Alter Ego #34 Preview

QUALITY TIME!

1

1994--2004

5.95

$

In the USA

No. 34 March 2004

Awesome Art & Artifacts By:

Doll Man TM & ©2004 DC Comics.

CRANDALL • ARNOLD • CUIDERA COLE • EISNER • FINE NORDLING • GUSTAVSON POWELL • DILLIN • FOX • WARD TOTH • AMASH • NOLAN KURTZMAN • GILBERT & MORE!

Vol. 3, No. 34 / March 2004

™

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

QUALITY TIME (Side One)

Production Assistant

Eric Nolen-Weathington

Cover Artists Reed Crandall Charles Nicholas (?)

Writer/Editorial: I Love Theme Issues! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Men of Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko

And Special Thanks to: Ger Apeldoorn Dick Arnold Bob Bailey Mike W. Barr Michael Baulderstone Jack Bender Bill Black Jerry K. Boyd Lee Boyett Sam Burlockoff Gary Carlson Ray A. Cuthbert Teresa R. Davidson Al Dellinges Roger Dicken & Wendy Hunt Jay Disbrow Shel Dorf Chris Ecker Will Eisner Michael Feldman Elliot Fine Gill Fox Bill Fugate Ron Frantz

Contents

Carl Gafford Janet Gilbert Al & Belle Grenet George Hagenauer Jennifer Hamerlinck Peter Hansen Ron Harris Mark & Stephanie Heike Tom Horvitz Dave Hunt Brian Kotzky Adele Kurtzman Mark Lewis Scotty Moore Michelle Nolan Larry Ripee Ethan Roberts Marc Swayze Greg Theakston Dann Thomas Mort Todd Alex Toth Jim Vadeboncoeur Hames Ware John Yon

Dick Arnold, son of company founder Busy Arnold, talks to Jim Amash about Quality Comics (with a sidebar by George Hagenauer on Arnold’s “men’s sweat” mags).

“IChuck Created Blackhawk!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Cuidera voices his opinions (and how!) on just about everything!

Better Read Than Dead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Michelle Nolan tells about Blackhawk’s 1950s transition from Quality to DC. “Another Fine Talent Lost”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 One Golden Age great re another: Alex Toth about Reed Crandall.

Comic Crypt: The Unknown Kurtzman (Part Two) . . . . . . . . 39 Michael T. Gilbert (and Ger Apeldoorn) on Harvey Kurtzman’s work for Varsity.

Quality Time (Side Two). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: Because it’s one of the relatively few examples of Golden Age work by the fabulous Reed Crandall still in existence, this gorgeously horrific cover art done for Doll Man #42 (Oct. 1952) has been reprinted several times—including by Michael T. Gilbert in Alter Ego #30, from Gary Arlington’s early-’70s Nickel Library. We decided it was high time it saw print as a cover again—if not on an actual comic book, then on this magazine about comic books.

[Doll Man TM & ©2004 DC Comics.]

Above: Without a doubt, another of the most talented artists ever to work in the comic book field was Lou Fine. The Flame, Doll Man, Black Condor, The Ray, covers—he excelled at all of them. But when publisher Greg Theakston put together his Lou Fine Comics Treasury in 1991, he chose Fine art featuring the Quality Comics version of Uncle Sam as his cover (see p. 10)—and he reprinted, with restored art, the lead tale from National Comics #12 (June 1941) as the book’s example of Fine’s work on that editorial-cartoon-cum-super-hero. Though the byline on the splash art reprinted above read “by Will Eisner,” and Eisner probably did oversee its production in his studio, this art looks like pure Fine to most aficionados. [Uncle Sam TM & ©2004 DC Comics; retouched art ©2004 Pure Imagination.]

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.

Quality Time-- part one

Men of Quality

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DICK ARNOLD Talks about Himself, His Father BUSY ARNOLD, and the Other Talented Men (and a Few Women) of Quality Comics [INTRODUCTION: Everett (Busy) Arnold was more than just the owner and publisher of Quality Comics, one of the best comic book companies of the Golden Age, which gave us Plastic Man, Blackhawk, Doll Man, and many others. He also hired the artists and the writers, proofread scripts, and looked over the finished art. By all accounts, he fostered an atmosphere of creativity for his employees that allowed them to do their best work, and was exceedingly generous with his staff and freelancers to a degree that few before or since have matched. In order to help complete the picture of Busy Arnold, I have spoken to many people who knew him. Now, for perhaps the most intimate look of all, let’s talk to Dick Arnold—who has the unique circumstance of having been both a loyal employee—and a loving son. —Jim.]

“As a Little Kid, He Was Always Doing Something” JIM AMASH: When was your father born?

DICK ARNOLD: May 20, 1899, in Providence, Rhode Island. His father’s name was Earl and his mother’s name was Ada. He was an only child. The family was pretty well off. My father’s grandfather was a wealthy man who had all sorts of businesses, like a textile mill, and owned real estate all around Providence. My grandfather was a junior Phi Beta Kappa and was the chairman of the math department at Brown University, though that doesn’t mean he was a real good businessman.

During his lifetime he managed to lose a great deal of what his family had. He died of influenza during the plague while my father was in college, in 1919.

JA: What can you tell me about your father’s childhood?

ARNOLD: The principal thing I can say was that his nickname was “Busy.” He got that nickname as a little kid because he was always doing something. He never sat still. He was a world-class long distance runner in college and ran against the best in the world. I don’t remember the name of the world’s champion at the time, but he wasn’t an American.

My father beat him in a race. My father played ice hockey in school and was a goalie. In college he was a history major. I was a history major at Brown, as was my son.

JA: So it runs in the family. Then you can appreciate why I’m so interested in history.

ARNOLD: In that regard, the interesting thing is that we are related to Benedict Arnold. When Benedict Arnold’s nephew, at the end of the American Revolution, tried to go to West Point, he was treated very shabbily. He couldn’t take that, so he got on his horse and went back to Providence. On his way back, he stopped at New Haven, Connecticut, and enrolled at Yale, but everyone in the next generation on down went to Brown.

[Above left:] Quality founder/publisher Everett “Busy” Arnold, seen at right in photo, with Gill and Helen Fox. Dick Arnold couldn’t provide photos of himself or his father, so we’re all the more grateful that Quality artist/editor Gill Fox sent us this one of Arnold, Sr., for Alter Ego #12, which featured a blockbuster interview with Gill. Check it out!

[Above:] According to The Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books, Gill drew the covers of Police Comics #1-12 in 1941-42—including this one for #5 (Jan. ’42). This was the first issue wherein Plastic Man usurped the feature spot from the original cover boy, Firebrand. See DC’s Plastic Man Archives, Vol. 1... although that fine collection lists the cover artists of Police #2-16 as “Unknown.” [Heroes TM & ©2004 DC Comics.]

My father finished college in 1921, and left Providence for New York.

He met my mother, Claire, soon after he got to New York and they were married in 1923. She was a model of some sort... she modeled gloves or something.

My father got a job in the printing press business, with Goss Printing Company, and became a very successful printing press salesman. When I was very young, we moved out to Old Greenwich, Connecticut, and my father commuted to work.

People would come to him for advice on how to start up printing plants. He told them what equipment they should buy. He’d go and help people, just as a pal, so to speak. He was that kind of guy. He left that business in the early 1930s and went to work for a guy named Walter

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Dick Arnold collectors who think so. When I ran a comic shop, I never had trouble selling the old Quality comics. They are still very desirable and valuable magazines.

Koessler, who printed the comics sections of the Sunday newspapers.

The company was The Greater Buffalo Press, and there was only one newspaper east of the Mississippi River that they didn’t do the Sunday comics section for. Then Koessler started cutting my father’s paycheck and he didn’t like that very much.

Koessler had all the business he could get and didn’t need my father to bring in any new accounts. My father left and started a comic book called Feature Funnies [later retitled Feature Comics].

ARNOLD: When I was moving one time, I had in the attic all the bound volumes of what my father published. I got tired of moving them and had the garbage man haul them away. Later on, I was blowing my brains out because I threw away a lot of money.

JA: Ouch! When you were young, did you spend much time at the offices?

JA: What gave your father the idea of starting his own comic book?

ARNOLD: He probably saw it was the coming thing. DC Comics was publishing comics with new material, and others were starting up. My father started off imitating Famous Funnies, which was reprinting the newspaper strips. He knew all the people in the business, so it was easy for him to line up features like Joe Palooka and Mickey Finn. This was in 1937. He would bring home the comics when they were printed, and he also brought home the comics produced by the competition.

JA: Your father also helped a couple of men named Bill Cook and John Mahon start up a comic book company, but they didn’t last long. I think that’s when your father decided to get into the business.

ARNOLD: It wasn’t too long after my father went into this business that he moved the offices from New York to Stamford, Connecticut. I remember, before I’d go to see a movie, going to the offices to get a couple of nickels so I could buy a couple of candy bars to eat while I was at the movies.

I saw people working on comics up there then.

JA: Did your father have a business partner?

The cover of Busy Arnold’s first comic book, Feature Funnies #1 (Oct. 1937) spotlighted Ham Fisher’s ultrapopular Joe Palooka, although the cover art is credited in Gerber to another famous comic strip artist, Rube Goldberg. Arnold and Harry “A” Chesler were most likely partners at this time. [Art & characters TM & ©2004 the trademark and copyright holders.]

ARNOLD: That could well be. My father was always helping people.

He must have thought he had a chance to do better.

“That Was Him Being ‘Busy’” JA: The first editor your father hired was a cartoonist named Johnny Devlin. He was replaced by Ed Cronin. Do you remember either of them?

ARNOLD: I vaguely remember Ed Cronin, but not the other one.

JA: Then Ed Cronin hired Gill Fox to be his assistant, and Gill became the editor when Cronin left.

ARNOLD: I wasn’t aware that was how it worked. I don’t know much about how things worked in the early days. When I worked at Quality years later, my father read all the scripts and was hands-on with everything. That was him being “Busy,” I guess.

JA: Is it fair to say that your father was a very detail-oriented man?

ARNOLD: Yes. He took great pride in the fact that he thought the artwork in his magazines was much better than anyone else’s. I think it was, but whether it really was or not, he thought it was.

JA: I’ll say this to you: he had four of the greatest artists who ever worked in comics. Will Eisner, Jack Cole, Lou Fine, and Reed Crandall.

ARNOLD: Absolutely. I consider Eisner the greatest genius who ever worked in comics, along with Jack Cole.

JA: Quality Comics sure lived up to its name. There are a lot of

ARNOLD: When he first started, he got the people who owned Look magazine [Mike and John Cowles of the Des Moines Register and Tribune Syndicate] as partners. I think they originally put up the money to get things started, and my father ran the company. Henry Martin was the liaison with the company that owned half the business with my father.

JA: Did this business partnership last until Quality stopped publishing?

ARNOLD: No. That’s where the Des Moines Register and Tribune [Syndicate] was smarter than my father. Around 1950, they told my father that they ought to get out of the comic book business. They said, “We’ve seen its best days.” So my father bought them out and he owned the whole thing. I don’t think he paid them much.

JA: Jim Steranko’s History of the Comics says the amount was $140,000. So your father didn’t get hurt that much, after all.

ARNOLD: In that sense, no. But the business didn’t make nearly as much after that. My father did well, but not like he had done during the peak war years. He published more magazines per month after the war, but the profit per magazine was pretty small.

“[The Spirit] Took Off like Gang Busters” JA: Did Will Eisner have any part of the business?

ARNOLD: At one time, Eisner and Jerry Iger were partners, and my father hired them to do most of the work for the magazines. He’d tell them to fill up the pages of Military Comics, so they did. Originally, my father didn’t pick out the stories or the artists that did the magazines, though that soon changed. And Eisner split from Iger, whom my father didn’t like, when The Spirit started.

My father got the idea to do a Sunday comics supplement. The Spirit, “Lady Luck,” and “Mr. Mystic” were the features. It took off like Gang Busters and ended up in many newspapers all across the country. For a

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Dick Arnold period of time, this was much more important to my father than the comic book end was. This was where the real money came from. Eisner packaged the work for my father.

The interesting thing was that, when Eisner went into the service, my father decided to put the best artists on The Spirit, like Lou Fine. I don’t remember who did the writing. But without Eisner, the feature went down in quality. Eisner was basically a cartoonist: a Gill Fox type of artist rather than a Lou Fine type of artist. The newspapers were complaining, telling us to get rid of these awful artists and get the old artist back. But Eisner was in the service. It wasn’t really Lou Fine’s fault, but Eisner had a way of characterizing scenes and a look that no one else could match. It didn’t have the same flair.

JA: Jack Cole also did some work on The Spirit.

Arnold & Eisner’s The Spirit “weekly comic book” provided Sunday newspapers with the adventures of The Spirit, Lady Luck, and Mr. Mystic. The splashes of Eisner’s “Spirit” story for Nov. 23, 1947, and a 1946 “Lady Luck” 4-pager drawn by Klaus Nordling were reprinted in Kitchen Sink’s black-&-white The Spirit #19 (Oct. 1978), with “wash” tones added to the former.

The far earlier “Mr. Mystic” splash page by Bob Powell seems to be from July 14, 1940. [©2004 Will Eisner.]

ARNOLD: They probably did that when they realized the thing was sinking. Jack Cole could have written the stories, because he could do the same kind of creative thinking that Eisner did. I never got to know Jack very well. He didn’t live near the offices when I was working at Quality. He sent the work in through the mail, so I didn’t see much of him.

JA: What artists would you say your father held in the highest regard?

ARNOLD: The people you mentioned: Eisner, Cole, Fine, and Crandall. Crandall was the master craftsman.

Reed was such a meticulous worker that he wasn’t able to turn out that much work. He’d do a lead story in Blackhawk, and someone else would draw the other stories. That’s one of the reasons Chuck Cuidera inked a lot of his stories.

JA: That’s interesting, because Chuck Cuidera created “Blackhawk,” right?

ARNOLD: Right, but “Blackhawk” may have originally been an Eisner idea. Chuck had worked for Eisner when the feature was created. Chuck definitely worked on the first stories, but who originally came up with the names for the characters is something I don’t know. I loved Chuck dearly.

JA: Eisner has said that your father owned The Spirit until it ceased publication, and that’s when the copyrights were transferred over to him.

ARNOLD: That could well be. I think Eisner’s Spirit was as well-done as anything ever done in comics. There’s a story that I remember hearing: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster brought “Superman” to my father, who said, “Nobody would read this stupid thing.” [laughs]

Quality Time-- part two

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“I Created Blackhawk!”

A Controversial Interview with the Late Artist CHUCK CUIDERA

Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash [INTERVIEWER’S INTRO: Charles (Chuck) Cuidera, who passed away in 2001, only two days after this interview was completed, was an interesting character: feisty, opinionated, and talented. He was instrumental in the creation and development of Quality Comics’ best-selling character (and later title), Blackhawk. After a stint in the military during World War II, he returned to Quality, primarily as an inker on “Blackhawk” and other features. When DC Comics bought out the Quality line in 1956, Chuck went along as Dick Dillin’s inker on the Blackhawk title; the pair remained a team on the comic until it was canceled in 1968.

Afterward, Dillin and Cuidera drew a few issues of Hawkman before Chuck retired from comics.

[It must be noted that some of the statements Chuck has made below (and elsewhere) about Blackhawk, The Blue Beetle, and his art director status at Quality have been questioned by others. In fairness to Chuck’s memory, we have decided to present his side of the story pretty much as he related it, with appropriate editorial comments. —Jim.]

“I Had Nothing to Lose” JIM AMASH: We’ll start by playing To Tell the Truth. Tell me when and where you were born.

CHUCK CUIDERA: I was born in Newark, New Jersey, September 23, 1915. I have my mother to thank for my artistic talent. She was the one who was artistic in the family, and one of the nice things about that was that we were the best-dressed kids on our street. [laughs]

Chuck Cuidera (left) and fellow pro inker Dave Hunt, in a photo taken several years back—juxtaposed with the cover of Blackhawk #40 (May 1951), repro’d from a photocopy of the art which Stephanie Heike of AC!Comics restored for Cuidera from the partly-destroyed original art a few years ago. This cover is usually credited to Reed Crandall, but Chuck swore he had done the entire thing—which was why he had the original artwork! Thanks, Mark &!Stephanie Heike—and Dave—for this pair of artifacts! [BlackhawK TM & ©2004 DC Comics.]

Those were the days of the Great Depression. My father came from Sicily, and he had one cousin who was a doctor and taught my father the English language. Pop also learned how to speak Spanish and French. Most of the poor unfortunates who lived in the neighborhood had no money but could always find some money to make wine. They’d pay my father off in five-gallon jugs of wine. My father was politically connected to a couple of Italian lawyers who looked to Pop to send them applicants to their office. Those poor unfortunates were trying to get their citizenship papers.

JA: What were your favorite newspaper strips?

CUIDERA: Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, and Milton Caniff were my favorite artists. As a kid, I used to love The Katzenjammer Kids and all the funny strips.

I started drawing comics in grammar school. My mother heard about the Northpine Art School on High Street, and she got me up on Saturday mornings to attend. We drew from sculptures, and most of the instructors were from Germany.

JA: After Northpine, you went to Pratt Institute, didn’t you?

My mother had thirteen children, but I only remember six of them.

It’s harder to remember the oldest ones. My mom was quite a woman, and she kept a barber strap on the knob of the kitchen door. When we didn’t follow orders, she’d swing at us, and of course she’d start crying.

Pop never touched that strap. He’d lecture to us, but he never hit us.

CUIDERA: Yes. I had a scholarship there. I got that while I was at Eastside High School. One of my art teachers was a lovely woman who did watercolors, and I tried to emulate her work. She took a real big interest in me and was responsible for me getting into Northpine Art School. I started at Pratt in 1936 and graduated in 1939. Pratt was an

“I Created Blackhawk!”

17 Kirby was nothing but a cleaner boy. He erased pages, made art corrections, paste-ups, and anything else that needed to be done.

JA: Did you meet Victor Fox?

CUIDERA: And how! He was a big clip artist. When I was working for Fox, he asked me to do him a favor.

He had this big box of liquor and wanted me to bring it up to his apartment, which was in the same building his office was. I got up there and this pretty little wench, wearing only a slip, invited me in for a cup of coffee. I said, “No, thank you.” I couldn’t wait to get out of there. [laughs]. Old man Fox always had a wench around him.

Fox was an older man than the rest of us. He was short, had a full head of hair, and smoked a cigar, and had a tremendously loud voice.

Very impressive, and he scared everybody. He wasn’t fat and he always liked women.

JA: I heard he was a crook and cheated people out of money.

CUIDERA: Oh, boy! He stuck Simon and Kirby for a lot of dough.

Most of the other publishers paid a good wage per page, but not Fox. He only paid $5 a page, if you could get it from him.

JA: What did he do, hide out on payday?

“Lou Fine… was my boy,” said Chuck Cuidera of his artistic colleague and friend. Above are a Fine page from the origin of The Flame in Wonderworld Comics #8 (Dec. 1939), and a panel of the searing super-hero in costume from #6 (Oct. 1939), courtesy of Greg Theakston from his 1991 Lou Fine Comics Treasury. [Restored art ©2004 Pure Imagination.]

architectural and engineering school. For the women, it was a dressmaking school. I expected to paint after I graduated, and I wanted to be a pictorial illustrator.

JA: How did you break into comic books?

CUIDERA: After I got out of Pratt, I went to all the publishing companies in New York and struck out. I saw an ad in the paper that Fox Features was looking for artists. I had nothing to lose, so I went there. The art director, Joe Simon, hired me on the spot, so I was making 35 bucks a week, between the staff pay and freelancing.

“Old Man Fox Always Had a Wench Around” JA: Had you read comic books before you went to Fox? CUIDERA: I don’t think I did. Comic books were just really starting out, and they became big and fat. Now, Joe Simon was an artist. He and Jack Kirby became partners and were working together even at Fox. Kirby was the artist and Joe was the writer, although Joe could draw, too. Joe was easy to work for. I worked in the office. Al Harvey was there, too. The office was small.

CUIDERA: Yes, something like that. Since I was on staff, I was pretty sure I’d get my week’s salary and all the freelance work I could handle.

JA: Lou Fine worked there, too, didn’t he?

CUIDERA: Yes, he did. And he was my boy. He was real good. At that time, I thought nobody drew anatomical figures better than Lou Fine.

He was the first to draw “The Flame.” We all admired him, especially when he drew the covers. He was a very nice man. We used to go to lunch together and sometimes went bowling. He had a game leg because he had suffered from polio when he was a kid. Sometimes he’d grab my arm when we went to lunch. I remember when he had a fight with Will Eisner, who was working behind the scenes at Quality Comics. I wanted to knock Eisner on his butt like you wouldn’t believe. Lou was a quiet, even-balanced guy, and after he left Eisner and went to work directly for Busy Arnold [Quality’s publisher], we stopped seeing each other.

JA: Do you remember what features you did for Fox? CUIDERA: Yes. I did “The Flame,” but “The Blue Beetle” was where I started. I took over “The Flame” when Lou Fine left Fox. JA: You’ve said you created “The Blue Beetle”...

CUIDERA: Yes, I did. Then there was a Polish fellow, Charles Wojtokowski, who followed me on the feature, using my name.

JA: What was Jack Kirby like in those days?

JA: Your full name is Charles Nicholas Cuidera. Why did you use the name Charles Nicholas instead of using your last name? Were you asked to do that?

CUIDERA: Jack came from a poor family. He was supporting his family. The funny part was that, when I started working for Joe Simon,

CUIDERA: No. I just used Charles Nicholas because I thought it was a better name to use. No one told me to use a pen name. Everyone used

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Chuck Cuidera

In his later years, Cuidera found himself in the eye of two storms of controversy regarding his career. The first involved his oft-repeated statement that he created The Blue Beetle, one of the earliest (and, in various incarnations, longest-lived) super-heroes, using his first and middle names, “Charles Nicholas”—while others feel strongly that was merely the pseudonym of artist Charles Wojtokowski. Comics historian Hames Ware says that although, to the best of his knowledge, “Charles Nicholas Wojtokowski is the only artist who consistently used that nom de plum over a nearly 30-year period… it is still possible that Chuck Cuidera, in an incredible coincidental fashion, may have also drawn ‘Blue Beetle’ at Fox and done so under the ‘Charles Nicholas’ byline. (Jerry Iger was noted for maintaining shop-created bylines regardless of whether the originating artist remained on a strip or not. ‘Charles Nicholas’ is a case in point, with several different artists in addition to Wojtokowski working with that same shop name stuck up there by Iger on the strip. Al Carreno would be one example of that happening, I believe.)”

Be that as it may, “Blue Beetle” debuted in Fox’s Mystery Men Comics #1 (Aug. 1939); his earliest cover appearance was on Blue Beetle #1 (Winter 1939-40), seen at left. As is well-known, Jack Kirby briefly drew the short-lived Blue Beetle newspaper comic strip, as per the above daily for 1-25-40, under the Nicholas byline.

Later, in Blue Beetle #28 (March 1944), seen below, someone—certainly neither Cuidera nor Kirby—had clearly been looking at Simon & Kirby comics! [Blue Beetle TM & ©2004 DC Comics.]

my name on that feature, including Jack Kirby. And I designed the Blue Beetle costume.

JA: Do you recall who wrote the first “Blue Beetle” stories?

CUIDERA: No. I wrote some of the stories, and I think Joe Simon did, too. I’ll probably stand corrected, but there were quite a few writers there. Bill Woolfolk was one of them; he later wrote “Blackhawk.”

There was another top guy, but I can’t think of his name now.

JA: Could it have been Bob Powell?

CUIDERA: No. But Bob Powell and I graduated from Pratt together.

Bob was responsible for me leaving Joe Simon and working for Quality Comics. He called me up one day and said, “There’s an editor at Quality who’ll double what you’re making at Fox’s.” I said, “You got a deal.” I went over to see him, and who was running the show for Busy Arnold but Will Eisner! I never got double my salary from Eisner. I wanted to whack him, and I was just the sort of a guy who could do it. I came from a rough neighborhood and could take care of myself. [laughs] Bob Powell and Will Eisner were good friends. When Eisner started working for Quality, he brought Bob Powell with him. Powell was the one who called me, because Eisner must have liked my work. [NOTE: Eisner was actually running the Eisner & Iger studio, not Quality per se. — Jim.] Bob Powell was an easy-going guy. I didn’t think he was going to be very successful once we got out of school, but he surprised me. I thought he was a better writer than an artist, but he did “Mr. Mystic” for Eisner. He made a pretty good buck in comics up until he died.

JA: Was the other writer you were thinking of Joe Millard?

Quality Time-- part four

36

“Another Fine Talent Lost” Artist ALEX TOTH on Artist REED CRANDALL

[Art ©2004 Alex Toth.]

[ED. NOTE: Thanks to Jim Amash for providing a copy of this 1992 mini-essay by Alex Toth. —Roy.]

“How do I love thee? Let me count the planes!” Alex says Reed Crandall was “too good to ‘cheat out’ ‘Hawks’ to save work” and gave all the aerial scenes “their full complement of aircraft.” This page from Military Comics #14 (Dec. 1942) is most definitely a case in point. Check it out in color in The Blackhawk Archives, Vol. 1. [©2004 DC Comics.]

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All strips Š2004 by the Harvey Kurtzman Estate.

Other material Š2004 the respective copyright holders.

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Comic Crypt

Introduction!

The Unknown Kurtzman

by Michael T. Gilbert

by Ger Apeldoorn

Few cartoonists have been as influential as Harvey Kurtzman—or as thoroughly researched!

The Hunt Begins!

Two years ago, while researching a “Little Annie Fanny” article, I dug out an old set of Harvey Kurtzman stats given to me 15 years earlier by the editor of the Dutch strip-fanzine Striprofiel. I’d been a Kurtzman fan since the age of 14, when I first discovered the paperbacks reprinting the early years of Mad. But getting a collection of Kurtzman material was pretty tough from Holland.

Fans have explored his groundbreaking early-’50s work for such EC titles as TwoFisted Tales, Frontline Combat, Weird Science, and Tales from the Crypt, and volumes have been devoted to Kurtzman’s most enduring creation, Mad. Harvey’s subsequent forays into humor, Trump, Humbug, and Help, have also been exhaustively examined, as has his “Little Annie Fanny” series for Playboy.

I was lucky enough to buy a complete set of Humbugs from another collector early on, and about fifteen years ago I managed to track down a set of Helps. But once I discovered eBay, my Kurtzman-collecting really took off!

To a lesser extent, even Kurtzman’s most minor early work has been documented! Comics scholars have noted that he began his professional career in I found two issues of the U.S. Army 1943, working on “Magno and Davy,” Varsity, Vol. 1, #1 (June 1947). [Cover art ©2004 the magazine Yank my first week—both featuring “Mr. Risk,” “Lash Lightning,” and other respective copyright holders.]

Kurtzman cartoons listed but not shown in long-forgotten heroes. Also wellGlen Bray’s Illustrated Harvey Kurtzman documented are his early humor work on Index! I also spotted a TV Guide with Kurtzman’s three-page color features like “Flatfoot Burns” for Quality, “Hey Look!” for Timely, and visit to Perry Como and a 1957 issue of Pageant with a ten-page “Potshot Pete” for Toby Press.

Kurtzman/Elder space story. I bought the first two for a couple of bucks In 1976, researcher Glenn Bray collected all this data into a but passed on the third and didn’t get a copy until much, much later. remarkably comprehensive 120-page checklist. Still the definitive word Soon, I’d amassed a near-complete collection of Kurtzman’s elegant on the subject, Bray’s Illustrated Harvey Kurtzman Index lists every magazine work from the ’50s. piece of Kurtzman art known to exist up to that date—even sketches and Then, while shuffling through my set of stats, I saw something I such esoteric items as his rare Silver Linings strip for the New York hadn’t noticed earlier: a pair of two-page spreads not listed in Bray’s Herald-Tribune. Bray also cataloged every known magazine article book. One was a two-page illustration of students on a campus. The featuring or discussing Kurtzman and his work, including rare appearsecond was an article about different types of girls, similar to ances in Esquire and TV Guide. No matter how obscure, every Kurtzman’s Mad work. Both had Varsity written on the back. I immedimagazine was listed. Every magazine except one: ately went on eBay to check out this title.

Varsity.

The great hunt had begun!

Between 1949 until 1951 Kurtzman wrote and drew a series of satirical articles and comic strips for the college magazine Varsity. The following year, he made comic book history with Mad magazine—but it was in Varsity that Kurtzman honed his unique approach to humor.

Last issue we reprinted Kurtzman’s Varsity comic strips. This issue we conclude our two-part article on “The Unknown Kurtzman” with Harvey’s equally impressive pin-ups and illustrations for the same magazine. Together they encompass every known cartoon drawn by Kurtzman for Varsity.

We’re delighted to share these exceptionally rare items by a man considered by many to be the most important American satirist of the 20th century. We’re even more delighted (and surprised!) to discover how sophisticated and funny these early strips are. Oddly enough, this important part of Kurtzman’s career was lost for almost sixty years— until a determined Kurtzman fan from Holland named Ger Apeldoorn rediscovered it. I’ll let Ger fill you in on Varsity’s history, and how he discovered these lost cartoons.

Take it away, Ger… On previous page: the cover of Varsity, Vol. 2, #5 (March-April 1949). [©2004 the respective copyright holders.]

Varsity Varsity, “The Young Man’s Magazine,” first appeared on the stands in June 1947, courtesy of The Parents’ Institute, a Christian-oriented publisher. The same folks also produced comic books like Calling All Girls, Calling All Boys, and True Comics. TrueBut-Dull Comics might be a better description!

That first Varsity included no editorial statement, but the title and contents speak for themselves. This tabloid-sized magazine [Continued on p. 44.]

1

PLUS: PLUS:

5.95

$$

QUALITY TIME!

Amazing Art & Artifacts By:

Plastic Man, Woozy Winks TM & ©2004 DC Comics.

KOTZKY (Father & Son) GRENET • COLE • FINE • EISNER GUSTAVSON • CRANDALL NICHOLAS • CUIDERA • AMASH KANE • SCHELLY • SWAYZE & MANY, MANY MORE!!

In the the USA USA In

No. 34 March 2004

1994--2004

Vol. 3, No. 34 / March 2004

™

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

QUALITY TIME (Side Two)

Production Assistant

Contents

Eric Nolen-Weathington

Cover Artists Charles Nicholas (?)

Reed Crandall

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko

And Special Thanks to: Ger Apeldoorn Dick Arnold Bob Bailey Mike W. Barr Michael Baulderstone Jack Bender Bill Black Jerry K. Boyd Lee Boyett Sam Burlockoff Gary Carlson Ray A. Cuthbert Teresa R. Davidson Al Dellinges Roger Dicken & Wendy Hunt Jay Disbrow Shel Dorf Chris Ecker Will Eisner Michael Feldman Elliot Fine Gill Fox Bill Fugate Ron Frantz

Carl Gafford Janet Gilbert Al & Belle Grenet George Hagenauer Jennifer Hamerlinck Peter Hansen Ron Harris Mark & Stephanie Heike Tom Horvitz Dave Hunt Brian Kotzky Adele Kurtzman Mark Lewis Scotty Moore Michelle Nolan Larry Ripee Ethan Roberts Marc Swayze Greg Theakston Dann Thomas Mort Todd Alex Toth Jim Vadeboncoeur Hames Ware John Yon

Writer/Editorial: Clenched Fists, Clenched Teeth. . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Anything Happened, I Was Working on a Comic!” . . . 3 “When A 1992 interview with Quality (and Apartment 3-G) artist Alex Kotzky, by Jim Amash.

“ITheDidn’t Want to Do Apartment 3-G !”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 son also rises! Brian Kotzky on his father’s career—and his own.

The Last Quality Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Al Grenet, Busy Arnold’s final head honcho, talks about his two decades in the field— and the fabulous talents he encountered.

The Alley Tally Party . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Bill Schelly reminds us it’s the 40th anniversary of one of fandom’s first conclaves!

Where does the time go?

FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America ) #93 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 P.C. Hamerlinck points a finger at Marc Swayze and Big Bang Comics. Well, maybe that’d take two fingers.

Quality Time (Side One) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover & Above: Our cover art was first seen as the lead splash in Plastic Man #47 (July 1954)… and seemed an appropriate lead-in to this side’s interview with Quality’s final editor, Al Grenet. The artist(s) can’t be pinned down with certainty, but researcher Hames Ware is putting his money on Charles Nicholas (née Charles Wojtokowski), the same guy who, Charles Nicholas Cuidera insists on p. 17 of our flip side, did not create Blue Beetle. See the black-&-white splash-page version of our cover on p. 30 of the Grenet piece. Still, ain’t it weird how A/E has sported two Plas covers—Alex Toth on #25, plus this one—but none yet with the primary art by creator Jack Cole? The reason: we can’t be sure that any of the art of which we have b&w copies, not even the one with Needles Noggle above from Police Comics #99 (April 1950), is actually by Cole! It may be by Cole—or Alex Kotzky—or John Spranger— or Klaus Nordling—or maybe even somebody else—and that doesn’t even count possible inkers! Thanks to Roger Dicken & Wendy Hunt and Michael Feldman for the photocopies.

[Plastic Man TM & ©2004 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.

Quality Time-- part five

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“When Anything Happened, I Was Working On A Comic!”

Golden Age Artist ALEX KOTZKY Talks about Quality, Apartment 3-G, and All the “Characters” in the Comics World

Conducted & Transcribed

by Jim Amash [INTRODUCTION: Alex Kotzky (19231996) was a hard-working artist, devoted to his craft, a fact which once prompted his wife to say to fellow artist Gill Fox: “He hasn’t left the attic for 35 years.” His major claim to fame was one of the better soap-opera comic strips, Apartment 3-G, which he drew from its debut until his death. I originally interviewed Kotzky because I wanted to learn more about Lou Fine and Jack Cole, as well as about his own work. On June 27, 1992, Kotzky, busy as could be, gave me two hours of his time which he didn’t really have... mainly because he felt that Lou Fine, in particular, hadn’t been remembered as fully as he deserved. Alex really didn’t want to talk about himself much, but I managed to get him to, in spite of himself. And his own career is definitely worth all the coverage we can give it! This interview was previously printed in the limited-circulation apa-zize CFA-APA (#29, Jan. 1993). It has been re-edited for Alter Ego by —Jim.]

“I Answered an Ad in the New York Times” JIM AMASH: Newspaper strips were your first exposure to comics?

ALEX KOTZKY: Yes. I was still in public school when the first comic books came on the stands. I thought it was like something from heaven. I was always interested in comics like Flash Gordon and Milton Caniff. I didn’t necessarily want to be a comic book artist. But I had to make a living when I got out of high school. I was 16, but I had a couple of art scholarships and I couldn’t even afford to take them.

JA: So if you could have gotten a job doing illustration, you would have never gotten into comics?

KOTZKY: Well, I never really penciled before I did comics. I went to Music and Art High School. I think I did my best work when I painted, so comics were something I had to learn immediately.

My son is an illustrator and he’s doing fairly well. He does paperback covers and is represented by an agent. He’s doing the type of thing I would have enjoyed doing.

He worked very hard to get where he is.

JA: So you gave up painting?

(Center:) Alex Kotzky’s “Manhunter” in a panel from Police Comics #10 (June 1942)—flanked by photos of the artist. (Top left:) This 1960s Polaroid snapshot, says his son Brian, is “one of thousands of reference photos taken for Apartment 3-G.” (Right:) Alex holding his granddaughter Kim in 1992—the year Jim Amash interviewed him. Photos courtesy of Brian Kotzky. Kotzky and writer Tex Blaisdell created Quality’s “Manhunter”; this art has been retouched, and grey tones added, for AC Comics’ new 150-page volume Golden-Age Greats Spotlight, Vol. 2. See ad on p. 8. [Retouched art ©2004 AC Comics; Manhunter TM & ©2004 DC Comics.]

KOTZKY: Yes. Immediately. I never went back to painting.

JA: How did you start in comics?

KOTZKY: I got out of high school in 1940 and couldn’t find a job. I answered an ad in the New York Times to do penciling for a comic artist. It was Chad Grothkopf at DC Comics, and I began penciling for him. It

4

Alex Kotzky Fine. I was too young to be drafted.

just evolved from there. “Cliff Crosby” was the first comic [book] strip I worked on. We also did “The Destroyer” for Martin Goodman at Timely. I was with Chad a year or so before I began working for Will Eisner. He was the standard type of guy you run into in comics. I was only 16 at the time. It was much like a junior-to-senior relationship.

JA: When Eisner got drafted, you and Fine took over the bulk of the drawing for The Spirit?

KOTZKY: Yes. I was still doing backgrounds. A couple of months later, I started inking figures. I began doing my own comic stories in the evening, on my own time. Then I started doing covers for different Quality comics. I did five covers a week, one a day. They wanted someone to do covers so they’d have a backlog. I was drafted in 1943.

JA: Where were you when Pearl Harbor happened?

KOTZKY: I was working on a comic. Most of my life has been spent working on comics. When anything happened, I was working on a comic!

“[Eisner] Was a Dynamo” JA: How did you get your job with Will Eisner?

KOTZKY: In 1941 a friend of mine, Al Jaffee, who later worked for Mad, offered to take my stuff up to Eisner. He wanted to try and sell him some of his artwork, too. Eisner said, “Okay, he’s hired.” And at the same time Al got a job for himself. I started out doing backgrounds on The Spirit.

There were six or seven people working for Eisner. We worked in twos or threes. Right above the East River on 42nd Street. I remember coming out one evening when we quit work and there was a big light in the sky towards the Hudson River. And that’s where the Normandie was burning. [NOTE: The Normandie, a French ocean liner, was being refitted for conversion into a U.S. aircraft carrier when it caught fire in New York Harbor in February 1942. —Jim.]

JA: What was Eisner like to work for?

KOTZKY: He was a dynamo. He didn’t have much time to fool around; he had to get the work done. In order to do that, he couldn’t baby you in any way. If you couldn’t do the work, you were out.

JA: Did you like the supporting characters in The Spirit?

KOTZKY: Yes. All of them. Considering the humorous approach to the characters, the strip would work well on television today. You could do it the way Batman was done in the 1960s—with humor.

Tex Blaisdell was also working on the backgrounds for The Spirit.

He had three or four guys working there on the Spirit supplement. Bob Powell did “Mr. Mystic” and Nick Viscardi [later Cardy] did “Lady Luck.” Chuck Cuidera was working on “Blackhawk.” He worked in the studio, too.

Eisner did the penciling and the inking... all the figure work. He was a whiz at production. He worked fast and he was excellent. And he wrote his own stories. Tex Blaisdell was drafted in early 1942, and so was Eisner. That’s when I went up to Stamford, Connecticut, with Lou

Eisner still sent in scripts for The Spirit while he was in the service, and did breakdowns for us. Not always... just when he had the time. He was a warrant officer in Ordinance in Maryland. He did those Joe Dope posters. They were very popular. Later he did P.S. magazine [for the military]. In fact, I did some illustrations for P.S. I worked for Eisner’s company on commercial comics from 1949 to about ’52 or ’53.

In regards to Eisner’s current work, I’m surprised that his work now is very moody, introspective, and not at all the light type of writing he had done with The Spirit. I imagine that his early environment has taken over and is coming out on the page now, whereas before he repressed it.

We both came from the same area. I lived up in the Bronx and he lived up a little higher, northern Bronx, but I didn’t know him then. l understand the background he came from. The work I’ve seen him do lately reminds me of Arthur Miller... if Arthur Miller was doing comic book pages.

JA: Eisner has said that he’s had trouble relating to the concept of the super-hero.

KOTZKY: I can understand that. Being a very intelligent guy, his mind just went beyond that. He wouldn’t allow himself to stay in that vein.

Even when he was doing The Spirit, he was avant-garde. There wasn’t anything like it.

(Left:) Alex Kotzky in uniform during World War II. (Below:) Until he was drafted in 1943, Kotzky helped Lou Fine and others keep The Spirit going. While it’s difficult if not impossible to be certain, this daily Spirit strip from Jan. 10, 1943, might be one on which Kotzky did backgrounds, or even inked figures. [©2004 Will Eisner.]

“When Anything Happened, I Was Working On A Comic!”

5

“What a Good Artist/Illustrator Lou Fine Was” JA: What was Lou Fine like? I’ve never heard a bad word about him.

KOTZKY: Well, there wasn’t. Consider that Lou Fine was a big name in the business at that time. He never once treated me as if I was in a subordinate position. I was always an associate with him, and he was extremely nice. Although I ruined the penciling that he did many times, he never complained. He offered some suggestions, but it was never in the form of criticism.

You run into guys with temperament in this business, but Lou didn’t have any temperament at all. He didn’t have any ego. He was just Lou Fine and he was working there the same as the rest of us. He was very quiet. Lou and his wife Mary led a quiet life and they enjoyed each other very much.

JA: Did you socialize with him very often?

KOTZKY: We had a group up there: Lou Fine, Gill Fox, Jack Cole, and Zully Szenics (he lettered). We used to go out bowling in the evenings—friendly games, no competition.

Lou was the opposite of Jack Cole. Cole was a completely extroverted type of guy. Always had a gag. Lou was certainly intelligent. He probably would have done well in anything he attempted. You know he had a

(Above left:) Lou Fine’s son Elliot sent us this photo of Lou sitting in his studio, and we printed it in our Fine issue, A/E #17—but none of us knew the identity of the guy pretending to hit Fine with a hammer. We now know: ‘tis none other than Alex Kotzky, clowning around! (Above:) “Black Condor” splash page from Hit Comics #6 (Nov. 1940), drawn by Fine under his “Kenneth Lewis” pseudonym. This story, with restored art, was reprinted in Greg Theakston’s Lou Fine Comics Treasury. [Retouched art ©2004 Pure Imagination; Black Condor TM & ©2004 DC Comics.]

game leg. He had polio when he was younger and he limped. I think, to some extent, that made him a little more introverted.

Lou Fine was really a painter and an illustrator. He really didn’t belong in comics. He was wasting his time. In his later years, before he died, I think he spent almost all his time doing paintings. Gill Fox and I went out to his house when he died to see his wife, and he had all his paintings on the wall. With a little more effort and training, he could have been a successful illustrator. I know he liked the work of Saul Tepper very much, an illustrator from the 1930s who was an excellent artist and painter.

JA: Why do you think Fine abandoned that beautiful sweeping brush line, so organic and decorative, and switched styles when he went to work for the advertising agencies?

KOTZKY: It was less work and a better-quality work. At that time, comic books didn’t have the reputation that they have now. They’ve made new inroads in fine art. I guess it was the later influence of the (Left:) A spectacularly spooky “Ray” page by Fine from Quality’s Crack Comics #20 (March 1941), repro’d from Alan Light’s 1970s Special Edition Series #2.

[The Ray TM & ©2004 DC Comics.]

Quality Time-- part five-a

16

“I Didn’t Want to Do Apartment 3-G!” Interview with BRIAN KOTZKY, son of Alex Kotzky Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash (Left:) Alex Kotzky and young son Brian at the drawing board, 1958. (Below:) Margo and Tommy—two of the three “G’s” in Apartment 3-G—in strips drawn by Alex Kotzky, probably with the assistance of son Brian, for Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, 1989. (Right:) Brian with daughter Kim, 2001. Unless noted, all art and photos accompanying this interview were supplied by Brian Kotzky. [Art ©2004 North America Syndicate, Inc.]

[INTRODUCTION: Brian Kotzky is more than the son of a great comic artist. An artist in his own right, Brian’s paintings graced many a paperback cover over the years. He also became his father’s assistant on Apartment 3-G, taking over the art chores upon Alex Kotzky’s death. Now a teacher, Brian looks back at his father in an honest portrayal of a man totally dedicated to his craft. —Jim.]

“I Was Seven Years Old When He Got the Strip” JIM AMASH: Tell me about your father’s beginnings.

BRIAN KOTZKY: He was born in the Bronx on September 11, 1923.

He was one of four kids. He had an older half-brother Milton, also a sister and a brother. His father was a widower when he met my grandmother. My grandfather died right after my father graduated from the High School of Music and Art, so, though I understand he had a chance to go to college, that changed his plans, as he had to support the family to a large extent. Then, there was a rupture in the family dynamic, so he wasn’t close to his family. I know he took classes at the Art Students League, probably on the weekends.

JA: How many children did your parents have?

KOTZKY: Two—me and my brother Bruce. I was born in 1954, Bruce in ’58. Bruce lives out in Las Vegas. He did inherit some artistic talent, and while in college it appeared he was going into a career in theatre set design. But he changed his mind and now does retail work.

JA: Your first memories of your father’s work would be Apartment 3-G, wouldn’t it?

KOTZKY: Yes. I was about seven years old when he got the strip. I have very vague memories of him working in an upstairs studio before then. We lived in a couple of different houses, and he converted an upstairs bedroom into a home studio. In the late ’50s—before 3G—I remember he did other kinds of work, like comic strip advertisements such as Duke Handy.

I was proud of the fact that my father was doing something that he was good at. I was interested in art, so I could identify with what he did.

He wasn’t like other kids’ fathers: they left home to go to work,and my father didn’t. That made me feel a little self-conscious. He was an extreme example of a workaholic. That’s not a healthy thing. Working at home allowed him to develop a lifestyle where all he did was eat, sleep, and work. He had no hobbies. He allowed the comic strip to fill up all his available time. He was always upstairs working on Apartment 3-G. In terms of being a parent and doing things with the family—like fatherand-son activities—there was virtually none of that. I can remember maybe one or two occasions when he took time out and we threw the ball around.

I do believe that, when I was two to five years old, he was able to be more of a family man. We have home movies of family outings from that time period. But later he worked all the time. We’d call him down for supper, which was the one time of the day when the four of us were together. Other than that, he was home around the clock, but he was upstairs.

“I Didn’t Want to Do Apartment 3-G !”

“He Was a Real Perfectionist” JA: When I interviewed your father, he said he worked all the time because he was a very slow artist. Do you think he was that slow?

KOTZKY: If you mean that he was slower than other cartoonists... well, I don’t know if he was slow in that way. What was so time-consuming is that he spent a huge amount of his work week preparing to do the finished art. He had enormous reference files he collected from magazines and newspapers, and spent a lot of time looking over that material before he started to draw. He was a real perfectionist. If he was dissatisfied with the results, he’d keep erasing and reworking the pencils until he got it right. That will make you slower. His studio was filled with filing cabinets full of reference material, which I inherited when I took over 3-G. There was just enough space for his drafting table and a second drafting table, where I worked.

I tried to duplicate his working methods at first, but it was extremely frustrating. For instance, let’s say I had to draw an ambulance. I’d find a folder that was labeled “vehicles,” which was the size of a couple of phone books. I’d have to flip through hundreds of pictures to find what I needed. Maybe I’d get lucky and find one in ten minutes, but it could take 45 minutes to find a shot of an ambulance. If you wanted to draw that vehicle from a particular point of view, but don’t have the necessary reference, what do you do? Keep looking, hoping you’ll find the shot you need? Or use the information from the shot you have and invent the detail needed to make it look the way you envisioned it? You have to come up with a strategy.

JA: Since he didn’t have spare time for hobbies, I take it that he wasn’t much of a reader.

KOTZKY: The only time I remember him taking time to read anything was in 1978, when his kidneys failed and he was hospitalized for several months. Other than that, he would read the newspaper and Time magazine each week, and that was it.

But he watched TV or listened to the radio around the clock. He didn’t start working until late morning or early afternoon. For most of the time while I was growing up, he worked until around 3 a.m., and then went to sleep. He’d listen to the radio for a few hours, mostly to classic songs from the ’40s and ’50s and scores from Broadway plays. He loved to listen to Frank Sinatra. By late afternoon, he’d turn on the television to catch the news and segue into the evening sitcoms or dramatic shows. If there was a good movie on, he’d make a point of watching it.

17

more of Dad in the early years? I’ve talked to cartoonists who knew him in the ’40s and ’50s. In the 1950s he was a freelance advertising artist and cartoonist. He was out getting jobs and spent a lot of time in Manhattan dealing with art directors. So he was out of the house and led an active life until he started doing Apartment 3-G, which dramatically changed the pattern of his life. The guys who remember seeing my father in the flesh are those who knew him before 3-G. JA: Sam Burlockoff said he loved listening to radio talk shows.

KOTZKY: Yes. There used to be a mid-day show on New York City radio with a very opinionated guy named Jack O’Brien, who had a lot of celebrity guests.

JA: Was your father interested in politics?

KOTZKY: He wasn’t politically active, but had conservative political opinions. With me being a teenager in the 1960s, there was the classic generation gap between the parent and the rebellious kid of the ’60s.

Frankly, he was exaggerating the degree to which I was rebelling. My hair was a little long, but that was about the extent of it.

I think he felt threatened by the change in society that the 1960s brought. I think he felt he was part of President Nixon’s “silent majority.” He did not vote that I remember, largely because, in New York, the jury duty notices were taken from the voter registration lists.

He couldn’t chance being called for jury duty.

My father never drove. He depended on my mother to do that. That contributed to his reclusiveness. When he did get out, he’d immediately go to his studio when he returned home.

“He Had No Time” JA: Did he employ any assistants before his kidney problems in 1978?

KOTZKY: Yes. Ben Oda was his letterer from the beginning. He was Japanese; a very gracious guy. He’d stop by once a week to pick up the strips and scripts, and return a few days later. I think it may have been an Asian custom, but at Christmas time he gave both my brother and me presents. He was the letterer for a number of cartoonists, so he must have had quite a budget for buying presents for all the kids of the guys he was working for!

I’d come over a few nights a week and work for a few hours in mid-evening, like 8 to 10 o’clock.

Sometimes, he’d tell me about a movie he saw... but that movie wouldn’t come on until one a.m. sometimes. [laughter] If he mentioned it, it was usually because he was observing the camera angles or the visuals, like in an old John Ford western. He made a point of watching baseball games on TV. Most of the time he was concentrating on what he was drawing, but if something caught his attention, he’d look up and watch a little, then go back to work.

My dad did get out of the house once a week, because he was a religious man. He’d walk to church and attend on Sunday mornings.

JA: But people would come over to see him. Gill Fox told me he used to do that on occasion.

KOTZKY: Gill lived several hours away, and they’d talk on the phone from time to time. Maybe Gill saw

After Alex Kotzky’s death in 1996, Brian Kotzky drew Apartment 3-G for three years. These dailies are from Oct. 28-29, 1998. On the syndicate proofs, the typeset credit is “By Brian Kotzky and Lisa Trusiani.” [©2004 North America Syndicate, Inc.]

Quality Time-- part six

The Last Quality Editor

21

AL GRENET Talks about His Two Decades in the Comics Field—and Beyond!

Interview Conducted & Transcribed by Jim Amash

Al and Belle Grenet in a 1998 photo, flanked by a pair of Quality covers—one (at left) which Al edited, and one he also penciled and inked (at right). Plastic Man #43 (Nov. 1953) reflected the growing horror trend, and may or not be by the same artist(s) who drew the #47 splash used as this issue’s Plas cover.

Marmaduke Mouse was a late Quality hit, running 65 issues between 1946-56; issue #53 was from 1955. Photo & Marmaduke color proof courtesy of Al Grenet; thanks to Bob Bailey for the scan of the Plas cover. [Plastic Man TM & ©2004 DC Comics; Marmaduke art ©2004 the respective copyright holders.]

[INTRODUCTION: Over the years of Quality Comics’ existence from 1939-1956, publisher Everett “Busy” Arnold hired various people to edit his company’s books, beginning with cartoonist Johnny Devlin, and including Ed Cronin, Gill Fox, George Brenner, Harry Stein, and John Beardsley, among others. The last editor hired by Arnold was Al Grenet, who guided the books through until the end. Grenet oversaw the new trends that Quality followed amid the stormy seas of the 1950s, as Dr. Fredric Wertham’s attack on comics helped exact a final toll. But Grenet’s career is about more than just Quality Comics, though that is our primary focus here. In fact, he played an interesting part in Quality’s early days—and even in its nigh-posthumous life—though I won’t spoil the surprises for you in advance. I’ll let Al tell you about them. And about himself. —Jim.]

“I Got It Down to a System” JIM AMASH: Here’s a tough question for you: where and when were you born?

AL GRENET: Budapest, Hungary, February 28, 1915. If I’d been born a day later, I’d be four years younger for every year I’ve aged. I came to America in 1920. My family were refugees because of the First World War. We settled down in New York, where I lived until 1978. Then I moved to Florida.

I started out at seventeen as an errand boy in a drugstore. I got promoted to cashier and was in charge of the errand boys. I saw an ad in the newspaper—Walt Disney was looking for artists. I went up and took

the test, but they didn’t like what I did, so I did other jobs until 1938, when I saw another ad in the paper for an artist. It was Eisner & Iger. They gave me a week’s trial and I stayed there for five years, until I went into the Army.

JA: Who hired you? Eisner or Iger?

GRENET: It was both of them. It was very informal. I showed them some artwork and they started me off as an apprentice at the large sum of $5 a week. I erased pages and whited out mistakes for the first year I worked there. Then they saw I had some talent, and I started lettering for them.

I also did backgrounds. Eisner & Iger had a system. An artist was given a script and he drew the whole thing. Later on, I got to be the shop manager for Iger when he and Eisner split up. We had a room full of artists, who generally did the pencils and inks on their individual assignments.

I changed that. I broke things down to where an artist penciled the story and then we checked it over. After that, I lettered the story and put in the backgrounds before handing it to an inker to finish. I got so fast at lettering that I was doing 16 to 20 pages a day, without guidelines. I got it down to a system. It was like handwriting to me.

JA: That’s impressive. What was it like to work for Eisner & Iger?

GRENET: It was very rough. Jerry Iger was a little fellow who didn’t do much in the way of artwork, but was a very strict boss. This was in the days of the Depression when we worried about our jobs. He’d come in Monday about 10:00, look around and see that some of the guys were

22

Al Grenet

Eisner & Iger—together again for the first time! Will Eisner (on left) and Jerry Iger (on right) two or three decades back— flanking the sequence from Eisner’s 1986 graphic roman à clef titled The Dreamer in which his and Iger’s transparent doppelgängers form their late-’30s partnership. Photos courtesy of Will Eisner and Jay Disbrow. [Graphic novel art ©2004 Will Eisner.]

talking and some were working. Iger spoke with a lisp. He’d say [imitating Iger], “Jesus Christ! This is Monday, tomorrow’s Tuesday, and Wednesday’s coming. Half the week’s shot to hell and nothing’s done!” That’s the way he used to talk. People used to make fun of him. He was tyrannical in that sense.

When he put me in charge, he gave me the dirty work of firing people. He’d hire them on Monday and fire them on Friday. I felt very badly about doing that.

I remember one woman who really needed the job.

We hired her on Monday.

Iger told me to fire her on Friday. What he used to do was hire people when he got a load of work in, and then fire them once it was done. There was no security with him. It wasn’t a happy time in my life.

JA: That was after Eisner and Iger split up in 1939-40, of course. But earlier, what was Eisner doing while Iger was watching people?

GRENET: He was a very good artist and did a lot of the work himself.

He rarely bossed anyone around. He was a little bit egotistical. He was much younger than me and used big words all the time.

Rufus, “Where’s the crackers?”

Rufus said there weren’t any more, and Iger said, “What do you mean there aren’t any more? You ate all the crackers?” We were embarrassed because Iger was yelling at poor Rufus, but Iger used to yell at everybody. He was lucky that he never got beaten up, because there were a few guys who wanted to beat him up. I remember one guy threatened to beat him up, and Iger was such a little guy, he was shaking in his pants.

JA: When you started lettering for Eisner & Iger, how much were you paid?

GRENET: I was on salary and I think I got $24 a week. I also did outside lettering for Harry Chesler; he paid $2 a page. I also lettered all the cover titles for Eisner & Iger. I created the logos, like for Blackhawk, Smash, Crack, Doll Man, Plastic Man, and the rest. And later, all the logos for the romance comics and other comics we did while I was at Quality. I also colored the covers for Quality after World War II. When Eisner split from Iger, Busy Arnold took control of the comics.

Eisner was no longer packaging complete stories for him, because he was too busy doing the Spirit section.

“There Were a Few Guys Who Wanted to Beat [Iger] Up”

JA: Was “Doll Man” an Eisner creation?

JA: Was Lou Fine there?

GRENET: Yes.

GRENET: The fellow with the limp? Oh, yes. He was an excellent artist and a good-natured person. He sat there and quietly did his work. Mort Leav was there, too. Somebody’d open the window and he’d say, “I smell fresh air. Close the window.” [laughs]

JA: I’d like to ask you about some of the people at Eisner & Iger. Do you remember Alex Blum?

JA: Did the workers socialize after hours?

GRENET: A few of them did, but I don’t remember who. I remember one time when Iger invited all of us to his house—Aldo Rubano, me, and some others. Iger had a servant working for him named Rufus, who also worked in the office. Iger figured he wasn’t home during the day, so Rufus went to the office with him.

We sat down for dinner and Rufus served us the soup. Iger asked

GRENET: Yes. He was in his forties and we were all in our twenties, so we looked at him like he was an aged man. He was a fairly good artist but didn’t mix with the rest of us.

JA: Was Raphael Astarita there?

GRENET: Yes. We used to call him the “Esther-eater.” [laughs] I don’t remember that much about him, though he worked at Iger’s, too. Later on, I was working for Arnold when Astarita came in looking for work. I knew his work, of course, and told Arnold, “This fellow wants a job.”

Arnold wanted to see samples of his work, so I asked Astarita if he had

The Last Quality Editor brought anything with him.

He said, “No, I got rid of all that stuff that I did for Iger.” So I asked him to do a splash page so I’d have something to show Arnold, and he said, “What do you mean? I got to do a sample?” I explained that Arnold didn’t know him and had to see an example of his work. He got mad and left. He felt he was a good artist and didn’t have to do that. I knew he was a good artist, but I had to show his work to the boss. I should have hired him anyway.

JA: Getting back to Eisner & Iger, were Jack Kirby and Al Bryant there?

GRENET: I don’t think Chuck Cuidera did “The Blue Beetle.” At least, not while I was there. I remember Chuck was mainly an inker; that’s all he did for me later on.

JA: Cuidera did do the complete art on the early “Blackhawk” stories, so he could pencil.

GRENET: Maybe so. I wasn’t there when “Blackhawk” was created. I always thought Charles Wojtokowski created “The Blue Beetle.” You know, there were a lot of people working at those shops, and it’s hard to remember them all. I didn’t socialize with too many of them, so I didn’t get to know them personally.

GRENET: Kirby had already left, but Al Bryant worked there. Years later, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was at Pilgrim’s State Hospital on Long Island. He had a lot of problems with his wife and was a little eccentric. One day, he invited Aldo and me over to his house.

We came over, and Bryant was hiding behind the curtains... we saw him.

We knocked on the door, but he never answered, so I knew something was up.

JA: Did Cuidera create “Blackhawk”?

One day, Bryant escaped from the hospital and came over to Arnold’s. He was all messed-up and dirty-looking. He must have hitchhiked over. Arnold gave him $20. Bryant asked for a job, so Arnold gave him a corner to work in, but Bryant started drawing things that made no sense. I said to Arnold, “Maybe he escaped? Maybe he wasn’t released?”

Arnold called the police, and sure enough, that’s what had happened.

The police were there in five minutes and took him away. We never saw him again.

GRENET: I don’t remember “The Ray,” but “Black Condor” was created by Eisner.

Bob Powell was at Eisner & Iger, too. He was an okay fellow.

Artie Saaf was at Iger’s, and he was a pain. He thought certain things were funny, and since I was the “straw boss,” he didn’t like me. I went out one day and he put thumbtacks in my seat. I sat on those tacks and it hurt. Saaf thought it was funny, so I figured he was the one who did it.

I went over to him and put a choke lock on him; I was going to kill him.

I was very angry and he never did it again.

JA: Were you the only letterer at Iger’s?

GRENET: No. There was another man there named Milton Cohen.

“[Eisner and Iger] Were Never on Friendly Terms” JA: Do you remember Charles Sultan?

GRENET: Charlie? Oh, yeah. He was a good fellow and a good artist.

He was a freelance artist; he didn’t work in the shop. He was one of my friends. He didn’t talk that much. George Tuska was also a nice guy. Charles Wojtokowski worked in the studio, too. He drew “The Blue Beetle.”

JA: Right. Do you happen to know who created “The Blue Beetle”?

GRENET: I thought he [Wojtokowski] did.

JA: I always thought so, too. He worked under the name “Charles Nicholas.” But Chuck Cuidera told me that he created The Blue Beetle and that he used his first two names, “Charles Nicholas,” for a pen name. Cuidera said that Wojtokowski kept that pen name when he started drawing “Blue Beetle.”

It’s always hard to reconcile the sad end Al Bryant came to with the many great covers he drew showcasing Doll Man (among others). This art from the cover of Feature Comics #100 (July 1946), as restored by Bill Black and his AC Comics cohorts, appears in AC’s new collection of Quality masterworks, Golden-Age Greats Spotlight, Vol. 2. See their special ad on our flip side.

[Doll Man TM & ©2004 DC Comics; restored art ©2004 AC Comics.]

23

GRENET: He may have helped create “Blackhawk.” I can’t say for sure.

Chuck was a nice guy, but he liked to enlarge his repertoire. He may have drawn the early stories, and Eisner could have created “Blackhawk.”

JA: Do you know who created “The Ray” and “The Black Condor”?

JA: Do you remember any of the writers at the Eisner-Iger shop?

GRENET: Not really. I know Harry Stein was there. Writers weren’t prominent in those days.

JA: You were there when Eisner and Iger split up. Did they part on friendly terms?

GRENET: They were never on friendly terms. Iger had all these sayings and he’d insult Eisner with them. Like, “You’re as popular as a hat-

38

Comic Fandom Archive

It’s the 40th Anniversary of the

Alley Tally Party!

On March 21 & 22, 1964, Exactly Four Months after the Assassination of JFK, Nearly a Score of Comics Fans Gathered for the First “Pre-Comicon”!

JOIN US FOR A PHOTOGRAPHIC REMEMBRANCE OF THAT SEMINAL EVENT—WITH SOME RARE AND NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED IMAGES!

by Bill Schelly A Time for Celebration Is it really possible?

Can it be that forty years has passed since the Alley Tally Party was held at Jerry Bails’ house in Detroit?

Can it truly be four full decades since the seeds of the first comicon were planted?

The answer, O my fellow old farts, is YES! And, though it may bring intimations of our own mortality to cast our minds back to that first day of spring 1964 when the first sizable gathering of comics fans got together, it’s an opportunity to celebrate a true milestone in our history as a separate and distinct fandom—a fandom where no one need apologize for loving comic books. And that’s something worth celebrating with every fiber in our fannish beings!

What’s an Alley Tally Party?

In this issue we’ve tried to avoid printing most Alley Tally photos which can be seen in Bill’s still-available book The Golden Age of Comic Fandom. One oft-published photo from the 1964 event shows eight of the participants around a lamppost in front of Jerry Bails’ home, with Jerry crouching to squint at fan Alex Almaraz, who’s pointing at the camera. Well, here’s a different, never-before-published photo—of nine fans—gathered around said lamppost. [Standing, l. to r.:] Don Glut, Jim Rossow, Bob Butts, Dick Anderson, Mike Tuohey, Grass Green. [Crouching, l. to r.]: Jerry Bails, Alex Almaraz, Ronn Foss. Chuck Moss, who appeared in the other photo, was probably taking this one.

hero who (Roy reasoned), being a caveman, could arguably be called the “first super-hero.” The Academy of Comic Book Fans and Collectors was formed to nominate the candidates and to supervise the voting of what were never referred to as anything other than the Alley Awards... or the “Alleys.”

The first Alley Awards were given out for comics published in 1961, and Roy easily counted the votes solo because of a fairly small number of ballots. But by 1963 fandom had grown, as had the number of categories on the ballot, making the tallying a job of not-insignificant proportions. Estimates are that there were about 250 ballots in that third year of the awards... and twenty categories.

Even this early, Marvel Comics had made substantial in-roads into what during 1961-62 had been virtually a DC preserve. Stan Lee won “Best Writer” and “Best Editor,” and Amazing Spider-Man was voted “Best Comic Book,” with Fantastic Four right behind. In fact, Marvel won ten of the fifteen pro categories. (See full list of pro comics winners at end of article.)

With its very name, the Alley Tally’s purpose is proclaimed: a gathering for the purpose of counting the ballots cast in the 1963 Alley Awards, the original “Oscars” for comics fandom—or “comicdom,” as it was sometimes grandiosely called in that era. They had originated from a suggestion by future comics pro Roy Thomas in a letter written to Alter Ego’s founding editor/publisher, Jerry Bails, on October 25, 1961: “Your selfappointed #1 idea man was just thinking that Alter-Ego [still hyphenated at this stage] … should add a new feature: The Alter-Ego Award.” Roy’s suggested name for the award was the “Alley”… which referred as much to the first two When Ronn Foss and Grass Green picked up the South Bend Crew to drive them to Detroit, Keith Greene snapped this previously-unpublished photo of (l. to r.) letters of the fanzine’s name as it Bob Butts, Jim Rossow, and Ronn outside Jim’s house. did to Alley Oop, the comic strip

It was Maggie Thompson, now editor-in-chief of The Comics Buyer’s Guide, who dubbed the gathering the “Alley Tally,” a name that ever since has been associated with one of the most important events in the history of fandom.

Still, I’ve always believed that Jerry’s clarion call for help was really just the ready excuse to gather together the first substantial group of comic book fans from a multi-state area. Fans in population centers like Chicago and New York City had probably assembled before,

CAPTAIN GARY’S

starring:

CARLSON • LEWIS FUGATE • ROSS BEATTY MOLDOFF SWAN ANDERSON BENDER VAN BRIESEN ACERNO

No. 93 March 2004

Plus:

Marc Swayze’s

“We Didn’t Know...

It Was the Golden Age!” Thunder Girl vs. Mr. Atom.

Art ©2004 Bill Fugate (penciler) & P.C. Hamerlinck (inker); Thunder Girl TM & ©2004 Gary Carlson & Chris Ecker; Mr. Atom TM & ©2004 DC Comics.

44

Marc Swayze I wasn’t on the Phantom Eagle long before it became obvious that this comic book character differed distinctly from most of those with which I had become accustomed.

The kid had no magic super-power. Captain Marvel was a super super-hero; he could fly, lift autos and trains, and do just about anything imaginable. And there were others… Prince Ibis, for example, who had his magic “Ibistick.” But our boy had to bring most of his adventures to a close by his only available means … his fists!

By

[Art & logo ©2004 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel © & TM 2004 DC 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, he illustrated her earliest adventures, and he wrote and drew her classic origin story, “Captain Marvel Introduces Mary Marvel (CMA #18, Dec. ’42); but he was primarily hired by Fawcett 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. After leaving the service, he made an arrangement with Fawcett to produce art and stories for them on a freelance basis out of his Louisiana home. There he created both art and story for The Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics, in addition to drawing the Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip for Bell Syndicate (created by his friend and mentor Russell Keaton). After the cancellation of Wow, Swayze produced artwork for Fawcett’s top-selling 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-1950s. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been FCA’s most popular feature since his first column appeared in FCA #54, 1996.

Last issue, Marc looked back to when he was first assigned a Phantom Eagle story.

This time, he examines the daring young aviator’s use of his fists.

—P.C. Hamerlinck.]

The writers obviously were not expected to provide much aid to the artist when it came to those Golden Age fight scenes. A panel description in the story script was not likely to say, “The hero, countering neatly with his left, delivers a professionally maneuvered right cross to the head of his opponent, the foremost knuckle on his right hand on a direct line with his straight wrist and high elbow, for maximum power….”

Okay, for an issue or two… but as a permanent regular assignment? It conjured up visions of the rubber stamp complex… scene after similar scene of the hero flailing away wildly. It was not a pleasant thought… not for the Phantom Eagle nor for me. If fight he must, then he should go about it properly… skillfully… blow by blow… as though he knew how to fight!

It took me back…way back, to when I was a kid… in the alley behind our house… in a fight.

I had nothing against Ferguson. I hardly knew him. I don’t know why we were fighting and probably didn’t know then. A couple of older boys had brought him from up the street where he lived to our block, presumably, from the way they were cheering for him, to beat me up.

So there we were, slugging it out… for their entertainment.

Between blows, some issued, some taken, I glimpsed a face… at the top of our high board back fence. Someone was quietly watching from the yard. My brother!

I have never known why… but I began to cry. My pals, O.H. and T-Bone, insisted I was ahead, but it was too late… the fight was over. And I didn’t even have a bloody nose. Ferguson had a bloody nose. But I was crying.

My brother, the world’s greatest guy… except for Papa… was mad. Not at the other kids… mad at me! And disgusted! Kept calling me a snotty-nosed crybaby all the way to the house.

On payday, though, he brought home a set of boxing gloves, a punching bag, and some books on selfdefense… and boxing. I heard him saying to Mama, “He may grow up to have cauliflower ears, but he’s not going to grow up to be a sissy!”

That opened up a new world for me… and the neighborhood kids fell right in with it. Wooden six-guns and stick horses were laid aside, perhaps for good, and pugilism moved in… workouts, This 1940s pencil drawing by Marc Swayze was published for the first jogging, sparring. Weight divisions time in P.C. Hamerlinck’s Fawcett Companion: The Best of FCA—still were determined among us, a ring available from TwoMorrows. [Art ©2004 Marc Swayze; Phantom Eagle erected, bouts arranged, and, almost as TM & ©2004 DC Comics.] though planned to coincide, the movies began a series titled “The Leather Pushers,” starring actor Reginald Denny. Jack Dempsey, according to the newsreels, was on his way to the heavyweight championship of the Nothing like that. More like: “Continue fight.” world, and before long you could hear the big fights on the radio… if you knew anybody who had one.

It was up to the artist. Woe to those who knew little or nil about the

art of self-defense… or offense. Woe, also, to the “hero.”

It was good. Good for the kids, good for the adults they were to become. In the first place, when word got around the schoolyard that

Captain Gary’s Big Bang

Captain Gary’s Big Bang An Homage to Ages Golden and Silver

by P.C. Hamerlinck

47

Part I: GARY CARLSON Over a decade ago, Gary Carlson’s long-time collaborator Chris Ecker showed up one day bemoaning his frustration at failing to find any comic book penciling work, and always being told by publishers and editors that you “draw like an old guy.” His simple solution: to draw some old-time comics! The duo had worked together on Carlson’s Megaton comic during the 1980s, in which an older generation of heroes were to be replaced by Megaton and his friends. Ten years later, Carlson and Ecker decided to tell some of the back stories of those older characters, and a whole mythology– to be published under the banner of Big Bang Comics—seemingly began to write itself.

Many people perceive Big Bang as merely a retro comic or parody book, but a closer look reveals something more unique. Heartfelt tributes are paid to the source material, rather than satirization or injecting an “isn’t this stupid?” attitude into the stories.

Also, BB does not retell or do new versions of classic old stories.

“We try to write and draw ‘new old comics,’ in the styles of the creators who created the original, classic iconic characters,” says chief Big Bang writer and editor Gary Carlson. “For someone who has read all the old stories of their favorite character, it‘s like finding an issue that they’ve never read before.”

Carlson has even used veteran artists for BB covers whenever possible. Shelly Moldoff and Marty Nodell each drew a cover, and Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson teamed up for another (signing it “Swanderson”). At one time Kurt Schaffenberger—and more recently Nick Cardy—were set to do covers, but had to withdraw for health reasons. Even modern masters such as Alex Ross, Rich Buckler, and Terry Beatty have rendered Big Bang covers.

Just for a zane, we’ve stuck the title of this article on this cover art for the Big Bang Comics 2003 Summer Special #1, with art by Mark Lewis and veteran artist Karl Kesel. Kinda reminds one of an old early-1940s All-Star Comics cover

by E.E. Hibbard, nicht wahr? [©2004 Gary Carlson & Chris Ecker.]

Alan Moore describes Big Bang Comics as “a loving pastiche of everything good about comics.”

Indeed, Big Bang brings home the love for old comic books, neatly wrapped with new characters with Golden and Silver Ages all their

48

“An Homage to Ages Golden and Silver”

Carlson and Ecker have managed to get some stellar guest-star artists to illustrate material. (Clockwise:) current super-star Alex Ross’ version of Thunder Girl for the front cover of Big Bang Comics #0, 1995... Golden Age great Shelly Moldoff’s back cover for that same mag... #4’s cover by Terry Beatty... and a house ad featuring the cover to Big Bang #6 by Curt Swan & Murphy Anderson. [©2004 Gary Carlson & Chris Ecker.]