Alter Ego #26 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

MAKE WAY FOR JOLTIN’

JOE SINNOTT

THE MAN WHO INKED THE MARVEL AGE!

5.95

In the USA

No. 26 July 2003

Vol. 3, No. 26 / July 2003 Editor

™

Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

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 Joe Sinnott Wayne Boring

Spotlight On JOE SINNOTT

Cover Colorists Joe Sinnott Tom Ziuko

And Special Thanks to: Bob Bailey Ken Bald Bob Beerbohm Bill Black Frank Bonilla Ray Bottorff, Jr. Tom Brevoort Roger Caldwell Mike Catron Nat Champlin John Costanza Craig Delich Al Dellinges Scott Deschaine Joe Desris Jay Disbrow Mark Evanier Carl Gafford Mark Glidden Walt Grogan George Hagenauer Richard Halegua Paul Handler Tom Horvitz Jon B. Knutson Tim Lapsley Michael Lark Mike Leach Stan Lee Paul Levitz Don Maris

Richard Martines Michael Mikulovsky Brian K. Morris Edwin & Terry Murray Will Murray Michelle Nolan Bruce Pritchard Trina Robbins Dorothy Schaffenberger Julius Schwartz Dave Siegel Jeff Singh Joe Sinnott Marc Svensson Marc Swayze Dann Thomas Alex Toth Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Michael J. Vassallo Mark Voger Mark Waid Hames Ware Alan Weiss Andy Yanchus Ken Yodowitz Eddy Zeno Mike Zeno Bernie Zlotnik

Contents Writer/Editorial: Happiness Is Just A Guy Called Joe . . . . . . . . 2 “You Do the Best You Can...” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Joe Sinnott—Marvel’s primo Silver Age inker—interviewed by Jim Amash. Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt: Spot That Style!!. . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 A querulous quiz conducted by Michael T. Gilbert. The Iger Counter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Additions and corrections to Jay Disbrow’s The Iger Comics Kingdom. re: [comments, correspondence, & even more corrections] . . . . . . 43 Henry Enoch Sharp. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Part I of a new series on Golden Age Unknowns by Hames Ware & Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. DC & The Donenfelds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: Joe Sinnott tells us that our color-splashed cover has never seen print in this form before. If we heard him a-right over the phone, he drew much of the basic artwork for a commercial ad—toothpaste or something—some years back. Later, he added the drawing of himself, blotting out most of a Dr. Strange figure—and filled in the space where the product had been advertised with that huge Ben Grimm head. Either way, it’s a winner, Joe! [Basic art ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.; self-caricature ©2003 Joe Sinnott.] Above: A pencil study of Thor that our feature interviewee drew in 2000. [Art ©2003 Joe Sinnott; Thor TM & ©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, $11.00 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.

Joe Sinnott

“You Do The Best You Can...” Joltin’ JOE SINNOTT—Marvel’s Primo Silver Age Inker—Interviewed by JIM AMASH Interview Conducted and Transcribed by Jim Amash [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Without a doubt, Joe Sinnott was a solid professional from the moment he started at Timely Comics, producing quality work in various genres. Joe’s art at this time was good enough to make us remember him, but his real fame comes from his work from the 1960s onward. When he took over the ink chores on Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four pencils, the quality level of that art reached the highest levels possible. Considering Kirby’s amazing talent, that’s no small achievement. As much as anyone, Joe Sinnott defined the Marvel art style with razor-sharp, efficient inking, setting the style that other inkers still follow. No matter who penciled Fantastic Four (or the many other comics Joe inked for Marvel), it was through the prism of Joe’s slick brush work that we came to know and love those characters. And now you get the chance to do the same for Joe Sinnott, the man, as if you didn’t already. —Jim.]

“My Earliest Memories Are of Drawing” JIM AMASH: Here’s the toughest question of the interview, Joe. Where and when were you born? JOE SINNOTT: Right here in Saugerties, New York, Oct. 16, 1926. Can you imagine that? JA: Joe, you’re older than the Empire State Building. SINNOTT: I am. And I’m older than many of New York’s bridges. In fact, when I was born, I don’t think there were any bridges between New York and Albany. Everything was done by ferries. Most of the bridges came into being around 1930 or ’31. JA: They built them just for you, Joe. They knew you’d be stopping by someday. Now, what got you interested in cartooning? SINNOTT: My earliest memories are of drawing. My mother had a boarding house and school teachers boarded there. For my third birthday, one of them gave me a box of crayons with a drawing of a big Indian on it. I used to copy that Indian and used those crayons down to the nub.

Joe in 1995, with a pencil drawing of the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing—plus the inked version of the same art. We’re just sorry we couldn’t repro Joe’s coloring! All photos printed with this interview are courtesy of Joe Sinnott. [Art ©2003 Joe Sinnott; The Thing TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

We had another boarder there, Bill Thiesen, who was a cook in a restaurant. He was from Germany and an interesting character. He was in the German submarine service in World War I and used to come home at night, wearing white pants and a white shirt. I used to sit next to him as he drew all over his pants. He’d draw Indians, cowboys, and soldiers. He was my first big influence and encouraged me to draw. He moved away a few years later, and it was like losing a close relative. I never saw him again and I’ve often wished down through the years that he could have seen what I was able to do. I think he’d have been proud of me. I was a fan of Terry and the Pirates, Flash Gordon, and Secret Agent X-9. Tim Tyler’s Luck was a favorite of mine at the time. I loved the adventure strips, and they got me interested in comics. I used to copy the Sunday strips, and the dailies, too. It was an interesting period for a kid to be growing up. As you know, the early comic books were reprints from the newspapers and I read those, too. When new characters like Superman started appearing, all the kids I knew bought and traded them. Big Little Books were popular, too, of course.

“You Do The Best You Can...”

JA: Did seeing the super-heroes fuel your imagination like the newspaper adventure strips? SINNOTT: To a big extent, yes. When the comic books came out, they were secondary to the newspapers. But when “Superman” and “Batman” came out, they developed a big following. “Batman” was my big favorite; maybe because it was better drawn. I was always looking for good art, even at that time. Batman was one of the best-drawn books of that early period. JA: Yeah, Bob Kane and all his ghosts. SINNOTT: I don’t know who all ghosted it, but all the stories were good. I listened to radio shows and knew what time all my favorites were on. I Love a Mystery, Jack Armstrong, Little Orphan Annie... all the adventure shows came on around five o’clock. Later on, around seven, The Lone Ranger, Mr. District Attorney, and stuff like that came on. I was happy when they made Terry and the Pirates into a radio show, but The Lone Ranger was probably the most popular show for kids around eight to fifteen years old and my favorite show. And The Shadow was on Sundays. You couldn’t listen to them all because sometimes the shows were on at the same time. I was a big Shadow fan, so I missed whatever else was on. They had great voices on radio. When Earl Graser, who was playing the Lone Ranger, died, Brace Beemer took over and did a great job. Radio shows were great for making you see the action in your head. It was great for the imagination.

“Tom Gill Had Many Accounts” JA: It still is. I listen to those old shows when I work. When did you decide to make art your profession? SINNOTT: That came much later. I drew all the time, even when I was in school. I was editor of my high school yearbook and we had a school newspaper called the Ulsterette, which I was the editor for. I took art in school, but we didn’t have much. We had a design class and representation class where we drew still lifes and some perspective work. No

figure drawing at all, which was what I wanted to do. When I came out of the Navy, I knew I wanted to go to art school. I was procrastinating, playing a lot of baseball. I was only 19 when I got out of the service in 1946. I worked for about 2H to 3 years in a cement plant. I was working in their rock quarry, and it was extremely cold there. In the winter of 1948, I decided to get out of the quarry and go to art school. I was looking through the New York Times for art schools, and I came across an illustrators school that sounded ideal. I got my portfolio together and went to the School of Visual Arts and showed it to Burne Hogarth. He thought it was terrific, but I thought he was pulling my leg. I figured he needed students, so that’s why he was telling me how good my portfolio was. I thought I wanted to be an illustrator, but a lot of magazines were folding then. Hogarth told me that a lot of comic book companies were looking for artists, and that my style would fit there. He encouraged me to take the cartooning course. One of my instructors was Tom Gill, who had many accounts, like Timely, which later became Marvel. He was working for Fawcett and was doing the Lone Ranger newspaper strip, too, and teaching eight hours a day. He’d go home at night and work on his accounts. He liked my work and asked me to be one of his assistants. There was an another fellow at the school, Norman Steinberg, who drew horses extremely well. We started doing a lot of the movie western stories for Tom, who was doing this work for Dell Publications. Tom drew and inked the heads, so it’d look like his work. Tom was paying us very well, and I was on the G.I. Bill, so I’d been living on a shoestring before I started with him. Working for Tom was great because I was gaining experience. I was still attending school and worked for Tom at nights and weekends. Norman and I went over to Tom’s house on the weekends and worked. He was mainly drawing westerns, like Red Warrior and Apache Kid for Stan Lee at Timely. He was also doing Kent Blake and a couple of other FBI agents. It’s amazing when I look back on the work that Tom Gill was doing; he was

Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, who generously sent us these photocopies, writes that, though signed by Tom Gill, the art at left was actually all ghosted by Joe Sinnott, for Kent Blake of the Secret Service #1 (May 1951). The splash at right from Justice Comics #24 (Nov. ’51) is signed by Joe. The artist says his first work for Timely/Atlas/Marvel was in 1950, but in those days stories often sat on the shelf for some time before being published. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Joe Sinnott

A montage of genres by Sinnott—all done for the company most readers then called “Atlas”—so we will, too. (Top row:) Love Tales #50 (Jan. ’52)... Astonishing #10 (May ’52)... Astonishing #11 (Spring ’52)... (Bottom row:) Amazing Detective Cases #13 (July ’52)... Battlefront #9 (Jan. ’53)... Bible Tales for Young Folks #1 (Aug. ’53). Doc V., who sent these splashes, points out that the romance story shows a “strong George Klein influence”... ironic, since in the late 1960s, Klein, who by then had long inked “Superman,” et al., for DC, was assigned to embellish John Buscema’s Avengers primarily because his inking resembled Joe’s! [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

turning out so much work that it was unbelievable. I have to give all the credit to Tom for giving me my start in comics. JA: Did he have much time to give you pointers in storytelling, since he had all that work to do? SINNOTT: I really don’t recall him doing that. I think you pick things up as you go along. We’d watch him as he drew the stories. Storytelling just seemed to come naturally to me. Of course, in those days, we worked from full scripts, so it was easy. I mean, it just goes hand in hand with being an artist. You have visualize the story like a movie director and pick out the most interesting way to tell a story. Storytelling never seemed to be a problem with the artists I knew. Some may have told the story better than others, but I never recall hearing anyone saying that storytelling was hard. JA: What was Burne Hogarth like as a teacher? SINNOTT: He was the best. I can’t imagine anyone being any more dynamic as he was. He was so forceful. Even when he wasn’t drawing, just his speeches alone were so intelligent. He knew what he was talking about. Can you imagine sitting in his class watching him draw? It was unbelievable to watch. Other students would sneak away from their classes just to watch him. He was a great character. Did you ever meet him? JA: Yes, at a San Diego Convention. He was talking comics with Gil Kane, and you can imagine how that went. Nobody near them could get a word in edgewise. We just stood and listened, and loved it!

SINNOTT: And of course, neither man was ever wrong about anything! [laughter] But I think Hogarth would have won an argument with anyone. I liked his early work on Tarzan, but he got too decorative. He put in every detail in the jungle and on the vines and leaves; it got too busy.

“I’ve Worked for Stan for 53 Years” JA: Did you go to work at Timely or St. John Publications after you worked with Tom Gill? SINNOTT: The first place that ever paid me directly was St. John’s. Somebody in class told me that there was a woman editor (I don’t remember her name, but she looked like a model) over there who was looking for someone to do a Millie the Model type of feature. I didn’t have any of that type of work in my portfolio; I had mostly adventure stuff. But I took it over to her and she must have liked it because she gave me a five-page script for Mopsy. Mopsy was actually quite a famous feature at that time, but I did a filler called “Trudy.” It couldn’t have been any simpler. But this was when I started working for Tom Gill, so I only did that one story. Tom was paying me more than St. John, and he was doing the type of stories I wanted to do. Most of what I did for Tom was for Stan Lee, and I did that for about nine months. We had two weeks off from school, and that’s when I got married. Even though I was making good money from Tom, I wanted to do my

“You Do The Best You Can...”

own stuff. I said to my wife, “I’m going to go to see Stan Lee and ask him for work.” I was already doing a lot of Tom’s work anyway.

what he wanted, even if if wasn’t a natural position to draw the character in. That’s why Stan was successful.

Stan wasn’t surprised to meet me, because he knew Tom had people helping him. He gave me a three-page western filler called “The Man Who Wouldn’t Die.” That’s how I started out with Stan. Then he started giving me other crime and western stories. Every week, I got a different story, as you would expect in those days. This was 1950.

JA: Do you remember if Stan had assistant editors or art directors?

JA: What was Stan Lee like when you first met him? SINNOTT: He was young in those days. Stan’s only about three years older than I am. He was effervescent; you couldn’t get a word in edgewise with Stan. He did all the talking and I was impressed with his personality, just like I was with Hogarth. If you were at a party with Hogarth, his would be the personality that stood out. Everybody would want to converse with him because he was so interesting. Stan’s the same way. Stan’s a good guy to listen to. [laughs]

SINNOTT: Oh, sure. I remember Bob Brown used to be one of his assistants. Timely was in the Empire State Building in those early days, and I used to go up there and sit in a little reading room, with four or five other artists. It got so that every week I went up there, the same guys would be in this room. Bob Powell, Gene Colan, people like that. I got to talk to them. Syd Shores was working there, too. Bob Brown would come out and say, for instance, “Gene, Stan will see you now,” and Colan would go into his office. They’d be in there maybe ten or fifteen minutes, and he’d leave with another script to draw. I’d go in, Stan would be behind his desk and make a few comments, but he seldom wanted anything changed.

Once in a while, Stan would say, “This would be more effective if you exaggerated this JA: In these early days, when In the 1950s, Joe used to chat with staffers Gene Colan, Bob Brown, and Syd more.” It’d always be handing in a job to Stan, did you Shores when he came in to the Atlas offices. Years later, he inked a run of constructive criticism. There’d be have to submit the pencils first? Colan Captain Americas, as per this splash from #124 (April 1970), repro’d from a stack of scripts on the left side a photostat of the original art provided by Joe. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.] SINNOTT: Never. And I was still of his desk, typed on legal yellow going to school when I started with paper. He’d take one off the top and didn’t know what he’d be handing him. He gave me a script and I’d go home and draw the story. You know you. It could be a war story or a western or anything. You took it home this from your own experiences: when you’re young, you’re so enthused and were expected to do a professional job on it. I really didn’t deal with about the work that you stayed up until it was finished. When you get anyone else but Stan. Everybody saw Stan. older, it becomes a job! In those days, the stories were only five or six pages. I’ve worked with Stan for 53 years and can only remember one time when I had to change something. It was a splash page. I followed the script precisely, and Stan didn’t like this story or the splash page. It was an Indian story, and the writer asked me to draw typical scenes around the Indian village. It was a montage of things that happened around an Indian camp: kids playing, an Indian brave carrying a deer around his shoulders, a woman making clothes, things like that. When I brought it in, Stan said, “Joe, this has no guts. All I want you to show is the Indian running towards you with a tomahawk in his hand. That’ll make the reader want to turn the page.” He was right, even though that wasn’t in the script. So I drew the Indian coming at the reader, wearing war paint and carrying a tomahawk. The quietness of the Indian village wouldn’t have made anyone want to turn the page. JA: Did Stan pay you for redrawing that page? SINNOTT: I don’t think so, but it didn’t matter. I was happy to redraw the page. Stan always wanted his artists to exaggerate whatever was written in the script. If Stan said, “Show the super-hero leaning over and pushing a rock,” you knew to take the drama to its ultimate point. That’s

“I’d See People Sitting behind Boards” JA: So you didn’t see people like Mike Sekowsky or Carl Burgos, did you? SINNOTT: I knew they were there, but I didn’t interact with them. I’d see people sitting behind boards and doing artwork or paste-ups, but I never spent any time there. When I left Stan’s office, there’d be a rack with the latest Timely Comics and you could take a book if you had work in it. You couldn’t take any other books. JA: Do you remember anything about Syd Shores, Gene Colan, or Bob Powell? SINNOTT: Bob Powell was a nice guy and a competent artist, but I didn’t get to know him like I did Syd Shores. I got to know Syd quite well. It was really a big disappointment to me when he died, because I’d lost a good friend. We’d spent a lot of time together, and his wife was extremely nice, too. Syd was a nice person and a terrific artist. I loved the way he foreshortened figures. He did Captain America in the 1940s and did a lot of westerns during the time I’ve been talking about. The thing about Syd I always remembered is that he could really pencil and

Mr. Monsterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Comic Crypt

The Iger Counter

The Iger Counter Additions & Corrections to Jay Disbrow’s

THE IGER COMICS KINGDOM by Roy Thomas In Alter Ego #21 we were pleased to feature basically the entire text (plus lost material) of The Iger Comics Kingdom, plus beaucoup art. Golden Age artist Jay Disbrow’s 1985 book told the story of S.M. (Jerry) Iger and his studio/”shop” of comic book personnel, which lasted from circa 1937 through at least the early 1960s. As explained therein, both Jay and Ye Editor knew that, despite latter-day efforts to weed out errors, some mistakes and omissions were still bound to remain in a work of that scope, culled as it had been from the fading memories of Jerry Iger, with relatively little black-&-white documentation to back it up. Still, we felt TICK deserved to be republished as a “work in progress,” with a footnote on both the Iger and the earlier Eisner & Iger shops added from info supplied to us by Jerry G. Bails; and we invited knowledgeable collectors to send us their comments and corrections, for printing in this issue. A number of comic art aficionados took us up on our challenge, and their remarks follow—illustrated, wherever possible.

Author and artist Jay Disbrow drew numerous illos for the 1985 edition of his book, but few made the final cut, so we printed many of them in A/E #21. Here’s one that accidentally got left out, depicting a major Quality hero originated by Will Eisner and Lou Fine. [Art ©2003 Jay Disbrow; Doll Man TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

First, though, there was the question of copyrights. We asked Bill Black of AC Comics, who supplied many of the art scans and who has reprinted much of the material the Iger shop did for Fiction House, Quality, Fawcett, and other companies, to fill us on his company’s relationship to the Fiction House art he reconstructs and prints:

Bill Black

Publisher: AC Comics In 1987, Frank Zeneau (who was working for AC Comics at the time) located T.T. Scott, President and Publisher of Fiction House. Mr. Scott granted reprint rights to the entire Fiction House line—except for Sheena, which was previously sold to Aratow/Columbia—to AC Comics. Thanks for the info, Bill. And keep those great AC reprints coming! They’re one of the great worthwhile projects in today’s comicdom. Roy well remembers meeting producer Paul Aratow, the man whose dream it was to make a Sheena film, on the Warner lot (it was then called the Burbank Studios) when he and partner Gerry Conway were selling screenplays together back in the first half of the 1980s. The Sheena movie was already vaguely in the works, and Paul told them, a bit ruefully, how the star had been cast: “[Columbia studio head] Frank Price just walked into my office one day and announced, ‘Tanya Roberts is Sheena!’” Not surprisingly, Price and Roberts were an “item” at the time. Still, Charlie’s jungle Angel looked great walking down to that African pool, didn’t she, guys? Price, of course, later became known for being dethroned at least partly because of the mammoth egg laid by the film version of Howard the Duck. Incidentally, at present, it seems that the rights to Sheena are in dispute between Aratow and Columbia. Next, the man who co-edited the 1970s Who’s Who of American Comic Books with Jerry G. Bails had this to add about the Iger shop:

Hames Ware Let’s not forget that Jerry Iger was an artist before (and after) he ran his comics shop. Here’s an Iger commercial illustration, autographed in the 1970s for Ken Yodowitz, who shared another one with us in A/E #21. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

I have spent my life researching and documenting all areas of the early comics, but none more so than the shops and their staffs. Those Iger and Eisner & Iger shop listings in Alter Ego #21 were my personal contribution to Vol. 4 of the original

The Iger Counter

Who’s Who of American Comic Books... in fact, Jerry himself in its preface states the same. I painstakingly wrote and talked to Jerry Iger, Bob Webb, Al Feldstein, Ray Osrin, and a multitude of others, from all eras of the shop periods from Eisner-Iger right on through the final shop (Bob Webb was the last artist still working for Iger, and in our phone conversations he gave me wonderful stories about all periods, just as Rafael Astarita did for the earliest shop era). It might be of interest to provide a little background as to who were the first-hand sources for the various shops, back in the 1960s and ’70s: For Harry “A” Chesler’s shop, it was Astarita head and shoulders above all others... for the simple reason that Raf had a photographic memory and, on tape, went down the roster, drawing-table by drawingtable, naming each artist and even providing physical description. His artist’s attention to detail even described Chesler himself, cigar ever-present in mouth, tobacco juice staining the art-boards as he admonished Raf to work faster... he wasn’t looking for masterpieces (yet years later it was Astarita that Chesler named as his best artist; he even called Raf, pleading for an original from his modern period). Astarita happily also worked at the Eisner-Iger shop and stayed on after Eisner left. He was the artist Iger tapped to take over some of Eisner’s strips like “Hawks of the Seas” after their split. Curiously, Raf said, of the two, he actually got along better with Iger and felt a bit sad for him, as he was apparently easy to parody in an oversized coat and with a speech impediment. I noticed none of the latter when I spoke with Iger on the phone. I sent Iger and all the others the lists Jerry Bails and I were always compiling with updates of who was at each shop. Each time they added still more.

conclusion of our conversation, was when I asked Webb what he was currently doing, and he said, “Hames, you remember how good I was at drawing boats and ships? Well [laughter now growing to an almost deafening crescendo]... now I’m building them!!” Laughter exploding and trailing off only as we said our goodbyes! I made the postwar Iger shop one of my primary studies... learning, among other things, from personal correspondence with Jack Kamen, that he left Iger earlier than some would believe, due to the fact that Iger quickly found someone to mimic Kamen, just as he had others mimic Matt Baker. This particular Kamen clone was so adept that Jack at one point wrote to me, “Sure looks like me... but it ain’t!!!” Identifying Iger people is a veritable thornbush of tangles, as Iger purposely tried to develop clones of his best artists, anticipating their leaving for greener pastures, resulting in artists like John Forte looking very Iger-ish while there, and non-Igerish before and after his time there. One definite update I can send now concerns the “Johnny Bell” byline. Someone supplied that it’s a pseudonym of John Belfi... an understandable educated guess... but in this case, I’m afraid, a blind alley. Johnny Bell was artist John Belcastro. He signed his full name a time or two, as I recall, but he was also remembered by several of those I interviewed.

Indisputably, one of the best artists in the Iger shop between 1944-54 was Maurice Whitman. Here, repro’d from a photocopy of the original art courtesy of Paul Handler, is a Whitman “Kaänga” page from Jungle Comics #156 (Feb. 1953). [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

Iger put me in touch with Robert Hayward Webb, who was without a doubt one of the great characters I ever talked to from the Golden Age. He had a loud laugh that punctuated all his remarks, reaching epic proportions at times. For some reason, he insisted his middle name be included in his Who’s Who entry (which of course we’d have done anyway) and made me happy when he said his favorite inker, David Heames, pronounced his last name “Hames,” like my own. He also related wonderful stories about collaborating with Tarpé Mills and confirmed that he was the last artist still on the Iger payroll, right into the early 1960s. But the loudest laughter of all, which came at the

At one point artist “Henry Schroeder” is mentioned. This is Gus Schrotter... prolific at Iger... but also at Binder and Jacquet... and, as recently as last month, while looking through some Chesler titles, there he was, also! Thus making Gustav Schrotter perhaps the only artist to have worked at all four shops! Oh, and the “Phantom Falcons” art on page 25 is by Mort Leav!

Plenty of food for thought there, Hames! And we no sooner finish that verbal repast—than another bodacious banquet is laid before us by Michelle Nolan, longtime comics researcher and writer of a popular column in Comic Book Marketplace magazine:

Michelle Nolan Many thanks for updating and reprinting Jay Disbrow’s entertaining and informative look at The Iger Comics Kingdom. It wouldn’t be fair to expect Mr. Disbrow to remember everything perfectly after so long.

The Great Unknowns

“THE GREAT UNKNOWNS” Part I of a New Series

Henry Enoch Sharp

by Hames Ware & Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.

Does the above name resonate with anybody out there? Probably not. As this new, semi-regular Alter Ego column is intended to highlight some of the lesser-known but still talented (and sometimes great) artists of the comic book world prior to the 1960s, one might have expected to encounter another comics artist named Sharp—Hal Sharp—since he at least was associated for many years with DC, doing “The Flash,” “Mr. Terrific,” and other features, as well as work for other publishers. And certainly Hal Sharp deserves coverage! But this piece is about Henry Enoch Sharp... no relation, that we know of.

With the exception of a few features for DC science-fiction titles circa 1952 and ’55, and though in 1950 he contributed illustrations to a handful of western pulp magazines, H.E. Sharp spent nearly his entire comic book career at one company—Ziff-Davis—working primarily on one title, their most successful and long-running: G.I. Joe. His other sporadic work for Ziff was often light-hearted, as in the sf examples shown here; but it’s obvious from his few serious (and always uncredited) efforts that he was capable of so very much more. So it’s no wonder that this excellent and unsung artist isn’t a household name—even in households with a lot of comic books stored away in closets. He seldom if ever signed his work, and by the mid1950s he had exited comic books for the more lucrative medium of television. You can find his name associated with the series Wild Wild West, for which he designed much of the gadgetry for which that show was so well known.

A humorous yet well-drawn Henry Enoch Sharp science-fiction splash page from Ziff-Davis’ Amazing Adventures #4 (July-Aug. 1951)... and a page from AA #6 (Fall ’52). [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

PLUS:

5.95

In the USA

Golden/Silver Age DC Publisher

IRWIN DONENFELD Tells ALL—-Or At Least A Lot—-To

MARK EVANIER ROBERT BEERBOHM & JULIE SCHWARTZ!

KEN BALD SY BARRY WAYNE BORING JOHN BUSCEMA GENE COLAN JAY DISBROW HARRY DONENFELD RON FRENZ MICHAEL T. GILBERT IRWIN HASEN JERRY IGER CARMINE INFANTINO JACK KIRBY JOE KUBERT MICHAEL LARK STAN LEE BOB LUBBERS JERRY ORDWAY ALEX SAVIUK HENRY ENOCH SHARP SIEGEL & SHUSTER DICK SPRANG CURT SWAN MARC SWAYZE ALEX TOTH MARK WAID ALAN WEISS MAURICE WHITMAN JIM AMASH & MORE!!

Plus Rare Art & Artifacts By:

No. 26 July 2003

Vol. 3, No. 26 / July 2003

™

Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

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 Wayne Boring Joe Sinnott

The Donenfelds of DC!

Cover Colorists

Contents

Tom Ziuko Joe Sinnott

Writer/Editorial: Donenfeld Times Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 “There’s a Lot of Myth Out There!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 DC publisher (1948-69) Irwin Donenfeld interviewed by Mark Evanier, Robert Beerbohm —& Julie Schwartz

“Up in the Sky! Look!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Founding DC publisher Harry Donenfeld in 1940—with Jerry Siegel and comic Fred Allen! K-Metal: The “Lost” Superman Tale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Mark Waid talks about the Most Important Superman Story Never Quite Told. Alex Toth on Shelly Mayer, Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America] #84 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 P.C. Hamerlinck presents Marc Swayze, Ken Bald, and comics on CD-Rom. Joltin’ Joe Sinnott, The Iger Counter, & Other Goodies . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: The story behind this never-before-published Wayne Boring penciled-andinked Superman drawing—and a previously-printed version by Boring and Jerry Ordway— is told on p. 30. ’Nuff said? From the collection of Roy Thomas. [©2003 DC Comics.] Above: “I was the first kid in the country to read ‘Batman,’” says Irwin Donenfeld. “I liked it better than ‘Superman.’” But by the time the two foremost super-heroes of all time officially met in Superman #76 (July-Aug. 1952), Irwin was their publisher. Read his fascinating story on the next two dozen pages! Art by Curt Swan & John Fischetti; script by Edmond Hamilton. [Art ©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, $11.00 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.

Irwin Donenfeld

“There’s A Lot Of Myth Out There!” And DC Publisher IRWIN DONENFELD Tries to Set It Right—as Interviewed by MARK EVANIER & ROBERT BEERBOHM—oh, yeah, & JULIUS SCHWARTZ Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

Edited and Slightly Abridged by Roy Thomas

Irwin Donenfeld in the early 1960s—surrounded by a montage of National/DC highlights during the years of his tenure as publisher from 1948-1969—including the comic he’s proudest of, Shelly Mayer’s Sugar and Spike. Photo courtesy of I.D. Thanks to Bob Bailey for the scan of the cover of Star Spangled Stories #90 (April-May 1960), and to Bob Beerbohm for Sugar and Spike. [Art ©2003 DC Comics and/or the respective copyright holder.]

“There’s A Lot of Myth Out There!” brother. You have to understand, in those days, in the ’30s and the ’40s, jobs were hard to come by. So when anybody had something going, they hired all the relatives. So my father hired all of his nephews and nieces to work for the company. Jack Liebowitz hired his brother, Mack Liebowitz, and I worked for him.

There may have been photos taken of the Irwin Donenfeld panel in 2001, but none surfaced in time for this issue, so here are (left to right): Irwin Donenfeld today... Bob Beerbohm looking casual at the 1997 Fandom Reunion Luncheon in Chicago, 1997... and Mark Evanier at a Kirby memorial panel at a fairly recent San Diego Comic-Con. I.D. photo courtesy of I.D., Beerbohm photo courtesy of Jeff Smith; Evanier photo courtesy of Tim Lapsley.

[NOTE: The following panel/interview was taped Friday, July 20, 2001, at the San Diego Comic-Con, by Mike Catron and Mark Svensson, assisted by Blake Bell. It was copy-edited by Robert Beerbohm and Roy Thomas, and tweaked by Mark Evanier. —Roy.]

“They Hired Me Because My Father Was the Boss” MARK EVANIER: I’m probably Mark Evanier, and I do a lot of these panels, but this is the one I’ve looked forward to most, because, like probably everyone here, I have a fascination with comics history, particularly DC Comics history. And this gentleman was at the center of an awful lot of it in the years when I started reading the comics and fell in love with them. Joining me to cross-examine our subject is a historian and a person who’s working on a book about comics— maybe he’ll tell us about it later. Mr. Bob Beerbohm, ladies and gentlemen. [applause]

We were in charge of production. That is to say, we created the schedule. In those days, the comic books, the insides, were printed in Bridgeport [Connecticut] and we had our own cover press called Donny Press, and my job was to make sure that the covers would arrive at the bindery at the same time as the insides. I suppose, in the beginning, it must have been tough figuring that out. But after a while, it really was easy, and then I had a lot of time on my hands.

My next big job was working on the Fawcett trial. You may have heard that we sued Fawcett on “Captain Marvel,” and first we lost in the lower courts. On appeal, that’s when I came into it. I worked with the attorney, Louis Nizer, quite a bit. Whit Ellsworth, our editor, went absolutely nuts picking out these “Captain Marvels” and finding in his research on the artwork in them, that they copied everything we did. And it was true. And my job was to find them and show them for the judge.

I found one panel that was absolutely beautiful. It showed Superman going into a Nazi dirigible. He leapt through it and out. “Captain Marvel,” a couple months later—the exact same scene. Captain Marvel through the dirigible and out. You could lay one over the other and see the same thing. Mr. Nizer had a gentleman who taught art at a university class, so I said to him, “Take your class”—about fifteen people—“and tell them (the description was from our writer), ‘Superman goes through a dirigible.’ Don’t give any other direction. See what you get.” He came

Our guest was the editorial director of DC Comics in the late ’40s through 1969. He’ll tell us later what that encompassed, but essentially, he ran the place. His father founded the place. We’ll be talking about him, as well. There are a lot of people in this business whose names you know because they wrote or drew the stories. There are other people who are less famous to the readers, because their skills were a little less easy to define, but they had a major effect on what appeared in the books. This gentleman has never been to a convention before, so we’re delighted to have him here... Mr. Irwin Donenfeld. [applause] The first obvious question is how did you get your start? When did you get into a management-type position at DC and how did that come about? DONENFELD: In 1948, I was already married and had a child. I graduated from college and I went up to DC and I showed them that I was a college graduate, I had a keen intellect, and they hired me because my father was the boss. [laughter] I remember one of my first jobs was in this big production room, and there’s piles and piles of artwork. Nobody wanted any of it, so I stood there and I chopped it all up, and that was the first thing I did. Of course, I chopped up about a jillion dollars’ worth of stuff, today, but I had a clean office. You can’t go wrong with that. My first job was with a man named Mack Liebowitz—my father’s partner, Jack Liebowitz’s,

The Superman-Captain Marvel lawsuit is still being argued out of court after sixty years! We didn’t feel like scrounging through hundreds of old comics to find a drawing of the two heroes smashing through a dirigible—and A/E’s editor freely admits to being skeptical of specific art claims, though who’s to say that some Fawcett artist didn’t swipe a “Superman” drawing sometime, out of sheer laziness? Still, as we opined a couple of issues back, it did seem like waving a red flag (or red union suit) in front of a bull for Captain Marvel to smash a car on his very first cover, when Superman had done the same thing a year and a half earlier on that of Action #1! Strangely enough, both covers are now ©2003 DC Comics!

Irwin Donenfeld

Louis Nizer, one of DC’s attorneys during much of the lawsuit against Fawcett, was a famous trial lawyer during the 1940s and ’50s. His 1961 memoir My Life in Court was a bestseller. It was rumored in the ’60s that in a future book he would write about the Superman-Captain Marvel lawsuit, but it never happened. [©2003 Doubleday & Co.]

“You May Not Know the Story...” ME: Not everyone knows the story. Will you brief us? DONENFELD: There was a man by the name of Major [Malcolm Wheeler-]Nicholson, and he was the first man to produce a comic book that had original art in it. Prior to that, all comic books were reprints from the newspapers. So Nicholson had a great idea, worked hard at it, but he was not a good businessman and he went broke. And when he did, Dad had a lot of stuff that he’d already printed for Major Nicholson and he didn’t know what to do with it. Dad knew a man by the name of Paul Sampliner. Paul Sampliner owned the company that distributed Major Nicholson’s magazines, and in those days—I don’t know about now—everybody got an advance. If a publisher brought in his magazine, and the distributor figured it was going to sell 50%, he got his 50% ahead of time so he could pay the printer. So when Major Nicholson went broke, he already had the advance money, and there was nothing there for the distributor. Dad got hold of him and said, “Let’s start a new one.” And Paul Sampliner said, “Yeah, but where are we going to get the money from?” And Dad said, “From your mother.”

back the next day with fifteen versions of Superman going through a dirigible, proving that these [Fawcett] guys just followed, just copied everything that we did. And my feeling is that it broke the case, because they settled shortly thereafter. BOB BEERBOHM: Just because none of these panels matched up to the one that was in “Captain Marvel”?

And it’s a fact. Mrs. Sampliner gave them the money to start Independent News Company, and Dad’s first jobs, in those days, were to try to get the wholesalers of all the various towns to handle the magazines, because if they didn’t handle them, there was no place to go. That was his job, to go all around the country—and I never saw him for weeks at a time—making sure that these people knew who he was and that they would take care of his magazines. His first magazines after that

DONENFELD: Yeah, nothing looked the same [in the student drawings], everything was different, fifteen different versions of how Superman would go into a dirigible. BB: Why don’t you tell us about your father, Harry Donenfeld? DONENFELD: My father was quite a character. He started—well, going way, way back, my father had three brothers. The first one was Charlie. He was the oldest and he started over at Donny Press. And then he had two other brothers, Irving and Mike. And Dad was the salesman for Donny Press. Mike worked for the paper company and sold the paper to us, and so that’s how he got paid. Irving worked for the ink company, and that’s how he got paid. BB: And Irving was never known as Irwin. DONENFELD: No. BB: There’s a lot of myth out there. DONENFELD: I was the only Irwin. My uncle Irving had a problem. He had a terrible stutter. One day, Dad was at the counter. A man came in and said, “I’m looking-guh-guh for M-m-mister D-D-Donenfeld.” Dad went back and said, “Irving, someone wants to talk to you.” So Uncle Irving with the terrible stutter went back, heard what this man said, came back to Dad and said, “What do you want me to do, g-g-get killed?” [laughs] But that’s how the thing was set up. Dad was the salesman. He worked with Hearst Magazines and the Ladies Garment Union, and he sold them and he did all the printing for them. And of course, the story’s that Major Nicholson went broke, stuck Dad with a whole bunch of magazines and a lot of debt.

Harry Donenfeld, looking like a movie studio mogul. Photo by I.D.

Major Malcolmn Wheeler-Nicholson was an ex-military man and pulp magazine writer who didn’t make a success of being a publisher. But the company he founded as National Allied Publishing in 1935 to publish New Fun Comics survives to this day as DC. The cover and several black-&-white comics pages from NFC #1 surround the dot-photo of the Major and Steven Petruccio’s cartoons from that strange 1985 publication, Fifty Who Made DC Great, put out to celebrate National/DC’s fiftieth anniversary. Thanks to Jerry G. Bails for a good scan of the above page. [©2003 DC Comics.]

“There’s A Lot of Myth Out There!”

Irwin Donenfeld

I would go up to the office and work on a table, and they’d show me how to package, and tie the packages. And then I would hide around the corner and we would look at the magazines. Well, one day, I went into the office and Dad was there. He said, “Come here, I want to show you something.” I said, “What is it?” I looked down and it was the original “Superman.” “So what do you think?” I read it— BB: It was the original art?

A young Irwin Donenfeld (left) at a card game with Independent News cofounder Paul Sampliner (right) and two unidentified executives from that company. Photo supplied by I.D.

were apparently a little on the sleazy side: Spicy Adventures, Spicy Detective, and Silk Stockings, and things like that. And they sold very, very well and he made an awful lot of money and now he’s able to hire all of his relatives to do the work. [laughs] In those days, we had a wholesaler in a major town, and he had a territory of maybe twenty miles, fifteen miles, little pockets of towns. There was no way, then, of a wholesaler delivering magazines to these people, because it didn’t pay to run that far. So they would tell the publishing companies—us—or the distributing companies, “Such-andsuch a deal, such-and-such advance, and five of this, four of that, six of another,” whatever. And we had a moving table and we made all the packages and that was with my cousins, whom I worshiped—big, brawny guys. I was twelve years old.

DONENFELD: The original art, yeah. It eventually appeared in Action #1. I read it and I liked it. I thought it was good. Now, just because I said I thought it was good was not the reason he decided to publish it. He had his own way, and he’s going to publish it and he’s going to try this out and, of course, it worked. Now, you must also remember that when he put out that first issue of Action Comics, he put it out on the stand—I don’t remember what the print run was—he already had the second magazine [= issue] in artwork. And he also had the third magazine that they were preparing artwork for. So he had invested a fortune in something that maybe nobody wanted. You may not know the story that Charlie Gaines and [Jerry] Siegel and [Joe] Shuster, the ones who created “Superman,” they went everywhere around, trying to sell and publish it. And nobody wanted it. So one day, Mr. Gaines said, “Why don’t you go to the fellow you’re working for now? Maybe he’s dumb enough to try it.” Siegel and Shuster Harry Donenfeld and Paul Sampliner’s first joint already worked for Dad venture was the Spicy line of pulp magazines on a strip called “Slam begun in 1934, such as Spicy-Adventure Stories Bradley,” so they were (note the hyphen on the cover—you don’t always there. So Dad was usually see it written that way). The cover of dumb enough and he the August 1937 issue was by H.J. Ward, who tried it. And the rest of it later did the famous Superman painting is history. “Superman” glimpsed on page 33. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.] took off like you can’t believe, or you can believe, and started a whole line of magazines, and soon we had “Batman”—and I was the first kid in the country to read “Batman.” I liked it better than “Superman.” [laughs] It was better artwork, it really was. And then I went off to college and I went off to the war and I was sort of a simple man—I spent most of the time in boxing rings, fighting. My kids asked me, “What did you do in the war, Daddy?” I said, “I beat up Americans.” [laughs] Yeah, I was on three different fields and I was Lightweight Champ on all three fields. ME: Let’s look at the first “Superman.” Now, we had Vin Sullivan on this panel a couple of years ago, and he told a little about those days. Let’s go through the details as he told them and see if you remember them the same way. He said that Max Gaines was looking for— DONENFELD: Let me tell you this: his name was Charlie Gaines. He was never called “Max” Gaines.

This 1979 penciled profile of Superman by co-creator Joe Shuster was offered for auction through Sotheby’s in 1991 in a $1000-$1500 price range. [Art ©2003 Estate of Joe Shuster; Superman TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

JULIUS SCHWARTZ: [from audience] I always called him “Mr. Gaines.” [laughs]

K-Metal

K-Metal: The “Lost” Superman Tale The Most Important Superman Story Never Told

by Mark Waid To be fair, I’d been wondering about it since I was ten years old. That made it easier to recognize. On my tenth Christmas, I received a copy of The Steranko History of Comics, Volume One, my first real exposure to the vast tapestry that is comic book history. “Absorbed” doesn’t begin to describe how obsessed I was with the information contained in its gigantic tabloid-size pages; by spring, I had the book practically memorized. Steranko’s reportorial prose style was colorful and vivid, and I had no problem following the sometimes-labyrinthine histories of characters and creators both popular and obscure. The only bit of information that left me puzzled came on page 35, where the author had reproduced “four pages from an unpublished ‘Superman’ story, circa 1939.” At age ten, I couldn’t understand why in the world any “Superman” story would be “unpublished,” but it certainly made an impression. Sixteen years later, I was a guest at the 1988 Superman Expo, held in Cleveland, Ohio, to mark the Man of Steel’s fiftieth anniversary. Among the exhibits was an assemblage of pages, far more than simply the four in History of Comics, from that same unprinted story. In fact, an exhibitor had borrowed and assembled from several sources all its known extant artwork; and, while the collection was far from complete—with the

beginning and ending notably missing—it surprised me to glean from the lettered page-numbers that the story had been over twenty pages in length. That was a remarkable anomaly given that almost without exception, all “Superman” stories of the early 1940s (all of them) were exactly 13 pages long, presumably so that each installment could either fit the lead slot in an issue of Action Comics or serve as one-fourth of a Superman line-up. That this tale had been axed because of its odd length seemed pretty unlikely, but it was the only explanation that made sense.

One of various posters created to advertise the 1948 Columbia movie serial Superman. This one, unlike the others, utilized art from the comics (that sure looks like a Winslow Mortimer Superman to Ye Editor). So what’s that serial got to do with a “lost” comic book story? Read on, MacDuff...! [©2003 DC Comics.]

Until. In ’88, as a staffer at DC, one of my responsibilities was overseeing the company’s library. That wasn’t where I worked; we had a staff librarian, and I was busy serving one editorial function or another on Secret Origins, Action Comics Weekly, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, Doom Patrol, Justice League, Wonder Woman, and the various Who’s Who series, and serving as Roy Thomas’ in-house liaison on Infinity, Inc. and Young All-Stars. One of my “side duties,” however, was to assist and guide the licensors who had arranged to microfiche DC’s rarer comics, a task that often involved identifying some of the weird lost treasures that would still turn up from time to time in the library’s giant filing cabinets. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving of that year, DC had closed the offices early, but (having no family plans) I was in no mad rush to leave. Good thing. Milling around the library afterhours (always far more a

The “Lost” Superman Tale

(Above:) As copiously described in a 1994 Sotheby’s catalog, “the surviving three panel section of the original art from Jerry Siegel’s and Joe Shuster’s historic first Superman daily,” showing among other things the destruction of Krypton. Two panels are apparently missing missing between the first two shown, and were probably cut off to be used in Action Comics #1 in 1938, while the action shown here was redrawn for the comic. (Below:) The first page of Siegel’s synopsis for this 26-page “first Kryptonite” story in 1940 begins with a fragment of what will be called “K-Metal” approaching Earth years later. [Art ©2003 DC Comics; synopsis ©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

joy than a chore), I was stunned to come across a dusty, forgotten ream box filled with faded, blurred carbon copies of typewritten manuscripts. And not just any manuscripts. Jerry Siegel “Superman” scripts from the late 1930s and early 1940s. Hmm. That adventure looked familiar... and that one... and that one... but what if...? For the remainder of the afternoon and into the evening, I laboriously matched each hazy carbon to its corresponding published story, all the while hoping against hope that maybe, just maybe, one script would be left over at the end of the day. And one was. One dated August 7, 1940. One that weighed in at a conspicuously hefty 26 pages. Page 8 looked familiar. Page 15, I recognized. I knew instantly what I’d found. It was a copy of the full manuscript for that lost story I’d seen as a boy. And what a story. It opens with Clark Kent interviewing Professor Barnett Winton, an astronomer whose telescope detects a passing meteor that Winton is “quite certain” is a fragment of an exploded planet he had studied years earlier, a world he called (for no given reason, by the way) “Krypton.” This means nothing to Clark, of course; as far as he’s concerned, he might as well be covering a flower show. Things gets marginally more exciting for poor Kent when, while covering a museum opening, he’s able to surreptitiously use his powers to protect attendees during the robbery of a painting, but it’s

Alex Toth

Alex Toth on Shelly Mayer Part II

[NOTE: In Alter Ego #21, we printed some extended comments by Alex on Sheldon Mayer, editor of the All-American Comics group from its founding in 1939 through his return to the cartoonists’ life in 1948. Here, as an adjunct to those remarks, is a brief note Alex wrote in 1992, soon after Mayer’s death. They were previously printed in Robin Snyder’s The Comics! (then History of the Comics), Vol. 3, #5, May ’92. —Roy.]

When super-heroes became all the rage by the late ’30s, Shelly Mayer adapted by introducing the distaff Red Tornado into his “Scribbly” feature about a “boy cartoonist” based largely on himself. This art from All-American Comics #21 (Dec. 1940) is one of 20 “Scribbly” pages reprinted in Michael Barrier and Martin Williams’ 1981 tome A Smithsonian Book of Comic-book Comics. The authors ranked Mayer’s work as worthy of inclusion along with that of Siegel & Shuster, Bob Kane & Bill Finger, Jack Cole, C.C. Beck & Otto Binder, Basil Wolverton, George Carlson, John Stanley, Carl Barks, Walt Kelly, Will Eisner, and the EC gang (esp. Harvey Kurtzman, Al Feldstein, and Bernie Krigstein). [©2003 DC Comics.]

No. 85 Our 30th Year! 1973-2003

Marc Swayze “Good marnin,’ officer.” Marnin? Weill had pronounced it marnin’, too! Smart… but I hoped he wouldn’t overdo it. “And a fine day it is today. May I see your license, sir?”

mds& (c) [Art

[EDITORS NOTE: From 1941-53, Marcus D. Swayze was a top artist for Fawcett Comics. The very first Mary Marvel character sketches came from Marc’s drawing table, and he illustrated her earliest adventures, including her classic origin in Captain Marvel Adventures #18, Dec. ’42; but he was primarily hired by Fawcett Publications to illustrate Captain Marvel stories and covers for Whiz Comics and CMA. He also wrote many Captain Marvel scripts, and continued to do so while in the military. After leaving the service, he made an arrangement with Fawcett to produce material for them on a freelance basis out of his Louisiana home. There he created both art and story for “The Phantom Eagle” in Wow Comics, in addition to drawing the Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip for Bell Syndicate (created by his friend and mentor Russell Keaton). After the cancellation of Wow, Swayze produced artwork for Fawcett’s top-selling line of romance comics, including Sweethearts and Life Story. 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. Continuing from last issue, Marc relates more about the laughter, jokes, and fun atmosphere that prevailed in the Fawcett art department. —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

I don’t know why, but for years I had pictured New York police as being rude and overbearing. But this fellow seemed okay. Santa Claus red cheeks underneath kind eyes with the hint of a twinkle reminded me of my father. This was a good man. My mind’s eye visualized him in his home… surely a family man… slippers in hand… tired after a long day on the pavements. Maybe he was lonely and wanted to be friends. I liked him. “I could be wrong, but wasn’t the light red when you passed through? Of course, I make mistakes now and then… we all do, don’t we?” Bless him, he was offering us a way out. He rested his elbows on the open window and spoke softly, confidentially: “Lately the old peepers have been playing tricks on me. Red looks like green sometimes, green looks like red. But I thought it was red…” Weill was sitting up straight now. His head had emerged from the turned-up lapels of his topcoat, and his voice was stronger. Not one to overlook an opening, Irwin Weill was taking a stand! “Officer, I am a professional artist. Colors are my specialty. I am employed at… you’ve heard of Captain Marvel?”

I wouldn’t have known how to find Jamaica, New York, on the map when I first went to work at Fawcett Publications. That, however, was my address for a while, after fellow art staff member Irwin Weill offered to share his apartment. Usually we took the subway to Times Square, but for some reason, on this day we drove in. The route took us through what at that early hour appeared to be one small community after another. As we passed under a traffic light at a somewhat isolated intersection, we were startled by a shrill whistle. You don’t see them any more… or hear them, those whistles cops used to have. Believe me, they were loud… this one in particular! Weill knew what to do. He pulled over immediately and drew to a stop. We sat silently while a heavy patrolman strode leisurely from the far corner of the intersection. “Good marnin,’ gentlemen.”

“We Didn’t Know...”

45 Poor Weill sat motionless, staring straight ahead. He held his new traffic ticket before him without looking at it. His shoulders were slumped, his face askew. What he needed was a stiff drink. But it was too early. There used to be a product available for making corrections. We called it “Chinese white.” Remember? It may have had several commercial names, but asking in any art or stationery store for “Chinese White” got you what you wanted. Although it usually came in small bottles, in the Fawcett art department it was purchased in quart jars. Not that we made more mistakes than others, but there were more of us. Chinese white and rubber cement were about the only supply items provided for community-type sharing among the artists. Almost to the man the art staff was made up of witty individuals. One would have thought the yearn to laugh, to joke, and to be able to take a joke were part of the application for employment. And among the members were about half a dozen who, with a little experience, might have been qualified for show biz… on the comedy side.

Marc Swayze says that C.C. Beck insisted his all-time favorite scene was the time when Billy Batson forgot to say “Shazam!” Above and below are the splash panel and sequence from that story, “Captain Marvel and the Baron of Barracuda Bay,” written by Marc Swayze, with art done in Beck’s shop, for Captain Marvel Adventures #30 (Dec. ’43). [ ©2003 DC Comics.]

“What precinct?” Weill quickly let that one go and continued. He was an authority now! “Colors do that to the eye. Look at one color long enough and it changes to…” “It wasn’t red, then?” “Of course not!” By this time the policeman’s broad shoulders filled the open window from edge to edge, his face well within the car, nose to nose with Weill’s. “THE LIGHT WAS RED!” Maybe my imagination was working overtime, but to this day I swear Weill’s hair stood straight up! Mine may have, too. This cop had a voice! Not only that… he had a conniving mind! The crafty manner in which he had lured Weill till he was right where he wanted him… then slammed the dagger home… right to the heart… was diabolical. And they talked about New York’s “Pride of the Finest”! This fellow was a dragon in a cop’s uniform! And he was so satisfied with himself. You could tell from the way he swaggered away!

Ken Bald

From A Barn To Barnabus

A Chat with KEN BALD, Artist and Binder Shop Art Director by Mark Voger Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck He’s not the only artist to have made his contribution to the Fawcett line of comics anonymously. But before long, Ken Bald’s name would ring loud and clear in the annals of comicdom. Prior to World War II, young Bald toiled in obscurity—happily so—at the legendary Jack Binder studio/barn in Englewood, New Jersey, which cranked out early stories starring Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, Bulletman, and company for Fawcett Publications. After the war, Bald worked briefly for the Beck-Costanza shop, also located in Englewood. But Bald made his most profound mark in the medium as the artist behind the syndicated comic strips Dr. Kildare, Judd Saxon, and Dark Shadows. The former continued to run for years after the 1961-66 medical drama starring Richard Chamberlain went off the air. The latter, though it lasted only a year, is still a favorite among devoted fans of the 1966-71 Gothic soap opera starring Jonathan Frid as 18th-century gentleman vampire Barnabas Collins. Bald, who is now semi-retired, continues to produce storyboards in the advertising field. Another of Bald’s distinctions is that he is one of the few living people to have known and worked with two of the Fawcett world’s greatest artists: C.C. Beck and Kurt Schaffenberger. (Bald and Schaffenberger were in the same class at prestigious Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and entered the Binder studio around the same time.) So when P.C. Hamerlinck and I set about deciding who would be the best candidate to write the foreword for Beck and Schaffenberger: Sons of Thunder (our deleted book project which has now morphed into two separate books, one on each of the artists), Bald's name was at the top of the list. The artist graciously consented. “Clarence Beck and Kurt Schaffenberger are no longer with us, but in a way, they are,” Bald wrote. “Just look in one of their many comic books, and thrill to the adventures of Captain Marvel or Superman. Fans will always remember Clarence and Kurt for their contributions to the medium. What more can an artist hope for?” Well said! I spoke to Bald spoke from his New Jersey home… — Mark Voger

Captain Marvel, Mr. Scarlet and Pinky, Bulletman, and Commando Yank. Ken Bald’s cover art for FCA #12 (a.k.a. FCA/SOB #1), April 1980, C.C. Beck’s first issue as editor—and Ken Bald himself, in the late 1940s. Photo courtesy of Dorothy Schaffenberger. [Art ©2003 Ken Bald; characters TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

From A Barn To Barnabus According to Hames Ware, the Binder Shop records say that Ken Bald illustrated the cover for Captain Midnight #3 (Dec. 1942), and that he penciled the hero’s interior stories off and on during that same year and perhaps into early 1943. (No specific issues were listed in Jack Binder’s records.) Bald, who was art director for a time at the Binder Shop, also penciled some “Bulletman,” “Mr. Scarlet,” and “Captain Marvel” stories in 1942, but alas, no exact dates or specifics were recorded as to which issues contained his work. It is also not known exactly who was inking his pencils at this time; it may have been his brother-in-law, Vic Dowd. Later on, circa late ’40s/early ’50s, both he and Dowd came back to do work on Fawcett’s romance comics. The best place to see latter-day Ken Bald comic book work is at ACG, where he did a multitude of covers in all genres... but again, none of his work was ever signed! [Art ©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

MV: What was Kurt Schaffenberger like when you two were college chums? BALD: We teased each other all the time. He had a great sense of humor. He was always a lot of fun. He was an “up” sort of person. I remember traveling up to Hartford, Connecticut, to meet his mom and dad. After Pratt, we both worked for Jack Binder’s studio out there in Englewood. In fact, Kurt and I roomed together there. MV: How do you remember those days at the Binder studio? BALD: I had lived in Mount Vernon [New York]. The trip for that first month I traveled from Mount Vernon to Englewood involved a trolley ride, a subway ride, and a bus, and everything else. [laughs] So it used to take me two hours to get in! This was before I got a car. MV: What sort of work were you doing at the studio? BALD: When we worked for Binder out there in Englewood on St. Nicholas Avenue, he had a big barn, which he had converted the top of into a studio. We worked there. Everything we did was “piecework,” so to speak. I think there were maybe ten of us or more. We The Binder barn in the early 1940s. Jack Binder is standing. Ken Bald is to his left, not looking at the camera. The other artists are, alas, unidentified. Photo courtesy of Nat Champlin.