Alter Ego #122

Roy Thomas’ Buyer-Guiding Comics Fanzine

No.122 $

January 2014

8.95

In the USA

A TRIP THROUGH COMICS FANDOM HISTORY WITH:

ALAN LIGHT MURRAY BISHOFF MAGGIE & DON THOMPSON BRENT FRANKENHOFF MARK EVANIER

TONY ISABELLA

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82658 27763

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& DOZENS OF OTHER TBG/CBG ALUMNI!

COMICS BUYER’S GUIDE Remembered!

Art © John Fantucchio • Characters TM & © their respective owners.

PETER DAVID

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 #112

ALTER EGO #113

DIEDGITIIOTANSL BL AVAILA

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ALTER EGO #109

ALTER EGO #110

ALTER EGO #111

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALTER EGO #114

ALTER EGO #115

ALTER EGO #116

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALTER EGO #117

ALTER EGO #118

ALTER EGO #119

ALTER EGO #120

ALTER EGO #121

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!

GOLDEN AGE JUSTICE SOCIETY ISSUE! Features on JOHN B. WENTWORTH (Johnny Thunder), LEN SANSONE (The Atom), and BERNARD SACHS (All-Star Comics inker), art by CARMINE INFANTINO, PAUL REINMAN, MART NODELL, STAN ASCHMEIER, BEN FLINTON, and H.G. PETER, plus FCA, Mr. Monster, and more! Cover homage by SHANE FOLEY to a vintage All-Star image by IRWIN HASEN!

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

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

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

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

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

Vol. 3, No. 122 / January 2014 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

Contents Editorial: A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Buyer’s Guide(s) . . . . 2 Comic Fandom Archive: Fandom Before TBG . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Rob Smentek William J. Dowlding

Proofreaders

Bill Schelly’s brief overview of comics adzines prior to the dawn’s early Alan Light.

An overview of the Buyer’s Guide, 1971-2013, by Brent Frankenhoff & John Jackson Miller.

TBG/CBG: A Pocket History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

John Fantucchio

Cover Artists Tom Ziuko

Heidi Amash Bob Bailey Ward Batty Terry Beatty Cliff Biggers Murray Bishoff Aaron Caplan Nick Caputo Robert Carter Peter David Jim Engel Mark Evanier John Fantucchio Chuck Fiala Shane Foley Brent Frankenhoff Stephan Friedt Janet Gilbert Jennifer Go Larry Guidry George Hagenauer R.C. Harvey Fred Hembeck Bob Ingersoll

Alan Light on how he created, built, and eventually sold fandom’s most successful adzine.

The Buyer’s Guide For Comics Fandom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Cover Colorist

Tony Isabella Batton Lash Mark Lewis Alan Light Johnny Lowe John Lustig Russ Maheras Doug Martin Mark Martin Jim McPherson John Jackson Miller Michelle Nolan Jerry Ordway Neil Ottenstein Barry Pearl John G. Pierce Charles R. Rutledge Steve Sansweet Randy Sargent Mitchell Senft Craig Shutt Andrew Smith Dann Thomas Maggie Thompson

With Special Thanks to:

WINNER

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Don Thompson

Murray Bishoff illuminates his time as Alan Light’s go-to guy on TBG.

Remembering The Buyer’s Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Maggie Thompson recalls her and Don’s days as co-editors of CBG—and way before!

“Beautiful Balloons,” Volume 3, #1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 15 short memoirs by Brent Frankenhoff, Terry Beatty, Stephan Friedt, Russ Maheras, Fred Hembeck, John Lustig, Bob Ingersoll, Batton Lash, Mark Evanier, Cliff Biggers, Ward Batty, Andrew (“Captain Comics”) Smith, Charles R. Rutledge, R.C. Harvey, & Johnny Lowe.

Bountiful If Brief Reminisces of TBG & CBG . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Michael T. Gilbert relates his own sojourn with both incarnations of the long-lived adzine.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt Buyer’s Guide Scrapbook. . . . . 55 Regular columnists Tony Isabella, Michelle Nolan, Craig (“Mr. Silver Age”) Shutt, & Peter David present material that would’ve been in CBG #1700—if they’d had the chance!

Four Easy Pieces Created for CBG #1700 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 P.C. Hamerlinck presents tributes to—and a hilarious story by—TBG‘s Alan Jim Hanley.

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #173 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

On Our Cover: One of the most popular fan-artists of the 1970s was John Fantucchio (b. 1938).

While he furnished his ornate and idiosyncratic drawings, with their distinctive signature and singular qualities, to fanzines like TBG, RBCC, et al., for only a few years—moonlighting from his job as an illustrator for the CIA, of all things—we could think of no art more fitting for this issue’s cover than his for the very first issue of TBG in 1971, which spotlighted Golden Age heroes Major Victory, U.S. Jones, Uncle Sam, Man of War, Captain Freedom, and The Fighting Yank, and which has never before been seen in color. (James Montgomery Flagg, of course, did the large Uncle Sam in the background). John himself prefers to see his artwork reproduced in black-&-white, and you can see it that way, though considerably smaller, on p. 7. Thanks for your blessing, John. [Heroes TM & © the respective copyright holders; other art © John Fantucchio.]

Above: We had so many reminiscences about the TBG & CBG this issue that they crowded out even a truncated “re:” letters section—but not the terrific homage to John Fantucchio’s work drawn by Shane Foley and colored by Randy Sargent, utilizing our miraculous “maskots.” Thanks, guys!

We weren’t gonna let all that work go to waste! [Alter Ego hero TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas – costumed designed by Ron Harris; Captain Ego TM & © Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly – created by Biljo White.]

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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A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Buyer’s Guide(s) his is going to be a weird issue.

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Weird because, for the first time in 122 issues of Alter Ego, Vol. 3, the theme—the combined history of Alan Light’s adzine The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom and its successor, Krause Publications’ Comics Buyer’s Guide—was suggested to me by John Morrow, who is ordinarily content with his lofty position as publisher of A/E. It turned out to be a very good idea. Thanks, John.

Weird, too, because it covers the full 42-year period of its/their life, instead of either adhering to A/E’s usual mid-’70s cut-off point or dealing with the checkered career of Ye Editor.

Weird, three, because virtually the entire issue deals with that theme. Bill Schelly begins with a look at the precursors of TBG and CBG… Michael T. Gilbert deals with his own relationship to them… P.C. Hamerlinck’s FCA spotlights TBG artist Alan Jim Hanley’s work… and the rest of the issue is written by those who wrote and/or drew and/or edited for TBG and/or CBG. Through no desire of our own, there’s not even a letters section to take your mind off that theme for a page or two. So many people who’d been associated with the adzine wanted to say goodbye to it in print—and had been denied the chance to do so—that we basically stripped the issue to the walls to squeeze everything in. We’re particularly overjoyed that founder Alan Light, his early righthand man Murray Bishoff, and regnant editors Maggie Thompson and Brent Frankenhoff are well represented, as is Maggie’s late coeditor and husband Don Thompson… to whom this issue is respectfully dedicated, in honor of his own dedication to CBG and to the highest standards of journalism.

This issue, then, is devoted to the four decades of the adoriented newspaper/magazine that debuted in 1971 as The Buyer’s

Guide for Comics Fandom and metamorphosed in 1983 into Comics Buyer’s Guide. In both incarnations, it was the major source of ads for comic book back issues, and to some extent for new comics, as well. The publication went from bimonthly to monthly to weekly, and eventually back to monthly again as the Internet began to siphon off much of its revenue and raison d’être.

Unfortunately, CBG was cancelled abruptly after #1699, with issue #1700, much of the material for which had been completed, destined never to see print. Several of its columnists had already written celebrations of what would’ve been its latest milestone… celebrations they felt they now had to either put online or else let go forever unseen. Some did one thing, some the other… but neither was as satisfying as seeing said piece in print in the publication for which it was intended. We’re hoping this edition of Alter Ego, while not purporting to be CBG #1700 or anything much like it, will soothe some of their melancholy… and perhaps our own, as well.

For I was a subscriber (often unpaying, I’ll admit, but still a subscriber) of TBG/CBG pretty much from first to last… and I wanted the opportunity to say goodbye, too. Farewell, Comics Buyer’s Guide. You’ll be remembered, both by those who wrote and drew and edited for you… and by those who merely read you.

Bestest,

P.S.: Perhaps a fourth weirdness is that very few of the ads that appeared in a publication whose main purpose was to carry advertising are reprinted in this issue. Those ads, of course, were by their nature ephemeral. So we preferred to share the artwork and writing that appeared in the publication.

COMING IN FEBRUARY The Silver Age Of DENNIS O’NEIL!

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123

The First Pro Decade Of One Of Comics’ Most Acclaimed Writers & Editors!

• Cover montage of the writer’s early comics work with some top artists!

• DENNY O’NEIL talks to RICHARD ARNDT about his work from 1965-75—scripting for Marvel, Charlton, and DC! We’re talking Dr. Strange—Daredevil—S.H.I.E.L.D.—“Children of Doom”—Prankster—Hercules—Wander—Batman—Green Lantern/Green Arrow—Wonder Woman—Superman—and that’s just for openers! Art by ADAMS • DITKO • KALUTA • KIRBY • SWAN • ANDERSON • APARO • NOVICK • SEKOWSKY • GIORDANO • AYERS • BOYETTE • GLANZMAN • GOLDBERG • HARTLEY • CARDY • COLAN • WRIGHTSON • BECK • GRANDENETTI • BROWN • DILLIN • CHAYKIN • SIMONSON, et al.!

• Beginning this issue! A complete reprinting, for the first time ever, of AMY KISTE NYBERG’s 1998 book-length study of comics censorship—SEAL OF APPROVAL: The History of the Comics Code—illustrated by art from the 1940s/50s crime and horror (and even super-hero) mags that drove Wertham & company crazy!

Conde Nast. ics, except The Shadow TM • Plus—FCA—MICHAEL T. GILBERT on more wide-eyed comics fans—& MORE!!

Characters TM & © DC Com Edited by ROY THOMAS • SUBSCRIBE NOW! Eight issues in the US: $60 Standard, $80 First Class • (Canada: $85, Elsewhere: $107 Surface, $155 Airmail). • NEW LOWER RATES FOR INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS! SAVE $4 PER ISSUE!

TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comic Fans!

TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: store@twomorrows.com • www.twomorrows.com

Comic Fandom Archive

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Fandom Before TBG A Quick Look At “The Way We Were” Before Alan Light Launched The Buyer’s Guide For Comics Fandom

by Bill Schelly

omicdom was established long before The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom began arriving with clockwork regularity in our mailboxes. Indeed, TBG’s debut in spring of 1971 occurred almost exactly ten years after the spring 1961 debuts of Alter-Ego #1 and Comic Art #1. Thus, the beginning of fandom’s second scintillating decade was marked by the appearance of Alan Light’s phenomenal new publication.

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How did comics fans get along pre-TBG, without a weekly or biweekly advertising vehicle? Since fandom developed not by any organized plan, but organically to fill the needs of aficionados and collectors of comic books and strips, it’s worth reviewing our history to see how that growth led to TBG (which, of course, eventually became CBG)….

The most basic force that fueled the formation of comic (or comics) fandom in 1960 and 1961 was fans’ desire to read and collect old comic books.

That, in turn, fueled the craving for information about comics of the past, because collectors needed to know the titles, dates, key issues, and contents of those sought-after, elusive issues.

Thus, when Jerry Bails (with a certain rascally co-editor) published the first, then-hyphenated issue of Alter-Ego on March 28, 1961, he was met not only with letters from fans hungry for more articles and data—but also with requests from fans to run their want lists and “for sale” lists in the next issue.

And so, in A-E #2 in June, there appeared an ad for old comics sent in

by Claude Held, who had been dealing funny-books for several years from his base in Buffalo, New York. Other advertisers were Frank H. Nuessel of Chicago, Red’s Book Shop of Dayton, Ohio, and Charles Crum of Jacksonville, Florida.

Indeed, Jerry was overwhelmed by the number of incoming advertisements of one type or another, and in August 1961 (with a Sept. cover date) he launched a spin-off called The Comicollector. This first adzine to originate in comicdom provided that much-needed marketplace, on a more frequent publishing schedule than Alter-Ego could offer.

A slightly different progression occurred for the editor of The Rocket’s Blast, which debuted in December 1961. Initially conceived as a newsletter (as A-E itself had originally been) and gradually inundated by incoming advertisements, G.B. Love didn’t start a new zine just to solicit ads. He simply bowed to popular demand and made room for them, using those revenues to keep his fanzine going. Before long, the number of pages with ads outnumbered those with editorial matter. While Love’s early issues were relatively crude, they appeared frequently. As fans realized this, it enhanced Rocket’s Blast’s value as a reliable advertising vehicle.

Love’s circulation increased gradually over the 1962-63 period,

Comic Collectors, Meet The Comicollector—And Comics Dealers!

until it became a worthy rival to The Comicollector.

Comicollector #1 (September 1961), published by Alter-Ego founder Jerry Bails (early-1960s photo on far left), was the first comics adzine—while fan John McGeehan, by virtue of having his want list on page 1 of that issue, was its first advertiser.

Claude Held (seen at near left in mid-1960s photo), who had been dealing in old comic books and strips through the 1950s, advertised even earlier, in A/E V1 #2. [Page © Estate of Jerry Bails.]

In contrast to G.B. Love’s steadiness at the editorial helm, the editorship of The Comicollector bounced from editor to editor. After its first year, Ronn Foss took over as editor and publisher (handling #7 through #12), then passed it on to Biljo White. But the task of typing up page after page of number-laden advertisements was no fun, especially for artistic types like Foss and White. So when Love offered to merge the two fanzines into one and fulfill the subscription obligations of the former publication, the Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector was born.

The first issue under that title was RBCC #29, dated April of 1964.

Once fandom only had one major adzine, it becomes easy to trace the growing need for such a publication, because Gordon

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Comic Fandom Archive

It’s Not Rocket Science, But… Florida fan Gordon (“G.B.”) Love, seen in photo, quickly upgraded The Rocket’s Blast from its crude beginnings in December 1961. By RB #20 (July 1963), pictured here, his fanzine boasted nice ditto covers by Howard Keltner, and some very worthwhile interior features, as well. But it was the ads that were the main attraction. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

Love proudly published his circulation figures in every issue. The guaranteed circulation of RB #28 had been 235 copies. A few months after the merger, the cover of RBCC #34 (October 1964) boasted, “By far, the highest paid circulation ever before reached by a comic fanzine. This issue, at least 625!!!” (This was paid circulation; Love sent out almost no freebies.) Four issues later, it was 725, and would continue to rise (albeit more gradually) after that.

The fanzine benefited greatly from a large influx of collectors who discovered comics fandom through plugs in Marvel and DC letter columns, and through ads taken out by Love himself in Marvel Comics. Various sub-sets of fans purchased and enjoyed the various other extant fanzines (with articles, artwork, and amateur comic strips), but nearly all who were serious about the hobby

Deep In The Heart Of Texas DallasCon Bulletin (#1, 1969, despite the “1973” on the cover) and Nostalgia News (#15, May 1972) were two incarnations of the same 'zine, published by a group of Texas fans. The former spotlighted a drawing by George Barr, the latter a scene of Bruce Cabot protecting Fay Wray in King Kong. The two mags each boasted the then-astronomical circulation of 6,000 copies. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Getting Into The Spirit Of Things As its circulation lurched toward 1,000 copies per issue, G.B. Love began using photo-offset printing on RBCC. Buddy Saunders’ nice Spirit cover appeared on #47, one of the first issues to be professionally printed; the second color is a nice touch. [Spirit TM & © Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

bought RBCC, or borrowed a friend’s copy. It appeared reliably on a monthly schedule through the 1960s.

More and more fans were becoming dealers, and new ones turned up seemingly in every issue of the zine. All the articles about the hobby that appeared in newspapers with some frequency focused on the “big bucks” that those “old funny-books” were worth. With dollar signs dancing in their heads, still more folks dug old comics from attics and basements, and routed them into the hands of dealers who advertised for back issues—or took out ads themselves. RBCC grew until G.B. Love was forced to convert to photo-offset printing. It began to look like a professional magazine. But Love stuck to its monthly schedule, mainly—it seems—because it was working fine that way.

Then came a publication that had a dramatic effect on the way old comic books were bought and sold: Bob Overstreet’s Comic Book Price Guide. EC fan Overstreet felt that comic fandom needed a price guide like other established hobbies had, and set about creating one. Based on data compiled by Jerry Bails and many other fans, the Price Guide was a boon to dealers and collectors in many ways. First, it provided the most extensive catalog of published comic books ever assembled. Second, it attempted to set a value for those comic books. Third, it promulgated standardized grading standards.

While many decried the Guide, it proved to be necessary.

Overstreet followed through with his plan to publish revised editions in future years, and true to his plan, it gave greater legitimacy to the comic book collecting hobby. The sale of old comics

Fandom Before TBG

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became a much bigger business. This, in turn, encouraged further scouring of attics, closets, and basements in houses across the country, unearthing back issues that had survived through World War II paper drives, the bonfires of the late ’40s and early ’50s, etc.

The sheer number of dealers and collectors made it clear that fandom could support more than one adzine. Indeed, some enterprising fans in Texas discovered just that, when a publication designed to promote Dallas as a (sciencefiction) WorldCon site was launched in 1969. When they announced a circulation of “approximately 6,000,” many took up their offer of cheap ads. When the WorldCon bid collapsed, the DallasCon Bulletin continued as an adzine called Nostalgia News.

However, its publication schedule was roughly bi-monthly, and it attempted to serve not only comics fandom but Edgar Rice Burroughs, science-fiction, and movie fandoms.

Therefore, there continued to be room for a second reliable adzine that was aimed primarily at comic fandom. And, if it could best RBCC’s monthly schedule, it might even grab the majority of the ad market. But, as will be described in subsequent articles in this issue, Alan Light’s initial idea was to publish a different kind of fanzine entirely, one that was based on—well, I’ll leave off here, and let the ensuing pieces by Brent Frankenhoff, John Jackson Miller, and Alan himself pick up the story from here.

Suffice it to say that all the events that had occurred in fandom before and up to 1971 created an environment that was ripe, nay,

Over The Top With Overstreet After Robert Overstreet’s Comic Book Price Guide came along in 1970, more dealers were attracted to the field, and some of them were ready for an alternative to RBCC. The photo shows young Bob reading a Batman comic.

[Page © Robert Overstreet.]

hungry, for The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom. It was the right adzine at the right time, and it caught a wave of burgeoning interest that propelled it forward. Of course, like any surfer, the trick was having the right board, and staying upright.

Watch for our multi-part feature on G.B. Love and RBCC coming a few issues hence. We have long wanted to give Gordon his due, and intend to do just that. If anyone wishes to contact Bill at the Comic Fandom Archive, his email address is: hamstrpres@aol.com.

Several of his Hamster Press books are still available.

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TBG/CBG: A Pocket History An Awesome Overview of The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom & Comics Buyer’s Guide

by Brent Frankenhoff & John Jackson Miller A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Before we plunge into the individual reminiscences of and articles and art by the all-star lineup of TBG/CBG editors, columnists, and cartoonists, we’re fortunate that Brent Frankenhoff, who co-edited CBG with Maggie Thompson in its later years, has teamed up with CBG historian par excellence John Jackson Miller to give us a fascinating look at the entire panorama of the publication(s), from beginning to end.

omics Buyer’s Guide began life in the basement of a comics fan in 1971 and, for many years, was the largest marketplace for comics sales by mail, also serving as the leading news source for many fans during the weekly era of its run.

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Much about the history of comics, both as a hobby and as an entertainment medium, can be seen in the pages of its 42-year history. It was a history that was filled with highs, lows, and many changes. Some changes were the result of external events; others, of moves by its owners.

The Alan Light Years (1971-1983)

Comics Buyer’s Guide began life when Alan Light, then 17, launched his own newspaper, The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom, in February 1971.

Fandom was in full swing then, with Robert Overstreet’s first Comic Book Price Guide having just been published. Fanzines were providing most of the mail-order connections for comics collectors, and Light’s addition was crafted as a so-called “adzine,” charging $30 for its full-page ads. The initial circulation for the broadsheet newspaper was 3,600 copies, and subscriptions were available free to requesting readers. (Ads in that first 20-page issue included two different copies of The Amazing Spider-Man #1—for $11 and $4, respectively!)

(Above:) Co-authors John Jackson Miller (on left) and Brent Frankenhoff in the CBG offices a few years back.

called the “George and Martha Washington of comics fandom,” Don and Maggie had produced the first general-interest comics fanzine (Comic Art) in spring of 1961 and had produced a comics fan newsletter (Newfangles) from March 1967 through December 1971. The Thompsons had first appeared in TBG #14 to continue the fan awards they’d started in Newfangles—and Light brought them in as columnists in #19 (Aug. 15, 1972). Their “Beautiful Balloons” column then ran in alternating issues.

“The TBG”—as people referred to it, despite Going Gentle Into That Good Night? the article already being in the acronym—shifted There’s a reason alternating from bimonthly to monthly with its second issue.

(Above:) The cover of what became, unexpectedly to issues were often the only place to most of its readers and contributors, the final issue of Editorial content was scarce in the early issues find editorial content in the early Krause Publications’ long-running Comics Buyer’s (although later regular Mark Evanier had a oneTBGs. It was only there at all Guide, dated March 2013.

Thanks to Brent shot column in the fourth issue). With artists because, with the Dec. 1, 1972, Frankenhoff. [characters TM & © the respective including Klaus Janson and P. Craig Russell issue (#26), TBG stopped being copyright holders; other content ©2012 Krause providing some of the earliest covers, circulation free and became a paidPublications, a division of F+W Media, Inc.] topped 4,000 by early 1972. With issue #18 (Aug. subscription publication—$2 for 1, 1972), it went biweekly. That issue included the 23 issues. When it changed from a publication’s first convention photo feature: on the 1972 New York requestor publication to one circulated under Second Class Mail Comic Art Convention. rates, the Postal Service required that advertising could fill no more than 75% of the magazine’s pages in every second issue. So #26 As TBG grew, Murray Bishoff joined Light as an assistant, and included regular news sections, including “Now What?” by the magazine brought in the couple who would later become Bishoff. synonymous with it: Don and Maggie Thompson. Sometimes

TBG/CBG: A Pocket History

7

And the newspaper had long provided a venue through which smaller publishers could reach readers. Underground publishers Rip Off Press and Last Gasp began advertising in 1973, and many more alternative publishers followed.

Jack Katz’s First Kingdom was featured in 1977, one of many indie spotlights. People advertised to sell and find all sorts of things—including subscriber Walter Koenig of Star Trek, who was trying to expand his comics-character pinback-button collection. The 1970s TBG also covered collectors’ issues, including the price spikes on such early “hot comics” as Conan the Barbarian #1, Howard the Duck #1, and Red Sonja #1. It also warned of the publication of the first counterfeit comic book: a copy of Warren’s Eerie #1, in 1976. (CBG would also later warn of the Cerebus #1 counterfeit, among others.)

The Guide-ing Light TBG founder Alan Light in 1971, working away in the DynaPubs office (aka his parents’ basement)… and the cover of The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom #1, featuring art by fan favorite John Fantucchio (1970s photo at center).

Although TBG #1 had no official cover date, Alan writes: “I always thought of it as February, 1971, because there was a two-month interval between #1 and #2, and the second issue’s ad deadline was April 1, 1971.” Photos courtesy of Alan Light. [Art © John Fantucchio.]

And there was a lot of content. Such Golden Age creators as Bill Everett were eulogized. Marvel’s expansion in the early 1970s was covered. Articles on attempts to censor comics appeared as early as 1973, with an article on the arrest of Direct Market pioneer Phil Seuling for selling underground comix. Coverage expanded when the publication went weekly with #87 (July 18, 1975) and added media topics. A movie called The Star Wars [sic] was announced as a Christmas 1976 release in TBG #97 (Sept. 26, 1975). San Diego Comic-Con co-founder Shel Dorf later provided TBG readers with one of fandom’s only interviews with Harrison Ford. Big news stories appeared throughout the 1970s. Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel spoke out in fandom for the first time in a piece that ran in TBG #105 (Nov. 21, 1975): “The Victimization of Superman’s Creators.” The magazine aggressively covered the drive to get pensions for him and Joe Shuster and was able to announce their settlement in #113, two months later.

As the 1980s began, TBG had grown into its role as a focal point. Cat Yronwode had taken over Bishoff’s news column with TBG #329 (March 7, 1980), naming her feature “Fit to Print,” and many players in what would be the modern Direct Market were in place. But, after publishing 481 issues comprising 33,000 pages, Alan Light (then just 29) decided to sell his creation to Krause Publications of Iola, Wisconsin.

The advertising base continued to grow—from the longestrunning continuous advertiser Bill Cole (who started his run in TBG #31) to Steve Geppi, today of Diamond Comic Distributors, whose testimonial ad for TBG ran in #71 (Mar. 1, 1975). As a result, the newspaper continued to expand—some issues had as many as four sections—with the Thompsons’ column expanding to take up nine full pages of the newspaper by 1976. (The largest issue of TBG was #190, the July 8, 1977, issue. It ran 148 pages, including a 52page catalog from Mile High Comics.) And pure entertainment features were added, with Fred Hembeck launching his Dateline cartoon.

The industry was changing, with editorial upheaval at Marvel, runaway cover-price inflation, and troubles in the newsstand market filling many discussions. News of layoffs at Charlton reached readers in 1976. TBG #257 (Oct. 20, 1978) reported the publication of Cancelled Comics Cavalcade, a consequence of the “DC Implosion.” But, with its circulation topping 10,000 copies in 1977, TBG was also reporting on the nascent comics-shop market, its ads connecting start-up distributors to start-up retailers. Seuling’s first ad introducing Sea Gate Distributors appeared on the back of TBG #207, the Nov. 4, 1977, issue.

Fifth Column? That’s For Pikers!

This montage of the mastheads of a number of regular TBG columns was compiled by longtime reader/researcher Russ Maheras. [© the respective copyright holders.]

8

An Awesome Overview of TBG & CBG

The Don And Maggie Years (1983-1994)

Krause was owned by Chester “Chet” Krause, who, like Light, had started his own magazine from his kitchen table—Numismatic News for coin collectors—in 1952. The company had acquired or started several publications in other collectibles fields and determined to follow that model in comics. That meant turning TBG into The Comics Buyer’s Guide—putting the “Comics” word up front—and it meant hiring Don and Maggie Thompson as its coeditors. (Tangentially, Krause also bought Light’s Film Collector’s World, changing the title to Movie Collector’s World—and the Thompsons edited that biweekly, as well, until it was sold to another publisher.)

The first Krause issue, #482 (Feb. 11, 1983), was a shock for its recipients. The newsprint tabloid had much higher production values—and, as with all Krause publications, handwritten ads were reformatted into typeset ads by the production staff. (This earned complaints from more than one reader, with the argument that buyers could no longer tell which sellers were idiots by the quality of their ads.) The every-other-week editorial thing went away, with editorial material in every issue, though the at-least25% goal was a requirement only every second issue. A paid classified-ad section was added, and that often ran many pages.

Yronwode, Hembeck, and other features were brought into the new CBG. The word “Comics” was quickly added to the logo, growing in weight and size over the ensuing months.

Included in that first issue was a new feature: “Comics in Your Future,” a highly detailed week-by-week listing of what was shipping. It would run for more than 20 years, before switching to the magazine’s website. The Thompsons added “Oh, So?” a letterscolumn feature (carrying over the title from their letters column in Comic Art) that was populated by fans and creators alike. Erik Larsen was one of the writers in that first column; over the course of the next decade-plus, many professional creators provided their points of view side-by-side with those of their fans. Don also began his “Comics Guide” review column, continuing the review work he and Maggie had provided in “Beautiful Balloons” in TBG. The Thompsons also immediately revived their fan awards, which had started in Newfangles. The first CBG Fan Awards results appeared in CBG #500, the Jun. 17, 1983, issue. (Frank Miller was the big winner.) Fan Awards ballots would appear in comics from Marvel and many other publishers, with awards ceremonies at Chicago Comicon for many years. The program—which, yes, was also a way of getting prospective subscribers’ addresses—received something in the neighborhood of 5,000 votes at its 1990s peak.

(CBG was, in fact, part of a two-pronged entry into the comics field for Krause in 1983. Alex G. Malloy, Neil A. Hansen, and Richard Maurizio packaged a first issue of a newsstand magazine, Comics Collector, for Krause. Krause gave the title to the Thompsons to edit thereafter, and, while the magazine only lasted 10 issues, the price guide included in it would eventually form the basis for Comics Buyer’s Guide Price Guide magazine in the 1990s, the CBG Checklist and Price Guide book series, and the Standard Catalog of Comic Books series.)

CBG, meanwhile, prospered thanks to subscription efforts and direct market distribution, with circulation topping 20,000 copies by the late 1980s. With the Thompsons at the helm, CBG continued to report on industry news. Expansion in the Direct Market brought more rounds of speculation, such as the run on 1984’s Amazing Spider-Man #252 (with the black costume) and 1986’s Batman: The Dark Knight #1. The many failed attempts at SpiderMan, Batman, and Watchmen films provided letters-column fodder. Censorship remained a major topic, following the Friendly

That’s The Spirit!

Among the many top professionals who contributed covers at one time or another to TBG was the late great Will Eisner. You can’t get any “topper” than that! [Art © Will Eisner Studios, Inc.; other elements © the respective copyright holders.]

Frank’s case, along with creators’ and publishers’ attempts to stave off a ratings system. The debate over Marvel and Jack Kirby’s art filled many pages. And the top-selling issue of the 1980s was 1987’s issue reporting Jim Shooter’s departure from Marvel.

The ease with which the Direct Market made self-publishing possible made CBG an important vehicle for a plethora of new publishers. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 was first advertised by its publishers in CBG #542 (Apr. 6, 1984) for $2 postpaid, and CBG followed with reports throughout the black-&-white comics glut that followed in the mid-1980s. The Thompsons promoted many up-and-coming creators, with Don recommending such releases as Jeff Smith’s Bone in the early 1990s.

Theme issues for international, Golden Age, and media-related comics appeared in the first Krause decade, as did many new columnists. Tony Isabella, who had written for the original TBG, started a regular presence in the 1980s, as did Heidi MacDonald, now of ComicsBeat.com. Bob Ingersoll wrote a legal column. And Peter David, who first appeared as a Marvel representative in CBG’s pages, started his “But I Digress” column in CBG #871 (July 27, 1990); he served as the inside-back-page columnist for years. By the early 1990s, the comics industry was experiencing the biggest boom of its history, driven by speculation and the availability of

TBG/CBG: A Pocket History

easy credit from comics distributors. CBG reported that annual sales in 1991 were $475 million— including the newsstand; that figure would reach $850 million in 1993. (By contrast, the Direct Market alone in 2012 had sales of $475 million, with the wider marketplace bringing it north of $700 million—in today’s dollars, that is.)

CBG reported on one boomlet after another, including the bagged Spider-Man #1 and 1992’s “Death of Superman.” The magazine switched to a tabloid in 1992 for easier shipping, which opened up the cover again for art. And, after reporting on distributors and their conferences for many years, CBG spun off businessto-business information into Comics Retailer in 1991.

As the comics glut reached epic proportions (with more than 500 comics coming out a month), the Thompsons famously editorialized for restraint. CBG issues ran over 120 pages many weeks— still running every other issue at a 75/25 ad-to-edit ratio—stuffed with ads from comics dealers. With Wizard starting to attract readers, Krause morphed its format into that of an upright singlesection tabloid with a color cover.

Brent Frankenhoff joined the staff as associate editor in September 1992, and John Jackson Miller came aboard as editor of Comics Retailer in November 1993. But, by the end of 1993, the comics industry was on the brink of a historic collapse.

And sadly, Don’s health was failing. He’d suffered a heart attack in 1983 and had dealt with attendant health issues in the years that followed. Despite occasional crises that landed him in the emergency room more than once, he kept up a busy, stress-filled schedule into 1994. Very busy. He was in the office at all hours, working on gargantuan output, and died of a second heart attack in May 1994 at 58, having reviewed more than 10,000 comics in his career; his and Maggie’s work together had appeared in 739 issues of the combined magazines.

CBG #1074 (June 17, 1994) was produced the week of Don’s death, using material he had prepared in advance; Maggie wrote an obituary and remembrance note in that issue. The first condolence note across the fax machine came from Neil Gaiman. Many, many more followed.

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Light Years Away (Clockwise from top left:) Alan Light (on right) and Chet Krause shake hands on the sale of TBG to Krause Publications in 1982. Photo courtesy of Alan Light.

Terry Beatty’s cover for TBG #481 (Feb. 4, 1983), Light’s final issue, depicted the changing of the guard. [Comics characters TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; other art © Terry Beatty.]

The spanking new editorial team of Don & Maggie Thompson is shown in 1983, holding copies of the premier Krause issue (#482) of The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom—which would soon be rechristened simply Comics Buyer’s Guide. The cover sported the photo of Light and Krause shaking hands which is seen in this same montage. The Thompsons had been columnists for TBG since very early in the adzine’s life. Photo thanks to Alan Light.

The Maggie Years (1994-Present)

Maggie soldiered on, dealing with what had become by that point an enormous weekly newspaper. The editorial computer system was an unholy disaster of a thing—an ancillary product of, no joke, a chemicals firm—and the copy was still, in those days, being pasted physically on layout boards. Everyone, as ever, pitched in, working enormous hours to keep the paper “on time, all the time” (a Krause Publications motto), and Michael Dean was brought on as Assistant Editor later that year. Mark Evanier signed on as a columnist, and the goal continued to be to build the comics community in every way possible. The problem, of course, was the same one everyone in comics was facing. The business model for CBG used page and advertising budgets based on past performance. After the fall of 1993, the comics industry was on a

10

An Awesome Overview of TBG & CBG

downward trajectory that was not going to improve until after 2000. In the meantime, retail accounts vanished, taking a chunk out of the newspaper’s ad and single-copy sales. Since ad pages determined the number of edit pages in those days, subscribers saw less of CBG in their mailboxes.

With the Feb. 23, 1996, issue (#1162), CBG reduced its trim size to that of a smaller tabloid, becoming less newspaper and more magazine. The Internet began chipping away the direct-mail market for collectible comics, and that, too, cost editorial pages.

Finally, the 75/25 rule was dropped, with a 60-page minimum page count instituted.

That meant a change in the size of the news hole: an increase (the first in a long time). It also meant that much more of the value of the magazine would be in its editorial content. This was a challenge for the publication, since its editorial budget had always been a challenge. The internal staff—which over the years included Joyce Greenholdt, Nathan Melby, James Mishler, Jason Winter, Don Butler, Julie Ullrich, and Ray Sidman—began generating additional original content. CBG included coverage of the gyrations of the distribution market in the 1990s and Marvel’s bankruptcy; censorship coverage continued with the Planet Comics case. For a while, a news-capsule deal was struck with Newsarama, whose Matt Brady had received his start writing for Comics Retailer.

Michael Doran and Matt contributed many pieces over the years.

The 1990s and early 2000s saw continuing experimentation— some of it exploring other pop-culture forms that might be of interest to readers devoted to comics. Such exploration included coverage of manga, games, and toys. (1995’s CBG #1116 became the highest-selling issue ever, when it included in its polybag an exclusive card for the then-white-hot Magic: The Gathering.)

More luck was had following something closer to the core mission: third-party grading via Certified Guaranty Company (CGC) and the rise of auction houses in the early 2000s. It became apparent, however, that nostalgia was a major unifying factor in CBG’s readership—as typified by popular columnist additions Craig “Mr. Silver Age” Shutt and Andrew “Captain Comics” Smith. The magazine also continued to cover the comics re-sale market, adding Mile High’s Chuck Rozanski as a columnist.

The missing piece, however, was the Internet. CBG had weathered the ups and downs of the hobby by being one of a stable of collectors’ magazines at Krause. Unfortunately, this safety in numbers tended to make it tougher for a single magazine—one serving early-adopters—to offer a service that the other magazines did not have. Opportunities to acquire or be host of some of the major comics sites operating today had to be passed over, because of a lack of infrastructure or resources. And one of the competitors that proved damaging to the magazine came, not from Internet news sites or other magazines—but rather, from eBay. That auction site struck directly at the weekly shopper model, wiping out the classifieds. It was this, among other things, that led to the end of the newspaper format in 2004. Krause had been sold to a privateequity firm in 2002 and merged with what is now F+W Media; in 2004, with the private-equity firm contemplating another sale (which happened in 2005), CBG abandoned the weekly shopper model to become a monthly magazine. For the first time, it was almost fully dependent on single-copy and subscription sales.

The number of people who canceled because of the change was in the single digits. The reason for this minimal defection was in part because then-publisher Mark Williams committed to giving the staff, for one year, the same number of pages that would have been published in a month of weekly issues. For a year, no issues had fewer than 240 pages—and the second monthly issue, #1596 (September 2004) was the largest ever, at 292 pages. The “bigchunk” model had enough room to pursue the three directives the staff had been given: directing one-third of the publication toward new comics with lots of reviews; one-third toward older readers with nostalgia pieces; and one-third toward collectors, with a priceguide section that drew upon actual transactions, digitally culled from—yes, eBay. That was part of a strategy supporting the Standard Catalog of Comics Books line, which the staff had recently started. With more content needed to fill the massive amount of

“There’s No ‘The’ There!”

The first pages of the retitled The Comics Buyer’s Guide #550, #559, & #738 (the latter in 1988) reveal the gradual enlarging of the word “Comics” in the title—until eventually the “The” was dropped. [CBG pages © Krause Publications; Alpha Flight & Wolverine art © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

TBG/CBG: A Pocket History

11

Sidebar 1:

More Than Just A Magazine

In addition to the ongoing 1,699 issues, a number of other publications have been produced by CBG staffers in the past 30 years, including a few books produced by freelance contributors. They include:

Comics Buyer’s Guide Annual (six editions, 1992-1997)

Comic Book Superstars (one edition, 1993)

Marvel Comics Checklist and Price Guide (one edition, 1993; this book led to the creation of the ongoing Comic Book Checklist and Price Guide series)

Comics Buyer’s Guide Comic Book Checklist and Price Guide (16 editions, 1994-2009) All in Color for a Dime (softcover reprint, 1997)

The Comic-Book Book (softcover reprint with new color section, 1998)

The Standard Catalog of Comic Books (four print editions, 2002-2005; one CD-ROM edition, 2006. The first two print editions had both a softcover and hardcover version.)

The Rumors Of Superman’s Death Have Been… Well…

The formidable media phenomenon known as “The Death of Superman” was heralded on the cover of CBG #983 (Sept. 18, 1992). Thanks to Brent Frankenhoff. [Superman name & logo TM & © DC Comics; other contents © 1992 Krause Publications, Inc.]

pages, Jim Johnson, John Petty, Brett Weiss, and Michelle Nolan came aboard as contributors.

The new format also allowed CBG to do something it hadn’t been able to do before: purchase original-art covers. Almost all of the magazine’s covers in the 1990s had been promotional pieces.

With CBG finally in a format via which Barnes & Noble could carry it on its newsstands, what was on the cover mattered. Mark Patten and, later, David Campiti helped the magazine acquire cover art. In 2005, CBG also finally got its own website, CBGXtra.com.

In the end, the re-design bought another eight years and just over a hundred issues.

Brent, who had been promoted to full Editor of CBG when Maggie (now Senior Editor) cut her workload at the end of 2007, worked with designer Shawn Williams to put together a varied monthly package. The 240-page deal lapsed, and the number of pages was slowly allowed to come back down to contain costs.

Color pages became black-&-white, glossy paper became newsprint, and the price guide was dropped altogether.

Several years earlier, F+W/Krause had folded Comics & Games Retailer and the much more lucrative Scrye. While the comics business today is doing fairly well, the magazine business has long been in worse shape, and, while there is still a market for the right magazine model (Alter Ego, etc.), there evidently wasn’t another evolution left in CBG. As noted elsewhere, Brent and Maggie received news of the cancellation just after the New Year. CBG #1699 had already gone to press, so there was no anniversary issue, nor acknowledgment in the magazine. The last editorial

Comics Buyer’s Guide Presents: (six volumes; two in 2003: X-Men and Hulk; two in 2011: 100 Sexiest Women in Comics and 100 Baddest Motherf*#!ers in Comics; and two in 2012: Greatest Comic Book Covers of All Time and Dangerous Curves.)

1000 Comic Books You Must Read (one edition, 2009)

Comic Book Price Guide (one edition, 2010)

Comic Shop (one edition, 2010)

A Parent’s Guide to the Best Kids’ Comics (one edition, 2012)

She-Devil With A Sword—And, Obviously, With Sex Appeal A/E’s editor personally chose this 2011 book cover

by Mark Sparacio to represent the various other comics-related publications put out by Krause over the years. The fact that Roy T. sorta “co-created” comics’ Red Sonja in concert with the ghost of Robert E. Howard is only one factor in that choice. You guess the others. Thanks to Brent Frankenhoff. [Red Sonja art © Red Sonja Properties, LLC.; other elements ©2011 Krause Publications, a division of F+W Media, Inc.]

article in the magazine was, as always, a column by Peter David, who suffered a stroke at the end of 2012.

The in-house editorial staffers of the comics division of Krause Publications have included over the years writer-artist Shawn Williams and writers Don Butler, K.C. Carlson, Joyce Greenholdt, Steve Horton, John Jackson Miller, and Ray Sidman. Among its

12

An Awesome Overview of TBG & CBG

Mad Magic The covers of CBG #1116 (April 7, 1995), by Norm Breyfogel—the best-selling issue ever, due to polybagging “an exclusive card for the then-white-hot Magic: The Gathering—and of #1162 (Feb. 23, 1996), the first issue at the smaller-tabloid, magazine-style size, with its simple, stark cover by Mad’s Sergio Aragonés. Thanks to Brent Frankenhoff. [Metaphysique/Magic: The Gathering art © Norm Breyfogle; #1162 cover art © Sergio Aragonés; text & other elements © 1995, 1996 Krause Publications, Inc.]

Half-price in December!

other projects over the years, the award-winning CBG staff has produced six annuals, two dozen price guides (including the massive Standard Catalog of Comic Books), and a number of other tiein projects, some identified with the CBG brand and some simply carrying the Krause Publications logo. And, when we say we “produced” these projects, we must note that countless other contributors provided great gobs of terrific content, which we were privileged to be the first to read. Among our most recent releases were 1000 Comics You Must Read, The Greatest Comic Book Covers of All Time, Dangerous Curves, and A Parent’s Guide to the Best Kids’ Comics.

There is no digital archive of CBG, beyond a DVD produced a few years ago, which collected the first couple of years of the magazine format. Digital back issues from the final year of the magazine are also available at Comics+. Krause did not own reprint rights to many of the columns that had appeared in the 1980s and 1990s, and excising that material would have been impractical.

Brent Frankenhoff is now a full-time proofreader and catalog copywriter for a Wisconsin direct-marketing firm, as well as a freelance writer and editor for various comics and hobby projects. He can be reached at brent.frankenhoff@gmail.com.

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, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more!

JOE KUBERT double-size Special tribute issue! Comprehensive examinations of each facet of Joe’s career, from Golden Age artist and 3-D comics pioneer, to top Tarzan artist, editor, and founder of the Kubert School. Kubert interviews, rare art and artifacts, testimonials, remembrances, portraits, anecdotes, pin-ups and mini-interviews by faculty, students, fans, friends and family!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 Only $4.48 (Digital Edition $3.95)

(164-page FULL-COLOR book) $17.95 Only $8.98 (Digital Edition $7.95)

SAVE 50% on the first two issues, only in December at www.twomorrows.com!

John Jackson Miller is the author of such novels as Star Wars: Kenobi; Star Wars: Knight Errant; Star Wars: Lost Tribes of the Sith; his own Overdraft: The Orion Offensive; comics stories at Marvel and Bongo; several Star Wars comics series at Dark Horse; and more. His fiction site is www.farawaypress.com. He also runs Comichron, the comics research site, which can be found at www.comichron.com.

John Jackson Miller today.

CO-AUTHOR’S NOTE: When I was a reader in high school, CBG gave me a sense of community; as an editor, it gave me the chance to talk comics with thousands of people at once and to advance some of my historical interests. The magazine changed my life, and I know that it touched others, as well.

—John Jackson Miller

TBG/CBG: A Pocket History

Sidebar 2:

Some History Highlights Of The Buyer’s Guide For Comics Fandom

• #57 (May 1, 1974): Alan Light took readers behind the scenes with a photo essay on “The Making of a Buyer’s Guide.”

• #73 (Jan. 1, 1975): This issue was printed entirely on yellow stock due to a newsprint shortage. Many readers thought it was a special holiday issue.

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• #447 (June 11, 1982): Terry Beatty drew the first and only 3-D cover for TBG.

• #477 (Jan. 7, 1983): The Thompsons announced their move to Wisconsin from Ohio but not the reason for the move.

• #478 (Jan. 14, 1983): Alan Light announced the sale of TBG to Krause Publications and the hiring of the Thompsons as editors.

• #481 (Feb. 4, 1983): After publishing an estimated quarter of a billion pages (33,000 individual pages in 481 issues with an average circulation of 8,500 during the paper’s run), Alan Light produced his final issue of TBG.

• #87 (July 18, 1975): TBG went weekly after several issues containing 100 pages or more.

• #100 (Oct. 17, 1975): TBG reached 8,000 subscribers.

• #119 (Feb. 27, 1976): Don and Maggie’s “Beautiful Balloons” column filled nine tabloid pages. By the end of TBG’s run, the couple had produced 147 installments of the column.

• #139 (July 16, 1976): A photo tour of World Color Press in Sparta, Illinois, where most comics were printed at the time, was included. Another such essay (perhaps a repeat of this one?) appeared less than a year later in TBG #191.

• #143 (Aug. 13, 1976): Murray Bishoff toured the Marvel Bullpen for a photo essay.

• #166 (Jan. 21, 1977): TBG had a circulation of more than 10,000.

• #209 (Nov. 18, 1977): Fred Hembeck’s “Dateline @#%!!” cartoon began.

• #247 (Aug. 25, 1978): This was the first issue published with an alternate cover carrying a 75¢ price for distribution to comics shops. Sales never topped 300 copies, because many store owners at the time said they felt that TBG’s ads were direct competition.

• #273 (Feb. 9, 1979): Murray Bishoff released his National Comics Shop Register, containing the names and addresses of more than 250 comics shops.

• #293 (June 29, 1979): The National Comics Shop Register now contained 439 comics shop listings, including 17 in Canada, and filled 13 pages.

• #329 (March 7, 1980): Cat Yronwode took over Murray Bishoff’s news column, renaming it “Fit to Print.”

• #352 (Aug. 15, 1980): Capital City Distribution ran its first TBG ad.

• #400 (July 17, 1981): Terry Beatty drew 400 characters for this issue’s anniversary cover, a project that took him two months.

• #436 (March 25, 1982): The foundations of Diamond Comic Distributors were laid with Steve Geppi’s purchase of New Media Irjax’s distribution concern.

Hey! We Only Counted 399 Of ’Em! Terry Beatty’s cover for The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom #400 (July 17, 1981) was designed to feature precisely that many characters from comic books, comics strips, and other pop-cultural areas—even movie serials! Inside was a listing of all 400 of them, in 20 rows. [Characters TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; text & other elements © 1981 the respective copyright holders.]

14

An Awesome Overview of TBG & CBG

Sidebar 3:

Some History Highlights of Comics Buyer’s Guide

• #492 (April 22, 1983): Kim Metzger’s Four Color Comments and Elizabeth Slaughter’s The Bitter Half first appeared.

• #498 (June 3, 1983): Bob Laughlin’s Kitz and Katz began.

• #499 (June 10, 1983): Ward Batty’s Trufan Adventures (later coproduced with Charlie Williams) and Craig Yoe’s Yoe-Ho-Ho strips started.

• #508 (Aug. 12, 1983): A list of birthdays of comics celebrities made its first appearance.

• #510 (Aug. 26, 1983): Everett True (a tribute to The Outbursts of Everett True by A.D. Condo and J.W. Raper), written by Tony Isabella with art by Gary Dumm and Greg Budgett, began. Robert Ingersoll wrote the first installment of “The Law Is a Ass,” and Rick Norwood’s “Cosmic Trips” column began.

• #514 (Sept. 23, 1983): “I Cover the Newsstand” by Tony Isabella began.

• #520 (Nov. 4, 1983): David Campiti’s “Confessions of a Curious Comic-Book Writer” started.

• #542 (April 6, 1984): CBG ran an early announcement of the upcoming release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1. Creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird promoted the book with a series of ads.

• #553 (June 22, 1984): Due to a production error, this issue number didn’t appear on the cover; some may make the claim that #553 doesn’t exist.

• #555 (July 6, 1984): The first (and only!) crossword puzzle to appear in CBG ran in this issue.

• #564 (Sept. 7, 1984) and #567 (Sept. 28, 1984): These were a pair of theme issues devoted to science-fiction in comics and in pulp and paperback fiction, respectively.

• #580 (Dec. 28, 1984): Retailer Cliff Biggers started “From behind the Cash Register,” a retailer point-of-view column.

• #589 (March 1, 1985): Another retailer, Thomas Walton, began “Walton’s Wisdom.” By mid-1991, these retailer-oriented columns would lead to the creation of spin-off magazine Comics Retailer.

• #600 (May 17, 1985): Researcher Steve Mitchell started “Slaughter of the Innocents,” a series of articles on the history of comics censorship.

• #601 (May 24, 1985): CBG’s comic strips were collected in one place for the first time on Page 20, a home they inhabited for about a year and, later, relinquished to such full-page features as Mark Martin’s 20 Nude Dancers 20 and Brian Douglas Ahern’s Bumpkin Buzz.

• #602 (May 31, 1985): Ron Goulart’s “Forgotten Funnies” feature first appeared.

• #603 (June 7, 1985): The first mention of “Marvel zombies” appeared in Trufan Adventures.

• #645 (March 28, 1986): CBG picked up the price-guide section

I Was A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle For The FBI This coming-comics news page of CBG #542 (April 6, 1984) heralded the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who were poised to become the Next Big Thing. Who knew? Thanks to Brent Frankenhoff. [Art © 1984 Mirage Studios.; text © 1984 Krause Publications, Inc.]

from the canceled Comics Collector.

• #674 (Oct. 17, 1986): The creators of Shatter, the first comics series entirely produced on a computer, took readers behind the scenes.

• #678 (Nov. 14, 1986): The first Holiday Supplement appeared.

• #692 (Feb. 20, 1987): After 100 installments, the first same-page disclaimer explaining the column’s title appeared with “The Law Is a Ass.” This issue also marked the return of “Fit to Print” after more than a year’s absence. It returned as part of a Page 9 ad from Eclipse, a spot it retained for a number of years.

• #721 (Sept. 11, 1987): The first installment of Bob Miller’s celebration of Hanna-Barbera’s 30th anniversary appeared. The series of articles ran well beyond the anniversary year.

• #744 (Feb. 19, 1988): Previously unpublished material from Dave Olbrich’s canceled comics retail trade magazine Comics Business ran in this issue.

• #746 (March 4, 1988): CBG published the full transcript of the Michael Correa trial, in which Correa, an employee of Friendly Frank’s, a comics shop in Lansing, Ill., was accused and convicted of selling obscene comics. The case, whose decision was later overturned, led to the creation of The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

TBG/CBG: A Pocket History

• #749 (March 25, 1988): The first “State of the Industry” report was published, as was the first multi-page preview of a Diamond Comic Distributors Retailer Seminar.

• #754 (April 29, 1988): The first Capital City Distribution retailers’ conference was previewed.

• #764 (July 8, 1988): A year after the first marriage proposal ad in CBG led to matrimony, a photo feature celebrated the first anniversary of Susan Barrows and Lamar Waldron.

• #765 (July 15, 1988): CBG marked 10 years of Elfquest with a special issue. A decade later, similar treatment was given to the 20th anniversary.

• #775 (Sept. 23, 1988): An ad for DC’s upcoming Plastic Man miniseries found the crime-fighter stretched across the tops of several editorial and ad pages.

• #807 (May 5, 1989): “Buried Treasures,” a special section for Golden and Silver Age comics, began.

• #819 (July 28, 1989): Mark Martin’s 20 Nude Dancers 20 first appeared on, of course, Page 20.

• #857 (April 20, 1990): All 40 pages of the second section had the wrong date of “April 6, 1990” on them. Gremlins.

• #866 (June 22, 1990): A special issue was devoted to the Dick Tracy film with Warren Beatty as the square-jawed detective.

• #871 (July 27, 1990): Peter David’s “But I Digress” started.

15

• #873 (Aug. 10, 1990): The murder of Barbara George, wife of Michigan comics retailer Michael George, was reported. Michael George was found guilty of the crime in 2008, when the case was reopened, and, after that verdict was thrown out, was found guilty at a second trial in 2011. Appeals continue in the case.

• #878 (Sept. 14, 1990): A photo-feature on CBS-TV’s new Flash series appeared.

• #890 (Dec. 7, 1990): The CBG Price Guide spun off into its own publication. It would later return to the pages of CBG.

• #900 (Feb. 15, 1991): Tony Isabella wrote about how, with the addition of one word to his Everett True cartoon that had appeared in CBG #517 (Oct. 14, 1983), with a joke about the production of “teenage mutant ninja” comics, he could have become “rich beyond my wildest dreams.”

• #901 (Feb. 22, 1991): CBG began its listing of comics fan clubs.

• #912 (May 10, 1991): Chris Smigliano’s For Art’s Sake first appeared.

• #919 (June 28, 1991): Reprints of Will Eisner’s The Spirit daily comic strip and Batton Lash’s Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre began.

• #923 (Aug. 2, 1991): Bruce Costa’s “Suggested for Mature Retailers,” another column that later migrated to Comics Retailer, first appeared.

• #929 (Sept. 6, 1991): Dan Vebber’s Adventure! comic strip began.

• #932 (Sept. 27, 1991): The infamous “Name Withheld” letter, in which an unnamed artist told writers they weren’t needed or wanted, appeared. Dozens of responses filled the letters column for months afterward, addressing the letter’s content and attempting to figure out who the writer was. (No, we still won’t tell you who wrote it. We said we wouldn’t.) The Adventures of Bumpkin Buzz by Brian Douglas Ahern also began in this issue.

• #943 (Dec. 13, 1991): “Xenogenesis,” Harlan Ellison’s two-part essay on the darker side of fandom, began in this issue and concluded in the next. Other professionals shared their stories in later issues.

• #946 (Jan. 3, 1992): The launch of spin-off magazine Comics Retailer was announced. K.C. Carlson was hired as editor of the retailer-focused publication.

• #949 (Jan. 24, 1992): Mark Martin’s 20 Nude Dancers 20 ended its run.

• #962 (April 24, 1992): The last multi-section broadsheet edition of CBG was published, coincidentally the 481st issue edited by the Thompsons, which tied Alan Light’s record.

• #963 (May 1, 1992): The new format for CBG began with a stapled single-section magazine that had art on the cover and “But I Digress” on the last editorial page: a position Peter David’s longrunning column retained for the rest of its run.

• #966 (May 22, 1992): A photo feature celebrated the 50th anniversary of Jack and Roz Kirby.

• #973 (July 10, 1992): Don Thompson devoted a page of “Comics Guide,” his review feature, to Jeff Smith’s Bone.

A Sharper Image Cover of CBG #1000 by Jim Lee, celebrating the birth of Image Comics.

[Art © Jim Lee; other elements © 1992 Krause Publications, Inc.]

• #977 (Aug. 7, 1992): Jay Hosler’s Cow-Boy comic strip began, and Peter David released the first installment of his illustrated barf bags in “But I Digress.”

16

An Awesome Overview of TBG & CBG

• #988 (Oct. 23, 1992): Bob Newhart’s short-lived CBS-TV sitcom Bob was cover-featured. Newhart mentioned CBG in one episode of the series. This issue also contained the first, uncredited writing by future editor Brent Frankenhoff: news bits he’d produced during his job interview for associate editor.

• #1000 (Jan. 15, 1993): With art by Jim Lee, the first of two glossy paper covers led off this special anniversary issue. (The other glossy cover was for #1162.)

• #1015 (April 30, 1993): Mike Bannon’s “Old Paper” began.

• #1028 (July 30, 1993): Craig Shutt’s “Ask Mr. Silver Age” column first appeared. No Go-Go Checks were harmed in the publication of the piece.

• #1030 (Aug. 13, 1993): Bill Cole’s 1,000th consecutive ad appeared.

• #1040 (Oct. 22, 1993): In order to not break his string of continuous review columns, Don Thompson wrote this issue’s “Comics Guide” from his bed after being hospitalized by atrial fibrillation.

• #1044 (Nov. 19, 1993): The full transcript of a debate between Peter David and Todd McFarlane, held at ComicFest ’93 (which asked, “Has Image Comics/Todd McFarlane been treated fairly by the media?”) was published.

• #1051 and #1052 (Jan. 7 and Jan 14, 1994): Two parts of an image promoting Jae Lee’s Hellshock appeared on these two issues’ covers.

• #1059 (March 4, 1994): Tributes to Jack Kirby, who died at age 76, filled this special issue.

• #1064 (April 8, 1994): Kitchen Sink Press’ 25th anniversary was observed.

• #1074 (June 17, 1994): Don Thompson’s death was reported, and tributes began appearing. Don’s work had appeared in 739 issues of TBG/CBG, and he had co-edited 593 issues of CBG. Adding his

Lee & Ditko—Not Exactly Together Again Psychedelic Steve Ditko art was used as the cover of CBG #1214 (Feb. 21, 1997)— while issue #1258 (Dec. 26, 1997) celebrated Stan Lee’s 75th birthday, with a visually cacophonous cover (and cake) by mirthful Marie Severin. Thanks to Nick Caputo for the scan of the former cover. [Ditko art © Steve Ditko; Marvel heroes & villains TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art, text, & elements on covers © 1996, 1997 Krause Publications, Inc.]

fanzine work to the total, he reviewed in excess of 10,000 comics in his career.

• #1093 (Oct. 28, 1994): Mark Evanier’s “Point of View” column began.

• #1103 (Jan. 6, 1995): After a few years as a separate magazine, the CBG Price Guide returned as a separate polybagged section with this issue.

• #1104 (Jan. 13, 1995): Continuing the spread of polybags, this issue contained the first of a series of polybagged monthly entertainment trading-card guides.

• #1115 (March 31, 1995): The second part of a three-part interview with Harlan Ellison appeared in this issue. No, readers didn’t miss the first and third parts in CBG. They appeared in Hero Illustrated and Sci-Fi Universe, respectively.

• #1116 (April 7, 1995): Another polybagged issue proved to be the most popular issue for some time, but not for its comics content.

Two cards for the Magic: The Gathering game were included with the issue: a “Norritt” and an exclusive pre-release of the “Word of Undoing.” We had extras lying around the office for years afterward.

• #1131 (July 21, 1995): Almost a decade after the first installment appeared, Steve Mitchell’s “Slaughter of the Innocents” series resumed.

• #1142 (Oct. 6, 1995): The 200th installment of The Adventures of Bumpkin Buzz appeared.

• #1155 (Jan. 5, 1996): CBG’s “Circulation Scavenger Hunt” began.

It would be the basis for John Jackson Miller’s Comics Chronicles website.

• #1162 (Feb. 23, 1996): Postal regulations and paper price hikes led to a format change for CBG, more in line with the size and shape of Rolling Stone at the time. John Jackson Miller began “Weeks of Wonder,” a thumbnail index of the preceding 13 years of CBG.

TBG/CBG: A Pocket History

• #1163 (March 1, 1996): The CBG Price Guide went from a separate supplement to several pages inside the issue.

• #1249 (Oct. 24, 1997): Prior to the switch to magazine format, this was CBG’s largest issue, at 200 pages. It absorbed the editorial content of what would have been a CBG Annual.

• #1277 (May 8, 1998): Scott Brick dug deep into the mystery of “Who Really Killed Gwen Stacy?”

• #1300 (Oct. 16, 1998): In addition to focusing on DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, this anniversary issue also included a contest with prizes valued at $1,300.

• #1313 (Jan. 15, 1999): A feature on luck in comics appeared in a special triskaidekaphobia issue.

• #1352-#1364 (1999-2000): The “Comics of the Century” issues (see p. 35).

• #1400 (Sept. 15, 2000): Planned as an anniversary issue, the issue was, instead, devoted to tributes to Disney Duck artist Carl Barks, who had died early in the week the issue was being produced.

• #1423 (Feb. 23, 2001): To mark 30 years of the publication, a “retro” issue was produced replicating what an issue produced in 1971 would have looked like. Most readers either didn’t get or didn’t appreciate the joke.

• #1455 (Oct. 5, 2001): A “silent” cover featuring Captain America solemnly looking over the streets of New York paid tribute to the losses of September 11. The issue’s news coverage was devoted to the disaster’s aftermath.

• #1456 (Oct. 12, 2001): The five-year anniversary of Lois Lane and Clark Kent’s marriage was observed.

• #1462 (Nov. 23, 2001): News returned to the cover of CBG, as the publication was divided into “sections,” each focusing on a different area of collecting.

17

• #1621 (October 2006): Dark Horse’s 20th anniversary was celebrated.

• #1627 (April 2007): Brent Frankenhoff was named CBG’s fourth editor, while Maggie Thompson was promoted to Senior Editor.

• #1635 (November 2007): With a tight schedule between two major shows, this issue featured convention scrapbooks for both Comic-Con International: San Diego and Wizard World Chicago.

• #1652 (April 2009): The issue featured a focus on the upcoming Watchmen film, which had been an on-again/off-again project almost since the series’ original publication in 1986.

• #1659 (November 2009): With a switch to saddle-stitching in the following issue, the final squarebound issue was published. A contest seeking a cover produced by the readers was announced.

• #1660 (December 2009): The final installment of the CBG Price Guide was produced.

• #1661 (January 2010): A trio of new features began, spotlighting creators, publishers, and shops. Comics reviews by fans and an ongoing column spotlighting webcomics also began.

• #1664 (April 2010): A piece by Mark Alvarado, the winner of the fan-produced cover contest, appeared.

• #1668 (August 2010): Peter David marked 20 years of “But I Digress.”

• #1672 (December 2010): CBG asked contributors and readers “Why Comics?” and received dozens of answers. The issue also contained a 140-character identification quiz, which was later turned into a downloadable subscription premium.

• #1595 (August 2004): CBG switched from a weekly newspaper tabloid format to a monthly magazine. A full price guide packed with additional features was one of many items added to the new package.

• #1600 (January 2005): The final “centenary” issue paid tribute to The Man of Steel. “The 1600 Comics You Need Most” appeared in this issue.

• #1603 (April 2005): The death of Will Eisner was reported.

• #1606 (July 2005): A photo page identifying the many printings of Marvel’s Star Wars #1 appeared. Michelle Nolan’s “Who Was Who in the Four-Color Funnies” began.

• #1607 (August 2005): Another columnist was added, when writer Beau Smith began his “Dottin’ the Eyes” column.

• #1608 (September 2005): A debate between CBG columnists and editors about when the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Ages began and ended appeared. It was, indeed, a “Battle of the Ages!”

• #1611 (December 2005): Showing the versatility of many of the editors of CBG publisher Krause Publications, numismatics books editor Tom Michael provided a multi-page history of Archie Comics.

• #1616 (May 2006): After spotlighting its many creators and staff members, CBG itself was profiled in the ongoing “Guidefile” feature this issue, which marked the publication’s 35th anniversary.

Standing Watch The cover of CBG #1455, the first published in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9-11-01, was drawn by Mike Zeck & John Beatty... actually for a Marvel cover. [Captain America TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; text & other elements ©2001 Krause Publications, Inc.]

18

An Awesome Overview of TBG & CBG

• #1678 (June 2011): The publication’s 40th anniversary was celebrated.

• #1682 (October 2011): Fifty years of comics fanzines were spotlighted.

• #1687 (March 2012): Peter David’s “Fan/Pro Bill of Rights” appeared.

• #1689 (May 2012): CBG’s writers told readers what their favorite find for their collections had been and noted what item(s) they were most seeking.

The Last “Centenary” Celebration The cover of CBG #1600 (Jan. 2005). As it turned out, there were only 99 issues to go. Art

by Jim Lee. [Superman art © DC Comics; text & other elements ©2004 Krause Publications, Inc.]

• #1692 (August 2012): The reader responses to CBG’s “Favorite Finds” were published.

• #1697 (January 2013): Stan Lee’s 90th birthday was celebrated with a special focus on “The Man.”

• #1698 (February 2013): The final “Year in Review” feature was published.

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• #1699 (March 2013): This was the final issue of CBG.

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19

The Buyer’s Guide For Comics Fandom The Birth & Thriving & Eventual Sale Of Fandom’s Most Successful Adzine

by Alan Light

A/E EDITOR’S INTRO: We are privileged to have the founder of The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom, the 1971-1983 predecessor to Comics Buyer’s Guide, on hand to relate to us firsthand the backstory of the original magazine—and how and why it metamorphosed into the juggernaut that it became. So we’ll just get out of his way and let him do it….

ack in 1968 there was a 15-year-old boy I used to know whose dad and uncle owned the neighborhood tavern in small-town Rapids City, Illinois. On weekends the boy would help out his dad by mopping and buffing the floor and carrying heavy cases up from the basement to re-stock merchandise. He sorted empty smelly beer bottles that had been sent down a chute to the basement. For working three hours every Saturday and again on Sunday, his dad paid him $12.00.

B

In The Beginning…

A teenage Alan Light holds up the original John Fantucchio art for the cover of The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom #1, which debuted in early 1971.

Photo courtesy of Alan.

was illegal, tearing off and returning the top third of a cover to get a full refund on unsold copies from the distributor and then selling the comics, which were supposed to have been destroyed.)

One day in September of 1968 he spent the full 12 cents for the latest issue of Adventure Comics, #374. Inside was an article headlined “The Wonderful World of Comics” that told about something called comics fandom and explained that “fanzines” were amateur fan magazines about comics. The article recommended a fanzine by the name of Comic Crusader, for 25 cents.

When it arrived in his mail box, the kid was hooked, and his life was forever changed.

That’s how he could afford to buy his comic books. He bought them mostly at the Ben Franklin five-and-dime store in East Moline, Illinois. At that time, he bought only DC comics (never Marvel) for the cover price of 12 cents. Once in a while the store would have a shopping cart piled high with all sorts of comics that had the titles mysteriously sliced off—and they cost only a nickel!

(The kid didn’t know that what the store was doing

...And Before The Beginning This is where it all started for Alan: an article about comics fandom in Adventure Comics #374 (Nov. 1968), and the copy of Martin L. Greim’s fanzine Comic Crusader #3 (Fall 1968) to which it pointed him. Adventure cover art by Curt Swan & Mike Esposito; CC cover by Greim. Thanks to Bob Bailey for the comics text page, and to Aaron Caplan for the CC scan. [Adventure cover © DC Comics; Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics; other CC art © Martin L. Greim.]

20

The Buyer’s Guide For Comic Fandom

Of course, you know that the boy is, or was, me. Looking back 45 years ago, it just seems like another person, another lifetime ago.

I still have that copy of Adventure Comics #374 and that issue of Comic Crusader, #3, in a single musty old box of souvenirs from my 15 years in comics fandom.

Soon after learning that fanzines existed, it occurred to me, “I could do that!” I wanted to join in. My first attempts, Comic Cavalier and then All Dynamic (the “All” came from my initials, Alan Lloyd Light), are laughably crude when looked at now. But they were necessary steps that led to a publication that endured a very long time, indeed—Comics Buyer’s Guide.

After losing about $100, which was a lot of money to a kid working hard to earn $12 a week, I decided to try going for a wider audience and maybe even the chance to break even or make a profit. A profit on a fanzine was unheard of in those days and was in fact considered anti-fan. It was very much frowned on.

The idea I had was to publish a tabloid-format newspaper for comic book fans. It might have a little advertising, but it would be mainly news. In what would turn out later to be an interesting coincidence, the people I contacted back in 1970 to help me with my new idea were Don and Maggie Thompson.

Why the Thompsons? They were celebrities in comics fandom.

They both went way back to the earliest days, and were “connected.” They knew everyone who was important in comics.

Don and Maggie had been publishing a mimeographed fanzine called Newfangles, which contained the latest news about comics gathered straight from their comics-famous friends.

A Cavalier Attitude The cover of Alan’s very first fanzine, The Comic Cavalier #1, printed in 1969 on a spirit duplicator. Art by Kevin Richert. Thanks to Alan for the scan, and to Aaron Caplan for the artist ID. [Angel TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A Newfangled Notion (Right:) Don & Maggie Thompson announced a year in advance that they were discontinuing Newfangles, as per the first page of issue #43 (Jan. 1971)—which led, in a roundabout way, to The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom—which in turn would furnish not just Alan Light but later the Thompsons themselves with an income for several decades. Thanks to Aaron Caplan. [© Maggie Thompson.]

(Above:) An all-smiles reunion—Alan Light and the Thompsons at the 1990 San Diego Comic-Con. Photo courtesy of AL.

The Birth & Thriving & Eventual Sale Of Fandom’s Most Successful Adzine

21

The Dynamic (Clockwise) Rise Of All Dynamic All-Dynamic #4 had sported a letter from one-time comics-industry threat-or-menace Dr. Wertham himself! [Logo art & text © the respective copyright holders.]

Near-future pro (Shazam!, Batman, et al.) Don Newton drew this highly textured black-&-white cover for DynaPubs’ photo-offset All Dynamic #7 (1970). [Superman TM & © DC Comics; other art © Estate of Don Newton.]

In the double-issue #5 & 6 (July 1970) was this illustration by newcomers Arvell Jones and Rich Buckler, who would go on to draw for years for Marvel and DC. Thanks to Doug Martin for all three scans on this page. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Don and Maggie had just announced their decision to stop publishing Newfangles. They were ceasing publication because the effort and expense of publishing had become too great.

Contacting them made perfect sense. Here I was with the idea of a fandom newspaper, but no way to collect news for it. Here they were, they knew all the latest news, but no longer wanted the drudge work and expense of maintaining a subscription list, printing issues, and mailing them out.

So I wrote the Thompsons a letter, something like “I will take over all of the work if you will gather the news for me.” A win-win situation, I thought. What could go wrong?

Well, the big-name fans took the time to politely write back to this guy who had written to them out of the blue to say that they couldn’t help gather any news. They were exhausted. Sorry. They wanted a break. Oh.

Without their help—without their news-gathering ability—I couldn’t proceed with my idea. So I modified my idea. It would still be newspaper-sized but contain all advertisements instead.

The idea, which I called The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom (named after a local free shopper that came in the mail all the time, called The Big River Buyer’s Guide) would still be a tabloid 11"x17" newspaper but would now be entirely devoted to advertising—the heck with needing someone to collect news—and, best of all, the advertisers would design the content themselves!

22

The Buyer’s Guide For Comic Fandom

Art & Commerce (Part 1) On this page: the covers of TBG #47 (Bernie Wrightson) & 92 (Greg Gilchrist, now artist of the Nancy newspaper strip), plus a panoramic drawing by Tarzan comic strip artist Russ Manning from #188. Covers provided by Russ Maheras, Manning illo by Doug Martin. [#47 cover art © Bernie Wrightson; characters on #92 cover TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; Tarzan TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

I would send the issues out for free—just like that local shopper I got in the mail all the time.

To get addresses of comic book collectors, I combed the pages of existing fanzines and comic books. In those days it was common for comics to publish letters to the editor, along with the full mailing addresses of the writers. I also placed ads offering free subscriptions in the major fanzines of the day, including the biggest one of all, the RBCC, an adzine published by Gordon B. Love of Miami, Florida.

“G.B.,” as he was known, was the most famous fan publisher at the time, and he published RBCC despite the added

The Birth & Thriving & Eventual Sale Of Fandom’s Most Successful Adzine

23

And on this page: the covers or pages of TBG #199 (Batman by Swamp Thing illustrator John Totleben)… #254 (by Daniel Clowes, later writer/artist of Ghost World, et al.)… #288 (Batman by Bob Kane)… and #420 (Daredevil, Elektra, and Spider-Man by Nexus artist/cocreator Steve Rude). First two covers provided by Russ Maheras, latter two by Doug Martin.

[Batman TM & © DC Comics; other #199 art ©John Totleben; #254 art © Daniel Clowes; non-Batman #288 art © Estate of Bob Kane; #420 art © Steve Rude.]

The Lovecraft Mythos George Hagenauer sent this 1976 drawing by pro Mike Vosburg of his then-new heroine Lori Lovecraft, as an example of how Alan Light’s TBG helped promote new ideas. [© Mike Vosburg.]

24

The Buyer’s Guide For Comic Fandom

I called my new company DynaPubs (short for Dynamic Publications). One of the most famous fan artists of the day, John G. Fantucchio, designed the company logo and also drew the first issue’s cover. At the top, he had written, of his own volition: “Daring—Original—Inevitable First Issue.”

So there I was in 1971 in my living room, with my mom and dad and grandmother and sister, surrounded by a mountain of copies of the first issue of TBG, using a wet sponge to stick labels onto about 3,000 copies. Not in our wildest dreams would we have believed the publication would last 42 years.

TBG went from bimonthly, to monthly, to twice-monthly, to weekly in very short order. It was a great success. When TBG began in 1971, the largest-circulation fanzine was sending out 2,000 copies. Twelve years later, we were printing over 10,000, and it was not uncommon for a weekly issue to have over 100 tabloid pages.

The Fan Press The TBG’s printer, Omar Printing, was located in LeClaire, Iowa.

This 1974 photo courtesy of Alan Light.

hardship of having cerebral palsy, which required him to type one letter at a time, using a pencil in his fist. (He passed away January 17, 2001, at age 61.)

My ad in RBCC offered every reader a free subscription to The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom. I remember holding my breath to see if G.B. would publish my ad, since I was an obvious competitor. The ad was critical to my success. If he had rejected it, TBG would likely never have succeeded. But he printed it (a mistake, I vowed, I would never make myself), enabling me to obtain virtually his entire subscription list.

During my 12 years, I was relentless in promoting the circulation of TBG everywhere I could, especially in the comic books themselves, which greatly expanded the size of comics fandom, and quickly. I sometimes wonder, for example, how much of an impact my efforts made. Would Comic-Con International in San Diego be the size it is today (for better or worse!) without my aggressive efforts? What other things would have been impeded, or not exist at all today, without my successful efforts to supercharge comics fandom in its important formative stage? There’s no way to know.

In 1983 I bowed out after 12 years and 481 issues, when Chet Krause, founder of Krause Publications, approached me to purchase the paper. He felt it would be a good fit with his other hobby publications. Chet had begun his magazine-publishing

Three To Get Ready…

Three different types of covers utilized by TBG —all provided by Doug Martin: (Left:) #13’s drawing by popular fan-artist John Fantucchio, which didn’t reflect any particular pro characters. [Art © John Fantucchio.]; (Center:) #14 by P. Craig Russell & Dan Adkins, a montage of Marvel heroes done especially for the DynaPubs newspaper. [Marvel heroes TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; Conan TM & © Conan Properties International, LLD.]; (Right:) #19’s reproduction of the upcoming Jack Kirby Mr. Miracle over done for DC. But, as A/E’s proofreader Bill Dowlding points out, the cover of MM #10 was a quite different drawing of a similar scene! [© DC Comics.]

The Birth & Thriving & Eventual Sale Of Fandom’s Most Successful Adzine

25

empire much as I had, starting out by working at his kitchen table.

When I told Chet I wasn’t interested continuing to work on the paper, he asked me whom I would recommend. I said Don and Maggie Thompson, those big-name fans who had long ago published Newfangles. They went back to the earliest days of Blinded By The Light comics fandom.

Hanley’s caricature of TBG editor Alan Light Don had been as Captain Marvel. Scan courtesy of Alan.

See more of his work on pp. 75-80 out of work for [Art © Estate of Alan Jim Hanley.] quite a few months after being laid off at the Cleveland Press, and he and Maggie were the obvious choice.

I have good memories of my dozen years as publisher.

My good friend and schoolmate, Murray Bishoff, who is now editor of the Monett Times in Monett, Missouri, was a big help in the early days. He would address all copies of the paper and lugged 70-pound mail bags to the post office—a backbreaking job that the printer finally took over with #87 in July, 1975.

Murray was also a big help by writing the main news column, “Now What?,” for many years. Murray was instrumental in getting Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster a settlement and pension from DC Comics. I’m proud of him for that, and proud that he used his column in my paper to do it.

Later, Murray was helpful in suggesting Catherine Yronwode to succeed him with her news column, “Fit to Print.”

All Things Must End Alan, in 1982, holds up the front page of his final TBG issue, which featured a comic strip written and drawn by Fred Hembeck. You saw that cover bigger on p. 9. Photo courtesy of AL.

pizza with Frank Frazetta, and going to movie matinees with Max Allan Collins, whose name is now in the movies as screenwriter.

It wasn’t always good. There were silly fan-feuds, not helped in some cases by my own insecurity and immaturity. I remember the time Alan Jim Hanley, creator of “Goodguy,” visited me and I took him out for his first lobster dinner, and then a year later I received the awful news that he had been killed in a car accident. And I saw the printer I had been using for 12 years go bankrupt when they lost my account due to the sale of the paper, after pleading with me to sell it to them instead (they didn’t know the first thing about comics, and couldn’t have afforded it anyway).

I still feel proud about what I started so long ago, even though it’s come to an end. It was a great, long, successful run. 42 years. 1699 print issues (481 of them mine). Not bad at all. I think that record just might stand.

The biggest continuing asset to the paper was my mother, Lavon. She was there all day answering the phone, taking care of the mailing list, and even was an excellent detective in cases of suspected mail fraud. She loved her job, and I can say flatly that without her and Dad the publication would not have lasted.

Neither of them questioned my sanity when I told them I wanted to quit college and publish a paper about comic books (of all things!). Dad passed away in 1997, and mom in 2000.

I recall other things, some fondly and some not, about my 12 years as publisher… great cartoons by Fred Hembeck, great covers by Terry Beatty and Alan Jim Hanley, columns

by Joel Thingval, Shel Dorf, and the Thompsons, sharing a

Behind Every Successful Adzine…

Two of Alan’s greatest assets are shown in this pair of photos.

(Left:) Light and his good right arm Murray Bishoff (in his trademark hat—see next article), representing TBG at the 1972 New York Comic Art Convention.

(Above:) Alan’s mother and good left arm, Mrs. Lavon Light, seen in the TBG office in 1978. Both photos courtesy of AL.

26

Remembering The Buyer’s Guide

by Murray Bishoff

A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: If there is one name firmly and forever identified with Alan Light’s original Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom, it’s that of Murray Bishoff, now a Mid-Western newspaper editor. We’ll let him tell you why that is….

was a junior in high school and remember quite vividly the day Alan Light handed me the first issue of The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom in the spring of 1971. I had known Alan for about a year. He was a year older than me. It wasn’t until my junior year that Alan and I could cross paths on a regular basis. I had little idea what this new publication would mean to me. Alan had not talked about this idea at all.

I

I had been collecting comics for about seven years. I’d read and re-read every reference book on comic books and strips I could find and had one of the larger collections in the area. I had subscribed to G.B. Love’s Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector for three years by then.

Alan must have advertised his All Dynamic fanzine there, and I called him up once I knew there was another collector in town.

Those active in comics fandom seem to come in three varieties: collectors, writers/artists/storytellers, and those who want to make publications. I was still expanding my collections at the time and getting my footing as a writer. Alan seemed to love the comics art form, but wasn’t much of a collector. He wanted to publish. As a writer, and someone who loved to talk about comics of all kinds, I was drawn to the venue Alan offered.

I wrote a piece on The Shadow for his fourth issue of All Dynamic. Initially I probably saw TBG only as a way to buy more stuff. As my collecting patterns changed, it became much more to me.

Addressing The Issues Of The Day Murray Bishoff addresses outbound copies of TBG in the DynaPub offices, 1972. Photo courtesy of Alan Light.

the addressograph, then bundling them, packing them in mail bags, and hauling them to the East Moline, Illinois, Post Office. In time, the job got too big for one day and would take Sunday morning to finish.

Alan’s mom became his office manager. A well-organized retired executive secretary, she kept the operation running smoothly. Alan seemed largely free to promote, think up new projects, and try to keep up with the engine that TBG had become.

I offered to help Alan any way I could. I was never a business partner or shared any investment in the company.

My assistance came through my knowledge of the art and offering an extra hand. Initially I tried to do some office work. My real contribution came as business picked up. With issue #11 (Feb. 1972) I started addressing the issues, a job I kept until TBG became a weekly. The job doubled quickly after #16 (June 1972), which was so big (60 pages) that Alan switched to a twice-amonth schedule. The extra income enabled me to buy more, complete my collections, and immerse myself further in the comics form.

Alan came from a very nice middleclass family with a large comfortable ranch-style home on the shore of the Mississippi River. His mom and dad and his slightly younger sister were wonderfully pleasant people. They welcomed me into their household like one of the family. Twice a month I would spend a Saturday at their house, running mountains of TBGs through

Initially, Alan started running columns to give readers something to look at between all the ads. In 1974, he got a second-class postage permit, which required a specific amount of non-ad material per issue. Then TBG started to get really interesting. Columns tended in run in the odd-numbered issues.

Looking back, the success of TBG is breathtaking. By issue #77 (March 1, 1975), the issue was 100 pages with over 7,000 subscribers. By issue #87 (July 18, 1975) the issues were so big Alan had to go weekly, and even so the first issue was 72 pages. By issue #200 (9-16-77), circulation topped 10,000 subscribers, and even a weekly issue was 80 pages.

Alan used all kinds of filler to meet his quota. Terrific Alan Hanley original strips of “Goodguy,” printer’s proofs of never-printed-in-the-U.S. 1940s “Captain Marvel” stories, other 1940s Fawcett super-hero stories we found in proof form at conventions, lots of historic photos of cartoonists all appeared, many in full-page size in the tabloid format.

Every issue was a feast for fans.

“Shazam! Eh?” The first page of a black-&-white “Captain Marvel” story produced by and for a Canadian comics company during World War II and reprinted in TBG #77 (March 1, 1975).

Thanks to Russ Maheras. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

If you count the ads in any mid-1970s issue and figure what it would take to convert all that to a format for Internet display, it seems unlikely that dealers and fans could have experienced the

Remembering The Buyer’s Guide

27

Pros & Cons Photos of a handful of the pros in attendance over the July 4th weekend at Phil Seuling’s 1974 New York Comic Art Convention, as printed in TBG #65 (Sept. 1, 1974). [Photos © the respective copyright holders.]

sense of community in any other format. You felt compelled to read everything in an issue because it was all in your lap. If you had to keep clicking to see more, you’d get tired and quit. With TBG, the glory of the printed page is setting it down and coming back for more later. The variety of material was staggering. On the cover of issue #83 (6-1-75), Alan proclaimed: “Reaching all serious comic collectors.” It was a claim that was hard to dispute.

Don and Maggie Thompson provided the first regular column, “Beautiful Balloons.” Marty Greim’s “Crusader Comments” followed. Initially Alan simply wanted more non-ad reading material, so he asked me to be his in-house columnist/reporter. My first column appeared in #26 (Dec. 1972). My column was called “Now What?” The name, though not as classy as the Thompsons,’ said “news.”

I wrote 20 columns in the first year, compared to a monthly routine for the Thompsons and Marty Greim. For several years, our pieces were really very similar in content. My columns were mostly news, obituaries (Walt Kelly, Merian C. Cooper, Lex Barker, Chic Young in the first year alone), promos for DynaPubs’ other publications, and a lot of commentary. Most of the verbiage was forgettable, though my review of Ralph Bakshi’s animated film Heavy Traffic in #44 (Sept. 15, 1973) showed depth and a bit of promise.

Once the second-class permit came through, Alan started spacing the columns out to a monthly routine and inflating their length. I went to a page or more. The Thompsons jumped to three and four pages. I continued my column for seven years, producing special reports as needed, particularly during convention season.

It took time, but I developed a style and focus. As the Thompsons moved into more reviews and letters, I concentrated on monthly developments, especially the economic side of the industry, watching retail price changes and the reasons behind them, as well as creative developments.

I was the first, and maybe the only, reviewer to go through Bob Overstreet’s Comic Book Price Guide page by page, reporting where he changed prices from year to year, and by how much. There were distinct blocks, such as numbered runs of the Fantastic Four, that would jump by 20% in a year’s time. I pointed out the patterns, which Overstreet never chose to explain. It seemed rather clear there was something more than market activity going on.

In 1973 I started going to conventions with Alan. He provided a venue for photo-journalism and ran photo spreads from different shows. In 1974 I provided photos, summaries of panel presentations, and market reports. This push into covering real news, and being able to publish it quickly, made TBG into a real newspaper.

We could put the reader right where we had been, and once TBG

28

Murry Bishoff On His Time With TBG

asked how prices they received compared to Overstreet. Many dealers are a taciturn lot, always dissatisfied with business. But I generally found interesting trends, and seldom did dealers say they were getting Overstreet’s prices, or at least prices from the latest edition. As the years passed, the going rate escalated. It seemed that, without an active auction market or any real knowledge if the prices advertised in TBG produced sales, one could declare the value of some comic long enough that it eventually became accepted.

I tried to write more thoughtful reviews, not simply relishing in my own wit and ability to cut something to shreds, which so many reviewers do.

I tried to provide constructive criticism, more in the Randy Jackson style. I hoped to raise the quality of fan writing.

Cover Me! The covers of two early-1980s TBG issues: #329, an “Elfquest” illo by Wendy Pini… and #439, with Nestor Redondo depicting a sparring match between Marvel’s Man-Thing and DC’s Swamp Thing.

Thanks to Russ Maheras and Barry Pearl. [Elfquest illo © Wendy Pini; Swamp Thing TM & © DC Comics; Man-Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art on #439 cover © Estate of Nestor Redondo.]

went weekly, no other publication compared to what we could do.

The convention reports from 1975 from Houston (#88, July 25, 1975), New York (#89, Aug. 1, 1975), and San Diego (#95, Aug. 22, 1975) were particularly significant, since nothing like that had been done before. Panel presentations provided extremely interesting insights from the creators. My writing rose to the challenge.

Recalling Ray Bradbury at the 1975 San Diego convention, I wrote, “As I watched him walk off into the noonday sun the last day of the con, a large suitcase in each hand, he reminded me of a magician with an overflowing top hat, a Johnny Appleseed that never quits blooming.”

If disciplines like psychology had technical journals, reflecting research and setting standards, I saw no reason why fan writing couldn’t do the same. I conducted a sociological survey of comics fans from a mail-in survey, the Murray Bishoff Survey, running results in issue #93 (Aug. 29, 1975). Even now, the findings, though limited by the sample, offer a very interesting foundation for later research. They confirmed much of what we suspected about who was in active comics fandom, how they got there, and how they might move on.

TBG columnist Terry Beatty and I got into an extended debate over his pieces. I urged him to think more rigorously, encourage better achievement, in short, to write a column more like mine than the Thompsons’. I never convinced him, but I tried to fight the good fight. Perhaps I failed to recognize what Fredric Wertham maintained in his book on comics fandom, that fan writing is at its

A lot of things got said at convention panels. Following the quips and reading in between the lines dropped by writers and editors was great fun. There were times speakers felt what they said would never leave the room, because it never had before.

Comics writers and artists were generally generous to each other, but less so to the business of comics and outside forces like the Comics Code Authority.

It was easy to bash the Comics Code on a panel. I reported what was said. Code administrator Leonard Darvin particularly watched those accounts and responded accordingly. People who had problems getting their work past the Code could often trace their issues back to comments I reported.

“Star Wars/Long As There Are Wars”

Equally important, at the comic conventions, I asked the dealers what was selling, the first real market reports in fandom. I also

Bill Murray, playing a sleazy lounge singer, would belt out the above lyrics in the late ’70s on Saturday Night Live. Murray Bishoff wasn’t in the audience for that one but he was in the enthusiastic crowd that witnessed the above-seen, trend-setting Star Wars presentation held at the San Diego Comic-Con in the summer of 1976, 9 or 10 months before the George Lucas film would be released. At this stage, no one knew that movie was going to virtually define the term “mega-hit,” so Lucas and company were pulling out all the stops to help publicize it. Onstage (l. to r.) are Lucasfilm merchandising-meister Charlie Lippincott, Roy Thomas, & Howard Chaykin.

The latter pair were the designated writer/editor and artist on the upcoming film adaptation being done for Marvel Comics. Thanks to Steve Sansweet. [© the respective copyright holders.]

The fan “press” had come into its own. Unlike earlier fan writing that was all about the writer, with my pieces, I became invisible as the comics writers and artists spoke for themselves.

People in the industry paid attention to each other according to what was in the fan press. I had some learning to do to get to that point. Phil Seuling, the New York Comic Con director, had to put on his English teacher hat and explain to me how to separate commentary from reporting. But I learned.

Remembering The Buyer’s Guide

core fluffy ruminations by amateurs. It can be more, and we proved that in TBG.

During my column tenure, both Marvel and DC opened up to the fan press. I would make monthly phone calls to Archie Goodwin and Jim Shooter at Marvel and Mike Gold at DC to get the latest news. Like members of the White House press corps, I didn’t worry about becoming a mouthpiece for the companies.

There’s a great thrill in having the story first. Over and over again, I delivered breaking news.

That regular contact gave me real reporter experience. I even had people from the edges of the business feed me false news. I learned the hard way whom to trust and whom not to trust, just like any other reporter.

It was an exciting time to be in the fan press. I got to see Lucasfilms’ initial Star Wars presentation of Ralph McQuarrie’s production paintings to the San Diego Comic Con, and review Christopher Reeve’s first Superman film, Michael Keaton’s first Batman film, the first Star Trek movie, and so many other great films of the 1970s and ’80s. When I look back on those pieces, I’m relieved to see I didn’t sound like an idiot.

Other projects I took on included the very first register of all the comic shops in the country. There were over 300 stores in the two lists I compiled in the late 1970s. Changes may have come too quickly to make an annual list practical. I hoped to give fans a better idea of what resources were in their area. I may have helped the independent sales market compete better with TBG in the process, but it was in this same period that comic books started disappearing from the local drug stores. Comic shops became the lifeblood of the comic sales, and TBG fueled the transition.

I also started running a monthly events calendar with my column, documenting convention dates and club meetings. I tried to integrate science-fiction conventions into the list, figuring fandoms could support each other. I never found much support for this venture. The genres maintained a healthy distance from each other. I continued doing the events calendar until Alan sold TBG.

Columns offer bully pulpits, a place to preach and take on a cause. I’m sure I did my share over the years. Championing a settlement with Siegel and Shuster from the first news of the end of their longstanding lawsuit to the settlement with Time/Warner remains one of the proudest moments of my life.

I got into dissertations about the ethos of being of fan, where we fit in the big picture, how we should feel about the art form, whether we had some obligation to push for quality in the industry, and the ethics of being a collector. Nobody else was writing about such stuff. I tried to make something significant out of our life as fans, and spur some thought about what we were doing here anyway. It was the same kind of commentary made by Howard Cosell, a journalistic hero of mine, about sports.

I stretched the idea of what we were doing by reaching out into other art disciplines. In issue #197 (Aug. 26, 1977) I reported on a symposium about the meaning of art. I

29

concluded with this: “[Davenport, Iowa, Art Gallery director] Larry Hoffman believes the artist is the only creative face left in our culture. If we hold that burden, we must live up to the challenge.

Keep creating.”

While I may not have sparked a public discussion on what it meant to be a fan, the person I recruited to succeed me on the column, Catherine Yronwode, really achieved that dialogue. I read Catherine’s work in other fanzines and decided she was the best writer out there. Catherine and I spent months talking about how to do a column, what to talk about, what needed to be said, and how to make a column that would stand above the others. Cat achieved that goal magnificently. Perhaps because she was a woman, Cat connected to fans unlike anything else I ever saw in fandom. The dialogue that ran in her column was extraordinary.

When Alan and I first began attending conventions, I felt we needed to stand out, like a brand. I donned a yellow hat with a big red DynaPubs pin. The hat became my trademark. It shows up in most of the cartoon renderings of me. One of my favorite mementos of the period is a caricature that fan artist Jim Engel drew of me similar to one Charles Schulz did of Lucy―all mouth.

I was able to provide input from my knowledge of comics on Alan’s Flashback and Golden Funnies reprint series. They were wonderful looks back on classic comics―and the only glimpses, in many cases, until very recently when large volumes of comic strip reprints have found a popular market.

When Alan sold TBG, I had already started working for Jim Steranko. I was as surprised as anyone. The Thompsons never cared for me and closed the door on my further involvement. I had explored a career in comics. I even developed a comic strip that I gave up at the recommendation of Milton Caniff. The colossal egos I encountered at conventions convinced me to seek a career away from fandom.

The lessons I learned in the fan press have served me well. In the 25 years I’ve worked as a newspaper journalist, I’ve treated my small towns like a fandom, covering every little event like it was a big one. Those days still guide me.

Today’s fans may have no idea what we did at The Buyer’s Guide over 30 years ago. A serious scholarly retrospective, like this issue of Alter Ego, will show that so much of what the fan press has become started at TBG.

Bishoff To KB3 \(Left:) Murray with his 1980 Inkpot Award, received at the San Diego Comic-Con. (Center:) Murray treasures the caricature done of him by cartoonist Jim Engel. [© Jim Engel] (Right:) Alan Light and Murray B. have a reunion in 2012. Photos courtesy of AL.

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“Beautiful Balloons,” Volume Three, #1

by Maggie Thompson s a long-time comics collector, I should note at the outset that I loathe keeping track of series that count themselves by volume and then number. Just how many were in Volume One? In Volume Two? For some reason, that information can be hard to come by—and sometimes even the originators don’t know. (Air Fighters Comics messed up their own count, for goodness’ sake.) But “Beautiful Balloons”—the column that Don and I began with The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom #19—well, yes, it has had three separate identities over the years. And, no, I have no idea how many releases there were in each volume (although, as noted elsewhere in this issue of Alter Ego, John and Brent say there were 147 in Volume One).

A

Before Volume One

Don and I met in 1957 at a picnic, in the course of which we talked about an incredible variety of popular culture in an ongoing geekfest (this at a time in which the terms “popular culture” and “geekfest” were yet to be coined). Fanzines were an integral part of the world of science-fiction fandom, and Don was already involved with Ballast, a science-fiction fanzine published by students at Penn State. We (separately) attended the World Science Fiction Convention in Pittsburgh in 1960, and (though we didn’t realize it then), it was clearly Comics Time. Dick and Pat Lupoff circulated the first issue of Xero there, and it included a nostalgic article on Captain Marvel less than eight years after the last issue of Whiz Comics. At the con banquet, Don and I decided to do a fanzine devoted to all aspects of comics: comic books, comic strips, animated cartoons, magazine cartoons, and the like. The following spring saw publication of Comic Art #1.

We announced at the beginning that it would be published on a determinedly irregular schedule, and we kept that pledge.

Comic Art brought us a wealth of contacts and insights. Comics creators who had received little adult attention until then were generous in their

Don & Maggie Before They Were “The Thompsons” (Above:) Don Thompson and Maggie Curtis a few weeks before their wedding—and, if we’re not mistaken, the tandem launching of their groundbreaking fanzine Comic Art. With thanks to Bill Schelly, from his aptly named seminal book The Golden Age of Comic Fandom.

(Below left:) The cover of Comic Art #3 borrowed a panel from the wonderful late and lamented comic strip Sam’s Strip by Jerry Dumas (and, anonymously, Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker) to illustrate the point that CA was published on what was actually a stubbornly irregular “schedule.”

In fact, though this issue came out sometime in the early 1960s, there’s no date on it at all! [Sam’s Strip art © Mort Walker & Jerry Dumas.]

responses to a couple of curious admirers. We reveled in every bit of information we—and our contributors—uncovered. We also continued our unfocused focus, while many other comics fanzines proliferated (led by Alter-Ego), almost all of them concentrated on costumed and/or super-powered heroes.

Then, as now, I lazily enjoy letting others do the work; if someone is already releasing a product I like, I’m happy to buy it. On the other hand, I tend to obsess on providing for myself something I can’t easily find elsewhere. So it was that Don and I eventually saw a need for another sort of comics fanzine: a newsletter to connect comics fans who cared about the activities of other fans. So, a decade after we met, we began to produce such a newszine on a regular schedule: Newfangles was born in 1967.

How did the Thompson & Thompson Team work? Often, in the early days, Don did the writing and I did the art.

Eventually, though, I simply wrote when Don didn’t; it literally reached the point at which one of us could begin a sentence and the other finish it. Material was composed on

“Beautiful Balloons,” Volume Three, #1

31

Newfangles For Old The first page of the Thompsons’ newsletter Newfangles #27 (Oct. 1969) featured word of the cancellation of The X-Men (though, contrary to the analysis there, sales of the Marvel mutant feature actually had improved somewhat under the team of Roy Thomas & Neal Adams)—and the information, startling to A/E’s editor when he re-read this page in 2013, that the hero/villain “Starr the Slayer” whom he and Barry Smith were introducing around that time as Marvel’s first sword-and-sorcery character had originally been slated to appear in one of their Daredevil collaborations instead. Roy has no memory whatever of that situation, but it sounds not unreasonable. Another example of the truism that journalism is the first draft of history. The Uncle Scrooge drawing is by future comics pro (and now Dick Tracy strip artist) Joe Staton.

[Uncle Scrooge TM & © Disney; text © Maggie Thompson.]

Volume One

OK, maybe we weren’t that tired. In TBG #19 (Aug. 15, 1972), we joined the others who provided non-advertising material to Alan’s publication. John Jackson Miller and Brent Frankenhoff have covered those years in eye-glazing detail elsewhere in this issue. I’ll add only a couple of details.

In suggesting I provide this attenuated memoir, Roy Thomas asked me how we came to work for the magazine, how we divided our duties, and what it was like to upend ourselves from Ohio and move to Wisconsin to assume the editorship and turn it in fairly short order into what it became.

mimeograph stencil (not ditto with its purple and attendant hues), and whoever was sitting at the typewriter was the one in control.

(Note: I was the only one who cut the non-typed content; for some reason, tracing art onto a mimeograph stencil is no longer a skill in high demand. But, if it’s needed, I can still do it. You supply the stencil, stylus, and backing sheet.)

Fast-forward to 1971. We’d been publishing Newfangles on time for months and months—and the novelty had worn thin. Our network of contacts had expanded our coverage, and we included reviews and news of current comics. As the publication grew, it also became more time-demanding. And we decided we’d had enough of the venture. However, we were disturbed at what we saw from many other fan publishers: They’d produce a number of issues, collect a chunk of change (sometimes literally) from subscribers, and then never publish another issue. So we decided to show folks how we thought it should be done: We announced that #54 (December 1971) would be our last issue. Go on, folks, we said: Replace us. In the meantime, we refunded all subscription funds past that issue and didn’t accept payment past #54.

How it happened: We began the column for Alan (who had invited us to join in the fun pretty much from its inception). We sent him camera-ready layouts, which he then laid into the pages of the issue. (Our layouts consisted of four sheets of legal-length paper, typed individually and then taped together to provide the dimensions that were appropriate for Alan’s format.) When we ran newspaper articles, we rubber-cemented them onto the page.

When an incredible number of terrific artists sent us filler illustrations, we rubber-cemented those contributions onto the page in the same way. As noted earlier, we switched off writing the material; whichever of us was free to write did so. It tended to be me, because Don had a full-time job at The Cleveland Press. But (at a guess) the introductory installment was by Don. (I say, “at a guess,” because I really don’t know whether he wrote it all. We adopted first-person-plural style because we were first people plural.)

Hey, I think I just covered “dividing our duties.” Onward!

The reaction was all that we’d hoped. A couple of young fans (Paul Levitz and Paul Kupperberg, to be specific) were producing an excellent newsletter, and we recommended that our readers turn to that duo for a replacement. Whew! That chore was soon to end for us! But there was another young fan who wasn’t to be handled the same way. We didn’t want the hassle of the subscription list and the layout and the publishing and the other annoying details? This lad would supply all those services; all we had to do was provide the content. Great idea, right?

We said no. We said we were tired. We said we had had enough of fan-writing deadlines. Heck with it. So the guy took the hint and went away. But he still had a yearning to publish some sort of comics publication, and he’d saved the money to do it.

He was Alan Light. And what he came up with was The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom.

Voila—It’s Iola!

Don and Maggie (or, to put it another way, Maggie and Don) hard at work on The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom in 1983, soon after being hired by Krause Publications. Photo by Alan Light.

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Maggie Thompson On Her & Don’s Days As Co-Editors Of CBG—And Way Before!

Would You Like To Ride My “Beautiful Balloons”?

The Thompsons’ first “Beautiful Balloons” column, from TBG #19 (Aug. 15, 1972), was written by Don, with Maggie supplying the artwork. Don’s love for his chosen field of journalism is apparent in his spirited attack of plagiarism… a problem that, alas, has increased exponentially with the advent of the Internet. Thanks to Russ Maheras. [Art & text © Maggie Thompson.]

As to moving to Wisconsin: When Krause Publications owner Chet Krause bought TBG and its sister biweekly, Film Collector’s World, his goal was to turn the publications into full-fledged newspapers. When he asked Alan whom he would suggest with newspaper or magazine editorial skills, Alan was nice enough to recommend us as editors. Don had worked for The Cleveland Press for 23 years, and it had just turned up its toes. We had created and co-edited a magazine for New Media, for which I had also created and edited Fantasy Empire.

Chet flew us to Iola and met us at the airport himself, and we spent the day in intensive interviews. Wrapping it up, he expressed astonishment at the idea of a husband-and-wife team working together to do such a job—but hired us anyway. Between October and our December move, we house-hunted in a return trip to Wisconsin, bought a house, sold a house, and began to pack and work out the logistics of the transfer. And we couldn’t tell anyone what it was all about.

I’ll spare you the details (the Christmas Day opening of gifts— which were then reboxed for the move; the kids’ chickenpox; the

realization that none of Valerie’s classes would transfer to classes in Iola; the details of arranging with wonderful friends for her stay in Ohio till the end of the school year; the moving company’s not providing enough boxes for the move…. Wait, I said I’d spare you that).

We were wildly excited at the opportunity. And I’ll also spare you the details of the challenges of those early days—including the fact that the first issue had to be prepared with almost no art, given that our collection was still in boxes.

So—shaping CBG? People told us they missed “Beautiful Balloons” when we took over CBG, missing the point that all of CBG became BB. When we first joined KP, it was apparent that some of our fellow employees thought that I was basically Don’s secretary, interested in comics only because he was interested in comics but otherwise pretty much ignorant of the field. Or something. Occasionally, someone would not-so-subtly test me: “Who’s this character?” “Did you ever read Dick Tracy?” and so on.

In any case, that stage lasted only the first six months or so.

We pretty much knew what we were doing. (It’s why Chet hired us, after all.) And we had the support of a wonderful staff of trained professionals, each of whom took on the variety of noneditorial work that went to producing and distributing publications. Eventually, we even received the bonus of a wonderful staff

“Beautiful Balloons,” Volume Three, #1

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publishing, the Internet, yadda, yadda, yadda. Brent became the generating engine that kept the vehicle moving forward—which it did until…

Until, 30 years to the day after Don and I began work at Krause Publications, Comics Buyer’s Guide came to an end. Symmetry.

And Here We Are With Volume Three

Don & Maggie, San Diego 1990 By now, Comics Buyer’s Guide was humming along like a well-oiled machine. Photo by Alan Light.

of additional editorial professionals. And the rest was simple enough. If working 24/7 is simple. But it was a blast. And our dream. (And daughter Valerie and son Stephen were accommodating and patient about living with parents who never, ever stopped working and talking about work.)

Volume Two

And then everything changed, as the world morphed from one in which, when I had a question, I could turn to Don, and he would have either the answer or a plan on how to find the answer.

(The Peanuts comic strip for August 25, 1960, summed up our relationship well: Linus was explaining the world to Sally. “That up there is the sky, Sally. The sky has clouds and stars and wind and rain… The sky is usually blue… This down here is grass…

Grass is usually green…” The last panel shows Sally snuggling up against Linus in admiration. Her thought balloon reads, “Isn’t he wonderful? He knows everything!”)

Valerie had made the move to New York City the week she graduated from high school and was on her path to a career she maintains to this day. And on a wonderful Saturday, son Stephen (born just after we’d sent Alan our first “Beautiful Balloons” column) graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

On Sunday, Don and I drove back home, exulting on how great our kids were and enthusing over one of the best days we’d had in many months.

And Monday morning, Don didn’t wake up.

How did I handle the change? How does anyone handle such a change? You soldier on, you show up for work, you continue to meet the challenges, etc. After Don died, some people asked me whether I was going to move away—again, as if I’d been Don’s secretary, rather than his co-editor. Well, hey. I’d been collecting comics since I was four. Eventually, I reinstated the “Beautiful Balloons” title as a header for my column of commentaries, and the job kept on keeping on.

And it should be noted that the staff at Krause Publications was, as ever, supportive and talented and downright skilled. The mix changed and shifted, but we continued to work together to keep CBG coming to mailboxes, no matter how things morphed. The format changed, our duties shifted as required by the evolution of

And this installment (probably the only one in the volume) turns out to be an abridgement of Some of My Life in Publishing.

Which has never been limited to TBG and CBG. I’ve written comics, produced other magazines, won a few awards, and made too many wonderful friends to count. I’m already in the midst of a couple of ongoing comics-oriented columns, overseeing one website, and planning another—and that doesn’t even begin to touch on such delights as hanging out with Valerie and her family and Stephen and his, along with a plethora of other keen relatives and friends.

To be continued somewhere….

Maggie Thompson makes a monthly appearance at www.comiccon.org/toucan and a weekly showing at scoop.diamondgalleries.com.

Her website (www.maggiethompson.com) froze for a while, as she gloried in the final cleaning of her desk at Krause Publications—but she’ll soon return to posting there. She also has a Twitter identity (ThompsonMaggie). Maggie wishes to thank Brent Frankenhoff for proofreading her manuscript of this piece before she turned it in, thereby answering the musical question, “Who edits the editors?”

34

Turning A Fan Into A Pro

by Brent Frankenhoff o how does a guy born and raised on a dairy farm in southwestern Wisconsin become the editor of Comics Buyer’s Guide? It’s an interesting journey. (Well, at least to me.)

S

I’ve always been a reader and always been interested in comics. The first comics I remember looking at, before I was four years old, were Amazing Spider-Man #80 (Jan. 70), Action Comics #381 (Oct. 69), and X-Men #63 (Dec. 69). (And, yes, I still have all three in my collection.)

Between doting parents and grandparents who would pick up comics for me (plus a great pharmacist who would send home a comic book with whatever prescription my parents were picking up for me), I had a sizable stack of comics early on. With no siblings to fight over them, I was able to hang onto all my comics from the start. As a sort of bonus, neither of my parents had brothers or sisters, so I inherited all their comics from the late 1940s and early 1950s. I wasn’t Supersnipe, by any means, but I had a great sampling of comics across the years.

When I went to kindergarten, my mother tells me, I came home upset on the first day, because they hadn’t yet taught me to read.

Once I did learn how, I haunted the school library, the town library, and any other outlet for books I could find. My parents discovered that the most effective punishment for me was cutting off my library visits.

I bought and read comics into my high school years, only stopping for a brief time (and then, not completely) when other pursuits caught my interest. When I went to college, I made a beeline for the grocery-store comics rack and was a regular there every Tuesday, when the new comics were stocked. I also discovered comics shops in Madison, Wisconsin, and Dubuque, Iowa.

In my junior year of college, a friend showed me Comics Buyer’s Guide. I had seen the fan-awards ballot in comics but hadn’t seen the paper itself until then. It was a revelation. Between the comics news, the interviews, the previews, and the historical features, this was heaven. I had read all the comics-history books (All in Color for a Dime, The Comic-Book Book, Jules Feiffer’s The Great Comic Book Heroes, Origins of Marvel Comics, Son of Origins, etc.), but this was fresh material delivered every week. My friend let me read his subscription copy while we were in college, and I resolved that, once I had a full-time job, the first thing I would do would be to get my own subscription.

All In Hardcover— But Not For A Dime!

Brent Frankenhoff, in a recent photo—and the cover of the original Arlington House edition of All in Color for a Dime, the 1970 hardcover edited by Dick Lupoff & Don Thompson. That volume, the first book to deal with Golden Age comic books after Jules Feiffer’s 1965 The Great Comic Book Heroes, consisted mostly of articles (some of them rewritten) from the iconic, eponymous series in Dick & Pat Lupoff’s 1960s fanzine Xero. This was one of the works of comics history that made an early impression on Brent. [Superman & Batman logos © DC Comics; rest of cover © 1970 Arlington House.]

I did just that in 1990, when I was working for a small-market radio station in Prairie du Chien, Wis. There, I met another comics collector; he was also a writer and artist. John Mundt and I quickly formed a friendship that endures, and he was the impetus that got me to a Chicago Comicon in 1991, where I met Don and Maggie Thompson—as well as Tony Isabella, Bob Ingersoll, and others— for the first time.

In late 1991, I saw an ad in Comics Buyer’s Guide for an editor for a new comics-related publication. I applied but didn’t hear a word.

It wasn’t long before CBG carried the news of the launch of Comics Retailer and the hiring of K.C. Carlson as editor. Within a few months, K.C. left to take an editorial job at DC, and his position at Comics Retailer became available. I applied again and this time had a phone interview, although the position was eventually filled internally by Don Butler.

My résumé and application were still on file that summer of 1992, when Don and Maggie were in need of editorial assistance with the growth of the weekly publication. I came to Iola for the first interview in early August, toured the company, rewrote material for Don and Maggie (those news bits appeared uncredited in CBG #988, Oct. 23, 1992), went to lunch with them, and then returned home. They told me that it would be a while before I heard anything, since they had to attend a convention later that month.

Turning A Fan Into A Pro

35

In late August, I received a call to come to Iola for a second interview. This time, when I met with the head of human resources, I was told that I was “one of one candidates” left, so I expected to be offered the job at some point that day. However, I went through a second tour of the building, more editing and rewriting, another lunch with Don and Maggie, and then a return trip home.

It was several days before the call came offering me the job. I gave my two weeks’ notice, did a few more broadcasts, packed my truck, and moved to Beverly… er, Iola. Starting work Sept. 21, 1992, I also moved into an apartment on Main Street that same evening. At the end of my first week, I rented a moving truck, returned home to get the rest of my furniture and comics, and Don and Maggie helped me finish moving in. I joined CBG with its 987th issue.

There was plenty to learn in those early weeks. We had a lot of pages to produce, and Don and Maggie were the most patient of teachers. One of my early news stories caused me to question something in a press release. Don said to call the company, a small independent publisher, so I “Comics’ Best Century Yet!” did. The president of the company answered the phone, addressed my question, and that was One of the big deals from CBG around 1999-2000 was the series of that. I went back to Don and was flabbergasted issues centered around the magazine’s “Comics of the Century” poll, in which its readers voted in pro and fan categories for their that “the president of the company answered the favorite artists, writers, editors, stories, series, etc., from the birth phone and my question.” Don laughed, since he of comic books in the mid-1930s through the end of the 20th knew that the company in question was so small century. As TBG/CBG historian John Jackson Miller states: “The 16 that the president was probably the only ‘Comics of the Century’ poll winners were announced, one employee in the office.

strategic data-sharing alliance with ComicBase, it was a chance to category a week, for 13 weeks, I believe—which would make it welcome longtime #1352-1364—with the final three categories announced in #1365…

While I learned a lot from both Don and friends Peter and [which] also had the ‘century-in-review’ piece.’” Since #1365 also Maggie, my deepest regret is that I didn’t have Carolyn Bickford into the recapped the baker’s dozen of previously announced winners, he more time to learn from Don. The layout tricks CBG family. That and Brent Frankenhoff chose this cover to represent the whole and headline-writing tips that he shared have magilla. Art by John Drury. [©2000 Krause Publications, Inc.] friendship and proven invaluable to me in the years since his partnership came into death. That summer of 1994, I found myself play early in 2013, when they hired me to produce their monthly flipping through issues that he had pasted up to see how he’d newsletter, ComicBase Confidential. solved a layout problem and often found myself asking, “What My farming background has also come back into play, as I’m would Don do?” Fortunately, Maggie was there to help and give writing articles for Antique Power, a tractor-collecting magazine guidance, something she has done for and with me in the many based in Ohio. It’s a chance to visit with family friends who have years since. I owe a lot of my career to the Thompsons. retired from farming and moved into a related hobby area.

Some feared that CBG would screech to a halt with Don’s death.

The challenges of working on multiple titles at Krause Fortunately, he had pasted up a number of filler pieces that we used Publications (CBG, Comics Retailer, and Scrye) has given me an in those first weeks after his death and, by then, I had a good grasp adaptability that is serving me well in my new full-time job as a on what went into each week’s paper. I quickly established contact proofreader and catalog copywriter for a direct-marketing firm in with all of CBG’s columnists and kept material flowing in, a process Plover, Wisconsin, about 30 miles from Iola. I’m still connected to I handled from that point until the final issue. I also made sure comics fandom, but in a less direct manner. I follow the news payments were processed on time, unsolicited submissions were online, enjoy nostalgia projects, and I pick up the comics I want to accepted or rejected in a timely manner, and did whatever else was read each week (no longer the ones I have to read to stay current). needed to keep the paper “on time, all the time.”

With the help of others at Krause Publications (especially John Jackson Miller, who solved too many problems and provided too much guidance to enumerate here), we rolled out the Comic Book Checklist and Price Guide, eventually producing 16 editions, plus five editions of The Standard Catalog of Comic Books and one edition of the full-color Comics Shop. Many, many hours were spent adding data to the files that would produce those books, then proofreading the hundreds of pages in each book, and more. If it sounds like a lot of work, it was, but I enjoyed nearly every minute of it.

The many conventions I’ve attended for CBG have yielded numerous friendships that I continue to maintain. It’s fun seeing folks who got their start producing cartoons or writing reviews or feature articles for us move on to bigger adventures. Talking to fans of the publication is also a treat. When we formed our

I’ll close by thanking Roy for the opportunity to close out my CBG days with this piece. I’ve admired his work for years. The first comic book on which I noticed his writing credit was The Invaders #1 (Aug. ’75). I remember going to the drugstore that Sunday morning with my dad; he bought a newspaper, and I found that issue. We took our purchases back to the local diner and, even today, the smell of maple syrup brings back memories of reading Roy’s story while we waited for our breakfast. (Both were nourishing and delicious.)

Brent Frankenhoff maintains an online presence with the comics community and can be reached at brent.frankenhoff@gmail.com. His Twitter identity is CBGBrent. (“CBG” can also stand for Comic Book Guy, as if you didn’t know.)

36

My Adventures With TBG

by Terry Beatty

A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Terry Beatty is a professional artist and writer, known for his series Ms. Tree (though not known only for that). But, back in the day, he was an early and important contributing artist to Alan Light’s TBG, as we’ll now let him tell you….

M

y first cover illustration for Alan Light’s The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom was cover-dated February 29, 1980—a retro-styled Batman image, drawn long before I had any professional association with the character. I had submitted a Master of Kung Fu drawing to TBG years earlier, around ’75 or ’76, while I was still a high school student. Alan had the good sense to reject that early effort (the original no longer exists), and I didn’t try again until I had started being published professionally. I was concerned about being typed as a “fan artist,” and in fact, after starting to contribute to TBG, had to ask one comics journalist to please not label me as such.

“small town folks” to make the trek to the “Quad Cities” area for movies, dining, and shopping. When Muscatine’s newsstand closed, a weekly run to the “QCs” became essential for picking up the latest comic books and magazines. Dropping in on Alan was sometimes part of those visits. What I recall most was that Alan was one of the first people I knew who owned a home video recorder—a “U-Matic.” I’d have no doubt been recording different shows than he did (I recall he had every episode of The Waltons saved on tape), but it was still a pretty cool thing.

TBG, which featured fan-contributed art on its covers, with a pro illo thrown in once in a while, had gone weekly—and Alan was running out of art to print—sometimes repeating a cover. I don’t recall who suggested it—but because of the weekly schedule,

I connected with Alan Light, thanks to our mutual friend, Max Allan Collins. Max and I were both born and raised in the Iowa river town of Muscatine. My father had been his junior high school English teacher, and Max made his first attempts at writing crime novels in Dad’s class. Though there is a ten-year difference in our ages, we were the two “comic book guys” in town, so it was inevitable that we cross paths. Eventually we began working together on comics projects, starting in 1979 with an attempt at a self-syndicated weekly comic strip feature. With that running, I felt I could do a little “fan art” on the side and still maintain my professional status.

TBG was published out of East Moline, Illinois—less than an hour’s drive from Muscatine—and it was a common thing for us

Terry And The Page-Rates (Left, from l. to r.:) Don and Maggie Thompson and Terry Beatty in Krause Publications’ office in Iola, Wisconsin, around the time Krause and the Thompsons inherited The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom. Photo taken by Alan Light.

(Above:) For some reason, Terry chose not to supply us with the very first cover he ever drew for TBG—so here is the earliest of those he did send: for Christmas 1981, a visual suggestion to have a Merry Memorabilia Christmas! Terry stresses that he was paid for the covers, which made him something of an anomaly at TBG. Thanks to Terry and Stephan Friedt for the scans of the three TBG covers that accompany this article. [Art © Terry Beatty.]

Colored by Larry Guidry.

and my proximity to TBG Central, I became a regular cover artist for the ‘zine—and, as far as I know, the only artist to be paid for my efforts. I wasn’t paid much, mind you—but I was paid—important to me at the time, as it technically made it professional work, not fan work.

37

[Art by & © Terry Beatty.]

My Adventures With TBG

Alan was cool with me turning in whatever subject matter I wanted—and most of my covers were tributes to cartoonists I admired, ranging from Will Eisner (The Spirit) to Bud Sagendorf (Popeye). We even experimented a little with color—and did one cover in 3-D, with me producing the art on multiple layers of mylar, and supervising the color at the printing plant to make sure the 3-D effect worked properly.

I also contributed a regular column, called “Sideways”—named for its format—made up of pasted-up type from our family’s old

typewriter and my own scribbled cartoons. I briefly wrote a similar column for TBG’s sister publication Film Collector’s World. My oddest contribution to TBG was an ongoing spoof of comics history called “The Phony Pages,” which was collected in comic book form as a two-issue mini-series by Renegade Press. Most of the “Phony” strips were “mash-ups” of pop culture from other media with the comics—Star Trek plus Winsor McCay became Little Nimoy in Slumberland, for example. Silly stuff, and it only made sense (if it made sense at all) to hardcore comics buffs—but then, that was the audience, wasn’t it?

I’m not sure how many cover illustrations I turned out for TBG, but it was quite a few. When Krause Publications bought the mag and turned it into CBG, they changed the format a bit and did away with the kind of cover illos I’d been doing for Alan. I kept writing for it for a while, book reviews mostly—but without the regular covers to draw, the fun was gone, and I soon decided to concentrate on drawing my own comics and leave the fan stuff to others.

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Mean & Green On this TBG cover (Jan. 22, 1982), Terry has noticed that early Marvel colorists rendered a fierce percentage of the company’s villains in green costumes— mainly, 1960s color-man Stan Goldberg has always maintained, because the heroes were usually garbed in primary colors, so that left green, purple, and orange for the bad-guys! [Heroes & villains TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other elements © the respective copyright holders.]

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38

How Does One Become A Fanzine Columnist?

by Stephan Friedt irst, you have to love comics.

Not just like them, but really, really love the medium. You have to buy and read and collect everything you can get your hands on. You have to aspire to one day be a comic book creator… or at least a comic store owner. You have to read fanzines… and go to comic cons… and write fan letters… and seek out any professionals that might live in your area.

F

In my case, I loved comics. I had since I was a youngster in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I saved my allowance and spent at least part of it on comic books every week. Gathered pop bottles for their deposit… mowed the neighbor’s lawns… anything I could manage that garnered me a few cents. Back then, twelve cents was all you needed… twentyfive if it was really “special.”

Spy Vs. Smasher Photos of Stephan Friedt in 1976 and today (well, okay, the day before yesterday) flank the cover of TBG #117 (Feb. 13, ’76). The illustrations of the Republic movie-serial version of the 1940s Fawcett hero Spy Smasher, as portrayed by Kane Richmond, are by Bob Murphy. [Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics; other elements © the respective copyright holders.]

If Mom or Dad asked if I wanted anything from the store, I said, “A comic book!” It didn’t matter which one or two they brought home; all that mattered was that it was a comic book.

I spent almost two decades gathering a collection together. I ordered catalogs and fanzines from the ad pages in the comic books. One of the fanzines was a weekly advertising newspaper called The Buyer’s Guide to Comics Fandom. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the first issue arrived.

Tabloid size… page after page of people all across the country with the same addiction I had… and plenty of issues to fill that craving. A subscription was immediately ordered with a money order… and fanzines and comics were bought from advertisers. Things like Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector…

Squa Tront… and Comic World.

The TBG publisher, Alan Light, also offered some Golden Age comic reprints called Flashback. Those were ordered, and when they arrived, I immediately sent him a letter asking if they could be purchased in quantity at a discount. What great material for trading! What great table fillers for the little weekend comic cons that were springing up at hotel chains around the state! Then in one issue Alan mentioned he had room for more “columnists.” I sent him my idea for a “review” column… something to help the fans separate the wheat from the chaff. That would have been about the end of 1974, or early 1975.

Alan looked at my first column… with my self-illustrated header… and “The Reviewer” was born. He didn’t care that its appearance was sporadic. If I had one available, he found room to publish it. If it wasn’t ready, he found something to fill in its place.

What mattered to Alan was that it was “fan-generated.”

People started sending letters of comment on my reviews. And things started showing up in the mail unrequested. Copies of fanzines showed up for me to review… Jerry Ordway’s Okay Comics… Jim Starlin’s Doctor Weird… and many others… all material for my column. Seven columns appeared over a little more than a year. All of them lovingly assembled from purchased comics and volunteered fanzines. My last column appeared in TBG #117, dated Feb 13, 1976.

The column ended that spring; I scored a job in a coin shop that

How Does One Become A Fanzine Columnist?

39

Doing Comics The Ordway Artist/writer Jerry Ordway’s work virtually spans the lifespan of TBG & CBG. At left are the covers of Jerry’s selfpublished Okay Comix #1-2, which Stephan Friedt mentions in this article. Jerry remembers: “Around 1974, I did a fanzine, Okay Comix, and I sent copies to a few other zines for review and hopefully free publicity. The Buyer’s Guide had a regular column by Don and Maggie Thompson, ‘Beautiful Balloons,’ where I got an okay review, but a more encouraging last line, that they saw promise in my work and expected good things from me in the future.

Something like that. It was incredibly satisfying getting those words of encouragement, at that age. I never forgot that, or them.” [© Jerry Ordway.]

By TBG #217 (Jan. 13, 1978), as seen below left, Jerry had progressed to working with his talented buddy Mike Machlan on the adzine’s black-&-white cover, featuring Atlas/Seaboard mid-’70s heroes The Protector, Tiger Man, and The Cougar. On this one, Mike penciled, Jerry inked.

Thanks to Russ Maheras. [© the respective copyright holders.]

sold used paperbacks and comic books… and I convinced the owner that comic books might be worth more than “half cover price.” That led to scoring a couple of Golden Age collections… which led to my brother and me deciding to sell off some of the collection to finance our own comic book store. We did local Pacific Northwest conventions and pooled our money to cover the cost of a table and a trip to San Diego and the 1978 Comic-Con.

In San Diego we met people like Jack Kirby, and Bob Kane, and Roy Thomas, and Wendy and Richard Pini, and so many others.

Our table was right next to an East Coast comic shop owner by the name of Steve Geppi, who helped us out and introduced us to

By the time of CBG #1413 (Dec. 5, 2000), Jerry and Mike had long since made the jump to pro-dom, beginning with DC’s All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc., and Jerry had moved on to the acclaimed The Power of Shazam! series, which was celebrated thereon by an Ordway drawing, color and all, even though the comic itself had been discontinued nearly two years earlier. Thanks to Mitchell Senft.

[Shazam hero © DC Comics; other elements ©2000 Krause Publications, Inc.]

more comic book professionals, and took us under his wing, and gave us great advice, and made sure we steered clear of the con artists. Roy Thomas bought a Golden Age issue of Flash Comics from us to fill a hole in his collection, and autographed a run of Conan that I had professionally had bound in a volume…. we came back home and opened our shop… and the world was good.

Jerry Ordway, 2011.

40

“It’s Here!”

An Ode To Art On The Outside Of The Mailing Envelope

by Russ Maheras

uring the 1970s, The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom (later known as Comics Buyer’s Guide) was the premier showcase for aspiring comic book fan-artists. Other contemporary fan-art outlets, such as Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector (RBCC) and The Comic Reader had slicker, more professional formats, but for sheer numbers of comics fans and professionals reached on a regular basis, TBG could not be beat. The fan-artist “sweet spot” in any issue of TBG was, of course, the cover, but to be published anywhere in it was always a big thrill.

D

When TBG roared onto the fan scene in 1971, there were only a handful of comic book stores around the country. Thus, one of the only places a collector or dealer could easily buy or sell comics, fanzines, posters, original art, or other comic book-related material was through the pages of TBG. This made its arrival in the mail every week a pretty big event for many.

It was against this backdrop that a unique, wonderfully drawn, and unfortunately short-lived cartoon series by Chicago artist Jim Engel was born in the address box of TBG.

The catalyst for Engel’s series of cartoons was a crudely drawn precursor cartoon that had appeared in the address box of TBG #98 (Oct. 3, 1975), several months earlier. It appeared only once, and according to then-TBG publisher Alan Light, its creator is unknown. But it proved to be the inspiration Engel needed to start doing his own take on the “It’s Here” theme.

Reflecting on the series of cartoons he drew 37 years ago, Engel said that when he saw the “It’s Here!” cartoon the first time in TBG #98, he thought to himself, “I can do better than this.” He then drew up some sample cartoons and sent them to Light.

Light liked what he saw and gave Engel the green light to make it a regular feature. Engel said the format was perfect for him at the time, because he was too busy to commit to the longer comic strip

The Russ Belt (Above:) A photo, which appeared in an issue of The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom, of four fans in 1974 at “one of the monthly YMCA minicons in downtown Chicago.” Left to right, seated, are George Rackett, William Garnett, and Roy Kinnard. Standing is this article’s amiable author (and this issue’s great benefactor) Russ Maheras. Thanks to Russ for this and the following. [© the respective copyright holders.]

(Left:) Russ’ celebratory cover for TBG #100 (Oct. 17, 1975). Russ writes: “During the 1970s, I was working on a career in comics, but in 1978 I decided that I didn’t like the realities of life as a freelancer, so I changed course, quit my union warehouse worker ‘day job,’ and joined the Air Force to learn electronics. Since I still had the drawing skills in my back pocket, I continued to keep one foot in comics, doing fan or pro work whenever I had the time or interest.” [Characters TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

formats that were then regular fare in TBG. And, because his cartoons appeared in the address box, it was the first thing TBG subscribers would see when they pulled the issue out of the mailbox. “It gave my work maximum exposure with minimum effort,” said Engel.

Light also gave him total artistic freedom to draw whatever he wanted, Engel said. Among the characters he drew during his run of “It’s Here!” were several friends, including a number of Chicago-area fans and dealers. “I liked surprising the people I knew, or drawing characters I liked,” he said.

His favorite “It’s Here!” cartoon in the series? “The best one was my Two-Face cartoon (a Batman villain), where he said “It’s here!

No it’s not!”

“I was just learning to draw,” said Engel. “[Alan J.] Hanley was my idol at drawing cartoony versions of existing characters, and this was the first opportunity I had to do just that.”

A friend and mentor to Engel and other Chicago-area fan artists, Hanley was TBG’s most prolific cover and comic strip artist until his tragic and untimely death in 1980. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: See this issue’s FCA section for more on cartoonist Alan Hanley.]

Engel’s nearly non-stop run of “It’s Here!” cartoons first appeared in the address box of TBG #115 (Jan. 30, 1976), and last appeared in TBG #144 (Aug. 20, 1976). The only issue missing a

“It’s Here!”

41

cartoon during that period was #128.

As to why Engel ended his the run of this unique series, even he can’t remember. “I’m not sure why I stopped, but I think it may have been because I got busy that summer at a new job,” he said.

In all, Engel drew 29 “It’s Here!” cartoons, five of which been reproduced at the bottom of this page for your enjoyment.

“It’s Here!” Index

#115 – Comic book artist Jack “King” Kirby

#116 – TBG publisher Alan Light

#117 – Mr. Spock from Star Trek

#118 – Underground comix character Mickey Rat

#120 – Captain Marvel (Shazam!) artist C.C. Beck

#121 – Marvel’s Howard the Duck

#122 – TBG’s “Now What?” columnist Murray Bishoff

#123 – Comedian Groucho Marx

#124 – Chicago pulp fan/author Robert “Bob” Weinberg #125 – Batman villain Two-Face

#126 – Jim Engel teases a drooling TBG fan

#127 – Chicago fan/dealer George Breo

#129 – Reprint of TBG #116 cartoon

#130 – Captain Marvel (Shazam!)

#131 – Crow cartoon

#132 – Dick Tracy villain The Mole

#133 – Reprint of TBG #122 cartoon

#134 – Louise Lasser from 1970s TV show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

“It’s Here!”—It’s There—It’s Everywhere!

A salubrious sampling of the “It’s Here!” address-box cartoons cited by sender Russ Maheras. Above left is the anonymous one that first appeared—the rest, all by Jim Engel, offer likenesses or caricatures (take your pick) of Jack Kirby, Alan Light, Mr. Spock, Howard the Duck, and Two-Face. [Howard the Duck TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; Two-Face TM & © DC Comics; Mr. Spock TM & © the respective copyright holders; other art © Jim Engel.]

Cartoonists Jim Engel (on right) and Sergio Aragonés.

#135 – Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse

#136 – Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson from The Amazing Spider-Man

#137 – Comedian Groucho Marx (a different cartoon from #123!)

#138 – Raggedy Ann

#139 – Comedian W.C. Fields

#140 – Mouse cartoon

#141 – Dick Tracy villain Flattop

#142 – Warlord Kro, who first appeared in The Eternals comic

#143 – Blackhawks member Chop Chop

#144 – Skyman

42

FRED HEMBECK Conquers The Buyer’s Guide red Hembeck started reading comic books at age six and, a couple of decades later, began lovingly mocking them in a series of cartoon strips commencing in TBG in 1977 and continuing right up through the end of CBG.

F

For this special issue of Alter Ego commemorating TBG and CBG, Fred prepared the strip at right, which revisits (or is re-visited by) the subject of the very first entry. He adds that, if you’re looking for him online, Google “Hembeck”; sometimes having an unusual name can be an advantage!

[Spider-Man TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art ©2013 Fred Hembeck.]

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

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy (which entitles you to the free Digital Edition) at our website or your local comic book shop. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR COMPUTER and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded at

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43

CBG Falls Off The Edge

by R.C. Harvey

A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: R.C. Harvey was, for some years, a reviewer/critic for CBG—and drew the occasional cartoon for the publication, as well. He shared his thoughts on its cancellation last winter on his blog, and on my request sent me a copy of those remarks. They were far too extended for full inclusion in this issue of A/E, especially since they were partly a history of TBG & CBG, but with his permission a bit of his commentary has been excerpted below….

an’t say we didn’t see the scrawl on the wall for this. The shrinking page count over the last couple of years was ample indication of the venerable fanzine’s growing financial embarrassment. And in 2012, CBG, for the first time in my memory, didn’t have a booth at the San Diego Comic-Con. It was, I thought, only a matter of time. Then, on January 9, CBG editor Brent Frankenhoff posted the bad news for Krause Publications, the magazine’s publisher: after 42 years, CBG would cease with the March 2013 issue, #1699. When CBG reached #600 in May 1985, Don and Maggie Thompson, the editors at the time, took note: “In the comic-book field, there isn’t another publication that has made it to 600 issues.” Too bad, now, that Krause (or the private-equity firm that owns CBG and Krause; no, not Bain) couldn’t have held off just one more issue to establish the publication’s record in a nicely rounded number, 1700.

C

But the decision to kill the longest-running magazine in comics fandom was made after No.1699 had gone to press, thus foreclosing on the possibility of CBG giving itself a dignified funeral: the issue contains no sentimental farewells by staff members, no round-ups of achievement to marvel at. Nothing. It was kaput, and that was that. No more discussion. It’s done.

Cause of death? In the realm of print, it’s the same old story: diminishing advertising revenues due to the Web and its free content made CBG increasingly irrelevant and financially unrewarding for the publisher. Said David Blansfield, president of the parent company: “We continuously evaluate our portfolio and analyze our content strategy to determine how well we are meeting consumer and Company goals. We take into consideration the marketplace we serve and the opportunities available for each of our magazine titles. After much analysis and deliberation, we have determined to cease publication of Comics Buyer’s Guide.”

Translation: “We’re not making the kind of money we used to make, and we want to make even more money than we used to.”

That’s how you keep a private-equity firm at bay: make more money.

Current subscribers to the magazine will receive a one-for-one conversion to CBG sister publication Antique Trader, a biweekly that has served the antiques and collectibles community since 1957.

Right: we’re all going to give up collecting comics and start collecting antiques.

Bidding TBG/CBG A Fond Adieu

I saw my first copy of The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom in about 1972. I must’ve sent off for a sample copy. I’d run across a few issues of the Menomonee Falls Gazette, the memorable weekly newspaper reprinting adventure comic strips published by Mike Tiefenbacher and Jerry Sinkovec, in a bookstore in the scruffier

section of Hennipen Avenue in Minneapolis in the spring of 1972, and MFG led me, as I recall (however shakily), to TBG, as the publication’s title was abbreviated and then abstracted in the common fan parlance of the day.

TBG had been functioning for only little more than a year.

It had been launched R.C. Harvey. by a 17-year-old kid in Photo supplied by author.

East Moline, Illinois.

Like almost all fan publications of the day, TBG was typewritten, not typeset. But it was printed, not mimeographed. Light solicited ads, which arrived on 8½ x11-inch sheets of paper; old and new comic books were listed for sale, the lists handwritten or typed. Light took these sheets as he got them and pasted four together to form TBG’s pages. The printed result was an unholy hodge-podge of cramped handwritten and typo-laden typewriter type “quarter-page” ads, sometimes painfully difficult to read. One advertiser as late as spring of 1976 headlined his ad: “Squint and Save!”

The interior was a mess, visually speaking, but handsome cover artwork was supplied by accomplished fan artists, even pros.

Whatever its faults, TBG became the most successful fan publication of the era.

Light started TBG in an auspicious year. In 1971, the comic book industry was having growing pains. The reviled Comics Code was modified for the first time since its adoption in 1954 to reflect changing mores and fashions; more daring stories (and pictures) resulted, attracting and holding older readers. Marvel and DC had raised cover prices and increased page counts. More comic for your money. Jack Kirby left Marvel for DC in 1970, but it wasn’t until 1971 that his New Gods and Forever People titles started, creating an entirely new kind of fiction for comics. DC changed publishers in 1971, installing an artist in the job—Carmine Infantino, whose influence brought new talent into the company and inaugurated much experimentation.

Fandom was in full swing. Shel Dorf and a cadre of young friends had launched the San Diego Comic-Con in 1970, and Robert Overstreet published his first Comic Book Price Guide in 1971, which had that codified pricing—and selling.

As the new adzine on the block, TBG walked right into an enormously lucrative opportunity—a burgeoning marketplace for selling old and new funnybooks. TBG circulation passed 4,000 in early 1972, and that summer, Light went from monthly to biweekly with #18, August 1, 1972. Three years later, TBG started weekly publication with #87, July 18, 1975. Circulation would hit 10,000 in 1977.

Then, in 1983, Light sold TBG to Krause Publications of Iola, Wisconsin, for enough money, doubtless, to commence living a life

44

R.C. Harvey On The End Of CBG

paper was set in type, even the ads....

As a hobby- and collector-conscious publisher, Krause changed slightly the name of Light’s publication to emphasize its purpose: The Buyer’s Guide became Comics Buyer’s Guide, and TBG morphed into CBG. In devising the new logo, the words of its title were superimposed upon a speech balloon. Beautiful.

And so we entered what I think of as the heyday of CBG. With a professional journalist at the helm and typography throughout, CBG looked and behaved like a grown-up newspaper. New columnists showed up—Tony Isabella, Heidi MacDonald, Bob Ingersoll, Peter David, Mark Evanier. One of the best of the TBG columnists, cat yronwode (who preferred lower-casing her name), didn’t make the transition. I started contributing an irregularly appearing column, called “Rants & Raves” (surprise), with #1067 (end of March 1994); it lasted only until CBG became a magazine in the summer of 2004.

The paper reported industry news, including censorship cases and similarly alarming events. And Don reviewed comic books with a flair for the turned phrase and an eye for idiocy as well as excellence.

Under The Covers Above is a copy of R.C. Harvey’s cover of TBG No.133 (June 4, 1976), as it appeared, slightly edited by editor/publisher Alan Light. R.C. has this to say about that: “In June 1976, I did a drawing of my characters Zero Hero and Starbright for the cover of TBG, and when it was published, I saw that Light had ‘edited’ Starbright’s neckline, reducing the amount of her bosom that is exposed.

You can see my version in the inset. Light’s re-touch covers a little more of Starbright’s right breast; ditto, the left, destroying, in the process, some of the defining curvature thereof. The difference is minuscule, as you can see (I hope), but it annoyed me and my libido.

“Admittedly, if it weren’t for my overweening fixation (not to say obsession) with things mammarian, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed Light’s adjustment. But, scandalous as it is to say, I am obsessed, so I was (and am) annoyed. I scoffed at Light’s prudery, but I also realized that he was thinking of his readership, which doubtless included many young people, who, as we all have come to realize, should not be exposed to anything sexual lest they start thinking about doing something about it.

And even though the survival of the species is udderly dependent upon their doing something about it, parental America doesn’t want it done now.

“Light never returned my artwork.... Probably he didn’t want me to see, right there on my very own drawing, the desecration he had committed.”

[Art © R.C. Harvey.]

of ease ever after. In his final issue, #481 (February 4), he thanked his parents, Lavon and Jerome, who “never questioned my sanity when I told them I wanted to quit college and publish a paper about comic books of all things.”

Light banked his bundle and took off for Hollywood….

Krause Takes Over

Krause, which specialized in publishing hobby-oriented periodicals, hired the Thompsons to edit TBG with #482 (Feb. 11, 1983), and, taking advantage of Don’s experience as a reporter and editor on the Cleveland Press, the erstwhile adzine became a true newspaper, tabloid format: instead of a cover, it had a front page that published news stories, not fan art. All the text throughout the

CBG was undeniably better journalism, but it was not as much fun as TBG. Light’s TBG was not unalloyedly terrible. Apart from its nightmare appearance, it was full of news and comment and fan art of stunningly varied degrees of incompetence. TBG jammed its 25% news hole with clippings culled from newspapers and magazines, mostly pasted onto pages, interspersed with typewritten items and articles supplied by off-again-on-again correspondents.

TBG’s big news and information department was the Thompsons’ “Beautiful Balloons.” The column, with a different logo every time, often ran for several pages, and when it did, a new fan-drawn logo appeared at the top of each page. The “BB” pages frothed with newspaper and magazine clippings as well as typewritten lists and reviews. And letters. “BB” had its own letters department.

When Don and Maggie became editors of the new CBG, “BB” effectively ballooned into the whole publication. But the big change in CBG came on Monday, May 23, 1994, with the unexpected death of Don Thompson at age 58. His widow, the remarkably resilient Maggie, took the reins with #1074 (June 17), which was in production at the time and almost ready to go to press. At the last minute, Maggie added an obituary for her husband.

Don had already written his “Comics Guide” column for #1074, doing several reviews of new comics. While criticizing one of the books for its cavalier attitude about spelling, Don went off into a witty apostrophe about how no one seemed to care about grammar or spelling anymore. Don, whose profession was words, cared.

And he was disgusted that even the latest Merriam-Webster dictionary didn’t care; it contends, Don said, “that any word spelled and used any way by anyone, anywhere, is okay.” He ends the column right after that, saying: “We have seen the future, and it is determinedly stupid.”

Don began his columns each week with some sort of quotation.

This column’s quotation was terribly ironic. He quoted Herbert Spencer: “Time: that which man is always trying to kill; but which ends in killing him.”

For comics and reviews, profoundly dosed with cartooning history and lore, beam up to www.RCHarvey.com, where his online magazine “Rants & Raves” is posted fortnightly or thereabouts and a dozen of his books are described. Snailmail can be sent to RCH at 17705 E. 99th Avenue, Commerce City, CO 80022.

45

the people on TV can’t actually hear me, I spoke to the TV. “That’s not what the study said.”

ou can blame Tony Isabella for this. I know I do.

Y

Or, if you’re one of those comic book readers who are only happy with a full rogues’ gallery, then make it Roy Thinnes, a bottle of Bayer aspirin, a doctors’ study on aspirin substitutes. Oh, and Tony Isabella. We mustn’t forget that nuhdz Tony Isabella.

My name, for those of you who don’t believe in reading bylines, is Bob Ingersoll. About 36 years ago, I was much younger; much, much lighter; and casting about trying to decide what to do with my life. What I had considered my best option—stay at home and live off my parents—was unexpectedly taken from me, when my father said, “Get out!” Suddenly I needed a new plan for my life. It was during this time of uncertainty that fate interposed in my life in the form of a Bayer aspirin commercial.

The commercial featured Roy Thinnes, an actor who had starred in two TV series back in the mid-’60s, The Long, Hot Summer and The Invaders, but who by the mid-’70s was finding work primarily in made-for-TV movies and commercials. I don’t think I was watching a made-for-TV movie on that fateful night back in 1977, but whatever I was watching, I was watching it with my father.

And it had the aforementioned commercial for Bayer Aspirin which starred Roy Thinnes.

The commercial started with Thinnes walking out on camera while carrying some thick, important-looking document. Then he looked directly at the camera so that it would appear that he was talking directly to us and fixed his face into that honest-looking expression that actors who had starred in two TV series in the mid’60s but by the mid-’70s were finding work primarily in made-forTV movies and commercials had all learned. That’s when he told us about the results of a recent doctors’ study.

That doctors’ study, Mr. Thinnes assured us with a solemnity that was used almost exclusively by funeral directors and actors who had starred in two TV series in the mid-’60s but by the mid-’70s were finding work primarily in made-for-TV movies and commercials, found no proof to the claim that aspirin substitute was safer to take than aspirin. Then, after Mr. Thinnes huckstered the virtues of Bayer Aspirin for the next 25 seconds, he concluded by saying, “Remember, aspirin substitute is not safer than aspirin.”

I looked at the TV and then, as is my habit despite the fact that I know

My father, who always preferred a good conversation to watching a commercial, even a conversation about a commercial, turned to me and said, “What?”

Bob Ingersoll (in photo) and the logo, sporting art by Whiting (first name unknown) that appeared on installments of the column.

The logo was colored for A/E by Larry Guidry.

Photo taken by Neil Ottenstein. [Art © the respective copyright holders.]

“The study he quoted said that doctors couldn’t find any proof that aspirin substitute was safer than aspirin,” I said. Then I continued with, “That doesn’t mean aspirin substitute isn’t safer than aspirin; it only means they can’t prove whether it is yet.”

And that’s when my father spoke the words that changed my life forever—that is, the life-changing words he said sometime after he spoke his first life-changing words, “Get out!” That’s when my father said, “You like that nit-picking stuff. That’s why I think you’d make a good lawyer.”

I couldn’t argue. My father hadn’t told me anything that my friends didn’t already know; I liked picking a good nit. As for becoming a lawyer, well, I wasn’t sure. Until I realized that going to law school would mean I could stay at home and live off my parents for another three years and quickly agreed.

Three years later, I graduated from law school and became a public defender in Cleveland, Ohio. It was a job I held for 28 years, until I retired in 2009. Not every client is happy to see he or she is getting a public defender, because they’re not paying for your services. These clients, who think you can’t get something for nothing, would tell me, “I don’t want a public defender, I want a real lawyer.” Now, to be fair to these clients, the county that employed me apparently thought it could get something—here, my services—for nothing, so it gave me a paycheck that also seemed to be telling me that I wasn’t a real lawyer. But I assure you, a public defender is a real lawyer. Honest. Check my diploma. It doesn’t say Placebo State University on it.

I rest my case.

There, I just said, “I rest my case,” more proof that I’m a lawyer.

Anyway, that’s the aspirin part. Because of aspirin, I became a lawyer. And I’m still trying to figure out how I can sue the Bayer people over that one.

“The Invaders”? Then Where’s Captain America?

Actor Roy Thinnes in a scene from The Invaders on 1960s TV. [© the respective copyright holders.]

When I was growing up, I never wanted to be a lawyer. What kid does? After I grew up and became a lawyer, I wanted to be a lawyer even less. No, what I wanted to be was a comic book writer.

I’d even had some success at the writing game. In the three

46

Bob Ingersoll On Laying Down The Law To CBG

“What article?” I asked him.

“The article about how the law is portrayed in comics,” he answered.

When I assured him that I had never spoken with either Don or Maggie Thompson about writing any such article, he informed me that he had grown tired of waiting for me to do something with the idea. So he had pitched the article to Don and Maggie and CBG for me.

Here Comes The Bat! Here Comes The Bat!

I had to give him credit, he was good. A nuhdz, but good.

Of course this meant that I actually had to sit down and write the article, a task I quickly realized would be impossible. Why impossible? Because as I reviewed how the law was portrayed in comics, or more accurately, how inaccurately the law was portrayed in comics, I realized the enormity of my task. Any article I could write would quickly exceed 10,000 words while I was still talking about Batman. Who knew how many words writing about all the other super-heroes and then the super-villains would require?

Frankly, A/E’s editor hasn’t the slightest idea whether Bob Ingersoll’s CBG column ever dealt with this particular tale, but since he mentions Batman as a character whose exploits he could examine from a legalistic viewpoint, here are the final two panels of the story “The Trial of Titus Keyes!” from Batman #20 (Dec. 1943-Jan. 1944), as reprinted in the hardcover Batman: The Dark Knight Archives, Vol. 6. Every courtroom drama should end on such a high note!

Script by Bill Finger; art by Bob Kane & Jerry Robinson. [© DC Comics.]

years between graduating from college and going to law school, I sold about eight comic book stories to the horror anthology comics that were making a comeback in the ’70s. The problem was that my success, like one of those commemorative plate sets that were being sold by other actors who had starred in two TV series in the mid-’60s but by the mid-’70s were finding work primarily in madefor-TV movies and commercials, was limited. As in: I wasn’t going to be able to make living by writing alone. So in the early ’80s, I became a lawyer. A lawyer who didn’t want to be a lawyer. A lawyer who wanted to become a comic book writer. A lawyer who wondered how he could combine what he wanted to be with what he was.

That’s when my friend Tony Isabella entered the picture. Tony, who was indirectly responsible for my first sales as a comic book writer when he a told a friend that Charlton Comics was buying horror stories and that friend told me, thought he could interfere directly with my desire to be a writer again by suggesting something he thought I could write and sell for actual money.

He suggested I write an article about how the law was portrayed in comic books. Not an actual comic book story about Superman or Batman interacting with the law, but an article about what the law is like in the real world and how that law would actually affect Superman or Batman. He thought it was a great idea.

I gave it all the consideration I thought it deserved and went home to dinner.

Yes, I didn’t listen to Tony.

Fortunately, Tony was, as I mentioned earlier, a nuhdz. And, like all good nuhdzes, he was a persistent nuhdz. A few months later, he again suggested that I write an article about how the law is portrayed in comic books. I did a quick calculation of how many potential markets I thought the article had, and....

Ignored Tony again.

Tony waited a few more months and then brought the subject up yet again. And I promptly gave it about as much attention as someone who texts while driving gives common sense.

Are you detecting a pattern here?

It went on like this for the better part of a year, until Tony called me one day and told me Don and Maggie Thompson, the editors of Comics Buyers’ Guide, wanted to see the article.

Take it from me, 10,000 words is not a sellable length for an article. When the Reader’s Digest version of an article clocks out longer than the Book of Genesis, magazines editors don’t know you from Adam.

So I decided that, if I couldn’t do the article as an article, I’d try it as a recurring column. That way I could do one installment about each of the problems I saw with how the law was portrayed in comic books. I wrote up the first three installments of the column, which I called “The Law Is a Ass,” on spec, sent them off to Don and Maggie, and waited to see how they would be received.

To those who feel the title “The Law Is a Ass” is vulgar and ungrammatical, I agree. It is. But what the Dickens can I do about it?

The phrase “the law is a ass” is from Charles Dickens. Oliver Twist, Chapter 51, to be exact. In said work, Mr. Bumble, a vulgar and ungrammatical character, is told that he is legally responsible for the wrongdoings that his wife committed, because the law presumes a husband can control the actions of his wife. Mr. Bumble’s vulgar and ungrammatical response is, “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor.”

I happen to love taking titles from famous quotes, even vulgar and ungrammatical quotes, so I thought this would be the perfect title for my column. Fortunately for me, Don and Maggie thought the same, liked what I had written, and bought the columns, vulgar and ungrammatical title and all.

Even more fortunate for me, the readers of Comics’ Buyers Guide also liked what I had written. Indeed, for the first several years when CBG started running its Readers’ Polls, “The Law Is a Ass” polled as either the second or third, depending on the year, mostliked feature in the paper.

When I sent in those three spec installments of “The Law Is a Ass,” I figured that, even if I was lucky enough to sell the column, the whole thing wouldn’t last more than a year. Eighteen months tops.

I wrote “The Law Is a Ass” for 23 years.

47

A Wolff At The CBG Door

by Batton Lash olff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre first appeared in 1979 as a self-syndicated weekly comic strip in a local New York publication, The Brooklyn Paper. Before long, the strip was picked up by The National Law Journal. By the time the first collection of Wolff & Byrd strips was published, I had been doing the feature for eight years, but was virtually unknown in the comic book community. I certainly owe a great deal to Comics Buyer’s Guide, thanks to editors and long-time comics aficionados Don and Maggie Thompson, for increasing Wolff & Byrd’s awareness among comics fans, with their reviews and recommendations.

W

One of the great thrills in my professional career was when I received the June 28, 1991, issue of CBG in the mail. I was surprised by the headline that the must-read newspaper of the comics industry was introducing strips by Will Eisner… and me!

My friend and attorney at the time, Mitch Berger, unbeknownst to me, had sent my self-syndication package to CBG. Without missing a beat, Don and Maggie added Wolff & Byrd to their roster of strips.

Even though the CBG strips had already run in The National Law Journal, they were new to the comics audience… and market! That presence in CBG led to forming Exhibit A Press with my wife, Jackie Estrada, where we would debut Wolff & Byrd in their own comic book title, later titled Supernatural Law (Don and Maggie also added a line along the bottom of the W&B strip that ran the week Jackie and I got married, acknowledging our tying the knot.

Unexpected, but very thoughtful! Don and Maggie were always fun-loving and good-natured!)

I’m just one of many cartoonists Don and Maggie have championed, giving us some much-needed visibility for readers to notice on a very crowded comics radar. I’ll never forget Don and Maggie’s generosity and will always appreciate the opportunity CBG gave me and my characters!

Batton Lash is the creator of the humor/horror series Supernatural Law (aka Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre). He has also written for Archie Comics and Bongo Comics. His latest projects are Gory Lori, a new comic book he penciled for creator/writer Nick Blodgett, and The First Gentleman of the Apocalypse, a brand-new series Lash created for the online comics anthology Aces Weekly.

More on Batton Lash can be found at www.exhibitapress.com

A Triptych Of (Top-toBottom) Terror The top-of-the-front-page plug for new strips by Will Eisner—and Batton Lash! Imagine the thrill of being in that twosome! [© Krause Publications, Inc.] A recent photo of the writer/artist, enjoying a quiet moment in between excursions into horror.

Courtesy of BL. The first CBG strip of Batton Lash’s Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre. [© Batton Lash.]

48

CBG’s

by John Lustig

Last Kiss began at the 1995 San Diego Comic-Con when I approached Maggie (at the urging of my friend Joe Torcivia) with the idea of taking some old romance comics and re-dialoguing the covers for laughs. Amazingly, she liked the idea. Last Kiss was launched in 1996 and appeared in occasional issues until 1998, when I decided to quit before I ran out of jokes.

But, at the 1999 SDCC, I surprised John Jackson Miller (and myself) by suggesting that I bring Last Kiss back for the 2000 Valentine’s issue. To my surprise, that was a hit and Brent Frankenhoff suggested I do a two-panel Last Kiss comic as a

Crises High And Lowe

by Johnny Lowe

A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Johnny Lowe is a freelance copy editor (for University Press of Mississippi). He is also a cartoonist who, over the years, submitted more than 20 cartoons to Don and Maggie Thompson’s CBG. “While most were done under the title Comments and Stories,” he says, “I did a ‘seven-part’ series of strips that were a riff on DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths.” [Basic art & script © Johnny Lowe; the characters homaged are TM & © their respective trademark & copyright holders.]

regular feature. This time, I stuck around a lot longer―in fact, until the final issue of CBG. By then, I’d created a small Last Kiss empire. I had almost complete creative freedom at CBG. That’s a gift every writer craves and all too rarely gets.

And for that, I gratefully blame (I mean thank) Maggie, Brent, and John.

John Lustig. See A/E #114 for the origins of the Last Kiss artwork. [Last Kiss logo TM & © John Lustig.]

49

question. I think one or both of us got too busy and since there was no mention of pay....

A Brief Reminiscence

A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Mark Evanier is a noted comics and television writer (not necessarily in that order) who started out in the 1970s as an assistant to Jack Kirby on his “Fourth World” material for DC Comics.

For years he wrote a column for CBG entitled “POV”—and these days he writes a daily blog about show business, comics, and anything else he feels like, at www.newsfromme.com....

’m not sure I have a whole lot to say about CBG, other than that I was proud to be a part of it for a time. Somewhere here, I have the copy I received of the first issue. For a while I saved them all, but storage space became more precious and the pile grew so foreboding, I knew I’d never wade into it. So out went everything but #1, even the issues that had writing by me in them.

I

Another confession: I never had any real interest in the ads. I can’t recall that I ever responded to one or even read 90% of them.

Before the publication contained articles, I could make it through an issue in about two minutes flat. I was a bit responsible that it began running articles amidst its advertising, though I’m sure Alan Light would have gotten to that without me.

When I received that first issue, I was impressed. I had briefly been involved a few years earlier in an attempt to create an advertiser-supported adzine. That’s what CBG was at the time: your subscription was free and the ads paid the freight. The endeavor I’d been involved in had done everything wrong and had crashed.

Alan did everything right and you could tell from the start he had a winner.

But I thought CBG lacked something: a reason for those of us with minimal interest in ads to page through the publication. I wrote him suggesting he add a few columns to the proceedings. He wrote back and said something like, “Good idea! Why don’t you do one?” That’ll teach me to suggest something.

I was then working with a partner, Steve Sherman, doing projects for Jack Kirby. I asked Steve if he wanted to pitch in on a column for CBG. He said fine and we wrote one we called “MESS,” which was what you got if you put our initials together. I don’t recall much of it other than that Steve wrote the dumb parts and I wrote the clever parts. (He, for some reason, has it reversed.)

Alan wrote that he loved it and wanted more, then wrote after it ran in some early issue to say that the readers loved it and wanted more. And then we didn’t do more. Why? That’s a good

I enjoyed CBG as it blossomed into a more rounded publication with more and more articles.

I followed it when Krause acquired it, hired Don and Maggie Thompson to run it, and it shifted from Alan’s Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom (was that the precise name?) to the CBG we thereafter knew and loved. I hope someone in this issue of Alter Ego mentions what a great guy Don was. I really liked and respected him, even though we could never agree on how certain words were spelled. We had, f’rinstance, a long knock-down drag-out over whether “miniscule” was an acceptable variant for “minuscule.” I said it was and he said it wasn’t.

In 1995, I was talking to Maggie one day about I-don’t-knowwhat and she said, “Hey, would you consider writing an article for us about that?” I said sure. Then I mentioned a few other recent topics in the publication about which I had some opinions... and after a bit of back ‘n’ forth, she said, “Hey, how about writing a regular column for us?” I said, “Lemme write one and see how I like it.”

That evening, I wrote one, not about the originally-suggested topic, and I enjoyed doing it. I called Maggie the next day and said, “Lemme send this to you, and if you want more like it, I’ll do more like it.” I wound up writing a little fewer than 400 of them... an impressive number until you look at what Peter David has managed. Then again, Peter took the easy route of writing good pieces on topics that the readers cared about.

I stopped one February day in 2002 because... well, the person who drove me off has apologized for it, so I don’t see any point in rehashing it here in detail. Suffice it to say that someone who worked for Krause (not, of course, Maggie) called me one day and said some disparaging things about the column and about my request for a penny-a-word increase in compensation. Since I’d recently won their annual poll as Best Column and since the money went to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, I thought his response was inappropriate... and it took all the fun out of the job.

Also, to be honest, part of me I suspect was looking for an excuse to get out. That weekly deadline had a way of cropping up when I could least afford the time. Moreover, I’d started blogging by then and I liked the freedom of the Internet—I could blog when I felt like it, not when a deadline commanded—and I loved the immediacy. That would be the same immediacy that, in my opinion, CBG couldn’t compete with as a source of news and advertising, leading to its demise.

I’m sorry it’s not still around. There was something so comforting about its weekly arrival... and the way its pages united the chaos of the comic book industry. It was also like a weekly letter from my friend Maggie and my friend Tony and my friend Peter... and there were always a few other friends in each issue and new ones to be made.

And, oh yeah, there were all those ads, too. I just ignored them.

The POV Collection That Just Groo In 2002, after leaving CBG, Mark Evanier collected a number of his “POV” columns in a TwoMorrows Publishing anthology titled Comic Books and Other Necessities of Life, followed by two sequels. The logo above front cover \illustration seen here (along with several interior cartoons that aren’t) was supplied by the inexhaustibly but exhaustingly talented Sergio Aragonés, with whom Mark has collaborated for many years on Groo the Wanderer. [Art © Sergio Aragonés.]

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A True Fan’s Adventures

by Ward Batty A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Ward Batty is one of the founders of the successful Comic Shop News, a weekly newspaper about upcoming comics that is distributed to readers free through, you guessed it, comics shops. But before he co-created this potential competitor to the CBG, he was the writer of several comic strips that appeared in the CBG itself….

discovered comics fandom through the Buyer’s Guide. My principal in fifth grade was a subscriber because he collected pulps, but there weren’t enough ads for pulps, so he transferred his subscription over to me. It was through The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom that I discovered CAPA-Alpha [comics fandom’s first “amateur press alliance”] and the UFO (United Fanzine Organization). At least one aspect of TBG inspired me deeply, as one of the first fanzines I published was called Fandom Advertiser’s Digest.

I

I remember being a fan of Fred Hembeck’s work in TBG and pitched the idea to Alan Light for a strip about fans and comics that was in a daily comic strip format and more gag-oriented. Alan agreed, and I recall having to lay the page out myself and send it to him camera-ready. The Ward Batty.

Trufan Adventures name came from the old “faan”-fiction zine title. Jerry Collins was the artist, and we did a few dozen strips over a 2-3- year period. The strip disappeared for a while, and when I started it back up with artist Charlie Williams, Don and Maggie were now editors, and the publication’s name had been changed to Comics Buyer’s Guide.

The strip changed from the four-panel format to a stacked sixpanel one when I had the artistic epiphany that the four-panel strips paid $5 while the six-panel ones paid $25. It also turned out to be very handy when we reprinted them in Trufan Adventure Theatre and Boffo Laffs during the great black-&-white comics

Going Batty (Above & below:) Two of Ward Batty’s Trufan Adventures from CBG. [© Ward Batty; characters TM & © their respective copyright holders.]

explosion of the 1980s. We also started doing Ultraguy & Joe Power for CBG. Don and Maggie were always supportive and even let me do the occasional extra-large strip (something about super-heroes and credit cards; clearly one can see why we’d need extra space).

Don and Maggie were also very cool when we started doing Comic Shop News. Many others had attempted a weekly against the mighty Buyer’s Guide and none had succeeded. CSN succeeded by being its own thing and through the support of the comic shops who did and do continue to buy the copies they give away. I happened to be at an event with Don, and he happily pointed out all the mistakes I had made in laying out the issue (#0 or #1). I can still hear Don say to me, “See here where you have two headlines next to each other? We call those headstones.” Over 25 years and 1300 issues later, I still endeavor to avoid “headstones.”

I had always meant to do something else for CBG (Charlie is still a fine artist) and am sorry that I’ll never have the chance. I’ll always be grateful to CBG for my career, more or less.

Some of the strips are in shiny color and have been reformatted for the web over at ultraguyjoepower.com. The 4panel strip has art by Jerry Collins; the other has art by Charlie Williams (Mohawks).

Both are © Ward Batty, ARR.

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CBG And Me

by Cliff Biggers ike many fans, I read TBG frequently during the 1970s, after being introduced to it by a friend, Jim Dowdy; my primary fanzine focus had drifted from comics to science-fiction at that time, but the sheer size of TBG intrigued me. I enjoyed the features far more than the ads, because I wasn’t actively seeking out back issues of comics at that time; heck, in the early 1970s, my and Susan’s budget barely allowed for new comics, since I was going to college full-time and working part-time.

L

I lost contact with TBG when Jim moved away, but was reunited with the publication under its new name as CBG shortly after I became a comic shop owner. Ward Batty, my business partner in the early days of Dr. No’s Comics & Games, was also a contributor to CBG, so I was reading his issue. Don and Maggie Thompson had become editors of the magazine, upgrading the quality and turning it from a fanzine/adzine into a sort of industry publication that comics desperately needed. So when the whole Thor #337 phenomenon came about, with retailers all over the country clamoring for copies (and in some cases buying them from rack jobbers before they ever made it into grocery stores, drugstores, or newsstands), I suggested that Don and Maggie should cover the story. “No,” Maggie said. “You should cover the story. You already know about it; why don’t you write it up for us?”

I followed Maggie’s advice and wrote the story, and was pleased to see it featured on the front page a few weeks later. It became the first of many stories I wrote for Don and Maggie about

A Thor Point!

Cliff Biggers—and Walt Simonson’s cover for Thor #337 (Nov. 1983).

What do these two things have to do with each other? Read on, Macduff!

[Thor cover © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other elements © the respective copyright holders.]

the business side of comics. Don also suggested that I write a column about comics retailing, which I immediately agreed to. It always seemed like a privilege to write for Don and Maggie, because I had been a subscriber and avid reader of their newsletter Newfangles in the 1960s, so they had achieved a particularly lofty status in my personal comics-fandom pantheon.

A few years later, CBG expanded its coverage to include a price guide, and Don and Maggie were looking for retailers who could help them with pricing advice. I became a part of their advisory board, gathering prices through our store and at conventions and writing about the changing marketplace; I remained a regular contributor to the CBG price guide for many years.

When Ward and I launched our own weekly, Comic Shop News, I was apprehensive that Don and Maggie might drop me from their list of CBG contributors. Not only did they keep me on as a freelancer for years to come, they also were kind enough to set up a trade between CSN and CBG, and we would even speak on the phone from time to time, swapping notes about stories in the works, industry trends, and comics in general. After Don’s untimely passing, Maggie and I would try to set aside at least an hour a month or so to chat and catch up. Today, e-mail and social media have supplanted phone calls, but I still look forward to hearing from Maggie about any of the numerous interests we share in common.

Comics Buyer’s Guide filled a unique position in comics: it was a place where fans and pros could interact in letters columns long before social media became the great equalizer, and it was a source of news for an industry in transition. Most important, though, it was the center of the comics community, linking all aspects of the industry and the art form, and it filled that role so well because of Don and Maggie Thompson. Their love of comics was evident in their work both personally and professionally, and that love of comics was the driving force behind CBG’s move into preeminence as an industry newsmagazine.

Most importantly to me, though, I had a blast working with them. They made writing about comics almost as much fun as the comics themselves.

Cliff Biggers is the editor and co-publisher of Comic Shop News, a weekly promotional news publication launched in 1987. He also wrote several issues of I*Bots for Tekno Comics and was the co-writer and co-creator of Earth Boys for Dark Horse. In addition, he is the owner of Dr. No’s Comics & Games in Marietta, Georgia, one of the oldest and largest comics shops in the Southeast.

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Of Martial & Other Arts

by Charles R. Rutledge

he first sale I ever made as a professional writer was to Comics Buyer’s Guide, and it happened because of a dinner conversation. Back in 1988 I attended my first Chicago Comics Convention. My friends Cliff Biggers and Ward Batty, who both were already doing work for CBG, asked if I wanted to go with them to dinner with Don and Maggie Thompson and a few other folks.

T

I ended up sitting next to Don and the subject of my being a karate instructor came up, leading to Don asking me a bunch of martial-arts-related questions. At that time First Comics was publishing an English version of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s samurai comic Kozure Ogami (Lone Wolf and Cub), and one of the issues centered on the Zen philosophy of “When you meet the Buddha on the road, kill the Buddha.” Don asked me what that was all about and we chatted about philosophy for quite a while.

At the end of the dinner, Don said to me, “You really know your martial arts. Would you like to write a column for Comics Buyer’s Guide about hand-to-hand combat in comic books?”

Well, of course I would. So for the next three years I wrote a biweekly column for CBG, which gradually expanded to cover all areas of fighting in comics. I explained how body armor worked, why parts of various super-hero costumes were liabilities in a fight (NO capes!), why silencers won’t work on revolvers, and the differences between martial arts like karate, kung fu, aikido, etc. I also reviewed a lot of comic books with martial arts themes. There were

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

quite a few at the time: The Question, Iron Fist, Badger, Armor, Whisper, Shuriken, etc. And of course there were heroes like Batman and Daredevil whose adventures usually involved some hand-to-hand combat. Cliff Biggers, who loves a good pun, suggested the name for my column—“The Hit Parade”—because it was a parade of articles about people getting hit.

I did interviews with Charles R. Rutledge declined to send a several comics profesphoto—but here’s the cover of the premier sionals who were also issue of First Comics’ 1987 reprinting of the martial artists, Japanese comic Lone Wolf and Cub by writer including Dennis Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima. The Cowan, Mike Baron, result of this collision was a long-running column in Comics Buyer’s Guide. and Roger Salick. Salick [Art © the respective copyright holders.] was also a karate teacher, and this led to me traveling to Wisconsin and guest-teaching his class, and eventually to taking over the scripting of Drunken Fist, one of the two kung fu comics that Roger was writing for Jademan Comics.

So, in the end, that dinner with Don not only gave me my first writing sale, but also led to my becoming a comic book writer.

—Plus One

I ended up learning a lot about writing by working on those columns. It was always informative to see what changes Don and Maggie made to my writing, eliminating needless words and reworking clumsy phrases.

On a personal note, I always looked forward to seeing Don and Maggie at conventions and hanging out with them. The last time I saw Don was at San Diego Con. He had a copy of The Comic Book Book with him and he got me do a sketch of Captain Teddy, a funny-animal super-hero I’d drawn for the comic Boffo Laughs, on one of the pages of the book, right there with the drawings and autographs of many comics pros whom I admired.

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>.

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That was the thing about Don. He treated you like a professional even when you were just out of the gate. I eventually ran out of column ideas and retired “The Hit Parade,” but it was a wonderful experience, and as I noted, the thing that made me a professional writer. So thanks, Don and Maggie, for giving a guy a chance.

Charles R. Rutledge is a freelance writer living in the Atlanta, Georgia, area. In addition to being a columnist for CBG, he has also written for Comic Shop News. His first novel, Blind Shadows, written with James A. Moore, came out last September from Arcane Wisdom; his second book, Congregations of the Dead, will be out at the end of 2013 from the same publisher. Charles collects anything to do with Robert E. Howard or Edgar Rice Burroughs.

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Thank Odin for comics, which elevated the mind with starbursts of imagination. Men leaped tall buildings in a single bound!

Barbarians trod jeweled thrones beneath sandaled feet! Muckencrusted mockeries of man lurked in the swamps!

A

by Andrew “Captain Comics” Smith Former CBG Contributing Editor las, Comics Buyer’s Guide, we hardly knew ye.

Actually, that’s not true: A lot of people knew CBG, and it brought a lot to their lives. I should know, as I was one of them.

Here’s why:

In the beginning there was no Internet, and darkness was upon the face of Fandom. Oh sure, a proto-fan base, the Ur fans, had coalesced around EC Comics in the ‘50s, but the Comics Code of 1954 and resultant industry implosion throttled that baby in its cradle. (Good Lord!) And then ate it. (Choke!)

And some guy named Roy Thomas, along with the legendary Jerry Bails, started fooling around with a fanzine named Alter-Ego in early 1961. And there was a group of enthusiastic Legion of Super-Heroes fans who also managed to connect with each other in the early ‘60s, which was pretty impressive for the communications technology of the time (two cans, string).

There were some other fanzines here and there, including something called Comic Art, also in early 1961, by a couple named Don and Maggie Thompson. Eventually, in the ‘70s, there was Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector, The Legion Outpost, and an adzine called The Buyer’s Guide to Comics Fandom, which eventually became Comics Buyer’s Guide.

But what was any of that to a Silver Age boy in redneck, backwater Memphis, Tennessee? I didn’t know about any of that! I loved me some comics, and collected just about everything, but it was a pretty solitary hobby. And as the Li’l Capn grew older, it didn’t take him very long to realize that he should keep his reading habits to himself.

If he didn’t want to get beaten up on a regular basis. Or die a virgin.

It was obvious there were other fans out there, even in my own city, because somebody was buying enough comic books to keep the business alive. And there were letters from real, live people in the letters pages who used fanspeak like “LOCs” and “Golden Age.”

But none of them lived where I lived. And in this Dark Age, everything I liked was hard to come by outside of comics. Genres that lifted us from the humdrum dreariness of daily life—sciencefiction, sword-and-sorcery, fantasy, super-heroes, horror, etc.—were as rare as gold kryptonite. While TV had the occasional heartstopping failure like Star Trek or Dark Shadows, movies had nothing at all—because studio executives famously believed that “sciencefiction doesn’t sell.”

But I enjoyed my four-color treasures solo, as the Li’l Cap’n grew into Teen Cap, and then into Collegiate Captain. I didn’t know any other fans. And there were no college courses on comics or any of my other private hobbies.

Will The Real “Captain Comics” Please Stand Up—Or Something?

CBG’s “Captain Comics” logo, with art probably by Joe Staton—and a photo that some may maintain is a more realistic representation. The coloring of the logo was done especially for A/E by Larry Guidry. [© the respective copyright holders.]

But one field seemed close: journalism.

Maybe I was inspired by Clark Kent, or Peter Parker, or Billy Batson.

Maybe Watergate made the job look heroic. But, really, how could a guy whose moral paradigm was shaped

by Superman not go into a field that promised to follow truth, justice, and the American Way?

Of course, somewhere around this time came the Big Bang: Star Wars. Slowly, gradually, “sci-fi” became cool. Or not altogether un-cool. George Lucas, bless his pointy beard, kicked open the door, allowing closeted geeks and nerds to shuffle blinking into the sunlight. We still wore shirts with colors not found in nature, we still needed Coke-bottom glasses, and we were still unaware of the rolled eyes when we used slide rules in public. But as science-fiction and related fields started to make real money, the tragically un-hip became… tolerable.

And comic shops arrived. I saw my first in Austin, Texas, around 1980, but I know the big cities had them earlier. That store, Lone Star Comics, was clean and professional, and I still remember making a trade there, a coverless Tales to Astonish #27 (“The Man in the Ant Hill!”) for Avengers #4 (“Captain America Lives Again!”).

But as I moved around the country in early adulthood, that was not a uniform experience. Many comic shops were dingy places with greedy, overweight, unwashed people that I didn’t really care to meet. (The Comic Book Guy stereotype on The Simpsons came from somewhere, you know.) Luke Skywalker could save fanboys from ridicule, but not from ourselves.

And why do I relate this tale of woe to today’s readers? Is it the insistent, needy narcissism of cranky old farts to start every story with “back in my day” and end it with “You kids get off my lawn”?

Well, yes. But also because I need to paint a word picture of just how glum, solitary,

Comics’ Dirty Little Secret?

Captain Comics says that many (but thankfully not all!) of his early experiences with comics shops bore an uncanny resemblance to the “Comic Book Guy” sequences in TV’s The Simpsons. [© Fox TV or successors in interest.]

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Dear Captain...

and bleak life as a fan was, in those days, for those in my position—so that I can stun, with maximum comparison, the good news.

Throughout it all I had one ever-loyal friend. One lifeline to the four-color world. One constant companion through every different college, job, city and/or girlfriend of my early adulthood.

You guessed it: Comics Buyer’s Guide.

I don’t even know where I first saw CBG (although Lone Star Comics in Austin, Texas, is a good guess). But here was a publication that combined the two powerful through-lines of my young life: comic books and journalism.

The comic book part was a window into a world I could only guess at. I mean, I knew real people created comics. But that kind of life or career was so alien to my experience in the Vietnam era in the South as to be unimaginable. CBG didn’t just make it imaginable, it brought it within reach.

The other part might mean less to someone who hasn’t dedicated much of their lives to journalism. But reading CBG in those heady days, I detected like minds at work. Whoever was writing and editing these stories weren’t amateurs. They knew their Strunk & White. They demonstrated copy-editing skill. They used the AP Stylebook. They even knew the difference between “blonde” and “blond”!

And so it is that, as I look back over the last 40 years of life as both fanboy and journalist, CBG looms large as my boon companion. It enriched my comics experience by providing context. And it spoke to me in my own lingo, that of the inkstained wretch.

All of which culminated one day when I read a story called “Who Killed Gwen Stacy?” in CBG #1277 (May 8, 1998), by someone named Scott Brick. You know, that was something I had actually wondered about for 25 years! How nice that someone took it upon themselves to finally answer the question.

Better yet, “Who Killed Gwen Stacy?” was comprehensive. It was professionally researched. It was well-written. It was multiplesourced. It attributed like crazy, straight from various horses’ mouths. It was deft, smart and professional—something I tried to be in my own journalism.

And then I thought, why isn’t it me writing this article? The result of that thought was that two years later I was working for CBG. I never ended up doing much in the way of investigative journalism—print was already beginning its death spiral by then, and other tasks took priority.

But I got to work at CBG, and what a ride! I was, sadly, too late to meet Don Thompson, who had passed in 1994. I have stolen so many of his insightful remarks (“If this is the sort of thing you’ll like, you’ll like this”) that I ought to have a “Don Thompson attribution” shortcut on my keyboard. His absence in the field remains a painful void.

But I met John Jackson Miller (now writing Star Wars comics and novels), who was sharp as a tack and knew his beans. I worked many years with Brent Frankenhoff, who embodies two contradictory things: “Good Editor” and “Nice Guy.” I’ve corresponded with Tony Isabella, Peter David, and Craig “Mr. Silver Age” Shutt (which is just as much fun as it sounds).

And then there’s Maggie.

Not “Ms. Thompson,” or “ma’am” or “your worship,” as you

Hint: It Wasn’t Just The Green Goblin!

Writer Scott Brick’s analysis for CBG of “Who Killed Gwen Stacy?” is credited

by Andrew (CC) Smith with inspiring him to want to write for the publication. Four decades after its first appearance, the final story page of The Amazing Spider-Man #121 (June 1973) by scripter Gerry Conway, penciler Gil Kane, and inkers John Romita & Tony Mortellaro still packs a wallop—and the tale is still controversial. What else could one ask of a comic book story? Stan Lee may not have liked it much, understandably— but Roy Thomas is proud of having edited it (mainly by staying out of the way and letting the above-named gents do their jobs). But then, Roy didn’t get the death threats that Gerry did! Thanks to Barry Pearl for the scan from the original comic. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

would expect with lesser people, but just “Maggie.” What else can you call her? Like Madonna or Prince, you don’t need another name, and she’d dismiss any honorific anyway, with her infectious laugh. She made me feel so at ease right away when I first met her at Comic-Con International: San Diego, that I couldn’t call her anything else but Maggie.

The world burps up few people this admirable, who make the impossible look easy, who are boundlessly talented but remain entirely without affectation. She’s one of my personal heroes.

When she actually wrote me to compliment me on one of my early columns, I was stunned. She thought something I wrote was good. That’s like Rembrandt saying, “Nice picture, kid.”

So there’s CBG, still giving to me until the end. Hopefully I gave back a little of what it gave to me. And I hope it gave some of you something similar.

Andrew Smith has been writing professionally about comics since 1992, and wrote for CBG from 2000 to 2013. He can be reached at capncomics@aol.com or on his website, comicsroundtable.com.

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Famous Mr. Monsters Of Fanland (Right:) Mr. Monster was cover-featured in this Nov. 27, 1992, issue of Comics Buyer’s Guide.

Art by Michael T. Gilbert, Simon Bisley, & Jeff Bonivert. [Mr. Monster TM & © Michael T. Gilbert; other elements ©1992 Krause Publications, Inc.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Buyer’s Guide Scrapbook!

By Michael T. Gilbert

M

e and the Buyer’s Guide go back. Way back.

Our relation? Well, it’s… complicated. Kinda like my memories of my college girlfriend. We were sweeties who even lived together for a time. Then we drifted apart, broke up, moved away from each other, and got together again.

But just as friends.

Oh, we’d keep in touch. But months, even years, would go by without contact. Regardless, the good memories never faded. That’s how I feel about The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom, forerunner of the recently canceled CBG.

The Guide and I hooked up at a 1971 New York SeulingCon. I was nineteen and ready for some serious four-color sensory overload. In the convention hall, a skinny blond kid called me over to his table, gave me a copy of his new adzine, and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. “Sign up now and get a free subscription for life!” The paper looked fairly slapdash.

Beautiful it wasn’t. Badly hand-lettered ads were mixed in with typeset ones. But did I mention it was free? So I signed up (this was around issue five).

Alan Light was the skinny blond kid, assisted by his henchman, Murray Bishoff. Light was even younger than me, maybe 17 or so. I didn’t take the offer too seriously. Why would anyone mail me a free newspaper? But sure as shootin’, the paper showed up monthly in my mailbox. Then every two weeks. By 1975 TBG was published weekly. Son of a gun!

Free For Life?

My suspicions weren’t entirely unfounded, though. Within a year, “free for life” morphed into “subscription only,” setting me back a cool $2 for 23 issues. Eeek! But by then I was hooked.

My sub started while I was still living with my parents in Commack, Long Island, and commuting to nearby Suffolk Community College. I transferred to SUNY New Paltz in upstate New York in 1972, eventually graduating with a BA in Art Education. But teaching was just a pretense to keep my parents happy. All I really wanted to do was draw comics.

It wasn’t always easy being a collector in New Paltz. Not in 1972. A couple of years later Peter Maresca would open the town’s first comic shop, The Crystal Cave. But back then all we had was a hippie bookstore that sold undergrounds, and two small drugstores.

Sometimes they only ordered one or two copies of the latest Barry Smith Conan or Wrightson Swamp Thing, so you had to grab fast! My pal Harvey Sobel at nearby SUNY Albany would mail “care packages” stuffed with comics I couldn’t get locally. As you can imagine, reading my Buyer’s Guide filled in the gaps.

I’d check out the latest ish and drool over rare comics and original art. The prices seem ridiculously cheap today, but I was working my way through school and most of those goodies were way out of my reach. Still, I did find the occasional deal. When I did, I’d dutifully send cash or a money order, and then I’d wait.

Doggone Nice Of Him! This Fred Hembeck TBG column was devoted to Gilbert’s “The Wraith.”

This page was scanned from the original art. [The Wraith TM & © Michael T. Gilbert; Hembeck character, art, & text © Fred Hembeck.]

And wait. And WAIT! If I were lucky, I’d get my precious comics. If not, I’d get a refund. Arggh!

In these days of instant gratification, anyone with the cash can buy almost any comic with the click of a mouse. But back then, conventions aside, TBG was the only game in town. Well, there was also the adzine Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector, an early forerunner to TBG. But it was more expensive and published less frequently.

The Guide helped me score a few great comics, including a batch of four mint EC Picto-Fictions for $12 total, part of a great warehouse find. Another Buyer’s Guide ad got me in touch with a collector selling the very first Haunt of Fear. It was too pricey for this college kid, but we arranged a trade for some early Marvels I‘d bought off the stands years earlier. I still remember the glorious moment it arrived in my mailbox, chock full of early Wood, Kurtzman, Feldstein, and Craig. Thank you, Buyer’s Guide!

Buyer’s Guide Scrapbook!

But, on the plus side, they began adding features to qualify for cheaper mailing rates.

I’d look forward to Murray Bishoff’s “Now What?” comic news column, Don and Maggie Thompson’s “Beautiful Balloons,” and Fred Hembeck’s “Dateline: *!!?#.”

Mixed Feelings

Still, even then I had decidedly mixed feelings about the paper. In the Guide’s early years, another fanzine publisher described dirty tricks that Alan Light and Murray Bishoff allegedly used to kill the competing adzine. Sometimes you’re better off not knowing how sausages are made.

Then there were the ever-escalating subscription rates. I can recall an editorial in which Light explained how he was forced to charge more because the paper kept getting bigger. But wasn’t it getting bigger because they were selling more paying ads? The same issue even included a pitch to potential advertisers bragging about how their fantastic circulation made a Buyer’s Guide ad a great buy. Talk about having it both ways!

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The Thompsons’ column had comic reviews and opinions. Fred’s strip featured fractured comic book history, terrible puns, and tributes to his favorite comics and cartoonists—all drawn in Fred’s delightful “squiggly-knee” style.

Woof!

The Wraith celebrates TBG’s 500th issue (June 17, 1983). [Art © & Wraith TM Michael T. Gilbert.]

(A few years after I’d begun my cartooning career, Fred devoted one of his columns to a gushing review of my Wraith series. When I was starting out, such praise was rare and welcome. Fred was kind enough to gift me the page, which I still treasure. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

The Terror Of Trezma!

Alan Jim Hanley (no relation to comic shop owner Jim Hanley) had a continuing feature in TBG called “Hanley’s Comics History,” which focused on obscure Golden Age heroes. This page appeared in the Sept. 19, 1980, issue, three years before Michael T. Gilbert revived Fred Kelly’s Mr. Monster. (See A/E #118.) Sadly, Hanley never got to see the new version. He died in a car crash in the winter of 1980, shortly after this page appeared. The black-&white original printing has been colored by Michael T. especially for this issue. [Art © Alan J. Hanley; Mr. Monster TM & © Michael T. Gilbert.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Early Years

A few months before graduating college in 1973, I’d used some student loan money to publish New Paltz Comix, a quasi-underground title. My first stories were printed there. Afterwards, I sold my comic door to door on campus at 50¢ a pop.

In 1974 I moved to New York City, portfolio in hand. Marvel and DC weren’t interested, but I was hired to draw graphics for NBC News. A year later, hoping to break into underground comix, I took the plunge and moved to San Francisco.

I sold my first cartoons to the notorious Berkeley Barb, and then pitched Mike Friedrich a story for his sci-fi/fantasy anthology, Star*Reach. This led to “The Wraith,” my first continuing series, for his funny animal title, Quack! Soon I was selling stories to its companion titles, Star*Reach and Imagine, as well as to underground publishers Last Gasp, Rip Off Press, and Kitchen Sink.

In 1977 I met my first wife. A couple of years later we moved from Orinda, California, to Austin, Texas, where she was pursuing her Master’s at the University of Texas. We rented a house and I set up a studio in the garage. Air-conditioning was out of our price range. I remember a solid week of 106-degree weather, sweat dripping as I slaved over my light box. Good times.

Wherever I’d moved, TBG followed. It didn’t pay much for articles, but its fannish enthusiasm was priceless. One of my favorite features was Cat Yronwode’s “Fit to Print,” a fascinating blend of comic history, reviews, and outspoken opinions.

Triple-Threat Terry!

(Above:) Terry Beatty drew TBG’s first and only 3-D cover, for the June 11, 1982, issue. (Below:) He also collaborated with Michael T. on the “Mr. Monster” story “Inklings” for Dark Horse Presents #28 (March 1989). [©2013 Terry Beatty & Michael T. Gilbert.]

This was shortly before she joined Dean Mullaney as co-owner of Eclipse Comics. Cat and I had begun corresponding in the early ’80s, due to a mutual love of all things Eisner and Ditko. In 1985, months after Pacific folded, she became my editor when Eclipse began publishing Mr. Monster. That, alas, proved to be a somewhat less pleasant experience than reading her column.

But it still fascinates me to realize how small the comic community was back then, and how often the players intersected in the pages of The Buyer’s Guide.

Take Terry Beatty, for instance. Terry was my favorite Buyer’s Guide cover artist. He also wrote a comic-oriented column, “Sideways,” plus “The Phony Pages,” an amusing parody of old comics and newspaper strips. We later became friends, and even collaborated on a “Mr. Monster” story.

Don Rosa was another fan favorite who provided art for The Buyer’s Guide (see p. 72). A decade later he would create Disney stories for Denmark’s Egmont Creative. The eventual list of TBG contributors who also scripted Disney comics included myself, Janet Gilbert, Bob Ingersoll, and John Lustig.

Fit To Sink!

(Right:) Will Eisner drew this soggy Fit to Print logo in 1981. [© Cat Yronwode.]

Buyer’s Guide Scrapbook!

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Movin’ On…

Near the end of 1981, my (now) ex decided the “genteel poverty” of a struggling cartoonist was not for her. She moved on to greener pastures, taking one of her professors along for the ride. After she left, I recall sitting in a stuffed chair in my sweltering garage studio. A copy of The Buyer’s Guide had just delivered the news that my idol, Wally Wood, had committed suicide.

Life didn’t end for me, though. In 1982 I moved to Kent, Ohio, to collaborate with P. Craig Russell on a new Elric series for Pacific Comics. Roy Thomas scripted our adaptation of Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné novel.

I was in the big time now.

But there was more bad news coming. A year later, I learned that my good friend Raoul Vezina had suffered a fatal asthma attack. He and I had met in my final year at college, and had collaborated on stories for New Paltz Comix.

Smilin’ Ed! Raoul Vezina’s definitive version of FantaCo’s mascot—and Gilbert’s tribute. Vezina suffered a fatal asthma attack in 1983. Gilbert’s eulogy appeared in TBG on Dec. 16, 1983.

[Art at left © Estate of Raoul Vezina; art at right © Michael T. Gilbert.]

Raoul’s signature character was comic shop FantaCo’s mascot, a wise-guy mouse named Smilin’ Ed. Raoul drew four Smilin’ Ed comics, plus short strips in The Buyer’s Guide. After his death, the Guide published my eulogy for Raoul, plus an accompanying cartoon. Another sad day.

But, on the “Elric” front, things were going well. So much so that I was offered a spot in Pacific’s Vanguard Illustrated series to keep me busy while waiting to begin a second Elric series. That’s how “Mr. Monster” was born, inspired by a long-forgotten Golden Age Canadian super-hero.

Around that time, the local paper printed a photo of Craig and me, along with a story about our recently completed Elric series.

Days later I got a call from an art teacher, Janet Clark, who also lived in Kent. She thought her middle-school kids would enjoy meeting a real live cartoonist, and asked if I’d be willing to speak to them. She sounded so cute on the phone, I couldn’t resist!

We hit it off immediately. When I discovered she was also an

aspiring writer, I suggested she could write a story about “Mr. Monster” for The Buyer’s Guide.

“Watch Out, Werewolves: Here Comes Mr. Monster!” was her first sale. It only paid $12, but she described seeing her first work in print as “thrilling!” “How many other first stories did The Buyer’s Guide publish over the years?” Other sales followed.

Spurred on by her successes, Janet soon traded art supplies for a typewriter, eventually branching into comic books.

By now, my six-issue Elric mini-series was finished, and I was planning to return, my old California stomping grounds. When I left a few months later, Janet joined me. We moved to Berkeley in 1984, and two years later Ms. Clark became Mrs. Gilbert. This year we’re celebrating our 30th together, and I couldn’t be happier. In 1987 we moved again, this time to rustic Eugene, Oregon, where I began my Mr. Monster: Origins series for Portland’s Dark Horse Comics.

Three years later, Janet began writing Disney comics, first for Disney Adventures, and then for Egmont Creative, a Denmark-based company producing stories about Donald Duck and the Disney crew for worldwide consumption. She’s been at it for 23 years now, and her work appears in over 60 different countries, for an estimated readership approaching a billion!

But her career began in The Buyer’s Guide.

Ch-ChChanges…

Paper Chase!

After Gilbert’s separation from his first wife, he moved to cheaper digs and TBG followed. The issue from Dec. 11, 1981, featured a Wally Wood tribute (seen above) some weeks after his death. It also included an ad (bottom right) for a Marvel Graphic Novel, Elric: The Dreaming City, adapted by Craig Russell and Roy Thomas. Little did Gilbert know the effect it would soon have on his career! [EC panel © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc.; Elric TM & © Michael Moorcock.]

Wherever I moved, I remained a loyal subscriber. But change was in the air. In 1983, 29-year-old Alan Light sold TBG to Krause Publications, and columnists Don and Maggie Thompson became the paper’s new editors of the re-christened Comics Buyer’s Guide.

Sloppy handwritten ads were traded for slick typesetting, perhaps

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

losing a bit of the magazine’s fannish innocence in the process.

Still, it remained indispensable reading. Throughout the years, features like Tony Isabella’s “Tony’s Tips,” Bob Ingersoll’s “The Law Is a Ass,” Martin Greim’s “Crusader’s Comments,” Liz Slaughter’s “The Bitter Half,” Peter David’s “But I Digress,” and Batton Lash’s “Wolff & Byrd” continued to entertain. And of course there were always the ads. But as time went on, I began to lose interest. The paper’s focus seemed to change. Or maybe I had.

In 1992 Mr. Monster was featured in a cover story. But even that wasn’t enough to make up for a cascade of corporate press releases, breathless articles about variant holographic covers or how best to invest in worthless comics. The new CBG still had talented, passionate creators, but it just wasn’t the same. The ’90s were a different time, and CBG was catering to a different audience. The crude, fun paper I’d fallen in love with decades earlier was long gone. Finally, after 20 years, I decided not to renew.

The Long Goodbye

The paper continued merrily along for another decade without me. Then in 2004 I read (online) that CBG would now be a thick monthly magazine sold on comic shops and newsstands. However, I rarely saw CBG on the comic store racks.

Meanwhile, louder, edgier competition from Wizard and similar magazines was chipping away at the readership. Young fans of the ’90s wanted hot artists and price guides aimed at comic investors, even if those “investments” often turned out to be fool’s gold.

CBG tried to imitate Wizard, even adding its own price guide to the mix. But the kids still preferred Wizard, while some older fans were turned off by the changes. Luckily for them, there were still Alter Ego and Comic Book Marketplace for their Golden Age fix.

Sneak Preview!

(Above:) The first article about Mr. Monster appeared in TBG on May 5, 1984, shortly before Doc’s debut in Pacific’s Vanguard Illustrated #7 (July 1984).

Janet Clark, who had just met the cartoonist (and future husband!), wrote it.

[Mr. Monster page © Michael T. Gilbert; article ©2013 Krause Publications, Inc.] (Below:) Michael and Janet Gilbert were featured in an article in Janet’s hometown paper, Ravenna, Ohio’s Record-Courier for July 7, 1991. [© the respective copyright holders.]

The Internet proved to be the final nail in the paper’s coffin.

Need news? Opinions? A thousand blogs have ‘em… free! Craving a comic? eBay and Amazon got you covered!

For decades, ads had been the financial backbone of The Buyer’s Guide, and now they were mostly gone. Once collectors could buy rare comics online, the magazine was toast.

Buyer’s Guide readers were a loyal bunch, and the revamped CBG lasted a lot longer than many predicted. But all good things must end, and end it did on March 2013 with issue 1699. I hadn’t bought a copy in years, but was still sad to see it go.

In preparing for this article, I waded through a box of TBG clippings I’d saved since the ’70s. It had been 30 years since I’d looked at them, and it was like discovering an old photo album filled with half-forgotten memories. My life and career as a young cartoonist was reflected in its yellowed pages. A more innocent time for comics was there, too, buried in the fine print.

The Comic Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom, once a vibrant young lady, is gone now. But like first love itself, the sweet memories never truly fade.

‘Till next time...

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Tony Isabella’s “Final Tips”

by Tony Isabella

A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Tony became a Marvel Comics staffer and writer in the early 1970s, after a several-year stint as a columnist in fandom. His “Tony’s Tips” and “Tony’s Back Page” (and his sometime comic strip Everett True) were regular features of CBG from very early on through issue #1699… and he had prepared the following edition for issue #1700 before he discovered that the magazine had been abruptly cancelled. Not being wasteful, he immediately ran the piece as part of his online blog, which he has quirkily titled “Tony Isabella’s Bloggy Thing”— but, happily, he didn’t object to our publishing that material in this commemorative issue of Alter Ego, as well. Before he expostulates on CBG’s sudden demise, as a bonus he’ll tell you all about G-8 and His Battle Aces….

Tony’s Tips!

[published in “Tony Isabella’s Bloggy Thing” for Monday, 01-14-13]

“Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”

—Douglas Adams.

BG reaches an impressive milestone this month with the publication of its 1700th issue. My own association with this sturdy journal goes back almost as far. Someone with a better memory than mine would be able to tell you exactly how far back, but I have to work with whatever brain cells I have.

C

I do recall I was excited when Alan Light sent me the first issue of what was then called The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom. Since becoming Clark Kent was my fall-back plan if I couldn’t work in the comics industry, I was thrilled by TBG’s newspaper-like format and its frequent publication. I immediately volunteered my services as a columnist.

assorted silliness, not unlike the “Tony’s Tips” columns I’ve been writing here for more years than I can remember. No, really, I can’t remember how many years. I hope this issue of CBG has some sort of timeline, because I’d like to know.

My current editors sometimes credit me as “CBG’s First Columnist” and I believe them because they never lie to me. It’s one of the many reasons I love them dearly. But, as I don’t have any copies of those early TBGs, including the ones with my work in them, I’m unable to confirm it for myself. If anyone out there has the issues and would be willing to photocopy those three early columns, I’d be most appreciative. We’re talking an autographed copy of my 1000 Comic Books You Must Read at the minimum.

But I digress. Again.

My friend and fellow fan Dwight Decker wrote some stuff for the first column. I can’t recall if we were planning to collaborate on a regular basis or if the concept was that I would collaborate with a different fandom friend every issue. I can’t remember if there were any collaborators on the other two installments of that short-lived feature. Once those brain cells go....

I was writing for a lot of zines in those days. A copy assistant at the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I only wrote the occasional bit for the paper and only put my name on one of those. It was a full-page article on the Green Lantern/Green Arrow “drug issues,” and it worked out pretty good. However, when I submitted a like article on the groundbreaking debut of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire, my editors couldn’t understand why they should run a second comic book piece so soon—about a year—after the first one.

I do remember why I had to stop writing the column. I landed a job at Marvel Comics, assisting Stan Lee and Sol Brodsky with the new weeklies the company was producing for the British market. I quite correctly realized that a new job in a new city wouldn’t leave me much time for fanzine writing.

I also recall recommending replacements to Alan. I suggested that he contact Don and Maggie Thompson, who were among the founders of modern-day comics fandom. I wonder how that worked out.

But I digress.

For TBG, I wrote three installments of something called “The Odd Collectors.” The title came from The Odd Couple, my favorite Neil Simon play and movie. The column was a mix of news, views, reviews, and

Tony Isabella in a recent photo.

Your Favorite Comic Book Was Probably #1001!

The cover of Tony’s hot-selling 2009 tome 1000 Comic Books You Must Read, from Krause Publications. [Art © the respective publishers; other elements ©2009 Krause Publications, Inc.]

CBG is the world’s longest-running magazine about comics. I have many good memories from my association with the publication. The best and frequently recurring one is whenever someone thanks me for recommending something in this column and the subsequent enjoyment they derive from that something. You’re welcome.

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Isabella On CBG

Tony’s Back Pages: G-8 And His Battle Aces

[Originally written for CBG #1700]

Doc Savage was my first and favorite pulp hero. I was introduced to him via a well-read Bantam paperback loaned to me by high school friend Gary Lunder. By the time Gold Key published Doc Savage #1 (Nov. 1966), I had my own well-read collection of paperbacks, purchased on nigh-weekly visits to Cleveland’s famed Kay’s Books. That solitary Gold Key issue featured writer Leo Dorfman and artist Jack Sparling’s less-than-spectacular adaptation of The Thousand-Headed Man.

A month earlier, Gold Key had published G-8 and His Battle Aces #1 (Oct. 1966). Though it barely registered on my comics radar at the time, I got a copy a year later in a trade with another pal. It was thrown in to sweeten whatever deal we were making.

G-8 was a “brother” to Doc Savage, though I didn’t learn that until later. Created by Robert J. Hogan, who wrote all 110 of his pulp-magazine adventures, G-8 was a World War I secret agent and aviator whose battles against the Kaiser sometimes included science fiction and supernatural elements. In the 1970s, Berkley Books reprinted eight of the Hogan novels. Comics legend Jim Steranko painted the first three covers, and that’s when I learned of G-8’s pulp origins.

G-8 and His Battle Aces #1 featured “G‑8 and the Secret Weapon”

by Dorfman with art by George Evans (pencils) and Mike Peppe (inks). By Gold Key standards, it was a decidedly grim and gritty thriller. Master of disguise G-8 goes behind enemy lines and amasses a modest body count while learning the secret of the terrible mystery weapon the Germans have unleashed on the allied forces. Though G-8’s true identity is not revealed in this comic book or the pulp magazines, his wing-men Nippy and Bull are both Americans.

The secret weapon is a zeppelin shaped like an enormous eagle that drops siren-equipped bombs on our trench-bound soldiers.

Dorfman’s script is good, though the finale, in which G-8 turns the zeppelin against the enemy, is surprisingly rushed given the 32page length of the story. Evans isn’t at his best here, but he does manage several effective shots of the grim G-8, the battlefields, and the zeppelin. Though my original copy is long gone, I was delighted to buy a replacement on eBay for a reasonable seven bucks. This one’s a keeper.

[A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: The following piece about the end of Comics Buyer’s Guide was written for and appeared in “Tony Isabella’s Bloggy Thing” dated Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2013. It has been slightly truncated here.]

Saying Goodbye To Comics Buyer’s Guide

Comics Buyer’s Guide, the world’s longest-running magazine about comics, had an impressive run of 1699 issues in 42 years. It was, for a long time, the comics industry’s newspaper of record and, one way or another, it was part of my life for most of its existence. The news of CBG’s demise hit me harder than I could have imagined. I had been expecting this news for years—always wondered if the next “Tony’s Tips” column would be my last—but I never expected CBG and yours truly wouldn’t get that last chance

to say goodbye to our readers and the publication. That the plug was pulled just one issue short of issue #1700 astonished me. It would have been nice to have had a grand send-off.

F+W’s cold and clinical press release was also a factor in how hard I took the news. I’ve been told this sort of thing is standard in “the business world” and I don’t doubt it. But “standard” doesn’t mean right, and it surely wasn’t right that F+W didn’t acknowledge CBG’s history and importance to the comics industry.

I Could’ve Had A G-8!

I was also concerned for CBG editors Brent Frankenhoff and Maggie Thompson, though, as Maggie was supposed to be retired, more so for Brent. However, Brent tells me the company treated him well after his two decades of service there... and Maggie tells me the people at Krause Publications have always been the most wonderful folks to work with. It seems a little nuts for me to be angry on behalf of friends who aren’t themselves angry, but whoever said I was a model of sanity?

The cover of the Oct. 1966 Gold Key comic G-8 and His Battle Aces #1-and-only. Artist unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Top all of the above with the realization that, for the first time in my four decades in comics that I can remember, I have no paying gig on my desk. If nothing else, I always had my next column for CBG to write. If only by a matter of degrees, this is sort of new territory for me. Yeah, I had a bad week.

That said, enough with the sadness already. Let’s look at all the good things CBG accomplished and how satisfying my association with the publication has been for me.

CBG boosted the careers of so many talented comics creators in its 42-year run. It informed comics fans and professionals alike in a knowledgeable and friendly manner. Week in and week out... and then month in and month out... comics readers learned of new comics and graphic novels and more. CBG celebrated the past and the present of the comics art form and industry, both in its pages and with the information it often provided to comics professionals, comics-shop owners, journalists, educators, publishers in and outside the field, and many others. It was not only the industry’s paper of record, it was also its outreach to the world outside comicdom. Everyone who participated in CBG and that outreach can be proud of what CBG accomplished in its 1699 issues.

There was a long gap between my initial contributions to the then-titled The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom and the renamed Comics Buyer’s Guide. The first thing I wrote for editors Don and Maggie Thompson was a spoof called “The Scarlotti Comics Group,” wherein I invented a Cleveland-based short-lived publisher of the 1950s and included a price guide to his handful of titles. It made Don laugh and that was all it took to make the sale....

At one point, I was writing multiple features for CBG. Every few

Tony Isabella’s “Final Tips”

weeks, I would write “I Cover the Newsstand,” in which I would take note of comics stuff in non-comics magazines. This is back when I owned and operated a comics shop and newsstand, so I had access to dozens of magazines every week.

The intros to “I Cover the Newsstand” were written in hardboiled detective style and, though I haven’t re-read any of these columns in decades, I remember enjoying writing them. They seemed popular with CBG’s readers and that once paid off for me in an unexpected way. Here’s the story...

It was early morning, around 5 a.m., and I was driving from our home in Fairlawn to my Cosmic Comics store in downtown Cleveland. I was speeding—my bad—and got pulled over by a police officer. She asked for my driver’s license. I handed it to her.

She looked at it, smiled and asked “Do you cover the newsstand?”

She was a CBG subscriber. She let me off with a warning.

Writing for the newspaper did have its perks every now and then.

Under the name “Brad Silver,” I also wrote “Book Talk.” This was a filler giving information on upcoming paperbacks and hardcovers that might be of interest to our readers....

Charmed by a turn-of-the-20th-century comic strip called The Outbursts of Everett True by A.D. Condo and J.W. Raper (1905-1927), which featured a quick-to-anger gent who does not suffer fools gladly, I wrote a comic book-centric version of the two-panel strip and talked Cleveland artist Gary Dumm, best known for his work with Harvey Pekar, to draw it. I figured it would be a one-shot, but Don and Maggie talked me into writing more of these New Outbursts of Everett True. I ended up doing hundreds of them for CBG and Movie Collector’s World, also edited by the Thompsons.

When I closed Cosmic Comics and went back to writing fulltime, I dropped out of CBG for a time. But I couldn’t stay away from two of the best editors in comics for long. I started writing “Tony’s Tips,” which originally reviewed comics-related stuff.

Reviewing actual comic books was Don’s territory, but, eventually, I started reviewing them, as well. I learned a lot from Don’s reviews, but never tried to duplicate his style. He was the king of the CBG reviews. I was an enthusiastic cheerleader and sometimes raucous court jester.

I wrote almost 800 “Tony’s Tips” columns for CBG. Sometimes I went far afield of comic books per se and wrote about real-world stuff that was important to me. When the local branch of the Christian Coalition, whom I called the “Vicious Coalition,” tried to mess with our award-

Why Don’t You Tell Us What You Really Think, Tony?

This Everett True cartoon, from the May 30, 1986, issue of CBG, was done, Tony says, “during the period when Jack Kirby was embroiled in a fight to get his art back from Marvel.” [© Tony Isabella.]

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winning library, I joined the battle. I wrote somewhere between six and a dozen columns detailing the fight for freedom in my hometown.

CBG readers loved them. Librarians all around the country started sending me fan mail. The VC threatened to sue me and, anonymously, made threats of a more physical nature.

The Medina Library would win an American Library Association award as the best library of its size. A levy for the library, which was bitterly opposed by the VC, passed by a landslide. Ultimately, the defeat broke the back of the local Christian Coalition. They have never been a force in the community since.

I cherish many things about my “Tony’s Tips” columns, but I’m going to limit myself to the big six...

Strange But True One of the Everett True strips written by Tony Isabella, penciled by Ed Wosolowski, and inked

by Gary Dumm. See the main text for the origins of Everett True. This rather typical cartoon, in which Everett True dishes out physical punishment to rude comic book fans, is from the July 5, 1985, CBG. [© Tony Isabella.]

I was able to entertain and inform tens of thousands of readers in those columns. It would be impossible to tabulate how many readers have told me how a recommendation from me led them to comics and books that are now among their all-time favorites.

I was able to draw attention to some incredibly talented creators early in their careers. When I got into comics, many of those who came before me were generous with their knowledge and time.

That meant a lot to me and it meant— and still means—a lot to be able to pay it forward.

I was able to promote quality works that might otherwise have been overlooked in the comics marketplace. I was far from the only CBG contributor doing this, but I cherish the notes of thanks I often got from creators, editors and publishers.

CBG gave me a “comics home” for decades. Writing for the magazine kept me visible and working through times when it was virtually my only connection to the industry....

Without my CBG connection, it’s unlikely I would have written 1000 Comic Books You Must Read. I’m very proud of that fun little romp through the history of the American comic book and grateful for the over-and-above guidance and support I got from Maggie Thompson and Brent Frankenhoff in bringing it to press.

Finally, and this is the biggest of the big six, I am so lucky to have made so many great friends through my writing for CBG. Some have grown up and grown old with me...and I cherish each and every one of them.

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“Who Was Who In The Four-Color Funnies” DC’s Animal House

by Michelle Nolan

A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Michelle Nolan began her fandom writing career as a compiler of major indexes of Nedor, MLJ, and Timely superhero comics. From 2005 (following the demise of Comic Book Marketplace magazine, in which her column “Nolan’s Notebook” had appeared since 1995) through issue #1699 in 2013, her “Who Was Who in the Four-Color Funnies” was a regular part of CBG. The following column, while not an “anniversary” piece as such, had been prepared for Comics Buyer’s Guide #1700, and we are grateful to her for allowing it to be printed here for the first time….

“S

ome of Superman’s best friends are squirrels!” touted a long series of house ads in early 1950s issues from DC Comics, showing the Man of Steel shaking hands with Nutsy Squirrel. Indeed, at one time DC published so many different funny-animal characters that it would have taken a super-kid to keep up with all of them, not to mention a multitude of dimes from Uncle Scrooge’s money bin to buy them all.

Dell, of course, was far and away the leader in the field of finanNolan & Nedor cially successful anthropomorphic antics Michelle Nolan, as caricatured by Golden Age artist Creig Flessel in the drawing she used for during the ten-cent era years as the masthead of her long-running of comics, which “Nolan’s Notebook” column in Comic Book expired at the end of Marketplace magazine (1995-2005).

1961. Dell, though, was [Art © Estate of Creig Flessel.] a piker when it came to creating dozens of characters over a relatively short time. Nobody, but nobody, was more prolific than DC at putting words in the mouths of just about every animal a kid could think of.

All told, DC published 726 funny animal issues from Funny Stuff #1 (Summer 1944) through 1961. By the time comic books went to a 12¢ price point, however, the only funny-animal title remaining in the DC stable was The Fox and the Crow—the strip that lingered through most of the 1960s and was always the company’s bestselling humor concept.

When my collection of DC funny-animal issues surpassed 700, I decided to have a little winter fun and create a character index, with help from the estimable comic historian-collectors Dan Stevenson and Stan Molson for the few issues I don’t have. The result of my research, as Crawford Crow (or maybe Fennimore Frog) might have said, was “stupendous and stupefying.”

I discovered there were 76 different strips, with many featuring two primary characters as foils, in those 726 issues! In the issue total, I counted “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” who was featured in 13 one-shot issues produced for the Christmas season from 1950 through 1962 (the last was a now-rare 25¢ giant). But, of course, DC merely licensed Rudolph from creator Robert L. May, so I didn’t count him as one of the 76 strips.

And if you count the regular supporting cast in those 76 strips, DC created more than 200 different funny animals! In the 1940s, when DC began six funny-animal anthology titles on a bi-monthly basis, the contents were more or less stable from issue to issue. But for about a five-year period in the 1950-1954 era, when newsstand comics were at their peak, five of DC’s six funny-animal anthologies never carried the same contents in any consecutive issues!

…But Don’t You Dare Tell Batman!

This full-page house ad ran in a number of DC comics, including in Funny Stuff #55 (July-Aug. 1950). That’s quite possibly an Al Plastino Superman shaking hands with Nutsy Squirrel, as drawn by an unidentified artist.

Thanks to Michelle Nolan & Robert Carter. [© DC Comics.]

DC’s Animal House

The exception was Real Screen Comics #1-138 from 1945-1961 (which finished as TV Screen Cartoons with #129-138). Perhaps by no coincidence, Real Screen was one of DC’s most successful titles in any genre and the only consistently monthly funny-animal title from the firm throughout most of the 1950s. All 138 issues featured “The Fox and the Crow,” “Flippity and Flop,” and “Tito and His Burrito” (which appeared under several different titles and logos, including the politically incorrect “Tito and Hees Burrito” for several years).

You always knew what you would get when you purchased Real Screen, which was a marvelous comic book indeed. If you haven’t read “The Fox and The Crow,” or “Flippity and Flop” for that matter, you have missed one of the great treats from the world of vintage funnies.

But in the 1950s, you never knew what you would get, other than the consistent lead characters, when you purchased Funny Stuff (later The Dodo and the Frog), Leading Comics (later Leading Screen), Animal Antics (later Movie Town Animal Antics, then Raccoon Kids), Funny Folks (later Hollywood Funny Folks, then Nutsy Squirrel), and Comic Cavalcade, which, like Leading Comics, had begun as a super-hero title in the 1940s.

In fact, in the 325 funny-animal issues of those five anthologies, no fewer than a staggering 157 features appeared—and this does not count single-page strips. Of course, many of those features appeared in more than one anthology. No comic book company in history ever came close to this character count in any genre with only five titles.

This is also, by the way, one reason they’re so much fun to collect. In addition, DC obviously tried to capitalize on the early television cartoon craze, but the only DC funny-animals I’ve heard of appearing on any screen were “The Fox and The Crow,” who had debuted in early-1940s theatrical cartoons from Columbia, about four years before their four-color incarnations began to cavort in the DC comic book forests. So, unlike at Dell, you’re mostly reading funny animals who appeared nowhere else.

In addition to “The Fox and the Crow,” who held forth in more than 1,000 stories in 242 issues of their own title along with Real Screen and Comic Cavalcade, plus “Flippity and Flop,” who mimicked Tweety and Sylvester in 187 different DC issues, there were four other stars. They were “Nutsy Squirrel” in Funny Folks, “The Dodo and The Frog” in Funny Stuff (from #18), “Peter Porkchops” in Leading (from #23), and “The Raccoon Kids” (in Animal Antics).

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from its very first one, Funny Stuff #1 (Nov. 1944), through the 1944-45 “business split” between DC and the affiliated AllAmerican Comics company (at which time DC and AA each listed only its own titles on inside front covers), and again after the AA line was officially absorbed by National Comics (DC) late in 1945.

In all, Mayer’s unique visions appeared in 220 stories of “Dizzy Dog,” “Doodles Duck,” and “Bo Bunny” (also including six stories of “Lil’ Chick-a-Dee,” not to be confused with Chick-fil-A!). These hilarious stories ran in staggered fashion in the anthology titles (except Real Screen) from the second half of 1950 through 1956, plus Peter Porkchops (with Mayer’s work first appearing in that title with #30 in 1954).

In 1956, Mayer began drawing entire issues of the new bimonthly Sugar & Spike and Three Mouseketeers titles, leaving him little or no time to continue his magical funny-animal work. In turn, Mayer’s funny-animal work began in 1950 after his regular bi-monthly Scribbly comic book ended with #13 in 1950 (there were two more issues of it following a hiatus of more than a year).

However, Mayer’s funny animals continued in the bi-monthly Peter Porkchops through 1957 along with one later issue, plus single stories in the final issues of The Dodo and the Frog and Nutsy Squirrel in 1957. These nine stories may have been created before 1957.

At any rate, Mayer’s prolific funny-animal output over a sixyear period—in the range of 1,000 pages over those 220 stories— was nothing short of phenomenal, especially considering he both wrote and drew all the strips. In all, Mayer’s remarkably amusing and touching comic book stories were on newsstands continually from 1948 (with Scribbly #1) through 1971 (with Sugar & Spike #98).

(He began his career in the second half of the 1930s and drew “Scribbly” and his wild entourage first for Dell and then for AllAmerican through 1944, in All-American Comics.)

There were numerous other comedic geniuses in the DC funny animal line—Jim Davis, Rube Grossman, and Otto Feuer, to name the most prolific—so the issues without Mayer’s work are also highly enjoyable. Those three usually had multiple stories in most issues, enhancing DC’s quality considerably.

But there were a dozen other significant characters who appeared in more than 50 issues but fewer than 100. Yet how many of you remember “Blackie Bear,” “Goofy Goose,” “Nip and Chip,” “The Hound and the Hare,” “Bernard the Brave,” “Roly and Poly,” “Blabber Mouse,” “J. Rufus Lion,” and “The Tortoise and the Hare”? Those nine worthies—all of whom had some pretty darned funny stories—have long been forgotten. There were, of course, the one-shot not-so-wonders, such as “Rube the Rodent” (Funny Stuff #20) and “Mike the Mole” (Comic Cavalcade #57), along with lots and lots of characters who frolicked for fewer than 50 stories, often a lot fewer, then disappeared into comic book limbo forever.

There were, however, three other such frequently appearing characters (all with 70 to 90 appearances) who will never be forgotten because they were created and drawn by the inimitable genius Sheldon Mayer: “Dizzy Dog,” “Doodles Duck,” and “Bo Bunny.” Mayer did not draw the earliest “Doodles Duck” stories for three years beginning in 1947; the notably talented Howie Post signed 21 of them. But Mayer edited all the DC funny-animal titles

It’s Good To Be The Editor!

On the inside front cover of Funny Stuff #5 (Summer 1945), editor Sheldon Mayer printed a photo of himself surrounded by his own versions of all the various features in the mag, and announced that he’d decided to draw (and maybe write?) the entire issue himself, “to get it out of my system.”

The regular artists returned in #6. [© DC Comics.]

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“Who Was Who In The Four-Color Funnies”

and Flippity and Flop in 1952 and to Peter Panda in 1953 to go along with Peter Porkchops, whose title began in 1949. More than 20% of DC’s line was devoted to funny-animals in 1953 (63 issues among 303, not counting the Rudolph annual) and 1954 (70 issues among 342). The only significant company more dependent on funny-animals was Dell, which produced 125 issues with those themes in 1953 among 351.

But DC’s funny-animal empire was soon to break up during the end of the Golden Age and the dawn of the Silver Age.

Win, Place, And show If “The Fox and the Crow” came in first in the DC anthropomorphic sweepstakes, the second and third most popular of its funny-animal comics, over the long haul, were “The Dodo and the Frog” and “Peter Porkchops.” The former are seen here in their very first cover spot, from Funny Stuff #19 (March 1947), as reportedly laid out by writer Woody Gelman, then penciled and inked by Otto Feuer. Peter Porkchops, who graduated later to his own title, made his debut in Leading Comics #23 (Feb.-March ’47), with a cover drawn entirely by Feuer. By now, Bernie Breslauer had come aboard to edit the humor comics under Mayer; after his passing circa 1948, he was succeeded

by Larry Nadle. [© DC Comics.]

Despite DC’s astounding lack of content consistency, the firm reached its funny-animal peak in the 1953-1954 period, especially with the beginning of new titles devoted to The Fox and the Crow

Comic Cavalcade, a thick 15¢ comic throughout its run, ended with #63 in 1954, and Leading Screen finished with #77 in 1955. Late in 1954, DC converted Funny Stuff, Funny Folks, and Animal Antics to The Dodo and the Frog, Nutsy Squirrel, and Raccoon Kids, respectively, but that experiment didn’t last long. All three titles staggered to three final issues apiece in 1957, and the charming children’s title Peter Panda expired in 1958. Peter Porkchops and Flippity and Flop finished with oneshot issues late in 1960, a year after their regular series ended, while Three Mouseketeers finished with two issues late that year after appearing bi-monthly for 24 issues through 1959. TV Screen Cartoons expired early in 1961.

By the time the 10¢ comic book era was over, the only DC funny-animal title left on the stands in 1962 was The Fox and the Crow with its long-running backup strip, “The Hound and the Hare.” As Crawford Crow might have said, “Foxie, I’m ever-so-proud we’re the last DC animals standing, but you have to admit this is a sad state of affairs.”

Please Note: Volumes 1 & 2 have been temporarily delayed and will be available in the near future.

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A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: One popular feature of the later CBG was the “Ask Mr. Silver Age” column presided over (i.e., written) by Craig Shutt. The following installment contains a few early paragraphs which have been added to insert what he calls “some history about my CBG work,” but otherwise the main text below is just as he wrote it for CBG #1700….

Craig Shutt.

The “Mr. Silver Age” logo has been colored for A/E by Craig Shutt. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Celebrating Super-Naughts!

Comics’ Myriad Approaches To Acknowledging Special “Anniversaries”

D

ear Mr. Silver Age,

I like when comics celebrate reaching double-0 special issues! I have two questions about them: Have comics always done that?

Did they always celebrate the same way?

Harvey D., Gotham City

Mr. Silver Age says: Double-naught issues were eagerly anticipated by fans growing up in the Silver Age and later, Harv. These comics often included special stories, text pieces, or artwork to commemorate this achievement. But that wasn’t always the case, and the ways they celebrated varied considerably. We can see that just by looking at all of the Superman-Family books from the Silver Age, a time when this acknowledgement really gained momentum.

And what better time to check out those issues than in CBG #1700?

Sadly, CBG #1699 ended up being the last issue, and we―editors, columnists, and fans alike―couldn’t celebrate the history that its double-naught number represented. Oh, bother. It wouldn’t have been my first double-naught rodeo with CBG, of course. I began writing for the periodical back in 1992, with #955 (March 6, 1992).

My articles appeared in the magazine’s regular “Powerhouse Paper” department, a huge section devoted to older comics that led off the second section. Those thick newspaper-sized issues could hold a lot of copy (and ads), but so much on one topic could strain readers’ interest. So I wrote lengthy quizzes―nearly 6,000 words!―covering a wide range of key stories and events throughout the Marvel and DC Silver Age universes.

After a little over a year of occasional articles, editors Don and Maggie Thompson found they had more small holes and fewer big holes, making it harder to fit in my contributions. So I split up the quiz I was working on into individual questions. To explain why these queries arose, I created the “Ask Mr. Silver Age” concept, with comics characters allegedly asking about that topic.

Those columns began running with a look at the Blackhawks as the “Junk-Heap Heroes” in #1020 (June 4, 1993). There could be no finer topic to show exactly what the column was going to be. The editors created a basic column header in #1209 (Jan. 17, 1997), and I

persuaded a friend, graphics artist Joe Bowlby, to design the GoGo-Checked logo that started running in #1315 (Feb. 28, 1997).

My first naught-y CBG celebration came with the triple-naught #1000, for which I wrote a quiz about DC super-heroes’ celebrations of their double-naught issues. That it didn’t appear until #1028 gives some idea of how highly my contributions were regarded. But I’m not bitter.

I continued appearing irregularly, and CBG received letters asking for more. The column moved up the charts in CBG’s annual Fan Poll, which asked readers to name their favorite features as well as comics and creators.

Maggie ultimately put this fan response to the test by coverfeaturing my column in #1360 (Dec. 10, 1999), by which time the magazine had become a weekly tabloid-sized magazine. They gave me six pages. I broke it into three articles: a one-pager on the re-use of the cover concept in The Flash #159 and #161; three pages devoted to the first (of what became annual) Mopee Awards, “honoring” three DC and Marvel comics apiece for their over-thetop goofiness; and two pages in which I delineated when the Silver Age began (Showcase #4 [Sep-Oct. 56]) and ended (Fantastic Four #102 [Sept. ’70]).

That final topic received significant fan response, especially when I subsequently laid out when the Bronze Age began (GiantSized X-Men #1 [Summer 1975]) and ended (Legends of the Dark Knight #1 [Nov. 89]). In all, I wrote 10 columns on this topic, responding to letters and further fleshing out the concept. I think I’ve even convinced a few fans of my logic.

By then, I had begun to appear (gulp) weekly. My appearances had become more regular through the early double-naught 2000s, including a second cover-featured, three-column special for the second annual Mopee Awards in #1410 (Nov. 24, 2000). With #1476 (March 1, 2002), I began appearing in every issue until (sob) #1699.

A final noteworthy moment came in late December 2003, when a collection of my early columns, titled Baby Boomer Comics, was published by Krause in a magnificent oversized, full-color trade paperback. It was a beautiful thing―but the Powers That Be

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Celebrating Super-Naughts!

couldn’t be convinced a sequel was required.

so excited they termed the issues “anniversary” celebrations, which had to confuse kids who relied on their comics for vocabulary lessons. To show the range of options, here’s how the Superman Family celebrated in the Silver Age (and slightly beyond).

So I was on board as a weekly columnist to do a Marvel-DC double-naught quiz in #1500 (Aug. 16, 2002) and another on Marvel’s super-heroes in #1600 (Jan. 2005). By that time, CBG had become a standard-sized, monthly magazine, a change that indicated how completely its news and advertising functions had been usurped by the Internet―and the beginning of the end.

I’m presenting 10 of them in rising order of being my favorites. I’m using 10 because it’s the naught-iest number available.

Which brings us to what would have been CBG #1700 and your question, Harv. Sorry for the digression. Fortunately for you, Alter Ego’s editor Roy Thomas kindly proposed producing a tribute issue to CBG, complete with some of the columns already prepared when the curtain fell at deadline time. Like this one.

In the early days, and even into the Silver Age, celebrating double-naught issues was a hit-ormiss proposition. Harvey Comics sometimes noted #100 or “anniversary” issues, as in the case of Blondie and Dagwood―but not Dick Tracy.

DC’s big cheese was less celebratory when he reached his first double-zero.

Superman #100 (Sept. 1955) featured the Man of Steel surrounded by four past covers marking the quarters (i.e., #1, #25, #50, and #75), but the stories inside didn’t mention the occasion (although one did retell his origin, a common occurrence).

Likewise, Batman #100 (June 1956) bannered the achievement and featured six past (fairly random) covers (#1, #23, #25, #47, #48, #61) but didn’t celebrate the milestone inside.

The first issue of Detective Comics to note its numbering was #400 (June 1970), which used only a banner, with no other acknowledgment. Whereas the earlier Batman #200 (March 1968) featured a special cover and a tale featuring a host of past villains.

That “gang’s all here” plot approach was often used by Marvel when its titles reached #100 (which mostly occurred after the Silver Age ended, due to their late start). Fantastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man, and Daredevil, three of the few that began with original numbering, all brought past villains together to battle the heroes, in one way or another. (Another, Sgt. Fury #100, held a Howler reunion.)

Cover art by Neal Adams & Dick Giordano. [© DC Comics.]

Sadly, its celebration left a lot to be desired.

The accomplishment rated a cover blurb, along with a “[Four Star] Special!” notation and a mention on the letters page from Gregory Kent of Goleta, California (remember that name). But the story not only didn’t celebrate this special achievement; it pretty well disregarded the super-legacy altogether.

Adventure Comics #400

Cover art by Mike Sekowsky & Dick Giordano. [© DC Comics.]

The first super-hero comic I found that noted its naught-y number was Fawcett Publications’ Whiz Comics #100 (Aug. 1948), starring Captain Marvel. It featured “The Hundred Horrors” in honor of the occasion. Captain Marvel Adventures #100 (Sept. 1949) likewise celebrated big-time, featuring a celebratory cover and a four-part story noting the Big Red Cheese’s achievement. In the tale’s final panel, he thanked his fans for their loyalty.

Action Comics #400

10. Adventure Comics #400 (Dec. ’70). [Script & art: Mike Sekowsky. Inks: Jack Abel.] This issue was celebrated as a double milestone: issue #400 and the comic’s 35th anniversary issue, counting back to its days as New Comics. It was one of the few “anniversary” issues (along with a later one we’ll note) that actually was an anniversary!

But there were other ways to celebrate these numerical milestones. Some editors became

It began with Supergirl’s foe Black Flame escaping from jail on the planet Kandor and flying to the Phantom Zone planet to pick up three bizarrely dressed phantoms: Inventor, L. Finn, and Toymaster. Proud Kryptonian names, all! Among their various traps for Kara, she was placed above gold kryptonite, which weakened her nearly to the point of death. But once she escaped, she regained her powers. Yikes. A memorable celebration to be sure, but not for the right reasons.

9. Action Comics #400 (May ’71). [Script: Leo Dorfman. Art: Curt Swan & Murphy Anderson.] This special “400th Anniversary Issue” didn’t recognize that accomplishment in any way beyond that cover line, not even a perfunctory acknowledgement on the letters page.

On the other hand, it didn’t completely ignore the super-canon, so it was a step up from its companion’s earlier #400 celebration.

And it did feature a gorilla (well, half of a gorilla) on the cover, which probably boosted sales (at least 50%).

8. Action Comics #300 (May 63). [Script: Edmond Hamilton.

Art: Al Plastino.] Sadly, this issue also provided no acknowledgement of its round number, even on the letters page, for a stirring tale headlined “Superman under a Red Sun!” The Superman Revenge Squad tricked Supes into chasing them into the far future, where the sun had become a red giant, causing him to lose his powers (d-oh!).

Trapped, he met androids of his large cast, including Mr. Mxyzptlk, Perry White, and

Action Comics #300 Cover art by Curt Swan & George Klein. [© DC Comics.]

Ask Mr. Silver Age

others. It was the only nod to his heritage―which often came up to that extent, so it wasn’t that special.

Adventure Comics #300 Cover art by Curt Swan & George Klein. [© DC Comics.]

Ironically, the issue became notorious when it won a Mopee Award in 2003 based on a plot resolution that made no sense.

When the story was reprinted in Best of DC Digest #1 (Sept.-Oct. ’79), editors tried to patch that hole by redrawing several panels, with minimal success, while leaving alone others―including the notion that anyone who said his name backward was transported to Mxyzptlk’s dimension. It wasn’t the greatest celebration.

7. Adventure Comics #300 (Sept. ’62). [Script: Jerry Siegel. Art: John Forte & Al Plastino.] The only acknowledgement of this key number came on the letters page, where Myrt Gallagher of Princeton, NY, commended the editors. They thanked Myrt “and the scores of other loyal readers who sent us Anniversary greetings,” and pointed out that the next issue of Superboy would celebrate its 100th issue with special features―leaving us wondering why they hadn’t done the same here.

Even so, the issue has become noteworthy for kicking off the ongoing series for The Legion of Super-Heroes and featuring an iconic cover replicating the style of DC’s Annuals. It’s hard to say if that was timed to the 300th issue, but it certainly made it stand out.

6. Justice League of America #100 (Aug. ’72). [Script: Len Wein. Art: Dick Dillin & Joe Giella.] This post-Silver Age issue launched one of the traditional Earth-One/Earth-Two team-ups, featuring the Seven Soldiers of Victory, so it was special in that regard. But that happened every year in some form.

The actual acknowledgement came in a unique way: The team held a big celebration of its 100th meeting, complete with a “100” cake and cameos by Elongated Man, Martian Manhunter, Snapper Carr, and Diana Prince.

Diana, Zatanna, and Black Canary were given the honor of cutting the cake, based no doubt on their expertise with kitchen utensils by virtue of being girls.

But as they lowered GL’s gigantic cake-cutter, the entire team (including special guest Metamorpho) were transported to Earth-Two, where the real party got started.

Justice League Of America #100 Cover art by Nick Cardy. [© DC Comics.]

Considering that the JLA had several two-part stories, while other adventures began without an official meeting, some gettogethers must not have been chronicled. I’ll always wonder what occurred at those.

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5. World’s Finest Comics #200 (Feb. ’71). [Script: Mike Friedrich. Art: Dick Dillin & Joe Giella.] Letter-writer Gregory Kent of Goleta, Calif. (him again!), congratulated WF on reaching 200 issues, noting that 1971 also represented the 30th anniversary of Superman and Batman’s first meeting (in AllStar Comics #7). The editors noted that it was also the 30th anniversary of WF, and, to celebrate, they teamed Superman with… Robin! He appeared on the first cover!

Meh.

The issue also featured a World’s Finest Comics #220 recurring feature in DC celebraCover art by Neal Adams. tions: a text page spotlighting [© DC Comics.] key events in the character’s career. In this case, the one-page piece featured a history of the title (since its early days as World’s Best Comics), mostly focusing on the time before the heroes teamed up in #71, as told in a round-robin discussion among Superman, Batman, and Robin.

This celebration was a big improvement over the one for WF #100 (March ’59), which didn’t even note the accomplishment on the cover.

4. Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #100 (April ’70). [Script: Robert Kanigher. Art: Irv Novick & Mike Esposito.] Batman defended Lois against charges of killing Lana Lang in this second half of a two-part story. It featured a couple of flashbacks to earlier tales to suggest that Lois might have suffered temporary insanity (which could have been proved with adventures from most issues, frankly).

On the letters page, several writers congratulated the editors, with one hoping for a big event, such as killing off “one of your minor characters, like Lana Lang.” The editors noted they’d done that very thing in #99 and were showing the consequences in #100 (spoiler alert: Lana got better).

Ironically, perennial celebrator Gregory Kent of Goleta, Calif., was represented, but he didn’t mention the anniversary!

The issue also featured a twopage spread of highlights from Lois’s adventures, three-quarters of which covered up to issue #20. Don’t infer from my implication. The final page featured short overviews of “Lois Lane’s Romances” and, to be fair to a minor character, “Lana Lang’s Romances.”

3. Superman #200 (Oct. ’67).

[Script: Cary Bates. Art: Wayne Boring.] Three letter writers (but not Gregory Kent) congratulated the Man of Steel on achieving this landmark, including one

Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #100 Cover art by Curt Swan & Murphy Anderson. [© DC Comics.]

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Celebrating Super-Naughts!

who worked at the offices of the Italian distributor of Nembo Kid (aka Superman). The editors claimed they received “thousands of congratulatory letters,” and I won’t question their math.

That appeared to be the only notice of this milestone until the end of the story. The novellength, three-part Imaginary Story envisioned Kal-El’s life if his family had been in Kandor when Brainiac shrank it (to save it from destruction). His new life included a younger brother, Knor-El.

Ultimately, Jor found a way to enlarge one man to become Earth’s champion, and he selflessly set up a competition among all Kandorian men (sorry, ladies!). The tournament ended in a tie between Kal and Knor. What are the chances?

Superman #200

Cover art by Curt Swan & George Klein. [© DC Comics.]

In the final competition, Knor surprisingly beat Kal and became Earth’s Superman! But while stopping an alien invasion, he was incapacitated. Fortunately, Kal had synthesized a tiny bit of enlarging gas and used it to go rescue his bro. But with no shrinking gas available, he was “stuck” on Earth as one of the most powerful men in the universe. Darn the luck.

So Knor stayed in America as Superman, while Kal went to Canada and became Hyperman! The editors noted that this ending served as a tribute, in the 200th issue, to Canada’s celebration of its 100th anniversary (a real anniversary!), as epitomized by its world’s fair, Expo 67, in Montreal. What a special celebration! It still makes me giggle.

2. Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #100 (March ’67). [Script: Leo Dorfman. Art: Pete Costanza.] Bannered as the “Special 100th Anniversary Issue!” this celebration featured the for-real (you know what I mean) wedding of Jimbo and his long-time flame, Lucy Lane. The only problem was the menagerie of lost loves that Jim left behind, who for some reason were not happy to see him taken off their dance cards.

There’s no accounting for taste.

The only downside to the celebration was that (spoiler alert) due to all the wacky women in her husband’s past, Lucy decided she’d take a rain check on the marriage, and it was annulled. She apparently didn’t stop to consider how she fit into the list of lunatic ladies attracted to Jim.

As icing on the cake, we got a one-page recap of highlights from Jimmy’s career, which included a few listings from Superman and World’s Finest Comics, plus shorter reviews of his “fantastic powers” and signal-watch use, plus scoops he Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #100 participated in but couldn’t write Cover art by Curt Swan & George up. There was even a midKlein. [© DC Comics.] column letter from Stanley James of Bangor, Maine, congratulating the team on reaching #100. The editors modestly replied that they’d “really knocked ourselves out” on the presentation. It showed.

1. Superboy #100 (Oct. ’62) [Script: Jerry Siegel. Art: Curt Swan & George Klein] The cover bannered this issue as “100th Issue!

Special Anniversary Features Inside!” and they didn’t skimp on that claim. The cover story dealt with Ma and Pa Kent thinking they were Jor-El and Lara and trying to rocket Superboy into space before the planet exploded. It turned out to be (spoiler alert) a cunning plan by some evil villains (the best kind), whom Superboy (of course) thwarted. But their escapades gave him a chance to relive his secret origin and bring up some key Kryptonian landmarks.

In addition to letters-page congratulations, the Special Features included a page reproducing the covers to Action #1 and Superboy #1, a reprint of the Map of Krypton from Superman Annual #1, a fascinating map showing the paths taken to Earth by Kal-El, Kara Zor-El, Krypto, and the green kryptonite that became red kryptonite, and, weirdly, a black-&-white screened reproduction of the page showing the Man of Steel’s origin from Superman #1. It was a pretty nice package.

The best reaction came from the three Legion lasses who had pretended to fight for Jim’s affection in SPJO #76 (Apr 64) to make Lucy jealous (without Jim’s knowledge). Realizing they allegedly still loved the poor sap, they put on stirring performances expressing their heartbreak. Duo Damsel got to do it twice.

The worst reaction came from the 5th-dimensional Miss Gzptlsnz, whose crush on Jimbo didn’t work out so well in SPJO #65 (Dec 62).

She concocted a cunning plan using a magical lipstick and watch (which she presented to the newlyweds in the guise of Supergirl). When the two smooched, the combination of enchanted trinkets transformed Superman into a giant pink super-mole. Oh, how I wish I had made that up.

Needless to say, much super-mayhem ensued.

As with many things, double-naught celebrations have changed since the Silver Age. If nothing else, publishers with big marketing departments don’t see many of their comics reach #100, as the temptation to ring up big sales with a new #1 long before that milestone is achieved is too compelling.

Those Silver Age comics indicate how varied the celebrations might be for the rare comic that achieves a double-naught “anniversary” today.

CBG fans can take solace in the thought that the magazine’s closing saved them from reading about editor Brent Frankenhoff’s hallucinogenic dream in which he battled all of his major foes (i.e., his contributors).

Superboy #100 Cover art by Curt Swan & John Forte. [© DC Comics.]

Known to fans worldwide as “Mr. Silver Age,” Craig Shutt waxed nostalgic about comics of old in Comics Buyer’s Guide from 1992 to 2013. He can still be reached at: craigshutt@ameritech.net.

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attached. Before, I could write however much I felt like, producing thousands of words about whatever. The new “BID” generally was not supposed to wander much above seven hundred words. This tended to be somewhat frustrating.

But my progressive disenchantment with the format was only part of the problem. The main thing that nagged at me was the increasing feeling that, as far as the world was concerned, it had simply become unimportant.

Why? Because no one was talking about it.

I don’t know. The simplest explanation is that after a quarter of a century writing a weekly/monthly opinion column, I simply didn’t have anything interesting to say anymore.

The Last Column

by Peter David

A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Peter David, who generally referred to himself modestly at the end of his “But I Digress” columns as a “writer of stuff,” is one of the most accomplished scripters in comic books’ recent decades, with acclaimed runs on The Incredible Hulk and various other series. I suppose this isn’t technically a column done for Comics Buyer’s Guide #1700… but it could well have been. We very much appreciate Peter, who is recovering nicely from a stroke (we ran into him walking around the San Diego Comic-Con, which is a trial to the fittest), taking the time to write this piece for the many fans of his long-running column….

I

was thinking of quitting.

Seriously. I was planning to retire “But I Digress.”

Personally, I think the more likely is the way the venue of opinion columns and fan feedback had changed during the intervening years.

Once upon a time, CBG was a hotbed of constant controversy.

Interviews, columns, letters from both pros and fans generated incessant disputes. Once upon a time, refusing to sign one’s name to one’s opinions generated a mass of hostile response; now it’s pretty much standard procedure as anonymous fans spout off about whatever’s bothering them.

Furthermore, no one has to wait a week, or two weeks, or longer to see their responses made public. Once upon a time, disputes in the pages of CBG could take weeks to play out. Now it happens in days, sometimes hours.

It used to be that I would write columns and it would prompt responses from just about everyone. Todd McFarlane felt compelled to challenge me to a debate over it. One column about the need for a pro-oriented convention called “Pro/Con” resulted in the convention actually

It had already gone on far longer than I had ever expected it to. After all, it first launched in July of 1990 and, like most projects in my life that wound up running years, I figured that it would last six months. Tops. And yet here we were, twenty-three years later, and I was still going.

The column used to be weekly, of course. Then again, so was Comics Buyer’s Guide, so naturally I had to remain consistent with the publication frequency. Then, in 2004, the frequency of the magazine was cut back to monthly and the publication was reformatted into an actual magazine rather than a newspaper. The change was made to try and help the publication survive, and since it lasted another nine years, I suppose it’s a qualified success in that regard.

The new format also meant changes for “BID.” I was no longer allowed to write about anything political. Or movies or television. Everything was supposed to be comic book related. It wasn’t as if I had an aversion to comics, but “BID” was always extremely free-ranging. I would talk about whatever the hell was on my mind at the time, regardless of the topic. I’d like to think that’s part of what helped the column’s longevity: You never knew what you were going to get when you flipped to the back page.

There was also a fairly steady word limit

Peter David & Friend A photo of Peter at a recent San Diego ComicCon… and a milestone in his (and comics’) life, the cover of The Incredible Hulk #331 (May 1987), the first issue written by Peter, who took Ol’ Greenskin in a wild new direction starting with turning him gray again! Pencils by Steve Geiger, inks by Jim Sanders III. The logo above was colored for A/E by Larry Guidry.

[Cover © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

72

But I Digress...

occurring. An open letter to Joe Quesada about increasing the price of Captain Marvel resulted in an eventual promotional endeavor called “U-Decide!” People constantly responded and my P.O. box was frequently filled with letters.

Now I hardly ever receive letters. Pros hardly, if ever, see anything worth commenting upon. It seemed to me, quite simply, that no one really gave much of a damn anymore. Attention had drifted from the printed word to the Internet. Fans are far more interested in talking with each other than with pros. Indeed, I walked away from Comic Book Resources because I was sick of fans deliberately trying to provoke me, and some proudly took credit for my defection.

It simply seemed that “BID” had outlived its usefulness. Yet I kept with it because, even after all these years, people would still come up to me at conventions and tell me that “BID” was the first thing they read in the publication. I didn’t want to reward that degree of dedication with quitting.

And then the magazine quit me. One day it was there, and the next, gone. Somehow I figured that, should that ever happen, I would get some sort of advance notice. But that didn’t happen. I got an e-mail that said they were done, and that was pretty much it. Somehow, in all the ways and all the times that I imagined bringing the column to a close, that was never one of the ways.

Then Roy gave me the opportunity to write this last installment.

So…what to say? What to say?

I suppose I should thank Don and Maggie Thompson. Years ago they ran a letter from an unnamed fan asking if I could start producing a weekly opinion column. In the intervening years, I never found out who that was. But if Don and Maggie hadn’t been open to it, “BID” would never have happened. Eventually Brent Frankenhoff took over the editing responsibilities and did a fine job under oftentimes less than ideal circumstances.

I want to thank my wife, Kathleen, for being an interested audience and letting me read my columns (including this one) to her before sending them in. And I should thank my daughters―Shana, Gwen, Ariel, and Caroline―for not bitching at me as the details of their lives were described for strangers.

I guess that’s the most important thing about this column. It has served as a substitute for therapy. Instead of going to a therapist on a weekly basis to tell him or her about what’s on my mind, I would have those same conversations with my fans. At one convention someone came up to me and commented about something going on in my personal life. When I asked how they knew about it, they said, “I read about it in your column.” That’s how much a part of my life the column had become.

Sure, I have other means of imparting my opinions: my blog, Twitter, Facebook. Still, I’m going to miss my column. When something has been your touchstone for nearly half your life, it would be crazy not to.

Nothing. Not really. It’s been twenty-three years. I’ve said all I have to say.

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A quarter of a million records, covering the careers of people who have contributed to original comic books in the US. Good Knight!

Don Rosa drew this Arthurian TBG cover, years before achieving fame writing and drawing stories starring Donald Duck and crew. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert.

[Art © Don Rosa.]

Goodguy TM & ©2013 the Estate of Alan Jim Hanley.

Artwork by Mark Lewis [marklewisdraws.com].

74

“Good Garbage!”

“Goodguy” Artist ALAN JIM HANLEY & “The Limbo League Crimes”

lan Jim Hanley’s personality and ardent affection for the Golden Age of Comics (and for Captain Marvel, in particular) was unashamedly translucent within his mirthful, good-natured comic strips produced for numerous ’60s-’70s fanzines—predominantly found inside the pages of The Buyer’s Guide for Comics Fandom and his own magnificent self-published Comic Book.

A

I enjoyed an all-too brief correspondence with Hanley before meeting him at a 1979 convention in Minneapolis. The affable and amiable artist—with his omnipresent pipe and array of drawing utensils bulging from his shirt pocket—was as open and gracious as his Captain Marvellike creation, Goodguy.

(Notably, another important individual from the Chicago comic fan contingent, Bernie McCarty, met with Hanley one early-’70s Sunday afternoon to figure out a way to revive the old Captain Marvel Club of their youth—a meeting which eventually materialized into the creation of… FCA!)

An article on Hanley by John G. Pierce was featured back in A/E #48 (May 2005). In this issue—before re-presenting for the first time in full color a complete “Goodguy” adventure (reprinted from Chuck Fiala’s FVP #5, 1972)—we honor the man and his talents with these earnest declarations from a handful of Hanley devotees. —P.C. Hamerlinck

My most vivid personal memory of Jim Hanley is watching him eat his first lobster at age 40. The year was 1979 and he had driven down to the TBG offices in his VW van to visit me for the first and only time. I took him to an upscale restaurant to treat him and to thank him. When he saw lobster listed on the menu, he mentioned he had never tasted it. I convinced him to order it, and I still remember his almost childlike delight when it arrived.

Jim was the most prolific TBG artist. His first contribution was the cover of issue #21 (Sept. 15, 1972), and for the next eight years I was pleased and honored to be in a position to pay him and distribute his material to a wide fan audience. Jim was a positive, upbeat, and generous man, which comes through in his work. He took great pleasure creating his universe. —Alan Light

gious—both in person and through his great fanzine Comic Book.

It’s no wonder then that I dedicated the first issue of my fanzine Maelstrom (published in 1974) to Hanley. —Russ Maheras

In a just world, A.J. Hanley would have had the opportunity to both write and draw Captain Marvel. Certainly, with his tales of Goodguy, Hanley showed that he understood the essence of Captain Marvel, while not being totally tied to the past; his earlier stories, at least, and with a little tweaking, could have been right at home as part of the CM canon. Alas, ours is a world in which our favorite features are corporately owned… a world which is inimical to the type of personal vision that was enjoyed and employed by Hanley. Fortunately, he found his niche in the world of fanzines where, in his own world (what today might be called the “Hanleyverse”), both nostalgia and social consciousness sprang forth in pleasant guises. —John G. Pierce

When I was about 15 years old, I was already an Alan James Hanley fan by the time I first met him. I loved everything about Hanley’s characters, stories, and artwork; every issue of his fanzine Comic Book was an absolute treasure. For a ’60s kid eager to know anything he could know about the Golden Age of Comics, Hanley’s characters were especially appealing because they were based on many yet-to-be revived Golden Age heroes. His stories weren’t completely straight, nor were they totally humorous: they were a wonderful combination of both, usually with a timely moral, commentary, or poignancy.

As a person, Jim Hanley was Goodguy… a warm-hearted, very accessible human being, with a strong moral character, and a great sense of humor. I still miss him, and I still regard his body of fanzine work as classics—every bit as important to me as anything that ever appeared in “real” comics.

Maybe more so.

—Jim Engel

Jim always encouraged me in my fanzinecreation endeavors, supplying original comics and information about reliable local printers.

For many of us, Jim Hanley was the local expert on drawing comics and cartoons. In the nomenclature to that era’s fandom in the Windy City, Jim was a “big-name.” —Chuck Fiala

I first met Alan “Jim” Hanley circa 1970 while buying comics out of Joe Sarno’s basement on the north side of Chicago.

Hanley was a talented, prolific artist whom all of us younger cartoonist wannabes in the area looked up to.

Hanley mentored me and other Chicago-area artists in the art of self-publishing, and his fanzine-publishing enthusiasm was conta-

Must Be “Bring Your Daughter To Work Day” Alan Jim Hanley at the drawing board with his daughter Kim in Chicago, 1974. Also seen is his cover for TBG #71 (12-1-74). Photo & cover provided

by Russ Maheras. [Art © Estate of AJH.]

“Good Garbage!”

75

Mark Lewis, who also drew and colored the cover of this edition of FCA, rendered this Hanley story, “The Limbo League Crimes,” into color for the first time ever. It was no trick for Mark to identify the three Golden Age heroes featured in the splash panel on this page: “They’re Robotman; Target (of Target and the Targeteers); The Guardian.” [Robotman & Guardian TM & © DC Comics; other art & story © Estate of Alan Jim Hanley.]

76

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Of panel 3 above, Mark writes: “I dodged the question of who’s who emerging from the comics by going monochromatic on all these ‘ghosts.’ [Re panel 4, l. to r.:] “Volto from Mars; Atoman; Hoppy the Marvel Bunny; Captain Tootsie; Captain Midnight; Funnyman; Green Lama; Golden Age Atom.” [Re panel below that:] “Bulletman, Star-Spangled Kid, Spy Smasher, Guardian again, and (most likely) Hangman.” Of the bottom-left panel, Mark feels this may be a Hanley creation. He says that “John Pierce believed [the guy in panel 6] is Hanley’s own ‘futuristic’ version of Captain Midnight called Captain Thunder (before he knew CT was CM’s original name).” [Bulletman, Star-Spangled Kid, Guardian, Spy Smasher, Shazam bunny TM & © DC Comics; Hangman TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.; Funnyman TM & © Estates of Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster; everything else © Estate of Alan Jim Hanley.]

“Good Garbage!”

Mark writes of panel 4, above: “Again, Guardian and Target (in the background), with Robotman and Target in panel 9.”

[Guardian & Robotman TM & © DC Comics; other art & story © Estate of Alan Jim Hanley.]

77

78

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

In panel 5, Mark identifies: “The Black Terror; Captain Flag (over his shoulder); a character I can’t ID whom I took to be maybe a Hanley amalgam of Blue Beetle and Skyman; Bulletman; the Golden Age Daredevil; and another unidentifiable character who looked like he might be a Hanley riff on Hangman; Air Wave; and Capt. Tootsie (whew!).” [Bulletman & Air Wave TM & © DC Comics; Hangman TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.; other art & story © Estate of Alan Jim Hanley.]

“Good Garbage!”

79

Of the character introduced in panel 1, Mark Lewis scribes: “If you don’t know who this is …!” In panel 2, from l. to r.: “Unidentified character; Guardian; Batman (?); Black Diamond; Spy Smasher; Captain Marvel; another unidentified character (in background); Volto from Mars: Golden Age Atom.” Personally, A/E’s editor suspects that “Batman” is really the Holyoke Cat-Man. Of panel 5, Mark writes: “Plastic Man (slugging Goodguy in the back of the head!); Golden Age Atom in the foreground; and an unidentified character.” [Guardian, Spy Smasher, Shazam hero, Atom, Batman (?), Plastic Man TM & © DC Comics; everything else © Estate of Alan Jim Hanley.]

80

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Mark’s IDs: “Upper row [l. to r.]: Mary Marvel, Green Lantern; Black Terror; Miss America; Plastic Man. [Next row:] Fighting American; original Daredevil; Guardian. [Next row:] Capt. Midnight: Robotman; Crimebuster; and you-know-who! [Next row:] Unidentified Hangman type; another unidentified hero; and Hanley’s Captain Thunder (with a visor pulled down over his eyes this time). In the lower left corner is Black Cat, and I decided the robot that Dr. Sin is working on is based on The Scarlet Nemesis…. Funny thing is, the robot duplicates in Hanley’s story work as a commentary on the state of super-hero comics now. And I like the fact that Goodguy spends most of his time looking to see that no one gets hurt, and property isn’t damaged unnecessarily… very different from most so-called heroes now!” [Shazam heroes, Green Lantern, Plastic Man, Guardian, Robotman TM & © DC Comics; Hangman TM & © Archie Comic Publications; Fighting American TM & © Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby; Miss America TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other heroes TM & © the respective trademark and copyright holders; other elements © Estate Alan Jim Hanley.]

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DENNY O’NEIL’s Silver Age career at Marvel, Charlton, and DC—aided and abetted by ADAMS, KALUTA, SEKOWSKY, LEE, GIORDANO, THOMAS, SCHWARTZ, APARO, BOYETTE, DILLIN, SWAN, DITKO, et al. Plus, we begin serializing AMY KISTE NYBERG’s groundbreaking book on the history of the Comics Code, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), Mr. Monster, BILL SCHELLY and more!

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Golden Age “Air Wave” artist LEE HARRIS discussed by his son JONATHAN LEVEY to interviewer RICHARD J. ARNDT, with rarely-seen 1940s art treasures (including mysterious, never-published art of an alternate version of DC’s Tarantula)! Plus more of AMY KISTE NYBERG’s exposé on the Comics Code, artist SAL AMENDOLA tells the story of the Academy of Comic Book Arts, FCA, Mr. Monster, and more!

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