Alter Ego #15

Roy Thomas’ Super-Heroic Comics Fanzine

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No. 15 June 2002

TRIBUTE TO

A TITAN!

John Buscema ‘Nuff Said!

Conan TM & ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc. Other heroes ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “AllInterview Issue”! Part 2 of an exclusive STEVE ENGLEHART interview (continued from ALTER EGO #103)! “Pro2Pro” interviews between SIMONSON & LARSEN, MOENCH & WEIN, and comics letterers KLEIN & CHIANG. Plus JOHN OSTRANDER, MICHAEL USLAN, and longtime DC color artist ADRIENNE ROY! Cover by Englehart collaborator MARSHALL ROGERS!

“Gods!” Takes an in-depth look at WALTER SIMONSON’s Thor, the Thunder God in the Bronze Age, “Pro2Pro” interview with TOM DeFALCO and RON FRENZ, Hercules: Prince of Power, Moondragon, Three Ways to End the New Gods Saga, exclusive interview with fantasy writer MICHAEL MOORCOCK, art and commentary by GERRY CONWAY, JACK KIRBY, BOB LAYTON, and more, with a swingin’ Thor cover by SIMONSON!

“Liberated Ladies” eyeing female characters that broke barriers in the Bronze Age: Big Barda, Valkyrie, Ms. Marvel, Phoenix, Savage She-Hulk, and the sword-wielding Starfire. Plus a “Pro2Pro” interview with JILL THOMPSON, GAIL SIMONE, and BARBARA KESEL, art and commentary by JOHN BYRNE, GEORGE PEREZ, JACK KIRBY, MIKE VOSBURG, and more, with a new cover by BRUCE TIMM!

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THE BEST IN COMICS AND LEGO MAGAZINES!

ALTER EGO #105

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ALTER EGO #108

DRAW! #22

See comic art and script BEFORE and AFTER the Comics Code changes, with art

by SIMON & KIRBY, DITKO, BUSCEMA, SINNOTT, GOULD, COLE, STERANKO, KRIGSTEIN, O’NEIL, GLANZMAN, ORLANDO, WILLIAMSON, HEATH, and others! Plus: FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, JIM AMASH interviews Timely/Atlas artist CAL MASSEY, and a new cover by JOSH MEDORS!

DICK GIORDANO through the 1960s—from freelance years and Charlton “Action-Heroes” to his first stint at DC! Art by DITKO, APARO, BOYETTE, MORISI, McLAUGHLIN, GIL KANE, and others, Dick’s final convention panel with STEVE SKEATES and ROY THOMAS, JIM AMASH interviews Charlton artist TONY TALLARICO, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and ROY ALD, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, GIORDANO cover, and more!

Big BATMAN issue, with an unused Golden Age cover by DICK SPRANG! SHEL DORF interviews SPRANG and JIM MOONEY, with rare and unseen Batman art by BOB KANE, JERRY ROBINSON, WIN MORTIMER, SHELLY MOLDOFF, CHARLES PARIS, and others! Part II of the TONY TALLARICO interview by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

1970s Bullpenner WARREN REECE talks about Marvel Comics and working with EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, STAN LEE, MARIE SEVERIN, ADAMS, FRIEDRICH, ROY THOMAS, and others, with rare art!

DEWEY CASSELL spotlights Golden Age artist MIKE PEPPE, with art by TOTH, ANDRU, TUSKA, CELARDO, & LUBBERS, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, cover by EVERETT & BURGOS, and more!

Interview with inker SCOTT WILLIAMS from his days at Marvel and Image to his work with JIM LEE, and PATRICK OLIFFE demos how he produces Spider-Girl, Mighty Samson, and digital comics. Also, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

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LEE & KIRBY: THE WONDER YEARS (KIRBY COLLECTOR #58)

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“Kirby Vault!” Rarities from the “King” of comics: Personal correspondence, private photos, collages, rare Marvelmania art, bootleg album covers, sketches, transcript of a 1969 VISIT TO THE KIRBY HOME (where Jack answers the questions YOU’D ask in ‘69), MARK EVANIER, pencil art from the FOURTH WORLD, CAPTAIN AMERICA, MACHINE MAN, SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, and more!

LEGO SPACE WAR issue! A STARFIGHTER BUILDING LESSON by Peter Reid, WHY SPACE MARINES ARE SO POPULAR by Mark Stafford, a trip behind the scenes of LEGO’S NEW ALIEN CONQUEST SETS that hit store shelves earlier this year, plus JARED K. BURKS’ column on MINIFIGURE CUSTOMIZATION, building tips, event reports, our step-by-step “YOU CAN BUILD IT” INSTRUCTIONS, and more!

Go to Japan with articles on two JAPANESE LEGO FAN EVENTS, plus take a look at JAPAN’S SACRED LEGO LAND, Nasu Highland Park—the site of the BrickFan events and a pilgrimage site for many Japanese LEGO fans. Also, a feature on JAPAN’S TV CHAMPIONSHIP OF LEGO, a look at the CLICKBRICK LEGO SHOPS in Japan, plus how to get into TECHNIC BUILDING, LEGO EDUCATION, and more!

LEGO EVENTS ISSUE covering our own BRICKMAGIC FESTIVAL, BRICKWORLD, BRICKFAIR, BRICKCON, plus other events outside the US. There’s full event details, plus interviews with the winners of the BRICKMAGIC CHALLENGE competition, complete with instructions to build award winning models. Also JARED K. BURKS’ regular column on minifigure customizing, building tips, and more!

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Vol. 3, No. 15 / June 2002

™

Editor Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout Christopher Day

Consulting Editors John Morrow Jon B. Cooke

FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck

Comics Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus Jerry Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White, Mike Friedrich

Cover Artist John Buscema

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko (with special thanks to Susan O’Leary)

Mailing Crew Russ Garwood, Glen Musial, Ed Stelli, Pat Varker, Loston Wallace

And Special Thanks to:

Don Andre Blake Bell Tom Bernardo Mike Burkey Mrs. Dolores Buscema John Buscema, Jr. Sal Buscema Joey Cavalieri Gene Colan Shel Dorf Patrick Dumas Jean-Jacques Dzialowski Mark Evanier John Fleskes Gil Formosa Karl Gafford Stan Goldberg Grass Green George Hagenauer Bob Hall David G. Hamilton Ron Harris Irwin Hasen Tom Horvitz Carmine Infantino John Kelly Adam Kubert Andy Kubert Joe Kubert Stan Lee Jean-Marc Lofficier Russ Maheras

Mick Martin Jim McLauchlin Brian K. Morris Dave Newton Eric Nolen-Weathington Charlie Novinskie Jerry Ordway Matthew Lage Owen & Susan O’Leary Joe Petrilak Adam Philips Bill Pearson John G. Pierce Dan Raspler John Romita Stephanie Sanderson Mrs. Dorothy Schaffenberger Marie Severin David Siegel Robin Snyder Flo Steinberg Marc Swayze Marc Svensson Dann Thomas Herb Trimpe Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Hames Ware Alan Weiss Ralph Rawson Werner Ed Zeno Mike Zeno

This issue is dedicated to the memory of:

John Buscema • Kurt Schaffenberger Henry Boltinoff • Chad Grothkopf Landon Chesney • Rich Grasso

Contents Writer/Editorial: “John Buscema Can Draw Anything You Can Get Him to Want to Draw!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 “John Buscema: The San Diego 2001 Interview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Mark Evanier talks to the artist about his love/hate affair with comics.

“Drawing Was His Life!”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Sal Buscema talks to Jim Amash about his big brother.

ACTOR Is Open for Business. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 At last—an organization dedicated to helping comics creators in need!

Stan Goldberg on John Buscema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 “Stan G.” on his friendship with JB—and a memorable trip to Italy.

A Few More Words about John Buscema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Brief tributes from a handful of the artist’s fellow pros.

More about Big John–––Kurt Schaffenberger–––& Others . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: Owen O’Leary, John’s art commission representative during the last year of his life, put together this stunning montage—the artist surrounded by penciled images of some of the Marvel heroes with whom he was most associated. [Conan TM & ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.; other heroes ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Above: A commission drawing of the Sentinel of the Spaceways, courtesy of Owen O’Leary.

[Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Silver Surfer TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Alter EgoTM is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. Phone: (919) 833-8092.

Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: Rt. 3, Box 468, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $5.95 ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 elsewhere). Eight-issue subscriptions: $40 US, $80 Canada, $88 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada.

FIRST PRINTING.

Title writer/editorial

2

“John Buscema Can Draw Anything You Can Get Him To Want To Draw!”

The above title is a line I’ve said many times since 1966, when John Buscema and I first worked together, beginning with The Avengers and continuing through Sub-Mariner, Conan the Barbarian, Fantastic Four, MGM’s Marvelous Wizard of Oz, The Savage Sword of Conan, and various other Marvel mags—and concluding with a DC series of which we had completed approximately one-fifth when he entered the hospital for the final time in January of this year.

In 2001 Jon B. Cooke, editor of our sister TwoMorrows magazine Comic Book Artist, and I had discussed future projects with John: Jon would do a long career-spanning interview and christen that issue “Buscema and the Barbarians,” while I would simply do more short interviews with him about our work together, along the lines of the Avengers-related one two issues back, although I was aware John recalled few details about that work and really cared little for comics work except the two Conan books and perhaps the first few issues of The Silver Surfer.

With John’s untimely passing, however, Jon understood that I could no longer stick to that plan, since I felt that I should do my own tribute issue to Big John in Alter Ego. Jon and I agreed that CBA would concentrate on more of a biographical approach, while A/E would feature my own reminiscences, and the two San Diego Comic-Con panels in which John took part in summer of 2001. Between our two magazines (with the CBA issue due out a few months after A/E) and other fan-press tributes to John that would inevitably appear, we hoped that all of us together might be able to do something resembling justice to the life and work of John Buscema.

mation, art, and remembrances... which again have been held for A/E #16... so that herein we could include tributes from John’s fellow professionals, from his good friend Stan Goldberg, and from his brother Sal, who of course has also been a comics artist for more than three decades.

I’d particularly like to emphasize that this issue would hardly have been possible in its present form without the heartfelt cooperation of Mrs. Dolores Buscema, John Buscema, Jr.—and especially Owen O’Leary, who for the last year of John’s life was his artistic representative, and who supplied A/E with literally hundreds of pieces of Buscema artwork of all types, both published and commissioned. In fact, largely because of Owen’s tireless efforts, the great majority of John’s work in this issue has been reproduced from photocopies of original artwork, rather than from comics which are more readily available. Since John inked relatively little of his printed work, it is particularly satisfying to be able to present his own penciled-and-inked versions of covers for Silver Surfer, Avengers, and other comics. We only regret that Owen’s own short memoir of John also had to be delayed till next issue.

Several other generous souls—David G. Hamilton, Mike Burkey, et al.—likewise came through for us and for John.

They know who they are—and so do we.

Oddly, when it came time to write my own reminiscences of John, I was painfully aware that this would have to be a quite different type of article from ones I had written earlier about Bill Everett and Gil Kane. The artist-creators of The SubMariner and the Silver Age Green Lantern had been friends of mine, despite age differentials, while my contacts with John—enjoyable and rewarding I was gratified when A Buscema commissioned re-creation, pencil and inks, of the cover of Fantastic though they were—tended to be moderator Mark Evanier and Four #112 (July 1971), John's fifth issue. Courtesy of Owen O'Leary. [Art ©2002 estate almost entirely professional. I videotaper Marc Svensson agreed of John Buscema; Hulk and Thing TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.] recall a handful of lunches we that Mark’s one-on-one panel had, usually with others present (Stan Lee, Sol Brodsky, John Romita, with John in San Diego in summer of 2001 could become the centerpiece Joe Shuster, or whoever); but the conversation seldom dealt with of this issue. (And that Mark’s Bullpen Reunion panel with John B., anything of a personal nature. Thus, I’ve opted, on our flip side, to give Gene Colan, John Romita, and Marie Severin could also be used— a respectful overview of our three-plus decades of collaboration, from though, in order to be able to concentrate this time on JB’s art, we’ve held that one off till next issue, which will follow in only thirty days.)

Avengers #41 through the still-unseen JLA: Barbarians #1; but I can’t pretend it is much more than that. All the same, at times I found it hard Several people who either were or know students of John’s at his to write the piece without choking up.

1970s comic book artists’ school/workshop also volunteered infor-

writer/editorial Alas, John Buscema’s is not the only passing on which we must remark this issue.

I met Kurt Schaffenberger at most once or twice, but I felt I knew him, partly because his colleague Otto Binder had sent me several 1940s photographs of him as early as 1964, when I was a teacher in St. Louis.

In fact, it was a letter about a Schaffenberger Lois Lane story, featuring an amorous alien monster called Herko, which had led to a bit of correspondence with Superman editor Mort Weisinger, which resulted in my being offered a staff position at DC the next year. Only a few months before Kurt’s death I sent a copy of one of Otto’s photos to the Schanffenbergers, and received back a courteous note from Dorothy S. The fact that Kurt himself did not respond only underscored the rumors I had heard about his failing health. P.C. Hamerlinck, in this issue’s FCA section, presents a lengthy interview with him, but it will not be the last time these pages will reflect the presence and talent of Kurt Schaffenberger. He was a good man, and a very good comics artist.

Sadly, we must also note the deaths of four others: Chad Grothkopf was one of the earliest comic book artists; his work ran the gamut from “The Sandman” to Hoppy the Marvel Bunny. A far-too-brief tribute to Chad, as he signed himself, appears in this issue.

3

Henry Boltinoff’s name is familiar to readers of 1950s and ’60s comics because of the many one-page and half-page humor features he drew in various DC mags. Henry, too, receives too few words elsewhere in this issue.

Landon Chesney, one of the best and brightest of the 1960s comics fan-artists, died in early 2002. His powerful, emotionally-charged work for Xero, Fantasy Illustrated, and elsewhere, lauded even by Gil Kane, was covered when one of his best stories was reprinted in Bill Schelly’s trade paperback Fandom’s Finest Comics (Vol. I). That book, still available from Hamster Press, would be worth a look for Chesney’s work alone.

Also gone is Rich Grasso, who worked with designer Chris Knowles on the layouts of the first issue of this volume of Alter Ego. Rich and I never met, but I appreciated his and Chris’ efforts, and hoped perhaps we might work together again sometime. It was not to be.

Let this issue of A/E be a celebration of them all—John, Kurt, Chad, Henry, Landon, and Rich—and of the thing which they all loved, each in his own way...

Comic art.

Bestest,

COMING IN JULY NOW 8 BIG TIMES A YEAR!

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#

16

THE

MARVEL FAMILY AND THE

MARVEL BULLPEN!

Ross; Comics 02 Alex 002 DC Art ©20 rvel TM & ©2 a Mary M

don; ona Fra ters, Inc.; n & Ram rac e Severi 2 Marvel Cha 02 Mari 00 Art ©20 ner TM & ©2 DC Comics ri 2 Sub-Ma TM & ©200 an Aquam

PART 2 OF OUR TRIBUTE TO JOHN BUSCEMA— PLUS: THE WORLD'S MIGHTIEST MORTALS • Two fabulous, full-color covers by ALEX ROSS (Mary Marvel)—and by MARIE (Sub-Mariner) SEVERIN & RAMONA (Aquaman) FRADON! • MARVEL BULLPEN REUNION 2001! JOHN BUSCEMA—GENE COLAN— JOHN ROMITA—& MARIE SEVERIN—interviewed by MARK EVANIER! • BIG JOHN's students speak—about his 1970s school/workshop!

• ALEX ROSS talks about Shazam! Power of Hope in a double-length FCA —plus MARC SWAYZE & C.C. BECK! • The bodacious BINDER BROTHERS—OTTO & JACK! A vintage interview about their classic work on Fawcett's mighty MARVEL FAMILY! • E.C. CONFIDENTIAL! MICHAEL T. GILBERT on some amazing non-EC work

by HARVEY KURTZMAN! • BILL SCHELLY interviews the guy who became PAUL GAMBI—tailor to the (DC super-villain) stars!—AND MORE!!

Edited by ROY THOMAS • Now 108 PAGES for the same price!

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4

John Buscema

John Buscema The San Diego

Interview

Conducted by Mark Evanier Transcribed by Brian K. Morris Interview Videotaped by Marc Svensson [INTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: At last year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, I got to spend many hours interviewing the likes of John Buscema, Marie Severin, John Romita and Gene Colan. How great is that? About the chats with Buscema, I have—of course—mixed emotions. Talking with the man is, of course, a happy memory... but why did that have to be his last public appearance?

Logic tells you that everyone has to go eventually... and we should be glad that John got dragged out to San Diego where he could be interviewed, honored, applauded, and where he got to see Marie, John, Gene, and other colleagues whose friendship he treasured. Still, reviewing this transcript, I can’t help but think, “Boy, I wish I could interview John further at the next San Diego Con. And the next and the next and the next...” Just to have him around.

John Buscema (l.) and Mark Evanier (r.) Photo courtesy of Ralph Rawson Werner.

[I must also admit to a certain amount of mixed feelings about John Buscema’s career—an ambivalence that John, it seemed to many, shared. He did an incalculable amount of work in comics, much of it on books I very much enjoyed reading... especially those done in collaboration with the editor of Alter Ego. John also drew an awful lot of comics that he didn’t especially like, doing the pencils (or layouts) for work that would be finished by folks he found incompatible, if not incompetent. It has always frustrated me that men such

as John Buscema were prisoners of a system, and that the system was not reconfigured to make maximum use of their talents. John was so good that, even hobbled by the process, there was still a surplus of talent in evidence. Perhaps I’m projecting, but I think he felt that frustration and that you can see some of it peeking out between the lines of what follows. —Mark Evanier.]

This fantabulous Buscema pencil-and-ink illo appeared both in black-&-white and in color (as the wraparound cover) in Sal Quartuccio’s 1978 publication The Art of John Buscema. There was a 17"x22" color print, too. If you ever run across a copy of either item, snap it up! [Art ©2002 the estate of John Buscema; super-heroes TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Conan TM & ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

The San Diego 2001 Interview

5

Two splashes penciled by John for Timely (later Marvel), from Romances of the West #2 (March 1950) and Amazing Detective Cases #3 (Nov. ’50), when he was only a year or two into his professional career. Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, who provided the copies, suspects John may also have inked “Bonnie Parker.” In the latter, clearly the waitress and counter should have been drawn on the left, the bald guy with his hands up on the right.

As done, the three balloons are read in the totally wrong order! [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

[John Buscema enters the room. Mark Evanier rises to shake his hand and John takes his seat.]

JOHN BUSCEMA: I’m sorry I’m late. [applause] I can’t beat that. I’m going home. [mocks rising from his seat] MARK EVANIER: When have you ever been late in your life?

BUSCEMA: [smiles] All right, I ain’t getting paid for this.

ME: At 4:00 we have a panel that’s listed in the program book as being about art techniques. It’s not. It’s going to be a surprise birthday party for Gene Colan. Gene is going to be 75 in a couple of

weeks, and we decided to have a party. He’s the only human being in this entire Convention Center who doesn’t know about this. He’s going to be thinking, “I’m on this stupid panel about art techniques.” [laughs] And we’re going to do about a minute or two of that, and then we’re going to bring in a cake and sing to him and talk about his career. If you see Gene, do not give away the secret.

All right, let me formally begin here. To save time, I’m going to list all the Marvel Comics that this man did not draw: [general laughter] Patsy Walker; Brother Voodoo, and It, the Living Colossus. He drew just about everything else there. One time when I was up at Marvel, John was supposed to deliver a job, and he wasn’t

By the late ’50s, for the American Comics Group, John was doing polished work which heralded what was to come a few years later. These splashes are from Adventures into the Unknown #165 and Forbidden Worlds #79, respectively. Thanks to Owen O’Leary. [©2002 the respective copyright owners.]

6

John Buscema

there at the moment. I asked, “What time is it due?” and they said, “He’s supposed to be in at 2:00.” I said, “But it’s only, like, 1:45 now” and someone said, “We expect him to be early.”

Over the years, I can’t think of how many Marvel Comics would have had blank pages or reprints, if not for this gentleman. Probably, most of you know his work from whatever you saw first. I think I was first conscious of him on The Avengers. Later on, he drew SubMariner, he drew Thor, he drew Conan the Barbarian... truly, one of the inspirational, talented men of our business, Mr. John Buscema. [applause] Have you any idea how you came to the comics you drew throughout your career?

BUSCEMA: I haven’t the slightest idea.

ME: At what age did you become aware that you could draw beyond the way we all draw when we’re young?

BUSCEMA: I’m sorry, I don’t get that question.

ME: Well, when we’re young, we all draw with crayons and we can draw a little bit. At what age did you figure out that you could draw a little better than the norm and could maybe make a career out of it?

BUSCEMA: I never really felt that I could draw the way I should draw. And I’m still struggling, right up to today, really. And I always try to improve. I’m always trying to change. I’m always trying new techniques, new styles. I understand what you’re saying.

any rate.

ME: But at some point, you realized that you could draw well enough to make a living.

BUSCEMA: No, no, no. Again, I’m going to say no, because I believed strongly for many years, even when I was working—I felt every job I turned in, they were going to fire me. This went on for years, really.

ME: [to audience] How many people here don’t buy this for a second?

BUSCEMA: No, I’m serious. I’m very serious. There were times I was terrified to turn in a job. And I expected them to say, “John, what? Are you kidding us?” And I went along that way for quite a few years until, I think, I signed a contract with Marvel. And then I thought I was going to be fine, now that I had a contract. No, but seriously, I was never happy with what I’d done, right up to today. I’ve always felt that I could have done better, and someone would discover that I could do better, and they were going to fire me.

ME: Most people here have probably seen the original artwork you’ve done. On the backs of the pages, there are these wonderful sketches. Don Heck once told me he thought that the more sketches there were on the back of the pages, the less interested you were in front of the pages.

BUSCEMA: That’s true.

ME: Maybe you weren’t satisfied with your work, but at some point, you realized that you were getting work, that you were better than, at the very least, half the people in this business. There’s some pretty awful people who get to work in this business.

ME: But at some point, you— BUSCEMA: No, no. I never reached that point. I think when I got my first job, and my first job—do I go on with this for a second?

ME: Yes, yes.

BUSCEMA: Yeah, I’ve heard that.

BUSCEMA: I think it was before any of you were born. Did you ever hear of a newspaper called The Hobo News? [pause] Never heard of The Hobo News? [audience laughs] I sold two gag cartoons to them. I think I was in high school. I got four bucks for it and I was on my way to fame and fortune. That’s what I thought, at

ME: But at what point did you feel that you knew how to do this?

Some of John’s back-of-the-page art in mixed pencil and ink, courtesy of John Kelly. [©2002 estate of John Buscema. Hulk TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

BUSCEMA: No, seriously. I think if anybody is really serious about their work, they’re never satisfied.

They will feel like the guy who is looking at it is going to say the same thing. He’s not up to what he should be doing, and I’ve always felt that way. And many times, I have to beat a deadline and when I beat that deadline and I’ve turned it in, I expect to get a phone call. It never comes and I’m happy and I can sleep at night.

ME: One of the things that other artists have said about you many times is how naturally you could sit down and draw and it would just come out of you. You didn’t have artist’s block, and you didn’t have to sit down and do twelve pages of roughs to build up a finished page. If you sat down at the board, a finished page would come out before you stood up. Is this a correct perception?

BUSCEMA: Sometimes. There were times—well, it hasn’t happened recently, but in years past there would be a page where I wanted to get a certain effect and I would spend... now, my normal day I could do three penciled pages a day. There were times I’d have a panel that would drive me up the wall and I would spend a whole day on just one panel,

The San Diego 2001 Interview

7

Also in the Fabulous ’50s, John drew movie adaptations for Dell/Western’s Four-Color series: #684 (Helen of Troy, 1956)—#944 (The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, 1958)—and #1006 (Hercules, 1959). Also shown directly above is a page from a 1950s issue of Dell’s Indian Chief. Looks like JB was already prepping for his lengthy run on Conan the Barbarian—and getting better as he went along! Ye Ed owns a copy of Helen of Troy; other art courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [©2002 the respective copyright holders.]

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John Buscema

believe it or not. It sounds ridiculous but that’s the way I am. Unless I get it the way I want, I will do it over and over and over until I hate my wife and kids—[laughs] kick the dog—but I’ve got to do it the way I want it.

ME: Now, you’re doing a panel over and over again. What would be wrong with that panel? Would it be the composition, would it be the anatomy, would it be the perspective?

BUSCEMA: It could be anything. It could be a figure—the figure’s not coming out right. It could be the composition—it’s not telling the story the way I want it to at the time. It could be anything. It doesn’t have to be anything specific, really.

ME: Now, three pages a day is rather phenomenal among artists.

BUSCEMA: So I’ve heard. [laughs] ME: Yes. There was a long period there where they had you doing what they call “breakdowns.” How many pages a day of breakdowns?

BUSCEMA: I’d do up to six, seven pages a day of breakdowns. And they’d go whoosh! And when I say “breakdown,” it’s not really something that’s a rough sketch. All it is, is an actual finished drawing without blacks, okay? You put blacks in it, and just a line drawing, and I could do six or seven pages a day.

ME: Leaving aside the issue of money, which would you have

In 2001 John penciled the second half of a prestige-format book Gil Kane had left unfinished when he passed away in January 2000. This is Buscema’s cover layout for the upcoming Superman: Ancient Blood of Rao. Inking will be by Kevin Nowlan; the writer is Steven Grant.

Editor Joey Cavalieri says the title may change. Thanks to art dealer Tom Horvitz; you can contact him re vintage comic art at <trhgallery@earthlink.net>. [©2002 DC Comics.]

preferred doing, full pencils or breakdowns?

BUSCEMA: Pencils and inks. I’d rather do the entire job myself.

ME: When you would ink your own work, do you pencil? I know the answer. You don’t pencil for yourself the way you would pencil for someone else.

BUSCEMA: Oh, yes. I try to do as complete a job for myself as I would for anyone else.

ME: But then as an inker, would you follow your own pencils closely or do you start filling in the inks?

BUSCEMA: Depends, depends.

Sometimes, I would just follow what I penciled. It depends on how close I want to follow. You know, it’s a creative thing. You change as you’re going along, and there are times I’m tired and I’d want to quit early so I followed the pencils I wanted to draw. And there were times I was creative and I tried to do something different and something. But it’s not a set thing. It’s a creative thing. It changes as you go along. I can change from day to night. If I go on vacation, for

Three of John’s favorite inkers: Frank Giacoia (Avengers #85, Feb. ’71)... John’s brother Sal, who inked his first-published Conan outing (#25, April ‘73)... and Tom Palmer (cover of #14 of Marvel’s Foom fan-club mag, June 1976); the latter is repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Owen O’Leary.

[Avengers ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Conan ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.; Red Sonja TM & ©2002 Red Sonja Properties, Inc.]

The San Diego 2001 Interview

One of the jobs of which John was justly proudest was the now super-rare 1991 graphic novel Conan the Rogue, which John plotted, penciled, inked, and colored; at the last minute he asked Roy T. to dialogue it. This is Roy’s favorite page in a favorite project, seen both in layout (courtesy of Owen O’Leary) and as a finished page. Note how JB altered the bottom panel by reversing the angle and moving Conan and company into the foreground. [©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

example, and I could be away this week, I’m going to be away. But then go back home and I try to draw, I’ve lost something. I have to draw every day. I draw seven days a week, and if I don’t draw I’m very unhappy. I’d rather draw than eat. That’s me. I don’t know, maybe I’m losing a few marbles, or something, but that’s my deal.

ME: What have you drawn lately?

BUSCEMA: Gil Kane passed away about a year ago. Gil was working on a project, a 64-page book—it has something to do with Superman.

But it takes place on another planet, another time, and he did 20 pages with 40-some odd pages to be done, I think. They asked me if I would finish it and I agreed. I was happy to work on Gil’s stuff because I thought he was one of the best in the business and I had tremendous respect for him. But I’m not going to be inking it because they want it to be not as far away from his style as possible. So the same inker that inked his stuff is going to be inking my stuff. And I was very intimidated, following Gil. He’s a fabulous artist.

ME: Are you penciling it differently because— BUSCEMA: No. I’m penciling it my way, but I’ll leave that to the inker.

If he falls on his face, tough. [laughs] ME: Could you mention some of the inkers over the years you have been happy with over your work? I won’t mention the ones you weren’t happy with. I know some of them.

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BUSCEMA: Tom Palmer. Frank Giacoia was fabulous, I thought. My brother, Sal, who followed me right after I returned, was terrific... I can’t remember names.

ME: So, is what you liked about their work what they brought to it, in terms of “Gee, he understood what I was doing there,” or “He took it in a totally different direction”?

BUSCEMA: Well, Frank Giacoia would take it in a different direction.

Frank Giacoia was a fabulous penciler. He could pencil, like, great. He could draw, so if he changed something, it didn’t bother me because the only thing he could do was improve on it. Tom Palmer added something. He didn’t change much, but whatever he did really made it great. My brother would ink it and he’d follow me right out the window, no changes.

ME: Without mentioning names, what could a guy do that was wrong? Or you could mention names.

BUSCEMA: I’m gonna have a lot of enemies here. Well, there was a guy who used to ink my Conans and he would love to draw eyelashes on the girls and he’d count them, I guess. [laughs] And if I drew it, he’d often flatten it out and... jeez, I don’t even want to talk about it.

ME: You look back at your body of work for Marvel—what other jobs did Stan [Lee] have for you where you felt came closest to what you wanted?

BUSCEMA: Well, the one I think—obviously, it was the last Conan I did, a graphic novel. I penciled and inked it, I colored it, and I’m very proud of that book. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.

There are other books that I think about, a couple of Silver Surfers that were pretty good, and most of the books with the Conan character. One

10

John Buscema ME: You’re talking about Barry Smith.

BUSCEMA: Barry Smith, right. I think he did about 14 or 17. And then they gave me the book after he left, and I don’t know why he did. But they gave me the book and I loved it from the very beginning. I was disappointed when they didn’t give it to me from the beginning. I had a certain number of years.

ME: As I recall, when they gained the rights to Conan, they figured that they wanted a lowerpriced penciler to balance out.

BUSCEMA: Was that it? I think he was getting greased there. [laughs] ME: When you first drew Conan, did you base your image of the face, the body, to any extent, on Frazetta covers?

BUSCEMA: No, no.

ME: It looked to me like you designed Conan from the start. You didn’t really modify him as you went along. You knew exactly what you wanted him to look like from the start.

BUSCEMA: Well, after reading Howard’s description, I envisioned this guy to be about six-three, six-four, weighing about 275 pounds. The one thing I struggled with that I tried to get, and was a little intimidated, was the head. I wanted to make it look like a tough guy, yet I didn’t want it to look obnoxious or a bad guy. I wanted it to look like a good guy, yet tougher, and I struggled with that for a while. I think I caught it after a certain number of books.

ME: When you were drawing Tarzan— BUSCEMA: Do we have to talk about that?

John compared his Tarzan unfavorably to versions by Hal Foster, Burne Hogarth, and Joe Kubert; but, as Mark says, “we liked it”—especially when, as on his cover for Marvel’s Tarzan #1 (June 1977) and in this commissioned re-creation, he inked it, as per #1-2. Writer/editor Roy T. wanted the cover to be an homage to the one that graced the Apeman’s first appearance in The All-Story (October 1912), seen at top right. Buscema re-creation art courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Tarzan TM & ©2002 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

of the reasons I joined the Conan book was that he’s not a super-hero. I shouldn’t say this because I’m—and I couldn’t care less because I’m retired, so I’ll give it to you straight—I think the dumbest thing in the world is to see a guy flying in his underwear. And I think it’s stupid. I’m sorry, that’s the way I feel. And I liked Conan because he’s real. He could get hurt, he didn’t fly, he knocked on doors before he opened them. He got run through and he was real. Anything super-hero oriented—I think it’s dumb, I can’t help it. I think Spider-Man is the dullest strip ever done. [laughs] Stan Lee, forgive me. That’s the way I feel.

ME: Were you familiar with Conan books before you did the comic book?

BUSCEMA: Yes, I was fortunate that Roy Thomas sent a whole batch of paperbacks and I fell in love with them. And I was supposed to do it originally, and Martin Goodman, who owned Marvel at the time, didn’t want to gamble on this particular project. And I think he wasn’t happy with my rate. It was a little too high for that book so he gave it to another guy—and I forget how many issues this guy did.

ME: Yeah, let’s talk about that, sure. [to audience] Because we liked it, didn’t we? [applause]

BUSCEMA: Look, some of the greatest artists in the business—Hal Foster started it, then there was Burne Hogarth, then there was Joe Kubert. You follow those guys. Believe me, you know how An unpublished Conan pencil sketch, courtesy of David G. Hamilton.

[Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Conan TM & c 2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

The San Diego 2001 Interview

11

intimidating it is? It scared the hell out of me.

I tried to get out of it. I told Stan, “Look, Stan.

It’s been done for so many years. I don’t want to do it.” “You either do it, or else.” And “or else” won out.

ME: Did you ever worry that your Tarzan would look too much like Conan?

BUSCEMA: No. ME: Did you base your Tarzan on anybody’s before when you sat down?

BUSCEMA: I sort of built it on Burne Hogarth’s Tarzan with Joe Kubert’s, and mixed it up and whatever came One of John’s first outings on his return to Marvel out. How is it I was appeared in Tales to Astonish #85 (Nov. 1966), with inks by Mike Esposito. Stan Lee felt it lacked never really happy with dynamism. Judge for yourself: pick up a copy of it? First of all, my fear, The Essential Hulk, Vol. 1, at your local bookstore. from the beginning, was [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.] what can do you do with Tarzan for all the years he’s been around? You can’t do anything. It’s like Superman. What are you going to do with Superman? I hate these characters. They’ve been around 60, 70 years. What are you going to do that’s going to interest the reader? I can’t come up with any new concepts, come up with new characters.

ME: Let’s talk about some of the other strips you did for Marvel on long runs.

Thor—you did quite a few issues of that. How did you feel about following Mr. Kirby on that?

BUSCEMA: A bit intimidated.

Kirby, to me, was close to a genius. In fact, this is the way it happened: I was in advertising for about eight years when I got called. It was Stan Lee, to go back to Marvel, and he gave me a book to do and I forget—I think it was The Hulk.

Big John did this drawing for the 1992 San Diego Comic-Con book, celebrating Jack Kirby’s 75th birthday... courtesy of both Owen O’Leary and Shel Dorf. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema.]

I don’t think I’d ever have stayed, because my style was not comic-oriented; it was advertising. Of course, it was different for me. He would draw, like, one way and I another. It’ s like a dentist and a brain surgeon. They’re both medical, but it’s a different ballgame.

ME: Apart from Conan, what books did you feel comfortable with? Did you feel comfortable doing Thor?

BUSCEMA: I loved Thor when it was in Asgard.

You see, I hate drawing cars and buildings, airplanes, civilians. But when he was up in Asgard, I liked that freedom. I could do any kind of building I wanted to draw.

I love drawing horses and I love doing costumes and there’s a tremendous freedom there which I loved. Once you bring him back to New York, I hated it. I hate drawing subway stations and helicopters.

ME: It was a “Hulk” story back in Tales to Astonish.

BUSCEMA: Thank you.

Anyway, really, it was a disaster, and I had never seen Jack Kirby’s work up until that day. Stan called me in and said, “John, you’re missing the boat. Study Jack’s work.”

And I took a pile of books home and I devoured the stuff. And that’s how I got back into comics. Without Jack Kirby,

ME: How about Silver Surfer?

BUSCEMA: Yeah, I liked that, I enjoyed that. We did 16 or 17 issues, I think, and the book died out. And it seems to be popular today, isn’t it?

ME: It seems to be popular.

A 1979 pencil sketch by John of the Incredible One. Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Hulk TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

BUSCEMA: I don’t know. I don’t follow comics

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John Buscema

now.

ME: It looked like, as you went along with the book, like in those later issues, you were trying to make the character a little more Kirby-like, a little more energetic.

BUSCEMA: No, I could never come close to Kirby’s stuff. I swiped Kirby. Let me tell you, it’s very simple to swipe if you can draw, but I picked up a pattern. Let’s say there are four or five people there. All you have to do is trace one, change the figures the way I do it. I don’t have to draw like Kirby. I swiped him so much. No one realized I was swiping him.

ME: But you were swiping composition. You’re not swiping figures.

BUSCEMA: No, I also swiped the way he hit guys. Jack Kirby hit a guy, that guy went flying. I learned how to draw guys in flight. But I never swiped anybody’s style of drawing. It was my drawing and I would change the idea, whatever. And I worked with Kirby’s books for years. In fact, I still have them at home. I won’t get rid of them. I love them.

ME: Who else in comics inspired your work?

BUSCEMA: Well, Joe Kubert I respect. John Romita, I think, is one of the best in the business. I love the guy’s stuff. I love his blacks, the way he does his blacks. I swipe from everybody, even Popeye. [laughs] I swipe from anybody. If I can get an idea from somebody, I’ll swipe it, it

A 1990s commission drawing of The Silver Surfer, courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Silver Surfer TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

John liked drawing Thor in Asgard, but not on Earth. But y’know what? He drew him great, either place! Repro’d from photocopies of original pencils, courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The San Diego 2001 Interview

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BUSCEMA: For real life? When I first started with Marvel, my second trip in ’66, Stan Lee gave me a list of characters for super-heroes and he related them to movie stars. I remember him relating one of the superheroes to Anthony Quinn. Now, Anthony Quinn is a great actor, he’s got a beautiful head, but he’s as skinny as a scarecrow. Come on, I’m not going to draw this guy as a super-hero. Now I just draw every guy, and if I have a problem, I go back to Jack Kirby or John Romita, or whoever, and I swipe.

ME: Is there anybody you’re always drawing secretly?

BUSCEMA: Not really. I just like drawing girls.

ME: Now, I have to ask about a story I heard. You did a thing for Marvel in the mid-’70s, an adaptation of the movie The Wizard of Oz, and the story that was making the rounds was that you drew that from memory.

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

BUSCEMA: I think I was born with a little bit of a photographic memory. Not today. I can’t remember anything I ate last night. But years ago, when I started working. For example, I remember movies like Errol Flynn as Robin Hood. And I remembered every foot of that movie. But when I saw The Wizard of Oz—I think it was 1939 or 1940? I remember everything from it, from the beginning, right to the very end, except for a couple of scenes I didn’t get just right, and we had to correct it. But, I mean, I remember every minute of that movie.

Don’t ask me how I did it. If it’s things that interest me, I will never forget.

All 75 pages of Marvel & DC’s MGM’s Marvelous Wizard of Oz were penciled by John from memory. Inks by Tony DeZuniga & The Tribe, script by Roy Thomas. For more about this awesome adaptation, see Roy’s reminiscences of John in this issue’s flip section. [©2002 the respective copyright holders.]

doesn’t bother me. But you’ll never know it. You’ll never know I swiped because I know how to swipe good.

ME: Now, one of my favorite things you did for Marvel was your least favorite. I believe you told me this was the most horrible assignment that you had. This was the brief period of time in the ’70s when Marvel was doing romance books. Remember My Love and Our Love Story? How many people remember those books? [a smattering of applause] I think you drew the best-looking women and the most exciting romance comics. Do you remember these at all?

BUSCEMA: Su-u-ure, I do. [laughs] No, I remember those.

ME: The first time we met, I mentioned how much I liked those. You acted like I just made a mess on your shoes. The worst assignments, and they were full of people wandering around and head shots and cars— BUSCEMA: No, let’s stop—I think there were different girls. I’m a little too old to get involved with the romantic stuff, you know. Forget about it.

ME: When you were drawing attractive women in those comics in The Avengers, or anyplace like that, who were you using for real-life models?

A Buscema Silver Surfer penciled page, courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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John Buscema that ability. I don’t know if it’s a great ability or what, but I can’t do it today. Don’t ask me what I had for dinner last night.

ME: You were next to me at the Italian buffet.

BUSCEMA: Do I have to remember that? [laughs] ME: Now, when you were saying that Stan was talking about a plot, were you thinking about pictures or did you think about story?

BUSCEMA: Pictures. I see pictures when I discuss a story, and I did the same thing when I was in advertising. I’d do the storyboards. For example, we did Chesterfield Cigarettes, and I’d have to do four or five different stories and discuss it with the client and come up with four or five different plots and go back to my room and not come out, and I’d remember every scene.

ME: I want to get that—where people say you just sit down and it just comes out of you. That is an artistic sense-memory and such visualization that a lot of very good artists don’t have.

BUSCEMA: They don’t need it. Really, it’s not that important. To make notes, that’s important. Now, I was so cheap that I didn’t use paper.

ME: You’re looking at a script, you’re looking at a plot, and somebody tells you an idea and a picture comes to you for that scene.

Pencils of a Buscema battle page, from Conan the Barbarian #43 (Oct. 1974).

Courtesy of David G. Hamilton. [Conan TM & ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.; Red Sonja TM & ©2002 Red Sonja Properties, Inc.]

ME: Were you, at least, sitting there with a photo of Ray Bolger as you were drawing?

BUSCEMA: Yeah. I did have shots of Bolger. I have shots of the Lion, I had shots of the Tin Man, I had shots of everyone. I couldn’t remember those, but the scenes I remembered.

ME: You had not seen the movie in thirty years?

BUSCEMA: Easy, easy, easy.

ME: [to audience] How many people believe this? [general laughter] BUSCEMA: We all get to go home right now?

ME: I’m trying to emphasize how absolutely amazing— BUSCEMA: I’ll tell you how I worked with Stan Lee when we worked on The Silver Surfer together. Again I repeat, at one time, I would picture things in my mind and I could remember them weeks after. I would go to the city and we would sit there, Stan and I, and discuss a plot for The Silver Surfer, and we’d throw ideas back and forth until finally, at the end of an hour or a half hour, whatever it was, I’d walk out of his office and not think of anything. And when I’d get home, I could remember every scene that we had discussed that particular day. I had

In the early 1980s John worked on a Doug Moench sword-and-sorcery concept.

Owen O’Leary, who provided this art, says it “looks like it was a practice page that John penciled, inked, and colored for the Weirdworld series... [He] mentioned that he wanted to do the inking and coloring for Weirdworld, so he tried a few pages, but found it was too time-consuming and not worth it money-wise.” [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Weirdworld TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The San Diego 2001 Interview Is that, ultimately, the picture you draw or do you improve on it?

BUSCEMA: No. Many times, I come up with a picture in my mind that, eventually, I will change.

It doesn’t fit, it’s not up to the rest of the story.

You change as you go along. In fact, when I work on a book, I don’t draw anything until the finished page. I have scrap paper and I rough it in and I can change, because of that roughing it in, and it’s very simple, right? You start worrying about the finished page, you hesitate to change because it’s a lot of work.

15 have a lot of close-ups and there’ll be a long shot of the guy. Yeah, it happened a lot but it doesn’t take up too much time.

ME: Your roughs are the same size as the original?

BUSCEMA: Yeah, roughs are the original size.

ME: Now, when you started working for Marvel, the originals were 12" x 18", not 10" x 15". Did you like the larger size?

BUSCEMA: In the beginning, it was a little tough, but you get used to it.

But if I rough it in— for example, I’m about to do a battle scene with ME: Did you find that Conan. Now, you have when they went to the horses, you have men on smaller size, there was horseback, you have a tendency to think of battle on the ground. the page as a whole What I’ll do for the composition? A lot of rough, instead of starting artists felt that if they to draw horses and big were drawing in the things and like that, I larger size, they would start drawing directional be drawing panel after lines. In other words, I panel after panel. But have a horse. I don’t if they were drawing draw a horse. I draw in the smaller size, direction, maybe in a they were drawing rectangle. That’s the page after page after horse. I have all these page. different lines that I BUSCEMA: Well, I can draw, and then I start The above sketch page is not from Vanguard’s 2001 John Buscema Sketchbook—you see what you’re saying. can order that book from its ad, elsewhere in this issue—but it’s representative of the picking them out. I’ll In those days, I didn’t kind of work John did as “warming-up” exercises. Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. pick out a few here, pick work the way I work [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Conan TM & © Conan Properties, Inc.; Wolverine, out a few there, a horse Nick Fury, and Black Knight TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.] now. I would go here, a horse there, horse directly to the finished on the ground, spears page and it took me years to change. In the beginning, I would turn out going through the sky, going into a guy, and that saves a lot of time. a half a page a day, I was happy. That’s because I liked working on the Instead, if I started drawing, which I did many years ago, I’d start with a finished page. It was a different ballgame. And there are problems when horse, a battle horse right next to him, and next are three or four figures, you’re working smaller or larger. You have to get used to it. That’s not and I’d start working out, erasing. something you get over in a couple of days.

ME: It takes a long time.

ME: Did you ever find you had problems working with somebody BUSCEMA: That’s why I was able do three pages a day. else’s characters, as opposed to your own? I mean, you obviously preferred to design your own characters, draw your own characters, ME: When you say it’s not working out, that’s the choreography of your costumes— the scene. The action’s not falling the way you want it to. How often do you just kick back and look at the composition of the page as a BUSCEMA: No. whole and say to yourself, “I need a bigger head on this page, better ME: No? arms and legs, and to vary my camera angle”? Was that frequently a consideration?

BUSCEMA: No, I don’t want to—I tell you, I don’t like super-heroes. [laughs] BUSCEMA: Oh, absolutely. Many times, I’d lay out a whole page of roughs, and then I’ll see that it just doesn’t work. I should have a closeME: All right. up of the guy because I’ve got too many small shots in there, or I may

16

John Buscema (Left:) This early ’50s Roy Rogers drawing by John Buscema for Western (Dell) was reprinted in Roy Rogers Western Classics Magazine #4 (1991) from AC Comics. And (right), courtesy of Owen O’Leary, the kind of western hero John would’ve liked to do, if given a chance. See AC’s ad elsewhere in this issue; Bill Black’s company reprints some of the best in Golden Age western, jungle, and super-hero comics, and deserves fans’ wholehearted support. [©1991, 2002, Americomics & AC Comics, as authorized by Roy Rogers Enterprises.]

BUSCEMA: Conan I enjoy. I love Conan.

look at it. I wanted to get a lot different with it.

ME: Okay, here’s one of those projects I think you enjoyed. You did a book that I remember and it was Merlin.

ME: Let us pause here for a brief commercial. There is a new book out of John’s work. It was edited and published by David Spurlock. This is really neat. If you really want to see examples of John’s rough sketches and the underpinnings of his drawings, this book is full of them.

BUSCEMA: Yeah, jeez. [rolls his eyes; audience laughs] I want to forget that job.

ME: Well, some of us liked it a lot.

I remember thinking, “I think this man really knocked himself out on this and really enjoyed this.” Am I wrong about this? Didn’t you like doing that book?

BUSCEMA: I’m sorry I ever attempted the book. When I got that book to work on, I was really excited about it. But it just didn’t work for me; I don’t know why.

At the end of the book, I was so disgusted with it, I didn’t want to even

BUSCEMA: And I need the money.

ME: He needs the money.

Purchase them. [Mark gets J. David Spurlock, in the audience, to announce where his booth is in the Convention Center.] Okay. And I do not get a cut. The book is called The John Buscema Sketchbook. All right, if the gentleman with a microphone is out there— when you ask questions of this man, we actually have a microphone this year. This is a new innovation for this convention. If you have a question, raise your hand, someone will come to you, stand, ask it. And, of course, way on the other side of the room. That’s right. Next, we’ll take a question from this side of the room. [points to opposite side of the room from where the microphone-holder is standing—audience laughs] AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’ve had the good fortune of seeing some of your work at Dell when you were doing Roy Rogers. My question is, did you enjoy doing westerns or did you enjoy doing other work?

BUSCEMA: I hated Roy Rogers. [laughs; applause] That was the dumbest book I’ve ever worked on. The stories—I mean, the stuff that I did was terrible and I don’t know how you bought that stuff, really. They’re so bad.

ME: You were working for Western Publishing? Over on Third?

BUSCEMA: Yeah. They still exist? I figured I put them out of business.

ME: No, they existed for many years after that. Did you do any other work over there?

BUSCEMA: Yeah, Don, Dave somebody. I don’t know. We’re going back a long time.

ME: That’s the purpose of these panels. Would you have enjoyed doing westerns in another context?

BUSCEMA: Yeah. I liked doing westerns. I loved horses and I loved the costumes, I loved all those things.

Collector Dave Newton put together a number of Buscema sketches he owned to create this cover for a recent issue of CFA-APA, a small-but-select-circulation apazine (no room to explain what that is!) under founder/central mailer Roger Hill.

[Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema.]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi. I’m a big fan of your Conan work.

And my question is, when you were designing Conan environ-

The San Diego 2001 Interview ments and architecture, etc., how much is based on imagination and how much is based on actual research of old historical oeuvres, etc.?

BUSCEMA: I once went into my dentist’s office and he had this plaque, a sort of ruined city. I can get an idea from almost anything. You know, shapes, real tapestries that might have a panoramic scene, or some play that’s on Broadway, and instead of seeing figures, I see buildings. I can get it from almost anything. I love drawing ruins and ancient cities, and all that kind of stuff. That method when I do the horses and battle scenes, I just scribble. I pick out the lines and shapes, whatever, and it works out really great. In fact, when I do vegetation, I scribble like they got leaves and trees. I think, for me, it works. I don’t know about somebody else, but that works for me. And I’m not worried about the detail. I worry about where the shapes are going, that’s what I’m thinking.

17

me away. You couldn’t take the book out, by the way. These huge volumes, they wouldn’t allow it. So I’d get these little paint pads, which I could afford, and I’d copy Michelangelo until I knew it by heart. Not that they looked like anything, but that’s all I wanted to do, was copy Michelangelo. Then I discovered Rubens and I discovered all the other artists and I copied everybody I could see. I was exposed to Degas, Latreque, anybody that could draw that I admired. Back then, we subscribed to The Saturday Evening Post and I grew up on a lot of great illustrators, which you people don’t see today. That’s the tragedy of the whole art world. They’re not exposed to anything today. I remember Robert Fawcett, Dorsett, Graves, and Albert Dorne. I could name illustrator after illustrator. I grew up with these guys. I had all this stuff piled in my home, going back 35, 40, 50 years. And Dean

AUDIENCE MEMBER: In years past, I’ve purchased some of your sketch pages, which I think are preliminaries, when you’re working on a page.

How many can you generate? Because there’s a lot of care taken with one particular character, like you just took a background character who I wouldn’t think would be featured, but you’ll draw [them] a couple of times or you’ll start drawing them and then start inking them. About how many pages can you do of these preliminaries? These sketches—they’re just roughs—they’re not really on bond paper. They’re on regular, like, scrap paper.

BUSCEMA: Oh, I see. Like I said before, I draw seven days a week. I love drawing. To me, drawing is—I don’t want to get dramatic, or melodramatic, but I like drawing. If I don’t draw for a day, I feel upset. Yeah, I draw on scraps, on writing paper, toilet paper, anything I can get my hands on, I draw. And it doesn’t matter. I don’t have any preconceived ideas of what I’m going to draw. I’ll start scribbling and something comes to my mind. It may be a guy sitting at a table, playing checkers with a volleyball, I don’t know. There are times I want to draw a horse with a guy on it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It’s kind of a bonus of buying original art, to see on the back, those other sketches.

BUSCEMA: Yeah, the backs of the pages. Why did I draw on the backs of the pages? Because I hated what I was doing on the front of the pages. [laughs] And I had all the freedom in the world to do what I wanted on the back of the pages. And that’s why they look so much better than the front of the pages. But they wouldn’t print the back of the pages. They looked at the front of the pages. They didn’t pay for the back of the pages.

That hurt.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Some of your sketches remind me of some of the classical artists like Reubens or Michelangelo.

BUSCEMA: Wow, thank you. Thank you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was wondering what artists outside of the comic field may have had an influence on you.

BUSCEMA: Well, I came from Brooklyn. When I was working there, about a half block away from where I lived, there was this library and I discovered Michelangelo. I’d go see the [unintelligible] and it blew

In the 1970s Marvel did pay John for some of his back-of-the-page sketches. Editor Roy T. would use them—inked by John or others—to illustrate text articles in The Savage Sword of Conan—and if you don’t remember that mag, you’re probably too young to be reading this. Sketch page courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema.]

18

John Buscema have asked me to do some covers, re-creations, and I’ve got a few of those every year. But mostly, I draw for myself. I have tons and tons.

This gentleman over here, he has some sketches that I did on typing paper, which I do maybe 20 or 30 a day. Then I toss them aside. Then there’s a guy who buys them by the ton. I sell him 2- or 300 sketches at a time and he sells them right around 50¢ apiece, or whatever. [laughs] AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can you tell me what it was like to grow up with your brother Sal? Did he kind of take his artwork, partly, from you, because your styles are quite similar? My cousin calls me from New York a couple times a week and he always mentions your name, and we always talk about your Avengers. Even though you don’t like super-heroes, we love them.

BUSCEMA: Well, Sal, really, was not that into art, as I am. He is an actor. The guy should have been an actor. He should have gone for that. He’s great as an actor. And we had some royal battles because he wouldn’t listen to me and I told him to give it up. He wouldn’t listen to me, so he did comics. I think he’s retired now. I don’t think he’s doing comics. With me, it was never a competition with my brother. I taught him everything he knew, and he’s sorry now.

ME: One of the things I find amazing—and I don’t know if you know this—but Stan Lee’s brother Larry, who’s been drawing comics for years, learned to draw from watching Stan because when Stan was a kid, he wanted to be an artist and sat around drawing all day. And Larry admired Stan and would sit there and draw all day, also. The difference was, though, that Stan was lefthanded and Larry was right-handed. Larry Lieber learned to draw with the wrong hand because he was imitating Stan, which was the same way Harpo Marx learned the piano from Chico.

BUSCEMA: I’ll tell you a little story. I was on staff at Marvel many years ago. It was called Timely Comics, in the Empire State Building,

John’s final collaboration with Stan the Man was on 2001’s Just Imagine...

Stan Lee Creating Superman. Special thanks to Adam Philips of DC for sending us penciled art from that epoch-marking one-shot. [©2002 DC Comics.]

Cornwell—God, these are the great—you don’t see that. Who do you admire? You admire comic book artists. And you know, they’re great. They’re great, but that’s no way to grow up. Not with The Simpsons. Oh, my God! [laughs] Oh, I do watch Batman, Warner Brothers. Fabulous. I love that. I watch it as often as I can, when I have time to see it. It’s beautiful.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You said that super-heroes aren’t particularly your bag, but how does it feel when you’re working on Just Imagine... Superman with Stan Lee? BUSCEMA: Well, it’s a different concept, I’ll say that. But I don’t feel anything for those comics. I don’t feel anything unless I’m interested in them. I’m not interested in Superman. It’s been done how many times, how many ways, and it was just another job to do. I just knocked it out. I shouldn’t say that but I drew that.

ME: What have you been drawing the last few years, other than comics? You haven’t been drawing every day, drawing comics.

BUSCEMA: I’ve drawn a couple of—what do you call them—people

Penciled panels from Avengers Annual #23 (1994), the last Avengers material John and Roy Thomas worked on together. Courtesy of both Owen O’Leary and David G. Hamilton. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The San Diego 2001 Interview

19

BUSCEMA: There was Syd Shores; Danny DeCarlo; Martin Nodell; Mike Sekowsky, a brilliant artist.

ME: Chic Stone?

BUSCEMA: Chic Stone was an inker.

ME: George Klein?

BUSCEMA: I don’t know about George Klein. I don’t remember him.

ME: Was Don Rico there at the time?

BUSCEMA: He was an editor who I hated. [laughs] I’ll tell you the story. The very first job I did, a 5- or 4-page job, and it seems some grave robbers had stolen Lincoln’s body. He was assassinated, and I had to draw Abraham Lincoln. Apparently, I wasn’t drawing him well. I brought in the pages and I had to bring them in to the editor. I brought them in to Don, and Don said, “It’s not Lincoln,” and he took out this penny. He said, “That’s Lincoln. Draw from that.” [laughs] No wonder it got bad. No, he was a nice guy. He was all right.

ME: Now, about who was there—was Christopher Rule?

BUSCEMA: No, no.

ME: All right, Al Jaffee.

This story from Crime Fighters #4 (Nov. 1948) was listed by John as his first pro job; it was for Stan Lee at Timely. We love the disclaimer: “All names and places in this true-to-life story are fictitious.” Like, even Honest Abe’s? Inker unknown. Thanks to Doc Vassallo. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

on the 14th floor, next to a jewelry store. I still remember that. That was a hundred years ago and there were so many great artists there. There was one guy in particular, the guy who created The Human Torch: Carl Burgos, a very fine artist. He was unbelievably talented, a brilliant artist.

I remember it was a huge room with about three or five guys in there, and I was sitting diagonally from Carl Burgos. And occasionally, I would look up and look around the room, and there was something about Carl Burgos that just didn’t set right with me. Not that I was uncomfortable, but something was happening there. Carl was doing something that... I said, “Something’s going on.” It took me a while before I realized this guy was drawing left-handed and right-handed.

And I mentioned to him, “Are you drawing left and right?” And he said, “Of course. I’ve been doing it for years.” He’s much older now. And he showed me he could write forwards and backwards simultaneously with both hands and he could draw with both hands at the same time.

Unbelievable. I asked him how. He had broken his right arm some years ago and learned how to draw with his left hand. Unbelievable.

ME: Who else was on staff up there?

John was impressed by the fact that Human Torch creator Carl Burgos could draw with both hands—at the same time! This Burgos page from Young Men #26 (March 1954) is repro’d by photostats of the original art. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

20 BUSCEMA: Yes, he was an editor.

ME: Okay, Morris Weiss?

BUSCEMA: No. ME: Sol Brodsky?

BUSCEMA: Sol Brodsky, yes.

ME: [to audience] Help me out.

John Buscema demon, and a terrific artist, but I’d never seen his stuff, never met the guy.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Bill Everett?

BUSCEMA: Yes. But Bill didn’t work with Stan. He was a freelancer.

He would come in occasionally. A hell of a guy to talk to, he was.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Did you ever see George Klein’s inks on your work?

BUSCEMA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw them. I wasn’t too happy. You know, let me tell you something. You can be a fabulous inker, but if you

Though respecting their talent, John didn’t feel George Klein (as per Avengers #59) or Joe Sinnott (Fantastic Four #113) were ideal inkers for his work; but a legion of fans begged to differ. Repro’d from photocopies of the original art, courtesy of Owen O’Leary and Mike Burkey, respectively. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Schomberg?

BUSCEMA: Who? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Schomberg. Alex Schomberg.

BUSCEMA: Never heard of him.

don’t mesh with the penciler, you’re going to screw him up. And it’s not that George wasn’t a good inker. We just didn’t mesh. I didn’t mesh with Joe Sinnott. Joe Sinnott was brilliant on Jack Kirby’s stuff. But when he got onto my stuff, he just couldn’t handle it. And guys like Tom Palmer and who’s the guy who passed away... I mentioned him before... Frank Giacoia was brilliant. Frank could change my artwork, but he could draw. He was brilliant.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Joe Maneely.

ME: How many people disagree with some of his choices of inkers? [laughs]

BUSCEMA: No, I never met Joe Maneely. All I know about him, I never saw his work. I heard that he’d died, and I heard he was a speed

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Could you explain the Marvel method?

The San Diego 2001 Interview

21

BUSCEMA: Oh, jeez!

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And why didn’t he [Stan Lee] have a good relationship with his artists and why was it different compared to what DC was doing?

ME: Why don’t we hold that? We have a panel focused on that on Saturday, so you don’t have to say it twice.

BUSCEMA: No, I’m going to say something. I know who’s going to be on that panel. I know Stan Lee’s going to be on that panel.

ME: Stan’s not going to be on that panel.

Using the so-called “Marvel method,” John, like other artists, would break the story down into panels from a written or verbal synopsis... then tighten it and add margin notes to aid the scripter. Note that, in this page featuring the Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer, the tilt of the female head at left in panel 1 has been altered between rough and finished pencils... and a background figure has been dropped from panel 2. Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

page one, page two. You’ve got to pace it so that page is filled up with panels.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Have you ever tried painting?

BUSCEMA: Yes, I used to do paperback covers, and I quit because I couldn’t make a living at it. I preferred doing that. I do paint a little, as a hobby. But I’d rather draw.

BUSCEMA: Oh, no? All right. But they talk about the Marvel [method]—the only difference between Marvel and DC is they worked with a full script and we worked with just an outline and we had a hell of a lot more freedom. And that’s the only way of doing it, because a writer cannot visualize the story the way the artist can. He doesn’t know if Spider-Man should be hanging outside of a window or should be on the roof. The artist will tell you if that’s the most likely development.

And when I’m a plotter, I mean without a full script, that’s the best way to work it. The only thing, you have to pace yourself because they don’t break it down panel-by-panel. They give you the whole story. It isn’t

ME: When you sit down to paint as a hobby, what’s the subject matter?

BUSCEMA: Figures. I’ve always worked with figures. Occasionally, I do a still life. And occasionally, if I’m interested, I’ll swipe a painting. I subscribed to Harper’s magazine, and if I saw something I like, I might copy it, just to learn what the guy’s brush strokes were for.

ME: Where did you learn that?

BUSCEMA: Unfortunately, I never took Anatomy. I just—not by

22

John Buscema

Roughs for another page from the graphic novel Conan the Rogue—and the finished version, repro’d from the Spanish edition, Conan el Picaro.

Rough courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

exposure. I never want to say that, but I did find a fabulous book and I learned everything from the one book. Not Bridgeman. Bridgeman’s great, they’re all great. A book called The Human Figure by John Vanderport. I still have it. I paid five bucks for it about a hundred and twenty years ago. It’s a fabulous book. I never read a word. All I did was copy these drawings and I worked it out with these drawings. I’ve had life drawing, I should say. But that book taught me what the figure was about. It taught me the difference between a man and a woman. I never knew before. [laughs] AUDIENCE MEMBER: I think you mentioned that you had done some work where you penciled, inked, and colored your own work, but I kind of missed that.

BUSCEMA: It’s just one book, the Conan graphic novel. In fact, I plotted the story. I didn’t write it, because Roy Thomas wrote the dialogue and copy. I just plotted the story, I drew it, I inked it and colored it, and such and such. I didn’t print it, though. [laughs] ME: Did you like the way your comics were colored?

BUSCEMA: My stuff? I couldn’t care less. No, seriously— ME: Did you look at your own books?

BUSCEMA: Now let me just tell you something. When I did a book, they would send the book back to me. In fact, all the publishers would send, DC and whatever other companies there were, they’d send a pile of these books. I would never look at my stuff. I would take it and throw it in a closet. Eventually, maybe months later, I would pick it up

and look at it, flip through it, because I knew I was going to be unhappy with it. Not so much for the coloring. I couldn’t care. It was the inking that would drive me up the wall. Most times, I wasn’t happy with it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: When you returned to Marvel in the ’60s— what was the main reason you returned to comic books at that time?

BUSCEMA: Well, maybe several reasons. Advertising’s a brutal life, believe me. Let me tell you, I was telling a friend of mine recently. For example, I would work a whole week and get ready to go home on a Friday night, and I’d get a call—the owner of the studio would get a call from an agency, that there was a campaign that had to be in by Monday.

You know, when you talk about a campaign, you’re talking about dozens of artists working on one product. It could be cars, it could be cigarettes, it could be anything, and you’d have to stay in the city. I’d have to call my wife and tell her I wasn’t going to be home for the weekend. And after we had this campaign we had to have on Monday morning, that was one of the reasons. The other reason was it took me anywhere from 5H to 6 hours a day, round trip, to go to the city, and that’s a day’s work right there. So when I got a call from Marvel, Stan said, “I don’t know if you’ll agree to work. We’ll make you happy, financially, and we have plenty of work.” I never thought twice and I returned to comics.

ME: Did you feel you were on a trial basis, the first job or two?

BUSCEMA: No. Stan made it sound—he knew what I was going to be drawing. He knew I could hack it. In the beginning, he would go through the material. He’d cut slack because I knew what I was going to

The San Diego 2001 Interview

23

do and he knew it, too.

became of it, would you consider teaching again?

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: At the risk of sounding geeky, I have to say you’ve always been my favorite artist.

BUSCEMA: I’ll ask one of my ex-students sitting right behind you. By the way, the book How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way came out of that workshop. It wasn’t a school; it was a workshop. I was unlicensed.

You have to have a license to be a school. I had it for a year. The second year, I had other people take it over. Don Heck—I forget who else. I think Stan’s brother, Larry Lieber, took over, and it was a hassle. I had to drive into the city from where I lived and it was too much of a hassle. I dropped the program but a couple of the guys are in the business, like the guy behind you.

BUSCEMA: Why, thank you.

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’m excited just being in the room with you, and no one’s ever drawn handsomer men.

BUSCEMA: Oh, my God! And my wife’s here!

FEMALE AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is, when you were young, when you started back in the business, it wasn’t the most respected field for an artist. How did your family and friends react to your decision?

BUSCEMA: I gotta tell you... I’d been bouncing around for five years at the high school. And finally, I got a job that involved—I should say Stan gave me a job, art staff, and I went home and I told my parents that I got this job, 75 bucks a week. And you never saw two happier people in your lifetime. And I could see they were happy, but why were they dancing? And I realized that they were happy they didn’t have to support me any more. [laughs] I think I was around twenty. That’s where I met Gene Colan and Danny DeCarlo.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I remember seeing some ads in the ’70s for The John Buscema School. I was wondering how that started, what

Probably the best-known artist to graduate from John’s art school—pardon us, workshop—of the 1970s is Bob Hall, who was in the audience at John’s San Diego panel. At left is the splash by John B. and Tom Palmer from Avengers #84 (Jan. 1971); at right is a 1976 illo by Bob, courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Original art ©2002 Bob Hall; Black Knight and Avengers art TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Would you consider doing it again?

BUSCEMA: I’m doing it now and I hate it. [laughs] No, I’ll be honest with you. I had a couple of guys in this class and I’m not too happy teaching just them. In other words, a room this big, I’d love it because I can kill time. When you’ve got a couple of people, it’s tough to kill time, you know what I’m saying? No, you don’t understand. I don’t think it’s worth my while to teach just a few people. I would love to have a class with at least fifty people. Then I could feel better. And then forget it, it’s a screwed-up class. Half of them want to learn comics, half of them want to be illustrators. What the hell, I don’t know where to start at, or begin it, or end. It’s difficult to go both ways. It’s impossible. It’s a different way of looking at things.

ME: Let me interject a quick story here. John was talking earlier about how he kind-of learned to make a living in comics, in the ’60s, looking at Jack Kirby’s work. An awful lot of people who drew comics

24

John Buscema

in the ’70s and ’80s made a living looking at his [Buscema’s] work. Don Heck told me that, in the ’70s, when he was having trouble getting the kinds of assignments he wanted, he came to you. You gave him some consultation, and he took a lot of your books and studied them. And he felt he made his living, the last few years, based on your inspiration. And I thought that was just wonderful.

One thing I find amazing in this business is how many times artists help each other—ostensibly helping your competitors. And one of these days, one of these guys, theoretically, could take a job from you. But I’ve never seen an artist refuse to help another artist when he could teach him something.

BUSCEMA: Well, this is better, but you don’t tell them, you don’t help them. [laughs] AUDIENCE MEMBER: I actually don’t have a question, just a follow-up on that, about the Buscema School. I’m the guy behind the guy who took the class.

ME: Why don’t you stand up and identify yourself?

BOB HALL: My name’s Bob Hall. [applause] And I just wanted to describe the single most amazing part of taking that class. But the most amazing part was taking a class from somebody who was just tops in the world at what he did. That’s an astonishing thing to do, really. It’s just different, somehow, than working with you and going to the university and getting something from this or that professor. But the single most amazing thing, I think, would be—my guess is, that anybody who has Dolores (Mrs. John) Buscema confirmed to Ye Editor that the pencil drawing of the young artist used as the frontispiece to that perennially-selling LeeBuscema opus How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way was indeed intended to be John himself as a youngster. [©2002 Stan Lee & John Buscema.]

watched John draw will say this—is that he will go up to these pages and he would tell you he was going to do something.

And then, like one of those old books where you would spread water on the page and a drawing would start to emerge, you’d watch John go like this [imitates a person drawing] over the entire page and very slowly, this drawing would begin to assemble itself. And then, all of a sudden, it was done.

I remember one time at Marvel that Jim Shooter called John in to teach people how to draw fast. And first of all, John’s reaction was, “How do you draw fast?” And finally John said, “Well, the only thing I know how to do is, go like this!” [laughs] Then, I think people sort of started challenging him. I think it was Walt Simonson that said, “Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but that’s only pinups. Draw something difficult.” And John said, “Okay.” And Walt said, “A guy, he’s a cowboy, a miner. He’s wandering through the desert and he’s dying of thirst. Yeah, yeah, there’s one little pool there by the cactus and he’s lying down, drinking some water.” And I stopped looking at Walt and I looked over at John’s panel, Two sketches of Wolverine by John. Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Wolverine TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The San Diego 2001 Interview John had drawn it and finished it. [laughs] So I just wanted to throw that in. That was a great class, John. You did great.

ME: Bob, stay standing for a minute. Did you get any professional work before taking his class?

HALL: I don’t remember. I did something really, really wretched for Charlton and that may have been just before I took the class, or just as I was starting.

ME: But after you got out of the class, you suddenly got a SuperVillain Team-Up, or something?

HALL: Oh, yeah. Boy, you’re good.

ME: Where else would this knowledge come in handy?

HALL: I’m sorry, but about the class, my suspicion was always that John wanted somebody from the class to get a job. [laughs] BUSCEMA: Some of the guys did get jobs.

HALL: But in my case, I knew that John would put in a good word for me to John Romita, and that’s how I got Super-Villain Team-Up, which John said I wasn’t remotely ready to do.

BUSCEMA: You were ready. That’s why you got in. You were never a failure.

25

started, that they were going to fire me, every week.

ME: Thank you, Bob. [applause] There’s someone down here. Shout it out.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: He just reminded me by saying how tough the guy was. I was speaking to Gene Colan in New York a couple of months ago. I asked him what it was like to work with artists like you and Jack Kirby. He’s talking about how you’d come in so nonchalantly and sit down and— BUSCEMA: I wasn’t nonchalant, believe me. I was scared.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: And before you knew it, while you’re talking, having a regular conversation with whoever, he just drew the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life. And he would do it while he was just talking to you, not paying attention.

BUSCEMA: I think he exaggerated, just a little.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: He said you used to do that and yet you had no idea you were creating the most incredible drawing every time.

ME: Well, speaking of Gene Colan, you’re all going to be back here at 4:00 for the surprise party. But in the meantime, I would like you to join me in thanking John Buscema, really for sitting here and talking to us, and also for a lifetime of wonderful comics. [general applause]

HALL: Honest to goodness, every time, just like you were when you

Threw you off balance for a second there, didn’t we? This specially-commissioned illo of DC’s original Justice League was done in 2001 for a collector Don Andre, through John’s representative Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; JLA TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

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28

Sal Buscema

“Drawing Was His Life!”

SAL BUSCEMA Talks about His Big Brother JOHN Interview Conducted by Roy Thomas—2/19/02 Transcribed by Brian K. Morris [INTRODUCTORY NOTE: John Buscema’s younger brother Sal began his comics career inking for Marvel in the late 1960s, and was soon penciling, as well, inheriting The Avengers at one of the occasions when John was pulled off the title by Stan Lee. I was thrilled to work with Sal, who could keep the established look on the magazine. Later we worked together on Sub-Mariner and other titles, as well, and Sal has had successful stints penciling for both Marvel and DC. On February 19, 2002, we spoke by phone about John’s passing, which had occurred a few weeks earlier.]

ROY THOMAS: I was sorry to learn that you and John had another brother pass away—only last year?

SAL BUSCEMA: Yeah, our oldest brother. His name was Alfred. Al was 78 and, as they said, if you look at Al, Al was a miniature John. This is so tragic about the two, because it’s just very difficult to fathom how two guys—they weren’t at advanced years, and they were much, much younger than their years. Al, especially. I mean, this is a guy that looked like he was twelve to fifteen years younger than he actually was. Last time I saw him, he was pushing eighty.

RT: When I last saw John, just about a year and a half ago, at a convention in White Plains, New York, he certainly didn’t look like

he was in his mid-seventies.

BUSCEMA: No. John was a little—I won’t say he was a health nut but he really was a very—he exercised religiously, believed in weight training for cardiovascular reasons, and all that. And he tried to watch his diet, too. I know he was very, very conscious of that, and he was a very robust and extremely very strong guy. I would not have wanted to get him angry at me, let’s put it that way. [laughs] And he had a temper, too. But this is the tragedy—and, I mean, this is what life is all about—it doesn’t matter. You contract an illness and in the space of a few months—and it could be the space of a few weeks or days—you’re gone. And that’s what happened to both of them. My older brother had had earlier problems; there were some problems with his liver. He had Hepatitis C, and so on and so forth. In six months’ time, I saw

Sal Buscema in a photo printed in the program book for the 1975 Mighty Marvel Comic Convention... and a drawing he did not too many years back for a restaurant in San Diego. Alter Ego has arranged to interview Sal ere long about his own career—which sure ain’t chickenfeed! [Art ©2002 Sal Buscema; Hulk ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Talks about His Big Brother John

29 BUSCEMA: Absolutely. As a matter of fact, one of the things I pride myself on is the fact that my family is very close.

RT: Well, you’re Italian, you know. [laughs] BUSCEMA: Yeah. It’s genetic, I suppose. [chuckles] Though I know of Italian families that are not.

RT: One of the things that I know John said last year was that he didn’t encourage you to be a comic artist when you wanted to. He thought that you should have been an actor. Did he ever tell you this, or was this something he just told other people?

BUSCEMA: I’m not sure that he encouraged me to become an actor. I suppose I had some talent in that area. As a matter of fact, I’ve been doing community theater for the last twenty years and had a great time doing it. It’s wonderful if you do it as a hobby, and people have told me, some people whose opinions I respect—I think they’re exaggerating—but they said I definitely could have been professional. But John encouraged me to be an actor? I’m not sure.

RT: Well, maybe he said he thought you should have been, more than that he encouraged you.

A John Buscema page from Thor #217, inked by Sal Buscema. Repro’d from photocopies of the original art, courtesy of Owen O’Leary. Script by Gerry Conway. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

this man reduced to a shadow of himself. And essentially, this is what happened to John, too, from what I understand.

RT: Did you see John during the last few months of his life?

BUSCEMA: Actually, no, I did not. I did not, and I regret that. I talked to him just before Christmas. My wife and I called together to wish him and Dolores a happy Christmas, and especially under the circumstances.

And I got the impression that he was feeling pretty good. He told me he was eating a little better and that he actually gained a pound or two, and so on. And then, just a little over a week later, they called and said he’d taken a violent turn for the worse—and he was gone the next day. So I didn’t even have an opportunity to come up there. Nobody dreamed it was going to happen that quickly. Even though he was very ill, it was a real shock to all of us.

RT: Were you and and John fairly close? Did you talk a fair amount on the phone?

BUSCEMA: Oh, sure. Well, yeah. As a matter of fact, that probably stems from conversations that we had, because I told him that I did not have the passion for art, and drawing in particular, that he did. I had a certain amount of talent, but it was developed with a minimal amount of effort. Where, in John’s case—I mean, this is a guy, as you know— he ate, slept, and breathed drawing. I mean, that was his life. He just had a great passion for it. I did not have that passion. I do have a passion for acting, and in that sense, I suppose, yeah, he probably said that I should have been an actor instead of an artist. Not to say that I didn’t enjoy— how do you not enjoy something that you’ve done for almost fifty years, professionally? I do enjoy it.

I think the difference is that I didn’t have the passion—that’s the best word I can think of—for it that John did.

RT: What, if anything, did he have to do with you coming to Marvel in the late ’60s?

BUSCEMA: Well, John and Dolores had come to visit us down here in Virginia this one weekend, and he just happened to mention—I was working for an art studio in Washington, D.C. and John had been freelancing for an art studio, a commercial advertising art studio in Manhattan. And I’ve heard several versions of this story, that Stan called John and that kind of thing. The incredible thing about it is that Stan and John bumped into each other accidentally in mid-midtown Manhattan.

RT: I did not know that.

BUSCEMA: Yeah, and they greeted each other and said hellos and “how you doing” and all that kind of stuff. And Stan said, “Hey, John, comic books are coming back, you know. Why don’t you consider doing some work for us?” Well, it just so happened that John hated the commute. I mean, he literally commuted five hours a day from his home in Port

30 Jefferson, Long Island, to Manhattan. He despised it. I mean, it’s a killer.

It’s a hell of a commute.

RT: You don’t have any time for anything else in your life.

BUSCEMA: Exactly, yeah. And what made it worse is that if he missed an 11:00 train, if he had to work late for something, he had to spend the night in the city. And John was a very, very strong family man and he hated being away from his family. And so this offered him an opportunity to get back into something that he did before, and offered him the opportunity to work at home. So, as they say, he called Stan, they got together, and the rest is history. Well, he happened to relate this to me.

When I had tried to get into comics, after I got out of art school, around 1953, the industry was dead. It was absolutely dead and there was just nowhere for me to go, so I went into other areas of commercial art. I always had in the back of my mind that I’d love to do comic books. I loved the idea of the independence and the freedom, and so on.

And anyway, when he told me about his going back to work for Stan, I began working. I had to learn how to do comic books. And even John was having problems, because all of a sudden he’s doing super-hero stuff, which he did very little of before that. So he had a learning process, also, and we used to kick things back and forth, and I literally worked, practically every night. I thought my wife was gonna divorce me because I would come home from work, have dinner, go down into my studio and start just practicing and looking at comics and looking at Kirby.

RT: This is before you sent samples in?

Sal Buscema that Stan wanted, that kind of thing. So anyway, to make a long story short, I got to a point where I said, “Well, I think I’m ready to do this.”

I felt comfortable with what I was doing. I penciled a six-page Hulk story that I made up myself—no dialogue, just the drawing—and sent them up to Stan. And, there again, as they say, the rest is history.

I also was bugging Sol Brodsky, because I wanted to break in as an inker plenty early. And Sol eventually—I think he did it just to get me off his back, because I would write him letters, I would call him, and just bug the hell out of the guy until he finally did give me a ten-page western to ink, and that was the beginning of it. And then I guess my first really official job with John was Silver Surfer. I think Joe Sinnott did the first three or so. Then I did the next four. I think I did #4 through #7, and then you and I got together on The Avengers.

RT: Right. I remember the samples you did for that, because they were Captain America landing on a rooftop and being attacked by the Man-Ape. BUSCEMA: I don’t think those were samples, though, Roy. I think that was the actual story.

RT: No, I made it into one.

In other words, you may have asked me to give you something and I vamped a beginning, off the top of my head. Then, once you had drawn it, it was obviously a good beginning for a story. [laughs] I’m curious why you were put on Silver Surfer as an inker right off the bat. John probably liked the idea, but I was just curious why Stan had you ink it when you hadn’t really done much inking before. And yet, here you’re being put on an important book. It was a more expensive book than the usual comic book. It was really quite a vote of confidence by both of them to put you on there pretty fast.

BUSCEMA: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then I just got to a point—I had done some stuff and then John critiqued them John’s “breakdowns”—really semi-finished pencils—for the splash of Fantastic Four and I knew I wasn’t ready. It #306. Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.] literally took me a year of working that way, practically BUSCEMA: I think one of every night and every weekend, just practicing and practicing and the reasons was that Stan wanted to keep John happy, because he was practicing and trying to learn the craft, until I felt that I was at least well aware of the guy’s talents and abilities. The fact is, Joe Sinnott is a reasonably ready for it. marvelous inker, but Joe Sinnott did not ink John well. It was two different styles. You know, if you go off a little bit with Jack, it’s not that RT: So what did John do? He just critiqued them? important. Go off a little bit with John’s drawing and you’re changing his drawings, and you don’t do that with John.

BUSCEMA: Yeah. Well, a couple of times, I sent him some things that I had done. He said, “Well, you know, you’re not getting enough power and you’ve got to really exaggerate,” and so on. You know, all the things

RT: I think that people liked Joe’s inking on John, but it lacked

Talks about His Big Brother John

31

I want to be very fair about this. John was very happy with Dan Adkins’ inking. As a matter of fact, I remember getting a call from him after I was off the book because I was doing Avengers with you.

And back then, I was slow as molasses. I could barely do two pages a day because I was getting my feet wet. And he called and we talked about it and he says, “By the way, I gotta tell you, Dan Adkins is inking The Silver Surfer now and he is doing a beautiful job.” I said, “Oh, great. Fantastic.” And when I saw it, I could see he was pleased with it, because Dan really did an excellent job on it. Good inker.

There again, Dan is a guy that can draw.

RT: Yeah. With John, he just had to ink what was there and not add much—yet one of the reasons Dan was one of the best inkers for Gil Kane was because he added a lot, which he didn’t have to do with John. With Gil, he added blacks and certain little bits of drawing. So Dan could adjust to different types of artists—the very, very different kinds of artists that Gil and John were.

BUSCEMA: Yeah, but a good inker, I’ve always believed, Roy, should be faithful to the penciler. For instance, for a while there, when I was with DC, they were giving me inking jobs of guys that were beginners, that they thought had potential, and they would literally ask me, “Sal, you know—” RT: Save it. [laughs]

As per dialogue by a staffer, this is a page from the “Hulk” story Sal penciled as a sample in the late ’60s—inked later (looks like Sinnott, Klein, or maybe Sam Grainger?) to go with a contest in Foom #8 (Dec. 1974). The prize? That issue’s Romita-Esposito cover drawing! [Art ©2002 Sal Buscema; Hulk TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

something that, somehow, was there with the best of other inkers over John. You and a few others, Tom Palmer, and sometimes Adkins and Giacoia were better inkers for him.

BUSCEMA: For John, to be very blunt about it, John was not satisfied with anybody, including me. [laughs] I always told him, “You should ink your own stuff, because that’s the only guy you’re going to be happy with, inking your own stuff.” As a matter of fact, in The John Buscema Sketchbook, he does make the comment that he didn’t like anybody’s inking. He said, “My brother does a credible job,” but he said, even there, that he still wasn’t satisfied with it. The reason he liked my inking was because I knew John’s drawing very well, I had drawing ability myself, and I’ve always contended that the best inkers are the guys that can draw.

The ones that call themselves “inkers” that can’t draw are linefollowers, and if you don’t give them exactly what you want in your pencils, they’re lost. John knew that I was going to be very faithful to his drawing, which is why he wanted me on the book. But I think that he was a little dissatisfied. He said my feathering was sloppy in the first issue. I’ll never forget that. And thereafter, I took that very seriously and I tried to get a little bit tighter with it, and I personally think—and John does, too—that those are probably four of the best-looking issues of the Silver Surfer’s run.

One of John’s most famous covers—as re-created by Big John a year or two back.

Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Silver Surfer & Thor TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

32

Sal Buscema RT: John would go back and forth between saying one time he wanted to do full inking—pencil, ink, everything. And then—once Stan wasn’t on him quite so much anymore to just do pencils, since I was more amenable to John doing what he wanted to do—then he’d say he wanted to do full art. And then after a couple of months of that, he’d say, “Ahh, too much work—I want to just do pencils,” and then it would be breakdowns.

BUSCEMA: He always said he never made any money inking.

RT: Yeah, and he always said it was totally economic, but I wonder if some of it was just sometimes he’d just get bored doing the whole job. I don’t know.

BUSCEMA: I think that’s part of it. Yeah, I think that’s part of it.

RT: Of course, his penciling always gave you whatever you needed, even if it was rough layouts. But there’s obviously a lot of difference between full pencils and layouts, in terms of how much work is in them and how much time it took him, because he could do six or so pages a day of layouts. I’d get these Conan books that would come in, in just a week or two, and just weigh me down, since I was getting the original art.

John called these (and was paid for) “breakdowns”—but any inker who couldn’t finish these and have the page turn out looking good shouldn’t call himself an “artist”! This page with Ms. Marvel may be from a later issue of The Avengers. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

BUSCEMA: Yeah. “Juice him up a little bit, save it. You know where he’s lacking. Just kind of fix it up a little bit.” And I enjoyed doing that.

I loved doing it and still, even with that, I always tried to be faithful to the penciler. I think that’s the inker’s job, and I think there’s a lot of inkers that lose sight of that. They overpower the penciler, and it’s the penciler who’s telling the story, not the inker, and it’s the penciler’s style that should come through. And I don’t know, maybe I’m alone in that.

But I feel very strongly about that, especially being a penciler myself. I don’t want somebody to overpower my penciling. I want them to follow what I draw, especially when I’m drawing a really tight, finished job. But a lot of inkers don’t do that.

RT: Sometimes they’re told, as you were, to add their own input. One of the things that John probably liked the least, but it was a tremendous success—and I understand both points of view because I’m the one who made the decision to do it—was when I had people like Alfredo Alcala inking John’s basically rough pencil layouts.

BUSCEMA: Well, when he’s doing breakdowns, yeah, obviously you can’t expect the inker to follow the drawing out the window, because it’s loose. So you’ve got to tighten it up. So consequently, there’s going to be a lot more of you in there than the penciler.

The cover of Silver Surfer #13 (Feb. 1970) was originally inked by Dapper Dan Adkins, but John did it himself in this commissioned re-creation a couple of years back. Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Silver Surfer TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Talks about His Big Brother John BUSCEMA: And with John, too, you have to consider, Roy, that this was a guy who was such a masterful draftsman—and drawing came so easily to him—that once he had the page figured out in his head, the execution was very quick. I mean, he just put it down on the page and that was it—it was done. So he was very fast because he was so good.

He didn’t have to struggle with his drawings. I was talking to somebody in the last few years who is, I think, a very good draftsman, and he said he really has to struggle. He works very hard to get his drawing the way he wants it. John didn’t have to do that. I mean, this is where his talent was so unique and so extraordinary.

I remember a story about Barry Smith—this was after Barry had changed his style, and I was amazed at how much he had improved. I hadn’t seen his work for years.

Remember, I used to ink his Conan in the early days. The guy had tremendous potential, but his drawing was abominable. It was just, “Good Lord, this is terrible stuff.” It used to make me cringe. Then, when I saw it years later, I mean, the improvement in his drawing was amazing. The guy turned into a hell of a good draftsman.

33

John was asked by a collector to re-do Jack Kirby’s cover for Fantastic Four #72 in his own style, but with Galactus replacing The Watcher, who appeared on the original. Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Silver Surfer and Galactus TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Anyway, I remember an editor and I were talking on the phone once about John, and Barry Windsor-Smith happened to be in the guy’s office just as some pages John had sent in arrived, and Barry was looking at them. He said, “This guy is amazing. I have to hire models to be able to do this, and my drawing still isn’t as good as this. And he does it from memory.”

What a testimony, coming from a really top guy in the business.

Maybe I’m going on and on about John, but...

RT: No, no, no.

BUSCEMA: He was just an extraordinary talent, he really was.

RT: No argument there.

Thanks, Sal.

A drawing done for Savage Sword of Conan. Apparently John had pasted in a new Conan head. [©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

34

ACTOR

ACTOR Is Open For Business!

A great thing happened on November 14, 2001: ACTOR (A Commitment To Our Roots), the first and only organization dedicated strictly to helping comics creators in need, sent out its first check.

Gray Morrow, the longtime comics and science-fiction artist, had passed away. Through an intermediary, we contacted Gray’s wife Pocho and told her about the organization: that we were a charity that gave back to the creative community that had given comics so much... and that we even had a provision to help cover a creator’s funeral expenses, hopefully alleviating a financial burden for the family.

Pocho Morrow was happy to hear of this. I think she was happy to know that there was one less thing for her to worry about in this time of need. More than anything, I think she was just happy to know that someone cared. ACTOR cut a check directly to the funeral home.

ACTOR has accomplished, in less than a year, what usually takes two years to get done: ACTOR’s 501(c)(3) documents—the paperwork you need to be an actual, honest-to-God non-profit corporation—were approved by the federal government in nine months. (The typical process takes 12 to 18 months.) We are open for business, ready to help, and there’s one important message that goes along with that.

There’s one reason and one reason only that you’re reading about Pocho Morrow: because she told us to tell you. She wants the world to know what this organization is doing. She wants to know that she’s helping others by doing this.

as we run two charity art auctions a year. Donations of any type can be sent to: ACTOR (A Commitment To Our Roots) 11301 Olympic Blvd., #587 Los Angeles, Ca 90064 And if you or someone you know is a comics creator in need, please feel free to contact us. Your confidentiality is assured. Please direct inquiries to one of the seven members of the Disbursement Committee, or to: Charlie Novinskie ACTOR Disbursement Secretary 625 Colony Rd. Clifton, CO 81520 Or call Charlie at (970) 523-3575 Disbursement Committee: George Pérez & Roy Thomas (co-chairs), Dick Giordano, Joe Kubert, Dennis O’Neil, John Romita, Jim McLauchlin.

—Jim McLauchlin, President, ACTOR P.S.: ACTOR’s auction at the Orlando, Florida, MegaCon on February 27, 2002, combined with other donations made there, raised $50,000 for its non-profit work. ACTOR means to put it to good use.

Similarly, ACTOR helped the Dan DeCarlo estate with funeral expenses, and helped veteran writer William Messner-Loebs with a financial hand... and contacts to get back into active comics work. Those names are of people who want you to know what ACTOR has done.

There are others, too. Many of our success stories you will hear about.

Some you won’t. Because—and I can’t stress this enough—ACTOR HAS A STRICT CONFIDENTIALITY CLAUSE, SHOULD A RECIPIENT WISH TO REMAIN PRIVATE. If a recipient does not want his/her identity known, it remains sealed. No one outside the seven-member Disbursement Committee and the secretary will know. ACTOR has already benefited one recipient in this matter. And you will never hear us reveal that person’s name.

So please know: the shingle is out and we are open for business. We’re always willing to accept cash donations, or donation of original art,

Among the many wonderful donations by comics pros for ACTOR’s auctions was this “3K” drawing by (from left to right) Adam Kubert, Joe Kubert, and Andy Kubert, which sold for $1400 at this summer’s auction at the Wizard World convention in Chicago. Thanks to the Kubert family for going the extra mile for a worthy cause. [Art ©2002 Adam, Joe, and Andy Kubert; Sgt. Rock & Batman TM & ©2002 DC Comics; Wolverine TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Stan Goldberg

35

Stan Goldberg on John Buscema Jim Amash Talks with “Stan G.” about Big John—and a Memorable Italian Sojourn had a flair for the dramatic. He knew how to explode a picture and tell the greatest story in continuity.

He could draw six panels on a page for an entire book and you could put any one of those panels on the cover of a magazine, and here he was using them to tell a story from beginning to end.

JIM AMASH: That’s one of the things I admired most about John Buscema. He drew a great picture in every panel without sacrificing storytelling.

GOLDBERG: That’s a perfect description. I saw something recently that he had inked, and John was very proud of it. He once told me that there was a time when he was penciling around 150 pages a month. They

Three American cartoonists in Lucca, Italy, 1999. (L. to r.:) John Buscema, Jose Delbo, Stan Goldberg. Stan, who provided all photos in this section, says, “We spent a lot of time together!”

[NOTE: Stan Goldberg, who for more than three decades has been a top artist for Archie Publications, began his career at Timely/Marvel in the late 1940s primarily as a colorist, later drawing Millie the Model and other titles. As Marvel’s chief colorist during much of the 1960s, he contributed to its rise that began in 1961 with the publication of Fantastic Four #1, and a long interview with him was planned for this issue before it was decided turn it into a special tribute to John Buscema. Stan has his own very special memories of this late great artist, and Jim Amash asked him about them. —R.T.] STAN GOLDBERG: John Buscema was not one of the best artists to work in comics—he was the best artist who ever drew comics. There have been a number of great comics artists, but John was better than everyone.

I have a dear friend, San Kossin, who’s an award-winning illustrator.

Sandy invited me over to his house for dinner one night, and some other well-know illustrators were there, too, including Barney Plotkin. I remembered that John worked for a studio many years ago and said to Barney, “I know someone who was a studio man many years ago, and he’s a terrific artist. Maybe you’ve heard of him? His name is John Buscema.”

Barney said, “John Buscema? We shared a studio many years ago. He was the best artist then, and I’m sure he’s a better artist than anyone in the business today.”

There was a woman there, Elaine Harwetel, who illustrated romance novels, and she remembered going to the School of Music and Art with John. She gave me her maiden name and I asked John if he remembered her. He did. It’s something that here’s someone who remembered John from high school, which goes to show how great he was when he was seventeen, eighteen years old.

Even though he worked primarily in comics, that was just the tip of the iceberg in regards to what John could do. I’ve seen some of his noncomics work and it’s amazing stuff. John knew how to draw, and always

Captain America vs. Thor—doubtless duking it out for some very good reason (like, a collector commissioned it). Buscema pencil-and-ink courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Capt. America & Thor TM & √Ω©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Stan Goldberg GOLDBERG: Right. I talked to Rudy Lapick [Timely inker who now works for Archie Comics], who was in the bullpen when John started. I was coloring in a different department, so I didn’t get to know him then. Later on, John left comics and went into advertising.

He tried to get work at DC once and they didn’t want to use him or couldn’t use him. I don’t think his style fit into DC at that time. They had the Curt Swan look: very slick, and every line meant something. It was very clean stuff. John was all over the place, and they didn’t want him.

I remember when John came back to Marvel in the 1960s. Stan Lee was very happy. We were taking a walk one day and Stan said, “We got John Buscema now, and now we’ve got the best.” Stan knew what he had and what John could produce for him.

JA: Did you ever color his work?

GOLDBERG: I must have, but I don’t remember specifics.

I wasn’t doing that much coloring when John came back to Marvel, so if I did, I probably did it when he worked for Timely.

JA: Did you get to know John when he returned to Marvel?

GOLDBERG: Not really. We were freelancers, and if we weren’t in the office on the same day, we didn’t see each other. He was raising a family and so was I. It was just a matter of doing your work and getting it done so you could go on to the next job. Sometimes you didn’t know where that next job would come from. I’ve worked on many books that seemed secure and then you’d hear that sales were slipping. If you’re doing three of them, one disappears one month, and before long, all three of them are gone.

John never had that problem, because he could adapt to so many different things.

A re-creation by John, doing both pencil and inks, of his cover for Avengers Annual #2, 1968. Courtesy of Owen O’Leary.

[Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Avengers TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I could never figure this out until John explained to me how he did it. I said, “When you’re doing The Avengers (and they’d have five to seven members in the group, maybe more) and they are fighting all these bad guys with nuts and bolts and sticks on them, how do you remember to keep the costumes straight from page to page?” John had a notebook with drawings of all these characters so he could keep them consistent-looking. He didn’t have to go back to the earlier pages to keep them straight.

were breakdowns, but they [Marvel] could give them to a good inker who knew how to draw and interpret them. It could have been The Avengers or Captain America or even romance, which they had him do a few times. Many guys have told me that the greatest romance artist was John Buscema.

When I first got to know John, it was during the Marvel days. Sometimes I was lucky enough to be up there turning some work in, and maybe John was meeting with Roy Thomas. A couple of times we went out to lunch together with a few other guys, and then we’d go our own ways.

I’ve seen those breakdowns and seen people work on them. You couldn’t just be an embellisher. You had to know how to draw, too, in order to work on those pages. But everything you needed was there.

Any artist with talent could take those pages and run with them.

When ACBA [the Academy of Comic Book Arts] was formed in the early 1970s, they had a couple of dinners, and John would say, “Let’s sit together.” That’s when I met his wife Dolores. We’d sit around and talk about getting together, but we never did. We were always busy working.

Years later, we worked together on Archie Meets The Punisher. John came up to the Archie offices and we got together and talked about old times. He talked about some of the trips he went on, including a trip to Italy he just loved. They had a comics convention there.

JA: Some people did a great job and some didn’t.

GOLDBERG: Yes, and that’s unfortunate. Maybe the guy who could do it wasn’t there at that time and Marvel needed someone to do it. They wanted John to do as much as possible because he could do a story better than anyone.

JA: John started at Timely before you did. He started in 1948 and you came in the following year.

It wasn’t until about four years ago that we really got to be social friends. Mel Lazarus [creator of the newspaper strip Miss Peach] called me up, mentioned that a bunch of cartoonists were taking a trip to the comics festival in Italy, and asked if my wife and I wanted to go. We

Talks About John Buscema

Stan G. labeled this photo: “Cartoon fesetival in Lucca, Italy—great time—1999.”

[L. to r.] Carmine Infantino, Mabel Delbo (her hands on arm of husband Jose Delbo), Jerry Robinson and wife Gao, John & Dolores Buscema, Stan & Pauline Goldberg (behind the Buscemas), Hy Eisman and Florence, Irwin Hasen.

“Me, John, Pauline, Dolores” on the street in Lucca.

37

“I introduced Irwin to John. They never met before. They became good friends, and Irwin could always make John laugh.” We noticed, Stan.

“Sitting on a bench at the Piazza Novona... some of the locals... but if you look close, you can see three very famous American cartoonists: Hasen, Buscema, and Infantino.”

Stan G. says: “Irwin Hasen drew this cartoon of all of us... looking at paintings of ourselves on the walls of a museum.” Depicted in the “paintings” [l. to r.] are: John and Dolores Buscema, Hy Eisman and his ladyfriend Florence, Carmine Infantino, Irwin Hasen, Stan and Pauline Goldberg, Mabel [written “Mabelle”] & Jose Delbo, Barbara and Frank Springer. Courtesy of the artist. [Art ©2002 Irwin Hasen.]

38

Stan Goldberg

were in Ireland a year or two before and had a grand time.

I thought about it and remembered that John Buscema had a great time there. I called him up to ask him about it. John said he couldn’t go because his daughter-in-law was going to have a child about that time and he felt he should stay. I told him I’d tell him all about it when I got back.

A half hour later, John called me back and said, “Why do I have to stay around here? My daughter-in-law’s going to have a child whether I’m there or not. I’m coming with you.” And it just so happened that she had her child right before we left for Italy, so it worked out fine. It was an eleven-day trip and we always talked about it, comparing it to other trips, and none of them ever came close to our Italy trip.

John and I and our wives were sitting at the airport, having coffee, when we saw Irwin Hasen [Golden Age DC artist and cartoonist of the Dondi strip], who was going on the trip, too. I called Irwin over, and immediately John started laughing because Irwin said something funny. Right then and there, it was an absolute love affair between the two. John grabbed Irwin’s bag and carried it for the entire eleven days of the trip. I said, “Well, you could carry the bag in one arm and Irwin in the other.” [laughs] We drew lots of cartoons on the trip and had fun doing that.

After that, the vacation started and we stayed up for 24 hours, catching and connecting plane flights and dealing with the time changes. After we got to where we were staying, I said, “You know what?”—and nobody realized this—“We’ve been up 36 hours.” Nobody wanted to go to sleep; we weren’t tired anymore. We put our bags in the room and went out to have some pizza and look around. The place we stayed in was built around 500 and it was only five miles from Lucca, where the festival was held. We sat around the hotel and talked some more.

JA: Who all went to Italy?

GOLDBERG: John and Dolores. Carmine Infantino. Frank and Barbara Springer. Jose and Mabel Delbo. Jerry and Gro Robinson. Hy Eisman and his lady friend Florence. Mel and Sally Lazarus (they stayed at another hotel). Irwin Hasen. My wife Pauline and me.

The festival lasted three days. They took us to lunch and dinner every day; we had great food and camaraderie. We did a lot of walking around and seeing the sights. The convention people all loved John. When they found out he was coming, they went crazy.

One night we went to a party at a disco. It was loud and John didn’t like the music; he was a big opera fan. He was going to leave and they said, “Wait. Wait. We’ll take you wherever you want to go.” They found a restaurant that was Archie Meets The Punisher, in the weird 1994 comic book of that title. Archie and the Riverdale gang were penciled by Stan Goldberg, Frank Castle and the bad guys by John Buscema, and the whole magilla was inked and pulled together by Tom Palmer.

The cover was by Stan and Henry Scarpelli. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc., and Archie Comics Publications, Inc.]

still open and made us a fantastic dinner. The convention people just couldn’t do enough for us, and I attribute all that to John.

When we went to Florence, a wealthy friend of John’s invited three or four couples to his house. We all went there, and on the guy’s walls was enough great artwork to blow your mind. We had a magnificent dinner and then we went to Rome, where John knew some other people. And when these people came to the United States, they’d all stay at John’s house. It was like one big family of sharing, giving and enjoying life. That’s what John did, and he shared it without everyone around him.

I never met anyone like him before, and I’ll miss him terribly. That’s the bottom line. I’ll miss his company and I’m so proud of that fact that he loved my company, too.

Talks About John Buscema JA: When you did Archie Meets The Punisher, did your editor, Victor Gorelick, coordinate your involvement?

GOLDBERG: Yes. Marvel’s Tom DeFalco and Don Daley also had editorial input. The book was inked by one of my favorite inkers, Tom Palmer. Batton Lash wrote it. I went to a trade show in Baltimore and autographed 2000 copies of it. Everyone who came by to see me had nice things to say about it. I had a lot of fun working on it, though I wish I’d had more time to do it.

I drew the first few pages, leaving room for John to do his work, and that was a little awkward. There was one sequence where I was supposed to draw some policemen, but John drew them. There was no time to redo it but it worked out fine. That was the only kind of problem we had.

John really had his opinions on art. If he didn’t like something, it didn’t matter if 99% of the other artists liked it, he’d tell you he didn’t like it. To the point where he’d say, “I’d like to get this guy, put him up against the wall, and put a bullet through his head.” [laughs] We’d talk about artists and I’d ask him, “Is this one of the guys you’d like to put a bullet through his head?” John was so descriptive in his art and his speech.

39

JA: Roy and John sure made a great team.

GOLDBERG: Yes, they did, for many years. Roy always teamed up with the best.

You know, as great an artist as John was, that’s how great a family he had. It’s a very special family. John and Dolores were married 48 years.

He had great neighbors, too. One of them told me a very funny story.

John was a real worker. Everyone knew he always stayed home. One day, the neighbors got John to go to the racetrack with them. They stopped off for some coffee on the way home. Now, at that time, a cup of coffee was about fifty cents. John says, “Fifty cents for a cup of coffee? It’s not a dime anymore?” [laughs] The neighbor said, “Now we know you haven’t been out of the house for a long time.” They all had a big laugh about that.

John was 74, and he could have lived another 74 years, producing work that no other man could have done. He had that kind of talent. His work had that kind of freshness to it.

For years I tried to get him to come to lunch with the Berndt Toast Gang. A few years ago, someone arranged for a bunch of New York cartoonists to come to a meeting. John came down, along with Joe Sinnott, Dan DeCarlo, Marie Severin, Vin Sullivan, Julie Schwartz, Mike Esposito, among many others. John stayed a while and had a nice time. He started coming to the lunches. John never went there to show off or anything. He was just one of the guys.

Once a month, an artist shows his work at a Berndt Toast meeting, and gives a short talk about his work. One time, John brings his work to show, but he didn’t realize that it was Bill Kressy’s turn; he got his dates mixed up. John didn’t take his artwork out of the briefcase, as he felt badly about it. Bill said, “Put your stuff out on the table, John.” So both men showed their work.

Bill got up and gave a short talk. John didn’t want to talk because it wasn’t his turn, but we made him. John got up and said, “I just enjoy hanging out with you guys, and I love coming down here.

Thank you very much for having me.” And he sat down. Now, here’s a man who’s been a teacher and had his own school and done his own book on art, and all he could talk about was how much he enjoyed being with us. That was John.

When John became ill and people found out about it, the family became snowed under with letters and e-mails. It was amazing. There was one letter that came from someone who had been homeless. The guy didn’t have any money and he used to go into a bookstore and look at John’s book How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. The guy loved the book, and for three weeks he went into the store and studied that book. The guy used what he learned and became a successful artist. He bought a house and was able to support his parents, too.

John never read this letter to me, but he told me about it. It meant a lot to John. A whole bunch of us were at his house one time and I asked John to get me the letter. John said, “Don’t ask me to read. I’m not going to read it.”

I said, “I can’t read it either, because I have as big a lump in my throat as you have, just from you telling me about it.” So John Reiner [cartoonist of The Lockhorns and Laugh Parade] read it. The guy wrote such a touching letter, and when he found out John was ill, he wanted to explain to John what his work meant to him. That book gave him a direction. Many of the letters were very touching. You met John once and you liked him.

“Roy always teamed up with the best,” says Stan—including on Sub-Mariner #1 (the May 1968 edition). This commissioned re-creation was both penciled and inked by John; the inker on the original had been Sol Brodsky. You’ll see some more team-ups of Stan G. and Roy T. a couple of issues from now, when Jim Amash interviews Stan at length about his half century in comics! [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Sub-Mariner TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Number 8, Summer 2002 • Hype and hullabaloo from the publisher determined to bring new life to comics fandom • Edited by Eric Nolen-Weathington

It’s Time to...

Last year we brought you DRAW! and received an incredible response. Now we’re turning our attention to all of you writers out there! You know, an artist can show an editor his work and the editor can evaluate it virtually on the spot. But what qualities are necessary to sell writing? What are editors looking for? What skills are needed, and what other media can these skills be used in?

This July, find out in WRITE NOW!, a new quarterly magazine edited by veteran Marvel Comics editor and writer DANNY FINGEROTH! It takes you behind the scenes, into both the creative and business processes that go into writing narrative fiction. Hear from pros ON BOTH SIDES OF THE DESK what it takes to write the stories that readers—and editors—want to read!

In the premiere issue, top professional writers discuss the practical aspects of their craft. You'll get tips and insights from interviews with: BRAIN MICHAEL BENDIS, the writer of Ultimate Spider-Man, Alias, Powers and so many more; JOE QUESADA, editor in chief of Marvel Comics, and co-writer of Ash and writer of Iron Man—he's the guy setting the writing standards at the House of Ideas today; JOSS WHEDON, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the comic Fray, and the upcoming Firefly TV series; J.M. DeMATTEIS, writer of SpiderMan, the Spectre, Man-Thing and Moonshadow; and to get an artist’s perspective on comics scripts, MARK BAGLEY, penciler of Ultimate Spider-Man, New Warriors and Amazing Spider-Man. Plus there’s an interview with STAN (THE MAN) LEE! ('Nuff said.)

The VIPs of POV TwoMorrows is proud to present COMIC BOOKS AND OTHER NECESSITIES OF LIFE, a trade paperback collection of MARK EVANIER’s POV columns! It includes Mark’s best essays and commentaries, many NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED, about the state of the art form (as only he can convey it), the industry’s LEADING PRACTITIONERS (including Jack Kirby and Carl Barks), CONVENTIONGOING, and Mark’s old COMIC BOOK CLUB (with unforgettable anecdotes)! Featuring a new cover and interior illustrations by Mark’s frequent partner, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, this 200-page trade paperback ships in July!

CBA Sold-Out No More!

Find out how their better halves live!

Will Eisner does what? Dave Sim is really like that? This August, see what its been like living with comic book creators over the past 60 years, with the people who know them best! This trade paperback explores the lives of the partners and wives of WILL EISNER, ALAN MOORE, STAN LEE, JOE KUBERT, HARVEY KURTZMAN, JOHN ROMITA, GENE COLAN, DAN DECARLO, ARCHIE GOODWIN, and more! In addition to sharing memories and anecdotes you’ll find nowhere else, their better halves have opened up private files to unearth personal photos, momentos, and never-before-seen art by the top creators in comics!

COPYRIGHT NOTICES: Batman, Joker, Phantom Stranger, TM & ©2002 DC Comics. Thor TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters Inc. Hellboy TM & ©2002 Mike Mignola.

Can’t find those CBA back issues you’re missing? The search is over! In June, simply pick up the COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION, VOLUME 2! It reprints the sold-out CBA #5 (’70s DC) and #6 (’70s Marvel) and includes over 20 NEW PAGES spotlighting STEVE ENGLEHART and MARSHALL ROGERS’ Batman work, plus DC’s ultra-rare CANCELLED COMIC CAVALCADE! Also included are interviews with and unpublished art by BERNIE WRIGHTSON, NEAL ADAMS, JOHN ROMITA SR., and more!

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Now Shipping!

The Jack Kirby Collector #34 Alter Ego #15 Comic Book Artist #18 DRAW! #3 Xal-Kor the Human Cat

Coming This Summer!

The Jack Kirby Collector #35 (June) Comic Book Artist #19 (June) DRAW! #4 (June) CBA Collection, Vol. 2 TPB (June) Panel Discussions TPB (June) Alter Ego #16 (July) Comic Books & Other Necessities Of Life TPB (July) Write Now! #1 (July) Comic Book Artist #20 (July) Comic Book Artist #21 (August) The Jack Kirby Collector #36 (August) I Have To Live With This Guy TPB (August)

Pros and Cons The convention season is underway and already we’ve had great shows at the Atlanta and Pittsburgh Comicons. Despite two nominations (for TJKC and CBA), we didn’t win a HARVEY AWARD, but our own ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON did get to be a presenter! Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth (especially if you bought something)! Next you can find us in Charlotte, NC for Heroes Con on June 14-16 (visit www.heroesonline.com for more info), and the biggie—Comicon International: San Diego, August 1-4 (where CBA, AE, and KIMOTA! are up for EISNER AWARDS)!

Designing? Buy the book!

When should you tilt or overlap a comics panel? What’s the best way to divide a page to convey motion, time, action, quiet? PANEL DISCUSSIONS (our new trade paperback, shipping in June) is the place to find out! It picks the minds of the industry’s top storytellers, covering all aspects of the design of comics! Learn from WILL EISNER, MARK SCHULTZ, MIKE MIGNOLA, WALTER SIMONSON, DICK GIORDANO, MARK CHIARELLO and others as they share their hard-learned lessons about the DESIGN of comics!

Verily, ’tis Thor’s 40th year!

In August, we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of THOR in THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR #36! To start things off, there’s two incredible color Kirby Thor covers (inked by MIKE ROYER and TREVOR VON EEDEN)! Inside, JOE SINNOTT and JOHN ROMITA JR. weigh in on their Thor work with new interviews, and we present a never-published 1969 interview with JACK KIRBY, conducted by SHEL DORF! Plus, we’re featuring 40 pages of Kirby Thor pencils, including an amazing Kirby Art Gallery at TABLOID SIZE, with pin-ups, covers, and more!

If you need to contact the TwoMorrows editors (or want to send a letter of comment), try e-mail!

John Morrow, publisher, JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR editor (and the one to go to with subscription problems): twomorrow@aol.com Jon B. Cooke, COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor: jonbcooke@aol.com Roy Thomas, ALTER EGO editor: roydann@ntinet.com P.C. Hamerlinck, FCA editor: fca2001@yahoo.com Mike Manley, DRAW! editor: mike@actionplanet.com And the TWOMORROWS WEB SITE (where you can read excerpts from our back issues, and order from our secure online store) is at: www.twomorrows.com

Art © Estate of John Buscema, Punisher TM & ©2002 Marvel Characterrs, Inc.

Submit Something To Alter Ego! Alter Ego is on the lookout for items that can be utilized in upcoming issues: • Convention Sketches and Program Books • Unpublished Artwork • Original Scripts (the older the better!)

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42

Tributes

Tributes A Few More Words About John Buscema

[Roy T. here: Had we the space and inclination, we could have filled this issue with little besides tributes to John Buscema from his peers and fellow professionals. However, since we believed that such accolades would be very well represented in the pages of The Comics Buyer’s Guide, Comic Book Marketplace, The Comics Journal, and elsewhere, we decided to solicit comments from only a handful of John’s colleagues... and one or two of them sought us out, as well. Their remarks are printed here more or less in the order in which we received them.

STAN LEE I’ll try to write a few words for you this weekend if I can.

Damn! John was one great artist—and one great guy!

[Later, being inundated by requests for comment

by DC, Marvel, and others, Stan asked if I could simply make use of the paragraphs he had written for them, and naturally I understood and concurred:]

[I awoke on the morning of Friday, January 11, 2002, to receive an e-mail telling me that John had John Buscema was far more than one of our passed away the preceding night. A bit later I sent finest comic book artists. If Michelangelo had an e-mail of my own to Stan Lee in California— elected to draw storyboards with pencil and pen, his certainly John’s most important editor and collabostyle would have been close to that of Big John’s. rator—to inform him of this sad fact, and to invite But, even more than a superb illustrator, John was him, should he wish to do so, to write a few words also a brilliant visual storyabout John. His initial teller. Thinking back on all the A late-’60s photo of Stan Lee, in front of the wall-full of Marvel covers in his office. The reaction came back at once:] Avengers and X-Men covers shown were penciled by John Buscema. Easily the most strips we had done together, I famous collaboration of Stan Lee and John Buscema was the first seventeen issues of had only to given him the The Silver Surfer in 1969-70. The above commissioned re-creation by John shows his briefest kernel of a plot and he own version of the cover of the first issue; the original had been inked by Joe Sinnott.

Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Silver Surfer TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A Few More Words About John Buscema would flesh it out with his magnificent illustrations so beautifully that the stories almost seemed to write themselves. Happily, the legacy of artwork that my dear friend, the creative giant that was John Buscema, leaves behind, will bring wonder and enjoyment to generations of readers to come.

Excelsior!

JOHN ROMITA After knowing and working with John Buscema for 35-plus years, I got to spend personal time with him in San Diego last July. With a terrible battle to face, and the petty annoyances which are common, he showed me something of the grand person he strove to hide all these years. With every right to lose his patience, he stuck it out and did his duty. All the world knows what a peerless talent he was; now we know what a man he was. He set standards for me for decades, forcing me to improve, making me a better artist, and then raised the bar for me to struggle harder to be a better man.

We will not see another like John Buscema again.

GENE COLAN

43

CARMINE INFANTINO (via phone with Jim Amash) The first time I met John was at a comic book convention in Lucca, Italy. I was being honored there. Unfortunately, in all the years I worked in comics, I had never met John. I was shocked when I met him, because he was nothing like I thought he would be. He proved to be a warm, delightful human being and we got to be quite friendly. I was always a fan of his work and was in awe of him.

The last time I saw him was this past summer at the San Diego Comics Convention. We talked about making a trip to Spain, but John wasn’t well enough to go. He’s going to be sorely missed in this business, because he was quite a talent, and you don’t replace a man like that very easily. I will miss him and the business will miss him. He was magnificent.

I don’t think John really got the full appreciation he deserved. He could go in so many different directions. You know he was in advertising for many years, and his color work was unbelievable. No matter what kind of work it was, John could do it and do it better than just about anyone else.

One of the things that always bothered me was that I couldn’t get

I believe it was 1946 or thereabouts when Stan Lee gave me my chance at comics. Very shortly after that, John came along and joined us all in the Bullpen.

He was a natural! And I envied every line he drew. All of his art was so skillfully drawn. He never displayed any lack of confidence in his work... everything was seamless. It was not unlike John to carry on a conversation and, before it was noticed, a page was completed.

These were my formative years, always trying to emulate the very best technique that I spotted in someone else’s work.

John had a thick crop of jet-black hair that he gave a quick run-through when he came in to work. He reminded me always of the very cool actor Robert Mitchum.

I remember him being a very fast worker. To me it was incredible how much work John could turn out in such a short time. This ability to turn out the art rapidly was not my strong point. I agonized over every line. It took me quite some time to improve on speed. Deadlines had to be met one way or another. The only option I had was to keep very late hours.

I never realized the scope of John’s work till recently. A book [The John Buscema Sketchbook, from Vanguard] has just been published, revealing much of his work that went beyond comics. A good deal of the inner man quickly became obvious to me about John. The faces of people within the pages of this book told me so much that I never knew about him before.

The depth of the man and his knowledge and range went so far beyond comics. He was a Michelangelo.

John was the backbone of the industry. His presence and influence will continue. I idolized him. Rest in peace, dear friend.

These pencil sketches by John ably illustrate Gene Colan’s point about John’s back-of-the-page work.

Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 John Buscema; Conan TM & ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

44

Tributes

JERRY ORDWAY John Buscema was such a big influence on my work, first inspiring me on his run with you on The Avengers, and later, after Kirby left Marvel, on Thor, Fantastic Four, and just about everything else Marvel published. My first Avengers comic, fresh off the newsstand, was #49, and I was hooked. John drew real emotion in his stories, and his figures always carried weight, which is a tough thing to pull off. I preferred his own inking, which really wasn’t as polished as that of Joe Sinnott or Tom Palmer, but showed his Hal Foster influence more. As a fan, I’d always hoped to see Wally Wood ink a Conan over John, as they shared many influences between them.

Even as a teen, his collaboration with Stan Lee on How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way guided me to make the most of my layouts. A few years back, I realized a dream of my own, inking John on an issue of Thor. What a thrill! He still had the drawing “chops” right till the end. I’ll miss him, but his work stands forever.

Although Carmine Infantino and later Jenette Kahn tried (understandably) to lure John over to their company, his first work for DC came in 2000. These pencils for the splash page of Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating Superman with John Buscema courtesy of Adam Philips at DC. [© 2002 DC Comics.]

him away from Marvel. I’d have loved to have had him at DC. John could do anything: romance, super-heroes, Conan, you name it. He could even imitate Jack Kirby when he had to; he could imitate anyone, if he so desired.

He was shy, unassuming, and friendly. He was a big teddy bear, and I’m so glad I got to be friends with him. I’m deeply saddened by his passing.

JOE KUBERT I didn’t know John Buscema that well—maybe met/spoke to him two or three times. But I always admired his work. Especially his pencils, and when he inked his own drawing. I had the opportunity to see a lot of his pencil work before it was inked by others—good inkers, too—but they never quite caught the dynamism that John delineated perfectly. He was a terrific artist.

Ordway’s inking of a John Buscema Thor battle page a couple of years back.

Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

IRWIN HASEN I first met John Buscema and his lovely wife Dolores in an airport cafe at JFK, about to board an Al Italia flight to Italy to attend a convention in Lucca. Stan Goldberg and his wife Pauline were there.

I was carrying an oversized Valpak bag. En route to boarding, John

A Few More Words About John Buscema grabbed my bag along with his, and simply walked on. I insisted, but this big bear of a man was too much for this rabbit.

I was never familiar with his work, but I got to see it on the trip. This wasn’t a bear of a man, but a talented giant. A gentle giant, kindly and unprepossessing and so full of warm humor and affection, we both shared those two weeks in Lucca.

Oh, John, who’ll carry my bags now?

45

When I began working for Marvel, I saw Romita, Kirby, Everett, Colan, and the rest as gods. There was so much talent there. I imagined drawing at their level. I looked at their lines, their composition. I thought, yeah, I can do that. Even Jack, whom I, along with everyone else, considered the King. Anyone who is facile with a pencil can imitate a Kirby drawing. Granted, not the concepts. But I never thought I’d ever touch John. To me, his drawing was out of reach.

I’m saddened to hear of John’s passing. My sympathy to Dolores, their kids, and the family.

I remember a story about John told by the older guys when I was working in the Marvel bullpen. The “older guys” were maybe only ten years older than I was, but it seemed they were in a class by themselves.

When John was younger, the story went, he couldn’t draw worth a damn. Terrible, said the guys. Suddenly, in mid-life, he exploded.

Fantastic drawings were coming out of nowhere. It was an epiphany.

John always saw The Big Picture. He really understood what Life— and comics’ place in it—was all about. He was so smart and witty, a truly graceful master. He made me laugh so much, and even giggle (which is terrifically different)!

I took heart in that story. It was always in the back of my mind that someday there might be a flash of light, and I’d be the artist I always wanted to be. Not as good as John, but as good as I could be. It was possible. There was hope.

John was a wonderful Renaissance man, a consummate professional, with an endearing, unique style all his own.

In the long run, it didn’t matter whether it happened or not. The point is, the story gave me inspiration. John was an inspirational guy.

Not only through his work, but because of the kind of person he was. I called him when I was going through my last days at Marvel. He was very supportive and gave me some excellent advice. I remember John as being direct, not mincing his words. There was never any confusion as to what John had to say.

FLO STEINBERG

Bye, John. We’ll look for you at night up in the stars.

HERB TRIMPE John Buscema. In the beginning, I knew John to be a highly respected artist and personality, by reputation. I found out for myself, meeting and talking to him during those whacko Marvel lunches when he was in town.

I love Jack Kirby and his work, but I always thought, if Jack could draw, and I mean in the classic sense, he’d draw just like John Buscema.

Longtime Marvel artist/colorist Marie Severin responded, as well—and we’ve opted to print her handwritten note above, along with the back-of-the-page sketch she refers to. This is John’s penciled sketch; a version inked by Ernie Chan appeared in Savage Tales #5 (May 1974). [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema.]

46

Tributes

POSTSCRIPT: John’s fame and reputation were worldwide, as his being a guest at comics conclaves in Gijon, Spain, and Lucca, Italy, will attest.

Via Jean-Marc Lofficier, who now resides in Los Angeles, several professional French comic artists sent in images in his memory. These three, all coincidentally featuring The Silver Surfer, speak volumes without the need of translation. The specific art below is ©2002 by the individual artists; the Surfer is TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Gil Formosa

Patrick Dumas.

Jean-Jacques Dzialowski

Roy Thomas’ Barbarous Comics Fanzine

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SPECIAL SALUTES TO

John Buscema and

Kurt Schaffenberger

Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Conan TM & ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc

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Vol. 3, No. 15 / June 2002

™

Editor Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout Christopher Day

Consulting Editors John Morrow Jon B. Cooke

FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck

Comics Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus Jerry Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White, Mike Friedrich

Cover Artist John Buscema

Cover Colorist Tom Ziuko (with special thanks to Susan O’Leary)

Mailing Crew Russ Garwood, Glen Musial, Ed Stelli, Pat Varker, Loston Wallace

And Special Thanks to:

Don Andre Blake Bell Tom Bernardo Mike Burkey Mrs. Dolores Buscema John Buscema, Jr. Sal Buscema Joey Cavalieri Gene Colan Shel Dorf Patrick Dumas Jean-Jacques Dzialowski Mark Evanier John Fleskes Gil Formosa Karl Gafford Stan Goldberg Grass Green George Hagenauer Bob Hall David G. Hamilton Ron Harris Irwin Hasen Tom Horvitz Carmine Infantino John Kelly Adam Kubert Andy Kubert Joe Kubert Stan Lee Jean-Marc Lofficier Russ Maheras

Mick Martin Jim McLauchlin Brian K. Morris Dave Newton Eric Nolen-Weathington Charlie Novinskie Jerry Ordway Matthew Lage Owen & Susan O’Leary Joe Petrilak Adam Philips Bill Pearson John G. Pierce Dan Raspler John Romita Stephanie Sanderson Mrs. Dorothy Schaffenberger Marie Severin David Siegel Robin Snyder Flo Steinberg Marc Swayze Marc Svensson Dann Thomas Herb Trimpe Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Hames Ware Alan Weiss Ralph Rawson Werner Ed Zeno Mike Zeno

This issue is dedicated to the memory of:

John Buscema • Kurt Schaffenberger Henry Boltinoff • Chad Grothkopf Landon Chesney • Rich Grasso

Contents re: (correspondence & corrections on past issues) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A Timely/Atlas/Marvel special.

“RoyBigThomas John”talksandabout“Roy the Boy” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 35 years of collaboration with John Buscema.

Presenting Grass Green’s “Da Scavengers” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Bill Schelly on one of fandom’s finest writer/artists.

The Wizard King: Wally Wood’s Unfinished Symphony . . . . . . 31 Michael T. Gilbert on a master’s final major work, never before published.

Tributes to Henry Boltinoff and Chad Grothkopf . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Two fine comic book artists remembered.

FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) #72 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Marc Swayze—plus a special “Salute to Kurt Schaffenberger.”

John Buscema: The San Diego 2001 Interview, and more . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: This Buscema pen-and-ink has been seen before—including in Savage Sword of Conan and ads for the 1978 Conan the Barbarian newspaper strip—but Owen O’Leary suggested it as one of this issue’s covers, and we agreed it was the perfect choice. Conan—a fantasy world—and a beautiful woman: three of John’s favorite subjects in one masterful illustration! [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Conan TM & ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.] Above: Conan and a slightly different type of gorgeous female, in a commission drawing courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Conan TM & ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.; Red Sonja TM & ©2002 Red Sonja Properties, Inc.] Alter EgoTM is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. Phone: (919) 833-8092.

Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: Rt. 3, Box 468, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $5.95 ($7.00 Canada, $9.00 elsewhere). Eight-issue subscriptions: $40 US, $80 Canada, $88 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in Canada.

FIRST PRINTING.

2

re:

re:

You may have noticed that this Alter Ego feels just a wee bit thicker than previous ones.

That’s because, starting this issue, we’ve added eight more pages, for a total of 108, counting covers. This is partly because the Great TwoMorrows Publishing Empire has been adding magazines and even books to its publication schedule at such a fast clip that there is now a 6-page TwoMorrows ad bloc in each issue, besides the two inside covers—but that’s really only 4 or 5 pages more than before, so you still get several extra pages for the same price! End of self-promo. Now, back to our regularly-scheduled "re:" section...

Let’s start with a word—several of them, actually, but all of them welcome—with regards to #11’s interview with Timely/Marvel’s third editor-in-chief, Vince Fago, as sent by Hames Ware, the co-editor/publisher (with A/E’s founder, Jerry Bails) of the original Who’s Who of American Comic Books: Dear Roy,

There’s no Alter (boy) in sight, as our mag’s comascot Captain Ego holds his evil nemesis Tigris aloft. All three debuted in Alter Ego (Vol. 1) #7 back in 1964, the creations of artist/writer Biljo White. This illo was drawn for V1#9 by Sam Grainger, who’d go on to work for Marvel and Charlton. [Art ©2002 estate of Sam Grainger; Capt.

Ego TM & ©2002 Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly.]

Like you, I’ve puzzled over the “German” who Vince Fago said drew “Human Torch” and might be named “Thomas.” Do you think he might somehow mean Gustave Schrotter, who drew scads of stuff at Timely, including the “Angel” sample you printed?

Schrotter was a prolific artist, seldom signing, and has several hardcover credits as late as the 1960s, including some textbook-type books, so he may have become a teacher as Fago recalls his “Thomas” did. Schrotter and Carl Pfeufer both worked through Lloyd Jacquet during much of the period, but are the only two Germanicsounding names that leap out from my ledgers that also fit the Timely time period Fago is discussing.

That doesn’t mean they

might not also have soloed, as well.

I say this because an artist Fago mentions, H.C. “Doc” Ellison, is one of the Binder shop mainstays; yet obviously he was either hired away by Fago or came to Timely after the Binder shop folded.

Somebody may say that Jimmy Thompson was indeed German, but for my part Gustave Schrotter’s name might ring a bell for Vince, after all.

I find it fascinating to hear (or read) names as they were truly pronounced, as Bill Harper pointed out with regard to Straight Arrow artist Fred Meagher. I recall a long-ago fan magazine listing Jules Feiffer as having worked on “The Human Torch”... a result of the interviewer hearing Carl Pfeufer’s last name spoken and assuming Feiffer was the “Pfeufer” in question.

As with the wonderful names of early baseball players, so many of the comics’ eclectic artisans’ names held great fascination for me, and I was delighted when hearing Wendell Crowley, Gill Fox, and others say

those names out loud... sometimes pronunciations so far afield from the way I’d been saying them that I had to get them to stop while I had them spell out the name, only to find out it was an artist whose name I’d been saying in a totally different way!

One of those artists I would happily have years of correspondence and tape interviews with was Rafael Astarita, who explained to me why he was changing the spelling of his first name to “Raphael” and how his last name meant “little star” in Spanish. Interestingly, the gremlins still play havoc, as, in the George Tuska interview, Raf becomes “Ralph.”

Also, gremlins made Ramona Patenaude’s unusual last name even more unusual in the reference in issue #11.

One last name game: my fellow art detective Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., and I had been going round and round for years over how Rudy Palais’ name was pronounced (George Roussos’ name presented a similar quandary). Jim, on the tapes he and I would send back and forth identifying comic book art, would say “Pul-Laze,” and I would come back on my tape with “Puh-Lay.” Finally, local Classics Illustrated historian Bill Jones, whose magnificent history of that neglected comic book has just been published by McFarland, found Rudy and was kind enough to give me his address. I phoned this unique stylist (no one ever drew in a style like Rudy Palais!) and told him about the 20-year debate Jim and I had going. Rudy kindly won my argument for me. (But I think I lost the one on Roussos!)

One last gremlin to mention: the artist on Page 34’s “Targeteers” is Ken Battefield (sic) (and yes, it’s def John Jordan to the right!). It was Battefield that Ned Pines [of Nedor/Standard/Pines Comics] hired to turn out reams and reams of slapdash work in case World War II prevented any artists from returning. Astarita told me that, after the war, the still-thrifty Pines hired him and Graham Ingels to “clean up” all the Battefield pages so Pines could get something for his money. Astarita said it was the most tedious and unsatisfying job imaginable, and that even though Pines offered both men the title of “art directors” and some cash to go with it, each had to eventually leave due to the depressing nature of the work. Ralph Mayo and others later filled this same task, and to this day you will see Pines Comics with beautifully rendered splash panels (apparently poor Battefield either skipped drawing splashes or rendered them totally unusable) and a few beautifully-drawn interior panels scattered amongst the rest by poor Battefield, of whom I believe it was said that he delivered his artwork with arms covered by cat scratches. Apparently he was a cat fancier with scads of cats perched on him and his drawing-board.

I am so glad to see Marcia Snyder mentioned for perhaps the first time ever in a fan magazine! Of all the wonderful female artists who drew for comics, from the classically-trained Clara Peck and Corrine Boyd Dillon to the accomplished cover painters like Louise Altson, as well as all the comic book regulars like Nina Albright and Ruth Atkinson, I consider Marcia Snyder’s work to be consistently (continued on p. 21)

“Roy The Boy”

“Big John”

3

“Roy The Boy”

Rascally ROY THOMAS on Three-plus Decades of Collaboration with BIG JOHN BUSCEMA So my wife and I are walking toward the exit door of the convention center when all of a sudden we hear this deep, booming voice: “Roy Thomas!”

I recognize it instantly, of course, even though it’s been several years since I last heard it in person... and months, at least, since I heard it even over the phone.

“Hi, John.”

John and Dolores Buscema are seated at a long table we’d just passed, John signing autographs with a gruff patience on this late afternoon at a comics convention in White Plains, New York.

Not certain whether they have met Dann before, I introduce them again. “I didn’t think you’d made it here,” I add. “They cancelled your panel.”

“You wanna hear a story? They sent this cab to pick us up out on Long Island...”

The gist of the tale is that the know-nothing cabbie got lost and drove for hours on the freeway trying to the find the right off-ramp in Westchester County. By the time first White Plains, then its convention center, was located, John had missed the one-on-one panel which was his sole scheduled event. Not that he minds, he makes sure I understand: “I wouldn’t even be here, but my grandkids told me I had to.”

We talk for a few minutes about this and that, including the project John is currently drawing— though officially he’s been “retired” for a year or two— and Dann snaps a pair of photos. We say our goodbyes, expressing a hope that we run into each other again one of these days.

(Left to right:) Roy Thomas, John Buscema, and Dolores Buscema in a chance encounter at Joe Petrilak’s All Time Classic New York Comic Book Convention in June 2000. Photo by Dann Thomas.

collaborations covered well over a third of a century, John and I were never friends in the sense that I was at one time or another with Bill Everett and Gil Kane and a handful of younger professionals, mostly writers. I believe he and I liked and respected each other, but we rarely spent any time together. Even so, thinking of a John Buscema anecdote even now, as I write these words two months after his death, in my mind I can still hear his voice as it was—robust, hearty, full of life—the last time we spoke, this past fall, when I interviewed him by phone about our 1960s/70s stint on The Avengers.

Somehow, although at the time we were working on a projected five-issue DC Elseworlds series titled JLA: Barbarians, it seems fitting that our last conversation dealt with The Avengers. Because that’s the way we’d started out, 35 years earlier...

In the Beginning...

And that’s the last time I saw John Buscema.

As you get older, you get used to people “passing on,” as they say.

You wouldn’t think you would, but you do.

Although our

Now—and then! At right, one of John’s penciled concept illos for JLA: Barbarians—and a re-creation of his cover for Avengers #49 (Feb. 1968), above, which he inked the first time around, too. Commission art courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art above ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Avengers TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.; “Kal-El the Barbarian” art ©2002 DC Comics.]

I don’t really recall the day John and I first met, except that it had to be in mid-1966, at Marvel’s offices at 625 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. I do remember being shown, probably by production manager Sol Brodsky rather than

by Stan Lee, a page of sample illustrations John had done. I don’t even recall if they were of super-heroes or merely figure studies. I only know they

4

“Big John” The art in “The Missile and the Monster!” is good, even if Buscema and Esposito were not perfectly suited... but Stan felt John still wasn’t “there” yet and pressed him to take a look at Kirby’s work to see the kind of excitement he wanted. It was probably before he drew his next two “Hulks” that John was given a “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” 12-pager to pencil for Strange Tales #150. Stan wanted John to adjust his illustrative look to accommodate Marvel storytelling. And the best way to assure that was to have him work over Jack Kirby layouts.

Jack’s layouts/breakdowns, when done for another artist to finish, contained relatively few details, being mostly concerned with the storytelling and the motion and the attitude of the characters. Which meant they were bursting with explosive action and hell-bent-for-leather storytelling. Still, any artist “tightening” those layouts had no choice but to reflect Jack’s point of view.

What’s more, since Stan scripted directly from those layouts, they were already lettered by the time they were given to the “penciler,” further limiting the changes the latter could make to Jack’s work. Even if, as Jon B. Cooke told me recently, John Buscema said he erased Jack’s layouts before he started penciling, the Kirby influence would still be there. (A couple of years later, Tom Palmer would likewise erase Gene Colan’s Dr. Strange far more finished pencils before he began to ink them; but the result never looked like anything other than Gene Colan inked by Tom Palmer. Not that Tom intended it to.)

John’s splash for Tales to Astonish #87—and the remainder of his three “Hulk” stories—are on affordable view in The Essential Hulk, Vol. 1. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

made an immediate impression of being beautifully and realistically rendered... far less “comic-booky” than anything I’d seen pass through the hallowed halls of Marvel in the year I’d been Stan’s editorial assistant, except for some of Gene Colan’s near-photographic work.

I was told that this big barrel-chested guy, John Buscema, had been with Marvel back in the “old days,” when it had been Timely Comics.

He’d been working in the advertising field for years, but now he wanted to get into comics again. Stan had welcomed John with open arms; he knew good drawing when he saw it as well as anybody. But “good drawing,” as such, wasn’t really what Marvel Comics was about. Marvel was about action, about drama, about excitement... and, artwise, in 1966 that meant it was pretty much “about” Jack Kirby.

Stan had finally come to the reluctant conclusion that “Wild Bill” Everett, great as he was, wasn’t the right artist to go on drawing “The Incredible Hulk” in Tales to Astonish, not even over pencil layouts by Jack Kirby. An interim issue assigned to veteran Jerry Grandenetti (#82, Oct. 1966) had proved a disaster, in Stan’s mind. In fact, while the inking on that ten-pager is doubtless Bill’s, and for all I know Kirby may have laid it out, the art wound up being credited to “Almost the Whole Blamed Bullpen” (with no mention of Grandenetti or any other artist).

In the final panel, beneath a drawing of Ol’ Greenskin stomping off muttering, “Free—to do—what??!” was a blurb: “...And that’s just what we’ll find out—NEXT ISSUE!” What readers found when they picked up Tales to Astonish #85 was a story credited to a new penciler—“John Buscema”—with inking by “Mickey Demeo” (longtimer Mike Esposito).

The climax of Avengers #50: Hercules vs. Typhon, as seen in glorious black-&-white in The Essential Avengers, Vol. 3. And no, Alter Ego doesn’t get anything in return for the plug; we just like to help collectors locate inexpensive copies of classic Golden and Silver Age stories. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“Roy The Boy” John’s “Hulk” stories in Astonish #86-87 improved as they went along... but when Gil Kane walked into the Marvel offices, willing to work under his own name this time, he got the “Hulk” assignment. And John had only drawn one Strange Tales installment, because 1966 was the second summer in a row that a young Pennsylvania artist named Jim Steranko came to a New York comics convention (and thence to Marvel) looking for work, and this time he’d gone away with the “S.H.I.E.L.D.” assignment—albeit initially over, you guessed it, Jack Kirby layouts.

So what to do with the supremely talented yet still-struggling John Buscema?

Avengers Forever... If I Had My Way about It At this time Don Heck was up to his ears drawing both the monthly Avengers and the extra-length Avengers Annual #1, so John was assigned to do a couple of fill-in issues, starting with #41 (June 1967).

For the first time since his return, John would be working not with Stan the Man, but with a relative newcomer—Roy the Boy (just turned 26, so not all that young, really).

John and I had little personal contact in those days—just the occasional phone call with regard to some point in the written two-orthree-page synopses I sent him for most issues. But I was instantly smitten with his work, and persuaded Stan that Don should be moved over to other projects—eventually to The X-Men, which I was also scripting—so John could remain as regular Avengers penciler.

Nor do I remember Stan or John ever talking with me about the possibility of John’s inking his own work; Stan clearly preferred he just

5

pencil. Even so, perhaps unhappy with the inking he was getting, John got Stan’s okay to ink Avengers #49-50, and they are the best-looking ones of that period. But John must have realized he’d make more money just penciling, and that was the end of his inking for quite some time.

Though sales were good, I can’t say we broke any sales records with those early Avengers.

At this point I could wax eloquent for page after page about the dozens of Avengers issues John and I did together through 1972, when I relinquished that title to concentrate on being Marvel’s editor-in-chief; but most such comments belong in an article about the group itself... and this one is about the Buscema/Thomas collaborations.

Besides, Avengers constituted only half the work John and I were doing together at this time.

Suddenly... The Sub-Mariner!

When Prince Namor (like The Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, S.H.I.E.L.D., and Dr. Strange) received his own monthly mag in 1968, John was tapped to pencil it. Behind a powerful cover inked by Sol Brodsky, The Sub-Mariner #1 inaugurated a string of issues I enjoyed every bit as much as Avengers... and which John probably enjoyed slightly more, not having so many heroes to juggle. He also liked the fact that the issue was embellished by Frank Giacoia, one of his preferred inkers. For my part, I reveled to see the “Buscema touch” applied to recaps of Namor’s origin and WWII exploits, and to the events in Fantastic Four #4 that had brought Sub-Mariner into the 1960s. It was immediately apparent that John would be the ideal choice to succeed Kirby on F.F., but of course in 1968 no one was thinking in

Re-creations of the covers of the Silver Age Sub-Mariner #4 & #6... courtesy of Tom Horvitz.

[Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Krang & Tiger Shark TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

6

“Big John”

terms of Jack ever leaving that mag—or Marvel.

There were several high points in the eight issues we did together, including an undersea war between Namor and Krang (Atlantis, if it didn’t equal Asgard in John’s eyes as a locale, was surely preferable to him to battles among Manhattan’s apparently endless supply of warehouses to be trashed in super-hero slugfests)... the advent of Tiger Shark (a villain John designed)... and #8, which featured an inspired knock-down-drag-out fight between Subby and the ever-lovin’ blueeyed Thing, beautifully inked by Dan Adkins.

I doubt John had any pleasant memories of having to draw Namor once again tearing up New York, but I loved it—just as I reveled at revealing, at the end, that issue #8 was being related by a Betty Dean who had aged realistically in the decade-plus since she’d last appeared in a Sub-Mariner comic. One of my favorite scenes from the 1960s is page 14 of #1, which features a full-length panel of Namor and Ben Grimm crashing through three floors of a building, pummeling each other all the way down.

But after #8 John was suddenly gone—even if ably replaced by Marie Severin— for reasons I’ll go into in a moment.

Robots and Androids Around this same time, over in Avengers, John and I collaborated on our two major character co-creations.

In #54 readers got their initial glimpse of the robot who would soon would become Ultron-5. And then—enter The Vision.

Vision he was drawing a character who was far more contemplative, even moody. John could make you feel The Vision was really thinking as he sprawled in a chair in Avengers Mansion. And when, in #58, John drew a full-page end panel to justify my title—“Even an Android Can Cry!”—it led more than one reader to write us about how moved he/she had been by the scene.

John Buscema, like John Romita and Gene Colan (and Steve Ditko before them all), was adding a veneer of humanity to the Kirby milieu— and he was doing it, in large part, with an android!

As you can imagine, I was having the time of my life. From Avengers #41-62, a run of just under two years, John penciled every issue except two—with #45 done by Don Heck, and #48 by George Tuska.

And then along came a silversheened alien balancing on a surfboard—and John Buscema was lost to me for some time to come, first on Sub-Mariner, then even on Avengers.

A Touch of Silver— in the Silver Age For a combination of reasons, when Marvel launched a Silver Surfer title in early 1968, Stan decided that Jack Kirby, who had originally conceived and penciled the character back in Fantastic Four #48, would not be the artist of his own title. Whether that was a sound or mistaken judgment must remain for others to argue about; it has nothing to do with John, who was assigned to draw the new doublesize bi-monthly.

Few would disagree that Lee and Buscema made a superlative team.

Many feel that Joe Sinnott was a far better inker for John’s pencils than John himself thought. The first issue of Silver Surfer was enthusiastically embraced by fandom. #2 was a bit more pedestrian, despite the introduction of the alien Badoon... but then came #3 and #4, easily the twin highlights of the entire series.

This isn’t the place to go into why that hero was introduced. But I can still vividly recall the morning when, working in my Brooklyn apartment as I did on The Vision takes on The Avengers, in a Buscema-Klein page repro’d alternate days, I tore open a from photocopies of the original art of issue #58, courtesy of Owen O’Leary.

For some reason I was present in [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.] package that had come in the Stan’s office for part of the verbal mail—and beheld the splash plotting session for #3, which would debut Mephisto. I recall little of page of Avengers #57, with The Vision floating into the lightningwhat was said, except that I was impressed with Stan’s idea of adapting streaked night sky. I’d told John I wanted him not so much to fly as to the Temptation of Christ into a comic book. He mostly left to John the float, lighter than air—and John came through like a champ. Perhaps it’s responsibility to decide what Mephisto’s version of Hell looked like... the way the android’s gloved hands grasp the sides of his golden cape, so and John’s Dantesque visions later pleased Stan as much as they did that it billows behind him. He seems to be sailing upward, simultaneanyone else. I also recall that on this occasion, as on others, Stan emphaously weightless as a feather and sinister as a spectre. sized that, when the Surfer bemoaned the fate that trapped him on our From the very beginning I knew that The Vision—who’d been introplanet, John should draw the scene like the emoting in the hyperduced specifically to join The Avengers—was going to be a great emotional Yiddish theater which has, by now (even by then), all but addition. While John, like most artists, had a tendency to draw the other perished from the Earth. Presumably John knew what Stan was talking male heroes a bit interchangeably, all muscles and heroic attitude, in The about, even though he was of Italian, not Jewish, descent.

“Roy The Boy”

7 visible in the very next issue, which—admittedly in a story that lacks the inherent possibilities of the preceding two—shows a Buscema far less inspired. Oddly—and this may just be coincidental—the Surfer abruptly looks thinner, weaker, even—dare I say it?— wimpier. I remember a feeling of disappointment when I saw the pencils to Silver Surfer #5, even though it was still beautiful artwork. There was even less of a sheen to the Surfer as the series progressed, and I felt the look of the character suffered greatly for it, despite good inking first by John’s brother Sal (a newcomer to the field), then by Dan Adkins.

Even so, I, like most professionals and older fans I knew, remained enthusiastic about The Silver Surfer, right up to the time when, first, Stan decided to replace John as the artist with Jack...and then, only one issue later, the comic (which had already been reduced to a regularlength monthly) was cancelled.

The temptation of Norrin Radd—and the Surfer vs. Thor, Buscema style. From The Essential Silver Surfer. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

If Silver Surfer #3 was a rousing success, issue #4 was both that— and, in other ways, an unparalleled disaster, at least in John’s eyes.

I remember John bringing in the penciled pages, and several of us ooh-ing and ahh-ing over them in the outer office. He seemed mildly pleased at our enthusiasm, and took the pages in to Stan’s office. What happened next I was not privy to, but John has related at various times, with varying degrees of diplomacy, that Stan “tore the job apart.” I recall his telling me, only a few days later when we met at Gil Kane’s Manhattan studio, that Stan’s first words to him after closing his office door had been, “Forget everything those guys out there said. The art’s all wrong, and here’s why.” Those may not have been Stan’s precise words, but that’s how John remembered them. Since he had made a conscious choice in that story to alter the Kirby version of Asgard and the gods to something more Arthurian, and to move away from Jack’s style a bit in his storytelling, he was crushed when Stan didn’t like it. (A few years later, when that story was reprinted in a hardcover volume and Stan called John to tell him it was one of the best things they had ever done together, John has said he was floored to realize that Stan had forgotten their earlier conversation.)

Avengers Re-assemble!

During this time, I worked with John only on odds and ends:

John penciled the cover of Avengers #66, and I was pleased the excellent use he made of Goliath’s size. (But, after brief stints by Gene Colan and Barry Smith, it was now Sal Buscema who was penciling Avengers—and doing a very good job of it, too.)

When Gil Kane had an illness in the family, John stepped in to finish off Captain Marvel #18 (Nov. 1969), the second issue of the new direction in which Gil and I had taken Mar-Vell. (John did a fine job, but Gil was back next issue.)

It’s not a case, perhaps, of one man being right, and the other wrong... but apparently John saw it, forever after, as a defining moment in his creative life.

Which is the only reason I recount it here, when I’d just as soon forget the whole affair. From that day on, John bent his efforts to becoming more of a Kirby clone than he had been heretofore, both in Surfer and elsewhere. The results are Gil Kane started Captain Marvel #18... but John finished it. Buscema/Adkins page repro’d from photocopies of the original art, courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

8

“Big John” While Stan scripted most stories John drew for our new “mystery” titles Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness, I did get a chance to write one in #3 (Feb. 1970) of the latter. (“Something Lurks in Shadow Mountain!” wasn’t one of our better efforts.)

John also penciled two Sub-Mariner issues during this period—#20 with Dr. Doom, and #24 with Orca, the Human Killer Whale—but these were only fill-in issues, when either he had a hole in his schedule or Marie Severin needed to be spelled.

The cancellation of Silver Surfer heralded a period when John and I began to work together more regularly, and, despite being sorry to see Surfy go, I couldn’t have been happier about it.

Sal Buscema moved over to Sub-Mariner, and with #74 (March 1970) John returned to Avengers. Something new had been added, however: inker Tom Palmer, who swiftly became one of John’s favorites, along with Giacoia, Sal, and perhaps Adkins. John and Tom made as good a combination of penciler and inker as you’d ever want to see on a superhero comic, and all I could do was pray that the combination lasted a long, long time!

Despite John’s conscious decision to re-Kirbyize his artwork (to turn out “the same old crap,” to give the sanitized version of the way he phrased it to me in the interview I did with him last fall), he couldn’t help keeping some of his illustrative look, especially with Palmer aboard.

When I gave him, for #75, a verbal description of a new way I’d like Quicksilver to move—bouncing and careening off objects as I had recently seen the 1940s Quality hero of that name do in stories drawn by Jack Cole—John nimbly turned Pietro into a human pinball, and gave him a feeling of speed he’d never had before.

In 1970 John had to forego illustrating Conan the Barbarian #1; but for The Savage Sword of Conan #222 (June 1994), Rascally Roy Thomas and editor Richard Ashford invited him to re-draw the entire story in his own way, from just a rewritten synopsis by Roy, without looking at the earlier comic. Penciled and inked Buscema versions of the splash courtesy of David G. Hamilton; unfortunately, when Roy photocopied the pencils for him years ago, his machine was malfunctioning—hence the black streaks at bottom. [©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

In #75, having become enamored of the sword-and-sorcery work of Robert E. Howard, crossed with the John Carter of Mars stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, I conceived the villainous Arkon the Magnificent, barbarian ruler of a fantasy dimension (even if I did give him a quiver-full of lightning arrow which, I blush to admit, was basically cribbed from the Weaponers of Qward in DC’s Green Lantern). John excelled at drawing Arkon riding around on the back of a huge reptilian steed. Sal returned for one fill-in issue in 1970 (#78), but otherwise it was a Roy-Johnand-Tom show, and I was in hog heaven about it.

What’s more, I almost got to write yet another comic with John.

As I’ve reported several times (so I’ll skim over it here), John was briefly scheduled to be the first penciler of Conan the Barbarian after I acquired for Marvel the rights to Howard’s hero, then making it big in paperbacks. But alas, after John had read several of the books and was all set to sink his teeth into the new bimonthly, publisher Martin Goodman decided we had to use a penciler with a lower rate so he could recoup the $150 per issue Marvel would

“Roy The Boy”

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best-looking comics coming out of Marvel was The Avengers, and I was proud to be a part of it.

And then it was over... again.

Buscema into the Breach John’s leaving The Avengers a second time after #85 (Feb. 1971) was basically due to Jack Kirby’s abrupt departure from Marvel in 1970.

After four issues of Fantastic Four drawn by a reluctant but capable John Romita, John B. was tapped to become that book’s regular penciler with #107 (Feb. 1971), so Jazzy Johnny could concentrate on The Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel’s best-selling title. John B. disliked drawing F.F. (though not as much as he’d hate penciling Spidey later!), but he had a gift for it, all the same. He had been determined, after Silver Surfer #4, to become a Kirby clone—and while he never really could submerge his own personality completely into Jack’s style, his own adeptness made him the perfect successor to the King.

Thor, the other comic Jack had been penciling, was another case entirely. John was tossed into the breach for one issue, with #178 (July 1970)... but, when Neal Adams evinced an interest in drawing Thor, Stan was glad to have a chance to work with an artist who had made such an impact, first at DC, then at Marvel on the doomed X-Men title. Yet, for reasons I’m not sure about (and which have no relation in any event to this piece), Neal was gone after #180-181 and John returned for a long stay as the Thunder God’s penciler.

The Lethal Legion—Power Man, Living Laser, Man-Ape, Grim Reaper, and Swordsman—rendered by John and Tom in Avengers #79 (Aug. 1970).

Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

be paying the REH estate. John and I were both disappointed, but Goodman’s cheapness turned out to be a windfall for Barry Smith, who came into his own on Conan. Besides, I still had John on Avengers, right?

Just paging through Avengers issues of this period fills me with nostalgia... but the feeling is also considerably more than nostalgia. The artwork there is good, pure and simple, however much scorn John may have mentally heaped upon his day-to-day work.

Arkon... The Lethal Legion... Red Wolf... even the original Valkyrie and her misled Liberators, in a story (#83) that mildly embarrasses me in retrospect: month after month, one of the

Fantastic Four #113 (Aug. 1971) was only John’s seventh issue of Marvel’s flagship title. By #127 he and Roy were a team on the book; above is his penciled cover sketch for it (courtesy of Owen O’Leary). F.F. #113 splash at left repro’d from original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey.[©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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“Big John”

Buscema and the Barbarian (Left:) Not the best photocopy in the world, but this is the first penciled page John Buscema ever did for Conan the Barbarian, since he drew #27 out of order before doing #25-26, to help Marvel catch up on an ever-latening schedule. The note to Gil Kane—probably written by production manager John Verpoorten—indicates that Gil once borrowed Marvel’s only copy, in those days before photocopiers had popped up in every supermarket. Courtesy of David G. Hamilton. (Right:) The finished art, inked by Ernie Chan, was reprinted in black-&-white in Conan Saga #64 (July 1992). [©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

As John often said, he liked drawing Thor whenever it was set in Asgard or the like, and hated it when it took place on Earth. But he was a pro, and he gave it his best shot, either way.

John and I did very little work in tandem during this time, though I did call on him to pencil one chapter of Avengers #94 and the entirely of #97, as part of the landmark “Kree-Skrull War.” And there was the fill-in issue I wrote of Fantastic Four (#119, Feb. 1972), which dealt with apartheid in “Rudyarda,” a transparently-named stand-in for South Africa. But when I had to give up Avengers entirely in mid-1972 to devote time to my new job as Marvel’s editor-in-chief, it seemed unlikely John and I would be working together in the future except on covers— which were a part of the issue he preferred not to do, given his druthers.

John looked as if he’d be tied up for the foreseeable future with nothing but F.F., Thor, and occasional stories for our black-&-white horror mags or even Crazy, our Mad wannabe.

Boy, was my crystal ball foggy!

When I became editor, Stan became president and publisher... and his new duties forced him to relinquish regular writing chores. I inherited F.F., the super-hero book I was most eager to write once my stint on Avengers ended. Working with John on that book was like coming home, in a sense, and I seized the occasion to make an artistic change in the book.

Back in 1953, when the original Human Torch had returned after a four-year absence, his initial story (in Young Men #24) was drawn in a realistic and illustrative style by Russ Heath. Russ drew only that single “Torch” tale, but I fell in love with his rendering of the hero, which to me really looked like a man on fire, for the first time. In 1972 I decreed that henceforth Johnny Storm ablaze should be based on Heath’s version. John and I launched that look in our first regular issue together, F.F. #126 (Sept. 1972). But somehow, though in his pencils the Torch’s flames now looked just the way I wanted them to—and Stan voiced no objection to the switch—the change was less effective after inking, even by the super-talented Joe Sinnott. Eventually the Torch reverted to the Carl Burgos look, and in any event I left the title after only a few months, due to the press of editorial duties.

Editorial duties... and Conan.

After a slow start, Conan the Barbarian under Barry Smith and me—and with two good-selling middle issues by Gil Kane—had become a modest hit, at which point Barry elected to leave the magazine, for a second time, after #24. Gil having decided he couldn’t make any money drawing Conan (“Roy wants me to draw a damn epic every issue,” he told someone—and of course he was right), I was free to offer the book to John Buscema, only a few years late.

John took to Conan with a vengeance. The first issue he penciled was

“Roy The Boy”

11 Again: this is not the place for a detailed history of John’s and my collaboration on Conan and Savage Sword. I’ve already done that—a series of nearly one hundred articles, issue by issue, of the color Conan when it was being reprinted, a year or two back, by Planeta-Forum of Barcelona, Spain, as Conan el Barbaro. At their request, I wrote a thousand words on each and every Conan issue up through #100, “The Death of Bêlit”—at which point the series ended.

The two things I most remember about Conan are how much I loved the character and prose by Conan creator Robert E. Howard—and how bowled-over I usually was when art by Barry Smith and later John Buscema arrived.

This remained true even though, by the mid-’70s, John was increasingly doing only “layouts.” For, as John says in the San Diego panel transcribed in this issue, his breakdowns contained all the drawing that an inker/embellisher who could draw needed to finish them off. The latter just had to take the time and expend some effort. This was done ably and to Marvel’s and most fans’ liking, if not to John’s, by Chua/Chan, Alcala, DeZuniga, and occasionally others such as Steve Gan, Pablo Marcos, or whoever.

For two Sundays in June of 1937, Prince Valiant and two comrades fought a huge “sea-crocodile” they termed a “dragon.” At Roy’s request, John made that “dragon” the co-star of Conan the Barbarian #39. Conan disposed of “The Dragon from the Inland Sea” in his own way—as seen below in John’s pencils, then his inked version. [Prince Valiant art ©2002 King Features Syndicate; Conan art ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

#27—though he then had to double back to draw #25-26 to finish off “The War of the Tarim.” John requested Sal as inker, and I was happy to comply; but after only one issue, for some reason, Sal had to leave. Still, in my view and Marvel’s, if not in John’s, things worked out well, because Sal’s replacement was Ernie Chan (then using the last name Chua).

What Ernie brought to Conan was a willingness, and a natural inclination, to add detail to John’s powerful drawings, where Sal had followed his brother’s pencils “out the window,” as they say. Either approach would probably have sold Conan at that stage, but most readers reacted favorably to the Buscema/Chua team.

What Ernie lost on Conan, of course, was the pure John Buscema look. But don’t blame that on Ernie. He was doing what we requested. Conscious that readers had grown fonder and fonder of Barry’s art as he had added more and more detail to his drawings, I felt that the “noodling” added by Ernie would keep the book visually closer to that look, only now with John’s more mainstream style underneath it. I would use the same editorial approach when John became the major penciler of The Savage Sword of Conan, the black-&-white mag we would add in ’74; there his main embellisher would be another Filipino-born artist, Alfredo Alcala, who would add even more detail to John’s drawings—to the point, some would say, of burying Buscema beneath Alcala. John felt more kindly toward the work of Tony DeZuniga.

All I know is—the approach worked. Conan the Barbarian soon became, under Buscema and Chan, one of Marvel’s bestselling monthlies... and Savage Sword swiftly rose to be one of the company’s most profitable titles, and one of the longestlived black-&-white comics ever.

To Ink or Not to Ink

If I sound to some like a philistine in relating how I turned over John’s pencils or breakdowns of Conan and other comics to inkers whose styles he found unsympathetic—well, maybe I was, and maybe so were the editors who came after me. But this was the way the system worked, and it was basically John’s choice, in the end. I’d have been happy to see John do full art on stories. It was John’s choice—economic, perhaps, but a choice nonetheless—to pencil or lay out several stories instead of

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“Big John” Savage Sword was a particularly fun experience for me, and I suspect for John—at least to work on, if not to look at after it was inked. We could do stories of any length, making them as long or as short as seemed appropriate... spreading them over two or more issues, if necessary. Many of these were adaptations of short stories or novels I sent him, either lightly annotated or simply after a brief phone discussion. Originally we stuck mostly to a combination of “originals” by me and adaptations of stories by Robert E. Howard—both the Conan tales themselves, and some of REH’s non-Conan efforts which lent themselves to being turned into Conan adventures. Later, Marvel gained the right to adapt material which had been added to the prose Conan canon by L. Sprague de Camp and others. I even acquired rights to some stories from pulp magazines and other sources which, while Conan-inspired, were by other authors and featured other heroes. Some of these tales adapted better than others, but I don’t mind admitting that I remain immodestly convinced that, between them, Conan the Barbarian and The Savage Sword of Conan from 1970-80 constitute one of the better comics series of the ’70s or any other decade. So sue me.

For his part, John liked adapting stories by Howard, but not always those by other authors. He felt—and I certainly agreed with him—that Conan epics by the “posthumous collaborators” were not generally the equal of those by Howard. But there was far too much Conan material coming out of Marvel, especially once Savage Sword went monthly, to stick to REH prose exclusively, even if I’d wanted to. De Camp and others had been adding to the Conan chronicle for years, and I saw no reason not to build on what they had done. As I always told John: the prose in a non-Conan story, whether by de Camp and crew, or plotted by me, would always be filtered through the prism of his art. So even an exploit which lacked something storywise might come out looking as good as “The Tower of the Elephant” or “A Witch Shall Be Born”!

In early 1974 John made one of his sporadic announcements that he wanted to both pencil and ink the color Conan comic. The gorgeous result was issues #38-39. The first featured a werewolf husband and mate in a story adapted from Robert E. Howard. In the second I tried an experiment. One of the great early moments of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant strip, which John admired, was an encounter with what the caption called “a great sea-crocodile,” which of course to the medieval Val was a “dragon.” I sent John a copy of those 1937 Sunday pages and said, let’s take this “dragon” and built a whole story around it. We did, and it became a John Buscema tour de force.

A page of sketches such as might have been picked up for use in the ’70s Savage Sword. ’Course, the guy at top left might’ve been a mite hard to fit in! [©2002 estate of John Buscema; Conan TM & ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

spending his time fully illustrating one or two.

From time to time, John would abruptly announce that he wanted to return to doing full penciling-and-inking. We would always say, “Fine.”

Then, invariably, after a month or three, for whatever combination of reasons, he would declare that he wanted to go back to doing only pencils/layouts. He bounced back and forth for years, decades, between these three levels of work, and it was usually his choice as to how much work he was doing on a given feature or issue.

Frankly, sometimes it made us tear our hair out. Think about it from our perspective: whenever John decided to pencil and ink an issue or issues, it meant we suddenly had to find other work for the guy who’d been inking that series. This required some quick juggling. Worse, when John decided later (as he inevitably did in those days) that he didn’t want to ink any more for a while, we’d have to cast about quickly for an inker or finisher. It was a definite inconvenience; but such was our respect for John and his work that we did everything we could to accommodate him. We felt it was worth it.

Fortunately, from my viewpoint, when John decided after those two issues to return to merely penciling Conan, I was able to bring Ernie Chan back aboard. Since John wasn’t wild about doing covers, many of them were penciled by Gil Kane. But John did full art on issue #44, which featured Conan and his distaff counterpart, Red Sonja.

If proof were needed that by 1974 Conan was one of Marvel’s most popular mags, it was provided when the Hallmark Minting Service struck a trio of “Official Marvel Solid-Bronze Collectors MedallionCoins.” And what three characters did Hallmark opt to put on them?

Spider-Man... The Hulk... and Conan the Barbarian.

Over in Savage Sword, which featured Conan- and Howard-related articles as well as comics material, John even found an outlet for some of the sketches he drew on the backs of his pages. Any penciled ones that might go well with the mag’s prose pieces I would get inked by another artist (a necessity, given our standards of reproduction) and use it, paying John a token fee for what, for him, had been merely warm-up exercises. John was in good company in those magazines, with other sketches being contributed by Al Williamson and Roy G. Krenkel, at least in the early days.

Savage Sword (and its predecessor, Savage Tales), which utilized painted covers, also gave John a chance to do a bit of painting, whenever

“Roy The Boy” the mood struck him. On at least two occasions, however—the cover of Savage Tales #1 in 1971, and a Conan/Red Sonja special a few years later—John was pressed to paint covers in a hurry, because another artist let us down. I still own the latter painting, which John gave me back in the ’70s. John had more skill at painting than he gave himself credit for.

He never expressed any real satisfaction with the end result, however, and in any event he could make more money by spending that time penciling. All the same, I’m glad we were able to feature a half dozen or so of John’s paintings.

One thing that amused me about John was that, though he loved drawing Conan, he was clearly lukewarm toward Red Sonja, the swordand-sorcery heroine I had developed as a curvy counterweight to the Cimmerian. Given John’s penchant for drawing beautiful women, I asked him once why he had relatively little enthusiasm for the She-Devil with a Sword.

“I like drawing women,” he said, “but I prefer the dancing women and the priestesses, not one who’s swinging a sword.”

Oz and Ends In 1975 another interesting fantasy project suddenly reared its head.

Having recently stepped down as editor-in-chief in favor of a three-year writer/editor contract, I persuaded Stan that, since L. Frank Baum’s turn-of-the-century novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was in the public domain, Marvel should do an adaptation of it in comics form. I’d been a fan of the Oz books for years before I’d had a chance to see the 1939 MGM movie; but since during the 1970s the film was being shown on TV every Christmas, a comics version of the book could become a

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perennial seller. Our mutual choice for the artist: John Buscema.

John was enthusiastic, more because of the film than the book.

Accordingly, I marked up a copy of Baum’s book and he began to draw.

He was to use the original W.W. Denslow drawings as a point of departure, but would do his own take on the characters. It would become an 80-page comic for our tabloid-sized line, which up to that point had consisted of reprinted super-hero and Conan material.

John was only seven pages into breakdowns for the story (whether or not he was slated to ink it as well I don’t recall) when we learned that, under publisher Carmine Infantino, DC Comics planned to do its own Wizard, and was making a deal with MGM to adapt the movie. For years, I’ll admit, I was skeptical whether DC really had such a bargain in the works, and suspected Carmine was bluffing. Later, however, it came to light that Shelly Mayer, legendary one-time DC editor and cartoonist/creator of Sugar and Spike, was scheduled to do the adapting. I’m sorry I never got to see any of the work Mayer did, if any was actually drawn; but of course in 1975 the news of this looming conflict merely got my competitive juices flowing.

To make a long story short, Marvel and DC soon agreed to pool their resources and co-publish a tabloid-sized comic based on the film. Marvel would supply all personnel, meaning John Buscema, an inker, and myself. MGM, however, could not supply us with a copy of either film or screenplay, and this of course was in the days before videotape, DVD, and such technology in the marketplace. I had to content myself with (a) a bootleg audio tape I was able to buy of the entire soundtrack, and (b) viewing the movie once more at the apartment of Marvel production manager John Verpoorten, who owned a 16mm copy of it.

The splash and page 7 (with the Good Witch of the North) of John’s pencil breakdowns for a Wizard of Oz comic, to have been based on L. Frank Baum’s book, not the 1939 film. John forgot he’d ever done them! Alas, a 1970s photocopier couldn’t quite accommodate a full page of art, so a bit has been lost at top and right. John’s earlier character designs for Dorothy and her companions were printed in the 1975 Marvel Comics Convention book... and a page from the MGM-authorized finished comic appears in our flip section. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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“Big John”

The Friday daily from the first week of the Buscema-drawn Conan the Barbarian newspaper strip in September 1978. From the personal collection of Roy Thomas. [©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

When we offered to screen the movie for John B., however, he said he didn’t need to see it again. He told me it had been a long time since he’d last seen it—whether not since 1939, as he seems to suggest in the interview printed in this issue, or at least for some years, I don’t recall— but he said he remembered it, and didn’t need either the screening or the audio tape. I was dubious... but time was short, so I told him to go ahead. The seven pages he had already roughed out of the book adaptation were scrapped. In fact, John wiped them so thoroughly out of his mind that on later occasions he denied to questioners that he had ever drawn the beginning of an adaptation of the book. But he had.

When John’s artwork came in, I was astonished. He had indeed penciled the entire 75 pages entirely from memory (aided only by some shots we’d found for him of the movie’s major characters, since they had to look like Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, et al.)—and the only mistakes

he’d made were drawing a couple of short sequences out of order. We simply cut those few pages apart and pasted them back together in the proper order—and we had our book. I wrote the script by listening over and over to the audio tape of the soundtrack, little snippets at a time, to get the dialogue exact. (We didn’t have the rights to use the movie’s songs, so someone who digs up a copy will look in vain for the lyrics to “Over the Rainbow” therein.)

Alas, though most people I know consider MGM’s Marvelous Wizard of Oz (don’t know why DC let us get away with calling it that!) a thing of beauty and a joy forever, there were several sour notes: First, John was very unhappy with the inking done in the Philippines

by Tony DeZuniga and other artists, loosely called “The Tribe.” But I have no recollection of John ever voicing a desire to ink the book. I suspect he did not.

Secondly, by this time both Marvel and DC were getting dealer resistance to our tabloid-sized packages, as no one seemed to know quite where to put them on the racks... and sales on Wizard, as on others, were unspectacular.

And most of all: it dumfounds me that, more than a quarter of a century later, Marvel and DC have not gotten together and made a deal with whoever currently owns MGM’s properties to reprint the adaptation as a normal-sized comic book or graphic novel. It would still be a perennial seller, dammit!

End of rant.

Goodbye, Marvel... and John Buscema During all this, of course, John’s work on the two Conan titles rolled merrily along. He didn’t draw every issue; during the 1970s nearly every artist around wanted a crack at drawing at least one Conan story, especially in Savage Sword; so I’d sandwich the likes of Neal Adams, Gene Colan, Ernie Colón, Sal Buscema, Carmine Infantino (once he was no longer affiliated with DC), Frank Brunner, and others in between issues done by John. And that doesn’t count pinups by dozens of others—longtime pros and newcomers alike. But it was John who was the artistic anchor on both titles, and the black-&-white became for a time—given its sales and price—the most profitable publication that Marvel put out.

In 1975-76 Roy and his friend Clara Noto (who would soon co-write the Red Sonja comic) prepared a screen treatment of their own sword-and-sorcery heroine, Lilak. John Buscema generously did this pen-and-ink drawing, hopefully to help film producers visualize this particular sword-carrying she-devil. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema.]

John and I were even asked to do a daily-and-Sunday Conan the Barbarian newspaper comic strip, which began in 1978 and ran for just over two years. John did a great job on the first several-week storyline, but after that he decided it wasn’t worth his while financially, and Ernie Chan inherited the feature. John was kind enough to gift me with the original artwork for the first

“Roy The Boy”

15 week of dailies, which were an “introduction” to Conan and his Hyborian Age, and I’ve had them ever since, despite numerous offers to buy them.

During the late ’70s John and I worked together on a few other projects that were near and dear to my heart (if not necessarily to his).

One was Fantastic Four Annual #11, in 1976, which gueststarred The Invaders, the retroactive-continuity grouping of Timely/Marvel’s most popular 1940s super-heroes: Captain America and Bucky, The Human Torch and Toro, and SubMariner. I sent the F.F. back to World War II and had them snafu a deadly scheme of Baron Zemo’s. My two favorite panels therein were a big half-page shot that introduced the ’40s heroes gathered around a war map “in a fortified bunker somewhere in the heart of London”—and a climactic panel in which The Thing rides a runaway rocket straight toward the Nazis’ commandeered castle, in a scene straight out of one of my favorite films, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. (Last I heard, my old friend Larry Brody, one-time Marvel letter hack and since then a TV writer-producer, still owned the original art to that page. Sure wish I could’ve talked him out of it!)

With Thor #272 (June 1978) I was invited to write the Thunder God with a team composed initially of John Buscema and Tom Palmer—and how could I say no to that? Their exquisite yet exciting art inspired me to conceive a storyline on which I look fondly to this day, in which a TV crew comes to Asgard to film Ragnarok, the worlds-ending Twilight of the Gods that seemed to occur with disheartening frequency in the pages of that magazine. John and Tom did wonders with the several-issue series, which included turning TV cameraman Red Norvell (named after jazz xylophonist Red Norvo) into an authentically red-haired version of Thor.

In the late 1970s John did these scene studies for the proposed Conan the Barbarian movie, already slated to star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had received good notices in the films Pumping Iron and Stay Hungry. The other two choices being talked about when Roy first got semi-attached to the project in 1975-76? Charles Bronson (as King Conan)—and a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone. Can’t you just hear it? “I’m Conan—da barbarian, y’know?” [Art ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

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“Big John” John did a more than credible job on the first two issues, which he both penciled and inked. We retold the Apeman’s origin, which I wanted to see given the Buscema treatment, and I liked the way it turned out.

But then John opted to do only breakdowns, and while Tony DeZuniga gave the finished work an illustrative sheen, it lacked the power and focus John could have given it. Perhaps the best-looking non-Buscema ink job on the series was that done by Filipino artist Steve Gan, when John and I adapted two of ERB’s Jungle Tales of Tarzan in the 1977 Tarzan Annual. Actually, a dispute with the head of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., over our various Jungle Tales adaptations eventually led me to quit Tarzan in disgust, but that’s another story. I’m prouder of some of the Tarzan work John and I did together than I am of others, but all in all it was a worthwhile experience—even if the ERB hero I really wanted to write was John Carter of Mars!

In 1980 my second three-year contract with Marvel was up, and in the end I opted to sign a new one with DC Comics, instead.

Hello, Marvel... and John Buscema!

I thought this might be the end of my collaborations with John Buscema, who of course was firmly ensconced at Marvel despite various attempts over the years by Carmine Infantino, then Jenette Kahn, to lure him to DC. But, as it turned out, by 1986 I was writing freelance for both companies, and for a few others besides.

In 1987 John and I teamed on a fill-in issue of Fantastic Four (#303), starring our joint creation Thundra.

Roy’s choice for the best-looking Marvel Tarzan not inked by John Buscema: Steve Gan, in Tarzan Annual #1, 1977. Oddly, in 1976 Steve had been sent, via Tony and Mary DeZuniga’s art shop in the Philippines, the entire penciled art to Conan the Barbarian #65—and Marvel was told that he liked John’s art so much that he refused either to ink it or to return it, and they had to take it away from him and have it inked by Tony and “The Tribe.” You can bet Roy’s always wished he could get to the bottom of that story! Repro’d from the original art, courtesy of Mike Burkey.[©2002 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

One project John and I worked on at more or less the same time in the mid-to-late ’70s, but not together, was the proposed Conan the Barbarian movie, which would take till the early ’80s to come to fruition with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the star... but since I had little if any contact with John concerning it, I’ll content myself here with just showcasing a few pieces of art he did for an early version of a storyline, which may well be the one on which I worked in 1975-76 with my friend Ed Summer, who had first interested producer Edward R. Pressman in the prospect of a Conan movie.

In 1991 we became the regular team once again on Savage Sword, at the instigation of editor Mike Rockwitz. While, in the years since the second movie (Conan the Destroyer, for which Gerry Conway and I had written the first several screenplay drafts), the Conan franchise had fallen from grace in terms of comic book sales, it was an enjoyable if perhaps foredoomed effort to try to bring the Cimmerian back to the heights he had enjoyed in the ’70s. With Ernie Chan as inker, John rose as usual to the occasion in mostly-original stories which dealt with a war between Serpent-men and Men-serpents (not to mention Thoth-Amon and Thulsa Doom), a Hyborian Age equivalent of Japan (Yamatai), and my personal favorite—Savage Sword #200, which bounced back and forth between simultaneous storylines of Conan in ancient days and Robert E. Howard in a Texas border town in the early 1930s (the place and time when he created Conan).

Meanwhile, for a period of five years, John labored during his spare moments on what was meant to be his Conan magnum opus—a 60-page graphic novel called Conan the Rogue which he intended to write,

And then there was Tarzan.

Okay. So, like John says in his 2001 interview on our flip side, a few reasonably talented guys named Hal Foster, Burne Hogarth, and Joe Kubert (not to mention Russ Manning, whom I suspect John appreciated less) had left their indelible stamps artwise on the Lord of the Apes, from 1929 through only a year or so earlier, when DC had had the rights to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ immortal hero. Even so, it surprised me that John was not more enthusiastic about drawing Tarzan. Certainly that comic generally met his criteria of not having to illustrate technology and modern cityscapes.

For a fleeting moment in 1932, Robert E. Howard comes face to face with his creation in the offbeat saga in Savage Sword of Conan #200, one of Roy’s personal all-time favorite projects. Art by John Buscema and Ernie Chan. [©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

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of 2001, he told me that some time before he had taken the entire art job to a gathering of artists—his peers, so to speak—and, when it came time to go home, two of the pages had been stolen! John both joked and spoke sadly about this occurrence, unwilling to believe any fellow professional had done this.

John and I even worked together for a final time on The Avengers— or rather, on Avengers Annual #23 (1994). This was a reunion which, I’m sure, held more resonance for me than for the super-hero-hating John. Still, editor Ralph Macchio and I knew how to get John interested: instead of setting most of the story on Earth, it took place in the Graeco-Roman underworld. I swiped the basic concept of the Alfred Hitchcock film Strangers on a Train (which, I’d learn years later, was scripted by Patricia Highsmith, who in the 1940s had briefly been a Timely comic book writer!), to have Loki and Pluto trade foes in their latest try at vengeance. Loki agreed to kill Hercules (an Avenger again at the time), and Pluto was to deal with Thor. This little trade-off plan failed, both in the movie and in the pair of Annuals I wrote—the other, of course, being Thor. It was like old home week being teamed with John again on Avengers, even just for one story. I even worked in Typhon, the Titan from Avengers #49-50 in 1968, the only two regular issues John had inked.

In the meantime, John had dropped off Savage Sword after a year or two, since Marvel had other demands on his time; but he returned to do a superlative full-art job on what became the magazine’s final two issues (#234-235, June-July 1995), an adaptation we did of REH’s swashbuckling story “The Daughter of Erlik Khan.”

Cimmerian Swan Songs Oddly enough, that wasn’t quite the end for John and me on Conan.

The finished art for this page from the 1991 graphic novel Conan the Rogue was printed two issues back; this is John’s rough for the page, courtesy of Owen O’Leary. For more from this essential Buscema volume, see our flip side. [©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

Some rather unimaginative souls tried to segue from the canceled Savage Sword over to a new title called Conan the Savage, featuring a multiplicity of artists and writers (myself included, off and on). It didn’t

pencil, ink, and even color. It stands today as perhaps the supreme monument to the talent that was John Buscema. When, after he had penciled and inked the entire story, he asked me to dialogue it instead of doing it himself, I felt more honored than I could say. He generously offered me my full page rate just for writing the dialogue, but I refused that. Sadly, when Rogue finally came out in ’91, Marvel didn’t give it any kind of push, and it was virtually ignored. I know of people who own a copy of everything else featuring Conan, or everything else drawn by John Buscema, but have never seen a copy of Conan the Rogue. And that’s a pity, because it was absolutely some of John’s best work.

John had offered me two pages of original art from the graphic novel, and after publication he duly sent them.

Later, however, he let slip to me that his wife Dolores had really wanted him to keep the art to that story intact... so I insisted on returning the pages to him. Ironically, in the last phone conversation we ever had, in autumn

Before—and After! John’s layouts for a page of Avengers Annual #23 (1994), and his completed art. Words by Roy Thomas.

Repro’d from photocopies of the original art, courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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“Big John”

last long, for the bloom was definitely off the Conan rose by then; but its tenth and final issue (May 1996) spotlighted a full-issue story we did together, adapting a pulp-mag story by Clark Ashton Smith, a contemporary of Robert E. Howard’s. It featured a rather youthful-looking 70year-old Conan, picked up where our adaptation of the de Camp/Lin Carter novel Conan of the Isles had left off, and was intended to launch the septuagenarian Cimmerian on a series of adventures in the Hyborian Age equivalent of the Americas. But it was too late. Perhaps John, knowing this was the final issue, lost heart for once. Certainly his inking of “The Necromancers of Naat” is the weakest I ever saw from him; it had an almost coloring-book quality to it. But no matter. Everybody has a bad day now and then, and John Buscema had had a seemingly neverending succession of good ones, artwise.

I’m glad to say that the last Conan work John and I did together was a much happier experience.

By the late 1990s Marvel was only putting out one three-issue Conan “mini-series” a year, just enough to keep alive its contract with Conan Properties, Inc. Thanks again to editors Ralph Macchio and Joe Andreas, I did the four final mini-series, and I believe they mostly turned out well. But the high point, to me, was the second-from-last of them, which I titled Conan: Death Carved in Gold (published in 1999, but actually prepared nearly two years earlier). I enjoyed coming up with the Hyborian Age answer to the California Gold Rush, but the icing on the cake was that John did full art on all three issues (excluding the painted covers). He was in marvelous form, especially in terms of the pencils, and I wished the series could go on forever.

This pin-up was done by John during the ten-issue run of Conan the Savage. Does anybody know if it was ever printed? (Roy didn’t keep a copy of the two or three issues in which he didn’t write anything.) [©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

Both pencil roughs and printed versions of the splash of Conan: Death Covered in Gold #2. Kind of a lame title, huh? It was supposed to be Death Carved in Gold— but the title got mis-lettered on the first cover, and we were stuck with it!

Courtesy of David G. Hamilton. [ ©002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

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19

those trips to Italy to pay for, and this was a relatively painless way of financing them. Longtime fans were just thrilled to see Stan and John together again after all these years.

Then, because Gil Kane had died in January 2001 with the art for a partially-completed prestige-format book on his desk, John was asked

by DC editor Joey Cavalieri to pencil the second half of the project, which likewise starred the Man of Steel. (For John’s cover rough for that book, see his San Diego interview on our flip side.)

At about the same time, I received a phone call from editor Dan Raspler, who said he had learned of a concept I had sent to DC many moons earlier for an Elseworlds story I called Kal-El the Barbarian.

My idea was to have Kal-El—that’s Superman to the uninitiated—come to Earth as an infant during a Conanesque time-lost era, and grow up to become a super-barbarian. This couldn’t be done as a Superman project per se, Dan informed me, but how would I feel about turning it into an Elseworlds JLA story, for a five-part series, to be drawn by—John Buscema? The longtime Conan team—together again!

What do you think I said?

We still made Kal-El the centerpiece of the story, but now swordand-sorcery equivalents of Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Aquaman, and the Martian Manhunter—the original JLA of 1960, the one I really cared about—would take part, as well. We even worked in Marv-El, who was the Captain Marvel of this ancient eon.

On our flip side you saw one of the two commission illos John did a year or so back featuring the original Justice League of America. Here’s the other one, which was done for Tom Bernardo. Owen O’Leary, who handled John’s commission work, says he had to send John reference on every single character; Big John had no idea what any of the super-heroes looked like!

[Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; JLA TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

It almost did, actually. In 1997-98, while we were working on the aforementioned mini-series, John and I were both informed by an editor of Marvel’s intention of restoring Conan the Barbarian to regular monthly publication, with the two of us as writer and artist. But nothing came of it. Sometimes, when something seems too good to be true, it is.

Up, Up... and Away The final irony of the years of collaboration between John Buscema and me occurred in the months just before his passing. By now, John had long since officially retired—he had only done Conan, he told me, because it helped finance his more or less annual trips to Italy. (At one point he even invited my wife Dann and me to travel with him and Dolores on their next one, and we were half-seriously considering it.)

When he did emerge from quasi-retirement in the last year or so of the millennium, it was to work, at long last, for DC Comics.

First, of course, came Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating Superman, to which John’s superb artwork and even name-credit (...with John Buscema) were added as an afterthought. John hadn’t changed his mind about super-heroes, which he generally loathed drawing... but there were John drew this humorous sketch for the cover of a program book for a convention in Europe. (Lucca? Gijon?) Courtesy of Owen O’Leary. [Art ©2002 estate of John Buscema; Conan TM & ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

20

“Big John”

drawing, he said, because it took his mind off... other things.

While I was dialoguing them from photocopies, John (with the help of his talented granddaughter) began the inking. Meanwhile, I was cleared to write the plot for issue #2, which I did.

And then I heard from Stan Goldberg, via Jim Amash, that John’s condition had begun to deteriorate, beginning in December. For the first time, Stan said, John no longer looked forward to drawing as he always had before. One night a few weeks later I learned, again from Stan via Jim, that John had been rushed to the hospital, and things didn’t look good.

(Clockwise:) A few penciled panels from the projected JLA: Barbarians #1: Kal-El proves he’s not your father’s sword-and-sorcery hero... he makes friends with three fellow warriors—Fledor (Batman), Lanthorn (Green Lantern), and Velos (Flash)... and John’s concept sketch for Marv-El, Kal’s magic-loving step-brother. Will John’s nearcompleted 22-page issue ever see print? Only time will tell. [©2002 DC Comics.]

It was shaping up as a fun project, and I did a fiveissue outline and a plot for issue #1.

But, alas, people have told me that, when they ran into him at the 2001 San Diego Comic-Con, John complained of stomach problems, which he was going to check out as soon as the convention ended.

He did... and learned that he had stomach cancer.

He kept working, though. Scheduling dictated that he complete the Gil Kane story first, then begin work on what was now called JLA: Barbarians. He finished the former, and then penciled the first issue of the latter. He would have preferred that Kal-El and the others not have super-powers, but at least this was a chance to draw something akin to the Conan work he had enjoyed more than anything else he’d ever done in comics.

JLA: Barbarians #1 was—is—a beautiful piece of work. Pure John Buscema, at the top of his game... not trying to impress anyone with fancy layouts or new ways of telling a story, but simply drawing and yarn-weaving about as well as any human being ever has in the history of comic books, and making it all look effortless despite the chemotherapy and other medication which, off and on, were sapping his strength. “I’ve got good days, and I’ve got bad days,” he told me the last time we talked. But he was enjoying

The next morning I awoke to find an e-mail saying that John Buscema had died.

John was not one to believe in legacies, least of all a legacy of artwork crammed into the pages of comic books.

I’m not sure I agree with him on that, just as I did not agree with him on other points about the value of comics and of his own work.

In spite of himself, John Buscema left a fifty-year legacy in four colors—and more than occasionally in black-&white—that will still be bringing pleasure fifty years hence... indeed, for as long as people appreciate good drawing and thoughtful storytelling.

But you know something?

We’d rather have John back.

This card, utilizing a scene drawn for the cover of Conan the Barbarian #96, was sent by the Buscema family, including Mrs. John (Dolores) Buscema and John Buscema, Jr., to those who kindly expressed their sorrow. We believe it’s an illustration by which John might wish to be remembered. [Art ©2002 Conan Properties, Inc.]

re: re: (continued from p. 2) outstanding. Of all the artists inspired by Reed Crandall’s work, including the excellent Dick Rockwell (who can be mistaken for Crandall at times by the uninitiated), it is Marcia’s work especially at Fiction House but also for Nellie the Nurse and other Timely teen titles that captured a part of Crandall, yet made it her own, that deserves her name and work be preserved—and I am so grateful that Alter Ego, via Vince Fago, has done so.

One interesting sidelight, speaking of Snyders: The equally great Mort Lawrence’s name came up in #11, and I thought I’d pass along the info that his full name was Mort Lawrence Snyder, in case he’s still around on the West Coast. Like Syd Shores, he and Mort Leav did some of their best work on those westerns at Orbit, which speaking of females in comics was owned by Rae Hermann, who was also associated with other publishing companies.

Hames Ware P.O. Box 21662 Little Rock, AR 72221 And, courtesy of 1940s bullpenner Dave Gantz two issues back, Hames, we even printed a photo of Marcia Snyder and others in A/E V3#13, as you doubtless saw. By the way, though we altered it, in your letter you spelled the name of the second major “Sub-Mariner” artist “Pfeuffer,” while most others render it as “Pfeufer.” Any hard info out there about the true spelling?

Our next correspondent, George Hagenauer (who has contributed numerous photocopies of original art to Alter Ego), wrote us about various topics. We had room here only for the part dealing with #11’s interview with Mickey Spillane: Hi Roy— Mickey Spillane has a great memory. Hope mine is as good if I make it to his age. However, he’s forgotten that his scripts weren’t lost in

21 the hurricane [Hugo]. For the past ten years, mystery writer Max Allan Collins (I help him with research for his historical novels) has been working on various compilations of Mick’s unreprinted work. As part of this project Mick loaned him a lot of material, including a box of comic book scripts. Most of them look like late 1940s, a mix of all sorts of genres, including, I think, romance.

The goal someday is to reprint them. The snag is figuring out what they were published in (as none have dates or notes as to where they finally appeared—and as you know it’s not uncommon for editors to change titles ’twixt script and publication). Most of Mick’s other unpublished work has been completed, so that will be the final work to do.

George Hagenauer (via e-mail) Thanks, George. We’ll try to print the rest of your informative letter soon.

Dear Roy, Issue #3 was a joy. I particularly liked the appreciation of Bill Everett. What a talent he was! As a fan growing up in the Silver Age, I’d never seen Bill’s work until Daredevil #1 appeared. Something about his art knocked me out. I’m not sure just what it was. Perhaps it was his half-straight, half-cartoony approach. Perhaps it was that soft, luscious ink line. I just know that even the arrival of my idol, Wallace Wood, didn’t dim my affection for Everett’s DD. My greatest pleasure at the time was Everett’s exceptional inkwork over Kirby on Thor and Colan on “The Black Widow” (in which Bill supplied what I believe was the first erect nipple in the Marvel Age of Comics).

I empathize with your regret at not having taped your conversations with Everett. We seldom realize when we’re holding history in our hands. For many years I was a friend of the late Manny Stallman, a wonderful guy who loved to tell stories of the old days. Manny had started out assisting Eisner on The Spirit, and later went on to pencil a lot of DC crime and science-fiction stories. He chummed around with

If you’re viewing a digital version of this publication, PLEASE read this plea from the publisher! his is COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, which is NOT INTENDED FOR FREE T DOWNLOADING ANYWHERE. If you’re a print subscriber, or you paid the modest fee we charge to download it at our website, you have our sincere thanks—your support allows us to keep producing publications like this one.

If instead you downloaded it for free from some other website or torrent, please know that it was absolutely 100% DONE WITHOUT OUR CONSENT, and it was an ILLEGAL POSTING OF OUR COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. If that’s the case, here’s what you should do: 1) Go ahead and READ THIS DIGITAL ISSUE, and see what you think.

2) If you enjoy it enough to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and purchase a legal download of it from our website, or purchase the print edition at our website (which entitles you to the Digital Edition for free) or at your local comic book shop. We’d love to have you as a regular paid reader.

3) Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR COMPUTER and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. 4) Finally, DON’T KEEP DOWNLOADING OUR MATERIAL ILLEGALLY, for free. We offer one complete issue of all our magazines for free downloading at our website, which should be sufficient for you to decide if you want to purchase others. If you enjoy our publications enough to keep downloading them, support our company by paying for the material we produce.

We’re not some giant corporation with deep pockets, and can absorb these losses. We’re a small company—literally a “mom and pop” shop—with dozens of hard-working freelance creators, slaving away day and night and on weekends, to make a pretty minimal amount of income for all this work. We love what we do, but our editors, authors, and your local comic shop owner, rely on income from this publication to stay in business. Please don’t rob us of the small amount of compensation we receive. Doing so will ensure there won’t be any future products like this to download.

Gus Schrotter may or may not have drawn a lot of “Human Torch” stories, but he evidently did the “Angel” story in Marvel Mystery Comics #41 (March 1943). Repro’d from b-&-w Canadian photostats. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

TwoMorrows publications should only be downloaded at

www.twomorrows.com

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re: dots. The tree behind the building is inked with that technique, and I’ve never seen anyone but Abel use it.

I’m sure someone has already mentioned that the foreign “Satana” page in the Romita interview is not in Spanish, but in Italian, a language I can read pretty well. I found it funny that they renamed Satana “Satan,” because in Italian “Satana” already means “Satan.”

Ron Harris (via e-mail) Always great to hear from the artistic co-creator of the Alter Ego comic book back in ’86—and of course Ron and Roy also worked together on The Young All-Stars, while Ron has done plenty of comic work on his own, including Crash Ryan for Marvel/Epic. He currently works in TV. Next, a quasi-related question: Roy— Enjoying the magazine very much. Just wonder if Alter Ego will be shedding any light on The SubMariner’s mysterious origin. I’ve read that Motion Picture Funnies Weekly was a promotion for Columbia’s unfinished Lost Atlantis production, headed by Harry Hoyt and Walter Lantz. How much of The Sub-Mariner was based on the movie and its unproduced sequel, Prince of Atlantis?

Stephanie Sanderson (via e-mail) We’ve heard rumors of such a planned but unfilmed 1930s movie, Stephanie... but was such a project ever truly contemplated? Can anybody enlighten us? In any event, it’s hard for Ye Ed to believe that “The Sub-Mariner” was originally based, at least in part, on a scenario for an unmade movie. Certainly Bill Everett never hinted of such a thing to Roy when the two of them roomed together in the 1960s—but it’s not impossible.

Now, here’s a long letter from Timely collector Blake Bell that we’ve meant to print for quite a while: Hi, Roy— I quite enjoyed Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #3, what with the rare artwork by my two favorite artists, Steve Ditko and Bill Everett. A few points of interest and clarification which connect the two above names.

On Page 11 you mention the Daredevil #1 debacle in 1964, with Everett turning in the art very late to [production manager] Sol Brodsky. Ron Frantz, former publisher of the ’80s version of Ace Comics, expanded significantly on this story in a conversation we shared. I had told him Ditko had been credited at some point in history with doing some minor backgrounds on Daredevil #1, but Ron shed a different light on that story:

See why Prince Namor was the hero everybody loved to hate back in the early days? This is the end of a 20-page story in Sub-Mariner #1 (Spring 1941), repro’d from Canadian photocopies of the original art by Namor creator Bill Everett. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

John Giunta, Bernard Baily, and that gang. In all the times I pumped Manny for memories, I never once taped him, or even took notes. Now he’s gone. Fortunately, Jim Vadeboncoeur recorded some oral history shortly before Manny died; and [my wife] Jan and I talk frequently with Manny’s wife, Jane. Maybe we can combine the tapes and Jane’s recollections for an article.

Re A/E V3#9: that Romita interview was dynamite! Love that guy’s stuff. Romita was very kind to me the one time I went to New York to hit up the majors in the late ’70s... showed me lots of Xeroxes of great art and gave me pointers and encouragement, but at that time they didn’t use out-of-state artists and I was afraid to move to NYC. I still remember him pointing at one of my samples and saying, “Now, see, that isn’t a Marvel knee....”

I think it’s a good bet that one Romita “Captain America” story you pointed out was indeed inked by Jack Abel. One quirk Abel had throughout his career is the way he inked tree foliage as a group of little

He said Ditko told him (in the late ’80s) that Steve had shown up at the Marvel offices right after Daredevil #1 had been handed in by Everett. It was in such disarray that Brodsky asked Ditko to hang around and save the project, as it was off to the printer the next day.

According to Ditko, he did much more than just minimal backgrounds on this issue—saving its bacon being the implication.

On Page 2 you re-tell the famous myth about the famous 1961 golf game between DC co-publisher Jack Liebowitz and Marvel publisher Martin Goodman, where Jack tells Martin how well Justice League of America is doing, then Martin orders Stan Lee to do up a super-hero team book, which ends up as The Fantastic Four.

This makes a good legend, but it just may not be so. Text of an

re: interview done for a Les Daniels DC history book exists where Liebowitz says he never played golf with Goodman! There also exists a deposition given by Goodman in a lawsuit where he denies the golf story. And, if this alleged golf game inspired Marvel’s return to superheroes, then how about “Dr. Droom” six months earlier?

Some myths die hard.

I also found the article on The Human Torch and Carl Burgos very interesting, as it dovetailed with discussions I was having with Dick Ayers concerning his time doing the art for The Human Torch in the mid-’50s. Darlin’ Dick said that 1952 and 1953 were his most productive days, when BOOM! one day the telephone rings and he’s lost both Ghost Rider (from Magazine Enterprises) and The Human Torch.

Also, for his work on Rawhide Kid he was no longer allowed to have the Kid used his rawhide whip! Dick had him wear leather chaps, just to keep a reason for having him called “Rawhide.” Dick would use the whip for the Kid to rip guns, knives, and the like out of the villains’ hands, as well as cigars out of their mouths or belts off their trousers, making them fall about their ankles.

Seduction of the Innocent [Fredric Wertham’s scathing study of comic books] also cost Dick his assistant, Ernie Bache, who had worked with him for three years, Dick’s memory telling him that when the work was signed “Ayers” it was by him and Ernie, and that he signed it “Dick Ayers” when he worked alone. They were working in Dick’s studio for Magazine Enterprises, Timely, and Charlton. Dick figures if not for Fredric Wertham, et al., the two would have become a top producing team.

Your comments about Dick’s work on the ’50s “Human Torch” mirrored our own conversations. Dick keeps very good records of his work, stating inventory numbers for his work on those “Torch” stories: 1953 - E-115, E-130, E-160, E-178, and E-241 1954 - E-238, E-272, E-326, E-327, E-328, E-329, E-371, E-572, E-584, E-590, E-634, E-638, E-917, E-960, and E-962 Interestingly, Dick says he never saw those last three stories in print in a comic! You referred in A/E V3#3 to one 1950s story being printed for the first time in the late ’60s in a Marvel reprint issue, so maybe it was one of those three. Dick said he could have just missed the issues in question (as he had to look for them on the stands), but it does raise the interesting possibility that “extra” stories of the three Timely heroes [Torch, Sub-Mariner, and Captain America] exist (or did), unpublished, as you have shown DC scrapped many stories in the late ’40s.

Strangely enough, all three Ayers stories in Human Torch #36 (the first of the “return” issues) are signed by Dick; but issue #37 has three more, signed by no one; yet the inventory numbers Dick supplied match them up as Dick’s work. The lead story in #37 has a vampire bat-creature as its lead character, and “Vampire” in the title, something which the Code would ban. The “Sub-Mariner” story in that issue is by Everett, and the odd thing is that he signed the story not on the splash, but on the second-from-last panel of the last page of the story!

Some creators say they have no memories of certain events, as they didn’t think their work would be remembered years down the line. Yet then you have Sheldon Moldoff (great interview with him in #4, by the way!) pulling out records for his claim on the EC horror trend.

Dick’s own records are meticulous and include some terribly interesting notes. For instance, I showed him a splash page to “I Saw the Other World!” (Tales to Astonish #7, Jan. 1960), and he said he A Dick Ayers splash from the third and final issue of Human Torch (#38, Aug. 1954) during the way-too-brief ’50s revival. A Chinese or North Korean Communist swearing by the Buddha seems a bit of a stretch, but Dick’s take on the original flaming fury was a treat. [©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

23 delivered same on July 1, 1959, supposedly scheduled for a Sept. 1959 issue of Tales to Astonish, and was paid $88 for the lettering, penciling, and inking. Right after he began inking Kirby on Sky Masters with three Sunday pages on September 5th.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this tale is that Dick drew that TTA story 9"x13", the size he drew his work in the late ’50s so that he could put two pages side by side, on one sheet of 14"x28" paper. Dick says inking Kirby’s 12"x18" pencils forced him back to 12"x18" paper for his own work.

Imagine owning the original art to those stories and getting two pages per page!

Dick broke down his ’60s production as follows: One page penciled per three hours; two pages lettering per hour; working mostly 12-hour days, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and he would letter the two pages after the 6 p.m. dinner for the next day’s two pages, doing two books per month, lettering, penciling, and inking. As an inker of other artists’ pencils, he did the four pages and remembers doing those “monster” stories’ 13 pages in two days by putting in a couple more hours. In 1962 he inked 878 pages, and there were a couple of months he did 100 pages each.

Perhaps my favorite Ayers “Human Torch” story comes from Strange Tales #107, where he fights The Sub-Mariner (Namor’s fourth appearance since returning, and his first outside Fantastic Four). Dick’s Sub-Mariner looked like a welterweight boxer, and Dick told me he got a synopsis which usually called for a generic fight scene at some point, so it is safe to say that Dick had much to do with those strange powers

24

re:

The Sub-Mariner displayed in that issue.

Keep up the good work, Roy, and use those dang Return of the Skyman pages and the Syd Shores bio I sent you before I die.

Blake Bell 125 Lawton Blvd., Apt. 1202 Toronto, Ont., Canada M4V 2A1 Whew! We’ll have to catch our breath after reading your long letter, Blake. You sure you’re not a blood relative of Roy’s?

Dear Roy, I really enjoyed Mike Barr’s article in Alter Ego V3#6, “When Those Who Can, Teach.” It was a great snapshot of two very rare publications, with some wonderful updated insights from Robert Kanigher and Stan Lee. When talking about his book Secrets behind the Comics, Stan reflected on his 1947 offer to review the portfolio of artist hopefuls for $1. He said he responded to absolutely every person who took him up on his offer.

I can attest to that. I managed to get a copy of Secrets in 1972, and, being an 18-year-old comic book artist hopeful (who also happened to have a wry sense of humor), I sent Stan my portfolio. I also enclosed $2 instead of the 1947 fee of $1 to help a little bit with the return postage. Keep in mind, this is before photocopy machines were readily available, so I actually sent him a pile of my original art.

Stan, being the good-natured and magnanimous person that he is, responded, even though his original offer had been made a quarter of a century earlier. And I was thrilled by his response, of course, because it was like getting a letter from Odin himself!

Enclosed is a copy of Stan’s letter of response—you may get a kick out of seeing it.

Russ Maheras ADDITIONS & CORRECTIONS Dept.: First, Michael T. Gilbert sent on this part of an e-mail from “Gord”: “The late Ronn Foss’ son, Dr. Scott E. Foss, appears... on the Discovery Channel’s Walking with Prehistoric Beasts.

He hosts the segment on prehistoric mammals’ jaws about two-thirds through the program. He is the spitting image of his dad. I guess you can learn from reading these funny-books, after all!”

Jim Amash asks us to make it clear (as we failed to do in a caption Ye Ed shoehorned into issue #12 at the last minute) that the 1984 convention from which we repro’d a Will Eisner self-caricature was organized not by Jim but by Tom Wimbish and John Butts; Jim says he helped on that show, but didn’t start co-organizing them till the next year. He says his ex-partner John Hitchcock was involved with that show, as well.

Re #12’s reconstructed, unpublished 1940s Paul Reinman “Green Lantern” story, Karl Gafford noticed something Ye Editor had overlooked: namely, although the bottom two rows of panels of the hard-to-read “page 11” reproduced from an old ad really are from page 11, the top tier is actually from page 2! As Karl points out, “The action takes place immediately after the setup on the bottom of page 1 and shows Doiby coming in on stage right as he appears in the middle tier.

Most importantly, even though the art is hard to read, you can plainly see Dr. Cypher is without the band-aid on his face in the top tier— which clinches the mystery in the bottom third! Apparently, whoever got these pages mistakenly thought the top third led into the middle and bottom third.” In other words, somebody pasted three rows of panels together from two different pages of the same story! Our thanks to

longtime pro colorist Karl, who clearly scanned that murky page more carefully than Ye Ed did!

Send any comments to: Roy Thomas/Alter Ego Rt. 3, Box 468 St. Matthews, SC 29135 Fax: (803) 826-6501 New e-mail address: <roydann@ntinet.com> See you in just thirty days, on A/E’s new eight-times-a-year schedule!

(Oh, and I’ve still got for sale a few personal copies of the out-of-print JSA ©2002 DC Comics, Inc. Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #1, with Ordway, Hasen, Lee, Gilbert, FCA, et al, for the price of $15 (postpaid) per copy—autographed if requested. Ditto a handful of copies of Comic Book Artist #2-5 (each with an Alter Ego section) for $15 apiece, likewise postpaid... and a few sets of Alter Ego #1-4, the 1986 color comic book with story by R.T., art by Ron Harris—$20 postpaid for all four issues, also autographed if desired. Send checks or M.O.’s (made out to Roy Thomas) to the address above. Sorry, foreign orders must add $5 for each item.)

Title Comic Fandom Archive

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Presenting Grass Greens

“Da Scavengers” Introduction by Bill Schelly [In Alter Ego V3#1 we reprinted “Da Frantic Four”— Grass Green’s askew view of the early Lee & Kirby Fantastic Four, which served as Grass’ introduction to comics fandom when it appeared in The Comicollector #8 in late 1963—and earlier, in the Hamster trade paperback Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Comics Fanzine, we re-presented 1964’s “The Bestest League of America Meets Da Frantic Four” by Grass and Roy Thomas. Now, thanks to magnanimous Mick Martin, who published the last three issues of the fanzine Komix Illustrated—and who is co-author with Marsha Porter of the Video Movie Guide 2002 for Ballantine Books—we’re delighted to be able to publish Green’s lesser-known—but equally brilliant—parody of The Avengers, which was featured in Komix Illustrated #13, 1964.]

In 1962 popular fan artist Richard “Grass” Green received a letter that rocked his world. It was from the comics artist he most idolized: Jack Kirby.

Green’s admiration for Kirby was born in the early 1950s, when Grass—then a junior high student in Fort Wayne, Indiana—discovered Jack’s work in Black Magic, Captain 3-D, Fighting American, and reprints of Stuntman. Kirby was the young artist’s greatest influence as Grass developed his own prodigious drawing talents.

When Green was discharged from the U.S. Air Force in the early 1960s, he began pursuing his dream to become a professional comic book artist. He was regularly haunting the newsstands in late 1961 when he saw a cover that caught his attention, not only because it was obviously by Kirby but because it featured super-heroes.

Fantastic Four signaled a new type of comic book from Marvel, and since Green was primarily a super-hero fan and had enjoyed The Human Torch in his 1950s incarnation, he was thrilled with FF #1.

He had an idea: write to Kirby for guidance! Why not? What did he have to lose? Green packaged up some of his artwork and penned a polite cover letter to Jack asking for his comments. He asked some questions, too, for example: “How large is the original art done?” The package was sent to Jack Kirby c/o whatever name and address Marvel was using at that time.

Some of Grass’ best known creations: Wildman and Rubberoy, his personal “Grasshoppa” character, and Xal-Kor, the Human Cat—who’s returning after several decades. [©2002 Grass Green.]

Back in late 1997, Grass did this selfcaricature in a letter he sent to Roy Thomas. [©2002 Grass Green.]

Imagine the young man’s excitement when he received, after some time, a large package in the mail from Kirby. You could have knocked him over with a feather when he realized that Jack had sent him some original art from the Sky Masters comic strip! And there was a letter from Kirby, too—one which, you may be sure, Grass studied endlessly for all its nuances.

We at Alter Ego are thrilled that this letter has survived after all the intervening years, and that we are able to publish it here for what may be the first time.

26 It’s really a quite remarkable missive, containing as it does the allusion to Kirby’s feeling that life is like a prize-fight, a reference that shows his acceptance that comics’ original art was not available to the artist, and the politeness and evident respect that Kirby always showed to young artists. There was even some concrete advice about how to lay out a comics page... and an unexpected gift of two originals from Jack’s Sky Masters newspaper comic strip!

The last paragraph is pure gold: “If your interest in this medium is intense, I’m certain your ability will develop accordingly. Your perserverance [sic] is bound to pay off. At any rate, no matter where your endeavors lead you, please feel that I am in your corner.”

Such sentiments, typed and personally signed by Jack Kirby, were of inestimable, life-changing importance to the young man with a pencil.

“Da Scavengers” Illustrated (with the 11th issue), the new “Viper” strip was the lead feature.

“Da Scavengers” was likely done in early 1964 (if the elements of The Avengers that are parodied are any indication), though it didn’t appear until KI #13 early 1965. By then, editor Martin was done with fanzine publishing, though he had done himself proud, offering work by such leading lights as Alan Weiss, Mike Vosburg, and Bill Dubay, as well as Ronn and Grass.

Why did Martin drop out of fandom after such a relatively brief period of involvement? “Somehow, I was lured away by rock ’n’ roll and girls,” Mick writes.

“The Beatles were on The Ed Sullivan Show the night I was addressing the envelopes for #11, my first issue of KI. It only lasted for two more issues.”

But fandom had more than a fleeting impact on the young writer. He writes, “Comics fandom has been with me in spirit throughout my life. Because of Ronn, Grass, Biljo, Jerry Bails, G. B. Love (who printed my first ‘national’ writing, ‘The Fan Commentator’ in The Rocket’s Blast #16), Roy Just as Grass Green Thomas, Larry Herndon, admired and was inspired by Bill DuBay, Buddy Jack Kirby, a young fan Saunders, George R.R. named Mickey Martin was Martin, Flo Steinberg, inspired by Green and his Ernest Bache, and other friend Ronn Foss to try his kind people, I began to Art by future pro Alan Weiss graced the cover of Komix Illustrated #13. hand at writing and believe you could do [Art ©2002 Alan Weiss.] publishing. anything if you really put your mind to it. Komix Illustrated at such a crucial time in my life was Mickey (now Mick) Martin writes, “In 1964, at the age of 13, I took what gave me the courage to pursue my dreams.” over the publication of Komix Illustrated from Biljo White when he went on to [become art editor of] Alter Ego. I wanted to feature my We thank Mick for working hard (using some computer visual heroes from fandom, especially Ronn Foss and Grass Green. They were enhancement techniques) to make readable copies from the ditto-printed such enormously talented guys and their thoughtful letters gave me so pages of KI #13, some of which were so light that we all despaired for a much encouragement.” while that nothing usable could be salvaged. “Da Scavengers” was one of those wonderful artifacts of a bygone age that might have been lost Martin had actually met Ronn when he eagerly accepted Ronn’s forever without his effort. Only a very small amount of re-touching on invitation to help assemble the copies of A/E #5. Mickey begged his the part of Yours Truly was necessary to achieve the results that are, as father to take him the “epic” 45 miles from West Sacramento to Rod Serling used to say, “offered for your inspection.”

Fairfield, California, for the occasion. Foss inspired him to write a script for another strip featuring Ronn’s female costumed hero The Viper (“The Plan of Spy X!”). When Mickey assumed the helm of Komix Now turn this issue of A/E SIDEWAYS for “Da Scavengers” No wonder Green’s work seemed more infused than ever with Kirbyism! And, no wonder the parody work he did for comics fandom— which he would soon discover—were so often of titles drawn by the King.

Comic Fandom Archive

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“Da Scavengers”

Comic Fandom Archive

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30 “Da Scavengers” [NOTE: For Grass Green’s current efforts, see his new graphic novel The Human Cat, published by TwoMorrows after this article was written. See ads for it, and for Bill Schelly’s recent offerings through Hamster Press, elsewhere in this issue.]

Now FLIP US BACK for the rest of this issue of A/E.

[Wally Wood art ©2002 estate of Wally Wood.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

The Wizard King Wally Wood’s “Unfinished Symphony” I’m sure you can spot many of Wood’s characters and scenes right out of The Wizard King. No mention of Wood in the credits.”

by Michael T. Gilbert Wally Wood was one stubborn guy. Nowhere was this more obvious than with his efforts to bring to life the world of The Wizard King.

Finally, in 1968, Wood published the first two chapters of The World of the Wizard King in the 4th and 5th issues of witzend, his selfpublished prozine. These were the first sections of a three-part prose story, profusely illustrated by Wood. Three years passed before he concluded that first tale in issue 8. At the end of part three Wood wrote: “This somewhat abbreviated account of the life and times of Odkin the Sly will serve as an outline for an expanded version to appear in another form and another place. Watch for it.”

Years passed, and The Wizard King project seemed to vanish. It reappeared in the late ’70s when Wood started his own company. In his Woodworks newsletter he promised his fans a three-volume series of graphic novels devoted to The Wizard King. True to his word, he came out with the first volume in 1978. Three years later he published volume two. But time was running out for Wood.

As described in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #8, Wood’s addiction to work and alcohol had ruined his body. He’d suffered a series of debilitating strokes, resulting in severely impaired vision. His assistants had largely completed the second Wizard King volume––and it looked it. He was disappointed with the results and planned to take greater control in the final volume. Unfortunately, Wood died that same year and the final volume never appeared. Like most of his fans, I assumed he had died

Wood created this imaginary world of warlocks, elves, and wizards when he was a child. In The Wally Wood Sketchbook Wood stated that it was “impossible for me to say when I started to work on The Wizard King.

I thought of the title King of the World... before I was 10 years old.” In time, that early prototype became the basis for Wood’s various Wizard King stories.

As Wood grew up, he became an awardwinning artist for Mad, Weird Science, Daredevil, and a legion of other classic comics. But he never forgot his childhood creation. He made several attempts at selling his concepts to various comic book publishers and animation companies, with limited success.

Bill Pearson recently described a meeting between animator Ralph Bakshi and Wood: “[A]t one time Ralph Bakshi spent several days at Woody’s place, and had him all fired up about a Wizard King movie Bakshi said he wanted to produce. Well, if you ever saw the eventual movie Bakshi made [Wizards, 1977],

Two versions of Wood’s Skyboat. The first was done when he was a young teenager; the second is from witzend #8 in 1978, when Wood was 44 years old. [©2002 estate of Wally Wood.]

The Wizard King

33 ATTEMPTED to finish it. He sent me the 44 pages of script and 44 pages of art, but HALF of the panels were blank or had only the barest roughs laid in. The other panels were partially inked. The one unfinished panel I’ve sent you is the BEST and most finished of these!”

Bill went on to explain that he sent half of the original art to another unnamed cartoonist, in hopes of getting him to complete the job. In the course of mailing, the package got lost and remains so. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to Xerox the light blue pencils before mailing, so no copies of those 21 pages exist. Bill concluded: “All I can say is, if 21 pages of unfinished art turn up somewhere, and it looks like Wood’s Wizard King, I’d sure like to have them back.

Someday, if I can get the 44 pages together again, I’m confident someone will want to finish it and see it printed.... So, please, Michael, however you word it, make sure it’s clear people understand I am not sitting on a book that should be published. It doesn’t exist.”

Perhaps it’s for the best that the book was never published. Wood was one of the comics’

(Above) Another early Wood illo. (Right:) The splash panel from the first Wizard King chapter in 1968’s witzend #4. [©2002 the estate of Wally Wood.]

before he’d had a chance to begin the project.

However, I was in for a shock when Bill Pearson, Wood’s longtime assistant and friend, informed me that I was wrong. Though it had never been printed, Wood had indeed written and designed that final story. I asked permission to print a sample, and wondered why that story hadn’t been published. Bill wrote:

Michael, Yes, you have permission to run the Wizard King illustration. It’s a large panel, the top two-thirds of a page, but not a splash panel. There were several such large panels in the third, unpublished book. It’s one of the most finished, but still pretty ragged. He was blind in one eye at this time, from a stroke, but it’s all his work. It’s obvious he was racing against time to get it done, and hoping it would be better than the second book, which was done mostly by assistants. He sent it to me to letter before he normally would have, but before I could start it, he was dead.

I don’t want to release any more of this unfinished art.

Best wishes, Bill Following up on this, I asked Bill how much of the story Wood had written before his death, and whether the art had been fully penciled and inked. In an e-mail dated 2/7/02 Bill replied: “Wood did NOT finish the third book! He

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

greatest artists, and that’s how he should be remembered. And as this sample shows, Wood was simply too ill at this point in his life to do justice to the story he’d pictured as a child.

Still, I find the story’s very existence an amazing testament to Wood’s determination. Even at the end, half-blind and suffering from agonizing headaches, Wood simply refused to give up. One can only imagine the super-human determination it must have taken Wood to continue. He’d vowed to complete this story, and in a way he did.

Sticklers to the facts could argue otherwise, but I’d still say that Wally Wood met his final deadline. True, the art remains unfinished––but Wood’s final 44 pages of script and layouts provided all the information

necessary for his assistants to complete the story. Only bad luck and a misplaced package prevented that from happening.

More importantly, Wood never gave up his childhood dreams. You can see an eerie similarity between Wood’s first Wizard King pictures, drawn when he was a child, and the almost childlike ones he struggled to put on paper at the end. It was almost as if he had come full circle. In a way he had.

For all his suffering, Wally Wood was lucky enough to spend his final days in the same wonderful place he’d loved as a child––the beloved world of The Wizard King!

This unfinished illo is from the never-published final Wizard King volume. This is the first and only art from this project ever to see print. [©2002 estate of Wally Wood.]

The Wizard King

35

When I moved from New York to San Francisco in 1975, I became friends with underground cartoonist Larry Rippee. Larry told me about a neat comic art series he’d been involved with called “The Nickel Library.” The Library was a series of single-page comic art prints put out in the early ’70s. Each print had three holes punched on one side, so it could be collected in a loose-leaf binder.

Underground publisher Gary Arlington printed these as a “laborof-love” and sold them for a nickel. Each week (month?) he’d print another one. These featured rare underground art, or glorious comic art treasures from decades past. Gary was also a super EC fan, and in addition to publishing some EC-inspired undergrounds also had two copies of each and every EC issue. Now that’s dedication! At some point he got his hands on an unpublished piece of Wally Wood art.

He decided it’d be fun to add a Two-fisted Tales logo and pretend it was an imaginary EC title. Gary was so tickled at the result that he sent copies to EC publisher Bill Gaines. Bad idea.

Not surprisingly, Bill’s lawyers weren’t thrilled with Gary creating new unauthorized EC titles, even in fun. They told him he had to stop. Gary was so disheartened by Gaine’s reaction to his EC tribute that he ended the series. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

So where did the art come from? Here’s the story Larry Rippee told me, as best as I can remember after 25 years: One of Gary’s Arlington’s friends was the late underground cartoonist Roger Brand. Roger had been one of Wood’s assistants in the 1960s. Roger told Larry that he’d found the art tossed away in Wally Wood’s trashcan. It had been done during the EC days, but was covered in white-out and partially redrawn and reused later.

Roger fished it out of the garbage and painstakingly removed the white-out, revealing the gorgeous page you see here. I have no idea why the art was whited-out or what it was originally drawn for––though EC’s short-lived Piracy title or Two-fisted Tales is my guess. It doesn’t matter, really. What matters is that it was saved––and that we can share it with you!

[©2002 William Gaines Agent.]

’Till next time...

Michael T. Gilbert

Comic Crypt Extra!

Postscript: As an extra bonus, we’ve dug up a couple of other rare “lost” pages, taken from Woody’s prime. The first is an unpublished page from one of the EC sci-fi titles in the early ’50s. I saw this up for sale on eBay last year. Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain a good print of the page, so unless one turns up at the last minute, this downloaded image will have to do. Below the picture, the seller wrote: “This is an unpublished, censored page from an undetermined EC story. An EC historian hypothesizes that this may be a page done around 1954. It’s believed this page may have been self-censored by EC. It’s uncertain whether this was a singular page pulled from a published story, or one page of an entire unpublished story. The page was cut into tiers and then reattached shortly afterwards, many many years ago. It’s certainly one of the most unique examples of EC original artwork, a censored, unpublished page of Wally Wood science-fiction art.”

Unique, indeed! If any of our readers have more information on this page, or a better copy of the art, please let us know.

Postscript 2: On our next page is another rarity: an unpublished Wally Wood cover for EC’s Two-fisted Tales #42. Or is it? Actually, TFT ended with issue #41––and from the art may well have been intended for some other EC title, rather than Two-fisted Tales.

Confusing? You bet! But I’ll try to give you as much background as I know. Here’s the story:

While we’re in a nautical mood, here’s a rare photo of an impossibly young Wally Wood taken while he was serving as a Merchant Marine. For more Wood information, check out The TV Party Website at: <www.tvparty.com/comics/wood.html> Special thanks to: Bill Pearson, Billy Ingram, John Hitchcock, and Casey Burns.

[Wally Wood art ©2002 estate of Wally Wood; “Two-fisted Tales” is a trademark of William Gaines Agent.]

36 Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

The Wizard King

37

Missing a Back Issue?

Got a hole in your Mr. Monster collection? We’ll gladly e-mail you a free Mr. Monster EEEK-Mail Catalog! Just Contact Michael T. Gilbert at:

MGILBERT@EFN.ORG

For a printed version, send one dollar to Michael T. Gilbert, P.O. Box 11421, Eugene OR 97440

38

Chad Grothkopf

Chad Grothkopf (1914-2002)

by Roy Thomas Chad Grothkopf was an amazing guy. Born in Chicago, he moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s and became an animator, first at Paramount, then at Disney. By 1938, as writer/comics historian Ron Goulart reported in his Encyclopedia of American Comics: From 1897 to the Present (1990), he was working in the infant medium of television in New York City, producing a series of “pioneering animated cartoons about Willie the Worm,” a character he had created.

Soon afterward he went to work for the new company of Detective Comics, Inc., using as his pen name the diminutive “Chad,” drawing such adventure features as “Radio Squad,” “Three Aces,” “The Sandman,” and “Johnny Quick,” but in later interviews, as per P.C. Hamerlinck’s Fawcett Companion, he denounced that work as “lousy!

Absolutely terrible!”

By the early 1940s he was writing and drawing humorous series for the comic books, first for Timely (“The Imp” and others), then for Fawcett. For the latter he created the entire lineup of its fledgling humor title, Fawcett’s Funny Animals, including Willie the Worm— and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny. It is for his work on that latter, which

Chad (on right) and Roy T. at a San Diego convention in the ’90s. Roy had just got Chad to sign the original art for his cover of the 1945 Animal Fair #1, with Hoppy and other funny Fawcett animals. Photo by David Siegel.

continued after he came out of the Army after World War II, both in FFA and in a spin-off title devoted entirely to Hoppy, that he will be forever remembered by aficionados of comic book art. Chad himself referred to working on Funny Animals and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny as “the best time of my entire career.”

At various times Chad also worked on True Comics (for the Parents’ Magazine line) and two Sunday newspaper strips: Famous Fiction, which adapted various classics, and Howdy Doody, based on the popular 1950s TV marionette. For a brief time in the early 1980s I was privileged to work with him at DC on a couple of issues of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!

Even with those sweat beads eternally flying from Hoppy’s face, nobody ever drew a super-animal better!

Chad’s Sandman (from All-Star Comics #3, Winter 1940) and Hoppy (from Fawcett’s Funny Animals, V4#17, June 1944). [©2002 DC Comics.]

Henry Boltinoff

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Henry Boltinoff (1914-2001) “Nice Guys Finish First”

by Robin Snyder (Editor: The Comics)

He left us laughing...

He produced a staggering number of cartoons across 60+ years, entertaining millions upon millions of readers in magazines, comic books, newspapers, books, syndicated strips and panels, and in the pages of our newsletter, The Comics.

Always professing to have difficulty with writing, he closed with the quiet Hocus-Focus.

Cartoonist Henry Boltinoff (l.) greets Hal Sherman (original artist of “The Star Spangled Kid” and other features) at the All Time Classic New York Comic Book Convention held in White Plains, NY, in June 2000. Courtesy of David Siegel.

The mapping of his unique bibliography has just begun. Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who of American Comic Books has barely scraped the surface of the career of this one-in-a-million cartoonist.

The last few years he was really on top of the world, working less and enjoying it more. He discovered in Florida a place to rest and relax, swim and play tennis. And continue his pleasant work.

It was my pleasure to know and love this beautiful man and to publish a tiny fraction of his delightful work. He has been, and his sense of life will always be, a part of my life and of The Comics.

Henry Boltinoff left us laughing for all the days of his working life and beyond.

Monthly! Edited and published by Robin Snyder

In an issue of his newsletter/oral history The Comics, Robin Snyder assembled this montage of features done for DC Comics and for syndicate panels by Henry Boltinoff, who passed away last spring. He was the brother of one-time DC editor Murray Boltinoff. [©2002 the respective copyright holders.]

Write to: Robin Snyder, 2284 Yew St. Rd. #B6, Bellingham, WA 98226-8899

Previously Unpublished Art ©2002 Frank Brunner

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: $150) Write now (be sure to include a self-addressed stamped envelope!) and receive FREE with my reply an autographed Brunner “Star Wars Galaxy” trading card!

Contact the artist at his NEW address:

FRANK BRUNNER 312 Kildare Court Myrtle Beach, SC 29588 Visit my website at: http://www.geocities.com/sberry52000/frankbrunner.html

Dr. Strange © & TM 2002 Marvel Comics, Inc.

IN JUNE: IT’S A HARVEY COMICS HOUSE PARTY!

CBA #19 gets downright funky with our celebration of those great HARVEY COMICS of yesteryear! Behind a new groovin’ cover by retro illustrator MITCH O’CONNELL (featuring some of the wonkiest characters ever to grace a comic book page!), we examine the 40+ years of the “House of Casper,” from Sad Sack to Richie Rich, Black Cat to Bee-Man, Little Lotta to Hot Stuff. We feature interviews with the company’s major contributors—including JOE SIMON, WARREN KREMER, SID JACOBSON, HOWIE POST, ERNIE COLÓN, and more— plus a definitive history of the publisher and more rarely-seen art than Richie has dollars! This ish also contains ALEX TOTH’s column and a look at the art and career of the late great DAN DeCARLO by noted inker TERRY AUSTIN. (Edited by JON B. COOKE • 116 pages) Six-issue subscriptions: $36 Standard, $54 First Class (Canada: $66, Elsewhere: $72 Surface, $96 Airmail).

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom.

TwoMorrows • 1812 Park Drive • Raleigh, NC 27605 USA • 919-833-8092 • FAX: 919-833-8023 • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

©2002 DC Comics

No. 74

A SALUTE TO

SCHAFFENBERGER

Plus MARC SWAYZE’S “WE DIDN’T KNOW... IT WAS THE GOLDEN AGE!”

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We Didn’t Know...

It couldn’t be called an avocation or hobby. Too much work involved. In my case it was an undertaking... a mission I had assigned myself toward an end... a future for which I felt best suited. I guess most of us felt that way.

When Clem, the dude ranch cowpoke, rode in from the syndicate trail and reined up at the Circle M bunkhouse, it had been nine years since my first stab at the syndicates. Nine years of feature ideas and as many major characters. Not necessarily, however, nine years of failure, though there still was no syndicate contract.

By

[Art & logo ©2002 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel © & TM 2002 DC Comics]

[FCA EDITORS NOTE: From 1941-53, Marcus D. Swayze was a top artist for Fawcett Comics. The very first Mary Marvel sketches came from his drawing table, and he illustrated her earliest adventures, including her origin story; but he was primarily hired to illustrate Captain Marvel stories and covers for Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures. He also wrote many Captain Marvel scripts, and continued to do so while in the military. After World War II and after illustrating two Fawcett stories, he made an arrangement with the company to produce art and stories for it on a freelance basis out of his Louisiana home. There, he created art and story for The Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics, in addition to drawing the Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip for Bell Syndicate (created by his friend and mentor Russell Keaton). After the cancellation of Wow Comics, Swayze did artwork for Fawcett’s romance comics, and eventually ended his comics career with Charlton Publications. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been FCA’s most popular feature since his first column appeared in FCA #54, 1996. Continuing from last issue, Marc reflects further on his several attempts to sell a syndicated comic strip—and finally getting a bite!

—P.C. Hamerlinck.]

I don’t recall any heartaches or heartbreaks or heart-whatevers. It was all part of the game... a tough, tough game... in a league not meant for regrets. As the saying goes, if you can’t stand the heat...

Before Clem there had been all those other characters... and all those backgrounds. Let’s see now... it started with a jungle girl, then a dog, then a military airman. They were followed by a blonde detective, a StoneAge kid, a big-city private eye, a piano player. With Rod Reed there was a banjo plunker, then a comic cowboy... and with Glenn Chaffin, a roving reporter.

There was the Cajun comic, LeBone...

Then what? Oh yes... the dog again. The German Shepherd breed, with top billing in the movies and heroic roles in the popular Can you imagine the number of comic strip ideas, outdoor stories of the day, prepared with fervent hopes of a long-range contract, that A rare Mary Marvel sketch by Swayze, the character’s became a personal favorite at are submitted to the newspaper syndicates in a year’s time? designer and first artist. [Art c 2002 Marc Swayze; Mary an early age and has remained Marvel TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

The comics editor of King Features once remarked that so. Jango was a major the annual average would easily exceed two thousand. supporting character in my first syndicate effort and top star in the Must have taken a lot of writing and rewriting... drawing and redrawing. second. This time he would benefit from better, I hoped... at least more I know. Some were mine. experienced... writing and drawing. The feature was prepared as a daily

Jango strip sample by Swayze. [©2002 Marc Swayze.]

It Was The Golden Age

43

quent changes to the strip to his suggestions.

First, both the first and last names of the character were likely to have different pronunciations in different regions. This, when what we wanted was consistency. Second, the character needed stronger background, more reason for being, than just swampland adventurer.

The third suggestion was that the five-o’clock shadow, the unshaven chin, might be repulsive to some women readers. Why take the chance?

Back in the ’20s there was an infielder... for the Washington Senators, I believe... named Art Shires. Good ball player, too, but, being a bit outspoken about it, he was titled by the sportswriters, “The Great” Shires. I liked that... enough to use it previously on Marty Guy. I used it on the new endeavor... The Great Pierre.

L’Eveque liked it too. On my next trip to McClure he took a hasty look at the changes to the strip and said: “Come on, let’s take a walk!”

The destination was only a few minutes away. The offices were vaguely familiar, but I didn’t notice until someone said, “Hi, Marc!” It was Joseph Agneli, Vice President and General Manager at the Bell Syndicate.

It turned out that a merger was under way between the McClure Syndicate and Bell, or perhaps it would be more accurate that Bell was taking over McClure. At any rate it wasn’t long before you didn’t hear of McClure Syndicate anymore.

It wasn’t long before Agneli was talking to me about a contract, either. Allowing some months for possible further revisions, The Great Pierre was to be released to the newspapers by the end of 1955!

Swayze on Captain Marvel: “...quick to give you a neighborly hand, and just as quick to crush any harm that threatened you.” A recent sketch by MS. [Art ©2002 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

strip, two weeks of finished art.

I don’t have an excuse for this one. Jango, however, was an outdoorsy feature. I suspect the syndicates and newspapers might have been looking for just what the comic books were selling like hot cakes... romance.

The next try was never intended to be a modification of the previously conceived LeBone effort. Another Cajun, yes, but not cartoony, not funny. Louis LeNoir (see next page) was an adventurer of the swamplands. Success for the feature would be highly dependent upon character development... not simply the hero’s reasonable physical feats, but his personality, his attitude towards life. I wanted a character acceptable and likable to the reading public.

And to the syndicate people!

It never once came to mind, but I’ll bet I was unconsciously imparting to the new character qualities I used to try to put into the Captain Marvel I drew and wrote about... a big, pleasant, capable guy, quick to give you a neighborly hand, and just as quick to crush any harm that threatened you.

But Captain Marvel was not boastful. LeNoir was a braggart... in a jesting way.

In August 1953 the feature was taken to the major syndicates, occasionally presented simultaneously with Clem and Neal Valentine.

Mac Raboy or Rod Reed, apparently having heard something, suggested I not overlook the McClure Syndicate.

Correspondence at McClure was begun with Henry O. Nimis. It was picked up and continued by Andre F. L’Eveque. I attribute the subse-

From Editor and Publisher magazine, March 17, 1956. Hmmm... did Marc say The Great Pierre was to have appeared in newspapers by late ’55?

Must be a story there—and Marc will tell it next time!

44

We Didn’t Know...

Lois Lenoir strip samples. [©2002 Marc Swayze.]

Kurt Schaffenberger

45

A Salute to Schaffenberger (Kurt P. Schaffenberger – 1920-2002 ) Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck INTRODUCTION Anyone familiar with Captain Marvel, The Marvel Family, Lois Lane, or the Superman Family needs no introduction to the awesome artwork of Kurt Schaffenberger. Born on a small farm in central Germany, he migrated with his family to the U.S. when he was seven years old and settled in the Hartford, Connecticut, area. Kurt graduated first in his high school class and, with the scholarship he earned, attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

From Pratt he landed a job at Jack Binder’s shop in Englewood, New Jersey. The Binder shop churned out artwork with its assembly-line-like production for the new field of comic books, with the majority of the studio’s comic output being produced for Fawcett Publications.

Exactly one year to the day after graduating from Pratt, Kurt was inducted into the U.S. Army, where he remained for the next four years (three of them in Europe). Overseas, he was with the first Special Service Company, providing various kinds of morale-boosting entertainment for

A Kurt Schaffenberger self-portrait, originally published in Jimmy Olsen #155—and one of his 1970s panels of the Marvel Family, with new dialogue added. [Art ©2002 DC Comics.]

the troops in England. The posters he prepared for these events brought him to the attention of a major who had run an art agency back in the States, and who was then in the process of initiating an art department for the Army. For the next two years Kurt helped produce training posters, charts, and other U.S. Army graphics. Able to speak German, he later joined the OSS and spent six months in Intelligence and counter-espionage work until his discharge as a Master Sergeant in late 1945.

Returning to civilian life, Kurt gravitated back to the comics and his association with Fawcett Publications, producing legendary work in Whiz Comics, Ibis the Invincible, The Marvel Family, Captain Marvel Adventures, Master Comics, Captain Marvel Jr., and other

Three Schaffenberger covers from the Golden Age of Fawcett: The Marvel Family #87 (Sept. 1953)...

Ibis the Invincible #6 (Spring 1948)... and Master Comics #122 (June 1951). [©2002 DC Comics.]

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A Salute to... their appearance as set down by the already established artists. His version of Superman has long been my favorite (yes, slightly even above that of Curt Swan—no easy feat!), while his Captain Marvel rates a close second behind that of C.C. Beck. And any portrayal of Lois Lane will always be judged against the Schaffenberger standard.

titles with his delightful, clean style of storytelling art. After Fawcett ceased publishing comic books in 1953, he tried to re-establish himself and primarily did general art work in a small studio… all while keeping a foot in the comics field, including illustrating Soldiers of Fortune for Classics Illustrated.

Kurt went on to work for American Comics Group (ACG) and various other comics companies, until Otto Binder—the prolific former Captain Marvel/Fawcett writer who later wrote for DC—recommended that he try out for DC’s upcoming Lois Lane comic book. Kurt got the job and took the once-minor character and developed her personality into something distinctive, unique, and memorable. His style was a natural for Lois Lane, and he continued to illustrate the character up until 1968, when he was assigned to draw “Supergirl” in Adventure Comics. He was a top artist at DC, and his long list of credits includes Jimmy Olsen, Superman, Superman Family, Super Friends, and, of course, Shazam!, which re-united him once again with Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family.

Did I say two? There’s a third adjective, and that is “nice.” He graciously consented to my requests for interviews, sent me (totally unsolicited) original art pieces; and, every December, the Schaffenberger family Christmas cards (which he designed) would arrive in the mail.

Comicdom has lost one of its best, nicest, and too-often overlooked, talents: Mr. Kurt P. Schaffenberger.

INTERVIEW Kurt’s cover for The Whiz Kids #3 (1980), John Pierce’s Marvel Family fanzine, from which much of this interview is taken.

[Art ©2002 estate of Kurt Schaffenberger; Marvel Family TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

Along with the newsstand comics, Kurt did a substantial amount of work in the commercial comics field primarily for Custom Comics, as well as a hugely diverse roster of freelance accounts including General Motors, the New York Police and Fire Departments, and the U.S. Air Force.

In this issue of FCA, we say goodbye to our friend Kurt Schaffenberger by proudly re-presenting the following interviews conducted with Kurt by John G. Pierce and Matthew Lage, from the mid-1970s to the early ’80s. The material is excerpted from the third and final issue of Pierce’s Marvel Family-devoted fanzine The Whiz Kids, and from the British fanzine Fantasy Unlimited # 26, May 1975. Both interviews were conducted by John Pierce. —P.C. Hamerlinck

JOHN PIERCE: Besides Fawcett and DC, what other comic book companies did you work for? Any EC work?

KURT SCHAFFENBERGER: Besides Fawcett and DC, I worked for Marvel, Archie, American Comics Group, Street & Smith, Classics Illustrated, Gleason, and many others who were too small to even have their names on the door. As for EC, I started two strips for them back about 1946: “Igor the Archer,” a Russian Robin Hood, and “Diggo Do & Diggy Don’t,” a father-and-son Chinese detective team à la Charlie Chan. I’m sure they both died the horrible deaths they so richly deserved many years ago.

JP: Did you find your work on Archie (1971) more or less difficult than your natural style/superhero work? Who did you work with

PREFACE

by John Pierce When I think of Kurt Schaffenberger, at least two adjectives come to mind.

The first is “consistent.” Looking at his work from Fawcett from the mid-’40s onward, as well as his later work on Lois Lane and the other Superman features, not to mention returning to The Marvel Family in the ’70s, one sees very little difference in style. It’s not that he didn’t improve during that time; it’s just that his art was already so good that little improvement or change was needed. His artwork never faltered; it was terrific from the beginning to the end of his career.

The next adjective (plus an adverb) would be “extremely talented.” Not many artists could draw such a variety of characters in his own distinct style, while never violating

“I tried to draw Captain Marvel as much like Beck’s as I could, and then did my own thing from there on.” (L.) Beck’s Big Red Cheese, from a 1970 drawing done for fan John Ellis, and (r.) Kurt’s cover for Whiz Comics #144 (April 1952). [Beck art ©2002 estate of C.C. Beck; Whiz cover ©2002 DC Comics.]

Kurt Schaffenberger at Archie?

SCHAFFENBERGER: At Archie I worked directly with Dick Goldwater and his assistant Victor Gorelick. I found doing Archie refreshingly simple compared to the exacting realism demanded by the Superman line or romance or mystery stories. I would describe my natural art style as sort of a caricatured realism.

JP: During what time period did you work on “Captain America”?

SCHAFFENBERGER: My work on “Captain America” was confined to inking four or five stories in early 1946.

have been influenced by the various artists I admire, men like Norman Rockwell, Lyendecker, von Schmidt among the illustrators, and Alex Raymond, Milton Caniff, and Hal Foster in the comic pages, but I have never tried to copy any of them. I admire craftsmanship in any field, be it art or plumbing, and the men I have mentioned are not only artists, but also craftsmen. The first professional job I did was inking backgrounds for a “Captain Marvel” story in the Jack Binder studio.

JP: Mac Raboy drew “Captain Marvel Jr.” in a dark, serious tone.

When he left the character, did the editor of Master Comics or Cap Junior’s own magazine request any of the artists to carry on the style set by Raboy?

JP: Otto Binder had said that in many instances during the ’40s and ’50s, when an artist received a story, he never read the entire script through. He just read one panel at a time, drawing the art for that panel as he went along. Did you do it that way? Was there any single comic writer whose scripts were so complex that they were hard to illustrate?

SCHAFFENBERGER: I don’t believe I have ever started a story without reading the entire script.

Sometimes it just wasn’t possible when things were in a rush and I would be sent a couple of pages at a time, as fast as they came from the writer’s typewriter.

It’s always a risky proposition, because you can develop a situation or character in one direction and then have the last page of the script force you to make a million and one changes to conform with the conclusion of the story.

47

SCHAFFENBERGER: By the time I started doing “Captain Marvel Jr.,” several other artists (Bud Thompson and Joe Certa are two who come to mind) had already had a whack at him, and Raboy’s style was a thing of the past. What I did was try to adapt him so that he would fit in with the Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel style of art, as they were now all appearing together in Marvel Family stories.

JP: Many people feel that, since C.C. Beck was the first and most prominent of the Captain Marvel artists, his simple, cartoony style should be the guide for the other Cap artists to follow. Did your art style prove to be a handicap in any way when drawing “Captain Marvel”?

“Comics are my living, but not my life.” Here we have both: Kurt at his drawing table, in a mid-’70s self-portrait—and a circa-1948 photo of Kurt with his daughter Susan, age ten months. This photo, given to Roy Thomas by Otto Binder in 1964, first appeared in 1997’s out-of-print Best of Alter Ego (Vol. 1, that is)... after which Roy sent the original to the Schaffenbergers, who hadn’t seen it in half a century. [Art ©2002 estate of Kurt Schaffenberger.]

JP: As a person who was there in the Golden Age, what comic book companies or company do you feel featured the best all-around artwork? Just to give an example, Otto Binder cited Quality Comics as having the best writing staff.

SCHAFFENBERGER: I’ll have to pass on this question. I have honestly never followed comics that much, except those which directly affected me. In other words, if Comics Company “A” went in for such and such a style, and I was looking to land an account there, I would try to adapt my style to conform. Other than that, I never more than glanced at what the field in general is doing, either then or now. In other words, comics are my living, but not my life.

JP: When did you first start drawing? Were there any of artists that you’d consider an influence to your work? Were there any particular artists whose styles you tried to copy? Do you remember what your first professional comic story was?

SCHAFFENBERGER: I have been drawing pictures for as long as I can remember, even going back to before I started school. I suppose I

SCHAFFENBERGER: I don’t believe my approach was any handicap, especially when you consider that the styles that Raboy, Thompson, and Certa used on “Captain Marvel Jr,” and the style Jack Binder used on “Mary Marvel,” were totally different from Beck’s. I tried to draw Captain Marvel as much like Beck’s as I could, and then did my own thing from there on.

JP: In the many different strips that you worked on, did you use a certain “different formula” with each of them, such as adding more dark/gothic elements to a strip like “Ibis the Invincible”… or using a fresh, buoyant style with “Captain Marvel Jr.” like Raboy did?

SCHAFFENBERGER: The only “formula” I have ever had was to do as good as job as I was capable of doing with each story. When a story is suppose to be humorous, I throw in a little more slapstick and caricature. When it is serious, I stick closer to realism. If the story was dark/gothic/supernatural, I would try to convey an air of mystery by using appropriate backgrounds and more blacks. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

JP: You were with Fawcett Comics until the very end in 1953. Otto Binder, when asked about the last story for Fawcett he worked on, answered, “The last one I wrote was a 3-part Marvel Family serial involving the Sivanas. When I got the bombshell news that Fawcett were discontinuing all of their comics, I indulged in a repressive desire and wrote a parody of that serial in which each of the Marvels, in turn, is killed off—others thought it was funny, but not very.” Do you remember the day when you got the news?

SCHAFFENBERGER: I remember the day well. I had just picked up a new Marvel Family script the day before from Wendell Crowley and had just finished penciling the first two pages when Wendell called me

48

A Salute to... with the news. I was dismayed, to say the least, but I would have been totally horrified had I known at the time that it would take me almost two years to re-establish myself to the point where I was financially in the black again. I had forgotten Otto’s parody until your question brought it to mind. I remember reading it at Otto’s home.

Schaffenberger on Sivana and his offspring: “I’m really sorry I didn’t create them!” [Art ©2002 estate of Kurt Schaffenberger; Dr. Sivana TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

JP: The Jack Binder studio disbanded sometime around 1943 and you were in the service around that time. After the war, how did you get back into comics?

SCHAFFENBERGER: After my discharge from the Army in late 1945 I worked at Beck and [Pete] Costanza’s studio in Englewood, New Jersey, for about two weeks, and then decided to go out on my own. I contacted Wendell Crowley at Fawcett, and he took me around to meet the various editors, and I was launched on my career as a freelance artist. I began illustrating “Ibis the Invincible” in Whiz Comics.

JP: You state that after the demise of The Marvel Family and Fawcett Comics in 1953, it would take you two years to get back into the financial swing. What work did you do during those two years?

SCHAFFENBERGER: I worked for several fly-by-night comic outfits that paid peanuts and then made you wait for months to get paid… if you were lucky enough to get paid at all. I also rented space in a general artwork studio where I did everything from photo-retouching to package-designing to paste-ups and layouts. The first break that helped me get back on my feet was meeting Dick Hughes at American Comics, who liked my work and was willing to give me all the work I could handle. The second break was getting the Lois Lane job at DC, through the good words that Otto Binder put in for me with [editor] Mort Weisinger.

afforded me the most personal satisfaction. Prior to that series, Lois had, for the most part, been a rather minor character in the background of “Superman” stories. I like to think that I helped make her a definite personality with whom the reader could identify. Other than Lois Lane, one comic character is about the same as another to me. They all involve a great deal of time and effort which, when broken down on an hourly basis, afforded me about the same salary as a competent (or even not-socompetent) plumber. While my style has not changed much over the years, I sincerely hope that I have gotten better over time. If I haven’t, I think it’s time I started looking around for a good location on which to open a hamburger (or Schaffen-burger) stand!

JP: When you graduated from Pratt Institute, did you want to go to work on comic books, or were comics simply a way to make a living?

Did you originally want to be just a commercial artist?

SCHAFFENBERGER: When I graduated from Pratt, I didn’t even know there was any such thing as comic books. The only comics I was aware of were the comic strips in the Sunday newspaper. I really wanted to be a magazine illustrator, and I kept kidding myself that the comics were a great training ground for this field. By the time I felt I was good enough to try, practically all the slick magazines had disappeared and I was left with the comics. I am now fairly content to be an aboveaverage-sized frog in a very small pond.

JP: Mort Weisinger once said that the reason comics are in such bad shape sales-wise is because of the editors. He said that sales depend solely upon the editor. Yet Fawcett and other comics were on the downhill slide in the ’50s, still being guided by such great editors as Wendell Crowley and Will Lieberson… two men who were also at the helm at Captain Marvel’s height in popularity. Therefore, do you agree with Weisinger’s statement?

SCHAFFENBERGER: No. Editors feel that they are the most important component in a successful magazine. Writers feel that they

JP: When DC leaked the news in 1972 that they were going to bring back Captain Marvel, did one of the editors contact you or did you apply for the job?

SCHAFFENBERGER: [DC editorial director] Carmine Infantino told me about it in early 1972, and asked me to work up some samples, as it was not yet definite that Beck would work on the book. When Beck did agree to whatever arrangement they made, I was told that I would be filling in whenever there was too much work for Beck to handle.

JP: Beck has stated that the only competent job that can be done on Captain Marvel and the other old Fawcett characters would be to revive the old shop system of the ’40s. Otto Binder commented that this would be hard to do as the artists and writers of the Golden Age “were more or less inspired.” Do you think the “shop” system could still work today?

SCHAFFENBERGER: No way! In order to have a shop, you have to have a boss, and all of the “old gang” had been independents for too long for that kind of set-up. As for being “inspired,” I get just as inspired today when I see all those bills arriving the first of every month as I ever did back in the “Golden Age.” JP: Is there any specific story—or any series—which you have done in your career that you are particularly proud of?

SCHAFFENBERGER: I would have to say that the Lois Lane series An early-’50s Marvel Family splash by Kurt S., reprinted in the 1977 hardcover Shazam! From the Forties to the Seventies. [©2002 DC Comics.]

Kurt Schaffenberger

49

thought he was a frustrated Cecil B. DeMille, and that he threw in mob scenes whenever he ran out of ideas or inspiration or both. Shortly after I stopped getting Rod Reed scripts, Otto Binder hit me with a script containing this panel description: “Show the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding roughshod over downtrodden humanity, with The Marvel Family flying to the rescue.” As I recall, this was a double-page spread, and it took me about four days to draw it… a somewhat longer time than it took Otto to write it. This was followed some time later by a story with The Marvel Family battling “galloping glaciers.” “Dear God, Otto, how in the heck do I show a glacier galloping?!”

JP: Is it easy for you to ink another artist’s pencils if that artist’s style differs greatly from yours? Did you ever ink Beck’s pencils?

SCHAFFENBERGER: I have only limited experience at inking other artists’ work, and fortunately had little trouble with it provided the penciling was completely done… which is the case in the Curt Swan “Superman” stories I have inked. I don’t believe an editor worth his salt would give an artist a story to ink that was totally different from his normal style, unless if it was just an experiment to see what the results would be. I’m fairly sure I must have inked some of Beck’s pencils at one time or another, but I can’t give you a specific example.

JP: Two of Fawcett’s top artists were C.C. Beck and Mac Raboy. Of the Fawcett staff, who were your favorite artists, writers, and editors?

What do you think of two of the most famous comic book artists, Will Eisner and Jack Kirby?

The back cover of Whiz Kids #3. [Art ©2002 estate of Kurt Schaffenberger; Superboy & Captain Marvel Jr. TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

are, and artists feel that they are both wrong, and that art sells a magazine. Mort was an editor for many years. The only thing that makes a magazine successful is the public that buys it… and I don’t know of any way to gauge the public’s whim. In other words, if you got together the best editor, writer, and artist in the world, you would still have no guarantee that the public would buy your book.

JP: Out of all the comics you’ve worked on, which villains were your favorite to illustrate?

SCHAFFENBERGER: The villains I have always enjoyed drawing the most are the Sivanas. I’m really sorry I didn’t create them! They are so hateful that they are lovable.

SCHAFFENBERGER: In my opinion, Beck, in the Fawcett days, was head and shoulders above the rest of the artists. Raboy drew exquisite, meaningless, pretty pictures. As for the editors, if I got along well with them, they were great. The writers, if they didn’t give me too many impossible situations to illustrate, were fine. I have always admired Eisner’s art style, although I have not seen any of his recent work. In my humble opinion, Jack Kirby is a terrific artist, but his flamboyant style often gets in the way of his stories. I need a road map to follow what is going on, and in my opinion (humble, again) storytelling is the name of the game in comics.

JP: What was it really like back in your days with the Jack Binder shop? Was there a certain feeling of comradeship? Could you give a few brief words on some of the people who you worked with at the shop and what features they work on?

JP: Your Fawcett work included such prominent features as “Captain Marvel,” “Captain Marvel Jr.,” “Ibis the Invincible,” “The Marvel Family,” and various movie and sports titles. What other features did you do?

SCHAFFENBERGER: Trying to recall this after more than thirty years is somewhat difficult, but some other features I did that come to mind are “Bulletman,” “Commando Yank,” “Golden Arrow,” and “Mr. Scarlet and Pinky”… all during my year at the Binder shop.

JP: In the course of my series of interviews for FCA, many remarkable opinions came out. Rod Reed related that sometimes artists and writers can be a veritable “pain in the ass,” with editors combining the worst qualities of the two. Upon hearing of my interviewing you, Reed said I should ask you about him and his “DeMille Complex.” Care to explain?

SCHAFFENBERGER: I’m amazed that Rod should still remember this after the more than twenty years since we’ve seen one another.

At the time, I was drawing “Captain Marvel Jr.,” and anytime I would get a script from Rod Reed, I could be sure that there would be a dozen crowd or mob scenes in each one. One day I told him I

“The Lois Lane series afforded me the most personal satisfaction.” A famous 1960s Schaffenberger splash from Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #42—in which he sneaked | a fallen Captain Marvel into the background, at a time when the notion of DC licensing, let alone owning, the Big Red Cheese seemed pretty unlikely! [©2002 DC Comics.]

50 SCHAFFENBERGER: In retrospect, it was quite a wonderful time for all of us. We were all young, having just graduated from art school, and the world was going to be our oyster. True, there was a war going on over in Europe, but that was of small concern to us… until December 7, 1941. During lunch in the summer, we would have baseball games, and in the fall it would be touch football. Our social lives were also centered around the studio, in that we all would often go out with our dates as a group. I recall that the gang of us and our girls went to the Glen Island Casino for New Year’s Eve, 1941. I left the Binder shop at the beginning of June 1942 to go into the Army, and the studio was split into two parts shortly thereafter, one half remaining in Englewood, New Jersey, and the other half moving to New York. Only one of the gang lost his life in the war that I know of, and that was Jimmy Potter. Pete Riss died in 1961, and most of the others have scattered to the four corners, although I still see Ken Bald occasionally and Vic Dowd (now Ken’s brother-in-law) rarely. Some of the others whose names should be mentioned are Bob Butts, Bill Ward, Vince Costello, Charley Tomsey, Nat Champlin, Al Duca, Bob Rylands, Ray Hartford, Bob Boyajian, John Westlake. As to which features they worked on, there was initially no such thing. We produced the stories like an assembly line, with The cover of Shazam! #23 (Winter 1976),

by Kurt Schaffenberger. [©2002 DC one man doing the roughs, Comics.] another penciling the figures, another the backgrounds. Inking would also be broken down into those categories. Toward the end of my year in the studio, some of us got our own features, but aside from the ones I worked on, I couldn’t say who did what.

JP: Any comments on your new work on Superboy?

SCHAFFENBERGER: He’s an easy character to draw and I enjoy doing it. Not only that, I’m working with Julius Schwartz, who’s one of my favorite editors. He and Dick Hughes back at American Comics Group (ACG) are two of the best editors. They were the easiest to get along with of those I’ve ever worked for.

JP: Did you ever do anything other than covers at ACG? SCHAFFENBERGER: Yes, I did adventure, romance, and mystery stories for them from 1955 to 1957 before I began working on the Lois Lane series. Thereafter, I only did covers for ACG until they folded. I also developed—but never drew in strips—two different supernatural costumed heroes named Magicman and Nemesis.

JP: Do you wish you were still drawing The Marvel Family?

SCHAFFENBERGER: Not really. I enjoyed doing it when they were first revived and I was quite happy to be working on the Big Red Cheese again after an absence of twenty years. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for The Marvel Family (although they did leave me high and dry back in 1953), but there was too much déja vu involved... and the Marvels were just no longer applicable to the present times, I suppose.

A Salute to... that Beck was becoming too demanding in regards to control of the book and that he had been rejecting scripts.

JP: In the “Marvel Family” story in Shazam! #11, you drew Captain Marvel landing a punch on Sivana’s jaw, something that Beck rarely showed.

SCHAFFENBERGER: I was not aware that having Captain Marvel socking Sivana was a rarity. In fact, I’m willing to swear that over the years of their antagonisms both Beck and I have had Sivana’s jaw belted more than a few times by Cap as well as the other Marvels.

JP: In the ’40s, you drew many “Captain Marvel Jr.” solo stories. Did you ever illustrate any “Mary Marvel” solo adventures?

SCHAFFENBERGER: I drew “Cap Jr.” for several years in both Master Comics and Captain Marvel Jr. comics before I began drawing “Captain Marvel” and “Marvel Family” stories. As for Mary, I do recall penciling some scripts while at Jack Binder’s shop, but I don’t believe I ever did any stories that were exclusively “Mary Marvel.”

JP: What did you think of Don Newton’s “new look” style on the “Shazam!” strip in World’s Finest Comics?

SCHAFFENBERGER: Well, I really like Newton’s work, but I don’t care for it on The Marvel Family. I wish they had stuck with the original style, but on the other hand, the original style wasn’t selling, so they tried something new.

JP: Who was responsible for the “Shazam!” strip’s “new look”?

SCHAFFENBERGER: I really don’t know. In a fan magazine, one of the writers was taking Jack Harris to task for starting it, but I don’t think he was responsible. It had to be higher up the ladder than that… either Sol Harrison, Jeanette Kahn, or Joe Orlando. I know that when they first started the “new look” they called me in to ink Kurt’s cover for Isis #1 (Nov. 1976). some of Newton’s stories to try to [©2002 Hallmark.] pull it back a little bit closer to what it had been. But that was totally impossible! My style was totally different from Newton’s.

JP: When original art is returned, how much is given to the penciler and how much to the inker?

SCHAFFENBERGER: It’s split. For Superboy, I get one story and one cover, and inker Dave Hunt gets the next story and one cover. I get all the odd-numbered issues and Dave gets all the even-numbered.

JP: Do you wish you could still ink your own work, or are you content to let someone else finish the job?

SCHAFFENBERGER: I would prefer to ink my own pencils.

However, they pay considerably less for inking than for penciling. So, purely on a monetary basis, I am extremely happy to be doing only pencils.

JP: Were you aware of the circumstances behind Beck leaving Shazam!?

JP: Do you have a favorite comic book artist among those currently working in either comics or strips?

SCHAFFENBERGER: All I know is what I read in the fan magazines.

The only thing that Carmine Infantino and Julius Schwartz told me was

SCHAFFENBERGER: I like Curt Swan and Neal Adams. I admire John Romita and John Buscema over at Marvel. In the daily strips, I like

Kurt Schaffenberger

51

Leonard Starr. In the early days when I started in the business, Caniff, Raymond, and Foster were everyone’s favorites. I still see Milt Caniff at NCS meetings.

JP: How do you get most of your commercial accounts, and do you spend more time on commercial artwork or on comic book assignments?

JP: Did you happen to see Superman—The Movie?

SCHAFFENBERGER: Most of the commercial stuff I’ve been doing was for Custom/Culver. I’ve gotten some commercial accounts through DC when they had a licensee who needed some drawings. In the past few years, I’ve been under contract at DC to turn in a certain amount of work, about 25 or 30 pages a month, which doesn’t leave me much time for other accounts. The good thing is that, at the end of the year, if I’ve met my contract, I then get the equivalent of two weeks’ salary. It’s like having two weeks’ paid vacation… for the first time in my life. I would say that on the average, newsstand comics take up about 2/3 of my time. I generally try to maintain this balance, as I consider comics my basic bread and butter income and more definitely scheduled than commercial or illustration work, which is far more unpredictable, although more remunerative.

SCHAFFENBERGER: Yes, I saw it, and I was very impressed with it.

When they mentioned doing a Superman movie, I thought it was going to go down the old porcelain receptacle. But I thought they did an excellent job with it.

JP: Do you see any disturbing or encouraging trends in comics?

SCHAFFENBERGER: To be honest, I don’t see any trends because I don’t look at that many comic books. As I said, comic books are my living. They are not my life.

JP: Are there any characters or features at DC (or anyplace else) that you would like to be drawing?

SCHAFFENBERGER: No, I’m fairly content with what I’m doing. I’m not looking for any new worlds to conquer at this point in my life.

JP: What were some differences between the DC scripts you got from Cary Bates and those from E. Nelson Bridwell?

SCHAFFENBERGER: The basic difference is that Nelson seems to try to drag remote comics characters from the past into the story, and it’s always a job to try to adapt these characters from forty years ago into a style of today, which is a more refined style than the crudeness we had back in the ’40s.

JP: Is there any writer whose scripts are easier to draw than any others?

SCHAFFENBERGER: No, most of the writers they have at DC are competent.

JP: Can you give a brief description of your typical working day?

JP: Are you still younglooking?

SCHAFFENBERGER: That question’s a real doozy! Let me put it to you this way. When I get up in the morning, I look in the mirror while shaving and say to myself, “There is a handsome, fortyish-looking man.” When I see photos of myself I look like a 60-year old and very grandfatherly-like. So, no, I’m not that young-looking anymore… nobody stays young-looking!

On that subject, a few years ago, my daughter and her family were here at our home, and my oldest grandson took a running leap across the living room and landed right in the middle of the family jewels, upon which I had some rather harsh words for the young lad. He stood up, put his hands on his hips, and said, “Grandpa, you are old, old, OLD!”

(Above:) Schaffenberger family Christmas SCHAFFENBERGER: I generally arise about 8:30 or so cards from 1944, 1961, and 1976. and have breakfast. I’m in the studio by about 9:30, where I [©2002 estate of Kurt P. Schaffenberger.] work until about 1:30. Then I take an hour break for lunch, JP: To the best of your recoland go back to the studio and work until about 5:15 or 5:30 lection, what’s the most difficult drawing assignment you’ve ever when my wife comes home. We sit down and have a cocktail before had? dinner. She gives me the scoop on all her trials and tribulations, and I give her what news I have. After dinner I sit in my recliner, tilted back, SCHAFFENBERGER: One that comes to mind immediately is a job I and zonk out for about an hour. Then I go back to the studio and I had to do back in the early ’50s, after Fawcett Comics had folded. An work until about 11 PM, at which time I turn on the television to see agent got me the job of a wash drawing featuring a full symphony what man’s latest inhumanity to man has been, and then watch The orchestra. It was a montage with records in the background. It took me Tonight Show. On the days when I go into New York City, I usually weeks to do the thing, and the pay was lousy, especially after the agent get up about 7:45, take a bus in, and go do my rounds at DC. I used to got his 25% commission. have office space at what was Custom Comics (later Culver JP: Does it bother you that other artists get a lot more recognition Publications), but this stopped when they relocated to Connecticut. from the fan press?

52

A Salute to...

SCHAFFENBERGER: No, I feel I have gotten about as much recognition as I deserve. I’m not going out looking for recognition.

JP: Do you work extensively from reference material when drawing stories?

JP: Did you draw your figures before or after the other artist?

SCHAFFENBERGER: It varied.

Sometimes I would do a drawing from scratch, other times I would work over their pencils, and still other times I would have to paste over their drawings and re-do them completely.

SCHAFFENBERGER: Yes I do.

Not for the figure work, but for JP: Working on some of the last backgrounds, airplanes, construction equipment, automobiles, historical few issues of Shazam! you did, materials. I have quite an extensive with Bridwell writing traveling morgue, which I’ve been keeping stories, were you supplied with here in my studio for about the past photos of the people and places 35 years or so. If it requires any involved?

High-flying Schaffenberger art from Shazam!—A Circus Adventure, a Little Golden Book, 1977. [©2002 DC Comics.] specific background I will check my SCHAFFENBERGER: Yes, we morgue for it. As for animals, I have generally received photos and I worked as best I could from them. a book I bought in the ’50s called The Art of Animal Drawing, which is my “bible” as far as drawing any animals.

JP: Approximately how long does it take you to pencil 17-page story?

JP: Who wrote most of the early Lois Lane stories you drew?

SCHAFFENBERGER: I’d have to go back through my attic to check the books out, but even that wouldn’t help because the writers and artists didn’t get any credit on the early stories. I do recall that Otto Binder did some of them, as did Jerry Siegel, but most of the others I’m not sure about. Mort Weisinger chewed up and spit out writers like you wouldn’t believe. It doesn’t really matter who wrote them anyway, because by the time Weisinger was finished with a script, it became a typical Mort Weisinger story.

JP: I noticed that some of the “Superman” stories from the ’60s which largely featured Lois Lane and Lana Lang were done primarily by another artist, such as Curt Swan, but that you did the figures of Lois and Lana. Was this because your version of them was so popular?

SCHAFFENBERGER: Whenever this happened, I did it at Mort Weisinger’s request, as he wanted to keep Lois more uniform throughout the “Superman” series, and he wanted my version of Lois to be the criterion.

SCHAFFENBERGER: In penciling, I average 1H pages a day. By pushing, I can sometimes do two pages per day. So a 17-page story would take me about 11 working days. If I’m also doing the inking on it, I don’t take as much time on the penciling because I do a lot of my drawing in the inking. If I’m doing both penciling and inking, I generally work at the rate at about one page per day.

JP: If changes are needed in an art job after it is turned in, does the editor have the penciler make the changes or does he have someone else do them?

SCHAFFENBERGER: The way Julie works is, I’ll take the job in and he will go over it, panel by panel and page by page. If there are some changes he wants, I’ll do them right there in the office. It very seldom happens. There’ll be an occasional change where he’ll want me to move a balloon from one point to another, but as far as the artwork goes, there are very few changes needed.

JP: Do you have any special method of laying out a page?

SCHAFFENBERGER: Generally, I will draw a small, quick thumbnail sketch to work out the best layout for a page. This gives me a general overall view of what the page will look like when completed.

JP: Is there any particular remembrance or humorous story during your long career in comics that you’d like to share?

SCHAFFENBERGER: Strangely enough, comics are not a very funny business. However, my wife’s favorite story concerns my son when he was about 12 years old. He was nuts about cars, and he had been helping an older teenage youngster work on his car several streets away from our home, and during their conversations my son had mentioned to the teen that I drew super-heroes for a living. One warm, windy summer afternoon, I was up on the roof of our two-story house checking the chimney. My shirt was opened and billowing out behind me just as the teenager drove my son up to the front of our house. The teen looked at me for a while with his mouth open, then turned to my son and said, “Does your father FCA editor P.C. Hamerlinck with Kurt in always stand up there Woodbridge, NJ, Memorial Day, 1995. like that?!”

A drawing done especially for Bill Wilson’s fanzine The Collector #29.

[Art ©2002 estate of Kurt Schaffenberger; Captain Marvel, Lois Lane, and Superman TM & ©2002 DC Comics.]

Now—FLIP US for more John Buscema!

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STAN LEE gets roasted by SCHWARTZ, CLAREMONT, DAVID, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, and SHOOTER, ORDWAY and THOMAS on INFINITY, INC., IRWIN HASEN interview, unseen H.G. PETER Wonder Woman pages, the original Captain Marvel and Human Torch teamup, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, “Mr. Monster”, plus plenty of rare and unpublished art!

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Unseen ALEX ROSS and JERRY ORDWAY Shazam! art, 1953 interview with OTTO BINDER, the SUPERMAN/CAPTAIN MARVEL LAWSUIT, GIL KANE on The Golden Age of TIMELY COMICS, FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, and SCHAFFENBERGER, rare art by AYERS, BERG, BURNLEY, DITKO, RICO, SCHOMBURG, MARIE SEVERIN and more! ALEX ROSS & BILL EVERETT covers!

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Interviews with KUBERT, SHELLY MOLDOFF, and HARRY LAMPERT, BOB KANIGHER, life and times of GARDNER FOX, ROY THOMAS remembers GIL KANE, a history of Flash Comics, MOEBIUS Silver Surfer sketches, MR. MONSTER, FCA section with SWAYZE, BECK, and SCHAFFENBERGER, and lots more! Dual color covers by JOE KUBERT!

Celebrating the JSA, with interviews with MART NODELL, SHELLY MAYER, GEORGE ROUSSOS, BILL BLACK, and GIL KANE, unpublished H.G. PETER Wonder Woman art, GARDNER FOX, an FCA section with MARC SWAYZE, C.C. BECK, WENDELL CROWLEY, and more! Wraparound cover

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GENE COLAN interview, 1940s books on comics by STAN LEE and ROBERT KANIGHER, AYERS, SEVERIN, and ROY THOMAS on Sgt. Fury, ROY on All-Star Squadron’s Golden Age roots, FCA section with SWAYZE, BECK, and WILLIAM WOOLFOLK, JOE SIMON interview, a definitive look at MAC RABOY’S work, and more! Covers by COLAN and RABOY!

Companion to ALL-STAR COMPANION book, with a JULIE SCHWARTZ interview, guide to JLA-JSA TEAMUPS, origins of the ALL-STAR SQUADRON, FCA section with MARC SWAYZE, C.C. BECK (on his 1970s DC conflicts), DAVE BERG, BOB ROGERS, more on MAC RABOY from his son, MR. MONSTER, and more! RICH BUCKLER and C.C. BECK covers!

WALLY WOOD biography, DAN ADKINS & BILL PEARSON on Wood, TOR section with 1963 JOE KUBERT interview, ROY THOMAS on creating the ALL-STAR SQUADRON and its 1940s forebears, FCA section with SWAYZE & BECK, MR. MONSTER, JERRY ORDWAY on Shazam!, JERRY DeFUCCIO on the Golden Age, CHIC STONE remembered! ADKINS and KUBERT covers!

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JOHN ROMITA interview by ROY THOMAS (with unseen art), Roy’s PROPOSED DREAM PROJECTS that never got published (with a host of great artists), MR. MONSTER on WAYNE BORING’S life after Superman, The Golden Age of Comic Fandom Panel, FCA section with GEORGE TUSKA, C.C. BECK, MARC SWAYZE, BILL MORRISON, & more! ROMITA and GIORDANO covers!

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1974 panel with JOE SIMON, STAN LEE, FRANK ROBBINS, and ROY THOMAS, ROY and JOHN BUSCEMA on Avengers, 1964 STAN LEE interview, tributes to DON HECK, JOHNNY CRAIG, and GRAY MORROW, Timely alums DAVID GANTZ and DANIEL KEYES, and FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, and MIKE MANLEY! Covers by MURPHY ANDERSON and JOE SIMON!

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JOHN BUSCEMA ISSUE! BUSCEMA interview (with UNSEEN ART), reminiscences by SAL BUSCEMA, STAN LEE, INFANTINO, KUBERT, ORDWAY, FLO STEINBERG, and HERB TRIMPE, ROY THOMAS on 35 years with BIG JOHN, FCA tribute to KURT SCHAFFENBERGER, plus C.C. BECK and MARC SWAYZE, and MR. MONSTER revisits WALLY WOOD! Two BUSCEMA covers!

MARVEL BULLPEN REUNION (BUSCEMA, COLAN, ROMITA, and SEVERIN), memories of the JOHN BUSCEMA SCHOOL, FCA with ALEX ROSS, C.C. BECK, and MARC SWAYZE, tribute to CHAD GROTHKOPF, MR. MONSTER on EC COMICS with art by KURTZMAN, DAVIS, and WOOD, and more! Covers by ALEX ROSS and MARIE SEVERIN & RAMONA FRADON!

Spotlighting LOU FINE (with an overview of his career, and interviews with family members), interview with MURPHY ANDERSON about Fine, ALEX TOTH on Fine, ARNOLD DRAKE interviewed about DEADMAN and DOOM PATROL, MR. MONSTER on the non-EC work of JACK DAVIS and GEORGE EVANS, FINE and LUIS DOMINGUEZ COVERS, FCA and more!

STAN GOLDBERG interview, secrets of ‘40s Timely, art by KIRBY, DITKO, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, MANEELY, EVERETT, BURGOS, and DeCARLO, spotlight on sci-fi fanzine XERO with the LUPOFFS, OTTO BINDER, DON THOMPSON, ROY THOMAS, BILL SCHELLY, and ROGER EBERT, FCA, and MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD ghosting Flash Gordon! KIRBY and SWAYZE covers!

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Spotlight on DICK SPRANG (profile and interview) with unseen art, rare Batman art

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Timely/Marvel art by SEKOWSKY, SHORES, EVERETT, and BURGOS, secrets behind THE INVADERS with ROY THOMAS, KIRBY, GIL KANE, & ROBBINS, BOB DESCHAMPS interviewed, 1965 NY Comics Con review, panel with FINGER, BINDER, FOX and WEISINGER, MR. MONSTER, FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, RABOY, SCHAFFENBERGER, and more! MILGROM and SCHELLY covers!

The IGER “SHOP” examined, with art by EISNER, FINE, ANDERSON, CRANDALL, BAKER, MESKIN, CARDY, EVANS, BOB KANE, and TUSKA, “SHEENA” section with art by DAVE STEVENS & FRANK BRUNNER, ROY THOMAS on JSA & All-Star Squadron, MR. MONSTER on GARDNER FOX, UNSEEN 1946 ALL-STAR ART, FCA, and more!

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BILL EVERETT and JOE KUBERT interviewed

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Unseen art from TWO “LOST” 1940s H.G. PETER WONDER WOMAN STORIES (and analysis of “CHARLES MOULTON” scripts), BOB FUJITANI and JOHN ROSENBERGER, VICTOR GORELICK discusses Archie and The Mighty Crusaders, with art by MORROW, BUCKLER, and REINMAN, FCA, and MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD! H.G. PETER and BOB FUJITANI covers!

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ALTER EGO #26

ALTER EGO #27

ALTER EGO #28

X-MEN interviews with STAN LEE, DAVE COCKRUM, CHRIS CLAREMONT, ARNOLD DRAKE, JIM SHOOTER, ROY THOMAS, and LEN WEIN, MORT MESKIN profiled by his sons and ALEX TOTH, rare art by JERRY ROBINSON, FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, and WILLIAM WOOLFOLK, MR. MONSTER, and BILL SCHELLY on Comics Fandom! MESKIN and COCKRUM covers!

JACK COLE remembered by ALEX TOTH, interview with brother DICK COLE and his PLAYBOY colleagues, CHRIS CLAREMONT on the X-Men (with more never-seen art by DAVE COCKRUM), ROY THOMAS on AllStar Squadron #1 and its ‘40s roots (with art

by ORDWAY, BUCKLER, MESKIN and MOLDOFF), FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more! Covers by TOTH and SCHELLY!

JOE SINNOTT interview, IRWIN DONENFELD interview by EVANIER & SCHWARTZ, art by SHUSTER, INFANTINO, ANDERSON, and SWAN, MARK WAID analyzes the first Kryptonite story, JERRY SIEGEL and HARRY DONENFELD, JERRY IGER Shop update, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, and FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, and KEN BALD! Covers by SINNOTT and WAYNE BORING!

VIN SULLIVAN interview about the early DC days with art by SHUSTER, MOLDOFF, FLESSEL, GUARDINEER, and BURNLEY, MR. MONSTER’s “Lost” KIRBY HULK covers, 1948 NEW YORK COMIC CON with STAN LEE, SIMON & KIRBY, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, HARVEY KURTZMAN, and ROY THOMAS, ALEX TOTH, FCA, and more! Covers by JACK BURNLEY and JACK KIRBY!

Spotlight on JOE MANEELY, with a career overview, remembrance by his daughter and tons of art, Timely/Atlas/Marvel art by ROMITA, EVERETT, SEVERIN, SHORES, KIRBY, and DITKO, STAN LEE on Maneely, LEE AMES interview, FCA with SWAYZE, ISIS, and STEVE SKEATES, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Covers by JOE MANEELY and DON NEWTON!

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17

ALTER EGO #29

ALTER EGO #30

ALTER EGO #31

ALTER EGO #32

ALTER EGO #33

FRANK BRUNNER interview, BILL EVERETT’S Venus examined by TRINA ROBBINS, Classics Illustrated “What ifs”, LEE/KIRBY/DITKO Marvel prototypes, JOE MANEELY’s monsters, BILL FRACCIO interview, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, JOHN BENSON on EC, The Heap by ERNIE SCHROEDER, and FCA! Covers by FRANK BRUNNER and PETE VON SHOLLY!

ALEX ROSS on his love for the JLA, BLACKHAWK/JLA artist DICK DILLIN, the super-heroes of 1940s-1980s France (with art by STEVE RUDE, STEVE BISSETTE, LADRÖNN, and NEAL ADAMS), KIM AAMODT & WALTER GEIER on writing for SIMON & KIRBY, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, and FCA! Covers by ALEX ROSS and STEVE RUDE!

DICK AYERS on his 1950s and ‘60s work (with tons of Marvel Bullpen art), HARLAN ELLISON’s Marvel Age work examined (with art by BUCKLER, SAL BUSCEMA, and TRIMPE), STAN LEE’S Marvel Prototypes (with art by KIRBY and DITKO), Christmas cards from comics greats, MR. MONSTER, & FCA with SWAYZE and SCHAFFENBERGER! Covers by DICK AYERS and FRED RAY!

Timely artists ALLEN BELLMAN and SAM BURLOCKOFF interviewed, MART NODELL on his Timely years, rare art by BURGOS, EVERETT, and SHORES, MIKE GOLD on the Silver Age (with art by SIMON & KIRBY, SWAN, INFANTINO, KANE, and more), FCA, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom, and more!

Covers by DICK GIORDANO and GIL KANE!

Symposium on MIKE SEKOWSKY by MARK EVANIER, SCOTT SHAW!, et al., with art

by ANDERSON, INFANTINO, and others, PAT (MRS. MIKE) SEKOWSKY and inker VALERIE BARCLAY interviewed, FCA, 1950s Captain Marvel parody by ANDRU and ESPOSITO, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY, MR. MONSTER, and more! Covers by FRENZ/SINNOTT and FRENZ/BUSCEMA!

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ALTER EGO #34

ALTER EGO #35

ALTER EGO #36

ALTER EGO #37

ALTER EGO #38

Quality Comics interviews with ALEX KOTZKY, AL GRENET, CHUCK CUIDERA, & DICK ARNOLD (son of BUSY ARNOLD), art by COLE, EISNER, FINE, WARD, DILLIN, and KANE, MICHELLE NOLAN on Blackhawk’s jump to DC, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on HARVEY KURTZMAN, & ALEX TOTH on REED CRANDALL! Covers by REED CRANDALL & CHARLES NICHOLAS!

Covers by JOHN ROMITA and AL JAFFEE! LEE, ROMITA, AYERS, HEATH, & THOMAS on the 1953-55 Timely super-hero revival, with rare art by ROMITA, AYERS, BURGOS, HEATH, EVERETT, LAWRENCE, & POWELL, AL JAFFEE on the 1940s Timely Bullpen (and MAD), FCA, ALEX TOTH on comic art, MR. MONSTER on unpublished 1950s covers, and more!

JOE SIMON on SIMON & KIRBY, CARL BURGOS, and LLOYD JACQUET, JOHN BELL on World War II Canadian heroes, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on Canadian origins of MR. MONSTER, tributes to BOB DESCHAMPS, DON LAWRENCE, & GEORGE WOODBRIDGE, FCA, ALEX TOTH, and ELMER WEXLER interview! Covers by SIMON and GILBERT & RONN SUTTON!

WILL MURRAY on the 1940 Superman “KMetal” story & PHILIP WYLIE’s GLADIATOR (with art by SHUSTER, SWAN, ADAMS, and BORING), FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, and DON NEWTON, SY BARRY interview, art by TOTH, MESKIN, INFANTINO, and ANDERSON, and MICHAEL T. GILBERT interviews AL FELDSTEIN on EC and RAY BRADBURY! Covers by C.C. BECK and WAYNE BORING!

JULIE SCHWARTZ TRIBUTE with HARLAN ELLISON, INFANTINO, ANDERSON, TOTH, KUBERT, GIELLA, GIORDANO, CARDY, LEVITZ, STAN LEE, WOLFMAN, EVANIER, & ROY THOMAS, never-seen interviews with Julie, FCA with BECK, SCHAFFENBERGER, NEWTON, COCKRUM, OKSNER, FRADON, SWAYZE, and JACKSON BOSTWICK! Covers by INFANTINO and IRWIN HASEN!

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ALTER EGO #39

ALTER EGO #40

ALTER EGO #41

ALTER EGO #42

ALTER EGO #43

Full-issue spotlight on JERRY ROBINSON, with an interview on being BOB KANE’s Batman “ghost”, creating the JOKER and ROBIN, working on VIGILANTE, GREEN HORNET, and ATOMAN, plus never-seen art by Jerry, MESKIN, ROUSSOS, RAY, KIRBY, SPRANG, DITKO, and PARIS! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER on AL FELDSTEIN Part 2, and more! Two JERRY ROBINSON covers!

RUSS HEATH and GIL KANE interviews (with tons of unseen art), the JULIE SCHWARTZ Memorial Service with ELLISON, MOORE, GAIMAN, HASEN, O’NEIL, and LEVITZ, art by INFANTINO, ANDERSON, TOTH, NOVICK, DILLIN, SEKOWSKY, KUBERT, GIELLA, ARAGONÉS, FCA, MR. MONSTER and AL FELDSTEIN Part 3, and more! Covers by GIL KANE & RUSS HEATH!

Halloween issue! BERNIE WRIGHTSON on his 1970s FRANKENSTEIN, DICK BRIEFER’S monster, the campy 1960s Frankie, art by KALUTA, BAILY, MANEELY, PLOOG, KUBERT, BRUNNER, BORING, OKSNER, TUSKA, CRANDALL, and SUTTON, FCA #100, EMILIO SQUEGLIO interview, ALEX TOTH, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more!

Covers by WRIGHTSON & MARC SWAYZE!

A celebration of DON HECK, WERNER ROTH, and PAUL REINMAN, rare art by KIRBY, DITKO, and AYERS, Hillman and Ziff-Davis remembered by Heap artist ERNIE SCHROEDER, HERB ROGOFF, and WALTER LITTMAN, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and ALEX TOTH! Covers by FASTNER & LARSON and ERNIE SCHROEDER!

Yuletide art by WOOD, SINNOTT, CARDY, BRUNNER, TOTH, NODELL, and others, interviews with Golden Age artists TOM GILL (Lone Ranger) and MORRIS WEISS, exploring 1960s Mexican comics, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and C.C. BECK, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom, and more! Flip covers by GEORGE TUSKA and DAVE STEVENS!

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18

ALTER EGO #44

ALTER EGO #45

ALTER EGO #46

ALTER EGO #47

ALTER EGO #48

JSA/All-Star Squadron/Infinity Inc. special!

Interviews with KUBERT, HASEN, ANDERSON, ORDWAY, BUCKLER, THOMAS, 1940s Atom writer ARTHUR ADLER, art by TOTH, SEKOWSKY, HASEN, MACHLAN, OKSNER, and INFANTINO, FCA, and MR. MONSTER’S “I Like Ike!” cartoons by BOB KANE, INFANTINO, OKSNER, and BIRO! Wraparound ORDWAY cover!

Interviews with Sandman artist CREIG FLESSEL and ‘40s creator BERT CHRISTMAN, MICHAEL CHABON on researching his Pulitzer-winning novel Kavalier & Clay, art

by EISNER, KANE, KIRBY, and AYERS, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and C.C. BECK, OTTO BINDER’s “lost” Jon Jarl story, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom, and ALEX TOTH! CREIG FLESSEL cover!

The VERY BEST of the 1960s-70s ALTER EGO! 1969 BILL EVERETT interview, art by BURGOS, GUSTAVSON, SIMON & KIRBY, and others, 1960s gems by DITKO, E. NELSON BRIDWELL, JERRY BAILS, and ROY THOMAS, LOU GLANZMAN interview, tributes to IRV NOVICK and CHRIS REEVE, MR. MONSTER, FCA, TOTH, and more!

Cover by EVERETT and MARIE SEVERIN!

Spotlights MATT BAKER, Golden Age cheesecake artist of PHANTOM LADY! Career overview, interviews with BAKER’s half-brother and nephew, art from AL FELDSTEIN, VINCE COLLETTA, ARTHUR PEDDY, JACK KAMEN and others, FCA, BILL SCHELLY talks to comic-book-seller (and fan) BUD PLANT, MR. MONSTER on missing AL WILLIAMSON art, and ALEX TOTH!

WILL EISNER discusses Eisner & Iger’s Shop and BUSY ARNOLD’s ‘40s Quality Comics, art by FINE, CRANDALL, COLE, POWELL, and CARDY, EISNER tributes by STAN LEE, GENE COLAN, & others, interviews with ‘40s Quality artist VERN HENKEL and CHUCK MAZOUJIAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER on EISNER’s Wonder Man, ALEX TOTH, and more with BUD PLANT! EISNER cover!

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ALTER EGO #49

ALTER EGO #50

ALTER EGO #51

ALTER EGO #52

ALTER EGO #53

Spotlights CARL BURGOS! Interview with daughter SUE BURGOS, art by BURGOS, BILL EVERETT, MIKE SEKOWSKY, ED ASCHE, and DICK AYERS, unused 1941 Timely cover layouts, the 1957 Atlas Implosion examined, MANNY STALLMAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER and more! New cover by MARK SPARACIO, from an unused 1941 layout by CARL BURGOS!

ROY THOMAS covers his 40-YEAR career in comics (AVENGERS, X-MEN, CONAN, ALL-STAR SQUADRON, INFINITY INC.), with ADAMS, BUSCEMA, COLAN, DITKO, GIL KANE, KIRBY, STAN LEE, ORDWAY, PÉREZ, ROMITA, and many others! Also FCA, & MR. MONSTER on ROY’s letters to GARDNER FOX! Flip-covers by BUSCEMA/ KIRBY/ALCALA and JERRY ORDWAY!

Golden Age Batman artist/BOB KANE ghost LEW SAYRE SCHWARTZ interviewed, Batman art by JERRY ROBINSON, DICK SPRANG, SHELDON MOLDOFF, WIN MORTIMER, JIM MOONEY, and others, the Golden and Silver Ages of AUSTRALIAN SUPER-HEROES, Mad artist DAVE BERG interviewed, FCA, MR. MONSTER on WILL EISNER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

JOE GIELLA on the Silver Age at DC, the Golden Age at Marvel, and JULIE SCHWARTZ, with rare art by INFANTINO, GIL KANE, SEKOWSKY, SWAN, DILLIN, MOLDOFF, GIACOIA, SCHAFFENBERGER, and others, JAY SCOTT PIKE on STAN LEE and CHARLES BIRO, MARTIN THALL interview, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more! GIELLA cover!

GIORDANO and THOMAS on STOKER’S DRACULA, never-seen DICK BRIEFER Frankenstein strip, MIKE ESPOSITO on his work with ROSS ANDRU, art by COLAN, WRIGHTSON, MIGNOLA, BRUNNER, BISSETTE, KALUTA, HEATH, MANEELY, EVERETT, DITKO, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, BILL SCHELLY, ALEX TOTH, and MR. MONSTER! Cover by GIORDANO!

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ALTER EGO #54

ALTER EGO #55

ALTER EGO #56

ALTER EGO #57

ALTER EGO #58

MIKE ESPOSITO on DC and Marvel, ROBERT KANIGHER on the creation of Metal Men and Sgt. Rock (with comments

by JOE KUBERT and BOB HANEY), art by ANDRU, INFANTINO, KIRBY, SEVERIN, WINDSOR-SMITH, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, TRIMPE, GIL KANE, and others, plus FCA, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY, MR. MONSTER, and more! ESPOSITO cover!

JACK and OTTO BINDER, KEN BALD, VIC DOWD, and BOB BOYAJIAN interviewed, FCA with SWAYZE and EMILIO SQUEGLIO, rare art by BECK, WARD, & SCHAFFENBERGER, Christmas Cards from CRANDALL, SINNOTT, HEATH, MOONEY, and CARDY, 1943 Pin-Up Calendar (with ‘40s movie stars as superheroines), ALEX TOTH, more!

ALEX ROSS and ALEX WRIGHT covers!

Interviews with Superman creators SIEGEL & SHUSTER, Golden/Silver Age DC production guru JACK ADLER interviewed, NEAL ADAMS and radio/TV iconoclast (and comics fan) HOWARD STERN on Adler and his amazing career, art by CURT SWAN, WAYNE BORING, and AL PLASTINO, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, and more! NEAL ADAMS cover!

Issue-by-issue index of Timely/Atlas superhero stories by MICHELLE NOLAN, art by SIMON & KIRBY, EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, AYERS, HEATH, SEKOWSKY, SHORES, SCHOMBURG, MANEELY, and SEVERIN, GENE COLAN and ALLEN BELLMAN on 1940s Timely super-heroes, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and BILL SCHELLY! Cover

by JACK KIRBY and PETE VON SHOLLY!

GERRY CONWAY and ROY THOMAS on their ‘80s screenplay for “The X-Men Movie That Never Was!”with art by COCKRUM, ADAMS, BUSCEMA, BYRNE, GIL KANE, KIRBY, HECK, and LIEBER, Atlas artist VIC CARRABOTTA interview, ALLEN BELLMAN on 1940s Timely bullpen, FCA, 1966 panel on 1950s EC Comics, and MR. MONSTER! MARK SPARACIO/GIL KANE cover!

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19

ALTER EGO #59

ALTER EGO #60

ALTER EGO #61

ALTER EGO #62

ALTER EGO #63

Special issue on Batman and Superman in the Golden and Silver Ages, featuring a new ARTHUR SUYDAM interview, NEAL ADAMS on DC in the 1960s-1970s, SHELLY MOLDOFF, AL PLASTINO, Golden Age artist FRAN (Doll Man) MATERA interviewed, SIEGEL & SHUSTER, RUSS MANNING, FCA, MR. MONSTER, SUYDAM cover, and more!

Celebrates 50 years since SHOWCASE #4!

FLASH interviews with SCHWARTZ, KANIGHER, INFANTINO, KUBERT, and BROOME, Golden Age artist TONY DiPRETA, 1966 panel with NORDLING, BINDER, and LARRY IVIE, FCA, MR. MONSTER, never-before-published color Flash cover by CARMINE INFANTINO, and more!

History of the AMERICAN COMICS GROUP (1946 to 1967)—including its roots in the Golden Age SANGOR ART SHOP and STANDARD/NEDOR comics! Art by MESKIN, ROBINSON, WILLIAMSON, FRAZETTA, SCHAFFENBERGER, & BUSCEMA, ACG writer/editor RICHARD HUGHES, plus AL HARTLEY interviewed, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more! GIORDANO cover!

HAPPY HAUNTED HALLOWEEN ISSUE, featuring: MIKE PLOOG and RUDY PALAIS on their horror-comics work! AL WILLIAMSON on his work for the American Comics Group—plus more on ACG horror comics! Rare DICK BRIEFER Frankenstein strips! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY on the 1966 KalerCon, a new PLOOG cover—and more!

Tribute to ALEX TOTH! Never-before-seen interview with tons of TOTH art, including sketches he sent to friends! Articles about Toth by TERRY AUSTIN, JIM AMASH, SY BARRY, JOE KUBERT, LOU SAYRE SCHWARTZ, IRWIN HASEN, JOHN WORKMAN, and others! Plus illustrated Christmas cards by comics pros, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

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ALTER EGO #64

ALTER EGO #65

ALTER EGO #66

ALTER EGO #67

ALTER EGO #68

Fawcett Favorites! Issue-by-issue analysis of BINDER & BECK’s 1943-45 “The Monster Society of Evil!” serial, double-size FCA section with MARC SWAYZE, EMILIO SQUEGLIO, C.C. BECK, MAC RABOY, and others! Interview with MARTIN FILCHOCK, Golden Age artist for Centaur Comics! Plus MR. MONSTER, DON NEWTON cover, plus a FREE 1943 MARVEL CALENDAR!

NICK CARDY interviewed on his Golden & Silver Age work (with CARDY art), plus art

by WILL EISNER, NEAL ADAMS, CARMINE INFANTINO, JIM APARO, RAMONA FRADON, CURT SWAN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, and others, tributes to ERNIE SCHROEDER and DAVE COCKRUM, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, new CARDY COVER, and more!

Spotlight on BOB POWELL, the artist who drew Daredevil, Sub-Mariner, Sheena, The Avenger, The Hulk, Giant-Man, and others, plus art by WALLY WOOD, HOWARD NOSTRAND, DICK AYERS, SIMON & KIRBY, MARTIN GOODMAN’s Magazine Management, and others! FCA with MARC SWAYZE and C.C. BECK, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, and more!

Interview with BOB OKSNER, artist of Supergirl, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Angel and the Ape, Leave It to Binky, Shazam!, and more, plus art and artifacts by SHELLY MAYER, IRWIN HASEN, LEE ELIAS, C.C. BECK, CARMINE INFANTINO, GIL KANE, JULIE SCHWARTZ, etc., FCA with MARC SWAYZE & C.C. BECK, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on BOB POWELL Part II, and more!

Tribute to JERRY BAILS—Father of Comics Fandom and founder of Alter Ego! Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ, plus art by JOE KUBERT, CARMINE INFANTINO, GIL KANE, DICK DILLIN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, JERRY ORDWAY, JOE STATON, JACK KIRBY, and others! Plus STEVE DITKO’s notes to STAN LEE for a 1965 Dr. Strange story! And ROY reveals secrets behind Marvel’s STAR WARS comic!

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ALTER EGO #69

ALTER EGO #70

ALTER EGO #71

ALTER EGO #72

ALTER EGO #73

PAUL NORRIS drew AQUAMAN first, in 1941—and RAMONA FRADON was the hero’s ultimate Golden Age artist. But both drew other things as well, and both are interviewed in this landmark issue—along with a pocket history of Aquaman! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more!

Cover painted by JOHN WATSON, from a breathtaking illo by RAMONA FRADON!

Spotlight on ROY THOMAS’ 1970s stint as Marvel’s editor-in-chief and major writer, plus art and reminiscences of GIL KANE, BOTH BUSCEMAS, ADAMS, ROMITA, CHAYKIN, BRUNNER, PLOOG, EVERETT, WRIGHTSON, PÉREZ, ROBBINS, BARRY SMITH, STAN LEE and others, FCA, MR. MONSTER, a new GENE COLAN cover, plus an homage to artist LILY RENÉE!

Represents THE GREAT CANADIAN COMIC BOOKS, the long out-of-print 1970s book

by MICHAEL HIRSH and PATRICK LOUBERT, with rare art of such heroes as Mr. Monster, Nelvana, Thunderfist, and others, plus new INVADERS art by JOHN BYRNE, MIKE GRELL, RON LIM, and more, plus a new cover by GEORGE FREEMAN, from a layout by JACK KIRBY!

SCOTT SHAW! and ROY THOMAS on the creation of Captain Carrot, art & artifacts

by RICK HOBERG, STAN GOLDBERG, MIKE SEKOWSKY, JOHN COSTANZA, E. NELSON BRIDWELL, CAROL LAY, and others, interview with DICK ROCKWELL, Golden Age artist and 36-year ghost artist on MILTON CANIFF’s Steve Canyon! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

FRANK BRUNNER on drawing Dr. Strange, interviews with CHARLES BIRO and his daughters, interview with publisher ROBERT GERSON about his 1970s horror comic Reality, art by BERNIE WRIGHTSON, GRAHAM INGELS, HOWARD CHAYKIN, MICHAEL W. KALUTA, JEFF JONES, and others FCA, MR. MONSTER, a FREE DRAW! #15! PREVIEW, and more!

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20

ALTER EGO #74

ALTER EGO #75

ALTER EGO #76

ALTER EGO #77

ALTER EGO #78

STAN LEE SPECIAL in honor of his 85th birthday, with a cover by JACK KIRBY, classic (and virtually unseen) interviews with Stan, tributes, and tons of rare and unseen art by KIRBY, ROMITA, the brothers BUSCEMA, DITKO, COLAN, HECK, AYERS, MANEELY, SHORES, EVERETT, BURGOS, KANE, the SEVERIN siblings—plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

FAWCETT FESTIVAL—with an ALEX ROSS cover! Double-size FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with P.C. HAMERLINCK on the many “Captains Marvel” over the years, unseen Shazam! proposal by ALEX ROSS, C.C. BECK on “The Death of a Legend!”, MARC SWAYZE, interview with Golden Age artist MARV LEVY, MR. MONSTER, and more!

JOE SIMON SPECIAL! In-depth SIMON interview by JIM AMASH, with neverbefore-revealed secrets behind the creation of Captain America, Fighting American, Stuntman, Adventures of The Fly, Sick magazine and more, art by JACK KIRBY, BOB POWELL, AL WILLIAMSON, JERRY GRANDENETTI, GEORGE TUSKA, and others, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

ST. JOHN ISSUE! Golden Age Tor cover by JOE KUBERT, KEN QUATTRO relates the full legend of St. John Publishing, art by KUBERT, NORMAN MAURER, MATT BAKER, LILY RENEE, BOB LUBBERS, RUBEN MOREIRA, RALPH MAYO, AL FAGO, special reminiscences of ARNOLD DRAKE, Golden Age artist TOM SAWYER interviewed, and more!

DAVE COCKRUM TRIBUTE! Great rare XMen cover, Cockrum tributes from contemporaries and colleagues, and an interview with PATY COCKRUM on Dave’s life and legacy on The Legion of Super-Heroes, The X-Men, Star-Jammers, & more! Plus an interview with 1950s Timely/Marvel artist MARION SITTON on his own incredible career and his Golden Age contemporaries!

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ALTER EGO #79

ALTER EGO #80

ALTER EGO #81

ALTER EGO #82

ALTER EGO #83

SUPERMAN & HIS CREATORS! New cover

by MICHAEL GOLDEN, exclusive and revealing interview with JOE SHUSTER’s sister, JEAN SHUSTER PEAVEY—LOU CAMERON interview—STEVE GERBER tribute—DWIGHT DECKER on the Man of Steel & Hitler’s Third Reich—plus art by WAYNE BORING, CURT SWAN, NEAL ADAMS, GIL KANE, and others!

SWORD-AND-SORCERY COMICS! Learn about Crom the Barbarian, Viking Prince, Nightmaster, Kull, Red Sonja, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, Beowulf, Warlord, Dagar the Invincible, and more, with art by FRAZETTA, SMITH, BUSCEMA, KANE, WRIGHTSON, PLOOG, THORNE, BRUNNER, LOU CAMERON Part II, and more! Cover by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

New FRANK BRUNNER Man-Thing cover, a look at the late-’60s horror comic WEB OF HORROR with early work by BRUNNER, WRIGHTSON, WINDSOR-SMITH, SIMONSON, & CHAYKIN, interview with comics & fine artist EVERETT RAYMOND KINTSLER, ROY THOMAS’ 1971 origin synopsis for the FIRST MAN-THING STORY, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

MLJ ISSUE! Golden Age MLJ index illustrated with vintage images of The Shield, Hangman, Mr. Justice, Black Hood,

by IRV NOVICK, JACK COLE, CHARLES BIRO, MORT MESKIN, GIL KANE, & others—behind a marvelous MLJ-heroes cover

by BOB McLEOD! Plus interviews with IRV NOVICK and JOE EDWARDS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

SWORD & SORCERY PART 2! Cover by ARTHUR SUYDAM, with a focus on Conan the Barbarian by ROY THOMAS and WILL MURRAY, a look at WALLY WOOD’s Marvel sword-&-sorcery work, the Black Knight examined, plus JOE EDWARDS interview Part 2, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #84

ALTER EGO #85

ALTER EGO #86

ALTER EGO #87

ALTER EGO #88

Unseen JIM APARO cover, STEVE SKEATES discusses his early comics work, art & artifacts by ADKINS, APARO, ARAGONÉS, BOYETTE, DITKO, GIORDANO, KANE, KELLER, MORISI, ORLANDO, SEKOWSKY, STONE, THOMAS, WOOD, and the great WARREN SAVIN! Plus writer CHARLES SINCLAIR on his partnership with Batman co-creator BILL FINGER, FCA, and more!

Captain Marvel and Superman’s battles explored (in cosmic space, candy stores, and in court), RICH BUCKLER on Captain Marvel, plus an in-depth interview with Golden Age great LILY RENÉE, overview of CENTAUR COMICS (home of BILL EVERETT’s Amazing-Man and others), FCA, MR. MONSTER, new RICH BUCKLER cover, and more!

Spotlighting the Frantic Four-Color MAD WANNABES of 1953-55 that copied HARVEY KURTZMAN’S EC smash (see Captain Marble, Mighty Moose, Drag-ula, Prince Scallion, and more) with art by SIMON & KIRBY, KUBERT & MAURER, ANDRU & ESPOSITO, EVERETT, COLAN, and many others, plus Part 1 of a talk with Golden/ Silver Age artist FRANK BOLLE, and more!

The sensational 1954-1963 saga of Great Britain’s MARVELMAN (decades before he metamorphosed into Miracleman), plus an interview with writer/artist/co-creator MICK ANGLO, and rare Marvelman/ Miracleman work by ALAN DAVIS, ALAN MOORE, a new RICK VEITCH cover, plus FRANK BOLLE, Part 2, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

First-ever in-depth look at National/DC’s founder MAJOR MALCOLM WHEELERNICHOLSON, and pioneers WHITNEY ELLSWORTH and CREIG FLESSEL, with rare art and artifacts by SIEGEL & SHUSTER, BOB KANE, CURT SWAN, GARDNER FOX, SHELDON MOLDOFF, and others, focus on DC advisor DR. LAURETTA BENDER, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

21

ALTER EGO #89

ALTER EGO #90

ALTER EGO #91

ALTER EGO #92

ALTER EGO #93

HARVEY COMICS’ PRE-CODE HORROR MAGS OF THE 1950s! Interviews with SID JACOBSON, WARREN KREMER, and HOWARD NOSTRAND, plus Harvey artist KEN SELIG talks to JIM AMASH! MR. MONSTER presents the wit and wisdom (and worse) of DR. FREDRIC WERTHAM, plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with C.C. BECK & MARC SWAYZE, & more!

SIMON & KIRBY and NOSTRAND cover!

BIG MARVEL ISSUE! Salutes to legends SINNOTT and AYERS—plus STAN LEE, TUSKA, EVERETT, MARTIN GOODMAN, and others! A look at the “Marvel SuperHeroes” TV animation of 1966! 1940s Timely writer and editor LEON LAZARUS interviewed by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, the 1960s fandom creations of STEVE GERBER, and more! JACK KIRBY holiday cover!

FAWCETT FESTIVAL! Big FCA section with Golden Age artists MARC SWAYZE & EMILIO SQUEGLIO! Plus JERRY ORDWAY on researching The Power of Shazam, Part II of “The MAD Four-Color Wannabes of the 1950s,” more on DR. LAURETTA BENDER and the teenage creations of STEVE GERBER, artist JACK KATZ spills Golden Age secrets to JIM AMASH, and more!

New cover by ORDWAY and SQUEGLIO!

SWORD-AND-SORCERY, PART 3! DC’s Sword of Sorcery by O’NEIL, CHAYKIN, & SIMONSON and Claw by MICHELINIE & CHAN, Hercules by GLANZMAN, Dagar by GLUT & SANTOS, Marvel S&S art by BUSCEMA, CHAN, KAYANAN, WRIGHTSON, et al., and JACK KATZ on his classic First Kingdom! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER’s fan-creations (part 3), and more! Cover by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “EarthTwo—1961 to 1985!” with rare art by INFANTINO, GIL KANE, ANDERSON, DELBO, ANDRU, BUCKLER, APARO, GRANDENETTI, and DILLIN, interview with Golden/Silver Age DC editor GEORGE KASHDAN, plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and a new cover by INFANTINO and AMASH!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

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

ALTER EGO #94

ALTER EGO #95

ALTER EGO #96

ALTER EGO #97

ALTER EGO #98

“Earth-Two Companion, Part II!” More on the 1963-1985 series that changed comics forever! The Huntress, Power Girl, Dr. Fate, Freedom Fighters, and more, with art by ADAMS, APARO, AYERS, BUCKLER, GIFFEN, INFANTINO, KANE, NOVICK, SCHAFFENBERGER, SIMONSON, STATON, SWAN, TUSKA, our GEORGE KASHDAN interview Part 2, FCA, and more! STATON & GIORDANO cover!

Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH madcap parody mag from 1967-69, examined with rare art & artifacts by ANDRU, COLAN, BUSCEMA, DRAKE, EVERETT, FRIEDRICH, KIRBY, LEE, the SEVERIN siblings, SPRINGER, SUTTON, THOMAS, TRIMPE, and more, GEORGE KASHDAN interview conclusion, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, and more! Cover by MARIE SEVERIN!

Focus on Archie’s 1960s MIGHTY CRUSADERS, with vintage art and artifacts

by JERRY SIEGEL, PAUL REINMAN, SIMON & KIRBY, JOHN ROSENBERGER, tributes to the Mighty Crusaders by BOB FUJITANE, GEORGE TUSKA, BOB LAYTON, and others! Interview with MELL LAZARUS, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more! Cover

by MIKE MACHLAN!

The NON-EC HORROR COMICS OF THE 1950s! From Menace and House of Mystery to The Thing!, we present vintage art and artifacts by EVERETT, BRIEFER, DITKO, MANEELY, COLAN , MESKIN, MOLDOFF, HEATH, POWELL, COLE, SIMON & KIRBY, FUJITANI, and others, plus FCA , MR. MONSTER and more, behind a creepy, eerie cover by BILL EVERETT!

Spotlight on Superman’s first editor WHITNEY ELLSWORTH, longtime Kryptoeditor MORT WEISINGER remembered by his daughter, an interview with Superman writer ALVIN SCHWARTZ, tributes to FRANK FRAZETTA and AL WILLIAMSON, art by JOE SHUSTER, WAYNE BORING, CURT SWAN, and NEAL ADAMS, plus MR. MONSTER, FCA, and a new cover by JERRY ORDWAY!

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

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

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

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

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

ALTER EGO: CENTENNIAL (AE #100)

ALTER EGO #99

GEORGE TUSKA showcase issue on his career at Lev Gleason, Marvel, and in comics strips through the early 1970s—CRIME DOES NOT PAY, BUCK ROGERS, IRON MAN, AVENGERS, HERO FOR HIRE, & more! Plus interviews with Golden Age artist BILL BOSSERT and fan-artist RUDY FRANKE, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and more!

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

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ALTER EGO: CENTENNIAL is a celebration of 100 issues, and 50 years, of ALTER EGO, Roy Thomas’ legendary super-hero fanzine. It’s a double-size triple-threat BOOK, with twice as many pages as the regular magazine, plus special features just for this anniversary edition! Behind a RICH BUCKLER/JERRY ORDWAY JSA cover, ALTER EGO celebrates its 100th issue and the 50th anniversary of A/E (Vol. 1) #1 in 1961—as ROY THOMAS is interviewed by JIM AMASH about the 1980s at DC! Learn secrets behind ALL-STAR SQUADRON—INFINITY, INC.—ARAK, SON OF THUNDER—CAPTAIN CARROT—JONNI THUNDER, a.k.a. THUNDERBOLT— YOUNG ALL-STARS—SHAZAM!—RING OF THE NIBELUNG—and more! With rare art and artifacts

by GEORGE PÉREZ, TODD McFARLANE, RICH BUCKLER, JERRY ORDWAY, MIKE MACHLAN, GIL KANE, GENE COLAN, DICK GIORDANO, ALFREDO ALCALA, TONY DEZUNIGA, ERNIE COLÓN, STAN GOLDBERG, SCOTT SHAW!, ROSS ANDRU, and many more! Plus special anniversary editions of Alter Ego staples MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA (FCA)—and ALEX WRIGHT’s amazing color collection of 1940s DC pinup babes! Edited by ROY THOMAS. (NOTE: This book takes the place of ALTER EGO #100, and counts as TWO issues toward your subscription.)

(160-page trade paperback with COLOR) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • ISBN: 9781605490311 Diamond Order Code: JAN111351

ALTER EGO #101

Fox Comics of the 1940s with art by FINE, BAKER, SIMON, KIRBY, TUSKA, FLETCHER HANKS, ALEX BLUM, and others!

“Superman vs. Wonder Man” starring EISNER, IGER, SIEGEL, LIEBERSON, MAYER, DONENFELD, and VICTOR FOX! Plus, Part I of an interview with JACK MENDELSOHN, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and new cover by Marvel artist DAVE WILLIAMS!

NEW!

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

ALTER EGO #102

ALTER EGO #103

ALTER EGO #104

ALTER EGO: THE CBA COLLECTION

Spotlight on Green Lantern creators MART NODELL and BILL FINGER in the 1940s, and JOHN BROOME, GIL KANE, and JULIUS SCHWARTZ in 1959! Rare GL artwork by INFANTINO, REINMAN, HASEN, NEAL ADAMS, and others! Plus JACK MENDELSOHN Part II, FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and new cover by GIL KANE & TERRY AUSTIN, and MART NODELL!

The early career of comics writer STEVE ENGLEHART: Defenders, Captain America, Master of Kung Fu, The Beast, Mantis, and more, with rare art and artifacts by SAL BUSCEMA, STARLIN, SUTTON, HECK, BROWN, and others. Plus, JIM AMASH interviews early artist GEORGE MANDEL (Captain Midnight, The Woman in Red, Blue Bolt, Black Marvel, etc.), FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and more!

Celebrates the 50th anniversary of FANTASTIC FOUR #1 and the birth of Marvel Comics! New, never-before-published STAN LEE interview, art and artifacts

by KIRBY, DITKO, SINNOTT, AYERS, THOMAS, and secrets behind the Marvel Mythos! Also: JIM AMASH interviews 1940s Timely editor AL SULMAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and a new cover by FRENZ and SINNOTT!

Compiles the ALTER EGO flip-sides from COMIC BOOK ARTIST #1-5, plus 30 NEW PAGES of features & art! All-new rare and previously-unpublished art by JACK KIRBY, GIL KANE, JOE KUBERT, WALLY WOOD, FRANK ROBBINS, NEAL ADAMS, & others, ROY THOMAS on X-MEN, AVENGERS/ KREE-SKRULL WAR, INVADERS, and more! Cover by JOE KUBERT!

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

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

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

(160-page trade paperback) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $4.95

HUMOR MAGAZINES (BUNDLE ALL THREE FOR JUST $14.95)

ALTER EGO:

BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE

Collects the original 11 issues of JERRY BAILS and ROY THOMAS’ ALTER EGO fanzine (from 1961-78), with contributions from JACK KIRBY, STEVE DITKO, WALLY WOOD, JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, BILL EVERETT, RUSS MANNING, CURT SWAN, and others—and illustrated interviews with GIL KANE, BILL EVERETT, & JOE KUBERT! Plus major articles on the JUSTICE SOCIETY, the MARVEL FAMILY, the MLJ HEROES, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS and BILL SCHELLY with an introduction by JULIE SCHWARTZ. (192-page trade paperback) $21.95 ISBN: 9781893905887 Diamond Order Code: DEC073946

COMIC BOOK NERD

PETE VON SHOLLY’s side-splitting parody of the fan press, including our own mags!

Experience the magic(?) of such publications as WHIZZER, the COMICS URINAL, ULTRA EGO, COMICS BUYER’S GUISE, BAGGED ISSUE!, SCRAWL!, COMIC BOOK ARTISTE, and more, as we unabashedly poke fun at ourselves, our competitors, and you, our loyal readers! It’s a first issue, collector’s item, double-bag, slab-worthy, speculator’s special sure to rub even the thickest-skinned fanboy the wrong way!

(64-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 • (Digital Edition) $2.95

CRAZY HIP GROOVY GO-GO WAY OUT MONSTERS #29 & #32

PETE VON SHOLLY’s spoofs of monster mags will have you laughing your pants off— right after you soil them from sheer terror! This RETRO MONSTER MOVIE MAGAZINE is a laugh riot lampoon of those GREAT (and absolutely abominable) mags of the 1950s and ‘60s, replete with fake letters-to-the-editor, phony ads for worthless, wacky stuff, stills from imaginary films as bad as any that were really made, interviews with their “creators,” and much more! Relive your misspent youth (and misspent allowance) as you dig the hilarious photos, ads, and articles skewering OUR FAVORITE THINGS of the past! Get our first issue (#29!), the sequel (#32!), or both!

DIEDGITIIOTANSL E

BL AVAILA

(48-page magazines) $5.95 EACH • (Digital Editions) $1.95 EACH

These sold-out books are now available again in DIGITAL EDITIONS:

NEW!

MR. MONSTER, VOL. 0

TRUE BRIT

DICK GIORDANO: CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME

Collects hard-to-find Mr. Monster stories from A-1, CRACK-A-BOOM! and DARK HORSE PRESENTS (many in COLOR for the first time) plus over 30 pages of ALLNEW MR. MONSTER art and stories! Can your sanity survive our Lee/Kirby monster spoof by MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MARK MARTIN, or the long-lost 1933 Mr. Monster newspaper strip? Or the terrifying TRENCHER/MR. MONSTER slug-fest, drawn by KEITH GIFFEN and MICHAEL T. GILBERT?! Read at your own risk!

GEORGE KHOURY’s definitive book on the rich history of British Comics Artists, their influence on the US, and how they have revolutionized the way comics are seen and perceived! It features breathtaking art, intimate photographs, and in-depth interviews with BRIAN BOLLAND, ALAN DAVIS, DAVE GIBBONS, KEVIN O’NEILL, DAVID LLOYD, DAVE McKEAN, BRYAN HITCH, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH and other fine gents! Sporting a new JUDGE DREDD cover by BRIAN BOLLAND!

MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ most prominent and affable personality! It covers his career as illustrator, inker, and editor—peppered with DICK’S PERSONAL REFLECTIONS—and is illustrated with RARE AND UNSEEN comics, merchandising, and advertising art! Plus: an extensive index of his published work, comments and tributes

by NEAL ADAMS, DENNIS O’NEIL, TERRY AUSTIN, PAUL LEVITZ, MARV WOLFMAN, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JIM APARO and others, a Foreword by NEAL ADAMS, and an Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ!

(136-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $4.95

(204-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $6.95

(176-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $5.95

SECRETS IN THE SHADOWS: GENE COLAN

TOM FIELD’s amazing COLAN retrospective, with rare drawings, photos, and art from his 60-year career, and a comprehensive overview of Gene’s glory days at Marvel Comics!

MARV WOLFMAN, DON McGREGOR and other writers share script samples and anecdotes of their Colan collaborations, while TOM PALMER, STEVE LEIALOHA and others show how they approached inking Colan’s famously nuanced penciled pages!

Plus: a NEW PORTFOLIO of never-seen collaborations between Gene and masters such as BYRNE, KALUTA and PÉREZ, and all-new artwork created just for this book!

(192-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $6.95

ART OF GEORGE TUSKA

A comprehensive look at GEORGE TUSKA’S personal and professional life, including early work at the Eisner-Iger shop, producing controversial crime comics of the 1950s, and his tenure with Marvel and DC Comics, as well as independent publishers. Includes extensive coverage of his work on IRON MAN, X-MEN, HULK, JUSTICE LEAGUE, TEEN TITANS, BATMAN, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, and others, a gallery of commission art and a thorough index of his work, original art, photos, sketches, unpublished art, interviews and anecdotes from his peers and fans, plus the very personal and reflective words of George himself! Written by DEWEY CASSELL. (128-page Digital Edition) $4.95

23

OTHER BOOKS FROM TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING

PENCILER, PUBLISHER, PROVOCATEUR

COMICS’ FAST & FURIOUS ARTIST

THE ART OF GLAMOUR

MATT BAKER

EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE

Shines a light on the life and career of the artistic and publishing visionary of DC Comics!

Explores the life and career of one of Marvel Comics’ most recognizable and dependable artists!

Biography of the talented master of 1940s “Good Girl” art, complete with color story reprints!

Definitive biography of the Watchmen writer, in a new, expanded edition!

(224-page trade paperback) $26.95

(176-page trade paperback with COLOR) $26.95

(192-page hardcover with COLOR) $39.95

(240-page trade paperback) $29.95

QUALITY COMPANION

BATCAVE COMPANION

ALL- STAR COMPANION

AGE OF TV HEROES

The first dedicated book about the Golden Age publisher that spawned the modern-day “Freedom Fighters”, Plastic Man, and the Blackhawks!

Unlocks the secrets of Batman’s Silver and Bronze Ages, following the Dark Knight’s progression from 1960s camp to 1970s creature of the night!

Roy Thomas has four volumes documenting the history of ALL-STAR COMICS, the JUSTICE SOCIETY, INFINITY, INC., and more!

(256-page trade paperback with COLOR) $31.95

(240-page trade paperback) $26.95

(224-page trade paperbacks) $24.95

Examining the history of the live-action television adventures of everyone’s favorite comic book heroes, featuring the in-depth stories of the shows’ actors and behind-the-scenes players!

CARMINE INFANTINO

SAL BUSCEMA

(192-page full-color hardcover) $39.95

MARVEL COMICS

MARVEL COMICS

An issue-by-issue field guide to the pop culture phenomenon of LEE, KIRBY, DITKO, and others, from the company’s fumbling beginnings to the full maturity of its wild, colorful, offbeat grandiosity!

IN THE 1960s

(224-page trade paperback) $27.95

MODERN MASTERS

HOW TO CREATE COMICS

Covers how Stan Lee went from writer to publisher, Jack Kirby left (and returned), Roy Thomas rose as editor, and a new wave of writers and artists came in!

20+ volumes with in-depth interviews, plus extensive galleries of rare and unseen art from the artist’s files!

(224-page trade paperback) $27.95

Shows step-by-step how to develop a new comic, from script and art, to printing and distribution!

(128-page trade paperbacks) $14.95 each

(108-page trade paperback) $15.95

IN THE 1970s

A BOOK SERIES DEVOTED TO THE BEST OF TODAY’S ARTISTS

FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

FOR A FREE COLOR CATALOG, CALL, WRITE, E-MAIL, OR LOG ONTO www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows—A New Day For Comics Fandom!

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com