Alter Ego #144

Roy Roy T Thomas homas’ Ace Ace Comics Comics F Fanzine anzine

ACES HIGH!

MAGNO • LASH LIGHTNING THE RAVEN • UNKNOWN SOLDIER VULCAN • THE FLAG • MR. RISK CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS

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No.144 January 2017

The Far-Flying Heroes of Golden Age

ACE COMICS!

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RRIOSR BILLR AHGA E EDIT

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82658 00058

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SILVE EY & OF GOLD K ICS! KING COM PLUS: FCA, YPT, COMIC CRDOM COMIC FANE, ARCHIV & MORE!

Vol. 3, No. 144 / January 2017 Editor Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck J.T. Go (Assoc. Editor)

Comic Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

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

Proofreaders Rob Smentek William J. Dowlding

Cover Artists

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 or Apps. 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. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE 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 within our Apps and at

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B. Currie (colorist unknown)

With Special Thanks to: Bill Harris Heidi Amash Hermes Press Richard J. Arndt Larry Houston Mark Arnold Alan Hutchinson Alberto Becattini Douglas Jones Rod Beck (“Gaff”) Allen Bellman William B. Jones, Jr. John & Friedel Jim Kealy Benson Adele Kurtzman Earl Blair, Jr. Art Lortie Roy Bonario Mark Lewis Jay Boyar Richard Lieberson Chris Boyko Jim Ludwig Robert Brown Doug Martin Frank Brunner Robert Menzies Nick Caputo Mark Carlson-Ghost Mike Mikulovsky Patrick Moreau Shaun Clancy Brian K. Morris Comic Book Plus Mark Muller (website) Bill Pearson Comics Kingdom Matthew Reynolds Blog (website) Rip Jagger’s Dojo Chet Cox (website) Brian Cremins Charlie Roberts Craig Delich David Saunders Michaël Dewally Eric Schumacher Digital Comics Museum (website) Jeff Taylor Dann Thomas Shane Foley Maggie Thompson Stephan Friedt Gerry Turnbull Janet Gilbert Dr. Michael J. Grant Geisman Vassallo Grand Comics Database (website)

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Gary Brodsky

Contents

Writer/Editorial: Change And Hope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Coming Up Aces!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Mark Carlson-Ghost writes of Ace Periodicals’ comics line—its heroes and (esp.) its villains!

From Dell—To Gold Key—To King—With The New York Times In Between! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Bill Harris tells Richard Arndt about editing—and writing—for three 1960s comics companies!

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Michael T.: The Fanzine Years (Part 3). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Fresh out of college in ’74, Michael T. Gilbert faced the greatest horror of all—the workplace!

Comic Fandom Archive: Earl Blair, Jr., Remembers G.B. Love & Houston Fandom. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 The 7th chapter of Bill Schelly’s salute to the legendary editor/publisher of RBCC.

re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 69 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #203 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 P.C. Hamerlinck presents Brian Cremins on Captain Marvel & his controversial pal Steamboat.

On Our Cover: We really didn’t have that much choice about the matter. The only illustrations that would telegraph up front the contents and feel of early-’40s super-hero comics published by Ace Periodicals would be one lifted from the cover of an issue of Four Favorites. But which one?

Publisher John Morrow and I finally settled on that of FF #4 (March 1942), which featured large figures of four major heroes (The Unknown Soldier, Lash Lightning, Magno, and The Raven) and one kid sidekick (Davey). It’s signed by the artist who has been identified as “B. Currie,” of whom little is known. Ye Editor has read in one place that it was a pen name of artist Harry Anderson, but we’ve never seen any confirmation of that—so “B. Currie” it is! See more of his and others’ work on the colorful Ace covers in this issue’s first offering. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Above: Sy Barry’s cover for The Phantom #22 (May 1967) was done for King Comics editor Bill Harris, who also wrote the issue’s tale of The Ghost Who Walks—one of the first costumed heroes in the history of comic strips, let alone of comic books. Barry was then the long-running strip’s artist; Bill Lignante drew the story inside. More about Harris’ work for King and two other comics companies in this issue! [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.] Alter EgoTM is published 6 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.

Sixt-issue subscriptions: $65 US, $102 Elsewhere, $29.70 Digital Only. 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.

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writer/editorial

I

Change And Hope

’ll have to let this issue’s feature articles—and our regular and much-acclaimed departments—pretty much speak for themselves this time around.

Well, maybe I’ll say just a few words about them up front...

Mark Carlson-Ghost’s well-researched and spellbinding history of Ace Periodicals and its decade-and-a-half-lived comics line shines a spotlight on a company that in general has been little noted nor long-remembered, but which nonetheless carved out an intriguing identity for itself on the color-splashed newsstands of two-thirds of a century ago.

Richard Arndt has conducted a gem of an interview with Bill Harris, who in the 1960s was an editor for three comics companies too rarely covered in these pages: Dell, Gold Key, and King.

As for Michael T. Gilbert on his fanzine years, Bill Schelly with the latest segment of his coverage of major 1960s-70s fanzine editor/publisher G.B. Love, and P.C. Hamerlinck and Brian Cremins dealing with the time when racial relations played a prominent role in the legend of the original Captain Marvel—well, let’s just say I’m proud of each and every one of ’em, as always.

And, now that I don’t have to needlessly ballyhoo the quality of this issue’s colorful contents, I can spend the rest of this half-page on the format change being made re Alter Ego… effective with our very next issue.

For the past few years, I’ve found myself increasingly hardpressed to devote the time to Alter Ego that I want to. This is partly because of the two humongous books I’ve been writing for the German publisher Taschen—2014’s massive 75 Years of Marvel: From the Golden Age to the Silver Screen, and a forthcoming tome on the career of Stan Lee. Those duties have been on top of my work with Stan on the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip, for Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., on a trio of weekly strips for that entity’s website,

on a series of “Roy Thomas Presents” comic book reprint volumes for PS Artbooks in the UK, on the occasional article or introduction for a book or The Hollywood Reporter or whomever... and even writing an actual comic book now and again. Plus, oh yeah… did I forget to mention that I’ve been happily married for well over a third of a century to a ravishing and otherwise level-headed redhead who for some unfathomable reason would like to see more of me than she does?

The problem, by and large, has been the eight-times-a-year schedule I’ve been trying to maintain on A/E, as a whimsical salute to DC’s eight-times-a-year “monthlies” back in the day. The bimonthly issues that took up approximately half of each year weren’t that much of a problem—but, in the first half of every annum, I’d find myself putting together an 84-page issue (counting covers) each and every month… with an inflexible deadline every thirty days. In the end, something had to give.

So, in concert with wife Dann and publisher John Morrow, I worked out a compromise that I hope will keep everyone reasonably happy.

Beginning with our very next issue, which celebrates the 40th anniversary of Marvel’s Star Wars comic that debuted in early March of 1977, Alter Ego will become a straight bimonthly—but with 100 pages (again, counting covers) in each full-color, slickpaper issue, which will cost just $1 more than the current edition.

That’ll mean slightly fewer pages per year that I (and of course my collaborative cohorts) will need to produce… but it’ll mean that deadlines will now always be 60 days apart instead of often just 30. Hopefully, that won’t make too much difference to you… but I assure you, as I chalk up 76 years on this planet, it’ll make a helluva lot of difference to me!

See you in sixty! And then sixty more… and then sixty more…!

Bestest,

STARTING NOW! GES EACH ISSUE 100 PA !

LY TH & BI-MON

COMING IN FEB.

145

#

THE SECRET ORIGIN OF MARVEL’S

STAR WARS

COMIC BOOK ADAPTATION! • Cover by HOWARD CHAYKIN, featuring his 1976 Marvel creation Monark Starstalker! s, Inc. Art TM & © Marvel Character

• Writer/editor ROY THOMAS tells RICHARD ARNDT the full, unfettered story behind Marvel’s 1977 four-color comics adaptation of the STAR WARS film—boldly going beyond what’s been previously revealed! Also—new interviews with artists HOWARD CHAYKIN, RICK HOBERG, & BILL WRAY—and some truly rare STAR WARS-related art!

• Plus—FCA spotlights “Fawcett & African Americans,” Part 2—MICHAEL T. GILBERT explores comics’ jazz connections—BILL SCHELLY’s finale of A/E’s tribute to G.B. LOVE—& MORE!!

TwoMorrows.

The Future of Comics History.

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3

Coming Up ACES! A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

by Mark Carlson-Ghost

I

t was the summer of 1940. No one could deny that Superman was flying high or that The Human Torch was catching fire in more ways than one. More than a few kids were whispering “Shazam!” on their way to school, just in case there was a little leftover magic in the air.

Pulp specialists like Fiction House, Standard/Nedor, and Street & Smith had already placed their chips on comic books as the next big thing in the lower echelons of the publishing domain. But one publisher was holding back. He had a reputation for being a bit conservative and, yes, a little cheap. His name was Aaron A. Wyn. His company, when he finally took the leap in June, was known as Ace. Perhaps it’s this late entry, and the relatively small number of super-hero titles that Wyn produced, that account for the historical neglect his company has suffered. It surely isn’t that his comic books were boring. Magno, Lash Lightning, The Unknown Soldier: these were elemental forces devoted to confronting evil. Half of Wyn’s heroes didn’t even bother with dual identities, with so many fiendish villains to be fought. No time to waste tearing free of unnecessary civilian guises.

And what villains they were, wildly colorful and extremely deadly! To note but one example, the maniacal Clown tried to dissect his arch-enemy alive to learn the secret of his magnetic power. These bad men turned on each other as easily as on the heroes. Ace villains were often legendary figures of horror: The Mummy, The Were-Wolf, and a Japanese vampire known only as Drako-Saki. Ace’s Vulture, Toad, and Professor Octopus preceded their more famous Marvel namesakes by decades.

The Ace line-up of comic books may not have always been the best-written or the best-drawn, but the heroes and villains are well worth revisiting. And Ace’s output during the 1950s, long after the costumed-hero craze had crashed, include some forgotten gems. Now that most issues of the Ace family of comic books are available on-line for interested readers, a detailed assessment of their output is long overdue.

If little has been written about the origins of these characters, even less has been said about the publisher and editorial team that oversaw them. The article that follows is the result of a fair amount of digging and a little educated speculation. The result is the first extensive history of Ace Periodicals, its comic books, and how they came to be.

A.A. Wyn & The Pulps

Aces Full (Above:) The Ace comics symbol, as it appeared from beginning to end of the company’s existence—and future Mad artist/writer Dave Berg’s cover for the company’s Four Favorites #5 (May 1945).

The various heroes who shared the Ace covers often seemed to be sharing a very Justice Society-like adventure… but inside, there was nary even a two-hero team-up in sight. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [© the respective copyright holders.]

A.A. Wyn Pulp, comics, & paperback publisher, 1898-1967. Thanks to David Saunders & www.pulpartists.com

A.A. Wyn may have been cautious, but he was hardly stupid.

Born Aaron Weinstein in 1898, Wyn (occasionally spelled Wynn)

arrived at pulp publishing through a rather circuitous route. Time magazine had this to say about him in a Sept.

16th, 1935, article entitled “Pulp Pride”: “Aaron A. Wyn, a strapping six-footer… has been a newshawk on the Pacific Coast, a schoolteacher in Idaho, a cowhand in Wyoming, an able seaman on freighters, a hobo, a writer.” According to Time, Wyn first stuck his toe in the pulp magazine business circa 1925, soon becoming an editor for Dell Magazines.

Circa 1930, Wyn—only 32—jumped at the opportunity to become a publisher in his own right. Harold Hersey had founded

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

Donald A. Wollheim would later helm Ace’s paperback science-fiction line—and see an example of his innovative “Ace Doubles” on p. 26. In the late 1960s, he would found DAW Books, which became a major SF paperback publisher. Above is a detail from a circa-1930s photo that appeared on the site thewaythefutureblogs.com. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Magazine Publishers two years earlier but had run into trouble with his financial backers. The backers were looking for a new man to lead what still seemed to be an operation with considerable potential for profit.

They enlisted Wyn. By 1935, when the Time article ran, Wyn was running a booming business, publishing titles as varied as Sky Birds, Western Aces, Ten Detective Aces, Secret Agent “X,” Spy Stories, and Love Fiction Monthly. Wyn’s wife Rose served as one of his editors from almost the beginning, as did a young fellow who became well known in science-fiction circles, Donald A. Wollheim.

How did Wyn come to the attention of a national news magazine? By writing an “eminently newsworthy” letter to The New York Times in defense of pulp fiction. The Times had run a rather desultory editorial regarding the medium. Wyn noted that “the story’s the thing.

You’re Aces With Us, A.A.!

A pulsating potpourri of early Ace pulp-mag covers: Sky Birds (Sept. 1931)… Western Aces (Sept. ’35)… Ten Detective Aces (April ’38)… Secret Agent “X” (date unknown)… Love Fiction Monthly (Sept. ’35). Wyn surely would’ve named his aviation pulp Aces High, if there hadn’t already been a pulp or two with a similar title. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Good writing never has spoiled a wellplotted pulp story, but it never made a bad one good.” Wyn valued fast-paced plotting above all else.

Well, perhaps not above everything….

Wyn had a reputation for being stingy in the extreme. Many years later, during the 1960s, the author of a Man from U.N.C.L.E. paperback novel played a clever prank on his employer. David McDaniel had the first letters of the chapter titles in his book’s table of contents spell out “A.A. Wyn is a tightwad.”

Fred Gardener Editor of the early Ace pulp magazines. Courtesy of David Saunders & www.pulpartists.com

The aforementioned Wollheim worked for Wyn for decades, overseeing many of his pulp magazines and later the sciencefiction division of his paperback line. Wollheim painted a more nuanced but still sharply delineated description of Wyn after his death in 1967: “Aaron Wyn, like many writers, was basically a shy man; most of his education had come from his own reading, and he was confident only of his own judgment…. He was a man to be respected, of high intelligence, undoubted literary ability within strict limits, but always a tough, opinionated businessman for whom few ever acquired a warm affection.”

Coming Up Aces!

5

a story and villain lifted from a 1934 tale from Secret Agent “X,” another Wyn/Ace pulp. A master of disguise, The Phantom Fed was a less dynamic version of the far more successful original. Wyn and his art editor, Fred Gardener, encouraged early writers to borrow freely from pre-existing Ace pulp-mag plots in an effort to reduce costs. Trost speculates that the names of the pulp heroes were changed to avoid paying the original writers royalties. But since the original author was occasionally credited, it seems equally likely that Wyn and Gardener felt the need to modify their pulp heroes for a younger comic book readership.

Other heroes appearing in Sure-Fire #1 were rather nondescript. The Raven, an otherwise unremarkable masked mystery man, distinguished himself only by being a special friend of the poor. Rounding out the line-up, Marvo the Magician barely distinguished himself from the newspapers’ Mandrake by having a monkey named Tito for an assistant instead of a muscle-man named Lothar. Hap Hazard, a juvenile adventurer, was played mostly for laughs.

Wyn’s second effort, Super-Mystery Comics, appeared on the newsstands a scant month after Sure-Fire. Its lead hero, Magno, master of magnetism, emerged full-blown, with neither an origin nor a secret identity to slow him down. “Mysterious and mighty,

Squeezing The Pulps Two of Ace’s early pulp heroes—who’d have their adventures translated in one way or another into Ace’s comics line—were Captain Hazzard (a Doc Savage imitation who starred in a single 1938 issue) and the masked “Moon Man,” who moonlighted in 38 stories in Ten Detective Aces. Artists unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Wyn’s experiences during his younger years, if Time and his own self-report are to be trusted, may have given him good reason to be cautious with his money. For an established publisher of pulp magazines, his entry into comic books was rather late in the game.

When Wyn finally gave the green light for the enterprise, he appears to have entrusted many of the details to his longstanding art editor, a fellow named Fred Gardener (not to be confused with “Zatara” artist/creator Fred Guardineer). In those early years, Wyn would reserve the honor of being listed as editor for himself.

The Early Comic Books Wyn started his comic book division with Sure-Fire Comics, cover-dated June 1940. Sure-Fire starred a multi-powered superhero named “Flash Lightning.” (His first name was generally put in quotation marks in the logo.) Flash was able to use the power of lightning to fly really fast and send forth bolts of electricity, all powers granted him by an ancient Egyptian mystic known only as the Old Man of the Pyramids. His first opponent, The Phoenix, along with his nefarious schemes, was directly borrowed from 1938’s one-and-only issue of Captain Hazzard, a pulp magazine also published

by Wyn through Magazine Publishers, Inc., which bore an “Ace” logo on its Jim Mooney cover. Pulp historian Mark Trost notes By the year this pic was that, with the exception of the featured taken, the artist had hero, the comics story was a fairly established himself on faithful, if truncated, adaptation.

Another feature in that first issue of Sure-Fire, “X, The Phantom Fed,” starred

features like “Batman,” “Supergirl,” and “Amazing Spider-Man.”

He’s Got A Train To Catch!

Top-notch “Lash Lightning” splash page from Lightning Comics, Vol. 2, #4 (Dec. 1942). Art by Jim Mooney; scripter unknown—after Flash had changed his first name to Lash. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

A Sure-Fire Thing!

The cover of Ace’s first four-color entry—Sure-Fire Comics, Vol. 1, #1 (June 1940), by an unidentified artist—surrounded by three splashes from that issue: “Flash Lightning” (script by Robert Turner, pencils by Harry Lucey)… “The Raven” (script by Turner, art by Martin Naydel)… “Hap Hazard” (story & art by Joe Archibald). According to the Grand Comics Database, as gleaned from Mark Trost in the pulp fanzine Blood ‘n’ Thunder #30 (Summer 2011), the “Flash” tale was based on the Captain Hazzard pulp story for May 1938… the “Raven” yarn on “The Sinister Sphere,” the first “Moon Man” story, in Ten Detective Aces (June ’33).

Also in that first ish was “X, The Phantom Fed,” an adaptation from Ace’s pulp mag Secret Age “X.” With its fifth issue, Sure-Fire became Lightning Comics.

[TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

These scans were provided by author Mark Carlson-Ghost, who supplied much of the comic art that accompanies his article, always courtesy of the Digital Comics Museum website.

Coming Up Aces!

7

Personal Magnetism Magno the Magnetic Man does his thing on the cover of Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 1, #1 (July 1940). Inside, besides a “Magno” story, there was also the beginning of the “Vulcan” series.

Artists & writers unidentified. Thanks to Mark CarlsonGhost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Magno is able to draw to himself anything of metal. In addition, he can hurl himself through space, attracted by anything metallic.”

His first story was also adapted from a “Secret Agent ‘X’” yarn, this time featuring a villain named the Octopus. Paul Chadwick, the author of the original novel, was given a writer’s credit for that first Magno story but is unlikely to have had anything to do with the adaptation.

The final character making his debut in the inaugural issue of Super-Mystery was Vulcan, a descendent of the Roman god of fire who sported a decidedly flame-like haircut.

The Black Spider, a masked detective who trained his poisonous arachnid namesakes to deadly effect, debuted in issue #3. Four issues after that, the other heroes were joined by Buckskin Blake, a patriotic fellow dressed in blue deerhide. Not just anyone could pull that off. A school principal by day, Buckskin’s common sense didn’t quite match his fashion sense.

Despite wearing a mask, he initially used his last name as part of his heroic moniker! (He soon dropped the “Blake,” and apparently everybody forgot he had ever used it.) His grandfather had been an Indian scout, though nothing was made of his apparent Native American heritage.

A kid sidekick for Magno—named Davey— had also been added to the mix in Super-Mystery #4,

What’s In A Name? Well, Maybe A Lot! (Above left:) “The Black Spider” made his debut in Super-Mystery, Vol. 1, #3 (Oct. 1940), probably owing something to the Street & Smith pulp mag The Spider—while (above right) “Buckskin Blake,” in Vol. 2, #1 (April 1941), combined the super-hero and frontier motifs. His dual identity worked better after he dropped the “Blake” bit! Writers and artists unknown. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

powers from Lash in Lightning #13. Too weak after torture to complete a mission, Lightning infused Isobel’s body with massive doses of electrical energy to substitute for him. Thereafter, Lightning Girl never left his side.

The two heroes could even track each other’s location through the “lightning impulses” each left behind.

In the meantime, in Lightning #6, a physician named Jim Bradley assumed the surgically masked guise of Doctor Nemesis, who was armed only with his wits and trusty truth serum. (A notable sidebar is that the good doctor was resurrected in 1993 as a Nazi villain named Doctor Death in a certain esteemed A/E’s editor’s comic book series, The Invaders. I’ll leave it him to detail the circumstances behind that particular revival.)

Buckskin Days Buckskin also fared well when drawn by Harry Anderson (above left) in Super-Mystery V2#3 (Aug. 1942) and by newcomer Harvey Kurtzman in V3#5 (July ’43), above right. We have no photo of Harry Anderson, but Harvey Kurtzman can be seen on p. 17. Thanks to Doug Martin, Mark Carlson-Ghost, & Jim Ludwig for the scans. [© the respective copyright holders.]

All in all, this first generation of Ace heroes were visually engaging if not particularly exciting in execution.

Unfortunately, the identity of the

along with his shapely older sister Beatrice Landis, a private detective who just happened to be investigating a case at the same time as Magno. It was Beatrice who sewed Davey a “Magno suit” when his hero worship became apparent. Magno infused the youth with temporary magnetic powers just by holding his wrist. Later, Davey’s magnetic powers appear to have become permanent. Beatrice, however, disappeared not long after. No magnetic touch for her.

Meanwhile, complications for Ace’s first super-hero, Flash Lightning, had emerged rather quickly. Since a fleet-footed fellow called The Flash had debuted five months earlier, it seems not unlikely that DC/All-American Comics made a fuss. With issue #8, “Flash” Lightning abruptly became “Lash” Lightning. (By issue #3, Sure-Fire had changed its name to Lightning Comics, though that probably had nothing to do with DC.) Further changes soon followed. Isobel Blake, a feisty reporter, obtained lightning

Lightning Strikes Twice (Left:) “Flash” Lightning abruptly becomes “Lash” Lightning in Lightning Comics, Vol. 2, #2 (Aug. 1941, real #8). You think maybe Jay Garrick complained?

(Right:) In Lightning V3#1 (June 1942), he acquires a female partner: Lightning Girl. Writers & artists unknown. Courtesy of Comic Book Plus website. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Coming Up Aces!

9

as daunting as it sounded, Gardener reassured, as Turner would be free to lift plots from literally hundreds of their pulp magazine stories. Turner would also be responsible for reviewing the artist’s drawings and in suggesting ideas for cover illustrations.

All of this seemed agreeable to Turner, so the matter of salary was all that was left to be determined. The writer remembered asking for $60 a week.

Gardener, a stocky fellow with a direct, bottom-line business sense, shook his head. “We were thinking in the neighborhood of forty.”

“Sorry,” Turner recalled replying, “I don’t particularly care for that kind of neighborhood.”

To his credit, Gardener laughed and asked Turner to think it over. Turner did just that and came back later with a compromise figure: $50 a week. Gardener agreed reluctantly. It was only later that Turner realized he’d negotiated a higher rate than some of Ace Magazine’s far more experienced pulp editors.

Did Turner actually create the early Ace heroes? If that was the case, he probably would’ve mentioned that aspect of his chores in his memoir. It seems far more likely that he took over very shortly after those who did. But others credit Turner with their creation, based entirely on speculation. The matter will likely never be satisfactorily resolved.

In any case, as a still relatively inexperienced writer, Turner was daunted by his new editorial/authorial duties. He would hastily read old Ace pulps, but found trying to translate stories written for a verbal medium into a visual one more challenging than it was helpful.

Open Your Mouth And Say “True!”

“Doctor Nemesis,” introduced in Lightning Comics, Vol. 2, #2 (Aug. 1941), was simply a physician with a secret truth serum—and a tendency to hide behind his surgical mask. Artist unknown; script probably by Robert Turner.

Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

individual or individuals who created these initial characters for Wyn may never be known.

Robert Turner Arrives Shortly after A.A. Wyn threw his cowboy hat into the comic book arena, Robert Turner was brought aboard to oversee his two comic book titles. We know this because Turner was good enough to include the story of his hiring in his 1970 autobiography Some of My Best Friends Are Writers, But I Wouldn’t Want My Daughter to Marry One. Turner already had experience writing comic book stories for Leo Greenwald’s Champion Comics. He had also dabbled in syndicated work, ghost-writing a storyline for the newspaper comic strip King of the Royal Mounted. But the ambitious young writer had found the compensation disappointing. Needing a better-paying gig, Turner answered an advertisement for a comic book editor at Ace Magazines, Incorporated. For the interview, Turner met with Wyn’s right-hand man, Fred Gardener.

Gardener explained to Turner that he was looking for someone to write the scripts for their entire comic book line. (Turner recalled this being four titles, but this seems unlikely, given what is known of the company’s actual publishing history.) This task would not be

Turner’s autobiography is full of amusing anecdotes of that period in his life, including one about Ace’s circulation man who generously let the writer in on a little secret. From Ace’s New York offices on the twentieth floor, located on the corner of 46th Street and Sixth Avenue, a pair of binoculars gave you a bird’s-eye view of the rooftops of neighboring hotels. This was an important fact only if you realized that many of the showgirls who performed in cabarets on Times Square sunbathed there!

Working at Ace also gave Turner an entrée into writing for their pulps. His first story appeared in Ten Detective Aces, the December 1940 issue. Shortly thereafter, Turner put in his resignation as editor of the comic book line.

It is worth quoting his recollection of his response to Gardener’s inquiry if he knew a good replacement: “I told him no, and then proceeded to blurt out that I thought their system was all wrong, anyhow, that their old pulp magazines weren’t really supplying the right kind of stories for the comics.

I suggested that they might be better off buying free-lance stuff from writers who specialized in that kind of material. Later I was surprised when this gambit paid off. They took my advice, and I then proceeded

Robert Turner Editor and writer for Ace Comics. Thanks to Will Murray.

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

to sell them a considerable amount of my own material on a per page basis.”

While Turner recalled writing for four Ace titles at once, this is inconsistent with what is known of Ace’s publishing history.

Turner noted in his Who’s Who entry for Jerry Bails that he was an editor at Ace in 1940, which is consistent with the date he provided for the publication of his first pulp story. In 1940, there were only two Ace comic books. Later, the line-up was briefly expanded to five, but that was late in 1941; the Ace line was never just four.

Turner marked his departure as editor with the end of the company’s policy of borrowing from pulp magazine plots. In all likelihood, this must have occurred very early in 1941, before Ace expanded its super-hero line-up. Turner stayed on as a freelancer, and may have written briefly for four titles in that capacity. His mistake is understandable, given that his autobiography was penned nearly thirty years after these events.

Who was the new editor that Gardener found to oversee the freelance system? Turner never said. Nor do the comic books themselves provide this information. But a change in storytelling approach was very apparent.

The Coming Of Some Very Bad Men With Ace comic books cover dated December 1940, a decided shift took place in the plotting and pacing of their stories. No longer did Magno and Lash Lightning face generic pulp threats; now they began battling true comic book villains as colorful as the heroes themselves. Magno began a five-issue struggle with The Clown, a maniacally energetic Nazi saboteur in, yes, a clown suit.

Four encounters with the deadly Cobra followed.

In like manner, Lash Lightning finally faced a worthy foe in The Mummy. Their struggle also lasted three issues, when The Mummy made the mistake of teaming with a new bad guy, the pasty whitefaced Mastermind. In a clever story development, unlike any seen in comic books before, The Mastermind double-crossed and killed his villainous partner! For readers who had found The Mummy a truly formidable felon, his murder must have come as quite a shock. Lash had to face the even deadlier menace of The Mastermind for two further issues.

Ace would continue with this tradition of recurring villains. But, unlike DC’s bad guys, these were not gimmicky thieves but rather deadly madmen with schemes plentiful enough to warrant multi-

Bring On The Bad Guys!

(Left:) The Clown and Zora get the upper hand on Magno and Davey in Super-Mystery V2#3 (Aug. 1941). Script by Robert Turner; art by Jim Mooney.

(Right:) Lash Lightning’s enemy The Mummy lasted several issues—but Mastermind murdered him in Lightning Comics, Vol. 2, #1 (June ’41). Art by Mooney; writer unknown. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Coming Up Aces!

11

Art Saaf issue struggles. They more nearly resembled the maniacal foes of the MLJ and Timely heroes.

Ace stood pat with their two-title line-up for about a year, until the overwhelming popularity of superheroics prompted Wyn to introduce three additional comic books. The new titles were heavily populated with patriotic heroes. Our Flag Comics debuted in August 1941 and featured The Unknown Soldier, the living embodiment of every young soldier who ever gave up his life for his country, and The Flag, a foundling who gained exceptional strength, speed, and invulnerability whenever he touched his mysterious flag-shaped birthmark. The Unknown Soldier broke current fashion and wore a stylized brown military outfit as opposed to the more typical red, white, and blue affair.

Not to be outdone, Banner Comics appeared one month later and featured no fewer than three patriots. The colorfully clad Captain Courageous was the very personification of courage called upon in troubled times, while The Lone Warrior and his younger brother obtained superior strength from an experimental serum concocted by their father. The third hero, Paul Revere, Jr., was simply the teen-aged descendant of the famous patriot. With its sixth and final issue, Banner Comics morphed into Captain Courageous Comics.

Joining the previously established line-up was The Sword, secretly Arthur Lake, who had discovered the transformative powers of the legendary Excalibur.

Ace also created an anthology title, Four Favorites, to gain extra

It’s A Grand New Flag!

The Unknown Soldier appeared on Art Saaf’s cover for Ace’s Our Flag #1 (Aug. 1941), but by #2 he’d switched from blue to khaki. The Flag grabbed the spotlight on the cover of #2 (Oct. 1941), courtesy of artist Jim Mooney. Another interior feature in #1 was “Captain Victory,” but he was gone by #2. Writer & artist unknown. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

exposure for their most popular heroes. Early issues starred Magno, Lash Lightning, The Raven, and Vulcan.

Who can take credit for this creative turnaround? Two names emerged from my research. One is the aforementioned Turner, who continued freelancing with the company and may have been responsible for part of the shift in tone. But there is another, more intriguing candidate for the role of the writer/editor who turned the rather stolid storytelling of Ace comic books around.

Abner Sundell & “How To Crash The Comics” Abner Sundell is not listed as having worked for Ace at all in Jerry Bails’ 1970s print edition of Who’s Who. Nonetheless, there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence to suggest that he did. It is known that Sundell worked as an editor along with Harry Shorten over at MLJ, where he co-created Steel Sterling and possibly The Black Hood. During Sundell’s tenure there, recurring villains bedeviled The Black Hood (namely, The Skull), The Shield (The Vulture), and Steel Sterling. Sterling’s new and fiercer foes included The Black Knight and several circus-themed villains, among them a fire-breathing bad man named The Inferno, who ultimately would turn hero. Robert Turner also worked for MLJ during this period, and both men wrote for Steel Sterling.

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

A Banner Day! Banner Comics started out with “#3” (dated Sept.1941), though nobody’s can figure out what series (if any) it replaced! Captain Courageous took the cover spot, with “Lone Warrior” being scripted by Otto Binder and “Paul Revere Jr.” drawn by one George Wilson—probably not the same artist who later painted a zillion covers for Western Publishing. The other artists and scripters are unidentified. The “W” on Lone Warrior’s chest was added by a previous owner of the comic. Thanks to Mark CarlsonGhost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Otto Binder The Golden/Silver Age writer’s story has been well-told in Bill Schelly’s recently republished book Otto Binder: The Life and Times of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary.

Louis Ferstadt (often referred to as “Lou”) is listed in his Wikipedia entry as a “Jewish American muralist and comics artist.” He also did work for DC in the 1940s.

Four Favorite Four Favorites (Right:) A quartet of notable Four Favorites covers. #1 (Sept. 1941)… #4 (March ’42)… #9 (Feb. ’43)… & #12 (Nov. ’43). The only artist ID’d so far is Louis Ferstadt, who drew the last of the foursome. Thanks to Jim Kealy & Michael T. Gilbert for some of these covers, to Grand Comics Database for the rest (and for numerous other covers accompanying this study). [© the respective copyright holders.]

Coming Up Aces!

Abner “Abby” Sundell

Sundell is listed as leaving MLJ sometime in 1941 and also apparently did some editorial work for Victor Fox later that same year. No other comic book work is noted. Yet Sundell appeared to still be active in comic books during 1942 when he wrote the article “How to Crash the Comics” for a writer’s magazine. [A/E EDITOR'S NOTE: That article was reprinted in its entirety in Michael T. Gilbert's "Comic Crypt" back in A/E V3#4.]

The stories Sundell chose as examples of good and bad writing in his article are telling.

Besides brief references to wellknown heroes like Superman, Batman, and Captain America, Sundell only mentioned heroes from three other companies. He wrote briefly about a couple of MLJ and Fox heroes respectively, which makes sense given that he had been an editor at both companies. But he devoted the lion’s share of his article to discussing heroes that belonged to Wyn’s line-up: Magno, The Flag, The Lone Warrior, and others. The comic book runs of these last two heroes were so short-lived that it seems likely someone would have had to have worked for Ace to even know that they’d existed!

Photo courtesy of David Saunders and his “www.pulpartist” website.

Similarly, the villains Sundell referenced in his article tended to be either famous (The Red Skull and The Penguin) or had appeared in a company he’d worked for (for example, MLJ’s The Skull and The Vulture) or surely must have worked for. Sundell discussed Magno villains, namely The Clown and The Cobra, and Lash Lightning foes The Eel and The Mastermind. In almost every example, the Ace references were the most detailed, as if Sundell had just recently been engaged in writing or editing those characters. Sundell even took a pot shot at an unnamed “Raven” artist, suggesting that three panels in a “Raven” script might have looked more interesting done by “the Captain America artist”— that is to say, Jack Kirby! Sounds a lot like a writer/editor who was disgruntled with the visual execution of one of his stories to me.

If Sundell began work at Ace late in 1940 or early in 1941, as seems likely, he immediately took the philosophy towards villains that he developed working at MLJ and refined it even further.

Sundell wrote: “With the introduction, or even the reintroduction of a villain into a story, from two to five pages should be devoted to characterization. Most stories would stem from this characterization of the villain. He should create the situation into which the hero is embroiled.”

of Four Favorites in late 1941. Teased as a youth because of his wolflike features, Krimetz accidentally killed one of his classmates and was forced to retreat into the mountains, “nursing hate, vengeance, and rebellion at his fate.” Years later, he uncovered the secret of transforming himself into the very figure he resembled, a werewolf.

A final example of the psychologically motivated foe favored in Ace comic books was Dark Eyes, who initially made his living slaughtering cattle with a single blow of his fist. First seen in Four Favorites #13, Dark Eyes observed that Lash and Lightning Girl had “the advantages of both sexes and they counteract the disadvantages of either.” The handsome, brooding Dark Eyes sought a female counterpart all his own.

“Yeah, I triggered the Chicago Massacre!” one dark beauty told Dark Eyes during an apparent interview. “Twelve cops! I shot them down in cold blood and spat on their bleeding bodies! So what?”

But the homicidal moll demurred when she learned Dark Eyes intended to take on the Lightnings.

Dark Eyes finally found his match in a calculating temptress known only as Madame Death. She promptly threw him across the room when he doubted her ferocity! Far from being put off, Dark Eyes knew he’d found just the woman he was looking for. It was an amorous match made in hell! Dark Eyes and Madame Death would return on two more occasions to try and knock off the far cheerier Lightnings.

“Villains should be fearsome individuals, visually,” Sundell continued in his article. “Gangster types should be avoided, since for the most part they do not represent sufficient opposition to a hero. As much thought should go into the creation of a villain as goes into that of a hero.… The villain must represent all vices, all that is evil, at a glance. Artistically he is a caricature of ‘bad.’”

Sundell’s principles of what made for a proper villain were perfectly manifested in the most popular Ace villain, the anything but funny Clown. With his leering white face paint (yet another circus-inspired element), The Clown was all malevolence, more often than not ultimately murdering any criminal associate (male or female) foolish enough to pair up with him. Ace villains may have had understandable motivations, but make no

This was precisely the case with Lash Lightning foe The Eel, who appeared in Lightning Comics #12 (4/42). Professor Aqua, billed as “the human fish,” was embittered by his life as a circus freak. “Bah, gawking yokels! I’m getting sick of exhibiting myself like this for peanuts every week” And so he becomes the criminal mastermind, Be A Clown, Be A Clown…

The Eel. Here, I believe, Sundell By the time The Clown fought Magno and returned to the circus-centered stories Davey for the umpteenth time in Superhe’d enjoyed working on for Steel Mystery Comics, Vol. 4, #4 (Oct. 1944), the Sterling. comparative size of the figures on the cover Or take another Lash Lightning foe, Adolf Krimetz, The Were-Wolf, who appeared in four of the first five issues

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might furnish a clue as to who the publisher figured was selling the mag! Art by Lou Ferstadt. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

Foe Favorites!

Three Ace pages that feature the type of “psychologically motivated” villain that Abner Sundell praised in his book, and maybe even wrote in the comics, are (clockwise from above): The Eel, aka Professor Aqua, in Lightning Comics, Vol. 2 #6 (April 1942), who appeared in both the “Lash Lightning” and “Raven” stories, back to back—probably a comic book first!—with Mooney drawing the first story… The WereWolf in Four Favorites #1 (Sept. ’41), with art again by Mooney… and Dark Eyes and Madam Death in Four Favorites #13 (Feb. ’44), by an unidentified artist. All scripters unknown. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

mistake about it, they were bad to the bone and then some.

Though it must be said, unlike most other Ace villains, no explanation was ever given for The Clown’s extraordinary evil. In some ways, this made him all the scarier.

As likely is clear by now, I am confident that Sundell was Ace’s new editor and the man responsible for initiating or at least fostering Ace’s golden age of villainy. Robert Turner stayed on with the company, doing freelance work for the new editor, and may also have created many of these memorable bad guys. If I’m right about Sundell, it’s hard to know how much he influenced Turner’s writing. Turner’s favorite character appears to have been the physician hero Dr. Nemesis. He certainly wrote for him the longest.

One especially pernicious adversary of the good doctor was a Japanese agent known only as XY, who drained the blood of shackled lepers, all in the service of tainting the blood supply of wounded Allied soldiers! My best guess is that those two men were probably responsible for most of the company’s writing output from 1941 to 1942.

How long Sundell stayed at Ace is hard to determine. He likely

Coming Up Aces!

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stopped working after the slowdown in publishing that commenced during the first half of 1942. When Sundell wrote his article for aspiring writers, he included a helpful list of editors to contact at the various publishing houses. For Ace he listed Fred Gardener. It may well be that, with the comic book lineup reduced to two (and even briefly one), there was no longer a need for a separate comic book editor. In any event, Ace villains were a big part of Ace super-hero stories well into 1944. Some of their most notable bad guys, like The Clown and Captain Nippo, lasted even longer. The Clown emerged as one of the iconic villains of the Golden Age, all the more remarkable since his heroic adversary— Magno—was never a huge star.

Unlike Batman’s Joker, The Clown lost none of his homicidal zeal over the years. He was one of the few villains of the smaller publishers who could still bring in extra sales with his every appearance on the cover. He and Magno clashed well over twenty times! The Clown appeared in eleven consecutive issues of SuperMystery Comics and had the same exact uninterrupted run in Four Favorites. (What’s more, none of these were continued stories.) By my reckoning, that’s more appearances for a Golden Age villain than anyone other than Batman’s Joker and Captain Marvel’s Dr. Sivana.

Who was responsible for the birth of this memorable character?

If the names of the creators of most Ace heroes are lost to us, fortunately one of the co-creators of The Clown is well known.

The Mooney-Turner Connection While the writer of the first Clown story remains uncertain, the artist who drew that story isn’t. Jim Mooney is best known for his wonderful work on the Silver Age Supergirl. What is less commonly known is that one of his earliest sustained artistic associations was with Ace Periodicals. His covers, in particular, which began appearing in December 1940, marked a period of higher artistic standards for the company. Mooney drew both the cover and the inside story that first featured the malevolent Clown.

He was only 21 years old at the time.

Mooney’s most notable assignments at Ace were Magno, Lash Lightning, the Raven, The Unknown Soldier, The Flag, and Vulcan.

He drew for the company for approximately two years before heading over to Timely to start working with Stan Lee. Turner wrote for these same characters, though how often their assignments overlapped can’t easily be determined.

What is known is that Turner and Mooney struck up a friendship, obviously liking the results of their collaborations. In a later interview (see Alter Ego #133), Mooney recalled how the two of them created a female super-hero named Wildfire. As young men anxious to make their mark, they moved quickly on their idea, selling their character to Busy Arnold of the Quality comics group.

Wildfire first appeared in Smash #25, cover-dated August 1941, which would’ve been while both men were still doing work for Ace. Presumably they discovered the editors at Quality paid better than A.A. Wyn. Either that, or they felt Quality would be a more prestigious home for their new heroine. Probably both. But Wildfire never achieved the success they’d hoped for.

Paper Shortages & Beyond The new, high-powered Ace line of comic books wouldn’t last long in light of looming wartime paper quotas. With March 1942, Wyn was forced to begin canceling various titles. That month marked the first and only issue of Captain Courageous. April was the last month an issue of Our Flag was published. Lightning had

Like Thunder, Like Lightning An action page by Jim Mooney from Lightning Comics, Vol. 2, #4 (Dec. 1941).

Scripter unknown. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [© the respective copyright holders.]

its last gasp in June of 1942. With its July issue, Super-Mystery was suspended until January 1943. Only Four Favorites continued with a relatively uninterrupted publication schedule.

The editors at Ace responded by squeezing their stronger features into the remaining two comic books. At Super-Mystery, The Black Spider and Vulcan were axed to make room for Paul Revere, Jr., Dr. Nemesis, The Sword, and Mr. Risk. Born without the ability to experience fear, Risk decided to use his resulting daring to help others in need. A conventionally dressed hero, the original man without fear’s business card read: “My business is take chances you are afraid to take. Don’t worry about money. No fee.” Risk was assisted by a powerfully built Asian assistant named Abdul. As for The Sword, he finally found an arch-enemy in the deadly Nazi spy, Fay Morgana. Though an association to the Arthurian villainess was clearly intended, sorcerous powers for Morgana were only hinted at. In her delightful final appearance, Morgana got drunk with her Aryan minions, trash-talking Hitler and despondent over her inability to put away her ever-virtuous foe.

Meanwhile, at Four Favorites, The Raven and Vulcan were given their walking papers to make room for The Unknown Soldier and Captain Courageous. Magno remained the primary cover-featured character in both magazines, clearly Ace’s best-selling character. At

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

penciling was still his primary passion. Along with these artistic changes came more pedestrian stories. Who wrote for the Ace heroes after Turner and Sundell left isn’t clear.

In 1946, Wyn decided to pull the plug on his super-hero characters entirely. Super-Mystery dropped Magno and its other costumed heroes, keeping only Mr. Risk as an ongoing feature.

Bert and Sue, a pair of married amateur detectives, and UNO, a United Nations operative, promptly took their places. Over at Four Favorites, Captain Courageous had given up his Harry Sahle costume for a conventional had earlier been Carl Burgos’ assistant military uniform, and The and briefly successor on “The Human Unknown Soldier was supplanted Torch” for Timely. by a new character, a mysterious hooded narrator known only as, well, The Unknown. These changes were insufficient to save the title, however, and Four Favorites was gradually transformed into an all teen-humor title with Hap Hazard first among a line-up of largely uninspired features.

Ace’s remaining detective heroes disappeared in 1948, though Aaron A. Wyn still had a few cards left to play. That year, Wyn added Crime Must Pay the Penalty and Western Adventures, once again simply following proven trends in the industry. Robert Turner returned to assist in the expanded writing demands.

“The Sword” Is Mightier Than The Pen! Before he appeared in Super-Mystery, “The Sword” slashed his way through Captain Courageous #6 (March 1942), the one and only issue of that title.

Art by Harry Sahle; scripter unknown. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

least, so it would seem, as long as he kept squaring off against The Clown.

Another impact of the war was a decided drop in the quality of art published in Wyn’s comic books. Many of their best artists were now serving in the military, and those quality pencilers who remained were much in demand. Warren Kremer, later of Harvey humor fame, did many of the covers after Mooney left. A number of other notable writers and artists, early in their careers and before they made their mark, toiled at Ace during this period. Per Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who, Ace employed Jack and Otto Binder (194142), L.B. Cole (1942-44), Harvey Kurtzman (1943), and Gil Kane (1943-44). They rarely stayed long, probably due to low page rates. Stories, however, remained engaging, largely due to the continued presence of formidable bad guys.

Never graced with wildly popular costumed characters, the Ace heroes showed signs of wear and tear earlier than those at DC and Timely. Ace never again expanded their heroic line-up past its two remaining standbys. When Wyn did decide to start rebuilding his comic book division in 1944, he went with three humor titles: Hap Hazard, Monkeyshines, and Scream Comics, an anthology of unremarkable mischievous kid features.

Rudy Palais (1945-49), with his evocative, strong lines, was one of Ace’s primary action artists in the post-war period. A young Al Feldstein also drew for Ace’s hero titles in 1947, back when

Western Adventures featured the adventures of Bud Steele, the Cross-Draw Kid: “When he was only a boy, he saw his father drilled in the back by some desperate bushwhacker… and strapping on his father’s guns, he took a vow to rid the West of all killers! Years of intense practice perfected for him the lightning cross-draw, which makes the fastest gunman seem to be slowdragging his irons….” The clean-living cowboy (he requested buttermilk at taverns, a practice that prompted a few fights!) faced

L.B. Cole in 1944. He would later become a noted comic book cover artist.

Cover Me! Another major artist temporarily in the Ace fold was L.B. Cole, who drew the cover of Four Favorites #13 (Feb. 1944). [© the respective copyright holders.]

Coming Up Aces!

17

Harvey Kurtzman in U.S. Army uniform, circa 1943. From Bill Schelly’s Eisner-winning biography Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and Revolutionized Humor in America. Courtesy of Bill and of Adele Kurtzman.

Taking A “Risk” (Above & clockwise:) Some of the earliest published art by Harvey Kurtzman, later the editor/creator of Mad and EC’s war comics, was for Ace’s “Mr. Risk” series. Above and at right are his cover and two pages from his “Mr. Risk” tale for Super-Mystery #15 (Jan. 1943). While the work wasn’t polished, artist Gil Kane often insisted, to Kurtzman and to others, that he admired the Jack Kirby-inspired vitality of these stories. Writer unknown. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert and Eric Schumacher. |[© the respective copyright holders.]

Rudy Palais

Playing Favorites Rudy Palais’ cover for Four Favorites #19 (Aug. 1945). Thanks to the GCD. | [© the respective copyright holders.]

1948 photo, courtesy of William B. Jones, Jr., from his landmark book Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History.

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

more colorful foes than the average Western hero: El Tigre, The Jester, The Skull, and Patch Eye among them. It was not enough, and the title was cancelled after only six issues, its numbering continued with Western Love Trails #7.

Into Unknown Waters After the war ended, “The Unknown” briefly took over the cover spot on Four Favorites (as of #29, June 1947)… then “Hap Hazard” and his teen friends commandeered the title right before its demise. Seen here is Al Feldstein’s cover for Hap Hazard #1 (April ’47). Thanks to Jim Ludwig for the latter scan. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Crime Goes West Ken Battlefield’s cover for Crime Must Pay the Penalty #2 (June 1948), our article’s author feels, demonstrates “exceptional sense of movement”… while in Western Adventures #1 (Oct. ’48), “The Cross-Draw Kid” uses the same gimmick that actor “Wild Bill” Elliott was then employing to good effect in Bmovie Westerns, on a cover that may be by Max Elkan, who drew the tale inside… and the “Sheriff Sal” splash page from that issue was definitely better-drawn (by King Ward) than much early super-hero fare. Writers, alas, unknown. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Also featured in Western Adventure was the dark-haired beauty, Sheriff Sal. As the Al Feldstein narrative informed readers: in 1943. Thanks To Grant “When the frontier town of Geissman & Stephan Red Dog elected Sally Starr its Friedt. sheriff, mocking laughter rang out from canyon wall to grazing land, and echoed across the Western ranges.”

The town of Red Dog was “so doggone peace-loving” no man wanted the job, but livens up shortly thereafter! Sal is dark-haired with a red skirt and cowboy hat, long-sleeved brown shirt and boots, and short white gloves. She sports a black star on each of her boots. The sheriff is often assisted by other women in the execution of her duties. But in Western Love Trails #7, Sal handed over her badge to the man she intended to marry. The surrender of her heroic role for romance would prove a metaphor for the impending transformation of the entire Ace line-up.

Coming Up Aces!

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Going A Bit Dotty (Left:) “Dotty,” a hatcheck-girl humor heroine, made her debut in Four Teeners #34 (April 1948)—and yes, Four Favorites had evolved (or devolved) into this mag, for a single final issue. (Right:) While Dotty soon got her own mag, she also appeared in comics like Vicky #5 (June ’49). Both stories were drawn by Al Hartley; scripter unknown. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Tough Choices Ahead As Aaron Wyn’s publishing enterprise entered 1949, it was clear some tough choices lay ahead. The viability of pulp magazines had been coming increasingly in question for several years. Magazine historian Theodore Peterson, in his Magazines in the Twentieth Century, noted that production costs on pulp magazines had risen 72% between 1944 and 1947. Nor were national advertisers particularly interested in spending their money on pulps when more upscale markets were available. Publishers were either drastically reducing the number of their pulp titles or abandoning them entirely.

Wyn, always slower to move on trends than most, was still publishing nine pulp titles as the New Year dawned: four love, two Western, two detective, and one focusing on sports stories. These titles showed remarkable longevity, each and every one having been published for over ten years. The Ace comic book lineup was roughly the same size at eight, though far less stable, including two detective titles (Crime Must Pay the Penalty and Super-Mystery), one new cowboy book (Western Adventures), four mostly new teen humor/funny girl titles (Ernie, Dotty, and Vicky having joined old

stand-by Hap Hazard scant months before), and one funny-animal book (Monkeyshines).

The Ace publishing company must Al Hartley have been in deep financial hardship, because the actions Wyn took between from Marvel Tales Annual January and August of 1949 were #1 (1964), when he was drawing Marvel’s Patsy decisive to the point of recklessness. and Hedy.

First of all, Wyn cancelled seven of his nine pulp magazines, keeping only his two best-selling love pulps. Next he cancelled all but one of his comic books, Crime Must Pay the Penalty being the sole survivor.

Finally, A. Aaron Wyn had his editorial staff produce and introduce no less than eight new romance comic books! Wyn’s comic book line had yet to tap into the promising romance market, but word was the profits to be made were remarkable. Wife Rose lent her editorial expertise to the effort, as she had been editing the Ace love pulps for nearly two decades now. Even so, the normally conservative Wyn must have been sweating bullets. He had no way of knowing that his huge gamble would pay off handsomely!

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

From Teen Dream To Glamorous Romance The eight new romance titles, all debuting between April and November 1949, were All Love Romance, All-Romances, Glamorous Romances, Love at First Sight, Love Experiences, Real Love, Revealing Romances, and Western Love Trails. Four of them continued the numbering of previous titles. The evolution of Four Favorites into Glamorous Romances serves as an example of just how convoluted these transitions could be, all in an effort to avoid paying a new postal-registration fee necessary in order to mail subscription copies. The post office sometimes declined to charge or failed to notice changes that were more subtle and gradual.

As discussed earlier, Four Favorites was originally an anthology title of super-hero stories. With issue #30 (July ’47), Four Favorites was transformed into a teen humor anthology, featuring Hap Hazard, Hazel of Hollywood, Jerry the Jinx, and the exceptionally hair-conscious Curly.

When the teen lineup faltered, Wyn attempted to save some money by entirely changing the focus and title into Crime Must Pay the Penalty with #33. The post office caught on and required Wyn to pay the required fee, and identify the second issue of Crime Must Pay the Penalty as #2.

Still trying to finesse the system, Wyn issued Four Teeners #34 (4/48), thus continuing to make use of the paid-in-full postal contract of Four Favorites. Four Teeners carried over Jerry the Jinx and Curly from the old title and introduced two new features, Sorority Sue and Dotty. Sorority Sue had the distinction of featuring a pretty college-girl heroine determined to not have her life revolve around boys. While the feature would continue, the feminist angle was soon dropped. Dotty was clearly the standout of the two features, with realistic rather than cartoony good-girl art and a delightful lead character: a shapely strawberry blonde

hatcheck girl. Written and drawn with loving care by a young Al Hartley, Dotty Draper was a unique career girl for that era, being neither stupid, accident-prone, nor man-crazy. Men, however, were clearly crazy for her! Dotty was soon made a back-up feature in Hap Hazard as well. Tasteful cheesecake poses were common, especially on the splash pages of her stories.

Whether by design or in recognition of a great new character, the next issue of the ever-changing series was identified as Dotty #35 (June ’48) but featured the same line-up of characters.

Gradually the other humorous features were phased out and oneoff romance stories took their place. With issues #39 and #40, the banner “Glamorous Romances” stretched over the Dotty cover logo, though the title remained Dotty in the indicia. Dotty’s stories became increasingly focused on serious romance, though the heroine’s spirit remained strong. In one story, while she was being romanced by a wealthy young man on a yacht, another guest—a young boy—fell overboard. The callow suitor fearfully froze and Dotty herself dived into the water to rescue the youth. Needless to say, the faint-hearted fellow was subsequently rejected without regret.

With issue #41, Ace formally changed the title of the comic book to Glamorous Romances, with a large banner beneath the logo reading “formerly Dotty.” Dotty appeared in one story that first issue, which turned out to be her last. Or was it?

One final “Dotty” story was doctored and saw print in Complete Love Magazine, Vol. 26, #4, though Dotty was portrayed with red hair and her name was changed to Helen. She was now working for Club Paris instead of the El Kissco Club, and dialogue was clearly altered to ensure that a marriage was in her future by the conclusion of the story. I prefer to think that Dotty ran afoul of some very bad men and ended up in a witness protection program with a dye job and a new name but still managed to find love. She surely deserved a happy ending.

Years of Wyn love pulps meant the comic books had dozens of painted covers to recycle if they chose. The painted-cover look helped the Ace love comics stand out in a crowded marketplace, in addition to their above-average production values and consistently upbeat endings.

Who was responsible for these often nuanced and sophisticated stories? Isabel Mangum is the only writer of Ace romances listed in Bails’ Who’s Who. That doesn’t mean she was the only writer, but it is the case that the Ace romances have a remarkably consistent style.

Love Is The Answer—Or Is It? In 1949, Glamorous Romances took over the slot recently vacated by Four Favorites/Four Teeners, with a more realistic “Dotty” heroine—while Complete Love was a hybrid, mostly a pulpish romance mag with 16 pages of comics. Even its cover was recycled from a pulp. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Stories almost always began with the heroine already knowing and having yearned for a specific handsome young man for some time. An opening first-person narrative often gave the family background of the heroine, an unusual story device in the industry. The heroine might or might not end up with the initial fellow, but the man she loved almost always had a psychologically grounded explanation of why he appeared to be less than totally committed to the heroine earlier in the story. A nice quality of the Ace romance stories was that both the man and the woman typically held some responsibility for whatever

Coming Up Aces!

21

Going Dotty—Phase 2 (Left:) Dotty, as Mark Carlson-Ghost sees it, wound up in a witness protection program, greatly altered (including her name and hair color) for this appearance in Complete Love, Vol. 25, #4 (Oct. 1951).

(Right:) Sorority Sue was one of the rare features with a teenage heroine that wasn’t centered around her quest to find a boyfriend. Artist and writer for both these pages is unknown. Thanks to MCG. [© the respective copyright holders.]

romantic obstacles they’d encountered. Over at Fawcett, by contrast, the romantic heroine was nearly always portrayed as being at fault for all of her troubles and almost always narratively shamed by story’s end.

Mangum is a bit of a mystery. She has no other writing credits other than for Ace, but she appears to have written extensively for them in multiple genres between 1948 and 1956. My private theory is that she had written earlier for the Ace love pulps and was given a chance to maintain her income writing for comic books during the pulp industry’s slow demise. Rose Wyn edited both the romance comics and romance pulps, after all, and was recalled as taking a motherly interest in her staff. In an Alter Ego interview, Lou Cameron described “Ma” Wyn as resembling the actress Betty Furness.

If Isabel Mangum followed the earlier practice of using old pulp plots for the comics, many of which she may have written herself, that might explain why every Ace romance heroine seems to begin her story with a fully fleshed-out family history. It might also help explain why Ace romances were so dialogue-heavy. If she was adapting old pulp material, Magnum may have had a lot of

narrative to cram into seven- or eight-page stories. A collector of both Ace’s love pulps and its romance comics could likely settle the matter, but such individuals are likely a rare breed indeed.

Perhaps due to a woman editor being more open to female talent, more than an average number of women artists worked on the Ace romance comics, Alice Kirkpatrick, Ann Brewster, and Valerie Barclay among them. Some of the more prolific male love artists included Sam Cooper, Jim McLaughlin, Norman Nodel, Kenneth Rice, Mike Sekowsky, and Lin Streeter.

What comic book historian Michelle Nolan, in her Love on the Racks, labeled “the love glut” undoubtedly hurt Wyn’s bottom line.

Just about every publisher had been overly aggressive in their attempt to capitalize on the genre’s popularity. Luckily, some of Wyn’s romance titles were selling well enough for him not to be tempted to give up the ghost entirely. Wyn cancelled All Love Romance, All-Romances, Revealing Romances, and Western Love Trails, but kept the other four. He wisely began to re-diversify his comic book line with the introduction of several new ventures. The first of these titles turned out to be Ace’s first horror comic book.

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

A Tangled Web Lou Cameron-drawn splash pages from Ace’s Web of Mystery #19 (July 1953) & #24 (May ’54). Scripter uncertain. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

High-Class Horror

Lou Cameron in the U.S. armed services in 1945—wearing a recently surrendered German officer’s cap. Cameron was interviewed in depth by Jim Amash in A/E #79-80.

The first issue of The Beyond was cover-dated November 1950.

Encouraging sales figures soon prompted the addition of Web of Mystery, Baffling Mysteries, and Hand of Fate the following year. An entire website, entitled “Ace Horror,” is devoted to scans of the best of these often unconventional horror tales.

Creepy toys, ventriloquist dummies, and statues come to life might stalk the innocent. Ancient curses, exotic cult priestesses, and deals with the devil could just as easily undo the schemes of the guilty. Vampires and were-creatures could also be found, though Ace writers seemed to favor cat-women over wolfmen. Ace women, evil or not, were almost always beautifully rendered. Robert Turner wrote many of the stories. Moody, graphically engaging artwork was provided by Jim McLaughlin, Ken Rice, Louis Zansky, and Mike Sekowsky, among others.

But no artist at Ace could match Lou Cameron for sheer virtuosity of page layout and story execution. Imagine the creativity of a Will Eisner melded with the realism of a Sy Barry. In a Cameron horror story, a long-tailed dragon might frame an entire page of story, forgotten faces drift across oversized panels like so many autumn leaves, or jig-saw edged panels begin to fall apart as evil schemes unravel. Unfortunately, Cameron’s often surrealistic style only suited the fantasy elements of Ace’s horror stories. His work in other genres for Wyn was well-executed, but far more conventional.

Ace even had a horror host who came close to being a bona fide super-hero. Hand of Fate featured as its narrator a hooded personification of Fate itself, who gradually took an increasingly active role in some of the stories. This trend reached its peak in issue #21, in which an occultist named Roger Dunning aspired to replace Fate himself. When the hooded figure finally allowed it, all those haunted souls that blamed destiny for their demise saw their opportunity to rise up and slay him. The final image of the story is the giant hand of genuine Fate reaching though the cosmos to crush the bodies of those who do evil.

Coming Up Aces!

23

John Buscema

Warren Kremer

in 1952. Thanks to Image artist Matthew Reynolds and Mike Miklovsky.

in 1975. Detail of photo printed in A/E #30, courtesy of Mark Arnold.

Taking A Risk!

(Left:) John Buscema’s cover for Mr. Risk #7 (Oct. 1950), actually the first issue. (Right:) The Warren Kremer cover of issue #2 (Dec. ’50), the final issue. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Crime, Atomic War, &… Green Arrowhead?

The atmosphere at Ace during the ’50s was colorfully detailed

by Lou Cameron in a Jim Amash interview published in Alter Ego #79. Fred Gardener was still with the company, now serving as managing editor. Cameron described Gardener as “a character, very just, but very brash.” He fondly recalled the time that Gardener threw a blustery Jerry Siegel out of the Ace offices.

Putting on airs in his effort to find work, Siegel had treated Gardener’s secretary rudely, and that the generally genial editor wouldn’t tolerate.

Gardener and his staff experimented with genres other than horror and romance with less success. Ace revived the character Mr. Risk in 1950 and gave him in his own title in an attempt to capitalize on the hard-boiled detective craze popular at that time.

His gimmick, unusual for a ’50s detective, was that he didn’t carry a gun. Having lost his Asian assistant, Risk was of necessity more two-fisted than ever. He was joined by two other detective features, “‘Poke’ Bancroft” and “Kirk Mason, the Tough Dick.” Mr. Risk only lasted two issues before being transformed into a conventional crime title, Men against Crime.

Other well-intentioned efforts followed. War Heroes was a decent, if short-lived title featuring the emotionally centered wartime stories DC favored. There was little gritty realism à la EC, but romanticized and redemptive deaths were not unknown. There was little reason to seek out War Heroes on the already crowded newsstands. It folded after just eight issues.

A far more creative effort was Robert Turner and Ken Rice’s World War III, cover-dated March 1952. “Let the reason for publishing this shocking account of World War III be completely clear,” Turner’s ominous narrative begins. “We want only to awaken America, and the world, to grim facts…. Only a superstrong and fully enlightened America can stop this onrushing horror of the future.”

“Fully terrified,” was more like it. By page 7, a full-page mushroom cloud was seen rising over the naval base at Norfolk, Virginia—no narration or dialogue needed. People were subsequently burned alive and all that remained of one man was his shadow etched in a ruined city wall. The Americans, for their part, avoided civilian targets—to the dismay of some of our angrier soldiers. But an atomic cloud rising over the Kremlin was intended to supply the reader with some righteous sense of retribution.

Atomicthemed comic books were being issued by several other publishers. Wyn may have felt he’d missed the mark by not playing up the

Hell Is For Heroes Cover of Ace’s short-lived War Heroes #1 (May 1952), birthed during the height—if that’s not a contradiction in terms—of the Korean War. Artist unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

atomic element and related devastation even more. He apparently put aside the second issue of World War III that Turner had already written and in November issued a redo of the atomic war theme, this time more sensationally entitled Atomic War! There was a marked shift in tone. More pages were devoted to the mayhem—Manhattan destroyed, civilian shelters flooded, drowning thousands, gas mains exploding, livestock incinerated. The devastation went on for pages.

And this time there was no fretting over civilian casualties in Russia. In Atomic War! #2, the new writer and artist composed a full-page rendition of the mushroom cloud arising from America’s attack on Moscow.

Even the pilots who dropped the bomb were amazed by the magnitude of the explosion, realizing they had dropped the world’s first hydrogen bomb.

World War III—& Counting!

The anonymous cover of World War III #1 (March 1952). The first cover reflected an atomic holocaust—but since there was nowhere to go from there, the second issue was delayed for more than a year. Artist unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Neither World War III nor Atomic War! featured continuing characters, relying The cover of the first issue of Ace’s Atomic War! instead on self-contained stories of the had depicted a nuclear attack on America.

American military effort. Except for the On the cover of #3 (May 1953), seen above, issues in which bombs were dropped, the it was the Soviet Union’s turn to be on the resulting tales weren’t very different from receiving end. Artist unknown. conventional war stories—other than the [© the respective copyright holders.] novelty of our guys confronting Russian Communists in combat situations. When Atomic War! was cancelled after four issues, Ace put out the second and final issue of World War III, which they apparently had fully prepared but never published. Years later, Robert Turner recalled writing both issues for $500, but had only a vague memory of one issue coming out, not surprising given the delay.

Hitting The Re-Set Button—Hard!

Up Close And Personal When it finally came out, the cover of World War III #2 (May 1953) eschewed atomic devastation in favor of Buck Rogers-style weaponry. Artist unidentified. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Earlier, in 1951, a new Western title had debuted named Indian Braves. Three lackluster back-up features included “Wild Eagle,” “Swift Elk,” and “John Thundercloud,” each a heroic chief of a different tribe. These stories were remarkable only for being set in an Old West that included Indian reservations. But the cover feature was unique, in a decidedly copyright infringement sort of way. Green Arrowhead was a Choctaw warrior who was known far and wide for his, well, green arrows—which he shot with unerring accuracy and speed. His “origin” story in Indian Braves #1 (March 1951) shed more heat than light.

Where’s Green Lanternhead?

Green Arrowhead (unnamed) was depicted on the uncredited cover of Indian Braves #1 (March 1951). [© the respective copyright holders.]

Coming Up Aces!

25

Indian Braves only ran one more issue. It’s tempting to speculate that DC put a stop to it, but a later Ace title, Space Action, a standard space-opera anthology with no plagiaristic complications whatsoever, was cancelled even more quickly. The retro-continuity freak in me would like to think that young Sandy grew up to have a daughter who married into the wealthy Queen family.

Generations later, a young blond-haired man named Oliver remembers tales his grandmother used to tell of a fellow named Green Arrowhead and gets an idea….

Final Days For Ace Comics In the summer of 1951, Wyn took his two remaining pulps, Complete Love Magazine and Ten-Story Love, and turned them into hybrid pulp/comic books. Continuing their pulp numbering, they now featured 30-32 pages of comic book artwork and 16-18 pages of pulp-style text. In later issues, when the size of Ace comic books shrank from 48 to 32, the number of text pages decreased to four.

This was still twice the amount required by postal regulations and found in other Ace titles. But, in the case of Ten-Story Love, Mrs. Wyn needed the four pages to ensure that, even if she counted half-page text features as stories, the ten in the title was not totally false advertising. The addition of these two former pulps brought the Wyn’s comic book romance line up to six, a formidable presence in the industry for that genre.

Wyn was never one to rest on his laurels for long, however.

According to Kenneth C. Davis in Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America, in 1946 Wyn had established a hardcover book enterprise called Current Books. He purchased another book publisher the following year and called the new joint venture A.A. Wynn [sic], Inc. Wyn reportedly had Jack Kerouac under contract but foolishly turned down his On the Road, the work that would make him the guru of the beat generation.

In Space Action, No One Can Hear You Scream!

Lou Cameron illustrated the cover of Ace’s Space Action #1 (June 1952). [© the respective copyright holders.]

Befriended by a philosopher named Ben Harden, Green Arrowhead learned the ways of the white man as a boy. Later, Gallant Hawk, the Choctaw chief and Green Arrowhead’s father, was duped into a war with the Cavalry by a greedy gunrunner who hoped to sell his product to the Choctaws. Gallant Hawk was killed in the ensuing battle, but not before he confessed he was wrong to distrust the white man. Green Arrowhead subsequently declined the role of chief, ceding it to his younger brother, and devoted himself to encouraging peace between the settlers and his people. Questionable racial dynamics aside, the initial tale never explained why the Choctaw warrior started using green arrows in the first place or how he got to be such an exceptional archer.

Adding another parallel to DC’s Green Arrow (still a back-up feature in Adventure Comics and World’s Finest at the time) was the addition of a blond white boy as a sidekick in issue three. A ruthless and land-hungry cattle baron, enraged at Sam Morgan for leasing reservation land from the Choctaws for grazing sheep, set fire to his homestead. Sam and his wife died, but Green Arrowhead arrived in time to save their adolescent son, Sandy. An orphan with nowhere to go, Sandy was adopted by the Choctaws, learning Indian ways, including skill with a bow and arrow. The Choctaws formally renamed the boy Little Bear. He and Green Arrowhead became blood brothers and embodied an idealized bond between once warring peoples.

In 1952, Wyn stuck his toe in the booming new paperback market. He focused primarily on sciencefiction and relied on his editor Donald A. Wollheim’s excellent sense of marketable material moving forward. Wollheim innovated the Ace Double Novel, in which the purchaser got two novels (and cover illos) for the price of one. The “back” cover of the traditional paperback became the front cover of the second novel.

Wollheim paired established draws with new writers, thus cleverly creating new audiences for his upand-coming talent.

In the meantime, controversy over

Ten-Speed Romance To judge by the anonymously painted cover of Ten-Story Love, Vol. 29, #3 (June-July 1951—really the first issue), Ace wanted the readers to believe in happy endings. By the way, if you count a couple of 1-page romance-oriented features, the issue really did contain ten stories, up to 8 pages long! The series ran 34 issues. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

But the Code itself was not the end of the comic book publisher. Ace continued to issue all six of their romance comic books under the new censorship guidelines. They had less success in keeping comics going in other genres. Wyn shortened the name of Crime Must Pay the Penalty to simply Penalty—to no avail. The title still died two issues later.

Trapped! did no better. Ace also briefly tried to ride the Davy Crockett craze with Heroes of the Wild Frontier, an effort that only lasted two issues. Then, with comics cover-dated November 1956, the romance line closed shop as well.

Why did A.A. Wyn give up comic books? His burgeoning paperback line increasingly generated the kind of profits that demanded his full attention. Kenneth Davis notes that Wyn sold off his hardcover book-publishing enterprise to focus exclusively on paperbacks in 1956. It is likely that he shut down his comic book line for the same reason. By the time of Wyn’s death in 1967, his comic books were a fading memory.

Ace paperbacks, on the other hand, would continue going strong long after his death.

Ace’s costumed heroes have made a minor comeback in the last few years, in the pages of retro-themed comic books Under editor Don Wollheim, the Ace Double Novels became a big deal, with two short like FemForce and Project: Superpowers. But, frankly, it’s books printed upside down from each other, each with its own cover. This 1955 Ace another glimpse of the Ace villains that I’m hankering for.

Double of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Conqueror (the first reprinting ever of REH’s One would hope a madman named The Mummy might know The Hour of the Dragon from 1930s Weird Tales magazine) and Leigh Brackett’s at least a few ways to return from the dead. Surely Dark Eyes The Sword of Rhiannon featured covers painted by pulp great Norman Saunders. and Madame Death could have found a way to immortalize [© the respective copyright holders.] their homicidal passion. Nor would the embittered Adolf Krimetz pass on one final chance to lash out at the salacious comic books had emerged as a national issue. Even world that so betrayed him, howling fiercely at the moon. though Ace was far from being one of the most sensationalistic After all, any hero worth his salt needs such villains. publishers, the industry’s self-imposed Comics Code effectively Abner Sundell said so. put the kibosh on Ace’s horror titles.

Double Whammy!

Louis Zansky in the 1940s. Thanks to William B. Jones, Jr., author of Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History.

Wild Shots Penalty #48 (Jan. 1956), the second issue after the title was rechristened, sported a cover by Louis Zansky…

Heroes of the Wild Frontier #2 (April ’56) an uncredited one. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Coming Up Aces!

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Bonus Feature (by Mark Carlson-Ghost):

A Who’s Who of Ace Villainy 1940-46

Captain Nippo (foe of Captain Courageous). Nippo was a Japanese patriot whose right hand had been replaced by a barbed hook. An excellent fighter, Nippo wore a formfitting green uniform with a rising-sun insignia on the chest and cowl of his uniform. Even after the war, Caption Nippo was “still battling the despised conquerors of his aggressor nation.” In Four Favorites #23, Nippo managed to escape capture once again, but the closing story caption promised that, in the following issue, “Captain Courageous sets out to bring Captain Nippo to trial before the war crime commission!” Nippo did indeed end up standing trial and, after over a dozen struggles with Courageous, was finally executed with a hangman’s noose. Four Favorites #9-14, 1618, 20-24 (years active 1943-46).

Captains Outrageous Captain Nippo battled on after the fall of Japan in the “Captain Courageous” yarn in Four Favorites #23 (May 1946). Since this issue deals with Nippo’s attempt to sabotage the testing of an American atomic bomb on obsolete ships, it must’ve been prepared not long after Japan had surrendered in September of ’45. He had made his four-color debut in 1943. Scripter & artist unknown. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost (with the Digital Comics Museum), to Doug Martin, and to Comic Book Plus. [© the respective copyright holders.]

The Clown (foe of Magno). This maniacal master criminal wore a yellow and green clown suit, black eye-mask, and white face makeup.

The Clown possessed exceptional strength and agility and exhibited a remarkable ability to recover from seemingly fatal injuries. Over the years, The Clown utilized his scientific genius to invent a degravitating solvent, a deadly death spray, and a demagnetizing fluid with which to coat his weapons. The Clown also once utilized a “mentabelt” of his own devising to turn Davey into his willing slave. The fiend made the youth wear a matching clown suit as they fought Magno in deadly combat. The Clown often surrounded himself with underworld lowlifes like Old Annie and the brutish Jock, but on one occasion mesmerized a beautiful woman to be his servant. Extremely treacherous, The Clown often killed (or attempted to kill) criminal allies once their usefulness to him had ended. Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 1/#5-2/3, Vol. 3/#2-4/5, Vol. 5/#3; Four Favorites #8-18 (1940-45).

Still Clowning Around Magno and Davey tackle The Clown yet again, in Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 3, #2 (July 1942). Writer & artist unknown. Thanks to Comic Book Plus. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

Call Me Madam—Or Madame!

In Xanadu Did Cobra Khan…

With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Cobra first battled Magno and Davey in Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 2, #4 (Oct. 1941). Art by Jim Mooney; scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Dark Eyes and Madame Death faced Lash Lightning and Lightning Girl in three issues in a row of Super-Mystery Comics. This splash page from #14 (May 1944) was the middle of those. The lady’s name was first spelled “Madam Death,” then “Madame Death.” Either way, she spelled trouble!

Writer & artist unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

The Cobra (foe of Magno). A.k.a. Leo Morez, a Nazi agent, The Cobra wore a green-scaled costume and hood, set off by a red cape. The claws of his gloves were filled with poison. His initial scheme involved sending out his Cobra squadron of warplanes from his secret domestic air base to bomb coastal American cities. Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 2/#4-6, Vol. 3/#1 (1941-42).

Dark Eyes & Madame Death (foes of Lash Lightning). Dark Eyes was a handsome, thickly built fellow, “powerful enough to kill a steer with one blow of his fist.” He was also very intelligent and recognized the hard-tobeat synergy created by the male/female dynamic of the Lightning team.

In order to match it, Dark Eyes sought out a partnership with the lovely Madame Death, a dark-haired scam artist who was also remarkably strong despite her slender figure. Later, Dark Eyes briefly teamed up with The Maestro (see below) in an effort to break Madame Death—the woman who likely was his lover—out of jail. Four Favorites #13-15 (1944).

The Dictator’s Shadow (foe of Lone Warrior). “Sinister leader of the American fifth column,” The Dictator’s Shadow appeared to be nothing more than a talking shadow. He created this effect by casting his shadow from a projector embedded in his ring. His talking shadow often disoriented his enemies and led them to think he may have met his end, when

The Shadow Knows…

The Lone Warrior tackles The Dictator’s Shadow in Banner Comics #3 (Sept. 1941).

For once, the identity of the scripter (Otto Binder) is known from that writer’s records, but the artist has not been identified. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Coming Up Aces!

29

in actuality only his shadow had been in harm’s way. The Dictator’s Shadow appeared shadowy even in the flesh, due to his being covered from head to toe in a black hood and robes. His real identity was never discovered. Banner #3-5 (194142).

Drako-Saki (foe of Unknown Soldier). Considered the “father of Japanese evil, [a] spirit of the nether worlds,” this so-called “Jap vampire” was raised from the dead to help defeat the Allied effort. Four Favorites #11 (1943).

The Eel (foe of Lash Lightning). Professor Aqua became frustrated by the limitations of circus life, where he was billed as “the human fish—the only person who can eat, drink, and live underwater”—and became The Eel. When submerged in water, The Eel possessed “terrible super strength.”

He wore a black diving suit, cowl, and goggles with lighter-colored gloves. His name was derived from the electric shock gun he freely used.

Lightning #12 (1942).

The Rise And Fall Of The Japanese Vampire Drako-Saki was “raised from the dead” to help the Japanese war effort—but The Unknown Soldier sent him back to where he came from, and he didn’t return again. Art by Harvey Kurtzman; scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

El-Buff-ali-Rugg (foe of Captain Courageous).

“The Half-Caste! Half Muslim, half Jap, combining all the evil features of both races,” elBuff-ali-Rugg wielded a knife to deadly effect.

Dressed in Asian-style shirt and trousers, he

Eel’ll Be Seeing You

East Of Suez

Professor Aqua’s powers are born, transforming him into The Eel, in Lightning Comics, Vol. 2, #6 (April 1942). Art by Jim Mooney; scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Good and evil collide in the Moslem world in the “Captain Courageous” exploit in Four Favorites #15 (Aug. 1944). Art signed by Bill Savage; writer unidentified. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

attempted to take control of India by obtaining the “symbol of the eternal kingdom.” Legend had it that possession of the artifact granted its owner invulnerability. Four Favorites #15 (1944).

Fay Morgana (foe of Sword). Variously described as “the greatest spy in all the Reich” and “beautiful as a dream, deadly as a serpent,” the narrative suggested Fay or Faye Morgana was “a woman from out of history” and thus likely a personification of King Arthur’s ancient adversary. Little was made of this, however, and she only rarely utilized magical powers. She did, however, wield a whip very effectively. Fay Morgana was often aided by her underlings, The Hun and The Goth (see below). After multiple attempts at defeating The Sword, Morgana began to despair in SuperMystery #22, and was shown getting drunk to drown her sorrows! At this point, The Genius (see below) appeared, volunteering to assist her. But Morgana ultimately betrayed The Genius, and his subsequent revenge contributed to her final defeat by The Sword. Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 3/#3-6, Vol. 4/#1-4 (1943-44).

The Genius (foe of Sword). This arrogant inventor and, yes, genius used a wide array of gadgets in his crimes. The Genius was short and a bit pudgy, his curly mop of hair adding to a sense of personal indolence. He ultimately was sent back to antiquity by a time machine of his own devising, never to be seen or heard from again. Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 4/#4-6 (1944-45).

The Hun and The Goth (foes of Sword). The Hun and The Goth were “masterworks of science and breeding, the first true representatives of the future race of German master-men!” As such, they were assigned by Hitler himself to assist Faye Morgana (see above). After their first failure, Hitler ordered his scientists to feed them special vitamins to double their strength.

The Hun was portrayed as a long-haired brute, and the Goth as a vicious old graybeard. Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 3/#4, Vol. 4/#1-4 (1943-44).

The Icicle (foe of Unknown Soldier). Born Rufino LeMair, this older Frenchman could create ice with his mere touch, and his breath was a cool mist regardless of the outside temperature. LeMair’s hair, eyebrows, goatee, and sideburns all resembled icicles. Four Favorites #7 (1942).

A Cool Reception The Unknown Soldier tries to give a cold shoulder to The Icicle in Four Favorites #7 (Oct. 1942)—several years before DC Comics had a “Green Lantern” baddie of that name. Artist & scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Four Better Or Four Worse We can double down on these next four entries—as Fay Morgana is drinking with her buddies The Hun and The Goth—when The Genius drops by and begins mocking her. Obviously, The Sword is in for a tough time when these four team up! From Super-Mystery, Vol. 4, #4 (Oct. 1944). Pencils by Lou Ferstadt; inks by L.B. Cole; writer unknown. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Coming Up Aces!

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That Must Be A HighTension Wire!

Jim Mooney’s cover for Lightning Comics, Vol. 2, #1 (June 1941—real #7), highlights The Mastermind. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Music, Maestro, Please!

The Maestro serenades Lash Lightning in Four Favorites #9 (Feb. 1943).

Art by Harvey Kurtzman; scripter unknown. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [© the respective copyright holders.]

The Maestro (foe of Lash Lightning). Born Wilbur Justus, this concert violinist first discovered a way to use his music to hypnotize bees into obeying him, and later mesmerized human beings, including the hapless Lightning Girl. Wealthy businessmen fell under his spell and felt compelled to sign over their fortunes to him. The Maestro quickly gave up his black-and-yellow-striped shirt and ersatz wings to dress formally, with a top hat that he wore over his long hair. The villain was assisted on one occasion

by Dark Eyes (see above) and on another by the Headsman, a hunchbacked torturer of vicious disposition. Four Favorites #9, 10, 12, 14 (1943-44).

The Mastermind (foe of Lash Lightning). Brilliant creator of a machine that gave him powers over lightning similar to that of Lash himself, The Mastermind—possessing eerie, glowing eyes— could also teleport himself to other locations at will by using an “electrical condenser.” By his third encounter with Lightning, Mastermind had developed a serum that could “make the mind and ear of any man obey [his] voice alone.” He used this serum to take command of an entire army base. The Mastermind worked for the Nazis, and in one appearance displayed a swastika insignia on his shirt. Lightning #7-10 (1941-42).

The Mummy (foe of Lash Lightning). By soaking cloth wrappings in radium, Professor Vatz became the Mummy, a fearsome vision

I Want My Mummy!

Mooney kept busy at Ace, also drawing the cover of Lightning, Vol. 1, #6 (April 1941), which introduced The Mummy. [© the respective copyright holders.]

impervious to harm. The Mummy made the mistake of teaming with The Mastermind (see above), who tried to unlock the secret of his power. When the two fell into a heated argument, the Mastermind attacked him, inadvertently killing him. Lightning #5-7 (1941).

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A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

“A Woman Is Two-Faced…”

Getting A Head

Lou Ferdstadt drew the “Mr. Risk” tale in Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 4, #2 (April 1944), which featured the one and only appearance of Nadya Burnett. Scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Another Ferstadt epic: Captain Courageous vs. Shinto Samurai in Four Favorites #16 (Nov. 1944). Writer unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Nadya Burnett (foe of Mr. Risk). While attempting to steal the Ghulsian Diamond, the beautiful and vain Burnett was severely scarred by a falling light, leaving the left side of her face misshapen. Burnett continued her criminal career, but now tried to destroy the good looks of others with acid. She apparently fell to her death at the end of her first encounter with Mr. Risk. Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 4/#2 (1944).

Professor Octopus (foe of Magno).

Octopus was a bald Japanese man who possessed four arms and wielded a samurai sword. He also sported a Fu Manchu mustache, round glasses, and a traditional Oriental robe. Octopus was the captain of a high-powered submarine.

Four Favorites #1 (1941).

Shinto Samurai (foe of Captain Courageous). The soul of an ancient samurai warrior was restored to life within a body constructed from multiple body parts, all under the watchful eye of Captain Nippo (see above). The Samurai turned on his creators once he had experi-

enced the inherent goodness of Captain C. Four Favorites #16 (1944).

The Toad (foe Lash Lightning). The Toad was born with green scaly skin, webbed feet and hands, and a propensity for leaping. He preferred to be called by his surname, Weston. Weston engaged in a vicious campaign of intimidation, seeking to force Congress into outlawing free speech. With the aid of a machine provided by the Axis, The Toad could send bolts of electricity over the air waves to kill anyone who said something he disapproved of and killed millions in just this fashion. Four Favorites #7 (1942).

…But Who’s Counting?

Magno’s pal Davey is only pretending to be terrified of Professor Octopus in Super-Mystery Comics #1 (Sept.

1941). Maybe it’s because the good prof actually has only six limbs? No wonder he didn’t make a second appearance! Art by Lou Ferstadt; scripter unknown.

Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

The Vulture (foe of Lash Lightning). The Vulture, a deranged scientist named Larkin, stole from his patriotic halfbrother blueprints for a flame gun and a formula that could create an impenetrable purple fog that can be solidified into a wall. As The Vulture, he operated out of “the Black City in the Sky.” Shirtless with bare legs, The Vulture wore a wing-like cloak that allowed him to fly and

Coming Up Aces!

33

Pop-Culture Vulture Jim Mooney splash for The Vulture’s sole appearance, in Lightning, Vol. 2, #5 (Feb. 1942). Scripter—well, you know how that goes. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Toad Away The Toad hopped aboard to face Lash Lightning in Four Favorites #7 (Oct. 1942). Artist & scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

withstand any force. His niece, Linda Larkin, also opposed him.

Lightning #11 (1942).

The Were-Wolf (foe of Lash Lightning). Adolf “Wolf” Krimetz was teased as a young cadet by fellow students because of his wolf-like features. Enraged, he accidentally killed one of his classmates and retreated into the mountains, “nursing hate, vengeance and rebellion at his fate.” Years later, the worst of his tormentors had become generals in the American military and Krimetz set out to kill them. Inexplicably, this commitment prompted him to turn into a wolf-man from the waist up, a transformation he was subsequently able to control. As The Were-Wolf, Krimetz possessed wolflike attributes: superior strength, agility, and fierceness. To cover his lower half he wore animal hides and fur boots. In his human form, Krimetz wore a yellow cape over a business suit, which he shed at the time of transformation. Four Favorites #1-2, 4-5 (1941-42).

Credits This article would not have been possible without the reference work of Jerry G. Bails and his Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999 website. Howard Keltner’s Golden-Age Comic Books Index 1935-1955, Revised Edition and the Grand Comics Database were also online references. I am indebted to the comic book microfilm library of Michigan State University, which made my thorough review of Ace heroes and villains possible. During two visits there, the assistance of Randall W. Scott, Special Collections librarian, was invaluable. Readers interested in seeing online versions of many of the Ace comic books discussed here can find them at the Digital

Wolf Call Splash panel of another Were-Wolf melee, in Four Favorites #5 (May 1942).

Writer & artist unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Comic Museum.

Robert Turner’s autobiography, Some of My Best Friends Are Writers, But I Wouldn’t Want My Sister to Marry One was published

by Sherbourne Press, Inc., in 1970, and the two quotes featured in this article are from pages 75 and 83. “How to Crash the Comics!”

by Abner Sundell (1942) was accessed from the Superman through

34

A History Of Ace Periodicals—Their Heroes & (Especially) Their Villains

the Ages website. Jim Mooney’s recollections are culled from an interview/article by Mark Heike at the AC Comics website, while Lou Cameron’s verbal description of Fred Gardener is from Alter Ego #79.

Material on the non-comics portion of Wyn’s career came from various sources. Details about various Ace pulps and their dates of publication are available in the Adventure House Guide to the Pulps

by Doug Ellis, John Locke, and John Gunnison. The Time magazine article on Wyn from its September 16th, 1935, issue was found in their online archive. Wollheim’s posthumous remembrance of Wyn is similarly available through the Internet. Mark Trost’s article on Ace’s adapting pulp stories into comic books appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of Blood ‘n’ Thunder. Information on Wyn’s venture into paperbacks came largely from Kenneth C. Davis’ TwoBit Culture: The Paperbacking of America.

Finally, I want to thank my husband Jason for his remarkable patience during my quixotic quest to write a comprehensive compendium of Golden Age heroes and villains.

Mark Carlson-Ghost is a long-time comic book collector and part-time historian. He has written for Comics Buyer’s Guide, Nostalgia Zone, and Robert Jennings’ Comic World, where he wrote the first historical treatment of the romance comics genre. Drawn to neglected subject matter, he has also written about the history of comic book sales and a three-part series on educational comic books in the 1940s and ’50s. Mark is currently working on cataloguing the appearances of recurring Golden Age villains, which is what drew him to the neglected gold mine that is the Ace comic book universe. Professionally, Mark is a psychology professor who teaches the history of psychology, among other subjects. He lives in Minnesota with his husband and their occasionally villainous cat.

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A very Human Torch-like panel from the “Vulcan” story in Ace Periodicals’ Super-Mystery Comics, Vol. 2, #3 (Aug. 1941).

The hero generates heat from his body without himself bursting into flame. The Grand Comics Database attributes the script to Robert Turner, the art to Jack Alderman. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost for the scan. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Pack 1: $15 (23 cards) Pack 2: $15 (27 cards) Free sample cards with a SASE The Drawn Word 3317 Park Ave Richmond VA 23221 WWW.THEDRAWNWORD.COM

35

From Dell—To Gold Key—To King— With The New York Times In Between!

A Candid Conversation With Writer & Editor BILL HARRIS About His Comics Career

I

Conducted & Transcribed by Richard J. Arndt

NTERVIEWER’S INTRO: Bill Harris was an editor first at Dell, then at Gold Key Comics, in the early 1960s, where he worked on such titles as Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom. Following that period, he was hired

by King Features to edit their new line of comic books, some of whose titles had been taken back from Gold Key, such as The Phantom, Flash Gordon, and Mandrake the Magician. Harris also wrote The Phantom for the entirety of its comic book runs at both Gold Key and King. This interview was conducted on January 25, 2013.

The Phantom Of The Comics Convention (Center:) Bill Harris at the 1965 “Academy Con” in New York City, flanked by comics fans Bobby Van (on his left) and Mark Hanerfeld (on his right). This con was held at a time when Harris was in between comic book editorial gigs. He’d recently resigned the one at Western/Gold Key, and the one at King Features was still a year away; but in July of ’65 he was still scripting The Phantom comic book for Gold Key. Thanks to Bill Schelly.

(Left:) The Phantom was visually introduced to Gold Key’s readers on the second page of its The Phantom #1 (Nov. 1962), as written by Harris, drawn by Bill Lignante, and lettered by comic strip veteran Ben Oda. The yarn was a riff on Richard Connell’s famous 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game.” Note that Gold Key at first eschewed the use of inked borders for its panels. Repro’d from Hermes Press’ 2014 hardcover The Phantom – The Complete Sundays: Volume Two 1942-1945; Hermes Press has reprinted the Gold Key, King, and Charlton comic book runs of The Phantom.

(Above right:) Splash page of King Comics’ The Phantom #22 (May 1967), with script by Harris and art by Lignante. Thanks to Eric Schumacher. [Both Phantom pages TM & © King Features, Inc.]

36

A Candid Conversation With Writer & Editor Bill Harris

“I Was Brought In [to Dell] To Promote Comic Books” RICHARD ARNDT: Thank you for agreeing to this interview. First, can you tell us a little bit about your background? Did you read a lot of comics as a kid?

BILL HARRIS: I grew up in Pennsylvania, in West Pittston, a pretty small town near Scranton. Just about all the kids read comic books. We traded them back and forth. I had a boxful and I kept them in the cellar stairway. The kids from the neighborhood would come and take out what they wanted and put in what they didn’t want anymore. Everybody did it.

My first job was with ABC Radio. My dream in life was to be in broadcasting. But I got fired after about four years. It was due to budget cuts, which is really common in that business. So I thought “F—- you guys. I’m not gonna work for you again, just so you can fire me for nothing that I did.”

So I began scrambling about, looking for a real job. I worked with Crowell-Collier, a publishing company that’s now defunct. I learned about sales there. The guy I worked with was a genius—a terrific teacher. He taught me how to write and do sales promotion.

I started a checkered career, bouncing around from one company to another. I’d gotten married and had kids, and I couldn’t afford to live on the salary that Crowell-Collier was paying me. Every time I asked for a raise, they told me the economy was poor. [laughs] I solved that one by quitting and going somewhere else. Eventually I wound up at Dell, which is now gone, too, I think.

I was brought in there to promote comic books.

RA: How did you promote comics in the early 1960s?

HARRIS: My promotional career at Dell Publishing, while officially on behalf of Dell Comics, included all of the Dell magazines, from Modern Romances to Inside Detective—there were dozens of them. It mostly involved relations with magazine wholesalers, who needed periodic nudges to put the Dell products on newsstands rather than saving them for returns to cover their monthly bills. It also included flyers and brochures to promote

Getting A Promotion It’s not known whether Harris was involved in doing promotion for Dell/Western on these two particular magazine issues (a ’60s-something edition of Modern Romances and the Feb. 1963 issue of Inside Detective), but one if not both are from the period of his employment at Dell, which didn’t include working solely on comic books! Note the Dell seal on the latter cover. [© the respective copyright holders.]

specific comic titles, which helped give Western, Dell’s partner company, some stories to impress the licensors on how we were working to boost their royalty revenue.

Remember, Dell did an enormous amount of licensed material, from movies to TV shows to cartoon and comic strip characters.

You know, Dell—and Gold Key, when it spun off from Dell—were exempt from review by the Comics Code Authority. The Comics Code was established to answer the ravings of Frederic Wertham, the self-appointed guardian of the poor little kids who he claimed were being corrupted by the comic book publishers. We were exempt because we had a higher authority—our licensors—to satisfy. That was a mandate that extended to even our original titles like Turok [Son of Stone] and Doctor Solar [Man of the Atom]. We did allow the Comics Code to look over our output, albeit without the authority to change any of it. I had regular visits with Leonard Darvin, a lawyer, and, I think, one of the inquisitors. I came to like him and wondered whatever became of him. There weren’t many jobs he could have filled after the Comics Code ran its course.

RA: He was the attorney for the Code Office, or actually for the Comics Magazine Association of America, which set up the Comics Code Office, in the early 1960s and in 1965, I think, became the actual head of the Comics Code. He worked for the Comics Code Office, in one way or another for 25 years. Then for 10 years after that he served as a consultant.

He passed away in 2003 at the age of 94.

Baby, It’s Code Outside!

Two of Gold Key’s successful (and non-Comics-Code-approved) 1960s series during Harris’ tenure, illustrated by strong covers: Turok, Son of Stone #44 (March 1965) and Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom #7 (March 1964). The latter cover was painted by George Wilson; the artist of the former is unidentified.

[TM & © Random House, Inc.]

HARRIS: Huh! Anyway, I really fell in love with comics on that job. A guy named Matt Murphy, from Western Printing, used to come down once a week to preview titles with Helen Meyer, Dell’s president. I got to know Matt, and one day I said to him, “You know, I’m in the wrong place. Instead of promoting comics, I’d rather be working on them.” He said, “I can’t hire you because you’ve become Dell’s most important employee” and all that. Dell was a customer of Western’s, and they couldn’t afford to rock the boat [by hiring me directly from Dell]. He told me to get on another payroll

Len Darvin Administrator of the Comics Code Authority, beginning in late 1965.

From Dell—To Gold Key—To King—With The New York Times In Between!

37

“Western Went On Its Own… Under The Name Gold Key” HARRIS: I never noticed that before! It’s all newsprint, but there are different grades of it.

Western had those licenses from the big companies, and the reason Western and Dell could get them and keep them was because they could offer a licensor not just comics but Big Little Books and coloring books and jigsaw puzzles—anything printed that they did. That made it easier for the licensor, because they could go to one publisher and get everything printed that they wanted. So that was why Western did the comics and Dell distributed them. It wasn’t good business to do everything else and let some other publisher do the comics.

Use Your Brain, Boy! When Dell/Western edged into the revived super-hero sweepstakes with Brain Boy #2 (July-Sept. 1962), after an one-issue tryout in its Four Color title, Dell and Western were near the end of their long-running partnership. By the time of Brain Boy #6 (Sept-Nov. 1963), the last of the series, Western had gone off on its own as Gold Key, keeping the key licenses such as Disney, Warner Bros., et al., and Dell was on its own—with fewer established properties and, in the end, far less success than Western/Gold Key. Both covers

by Vic Prezio. Contributor Jim Ludwig informs A/E that “Dell Comics is coming back”—with the formation of InDellible Comics, beginning with a 64-page multi-genre anthology All-New Popular Comics. See the InDellible Comics site on Facebook.

[TM & © the respective copyright holders.]

and call him back. So I did. I lasted about nine months [at the other job] and called him back and got the job at Western Printing. I had quit Dell to get the door open for Western, where I stayed for five or six years.

RA: So Dell had their name on the comics, but Western was actually doing the editorial work on them?

Then, just after I started at Western, Dell and Western dissolved their partnership and Western went on its own, publishing comics under the name Gold Key. It was essentially the Dell Comics line, but Western was printing and producing the books for themselves.

My favorite book at Gold Key was Bullwinkle Comics.

Those were among the list of books I edited, and we had a lot of fun with them. There were three editors at Western when I was there—Wally Green, Ken Power, and myself. Matt Murphy was the chief. Albert Leventhal was in charge of Golden Press, which included all the comics, too, which is why they were called Gold Key.

Eventually I reached the same point with Western that I’d reached with other companies. I asked for a raise and they said forget about it. So, rather than argue with them, I went to work for The New York Times. One of the reasons I went to the Times was that they had a union and you didn’t have to ask for a raise. I lasted there for thirty years. I was the assistant promotion manager, doing

HARRIS: Not just on the comics. Western Printing was also doing Golden Books and all kinds of activity books. They did the Big Little Books, too. They printed the Dell paperback line as well as Dell Comics. They actually edited and produced those books. The Dell paperback line was huge back in the 1950s. That was Western doing all the editing and artdirecting, while Dell, as a client, was the financier and distributor but just got the finished product.

Western also had the Disney license as well as a lot of others, including Warner Bros. Those were really big licenses—Disney and Warner Bros. For that genre, adapting movies and cartoons and so on, Dell/Western was the only place to go.

RA: One of the things I used to find interesting about the old paperbacks was that, when I was a teenager, you could look at a page of print, not the cover or the title page but just a page at random and you could tell which publisher was doing the book just from the paper and typeface.

Ballantine used a rather elegant font. So did Dell. If it was really sloppy-looking, it was Ace. [laughs] Bantam’s was business-like. Fawcett also had a particular approach to page design. Berkley was the easiest to spot, because their paper was almost transparent. They used this rather thin typeface, and you could actually see the print from the opposite side of the page kind of leaking through.

Me Tarzan—You Tarzan!

When Western took full charge of its comics circa mid-1962, reconstituting its comic book line as Gold Key, there was little change from the last Dell issue to the first Gold Key one, except for perhaps an extra month or so’s time lapse. On the left is George Wilson’s cover for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan #131 (July-Aug. 1962)—on the right is his cover for the still-bimonthly Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan #132 (Nov. ’62). Artist Jesse Marsh and writer Gaylord Du Bois continued as the creative team inside, as well. [TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

38

A Candid Conversation With Writer & Editor Bill Harris

public relations work and stuff like that. One day, somebody called me from some publishing company in Britain. They were in New York and were looking for stuff to photograph and wanted to take pictures of the Times’ pressroom. In my capacity there, they had to ask me first. So I did the photo shoot with them, and a while later the girl from the British company asked me if I’d like to write the introduction for that New York book. Of course I said yes. When I got the book, it had my name on the cover! Come to find out, the British company Booked! was producing a line of books, A brief tip-toe through but they couldn’t have British www.amazon.com turned up this writers because they were trying book written Bill Harris, published to sell the books in the States roughly a decade ago. There are, and Americans won’t buy books apparently, quite a few others. [© the respective copyright holders.] with British writers. They wanted an American writing style. I could do an American writing style! [laughs] The main distributor in the U.S. of those British books was headed up by J.P. Leventhal, who was Albert Leventhal’s son! I always thought that was kind of weird. The son has been really successful with his company—Black Dog & Leventhal.

Ultimately, over the years, I wrote a hundred books. Some pretty small—5000 words—but some 100,000-plus words. I did that for quite a while, but eventually all of the companies went out of business and left me high and dry. I couldn’t afford the rent anymore in New York, so I moved to Dallas, which is where I am now. I haven’t really done any work in about two years. I’d like to, but I think everyone in the publishing business thinks I’m dead! [laughs] RA: Maybe we can change that.

“I Could Be King Features’ Comic Book Editor, Too” HARRIS: Maybe! Now, while I was at Western, I also wrote The Phantom, the guy in the purple suit.

RA: Yeah, I know The Phantom. He may have been the first costumed super-hero.

Features’ comic book editor, too. I took them up on it. I quit my job at the Times to go to work for King Features. Sylvan Byck was the comic strip editor back then. He was an old guy and he looked awful. He looked like he would have a heart attack any minute. I thought that if I was around when that happened that I’d get his job, which was sort of the ultimate job in comics—running King Features. He was tougher than he looked, though. [laughs] He was in charge there long after I’d left the company.

Sylvan Byck

Longtime comic strip I only lasted there a while. We had a weird editor for King scheme for selling comics. We attempted to cut Features Syndicate. the wholesalers out of the loop in favor of selling bagged comics through rack jobbers.

The scheme failed when our need to keep publishing new issues to satisfy the foreign market got ahead of our new distributors’ ability to sell the bagged comics fast enough, and they refused to stay onboard. It was like the story “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” We found ourselves awash in new comics that we couldn’t get to market because of our stupid decision to burn all our bridges. We eventually alienated the wholesalers and we alienated everybody else.

I worked for a guy there named John Wright. He was the licensing director for King. He was a really hard-drinking, hardliving Irishman. He came from a wealthy family. His father pioneered printed dress patterns. They used to run in newspapers as a feature every week. Women would cut out the one they liked and send away to him for the dress pattern. The father became a millionaire selling these dress patterns. His son John followed in his footprints and became the salesman for King Features. He flew his own airplane from paper to paper. He ended up going to work for Popeyes Fried Chicken, which had nothing at all to do with King Features and the Popeye comic strip. He wished that it did, because he would have liked to collect the royalties of that tie-in. The chicken franchise was actually named, I think, for Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle, who was a real-life cop whose story was told in the movie The French Connection. King

HARRIS: Lee Falk owned that character, and when we got the license to do the comic book I kept trotting writers up to Lee to see if he liked any of them enough to write his damn comic. He just kept turning everybody down. Finally I said I didn’t know what to do. He asked me if I would be interested in doing it. I said yes, and that’s how I became the writer.

I worked on the book for a few years. Then, when I went to the Times, of course I took the writing job with me as a freelancer. One day Western called me up and said that King Features, the licensor on that title, was going to do their own line of comics and that I’d no longer be able to do the Phantom for Western. So, of course, I called up King Features right away and told them that The Phantom was my freelance account and that I wanted to keep it. They told me that not only could I write The Phantom but I could be the King

“Now We Make Like Mandrake!”

Don Heck From Marvel Tales Annual #1, 1964, at a time when Heck was drawing “Iron Man” and The Avengers. [© Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Marvel artist Don Heck drew the cover of King Comics’ Mandrake the Magician #1 (Sept. 1966). The quote in the heading comes from director Federico Fellini, who was known to say it (in Italian, we presume) during the filming of his movies. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

From Dell—To Gold Key—To King—With The New York Times In Between!

39

King Of The Comics (Above left:) Having returned to editing, this time for King Comics, Bill—still also the writer of The Phantom— took part in a panel at John Benson’s 1966 con.

(L. to r.:) Bill Harris, Marvel writer/assistant editor Roy Thomas, French author & critic Maurice Horn, and comics artist/legend Gil Kane. Thanks to Maggie Thompson. Bill saw to it that King Comics had an ongoing presence in the comics “newszines” of the day, as exampled by these two items from On the Drawing Board (soon to be The Comic Reader): (Above:) In Vol. 2, #7 (aka #54), for Nov. 1966, Harris wrote of King’s ambitious expansion plans; but, of the several projected new titles, only Jungle Jim would ever actually appear—and it only for one issue, in the last month of King Comics. Thanks to Nick Caputo.

(Below:) Bill’s letter in April 1967’s OTDB Vol. 2, #12 (aka #59), explained the new King Comics system of distribution, which was designed to bypass the newsstand. Unfortunately, as Bill relates in this interview, that business plan failed to pan out, and King Features was soon out of the comic book business, its final issues bearing Dec. 1967 cover dates. Thanks to Jim Kealy & Nick Caputo. [© the respective copyright holders.]

(Left:) A house ad for the King Comics line, from The Phantom #22 (May 1966).

[TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

40

A Candid Conversation With Writer & Editor Bill Harris

Mandrake, You’re A Brick!

(Above:) The King title Mandrake the Magician #5 (May 1967) featured no fewer than two of the company’s comic strip headliners, starring the hero whose “magic” was accomplished by “gesturing hypnotically” and his muscular assistant Lothar.

Behind a cover by Mandrake comic strip artist Fred Fredericks came two “Mandrake” tales drawn by Ray Bailey and written by Gary Poole, and a backup tale of “Brick Bradford” scripted and drawn by Paul Norris. Brick Bradford had once been the country’s #3 “science-fiction” newspaper strip, behind Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Thanks to Eric Schumacher.

[TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

Features got screwed out of royalties there. [laughs] John went to work for them anyway.

Paul Norris had drawn the late run of the Brick Bradford strip, and in the early ’40s had been the original artist of DC’s “Aquaman” feature.

This circa-1950s pic courtesy of Charlie Roberts.

Ray Bailey After assisting Milt Caniff on the Terry and the Pirates strip in the ’40s, Bailey pursued a long comic book career, including as artist of Dell/Western’s Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. Dr. Michael J. Vassallo generously provided this previously unpublished photo of the Bailey family, taken on Dec. 6, 1947, by Pete Tumlinson. (Left to right:) Dorothy, Carol, Ray, & Richard. Future Timely artist Tumlinson’s first job upon moving from Texas to New York City was as Bailey’s assistant on the comic strip Bruce Gentry.

The same thing happened in England with Wimpy’s hamburger stand, which started up in the 1950s.

Any reasonable person would assume that a hamburger stand named Wimpy would be a reference to the Popeye comic strip and the character Wimpy, who loved hamburgers. The King Features representative over there went to the Wimpy company to challenge them and tell them to drop the name or pay us royalties.

So he goes into the office and they tell him, “Please meet Mr. Wimpy.” [laughs] The guy named the company after himself!

Those were two businesses that, if King Features had gotten in on the ground floor, they could have made a huge amount of money from.

So the King Features comics went bust, and the titles went over to Charlton. I found myself sitting there at King Features without anything to do. I was a young man then, and everybody at King Features was very old. You couldn’t get Blue Cross insurance there

From Dell—To Gold Key—To King—With The New York Times In Between!

41

[through the company], because the average age of everyone was so high. King Features was owned by the Hearst Corporation, and they used to let the retiring girlfriends and what-not come in and work there. You couldn’t lose with King Features. So there I sat, bored out of my mind, and finally I got to the point where if anyone asked me to do anything I’d snap at them. I didn’t want to be that guy.

They had a movie called Yellow Submarine coming out, so I worked on the licensing for that. Then all of a sudden, one day it was gone. Movies come and go, you know? Yellow Submarine came and went. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Western did the comic book adaptation of that film inspired by a Beatles song, using an early draft of the movie's screenplay.]

I called my old boss up at the Times and asked if I could have my old job back. He said yes, so I went back. I just took up where I left off. I ended up leaving the Times years later because the books I was writing were taking up so much of my time. I asked one of my publishers if I could match my salary from working at the Times by working for him and he said yes. I worked for multiple publishers after that.

“I Did All The [Phantom Comics] Published

By Western And… King Features” RA: You worked on The Phantom for a considerable period of time— three or four years.

HARRIS: Yeah, I did all the ones published by Western and all the ones published by King Features: 28 issues between 1962 and 1967.

Then the book went to Charlton.

RA: Did you work with a number of different artists while writing The Phantom?

HARRIS: No. That was another thing about Falk. We had one guy.

His name was Bill Lignante. He came to me right after I started organizing the book, before publication, and told me that he was Lee Falk’s pick to do the comic book. I told him that we had artists of our own at Western and we’d rather use one of them. Frankly, I didn’t think that Lignante was that good an artist. At least, I didn’t think that at the time. I’ve since changed my mind. But I found out later that Lee Falk had indeed sent him over. So we used him. He was the only artist we used for the book at both Western and King Features.

RA: One of your and Lignante’s stories did appear in the Charlton version of the book—“The Ghost Tribe,” in #35.

Lee Falk The writer and major creator of two popular early adventure comic strips for King Features: Mandrake the Magician and The Phantom.

Thanks to Hermes Press.

HARRIS: I don’t know about that.

There may have been one left over.

See, King Features had to produce material for the foreign market. The worldwide market, actually. That’s why they went into comics to begin with. To keep supplying that market, they had to keep producing material even though they were no longer publishing it themselves. I suspect, with that Charlton story, we got a couple of scripts up on the publishing schedule, and when Charlton took over, they started with their own scripts but used ours when a deadline got too close. I think Dick Wood took

Print The Legend!”

Splash page of Bill Harris’ second “Phantom” story, for Gold Key’s The Phantom #2 (Feb. 1963), which depicts the hero on his throne in the Asian jungles, his faithful dog Devil at his side. (His horse, in case you didn’t know, is named Hero.) Art by Bill Lignante. Repro’d from the first volume of the Hermes Press reprinting of the “Gold Key years.” [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

over The Phantom after I left.

I’m not sure, though.

RA: Yes, he did three or four issues.

HARRIS: Dick had a brother or maybe two, and they all worked in the comic book business. I liked Dick Wood. I don’t know how to describe him, but he was a very interesting man.

RA: Both Western and the King Feature books tended to use painted covers….

Bill Lignante

HARRIS: Yeah, that was a Artist of all Gold Key and King Comics Western thing. Ed Marine issues of The Phantom, as personally was the art director there, selected by Falk. and he worked for a guy named Walter Brooks, who was the overall art director for Western.

Brooks was responsible for all the Dell paperback covers. Ed was responsible for all the comic book covers. Ed liked to use paintings.

I think that became kind of a Western trademark.

42

A Candid Conversation With Writer & Editor Bill Harris

The Ghost Who Walked—From King Comics To Charlton (Clockwise from top left:) Sy Barry’s cover for The Phantom #28 (Dec. 1967), the final King Comics issue—Jim Aparo’s cover for The Phantom #35 (Dec. ’69), the Charlton ish that finally got around to printing Bill Harris’ last story of The Ghost Who Walks—and #35’s lead splash page, drawn by Bill Lignante (who received a byline, although Harris didn’t). The latter page is repro’d from Hermes Press’ 2012 hardcover The Phantom – The Complete Series: The Charlton Years: Volume One; thanks to the Grand Comics Database for the covers.

Incidentally, in between King and Charlton, the numbering of The Phantom skipped from #28 to #30. Thanks to Jim Kealy and the Rip Jagger’s Dojo website for the above info. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

The Phantom Also Walked To Mexico, Australia, & India!

Harris & Lignante’s last “Phantom” tale, which should have been King’s The Phantom #29, was reprinted abroad with covers never seen in the U.S. (Left to right:) A Spanish-language version, with cover by Phantom strip artist Sy Barry… from the Frew line in Australia… and from the Indrajal line in India. The artists of the latter two are unidentified. With thanks to Jim Kealy and the Rip Jagger’s Dojo website. The Phantom is still very popular abroad, particularly in Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

From Dell—To Gold Key—To King—With The New York Times In Between!

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RA: Nobody else was using painted covers at the time.

HARRIS: But Western did! I thought the results were pretty good. Some of those paintings, especially of The Phantom, were top-notch. Hermes Press has published a couple of books, reprinting the old comic books, and they have the covers in there. I was surprised looking at them all these years later at how good they are.

RA: I think George Wilson did most of those covers. He was really quite good.

“Jim [Warren] Was… One Of The Smartest Guys I Ever Met” HARRIS: He sure was. He used to come into my office, which was next door to Ed’s, and chat. Everybody stopped to chat. I don’t know how to describe a comic book office.

They were like a playground. [laughs] Everybody who passed the open door stopped and chatted a bit.

Two of the favorite people I worked with then were Al Kilgore and Fred Fredericks.

Al did the Bullwinkle comics I talked about earlier. Fred did the Mandrake comic strip for something like thirty years. Fred could do anything, though. Once we got an assignment from Jim Warren… I don’t know if you know much about Jim, but he was one of the most unforgettable characters I ever met.

Painting Phantoms The cover of Gold Key’s The Phantom #1 (Nov. 1962), by George Wilson. To the best of our knowledge, Wilson painted all 17 of the Gold Key Phantom covers, as well as many other covers for the company. Sadly, photos of Wilson seem elusive even to hardcore collectors of his work. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

When the World’s Fair came to New York in 1964, Jim decided he wanted to do a comic book on it to sell at the Fair. His idea was, I thought, quite brilliant. Because the theme of the fair was the World of the Future, Jim chose to make the comic book The Flintstones at the New York World’s Fair. Cavemen seeing the world of the future. In order for him to do that, though, he had to come to Western, which had the license for publishing not only Flintstone comics but most of the Hanna-Barbara stuff. That means that we had to actually produce the comic book for Jim. So we did. I put it together. Al

Too Bad These Two Didn’t Get Together In A “Team-Up” Comic!

Fred Fredericks (on right) with Lee Falk, writer and official creator of the Mandrake the Magician and Phantom comic strips.

According to the Comics Kingdom Blog, this May 1955 photo was taken just prior to Fredericks’ first Mandrake strips appearing in print. The occasion was a benefit show for the USO, held at the Carlisle Hotel in New York City.

Bill Harris says that two of his favorite artists to work with were Al Kilgore, who drew Bullwinkle and Hoppity Hooper for both comic strips and comic books, and Fred Fredericks, who succeeded artist Phil Davis on the Mandrake the Magician strip and drew the covers for some of the King Comics issues. Seen are Fredericks’ cover for Mandrake #5 (May ’67) and Kilgore’s for Gold Key’s Bullwinkle #1 (Nov. 1962). Earlier, Dell had published its own Bullwinkle #1, just before the 1962 split with Western Publishing. [Bullwinkle cover TM & © the respective copyright holders; Mandrake cover TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

Al Kilgore From the Wikipedia entry on the artist.

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A Candid Conversation With Writer & Editor Bill Harris

Kilgore wrote it for me and Fred illustrated it.

[INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: The art is credited by the Grand Comics Database to a Phil de Lara rather than Fredericks; it’s impossible for us to confirm which of the two is correct.] Mel Crawford, another of my favorite artists, did the cover. That book was my all-time favorite project, of any kind. We went up to Jim’s apartment to hash out what we wanted.

We ended up going there seven or eight times, and it was like going to a party over there.

Kilgore and Fredericks were the funniest guys on Earth. Jim appreciated their humor. We’d sit around and shoot the jokes back and forth. It was like a vaudeville room. I got to like Jim a lot, and we stayed in touch for quite a while. I guess you know that he just dropped out of sight.

RA: He’s still around and kicking, though.

HARRIS: Jim had a lot of enemies in the comic book business, but I’ve always defended him. He was always very generous with gifts. He got a lot of loyalty that way.

RA: Right about the time Creepy #1 came out, there was a Bullwinkle newspaper strip by, I think, Al Kilgore that featured Uncle Creepy. Was that little shout-out your doing? The strip was reprinted on the first or second letters page in Creepy.

All’s Fair…

The cover of the 1964 comics special Hanna Barbera The Flintstones at the New York World’s Fair, a notion of Warren Publishing’s Jim Warren, published by Gold Key/Western. Art by Mel Crawford.

[TM & © the respective copyright holders.]

HARRIS: I put together the first couple of letters pages for Creepy, and I think it’s quite possible that I put that Bullwinkle comic strip in there. I don’t really remember. The first issue of Creepy didn’t come out all that long after the Flintstones at the New York World’s Fair book. I had this idea that comics companies didn’t really do too much with the kids, their fans, who read their stuff. They really had no contact with them until this fan movement started in the early 1960s. The fans were kind of ignored before that. They would come and hang around the office and kind of hero-worship you, hoping to meet an artist or a writer. I thought that, if Jim could get involved with those fans, he’d be way ahead of the game. I think he agreed, and that’s what we did.

Creeping Along Creepy #18 (Dec. 1968) was the first issue of that Warren title to appear after Archie Goodwin resigned as editor—so it may be one of those for which Bill Harris did “editorial consulting.” Officially, the editor is listed as being publisher James Warren himself. Cover painting by Vic Prezio. [TM & © New Comics Company.]

RA: He started up a fans page where the young writers and artists could show their work. A large number of writers and artists got their first public appearance on a Creepy, Eerie, or Vampirella fan page or appeared on the letters page. Bernie Wrightson, Bruce Jones, Len Wein, for example, appeared on the fan page. Brad Bird, who directed both The

Iron Giant and The Incredibles films wrote to the letters page, as did many other future media professionals.

…And Three To Go! (Left to right:) James Warren, Bill Harris, and Woody Gelman share a moment at the 1965 New York comics convention, probably following the panel in which Harris and Warren took part. Bill had only recently stepped down as a Gold Key editor, but was still writing The Phantom for the company… James W. was the “Warren” in Warren Publishing… and Woody Gelman, a one-time funny-animal scripter for DC (and the creator of its popular humor feature “The Dodo and the Frog”), was then an executive at Topps Chewing Gum, Inc., and near-future publisher of Nostalgia Press. Thanks to Bill Schelly.

HARRIS: Jim was a smart guy, one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met, and he knew how to work what he did well.

Fred and Al were both movie buffs. They could recite dialogue from everything except silent movies. They knew the cast of every movie. Al collected 16-millimeter prints of movies, which was the only way you could watch a movie at home in those days. He had quite a collection. Al designed the boxes that the movies were shipped in, so he got free films that way. Nearly every week you could expect an invitation to come over and watch a movie at his house.

RA: Your mentioning your connection with Jim Warren reminds me that a writer for Warren mentioned that a Gold Key editor was ghost-editing the Warren books right after Archie Goodwin left. Would that Gold Key editor have been you?

HARRIS: Yes, I did some “editorial consulting” for Jim Warren at the start of his publishing operation. I wouldn’t say I edited any issues. Jim did that himself. But I did backstop him and encouraged some of the writers and artists I worked with at Western or King Features to look for work at Warren Publishing. I was partly motivated by an admiration for Jim’s style, but more out of a desire to help those guys find more work than I

Sy Barry See A/E #37 for an in-depth interview with this superb artist.

Two of his Phantom covers can be seen on p. 42.

From Dell—To Gold Key—To King—With The New York Times In Between!

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Al Williamson was one of comic books’ greatest devotees of the art of Flash Gordon creator Alex Raymond—as well as a star artist at EC Comics in the first half of the 1950s.

We’re Number One! There were two Flash Gordon #1s in the mid-1960s. (Left:) This painting by an unidentified illustrator fronted Dell/Western’s #1-and-only, dated June 1965. The interior art was by Paul Norris. (Right:) Al Williamson drew the beautiful cover for King Comics’ Flash Gordon #1 (Sept. 1966), as well as the interior art. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

was prepared to pass along. One I recall was Ben Oda, the lettering man, who was one of my all-time favorite people. He became one of Jim’s favorites, too.

As for exact dates of when I was doing this consulting, it’s among my weaknesses that I can’t retain numbers longer than a minute or two. Sorry!

Do you remember a guy named Sy Barry?

“We Made Money On [Flash Gordon #1]” RA: I do. I think he did Flash Gordon… no, wait, that was Dan Barry.

HARRIS: Sy and Dan were brothers. I was watching a thing on Netflix last week. A science-fictiony kind of television program, and the producer and head writer on it was a guy named Seymour Barry, and I thought to myself, “I know a guy named Seymour Barry. Now where do I know that name from?” Mind you, I don’t know if it was the same guy, but Sy’s full name was Seymour. Sy drew the Phantom comic strip for many years. He also worked with his brother on Flash Gordon. I don’t know if Dan took over the strip directly from Alex Raymond, who died in a car crash in the 1950s. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: For the record, Mac Raboy took over the art on the Flash Gordon strip after Raymond’s death. When Raboy died in 1967, Dan Barry took over the strip. See the coverage of Dan Barry in A/E #130, 131, 134, & 137. A/E #37 highlighted an interview with Sy Barry.]

RA: Al Williamson, who drew Secret Agent X-9, which was started by Alex Raymond, also drew the Flash Gordon comic book for King Features. I thought that Williamson’s artwork looked the most like Alex Raymond’s on Flash….

HARRIS: I was the editor on that book. We had full copy returns on Flash Gordon #1, and I had a room full of copies of that issue. The guys who sell used comic books in various types of stores came up to King Features and bought the returns from us. We didn’t take a bath on the number of returns. We made money on that one.

That was a beauty of a comic book. Frank Bolle did some of the Flash Gordon comics, too. Frank worked for me a lot at Western. He’s a hell of a nice guy. Is he still alive?

[Continued on p. 50]

Secret Agent Whatever For King’s Flash Gordon #4, Goodwin and Williamson also drew a backup tale of King Features’ comic strip Secret Agent X-9, which had been originated in 1934 by Dashiell (The Maltese Falcon) Hammett and Alex Raymond and would run, under various teams, through 1996. The same year they drew this comic book story (1966), Archie and Al would take over the newspaper strip, whose name was changed for the remainder of its run to Secret Agent Corrigan. Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

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A Candid Conversation With Writer & Editor Bill Harris

Al Williamson Was No Flash In The Pan! (Clockwise from above left:) Two gorgeous Williamson-drawn pages from King Comics’ Flash Gordon #4 (March 1967), and one from #5 (May ’67). What more is there to say? Oh yeah… that the first two were scripted by Archie Goodwin, the third by Larry Ivie. The various scans were provided by Mark Muller and Nick Caputo. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

Larry Ivie Archie Goodwin is seen in the front row at a 1966 or ’67 New York comics convention, between Bill Harris (on our left) and Marvel production artist John Verpoorten.

Standing is artist/writer Jim Steranko; seated in second row (l. to r.) are writers Mike Friedrich & Roy Thomas, artist John Romita, and his wife Virginia.

was one of the first 1960s comics fans to “turn pro,” scripting briefly for Gold Key, Tower, and Marvel. A 2018 issue of Alter Ego will showcase in-depth coverage of Ivie’s career, written by his friend, artist Sandy Plunkett. Photo courtesy of Bill Schelly.

From Dell—To Gold Key—To King—With The New York Times In Between!

47

Frank Bolle A self-portrait, courtesy of Michaël Dewally. [© 2016 Frank Bolle.]

Flash Gordon Gets Bolled Over!

Gil Kane’s cover for King Comics’ Flash Gordon #2 (Nov. 1966)… and Frank Bolle’s splash page for same, scripted by Archie Goodwin. The splash was contributed by Nick Caputo. [Pages TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

Ric Estrada was most noted for drawing war stories for DC Comics.

Brief Flashes Several Flash Gordon enthusiasts got their own opportunity to handle the swashbuckling SF hero, either in his own title or in The Phantom. (Left to right, above:) Ric Estrada in Flash Gordon #3 (Jan. 1967), with script by Bill Pearson; Wally Wood in Phantom #18 (Sept. ’66); Gil Kane in Phantom #19 (Nov. 1966). Latter two scripters unknown. Photo of Pearson on p. 48... Wood on p. 53... and of Kane on p. 39. Thanks to Art Lortie for the page scans. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

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A Candid Conversation With Writer & Editor Bill Harris

Don’t Get Crabby, But… (Clockwise from top left:) Reed Crandall’s black-&-white preliminary cover drawing, the published cover (with a number of differences), and an action page for King’s Flash Gordon #6 (June 1967). The page from “The Crab Men of the Lost Continent,” scripted by Bill Pearson, is repro’d from its reprinting in the King Reading Library #R-16 (1977). Thanks to Nick Caputo. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

Reed Crandall (Above:) Acclaimed for his 1940s “Blackhawk” and other comics features. This photo, probably taken

by Roger Hill, appeared in Jerry Weist’s EC fanzine Squa Tront #1 (1965), as did the prelim at the top of the page; special thanks to Nick Caputo. Roger Hill’s major new book on Crandall’s life and career, incidentally, will be published in early 2017 by TwoMorrows.

Bill Pearson (Clockwise from lower left of pic at near left:) Prominent comics fans John Benson, Bill Pearson, Bill Spicer, and Richard Kyle outside Spicer’s California home circa 1973. Photo taken by Friedel Benson. Thanks to Bill Schelly.

From Dell—To Gold Key—To King—With The New York Times In Between!

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Mac Raboy succeeded Alex Raymond and Austin Briggs as artist of the Flash Gordon Sunday strip, drawing it from 1946 till his death in 1967. Photo from a 1949 King Features publication, courtesy of Shaun Clancy & Chris Boyko. [© King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

Two Late Flashes Of Lightning Two other artists seen in the King Comics Flash Gordon were Mac Raboy, whose comic strip work was reprinted in #7 (May 1967), including on the cover—and then-current FG strip artist Dan Barry, who drew the cover of #11 (Dec. 1967), the final issue. The main story in the latter was by writer Bill Pearson and artist Frank Bolle, however. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

Dan Barry Artist of the Flash Gordon daily strip from 1951-1990. Photo courtesy of Alberto Becattini.

Russ Manning was also celebrated for his work on the Tarzan and Star Wars comics strips, and earlier on Gold Key’s Tarzan comic books.

Bob Fujitani The renowned Golden/Silver Age artist was interviewed in Alter Ego #23.

When Super-Heroes Came To Gold Key (Left:) Russ Manning’s splash page from Gold Key’s Magnus, Robot Fighter #1 (Feb. 1963). The artist also scripted the story, which was set in 4000 A.D. Repro’d from Dark Horse’s hardcover Russ Manning’s Magnus, Robot Fighter – Vol. 1.

(Right:) A Bob Fujitani-drawn page from Gold Key’s Doctor Solar – Man of the Atom #1 (Oct. 1962); script by Paul S. Newman.

Although Doc turned a nice, glowing radioactive green in the first issue, he didn’t acquire a super-hero costume till issue #5. [TM & © Random House, Inc.]

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A Candid Conversation With Writer & Editor Bill Harris

[Continued from p. 45.]

RA: Yes. He’s drawing the Apartment 3-G and Gil Thorpe comic strips. He worked on The Heart of Juliet Jones for a number of years, too.

HARRIS: He was really good at drawing girls. He could draw a woman that could make you salivate. [laughs] RA: Reed Crandall did some of the King Features Flash comics as well.

HARRIS: Yes, he did. I’d completely forgotten about him. He was older than the other artists. Flash and Tarzan, for that matter, with Burne Hogarth, always had top-notch artists on them. The art was so beautiful to look at.

RA: Yes, Hal Foster and Hogarth and, later, Russ Manning all worked on the comic strip. I liked their artwork on Tarzan.

HARRIS: We used Russ Manning at Western for Magnus, Robot Fighter. He was great on that. Bob Fujitani was an artist there, too.

He drew Turok and Doctor Solar. Bob lived in New Mexico, someplace like that, and he had a collection of spiders—tarantulas. [laughs] He made a point of telling you all about the tarantulas!

Kept you sober when you visited his house! [more laughter]

Dell and Western did a lot of movie adaptations. Western didn’t pay royalties for those. They were considered promotions for the film, which was nice for the licensing department. [chuckles] We never allowed any artist to go outside the grid. The grid was the shape of the panels on the page. In fact, we had the illustration board printed with the grid on it in blue so that the artist wouldn’t get what we called the venetian blind effect. Every panel was the same size and all that varied was the number of panels on a page.

It was the same as a newspaper strip grid. It was done that way because that’s what the licensors expected. They didn’t want you messing around with their character too much.

Mort Walker, the Beetle Bailey guy, worked up in Connecticut, and he had a whole bunch of guys who worked with him on all his stuff. Dik Browne was one of them. Bob Gustafson was another.

They’d go out and play a round of golf every day, then come back and work. I always thought that was a pretty neat aspiration for a kid to have. Work with a bunch of friends and play golf at least once every day. And make a lot of money doing it, by God. It wasn’t just Beetle Bailey, either. They were doing Hi and Lois and Hagar [the Horrible], too.

RA: I got acquainted with the King Features comics when I started tracking down all the comic work of a young artist—well he was young at the time but he’s passed away now—named Jeff Jones…

“We Never Allowed Any Artist To Go Outside The Grid” HARRIS: Jeff Jones is dead? I didn’t know that. I knew Jeff pretty well. He was a nice guy.

RA: Yes, he passed away a couple of years ago now. Jeff did some of his earliest work at King Features, on little back-up stories. War tales in the back of Mandrake, and I think he drew a single issue of Flash Gordon, along with artist Roger Brand.

HARRIS: Those little back-up strips were called second-class matter. In order to mail comics from one place to another you had to have second-class postal entry. Otherwise, you couldn’t afford to do subscriptions. In order to get that postal rate, you had to put in one page of text and eight pages of material based on a character not on the cover. The postal people considered a comic with just one character a house organ if you didn’t have a back-up feature.

I’m pretty sure it was eight pages for a secondary character. Which was a good thing if you had an artist come in looking for work and you really didn’t have a full book for them to do. You could give them the back-up story. It wasn’t licensed material, usually, so you didn’t have to worry about the licensor objecting.

That was one of the reasons that Carl Barks created Uncle Scrooge. They needed something not named on the cover to fill up the back of the Donald Duck comic to qualify for the second-class postal rate, and so “Uncle Scrooge” debuted. He also created Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Donald’s nephews.

It was a strange setup, because he created them to appear in the Donald Duck comics, so Disney owned them. They’d been created by a writer/artist working for Western, but Western had to pay a fee to Disney to continue to use them in the comics. Just strange.

Jeff Jones at the New York Comic Art Convention, 1971.

Thanks to the website formerly known as Great American Comic Book Stories.

Pharaoh Tales Can Come True…

Jeff Jones drew, and Raymond Marais wrote, this history-based backup tale, “Pharsalus – The Triumph of Caesar,” in King’s Mandrake the Magician #8 (Sept. 1967). Thanks to Jim Kealy, Jim Ludwig, & Alan Hutchinson for sending us scans from this story. Sadly, we’ve never located a photo of Marais, who had entered the field months earlier, scripting a few stories for Marvel [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

From Dell—To Gold Key—To King—With The New York Times In Between!

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Mort Walker as a young artist in 1950, before his newspaper comic strip creation Beetle Bailey joined the Army! Seen left to right are covers, which may or may not be solely (or at all) by Walker, from three successive comics companies, spanning a decade and a half: Dell’s Four Color #59 (May 1953, the first comic book appearance)—Gold Key’s Beetle Bailey #53 (May 1966, the last GK issue)—and King Comics’ Beetle Bailey #62 (Sept. 1967). In 1969 Charlton picked up the title. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

The problem with making money selling comics is that the letterpress printing that they used meant that they had to print a huge number of copies that you had no hope of selling before the next issue of the comic came out. They just had such heavy returns! It cut into your profit. For every 100,000 copies you printed you might sell 45,000. You might even sell less than that.

RA: Nowadays they do direct sales for much of their issues. There are no returns, but the print runs are much, much lower.

HARRIS: They’re using other forms of printing, I’m sure. That letterpress that Western used at their plant in Poughkeepsie was the same thing as newspaper printing. Same kind of paper, same kind of everything. The funny thing was that the comics used color and the newspapers didn’t. Then the newspapers went to offset and were able to put color in. The Sunday comics, however, were letterpress-printed and were in color. They could have done it that way.

Greater Buffalo Press printed those Sunday comics, by the way.

They printed the comics sections for newspapers all over the country. Greater Buffalo was not all that far away from where I grew up, and that was one of the reasons we had so many comic books as kids. They came almost directly from the plant and were easy to get.

At Western we used the same printer that everybody else used at the time—World Color Press in Illinois. They were called the “Funnybook Factory.” The whole town of Sparta [Illinois] worked in the “Funnybook Factory.” All of the major comic companies printed in Sparta. It was a huge plant. I don’t know if it’s still there. It was twice as big as the one in Poughkeepsie that Western had. I liked them when they were my printer. They were good at what they did.

Camel’s Soup… “Mmm, Mmm, Good!”

A key page from the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” story “Egyptian Gyp” in Dell/Western’s Four Color #1311 (March-May 1962), written and drawn by Al Kilgore.

Thanks to Rod Beck. [TM & © Jay Ward Productions or successors in interest.]

The other problem with making a living doing comics was that they either didn’t pay you, or when they did, they didn’t pay you very much. So many times I heard from guys in the comics business that they worked for somebody and they didn’t get paid or they didn’t get paid what they’d been promised. But they

52

A Candid Conversation With Writer & Editor Bill Harris

worked for the lower rates because it was better to have some money coming in than no money at all. It started out as a penny business, and I guess it always will be.

RA: You mentioned earlier that a lot of the work you did for Western has been reprinted. Would that be the recent collections from Hermes Press?

HARRIS: I think so. I think those books look really great. The color is really sharp. That’s the sort of thing you long for, to see that stuff that way.

RA: Many people believe this is the ideal time to reprint old material.

There’s so much of it that hasn’t been touched in decades, or if it has, has come out piecemeal or in formats that didn’t do it justice.

HARRIS: A lot of that work has never been reprinted. The King Features material appeared overseas in various ways, but in this country it just had the one appearance and that was it. The Al Williamson work on Flash Gordon is really beautiful stuff.

I’m intrigued by the idea of reprinting comics in book form.

And there’s so much still to collect. Stuff like that old Bullwinkle material would be great in book form. You could build an entire children’s division of publishing just from the cream of the crop in those kinds of comics. Some of that stuff is just fall-down-laughing material. One of the first stories that Al Kilgore showed me when I went to Western was a “Rocky & Bullwinkle” story where they were going to Egypt to look for the recipe for camel soup! [laughs] It was a takeoff on Campbell’s Soup! Al and Fred were so good at that kind of stuff. I think it would really do well if it was shown to the right market.

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From Dell—To Gold Key—To King—With The New York Times In Between!

53

BILL HARRIS Checklist [This checklist is adapted from the online edition of the Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999, established by Jerry G. Bails and viewable at www.bailsprojects.com. A few facts have been added based on information supplied by Bill Harris for this interview. Special thanks to the Grand Comics Database and Art Lortie. Names of features that appeared both in comic books with that title and in other magazines, as well, are generally not italicized. Key: (w) = writer; (e) = editor.]

Name: William (Bill) Harris (b. 1933) editor, writer Jobs in Media: ABC Radio, Crowell-Collier (publishing company), New York Times - dates uncertain; Dell Publishing (magazines & comics, promotion) early 1960s Author: More than 100 books for various publishers COMIC BOOK CREDITS (U.S. Mainstream Publications): Charlton Comics: The Phantom #35 (w) 1970 (from King Comics inventory) King Comics: editor 1966-67 titles; Beetle Bailey (e) 1966-67; Blondie (e) 1966-67; Flash Gordon (e) 1966-67; I Spy (e) 1966-67; Jungle Jim (e) 1967; Mandrake the Magician (e) 1966-67; The Phantom #18-28 (w) 1966-67; Popeye (e) 1966-67 Western Publishing: editor 1962-65 New York office, briefly first for Dell, then for Gold Key; Beetle Bailey (e) 1962-65; Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery (e) 1963-65; Doctor Solar, Man of the Atom (e) 1962-64; The Phantom #1-17 (w) 1962-66; The Phantom (e) 1962-65; Popeye the Sailor (e) 1962-65; perhaps edited other titles as well

The New York Jungle Two pieces of King Comics Jungle Jim art, below a photo of Bill Harris with fellow pros at either the 1966 or ’67 “Academy” comics convention in New York City. (Left to right:) Artist (and Tower editor) Wally Wood, Harris, DC editor/writer E. Nelson Bridwell, con host (and Charlton Captain Atom scripter) Dave Kaler, and Charlton editor/artist Dick Giordano.

(Left:) Frank Thorne’s splash page for the issue’s lead story—actually reprinted from Dell/Western’s own Jungle Jim #5 (April-June ’55); script by Paul S. Newman. Thanks to Nick Caputo.

(Below:) Wally Wood’s cover for King’s Jungle Jim #5-and-only (Dec. 1967).

[Pages TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

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55

[©2016 Michael T. Gilbert.]

56

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Michael T.: The Fanzine Years! (Part 3)

by Michael T. Gilbert

L

ike Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, I found myself in limbo after graduation. By December 1973, I’d completed my student-teaching requirements (a sop to my parents while I took art classes and drew comics on the side). While technically qualified to teach art, I had zero interest in actually doing so. I wanted to draw comics. In 1974, that wasn’t going to be easy.

In the indulgent ’70s, schools’ standards weren’t as rigorous as they’d been decades earlier. As a result, my cartooning skills were mostly self-taught. The School of Visual Arts only began offering cartooning classes in September 1973, and the Kubert School didn’t open until 1976. But by then it was too late for me. With diploma in hand, I was anxious to earn a living.

On the plus side, school was a lot cheaper then, with some help from a Regents scholarship. As a result, I graduated owing a mere $1000—$600 of which I spent printing New Paltz Comix #1! As luck would have it, Gram had given me a $1000 savings bond for my Bar Mitzvah, and it matured just at the right time. So my college was now fully paid off. Eat your heart out, Millennials!

Creepy’s Loathsome Lore!

(Above & below:) Two sample pages Michael attempted to sell to Warren Publishing in 1971. The “Spawn of Mars” page never got past the pencil stage, until inked by his friend Brian Buniak years later. [© 2016 Michael T. Gilbert.]

After graduation I moved back to my parents’ home in Commack, NY. But after seeing me laze around a couple of weeks, Mom not-so-subtly informed me I’d be moving out. I’ve had my issues with my mom, who passed on a few years back, but forcing me out was actually very healthy. Mom’s mother, Grandma Anna Nurock, had an extra room in her large Bronx apartment, so I had a free place to crash. It was a good way to transition to “real life,” and made it easier to look for a job in the city.

During my college days, I’d already met with James Warren a couple of times, but failed to make a sale. This time I decided to work up some samples to show DC or Marvel. I penciled a “Spider-Man” page, but the results were stiff and awkward. How did Ditko make it look so effortless? Frustrated, I tossed it, and decided to try again. Maybe I’d have better luck with “Batman”?

Commercial Art! In the meantime, I lugged my huge portfolio around town on the subway looking for work. I had no luck for the first few weeks, though at one point I stumbled onto Ken Bald’s studio. In 1974 he was drawing the syndicated Dr. Kildare comic strip and had, until recently, also illustrated the Dark Shadows strip. While he was quite friendly and encouraging, he had no work for me.

Michael T.: The Fanzine Years! (Part 3)

57

Then I finally hit paydirt. I’d stepped off the subway, portfolio in hand, when I spotted an odd sign in front of one door that said Vizmo. I got the idea it was some kind of graphic arts studio, so with nothing to lose, I stepped inside and asked to talk to the art director. By pure luck, he needed someone, and after looking at my portfolio, hired me to work there three days a week.

Vizmo supplied graphics for NBC News in New York, which worked in the 30 Rock building next door. Their art was done by cutting up various colored papers into whatever image ran with the stories of the day. Then the art was sent to the photographers to make colored cells that could be flashed behind the news anchors.

Unfortunately, it took the cameramen hours to develop the images. Many’s the time I found myself racing across the street to the NBC 30 Rockefeller Center building, grabbing an elevator to some upper floor and handing the art to the NBC crew with seconds to spare. Nowadays you’d whip something up on your computer and instantly e-mail it. But it was different back then.

The hourly rate was good, but NBC only needed me for the weekend news. Still, by keeping expenses down, I made enough money to move out of Gram’s aging apartment. One of the Vizmo photographers, Jack, found an old brownstone flat on 99th and Broadway, and we agreed to split the rent. Each of us had a large bedroom, with the kitchen between us. Unfortunately, I had to go through his room to use the bathroom, adjacent to his. Well, it still beat living at Gram’s!

Got Comics?

Strangely enough, comic collecting became something of a problem in the city, despite the fact that most were published there.

I often found that the magazine newsstands near me stocked few comics, and rarely the ones I was looking for. At some point, I discovered Ed Summer’s Supersnipe Comic Book Emporium at

Happy Easter!

Michael’s first airbrush job appeared on New York’s NBC News in 1974. [© 2016 the respective copyright holders.]

84th and 2nd, a brisk walk from my 99th street apartment.

Supersnipe was perhaps the first store in New York City that sold comics exclusively. But the place was roughly the size of a closet, and I didn’t find the vibe very friendly. Years later I learned that a pre-Star Wars George Lucas was Summer’s silent partner in a comic art gallery next door.

New Paltz Comix I met some great people at Vizmo, and was finally making my living doing art. But I still had comics on the brain, and in my spare time I began work on a second issue of New Paltz Comix (subtitled Amazing Adult Fantasies). Issue two was a co-operative venture, with each of the artists drawing a story and putting up some money for the printing. Vince Kimszel, a small underground comix distributor, also invested some money. Vince introduced me to cartoonist Brian Buniak, who would later become the main “Thunder Bunny” artist. Knowing my love of all things Eisner, Brian wrote and drew a parody of Will’s Spirit. Mr. Buniak did such an exceptional job on “The Sprite” that Eisner almost sued us.

Hey, even getting threatened by my idol was an honor!

Jay Eisenberg, under whom I’d done my student teaching, drew a beautiful photo-realistic X-rated cover, giving the book a proper underground-comix feel. My old New Paltz cartoonist pal, Raoul Vezina, also did a fabulous flip-cover, illustrating our lead “Rubber Soul!” story.

Raoul still lived in New Paltz, so I’d sometimes bus there and crash at his place while we jammed on our story. That was fun, but the old house he and his housemates rented was cold and chilly in the winter. Unfortunately Raoul had a bad asthma problem that, in 1983, killed him. I’m sure his drafty house, and the smoky local bars he played music in, didn’t help.

1776, Baby!

These unpublished Bicentennial designs were drawn by Michael in 1974 for HIT Sales, to mark the upcoming celebration. Only missed by forty years! [© 2016 Michael T. Gilbert]

When the comic was finally printed in 1974, a few of us sold it door-to-door on campus—a fairly mortifying experience. But at least I was in print again.

58

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Trouble Brewing!

Things were going well with my comic, but there was trouble ahead with my NBC gig. I was soon to learn the dangers of interoffice politics. Jura, an ambitious 30something gal, was one of the art directors.

Unbeknownst to us, she was secretly working behind the scenes with NBC to help them create a new graphics department, intending to cut Vizmo out.

Jura’s friend, Jane, had been hired by NBC to run their new graphics division. The two worked out a deal: Jura would secretly make copies of Vizmo’s graphic files and templates, thereby speeding up NBC’s launch of their own in-house art department. In return, Jane would hire Jura as her second-in-command.

Unfortunately, Jane decided to do a little double-crossing herself. She figured, if Jura’d stab her old boss in the back, she‘d likely do to the same to her. So Jane didn’t hire her, and when Vizmo found out what Jura’d done, she found herself out in the cold, fighting a lawsuit. Karma, baby! But as a result of the changeover, the Vizmo art department was drastically downsized and I was about to lose my first job.

Cover Story!

Raoul Vezina’s cover to New Paltz Comix #2 (“Amazing Adult Fantasies”), and Brian Buniak’s Spirit parody, “The Sprite,” from the same comic. [© 2016 Raoul Vezina and Brian Buniak, respectively.]

In the meantime, I kept busy working on New Paltz Comix #2.

I’d recently picked up a new magazine, Inside Comics, a precursor of The Comics Journal, published by Larry Brill and edited by comics’ #1 muckraker, Joe Brancatelli. The magazine was accepting full-page ads for $125. It was a big chunk of change, but without a distributor for our comic I thought it was worth a try. After

spending weeks laboriously working up a slick ad, I paid my money and waited. The result was anything but a raging success.

Ultimately about a dozen people ordered my 75¢ underground— which may help explain why I’m not a rich publisher today.

While there, I asked if they had any work for a talented cartoonist. Brill told me they needed a fast layout man for some sex newspapers they were producing on the side, and I laid out a couple of sample pages. But apparently I was too slow to embark on a minimumwage career pasting up smut papers. Oh, well.

Instead, I made an appointment with DC to show some “Batman” samples. Lacking an actual script, I completely redrew three pages from a recently published Batman comic. Editor Joe Orlando agreed to look at my samples, and gave me a brief art critique. He was friendly, but didn’t think I was anywhere near ready.

Joe tried to soften the blow, assuring me that my job at NBC was much more prestigious than a poorly paid job drawing crappy DC comics anyway. Little did he know that I was weeks away from losing that particular plum!

Super, Man! This ’30s-era Superman was one of the samples Michael showed DC in 1974. [Superman TM & © DC Comics.]

I also inquired about working at NBC’s graphic department, but their staff was already in place. So I was once again out of a job. This went on for a couple of months.

With rent to pay, I was quickly running out of money. Worried and depressed, I feared I’d have to pack up all my stuff and move back with my family.

Michael T.: The Fanzine Years! (Part 3)

Twice-Told Batman!

(On this page & on top half of following page:) In 1973 Michael redrew three pages from ”The Spook’s Master Stroke” (Batman #252, Oct. 1973) as samples to show DC. Each MTG page is seen to the right of the printed version, which was written by Frank Robbins, penciled by Irv Novick, & inked by Dick Giordano [TM & © DC Comics.]

59

60

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Guardedly Optimistic!

However, Dad unexpectedly came through, tipping me off to a temp job he’d heard about in the city. Some downtown bank needed a guard for a couple of weeks, and wasn’t very particular about who, judging from the fact that they hired me.

As fate would have it, there was an art display in the lobby.

Bored, I started chatting with a couple of young guys checking it out, and discovered the two were graphic artists working for HIT Sales just down the block. They suggested I apply there. I did, and soon scored my next gig.

My job consisted of designing and pasting up art for a lowrent factory that manufactured advertising keychains, letteropeners, and such. The pay wasn’t great, but I was finally working full-time. The other artists were fun, and it was great on-the-job training. Which is not to say I didn’t have my share of screw-ups.

I recall pasting up lettering for a pewter letter-opener to be emblazoned with “Conceived in Liberty.” Unfortunately, I typed out “Concieved In Liberty,” and Hit Sales stamped out 10,000 copies before they caught my spelling error. The entire run of pewter letter-openers had to be melted down and recast. In my (meager) defense, my misspelling also slipped past four of my proofreading superiors!

HIT Sales proved to be a good practical education. I learned how to use proportion wheels, shoot Photostats, and produce

Talk About Persistence!

(Left:) Michael finally got to draw (and write!) the real thing in 1994.

From Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #94. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Michael T.: The Fanzine Years! (Part 3)

61

type on a Vari-Typer machine. I learned a lot more about commercial art than I ever had in college.

But, after a year at HIT Sales, I found myself restless again. I wanted to draw comics, and this wasn’t getting me any closer. I gave one last shot at selling a story to Warren, this time meeting with editor Bill Dubay. We chatted about his old fanzine work, and he was nice enough to show me some rejected Spirit cover paintings and art for an upcoming Bernie Wrightson story.

But, in a bit of brutal honesty, he told me he didn’t think my work would ever be good enough for Warren Pubs. I was determined to prove him wrong. Many years later I did, when Bill stopped by my table at a con to tell me he was a big “Mr. Monster” fan. We had a laugh when I reminded Bill of his comments decades earlier!

Well, if Warren and DC weren’t interested, there was a whole underground comix industry in California. Maybe I’d fit in better there.

California Dreaming...

I’d lived in New York all my life, but at 23 and single, I was ready to take a few chances. On an impulse, I decided to quit my job and move to California. In college a year earlier, I’d sent a story, “The Circle Game,” to the venerable underground comic, Yellow Dog, based in the Bay Area. The editor told me she loved the story and would have bought it, but they’d just discontinued the title. So I felt I was on the right track.

My move was aided by Pete and Joe Koch, two major comic art dealers today who sold comic book back-issues in bulk in the early ’70s. They lived right around the corner and offered to store my collection in their huge apartment, already stuffed to the brim with comics. My parents took the rest.

It Inks!

Penciler Gerry Mooney wasn’t crazy about Gray Morrow’s inking on “Monster On My Back,” originally published in Red Circle Sorcery #11 (Feb. 1975). Looks great to me! [TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

While planning my move, I had an unexpected visit from Gerry Mooney, a fellow Suffolk Community College graduate, and a successful commercial artist today. He and I were friendly rivals at college, and he happily rubbed in the fact that he’d just had a story accepted by Archie’s Red Circle Sorcery comic. Man, I was jealous!

At the time, Gerry was unhappy that editor Gray Morrow had inked his pencils. We should all have such problems!

After we got caught up, Gerry told me he was about to visit Mike Kaluta who (I was shocked to learn!) lived mere blocks away.

Did I want to tag along? Did I!? Kaluta was one of my favorites.

Mike was great, and his apartment was stuffed with all kinds of candles, skulls, ship models, and other arcane artifacts. However, what most impressed me was a large painting he was working on—a robot version of the famous “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” photo. The finished art appeared as the cover of the second issue of Marvel’s Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction magazine, with a couple of cheesy planets added to the background.

That was fun, but all good things must come to an end. In early 1975, I bade goodbye to my old life and moved to San Francisco, where my comic book career finally took off.

But if you want to read that story, you’ll have to pick up a copy of A/E #125 and #126. Me? I’m done!

Till next time…

Cool!

Mike Kaluta’s cover for Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #2 (March 1975). [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Incredible interview with JIM SHOOTER, which chronicles the first decade of his career (Legion of Super-Heroes, Superman, Supergirl, Captain Action) with art by CURT SWAN, WALLY WOOD, GIL KANE, GEORGE PAPP, JIM MOONEY, PETE COSTANZA, WIN MORTIMER, WAYNE BORING, AL PLASTINO, et al.! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

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Comic Fandom Archive

63

Alter Ego’s Multi-Part Tribute To G.B. Love & RBCC – Part 7

G.B. Love.

(1939-2001) Photo by Robert Brown.

EARL BLAIR, JR., Remembers G.B. Love & Houston Fandom

by Bill Schelly

I

NTRODUCTION: In prior installments of our multi-part tribute to Gordon Belljohn Love (in Alter Ego #133-135 & #140-142), we covered the period of his life during which he published the Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector, his ubiquitous 1960s adzine, from his base in Miami, Florida. James Van Hise explained in issue #142 how he took over the reins of RBCC from G.B. in 1974. Various friends, fans, and contributors to RBCC have also shared their memories of Gordon Love with us.

Now we shift our focus to the second important stage in Love’s story: his period as a central figure in Houston fandom, his role as editor of the fanzine Trek (and the Best of Trek book series), and his friendship with Earl Blair, Jr., who knew him as well as or better than anybody. I spoke with Earl (“Captain Bijou” to his friends and customers) at length via telephone on September 6, 2014. The tape was transcribed by Brian K. Morris. Special thanks to Earl Blair, Jr., Roy Bonario, and Robert Brown for their photographs.

BILL SCHELLY: Could you give me a little information about yourself as a comic book collector as a boy and teenager?

EARL BLAIR, JR.: I was born in 1946, in San Antonio, Texas. I was an Army brat, and our family moved around. We ended up settling down in Houston in late 1950, early 1951. I’ve been a comic book fan from the earliest time I can remember, buying comics off the stands, comics such as Roy Rogers, Superman, and Captain Marvel Adventures. When DC was bringing back The Flash and Green Lantern, some of the letter columns started talking about the old issues in 1940s and all of that. I thought, “I would like to find out where I can get some of those.” I wrote DC and they said, “We don’t have any of these comic books, but you can try some of these guys: Howard Rogofsky, Claude Held, and Ken Mitchell.” I started buying comic books from Claude Held, and also went to used book stores in Houston looking for back issues.

Earl Blair, Jr. in the mid-1960s. [Photo © 2016 Earl Blair, Jr.]

BS: Did you ever find much in those used book stores?

Captain Caption In the early 1950s, young Earl had been a fan of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel— and he drew this Captain Marvel art for the cover of G.B. Love’s Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector #48 (1966) some time before the two of them ever met in person. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

BLAIR: There was this old feller running a book store, and he saw my earnestness in looking for old comics. I’d left my phone number with him. So when a lady came into his store with a box full of old comics, he called me and I rushed right over. [Bill laughs] I’d say there was probably 100 or 150 comics in the box. I started going through them, and these are titles I had never had or hadn’t

64

Comic Fandom Archive

seen in years: Marvel Family, Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Flash, All-Flash, the original Green Lantern, Exciting, All-New, Batman, and Detective Comics…. All these comic books were from about 1943, 1944, right around there, on up to about 1952.

BS: What a find!

BLAIR: I bought all that I could afford at a nickel apiece. But I didn’t buy them all, because my grandmother told me “Never be greedy. Always leave something for someone else.” So I bought maybe sixty or seventy of them at a nickel apiece, went home, and man, I just read and read and read. Then I went back and bought the few that were left.

Houston, We Have A Situation

In the meantime, I was getting these lists from Claude Held. You could get some good older comics for 60¢, or like Adventure with Starman for two or three dollars. I would mow lawns or find bottles and cash them in, or work a little job here or there or whatever, and every time I got some money together, I’d send off and get books from Claude Held. It was amazing what six or seven dollars would buy back in those days.

Houston Fandom Is Born BS: Let’s jump ahead to the start of Houston fandom.

BLAIR: It all started with Gene Arnold. There were pockets of collectors around the city, and nobody really knew anybody else was collecting unless you ran into somebody at a used book store, and then it was just kind of passing. But then there was this story in the Sunday Houston Chronicle in 1965, a full-page story, with photos and everything, about this guy who collected comic books.

His name was Gene Arnold. He was a prominent radio personality in the Houston area in those days. So we all ended up contacting Gene, and through him I got introduced to Mark Schooley and Roy Bonario, who became two of my best friends.

BS: Right. Roy told me how, through Gene Arnold, a list of about a hundred names of local collectors was drawn up, which led to the first meeting of comics fans in Houston at the YMCA. He said everyone was shocked when something like fifty fans showed up,

(Left:) A 1965-66 newspaper photo of Houston radio personality Gene Arnold, who was responsible for Earl meeting later best friends Mark Schooley and Roy Bonario. Earl writes that another Houston fan, Glenn Kessler, already knew Arnold and had purchased comics from him, including a copy of Action #1. “It was out of our association with Gene [Arnold] and the contacts of Mr. Fred Van Cleave of the Northside Book Emporium, that the Houston Comic Collectors Association was formed.”

Thanks to Earl for sending this photo. [© the respective copyright holders.]

(Above—from l. to r.:) Earl Blair, Jr., Ken Finnerty, Marc Schooley, and Roy Bonario, sometime in the late 1960s. Photo courtesy of Roy Bonario.

and that was the beginning of Houston fandom.

BLAIR: I was going to say thirty or forty people turned out for the first meeting. [chuckles] One of them was a guy named Larry McMurtry, writer of Lonesome Dove. A few months later, some of them went to Dallas for the first Southwestern Con. [NOTE: It was held on July 22, 1966. —Bill.] In the meantime, we had all subscribed to RBCC. BS: Right, everyone wanted to see those ads for old comics.

BLAIR: We didn’t know G.B. from Adam at that point, but we advertised the Houston Con in RBCC. The first Houston Con was in 1967. We got into an agreement with Dallas, where the con would go back and forth between Dallas and Houston. So it was ’67 in Houston, ’68 in Dallas, ’69 back to Houston. Then Oklahoma came in; they got it in ’70. It was a round-robin thing until we had a falling out. G.B.’s first con was the ’68 Southwestern Con, and then I invited him, the following year, to come down to Houston.

[NOTE: See the Comic Fandom Archive in A/E #141, wherein Larry Bigman talks about convincing G.B. to go to the Dallas Con in 1968, and the sidebar on the preceding page with Love’s own account. —Bill.]

Earl’s New Best Friend BS: I gather that you had a really strong connection with G.B. Was that from the very beginning, or did that develop over time?

BLAIR: We hit it off really well from the get-go. We were fairly close to the same age, although he was a bit older than I was, and we had similar interests. [NOTE: Love was born in 1939. —Bill.]

When he first moved here to Houston, he lived in an apartment complex off the Southwest Freeway, and we would go there and have Poker Night. We all treated him like everybody else. He had

Houston Does Dallas Roy Bonario, one of the founders of Houston comics fandom, most likely at the 1966 Southwestern Con in Dallas. Courtesy of Roy Bonario.

Earl Blair, Jr., Remembers G.B. Love & Houston Fandom

65

SIDEBAR:

Gone To Texas!

This article from RBCC #59 (1968) is both a rare example of G.B. Love’s writing—and a testimonial as to how he was “seduced” by the 1968 Southwestern Con into moving to Houston, Texas. [© the respective copyright holders.]

G.B. Love in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of Robert Brown.

to dish it out and take it like everyone else. Nobody cut him any slack because he had cerebral palsy. He was just one of the guys as far as we were concerned.

BS: Did you have any trouble understanding him?

BLAIR: Not really, because after a while, you pretty well got so you understood what he was saying with very little problem.

There would be times when I had to say, “G.B., what was that?

What’d you say?” Sometimes, I’d pretend I didn’t understand him just to joke with him. We teased him as bad as each of us teased each other.

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Comic Fandom Archive

ended up being a slick fanzine for its day, and lasted about twenty issues. But I backed out of it after a year or two, because of the demands of writing and editing my own publication which was published monthly.

BS: I take it G.B. was super-enthusiastic about Star Trek?

BS: And accepted him.

BLAIR: He liked Star Trek as much as he liked The Green Hornet or anything else. And he bought and collected— but I wouldn’t call him what we used to call in those days a “Trekkie.” He wasn’t that enamored with it. He enjoyed it, but then again he enjoyed a lot of science-fiction. He enjoyed B-Westerns, he enjoyed serials, he enjoyed all of that. So while he certainly liked Star Trek, he also saw the financial possibilities of it at that time.

BLAIR: And accepted him, and boy, he could dish it out. Buddy, let me tell you, he had a sharp wit and a sharp tongue! So it was fun. We all had a great time together.

BS: Well, sure, because he no longer had RBCC. He had to come up with more income. But the first thing you guys did together, I thought, was work on doing some conventions. Mini-cons and Houston cons.

BS: Was this apartment the one at 3225 Timmons Lane? Apartment #79? He gave out that address after he moved.

BLAIR: It was. The ’73 Houston Con was still pretty local. Then, when G.B. got there, we did the mini-cons. The mini-cons in this area, by the way, were started by Ken Bonnell, who did maybe one a year, whatever. Ken helped us with all the printing for Houston Con and all the flyers and the program books and what have you.

The mini-cons became quite anticipated, and were sort of a gathering place for people who were involved in the resurgence of Star Trek, as well as comic books, and what have you. They were really profitable for a while. Then we went from that to the Houston Cons in 1974, 1975. I sold my participation in the Houston

C’mon’a My House!

(Left:) A recent photo of the house G.B. Love bought, at 2500 Pennington, on the same street where Earl Blair Jr. lived in Houston.

(Right:) G.B. and Earl in front of that house, in 1974.

[Photos © 2016 Earl Blair, Jr.]

BLAIR: Yes, that’s right. After he was there for a while, he bought a house right down the street from me on the same street, about two doors down. Once we began getting involved in projects together, it made sense for him to be nearby. I was at 2511 Pennington and he was on the opposite side of the street in a big two-story house. He had some of it renovated, put a movie room in the upstairs. We’d go over there and work on one thing or another, or watch movies, or whatever. We were pretty much like brothers all the time that he was here.

“The Magazine For Star Trek Fans” BS: He did some more publishing after RBCC, but not a comics fanzine, right?

BLAIR: He was always coming up with something new to do. The Trek magazine was just another thing that we popped out one night.

He said, “Hey, why don’t we do a Star Trek magazine like your Film Collectors Registry?” At the time, I was publishing a film-collectors magazine called the Film Collectors Registry, which had been originally published by Ted Riggs out of Knoxville. I published that from about ’73 to ’77.

BS: But Trek was your own original with G.B.?

BLAIR: Yes, and Walter Irwin. We were coeditors and co-contributors.

BS: I see. And so that started pretty soon after G.B. got to Houston?

BLAIR: Yes. At that time, the Star Trek phenomenon was really starting to peak. Trek, known as “The Magazine for Star Trek Fans,”

The Registry Office The tabloid format Film Collector’s Registry, published by Earl Blair, Jr. (left), would be copied in the early issues of the magazine Trek, before it went into a traditional magazine format with display covers (right). [© the respective copyright holders.]

Earl Blair, Jr., Remembers G.B. Love & Houston Fandom

67

To Boldly Go…

…Where No Man Has Gone Before!

(Above:) While still working with Jim Van Hise on RBCC before he moved to Houston, G.B. Love’s interest in Star Trek was already evident from the cover of RBCC #105 (1973). Art by Morris Scott Dollens. [Star Trek TM & © CBS Television.]

(Above:) After he gave up publishing RBCC, it wasn’t long before G.B. Love was again a publisher, this time (with Earl Blair, Jr.) a magazine devoted to the recent TV series Star Trek. The magazine Trek announced its change in format to a slick magazine from a tabloid with issue #5. Above is the cover of Trek #9 (Oct. 1977). [Star Trek images TM & © CBS Television.]

Trek On Track!

(Above:) Interior of Trek #9 (1977). [Star Trek TM & © CBS Television.]

(Right:) G.B. makes a purchase at the Nashville Film Festival in 1975 or 1976. Earl recalled: “G.B. was notoriously ‘thrifty,’ so when he opened up his wallet to buy something, I said, ‘I have to get a picture of this!” [Photo © 2016 Earl Blair, Jr.]

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Comic Fandom Archive

“Let Me Play Among The Stars…”

(Left:) G.B. with his idol, B-Western star (and top stuntman) Dave Sharpe, at Houstoncon 1973.

[Photo © 2016 Earl Blair, Jr.]

Con in 1975 to Mark Schooley and Roy Bonario.

BS: Of course, putting on a con involves a lot of work. What part of the work would have been G.B.’s area?

(Above—from l. to r.:) Film and TV star Jock (Tarzan, Range Rider) Mahoney… G.B…. Walter Irwin (author and Trek collaborator)… and Famous Monsters of Filmland co-creator Forrest J. Ackerman.

This panel is seen judging the costume contest at Houstoncon ‘77. [Photo © 2012 Earl Blair, Jr.]

BLAIR: First of all, he and I would usually have a table together and he would man the tables. Also he was a good idea man, in terms of managing the cons. When it came to mailing, you had to apply labels and stamps and all of that. He did that just like anybody else.

Our tribute to G.B. Love and RBCC concludes next issue, with the second part of this interview.

READERS: I’d like to offer all Alter Ego readers my personal thanks for your support for my various recent biographies of Harvey Kurtzman, Leonard Cole, and Otto Binder. My next book is John Stanley, Giving Life to Little Lulu, a deluxe, full-color book from Fantagraphics Books.

Fans of Little Lulu are going to love it. And I think even those of you who wouldn’t necessarily buy a book about Lulu will enjoy it, for the amount of comic book history included in my in-depth biography of the man and his career. I can be contacted at: hamstrpres@aol.com. My web site is www.billschelly.com. ‘Nuff said!

Congratulations to

BILL SCHELLY

on winning the 2015 Eisner Award for Best Comic-Related Book at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con— for his biography Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and Revolutionized Humor in America from his fellow TwoMorrows editors: John Morrow, publisher Jon B. Cooke, editor, Comic Book Creator Michael Eury, editor, Back Issue & Roy Thomas, Chris Day, Jim Amash, Michael T. Gilbert, & P.C. Hamerlinck of Alter Ego.

You nailed it, kiddo!

69

He probably would have, Jay. We’ve yet to hear a major complaint about Sol from those who worked with or for him, except perhaps that he was a hard man to get a pay raise from. But that doubtless had at least as much to do with his instructions from above as with Sol himself.

To those who didn’t peruse the Marvel credits carefully back in the day, Sol Brodsky was little-known, because he had only the occasional credit as an inker, artist, or writer—and much of his Atlas-Era work was unsigned. The same was true to a different extent with regards to the late Stan Goldberg, a tribute to whom appeared in A/E #134, as witness Patrick Moreau, below: Hi Roy, You know what I like about your magazine? I get to find out about people and their work that I would never have found anywhere else. I knew of Sol Brodsky as Marvel’s production manager only. I didn’t realize he was a gifted artist.

Shane Foley

Stan Goldberg was another person who surprised me. I knew him from “Archie” and I knew that he had colored Marvel comics, but I didn’t know how involved he was. A very underrated artist.

F

irst things first: Hard as it is to believe, this issue marks the 100th issue in a row for which Aussie artist Shane Foley has drawn a “maskot” drawing—whether we happened to have a “re:” section that ish or not! So congrats, Shane! By our lights, you never fail to come up with an interesting take on an issue’s major theme—including this one, which you also colored! [Alter Ego hero TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas—designed by Ron Harris; Captain Ego TM & © Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly—created by Biljo White; other art © 2016 Shane Foley.]

One last thing: When I read memories about these gentlemen at Marvel in those days, I say to myself, “That could not happen again,” because the world has changed so much. I knew you were there for a lot of it, but reading these stories where Stan Lee is not

Now, on to missives (e- and otherwise) re Alter Ego #134’s tribute to artist/production manager/publisher/Marvel VP Sol Brodsky, which was a very special issue to me (Ye Editor/Roy) because of my long and often close association with “Jolly Solly” back in the “Marvel Age.” We begin with a short note from Golden Age Timely artist Allen Bellman: Roy, Sol Brodsky and I were good friends. Knew him before he was married. He took a ride with me in my new car around Prospect Park Circle [in Brooklyn]. I was driving in fear, having horns honking all around me. Wish you had gotten in touch with me about this issue in advance, so I could have contributed to it.

Allen Bellman So do we, Allen… but we did get comments from Stan Lee, John Romita, David Anthony Kraft, and the late Herb Trimpe, as well as the interview with his daughter Jana Parker, who has been a Marvel colorist for some years now. If you have other memories of Sol you’d like the share, we’d be happy to print an extended letter from you, anytime!

Here’s another brief reminiscence from someone who knew Sol Brodsky… Jay Boyar: Dear Roy, Thank you so much for the Sol Brodsky issue of A/E. The photos and drawings you ran were delightful, and the reminiscences by yourself and others really got to the essence of the man I knew. I worked for Sol at Marvel in the mid-1970s. He was a wonderful boss! I still can’t believe how much he put up with from a stupid kid like me. I learned so much from him!

Since it was my first job out of college, I thought all bosses were as great as Sol was. They are not. To this day, one of my big regrets is that I never told him how much his superb example has meant to me. (Of course, he would probably have shrugged off the compliment!)

Jay Boyar

Support Your “Red Cross”!

Because Sol Brodsky told Roy Thomas in 1965 that he’d been the feature’s creator (probably in the sense of “co-creator”) back in the early ’40s, we’re presenting one of the pages from the “Red Cross” hero tale in Holyoke’s Captain Aero #8 (Sept. 1942). The byline of the first three “Red Cross” episodes was “by Charles Nicholas & Sol Brodsky,” but it’s not known who did what it terms of writing, penciling, and inking. From the invaluable Comic Book Plus website. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

Dear Roy: I read with great interest Jim Amash’s eulogy for Stan Goldberg, and the remarks he made about Stan having a special connection with the name “Heidi” is something I can attest to as well. While doing both the interview with Stan on Sol Brodsky [for #134] as well as a full interview on his career for Comic Book Creator, I happened to mention the name of one of my daughters, which also happens to be Heidi. (It’s a small world, Mr. Amash.)

Stan immediately began relating what I expect was the same story that Mr. Amash mentioned, and I quickly realized that he was describing something quite personal and told him I was turning off my tape recorder. He actually asked me not to. He wanted to see if he was ready to tell the story about his own daughter. I assured him that, if he felt overwhelmed by the subject, we’d simply cut out the story he was telling.

After I transcribed the interview, both Stan and his wife decided it was still too painful a subject and it was cut from the official interview. However, Stan did insist on sending me a present for my daughter Heidi’s upcoming high school graduation: a personalized drawing of the famed “Malt Shop Scene” with Archie, Betty, and Veronica all sharing a single malted.

Both Betty and Veronica were thinking jealous thoughts about my daughter and the possibility that she was moving in on Archiekins.

It was a very sweet gift, and when I unexpectedly got it in the mail, I offered to pay him for it. He refused, saying he never accepted payment from other comic pros (which I’m not sure I am) and insisted that all Heidis everywhere should have Betty and Veronica keeping an eye on them, just to be safe. Stan was a class act and a great guy. One of the best interviews I’ve ever done, and certainly one of the nicest.

The Cheese Stans Alone!

Here’s an e-mail we received from Chris Boyko: “Have just finished A/E #134’s tribute to Sol Brodsky, and this is exactly the sort of thing A/E excels at: behind-the-scenes stories and history of people who are not super-stars but without whom the comics industry could not have functioned. Great stuff. I have to give special kudos to Jim Amash for his exceptionally moving tribute to Stan Goldberg, another ‘unsung hero’ and all-around wonderful guy. I am sending my favorite photo of Stan, taken in March 2012 at a New York Con where he poses with a pin-up page from Millie the Model Annual #1, ‘Meet S. Lee and Stan G.’ Mere moments after I took this, Stan Lee came around the corner, and he and Stan G. shared a moment (hugs, smiles) and both marveled (sorry, couldn’t resist) at this piece of art. Alas, my camera decided to choose that moment to seize up! It probably could only handle one Stan at a time.” Here’s the pic Chris took of Stan G. holding up the 1962 page on which he’d drawn caricatures of himself and Stan Lee. Seen at right is one of Stan’s later classic covers, that of Archie #542 (Jan. 2004). [TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

the main locus, you get to see a different side of him beyond the usual. Stuff that would be left on the cutting-room floor if this were a movie.

In fact, if it wasn’t for you, a lot of these people would be on that floor.

Patrick Moreau As Jim Amash was fond of saying back when he was doing the majority of the interviews for A/E, you often learn more from the “minor” players in a comics company than you do from the “stars,” who were off doing their own thing and not paying that much attention to what anyone else (or the company itself) was doing. (Chris Boyko makes much the same point in a caption elsewhere on this page.) Not that Sol Brodsky and Stan Goldberg were truly “minor players,” except perhaps in name recognition.

More on “Stan G.,” as he was ID’d for years in the “Millie the Model” credits, from Richard Arndt, who of course provides many of the interviews that appear in these pages:

Richard Arndt No quarrel there, Richard. While Stan was easing out of most of the coloring by the time I joined Marvel in 1965, I was privileged to work with him there on “Millie the Model” stories, and on several stories for Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! at DC in the ’80s. We were slated to begin work on a new “teenage” series for DC a couple of years later when the great personal tragedy to which you refer led him to withdraw. It was good to see him come out of his shell to some extent in his later years. Stan Goldberg and Sol Brodsky are definitely two of the happy memories from my own days in comics.

Next, this correction to one of the captions in the Seal of Approval segment reprinted in #134 from Amy Nyberg’s 1998 book on the history of comics censorship, from Jeff Taylor: Hi Roy— On p. 44, the caption says that the pale, dark-cloaked title Man from Transilvane and his furry werewolf companion in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #142 came from a “parallel dimension.” Actually, Kirby being Kirby, the concept was much more wildly imaginative than that, and Count Dragorin and Lupek came from a miniature planet created by a mad scientist who projected old horror movies into their atmosphere to see how it would affect their cultural development.

After the required fight scenes, Superman, of course, saved the day and sent the ghoulish pair back to their home and decided to

re:

71

give their little world a much more positive influence by showing them more wholesome fare, starting with the classic Western musical Oklahoma! (and I can’t even begin to list all the things that can go wrong with that choice…).

Jeff Taylor Thanks for the clarification, Jeff. I’ll admit to not re-reading that Kirby story before writing that caption, though I wasn’t too far off.

A note, now, on the late Don Ensign, an earlier contributor to this magazine, from FCA editor P.C. Hamerlinck:

Gary Brodsky

Hi Roy, I know my friend and FCA contributor Don Ensign would’ve liked seeing his letter printed in A/E #134. Don passed away on March 19, 2014. He was essentially the Jerry Bails of Christian Comics Fandom, and had written articles about Silver Age comics in various fanzines during the late ’60s. Don had given me the thumbs-up to continue to use any of his later-day Captain Marvel Jr. and Bulletman research in A/E or FCA, so his name will continue to live on in our pages.

P.C. Hamerlinck We’re happy that that will be the case, P.C. A couple of quick asides: Craig Delich believes he can identify the “Lee” in the “Brodsky & Lee” credit on the splash page of “The Deacon” from Cat-Man Comics, Vol. 3, #7, which was seen on p. 32 of A/E #134. He states: “Jerry

R.I.P., Gary Brodsky We regret to report that, as this issue was in preparation, we learned from online sources that Gary Brodsky, son of Sol Brodsky, passed away on May 9 of this year. We had lost touch with him sometime in 2014, after he had tentatively agreed to be interviewed for Alter Ego #134 about his father’s life and career. Besides publishing a number of (mostly) comics-related books over the years, Gary drew some covers for Marvel reprint books in years past, such as the pictured cover to the Marvel UK Incredible Hulk Annual 1978, which was adapted from a Jim Starlin cover for Marvel Super-Heroes #47 (Nov. 1974). Thanks to Robert Menzies & Gerry Turnbull for the cover scan and ID. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Bails, in his Who’s Who, identified the possible man: Lee Schwartz, who was an artist at Holyoke in 1942 and signed his work either with his first name (as here) or his last name.”

And “Comics Crypt” editor Michael T. Gilbert writes: “You have a ‘Shield’ page from Archie’s The Fly comic on page 23, which you credited to Sol [Brodsky]. I’m pretty sure it was actually drawn by Bob Powell, who did other work in that issue.” You may be right, Michael, and indeed certain aspects of the art look like Powell to me, too.

Oddly, though, while Powell is indeed credited by the Grand Comics Database as drawing other material in The Fly #4 (Jan. 1960), it attributes art of the two-page featurette “The Power Pack” to Brodsky, with script by Joe Simon. That’s not to say that the GCD is undeniably right—but it seems a strange error to make when attributing other work in the issue to Powell.

E-mails and letters concerning this issue’s contents can (indeed, should) be sent to: Roy Thomas e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135

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Steamboat & Sabra Holbrook’s Youthbuilders Captain Marvel & African American Stereotypes During World War II

by Brian Cremins [Author’s Introduction: Steamboat, a character who first appeared in America’s Greatest Comics #2 (Feb.-May, 1942), was one of Captain Marvel’s regular cast members until he vanished for good in mid-1945. In his 1960 essay “The Big Red Cheese,” Richard Lupoff described the character as “the exemplification of the racial stereotype of the era, as popularized in innumerable pulp magazine stories, radio dramas, motion pictures (perhaps there most of all), and other popular media.” Although Lupoff, Gene Arnold, and C.C. Beck himself have all written about Steamboat, and while Beck, Otto Binder, and Will Lieberson all remembered him in various interviews, very few scholars have studied the history of the Youthbuilders, a kind of after-school Early on in the process program developed by innovative social of researching my book worker and education reformer Sabra Captain Marvel and the Art of Holbrook. Why are the Youthbuilders so The World’s Mightiest…

Nostalgia [available from the important? A group of New York City (Above:) Steamboat was hypnotized into believing he was Captain University Press of middle-school kids who took part in the Marvel in the ironically-titled tale “The World’s Mightiest Mistake,” Mississippi], I knew that I’d be program visited Lieberson at Fawcett’s from Captain Marvel Adventures #16 (Oct. 1942). Writer unknown; devoting an entire chapter to offices in 1945 and argued persuasively for art by C.C. Beck, Dave Berg, & the Captain Marvel art staff. [Shazam the character. Like Arnold, the character’s removal. The following hero TM & © DC Comics.] however, I had no idea “what essay (based on the fourth chapter of my (Right:) Cartoonist Keiler Roberts (best known for her autobiographical happened to him,” at least book Captain Marvel and the Art of series Powdered Milk) did the drawing and cover design for our until a good friend and fellow Nostalgia) is a tribute to those students author Brian Cremins’ book Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia, comics scholar passed along a and their passion for comics—an art form recently published by the University Press of Mississippi. The article clipping from The Chicago that follows is abridged from a chapter of that book. that, for all its flaws, has again proven its [Art © the University Press of Mississippi.]

Defender newspaper dated ability to bring about real and positive May 5, 1945. The headline? social change. As you’ll see, Holbrook “Negro Villain in Comic Book Killed By Youngsters.” According to encouraged her teachers and her students to compile as much research as the article, credited to the ANP (the Associated Negro Press), possible when discussing and debating an important social topic. In that “representatives of Youthbuilders, Inc.,” had “persuaded Fawcett spirit, P.C. Hamerlinck has also assembled, for next issue, a follow-up Publications to drop the character, ‘Steamboat,’ from one of their piece: a portfolio of images, information, and insights regarding favorite comic books, ‘Captain Marvel.’”

Steamboat's treatment and the depiction of other African Americans during Fawcett's Golden Age. —Brian Cremins.]

So, the Youthbuilders, I thought. Interesting. I made a list of questions. Who were they? How could I find out more about them?

I answer a lot of those questions in what turned out to be one of or Gene Arnold, who wrote the detailed summaries of the longest chapters in the book. But, as I continue to share this Captain Marvel’s cast of characters in The Rocket’s Blast information with other colleagues, I thought I’d also give FCA Special #8 in the early 1970s, Steamboat’s disappearance readers a sneak preview, along with some material that didn’t from the hero’s adventures was something of a mystery. “There make the final cut. was no explanation of what happened to him,” Arnold writes. “He was just conveniently written out of future scripts and there was Before I go any further, I should mention that the training I no reference made to him again. It was as if he had never existed.” received while doing my Ph.D. in English at the University of Connecticut proved invaluable as I tracked down this information.

F

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

76

I wrote my dissertation not on comics but on the life and work of selfpublished novelist and independent filmmaker Oscar Micheaux (18841951), a fascinating figure who got his start as a Pullman car porter and ended up being one of the most prolific and trend-setting independent directors of the 1920s and 1930s. The legendary actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson, for example, made his film debut in Micheaux’s 1925 silent classic Body and Soul. Micheaux also wrote detective novels, so I managed to work my love of comics and pulp Oscar Micheau fiction into a portion of my disserin a back-cover photograph tation. (My advisor, who also helped from his 1944 novel The Wind me with the Captain Marvel book from Nowhere. [© the proposal, was okay with that.) respective copyright holders.]

Throughout his career, Micheaux fought against African American stereotypes in his fiction and in his movies. As I researched Steamboat, in fact, I kept thinking of a line from Micheaux’s autobiographical first novel, The Conquest (1913), about his years as a homesteader in South Dakota.

Half-way through the story, writing in the accepted parlance of the day, Micheaux pauses to remind his readers—many of whom were the white farmers he lived and worked with—that “no liberty-loving colored man appreciates being regarded as ‘aunt,’ or ‘uncle,’ even though some of these people were as honorable as could be. This is a modern age” [Micheaux 143].

I don’t know if years later Micheaux ever read a Captain Marvel comic, but if he did, I’m sure he would have seen Steamboat as a

Sabra Holbrook This photograph accompanies Adelaide Kerr’s profile of her in the Spokane Daily Chronicle for Wednesday, September 3, 1947.

relic of another era, a character who did Direct Object not belong in the The title page of Sabra Holbrook’s 1943 book “modern age” of the Children Object. A blurb on the page opposite 1940s as the World this one explains that the photo shows students War II years came to “[interviewing] Newbold Morris, Chairman of a close. With the their Board, and President of the New York City Civil Rights Council, on affairs of state, in Mr. Morris’s City Movement on the Hall Office.” [© the respective copyright horizon, it was time holders.] for change. As one of the anonymous commentators on Brian Cronin’s 2014 Comic Book Resources article on Steamboat writes, “The existence of the Youth Builders [sic] also pretty much demolishes the rationalization that everybody was just racist in olden times so we should just excuse it or ignore it” [quoted in Cronin]. Most of the work I did on Micheaux required a lot of archival research in old newspapers and magazines (not to mention a few incredible trips to Gregory, South Dakota, nestled between Vermillion and the Black Hills). So I started searching for other articles on the Youthbuilders and their conversation with Will Lieberson. I ended up discovering far more than I could fit in a single chapter of the book.

Soon after reading the article from the Defender, and after studying C.C. Beck’s and Otto Binder’s comments on the character, I found myself sitting with a box of microfilm on the third floor of the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In the NAACP files, I found numerous articles and memos related to the Youthbuilders and to Sabra Holbrook, the young social worker and education reformer who helped to create the program in the late 1930s. I love a good mystery, especially one that leads me to a noisy, blurry microfilm machine. Reading those files, I felt—as I often did while writing the book—like I was in a room filled with ghosts, each one staring back at me in black and white.

Steamboat Docks!

Panels from Steamboat’s first appearance, in America’s Greatest Comics #2 (Feb.-May ’42). Prior to Billy Batson offering him a job, Steamboat Bill (the only time his “full” name was revealed) rode a horse-drawn food wagon.

Writer Ed Herron created Steamboat and was the possible author of the character’s debut. Art by C.C. Beck, Dave Berg, and the Fawcett Captain Marvel art staff. The tale was reprinted in The Shazam! Archives Vol. 4 (2003)—the only time DC ever reprinted a “Captain Marvel” story that featured Steamboat. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

First, though, I wanted to know what happened at the meeting between the kids and Fawcett Executive Editor Will Lieberson inside his office at 67 West 44th Street. The Defender article tells that story in full. “The strip was fine, the youngsters all agreed, but such a character will go far to break down all that anti-bias groups are trying to establish,” the anonymous reporter explained, before noting that the students were all from “Junior High School 120, Manhattan.” After meeting with them and discussing Steamboat, Lieberson, according to the article, “characterized the group as ‘born diplomats.’” Years later, in an interview with Matt Lage

Steamboat & Sabra Holbrook’s Youthbuilders

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included in the Fawcett Companion, Lieberson remembered his aversion to Steamboat: “I always found the character objectionable, and when I took over Rod Reed’s position I exercised my prerogative as executive editor and ordered him out of all future scripts” [Lieberson quoted in Lage 94]. That decision, at least according to the Defender article, must have been influenced in part by the students and their arguments. According to the ANP Will Lieberson reporter, “Lieberson was completely won over 1947. when one boy produced an enlarged portrait of ‘Steamboat’ and said, ‘This is not the Negro race, but your oneand-a half million readers will think it so.’” The conversation that took place in Lieberson’s office follows the pedagogical format that Sabra Holbrook outlines in her 1943 book Children Object, which describes the Youthbuilders’ philosophy and offers helpful suggestions on how to start a branch at your local school.

Fawcett Face-Off (Above:) As per “Captain Marvel” artist/co-creator C.C. Beck in his 1981 privately circulated mini-autobiography, Preacher’s Son: “One day when I was at the Fawcett editorial offices, a delegation of African-Americans marched into Will Lieberson’s office to denounce, in strident tones, our ‘negro’ character in Captain Marvel comics, Steamboat. ‘He shambles, and he is stupid!’ they declared. ‘He’s a servant and people laugh at him. As members of a minority, we demand that something be done about this character!’ ‘I know how you feel,’ Lieberson said with a smile. ‘I’m a member of a minority myself, you know. I’ll do what I can.’ After the protesters left, Will and editorial director Ralph Daigh quickly killed off the character in fear of losing sales.” In his usual cartoon style, Beck drew this artistic interpretation of the encounter, which demonstrates the difference between cartoonish caricature and racial stereotype. [Art © Estate of C.C. Beck.]

At some time, probably during the World War II years, Fawcett circulated a major inter-office memo about the editing of comics as a social responsibility: “The words and actions in comics exert a tremendous influence on youngsters and grown-ups. This influence must be good! … Fawcett Comics’ editors realize their tremendous responsibility for the millions of readers upon whom comics exert a strong social force. They realize that the cartoons must be staged with the proper language, environment, and action to gain the proper interpretation by millions of children and adult readers. Because this responsibility has always been recognized by Fawcett editors, they have the active counsel of eminent educators advising them of changing social conditions and the psychological standards which should be maintained.” (The illustrated memo itself was reprinted in A/E #21, courtesy of Richard Lieberson, Will’s son.) [© the respective copyright holders.]

As I mention in my book, Youthbuilders, in contemporary terms, was a kind of after-school or extracurricular program designed to teach students about the tradition and potential of American democracy. An article published in the Nassau Daily Review-Star in the Spring of 1945 explains that “Mrs. Holbrook has worked out a process which provides children with opportunities to become participating citizens now, in their own schools and neighborhoods, thus finding out from experience what the powers and obligations of citizens are, and how they may be used to improve the welfare of all.”

Adelaide Kerr fills in some of the details of Holbrook’s life in a 1947 profile published in the Spokane Daily Chronicle. After moving from her native Massachusetts to New York with her husband, Holbrook began working with New York City Public Schools assistant superintendent William Jansen who “sent her into a junior high school to visit with the youngsters and find out what interested them” [Kerr 13]. Soon, in collaboration with Byrnes MacDonald, the “onetime head of New York City’s Crime Prevention Bureau” [Time, May 20, 1940, p. 60], Holbrook began lecturing at schools and assisting students and teachers as Youthbuilders took shape.

Cover Me! Besides being prominent on the CMA #23 cover, Steamboat actually made it onto two other Fawcett covers: Can you spot him on America’s Greatest Comics #6 (Feb. ’43) and Whiz Comics #59 (Oct. ’44) covers?

To help you to find him on the latter, we’ve included artist Beck’s 1974 re-creation of the Whiz cover’s Marvel Family cast portrait—with its inclusion of dealer/collector Bruce Hamilton on the far left, and Beck himself (next to Dr. Sivana) on the far right. [Shazam heroes & related characters TM & © DC Comics.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

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Larry Houston

Mark Lewis

Present At The Re-Creation Notice something different about this issue’s FCA cover (see p. 73), re-creating the cover of Captain Marvel Adventures #23 (Apr. ’43)? When it was decided that our FCA cover needed to feature the character Steamboat in some way, neither FCA editor P.C. Hamerlinck nor our cover coordinator Mark Lewis felt right about simply using Golden Age art of Steamboat (or a new approximation of same) on the cover. The two discussed the possibility of doing new art wherein Steamboat would be depicted in a non-racist/non-stereotypical way, but then the problem became: How would readers even recognize him? It was decided to do a cover re-creation of CMA #23, which prominently featured Steamboat and called him by name … but to do it as if it had been done in a 1943 world where African-Americans were not drawn in a horribly caricatured racist way, and do it the way that it should have been done.

Mark Lewis says: “I thought [this re-creation] might be something of interest to my friend, mentor, and first boss in the animation industry, Larry Houston.

Though Larry is best known for his animation work, he’s always had a love for comics and has been wanting to dip his toes back into those waters. Larry has also always had an interest in and concern for positive portrayals of African-American characters in animation and comics. So this seemed like it might be a good opportunity for us to collaborate. Larry made a tight layout on bristol board to work with, making the major, obvious change to Steamboat’s appearance. He passed the baton to me, and I proceeded to finish off the pencils, ink it, add all the lettering, attempt to duplicate the original color palette, and even give it the appearance of actual age.”

As for the original CMA #23 cover (reprinted above), artists C.C. Beck and Pete Costanza depicted a muscular Steamboat helping Captain Marvel fire a cannon shell across the ocean at the Axis. VP/Circulation Manager Roscoe Fawcett, concerned with Southern reaction to having a black man on the cover of its biggestselling comic book, instructed their printers to glue a Bulletman mini-comic (see center image) over the Steamboat figure on part of the production run to be distributed in the South. Despite the manner in which Steamboat was depicted, it was a true rarity to have an African-American figure in a heroic pose appear on a comic book cover during the entire Golden Age of Comics. Steamboat had even gained enough popularity to warrant his own “Comix Card” (shown far right) on the back cover of CMA #23. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

By the late 1940s, according to New York Post reporter Fern Marja, the students who’d taken part in the program at various public schools across the city had tackled a range of issues, from “a rat extermination drive” and “the adoption of DP children” to “the establishment of veterans’ recreation centers” and even “the donation of pencil sharpeners to each classroom in pressure areas to kill the alibi that razor blades are essential equipment for a pupil” [Marja]. The program was not limited to the New York public schools, however. Kerr also points out that, in 1946, “Youthbuilders’ work was carried on in 109 schools in New York, 25 in Philadelphia and 10 in Chicago, as part of the school curriculum” [Kerr 13]. What they all shared in common, at least according to the newspaper and magazines reports I’ve read, was Holbrook’s vision of a progressive educational system that would bring about necessary social change by challenging the prejudices that divide American citizens along ethnic, racial, and economic lines. Those foolish divisions, Holbrook believed, would only lead to more ignorance and ultimately to violence.

As a teacher with almost twenty years of experience in the classroom, I found the Appendix of Holbrook’s 1943 book especially useful. The ideas she developed for the other teachers in the Youthbuilders program are still relevant over seventy years later. “We never lecture the children,” she explains. “That’s one of our rules and perhaps it would be a good rule to use with adults, too—‘no lectures’” [Holbrook 159]. Later in the Appendix, she

describes the “pattern of activity” that is the foundation for a successful Youthbuilders lesson: “first, free discussion; second, exciting investigation; and third, concerted action” [167]. With these three tenets in mind, let’s imagine, for a second, how the young men and women from Manhattan Junior High School 120 decided on a plan of action after reading an issue of Captain Marvel Adventures.

The kids, as the Defender article suggests, were big fans of the character and of his adventures. Maybe one of them brought a copy to school and started reading it—during math or history class! (For the record, as a kid I would often bring my beloved X-Men and All-Star Squadron comics with me to class. I won’t say whether I read them there or not.) Or maybe one of the students asked the teacher why there were so few African American characters in Captain Marvel’s circle of friends. Why did Steamboat and his relatives all look alike and talk, as Gene Arnold said of Billy’s friend, “with an accent you could cut with a knife”?

The teachers who took part in Youthbuilders, Fern Marja explains, sought “to transfer the excitement and stimulation youngsters usually find in the unreality of comic strips and radio serials to the reality of the world they live in.” What better way to do that than to turn the kids themselves into heroes, confident and ready to speak up for themselves? By the time they visited Will Lieberson up in his office at Fawcett, the students from Junior High School 120 were ready. Steamboat, and all he represented, was no match

Steamboat & Sabra Holbrook’s Youthbuilders

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for them. In other words, they had something even more powerful than a magic word. They’d done their homework!

An article about the program published in the National Municipal Review in the summer of 1948 lists Steamboat’s removal as one of the Youthbuilders’ great accomplishments, along with their success in “enlarging neighborhood recreational facilities in a certain section of Brooklyn,” “[breaking] up segregation according to races in the school cafeteria,” and “[collecting] thousands of pounds of salvageable material for war purposes” [Parker 391].

The Many Moods Of Steamboat

Steamboat was often written as being scared witless of practically everything, even on the occasions when But how did artist C.C. Beck and writer Billy brought down the thunder, as in scripter William Woolfolk’s “The Trumpet of Doom” (CMA #16, Oct. Otto Binder respond to Lieberson’s decision ’42; artist unknown) … but he was also written as a reliable friend, capable of holding his own, and always to eliminate the character? In another had Billy’s back, like when he saved his pal from Dr. Sivana shooting him in America’s Greatest Comics #3 interview you can read in the Fawcett (May-Aug. ’42; art by Ray Harford; scripter unknown). [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

Companion, Binder explained to Matt Lage that he and the other folks at the publisher borrow Beck’s word, Steamboat is a “degrading” character, and he “were always creating new side characters, most of which became also represents a kind of narrative shortcut that results, I think, in just one-shots if they turned out to have no appeal.” He then poor storytelling. Towards the end of her book, Morrison lists remembers that “Steamboat was the creation of Ed Herron, the “some of the common linguistic strategies employed in fiction to greatest early Captain Marvel editor” [Binder, quoted in Lage 60]. engage the serious consequences of blacks.” The first of these, she Steamboat Bill, with his horse and carriage, first appeared in says, is “[e]conomy of stereotype,” which, she writes, “allows the America’s Greatest Comics #2 early in 1942. By 1945, Binder notes, writer a quick and easy image without the responsibility of specithe character “was dropped during a wave of criticism of any antificity, accuracy, or even narratively useful description” [Morrison minority leanings that came up in that period,” a decision, he adds, 67]. that he accepted as a necessary change: “I was all in favor, actually, of anti-discrimination, so it didn’t bother me, except that we did This is exactly the point that young man was making to Will sigh once in a while because it was fun to depict such dialect Lieberson when he held up that “enlarged portrait” of Steamboat. groups. We never meant to degrade them, merely play them for Given the quality of the writing and the drawing in Fawcett’s humor” [Binder, quoted in Lage 60].

Captain Marvel comics, these students wanted to know, why include a character like Steamboat, one so limited and lacking in In an interview with Tom Heintjes, Beck echoed these sentidepth of characterization? As cartoonist, comic book fan, and ments and explained that Steamboat “was always a cartoon National Book Award-winning novelist Charles Johnson has character, not intended to be realistic at all, but he was taken argued, these kinds of racial caricatures represent “a failure of the seriously by some, sadly enough.” In his essay “Mr. Mind and the imagination (and often of empathy, too)” [Johnson 13], but, at the Monster Society of Evil,” published in Robert Overstreet’s Comic same time, he suggests, we should research and study these figures Book Price Guide No. 15 in 1985, Beck admits that the comic books carefully. That way, when they inevitably appear again in the of the 1940s were filled with questionable images, ones best left in popular culture that surrounds us, we too can work together to the past. While, as he stated numerous times in his columns for The challenge and resist them, just as those Captain Marvel-loving Comics Journal and in his essays for his Critical Circle group, he New York City school kids did in 1945. We’ve got plenty of was no fan of the violent and often sexually explicit comics of the homework left to do, and plenty of dusty boxes of microfilm just 1980s, he also points out the offensive and hurtful narratives that waiting to be studied. filled the newsstands during the Golden Age: “It is true that much of the male chauvinism, the super-patriotic Americanism, and the Works Cited and Further Reading: degrading treatment of minorities that was displayed in the comics of nearly a half-century ago would not be acceptable today” [Beck Arnold, Gene. The Rocket’s Blast Special #8. Miami: The S. F. C. A., A-93]. Beck, however, qualified this statement by arguing that circa 1970. Print. those stories and characters would have been “too tame” for the Beck, C.C. “Mr. Mind and the Monster Society of Evil.” The Comic 1980s due to the “horrible things” on display “in our comics and Book Price Guide No. 15 (1985–86). By Robert M. Overstreet. New on our television screens” [Beck A-93]. Having read so much of York: Harmony Books, 1985: A–89–A-93. Print.

Beck’s often visionary criticism on the art of comics, both published and unpublished, I wish he were still around to share Binder, Otto. “‘We Were More or Less Inspired.’” Interview with more details about the character.

Matt Lage. Fawcett Companion: The Best of FCA. Ed. P. C. Hamerlinck. Raleigh: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2001: 59–64.

In researching my chapter on Steamboat, I found myself Print. returning not only to my work on Micheaux but also to Ralph Ellison’s essay “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Cronin, Brian. “Comic Book Legends Revealed #467.” Comic Book Humanity” and to Toni Morrison’s classic study Playing in the Dark: Resources, April 18, 2014. Web. December 9, 2015.

Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, an analysis of the presence of African American characters in writers including Poe, Melville, Ellison, Ralph. “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Hemingway, and Faulkner (one of Morrison’s favorite writers). To Humanity.” Shadow & Act. New York: Signet, 1964: 42–60. Print.

80

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

“The World’s Mightiest Mistake” – Take 2 Heintjes, Tom. “An Interview with C. C. Beck.” Hogan’s Alley, May 4, 2012. Web. December 1, 2015.

It’s interesting to note that Steamboat’s girlfriend in the story “The World’s Mightiest Mistake” in Captain Marvel Adventures #16 (Oct. 1942) was not drawn in caricatured racist style, unlike the other African-American characters featured therein. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

Holbrook, Sabra. Children Object. New York: Viking Press, 1943.

Print.

Johnson, Charles. Foreword. Black Images in the Comics: A Visual History. By Fredrik Strömberg. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2003: 5–19. Print.

Kerr, Adelaide. “Youth Builders Organize to Work for Better World.” Spokane Daily Chronicle, September 3, 1947: 13. Print.

Lieberson, Will. Interview with Matt Lage. Fawcett Companion: The Best of FCA. Ed. P. C. Hamerlinck. Raleigh: TwoMorrows Publishing, 2001: 92–97. Print.

Marja, Fern. “Youthbuilders Units Study, Then Act on Civic Issues.” New York Post, Home News, July 27, 1948. From the Papers of the NAACP, Richard J. Daley Library, University of Illinois Chicago.

Micheaux, Oscar. The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer. Lincoln, Nebraska: The Woodruff Press, 1913. Print.

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Print.

“Negro Villain in Comic Book Killed by Youngsters.” Credited to the Associated Negro Press (ANP). Chicago Defender, National Edition, May 5, 1945: 11. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Parker, Elsie S., ed. “Youthbuilders’ Experiment.” National Municipal Review vol. 37, no. 7 (July 1948): 391–92. Print.

“Sabra Holbrook to Direct Panel.” Nassau Daily Review-Star, March 23, 1945: 17. Print.

“Youthbuilders, Inc.” Time vol. 35, no. 21 (May 20, 1940): 60. Print.

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(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Summer 2017

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Spring 2017

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Now shipping!

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Winter 2017

TwoMorrows

The Future of Comics History.

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2017 Update #1 from TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 • 919-449-0344 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

HERO-A-GO-GO!

Welcome to the CAMP AGE, when spies liked their wars cold and their women warm, good guys beat bad guys with a pun and a punch, and Batman shook a mean cape. HERO-A-GO-GO celebrates the Camp craze of the Swinging Sixties, when just about everyone—the teens of Riverdale, an ant and a squirrel, even the President of the United States—was a super-hero or a secret agent. BACK ISSUE magazine and former DC Comics editor MICHAEL EURY takes you through that coolest cultural phenomenon with this collection of nostalgic essays and histories of classic 1960s characters like CAPTAIN ACTION, HERBIE THE FAT FURY, CAPTAIN NICE, ATOM ANT, SCOOTER, ACG’s NEMESIS, Dell’s SUPER-FRANKENSTEIN AND DRACULA, the “SPLIT!” CAPTAIN MARVEL, and others! Featuring interviews with BILL MUMY (Lost in Space), BOB HOLIDAY (It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman), RALPH BAKSHI (The Mighty Heroes, Spider-Man), DEAN TORRENCE (Jan and Dean Meet Batman), RAMONA FRADON (Metamorpho), DICK DeBARTOLO (Captain Klutz), TONY TALLARICO (The Great Society Comic Book), VINCE GARGIULO (Palisades Park historian), JOE SINNOTT (The Beatles comic book), JOSE DELBO (The Monkees comic book), and many more!

(272-page FULL-COLOR TRADE PAPERBACK) $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-073-1 • SHIPS APRIL 2017!

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COMIC BOOK FEVER

AL PLASTINO

MONSTER MASH

GEORGE KHOURY’s “love letter” to comics of 19761986, covering all the top artists, the coolest stories, and even the best ads!

Biography of the Superman artist who co-created Supergirl, Brainiac, and the Legion of Super-Heroes!

Time-trip back to the frightening era of 1957-1972, and explore the Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze, when monsters stomped into the American mainstream!

(288-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $34.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-067-0

(240-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $34.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-063-2

(112-page trade paperback) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-066-3

(192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $13.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-064-9

SUBSCRIPTIONS ECONOMY US Alter Ego (Six 100-page issues) $65.00 Back Issue (Eight 80-page issues) $73.00 BrickJournal (Six 80-page issues) $55.00 Comic Book Creator (Four 80-page issues) $40.00 Jack Kirby Collector (Four 100-page issues) $45.00

LAST SUPERMAN STANDING

EXPEDITED US $83.00 $88.00 $66.00 $50.00 $58.00

PREMIUM US $92.00 $97.00 $73.00 $54.00 $61.00

INTERNATIONAL $102.00 $116.00 $87.00 $60.00 $67.00

DIGITAL ONLY $29.70 $31.60 $23.70 $15.80 $19.80

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2017 RATES

MLJ COMPANION

Documents the complete history of Archie Comics’ “Mighty Crusaders” super-hero characters, from the 1940s to today!