Alter Ego #115 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy Roy T Thomas homas’ In-Depth In-Depth Comics Fanzine anzine Comics F

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3-D COMICS OF THE 1950s!

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No.115

March 2013

ALL IN 3-D FOR A QUARTER (in 1953)!

SIMON & KIRBY KUBERT & MAURER MESKIN • POWELL NOSTRAND • WOOD FELDSTEIN & MORE!!

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Edited by ROY THOMAS The greatest ‘zine of the 1960s is back, ALL-NEW, and focusing on GOLDEN AND SILVER AGE comics and creators with ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS, UNSEEN ART, P.C. Hamerlinck’s FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America, featuring the archives of C.C. BECK and recollections by Fawcett artist MARCUS SWAYZE), Michael T. Gilbert’s MR. MONSTER, and more!

2012 EISNER AWARD Nominee Best Comics-Related Journalism

Other issues available, & an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all issues at HALF-PRICE!

ALTER EGO #106

ALTER EGO #107

DIEDGITIIOTANSL BL AVAILA

ALTER EGO #103

ALTER EGO #104

ALTER EGO #105

The early career of comics writer STEVE ENGLEHART: Defenders, Captain America, Master of Kung Fu, The Beast, Mantis, and more, with rare art and artifacts by SAL BUSCEMA, STARLIN, SUTTON, HECK, BROWN, and others. Plus, JIM AMASH interviews early artist GEORGE MANDEL (Captain Midnight, The Woman in Red, Blue Bolt, Black Marvel, etc.), FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, & more!

Celebrates the 50th anniversary of FANTASTIC FOUR #1 and the birth of Marvel Comics! New, never-beforepublished STAN LEE interview, art and artifacts by KIRBY, DITKO, SINNOTT, AYERS, THOMAS, and secrets behind the Marvel Mythos! Also: JIM AMASH interviews 1940s Timely editor AL SULMAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and a new cover by FRENZ and SINNOTT!

See comic art and script BEFORE and AFTER the Comics Code changes, with art by SIMON & KIRBY, DITKO, BUSCEMA, SINNOTT, GOULD, COLE, STERANKO, KRIGSTEIN, O’NEIL, GLANZMAN, ORLANDO, WILLIAMSON, HEATH, and others! Plus: FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, JIM AMASH interviews Timely/Atlas artist CAL MASSEY, and a new cover by JOSH MEDORS!

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ALTER EGO #108

ALTER EGO #109

ALTER EGO #110

DICK GIORDANO through the 1960s—from freelance years and Charlton “Action-Heroes” to his first stint at DC! Art by DITKO, APARO, BOYETTE, MORISI, McLAUGHLIN, GIL KANE, and others, Dick’s final convention panel with STEVE SKEATES and ROY THOMAS, JIM AMASH interviews Charlton artist TONY TALLARICO, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and ROY ALD, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, GIORDANO cover, and more!

Big BATMAN issue, with an unused Golden Age cover by DICK SPRANG! Interviews SPRANG and JIM MOONEY, with rare and unseen Batman art by BOB KANE, JERRY ROBINSON, WIN MORTIMER, SHELLY MOLDOFF, CHARLES PARIS, and others! Part II of the TONY TALLARICO interview by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

1970s Bullpenner WARREN REECE talks about Marvel Comics and working with EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, STAN LEE, MARIE SEVERIN, ADAMS, FRIEDRICH, ROY THOMAS, and others, with rare art! DEWEY CASSELL spotlights Golden Age artist MIKE PEPPE, with art by TOTH, TUSKA, SEKOWSKY, TALLARICO Part 3, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, cover by EVERETT & BURGOS, and more!

Spectre/Hour-Man creator BERNARD BAILY, ‘40s super-groups that might have been, art by ORDWAY, INFANTINO, KUBERT, HASEN, ROBINSON, and BURNLEY, conclusion of the TONY TALLARICO interview by JIM AMASH, MIKE PEPPE interview by DEWEY CASSELL, BILL SCHELLY on “50 Years of Fandom” at San Diego 2011, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, PÉREZ cover, and more!

SHAZAM!/FAWCETT issue! The 1940s “CAPTAIN MARVEL” RADIO SHOW, interview with radio’s “Billy Batson” BURT BOYAR, P.C. HAMERLINCK and C.C. BECK on the origin of Captain Marvel, ROY THOMAS and JERRY BINGHAM on their Secret Origins “Shazam!”, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, LEONARD STARR interview, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

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ALTER EGO #111

ALTER EGO #112

ALTER EGO #113

ALTER EGO #114

ALTER EGO #115

GOLDEN AGE NEDOR super-heroes are spotlighted, with MIKE NOLAN’s Nedor Index, and art by MORT MESKIN, JERRY ROBINSON, GEORGE TUSKA, RUBEN MOIRERA, ALEX SHOMBURG, and others! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, more 2011 Fandom Celebration, and part II of JIM AMASH’s interview with Golden Age artist LEONARD STARR! Cover by SHANE FOLEY!

SUPERMAN issue! PAUL CASSIDY (early Superman artist), Italian Nembo Kid, and ARLEN SCHUMER’s look at the MORT WEISINGER era, plus an interview with son HANK WEISINGER! Art by SHUSTER, BORING, ANDERSON, PLASTINO, and others! LEONARD STARR interview Part III—FCA—Mr. Monster—more 2011 Fandom Celebration, and a MURPHY ANDERSON/ARLEN SCHUMER cover!

MARV WOLFMAN talks to RICHARD ARNDT about his first decade in comics on Tomb of Dracula, Teen Titans, Captain Marvel, John Carter, Daredevil, Nova, Batman, etc., behind a GENE COLAN cover! Art by COLAN, ANDERSON, CARDY, BORING, MOONEY, and more! Plus: the conclusion of our LEONARD STARR interview by JIM AMASH, FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

MARVEL ISSUE on Captain America and Fantastic Four! MARTIN GOODMAN’s Broadway debut, speculations about FF #1, history of the MMMS, interview with Golden Age writer/artist DON RICO, art by KIRBY, AVISON, SHORES, ROMITA, SEVERIN, TUSKA, ALLEN BELLMAN, and others! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER and BILL SCHELLY! Cover by BELLMAN and MITCH BREITWEISER!

3-D COMICS OF THE 1950S! In-depth feature by RAY (3-D) ZONE, actual red and green 1950s 3-D art (includes free glasses!) by SIMON & KIRBY, KUBERT, MESKIN, POWELL, MAURER, NOSTRAND, SWAN, BORING, SCHWARTZ, MOONEY, SHORES, TUSKA and many others! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Cover by JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY!

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Vol. 3, No. 115 / March 2013 Roy Thomas

Editor

Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Associate Editors Christopher Day

Design & Layout John Morrow

Consulting Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck

FCA Editor

Michael T. Gilbert

Comic Crypt Editor

SPECIAL 3-D NOTICE:

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

This issue of A/E has been polybagged to include a pair of 3-D glasses at no increase in price. But hang on to them— ’cause we’ll be featuring additional 3-D images in future issues—including a second 3-D edition in 2014—and next time, we probably won’t be able to throw in free 3-D specs!

Jack Kirby & (probably) Mort Meskin— in association with Joe Simon

Digital Readers: For a pair of 3-D viewers, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to: TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614

Editorial Honor Roll

Rob Smentek William J. Dowlding

Proofreaders

Cover Artists

Tom Ziuko

Cover Colorist

—John Morrow, Ray Zone, & Roy Thomas.

Andres Jimenez Heidi Amash Douglas Jones Pedro Angosto Jim Kealy Matt D. Baker Pete Koch Rod Beck David Anthony John Benson Kraft Al Bigley Henry Kujawa E.B. Boatner Richard Kyle Dominic Bongo Ruth & Jerry Levine Chris Boyko Jim Ludwig Bernie Bubnis Dennis McHaney Jim Burns Brian K. Morris James Cassara Ken Quattro Shaun Clancy Rita Perlin Chet Cox Ethan Roberts Jeff Deischer Gordon Robson Gary Dolgoff Fred Robinson Mark Evanier Randy Sargent Michael Feldman Jeff Taylor Al Feldstein Greg Theakston Shane Foley Dann Thomas Joe Frank Mike Tuohey Mike Gartland Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Janet Gilbert James Van Hise Clizia Gussoni Jennifer Hamerlinck Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Heritage Comics Craig Yoe Archives Ray Zone Alex Jay

With Special Thanks to:

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Glenn Lord & Bill Crouch —and of Joe Kubert, Norman & Leonard Maurer, and Archer St. John, the men who brought the dream of 3-D comics to life—

and of Ray Zone, who kept the dream alive

Contents Writer/Editorial: 3-D Or Not 3-D—That Is The Question! . . . 2 The 3-D-T’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Ray Zone on the rise and fall of 1950s 3-D comic books—including some incredible secrets! Michael T. Gilbert revisits Kanegson, Eisner, Feldstein—and Charles Atlas.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Update Edition . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Bill Schelly interviews Richard Kyle, the man who coined the term “graphic novel.”

Comic Fandom Archive: Of Graphic Stories & Wonderworlds . . .59 Tributes To Glenn Lord & Bill Crouch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 re: [correspondence & corrections] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #174 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 P.C. Hamerlinck & Roy Thomas present George Evans’ Captain Video—part II

On Our Cover: Depicting the only 1950s super-hero created specifically to be printed in three dimensions, this drawing by Jack Kirby demonstrates the dynamics that would one day earn him his Marvel nickname as “The King.” Produced during his partnership with fellow great Joe Simon, who may or may not have contributed directly to it, this illustration—used as both the cover and lead splash artwork in Harvey Comics’ Captain 3-D #1 (Dec. 1953)—was most likely inked by yet a third artistic titan: Mort Meskin. Our cavorting co-publisher, John Morrow, combined the 2-D cover figure with the 3-D background of the interior splash to generate TwoMorrows’ first-ever 3-D cover! Read more—lots more— about Captain 3-D in this issue!

Above: Ye Editor suggested, at one point, the direct opposite of our peerless publisher’s approach—namely, a three-dimensional figure of Captain 3-D against a flat, colored background. So we figured you might as well see what this issue’s cover could have looked like! John Morrow prepared this version, too. [©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby; Captain 3-D is a trademark of the Estate of Joe Simon.] Alter EgoTM is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: 32 Bluebird Trail, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Eight-issue subscriptions: $60 US, $85 Canada, $107 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in China. ISSN: 1932-6890 FIRST PRINTING.

writer/editorial

3-D Or Not 3-D—That Is The Question!

’ll admit it. At age twelve, I was nuts about 3-D comics. Absolutely, positively, deliriously nuts!

As soon as I saw the first commercial 3-D movie, Bwana Devil— at a drive-in theatre, no less!—I was ready for 3-D comics. I didn’t know if it could be done, let alone how—but as soon as somebody did, I’d be right there.

Okay, so I was kind of disappointed that the first 3-D comic starred Mighty Mouse, not Superman or Batman or the stillhanging-on-just-barely Captain Marvel. Still, when I put on those 3-D glasses with red and green lenses (or, in a few cases, red and blue), I was transported to a world which was somehow much more real than the normal four-color landscape. Naturally, I’d have liked the 3-D comics to have been in color—and, being a kid on an allowance, I’d have loved them to be less expensive. 25¢ for a comic book!? Did those guys think we were made of money?

I’d also have loved for 3-D comics to have featured more superheroes. I could just imagine the (defunct) Human Torch throwing a fireball right at me—or Plastic Man stretching his arms from way deep in a panel’s background (where the green lines, when you looked at them without your 3-D glasses on, were on the left) to right in front of your face, his rubbery fist seemingly only inches from your own widened eyeballs (and now his hand would be drawn with green lines on the right, at least in most comics).

If I was to be disappointed again when first Superman, then Batman 3-D mags came out and their “3-D” wasn’t as good as in some other comics, at least I was overjoyed when the “Mighty Mouse” company that had started it all—St. John, they were called—issued a mag starring Joe Kubert’s caveman hero Tor in 3-D. Norman Maurer’s Three Stooges and both guys’ Whack had their moments, too… as did just about everything in 3-D from Harvey Comics, even though Adventures in 3-D and True 3-D were mostly filled with hero-bereft stories that left me cold. Why couldn’t anybody but St. John and Harvey really get 3-D right, I wondered.

Then Harvey’s Captain 3-D #1 came out—and I really went out of my (barely) pre-teen mind! Okay, so the striped pants looked pretty godawful—and that little knob on his helmet looked even sillier, almost as if he were wearing a beanie or something! But that Simon & Kirby art! And those stories! A kid putting on 3-D glasses and then a super-hero jumping right out of a book to take him on an exciting adventure—after which he jumps back into the book! The Cat People! Living paper dolls! “Iron Hat McGinty and His Destruction Gang!” I’d been a Simon & Kirby fan since I was six or so, but this was far-out stuff, even for them! I couldn’t wait for Captain 3-D #2 and King Solitaire!

Well, actually, as it turned out… I could. ’Cause as quickly as the 3-D fad came to comics, it went away again. Comics that cost a quarter—and you had to wear glasses to read them—become a “four-eyes”—even I wasn’t one of them yet! And when you read them, they looked like they were in black-&-white, not color! What kind of a deal was that? I was willing to compromise because I loved the 3-D effect… but clearly, most other kids weren’t.

I knew the day of 3-D comics was over when one day, around the turn of 1954, I walked into a Woolworth five-and-dime and saw a big table on which were strewn dozens and dozens of 3-D comics—all selling for just a regular ten cents, not the two-bits cover price.

And sure enough, over the next couple of months, 3-D comics were no more. But the era had been great while it lasted. You had to be there. And I was.

And, with this issue of Alter Ego, you can be, too—thanks to Ray (“3-D”) Zone and a number of comics fans who were generous with their time and scanners. But it’s not just nostalgia I feel when I read Ray’s article—it’s history. The history of a brief period which can never come again, not in quite the same way— but which left its mark on the comics industry of the 1950s. Come see!

Bestest,

COMING IN APRIL

116

JOE KUBERT in the GOLDEN & SILVER AGES! Remembering The Early Decades Of A Titan’s Life & Work! • Cover montage of KUBERT art—framing a portrait by DANIEL JAMES COX! • Honoring the first half of JOE KUBERT’s comet-like career, from the early 1940s to the mid-1970s! Revealing interviews by JK biographer BILL SCHELLY & RICHARD ARNDT & (re Enemy Ace) DANIEL JAMES COX—amid magnificent illustrations of Hawkman, Flash, Vigilante, Batman, Black Cat, Tor, Viking Prince, Sgt. Rock, Tarzan, et al.—many of them never seen before! (And keep those 3-D glasses handy!) • FCA presents the final chapter of a great Captain Video story drawn by GEORGE Prince, Enemy Ace, es Cox; Hawkman, Viking EVANS—plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT’s Comic Crypt (KUBERT edition)—& MORE!! Portrait ©2013 Daniel Jam Comics; Tor art ©2013 Estate of Joe Kubert; 13 DC Sgt. Rock art ©20

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the

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books by Ray Zone

Alpha And Omega—in 3-D! These two splash pages bookend the fleeting mid-1950s era of 3-D comic books: the first in St. John Publishing’s Three Dimension Comics #1 (Sept. 1953)—and that of writer/layout artist Harvey Kurtzman & artist Wally Wood’s “V-Vampires!,” a story redrawn and expanded from Mad #3 (Feb.-March 1953) for Three Dimensional EC Classics #1 (Spring 1954). EC’s Three Dimensional Tales from the Crypt of Terror #1-and-only had the same date as the latter. (Curiously, in most ’50s 3-D comics, the red lens covered the left eye; in EC’s, it covered the right one. Set your 3-D Zone/TwoMorrows viewers accordingly!) Thanks to Ray Zone and Rod Beck, respectively, for the scans. [Pages ©2013 the respective copyright holders & E.C. Publications, Inc.] The “Mighty Mouse” scripter may be Paul S. Newman, the comics series’ regular writer. The artist is unknown; the 1970s Who’s Who of American Comic Books credits Norman Maurer and Joe Kubert, but they “merely” added 3-D effects to a pre-existing story. Amazingly, by author Ray Zone’s tally, the entire original 3-D period lasted only nine months, from slam-bang start to dead-end finish!

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

I. Overview In Three Dimensions

SIDEBAR #1:

hen Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer produced Three Dimension Comics #1 through St. John Publishing Company in the summer of 1953, it was something new under the sun.

3-D Comics Prehistory—Expanded

There had been stereo drawings, of course, beginning with Charles Wheatstone in 1838. And the Tru-Vue company put out 3-D cartoons as stereo pairs on 35mm film strips with popular comic strip characters in the 1930s. In 1937 the Keystone Company had even published a set of optometrical “Eye Comfort Training” stereo test cards for children which featured 3-D conversions of cartoon art. And, of course, the View-Master Company had been involved in the production of stereo cartoon reels since 1947.

But Joe Kubert was not aware of any of that when he proposed the concept of a 3-D comic book to his partner Norman Maurer. Both of them had a copublishing arrangement with publisher Archer St. John whereby they were paid royalties on sales for the comic book titles they produced.

A. Before—And During—The 1950s 3-D Movies

ne hundred years before Kubert and Maurer invented 3-D comics, Charles Wheatstone, the discoverer of 3-D, drew geometric pairs of images by hand to prove his discovery. Wheatstone used a complex mirror device to view the pairs of images in 3-D. In 1891 in France, Ducos du Hauron invented the anaglyph, the red/blue process that eventually was used to print 3-D comics.

In the early 20th century optometrists used 3-D cartoons to test children’s ability to see 3-D. The Tru-Vue Company of Rock Island, Illinois, in 1933 sold 3-D cartoons viewable on a strip of 35mm flexible film. Among the popular comic strip characters that were available as Tru-Vue 3-D cartoons were Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, E.C. Segar’s Popeye, and Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy.

Norman contacted his brother Leonard, who had a background in printing technology. Working one full day, Kubert and the Maurer brothers assembled samples to test the 3-D process. Kubert worked up an image of his caveman character Tor, and Maurer created a Three Stooges sample. Archer St. John loved them.

In 1939, the View-Master system with its circular disks of seven 3-D pictures and viewing device invented by William Gruber was acquired by Sawyers Photo Processing of Portland, Oregon. After World War II, the View-Master system was distributed widely and featured many cartoon reels with such characters as Superman, Batman, Flash Gordon, and, by the 1970s, Marvel characters such as Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four. 3-D effects for these comic-book reels were produced by drawing two separate left- and right-eye images so that full volumetric roundness was visible. View-Master 3-D cartoon reels were still being produced in 2012.

B. 3-D At The Movies In The 1950s

By the fall of 1953, when Three Dimension Comics was released, 3-D movies were playing strong in theatres all over the United States. Bwana Devil, the film that had launched the 1950s 3-D movie boom, had been released on November 26, 1952. The wave of interest in all things 3-D had actually commenced in 1947 when the David White Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, released the Stereo-Realist camera that had been designed and built by Seton Rochwite. Initially, a handheld “red button” viewer with internal illumination was also released for viewing the stereo slide transparencies produced by the Stereo-Realist camera. Then, stereo projectors appeared on the market, and this led to formation of a number of 3-D clubs where members gathered to view projected stereo slides as a group. Some of these clubs are still running strong today, like the LA 3D Club (LA3Dclub.com), with members producing 3-D images using digital cameras, and sharing their work in numerous programs and competitive exhibitions.

St. John was a licensee for TerryToons’ Mighty Mouse, and it was decided that a 3-D comic book featuring that character was to be rushed into production. When Three Dimension Comics #1 was published, it sold out a million and a quarter copies virtually overnight. It was immediately reprinted and proceeded to sell over two and a half million copies total.

Joe and Norman filed a patent for their 3-D conversion process, which they termed “3-D Illustereo,” with the intention of licensing their technique to other comic book publishers. Archer St. John intended to convert his entire line of comic books to 3-D. So he rented out two

Call Me Bwana Devil A theatrical poster for Bwana Devil (1952), the first feature length 3-D movie—and the cardboard 3-D “glasses” provided for it. The latter sported polarized (not red and green) “lenses.” Producer Arch Oboler had been one of the most celebrated writers in the Golden Age of Radio. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

By 1953, the wave had gathered full force, as anaglyphic 3-D began appearing in publications of various kinds, from 3-D Movie magazine with Marilyn Monroe on the cover to anaglyphic inserts in Popular Mechanics and full-page ads in newspapers like the Los Angeles Times. The 3-D comic books made their appearance in the midst of this worldwide wave of interest in stereoscopic photography and motion pictures.

The 3-D-T’s

additional floors of a building on Third Avenue for an assembly line.

Production of the St. John 3-D comics was done with the use of four to five clear acetate cels over a Craftint board. The different levels of depth were made as line drawings on the individual cels and then opaqued on the back with white. When the acetate cels were shifted left and right on top of each other over the Craftint board, the separate left- and right-eye views were produced and subsequently shot with negative printing film. The acetate cels were punched for accurate pin-registration in the same manner as that used for cartoon animation. It was a laborious process that produced a 3-D effect having as many as six levels of apparent depth on a comic book page.

Kubert and Maurer subsequently published threedimensional issues of Tor, The Three Stooges, Little Eva, House of Terror, and Whack, a satirical comic book along the lines of Mad. One of the stories included in Whack #1 was titled “The 3-D-T’s, A Look behind the Scenes of America’s Screwiest Industry,” and ridiculed the frenetic 3-D comics stampede, with Norman and Joe featured as characters. Archer St. John, with the nom de comic “St. Peter,” was also caricatured in a second, 2-D installment of this series.

As soon as Three Dimension Comics #1 had appeared on the newsstands in the summer of 1953, all the comic publishers had taken notice. For the March 1987 issue of Starlog magazine, David Hutchison interviewed DC production manager Jack Adler about DC Comics’ entry into the 3-D comic book market.

Of Mighty Mice And Men Publisher Archer St. John, from a 1950s photo courtesy of Fred Robinson & Matt D. Baker… and the 2-D cover of Three Dimension Comics #1, with thanks to Rod Beck. Artist unknown. [Cover ©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

They Were Nobody’s Stooges! (Left-to-right images from the dawn of 3-D comics:) Artists Joe Kubert (seated) and Norman Maurer in the oft-reprinted photo from the inside front covers of St. John’s Three Stooges #1 and One Million Years Ago #1, both cover-dated Sept. 1953. The first 3-D issues of both series (#2 of each) were dated Oct. 1953. One of the experimental “Three Stooges” panels that Norm prepared overnight and showed to publisher Archer St. John to demonstrate the viability of 3-D comics. This art, like the photo of Moe and the Maurers at right, saw print in Craig Yoe’s highly recommended 2011 hardcover Amazing 3-D Comics! (See p. 50.) There was reportedly a Kubert “Tor” sample 3-D page, as well. [©2013 Joan Howard Maurer.] Moe Howard (head of the “reel-life” Three Stooges, minus his fright-wig)… comics artist/writer/editor Norman Maurer (who was married to Moe’s daughter Joan)... and Norm’s brother, the technologically inclined Leonard Maurer. Thanks to Craig Yoe & Clizia Gussoni. To the extent possible, in this issue we’ve refrained from repeating images that appear in Yoe’s book, which reprinted a number of complete stories. Your comics library should contain both it and A/E #115—as well as Hal Morgan & Dan Symmes’ 1982 tome Amazing 3-D, which covers the whole ’50s phenomenon and contains an excellent section on the comics.

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

“I was working at DC, which was then known as National Periodicals, doing color separations for them,” Adler recalled. “There were rumors in the industry that someone was toying with the idea of 3-D for comics. [Production chief] Sol Harrison came over to me and asked if I had ever heard of such a thing and could I do it? I said, yes, it could be done. And he said, ‘Do it.’ It was just as simple as that.

“My interests lay in the area of optics and photography. In the natural course of exploring optics, I learned about 3-D photography, how and why it worked. The very day Sol Harrison asked me about 3-D comics, I took apart a panel and reassembled it on cels to show how it could be done. I took a panel out of one of our books— I think it was of two mice chasing each other.

“I worked out a formula that would allow you to create the illusion of correct relative size and distance. In other words, you could create the effect of something being 10 inches or 10 feet in front of you. Eventually, I applied for a patent for my method of creating 3-D drawings, but I was turned down on the premise that I used materials and methods from other things.”

Jack Adler’s figuring out the cel acetate 3-D conversion process swiftly led to publication of Superman “in Startling 3-D Life-Like Action” in November 1953 and Batman “Adventures in Amazing 3-D Action” in December.

To the great dismay of Maurer and Kubert, other publishers, too, quickly began to issue 3-D comics without acquiring a license for “3-D Illustereo.” In fact, the only company besides St.

Getting The “3-Disease” The first page of “The 3-D-T’s,” the “behind-the-scenes” story of 3-D comics from Whack #1 (Oct. 1953). Art and story by Norman Maurer (who’s caricatured at right), probably with input from co-editor Joe Kubert (center). Thanks to Ray Zone. [©2013 Estates of Joe Kubert & Norman Maurer.]

SIDEBAR #2:

The Cel Method

sing clear acetate overlays with two different sets of registration punch marks on the cels, true 3-D effects were achieved from primarily “flat” source material for both 3D comic books and the 3-D animated cartoons of the early 1950s. With a US Patent (No. 2,776,594) for a “Method of and Means for Producing Stereoscopic Animated Cartoons,” William F. Garity illustrated and described a method of “preparing cels, bearing representations of objects at different distances from an observer, for the production of animated cartoon films for stereoscopic projection.”

Garity’s patent was applied for on August 18, 1953, just two months before Freeman H. Owens’ 1936 patent (see p. 34) was due to expire. Garity’s patent was eventually granted on January 8, 1957, and had been assigned by Garity to Walter Lantz

Productions, which had used it to produce Hypnotic Hick, a sevenminute 3-D cartoon featuring Lantz’s popular Woody Woodpecker and released to movie theatres on August 26, 1953.

Observing Hypnotic Hick closely in 3-D, as well as some of the other animated cartoons of 1953 like Boo Moon (featuring Casper the Friendly Ghost) and Ace of Space (with Popeye), instances of true stereoscopic drawing are occasionally present with actual elements drawn as discrete right- and left-eye stereo pairs. This was also the case with some of the Harvey 3-D comics that were published at the same time. Most of the 1950s 3-D comic books and cartoons, however, exhibited a world of stereoscopic visual space consisting of four or five planar or “flat” levels going back into the page or screen.

The 3-D-T’s

Harvey 3-D Hits A trio of covers for some of Harvey Comics’ earliest and technologically impressive 3-D mags: Adventures in 3-D #1 (Nov. 1953), True 3-D #1 (Dec. ’53), and the Simon-&-Kirby-produced Captain 3-D #1 (Dec. ’53). The former’s “leaping leopard” illo (by Howard Nostrand), which was reproduced in 3-D inside the mag, is reprinted in Craig Yoe’s Amazing 3-D Comics! book, so we’ve chosen instead to showcase the 3-D lead splash (by an unidentified artist) from True 3-D. The Captain 3-D cover was penciled by Jack Kirby, and probably inked by Mort Meskin. Thanks to Rod Beck & Michael T. Gilbert for the Adventures scan—and to Ray Zone for those from True 3-D—while Ye Editor scanned Captain 3-D from one of the two copies he owns. [Captain 3-D art ©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby; other art ©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

World’s Finest 3-D? DC production manager Jack Adler eyes the covers of the 1953 ThreeDimension Adventures Superman and 3-D Batman tabloid-size comics he spearheaded. Both covers look to have been penciled by Curt Swan; inkers uncertain. Adler provided the photo for A/E #56; covers sent by Ray Zone. See interior art from these mags on p. 25. [Covers ©2013 DC Comics.]

John to license Kubert and Maurer’s process was the Power Publishing Co., which issued The Space Kat-Ets in 3-D with a December 1953 cover date.

Some of the finest 3-D comics produced by St. John’s competitors were those put out by Harvey Publications. including Adventures in 3-D (Nov. 1953) and True 3-D (Dec. 1953). The art and conversions for these 3-D comics were created by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand, and they featured drawing “in-the-round” and continuous depth. Harvey also published Captain 3-D with dynamic art by Jack Kirby for December. Leon Harvey, one of the publishers of Harvey Comics, saw great potential in 3-D. Howard Nostrand, in an interview in Bill Spicer’s Graphic Story Magazine #16 (Summer 1974), recalled how Harvey attempted to move beyond the competition: “Leon got together with somebody or other and they worked out some gimmick so that the art seemed to project out of the page towards you instead of just remaining in planes. It all went for naught, though. After two issues the whole thing was dead.”

[Continued on p. 34]

When Tom Corbett Grew Whiskers Splash page from Power Publishing’s Space Kat-Ets #1 (Dec. 1953), the only non-St. John 3-D comic that was actually licensed by 3-D Illustereo. Writer & artists unknown. Thanks to Ray Zone. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

The 3-D-T’s

N O I T C E S D 3 D THRILL-PACKE plete

A Stereoscopic & Incom D Comics, 3Bird’s-Eye View Of 1950mspany Company By Co

St. John Publishing Co. Tor De Force Joe Kubert’s celebrated “Tor” series was launched in the full-color One Million Years Ago (Sept. 1953)—but after that, things got confusing. The second issue, whose cover is seen at far left, was officially titled 3-D Comics #2 (Oct. 1953). The very next month saw the third “Tor”-starring mag—which was also titled 3-D Comics #2, though with a publication date of Nov. ’53! The latter’s cover, seen at near left, spotlighted 3-D figures of Kubert’s cavorting caveman and his pet proto-monkey Chee-Chee. Also depicted, from scans sent by Ray Zone: Kubert’s two-page “Panelrama” spread from the first 3-D Comics #2. In the early 2000s, DC reprinted all “Tor” and related prehistoric St. John material in beautiful hardcover editions, but in color and not in 3-D; in the 1980s Ray Zone had overseen the collecting of much of Kubert’s 3-D “Tor” in comics format. Craig Yoe’s recent Amazing 3-D Comics! volume reprints one entire “Tor” story in 3-D. And we’ll have more 3-D “Tor” in next issue’s Kubert tribute. [©2013 Estate of Joe Kubert.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

Also In This Eon… The two 3-D Comics #2 issues contained other features besides “Tor” (as seen counter-clockwise from top left): “The Wizard of Ugghh,” probably drawn and scripted primarily by Norman Maurer (perhaps with an assist from artist Bob Bean?) for the first #2, sported a Stone Age W.C. Fields con-man type. “Danny Dreams,” seen here from the same issue, was a series starring a 20th-century teenager who dreamed he was back in prehistory; eventually he couldn’t wake up and was trapped there! Art by Joe Kubert; scripter unknown. In the second 3-D Comics #2 were Kubert-illustrated “Story of Evolution” pages. By covering one or the other eye while wearing 3D glasses, a reader saw either an ancient beast—or its modern-day descendant. [All art on this page ©2013 Estate of Joe Kubert.]

The 3-D-T’s

All The World’s A Stooge (Counter-clockwise from top left:) Norman Maurer’s cover for The Three Stooges #2 (Oct. 1953), the first 3-D issue. The splash page is from its second story starring Moe, Larry, and Shemp. (Curly, the zaniest of the original Stooges, had left the trio in 1946 due to serious illness; his and Moe’s brother Shemp had taken his place in the movie shorts—and finally, in 1953, in comic books.) Thanks to Chet Cox for the 3-D splash. [©2013 Joan Howard Maurer.] “Dee-fective Comics” in Whack #1, drawn (and perhaps written?) by Norman Maurer, is a parody of Chester Gould’s comic strip Dick Tracy. Whack was the very first Mad-influenced comic to be published after Harvey Kurtzman’s four-color brainchild hit the newsstands. Thanks to Rod Beck. You can read more about it in A/E #86; and several of Whack’s 2-D lampoons saw print in John Benson’s splendid 2012 anthology The Sincerest Form of Parody. [©2013 Estates of Norman Maurer & Joe Kubert.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

Casting A Wide 3-D Net Kubert & Maurer also oversaw 3-D editions of other St. John titles, such as single issues of The House of Terror (Oct. 1953), The Hawk 3-D (Nov. ’53), and Daring Adventures 3-D (Nov. ’53). Two of the splash pages shown here were drawn by Joe; the “Hawk” artist is unidentified, as are the writers of all three tales. Thanks to Rod Beck for this trio of splashes. St. John also published an issue of Abbott & Costello 3-D. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

The 3-D-T’s

Watch The Fur Fly! (Above:) The 3-D interior version of the cover of St. John’s Funny 3-D #1 (Dec. 1953). Artist & writer unknown—but the 3-D is fine! Thanks to Rod Beck. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Bubble Gum, Bikes—& Bras! (Above & left:) St. John’s talented crew even rendered the inside paid ads in 3-D, such as this one for Fleer Bubble Gum. There was also one for Schwinn bicycles— and another company even ran one for Young Form Bras. Artists & writers unknown. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

Harvey Publications

Having An Adventure Adventures in 3-D and True 3-D (for some reason the cover logo of the latter contained no hyphen, though the indicia title did) were two basically interchangeable mags from Harvey. Even so, they’re noteworthy both for the superior 3-D—at least as good as that produced even by Maurer & Kubert—and for solid art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand. (The latter pair of erstwhile colleagues are seen, in that order from left to right at top right of this page, in a 1950s photo provided by Seth Powell for A/E #66’s coverage of his father; a Nostrand interview ran in A/E #89.) Harvey 3-D comics, like some other companies’, contained two pairs of “glasses” rather than one. Seen above are two splashes from Adventures in 3-D #1 (Nov. 1953)—the one on the left by Powell, the other by Nostrand—and at right is a 3-D spread by Nostrand of #2’s cover scene (Jan. 1954). Thanks to Rod Beck and Michael T. Gilbert. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

The 3-D-T’s

Now You See It... (Left:) Harvey’s Adventures in 3-D and True 3-D contained several one-pagers called “Three D Blinkeys,” which played with the red and green lenses much as Joe Kubert had done with the “Story of Evolution” pages. If you covered one eye/lens, one story was told; if you covered the other, you saw a tale with a quite different ending. Ye Editor’s favorite one, from True 3-D #1, has sciencefictional art by Bob Powell; writer unknown. Thanks to Ray Zone. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

(Right:) The humorous comic strip/comic book character Sad Sack starred in Harvey 3-D Hits #1 (Jan. 1954). The strip had been created by writer/artist George Baker while in the armed services during World War II; the identities of the writer and artist of the comic book are unrecorded. Thanks to Rod Beck. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

Comin’ Atcha! Another trio of Harvey 3-D goodies (clockwise from top right:) The cover scene of True 3-D #2 (Feb. 1954), as transformed into 3-D inside. Artist uncertain. Thanks to Ray Zone. The 3-D splash version of the cover of 3-D Dolly #1 (Dec. 1953); artist unknown. Thanks to Rod Beck & Michael T. Gilbert. And this three-dimensional house ad plugs several Harvey 3-D covers, even adding 3-D effects to the miniatures. It’s presided over by Captain 3-D, as penciled by Jack Kirby. [Captain 3-D art ©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby; other art ©2013 the respective copyright holders.] And, speaking of Captain 3-D….

The 3-D-T’s

Captain, My Captain… If one discounts the redrawing of a few old “Superman” stories, the only super-hero exploits created especially for 1950s 3-D comics were those of Harvey’s Captain 3-D #1 (Dec. 1953). That title was produced by the team supreme of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, with Kirby penciling and Mort Meskin handling most of the inking (though reportedly Jack and a young Steve Ditko also did some); the writer is unknown. On this page are the first two of the issue’s three splashes. Incidentally, there was no hyphen in the hero’s name in the actual stories. [©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby; Captain 3-D is a trademark of the Estate of Joe Simon.]

Captain 2-D All comics material from Captain 3-D #1 (Dec. 1953) except the contents page was reprinted in Titan Books’ 2010 hardcover The Simon & Kirby Superheroes. However, that tome reprinted the “Cap” stories in 2-D—and in color for the first time ever, which was a plus in its own way. All the same, we hope one day to see those stories reissued in 3-D!

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

A Captain Courageous This third and final Kirby (& Meskin?) splash page from Captain 3-D #1, like the other two, illustrates a point that The King made to fan/writer/editor Martin L. Greim, as recorded in AC Comics’ Golden-Age Men of Mystery #15: “Kirby pointed out to me once that a lot of other 3-D books were done wrong. The 3-D effect showed objects flying into the panels instead of leaping out of them.” Certainly Simon & Kirby didn’t make that mistake! [All comics material on this page ©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby.]

W.M.D.’s, Simon & Kirby Style (Right:) This Kirby/Meskin page, reproduced from the original art, which depicts the weapons of mass destruction wielded against each other by the warring denizens of the World of D—juxtaposed with a key panel from the 3-D version, which displays an impressive degree of depth. Thanks to Dominic Bongo for retrieving the art at right for us from the Heritage Comics Archives.

The 3-D-T’s

Up Close And Personal (Below:) The original, pre-3-D art for page 6 of the first story in Captain 3-D #1, penciled by Kirby (and probably inked by Meskin) on Craftint paper. Note that the background art, including one figure in panel 1, is done in gray at this stage, not in line art. Ray Zone writes: “The gray background art is likely just rendered for position only (not finished as rendered ink), with placement of the other layers which ultimately were put on cels as layers for subsequent lateral shifting. With 3-D cel art, it’s fair to say you don’t actually have ‘originals.’ The different elements are Photostats or PMTs (Photo Mechanical Transfers) shot from actual originals. The stats were then cut out and glued to cels for shifting at different distances horizontally for left- and right-eye images. This art is probably key art for FPO [for position only], an intermediate made before final creation of the PMTs on cels actually used to shoot left- and right-eye negatives.” [©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

The Shape Of 3-D Things To Come The full-page ad at right, supplied by Ray Zone, “boasts” a non-Kirby Captain 3-D figure—but the real kicker is that it showcases Kirby’s cover done for the second issue, plus a mention of someone called Infinity. [All images on this page ©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby.]

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www.twomorrows.com In addition, a caption in #1 had said that in “the next big issue” Cap would meet “King Solitaire.” Below is a 2-D house ad from Adventures in 3-D #2 that likewise heralded Captain 3-D #2; artist uncertain. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. But that ballyhooed issue, sadly, never appeared. [©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby.]

In 1992, however, artist & AC Comics publisher Bill Black re-inked that small image of the Captain 3-D #2 cover from the full-page house ad—and it became the cover art for Golden-Age Men of Mystery #15. (Still later, Black inked that 1953 cover yet again for TwoMorrows’ flagship publication The Jack Kirby Collector [#45]—this time from a photocopy of the original art that had been rescued from a dumpster by a former Harvey employee and sent to John Morrow.) [Art ©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby; Captain 3-D is a trademark of the Joe Simon Estate.]

The 3-D-T’s

Captain 3-D #2! Amazingly, it’s been learned in the past decade-plus that most of the interior pages of Captain 3-D #2 still exist—or at the very least, photocopies of the pencils do. Jack Kirby wasn’t directly involved in that art; but much of the penciling is by the great Mort Meskin, who (besides inking much of #1) had done stellar artwork in the 1940s on “Johnny Quick,” “Vigilante,” “The Black Terror,” “The Fighting Yank,” et al.! Seen below is Meskin’s splash page from one story intended for #2; it’s reproduced here, for the first time ever, courtesy of Ethan Roberts, owner of the original art. Thanks a 3-D million, Ethan! [Art ©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby.]

(Above:) Mort Meskin. Photo sent courtesy of sons Peter and Phil for A/E #24.

MIND-NUMBING NOTE: Want to see more of the never-published Captain 3-D #2? Just turn the page!

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

Be-Bop! A Lulu! AC Comics’ Golden-Age Men of Mystery #15 reprinted the other eight pages of this Meskin-drawn story, with its lowlife villain called Be-Bop, from photocopies of the pencils owned by collector/historian Greg Theakston. AC had all eight computerlettered (utilizing the text Meskin had scribbled in); three were inked by Bill Black. But, because the tale was then erroneously assumed to have been a 10-pager, the page numbers are each off by one: the pages reprinted here from GAMoM are actually pp. 2 & 8; “page 3” picks up right where the splash page leaves off. The photocopied pages were at one time in the possession of comics artist George Roussos, who may have once been assigned to ink them. Thus, this nine-page adventure intended for Captain 3-D #2 has been completely preserved in penciled form! GAMoM #15, incidentally, with its in-depth study of Captain 3-D, is still available from AC Comics (see ad on p. 74); we recommend it highly. [Art & story ©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby.]

But wait—there’s more—!

The 3-D-T’s

Playing Solitaire Also preserved were Meskin’s dynamic pencils for pp. 2-8 of the “King Solitaire” tale heralded in 1953 house ads—with each page numbered for our convenience. As to the other numbers (and letters) indicated on these pages, they’re probably related to preparing the page for 3-D publication. Thanks to A/E publisher John Morrow and original-art dealer Pete Koch—also to Mike Gartland for doing (John says) “most of the legwork” and to James Van Hise. The whereabouts of the splash page of this story is, unfortunately, unknown—nor are we sure precisely what’s going on in these pages, besides Cap and Danny encountering King Solitaire. [©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

Three’s Company! Photocopies also exist of at least five penciled, text-less pages of a third tale meant for Captain 3-D #2. These, which don’t seem to be Meskin’s work, have our hero journeying, apparently minus Danny, to another dimension—perhaps war-ravaged “D” itself?— in search of the stolen Book of D. Captain 3-D gets to ride around on a fierce-looking saurian, whilst helping a tribe of primitives against armored soldiers. But where in any of these three yarns is the advertised “Infinity”? Some pages of this story are drawn in a standard linear comics style, as per below left; others, like the one below, are literally awash in pencil lead (which sounds, actually, not unlike the way Meskin reportedly laid out his own work). Thanks again to Morrow, Koch, Gartland, & Van Hise. [©2013 Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby.]

See more of the unpublished Captain 3-D #2 in a near-future issue—so hang on to the “3-D goggles” you got free with this one!!

The 3-D-T’s

DC Does It! And here, as promised back on p. 8, is interior art from National/DC’s Three-Dimension Adventures Superman and 3-D Batman (both published in late 1953).

“Origins”—Take Two (Above:) The already-iconic “Superman” logo was altered to give a 3-D effect without need for an actual receding perspective, something that St. John and Harvey could do and DC did not. Comics historian Bob Hughes informs us that all three “Superman” stories in the tabloid were completely redrawn in 1953, including this one by artists Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye, re-adapting Bill Finger’s tenth-anniversary retelling of the origin in Superman #53 (July-Aug. 1948). DC made no attempt, Bob says, to closely approximate the earlier art. (Below:) Oddly, in a panel from another story in the issue (“The Man Who Bossed Superman!”), the DC crew didn’t make much use of the comin’right-atcha aspect of 3-D. Pencils by Curt Swan; writer and inker uncertain. [All art on this page ©2013 DC Comics.]

Holy 3-D Glasses, Batman! (Above:) In 1953, the “3-D’d” rendition of the story “The Robot Robbers” from Batman #42 (Aug.-Sept. 1947) was not redrawn, but merely rendered into 3-D. This page is from a 1980s version translated for publication in Spain by the company Editor Toutain. Script by Bill Finger; full art by Charles Paris. Thanks to Andres Jimenez.

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

The Marvel Age of 3-D Comics—NOT! Timely/Atlas (precursor of Marvel) produced only two 3-D issues—and, surprisingly, neither was a horror comic! Even so, the efforts of Martin Goodman’s company were memorable mainly because (1) for some reason Timely/Atlas line charged only 15¢ instead of the usual quarter for a 3-D comic; and (2) for that dime and nickel, 3-D Action #1 (Jan. 1954) still gave you two 3-D viewers, “in case you lose one!” (See cover at left; the page below is the inside front cover.) But—did anybody really believe the glasses were “free” when the comics cost more than a dime? Cover artist unknown.

Two of the “men’s action” stories inside were drawn by Syd Shores and George Tuska, most likely not originally for 3-D. Thanks to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., Rod Beck, & Michael T. Gilbert for these four scans! [All art on this page©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The 3-D-T’s

Riding Off Into The 3-D Sunset Timely’s 3-D Tales of the West #1 (also Jan. 1954)—with its cover by an unknown artist and several cowboy shoot-’em-ups—included a “Black Rider” yarn drawn by Al Hartley; scripter unidentified. Thanks to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. The art on the house ad at left, which was sent by Ray Zone & Rod Beck, is identified by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo as being by Joe Maneely. [©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

Fiction House & MikeRoss

The Queen Wears A Size 3-D Fiction House, the pulp-mag company which would go out of business in a couple of years, put its biggest comics star into Sheena 3-D (1953; no month), utilizing art that may or may not be by Robert Webb. But the company’s 3-D effects were flat; Sheena, for instance, is rendered at page level, not coming at the reader—which was probably what young boys expected when they purchased a copy (except that they didn’t—not in large enough numbers, anyway). Thanks to Ray Zone. [Sheena TM & ©2013 Paul Aratow or successors in interest.]

Love That 3-D? Apparently Not! Ross Andru & Mike Esposito’s 3-D Love and 3-D Romance one-shots, according to Esposito in his interview with Jim Amash in A/E #53, had only about 10% sell-through and helped put Stereographic Publications (an offshoot of their MikeRoss Publications?) into receivership. This page is from 3-D Love. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

The 3-D-T’s

You’re A Star!

Old King Cole Star Publications’ major asset was artist/editor L.B. Cole (see photo), who drew the dramatic covers of its 3-D Western Fighters #1 and 3-D Jungle Thrills #1 (both Dec. 1953). The IDs of the artists and writers of the two splash pages are uncertain. Cole will be spotlighted in A/E #117. [Comics pages ©2013 the respective copyright holders; photo ©2013 E.B Boatner, with thanks to John Benson.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

One-Shot Wonders

Ain’t She Keene! (Above:) Surprisingly, Archie Comics’ lone entry in the 3-D comics sweepstakes didn’t star Archie Andrews! Katy Keene 3-D (the official title), written and drawn by Bill Woggin, bore a date of simply “1953.” Scan supplied by Ray Zone. [©2013 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Rootie Call (Above:) Rootie Kazootie, a Howdy Doody-style marionette from early TV, starred in an issue from Dell/Western awkwardly titled 3-D-ell. The panels in this relatively unique 3-D comic were composed of photos, not drawings! Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Jet Pup(py) Love (Left & above:) Dimensions Publications’ Jet Pup 3-D (Winter 1953) probably hoped to capture some of the magic of the 3-D “Mighty Mouse” comics. (There never was a 2-D Jet Pup comic; thanks for asking.) We’re grateful to dealer Gary Dolgoff for the scan—and to James Cassara for buying the comic from Gary and asking him to send us one! Jim Ludwig provided the cover image. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

The 3-D-T’s

Not With A Bang But With A Whimper

Cheerios, Old Chap! As the short-lived 3-D Comics craze wound down, specimens began being given away free as premiums—which, of course, is precisely how color comic books had started out in the late ’20s and ’30s! Above is Paul Murry’s cover for the 24-page 1954 giveaway Walt Disney’s Comics – Cheerios Set 1 #1, which was placed in boxes of that popular breakfast cereal. [©2013 Disney Productions, Inc.]

Tarz An’ The Apes Almost comics, but not quite, were Topps Chewing Gum’s so-called “bubble-gum cards,” collected and traded by kids of the period. Tarzan’s Savage Fury, a 1953 movie starring Lex Barker, was one of two Tarzan films promoted by a set of 60 3-D trading cards, reportedly produced through Harvey Comics and drawn by artists Bob Powell & Howard Nostrand (see pp. 14-16). The other set was Tarzan and the She Devil. Images retrieved from the website Chuckman’s Non-Sports Trading Cards of the 1950s. [©2013 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

The 3-D Effect Comics Several companies tried to grab the attention of 3-D comics enthusiasts with mags that (supposedly) approximated the look of them in some way, but didn’t require glasses—or a 25¢ price tag. One of the most imaginative techniques for referencing 3-D in a conventional four-color comic book was to design the art with receding or oblique panel borders that suggested a 3-D effect. Characters and objects would overlap the panel borders and seemed to be coming out of the picture. (Near left:) This was effectively done by artist Harry Lazarus in Adventures into the Unknown, published by the American Comics Group (ACG) via a gimmick dubbed “Truevision 3-D”—as per this page from AITU #53 (March 1954). The identity of the writer is unknown. Other ACG titles using this effect were Romantic Adventures, Lovelorn, Cookie, The Kilroys, and Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert for this and the following two scans. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: ACG’s black gutters were perhaps an attempt to duplicate the feel of sitting in a darkened theatre watching a 3-D movie.] [All art on this and the following page ©2013 the respective copyright holders.] (Facing page, top left:) Frank Bolle, in issues of Magazine Enterprises’ Tim Holt/Red Mask and Black Phantom, showcased what was called “3-D Effect Illustration.” Seen here is a splash page from Red Mask #42 (June-July 1954), the first issue after the magazine had officially changed its title from Tim Holt—though not the first “3-D effect” edition. Scripter unknown. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: This was pretty much just ACG’s “Truevision 3-D” with white gutters instead of black ones.] (Facing page, far right:) Lev Gleason Publications offered three 1954 issues of Crime and Punishment and one of Black Diamond Western, with stories featuring CinemaScope-shaped panels in an effect they called “Deep Dimension.” Art on this page from “War on the Streets” in the first of these, C&P #66 (March 1954) is by Alex Toth—who drew all the “Deep Dimension” stories; scripter unknown. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: To this then-young reader, the shape of the “Deep Dimension” pages was unpleasantly like reading a comics page that had been printed on wet cloth, with its four corners pinned to a wall, the rest of the page shrinking inward as it dried.] (Facing page, bottom left:) But the most bizarre of the “3-D effect comics” was Jungle Adventures #7 (1954), a one-shot “Story and Coloring Book” from the previously mentioned Star Publications, with cover art by publisher Leonard B. Cole and interior black-&white art by Jay Disbrow in what was dubbed “PictureScope”—“a new illusion without glasses.” The always-enterprising Cole doubtless hoped to make a killing charging 15¢ for this black-& white magazine that employed just one large cantilevered panel on each page and a tale featuring Jahka, Lord of the Jungle, and his encounter with a sacred red ape. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Ray Zone is too modest to mention it, but in the 1980s he would turn Jungle Adventures #7 into true 3-D; that art will be showcased in A/E #117’s upcoming coverage of L.B. Cole and his artist-colleague Jay Disbrow—so save your 3-D goggles!] [Art on this and facing page ©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

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[Continued from p. 8]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

After a strong start, sales on 3-D comic books plummeted rapidly. From (cover dates) September 1953 to June 1954, a total of 51 different 3-D comic books were published by a variety of publishers.

Dismal sales of 3-D comics by December of 1953 undermined Archer St. John. Another blow to Joe and Norm’s “3-D Illustereo” came in the fall of 1953, when they were sued for patent infringement by William Gaines, publisher of the EC Comics line. Unknowingly, Joe and Norm had infringed on a 1936 patent that had been granted to inventor Freeman H. Owens for a “Method of Drawing and Photographing Stereoscopic Pictures in Relief” (US Patent No. 2,057,051).

Two For The 3-Saw Two men whose work with 3-D would profoundly affect Kubert & Maurer—and even more so, Archer St. John: (Left:) Inventor Freeman H. Owens, seen in 1924 with a home movie projector. This photo was retrieved from the Freeman H. Owens Photo Page website by Ken Quattro; Ken is conducting his own research into 3-D comics, which will appear in a 2014 issue of A/E.

Though the patent was due to expire on October 13, 1953, Gaines licensed it from Owens and proceeded to sue Kubert, the Maurer brothers, and St. John for infringement. At the same time, Gaines proceeded with plans to publish two 3-D comic titles, Three Dimensional EC Classics and Three Dimensional Tales from the Crypt of Terror, which eventually saw print in the spring of 1954. The books featured excellent art and 3-D effects by the stable of EC artists which included Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Bernard Krigstein, and Graham Ingels.

(Right:) William M. Gaines, publisher of EC Comics. Photo put on the Internet by daughter Wendy Gaines Bucci; provided to us by Michael Feldstein.

Joe Kubert went on to produce thousands of pages of comic book art and to found The Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art in Dover, New Jersey. Norman Maurer migrated back to Hollywood to produce motion pictures. Archer St. John exited the comic book business.

Three Dimension Comics #1 had been an artistic and cultural anomaly, an economic quirk in the comic book publishing landscape. It had been the first time that cartoon line art had been published in anaglyphic form in a comic book, and children everywhere in America had responded with eager eyes and hands to this unprecedented visual innovation.

II. JOE KUBERT & NORMAN MAURER Discuss The Origin Of 3-D Comic Books

Following are excerpts from a conversation that was videotaped by the author at the 1986 San Diego Comic Convention for a panel discussion between Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer about the 3-D comics of the 1950s. It was the first meeting of the two artists after an interim of many years, and there was great humor and affection evident between the two longtime friends during an in-depth discussion of their early years as comic artists. Kubert and Maurer were among the first artists in the comic book industry to negotiate for and secure “creators’ rights” with participation in profits for individual titles that they launched and produced. Three Dimension Comics #1 (Sept. 1953), featuring “Mighty Mouse” and published by St. John Publishing Co., was among several titles in which Kubert and Maurer had profit participation.

JOE KUBERT: What happened was, I had just come out of the

service in 1952. And I had been stationed in Germany. Norm was out in California with his wife and his family. When I got out of the Army, the first thing I did was to take a vacation with my wife.

And when I got back to New York I contacted Archer St. John, who had seen my work and was interested in doing something with some of the ideas that I had shown. At that point I contacted Norm and Joan and said, “Look, I think we have some sort of a deal that looks viable. Come out here and see what we can set up.” So Norm and Joan did come out, and we started publishing with St. John and we were co-publishers. And we participated in the profits of any of the publishing ventures that we were into.

NORMAN MAURER: Right, and that deal was on “flat” comics.

KUBERT: That’s right. And so, anyhow, we started putting out these comics; that was Tor, Three Stooges, and Whack and several others. And at that time Norm and I talked about doing something different. We said, “Let’s see if we can do something different. Something that’s just a little bit off the beaten track.” And I remembered, when I was in Europe, where I was stationed, I had seen some magazines with three-dimensional photographs. And they included the red and green lenses with which you saw the photographs. MAURER: And 3-D movies were going big at that time. Bwana Devil was a big hit.

KUBERT: So I asked Norm, I said, “What do think about the idea of transposing what we do with illustration, technically, and putting out a 3-D comic book? We will make the drawings and turn them into 3-D.” Norm’s first reaction was “Naaahhhh...!” That’s always his first reaction. He was always testing you. As if to say, “If you don’t really feel strongly about what you’re doing... forget about it!” Which is great. And so Norm contacted his brother Len, who had some background in techniques of printing.

MAURER: Yeah, Len was a graduate engineer of Georgia Tech. He had more brains than we do when it came to this technical stuff.

KUBERT: So we all got together. We put together the samples of the thing and...

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MAURER: No, wait a minute... We worked it out in one day, and toward evening we thought we had it licked and put it all together. My brother worked for Supreme Knitting Needles, now owned by Singer Sewing Machine, way out in the valley, and they had a little print shop there. And he went driving all the way back to Long Island, opened up the factory, went into the print shop, and in the wee hours of the morning he came back with this stuff printed in red and blue. And we had no glasses.

KUBERT: I remember that. Yes, yes...

MAURER: So we were out looking for red and green cellophane at 9 o’clock in the morning in 1953 in New York City.

KUBERT: We couldn’t tell if the stuff worked or not! We couldn’t see the 3-D...

MAURER: Well, we all remembered one thing...that they used to sell lollipops that were wrapped up in different colors of cellophane. And we went and bought some. By morning we had the glasses and we almost fainted because it worked!

KUBERT: It actually worked!

MAURER: I’ll never forget that meeting with St. John when Joe— and Joe was more of a convincer then because he had set up the original deal.

KUBERT: You had stage fright...

MAURER: No, no stage fright... and he just about had St. John almost convinced, and then he showed him the stuff. And I remember St. John sitting in front of that fifth-floor window and when he looked at the stuff he leaned back in his chair and I thought he was going to fall out the window....

KUBERT: Yeah, he looked at the stuff and I thought, “Oh my God!”

MAURER: And we made the deal like that, just like that.

KUBERT: Well, I must tell you a little about St. John. Archer St. John was his actual name and he was the publisher of St. John comics...

MAURER: A saint he wasn’t...

KUBERT: Don’t speak ill of the dead. But he was a tall guy and he used to be an executive with the Lionel Train Company. After that he put together his publishing company and he was very conservative, an ultra-conservative type. And that was the person that we two nuts were working with, putting out these crazy comic books and ultimately the 3-D magazines. And we had an arrangement with him that we were partners, co-publishers, when it came to any of the material that we produced.

MAURER: When that first 3-D book was proposed, everybody thought that he and Joe and I were crazy. You used to be able to buy then 64 pages in full color for a dime. And here we were putting out 32 pages in black-&-white for a quarter. And everybody figured this can’t go. Well, it sold out overnight. We sold two and half million copies.

KUBERT: Our first run was a million and a quarter copies. And we went back to press.

MAURER: It was written up in the Encyclopedia Britannica as the biggest-selling comic magazine of that year, bettering Superman and all the rest.

Now, St. John was a strange man, very difficult to pin down. He was a bloody dynamo when he had an exciting project. And the minute he finished it, he would disappear. You couldn’t find him.

KUBERT: He ordered champagne after that first 3-D book... a lot of bottles.

Giving It A Whack This one’s definitely worth putting on your 3-D glasses for! The caricatured Norman Maurer (on left) and Joe Kubert are forced to draw all the St. John 3-D comics themselves after their overworked staff rebels, in “The 3-D-T’s” story from Whack #1; art and perhaps script by Maurer. A photo of the boys was seen back on p. 5. Thanks to Rod Beck. [©2013 Estates of Norman Maurer & Joe Kubert.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

was what eventually killed him.

KUBERT: When Norm and I made our success with St. John, we were both living in New Jersey. Norm went home and told his wife about it and I went home and told my wife about it, and we both drove up in brand new Buicks!

Now, what happened was that St. John suggested that, since he was a licensee of the Mighty Mouse character, we use the 3-D for that. Instead of applying the 3-D technique to any kind of character that didn’t have promotional value, St. John felt, perhaps rightly so, that the Mighty Mouse character would by itself generate a lot more sales. And the artwork had already been finished. The artwork was flat. It had been done on paper. It was all flat and finished. And we then converted it into a 3-D illustration. And that was a story in itself.

We had the entire 32 pages of material and we then had to convert it into a book. Norman and I worked for three days and nights without sleep to convert the book. And we finished the entire book in 3-D. We took the artwork, got on a plane, and went down to Washington to the engraver. We set the artwork up for the engraving camera to have the stuff shot properly. And

“St. Peter, Don’t You Call Me, ’Cause I Can’t Go…” The second “3-D-T’s” story, published in 2-D color in Whack #2 (Dec. 1953), was a thinly disguised allusion to legal hassles over the 3-D process. This time, shown alongside caricatures of Kubert and Maurer is “A. St. Peter,” stand-in for publisher Archer St. John. Thanks to Ken Quattro. [©2013 Estates of Norman Maurer & Joe Kubert.]

MAURER: Yeah. That one book segued into something else.... Now we tried to talk him out of it. KUBERT: We tried to talk him out of it.

MAURER: But he rented two or three floors over on Third Avenue. He had twenty or thirty people working for him.

KUBERT: He had his office on Fifth Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street. And he immediately rented an additional two floors of that building to hire those people to convert every book that he was doing into 3-D as a result of the phenomenal sales of that first book. So we immediately hired every artist who was around who was not working. They would come down and do painting and drawing and re-drawing and all those things you had to do.

MAURER: We had the comic book industry’s first ink-and-paint department! People were painting in the white on the back of those cels. Now, Joe and I were not that sure that it would last. But St. John was bound to make a killing after that first sale. And I think it

Whack’s Museum This third (of four) pages of “The 3-D-T’s” in Whack #1 suggests the frantic pace at which Kubert, Maurer, and their staff of artists worked to get that first 3-D comic ready in record time. Art by Maurer; writer uncertain. Thanks to Rod Beck. [©2013 Estates of Norman Maurer & Joe Kubert.]

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Off To The 3-D Races! The splash page of the third “Mighty Mouse” adventure in Three Dimension Comics #1—and a 3-D house ad from it that heralded the imminent first 3-D issues of Tor, The Three Stooges, and Whack. “Mighty Mouse” artist and writer unknown. Thanks to Rod Beck. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

we stayed there until the whole thing was shot and then we flew back home.

What we intended to do, with this tremendous thing we had, was to license it to all the publishers. And we applied for a patent for this 3-D process. And Norman, who really should have been a lawyer, had a lot to do with any contractual arrangements we made. It was our idea to license this for other people to use. And it was probably our biggest mistake. Because as soon as we published the first book, as soon as other people saw what the potential and the possibilities were, there was an onslaught the like of which no one, anybody else, could have held back with the kinds of books, the number of books that came out, and the infringements that we felt were made on our patent.

MAURER: The Tor and the 3-D Stooges book were the second books to come out. They were the only books that had a 3-D cover, which was a mistake. In converting the books to 3-D we redesigned the backgrounds to give them depth.

KUBERT: The original samples we had done in 3-D were The Three Stooges and Tor.

MAURER: And we did something that no one else did. We used

half-tones for the backgrounds.

KUBERT: Yes, half-tones on Craftint boards. We wanted to put texture into the art, wood texture and so on. A lot of this stuff was drawn by other artists.

MAURER: And we would ink it again. If you’re familiar with the average comic book characters, they’re very simple with no background at all. And to switch that to a 3-D medium we would have to redesign the art to put it to a background. So, with Mighty Mouse, it was a pretty heavy redesign from the original “flat” art.

KUBERT: All of the work was done on clear acetate.

MAURER: The acetate was 12" x 18", the old size. And the shift of the separation with the acetate was all side-to-side.

KUBERT: That was part of the patent which we had applied for, and that was why the first time we had it shot, we insisted that we be there at the camera to make sure there was no problem. And we used the acetate in the way they make animation.

The 3-D looked rather complicated and, as a matter of fact, that’s what we were striving for. With simple art, a great deal of the 3-D was lost. So there had to be some complications where

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

The State Of The Art—1953 (Left:) In 2-D, 3-D, or 4-D, Tor was a magnificent achievement. The late Gil Kane and A/E’s editor are surely not alone in believing that, say what you will about “Hawkman” or “Sgt. Rock” or “Enemy Ace” or even Tarzan, Tor was the absolute apex of Kubert’s art. This splash page is from the second 3-D Comics #2; thanks to Ray Zone. [©2013 Estate of Joe Kubert.] (Right:) An excellent “sci-fi” page by Maurer from Three Stooges #2. Thanks to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. [©2013 Estate of Norman Maurer.]

foreground figures bounced off whatever was behind them. The 3-D in Whack, for example, looks like a hodgepodge of stuff. But in actuality, in 3-D, the art pulled away from the background and immediately you could see it very clearly. So without the glasses you’re seeing a jumble. And we usually used about six levels of depth.

Almost immediately, we went in for double-page spreads, because we felt, right from the beginning, that space and size were two of the most effective things that we could use to add to the story and the dramatics. Big pictures, like “Panelrama,” would do that. And I tried to use it in every one of the Tor 3-D magazines because I felt that it did have an effect, providing you enhance the storytelling, of course. This is not original, like I just drew it out of the clear blue sky. Jack Kirby and other artists before me had done this a thousand times. We just tried to apply some variation to these techniques and make the art as strong as we could.

III. LEONARD MAURER: The Third Man

An e-mail I received in June 2000 from Leonard Maurer provided additional historical perspective on the invention of the 1950s 3-D comic

books. Maurer was responding to some of the 3-D comics history on my website that he had just read and wanted to set the record straight:

“I actually invented the [3-D] process independently, as well as designed the system of pre-punched acetate sheets,” Leonard wrote. “As well, I supervised the entire production from A to Z of the first Mighty Mouse book and eventually ended up owning the 3-D Illustereo company after St. John bought me out when the whole market collapsed in 1954.”

With this company Maurer went on to work on 3-D in the advertising business, and it eventually led to his ownership of a graphic design studio, a career in the advertising business, and work in the fine art printing, computer graphics, and motion picture industries, with new 3-D and other graphic innovations produced along the way. What follows is the “real story” of 3-D comics as told by Leonard Maurer:

“Even though it was Joe’s remark, ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be great if we could make a 3-D comic book?’ (when he, Norm, and I were driving past the marquee of the Paramount Theatre where Bwana Devil was playing in 3-D), that got me thinking about 3-D comics,”

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“With the idea fully formed in my head, I immediately turned around, picked up some acetates, went back to Norm’s hotel room, and explained the process to him. We then collaborated on a short, short story and he went immediately to work with pencil, brush, ink, and paint, following my technical instructions. Norman always did this and I taught him many production tricks, such as the thin aluminum page layout templates he carried with him when he traveled which enabled him to produce more pages a day than any other artist. That probably helped make him one of the highest-paid guys in the business.

“I did the opaquing on the back of the acetate. And, around 2:00 a.m., we had finished the real ‘World’s First’ 3-D comic book page, entitled ‘The Three Stooges in the Third Dimension,’ starring Moe, Shemp, and Larry. When Norm was done, I slept over in his room, and at the crack of dawn, drove straight out to my plate-maker, and then to my company where I was the advertising manager, with an in-house print shop. I mixed the ink colors and finished the job.

The Third Man’s Theme Leonard Maurer at a ’50s advertising trade show, promoting the “3-D Illustereo” process. This photo appeared in Craig Yoe’s book Amazing 3-D Comics!; thanks to Craig and Clizia Glussoni.

wrote Maurer, “Joe hadn’t the faintest idea how it could be done other than cutting out the figures and standing them on a stage in front of a background to be shot with a stereo camera, which we discussed at the time. He also didn’t find out that the Illustereo process was invented and fully developed by me, overnight, until he saw, on the following day, the first sample ‘Three Stooges’ page that Norman painted the night before under my technical directions, and from which artwork I produced the plates and printing that morning on my company’s offset Multilith press.

“At the time, Norman was visiting New York to work out a normal 10¢ book-editing deal for him and Joe. As usual, when Norm came to New York with or without the Stooges or his wife, Joan, I acted as the chauffeur. The night of ‘the great 3-D comic breakthrough,’ I first dropped Joe off at his car so he could go back to New Jersey, and then dropped Norm off at his hotel. Later, while driving home to Queens over the Midtown Bridge, the whole process of depth shifts suddenly popped into my head.

“I was mulling over, while thinking about it, the idea of using sectional cut and pastes to get the shifts between the two images, but I discarded that in favor of drawing directly on acetate, because I didn’t want to confuse the artists or change their techniques. And I needed something that would facilitate high-volume production without having to go through two separate steps of drawing and then cutting and pasting. As an engineer, I was very conscious of time-andmotion considerations. I was also familiar with cel animation, and immediately saw the similarities.

“Learn To Be A Comic Book Artist!” In early 1953, no one had ever so much as published a 3-D comic book. But by the time of Whack #2, Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer were offering for sale their own correspondence course on drawing and writing comics—including 3-D comics! By then, though, the 3-D fad was basically over. [©2013 Estates of Joe Kubert & Norman Maurer.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

“Being a bit naive about media businesses at the time, I didn’t realize that the six-months exclusive was what triggered Sol Harrison, Stan Lee, and all the others to knock us off as quickly as they could. My hands were tied in offering everyone a license, which was one of my stipulations before signing contracts with St. John. “I could understand them doing this, however, since the success of ‘Mighty Mouse,’ with its precision offset printing, along with my carefully designed and engineered die-cut glasses insert, and selling for a quarter with the same number of pages as a dime book, was big, big news. There were big financial stakes involved, especially since it had an unheard-of 100% sellout of its initial print order. We even had to reprint an additional million. That was some leap, especially considering that the normal print order at the time was under 300 thousand. All of us were jumping up and down with excitement as those phenomenal sales reports came in. “Incidentally, all of this was based on our combined advice and suggestions to St. John. I also warned him not to go too far overboard with the next books, since I didn’t think the fad would last more than two seasons. I recognized the danger of printing off-register, too, especially in the ‘y’ axis, and knew that as soon as they tried to do it on the standard comic book web letterpresses, with their notoriously poor registration, the resultant headaches would bust the whole market apart. “What eventually bankrupted St. John was his attempt to block all the other publishers by buying up, in carload quantities, all the factory output for over six months of dyed

“At 11:00 a.m., I rushed back to Manhattan and picked up some EK-Wratten filters at a camera shop. And it was that page that Joe first saw that afternoon and which, later, we presented to Archer St. John as co-inventors. We gave St. John a 25% partnership in our licensing company, along with a six months’ head start for his publishing company in exchange for financial guarantees for Norman and Joe as editors, and myself as supervising producer. We then set up a secret studio to be used for production of the ‘Mighty Mouse’ book.

“Boy! Are You Missing Out!!” The judge who is reported (by Leonard Maurer, on the facing page) to have remarked that Bill Gaines’ case against 3-D Illustereo read like a “fantasy story out of Mad comics” couldn’t have been referring to this splash panel spoofing 3-D comics in Mad #12 (June 1954), ’cause it went on sale months after the hearing was over. Script and layouts by Harvey Kurtzman; finished art by Wally Wood. Note the takeoff on Mighty Mouse (who originally had briefly been called Super Mouse). Like a zillion other bugeyed young boys, Ye Editor tried looking at this panel through 3-D glasses—and you know what? Nothing! [©2013 E.C. Publications, Inc.]

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acetate made to my specifications, and produced by the Celanese Corporation. He also bought up carload quantities of comic book newsprint paper. He didn’t succeed in blocking everybody, since there were other major acetate and paper manufacturers, but he did hold up a few, and for a while, his books were of the best quality and led the market.

“The only problem I had was not being allowed to use low-acid paper for the initial printing, although he went along with most of my other suggestions. My beef today is that if he had allowed me to use low acid paper, my last few mint copies of the pioneering ‘Mighty Mouse’ book wouldn’t be so browned-out.

“Nevertheless, while all this was going on, I did what I could to prepare the way for licensing, and had already approached several publishers. But all my efforts soon went up in smoke when we were forced into a cockamamie patent infringement lawsuit with Bill Gaines. A month before its expiration, he bought the Freeman Owens patent from the dying inventor for a few hundred bucks.

“That suit was based on surreptitious individual tape recordings of meetings with Joe and Norman where Gaines accused me of stealing the Freeman Owens patent out of the patent office. That triggered the resignation of Harvey Kurtzman and Bill Elder, who had gotten confidential disclosures of the entire process from me and felt betrayed by Gaines when his accusations came out in court.

“The judge threw the case out with the comment that Gaines’ deposition read like a ‘fantasy story out of Mad comics.’ But it served its purpose, and ruined all my chances to license the 3-D Illustereo process to anyone other than St. John. Harvey’s resignation opened the way for Al Feldstein to take over Mad. Al, my closest High School of Music and Art buddy, wasn’t involved in the disclosure, but he warned me about Gaines’ secret tape recorders before my meetings with him. All these guys were also old high school classmates of mine, as were many of the Mad comics’ artists.

“Since that lawsuit ended all possibility of licensing in the comic book business, I was already preparing for 3-D entry into the advertising market when St. John offered me a decent cash buyout and gave me the 3-D studio with all its equipment, as well as sole ownership of the 3-D Illustereo trade name, for helping him unload some of his surplus acetate and glasses to help him avoid bankruptcy. He made a separate deal with Joe and Norm, since they were under contract as book editors and artists. Eventually, he had to go bankrupt anyway, and died shortly thereafter.

SIDEBAR #3:

3-D Comic Art In Advertising

A line art.

naglyphic art and photography had been used for advertising as early as the 1920s in both the United States and Great Britain. Toys and games were also produced that used the two-color 3-D process with cartoon imagery and

In 1954, as the 3-D comics boom was subsiding, Leonard Maurer marketed 3-D Illustereo for use in advertising. He produced one project with an advertising brochure for Merita Bread and Cakes. Leonard also had artist Bob Bean work up a sample of a girl on a beach in full-color anaglyph he called “Stereochrome,” with Bean painting the artwork on cels which were shifted and color-separated for 3-D viewing.

Freihofer’s bread also offered at this time a 3-D Fun Book starring The Cisco Kid “in an exciting adventure never before printed.” Sixteen individual anaglyph sticker panels were available in each loaf of bread that kids could then put into the 3-D Fun Book to complete the story. Quite a bit of white bread had to be consumed to complete the story.

Luden’s Cough Drops also issued a premium promotional Howdy Doody 3-D comic available as a series of collectible strips. These were produced using the cel acetate method for stereo conversion. Premium promotional use of 3-D comics outlasted the 1950s boom in 3-D comic books.

Leon Harvey, of Harvey Comics, also formed the Harvey Information Press in 1953 as a separate subdivision of the company to produce custom anaglyphic 3-D for advertising and promotional premiums. A 3-D sample sheet Harvey produced in 1954 features art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand depicting Niagara Falls, the Empire State Building in New York City, the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, and the Grand Canyon with 6 well-delineated levels of depth. Through Harvey, Powell and Nostrand also produced 3-D art in 1953 for two sets of Topps Chewing Gum trading cards in well-printed anaglyphs with the movies Tarzan’s Savage Fury and Tarzan and the She Devil. In 1954 Cheerios promoted 24 pocket-sized 3-D comics featuring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck that were available, along with the glasses, in each box of cereal. (See p. 31.) These 3-D trading cards, advertisements, and promotional premiums are highly collectible today.

Next Step: 3-D X-Ray Glasses? “Stereochrome” 3-D ad sample created for Leonard Maurer by artist Bob Bean, for the purpose of demonstrating 3-D’s commercial possibilities to ad executives. Thanks to Ray Zone. [©2013 Estate of Leonard Maurer.]

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

image to each eye with the opposite gel.

So I said to him, “We gotta figure out a way to do it in 3-D.” So he says, “I don’t know. Do something.” So I go in the back, and I build. Bill had a camera department, and I had the first 35mm Konica camera. I built this little stage set of one of the panels from one of the stories. This was a 3-D stage set. I had a background, a drop, and I had a couple of trees and some figures. Like that.

And I actually made this 3-D thing, just experimenting to see what we could do. And I took the camera and shot it. Then I moved it four inches and shot it again. Then we sent the two pictures, black and white, so they looked like line drawings, down to our engraver and said, “Engrave each one of these. Mix up a red and a green.” So they did that and I had this proof. I don’t know where it is today.

The Usual Gang Of Idiot-Savants But seriously, folks—here’s two-thirds of the brain trust that made EC the little powerhouse it was: publisher/managing editor Bill Gaines on the left, and editor/writer/artist Al Feldstein, in a photo taken at the offices of Entertaining Comics. (The one-third that’s missing is fellow editor/writer/artist Harvey Kurtzman, creator of Mad and EC’s war comics.) Michael Feldman sent us this 1950s photo, which was put on the Internet by Wendy Gaines Bucci.

“The 3-D advertising business was pretty good for a couple of years, until it, too, fizzled out. But it did lead to my graphic design studio and then to the movie business when Norm and I developed the ‘Artiscope’ auto animation process based on live actors. But that’s another story.”

IV. The AL FELDSTEIN Version: The Story Of EC’s 3-D Comics

On November 8, 2003, Al Feldstein visited comics art collector Glenn Bray in Sylmar, California. I was invited to meet Feldstein, and it provided a perfect opportunity to hear the EC 3-D comics story directly from the man responsible for them. Feldstein was gracious, highly animated, and only too happy to tell the story for the interview. He related that EC publisher William M. Gaines was a big fan of 3-D, who had acquired a Stereo-Realist 3-D camera when they’d become available in 1947. By 1952, Gaines was shooting his own 16mm 3-D movies using the single-strip Bolex stereo system. Continuing:

AL FELDSTEIN: Bill Gaines buys the first Polaroid 3-D system for shooting camera slides and showing them on a screen. He buys this 3-D camera. And the projector projects on a silver screen, much like Bwana Devil when they came out with that and you used Polaroid glasses.

I remember he went to Havana, Cuba, and he shot a stage show live in 3-D, and we had a session at the office, Johnny Craig and I, so he showed us this. So I said to Bill, “You know, we ought to be able to do this in 3-D comics.” I had remembered this French system with the red and green. I don’t know where I had seen it, but I knew that a red image and a green image become a black

Tales From The Creekmore Al Feldstein’s very first horror story art was not for EC’s legendary Tales from the Crypt but for “The Creekmore Curse”—fittingly enough, his only work for ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown (#3, Feb.-March 1949), the very first regularly published horror comic. Scripter unknown. Repro’d from PS Artbooks’ hardcover Collected Works: Adventures into the Unknown, Vol. One, which reprints the first five issues of this historically important title. Dark Horse Comics has reprinted several issues in a hardcover, as well. See this story’s splash page on p. 60. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

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The camera engraver gave us this proof, and by God it works! Bill says to me, “Sure. So you’re going to do every panel in a little 3-D stage setting? And we’re going to shoot each one and go fly a kite?” And that was that. It was 1949 or 1950 at the latest. I was still living on Ocean Avenue.

This was right after I started to work for Gaines. I went to the High School of Music and Art, which is how I got into art. I had a very good friend. We used to meet on the subway and go up there. We were both from Brooklyn. We both played the harmonica. And we were great friends. His name was Lenny Maurer.

As an aside, how I got into comics was that Lenny Maurer and his brother Norman were starting to do comic book work and he was going to Music and Art and I heard about it. My parents couldn’t afford to get a dime up to send me to school, no less, or to give me money for dates. So I was working as a pin boy in the bowling alley, at a dude ranch in the summer, you know, taking odd jobs and stuff like that. And I heard that Norman Maurer was making twenty bucks a page doing comics. So I had never read a comic book and said, “Jeez, maybe I could draw up some samples and get some work.”

So I borrowed a couple comic books. I made up a portfolio and I went around peddling it to the comic book publishers and I got laughed out of the office. They were terrible. One guy was kind and he said to me, “Why don’t you get a job as an apprentice? Learn the business. You can draw but you gotta learn the techniques and the panels.”

I said, “Got any suggestions?” And he said, “Yeah, go to Eisner & Iger.” It was a studio that serviced Hap [sic—should’ve said “Busy”] Arnold’s stuff, Fiction House, and a couple of others. So I go up there and meet Jerry Iger. Eisner had just broken away from him. He was By Jupiter! on his own but he was still using the Eisner & Splash of the middle “Mighty Mouse” story in St. John’s Three Dimension Comics #1. Iger paper and the name. It became the Iger Artist & writer unknown. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.] Studio after that. But he gave me a job running errands. Three bucks a week. After school, I So, sometime after that, out come St. John’s 3-D comics with an would come in and I’d sit there erasing Lou Fine’s artwork, Ray American Sterographics patent pending, etc. I said to Bill, “They Rita, and all these great artists… Mort Leav and Bill Hughes. did it, Bill. How’d they do it?” Bill said, “I don’t know. Let’s get I ran errands and sat next to Bob Webb, who was doing ‘em up here and see how much money they want.” So up come “Sheena,” and he said to me, “Here, draw palm trees in the Kubert and Lenny Maurer and they’re talking about their patent background.” So I would do backgrounds. That’s how you break and the royalties, etcetera. Bill tells them he’ll think about it and in. You know who also did work for Iger? Jack Kamen. Reed they go away. Crandall was also an artist there. When these guys came around I said to Bill, “You know, Bill, I showed this to Lenny a long later to EC, of course I grabbed ‘em. They were great. And they time ago. Let’s do some research. Let’s go down to the New York were my heroes. Public Library and look at patents.” It was just a whim. So, Bill and Anyway, it was through Norman Maurer and his brother Lenny I go down there and we’re going through the patent books. We’re that I got into comics. Lenny visits me at my home, after I’m looking at patents. And then I said, “Let’s go back to where the married, back from the war. And I showed him this 3-D proof. I patents are just running out. Because his [Leonard Maurer’s] said, “Hey, look at this. I wanted to do 3-D comics and I’ve done patent pending may be a lot of baloney and he may have found a this but it’s so complicated to do it that I don’t think we’re ever patent that they’re using because it’s run out or it’s just running going to be able to do it.” That was that. out.”

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

And we come across this patent by Freeman H. Owens. He owns a patent where you put drawings on cels and separate them so they become 3-D. You can move the camera. You can do panning. Disney was using that with the multi-plane camera. Disney owned that. I said, “Look at this. Here it is! All we have to do is shift these cels. And shoot it twice and we got 3-D.” And Bill says, “Tell me what to do.”

Now, Lenny Maurer’s father was in the textile business. He represented textile manufacturers and textile machinery manufacturers. Next to the Owens patent in the book, there was this patent on textile machinery. Even though Lenny went to Music and Art, he never followed his art. He went into his father’s business. I said, “Son of a gun! This guy was looking at textile manufacturing machinery patents and he found this accidentally. And he grabbed it and went to Kubert and they started American Sterographics.”

EC In 3-D The covers of EC’s two 3-D comics—plus their inside-front-cover instructions on how to assemble their “3-D viewers.” Some variation of this kind of page appeared in most 3-D comics, but only the one in the EC mags sported the Freeman H. Owens patent announcement—which was clearly aimed at 3-D Illustereo and St. John Publishing! (See bottom of page.) The covers are by Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein, respectively; the artist & scripter of the instruction page are unknown. Thanks to Rod Beck for the images. [©2013 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.]

The 3-D-T’s

SIDEBAR #4:

The Amazing FREEMAN H. OWENS hough he never made a dime from his 1936 patent for a “Method of Drawing and Photographing Stereoscopic Pictures in Relief” using sheets of cel acetate, Freeman Owens was certainly prescient with this invention. In the 1950s, the technique was, either knowingly or unknowingly, “reverseengineered” repeatedly for production of 3-D comic books and animated 3-D cartoons.

Born on July 20, 1890, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Owens had an astonishing career as an inventor with over 11,000 inventions to his credit and 200 U.S. patents. He was a pioneer cinematographer and builder of motion picture cameras. In the 1920s he invented “talking pictures” while working with Lee DeForest for sound-onfilm technology. As a movie cameraman, Owens worked with the most important figures of early motion pictures such as Carl Laemmle of Universal Studios and William Fox of Fox

“Movietone.” He also filmed Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Clara Bow, and Gloria Swanson.

As a daredevil cameraman and adventurer, Owens filmed hurricanes and news events from the seat of open-cockpit airplanes all around the world. Owens did sell a number of his ingenious patents and inventions. Among these were the A.C. Nielsen Rating System for television, a plastic lens used by Kodak for disposable cameras, eyeglasses, and sunglasses, a home 16mm sound movie system, 70mm cameras and projectors, and slow-motion cameras.

At the time of his death in 1979, at the age of eighty-nine, Owens was very near to completing work on a patent for a perpetual motion machine.

Much of the above information was obtained from the Freeman H. Owens Photo Page website.

Separated At Birth? (Left:) For his article on St. John Publishing Co. in A/E #77, Ken Quattro provided the last two pages of Freeman H. Owens’ detailed 1936 patent drawing of his “Method of Drawing and Photographing Stereoscopic Pictures in Relief.” See that issue for the other page, which utilized the Tarzan(ic) drawing to show how his system worked. (Right:) This patent-pending drawing of a “Loom for Weaving” (#2,057,053) is situated very near Owens’ in a patents volume that would’ve been in the New York Public Library. From this fact, Al Feldstein in 1953 drew an intriguing conclusion, as detailed in his interview. Art supplied by Ray Zone.

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

would work. The furthest one away would not shift. The second one would be a quarter of an inch. The third a half. The fourth three-quarters. And we published our 3-D comics on the Freeman H. Owens patent.

American Stereographics was s*** out of luck. You know they couldn’t do anything after that. And it was public domain in six months. In those days it was before you could appeal for extensions. Disney has grabbed this system where they can renew a patent for another seventy years.

[INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: To produce 3-D art, previously-published EC stories were totally redrawn, sometimes even with an expanded page count.]

FELDSTEIN [continuing]: What we did was to take the panel and break it down into planes The artists were pissing and moaning. They would (Right:) Also testifying was artist Bill (a.k.a. Will) Elder, who was then working primarily for editor Harvey draw a foreground figure. And you Kurtzman on Mad. He’s seen here in the 1980s. would have to opaque so you wouldn’t So Bill said, “Let’s find this Owens!” Because his patent had six see through it. And then the next plane. And they did all these or eight months to go. I said, “How the heck do we find this guy?” planes. I don’t know where that original art is. It’s all on acetate. Bill said, “At least go upstairs and look and see if he’s in New York They did actual drawing on actual sheets, five sheets to a page for City.” So we get out the directories. And sure enough, there’s a five planes. Freeman H. Owens living in New York City. The same day, we That’s the story of how EC got 3-D. grabbed a cab and go down to this brownstone, and underneath the brownstone is his address. And we go in and it’s a laboratory with a lot of gadgets. Owens is doddering. He must have been in V. What The Judge Ruled his eighties. On September 30, 1953, Judge Edward A. Conger, presiding in We ask him, “Are you Freeman H. Owens?” He says, “Why are the case of Owens, et al. versus American Stereographic [sic] Corp. et al. you here?” We tell him about the patent. And he says, “Oh yeah, delivered the opinion of the court. The litigation was a motion for a the patent is running out.” We said, “We’d like to buy the patent preliminary injunction restraining Kubert, the Maurer brothers, from you.” He said, “You want to buy my patent from me when and St. John “from making and distributing three-dimensional it’s got six months to go?” I said, “Yeah.” So Bill bought the patent. comic books or magazines produced by a certain ‘3-D Illustereo’ He gave the guy $250 for the last end of the patent. process” because it allegedly infringed upon the 1936 Freeman Owens patent that Gaines, as the assignee, had licensed from the Then [laughs] he called up American Sterographics and said, inventor. Archer St. John, the American News Company, a “We’re suing you for patent infringement. We own the system and distributor of magazines and comic books, and the Lionel we’re putting out our own 3-D comics.” I went home and made Corporation, who had advertisements in the Illustereo process in seven drawing boards with seven “R’s” with pegs, and we had a the St. John 3-D comic books, were also named as defendants in the punch machine that was used for making eyelets for books or litigation. something. I figured out how to punch each sheet so the shift

Testimonials

(Left:) Paul Terry, founder of Terry-Toons (and thus officially the creator of Mighty Mouse), testified at the hearing growing out of Gaines’ lawsuit—though presumably not in the Mighty Mouse mask he holds here.

SIDEBAR #5:

“T

Leonard Maurer & “Stereochrome”

he ‘StereoChrome’ polychromatic (4/C process) was an anaglyph technique I worked on with American Colortype,” said Leonard Maurer. “It was originally tested with painted artwork on cels, using the same levelseparating technique as the comic book ‘Illustereo’ process, as well as in my 3-D advertising work (using painted grayscale images). As an advertising application, we were planning to also test the Stereochrome process photographically using a dual mirror, single lens camera auto convergence system I designed so that the center of interest at any depth level would be in full-color sharp focus and relatively fringe-free when printed as a 4/C anaglyph.

“Unfortunately, before we had a chance to do much more than the first test with the Bob Bean painting of the beach scene, American Colortype went out of business. At around the same time, the 3-D advertising interest began to switch over to the then newly developed lenticular systems (that were heavily promoted by Look magazine and EK Co.), and I gradually abandoned my 3-D cartoon anaglyph work to continue on as a conventional graphic design studio. We did, however, have a hand in the production of the Tarzan 3-D card series published by Topps Bubble Gum, along with a number of interesting 3-D posters and marketing brochures.”

The 3-D-T’s

Through A Glass—But Not Too Darkly These additional pages from the “3-D-T’s” story in Whack #2 lampoon the competition and legal shenanigans that went on during the brief era of 3-D comics. On the story’s final page, publisher St. Peter goes mad from the strain and is diagnosed as having—what else?—the 3-D-T’s! This issue went on sale in early autumn of ’53, around the time of the hearing, so it was clearly prepared well before the case came to court. Thanks to Ken Quattro. [©2013 Estates of Norman Maurer & Joe Kubert.]

After citing the first two paragraphs of Owens’ patent, Conger also reiterated Gaines’ summary of the production steps involved for 3-D comic books as (a) analyzing and breaking the comic art down into the desired number of planes, (b) copying each plane to a separate sheet or transparent cel and, in the case of transparent cels, opaquing the areas covered with white where and if desired, (c) superimposing the sheets and/or cels in register to simulate the original drawing, and (d) shifting the cels laterally and then copying the composite result photographically. A description of anaglyph printing then followed.

Gaines reminded the court about “the ’3-D’ craze and the profits to be reaped.” He described marketing efforts by Kubert and the Maurer brothers for licensing of the Illustereo process to him and stated that “the defendants actually never had intention of licensing anyone other than St. John Publishing,” and that they were out to “corner the market in 3-D comic books.” The difficulty of acquiring 3-D glasses, and the colored acetate used to make them, were also noted.

Gaines was convinced Kubert and the Maurer brothers were employing the Owens process and infringing the patent. His case

was a little weak in proving this, however. He stated that “the naked eye tells the story” and, after studying the 3-D comics, said that he “can’t think of any method other than Owens’ that might have accomplished the result.”

Freeman H. Owens (see photo on p. 34) took the stand after Gaines and asserted his belief that the defendants had infringed his patent, and also noted that he had failed “ever successfully to promote the patent, or to receive one penny from it.” Al Feldstein then gave testimony to the court and expressed the opinion that “only one of the methods invented, taught, and detailed in the Owens patent could have been used in the production of that (‘Mighty Mouse’) comic book.”

Following testimony from two 3-D experts and George Hanlin, the original Government patent examiner for the Owens patent, EC artist Bill Elder took the stand. Elder testified “that he visited the offices of American Stereographic [sic] Corporation in June [1953]” and “that defendants Kubert and Norman Maurer explained to him the process by which defendants’ comic book ‘Mighty Mouse’ had been produced” and that he was of the opinion that it was “undoubtedly the process invented and taught by Mr. Owens.”

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

testimony from Archer St. John and animated cartoon producer Paul Terry, Judge Conger rendered his opinion. Conger acknowledged that the Owens patent appeared to be valid but stated, “It is plain from all the circumstances, however, that defendants’ infringement of the Owens patent is not reasonably clear, if at all.”

After noting that Elder’s testimony was “practically unanswered” by Kubert and Maurer and that they had acknowledged explaining to Elder the 3-D process, Conger observed that “This circumstance along with others raises a suspicion that the defendants may have appropriated Owens’ work.” He found that it was not, however, “clear proof of infringement,” particularly since Kubert and the Maurer brothers had filed their own patent for the 3-D process.

“I am convinced that the plaintiffs have not made a case for the relief sought,” concluded Conger. “The application is denied.”

[Special thanks from the author to Ken Quattro for supplying court documents that were accessed to relate the account above.]

VI. Exit 3-D Comics

Was Leonard Maurer aware of the Owens patent from 1936 when he “invented” 3-D Illustereo? Could Al Feldstein be correct in assuming that Maurer discovered the Owens patent at the New York Public Library while looking through the book of U.S. Patents? Lending some credibility to Feldstein’s assertion is the fact that a U.S. patent (No. 2,057,053) by F. Phily for a “Loom for Weaving” is very near to the Owens patent in the large volume that would have been in the New York Public Library. The Phily patent was granted the very same day, October 13, 1936, as the Owens patent. Could Leonard Maurer have come across the Owens patent while doing research on the Phily patent in conjunction with his job working for the Supreme Knitting Needle Company? Both patents, of course, were set to expire at the very same time.

“A Lion In Your Lap!”

In the pages of Whack, “America’s craziest comic book,” the St. John knockoff of Mad comics, Kubert and Maurer satirized both the frenetic assembly-line production of 3-D comics and the legal shenanigans with a continuing story titled “3-D-T’s, A Look Behind the Scenes of America’s Screwiest Industry!” In the October 1953 3-D issue of Whack (#1), Norman Maurer art satirizes both Joe and Norm as they mercilessly drive a bullpen of hapless artists in the “ink and paint” department to complete a 3-D comic book. The first installment of the tale documents Kubert and Maurer’s attempt to invent a 3-D process for comic books in the midst of the 3-D movie boom of the 1950s.

The subject of the surreptitious tape recordings made at the EC offices in August 1953 was also discussed by the judge: “It appears that Kubert was invited to Gaines’ office by Gaines and/or Feldstein for a little chat, and, unknown to Kubert, the conversation was tape-recorded—70 pages in all.” Judge Conger stated that he had read the entire transcript of the recording. “Without giving consideration to its propriety or admissibility,” he said, “I can only conclude that it completely establishes that Kubert was innocent of any wrongdoing in connection with Owens’ patent and the publication of defendants’ 3-D comic books.”

Leonard Maurer then appeared on the stand and stated that he invented the process used to produce the 3-D comic books and that it had no relation to the Owens patent. After hearing additional

The second episode of “3-D-T’s” was printed “flat” and in fourcolor in the December (#2) issue of Whack. A host of raucous lawyers, nefarious artists, and litigants are ridiculed in the sequel to the “3-D-T’s” story. The cigar-smoking publisher of “Acme Comics” takes notice of 3-D comic book sales and sends “G-2,” his “best operative,” posing as an artist, to go to “St. Peter”

The 3-D-T’s

Kirby & 3-D—Together Again! (Left:) This Jack Kirby 3-D image was part of 1982’s Battle for a Three Dimensional World. It depicts the hero, Stereon, battling a Cyclops—surely the perfect foil for a 3-D hero! (Below:) Kirby color 3-D: Stereochrome for an ad in Battle. Script & 3-D on both images by Ray Zone. [©2013 3-D Video Corporation.]

Publications and elicit the secret of the 3-D process from Joe. “I got it! Straight from the horse’s mouth!” G-2 reports back to his boss. “All you do is draw with one eye shut—-and then do the same drawing with the other eye shut!” Soon St. Peter is besieged in his office by litigants serving him cease-and-desist orders. He eventually collapses, succumbing to a case of the 3-D-T’s, with one eye turning red and the other green.

It was only after Kubert and Maurer produced this second “3-D-T’s” story that they experienced their day in court with Bill Gaines. In the months afterward, St. Peter’s delirious wish therein for a return to “the good old days of publishing flat books” would become a reality. 3-D comics and “3-D effect” books would trickle out for the next six months. But it was obvious that 3-D comics had become a short-lived “blip” on the comic book horizon.

Epilogue: JACK KIRBY Returns To 3-D Comics

In 1982, nearly thirty years after co-creating Captain 3-D for Harvey Comics, Jack Kirby returned to the world of 3-D comics by drawing the art for Battle for a Three-Dimensional World, a sixteenpage 3-D “cosmic book” published by 3D Video Corporation of North Hollywood, California.

Written by Ray Zone, Battle for a Three-Dimensional World was a combined history of 3-D technology and a promotional tool for 3D Video Corporation, which at the time was licensing anaglyph

versions of 1950s 3-D films for syndicated television broadcasts in the United States. And they were selling millions of anaglyph glasses through convenience stores to view the programs.

Subsequently, Kirby produced the art for three 3-D “Sports Action Posters” featuring The Honeycomb Kid that were available along with 3-D glasses as a premium in boxes of Honeycomb Cereal, from the Post Company. These were converted to 3-D by Ray Zone. A second issue of Captain 3-D planned by Harvey Comics was never published. Kirby’s 1953 art for the cover for Captain 3-D #2 was re-inked

The Rise And Fall Of The 1950s 3-D Comic Books

by Bill Black and converted to 3-D by Zone for publication in the Winter 2006 (#45) issue of TwoMorrows Publishing’s The Jack Kirby Collector.

A SORROWFUL NOTE: Sadly, we learned in the eleventh hour of the passing of Ray Zone on Nov. 13, 2012, at the far-too-young age of 65. Only days earlier, he and Roy Thomas exchanged e-mails about Ray’s writing an article for A/E’s second 3-D issue, scheduled for next year. His death is a true loss to the comics community.

Since 1982, Ray had produced and/or published stereo conversions for nearly 150 3-D books and was a 3-D artist, speaker, and 3-D producer for several films. He Ray Zone received the 1985 American Comic Book Award for Special Achievement in the Field of 3-D Comics and a 1987 Inkpot Award from the San Diego Comic-Con International. He was currently creating stereo conversions for Soleil Productions in France. His books such as 3-D Filmmakers (Scarecrow Press, 2005), et al., were the source of some of the information recorded in his piece in this issue.

A future Alter Ego will feature a longer tribute to the life and accomplishments of the man who styled himself Ray “3-D” Zone. Meanwhile, because his heirs will probably be handling his website, we are printing at right the ad that Ray sent us to accompany his article.

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The cover to The Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962), probably inked by Paul Reinman, and a panel from issue #2’s “The Terror of the Toad Men” (July 1962) inked by Steve Ditko. [©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.] [Hulk TM & ©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Comic Crypt Updates! by Michael T. Gilbert

Abe Kanegson!

ast year we ran a Comic Crypt series devoted to the mighty Abe Kanegson, Will Eisner’s brilliant Spirit letterer (A/E #101-103, 105-106). On May 24, 2012, Abe’s niece Ruth Levine sent an e-mail accompanied by two of her uncle’s unpublished drawings:

Dear Mr. Gilbert: My name is Ruth Kanegson Levine. Abe Kanegson was my uncle. My father, Mack, was his oldest brother. Last weekend I spent a few days with my aunt, Rita Perlin, in New York at her home. I had been hearing about your interviews with some family members for a year regarding Abe and his years as a letterer. I was so excited to finally read all of your articles in Alter Ego that I finished them all in one sitting. Abe was 22 years older than me. Most of that time he was ill, so he was an enigma to me, even though I lived in the same two-family house as he in the Bronx. My fondest memories are of his calling square dances and singing at my grandparents’ bungalow colony in Mountaindale on many Saturday nights.

I occasionally see his wife, Elizabeth (Betty), and his sons, Ben and Andras. Unfortunately, I do not see them as often as I would like, being that I live in Minnesota and they in three different states. I plan to share the issues of Alter Ego with my children and grandchildren. This is so much a part of our family history, of which I knew little. Thank you so much for your perseverance. It is truly appreciated. Best wishes, Ruth Levine I thanked Ruth and received this reply a few days later: Dear Michael: Thanks so much for your response. I am in my sixties now, and was 21 and pregnant with my first daughter when Abe died (we got married young in those days). I knew he had worked on some comic books, but that was about it. It was before my time. Besides listening to him sing, I loved watching him sketch and was in awe of his talent. I am attaching two drawings of his that my parents had.

Two by Kanegson! The two rare undated Abe Kanegson paintings on this page and the next come to us courtesy of Ruth and Jerry Levine. [Art ©2013 Abe Kanegson Estate.] We also have examples of Kanegson’s brilliant lettering for Will Eisner’s “The Christmas Spirit,” the story which appeared in The Spirit Section for Dec. 24, 1950. [©2013 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

Comic Crypt Update!

Unfortunately, they are not dated. Somewhere, there is a charcoal sketch he did of me when I was about eight years old. I have been going crazy looking for it. If I find it, I will send it to you. As an aside, I too always marveled that he did not stutter when he sang. If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Best regards, Ruth

Thank you, Ruth, for sharing your memories of Abe, and providing two rare previously unpublished Kanegson illos!

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

The Spirit!

On A Related Note... Speaking of The Spirit, check out this short article from the April 22, 1954, issue of Jet magazine, the long-running AfricanAmerican weekly digest. It describes a kid who must be Ebony’s #1 fan. Ebony, of course, is The Spirit’s best friend. The kid would've made a good, less caricatured Ebony in a TV show or movie! And who could argue with his choice of reading material? [Jet material ©2013 Jet magazine.]

Jet Propelled! (Left:) A couple of 1954 Jet covers. [©2013 Jet Magazine.] (Below:) Ebony takes center stage on Eisner’s cover for Warren’s The Spirit #7 (April 1975), and in a Spirit panel from “Heart of Rosie Lee” (Oct. 13, 1946). [©2013 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

Comic Crypt Update!

Charles Atlas!

Alter Ego #108, 109, & 114 featured a series of articles on muscleman Charles Atlas and the comic book parodies he inspired. But I missed the classic Joe Simon & Jack Kirby version at right from Charlton’s From Here to Insanity #11 (Aug. 1955). Who better to make fun of impossible heroes than comics’ premier super-hero creators?

And how could I forget the classic 1940s George Jowett bodybuilding ad at the bottom left of this page? The cheeky fellow not only imitated the Atlas layout, but also included a blatant knock-off of the classic Charles Atlas “puny guy vs. bully on the beach” scene! Imitation: the sincerest form of thievery!

Finally, Shaun Clancy pointed out the fascinating fact that Charles Atlas appeared in person at the 1939-40 World’s Fair Superman Day celebration on July 3, 1940, to present the Superman Race Contest award. Ray Middleton was also there, the first actor to dress up as the Man of Steel. He looked good, but we sure wish we could’ve seen Mr. Atlas sporting the Super Suit!

Supermen All! (Counter-clockwise from above:) Simon & Kirby’s Charles Atlas parody from From Here to Insanity #11 (Aug. 1955)—Charles Atlas and George Jowett comic book ads—and actor Ray Middleton as Superman in at the New York World’s Fair in 1940, along with an ad for the Fair’s “Superman Day.” [Superman art ©2013 DC Comics; other images ©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Al Feldstein

Way back in 2003, we interviewed top EC artist/writer/editor Al Feldstein (A/E #22). Recently, while reading volume one of PS Publishing’s Collected Works: Adventures into the Unknown, I was surprised to see that AITU #3 (Feb. 1949) featured “The Creekmore Curse,” illustrated by Al.

Adventures into the Unknown is generally acknowledged to be the first regularly published horror comic, created shortly before Al and publisher Bill Gaines began their own comic book horror line. I was curious to know how much the ACG horror comic influenced Tales from the Crypt and the other EC fear-fests, so I wrote to Al. He kindly answered a few short questions, including how he happened to do the story in the first place: The story was done at the tail end of my “freelance” career, before I started working for Bill Gaines and the EC Publications full time. As far as why he didn’t continue working for ACG, Al stated:

[They] never offered it to me… and the EC deal seemed more promising.

I asked if Adventures into the Unknown had influenced the horror comics he and Gaines created at EC: I’m sure it had some influence on me when I was imploring Bill to stop imitating and start innovating. But what I had in mind was a

Frightful Feldstein! (On this page:) Al Feldstein’s splash for “The Creekmore Curse” in Adventures into the Unknown #3 (Feb.-March 1949), a precursor to Al’s classic cover to Tales from the Crypt #22 (Feb. 1951). [EC page ©2013 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.; ACG art ©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

lot more “horror” than the mild Adventures into the Unknown when I suggested that we try scaring the pants off kids.

When asked if he had also scripted “The Creekmore Curse,” Al stated that he had not, and said that:

[The] job was done during my freelance days when I was working from scripts supplied by the editor or whoever assigned me the art job.

That was most likely Richard Hughes, ACG’s editor and main writer.

And so that solves that little mystery. Our sincere thanks to Al, and to Ruth and Jerry Levine for the Kanegson art. Thanks also to my wife Janet, who discovered that “spirited” Jet article. That’s it for now, but expect even more fun stuff next issue!

Till next time…

The Comic Fandom Archive presents…

Of Graphic Stories & Wonderworlds A Conversation With Writer, Publisher, & Bookstore Owner

RICHARD KYLE Wherein He Tells Of Buying Action Comics #1 Off The Stands, & Other Thrills Of Reading Comics In Their Golden Age (The 7th installment of our 9-part series devoted to Fandom’s 50th Birthday Bash, held at Comic-Con International 2011 in San Diego. Richard Kyle was a Guest of Honor at that event.) by Bill Schelly major highlight of the Comic-Con International 2011’s 50th Anniversary of Comics Fandom events was the opportunity to meet guest of honor Richard Kyle. When I think about all the writers for the fan publications of the 1960s and early 1970s, Richard Kyle looms large in my memory and personal estimation. At a time when all of us wanted folks to understand that comic art could and should be taken seriously, and wasn’t just for kids, Richard came along to establish a tone of discourse that was intelligent, well-considered, yet down-toEarth and relatable.

One of the problems was that the name of the field itself—“the comics”—seemed to misrepresent the types of stories that were among the most popular in the medium. There was nothing “comic” about adventure, crime, horror, Western, war, or, yes, even super-hero stories. We needed a new term for the art form that captivated us, and Richard Kyle gave us a couple of very useful ones: “graphic story” and “graphic novel.” Not perfect terms that satisfied everyone, to be sure, but a step in the right direction, and they are still in use today.

Those terms, of course, were invented by Kyle as part of his intelligent essays on various aspects of the form, which included articles for such fan publications as Xero, Alter Ego—and Fantasy Illustrated, which changed its title to Graphic Story Magazine with its 8th issue. Therefore, as my excitement was building for Comic-Con 2011, I was thrilled to finally have a nice, long chat by phone with Richard about his life, his writings, his own fanzine (Graphic

Story World/Wonderworld), and his bookstore. Alter Ego is proud to present what we believe is the first in-depth interview with Richard, as part of our coverage of the 50th Anniversary of Comics Fandom.

This conversation took place on February 27, 2011, when the ComicCon special events were in the planning stages, and was transcribed by our very own Brian K. Morris.

BILL SCHELLY: Let’s start with the obvious beginning... when and where were you born?

RICHARD KYLE: I was born in Oakland, California, in April of 1929. We left Oakland and traveled all over southern California and the Southwest, when I was just a baby. And then when I was 11, why, we moved back to Oakland and I grew up there.

BS: What did your dad do?

Keep The Flame Burning! Richard Kyle at home in Long Beach, California, with some esteemed reading matter—plus the back cover of Dick & Pat Lupoff’s 1961 mimeographed fanzine Xero #8, which featured Kyle’s groundbreaking article “The Education of Victor Fox.” As “Jim Moriarty,” Kyle even rendered an artistic approximation of Lou Fine’s version of The Flame. At top right of this page is the ID badge from the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con, which was designed by Gary Sassaman. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

KYLE: My father was in the Navy, in the submarine service. This was in the early ’20s, when submarines had to use batteries to run underwater. There was a serious accident, the submarine shipped sea water into the batteries, and the combination created chlorine gas—I’m told—and severely damaged his lungs. Soon he discovered he had TB. In those days it was commonly fatal. He died a young man, when I was just four.

BS: So you were brought up by your mom.... What did she do?

KYLE: My mother was a nurse. She’d taken her training in San Diego at Mercy Hospital.

BS: What was around when you started becoming aware of reading material as a child?

A Conversation With Richard Kyle

to read that very well.

KYLE: You know, I almost passed up buying Action #1. I read it at the drugstore soda fountain and discovered it was a continued story, and I wasn’t sure about spending my money on it, even though I liked the story. I thought the artwork was terrific. I’d seen Shuster’s work on his other strips, and I was a great fan. But I’d have to wait a month. That same day, a black-&-white reprint of Lee Falk’s Phantom had come out and I loved it. I thought it was terrific. So my stepfather, in a flash of generosity beyond imagining for him, [chuckles] bought both of them for me.

BS: So you were right there, having purchased a copy of Action #1 off the stands, thanks to your stepdad.

KYLE: Well, yeah, although I hate to KYLE: There was, oddly enough, a give him credit. He was everything magazine called Child Life, which l that the evil stepfather should be, loved. But that must have been a bit except that he wasn’t physically later. I discovered comics when I saw abusive. what was probably the first issue of the first comic book, Famous Funnies. BS: Oh, okay. Well, we won’t give him— Next Stop—Boy’s Life? It could have been an even earlier KYLE: And he had many admirable One of young Richard Kyle’s favorite magazines was Randtrial issue, I’m not dead sure. But I McNally’s Child Life. Depicted is the cover of the March 1937 characteristics, but he displayed none can remember going with my issue. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.] of them to us. stepfather into what would now be called a mom-and-pop grocery store BS: I suppose you were trying to get comics for a nickel or trading with and seeing piles of these comic books there. They were extraordifriends and so on. narily colorful, and there were all these wonderful pictures and there was everything and I couldn’t read. Or l could kind of read KYLE: Yeah, but you know, there were comparatively few at the but I couldn’t read up to the level of comic books, so I knew not to time. It’s hard for me to imagine there were more than a dozen or ask. It was the Depression and comics cost a dime, nothing today, so comic books.... Of course, most of them were terrible. But in but the equivalent of $2 or more then. You didn’t idly spend the school, kids traded them around. price of a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk on a kid’s whim. BS: What was your experience in World War II like? Anyway, I started reading comic books fairly soon after that, a few months, maybe six months, somewhere in there. By late l934 and KYLE: It was the most interesting experience of my life. My particularly 1935, I was reading any comic book I could find. mother had divorced my stepfather.... There was no immediate discomfort. We lived in Oakland. The town was an embarkation BS: Plus the comic strips in the newspaper, I would think. point for the military and it ran 24 hours a day. I grew up during KYLE: Yeah. I loved Mickey Mouse. And Big Sister. And Popeye. And the war, and when I was thirteen, because we really needed the Mr. Dinglehoffer and His Dog. And so many good ones. Characters money, I left school. I could see that I was not going to have like Alley Oop and Tarzan. Professor Watasnozzle and the planet enough money to get a college education unless something extraorReverso, that probably gave birth to Bizarro. Little Orphan Annie. dinary happened. So I left school to go to work and I was Buck Rogers. But still, there was something about the comic book independent of my mother, essentially, kind of living my own life. format that really drew me. Somehow when they repackaged the BS: What kind of work were you able to get at that age? strips into comic books they became something new. Roy Powers, Eagle Scout, which ran in Famous Funnies, and AP’s Scorchy Smith, KYLE: I had my full height—maybe I was an inch shorter—and so were transformed. I never saw Roy Powers in a newspaper, but it I was like five-ten to five-eleven. I looked mature for my age and I couldn’t have looked better in one. Roy Powers was drawn by dressed in grownup clothes. I got a job for Safeway, the large Frank Godwin, who also did Connie, about a model, I think, who grocery chain which is still in existence, and I worked with them ended up travelling to the moon. Godwin was a brilliant pen-andfor a while, and I worked for a typewriter repair service for a ink artist, and his work showed up extraordinarily well in reprowhile. Later, toward the end of the war, I worked in a concrete duction. At some point, United Features started reprinting their block manufacturing company and had several other jobs. own comic strips. Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson began New Comics However, I was regarded as a truant by the Department of and Fun Comics, and so on. I don’t remember buying the first issue Education. They threatened to put me in some farm for delinquent of any of them, but I clearly read them because I’ve remembered kids and I wasn’t delinquent. I was a little wild, but not a delinthem for years. quent. So I managed to flee to Stockton and worked in a chocolate factory up there for a few months. The school authorities lost BS: When Action Comics #1 came along, you were certainly old enough

Of Graphic Stories & Wonderworld

interest in me, and then I came back to Oakland. By the time the war was over, I could pass myself off as 21. I used to drink in bars and all the rest of it, without any problem at all. And they didn’t care too much in those days, but still, if you really looked young….

BS: Right, and you were what? Seventeen? Sixteen?

KYLE: Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I worked up in Stockton for a while.... I can’t remember the name of the chocolate factory now. They made chocolates for sort of upscale places then, handmade chocolates.

BS: What kind of reading material did you read during the war in terms of comics and then non-comics?

KYLE: I read science-fiction pulps and comic books and I read Doc Savage and The Shadow and all the trash that is supposed to destroy the human mind that they could think of at that time. [Bill chuckles] Naturally I was really worried about my brain, so during the Korean War l took equivalency tests for the first year of college and I scored in the 93rd percentile. BS: My goodness. And when were you in the Army?

KYLE: During the Korean War. I was drafted in January of ’51 , and discharged in December of ’52. I served in Japan, where I took CBR training—Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Warfare training—in case the Russians dropped an atomic bomb on us and I had to defend my unit. And after Korea, where I served as a combat infantryman, while I was waiting around to be discharged—our transport had arrived home a week early—they tried to talk me into the National Guard. But I was wise. Anyway, as I said, I scored in the 93rd percentile and I thought to myself, “Boy, you’re really one hell of a smart guy.” [Bill laughs]

And then I realized something that I don’t believe the educational authorities of the day had ever considered. That is, you can teach children anything, but unless it entertains them they won’t

remember it. The minute they no longer have to know it for school, it’s gone. I never read for anything other than entertainment. What I read interested me, and I remembered it. What most kids learned in school in those days were things they had no interest in and no remembrance of ten minutes after the test was over. And so the upshot of it was that we were probably all equally intelligent, but I had an active interest in what I was reading and they had none whatever. BS: What about writing? Did you ever do any writing when you were very young?

KYLE: Well, I used to write essays in school. They weren’t notably popular. [mutual chuckling] When it came to writing stories, I always had a problem. I could never bring them to a satisfactory close unless I resorted to clichés or something outrageous. And I opted for outrageous. But independent of school, I was interested in comics, and like a lot of kids then, I was trying to draw my own. I started when I was around thirteen and I drew—or started to draw—seven or eight pages of my first one. I realized quick enough that it was terrible. But I tried again, and the next strip was one of the great bad concepts of all time. I had read that there was space between molecules and atoms, so my character—in his special suit, of course—could kind of vibrate through these interstices and walk through walls. When bad guys would shoot at him, the bullets would pass on harmlessly through his body, and so on. And so his name was “Vibroman,” [laughs] which is just terrible. [Bill chuckles] But you know, somewhere recently I saw a reference to a character in today’s comic books called “Vibroman.” Who would pick that for a name unless you were thirteen years old? I still remember the legend for it.

BS: Okay, let’s hear it.

KYLE: “In the year nineteen hundred and forty-three, a man arose from the depths of humanity to fight the crime that overrode the Earth, destroying its foundations.” Isn’t that terrific? BS: Well, everything was upward from there. [mutual laughter]

KYLE: A year later, I came up with a strip called “Mister X.” It was kind of like The Spirit. but unfortunately it wasn’t funny.... Mister X was very long-lived, the oldest living thing on Earth. The legend on that one was, “Long before the dawn of man, the creatures walked across the sand. Among them walked one neither god nor man—Korlu.” [laughs]. Finally, when I was around fourteen, maybe fifteen, I did “Adam Wary.” A few panels of that survive. No legend. The dialogue is lame, but the artwork isn’t bad at all for a kid that age.

BS: The “Superman” feature was modeled after Shuster’s style through the war, wasn’t it?

Early Daze How many Alter Ego readers can claim that they read both Famous Funnies #1 (July 1934) and Action Comics #1 (June 1938) hot off Depression newsstands? [Famous Funnies cover ©2013 the respective copyright holders; Action #1 cover ©2013 DC Comics.]

KYLE: It wasn’t just the art. Some of the first stories that Jerry [Siegel] wrote were social protest stories. There were a lot of mine cave-ins during the ’30s, for example, and there’s such a story in, I think,

A Conversation With Richard Kyle

Superman #3. I liked it BS: Did you get fanzines, or did you just read the pro a great deal at the mags? time. Also, Superman KYLE: Oh, I used to read the fanzines. They were doesn’t appear in reviewed by several of the pulp science-fiction costume, except on magazines, and I knew a guy who was a member the first page. There’s of FAPA—the Fantasy Amateur Press just one shot of him, Association. His name may come to me. I read and the rest of the whole mailings, so without being a member, I time he’s dressed as a was probably as well-informed as anybody who miner. He always had was a member. a streak of realism in him, somehow or BS: Did you ever have anything that you wrote other, and I liked that published in science-fiction fanzines? sense of reality the regular clothing gave KYLE: Couple of letters, maybe. him. I’d been reading BS: But you did meet D. Bruce Berry. Can you tell us Siegel & Shuster for a how you met him? [NOTE: D. Bruce Berry was a long time. I read prominent science-fiction fan-artist, and later drew for “Federal Men,” comics, primarily as an inker for Jack Kirby.] “Doctor Occult,” and I believe “Radio Squad” KYLE: I was working as a clerk in a local was out then. I loved bookstore—this was just before the Korean War, I “Slam Bradley.” In think—and we were a kind of center for sciencefact, I liked “Slam fiction collectors and fringe comics fans. Many of Bradley” better than the “fans” were strictly collectors—old-time “Superman.” I just readers of science-fiction itself, rather than fans loved that strip, of science-fiction. And those prototypical comic maybe because I really book fans were outraged at the thought of had no father and paying 15¢ for the first issue of Batman. I got to Slam Bradley had a know a lot of them. When an informal club was sidekick named formed, I attended the first meeting, which was Shorty, and also Bruce’s first. He brought with him fifteen A Grand Slam! sometimes Shorty or twenty pages of originals for a fantasy strip rides around on his To a kid in 1937, Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s Slam Bradley was a he was working on. It was called Sorcery, and shoulders. I think I thrilling action star, though he would soon be eclipsed by a somewhat Bruce had drawn it twice-up, like Prince Valiant more popular creation of the Cleveland team. From the lead story in must have identified and Flash Gordon. Detective Comics #1—as reprinted in the Millennium Reprint edition [Slam] as a father (March 1937). [©2013 DC Comics.] figure, and I really BS: Were they Sunday pages? liked it. But I also KYLE: Yeah. Sorcery was very promising. Bruce was a highly liked Shuster’s style. He lifted from an awful lot of people, but he skilled professional advertising artist. had his own personality and character that I really enjoyed. And the story was good, particularly the BS: So would you say that you were really into comics in the ’40s, or revised version. Bruce was a good writer. were you really more, say, into science-fiction and that kind of thing? But I also thought the inking was off, far too loose. I didn’t pass my thoughts on to KYLE: Both of them or all of them. I started reading science-fiction him, however, even after I got to know when I was eight or nine. Astounding Stories changed its name from him, because he was so touchy. I soon Astounding Stories to Astounding Science Fiction around late ‘37 or learned that. In this case, however, Bruce into ‘38. I didn’t understand trademark law. I had the demented came to the same conclusion independidea that if they had started calling it Astounding Science Fiction, ently, and redrew the whole strip. It was then Astounding Stories was free and could be used by anybody. So vastly improved—and one of the syndiI drew an issue.... I can’t remember what kind of stories were in cates sent around a salesman to look at it. it—there were some sort that I invented—but I hand-drew an Nothing came of that—exactly. But the issue, and my teacher was really upset because I was doing such same syndicate soon was offering around an aberrant thing. If you had a creative thought in the schools in A Berry Talented Guy a strip called Kevin the Bold, with much the 1930s, well, there was something wrong with you. Really, they This rare photo of D. Bruce the same appeal. Unfortunately, [Bruce’s] didn’t want anybody that had any creative imagination and Berry was taken in 1970. frequent inability to take criticism made certainly nobody that read science-fiction. Kyle met him in the 1950s, him difficult to work with. We had many when Berry was a popular of the same interests, though, and kept in BS: How long were you involved in science-fiction fandom? When would fan-artist in the sciencetouch over the years. that have been? fiction fanzines of the day.

KYLE: I wasn’t an active fan, although I did belong to the Golden Gate Futurians in San Francisco for a couple of months. And I attended the Garden Library meetings in Berkeley regularly, until I was drafted. l knew a couple of people in fandom, however, and was familiar with a lot that was going on in it.

BS: Just to connect up the dots a bit, when did you serve in the military?

KYLE: I went in on January 9th, 1951, and got out about a month early because

Both were fated to make their biggest splashes in comics fandom in the same magazine—but that’ll be explored in Part 2 of this interview. Thanks to Richard Kyle.

Of Graphic Stories & Wonderworld

I’d just gotten back from Japan to the United States, and so, with a month left to go, they just let me go. I’m not sure, but it was somewhere around the first week of December 1952.

BS: How did you make your living in the 1950s?

KYLE: I initially went back to work for the concrete block company because I’d worked there before, and you were guaranteed a job when you got out, but they weren’t in good shape financially. The husband had died and I was too young to be of any great help to his wife, a very nice person, although I sort of staggered along doing it for a while. But you needed more business knowledge than I had. So I went to work for General Telephone, making telephone cable. I worked at that until I sold my first professional story, a mystery story. Then for several years, one way or another, I made my living as a writer, and don’t ask me what I published and where or anything like that. Except, I’ll tell you I didn’t write porno. BS: Roughly, when did you sell your first?

KYLE: I sold my first story in 1956, and from then, I sort of straggled off about ten years later.

BS: Now we’re coming up to the time when you would have first heard about comic fandom. How did that happen?

KYLE: One of the science-fiction fanzines that I read had reviews of other fanzines and there was a mention of Xero in it. That was my first contact with comics fandom or what became comics fandom. I wrote to the Lupoffs and subscribed, and then corresponded briefly with Dick. He asked me if I would write a segment about the Fox comics for the “All in Color for a Dime” series that he was running in Xero.

BS: People became aware of you because that meant you were published in a pretty well-known place like that, and with a major piece in an important series. So you suddenly became a well-known fan.

KYLE: Dick was an editorial genius. He was absolutely and perfectly in tune with the times. We have become a vernacular nation and the world has become a vernacular world. And, as editor, Dick picked up on that—and made Xero a part of it. BS: But what was different about Xero?

KYLE: First, there was the coverage of comics. Then it extended to Robert E. Howard and Conan. And there were more contemporary references and satire to some extent. But the thing about it was that it was written in the vernacular. It was written in ordinary speech, and that really wasn’t done before. People were always embarrassed about writing in natural speech. They thought they had to be really formal, really bookish. Dick had the right ear for the times, and that made the difference.

BS: After all, it was a fanzine, so it wasn’t trying to be “professional” in every respect.

KYLE: Well, no, it wasn’t. But it had a very accomplished feel. Bhob Stewart did a great job of art-editing on it. The way he handled the colored inks and the color of the mimeograph paper wouldn’t have worked in any other format.

BS: Right. He made the limitations of mimeo, in a way, its strengths. He was able to create something visually exciting and interesting using a printing method that was usually, at best, straightforward and rather bland. KYLE: Yes, exactly. That’s exactly what he did.

BS: The letter columns in Xero were lively and full of name writers. KYLE: Yeah, the letter columns were very good. I enjoyed those.

BS: And I’m pretty sure you had some letters in those letter columns.

KYLE: As a matter of fact, I did. When I went out to a

The Education Of Richard Kyle Kyle’s “All in Color for a Dime” article about Fox Comics was made possible when early comics dealer Bill Thailing of Cleveland, Ohio, sent him a box of Fox Comics on loan. (Clockwise from above:) Kyle circa 1960—Bill Thailing during the same era—and Lou Fine’s cover for Fox’s Wonderworld Comics #8 (Dec. 1939). [Cover ©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

A Conversation With Richard Kyle

meeting of LASFS, the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society—a long-lasting science-fiction club with members who were also interested in comics—they introduced me as “the guy that writes all those letters to Xero.”

BS: It seems like Xero gave you a place to stand up and be a writer of a different sort.

KYLE: Yeah, but on the other hand, I had been writing, essentially, hard-boiled crime stories. and I had no problem with that. But the thing, I guess, that made the Fox article in Xero work is that I’d read Jim Harmon’s piece, which is just a nostalgia piece, and nothing wrong with that, and a couple of others, but they were nostalgia pieces, as well. When Dick asked me to do Victor Fox, my memories of Victor Fox publications was so hazy that I finally said, “Sure, but I’ll need to borrow some of the comics from someone.” So Dick got Bill Thailing, who was a dealer in old comics in Cleveland, to send me a big cardboard box of Fox comics. In reading them over, I realized that after the seventh or eighth issue of his magazines, they had completely new artists and new writers. The things that I had liked, like Lou Fine for example—he was doing just great work on the early issues—were gone. Those streamlined yachts that he used to draw—it was all gone, and it was replaced with pretty junky stuff. Thailing sent me everything he had at the time, and I could see it dribbling through a series of organizations and reorganizations of Fox publications.

BS: Speaking of “dribbling” .... what about Kooba Cola?

KYLE: Victor Fox had all of these promotions, and one of them was Kooba Cola. I have never run into anybody that ever drank Kooba Cola, saw a bottle of it, or anything.

BS: But it appeared in ads.

KYLE: All he’d really have to do, you know, would be to buy some standard local brand of cola that had a paper label and just plaster another name on it, which is what he may have done in some parts of the country, I don’t know. He did all of that kind of stuff. So, I’m looking over the guy’s history, a pile of old magazines, and I realized I couldn’t write a nostalgic piece. I realized that what I could write was about a man’s life.... He was offering it to me right there. So I wrote “The Education of Victor Fox” for Xero. I didn’t write a comics article, but more of a profile of a man’s life, though of course comics and science-fiction were involved.

BS: Wasn’t it the longest of all the “All In Color for A Dime” pieces?

KYLE: Yeah.... Don Thompson told me that it was so long that Dick Lupoff was uncertain about whether to accept it or not. According to Don, Dick wasn’t very happy about it. He asked Don’s advice, and in the end he went ahead and published it. I don’t know how popular it was, because Xero had a very small circulation. It just happened to have an extraordinarily influential readership.

Drinking Rum & Kooba Cola Two house ads from Green Mask #6 (Aug. 1941) demonstrate the twin pillars of Victor Fox’s approach: a plug for another of his comic books, and a pitch for Kooba Cola (whose name is probably an Americanized spelling of the place-name that’s pronounced the same in Spanish but spelled “Cuba”). Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Of Graphic Stories & Wonderworld

BS: Xero had a fairly large circulation by #8 when your article appeared, but not like a photo offset fanzine, because it had to be physically run-off. I believe Dick told me the circulation never exceeded 500 copies, maybe less than that. Still, a healthy print run for a fanzine. And a lot of the readers were active fans, as you alluded to earlier. I think “The Education of Victor Fox” ended up being a piece that can live beyond “All in Color for a Dime” when the other entries in the series have largely been surpassed by subsequent research and other articles.

KYLE: Fox was an absolutely fascinating character. Although he would be hard to stomach if you had known him in real life. [Bill chuckles] His comics by the late 1940s were really bad. I don’t know who was writing those, but on a Freudian level, it’s some pretty disturbed stuff. It’s so beyond the pale that I can’t imagine anybody except somebody who was a sexual deviant of some kind wanting to read that stuff. They were really tasteless. And he’s putting that stuff in “Blue Beetle” stories!

BS: I think that your conclusion of “The Education of Victor Fox” says it very well. Fox’s lesson was that he couldn’t sell that kind of sick stuff. KYLE: Yeah, that was it.

Manning The Barricades Next issue, Richard Kyle talks about his association with Bill Spicer, editor and publisher of Fantasy Illustrated and Graphic Story Magazine. This famous photograph was taken on the occasion of a 1964 meeting at the home of Russ Manning, a time when important connections were made. (Top Row, left to right:) Fan writer Glen Johnson, Richard Kyle, collector/dealer Rick Durrell. (Kneeling, l. to r.:) Data-indexer John McGeehan, Bill Spicer, and, of course, Magnus – Robot Fighter artist Russ Manning.

Next Issue: The conclusion of our Richard Kyle interview, which comprises Part 8 of our projected 9-part coverage of the 2011 Comic-Con International 50th Anniversary celebration. After that, we’ll conclude with a transcript of the “Spotlight on Bill Schelly” panel, hosted by Gary Brown.

Meanwhile, we urge any and all readers to complete their collection of Bill’s “Kubert Trilogy” of books, all first-rate tributes to the talent of the legendary comic book artist: Man of Rock (the biography), The Art of Joe Kubert (the full-color coffee table book), and Weird Horrors & Daring Adventures (an archival collection of Kubert-drawn stories from 1944 to 1955)—all currently available from the publisher at Fantagraphics.com, or through amazon.com.

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In Memoriam

Glenn Lord (1931-2011) “You Did Your Job... And You Did It Damn Well” A Personal Appreciation by Roy Thomas

lenn Lord, a soft-spoken Texan who died a little over a year ago, never wrote, drew, edited, published, lettered, or colored a comic book. He was, I’m sure, not even a regular reader of them. And yet, in 1969 and afterward, he made a singular contribution to the comics world… one that still reverberates, more than four decades later.

And his importance to fantasy prose literature, which came first, is even greater than his importance to comics.

As a young man in 1957, while working for a paper company in Pasadena, Texas, Glenn gathered many of the poems of a deceased fellow Texan named Robert E. Howard from pulp magazines of the 1920s and ’30s and turned them into a slim volume titled Always Comes Evening, published by Arkham House of Wisconsin but financed by Glenn himself. It was the first full book devoted to the ballad-style poetry of the then nearlyforgotten creator of Conan the Cimmerian, King Kull, Solomon Kane, and Bran Mak Morn… that long-dead “fictioneer” who’d written stories of daredevil exploits, bloodcurdling sorcery, Lovecraftian horror, dockside pugilism, and Western braggadocio, before shooting himself in 1936 at the age of thirty.

Glenn followed this in 1962 by launching The Howard Collector, a small twice-annually magazine dedicated to printing various “lost” or previously unpublished works by REH.

In the mid-’60s, the Conan stories were being reprinted in paperbacks behind gorgeously dynamic Frank Frazetta covers and were selling like Hyperborean hotcakes. Fantasy author L. Sprague de Camp, who had arranged the paperback deal, was looking to divest himself of being literary agent for the REH estate so that he could concentrate on editing the series and co-writing new Conan

Pulp Memories Glenn Lord (on left) and Roy Thomas in Cross Plains, Texas, in summer of 2006—and Frank Utpatel’s dust jacket art for Always Comes Evening, Lord’s 1957 collection of Robert E. Howard’s poetry gathered largely from pulp magazines of the 1920s and ’30s. The photo is from the 2011 book Anniversary: A Tribute to Glenn Lord and The Howard Collector – For the 50th Anniversary of The Howard Collector and the Eightieth Birthday of Glenn Lord. Editor Dennis McHaney’s caption reads: “Glenn and Roy taking questions from the fans. The two made a great team—Roy likes to talk and Glenn likes to sit back and observe.” Readers can find this book on www.lulu.com. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

stories—perhaps also to avoid a possible conflict of interest. Glenn was the man de Camp invited to succeed him as the estate’s new literary agent. Glenn held that post for several decades—ironically, and sadly, during a period in which he and de Camp moved from being allies of convenience to being implacable foes.

Glenn skillfully marketed Howard’s many non-Conan writings with the result that, during the late 1960s and the 1970s, virtually the entire REH oeuvre came into print. Not only Kull and Kane and Bran, but also Cormac mac Art and Skull-Face and Steve Costigan (a couple of him) and the irrepressible Breckinridge Elkins… as well as a wealth of horror tales that, like the Conan yarns, had once seemed relegated forever to the moldering pages of the old pulps.

De Camp may have launched what author Paul M. Sammon calls “The Conan Phenomenon”—but it was Glenn who widened it into the Robert E. Howard Phenomenon.

And when a youngish Marvel comics writer and editor (myself) wrote to him out of the blue in 1969, saying he had little money to offer but would like to arrange for his company to license the rights to Conan, it was Glenn who instantly saw the inherent possibilities in having Howard’s most famous creation appear in a new mass medium, thereby widening his audience.

Glenn was a genuine pleasure to work with—and I speak as someone who has been vocally critical of the overseers of two

other pop-culture franchises in whose vineyards I labored a bit later. He provided me with copies of original Conan manuscripts so I wouldn’t be dependent only on the de Camp-edited versions… and with photocopies of various forgotten or never-published Howard writings… and he allowed the artists and me, for a most nominal fee, to adapt many of REH’s non-Conan tales into adventures of the black-maned, sulleneyed barbarian, thus introducing ever more readers to the master’s poetic prose, even if in adapted form. In return, I made certain that Howard’s name was splashed over every story associated with him…a goal Glenn and I shared.

In Memoriam

From The Pulps To Paperbacks And Four Colors

From the combination of the all-important Howard creation and prose, and the popularity of no less than three Conanstarring Marvel comics by then, came the eventual viability of the Conan the Barbarian film that made a movie star of Arnold Schwarzenegger—and so much that has happened since. And a lot of that was due to the determination and foresight of Glenn Lord, one of the founding members of Conan Properties, Inc.

(Counter-clockwise from above:) Roy G. Krenkel’s exquisite cover for the 1967 Lancer first edition of King Kull, perhaps the first of many paperback collections of stories assembled and edited by Glenn Lord (which led to yet another Marvel Comics franchise)—Ken Kelley’s cover for REH’s Skull-Face—and Barry Smith’s cover for Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #1 (Oct. 1970), which is considered by some comics historians to mark the beginning of the Bronze Age of Comics. Inks by John Verpoorten. [Conan cover ©2013 Conan Properties International, LLD.; King Kull cover ©2013 Kull Properties, Inc.; Skull-Face cover ©2013 Robert E. Howard Properties, Inc.]

Glenn was, in some eyes (including mine), treated rather shabbily in the 1990s, when he was accused of enriching himself unduly on Howard’s legacy and was removed from his post as the estate’s literary agent. In no way do I fault him when I say I believe that until the day he died he held more than a bit of a grudge against those who’d caused his dismissal. Why shouldn’t he have? Last I heard, they had never apologized to him.

Yet, when I met him for the last time in Cross Plains, Texas, in 2006, at the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Robert E. Howard’s birth held in that post-oaks, sand-roughs town, and when we sat side by side in a high school gym talking to a sizable crowd of REH enthusiasts about the greatness of the author and the fun we’d had in our different ways in guiding the fortunes of his larger-than-life heroes… it was as if those 35-plus years had flown by in a moment, and all the times had been good ones. It was an honor to share a panel with him, even though Glenn always spoke as little as he could get away with.

Glenn Lord passed away on December 31, 2011. He is survived by his wife Lou Ann. They had a son and a daughter.

Rest in peace, Glenn. You did your job… and you did it damn well. I’m proud to have known you.

In Memoriam

Bill(1945-2011) Crouch Friend to Detectives, Princes, and Possums by Chris Boyko

ireless Pogo fan and promoter William M. Crouch, Jr., passed away on February 21, 2011, after a heart attack at age 66 put him into a coma from which he never recovered. Living in the Bridgeport, Connecticut, area, where his family had roots going back to the 1850s, his “real” job had been working for his family’s paper company and later for the firm that bought them out in 1981. He worked, as members of his family had for 80 years, in the paper business until he retired in 2008 due to health issues.

As is fitting for a man who worked with paper, he had a love of what could be done with it. Specifically, he loved the graphic arts or, as they were no doubt known to the young Bill, “the funny papers.” He became an ardent fan of Milt Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, Al Capp’s Li’l Abner, Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, and, perhaps above all others, Walt Kelly’s Pogo. He graduated from Columbia University in 1967 with a B.A. in Art History and a senior thesis on comic art. In those days, the scholarship of comics was limited to fanzines like Xero and The Comic Reader, and Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes was only two years old.

Bill contributed to such seminal reference books as The World Encyclopedia of Comics (1976) and numerous others. He wrote essays for many publications, including Jud Hurd’s beloved Cartoonist PROfiles. For the last ten years, Bill wrote a monthly column on comics and their creators for Great South Bay Magazine. But his greatest contribution to comic scholarship is the book projects he worked on starring his favorite characters: Dick Tracy, Prince Valiant, and Pogo.

Crouching Tiger Bill Crouch (on left) and Prince Valiant creator/artist Harold R. Foster in the late 1970s—and the covers of four of the five large Pogo paperbacks he edited for Fireside between 1980-89. [Pogo art ©2013 Estate of Walt Kelly.]

In 1990 Bill edited Dick Tracy: America’s Most Famous Detective and, with Larry Doucet, wrote The Authorized Guide to Dick Tracy Collectibles. Both of these books capitalized on the Warren Beatty film.

He became a friend of Hal Foster and in the 1970s contributed six storylines to the series. In 1981 he published The Prince Valiant Scrapbook.

From 1978 to 1988, Bill edited and published the Pogo fanzine The Okefenokee Star, and between 1980-89 he edited and designed five 258-page Pogo trade paperbacks for Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster with the help of Walt Kelly’s widow, Selby.

Though his heart was always with the newspaper strips, Bill also wrote for such Charlton comic books as The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, and Hong Kong Phooey #1, and contributed to Charlton’s Sick in the mid-’70s. He also selfpublished three wonderful collections of Wally Wood’s early art: The Wallace Wood Sketchbook (1980), The Wallace Wood Sketchbook II (1981), and Woodwork #1 (1980).

Bill Crouch is survived by his wife, Minh-Chau Luong-Crouch (a former senior translator at the United Nations), his sister Dorothy Crouch (former managing director of DC Comics and associate editor of Mad), and brother Miller Crouch. Bill left us with books to read, enjoy, and pass onto future generations to keep the comics of the past alive in the present. As Bill might have said, “I go Pogo, will you?”

hat better way to open the letters section of a “3-D issue” than with two Shane Foley images of our miraculous “maskots”? The one on the left salutes Simon & Kirby’s Captian 3-D; it was obligingly rendered into three dimensions by none other than Ray “3-D” Zone himself! A true first for Alter and Captain Ego, those 1964 creations of the fan-artist/editor Biljo White! And on the right is Shane’s homage to 3-D Man, that mid-1970s hero of tales set in the late 1950s by writer/editor Roy Thomas and penciler Jim Craig. Since the three “3-D Man” issues were printed in full color, not in just red and green, Randy Sargent volunteered to color that particular homage featuring the super-hero Alter Ego. Thanks to our own terrific trio! [Alter & Captain Ego TM & ©2013 Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly; Alter Ego TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas – costume designed by Ron Harris.]

Because of the humongous amount of 3-D material that’s coming right off the page at you in this month, we’ve only room for truncated reactions to A/E #104, which spotlighted perhaps the longest Stan Lee “interview” of all time, conducted over two audio-recording sessions in Los Angeles in August & September of 2005. As per usual in such “truncated” editions, all of my (Roy’s) comments will be rendered in italics—like this—and those of the correspondents will not be in italics—like this!

John Benson: “I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the Stan Lee interview in A/E #104. In one way it sorta reminded me of that scene in The Great Man where a guy is asked to say a few words about the departed ‘great man,’ and he says, ‘How long do you want?’ and, when told, does a little off-the-cuff eulogy that hits the time requested to the second. I loved how Stan could be told information and then turn around and immediately and gracefully incorporate it seamlessly into a personal narrative which sounds absolutely sincere. I’m not putting him down. I think what he’s doing here is absolutely brilliant, something very few people could do. It’s amazing that you can hear him being given data and still believe him completely when he transforms it into a personal reminiscence. And it wouldn’t work if a lot of it wasn’t really genuine, and interesting on its own merits. That tremendous facility put him where he is. A great document!

“But some transcription goofs crept in, rare for A/E. My favorite is the team of “Joe Simon and Jack Hervy” doing Captain America (p. 24). “An anachronism whose lived his time” (p. 35): hey, that should be “who’s.” And on p. 23, this may be a matter of taste, but I think it would be more usual to spell it something like “whooh,” not “woo.” But you know what? I just looked into a little patch of text in [my own book] The Sincerest Form of Parody and was mortified to note that suddenly, in the middle of a paragraph about Fred Ottenheimer, I switched to calling him ‘Ottinger’! Agony, agony.” It happens to the best of us, John—and to the worst— and to those of us in between. Next, I asked to hear from readers who bought Fantastic Four #1 off the newsstands in summer of 1961, and here’s a response from the gent who provided us with the never-beforeprinted Captain 3-D #2 splash seen on p. 21:

Ethan Roberts: “I bought all the early super-hero Marvels off the newsstand, beginning with The Fantastic Four #1. Prior to it, I would look at Atlas/Marvel in passing only. At the time they all seemed very similar to me—mostly monster books with twist endings—Ho Hum. I was more interested in the Westerns, particularly Two-Gun Kid with Kirby/Ayers art. I had gotten back into comics after a latent period that had lasted from when I was 12 until I was 13. A coverless issue of [Magazine Enterprises’] Best of the West purchased at a PTV flea market did it. Thus I started collecting comics, basically DCs with the Silver Age revivals. My interest began to extend back to earlier eras. By the time FF #1 emerged, I was drawn to it because it had Elongated Man/Plastic Man and The Human Torch on the cover. Except for that, I wouldn’t have laid down my down for just another monster book.” Same here, Ethan. Looks like Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Martin Goodman targeted their audience pretty nigh perfectly—even if it was also something of a “happy accident.”

Bernie Bubnis: “Do I remember buying Fantastic Four #1? Are you kidding? That was fifty years ago, my friend. A lot of important things have happened since then, career-wise, personal-wise, life in general-wise. I never gave it a thought. Until now. I guess I do remember. Stuck behind memories of my marriage, the birth of my kids, being drafted (‘But Uncle Sam, I’m anti-war and a hippie!’), the deaths of too many, and dopey memories like Raquel Welch’s first TV special, which made me finally buy a color television, is actually the memory of buying that first issue! In those days I bought every comic book available in my little dippy town of Farmingdale, Long Island. Even those Atlas ‘this does not make

[correspondence & corrections]

sense’ monster titles. Whoa, what was this? A ‘this does not make sense’ monster and what looks like ‘super’ heroes. The cover alone bore no resemblance to my regular diet of National comics. I remember thinking that I really loved Plastic Man, and here was another rip-off. The Human Torch? Hey, that was interesting. Those are two memories stored plainly behind some of my dopey memories. But I actually can recall the exact thoughts of my 13-year-old self! I cannot recall too much of those early National titles, or covers, or stories, or ever being excited. Don’t get me wrong. I looked forward to each of those comics, and each took me on flights of fantasy… but searching my memory for the same thrill as first seeing FF #1… does not exist. I have never thought about it. I guess that issue was a game-changer for me. Those early issues were rough around the edges but fun to read. Different, just different. A new universe to explore. I’m glad you reminded me. I owe some thanks to Stan and Jack. And to you, for another great issue.” Thanks to the guy who threw the very first comics convention, back in 1964!

previously, was another terrific peek into the workings of the early Marvel (nee Timely) years. The same with Mike Gilbert’s piece on Mike Friedrich (concerning DC) and Shaun Clancy’s interview with Ray Ald (re Fawcett), again adding color to the landscape behind the various comic book publishing companies and architects. Consistent in every way with what I regard was the intention of Jerry Bails when he began Alter-Ego, and that was to shed light on the many personalities and give credit to the many men and women who often contributed anonymously to the ‘cultural classics’ we know and love as ‘comic books.’ Congratulations to you, your staff, and all the fine contributors in making A/E #104 prove that A/E is still and truly the World’s Greatest Comics Fanzine.” Always great to receive a kind word from the guy who, back in the 1960s, assisted Jerry Bails on his early fan-publications! Readers can peruse more about—and by— him in Bill Schelly’s and my upcoming TwoMorrows tome The Best of Alter Ego, Vol. 2, reprinting more from the original 1960s-70s run of this mag. With luck, it’ll be out this summer!

Richard Kolkman: “I have read your This “unused variant” of the Jack Kirby-penciled cover of The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961), which has been printed fine Alter Ego for years, and your fine Mark Evanier: “You have the cover in from to time since, eliminates one of the five “innocent comics 1965-1978, and I am caretaker of [A/E #104] to Marvelmania Magazine #4, bystanders”—namely, a hat-wearing man standing near The Jack Kirby Checklist. I am currently with art identified as being by Gene the doorway labeled “135.” It was sent to us by Gordon researching the dim recesses of Kirby’s Colan. That’s actually art done by the Robson. Marvel’s long had problems getting this cover career from 1935-1940. Very murky, but Grantray-Lawrence Animation Studio right in reprints; in the 1987 Marvel Masterworks Volume exciting. I was re-reading Mark for the Sub-Mariner cartoons that were Two: Fantastic Four, the cop in the back, as well, was Alexander’s fine book The Wonder Years, done for the Marvel Super-Heroes dropped from both that hardback’s cover and the and I believe I have solved the typed-out cartoon show that weren’t based on reprinted version inside—and on those two renditions the [i.e., crossed out with typewriter keys] pre-existing comic book stories. Most of citizens were also colored quite a bit differently, both from name on Stan Lee’s 1961 FF #1 synopsis. it was by Doug Wildey.” Thanks, Mark. the original FF #1 and from each other! [©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.] As Stan has stated, he considered only Live and learn. Wildey very much caught Kirby for the assignment, and I have the photographic flavor of Gene's Namor. forensically studied the strike-out name… and I believe it says: ‘JACKY.’ I have very good supposiJim Burns: “Here are a couple of great (!)(?) mysteries no one’s ever tions for this, and I will write more soon. But I am convinced Stan addressed: (1) No one seems to know—incredibly enough—who was using Goodman’s nickname for Jack and thought better of it.” played the host of the Marvel cartoons when they ran on WOR in Could be, Richard, though others have other interpretations. I will admit, New York in 1966… a character called ‘Captain Power.’ Two generas one who spent time with Stan and Jack from 1965-70, that I can’t ations of Marvel folk didn’t know, and even a couple of WOR recall Stan referring to Jack as “Jacky,” whether Kirby was in the room or executives had no idea! Captain Power was a caped super-hero, not. But Jack liked to call Stan “Stanley”—even though I suspect he knew played by a young actor or announcenter, who would talk about Stan didn’t much care for that reference. running into some of the Marvel characters. He also did live ads for PDQ chocolate milk mix. (2) And Jim Steranko (those of us who Mike Tuohey addressed “Roy, Jim, Bill, et al.”: “I’m impressed that, have worked with him are allowed to use the first name, right?) after over 100 issues, you seem to have nailed this ‘fanzine’ thing would always pleasantly put off discussing two topics: (a) the so well again with A/E #104. Although we have read versions of animated super-hero series he tried pitching to Paramount’s Stan Lee’s various memories before, it is always interesting to me cartoon division around ’67 or so (there are great photos of this, how he managed to add a little something new or different to each from Castle of Frankenstein magazine)—and (b) whatever happened of the re-tellings. One of the things I’ve always admired about Stan to the Christmas with the Super Heroes series that he, or Stan, wrote Lee is that he gave work whenever he could to the discarded great about as hoping to happen as a Marvel deal with one of the artists nearing the end of their careers: Bill Everett, Wallace Wood, networks around 1973?” I’ll have to ask Stan about that one of these Bob Powell, Werner Roth, Ogden Whitney, Wayne Boring, and I’m days, Jim—either for A/E or for a big new book I’m writing about Stan sure I’m missing a few. How much did you have to do with that for the German publisher Taschen. As for that once-projected Steranko yourself, Roy? series, see A/E #113.

Everybody Wants To Get Into The Act!

“The conversation with Al Sulman, a virtual unknown to me

David Anthony Kraft commented on the lengthy “legends” stamped on the backs of Marvel checks during at least much of the 1960s: “When I started [at Marvel] in early ’74, no such legends appeared on the checks. They came [back] in later, and it seemed a case of imposing conditions after the fact, not in advance (that was maybe ’78), hence my feeling that, if they could add it after the fact, I could subtract it before signing, stipulating first serial rights only. But I do wonder about latter-day characters like She-Hulk. Stan threw together the first issue overnight to head Universal off at the pass, but aside from being green and called She-Hulk, pretty much everything else about her character was created by me. I have no doubt Stan will get credit in future if/when there’s a movie or whatever… but wish there was a better way to get acknowledged for my contributions than suing. Note that Iron Man and the like include the early creators; don’t know if that includes any money, but it surprises me that Marvel Studios doesn’t have some sort of at least flat fee for cases like these, since there are so many of them. Seems like it would be easier all around.”

re:

The Cover Of The Sentry

Spectre #3 with the aid of Neal (Adams), but very off on its chronology, as this would be taking place in late 1967 for a book on sale in January 1968. Neal did not draw The X-Men until 14 months later—nor was he drawing ‘Batman’ then, either. In fact, his first interior Batman work wasn’t even for Bat-editor Julie [Schwartz]. It was The Brave and the Bold #79 for Murray Boltinoff, on sale in June 1968 (five months after he’d had to draw Spectre #3) and teaming Bats with Deadman…. All of which, btw, ignores one big, glaring hole in the [Mike Friedrich] story: no editor (least of all one as story-conscious as Julie, especially with a young writer) would have allowed a writer to deliver a script directly to the artist without it first going through the editor’s scrutiny. As memory serves me, Neal’s first ‘Batman’ story for Julie was, indeed, one of Mike Friedrich’s scripts, the Christmas story ‘The Silent Night of The Batman,’ in the back of Batman #219, on sale December 1969….” We’ll leave it to Mike to respond if he wishes, Gaff… but I suspect at least the broad outlines of his story are accurate, and certainly Mike was relating the tale as he recalled it.

Jeff Deischer: “I’ve read in a number of accounts that John Romita was against killing Gwen Stacy, so I’m highly doubtful that the idea originated with him, as Stan believes.” I’ll let John and Gerry Conway hash that out, Jeff. It didn’t come from Stan or myself (as editor), I know that… so it had to be one, or both, of those guys!

This unused cover penciled by Jack Kirby for FF #64 (July 1967) was first seen on the cover of the 1968 SCARP-Con program book; this version was eventually inked by Joltin’ Joe Sinnott. Fan Henry Kujawa colored a digital image and sent it to us. Us, we’ve always kinda preferred it to the cover that was actually used—but who are we to second-guess Stan Lee and/or Martin Goodman? [©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Al Bigley: “More on the fabby A/E #104: That JRSR [John Romita, Sr.] cover rough on page 32 is from the cover of Darkhold #5 from 1993. I ought to know. I did most of the interior pencils. I think Rich Case did the final cover, based on JRSR’s beautiful rough!” Thanks, Al!

Pedro Angosto: “Was thinking that, for having legendary bad memory, Stan has a unique ability to reproduce “his version of facts” word by word every time! ‘Si non e vero, e ben trobatto.’” Not really quite true, Pedro. Two important things that folks often forget: (1) Stan doesn’t really repeat his stories “word for word”—he’s telling a familiar story, but there are minor variations in terms of phrasing each time he repeats it. Check it out. (2) More importantly, it would be strange, even suspect, if the wording weren’t at least reasonably similar each time he tells a well-known story. After all, he’s relating what he recalls as real events, however subjective the memories of all of us are. He doesn’t see them much differently over time… and he can’t just add or subtract words willy-nilly from those anecdotes, or else they’d be less true to his memory. Chances are that you, too—like myself and most of the rest of humanity—use similar words, phrases, probably even intonations, when you tell a story you’ve told various times before.

Douglas Jones, a.k.a. Gaff: “Got the issue of Alter Ego celebrating the 50th anniversary of FF #1 today. An excellent job. Couple of things: (1) The Kirby Silver Surfer cover to the 1975 Julycon program book was not inked by Kirby—or anybody. It’s shot from a pencil sketch. I remember that because, from 1974-76, some of the production for the Julycon books was done at DC, as Sol Harrison was close friends with Phil [Seuling, convention host]. (2) Cute ‘autobiographical’ story on Mike Friedrich selling the story to The

Joe Frank: “While I heartily agree that the 50th anniversary of The Fantastic Four—and, by extension, the Marvel super-heroes—is worth honoring and exploring in greater depth, I was disappointed in Alter Ego #104. Is something really a ‘recollection’ if it has to be coached or prodded? Agreed, there’s no shame in forgetting precise details of events that happened half a century back. In fact, though it would make for a less superficially entertaining experience, I’d far rather read an honest admission someone doesn’t remember than prompted guesswork or a rehearsed revision…. I believe Stan was vitally involved with all the Marvel characters of that era, either suggesting or helping to define them. But I bristle when his partners—the ones who also contributed key concepts, characters, plot elements, and visuals—are treated as mere helpful assistants. The Fantastic Four [#1] wasn’t a fully scripted novel. Stan’s contribution, though vital, was initially only a terse synopsis. Jack [Kirby] added ideas, visuals, and paced the story. Stan, in turn, wrote the distinctive dialogue. Neither man’s contribution should be ignored or dismissed. It was a thriving partnership, a true collaboration, so why should fandom be asked to choose between radically conflicting versions where one side did it all?

“You, thankfully, noted Stan’s dubious assertion in the creation of Iron Man: his citing the hostility towards arms

[correspondence & corrections]

manufacturers which King Features. He also came much later than received a copyright on 1963. However, not a an unpublished musical word was said in the composition.” We appretranscript—or in a clariciate your sharing this data fying caption—about his with us, Alex. However, Jim revision of why ‘SpiderAmash says he has since Man’ was published in leaned that Al is indeed Amazing Fantasy #15 and now deceased. why Jack was removed so quickly, his story aborted. Jeff Taylor: “The thing I Amazing Fantasy #15, as really loved the best was per Amazing Spider-Man the interview with Tony Caving In Omnibus, Vol. 1, had an Tallarico, of whom I’ve Joseph Sulman drew—and his brother Al may have written—the “Caveman Curly” episode in editorial page announcing been a fan ever since I All Funny #14 (Nov.-Dec 1946) as one of his last art efforts in comics. The splash panel from more ‘Spider-Man’ stories was a kid and found a this first page was seen in A/E #104. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [©2013 DC Comics.] in upcoming issues. Why copy of his wonderfully do that for a supposed pulp and apocalyptic one-shot in an already cancelled book? Same with Steve Ditko’s Blue Beetle comic in my grandparents’ bathroom reading rack. I also unused cover. Why commission a second one, drawn by Jack, if it owned that Monsters book he illustrated for Walter Gibson, which really didn’t matter?” I’ve little doubt, Joe, that both Stan and Jack adapted classic horror novels for children, and which I almost read misremembered or forgot various facts about what was, after all, just one to pieces, and—well, let’s just say that an issue of his Dell supermore rapidly-turned-out assignment in 1962. All I recall Stan (and his hero version of Dracula really helped me get through a rather tense longtime associate Sol Brodsky) telling me in 1965 was that Jack had vacation with my mentally ill, alcoholic step-father. Tallarico is my drawn at least part of the first “Spider-Man” story when Stan decided he favorite “good bad artist” (which I define as someone who may not wanted a different approach—that Jack’s was too standard-heroic for this be so high in technical quality but more than makes up for it in new character—so Stan went to Steve Ditko for the published artwork. energy, imagination, and personality as opposed to a “bad good I’m not at all surprised that “Spider-Man” was probably intended to be artist” whose technique may be superficially ‘perfect’ but whose an ongoing series from the start—and that some or all of the contents of work is dull, dull, dull), and I am eagerly looking forward to part The Amazing Spider-Man #1 a few months later may have been made two of the interview next month…. By the way, I’m sure somehow up of material originally intended for Amazing Fantasy #16 forward. has said this before, but a 1958 film called Monster on the Campus As for the decision to have the cover of AF #15 re-penciled by Kirby— must have been a major subconscious influence on Stan Lee, that may have been either Stan’s decision or publisher Martin Goodman’s. because it featutes a university scientist named Dr. Donald Blake (!) Even with a final issue of a comic, after all, they hoped to sell as many who accidentally ingests gamma-irradiated prehistoric coelacanth copies as they could. blood and devolves into a savage subhuman brute!” I wouldn’t bet a plugged nickel on Stan Lee having seen Monster on the Campus, Jeff… Richard Kyle: “Enjoyed reading the Al Sulman interview. It’s too though I know a bit less about Jack Kirby’s movie-going habits—or those bad there is no more. I had a love-hate relationship with [his artist of Larry Lieber, who gave Thor's alter ego the name "Donald Blake.” Still, brother] Joseph Sulman, and now I know some of why. His who can truly say, at this late date? imitative stuff really explains the ‘Koppy’ byline. Too, I loved Fred Guardineer’s ‘Zatara,’ and Joseph just didn’t have the feel for it. (I A FOND FAREWELL thought Guardineer was better than than [Mandrake the Magician artist] Phil Davis. Still, when Joe Shuster lifted a pose, it never It’s with extreme sadness that we must announce that Marc bothered me…. Note the last line of the first column of page 80. Swayze, the 1940s-50s Fawcett who has written the “We Didn’t Know… Argosy was never published by St. John, nor did it ever publish It Was the Golden Age!” column in A/E’s FCA section since the very confession stories. Argosy was founded at the turn of the [20th] first issue of the current volume of Alter Ego back in 1999, passed away century by Frank Munsey and was sold to Popular Publications shortly after midnight on October 14, 2012. We are informed by his around 1940, who eventually turned it into a slick men’s magazine. daughter, Desha, that he left us peacefully in his sleep. Dann’s and my Popular didn’t publish confessions, either.” Thanks, Richard. You are, thoughts go out to Desha and to Marc’s wife June, with whom I’ve spoken as ever, a fountain of information. numerous times on the phone. I was never privileged to meet Marc in person, either, and that is my loss, for he always seemed the perfect and Alex Jay: “I read the Al Sulman interview in A/E #104. I have a reasonable gentleman, who greatly enjoyed sharing his memories of the subscription to Ancestry.com and searched the Sulman family. That early days of comic books with those who were interested. information plus articles I found through Google are compiled in Marc turned 99 last July, so FCA editor P.C. Hamerlinck, the attached PDF. One discrepancy I notice is Al’s date of birth. TwoMorrows publisher John Morrow, and I had already planned a 100thAncestry.com lists two Public Records documents with a date of birthday bash for Marc in the pages of A/E #119, out this coming July. March 13, although one of them has, in brackets, “March 16.” (I And we see no reason to change those plans—far from it! Please join us. think the source was a hand-written document and the transcriber had trouble with the figure.) In the A/E interview, Al said he was born on the 19th. Maybe it’s a typo? Al recalled, correctly, his Send all comments, carping, and congrats re A/E to: enlistment month (February 19) and vacation in Paris (he went Roy Thomas e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com twice). Al’s name is not in the Social Security Death Index, so he’s 32 Bluebird Trail still alive. [His brother] Joseph passed away in 1994. I found death St. Matthews, SC 29135 notices [for Joe] in three Florida newspapers. When he lived in Connecticut, he was interviewed on June 28, 1979, by a fifth-grader Don’t miss next issue’s tribute to Joe Kubert—truly one who created a super-hero. The article said Joseph was an artist at of the greats!

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COMICS’ GOLDEN AGE LIVES AGAIN! MINUTE-MAN BLACK TERROR • AVENGER PHANTOM LADY • CAT-MAN DAREDEVIL • CRIMEBUSTER CAPTAIN FLASH SPY SMASHER MR. SCARLET SKYMAN • STUNTMAN THE OWL • BULLETMAN COMMANDO YANK PYROMAN • GREEN LAMA THE EAGLE • IBIS

The above is just a partial list of characters that have appeared in AC Comics’ reprint titles such as MEN OF MYSTERY, GOLDEN AGE GREATS, and AMERICA’S GREATEST COMICS. Virtually all issues published to date are available at $6.95 each. To find over 100 quality Golden Age reprints, go to the AC Comics website at <accomics.com>. AC COMICS Box 521216 Longwood FL 32752 Please add $1.50 postage & handling per order.

Part II of

“The INDESTRUCTIBLE ANTAGONIST!” #174 March 2013

ast time, we reprinted pages 1-7 of this George Evans-penciled classic from Fawcett’s TV-licensed comic Captain Video #3 (June 1951); the inker was Martin Thall, while the scripter is sadly unidentified. Besides being an excellent science-fictional adventure— superior in both story and art to the average comics fare of the day—its antagonist Makino served as my initial inspiration for Ultron, the “robot” super-villain that artist John Buscema and I would introduce at Marvel in 1968 over the course of The Avengers #54-55 & #57-58. More about that last time and in A/E #117, though. This round, we’ve just got room, with thanks to P.C. Hamerlinck & Rod Beck for the scans, to re-present the middle section of this 19-page spectacular—right after Makino, having murdered his creator Prof. Seminik and vowed to prove his own superiority to mankind, has flown off at the controls of the hero’s Whirlojet, leaving Video and the young Ranger behind—amid a treacherous marshland.

—Roy Thomas, Guest FCA Co-Editor.

FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America]

The quicksand sequence above is simply a throwaway bit of danger for the heroes, though admirably rendered by George Evans and Martin Thall. In the insert panel: Marc Swayze wrote and drew the earlier killer robot Klang in Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Adventures #15 (Sept. 1942). [Shazam hero TM & ©2013 DC Comics.]

Captain Video vs. “The Indestructible Antagonist!” - Part II

Wasn’t the future wonderful? In 1951, the “shape of things to come” was pretty much in the image of that relatively new marvel, the TV set—and a console model, to boot! But that was to be expected, since the Captain Video show was launched in 1949 partly as a gimmick to help sell the fledgling (and alas, doomed) DuMont Television Network—and, for that matter, DuMont TV sets, which were the company’s main product! (NOTE: As per ad on p. 74, PS Artbooks, inspired by this FCA feature, will reprint a special hardcover collection of all six 1951 issues of Captain Video, annotated by Roy Thomas. With luck, it’s on sale right about now!)

FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America]

Years before Marvel’s Ben Grimm/The Thing would don an overcoat to disguise his unorthodox appearance—although quite some time after The Phantom did the same to hide his costume in polite society—Makino adopted such garb in Captain Video #3.

Captain Video vs. “The Indestructible Antagonist!” - Part II

The Captain uses his generically named “ray gun” against Makino—to no avail. In Columbia’s 1951 Captain Video movie serial, he used two types of hand-weapons: a “ray gun” whose main visible effect was spraying sparks—and a “cosmic vibrator,” the taser of its day. Visually, the former was Ye Editor’s all-time favorite movie ray gun—hence the inset from that serial, with Judd Holdren as CV. [Serial still ©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America]

The writer of this story feels less compulsion to explain what is going on in the panel than was usual in that era—e.g, in panel 3, where it seems Makino’s left arm grows longer to thrust the Ranger away, but no mention is made of its lengthening. The robot assassin escapes again—setting the scene for the climactic two sequences of the story. “The Indestructible Antagonist!” will conclude next issue…!

Make ready for COMIC BOOK CREA REA ATOR, the new voice of CREATOR, the comics medium! TwoMorr woM ows is proud to debut our newest magazine, Comic Book Creator, Creator, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics, focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. Behind an ALEX ROSS cover painting, our frantic FIRST ISSUE features an investigation of the oft despicable treatment JACK KIRBY endured from the very business he helped establish. From being cheated out of royalties in the ’40s and bullied in the ’80s by the publisher he made great, to his estate’s current fight for equitable recognition against an entertainment monolith where his characters have generated billions of dollars, we present Kirby’s cautionary tale in the eternal struggle for creator’s rights. Plus, CBC #1 interviews artist ALEX ROSS and writer KURT BUSIEK, spotlights the last years of writer/artist FRANK ROBBINS, remembers comics historian LES DANIELS DANIELS, sports a color Valentines alentines tto his beloved, gallery of WILL EISNER’s V showcases a joint talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL on their unforrgettable gettab gettable collaborations, as well as throws a whole kit’n’caboodle of other creatorcentric items atcha! Join us for the start of a new era as TwoMorr woM ows welcomes back former Comic Book Artist editor Jon B. Cooke, who helms the all-new, all-color COMIC MIC BOOK CREA ATOR! TOR!

PGS s !LL COLOR s 1UARTERLY $8.95 cover price Digital Edition: $3.95 ISSUE SUB BSCRIPTIONS s PRINT 53 WITH &2%% $IGITAL %DITIONS s DIGIT GIT TAL AL: $18.80 &IRST #LASS 53 s #ANADA s &IRST #LASS )NTERNATIONAL s 0RIORITY )NTERNATIONAL 3UBSCRIPTIONS INCLUDE THE DOUBLE SIZE 3UMMER 3PECIAL

ALTER EGO #116

BACK ISSUE #63

KIRBY COLLECTOR #60

DRAW! #24

BRICKJOURNAL #23

JOE KUBERT TRIBUTE! Four Kubert interviews, art by RUSS HEATH, NEAL ADAMS, MURPHY ANDERSON, SHELDON MOLDOFF, IRV NOVICK, and others, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY’s Comic Fandom Archive, FCA’s Captain Video conclusion by GEORGE EVANS that inspired Avengers foe Ultron, cover by KUBERT, with a portrait by DANIEL JAMES COX!

“British Invasion” issue! History of Marvel UK, Beatles in comics, DC’s ‘80s British talent pool, V for Vendetta, Excalibur, Marshal Law, Doctor Who, “Pro2Pro” interview with PETER MILLIGAN & BRENDAN McCARTHY, plus BERGER, BOLLAND, DAVIS, GIBBONS, STAN LEE, LLOYD, MOORE, DEZ SKINN, and others. Bonus 25” long fold-out triptych cover by RON WILSON and DAVE HUNT of Marvel UK’s rare 1970s “Quadra-Poster”!

FANTASTIC FOUR FOLLOW-UP to #58’s THE WONDER YEARS! Never-seen FF wraparound cover, interview between FF inkers JOE SINNOTT and DICK AYERS, rare LEE & KIRBY interview, comparison of a Jack and Stan FF story conference to Stan’s final script and Jack’s penciled pages, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, gallery of KIRBY FF ART, pencils from BLACK PANTHER, SILVER SURFER, & more!

GLEN ORBIK demos how he creates his painted noir paperback and comic covers, ROBERT VALLEY discusses animating “The Beatles: Rock Band” music video and Tron: Uprising, plus Comic Art Bootcamp on “Dramatic Lighting” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, BOB McCLOUD gives a Rough Critique of a newcomer’s work, and more!

STAR WARS issue, with custom creations from a long time ago and far, far away! JACOB CARPENTER’s Imperial Star Destroyer, MARK KELSO’s Invisible Hand, interview with SIMON MACDONALD about building Star Wars costume props with LEGO elements, history of the LEGO X-Wing, plus our regular features on minifigure customization by JARED BURKS, “You Can Build It” instructions, and more!

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(104-page magazine with COLOR) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Now shipping!

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A COMICS HISTORY GAME-CHANGER!

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES THE

1960-64 Volume NOW SHIPPING! 1980s Volume ships in MARCH!

This ambitious new series of FULLCOLOR HARDCOVERS documents every decade of comic books from the 1940s to today! Each colossal volume presents a year-by-year account of the comic book industry’s most significant publications, most notable creators, and most impactful trends.

This ongoing project enlists TwoMorrows’ top authors, as they provide exhaustively researched details on all the major events along the comics history timeline! Editor KEITH DALLAS (The Flash Companion) spearheads the series and writes his own volume on the 1980s. Also in the works are two volumes on the 1940s by ROY THOMAS, the 1950s by BILL SCHELLY, two volumes on the 1960s by JOHN WELLS, a 1970s volume by JIM BEARD, and more volumes documenting the 1990s and 2000s. Taken together, the series forms the first cohesive, linear overview of the entire landscape of comics history, sure to be an invaluable resource for ANY comic book enthusiast! JOHN WELLS leads off with the first of two volumes on the 1960s, covering all the pivotal moments and behind-the-scenes details of comics in the JFK and Beatles era! You’ll get a year-by-year account of the most significant publications, notable creators, and impactful trends, including: DC Comics’ rebirth of GREEN LANTERN, HAWKMAN, and others, and the launch of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and multiple earths! STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY’s transformation of superhero comics with the debut of FANTASTIC FOUR, SPIDER-MAN, HULK, X-MEN, AVENGERS, and other iconic characters! Plus BATMAN gets a “new look”, the BLUE BEETLE is revamped at Charlton Comics, and CREEPY #1 brings horror back to comics, just as Harvey’s “kid” comics are booming!

NOW SHIPPING! The Best of FROM THE TOMB Compiles the finest features from the preeminent magazine on horror comics history, along with never-seen material! (192-page trade paperback with COLOR) $27.95 • (Digital Edition) $8.95 ISBN: 9781605490434 • Diamond Order Code: AUG121322

The co-founder of Filmation Studios tells all about leading the last American animation company through thirty years of innovation and fun! (288-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29.95 • (Digital Edition) $9.95 ISBN: 9781605490441 • Diamond Order Code: JUL121245

MATT BAKER: The Art of Glamour The fabled master of glamour art finally gets his due! (192-page HARDCOVER with 96 COLOR pages) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.95 ISBN: 9781605490328 • Diamond Order Code: JUN121310

TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans! TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

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LOU SCHEIMER: Creating the Filmation Generation

1960-64 VOLUME: (224-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.95 • ISBN: 9781605490458 • Diamond Order Code: JUL121245