Alter Ego #117 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy C at aclysmic homas Thomas homas’’C ataclysmic aclysmic Roy T Cat Comics F anzine Comics Comics F Fanzine anzine

Forget Forget Forget Batman! Batman! Batman! Long Live Long Long Live Live CAT-MAN! CAT-MAN! CAT-MAN! TM

FELINE FELINE FERAL FOCUS FOCUS ON ON GOLDEN AGE GOLDEN GOLDEN AGE AGE ARTISTS ARTISTS ARTISTS

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In In the USA In the the USA USA

L.B. L.B. COLE COLE & & No.117 JAY JAY DISBROW DISBROW

June 2013

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 #107

ALTER EGO #108

DIEDGITIIOTANSL BL AVAILA

ALTER EGO #104

ALTER EGO #105

ALTER EGO #106

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!

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, & DITKO/GIORDANO cover!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #109

ALTER EGO #110

ALTER EGO #111

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!

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!

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ALTER EGO #112

ALTER EGO #113

ALTER EGO #114

ALTER EGO #115

ALTER EGO #116

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!

JOE KUBERT TRIBUTE! Four Kubert interviews, art by RUSS HEATH, NEAL ADAMS, MURPHY ANDERSON, MICHAEL KALUTA, SAM GLANZMAN, 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!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships April 2013

Vol. 3, No. 117 / June 2013 Roy Thomas

Editor

Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Associate Editors Christopher Day

Design & Layout John Morrow

Consulting Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck

FCA Editor

A BELATED NOTE ABOUT OUR 3-D ISSUE (A/E #115):

Michael T. Gilbert

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

Editorial Honor Roll

Rob Smentek William J. Dowlding

Proofreaders L.B. Cole

Cover Artist

Only when copies of Alter Ego #115 were shipped to the USA from the printer in China did we learn that the cardboard viewers polybagged with the magazines were designed so that the red lens fit over the right eye. In nearly all 3-D comics in the 1950s USA, the red lens needed to fit over the left eye. Only by re-bending the viewers could the proper 3-D effect be obtained. Sorry we couldn’t inform most of our readers of this fact until now. Try ’em out on p. 15 of this issue. —John Morrow & Roy Thomas

With Special Thanks to:

Heidi Amash Harry Andrews Richard J. Arndt Bob Bailey Pat Bastienne Rod Beck John Benson E.B. Boatner Lee Boyette Dominic Bongo Mike Bromberg Bernie Bubnis Bart Bush James Cassara Shaun Clancy Chet Cox Vince Davis Jay Disbrow Michael Dunne Joseph Eacobacci Jim Engel Mark Evanier Jon R. Evans Shane Foley Janet Gilbert Grand Comics Database (website)

Jennifer Hamerlinck Heritage Comics Archive Tony Isabella William B. Jones, Jr. Richard Kyle James Heath Lantz Jean-Marc Lofficier Jim Ludwig Bruce Mason Frank Motler Martin O’Hearn OHLIEi Vern Patrick Rita Perlin Scott Rowland Randy Sargent Ed Savage Cory Sedlmeier John Selegue Rick Starr Mike Stephenson Dann Thomas Maggie Thompson Albert Val Michael Vance Mike Vosburg

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Leonard B. Cole, Martin Filchock, & Jean Giraud

Contents Writer/Editorial: Old King Cole—Long May He Reign! . . . . . . 2 L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Jay Disbrow’s remembrance of a colorful Golden Age colleague—and memorable cover artist. John Benson’s brief 1979 encounter with L.B. Cole—and, incidentally, Harvey Kurtzman.

Meeting Lenny Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Ray Zone’s conversation with 1950s comics artist Jay Disbrow.

A Four-Color Dreamer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Michael Vance continues his look at recently unearthed artifacts of an important writer & editor.

Richard E. Hughes: Life After ACG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Michael T. Gilbert on his favorite comic book cliché.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt: Evil Twins! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Bill Schelly concludes his talk with writer, publisher, & bookstore owner Richard Kyle.

Of Graphic Stories & Wonderworlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Tributes to Martin Filchock & Jean Giraud (Moebius) . . . . . 67 re: [comments, critiques, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #176 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 P.C. Hamerlinck & Roy Thomas host the final chapter from Captain Video #3.

On Our Cover: Over the past couple of decades, the irrepressible L.B. Cole has loomed ever larger on the comics landscape, due primarily to the large number of distinctive covers he produced, especially for his own 1950s imprint, Star Publications. One of his most celebrated subjects was Continental/Holyoke’s Cat-Man—whom he apparently never drew except on covers. Thanks to copublisher John Morrow for turning the cover of Cat-Man Comics #31 (June 1946) into an equally striking Alter Ego cover! With thanks to John Selegue for the scan. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.] Above: Another colorful Cole cover—this one for Star’s Terrors of the Jungle #4 (April 1953). Inside was a jungle-lord story (the hero was named Taranga this time) by co-featured late Golden Age artist/writer Jay Disbrow. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

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

Old King Cole–Long May He Reign! Cole, whose career is touched on in no less than three separate articles and interviews in this issue, is one of those Golden Age figures who seem forever the subject of controversy.

L.B.

That he was a skilled artist is all but undeniably true—yet there are a few critics and comics historians who dismiss him as a mere purveyor of garish mini-posters.

He was a very capable illustrator of animals, a subject in which many comic book artists have definitely failed to distinguish themselves over the years—but he preferred being a publisher and limiting himself, whenever he could, to drawing nothing but covers.

He was much admired by Jay Disbrow, an artist who broke into the field under Cole’s tutelage circa 1950—yet even Disbrow, the other cover-blurbed subject of this month’s A/E, reports in this issue how Cole occasionally lifted one of the younger man’s splash pages and turned it into a Star cover, then signed his own name to it—even though the very same art could be seen inside that same issue beneath Jay’s byline!

These days, Cole is probably identified at least as closely with the Continental/Et-Es-Go/Holyoke characters Cat-Man and The Kitten as he is with any other heroes or comic book subject matter—yet, in all his life, he never drew a single story featuring those heroes, but only those bold covers, month after month.

He was a 1940s colleague of future greats like Mad creator Harvey Kurtzman—yet John Benson’s brief transcription on

pp. 27-29 shows Kurtzman trying to keep his distance when the two old pros found themselves guests at the same con in 1979.

Well, perhaps that’s only to be expected. Almost no one is universally beloved (or even respected)… and the fact remains, it seems to me, that Cole left behind a legacy of striking covers, as well as a few particularly artful illustrated stories, which richly deserve the collectability they’ve attained in the past few decades, especially since the two giant hardcover volumes of Ernst and Mary Gerber’s monumental Photo-Journal Guide to Comic Books put them so prominently—and so prolifically—on display.

To me, the proof of this particular pudding is that, when layout guru Chris Day and I finished putting together the first nigh-half of this issue, I looked at the scans I had left over in my PC documents of Cole covers I wished we’d had room to print—and there were literally dozens of them which I regretted not having room to reproduce, big and in color.

Special thanks to Jay Disbrow, another talented artist I’ve long wanted to feature in A/E’s pages, for writing his elegant appreciation of L.B. Cole. Actually, he scribed it quite a few years ago now—and I greatly appreciate his unfailing patience. I told him, at least once every year or so, that I was going to find the right spot to publish it one of these fine days—in company with the late Ray Zone’s interview with Jay himself—and I finally did! Now what do I do with all those other great Cole cover scans? Bestest,

COMING IN JUNE

118

MARVEL’S AVENGERS— THE FIRST DECADE!

• Marvel didn’t print DON HECK’s 1966 cover art for Avengers #37—but we do (with their permission, natch!) • A/E celebrates 50 years of Avengers with a Hawkeye’s-eye view of its first decade by KURT MITCHELL! The Black Panther’s controversial roots—a pictorial by ARLEN SCHUMER! WILL MURRAY asks: Was Avengers just a last-minute stand-in for Daredevil? Avenging art & artifacts by JACK KIRBY, STAN LEE, WALLY WOOD, JOHN BUSCEMA, DON HECK, ROY THOMAS, NEAL ADAMS, SAL BUSCEMA, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, GENE COLAN, GEORGE TUSKA, RICH BUCKLER, FRANK GIACOIA, STEVE ENGLEHART, BOB BROWN, BILL EVERETT, et al.! • E.C. STONER—KEN QUATTRO profiles the pioneering African-American artist of Blue Beetle, Marvel Man, Night Devils, & others! • FCA presents MARC SWAYZE’s last comics story—BILL SCHELLY interviews BERNIE BUBNIS about the first comics convention ever—MICHAEL T. GILBERT pries open the Comic Crypt—& MORE!!

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L.B. COLE— Giant Of The Golden Age A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character— And Memorable Cover Artist by Jay Disbrow

“You’re Not Quite Ready For A Career In Comics”

any aficionados of the Golden Age of Comic Books look back with fond memories upon the work of a true giant of that era: L. B. Cole. He was a man of extraordinary artistic ability and editorial excellence. He was an artist, a writer, and an editor of both comic books and specialty magazines. During a long and fruitful career, he produced a plethora of comic book covers, as well as covers for sporting magazines and specialty publications. During the 1980s he turned his talents toward creating full-color renderings for medical books and charts.

I first met him in the summer of 1946, when at an early age I made my initial attempt to break into the industry that had become my obsession. In an ornate building at 220 West 42nd Street in Manhattan were located the editorial

Sparks And Re-Creation Leonard Brandt Cole in 1980, juxtaposed with his vintage cover for Continental (or is it Holyoke’s?) Catman Comics #29 (Aug. 1945)— his cover for Star Publications’ Blue Bolt #105 (April-May 1950)—and a re-creation of the latter, done several decades later and with a few interesting alterations, especially in the Green Sorceress’ attire. The Catman cover is reproduced from a scan of the color proof, with thanks to John Selegue; read more about this set of proofs on p. 29. The two versions of the Blue Bolt cover were sent respectively by Jim Ludwig and by Dominic Bongo, who retrieved the image from the Heritage Comics Archive. Photo sent by John Benson and printed by courtesy of photographer E.B. Boatner. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

“A piece of cake,” I said to myself as I began. Little did I realize how difficult it would really be. Twenty minutes later I lay down my pencil and scanned the finished product. Subliminally I knew the project was a failure, but since I had accepted the challenge I had no choice but to show it to him.

While Cole studied my drawing, I studied his facial features, looking for a clue to his reaction. It was quick in coming.

Jay-Walking Through History Jay Disbrow in 1970— nearly a quarter of a century after he first met L.B. Cole, but hey, it’s the earliest photo Jay could provide us! You’ll just have to mentally extrapolate backward and picture him in 1946.

offices of Continental Comics Publications. Within this plush art deco establishment, I met the great L.B. Cole for the first time. Of course, I had no idea who he was, nor the extent of his skills. I only knew he was the editor of Continental Comics, and he was one of those who possessed the means of launching my career.

He examined my comic page sample with a critical eye. Then he asked me, “What is your favorite subject? What do you like to draw the most?”

“I’m afraid you’re not quite ready for a career in comics,” he said. “I recommend that you enroll in a good art school. Pick one that specializes in figure drawing. Once you master anatomy, the rest should come fairly easy.”

I thanked him for his time and consideration, and walked out of his office. That was the first time I met L.B. Cole. Five more years would pass before I would encounter him again.

“I Drew Horses Almost Exclusively For Two Or Three Years”

Leonard Brandt Cole was born in New York City in 1918. Both of his parents possessed artistic inclinations, but neither was willing to invest the time and effort that were necessary to bring those talents to fruition. In short, they lacked the drive for achievement their son possessed.

He exhibited artistic talent from his earliest youth. His specialty was animals, most specifically horses. In his own words in an article in the 11th Edition of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide: “I drew horses almost exclusively for two or three years.” Of course, he studied other animals as well, all of which stood him in good stead when he eventually settled into his career as comic book editor and illustrator.

“Figures,” I said without hesitation. “My specialty is drawing people in action situations.” Ah, the brash confidence of youth.

He sat me down at a drawing table in the corner of the room. He then provided me with a sheet of bristol board, a pencil, and an eraser. Upon a small stand beside the drawing table he placed a two-foot-tall plaster model of a male figure, molded with all the muscle formations in sharp relief.

“Make a drawing of this figure,” he said, “and when you’re finished, bring it to me. Take your time and do your best. Then bring it to my desk.”

The Pen Is Mightier Than “The Sword” To Ace Periodicals, Cole contributed this double-page splash for a story of “The Sword,” in Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 3, #6 (Oct. 1946). Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age

The Better Half—And The V.P. (Above:) Ellen (Mrs. L.B.) Cole, who had earlier been a comic book letterer, is seen sometime between 1974-77 speaking with Nelson Rockefeller, then VP to President Gerald Ford. According to information the Coles provided along with this photo to the magazine Comic Book Marketplace for an interview in its issue #30 (Dec. 1995), “The Vice President assisted the Coles in producing films for the electrical industry.” The gent seen between them is unidentified.

Three To Get Ready… (Above:) Some rare early costumed-hero interior work by Cole: “Miss Victory” from Continental’s Captain Aero #6 (June 1942)… “Boomerang” from that company’s Terrific Comics #5 (Sept. 1944)… and “Black Venus” from Aviation Press’ Contact Comics #3 (Nov. ’44). Not only is Cole’s work distinctive, even early on, but he signed virtually everything he drew. If only more artists had done so! Although Jay Disbrow reports that Cole wrote many comic stories, there is virtually no record of which ones he might have scripted. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

Doing The Continental (Above left:) Cole’s cover for Continental’s Suspense Comics #8 (June 1945). His first cover for this series was for #4; after that, he illustrated all remaining covers for the 12-issue run of the “horror-suspense” series, whose cover star was a character called—Mr. Nobody. (Above center & right:) After doing a number of Captain Aero Comics covers for Continental that showed U.S. warplanes attacking Japanese forces, climaxing with #24 (Nov. 1945), Cole suddenly had to switch gears after V-J Day, and his covers immediately got more science-fictional in nature. Thanks to Jim Ludwig and John Selegue, respectively; the latter cover is reproduced from a cover proof. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.] The 1944 photo, taken in the Et-Es-Go/Continental offices, shows (l. to r.) Cole, editor Ray Herman, and Jack Grogan perusing a copy of Captain Aero #14. The pic was provided by Cole in 1995 to Comic Book Marketplace #30. Incidentally, although Herman’s first name is often spelled “Rae” in articles, she apparently spelled it with a “y” instead. Grogan, who’d drawn funny-animal features for Timely in 1942, would draw “The Hood,” “Red Cross,” “Mr. Nobody,” et al. for the related companies Continental, Et-Es-Go, and Holyoke. Photo credited to Sheldon Levens.

But before he entered the comics field full-time, he spent a number of years in advertising. For the truly creative artist, advertising can be the bane of his existence. But at times, it’s necessary to pay the bills and provide the necessities of life. Of course, if one has access to a few big accounts, advertising can be a very lucrative enterprise. For Leonard Cole this proved to be the case. But the money he was taking in could not compensate for the lack of artistic expression that he longed for. That did not come until he took the headfirst plunge into the comics.

After a short time of freelancing, in 1942 he was hired by Frank Temerson, publisher of Continental Comics on 42nd Street. He was brought in as editor and art director, and immediately set about upgrading the output of that publishing company. Later, Cole’s wife, Ellen, was brought in as staff letterer. After a little practice, she proved as proficient in lettering as he was in illustrating comic book covers.

Of course, lettering proceeds at a faster pace than penciling and inking comic pages. Since Continental published at least five different titles per month, Ellen never lacked for assignments. The fact is, she was often hard-pressed to keep up with the demand.

But fortunately there were other letterers to pick up the overflow which she could not handle.

The comics that Continental published were Suspense, Captain Aero, Contact, Catman, and Terrific. Besides these ongoing titles, the company published numerous one-shot publications over the years. When one considers that in those days each comic book contained 64 interior pages, it becomes obvious that five titles per month amounts to a large annual output. To be precise, it represents 3,840 pages, plus 60 comic book covers. With annual one-shot titles included, the annual page count would probably exceed 5,000. Quite an output for a small comic book company.

In those days, Leonard Cole was most closely identified with the Cat-Man character. He helped to mold the hero’s persona, and he wrote many of The Cat-Man’s adventures.

[Continued on p. 10]

L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age

A/E Special Section:

Forget BATMAN!

Here Comes The CAT-MAN!

Hep Cat-Man L.B. Cole was rediscovered by fans in the late ’70s and early ’80s—and yet again in the ’90s, when the magazine Comic Book Marketplace featured him in several issues in the mid-1990s. Especially celebrated have been his covers for Catman Comics. Seen here, clockwise from top left, are the ones for Catman, Vol. 3, #2 (Nov. 1944), #27 (April ’45), and #30 (Dec. 1945). [©2013 the respective copyright holders.] Incidentally, as Mike Bromberg assures us, the hyphen in the hero’s name was not always part of the mag’s indicia, but was often indicated, especially in story logos—so we’ve chosen to refer to him as “Cat-Man” in most instances—except in the case of the comic’s title. Call it a quirk. The two digest-sized color issues of Mike B.'s Cat-Man Collector fanzine from a few years back are out of print, but are worth seeking out for their mix of reprinted stories and well-researched articles on the series. Trust us on this!

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

Herding Cat-Men L.B. Cole, however, never drew an interior page of “Cat Man.” Clockwise on these two pages, beginning directly below, are a litterbox-full of splashes by various artists (and doubtless writers, most of whom cannot be positively ID’d) of the feline felon-fighter, all courtesy of Jim Ludwig, and all ©2013 the respective copyright holders. The Grand Comics Database lists the first three dozen issues (and Crash Comics Adventures) under the company heading “Temerson/Helnit/Continental,” yet elsewhere counts #6-17 as being published by Holyoke—but we won’t try to sort that out here.

(Above:) “The Cat-Man” started out as quite a different feature—at the related Tem [for “Temerson”] Publishing Company. Irwin Hasen (later the instigator and artistic co-creator of “Wildcat” at DC/All-American) was the illustrator when the hero debuted as a sort of half-Batman, half-Tarzan in Crash Comics Adventures #5 (Nov. 1940), as per the panel repro’d above—but the cover at top right was drawn by Bert Whitman.

(Above:) When Cat-Man got his own title after only one outing in Crash, the feature was drawn by Charles M. Quinlan for a number of issues. (GCD even lists Quinlan as scripter of this episode.) For a short time, although the costume immediately lost its Tarzanic flavor, he retained his tiger companion, as per Catman Comics, Vol. 1 #8 (July 1941—actually the third issue of his solo title).

L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age

(Above:) Soon, doubtless noticing the successful Batman & Robin teaming over at DC, David (Cat-Man) Merryweather dropped the tiger in favor of young teenager Katie Rose—code-name The Kitten—as a sidekick. Too bad the feature was defunct by the time Dr. Wertham moved into high gear; he’d have had a ball casting sexual aspersions at it, too! This splash page is from V2#8, a.k.a. #21 (Nov. 1943). The story’s villain, incidentally, is the piggish Mr. Peccary—and Cat-Man starred in only one tale per issue.

(Above:) Don Rico, who was showcased in A/E #114, drew the lead “Cat-Man” feature in Vol. 2, #10, real issue #23 (March 1944). Did he perhaps write it, as well? Don’t ask us!

(Above:) Only Cat-Man’s gloved hand was in evidence when George Gregg drew—and signed—this splash for issue #31 (June 1946).

(Left:) This splash by artist Bob Fujitane (as “B. Fuje”), from Catman Comics #29 (May 1945), spotlights the heroes’ oft-recurring foe, Dr. Macabre.

[Continued from p. 6]

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

Through a special arrangement with Continental Publications, Cole began producing comic book material for other small comic book publishers. Under contractual arrangements, he would provide complete packages for these companies, which included scripts (many of which he wrote himself), penciling, inking, lettering, and completed covers. This enabled the publishers to concentrate exclusively upon printing and distribution, while Cole and his staff managed the creative output.

“Why Don’t We Pool Our Resources And Buy It Together?”

In 1949, Cole learned that the Curtis Publishing Company was discontinuing its Premium Group of comic book titles and closing down its entire comics operation. What had hitherto been a prosperous enterprise for Curtis had become a liability, and its entire back inventory of comic pages was up for sale. Leonard saw this as an opportunity to become a publisher, since all the material he would need was in one place. On a certain designated day, an auction would be held, and the highest bidder would walk off with the prize.

At the appointed hour, Cole arrived at the Curtis Publishing Company to place his bid. There he encountered his old friend Jerry Kramer, a professor of business law at New York University. Kramer had also heard of the auction and had decided to bid on the properties. The two men were astonished to see each other there.

“It would be foolish for us to try to outbid each other, Len,” said Jerry, “Why don’t we pool our resources and buy it together?”

And that is precisely what they did. Before the day was over, Kramer and Cole had purchased $150,000 worth of art, scripts, plates, and mats for $12,000. It was one of the most remarkable coups in the history of magazine publishing. In addition, they had purchased that day the publishing rights to Joe Simon’s and Jack Kirby’s stories of the hero Blue Bolt. This was the beginning of Star Publications.

Jerry Kramer and Leonard Cole set up headquarters in an office building on Fifth Avenue and 32nd Street in Manhattan. This period was still a part of the so-called “Golden Age of Comic Books,” and it would have been unthinkable to establish a comic book publishing company in any place other than Manhattan. During this period (the beginning of 1950), there were probably more than 60 comic book publishers in America, and virtually all of them were all centered in New York City. Most of these were small publishers. Fewer than half a dozen were considered to be true giants, such as DC, Timely (Marvel), Dell, and Fawcett.

Notwithstanding, some of those smaller publishers were able to do yeoman’s work in producing quality literary work in a comic book form. This was true at EC Comics, which at that time was beginning to flower in a medium known for its mediocrity. Others, even smaller than EC, were attempting to accomplish the same thing. Not all succeeded in this noble attempt. In fact, most failed. For, once a standard has been adopted by an industry, the industry tends to continue in that mold as long as its output shows a profit. By early 1951, Star Publications was indeed showing a profit. With a vast backlog of material to publish,

Like A Bolt From The Blue Cole and Kramer obviously bought out Novelty’s assets in 1949, since the first “Star Publications” issue of Blue Bolt was #102, cover-dated Nov.-Dec. 1949 and on sale at least a couple of months earlier (see above left). The first Star Blue Bolt cover featuring the longuncostumed title hero was #103 (Jan.-Feb. 1950), seen above center. Both covers by Cole. Although Joe Simon claimed copyright on his and Jack Kirby’s 1939-40 “Blue Bolt” material in that title, that’s definitely a Simon and/or Kirby figure in the lower right corner of what is basically Cole’s cover for Blue Bolt #110 (Aug. 1951). All scans from Jim Ludwig. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age

I brought my science-fiction feature to him and he agreed to market it. But after several weeks elapsed and I heard nothing from him, I decided I could wait no longer. During the little free time I had, I began to make the rounds of the comic book publishers again. It was then that I met Leonard B. Cole for the second time.

I walked into his office on 5th Avenue, introduced myself, and proceeded to show him my samples. I cannot say that I recognized him from our previous encounter five years earlier. I had met so many other comic book editors during that period; he was just one more face behind an executive desk. But I was impressed by the paintings that hung on his office walls. They were magnificent renderings of horses that had been executed in extraordinary detail.

The Beast From Blue Bolt Jay Disbrow’s first splash page for Star Publications—“The Beast from Below,” which appeared in Blue Bolt Weird Tales of Terror #112 (Feb. 1952)— and the cover done by L.B. Cole to go with that story. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

and virtually no staff to pay, they did extremely well during the initial phase of their publishing effort. Of course, Leonard Cole’s striking covers were primarily responsible for that. While it’s true that one cannot judge a book (even a comic book) by its cover, it’s equally true that the cover serves as an entree to the magazine’s contents. If the cover arrests the attention of the perspective buyer, there is a good chance he might purchase it, especially if the interior work matches the quality of the cover. And so it was from January to March of 1951.

“Perhaps You Can Flesh It Out For Me”

It was at this point that I re-entered the story.

From January 1950 to March 1951, I had been working as a staff artist at the Jerry Iger Studios. However, I had a longing within me to expand my horizons and control my output. In short, I wanted to pencil, ink, and write my own comic stories. Just like Carmine Infantino (see Alter Ego #10, Sept. 2001), what I really wanted was syndication. But my achievements in this area were exactly the same as his: zero!

Then, in February of 1951, I found an agent named John J. Kennedy (no relation to the then-future President of the U.S.A.), who specialized in promoting new comic strips to the syndicates.

My second encounter with L.B. Cole was considerably different from my first. The first time I met him, I was a rank amateur. Now I was a professional, with published samples to prove it. He evidently liked what he saw, because he told me he could provide me with work and would telephone me in a few weeks. This was indeed encouraging. I returned home with a heightened sense of anticipation.

Now my only choice was to wait. While I worked at the Iger Studios each day, I wondered who would call first, L.B. Cole of Star Publications, or John J. Kennedy who held my Sunday comic pages. I lived in New Jersey, and both men knew I could be reached only in the evenings and on weekends. Cole was the first to call. He told me he had a script for me to illustrate. The following Monday evening, after finishing work at the Iger Shop, I hurried to Cole’s office. He handed me the script he had promised and I immediately read it. It was intended as a humorous story; what it actually turned out to be was a whacked-out tale of a teenage girl and her efforts to break into show business. It was by no means great literature, but at least the artwork would be all mine.

I worked on the story at nights and a couple of weekends, and when it was finished, I brought it back to the Star offices. Leonard seemed pleased, and he assured me he would have more work for me to do. On the strength of that assurance, I terminated my job at the Iger Studios.

Leonard Cole put me in touch with another artist named Norman Nodel (no kin to Mart Nodell, the creator of DC’s “Green Lantern” feature). Nodel was a friend of Cole’s, and he was jammed up with so much comic art responsibilities that he was in desperate need of assistance. Norman handed me a stack of bristol board pages that he had penciled and asked me to ink them. It was

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

a lengthy science-fiction story with a short deadline. I accepted the assignment, and at the loss of considerable sleep, I completed it on time. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Norman Nodel’s last name is often spelled with two "l's," but apparently one "l" is the correct version.]

For a full month I worked on Norman’s pages, inking several stories at a breakneck speed. Finally the emergency was over, and Norman told me that Cole had more assignments for me. I returned to his office, and he handed me another script.

I believe it was about this time that John J. Kennedy contacted me to say he had exhausted all efforts to get my comic strip syndicated. He recommended that I come to his office and pick up my pages as soon as possible. This I did with a great sense of loss. But life goes on, and this experience made me determined to do whatever I could to totally control my comics output.

After delivering my second comic story to Cole, I made my pitch to him. I told him I wanted to write my own comic book stories. I explained that I had had broad experience in writing comic book stories since I was 15 years old. This was literally true. But it had no bearing on the quality of the stories I wrote during those years. Len listened carefully and weighed my proposal, and then finally said:

“For a long time, I’ve had in mind a story which I never had time to develop. Perhaps you can flesh it out for me.”

I told him I would give it my best shot. So he explained to me the following narrative, which I ultimately wrote up in full detail: A coal miner in Wales falls into a deep shaft when the ground gives way beneath him. He lands with a thud far below ground and lies unconscious for weeks, while strange unknown gases seep into his body. When he regains consciousness, he has changed completely. He has metamorphosed into a huge hairy creature of unknown species.

The monster survives on cave rodents as he searches for a means of ascent. Finally he enters a tunnel that leads upward, and he begins a climb that lasts for months. Then one night, he arrives back on the surface, burning with lust for revenge against the mine owner, who he believes is responsible for his condition. He finds the man and destroys him. Then he goes on a wild rampage against the townspeople. As dawn approaches, he realizes he must return underground or die from exposure to sunlight. He reenters the mine, but every night thereafter, he returns to the surface and wreaks havoc on the mining town.

Then one night as he skulks silently through town, he sees the shadowy figure of a young woman wending her way through the streets. This would be his next victim. As she walks past a barn, he steps out before her and utters a roar. In that brief instant, as the girl stares at him in horror, he recognizes her. She is his own daughter! He recoils and backs away. He is so completely discombobulated that he cannot find his way back to the underground shaft. As the sun rises, he collapses in the street and dies. Later, as the miners make their way to the coal shafts, they find the body of their old co-laborer lying in the street. He has returned to his natural appearance, and the townspeople are mystified as to where he has been for so long, and why he returned.

That was the story. I went home and broke it down page by page, and panel by panel. Then I typed it up and took it back. Cole was pleased with it, so I returned home and penciled, inked, and lettered it. The finished product was reviewed and accepted. Len chose the title of the story. He called it “The Beast from Below.” It appeared as the lead story in Blue Bolt Weird Tales of Terror #112.

“No More Torga!”

That was the true beginning of my three-year tenure with Star Publications. I went on to write and illustrate many comic book stories for Leonard Cole and Jerry Kramer, which they always ran as features in their magazines. Cole almost always designed his cover art around my lead stories. One time he took the splash page from one of my weird mystery stories and made a Photostat of it and enlarged it slightly. He pasted this on a piece of illustration board, and it became the cover of that magazine. Then he signed his name to it! If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then plagiarism must be some kind of tribute, also. [NOTE: See. p. 43.]

It Was Bo Jest One Of Those Things The “Bo Jest & the White Feather” parody in Unsane #15-and-only (June 1954), based more or less on the 1939 film Beau Geste, was apparently drawn by Star staff artist George Peltz. Scripter uncertain. Thanks to an unknown donor. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Star Publications had an in-house artist named George Peltz. George was a kind of all-around production man who was responsible for many of the business activities at the office. But he also created comic book stories as time would allow. He was a pleasant enough individual, but he had a fixation that almost drove him to distraction. George hated city life. He hated New York City. He longed for a quiet life in the country. But, alas, as long as he was associated with Star, such a thing could not be.

The kind of comic book material I did for Cole consisted primarily of weird mystery, jungle adventure, crime stories, and an occasional science-fiction story. My favorite subject was science-

L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age

By 1953, the so-called “romance” genre in comics was in full swing. Cole wanted to make certain that these love-story types were not a mere passing phenomenon before he plunged into them. But once he was convinced that they would be around for a while, he dived into the medium with determination. Naturally, I became involved in this new direction.

Please understand that I have nothing against love and romance. The fact is, I had been in love several times before I met the young lady who became my wife. But when Leonard Cole one day handed me a half dozen romance comic books from other publishers and said, “Study these carefully; we will soon be publishing a line of magazines similar to these,” I must confess I had reservations.

I took the magazines home and read them. I was appalled by the superficiality of those stories. They were all about young women who fall in love “with Love.” Usually, these girls are attracted to some sweet-talking guy who is up to no good where they are concerned. At this point the hero steps in and rescues the girl, and she finds true happiness at last. What a crock! If real life were like this, our divorce courts would have closed down centuries ago.

But I knew that, if I wished to continue in the comics field, I must accept this new trend. So I wrote and illustrated love stories the same as the others. In fact, the time came when the romance

fiction, and I was able to do close to a dozen of them while I freelanced for Star. But Cole wanted ghost stories, and since I didn’t believe in ghosts, it was not always easy for me to get in the mood for doing them. However, I did believe in monsters (well, I almost believed in them). I thought that monsters made ideal subjects for comic book stories. After all, they were made of flesh and blood just like people were, and they were capable of inflicting great damage, resulting in great drama. Whereas ghosts were noncorporeal entities that could only frighten people.

But the jungle stories were always interesting. As a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, I found it fascinating to dream up stories involving Tarzan-like heroes. Leonard Cole had a policy to never use established protagonists repeatedly in his magazine stories; in this he was following the procedure of Bill Gaines at EC Comics. Simply put, this meant that one hero appeared in each story and was never seen again. However, I had created a jungle-man character I was quite fond of. His name was Torga. I found a way to feature him in at least six stories that appeared in Terrors of the Jungle. But one day, Leonard said to me, “No more Torga!” I got the message and reluctantly abandoned the jungle hero.

In the fall of 1952, Star Publications moved to a new address. It was a building at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street. This was the same building that housed the St. John comic publishing company. Star was on the 4th floor, and St. John was on the 29th; the building was a mere five blocks from Rockefeller Center.

Torga, Torga, Torga Jay Disbrow’s favorite among the various Tarzan-inspired heroes he created, wrote, and drew for Star Publications was Torga, who appeared in perhaps half a dozen stories in Terrors of the Jungle. This splash from #5 (June 1953) was sent by Jim Ludwig. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

Tropical Pulchritude The printed cover of Terrors of the Jungle #9 (June 1954), repro’d from a color proof—and two stages in Cole’s re-creation of it several decades later. Somewhere along the line, the young lady switched to a bikini. Thanks to Shaun Clancy. [comic art ©2013 the respective copyright holders; re-creation art ©2013 Estate of L.B. Cole.]

stories I created outnumbered the dramatic and adventure stories I produced. I soon found myself drowning in a sea of simulated romance.

Then one day a brilliant idea came to me. I was so weary of creating stories of handsome young men who fell in love with beautiful girls; I wanted to try something totally different. I thought of the legend of Cyrano De Bergerac, as immortalized by the novelist Edmond Rostad. Of course, Cyrano had been an actual historical personage, a man with a brilliant intellect. But he had an enormous physical defect: his nose was so large that it marred his appearance. To be precise, he was ugly. The great actor Jose Ferrer brought this all out in perfect detail in his 1951 film on the life of Cyrano. I would create a story of a modern Cyrano De Bergerac. There would be no swashbuckling dueling scenes, of course, because the story would be set in the 1950s.

I discussed this concept with Leonard Cole, and he thought it would be a great change of pace. So I composed the following scenario: The hero is a young man named Gary Simmons. He was born ugly and was shunned by his neighbors and school mates. Because of his physical impairment he lived a lonely life. In college, he worked twice as hard as the other students to prove his worth as a human being. He graduated from college with

L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age

honors and became a brilliant scientist. Like all men, he yearned for love, but it was denied to him because of his appearance.

Then one rainy night he was driving through the city streets, distracted by his problems. Suddenly a young woman started crossing the street at the intersection. Gary slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. His car struck the girl. He stopped the vehicle, leaped out, and ran to her side. She was unconscious (she was also beautiful). He

Keen Teens For Tweens (Above:) A page from a Disbrow-drawn romance story from Popular Teen-Agers #15 (Jan. 1953)—and L.B. Cole’s cover for issue #5 (Sept. 1950), which would’ve been right at home on most issues of Archie around that time. On this cover, for some unknown reason, the word “Popular” has been shortened to just “Pop”—though with #6 the letters “ular” were added, very small. \For the first four issues, the comic had been titled School Day Romances. By #15, though its official title remained unchanged, the biggest words on Cole’s thenromance-style cover was “LOVE.” Script probably by Disbrow. Thanks to Jim Ludwig for the interior page. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

picked her up, placed her in the car, and sped to the nearest hospital.

The Cole/Disbrow Zone (Above:) Though this 1954 “not-really-3-D” title is usually referred to as Picturescope Jungle Adventures from the logo on its L.B. Cole cover (see A/E #115, our 3-D issue), that first word wasn’t technically a part of the title. We weren’t able to obtain interior art from the original comic; but in 1987 Ray (3-D) Zone converted the one-drawing-a-page sheets of this self-proclaimed “Story and Coloring Book” into actual 3-D, as per above. So get out those 3-D glasses we gave you two issues ago! This time, the jungle lord’s name was Jahka… but he’s still sporting those leopard-skin trunks! Probably scripted by artist Jay Disbrow. [©2013 Estate of Ray Zone.]

Gary waited in the hospital while the girl was taken into the emergency room. He learned later that she would recover, but because of the accident she would be blind for life. He was heartsick to realize what he had caused. Her name was Julia Collins, and Gary visited her in the hospital every day, trying to verbally make amends for what he had done. She knew he was the cause of her condition, but she bore him no ill will. Rather, she looked forward to his visits, even though she was unable to see him.

Of course, he fell in love with her, and she was strongly attracted to him because of the quality of his voice and his deep concern for her welfare. Then, one day, she told him that a brilliant eye surgeon was going to perform an operation on her that would restore her sight. Gary went numb with dread. He knew that if her vision was brought back, their relationship would end, for she would be repulsed by his appearance.

“The day she regains her eyesight,” he thought, “will be the darkest day of my life!”

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

The operation was performed and her sight was restored. But Gary failed to come to the hospital that day, nor the day after. Julia was heartbroken. When she was released from the hospital, she launched an investigation to find where he lived. When she obtained that information, she went to his apartment and rang his door bell. When he opened his door and saw her there, he was shocked and dismayed.

“Now you know why I did not visit you after your operation,” he said. “I knew you would be horrified by my appearance.”

“But I’m not horrified,” she replied. “It was the nobility of your life, and the kindness and beauty of your soul, that caused me to fall in love with you.”

And thus they were married and lived happily ever after.

Admittedly, there was a certain amount of schmaltz there. But at least it was different from most of the silly romance stories that flourished at that time, and I think it sold well.

I continued to grind out comic stories for Star Publications, and during the slow periods I did some stories for Trojan Publications, who were located at 480 Lexington Avenue, in the same building that housed DC Comics. On one occasion, Leonard Cole sent me to a publishing company named Timor Periodicals. I created a story for them called “Ultimate Destiny.” For some reason this became a “classic.” It was the story of a man who turned into a huge blob of protoplasm. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: See p. 34.]

Comics Fen-dom

Under L.B. Cole as co-publisher and cover artist, Blue Bolt underwent a transition from superhero and science-fiction fare (as per issue #106, June-July 1950, which featured Basil Wolverton’s old Novelty feature “Spacehawk”) to horror, as per Blue Bolt Weird Tales of Terror #118 (April 1953). [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Among my output at Star was a complete 32-page jungle story that was Star’s answer to the 3-D craze that was running rampant through the comics industry at that time. It was called Picturescope Jungle Adventures. It was not a true 3-D magazine, but I think it at least broke even at the newsstands. In the mid-1980s, Ray Zone obtained the rights to it and republished it in a true 3-D format. By that time, the project was probably in the public domain anyway.

“Is This What You Call ‘Good Taste,’ Mr. Gaines?”

By the summer of 1954, it appeared that the comic book medium was a well-established institution, and that I would continue in it far into the future. Little did I realize that ominous storm clouds were forming on the comic book horizon that boded ill for the entire industry.

A number of hardcore civic and social groups had come to the conclusion that comic books were so filled with violence and sexual titillation that they posed a threat to the young readers exposed to such material. These groups formed such a groundswell of protest that eventually a United States Senate subcommittee investigated the matter. Unfortunately, William Gaines testified before the committee. He was there ostensibly to defend the comic book industry (but especially his own EC publications). But instead of making a case for the comics, he became a laughingstock on the witness stand. He claimed that his comic books were always in good taste and that he would never publish anything that would violate standards of public decency. Then the senatorial prosecutor opened his brief case and withdrew a number of comic books that bore the famous EC imprimatur. He handed these to Gaines.

“Is this what you call ‘good taste,’ Mr. Gaines?” he demanded.

They were copies of the EC horror comic books, with numerous examples of bloody corpses and dismembered bodies and other grotesqueries. Gaines stammered and sputtered until he was dismissed from the witness stand.

By now the genie was out of the bottle, and there was a parental backlash against the comic book industry that would not be stayed. Dr. Fredric Wertham’s so-called “exposé,” Seduction of the Innocent, added fuel to the controversy. The result of all this was an implosion in the comic book industry. By December of 1954, comic book sales plummeted to an unthinkable low. Overnight, the majority of comic book publishers were forced to cease publication. Only the giants like DC, Timely, Dell, and a few others survived. I, along with 80% of the artists, writers, and production

Classics ReIllustrated L.B. Cole’s 1960 cover for the reissue of Classics Illustrated #30’s adaptation of William Wilkie Collins’ seminal mystery novel The Moonstone. Don Rico’s cover for the original 1946 edition was seen in A/E #114. Thanks to William B. Jones, Jr. [©2013 Frawley Corporation and its exclusive licensee, First Classics, Inc.]

L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age

“It Was Quite A Reunion”

In 1978, after 24 years had elapsed, I met him again at a New York City comic convention. Jerry Iger joined us for that occasion. It was quite a reunion.

My wife and I also visited Leonard and Ellen Cole in their spacious apartment in Queens, New York, and we met them at comic conventions several times. It seemed that the years had been kind to both of them. Then, in 1995, I heard that he had undergone a leg amputation. I telephoned him to ask if this was true. Yes, it was true. He had become diabetic, and that condition had been with him for months before he had any realization of it. His leg had become metastasized, as so often happens to diabetics. But his spirits seemed to be high, and he told me he would eventually be fitted with a prosthesis that would enable him to walk again. When the prosthesis was attached, he regained a great deal of mobility and could walk quite well with the aid of a cane. He even returned to work and had a couple of years of productive activity.

Then, in late December of 1995, I received a telephone call from Ellen Cole. She told me that Leonard had passed away on Christmas Eve, in the small hours of the morning. The news came as a shock to me. We have a tendency to go through life thinking

people were out in the cold. I went to work for the Walter Read Art Studio, producing posters and advertising pieces for motion picture theatres. Later, to upgrade my income, I turned to (shudder) technical illustration, augmented by some feature newspaper writing.

Leonard Cole kept Star Publications afloat by using up all the old inventory from Curtis Publishing Company. When those comic books no longer sold, Star also folded. But Cole was able to land on his feet, despite the comics carnage all about him. The Gilberton Company, publisher of the venerated Classics Illustrated, survived the comic book crash and took him on as editor and art director. He was there long enough to mold the company to fit his historic image of what it should be like; then he moved on to the biggest comic book publishing company in existence—Dell.

In the early 1950s, Dell Publications released more comic books than any other publisher. Of course, they, too, were forced to cut back on their total output due to the industry-wide shake-out. Cole was given the top spot at Dell, and he helped to steer the Dell vessel almost into the Silver Age of Comic Books.

All during his career, L.B. Cole continued to produce cover paintings for some of the leading sports magazines in the industry. Rod and Gun and Field and Stream often used his colorful covers, as did other specialty publications.

In the late 1970s, Cole turned his talents toward the medical profession. He painted full-color graphic charts of the human anatomy, showing all the muscles and skeletal positions. He continued in these endeavors for nearly two decades.

A Peaceable Kingdom—L.B. Cole Style As well as re-creating some his vintage comics covers, Cole sometimes painted adaptations (and approximations) of them, using real-life models. Thanks to Shaun Clancy. [©2013 Estate of L.B. Cole.]

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

The news of his death caused me to think back to that time when I first met Leonard Cole, 53 years earlier. Back then, the only thing I had going for me was the desire to become a top-flight comic strip artist and writer, while he was already established in both categories.

Oklahoma, OK—For S.M., L.B., and J.D.! (Left to right:) S.M. “Jerry” Iger, L.B. Cole, and Jay Disbrow reunite in a photo from the program book for the 1981 Multicon held in Oklahoma City—and thus probably taken at the 1980 con. Thanks to Shaun Clancy, who received it from Bart Bush on Facebook. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

(subconsciously) that certain individuals, because of who they are or what they have accomplished, are virtually immortal. Of course, on a conscious level, we all know better. But those are the foibles that human nature is heir to.

On one occasion in 1983, my son and I were in midtown Manhattan, and on a nostalgic whim I decided to visit the building that had housed Star Publications in the 1950s. We entered the stately building at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street and took the elevator to the 4th floor. When we entered the area that had once been Star Publications, I was shocked by the sight that greeted us. All the walls that had separated the various offices and studios had been removed. In their place was a massive open area that was occupied by a European airline company. I sighed deeply. When the philosopher said, “One cannot go home again,” how right he was.

The legacy of Leonard Cole can be found in the numerous comic book covers he has left us. Those, plus the many other pieces of art he executed, today are highly sought after by fans around the world. Had he chosen, he could have written a book, or a series of books, on a variety of subjects, for I believe he did possess those literary skills. But he chose to stay with the medium that was most comfortable for him, and his output in that medium was truly phenomenal.

Men with the artistic skills that L.B. Cole possessed are rare in any generation, which is why we should revere the memory of all they accomplished in a single lifetime.

Thanks to Brian K. Morris for a typing assist.

The Man Behind The Mask The stark cover of Rural Home’s Mask Comics #1 (Feb.-March 1945)—and L.B. Cole working on a re-creation of it, as seen in the previously mentioned 1981 Multicon program book. Thanks to Shaun Clancy and Bart Bush. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.] Also seen, at far left, is Cole’s sketch for a “1981 con book cover”—which probably refers to the above publication. [©2013 Estate of L.B. Cole.]

L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age

L.B. COLE Checklist

[The following Checklist is adapted from information found in the online edition of Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999, established by Jerry Bails (see ad on p. 26). Names of features which appeared both in comics of that name and in other magazines are generally not italicized. Key: (w) = writer; (a) = full art; (p) = pencils only; (i) = inks only; (e) = editor; (ad) = art director.]

Name: Leonard Brandt Cole (19181995) – artist, editor, art director, publisher

Education: Doctor of Anatomy & Physiology, University of Berlin (Germany) Family in Arts: Ellen Cole (wife, letterer)

Print Media (Non-Comics): Art director – Alfred Hitchcock Magazine 1956-58; art director – Consolidated Lithography c. 1943; artist – advertising 1957-59, children’s magazines (no date), medical illustrations (no date), Thriller Books (paperbacks) 1947, Stork Original Novels (paperbacks) 1950; editor & artist Cosmos Science Fiction (magazine) 1953-54, Field & Stream (magazine) no dates, Rod & Gun (magazine) 1956-58; producer & artist – anatomy books 1990s

Commercial Art & Design: Instructional materials – audio-visual for University Films 1964-c. 1979

Lustful Colors (Above:) A pair of paperback covers painted by Cole for Croyden, a.k.a. Superior. Whether those are other names for the companies listed in the Who’s Who as “Stork” or “Thrilling,” or a third company, we’re not sure. Thanks to Shaun Clancy. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Honors: Inkpot Award (San Diego Comic-Con) 1981

Comics Studios/Shops: Chesler Studio (a) late 1930s; Ferstadt Studio (a) c. 1942-43; L.B. Cole Studio (head) 1943-48

Other Career Notes: paintings – re-creations of his comics covers c. 1980+

COMIC BOOK CREDITS (Mainstream or Related U.S. Publications):

Ace Periodicals: Captain Courageous (a) 1943; Hap Hazard (i) 1944; Lash Lightning (a) 1942; Magno (a) 1943; Paul Revere Jr. (a) 1943; romance (a) 1949, 1953; The Sword (i) 1944; The Unknown Soldier (a) 1943

American Comics Group: various features (a) 1951

Aviation Press: Black Venus (a) 1944-45; Black Venus & Tommy Tomahawk (?) 1944; Contact Comics (e) 1945-56; covers for Contact Comics (a) 1944-46; Dogfight (p) 1944; Flying Tigers Bomb Japanese Airfield (p) 1944; Golden Eagle (p) 1944-45; Tommy Tomahawk (p); Warhawk (a) 1940s

The Wit and Wisdom Of L.B. Cole (Left:) We’re not quite certain what category this Cole cover should come under from the Checklist. “Anatomy books,” perhaps? Thanks to Shaun Clancy. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

Four Aces A quartet of interior splashes by Cole done for Ace Periodicals, writers unknown, all courtesy of Jim Ludwig (clockwise from above left): “Magno and Davey” from Four Favorites #11 (Aug. 1943). Hopefully, someone other than he or his wife Ellen lettered it—’cause it’s one of those old-time comics pages that contains the classic spelling “villian”! For the same issue, Cole drew a “Captain Courageous” tale. Four Favorites #12 (Nov. 1943) featured a double-page splash for “The Unknown Soldier”—but you’ll have to take our word for it, ’cause we only have half of it! From Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 3, #1 (April 1942) rides “Paul Revere,Jr.” [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age

Holyoke Publications: Black Raider (a) 1945 [imprint: Narrative]; Boomerang (a) 1944; covers (a) & (painting) 1943-46 [imprint: EtEs-Go]; illustration (a) 1945; Khaaron (a) 1945; Miss Victory (a) 1944; Power Comics (packaging) 1945 [imprint: Narrative]; The Reckoner (p) 1944; Satan (a) (no date); support (e) & (ad) 1943-45 [imprint: Continental]; Suspense Comics (p) 1943-44 [imprint: Et-Es-Go]; war (a) 1944 I.W. Publications: covers (a) 1958; Gunmaster/ Gregory Gayle (a) 1946 (reprint)

Cobra In The Clouds (Above:) Though the Who’s Who credits Cole with drawing the “Black Cobra” feature for both Chesler Publications and Farrell Publications, researcher Jim Ludwig suspects he may have drawn that second-string hero only on this cover for Captain Flight Comics #10 (Dec. 1945), for the Four-Star imprint of Farrell. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

All Romances—All The Time! (Above:) A love-story splash from Ace’s All Romances #1 (Aug. 1949). Cole’s was the lead-off story. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. Scripter unknown. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Chesler Publications: Black Cobra (a) 1945 (maybe covers only)

DC Comics: The Flash (assist) 1942

Dell/Western Publications: (editor & art director of all but last) Dracula 1962; Dun and Loo 1962-63; Tales from the Tomb 1962; Universal Pictures Presents Dracula, The Mummy, and Other Stories 1963; War Heroes (a) 1943

Essankay Publications: covers (painting) 1949; Smash Sports Hits (a) 1949

Farrell Publications: Black Cobra (a) 1945 (may be covers only [imprint: Four-Star]; Captain Flight (a) 1945; covers (a) 1945-47 [imprint: Four-Star]; Flight (a) cover; Round-the-Clock Torture (p) 1945 Fawcett Publications: Don Winslow of the Navy (a) c. 1943

Gilberton/Classics Illustrated: Best from Boys’ Life (a) 1958; Black Beauty (a) 1960; Classics Illustrated Special (a) 1959; covers (a) 1950, 1958-60; Green Mansions (a) 1950; support (e) & (ad) 1958-61; Wild Animals I Have Known (a) 1959; The World around Us (a) 1958

Hamilton Comics: cover (painting) 1991, 1995 for reprint title Dread of Night, perhaps others

Lev Gleason Publications: backup feature (a) in Black Diamond Western

Living Library: The Living Bible (painting) covers 1945-46

Magazine Enterprises: covers (a) 1948; Manhunt (a) 1947; Red Fox (a) 1947-48; Trail Colt (a) 1949

New Comics Group: covers (paintings) 1945-48

Novelty Comics: The Cadet (a) 1944-45; covers 1947-49; Dick Cole (a) 1948-49

Orbit Publications: covers (painting) 1945-56; Patches (packaging) 1946-47; Taffy Comics (packaging) 1946-47; Toy Town Comics (packaging) (some a?) 1946-47; Wiggles the Wonderworm (a) 1945

Quality Comics Group: Web of Evil (a) 1952

Rural Home Publishing: (packaging on all) Eagle, Mask Comics, Patches, Taffy all 1945

Spotlight Comics: covers (a) & (painting) 1944-45; filler (a) 1945; Great Comics (a) 1945; Ship Ahoy (a) 1944; Tailspin (a) 1944 [Continued on p. 26]

Tomb Be Or Not Tomb Be When self-righteous Dell decided to get into the horror comics (or at least ghost comics) business in 1961, the cover of the first issue was painted by L.B. Cole. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

Gilberton Greatness (Clockwise from top left:) An interior page by Cole from Classics Illustrated #152 (Sept. 1959), with writer Abner Sundel adapting Ernest Thompson Seton’s Wild Animals I Have Known (did we mention the guy could draw animals!?)— His cover for the children’s favorite The Magic Dish, done for Classics Illustrated Jr. #558 (Feb. 1959)— Plus that of The Best from Boys’ Life (Oct. 1958). Thanks for all three of these to William B. Jones, Jr., author of the essential hardcover Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History. [CI/CIJr art ©2013 Frawley Corporation and its exclusive licensee, First Classics, Inc.; Boys’ Life cover ©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

The Redcoats Are Coming! (Left:) In the tradition of radio’s Sgt. Preston of the Yukon and Dell/Western’s King of the Royal Mounted came Magazine Enterprises’ “The Red Fox of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police” in Manhunt #5 (Feb. 1948), with art by Cole. The script is credited in the GCD to Gardner Fox, who was a childhood friend of ME publisher Vin Sullivan. With thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age

Dread End

Igoor Beavers

(Above:) This image he painted for Hamilton Comics’ Dread of Night #1 (1991) was probably Cole’s last horror cover. It’s based, says sender Richard Arndt, on Mike Roberts’ cover for the 1974 underground comic Grave Tales. [©2013 Estate of L.B. Cole.]

A Bible Study (Above:) Cole covers for Living Library’s The Living Bible #1-3 (Fall, Winter, & Spring 1945-46). There was no issue #4. With thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

4Most And Furry

Toy Boy

If These “Cases” Are “All-Famous,” Why Haven’t We Heard Of Them? (Right:) Cole’s covers for Star Publications’ All-Famous Police Cases #13 & #14 (no dates given by GCD, but #6—really the first issue—was dated Feb. 1952) could stand comparison with Charlie Biro’s for Crime Does Not Pay over at Lev Gleason. But L.B. just couldn’t resist making a play for kids’ coins that were then chasing “3-D Comics,” as note his copy on #13. Repro’d from color proofs, with thanks to John Selegue. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

L.B. Cole—Giant Of The Golden Age

Department 3-D (Left:) Star’s two entries in the actual 3-D sweepstakes were Indian Warriors 3-D #1 (Dec. 1953) and Jungle Thrills 3-D #1 (1953 – no month). Covers by Cole. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Terror And True Love (Right:) L.B. Cole used the motif of a skull-headed giant spider at least twice on covers. (See p. 6 for the other instance.) This time it was for Star’s Startling Terror Tales #11 (July 1950). (Far right:) His cover for True-to-Life Romances #9 (Oct. 1951). The hyphens in the title were an offand-on thing. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

A Remembrance Of A Colorful Character—And Memorable Cover Artist

[Continued from p. 21] Star Publications: (co-owner & editor & art director of all) AllFamous Crime 1950-51; All-Famous Police Cases 1952-54; Blue Bolt Comics 1949-51; Blue Bolt Weird Tales of Terror 1951-53; Confessions of Love 1953-54; covers 1949-54; Crime-Fighting Detective 1950-52; Criminals on the Run 1948-49; Dick Cole 1949-50; filler (w)(a) 1951; Film Stars Romances 1950; Flaming Western Romances 1949-50; 4 Most Boys Comics 1949-50; Frisky Animals 1951-53; Frisky Fables 1949-50; Fun Comics 1953; Gasoline Alley 1950; Ghostly Weird Tales 1953-54; Holiday Comics 1951-52; The Horrors 1953-54; Indian Warriors 1951; Indian Warriors 3-D 1953; Intimate Secrets of Romance 1953-54; Jungle Thrills 1952; Jungle Thrills 3-D 1953; Mighty Bear 1954; The Outlaws (a) 1952-54; Picturescope Jungle Adventures 1954; Popular Teen-agers 1950-54; School Day Romances 1959-50; Shock Detective Cases 1952; Shocking Mystery Cases 1952-54; Spook 1953-54; Sport Thrills 1950-51; Startling Terror Tales 1952-54; Super Animals Presents Pidgy and the Magic Glasses 3-D 1953; Super Cat 1953-54; Target Western Romances 1949-50; Terrifying Tales 1953-54; Terrors of the Jungle 1952-54; Thrilling Crime Cases 1950-52; Top Love Stories 1951-54; True-to-Life Romances 1959-54; Unsane 1954; Western Crime Cases 1951; Western Fighters 3-D 1953; White Rider and Super Horse 1950-51; Wild West Rodeo 1953; Zoo Animals 1954

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Unsane(d) Melody Unsane #15 (June 1954) was Star Publications’ sole attempt to compete with EC’s color Mad. Cole’s cover showcased Egypt’s corpulent playboy King Farouk, a popular figure to poke fun at in those days (not long before he was overthrown). Interior pages by George Peltz and Jay Disbrow can be found on pp. 12 & 42 of this issue of A/E. Thanks to Frank Motler. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

L.B. Cole’s bondage cover for Star’s Terrors of the Jungle #7 (Dec. 1953) featured Jay Disbrow’s hero Torga— who also starred in a story inside. That’s Torga waaay in the background. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Meeting LENNY COLE A 1979 Encounter With L.B. COLE— And, Incidentally, HARVEY KURTZMAN by John Benson first became aware of Leonard Cole in late spring, 1954, when I bought a copy of Unsane #15 (the one and only issue) with a Cole cover. And I must admit that, years later, when I saw them at conventions, I was also intrigued by all those brash, artless, colorful covers that he did for Star in a style that betrayed his cigar-box-creation beginnings. I became aware of Cole as a person when I talked to Mad creator Harvey Kurtzman and artist Gil Kane in 1972 about their earliest days in comics, when, as teenagers, they had worked in the Louie Ferstadt shop. For a time, Cole had worked there, too. Cole, six years older, would use his age and life experience to play mind games with the innocent, naïve, 18-year-old Kurtzman. As I listened to Kurtzman and Kane talking about Cole... how shall I put it... it was evident that they did not have a high opinion of him.

The only time I met Cole was on June 30, 1979. It was at one of Phil Seuling’s New York Comic Art Conventions at the then-named Statler Hilton Hotel in New York. E.B. Boatner and I had arranged to meet with Kurtzman in his room to record his comments about Two-Fisted Tales for inclusion in the notes for Russ Cochran’s slip-cased reprints of that EC title. When we arrived at his room, he warned us that we might be interrupted, because he’d seen Cole downstairs and had to invite him up. He was plainly dreading the meeting and made several negative remarks about Cole. When there was a knock on the door, Kurtzman said, “I’m expecting a friend. I hope this is my friend and not Leonard Cole!” (It was neither.) Later, when Cole did arrive, Kurtzman jumped up to welcome him in a hearty tone that, to us who had heard his earlier comments, seemed rather hollow. The two then engaged in small talk about their current activities and mutual friends. Cole was not near the recorder and another conversation was going on in the room simultaneously, so much of this small talk is inaudible on the tape.

KURTZMAN: There he is: Lenny Cole! How’ve you been? [Boatner takes a picture.] We immortalized that moment. [laughter.] You’re still fishing, I see.

Over Hill, Over Dale, Overstreet (Above:) L.B. Cole looks on as Bob Overstreet (seated at left) shakes hands with Mad creator/editor/writer/artist Harvey Kurtzman at the 1979 New York Comic Art Convention. Thanks to John Benson and photographer E.B. Boatner. (Left:) A tangible result of the Cole/Overstreet confab: the former’s painted cover for the 1981 Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (Vol. 11)— a re-creation of one of his many Star Publications horror (or was it jungle?) covers. Retrieved from the Heritage Comics Archive by Dominic Bongo. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

COLE: Absolutely. How are you?

KURTZMAN: Pretty good. How’ve you been, how’s everything, how’s your wife? [Cole’s response inaudible.] Oh, yeah? No kidding. What are you doing now? COLE: Publishing... [inaudible]

KURTZMAN: [enthusiastic] You’re publishing! [more inaudible banter] We were just talking about when I first came here and I was looking at your book; it’s terrific stuff! Your fishing book. You’ve done more than one, I think. I remember you were fishing...

COLE: Even then. [long inaudible comment]

KURTZMAN: You know, [laughs] it reminds me of a story… which I won’t tell right now… of a lemon meringue pie in a Horn and Hardart’s.

COLE: Those were good days, Harvey—those were the good old days, believe me. They’re better now.

KURTZMAN: Down from Lou Ferstadt, God rest his soul.

COLE: You guys finish up [your interview]. I have to use your facility.

A 1979 Encounter With L.B. Cole—And Incidentally, Harvey Kurtzman

Publications. It’s as simple as that, and that’s how that evolved.

BENSON: How did you get... did you buy material from Fox? There were reprints...

COLE: None at all. None whatsoever.

BENSON: Nothing in there that was reprinted from Fox?

COLE: Not to the best of my knowledge.

BENSON: You had the same artists?

It’s Always Fair Weather Cole and Kurtzman shaking hands at the ’79 con. Thanks to John Benson and photographer E.B. Boatner.

In the 1972 session, Kurtzman had told a story about Cole in Horn and Hardart’s, but it didn’t involve a lemon meringue pie. He said that Cole would point out women in the restaurant and guarantee that he could fix Kurtzman up with them, but only if he agreed immediately. We continued the interview, and a while later Cole reappeared. KURTZMAN: Hey, sit down, Lenny.

COLE: It’s all right, I’m better off [here]... [He’s interrupted by a tremendous crash, a chain reaction probably caused by Kurtzman moving a chair, in which the recorder is knocked down.] KURTZMAN: God! [laughter.] I just tore out my pocket.

COLE: Do I have to take care of you like I used to?

When our interview with Kurtzman was finished, the phone rang and Kurtzman took the call, making arrangements to meet the person he had been expecting earlier. I turned to Cole to ask some questions. I had become interested in romance comics, and had noticed that many stories from the Fox titles were later reprinted in Star comics, which I knew was Cole’s operation. A sentence or two of Cole’s initial reply is inaudible, but I soon moved the recorder close to him.

COLE: Well, I used whoever I could get, of course. Then what happened was, we took some of the old storylines. They had a great big inventory at Premium, at Curtis, and they might have had some of Fox’s material in there that he sold to them, I don’t know. That might very well have been, that might have been, sure. He might have sold them to Curtis. And then we were buying... we were doing some 115, 120 separate titles a year.

BENSON: You mean issues.

COLE: Separate titles!

BENSON: Titles? You had 120 titles for Star?

COLE: I did 1,500 covers myself. I just sold cover press proofs downstairs. BENSON: Color proofs?

COLE: Yeah.

KURTZMAN: [now off the phone] Are you recording? BENSON: We didn’t record your telephone call.

KURTZMAN: Because I’m going to meet somebody. Are you all leaving now? BENSON: Well, we’re going to the cocktail party.

BENSON: I wanted to talk to you about the very early mechanics of Star comics and how they evolved from Fox and so forth. There seems to be some connection.

COLE: It wasn’t connected with Fox. A guy named Jerry Kramer and I bought stock from the [inaudible]. Curtis Publishing Company had a group of comics called the Premium group of comics, and a man named Jerry Old And Young Kings Cole Kramer and I met up there and we both bid Cole’s cover for Criminals on the for them—it was, I think, $12,000. So he said.... Run, Vol. 4, #4 (Dec. 1948-Jan.

BENSON: That was for the titles?

COLE: No, they had a tremendous inventory of mats and plates and unused artwork, because at that time comics had a blanket indictment by Dr. Wertham, and you know what was happening. So what we did was, we said, well, why should we work at crosspurposes, why don’t we go in together? So we invested $6,000 each and we bought Curtis Premium group of comics, Young King Cole… Dick Cole… I don’t remember what the names of the titles were, and we made them into Star

1949); note the copy that says the mag had formerly been called Young King Cole under its original publisher, Novelty/Curtis. The name of the comic had been changed first to the above, then to Crime-Fighting Detective, before L.B. Cole (no relation to Y.K.!) and associate Jerry Kramer purchased Curtis/Premium’s comics assets later that same year. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this and numerous other covers in this issue. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Meeting Lenny Cole

Pennsylvania at the time.

KURTZMAN: [dryly] What did you do to Kefauver?

Proofs Positive! Alert A/E reader John Selegue sent us scans of a number of cover color proofs of L.B. Cole art that recently popped up on the Internet—probably from the 1979 convention sale that the artist mentions to John Benson. There were at least a dozen others, quite possibly far more. Cole did a lot of covers, but the one for Blue Bolt #104 (March-April 1950) is the only one he did for Star Publications featuring the Noveltyborn costumed hero Target—while that of Catman Comics #28 (June 1945) was only his third for that mag. On the unsigned cover for Blazing Western #5 (Sept. 1954), a title published by Timor, the man being gunned down appears to be leaping several feet straight up in the air as he’s being shot—definitely not a realistic result of the impact of the bullets. This latter proof is probably not the work of L.B. Cole—or he’d have signed it! [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

KURTZMAN: OK, well... all right.

BOATNER: [inaudible, perhaps showing photos] ...and Dr. Wertham below.

COLE: Oh, there he is. [inaudible] Harvey, were you with me when Kefauver came to this hotel? I did a number on him that you wouldn’t believe. [giggles] In this hotel, it was the Hotel

COLE: Oh my God, he was... I said, Senator, do you mean, you’re referring to incest and cannibalism and this and that? And he said, exactly. And I quoted chapter and verse incidents. And he said that’s exactly what I mean. I said, well, Senator, here you are… the Bible, Shakespeare, Grimm’s fairy tales. And his face got white, and he said, “I hope this isn’t being recorded!” [laughs] He’s at that big drawing board in the sky, I guess.

KURTZMAN: That was the villain, Wertham. I think he’s even gotten to regret his [excesses]. Do you get that feeling, Barbara [Boatner]?

BOATNER: Yeah.

COLE: He indicated that he could have gone either way, where the most money was.

KURTZMAN: You think Wertham was that kind of a guy?

COLE: Yeah, well, he intimated as much. He said he could go pro or anti—it depends on, ah...

KURTZMAN: Listen, I’m going to run along ahead. I’ll see you all down there.

Of course, in its entire run Star had about 45 titles, not 120. And Cole did less than 270 covers for Star, which he is apparently referring to here. He did covers for other companies, too, over the years, but even including magazines and paperbacks his total output must have been a lot lower than 1,500. Did he really have an inside track on Wertham’s motives, and have a conversation with Estes Kefauver? Who can say...?

John Benson has been both a comics fan and comics critic since the days of 1950s EC fandom, and currently edits and publishes the ultimate ECrelated magazine, Squa Tront. Bill Schelly conducted an indepth interview with him in 2003 across the course of Alter Ego #27-29.

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A Four-Color Dreamer The JAY DISBROW Interview Conducted & Transcribed by Ray Zone

A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: The following relatively short interview was conducted in 1981 and has never had previous publication in any form. At the time the conversation between Jay Disbrow and Ray Zone took place, the former was still working on his history of the Iger Comic Shop, which was published in 1985.

ith the rise of the adventure comic strip in the 1930s, there was a new American dream. It was nurtured by the illustrative genius of Alex Raymond with his graceful renderings of other worlds in the panels of Flash Gordon. It was further elaborated by Burne Hogarth and Harold Foster with Tarzan and Prince Valiant as a continuous, exotic, and highly detailed form of graphic storytelling.

The work of these graphic storytellers gave the artistically disreputable media of newspaper comic strips and comic books new status as an art form. The four-color stories reached an enormous audience and the artists became new American heroes.

Jay Disbrow got caught up in the dream. He is a native American dreamer, a writer and artist of visual narratives infected with the lure of the four-color comic medium. In the eighth edition (1978-1979) of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide he confessed to “a mania for adventure comic expression” that began in “early childhood.” For him the comics “represented an inner compulsion that demanded expression. Adventure comic story plots,” he wrote, “were bred within the very fiber of my being and they struggled incessantly to get out of my psyche and into print.”

From the time he was 14, Jay wrote and drew adventure comic stories “at a furious pace. I made up the plots as I went along,” he explained, “filling in the narration and the dialogue panel by panel.... As a teenager I sent my comic pages to Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, and Burne Hogarth for criticism. These titans of the syndicate world who were my heroes graciously took their time to encourage me in the pursuit of my chosen career.” Disbrow applied himself to studying the construction of the human figure and the riddles of perspective. He was in the process of developing one of the most unique styles in comics, art so individualistic it has been called “esoteric.” After high school graduation Disbrow spent three years in

Bantor—Rhymes With Tantor Jay Disbrow (in a 2002 photo) end one of his beloved jungle-lord creations: Bantor, with his mate Zentra, seen here in the splash page he drew (and probably wrote) for Star Publications’ Terrors of the Jungle #6 (Sept. 1953). Thanks to Jim Ludwig for the comics scan, and to Jay for the photo. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

frustration attempting to gain a foothold in the comic book industry. In January of 1950 he landed a job as an inker at the Iger Studios. “For about three weeks I lived in a dream world,” he wrote. “I was now on the inside. I had at last become a professional.”

At the Iger Studios Jay worked on the comic book “production line.” Eventually he was doing the pencilling for such popular Fiction House hero-features as “Sheena,” “Kaänga,” “Firehair,” and “Long Bow.”

After he had been with Iger for over a year, Jay decided “the time had come to launch out into that vast ocean of freelance opportunity.” Going to the office of Star Publications, he met (actually for the second time) Leonard B. Cole, the editor of Star and an artist of surpassing talent himself.

The Jay Disbrow Interview

Success Has Many Fathers… On p. 11 were printed L.B. Cole’s cover and Jay Disbrow’s splash page for “The Beast from Below,” the audition story that Disbrow scripted and illustrated for Star’s Blue Bolt Weird Tales of Terror #112 (Feb. 1952). At left is a key page from the story; thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Monster,” appeared in Ghostly Weird Stories #120. It is an autobiographical fantasy told by a comic book artist named Ray Alexander (a tribute to Alex Raymond). The character of an editor named “L. B.” also figures in the story. The editor tells the artist, “Weird stories are the hottest things on the newsstands today. The public is demanding them. People have a subconscious desire to be frightened.” The artist is then told to create as grotesque a demon as he can imagine.

Disbrow also produced a one-of-a-kind comic book for Star Publications, called Picturescope Jungle Adventures. It is a black-&white coloring book and comic with one large panel on each page simulating an effect of great depth. Picturescope Jungle Adventures was produced to capitalize on the 3-D trend in comics of the early ’50s and features the adventures of Jahka, Lord of the Jungle.

While producing comic stories for Star Publications, Disbrow continued to do freelance work on the side. He created a classic story for Crime Detector #5 entitled “Ultimate Destiny - A Study in Suspense and Horror.” The story tells of a man who violates an

Cole liked Disbrow’s samples and he gave him an assignment drawing a teenage comedy story. In the spring of 1951 Jay proposed to Cole that he write as well as draw some stories for the Star comics. Cole gave Jay the premise for a story about a man who fell into a subterranean world and was transformed into a monster. Disbrow then proceeded to write, pencil, letter, and ink the story. It appeared in Blue Bolt Weird #112, with the title “The Beast from Below.”

For 3½ years after that, Disbrow wrote and illustrated over a hundred stories and fillers for Star Publications; they appeared in comics with such titles as Blue Bolt Weird Tales of Terror, Spook Detective Cases, Terrors of the Jungle, and Unsane. Disbrow’s comic book collaboration with L. B. Cole produced many works that are rare collector’s items today.

One such classic story, entitled “Night-

G’Night, Sweetheart! Disbrow’s splash and Cole’s cover depicting “Night-Monster” in Star’s Ghostly Weird Stories #120 (Sept. 1953). Interior script & art by Disbrow. Thanks to Jim Ludwig for the splash scan. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

A Four-Color Dreamer

“Bongo! Bongo! Bongo… He Don’t Want To Leave The Congo!” With the above song lyric from the Tarzan parody in Mad #6 (Aug-Sept. 1953) ringing in our ears, we present a trio of splash pages of tales written and drawn by Jay Disbrow and featuring more jungle lords who were not named Tarzan—or Melvin (as per Mad #2 & 6)—or even Torga, Jay’s favorite of his various Tarzanic creations. Editor/publisher L.B. Cole may at some point have decreed “No more Torga!” —but these pages attest that Disbrow had plenty more kings of the jungle where Torga came from! Seen clockwise from above left in chronological (but not numerical) order, due to Star Publications’ maddening numbering system—and with thanks to Jim Ludwig—are: Zandar had an unusual backstory, having been a circus strongman before being promoted to king of the rain forest in Terrors of the Jungle #20 (Dec. 1952). His opponent, the beautiful Sheah, was no doubt inspired by H. Rider Haggard’s classic 19th-century adventure novel She—but then, what wasn’t, in those days? Four months later (!), in ToJ #4 (April ’53), Taranga got a chance, as so many jungle monarchs did, to tangle with dinosaurs—while the beautiful blonde from the Congo plane crash was clearly a Sheena wannabe! See Cole’s cover for this issue on the contents page. In ToJ #10 (Sept. ’54), JD gave the “jungle queen” Nagra a solo-star role in yet another tale set in a never-quite-was Congo, in “Jungle Justice.” [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

ancient Hindu taboo and culminates with one of the most grotesque full-page panels in comic books.

The comics censorship controversy of 1954 and the coming of the Comics Code at the end of that year put an end to Jay’s career in comic books, as Star Publications and many other companies folded. It was the end of the Golden Age of comic books. So Jay entered the world of commercial art to make a living, and he

The Jay Disbrow Interview

The Pen Ultimate A set-up page and the big-panel payoff of the Lovecraftian entry “Ultimate Destiny” from Crime Detector #5 (July 1954), from Timor Publications, Inc. The latter revelatory panel is considered a classic moment in horror comics, as drawn by Jay Disbrow; it was reprinted by Eclipse in 1987 and in IDW’s Haunted Horror #1 in 2012. Scripter uncertain. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

cates have achieved the potential of a fine art with the work of Raymond, Foster, and Hogarth, RZ: What comic strips do you read today?

remains there today. By the end of the 1970s, comic book fandom had rediscovered Jay’s work, and the stories he had created for Star Publications began to command premium prices from collectors.

In 1979 Fantagraphics Press commissioned Jay to produce a complete comic book and gave him full editorial control. Jay created The Flames of Gyro featuring Valgar Gunnar, a work in the spirit of Alex Raymond, a tale of high adventure in outer space. In the mid-1980s Jay wrote a biography of Jerry Iger entitled The Iger Comics Kingdom, which provided a detailed history of Fiction House and included many famous comic book covers. He has also created a new adventure comic feature called “Lance Carrigan of the Galactic Legion,” which was slated to appear in Future Gold magazine.

To this day Jay Disbrow remains infatuated with the lure of the adventure strip. When I interviewed him, it was apparent that he is a four-color dreamer who has never abandoned his love for the comic book medium.

RAY ZONE: Do you collect Alex Raymond art?

JAY DISBROW: Oh, absolutely. I’ve got several volumes of Raymond’s material going all the way back to his earliest Flash Gordon. I have nearly all of the Flash Gordon pages in various forms. And I also collect Hal Foster and Burne Hogarth. These are my three heroes. These are the guys that, to me, represent the very epitome of comic art. In my opinion they still do. They are still the tops. There’s nobody who has ever surpassed them.

I think, like a lot of people, that comics are not usually exploited to their full artistic potential. That’s a statement I have heard over and over from many different sources. But the newspaper syndi-

DISBROW: Star Wars and Tarzan. Hargar the Horrible is one of my favorite humorous comics.

RZ: Tell me about your Fiction House work.

DISBROW: I worked on “Sheena,” “Kaänga,” and a number of others through the Iger Studios. Jerry Iger was a kind of clearing house for Fiction House material. He produced the artwork for them. They either gave him the script, or he had his writer, Ruth Roche. She worked right up front and turned out a lot of material for Fiction House, also.

RZ: How did the Picturescope Jungle Adventures comic book evolve?

DISBROW: That came about as a result of the fact that Leonard Cole, editor of Star Publishing, wanted to corner some of the market on the so-called 3-D comics that were out at the time. But he didn’t go by route of the 3-D reproduction method. Instead, he came up with this particular format trying to create the illusion of 3-D by simply the type of drawings that were made. There was a tremendous amount of foreshortening that I used consistently throughout the whole book. This is what he wanted, so this is what I tried to give to him. We were competing with the 3-D comics out at that time.

RZ: What do you think of horror comics?

DISBROW: I wasn’t really interested in turning out horror stories. That was the stuff that Leonard wanted. He said, “This is the stuff that’s selling and this is what we have to produce.” But I wanted to do science-fiction stories. Once in a while I was able to get one in.

RZ: Do you prefer drawing a monster to drawing a ghost?

DISBROW: Exactly; they have substance!

RZ: How big was the market for horror and crime comics in the early ’50s?

A Four-Color Dreamer

Iger Counter Because Disbrow didn’t generally do full-art chores on his early jobs for the Fiction House comics line, these are only “best guesses” by the indexers at the Grand Comic Database as to tales he might’ve worked on of “Sheena” (from Sheena #18, Winter 1952) ... “Firehair” (from Rangers Comics #64, April 1952) ... and a “Captain Fight” splash from an issue of Fight Comics. All three were ultimately the product of Jerry Iger’s comic shop. Scripters unknown. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

DISBROW: There was a big market for them, unquestionably. From 1950 to 1955, the end of the Golden Age, there was a great demand for them. We sold a lot of them at Star Publications. And I know that Bill Gaines sold a tremendous quantity of them with his EC comics.

RZ: Do you think people have a subconscious desire to be frightened?

DISBROW: Based on the horror films that were turned out in the ’30s and ’40s, I would say, yes, people do enjoy being frightened. Of course they know it’s just an illusion. There’s really no danger, so they take comfort in that. Yet, at the same time, they enjoy the vicarious thrill. That’s why they read horror comics. And that’s why they are going and seeing such films as The Fog and Friday the 13th.

RZ: Why do you think the Golden Age of comics ended?

DISBROW: TV was one big reason. However, another big factor was parental displeasure over the horror and crime comics. In many cases the parents themselves had seen some of the material their youngsters were reading. And they were appalled at the violence in the comics, particularly the EC comics that Bill Gaines put out. Some of the horror comics I did were also somewhat violent, I’m not denying that. But Gaines was the leader in the industry with his horror comics.

The Jay Disbrow Interview

“They Never Return”—Or Do They? (Left:) A Disbrow-drawn page from Story Comics’ Mysterious Adventures #23 (Dec. 1954), at the tail end of the horror-comics period. By issues dated spring of 1955, the Comics Code seal would be in evidence—and Mysterious Adventures wouldn’t. Nor, for that matter, would Story Comics. Scripter unknown. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

And then there was the Congressional investigation into the comics field that took place in 1954. That was a big factor. It generated a lot of negative publicity. Another thing was Fredric Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent. This book was a big contributor to the demise of the Golden Age of Comics, no question about it. Seduction of the Innocent had a devastating impact on the opinions of the parents of teenagers who bought comics. Of course, I read the book. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions. In many areas I think he was way off base. But in some instances he was quite accurate.

The most remarkable thing to me is the fact that so many publishers went under at this particular time. This was at the end of 1954 and the early part of 1955. When I was in the field back in 1953, there were at least 56 publishing companies that produced comic books. Today I think there are only about 6 or 7 mainstream publishers. All the rest are either underground or alternate publishing companies who publish material on a small scale. That’s the way matters stand at the moment.

RZ: What’s the story on the Centurion of Ancient Rome comic book?

DISBROW: That was done for the Zondervan Publishing Company in Grand Rapids. They published it in a black-&-white edition early in 1958 and had a very limited circulation. Probably only about 6000 were printed. It was more or less an experimental type thing and the only religious comic book I’ve done. Ancient Rome is one of my abiding interests.

RZ: Do you follow comic book fandom and keep up with successive editions of the Comic Book Price Guide?

Friends, Romans, Countrymen… Lend Me Your Color Presses! The Centurion of Ancient Rome, which Jay refers to as being published in black-&white, was a “twocolor” religious/ historical comic drawn by Jay Disbrow in 1958. This cover used only two colors of the usual four-color process— black and red; missing are the blue and yellow plates—along with, no doubt, thousands of dollars in expenses for the Zondervan Publishing Co. Thanks to Rick Starr. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

A Four-Color Dreamer

DISBROW: They took up about 65% of my whole career. Can you believe that? So many of those were for Star it was unbelievable. I never saved any of those. To me they were all silly. They were all very highly formulized. All of them. There are comics I haven’t seen for 26 years because I never bothered to save them. As a matter of fact, I recently came across one of the horror stories I had done from Ghostly Weird Stories #124. I had been searching for it for about three years and I finally acquired a copy. It was like looking at somebody else’s work.

RZ: As you have said, your drawing style is “a product of your own development.” Have you had any formal training?

DISBROW: No, I had training. I took the Famous Artists course. [laughter] I got it through the people I worked for. I did it more or less as a lark. But, before that, the practical experience I had gotten was through the Iger Studios. During the 13 months that I was there, I learned a tremendous amount,

The Golden Age Of Black-&-White Pin-Ups (Above:) Having broken into the pro ranks only circa 1950, Jay never got a crack at drawing the classic super-heroes in the Golden Age of Comics—but he took a stab at them later, with Sheena tossed in for good measure, in this illo that popped up in a recent Mike (romitaman) Burkey auction. Frankly, though, we’ve no idea whose face that is near Captain America’s shield! See Mike’s ads on pp. 44 & 60. [Superman, Captain Marvel. Batman, & Spectre TM & ©2013 DC Comics; Sub-Mariner, Human Torch, & Captain America TM & ©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Sheena TM & ©2013 Paul Aratow or successors in interest.]

DISBROW: Oh, yes. When I got out of the comics field I was out of it completely. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as comics fandom until about 1973. I was absolutely incredulous to discover that people were actually trying to obtain old issues of my comic books. It was astonishing that anyone even remembered me from the comics. I thought I was completely forgotten along with everybody else. Of course I knew there were some giants in the field like Siegel and Shuster, Bob Kane, and people of that stature. But I never thought that my name would be remembered in the business. I was surprised to find that there were people who remembered me.

RZ: Is anyone compiling an index of your work?

DISBROW: Yes. There is a man named John Willie who lives in Oklahoma. He’s compiling a private list of my work. RZ: How many love comics did you draw?

Home Sweet “Homecoming” (Right:) “The Homecoming” was a Disbrow-drawn yarn in Ghostly Weird Stories #124 (Sept. 1954), the issue Jay says he’d been searching for for three years—only when he found it, “It was like looking at somebody else’s work.” But even without his signature, we’d recognize the Disbrow style. [©2013 the respective copyright holders; other art ©2013 Jay Disbrow.]

Actually I think talent is something that you more or less gravitate to on your own. You can go to the finest art school in the world, and if you don’t make an effort to really absorb what’s before you, then you’ll never learn to be an artist. My ambition has always been the syndicates. Unfortunately, I have not yet achieved that. But who knows, maybe someday I will.

RZ: How did your Flames of Gyro comic come about?

DISBROW: That one was a real labor of love for me. When Gary Groth of Fantagraphics Press

The Jay Disbrow Interview

offered me complete editorial freedom on the comic, I decided to go ahead with it. The interior art is half-tone reproduction with wash tones in every panel. It’s the kind of comic book I’ve always wanted to do, a full-length science-fiction story in which I was able to totally unleash my imagination.

RZ: Would you consider doing some stories today for Marvel or DC?

DISBROW: I would be happy to do that. Also, I might add that I would not deliberately do anything that would violate the Comics Code. RZ: To what do you attribute comics fandom?

DISBROW: Fans who buy comics are in love with the medium, the story being told through pictures with balloon dialogue. This is really the source of the enchantment. It’s the medium itself. This is what enchanted me as a small boy when I used to read Flash Gordon and Prince Valiant. Actually, comics are similar to still motion pictures.

Never A Doll Moment! (Right:) One of a number of unused drawings Jay did for his 1985 opus The Iger Comics Kingdom (see next page), this one spotlighting the Quality Comics hero Doll Man. Others of those drawings were printed for the first time when his history of the S.M. Iger Comics Shop was reprinted in its entirety in 2003 in Alter Ego #21. Thanks to JD. [Doll Man TM & ©2013 DC Comics; other art ©2013 Jay Disbrow.]

A Four-Color Dreamer

JAY DISBROW Checklist

The following Checklist is adapted from information found in the online edition of Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999, established by Jerry Bails (see ad on p. 26.). Names of features which appeared both in comics with that title and in others magazines have generally not been italicized. Key: (w) = writer; (a) = artist; (p) = pencils; (i) = inks.

Name: Jayson (Jay) Edward Disbrow (b. 1926) – artist, writer

Influences: Alex Raymond, Harold R. Foster, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Burne Hogarth

Member: Armed Forces Writers League (President of Branch 112)

Print Media (Non-Comics): artist – posters 1977 Jovian Enterprises: Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu; reporter c. 1955-80; writer of articles for newspapers and magazines (no dates); book The Iger Comics Kingdom 1985 for Blackthorne Publications; novel Kelzenda (no date) Performing Arts: speaker (freelance)

Other Career Notes: public relations director – Brick Computer Science Institute 1987; teacher/lecturer 1960s-80s

Iger, Iger, Burning Bright… The cover of Jay’s 1985 book The Iger Comics Kingdom depicted Sheena, the most famous creation of the studio, as drawn by the late great Dave Stevens. The publisher was Blackthorne. [Art ©2013 Estate of Dave Stevens; Sheena TM & ©2013 Paul Aratow or successors in interest.]

Fine Arts: painter of murals for civic centers and hospitals (no dates)

Honors: AFWL National Essay 1st prize 1976

Promotional Comics: Captain Electron (a) 1987 (?) for Brick Computer Science Institute [NOTE: See next page.]

Comics in Other Media: Junior life (w)(a) 1964-68 in Sunday School handouts; Aroc of Zenith Internet comic strip 2000-2005

Comics Studio/Shop: Iger Studio (w)(p)(i) 1950-51

COMIC BOOK CREDITS (Mainstream or Related U.S. Publications):

Electron Central Disbrow’s cover for Captain Electron #1 (1986) from Quest Publications, Inc., which seems to be a division of the Brick Computer Science Institute— or is it vice versa? Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2012 the respective copyright holders.]

Aida-Zee Comics: Aida-Zee Comics (i) 1990 (also lettering) American Comics Group: Forbidden Worlds (a) 1952

The Jay Disbrow Interview

Aroc And A Hard Place Jay Disbrow’s Internet comic strip Aroc of Zenith, an homage to Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon that was such an inspiration to him, ran an amazing 312 episodes between 2000 and 2005. Seen here, clockwise from above left, are a legend/recap special page, the very first episode, and the final one, in which the hero and heroine are finally wed—in the Dec. 25, 2005, strip. Dontcha just love happy endings? Disbrow was both writer and artist for the full run. [©2013 Jay Disbrow.]

Brick Computer Science Institute/Quest Publications, Inc.: Captain Electron (w)(a)(some p) 1986; Dray Prescott (w)(a) 1984; Lance Carrigan of the Galactic Legion (w)(a) 1984; Mr. Computer and Captain Electron (w)(a) 1986 (also lettering); Quest Presents (w)(a) 1983. [NOTE: A/E is unaware if the Captain Electron publication listed in this paragraph are the same as that listed above for 1987 under “Promotional Comics.”]

Fantagraphics Books: Flames of Gyro (w)(a) 1979

Farrell Publications: All True Romance (a) 1956; Bride’s Diary (a) 1956; Bride’s Secrets (a) 1956; Captain Flight (?) (p) no date; Dear Heart (a) 1956; Secret Love (a) 1956; True Life Romances (a) 1956

Fiction House: Cowgirl Romances (i) 1952; Firehair (i) c. 1950-51; Kaänga (i) c.1950-51; Long Bow (p) c. 1950-51; romance (p)(i) c. 1950-51; Sheena (i) c. 195051

Fox Comics: Rulah – Jungle Goddess (w)(a) c. 194849

Gilberton/Classics Illustrated: The World around Us (a) 1959 Harvey Comics: Love Problems (p) 1951

I.W. Publications: (all reprints from other companies & publications): Daring Adventures (w)(a) 1963; Eerie Tales (a) 1964; Fantastic Adventures (a) 1963: fillers 1963-64, 1967; Strange Mysteries (a) 1958; Taranga (a) 1953

Star Publications: Blue Bolt Weird Tales of Terror (w)(a) 1951-53; Confessions of Love (w)(a) 1952-53; Ghostly Weird Stories & Ghostly Weird Tales (w)(a) 1953-54; The Horrors (w)(a) 1953-54; Jungle Thrills (a) 1954; Popular Teen-agers (w)(a) 1951-54; Shocking Mystery Cases (w)(a) 1954-54; Spook (w)(a) 1953-54; Startling Terror Tales (w)(a) 1952-54; Taranga (a) 1953; Terrors of the Jungle (w)(a) 1952-54; Top Love Stories (w)(a) 1951-54; Torga (a) 1954; True to Life Romances (a) 1951-54; Unsane (w)(a) 1954

[Continued on p. 43]

A Four-Color Dreamer

Close “Encounter” Of The Disbrow Kind

“Bride” Goeth Before A Fall

(Above:) Although many of Disbrow’s signed stories bore the byline of his full first name—“Jayson”—on this story from Ghostly Weird Stories #121 (Dec. 1953), he appended his more usual appellation. He drew (and probably scripted) three stories in this issue, which was not unusual for him to do in the horror comics of Star Publications. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

(Above:) The American Comics Group’s Forbidden Worlds #10 (Oct. 1952) showcased “Bride of Doom,” apparently Disbrow’s sole effort for the company that Richard E. Hughes built. The whole yarn was recently reprinted in the PS Artbooks hardcover Forbidden Worlds, Vol. 2, collecting issues #6-10 of the title. Scripter unknown. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

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Quest Presents Quest Presents… (Left:) Jay Disbrow wrote and drew “Lance Carrigan of the Galactic Legion” in issues #1-3 of Quest Publications’ Quest Presents. He doesn’t seem to have drawn the cover of the first issue, but made up for it with a wraparound cover for #2, and a striking hero pose on #3. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

The Jay Disbrow Interview

Unsane My Heart Jay got a rare opportunity to try his hand at drawing (and probably writing) humor when Star Publications put out Unsane #15 (June 1954), its oneshot answer to the burgeoning popularity of EC’s—and Harvey Kurtzman’s—four-color Mad comic book. “Twenty Thousand Leaks under the Sea” was more a parody of the Walt Disney movie than of Jules Verne’s book. Ye Editor was never certain why 1930s/40s big game hunter Frank “Bring ’Em Back Alive” Buck was being spoofed at this late stage, but nonetheless he enjoyed Disbrow’s take on one of his earliest childhood heroes. Pictured are the story’s splash page—the de rigueur takeoff on Marilyn Monroe—and a final page which includes Tarzan or someone remarkably like him. Thanks to “OHLIEi” and Vern Patrick for the “Leaks” splash, and to John Benson for “Frank Bunk.” [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

A Four-Color Dreamer

Getting Spooked (Above:) A climactic page from the Disbrow-drawn “The Insider”—and the cover for that final issue of Spook (#32, Oct. 1954) from Star Publications. The latter is the Jay Disbrow splash page, mentioned back on p. 12, which Cole turned into a cover with virtually no change—but if Cole signed it with his own byline, as Jay D. notes on p. 12, we can’t see it here. Maybe it was some other cover? Jay probably wrote the story, as well. Although other words—in this case, “Suspense” and “Mystery”—were often prominent on its covers, the indicia name of the comic was Spook, pure and simple. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

[Continued from p. 40]

Story Comics: Mysterious Adventures (p) 1953-54

3-D Zone: Picturescope Jungle Adventures (a) 1987

Timor: Blazing Western (a) 1954; Crime Detector (a) 1954

Trojan Comics: Beware (w)(a) 1954

Zondervan Publishing House: The Centurion of Ancient Rome (w)(a) 1957

Beware The Cry Of The Seal—Comics Code Variety, That Is! (Right:) One of Jay Disbrow’s “freelance” accounts, if only briefly, was Trojan Comics, for which he wrote and drew this story in Beware #11 (Sept. 1954), as the Comics Code Authority rumbled like thunder in the wings. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

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RICHARD E. HUGHES: Life After ACG Part II Of A Study Of A Major Comics Editor & Writer by Michael Vance

EDITOR’S NOTE: As noted in Part I of this piece (in issue #112), a long-unsuspected cache of materials related to longtime comic book editor and writer Richard E. Hughes (real name: Leo Rosenbaum) was purchased two or three years ago by Yonkers, NY, resident Joseph Eacobacci. Joey has generously made it available to Ye Editor and to Michael Vance, author of the 1996 book Forbidden Knowledge: The History of the American Comics Group, which was serialized in A/E #61 & 62. These papers were apparently given some years ago by Hughes’ widow Annabel to a man she was dating and contained numerous photos and papers; he later sold them to Eacobacci.

A/E

In this issue, Michael Vance continues his guided tour of these artifacts, which add considerably to what we know about the life of the man who (for the B.W. Sangor Shop in the early 1940s) co-created such Standard/Nedor heroes as The Black Terror and The Fighting Yank, among numerous others—and who from 1948-67 was the editor and a major scripter for Sangor’s American Comics Group (ACG), publisher of Adventures into the Unknown, the first regularly published horror comic book. Hughes also co-created “Supermouse” and “Herbie,” ACG’s offbeat super-hero of its final decade; no fewer than three never-published “Herbie” scripts found among the Eacobacci trove were touched on and even partly illustrated in A/E #112. Now, Michael shows us that the Hughes/Eacobacci cache has yet another surprise or three to unveil….

Hughes Was Huge! Richard E. Hughes, smoking his omnipresent pipe in a undated, previously unpublished photo from the Joseph Eacobacci Collection, regards three of his major career milestones. (From the top:) “The Black Terror,” drawn here by the Nedor feature’s original artist Elmer Wexler for America’s Best Comics #6 (July 1943)—scripter unknown, but Hughes created the hero with Wexler as part of the Sangor Shop… Edvard Moritz’s cover for ACG’s groundbreaking horror title Adventures into the Unknown #1 (Fall 1948), edited by Hughes… …and Ogden Whitney’s cover for ACG’s Herbie #1 (April-May 1964), which Hughes both wrote and edited. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Richard E. Hughes: Life After ACG

Custom Comics

The success of the American Comics Group under Hughes’ management led to a separate imprint, Custom Comics, also called Culver Comics (1954), which Hughes did not create. His post-comics résumé described Custom as an arm of the American Comics Group that produced “special purpose magazines for major commercial companies and governmental agencies. Purpose: public relations and sales promotions. Write major portion of such materials.”

And Hughes did so through 1967; but copies dated as late as 1977 prove that Custom Comics remained a viable property even after his early-’74 death and into the 1980s, as confirmed by then-ACG publisher Frederick Iger (1924-?). These comic books were produced for police and fire departments, Buster Brown Shoes, the U.S. Air Force, and dozens of other institutions; they were given away free or as product premiums.

Joseph Eacobacci’s collection contains seventeen copies of these advertising booklets and one related trade magazine. They include: Skating Skills (Chicago Roller Skating), Success (Grit newspaper), Once a Champion (Soap Box Derby), Don’t Be a Fizzle (New York City Fire Department), We Want to Tell the Story (early American life), Great Moments in Steer Wrestling (three different books, Wrangler Jeans), Howard Johnson’s Children’s Menu #2 & #13, Your Friend the Policeman (1963 and 1968, New York City Police Department ), Your Friendly Druggist Coloring Book (Dristan), You’ll Be A Winner (political race), Massachusetts Men against the Sea, El Otro Pueblo (in the Spanish language; the title starred Foxy the Firefighter), St. Louis…Let’s Do It Nov. 8th! (St. Louis Improvement Bonds Committee), The Baltimore Colts (National Football League), and Wings of Adventure (Braniff Airways). They are of different page counts and sizes, and are drawn by various uncredited artists, with art by Kurt Schaffenberger (1920-2002) featured in the majority of titles. Hughes had stapled a small rectangle of paper to the cover of each comic book with a typewritten description of its intended use.

Hughes’ Familiar Haunts (Left:) A recent photo (from a real estate website) of 331 Madison Avenue in New York City, which 50 years ago housed the offices of the American Comics Group. How much this or the following building(s) may have changed in the interim is not known. (Right:) A current Google photo of 23 W. 84th Street in the Bronx, the last residence and neighborhood of Richard and Annabel Hughes. Thanks for both pics to Michael Vance; unless otherwise noted, all scans utilized in the remainder of this article, including those from the Eacobacci Collection, were done by MV. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

As an example, the copy for Success reads: GRIT, a weekly newspaper of national proportions, is sold and delivered by boys. Enlisting boy salesmen, essential to their big operation, was becoming increasingly difficult… until we started producing books for them. Since then, they’ve ordered and reordered constantly, using many different books to present their message in many different ways.

The Copy for Skating Skills reads:

If you owned a Roller Skate Company, how would you foster good and profitable public relations? Probably as CHICAGO ROLLER SKATE did… through an interesting and informative book on the “ins” of roller skating, such as this one!

The Feb. 1961 issue of Advertising Requirements, the trade magazine in this collection, featured an article on comic books. It includes amazing facts about Custom Comics. In it, the number of copies of Buster Brown promotional comics distributed is listed at 50 to 75 million. Yes, million. They had been produced by Custom since 1959. Hughes and his crew had also produced 35 Wrangler Jeans promotional comics since 1957, totaling 45 million copies. These distribution numbers are staggering, outstripping the sales of any newsstand title, and Richard E. Hughes edited all of them, and wrote most of the books.

It’s An Old (Spanish) Custom Three of Custom Comics’ many commercial comics-style publications. The first two, which dealt with the New York City Fire Department (8 pages) and Braniff Airlines (16 pages), were drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger; the former was also printed in Spanish, as was El Otro Pueblo [The Other City]. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Part II Of A Study Of A Major Comics Editor & Writer

Custom-Made Comics

(Above:) Custom Comics covered subjects from politics to propaganda to paper-peddling for Grit. The dates of these and other commercial comics depicted in this section are unknown. Hughes apparently wrote all the text for these publications (which he referred to as “booklets”): the 32-page Skating Skills (for Chicago Roller Skate) and the 16-page Success (done for Grit) and Once a Champion (for the Soap Box Derby) were drawn by Schaffenberger; Policeman by Chic Stone. Both these artists also did considerable work for editor Hughes at ACG. The Eacobacci collection of Hughes artifacts includes clippings about Custom Comics from various newspapers, including the New York Herald Tribune. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Chic Stone.

Ogden Whitney.

It’s All In The Jeans Quaint Customs (Above:) The 16-page Massachusetts Men against the Sea was drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger; the artist of the equal-length You’ll Be a Winner, which promoted a political candidate in Jackson, Mississippi, is unknown. Of Sea, Hughes wrote in a career recap: “Fishing is one of Massachusetts’ major industries. It’s of utmost importance to steer young people toward it… so the Massachusetts Seafood Council secured the valuable aid furnished by this booklet which we published for them.”

(Above:) The art on these Custom-produced Wrangler Jeans comics pamphlets—each of which was 36 pages in length—is by Hughes’ “Herbie” and Adventures into the Unknown collaborator Ogden Whitney, who in the early 1940s had co-created “Skyman” with writer Gardner Fox for Columbia Comics. Whitney’s self-portrait (center of page) is from a 1960s ACG story; the masked aviator Skyman is seen at left in a pose from Columbia’s Big Shot Comics. Michael Vance notes that, according to a Hughes promotional piece, the 35 (!) various Wrangler commercial comics produced between 1957 and 1961 sold a total of 45 million copies… certainly outstripping the circulation of any comics that Hughes (or most others!) had published. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Richard E. Hughes: Life After ACG

Comic Strips, Scripts, And—?

At some time in his career, Hughes wrote seven days of scripts with multiple pages of character development and suggestions for a syndicated newspaper comic strip. It was to be drawn by artist and personal friend Kurt Schaffenberger, who had done a huge amount of work for ACG. Entitled Love Clinic, it was based on the same premise as popular newspaper advice columns like “Dear Abby.” It was intended that readers would send in relationship problems, and Hughes’ characters would visually present solutions. It is unknown if the typed, double-spaced script was actually drawn and submitted to any syndicate, and is improbable that Love Clinic was ever published.

Stranger yet is “Cobra,” a six-page synopsis for a horror story that does not fit the standard format for comic books, television, or motion picture submissions at the time. It was too graphically gruesome for publication in a post-Code ACG “mystery” title, yet was uncharacteristic of the style popularized in the 1950s by EC horror comics. Set during and shortly after World War II, it is the tale of a plastic surgeon in Nazi Germany who is associated with an underground movement to kill Hitler, and a beautiful Nazi spy whom he loves. The surgeon is betrayed by his lover without his knowledge. He is tortured, then freed, and eventually ends up in

New York City after the war. His beautiful former love also arrives in New York City years later, only to meet a fate bloody, graphic, and horrifying. There is no date or additional information on Hughes’ typed, double-spaced manuscript.

Finally, “Wagon Train West” proposes “a story line that packs colorful thrills aplenty” in 14 pages of typed, double-spaced script. There is no year on the synopsis or information on the manuscript of its intended medium—whether it was to be for comics, television, a novel, or movie—and the synopsis reads like the first installment of a proposed series. In it, a 12-year-old boy travels west to escape poverty and his own cowardice, only to find adventure, courage, and wealth!

During his career in comic books, Richard Hughes also wrote material meant for production in radio and television, and for publication in magazines or as novels.

Although it does not indicate the year it was written or the program it was written for, Scream Forth Your Love is a 9-page science-fiction/horror play probably intended for a 15-minute radio show. It is unknown if this radio script was ever produced. In it, an amoeba-like creature from another planet is banned to the moon for undesignated crimes. But it hitches a ride in the body of a visiting astronaut from Earth back to the man’s home, to his wife… and horror!

The only short story in the collection is titled “Quarter-Section,” and neither the year it was written nor the magazine to which it was submitted is indicated on the manuscript. It is the 9-page “mainstream” story of a six-year-old girl named Azalea, and is

Scripts For Love And Money Hughes’ script for the opening continuity of the unsold Love Clinic comic strip—and the first page of his synopsis for the strong horror story “Cobra.” (Actually, there is no byline on either of these scripts, but because they were located amid the artifacts sold to Joey Eacobacci, it seems more than likely he is the author of all the material in the cache.) Also depicted here are the covers of two ACG mags that Hughes edited containing similar themes—those of Romantic Adventures #23 (July 1952), which may have been drawn by Ken Bald, and Skeleton Hand #1 (Sept.-Oct. 1952), which almost certainly was. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Part II Of A Study Of A Major Comics Editor & Writer

It is unknown at this time if Hughes’ greeting card verses were accepted and published by Norcross.

Sales-Films

Sales-Films was another division of the ACG conglomerate, and there are four scripts in Eacobacci’s collection that advertise the benefits of buying Reader’s Digest magazine. Although it is obvious from Hughes’ directions in these two- or three-page scripts that they were meant to be filmed, it is impossible to determine their exact use. Certainly meant for possible subscribers, they are nevertheless too long for television commercials and too short for documentaries. These scripts are undated, and titled “Getting Ahead,” “Saving for Gain,” and “Then and Now.” In one, Sally explains to Jim that: It’s the swellest publishing idea I ever heard of. Nobody can afford to buy all the good magazines. Even if they The first page of Hughes’ unproduced radio drama Scream Forth Your Love—and the proof sheet for an could, they wouldn’t have time enough early-1950s trade-magazine ad for the American Comics Group’s line, showing what a variety of content Hughes was used to editing, and often writing. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.] to read through them to find the really worthwhile, important things. So the written from her perspective. She lives with her poverty-stricken Reader’s Digest does the job for us! It hunts out the most vital parents, who are share-croppers on a quarter-section of tobacco. It and significant features from the best magazines. It takes the is unknown if this story was published. live, interesting articles which help modern people keep abreast of the times and condenses them into readable fascinating form. That’s why the Reader’s Digest can teach while it Greetings! entertains. Most probably in July of 1968—when ACG was “closing down,” Another of Hughes’ works in this collection is Look Out for Celia, according to Hughes’ cover letter, although the last issue of an a 107-page murder-mystery screenplay written in an unknown ACG newsstand comic book had been released in 1967—he year for an undesignated market. Expensively bound, it was submitted verse to the Norcross Greeting Card Company located at probably intended for the movie screen as a story of mounting 277 Madison Avenue in New York City. Norcross is recognized as tensions and fear. Victor Jumel returns home with a surprise: Ellen, the first publisher of Valentine’s Day cards. Its founder, Arthur his new wife. Why a surprise? Because everyone at the mansion Norcross, would die in 1969, about a year after Hughes’ “knew” that he’d marry Celia, who is beautiful but with a “savage submission, but the company would continue after his death. feline cruelty.” Everyone “knew,” including Victor’s mousey sister Richard’s submissions, all on ACG letterhead, were in response Blanche, half owner of to a classified advertisement in The New York Times, and consisted Jumel Hall, and of three loose-leaf binders sent on different dates. The first binder viciously jealous of contained a cover letter, a Custom Comic for Howard Johnson’s Celia. Look out!! (#8, art by Schaffenberger), nine pages of verse, and his résumé. The second binder was sent on June 2 and held a cover letter Greetings! expressing his pleasure at Norcross’s interest, and 18 pages of Richard Hughes as a verse. The final binder was sent on July 22, and twenty pages of young man. Perhaps he verse followed his cover letter. As example of this greeting card was chronicling this verse:

Stay Tuned!

Marriage is made up in Heaven above Betwixt each Belle and her Beau But you two have brought a new meaning to love Down on this earth below! Happy Anniversary! It’s been this way from the start Two of you, with just one heart! Like one in every kind of weather Every day a day together! This one is a special day— Your Anniversary—hope it’s gay!

earlier self when he wrote cheery and heartwarming verses aimed at acquiring a job with the Norcross Greeting Card Company. His papers in the Eacobacci cache are full of poetry, some of it quite lengthy and quite clever—and not nearly all of it suitable for Norcross greeting cards! [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Richard E. Hughes: Life After ACG

name is not on the manuscript; this episode is credited to the series’ head writer, Charles Elwyn, a practice common at the time. But it is typed on the same cheap newsprint as all of Hughes’ manuscripts, production notes on the cover page are detailed and specific, and the obvious question must be, why would it be in Hughes papers if he hadn’t written it? His wife Annabel and Norman Fruman both mention his work on television. However, no screenplay work is mentioned on his résumé.

This particular script focuses on the mundane aspects of raising a baby, and on neighborhood gossip between the main character, Helen Emerson, and her two best friends.

It is virtually certain that “Squeeze Play” was written by Hughes and aired on CBS television on May 12, 1953, as an episode of the series called Danger. Danger was broadcast from 1950 to 1955 as a half-hour of “psychological dramas and murder mysteries” telecast from New York City on Tuesdays from 10:00 to 10:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. It also seems certain that the manuscript found in this collection is not complete, with a twopage script example that reads: “Half-Hour Continuity. It is composed of 44 pages, such as the following, which is representative: (This one is all dialogue).” However, the teleplay, credited to Alex Furth, is only 7 pages in length, with a theme of political blackmail and intrigue.

Doomed To Bloom Unseen (Above:) The first page of Hughes’ manuscript for his unpublished screenplay Look Out for Celia, about a—how shall we put it?—troubled marriage. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

An innovative machine gun and two murders in the Van Tuyl mansion are the subject of the only complete novel in the collection. At 373 double-spaced, typewritten pages, inexpensively bound, but on a higher quality paper than Hughes used on his other manuscripts, Westchester Weekend is a real-world detective novel without the film noir elements and the quirky characterizations of other famous detective series. His one-time assistant at ACG, Norman Fruman, remembered reading this manuscript and wondering why it hadn’t been accepted for publication.

Television

It is almost certain that, in the earliest days of television, Hughes did write at least two teleplays (television scripts) that were produced.

Valiant Lady was a 15-minute-long soap opera that was broadcast live from New York City by CBS television from October 12, 1953, through August 1957. One of the two manuscripts in this recently discovered cache of Hughes materials is a 16-page teleplay for episode #36, which was televised on Monday, November 30, 1953. Hughes’

Valiant Attempt The first page of Hughes’ script for the 11-30-53 episode of the 1950s TV soap opera Valiant Lady. Also seen are photos of series stars Joan Blaine (who played Joan Barrett) and Jerome Cowan. According to a Wikipedia summary, heroine Joan Barrett was widowed in the first year of the series (which was also heard on radio), and got married to the Governor of the state in the show’s final episode. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Part II Of A Study Of A Major Comics Editor & Writer

Hughes Bows Out With A Bang Hughes’ final work in comics appeared in DC Comics. According to careful script analysis by Martin O’Hearn, Hughes scripted the lead story for Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #79 (Nov. 1967) and the “Spidermen” effort for Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #107 (Dec. ’67)—as well as “The Wrongo Superman” in JO #114. The respective artists are Kurt Schaffenberger and Pete Costanza, both of whom had until recently also drawn for ACG editor Hughes. Who knows—maybe one of them talked Superman line editor Mort Weisinger into giving Hughes the gig! Thanks to Bob Bailey for the scans. In addition, although Showcase Presents Hawkman, Vol. 2, lists Bob Haney and Arnold Drake as the authors of the stories in 1967-68’s Hawkman #23-25, O’Hearn is fairly positive that Hughes was the author of those three tales. Seen here is the splash page of #25 (April-May 1968). Pencils by Dick Dillin; inks by Charles “Chuck” Cuidera. Thanks to Scott Rowland. [©2013 DC Comics.]

A Novel Idea

“The Path of the Panther” is Hughes’ 60-page, detailed synopsis and two sample chapters for a novel that would be called a suspense/thriller in today’s market. It is simply bound and typed on a higher-quality paper and tells the uncharacteristically brutal—for Hughes—story of a young man who rises as a propagandist through the early days of Nazism in Germany to a position of power during World War II. It has a strong focus on characterization and is an intriguing look at how an initially innocent and average man can slowly justify ever deepening deception, betrayal, adultery, and eventually even murder, in his lust for sex, power, and money.

On the cover page, Hughes described it as “a tense and gripping tale of brutal murder, hiding behind a hypocritical screen of war and politics—of a strange and implacable revenge. Between the two comes as breathless a pursuit as you’ve ever witnessed.”

Richard E. Hughes: Life After ACG

Out On The Town Richard and Annabel Hughes in an undated photo (repro’d from a photocopy) taken at a nightclub.

Despite several of his artists stating that Hughes was particularly sensitive and negative about any sexual innuendo in ACG’s comic books, one of the principal themes in “The Path of the Panther” is lust. Several of the scenes are graphic in their description of foreplay, and profanity and violence are scattered throughout the synopsis and sample chapters.

A Last Hurrah In Comic Books

Richard Hughes produced his last mainstream comic book work for DC Comics in 1967, writing unaccredited stories for comic book titles including Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Hawkman, as well as for several mystery-anthology titles. Giving Hughes credit for authoring those stories now is based on the best opinion of several comics historians who specialize in identifying writers and artists by their styles, as well as on the opinion of Hughes’ widow.

Hughes ended his career and his life outside the art form of comics: writing response letters to complaints for Gimbel’s Department Store in New York City.

Richard Hughes created important super-heroes during the early history of comic books, as well as Supermouse, the first funny-animal parody of Superman. As the driving force behind the first ongoing horror comic book, he inadvertently helped spark the comic book witch hunt of the 1950s that almost destroyed the art form in America. The ACG title Adventures into the Unknown led to dozens of imitations, among them EC Comics’ horror books, which are now thought of by many critics as the finest ever published.

Hughes’ American Comics Group was one of the few publishers to survive the Comics Code Authority that it had helped initiate. His mark on the history of comics is indelible, and his career can never be duplicated. Hughes’ life was important as “one of the best editors” (that’s what legendary artist Al Williamson called him) in the so-called Golden and Silver Ages of comic books.

Even today, Richard Hughes is synonymous with the American Comics Group in the minds of thousands of comic book readers. This identification is so powerful that a long-enduring (but untrue) myth has grown, among fans and early comics historians alike, that Hughes wrote almost everything in every ACG title. This sense of recognition is amazing, considering that his name never appeared on a cover, rarely on a letters page or as the host of a

Of Supermice And Supermen Although it’s unlikely that he wrote or edited Pines Comics’ Supermouse Summer Holiday Issue (1957), Richard Hughes seems to have created the character in the early 1940s as a parody/knockoff of Superman, evidently slightly in advance of Paul Terry’s Mighty Mouse. In fact, it’s speculated that it’s because of the slightly-prior existence of the comic book Supermouse that Mighty Mouse—who was indeed called instead Super Mouse in a couple of his earliest animated cartoons—changed his name. Thanks to Chet Cox. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

story, and never in the credits for any story. Indeed, his reputation continued to grow for years after ACG ceased publishing. Although personal name recognition was never used as a marketing tool by Hughes, his influence, editing, and writing touched every magazine containing material from the Sangor Shop or released under the ACG shield for more than 25 years. And, as evidenced by their accomplishments with other publishers after having left ACG or the Sangor Shop, hundreds of artists and writers carried Hughes’ influence, despite the mystery and enigma that surrounds much of his life, throughout the industry during three decades of the most popular art form on Earth: comics.

NOTE: The foregoing article rephrases some material from Michael Vance’s 1996 book Forbidden Adventures: The History of the American Comics Group, which was reprinted virtually in its entirety in Alter Ego #61-62.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Evil Twins! by Michael T. Gilbert y first “Evil Twin” sighting was late in 1959, when I was eight years old. A classmate had brought a “hot off the presses” World’s Finest #106 to school. It featured “The Duplicate Man,” a clever crook with a gizmo that let him split himself into twins. Whenever Superman or Batman was about to catch a twin, The Duplicate Man clicked his fingers and merged with his other half, who was waiting across town. The two heroes finally captured the slippery felon by working together.

Before the first bell rang, I tried to work out a trade for the comic, but the tiny twerp turned up his nose at my copies of Wonder Woman. Would I ever find out what happened to The Duplicate Man? Luckily, fate stepped in.

Now you have to remember comics were strictly a no-no in schools back then. We traded ’em on the “down-low” before the teacher came in. And on that day, the little scofflaw with the World’s Finest got caught red-handed.

Our teacher grabbed his comic and stuffed it into a drawer filled with yo-yos, baseball cards, and other illegal contraband. When school ended that day, our teacher took out the comic, tore it in half––and tossed it into the trash! Oh, the humanity!

My younger self didn’t catch the irony of a comic about a crook who could split in half being split in half itself. But there’s a silver lining in every tragedy.

While the rest of the class grabbed their coats and headed for their buses, I lagged behind. Then, with a pounding heart, I rescued both halves of that precious comic from the metal wastebasket. Once home, I carefully put it back together with a couple of tons of Scotch tape. It wasn’t pretty, but that wonderful comic was finally mine! And there’s an amusing postscript to all this.

Flash forward to 1999, when I attended a Seattle comic convention. As luck would have it, the great Dick Sprang, who had drawn “The Duplicate Man,” was sitting next to me. Seizing the opportunity, I pulled out my taped-together copy. I shared the vintage tale with Mr. Sprang and asked him to sign it, which he graciously did. . . with a chuckle.

And that’s why “The Duplicate Man” remains my favorite Evil Twin story of all time!

Evil Twins!

Flash Vs. hsalF!

One of the great DC Evil Twins was long-time Flash foe Professor Zoom, a.k.a. The Reverse Flash. Zoom was a superspeedster of the future, but unlike Barry Allen, this Flash was pure evil!

The art that issue was by Carmine Infantino, whom many consider to be the all-time greatest Flash artist. “The Menace of the Reverse-Flash” debuted in issue #139, the first of many stories featuring the Silver Age Flash’s Evil Twin. This one was written by John Broome.

Recently, Bruce Timm of Batman Animated fame did a tribute to Carmine’s cover, creating sort of an Evil Twin version of Infantino’s illo! Timm’s piece isn’t a direct swipe, but a completely new drawing using Carmine’s original layouts. Timm seemed to actually channel 1960s-era Infantino for his homage!

The Flash had actually faced an evil twin years before, in February 1949, when he’d battled a criminal version of himself called The Rival. Reportedly, John Broome scripted “The Rival Flash,” in Flash Comics #104, the final Golden Age issue. A bogus version of The Flash’s speed serum powered this hooded version of The Flash, but the real speedster made quick work of him.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Evil’s Funny Side!

Not even kiddie comics are immune from Evil Twins!

Supermouse had double trouble in the form of Cooper Mouse, a lookalike crook. After stealing some powerful supercheese from Supermouse, the dastardly double disguised himself and wreaked all kinds of havoc. The rat’s nefarious plan almost worked, until he kissed Annabel Mouse, Soupie’s lovely girlfriend. She smelled onions––which Supermouse detested. Plot foiled! Cooper Mouse just didn’t pass the sniff test.

If a comic book hero sticks around long enough, more than one Evil Twin is sure to pop up. Case in point: “Mirror Mutiny” in the very first issue of the mouse’s solo title. Here Supermouse’s own reflection leads a revolt of all the mirror images in town. He and the other reflections are tired of copying all of the stupid expressions people make when looking in a mirror. They go on strike, until the Mouse of Steel comes up with a great idea: get people to do more fun stuff in front of mirrors for them to imitate, like “eating ice cream and reading comic books!” Brilliant!

If two Evil Twin stories are good, then a third must be even better––as in “The Magic Mirror!” in Supermouse #11, featuring a Good Twin. In fact, it’s Soupie’s own reflection (again!), one he meets after accidentally stumbling into Mirrorland. Who says all comic book twins have to be evil?

Mirror Images! (Top right:) Supermouse vs. Cooper Mouse, from Coo Coo Comics #23 (March 1946), the comic in which Supermouse starred before he got his own mag. Even the names sound similar! According to cartoonist Jim Engel, the art is by Al Hubbard. Jim also believes most of the “Supermouse” stories were written by Richard Hughes, of ACG fame. (Left:) Supermouse met his own reflection in Supermouse #1 (Dec. 1948). Milt Stein illustrated this story. (Above:) That mighty mouse met yet another twin, Reflection, in Supermouse #11 (Feb. 1951), also drawn by Milt Stein—but at least this one was on his side! [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Evil Twins!

Blue Beetle’s Not-So-Evil Clone!

Bob Kanigher wrote THE most twisted Evil Twin story of all time. Yes, the same guy who penned the notorious 1970 classic “I Am Curious Black,“ in which Lois Lane searches for the real scoop on race relations by going undercover as a black “sister.” In that story her complexion reverts to white at the end, disproving the old adage “Once you try black, you can never go back!”

But that story wasn’t half as crazy as “The Adventure of the Double Cell” in Fox’s Blue Beetle #33.

An enemy agent murders brilliant Professor Hogart as he experiments with the very origins of life. While investigating the crime, the Beetle accidentally injects himself with the doc’s secret serum. He blacks out and awakens to find himself staring at an exact duplicate that is dripping with something… wet.

That wet stuff is actually the afterbirth, since the Beetle just gave birth to himself! Ickk!!

Our hero explains the facts of life to his twin. ”So you see, Hogart had solved the riddle of cell division and you are the result of his discovery.” Junior replies, “You mean... you are my father? Or shall I say, mother?” Double-Ickk!

When the Beetle tells “sonny” to lay low for awhile, the twin replies, “Yes, mother!” Man, that kid’ll need some serious therapy!

My Son, The Clone! Scenes from “The Adventure of the Double Cell” from Fox’s Blue Beetle #33 (Aug. 1944). Script by Robert Kanigher, with art possibly by Herman Browner—or else by E.C. Stoner, whose career will be examined next issue. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Later, the Beetle (in his Dan Garrett identity) and his twin try to dope out who the killers are. The Garretts probably figure “two heads are better than one.” But the enemy agent is busy, too. He injects himself with the serum, creating his very own Evil Twin! However, the two are so evil they wind up killing each other. Serves ’em right!

Later, while the Blue Beetle follows a lead, a Nazi agent sneaks up from behind and blows his brains out. But (surprise! surprise!) the poor victim turns out to be the clone. “The fiends!” says the real Blue Beetle, staring at the body. “His entire face is blown away!”

This ties up a lot of loose ends, but is the Beetle grateful? Not a bit! He goes right out and beats the crap out of the remaining agents, destroying the formula in the process.

By any measure it’s a remarkable story, full of crazy plot twists. But strangest of all is that Kanigher wrote this cloning story in 1944!

For the record, the first animals to be cloned were sea urchins, by a man named Hans Dreisch in the late 1800s. Kanigher wasn’t the first to come up with the idea of cloning a man. Oracle: Thinkquest’s “History of Cloning” states that:

“In 1902, another scientist, embryologist Hans Spemman, used a hair from his infant son as a knife to separate a 2celled embryo of a salamander, which also grow externally. He later separated a single cell from a 16-celled embryo. In those experiments, both the large and small embryos developed into identical adult salamanders. Spemman went on to propose what he called a “fantastical experiment”—to remove the genetic material from an adult cell, and use it to grow another adult.”

Maybe so. But I’m guessing that even the good doctor would be hard pressed to explain how the Blue Beetle cloned his snazzy blue costume!

And Finally...

While reading about Evil Twins in the funnies is fun, thank goodness they don’t exist in real life. Take, for instance, my Uncle Irwin. I mean, a sweet guy like him could never have an Evil Twin. Or could he?

‘Till next time...

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Comic Fandom Archive

“Of Graphic Stories & Wonderworlds” A Conversation With Writer, Publisher, & Bookstore Owner RICHARD KYLE—Part 2

[This is the 8th 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 one of the guests of honor at that event.]

by Bill Schelly

Introduction

ere is the second part of my conversation with Richard Kyle, which took place in March 2011, about three weeks after Part 1. Last time, as recorded in Alter Ego #115, Richard discussed reading comic books in the late 1930s, quitting school when he was 13, some juvenile attempts at writing, and his involvement in science-fiction fandom. Then we covered his entrance into comics fandom through the pages of Dick and Pat Lupoff’s fanzine Xero and his entry in the “All in Color For a Dime” series, called “The Education of Victor Fox.” Now Richard and I discuss his increasing participation in comics fandom in 1964, both in the pages of CAPA-Alpha and in Bill Spicer’s fanzine Fantasy Illustrated.

I would like to simply add that it was really a kick to be able to talk at length with Richard, after having been a fan of his writing since I encountered it in some of the first fanzines I purchased as a teenager. Our talk was transcribed by CFA stalwart Brian K. Morris.

BILL SCHELLY: In 1964, Xero ended, but by then you’d linked up with Bill Spicer and Fantasy Illustrated. I’m curious how that occurred.

RICHARD KYLE: I don’t know. I don’t remember whether I ordered Bill’s magazine or what.

BS: He may have just written to you because he liked your Fox piece, and that somehow led to you getting a column in Fantasy Illustrated.

KYLE: Independent of me, he and Bruce [Berry] had been corresponding, and he had gotten Bruce to draw the adaptation of the Adam Link story [“Adam Link’s Vengeance” in Fantasy Illustrated #1 and 2]. That brought me back in touch with Bruce.

BS: And right into the middle of comics fandom. Xero was really a bridge between science-fiction and comics fandom

KYLE: Yeah, yeah. Bill asked me to do a column in Fantasy Illustrated. I had created a column for CAPA-Alpha—you know, the Amateur Press Association—and I was one of the original founding members. And at first, I was just really an enthusiast of the old comics because they awakened so many emotions in me.

What’s In A Name? (Left:) Richard Kyle, in a recent photo. (Above:) By the fall 1967 (#8) issue of Fantasy Illustrated, editor/publisher Bill Spicer had become so enamored of Kyle’s term for cartoon continuities that he renamed his fanzine Graphic Story Magazine. Even those who didn’t read Kyle’s article in it were hit with the title in the advertisements in the adzine Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector, which spread the term “graphic story” far and wide. [Cover art ©2013 George Metzger.]

Of Graphic Stories & Wonderworlds

having to get my CAPAAlpha contribution done and get it sent off so I’d be on schedule. “What am I going to talk about?” That was the first thing that popped into my mind—so I’d obviously been thinking about it. BS: Of course there’s the term “the graphic arts.” Is that what spurred you to use the words “graphic art,”or “graphic story”?

KYLE: My first thought was “graphic story,” because I was familiar with “graphic” as in “graphic arts” or “graphic display” and that sort of thing. Then I went to my dictionary, which happened to be The Merriam-Webster New International Dictionary, Fifth Edition. It has the most wonderful, exact, and precise definition of “graphic” that I’d seen Links With EC anywhere. [Reads from the dictionary:] “Graphic: (Left:) Landon Chesney’s remarkable cover for Fantasy Illustrated #1 (1964), the fanzine that was named after the erstwhile EC Picto-Fiction magazines. Bill Spicer’s fanzine brought back most of the genres of EC stories from the pre-Code era, as 1. Well delineated; vividly created by the most talented writers and artists in fandom. [Art ©2013 Estate of Landon Chesney.] described; also describing (Right:) Since the EC’s science-fiction title Weird Science-Fantasy never got around to adapting Eando (Otto) Binder’s classic clearly and vividly. 2. Of or robot story “Adam Link’s Vengeance”—the next in the Link series after the tales that they did adapt in mid-1950s issues— pertaining to the arts Bill Spicer sought to remedy the omission by producing a spectacular adaptation in collaboration with the dazzlingly (graphic arts) of painting, talented artist D. Bruce Berry. This was possibly the finest graphic story to emerge from fandom’s early days. From Fantasy drawing, engraving, and Illustrated #1. [Art ©2013 D. Bruce Berry; adaptation text ©2013 Bill Spicer; original story ©2013 Estate of Otto Binder.] any other arts which pertain to the expression of BS: Can you describe how you invented the terms “graphic novel” and ideas by means of lines, marks, or characters impressed on a “graphic story”? Was that because “comics” seemed like it wasn’t surface.” That settled it. lf that isn’t the perfect description of what properly or sufficiently descriptive? a comic book story is, I don’t know.

KYLE: Well, it wasn’t that it was insufficient. It’s like the term “undertaker.” What does an undertaker undertake, you know? It’s a phrase or a term that seems to describe something but in fact doesn’t. And “comics” was that way. All the references that people had were to things that were distasteful or silly or certainly unserious. Yet here I was, reading stories—say, the ones at EC, but it was also true of some from other comic book publishers—by guys who were very highly skilled. It wasn’t as though they were trivial people. I was really concerned about it, because I saw these people doing what I recognized as serious work, whether it was necessarily humorous or not. In some cases it was. Some, it wasn’t. But it was work of importance. I rebelled at the idea that any art form couldn’t be serious just by the nature of it. That bothered me and it bothered me increasingly. I’d read comments, “Well, that’s comic book s***,” “It’s only comics,” or other similar statements. I can remember, one night, thinking about it before I was going to bed.... “Well, what would you call them?” I immediately thought of “graphic story” and subsequently, “graphic novel.”

BS: That was when you were lying in bed at night?

KYLE: I wasn’t even in a state of reverie which, you know, would be conducive to something like that. I was just thinking about

BS: I agree. So the next day, you put that in your “Wonderworld” contribution for CAPA-Alpha, and within a few weeks it was out for discussion. KYLE: Yeah, and nobody bothered discussing it. [chuckles] BS: Oh?

KYLE: I did four or five “Wonderworld” contributions to K-a and never got a single response from any of them. So when Bill Spicer offered me a column in Fantasy Illustrated, I jumped on it—and dropped out of CAPA-Alpha. Eventually, as you know, Bill changed the name of his fanzine to Graphic Story Magazine. My column was called “Graphic Story Review,” and it did attract quite a bit of interest, and Bill got letters in response. [Richard’s column debuted in Fantasy Illustrated #4, 1965. –Bill.]

BS: I remember one particular discussion which happened after you likened the editor of a comics story—or graphic story, excuse me—to the director of a movie. Can we explore that idea a bit?

KYLE: It enraged a lot of people, and I can understand and not understand it at the same time. When you touch a sensitive button for people at times, they never really read everything that you’ve

Comics Fandom Archive

Manning Up (Left:) Bill Spicer and Richard Kyle discuss comics (what else?) at the 1964 fan meeting at Russ Manning’s California home. Soon the two of them would launch a “graphic revolution” of sorts, popularizing the terms “graphic story” and “graphic novel” that Kyle invented that same year. A photo of Richard, Bill, and others at the Magnus/Tarzan artist’s home was seen in A/E #115. (Right:) Kyle’s often controversial “Graphic Story Review” column appeared in each issue of Fantasy Illustrated from #4 through #7, shown here. It was accompanied in this issue with a two-page header utilizing Marvel Comics clip art of the era. The column itself, however, was concerned with both DC and Marvel super hero characters. (FI #7, Spring 1967.) [Art ©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

said. They read part of it and they blow their tops. I never felt that the editor was more important than the writer or artist; I thought the function of editor was, however. I still do. The editorial function can be wielded by anyone in the creative process, writer, artist—or editor. And they can do it well or badly. And do. “Editor” is a

function, not a fat guy with a dead cigar in his kisser.

BS: The director coordinates the various professionals who go ahead and ply their crafts.

KYLE: Yes, but he also controls what’s seen and what’s written. I mean, it’s more than just coordinating things. Harvey Kurtzman wrote and drew and penciled and inked his own stories. Kurtzman also oversaw the penciling and inking of those who worked from his scripts and layouts. As editor, he performed every possible function that you could possibly do in comics. There weren’t many people that did that, but my point was that the editorial function was the critical one. The editor says, “All right now, you do something.” He selects a writer, he selects an artist, he approves the storyline, he performs all of these functions. Now, a lot of them are implicit. When Carl Barks was doing Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck, he was living well away from the office for a great deal of that time, and it was just agreed that Barks was reliable and you didn’t have to edit him except under I think only a couple or three circumstances where they were unhappy about something. But that doesn’t mean that the editorial function’s been removed. It’s that Barks performed the editorial function himself.

BS: I think maybe some of the people disagreed because they felt that in most comic book situations, you could read stories that were edited by different people and couldn’t detect a difference, necessarily, between work coming from one editor or another. With some you could, maybe, like Julius Schwartz perhaps, or certainly Stan Lee. But there are other editors that you wouldn’t know—you wouldn’t be able to tell if they switched editors, immediately tell a difference, whereas you could tell if a movie was directed by Hitchcock even if you didn’t see the credits.

Their Ultimate Fantasy The cover of 1972’s Fantasy Illustrated #7, the last issue before the name change to Graphic Story Magazine, was credited to “Adkins & Wood”— which probably means that Dan Adkins penciled it and Wally Wood inked it. [©2013 Dan Adkins & Estate of Wallace Wood.]

KYLE: Well, yeah. But again, a lot of editors were just directing traffic and that’s all they did, including Stan, aside from displaying a certain kind of personality in some of his stories. But essentially, that’s all that all of these guys were doing. They did it for years. They consumed artists and, I imagine, writers. I mean, there were a number of guys who were extremely good writers that wrote for comics. Alfred Bester, for example, and there are others that would come to mind if I spent some time thinking about it, people of real talent. And that talent was, for all practical purposes, unused. That’s an example of the power of editors... that somebody who is essentially a nobody could thwart someone who was capable of much more than they could imagine.

Of Graphic Stories & Wonderworlds

concerned, without exception. At EC, the editors made two changes in my work during the time I was there. The last panel of a science-fiction story, “Marbles,” in Incredible Science Fiction #30, and the cover of Piracy #6....”

You’re probably familiar with this so I won’t go on. That’s the substance of what Krigstein said and that was the complaint most people made. However, facts are facts. The editor buys the script, assigns the writer, assigns the artist, and oversees the creation of the story. From beginning to end, the editor has the most power. He had better use it creatively. As it is, virtually all comics editors have been nothing more than mechanics, including some of the most celebrated. Krigstein was talking people, however. I was talking function. Krigstein was a brilliant, idiosyncratic artist, but you can’t build an entire art form on one point of view, one art style, one kind of story-telling, no matter how brilliant. In the movies, the director is there to represent the audience. In the graphic story that’s the editor’s job. It’s worth remembering, too, that the idea of the graphic novel, and the graphic novel itself, did not originate with the professional comic book writers or the professional comic book artists, or the professional comic book editors, or the professional comic book publishers—it originated with the demand by comic book fans themselves for grown-up comic book stories.

Graphic Enough For You? Graphic Story World #8 (December 1972)—not to be confused with the earlier Graphic Story Magazine #8—offered Dan Spiegle’s “Penn and Chris,” an interview with Jim Steranko, and John Benson’s excellent report on the 1972 EC Fan-Addict Convention. [Art ©2013 Dan Spiegel.]

BS: Do you remember some of the reactions?

Clearly there was—is?—something fundamentally wrong with the comic book biz. From the very beginning, it has run away from R&D. But why? The question could surely use an answer. Steve Jobs could have supplied it, and so could every one of today’s Silicon Valley innovators. However, despite everything, the fans are at last getting what they clearly wanted from the beginning—if only, perhaps, to see the medium made obsolete in too short a time by easily foreseeable developments of the iPad.

BS: Well, one could argue that when Kirby went to DC, when he effectively no longer had an editor—of course, he was doing his own writing then—the stories weren’t as good as the stories produced at the height of The Fantastic Four when he was collaborating with Stan Lee and Lee was editing and contributing a lot.

KYLE: Let me see if I can find Bernard Krigstein’s response … Ahh … He begins by saying that he’d had the pleasure of reading my “extremely interesting” remarks in Fantasy Illustrated #4, Summer 1965, then goes on, [reading] “It would be unnatural to find one’s KYLE: Well, yes. self in absolute agreement with any essay of artistic analysis, no I agree, except matter how excellent it may be.” He’d been real nice to me to lead that Jack’s best up to this. “And while there were several items I did disagree with, work for DC I want to confine myself to one point which seems to me to need began just at the most clarification in understanding the creation of comic book the point that stories. That is, Mr. Kyle’s statements that ‘as the motion picture is DC, or Carmine the director’s medium, the graphic story is an editor’s.’ Actually, Infantino, the editor is the least important contributor to the final product. cancelled all of My argument is that an editor can intrude into the artist’s domain those books, only to lower the artistic level of the final product. lf there has been because Jack an instance of an editor having improved a story by requiring a was the kind change, and I have never seen such an improvement, it could only of a occur with an inferior artist, and this condition rules out any possiwriter/artist bility of a work of Art in the first place. It is a fact that any new who tries out ideas I introduced into graphic story breakdown, or drawing, New Gods For Old were the result of persuasion, arguments, and outright Like a lot of readers, Kyle felt that writer/artist Jack Kirby breaks between editors and was really getting a handle on his Fourth World titles (New Gods, Forever People, and Mr. Miracle) just when DC myself and were not introcancelled them. Pictured is Kirby’s cover for New Gods #11 duced, but permitted very (Nov. 1972), the final issue. [©2013 DC Comics.] reluctantly, by the editors

Comics Fandom Archive

ideas until he hits on what he really wants to say. The series was just getting underway....

BS: That DC work was certainly a purer expression of Kirby, whether you like it or not, because he was doing the writing and everything. There’s something to be said for that. At any rate, it sounds like you stand by your original comment about movie directors and comic book editors.

KYLE: Well, I do, because the editor controls it. He’s got the gun, he has the money, whatever term you want to use. It isn’t that I favor the editor’s dominance. It’s not my opinion, it’s a demonstrable fact, and it can be a very unfortunate one, just as it can be a very brilliant one.

BS: Obviously, Bill Spicer really liked the “graphic story” term, so much so that he changed the title of his magazine, which is quite a dramatic thing to do, to put that idea forward.

KYLE: At the time that I came up with “graphic story” and “graphic novel,” Bill—by chance—was searching for a term himself. He had come up with “panel graphics,” I think it was. Of course I was delighted when he changed the name to Graphic Story Magazine. If it hadn’t been for Bill, [chuckles] I seriously doubt if the terms would ever have been picked up by anybody.

BS: Now I want to talk about the genesis of the Graphic Story Bookshop and Richard Kyle, Books, and how that all flowed. We’re jumping ahead here, but how did Graphic Story bookstore originate?

And I Say To Myself, It’s A Wonderworld Life (Left:) Fred Patten, depicted at a San Diego Comicon in a photo by Vince Davis, became Richard Kyle’s partner in the Graphic Story Bookshop, a mail-order business to sell comics produced overseas to American readers. (Above:) Alex Toth’s story “Jon Fury in Japan” had its first printing in the pages of Wonderworld #10 (Nov. 1973), Kyle’s fanzine that had formerly been known as Graphic Story World. The new name came from the early-1940s Fox title Wonderworld Comics, which had once featured covers and interior art by Lou Fine; see A/E #101 for Kyle’s justly lauded article “The Education of Victor Fox.” [Cover art ©2013 D. Bruce Berry.]

KYLE: I met Fred Patten at a fan gathering. He could read French and was an enthusiast of the French comics albums. I was interested in the Tintin books because they were famous—and I’d never seen or heard of them before. Fred loaned me some of the best of them, and we began to correspond— I lived in Long Beach and he lived mulch further north, near the Hughes Aircraft plant, where he was a technical librarian. Soon he was contributing to my fanzine, Wonderworld—Fred was an excellent writer, and an exceptional reviewer, one of the best I’ve ever read—and when he wrote a long article on France’s Asterix, reader interest was strong. So we began to import some of the French albums and sold them through the magazine.

BS: You mean like getting them at a discount and re-selling them?

KYLE: Yeah, buying them wholesale from the publishers. This became increasingly successful. Finally, we were ordering so much stuff, it was filling up Fred’s house. We needed some place to store all this stuff, so we leased a small space in downtown Long Beach. This enabled us to operate as a retail store. Then the store began to take away time from the mail-order books and albums. Eventually,

we became a science-fiction and comics bookstore and were buying material from all over Europe. We had stuff from Italy and France and Belgium and a couple of other places, and it just kept on growing. We moved into a larger store and then from there into the Third Street store, which was 2400 square feet. We’d go on to become an all-new—we never carried used books or magazines— general fiction bookstore, as well as an SF and fantasy store—and Fred ordered the first Japanese manga imported into the U.S., to add to the European imports.

BS: At what point did the name of the store change to Richard Kyle, Books?

KYLE: When Fred became involved in other ventures, in anime and manga, and I bought him out. It was friendly, we’re good friends.

BS: At that point, then, you changed the store’s name to Richard Kyle, Books?

Of Graphic Stories & Wonderworlds

KYLE: It was Wonderworld for a while, and then it became Richard Kyle, Books. By that time, it wasn’t only a comic book store and a science-fiction store. We specialized in so much stuff, we became a general bookstore. Incidentally, there was a rock band called The Richard Kyle, Books. Have no idea what happened to them. BS: How long were you in business?

KYLE: Twenty-four years. Until ’97. We were still in the black, but it was time. We’d published the first graphic novel, George Metzger’s Beyond Time and Again, and the story that Mark Evanier has called “the last great Kirby strip,” Jack Kirby’s “Street Code.” We’d received the lnkpot Award from the San Diego Comic-Con, and a Prix Phenix medallion from French fandom. And a legion of friends. I’m not likely to ever do better than that.

BS: Let’s conclude with me asking, what kind of stuff do you read today? KYLE: I’m still looking for new.

Coming Up: Our final column covering the 2011 Comic-Con International 50th-Anniversary celebration, a transcript of the “Spotlight on Bill Schelly” panel, hosted by Gary Brown, will appear in A/E #119—while next issue’s Comic Fandom Archive will be guest-written by Bernie Bubnis, 1964 host of the first comics convention ever!

Pulp Fiction (Left:) Kyle brought back Argosy magazine, one of the original pulps from nearly a century earlier, while running his late, lamented book store in Long Beach. This is D. Bruce Berry’s cover of the April 1989 issue. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

In Memoriam

Jean Giraud (Moebius) (1938-2012) “What He Liked, He Said, Was The Surprise” by Jean-Marc Lofficier

’m looking right now at the front page of the French morning paper Libération, the third largest daily in France, and staring back at me is a full-page portrait of Jean “Moebius” Giraud. The picture looks as if it was hastily drawn by rival superstar artist Enki Bilal. Under it, there is a punnish title: “Moebius: La Bande Décimée,” which sounds just like La Bande Dessinée (a French term for comic strips) but implies that the world of comics has been “decimated” by the news of the passing, on March 12, 2012, at age 73, of Jean “Moebius” Giraud, after a long battle with cancer.

Judging from the various testimonies posted on Twitter and the blogs, the copy writer of Liberation wasn’t wrong. The world of comics was indeed in mourning. His bibliography, not to mention his filmography, could easily fill the rest of this magazine. From the inscrutable Arzach to the bumbling John Difool, from the everresourceful Lt. Blueberry to the unflappable Major Grubert, from the enigmatic Starwatchers to the brightly-colored worlds of crystal, his storytelling and imagery have influenced legions of professionals worldwide. One can no more imagine a world of comics without Moebius than one without Jack Kirby in the U.S. or Hergé in Europe.

Jean (as he was known to his friends and family) was born in 1938 in Nogent-sur-Marne, a suburb of Paris. From childhood, he always wanted to tell stories in illustrated form. After a two-year stint at the School of Applied Arts in Paris, he began drawing Western and adventure stories for kids’ magazines, before a trip to Mexico and military service in Algeria during the Franco-Algerian War.

His career really began when he apprenticed with Joseph “Jijé” Gillain in 1961. He was quickly talent-spotted by writer JeanMichel Charlier, and in 1963, with Jean using the moniker “Gir,” the pair launched the adventures of Lieutenant Blueberry in the magazine Pilote. Blueberry was an unusual character for the times: an anti-hero, dirty, unshaven, a gambler and a drunkard, with a broken nose and a checkered career.

Jean also began drawing science-fiction illustrations and wicked satirical/fantastic strips for the magazine Hara-Kiri under the pseudonym “Moebius,” after the 19th-century German astronomer and mathematician (because of the double entendre on the meaning of “Moebius strip”).

In 1975, Jean co-created the magazine Métal Hurlant (Screaming Metal) with several other artists and writers. There he first published his ground-breaking strips Arzach, The Airtight Garage, and ultimately The Incal, a saga written by film director Alejandro Jodorowsky. In 1977, Len Mogel brought Métal Hurlant to the U.S.,

When Worlds Collide Jean Giraud led two divergent and major artistic lives—as “Gir,” drawing (and later also writing) Lt. Blueberry, and as “Moebius” illustrating his fantasy and science-fiction concepts. In the piece of art seen here, those two worlds met, at least for a moment. [©2013 Estate of Jean Giraud.]

where it was called Heavy Metal. From that point on, Moebius’ fame grew to international proportions. Film-wise, there was work on Jodorowsky’s aborted Dune film, which segued into Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), then Tron (1982).

From 1986 to 1996, Jean worked and often lived in the United States. Marvel embarked on a reprinting of his works, with over a dozen graphic novels devoted to Moebius and nine to Blueberry; there were also books from Catalan, Dark Horse, Graphitti, and Caliber. In 1988 he teamed up with Stan Lee to produce the graphic novel Silver Surfer: Parable, which gained unusual fame by becoming the cause of an argument in Quentin Tarantino’s film Crimson Tide (1995).

He also provided designs for the movies Willow (1988), The Abyss (1989), and The Fifth Element (1997), and for the video game Panzer Dragon (1995). By then Moebius had become fashionable, even commercial. In 1999, Sony opened its Metreon Entertainment Center in the heart of San Francisco; it included an entire gaming area designed by Moebius.

In 2000, Jean returned to France, where he was the subject of a major exhibit in 2004-05 and a major retrospective at the Cartier Foundation in 2010. Two documentaries, one in Germany, one in France, have been produced about him.

I remember Jean telling me once that Lt. Blueberry was his daytime job; he took it very seriously. But at night, he said, if he didn’t feel like going out to the movies or watching television, he would grab a sketchbook and start telling himself a story on the paper. One page after the other. Discovering it at the same time he was drawing it. What he liked, he said, was the surprise. So did we. And now we’ll never find out what’s on the next page....

Jean-Marc Lofficier and his wife Randy, who also wrote for U.S. comics, were friends and business associates of Jean Giraud during much of the 1980s and ’90s. They currently reside in France, where they run their publishing operation, Black Coat Press, and other creative ventures.

In Memoriam

Martin Filchock (1912-2012) “America’s Oldest Active Cartoonist”— Guinness, Take Note! A Remembrance by Jim Amash

artin Filchock packed an awful lot of living into his 100 years.

During the Great Depression, Martin hoboed from town to town, illegally rode the rails across country— narrowly avoiding death more than once in those travels—while looking for work, collecting survival instincts that served him well during the course of his years. He was a young newspaper sales boy, sold his first cartoon to the Hobo News in 1928, was a semi-professional baseball player, railroad worker, a miner as a minor, and a Civilian Conservation Corps worker who, besides working all day on rails and roads, drew cartoons for the CCC’s newspaper, and sometimes, for food in small towns. A World War II Army veteran of the Pacific Theatre of Operations, Martin even sold candy bars, silk products, and cigarettes on the black market while he

drew cartoons for his fellow soldiers on the side, which was probably the last dishonest thing he ever did. Martin was always drawing cartoons for somebody, somewhere, for over 80 years all totaled: sometimes for food, mostly for money, and once in a while, as a freebie—intended or not—because a few unscrupulous publishers did not pay him.

In between it all, Martin was one of the pioneers of early comic book art, starting in 1936 for Comics Magazine Company. He also worked for Centaur Publications and Lloyd Jacquet’s

Filchock & Friends Martin Filchock in the early 1940s—with still many decades of creative life ahead of him— and the splash panels of three of his early creations for Centaur-related comics group: “The Owl” (from Funny Pages, Vol. 4, #1, Jan. 1940)… “Mighty Man” (from Amazing-Man #9, Feb. 1940)… … and “The Fire-Man” from Liberty Scouts Comics #2 (Aug. 1941). Thanks to Bruce Mason, Henry Andrews, Lee Boyette, and Jon R. Evans for providing these scans of vintage Filchock art. “The Owl” tied DC’s “Hawkman” as the first comic book feature about a winged crime-fighter—while Fire-Man once audaciously battled a dead ringer for Carl Burgos’ Human Torch! [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Martin Filchock

Funnies, Inc. shop, which put together Motion Pictures Funnies Weekly, whose first issue not only debuted Bill Everett’s “Sub-Mariner” but also Martin Filchock’s “Kar Toon and his Copy Cat.” In addition to drawing and lettering his work, Martin wrote most of his features (briefly assisted by his brother George), which included “Bob Colby,” “The CC Kid,” “The Fire-Man,” “Headless Horseman,” “The Owl,” and various covers. His “Mighty Man” feature was one of the earliest super-heroes, and among his many powers was the limitless ability to stretch his body, predating fellow Centaur co-worker/cartoonist Jack Cole’s 1941 Plastic Man creation by two years.

Returning from military service in 1945, Martin did not resume his comic book career, deciding he could make more money as a magazine gag cartoonist. He was right, because he was selling cartoons until the day he died. I doubt there have been very many magazines published in the last 60-plus years that haven’t been graced by a Filchock chuckle or two. Even now, Looking Back magazine still publishes his work, because Martin left a backlog of “Defective Detective” upon his passing. With this feature, Martin realized one of his last two remaining goals in life, which was to publish work until he was 100 years old, and to go on record in the Guinness Book of World Records as America’s Oldest Active Cartoonist. He succeeded in the former, but for unknown reasons, Guinness is stalling about granting Martin this obviously provable achievement. I wish he had lived to see it happen.

Martin was a fascinating man: an avid reader, and a news and sports junkie. An exceptionally likable and unpretentious man, we were friends before I even finished interviewing him. Caring, considerate, witty, knowledgeable, and proud without vanity, he could size up a situation or a human being quicker than most. I would like to say he was smarter than his years, but how many of us live to be 100? He paid attention to what happened around him, and he didn’t waste his life on foolishness. He was a friend in the old-fashioned sense of the term, not in the way that many view the concept in today’s world. A man of honor and strength, Martin’s word was his bond; he was a man you could trust implicitly. And though he watched his money, Martin was very generous to those who needed help.

Martin had a friend whose wife was ill. He kept abreast of the situation and continually consulted his own doctors, one of whom was his devoted daughter, Joanne, in hopes of passing on information that would help the friend’s wife receive better care. He watched out for his friends and neighbors, and though he wasn’t religious, he certainly lived by the Ten Commandments. Martin had seen enough of life to do nothing less than that.

When Martin’s wife was stricken with Alzheimer’s disease, he took care of her and kept her in their home until the end. Joanne told me that all of her mom’s doctors and nurses said that he was the most conscientious and tender care-giver they had ever seen. Joanne herself certainly inherited his best qualities. When Martin became ill at the end of his life, Joanne gave him the same quality of care he had given her mother.

He liked attention (who doesn’t?) and appreciated that he had fans like Lee Boyett, G.G. Faircloth, and Hames Ware, who cared about his work. For a dime or a dollar, Martin turned out a fun cartoon for any outlet that wanted him. He wasn’t a great

Martin & Martin The artist/writer in 2005, at age 93… and a gag cartoon he did some years back from Marvel/Timely publisher Martin Goodman’s Groovy magazine. Thanks for the latter to Jim Ludwig. The photo appeared in the Citizen Tribune newspaper of Morristown, Tennessee. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

cartoonist and was the first to admit that. But he knew how to make people happy. In fact, I think he was funnier in real life than he was on the published page. Martin built his life around humor: “Whenever I think of people enjoying my cartoons, it gives me great satisfaction.”

And he could take a good ribbing as well as he could dish it out. I remember when oil and gas were discovered on his land in Tennessee. I called him up and after he said “Hello,” I started singing, “Come and listen to my story about a man named Jed….” We had fun with that for a while, but there’s no way Martin was moving to Beverly Hills. As it turned out, the discovery wasn’t a big strike, and even if it was, Martin loved making cartoons too much to ever retire.

Martin was a proud dog-owner; he had five of them. He was short and small in stature, and he used to joke that his dogs were bigger than he was, but he walked them every day. Martin was also a hunter, and at the age of 98 he shot an 8-point buck on his land: “The recoil hurt my drawing shoulder for two weeks, so I’m retiring from hunting.” Soon after that, he stopped mowing his lawn and curtailed many of his physical activities. What I found remarkable was that, until he was almost 99, Martin never had any dietary restrictions of any kind. “I’ve got good genes and I’m gonna wear them as long as they fit me.”

Martin was 92 when I first contacted him about an interview, which was published in A/E #64. I missed a lot by not knowing him earlier, but good fortune—and my Alter Ego work—provided me with the opportunity to be his friend for the last eight years of his life. Martin made life fun for all of us because humor was the biggest part of his existence. And he made sure it was for those fortunate enough to be in his presence, too.

“He was utterly gracious to me and the young artist and any fans who approached him at the convention. What a wonderful talent—but, most of all, what a genuine, gracious, and supportive human being.” That was the experience of most of us who knew him, Ed. All that— plus one of the great comic book inkers, a good artist, and a very forward-thinking editor. I figure that, to average out for Dick, there have to be some real notalents out there.

Pat Bastienne, who worked with Dick for years as his assistant, and later as his editorial coordinator at DC when he was managing editor there—and who was also one of his closest friends and confidants—says: “Just to let you know, I received my copy of Alter Ego [#106] and spent the rest of the afternoon reading it. You did a great job, and thank you for being so faithful to ‘the way it was’ with and/or because of Dick. Of course, it put pangs on my heart again, but it was a fine tribute.”

oy here… so what else is new? Afraid I’ve had to kinda give up, at least for a little while, on trying to deal in each “re:” section with two issues of A/E. It’s all I can do to squeeze in comments about one issue—with thanks to artist Shane Foley and colorist Randy Sargent for this month’s “maskot” entry, which cleverly adapts one of L.B. Cole’s recurring motifs. [Alter Ego hero TM & ©2013 Roy & Dann Thomas; costume designed by Ron Harris; other art ©2013 Shane Foley.] Now, without further ado, or even a-don’t, I’ll dive headfirst into correspondence re Alter Ego #106 and coverage of Dick Giordano, Tony Tallarico, et al. As has been our usual wont, the quoted words of the letter-writer or e-mailer will be non-italicized, while all comments by Ye Editor will be in italics:

Ed Savage, artist/co-creator of the 1980s b&w comic Shadow Star, writes: “I never had the opportunity to work with Dick Giordano as a fellow professional, but I did meet him on two occasions—and both occasions bear out everything I have heard or read about him. The first time was in 1976 at a convention in San Francisco. What a convention that was: Neal Adams, Dick Giordano, Gil Kane, and Jack Kirby. I have a hard time approaching pros at cons. Feel like I am interfering with their time with other fans. But, for some reason, I felt comfortable approaching Dick. He was gracious and friendly, even though he had to deliver the line: Go home and practice more. So I did.

“The second time was when I was helping Dan Vado, doing advertising for his shop and conventions, and production for the early Slave Labor [Graphics] books. Dan asked me to be Dick’s hearing-ear dog—repeating questions for Dick that he didn’t hear well. I was elated to do this, but flustered, as well. I gave him a totally inept introduction but did okay with the questions. The amazing thing is that he said he remembered me from 1976. Wow. Really? Or was he just being gracious? Gotta leave that to those who knew him well.

“At the time, I was working on a book that I had published and that Dan had taken over publishing. I had drawn and helped plot the first two issues. After that I moved into production and management and passed the art chores to two young up-andcoming artists. Since I had Dick’s attention, I asked him to look over the work of and talk to the young penciler. He was not especially impressed with the young guy’s art (think it was too Marvelish), but, after looking at the first two issues, he told me I had improved a lot. Again, have to take him at his word; he had no reason to butter me up.

Of Cadillacs, Dinosaurs, And—Other Things One of A/E editor Roy Thomas’ favorite collaborations with Dick Giordano (along with Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt at DC, but that was as much wife Dann’s project as his own) was the three-issue story arc they did together to inaugurate Topps Comics’ all-too-brief series Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, riffing on the original concept created in Xenozoic Tales by Mark Schultz. The Grand Comics Database and other sources usually emphasize the William Stout covers on issues #1-3 (Feb.-April 1994), and those are indeed beautiful and lush—but RT has a special fondness for the three “alternate covers” drawn by DG, who’d done the interior artwork. Above is the second of those. The story arc was a sequel to one of Schultz’s earliest “Xenozoic Tales.” [©2013 Mark Schultz or the respective copyright holders.]

re:

Mike Vosburg, pro comics artist and the creator of Lori Lovecraft: “Just finished reading through your really fascinating and informative issue on Dick Giordano. For the record, while he only inked one job of mine that I ever saw, Dick was the best guy I ever had finish my work. (I also penciled some pages for him for the Modesty Blaise book he did, but I have never seen a copy of the finished book. Anyone out there have access to a copy?) And, like everyone else, I thought he was a great guy.”

Michael Dunne, A/E reader who has generously supplied many a piece of commissioned pro art to us, added a tidbit of info to our Giordano tribute: “I was reading issue #106 last weekend and can tell you with certainty that, in the Dick Giordano final Heroes-Con panel [as transcribed in that issue], I am Questioner #5 and #10. I was very interested in whether Ditko had the same aversion to the Ted Kord Blue Beetle that he had for Marvel’s Spidey and Dr. Strange. Others may dream of a Ditko Spider-Man sketch; for me it would be a Blue Beetle sketch by Steve, I so loved that Charlton Action Heroes line when was a high school freshman.” Me, I’ll admit I’d opt for Spider-Man or Dr. Strange—but a close third would be the original Captain Atom—the original 1950s costume, not the one revamped in the mid-’60s, which left me cold. Different strokes….

Jim Ludwig, whose name is in evidence about a zillion times in this very issue for all the scans of L.B. Cole and Jay Disbrow art he sent us: “I read your mention of the barred [letter] ‘I’ by ‘A. Machine’ in A/E #106. I checked in a comic, and even in your example [on p. 12] the bars were added by a brush. Looking with a magnifying glass, the difference in the bars of the “I” can be seen.” Thanks for your efforts, Jim—I never thought of trying that. Now the question is—who added those horizontal bars at the top and bottom of some capital “I’s”? Dick, perhaps—or his long-suffering wife Marie, who operated “A. Machine”? Solve one mystery and another one rears its Hydra-like head.

Tony Isabella, who spent years travailing in the comic book field as a writer and editor, begs to differ with a characterization made of him in #106: “I am not the ‘co-creator’ of Black Lightning. I’m the creator of Black Lightning. Solo. Which examination of the first couple of years of the character’s appearance in various DC comics will verify. It’s in the credits. I had solo credit until shortly after I inquired about buying out whatever stake DC felt it had in my creation. Black Lightning was never a work-for-hire creation. Everything key to the character was created before DC entered into a partnership agreement with me. While it’s true that [artist] Trevor Von Eeden can be rightfully considered the key designer of the original Black Lightning costume—[though] several others designed elements of the costume, including Joe Orlando, Bob Rozakis, and myself—that doesn’t entitle him to co-creator status. Except in DC’s eyes, since they wanted to diminish my claim to Black Lightning. They retroactively gave him that status and starting giving him half the royalty money owed to me. I know DC and Trevor will both dispute the above facts, but they are the facts. I’d appreciate a correction in a near-future issue of Alter Ego.” Naturally, Tony, we’re not in a God-like position to know the ultimate truths of any creative situation—but true it is that you were originally listed as creator of the Black Lightning hero, and we’re happy to provide you an opportunity to state your side of things for the record.

Bernie Bubnis: “The [Tony] Tallarico interview by Jim Amash is incredible. What a memory Tallarico has! I worked as a gofer in the art department of a large NY advertising firm. I just know a few of my fellow gofers went on to bigger and better things in the art world, but I can’t remember a soul. I had my own small agency for a while, and I am hard pressed to remember all but a few of my own employees.” Mark Evanier, longtime comics and TV scribe, pointed out that, due to

“Hawk-aaaa!” Fan and collector Michael Dunne kindly sent us this prelim pencil of a commission drawing of Blackhawk done for him by Dick Giordano. We can’t recall—did we ever print the finished artwork? [Blackhawks TM & ©2013 DC Comics.]

a typo (doubtless made by Ye Editor), #106’s obituary/tribute to artist Jon D’Agostino related that he died in Ansonia, California—when the actual state was Connecticut. Of another error that made it into print in that piece, he adds: “I did typo that the School of Industrial Art was located in Los Angeles, but I caught that and fixed it almost immediately. Roy must either have downloaded it just before I did that or somehow got a cached, uncorrected version.”

Rita Perlin, the sister of Spirit letterer Abe Kanegson, who was covered in several editions of Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, sent this note to Crypt editor/writer Michael T. Gilbert, who passed it along to us: “I loved the articles about Abe. You did a great job of incorporating all the photos and artwork I sent you. For your information, however, Abe graduated from James Monroe High School when he was about 15½; hence the graduation picture in the article. He then dropped out of City College (now CUNY) after completing a year or two, maybe for financial reasons. It was still during the Depression.”

Richard Kyle, 1960s-70s fan-writer and publisher, was, as I’ve often said, the source of the “Nighthawk” name (and ultimately of his secret identity, as well) when I was developing that character in the Squadrons Sinister and Supreme for Marvel. I mentioned in #106 how I got the idea to call my Batman surrogate “Nighthawk” from a hoax he pulled in (and on) for the late-’60s/early-’70s comics newsletter Newfangles, which I recalled as being a review of a (nonexistent, as it turned out) new pulp magazine, and he responded: “The Nighthawk/Night Hawk mention took me back a ways. I’ve forgotten some of the details, but I do remember how Nighthawk’s name was chosen. Along with a half dozen other fan writers, I was reviewing books for a column in Don and Maggie Thompson’s Newfangles. It had started off well, with fresh, new books and stories—but the quality of the field had deteriorated. So, in a fit of misguided ennui, I ‘reviewed’ a nonexistent comic book and attributed it to the new company that was publishing C.C. Beck’s short-lived Fatman. I used the review to

[comments & correspondence]

suggest what the current Batman ought to be.

“I needed a name for the hero, of course. Maybe The Owl? But there had been too many indifferent ‘Owls’…. So I ran through variations on other birds of prey that might suggest Batman. And ‘Nighthawk’ presented itself immediately. I’ll swear there was no English pulp magazine involved. If I had come across it anywhere, I’d have bought it. Kyle isn’t that common a surname, and I am vain. At the least, I’d have remembered it.” Oh, and Richard signed this letter: “Thurston Kyle.” That’s the true identity of The Night Hawk in the old English pulp magazine mentioned (and shown) in A/E #106... which was spookily similar to Richard’s own name... while I christened “my” Nighthawk “Kyle Richmond” in homage to Richard’s little hoax. Earlier in the missive, RK also wrote:

“Enjoyed the Dick Giordano stuff immensely, of course. Giordano was one of the few visionaries the field has ever had. Without him, I doubt The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen would have been published. Or that DC would still be around. He deserves Alan Brennert’s appreciation. And DC’s eternal but unacknowledged gratitude.”

For my part, I was interested in tracking down Richard’s original review to see what he had actually written. I was helped immeasurably by Maggie Thompson herself, after I dropped her a line at the late lamented Comics Buyer’s Guide, where she was senior editor. She quoted Richard’s “review” from Newfangles #14 (Sept. 1968)—“circulation 81”—page 4, in “Criticizing the Comics”: “Nighthawk #1: An old idea, handled in a fresh new way. The first costume-hero strip since Bob Kane’s original ‘Batman’ with a genuine atmosphere of mystery and strange adventure. Good, tight scripts by David Maris (especially ‘My Name Is Fear’), and capable art and outstanding breakdowns by Glen Hawkins. Saddle-stitched 25¢ format may affect sales adversely. (rk)”

labor and a half, and we relied on our sources to be dependable. Anybody can hoax anyone who trusts him or her, so it was not only not an achievement but it was also a complicating factor, as tried to track down details of what he was recommending in a time of no direct-market comics circulations.”

Of course, Richard and Maggie have long since made up, and they happily shared two or three panels at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con’s celebration of 50 years of comics fandom… since Maggie knows that Richard never really meant to cause any trouble and that there was certainly no malign intent. Even though later I misremembered him as referring to Nighthawk as a “pulp magazine” rather than a comic (probably based on my recalling Richard’s “saddle-stitched” reference, though that was true of both pulps and comics), I’m doubtless the only person who benefited from Richard’s little hoax, since it soon gave me a name and motif for a member of the Squadron Sinister that I would dream up and of which I would even draw the initial costume sketch for The Avengers #70 (Nov. 1969). The funny thing is, I had to be vaguely aware, somewhere in the back of my mind, of the old DC Western hero called The Nighthawk, some of whose stories I’d read in the ’50s—but that Nighthawk never consciously entered my mind. But—did that one subconsciously influence Richard? Did he ever even hear of that Nighthawk? Oh, what a tangled web we weave…! Keep sending those kudos and kibitzes to:

Roy Thomas e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135

And, speaking of The Avengers, as we were just a couple of paragraphs back, don’t miss our next-issue spotlight on the first decade of that ever-assembling combo!

Maggie also quoted wryly from her and Don’s embarrassed admission in Newfangles #18 (Jan. 1969, circulation 130): “And now a correction: In NF #14, we printed a review of a comic called Nighthawk that had been seen only by the reviewer, Richard Kyle, and a Johnny-come-lately cohort who sent in a (never-used) review of the same issue. It has been evident for some time that we were hoaxed. After waiting in vain for the punch line, we have decided to apologize to our readers for misinforming them. We will not be as trusting in the future and hope our reputation isn’t smeared too badly by our gullibility.”

Her additional recent comments, to Ye Editor: “May have been meant as a goodnatured little hoax, but it was a frippin’ pain in the butt. Pulling everything together every month was a

Holy Homage, Batman! Since we’ve been talking Tony Tallarico here—and since a Batman-related hoax is discussed in this “re:” section—we thought we’d use this opportunity to spotlight a pair of Tallarico-produced covers (with the pencils farmed out to his longtime friend Bill Fraccio, and Tony inking—after Tony lined up the job in the first place) that were basically takeoffs on the Darknight Detective: Dell’s Dracula #1 (Nov. 1966), which turned Bram Stoker’s varicose-vein-sipping vampire into a superhero… and Bobman and Teddy, the 1966 sequel to the super-successful, tabloid-sized The Great Society Comic Book from Parallax Publishing Co. Thanks to James Cassara and Albert Val for both scans. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

#176 June 2013

Video-Grams A Look At Captain Video And His Video Rangers by James Heath Lantz, with Roy Thomas

[Abridged from the hardcover volume Roy Thomas Presents Captain Video, published by PS Artbooks, 2013— but originally prepared for this issue of Alter Ego]

Vini, Video, Vinci!

etween its birth in 1946 and its death in 1956, the DuMont Television Network gave home audiences such classics as The Ernie Kovacs Show and Cavalcade of Stars, the show that introduced The Honeymooners. The network was an offshoot of DuMont Laboratories, a company that manufactured television equipment—including TV sets. Launching its own network was presumably one way of selling those early sets!

And nothing on the DuMont Network was quite like Captain Video and His Video Rangers.

Ostensibly set in the year 2254, Captain Video (for short) aired from June 27, 1949, through April 1, 1955. Its 7:00-7:30 p.m. time slot from Monday through Friday made the series popular among both children and adults. It had all the staples of children’s programming of the day—including moral lessons and the use of film clips—even while it capitalized on the nascent adult interest in the possibility of space travel. The show ushered in science-fiction on television, a genre that would later include The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Doctor Who, et al. Unfortunately, only about two dozen of Captain Video’s more than 1000 have survived, and fewer still of those are available at present on DVD. Captain Video could claim a lot of firsts.

It was the first space-adventure program transmitted on live American television. The mechanical menace Tobor (played by 7’6” Dave Ballard) was the first automaton to appear in science-fictional TV, although he (it?) later reformed; “Tobor,” of course, is “robot” spelled backwards. Captain Video was also the first space show to spin off a TV series—two, in fact, as noted below. It inspired the first and indeed the only movie serial adapted from a TV program. The “Captain Video” board game released by Milton Bradley in 1952 was the first game of that type based on a TV series. The show also led to one of the first examples of TV cross-advertising, when, in one Honeymooners episode, Ed Norton (Art Carney) even tricked Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) into moving the TV aerial so he could finish watching Captain Video. Both were on the DuMont Network, of course. What, they should’ve been watching Milton Berle over on NBC instead?

One more first: In 1951, Fawcett Comics published the six-issue Captain Video comic book series. It was Fawcett’s first, though not last, TV license. First, though, re the TV series:

Video On Video

Captain Video and his Video Rangers operated from a secret mountain base. The Captain (portrayed first by Richard Coogan,

First Men In Space? From the DuMont Network’s TV series, here are shots of Captain Video and the Video Ranger—in their uniforms, and in space gear. That’s obviously Don Hastings as the Ranger—but we’re not certain if the Captain in these shots is first CV Richard Coogan or the later Al Hodge. You’ll have to compare their mug shots on p. 76. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

then by Al Hodge), the Video Ranger (Don Hastings), and their more sporadically seen colleagues received orders for missions from the Commissioners of Public Safety, acting on behalf of the Solar Council of the Interplanetary Alliance. The Rangers defended time and space from such evildoers as Mook the Moon Man, Prince Spartak, Princess Arura, Clumsy McGee (ace funnyman Arnold Stang, who also played Jughead on radio’s Archie Andrews), and Norgola (Ernest Borgnine, before his big break in the movie version of Paddy Chayevsky’s Marty). But no villain in the Captain’s rogues’ gallery could match the maniacal genius of mad scientist Doctor Pauli, whose nefarious inventions made him the archnemesis of the Video Rangers.

Being something of a technological genius himself, Captain Video would fight his enemies using such devices as the Atomic Rifle, the Astra-Viewer, the Remote Tele-Carrier, the Discatron, and the Opticon Scillometer. Throughout the television series, he and the Rangers would use the X-9 rocket plane and the spaceships Galaxy and Galaxy II to reach their various destinations.

It was perhaps a bit overly ambitious to have set the Captain Video program in a future replete with space travel and aliens, for neither the necessary special-effects technology nor a budget to purchase them if they had existed, was a possibility for the DuMont Network in 1951. The Rangers’ uniforms resembled military surplus with sewn-on lightning bolts. It’s been reported that the visual-effects budget for the series was a mere $25 a week—a lot more money six decades ago than it is now, but still not nearly enough! As a result, stories relied mostly on dialogue and exposition, with precious little action—which at least led to the Captain relying on his wits rather than his weaponry to defeat his enemies. As it happened, the series was shot on the floor above Wanamaker’s Department Store in New York City, so props were often made from odds and ends which had been purchased downstairs. Most amazingly of all, from 1949 to 1953, ten minutes

Video-Grams

In spite of all these limitations of technology and budget, Captain Video captured the hearts and imaginations of its viewers. It paved the way for other space adventure shows, including competitors Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and Space Patrol. One might even go as far as say that Captain Video inspired the characters of Commander J. J. Adams (Leslie Nielsen in the 1965 classic film Forbidden Planet) and Captain James Tiberius Kirk (William Shatner in Star Trek). Or one might not.

The breaks in the action on Captain Video, called “Ranger Messages,” were meant to teach lessons to children. That was not uncommon back in the day. However, while most of its competition was preaching civic duty and safety first, the Captain was teaching children about freedom and nondiscrimination. This made the series a true innovator, paving the way for Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone and Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek.

of each episode featured scenes from old Western movies. Communications Officer Ranger Rogers (Fred Scott, who also had a career as a singer of Western ballads) would describe these as the adventures of Captain Video’s undercover agents on Earth—while in truth they were the result of a combination of budgetary restraints and the overwhelming popularity of vintage Western movies on TV at that time. After 1953, a pair of technicians provided models and practical effects scenes shot in 16mm film, and these were placed into episodes whenever needed.

Even so, as the Wikipedia entry on Captain Video makes clear, the scarcity of episodes available for viewing makes it unclear in what period the stories take place, despite the official 2254 date: “The stories in the surviving kinescopes could take place in 1950, as when Dr. Pauli plots to rob a bank in Shanghai, or centuries in the future, as when Captain Video seeks to establish a reliable mail service for far-flung interstellar (or at least interplanetary) colonies… or struggles to prevent the many space stations circling Pluto from being destroyed by an approaching comet.”

Since this was a kids’ show, Captain Video’s inventions were never lethal. Devices such as the Atomic Disintegrator Rifle and the Electronic Strait Jacket were merely used to capture or incapacitate the bad guys—perhaps partly because of the public concern at the time about violence on television and its possible connection to juvenile delinquency.

The DuMont series likewise pioneered something that is commonplace in science-fiction TV today: the spin-off. By 1951, the show had become so popular that Columbia Pictures acquired the rights to produce a movie serial titled Captain Video – Master of the Stratosphere (of which more on our next page).

And, on September 5, 1953, a second CV television series—The Secret Files of Captain Video—premiered on the DuMont Network, airing every second week on Saturdays. The only major difference between Secret Files and the original show (which continued in its five-times-a-week slot) was that the original series was a serialized program, while its spin-off told a complete story in 30 minutes. The final episode of Secret Files aired on May 29, 1954; no episodes from it are known to have survived.

After the original series itself ended in 1955, Al Hodge became the host of yet another show: Captain Video and His Cartoon Rangers, on which he introduced cartoons in host segments. No examples of this series are known to exist, either.

And “Atar” Spelled Backwards Is…? (Left:) Tobor the robot and one of the lovelies of the Captain Video series—both nicely labeled. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.] (Above:) Movie and TV robots hadn’t improved much by 1951 from what they were in comics a decade earlier. The late Marc Swayze, whose work has appeared in all 117 issues thus far of Alter Ego, Vol. 3, wrote and drew this amiable ending to his story featuring the robot Klang in Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Adventures #15 (Sept. 1942). Thanks to P.C. Hamerlinck. [Shazam hero TM & ©2013 DC Comics.]

Fawcett Collectors Of America

(radio’s Lois Lane), Ernest Borgnine, Arnold Stang, and Jack Klugman. Bob Hastings, older brother of the actor who played the Video Ranger, made his TV acting debut on the series; he would later be the voice of the young hero in the Filmation animated Superboy cartoons.

Of the many villains in Captain Video, none was as maniacal as the evil Dr. Pauli. This mad scientist, who often dressed like a Chicago gangster, was played on TV first by Bram Nossen, then by Hal Conklin. During the 1953-54 season, Dr. Pauli was mysteriously written out of the series for reasons unknown. It’s been reported that Conklin’s portrayal of Pauli was so convincing that children would throw stones at him as he left the subway on arriving home from the DuMont studios.

Captain Video was first played on TV by Richard Coogan, an actor who tended to “float” his lines, meaning that he rarely delivered them as scripted. He Separated At Earth even completely blew them and broke character on (Left:) Original Captain Video Richard Coogan. (Right:) Later, longer-termed CV Al Hodge. many occasions. The otherwise-nameless Video Photos from the Internet, bless it. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.] Ranger, as played by 15-year-old (but already TV veteran) Don Hastings, often saved the scenes in Strangely enough, Video himself wasn’t the only character from which he worked with Coogan. In December of 1950 Coogan was his series to get the spin-off treatment. Here Comes Tobor, produced replaced with Al Hodge, who had played The Green Hornet on by Guild Films, was shot in Hollywood by travel documentary radio from 1936-43 and again in 1945. In addition to appearing in producer Carl Dudley for the 1956-1957 TV season after Captain Captain Video and Secret Files and Cartoon Rangers, Hodge would Video itself had gone off the air. Tobor (simply credited as “Tobor” visit sick children in the hospital dressed as the space hero. As late in the credits, with no mention of a human actor) was a nine-footas 1959, he appeared as Captain Video at Macy’s Department Store, tall robot owned by Prof. Bruce Adams (Arthur Space) of the drawing the largest crowd in the store’s history. Adams Research Center and controlled telepathically by his nephew Tommy. Adams and Tobor helped the U.S. Navy search for Video Serial Box missing nuclear submarines. The show never went beyond the pilot. Here Comes Tobor can be found on the Internet Archive site at Captain Video – Master of the Stratosphere debuted in movie http://archive.org/details/tobor01. In 1954 there was even a lowtheatres in 1951… the only movie serial ever to be based upon a TV budget theatrical film, titled Tobor the Great. In it, Tobor (played this series. However, it was anything but a faithful adaptation of its time by Lew Smith) was created for space travel—but enemy small-screen counterpart! In fact, it not only sported a totally agents wanted to reprogram him for evil purposes. Tobor the Great different cast of actors, but it considerably altered many major plot is now available on DVD, from Lions Gate Entertainment. elements and settings used on the DuMont show, giving the audience what these days might be called an alternate-reality The Video Rangers were the guardians of the universe. version of the space adventurer. There was no Dr. Pauli—and no Unfortunately, even they couldn’t rescue the DuMont Television Tobor, at least as those seeing the TV show knew him/it. Tobor, Network. After Miles Laboratories ceased sponsoring its Morgan played by actor George Eldredge, was a non-robotic scientist Beatty news program, that left Captain Video as the only show on working for the intergalactic dictator Vultura, who dwelt on the the network with endorsement (over the years it had been planet Atoma. The “Tobor” name was perhaps used to lure sponsored at various times by Powerhouse Candy, Skippy Peanut television viewers to believe that the popular automaton from Butter, and Post Cereals), and it aired its own last adventure on Captain Video would make an appearance on the silver screen. April 1, 1955. The DuMont Network itself folded in August of the However, the only mechanical men in the serial were tin-cannext year. looking retreads from other Columbia serials.

Video Stars

Many celebrities worked behind the scenes or in front of the camera on Captain Video and His Video Rangers. The writing staff included the likes of George Lowther, who adapted Superman and the comic strip Terry and the Pirates for radio. Later, such young but later noted science-fiction authors as James Blish, Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Vance, Robert Sheckley, C.K. Kornbluth, and Damon Knight also wrote for the series. Clarke’s short story “Arms Race” is based on his time working on Captain Video. In the early 1960s Blish wrote about his experience on the show for the science-fiction/comics fanzine Xero.

Actors and actresses well-known to movie, radio, and TV buffs made appearances in Captain Video, including Joan Alexander

By 1951 only Republic and Columbia were still producing serials for movie houses. They were a genre in severe decline, now aimed almost entirely at children. Even so, in that year, Captain Video was at the height of its popularity. Columbia Pictures released the first chapter of Captain Video – Master of the Stratosphere on Dec. 27, 1951. Veteran producer Sam Katzman, who’d brought Superman and Batman to the silver screen for Columbia, brought in frequent collaborators Spencer Gordon Bennet and George H. Plympton to direct and write, respectively.

In the serial’s 15 chapters, the Captain (Judd Holdren) and his Video Rangers (Larry Stewart plays the Don Hastings role) fight to stop the intergalactic dictator Vultura (Gene Roth) of the planet Atoma, his Earth-agent Dr. Tobor (George Eldredge), and their lackeys from conquering the Earth.

Video-Grams

Serial Boxes Three images from the 1951 Columbia movie serial Captain Video – Master of the Stratosphere. Star Judd Holdren holds a “cosmic vibrator” in the photo at left, while in the central scene he and the Ranger are armed with flame-spurting rayguns left over from the earlier serial Mysterious Island, which had introduced invaders from Mercury into Jules’ Verne’s classic; for CV, the main body of those weapons was painted black. Roy T. has wished ever since he saw those serials that he had one of those rayguns! Also seen is the packaging for the DVD of the Captain Video serial. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Having a budget perhaps a little larger than that of the TV show allowed Captain Video and/or Vultura to wield such sciencefiction devices and gadgets as the Opticon Scillometer, the Isotropic Radiation Curtain, the Radionic Directional Beam (a variation of radar), and the Psychosomatic Weapon. The serial used a oneextra-color process called Cinecolor to give the image a different tint when its heroes were on another planet, in that era of purely black-&-white television. Exterior scenes on the planets Atoma and Theros were filmed in the Bronson Canyon section of Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California. On the screen, the planet Theros was tinted green, Atoma pink, to indicate that the two worlds were different from Earth. Still, various corners were cut: scenes of rockets or flying saucers in flight were done with cell animation rather than with models as in Flash Gordon. As on TV, we rarely got even a look at other Video Rangers besides the two stars and their resident scientist Gallagher; actors with speaking parts cost money!

Perhaps the most significant difference between the serial and its parent TV series is inherent in the former’s subtitle “Master of the Stratosphere.” Columbia’s chapter-play took place in the present day (1951) on Earth—with a few side trips to the planets Atoma and Theros via animated rocket-ship. The contemporary setting did away with the need for many futuristic sets. Video did most of his traveling by means of a spiffy, doorless little sports convertible called the Jetmobile, and even the ray guns were different from those on the TV show.

Captain Video – Master of the Stratosphere was a commercial success, and kept playing long after most other serials had been retired to the vaults. It was one of only two serials Columbia reissued three times: in 1958, 1960, and 1963.

Still, the end was clearly near for movie serials. They were briefly revived in the ’50s and ’60s when studios repackaged movie-theatre versions of some of them at a length of 90 minutes or thereabouts. Television often aired the old serials themselves, one chapter per day instead of one a week as in the old days. Yet television—of which Captain Video, down to his very name, was a living symbol—sounded the death knell of such sequential film

story arcs. Columbia’s Blazing the Overland Trail, which is considered the last official serial, came out in 1956. Still, home video companies continue to release them on DVD today for children of all ages to enjoy. They’ve even given the Captain Video serial the digital treatment. Drop by your local video store if you want to check it out. It’s not that bad!

Captain Video wasn’t the first action hero to be merchandised for toys, books, and other gadgets. There are quite a few collectibles based on him, from rings to space ports. Humorist Dave Barry once referenced the Captain Video Rocket Ring, a premium from Powerhouse candy bars, saying that the toy ring had a higher production value than the actual TV show it promoted. He wasn’t far wrong.

Four-Color Video

And then there was the Captain Video comic book.

By far the most popular character to come out of Fawcett Publications’ comic book division was Captain Marvel, who debuted in Whiz Comics #2 (Feb. 1940). Fawcett eventually licensed a number of characters from other media, beginning with radio’s Captain Midnight, and including such movie cowboys as Hopalong Cassidy, Lash LaRue, Rocky Lane, Monte Hale, Gabby Hayes, etc. However, no property born in the relatively new medium of television made it into their comics pages until Captain Video hit the stands with its debut issue cover-dated February 1951.

Video’s sometimes-52-page comic book featured two stories of the Captain himself, as well such space-filling features as “Rod Cameron” (starring yet another real-life Western-movie actor) and comedy single-pagers. Most of the people responsible for producing the “Captain Video” comics stories were uncredited. However, it’s known that George Evans (1920-2001), whose work would soon grace many fondly remembered EC Comics publications, penciled all the yarns in Captain Video. The scripter(s) is/are unknown; but Roy Ald (1920-2012), the bylined editor of Captain Video, told both FCA editor P.C. Hamerlinck and Shaun Clancy (who later interviewed Ald for the FCA installments in A/E #104108) that he had also scripted some “CV” adventures.

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Comic Books Get Into The Act (Left:) The evil Dr. Pauli and his giant wasps (and scorpions and caterpillars) made dangerous foes in Captain Video #1. (Right:) In issue #4, the series finally went interplanetary (at least after a fashion). Art for both by George Evans & Martin Thall; scripter unknown. Thanks to Rod Beck. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Unlike horror comics, science-fiction titles, while reasonably common, were not nearly as popular in the 1950s. EC Comics admitted in its letters columns that its Weird Science and Weird Fantasy were its lowest-selling titles, in spite of being generally considered the best in the sf anthology genre. So when Captain Video ventured into the comic book medium, his creative team had their work cut for them.

On TV and even in the movie serial, Captain Video’s adventures took him to the far corners of the universe. In the former, he’s dubbed the “Master of Time and Space,” a phrase that even graces the opening narration of the first story in Captain Video #1, “The Secret of Sun City.” Yet all the yarns in all six issues are set on a 1951 Earth.

The machinery and weaponry at the Captain’s disposal throughout the half dozen issues are indeed futuristic, however, and with them he deals with a variety of unusual threats, from giant scorpions controlled by Dr. Pauli to Makino, the mechanical menace seen in our previous three issues. But extraterrestrial settings weren’t used until #4’s “The Ring of Orgon.” Whether this was a decision made by Fawcett alone, or was also the wish of the DuMont Network, is uncertain. The likelihood is, however, that DuMont, just happy to gain the extra exposure that a newsstand comic book might give its TV show, simply signed over the comics license to Fawcett and let them run with it. Even so, it’s easier to see why the Columbia serial opted for a cost-shaving 1951 setting than it is to reason out why a comic book, whose scope and scenery would be limited only by the imaginations of its writers and artists, would opt for a contemporary setting… unless ‘twas because Fawcett’s publishers and editors felt that far-future science-fiction would have little appeal to its readers. In the A/E interview, Roy Ald told Shaun Clancy that he didn’t recall any interaction with the DuMont Network people, or receiving any “TV scripts to convert into a comics story.” But, of course, we don’t really know if Fawcett wanted any help or was happier to concoct their own vision of the hero… and we probably never will.

For whatever combination of reasons, sales were not what had been expected, considering the popularity of the TV show, and

Fawcett ended the title with its sixth issue. A licensing fee, whether or not it was a stiff one, had probably helped make the comic unprofitable.

Viewed as a comic book in its own right, this article’s co-writer, Roy Thomas, feels that Fawcett’s Captain Video comes off far better than websites like Roaring Rockets give it credit for. He feels the scripts are generally reasonably literate, heads if not heads and shoulders above the usual comic book fare of the day. That situation was aided and abetted, he believes, by the fact that its stories were often longer than the average comic book tale of that era. The two “CV” stories in #1, for instance, are 13 and 12 pages long, respectively, the standard length of “Captain Marvel” (and “Superman” and “Batman”) exploits of the time… but “The Legion of Evil” in #2 is 16 pages long, “The Indestructible Antagonist” in #3 is 19—and #3’s “Project X” is no less than 21 pages. Such pagelengths gave both writer and artist ample space to develop story and visuals, and if they didn’t limn character with equal effort, at least they didn’t fill the pages with nothing but repetitious battles and ray-gun blasts. Both the Captain and the Ranger are pretty much two-dimensional, true; yet within their limits they behave at least as much like real people as they do like the stereotypical surviving super-hero of 1951. This fact, added to the more than competent artwork of George Evans, made Captain Video one of the better comics on the stands for the brief period of its existence… even though Evans related in an interview published well over a decade ago in FCA that he didn’t care much for drawing the series.

Having cut his eyeteeth at Fiction House in the late ’40s on such fare as the “Lost World” series in Planet Comics and “Tiger Man” in Rangers Comics, George Evans (1920-2001) drew for Fawcett from 1949 to 1953, the year the company dropped its comics line following settlement of the long-standing lawsuit by National/DC over Captain Marvel’s alleged copyright infringement of Superman. For Fawcett, along with war and horror entries, he illustrated the adaptation of George Pal’s apocalyptic sciencefiction film When Worlds Collide—and Bob Colt Western, a shortlived title that treated a totally made-up cowboy as if he were a real-life Western-movie star. And in 1951 Evans became the primary artist of Captain Video.

Video-Grams

Evans would go on to greater fame—at least what counted as “fame” in the ghetto-like world of comics readers—as one of the better artists at EC Comics, first in its horror, crime, and sciencefiction titles, then in its late “New Direction” comic Aces High, which showcased stories of World War I aviation. After the demise of EC’s color comics, he drew for Dell/Western and for Classics Illustrated; he also illustrated the ongoing Space Conqueror for Boys’ Life magazine and ghosted the newspaper strip Terry and the Pirates in the 1960s.

While Evans inked a few stories in Captain Video, most were embellished by Martin Thall, nee Martin Rosethal (1930-2012), who had previously done little besides a spot of work for Toby Press and Trojan/Stanhall. In the latter 1950s, he would ink Evans on adaptations for Classics Illustrated. Thall was interviewed by Jim Amash about his comics career in A/E #52. Al Williamson (19312010), who also did a bit of inking on the series, was then just beginning to draw stories for EC and the American Comics Group; in later years he was celebrated as the artist of such newspaper strips as Secret Agent Corrigan and Star Wars, and gained new legions of admirers still later as an over-qualified inker for Marvel Comics.

Four Down—996 Or So To Go! This commercial DVD contains four episodes of Captain Video and His Video Rangers, put together by Alpha Home Entertainment. [Packaging ©2013 the respective copyright holders.]

jet-propelled metal throne—a body composed of the hardest substance ever created, or ever creatable. For that three-parter, Roy conceived a metal called “Adamantium,” a name inspired by his recalling the word “adamantine” from Richmond Lattimore’s translation of the ancient Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. Thor referred to Adamantium as “a substance all but indestructible”—a nod to the title of the “Captain Video” #3 story from 18 years earlier. Roy has been pleased to see the word “Adamantium” virtually enter the language… and admits he won’t die happy until some eccentric scientist who was a comic book geek in his younger days uses “Adamantium” as the name of a new element!

Even with his eternal evil grin and his new Adamantium frame, however, Makino was still not quite done influencing events in The Avengers. When scripting the third chapter of the second adventure (in Avengers #68, penciled by Sal Buscema), Roy did his own riff on the ending of “The Indestructible Antagonist,” in which Makino destroys himself (apparently only Adamantium can destroy Adamantium) when he cannot satisfactorily answer a scientist’s

While Captain Video’s four-color Fawcett exploits ended after only half a dozen issues, he got a brief new lease on life in AC Comics’ Thrilling Science Fiction Tales #2 (1990), which featured text articles, black-&-white reprints of classic SF comics, and even new material drawn by George Evans. At AC, however, the Captain’s name was eventually changed to Videxx, whether for legal reasons or simply to avoid confusion.

Video Goes Marvel—Sort Of

As covered in A/E #114, Roy Thomas had a special connection with one “Captain Video” story in particular, when, recalling the appearance and personality of the robot villain Makino and his virtually “indestructible” nature, he utilized that character as the inspiration in the creation of Ultron (originally known as Ultron-5) in Marvel’s The Avengers #54-55 & 57-58 in 1968. We won’t repeat that information here, since back issues are very definitely still available from TwoMorrows.

The next year, Roy and penciler Barry Smith related a second four-color saga featuring Ultron… this time as Ultron-6. Commencing in Avengers #66 (July 1969), the reconstructed living robot sported a body whose lower half melded into a sort of

Cold War—Cold Steel! (Left:) Bob Powell’s imaginatively designed killer robot from the cover of Magazine Enterprises’ The Avenger #3 (June-July 1955). The Cold War costumed hero known as The Avenger, who fought the Commies and their subversive creations for four issues, was unrelated to the 1930s pulp-mag hero called The Avenger, to Marvel’s 1963+ Avengers, or to the 1960s BritishTV Avengers composed of Mr. Steed and Emma Peel. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [©2013 the respective copyright holders.] (Above:) See the family resemblance in the body below that Makinoinspired head when Ultron-6 makes his big entrance in The Avengers #68 (Sept. 1969)? Art by Sal Buscema & Sam Grainger; script by Roy Thomas. [©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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question about human feelings. Roy had intended to swipe that ultra-satisfying climax cold; but when the time came, he opted instead to use dialogue to introduce a variation on it. The new body that Ultron sports in Avengers #68, as noted in A/E #66’s coverage of renowned artist Bob Powell, was re-designed by Buscema at Roy’s behest to strongly resemble a nameless Powell automaton in Magazine Enterprises’ coincidentally-named comic The Avenger #3 (June-July 1955).

Video Legacy

The early television series Captain Video and His Video Rangers, to the disappointment of many, is a lost classic that may never be found. Much of the DuMont Network’s archive consisting of Kinescope (16 mm) and Electronicam (35 mm) was sold for its chemical content in the 1970s by Metromedia, the broadcast conglomerate that was DuMont’s successor company.

The UCLA Film and Television Archive has about a dozen episodes of Captain Video; but these can only be viewed within the walls of their library. The Internet Archive has two entries available for online viewing at http://archive.org/search.php?query=subject: %22Captain%20Video%22. Alpha Home Entertainment has released the only presently known DVD of Captain Video and His Video Rangers; it consists of four shows. Considering the more than 1000 episodes of Captain Video’s two series produced for TV, that barely scratches the surface.

But fans continue not to lose hope. Perhaps one day a private collector or even UCLA will make more adventures of the Master of Time and Space available. Meanwhile, as of late winter of this year, we at least have the six Evans-drawn issues of Fawcett’s Captain Video back to thrill and intrigue yet again, courtesy of PS Artbooks.

ON NOWLE! SA

Master And Commandment Adamantium or no Adamantium, Ultron-6 destroyed himself at the climax of Avengers #68. Writer Roy T. had plotted the story out intending to swipe cold the ending of “The Indestructible Antagonist!” in Captain Video #3—seen in the previous issue of A/E—but in the end he wrote dialogue that gave the denouement a slightly different, if similar, cast. [©2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Non-A/E Sources for This Article:

Capt. Video page from The Museum of Broadcast Communications: www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php3?entrycode=captainvideo

French Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere site (images): www.devildead.com/indexfilm.php3?FilmID=1184 CaptainVideoFans Yahoo Group: http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/CaptainVideoFans/

Todd Gault’s review of Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere: www.serialexperience.com/showarticle.php?fldRecNum=192 Roaring Rockets Captain Video Pages: http://216.75.63.68/space/video/index.phtml

TV Acres: Captain Video: www.tvacres.com/police_sci_fi_video.htm

Femforce Index: www.joeacevedo.com/docs/femforcezone/ femforceindex/acindexff43.htm

Comic Vine’s Captain Video Entry: www.comicvine.com/ captain-video/29-6655/

“Remembering Fawcett by George Evans,” Fawcett Companion, P.C. Hamerlinck, ed. (TwoMorrows, 2001)

Also various Wikipedia pages and Internet Movie Database pages

James Heath Lantz, self-described Ultra-Nerd, grew up in rural Ohio and was influenced heavily by TV, film, and books—especially comic books. He currently lives in Italy with his beautiful life Laura and their zoo of dogs, cats, and a turtle. He has written articles and reviews for the Superman Homepage (www.supermanhomepage.com) and the Doctor Who fanzine Fish Fingers and Custard (www.fishcustardfanzine.co.uk).

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