Alter Ego #120

Roy Thomas’ X-uberant Comics Fanzine

A HALF-CENTURY SALUTE TO THE TM

X-MEN

IC LG TA E: S NO NOT R’S -ZA LY KAOBABIS PR N TH E, I SU T IS – BU O TO ON’T , D INK L BL OU’L !

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PLUS:

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X-MEN TM & ©Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Featuring Their FirstDecade Definers: LEE • KIRBY • ROTH THOMAS • ADAMS • HECK TUSKA • FRIEDRICH DRAKE • BUSCEMA KANE • COLAN COCKRUM

$

8.95

No.120

In the USA

Sept.

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!

2013 EISNER AWARD Nominee Best Comics-Related Journalism

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

ALTER EGO #111

ALTER EGO #112

DIEDGITIIOTANSL BL AVAILA

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ALTER EGO #108

ALTER EGO #109

ALTER EGO #110

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!

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

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ALTER EGO #113

ALTER EGO #114

ALTER EGO #115

GOLDEN AGE NEDOR super-heroes are spotlighted, with MIKE NOLAN’s Nedor Index, and art by MORT MESKIN, JERRY ROBINSON, GEORGE TUSKA, RUBEN MOIRERA, ALEX SHOMBURG, and others!

Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, more 2011 Fandom Celebration, and part II of JIM AMASH’s interview with Golden Age artist LEONARD STARR! Cover by SHANE FOLEY!

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

MARV WOLFMAN talks to RICHARD ARNDT about his first decade in comics on Tomb of Dracula, Teen Titans, Captain Marvel, John Carter, Daredevil, Nova, Batman, etc., behind a GENE COLAN cover! Art by COLAN, ANDERSON, CARDY, BORING, MOONEY, and more!

Plus: the conclusion of our LEONARD STARR interview by JIM AMASH, FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

MARVEL ISSUE on Captain America and Fantastic Four! MARTIN GOODMAN’s Broadway debut, speculations about FF #1, history of the MMMS, interview with Golden Age writer/artist DON RICO, art

by KIRBY, AVISON, SHORES, ROMITA, SEVERIN, TUSKA, ALLEN BELLMAN, and others! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER and BILL SCHELLY! Cover by BELLMAN and MITCH BREITWEISER!

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

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ALTER EGO #116

ALTER EGO #117

ALTER EGO #118

ALTER EGO #119

ALTER EGO #120

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!

GOLDEN AGE ARTISTS L.B. COLE AND JAY DISBROW! DISBROW’s memoir of COLE and his work on CAT-MAN, art by BOB FUJITANI, CHARLES QUINLAN, IRWIN HASEN, FCA (Fawcett Collector’s of America) on the two-media career of Captain Video, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom history, Cat-Man cover

by L.B. COLE!

AVENGERS 50th ANNIVERSARY! WILL MURRAY on the group’s behind-thescenes origin, a look at its first decade with ROY THOMAS, STAN LEE, JACK KIRBY, THE BROTHERS BUSCEMA, TUSKA, ADAMS, COLAN, BUCKLER, ENGLEHART, MERRY MARVEL MARCHING SOCIETY, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, FCA, Golden Age Blue Beetle artist E.C. STONER, unused Avengers cover by DON HECK!

MARC SWAYZE TRIBUTE ISSUE, spotlighting FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America)!

Salutes from Fawcett alumnus C.C. BECK and OTTO BINDER, interview with wife JUNE SWAYZE, a full Phantom Eagle story from Wow Comics, plus interview with 1950s Dell/Western artist MEL KEEFER, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and a SWAYZE Marvel Family cover art from the 1940s!

X-MEN SALUTE! 1963-69 secrets, rare ‘60s BRAZILIAN X-MEN stories, lost ‘60s XMen “character sheet” by STAN LEE, ROY THOMAS on the 1970s revival, art and artifacts by KIRBY, ROTH, ADAMS, HECK, FRIEDRICH, and BUSCEMA—plus the MARVELMANIA fan club story, interview with Golden Age writer ED SILVERMAN, FCA, Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY, and JACK KIRBY’s unused X-Men #10 cover!

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Vol. 3, No. 120 / September 2013 Roy Thomas

Editor

Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Associate Editors Christopher Day

Design & Layout John Morrow

Consulting Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck

FCA Editor

Michael T. Gilbert

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

Editorial Honor Roll

Rob Smentek William J. Dowlding

Proofreaders

Jack Kirby & Chic Stone

Cover Artists

If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

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Tom Ziuko

Cover Colorist

With Special Thanks to:

Richard Kelsey Kris Adams Henry Kujawa Neal Adams Mark Lewis Heidi Amash Jim Ludwig Mark Arnold M. Luebker Rod Beck Sammy J. Maynard II Gary Brown Jeff McLaughlin Aaron Caplan William “Red” Nick Caputo Mohler Dewey Cassell Brian K. Morris Shaun Clancy “movielover” Digital Comics Will Murray Museum Ken Quattro Scott Edelman Barry Pearl Don Ensign John G. Pierce Mark Evanier Rich at Gerson Fasano “coollinesart” Jim Fern Herb Rogoff Jeff Gelb Jesse Rubenfeld Janet Gilbert Ed Silverman Grand Comics Dann Thomas Database Mort Todd Roberto Guedes Michael Vance Larry Guidry Jennifer Hamerlinck Dr. Michael J. Vassallo John H. Haufe, Jr. Tony Isabella

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Roy Ald, John Severin, Norman Fruman, & Sid Couchey

Contents Writer/Editorial: Not X-actly X-static, But... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Will Murray tells of the roots and first decade of “The Strangest Super-Heroes of All!”

The Extraordinary But Star-Crossed Origins Of The X-Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 The secret 1960s history of the mutants south of the Equator, revealed by Roberto Guedes.

Made In Brazil: The X-Men!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Richard Kelsey chronicles the glorious rise and fall of Marvel’s very first official fan club.

“The M.M.M.S. Wants You!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Shaun Clancy interviews radio/TV journalist (and short-time comics writer) Ed Silverman.

“I Kept All The Comic Book Stuff In A Separate File” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Michael T. Gilbert details more of the Mad creator’s influence on comic book artists & writers.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! The Men Who Would Be Kurtzman (Part 2) . . . 53 Concluding our associate editor’s own panel at San Diego 2011, conducted by Gary Brown.

Comic Fandom Archive: Spotlight On Bill Schelly – Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Tributes to Roy Ald, John Severin, Norman Fruman, & Sid Couchey . . . 66 re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 P.C. Hamerlinck ushers in Otto Binder, “Red” Mohler, & Captain Marvel Jr.

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #179 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

On Our Cover: What better way to celebrate a half-century of The X-Men, and particularly their first decade, than to lead off with a “rejected” cover by none other than Jack “King” Kirby himself, as inked by Chic Stone? Of course, back in 1965, “rejected” was a relative term. There’s a good chance that editor Stan Lee approved Jack’s sketch for this take on The X-Men vs. Ka-Zar… an even better chance that, at the very least, the two men talked over the idea before Kirby penciled it… but either Stan later had second thoughts, or else publisher Martin Goodman nixed the finished product very late in the game, as he was occasionally wont to do. So we get two X-Men #10 covers instead of one! [© Marvel Characters, Inc.] Above: Recognize this circa-1970 X-Men cover? Us, neither! But it’s the “X-Men” cover drawn by an unidentified artist for the Brazilian comics title Ediçðes GEP #14. See still more art and story from this rapturous Rio rarity—on p. 31! Thanks to Roberto Guedes. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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

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Not X-actly X-static, But... he day that I became the second scripter of The X-Men was a very big one in my life.

T

Since coming to work on staff for Stan Lee the previous July, I’d been writing steadily, and I suppose that to some extent I’d already climbed my way up the food chain: from the two “Millie the Model” mags, to my first crack at a Marvel super-hero (Gene Colan’s “Iron Man” debut)… to dialoguing a pair of Steve Ditko’s “Dr. Strange” yarns before Stan moved me on to something else and even-newer-comer Denny O’Neil inherited that series… to becoming the regular writer of my first book-length series, Sgt. Fury.

No complaints there.

Still, the thing I most wanted to write—and that Stan had hired me to eventually write—was superhero stories. So I was excited when, circa January of 1966, he handed me the twice-up original art for the entire 20th issue of The X-Men, which Werner Roth had drawn (only his third full-pencils job), and told me he wanted me to “write” this story. (Gradually, comics writers would evolve into using the word “dialogue” as a verb in this context, but I don’t think Stan or I ever used that term, at least not for several years.)

DC’s Justice League of America and Marvel’s Fantastic Four and early Avengers. This could be fun!

Also, I managed to put the kibosh on an arrangement Stan had made with Werner Roth, out of my hearing. Stan had told Werner that he (as penciler) would plot the X-Men stories and I’d just add the “copy” later. I objected strongly about that to Stan as soon as I heard it. If I was to be the writer, I wanted to control the storyline.

He decided I was right, and he reversed his decision.

That settled, I had a fair amount of fun with The X-Men over the next year or so, even though Stan never thought Werner’s work reached the proper pinnacle of excitement. Well, I was no Stan Lee in the dialogue department, either, and I’m sure that, had he stayed on the title, he would’ve gotten better work out of Werner than I did. But then, Stan usually met with Werner to go over the art before I saw it, so that wasn’t really my responsibility at that stage. Stan continued to try to light a bit more of a fire under the talented middle-aged artist, but somehow, though the comic was always well-drawn, the art and writing only rarely soared. The XMen had been one of Marvel’s weaker titles even under Lee and Kirby, and it declined a bit, although not precipitously, under Thomas and Roth.

As per my usual method at that time, I taped transparent sheets over the artwork and indicated the balloons and captions as I wrote them, both after hours at the office By the time I dropped X-Men and at “home” on my Smithfor some other assignment, with Corona portable. On the splash Stan turning it over to my old page, like Stan, I hand-lettered the buddy (and new staffer) Gary actual text. When he saw the Friedrich, I didn’t really mind pages, and with me standing on relinquishing it—but I looked back his left, Stan did a fair amount of with some pride on having corewriting on that busy splash page; created The Banshee (who Like A Banshee Out Of Hell in fact, my recollection is that he should’ve been a female mutant, Gil Kane never drew a story or even a cover in the original 1963-70 even added a “word balloon” or but Stan vetoed that idea), Factor X-Men series, but he did a bang-up job with The Banshee for the cover two coming from bystanders.

Three (my response to of the otherwise-reprint issue #76 (June 1972). Inker uncertain.

There wound up being two S.P.E.C.T.R.E., U.N.C.L.E., and [© Marvel Characters, Inc.] captions, one arrow, and ten word other alphabet-soup spy groups), balloons on that page. Still, Stan The Locust (Archie’s Fly as a liked my basic script, and I suspect it was he who used the phrase villain), Grotesk (inspired by the old Fawcett Captain Marvel “skillfully scripted” for my credit. (I don’t believe I’d have had the baddie, King Kull, with a name suggesting that of Dick Tracy’s old nerve to write that myself at that stage.) movie foe, Gruesome), the “X-Men Origins” back-up feature, and individualized costumes—along with bringing that great Golden The X-Men hadn’t been a favorite title of mine, not even under Age flop, Red Raven, into Marvel continuity. I was proud, too, that Stan and Jack, except for the three-part “Sentinels” storyline a Stan allowed me to use Spider-Man as a full-fledged guest star, at couple of issues earlier. Still, I was happy to have the gig. Not only a time when no one else had written the web-spinner but himself. was it a super-hero title, not a “Millie the Model” or even a “Dr. Strange,” but it was a group book, and those were always favorites Bad moments in that first stint? My “X-Men Meet Frankenstein” of mine, from the beloved All-Star Comics of my youth through

writer/editorial

story (I liked the idea, but not my execution)… the time when I neglected to make certain the two halves of a double-page spread would actually face each other in the story (#37)… other things big and small and too numerous to mention. When I left the title, it was probably less strong than when I had inherited it. Nor would things improve over the next year, despite the best efforts of Gary and Arnold Drake and a succession of artists (although Jim Steranko breathed a bit of life, at least artistically, into the series for a couple of issues).

When Stan decided, after some months, that I should return as scripter to try to improve the mag’s sales, I wasn’t sure that I could… or even that he could have. (In retrospect, though, I rather suspect he could have.) But then, as fate would have it, the young artist-phenom Neal Adams came waltzing in to draw and co-plot the title. I’ve never been convinced X-Men was slated for cancellation in two issues as Neal recalls Stan telling him (with publisher Martin Goodman, a mag would simply be on the schedule one day and off the next—that’s the way he worked). Still, there’s no denying that X-Men was in a dead heat with Dr. Strange and S.H.I.E.L.D. for the bottom of the Marvel heap, saleswise.

Neal came in as I was revving up some Egyptian plotlines and trying to develop Scott Summers’ newfound brother into a viable (mutant) character. My concepts and dialogue inspired Neal somewhat… and his drawing and added elements inspired me a lot… and we did some good work together over the ensuing months. Despite the false start and bad feelings all around when Goodman nixed Neal’s first cover (because he’d drawn the heroes strapped to the mag’s logo, rendering it hard to read), we soon turned The X-Men into a must-read for at least the more sophisticated Marvel readers—and we bumped up the sales a bit, too. Not quite enough to stave off eventual cancellation, but I persist in

3

believing that said cancellation was more a failure of the publisher’s judgment than an astute business move. As I’ve often said: there has to be a reason that, of the various Marvel titles cancelled in that era, only X-Men was swiftly brought back, even if only as a reprint title.

There followed The X-Men’s several “years in the wilderness,” in which, in addition to reprints, they occasionally guest-starred, while The Beast briefly had his own series. None of which quite worked.

And then came the happy accident (related more fully elsewhere) that led me to propose, in the summer of 1974, that The X-Men be brought back with several of the original cast plus several new mutants from different countries… so that they returned with a vengeance in 1975 and have never been out of the limelight since.

If I couldn’t quite “save” The X-Men the first time around… well, at least I had a hand in jumpstarting their four-color career a few years later. I hung around long enough to have a good idea… and to get lucky. Lucky for me… far luckier for Marvel.

But that was my job, right? To sell comic books, as writer or editor or both.

From a lackluster start… through the stellar team-up with Neal… to the revival of the “new, international X-Men.”

It’s good to know I got better at handling The X-Men as I went along!

Bestest,

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LEONARD SANSONE, original inker of The Atom (plus photos & info re Atom co-creators BEN FLINTON & BILL O’CONNOR)! Major Golden & Silver Age artist BERNARD SACHS, who inked whole All-Star Comics issues penciled by ARTHUR PEDDY! Plus rare JSA-related art & other surprising revelations about comics’ first and greatest-ever super-hero team!

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The Extraordinary But Star-Crossed Origins Of THE X-MEN The First Decade Of “The Strangest Super-Heroes Of All!”

by Will Murray

(Above:) X-Men #1 writer/editor Stan Lee— and penciler/co-plotter Jack Kirby, both from the 1964 Marvel Tales Annual #1. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“X” The Unknown—At Least Till Next Month!

(Above left:) Curiously, although we now know that The X-Men #1 was planned to debut at roughly the same time as Daredevil #1, and that The Avengers #1 became a last-minute replacement for the latter (as detailed in A/E #118)—and though both Sept.1963-dated team comics went on sale on the very same day in July of ’63—Fantastic Four #18 (Sept. 1963) featured a full-page house ad for Avengers #1, while the X-Men logo was merely squeezed onto the bottom of a page advertising two Annuals.

(Center:) Even in the “Special Announcements Section” on FF #18’s letters section, mention of X-Men played second fiddle to Avengers. (Well, okay, so Stan Lee wrote that The X-Men were “merely the GREATEST!”—but what did you think he was gonna say?)

(Right:) It wasn’t until FF #19 (Oct. ’63) that X-Men #1 got the full-page-ad treatment, by which time it had been on sale for a while. On the actual printed cover of #1, the levitational energy lines emanating from Marvel Girl’s head were deleted.

Art by Kirby and (probably) Reinman. Thanks to Barry Pearl for all three scans. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.] P.S.: Because the entire 1963-70 X-Men series is in print in various Marvel Masterworks and Essentials editions, we’ll be reprinting few pages or panels from those comics in this issue. We prefer to concentrate instead on rare art materials.

The Extraordinary But Star-Crossed Origins Of The X-Men

“Something X-tra”

n July 2, 1963, Marvel Comics simultaneously released The Avengers and The X-Men, the former being their (latest) answer to DC’s Justice League of America, while the latter was an attempt to duplicate the success of Marvel’s own Fantastic Four—with maybe a touch of Spider-Man teenage angst thrown in.

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Tagged “The Strangest Super-Heroes of All Time!” The X-Men was more subdued than the FF and darker than The Avengers. Up to this point, most of the heroes of the Marvel Universe had been radiation-created mutations, whether born of cosmic rays, gamma radiation explosions, or, in the case of Spider-Man, radioactive accidents. Daredevil, in the works at the same time as The X-Men (see A/E #118), would share the latter theme with the wall-crawler.

This time, however, writer-editor Lee modified the successful formula by offering up a team of super-heroes who were born with their special powers, thanks to the radiation effects of atomic experimentation.

“What if I just made them mutants?” Lee was quoted in Douglas Martin’s essay “The X-Men Vanquish America” (The New York Times, Aug. 21, 1994). “There are mutants in nature, and with all the atomic explosions they’re more likely than ever before.”

Lee wanted to title the book The Mutants, but publisher Martin Goodman objected on the grounds that young readers would not understand the term.

5

As Stan related in the 1975 Simon & Schuster collection Sons of Origins of Marvel Comics, “Mutants have an extra power, extra ability, some extra facet or quality denied a normal man. The word ‘extra’ was the key. Mutants are, in a sense, people with something extra. And, if we think of the word ‘extra’ in phonetic terms, we might think of that phrase as ‘people with something x-tra.’ And a man with something x-tra could conceivably be called an x-man!

Therefore, since we were discussing a whole group of mutants, why not call the book The X-Men?”

Goodman accepted the new title. Perhaps he half-recalled the cover story to a 1937 issue of his old pulp magazine Star Detective, N.V. Romero’s “The X-Man.” (Although that particular title character had been an undercover G-Man, not a super-hero.)

Both Lee and artist Jack Kirby, predictably enough, claimed credit for originating the concept in later years.

“As with all superhero teams, I had to have an excuse for putting them together,” revealed Lee to Tom DeFalco in Comics Creators on X-Men (Titan Books, 2006). “The Fantastic Four were essentially a family, the Avengers were a club. What could the XMen be that would be different? I figured if they’re teenagers, what’s more natural than a school?”

“I created X-Men because of the radiation scare at the time,” asserted Kirby in Comics Feature in 1986. “What I did was give the beneficial side. I always feel there’s hope for the human condition.

Sure, I could have made it real scary. We don’t know the connotations of genetics and radiation. We can create radiation but we

Martin Goodman.

Putting All Your “X” In One Basket The cover and opening pages of the March 1937 issue of Red Circle’s Star Detective pulp magazine, published by Martin Goodman (seen in photo). The cover is by J.W. Scott, the interior “double-truck” illo

by Earl Mayan. Nothing is known about bylined author N.V. Romero. It seems unlikely that Stan Lee, who’s always said he came up with the X-Men name after Goodman nixed The Mutants as the title of the comic, ever saw the pulp story. After all, he didn’t go to work for Timely until nearly four years later—though he could have bought the mag off the newsstand, of course. Thanks to Will Murray for the interior scans and artist ID. The photo of Goodman is a blow-up from the famous 1942 photo taken at the so-called “Bambi” dinner. [Art © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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The First Decade Of “The Strangest Super-Heroes Of All!”

Comics’ First Merry Mutant?

Perhaps the first mutant super-hero in comic books—at least the first to whom the word “mutant” was applied at the time—was Captain Comet, created as a National/DC hero beginning with Strange Adventures #9 (June 1951). Art by Carmine Infantino & Bernard Sachs; script by John Broome (as “Edgar Ray Merritt”)—and editing by Julius Schwartz, who, having been a prominent science-fiction fan in the 1930s, probably had more than a blue pencil to do with the project. On sale around the time you’re reading this, we’re happy to say, is the first volume of DC’s hardcover Captain Comet Archives. Thanks to the GCD for the cover scan, and to Bob Bailey for the panels. [© DC Comics.]

don’t know what it’s going to do. I think there’s a possible path through these dangerous courses that will steer us to permanent peace and make new people of us. That’s what I did with the XMen. They were young people who enjoyed life and had a teacher.

“I took it all from the times that we lived in. This was only about 15 years after Hiroshima. That’s no time at all. This was the period when we were first thinking about getting electricity from nuclear plants. We didn’t know what radiation could do because we saw all the effects it had had on the people of Hiroshima. How can we tell––radiation might help us as well as hurt us. We haven’t explored all of it yet.”

Since ascribing the creation of a comic series to one creator is a little like giving one parent the lion’s share of credit for a talented child, each man was probably half right.

Mutants Before 1963

Of course, mutants had been a staple of science-fiction for decades, going back at least to A.E. van Vogt’s classic Slan. That 1940 Astounding Science Fiction serial-turned-novel is the seed from which most depictions of human-like mutants have sprung. It tells the tale of a young telepathic mutant named Jommy Cross, who

battles to save his fellows Slans (as mutants are called in the future) from being hunted down and exterminated by ordinary humankind.

Slan had become a classic in the sub-genre, as had Wilmar H. Shiras’ 1953 science-fiction novel Children of the Atom, which is a blueprint for the notion of a generation of mutant children of irradiated parents forced to hide their supernormal abilities from the general population and banding together for self-protection.

First published in Astounding, it was set in the future year 1972.

Another 1953 novel of mutant misfits was Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human, which postulated a concept of telekinetic and telepathic humans banding together for self-protection and selfactualization.

John Wyndham’s 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos postulated a menacing group of telepathic mutant children who were schooled, with horrific results. It was filmed in 1960 as Village of the Damned.

All the above novels were widely read by those interested in speculative fiction and fantasy, and it can easily be assumed that Jack Kirby––a voracious consumer of science-fiction books––read at least one of them. The same might be said of Stan Lee.

The Extraordinary But Star-Crossed Origins Of The X-Men

Mutants were rare in comic books prior to The X-Men. Over at DC Comics, the futuristic Captain Comet, who had first appeared in DC’s Strange Adventures #9 (June 1951), was a mutant, but he had been phased out of that science-fiction comic in 1954. His inborn powers were largely mental, although he was very capable physically, as well.

A few stray mutants had popped up in Timely/Marvel pre-hero fantasy mags such as Journey into Mystery and Amazing Adult Fantasy—e.g., the stories “The Mutants and Me,” “The Man with the Atomic Brain,” and “The Man in the Sky,” the latter two virtually identical stories about lone mutants who discover others like themselves secretly living like ordinary people, exactly like Children of the Atom.

The earliest significant Timely example dates from 1953, in a story in Man Comics about a renegade young mutant named Roger Carstairs, whose powers include the ability to project illusions into the minds of others. Carstairs uses these abilities for evil purposes, and perishes as a result in a tale belonging to the “Bob Brant and his Trouble-Shooters” series, “The Crawling Things!”

So mutants were not new. But they were about to be reinvented as Marvel super-heroes.

7

might be called an inverse Human Torch, while the gorilla-like Beast evoked the flavor of Ben Grimm, alias the Thing, as did his and Iceman’s antagonistic interplay. Beyond that, the parallels vanished. Cyclops with his power beams evoked Jack Cole’s similarly-powered Comet of Golden Age days. The Angel might have been a re-thinking of the old Timely non-powered Angel, with a touch of the Red Raven––although one would doubt anyone remembered that 1940 loser. Marvel Girl was a typical ’60s Marvel super-heroine, attractive and armed with powers considered feminine––in this case telekinesis. (For the first-issue cover, however, her telekinetic energy emanations were whited out at the last minute, reducing her to hapless observer status.)

The premise was as strong as it was simple. Professor X secretly educated young mutants in the seclusion of his private school in Westchester County, New York, while seeking others to bring into the fold. Opposing him was the enigmatic Magneto, hunting for malleable mutants to join him in the subjugation of the human race. The backstory of their opposition was developed over the first year.

[Continued on p. 11]

X-Tales Out Of School

The core concept of a school for young mutants, led by a wheelchair-bound telepath named Professor Xavier, allowed Lee and Kirby to skip a formal origin story. (The fact that DC had just rolled out a Marvel-like group of misfit super-heroes called The Doom Patrol, also led by a father figure in a wheelchair, is another matter entirely.)

“I thought of Professor X as Yul Brynner,” Lee told Patrick Daniel O’Neil for Wizard: X-Men Turn Thirty. “I thought it would be good if he was physically limited, since his mind was so powerful.”

By day, these teenagers were outwardly-ordinary students. But when danger called, they donned simple cowled costumes and became The X-Men.

Jack Kirby saw this as an evolution of the type of kid-gang features he’d been developing since his early days at Timely.

“Yes, I created The Young Allies,” he told interviewer Leonard Pitts, Jr., in 1986. “All of them. All of them came from my basement. The Avengers, Daredevil, The X-Men, all of them. The X-Men, I did the natural thing there. What would you do with mutants who were just plain boys and girls and certainly not dangerous? You school them. You develop their skills. So I gave them a teacher, Professor X. Of course it was the natural thing to do. Instead of disorienting or alienating people who were different from us, I made The X-Men part of the human race, which they were. Possibly, radiation, if it is beneficial, may create mutants that’ll save us instead of doing us harm. I felt that if we train the mutants our way, they’ll help us—and not only help us, but achieve a measure of growth in their own sense. And so, we could all live together.”

Beyond that initial impulse, the challenge was, as Lee once expressed it, “What powers can I give them that are not in use at the moment?”

As an attempt to innovate along Fantastic Four lines, The X-Men strove to be as different as it was parallel. Iceman

The Cleanup Crew According to Jack Kirby Collector editor/publisher John Morrow, the above twothirds of a page of Jack Kirby pencil layouts are on the back of what was printed as page 6 of The X-Men #17 (Feb. 1966). Originally, these panels were to form most of page 3, until—as then-editorial-assistant Roy Thomas recalls it—editor Stan Lee decided Jack had devoted too much space (three pages’ worth, if these panels had been kept) to the clean-up after the defeat of The Sentinels, before getting around to showing several of the teenage mutants recuperating in a hospital. The full-page shot of The Angel flying on the published p. 6 was added to take up the space that Kirby had spent on soldiers standing around and Sentinels lying around… while not letting a (sliced) piece of art paper go to waste. These panels were first printed in The Jack Kirby Collector #7. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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The First Decade Of “The Strangest Super-Heroes Of All!”

Early Science-Fiction Mutants

Odd John (Above row:) The superhuman protagonist of British author Olaf Stapledon’s 1935 novel may or may not be counted as a “mutant,” depending on your inclinations—but he certainly displays mutated tendencies from birth, learning advanced mathematics and eventually developing telekinetic powers. Stapledon also invented the term “homo superior,” used decades later in The X-Men. Seen here are a photo of Stapledon, the cover of (we think) the first hardcover edition, and the slightly more lurid cover of an early paperback version.

Artists unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Slan Master science-fiction writer A.E. van Vogt (photo at left) wrote this novel in serialized form for 1940 issues of the pulp magazine Astounding Science Fiction. In the future, Slans are “evolved humans” with great intelligence, mind-reading abilities, and extraordinary speed and strength. Some of them have tendrils; some don’t. Seen above are Robert E. Hubbell’s cover for the first hardcover printing (published by Arkham House)—and that of an early paperback edition, complete with space babe.

Artists unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

The Extraordinary But Star-Crossed Origins Of The X-Men

9

Children Of The Atom (In this row:) Unfortunately, we could find no photo of Wilmar Shiras—who, contrary to the name, was a woman. Her short story “In Hiding” in a 1948 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and its 1949 sequels “Open Doors” and “New Foundations” became the first three chapters of the novel Children of the Atom. It deals with amazingly gifted children with eerie powers caused by radiation—as would be those of The X-Men in 1963. Seen here are the first hardcover and an early paperback edition. [© the respective copyright holders.]

More Than Human (Left:) Theodore Sturgeon, seen in photo, was one of the deans of science-fiction, and More Than Human (1953) may well be his masterpiece. Its six young extra-powered protagonists together form what is essentially a gestalt being, and can “blesh” their abilities together to act as one organism, whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. (“Blesh” is a portmanteau word combining “blend” and “mesh.”) Mutants? Maybe yes, maybe no… but hard to ignore, ever since it was first published. Depicted is the cover of an early paperback edition of More Than Human. [© the respective copyright holders.]

The Midwich Cuckoos (Left & above:) This 1957 novel by Englishman John Wyndham (photo) dealing with malevolent mutant children with mental powers and a group mind—“bleshing” with a vengeance!—was filmed twice under the title Village of the Damned. Pictured are an early dust jacket of the novel, and a scene from the 1960 movie version. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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The First Decade Of “The Strangest Super-Heroes Of All!”

The Marvel Mutants Before Marvel In the several years preceding the debut of The X-Men, Timely editor Stan Lee and several of his writers and artists produced a number of stories involving mutants. Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo for supplying the scans on this page and the next to:

“The Crawling Things!”

(Left:) The pre-Comics Code Man Comics #28 featured the sixth entry in the “Bob Brant and the Trouble-Shooters” series, one of comics’ onceubiquitous kid gangs. The powers of the evil teenage “mutation” Roger Carstairs are—wait for it—that he can create images of swarming insects in people’s minds. The mutant youth gets gunned down by his own accomplices before he can use his abilities to do much more than pull off a few bank robberies. Art by Carl Hubbell; scripter unknown.

“The Man With The Atomic Brain” (Left & below:) Radiation is again the cause of the mutation in this story from Journey into Mystery #52 (May 1959). Its protagonist is an outcast, until “a hidden group of like-powered people” (to use the Grand Comics Database’s descriptive phrase) take him in, a plot with vague echoes of Olaf Stapledon’s 1935 novel Odd John. Art by Steve Ditko; scripter unknown.

“The Mutants And Me” (Left:) When the narrator of this yarn in Tales of Suspense #6 (Nov. 1959) discovers that he himself is a mutant, he realizes that, if his condition were known by the populace, “I would be feared, hated… men would shun me, distrust me! I must never allow them to know!” Sound familiar? Art

by Joe Sinnott; scripter unknown.

The Extraordinary But Star-Crossed Origins Of The X-Men

11

“The Man In The Sky” (Left:) By the time of Amazing Adult Fantasy #14 (July 1962), Fantastic Four was already a hit for the asyet-unchristened Marvel Comics. Writer/editor Stan Lee was enjoying his O. Henryish romps with artist/co-plotter Steve Ditko, as in this yarn which uses the word “mutant.” When Roy Thomas e-mailed Stan recently to ask if he recalled why he wanted to call the 1963 Marvel title The Mutants, he replied that he had no idea, but that the series would be about mutants, so what else should he have called it?

(And when Ye Ed asked him about Slan, Children of the Atom, More Than Human, et al.? “Never heard of ’em!”)

[All art in this grouping © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

[Continued from p. 7]

O Brotherhood, Wherefore Art Thou?

After defeating a lone Magneto in the debut issue, The X-Men went on to discover and battle an interesting collection of oddball mutants such as The Vanisher, The Blob, and Unus the Untouchable. None proved to be X-Men material. Paul Reinman’s moody, crepuscular inks gave way to Chic Stone’s crisp, cartoonish lines, but sales never really took off. While The Avengers soon went monthly, The X-Men lingered as a bi-monthly. Lee liked Reinman’s inking over Kirby, yet fans did not share that sentiment. Reinman had also inked The Incredible Hulk #1, another book that never took off. (One wonders if, had either debut issue enjoyed brighter inking, its fortunes might have turned out differently.)

X-Men #4 introduced Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants— the wicked Mastermind and The Toad, supported by the surprisingly sympathetic Quicksilver and his sister, The Scarlet Witch. It was as if the latter pair were being developed to switch sides and eventually become full-fledged X-Men. In point of fact, within a year, the latter two would indeed go over to the side of good— when they joined The Avengers.

“I had big plans for Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch,” Lee asserted in Tom DeFalco’s 2006 study Comics Creators on X-Men. “I wanted them to eventually give up being villains and become heroes. That’s why I used them in Avengers after I left X-Men.” Actually, the pair became Avengers while Stan was still writing The X-Men—but who’s counting?

Once the Brotherhood was introduced, The X-Men tangled with them over four consecutive issues, both teams attempting and failing to recruit The Sub-Mariner, whom Lee had classified a mutant, when in fact Prince Namor was more of a hybrid. Clearly, including this immensely popular guest star was a bid to attract fresh interest to the series. But readers may have tired of the

recurring Magneto, and of Professor X’s failure to recruit a single new X-Man from the many undiscovered mutants they encountered.

All through 1964, Lee did everything he could to lure readers over from other Marvel books. The Angel guest-starred in “Iron Man.” Iceman teamed up with The Human Torch in Strange Tales; then the entire X-Men team tangled with the Fantastic Four in the latter’s title. They even cameo’d in the first Amazing Spider-Man Annual. Thor fought Magneto and his mutants in Journey into Mystery, with The X-Men largely lurking off-panel. Finally, The Avengers joined in a memorable free-for-all in X-Men #9 while the Torch popped up in X-Men #11. Nothing seemed to move the sales needle.

Tinkering with the core cast, Lee gave The Beast a vocabulary makeover calculated to distinguish him from other brutish Marvel heroes. In that sense, the character went from being a copy of pulpmag hero Doc Savage’s simian sidekick, Monk Mayfair, to a combination of Monk and Johnny Littlejohn, the polysyllabic archeologist of the Doc Savage team.

As Lee explained in Son of Origins of Marvel Comics: “After a while I felt The Beast was too similar to the Thing (from Fantastic Four), and in the issues that followed I changed his manner of speech completely, making him the most verbose, articulate, and eloquent of the group.”

Kirby redesigned Marvel Girl’s headgear––only to abruptly reverse the change after only two issues. It came and went without comment, and there are signs that the artist simply forgot to draw her properly and in-house corrections had to be made, although they neglected to do so on the cover to issue #9. Iceman learned to crystalize his frozen form, turning him from a human snowman to a true Iceman. He got rid of his superfluous boots, but later took them up again. A quasi-official connection with the FBI agent Fred

12

The First Decade Of “The Strangest Super-Heroes Of All!”

Leslie Howard (but how does one interpret “without English accent”?)

Yul Brynner

Anthony Perkins

(Young) Tony Randall (Young) Gene Barry “X-Men”-Rated Movies Sometime in 1975, Marvel staffer and scripter Scott Edelman happened across what he describes on his blog as “a dozen or so carbon copies of descriptions of Marvel’s central superheroes buried in the back of a file cabinet, barely visible because the sheets had slipped between the drawers….

Because the pages only referenced the earliest of Marvel’s characters—the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, etc.—and because all of the references as to which famous actors’ voices we should imagine coming out of their mouths were of a previous generation, I always assumed these were written

by Stan Lee [and not written any later than 1965].” They also appeared, Scott felt, to have been composed on the same typewriter on which Stan composed his Soapboxes for the Bullpen Bulletins page, and were probably meant to be “a guide for the writers who’d follow him, perhaps so that the characters could be more effectively merchandised.”

When Scott contacted Stan about them, The Man replied: “I think I wrote it. It looks like my typing. But I can’t swear to it. Did you ask Roy Thomas?

He’s better at recognizing stuff than I am. I just wouldn’t wanna testify to something that I’m not sure of. I’d say there’s a 75% chance that I wrote it.”

A couple of years back, Scott generously sent Roy scans of the photocopies he had kept of these sheets. Roy puts the odds of their being Stan’s work at rather better than 75%; certainly they’re in line with Stan’s mention of Yul Brynner on p. 7, even if the writer managed to misspell Scott Summers’ surname. RT suspects the notes may have been meant as a potential guide for animation studios, at a time when the Marvel characters were only beginning to make it to television in cartoon series like Marvel Super-Heroes, even though The X-Men didn’t wind up being included in that omnibus 1966 series. For some reason, alas, the writer didn’t suggest any voice models re Iceman or Marvel Girl. [© 2013 the respective copyright holders.]

The Extraordinary But Star-Crossed Origins Of The X-Men

13

Mariner… and a jungle pulp hero not seen since the Timely days, KaZar. “The Incredible Hulk” feature was revived in Tales to Astonish. Lee decided to use The X-Men to reintroduce the jungle lord, which he did in issue #10, one of the great Lee and Kirby issues of that fabulous year. Despite the stellar start, Ka-Zar never truly caught on, but a year later, Sub-Mariner joined the Hulk in the reformulated Tales to Astonish. They would enjoy great success. Not so The X-Men.

The Three Faces Of Ka-Zar The triple incarnation of a jungle king. (Clockwise from above left:) The cover of the 1936 pulp magazine Ka-Zar, Vol. 1, #1; artist unknown… the splash page of the “Ka-Zar the Great” story in Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), with art by Ben Thompson, scripter unknown… and the unused version of the Jack Kirby/Chic Stone cover done for The X-Men #10 (March 1965), repro’d from a photocopy of the original art. Except for the name, the Marvel version of Ka-Zar had no connection to the 1930s hero. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Duncan of Department of Special Affairs in Washington was summarily dropped, severing the team’s single contact with outside authority. The X-Men worked best as outcasts, if not outlaws.

A rivalry between Scott Summers and Warren Worthington III over the affections of Jean Grey duplicated the early sexual tension between Reed Richards and the Sub-Mariner over Sue Storm of the Fantastic Four; but a fourth arm of that conflict–– Professor X’s unspoken crush on the redhead––was summarily dropped after one thought balloon!

In the middle of all this, Lee and Kirby decided to radically alter the premise of the series. The X-Men suddenly graduated from Xavier’s School for Gifted Students, and their mentor took a leave of absence, installing Cyclops as his replacement. Yet they remained headquartered in his private facility. It was only issue #7.

Xavier returned a mere two issues later to lead the battle against Lucifer, the non-mutant villain who cost him his legs.

This was the Avengers crossover issue. Kirby’s art made the stories just as exciting as Fantastic Four, but readers still weren’t buying it.

During this period, the Marvel Universe was fast expanding. According to an anonymous artist who says that at the time he was offered his choice of which of the three characters to draw, Martin Goodman handed Lee a list of three dormant characters he wanted to see revived: the Hulk, who had briefly been with The Avengers… The Sub-

Returning to the theme of the mutant-vs.-mutant tension, Lee and Kirby introduced The Stranger in issue #11. He was one of those cosmic characters like The Watcher who increasingly began populating the Marvel Universe. When Magneto attempted to recruit him, the resulting carnage scattered his Brotherhood forever. Magneto was taken off-planet, clearing the series for new directions.

14

The First Decade Of “The Strangest Super-Heroes Of All!”

His Brother’s Keeper

An important new villain was introduced in the July 1965 issue—The Juggernaut. Jack Kirby designed him as a hulking monster studded with spikes, but either the Comics Code demanded that he be toned down or else the idea was re-thought on the editorial level. Regardless, with this issue, Kirby shifted over to providing breakdowns only. Lee re-assigned him to take over the “Hulk” strip in Tales to Astonish, along with the new “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” feature in Strange Tales. The incomparable Alex Toth penciled that issue over Kirby breakdowns, and an important new phase of The X-Men was poised to begin.

Unfortunately, Toth discovered that he was not simpatico with the Kirby approach to comics and left after that single issue, his work marred by Vince Colletta’s inappropriate inks.

The Juggernaut was revealed to be Cain Marko, Xavier’s stepbrother. This was a twist on Lee’s original idea, as he recounted in Comics Creators on X-Men: “I always wanted Magneto to turn out to be Professor X’s brother. If I had stayed with the book, that’s what I would have done.”

This thinking could explain Magneto’s Corinthian-style helmet—it was designed to conceal his resemblance to Xavier from readers until the big revelation. It might also have provided some measure of shielding from Professor X’s telepathic powers, just as the Juggernaut’s psionic helmet later did. Come to think of it, could Lee and Kirby have grafted some of their original plans for Magneto onto The Juggernaut?

Had Lee and Kirby remained with the series, perhaps they might have explored the Magneto-Xavier plot possibilities. As it turned out, Magneto’s origins were left to a later generation of Xscripters. But the sibling connection did explain one anomaly: Why both men possessed the identical power to project non-physical images of themselves out into the world, which they used to locate other mutants and to privately communicate with one another.

Next, a returning 1950s Atlas artist, Werner Roth, calling himself “Jay Gavin,” steps into the breach to work over Kirby layouts. He does a creditable job with the second part of the Juggernaut story and a three-parter introducing the mutant-hunting giant robots called The Sentinels.

The animosity between ordinary humans and mutants began heating up with this phase. Before, intolerant citizens shouting “Mutie!” occasionally flavored the proceedings. Now the darker theme of anti-mutant prejudice came powerfully to the forefront in a tale that would reverberate far beyond the 1960s.

“The X-Men were unique among all our characters,” Lee pointed out in Comics Creators on X-Men. “Instead of being lauded by the public, they’d be feared and hated and hounded and shunned.... The more good things the X-Men did, the more the public hated them. I thought that was an interesting concept.”

Unfortunately, sales did not follow suit. After a year’s absence, Magneto returned for a two-parter. For one last try, Lee returned to the concept of introducing a new potential X-Man mutant, only to have him return to normal, after refusing to join the team. The multi-powered Mimic was the latest variant on The Blob and Unus.

And, in an effort to boost the appeal of the team’s subdued blue and gold uniforms, they began wearing red belts.

Diverse Hands

With X-Men #20, dated May 1966, Roy Thomas took over scripting the series, dialoguing a Stan Lee plot featuring Lucifer, The Blob, and Unus for his first effort. After that came a procession of new and old villains––many not mutants––as well as important new mutants, such as The Banshee and a returning Mimic, who briefly joined The X-Men as their first actual recruit.

By this time, Werner Roth and Roy Thomas were on their own, Jack Kirby having moved on before Lee shifted over to a purely editorial oversight position. Attempts to keep the series fresh and interesting seemed insufficient.

As The X-Men likewise struggled, Lee sought ways to reinvigorate the lackluster team. Werner Roth was replaced by Ross Andru, then Don Heck, followed by George Tuska. Roth was relegated to the short “X-Men Origins” feature that started running in the back of the magazine. It was an effort to fill in the characters’ blank backstories and punch up interest in the main continuity. But with such a large cast, shorter stories only made matters worse.

Unlike his publisher, Martin Goodman, who would drop a title at the merest hint of sagging sales, Stan Lee steadfastly refused to

X-Men Off-Duty It’s impossible to be certain when second X-Men artist Werner Roth penciled this (never-used) page—or precisely who inked it (we strongly suspect Sam Grainger, done as an inking sample). The page has been printed before in A/E—so this time we’re showcasing it as colored by A/E reader Henry Kujawa, who’s drawn a few alternative comics of his own. It depicts Hank (Beast) McCoy and Bobby (Iceman) Drake having fun in their civilian IDs. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Extraordinary But Star-Crossed Origins Of The X-Men

give up on a promising concept. Many early Marvel strips struggled to find an audience. Lee invariably revamped them rather than throwing in the towel. Iron Man and the Hulk were two of the more successful heroes who might very well have been abandoned in 1963 or ‘64, had Lee simply given up on them.

With the Dec. 1967 issue, The X-Men were given new nonuniform costumes, a new wrinkle instigated by Roy Thomas. “XMen had always been one of Marvel’s poorer sellers in the 1960s, even under Stan and Jack—the last of the Marvel comics to go monthly, or tied for it,” Thomas acknowledged. “And it certainly didn’t fare as well under Werner Roth and me... so I decided that perhaps getting rid of the rather boring uniforms in favor of more individualized costumes would help. I think it did, to a certain extent... certainly The X-Men never went back to the uniform look, except in some ‘training’ book like X-Factor... but of course [variant costumes] still weren’t the answer. I do feel I made a mistake letting Ross Andru (who designed the new costumes) put ‘suspenders’ on the Angel... too reminiscent of Hawkman’s cheststraps, which almost suggested Angel’s wings were artificial like Hawkman’s, which of course they weren’t. Otherwise, though, I think the costumes were pretty good... though it took the artistry of Neal Adams to really make them look good.”

Three issues later, Professor X was summarily killed off. At last, The X-Men were out on their own. Four issues after that, they broke up and began having solo and team-up adventures. At Lee’s insistence, the X-Men title was reduced on the masthead in favor of the heroes being spotlighted in a given issue, while Gary Friedrich, followed by The Doom Patrol’s Arnold Drake, took over scripting.

Werner Roth moved back to the front of the book, working over Don Heck layouts. All were clear signs of a foundering feature.

15

Roy Thomas reflects, “If Martin Goodman hadn’t killed The XMen when he did, [the mag] probably wouldn’t have been killed at all, because there were definite signs of life in the latter issues, especially the first Ka-Zar cover and then the one with the Marie Severin cover. I think Neal’s later issues and the couple by Don Heck and Sal Buscema did okay, too. We were starting to sell the book—but Goodman gave up on it!”

You Can’t Keep A Good Mutant Team Down

The original X-Men were scattered, but continued to surface.

The Angel appeared in the back of Ka-Zar and Marvel Tales over the course of 1970-71, in a serialized story written by Superman cocreator Jerry Siegel and drawn by George Tuska. The following year, The Beast grew feral full-body hair for an interesting sevenissue run in Amazing Adventures. Gerry Conway and Tom Sutton kicked off the new feature. Steve Englehart took over with the second story, bolstered by artists such as Marie Severin, Bob Brown, and Jim Starlin.

The X-Men did return with a #67 dated Dec. 1970; but this merely initiated a five-year run of reprints. This sad state of affairs

[Continued on p. 18]

For two issues, Jim Steranko art breathed new life into the tired title—but then he was gone. Barry Smith took a turn, channelling Kirby, then vanished from the feature. Every time a new artist departed, Heck or Roth filled in for an issue until a suitable art team could be inducted.

Finally, with X-Men #55, Roy Thomas returned, with artist Neal Adams joining him the very next issue, and the greatest run of issues since the beginning was inaugurated. Magneto returned after another long lapse. This was the period that saw the development of important new X-recruits, Cyclops’ brother Havok and Polaris, the introduction of Sauron, the return of Magneto, Ka-Zar, The Sentinels, and, most importantly, Professor X, back from the dead, just as Roy Thomas had earlier intended if it proved necessary to revive him.

Unfortunately, deadline issues interrupted that flow, forcing Don Heck and Sal Buscema to draw fill-in issues, until abruptly Goodman gave up on the title.

The X-Men was suspended with #66 (March 1970). It was a shock. The last time Marvel had cancelled a major super-hero title had been when the original run of The Incredible Hulk had ceased. As it later turned out, sales had spiked during the Thomas-Adams run, but by the time Goodman had hard circulation figures, he had already folded the book.

Magneto On Mutant Steroids Although John Buscema was the penciler and George Tuska the inker of the printed cover of The X-Men #43 (April 1968), Dewey Cassell, author of the TwoMorrows volume The Art of George Tuska, was delighted when Mr. T. deigned to re-create that cover for him a few years ago, as seen above. The writer of that issue was Roy Thomas. [X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

16

Beware The Comics Code, My Son! X-Men #33 (June 1967) went through no less than three covers. The first (above left) was penciled by Werner Roth; inker uncertain but may be John Tartaglione. But either Stan or Martin Goodman considered it not strong enough. It’s seen here as colored by Henry Kujawa for his blog.

The second version (above right), penciled and inked by Gil Kane, was too strong—at least for the folks at the Comics Code Authority. They rejected out of hand the use of the monstrous-looking other-dimensional Outcast as the towering figure on the cover—seen here as restored from a small black-&-white image printed somewhere-or-other and colored recently by Henry Kujawa. On the printed cover (not shown), The Outcast was redrawn as the still-menacing but less overtly grotesque Juggernaut, with Iceman and The Angel (rendered by an unknown hand) replacing Cyclops and Marvel Girl for some reason. Henry points out that the heads of Marvel Girl and Cyclops that made it onto the printed cover were taken directly from the unused Roth cover! See how much trouble the pros went through to deliver four-color fantasy to their readers? [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

X’d Out! (Right:) Rich at “coollinesart” provided this glimpse of two unused, crossed-out Don Heck pencils for the second page of X-Men #39 (Dec. 1967)—as well as the original art of the panels that supplanted— and followed—them.

Chances are that writer Roy Thomas (or, more likely at that stage, editor Stan Lee) felt that more action was needed that early in the continued story. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Center right:) Also seen is a 1990 photo of Don Heck in his studio, taken by his friend Jim Fern; printed courtesy of the latter.

The Extraordinary But Star-Crossed Origins Of The X-Men

17

Team Sports The two other scripters of the “first volume” of The X-Men were Gary Friedrich and Arnold Drake, each of whom probably had fonder memories of other groups.

(Left:) Gary Friedrich, seen below as per the 1969 FF Annual, had earlier co-created the series “The Sentinels” with commercial artist (and future Marvel inker) Sam Grainger as a back-up in Charlton’s Thunderbolt #54 (Oct. 1966). The youth-group’s franchise lay somewhere in between Fantastic Four and X-Men. [© the respective copyright holders.]

(Below right:) Arnold Drake’s well-remembered series “Doom Patrol” was launched in DC’s My Greatest Adventure #80 (June 1963), coming out two or three months before The X-Men #1. Both featured wheelchair-bound leaders for their teams, and Arnold believed till the end, with no real proof, that Stan Lee had learned of “The Doom Patrol” while the first story was in the works and had copied it. Art by Bruno Premiani. The circa-2000 photo of Drake was taken by Jeff McLaughlin. [© DC Comics.]

Arnold Drake, circa 2000.

Alias Smith And Dee (Left:) Barry Smith’s unused cover for The X-Men #53 (Feb. 1969)—inker uncertain, but may be the same Michael Dee (a.k.a. Mike Esposito) who inked the Smith re-do that did get printed. Personally, Ye Editor likes this one better than the one that got printed. It has been colored here by Henry Kujawa. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Above:) Barry (in suit, facing camera) talking with Roy Thomas (at far left) and others at the 1973 New York City Comic Art Convention. Except for Sergio Aragonés at right rear, the other folks can’t be positively identified, though that may be Roy’s then-wife Jeanie with her back to us. Photo taken by M. Luebker; thanks to Larry Guidry for finding it for us. Barry, of course, was then earning plaudits for his work on Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, and would soon move on to his own projects as Barry Windsor-Smith.

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The First Decade Of “The Strangest Super-Heroes Of All!

Cover Me! (Above:) Many of the reprint issues of X-Men that began a few months after the mag’s cancellation had new covers. (Left to right:) X-Men #67 (Dec. 1970) by Marie Severin, inked by Joe Sinnott… #69 (April ’71) by Sal Buscema from a Marie Severin sketch… #73 (Dec. ’71) by Bill Everett… #79 (Dec. ’72) by Gil Kane, inked by Frank Giacoia. If only all these talented artists had been given a chance to do new stories during that period! Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

[Continued from p. 15.]

continued till 1975, when, after the concept was re-imagined at Roy Thomas’ suggestion in Giant-Size X-Men #1, the new international team led by Cyclops began a second life, one that continues to this day.

As Thomas sees it, this was a clear vindication of his rehabilitation of the series. “The proof of the pudding is that Goodman very soon brought X-Men back as a reprint title... something he didn’t do with other comics that he cancelled. It was almost––but not quite–– his way of admitting he’d made a mistake. But then, if X-Men hadn’t been cancelled so that Marvel president Al Landau would suggest in mid-1974 that Marvel start up an ‘international’ group, and I made that The X-Men... then who knows if The XMen might’ve limped along as a so-so comic for decades and no new title might’ve been created that would’ve become the darling of the 1980s?”

Why did The X-Men fail to take off? Was it too much like The Fantastic Four? Too little like The Avengers? Too crowded a cast of characters?

Or was it just the fact that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby didn’t stay with the strip long enough to develop it to its full potential.

Those questions cannot be answered definitively. But while I think the latter explanation best fits, maybe, just maybe, Marvel readers back in 1963 needed a fullblown first-issue origin story to be fully hooked....

“You Have The Cool, Clear Eyes Of A Seeker Of Wisdom And Truth” Rising star Neal Adams in the 1960s—and a more recent sketch of Cyclops that appeared on his website. Thanks to Neal and his daughter Kris Adams for permission to print the latter. [Cyclops TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Extraordinary But Star-Crossed Origins Of The X-Men

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Second Time’s The Charm!

(Above:) In mid-1974, as is widely known these days, Marvel president Al Landau suggested in a meeting with publisher Stan Lee and editor-in-chief Roy Thomas that it might be a good idea to develop a team of international super-heroes, aimed mainly at selling comics in certain other countries and hopefully breaking even in the U.S. With Stan’s blessing, Roy seized on this as a chance to order The X-Men back into production with a few old and several new members, assigning Mike Friedrich to write and Dave Cockrum to draw. By the time “The New X-Men” debuted in 1975, Roy was no longer editor and Len Wein was the mag’s writer/editor—but Cockrum was still on board as illustrator and helped get the rejuvenated group off to a flying new start on its way to superstardom, with “X-Men” destined to one day become a household word! (So maybe Martin Goodman had been right all along! Would it ever have been possible for the generic phrase “The Mutants” to become as identified with Marvel Comics as “X-Men’ has?)

Seen here is a portrait of Dave done a few years ago by fellow artist Joe Rubinstein. It’s flanked by a Cockrum sketch of Cyclops and by Dave’s preliminary sketch for the cover of X-Men #119 (March 1979). [Portrait © 2013 Joe Rubinstein; other art TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Another Mutant County Heard From!

(Left:) Here’s an anomaly for a closer: a drawing by Gene (the Dean) Colan, done in 2000, of the original five X-Men—plus Scott’s brother Havok—doubtless done as a fan-commission. Shows what a pity it is that Gene never got his own shot at drawing The X-Men—not that he’d particularly have wanted to! No fan of illustrating the adventures of super-hero groups, he was eager to get off The Avengers in the early 1970s after just a three-issue run! [XMen TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.].

ATTENTION: FRANK BRUNNER ART FANS! Frank is now accepting art commissions for covers, splash panels, or pin-up re-creations!

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Visit my NEW website at: http://www.frankbrunner.net [Dr. Strange, Black Widow, & Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, inc.; Red Sonja TM & © Red Sonja Properties LTD; other art © Frank Brunner.]

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Made In Brazil: The X-MEN! The Secret History Of The Mutants South Of The Equator

by Roberto Guedes A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: The story of the first volume of Marvel Comics’ The X-Men seems fairly concise and knowable: a mere 66 issues, published from mid-1963 through the turn of 1970, plus a few guest appearances in other heroes’ mags… and, if one wants to count them, a handful of new covers done for reprinted 1960s issues beginning in late ’70. But that’s not quite the entire X-Men oeuvre from the ’60s.

To learn of nearly 100 additional pages of original “X-Men” yarns, produced primarily in an approximation of the artistic style of Jack Kirby, we must migrate momentarily to South America….

n 1967, when the U.S. Marvel Super-Heroes animated cartoons series (from Grantray-Lawrence) began to appear on TV stations around Brazil, publisher Adolfo Aizen seized the opportunity to put out comic books starring The Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Sub-Mariner, and Captain America—and, some time later, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and Daredevil, as well—through his EBAL imprint. Aizen was initially only interested in the characters

I

The Red Iceman Cometh!

(Above:) The Jack Kirby/Chic Stone cover for GEP’s X-Men #1 (1968), which actually reprints stories from the U.S. The X-Men #7 (Sept. 1964). Although author Roberto Guedes reports that the official name of the comic, which alternated material from The X-Men, The Silver Surfer, and Captain Marvel, was Ediçðes GEP, the cover logo here is clearly just X-Men—minus “The” or any Portuguese-language equivalent. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.] Note the, shall we say, creative coloring. Apparently no one told the Brazilians (or else they didn’t care) that the mutants were wearing uniforms, not costumes. But surely it can only be a failure to communicate that caused Iceman to wind up colored red! All art & photos accompanying this article were supplied by Roberto Guedes.

(Left:) The splash page from the back-up story in GEP’s X-Men #1, featuring The Beast, was less Kirbyesque than most.

who had appeared in TV cartoons (except, curiously, for Daredevil) and ignored the other Marvel heroes.

Thus, the original X-Men series by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby came to this tropical country in 1968, thanks not to Aizen but to the GEP Company (an acronym for “Gráfica Editora Penteado”) operated

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The Secret History Of The Mutants South Of The Equator

The creators primarily responsible for this unusual task (after all, it is not documented with 100% certainty that Marvel even knew of these extra stories—or that they cared much one way or the other) were Gedeone Malagola and Walter Silva Gomes, along with others who were not credited. Together, the writers and artists produced a total of ten “X-Men” back-up stories. The tales were generally very creative; the characterization was at least reasonably true to the characters as they appeared in the American comics, and the drawings were at least a reasonable facsimile of Kirby art.

Malagola stated, years later, that Marvel had authorized the GEP to produce new “X-Men” stories. That assertion was never adequately explained, but it was commonplace for Brazilian publishers to produce extra adventures of foreign, licensed characters.

In 1967, for example, RGE Company (an acronym for Rio Gráfica e Editora) had already done something similar, when it had produced a totally unprecedented crossover between the original android Human Torch and the original (i.e., Fawcett Publications!)

Captain Marvel, even though the first Torch had last had his own feature in 1954 and the Shazam hero had been cancelled in 1953!

(This unique story was examined by John G. Pierce in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #1, in 1999; later, the entire adventure was actually reprinted, a couple of pages at a time, over a series of A/E issues.).

¡Ay Robot!

Issue #8 is the only one of the several Brazilian X-Men covers on which the phrase “Ediçðes GEP” is clearly a title for the mag. The Kirby-penciled cover is reprinted from the U.S. X-Men #14 (Nov. 1965), the first of the Sentinels issues. Well, at least The Iceman’s colored white on this one—and the folks at GEP deleted the backward number “1” that had been emblazoned on the robot’s chest in the American edition, probably due to the cover art being “flopped,” reversing right and left. There are a few minor artistic differences in the area beneath the Sentinel’s right hand—but at least Marvel Girl is levitating, not swinging on a rope as in the U.S. comic! Let’s give credit where credit is due! [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

by publisher Miguel Penteado. Their stories were printed in a comic book called Edições GEP (GEP Editions) in a relay system, alternating with other Marvel characters such as The Silver Surfer (by Stan Lee & John Buscema) and Captain Marvel, the Kree warrior.

For economic reasons, as with other Brazilian publications in the 1960s, the X-Men comic book had a color cover and interior pages of black-&-white, although the size of the pages was slightly larger than that of American comic books. The title had a variable periodicity, and the final edition came out in late 1970; there were a total of 23 issues.

As the original U.S. stories contained about 20 pages, and GEP lacked paid advertising to fill the remaining pages of the comic book in the same manner that Marvel did, Penteado opted to assign some Brazilian writers and artists to produce new stories of eight or nine pages.

The Savage Land Forever!

The splash page of The X-Men #10, as reprinted in Brazil by Panini in 1988— with a due credit added for editor Roberto Guedos. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Made In Brazil: The X-Men!

The Merry Marvel Mutants Society The Kirby covers of the U.S. X-Men #10, 11, & 15 became those of Brazil’s #4, 5, & 13. That of #4 displays the MMMS plug fairly high on The Beast’s back, as it was on an unused version of the American edition—on #6, the crowd, buildings, and even the oncoming truck are far more colorful than in the Stateside version colored by Stan Goldberg—and by #13, four of the young mutants at last sport matching colors on their uniforms. But wow, those psychedelic hues! None of which answers the musical question: Did the Brazilian comic really contain an ad for the Merry Marvel Marching Society, which by the end of the 1960s had pretty much lapsed in the U.S.? [© Marvel Characters Inc.]

In addition, there are several other cases of this type of thing, such as the tales of The Fly, Archie Comics’ super-hero (created by Joe Simon in 1959), which appeared in the comics of La Selva Company, as rendered by artists Luis Rodrigues and Izomar.

Rodrigues worked as a letterer in the GEP’s comic books, and is likely to have drawn some of the uncredited Brazilian “X-Men” backup stories.

A curiosity: In 1970, after the cancellation of GEP’s comic books, the artist Eugenio Colonnese created a super-hero called X-Man. He became the first Brazilian super-hero to appear in a color story rather than only in black-&-white ones.

The legitimate X-Men only returned to Brazilian newsstands in April of 1979, then published by RGE, in Almanaque Marvel # 1 (a collection in digest format, with 100 color pages, which also featured stories of Spider-Woman and Daredevil.)

RGE published some of the mutants’ 1969-70 stories by Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, then immediately segued into the “New X-Men” by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum. In 1983, The X-

23

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The Secret History Of The Mutants South Of The Equator

hero with physical characteristics similar to those of Superman and whose origin was somewhat similar to that of the then-obscure Marvel Boy, as first drawn by Russ Heath in 1951. (Capitão 7 is abducted to another planet and gains super-powers. Returning to Earth, he begins to fight crime.) In fact, Capitão 7 first debuted on television in 1954, and he gained a newsstand comic book only in 1959. With the end of the TV show in 1964, the title was canceled.

The following year, Penteado founded GEP Company, which lasted until 1980.

Gedeone Malagola – He was one of the most prolific comic book writers and artists in Brazil. It is estimated that he has written over 1,500 stories. Around 1950 he founded the Editora Júpiter (Jupiter Company), which was short-lived. A versatile talent, he produced many genres of comics for various publishers: Westerns, war, horror, love stories, and of course super-heroes. Gedeone signed some stories with the pseudonym “Rick

“X” Marks The Spot The Brazilian “X-Man” of 1970. Maybe one of these days Roberto will have to tell us more about this guy! [© 1970 the respective copyright holders.]

Men migrated to Editora Abril, the largest publishing company in Latin America—founded in 1950 by Italian-American Victor Civita—which from that time until today has published in Brazil the characters of Walt Disney.

Finally, in 2001, all the Marvel heroes began to be published by Panini Comics (an Italian multinational publisher that also represents Marvel and DC Comics in European countries). From there, The X-Men were launched in several monthly comic books, in limited editions, in graphic novels, and even in the luxurious collection Biblioteca Histórica Marvel (the Brazilian version of Marvel Masterworks), whose reprint editor was none other than the author of these lines.

However, with the popularity achieved by mutants in Brazil from the ’80s onward, the very rare GEP X-Men comics are precious collector’s items, at least largely because of the content unique to them—The X-Men as drawn by Brazilian artists, or perhaps we dare call them, “The Brazilian X-Men.”

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Miguel Penteado – He was a comic book editor and artist who began his career in the 1950s, illustrating covers for La Selva Company. In 1951, he was part of a group of enthusiasts who organized the pioneering International Exhibition of Comics in São Paulo, Brazil. The exhibition featured original art by American artists such as Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff, and Will Eisner. The event was recognized even in the European press, due to its uniqueness.

Penteado was also a founder of the Editora Outubro (October Company) that launched many Brazilian authors in the early ‘60s. His most successful comic was Capitão 7, about a

Capitão 7 Gets Lucky (Counterclockwise from top center:) Brazilian comic book editor and artist Miguel Penteado—the 34th issue of his Capitão 7 comic (circa 1963)—and a publicity shot of actor Ayers Campo in the Capitão 7 series filmed at Record TV Studios in the 1960s. [Capitão 7 art & photo © the respective copyright holders.]

Made In Brazil: The X-Men!

25

When Raio Strikes Writer and artist Godeone Malagola (left) and his creation Raio Negro (Black Lightning)—seen here in his encounter with early X-Men foe Unus the Untouchable! Did Martin Goodman know about this? Roberto Guedes informs us that, on the Brazilian “X-Men” back-ups, Malagola only scripted, never drew.

[Unus the Untouchable TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; Raio Negro art & story © 2013 Estate of Gedeone Malagola.]

Starkey,” in order to make readers think the stories were of foreign origin.

Malagola is creator of the super-hero Raio Negro (“Black Lightning” in English, but having nothing to do with the DC character created by Tony Isabella). In fact, Raio Negro is a hero with a power ring and an origin story very similar to that of John Broome & Gil Kane’s Green Lantern; he debuted in February 1965, under the GEP imprint. Gedeone Malagola later talked about it: “My editors showed me a Green Lantern comic book and requested something similar. I just did it.”

Raio Negro did have relative success between the years 1965– 1967, but it’s important to understand that Brazilian readers were not yet acquainted with DC’s Green Lantern. Malagola even came up with a meeting between his Raio Negro and Unus the Untouchable, the early X-Men foe, in an edition of the Raio Negro comic book!

In the ’80s, Malagola did the comics adaptation of the television barbarian He-Man for Abril Company. Unlike the uncertain situation with regard to The X-Men at GEP, these He-Man comics were definitely made with the approval of the American licensor.

In the 1990s, due to ill health, he withdrew from the publishing industry. In July 2007 an independent publisher released Jupiter II, the last story of Raio Negro done while Malagola was still alive. It was a crossover with the super-hero Meteoro (Meteor) in Meteoro Comics #1, written by yours truly. Malagola died in 2008 at age 84.

Walter Silva Gomes.

Walter Silva Gomes – Little is known about his career in comics. The few details known reveal that he drew during the 1960s for several of GEP’s magazines. In the following decade he migrated to advertising.

THE “X-MEN” BACK-UP STORIES IN EDIÇÕES GEP (1968-69):

EG #1 – “Battle of Titans” (“Luta de titãs”) – Uncredited. Poor art.

(See p. 21.) During a safari in Africa, Hank McCoy, a.k.a. The Beast, finds a sleeping caveman. Upon awakening, confused and enraged, the caveman struggles with the young mutant. With great difficulty, the hero manages to imprison him in a cave. There is no explanation for how the troglodyte has survived so many centuries.

EG #2 – “The Day When Jean Became Leader” (“O dia em que Jean se tornou líder”) – Uncredited. A nonsense story! In the Lee & Kirby stories, in the absence of Professor Xavier, Ciclops (Cyclops) always assumed command of the School for Gifted Youngsters; but here, one day, the team members are faced with Jean Grey in the lead chair. Without knowing why, Beast, Iceman, and Angel are required to perform a series of foolish tasks, like fixing the street pavement or providing ice for an ice cream factory. They are outraged, until Cyclops returns and explains that it was all part of a plan to keep Magneto from realizing that Scott Summers was missing.

EG #3 – “Complicated Race” (“Corrida complicada”) – Uncredited. In this curious adventure, Jean participates as a pilot in a race car, while her friends fight Magneto and Mastermind. The villains try to sabotage the race so that Jean doesn’t win, but The X-Men manage to defeat the criminals, of course.

EG #4 – “The X-Men vs. Octopus the Terrible” (“Os X-Men contra Octópus, o Terrível”) – Art by Walter Silva Gomes. Octopus is a new villain, having nothing in common with Spider-Man’s nemesis Dr. Octopus. The artist tried to draw in a manner similar to the style of Jack Kirby (with Chic Stone’s inking). The machine Cerebro detects the presence of a new mutant in downtown New York, and The XMen rush to intercept him. On reaching the spot, they come faceto-face with Octopus, a hideous giant man with eight arms, who is terrorizing the population. While the other X-Men try to stop him, The Beast seems to run away, but returns minutes later with a giant shell made of lead, which contains Octopus. Hank explains to his friends that Octopus was not a mutant like them, but a man who suffered a molecular alteration due to radioactivity. So the lead causes the monster to revert to human form.

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The Secret History Of The Mutants South Of The Equator

EG #5 – “The Haunted House” (“A casa assombrada”) – Art by Walter Silva Gomes. Beast and Angel decide to investigate the case of a “haunted house” located in a distant neighborhood, and discover that the nephew of the deceased owner (aided by a henchman) frightened off everyone who approached the residence. He wanted to take ownership of the property, but the reasons why are not made clear in the story. This time, the usual roles are reversed: the heroes use their mutant powers to scare the criminals, who surrender to police. One curious fact is that Warren and Hank do not wear their costumes in this story.

EG #6 – “The Mutants from Jupiter” (“Os mutantes de Júpiter”) – Script by Assis, art by Walter Silva Gomes. This story is pretty absurd, but it is also one of the most interesting. A meteorite falls in the school yard, and Jean discovers in it a tape recording of a mayday call from the planet Jupiter. The heroes hurry in their spaceship (!) to that distant planet, which was the origin of the meteor, and are greeted by Emperor Zaikros. He explains that five super-powered mutants want to dominate Jupiter, and only The XMen can stop them. Just as in the memorable adventures of the

Meanwhile, In The Back Of The Issue…

(Left:) The Lee-Kirby splash page from The X-Men #7, translated into Portuguese.

(Row below:) The splashes of the Brazil-produced “X-Men” back-up stories from issues #1 & 2. On the latter, in particular, all the hero-figures were swiped from Kirby-drawn stories to keep the style of the comic consistent.

Writers & artists unknown. [X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art © 1968 the respective copyright holders.]

Made In Brazil: The X-Men!

Justice League in the Silver Age, each X-Man faces a villain: Acumulador (Accumulator), who absorbs psychic energy, faces Jean; Computador (Computer), who calculates and predicts the movements of blows, fights with The Beast; Terrificador (Scary), who generates images of the people’s worst fears is the adversary of Iceman; The Angel tries to stop Camuflador (Camouflage), a sort of chameleon-man who takes several forms. Finally, Cyclops battles with the leader of the villains, Coordinator, a creature capable of multiplying into several separate-but-equal Coordinators. After fierce fighting, all the heroes end up victorious and return to Earth with the blessings of Zaikros.

EG #7 – “The Man Who Wanted to Rule the World!” (“O homem que queria dominar o mundo!”) – Writer: Gedeone Malgola; artist: Walter Silva Gomes. Professor Xavier asks The X-Men to arrest Lahar the Wizard, a villain with hypnotic powers and pretensions to world domination. The criminal is visually similar to Mandrake the Magician, Lee Falk’s classic character. After a brief fight inside the theatre where Lahar performed his shows of illusionism, the mutants are dominated by their enemy’s hypnotic power. Lahar means to use television to spread his power over the country’s population, but Jean manages to break the hypnotic blockade and free her comrades. Lahar is surprised and cannot escape the heroes.

27

In the end, Cyclops thinks of declaring his love for Jean, but he is very shy and can’t bring himself to do it.

EG #8 – “The X-Men Face... Thor the Viking!” (“Os X-Men enfrentam...

Thor o Vinking!”) – Writer: Gedeone Malagola; artist: Walter Silva Gomes. A nuclear explosion awakens the frozen Thor in the 20th century. Visually, this Thor is virtually identical to the hero created in 1962 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, but his personality is totally different, more akin to that of the mythological deity. He’s very aggressive and creates bedlam in the city until The X-Men decide to face him. The only way to stop him is to use a time machine (very simple—these things are easy to find!) to send the god of thunder into the past, to the era of the Vikings. This comic book is one of the most popular in the back-issue market among Brazilian fans of The X-Men.

EG #13 – “Danger under the Water” (“Perigo sob as águas”) – Uncredited. Maritime adventure with Iceman and The Beast. It is the weakest of the plots, and the art is also poor. Bobby and Hank have two free hours before they must return to school, and go spear-fishing on a secluded beach. They are attacked by several fierce sharks, and they barely escape, even with their mutant powers.

[Continued on p. 32.]

They Call Me Mister Octopus The splash and a crucial introductory page from the “Octopus the Terrible” story in the Brazilian X-Men #4. Art by Walter Silva Gomes; scripter unknown.

Roberto assures us there’s no connection between this Octopus and a certain arachnid-baiting Doc Ock. [X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; Octopus & other art © GEP or successors in interest.]

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The Secret History Of The Mutants South Of The Equator

Maybe The Dog’s A Mutant?

(Above:) Looks like artist Walter Silva Gomes may have worked his pet dog into this street scene from the Kirbyesque back-up from the Brazilian X-Men #5. Well, why should Stan Lee have all the fun of appearing in cameos? Writer unknown. [X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art © 1968 GEP or successors in interest.]

By Jupiter!

(Left half of page & directly above:) Two full pages, plus a couple of panels, drawn by Gomes for the X-Men #6 back-up. See the main text for a synopsis of the story “The Mutants from Jupiter.” Script by Assis. [X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters; other art © 1968 GEP or successors in interest.]

Made In Brazil: The X-Men!

29

It’s Magic!

(Left & below:) The first and final pages—plus a panel in between—of the tale introducing Lahar the Wizard. Script by Gedeone Malagola; art by Walter Silva Gomes.

This story may (or may not) have borrowed a bit from the Miracle Man yarn in Fantastic Four #3. [X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art © 1968 GEP or successors in interest.]

(Bottom left:) The cover for that issue of GEP/X-Men (#7) displays yet another oddball color scheme for the young mutants' costumes. Apparently nobody ever bothered to check the previous cover's coloring. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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The Secret History Of The Mutants South Of The Equator

Thor Loser!

A potpourri of pages and panels from the Brazilian entry in X-Men #8, guest-starring The Mighty Thor—except that he isn’t! See the main text if you don’t believe us. Script by Gedeone Malagola; art by Walter Silva Gomes. [X-Men & Thor TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art © 1968 GEP or successors in interest.]

Made In Brazil: The X-Men!

31

Fireman, Save My Mutants!

(Above & right:) You (and we) saw the original Brazilian cover of that country’s X-Men #14 on this issue’s contents page. Now, feast your hemisphereroving eyes on three more pages and panel groupings from that issue’s back-up tale. Surprisingly, the artist (as well as the scripter) is unknown, but in spots he appears to be emulating the one X-Men issue drawn

by Jack Sparling. Thanks to Roberto Guedes. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Life’s A Beach!

(Left:) ‘Twould appear to be Hank (Beast) McCoy on this splash page from the back-up in X-Men #13. Apparently the other guy is intended to be Bobby (Iceman) Drake. Scripter & artist unknown. [X-Men TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art © 1968 GEP or successors in interest.]

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The Secret History Of The Mutants South Of The Equator

[Continued from p. 27.]

EG #14 – “Fireman” – Uncredited. Good art. Many workers have disappeared in the uranium mines of Koonklide. Professor X orders The X-Men to investigate the case. Upon their arrival at the site, an explosion occurs in the mine and the heroes fall to the center of the Earth. There they encounter Fireman, a giant flaming creature who is responsible for the disappearance of the workers.

After a fierce fight, Iceman and Beast freeze the monster, with the latter smashing him using his enormous feet. Jean says that other Firemen exist, but they will not attack the men on the way to the surface. Curiosity: this villain resembles Equinox, the enemy of Iceman, Human Torch, and Spider-Man who would emerge years later in Marvel Team-Up. Unlike the others, this back-up adventure became the basis of the cover of Edições GEP, rather than the original American art.

Roberto Guedes (b. Dec. 18, 1965) is a Brazilian comic book writer, editor, and magazine columnist. He is the creator of Meteoro, a teenage super-hero. He has also authored several books, including most recently A Era de Bronze dos Super-Heróis (The SuperHeroes’ Bronze Age) and Stan Lee, O Reinventor dos SuperHeróis, which tells “the story of the creator of the Marvel Universe.” He wishes to thank Gerson Fasano for several of the scanned images that appeared with this article.

Roberto Guedes and the cover of his recent book on the Marvel work of Stan Lee. Cover art by Seabra. [Marvel heroes TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art © 2013 the respective copyright holders.]

33

“The M.M.M.S. Wants You!” The Glorious Rise And Fall Of Marvel’s Very First Fan Club

by Richard Kelsey

I

t started with four initials.

Those initials, “M.M.M.S.,” suddenly appeared in ads, in bulletins, and on the letters pages in Marvel comic books in issues published in 1964, along with a challenge for readers to guess what the initials meant.

What they meant, it would turn out, was the beginning of Marvel Comics’ multiple attempts to start a club for fans. In all, four different clubs spanning almost three decades and generating different membership kits, magazines, and all sorts of merchandise including buttons, figurines, posters, T-shirts, decals, stationery kits, and portfolios came and went.

Today, only the memories and merchandise, now prized collectibles, remain of the clubs. Not one of those four attempts lasted, in spite of a large and enthusiastic response for each club.

And it all started with four initials.

The answer to the tease concerning what “M.M.M.S.” might stand for was given in the letters pages of Marvel’s December 1965 issues, as seen in the first art spot on the very next page:

Marvel, I felt it should have a lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek feeling to it. Even the name should be slightly outrageous.”

Lighthearted? The detailed description of the membership kit in a full page ad in the February 1965 issues certainly was that, as it proclaimed that, for $1, you could get:

(1) A membership button measuring three inches in diameter which showed the Thing carrying a flag with the words “The Merry Marvel Marching Society” emblazoned on it and depicting Spider-Man and The Human Torch alongside.

Above the M.M.M.S. flag were the words, in all caps, “I BELONG.”

(2) “A whole mess of absolutely useless M.M.M.S. stickers which you can paste onto your bookcovers, attaché case, or the hubcaps of your Sting-Ray!” The ad didn’t show all of the stickers nor specify the exact quantity that “a whole mess” meant.

The MERRY MARVEL MARCHING SOCIETY

As Stan Lee wrote in his 2002 autobiography Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee: “Naturally, I wanted to make it unusual, as different from other fan clubs as possible. As with everything

Fan-tastic Notions (Left:) Stan Lee devoted a half page in Fantastic Four #15 (June 1963) to acknowledging various Fantastic Four fan clubs that had spontaneously sprung up around the country. At this time, the cover box referring to the company as the “Marvel Comics Group” was only two months old. Art either by Jack Kirby—or by Sol Brodsky or someone imitating Jack.

(Above:) Over the course of the next year, though, Stan got an idea he liked better than merely plugging fans’ groups. The last paragraph in the “Special Announcements Section” of the letters pages in FF #32 (Nov. 1964) teased readers with the letters “M.M.M.S.” Clearly, publisher Martin Goodman had a hand in the new club, as well… but Stan maintains the club was his idea. Seems to Roy T. like Stan told him once that Merry Marty wasn’t really that sold on the idea—but maybe he changed his mind when all those dollar bills came floating in!

Thanks to Barry Pearl for the scans. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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The Glorious Rise And Fall Of Marvel’s Very First Club

Crazy Club Clues (Clockwise From Above:) Stan began the “Special Announcements Section” of Fantastic Four #33 (Dec. 1964) by telling readers what “M.M.M.S.” stood for (the usual guess probably contained the already-familiar phrase “Make Mine Marvel”).

A special letters-section box in FF #34 (Jan. 1965) dropped a few more tidbits of information (like, the tariff was gonna be a whole buck!) and probably stalled for time.

Then, in #35 (Feb. 1965), an entire page was devoted to the official debut of the Merry Marvel Marching Society—a page that probably contained even more hand-lettered words than even a regular “Fantastic Four” story page did! The house ad was repeated the next month in #36. Thanks to Barry Pearl for these scans. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

(3) A membership card displaying on the front the Marvel seal and the words “The Marvel Age of Comics – ’Nuff Said” and “E. Pluribus Marvel” and “Be it known [with space for the member’s signature] is a charter member in good standing of The Merry Marvel Marching Society and is thereby entitled to the adulation and admiration of all lesser mortals! These privileges are non-transferable.”

Alongside that was space for the signature of the “Grand Marshal, (pro tem)”—“Benj. J. Grimm” (the Thing).

(On the back of the membership card appeared “The Merry Marvel Pledge,” which read: “I pledge allegiance to the mags of the Marvel Group, and to the madmen who put them on the stands. One bullpen, understaffed, indecipherable, with liberty and boo-boos for all.” To the right of the pledge was a membership number stamped on the card.)

(4) A soft vinyl 33 1/3 r.p.m. record which according to the ad featured “the actual voices of the bullpen gang clowning around and welcoming you to the good ol’ M.M.M.S.!”

Later, the membership kit would change and include new items. For example, a different record featuring two songs replaced the first record with its voices of the Marvel bullpen.

“The Merry Marvel Marching Society Official Scribble Pad,” a “Make Mine Marvel” pencil, and thumbnail-size comic books become part of the official kit. A different button replaced the first one, and the membership card was printed on differentcolored paper. This new edition cost 69¢, and current members could purchase it for 50¢. That price would later go back up to $1 for new applicants and 75¢ for current members. Sounds cheap? Remember that regular-sized comic books cost 12¢ in the middle 1960s. So $1 would have bought you eight comic books. Comparing that to what current regular comics cost would give you an idea of an equivalent cost for today.

Marvel heavily promoted the club. Ads for the Merry Marvel Marching Society appeared inside the comics and even on the covers each month. A frequently used advertisement copied the style of the old Uncle Sam military enlistment recruitment posters, with the Thing looking and pointing directly at the reader above the words “The M.M.M.S. Wants You!”

“The M.M.M.S. Wants You!”

35

Count former Marvel staffers amongst the many enthusiastic fans back in the day.

Tony Isabella, a comic book writer and editor who began his career at Marvel in 1972, reports: “Of course, I was a proud member of the Merry Marching Marvel Society. What selfrespecting Marvel fan of the 1960s wasn’t? Joining the M.M.M.S. and receiving the membership kit was a huge deal for me. Locally, I only had two friends who read comics and that was it. This was even before I had started contributing to comics fanzines. So, all of a sudden, artificial as it might have been, I was part of a community.”

Scott Edelman, who worked at Marvel as an editor and writer in the middle 1970s, recalls saving enough dimes, nickels, and pennies to cover the membership kit cost, putting the coins in a Junior Mints box, taping it shut, and mailing that to Marvel to get his M.M.M.S. club kit: “I was nuts for the company. Those orange M.M.M.S. stickers—I put them all over the place. And, early on with the Merry Marvel Marching Society, they used to list members’ names in the comics. My name is somewhere in an issue of Tales of Suspense with the Titanium Man. I’m in there as ‘Scott Edelman from Brooklyn, New York.’ It was just the perfect time and I was the perfect age to be in love with the whole Stan Lee image and the Bullpen Bulletins.”

Kit And Kaboodle The M.M.M.M. membership kit, from an Internet photo—complete with the envelope it came in! Popular as the button and stickers were, though, the true hit of the package was the 33 1/3 r.p.m. record that featured the voices of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Flo Steinberg, Sol Brodsky, Artie Simek, Sam Rosen, Wally Wood, et al. Amazing Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko declined to participate, so he’s treated on the recording as if he’s climbed out a window to escape the proceedings—something Mr. D. might well have done, if forced to it! Artie Simek didn’t really play his harmonica on the record as Stan recalls later in this article, however. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

And fans responded. In the July 1966 issues, a Marvel Bullpen Bulletin reported that “We haven’t had much time to mention it lately, but the ol’ MERRY MARVEL MARCHING SOCIETY has so many thousands of members now that we’re almost running out of numbers for the flood of new applications that keep pouring in!”

Les Daniels’ 1991 coffee-table volume Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics confirmed the tremendous response, saying that fans joined “in enthusiastic droves when membership application forms were finally published.” Stan’s “Gal Friday,” corresponding secretary Flo Steinberg, was quoted in that book: “Nobody ever expected it to be so big. There were thousands of letters and dollar bills flying all over the place. We were throwing them at each other.”

“For this, people paid money,” Daniel reported. “In fact, branches of the M.M.M.S. sprang up at hundreds of colleges and universities, including such august institutions as Oxford and Cambridge. Lee never presented the M.M.M.S. as anything more than a lot of foolishness, but apparently this very quality made it a big success. And significantly, this fan club was not for just one character, but for an entire line of comics.”

“You have to remember,” says Mark Evanier, who has written for both comics and TV and has authored several books, “at that time, especially when the Merry Marvel Marching Society started, we didn’t really have comic conventions. We didn’t really have much access to Stan, Jack, Johnny Romita, and people like that. So any little thing that brought you a notch closer to the people who did the comics was kind of a thrilling thing. I think it was definitely a neat thing to have around.”

The Second Time Around The cover of the second M.M.M.S. record (which featured recorded songs, including the “I Belong” anthem, instead of the Bullpen) overlays a heroladen “scribble pad.” The art on the record was probably the work of then production staffer Marie Severin. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

36

The Glorious Rise And Fall Of Marvel’s Very First Club

Marchers. Nobody had ever gotten anything like that before, where they actually heard the voices of the people whose stories they had been reading. It’s a wonder they didn’t cancel their subscriptions on the spot! But they didn’t—they loved it and it was oh so typically Marvel!”

Fans did indeed love it.

Likewise for former Marvel writer/editor Jim Salicrup: “I come from a fairly poor background. I grew up in the Bronx, in the projects and later in a very tiny apartment, so I have many memories of trying to scrounge up enough money just to buy the comics back when they were 12¢ or a quarter. Seeing the snazzy ads for the M.M.M.S. in all the Marvel titles was quite a temptation. I just had to join. After all, I truly loved those Marvel comics, and had to have anything that had any connection to them whatsoever. There was no way I could resist a fan club! And yes, receiving that priceless M.M.M.S. membership package in the mail was as thrilling as any Christmas or birthday present ever,” Salicrup recalled.

Missouri high school teacher Roy Thomas, too, was a charter member. He hadn’t joined any comics-related club since the Junior Justice Society of America back around 1950, and the buck was a far heftier sum than a dime had been a decade and a half earlier, but he found Stan’s hyperbolic enthusiasm, as expressed in the ads, highly infectious.

Out of all of the items in the membership kit, many of them most remember and love the record of the Marvel bullpen conversing.

“I realized,” Lee reported in his autobiography, “that most of our readers felt they knew the members of the bullpen because I was always writing about them. So, in a moment of inspiration, I marched the whole gang out of the office one day to a recording studio about five blocks away. In those days, you could press a very cheap vinyl record for less than a penny each. Since it was so affordable, we made a record for our fans, ad-libbing the whole thing. Jack ‘King’ Kirby and I feigned an argument in front of the mike with brilliant dialogue, like—Jack: ‘What are we doing here anyway?’ Stan: ‘Making fools or ourselves,’ while our demon letterer, ‘Adorable Artie’ Simek, insisted upon playing his off-key harmonica, and production manager ‘Jolly Solly’ Brodsky pleaded for us to cut the nonsense short because we had deadlines back at the office. My one-in-a-million secretary/assistant, ‘Fabulous Flo’ Steinberg, begged us to restore some sanity to the whole affair, and on and on.

“Our wacky little record, which played for about five minutes, was one of the many offbeat things we sent to our Merry

Clipping Coupons (Top of page:) Even when, for example in FF #38 (May 1965), Marvel devoted only about a third of a page to the M.M.M.S., Stan’s written message would’ve make it an irresistible read for most fans. (Right:) The next month, though, it was back to a full page of hard-sell, sporting a Thing figure that might have been drawn by Sol Brodsky. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“I must have played the Marvel Bullpen record a dozen times that first day.” Isabella has said. “It was corny, but it was also wonderful. I smiled every time I played it.

When I worked with Stan at Marvel, I was pleased to discover he wasn’t all that different from the exuberant ‘host’ of the record.”

“Sure, it was corny, but I loved it,” Salicrup said. “It was cool hearing the voices of so many Marvel Bullpenners. It’s especially significant now, since so many of those voices are no longer with us.”

Evanier also loved the record, noting, “I played it and thought it was very funny. It had the effect of making us feel a little closer to the people behind the comics. When they put the second kit out, I bought that just as a coupletist. Unfortunately, the record in the

“The M.M.M.S. Wants You!”

37

Celebrity Endorsements Various artists—including, some think, Sol Brodsky and Carl Hubbell—drew character shots that decorated full-page M.M.M.S. ads in Marvel’s July 1965 issues. Thanks to Barry Pearl & Nick Caputo. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Bulletins” and issues of the “Merry Marvel Messenger” were mailed out to members in 1965 and 1966.

“There were two or three newsletters,” Edelman recalled. They were basically an equivalent of an overblown Bullpen Bulletins page telling you about what was coming up and giving you personal information into the lives of Don Heck, Dick Ayers, those guys. It was fun reading.”

In the June 1967 issues, Stan’s Soapbox related a letter from Evanier which suggested rankings like a “Real Frantic One” (who had bought his first Marvel comic) and Quite ‘Nuff Sayer (who has had his first letter published) to avoid the M.M.M.S. from turning into “disorganized chaos.”

“My greatest, lasting contribution to the comic book industry,” Evanier noted with a laugh when asked about how he came up with the idea for those rankings. “I had the flu one day. I was home, very sick, and I just started writing. I used to write a lot of letters to the comic letters pages. There was really no thought process behind it. They new kit wasn’t the same. I was hoping for a sequel with all of the new people in it or something like that. But they did the record with the music.”

Throughout the reign of the club, news and announcements appeared in Marvel Comics, such as lists of new members, along with advertisements for M.M.M.S. and Marvel products, like T-shirts, posters, stationery kits, and sweatshirts. A “special M.M.M.S. page in each of our mags!” announced in the June 1965 issues’ Bullpen Bulletins, “filled with unexpected announcements and surprising features” never appeared.

Several “Special Bullpen

Just One (Or Two) Of Those Things As soon as the membership drive was over, the Merry Marvel Merchandising began in earnest, with this full-page ad in FF #41 (Aug. 1965) spotlighting the new Fantastic Four T-shirt. Seen above is a photo of the Thing sweatshirt, which would soon follow; it’s seen in its original packaging. Thanks to Barry Pearl for the page scan. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

38

The Glorious Rise And Fall Of Marvel’s Very First Club

ended up printing it in the Bullpen Bulletins page, so it ran in every Marvel comic.”

“We kinda dig Mark’s idea. Let us know how it hits you and maybe we can really get the thing rolling,” Stan wrote in his Stan’s Soapbox.

In the November 1967 issues, two letters appeared in the Bullpen Bulletins—one pro and one con about the rankings.

“So, what are we gonna do about it? Well, for one thing, we’re going to boil down the seemingly endless list of titles which we’ve had suggested to us, and try to limit them to just a few, easy-toremember ones. Then, when we get all the details worked out, we’ll clue you in on this page in the very near future. And don’t worry about being left out in the cold. We’re gonna work it so that EVERY Marvelite—whether he’s had a letter printed, or won a noprize, or not—every Marvelite will be entitled to a rank of his own!

Just give us time! Yes sir! Before we’re through, we’ll be well on

our way to total oblivion!” the bulletin reported.

Then from the December 1967 issues through the June 1968 issues, Marvel listed revised versions of Evanier’s suggested rankings:

• “Any frenzied fan who buys at least three Marvel titles per month, with unfailing devotion” was a “RFO – a Real Frantic One!”

• A “Quite ‘Nuff Sayer” (QNS) was “to be used with pride by any heroic one who has had at least one letter published in a Marvel mag.”

• A “TTB” (Titanic True Believer) was“the hard-earned and welldeserved title for anyone who has ever won a noteworthy, nonnegotiable No-Prize!”

• A “KOF” (Keeper of the Flame) was “any Marvel madman, anywhere in the free world, who successfully recruits a new disciple into the riotous ranks of Marveldom!”

• A “PMM” (Permanent Marvelite Maximus) was the title for “those fortunate few who have won all four of the preceding titles!”

• And the “FFF” (Fearless Front Facer) was “a purely honorary degree, approved and awarded by Smilin’ Stan and a carefully chosen committee for devotion to Marveldom above and beyond the call of duty!”

In the September 1968 issues, a Bullpen Bulletin listed all six rankings together. The letters pages in those issues also had a box with the rankings. From that issue on, boxes listing those rankings regularly appeared in the comics.

Then things seemed to tone down. Ads for the membership kit and various promotions and products continued to run in the comics. But no further Bullpen Bulletins, announcements, news about the M.M.M.S., or Merry Marvel Messengers appeared.

Something seemed missing. The M.M.M.S., which had started with so much fanfare and excitement, seemed slower and quieter. What happened? Why no cheery, fun “Stan-speak” about the M.M.M.S. in the Bullpen Bulletins or letters pages?

The following notice, which appeared in the October 1969 issues’ Bullpen Bulletins, answered that question:

Fitting Fans To A “T” After a couple more full-page M.M.M.S. ads pushing stationery and whatnot as well as membership, the house ad in FF #44 (Nov. 1965) showcased no less than eleven Marvel T-shirts! A/E’s editor, just hired by Stan in July of ’65, not long after these ads appeared, bought early samples of the Fantastic Four and X-Men T-shirts—and proudly debuted them both at the 1965 New York Comics Convention! Other fans were doubtless making their own fabulous fashion statements across the country. Thing art probably by Kirby. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“ITEM: Here’s big news for all members of the good ol’ Merry Marvel Marching Society, and for those of you who intend to join. Remember years ago, when we started the MMMS? We promised we wouldn’t just swear you in and forget about you. Then what happened? We forgot about you! Naw, we didn’t really—but what DID happen is—our mags became so much more popular than we ever dreamed they would, and we became so much busier than we ever expected to, that we just never had the time to do all the things we had hoped to do with our swingin’ little club.

But, we’ve managed to change all that now! And the change is so important, that we’re gonna give it a paragraph all to itself—just like this—”

And with that next paragraph, the Merry Marvel Marching Society ended—and the new and replacement club, Marvelmania International, began.

To be continued in a near-future issue of Alter Ego….

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40

“I Kept All The Comic Book Stuff In A Separate File” An Interview With The Very Versatile ED SILVERMAN Conducted 3-29-10 & Transcribed by Shaun Clancy

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: Ed Silverman is, as per the bio contained in his memoir Brief Encounters with the Famous, the Near Famous and the Not So Famous, “a distinguished broadcast journalist and documentarian.” That is actually a bit of an understatement when applied to a man who has won 11 Emmy Awards, the Freedom Foundation Award, the Albert Lasker Foundation Award for Medical Journalism, and various other accolades over the years. Among his most notable broadcasts for ABC radio (and later television), he was the first on the air for that network about the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, served as network pool correspondent at Guantanamo during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, anchored the Man in Space broadcasts, covered the March on Washington and the admission of African-American James Meredith to the University of Mississippi, was beaten and tear-gassed during the ensuing riots, covered the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald murderer Jack Ruby, and participated in many other major journalistic moments. He has won numerous industry awards, and in the 1970s he served in the administrations of New York City mayors John V. Lindsay, Abe Beam, and Ed Koch.

A/E

and they had a long (and, as you’ll see, tumultuous) relationship. He was also teamed later with another sports-broadcasting legend, Howard Cosell.

Hence the unusual amount of space devoted in the following interview to sports, not ordinarily a center of focus in this magazine.

In the early 1950s, Ed Silverman also wrote material for a number of comic books… and we are pleased to welcome him to the pages of Alter Ego….

“Ed Cronin Wrote Back A Note…”

SHAUN CLANCY: The Who’s Who in American Comic Books 1928-1999 website, which attempts to list all the people who ever worked in comics, does not list your name in it as a contributor. Did you use a different name when writing for comics?

ED SILVERMAN: No, no… I submitted my work under my own name. I did work for both Ziff-Davis and Hillman.

His career at ABC radio began with his becoming writer, producer, and on-air reporter-interviewer for Bill Stern’s Sports Today nightly network program,

Silverman, Stern, & Sports Comics Ed Silverman, seen a few years back amid his many honors and awards—flanked by two moments associated with mid-20th-century sports-broadcasting megastar Bill Stern, of whom more in the course of this interview: a photo of the two radio-men on the air (Ed’s on our left) and the splash page of one of probably several stories he scripted for Ziff-Davis’ comic Bill Stern’s Sports Book #2 (Summer 1952). Photos courtesy of Shaun Clancy & Ed Silverman.

[Page © 1952 Approved Comics, Inc.] The artist of “Man o’ War – Saga of a Champion” in BSSB #2 is uncertain (the Grand Comics Database has only skeletal info on the issue); but Silverman says he was the writer. The portrait of Stern, which appeared on every cover and splash panel of all three issues, was done by a different illustrator, perhaps Gerard McCann or Everett Raymond Kinstler, both of whom drew material for the interiors of Ziff-Davis comics. Splash page repro’d from a bound volume of Z-D issues on loan from one-time Z-D editor Herb Rogoff.

“I Kept All The Comic Book Stuff In A Separate File”

41

Cronin The Adventurer It was Hillman Periodicals comics editor Ed Cronin who bought Ed Silverman’s first actual comic book story. For Vol. 2 of the recent PS Artbooks hardcover collection Roy Thomas Presents The Heap, erstwhile cartoonist Herb Rogoff—who edited comics in the early 1950s for both Hillman and ZiffDavis—drew this caricature of his Hillman boss. This “recollection,” he says, will give modern readers some notion of what Cronin looked like: “I do know that his collar, tie, and the pin are all accurate. The rest of him is, after 60+ years, what I came up with.” Since no photos of Cronin are known by us to exist, Herb, we’re glad you did! [© 2013 Herb Rogoff.]

Also depicted are the Cronin letter that Ed quotes elsewhere on this page— and a Hillman envelope sent from Cronin to Silverman on Oct.10, 1951. Thanks to Shaun Clancy & Ed.

He was always in the market for new writers or new ideas. I made a submission, and his boss Ed Cronin liked the stuff. The first thing I submitted to them was one of those one-page fillers, which was a narrative rather than a picture story.

SC: You mean those 1- or 2-page text stories you find in the middle of comics that get comic books classified as media postage?

SC: Did you ever submit work to any other comic book publishers and maybe not have it published?

SILVERMAN: I did some early submissions to Will Lieberson over at Fawcett, but there was a little family conflict of interest, so I decided I didn’t want to get involved with them. Will Lieberson was the husband of my first wife’s cousin, and I didn’t want to get into that favored-family position where I would owe him favors.

My relation with Herb Rogoff had been one of working together professionally at Sports-Week. Later, when Herb was editing for comic books, I would work mostly through him. We stayed in touch after Sports-Week, and he later suggested that I work for him.

SILVERMAN: Right, and they always had a need for those fillers. When I submitted the first one, Ed Cronin wrote back a note. I have it right here. It’s dated “10-18-51” in green ink, and it reads: “Dear Ed, We can’t use the story as it is. It’s a very good yarn [which he underlined], and here’s what I’d like you to do with it. I’d like you to make a regular picture story of it [he underlined the word “picture”] about 5 pages in length. I’ll pay you $8 per page, 3 panels on page 1. The splash, which starts the story, plus 2 panels then 4 more pages of 6 or 7 panels per page, preferably 6 panels [which he underlined]. This would make a good 5-page picture story and I’d like to have it. Keep copy short [underlined the word “short”]. Don’t use any more captions than necessary. I like this yarn [all underlined], so please let me know if you are willing to do this. See you, Ed Cronin.” As you can see, he was being instructive and not critical.

SC: Do you remember the yarn he speaks of? Was it sports-related?

SILVERMAN: No, it wasn’t a sports story. I think it was a spy story.

SC: You’re probably the only person who still has anything written by Ed Cronin left, and you found it in less than five minutes in all your stuff, thinking today was going to be an interview on your radio career.

Amazing.

SILVERMAN: I kept all the comic book stuff in a separate file, as I have closets full of stuff. I’ve been going through trying to clean it out. I’m not getting any younger, so I figured I might as well start now.

42

An Interview With The Very Versatile Ed Silverman

“I Was Also An Amateur Boxer”

SC: May I ask where and when were you born?

SILVERMAN: January 28th, 1924, in Jersey City, New Jersey.

SC: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

SILVERMAN: I had two brothers, both of whom are now deceased.

SC: What is your technical background in writing? Did you go to college, take a course in writing, or were you self-taught?

SILVERMAN: I went to SMU [Southern Methodist University] for one year.

SC: Did you collect comics when you were a kid?

SILVERMAN: I didn’t collect them. I read them, and the comics I read were Tarzan, Popeye, Classics Illustrated, and Superman when it came out.

SC: Did you serve in the military?

SILVERMAN: Yes, I was in the Navy for 3½ years.

SC: Then, once you came out of the Navy, you knew you wanted to be a writer?

SILVERMAN: I was doing some writing in the Navy, and I had done some before, too. I worked on several service publications while I was in the Navy. When I was in Hawaii, for example, I was stationed at Aiea Naval Barracks. It was a transient center and service center. There was a weekly publication, and I did a personality interview and a sports column.

SC: Did you have a sports background in high school?

SILVERMAN: Yes, I played football, and I was on the track and field team.

SC: Was your whole family athletic?

SILVERMAN: Yes. My younger brother, who died a couple of years ago, was an All-American basketball player. He played at George Washington [University]. He made all-conference and honorable mention All-American back in 1952 or ’53. In fact, he was drafted by the old Rochester Royals, and then he had a better offer and was drafted by the Army. [both laugh] Then he came out a couple of years later and the opportunity had gone by, because there were younger guys coming up and he’d been out of the game

Pigskins & Pugilists These two splash pages from Bill Stern’s Sports Book #2, by unidentified artists, display two athletic activities in which scripter Silverman specialized while in the U.S. Navy. Our apologies for the loss of the last letter in the name of boxer Eugene Criqui at right, due to the pages being scanned from Herb Rogoff’s bound volume of Ziff-Davis comics from a given period. [© 1952 Approved Comics, Inc.]

“I Kept All The Comic Book Stuff In A Separate File”

43

shot puts and all, at 6' and 150 pounds. My problem was that I was too young, and I actually graduated from high school two days before my 16th birthday. So I was playing with guys who were 2 or 3 years older than I was, and they were much more mature physically, which forced me to compete even harder.

I was also an amateur boxer and I boxed in the Navy. We used to sneak into town and fight under aliases. I made more money fighting in the Navy than I did fighting four-rounders professionally. When I was in Hawaii, we had weekly smokers at the various bases. Army, Navy, Marines, submarine base, Air Force— and they all had boxing teams from here to eternity, so we’d be traveling a circuit, and sometimes I would fight three times a week.

We were fighting 3-rounders, but even so some of them were pretty rough. We had some great fighters. We had several world champions like Georgie Abrams, who was a middleweight champ; Freddie Apostole, who had fought Billy Conn; and Freddy Miller, who was the world featherweight champion. Lew Jenkins, the lightweight champion, was with us, too. During the course of time, people like Jack Dempsey came through… Gene Tunney and James Braddock.

Joltin’ Joe In Four Colors The lead splash page from Ziff-Davis’ Baseball Thrills #3 (Summer 1952). Art attributed to Alex Kotsky; story perhaps written by Ed Silverman. Although in the following pages both Ed and Herb Rogoff refer to this comic as “Bob Feller’s Baseball Thrills,” the Hall of Fame pitcher’s name was not part of the official title; however, the phrase “Edited by Bob Feller” appeared above the name of the mag. Thanks to Herb Rogoff and his bound volume. [© 1952 Approved Comics, Inc.]

for three years. But it was the best thing that ever happened to him, because he got involved in real estate and wound up being the #1 seller of new luxury homes in the United States.

SC: I assume he was tall and over 6 feet at that time?

SILVERMAN: He wasn’t that tall. He was about 6' 3", but he was a great shooting guard. In fact, if he were around today, he’d be worth $20 million. He could shoot, what today would be threepointers, with his eyes closed.

SC: Did he ever go into coaching?

SILVERMAN: No, because once he came back from the service he got involved in real estate and started his own company, which he used to help develop shopping malls, office and apartments buildings and, of course, the luxury homes. He was quite an entrepreneur.

SC: Of all your sports background in high school, what was your favorite sport at that time?

SILVERMAN: Football. I played quarterback, and I also played football in the Navy. I also ran the 440 and threw the discus and

Our sports teams had all the college All-Americans in football, as well as many professional football, baseball and basketball players. They were all in service, and their primary job was to entertain the troops, so we had quite an array of sports personalities. As a matter of fact, I was looking at a picture the other day of the football team I played with in Hawaii, for which I was the back up quarterback. The starting quarterback was Steve Lach, who was a two-time All-American at Duke and is in the Football Hall of Fame. The guy who played left guard was Emil Davaric, who was All-American at Harvard. We played against guys like Jack Crane, who was an All-American at Texas, Alvin Dark, who was an AllAmerican at LSU and who later played baseball for the New York Giants. It was just pro after pro.

The lineup in baseball it was just unbelievable. Our starting pitcher was Freddy Hutchison (Detroit Tigers), and our shortstop was Bob Lemon, who later became a great pitcher with Cleveland.

Then there was Billy Herman, who was a Brooklyn Dodger and was the manager of the team. You name it, they were there. Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, etc. The place was just filled with great professional athletes.

SC: Did fame get to their egos, or were they pretty down to earth?

SILVERMAN: They were all terrific guys. No prima donnas. One of the guys who was in our unit was the tennis player Bobby Riggs—the great hustler. Remember he later played that match with Billie Jean King? Riggs was an absolute fantastic player, and he was a con man. At the chief petty officers club, they used to have this big ping-pong table, and they used to play table tennis for money. Riggs, in addition to being a great tennis player, was also a great table tennis player. So he’d hustle these guys and he’d say, “I’ll play you left-handed”; but of course Riggs was ambidextrous. That didn’t convince anyone, so he said, “All right, I’ll play you with my left hand tied behind my back and I’ll play you righthanded.” They’d play for $100 and sometimes $500 a game. One night they told Riggs, “We’re not playing with you anymore.” And he said, “Screw you. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll spot you 20 points on a 21-point game.” And he never lost.

SC: Did you ever play him?

SILVERMAN: Are you kidding? I stayed far away from him.

What’s all this got to do with comics? [both laugh]

44

An Interview With The Very Versatile Ed Silverman

“Sports-Week Was A Strange Place”

SC: After leaving the military, where did you go?

SILVERMAN: While I was in service, I was also stationed in Washington, where I met Roger Treat, who was the sports editor of the Washington Daily News, and we got friendly. I had written some stuff that Roger had liked, and he asked me to write a guest column one day, which he also liked. Then he started having me come in evenings and I’d do some work on the sports desk. He usually gave me assignments on boxing. I covered a couple of matches, and then I wrote a couple of features for him. When I went overseas and he found out I was stationed with all these great athletes, he asked me if I’d do a regular submission on what’s happening in sports in the Armed Forces. I’d send in a piece every month, and I was being published in the Washington Daily News.

When I came out of the service, Roger Treat said he didn’t have any openings on the paper but there’s a guy named Marty Berg who has a weekly sports paper called Sports-Week, which was national with about 100,000 circulation. During the war it had a circulation of about a million because it was subsidized by private industry and then distributed to the Armed Forces. The magazine was really the forerunner for the format for what later became Sports Illustrated. We would cover any conceivable sport and give the results every week. Then we would go through the principal papers from around the country and pick out the best writings, the best columns, and reprint those. We would also do original coverage.

Herb Rogoff was our cartoonist. I would use the pseudonym “Spike Greb,” which was Marty Berg’s last name spelled backwards. That’s when I would do boxing and wrestling; but when I did horse racing, I was “Bat Masterson, Jr.” These are names Marty came up with. Then I would ghost a column for Jack Dempsey’s weekly ring ratings, and I was getting upset, as I was being paid for writing and now I’m the editor as well, so I said, “I’m not getting any credit here, so I’m gonna use Ed Silverman.”

He said “Okay, you got the boxing column.” Then from there on, whatever I did, which was on a weekly basis, I got my own byline.

As a matter of fact, I got a wonderful 8- or 9-page handwritten letter from a guy who said: “Dear Bat, I knew your father. I don’t know if your dad ever mentioned me?” He went on to tell me about the days of the Old West when he and Bat Masterson did this and that. The letter was absolutely legitimate, because the detail he went into could only have been known by an insider. I wish I had kept that letter, so here’s this poor old guy writing because he thought I was really Bat Masterson’s son.

One of the guys who came to work with us was Billy Ward, before he left to form Billy Ward and the Dominos. He is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There’s a big move on for recognizing him as the man who started rock and roll. Billy was a young black writer who was a very talented artist. He had been a music prodigy, and at age 14 he had played a concert at Julliard, where he studied.

Anyway, he started as a sports writer and he came to work for us. Shortly after, he left Sports-Week and formed the musical group. He appeared on Ed Sullivan and toured the country with Louis Armstrong.

Sports-Week was a strange place. People would rotate in and rotate out, but it was a great training ground. We printed it at an old printing plant in the City Hall area, at a place called Rogowski’s, the same plant where Variety published each week.

Each week, we would be rubbing shoulders with these guys who were writing up show biz.

SC: How did you get to work on Stern’s radio show?

SILVERMAN: I met Bill as a result of my comic book work. I wrote the entire voluminous issue of the Bill Stern Sports Book. He and his managers loved my work. I also sold and ghosted a daily column under his name for the Newhouse newspaper chain, as well as several magazine stories. When he moved from NBC to ABC, he asked me to go with him on a full-time basis.

“I Followed Herb [Rogoff to Ziff-Davis]”

SC: How many stories do you think you wrote for comics?

SILVERMAN: In the early 1950s I did a lot of their one-shot stuff like for Bob Feller’s Baseball Thrills #2 & 3, the Bill Stern Sports Book #2, and I still have a lot of the scripts. I did a story in Crusader from Mars #1 (a two-page text piece), Red Grange Football Thrills #1, The Hawk #1 (“Death Valley Scotty”), Kid Cowboy #8, Wild Boy #5 & 7 (“The Peoples of Africa” and a two-page text story), Weird Thrillers #3 (“Letter in Black”), G.I. Joe #6, 8, 9, & 11 (two-page text pieces), Airboy Comics (“The Real McCoy” & “The Saginaw Story”), Famous Stars #6 (“Hopalong Cassidy” & “Gary Cooper’s Springtime Mystery”), Explorer Joe #1 (“Famous Ships”), The Crime Clinic #3, Real Clue Crime Stories (“The Man Who Chased Himself”), and a dozen other stories in similar comics.

SC: So you worked freelance at Hillman for Herb Rogoff and followed Herb over to Ziff-Davis?

SILVERMAN: Yes…I followed Herb.

SC: Did you work for both publishers at the same time, or did you cut the ties to Hillman immediately?

SILVERMAN: I stuck with Herb exclusively.

SC: Did you write stuff by request, or did you just submit, hoping it would get published?

Sports Stars (Left:) The real Bat Masterson in 1879 (Ed Silverman wrote articles on horse-racing as “Bat Masterson Jr.” in the late 1940s)—and (above) a 1957 publicity shot of Billy Ward and the Dominoes. Ward worked for a time with Silverman at Sports-Week magazine.

“I Kept All The Comic Book Stuff In A Separate File”

Ed Silverman Goes Wild, Boy (Top left:) Silverman wrote the one-page feature “The Peoples of Africa” for Ziff-Davis’ Wild Boy #7 (Aug.-Sept. 1952). Artist unknown. Thanks to Rod Beck.

(Top right:) One of the scripts Ed has retained from his comics-writing days is that for “Joe Barton” story “The Big Hunt,” intended for Wild Boy #4. The tale is one of a number of comics yarns over the years which were loosely based on Richard Connell’s famous short story “The Most Dangerous Game.” Thanks to Ed Silverman & Shaun Clancy.

(Right:) Publication of this story was delayed till #9 (Oct. 1953), which happened to be the first issue published after Z-D exited the comics biz and sold its inventory to St. John Publications, which added “of the Congo” to the title. The artist is none other than Carmine Infantino, who at the time seems to have been influenced to some degree by the work of Bernard Krigstein. Thanks to Jim Kealy for this page. [© 1953 the respective copyright holders.]

SILVERMAN: It was a combination of both. When Ed Cronin was running things [at Hillman], I knew he used to love things like spy stories and crime stories, stuff with unusual twists. The thing that still makes crime stories popular today is the twist endings.

SC: Ziff-Davis was very into publishing pulp magazines at that time, so did you also write for pulp magazines?

SILVERMAN: No.

SC: Did your family know you were writing for comics?

SILVERMAN: Oh yeah, sure, although I didn’t advertise the fact too much.

SC: How did you meet your wife?

SILVERMAN: We were introduced by a cousin of mine who was in

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46

An Interview With The Very Versatile Ed Silverman

the Air Force, who met my wife and her sister at a serviceman’s dance. He had dated the sister, and then he wrote me in Hawaii at the time and said that he had met this girl and he thought the sister (my future wife) would be perfect for me, and he said why don’t I write her. I did, and we corresponded and exchanged photos. I came out of the service, and then six months later we were married. We were married in a synagogue in Brooklyn.

SC: Was the Lieberson family there?

SILVERMAN: Yes. They had to be, but we would only meet up with them on a few family occasions. My wife and I were their guests for dinner one time at their apartment on the West Side. She passed away years ago from breast cancer and I never remarried. I have a son and a daughter who are both married, and I have four grandchildren. My oldest granddaughter was a graduate of Yale Law School and is now married and living in Atlanta. My son had worked at my brother’s company for a number of years in marketing as a manager. Both my son and daughter live in the Washington, DC, area near Potomac, Maryland.

SC: Is your wife’s sister still with us?

SILVERMAN: Yes. There are two sisters, and they are both still alive.

“[Bill Stern] Did Sign Off On The Scripts”

SC: How did you get from comic books into radio?

SILVERMAN: As a matter of fact, when I did the Bill Stern comic book, which was a huge book, I really researched the hell out of it.

Being familiar with the making of a comic book, you know that each panel requires a description of everything, including facial expressions and even background positioning, if you are doing your job right. It’s like a shooting script, and instead of [just being] a cameraman, you’re directing the artist. I told Herb on many occasions that that was the best training for television I ever had.

SC: Did you do thumbnail sketches for the artists with your scripts?

SILVERMAN: No, and it wasn’t until later that I realized how well it prepared me for doing TV scripts.

Sidebar:

HERB ROGOFF On ED SILVERMAN

Ed Silverman and I were great buddies from the day I re-joined Sports-Week—right after the war, until I lost track of him in the ’60s.

Sports-Week was a newspaper edited and published by Marty Berg, a newspaperman from the old school: Winchell, Runyon, Jimmy Cannon, etc., who worked on the Bronx Home News, a great newspaper that eventually became part of The New York Post.

I worked for S-W before the war as a copy boy. Marty had always promised me that he would use me as a staff cartoonist.

Alas, he never did in my first stint with the paper, but he came through when I returned after World War II. That’s when I met Ed. When I left S-W in 1948, the year I got married, Ed was still there.

Eventually, I joined the staff at Hillman Comics. At that time, Ed needed work, having lost his photography business because of a lawsuit instituted against him. One of our comics at Hillman was All-Sports Comics, and I invited Ed to write some stuff for me. This carried over to Ziff-Davis when I joined them, and Ed worked on my sports books there: Bob Feller’s Baseball Thrills, Red Grange’s Football Thrills, and Bill Stern’s Sports Book. It was as a writer for the latter title that he met Stern, which led to his joining him on his radio show and then on to television at ABC.

The last time I saw him was when he arranged to have [artist] Helen Van Wyk appear with Edie Adams on the early evening news on Channel 7, the ABC outlet in New York City. Helen did a demonstration of a portrait of Edie. It was a great boost to Helen and to Grumbacher Artists Supplies, for whom I was PR Director. I left Grumbacher to move to Rockport, Massachusetts, where Helen had a home, and we eventually married and lived together for the next 30 years until she died of cancer in 1994.

I made a connection with Ed early in 2010 and we have corresponded and called each other since then.

SC: Was Bill Stern involved in the book you did do?

SILVERMAN: I’m not sure if I did the comic with him before or after the column, but he did sign off on the scripts. I remember sitting in a meeting with Bill, and he was still at NBC at the time and I was in his office. This was the time I was trying to pitch the newspaper column. He had one of those huge radio NBC offices, and there was Bill standing at one end.

It must have been fifty feet long, and he’s leaning on his cane, as he had an artificial left leg. I walk in the door and before I say a word to him, he wheels around, points the cane at me, and he says, “I’m a whore. I want to get paid.” [both laugh] He was setting the ground rules right away. I talked with him and I walked out with the right to sell a column under his name, as well as magazine stories.

I still have a letter of agreement somewhere here with what the split would be, and it was a pretty good agreement. Everything was on spec, of course, and I think he was shocked more than anyone else with its success, as he was not too popular with the writing press, and neither was my later friend Howard Cosell.

SC: Did Bill Stern have a drinking issue?

SILVERMAN: No. It was drugs. Did you ever read his book called

The Fabulous ’50s (Above:) Herb Rogoff and his wife, painter Helen Van Wyk, circa 1950s.

Courtesy of HR. This photo first appeared in A/E #43, which featured an in-depth interview with Rogoff. (Right:) The cover of Bill Stern’s Sport Book #2 (Summer 1952), probably painted by noted pulp artist Norman Saunders.

[Cover © 1952 Approved Comics, Inc.]

“I Kept All The Comic Book Stuff In A Separate File”

King Of The Hillman These three stories were scripted by Ed Silverman for Hillman Periodicals—and were located for us on the invaluable Digital Comics Museum by a reader who signs himself only as “movielover.” (Clockwise from top left:) “The Saginaw Story” in Airboy Comics, Vol. 6, #8 (Sept. 1949), must have been one of Silverman’s earliest efforts for Hillman editor Ed Cronin, and already shows the writer’s predilection for sports-related yarns. Artist unknown.

So does “The Real McCoy” in Airboy V6#12 (Jan. 1950), which fleshes out the origins of a famous cliché. The GCD lists either Reed Crandall or Al McWilliams as the possible artist.

In Real Clue Crime Stories, Vol. 7, #5 (July 1952), Silverman relates a spy story set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the years before the First World War. Art by John Prentice. [© 2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Taste of Ashes? There’s a picture of the two of us in there, and we worked together for 3½ years. It would have been longer if he hadn’t gone off the deep end. His sponsors loved him. First it was Gussie Busch (Budweiser), and then it was Allstate Insurance, and they both loved him because he was so great as a motivational speaker for their sales force. He would go to regional sales meetings, and Bill was great with small and large groups of people, because he had a great personality. He would charm them with stories, and after a while Gussie Busch didn’t care whether the show got ratings or not. It did get ratings, but he was more interested in what Bill meant to his sales force.

At that time the show was the only daily national sports show on radio, and I’m proud to say I produced it. All the sports shows were regional, and we had a 15-minute show that encompassed the latest sports results, editorials, interviews with sports personalities, and sports features like “Where Are They Now?” We did a lot of traveling, and it legitimized Bill in a lot of respects. While I was

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An Interview With The Very Versatile Ed Silverman

What’s Black-&-White & Read All Over?

Inside Front Covers Of Comic Books—And Paychecks!

Silverman scripted a number of one-page features for the inside front covers of ZiffDavis comics, such as The Hawk #1 (Winter 1951), Explorer Joe #1 (same date), and Weird Thrillers #3 (Jan.-March 1952). The artists of the former two pages are unidentified by the GCD (which does, however, ID the letterer as probably being Ben Oda!), while Everett Raymond Kinstler drew “Letter in Black.” Thanks to Rod Beck, Gene Reed, & Herb Rogoff, respectively. [© 1951, 1952 Approved Comics, Inc.] Also seen (directly above) is one of Ed’s Z-D check stubs—this one including payment for “Letter in Black,” thus establishing that his rate for this type of inside-front-cover feature was $9 per page—not bad for that era! Thanks to Ed Silverman & Shaun Clancy.

“The Mouth” At The Mike Famous 1960s-plus sports announcer Howard Cosell.

doing the Stern show, the director was also the director of a weekly show called All League Club House. This was a show in which 3 or 4 eighth- or ninth-graders would sit around a table with a sports star and Howard Cosell would be the moderator.

They would ask questions of the sports celebrity. It was sponsored by the Little League and was Howard’s break into broadcasting. We had a mutual producer, so Howard would listen to our show all the time. In those days I would go out with a portable tape recorder, which was the most primitive tape recorder you could ever imagine. It was called the TaPak. It was created during World War II, and it was

battery-powered and spring-driven, and you had to hand-wind it.

This was groundbreaking reporting, and Howard was impressed by it, so he asked Pem, the director, if he would introduce us and he did. Howard wanted me to be a guest on his show, and then asked if I’d do a weekly piece on his show. We got to be good friends.

We met socially, and then I arranged for a local nightly radio show called The 11:30 Clubhouse on WABC. Howard and I produced it. We got Chris Schenkel to do the anchor duties, and I think we paid Chris $50 a week. I was paying this out of my own pocket, and I remember writing checks to Chris, and after about three or four weeks we realized that Chris wasn’t working out. He was the sweetest guy in the world, but he wasn’t a tough enough interviewer. We wanted hard-hitting interviews, so we said

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49

and downers. He would take them by the handful.

A Man Of Letters A pair of letters from Bill Stern to Silverman that suggest an interesting dynamic between the two journalists. Thanks to Ed Silverman & Shaun Clancy.

goodbye to Chris, and Howard and I took over the show. There I was, doing the Bill Stern Show during the day and then hanging around until 11:30 at night and doing another show for practically nothing. After about six more weeks I said to Howard the show was all his, and he jumped at it, and that was Howard’s start in broadcasting. It got good reviews. After that, he started doing some stuff for the network.

SC: Did Howard’s slow speech pattern sound the same then as it did in the 1970s?

SILVERMAN: Yeah. He developed a much better technique as he went along, as we all did. Howard was very hard to listen to in the early days. You’ve got give him some credit at the beginning.

When he was doing All League Clubhouse, he would plant tough questions with the kids to ask the sports figures, and these were questions no sports interviewer would ever ask, but when a kid asks you these questions, what are you gonna do? [both laugh] This was all live, too.

“God, I Can’t Put This Guy On The Air!”

SC: When the Bill Stern Show ended, was it a surprise, or did you see it coming?

SILVERMAN: It wasn’t a surprise, because I was the guy who called John Daily and told him he had to take him off the air. I used to carry a letter with me from John Daily authorizing me to use my own judgment as to whether or not to put him on the air, because there were several earlier instances where Bill came to the microphone stoned. One night when Bill came into the studio, he must have lapped up a handful of pills, which came in all colors. It was five minutes to airtime, and he was sluggish and slurring. When I first saw the pills in his desk, I thought they were jellybeans because of all the colors, but they were all drug capsules of uppers

Hoppy The Marvel Cowboy This picturized bio of William Boyd, the actor who portrayed (and by that time basically owned) the ultra-popular Western-movie hero Hopalong Cassidy, appeared in Ziff-Davis' Famous Stars #6 (Spring 1952). By this time, Hoppy's old films were huge on TV, although the last one had been filmed in 1948. Artist uncertain; the Grand Comics Database suggests John Prentice as a possibility.

Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Anyway, I said, “God, I can’t put this guy on the air!”—and I told Bill the bad news. He said, “Please Eddie, let me go on. I can do it.” I said I couldn’t do it, and he gave in like a scorned child.

Someone took him back into the office and I filled in for him. I cried when the show was over, because here I am treating the great Bill Stern like a baby. It was heart-wrenching. He straightened up after a few days, and he was in a good shape for a while.

Then we went to Virginia Beach for the Triangle Cable Company Golf Tournament, which was part of the LPGA tour. Bill was going to do the live broadcast. We went down there for three days on the company plane, and all of a sudden, I’m looking for Bill because we were supposed to go on the air and I can’t find him. I go to the room and he’s stretched out on the bed completely zonked out. I send for the house doctor, who says that Bill overdosed. We take him to the local hospital and they straighten

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An Interview With The Very Versatile Ed Silverman

Turn The Radio On! (From left to right:) Ed Silverman before a placard announcing an awards banquet of the Radio Enthusiasts of Puget Sound, June 2010… Ed and friend Rhoda Alben-Aronson at the event… and Ed with Norman Corwin (legendary writer of drama in radio’s Golden Age). Thanks to Ed Silverman & Shaun Clancy.

him out. I get him on a plane and fly him back to New York.

Earlier I had called his wife Harriet to tell her to please meet the plane at the airport, as I had to clean things up at the tournament site. I told her Bill can’t go on and you have to do something. She met him at the airport, and I then called John Daily and told him what I had done. I said, “John, I exercised my judgment according to your letter, and I don’t know where we go from here.” He thanked me, and two days later Harriet put Bill in the Institute for the Living.

SC: Did you have other instances like that in your career where you couldn’t talk about that type of behavior?

SILVERMAN: No, not really. Howard was a clean-cut guy.

SC: Did Bill Stern pass away from a drug overdose?

SILVERMAN: No. He had a heart attack. After the episode I mentioned, he came back and worked for Mutual, and he contacted me asking if I’d come back and work with him. At that time I was director of news for ABC radio, and our careers were

going in different directions, so I declined. I continued my career at ABC and wore all types of hats. At the time ABC was nicknamed “the 4th” network,” and “Almost Broadcasting Company.”

SC: Did you ever have any contact with Walter Winchell?

SILVERMAN: Oh jeez, yes. Walt’s office was next door to mine.

He had a cubbyhole and I had a smaller cubbyhole. The guy who wrote his Sunday show was a guy named Jesse Mass. Jesse was a good friend of mine, and when my son was born I got a call from someone saying they heard on Walter Winchell’s show that I had had a baby boy. I swear I must have got twenty phone calls in about a half hour. Such was the reach of his show. Walter could never stop talking about himself. I’d go into his office to tell him something, and thirty seconds into it he’d nod his head and then start talking about himself.

Every year for about four years in a row as part of The Bill Stern Show, I used to go Las Vegas to cover the Damon Runyon Cancer [Fund] Golf Tournament of Champions at the Desert Inn. Walter Winchell was the chairman of the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund in those days. He would come out there for a putting contest between himself, Bob Hope, and Bing Crosby. Guess who would win the putting contest? Every year Walter Winchell would win, and Crosby and Hope would just go crazy. He’d take great pleasure in beating them.

Walter was also the cheapest S.O.B. in the world. Here’s a story.

Jesse Mass was working at an editor’s salary, and for a few extra bucks he was doing the Sunday night show for Walter. Every year at Christmas time, trucks would pull up with tons of gifts for Walter. This was before ethics issues were a problem, and here’s Jesse doing a great job for Walter, so one day just before Christmas he calls Jesse in and he says, “Jesse, I got you something for Christmas.” Jesse thanks Walter, and Walter produces a lovely gold pocket pen and pencil set and says, “Jesse, for Christmas, which one do you want? The pen or the pencil?” [both laugh] SC: Which one did he choose?

SILVERMAN: He said as politely as he could that he already had a pen and a pencil and declined the gift. Walter was not one of the most beloved characters.

Debriefing Encounters Of The First Kind One of the most reprinted photos of Ed Silverman is the one in which he interviews rocker Elvis Presley upon his being discharged from the U.S. Army on March 5, 1960. Ed’s the one on the right. This photo became the cover of his ebook Brief Encounters with the Famous, the Near Famous, and the Not So Famous. You can probably locate access to it online. Thanks to Ed Silverman & Shaun Clancy. [© 2013 the respective copyright holders.]

Shaun Clancy started collecting comics in 1975 at the age of eight, when his father brought home a Charlton horror comic for him to read.

Soon his mother gave him older comics with their cover logos cut off, from a used bookstore. Today Shaun is married with two young boys, owns a heating and air-conditioning company in the Seattle area, and spends large amounts of time researching comic book history to get the records straight.

“I Kept All The Comic Book Stuff In A Separate File”

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“Game” Over!

(Above left & right:) The final page of script—and of Infantino art—for the story “The Big Hunt” from Wild Boy of the Congo #9. Thanks to Ed Silverman & Shaun Clancy for the former—and to Jim Kealy for the latter. [© 1953 the respective copyright holders.]

The photo at center shows Ed Silverman and Shaun Clancy at the aforementioned REPS banquet in June 2010, at which Ed received a richly deserved award for his radio-journalistic career. Thanks to both gents for the pic.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’

TM

by ROY THOMAS & TOM GRINDBERG

ALL-NEW COMIC STRIP ADVENTURES —NOW PLAYING ON AN INTERNET NEAR YOU!

The Triumphant Return of the Greatest Adventure Hero of All Time!

NEW SEQUENCES CONSTANTLY BEING ADDED!

Official Website:

http://edgarriceburroughs.com/comics/

Tarzan is a trademark of, and Tarzan artwork ©2013 by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.

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

Art ©2013 AC Comics.

The above is just a partial list of characters that have appeared in AC Comics’ reprint titles such as MEN OF MYSTERY, GOLDEN AGE GREATS, and AMERICA’S GREATEST COMICS. Virtually all issues published to date are available at $6.95 each. To find over 100 quality Golden Age reprints, go to the AC Comics website at <v.com>.

AC COMICS Box 521216 Longwood FL 32752 Please add $1.50 postage & handling per order.

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Kurtzman Remembered (Above:) Harvey Kurtzman, as seen in Frontline Combat #6 (May-June 1952). [©1952 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.] (Right:) Paul Guinan’s Kurtzman tribute, from the 1993 San Diego Comic-Con program book. [©1993 Paul Guinan & Anna Bennett.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

The Men Who Would Be Kurtzman (Part 2)!

by Michael T. Gilbert ast issue we discussed Harvey Kurtzman’s enormous influence on his peers—specifically Russ Heath, who drew for Kurtzman’s Mad and Two-Fisted Tales. When asked if he liked working from Kurtzman’s layouts, Heath replied: “Oh, I loved them. In fact, I’m sure some of his style even came out in my drawings.” Kurtzman definitely inspired dozens of ’50s-’60s-era writers and artists, including his two former Help! assistants, filmmaker Terry Gilliam and feminist icon Gloria Steinem.

L

But Kurtzman’s pop-culture legacy continued far beyond the Mad Men era. Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, Art Spiegelman, and Greg Irons were part of a whole generation of kids who grooved on his Mad, Humbug, Trump, and Help!, along with his gritty war stories in EC’s Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales.

Using humor, Harvey taught those kids to distrust what the doctors, politicians, or Madison Avenue shills were selling. In the ’60s, underground cartoonists took Kurtzman’s lessons to heart and comically excoriated mainstream American culture. Chief among them was Robert Crumb, possibly Kurtzman’s number one fan.

The Crumb Connection!

As a kid growing up in the ’50s, creative Crumb was drowning in a sea of conformity, until Kurtzman threw him a lifeline—Mad comics.

“The covers of Mad no. 11 and Humbug no. 2 changed way I saw the world forever!” said Crumb. “Even though I’ve made a name in my own right, I still feel like a worshipful fanboy.”

Love Note!

(Above:) R. Crumb’s Kurtzman tribute from Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures (Byron Preiss Visual Publications, 1990). [Art ©1990 R. Crumb.]

world view reaffirmed Crumb’s own dark suspicions about how the world really worked. His influence on Crumb is plain, particularly on Foo, a fanzine Crumb published as a kid with his older brother Charles. Many of its stories were thinly-disguised swipes of Kurtzman features, such as their “Clod Award”—a variation of

Kurtzman’s hilariously cynical

Bah, Humbug!

(Left:) Crumb found Basil Wolverton’s Mad #11 cover (May 1954) and Bill Elder & Jack Davis’ Humbug #2 (Sept. 1957) a pair of real eye-openers! [Mad cover art ©1954 E.C. Publications; Humbug cover ©1957 the respective copyright holders.]

The Sincerest Form of Flattery!

(Above left:) Brothers Charles and Robert Crumb published this “Clod Award” page in Foo #2 (Oct. 1958), imitating Kurtzman’s “Humbug Award.” (Above right:) This Arnold Roth drawing appeared in Humbug #2 (Sept. 1957). [Foo art ©1958 R. Crumb & Estate of Charles Crumb; Humbug art ©1957 the respective copyright holders.]

The Men Who Would Be Kurtzman (Part 2)!

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Humbug’s “Humbug Award” for the magazine’s leastfavorite person of the month.

Kurtzman also gave Crumb his first professional comics’ assignment, the sixpage “Harlem Sketchbook” in Help! #22 (Jan. 1965). Crumb went on to become a pop culture legend with outrageous characters like Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat, but never forgot the lessons learned from Kurtzman. He even wrote a heartfelt love letter to his mentor in Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures, a tribute book published shortly before Harvey’s death in 1993.

The Other Guys

Other Help! luminaries include comix artists Gilbert Shelton, Skip Williamson, Jay Lynch, and Joel Beck. But Kurtzman’s influence spread even further.

The Sincerest Form Of Flattery Kurtzman laid out and Wally Wood drew the above “V-Vampires!” panel from Mad #3 (Feb. 1953).

Charles Crumb liked it enough to swipe it for the cover of Foo #2, seen at right. [Mad panel ©1953 E.C. Publications; Foo cover ©1958 Estate of Charles Crumb.]

Art Spiegelman wrote a gushing foreword in Harvey Kurtzman’s

Strange Adventures: “Seeing Harvey’s work when I was a kid made me want to be a cartoonist in the first place. There’s a hazy but definite genealogical link between “Mickey Rodent” seared into

Illegitimate Sons of Mickey!

(Clockwise:) Cover of Maus, published by Pantheon [©1991 Art Spiegelman]… Kurtzman & Elder’s “Mickey Rodent” (Mad #19, Jan. 1955) [©1955 EC Comics]… Air Pirates Funnies #1 cover (Aug. 1971) [Mickey Mouse art © Disney Productions]… cover of Mickey Rat #1 (May 1972, LA Comics Co. [©1972 Robert Armstrong]… Floyd Gottfredson’s Classic ’30 Mickey Mouse (reprinted in Fantagraphics’ Mickey Mouse, Vol. 1: Race to Death Valley [©2011 Disney Productions]… Mickey at 60 [©1988 Bill Stout and Jim Steinmeyer].

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my pre-teen psyche when I first discovered it (in a Mad reprint paperback) and Maus, my novel-length comic book about my parents’ experience as Jews (represented as mice) in Hitler’s Europe. There’s an overwhelming link between the anarchistic and subversive brand of humor invented by Kurtzman that made zillions of dollars for his publisher at Mad, and the ‘Wacky Packs’ and ‘Garbage Pail Kids’ stickers I developed for the It’s Time, Square!

Topps gum company Greg Irons’ back cover for Deviant Slice Funnies #1 that made zillions of (March 1972). [©1972 Greg Irons and Tom Veitch]. dollars for them.

(Hmm. I think I may have followed in Harvey’s footsteps one step too closely—right down an open manhole, by George.)”

Bijou!

(Above:) Kurtzman drew the cover to Bijou Funnies #8 (Nov. 1973), satirizing the underground comix scene. [©1973 Harvey Kurtzman].

Indeed, the early Mad—with help from fellow Mad-men Wally Wood, Bill Elder, Jack Davis, Basil Wolverton, and John Severin— caused thousands of readers to question authority. People like Greg Irons and Tom Veitch, who took Kurtzman’s anti-war tales to even darker extremes. Their Deviant Slice Funnies #1 included a truly gruesome Time magazine parody that featured a naked, limbless

(Below:) Stout drew this parody of Snappy Sammy Smoot for the same Bijou. [©1973 Bill Stout.]

It’s Melvin!

(Above:) Kurtzman’s script and layouts and Wally Wood’s finished art for the lead story in Mad #9 (Feb-March 1954). Look familiar?

Repro’d from DC’s The Mad Archives, Vol. 2. [© 1954, 2007 E.C. Publications, Inc.]

The Men Who Would Be Kurtzman (Part 2)!

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Good Men! (Above:) Kurtzman’s Goodman Beaver from Help! #16 (Nov. 1962)—and his prehistoric ancestor from Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures. [©1962 & 2013 by Bill Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, & Bill Stout.]

soldier. That image still shocks today, and would never have appeared in a traditional newsstand comic, not even Kurtzman’s own war books.

Stout Fellow!

Kurtzman’s influence was so pervasive among the undergrounders that, in Bijou #8, top comix artists satirized each other’s strips in true Kurtzman-style. It even featured a cover by Kurtzman himself! The issue includes comix greats Jay Lynch, Skip

Williamson, Pat Daley, Denis Kitchen, Bob Crumb, Bill Griffith, Kim Deitch, Justin Green, Willy Murphy, Jay Kinney, Ralph Reece, and William Stout. The later contributed a parody of Skip Williamson’s Snappy Sammy Smoot in the style of Kurtzman and Elder’s Little Annie Fanny.

War! (Above:) Kurtzman fan Archie Goodwin wrote and edited Warren’s Blazing Combat magazine, closely based on Kurtzman’s war comics. The mag even employed many EC artists. For four glorious issues, Goodwin channeled Harvey’s unflinching view of war to produce one of the era’s finest anti-war comics. Blazing Combat #1 (Oct. 1965.) [©1965 Warren Publications’ successors in interest].

The Bijou artists were an impressive mix of first- and secondgeneration underground cartoonists, but Stout really channeled Kurtzman best. His style was a brilliant amalgam of EC artists Bill Elder, Wally Wood, and Frank Frazetta, but Kurtzman’s influence was always front and center. ”I had just discovered the original Mad comics,” said Stout in a 2003 Comics Journal interview. “I was especially enthralled with Will Elder’s work, and Wally Wood’s work. I went nuts over the stuff!”

Stout briefly apprenticed under his idol on Playboy’s

War Is Hell!

(Left:) Bill Stout drew “Filipino Massacre” for Yentzer and Gonif’s Bicentennial Grossouts. It was inspired by stories like Kurtzman’s “Big ‘If’!” in Frontline Combat #5 (March 1952). [© Bill Stout & William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., respectively.]

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It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World!

Everybody’s mad for Mad, judging by these parodies of Harvey’s classic issue #1 cover. How fitting to see the master getting some of his own medicine!

(Above:) Kurtzman’s actual cover to Mad # 1 (Oct. 1952), side by side with his color rough, which for many years hung on the wall in Al Williamson’s den. [©1952 E.C. Publications.]

Harvey And His Creations!

(Above:) Kurtzman as depicted by his long-time friend and partner, Will Elder, drawn for The New Yorker magazine (March 29, 1993). [©1993 New Yorker Magazine or successors in interest.]

(Above:) Terry Beatty’s Mod #1 cover (June 1981), and Batman Gotham Adventures #13 (June 1999) by Rich Burchett. [© Kitchen Sink Press & and DC Comics, respectively.]

(On right:) Alex Grecian’s back cover to Batton Lash’s Supernatural Law #26 (2000); Batton was one of Kurtzman’s students at the School of Visual Arts in the ’70s… Scott Saavedra drew this 1987 It’s Science with Dr. Radium #5 cover… and even The Donald got into the act with Donald Duck Adventures #11 (April 1990)

by Bob Foster, Todd Kurosawa, and Scott Shaw! [©2000 Batton Lash, 2013 Slave Labor Graphics, & 1990 Disney Productions, respectively.]

The Men Who Would Be Kurtzman (Part 2)!

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Little Annie Fanny. But the young artist was restless, and Kurtzman wisely encouraged him to do his own thing. Stout went on to become an award-winning designer of children’s books, album covers, film storyboards, murals, dinosaur paintings, and more, but never gave up his love of comics or his love of Kurtzman.

Stout’s humorous comics always had a Kurtzman feel, especially his “Shmegeggi of the Cavemen,” a story drawn for Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures. Scripted and laid out by Kurtzman, “Shmegeggi” starred a prehistoric version of Goodman Beaver, the Annie Fanny precursor from Humbug and Help!

But Stout’s Kurtzman influence went beyond funny stuff. Taking a cue from Kurtzman’s meticulously-researched war stories, Stout wrote and drew “Filipino Massacre” for Last Gasp’s Bicentennial Grossouts. It was a tour de force, focusing on a shameful periods of American history.

When discussing the story in The Comics Journal Special, Vol. 3 (2003), Stout said: “I was a big fan of Kurtzman’s Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales books. I thought, ‘Here’s my chance to do my own true war story.’”

Stout had learned Kurtzman ‘s lessons well: do your research and then tell the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it may be.

Twice-Told Tales!

(Above:) Jack Davis’ cover to Two-Fisted Tales #30, (Nov. 1952)—and its Evil Twin, Fear Agent: The Last Goodbye #3 (Dark Horse, July 2007), drawn by Tony Moore. [Two-Fisted Tales art ©1952 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.; Fear Agent art ©2007 Rick Remender & Tony Moore.]

After suffering years of ill health, Kurtzman died on February 21, 1993. The shadow he cast was a long one. Bill Stout received an Inkpot Award in 1978 for “Outstanding Achievement in Comic Arts,” just one of many honors in his long career.

In 1992, Art Spiegelman won the first-ever Pulitzer Prize for a graphic novel for Maus, his famous depiction of his father’s experiences in Nazi concentration camps. And 2009 saw the publication of the acclaimed The Book of Genesis, Robert Crumb’s Biblical comic book adaptation. These efforts demonstrated yet again that comics could be taken seriously as an art form.

But Kurtzman really led the way, during comics’ Dark Ages, with stories like “Big If” and “Corpse of the Imjin.” To him, comics were more than just throwaway junk. Now students like Stout, Crumb, and Spiegelman carry on his legacy. They are…

The men who would be Kurtzman!

‘Till next time…

Twice-Told Two! (Above:) Kurtzman’s Two-Fisted Tales #22 cover and Don Rosa’s parody of it, drawn for The Great E.C. Reunion 2000 booklet. [©1952 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., & ©2000 Disney Productions, respectively.]

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Spotlight On BILL SCHELLY – Part II Alter Ego’s Associate Editor’s Own Panel At San Diego Comic-Con 2011 Panel/Interview Conducted by Gary Brown

NTERVIEWEE’S NOTE: This piece, the second half of the “Bill Schelly Panel” held at the San Diego Comic-Con in July 2011, represents the conclusion of our year-long coverage of the major events related to that Con’s “50th Anniversary of Comic Fandom” celebration.

Last issue’s installment dealt with my early comic book reading experience, my discovery of comic fandom, my time away from the hobby and return in 1990. I also recounted the publication of my first book, a biography of silent film comedian Harry Langdon, and the “origin story” of my book The Golden Age of Comic Fandom, from its humble beginnings as contributions to the comics amateur press alliance (apa-zine) CAPA-Alpha to it’s being self-published under my Hamster Press banner. —Bill.

I

GARY BROWN: Was the Hamster Press experience a good one for you? Would you recommend somebody going into self-publishing if they had no other alternative?

BILL SCHELLY: It was most definitely a good experience for me. It allowed me to get The Golden Age of Comic Fandom and other fandom history books in print when no established publishers were interested. Would I recommend it? [chuckles] These days, I’d tell people that self-publishing in the print arena, as I did, has gotten much more difficult. For one thing, the cost of paper has gone up. The second thing is, when I began 20 years ago, I got a special, very low discount from Diamond Distributing. Then, too, people tell me it’s more difficult to get your product into the Diamond catalog if you are a new, small publisher. For me, the 1990s was a unique moment in time when I could do it, and only because I was fine with just breaking even. If you have an idea, go for it, but these days I would suggest either “print on demand”—where books are only printed when an order comes in—or digital publishing. Also, it’s much easier to get published digitally than in a hardcopy book. You can start at square one with something online, and if you generate enough interest, then consider a print edition if you feel that’s important. A lot of young people, and not-so-young people, are perfectly happy with digitalonly publishing. That avenue wasn’t available to me when I started. If you want to write, or draw, or whatever, I encourage you to pursue it and consider all avenues. Like I said before, “make

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris something happen,” because no one will do it for you.

GB: If I’m not mistaken, the next two projects were The Best of Alter Ego and The Best of Star-Studded.

SCHELLY: Well, no, they came in this order: First was Fandom’s Finest Comics, which reprinted a lot of the best amateur strips from the professionally printed fanzines like StarStudded Comics and Fantasy Illustrated. Then came Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Comics Fanzine, co-edited with Roy. We are working on a sequel to that one right now. There was a second volume of Fandom’s Finest Comics, and later the Comic Fandom Reader and the Best of Star-Studded Comics. Um.... I might be forgetting something.

GB: You also published some comic books, didn’t you?

SCHELLY: Yes! I did publish two black-&-white comic books. One was The Eye #1 with my own take on Biljo White’s fandom character, and Heroes Vs. Hitler, which brought a whole bunch of those heroes together. Roy had a hand in that one, as he did in several of my books. I got to have my pencils inked

by Dick Giordano on Heroes Vs. Hitler, which was a real thrill. He sure made me look good! (I also wrote an homage to the Finger-Moldoff “Robin Dies at Dawn” for Image around the same time, A Splash Panel and that was the extent of my Photos of Gary Brown (left) and “pro” comics work.) Let’s Bill Schelly at the Bill Schelly panel at see...

I wrote a fannish the San Diego Comic-Con, July 2011. memoir called Sense of Thanks to Aaron Caplan.

Wonder: A Life in Comic Fandom, which was published

by TwoMorrows. I think there are about 10 books in all about fandom. And, um.... where were we? [chuckles]

GB: Well, then came the biography of Otto Binder, certainly one of the legendary writers.

SCHELLY: Oh, yeah. I started working on the Binder biography around the time we hit year 2000. It was, like the fandom books, a real labor of love.

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The Fandom Menace A montage from a few of Bill Schelly’s Hamster Press publications. (Clockwise from top left:) Fandom’s Finest Comics [Vol. 1], which reprinted amateur strips from several fanzines, including StarStudded Comics and Alter Ego. [Art ©1997 the respective copyright holders.]

One of “fandom’s finest” amateur comics is an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “The End of Bukawai” in the book Jungle Tales of Tarzan. It was reprinted in FFC V1 from Fantasy Illustrated #3 (1965) with the permission of Danton Burroughs. The story was adapted by editor/publisher Bill Spicer and illustrated by Harry Habblitz. [©1965 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.] The opening sequence of The Eye #1 (Summer 1999), penciled by Bill Schelly and inked by Bill Black, featuring the hero created by Biljo White. [©1999 Bill Schelly.]

Art penciled by Bill and inked by Dick Giordano, from the centerfold of Heroes Vs. Hitler (2000). It starred some of the best of fandom-created heroes. [Character art ©2000 the respective copyright holders; other art ©2000 Bill Schelly & Estate of Dick Giordano.]

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GB: Was it difficult to research? I mean, to do a biography of somebody who’s already dead and maybe not a lot of paper trail?

SCHELLY: It might not have worked out, but it did beautifully because I stumbled on a wealth of great material. I was very lucky.

I think I was the first person to find out that Otto had written a sort of autobiography in 1947. It was in his papers at a Texas college. [NOTE: It was in the Cushing Memorial Library at Texas A&M University, to be specific. —Bill.] The curator was kind enough to make me a copy and I found it was helpful, although it wasn’t a true autobiography with lots of personal details... It was more of a humorous book, the kind Steve Allen used to write, with his views about various things, such as working in comics, but lots of other things, too. Also, I ran into different people with a lot of stuff. I got to hear Otto’s voice on a tape recording of a panel at the 1965 [New York] comicon, and when some fans visited his home.

I located some of his relatives and they talked to me, and then somebody who happens to be in this audience wrote a wonderful introduction for me—Richard Lupoff, who’s right over here with his lovely wife Pat. That introduction, I think, really helped the book, because Dick is a very successful author and was a friend of Otto. It was the only hardcover book published by Hamster Press.

And I didn’t print enough. I underestimated that one. I printed somewhere between 1,200 and 1,400 copies, and they sold out very fast. It was quite an experience writing his story, kind of an emotional roller-coaster, because his life had tragic elements, and he was such a wonderful man.... I wish his life had turned out better than it did.

GB: The next, we come to my personal favorite, Man of Rock, the Joe Kubert biography. [audience applause]

SCHELLY: Thank you. Man of Rock, yes—the book Joe didn’t want me to write. The idea was suggested to me by Bud Plant... and eventually I contacted Joe at the Kubert School in Dover [New Jersey]. Because he’d given me a cover blurb for my fannish memoir [Sense of Wonder], I had sent him a complimentary copy of the Binder biography. He told me he read it and really thought it was well done. But when I said, “I’d like to write a book about you,” he said “No!” When I asked him why, he just said it would be too embarrassing and that there was nothing that interesting about his life. I disagreed with that, of course... but he still said “No.” Finally, I said, “But Joe, you have to know that someone, some day, is going to write a book about your career... and, if you

liked my Binder bio so much, why wouldn’t you want it to be me?” There was a pause, then he said, “I think I want you working for me, Bill, because you don’t take no for an answer.” [laughs] I told him he didn’t have to do anything but let me interview him, and he finally agreed.

So then I asked, this was a little later, if I could come out and interview him at the school in person.

He said okay, and that’s what happened. I ended up working on it, for, what... about two You Otto Buy It—In 2003 years. When it was Words of Wonder: The Life and Times of Otto done, I wasn’t sure if Binder it was good enough. was the only hardcover book published by Hamster I had no idea people Press. It came out—and sold out—in 2003. would like it as [Characters © by DC Comics.] much as they did.

That sounds immodest.... but, I mean, it got the best reviews of anything I’ve written so far.

GB: And more importantly, Joe’s opinion of the book was …?

SCHELLY: He never read it. [audience chuckles] I sent it to him as a finished manuscript, but he said he couldn’t bear to read it because it was too embarrassing. But his wife Muriel read it, and she marked about a half-dozen factual changes, and that was it. So as far as I know, Joe never read the book. I believe him, he’s a straight-shooter. He would have told me. But that’s okay, you know? He knows what happened in his life. The book was for other people. He said his sister Roz loved it.

GB: Getting back into comic fandom, you wrote The Founders of Comic Fandom.

SCHELLY: Fandom’s Founders was the book that I figured would really be the last one, because you can only write so much and then you kind of get a little burned out. I’m fascinated with fandom, and I always will be, but I’ve kind of done my thing after eight or nine books. And I can continue with it in Alter Ego. What happened was, an editor at McFarland, who re-issued my Harry Langdon biography, asked me if I had any more ideas for books. I just said, “Well, maybe a book on the founders of comics fandom.” That editor asked me to send them a proposal. I thought, “I have most of the research.... It should be fairly easy.”

School Daze Bill Schelly visiting the Kubert School in 2004, about to interview Joe Kubert for the biography Man of Rock.

Wrong! That was really a tough book to write because, as I really got into it, I realized I needed a lot more information. I didn’t know enough to write biographies of all these people. So I had to interview almost everybody, even if I’d interviewed them before or knew them fairly well. But the cool thing was, I got to really talk to people that I hadn’t talked to yet. In other words, when I’d done my fandom books and things, there were a lot of

Spotlight On Bill Schelly – Part II

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made a living doing something they had to do just to make ends meet or maybe for a more secure livelihood. I never made any money off anything when I was in fandom. I never was a dealer or anything like that, because I don’t have that touch. Some people, you know, they have the touch to make money. Have you noticed that? It seems like they just know how, whatever they get into, to make a profit. Then others of us just don’t have that touch. That was the kind of person I was.

But see, there’s a silver lining, because by doing that, fandom was something that was always special. It was never tainted by commercial considerations. I never did the books for money, and so it’s something I can always love that I don’t have to say became like work. Even when I had to work really hard on a book like the Founders book, it was work I was enjoying. So I’m glad now that I didn’t get accepted by DC. Because breaking into pro comics didn’t work out so well for some of my fanzine contemporaries, in the long run. So I’m grateful to Julie Schwartz, [laughs] for Vince Colletta or The Mob or whoever rejected me back in 1973.

GB: So how did you get all these people to send in the geekiest photos for Founders of Comic Fandom?

SCHELLY: The geekiest photos? [chuckles] Well... I wanted to have pictures of what people looked like back then. I already had quite a few photos, ones I’d gotten for my earlier books, but there were a lot I needed. I was able to get some of the folks to dig up old photos. A couple, like Robert Jennings, who published Comic World, didn’t want their photos in there. It was tough especially with some who had passed away, but I did manage to get a vintage photo of almost everybody. I got one from you. [indicates Gary] Gary’s in the book, of course, and his buddy Alan Hutchinson, who’s also here today.

Bill Schelly Writes At Dawn Not becoming a pro comic book artist didn’t keep Bill from contributing a script or two along the way to the alternative press. Mike Worley did the art on Bill’s homage to “Robin Dies at Dawn!” (Batman #156, 1963), which was titled “Doom in Dimension X!” [Knightwatchman and Kid Galahad © by Gary S. Carlson and Chris Ecker; other art ©2013 Mike Worley.]

people that I, for whatever reason or other—I didn’t have their phone number then or their e-mail address—hadn’t been in touch with. By doing that book, I got to talk to a bunch of different people and new people and so actually, it was a lot of fun and it was interesting, but it was very hard work, which surprised me. I knew the readers would want to find out what happened to these people. Not just what they did in fandom, but also, “whatever happened to so-and-so?” So it was a big job because there were about eighty fans profiled in there.

GB: Were there any surprises you found out about the people?

SCHELLY: I found out that John Fantucchio, the artist who did so many great covers for the Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector and other fanzines, worked at the CIA as his day job back then. He was an artist for them.

One thing that did become clear working on Founders of Comic Fandom was that fandom really got a lot of people started in their careers, because many of them became professional writers and artists. Many of them used writing on the job where they went to, or they used their fanzine skills to go into publishing. You could see some continuity. Of course a lot of them were like me and

And then for the cover, it was like, well, what do you put on the cover? Do you put a patchwork of all these faces? If you’re publicizing a book, you don’t want to have an image that you can’t even see when you reduce it and it looks like oatmeal. You’ve got to come up with an image that could be reduced and you can tell what it is. And I got the idea of just coming up with a fake desk from that era and putting an old typewriter, and an old Coke bottle, and some fanzines, and some public domain comics, and some different things, and I thought, “Well, maybe this is a good idea. Let me see what they think of it. They’ll tell me what’s wrong with it, and maybe I can re-do it better.” So I took a picture of it and sent it in, and they accepted it “as is” without a peep. That’s how that happened.

GB: Finally, let’s talk about the new book.

SCHELLY: Well, yeah. Have we got time? I want to have some Q&A.... So just briefly about the new book... When Man of Rock came out, it got a very good reception but some people said, “There really wasn’t enough artwork in there” and “I wish it would have been in color.” I mentioned the idea to the publisher, and he thought a

Founders, Keepers The cover of Bill Schelly’s 2010 book Founders of Comic Fandom, published by McFarland. Bill took the photo himself. [©2010 the respective copyright holders.]

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communication. I don’t think the book has any value as a research tool or for the thoughts that are expressed in it, but it’s an interesting snapshot of Frederic Wertham’s brain at that stage in his life.

UNIDENTIFIED QUESTIONER #2: I was curious about how you researched The Golden Age of Comic Fandom. Was it just through various contacts, or your own archives, or did you go to libraries, or what?

SCHELLY: There was nothing in libraries, and I didn’t have any fanzines except a few of my own at that point. But, through CAPAAlpha, I began asking for contact info for a lot of the old fans, and I also began collecting fanzines. A fan named Richard Pryor had an address for Ronn Foss, who was a top fan artist in the early 1960s.

Ronn was living in a cabin without running water in the Ozark hills, and was very welcoming and friendly. Our correspondence really became a close friendship, and he was an enormous help. He had some addresses, and put me onto other trails, and we did a bymail interview. And I just kept beating the bushes, and then I started making phone calls. So between personal telephone interviews and what I found in the pages of all the fanzines I was able to find—and I ended up with almost 2,000—I was well on my way.

Just Out! Jeff Gelt snapped this photo of Bill at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con with an advance copy of his Fantagraphics book The Art of Joe Kubert.

Kubert art book was a great idea. So I spent several months gathering together art from my own collection, and from other sources. I wanted to use the best examples of Joe’s work from every stage in his career, and also some examples of original art.

We also decided there should be some complete stories, so we have five or six complete Kubert stories in there from about 1945 to 1955. Most of them are horror stories from St. John and others. The book designer, Tony Ong, was very amenable to me working with him to lay it out. I was able to make sure from the standpoint of someone who was a Kubert fan that the right images were bigger and others could be smaller. Don’t clean up the original art, and so on. So the book was made from the point of view of a comics fan, and I’m very happy with it.

UNIDENTIFIED QUESTIONER #3: If you were born in 1951 and interested in becoming a comic book professional, the Kubert School came along a little too late for you.

SCHELLY: Yes. Joe’s school started in the fall of 1976, about three years after my rejection by DC.

UNIDENTIFIED QUESTIONER #3: [continuing] Did you have any sense when you were observing that you wished it had been there for you instead of the interview with Vinnie Colletta?

SCHELLY: [chuckles] If the Kubert School had been open in time for me, and I could have afforded to go, then I might very well have wanted to go there. But my parents could barely afford to help me with college at the University of Idaho, where tuition was just $400

GB: Should we take some questions? [Gary Brown fields the questions.]

UNIDENTIFIED QUESTIONER #1: I heard that Fredric Wertham wrote a book about fanzines. Do you know about that?

SCHELLY: Yes... Later in life, Wertham apparently needed a project, and he found out about comics fanzines. I think it was because people wanted to interview him, so they were sending him copies of their fanzines. He got interested in them and eventually decided to write a short book about them. When it was announced, people were going, “Oh no! Now Wertham’s going to attack fanzines and fandom!”

But, oddly enough, it turned out that Dr. Wertham liked fanzines! He corresponded briefly with a number of fans, and I was one of them. His book was titled The World of Fanzines, and my fanzine, Sense of Wonder, is mentioned in it, along with some others. It was a very friendly book, something about how they were a valid and healthy form of

For What It’s Wertham!

Dr. Fredric Wertham’s 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent had savagely attacked comic books.

Yet, in 1973, he devoted another book, The World of Fanzines, to comic book fan-publications.

Seen above left is the cover of the latter, which was subtitled A Special Form of Communication.

At right is William Auerbach’s sketch of Wertham that appeared on the back of the good doctor’s book.

[Cover & sketch ©1973 Southern Illinois University Press or the respective copyright holders.]

Spotlight On Bill Schelly – Part II

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a semester. The Kubert School is a private school and was, even at the beginning, much more expensive than that. And, since I didn’t get drafted, I didn’t have the G.I. Bill. I should add that I really came to realize, when I visited the school and had Joe explain the curriculum to me, and also talked to people who went there.... the school’s classes were very demanding. You basically had to draw for eight hours a day, every day. That’s appropriate because if you want to work as a comics artist, that’s what you have to do. It “separates the men from the boys” so to speak. And I was just a boy, just an amateur. I didn’t have the stuff for that. I didn’t want to do something that hard, frankly. You have to be the kind of person who won’t be happy doing anything else, basically, to work in comics professionally, and that wasn’t me.

UNIDENTIFIED QUESTIONER #4: Can you talk briefly about the Pittsburgh days and knowing Jim Shooter?

Shooter In Space During his brief flirtation with fandom in 1967, comics writer (and future longtime Marvel Comics editor-in-chief) Jim Shooter drew the cover for Bill’s fanzine Sense of Wonder #2 (April 1967), as well as several other miscellaneous pieces of art that appeared in Bill’s fanzines. “Star Rangers” was a Star Trek-inspired team created by Sherman Howard.

[Art ©1967 Jim Shooter.]

SCHELLY: Jim Shooter? Well, yeah, Shooter invited me over to his house and I met his mom. His dad was a laid-off steelworker, I believe. I could hear him coughing in another room, maybe because his lungs were damaged from working in front of the ovens or whatever a steelworker did. Jim was super-nice. He came to the first mini-con in Pittsburgh in 1967, and was even talking about publishing his own fanzine. But he was supporting his family at fifteen and sixteen, and really didn’t have time for that. Also, I think I read somewhere that his editor at DC, Mort Weisinger, flat-out told him not to be involved with fandom. But before that happened, he did some covers and other artwork for my fanzines and for a few other people. Then a time came when Jim didn’t return my phone calls. It was over and I just had to accept that. So that’s what happened. One more quick question? No, we’re out of time. Thanks for coming.

GB: Okay, good? Thank you very much.

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In Memoriam

Roy Ald (1920-2012) “He Had A Restless Mind That Always Wanted To Be Challenged”

by Shaun Clancy

oy Ald passed away on Saturday, July 7th, 2012, at the age of 92, while living in East Meadows, New York. I had first contacted Roy three years ago, with the hope that perhaps he would remember a few things about his comic book career, knowing full well that he had written many books since those days.

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I was pleasantly surprised that the almost 90-year-old Roy remembered quite a bit, and that the more we talked, the more he remembered. For the entire period that I knew him, he was always continuing his research on the theory of time and its relationship to the current perceptions that things and events now move more quickly and are more precise. The nanosecond was the topic of a few discussions, including how multitasking and the desire for instant demand were being pushed in everything from the stock market to auto-making and will be expected by future generations.

This was an interest of his since the 1950s, and he felt he was nearing the completion of his research.

When I had asked him of which area of work he had done he was most proud, he replied, “None”; but he was extremely proud of his ability to remain in top physical condition throughout his entire life. Even at 90, he was challenging anyone who would listen to arm-wrestling matches. Every phone call I had with him would be filled with classical music blaring in the background. He set aside a certain amount of time each day for rest and research, no matter what. He had a restless mind that always wanted to be challenged. The main question he asked himself his entire life was, “Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life?”—to which the answer was always no. I even titled my multi-part interview with him in the FCA after that question.

One area of discussion we dwelled on for many weeks was Fawcett’s Negro Romances comic books of circa 1950.

Roy stated vigorously that his close friend, African-American Ald Acquaintance… artist Alvin Roy Ald in 2010—and (below) the splash panel Hollingsworth, had of the lead story in Fawcett’s Negro Romance participated in it, #2 (Aug. 1950), which was probably written by Ald. Some feel that Alvin Hollingsworth drew though he could not this tale and/or another in that issue, but the remember to what identification is not yet settled. Thanks to extent he did so. Was Shaun Clancy for the photo. [© 2013 the he an inker of respective copyright holders.] someone else’s pencils, or did he possibly do only one story an issue? We’ll never know, but Roy convinced me that Alvin was a part of that series. The TV show The History Detectives wanted to film Roy about his involvement in that comic as editor and writer, but he wanted no part of that, though he never told me why he didn’t. I suspect he was embarrassed to be in a physical-rehabilitation building after priding himself on his lifelong theory of natural healing. He asked that I take his part, which I did.

Another area we discussed was the Gold Medal book The Mansion of Evil, which was done in an early graphic-novel style and was developed by Roy for Fawcett. It came out the same year as St. John’s It Rhymes with Lust, which some consider the first-ever graphic novel, so there’s room for debate as to which was really first.

Roy was with Fawcett for eight years, the longest tenure of any of his ventures, and he loved remembering those days. He stated that his friendships at Fawcett were the fondest memories he had of his professional life. I am very pleased to have known Roy Ald and to have helped him recall some of his favorite times in the industry. It won’t be the same not being able to call him to have my questions answered.

Shaun Clancy’s fivepart FCA interview with Roy Ald appeared in Alter Ego #104-108.

In Memoriam

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John Severin (1922-2012) “His Art Has A Quiet Integrity That Stands The Test of Time” An Appreciation by Nick Caputo

n 1948 John Powers Severin began a long and distinguished career in comics. Working for editors Joe Simon and Jack Kirby at Crestwood, he drew a variety of Western features, most notably “American Eagle” with inker Bill Elder. In 1953 he joined the prestigious EC Comics. With noted writer/editor Harvey Kurtzman, Severin was acclaimed for his attention to detail and authenticity on titles such as Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales. Severin also worked with Kurtzman on the first ten issues of Mad. His superb caricatures and exaggerated body language served him well for an unbelievable 45-year run (starting in 1958), drawing for Cracked magazine.

I

Another long-running account originated in 1949 for Timely/Atlas/Marvel, where Severin drew an array of genre stories: war, Western, crime, mystery, jungle, humor. He produced stunning covers for titles such as Gunsmoke Western, Ringo Kid, Battle, Police Action, and Combat Kelly. He returned in the 1960s, in the midst of the Marvel super-hero explosion, adding depth to Jack Kirby’s layouts on “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and later on that hero’s World War II exploits in Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos. After three impressive solo stories, he took over as inker, teamed with veteran penciller Dick Ayers for a celebrated run. Severin also inked Herb Trimpe on The Incredible Hulk for several years, one of his few super-hero-related assignments. One of the most attractive pairings was with sister Marie on Kull the Conqueror. In the 1970s Marvel’s Western line was often graced with his pencils and/or inks on Kid Colt Outlaw, Two-Gun Kid, Western Gunfighters, and Outlaw Kid.

Severin worked for a profusion of publishers Severinth Heaven over the years, John Severin and drawing board—and two remarkable including things that came out of that collaboration: a splash Standard, IW, panel from Mad #1 (Oct.-Nov. 1952), which demonstrates Harvey, his facility at both Westerns and humor—and one of his Charlton, portfolio illustrations of Robert E. Howard’s hero King Warren, and Kull. [Mad page © 1952 E.C. Comic Publications; the short-lived Kull TM & © Kull Properties, Inc.] Atlas/ Seaboard. At DC he drew many standout war stories, usually with writer Robert Kanigher, including “Sgt. Rock,” “The Unknown Soldier,” “Enemy Ace,” and, notably, a long run on “The Losers” strip in Our Fighting Forces. Other work worth seeking out is his crisp black-&-white art on display in Creepy, Blazing Combat, and Thrilling Adventure Stories. In later years he continued to produce superior work on The Punisher, The ’Nam, Bat Lash, Desperadoes, and Rawhide Kid.

Severin was an artist who did not always get the acclaim he deserved. Super-heroes (like romance, as he freely admitted) were not his forte, because he did not idolize the human figure. Instead, he brought authenticity to characters, settings, and weaponry.

For over 60 years John Severin was one of a rare breed that always turned in quality work. Never flashy, his art has a quiet integrity that stands the test of time.

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In Memoriam

Norman Fruman (1923-2012) A Long And Distinguished Career As A Scholar And Comic Book Creator

by Michael Vance

orman Fruman died of cancer on April 19, 2012, in Laguna Beach, California, at the age of 88. In 1995*, it was discovered that he was an on-staff assistant editor and writer for the American Comics Group (ACG) from 1951 through 1953 or 1954.**

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In the fall of 1951, Fruman was hired as the assistant editor at ACG, although he had never read or written for a comic book. In this capacity, he helped oversee all aspects of preparing a story for publication, including assigning artists to illustrate scripts.

However, he quickly began writing for all but the humor titles,

averaging two stories a week. He also wrote one-page prose stories and the replies to some published letters from fans. He briefly replaced Leo Isaacs as ACG’s staff writer during a downturn in the industry.

Fruman also wrote for Custom Comics, a division of ACG whose publications were produced for major commercial companies including Wrangler Jeans, Buster Brown Shoes, and Howard Johnson, and governmental agencies including the U.S. Air Force and police and fire departments. These comics were given away free or as product premiums. (For more information, see A/E #117.)

During his stint at ACG, Fruman appeared on the television quiz show The $64,000 Question, winning a substantial amount of money that allowed him to finish his education and become a college professor. Fruman continued as a freelance writer for ACG until the late fall of 1957.

Born in 1923 in the Bronx, New York, Fruman attended Townsend Harris Hall, a high school for gifted boys, then City College in New York City. In 1943, he was drafted and attended officer candidate school, eventually being commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Army. Fruman served in Europe as the youngest combat platoon leader in the famous “Rainbow Division” of the 42nd Infantry. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and was a prisoner of war until April 1945. After the war, he returned to New York and graduated from City College in 1946. He also earned an M.A. in Education from Columbia Teachers College (1948) and a Ph.D. in English from New York University (1960).

As a writer, Fruman was well known for his biography of the English poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Coleridge, The Damaged Archangel (1971), which exposed the poet’s plagiarism. He also taught at California State University, Los Angeles, where he won the Outstanding Professor Award, was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Tel Aviv, and was a visiting scholar at French universities. In 1994, he helped found the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers.

NOTES:

* ACG editor Richard E. Hughes’ widow identified and helped locate Norman Fruman.

** Forbidden Adventures: The History of the American Comics Group by Michael Vance, published in 1996 by Greenwood Press and serialized in 2006 in Alter Ego #s 61 & 62.

Adventures With Norman Fruman Norman Fruman (at top) and the cover of one of the many ACG comics for which he edited, and quite possibly scripted: Adventures into the Unknown #28 (Feb. 1952). Art by Ken Bald; with thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [© 1952 the respective copyright holders.]

Michael Vance is a professional author of fiction, as well as a recognized expert on the Sangor Art Shop and the American Comics Group.

In Memoriam

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Sid Couchey (1919-2012) Key Harvey Comics Artist

by Mark Arnold

rtist Sid Couchey passed away on March 11, 2012, at the age of 92. Though he had a long and varied career, he is best known for his work at Harvey Comics, where he became the primary artist for “Little Dot” and “Little Lotta” and occasionally “Richie Rich.” I spoke with Sid many times over the past 10-15 years, and he was always friendly and engaging. He sent me many pieces of original art during this period, and in 2008 even contributed original art for me to display in my traveling Harvey Art Show. I now cherish those pieces even more. On March 17, 2004, I did a formal interview with him for my fanzine The Harveyville Fun Times! I do miss him dearly. Even though he was 92, his death still came as a shock to me.

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Sid was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 24, 1919, and had two older brothers. The family moved to Saginaw, Michigan, then to Champagne, Illinois, and eventually to Essex, NY, his permanent home. When he was very young, his father, Lester, would come home with the Sunday funnies and Sid would lay them out and draw his own versions of such great old comics as The Katzenjammer Kids, Toonerville Trolley Folks, Hairbreadth Harry, Krazy Kat, and on and on.

When Sid was a teenager, he felt that his cartooning was pretty good stuff. About that time Walt Disney, Mickey, Goofy, and company exploded onto the scene. Sid wrote Walt a letter indicating that he was ready to come to California and help him out. To his surprise, he received a return letter (without a train ticket) saying that Walt wasn’t quite ready for Sid! Sid appreciated the art of the likes of Walt Kelly, Burne Hogarth, and Norman Rockwell. He went to the School of Visual Arts and also took an art correspondence course from the Cleveland-based Landon School of Cartooning.

Sid and Ruth Couchey.

After his schooling, Sid worked for Victor Fox, Famous Funnies, and Heroic Comics before settling in on Harvey Comics, his main place of employment within the comic book industry from the late 1950s through the early 1980s. In my 2004 interview with him, he relates how he got hired at Harvey: “A group of guys that I played softball with at the School of Visual Arts started their own comics studio and heard that Harvey was looking. It wasn’t their shtick so they told me about it. I went over and met Sid Jacobson, Alfred Harvey, and then Warren Kremer. After a few weeks I began to get stuff with some regularity… mostly ‘Little Lottas’ and ‘Little Dots.’

Not long before that, Ruth and I were married. Later, I was told that I needn’t come in on a weekly basis and I could move and mail if need be. It didn’t take long to pack up Ruth and newborn baby Brian and head back up to Essex, in the Adirondacks on Lake Champlain. In that scenario, I seldom met any of the other Harvey Players.”

For many years, Sid also conducted private art lessons and created and designed characters such as Rascal the Raccoon, an anti-drug character for the State of Vermont, and Roo, the Reader, a kangaroo, for Literacy Volunteers. He also created such characters as Sherlock Ohms & Dr. Wattson, Gaucho Marx, and Champy, the Lake Champlain Sea Monster, and received a lifetime achievement award in Kansas City. His artwork appeared regularly in the magazine Good Old Days, and he drew a couple of Tom Tyler Comics, as well, featuring the adventures of a B-movie favorite of his.

A lifelong Cleveland Indians fan, Sid once told me that being an Indians fan is just as tough as being a Chicago Cubs fan and, until recently, a Boston Red Sox fan. His lifelong love for the team allowed him to throw out the first pitch for at least one Indians game, which he was fully dressed up for, and he relished the moment!

He was still bright and vibrant as recently as January 2012, but then a rare form of cancer called Burkitt’s lymphoma struck him and took his life on March 11th. He is survived by Ruth, his wife of 52 years, their two children, and many grandchildren. He died in Inman, South Carolina, to which the Coucheys had made a regular pilgrimage every year rather than braving the harsh upstate New York winters.

Sid seemed to have such endless amounts of energy that, even though he was in his 90s, it seemed that he would keep on living forever.

El Sid Sid and one of his paintings of the many Harvey characters, including Richie Rich, Little Dot, and Little Lotta. Thanks to Mark Arnold.

Mark Arnold is a comic book and animation historian who has written books about Harvey Comics, Underdog, Cracked Magazine, and Archie Comics, and is currently at work on a book about Walt Disney Productions. From 1990 to 2011 he was the editor and publisher of The Harveyville Fun Times!

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great—and far as I can tell, no one complained, so perhaps reproduction was only relatively poor. Still, we wouldn’t want anyone blaming our printers in China, since #109 was the second issue of A/E printed there.

Oh, and in another e-mail, John also mentioned that, on the Checklist page, I listed the name of interviewed artist Tony Tallarico as “Alfred Anthony Tallarico,” when it’s really Anthony Frank Tallarico. The error, apparently, was picked up from a relatively rare mistake of that kind in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999.

Apologies to Tony!

Seems like many of the comments this time came from our scintillatin’ staff, as P.C. Hamerlinck, proprietor of the FCA segment of the mag, had this to say about one illustration that accompanied Ken Quattro’s piece on Spectre/Hourman artist Bernard Baily:

Hi Roy—

On page 14 (the Bernard Baily article), the “Capt. Marvel Jr.” page shown is by Al Carrena, not Baily. Hames Ware would probably back me up on that one. I suppose Baily could’ve inked it, but I doubt it, as Fawcett’s freelance artists weren’t usually working in unison with one another…. The freelance Fawcett artist

hane Foley bailed us out on this one, folks! Last issue we advertised X-Men “art and artifiacts” from virtually all the talents who had labored on the first volume of that title from 1963 through 1970—but we were unable to come up with any X-Menrelated art by phenom Jim Steranko, who drew two of its issues. Enter Shane with the above illo, which turns two of Jim’s figures from the series into “maskots” Alter Ego and Captain Ego—which is sort like Foley inking Steranko layouts. And Randy Sargent’s vibrant colors completed the mission. Thanks, guys! [Alter Ego hero TM & ©2013 Roy & Dann Thomas (costume designed by Ron Harris; Captain Ego 2013 TM & © Bill Schelly & Roy Thomas; created by Biljo White.]

S

Now, on to our e-mail and s-mail (that’s “snail” to the uninitiated) re A/E #109, whose cover feature was the Justice Society of America. As of late, we’ve had to truncate our letters sections a bit, putting my (that means Roy’s) comments in italics. We begin with a message that I received even before the issue came out, when our peerless co-publisher, John Morrow, wrote concerning the printing of the issue’s cover, which utilized a scan of a piece of 1986 JSA art by George Pérez: Roy—

I wanted to let you know right away: I just saw a copy of #109, and due to how I set up the file for the Chinese printer, the line art printed too heavily, so the Pérez image isn’t as clear as I’d have liked. It was my fault, and while it’s not terrible, it’s not quite up to either of our standards. Unfortunately, it’s not something we would’ve picked up on the proof; until it was printed, there was no way to spot it. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again…

John Morrow

The lines were a tad fuzzier than we both would’ve liked, John—but despite my horror when I received the message, the difference wasn’t that

Bernard Baily—Man Of The Hour A/E #109 subject Bernard Baily, with and without assistants, turned in some beautiful artwork early in the Golden Age of Comics, including this “HourMan” splash for Adventure Comics #81 (Dec. 1942), a scan of which was sent to us by Jim Ludwig. We look forward to Ken Quattro’s continuation of his study of Baily, dealing with his later work. [© DC Comics.]

re:

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page rate sheet [seen in #109] put together by [editor] Rod Reed and [v-p] Ralph Daigh was actually dug up from [managing editor] Will Lieberson’s old file material. Will’s son Richard had sent it to me when I was compiling the Fawcett Companion book…. I assume you’ve been getting positive feedback on our full-color format. (Great to see Mark Lewis’ America’s Greatest/All-Star cover in color! Now I don’t feel so bad about my ink job on it.

P.C. Hamerlinck

Your inking was just fine, P.C.—and as for that “Cap Jr.” page, let’s hear from Ken Quattro, who, informed of P.C.’s correction of his artist ID re that “Captain Marvel Jr.” page, responded graciously:

Roy—

I certainly wouldn’t dispute P.C.’s expertise in this area. Furthermore, there was one other “Captain Marvel Jr.” story in CMJ #3 (Jan. 20, 1943) that also began with the words, “Once upon a time.” I didn’t discover that one until very recently. It’s possible (and perhaps probable) that this was the story referred to in the memo. If so, everything else said about Baily’s art still applies. And since it only came out a month later than CMJ #2, the time period still coincides with Baily’s start-up of his comic shop.

Ken Quattro

And we were all set to run that second “Cap Jr.” splash from issue #3 in this spot, Ken—until we suddenly realized that we printed it last issue, ID’d by PCH as being most likely drawn by— Sheldon Moldoff! Whoever drew it, we decided it made no sense to run it again. This tracking down and identifying of artists is harder than a lot of folks think it is, huh, guys?

John H. Haufe, Jr., whose e-mail lists him as “historian/sales” (his position with Jack Lake Productions, which is currently reprinting the Classics Illustrated editions from the 1940s through the 1960s), scribed:

Hi Roy—

Really enjoyed the Classics Illustrated material in A/E #109 (Tallarico interview) and #110 (Lou Cameron). I did need to point out the misspell of “Alfred Sundel” in the former issue. Sundel was a brilliant adapter in the years at the end of the initial CI run in the States, later in Europe.

John H. Haufe, Jr.

Sundel didn’t have quite the same magic touch when it came to early Golden Age super-heroes, John, as was noted when Alter Ego reprinted an article of his from Writer’s Digest in one of the early issues of this magazine. But all writers have their strength and weaknesses, and few would argue with your years of study of the original Classics Illustrated series!

Memories Of Moldoff Sammy J. Maynard II saw the mention of Shelly Moldoff’s passing in a caption written for the Bernard Baily article, and sent this note: “With the passing of Sheldon Moldoff, I was quite sad. I have been a huge Hawkman fan since the days of Super Powers action figures. It was actually through your magazine that I contacted Mr. Moldoff in 2000 to get a drawing of the Golden Age Hawkman.

Much to my pleasure, $60 got me a full-color, beautifully rendered piece of artwork. I have always thought I would send you some pictures of the artwork for Alter Ego, and now, with Shelly’s passing, I definitely feel compelled to share with you and your readers the wonderful treasure that he created for me. I hope the photo works. I had the artwork professionally framed, so I could not get a scan.

Thank you for Alter Ego and a chance to have a piece of comic book history.”

[Hawkman TM & © DC Comics.]

Roy responds: “I know how you feel, Sammy. I myself, ten or twelve years ago, commissioned Shelly to do for me color renditions of Hawkman and the early-EC team of Moon Girl and The Prince.

In addition, I purchased from other fans a beautiful big color drawing of Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Batman, and Batwoman… one of Batman and The Penguin… and another which contained most of the members of the Justice Society of America (with Bat-Mite thrown in for good measure).

All these have been printed in A/E at one time or another… but now that we’ve gone to full color, I may find an excuse to run them again one of these days! Shelly was always a kind and gracious man, even if he did sometimes take me to task for the fact that I liked Joe Kubert’s Hawkman even better than his. Note I say, truthfully: ‘even better.’ Both versions were magnificent, and surely it was Shelly’s rendition that made the Winged Wonder one of the most popular heroes during the World War II years.”

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[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

That’s all the messages we’ve got room for, but keep sending ’em to: Roy Thomas 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135

e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com

And, having just gotten through with comments on our previous issue on the Golden Age Justice Society, it’s time to remind you that our next issue deals with that same nigh-inexhaustible subject… most specifically, with writers and artists who helped bring the world’s first-ever super-hero team to life between 1940 and 1951. And need we add that each piece will be lavishly illustrated?

A parting reminder: the Alter-Ego-Fans chat list is a great place to learn about what’s on the minds of one’s fellow A/E readers and comicshistory aficionados, as well as about future plans for this mag’s contents.

You can connect up with it at group.yahoo.com/group/alter-ego-fans.

If you have trouble getting on board at first, simply contact Web cooverseer Chet Cox at mormonyoyoman@gmail.com and he’ll walk you through it. Alter-Ego-Fans is where the Golden and Silver Ages still live!

Born On A Monday?

Mort Todd, who at various times has been editor-in-chief of Cracked Mazagine and an editor at Marvel, wrote us three years ago about the coverage of DC founder Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson in A/E #88, with personal praise for several members of the W-N family who befriended him at one time or another.

Somehow, that letter got misplaced and went unpublished, but he added: “Attached is an illustration I did [in 2000] when your first All-Star Companion came out, based on Irwin Hasen’s splash from All-Star Comics #33. I just came across it and colored it. Feel free to use it if you have a place for it.” Thanks, Mort. We might just find a spot for it one of these days…. [JSA & Solomon Grundy TM & © DC Comics.]

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Art ©2013 Mark Lewis

In a sense, the comics are movie stills, and so partake of the great popularity of the motion picture. Very often, the writer of the comics script says, in his instructions to the artist: “Shoot camera at an angle, looking down on hero from above as he battles the villain.” We are simply using a movie term to indicate to the artist how he should present the scene, as if he were behind a camera.

Part II

O

Abridged & Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

tto Oscar Binder (1911-1974), the prolific science-fiction and comic book writer renowned for authoring over half of the Marvel Family saga for Fawcett Publications between the early 1940s and 1953, wrote Memoirs of a Nobody in 1948 at the age of 37, during what was arguably the most imaginative period of his repertoire of “Captain Marvel” stories.

Aside from intermittent details about himself, Binder’s capricious chronicle resembles very little in the way of anything that is indeed autobiographical. Unearthed several years ago from Binder’s file materials at Texas A&M University, Memoirs is self-described by its author as “ramblings through the untracked wilderness of my mind.” Binder’s potpourri of stray philosophical beliefs, pet peeves, theories, and anecdotes were written in freewheeling fashion and manifestly devoid of any charted course—other than allowing his mind to flow with no restricting parameters. The abridged manuscript—serialized here in the pages of FCA—will nonetheless provide glimpses into the idiosyncratic and fanciful mind of Otto O. Binder.

In our first excerpt, presented last issue, Otto offered up a prologue to his memoir before going into how he felt about his own name. (He hated it.) In this second installment, he begins to delve into the pages of comic books. —P.C. Hamerlinck.

But this still doesn’t quite account for the tremendous appetite which children have for the comics, almost as if they had been starved of such fare, and could now eat their fill. So I make the point that the comics are modern fairy tales. Such old-time fairy tales as the Grimm and Anderson classics, the Mother Goose rhymes, and such, had really become a bit passé to modern kids. They dealt with medieval times, ogres and witches and what not, which to our kids today, in this scientific age, is pretty much old hat.

So when along came the modern “fairy tale,” whose hero was knight, sorcerer, giant, and genius all rolled into one quite human form, wearing a gaudy costume, the kids went for it hook-line-andsinker. The comics hero is just as fantastic and unbelievable as any classic fairy tale character, but he has the one advantage of living in present times and dealing with on-the-spot crimes and evil. As such, the youngster can identify himself with the hero much more so than he could identify himself with Prince Charming riding a white horse through some dank forest of long ago.

So much for why they’re popular.

To take up another phase, some people and organized groups are against the comics as proper food for young and impressionable minds. They claim the child’s mind becomes so crammed

The Modern Pied Piper

My writing, as I mentioned before, has been the so-called pulps and comics. The mood is upon me to tell you something about the comics. Some behind-the-scenes facts.

By comics I refer specifically to all those dime magazines so dear to the hearts of the young. Of course, they are only for the young. Hardly anybody over 93 reads them.

The comics are a strange phenomenon that has suddenly sprung upon the American scene, no longer than ten years ago or so. The colorful, invincible heroes were an overnight sensation, and like mushrooms, a host more of mighty adventurers arose, fighting crime and evil. Why their amazing popularity among the small fry? What magic in them has so bewitched the kids that some of the comics magazines sell up to a million copies each and every month of each and every year?

I’ve tried to analyze it myself. The comics, of course, are stories told in pictures, and that’s part of the secret. Stories told in attractive colors and active figures are much more alive and vital, in their impact on the mind, than plain unadorned words.

Confucius say: one picture worth thousand words.

Open Door Policy Our late longtime Alter Ego comrade, artist Marc Swayze, whose life and 100th birthday we celebrated last issue, drew Captain Marvel Jr. only twice during his comics career: once, in the background on the cover of Wow Comics #9 (Jan. 6, 1943)… and, as shown in the example above, within Mary Marvel’s origin story written by Otto O. Binder for Captain Marvel Adventures #18 (Dec. 1942). “The colorful, invincible heroes were an overnight sensation,” Binder affirms in this issue’s chapter of Memoirs of a Nobody. [Shazam characters TM & © DC Comics.]

Memoirs Of A Nobody – Part II

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with thoughts of crime and wickedness, as exposed in the comics, that his tender mind is warped. I wonder. The old fairy tales, as has been pointed out in rebuttal already, are themselves jammed to the hilt with killing, gore, hideous sorcery, and what not. Think of Little Red Riding Hood. And yet these dainty “classics” are what the comic-criticizers would have the kids go back to. From the frying pan back to the fire.

Presumably, all us grownups, who passed a comic-less childhood but nevertheless boned up on classical fairy tales, have had our minds so warped by the gore that we are all mentally lame. That’s the only conclusion I can come to—if comics are bad for present-day children, how come nobody tried to ban those fairy tales?

Still, I’m no expert in child psychology. Maybe the classic bloodand-thunder tales, as well as modern comics, work adversely on kids. But this again leads to an absurdity. What with radio, movies, and all other agencies of public information today surrounding kids with the gore and thunder of real life, how can the comics possibly add any more to what their little minds have already taken in? If the purists wish to protect the childish mind from any and all “bad” influences, they had better wait till mankind itself reaches Utopia, setting the right example to their offspring.

But I’m prejudiced. I write comics. I make money at it.

Naturally, I don’t want them banned or curtailed. And to be more objective, let me add that I partially agree with the reformers.

There are comics magazines and stories which are unnecessarily bloody and horror-soaked. But please, there are also many comics magazines that are not in that category. Does one rotten apple condemn the whole barrel? And yet you will find “psychologists” and “experts” loudly proclaiming that all comics are bad because they read one or two without taking the trouble to make a comprehensive and careful survey. I can’t agree with any blanket indictment such as this, no more than I can agree that all people with close-set eyes are shifty and untrustworthy, just because Killer Cudahy was.

But I think the comics themselves are facing the problem, and solving it. You will find more and more of the element of humor and lightness in the stories now than formerly, shying away from out-and-out grimness. Even in crime stories, a side character who is humorous, or a slapstick incident, can take away much of the dead seriousness of the tale.

Also of late the comics have set up their own code, their own “Johnson Office,” their own set of taboos. Many big publishers have joined this movement, to better their product and meet the adverse criticism from right and left. A board of advisors whose members include prominent PTA groups and the like pass upon stories and are seeing to it that nothing is presented to the young reader which can be harmful to his morals or his sense of justice.

The “good” comics avoid sex strictly, for instance. Some of the drawings may show a bit more of the female leg than necessary, or follow all curves, but never in a story is there a suggestion of seduction, adultery, or rape. Never, never, never! In fact, if you ask me, the comic book villains are quite the most frozen-blooded bunch of sex-haters known. To wit, when the dastardly villain has the beauteous girl all alone to himself, down in a bomb-proof shelter that nobody knows the existence of, what does he do? He ties the girl into some trap of whirling knives or something and goes chortling off to pull more crime and snatch more money.

Honest.

Secondly, comics preach over and over again one universal theme: crime does not pay! The villain always gets caught. The hero

Crime On Their Hands In this chapter of Memoirs, Binder defended his livelihood, declaring that comics made for “a very convenient scapegoat” in regards to their alleged bad influence and being a primary cause in the rise of juvenile crime. In Otto’s “The Case of the Jolly Roger” (Master Comics #35, Jan. 1943; art by Mac Raboy), Captain Marvel Jr. revealed to an actual kid-delinquentgang-member “super-villain” the ills of his ways… and eventually gave the punk a good spanking for all the stunts he pulled!

[Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

always wins. So they are certainly not remiss in that respect. I sometimes think no child getting that lesson drubbed into him day after day, story after story, can ever turn to crime. The child might want to become a swashbuckling hero, yes. Or a crime-hunting detective or policeman, but never a criminal. If the rate of youthful delinquency is rising, I don’t think the blame can be laid at the doorstep of the comics.

This may be a bit mean to say, but the comics make a very convenient scapegoat. That is, alarmed at the rise of juvenile crime and maladjustment, the social worker or reformer then wildly casts his or her eye about, to see what he can rip into as the source of such delinquency. He spies the comics, which most kids read, and presto—he’s got it. Clean up or suppress all comics, and juvenile meandering off the straight and narrow path of life will vanish like dew under the sun. Ah, if life and its ills were only so simple.

I have read those lurid newspaper accounts, of course, of how a child confessed he hung his playmate because he saw it in the comics. But leave us be sensible. Any kid pulling a stunt like that must have been abnormal from the start. If so, is it this inherent abnormality which caused the crime? Or the comics he happened to read? Which is the cause and which is effect? I remember as a kid that, after reading the story of Jack the Giant Killer, I promptly took an axe and chopped down a tree in which a big man was sitting, killing him.

Next: THE MODERN PIED PIPER - Continued!

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Home Is Where The Thunder Is The Roadway To Capt. Marvel Junior’s Residence

by Don Ensign

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

Introduction

reddy Freeman’s home town was often constructed with many clues of its identity littered within his stories. But where exactly did Freddy and The World’s Mightiest Boy call home?

F

The city where Freddy Freeman had his residence and newsstand business was not actually pinpointed in the vast majority of the “Captain Marvel Jr.” stories. Perhaps the writers deliberately didn’t want to call out a specific location that Freddy and Captain Marvel Jr. claimed as their home base… or Fawcett editors could have conceivably determined that their young readers may have wanted to claim Junior for their own home town.

Therefore, while the creative team at Fawcett may not have had a specific city in mind, they did nevertheless leave some subtle (as well as overt) hints about the city that Marvel Jr. lived in and protected. Superman and Batman had their fictional Metropolis and Gotham City, both of which were based on New York City and other large American and even international cities. In the 1960s, Stan Lee based his Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Avengers, and other characters squarely in New York City.

The Big Apple

New York City was the specific site of a number of Captain Marvel Junior’s early exploits. The World’s Mightiest Boy was in NYC to battle Captain Nazi and twice repelled a German aerial bombing attack on the Big Apple (Master Comics #34; All Hero Comics #1). Junior confronted the “Marble Madness” that sent huge animated stone statues rampaging down Fifth Avenue, near the Natural History Museum and NYC’s harbor (Master #41); Freddy Freeman was also seen in the tale hawking newspapers in the city.

CM Jr. battled a giant Nazi super-soldier in the streets of NYC, where again Freddy “peddles his wares...” (Master #42). Captain Nazi abducted a patient from a NYC hospital and took him to Baffin Land (Captain Marvel Jr. #12), where Junior confronted the super-Aryan. Freddy met a telepathic penguin at the New York Aquarium in Battery Park before embarking to Antarctica (Master #44).

It is important to understand that Freddy Freeman and Captain Marvel Jr. were more mobile during the wartime, visiting many locations and cities both in the U.S. and overseas. The Standard Oil Refinery was one location for a story from 1944 (CMJr #17), most likely based on the current Bayway Refinery in Linden, New Jersey, near the New York City metro area. Again in ’44, we found the crippled newsboy peddling papers in NYC in “The Indian Braves of Wall Street” (CMJr #20). Freddy and a friend became involved with a steamboat race up the Hudson River (CMJr #22).

Freddy was in NYC in a mid-1946 story (CMJr #43) wherein his alter ego battled Dr. Encyclo and his beasts. Later, Freddy raised funds to build the “Metropolis Hospital” (CMJr #46). A ruthless Wall Street businessman used any means to wrestle control of land containing a valuable oil deposit from a company in which Freddy owned stock (CMJr #55). This story could’ve either taken place in New York or neighboring Pennsylvania.

I’ll Take Manhattan New York City was the unambiguous locale of numerous “Captain Marvel Jr.” wartime-era escapades. Here, Freddy Freeman “peddles his wares” around Times Square in a tale from Master Comics #42 (Sept. 1943; art by Mac Raboy) in which CM Jr. clashed with a giant Nazi super-soldier named Woton in the streets of NYC. Art by Mac Raboy. Scripter unknown.

[Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

While New York City was the site of some of Junior’s adventures during the war years, it wasn’t necessarily his home base. In 1949, Freddy and his landlady, Mrs. Wagner, visited NYC (Master #107), where CMJr stopped Sivana Jr. from hijacking the Statue of Liberty. This story indicated that, from at least by the middle of 1947, Freddy was living and working outside of New York City.

(Freddy officially moved into Mrs. Wagner’s Boarding House in CMJr #52, Aug. 1947.)

The Philadelphia Stories

Over the course of the “Captain Marvel Jr.” series, we are told a number of things about Freddy’s metropolis. The city where he lived had a Chinatown (Marvel Family #24; MF #27), a science museum (CMJr #68), a casino (CMJr #68), a zoo (CMJr #35; CMJr #51; MF #53), and a Natural History Museum that the ancient villain Greybeard tried to rob (CMJr #37). Freddy sold newspapers at a train terminal (Master #68), at a trolley track, and on a college campus in the city (Master #85). The anonymous city also had a ice hockey team (MF #3), a major airport (CMJr #80), skyscrapers (Master #71; CMJr #46), a concert hall (CMJr #43), a “Whiffanys” jewelry store (CMJr #50), an observatory at the city college (CMJr #97), and a horse-racing track (CMJr #92); and there was an Avon Theater in Freddy’s neighborhood (CMJr #44; #54; #64; #69). (An Avon Theater existed in Philadelphia from 1924-56.)

There are key items that point to one certain city as being Freddy Freeman’s home. The city is an ocean port with a water-

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walked by a wall with a posted sign that read: “The New Home of Fawcett Publications, Wm F Babor, Contractor.” Babor was indeed a New York City building contractor with offices at 132 East 40th Street. The location of Babor and Fawcett’s editorial offices are a considerable distance away from each other. Freddy’s apartment’s address before his move to Mrs. Wagner’s Boarding House was 85 Center St (CMJr #40). There is a Center Road in Old Greenwich, CT. The address for Fawcett Publications’ editorial offices was 22 West Putnam Ave., Greenwich, CT, in CMJr #53 (Sept. 1947), but it had changed the following month in CMJr #54 to Fawcett Place, Greenwich, CT.

Since Freddy is shown hawking newspapers on page 1 of the above-mentioned story from CMJr #51, the home of Fawcett’s offices also appear to be the home town of Captain Marvel Junior.

The “New Home of Fawcett” sign placed in the strip was in all likelihood not to be accepted as a location indicator, but merely as a celebratory announcement of the new Fawcett headquarters.

Home Sweet Boarding House Freddy Freeman moved into Mrs. Wagner’s Boarding House in “Captain Marvel Jr. Finds a Home” (CM Jr. #52 Aug. 1947; script: Otto Binder; art: Bud Thompson). Bill Schelly, in his exceptional 2003 book Words of Wonder: The Life and Times of Otto Binder, wrote: “In 1943, Otto Binder was asked to develop a fuller background to the Captain Marvel Junior series…. Where did Freddy Freeman live? … He needed supporting characters who would lend themselves to story ideas, and create continuity. Binder established that Freddy has a room in a house owned by Mrs. Wagner. He put Freddy in a specific neighborhood, and at an established newsstand at the corner of Oak and Main. This development did the trick, and certainly ensured Junior’s longevity….” [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

front (Master #64; CMJr #38, 41, 50, 68; MF #29, #53). There is a river near the city (CMJr #54) with ferry service across the river (CMJr #67). There’s unquestionably a ship-building facility down at the docks (Master #82), a lighthouse nearby (CMJr #32), and a Coast Guard station in close proximity (Master #69). There are an Arsenal and many large buildings in the city (CMJr #43). Freddy’s newsstand located at the corner of Oak and Main seems to be inconclusive. There are both an Oak Street and a Main Street in Philadelphia, but they are parallel streets that don’t intersect.

(There’s also an Oak Street in Greenwich, CT.) Allentown was the site of flooding in the “Captain Marvel Jr.” story from Master #88; Allentown is 61-64 miles from downtown Philadelphia.

(Historically, Allentown, PA, has experienced severe flooding.)

The final major point within Freddy’s city is that it’s the home of a Treasury Building (Master #52, 74; MF #53) and sub-Treasury (CMJr #44). There are U.S. Treasury Buildings in Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco, West Point, and Fort Knox. The U.S. Treasury was shown in an early story (Master #43), but in all probability referred to the Washington, DC, facility. Since Denver, West Point, and Fort Knox are landlocked, this leaves Philadelphia and San Francisco as the likely candidates for Freddy‘s city. There were several occasions where Freddy/Junior traveled to the West Coast for visits or special assignments, but he did not seem to live there permanently (CMJr #2, 4, 15, 16, 30, 106). This likely eliminates San Francisco and leaves us with Philadelphia as Freddy’s home town. The City of Brotherly Love contains all of the above site features and seems to be a very good fit as being Freddy’s home, especially in the post-war period.

Fawcett City

On the other hand, there are numerous city elements that don’t fit in with Philly. In a 1947 story (CMJr #51) Freddy Freeman

In the very next issue, Freddy is transferred to a newsstand on “the other side of town” (CMJr #52). It gives the impression that Freddy had lived in that “town” sometime before this 1947 story.

In the 1945 story “Lunatic Larceny” (CMJr #32), Freddy is selling newspapers in front of the Rye Exchange Bank. Rye is a New York town (Westchester County) near the Connecticut border. West Point, somewhat north of New York City, could be seen as a Treasury station location, although that may be a bit of a stretch, as the Treasury Building(s) are seemingly within Junior’s city proper rather than in a fringe location. Freddy had visited a “Little Acres” in Master #76. There is a Little Acres farm in South Glastonbury, CT (approximately 86 miles from Greenwich, CT).

Freddy later visited a farm in Fairfield County (MF #28). Fairfield County, CT, is the county bordering New York in which Greenwich is located. While the weight of evidence doesn’t support Greenwich alone as being Freddy’s home city, perhaps— taken as a part of the greater New York City metropolitan area— Greenwich becomes an additional strong contender as the locale of Freddy’s residence.

[Continued on p. 80]

Site Unseen Freddy Freeman passes a construction site earmarked as the new home of Fawcett Publications in “Capt. Marvel Jr. and The Magic Hat” (CM Jr. #51, July 1947; script: William Woolfolk; art: Bud Thompson), giving eagle-eyed readers the notion that Freddy’s hometown was Greenwich, Connecticut.

[Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

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A Beautiful Rut An Interview With Mac Raboy Assistant WILLIAM “RED” MOHLER

by John G. Pierce

he majestic and meticulous artwork of celebrated “Captain Marvel Junior” artist Emmanuel “Mac” Raboy frequently required assistants to smooth the progress towards completing comic book art pages starring the World’s Mightiest Boy. The principal artists who lent their support to Raboy at Fawcett Publications during the 1940s included Bob Rogers (nee Rubin Zubofsky), Gene MacDonald, and William “Red” Mohler, whom FCA correspondent John Pierce interviewed back in the mid-1970s after discovering that he and the artist resided in the same county. The outcome of their conversation is published here for the first time. Unfortunately, we were unable to come up with a photo of “Red” Mohler. Mohler’s birth and death dates are not known; the entry for him in the online Who’s Who in American Comic Books 1928-1999 contains no information except that he is alleged to have worked for the B.W. Sangor comic art shop in 1946. —PCH.

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

T

JOHN PIERCE: Could you give us a brief rundown of your career in comics?

“RED” MOHLER: In December of 1942, I was hired on a sixmonth trial basis as an inker for Mac Raboy. I worked with Mac only on “Captain Marvel Junior.” We worked in a main room. C.C. Beck, who had a large staff, was in the next room. The draft kept people coming and going. Gene MacDonald and I were hired on the same day. I was fired six months later. Raboy left and opened an office. Gene and I went with him. He started branching out. At Fawcett, there were 15-18 people in a room, doing paste-ups on True and other magazines.

Mac, Gene, and I were in a corner. We did relatively few scripts, perhaps one per month.

JP: What you can tell us about Raboy himself?

MOHLER: He got $35 and later $50 per page for his work. He did a page a day. Mac was a quiet, gentle, kind, neurotic, lovely man. Though he was a well-liked person, he was not a very happy person, and kept to himself. I liked Mac’s work.

JP: What were your impressions of the comics industry itself?

MOHLER: The comics were a sweatshop. Most of us hated it, and were ashamed of it… kind of a low thing.

The creators felt differently, but mostly it was bad stuff.

There were no attempts at quality, except for Raboy.

Unfortunately, publishers didn’t want quality. They wanted volume. Some people got $60 a week, a huge salary back then, and it went to their heads.

JP: Did working with Raboy influence your own style?

MOHLER: No. I didn’t like doing comics. I should have gone down to an ad agency and gotten a $12-a-week job instead.

Up, Up, And Anchors Away!

The lifting cover to Master Comics #37 (April 1943), just one of the many masterworks artist Mac Raboy (seen in photo) created during wartime at Fawcett Publications while working on “Captain Marvel Junior.” William “Red” Mohler, one of the two artists hired at the same time to assist Raboy, said that he and Gene MacDonald were asked to learn to draw like Mac “…but there was no way!” The photo of Raboy was seen in full in the FCA section of A/E V3#6 back in 2000, courtesy of Roger Hill. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

In an attempt to locate a photo of Mohler, Roy Thomas e-mailed Roger, who had written about Raboy and his assistants in the aforementioned issue of A/E, and informed him of this upcoming interview. His response: “Wow, I didn’t know anyone had ever talked with ‘Red’ Mohler; in fact, I don’t think I ever knew his first name was William. I wasn’t aware of his contributions to Fawcett Comics until either Bob Rogers or Gene MacDonald mentioned his name to me. But neither of those guys had photos of ‘Red.’ I tried to track down ‘Red’ many years ago but never could find him (because I didn’t have that first name)…. .

“Oh, someone told me along the way that ‘Red’ was married to a woman named Helen, nicknamed ‘Duffy,’ Mohler. I got a listing on her over 15 years ago, living in New York City, and called her phone number countless times, only to get an answering machine. I left many messages on her machine, but she never called back. I eventually gave up, assuming she just didn’t want to talk about those days. I tried the number again a few years ago and it was disconnected. I think she’s probably gone now, like most of those folks. Too bad. Good luck on it, Roy.”

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FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

JP: Describe your working environment.

MOHLER: Gene MacDonald, Mac, and I worked in a corner of our room. Gene and I were supposed to be learning to draw like Mac, but there was no way! I admired Mac’s work. He had a photographic memory, and thus started copying himself. He would do similar poses over and over. It got a little static after a while.

Mac could draw an arm without They Also Serve… reference. He made me want to sit down (Above:) A 1980s photo of and draw and draw. He was in a Mohler’s fellow Raboy beautiful rut, but still a rut. [Photo]stats assistant, Gene were used a lot on Captain Marvel MacDonald. Courtesy of Junior figures. In penciling, I would read Bob Rogers; a fuller version appeared in a script several times before starting on A/E V3#6. it.

JP: Do you think Raboy was capable of doing better for himself?

MOHLER: Mac’s ability should have been channeled up for a higher purpose, instead of drawing a simple little kid flying through the air. His work belonged in museums.

JP: Some feel that Raboy was strongly influenced by Alex Raymond.

Dam Yankee!

“Red” Mohler recalled Raboy being in “a beautiful rut” by drawing similar poses over and over of Captain Marvel Jr.; eventually, Photostats of CM Jr. figures were adhered to the art pages, such as in this series of panels from “Liberty for the Chetniks” (Master Comics #36, Feb. 1943), produced during Mohler’s tenure as art assistant to Raboy. Scripter unknown. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

MOHLER: Alex Raymond was a take-off point for Mac’s work. But he had pride in his own ability and had no need to copy from Raymond. It was probably an unconscious influence, at best. He also admired Roy Crane’s Wash Tubbs, especially the placement of blacks and design. It was lovely.

JP: Was there a problem with missed deadlines?

MOHLER: Not that I know of.

JP: [Fawcett comics editor] Rod Reed once told me that “We didn’t know we were living in some sort of Golden Age, or we would have made notes.” What would you say to that?

MOHLER: If I’d known then of the later interest, I would have made an effort to acquire originals, and keep more information in my head. At the time, it was just a means to live. My own main interest was in magazine illustration, but I never really did that, except on a minor scale in Canada. Photography hadn’t quite begun to supplant the illustrations.

JP: What else did you do?

Tanks For The Memories!

Above is the high-flying opening to “The Secret Weapon” (script: Otto Binder; art: Mac Raboy) from Master Comics #38 (May 1943), produced during Mohler’s tenure working alongside Raboy.

[Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

MOHLER: I started freelancing after Raboy left. It was mostly short-term work for people who had paper [i.e., could obtain paper for printing comics during wartime rationing]. There were always places to get work. Word-of-mouth contact helped. I worked for [Charles] Biro, [Bob] Wood, and [Lev] Gleason… mostly realistic stuff. Captain Marvel Jr. was the only super-hero I ever did. There were lots of crime, adventure, mostly junk; some strips were about detectives or photographers. [When] Raboy was doing “Kid Eternity,” he didn’t have time to work on it, so he sent me over [to help him].

JP: What else?

MOHLER: I left New York—and the [comics] industry—at the end of 1946, and went to Toronto until 1953, then came to Columbus

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“A Beautiful Rot”

MOHLER: About 10 years ago. It was a kind of romantic thing to kids who’d grown up [with comics]. But it was anything but glamorous. However, the money was good. But the end of the war ended much of that, as servicemen were a big source of support for comics. In the early ’60s, an associate learned of my former ties with comics and was terribly impressed.

JP: What can you tell us about some of the other Fawcett people you knew?

It Seemed Like An Eternity…

With their Fawcett-Capt. Marvel Jr. days barely behind them, Mac Raboy had called in “Red” Mohler (now a freelancer) during the mid-’40s to assist him on one last feature: Quality Comics’ “Kid Eternity.” Above is a panel from “The Count” in Kid Eternity #3 (Fall 1946), a Raboy-drawn story that included cameos by Rembrandt, Nostradamus, and Hippocrates. Scripter unknown. The tale was reprinted in the 1990 DC Comics hardcover The Greatest Golden Age Stories Ever Told. [Kid Eternity TM & © DC Comics.]

[Ohio], where my mother was terminally ill. I’m now a selfemployed ad artist. I’ve been working while we’re talking!

JP: When did you become aware of the latter-day interest in comics of the 1940s?

[Continued from p. 77]

MOHLER: I remember Al Allard, Joe Millard, Rod Reed, and Henry Van Valkenburg. I knew Ed Robbins slightly. Jack Katz worked for Beck until he was drafted. He did some inking after the war, but later went into book work, where he was known as Ezra Jack Keats. There was a Frenchman who played pranks, and a Danish layout person. And then there was a Chinese girl named Chu who did lettering. She may have done some lettering for Beck, too. (There were two or three Asian letterers in the industry. Irving Watanabe probably was the best letterer in town.) I’ve never worked any place like it since! Still, it was as high a class place you could find. Some of the others were scruffy. You’d take work in and ask for a check, because they wouldn’t be there next week.

JP: What about C.C. Beck?

MOHLER: Beck was loose, cold, not terribly friendly. Fellows who worked for him didn’t care for him.

[NOTE: Upon being informed of Red’s remark, C.C. Beck commented, “And here I thought they loved me! At least on payday!” —John.]

Can’t Find My Way Home

Confusing matters even further is a 1949 story wherein Freddy Freeman and Mrs. Wagner attend a town meeting honoring a World War II hero. The town where the meeting is held is named Middletown (Master #105). (There is a Middletown, CT; however, this New England town is landlocked and doesn’t have a Treasury building. There is also a Middletown, NY—just north of the NYC metro area—but again, has no Treasury building… and, there are five Middletowns just within the state of Pennsylvania.)

One rationalization is that Freddy and Mrs. Wagner were simply visiting Middletown and attended the ceremony for the war hero. Yet, in the town we see Freddy delivering newspapers; Freddy’s friend, police officer Jim Bellows, is also at work in the town… so it seems as if Middletown is yet another place designated as the newsboy’s home.

In summary, we are presented with several hometown possibilities: (1) The Fawcett editors had no specific city in mind for the home of Freddy Freeman, especially in the post-WWII-and-beyond eras, where his municipality was discernibly a composite of several cities. (2) The city of Philadelphia is a seemingly close fit for Freddy’s anonymous city, based upon clues within numerous “CMJr” stories. Or (3) a great number of CMJr’s stories could have occurred—and perhaps rightfully so—in Fawcett Publication’s very own hometown headquarters of Greenwich, Connecticut, and the greater New York City metro area.

But wherever his humble abode may have been, Freddy Freeman moved a long way from his Fawcett 1942 Writing Guidelines description of merely being an orphan who lived “in a shabby attic room somewhere in the city.”

The preceding article is excerpted from The Blue Boy Chronicles #1; see capmarjr.blogspot.com or e-mail donensign@mail.com for more information.

Middletown Memories In “The Tarnished Hero!” (Master Comics #105, July 1949; art: Kurt Schaffenberger; scripter unknown), Freddy Freeman, his landlady Mrs. Wagner, and his friend, police officer Jim Bellows, all seemingly reside in Middletown. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

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Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured throughout his career, ALEX ROSS and KURT BUSIEK interviews, FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembering LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more!

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NEAL ADAMS vigorously responds to critics of his BATMAN: ODYSSEY mini-series in an in-depth interview! Plus: SEAN HOWE on his hit book MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY; DENYS COWAN on his DJANGO series; honoring CARMINE INFANTINO; Harbinger writer JOSHUA DYSART; Part Two of our LES DANIELS remembrance; a big look at WHAM-OGIANT COMICS; ADAMS cover, and more!

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JACK KIRBY: WRITER! Examines quirks of Kirby’s wordsmithing, from the FOURTH WORLD to ROMANCE and beyond!

Lengthy Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, LARRY LIEBER’s scripting for Jack at 1960s Marvel Comics, RAY ZONE on 3-D work with Kirby, comparing STEVE GERBER’s Destroyer Duck scripts to Jack’s pencils, Kirby’s best promo blurbs, Kirby pencil art gallery, & more!

JOE JUSKO shows how he creates his amazing fantasy art, JAMAR NICHOLAS interviews artist JIMM RUGG (Street Angel, Afrodisiac, The P.L.A.I.N. Janes and Janes in Love, One Model Nation, and The Guild), new regular contributor JERRY ORDWAY on his behind-the-scenes working process, Comic Art Bootcamp with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, reviews of artist materials, and more! Mature readers only.

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DAN SPIEGLE: A LIFE IN COMIC ART

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This sequel to ALTER EGO: THE BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE presents more vintage features from the first super-hero fanzine, begun by JERRY BAILS & ROY THOMAS. Editors ROY THOMAS and BILL SCHELLY reveal undiscovered gems from all 11 original issues published from 1961-78, including features on Hawkman, the Spectre, Blackhawk, the JLA, All Winners Squad, the Heap, an unsold “Tor” newspaper strip by JOE KUBERT, and more!