Alter Ego #4 Preview by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy Thomas ’ Legendary Comics Fanzine

No. 4 SPRING 2000

THE

FLASH

by Harry Lampert

Sixty Years Ha ve Gone By In

FLASH--and HAWKMAN’s

Been There All Along! SPECIAL SALUTE TO

THE SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF

FLASH COMICS REMEMBERING THE LATE GREAT

GIL KANE Featuring Featuring Rare Rare Art Art & & ARTIFACTS ARTIFACTS BY: BY:

Joe Kubert Shelly Moldoff Harry Lampert Gardner F. Fox Robert Kanigher Carmine Infantino Michael T. Gilbert Lee Elias E.E. Hibbard Moebius

5.95

In the USA Hawkman, Flash & Shadow Thief TM & © DC COMICS

Volume 3, No. 4 Spring 2000 Editor Roy Thomas

Associate Editor

Contents

Bill Schelly

Design & Layout Jon B. Cooke/ GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS Janet Sanderson

Consulting Editors John Morrow Jon B. Cooke

Winged Lightning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Writer/Editorial celebrating 60 years of Flash(es) and Hawkmen. What hath Superman and Flash Gordon wrought?

re:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

FCA Editor

Only space for a few corrections, due to our last-minute Gil Kane tribute.

P.C. Hamerlinck

A Moon… a Bat… a Hawk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Contributing Editor

A candid interview with Golden Age artist Sheldon Moldoff about Hawkman, Batman, Moon Girl… and EC.

Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus

Jerry G. Bails Ronn Foss, Biljo White Mike Friedrich

Special Kubert Consultant Al Dellinges

Two Short Conversations with Joe Kubert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Al Dellinges and Roy Thomas talk with the only man to draw the Winged Wonder in both the Golden and Silver Ages.

Joe Kubert and Me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Cover(s) Artist

Al Dellinges writes about his half-century-old obsession with the art of one of comics’ most honored illustrators.

Joe Kubert

Cover Color

The Life and Good Times of Gardner F. Fox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Tom Ziuko

Mailing Crew

Letters and records from the late co-creator of The Flash and Hawkman.

Russ Garwood, D. Hambone, Glen Musial, Ed Stelli, Pat Varker

And Special Thanks to: Mike W. Barr Lamar Blaylock Jerry K. Boyd Lynda Fox Cohen Ray A. Cuthbert Chris Foss Jeff Gelb David Hamilton Mark Hanerfeld Roger Hill Tom Horvitz Carmine Infantino Robert Kanigher Joe & Muriel Kubert Harry & Adele Lampert Randy & JeanMarc Lofficier

™

Dave Manak Scott McAdam Eugene L. Meyer Moebius Sheldon & Shirley Moldoff Rich Morrissey Albert Moy Jerry Ordway Ethan Roberts Kurt & Dorothy Schaffenberger Robin Snyder Tom Stewart Marc Swayze Dann Thomas Joel Thingvall Mike Vosburg Jerry Weist Marv Wolfman

The “Save Hawkman” Campaign. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 What? No regular title for Hawkman? Bill Schelly tells how comics fandom reacted to that fact in the 1960s.

Remembering Gil Kane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 A very personal reminiscence of the late great comic book creator by his friend and collaborator Roy Thomas.

Special Flash Section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About our cover: Kubert’s dynamic Hawkman graced the cover of Alter Ego, Vol. 2, #1, and now Joe’s generously allowed us to print—for the first time ever in color—his Hawkman vs. Shadow Thief drawing done for the 1977 Bay Con (San Francisco). Whenever the Feathered Fury starred on a Flash Comics cover in the 1940s, it sported a cameo image of the Fastest Man Alive—and vice versa—hence Harry Lampert’s Flash here. [Hawkman and Flash ©2000 DC Comics Inc.] Alter EgoTM is published quarterly 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@oburg.net. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $5.95 ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $20 US, $27 Canada, $37 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. Alter and Captain Ego ©2000 Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly. The Atom, Batman, Batwoman, The Black Pirate, Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Don Caballero, The Flash, Ghost Patrol, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Hawkgirl, Hourman, Ibis, Johnny Quick, Johnny Thunder, Kid Eternity, The King, Marvel Family, Mary Marvel, The Ray, Red, White & Blue, The Ring, Rose & The Thorn, Sargon, Sgt. Rock, Steve Malone, Superman, Viking Prince, The Whip, Wildcat ©2000 DC Comics Inc.; Moon Girl ©2000 William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc. The Golem ©2000 Protestant Digest. Tor ©2000 Joe Kubert. Lori Lovecraft ©2000 Mike Vosburg. All-Winners Squad, Angel, Blazing Skull, Bucky, Captain America, Captain Marvel, The Fin, Hulk, Human Torch, Iron Fist, Morbius, Patriot, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Super Rabbit, Terry Vance, Thing, Toro, Vagabond, Venus, Vision, Warlock, Whizzer ©2000 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Conan ©2000 Conan Properties, Inc.; Flash Gordon ©2000 KFS. Mr. Monster ©2000 Michael T. Gilbert. Droopy ©2000 Harry Lampert. Pogo ©2000 Walt Kelly Estate. The Flame, Samson, U.S. Jones ©2000 Fox Publications. Magno & Davey, Raven, Unknown Soldier ©2000 Ace Magazines, Inc. The Wizard ©2000 Archie Comics Group. Flyin’ Jenny ©2000 Bell Syndicate. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING

Writer/Editorial

Winged Lightning

or me, one of the greatest things about bringing back Alter Ego after three decades has been re-establishing contacts, even friendships that had lain dormant for years… or simply to give me an excuse to get in touch with old friends, or (hopefully) to make new ones.

That renewed contact, of course, is a doubleedged sword, as detailed below… but first: In 1939—the year Flash Comics #1, whose heroes Flash and Hawkman this issue of A/E celebrates, made its debut— events must have been seen as moving very fast indeed. Adolf Hitler, six years into his proclaimed “Thousand Year Reich,” had established Nazi Germany as a power to be respected, or at least feared, by old foes France and England. In September, only weeks after abruptly signing a peace treaty with the hated Joe Stalin and the U.S.S.R., Der Führer sent troops storming into neighboring Poland, overwhelming it swiftly in what became known as Blitzkrieg. “Lightning War.” By late 1939 things were moving quickly in the lesser world of comic books, too. Only a year-and-a-half after he had flung his first flivver on the cover of Action #1, Superman’s attributes had already been cloned by a whole passel of imitators: First Wonder Man, then Captain Marvel and Master Man, matched the Man of Tomorrow power for power; Batman borrowed the costume and secret identity; Human Torch and Sub-Mariner mutated his ability to survive fire and the briny deep into specialties of their own.

Mitchell’s antebellum South, “gone with the wind.” It all makes me wish I’d brought A/E back years ago… or that I had more time. But don’t we all? For, the flight of time is, indeed, swift— Hawkman and The Flash, put together. Winged lightning, indeed. As I readied this issue, time caught up with two friends of mine—one the consummate comics professional, the other a longtime fan just as devoted to comics in his own way. From 1959-60 forward, Gil Kane became one of the artistic kingpins of the Silver Age, after two decades of laboring in the shadow of other artists. After Green Lantern, then The Atom, and later a significant body of excellent work for Marvel, DC, and other companies (including publishing on his own, more than once), he never again stood in any artist’s shadow. Gil, whom I was privileged to call friend for just over thirty years, passed away on January 31, 2000, after the return of the lymphoma he had staved off more than a decade earlier.

Though news of his passing came as this issue was in the final stages of And over at All-American Comics, a new company production, I’ve written a memoir of our allied with Superman’s publisher, National/DC, two more friendship and collaborations which of his attributes—speed and flight— appears in the issue. And in June, as would be spun off into separate Gil Kane (1926-2000) was justly proud of the oft-overlooked run of already planned, A/E will feature one Superman stories he and Marv Wolfman produced during the 1980s. This characters by writer Gardner F. Fox, of Gil’s last interviews, which deals powerful sketch reminds us why that work should not be forgotten. editor Shelly Mayer, publisher M.C. with the early days of comics. [Superman ©2000 DC Comics, Inc.; courtesy of Jeff Gelb.] Gaines, and a few talented artists. Another who has left us too soon was Mark Hanerfeld.

Mentioning my esteemed correspondent Gardner Fox brings me back to the first two paragraphs above. Perhaps I simply had to wait until I had grown old enough myself (I turned 59 last November, incredible as that seems to me) to be able to fully appreciate the notion of “time in its flight.”

I’d known him since the late ’60s, when he palled around with Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, et al. in New York, winding up as an assistant editor (and occasional scripter) for DC, and as the model for Abel, the host of The House of Secrets.

Since the early-’98 revival of Alter Ego, it’s been a real pleasure—if occasionally a bittersweet one—to again have an excuse to question both my contemporaries and my elders. After all, they, and only they, can truly document a world that is now, every bit as much as Margaret

As Mark Evanier detailed in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1367 (1/26/00), Mark H. was a lifetime booster of comics. Indeed, he’d planned to write for A/E about the Silver Age Flash, with the cooperation of his admired friend Carmine Infantino; and a Kubert Hawkman sketch which Mark

A Moon… a Bat… a Hawk—

A Moon... A Bat... A Hawk A Candid Conversation With Sheldon Moldoff

Interview Conducted and Edited by Roy Thomas Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson [EDITOR’S NOTE: Under his quasi-pseudonym Shelly, Sheldon Moldoff would be the Hawkman artist from Flash Comics #2-61 and in All-Star Comics #1-23. But Shelly’s accomplishments go far beyond even the Winged Wonder.] ROY THOMAS: Shelly, you and Irwin Hasen [the second regular artist of the Golden Age Green Lantern] are about the same age, and you seem to have one of the very same major influences: sports cartoonist Willard Mullin. SHELLY MOLDOFF: Irwin and I only found that out maybe twenty years later. When I got out of school—or I may have even still been in school—I admired Mullin’s sports cartoons. Their strength was his ideas, and his little sketchy cartoon characters, which I loved. So I got on the subway and went down to the New York World-Telegram office and just introduced myself, and he was very nice. This had to be about 1936 or 1937, or maybe a year earlier.

everybody, I adapted that style to comic books, because I thought it was the best. I really loved comic books when they started, not only because of the medium it was—a complete story, which was terrific—but the fact that it was a chance to sell work. Because if you had to wait for an opening in a newspaper or syndicate, you could wait forever! There are only so many strips that a newspaper carries. RT: Some people still think of the comic strip as being automatically superior; but when you realize a comic book can do five-, ten-, even 100-page stories—that makes it a whole different medium, and just as valid in its own way. MOLDOFF: That’s why the comic book became so successful. It wasn’t a cliffhanger. You didn’t have to wait till tomorrow to see another four panels, and the next day another four panels. You sat down, and you read a complete eight- or ten-page story. RT: I understand another well-known comic book artist had something to do with your starting cartooning… Bernard Baily [artist of “Hour-Man,” “The Spectre,” et al.].

I would go watch him work. Sometimes when I was there he’d be stuck and he’d say, “I’ve got to do something on baseball. Got any ideas, Sheldon?” And I’d say, “How about this or that?” Several times he did take my suggestions, and he’d let me just sit there and watch him, and it was great. I think I learned a lot just from the way he moved his little cartoon characters. RT: It’s no surprise that you list Hal Foster and Alex Raymond as influences—every comics artist back then admired those two, and Milt Caniff—but I’ve read that in your high school yearbook in 1937 you listed Walt Disney as the man you most admired.

Shelly Moldoff with a recent re-creation of his first Hawkman cover for Flash Comics (#8), and what he calls “my favorite cover.” [Photo courtesy of Sheldon Moldoff; Hawkman, Flash, Johnny Thunder, Whip, King, and Cliff Cornwall ©2000 DC Comics Inc.]

MOLDOFF: I was the staff cartoonist on the high school paper, and I thought animation was fantastic. I remember when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came out, and everybody said to me, “Oh, a fulllength cartoon? That’s ridiculous… it’ll fall on its face!” I said, “No, this is going to be a classic!” Sure enough, it opened in the Radio City Music Hall in New York, and it played to sell-out crowds for weeks and weeks and weeks! He proved it could be a great new art form and story form. In those days, we wanted to be cartoonists, and we didn’t even know what super-heroes were. My ambition was to learn how to draw, and then have a funny cartoon character and sell it to a newspaper. I never thought in terms of straight adventure. And then, when Flash Gordon started to make an impression on

MOLDOFF: Yeah, he lived in the same apartment house I did in the Bronx. He was a few years older than me; he went to James Monroe High School, and he was also his school’s newspaper cartoonist. He was a very good-looking guy, and I think he was class president. I was drawing in chalk on the sidewalk—Popeye and Betty Boop and other popular cartoons of the day—and he came by and looked at it and said, “Hey, do you want to learn how to draw cartoons?” I said, “Yes!” He said, “Come on, I’ll show you how to draw.”

So we went across the street and sat on a bench in the park, and he showed me how to start with a circle, and how to make the body, and how to make a smile, and the proportions for cartoons. He said, “Keep practicing. I live on the fourth floor, and if you want to show me some of your work, I’ll be glad to look at it.” So we became friendly, and I’d periodically go up and show him my stuff, and he would help me and criticize me.

Then he moved away while I was still in high school, and then a few years later I was at National bringing in some filler pages for Vin Sullivan and in walks Bernard Baily! He looked at me, and he said, “Sheldon?” I said, “Yeah, Bernie, how are ya?” He said, “Well, you made it, huh?” [laughs] I said, “Yeah, yeah, thanks to help from you and other people, I’m a cartoonist!”

No moon in sight, but bats and hawks we’ve got! This beautiful 19” x 14” color commission piece, done in 1991, is from Ye Editor’s private collection. [Art ©2000 Sheldon Moldoff; Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Batman, Batwoman ©2000 DC Comics Inc.]

The same thing happened when I was admitted into the National Cartoonists Society in the early ’40s. At a meeting, when they announced the new members, I stood up… and you get a little round of applause and greetings… and who comes out of the crowd but Willard Mullin! He came over to me and said, “Shelly, I’m so glad to see you’re here! You’re one of us now.” Irwin Hasen had a similar experience. RT: Although the recent “Millennium” reprint of the first issue of Action Comics [1938] listed the author of the sports cartoon in that issue as “Unknown,” that was your work, wasn’t it? MOLDOFF: Yes. I did those things because of my interest in sports and because of Willard Mullin’s advice. The one in Action #1 was one of the earliest things I sold. I also sold such filler pages to several of the other magazines. It would be sports oddities, or movie oddities, or “Believe It or Not” Ripley-style facts. Vin Sullivan and I got along great, and I sold many, many pages to him. That’s how I began in comic books. RT: One area of your career we won’t deal with much here, because it was covered in A/E, Vol. 2, #5 [flip section of Comic Book Artist #5], is one of your first jobs— assisting Bob Kane on “Batman” back in ’39.

funny cartoon strip, “Rusty and His Pals.” RT: How much professional comics work had you done by this stage? MOLDOFF: Maybe a couple of filler pages… no strips [i.e., stories]. Someone told Bob about me, and he called me, and I went over to see him in the Bronx—we both lived in the Bronx—and I started working for him. I met Bill Finger there, and we were gung-ho. A lot of people have asked me, “Should Bill Finger’s name be up there [on “Batman”]? The only thing I can say is, at that time, we were all excited that we were working, you know? Bill Finger was a frustrated writer. There were not too many markets. Then, all of a sudden, here’s Batman, and his friend Bob needs as many scripts as he can provide. As soon as he finishes one, he’s got another one to do. All of a sudden, we’re making money!

RT: After all, that was the tail end of the Depression. And I remember what Jack Nicholson said when he won an From Shelly’s high school Oscar for One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest: “I’m still yearbook. Even then, he getting used to working steady!” [laughs] knew what he liked! [courtesy of S.M.]

MOLDOFF: He had just started “Batman,” and he needed help, because he was also doing a strip called “Clip Carson” and another

MOLDOFF: That was the main thing, you know? Nobody thought “Batman” was going to go for sixty years and be the industry that it became. All we wanted to do was make a couple of bucks, plus we’re in print—which is every writer’s or artist’s ambition, to be in print—so we were satisfied at the time.

A Moon… a Bat… a Hawk—

RT: How long did you work for Bob Kane that first time?

even the very first “Batman” cover by Bob Kane [for Detective Comics #27, 1939] was a Flash Gordon swipe—which nobody ever seems to have noticed before! Kane’s cartoonier style hides it, but the pose is a swipe. Which is okay. Everybody uses swipes; there’s nothing wrong with that.

MOLDOFF: Oh, I’d say a couple of months. But I wanted to do my own work, and Sheldon Mayer offered me the chance. So I started drawing “Cliff Cornwall” [in Flash #1]. It was written by Gardner Fox, who was Sheldon Mayer’s main writer. Also, I kept doing “Clip Carson.” RT: “Clip Carson” and “Cliff Cornwall”… how did you keep them straight? MOLDOFF: Well, one is in the jungle and the other is a detective! [laughs] “Cliff Cornwall” lasted a few months in Flash, but that was a period of great change in comic books. All of a sudden everybody wanted super-heroes. RT: As of Flash #3, Dennis Neville, the first “Hawkman” artist, was gone, and Harry Lampert had left “The Flash,” and you and E.E. Hibbard were doing those features. Did you ever find out why these big changes?

MOLDOFF: I had met M.C. Gaines when I first walked into Sheldon Mayer’s office, and he took a shine to me. I started working. Later on, I did special things that Gaines had me do… not in comic books, but publicity-type things. He’s the one who said, “We’re going to put you on ‘Hawkman,’ and do whatever you want with it. Do a good job; I know you can do it.” And that was it! RT: How did the idea come to you to employ the Alex Raymond approach? Neville hadn’t done the strip that way. MOLDOFF: No, his version was completely different. But when I looked at “Hawkman” and read a couple of stories, I said to myself, “This has to be done in a Raymond style.” I could just feel it, like Raymond—or Foster. RT: How did you work it? Had you kept a collection? Because you obviously couldn’t go out and buy a collection of Flash Gordon or Prince Valiant in 1939 the way you can now. MOLDOFF: Oh, I saved those Sunday pages and the daily papers for years! There isn’t an artist around that does not have a file… a “morgue.” RT: Arlen Schumer discovered, while composing a cover for A/E V2#5, that

MOLDOFF: As a matter of fact, I met Albert Dorne early in my career; he had a cousin my age who introduced me to him. At that time he was considered the top commercial artist in New York City. He did ads for everybody; he was unbelievable. He had several different styles. He had a tremendous drawing board, and on it were tacked different swipes. When he got a job from an agency, regardless of what it was, he’d first get swipes. That would bring him up to date on every possible angle that would benefit the illustration. Then he went to work! Dorne was a master craftsman, but he found that, using swipes, you had something to lean on, and it could enhance your work! It could be photographs, it could be drawings, it could be color, it could be anything! But it helps you to get a better finished product.

RT: What was the first cover you did? MOLDOFF: It was for More Fun Comics. A scene of a hunter being attacked by two wolves. Another early one was a pirate cover for Adventure Comics. [See illustrations on p. 8.] RT: What quality do you think your work had—like that of Creig Flessel, Howard Purcell, Irwin Hasen, a few others—that made DC’s editors say, “We want you, rather than the interior artist, to do the cover of Flash Comics #1 or the first Green Lantern cover on All-American [#16]?” MOLDOFF: As I said, M.C. Gaines took a shine to me. He liked my style; he liked the realism. We were competing with the newspapers. When he picked up the Sunday papers, he saw Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, Terry and the Pirates. When he picked up a comic book, there was a tremendous difference in the quality of the art.

In 1939, Shelly was serving as Bob Kane’s assistant on “Batman”; sixty years later, he did this Kane-style commission piece for fan/collector Jerry Boyd. [Art ©2000 Shelly Moldoff; Batman ©2000 DC Comics Inc.]

And then, all of a sudden, he saw me… an 18-year-old coming around, and I’m almost a student of Raymond, and by God, the stuff looks good—it looks like Raymond!

Two Short Conversations with Joe Kubert

Two Short Conversations with

Joe Kubert Conducted by Al Dellinges and Roy Thomas Conversation One: Kubert/Dellinges [ED. NOTE: Al Dellinges has spent years studying and even tracing the comic art of Joe Kubert. The following interview, conducted by mail, was previously printed in Al’s self-published volume Joe Kubert: A Golden Age Index, in 1978, and dealt primarily with his art during the 1940s, when Kubert was in his teens and early twenties.] AL DELLINGES: In Flash Comics #62, your first Hawkman job in that magazine, it looks as though you misspelled the name of Hawkman on the splash page. JOE KUBERT: That was apparently the act of a young, over-zealous cartoonist. And you’re absolutely right, Al—I did misspell the title name. This must be a “first” of some sort. Boy, am I red-faced! AD: The quality of the artwork in Flash #71 is quite superior to any previous issues. Did you feel you finally arrived at your potential with that story? KUBERT: It’s very difficult to look at these things in retrospect. I do know that I entered into each job with the hope and desire that it’d be better than the last. I still do, even today. Incidentally, do you notice the back-slanted lettering in the strips? These were my first experience in lettering—at the behest of Sheldon Mayer, my then-editor. AD: The splash pages of the next five issues of Flash Comics retain the same quality as #71; however, some of the artwork was tight, while some appeared loose. Was mood a factor during work on these jobs? KUBERT: I might have been the subject matter that dictated the style and approach I used. I don’t really know. All I do know is that, looking at some of this material—the distortions and the bad drawing—gives me the shudders! AD: Did you work at home or at a studio? KUBERT: Most of the years I’ve spent in the business have involved my working at home. At one time or another I’ve worked at “studios” which were set up by a group of guys including myself, fellows like Alex Toth, Carmine Infantino, Hy Rosen, Howie Post. AD: The splash page of Flash #75 is the only one in which Hawkman did not appear.

Any reason why you didn’t include him? KUBERT: I tried my best to have the splashes look as different as possible, design-wise. Other than that, I’ve no idea why I didn’t include Hawkman. Incidentally, if I’m Hawkman head by Kubert, done for a ’70s San Diego not mistaken, the Comic Con program. [Art ©Joe Kubert; Hawkman lettering (except ©2000 DC Comics Inc. Thanks to Al Dellinges.] for the first caption letters) was done by someone named Sol Harrison—now president of National Periodicals—and one of my dearest friends. AD: Most of your covers and splash pages show Hawkman on the left side of the page. Any particular reason? KUBERT: Yes. We [artists] were given to understand that the magazines on retail display racks usually showed the top [title] of the cover and the left-hand side. So we tried (and still do) to design/plan the cover with the star character on the left-hand side. AD: How do you account for the marked improvement in your work within a relatively short time? For instance, the artwork in Flash Comics up to issue #70 was okay, but Flash #71 was a professional achievement in every respect. KUBERT: That’s a matter of your own personal judgment, Al. As I mentioned before, looking at all this work today makes me cringe. But I believe it’s a good idea for the work to be shown, if for no other reason than to allow those people who are trying to break into the business the opportunity to see and learn from my early and most amateurish efforts. AD: Flash #76 has the finest total overall quality of all issues to that point. I know it was a long time ago, but were you exceptionally proud of the job you did on that one? KUBERT: I think perhaps you’re more affected by the story than the illustrations, Al.

Photo of Joe Kubert in the 1970s. [Courtesy of Muriel Kubert]

AD: Hawkman in Flash #85 lacked the quality that was present in Flash #76, and Hawkman began changing in style

Two Short Conversations with Joe Kubert this period? KUBERT: I really don’t recall. But, at one time or another, I’ve worked for possibly every [comic book] publishing house in the business. There were 25 to 30 different publishers, as opposed to today’s three or four. It was a very exciting time. AD: How long did it require to complete a nine-page [Hawkman] story? KUBERT: The time that it takes to complete a page varies tremendously, depending on the subject. Some pages may take two to three hours to complete (pencil and inks). Others may take all day. Working “by the clock” can be terribly self-defeating, I think. AD: Judging from the amount of details in your backgrounds, I get the feeling you were never overly concerned in the amount of time you spent on each sketch. KUBERT: I guess that’s true—and remains true. AD: Your drawings contain a good deal of extra artwork like pictures on the walls, frame mouldings, fireplugs, bricks in buildings, and many other items that enhance your illustrations. This must have required a lot of extra time. KUBERT: Again, time was not (and is not) the criteria. Backgrounds and detail are multipurposeful. To enhance an illustration, and to lend credence and believability to the story. If mishandled, those details can destroy the illustration/story. AD: Your angle shots are great. Your shadow effects create beautiful designs. Any particular comments on how you handled these? KUBERT: The artist/cartoonist is casting director, director, and cameraman all rolled into one. Design and composition are tools to be utilized to keep a pace—transition—and impact that will be accepted by the reader.

While Joe may not think much of his art from 1944-49, Al Dellinges and Roy Thomas beg to differ! This page from “Land of the Bird Men” in Flash #71 (May 1946) even has Hawkman in all seven panels. [©2000 DC Comics Inc. Original art from R.T.’s collection; both purchased from Joel Thingvall, acting as agent for Jon Chester Kozlak.]

and costumes. Any feelings you care to express concerning these? KUBERT: I think I tried to get a little too “cutesy-pie” on this cover, and I guess it didn’t come off. AD: Was time, or a lack of it, a major element in determining the manner with which you handled Hawkman in the later issues, say #88 through #104? KUBERT: Not really. I’d say I spent at least as much time on all the work I do and have done. As a matter of fact, one of the stories that pleased me (at the time) was “The Ghost.” So, you see—it’s all a matter of personal taste. Generally, I try to do the kind of work that pleases me, rather than anyone else. If it pleases others, as well, that’s great. AD: Your next assignment after Flash #76 was Flash #85, a lapse of about twelve months. Do you recall what other art jobs you did during

AD: How do you approach anatomy?

KUBERT: The mistake is made by many aspiring young cartoonists that anatomy may be learned from comic books or syndicated strips. Wrong! These are exaggerated (and often incorrect) examples. Figure drawing from life (both nude and draped) is absolutely essential to a knowledge of anatomy to be applied to any form of art in which the human figure is portrayed. AD: Animals—how about those lizards? KUBERT: I dunno, I guess I had a sort of “thing” for creepy-crawly things. I never realized it until I looked through these old stories. Seems like I stuck ’em in every conceivable place. And some places that weren’t conceived. AD: Do you recall any outstanding remarks or comments made to you by your peers on jobs such as “The Golem,” “Alabam,” and “Hawkman”? KUBERT: Not really, Al. “The Golem” meant a great deal to me

Joe Kubert and Me

Joe Kubert and Me by Al Dellinges

s a youngster I just loved Hawkman.

At some point, however, I switched my loyalty over to The Atom, and that’s where I stayed—until the mid-1940s, when I first encountered Joe Kubert’s artwork on the Hawkman character, which seems to have had a lasting effect on me. I think it’s safe to say that I am probably Joe Kubert’s biggest fan.

My qualifications are that I have copied/traced nearly every comic book story he ever worked on. In the beginning, I thought that if I became more familiar with his style of drawing, my work would become just like this. My problem was, I never learned to draw well enough to be able to incorporate his style into mine. But it wasn’t a total loss. I found enormous pleasure in tracing his lines, and the better I got at it, the more fun it was. It would be nice to find some new Kubert art to copy every day, but that type of thing stopped turning up long ago. So I just keep copying the same stories over and over, trying to improve each new attempt. In 1973 or thereabouts, I had the pleasure of working with Joe on a project that I found most rewarding. DC wanted to reprint the Tor stories Joe had originally done for St. John Publishing Company in the early 1950s. As far as I knew, he still had his original art, but preferred not to use it, and Al once wrote that “This is the asked me to copy the pages from only drawing Kubert sent me that the original comic books, which he I never used somewhere.” No would provide for me on loan. (I longer, Al! [©2000 Joe Kubert.] already had issues #1 and #3.) The way I copied the pages was to take a 35 mm color slide of each comic book page and project it onto the wall at the desired size, which was about “twice up,” or 200%, of the size of the printed comic. Then I would attach a piece of illustration board to the wall and ink the images on the wall with a brush. It took me about eighteen hours to do each page. Joe had the lettering done later—by one of his sons, I believe. He paid me $15 a page, which was fine with me, as I valued working with him. I was in my early forties at the time and found the entire project enlightening. I copied three complete Tor stories and one “Danny Dreams” story (from the first and third St. John issues of One Million Years Ago/Tor); these were printed in issues #2, 3, and 4 of DC’s Tor in 1974. Around that time I published the Joe Kubert Golden Age Index, so it was a good time for me. After I finished the fourth story, Joe told me they had found

You name it—Joe Kubert’s probably done it—and Al Dellinges has published something about it! Joe drew a special cover for Al’s Joe Kubert: The War Years in 1990; and Al created a montage of early JK work for his Joe Kubert: A Golden Age Index in 1975. [Art ©2000 Joe Kubert and Al Dellinges, respectively; Sgt. Rock, Hawkman, Flash, Viking Prince, Sargon, Wildcat ©2000 DC Comics Inc.; Tor ©2000 Joe Kubert; Tarzan ©2000 ERB Inc.]

another way to reproduce the rest of the artwork they wanted to use, so I was no longer needed, and I moved on to other projects. Later, I worked with Roy Thomas on two Kubert/ Hawkman-related projects for DC Comics. First came a “reprint” of the “Land of the

The Life and Good Times of—

THE LIFE AND GOOD TIMES OF

GARDNER F . FOX A Letter from the Co-Creator of Flash and Hawkman [NOTE: As anyone who has been following Alter Ego (Vol. 2-3) and/or the DC Archives series knows, Gardner F. Fox (1911-1986) was both one of the most prolific and one of the most important writers in the more than sixty-year history of comic books. While Michael T. Gilbert (with a bit of help from Mr. Monster) has been digging through the Fox papers at the University of Oregon (Eugene) from time to time, this issue of A/E would seem to be the place to take a closer look at the cocreator of The Flash, Hawkman (twice), Doctor Fate, The Justice Society of America, Adam Strange, The (Silver Age) Atom, et al. The following missive from Gardner to comics fan James Flanagan, dated March 26, 1979, was printed in Robin Snyder’s History of Comics, Vol. 2, #2, Feb. 1991. In some places Gardner appears to be answering specific questions posed to him earlier by his correspondent; the reader can generally surmise what those questions were. A few editorial notes have been added for clarity. The letter is ©2000 by the Gardner Fox estate. Now, here is Gardner in his own words:]

my junior year), and the idea sounded good. I have since discovered that I was the very first writer hired to do comic book writing—I beat Otto Binder by about six months. Using my law school background, I invented Steve Malone, District Attorney, and a story about him was my very first comic book yarn. I followed this with a Zatara, and I was on my way. The pulps I read ’way back then were Argosy, All Story, Amazing, and some of the sports pulps. My favorite authors were A. Merritt, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and in the mystery field, John Dickson Carr. There was also Harold Lamb, Jeffrey Farnol, and one or two others. I was in at the early stages of Flash Comics. I worked with Sheldon Mayer, boy-editor at the time, and came up with the Flash, Hawkman, King Standish (based on Frank Packard’s Grey Seal novels, if I recall correctly), and Cliff Cornwall. I also wrote the short stories which Flash Magazine carried in those days. All in all, I have written over four thousand comic book stories. My mind reels at this when I stop to think about it. If you figure that I wrote in the span of thirty years, and break it down, you’ll see what I mean.

o start with, I got into comics because the law, back in those Depression Days, was not something at which to get rich, so when a good friend Gardner Fox in retirement, probably late 1970s or early of mine—Vin Sullivan, whom I’d known ‘80s. [Photo courtesy of daughter Lynda Fox Cohen] since the second grade of grammar school—suggested I try my hand at writing comics (a completely new thing, back in those days), I fell in with the idea. I’d written a lot. I was on the high school paper, the college newspaper (I wound up being “Steve Malone,” from an early issue of Detective Comics, drawn by Don Lynch. Editor in Chief of [©2000 DC Comics Inc. Courtesy of Jerry Bails.] the college paper in

I worked from the beginning with the Justice Society stories, though the idea of creating the Justice

The “Save Hawkman” Campaign

Wheet! Wheet! Calling all fans of the Winged Wonder! Rally ’round to hear about comic fandom’s first fabulous cause extraordinaire:

The “Save Hawkman ” Campaign Focusing on the drive by 1960s comics fans to persuade DC Comics to award Hawkman and Hawkgirl an ongoing series, as epitomized by one of the Hawks’ most ardent fans, Mike Vosburg... with an assist from Ronn Foss and others.

by Bill Schelly I. FIRST FLUTTERINGS The hero revivals by DC Comics (then National Periodical Publications) catalyzed the formation of comics fandom in the early 1960s. New versions of The Flash and Green Lantern were received enthusiastically, and the introduction of a re-tooled Justice Society (as the Justice League) would inspire fans Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas to launch the first super-hero comics fanzine, Alter-Ego, in early 1961. Everyone wondered—who would be the next hero from the First Heroic Age of Comics in the 1940s to be brought forward to the era of John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier”?

months ago [Julius Schwartz] asked me if I would be interested in drawing Hawkman again,” Kubert wrote. “My answer was a resounding yes! I believe Hawkman will benefit from my experience of two decades in the comic book business. I feel I can apply things I couldn’t even visualize 15 years ago. I sincerely hope that the readers will enjoy reading Hawkman as much as I will enjoy drawing him.” Alter-Ego #1 (March 1961) and the third Hawkman try-out issue (Brave and Bold #36, cover-dated June-July 1961) appeared within a month of each other. Comics fandom was born, and so, too—it seemed—was a new crime-fighting career for the Hawks. There was little doubt that DC had struck paydirt again. The assumption among most fans was that Hawkman’s progression to his own magazine was assured.

When DC editor Julius Schwartz announced that Hawkman would be the next of the classic heroes to return, he was already cognizant of the new breed of older, more sophisticated super-hero fans. Since the re-birth of The Flash in Showcase #4 in 1956, Julie had received first a trickle, then a steady stream of correspondence from high school and college students, teachers, and other unusually knowledgeable, perceptive readers. Mike Vosburg, 1963. [Photo courtesy of M.V.]

He valued their opinions enough to send them advance black-&white photostats of the Winged Wonder’s debut story, which was scheduled for The Brave and the Bold #34 (Feb.-March 1961), “Creature of a Thousand Shapes!,” written by Gardner Fox and illustrated by Joe Kubert. This way, the fans’ letters would be received in time to appear in a letter column in the very next issue of B&B, which would feature a second Hawkman adventure. The reception of the four “guest critics” was, overall, highly enthusiastic. Jerry Bails wrote, “There could have been no better selection of an artist for Hawkman than Joe Kubert. His drawings are superb.” Ronnie Graham was congratulatory: “I’m happy to see Hawkman revived after all these years. He should be more successful than Green Lantern, and possibly Flash.” Ron Haydock added, “This character has got to hit again!” Roy Thomas described the issue as “excellent,” and concluded, “I hope that your great new Hawkman comic runs a hundred issues or so.” In that same letter column, Kubert provided a capsule autobiography, which included the fact that he had drawn the original Hawkman strip starting in 1945, when he was just eighteen years old. “A few

The “Save Hawkman” Campaign

II. HAWKMAN FAILS TO SOAR Then came a startling announcement in On the Drawing Board #4, 10/7/61, Jerry’s A-E spin-off featuring pro comics news. “The latest word is: Hawkman will have to have another three-issue try-out. No schedule date yet….” Suddenly the future of Hawkman was in question. Sales, according to Schwartz, had fallen short of expectations. Partly to please the vociferous older fans, partly because of his own belief in the character, Schwartz committed to a second try-out series beginning in B&B #42 by the same creative team, starting over with an expanded telling of their origin. By the time the second series began appearing on spinner-racks, from April to August 1962, comics fandom had experienced a dramatic influx of members. Jerry Bails’ mailing list had swelled to over five hundred names by the end of ’61, and the growth accelerated in the following year. Some fans specialized in researching data from old comics books; others preferred to buy and sell those rare earlier editions; another group, those with a creative bent, contributed to the burgeoning number of amateur magazines devoted to the medium.

III. ENTER: “VOZ” One of the most active of this new wave of enthusiasts was a 15-year-old comics fan living in Pontiac, Michigan. His name was Mike Vosburg, or simply “Voz.” He, more than any other fan, would become the driving force behind the “Save Hawkman” campaign. Voz was an aspiring comics creator who produced his own hand-drawn comic books. He called them his “two-minute comics” because they featured figures who were little more than stick-men, drawn in a blinding rush. In later years, Mike became a successful comics artist on features as disparate as John Carter of Mars, Master of Kung Fu, American Flagg, She-Hulk, and Cloak and Dagger. He later gained eminence as an animation storyboard artist for G.I. Joe, Gem, and The Bionic Six, and won an Emmy Award for directing an episode of the animated Spawn series. But in the summer of 1962 Mike was (by his own description, in a recent interview) “a nerdy kid, terrified of girls, very quiet, not an athlete,” who took to fandom like a fish to water. Upon laying eyes upon the early ditto issues of Alter-Ego, Voz instantly began planning to publish his own fanzine devoted to the resurgence of costumed heroes. Mike recalls, “Once I saw the stuff that Jerry put out, I thought, “Great! I can do one of those!” He called his publication Masquerader (or Mask, for short). While there’s no doubt that Vosburg responded strongly to the characters of Hawkman and Hawkgirl (she wasn’t Hawkwoman then), he was first and foremost a Kubert fan. Mike remembers, “The first

The late Mark Hanerfeld has written: “This shot of Hawkman by Joe Kubert was done to be auctioned in support of the Metrocon (Washington, DC) in 1971. It is reproduced using the photocopy machine’s capability set at a darker setting to allow the (supposedly unprintable) blue pencil shading and lightning behind the figure to show… I brought the piece down to Washington to be auctioned off.” Mark wound up buying the treasured artwork himself! Except for the comic art fanzine CFA-APA, to the best of our knowledge it has never been printed before, and we wanted it to head this article on fans of comics, Joe Kubert, and Hawkman—because Mark, bless ’im, was all three. [Art ©2000 Joe Kubert; Hawkman ©2000 DC Comics Inc.]

Remembering Gil Kane

Remembering Gil A Very Personal Reminiscence of Gil Kane by Roy Thomas [NOTE: Two issues ago, I transcribed some personal thoughts about Sub-Mariner creator Bill Everett. He and Gil Kane were far and away the two Golden Age comics talents with whom I’ve had the closest relationships over the years, partly because I’m a decade or so younger than most of them. The following piece was much harder to write than the one on Bill Everett… for Bill has been gone from us for more than a quarter of a century, while, as I type these words, Gil’s passing is less than two weeks past. Perhaps a bit of time, a bit more perspective, would benefit this memoir. [However, after being deluged with requests to say something about him for widely disparate publications, I decided to delay a couple of items originally scheduled for this issue and to write about Gil, instead. I apologize for the fact that, with the deadline looming, I was unable to polish this piece as much as I might have liked, or to put everything in strict chronological order, or to provide precise times and dates for everything. [As in the case of the Everett piece, this article is in no way an attempt at a biography, even a brief one, of Gil Kane. His more than half-century career has been covered in many articles and interviews over recent years, with doubtless more to come. I myself was probably one of the last to interview him, in an hour-plus phone conversation in mid-1999 which was intended by mutual consent to discuss not Gil’s career per se, but the Golden Age of Comics as it manifested itself at various companies. The part of that talk dealing with Timely Comics in the ’40s and ’50s appeared last issue; the remainder, covering Gil’s memories of DC and other places he worked in his youth, will appear next issue. —R.T.]

I. PREFACE For some reason Gil Kane and Bill Everett are linked together in my mind, at least in certain ways. In point of fact, although both were friends and collaborators of mine whose careers at Marvel overlapped during the late 1960s and early 1970s, they barely knew each other. The closest they came to “working together,” I believe, was on a cover or three—as when Bill inked a last-minute cover Gil had penciled for Avengers #97, the final chapter of the KreeSkrull War. For that illustration, which featured several Timely Golden Age

heroes including Sub-Mariner, inker Bill impulsively designed a joint signature in which their elongated initials (“GK” and “BE”) overlapped. And yet, when I sat down to write a reminiscence of Gil Kane, whom I knew for more than thirty years, one of the first things I thought of was an incident which occurred shortly after Bill’s death at age 56 in February 1973. Gil told me, with some incredulity, that someone in the comics field had suggested that he write an article about Bill’s life and career, with the hope that a major newspaper or magazine might print it. Gil scoffed at the very idea. “What could I say that they’d possibly want to print?” he asked me rhetorically (I’m paraphrasing his words here, but fairly closely). “That he was a comic book artist and created The Sub-Mariner? That’d mean nothing to anybody outside the comics field.” He never wrote the piece. It was not that Gil didn’t respect Bill Everett’s talent. He merely felt that even The Sub-Mariner, one of the first great comic book super-heroes, was not well enough known by the general public for a newspaper like the New York Times to be interested in printing more than a short obituary. And he was probably right, given the times. What might Gil have said had he known that, 27 years later, the Gil Kane thumbnail for a Green Lantern cover. Times would print [©2000 DC!Comics, Inc.; Courtesy of David Hamilton.] a several-hundredword article headlined “Gil Kane, Comic-Book Artist, Is Dead at 73”—or that I, and others, would be fielding phone calls from U.S. News &World Report, among other publications, for information and quotations about Gil’s career and even about his and my work together. I know he would have been surprised. I suspect he might have been secretly pleased, even though he might not have admitted it. Gil Kane (1926-2000). Now he belongs to the ages: Golden, Silver, Bronze, Modern, and Beyond. Photo of the master holding court at the 1997 San Diego Comic Con. [Courtesy of Tom Stewart.]

Remembering Gil Kane Somehow, the mere thought of Gil, up on some heavenly cloud, looking down on coverage of his passing in the national media, reminds me of a remark he made when, a decade ago, he was asked to pencil the final issue of the Green Lantern series he had begun in 1959-1960. Oh, he was going to do it, all right—because it was paying work—but he disparaged the very notion that he should feel honored about being asked to illustrate this bookend to his Silver Age work.

After a brief Kirbyesque stint on “Hulk” and “Captain America,” Gil returned to Green Lantern with renewed vigor—and more dynamic anatomy. Splashes from Green Lantern #52 (Apr. ’67) and Tales to Astonish #88 (Feb. ‘67). [Hulk ©2000 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Green Lanterns ©2000 DC Comics Inc. GL repro’d from original art, courtesy of Jerry G. Bails.]

I insisted that it was “fitting” that he draw this last issue of the GL series. “I must tell you, my boy,” he said in that patrician tone he affected, “that I think of it more as ironic.” For, though this may surprise some who didn’t know him, Gil never really liked having it thought or said or written that the apex of his career was Green Lantern.

He never cared much for that work, or for any of the DC comics of the early 1960s which brought him to the attention of early fandom and which originally made his reputation. After all, beginning in the latter half of the ’60s with his “return” to Marvel on such strips as “The Incredible Hulk,” “Captain America,” and then Captain Marvel, et al., all his early Jack Kirby influences and his meticulous striving after dynamic yet accurate anatomy had suddenly found a chance to emerge—and he was far happier with that work, and with the art he did afterward for Marvel, DC, and others, than he could ever be in looking at his earlier product. All the same, the cold hard fact remains: Gil Kane will forever be more identified with the second Green Lantern than with anything else he ever drew.

II. THE LIFE AND TIMES The New York Times article by Douglas Martin gives a fairly accurate rundown of his life, and by the time this issue of A/E comes out, most comics fans will have read it or some related account. A few salient facts, if only in order to add Gil’s and/or my own take on them: Born Eli Katz in Latvia on April 6, 1926, he came to New York with his family at the age of three. Early on, he became not only a fan of swashbuckling movies and of pulp magazines, but also of comic strips and comic books. In A/E V3#3, when I asked if he recalled the debut of Timely’s flagship title in 1939, he answered without hesitation: “My bedroom was being painted a light color of blue when I got the first issue of Marvel Comics. I remember reading it on the bed….” At that time he would have been 13… well above the age of the typical comics reader. At 15 he dropped out of vocational high school to become a comic book artist. His first job Right: Storytellers in the story. Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, as depicted by the artist in the back-up “Tales of the Hyborian Age” strip featured in Conan the Barbarian #12. [©2000 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Roy Thomas ’ Legendary Comics Fanzine

No. 4 SPRING 2000

THE

HAWKMAN

by “Shelly”

5.95

In the USA

60 YEARS HAVE GONE BY IN A

FLASH! --THANKS TO THIS ISSUE’S

ARTISTS & ARTISANS: Joe Kubert Shelly Moldoff Harry Lampert Gardner F. Fox Robert Kanigher Carmine Infantino Michael T. Gilbert Lee Elias E.E. Hibbard Moebius

Hawkman, Flash, Rose & Thorn TM & © DC COMICS

All This Plus C.C. Beck, Marc Swayze, and Kurt Schaffenberger In

Volume 3, No. 4 Spring 2000 Editor Roy Thomas

™

Contents

Associate Editor Bill Schelly

Design & Layout Janet Sanderson Jon B. Cooke/ GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS

“Quick As a Flash”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A (hopefully not too brief) history of Flash Comics by Rich Morrissey

Consulting Editors

Flash and Fantasy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

FCA Editor

Two Roses and One Thorn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

A candid conversation with Harry Lampert, original artist of “The Flash,” about his life and many, many careers.

John Morrow Jon B. Cooke

P.C. Hamerlinck

Robert Kanigher talks about his two versions of “Rose and Thorn”— with Kubert art from the 1940s story DC never published.

Contributing Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Crash the Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Editors Emeritus

Jerry G. Bails Ronn Foss, Biljo White Mike Friedrich

Special Kubert Consultant Al Dellinges

Cover(s) Artist

The Moebius Silver Surfer Sketches—Plus One. . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Jean-Marc Lofficier walks us through unseen art of Marvel’s Sentinel of the Spaceways by the fabled French cartoonist.

FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) #63 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Joe Kubert

P.C. Hamerlinck introduces another fabulous Fawcett foray.

Cover Color

“We Didn’t Know... It Was the Golden Age!” (FCA). . . . . . . . 38

Tom Ziuko

Mailing Crew

Russ Garwood, D. Hambone, Glen Musial, Ed Stelli, Pat Varker

Michael T. Gilbert and Mr. Monster ask us the burning question of 1942: Who the hell is Abner Sundell, and why is he telling us how to write super-hero comics?

Golden Age artist Marc Swayze tells us how he left New York for Louisiana in 1944—and what he took with him!

From Soup to Nuts (FCA). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 More facts and opinions from the pen of the late C.C. Beck, original artist of the Big Red Cheese.

Fawcett Friendships (FCA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 More photos from Kurt and Dorothy Schaffenberger, recalling the days when Captain Marvel was indisputably the World’s Mightiest Mortal.

Special Hawkman Section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About our cover: So The Flash isn’t running like mad in this picture. Would you, with a pair of beautiful women on both sides of you? Thanks to Robin Snyder (and to the late E. Nelson Bridwell) for preserving the third and unpublished Golden Age “Rose and the Thorn” tale drawn by Joe Kubert. This image is from the splash page. [The Flash, Rose and The Thorn, Hawkman ™&©DC Comics, Inc.] Alter EgoTM is published quarterly 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@oburg.net. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $5.95 ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $20 US, $27 Canada, $37 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. Alter and Captain Ego ©2000 Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly. The Atom, Batman, Batwoman, The Black Pirate, Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Don Caballero, The Flash, Ghost Patrol, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Hawkgirl, Hourman, Ibis, Johnny Quick, Johnny Thunder, Kid Eternity, The King, Marvel Family, Mary Marvel, The Ray, Red, White & Blue, The Ring, Rose & The Thorn, Sargon, Sgt. Rock, Steve Malone, Superman, Viking Prince, The Whip, Wildcat ©2000 DC Comics Inc.; Moon Girl ©2000 William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc. The Golem ©2000 Protestant Digest. Tor ©2000 Joe Kubert. Lori Lovecraft ©2000 Mike Vosburg. All-Winners Squad, Angel, Blazing Skull, Bucky, Captain America, Captain Marvel, The Fin, Hulk, Human Torch, Iron Fist, Morbius, Patriot, Silver Surfer, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Super Rabbit, Terry Vance, Thing, Toro, Vagabond, Venus, Vision, Warlock, Whizzer ©2000 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Conan ©2000 Conan Properties, Inc.; Flash Gordon ©2000 KFS. Mr. Monster ©2000 Michael T. Gilbert. Droopy ©2000 Harry Lampert. Pogo ©2000 Walt Kelly Estate. The Flame, Samson, U.S. Jones ©2000 Fox Publications. Magno & Davey, Raven, Unknown Soldier ©2000 Ace Magazines, Inc. The Wizard ©2000 Archie Comics Group. Flyin’ Jenny ©2000 Bell Syndicate. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING

Quick as a Flash

“Quick as a Flash ” A (hopefully not too brief) history of Flash Comics by Rich Morrissey I. TWO FLASHES OF LIGHTNING The year was 1939, and comic books had become, in only a short time, one of the greatest success stories of American publishing. The format had been around for years, but not until the astounding success of the Superman-starring Action Comics the previous year had publishers, both old and new, begun to jump onto the comic book bandwagon in droves. The race was on to come up with new and successful characters— and with strong and punchy titles for their new magazines. So it was hardly surprising that two different publishers came up with the same title—Flash Comics—at virtually the same time. After all, one of the most popular heroes in newspaper comics at the time was Alex Raymond’s science-fiction strip Flash Gordon!

assigned the projected magazine to one of their regular editors, Bill Parker, and to staff artist Charles Clarence Beck. They produced the ashcan edition of their Flash Comics completely by themselves, later adding another staff artist, Pete Costanza, to flesh it out into a complete 64-page comic with multiple features. The copyright office, however, decided that All-American’s ashcan edition of its Flash Comics had come in first, so Fawcett had to find a different title. It changed Flash Comics briefly to Thrill Comics, and by the time of actual publication to Whiz Comics (re-christening it after the company’s seminal publication, the post-World War One joke-book Captain Billy’s Whiz-Bang). For quite different reasons, Captain Thunder became Captain Marvel and went on to his own paramount place in comics history.

In a more surprising parallel, both comics cover-featured a hero drawn in a relatively cartoonish style—each with a bright red shirt adorned by a yellow lightning bolt! But maybe even this wasn’t so unusual a parallel, given the times. Red was a preferred color for super-heroes’ outfits; primary colors worked best with the printing processes of the day, and Superman was already garbed mainly in blue, as was Batman. The title Flash suggested lightning; and yellow, generally used for costume trim since as a main color it rendered the page too easy to see through, was the traditional color of lightning—even though real lightning is actually white or blue-white. Lightning is accompanied by thunder, so the lead feature of Fawcett Publications’ Flash Comics was named Captain Thunder; and All-American Comics’ Flash Comics featured The Flash as a lead character, backed up by a more tongue-in-cheek character named Johnny Thunder. Fawcett Publications, a Minneapolis magazine publisher inspired to expand into comic books by Superman’s success, The two top stars of Flash Comics, drawn by their principal Golden Age artists for issue #40, April 1944: The Flash by E.E. Hibbard, and Hawkman by Sheldon Moldoff. [©2000 by DC Comics Inc.]

Quick as a Flash

II. MAX AND SHELLY, THE ALL-AMERICAN BOYS By contrast, All-American Comics had older ties to the field. It |had been launched months earlier by Max C. Gaines, who is generally considered to at least have co-invented the comic book format in 1933 and who had already started up lines of comics for several different publishers. After a few years as a consultant with DC Comics, he had set up a partnership in 1938 with one of DC’s owners, Harry Donenfeld, as All-American Comics. The new line bore the DC logo, advertised and was advertised in DC comics like Action, Adventure, and Superman, and would go on to cross over its characters with those of the DC titles from time to time. All the same, AA was legally a separate entity with different editorial offices… much like Milestone Comics in more recent years, and the Wildstorm imprint of today. Gaines, who reportedly brought the Superman strip to DC’s attention, was understandably eager to make his own line a success, and to create and (co-)own other characters who might approach or even equal the success of Superman. With his experience and with access to the same talent pool that had turned Superman into comics’ greatest success story and had then come up with Batman, as well, Gaines stood a good chance of achieving his goal. Most of the earliest comic books had consisted of reprints of successful newspaper comic strips. By the late 1930s, and with the entry of major syndicates into comic Comics pioneer M.C. “Max” Gaines, circa 1942. book publishing on their own, most of the most popular strips were already taken, forcing come-lately publishers like DC to rely on new material, mostly produced by creators whose ideas had been rejected by the syndicates. Superman (whose creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, had tried to sell him as a newspaper strip for years, ironically doing so only after Action Comics had become a big hit) was the first such feature to prove more successful than any strip reprints. This indicated to publishers that they could succeed in the business even without paying hefty licensing fees to the syndicates. More established publishers like Dell, for which M.C. Gaines had launched Popular Comics in 1936, could afford established strips, but often filled out the pages with original material. Popular had featured mostly characters licensed from the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, such as Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, and Terry and the Pirates, but Gaines had cut costs by purchasing, at a much lower cost, occasional unpublished strips. One such strip-turned-comic-book-feature was “Scribbly,” which starred a struggling teenage cartoonist, produced by a real-life struggling teenage cartoonist named Sheldon Mayer. Mayer proved to be knowledgeable about the comics field, and in tune with what contemporary kids liked (being, Gaines may well have figured, hardly more than a kid himself), and he became Gaines’ assistant first at Dell, then at DC. It’s been said that he was the one who first brought the Superman strip to Gaines’ attention, leading Gaines in turn to promote the idea to Harry Donenfeld at DC. So, when Gaines launched his first comic book in early 1939— All-American Comics, the namesake of his company—he chose Shelly Mayer to be its editor.

For their initial offering, Gaines and Mayer combined concepts from all the successful comic books of the day. Gaines used his syndicate contacts to purchase reprint rights to a few comic strips not yet tied up (like Skippy and Mutt and Jeff), and Mayer segued his “Scribbly” feature over into its pages. All-American #1 also contained adventure features of the kind that seemed to be catching on, including “Red, White, and Blue,” a strip about servicemen from the Army, Navy, and Marines initially written by Superman creator Jerry Siegel. Siegel, Sheldon Mayer, circa 1945. Yeah, we know we however, was being kept ran this photo in A/E V3#1, but see our Shelly very busy by the regular Moldoff interview this issue for another one. DC line (Superman was being spun off into his own title, and more characters such as The Spectre were in the works), and “Red, White, and Blue” never rose above backup status.

III. THE QUICK BROWN FOX Gaines’ and Mayer’s next AA title, Flash Comics, was conceived as a super-hero/adventure title from beginning to end. To produce an entire comic book on relatively short notice, Shelly Mayer turned to two writers, neither well-known even in the limited field of comics; both, however, had proved reliable, imaginative, and possessed of a sense of humor—an important factor to an editor whose first love was humorous comic strips. Gardner F. Fox was a young lawyer, a childhood friend of original DC editor Vincent Sullivan, who had been less than successful to date in his law career. Offered a chance to write several features for the DC line, Fox had done well with such minor features as “Steve Malone” and “Cotton Carver,” had turned “Zatara the Magician” (originally written as well as drawn by creator Fred Guardineer) into the main backup in Action Comics, and may even have co-created the moderately successful Sandman for Adventure Comics. (An Aside: Gardner told me once that he did create The Sandman, basing him on a pulp hero called The Grey Seal—of whom I would have heard by then if I had done more than skim over the chapter on pulp magazines in The Steranko History of Comics. Others are at least equally certain that artist Bert Christman wrote as well as drew the first “Sandman” stories. But Gardner F. Fox—one of comic books’ semiI’ve found that many early nal writers—though here a bit older than comics creators simply have when he co-created The Flash, Hawkman, unclear memories of events Dr. Fate, and The Justice Society. This caricature is by Dave Manak and comes from which, after all, took place (as well as all the images on this page) sixty or more years ago. At The Amazing World of DC Comics. [©2000 any rate, Fox was soon DC Comics, Inc.] writing “Sandman.”)

“Flash and Fantasy”—A Conversation with Harry Lampert

“Flash and Fantasy”

A Conversation with Harry Lampert Co-Creator of The Flash Interview Conducted by Roy Thomas Transcribed by Jon B. Knutson ROY THOMAS: If you don’t mind, I’ll start by asking about the two Comic Cavalcade covers I mailed you—#23 and #27, from 1947-48. Alex Toth drew Green Lantern, Flash, and Wonder Woman on them, but I was curious if you drew your character “Cotton-Top Katie” on them, or if the three kids are by Shelly Mayer. LAMPERT: No, I didn’t do these particular drawings. I think I remember everything I did. I would say, first of all, there’s an aspect of the drawing that’s like mine, but the way he did the hair—that’s not me. RT: Most likely Mayer, then. Anyway, reverting to something resembling chronological order: You were born in 1916? LAMPERT: November 3, 1916, in New York. I lived up in Washington Heights, and attended George Washington High School. I was going to graduate in June, and my friend Henry Spiegel says, “My brother George, who’s a graduate of Pratt Institute, went up to a place called Fleischer Studios and he couldn’t get a job there—they said they wanted cartoonists. Harry, you’re a cartoonist; why don’t you go up there?” So I stayed up all night and did two full pages of drawings, and I got a job. It was 1933. I was 16-and-one-half years old. RT: Did they know how young you were?

[EDITOR’S NOTE: I first met Harry Lampert at the 1996 San Diego Comics Convention. It was a great thrill for me, because I knew that not only had he drawn the first two adventures of the original Flash in 1939, but that in 1946 he had also illustrated an “Atom” chapter in All-Star Comics #34, as well as humorous gags and stories which appeared in various DC comics in the late ’40s. Harry was surprised to see the bound volume of All-Star #33-41 I was carrying, but graciously signed the inside front cover, as had Julius Schwartz, Robert Kanigher, Martin Nodell, Irwin Hasen, and several other JSA artists, writers, and editors before him. Thus, when I decided to do an issue of Alter Ego honoring the sixtieth birthday of Flash Comics #1, it was inevitable that Harry Lampert would be one of the people I would most want to talk to—and the experience proved even more enjoyable and rewarding than I had expected. For he has been a man of many careers and accomplishments, as the following interview reveals.—R.T.]

LAMPERT: They didn’t care. I worked there for five years. I started out as an inker, and soon became the assistant head of the inking department. What’s happened was, I’d get something from the Planning Department. They’d say, “Do this, but you have to trace this head seven times and retrace it.” I said, “No, why can’t we put this on the top cel, and make the other one the middle cel, and save all that drawing?” “That’s a good idea, Harry.” And then another one came

“Flash and Fantasy”—

THE SUPERMAN/ HARRY LAMPERT CONNECTION? Did Harry Lampert work on cutting up Superman newspaper strips for Action Comics #1 in 1938— or perhaps on Superman #1 in 1939, which contained primarily reprints of the first four Action stories—or even on Superman #2? The matter has been debated these last few years by aficionados, though none has ever impugned Harry’s motives; it’s merely an argument over memory and chronologies. Harry’s earliest story work in comics was on “Spot Savage” in All-American Comics #1 (April 1939), which would have been drawn in late 1938, while Action #1 had been prepared more than half a year earlier. In response to my query, comics historian Jerry G. Bails writes: “This matter has been discussed at some length on the GCD [Great Comics Database] Chat list. If I recall the upshot correctly, it was decided that Harry was remembering doing paste-ups on Superman #1, not Action #1. I haven’t checked, but others who have checked say there were enough differences in the sequences in Superman #1 [from the original versions in Action #1-4] to make sense of the conflicting assertions. Many people who were in contact with Shuster |continue to insist that Joe did all the rearranging for Action #1. This may reconcile the apparent conflicts.”

up, and after a while, all the stuff would come to me first, and I’m 17 years old! So in an hour, a half hour, whatever, that I spend doing this, I saved three or four days’ work for the department! There were a number of future cartoonists there. Gill Fox [later a comic book artist and editor] and I used to sit right next to each other. Hal Sherman [later the original artist of “The Star-Spangled Kid”] was with me, and Frank Engli, who became assistant to Milton Caniff on Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon. We were all so jealous of him, because many of us didn’t feel animation was our thing. I could have been whatever I had set my mind to be. But I was thinking all the time of doing cartoons outside the animation field. My first professional cartoon appeared in the New York American newspaper in October 1934. While I was working at Fleischer’s, I did a cartoon that showed the World Series going on. There’s a guy in the first seat of the bleachers fast asleep, and the guy behind him is saying, “He stayed up all night to be the first one in to see the game!”

RT: Did you continue to sell to newspapers while working for DC? LAMPERT: No. After I left Fleischer’s, I went into the comic book field. Actually, I went down there because I knew Shelly Mayer. He and I had worked together as apprentices for a fellow named Ving Fuller. He was a cartoonist who had a strip going in the New York Daily Mirror. Shelly and I were both in high school at the same time. I graduated a year earlier than he did and I got that job at Fleischer’s; and when he graduated, I recommended him for a job there. Did you know Shelly? RT: We only exchanged a letter or two, and maybe one phone call. LAMPERT: He was one of the biggest kidders in the world, you know. He really was a character. Of course, in a place like animation, where everything’s so staid and routine, factory-line—he was asked to leave. [laughs] And he was so down. But I said, “Shelly, this could be the best thing that ever happened to you in your life,” and it turned out to be, because he then got in on the ground floor of comic books. When Fleischer’s decided to move their operation from New York to Florida, they offered very good benefits—one month of free rent down there, and a guarantee that if you didn’t like it they’d pay your transportation back—but I decided I wanted to go into another area. That’s how I wound up in the comic book field, at DC’s offices on Lafayette Street. I started up a couple of strips there. I worked at assisting some of the artists. RT: You’ve said that you worked on the first issue of Action Comics. [NOTE: See the accompanying sidebar for another view of this minor but controversial point.] LAMPERT: I did the first appearance of Superman in the comics, ever. All I did was: I was given the job to take the proofs that Siegel and Shuster had sent to the syndicates and hadn’t been able to sell; I took them and put them into comic book form. I cut ‘em up, pasted them up from daily strips into full-page stuff. Where things didn’t fit, I’d make little extensions…you follow me? RT: Yes. You can tell where there’s a change of surface. There’ll be a little white space where the pen kind of skipped, going from the Shuster paste-up to what was added. LAMPERT: Blame me for that. I made a joke about it: In the first appearance of “Superman,” the only original artwork was mine. [laughter] Everything else was proofs! RT: Would Vin Sullivan, the original editor of Action Comics, have been the one to hire you to do the paste-up work on that first Superman story?

Still another possibility would be that Harry pasted up (and added art to) the lead “Superman” story in Superman #2. That adventure, which lacks even a true splash panel, is quite obviously one drawn originally for newspaper strip syndication—but, unlike those in Superman #1, had not appeared in Action.

LAMPERT: No, no, no, I was hired by Gaines. RT: Were Shuster and Siegel still back in Ohio then? LAMPERT: No, they were there in New York. And when they came in, you could feel an aura in the air. The people down there knew they had something. I did the paste-ups for a dollar a page. I was a freelancer; I was never on the payroll. When they gave me that job, I did it. Whether it was an inking job on “The Green Lantern,” or that time I did “The Atom”— whenever they had a crisis—

The matter remains unresolved. Certainly Harry Lampert doesn’t need credit on Action #1 to establish his bona fides as one of the true comics pioneers!

RT: There you were!

—RT.

RT: The earliest DC comics work you’re listed as

Two Roses and One Thorn

Two Roses and One Thorn ...and Other Errata by

Robert Kanigher With a Postscript by Joe Kubert and an Index by Robin Snyder

Robert Kanigher, flanked by scenes from The Flash’s first two RK-scripted encounters with The Thorn—from Flash Comics #89 (Nov. 1947) and #96 (June 1948), as drawn by Joe Kubert. The caricature by Dave Manak of RK is from The Amazing World of DC Comics #14, 1977. [©2000 DC Comics Inc.; thanks to Al Dellinges]

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Robert Kanigher, of course, is one of the premier writers in comics history, having begun with Fox Publications circa 1940 but moving on swiftly to Fawcett, to MLJ—to DC, where from 1943 on he became first a major writer, then a writer-editor. He is most noted for his tales featuring Flash, Hawkman, Green Lantern, Justice Society, Black Canary, Wonder Woman, et al. in the latter ’40s, and since then for “Viking Prince” and such classic DC war series as “Sgt. Rock,” “Enemy Ace,” etc. [The following article has been compiled, with RK’s permission, from a letter he sent Ye Editor in late 1999 and one he wrote in 1992 for the newsletter Robin Snyder’s History of the Comics (now Robin Snyder’s The Comics). The portion dealing with RK’s twice-lived concept “Rose and the Thorn” was originally published in RSHOC, Vol. 3, No. 7, July 1992, and is ©1992, 2000 by Robert Kanigher. [At the end of the article, also concerning “Rose and the Thorn,” have been added a brief note by Joe Kubert and an index by Robin Snyder; both are from RSHOC Vol. 2, #7 (July 1991), and are ©1991, 2000 by Joe and Robin, respectively, and are used with their kind permission. [And now, RK in his own words—and if there is ever any sense of a bit of discontinuity between one thought and another, the fault is due to the editing, and not to RK himself, who fires off ideas like they were bullets:]

You surprised me with “Kanigher on Kanigher” [in A/E, Vol. 3, #2]. I didn’t expect it. Nice hemstitching. One error: You said I called National/AA “Arco.” Wrong. Arco were the publishers next door to Shelly [Mayer]’s offices. The highly qualified Ben Raeburn, whom I knew socially, became the managing editor of Arco Publishing. Ben introduced me to Shelly Mayer. [About his work:] I never kept a record of what I wrote or where it appeared. I didn’t keep a single copy. What has been recognized is that I didn’t bring comics to comics; but my own world. [About proofreading:] Although I do not consider proofreading part of an editor’s responsibility, I did proofread every book of which I was the editor, because I didn’t have an assistant to train. I wrote every feature. Designed every cover. Almost every illustrator signed his cover. If he drew the feature, his name was on the first or second page. When I made out a voucher for a

Two Roses and One Thorn The Sneezing Skyscraper. The Lonely Locomotive. The Secret of the Dolphins. Philip, the fly that saved Hollywood.

[On the circumstances of his writing and editing Wonder Woman beginning in the mid- to late-1940s. After recounting how he was lured into an office job by Shelly Mayer and Jack Liebowitz, as per A/E V3#2, he goes on:] I relieved Shelly of the Amazon he hated, and the manner in which he chose me confirmed my belief that he was more performer than creator, despite the adulation of every illustrator from Hasen to Toth, deserved though he was according to their yardstick. Not mine. Whether [Wonder Woman co-creator William Moulton] Marston was alive or dead when I took over, I do not know. I did my best to create real human beings of Diana and Steve. A maelstrom arose. Everyone from the Bronx to Bombay had his/her idea of how WW should be handled. It wasn’t mine. A woman spent a fortune calling me for an hour from somewhere in California, every Friday, telling me how the Amazon should be produced. The great mystery is why didn’t Liebowitz fire me or at least take me off the book, during all the years I handled her? Only once Jack handed a complaint from Mrs. Marson to Whit, who told me to “Take the old lady out to lunch and smooth her feathers.” I went to Mrs. Marston’s office in a huge company’s huge building on Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street. She was very gracious to me. She took me to lunch in her company’s restaurant. She never uttered a word of complaint and even invited me to spend a weekend in her Westchester home.

Page 2 of Kanigher and Kubert’s third “Rose and Thorn” story, complete with lettering marked for rewriting. Of this tale, mostly unpublished by DC, Robin Snyder writes: “The photostats I used [in my publication] came from Nelson Bridwell [longtime DC editor]. In one of our moves he was about to throw a package of stats in the wastebasket; can’t recall why. Anyway, I asked for them, and he obliged.” See the ad elsewhere this issue for how to receive Robin’s excellent newsletter, Robin Snyder’s The Comics. [Flash ©2000 DC Comics Inc.; special thanks to Robin Snyder.]

check for every script, cover, artwork, etc.—the freelancer’s name was on it. Thus, he automatically received credit for his or her work. I chose the backups. And the “funny” one-pagers from [Harvey] Kurtzman to [Irwin] Hasen. Whit [Ellsworth] told me he hated Kurtzman’s and Krigstein’s work, but I kept them on until Harvey drifted away of his own accord. I always thought the letters pages should be an extension of the book they were in, as interesting as a story—when they were boring, statistical, not personal, I took over “Take Ten!” [About fairy tales:] I believe in fairy tales. I’ve even written them. Not for comics, although to be illustrated:

I discovered later that the complaint arose because I wrote a real romantic story coupling Diana and Steve. I made them human instead of the mishmash of mythology that Marston had concocted. Nothing came of it and Marston’s name continued to be on every WW story.

This reminds me of the “Sam Goldwyn Presents” signature on every movie coming out of his studio, and “Stan Lee Presents” on every story coming out of Marvel even if he was at the North Pole. Did they take the bricks with the applause? I met Stan once at Marvel. He was very amiable and complimentary at my attitude to, and performance in, comics. But I found his monolithic presence had reduced everyone to worker bees in their individual cubbyholes. Stifling. Who towered over DC? Nobody. When Shelly took early retirement, what happened? Nothing! Editors Nadle, Schwartz, and Kanigher took over National. When Whit finally vanished, what happened? Nothing! Editors Weisinger, Schiff, and Boltinoff continued producing

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt presents—

Crash the Comics!

nly the professional writer knows what the other half reads. There are several million who don’t read at all; they only laugh at the pictures.

Every large newsstand is a cross section of America, and there, for anyone who is interested, is the effect of all our repressions, our hopes, and fears. We read not only to learn but to gratify our cravings. As the son is father to the man, so the literature of our childhood is the father of our future. Several million people, most of them children, buy a comic magazine every month. Over 100 comic magazines represent, in paper, printing, engravings, salaries to writers, editors, and artists, and income to news dealers, a huge multimillion dollar business. The comics today are influencing the reading tastes of tomorrow, just as surely as Horatio Alger influenced the thinking of every adult today. Any intelligent writer who tries can make a living writing for the comics. Let’s examine their stories, beginning with the hero. THE HERO Comic heroes are the apex of heroism, with all the prerequisites of strength, brains, handsomeness, and appeal to women, that are incumbent upon juvenile heroes. All comic characters live in their own world to the complete

exclusion of all other comic characters. Consequently, Batman, in his strips, is the total of heroic qualities; however, if Batman were to be compared with Superman, in the same story, Batman would immediately become a subservient character. Therefore the writer must create his own world for his heroes, a world in which his hero is the only hero. Comic heroes must be treated by their writers with respect. Too often a writer thinks, “Well, he’s just another comic-mag hero, the kids have seen a hundred of them.” This type of mental reaction results in the breakdown of character and was responsible for the failure of Samson, one of the early comic magazine successes. Samson and David, clad in lion skins, would stroll the streets, casually, looking for trouble, waiting for things to happen. This casual attitude was reflected by response of people in the streets to Samson and David and was carried to the readers. The reaction was, “Well, if the people in The red-black-&-white cover of the 110-page The Writer’s 1942 Yearbook. [©1942 Writer’s Digest]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt presents— protect it from the Cobra, and while they are there standing around being useless, the villain strikes and kills sympathetic characters. Magno and Davey failed, not because they were captured or rendered helpless, or even because they were sidetracked by the villain, but through sheer inability. HOW TO INVOLVE THE HERO IN THE PLOT Too often the hero walks down the street and something happens, whereupon the hero jumps in and is involved with the plot. Cut this down to essentials and the hero is just minding someone else’s business. For a few stories this may be acceptable, but after a while the reaction sets in that the hero has no real motivations for his entry into the plot. The reader vicariously pictures himself as the hero. Consequently, if the hero has a strong personal reason for entering the plot, then the motivation becomes so much stronger. Even in the instance where the hero is a detective assigned to the case, the plot should develop so that the hero has more than just a duty motivation. For example, The Flag, who is a symbolic character, becomes deeply involved in a story because anyone whistling “The Star-Spangled Banner” immediately sets up a call within The Flag himself. A blow at the flag or the things it represents becomes a blow at the character The Flag. Or the Lone Warrior must fight not only to stop the Nazis, but to clear his own name as well, thus giving increased motivation to his actions. It also adds suspense. The thought arises—will he be able to clear himself? We know he’s not going to be killed or badly hurt, but will his good name be injured?

By 1942 Abner Sundell had already worked on such comics as Wonderworld, featuring The Flame. [©2000 Fox Publications; unless otherwise noted, all art accompanying this article courtesy of Michael T. Gilbert, who found them among dog-eared old comics in his personal collection.]

the story aren’t impressed by Samson and David, why should I be?” For contrast note the treatment of Captain America or Batman. Whenever these characters appear, panels are spent with crowds drawing back in amazement, with people cheering. The reader feels the importance of these heroes and his reaction becomes the same. Since the hero is the smartest, the strongest, the most excellent of all beings, his appearance upon the scene of the story should mark the end of the villain’s worst crimes. From this point forward the villain feels the pinch of opposition, and he changes his actions to remove the hero. Therefore all violent killings, all crimes in which the villain runs rampant, should occur before the hero becomes involved with the plot. Consequently we allow the villain to run wild in the opening of the story. From the time that the hero takes over, however, all crimes are the responsibility of the hero. The villain can plot actions that allow him to accomplish a murder or two with the hero on the scene, but these must be clever enough so that the reader feels there are extenuating circumstances, and the crimes were not the fault of the hero. Careless writing results in situations, as in “Magno and Davey,” where these two heroes go to a masked ball to

The elementary method of tying the hero’s role in the story is one that depends wholly on the strength of the villain. The Joker plans a whiz-dizzer crime; a honey. But he has been around before and he knows that Batman and Robin are always gumming up his parade. So he makes his plans. When this story starts he plots a fiendish method of getting our heroes out of his path. He takes the first swing at them. From there on it’s their fight. This method is very simple and easily overdone; and if your villain is not the strongest possible, his actions consequently are not the strongest possible, either. So handle this type gently. Another method is to utilize the powers of the hero in a manner that brings him inadvertently into the case. The Clown has just murdered a man in public view without anyone realizing what has happened. He can’t get away, but he can get rid of the swag which would be evidence against him. He places the money in a toy dirigible with a magnetic motor and sends it directly (at least he thinks so) to his hideout. But Magno and Davey, who know nothing about this crime, are in another part of the city amusing themselves by playing magnetic tug of war. They set up a wall of magnetism that crosses the path of the toy dirigible and bring The Clown’s swag directly to them. They’re in the story now and due to their own efforts.

The Moebius Silver Surfer Sketches

The Moebius Silver Surfer Sketches ...Plus One! by Jean-Marc Lofficier [NOTE: Over the past decade-plus since The Silver Surfer: Parable, by Stan Lee and Moebius was first published by Marvel Comics, the French artist has drawn numerous sketches, at comics conventions and elsewhere, of the “sentinel of the spaceways.” Here for the first time, accompanying a short piece on that epic collaboration, is a collection of some of these sketches, courtesy of Moebius and of Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, his partners in Starwatcher Graphics. One or two of the sketches, it will be noted, are in an even more purely “Moebius” style (if that’s possible) than his illustrations in the work done with Stan Lee. —R.T.]

Eventually, I met Moebius in 1985, when he was living in Los Angeles. He and his thenwife Claudine had just created a corporation called Starwatcher Graphics to handle his business affairs; and, a few months later, they both asked my wife Randy and me to come aboard.

I first discovered Moebius in the early 1960s. At that time his western series, Lieutenant Blueberry, done under his real name of Jean Giraud (or, more accurately, signed “Gir”), was as much a staple in French comics as, say, Batman was in the United States. At the same time, being an avid sciencefiction fan, I also admired the work of an artist who was doing a wonderful job illustrating s-f short stories in the French edition of Galaxy magazine. That artist signed his work “Moebius,” and I didn’t realize he and “Gir” were one and the same until writer Jacques Lob spelled it out in his Anthology of Comics. Like many fans, I then often wondered why “Moebius,” rather than “Gir,” didn’t do actual science-fiction or fantasy comic book stories. I didn’t have to wonder for long. In 1973, with the publication of “The Detour” (a rather appropriate title) in the weekly magazine Pilote, Moebius finally arrived on the comics scene. (This story was reprinted in Dark Horse’s Arzach collection.) A year later—in 1974—Moebius and Philippe Druillet and a couple of other artists went the self-publishing route, and created the magazine Metal Hurlant. It’s hard to explain, to anyone who wasn’t there, the impact that Metal Hurlant had on the French comics scene. Up to that point, the entire French-language comics industry (with a few exceptions, such as Barbarella) was totally dominated by juvenile adventure series. In the space of a year or two, not only had that domination ceased, but mighty publishing empires were forced to adapt—or disappear.

One of the very first actions we took was to set up a complete reprinting of all the Moebius stories at Epic, Marvel’s division of creator-owned projects, in versions newly translated and (sometimes) recolored. Soon afterward, we met Stan Lee, who, upon discovering that The Silver Surfer was one of the few characters Moebius had read avidly (when it was published in France in Fantask by Editions Lug in the late ’60s-early ’70s), convinced Moebius that the two of them should do a Silver Surfer story together. “Stan is so full of creative energies that it was hard to say no to him,” commented Moebius in an interview we did at the time. “But it sounded like a lot of fun. We all got very excited. I had no idea at the time how difficult it would prove to be. I was in a state of total panic for months. Even up to the last page before I had to draw the Surfer himself, I didn’t know what I was going to do. It’s very hard to inherit a character which already has a given look that you must respect, and yet you want to, no, you must draw him the way you feel him. I had never done that before. That was very hard.” Silver Surfer ©2000 Marvel Characters, Inc.

no. 63

P.C. Hamerlinck's

THE

PHANTOM HANTOM EAGLE Rendered circa 1948-50 by Marcus D. Swayze from his personal sketchbook.

Fawcett Collectors of America

FCA EDITOR’S NOTE: From 1941 through 1953, Marcus D. Swayze was a major artist for Fawcett Publications, being the first illustrator to visualize Mary Marvel, but primarily working on Captain Marvel and, later, The Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics, as well as Fawcett romance comics. His ongoing professional memoirs have been an important part of FCA since #54 in 1996. This chapter chronicles events that took place in 1944, after Marc was discharged from the army because of a knee injury. In it, Marc remembers Captain Marvel, Jr. artist Mac Raboy, and the deals Marc himself set up with Fawcett (and with the Bell Syndicate) before leaving New York City to freelance from his home in the South.—Paul C. Hamerlinck.

was a top-drawer distribution system, intact and in place, ready and waiting to add comic books to their fifty or so established publications. From the start, Captain Marvel was assured a respectable place on the newsstands, where rivals might have been struggling to get on the racks. During dinner with the Raboys, Mac described his “in town” studio and suggested that I use it. He was doing his work at home, he said, and insisted that my presence at the location would be an aid to him. Sorting his mail, he said… calling him if any of it struck me as important. He didn’t need me there. It was just Mac’s awkward, modest way of being what he was… a generous, modest, kind, considerate soul. I am truly thankful for having known Mac Raboy. I worked at his 42nd Street place until I left New York later in the year. It was a comfortable layout with three, I believe, drawing tables. One was Mac’s, sectioned off to provide a degree of privacy, at which I worked. Another was occupied by amicable Red Moeller, assistant to Mac. Occasionally an attractive young lady with Oriental features came in and did lettering… excellent work, by the way. I had thought Gene McDonald also was in that office but have been told recently he was not with Raboy at the time. It must have been on a later visit to the City that I knew Gene. “Just exactly what is it you want?”

mds& (c) [Art

was working on the Prince Ibis art for Whiz Comics #59 in my hotel room when I received a phone call from Mac Raboy.

“Let’s have lunch,” was all he said.

During the noon hour we discussed everything under the sun except what was on our minds: The split that had occurred between C.C. Beck and me at the Copacabana. Mac mentioned it only to the extent of letting me know that he had heard about it. The lunch ended with Mac insisting that I have dinner that evening with him and his wife. I had never before been to the Raboy home and I doubt if many people in the business had. That assumption is based on Mac’s retiring spirit, not on any lack of courtesy or hospitality. Mac’s wife Lulu was, as I already knew her to be, charming. As the three of us talked in their living room a young son of school age appeared, was introduced, and quietly withdrew. Mac proudly showed me a handsomely bound, heavy volume that his father had authored… printed in a language other than ours. I think there is much about Mac Raboy that we don’t know… and, admiring him as so many of us do, we ought to know. He was not a comic strip artist… not at heart. He was an illustrator and a craftsman. He treated each comic book panel as a challenging work of art, not as a step in moving his characters on toward their fictional destinations. Once again my hat is off to Al Allard, Eddie Herron, and Ralph Daigh, who recognized this genius and who, instead of attempting to blend him in with, say, an assembly-line arrangement, assigned to him only the quantity of work that allowed time for his meticulous style. From the art standpoint, Fawcett Publications in the Golden Age had the mostest of the most in comics. In C.C. Beck they had the foremost in cartoon-style storytelling featuring a super-hero. In Mac Raboy they had the supreme in beautiful comic book illustration. Another element they had, that has received little or no attention, “I was working on the Prince Ibis art for Whiz Comics #59…” Here’s the entire splash page of that story; only the splash panel itself was shown last time. [©2000 DC Comics Inc.]

When Ralph Daigh spoke, he looked you dead in the eye. Some may have assumed the purpose was to intimidate, but I don’t think so. To me it meant, “I’m laying it on the line and I expect you to do the same.” I could deal with that. Daigh had been with the Fawcett organization before the move from Minnesota. As editorial director of all the Fawcett magazines, he

“We Didn’t Know… It Was the Golden Age” generally remained aloof from those of us in the ranks. I was surprised when told he wanted to see me. On the way to his office I went over a subject that had occupied my mind in the army hospital… my future. “What I want,” I said, seated across from him, “is a regular assignment that I can prepare and mail in from my home in the South… an assignment that will assure an adequate, dependable income that will enable me to marry, have a home, raise a family.”

was at the south end of the 22nd floor, Lieberson’s at the northeast corner. It was close to noon and if I got all the way down the hall, I’d end up having lunch… and enjoying it… with some of the editors or the old bunch from Allard’s art department. At the reception room I turned toward the elevators. There was an Automat near 5th Avenue that had fabulous peach pie. I needed time to think. The same question asked by Ralph Daigh came to mind: “What exactly was it that I wanted?” Not Captain Marvel, not Mary. In earlier talks with Al Allard, that issue had been made clear. Either would have demanded constant attention to whatever was going on “at headquarters.” And it would have been senseless to discount the possibility of such a selection resulting in a repercussion that might have been heard around the world… the Fawcett world. Could have resulted in the scuttling of the nice arrangement I had with Daigh.

“Don’t like the City, eh?” “I love New York City, and think highly of all the friends I have here,” I said, “but it’s time to go home.” “We have no arrangements like what you’re asking,” said Daigh. “Our policy is that our freelance people be right at hand where they can work closely with the editors.” I was aware of that.

I didn’t want a masked hero. Masks hid facial features, and I liked to draw “Look at it this way,” I said. “I’m facial expression and felt it was one of my pretty well educated, with professional strong cards. experience… I can write as well as draw… and I’m associated with one of the world’s I didn’t want a super-hero. A recently Mac Raboy’s classic cover for Master Comics #27 foremost publishers. Now, with that completed Mr. Scarlet story was enjoyable, (July 1942). [©2000 DC Comics Inc.] combination, if comics won’t provide the but the thought of doing any knit-suited, reasonable lifestyle I expect of myself, then caped, booted, often masked, invulnerable star… month after month… it’s time to find that out… and, if necessary, time to move on to was not a pleasant one. something else.” I recall distinctly those final moments with Ralph Daigh, probably because I look back upon them as a turning point in my life. As he stared at me, I realized he had already spoken with art director Al Allard about the matter. “I like the way you talk,” he said. “Go in and tell Willie [Lieberson, executive editor of Fawcett Comics] to give you whatever it takes to make you happy!” I have regretted never revisiting with Ralph Daigh… or Al Allard… since those days. It might have meant some satisfaction to them to be reminded of the years of good, solid working relationship that followed. Not only had my own intentions been fulfilled, but, to borrow the later words of editor Wendell Crowley: “When those pages came in from Louisiana they were always on time, and absolutely camera-ready… never a need for corrections or touch-ups of any kind!” Daigh’s office “What exactly was it that I wanted? Not Captain Marvel….” [1999 art ©2000 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel ©2000 DC Comics Inc.]

When Superman first came out, a certain party—me—predicted the feature would never last. The old short story pattern where you got your main character in a jam, then extracted him/her by means of his/her own abilities, just wouldn’t work. Nope, the feature would never last. Of course, it did last… and how! Shows that no matter how brilliant one may look, sound, or act, one can be wrong. What my little country mind had not opened up to was that you could get the good guy’s friends, or any nice people, in a jam, and your boy could use his talents to get them out. Regardless… the idea of writing for a super-hero blew me cold! I suppose it was clearer, the things I didn’t want, than what I wanted. It was gradually coming around, though. By the time a second go at the peach pie was finished, I was convinced I would be most comfortable with a feature that allowed creative impact… adventure and action, to be sure, but, more so, characterization, emotion, expression, human interest. I still maintained aspirations toward a syndicated feature of my own, but I must have realized the choices to be made on this particular day involved a potential lifetime career. On the long-term basis I wanted to draw and write about people… not super-people but real people, in contemporary surroundings. There was no question but that the most likely features to meet such standards would not be the front-of-the-book stars or the highly promoted heroes on the covers. What about Prince Ibis the Invincible? I had just finished the art on an Ibis story, and he was an interesting character… easily drawn and in a today setting. He pulled off some super-power stunts with that Ibistick of his, but he wore a suit that might have come from the men’s store

Fawcett Collectors of America

From Soup to Nuts An Essay by C.C. Beck Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck EDITOR’S NOTE: FCA is proud to present another previously unpublished essay by Charles Clarence Beck, the original chief artist of “Captain Marvel.” During the 1980s I was a member of The Critical Circle, a mailing group Beck formed for roundtable debates on essays he would send to each member (others members being cartoonist Trina Robbins and former Mad magazine associate editor Jerry DeFuccio). More of these essays will appear in future issues of FCA.—PCH.

I. PRELUDE AND OVERTURE

or comic strips if the copy is not handled properly. Cartoon copy comes first; if there is any space left, the artist fills it. Many comic book artists and editors go at things the wrong way around, with disastrous results. My second job was in a lampshade studio, where I learned how to draw in cartoon style from established comic strips. We had permission to reproduce the leading comic strip characters of the day on our handmade shades, and I made tracings of Smitty, Barney Google and his horse Sparkplug, Harold Teen, Tillie the Toiler, and Little Orphan Annie and her dog Sandy, which I punctured with little holes and transferred to the lampshades with charcoal pounce. Then I finished the drawings with Indian

One of the clearest pictures in my memory of my childhood is of myself and my younger brother Willis riding our tricycles (our folks were too poor to buy us bicycles) across our hometown of Zumbrota, Minnesota, to visit a kindly old couple who saved their Sunday comics for us (our folks were too poor to buy the Sunday papers, too). Newspaper comics were in their heyday when I was young. Each one filled a whole page in those days—they weren’t the cramped little things they are today. Happy Hooligan, The Katzenjammer Kids, Little Jimmie, Bringing Up Father, Polly and Her Pals, Mutt and Jeff, many more fascinating, funny characters cavorted through the panels doing all sorts of improbable, impossible things. The best comics of today are drawn by cartoonists who follow the style set back in the days when comic strips were big, bold, and drawn by masters of the medium. Although my folks were poor, we had some fine illustrated books on our bookshelves. Milton’s Paradise Lost, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, and the Lambs’ Tales from Shakespeare were profusely illustrated with woodcuts and engravings. I still have some of these books. A copy of the complete works of Shakespeare printed in 1839 has some fascinating woodcuts in it. I pored over these books—and still do today—wondering how in the world anyone could know so much about things and be able to make pictures of them as these marvelous artists did. In school I breezed through my lessons with no trouble at all because they all seemed like child’s play to me. I never had to do any homework (even in college in later years) and thus had plenty of time to devote to trying to become an artist. There was very little art instruction in the small-town school I attended, and no artists except a sign painter to teach me anything lived in our town. I had to teach myself from books on art, and when I was 16 or 17 I took a correspondence course in commercial art from a Chicago firm. Later I attended art schools in Chicago and Minneapolis and got a good, basic training in the history and principles of art. I never studied cartooning, though. Cartooning is only one form of art, not a separate discipline. Without a knowledge of all forms of art, no one can make cartoons of any value. My first job was as a letterer for a syndicated cartoonist in Chicago. I have always liked to do my own lettering whenever possible, as I maintain that good lettering is far more important than the drawings which accompany it. The copy is what tells the story; the pictures are just there to make it clearer. The most beautiful pictures are wasted in books

Combining humor and adventure in one outstanding tale which many consider one of the Big Red Cheese’s best, Billy Batson and Captain Marvel are easily outsmarted by Sivana, in “The Plot against the Universe” from Captain Marvel Adventures #100 (Sept. 1949) by Otto Binder, C.C. Beck, and Pete Costanza. [©2000 DC Comics Inc.]

ink and water colors. Some people say that it is wrong to copy or trace other artists’ work, but that’s the way to learn. All the old masters, and the best of today’s artists, learned from established artists. Those who start from scratch end up merely re-inventing the wheel—and usually their wheels are so poorly put together that they won’t work. In 1933 I got a job with Fawcett Publications, where I continued to work as a copyist and tracer of old comic pictures. Fawcett had a habit of losing artwork after it had been reproduced and printed, and whenever they wanted to re-run an old cartoon it was easier (and cheaper) to have me redraw it than to call in the original artist or to look for the original art. Although line drawings can be picked up and made into printing plates, tones or colored pictures can’t with any clarity. The dots in them form interference patterns which are very annoying to the eye. Today there are ways to get around this problem, but back in the ’30s there weren’t. The pictures had to be redrawn.

I didn’t create any of Fawcett’s characters; I was just the first person to put them into visual form. They were conceived in Parker’s mind; I was just the doctor who held them up and slapped them on their bottom to make them draw their first breaths. Parker created all the characters in Fawcett’s Whiz Comics, which first appeared in May 1940 [with a cover date of January 1940]. I drew “Captain Marvel,” “Ibis the Invincible,” and “Spy Smasher” in that issue and in several of the following issues. In just a few months, “Captain Marvel” was far ahead of all the other comic book characters in sales (even “Superman,” much to DC’s alarm), and other artists took over “Ibis” and “Spy Smasher” while I devoted all my time to drawing “The World’s Mightiest Mortal.”

II. TO BE OR NOT TO BE

Cartoon magazines like Fawcett’s Hooey, Smokehouse Monthly, and Whiz Bang were on their last legs in the late ’30s, and comic books were beginning to take their place. They didn’t really take over the market until those two unknown fellows Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster set the publishing world on fire with their Superman comic character—which DC ran as a filler in their Action Comics. Fawcett decided to get into the comic book field in late 1939.

I have never had, like Hamlet, to dither around trying to make up my mind about things... at least not about things connected with art. It was always perfectly clear to me that a character who appeared in a comic book should be a comic character. Fine art and realistic drawing don’t belong in comic books. They are as out of place there as stuffed animals in living rooms instead of where they belong, in museums, or plaster statues on front lawns instead of in churches (and maybe not there).

I was 29 years old at the time, and Bill Parker, a Fawcett editor who was given the job of creating Fawcett’s comic characters on his typewriter, was about the same age. It is not generally known that comic characters, like characters of any kind, are created by writers, not by artists or actors or inexperienced amateurs. Parker was an experienced writer and I had ten years of experience at the drawing board myself. But

There is some confusion about the meaning of the terms “comic” and “cartoon.” Many people think that “comic” means “funny” and that “cartoon” means “a drawing made by a rotten artist who never learned to draw any better.” Nothing could be farther from the truth than these two common misconceptions.