Alter Ego #158

Roy Thomas' Unfettered Comics Fanzine

$9.95

In the USA

No.158

WILLIAM WOOLFOLK

NT:

PRESE

May 2019

BIG-BANG BONUS!

Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics

&

SPOTLIGHT ON GOLDEN AGE GREAT

40-YEAR

STAR WARS COMICS

TM

REUNION PANEL! With

HOWARD CHAYKIN CHARLES LIPPINCOTT & ROY THOMAS! 1

82658 00360

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Vol. 3, No. 158 / May 2019 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

Contents

Writer/Editorial: Ghosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 William Woolfolk Remembered . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Donna Woolfolk Cross talks to Richard Arndt about her celebrated writer father.

Cover Artist

For The [Golden Age] Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Cover Colorist

The 2002 San Diego Comic-Con Golden Age Panel . . . . . . 29

A brief & illustrated look at Woolfolk’s script-records journals.

C.C. Beck

Glenn Whitmore

With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Richard J. Arndt Bob Bailey Alberto Becattini John Benson Ricky Terry Brisacque Bernie Bubnis Mike Burkey Nick Caputo Howard Chaykin John Cimino Shaun Clancy Comic Book Plus (website) Pierre Comtois James Colville Chet Cox Donna Woolfolk Cross Leonardo de Sà Craig Delich Diversions of the Groovy Kind (website) Sean Dulaney Duane Eddy Mark Evanier Justin Fairfax Jean-Michel Ferragatti Melodie Figueroa Shane Foley Four-Color Shadows (website) Dan Friedman Martin Gately Jeff Gelb Janet Gilbert Michael Grabois Grand Comics Database

George Hagenauer Rich Harvey Jim Kealy Paul King Dominique Leonard Mark Lewis Charles Lippincott Art Lortie Jim Ludwig Doug Martin Mike Mikulovsky MinuteMan/ DarthScanner (website) Patrick Moreau Russ Morisi Val Morisi Bill Morrison Mark Muller Joe Musich Ken Nadle Martin O’Hearn Leo Pond Audrey Parente Barry Pearl Paul Power Gene Reed Scott Rowland Randy Sargent David Saunders Sai Shankar David Siegel Louise Simonson Robin Snyder Bryan Stroud Marc Svensson Dann Thomas Steven Tice Boris Vallejo John Wells Ryder Windham

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

William Woolfolk, Russ Heath, Marie Severin, & Gary Friedrich

Mark Evanier moderates the reminiscences of Bill Woolfolk, Bob Oksner, Nick Cardy, Bob Lubbers, Lew Sayre Schwartz, & Irv Novick.

A Century Of Zorro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Audrey Parente & Rich Harvey celebrate 100 years of the first costumed hero ever.

“Squinkers” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Part IX of scripter John Broome’s 1998 memoir My Life in Little Pieces.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! The PAM Papers, Part 4 . . . . . . 57 Michael T. Gilbert showcases Pete Morisi’s origins of Peter Cannon... Thunderbolt.

Comic Fandom Archive: Jim Warren’s Code-Free Comicbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Bill Schelly tells how he came to write a book about the birth of a black-&-white empire.

Tributes to Russ Heath, Marie Severin, & Gary Friedrich . . . 70 re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 75 The Star Wars Comics Reunion Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

40 (or is it 41?) years on, Howard Chaykin, Charles Lippincott, & Roy Thomas reunite to discuss their roles in one of the most important comicbooks ever.

On Our Cover: In late 1939, Fawcett Publications printed a very limited “ashcan edition” of what it called Flash Comics #1 (see p.13 for scan), intended not for general circulation but merely to secure copyright and trademark. The cover art by Charles Clarence Beck spotlighted its new super-hero Captain Thunder, who wasn’t named thereon. When it turned out DC had beat Fawcett to the Flash Comics moniker, there was a second “ashcan,” identical except for being titled Thrill Comics. When they lost that race to Pine/Nedor’s Thrilling Comics, Fawcett launched its now-named Whiz Comics with a “#2,” and with the hero rechristened Captain Marvel. They never utilized the ashcan’s cover art in a regular comic; so this may well be the first time it’s ever seen print as the cover of a magazine actually on sale in stores. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

Above: As publisher and writer (and probably editor) of O.W.’s Mad Hatter #2 (Oct.-Nov. 1946), William Woolfolk scribed a creepy story in which his oddly named super-hero battled The Gargoyle, who a couple of panels from now will turn out to actually be a gorilla with the transplanted brain of a human murderer. Art by John Giunta. Thanks to the Comic Book Plus website. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Alter Ego TM 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.

Six-issue subscriptions: $67 US, $101 Elsewhere, $30 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.

writer/editorial

2

A

Ghosts

s I write these perishable words, the New Year 2019 is a week and two days old… but you’ll have to forgive me if I can’t help thinking more about the old one.

2018 was a year in which I lost four friends and colleagues whom I associate strongly with the 625 Madison Avenue offices of Marvel Comics that I, too, occupied in the mid-1960s.

Gary Friedrich was, as I say in the brief tribute I wrote to him (on p. 73), my best friend for many years, and almost certainly the closest one I’ll ever have. He came on staff at Marvel in late 1966 and produced a number of memorable stories and characters. Of course, our friendship preceded that employment and would, in spite of difficulties, far outlast it.

Marie Severin was a delight—one of the first folks I met in the bullpen in July ’65, where she was a production worker, on the verge of turning out the art that would make her a Marvel legend. Her passing was not unexpected, since she’d developed Alzheimer’s in recent years, but it’s still as if a light has gone out, leaving the world a slightly dimmer place for me—just as it became when Flo Steinberg died last year... another 625 Madison alumna.

Steve Ditko, that most private of artists, was an in-and-out presence at Marvel during my early days there, just before he split; but he was always friendly and polite to the new kid. I can still see him standing at production manager Sol Brodsky’s desk when he’d breeze in to deliver (and pick up) artwork and then scoot out again, always before he and editor Stan Lee could accidentally encounter each other.

And Stan Lee. He and I were never close friends, in my (and doubtless in his) sense of the term, but we greatly valued each other as colleagues, once I’d learned the ropes. Without his ever really intending to, he became my mentor and one of the most important people in my life. I had been expecting his passing ever since his beloved wife Joan had left us the previous year; even so, when it

came, less than 48 hours after I last saw him, it was still a body blow.

To much of the rest of the comics-reading world, these four were giants in varying degrees. To me, they were people I knew… that now I don’t. But they live on in my memory.

This issue of A/E features tributes to Marie and Gary… and to Russ Heath, a wonderful comics artist I’ll always associate with the Ventura Boulevard eatery in L.A. where Gerry Conway and I used to run into him in the early ’80s. (For an in-depth interview with Russ, see A/E #40.) I plan to put together a Gary Friedrich issue the first chance I get, now that I’m finally forced to admit I’ll have to do so without his help. And, while Marie has been featured in a few issues in short interviews or on convention panels (e.g., #16, #95, & #156), I hope to do an issue truly centered around her, if and when I can find sufficient rare material to fill such an edition.

Steve Ditko and Stan Lee will be celebrated, each in his own way, in the upcoming issues #160 & 161, respectively. They remain connected, both in print and in the remembrances of those who realized, either at the time or later, that their “Spider-Man” and “Doctor Strange” were two of the signal achievements of the Silver or any other comicbook age.

This is, as so many of them are these days, an issue filled with ghosts: showcased acclaimed writer William Woolfolk (and indeed the entire list of panelists from a 2002 San Diego Comic-Con)… John Broome, whose memoirs continue… Pete Morisi, who’ll be even more prominently covered next issue…

They’re the ghosts of New Years Past… but, thanks to their undeniable talents, they will be with us many a New Year’s Future, as well. And thank God for that.

Bestest,

159

#

COMING IN JUNE

PETE MORISI...

Thunderbolt!

The Charlton Silver Age Artist “PAM” & His Lifelong Love Affair With Comics!

r art Estate of Pete Morisi; othe Thunderbolt art TM & © trademark & copyright holders.

TM & © the respective

• MICHAEL T. GILBERT presents a special feature-length “Comic Crypt” on PETE MORISI! “PAM,” creator of Peter Cannon… Thunderbolt & Johnny Dynamite, wrote a multitude of letters to fan/collector GLEN JOHNSON about the Golden/Silver Age artists he admired (and a few he didn’t)! Art & artifacts by BUSCEMA • DITKO • KIRBY • FINE • WHITNEY • TUSKA BOYETTE • GIORDANO • ROSS • FLESSEL • WOOD • SIEGEL • O’NEIL • CRANDALL, et al.!

• ROY THOMAS relates the behind-the-scenes story of his cameo in the third season of Marvel/ Netflix’s Daredevil—with plenty of photos & art!

• Plus: FCA with still more on WILLIAM WOOLFOLK—JOHN BROOME, Part X—BILL SCHELLY celebrates the life of Xero co-editor PAT LUPOFF—& MORE!!

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A WOOLFOLK AT THE DOOR: part one

4

WILLIAM WOOLFOLK Remembered A Conversation with DONNA WOOLFOLK CROSS Conducted by Richard J. Arndt Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

I

NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: Donna Woolfolk Cross is the daughter of William (Bill) Woolfolk and Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk. Like her parents, she is a writer and has written a number of nonfiction books as well as one international best-seller titled Pope Joan. We talked with her to gain further insights on her father, who began his comics-writing career working at MLJ (on “Archie,” “The Hangman,” “Steel Sterling,” “Black Hood,” “The Shield,” “The Wizard”) before a prolific period freelancing for Fawcett (“Captain Marvel,” “Captain Marvel Jr.” “Mary Marvel,” “Marvel Family,” “Captain Midnight,” “Ibis the Invincible,” “Spy Smasher”). At the same time, the highly in-demand writer also scribed stories for Timely (“Captain America,” “Human Torch,” “Sub-Mariner,” “Young Allies,” “Blonde Phantom”), Quality Comics (“Blackhawk,” “Kid Eternity,” “Plastic Man,” “Doll Man”), Orbit (Wanted), Hillman (“The Heap”), and others. During World War II he wrote The Spirit scripts while creator Will Eisner was in the Army and, after the war, tried his hand as a comicbook publisher with the short-lived O.W. Comics (Mad Hatter). In the early 1950s he wrote “Superman” stories for National (DC) at the same time he was writing “Captain Marvel” tales for Fawcett. When Fawcett closed down its comics division, he wrote primarily for DC (“Superman,” “Superboy,” “Batman,” Our Army At War) until late 1954, when he left comics altogether and moved on to magazine publishing (Inside Story, Space World), became an Emmy-nominated television writer (The Defenders), and a successful novelist (My Name Is Morgan, The Beautiful Couple). The comments by William Woolfolk referred to in the following interview with his daughter (conducted in September 2017) were drawn from the essay “Looking Backward… from My Upside-Down Point of View” by William Woolfolk (Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #6) and “William Woolfolk: The Human Side of the Golden Age”—an interview by P.C. Hamerlinck (A/E, Vol. 3, #24).

RICHARD ARNDT: We’re welcoming Donna Cross, the daughter of comics writer William Woolfolk and comics editor/writer Dorothy Woolfolk. Welcome, Donna!

DONNA WOOLFOLK CROSS: Thanks, Richard! I don’t know how much I can help you. My brother Donald was twelve years older than I. So he could have told you more about Dad’s comic book writing. Alas, he died in 2015. I myself was only eight years old when Dad left comics.

RA: Knowing that, we’ll do what we can. One of the challenges of interviewing children of comicbook creators is that they often don’t know the minutia of their parent’s work, or the co-workers they associated with,

A Couple Of Marvels (Above left:) William Woolfolk with daughter Donna, circa mid-1960s, during her college years. Photo courtesy of Donna Woolfolk Cross.

(Below:) Woolfolk was sometimes called by his Golden Age peers “The Shakespeare of Comics.” Among many other major stories, he wrote “Captain Marvel Meets Mr. Atom,” the tale that introduced that nuclear super-villain, for Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Adventures #78 (Nov. 1947).

Art by CM co-creator C.C. Beck. [Shazam hero & Mr. Atom TM & © DC Comics.]

William Woolfolk Remembered

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unless those people were also friends of the family.

CROSS: Professionally, I may not know what you need, but personally I, of course, knew my father pretty well.

RA: Well, shall we try a few names and see if they stir any memories?

One of the names your father mentioned quite a lot in the interviews I’ve read was Seymour Reit, who co-created “Casper the Friendly Ghost” with Joe Oriolo.

CROSS: That was my Uncle Sy! I adored him! Dad and Sy were very close friends. Actually, they were two-thirds of a triumvirate of close friends, with the third person being Reggie [Reginald] Rose. Uncle Reggie wrote [the drama] Twelve Angry Men for Playhouse 90 back in the 1950s.

Those three were the closest of friends.

Defenders All! (Left:) When this photo was first printed in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #6 (2000), in conjunction with an article written

by Woolfolk, he said of it: “This is a recent photo of the senescent Four Musketeers. The combined years of our friendship total over 200 years. Reading left to right: Reginald Rose, screenwriter of Twelve Angry Men and many others, also the producer and creator of the once-famous Defenders TV show on which I served as story editor and chief writer; myself; Miles Cahn, owner of Coach Leather, which he sold for $20 million; and Seymour Reitt, who created Casper the Friendly Ghost and wrote two bestselling novels.” Unfortunately, Rose’s name accidentally got rendered as “Ross” back in 2000, but we’ve corrected it here.

(Right:) E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed starred in the 1961-64 TV series The Defenders as father-and-son defense lawyers who specialized in socially significant cases. It is still considered by many to be one of the best TV dramas ever. Woolfolk was a writer and story editor on the series from 1961 to 1964.

RA: Seymour Reit was a writer/cartoonist, who also wrote quite a few children’s books. He worked for the Eisner-Iger Studio in the 1930s …

CROSS: Sy was a cartoonist, most noted for “Casper,” but he also wrote for adults—one was a well-received book called The Day They Stole the Mona Lisa. In addition, he wrote animated cartoons and for Captain Kangaroo. He was an accomplished writer as well as a cartoonist.

RA: Reginald Rose, of course, was one of the leading lights of early television. Besides his dramas for Playhouse 90 and other anthology-type television shows, he was also the creator of The Defenders (1961-1965), still one of the best lawyer dramas to appear on television.

CROSS: Absolutely! My father was chief story editor on The

Defenders during that time. Reggie, of course, created and produced the show and probably did all kinds of other things, but my father was story editor for at least, I think, a year and wrote a number of the scripts for the show. One of those shows won an Emmy. The Defenders was known for taking on controversial topics of the day, like birth control—which was a tough topic in the early 1960s—and book-burning. I think both of those issues ended up in scripts written by my father.

RA: Other names—do you remember Otto Binder?

CROSS: Yes, Otto Binder was definitely a friend. A good friend.

I remember him being talked about a lot. I’m sure he was at our house a lot and was included in my parents’ small circle of friends.

RA: From what I understand, your father and Otto kind of split the writing on the “Captain Marvel” cast of characters. They also wrote “Superman” stories at roughly the same time.

CROSS: That’s interesting. I have a journal in which my father, who was careful in that way, wrote down every single story he wrote for Fawcett, DC, Quality, or anyone else.

He wrote down his title, the date he wrote it, the amount he got for it, the number of pages of the story, and then, in the back of that book, he has a few pages of his thoughts on how to tell a good comicbook story… how to craft a good plot. [NOTE: See the following article for more about Woolfolk’s journal.]

Bill & Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk in two photos from the 1950s. The one at left is courtesy of Donna Woolfolks Cross. The one at right was provided circa 2000 by their late son Donald Woolfolk for the first volume of Roy Thomas’ & TwoMorrows’ All-Star Companion book series, since (from 1942-44, before their marriage) Woolfolk’s second wife Dorothy had been story editor on DC/All-American’s All-Star Comics and related titles; she would return to DC from 1971-72 as editor of romance comics and Wonder Woman. In addition, during 1945-46 she was an editor at Timely Comics, then briefly in 1948 for EC Comics, working for Bill Gaines, the son of her old AA boss M.C. Gaines.

RA: What memories, if any at all, do you have about your father’s work at Fawcett?

CROSS: I was so young when he left Fawcett that I really don’t have any direct memories. He was

6

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

quite sought-after by various other companies at the time, from what I heard. Mom was editing, although that seems odd to me, since not many women were editors in those days. The story I was told of their meeting was that Dad would keep going by her desk, offering her tickets to Oklahoma or Carousel. He was married at the time, actually, Otto Binder but the marriage hard at work at left—next to a splash page he scripted for Fawcett’s Mary Marvel #16 (Sept. 1947), as drawn by his brother Jack. was on the rocks.

Photo courtesy of Bill Schelly.

It had been a hasty At right is a splash page scribed by Bill Woolfolk for the “Mary Marvel” story in The Marvel Family #33 (March 1949); art likewise by one, arranged just Jack Binder. Thanks to Mark Muller. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.] before World War II. Like so many other young men, my father thought he was going off to war and likely to die. Anyway, it was at work that Mom and Dad met. I know that the reason they got married was that she got pregnant with me. [laughs] I just don’t know much about the professional relationship except I heard over and over again that he was the writer and she was an editor or something. [NOTE: See caption on p. 5 for information re Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk.] He was forever walking by her desk trying to ask her out.

RA: Your father remarked in an interview published shortly before his death that he met your mother when she was working at Timely Comics, editing Captain America, around 1944. This might be because Stan Lee was in the service at the time and Dorothy had taken over some of Stan’s editorial assignments for him.

CROSS: Towards the end, my father was already having some dementia. Dad passed away in July 2003. He was having cognitive issues. It was very hard to tell sometimes, because he was still incredibly verbal. Very articulate. Very charming, so most people couldn’t guess that he was having problems. But he could no longer draw the face of a clock, which is one of the key ways they test you for cognitive issues, so his memory of certain things may be questionable.

RA: How long did your father serve in the military?

“War’s Over If You Want It!” By late 1945, when Dorothy Roubicek was an editor at Timely, Captain America Comics was actually being published only eight times a year, though the indicia still said “monthly.” Issue #47 (June) was the last with a war-oriented cover. That of #50 (October) featured a bizarre mashup of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (with perhaps a touch of the ever-dependable King Kong). The identities of the scripters within are mostly not known. Art by Alex Schomburg.

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

William Woolfolk Remembered

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CROSS: I know my father was drafted at some point, but he never actually saw action. He went down to the place in Florida where new recruits normally were sent for two weeks to be processed and then were shipped off. My dad, however, was there for three months! [chuckles] He was never called to go anywhere. The story, as he told it, goes that he would have two weeks of friends, and then they were gone and he was left behind, to make new friends for another two weeks. He finally walked into his superior officer’s office and said, “Hello, Private Woolfolk reporting.” The captain checked the list of recruits and told him that there was no Private Woolfolk in his command.

Dad said “Thank you, sir,” saluted, and went out. [both laugh] That was Dad’s story of why he never went overseas.

After that, he got some sort of arthritic condition and was discharged for health reasons, so he never went overseas or served in the actual combat.

RA: He mentioned he had a “brief, inglorious military service.”

CROSS: Yes, and that was it.

RA: He does mention that he was still writing forty pages a month for various publishers even while he was in the service.

CROSS: That’s what’s so curious, and even in his diaries, which don’t go back that far—they start in 1960—but, always, the first thing at the top of the page was how many pages he wrote that day. He always knew exactly how many pages he was writing, every day, seven days a week.

In fact, Uncle Reggie [Rose] tried to talk him out of doing that. Uncle Reggie would tell him it shouldn’t just be about pages. He urged Dad to take his time, regroup, and rewrite when necessary. But Dad always had a certain number of pages he wanted to do in first draft, then a certain number in second draft—which, of course, would be more. I don’t know if that applied to his comics days, though. It certainly applied to his book-writing. He wrote twenty books after leaving comics.

RA: He mentions that he wrote four to six pages a day while writing comicbooks, which was low for comicbook writers in the day. But he wrote more pages than most of his contemporaries because he wrote every single day.

CROSS: Yes! Exactly, that’s right! That was his theory throughout his writing career. You have to get this number of pages done every day, even if it’s not a huge number.

But, as a year has 365 days, at the end of that year you’ve got eighteen hundred or more pages written. You’ve got a book. You’ve got a lot of short stories. You’ve got a very large number of comicbook stories.

Taking A “Torch” To The Golden Age Researcher Martin O’Hearn credits Bill Woolfolk with scripting the “Human Torch” lead story in All Winners Comics [second series] #1-and-only (Aug. 1948). The pencils may be by Maurice Gutwirth; inker unknown. Reproduced from the hardcover Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age All Winners Comics, Vol. 4. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RA: He mentions that he was averaging 150 pages a month as a civilian, which was a high monthly average. His day rate of written pages, however, was rather low, since there were people who could write ten or twenty pages a day, but they couldn’t do that every single day.

CROSS: I think Dad took a very workmanlike approach towards writing. This was his livelihood. This was how he earned his money.

He wrote a certain number of pages a day to ensure he was going to get a paycheck.

RA: One of the things he was known for in his comicbook days, and quite likely in his writings after that, was his ability to create characterization.

Characterization was not a huge thing for comicbook writers in the 1940s.

Having a character who did things based on his actual characteristics rather than plot necessities was fairly rare. Your dad’s stories were not simply plot-driven stories. Even in his one-off stories, there’s a real effort

to make the main character do things because doing that was part of his nature, not simply the demands of the plot. I think that may be what makes many of his stories stand out a bit from other writers of that period. He sounded a little bit rueful or perhaps bemused over the notion that, out of all his writings, his comicbook stories may be the ones that will stand the test of time and be remembered long after all his other writings.

CROSS: That was one of Dad’s great regrets. When he started out as a writer, he really wanted to be a literary author. He wanted to write for literary magazines. He even had a few things published in some small-press magazines of the day. He met Reggie around this time. They actually considered going in together as a writing team. But before that happened Reggie got some sort of major recognition, and Dad didn’t think it would be right to team up with someone clearly on his way up already. Both Dad and Uncle Sy, to some extent, had literary aspirations. After he left comics and was

8

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

A Different Kind Of “Spaghetti Western” Woolfolk (a screen capture from videotaped footage taken at The Old Spaghetti Factory in San Diego during Comic-Con weekend, Aug. 1-4, 2002), surrounded by images from his stories for three different companies, all starring heroes now owned by DC Comics: “Captain Marvel” from Fawcett’s Whiz Comics #98 (June 1948), with art by Pete Costanza—“Kid Eternity” from Quality’s Hit Comics #60 (Sept. 1949), with art by Pete Riss—and “Batman” from DC’s Detective Comics #199 (Sept.

1953), with pencils by Lew Sayre Schwartz & Bob Kane, and inks by Ray Burnley & Stan Kaye. Thanks to Jim Kealy, Comic Book Plus, and Doug Martin, respectively, for the scans. [Shazam heroes, Kid Eternity, & Batman TM & © DC Comics; screen capture © 2002 Marc Svensson.]

William Woolfolk Remembered

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writing novels, Dad always wanted to write the big one—“the Great American Novel.”

RA: I don’t know too many writers who don’t harbor a secret fantasy about that sort of thing.

CROSS: I’ve written several books myself—mostly nonfiction, but when I wrote a novel, Pope Joan, Dad was very interested in it, encouraging me at every step of the way. It became an international best-seller and was turned into a movie. I think Dad took some deep pleasure in that.

RA: It seems like you had a great bond with your father.

CROSS: I adored my father. [chuckles] We actually wrote a book together called Daddy’s Little Girl. He was an anchor of sanity in a rough world. My mother was also a brilliant woman. Endlessly engaging and amusing, like my father, but much more difficult. So my father and I were very close. He was articulate and eloquent.

A silver-tongued devil, which was a quality I very much admired.

Opinion of the Court [Doubleday, 1966] was the book he put the most into and which came closest to him to being the literary piece of fiction that he wanted to write… but he wrote some boiler-plate novels just to make a living. Even in those, however, I think you can see his eloquence. He was the world’s best editor, by the way. For any writing of mine, or my mother’s or for friends, he was a terrific editor due, no doubt, to his own writing abilities.

RA: He did work as an editor/publisher for quite a number of years. After leaving comics, he had his own publishing firm for about a dozen years.

CROSS: Yes, that would have been JBC Publishing. That was in the 1960s, an era that I have better memories of. I was at least 12-14 when that was still going on. His office was located on West 57th Street in New York. They published Space World…

RA: Which Otto Binder was the co-owner of, as well as the editor.

CROSS: That’s another reason that I knew Otto. I would go to that office and Otto would be there. At some point, my dad and Otto may have broken up the partnership.

RA: I believe your dad got involved in writing for television on The Defenders and whatnot, so that, instead of selling his publishing company, he handed it over to the employees and they ran it into the ground in about a year and a half. Otto himself had tried to take Space World to a different publisher. They took the magazine on but then promptly fired Otto.

CROSS: I knew there was something going on about that time, although I didn’t know what. In addition to Space World, they also published some horror or thriller magazines… short story collections.

RA: That’s entirely possible. Your dad also published “micromagazines”—I think that’s what they called them…

CROSS: I remember seeing those! We threw out so much stuff when my mother and mother got divorced. I helped my mother move out of the apartment and we threw out boxes—oh, my God!—of Superman comic books. Many had stories that Dad wrote.

They were in numerical order and he could have signed the ones he’d written. It was the mid-1960s. We thought, you can’t keep everything, so we tossed them.

RA: And they would probably be worth a fortune today.

CROSS: I know. [sighs, then laughs] I’m well aware.

RA: Inside Story was one of the magazines your dad published, which was apparently modeled after the notorious Confidential magazine, which dug really deep for salacious scandals about entertainment figures—

I Wish I May, Wish I Might, Have A Piece Of Kryptonite!

In Woolfolk’s “One Hour to Doom!” (Superman #89, May ’54), evil scientist Lex Luthor hides a Kryptonite-laden bomb somewhere in Metropolis. Pencils by Wayne Boring; inks by Stan Kaye. For more about Kryptonite, see pp. 13 & 14 of this issue. [TM & © DC Comics.]

whether they were true or not. Confidential was a pretty seedy magazine.

I’m hoping that Inside Story wasn’t quite that bad. [chuckles] CROSS: It may have been quite seedy. [laughs] That was my father’s conflict, I think, and grief in life. He wanted to be a serious literary writer, which was something that was often at odds with his need to make a living. Most people who lived through the Depression Era felt that. The money that was available from comics and from The Defenders and from the publishing world, whether the magazine was seedy and cheap or not, was always a lure. I think Dad regretted that he never really gave literary writing his all.

RA: I notice that he followed Opinion of the Court, which was a very well-received book, with the two Batman novelizations that he wrote as tie-ins for the 1960s TV series—Batman: Three Villains of Doom and Batman vs. the Fearsome Foursome.

CROSS: Yeah, well, see.

RA: He actually mentioned that he needed a break from all that seriousness.

CROSS: Frankly, I’m sure he needed the money at that time. With Opinion of the Court, his Doubleday editor Lee Barker expected it to be a big bestseller, and was all set to get a big advertising push.

However, Dad was cursed with what he called the “Woolfolk

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think he would have realized his dream.

RA: He also mentioned that he was a versatile writer, and that nobody ever put “He was a versatile writer” down on a tombstone. The writers you tend to remember have a consistency to their work that precludes versatility.

CROSS: Actually, Dad mentioned to me once that he considered that to have been a mistake on his part—having the ability to write so many different types of stories. If you get known for a certain genre, that becomes a kind of brand. You’re known as a writer of romances, horror, thrillers, whatever… but Dad kept changing genres.

Inside Space!

Leaving comics behind him in the mid-1950s, Woolfolk became for a time a magazine publisher. Two examples: the gossipy Inside Story (one of the numerous imitators of the then-super-popular Confidential)—and, beginning in 1960, Space World (“The News Magazine of Astro Science”), the latter edited for a time by his friend and fellow former Fawcett scribe, Otto Binder. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

luck”—which meant bad luck or timing. When Opinion of the Court came out, there was a big newspaper strike, and back then, for a novel, that sort of thing was ruin. No one saw the great reviews from The New York Times or any of the other papers. Without that publicity push, Opinion of the Court didn’t have the commercial success that was expected of it. I’m guessing that Dad did the Batman novels to make up for that a bit. Dad had the talent. I think he could have been the literary writer that he wanted to be, but he would have needed, as Virginia Woolf said—“a room of one’s own”—by which she meant, among other things, that a writer needed to have or inherit enough money to not have to worry about making a living. If Dad had simply been able to write what he wanted to write, and nothing else, I

A Just Reward?

(Left:) Woolfolk is listed as editor of the Nov. 1955 issue of Reward, a “true-crime” magazine, perhaps not one of the talented writer’s loftier ventures. His daughter says, “I think Dad regretted that he never really gave literary writing his all.”

Thanks to George Hagenauer.

(Right:) A few years earlier, he had scripted similar fare for comics, as per this page from Wanted #16 (Nov. 1948), with art by Mort Leav, from Orbit Publications.

Thanks to Nick Caputo. [© the respective copyright holders.]

RA: In the 20th century, you made the most money and acclaim by writing one type of genre.

CROSS: Exactly. You follow the money, wherever it’s coming from. If you’re making more money writing one type of thing,

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first. Dad was a little disdainful, because Sy had literary aspirations as well. Dad thought Sy had “sold out” because it wasn’t what they’d discussed writing when they were in college. Then Sy told him how much money he was making and Dad was, “Oh, good. How do I sell out, too?” Dad was making something like $300 a week when the average salary of a working man was $30 a week.

Writing comics gave him the ability to live a good life for quite a number of years. For that kind of money, I would have sold out, too! [laughs] Dad was, for quite a while, the highest-paid and most sought after writer in comics. You know, I grew up believing, or having been told, that my father created the expression “Holy Moley!,” which was something that Captain Marvel/Billy Batson said quite a lot. Somebody else told me he hadn’t actually invented it but only popularized it.

RA: Ken Reynhout, a cousin of yours, provided information about it to slang experts attempting to locate the source of the expression. They weren’t very successful

The Bad And The Beautiful—Not Necessarily In That Order Following problems marketing his novel Opinion of the Court (due to a newspaper strike), Woolfolk wrote two Batman TV tie-in paperback novels for Signet in 1966… under the pseudonym “Winston Lyon.” Thanks to Art Lortie.

[TM & c DC Comics.]

then specialize in that sort of thing. Dad was a versatile writer. But that didn’t make him a name brand, where a reader could buy his book and know exactly what they’re getting. I think Dad was a little proud of his versatility, but he was also regretful that he didn’t just stick with one genre.

RA: And he was a really good comicbook writer.

CROSS: I know. Even today some of his stories stand up really well, while others of that period are just… quaint. I also think he was rueful, to use your word, especially towards the end of his career, when he became aware that his comicbook writing was likely to be the work that most people would remember him for.

“Oh, my God, for comics!” That comes from the days when he’d been at NYU and had been a big hot-shot writer in all the writing classes. So much more prestigious than what was considered the “popular writing” of comicbooks. [chuckles] RA: The irony of that is that today some of the best writers, from both television and the literary world, deliberately write comics and see no problem in it whatsoever. It’s good for their careers.

CROSS: But who would have thought that in 1940 or 1945 or 1955?

Who would have ever thought that the comicbook would become this incredible iconic thing, studied by academics? Nobody thought that back then. It was just a job. If you were an artist, you were trying to get work in comic strips. If you were a writer, you were trying to get work in radio or TV or movies or books. Comics was just a first step—not the step. Dad looked down on comics, and his work there, for a long time.

He told me a story once—that Sy [Reit] had gotten into comics

“Hawkaaaa!”

The splash page of the lead story in Quality’s Blackhawk #38 (March 1951), written by Woolfolk and drawn by the deservedly legendary Reed Crandall. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [Blackhawk TM & © DC Comics.]

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Woolfolk At Quality & Fawcett \A trio scripted by Woolfolk. (Clockwise from top left:) “Doll Man” from Quality’s Feature Comics #138 (Sept. 1949).

Artist uncertain; may be Bill Ward, says the GCD. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert for this and the following scan. \“The Marvel Family Makes the Headlines,” from The Marvel Family #6 (Nov. ’46), was scribed by Woolfolk and drawn by C.C. Beck & Pete Costanza. \Another page from the “Captain Marvel” lead story in Whiz Comics #98 (June 1948); art by Pete Costanza. Thanks to Jim Kealy.

[Doll Man & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

tracing its origin, from everything I’ve read. Captain Marvel certainly seems to be the character who made the expression widespread.

CROSS: I’ve heard that Dad only popularized it. I used to joke with my friends that any time they said “Holy Moley!” they’d owe me a nickel! I’d be interested to know the first time the expression was used in the “Captain Marvel” comics. I grew up believing it because my father and mother both told me this, that my father had invented it. If it isn’t true, then my mother had a similar flight of fancy, because she told me that she had invented Kryptonite!

According to her, Superman was just this invincible person and he was getting more invulnerable all the time. My mother said, “No, no! He must have a

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vulnerability. He must!” According to her, directly because of her, there’s Kryptonite. Again, though, I’ve been told that’s not quite accurate. According to her, Kryptonite was her contribution, but she was a very unreliable source, to say the least! [laughs] RA: She may have been the one to tell them to put it into the comics, because I recall that it first appeared on the Superman radio show in June 1943, but didn’t show up in the comics until Superman #61 (Nov. 1949). [NOTE: Dorothy Woolfolk did claim, in a 1993 interview, that she at least inspired the concept while she was working at DC/All-American/ National Comics as an editor in 1942-1944… but, as shown in Alter Ego #26 & 37, the original source of Kryptonite was not the radio show, but a never-published script that Jerry Siegel wrote in 1940… although there it was only called “K-Metal.”]

Back to your dad: he mentioned in one of the interviews that I read that he was called the “Shakespeare of Comics” by some of the people at Fawcett, as well as by the crew working on The Spirit newspaper comic section. It was a nickname he seemed a little embarrassed about…

CROSS: Oh? [laughs] See, that ties into the eloquence thing again.

He was very articulate. He had the gift of the gab, possibility from his mother, who was Irish, I think. It doesn’t surprise me at all that some would bestow on him the “Shakespeare of Comics” title. He was a very eloquent, literary man.

RA: That showed in the interviews I was reading. He was quite articulate. Some writers, in their speech, are sort of like Jack Webb—“Just the facts, ma’am.” Your father’s interviews aren’t like that at all.

CROSS: Dad could charm anyone. Usually within minutes.

Whether that’s a good quality or not depends, I suppose, on the person.

RA: Do you remember anything about O.W. Comics?

CROSS: No.

[continued on p. 16]

Bill Woolfolk holds forth at a 1948 party at the home of Fawcett managing editor Bill Lieberson.

Holy—Well, Okay—Moley!

Captain Marvel’s and Billy Batson’s pet exclamation “Holy Moley!” has murky antecedents. (The preferred spelling would’ve been “Moly,” if you assume it was derived from a certain Greek-mythical herb, in keeping with the similarly mythological origins of the word “Shazam.”)

The Wiktionary helpfully traces the two-word phrase back to “circa 1892” as being related to “Holy Molly”—a euphemism for the exclamation “Holy Mary,” with “Molly” as a more socially acceptable substitute for the name of the mother of Jesus. If that interpretation sounds a bit far-fetched—well, there’s always another religiously derived epithet that may well have played a part: “Holy Moses!”

(Left:) Surprisingly, the term “Holy Moley!” doesn’t appear in either the initial “Captain Thunder/Captain Marvel” story in Fawcett Publications’ Flash Comics #1 ashcan edition, whose black-&-white C.C. Beck cover is seen here—or, in fact, anywhere in the ensuing Whiz Comics or Captain Marvel Adventures up through at least 1941 or so, two-plus years into the hero’s thunderclap career. Before that, Cap and Billy Batson use such exclamations as “Migosh!”—“Great guns!”—even “Jiminy Cricket!” Has anyone out there done any research as to precisely when and where the “Holy Moley” phrase first appeared in a “Captain Marvel” story?

(Above:) We suppose it’s at least possible that Bill Woolfolk was the first scripter to have either of them blurt out “Holy Moley!” Once used, though, it popped up in virtually every “CM” story from then on, as per this splash page of his “The War between the Planets” from CMA #91 (Dec. ’48); art by C.C. Beck. Captain Marvel Jr. and Mary Marvel used it as well. [Shazam hero & Billy Batson TM & © DC Comics.]

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Tales From The Kryptonite!

Bill’s wife Dorothy told her daughter Donna of taking Kryptonite as a concept from the Adventures of Superman radio program and helping to introduce it to comics readers, and did claim in a 1993 interview that she had at least suggested the concept while working at All-American Comics as an assistant editor in 1942-44.

Perhaps. However, Kryptonite’s first four-color appearance didn’t come till Superman #61 (Nov.-Dec. 1949)—half a decade after she’d left DC’s employ—with a script by Bill Finger and art by Al Plastino. (Incidentally, as related in A/E #26 & 37, Kryptonite—then called “K-Metal” but precisely the same stuff—was actually the invention of Superman writer/co-creator Jerry Siegel in 1940 [!], in a 26-page story that, after it was fully drawn, DC decided not to publish.) Oddly, even “Superman’s Return to Krypton,” as provider Bob Bailey points out, has only been reprinted twice—and just once in color, in the 1990 DC hardcover The Greatest Golden Age Stories Ever Told, from which these scans are taken. The page above right shows the result of the Man of Steel’s exposure to Kryptonite—actually the glowing green gem in Swami Riva’s turban. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Trail Of The Lonesome Twins In the 10-year run of All Star Western, Woolfolk contributed only one script to it—for issue #72 (Aug.-Sept. 1953). Pencils

by Gil Kane, inks by Bernard Sachs.

[TM & © DC Comics.]

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Woolfolk At DC A trio of pages scripted by Bill Woolfolk for National/DC in the early 1950s. (Clockwise from top left:) Superboy meets an early version of Supergirl—in Superboy #5 (Nov.-Dec. 1949). Art probably by Al Wenzel.

The lead splash page from Our Army at War #13 (Aug. 1953).

Pencils by Jerry Grandenetti; inks by Joe Giella.

Batman has an encounter with the Catwoman in Batman #45 (Feb. 1948). Art by Charles Paris, who usually just inked Lew Sayre Schwartz, Dick Sprang, or other “Batman” artists.

Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert for all three scans on this page.

[TM & © DC Comics.]

William Woolfolk Remembered

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FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

[continued from p. 13] RA: Your father was the publisher of O.W. Comics. He only published one title and eventually sold the other projected one to M.C. Gaines.

CROSS: “Gaines” sounds familiar… wasn’t there a Bill Gaines?

RA: Bill Gaines was the son of M.C. Gaines. Bill was the publisher of EC Comics and Mad magazine. His father founded All-American Comics, sold it to DC in 1945, and then founded Educational Comics [EC] before dying in a boating accident in 1947. He bought your dad’s 1946 title Animal Antics, which was a funny-animal comicbook combined with adaptations of Aesop’s Fables, and renamed it Animal Fables. Your dad did the work on it, but M.C. Gaines published it.

CROSS: Again, there’s that literary bent—adapting Aesop’s Fables into comicbook form. Was there a “Reddy the Fox” story in it?

Dad used to tell me Reddy the Fox bedtime stories. I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that was in Animal Fables. It’s possible Reddy and his stories were something he was making up off the top of his head to get a little girl to sleep at night, but perhaps a search could unveil something.

[NOTE: For the record, I didn’t find a “Reddy the Fox” character in Animal Fables, but there was a “Reddy Fox” used in Fawcett’s Animal Fair title as well as various “Captain Marvel” titles. These stories all appeared during the late 1940s when Ms. Cross was a young child and her father was heavily involved in writing the “Captain Marvel” titles for Fawcett, so perhaps this is a bibliographic mystery solved.]

RA: The other title that your father published for O.W. Comics was a book called Mad Hatter, which was a super-hero title that lasted for two issues in 1946. He mentioned that he broke even on the first issue and was astonished to make money on the second, as super-hero sales were declining at the time. Apparently, it wasn’t enough money to keep going with O.W. Comics.

CROSS: I vaguely remember that title. Going for only two issues was Dad’s way. Jumping from one thing to another and not waiting to build the brand. Something that Dad regretted towards the end of his life was not sticking to something long enough for it to make it big. I would tell him, “Dad, you raised and supported a whole family, put me through college, made a living, and a very good living at that, and you did all that simply with your pen. Not many people can do that.” And they can’t—most writers have to take other jobs to support themselves. Dad supported his entire family for decades, simply through his writing. That’s no small thing. The need to get that check in the mail is what drove him all his life.

He was a fanatic for checking the mailbox. “Did the check come?”

That’s not dishonorable. But it does mean that he had to sacrifice his own literary aspirations to some degree. He really wanted to write the great novel. But he also had to make a living. He wanted to be John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Ernest Hemingway. Hell, he wanted to be Shakespeare!

RA: But there are likely a lot of writers, very good writers, who were influenced by your dad or Otto Binder and the like.

CROSS: I didn’t know that.

Mad As A Hatter!

In 1946 Woolfolk took on the role of comicbook publisher, but his O.W. Comics endeavor was extremely short-lived. Its sole title to actually make it to the newsstands, The Mad Hatter, featuring an oddly-named super-hero, lasted only two issues. Woolfolk wrote all the “Mad Hatter” scripts therein, and reportedly most if not all of the others as well. The cover to #1 (Jan.-Feb. ’46), above left, was drawn by John Giunta… that of #2 (Oct.-Nov. ’46) by Mort Leav. Strangely, the “gorilla with a human brain” story alluded to on the cover of #1 didn’t actually appear until #2—maybe a deadline problem? In truth, the stories in the two editions could’ve been published in any order, since there was no origin yarn or continuity. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

RA: Carl Sagan, for example, wrote all those great science books, and one of his influences was the work of the science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, who also wrote a few comics at the start of his career.

Daniel Keyes, who wrote [the SF novel] Flowers for Algernon, started out in comics, too. Tennessee Williams’ first sale was to a pulp magazine. Michael Chabon is a Pulitzer Prize winner but also a huge comics fan, particularly of the time period your father was writing in. As a teacher and librarian, I know for a fact that you never can tell who’s going to be inspired by something you say or do or write.

Once you put something out there, it takes on a bit of a life of its own.

CROSS: I wish I’d thought to say something like that to him towards the end of his life. It

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Like Bugs To A Flame (Above:) Within the Mad Hatter comic was another oddity: A backup feature, “Freddy the Firefly” (left), was a funny-animal clone of Timely/Marvel’s “Human Torch”—down to his shouting “Flame on!” to activate his fire-power! Freddy was to have been one of the stars of O.W.’s second title, Animal Antics. Thanks to Comic Book Plus website. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

(Right:) But that material for that mag was instead sold to Bill Gaines’ EC Comics line and became part of its new offering Animal Fables, as per the other two images. Freddy the Firefly appeared in flame on all the EC covers except the first, as witness that of #5 (JulyAug. 1947; artist unknown). Only on the final cover, for #7 (Nov.-Dec. ’47), drawn by Al Fago, were Freddy’s flames colored green and yellow instead of red. Maybe Timely publisher Martin Goodman complained? Thanks to the GCD. [Animal Fables covers TM & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.]

might have comforted him. I think it’s a bit ironic that what Dad appears to be likely to be remembered for aren’t the literary books that he wrote but his comics work, especially since in the beginning he looked down on that work. In a way, I wish he’d stayed with comics, because he was making a good living at it, and the interest in his work shows that he was good at it.

RA: He left comics in 1955, just before the field went into a slump, both financially and creatively. Your dad may have seen the writing on the wall

and left for greener pastures as a magazine publisher and then to writing for television before moving on to novels and so on.

CROSS: The track record of a person trying to make a living.

Keeping an eye on where the business was going. My mother was a woman of extravagant tastes, so it wasn’t easy to support her in the style to which she had become accustomed.

RA: When did your mom and dad break up?

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What? No March Hare?

(Left:) The lead story in Mad Hatter #1 (Jan.-Feb. ’46) was written by Woolfolk; the artist is unidentified. Thanks for this and the following splash to Comic Book Plus website.

(Right:) See? We told you the “gorilla with a human brain” story didn’t show up till #2 (Oct.-Nov. ’46)… and a creepy one it was, if a five-year-old Roy Thomas’ memories are any judge! A scientist put a murderer’s brain into the body of a powerful ape—who then killed him, donned an ugly but human mask, and became a criminal boss who called himself “The Gargoyle.” Script by Woolfolk; art by John Giunta. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

CROSS: The first split came right after I went to college, in 1965.

They reconciled several times after that, but the final split came in 1970.

RA: Might you know something about your dad’s writing practices?

Those are usually developed early in a writing career and carried along throughout one’s life. Your dad mentioned that he might not write all day and then suddenly start writing at 11:30 at night and get his day’s quota done.

CROSS: We had jokes about Dad’s writing practices. He always had to read The New York Times in the morning. That was crucial.

Then he wanted to weigh himself, which was always somewhat complicated. He’d want to have a banana, but he didn’t want to weigh himself after eating the banana because it might tip the scales. By the time he weighed himself it would be well into the day, and then he did his errands and whatnot, followed by lunch.

By then he’d be getting furious with himself for not sitting down and writing, so it often ended up with him writing all night to get those five or six pages every day done. But he always got those pages done. He wouldn’t go to sleep without doing them. If he was able to get to work in the morning, he was always so thrilled and delighted! If he got his pages done before lunch, he would have a great day. It’s true that very often he didn’t work that way, but

The Feminine Mystique—1951 Style A now politically incorrect panel from the Woolfolk-scripted, Crandalldrawn Blackhawk #38 story whose splash was seen back on p. 11. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [Blackhawk TM & © DC Comics.]

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Woolfolk at O.W. A threesome of pages from Mad Hatter #1 & 2, the only comics ever published (as well as written) by William Woolfolk.

(Left:) See? We told you he even yelled “Flame on!” like the Human Torch!

The “Freddy the Firefly” story in Mad Hatter #1 (Jan.-Feb. 1946) was probably scripted by Woolfolk, if only to keep down the cost of hiring another writer.

Artist unknown. See this yarn’s splash on p. 17. All art on this page comes from the Comic Book Plus site.

(Below & bottom right:) Woolfolk wrote and Mort Leav drew the first (on bottom left) and third “Mad Hatter” stories in the second issue of the quirky but doomed title (cover-dated Sept.-Oct. 1946).

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

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William Woolfolk (Above left:) A portrait of the novelist, photographed in the 1970s by “Chick” Craig.

(Above right:) Father and daughter in New Canaan, Connecticut, 1982. Both photos courtesy of Donna Woolfolk Cross.

you could be sure he wouldn’t go to bed without getting his daily pages done. If he had to stay up until 3:00 am, he’d work to get those pages done. This was seven days a week. Without fail.

You know, we were talking earlier about Dad being the “Shakespeare of Comics.” I actually learned my Shakespeare directly from Dad. He was always quoting the Bard around the house. [chuckles] He really liked to quote one passage—I think it’s from Julius Caesar, as Brutus and Cassius are taking leave of each other before the climactic battle:—“If we do meet again, why, we shall smile.

If not, why then this parting was well made.”

So it may well be that you and I shall speak again, but, if not, then this parting is well made. That comes straight to you from my father. [chuckles]

Father & Daughter—Immortalized Moments (Above, top to bottom:) Donna and her dad—screen captures from videotaped footage taken at The Old Spaghetti Factory in San Diego during Comic-Con weekend, August 1-4, 2002. [© 2002 Marc Svensson.]

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William Woolfolk Remembered

21

WILLIAM WOOLFOLK Checklist [This checklist is adapted from information in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999, established by Dr. Jerry G. Bails and viewable at www.bailsprojects.com (see ad on p. 56). Some information was updated based on an interview conducted by Jim Amash. Names of features that appeared both in comicbooks of that title and in other magazines are generally not italicized. Key: (w) = writer; (e) = editor; (S) = Sunday comic strip. In the comicbook listings, all credits are as “writer” unless indicated otherwise.]

Name: William Winston Woolfolk (1917-2003) – writer, publisher Pen Name: Winston Lyon (in books) Education: B.A., New York University Family in Art: Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk (former wife) – editorial work at DC c. 1943-44 and again in 1970s, at Timely Comics c.1945-46, & at EC Comics 1948.

Publisher: Magazines 1953-1963: Glance, Space World, Inside Story, Scene, Shock Writer: Non-fiction: Great American Birth Rate [with wife Joanna]; Daddy’s Little Girl [with daughter Donna Cross]; novels: The Naked Hunter 1953; The Sender 1955 (?); Shade of Difference 1955 (?); Run While

William Woolfolk as seen above on the back cover of the dust jacket to his 1962 Doubleday novel My Name Is Morgan—one of the bestselling of his works of fiction.

At least, if you don’t count the ones published in four colors, which often had higher print runs. [© the respective copyright holders.]

You Can 1955; The Way of the Wicked 1956; My Name Is Morgan 1963; Opinion of the Court 1966; Criminal Court 1966; Batman vs.

Three Villains of Doom 1966; Batman vs. the Fearsome Foursome 1967; The Beautiful Couple 1968; The Builders 1969; Maggie: A Love Story 1971; The Overlords 1972; The President’s Doctor 1975; We Two 1977; The Adam Project 1984—also short stories and articles in magazines Liberty, Household, Toronto Star Weekly, Collier’s

Talk About A “Key Issue”!

“Bulletman” splash page from Fawcett’s Master Comics #21 (Dec. 1941); script

by William Woolfolk, art by Mac Raboy. Guest-starring Captain Marvel, this is the story that related the origin of Captain Marvel Jr.—when teenager Freddy Freeman was crippled by the villainous Captain Nazi. [Shazam hero, Bulletman, & Captain Nazi TM & © DC Comics.]

Performing Arts (TV): Story editor & chief writer The Defenders 1961-64; Arrest and Trial, et al.

Syndication: The Spirit (S) c. 1942-45 for Register & Tribune Syndicate COMICBOOKS (Mainstream U.S. Publishers): Archie Publications: Archie c. 1941-42; The Black Hood c.

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1941-42; The Boy Buddies 1942; The Hangman c. 1941-42; The Shield c. 1941-42; Steel Sterling c. 1941-42; The Wizard c. 1941-42.

DC Comics: All-American Men of War 1953-54; backup features c.

1946-53; Batman and Robin 1948-52, 1954; Johnny Quick 1948; Our Army at War 1953-54; Roy Raymond TV Detective (a.k.a. Impossible but True) 1951; Star Spangled War Stories 1953-54; Superboy 1949-53; Superman 1944-46, 1948-55, 1986; Trigger Twins 1953; Wonder Woman c. 1949 EC Comics: stories in Animal Fables 1947 (unconfirmed but likely) Fawcett Comics: Bulletman c. 1943; Captain Marvel 1942-53; Captain Marvel Jr. 1942-53; Captain Midnight c. 1942-53; Ibis the Invincible c. 1942-53; Spy Smasher c. 1942-plus; various features c.

1942-53 Hillman Periodicals: The Heap 1946-47 Marvel Comics: Captain America c. 1944-46; Human Torch c.

1944-46, 1948; Sub-Mariner c. 1944-46; Young Allies c. 1944-46 O.W. Comics Corporation: Mad Hatter 1946 Orbit Publications: Love Diary c. 1950-51; Love Journal c. 1951; teen/ family fun c. 1950-51; Wanted c. 1947-51; Westerner c. 1950-51 Quality Comics Group: Blackhawk c. 1944-48; Doll Man c. 1942-53; Kid Eternity 1947; Plastic Man 1948-50 (some of latter material reprinted by I.W. Publications 1964)

Cape Fear?

Another action page drawn, by an unidentified artist, for the lead story in O.W.’s The Mad Hatter #1—and of course scripted by Bill Woolfolk. You gotta love a super-hero who sports a furry white cape! [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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A WOOLFOLK AT THE DOOR: part two

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For The (Golden Age) Record A Peek Inside WILLIAM WOOLFOLK’s Writing Records Journal Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

Try to discern whether your idea is a beginning, a central conflict, or an ending. Then plot forward or backward from it to include material necessary to achieve an effect. Every story represents a growth from the beginning to the end. This growth or change is the story itself, which is why with beginning and end known it is often easy to plot the intervening growth. —William Woolfolk, on story plotting; excerpted from the final pages of his comics writing journal

Marc Svensson

Martin O’Hearn

W

hen renowned Golden Age comics writer William Woolfolk was a special guest at the 2002 San Diego Comic-Con, he mentioned to videographer Marc Svensson that he had held on to his old ledger whereon he had kept track of his comicbook work for various publishers. It turned out that a notebook with Woolfolk’s meticulously documented sales records of his comicbook scripts did indeed still exist! Soon afterward, his daughter, author Donna Woolfolk Cross, allowed Marc to painstakingly scan each page of the journal. Since those scans were acquired, Martin O’Hearn has translated and transcribed the handwritten pages from the notebook, and added, where he could, information that Woolfolk left out on his entries: namely, where the stories were ultimately published.

Notebook Jottings (Above:) The “Jan.-Feb. 1950” page from William Woolfolk’s writing journal notebook—whose initial entry is the story “Feud with a House” from Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Jr. #89 (cover-dated Sept. 1950). Art by Joe Certa. [Journal image © Marc Svensson; Shazam character & Freddy Freeman TM & © DC Comics.]

For The (Golden Age) Record

Fawcett Forays Into Biography & Fantasy (Above:) “Champion of Champions” from Joe Louis #2 (Nov. 1950); artist unknown. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

(Above right:) “The School for Witches” from The Marvel Family #52 (Oct. 1950); art by C.C. Beck & Pete Costanza. [Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics.]

O’Hearn’s research and detective work with Woolfolk’s records can be found on his blog, Who Created the Comic Books [martinohaern.blogspot.com]. While the journal’s entries do not begin at the very beginning of Woolfolk’s comics career, and not all listings were accompanied with script descriptions, it nonetheless is a highly informative, invaluable Golden Age artifact.

A dedicated seeker for the uncredited comics creator, O’Hearn shared some thoughts on the fact-finding journey he took with Woolfolk’s journal: After I first realized that the anonymous comicbook writers could be identified by distinctive stylistic quirks, I was able to work back into the ’40s and ’50s on, say, Otto Binder and Jerry Siegel, because some of their stories had been credited in the Superman family letter columns and elsewhere. When it came to William Woolfolk, all I had to go by was the list of his strips and tenures in

Pouring Water Into Plastic Bottles (Right:) While the brilliant “Plastic Man” creator Jack Cole wrote many of his own stories, he was also adept at illustrating the concepts that others, such as Bill Woolfolk, brought to what he had originally called his “India Rubber Man.” The “Mr. Aqua” story was written by Woolfolk for Quality’s Plastic Man #25 (Sept.

1950). [Plastic Man TM & © DC Comics.]

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Jerry Bails and Hames Ware’s Who’s Who of American Comic Books.

For what it was worth, I noted the sound effects in his two Batman novels as Winston Lyon. I was able to identify stories like “The Terrible Trio” (Superman #88, Mar. ’54) and “The Chameleon Stone” (Captain Marvel Adventures #91, Dec. ’48) in reprint.

Years later, I could corroborate my list against a known story: “Jimmy Olsen, Editor” (Superman #86, Jan. ’54). In his History of Comics, Volume 2, Steranko had reproduced the first page of the script for that tale, which had Woolfolk’s name on it.

Far later in the future, Marc Svensson had scanned the pages of Woolfolk’s notebook of script sales, courtesy of Donna Woolfolk Cross. I figured that, even without titles listed, most of the descriptions could be matched up with the published stories. Having the comics more easily available or better-indexed nowadays made the project easier than my research from decades earlier.

The records confirmed a number of my IDs but also showed where, in my early days at writer-spotting, I’d attributed too many “Superman” stories, for instance, to Woolfolk. On the other hand, I’d credited the reprinted “Mysto, Magician Detective” stories from Detective to one of the usual suspects for the magazine, George

Kashdan, inasmuch as the Who’s Who never mentioned the strip as one of Woolfolk’s.

Marc suggested I use the information when I started my blog, Who Created the Comic Books, and for some time I alternated a month from the records with posts on other writers and artists. Blogging the information meant quick feedback from other comics scholars who could help fill in data.

The notebook shows how a comicbook writer becomes a prolific one: William Woolfolk wrote an average of 120 pages a month. His case differs from writers like Gaylord Du Bois and Joe Gill, in that he always has a number of different publisher clients per month.

He starts the notebook a few years into his career, in late 1944, unfortunately, as his tenure on The Spirit is ending. He sells one last Spirit script in October. Since he doesn’t start putting in story descriptions until 1945, possibly the only notations would have been “7 pgs—Spirit” again and again, which wouldn’t have helped today’s researchers much.

The records reflect the comic book industry shake-ups in the late ’40s and early ’50s, as super-heroes begin falling by the

Westerns & Wizardry Woolfolk wrote it all! Here, “Monte Hale Battles The Great Hunger” from Western Hero #94 (Sept. 1950), starring a Saturday-movie-matinee cowboy star, with art by Bob Laughlin, is juxtaposed with “Ibis the Invincible and Davy Jones’ Locker” from Whiz Comics #125 (same month), whose artist is unidentified. [Ibis the Invincible TM & © DC Comics; Monte Hale story © the respective copyright holders.

For The (Golden Age) Record

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For The (Golden Age) Record

Man, Boy, & Mrs. (Clockwise from top left:) According to researcher Martin O’Hearn, who has carefully examined Woolfolk’s scripting records, he didn’t write any “Superman” stories until 1953. However, Bill was right there in Superboy #1 (March-April 1949) when the Boy of Steel gained his own comics title, with art by Al Wenzel. Thanks to Jim Kealy.

Woolfolk is credited with writing “Lois Lane—Wanted!” for Action Comics #195 (Aug. 1954), with art by Wayne Boring (pencils) and Stan Kaye (inker). Thanks to Nick Caputo.

The splash page of “Superman Marries Lois Lane” from Action Comics #206 (July 1955), as scripted by Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk and illustrated by Boring & Kaye. Thanks to Jim Ludwig & Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.]

wayside. A number of Woolfolk’s super-hero scripts go unpublished (although paid for) as titles and features are cancelled, such as Young Allies. Later, his final “Captain Marvel Jr.” stories are reworked into “Captain Marvel” ones after Junior’s magazine is suddenly no more.

One case that hits close to home is the comic he published himself, Mad Hatter, which lasts only two issues. Stories for an advertised funny-animal companion title, Animal Antics, are sold to EC and become Animal Fables.

Among the genres that William Woolfolk takes up at various companies are Westerns, crime, horror, war, and romance. It’s some of the love stories in the records that led me down a new avenue of

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writer-identifying; he plotted a number of the Orbit romance tales for [wife] Dorothy Woolfolk, describing five of them, so I have five of her identified scripts to examine. Whereas one of his trademark expressions is “Good glory,” one of hers is “Oh, glory.” Those “Superman” stories beyond William’s own that I’d mis-credited to him? Many were actually hers, I found as I looked at them anew.

That explains a line in Steranko’s book that had been puzzling people for years, about how William and Dorothy met at DC—he was writing “Superman” and she was writing “Lois Lane.” Since his tenure on “Superman” was known from Bails and Ware to be the early ’50s, and “Lois Lane” had her own backup strip in 1944-46, how could those periods be reconciled? It’s a misinterpretation of “writing Lois Lane”—Dorothy was writing “Superman” stories featuring Lois, such as “Superman Marries Lois Lane” (Action Comics #206, July, ’55). Her tenure was approximately 1949-55, so she started writing “Superman” before he did (1953-54), but not back in the mid-’40s.

William Woolfolk’s comics-writing career comes to an end as he goes into publishing again with Space World. In his last months of notebook entries he notes progress on his first novel alongside the comicbook stories, and around the time The Naked Hunter is published in 1954 he’s out of comics.

A Reptile Dysfunction Not in his journal, obviously, but perhaps the last comics story Woolfolk ever scribed was this “Superman” yarn done for Action Comics #576 (Feb. 1986), illustrated by his one-time Fawcett colleague Kurt Schaffenberger. Thanks to Gene Reed, who wonders if editor Julius Schwartz may have asked Woolfolk to write one more tale for him before he retired. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Benito Gallego’s ORIGINAL ART for SALE directly from the Artist Contact benitogallego@gmail.com

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A WOOLFOLK AT THE DOOR: part three

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The 2002 San Diego Comic-Con Golden Age Panel Starring WILLIAM WOOLFOLK, BOB OKSNER, NICK CARDY, BOB LUBBERS, LEW SAYRE SCHWARTZ, & IRV NOVICK Moderated by Mark Evanier Transcribed by Sean Delaney ~ Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck ~ Videotape © Marc Svensson

A/E

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: Actually, this panel from nearly two decades ago really needs no introduction—except perhaps to express regret that all six of the 1940s comics professionals who took part in it have passed from the scene since that day. Our special thanks to Marc Svensson for providing a videotape of this gathering and allowing it to be painstakingly transcribed by Sean Delaney—and to Mark Evanier for giving us his blessing to print it. As the panel begins, on an August day at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2002, one of its prospective members—artist Irv Novick—had not yet arrived, but don’t worry, he’ll make his debut before long…

MARK EVANIER: I’m Mark Evanier, and it’s a joy to be able to moderate this panel every year because we get to spend some time with people who built this industry and who invented a lot of things that some of us of a later generation shamelessly plagiarized … but who also inspired us with their fine work over the years. We will hopefully be joined a bit later by Irv Novick, but let me introduce these gentlemen.

Starting on the far end … Over the years on this panel, we have had a vast number of people who at one time or another were “Bob Kane.” We’ve had everyone who was “Bob Kane” except Bob Kane. [laughter] For a period of time, this man was responsible for the work that came out under

Bob’s name. He also did a lot of other things, including some stuff that we will ask him to talk about. For this panel only, we’re going to focus on the seven years you were with Bob. And he was the guy who, at one period, I thought was the real Bob Kane. Would you welcome Mr. Lew Sayre Schwartz. [applause] We are thrilled to have with us on this panel not one, not two, but several of what we call “Good Girl Artists.” They drew real sexy women in comics and comic strips and this gentleman is one of them. He did a lot of work in newspaper strips. The strip I liked the most was a thing he did called Long Sam, which—I don’t know that I even bothered to read it. I just looked at the pictures. [laughter] It was very lovely. He’s had a very long career in comics before and after [it]. Mr. Bob Lubbers, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] The gentleman who, over the years, probably inspired more artists… people of my age bracket became artists with love of the way this man drew Aquaman and the Teen Titans and so many other covers. Especially a comic called Bat Lash. Mr. Nick Cardy, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] There’s a recurring theme here of drawing sexy women in comics, and this gentleman drew some of the sexiest over a period in DC books.

Over the years his work we know best is probably Jerry Lewis, Sgt.

A Golden Age San Diego Six-Pack—Plus One A cornucopia-style composite of the moderator and the half-dozen “Golden Age” panelists at the August 2002 San Diego Comic-Con. (Left to right:) moderator Mark Evanier… William Woolfolk… Bob Oksner… Nick Cardy… Bob Lubbers… Lew Sayre Schwartz… Irv Novick. All panel photos © 2002 Marc Svensson.

Mark Evanier is a longtime writer for comics and television.

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when they worked with the other people on this panel. Bob, you worked next to Nick at Fiction House. Tell us about that.

BOB LUBBERS: Nick and I met in 1941. I was hired by Fiction House to be in the bullpen to be one of the cartoonists. So I walked in with my business suit, white shirt and tie, and Panama hat. You all laugh, but that’s how we dressed in those days! And they put me in a chair next to Nick Cardy, and we haven’t seen each other since 1948, so this is a real reunion. I remember, my first day at Fiction House, I was scared to death… some artists had invited me out to lunch. We went up to Roth’s Deli, up on Broadway, I think, and we had a pastrami sandwich and some beer. And that made it an easier opening for me into the world of comics and cartooning.

This man, Nick Cardy… one of my oldest, dearest friends and one of the funniest, most droll guys you’ll meet in your life.

ME: Do you recall what you were paid back then?

LUBBERS: I think about $90 a week.

ME: How was $90 a week to live on back then?

LUBBERS: No, wait. That was later. Probably $50 a week, maybe.

After the war, it was $90.

ME: Were you living well? Did you get a good place to live then?

William Woolfolk at a 1952 Christmas party (since we also wanted to show you pics of all six Golden Ager creators back in the day)—plus a gorgeous “Blackhawk” splash featuring the beautiful but sinister Madame Butterfly, from Quality’s Modern Comics #78 (Oct. 1948). Script by Woolfolk; pencils by Reed Crandall; inks by Chuck Cuidera, who had artistically co-created the series in 1941. Thanks to Shaun Clancy & the late Roy Ald for the photo.

[Page TM & © DC Comics.]

Bilko, Dobie Gillis, Bob Hope… he drew Supergirl, he worked on Superman, he drew Mary Marvel. Mr. Bob Oksner, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] And one of my favorite writers of comics… you know, writers have not always quite gotten the credit that they deserve over the years. And certainly not enough money. [laughter] But this gentleman was one of the writers others were emulating in the 1940s, and I was very honored for many years to write the Blackhawk comicbook, and my model for what a good “Blackhawk” story should be was all the ones that he did. How many “Blackhawk” stories did you write?

WILLIAM WOOLFOLK: I never counted.

ME: But he went on to become a well-established, well-respected television writer—I wish they would rerun The Defenders, because I think that was one of the greatest TV shows of all time. Mr. William Woolfolk, ladies and gentlemen. [applause] I want to start by asking each person on the panel

Bob Lubbers in his younger, “Golden Age” days—plus his cover for Fiction House’s post-World War II Rangers Comics #40 (April 1948). Trust us on this—he was already good half a decade earlier than this art! Thanks to Alberto Becattini. See A/E #109 for a short bio-article by Lubbers.

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

The 2002 San Diego Comic-Con Golden Age Panel

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LUBBERS: Yes. I ended up buying my first house.

ME: [to Oksner] Did you ever ink any of his covers?

ME: What were you drawing for Fiction House?

BOB OKSNER: Yes. I inked several of his covers. And they were so good, and fortunately DC would return some of the covers to the inkers, and one of his very good covers is hanging on my daughter’s wall. A wonderful artist and I enjoyed inking his work… an easy job for me. But we never really met in the office because I wasn’t there, and I don’t think you were there very long.

LUBBERS: Well, as they did for all bullpen artists, they start you off to find out what you can do. I really don’t remember the first one. The first one I do remember was “Captain Wings,” the main character of Wings Comics. Or “Señorita Rio,” who Nick did a version of, and “Firehair” and “Camilla” and…

NICK CARDY: “Sheena”?

LUBBERS: No, not “Sheena.” But they liked the way I did thighs and “headlights.” [laughter] ME: Who else was working there at the time?

LUBBERS: Artie Saaf, who was one of my good buddies… Nick, Artie, and Mike Peppe. Mike was a special-features artist and did the single-page things. Mike had two brothers. He had one brother who was a prize fighter, and he was a bartender at the other brother’s strip club up on 52nd Street. [laughter] And we used to go up there half the time to just sit down and watch the strippers.

CARDY: At Fiction House, we were there, but when I was a freelancer at DC, you’d come in and deliver a job. Sometimes I’d see Bob, sometimes I’d see Joe Kubert. Sometimes I’d see some of the other guys. Otherwise, we’d deliver our jobs, chat a little bit with the editor, and then took off to go home. Is that the way you… ?

OKSNER: Yes, I’d take off early because I had an apartment and a garage there where I could stay in the city, which was very expensive, and I wanted to get out as fast as I could. [laughter] So I left the covers I inked, picked up the penciled work from Julie [Schwartz] and brought back the inks and run right out again, all in a very short time.

CARDY: That’s where we learned to draw girls.

LUBBERS: You got it. [laughter] ME: Nick, how was Fiction House to work for?

CARDY: I’ll tell ya, if you expected to be an “artist” when you were at Fiction House, forget it! Because the guys were always pulling pranks. You never knew what was going to be on your chair. You’d get some work done, but at times I’d wish I was alone, you know, so I could get something done. But we had a nice bunch of guys there. And that’s the first company I remember that, at Christmastime, gave you a big bonus. [to Lubbers] Do you remember?

LUBBERS: Yeah.

CARDY: You know, I was getting $25 [a week] working for Bill Eisner. I left Eisner and went to Fiction House. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but it was a nice experience. You made good friends. There’s one friend—Artie Saaf. He was a little on the wacky side, but we liked him. There was a girl who was doing lettering or cleaning up. She was very well-endowed.

Whenever she got into a chair, she would slide into it. One time Artie put a whoopee cushion on her chair, and she sat on it. She was so embarrassed. I didn’t help any, because I did a caricature of her, and on another piece of paper I put the bosoms on it. I don’t think she talked to me for a while. [laughter] [Irv Novick arrives] ME: Ladies and gentlemen, how about a warm welcome for Mr. Irv Novick. [applause] Now Nick, there was a period when you and Bob Oksner were doing all the covers for DC together. Did you guys see each other in the office much?

CARDY: Well, I’ll tell you, Oksner— before he did the covers—he drew some beautiful, beautiful women, and I figured I better do something because this guy is good, you know?

And I’ve always admired his work, and then later on I found out he did some covers. I did over 200 for DC, and I know you did quite a few …

Nick Cardy drew under his birth-name Nicholas Viscardi until he returned from service after the Second World War. Here’s his splash page for a “Señorita Rio” story in Fight Comics #23 (April 1943), from a script attributed to “Morgan Hawkins,” no doubt a house name as other Fiction House bylines were.

See A/E #69 for Jim Amash’s in-depth interview with Cardy. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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Bob Oksner in a 1950s photo—plus examples of his work from both the Golden and Silver Ages: the final page from the “Mekano” story he illustrated for Nedor’s Wonder Comics #1 (May 1944), writer unknown (see A/E #67 for its splash)… a never-published cover drawn for Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #131 in 1973… and his cover for The Adventures of Jerry Lewis #65 (July-Aug. 1961). Oksner was especially associated with long runs of the licensed Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis titles at DC. Photo courtesy of Ken Nadle; Lois Lane art from dealer Mike Burkey (www.romitaman. com); Jerry Lewis cover from Bill Morrison. See A/E #67 for an in-depth interview with Bob Oksner. [Mekano page TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; Lois Lane & Jerry Lewis covers TM & © DC Comics.]

CARDY: The other thing is that, if you stayed there too long, you got wound up in office politics and gossip. They’d say, “Did you know what this guy did? Do you know there’s a union they want to put together?” or something. I just went there and I got my check.

OKSNER: That’s the way it was. Get in and get out fast.

ME: Bill, did you meet the artists a lot when you did stories?

WILLIAM WOOLFOLK: As little as possible. [laughter] ME: Tell us about some of the artists who were drawing your stories that you liked, starting with Quality Comics.

WOOLFOLK: Lou Fine.

The 2002 San Diego Comic-Con Golden Age Panel

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Fly Like An Eagle!

(Left:) Contact Comics from Aviation Press starred “The Golden Eagle”—a “Blackhawk” rip-off is ever there was one, as seen on this Rudy Palais-drawn page from #8 (Sept. 1945). The writer is unidentified in both the Grand Comics Database and the Four-Color Shadows website where this scan was found.

(Right:) In Contact #10 (Jan. 1946), scripter Bill Woolfolk put artist Palais and the Eagle through their paces against a female Japanese fighter pilot called The Ace of Blades. This time, though, the high-flying hero didn’t sport a bird-of-prey chest symbol à la his Quality predecessor, as he had earlier. Contact Comics only managed to last a dozen issues, perhaps partly because there were virtually no human beings seen prominently on any of its covers—only airplanes (and, on the final one, space ships). [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

ME: One of the great artists of the business. Who else? Who did you like drawing your stories?

ME: Rudy Palais. At DC? Tell us some of the scripts you wrote at DC.

New York from Connecticut. And I’d have a little time at the end of the day to maybe start the pages. I’d get back to Connecticut, have dinner and work until 10 or 11 PM. If there was something I was really having fun with, I’d be up until 12 or 1 AM. But I had to get up to catch a train in the morning and drive my Jeep through a herd of cows. [laughter]

WOOLFOLK: I wrote most of the things at DC. I wrote “Batman,” “Superman,” and whatever else they had going.

ME: [to Woolfolk] Tell us some of the editors you were working for at DC?

ME: Were you writing them when Lew was drawing them? [to Schwartz] Lew, who was writing the “Batman” stories that you were drawing, mostly?

WOOLFOLK: Well, mainly Mort Weisinger, who I loathed and despised. [laughter]

LEW SAYRE SCHWARTZ: There were a lot of Bill Finger stories that I recall. I don’t really recall most of the writers

WOOLFOLK: General characteristics. [laughter]

WOOLFOLK: Rudy Palais.

ME: Alvin Schwartz or…?

SCHWARTZ: No, because I was between ’47 and ’53 … but back then I was much more concerned with getting the work done, because I was working during the daytime at King Features as a staff artist. And I’d start my layout sketches on the train going into

ME: And was there one reason, or just general principles?

ME: Did he know what a good story was?

WOOLFOLK: He had certain set things he thought a story should have. He thought you had to have a gimmick that you could inject like a hypodermic into a story. He had to have a special gimmick.

ME: Which characters did you enjoy writing the most for DC?

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WOOLFOLK: I don’t think I enjoyed DC. I enjoyed Fawcett more. I enjoyed writing “Captain Marvel.”

ME: Now, at Fawcett, were you working with Wendell Crowley or Eddie Herron?

WOOLFOLK: Eddie Herron, succeeded by Crowley.

ME: Did they treat you well at Fawcett?

WOOLFOLK: Very well. There were hardly any writers. [laughter] ME: It was you and Otto Binder writing everything there.

WOOLFOLK: As a matter of fact, at one stage it was almost just Otto writing. He came in one time and Herron, who was then editing, came and brushed off the seat for him and said, “Sit down.

You’re hired.”

ME: Did you find it more challenging to write stories about real powerful characters like Captain Marvel, or was it more challenging to write about human beings, people who couldn’t fly?

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Up ’N’ Atom The splash page of “Mr. Atom and the Comet Men” from Captain Marvel Adventures #81 (Feb. ’48). Script by Woolfolk, art by C.C. Beck. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

WOOLFOLK: I don’t think we wrote about human beings. [laughter] ME: There were a couple in there, weren’t there, like the Blackhawks?

WOOLFOLK: They were the nearest thing.

ME: Which was more enjoyable… or which was more of a challenge?

WOOLFOLK: The challenge was getting a paycheck. [laughter] ME: How much were they paying you at Quality?

WOOLFOLK: I forget. I do remember when I first broke into comics what I got.

Lew Sayre Schwartz at the Chicago Playboy Club in 1962—and his splash page for “The Man with the Automatic Brain” from Batman #52 (April 1949). Script

by Bill Finger; pencils by Schwartz & Bob Kane (who in those days often insisted on drawing in the Batman and Robin figures—imagine that!); inks by Charles Paris. The photo is a detail from one Schwartz sent A/E for his in-depth interview in issue #51. [TM & © DC Comics.]

ME: What did you get?

WOOLFOLK: $1.60 a page, 60 cents more for putting in the dialogue.

ME: Wow. That’s about what it was back in the ’70s. [laughter]

The 2002 San Diego Comic-Con Golden Age Panel

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WOOLFOLK: They were impressed by me. [laughter] ME: Well done! Lew, tell us more about the period when you were doing “Batman.” You started in ’47, was it? Bob Kane would’ve made a new deal with DC, right?

SCHWARTZ: I guess so, yeah, just about that time. I first met Bob in ’46. We were both chasing the same lady on the beach in Miami.

ME: [to audience] You may notice a theme here. [laughter] CARDY: That’s all we have, is memories. [laughter] SCHWARTZ: I didn’t know who this guy was, and so I kinda hated him. [laughter] Then I found out, and we started talking. He looked at some of my work and said, “I’m going to call you in the fall.” I went back home to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t call me. And in ’47, I did a project called Dusty Diamond that Bob and Will Eisner had. I don’t know why these guys hired me, because my work was so bad I couldn’t believe it. But they did. That did not fly, but Bob started to use me on “Batman.”

From the very beginning —and I’d like to correct something, because I keep seeing excerpts in some of the magazines that credit my name, saying I started with Bob doing backgrounds, etc. The fact is, from the first day, I was penciling the whole ***dam page!

What I did was leave Batman and Robin very loose, so when Bob turned the page in, it looked… well, I’ll say I think I’m one of the few people to get along with him. We remained friends almost to the end.

ME: When you were penciling for him, was the style you were using your own natural style? Were you trying to imitate his style?

SCHWARTZ: I tried. First of all, as a kid, I loved “Batman.” I probably loved the stuff with Jerry Robinson.

ME: So, you copied stuff?

Black, Blue, & Gray Are The New Orange “Batman—Boss of the Big House!” in Detective Comics #169 (March 1951) was penciled by the Schwartz/Kane team and inked by Charles Paris. Scripter unknown. For a photo of Bob Kane, see A/E #156. [TM & © DC Comics.]

WOOLFOLK: Everyone has the feeling that we were all povertystricken back then. I was living in Brooklyn at the time. I would take a girl out—I would go out if they wanted to go out with me. [laughter] I would take them to New York and I would take them to a seven-course dinner at Rosoff’s restaurant [Rosoff’s Victory Room] and I would take them to a Broadway play and then I would take them home. What do you think the total cost of that excursion was?

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: Ten dollars!

MAN IN AUDIENCE: Five dollars!

WOOLFOLK: Five dollars. Five cents each on the subway…

ME: Did you ever see her again? [laughter] How many women do you think you’ve taken to dinner and a play? And what plays did you see on Broadway?

WOOLFOLK: Let me see… Three Men on a Horse, Boy Meets Girl, and… I have to think of it in terms of the woman I was with. [laughter] ME: Were they impressed that you worked in comicbooks? [laughter]

SCHWARTZ: Yeah. The work appealed to me. I was excited. It was “Batman,” something that the public held in fairly high regard at the time. But, my love… my ambition was to be Milton Caniff, and I think that style kept popping up in “Batman” all over the place.

Sometimes Bob would complain about it. But, in terms of style, I tried to stay within what I thought was Bob’s style at the time. Some things used to bother me a great deal, because Bob never drew an arm coming out of an armpit—it came out of their sides! So I could always tell when I looked at something if it was something Kane drew. The arms never seemed to connect! But I have to say, this is my first time here [at Comic-Con], and it has been an incredible experience to have young folks come up and tell me how much they love the old stuff. And they know all the stories I did. I mean, stories I don’t even know! [laughter] Bob was… I don’t want to say lazy, but he was slow. And he was supposed to do, like, 160 pages a year. When I worked for him, he turned in 240 pages. I was very happy with what I was making, and I did that stuff very fast. At that time, I was turning out a story with 12 pages, six or eight panels per page depending on the page, and it went very quickly somehow. But the style, I think through ’49 and ’50, Mark, to answer your question, my own style started to slip in unbeknownst to me. And that’s sort of what happened. So now when I see some of the old things and I look, there’s a Milton Caniff head here, you know, and whoever else influenced my work at that particular time somehow popped up.

But it was a great life experience, and I’ll end this discourse by just saying what was most interesting was doing sequential art was when I got out of the cartoon business. I had no idea that I was so well-prepared to enter the film business, which is what I did. It’s

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Irv Novick as a young artist—flanked by Golden and Silver Age work. (Left:) The cover of MLJ’s Pep Comics #18 (Sept. 1941). Novick was the original artist of “The Shield,” a flag-draped hero who pre-dated Captain America by a year and probably partly inspired the Simon & Kirby character. (Right:) He also penciled “The Case of the Purr-loined Pearl” for Batman #210 (March ’69). Script by Frank Robbins; inks by Joe Giella. See A/E #62 for a brief interview with Novick. [Pep cover TM & © Archie Comics Publications, Inc.; Batman page TM & © DC Comics.]

the same thing except for the sound, and Roy Crane gave us sound back in 1926 with “pop,” “pow,” “sock,” and “snag.” The only thing that was lacking, I think, was true motion, but if you look at an old Roy Crane Wash Tubbs or Caniff or any of the old-timers, everything moved. It was wonderful. And we were lucky, I think, the whole bunch of us, because we learned from such great people. And we were blessed. Very lucky.

ME: Irv Novick was another man who drew a lot of “Batman” stories in his day. I wanted to ask you about Robert Kanigher, who passed away a few months ago. Can you tell us a bit about working with for over the years?

NOVICK: Well, some people did not like him.

ME: Did he discuss the scripts with you in advance, or did he hand you a script and say, “Here, draw this one!”?

NOVICK: Well, usually, he would do that. But he always wrote pretty darn good scripts, so I accepted what I got. I’d read them, re-read them, and I never had trouble with him. Some people did.

ME: [to Woolfolk] Bill, did you read any other writers who wrote comics or read other people’s scripts?

WOOLFOLK: Oh, I read comics on numerous occasions.

IRV NOVICK: He and I were very good friends for almost 50 years. We got along extremely well together. I thought it was easy working with him. Some people did not. But he and I got along very well.

ME: What did you think of the other writers? What did you think of the writing in general?

ME: He liked your work tremendously. You were one of his favorite artists.

Did you find that he gave you a lot of input?

ME: Well, did you think the other writers were writing good stories?

NOVICK: Well, he usually let me do what I wanted, and he always wrote pretty good stories.

ME: Yes.

ME: What should people know about him personally? What kind of person was he?

WOOLFOLK: Compared to what? [laughter]

WOOLFOLK: We’re talking about comics?

WOOLFOLK: Yes. I thought they were dangerously good.

The 2002 San Diego Comic-Con Golden Age Panel

ME: Did you have any other favorite writers? Anyone whose work you felt …

WOOLFOLK: Me! [laughter]

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at that time, he said, “Only four pages a day? I have thirteen pages a day.” I said, “I do 120 pages a month.” He said, “120 pages a month?!” He did not know to multiply 4 times 30 days.

ME: And what were you writing on? What kind of typewriter?

ME: Well, aside from you.

WOOLFOLK: I loved Donald Pembroke. Both as a man, and as a writer.

ME: Who was the best editor you worked with?

WOOLFOLK: Probably Wendell Crowley. The nicest editor was Harry Lucey. He was the first editor I worked for at MLJ, and he was a diplomatist. And then he came up to me at the party and said, “One of us has his fly open.” [laughter] A man with delicacy, too. [laughter] ME: Did you have a problem with deadlines?

WOOLFOLK: No. I wrote as rapidly as I could.

ME: How many pages a day?

WOOLFOLK: Well, I limited it to four pages a day, actually. And when I told that to people, and Bruce Elliot, who was also a writer

WOOLFOLK: An old Remington, I think.

ME: Did you work later on electric typewriters or computers?

WOOLFOLK: No, I don’t work on computers. The computer works on me, I should say.

ME: If you had a computer in those days, how many pages do you think you’d get done a day?

WOOLFOLK: I don’t think I was limited by that. I was limited by bone laziness. [laughter] You write to survive, you know. When you say you want to survive as a writer, you’ve narrowed down your chances. So I was grateful just to be able to write for a living and make a little money.

ME: Now, a lot of people who wrote comics would start writing with no idea where they were going. Did you ever write the beginning of a story not knowing where it was going to end?

All The Way With MLJ! (Left:) Woolfolk wrote and Novick drew this “The Shield and Dusty” story from Pep Comics #36 (Feb. 1943). (Right:) Bill teamed up with artist Paul Reinman on “Boy Buddies Special Case No. 4” for Hangman Comics #2 (Spring ’42), under MLJ editor Harry Shorten. [TM & © Archie Comics Publications, Inc.]

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WOOLFOLK: Oh, no. I always knew. I plotted in advance as much as I could. I had a lot of experience outside of comics before I got into comics, so I knew what to do. And when I first arrived at MLJ, they just didn’t have writers. They had people who were sort of intended to be writers. I don’t know where they came from… out of the woodwork.

ME: Did Irv Novick ever draw some of your MLJ stories? Do you know?

WOOLFOLK: Of course! “The Shield” and “Steel Sterling” and etcetera. He was the best of the graphic artists. He could draw action. Paul Reinman drew good backgrounds with rather static people in front. And at one stage, I gave him a big boost, because they decided there should be backgrounds in the stories and I said, “What you want is a location in space.” Now, that became a buzzword. People would go around saying they had to have an artist do a location in space, as though there was somewhere else

you could be located. [laughter] ME: When you wrote the story, did you tailor it to the artist?

WOOLFOLK: No. I didn’t have a choice. Harry Shorten decided that. He was the editor there.

ME: What kind of editor was he?

WOOLFOLK: He was a great football player. [laughter] ME: Without naming names, tell us about your worst editor in comics.

WOOLFOLK: Oh, there were so many. [laughter] ME: Does anyone else here recall a very bad editor?

CARDY: Well, I won’t mention the writer, but I was doing Congo Bill and he said, “ I want you to put this little boy”—Congo Bill had this little sidekick, Janu—“put him on a hyena, because it’s the fastest animal in the jungle.” And I tried to tell him, I said, “That isn’t the fastest…” “That’s the fastest animal in the jungle!” he said. [laughter] And then he said, “Have the rhino charging the zebra, because zebra’s its favorite meat!” Rhinos aren’t carnivorous. They don’t eat meat! [laughter] He said, “That’s the story.” I didn’t change it. I put it in. Between him and the editor, I couldn’t. [laughter] WOOLFOLK: Unobtrusively, I’m going to the men’s room. [laughter] ME: [repeating a question from the audience] Describe what it was like working in a bullpen situation. How many people in the room …

LUBBERS: I’ve lost count. I have a hard time remembering a lot of this old stuff. I went to the doctor and said, “Jeez, Doc. I can’t remember these things.” He asked, “How long has this been going on?” I said, “How long has what been going on?” [laughter] So … what was the question? [laughter] ME: Bullpen situation.

CARDY: Basically, it was a very large room, and along one wall they had the girls that did the clean-up. Then they had several people who did the backgrounds. And along the other wall, they had the artists that did the various stories. And, through a doorway into the next room, they had all the editors and the hierarchy. But mainly they’d give you a schedule to work and you had to stay on that schedule. Sometimes, they say they want you to do it in a month for the job you’re doing. If you goof off, fooling around and not doing your stuff, you’ll wind up working at home and bringing it in. But we got it done, didn’t we?

LUBBERS: You were the cause of a lot of the delays. [laughter] CARDY: I don’t remember that. [laughter] LUBBERS: We had a pornography challenge one day, I remember. [laughter] You don’t remember that?

CARDY: No, I don’t. Tell the story and maybe I’ll remember.

Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, I Don’t Wanna Leave Congo Bill!

Sorry, we couldn’t find any Congo Bill comicbook in which a hyena was the fastest animal alive and rhinos ate zebras—but here’s a cover by Nick Cardy that shows a rhinoceros, at least! (Even though DC would’ve been lucky if even 10% of its intended audience read the cover’s two word balloons in the order they’re meant to be read!) When the “Jungle Jim” wannabe got his own comics title for a time, Congo Bill shared billing with Janu the Jungle boy—as per #4 (Feb.-March 1955), with thanks to the Grand Comics Database. Ignominiously, a few years later, the great hunter would be reduced to switching brains on a regular basis with a golden ape when the series was retitled Congorilla. [TM & © DC Comics.]

LUBBERS: Well, Nick did a little card with “Casey at the Bat,” and when you opened it up, the bat popped up. [laughter] CARDY: I did that? [laughter] LUBBERS: You see, I think Nick wanted to get on further in his career than a lot of us younger people knew.

CARDY: [to audience] He’s only two years younger than me. [laughter] LUBBERS: The goal for me was to do these things as fast as I

The 2002 San Diego Comic-Con Golden Age Panel

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Lubbers & Other Strangers Bob Lubbers was a busy guy! Over the years, he went from drawing comicbooks, like this cover for Fiction House’s Wings Comics #91 (March ’48)—to a long stretch as the artist of the Tarzan newspaper comic strip—to a second strip at the same time, Long Sam, a fetching heroine whom he later depicted for collector Shaun Clancy. [Wings art & Long Sam TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; Tarzan TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

possibly could. It’s not that you earned any more money, but I just couldn’t sit there and draw in great detail and…

CARDY: His pages—he would do them very quick.

One thing I am very envious of is he would do two pages to my one. Or three pages to my one.

LUBBERS: But the problem was, and I discovered it later, was that I wasn’t really drawing very well because I didn’t take the time to really design the page.

ME: Mr. Lubbers, to distinguish you from Mr. Oksner, at one point you were drawing two syndicated newspaper strips at the same time.

LUBBERS: Yes. ME: How is this humanly possible?

LUBBERS: Well, I needed the money. [laughter] I was working for United Features Syndicate drawing a strip that Al Capp started to write, which I illustrated from the beginning. In fact, it was Al Capp who called me one day—and I was doing Tarzan at the time—and Al Capp said, “I’ve got a new comic strip I’d like to do. I’d like to talk to you about it.” Anyway, Al Capp and I got together on a strip called Long Sam, but… What was the question? [laughter] ME: I was asking how you could do two strips at once.

LUBBERS: Oh. So, I was drawing Long Sam, I guess… it had a seven-year run, and right in the middle of it, I got a call from the editor at King Features Syndicate and he asked, “Would you like to draw [Secret Agent] X-9, and write it?” because Mel Graff, who was

doing it at the time, wanted to get out of it. So I said “sure.” And so I wound up writing a Sunday page story for Long Sam, a six-day daily strip story —two different stories for the same character each week— and a completely different story for X-9. So, that was the scheme.

CARDY: Did you go up to Al Capp’s house in…

LUBBERS: On Beacon Street?

CARDY: In Boston, yeah.

LUBBERS: Oh, yeah. Are we going to talk about Al Capp? [laughter] CARDY: I did some work with him, too.

LUBBERS: I’ve got to tell you a little about Al Capp. Towards the end of his career I’d go up to visit him. I worked at home at the time, and I would touch up his pencils. He would send down Li’l Abner to me to put a little draftsmanship into some of the things.

So I would go and visit him once in a while, and one day when I went up, his daughter, who was about 30 or something, and another woman had a whole slew of Li’l Abner proofs laid out on the floor.

I said, “What the hell are they doing with these?” He said, “Oh, I don’t know. They’re just picking out panels for something or

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another.” Well, what they were doing was picking out individual panels from the daily strip that could be illustrated separately as a work of art. So they stocked these things up, then they hired an artist from Germany to come over, and this guy was paid to blow them up on the wall maybe twenty times their size and copied everything to make a painting out of it. Well, this is what this guy did.

To Capp Things Off Since the panelists went off onto a tangent discussing the great (if somewhat eccentric) cartoonist Al Capp, creator of the oft-wonderful comic strip Li’l Abner, we thought we should at least make a nod in his direction—with the Capp drawing at left showing both of them! [TM & © Al Capp Enterprises, Inc., or successors in interest.]

Later on, I went up to the apartment on Central Park South of the woman who designed this thing. I got off the elevator and right in front of me is a 3’ x 6’ oil painting—a perfect imitation of this one Li’l Abner panel. But I had a habit of putting my Morse code initials in the stuff that I inked and drew. “B” for “Bob” was dash-dot-dot-dot, and “L” for “Lubbers” was dot-dash-dot-dot.

Well, here staring me in the face, this guy had copied my initials! [laughter] But there’s more to the story. They wound up with a stack of these paintings that were also sold as lithographs. Well, there was a big show prepared at the Huntington Harbor Museum in New York to show his work, but he hadn’t signed them yet. So they loaded the paintings on a truck and drove them up to Boston and had me pencil in “Al Capp” for him to sign. They propped them in his lap and he signed all of them and then they took them back and auctioned them off, making about $2.5 million.

SCHWARTZ: I just want to mention that I was at that opening.

CARDY: Did you hear the story that Al Capp once told? He was at

Go Peddle Your Papers!

(Left:) One of the Spirit scripts reported to have been written by William Woolfolk for that comicbook-style newspaper comic strip is the one dated Aug. 27, 1944; pencils by Lou Fine, inks by Don Komisarow. [TM & © Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] (Right:) \Splash from Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Adventures #95 (April 1949); art by C.C. Beck. [Shazam heroes & Billy Batson TM & © DC Comics.]

The 2002 San Diego Comic-Con Golden Age Panel

a hotel in England. He had just returned from the dinner or bash— he was stoned—and when he got up to his room he unstrapped his false leg—it had just his sock and a shoe on it, and he tossed it under the bed. So, he was lying down and ordered room service.

He told them to bring up a bottle of Scotch and a glass. The worker came up, brought the bottle, and put it on the nightstand and, seeing this foot sticking out from under the bed, said, “What about him?” [laughter] ME: Another question from the audience?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Another question for Bob and Nick about the Fiction House days. You talked about that you had a whole row of clean-up girls working there. Did any of them end up being the models for the Fiction House girl covers like Sheena or Rulah? [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Rulah was actually a Fox title, not Fiction House.]

LUBBERS: No. [laughter] CARDY: There was one of the girls who was very attractive …

LUBBERS: Peggy Margrath. We went to high school together. It’s such a small world.

CARDY: Yeah, up there we had girls with mustaches. [laughter] But they were really nice people.

SCHWARTZ: I’d like to add about Al Capp. Al was a very tough cookie. The leg business, I think, dictated a great deal of his

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personality on many levels. But, the most poignant story… At one point, Stan Drake used to come out to Boston. Stan and I were very close friends, and I would come in from the Cape and we would have dinner. On several occasions I would pick Stan up at this studio on Beacon and Al Capp would be there. Now, I had a strange and interesting relationship with Al because, at a point, I worked for a big advertising agency, and Al used to invite me to lunch three or four times a year. And this guy was one of the most entertaining, engaging, lovely men you could want to sit and have lunch with.

That’s on one hand. On the other hand, uh, a dragon! So it was very poignant to me when I picked up Stan and we went to dinner, and he said, “Guess what happened this morning.” I said, “What?” He said, “Al came in, went down the three steps into his studio, took off his hat and coat and hung them up, took off his jacket, sat down at the drawing board,” turned to Stan and said, “Listen, son. Let’s not cut any more paper.” And that was the end of Lil’ Abner. That’s how it stopped.

LUBBERS: Al had some problems in his life. I don’t know if you care about Al Capp, but he’s more interesting than we are, actually. [laughter] The last seven years of his life were very painful, and because of some of his activities, it caused the deterioration of his comic strip. I don’t want to mention a particular incident, but it was something that very much ill-affected his comic strip. And in the attempt to rejoin the ranks of acceptable people in the universe, he began to change Li’l Abner into something strange. Al began to deteriorate. I had been doing the penciling and the inking and the lettering and coloring of the Sundays—the whole thing—and he wanted me to move up to Boston. I lived in Long Island at the time.

I said, “Al, I’m not going to do that,” and I didn’t.

We were talking about Stan Drake. Stan was one of my all-time, long-time friends and he drew a wonderful illustrated strip called The Heart of Juliet Jones for King Features Syndicate, which was a huge success. He had 800 or 900 papers, which is what you based your income on. You get “x” dollars for each paper that gets printed, and the staff put that above everything. Stan was up for grabs as he was moving up there and worked with Al. I knew that Stan was very unhappy up there, and he’d still send the pencils he did for me to ink, and I’d have to change them. Al was drawing Li’l Abner with a “three-head” body. It was terrible. And he would ink in the head, so you there was no way you could change that, but he would have Lil’ Abner standing up straight and I’d have to bend him to get him into the frame. But he was in such a bad shape and Stan tried to help him, and I never knew until this moment that it ended that way. That’s something.

ME: Let’s get to another question here. Yes, Jerry?

JERRY BECK, FROM THE AUDIENCE: Mr. Woolfolk, what year did you start writing, and what did you do before comics? Did you write pulps?

WOOLFOLK: I didn’t write anything for pulps, but I did write some secondary series. I wanted to write the first-class series, but they kept saying they’d get back to me.

ME: What was the first thing you sold as a writer? What was your first sale?

Bear With Us! Another commission drawing by Bob Lubbers—this one with Long Sam (from comic strips) and Firehair (from Fiction House’s comicbooks) in a clever teaming. Thanks to Dominique Leonard. [Characters TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

WOOLFOLK: An odd sort of thing. I worked for an experimental literary magazine, and my whole ambition was to be Joseph Farmer, possibly Shakespeare. [laughter] I sold a story called “Reward for Valor,” and discovered years later that the woman who bought it was an associate at Otis Adelbert Kline, and he had written that the story moved him so much he wanted to sell it for me, and that was my first story.

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Gimme Five!

Vintage clockwise art by Irv Novick (Pep Comics #5, June 1940; script by Harry Shorten)… Bob Oksner (cover of Comic Cavalcade #26, April-May ’48)… Nick Cardy (cover of Aquaman #24, Nov.-Dec. ’65)… Lew Sayre Schwartz (cover of Detective Comics #168, Feb. ’51; inks by George Roussos)… & Bob Lubbers (cover of Fiction House’s Movie Comics #1, Dec. ’46). Thanks to Marc Svensson for the Pep scan. [Pep cover TM & © Archie Comics Publications, Inc.; Comic Cavalcade, Aquaman, & Detective covers TM & © DC Comics; Movie cover TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

The 2002 San Diego Comic-Con Golden Age Panel

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And To Think That, Back Then, Those Two Companies Were Wrapped Up In A Lawsuit…!

Since this is a Woolfolk-spotlight issue, we’re closing with splashes from the two comics outfits with which our featured writer is most identified: “The World’s Mightiest Shadow” from Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Jr. #113 (Sept. ’52), with art by Bud Thompson…and “The Perfect Plot to Kill Superman” from DC’s Action Comics #183 (Aug. ’53), with art by Al Plastino. Of course, if either story were to be reprinted nowadays, it would have to be in a DC comic or book. [Shazam hero & “Superman” page & characters TM & © DC Comics.]

ME: How old were you?

WOOLFOLK: 12. [laughter] Maybe 9.

ME: Another question…

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Since Fiction House did have the pulp line, did either Nick or Bob ever do any illustrations for the pulps at all?

CARDY: Yeah, I did about three or four pulp illustrations; one was a Western, another one was football. I was experimenting with the dry brush, because pulp [art] was mainly dry brush, and there were some good illustrators in the pulps. Martin Stoops and quite a few others were really fantastic.

LUBBERS: I did a couple, too, but one of the greatest of those pulp illustrators was Sam Savitt.

CARDY: Oh yeah. He drew horses.

LUBBERS: I read about his death not too long ago and I thought to myself, “Gee, why didn’t we ever get together again?”

ME: [to Woolfolk] Before we get to the next question, tell them what you wanted to add about Harry Shorten.

WOOLFOLK: Oh, yes. I gave a rather quick, one-line answer when they asked what kind of editor he was. I said he was a very

good football player. Football players and being good editors are not mutually exclusive. He was not a bad editor. [pause] He was illiterate. [laughter] They used to have in comicbooks two pages of text, which would help pass the Post Office requirements. At one stage, he asked me to write one of those two-page things—which were bios—on Beethoven. I said, “Of course. I’d be glad to.” He said, “Don’t forget to include the fact that he was blind.” [laughter] I said, “You don’t mean ‘deaf,’ do you?” He said, “Don’t tell me the poor bastard was deaf, too!” [laughter] ME: Okay, this gentleman here had a question …

AUDIENCE MEMBER: For the whole panel: were there any publishing houses you refused to work for because they had a bad reputation for not paying?

[Evanier repeats the question to Irv Novick] NOVICK: No. [laughter] ME: Lew? How about you?

SCHWARTZ: Bob Kane kept me very under wraps—and I was perfectly fine with it at the time—but the one person chasing like hell to find out who was doing Bob’s work was Mort Weisinger.

Mort used to call me on the pay phone in the bullpen at King Features and [try to] get me to admit that I was doing Bob’s work. I

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

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would deny it because the work was steady…

ME: Was he trying to prove that Bob wasn’t doing it, or was he just trying to prove that you were?

SCHWARTZ: I have the notion that he was not in love with Bob. [laughter] I also have the notion that if he could have strung him up… I never met any of the “Batman” artists. I never met Sheldon Moldoff or Charlie Paris. I was very separated from the comicbook business. The only connection I had was Bob Kane. And from there, I left King Features and began right into advertising and then into film.

ME: Anyone else ever have an editor or publisher who wouldn’t pay?

CARDY: I had. It wasn’t in comics, but it was doing a movie poster.

I was supposed to get about $600 for the work. I had to take them to small claims court and they finally paid. And then they wanted me to do another job that was for the movie The Bad News Bears. I said, “I don’t know if I’m going to fool around with these guys, the way they pay.” They gave it to Jack Davis and the thing went over big. I was wonder if he got paid. He must have.

ME: We’re about out of time here. I would like you to join me in thanking not only for spending this time with us, but for their careers of wonderful work: Mr. Irv Novick [applause], Lew Sayre Schwartz [applause continues], Bob Lubbers [applause], Nicholas Cardy [applause], Bob Oksner [applause], and Mr. William Woolfolk. [applause] Thanks to David Siegel for all his efforts over the years in bringing Golden Age comicbook creators to the San Diego Comic-Con… and to Marc Svensson for having the insight of videotaping these creators’ panel appearance. —PCH.

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

Also, your ideas for NEW art are welcome!

Art can be pencils only, inked or full-color (painted) creation!

Contact Frank directly for details and prices.

(Minimum order: $500) Visit my website at: http://www.frankbrunner.net

[Conan & Bêlit TM & © Conan Properties International, LLC.]

Previously Unpublished Brunner Artwork!

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A Century Of ZORRO

Celebrating The First True Costumed Hero

by Audrey Parente & Rich Harvey

W

ith the swift slash of a blade, a remarkably romantic and clever vigilante in a dark mask and cape became the first super-hero to splash the cover of a pulp-fiction magazine—exactly one century ago this year.

turned to crafting pulp-fiction stories. He created several additional memorable characters in the pulps later, including The Crimson Clown and Thubway Tham, and he wrote under several pen names. But Zorro was his magnum opus.

Zorro, whose true identity is camouflaged by the foppish behavior of caballero Don Diego Vega, made his world debut in The Curse of Capistrano. That novel was serialized in five issues of All-Story Weekly, a popular pulp-fiction magazine, beginning in the August 9, 1919, issue. More than 60 Zorro stories followed in various pulp-fiction magazines through 1959.

McCulley, born in Ottawa, Illinois, on February 2, 1883, designed Zorro from studies of an old Californian mission town, about which he wrote multiple stories, some with and others without Zorro. His Zorro character highlighted a caballero’s spirit while also portraying the difficulties of the lower classes.

To the world at large, Zorro was wise and brave, cunning and clever, and a dashing figure of justice. He protected the downtrodden of Spanish California, punishing criminals and serenading lovely ladies. To his fans, he was the provider of thrills and laughter on the printed page, in a landslide of movies, television series, comicbooks, and licensed merchandise.

Johnston McCulley was a writer working in newspapers in several cities for more than a dozen years before he successfully

Prior to Zorro’s debut, the 15th Century do-gooder outlaw Robin Hood frustrated the unjust Sheriff of Nottingham. The Scarlet Pimpernel, a nobleman and savvy swordsman who rescued aristocrats from the guillotine, had first appeared in a novel by Baroness Orczy in 1905.

These icons of literature may have influenced McCulley, but his Zorro character added flourish by

Johnston McCulley (1883-1958), creator of Zorro.

“Z” Is For “Zorro”!

A two-page spread (what pulp artists and editors called a “double-truck” illustration) from Johnston McCulley’s short story “Zorro Serenades a Siren,” which appeared in the Feb.1948 issue of West magazine. Art by Joseph Farren.

“Zorro,” of course, is Spanish for “fox.” [TM & © Zorro Productions, Inc.]

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Celebrating The First True Costumed Hero

The Curse of Capistrano (Left:) That was the name of Johnston McCulley’s first Zorro novel, as serialized in All-Story Weekly, beginning in the edition published for August 9, 1919—one hundred years ago this annum! Cover art by P.J. Monahan; thanks to David Saunders for the ID. (Above:) Dashing silent-screen actor Douglas Fairbanks was the first to portray Zorro in movies, beginning in 1920’s The Mask of Zorro, a film adaptation of The Curse of Capistrano. [TM & © Zorro Productions, Inc.]

adopting a mask to conceal his true identity. Previous do-gooders had no secret identity or, as with The Scarlet Pimpernel, the persona was relegated to a calling card and disguises.

With his flamboyance, stealthy personality, and mask, McCulley’s protagonist took center stage—and benefited from humorous interplay as the dandyish Diego with unsuspecting soldiers. In this respect, the swashbuckling Zorro predates modern-day super-heroes, who routinely wear masks to conceal their identities from adversaries.

In 1920, The Curse of Capistrano—retitled The Mark of Zorro— was adapted to film by director Fred Niblo. The legendary Douglas Fairbanks portrayed the dual role of Don Diego de la Vega and the masked Zorro, performing many of his own stunts.

Continued popularity of the character coaxed McCulley into writing The Further Adventures of Zorro, serialized in six parts in All-Story Weekly beginning with issue cover-dated May 6, 1922. This in turn prompted another film, Don Q, Son of Zorro, also starring Douglas Fairbanks.

McCulley would not revisit Zorro again until 1931, with the appropriately titled Zorro Rides Again (Argosy magazine, Oct. 3, 10, 17, & 24). Thereafter, an average of one Zorro adventure (usually a short story) appeared in the pulps each year. All the while, McCulley churned out thousands of words for popular magazines.

Notable among his stories were two continuing characters— Thubway Tham, a lisping pickpocket, and The Crimson Clown, a contemporary masked thief who mocked criminals and police

alike. The Clown appeared frequently between 1926 and 1931 (with a final story in 1944). Thubway Tham appeared in nearly 150 stories between 1918 and 1960. Although Zorro had starred in two motion pictures and would star in several more, McCulley’s authorial focus never remained on his Spanish hero for very long.

McCulley’s indifference to his success probably arose from his own ground-breaking story. He never imagined Zorro as more than a one-off character. By the conclusion of The Curse of Capistrano, the masked caballero reveals himself before California’s governor, and the pueblo’s residents, as the young nobleman, Don Diego Vega.

McCulley, confronted with a masked man who was no longer mysterious, simply ignored what had gone before. In subsequent stories, soldiers and citizens alike conveniently forget Diego is Zorro, even when he unmasks yet again! With years between novels, the author may have assumed readers forgot previous adventures, if they had read them, or banked on the difficulty in obtaining back-date magazines.

Finally, Zorro became the star of a continuing series in West, a popular Western-fiction pulp, beginning in 1944. With new Zorro adventures almost monthly, McCulley abandoned the previous inconsistencies and settled upon a conventional format. Don Diego entrusted his secret to the mute manservant Bernardo, the mission priest Fray Felipe, and (eventually) his fire-eating father Don Alejandro, a wealthy, respected ranch owner in Reina de los Angeles.

“Zorro Draws His Blade” (July 1944), the first West installment, introduced Sergeant Manuel Garcia, a rotund but loveable soldier who dreams of capturing Zorro—to collect the Governor’s reward.

From this point, Garcia became Zorro’s recurring antagonist (the term “frenemy” had yet to be coined).

47

A Century Of Zorro

“Zorro Draws His Blade” …to defend himself from Sgt. Garcia’s attack, in Joseph Farren’s illustration from West magazine (July 1944). [TM & © Zorro Productions, Inc.]

Joseph Farren

“Zorro’s Stolen Steed” Zorro’s trusty stallion was never named in McCulley’s stories, but was christened “Tornado” in the Disney TV series of the 1950s. The Disney Zorro episode “Zorro Springs a Trap” (season 1, episode 21) may have been inspired by this story. The illustration accompanying the story in West magazine for March 1950 was again by Joseph Farren. [TM & © Zorro Productions, Inc.]

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Celebrating The First True Costumed Hero

The 44 stories from West magazine were most closely echoed in the Walt Disney Productions television series starring Guy Williams. That series began in 1957, broadcast on the ABC network through 1959. Episodes lifted titles such as “Zorro Saves a Friend,” while McCulley’s stories inspired episodes such as “Zorro’s Stolen Steed.” The series sparked a merchandising onslaught, which has never disappeared.

India’s Bollywood produced a female version, Madame Zorro, in 1963, filmed in Bombay.

American Zorro comics, released both before and during the period in which the Disney TV show was on the air in the U.S., also appeared in many countries, including a hundred issues in Brazil between 1954 and 1962, and issues in Sweden, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Austria, Colombia, and Japan. A Zorro comic from Great Britain was published by L. Miller & Son, but the character was only a modern-day knock-off of Johnston McCulley’s hero, complete with airplanes.

In the U.S., Zorro television animation erupted in the 1980s, along with a comedy film starring George Hamilton: Zorro the Gay Blade, produced by 20th Century-Fox, and a spoof television series Zorro and Son, which appeared on CBS. The ’80s also saw a series of video games for Commodore 64 and Apple II.

More movies, including one for television, followed in the United States in the 1960s and ’70s, and there also were Zorro movies made in Europe, one starring Alain Delon in a FrenchItalian co-production. Mexico contributed several Zorro films, such as El Zorro de Jalisco (1941), starring the popular Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz, and The Great Adventure of Zorro (La gran aventura del Zorro, 1976).

The Philippines spit out Zorro films like The Magnificent Zorro (1968) and Tulume Alyas Zorro (1983), and for TV in 2009 a show, titled Zorro, which loosely followed McCulley’s original The Curse of Capistrano.

Zorro continued strong in the ’90s, starring in 88 episodes of an American live-action TV Series, New World’s Zorro, co-produced

by New World (U.S.), Ellipse (France), and RAI (Italy). The series has since aired in over 50 countries. On the animated front, Mondo (Italy) released a Japanese animation, Kaiketsu Zorro, in the mid-’90s.

At the same time, Disney colorized and re-released 78 of its Zorro TV episodes in the U.S., and in London, Ken Hill’s musical stage play opened to rave reviews. Then, in 1998, Antonio Banderas’s portrayal of Zorro lit up in the screen in Columbia Pictures’ The Mask of Zorro. All the while, the merchandise marketing thrived, including a Zorro toy line in early 1998.

Zorro In Four Colors—In Four Color (Left:) The pre-1955, pre-Disney “Zorro” issues of Dell/Western’s Four Color comicbook series have been collected in Hermes Press’ Zorro – The Complete Dell Pre-Code Comics Adventures, published in 2014.

(Right:) The Dell/Western comics that featured the Disney version included #976 (March 1959), behind a photo-cover featuring actor Guy Madison. [TM & © Zorro Productions, Inc.]

A Century Of Zorro

49

Let’s Dynamite Zorro!

When Dynamite Comics issued its own Zorro #1 for Feb. 2008, there were no fewer than three Zorros, on three alternative covers, by artists (l. to r.) Matt Wagner, Mike Mayhew, and John Cassaday. [TM & © Zorro Productions, Inc.]

A classic-style Zorro appeared from Capstone in a DOS video game in 1995 called Zorro: A Cinematic Action Adventure, and in 1999, Game Boy Color released The Mask of Zorro video game. In the 2000s, Playstation issued The Shadow of Zorro for Windows, and Zorro popped up in 2009 in a game from Nintendo Wii and in 2010 for Nintendo DS. Zorro also appears as a sidekick-like aid to the main character in the popular 2017 Playstation game, Persona 5.

Zorro had appeared in comics published in Dell’s Golden Age from 1938-1955, and in Dell’s Silver Age comics from 1956-1959.

While interior pages were illustrated by Alex Toth and Warren Tufts, covers featured color photographs of a masked and cloaked Guy Williams. Other literary adventures were published as children’s books by Gold Key, and tied in directly to the television program.

In December 1990 Marvel Comics released its own Zorro title, which ran for 12 issues and used storylines from the New World’s Zorro TV series as the basis for each issue. Topps Comics took up the mantle in the 1990s. During this series, writer Don McGregor and illustrator Adam Hughes introduced Lady Rawhide, a new supporting character whose popularity resulted into her own comic series. In 1993 McGregor and Tom Yeates collaborated on a Zorro vs. Dracula stand-alone graphic novel. That pair would later go on to write a daily Zorro comic strip that ran from 1999-2001.

The horror themes of Zorro vs. Dracula foreshadowed a new Zorro comicbook series scheduled for release in 2018 and 2019 by American Mythology, coinciding with Zorro’s 100th Anniversary celebration. Zorro: Swords of Hell (2018) and Zorro: Sacrilege (2019) are tales with a supernatural bent, featuring demons, vampires, and paranormal evil. Swords of Hell is written by David Avallone, son of the late pulp writer Michael Avallone. The comic is illustrated by Roy Allan Martinez (House of M, Immortal Iron Fist) and colored by Enrica Angiolini (Warhammer 40,000, Eternal Thirst of Dracula).

John Gertz, President of Zorro Productions, Inc., stated in the

Previews World Catalog of Diamond Comics: “For decades we have utilized a fresh, innovative approach with top talent to enhance the Zorro universe of characters, the Zorro brand and franchise…. Our relationship with American Mythology is yet another example of our commitment to our fans and Zorro!”

Avallone said he’d been a big fan of Zorro since he was a kid, “when my father sat me down to watch one of his very favorite movies.”

Despite all of this attention to Zorro in other media, other than reprints of the original novel, McCulley’s stories remained largely overlooked. Zorro’s original print adventures were largely unknown by generations raised on his movies and comicbooks.

In 2016, Bold Venture Press remedied this problem by reprinting the stories in Zorro: The Complete Pulp Adventures. Each edition in the six-volume collection (available in hardcover and softcover) included supporting essays exploring Zorro’s history, and the original illustrations from the pulp magazines.

The essays, written by experts in their various fields, analyze Zorro’s California, discuss the many movies, review the breadth of Zorro’s exploits in the serials, explore decades of collectibles, and study the occasional oddities and even some bizarre, unusual twists Zorro’s path took him down.

After completing the original series, Bold Venture Press published Zorro and the Little Devil (2018), a new adventure novel

by New York Times best-selling author Peter David, best known for his Star Trek: The Next Generation novels. Publishers Weekly said the new novel “has captured the pulp spirit of Johnston McCculley’s originals,” with an “emphasis on action.”

Bold Venture Press’s 2019 plans include release of Tales of Zorro’s Old California, collecting other Johnston McCulley’s novels in the same era and location as those starring Zorro.

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Celebrating The First True Costumed Hero

Kindle and eBook versions of Zorro print books are about to be offered, and Zorro has online slots, digital coloring games, and adventure games. A new, updated version of Aristocrat’s long-running Zorro slot machine appeared on casino floors in Las Vegas in 2018 and has proven popular with players.

Zorro costumes surface every Halloween, and we have Virgil Evans (V.E.) Pyles it on good authority that several motion pictures and live-action TV series are in advanced stages of development, but exact details are still under wraps. Check Variety frequently to learn more about new updates.

Many different representations of Don Diego’s masked alter ego have appeared throughout the century. One element has remained consistent—the slashing “Z,” a trademark owned and protected by Zorro Productions. Given his enduring popularity, there’s no telling how many versions of Zorro will appear over the next century….

“Zorro Rides Again!”

Here’s the first page of the above-named story, published in four weekly issues of Argosy pulp magazine, beginning with the edition dated Oct. 3, 1931. Illustration by V.E. Pyles. [TM & © Zorro Productions, Inc.]

Audrey Parente & Rich Harvey The wife-and-husband, editorand-publisher team who wrote this article—and have re-presented Johnston McCulley’s original “Zorro” pulp adventures to the world in handsome new trade paperback editions from their Bold Venture Press. Seen at right is the cover (reproduced from Dell/ Western comics cover art) of Zorro: The Complete Pulp Adventures by Johnston McCulley, Vol. 1. Check ’em out at boldventurepress.com. Oh, and there are handsome new illos inside by Ed Coutts as well. [Art TM & © Zorro Productions, Inc.]

Edited

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53

“Squinkers”

Part IX Of Comics Writer JOHN BROOME’s 1998 Memoir

A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Although I’m pleased and proud to have been permitted, by his daughter Ricky Terry Brisacque, to serialize his “offbeat autobio” My Life in Little Pieces in the pages of Alter Ego (utilizing a Word document retyped by Brian K. Morris), I must admit that I wish John Broome had written more therein concerning his work in comicbooks and pulp magazines. Still, I find it fascinating to read all these pithy anecdotes about life in the U.S., France, and Japan from one of the most talented and important of DC’s Silver Age scripters—even more so because, between 1947 and 1951, he had also been one of the two major scribes of “Justice Society of America” stories. The flow of his book is a bit like what I’d have expected to hear if he and I and his editor/friend Julius Schwartz had gone out to dinner together during the 1998 San Diego Comic-Con that all three of us attended. And, in fact, in this installment, at least, John Broome finally tells what might be considered a couple of tales out of school about a trio of his former DC co-workers: writers David Vern [David V. Reed], France “Ed” Herron, and the aforementioned editor Schwartz.

S

PART THE SECOND

ome dubious encomiums that people have laid on me in the course of the years (but which I have chosen to regard as purely complimentary):

“You seem to believe that anything worth doing is worth overdoing.”

At Woodlands, an adult summer camp in the Catskills, long ago: the opinion of another, presently nameless male camper.

But did I really deserve this quasi-bouquet? I can’t see how. I was no drinker: weak stomach. And as for women, I didn’t begin to rank with someone like friend Dave Vern who in his forties already claimed to have accounted for 500 of the lasses, by actual body count. (… Saul has slain his thousands but David his ten thousands.) So in what way was I overdoing it? Sorry to say, it beats me now to offer an explanation, especially since the next remark seems to cancel out the first.

“You don’t seem to exert yourself the way other men do.”

This was Vern himself in one of his rare non-belittling personal sallies made to me about me. The only comment I can make at this ages-later date is that I certainly didn’t exert myself the way Vern did, although with equal certainty, I should have dearly liked to.

And now some critical items, probably much better deserved, plus several memorable expressions of ill will:

Squinks, Squinkers, & Scripts (Top left:) John Broome and his young daughter Ricky, on June 9, 1951, with his family’s boat that, according to the handwritten notation on it, had been christened The Squink. For the probable source of that name, see his mention of the term “squinker” in this installment of his reminiscences.

Thanks to Ricky Terry Brisacque.

(Above:) One of John’s most famous comicbook stories, which introduced his co-creation The Elongated Man, appeared in The Flash #112 (April-May 1960). Pencils by Carmine Infantino; inks by Joe Giella, under editor/friend Julius Schwartz. Thanks to Doug Martin. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“You’re cold. There’s no warmth in your writing. I’m a much better writer than you.”

France E. (Eddie) Herron, whose thigh was as big as my waist. We were both writing comics in the Fifties for Julie Schwartz (Herron after a stint as top comics editor for Fawcett). I had such a good in with DC editor Schwartz—who by the way, had started agenting science-fiction stories in the Forties to be soon baptized by writers like Ray Bradbury as the World’s First Interplanetary Agent—that I could travel abroad and send my stuff in and receive return checks by mail. This must have been a matter of some envy on the part of other “squinker” writers who had to stick close to the N.Y. market in order to sell. (“Squinker” was a term of the Fifties for

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Part IX Of John Broome’s 1998 Memoir

David V. Reed, a.k.a. David Vern Broome always referred to this writer as “David Vern,” though his real last name seems to have been Reed. Above detail from a 1945 banquet photo from the collection of the late Julius Schwartz, with special thanks to Todd Klein’s blog and to Will Murray.

(Above left:) As “David V. Reed,” he had authored various types of pulpmagazine stories, including science-fiction (“Moons of Death”) for Fantastic Adventures, Vol. 3, #3 (May 1941). Cover by Robert Fuqua, the pen name of prominent artist Joseph Wirt Tillotson; thanks to David Saunders for the ID. Also seen, at right, is a perhaps factual, perhaps fictitious “Introducing the Author” piece on Reed, courtesy of Sai Shankar.

(Below:) No scripter credit was given at the time for this well-known story from Batman #81 (Feb. 1954), but it was reportedly by Vern/Reed. The art says “Bob Kane,” but it was actually by Dick Sprang (pencils) & Charles Paris (inks).

Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.]

a comics story script. It may not be in use any more. However, in this connection, see the Vern story a bit further on.)

Hy Rosofsky, a dentist friend, in an argument where I thought I was trying to help him: “You’re arrogant!” Me: (always a quick igniter) “Yes, and it’s particularly apparent to those who have a good deal of arrogance themselves!”

Herman Slobin, a NYC civil engineer who retired and began repairing clocks and watches for people living around his rustic place in Wingdale, N.Y. I guess I must have seemed still young at almost fifty, for one day he showed up at my house and this is what he said: “Why shouldn’t you suffer like all the rest of us suffer?”

I always felt this was a kind of curse laid on me, and actually right after it, I began to get hit by many of the minor ills that up to 45 I’d been free of. Incidentally, it was at Slobin’s retreat that I saw that amazing device, a gravity-powered hydraulic ram. Ping … ping … ping it went in the little stream and water was spurted upward.

Jackson Miller, in Japan, a fellow English teacher, an American over seventy: “Your hair is kinky and rough. Mine is silky and smooth.”

He was right about that, but I still don’t know why he mentioned it. However, what I’m getting at is that within a relatively short time after making each of the above remarks, all four of the speakers had passed on to their reward, Herron on

“Squinkers”

55

Julius Schwartz (on left) is seen here with John Broome and artist Murphy Anderson (on right), in a photo that first appeared in the editor’s 2000 autobiography, Man of Two Worlds. Julie and John, as editor and writer, had often worked together, beginning in the 1940s; Schwartz often said that Broome was his “best writer, best friend, and best man at his wedding.” The photo was taken at the 1998 San Diego Comic-Con. (Right:) For Strange Adventures #38 (Nov. 1953), the above three produced another of their ongoing collaborations starring “Captain Comet,” the first super-hero officially called a “mutant.” Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

France (Ed) Herron In his memoir, John Broome spelled his name “Herren”—and his actual first name was often rendered in early comics histories as “Francis” or even “Frances.” The pic below of Herron in policeman garb—the only photo we’ve ever seen of him—is a detail from the photo-cover of DC’s Gangbusters #10 (June-July 1949). The entire cover was printed in A/E #155.

Thanks to P.C. Hamerlinck.

[TM & © DC Comics.]

(Left:) The Grand Comics Database credits Herron with scripting not only the very first Red Skull story (in Captain America Comics #1, 1941), but also this exploit from issue #19 (Oct. 1942)— though the vintage racial stereotype does no one any credit. Pencils by Al Avison; inks by Syd Shores. Repro’d from the hardcover Marvel Masterworks: Golden Age Captain America Comics, Vol. 5, which doesn’t credit Herron but says that Shores had help from George Klein. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Above right:) On John Broome’s boat it’s “Squink”—in this memoir Herron uses the term “squinker”: both were apparently at one time slang, at least around DC Comics, for comicbook scripts. In the 1975 The Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Vol. 3, edited

by Jerry Bails & Hames Ware, this “quotable quote” from retired Superman editor Mort Weisinger (though identified only by initials) uses the plural term “squinkas.” Whatever the spelling, it was a basically derisive expression. But A/E’s editor would dare to suggest that anybody who thought Otto Binder’s scripts for the 1940s-50s Fawcett “Captain Marvel” were inferior to the potboiler science-fiction he produced after he returned to so-called “real writing” was probably a snob who disparaged comics primarily because they combined words and pictures and were aimed at younger readers.

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Part IX Of John Broome’s 1998 Memoir

the operating table after a life of heavy drinking, Rosofsky of a heart attack, Slobin of cancer, Miller of complications following an operation for a stomach ulcer. Is it any wonder that I began to have an uncanny and uneasy feeling that I had somehow been involved in these deaths?

Echeverria’s Roastbeef There’s a saying about Basque men not taking advantage of a drunken woman. Maybe it’s not true of all Basques, but Raoul Echeverria was really that sort of man. He was a six-two, two-hundred-pounder, married to a slip of a woman much younger than himself whom he obviously worshipped. Despite his bulk, Raoul fitted neatly around her little finger. Consequently, it was no surprise that Mrs. Echeverria’s ninety-year-old father should be accommodated into their cramped living space. Raoul was a professional photographer occupying a narrow railroad flat that also served as his studio in West 51st Street, Manhattan, in the tenement building where I had a pad in the basement and was trying my wings as an artist.

To be sure, Raoul had been other things in his long life, including a World War I allied aviator, shooting pistols at the goggled enemy when out of machinegun ammunition. I’d heard this tale before, but hearing it from Raoul, and listening to his so hearty laugh as he reminisced, gave it a freshly convincing impact.

As for Raoul’s father-in-law, the old chap, I learned, could

The WHO’S WHO of American Comic Books 1928-1999 Online Edition Created by Jerry G. Bails FREE – online searchable database – FREE www.bailsprojects.com – No password required

at his very advanced age eat only gruel. But in order to manage even that, he had to have a whole roast beef, a whole leg of beef including the thigh bone, on the table before him as inspiration since he never touched it. Raoul was his usual jovial self as he described this nightly dinner table scene, but still it presented a pathetic vignette, the shrunken-down Englishman, all his vigor gone, eyeing the huge mass of red meat which all his life he’d savored but now could look at only reproachfully as he spooned down his dank and tasteless porridge. Would the years inevitably bring us all to such a pass? It was hardly a pleasing prospect.

Anyway, they didn’t bring Raoul there. Just about two years after I’d first met him, we were all in the tenement, startled and saddened by the news of his sudden death. On his way, one day, to the overstocked giant refrigerator that dwarfed all else in his tiny kitchen, he was stricken and found hours later by his wife, stretched to his full length on the linoleum that she kept so spotless.

Thus ended my brief acquaintance with this fine man. If he’d been a mean sort, I’m sure he would have lived longer. But though gone, Raoul would not be forgotten in one household at least, for he had assured himself a permanent place in the lexicon of the Broomes’ marital life. If at a party, wife Peggy should catch me making a perfect fool of myself over a young thing one-third my age, l have only to murmur afterward, “Echeverria’s roastbeef!” to win from my spouse a small but warmhearted smile of forgiveness.

John Broome’s memoirs will continue next issue—with more about “squinkers.”

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The Mad Hatter throws more than a tea party in this panel from issue #2 (Oct.-Nov. 1946) of his short-lived O.W. title. Script by William Woolfolk; art by Mort Leav. Thanks to Comic Book Plus website. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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(Above:) Thunderbolt and friends from the 1974 Charlton Portfolio (aka CPL #9-10). And say, is that Pete at the bottom, snoozing after a long deadline? [©2018 the Morisi Estate]

(Above:) Louise and Pete Morisi in 1962. From Charlton Spotlight #8. Photo thanks to Val and Russ Morisi. [©2018 the Morisi Estate]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

The PAM Papers - Part 4

Birth Of A Hero!

by Michael T. Gilbert

I

n the gossip-starved early ’60s, Golden and Silver Age fans rarely got to peek behind the scenes as a new comicbook hero was born. But, in 1964, Glen Johnson got a lucky break. While searching for juicy comicbook scoops for The Comic Reader (an early newszine he was editing), Glen struck up a correspondence with Charlton mainstay Pete Morisi (PAM)—a correspondence that would span forty years! They became friends, and in the course of their letter-exchange, Pete began dropping hints of a new action hero he was working up—a hero eventually revealed to be Peter Cannon…

Thunderbolt. For those who came in late, Tibetan monks raised Peter Cannon after his parents died, and taught him to control mind and body to a superhuman degree.

Glen’s letters to PAM are presumed lost, but luckily the young fan saved Pete’s voluminous correspondence. With Glen’s permission, we’re sharing some of those letters for the first time, edited for space and clarity (while making sure not to alter the content). We’ve also

added some “Comic Crypt” commentary following each letter to further explain some points. (We’ve left quotation marks, underlining, etc., pretty much as Morisi indicated them in his missives.)

Let’s start with Pete’s self-critical overview of his career… and the first mention of a future Charlton hero!

The Letters (Undated, 1965) Dear Glen— You missed your calling.

You should have been a lawyer.

Let me try to answer your questions in the order you threw them at me. #1 I work for an outfit ‘outside’ of the comic field and they don’t want my name connected with those ‘cheap funny books’ in any way. (That’s their words—not mine.)

Pete A. Morisi in the U.S. Army, 1946. [© 2018 the Morisi Estate.]

#2 Joe Gill does quite a bit of writing for Charlton (I think the quantity of work he does prevents him from turning out better stuff). E.H. Hart, a former ‘Timely’ (now Marvel) man, who is some sort of ‘wheel’ in Charlton’s other stuff, does some good writing now and then. There are others, but the names escape me. #3 Sorry, sorry, Nightmare was published

by Ziff-Davis. The stories I mean were ‘Blood Ship’ and ‘The Corpse That Wouldn’t Stay Dead’ in the summer issue published in 1952. #4 Tuska and I shared a studio in NY, while he was working on the above stories, and others. We are friends, tho’ it’s been years since I’ve seen him. You probably know that he did ‘Scorchy Smith’ for awhile, then switched to ‘Buck Rogers’ and is still doing it.

In Tandem With Tuska At Timely PAM illustrated stories for Timely/Marvel’s Arizona Kid, such as “The Raiders of Balancing Rock” from issue #6 (Jan. 1952).

That issue also featured “The Avenger,” a tale drawn by PAM’s idol, George Tuska. It was one of the few times they shared a book. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc].

#5 All the strips you mentioned were ‘Tuska-done,’ a few Crimebusters, the Headline and Prize group, Pvt. Strong (I think with Mike Peppe inking), etc. #6 I did quite a few strips for quite a few outfits. I hesitate to mention

The PAM Papers—Part 4

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them, because, looking back, they were pretty bad, except for one or two, when the story was ‘right.’ But here goes— Timely (Marvel) –– All types, plus a few issues of a book called Arizona Kid. So-so stuff.

[Comic] Media (out of business) –– All types, plus five or six issue of Dynamite (That’s Johnny Dynamite, Private Eye…a take-off on Mike Hammer). So-so stuff.

Standard –– Love (Ugh!) stories.

Quality –– A girl cowboy strip called ‘Two-Gun Lil’ which I didn’t ink. Another ‘ugh.’

Harvey –– A whole batch of ‘fillers.’ So-so.

Toby Press ––Love stuff –– ugh!

Timely (again) –– All types and a lot of Stan Lee-written westerns (that I missed getting on the stands). Not too bad, I was getting there.

Dan Barry –– I inked a couple of months of ‘Flash Gordon,’ not bad, but can’t compare with Dan. Timely (again) –– Weird, Fantastic, etc. Eh! Lev Gleason –– Some crime stuff, plus Black Diamond Westerns. Eh! Charlton –– Billy the Kid, Lash LaRue, Masked Raider, Wyatt Earp, Kid Montana, and Gunmaster (poor stuff at first, good to great for a while, and fair towards the end).

That’s right, I said end…at least for a few months. Pat Masulli called and said that he had been ordered to drop titles due to the ‘slow’ comic season that comes up about this time, and due to the fact that I have ‘other stuff’ I said okay. This may be (as I said) for a few months, or permanent. (It’ll give me a chance to work on a costume thing I’ve been thinking about anyway!) #7 If I do go back with Charlton, I’m not too sure I’d want Blue Beetle! I would have wanted to build the strip up from the

“Rotten Tomatoes”—Morisi Style “Two-Gun Lil” from Quality’s Crack Western #78 (May 1952), penciled by Pete. His judgment of his Quality work at that time? “Ugh!”—end quote.

Script attributed to Robert Bernstein by the Grand Comics Database—but then, that website also incorrectly lists Morisi as inker.

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

beginning (writing and all)… but we’ll see. #8 It’s okay with me if you mention the strips that Tuska doesn’t do! #9 If Pat mentions my name, you can, too, but no TCR, please. #10 Dick Giordano’s a good artist, and will one day ‘come into his own.’ #11 The above should answer ‘if I’m doing Vulcan.’ #12 Keep on writing Pat. Maybe ‘George Tuska, the artist that draws Kid Montana,’ will wind up with Blue Beetle after all.

Sincerely, Pete

They Call Me Mr. Morisi!

Before he became a cop, Pete was happy to sign his full name, as he did in the bottom right-hand corner of Lev Gleason Publications’ Black Diamond Western #60 (Feb. 1956). [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

MTG: The “outfit ‘outside’ of the comic field” Pete mentioned was as a police officer, a job he took in the mid-1950s, while Pat Masulli was then the editor at Charlton Comics. PAM’s later comment, “It’ll give me a chance to work on a costume thing I’ve been thinking about anyway!,“ is a classic case of “burying the lead”! PAM then mentions his new project in a subsequent letter.

He also responds to an inquiry from Glen asking if he was planning to take over the Son of Vulcan super-hero comic.

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

(Undated, 1965) I’m not doing Vulcan—or anything—from Charlton right now.

The ‘costumed thing’ I mentioned is my own ‘baby’—character, story, and art.

MTG: It’s noteworthy that Pete came up with T-Bolt during a relative dry spell at Charlton, when he had the time to develop it.

Earlier in the previous letter, PAM again joked about his work being mistaken for George Tuska, a cartoonist whose style he emulated.

Dear Glen—

(Undated, 1965)

Pat Masulli called me recently, and sent out two ten-page Gunmaster scripts—which I penciled and inked for him. I also sent him some ideas and sketches for a new costumed strip. He likes it and will present it to his bosses sometime in April (they’re on vacation). If anything comes of it, I’ll let you know!

All my best, Pete

What? No Pictures?

The Comic Reader #40 (1965) revealed Glen’s scoop about T-Bolt—even if it had to be totally verbal. That was also the last issue edited by Glen. [Nukla TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Dear Glen—

(Undated, 1965)

My new character is all set up for at least one issue (comic sales of super and costumed characters will be evaluated then, and will determine if more issues will follow). I’m just starting to work on the first script now. I suggest you hold off on mentioning it for a while… I’ll let you know when, okay? Oh yeah, being that you didn’t ask me, I’ll tell you the strip’s name—it’s THUNDERBOLT! Sincerely, Pete

Dear Glen—

(Undated, 1965)

Your letter caught me at a bad time… in the middle of another ‘Gunmaster’ thing, so a quick sketch of my proposed new character will have to do. The colors are blue and red (split costume) with white boots and guns, plus bare legs! If it’s ever published, the character will have about 20 lb. more beef on him… Pat likes ‘em bulky!

Your ‘group comic’ idea is a good one, but I don’t think I’d like the assignment. The characters would have to be drawn in a similar style, as they are now… and that would be rough!

Together Again—Sort Of! In 2009, Pete’s stylistic influence, George Tuska, got a chance to draw PAM’s signature hero for Dynamite Entertainment’s Peter Cannon— Thunderbolt #1. George passed away later that year. [Peter Cannon TM & © the Morisi Estate].

As for Zip-a-tone, I don’t know. It’ll be hard enough writing, drawing, and trying to develop an interesting and workable character, without adding more problems... but we’ll see.

As for my name (again I know that it’s bound to leak out sooner or later... but I still can’t give an okay on it)—to any

The PAM Papers—Part 4

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fanzines... or publishers, for that matter.

Back to Gunmaster, Pete Morisi 105 Ave. X B’klyn, N.Y. MTG: Glen’s suggestion of a Charlton super-hero team-up book seems like a natural. However, it didn’t happen until 1986, when Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons produced their re-imagined version of the Charlton heroes for DC. I’m referring to The Watchmen, of course!

Dear Glen—

(Undated, 1965)

You can mention T-Bolt in your final TCR, and go out in a blaze of glory –– so to speak, okay? But please, don’t reveal the source, and don’t build it up too much—it may just wind up being a king-size bomb.

Prevues Of Coming Attractions PAM sent this early black-&-white Thunderbolt illustration to Glen D. Johnson in 1965, months before the character appeared in comics. At Charlton, the guns were dropped. First published in Charlton Spotlight #3 in 2004. [© the Morisi Estate.]

Thanks for being excited about Thunderbolt as I am. I hope I don’t let you down! Gotta rush, I’m really squeezed on this first Thunderbolt deadline!

Pete

Dear Glen—

(Undated, 1965)

I thought about a ‘no origin’ first issue of Thunderbolt, and probably would have done it that way, but as I mentioned before, the first issue may be the last one—so I couldn’t hold back too much!

Action Squad!

Charlton never published a team featuring the company’s main “Action Heroes,” but if they had it might have looked like this! Art taken from a vintage house ad for the heroes’ individual titles. [Peter Cannon TM & © the Morisi Estate; other heroes TM & © DC Comics.]

As for getting an issue before it goes on sale, Charlton has never been that generous… We’ll just have to wait! As for when it goes on sale—I don’t know… My deadline is July 10th, so it could be August or September!

I think I started in comics about 1948 or 1949, and if I remember correctly, Pat started about that time also! I guess you can mention that, but I don’t know who he worked for! As I said once before, he quickly decided to go into the business end

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

of things—which proved to be a good move! Speaking of Pat, he’s squeezed me into a corner and insists that I put a name on Thunderbolt (credit-wise) so, contrary to what I told you about my dislike for a phony name, I’ve got no choice! The name I’ll use is ‘PAM,’ my initials.

The Fantasy Illustrated mags you sent look very good—thank you—I guess I’d better watch my step… or I’ll be replaced!

Guess that’s it, now back to Thunderbolt!

Sincerely, Pete

Dear Glen—

(Undated, 1965)

Just a quickie note. Just got finished with Thunderbolt last night (2:00 AM) and thought I’d drop you a thank you note for the nice plug in TCR #39 July.

I had to rush the art on Thunderbolt #1, and am not too happy with it, but I feel that the story is good and solid, and should ‘carry’ the book. At least for this issue. (Oh yeah, Pat told me that there will be issue #3, so maybe I can improve on it.)

Truly, P. Morisi

Dear Glen—

(Undated, 1965)

Got your letter where you suggested that T-Bolt get himself a ‘girl he can’t have’ and inject ‘humor into the strip’ a la Stan Lee. I think that I’ll eventually get around to that, but for the first few issues I want to build character and story… the gimmicks will come later! As for T-Bolt’s costume colors, it’s red and blue with a black mask and V-neck. Legs are bare and boots are white or yellow! The guns have been removed (Pat’s suggestion) and the waist belt has a striped effect.

Yes, I still follow the artists of today, and I’ve got quite a few favorites—Crandall, Toth, Tuska, and Kirby are some of them, although I didn’t care one bit for the Kirby/Tuska combination!

George simply inked over layouts and the result, in my opinion, was blah! I still consider Lou Fine just about the best artist that ever hit this business and his stuff in the early 40s is still better than anything around today! The guy is simply great!

Applying A Hammer To Make Dynamite Pete cut his writing chops on Comic Media’s Mike Hammer knockoff, Johnny Dynamite. This splash page is from issue #9 (Sept. 1954). Later in his career, PAM attempted to develop another detective hero, Pete Savage… for Hire. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Saw some of the Russ Manning Magnus books, and as I mentioned once before, he is good… I think his ‘girls’ are extra-well done!

Guess that’s it. Have a nice vacation— Pete Morisi MTG: I’m thankful that Pete wasn’t interested in copying the Stan Lee Marvel formula, as Glen suggested. The Archie super-hero line that came out in 1965 did just that, with embarrassing results. As a teenager I appreciated PAM’s thoughtful, understated approach. My opinion hasn’t changed.

That wraps it up for this issue. Next time, expect something very special—an Alter Ego cover story on Morisi, featuring 30 pages of PAM papers, plus an overview of Pete’s career. All that and a very personal reminisce of Pete and his wife Louise, by PAM’s son Val Morisi.

Our thanks to Glen D. Johnson and the Morisi family. For further reading on Pete Morisi, I highly recommend Mike Ambrose’s Charlton Spotlight #8 and Jon B. Cooke’s Comic Book Artist #9 & 12.

Till next time…

Copping A Plea When Pete became a full-time cop in 1956, he had to cut back on his comicbook work. Stan Lee took it gracefully when Pete left Marvel.

JIM WARREN’s Code-Free Comicbooks

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Comic Fandom Archive

How I Became A Fan Of Warren Publishing & Wrote A Biography Of Its Fascinating Founder

by Bill Schelly

I

didn’t discover EC comics until I joined comic fandom in mid-1964. I was never fortunate enough to run across any of them in the stacks of comics at friends’ houses, and certainly not at our church bazaars. It was in the pages of G.B. Love’s adzine Rocket’s Blast-Comicollector that I encountered strange comicbook titles like Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, and Weird Science.

“What are these?” I wondered.

James Warren in earlier days, at left—and, at right, a (more or less) contemporary shot, courtesy of Jamie Colville.

Gradually I came to understand there had been a wild and woolly line of comics published before the Comics Code came along in the mid-1950s. Then my comic-collecting buddy Richard Shields, who always had plenty of spending money (he had a paper route), ordered a bunch of ECs from a mail order dealer, and I got to read some of them. I instantly loved them, both the stories and the art, and bemoaned my fate, being born too late to buy ECs off the stands, and not having enough spending money to collect them in 1964.

Imagine my surprise when, in January 1965 (a month before I published my first fanzine), I noticed a copy of something called Creepy (#2) on the magazine rack at a local drug store in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The painted cover was highly dramatic, although unusually dark for that era. Browsing through it, I quickly realized that many of the artists had drawn those

Jeepers, Creepy!

Bill Schelly reports that the first issue he saw of Warren’s Creepy was #2, which featured the excellent “Wardrobe of Monsters” by Otto Binder and Gray Morrow, behind a Frank Frazetta cover.

Pretty much the entire runs of the Warren black-&-white comics Creepy and Eerie have been reprinted by New Comic Company, LLC. [TM & © New Comic Company, LLC.]

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every Saturday night, I’d been following Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine in 1963 and 1964, but Creepy was something entirely different from that title, even if it was from the same publisher.

The art was nothing short of spectacular.

In certain ways, the work of such top talents as Angelo Torres, Al Williamson, Joe Orlando, and Reed Crandall looked even better than it did in the EC comics. The pages were larger than a standard comicbook, and the monochromatic art wasn’t in any way obscured by the relatively crude coloring of mainstream comics. In addition, it sported a cover by Frank Frazetta, possibly the first piece of fantasy art by the great artist that my young eyes had beheld.

“What a great magazine!” I thought.

Name Us Famous Famous Monsters of Filmland #9 and 12, with cover paintings by Basil Gogos.

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

Except for the price. Not that it didn’t seem worth 35 cents. It was just that I received a rather small allowance, and I didn’t have 35 cents in my pocket. Therefore, I had to leave the magazine on the shelf (carefully tucked behind some other magazines) and figure out a way to get my hands on some money that night. Suffice it to say that I

great EC comics of the past. (Somehow, I had missed Creepy #1 the prior November, and hadn’t yet seen the Tales from the Crypt paperback book that had come out in late December.) “What this,” I thought. “A new EC?” Not quite. In fact, the stories in Creepy were different from those of EC. They were more geared toward classical Universal monsters, and with somewhat less emphasis on surprise endings.

A young writer named Archie Goodwin wrote most of the stories.

They were basic, highly effective horror tales that managed to sidestep the Comics Code because they appeared in a black-&-white magazine.

Because I loved watching the old Universal horror films like Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man on our local Chiller Theater TV show

On The Eerie Canal With Eerie #2 (March 1966)—the first issue having been an “ashcan” edition published solely to secure title trademark—Warren introduced a companion to Creepy. In Eerie #3, Steve Ditko made his debut in its pages with “Room with a View,” a fine story written by Archie Goodwin. Covers by Frazetta. [TM & © New Comic Company, LLC.]

Jim Warren’s Code-Free Comicbook

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did acquire the additional lucre and was back at the drug store the following day to buy my copy. Lucky I reacted so quickly, because all the other copies were gone. (Later, I saw that you could order back issues through the mail.)

Just as Giant Superman Annual #1 began my love affair with DC’s comics, and Amazing Spider-Man #7 (Sept. 1963) began my Marvel madness, Creepy #2 began my fervor for Warren Publications’ comicbooks. Creepy was soon joined by Eerie, which was equally good, and through 1965, 1966, and much of 1967, I found the money to buy every issue, even when the price went to 40 cents in the spring of 1967.

Creepy and Eerie (and the war title Blazing Combat) were “the place to be” for many of the finest artists in comics. In addition to those already mentioned, I marveled at spectacular work by such talents as Gene Colan, Gray Morrow, John Severin, Steve Ditko, Alex Toth, and many others. Archie Goodwin, who ascended to editor of the books as of Creepy #4, later said he wrote stories to cater to the artists’ individual talents, and it showed. Each issue was a feast for the eyes, and each sported another jaw-dropping cover by Frazetta. These early issues were what I came to think of as the Golden Age of Warren comics magazines. They really couldn’t have been better!

Then something happened to them, what we now call the “Warren downturn.” Market forces, including a softening of the monster craze and the rise of the Batman TV show the prior year, forced the publisher to tighten his belt. Cost-cutting resulted in late payments to the writers and artists, reprinted stories, and new work that was less appealing. Uncomfortable with the situation, editor Archie Goodwin left, and so did most of the artists who had helped make the “Goodwin era” great. No more new Ditko, Williamson, et al. The Frazetta covers also stopped. It didn’t take me long to drop out of Creepy and Eerie.

As a result, I wasn’t paying attention when the Warren magazines began showing signs of new life. Vampirella didn’t do anything for me, and I wasn’t immediately a fan of the art by Tom Sutton and a few promising artists who began showing up in the early 1970s. I was wrapped up with reading Our Army at War, Swamp Thing, and Conan the Barbarian. As far as I was concerned, the Warren mags were a lost cause.

I didn’t pay much attention to Warren books until he launched The Spirit magazine. I heard about the Warren revival early, because I had contacted Will Eisner in early 1973 about writing his biography. He told me there would probably be biographical pieces in a new Spirit magazine that he was editing for Jim Warren. When I attended the 1973 New York Comic Art Convention, I couldn’t miss the large Spirit poster on the wall behind the Warren booth in the dealer room.

Like a lot of my peers, I had become a fan of Eisner’s dominomasked detective upon reading the two 25¢ Harvey reprint comics in 1966 and 1967. Then, in 1972, I published a two-part article on Eisner’s career in my fanzine Sense of Wonder (#11 and #12); these were, I believe, the first attempts to chronicle his entire career in comics rather than just The Spirit.

Warren’s The Spirit magazine was a thing of beauty. True, Eisner re-worked some of the title pages, making them more appropriate to comicbook form, but he did a wonderful job with this. The black-&-white printing, with gray tones, was a monochromatic marvel. I began buying them and gloried in them.

At the same time, I sampled some of the issues of Creepy and Eerie published in 1974.

Rising Spirit With The Spirit #1 (April 1974), Bill became interested in the Warren magazines again, after having dropped them in 1967 after Goodwin departed as editor. Cover painting by Basil Gogos, based on a 1950 Will Eisner Spirit splash. [TM & © Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

Unfortunately, my “return to Warren” ended abruptly when I walked away from fandom and comicbooks after graduating from college and moved to Seattle in the fall of 1974. Hence, I missed all the good things in comics that were published from mid-1974 to 1986. That’s when I began buying comics again (and even opened a comicbook store). One of the good things during my “hiatus” was a major upswing in the quality of Warren’s comicbooks. If the “Goodwin era” was their Golden Age, then, I later discovered, the “Louise Jones era” was their Silver Age.

The Silver Age Of Warren When, after my return to fandom, I began investigating the contents of the Warren mags, it didn’t take me long to realize that there had been a major turnaround in the quality of the stories.

Indeed, when Bill DuBay became editor in 1973, there was a whole new flowering of the line.

One of those changes involved the influx of a new slate of artists from the Spanish art agency Selecciones Illustradas.

Artists such as José Gonzalez, José Ortiz, and others had a major effect on the appearance of Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella.

Bill Dubay Warren editor, 1973-75.

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All Cats Are Black In The (Wrightson) Dark Bernie Wrightson began a memorable run of stories for Warren with his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat” in Creepy #62 (May 1974).

[TM & © New Comic Company, LLC.]

This period also saw the rise of the great Bernie Wrightson in their pages, starting with his self-penned “The Black Cat” adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story. With added income from foreign sales, Warren was able to raise his rates ($100 a page and higher), thus bringing former stars such as John Severin, Reed Crandall, and Alex Toth back to the fold. DuBay jettisoned most of the past writers, and brought in names that would become familiar to readers of the mid-1970s: Budd Lewis, Rich Margopoulos, Gerry Boudreau, and Kevin Pagan. Only Doug Moench and Steve Skeates stayed on.

While DuBay launched the resurgence, the Silver Age of Warren wasn’t fully in place until a brand new editor had taken the helm: Louise Jones (now Simonson). By the end of 1975, DuBay was burned out, so he left and his assistant was promoted to full editor. Soon the magazines improved even more. While writer Bruce Jones had sold a script to DuBay in 1974 (“Jenifer!,” drawn

by Bernie Wrightson), he really came into his own under Jones’

Louise Jones succeeded Bill DuBay as editor in 1976.

She is now Louise Simonson, wife of artist Walter Simonson. Photo courtesy of Louise Simonson.

editorship, producing many fine, genuinely frightening stories. Four appeared in Creepy #83 (October 1976), arguably the finest single issue of any Warren comic since the early Goodwin period. Jones’ stories in that issue were drawn by some of the top artists in the business: Russ Heath, Al Williamson, Richard Corben, and Carmine Infantino. Perhaps the finest was the excellent “Process of Elimination,” a tale of a man who kills his own family because he knows a nuclear bomb will be exploded nearby and wants to save them from suffering. But then, “In Deep” by Bruce Jones and Richard Corben (in full color) was also a Creepy classic. Bill DuBay (who still freelanced for Warren) contributed two fine scripts to that issue, which were drawn by John Severin and José Ortiz, respectively. It’s an essential issue for any fan of Warren’s magazines.

This great period was not to last. Jones had fended off job offers from other publishers, but in late 1979, as she passed her fifth anniversary with Warren, she was ready for a new challenge. Jim Shooter, the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, asked her to lunch and offered her a job. She accepted. Warren implored DuBay to return as editor, at least long enough to train someone to take over the job. DuBay agreed, but his heart wasn’t in it. The great era was not destined to last into the 1980s, but that’s another story— one that I tell in, I hope, satisfying detail in my book on Mister Monster himself, James Warren.

All Good Things…

The last issues of the Warren comics mags: Creepy #145, Eerie #139, and Vampirella #112, all published for December 1982. Creepy had lasted 18 years. Respective covers by Jose Mirelles, Kelly Freas, & Martin Hoffman with Enrich inks. [Creepy & Eerie covers TM & © New Comics Company, LLC; Vampirella cover TM & © Dynamite Entertainment.]

Jim Warren’s Code-Free Comicbook

The Best Single Warren Issue?

Some readers, Bill Schelly included, find it hard not to feel that Creepy #83 (Oct. 1976)—edited by Louise (Weezie) Jones—is the finest single issue of any of the Warren comics magazines, with its Frank Frazetta cover and this trio of Bruce Jones-scripted stories, as drawn by Al Williamson, Rich Corben, and Russ Heath, respectively. [TM & © New Comics Company, LLD.]

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Comic Fandom Archive

Writing About James Warren The story behind my decision to write a biography of Warren begins back in 2014, when I interviewed him for my book Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad. I called him to see if he would talk about publishing Kurtzman’s Help! magazine, and was surprised that he picked up the phone on my first attempt.

Warren was affability itself as he fielded questions about meeting Kurtzman, starting Help! magazine, and some of the difficulties that eventually led to his deteriorating relationship with Harvey. After our talk, he sent me a magazine with an interview he had done, and a nice letter. Therefore, as I considered topics for a book to follow my memoir Sense of Wonder, My Life in Comic Fandom, the idea of a Warren biography arose.

Knowing phone conversations were difficult for him, given his poor hearing, I proposed the idea in a letter. Would he be willing to work with me on a Warren biography?

Unfortunately, he wasn’t. By return mail, he politely explained that he wouldn’t work on such a book with me since he was writing his own memoir.

I mulled this over. I had heard that such a memoir was “in the works” for a long time, and while I was eager to read it, I realized that this wouldn’t negate my doing a biography. His book would be from the inside-out, and a biography would be from the outside-in.

Biographies were often written without the cooperation of the subject, such as I had done with my Otto Binder book, written 25-plus years after that writer’s passing. The more crucial question was whether I could gain access to enough new information— new or unpublished interviews, correspondence, etc.—to write a worthwhile book, which would offer new material to longtime Warren readers and fans.

As it turned out, I was able to find such material, such as the complete story on the origin of Famous Monsters and Creepy, and I went ahead to write a biography titled James Warren: Empire of Monsters, which was recently published by Fantagraphics Books.

(I would have dropped the project if this new stuff hadn’t been found.) It was a challenge but I enjoyed working on it, because I learned so much more about Warren in the process of researching and writing it over the past two years. The acknowledgements in that book are, I think, a testament to the large array of material that I was able to unearth. (The cover of my Warren biography, designed

by Keeli McCarthy, can be seen on the facing page.)

In case you’re wondering, I did respond to Warren’s letter, in which he had told me he wouldn’t cooperate with my work on a biography of him. I told him I was sorry to hear that, and hoped he would change his mind. (He didn’t.) However, I was going to go ahead and write it anyway.

It would have been great to have had his participation, but I subsequently discovered that I would have it to a great degree anyway, in the form of three long, previously unpublished Warren interviews that were made available to me. And, the book would have little or no mythologizing. (There are quite a few humorous anecdotes.) It would be, as best as I was able to accomplish, the truth—no exaggerations or grandiosity. I ended up with much more information than I could use, and am proud of the book.

Is it without error? I’m sure it isn’t—because no book of this

Help! From Warren James Warren granted Bill Schelly an interview about his publishing Help! magazine for Bill’s biography of its editor, the great Harvey Kurtzman.

Help! #1 came out in mid-1960; Kurtzman and Elder’s “Goodman Beaver” character debuted somewhat later. [Goodman Beaver TM & © Estates of Harvey Kurtzman and Bill Elder; cover TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

sort can be perfect. Much as I’ve tried to eliminate errors in each of my books as I prepared them for the printer, some things manage to defy the eyes of multiple proofreaders and my own attempts to check and double-check. That’s just inevitable. I trust the errors will be minor. Because Jim Warren deserves a book that’s as accurate and error-free as possible.

An AUDIOBOOK of Sense of Wonder, My Life in Comic Fandom—The Whole Story is now on sale. It’s read by Derek Botten who did an excellent job. I wish it had been available earlier, but am excited that it’s finally come out. Admittedly, it’s a little odd listening to (rather than reading) the story of my life in fandom. The audiobook form brings a whole new dimension to the narrative. It’s available for download for $19.95 at Northatlanticbooks.com, and also at Amazon.com. Great for listening in your car during traffic jams (or anywhere else).

Next issue: I’m trying decide between a number of interesting ideas for upcoming issues, so the next CFA column will have to be a surprise.

Meanwhile, you can get in touch with me at: hamstrpres@aol.com.

And be sure to pick up copies of my other recent books from Pulp Hero Press: Founders of Comic Fandom (second printing), and Bill Schelly Interviews the Founders of Comic Fandom, Vols. 1 and 2. The second one has what I think is one of the most interesting interviews Roy Thomas has given. ’Nuff said!

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Release date: Mar. 20, 2019

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In Memoriam

RUSS HEATH

(1926-2018) “One Of The Most Talented Artists In The Industry”

R

by Bryan D. Stroud uss Heath, one of the most talented artists in the industry, passed away August 23, 2018, at the age of 91.

He left behind an impressive body of work from his decades-long life, providing illustrations for offerings from Timely/ Marvel, Warren, St. John, and perhaps most famously the line of DC war books such as All American Men of War, Our Army at War, and G.I. Combat, where he co-created the feature “The Haunted Tank” with writer Robert Kanigher.

Known for his attention to detail, meticulous research, and painstaking renderings of equipment, Russ’ photo-realistic drawings were a mainstay that never failed to impress both his editors and his fans. But he also had success in other areas, including satirical art for Mad (in both its comicbook and magazine incarnations) and The National Lampoon, as well as working for a time with Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder on the “Little Annie Fanny” feature for Playboy.

Russ Heath in a fairly recent photo, juxtaposed with his splash for a “Sgt. Rock” story in Our Army at War #259 (Aug. 1973; script by Robert Kanigher)—and that famous toy “Roman soldiers” ad that was reprinted many times beginning in the 1950s. Thanks to Bryan Stroud for the photo and ad, and to Bob Bailey for the OAW scan. See A/E #40 for a Heath interview. [DC page TM & © DC Comics; ad TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

One of his best-known works was the seemingly ubiquitous advertisement, seen on multiple comicbook back covers over many years, for toy Roman soldiers. He often said that if he had been paid a royalty every time that single drawing had appeared, he’d have been rich.

His talent for drawing Western stories helped land a syndicated newspaper strip featuring The Lone Ranger in 1981, with scripting by Cary Bates.

Finally, Russ headed to California and worked on animated features for several studios before going into retirement, but still doing the occasional commission.

A recipient of a San Diego Comic-Con Inkpot Award in 1997, he was also recognized through induction to the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2009, and a Milton Caniff Award in 2014.

In a 2007 interview, when asked how he hoped to be remembered, he shared the following: “It’s great to be known for where you’re trying to do something that is meaningful and somebody realizes it. That’s always nice. That beats the boredom of just turning it out and turning it in. Especially now that I’m too old to marry rich. [chuckles]”

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In Memoriam

MARIE SEVERIN (1929-2018) “Creative Versatility”

by Dan Friedman

Mirthful Marie Severin at EC Comics in 1952—and her cover for Tales to Astonish #99 (Jan. 1968), as inked by Dan Adkins.

Photo found on Internet by Mike Mikulovsky.

[Cover TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

O

n August 29th, 2018, the world lost legendary comicbook artist Marie Anita Severin, from the complications of a hemorrhagic stroke she suffered just days after her 89th birthday.

By age three, Marie was already asking her mother, Marguerite, for chalk so she could draw hopscotch boards and artworks on the streets of Brooklyn. Her father, John, was quick to recognize her precocious talent, and by the time she was in elementary school she was sitting at the kitchen table drawing pictures for her family’s enjoyment. Marie thought this was routine in every American home.

Around the same time, she began reading action comicbooks.

She attended the all-girls Bishop McDonnell Memorial Parochial High School, where her teachers, recognizing her artistic abilities, soon recruited her to illustrate posters and the set designs for the school’s theatrical productions.

Marie’s introduction to the comicbook industry began seven decades ago when her older brother, famed penciler John Severin, asked her to be his personal colorist at EC Comics. Her superb work on her brother’s military tales caught the attention of editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher Bill Gaines. Soon she was coloring most of EC’s titles. Her natural gifts for coloring and shading was such that the talented men who worked there regarded her as a colleague. Her fearlessness and self-confidence paved the way for other women to enter the comics field.

When EC took an economic hit from the harsh regulations of the Comics Code Authority, Marie moved over to Timely Comics, coloring for editor Stan Lee. When Timely collapsed in the late 1950s, Marie went to work for the Federal Reserve, where she came up with The Story of Checks, a comic detailing the workings of ABA routing numbers. Later, she moved to Filmfax, where she supervised and illustrated projects that mainly focused on mythology.

Eventually, she was able to return to her first love, following her brother back to Timely, now Marvel Comics. There she thrilled readers’ imaginations for more than 40 years. Her eye-catching covers and her uncanny ability to imbue her illustrations with

motion made her a fan favorite. Her drawings elicited the brute power and anger of the Hulk, captured the essence of Dr. Strange’s weird worlds, and allowed readers to appreciate the egotistical nature of the Sub-Mariner. Her witty, yet biting, sense of humor permeated the pages of Marvel’s satirical Crazy and its self-lampooning Not Brand Echh.

“Creative versatility” are the best words to describe Marie Severin. Her ability at inking, penciling, coloring, lettering, creating layouts, and duplicating other artists’ styles made it easy for her to make corrections to panels as needed. Her sense of humor and her quick in-office sketches of her co-workers were the stuff of legends.

One of the best-known anecdotes about her involved iconic artist Jack Kirby’s half-smoked cigar, which she pinned on her wall after he quit Marvel in 1970. Her caption read: “Kirby was here.”

It was Marie Severin who introduced readers to the evil Doctor

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In Memoriam

A Kid Sister Gets Into The Act Marie with Dan Friedman in 2017—juxtaposed with some parody work of which she was especially proud (“Tarz an’ the Apes” from Spoof #2, Nov. 1972), primarily because it was inked by her brother John. She and writer Roy Thomas designed it to be a sequel to the two Tarzan lampoons by John and writer/editor Harvey Kurtzman that had appeared in early color-comics issues of Mad. Photo courtesy of Dan Friedman. Thanks to Michael Grabois & the Diversions of a Groovy Kind blog for the art scan. [“Tarz” page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Bong, Kull the Conqueror, Spider-Woman, and The Living Tribunal.

A woman of innate grace and substance, she was never too busy to talk with fans. At comics conventions, she steadfastly refused to charge attendees for her autograph, and if she was shown an impressive portfolio by a fledgling artist, she took it upon herself to arrange an interview for them at Marvel.

In 1998, Marie received the Comic-Con International’s Inkpot Award, and in 2001 she was inducted into the Will Eisner Comics Industry Hall of Fame. In 2017, she was awarded the Comic-Con International’s Icon Award, which placed her in the pantheon of entertainment luminaries like Stan Lee, George Lucas, Ray Bradbury, Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, and June Foray.

During the course of her long and fruitful career, Marie was singled out by her peers for her unique artistry. In 1974 she received the Shazam Award (from the professionals’ Academy of Comic Book Arts) for her prowess as a penciler; and just a year later, she was nominated for Shazams in two entirely different categories, inking and coloring.

Marie Severin’s genius and influence will be an indelible part of comicbook culture forever. May she rest in peace.

As a tribute to her phenomenal intellect and adaptability, she became a bulwark of Marvel’s Special Projects Division in 1980s, designing toy statues and coloring books. In 1985, she illustrated the Fraggle Rock and Muppet Babies comics for Marvel’s newly formed Star Comics division.

Daniel Friedman is a pediatrician and assistant clinical professor at the Northwell-Hofstra University Medical School. He is the co-author of The Strange Case of Dr. Doyle and is a singer/songwriter/bass guitarist for the Friedman Brothers Band. He is grateful to have counted Marie Severin as one of his favorite longtime friends.

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In Memoriam

GARY FRIEDRICH (1943-2018) “He Will Be Remembered

By The Comics World” A Personal Tribute by Roy Thomas

G

ary Friedrich was the best friend I ever had.

He was also, of course, the man who wrote numerous comics stories for Charlton, Skywald, Atlas/Seaboard, Topps, and especially Marvel Comics between 1966 and 1993. Along the way, he co-created “Tiffany Sinn” for Charlton and “Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders” for Marvel… “Son of Dracula” for Atlas/Seaboard and “Son of Satan” for Marvel… “Hell Rider” for Skywald, and the motorcycle-riding “Ghost Rider” for Marvel.

Born on August 21, 1943, he grew up in Jackson, Missouri, ten miles from the Mississippi River. He and I met when he came to work at the Palace Theatre, and we quickly became friends despite the several years’ age difference. In the early 1960s he

formed a small rock’n’roll band and invited me to become the vocalist; that gig lasted a year or two. In 1964 he became the editor of the local twice-weekly newspaper.

Groovy Gary (his official Marvel nickname)—and the splash page of the very first tale of “Ghost Rider,” the supernatural motorcyclist, in Marvel Spotlight #5 (Aug. 1972). Thanks to Barry Pearl for the scan; the photo appeared in the 1969 Fantastic Four Annual.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

In late 1965, I suggested he join me in Manhattan, where he soon began writing stories for editor Dick Giordano at Charlton, specializing in romance comics with audacious titles (“Born in the Boondocks,” “Too Fat to Frug,” “Tears in My Malted,” et al.) but also dialoguing Steve Ditko’s revived “Blue Beetle.”

Before long, he was on staff at Marvel, scripting stories, initially Westerns (including the cowboy Ghost Rider) and war comics (Sgt. Fury, Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders, Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen), but also Captain America, Daredevil, Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Captain Marvel, The Incredible Hulk, et al. He and I pitched the initial concept for the spoof comic Not Brand Echh to Stan Lee… and Gary and artist Herb Trimpe together created the (sadly) one-shot World War I feature “Phantom Eagle.”

Leaving his staff job to live for a time in Nevada (he was briefly a blackjack dealer in Reno) and Hollywood, he eventually returned to New York and wrote comics for Skywald, Atlas/Seaboard—and Marvel again, for whom he faithfully adapted Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, co-created the “Son of Satan,” and had the initial idea of a motorcycle-riding hero/villain appropriating the name “Ghost Rider.” He and I and perhaps artist Mike Ploog had some minor disputes about certain details of the latter’s development, but there was never any question that the main force behind the character was Gary, who in 2007 would sue Marvel over the hero after the motion picture rights were sold; the suit was eventually settled.

Unfortunately, as he was later the first to admit, Gary had become an alcoholic in his youth, which eventually led to problems with Marvel. Eventually, however, after moving back to Missouri, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and became a leading light in the organization locally. There he wed his fifth wife, Jean—the right marriage at last, and the one that endured for many years, to the end of his life. He spent several years as a driver/courier of medical materials in the St. Louis area. Some years ago, however, he contracted Parkinson’s disease, which, combined with his extreme

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In Memoriam

“Tryin’ To Catch The Devil’s Herd” Gary with the Bill Finger Award he won in 2010 (an award given to writers whose work is deemed to have received insufficient recognition during their careers)—and the splash page for his pre-“Ghost Rider” motorcycle hero from Skywald Publishing’s Hell Rider #1 (July-Aug. 1971), with pencils by Ross Andru & inks by Mike Esposito. Thanks to Scott Rowland for the photo, and to Jim Kealy for the art scan.

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

taken to the hospital… and he passed away even before I could book a flight over to see him.

But maybe we’d said all we had to say that day two years earlier. And over the course of more than half a century prior to that.

Ironically, Gary passed away the same day as artist Marie Severin, with whom he had worked on Not Brand Echh and Incredible Hulk, and with whom he’d shared an office for a time in the 1960s.

Matter of fact, the two of them even shared the same birthday.

loss of hearing, made it difficult for him to communicate with people by phone or even e-mail.

I last saw him in 2016, when I had flown down to Missouri for my mother’s funeral. I stopped by his home south of St. Louis, and we had an enjoyable visit for the larger part of an hour. Despite his near-deafness, we managed to talk about the Palace Theatre and cruising around late at night in the Missouri hinterlands and Stan Lee and our rock’n’roll band and 1001 other things. I left, looking forward to the next time we could get together. But it was not to be. In late August of 2018, just after his 75th birthday, he had to be

In the end, the accomplishments of which Gary was most proud were connected to his later work with AA. But he will be remembered by the comics world as well… every time a flamehaired, skull-headed, black-leathered motorcyclist (or even muscle-car driver) smashes his grinning way out of a comicbook cover…!

Although Gary and I were never able to work out a good way for me or anyone else to talk to him for Alter Ego in his later years, he was excellently interviewed by Jon B. Cooke for TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Artist #13 in 2001. It is planned that, sometime in the next year or two, an issue of A/E will be dedicated to Gary and his work, and I look forward to greatly expanding on the above notes at that time. For a guy I rarely got a chance to see or even talk to during the last couple of decades of our overlapping lives on Earth, I miss him more than I can say.

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on “The Owl” to be understated and exciting. And by golly, I also have to admit I had the biggest crush on his Owl Girl as a kid! She was always one of the sexiest sidekicks in comics history! So that’s an issue I can’t wait to read!

Jeff Gelb And by now you have, Jeff—and we’re sure you’ve let us know what you thought of it. Meanwhile, you’ll doubtless have rejoiced to be advised (by our next-issue notice back on p. 2) that A/E #159 will feature an extra-length “Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt” piece on the aforementioned Pete Morisi—including his decades-long correspondence with Glen Johnson about the work of many other Golden and Silver Age comics pros!

Be here—it’ll be a true all-star spectacular. (And you already know how A/E’s management feels about things with the word “all-star” in the description!)

Now, this briefer comment on #147 from Joe Musich: Dear P.C.— I wonder if the big world will appreciate the effort behind the latest FCA/Alter Ego? I am only up to page 17, and it is spectacular.

Unlike my usual reading pattern, I did not survey-read before I began picking and choosing articles. This is going to be cover to cover. Great job!

Joe Musich

T

here was no greater Golden Age illustrator than Fawcett’s Mac Raboy, so it’s one of his most iconic Captain Marvel Jr. figures that our regular and much-appreciated “maskot” illuminator Shane Foley chose to emulate for this issue’s “re:” header—and a fine job he made of it, too, aided and abetted as usual by the coloring of Randy Sargent. Thanks to both! [Alter Ego hero TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas; costumes designed by Ron Harris.]

This time around, we’ve got a double-header of a letters section for you, starting with a couple of comments on our Otto Binder issue, Alter Ego #147, starting with a few words from Jeff Gelb:

Hi Roy— Alter Ego #147 was great eye candy! What a terrific idea to showcase Binder’s work graphically. It points out so perfectly how prolific OOB was! You could almost argue there wouldn’t have been a Golden Age without him. You could certainly say his stories were the heart and soul of that era. And every one of those illustrations made me want to read the story he’d written to back it up. What a fertile imagination! And somehow, seeing his work showcased visually made a big difference in terms of allowing me to understand his true importance to the Golden Age. I also want to tip my hat to Michael Gilbert for two reasons: (1) Focusing on PAM [Pete A. Morisi] and those fascinating letters he sent to fan Glen Johnson. As a lifelong PAM fan, I’d love to see more of PAM’s thoughts shared in future Gilbert columns.

(2) Looking ahead, I am thrilled to see an A/E issue that will focus on Frank Thomas (and The Owl). Thomas’ art, though quirky and cartoony, always got the job done, and I always found his work

“Scarlet” Fever One of the many, many examples of Otto Binder’s comics writing we couldn’t squeeze into A/E #147 was this “Mr. Scarlet and Pinky” splash page from Fawcett’s Wow Comics #14 (June 1943), with art by the comics shop of his brother, Jack Binder. Thanks to P.C. Hamerlinck. [Mr. Scarlet & Pinky TM & © DC Comics.]

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[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

Far as we’re concerned, Joe, most every issue of A/E should be read “cover to cover.” How else will you know if you’ve missed learning something you really want to know?

Next, these notes: Craig Delich sent a few cogent corrections, as is his wont: “On page 10, the ‘Iron Munro’ story was written by Robert Sturgeon and illoed by E.C. Stoner… per Anthony Tollin. On page 12, it’s stated that the ‘Captain Battle’ splash came from issue #3… it’s actually from #2. The splash page shown on page 72 comes from Pines’ Fantastic (not Forbidden) Worlds… issue numbers are the same, as are month and year. Re page 86, ‘Dangerous Journey’ story. You say Bernard Sachs inks… [Julius] Schwartz records say Joe Giella.”

Thanks for the fixes, Craig!

Alter Ego #148 was the first of two issues to date (the second would be #156) dealing with Joe Petrilak’s All Time Classic New York Comic Book Convention, held in nearby (but maybe not quite close enough) White Plains, NY, in June 2000, one of the last and greatest cons to feature a legend-filled lineup of Golden and Silver Age greats—especially the former.

To start things off, here’s our resident commentator-without-portfolio, Bernie Bubnis: Hi Roy— Interesting comments from Joe Petrilak. Sounds like he wanted to make history. His devotion to this convention is really fantastic, but the location probably dulled the final attendance. Still, it did sound like First Class all the way.

All three panels were very interesting. Wish I coulda been there.

“The Flash 60th”: I seem to remember Joe Giella once telling me he hated inking the gorilla villain [Grodd] who plagued Flash.

The “fur” gave him a headache.

“The Big Three”: The issue of original art being “stolen” came up once before. Roy, you could not leave the DC offices without pages of original art under your arm. I never knew Marv Wolfman, but I knew Len Wein. Before the two of us parted ways, we hung out together. Len was like a six-foot-tall walking magnet. Everyone was drawn to him. Big smile, firm handshake, and he always had something interesting to say. We visited the DC offices together and always left with pages of original art, and Len loved those pages.

Much more than I ever did. I would just trade them for Golden Age comics, but Len treasured every piece. To give him the job of cutting them to pieces was criminal. I will bet anything that he followed DC’s order and cut most of those pages to ribbons, and if one or two followed him home, well, dammit, twenty minutes ago they were stuffing our pockets with them for free! Kubert remembered it all correctly. He was always generous with his art.

Even though I wrote an article describing Mike Sekowsky’s art style as “chicken scratching,” we became “business” partners selling his “free” original art. Mike was intrigued with the fact that there was an after-market for original art. Pricing was not like today, but the fact that it could generate a “second chance” check was enough to interest Mike. He gave me some of his JLA art to sell for him. Mum was the word. Unfortunately, I could only sell splash pages and pages that featured several of the characters together. I only did it for two issues of the JLA. I do not know what became of the rest of the pages.

“Green Lantern 60th”: Lots of strong memories at that table, but Mr. Thomas was definitely needed to keep this train moving.

My favorite graphic is a young Toth “GL” page.

Although I have always been a Captain Marvel fan, I sometimes feel “read out” or something on Fawcett. No disrespect meant, because when I do take the time to read, it is always

Three To Get Ready… But Nowhere To Go! Winky, Blinky, and Noddy (the erstwhile “Three Dimwits”) had been born in the Golden Age as knockoffs of the movies’ Three Stooges, of course, but didn’t fit into the more realistically drawn super-hero comic of a decade or two later. This “The Madcap Inventors of Central City” page from The Flash #117 (Dec. 1960) was scripted by Gardner F. Fox, penciled by Carmine Infantino (who, in Ye Editor’s opinion, did a fantastic job), and inked by Joe Giella. Repro’d from DC’s hardcover The Flash Archives, Vol. 3.

[TM & © DC Comics.]

excellent. Enjoyed this one especially. Anytime the writer really knows his subjects, you can feel it in the writing. Paul Power did a great job.

Bernie Bubnis Yeah, that FCA section is a favorite of Ye Editor’s, too, Bernie—and for the reason why, see the art spot on p. 78!

Of course, the main focus of A/E #148 was Joe’s fabulous con—and here are a few words from Robin Snyder, proprietor of the fanzine The Comics!: Dear Roy, I’ll bet Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino would be surprised to see how much space you have devoted to the Fastest Man Alive. I know I was and am pleased. I learned a thing or two from the feature on The Flash. Winky, Blinky, and Noddy still amuse me after all this time. I wish Julie had ignored the revolting cranks who rejected those cute characters. I would have liked to see them continue.

Robin Snyder Me, too, Robin—since it was mainly a letter or two of mine that induced editor Julie Schwartz to commission that 1960-61 story. But he probably made the right decision for the time, even if Carmine’s rendition

re:

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of the Three Dimwits was a perfect blend of old styles and new!

guests have passed and we lost some of the greats in our industry.

Now to Pierre Comtois, who’s produced a couple of welcome historical treatises for TwoMorrows Publishing:

Again: let us know who you are, if you see this issue! Our apologies for somehow losing your name. We hate it when that happens!

Roy,

Now, a bit more on Pete Morisi in anticipation of next issue, this time by longtime collector George Hagenauer:

Although Golden Age comics never really grabbed me (over the years, however, I have come to appreciate some EC and Doll Man), the panel discussion with Carmine Infantino, Julius Schwartz, and Joe Kubert as moderated by your well-informed self was fun to read. The only caveat I’d add to that, though, is the missing portion on page 38, column 2, where you mentioned comments on the gloomy state of today’s comics or industry were dropped from the transcription. That got my attention! Don’t know about any of your other readers, but I’m really curious about what these three giants made of it (particularly since things have only gotten worse since 2000).

Pierre Comtois Afraid something had to give for reasons of space, Pierre, and the pros’ comments on the state of the comicbook art in 2000 had less to do either with the Golden/Silver Age franchise of Alter Ego or with the way things are nearly two decades later. Still, we’d have run that material if we’d had room. Maybe someday I should dig out that panel transcription again and run those remarks, if and when we do a third issue on Joe Petrilak’s fantastic con.

Hi Roy— Saying Pete Morisi was a collector way understates it. I had been fascinated with his art since I saw “Thunderbolt” at age 16.

My interest grew greater when I saw his “Johnny Dynamite” a year later at a Chicago Comics fan club meeting in a park.

It wasn’t until a bit before his death that I connected with him, probably through Max Allan Collins, who has had a Johnny Dynamite sketch by Pete over his desk for the 35+ years I have known him. I wanted one, too, as I consider it the pre-eminent 1950s crime comic. Pete was a cop and knew that stuff. So I inquired about a sketch. Pete’s reply: “Got any comics?” He had good taste and cleared out half my collection of Albert Gioletti Sgt. Preston comics in return for that sketch.

Below are a few memories of that con from someone who was there—but unfortunately, somehow, his name got left off when I retyped his e-mail for this section. Hope he’ll let us know who he is, because we owe him a freebie copy of this issue—but then, he’d probably have to buy one first to know his letter was used, right? Oh well, that’s okay—you can’t have too many copies of Alter Ego, that’s what I always say:

I regret not getting an original sketch from George Tuska of Iron Man. I missed Marie Severin, Barry Windsor-Smith, Bernie Wrightson, and a few others. The panels were fantastic, and I attended several, including the once-in-a-lifetime panel with Jerry Robinson. As time has passed, this con has become even more memorable, as most of the

Glad to know Glen Johnson is still with us. I believe he and his brother did some ditto zines I contributed to back in the high school years.

George Hagenauer Yeah, Glen was editor and publisher of The Comic Reader newszine for some time, and a contributor even to the first volume of Alter Ego back in the ’60s.

We got a bit confused about who transcribed which panel for A/E #148, so here’s a welcome update from one of the tireless transcribers who run videotapes or DVDs backward and forward to try to pick up every nuance possible of talks between comics pros… in this case, Steven Tice:

Hey Roy, I went to that 2000 convention specifically to meet John Buscema.

As I waited in line, Jim Shooter came up to him and it was very noticeable that there was friction between the two parties. I knew some of the issues from reading history books on the industry, but one could tell that these emotions ran deep. John was very short and curt, but I heard later that he was in some pain due to his illness.

The guy loved and collected comics right up to the end and was an amazingly underrated artist.

Hi, Roy!

Boris At War One slight correction re A/E #148’s Classic Con coverage arrived from none other than Boris Vallejo, the famed fantasy illustrator who was one of the guests at the 2000 event. He writes: “In my nitpicking way, I have to correct one bit in A/E #148. My first comic work was not for Skywald. It was in Tower’s Fight the Enemy #2 (1966). Sorry about that!” Art scan sent by Gene Reed & Jim Kealy. [TM & © John Carbonero or successors in interest.]

We’re the ones who should be sorry, Boris. But, from our point of view, much as we love your paintings, we’re sorry you didn’t do more comics stories. Still, that would’ve deprived Ye Ed, as editor of Marvel’s Savage Sword of Conan in the 1970s, of all those great covers of the bronzed Cimmerian—and maybe of that cover you did for Dracula Lives! #1, which you sold him and still hangs on the wall of his office!

Only one of the panel transcripts in A/E #148 should have been credited to me. It turns out that the Infantino/Kubert/ Schwartz panel was the one that was inadvertently assigned to both Sean Dulaney and myself, which explains why I’m not credited for that one. The “Green Lantern 60th Anniversary” panel should have been credited to me.

Steven Tice Thanks, Steven. At least TwoMorrows sent the checks to the right place, right?

Here’s a tidbit of Golden Age info from John Wells, who’s now putting

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Article Title

together books about the history of comics: Hi, Roy! I wanted to pass along this minor detail while I’m thinking of it. In the “Flash 60th Anniversary” panel transcript, Harry Lampert spoke of seeing “The King” in an issue of Star Spangled Comics. Most readers likely assumed he was talking about the Golden Age title, but this was actually the 1999 Star Spangled Comics one-shot by Geoff Johns and Chris Weston.

That was the hero’s first and only non-reprinted appearance since the 1940s—even you never got around to using him in All-Star Squadron—although his son later appeared in several 21st-century “JSA” stories.

With One Magic Guitar…

Paul Power, who wrote the FCA segment in A/E #148, tells us: “Here [above left] is a recent photo of Duane Eddy and myself. It was taken by James Frank Dean, an actor/graphic designer and guitar-player. The guitar in that photo is the new 6-string bass that Duane designed for GRETCH Guitars; it debuted at the NAMM show. Duane played us a few tunes on the spot. Quite a treat. I’ve known Duane for 13 years, but this was the first time we had met face to face. What fun, and many good laughs! I know he liked the article in A/E.” Photo by James Frank Deane; sent by Terry Wilson & Paul Power.

For Ye Editor’s part, that FCA segment led to my enjoying some online correspondence with Duane Eddy, whose “twangy guitar” music I’ve loved since the late 1950s—and I was overjoyed to learn that he’s still doing profitable gigs on his own and on various folks’ recordings! Seen above right is a display ad for his 1960 hit single “Shazam”—which really does show its inspiration… the original Captain Marvel, lightning bolt and all! Courtesy of Duane Eddy & Paul Power.

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

John Wells

Good to know, John.

And now, Craig Delich is back, writing about issue #148 this time: “Page 34—the blurb for the ‘Boy Commandos’ story from issue #32 says the inker is unknown; it’s Steve Brodie… and the writer was France Herron. On page 46, the Toth ‘Green Lantern’ story blurb provided states the strip to be attributed to [John] Broome. It’s Robert Kanigher.” We see that the Grand Comics Database attributes the story to Kanigher; we must’ve got the Broome credit from somewhere else, since we wouldn’t have added that on our own.

Also, frequent contributor Bob Bailey adds: “You published a Golden Age Green Lantern sketch signed ‘To Bob, Irwin Hasen 1978’ and asked if ‘1978’ was indeed the date written. Yes, it was. I am the Bob mentioned in the signature. Irwin was showing me how to draw GL for a class at the Kubert School. He then signed and gave it to me.” Thanks, Bob! As the owner of quite a bit of Hasen DC artwork myself, it’s always good to run into another Irwin admirer!

Send those e-mails and other epistles to: e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com Roy Thomas 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135 While you’re waiting for the next Alter Ego, you might try the e-mail discussion list Alter-Ego-Fans on the Yahoo Groups.

Subscribers will learn about future issues of A/E—though admittedly perhaps at the price of being asked if they can help provide some desperately needed art or photo for an upcoming issue. Lots of other exchanges and comments there from your fellow readers, too. Just visit http:/groups.yahoo.com/ group/alter-ego-fans. Moderator Chet Cox advises us that Yahoo Groups has for some reason deleted its “Add Member” tool, so if you find it won’t let you in, please contact him at mormonyoyoman@gmail.com and he’ll walk you through the process.

And, over on Facebook, dealer and con-expeditor John Cimino runs what he’s christened The Roy Thomas Appreciation Boards, which discuss anything and everything dealing with the above-named comics writer/editor, including this mag, upcoming con appearances, comments on comics or

super-hero movies, or whatever either one of them feels like writing about.

The site is fully interactive—whatever that means!

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Taschen Books has told me that the 1000-copy deluxe edition of the big 400-page illustrated book I wrote for them, The Stan Lee Story, went out of print during the month of November, within a week of Stan’s unfortunate passing. The general-market edition should be released circa May of this year—it’ll be a lot cheaper, though you still aren’t likely to find it on the “bargain books” rack at your local Barnes & Noble anytime soon. Check out this “career biography” of one of the 1960s titans who changed comicbooks forever!

The STAR WARS Comics Reunion Panel

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41 Years After San Diego ’76, CHAYKIN, LIPPINCOTT, & THOMAS Reunited At TerrifiCon 2017 Moderated by Ryder Windham Transcribed by Sean Dulaney

A/E

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: In Alter Ego #145, I wrote a lengthy article about my connection with the very earliest days of the Star Wars phenomenon, namely the publication of Marvel’s ongoing Star Wars comicbook—from my initial dinner with George Lucas in early 1975 through my departing the series in late 1977 after scripting and editing its first ten issues. In that piece, I also felt compelled to deal with a few less than pleasant aspects of that relationship, including certain latter-day statements made online about myself (and to some extent about Marvel, Stan Lee, and original series artist Howard Chaykin) by Charles Lippincott, Lucas’ 1970s media projects director, a person with whom I had previously enjoyed an amiable fellowship.

Thus, I was delighted when I learned that con host Mitch Hallock and my buddy and manager John Cimino had plans afoot to get Howard and me together for a Star Wars 40th-reunion panel at the August 2017 TerrifiCon, to be held at the Mohegan Sun resort/casino in Uncasville,

The Usual Suspects All smiles, before the panel. (L. to r.:) Roy Thomas, Howard Chaykin, Charles Lippincott. Roy and Charley are wearing Star Wars T-shirts, but only Roy’s was the very same one worn at their San Diego Comic-Con conclave in July of 1976. To see photos of that event, order a copy of A/E #145 from TwoMorrows Publishing! Thanks to John Cimino.

Star Wars—41 Years After San Diego ’76!

(Above:) The cosmic cast of the “Star Wars Comics Reunion Panel” held on Aug. 19, 2017, at the TerrifiCon, at the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. (Left to right:) Charley Lippincott, Roy Thomas, Howard Chaykin, and moderator Ryder Windham. Thanks to John Cimino.

(Below:) The cover of Marvel UK’s Star Wars Weekly #1 (dated Feb. 8, 1978) utilized that of Star Wars #1 (July 1977, but on sale that March) by penciler Howard Chaykin and inker Tom Palmer, and was prepared in Marvel’s NYC offices. In this issue, we’ve made every effort to avoid reprinting art or photos seen in Alter Ego #145; hence the Marvel UK cover this time around.

[TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

Connecticut... a reunion I had long considered unlikely, since I knew Howard was no great admirer of the film or the universe it had spawned. I was even more juiced when I heard there was a possibility Charley Lippincott might also be there, since, despite those few less than pleasant exchanges we’d had online a couple of years before, I knew that, around that time, Charley had stated publicly online that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease—and now I was happily given to understand (by Charley himself) that what he has is NHP (Normal Hydrocephalus Pressure), still a serious problem but not as grim as he had originally been led to believe.

Therefore, it was with a mixture of enthusiasm and trepidation that I turned up in the big and packed panel room at the Mohegan Sun. I came wearing the very same Star Wars T-shirt Charley had given me in July of 1976 at the San Diego Comic-Con, just before he, Howard, and I had spoken to an eager audience about a film that wouldn’t debut in theatres for another ten months; I was pleased that I could still fit into it, even if it was a wee bit tighter than it had been 41 years earlier, virtually the last time I’d worn it. Howard, Charley (who decided at the last minute to join the panel), and I conversed and were photographed standing around following the end of the previous panel held in that room, and then we were herded to the long, microphone-strewn table on the stage—where Charley parked himself at one end, a bit apart from moderator Ryder Windham

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Chaykin, Lippincott, & Thomas Reunite—41 Years Later

(himself a Star Wars veteran of another kind) and the rest of us. The discussion was recorded on film by Leo Pond for his video company The Dorkening, beginning even before the panel had been officially convened, thus catching me in mid-sentence, talking to Howard....

ROY THOMAS: ...I think you have a lot of things you want to say...

HOWARD CHAYKIN: No, I’m letting you do the talking, because my feeling is I can only poison the well if I open my mouth. [audience laughter]

THOMAS: ...who talked me into talking Marvel into doing Star Wars.

CHAYKIN: He was the guy who brought the Star Wars product to Marvel and got the book going.

THOMAS: Without Charley, there might not be a Marvel Comics today. [audience applauds] CHAYKIN: [to audience] You can all leave now.

THOMAS: Okay. Well, you know I’m somewhat ambivalent.

LIPPINCOTT: Now I can drop dead. [audience goes “Ooooh”]

CHAYKIN: I know. The nice thing is, you and I literally operate from the center of it. You have ambivalence. I have hostile indifference. [nervous audience laughter]

THOMAS: It’s only been forty years.

THOMAS: [to Lippincott, at far end of table] Charley?

CHAYKIN: Charley, you want to join us?

CHARLES LIPPINCOTT: [off-screen voice, only partly audible] ...sit on the outside...

CHAYKIN: Before we go anywhere... more than anything else, before anything else is said, let’s have a round of applause for Charley Lippincott, [clapping begins] who is the guy...

CHAYKIN: It only means making room for someone else, so don’t worry about dying. It’s just that there’s fewer natural resources every day.

THOMAS: I literally haven’t seen Charley for about forty years or something like that...

CHAYKIN: The last time I saw Charley, we were living five blocks away from each other in Los Feliz... or Silver Lake. [to Windham] Take it away.

RYDER WINDHAM: I’m Ryder Windham. I’ve written too many Star Wars books. A long time ago, I was a Dark Horse comicbook editor and worked on Star Wars titles, including reprints of the Marvel comics. And I hope you guys got royalties when they came out.

CHAYKIN: I certainly didn’t at Marvel, that’s for sure.

WINDHAM: Anyway, a few years ago, I also started corresponding with Charles Lippincott, and last week he said, “Oh, I’m going to be in the area. Maybe we should meet up?” I said, “Maybe you should come to the convention.” “Don’t tell anybody,” he said. “Okay!”

So... here he is. I also remember I was... This will go back. 1977... I remember buying the first three issues of Star Wars before the movie came out.

THOMAS: [to Lippincott] That was the deal, right? That was the deal.

WINDHAM: I do know a wee bit because of the history, or my awareness of it. I know that Charles Lippincott was a publicist for 20th Century-Fox and, essentially, he met... [to Lippincott] You talked with George Lucas and Gary Kurtz about The Star Wars project that they were working on, and they brought [you] in as vice-president of licensing and merchandising... publicity. It was sort of this evolving job that was initially supposed to be a publicist, but one of the things that... I think it was in 1975 you were starting a plan about what to do, and by early 1976, it was a very specific plan that Charles Lippincott said, “We want to do a comicbook adaptation to promote Star Wars, and we also want to promote this at San Diego Comic-Con.” Which was, at that time, an unprecedented thing. San Diego Comic-Con was where you would meet writers and artists of comicbooks, but the idea of promoting a movie at a comicbook convention? Blame Charles.

THOMAS: Especially a movie that wouldn’t be out for about a year.

From Asteroid To Tabloid Since chances are you’ve already seen the covers and interiors of the U.S. Star Wars comics published by Marvel beginning in 1977, here’s the Portuguese rendition of the cover of the giant-paged Marvel Special Edition Featuring Star Wars #2 that reprinted issues #4-6. Cover art by Howard Chaykin & Tony DeZuniga. [TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

CHAYKIN: Well, if you want to take this to the logical limit, this is one of the reasons the San Diego convention is such a s**tstorm now. [audience laughter] THOMAS: If we had it to do over, I’m not sure we’d do it, because— CHAYKIN: [It’s] why comicbooks are ghetto-ized to the far end of

The Star Wars Comics Reunion Panel

Hall H and the rest of it is filled with people who used to beat us up in high school for liking comicbooks. [laughter] I could be wrong, but not likely. Just sayin’.

WINDHAM: Forgive me. I forgot how excited I am to be here... [removes sport coat]

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THOMAS: [indicating his own T-shirt] Charley gave me this one 41 years ago. [laughter] CHAYKIN: And I gave mine to my granddaughter 16 years ago because I don’t really care. [laughter]

WINDHAM: [to Chaykin, as he unbuttons his shirt] Now you’re going to be the odd man out.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: [holds up a copy of 1976 Star Wars poster drawn by Chaykin] This is the poster that Howard did that Charley... that Lucasfilm released. This is the first Star Wars poster that Howard designed, that [was] introduced at Comic-Con when it was an itty-bitty, tiny little thing and you could actually get tickets and you could get seats easily.

CHAYKIN: And believe me, there’s nothing new in that. It won’t be the first time.

THOMAS: [referring to Chaykin’s art on the poster] The kid had promise.

WINDHAM: [reveals he’s wearing the same early Star Wars-design T-shirt that Roy and Charles are wearing] So, Charles gave this to me yesterday. So... envy.

CHAYKIN: [shrugs disdainfully] Eh. [pause] And Dave Mandel owns the original, in case you were curious.

CHAYKIN: Excitement means he takes his coat off. Some of us actually glow from within.

CHAYKIN: Get over yourself.

WINDHAM: Okay. [laughter]

THOMAS: Of which Howard Chaykin said, when he [told me] the sum of money [Mandel] paid for it: “Some people have too much disposable income for their own damn good.”

CHAYKIN: That’s exactly right. [laughter] THOMAS: I remember that well.

CHAYKIN: And I said to Dave, “For that kind of money, you could buy a minor Rockwell.” [laughter] Not anymore, but you could.

WINDHAM: I’m guessing you could search for interviews online or even reports about the making of Star Wars... Much has been said about it before, but for anyone who is uninformed... I know that Charles wanted Howard to work on the Star Wars comic because he’d seen “Cody Starbuck.”

LIPPINCOTT: Right.

WINDHAM: Okay. So it was this swashbuckling, sci-fi adventure comic.

So, I guess, for Howard and Roy to talk about where you were at in your careers in, say, early 1976 or so when you first got wind of... What were you up to? Where were you at?

CHAYKIN: Well, Roy was running the house and I was in the middle of a decade worth of ineptitude. [laughter] THOMAS: Everyone should have such ineptitude! But anyway, in my case it was February of 1976 and I was about to make plans, or I had already made plans, I’m not sure of the order—to move to Los Angeles. I had been separated from my wife for some months for the third or fourth time, and it had finally taken hold. [Chaykin chuckles] So I was going to move to L.A. and get away. I was invited to come back to Marvel as editor-in-chief a second time, a year and a half after the first time, and accepted, then reneged after I went to L.A. and said, “Hey! I can walk around in a short-sleeve shirt in the middle of the [February] day in L.A. I can’t do that in New York.”

So I came back and told Stan I was moving [to California].

More “Star Warz” In A/E #145, we reprinted the cover and splash page of the “Star-Warz” parody produced by writer Joe Catalono and artist John Severin for Cracked Magazine #146 (Nov. 1977). Here’s page 2 of that spoof—we can never get enough Severin artwork! Frankly, though, Ye Editor’s always been amazed that, to the best of his knowledge, none of the early parodies (in Mad, Cracked, Crazy, wherever) ever used the vastly superior mocktitle “Star Warts”! Thanks to Michael Grabois. [TM & © Cracked Magazine/ Mega Media.]

About this same time, suddenly I was contacted by my friend Ed Summer, who said, “I’ve got somebody I’d like you to meet. His name is Charley Lippincott and he’s the right-hand man of George Lucas, and he’d like to talk to you about this movie Star Wars,” which I had heard George talk about a year earlier when we had all had dinner together. And I said, “Well, I’m not editor-in-chief anymore, but if you want to come over and talk to me...” So Charley and Ed came over, and Charley did most of the talking and talked me into it... but I’ll let him talk about that... Or you, Howard. You’ve got to talk a little bit more about the wonderfulness of the ’70s.

CHAYKIN: Well, I... I’m still apologizing for much of the work I did between the time I was 20 and 30.

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Chaykin, Lippincott, & Thomas Reunite—41 Years Later

Cover Versions (Left:) Okay, okay, you talked us into it! Here’s the Chaykin/Palmer cover of Marvel’s Star Wars #1—or rather, a reproduction of the original art for same— which is currently owned by David Mandel, who also purchased the poster Chaykin drew for exhibition and sale at the 1976 San Diego Comic-Con, as featured in A/E #145. Thanks, Dave! You’re a true patron of the arts!

(Right:) Chaykin also apparently allowed his arm to be twisted into doing this slight reworking of that cover art as a commission drawing, with a somewhat altered inking style. [Star Wars material TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

THOMAS: [shaking his head ruefully] Awful stuff, awful stuff.

CHAYKIN: But my understanding was, George owned a piece of Ed’s store...

WINDHAM: Ed Summer, who had Supersnipe Comics...

CHAYKIN: The comicbook emporium in the 80s on the East Side, which was a really good comicbook shop back in those days. I mean, I bought from Ed all the time. So I knew Ed pretty well. And I think there’s a certain... there’s an element of a lot of the “Cody Starbuck” stuff that informs a lot of what ultimately evolved into Han Solo.

And... one of the things you have to understand is that, for those of us on this side of the table—at least in those days—it was a calling, but it was also a job. So the opportunity to have something that would keep me busy for six issues—it turned out to be ten—was something I couldn’t turn down. Because, you guys think, “Why did he do that job?” Because it was offered to me, and frequently, you take the work you get. It seemed appropriate for

my skill-set, and the script... I did the breakdown on the script, as I recall. One of the reasons guys like Roy liked to work with me as an artist, even back in those days, was that I had a pretty good storysense, and that I understood how to make natural breaks and how to turn material into a viable form of 22-24-28-page long chunks.

Which is not a common trait among my generation of talent. Lately, it’s even less common. [laughter] No, it’s true. Most comicbook artists these days are knuckledragging morons who can’t... [more laughter] They don’t read...

THOMAS: [to Chaykin] No names.

CHAYKIN: No names. They don’t read, so they can’t really deliver narrative. It’s a problem.

LIPPINCOTT: They like the pictures.

CHAYKIN: That’s exactly right. They’re into sensation as opposed to narrative.

WINDHAM: Well, you just said something and I want to pounce on it,

The Star Wars Comics Reunion Panel

83

CHAYKIN: [taking the sheet handed to him by Windham] I’m being charged with a crime from forty years back. [audience laughter] Apparently, “I’m not going to break the script for him because that’s his job. I can fight with him after he’s made the decision, after I’ve made mine. It’s going to be a lot of fun to do. There’s a lot of material to work with.” That’s not how it worked out.

WINDHAM: I know, but it was something that fascinates me...

THOMAS: [to Chaykin] What? You thought we were going to fight about it?

CHAYKIN: No. I assumed you’d end up... Who knows?! Who gives a s**t? [laughter] THOMAS: [indicates audience] They do. They’re here.

CHAYKIN: [to audience] You have too much spare time, don’t you? [laughter] WINDHAM: My experience as a comicbook editor, just based on what you said, it was like, “Yeah, somebody might write a script and someone

And He’s Not Even A Barista!

Chaykin’s cover featuring his hero “Cody Starbuck,” done for the “newszine” The Comic Reader #123 (Oct. 1975). Thanks to Mike Mikulovsky. [TM & © Howard Chaykin.]

and it’s about the breakdowns. Because I’ve read some interviews—and I don’t mean to do this—this is my own curiosity. [reads off and on from a page of notes] In Alter Ego magazine, 2016, Richard J. Arndt asked Howard, “Did you do your page breakdowns off the original screenplay?” and Howard responded, “I broke the screenplay down into six issues and then Roy wrote dialogue to accompany that material.” [moving on down the page] Okay, from a transcript of an interview by Charles Lippincott, where he was talking with Howard and with Roy... they’re waiting for Roy to show up for a meeting...

THOMAS: Oh, that was the one at George’s office right after the San Diego con.

WINDHAM: Okay. Howard said, “I’d like to get Roy Thomas and have him read that script,” meaning the most up-to-date script. “Then re-read it and break it down for me, because I want to get started on the job on the first issue. I have no intention of doing breakdown myself.” Charlie said, “But he’ll need a new script.” Meaning Roy needs a new script. “That’s another reason for coming over here today. He mislaid the script I sent him.” Howard responds... [to Chaykin] You want to..? [Chaykin takes sheet of paper from which Windham is reading]

Another Disney Princess Princess Leia is captured near the start of the 1977 film, as per Star Wars #1. Script by Roy Thomas; art by Howard Chaykin. Thanks to the MinuteMen/DarthScanner online site. The entire opus of Marvel’s Star Wars comics series has been reprinted by Marvel over the past few years in hardcover omnibus editions, now that Disney has purchased Lucasfilm as well as Marvel. [TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

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Chaykin, Lippincott, & Thomas Reunite—41 Years Later

Raising Kane (Left:) For Marvel’s Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #5 (Sept. 1975), editor Roy Thomas commissioned Howard Chaykin to write and draw an adaptation of major SF writer Larry Niven’s award-winning short story “All the Myriad Ways.” It was fine work, but Chaykin reports that the prose author was less than enchanted by it. Horse-racing and all that. But wouldn’t it be great if one day Marvel could reprint its awesome SF and horror adaptations of the 1970s?

[TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; original story © Larry Niven.]

(Right:) Just before they switched into high gear to do Star Wars, Thomas and Chaykin worked together to adapt Robert E. Howard’s short Solomon Kane yarn “A Rattle of Bones” for The Savage Sword of Conan #18 (April 1977). Thanks to Barry Pearl for both scans. [TM & © Solomon Kane Properties, Inc.]

THOMAS: Well, he [Chaykin] was a writer, first of all.

CHAYKIN: The fact is, whatever ineptitude I talk about in that ’70s material, the one thing I had going for me—a real strong skill-set— was an understanding of visual narrative. And that is one of the reasons why Roy and I worked so well together on the material we did. We shared an affinity for the material we did. The “Solomon Kane” stuff is a perfect example, and the Larry Niven... [to Roy] I ran into Niven at a Houston show a couple of years back.

WINDHAM: Right. You were doing—

THOMAS: Yeah?

THOMAS: Even if he hadn’t been, I knew he could tell a good story because I had worked with him on “Solomon Kane” and several different things in the recent past and I really liked his work. Even if he didn’t.

CHAYKIN: And I introduced myself. He didn’t know my name, but I went into deeper detail. He gave me twenty f****ng minutes of s**t about this story. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Chaykin is referring to his comics adaptation of Niven’s short story “All the Myriad Ways,” which appeared in Marvel’s Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #5 (Sept. 1975).]

else might—the artist, the penciler—might interpret this script, but to have the artist do... to give an artist a script and expect them to do, “Okay, you do the breakdowns for this...” And I think that was more specifically the Marvel style...

CHAYKIN: But I also think Roy trusted me...

CHAYKIN: No, but... [laughter] THOMAS: But I had had him write stuff. I had him adapt a Larry Niven story of science-fiction. He had written his own story [in that case]. He had written those “Cody Starbuck,” things like this, so why not? Now, there was the little problem. He didn’t exactly get paid extra, but he didn’t have me hassling him, too. If you want to call me, I’m right there... 3,000 miles away.

THOMAS: What? All the— CHAYKIN: Yeah. Like, f*** you, old man! [laughter] THOMAS: That was good. That was a good adaptation. I was really pleased with it.

The Star Wars Comics Reunion Panel

85

But we had to wait for that final script, so you couldn’t start quite as early [as we’d have liked].

CHAYKIN: There are a number of things in the book that aren’t in the movie.

THOMAS: Yeah. We caught hell for that, too.

CHAYKIN: Jabba... please! Like that was our fault. Jabba the Hutt was in that first issue, and Jabba didn’t exist yet. And one of the things you have to know is that, when Roy and I went to visit the studio, they gave us 400 stills and 17 [Ralph] McQuarrie paintings.

And the thing I think you should know about production art is, it’s aspirational: “Well, this is what we’d like it to look like.” But the reality is, when I saw the movie after having done 2½ issues of the book, I said, “Holy s**t! This is a movie that actually looks like the production paintings as opposed to the stills.” The stills looked like an Ikea under construction. [laughter] And again, this is going to be a huge deal. I had no idea.

Because, up to this point, science-fiction movies were junk for people like us who care about these things. This was something that was going to become a universal idea. That’s what freaked me out for the most part.

Why Aren’t Any Of These Scenes On The Star Wars DVD? One of several pages in Star Wars #1 that adapted material from the final screenplay—of sequences that, if they were ever filmed, wound up on the cutting-room floor before the movie came out. Unsophisticated but infinitely indignant readers assumed Thomas and Chaykin had simply made them up! Thanks to MinuteMen/DarthScanner site. [TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

CHAYKIN: I was like, “I’m back to my burger, m*****f*****.” [laughter] THOMAS: Well, Harlan Ellison hated Alex Nino’s adaptation of “Repent Harlequin Said the Tick-Tock Man”...

CHAYKIN: And he’s crazy. It’s gorgeous.

THOMAS: ...And I told him he was crazy.

CHAYKIN: It’s staggering.

THOMAS: I said, “Just because you wrote it doesn’t mean you understand the only way it can be done.”

CHAYKIN: There you go!

THOMAS: Now, I could have—since there was a full [Star Wars] script, there was no reason for me to do a [synopsis], unless Howard said he needed it—done a 2- or 3-page pacing, but he’d still have to go back to the script to really pace it out. So it’s better to just let him do it. He had the story. Just cut out a little bit, because he knows he has to do it in six issues. I wrote them one at a time.

And I didn’t have that much time to think about it, either, because we were under the gun. If we could have started a little earlier....

“I Am Your Father, Luke!”

A black-&-white commission drawing of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, done by Howard Chaykin. [TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

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Chaykin, Lippincott, & Thomas Reunite—41 Years Later

WINDHAM: So, the first issue has come out and the movie is a hit...

LIPPINCOTT: You saw it at the beginning of the movie.

THOMAS: The first three issues had come out.

CHAYKIN: But [at that stage] we had not seen anything!

WINDHAM: First three issues. But at that point, there were deadline problems, I guess? Or there were shifts in the art. The first issue looks like Chaykin...

CHAYKIN: I was also working for Byron Preiss at the time. He’s still dead. [laughter] And I had brought in—

THOMAS: That’s why the splash page of the [comic] doesn’t match that wonderful opening scene. We would have needed two or three pages to do that well. We didn’t even know it was going to be that way, so Howard just drew a picture of the fight. Which doesn’t have the same kind of impact, but there’s no way he could have done that without taking a couple of pages...

THOMAS: I didn’t know that. You were moonlighting?

CHAYKIN: In fact, one of the things you have to understand...

CHAYKIN: Yes.

THOMAS: ...and it still wouldn’t have had the impact of the movie.

THOMAS: Nobody tells me anything!

CHAYKIN: ...movie scripts tend to be templates. It’s the visualization of the text that ultimately makes the film. We did the best we could with what we knew about the material. But, frankly, the structural narrative of the movies is much more traditional—I mean, for me as a guy who’s been going to the movies since he was a little kid, I can see all the Warner Bros. references in that movie. All the MGM references in that movie. All the Paramount references in that movie. Every one of those references, from samurai films to Westerns to World War II air pictures, it’s all there.

CHAYKIN: Well, comics paid so s**tily in the ’70s that I ended up having three skill-sets. I was a writer, I was a penciler, and I also did storyboard artwork for advertising agencies, because that was where you made your cash. I brought in some help. I had Alan Kupperberg give me a hand. I did breakdowns, he’d tighten my breakdowns, and then I’d tighten them up again. But... we were all slow. We were all young. Roy’s a little bit older than me, but we both were in our “prime”...

THOMAS: Such as it was.

CHAYKIN: ...and life happens. [to Roy] You keep saying that, but both of us were interesting tickets in our time. But the work got done. And the fact is, I think the one thing that sustained the book throughout this entire experience was that there was a direct connection between the text and the visual narrative. The drawing may have been a little clumsy, but the structure and narrative were there. And that, for me, is what’s most important.

WINDHAM: I agree. And it’s funny that, as a kid reading the comic, I remember... I forget which issue it is, because I’m not that anal-retentive...

CHAYKIN: You have a life and better things to do with your time.

WINDHAM: ...but I remember vividly, the Millennium Falcon is getting drawn into the Death Star, and I saw it in the comic and I thought, “Wow!” And when I saw it on screen, I thought, “Oh my gosh! It’s so much larger.” But rather than getting outraged as a kid reading the thing, I didn’t read it and think, “Wow, they didn’t make it look like it does in the movie!”

CHAYKIN: Bear in mind, we had no sense of scale.

WINDHAM: And also, the photo reference was very limited.

THOMAS: I almost never saw any, because I didn’t bother that much...

CHAYKIN: Were you at the model building room with me?

THOMAS: Yeah, yeah. But I didn’t see— CHAYKIN: We were there the day they were building— THOMAS: I didn’t pay as much attention, because you were the one who had to know what it looked like. I just had to write it, so...

CHAYKIN: I also love models. They were building Darth Vader’s flagship on the day we were there. And it’s the size of a refrigerator hanging from the ceiling, and it’s made from Japanese tank model parts and transistor radios. But we never got a sense of scale, of how big these things were. There were a number of the tunnels, the trenches on the Death Star, of different scales and sizes, but you never got a sense of how big the Millennium Falcon was supposed to be in relationship to other ships and other things.

“We Stood Beneath An Amber Moon...”

The splash page of the 1978 Brazilian reprint of Star Wars #1, as Guerra nas Estrelas no. 1, published by Block Editores of Rio de Janeiro. Ye Editor’s Portuguese is pretty much nonexistent, but it sure looks to him as if the first two captions are a translation of the movie “crawl” as printed in the Marvel comic, wherein it had been quoted from the final screenplay before that “crawl” was totally rewritten in the eleventh hour for the actual film—and the comics credits had been omitted. Thanks to Leonardo de Sà. [TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

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CHAYKIN: What Roy’s talking about...

LIPPINCOTT: It would have been like...

THOMAS: Dell Comics.

LIPPINCOTT: Right.

CHAYKIN: On the Wings of Eagles.

THOMAS: And I didn’t want to do that. I said, you can give it to somebody else, but if it isn’t six issues I’m walking away from it.

CHAYKIN: One of the takeaways from what Ryder is saying is that Star Wars was the first comicbook that really created, in the fan population, the concept of the brand, of the materialized brand. I come of the generation that believes talent is the brand.

But Star Wars redefined the relationship to comics in a profound way in that— One of the things the Lucasfilm guys were doing was confirming that brand by that photo-creation. Let’s face it: George made the money on that stuff by the wise move of holding on to all the licensing. The licensing is based on likenesses in a profound way. The comicbook enthusiast today tends to respond to the brand, and my job, as the talent, is to try to convince you on a one-by-one basis that it’s the talent who makes the material and not the material made.

THOMAS: It’s like... Remember when they made that paperback version, putting all six issues in a paperback? The only names on the cover were going to be George Lucas and Stan Lee, because Stan was writing some little introduction or something. I love Stan, but that drove me up the wall. I went in to him and said, “I want Howard Chaykin’s and my name on this cover along with you and George. We’re the people who did the work.” All Stan did was say, “Okay, you can do it.” [laughter]

Look-In Locks In! The Dec. 31, 1977, issue of the British magazine Look-In [Junior TV Digest] headlined special Star Wars features. By then, it was clear that George Lucas’ space fantasy was going to take over the known universe! Thanks to Leonardo de Sà. [Star Wars material TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

The rest of it was all Charley and me, basically. Charley coming to me, and then me taking it to Stan. We worked kind of as a tag team, and it worked out pretty well. Stan’s main thing was saying he approved it because Alec Guinness was in it, which

And it drove me nuts.

WINDHAM: I thought the, again from my editor background... I remember, with Lucasfilm in the 1990s, there was some point they wanted almost every issue to have some sort of photo-realistic look. They wanted the likenesses to be spot-on. They wanted certain artists to work with it, but I remember telling them, “What about doing a comicbook that has visual energy to it where...” I mean, we know who the characters are. They were very hung up on making comics that look like movies that were never made, if that makes any sense, as opposed to.... And if they were going to do a comicbook adaptation, I just thought, “Why don’t you just do one of those photo-novel things, if this is what you want?” ...And All In Color CHAYKIN: Call John Byrne. [laughter] WINDHAM: But, no. I guess, as a kid, I appreciated the differences in the comics and the movie. I mean, I enjoyed the comics because they were fun.

THOMAS: What if they had had their way at Marvel and the circulation director had actually talked Stan and the president, Jim Galton, into forcing us to do it in one or two issues like they wanted to do?

CHAYKIN: Right! If at all, I might add.

THOMAS: What would that have been like?

For 4½ Francs!

Star Wars also took over the lead spot in the French comicbook Titans, published by Editions Lug, which had formerly cover-featured its resident superheroes. This is the cover of issue #12 (July 10, 1977). Artist unknown.

Thanks to Jean-Michel Ferragatti. [TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

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Chaykin, Lippincott, & Thomas Reunite—41 Years Later

probably—while [the Star Wars comic] may have brought a few people into the movie theatres, it probably wasn’t of much importance to the movie [in terms of] getting people to come to the movie—although some did, of course—but [the comic] was really important to Marvel Comics—who hadn’t wanted to do it—because Marvel Comics was being squeezed at the cover price, they weren’t getting into enough stores, and this and that. The reprints and all the money they made—they, not me and Charley...

CHAYKIN: Or me!

THOMAS: ...or Howard.

LIPPINCOTT: Stan Lee told me, if they hadn’t done the Star Wars comic, they would have probably tanked as a company.

THOMAS: Potentially. What it did is, it made so much money with the reprints and the tabloids and this and that, that it bought Marvel a year or two. It wouldn’t sustain them forever, but it bought them a year or so to kinda retool and get past that point.

I can’t claim any special... Charley wasn’t trying to save Marvel Comics, and I didn’t know I was helping to do it, nor did Howard.

We were all just doing our job. He [Lippincott] was doing it for George and his own interests. I’m doing it because, okay, it’s a fun project and I’ve got to write something.

CHAYKIN: And me, because I basically need work because I’m a young working professional. Bear in mind, had the book come out a year later, with the royalty system in place...

THOMAS: Oh no! Don’t say it!

CHAYKIN: ...Roy and I could have been sitting on enough money—enough “F*** You money”—to never have to work again. [audience laughs as Howard nods with an evil grin] You think I’m joking? I’m deadly serious. Okay? Unfortunately...

THOMAS: The funny thing is, all the years after that, when Dark Horse would reprint the stuff a time or two...

“Trust The Force, Luke!”

Another commissioned piece by Howard Chaykin—this one focusing on Luke Skywalker, the one-time almost-Luke Starkiller! [TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

wouldn’t have sold any comics on a street corner, although Alec Guinness was great. You know, the rest of us, we responded because Charley’s turning over these beautiful McQuarrie drawings and I’m thinking, “There’s no way we can do this. It’s science-fiction. It’s going to be an uphill battle. It’s not my job anymore anyway. I’m not the editor-in-chief...”

CHAYKIN: Now, were you in LA at this point?

THOMAS: No, I was still in [New York] City. I had made arrangements, but I had to make them six months in advance. So, I knew I was going, but I wasn’t [there yet]. So, when he [Lippincott] flips over that one—the cantina sequence drawing, which he referred to as “the cantina sequence,” all of a sudden it all clicked in my mind. I see this guy about to slap leather with an alien.

There’s the Stormtrooper, and it looks like a Mexican cantina or a saloon from an old Western movie and I realized, “Yeah, this isn’t science-fiction. This is space opera! This is Planet Comics and Planet Stories and all that.” And while some of those things had bombed in comics, too, we had a halfway decent shot at doing it. It might be fun to do. Who knew it was going to make a lot of difference?

And the funny thing I have to say before we run out of time is—Charley had this great plan. [His approach to] merchandising was very visionary. But the interesting thing is, in the end,

CHAYKIN: Got a lot more money out of Dark Horse than we ever did out of Marvel.

THOMAS: I sure didn’t.

CHAYKIN: I did. [laughter] THOMAS: All I was ever able to get out of them was a copy or so of the book.

CHAYKIN: No s**t?!

THOMAS: I— CHAYKIN: [stands up] Let’s call Mike [Richardson, Dark Horse publisher] right now!

THOMAS: I made money because Dynamite [Dynamic Forces] would fly me up to sign a thousand or so in an hour or two, and that’d be good money. But from Dark Horse, practically nothing.

But I’ve been making good money now that Disney has bought all of us.

CHAYKIN: Right.

THOMAS: Or all our property. Because now, they put it out and it seems like they’ve got a new version—hardcover or something— every few weeks, and they send nice little checks. So, finally, after forty years, I’m finally making a slight profit. [pause; to Chaykin] You got money from Dark Horse?

CHAYKIN: I did. [laughter] Bear in mind—not “F*** You” money,

The Star Wars Comics Reunion Panel

[crowd laughter] but “Get Off My Lawn” money.

THOMAS: I didn’t get enough money to buy a sign that says “Get off my lawn.” [laughter] CHAYKIN: You have to understand that, when I’m sitting in that theatre on that Wednesday afternoon watching the picture three days before it opens theatrically, and there are maybe eight other people in the theatre—this is a massive New York City movie palace that is now, of course, an office building or some s**t—my first thought was as I’m watching this thing [the Star Destroyer] come down is, “Holy f***! If I had known it was going to be this big a deal, I’d like to think I’d have done a better job!” [laughter] THOMAS: Hadn’t you seen the movie [before]...?

CHAYKIN: Nope. I had not.

THOMAS: Didn’t you go to the screening at George’s place? Or was that just me and [Steve] Leialoha and—Charley, you were there...?

CHAYKIN: No. THOMAS: [to Lippincott] It was a screening in February in ’77. [to Chaykin] You weren’t there...?

CHAYKIN: No, I was in New York City.

LIPPINCOTT: Yeah. He was in New York City.

THOMAS: I keep forgetting. I know a couple of people were there...

CHAYKIN: Yeah, but you were all the California guys.

THOMAS: Yeah, right. Yeah. [a bit of crosstalk, not caught on film] I thought you might have been. I know several of us were there. We were watching the movie. We didn’t know who was beside us.

89

in that way. They do now. I mean, if you look at comicbooks now, today, they take forever to tell a story. Most contemporary comics are sort of windy and endless. And when something economical comes along and it’s broken up, you can almost... There’s almost a start. It would be an interesting experiment for the two of us to find ourselves in this seat again, to do something like this again. [pause] I’m not ready to do it, and neither is he. But it would be a very, very different book.

THOMAS: I think so, yeah. I know that even in terms of what I did, which was... I had two functions. One, which is at the top, was overlooking the other guys, because I was the editor. Anything that Howard did that I didn’t like—assuming, of course, forgetting about time [pressures]—I could have said “change” or had someone else change or whatever. But I didn’t want to do that if I didn’t have to, and I never felt the need to. On the other hand, I got it on the other end just to do the dialogue, and I’m really sorry because— well, I was worried that people couldn’t follow the story because it’s all the space stuff and this and that, and it might be a little hard to follow. So I think I took a little too much of the script and turned it into captions. If I had it to do over again, I would try to find a way to cut that down, but I...

CHAYKIN: You needed that.

THOMAS: I felt like I needed a lot of it. Maybe not in some individual case, but I probably needed some of that.

CHAYKIN: But I think the fact of what I’m saying is, more time, more room, to open up would have created an entirely different product.

THOMAS: Yeah. We had, what..? Out of... I had 107 pages or something like that.

CHAYKIN: I got flown out west shortly thereafter by Jake Bloom on another issue. But when I think about this material and I look at it now, I realize, to a great extent, my delivery was dictated by my ineptitude and my inability. I know now, for example, this if this project were to land on my desk today, it would be—I would probably demand, as opposed to six 20-pagers, I would probably want to do it at a minimum 160 pages to open up and see it.

THOMAS: Yeah.

CHAYKIN: And it would look more like the work I did for Byron Preiss on Empire or for Byron on The Stars My Destination than it looked like then. Okay? Because what Roy is talking about in terms of that cantina sequence—the comicbook, necessarily by dint of format, gives short shrift to all of the beloved set scenes elements. And set pieces are what matter today, and it certainly did then as well. Mainstream comics did not have the agency to deliver set pieces

Getting Graphic Chaykin feels that, if he was given an opportunity to re-draw his Star Wars adaptation, the new version would visually compete better with his work on the graphic novels Empire (1978, by SF author Samuel R. Delaney and Chaykin) for Byron Preiss Productions—and The Complete Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (1992, done for Marvel’s Epic line), which Chaykin illustrated from a script adaptation by Byron Preiss. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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Chaykin, Lippincott, & Thomas Reunite—41 Years Later

LIPPINCOTT: I had [unintelligible] with Heavy Metal for Alien.

LIPPINCOTT: Right. Because of going to Heavy Metal and talking to them, they gave me a chance to open up the thing and do it. And I worked with a friend of yours...

CHAYKIN: It was a 64-page book, but they managed to boil down its essence. And bear in mind, Alien is a much simpler story. Star Wars is an epic. Alien is a haunted house movie. The story just takes place on a ship. [Thomas laughs] It is. It’s really what it is. It’s a monster—basically all that Jason, guys in masks and cutting up their children stuff, really derives from that. [to Ryder] Yours.

CHAYKIN: Yeah, I think Walter [Simonson] and Archie [Goodwin]’s take on that was...

WINDHAM: Mine. Well, gosh. We have a few more minutes. Oh! We have ten.

LIPPINCOTT: ...who did a terrific job of opening it up, and it was a marvel for me to sit there and see this happen. To go through that evolution.

CHAYKIN: Thanks for the scouts.

CHAYKIN: And there’s a perfect example. Exactly.

CHAYKIN: I think the Alien adaptation by Walter and Archie is the single most successful film-to-comics transcription you can see. It’s staggeringly good.

LIPPINCOTT: Yes. THOMAS: How long was it?

CHAYKIN: Was it 64 pages?

WINDHAM: I think so.

LIPPINCOTT: Well, it was whatever they needed...

WINDHAM: Are there any questions?

CHAYKIN: [pointing] This guy was first. Don’t yell. No fighting.

When Daddy and Daddy fight, there’s trouble.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was wondering if you had any free rein on characters guys added or were able to add outside of the movie?

THOMAS: You mean like in those six issues?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I know you mention the green [rabbit]...

THOMAS: Yeah, but that was afterward...

CHAYKIN: Which seemed to annoy the s**t out of everybody. [laughter] THOMAS: Not everybody. I liked that character.

CHAYKIN: Me, too. [to Thomas] Did I tell you about the chick who showed up at the New York show dressed as the Playboy Bunny version of that?

THOMAS: No! CHAYKIN: It was fantastic! [audience laughter; some crosstalk among panelists] ...academic, funny, and self-aware, who moonlit weekends as a stripper... and showed up dressed as Jaxxon’s Playboy Bunny version. It was fantastic. There was a self-awareness and a wit to it I found shocking and wonderful.

THOMAS: [to audience questioner] The closest we came to adding any characters was simply doing it by the script, as there were scenes early on...

CHAYKIN: Biggs Darklighter, for example.

The Ultimate Illegal Alien Charles Lippincott was also involved with merchandising the 1979 film Alien, including its Heavy Metal-published graphic novel adaptation by scripter Archie Goodwin & artist Walt Simonson. A fine piece of work! [TM & © 20th Century Fox or successors in interest.]

THOMAS: Luke with his buddies... scenes that were there to establish characters on Tatooine. And, boy, did we get letters from people who saw the movie: “How come you have all these scenes in the comic that aren’t in the movie?” Of course, they were in the script we were given, but it’s hard to explain to people... and besides, if we’d had a hammer in our hands when we tried to explain it, we might have gotten violent with these people. They were so self-righteous about it. But we certainly wouldn’t have added anybody. The scenes Archie Goodwin of aliens sitting in the corner [in the cantina sequence] were added at the last minute practically, anyway. They had no connection to the rest of the story. They were just in that one scene. I mean, it would’ve been great to add those things, but we obviously didn’t have space, time, or anything else to do it.

Walt Simonson

LIPPINCOTT: There was an opening up of Alien. There’s stuff there showing the alien that wasn’t shown other than in that one area,

The Star Wars Comics Reunion Panel

91

which was important to the readers.

THOMAS: While, at Marvel, we were all sweetness and light.

THOMAS: Didn’t they have a scene or two in Alien that were not in the finished movie? Did they show any of, you know, the bodies hanging that the alien was saving? Or was that taken care of by then?

CHAYKIN: Oh, yes. Marvel. Actually, Marvel was a fun place to be in those days. I mean, the thing about comics in the 1970s is it was very collegial. It was competitive, but collegial. And Warren was not part of that axis. DC and Marvel both, we all just sort of hung around. Most of us got work by hanging around the offices and waiting for something to be needed. And that’s not a joke. It’s quite true. There was no security. I never felt unwelcome. You’d walk in, you’d f**k around and banter with the secretaries, and you’d hang with your editor and shoot the s**t. [Production manager] John Verpoorton ran the house. In those days, the comicbook companies, all of the editorial departments were effectively run by the production department. Production dictated everything . All of the really funny s**t happened in the production department.

Verpoorton was that way... Jack Adler and Sol Harrison were oddly shark-like at DC. [Roy laughs] But it was... They were the tails that wagged the dog. And I loved being in my 20s in New York City and the comicbook business in the 1970s. It was a fantastic experience.

LIPPINCOTT: No. They had taken care of it by then.

CHAYKIN: [indicating guy in audience] This guy here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER 2: A two-part question. [to Lippincott] I know you mentioned the interest from you and George of working with Howard and Roy and Marvel, but was there any consideration at the beginning to go with DC? THOMAS: [to Lippincott] Well, there a story about DC or Warren.

Did you think about other companies before you came to me? I always didn’t know if I was the first person, last gasp, or whatever.

LIPPINCOTT: There was talk about Warren at the time, but there was no way anything was going to happen.

THOMAS: [to Lippincott] We mentioned Warren. What about DC?

CHAYKIN: Not with Jim.

CHAYKIN: Yeah. That I’d love to know about.

LIPPINCOTT: No. And Howard, you can talk about Warren... because I never had anything to do with Jim.

THOMAS: I remember you spoke with Jeanette Kahn, didn’t you, at some stage?

CHAYKIN: Warren was a complex and difficult place to work. On a number of levels.

LIPPINCOTT: DC didn’t mean anything to me at the time.

Hares Apparent (Above:) Before he ever heard of either Star Wars or Jaxxon the green rabbit, Howard Chaykin contributed this illustration to the program book of Phil Seuling’s 1975 New York Comic Art Convention. Thanks to John Benson. [© Howard Chaykin.]

(Right:) As Roy T. detailed in A/E #145, George Lucas hated Jaxxon with a passion... an opinion that helped make up the comics writer/editor’s mind to depart the Star Wars comic sooner rather than later. Happily, other fans have reacted more favorably to Jaxxon and the other characters created in Star Wars #7-10, such as this drawing by Bob Wiacek of Jaxxon and Amaiza.

[Jaxxon & Amaiza TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.] SPECIAL GEORGE LUCAS NOTE: Roy writes: “Although I tried to cram everything I could recall about my ‘Star Wars experience’ into A/E #145, I still managed to leave out one of my favorite memories of the period.

During my conference with George Lucas about post-movie storylines for the comic held in his office at Universal soon after the opening of the instantblockbuster film, I asked him how he planned to keep straight all the various new emanations of the Star Wars universe—novels, comicbooks, comic strips, etc.—that were now bound to conflict with the film and with each other. George responded simply and straightforwardly with what remains my favorite all-time comment on Star Wars matters: ‘What happens in the movies is gospel. Everything else is gossip.’ Nobody could have put it better.”

THOMAS: I mean, I never heard anything else. All I knew was you

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Chaykin, Lippincott, & Thomas Reunite—41 Years Later

CHAYKIN: [to Roy] Did Ed die?

THOMAS: [to Chaykin, frowning] Yeah. [to Lippincott] Actually, Ed didn’t talk to Stan. He spoke to me.

LIPPINCOTT: Oh, I know. He went out to dinner with you, and that made all the difference in the world, because then there was this opening to be involved.

THOMAS: Stan liked me. [audience laughs] WINDHAM: We have five minutes. Any other questions? Yes, sir?

AUDIENCE MEMBER IN BACK: I know you guys have been talking about the first six issues of the Marvel series, but I remember issue 7 very clearly. [Lippincott and Chaykin admonish him to talk louder] THOMAS: [loudly, with hands to mouth like megaphone] He says he remembers issue 7 very clearly!

CHAYKIN: [to guy in audience] Better you than me. [laughter] AUDIENCE MEMBER IN BACK: I remember, as a kid, getting that, and finding out that you were going to continue the Star Wars story was very exciting to me. [unclear] ...the next movie. Did you get any guidelines from Lucas?

THOMAS: Oh, we got great guidelines. I was told “you can’t do anything with the romance between Luke and Leia.” Nobody told me why. [laughter] They said...

CHAYKIN: Now that’s the movie I wanted to see. [laughter] Oh my God! THOMAS: They said, “You can’t use Darth Vader, because we don’t know what we’re going to do in the sequel.” So they were just ignoring the thing. And you can’t use... Oh, I mentioned, there’s mention of something called “The Clone Wars” in one place in Star Wars.

Down To The Space In Ships Still more of his 1970s comics artwork that Howard Chaykins keeps apologizing for on the panel—this one a full-page scene from his “Iron Wolf” tale in DC’s Weird Worlds #8 (Nov.-Dec. 1973). Plot & art by Howard Chaykin; script by Dennis O’Neil. Thanks to “joe-one-with-chaos,” whoever he may actually be.

[TM & © DC Comics.]

had tried to reach Stan...

LIPPINCOTT: Right.

THOMAS: And I gotten the impression that you had talked to him and he turned you down. Turns out actually you couldn’t get to him at all. You just got to his secretary. Is that right?

LIPPINCOTT: The first week, I couldn’t get through to him. He wouldn’t talk to me.

THOMAS: Neither could I, some days.

LIPPINCOTT: And then I went to...

THOMAS: Ed. LIPPINCOTT: Ed. Yes. WINDHAM: Ed Summer.

THOMAS: He died a couple of years ago.

LIPPINCOTT: Ed talked to Stan about it, and that made a big difference right there.

LIPPINCOTT: [unclear] THOMAS: But it’s in the movie.

CHAYKIN: I really wanted to meet Dorothy Vader, Vader’s wife.

THOMAS: So I asked them, “Can we use—what if I do something to develop the Clone Wars?” And they said, “No. We might want to do something with that someday.” [laughter] So I was disgusted.

But the thing is, I liked space opera, and there was a character I had tried to get for Marvel after Conan hit called “Northwest Smith,” created by C.L. Moore...

CHAYKIN: God, I forgot about that. That’s right!

THOMAS: Yeah, there were a lot of great stories. “Shambleau”...

I even named a cow after Shambleau. But anyway, the thing is, [Moore’s] agent wanted $500 an issue for an obscure character that hadn’t been around since the ’30s or something. It made no sense. But I loved that kind of thing... and Han Solo reminded me of that, and Chewbacca the Wookiee was the perfect hairy “Tonto” character. That’s “hairy Tonto” not “Harry and Tonto.” [laughter] CHAYKIN: That’s exactly where I was going. Art Carney just flew through my head. [laughter] THOMAS: I had to make up a new story, so I said, “We’ll do a Magnificent Seven kind of story,” or whatever. So I had to make up new characters. So that’s how the green rabbit got made up, because I wanted to have one character that had sort of animalistic qualities.

But I went a little further in another direction and George didn’t like it—which I totally understand. On the other hand, I realized,

The Star Wars Comics Reunion Panel

93

CHAYKIN: Flash Gordon. Al Williamson was Alex Raymond’s spiritual son. And he loved that stuff much too much.

THOMAS: But we did the best we could.

Comicbooks, like politics, are the art of the possible, and we did the best we could with it.

WINDHAM: [being signaled from the door] We’re done.

THOMAS: For a book that I think I could have written better, and that Howard thinks is just this side of toilet paper... [laughter] CHAYKIN: I wouldn’t go that far. I’m just shamed, not disgusted. It’s a matter of degrees.

THOMAS: Okay. But the nice thing is, it became such a nice success. [to Howard] I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wished that I had a chance to redo it. I got annoyed at Dark Horse when they had somebody else do a revamp, because

North By Northwest Smith Back in A/E #145 we spotlighted the cover of the 1950s hardcover edition of Northwest of Earth, one of the two Gnome Press books that had reprinted the 1930s adventures of C.L. Moore’s Weird Tales space-opera hero Northwest Smith, tales admired by both Thomas and Chaykin. Above are the covers of two later paperback editions of that work, one from Ace Books, the other from a publisher calling itself Planet Stories. Artists unknown. [Art © the respective copyright holders.]

I’m having so much fun working with Conan because Robert E. Howard died four years before I was born. The estate just takes its money and lets me do what I want. I quit Tarzan because there was someone at the estate giving me trouble, and I quit Star Wars—with no great rancor, but just because it wasn’t going to be fun for me anymore. Archie Goodwin had a wonderful feel for it. He had Walt Simonson, Carmine Infantino...

CHAYKIN: And Al! THOMAS: Al Williamson.

CHAYKIN: But Al... Al is the one who should have been doing it in the first place. He just loved that stuff so much. At the age of 60, he had an adolescent sensibility of— THOMAS: You think you were having trouble meeting the deadlines? What if Al Williamson— CHAYKIN: Look, let me tell you... No. No need to defame the dead in that regard. [pause] Actually, we can talk about him. He’s not here. [laughter] LIPPINCOTT: They want us to close up... but I will say that it is true that the one person who should have been working on the whole thing passed away, and would have been a very good artist to work on it, and that’s Al Williamson.

CHAYKIN: Exactly. He should have been doing it from the beginning.

LIPPINCOTT: He was the closest thing to the original artist of—

“Don’t Get Cocky, Kid!” Apparently Dave Cockrum, then rising to Marvel stardom on the strength of his artwork on the revived X-Men title, drew this cover for Marvel UK’s Star Wars Weekly #4 (for Feb. 29, 1978). Thanks to Martin Gately. [TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

94

Chaykin, Lippincott, & Thomas Reunite—41 Years Later

A Long Time Ago, In An Artbook Far, Far Away...

In Alter Ego #145, we ran the first of a series of sample comic strips drawn by legendary artist Al Williamson retelling the story of the film—strips that were never used in the newspapers but were first printed in James van Hise’s 1983 book The Art of Al Williamson. But note the two different misspellings of “Artoo Detoo.” This time, we’re reprinting the first four strips. Williamson, of course, was tapped to draw the Marvel adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back. [TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

The Star Wars Comics Reunion Panel

95

“Let The Wookey Win!” (Far left:) A well-composed scene showing Han Solo, Chewbacca the Wookiee, and Luke Skywalker by comics artist Gene Day, from his quashed 1977 Star Wars Portfolio. See A/E #145 for details. Thanks to Paul King. [TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.] (Near left:) As mentioned in A/E #145, Roy Thomas was wandering amid the pre-owned volumes in the famous Strand Bookstore below 14th Street in NYC, sometime in the early ’80s, when he stumbled across a 1941 hardcover copy of a then-new English stage drama titled The Wookey, by one Frederick Hazlitt Brennan.

In fact, it was so new in ’41 that apparently the book had gone to the printers before the play had opened in London. Its success or lack of same is not known to Ye Ed, but it starred (see photo from book) the English stage and screen actor Edmund Gwenn, best known for his later appearances in the American films Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (1955). The Wookey dealt with the 1940 “Miracle of Dunkirk,” in which much of the British army was rescued (offstage, of course) from France under the very nose of Hitler and the Luftwaffe; “Wookey” was the surname of a workingclass family living in the East End dock area of London. No, it’s not likely that’s the source of George Lucas’ inspiration for the word “Wookiee”—but it’s interesting, just the same.

[Photo © the respective copyright holders.]

I thought, “I want another shot at it without the deadline pressures and knowing what the movie’s going to look like, which we did not.”

CHAYKIN: There’s that.

THOMAS: But other than that, it was really a great experience to get to work with that. And I’m so glad that Charley could make it here, because I haven’t seen him for forty years. And without Charley coming on in the first place, there would no Star Wars comics. Maybe no Marvel Comics, so...

CHAYKIN: But there also might not be millions of people who used to beat us up for reading comics in high school filling up the San Diego comic book convention. [laughter] Thanks so much.

THOMAS: Thank you. [audience applauds]

Star Wars 1977--& 2017 A final vista of the TerrifiCon panel and packed chamber, with (l. to r.)

Lippincott, Thomas, Chaykin, and Windham... plus yet another of those infamous pages from Marvel’s Star Wars #1 that Thomas and Chaykin adapted from the official screenplay but that didn’t quite make it into the finished film.

Thanks to MinuteMen/DarthScanner site. [TM & © Lucasfilm, Ltd.]

GET A FREE COPY! Help us find a few missing pages, and better scans of others. Anonymity will be respected.

JACK KIRBY’S DINGBAT LOVE

In cooperation with DC COMICS, TwoMorrows compiles a tempestuous trio of never-seen 1970s Kirby projects! These are the final complete, unpublished Jack Kirby stories in existence, presented here for the first time! Included are: Two unused DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET tales (Kirby’s final Kid Gang group, inked by MIKE ROYER and D. BRUCE BERRY, and newly colored for this book)! TRUE-LIFE DIVORCE, the abandoned newsstand magazine that was too hot for its time (reproduced from Jack’s pencil art—and as a bonus, we’ve commissioned MIKE ROYER to ink one of the stories)! And SOUL LOVE, the unseen ’70s romance book so funky, even a jive turkey will dig the unretouched inks by VINCE COLLETTA and TONY DeZUNIGA. PLUS: There’s Kirby historian JOHN MORROW’s in-depth examination of why these projects got left back, concept art and uninked pencils from DINGBATS, and a Foreword by former 1970s Kirby assistant MARK EVANIER! SHIPS OCT. 2019!

(160-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $14.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-091-5

rs. ctive owne their respe All characte

In the latest volume, KURT MITCHELL and ROY THOMAS document the 1940-44 “Golden Age” of comics, a period that featured the earliest adventures of BATMAN, CAPTAIN MARVEL, SUPERMAN, and WONDER WOMAN. It was a time when America’s entry into World War II was presaged Look for the 1945-49 volume by the arrival of such patriotic do-gooders as WILL EISNER’s Uncle Sam, HARRY SHORTEN and in early 2020!

IRV NOVICK’s The Shield, and JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY’s Captain America—and teenage culture found expression in a fumbling red-haired high school student named Archie Andrews. But most of all, it was the age of “packagers” like HARRY A CHESLER, and EISNER and JERRY IGER, who churned out material for the entire gamut of genres, from funny animal stories and crime tales, to jungle sagas and science-fiction adventures. Watch the history of comics begin! SHIPS JUNE 2019!

rs TM & ©

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: 1940-44

OR -COL FULLDCOVER HAR RIES SE nting me docu ecade of ! d each s history ic m co

(288-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $45.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-089-2

MAC RABOY Master of the Comics

Beginning with his WPA etchings during the 1930s, MAC RABOY struggled to survive the Great Depression and eventually found his way into the comic book sweatshops of America. In that world of four-color panels, he perfected his art style on such creations as DR. VOODOO, ZORO the MYSTERY MAN, BULLETMAN, SPY SMASHER, GREEN LAMA, and his crowning achievement, CAPTAIN MARVEL JR. Raboy went on to illustrate the FLASH GORDON Sunday newspaper strip, and left behind a legacy of meticulous perfection.

Through extensive research and interviews with son DAVID RABOY, and assistants who worked with the artist during the Golden Age of Comics, author ROGER HILL brings Mac Raboy, the man and the artist, into focus for historians to savor and enjoy. This FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER includes never-before-seen photos, a wealth of rare and unpublished artwork, and the first definitive biography of a true Master of the Comics! Introduction by ROY THOMAS! ISBN: 978-1-60549-090-8 • SHIPS AUG. 2019!

(160-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.95 Roger Hill’s 2017 biography of REED CRANDALL sold out just months after its release—don’t let this one pass you by!Pre-order now!

Silver ary ers Anniv -2019 1994 ears 25 Y

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BACK ISSUE #112

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AMERICAN COMIC BOOK COMIC BOOK IMPLOSION ORAL HISTORY OF DC COMICS CHRONICLES: The 1990s AN CIRCA 1978! Marking the 40th anniver-

NUCLEAR ISSUE! Firestorm, Dr. Manhattan, DAVE GIBBONS Marvel UK Hulk interview, villain histories of Radioactive Man and Microwave Man, Radioactive Man and Fallout Boy, and the one-shot Holo-Man! With PAT BRODERICK, GERRY CONWAY, JOE GIELLA, TOM GRINDBERG, RAFAEL KAYANAN, TOM MANDRAKE, BILL MORRISON, JOHN OSTRANDER, STEVE VANCE, and more! PAT BRODERICK cover!

BATMAN MOVIE 30th ANNIVERSARY! Producer MICHAEL USLAN and screenwriter SAM HAMM interviewed, a chat with BILLY DEE WILLIAMS (who was almost Two-Face), plus DENNY O’NEIL and JERRY ORDWAY’s Batman movie adaptation, MINDY NEWELL’s Catwoman, GRANT MORRISON and DAVE McKEAN’s Arkham Asylum, MAX ALLAN COLLINS’ Batman newspaper strip, and JOEY CAVALIERI & JOE STATON’s Huntress!

BLACK SUPERHEROES OF THE 1970s!

History of Luke Cage, Hero for Hire! A retrospective of artist BILLY GRAHAM, a TONY ISABELLA interview, Black Lightning, Black Panther in the UK, Black Goliath, the Teen Titans’ Mal and Bumblebee, DON McGREGOR and PAUL GULACY’s Sabre, and… Black Bomber (who?). Featuring MIKE W. BARR, STEVE ENGLEHART, ROY THOMAS, and a BILLY GRAHAM cover!

sary of the “DC Implosion”, one of the most notorious events in comics (which left stacks of completed comic book stories unpublished and spawned Cancelled Comics Cavalcade). Featuring JENETTE KAHN, PAUL LEVITZ, LEN WEIN, MIKE GOLD, and others, plus detailed analysis of how it changed the landscape of comics!

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Year-by-year account of the decade when X-MEN #1 sold 8.1 million copies, IMAGE COMICS was formed, Superman died, Batman had his back broken, and Neil Gaiman’s SANDMAN led to the VERTIGO line of adult comic books. Go behind-thescenes in that era of gimmicky covers, skimpy costumes, and mega-crossovers. By KEITH DALLAS and JASON SACKS.

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ALTER EGO #160

ALTER EGO #161

ALTER EGO #162

DRAW #36

REMEMBERING STEVE DITKO! Sturdy Steve at Marvel, DC, Warren, Charlton, and elsewhere! A rare late-1960s Ditko interview by RICHARD HOWELL— biographical notes by NICK CAPUTO— tributes by MICHAEL T. GILBERT, PAUL LEVITZ, BERNIE BUBNIS, BARRY PEARL, ROY THOMAS, et al. Plus FCA, JOHN BROOME, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Spider-Man cover by DITKO!

Full-issue STAN LEE TRIBUTE! ROY THOMAS writes on his more than 50-year relationship with Stan—and shares 21stcentury e-mails from Stan (with his permission, of course)! Art by KIRBY, DITKO, MANEELY, EVERETT, SEVERIN, ROMITA, plus tributes from pros and fans alike, and special sections on Stan by MICHAEL T. GILBERT, BILL SCHELLY, and even the FCA! Vintage cover by KIRBY and COLLETTA!

WILL MURRAY presents an amazing array of possible prototypes of Batman (by artist FRANK FOSTER—in 1932!)—Wonder Woman (by Star-Spangled Kid artist HAL SHERMAN)—Tarantula (by Air Wave artist LEE HARRIS), and others! Plus a rare Hal Sherman interview—MICHAEL T. GILBERT with more on artist PETE MORISI—FCA— BILL SCHELLY—JOHN BROOME—and more! Cover homage by SHANE FOLEY!

MIKE HAWTHORNE (Deadpool, Infinity Countdown) interview, YANICK PAQUETTE (Wonder Woman: Earth One, Batman Inc., Swamp Thing) how-to demo, JERRY ORDWAY’s “Ord-Way” of creating comics, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the latest art supplies, plus Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and MIKE MANLEY! May contain nudity for figure-drawing instruction; for Mature Readers Only.

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BRICKJOURNAL #56

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #19 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #20

KIRBY COLLECTOR #75

MIKE GRELL

LIFE IS DRAWING WITHOUT AN ERASER

Career-spanning tribute covering Legion of Super-Heroes, Warlord, & Green Arrow at DC Comics, and Grell’s own properties Jon Sable, Starslayer, and Shaman’s Tears. Told in Grell’s own words, with PAUL LEVITZ, DAN JURGENS, DENNY O’NEIL, MARK RYAN, & MIKE GOLD. Heavily illustrated!

(160-page FULL-COLOR TPB) $27.95 (176-page LTD. ED. HARDCOVER) $37.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 • Now shipping!

KIRBY COLLECTOR #76

LIFE-SIZE LEGO and what it takes to build them (besides a ton of LEGO brick)! HELEN SHAM’s sculptures of giant everyday items, MAGNUS LAUGHLO’s GI Joe®-inspired models, military builds by ERIC ONG, plus “Bricks In The Middle” comic by KEVIN HINKLE, “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BrickNerd’s DIY Fan Art, Minifig Customization by JARED K. BURKS, & more!

Celebrating the greatest fantasy artist of all time, FRANK FRAZETTA! From THUN’DA and EC COMICS to CREEPY, EERIE, and VAMPIRELLA, STEVE RINGGENBERG and CBC’s editor present an historical retrospective, including insights by current creators and associates, and memories of the man himself. PLUS: Frazetta-inspired artists JOE JUSKO, and TOM GRINDBERG, who contributes our Death Dealer cover painting!

NOT YOUR AVERAGE JOES! Interview with JOSEPH MICHAEL LINSNER (CRY FOR DAWN, VAMPIRELLA), a chat with JOE SINNOTT about his Marvel years inking Jack Kirby and work at TREASURE CHEST, JOE JUSKO discusses the Marvel Age of Comics and his fabulous “Corner Box Collection,” plus the artists behind the Topps bubble gum BAZOOKA JOE comic strips, CRAIG YOE, and more!

KIRBY & LEE: STUF’ SAID! The creators of the Marvel Universe’s own words, in chronological order, from fanzine, magazine, radio, and TV interviews, painting a picture of JACK KIRBY and STAN LEE’s relationship—why it succeeded, where it deteriorated, and when it eventually failed.

Includes a study of their solo careers after 1970, and recollections from STEVE DITKO, WALLACE WOOD, & JOHN ROMITA SR.

FATHERS & SONS! Odin/Thor, Zeus/ Hercules, Darkseid/Orion, Captain America/ Bucky, and other dysfunctional relationships, unpublished 1994 interview with GIL KANE eulogizing Kirby, tributes from Jack’s creative “sons” in comics (MUMY, PALMIOTTI, QUESADA, VALENTINO, McFARLANE, GAIMAN, & MILLER), MARK EVANIER, 2018 Kirby Tribute Panel, Kirby pencil art gallery, and more!

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Relive The Pop Culture You Grew Up With!

Remember when Saturday morning television was our domain, and ours alone? When tattoos came from bubble gum packs, Slurpees came in superhero cups, and TV heroes taught us to be nice to each other?

Those were the happy days of the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties— our childhood—and that is the era of TwoMorrows’ new magazine RETROFAN!

#5: Interviews with MARK HAMILL and Greatest American Hero’s WILLIAM KATT! Blast off with JASON OF STAR COMMAND! Stop by the MUSEUM OF POPULAR CULTURE! Poke fun at a campy BATMAN COMIC BOOK! Plus: “The First Time I Met Tarzan,” MAJOR MATT MASON, Moon Landing Mania, SNUFFY SMITH at 100 with cartoonist JOHN ROSE, TV Dinners, Celebrity Crushes, and more fun, fab features!

SHIPS JUNE 2019! #6: Interviews with crazy creepster SVENGOOLIE and Eddie Munster himself, BUTCH PATRICK! Call on the original Saturday Morning Ghost Busters, with BOB BURNS! Uncover the nutty Naugas!

Plus: “My Life in the Twilight Zone,” “I Was a Teenage James Bond,” “My Letters to Famous People,” the ARCHIEDOBIE GILLIS connection, the PINBALL Hall of Fame, Super Collector DAVID MANDEL’s comic art collection, Alien action figures, the RUBIK’S CUBE fad, and more fun, fab features!

SHIPS SEPTEMBER 2019!

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RETROFAN #1

RETROFAN #2

RETROFAN #3

RETROFAN #4

THE CRAZY, COOL CULTURE WE GREW UP WITH! LOU FERRIGNO interview, The Phantom in Hollywood, Filmation’s Star Trek cartoon, “How I Met Lon Chaney, Jr.”, goofy comic Zody the Mod Rob, Mego’s rare Elastic Hulk toy, RetroTravel to Mount Airy, NC (the real-life Mayberry), interview with BETTY LYNN (“Thelma Lou” of The Andy Griffith Show), TOM STEWART’s eclectic House of Collectibles, and Mr. Microphone!

HALLOWEEN! Horror-hosts ZACHERLEY, VAMPIRA, SEYMOUR, MARVIN, and an interview with our cover-featured ELVIRA! THE GROOVIE GOOLIES, BEWITCHED, THE ADDAMS FAMILY, and THE MUNSTERS! The long-buried Dinosaur Land amusement park! History of BEN COOPER HALLOWEEN COSTUMES, character lunchboxes, superhero VIEW-MASTERS, SINDY (the British Barbie), and more!

40th Anniversary interview with SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE director RICHARD DONNER, IRWIN ALLEN’s sci-fi universe, Saturday morning’s undersea adventures of Aquaman, horror and sci-fi zines of the Sixties and Seventies, Spider-Man and Hulk toilet paper, RetroTravel to METROPOLIS, IL (home of the Superman Celebration), SEAMONKEYS®, FUNNY FACE beverages, Superman and Batman memorabilia, & more!

Interviews with the SHAZAM! TV show’s JOHN (Captain Marvel) DAVEY and MICHAEL (Billy Batson) Gray, the GREEN HORNET in Hollywood, remembering monster maker RAY HARRYHAUSEN, the wayout Santa Monica Pacific Ocean Amusement Park, a Star Trek Set Tour, SAM J. JONES on the Spirit movie pilot, British sci-fi TV classic THUNDERBIRDS, Casper & Richie Rich museum, the KING TUT fad, and more!

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