friedrich: “The Topic of Conversation Was the Revival of The X-Men! ” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Len Wein: “Alienation Was What The X-Men Were All About!” . . . 31 Dave Cockrum: “We Kicked the Whole Thing Around a Lot!” . . . . . . . 34 Interview with the “New X-Men’s” first artist—plus a sidebar with wife Paty.

Chris Claremont: “I Was in the Right Place at the Right Time!” . . . . . . . . 48 Mort Meskin: His Kith & Kin Section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: We couldn’t be more pleased and honored that Dave Cockrum agreed to create a new X-Men drawing especially for this edition of Alter Ego, in addition to sending us a multitude of previously unprinted illos of Marvel’s mighty mutants for use with his own and other interviews herein. A word to the wise: Dave does commission work featuring The X-Men, Starjammers, Futurians, Legion of Super-heroes, and other characters he’s drawn, and can be reached at <parrotstew@in4web.com>. [Art ©2003 Dave Cockrum; X-Men TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Above: As discussed in this issue, a few years back Dave penciled a never-published fill-in X-Men issue, the original art for which has recently been returned to him by Marvel. Several pages (and even one penciled page) from it appear herein, starting with the balloon-less halfpage reproduced above depicting the late-’60s X-Men and their greatest foes. Oh, and those are Lorna Dane/Polaris’ feet above The Angel’s head, jutting out from another panel. Inks by Joe Rubinstein. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Alter EgoTM is published monthly 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 Canada, $11 elsewhere). Twelve-issue subscriptions: $60 US, $120 Canada, $132 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.

The Men Called “X” part one

“I Wanted Magneto to End Up Being Professor X’s Brother!” STAN LEE Talks to ROY THOMAS about the Early Days of The X-Men –––and Even “The Doom Patrol”

Interview Conducted by Phone – Feb. 11, 2003 Transcribed by Brian K. Morris [NOTE: Since Stan Lee was the co-creator and first writer of The X-Men, beginning with its first issue in 1963, I could hardly conceive of doing a special issue on Marvel’s merry mutants without getting his thoughts on the matter. I promised him our phone talk between L.A. and South Carolina would take only about fifteen minutes, and I was as good as my word. —Roy.] ROY THOMAS: I always considered it strange that Marvel came out with two super-hero groups at virtually the same time: The Avengers and The X-Men. I was curious why that happened. STAN LEE: They came out at the same time? RT: Within a couple of weeks of each other, at most. LEE: Well, I never thought of them as being similar, because The X-Men was a totally new group of new characters. And The Avengers was just a bunch of guys I put together, but we’d seen them all before. So I never thought of them as being a new group. RT: It seemed to me when I first saw it that, as opposed to The Avengers, The XMen was more in the vein of Fantastic Four—a group created as a group, only with the teenage appeal of Spider-Man. Did you have any of that consciously in mind when you did it, sort of combining those two books? LEE: [laughs] I don’t think I was thinking of that. I think all I was trying to do—and again, I don’t remember it—it may be that [Marvel publisher] Martin Goodman said to me, “Why don’t you do another group?” Because if the Fantastic Four was doing well— RT: So you did two of them. LEE: You’re right, The Avengers were a group. But we always had guest stars. To me, this was the ultimate “guest-star.” [laughs] We had five guest stars in one story. RT: I remember you told me soon after I came to work for you in 1965 that your original name for the comic was The Mutants, but Martin Goodman nixed it. I was wondering why you went with that name, and why he nixed it.

Stan Lee in the Silver Age—as seen in the set of Bullpen photos sold in the early ’70s—and the cover of A Certain 1963 Comic Book that is worth a lot more now than it was then, from the black-&-white pages of The Essential Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 1. Thanks to R. Dewey Cassell for reminding Ye Editor that the set of photos had ever even existed! This one was taken circa late spring of 1970, as shown by the cover proofs on Stan’s office wall. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

LEE: Well, I wanted it to be called The Mutants because they were mutants. [laughs] It seemed like the logical name. And I remember this, because I’ve told this story so often—he nixed it because, he said, “Nobody would know what a mutant is.” He didn’t think people understood that word. But if people wouldn’t know what a mutant is, how the hell are they going to know what an “X-Man” is? I needed another name, and I’d decided to call the professor, Professor X. And they were characters with “extra” powers. And somehow, at some point, it made me think of them as The X-Men. You know, Professor X, and they had an “X” power. Of course, one of them was a woman, so I shouldn’t have done that. [laughs] RT: Well, “X-People” or “X-Persons” wouldn’t have sounded very good. I’m curious, did you make up all five of the characters when you made up the idea, or did you leave who some of the particular characters were up to Jack? LEE: Oh, no. I always made up all of them, in all the books. Jack was just the guy to whom I’d say, “Hey, I’ve got something for you to draw.” Of course, after that, his contributions were considerable. [laughs] But in the beginning, I used to just hope he’d like it and say, “Oh, great. I’ll draw it.”

The Men Called “X” part two

“I’m Proud of Both My Runs on The X-Men!”

A Fond Look Back by the Marvelous Mutants’ Second Scripter, ROY THOMAS “Another Mighty Marvel Bullpen Surprise!” “X” has traditionally and mathematically stood for the unknown—the mysterious factor in an equation, either algebraic or human. And, despite the unique talents of the individuals involved with The X-Men after its mid-1970s return, it’s certainly unknown and perhaps ultimately unknowable precisely why that comic became, twenty-plus years ago, Marvel’s best-selling title, surpassing even The Amazing Spider-Man, just as the latter had once passed Fantastic Four. That hardly seemed a likely scenario back in the 1960s, let alone the first half of the 1970s, when there was no original X-Men book. Sure, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby started The X-Men out well, and it always had its following. But in the ’60s it never approached the popularity of The Avengers, let alone of F.F.. And once first Jack, then Stan, departed within a few issues of each other—Jack after #17 (Feb. 1966), Stan with #19 (April ’66)—The XMen began a slow decline which ended in cancellation. I know because, to a certain extent, I suppose I was a part of that late-’60s decline. I’m proud to this day that Stan passed the scripting of X-Men on to me with #20 (May ’66). He handed me already-penciled pages by Werner Roth, who had taken over full penciling with #18, after a brief apprenticeship over Jack’s layouts. As per all my previous hero scripting for Stan (one “Iron Man,” two late Ditko “Dr. Stranges,” and Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos), I started out with a story already plotted by Stan and the penciler. It was Stan and Werner who teamed up mutants Unus the Untouchable and The Blob, decided how Professor X lost the use of his legs at the hands of the recurring villain Lucifer. I was simply the hired gun—or rather, hired typewriter. But I was happy to pick up the torch.

This photo of Roy Thomas from the Silver Age Bullpen series (courtesy of R. Dewey Cassell) has gotta be an early shot, since after ’66 or ’67 the Rascally One rarely wore a tie to the Marvel office! Roy wrote the original X-Men and helped jump-start the new mutant group, both of which are pictured in this Dave Cockrum art—done for a Slurpee cup, Dave tells us. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Marvelous Mutants’ Second Scripter

there’s just a bit too much of it. And even that is a subjective opinion, not shared by everyone who read the issues, I’m happy to say.

“Let’s See How a Swingin’ Staff Handles a Yarn All by Their Lonesome!” The first sour note for me on X-Men came with my second issue, #21. I learned that, for reasons never made clear, Stan had told the artist that he (Werner) would be plotting the upcoming issues, and I’d be simply writing dialogue and captions for them. Now, understand: in those days, Werner wouldn’t have received one extra cent if he had plotted all stories with no input from me; I’d still have received my full script rate, then probably $10 a page. But I felt that I, not Werner, should be plotting the stories. I said so to Stan and prevailed, though I’m not sure how much I contributed to the plot of #20 (“From Whence Comes... Dominus?”) and how much is Werner’s or, indirectly, Stan’s. Werner himself seemed happy either way, and to this day I’ve no idea whether the plotting thing was his idea or not. He was older than most other artists I’d worked with, or so he appeared to me at the time; and though he was always friendly, his enthusiasm for comics seemed limited. Yet he was certainly not un-inventive, as witness page 17 of #20, where one panel on a six-panel page shows five mutants on three sets of stairs ascending the face of Dominus’ enormous machine. Like John Romita, Gene Colan, and other Bullpenners, he had been drawing romance comics for DC and, finding himself with less and less work as that genre slowly imploded, had wandered over to Marvel. Like Colan, Mike Esposito, and others, he opted at first for a pseudonym: “Jay Gavin,” taken from the first names of his sons—a common ploy in those days.

Splash of X-Men #20, repro’d from the black-&-white Essential Uncanny X-Men, Vol. 1. The word “Uncanny” was retroactively added to the 1960s title later to avoid confusing with the new X-Men mag begun in the ’90s. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Although X-Men hadn’t been one of my favorite comics before I’d entered the field, I enjoyed writing the mutants—especially The Beast, with his voluminous vocabulary. The others, however, I found less differentiated than Sgt. Fury’s six buddies.

All I recall about doing the “dialoguing” (a term not then in use) on #18 is that, as I’d done with earlier super-hero efforts, I taped tissue paper over the original twice-up penciled art and drew on balloons and captions containing the “copy” (as we called it, taking a term from advertising). I can’t remember if it was my decision to have so many people on the splash talking, or whether Stan added even more balloons when he went over my script with me. I know there were changes; I just don’t know what they were. I do know I hadn’t indicated any more balloons than are there in the published comic: a grand total of ten, not counting the introductory caption and the credits. Stan added the blurb reading “Another mighty Marvel Bullpen surprise!” with an arrow pointing to my name beneath his. I was flattered to have him draw attention to me, indicating he wasn’t totally ashamed of the script. But then, if Stan hadn’t felt I was up to the job, he wouldn’t have given me The X-Men, less than a year after I’d walked in the door. My early X-Men is certainly copy-heavy, even for me. Something about Werner Roth’s pencils lured me into giving most people in the panels dialogue; they usually looked as if they were all talking. But that’s not Werner’s fault. He and I were both simply doing what we felt Stan wanted. Stan seemed to like our X-Men. After all, he hadn’t exactly been shy about sticking lots of word balloons into Werner’s panels himself, as witness #19, page 11: its final 1/3-of-a-page panel contains seven characters—and eleven word balloons! Actually, I’m not at all ashamed of my X-Men dialogue my first time around, even though I feel my second stint (mostly with Neal Adams) was superior. I don’t think that, for the most part, it’s bad dialogue...

“If a super-villain isn’t much by himself, put him in a group with several others!” That was Stan the Man’s philosophy—and it worked pretty well in X-Men #22-23 with Unicorn, Scarecrow, Porcupine, The Eel, and Plant Man. Script by Roy Thomas, art by Werner Roth & Dick Ayers. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey. See Mike’s ad elsewhere in this issue. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Men Called “X” part three

“I Was Never Really an X-Men Fan!” An Interview with Silver Age Mutant Scribe GARY FRIEDRICH

Groovy Gary Friedrich, as seen in a Bullpen photo section in the 1969 Fantastic Four Annual—flanked by (on left) an un-used cover for X-Men #48 (Sept. 1968) penciled by Dashin’ Donnie Heck and inked by Jazzy Johnny Romita—and (on right) by the published all-Romita (?) version. Thanks to Jerry K. Boyd for finding this one for us! Jerry figures—and we agree— that Stan or publisher Martin Goodman may have rejected it at the last minute because both heroes have their faces turned away from the readers—but then, that’s why the big cameo heads at left were added. Also, that monster on the first cover does look a bit like a frog! [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash [INTRODUCTION: Gary Friedrich did a lot of comics writing between 1965 and the mid-’70s, so he has an excuse for not really remembering his short writing stint on the 1968 X-Men: from issue #44, which he scripted from a Roy Thomas plot, through #47, which Arnold Drake scripted from Gary’s plot. However, Gary has etched himself into X-Men lore by scribing the Iceman origin back-ups in #44-46. In a near-future issue, A/E plans to present a fuller look at Gary’s stint at Marvel, but for now, we’ll whet your appetite with this brief look back. —Jim.] JIM AMASH: How did you get the writing job on The X-Men? GARY FRIEDRICH: The way things worked then was that Stan Lee would give up the writing on a title to Roy Thomas. Roy would then give up something to me. Millie the Model went from Roy to whoever was ahead of me (Ron White, I think), and pretty soon, I came in and got Millie. Then Stan passed something on to Roy, and he passed Sgt. Fury on to me. So probably, Stan passed something on to Roy and he passed The X-Men off to me. JA: Issue #44, the Red Raven issue, was plotted by Roy (so he gets total blame for the Red Raven idea!) and you scripted it. The back-up Iceman story was entirely written by you. So I assume Roy was in the middle of working on the lead story when you took over, because Roy took the Red Raven name from an old Timely comic, packaged by

Simon and Kirby, and it was such a bomb that it only lasted one issue. Only Roy would have remembered an obscure character name like that!

FRIEDRICH: That’s probably what happened. That sounds like something I’d inherit and sounds like something Roy would pull from out of the past. I have to say that the whole memory of writing the X-Men has been flushed out of my memory. I just don’t remember anything about it. I do remember how hard Roy worked on the series. There was a time when Roy and I were living together, and he was writing The X-Men then. Roy was always a hard worker and he really lived this stuff. He really slaved over The X-Men and you can see that by noticing all the copy in the stories. [laughs] I can remember [letterer] Artie Simek calling in, whining and crying about how much copy there was. He wanted a couple extra dollars a page because the copy was so heavy. [more laughter] I don’t blame him. Artie worked at home and would sometimes call me at home and say, “What the hell are you doing to me? There’s 79 balloons on this page! You’re killing me!” He’d call and ask for Roy, and I’d say, “How are you doing, Artie?” and Roy’d be waving his arms, like saying, “No, no! I’m not here!” [mutual laughter] Artie’d only call for one reason. But everybody liked Artie, so it wasn’t personal. I never met Sam Rosen... only Artie would call! But Roy and I both had a tendency to write a lot of copy. There’s a lot to read in those comics and I always liked to read comics like that.

JA: Did you write that heavily because it was your style, or because Stan and Roy wrote a lot and you thought that was the Marvel style? FRIEDRICH: I don’t think it was a matter of style; it just seemed to come out that way. I never liked plotting things, but of course, you had to do that to some degree at Marvel. I liked to start a story with a couple of characters and see where it took me. The writer has more control if he writes a complete script first.

The Men Called “X” part four

“Stan Loved Dialogue!”

ARNOLD DRAKE Talks about The X-Men, His Time at Marvel—and The Doom Patrol! Interview Questions Prepared by Jim Amash (Feb. 7, 2003) [NOTE: He’s baaack! And we are happy to have him. In Alter Ego #17 Arnold Drake discussed The Doom Patrol, and here he returns to talk (mostly) about his involvement with The X-Men. Considering that there are a few similarities between the two super-hero groups, it seemed like the right time to ask Arnold about The X-Men, while comparing the differences in the writing process between full-script writing at DC and the “Marvel method.” Rather than simply be interviewed, Arnold preferred to use my questions as a springboard to write the following piece, which contain a few choice observations which I found fascinating and thought-provoking. For more on these subjects and Arnold’s creation of “Deadman,” as well as on his Gold Key writing, see Alter Ego #17. And if Arnie wants to spell “comics” as “comix”—well, who are we to gainsay him? —Jim.] In 1966, when I’d been at DC for a dozen years or more, I decided to take my family to live in England for a while. Both my parents had just died (within six months of each other), and my wife Lillian, who at times was closer to my Mom than to her own, mourned her deeply. A major scene change was in order. Too, I thought that for Pamela (seven, at the time), it would be a great adventure. And so it was. In “Nevern Cottage” (a lovely London house that Pam dubbed “Nevern-Nevern Land”), far from DC’s internal and external bickerings and the minutiae of the comix industry, I began listening to my guts. They told me that DC was running, nay, streaking up a blind alley.

Mort Weisinger and Jack Schiff were the top editors. But there was no editor-in-chief. DC President Jack Liebowitz feared that appointing one would drive the other to quit. But I offered a daring notion: “Bring in a top talent from outside. Like maybe hire an editorial VP from TimeLife?” Liebowitz smiled benignly, as you do when you’re talking to a schizophrenic who’s off both his rockers. His words were, “What Time executive would touch the comic book business?” Which, with the passing years, reads as pretty good irony. So, with the market sprinting off in all directions, DC was without a compass. Plummeting sales said something was wrong. But what? Finally they chose Carmine Infantino to supply some answers. Good move! He worked night and day to sharpen the look of the magazines and lift office morale. And he did both brilliantly. Improving sales showed they were beginning to face their problems. But, to quote a Schiff axiom: “The cover sells that month’s issue. But the insides sell next month’s!” And the insides had changed very little. That was where it was at when I returned from London. In a meeting with Irwin Donenfeld (son of founder Harry), I said that Marvel was gaining fast on DC. Carmine was their Jack Kirby. But they also needed a Stan Lee. I offered my services. He said, “We outsell Marvel 3-to-1.” I said, “That’s this year.” He shrugged his executive shoulders. But now I saw that his second favorite sport was running up blind alleys. So I packed my bowling ball and moved over to Marvel. I already knew a bit about Marvel. When The X-Men’s first “ish” appeared some three months after “Doom Patrol” #1 [My Greatest Adventure #80], I pointed out the fantastic similarity to the DC editors. Weisinger said, “Don’t get your bowels

Arnold Drake in uniform in 1942, two years before he took part in the Battle of the Bulge—a recent photo with his granddaughter Tatiana, one of a set of twins—flanking his first plot-and-dialogue contribution to The X-Men, a 5-page feature on Iceman in #47 (Aug. 1968). Photos courtesy of Arnold. [X-Men page ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Men Called “X” part five

The X-Men: “A Cool Concept!” A Panel on the Silver & Bronze Age X-Men –-––with DAVE COCKRUM, JIM SHOOTER, ROY THOMAS, & ARNOLD DRAKE

Conducted by Craig Shutt (June 11, 2000)

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

[NOTE: On June 9-11, 2000, the city convention center of White Plains, NY, an hour from New York City out in Westchester County—yes, the same Westchester County that has been home to Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters—hosted Joe Petrilak’s All Time Classic New York Comic Convention, with one of the greatest guest lists of Silver and (especially) Golden Age talent anywhere, ever, period. Alter Ego plans to devote an entire issue to it in The panel gets under way with the moderator and the three previously announced the near future. One Silverguests (left to right): Craig Shutt, Jim Shooter, Roy Thomas, and Dave Cockrum; and-Bronze Age event was an photo courtesy of Joe Petrilak—plus Dave Cockrum and Gil Kane’s cover for GiantX-Men panel, hosted by Craig size X-Men #1 (1975). Dave discusses who did what on the panel. And learn more Shutt, writer of the “Ask Mr. about it in our interview with Dave, later this issue. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Silver Age” column for The Comics Buyer’s Guide. I’ve had to edit and telescope the panel slightly to fit it into this special X-Men issue with so many interviews. Special thanks to Joe Petrilak! —Roy.] CRAIG SHUTT: I have the easy task of introducing three guys who really don’t need any introduction. To my immediate left is Jim Shooter, who worked as editor-in-chief for a number of years on The X-Men... Roy Thomas, who did many of the classic stories with Neal Adams and had some input on the new X-Men when they were first being started up... and Dave Cockrum, whose sketchbook held many of The X-Men, even before any of us had ever seen them. What I’d like to ask each first is: from your time with The X-Men, what do you consider one of the highlights, or one of the key things that you remember best from those years? JIM SHOOTER: Well, I’m kind of one of the least involved here of any of these guys, so... [passes the microphone to Roy, who passes it to Dave] DAVE COCKRUM: Well, it was just mainly fun, most of the time. You know, when you’re young and enthusiastic and a comics fan, that’s the most fun you can have, really. Marvel was a fun place to work, and getting to draw all these people

in Spandex, that was great. I guess, as far as The X-Men goes, “Kitty’s Fairy Tale” is one of my favorite high points, because we were just joking around and said, “Why don’t we do a fairy tale?” It was just spur-of-the-moment, off the top of our heads; we just spun that story out, and that was a gas. And the Brood stuff. The Brood were so nasty that, if Phoenix had eaten their planet, she’d have gotten a medal. [laughs] And I thought that was fun. Those were really mean buggers, you know. [to Roy] It’s your turn. ROY THOMAS: I enjoyed my two stints as writer on The XMen. The first was with Werner Roth, and later Don Heck and Ross Andru, as the second writer of The X-Men, after Stan Lee suddenly turned it over to me one day. But probably the most enjoyable time was working with Neal Adams on all but one of the issues of X-Men that he did. Despite deadline problems, it was always worth it in the end, because they were beautiful; they’ve been printed over and over again, and they deserve to be. It didn’t make any difference what the story was. Just to be knocked out by the beauty of those pages was enough.

But in some ways, the most satisfying thing to me personally is that, back in ’74, not long before I left the editor-in-chief job, one of my last acts was to say, “Hey, let’s revive The X-Men!”—which I’d always been wanting to do and had been trying to do, here and there. We made them an international group... figuring maybe this time they’d make it. Well, it turned out they did, more than any of us could ever have guessed. And I think that Dave Cockrum and Chris Claremont particularly, and Len Wein,

“A Cool Concept”

We’ll confess it up front, with no apologies: Dave Cockrum sent us a lot of rare artwork, and we intend to use nearly all of it in this issue and next! Of this drawing of the “old” and “new” X-Men, though, Dave writes: “Frankly, I don’t remember doing this. It was apparently done for an unused mug design for the Danbury Mint. Very little of this looks to me like my work. I think the inker must’ve heavily reworked it.” The inker is John Koblish, who has done work for both Marvel and DC. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

who wrote the first story, and then later maybe John Byrne as an artist, too—that handful of people ended up turning The X-Men into something that none of us ever would have dreamed as late as 1974, ’75, which was that X-Men would become the hottest thing at Marvel Comics. If you’d told somebody that 25 years ago, they’d have locked you up in a room with Prez or Brother Power, the Geek. SHOOTER: X-Men was becoming the big hit while I was there. I didn’t do much with starting it, so it was always up front and important when I was there. There was an issue with Firelord that Dave drew. He had a big apartment in Queens, and before I found my own apartment, I stayed with him for a while. Well, look at the splash page with Firelord flying over the X-Men mansion, and picture me with a broom in my hand, standing on one leg in the living room. That was my debut in The X-Men. [laughs] He used to ask me to pose. He’d say, “Hold your hand like this.” “I can’t write while I’m holding my hand like this, Dave.” [laughs] But little bits of me crept into the art here and there, and that was fun. In some ways, The X-Men was sort of the hardest book; and in some ways, it was the easiest book. Chris Claremont deserves immense credit for the success of The X-Men; he wrote it and did a great job. A lot of writers—if something was wrong with a script, I’d call up them and say, “Hey, this doesn’t work,” and they’d say, “Well, if you want to change that, it’s okay,” and I would do a rewrite, and that was the end of it. Chris, the first time I changed a word, went ballistic. [laughs] Out of his mind, right? And then he said [angrily], “Just put an ‘X’ in the margin and tell me what it is.” So he would come in and see a little “X” scribbled in the margin. He’d say, [angrily] “What’s this?” I’d say, “Well, you know, it’d be nice to mention a character’s name in this issue, Chris.” And he would—[growls] then he’d go find a typewriter someplace and he would fix it. But he wanted every word to be his, okay? And it was. Okay, with a rare exception—a place where I accidentally wrote some suggested copy. And in the space allotted, he couldn’t figure out anything else to put in there and he was furious, but he had to use those words. Chris, also, was responsible for recruiting all the great artists on The X-Men. He really made it a personal mission. I think he even had some deal where he paid Tom Orzechowski extra to stick with lettering The X-Men. The same with Glynis Wein—Glynis Oliver—the colorist. He really made it his personal crusade to make that book work, and boy, did

it! So it was a joy working on it, and even though Chris and I argued like cats and dogs over the stories, as editors and writers do sometimes, I think all of us really felt we had something special going on there, and a lot of great moments. CS: I was interested in seeing what the new movie [the first X-Men film] does about mutants, and the prejudice against them. And I was wondering what you see as what their appeal has been over the years—if it was the prejudice and the misfits, or if it was the cool characters and the powers they had. SHOOTER: I don’t know. I mean, I think it was a cool concept. I think I really credit it to the fact that the people doing it did a better job than almost anybody else. They did really work their butts off, and Dave used to crash an airplane every issue. [laughs] THOMAS: One of the reasons it wasn’t as big in the early ’60s is because its time really hadn’t come yet. It was before the age of the teenaged super-hero. I noticed back in the ’50s, when I was a teenager, that the teenage idols kept getting younger. First there was Elvis, who was 21 when he really hit. A couple of years later, Ricky Nelson was 18 when he got big. And then suddenly there’s Fabian, who’s like 15 or 16—and I think this is what happened to comics, a decade or so later. Nor was the “outcast” thing quite as big earlier. Remember, ’63 was still the Kennedy years. But by the middle and late ’60s, with Viet Nam and civil rights and all that, the idea of the outsider as the hero came in big. And what did you have as the groups before that? You had Justice League of America. I mean, these guys are just a bunch of Rotarians with super-powers, you know? And the idea that they would ever argue was just beyond belief. The Fantastic Four argued and that was what made them fun, but they were still a group. Everybody knew where they lived. They were heroes and lionized. The Avengers were all heroes—everybody knew who they were, and they had a building. And the mutants were these guys, hiding out behind trashcans or trying to pretend they’re a bunch of innocent kids up in Westchester County. Where is that Westchester County? It’s a fictitious county like Gotham City, you know? [laughs] I think it was a combination those two things, and the incredible talents of the people who did it. Despite the fact that Len Wein did a very fine job with that first issue, and I had a little something to do with getting it going, it was primarily Chris, first with Dave and then with

The X-Men Panel

John Byrne. Once that was in place, everything else since that time, no matter who did it, and how it sold, goes back to those few guys, more than anything else. Sure, the issues Neal and I did were influential on those guys. Plus Lee and Kirby, of course, in the first place. Yeah, they had something to do with it, yeah. [laughs] COCKRUM: One thing that always weirded me out a little with the mutant prejudice thing was, how come guys that acquired their powers later weren’t discriminated against, you know? Why were you only discriminated against if you got born with it? I’d sit and scratch my head an awful lot about that. Mr. Fantastic is weirder than a lot of those mutants. Why don’t people hate him? But they didn’t. SHOOTER: Good P.R. COCKRUM: Yeah. He had money. [laughs] But I think the mutant persecution thing was a good deal of it. But the thing is, they were also treated like a family. In spite of all of this hatred and fear, they hung together and supported each other, and they could count on each other. Well, most of the time, anyway. And that appealed to a lot of the readership, I think. Plus, people were constantly leaving and coming back, and new people coming in, so you had an ever-changing cast, and nobody had a chance to get bored.

says I said, “I want to see how you do a Canadian accent,” because he’d been doing “Brother Voodoo” with a Jamaican accent. What would he say: “Eh?” We just talked it over and, except for those few sentences, everything else was Len working with Herb—I don’t know if Herb contributed a little extra. When Herb and I worked on The Hulk, we just talked over ideas for ten or twenty minutes, and then he’d go and draw. But anyway, they went off and did it. Everything else, even the fact that he was a mutant was, I presume, Len. And the fact that he had the prodigiously-sized claws, that, too, would have been added by Len and Herb. Also, years earlier, I’d needed the name of something stronger than steel or anything else. And I’d read a translation of the play Prometheus Bound by the Greek playwright Aeschylus, which used the adjective “adamantine,” and I remembered that. So I made up this thing called “adamantium” in The Avengers. So, though I didn’t make up the idea of giving Wolverine adamantium claws, I was really pleased that adamantium became a part of it, too. I was thrilled a few years ago when I saw adamantium mentioned by name in either Time or Newsweek. I’d contributed a word to the English language. [chuckles] Maybe it’ll be in the dictionary someday, along with “Quinjet,” or some other deathless contribution of mine. [laughs] But basically, it was Len and Herb; and of course it was developed, later on, by other people. Dave and I were arguing back and forth in print a year or so ago in Comic Book Artist about which of us came up with the idea for the international X-Men. Dave said it was me, and I said it was Dave, or at least Mike Friedrich said it was Dave and that sounded okay to me. So we never did figure it out.

CS: With the second group, Wolverine became a real break-out star. And I was wondering what it was in his makeup that suddenly made him become a guy who could have so many series and miniseries, as that point when he did. SHOOTER: Roy, you were the editor when Herb and Len did it [in The Incredible Hulk #180-181], weren’t you?

COCKRUM: You said, “mutant Blackhawks.” THOMAS: Yeah. I had a couple of [laughs] different names—now, Dave may have shown me a Wolverine character before— THOMAS: Yeah, I [Dave nods] but I had it in my mind that I remember that phrase, but was going to make up a character, or have a Mike Friedrich seemed to character as a villain. And I wanted him to remember you showing me be Canadian, because we had a lot of some sort of international Wolverine co-creator Herb Trimpe at the March 1975 Mighty Marvel Comic readers in Canada, and he was going to be thing that was similar to Convention, as seen in FOOM #10, Marvel’s own “fanzine”—and the rarelycalled either “Wolverine” or “Badger.” But that, before. You and Mike reprinted final panels of The Incredible Hulk #180 (Oct. 1974), the world’s “Wolverine” sounds like a wolf, and first glimpse of Canada’s own Wolverine. Can you believe it—for a change, Friedrich were originally “Badger” sounds like, “Aw, come on.” he’s breaking up a fight, between Ol’ Greenskin and The Wendigo! going to be the team. [laughs] The “Badger” name got used later, Script by Len Wein (whom you’ll see later), inks by Jack Abel. too. Maybe Dave had this other character [Hulk art ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.] COCKRUM: I don’t before, which I didn’t consciously remember showing you remember, but there are only so many animals in the world. anything like that. You said “mutant Blackhawks” and maybe an island So I take Len Wein out to lunch, tell him I want a guy named “Wolverine”—he’s Canadian, he’s short and mean. Because a wolverine is a small, fierce creature like the Tasmanian devil. Nelson Bridwell had the Tasmanian Devil in his group over at DC by this time; besides, The Tasmanian Devil couldn’t be Canadian. I don’t remember this, but Len

location, or something like that.

THOMAS: My idea, originally—but I didn’t insist on it being used, and I left the editor-in-chiefship soon afterward and it took a long time to get that first issue out, and that’s why my name isn’t on it—[laughs] my idea was to use a couple of the original guys like Cyclops and Marvel

The Men Called “X” part seven

“Alienation Was What The X-Men Were All About!”

LEN WEIN, Co-creator of the 1970s X-Men, Talks about Roads Taken and Not Taken

Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Len Wein is one of those writer/editors celebrated by comic book fans for many achievements, particularly the co-creation of DC’s Swamp Thing—but also for his initial involvement in the X-Men relaunch in 1974-75. The X-Men have become ingrained in pop culture, due to strong planning on the part of their re-creators. While Len’s tenure was short and sweet—one whole issue!—he helped build the foundation for a commercial success that no one could have imagined at that time. Built on top of the foundation laid by Len are the successful careers of many creative talents, and Alter Ego is thrilled to give him that kudo now. Take a bow, Len! —Jim.]

days. The biggest problem we had was resolving the story; we couldn’t come up with an ending. We were hammering it out in the office, and I think it was Chris Claremont who suggested the idea of sort of squirting the island out into space. JA: Oh, yeah? How involved was Chris in the early plotting? WEIN: That was as involved as he was. JA: But he sat in on the plot sessions, didn’t he? WEIN: As did everyone else in the office, since we were plotting there. Chris was my assistant, and since I was editor-in-chief, his desk was about fifteen feet from my desk. He sort of basically heard what we were discussing, but he wasn’t really sitting in on the meetings. JA: When you and Dave talked out the plot, did you go and type it up for him? WEIN: I’m not sure, but I believe so. Back in those days, I worked in several ways. I typed plots for various people, and I wrote some down in longhand and dictated them to the artists. I don’t remember which way Dave and I worked, or if we just sat down together and he took notes.

JIM AMASH: How did you get involved with The X-Men? LEN WEIN: Sort of diagonally. It was more by accident than anything else. There were rumors of reviving the X-Men series at Marvel for a number of years. Roy Thomas had the idea of reviving them as a group of international heroes, like the Blackhawks. At one point, Mike Friedrich was supposed to be the writer, but he’d left Marvel by the time the series was actually greenlighted, and I got the job, though I don’t exactly remember the reasons why. I was glad to take it. JA: You became editor-in-chief at Marvel around the same time, didn’t you? WEIN: Yes. JA: Considering The X-Men’s past history, there wasn’t a whole lot expected from the relaunch, was there? After all, The X-Men weren’t the Fantastic Four. WEIN: Exactly. At that point in time, I was also writing several other major titles at Marvel, so this wasn’t like doing the Fantastic Four. Who knew what The X-Men would grow into? It was just another book. It was no different to me than “Brother Voodoo” or a couple of other new series that I was involved in. The special thing to me was that I’d be working with Dave Cockrum. JA: I can understand that. Tell me how you and Dave plotted stories together. WEIN: We went into a room, sat down, and worked it all out. We worked out most of Giant-size X-Men #1 in the office, over several

JA: Whose idea was it to keep Cyclops as the team leader? WEIN: Oh, I think both of us agreed on that at the beginning. We wanted to keep some connection to the old XMen, and Cyclops had been the leader of The X-Men. But we basically had the understanding that most of the group would be new characters and not the old team. JA: Even though Jean was dating Cyclops, you decided to get rid of her. Why? WEIN: For variety’s sake and to open new possibilities. But I had planned to bring her back eventually. JA: Dave told me that you got rid of her because she was a wimpy character and you guys hadn’t decided what to do with her. WEIN: That was part of it. We wanted to find a way to make her interesting. It also opened romantic possibilities for Scott, since she wouldn’t be around. It was worth our time not to have her there. JA: You had created Wolverine before this series got started. Tell me about that.

The Men Called “X” part eight

“We Kicked the Whole Thing Around a Lot!”

DAVE COCKRUM Talks about His Co-creation of the New X-Men in 1974-75 Interview Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash [INTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: Dave Cockrum was the visual architect of the new XMen series that Marvel Comics launched in 1975. His superior ability to design costumes, coupled with his effective draftsmanship, lent the freshness and convincing reality necessary to the new series’ success. While others such as Chris Claremont and John Byrne were extremely important creators on this series, much of the early impact of The X-Men relied on Dave’s contributions. The current worldwide popularity of The X-Men has its roots in the foundation he helped establish. With that in mind, this interview examines those times from Dave’s point of view as an artist. —Jim.] JIM AMASH: You left DC Comics, where you were doing the “Legion Of Super-heroes” feature in Superboy, for Marvel Comics. What did you start on at Marvel? DAVE COCKRUM: The first thing I did at Marvel was a “Gulliver of Mars” story for a black-&-white magazine. I remember John Romita making me fix a lot of stuff on that story. I wasn’t acclimated with the Marvel style yet... you know, all their characters had these big bodies and little heads, and I was drawing figures with natural proportions. JA: This was in 1973. The new X-Men series started in 1975. What were you doing for those two years? COCKRUM: I penciled two issues of Giant-size Avengers and inked six issues of the regular Avengers comic, in groups of three. I think there were five pencilers on those six issues. One issue had an old George Tuska “Captain America” segment that they just spliced in. Don Heck, Rich Buckler, Bob Brown, and—I believe there was another artist, whose name I can’t remember, who penciled those issues. I might as well have been classified as a penciler, because they told me to “make them all look alike.” In order to make George Tuska’s work look like the others, I had to do a lot of re-penciling. Everything was there; it was just that it was straightforward Tuska art, and they wanted a uniform look to that issue. Basically, I used Dick Giordano’s style over Neal Adams to make the artists all look alike. JA: I don’t suppose you made any Xeroxes of the pencils? COCKRUM: I used to Xerox a lot of the pencils to stories I did, but somewhere along the line I lost most of them. I do have a few things, including an unpublished fill-in story I did for X-Men. In this story, Xavier goes to visit FBI agent Fred Duncan and they reminisce about the career of The X-Men. My tour of duty on The X-Men was covered in one panel, which annoyed the hell out of me. Roger Stern wrote this script and really whizzed past what I’d done on the series. I don’t know

“Dave ‘X-Man’ Cockrum,” they called him in the 1975 Mighty Marvel Comic Convention program book (they couldn’t come up with an adjective starting with a “d”?!)—plus what Dave calls “a revamped version of X-Men head circle.” [Storm, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Cyclops, Marvel Girl/Phoenix, Colossus, and Banshee TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

why the story wasn’t used. Maybe because it’s a very quiet story; it’s just two guys reminiscing. There are a lot of flashback panels, and you do see action shots, but it’s basically not the sort of story they usually do in XMen. Maybe it’ll turn up one day in an annual or something. I don’t know when I drew it... maybe ten or fifteen years ago. JA: Tell me how your involvement with The X-Men began. COCKRUM: Roy Thomas was editor-in-chief, and I’d been badgering him to draw a series. Roy liked my stuff, and at one point I’d shown him some of the character designs for villains that I had done for “The Legion of Super-heroes,” which included a version of a character I named Wolverine. Apparently, this was what gave Roy the idea to ask Len Wein to create a character called Wolverine. When the “powers-

“We Kicked the Whole Thing Around a Lot!”

JA: Did the fact that you were a good costume designer, as well as a good artist, help you get this series? COCKRUM: It may have. Roy knew about my “Legion” work, though Wildfire was the only character of mine that made it into that series. I had created Nightcrawler (in a yellow-and-black costume instead of the familiar red-and-black) for the Legion, but editor Murray Boltinoff was very conservative and didn’t want to do anything to offend his readers. I guess Chameleon Boy must have been introduced into the Legion before Murray handled the feature, or he might not have gotten in, either. He thought Nightcrawler was too strange-looking. I don’t know why he didn’t go for Typhoon, because he at least was fairly normal-looking. At least Wildfire made it into the series. [EDITOR’S NOTE: At this point Jim asks Dave about how The Black Cat “metamorphosed” into Storm. Since Dave talks about that, in similar words, in the 2000 convention panel a few pages back, we’ll skip ahead to his other comments on the creation of Storm. —Roy.]

The splash of the never-published fill-in X-Men issue drawn circa 1990, inked by Joe Rubinstein and scripted by Roger Stern; repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, which was returned to Dave while this issue of A/E was in the works. Thanks to Marvel returns editor Wilson Ramos, Jr., for sending A/E copies, and to Tom Brevoort. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

that-be” decided to revive The X-Men, Roy thought of me and gave me a chance. With the character design of Wolverine, I also had a drawing of his twin sister Belladonna. They both wore black, and he had sort of “tufty” hair and big sideburns and fangs. She wore a black costume that showed a lot of skin, and she carried a whip. There were a couple of other characters, like Manta and Sidewinder. Roy liked my ideas. JA: When you started on the series, Mike Friedrich was involved. COCKRUM: Right. He was going to be the writer. Roy, Mike, and I went to lunch and had a general planning meeting about how to approach the series. I think it was at that point that I started drawing up new characters, one of which was The Black Cat... not the one I designed later for Spider-Man. But then the project was put on hold, and when we got back to it, Mike was no longer involved and Len Wein was asked to write the series. Also, by this time, other cat characters, like Tigra, had popped up, so I decided to do something else with The Black Cat.

This 1972 drawing by Dave Cockrum shows some of the “character designs for villains I had done for ‘The Legion of Super-heroes.’" Guess which one of ’em Dave named ‘Wolverine’! Contrary to what Dave remembers in this interview, Roy T. doesn’t recall having any memory of this character or even his name when he asked Len Wein to develop a Wolverine in The Incredible Hulk #180-181, but it might have been there in his subconscious. [©2003 Dave Cockrum.]

The WOMen Called “X” part eight-a ^

“Paty”––It Rhymes With “Katy”! Sidebar by Roy Thomas I remember Paty—Dave Cockrum’s wondrous wife—telling me back in the 1970s how she adapted her original name “Patty” into its present form after a friend left out a “t” once when writing it. Guess she just liked the way it looked—and, the ramshackle rules of English being what they are, the new version of the name wound up being pronounced with a long “a,” thus giving her a fairly unique cognomen. It fits her.

As Paty Greer (her name from her first marriage), she used to write letters to Marvel—maybe she even sent in some sketches with them, for she’s a talented artist. At any rate, sometime during my two-year tenure as Marvel’s editor-in-chief, and for some time thereafter, she wound up working on staff, and doing some artwork, as well. For instance, in 1973 Bill Everett inked her pencils for the third issue of The Claws of the Cat.

Paty, as seen in the Mighty Marvel Comic Convention program book—and a drawing she did especially for FOOM #10 in ’75. Key: The Angel = staff artist Duffy Vohland; The Beast = staffer Scott Edelman; Iceman = editor Marv Wolfman; Cyclops = editor-in-chief (and X-Men writer) Len Wein; Marvel Girl = Paty; Prof. X = Stan Lee. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

And you could’ve knocked me over with one of The Angel’s feathers when, one bright day in 1974, she surprised me in my office at Marvel with a gift she’d made for me— what was described in the Dec. 5, 1974, issue of the Middletown [NY] Times Herald Record as “a complex chess set.” As Hunter Thompson would say: Indeed.

It was a chess set, and then some—with each piece, pawns and all, hand-carved in the shape of a different Marvel character. Heroes on one side, villains on the other. Paty has always had a thing for The Vision (the Silver Age version John Buscema and I introduced in The Avengers #57 in 1968), and back then she followed his longtime and eventually altar-bound romance with The Scarlet Witch—shall we say, closely! So she made Vizh and Wanda the 8"-high king and queen of the “good guys” side. They were counterbalanced by Mephisto and The Enchantress for the “bad guys.”

And nothing has. Nearly three decades later, that exquisite, beautiful chess set which has always meant so much to me sits behind glass in a display case in my home office in South Carolina, maybe 15 feet away from me as I type these words—and once, when I owned a rug with a chessboard design, I even set all 32 pieces up on it, in their proper squares, and played a game with it. Facing each other were the afore[Paty continued on next page.]

“I worked on and off for more than two years” on that chess set, she recalled for the newspaper, while (as described by the reporter) she picked up “a softly hued statuette resembling the 32 pieces she made for the ceramic set, all hand carved.” “It was a surprise,” she continued, referring to the moment when she presented the quite sizable, multi-part gift to me. “And he was surprised!” Paty doesn’t have to rely on memory for that remark; she recorded the moment on audiotape, and still has it—she even sent me a copy! As for yours truly, I eventually transported the set back to my apartment as gingerly as I could, since I didn’t want anything to happen to any of the pieces.

“A chess set, and then some.” Photo by Dann!Thomas.

The Men Called “X” part nine

“I Was in the Right Place at the Right Time!”

CHRIS CLAREMONT on the Early Days of the New X-Men Interview Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash [INTRODUCTION: Chris Claremont was at the epicenter of a cultural phenomenon, though he didn’t know it yet. He took the 1974 standard of the super-heroic soap opera style of writing and raised the bar for writing in the comics industry. Great successes seldom start out fully formed, and as you’ll see, this one didn’t, either. Claremont and Cockrum took The X-Men, checkered past and all, and retooled the series into something so special that the shockwaves unleashed at Krakoa in Giant-size X-Men #1 still reverberate in our imaginations. And made Chris Claremont one of the most influential writers in comic book history. —Jim.]

The general consensus was that this format would present the series in a back-door pilot format in order to get a sense of what commercial potential The X-Men had. And also construct a publishing plan that was conducive to both Len and Dave’s schedules. As editor-in-chief, Len didn’t have that much time to devote to writing comics, and Dave was not the fastest penciler in the universe. It was felt that this format would allow Dave to present the work in a form that allowed him to maximize the greatest visual potential. It also would allow Dave to stay on the series for a longer amount of time. What happened was that at the time when Len decided to leave the editor-in-chief position, there was also a rethinking of editorial publishing policies. The decision was made to go from a quarterly format to a bimonthly format. At that point, the second

“Cheerful Chris Claremont,” as seen in the 1975 Mighty Marvel Comic Convention program book. As Chris pointed out at the 1995 Stan Lee Roast, transcribed back in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #1, they were running out of alliterative inspiration by the time they made that one up!

JIM AMASH: I’m a little unclear as to what your position was at Marvel when the new X-Men series started.

CHRIS CLAREMONT: At that particular time, I was an associate editor. Len Wein was editor-in-chief, and as associate editor, I was number two. For all intents and purposes, I was then what I was the last time I was at Marvel, which was the #2 editorial guy. In those days, it wasn’t as large and complicated a structure as it is today. JA: So that’s why you were sitting in on the original meetings between Len and Dave Cockrum. CLAREMONT: Well, my office was right outside his office... my desk was. We really didn’t have offices, per se. I would kibbitz every chance I got. JA: How involved were you in the early meetings? Were you throwing ideas in, too? CLAREMONT: It was a general, unstructured thing. I would hang out and listen to Len and Dave work. We all just sort of spitballed ideas at each other. It was a lot of fun. JA: So Len leaves the series and you script issues #94 and 95, before completely taking over the writing chores. CLAREMONT: The original publishing plan was to bring out The XMen as a giant-sized quarterly comic book. It was partly to compete against DC’s 25¢ comics... [laughs] twenty-five cent giants! What a change from today.

Nightcrawler and Storm, in a beautiful pencil drawing gifted to Chris by artist Dave Cockrum in 1975. It was used in the X-Men coffee table book, and was done on the back of an X-Men page. [Art ©2003 Dave Cockrum; Nightcrawler & Storm TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“In The Right Place at the Right Time!” giant-size issue was already penciled, except for the last dozen pages or so. It required a chunk of revamping.

49 create a big event when the book is only six issues old? What can we do? Again, it’s a matter of us finding creative energy and synergy as a team. The way Dave visualized Jean in #94, when she left the group, was different than the way he drew her in #97, when she came back. My feeling was that if she’d have looked in 94 the way she had in 97, I’d have never let her out of the book. I was looking for chemistry between the characters. We wanted to shake up the status quo. If we left Jean in the book, it’d become too much like the original X-Men. The original idea was to bring her back, but not as a member of the team—but then what do we do with her? I needed to figure out who Storm was... who Cyclops was... and what were their key elements? How to approach Nightcrawler? How to approach Colossus? And how very much to approach Wolverine?

JA: Who did the revamping? CLAREMONT: The “überplot” was Len’s. We had to build to a point where Thunderbird died at story’s end. The pacing of the events was substantially established, but out of necessity, we had to break the story into two parts. We had to find a place to split the book so that issue #94 had an exciting conclusion,which we did by having The X-Men blown out of the sky. Then we redesigned the second half of the story so it was a coherent stand-alone issue that led to a final conclusion. I did the restructuring, but it was basically Len’s story. Issue #95 was my pacing... mine and Dave’s. #96 was my first official plot, and even then it was amusing, because it was sort of a mess. I was trying to figure out what the hell to do. Marv Wolfman had taken over as editorin-chief, and I was holding down a staff job while trying to figure out what Dave and I wanted to do with The X-Men—who the characters were and what we wanted to do with them—without losing any time.

JA: This was supposed to be a teenage group, but by this time, Scott’s not really a teenager, is he?

CLAREMONT: I think the whole nature of the team was such that Wolverine was a military officer in the Canadian Armed Forces; The final page of The X-Men #94 (Aug. 1975), repro’d from a photocopy of JA: Was the fact that you were therefore, he was not a teenager. the original art, thanks to Mike W. Barr and Tom Horvitz. Originally a longer previously involved with The XStorm... you always had the sense story was planned for what would have been Giant-size X-Men #2, but it Men, as Len’s associate editor, that even if she was a teenager, the had to be cut in two when the comic became a 32-pager. Chris Claremont, make it a given that you’d take first line they used was that “Her script (from a Len Wein plot); Dave Cockrum, penciler; Bob McLeod, inker. over the series? eyes were blue as crystal and older [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.] than time.” There was the sense CLAREMONT: I was in the right that there was more to her than meets the eye. Colossus was very much place at the right time. They needed a body and I needed the work. I a teenager, or at least, in his late teens, in that ambiguous, ephemeral was enthusiastic about the work. I loved working with Dave. I loved the space between 12 and 20. Nightcrawler could have gone either way. I characters. It was one of those circumstances where it was thought, think we all felt that in order to draw a demarcation between the old “Why not give the kid a shot?” It was a low-profile book and no one team and the new one, the idea was to play them a little older and more had any great hopes for it. Dave’s stuff had done exceptionally well for mature. This added a dynamic whereby they are not exclusively kids DC’s “Legion of Super-heroes,” but The X-Men had always had a very trying to learn their powers. We wanted to take it up to the next level; storied history at Marvel. The “Legion” had a measure of historical more of a university level than a middle school or high school setting. chops to it. Curt Swan, Edmond Hamilton, and other luminaries had worked on the feature. The X-Men had Roy Thomas and Neal Adams on the book for a while, but the new series wasn’t viewed as having the potential of becoming a heavy-hitter at that point. At this stage, we were deciding how to define the new characters. We were jumping off into the unknown. So they decided to “give the kid a shot.”

JA: I asked Dave this question and I’d like to hear your thoughts on this subject. What age did you have in mind for Professor X when you started the new series?

JA: Since you took over in the middle of the writing process, you didn’t have time to hit the ground with characters that were fully formed.

JA: He said somewhere in his thirties.

CLAREMONT: I think Dave and I both felt that the issues where things started to creatively jell were issues #98, 99, and 100. 96 and 97 were issues where we were working out the kinks. The other problem was that we had a one-hundredth issue staring us in the face, and traditionally, centennial issues were associated with big events. How do you

JA: But when you started adding details to his background, he has to be older.

CLAREMONT: Forties. What did Dave say?

CLAREMONT: Yeah, about that.

CLAREMONT: The problem with back stories is that they always come back to bite you on the ass. My big mistake, structurally speaking, was making Storm my age. The idea that she was born in mid-century,