Alter Ego #169

Roy Thomas' Hard-Driving Comics Fanzine

FROM HELL-RIDER TO GHOST RIDER! FROM SGT. FURY TO–SGT. DARKK!?

GARY FRIEDRICH

RIDES AGAIN!

Art TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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No. 169 May 2021

Vol. 3, No. 169 / May 2021 Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editor Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor

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

Comic Crypt Editor

Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll

Jerry G. Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White Mike Friedrich, Bill Schelly

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With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Richard J. Arndt Bob Bailey Carol Bierschwal Danny Bierschwal Ray Bottorff, Jr. Len Brown Jean Caccicedo Aaron Caplan Nick Caputo John Cimino Jim Clark Comic Book Plus (website) Chet Cox Brian Cremins Justin Fairfax Albert Fisher Shane Foley Jean Friedrich Janet Gilbert Grand Comics Database (website) Robin Green

Beverly Hahs Kirk Hastings Robert Higgerson Sean Howe Jim Kealy Troy R. Kinunen Katy Kirn Tyler M. Koenig Mark Lewis Jim Ludwig Mears Auctions (website) Peter Normanton Barry Pearl Warren Reece Scott Rowland Joe Rubinstein Matt Scullin John & Martha Short Ken Steinhoff Dann Thomas Mark Voger Brandon Williams Kent Wilson

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Gary Friedrich

Contents Writer/Editorial: My Best Friend—Gary Friedrich . . . . . . . . . . 2 “Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

A conversation with Roy Thomas about those six decades, conducted by Richard Arndt.

Remembering Gary Friedrich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Wife Jean Friedrich and nephew Robert Higgerson on the Marvel writer’s later years.

From The Tomb Presents: The Friedrich Monsters . . . . . . . 61 Peter Normanton on Gary’s horror/mystery comics at Marvel, Charlton, et al.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Frazetta Covers That Never Were . . 67

Michael T. Gilbert displays some exquisite Frazetta EC covers that didn’t quite happen.

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #228 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 P.C. Hamerlinck showcases Mark Voger’s fond look at Golden Age great Ken Bald.

On Our Cover: The first and probably most famous image ever drawn of the hard-driving Ghost Rider is Mike Ploog’s cover for that supernatural hero’s Devil-may-care debut in Marvel Spotlight #5 (Aug. 1972).

Yet, important as Mike was to the killer look and instant popularity of that Marvel stalwart, he was basically the brainchild of writer Gary Friedrich—so we’ve replaced the eldritch biker’s skull/visage with a photo of the scribe, who is this issue’s chief topic of discussion. Thanks to John Cimino for first putting this image together for us, and to Chris Day and John Morrow for the final version. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] Above: We figure you won’t get far in this edition of Alter Ego before you understand why we parked the splash of Sgt. Fury #70 (Sept. 1969) atop this page. “The Missouri Marauders” was (were) the creative offspring of aforementioned scripter Gary Friedrich, artistically realized by the stellar talents of penciler Dick Ayers and inker John Severin. Far as Ye Editor knows, the only one of the seven Marauders Gary named after an actual fellow denizen of the Show-Me State was Pvt. Paul Schade (pronounced “shod-dy” rather than “shade,” not that it really matters). Their adventures alongside the Howling Commandos continued into the following issue. Thanks to Barry Pearl for the scan. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] Alter Ego TM is published 6 times a year by TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344.

Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: 32 Bluebird Trail, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices.

Six-issue subscriptions: $68 US, $103 Elsewhere, $27 Digital Only. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © Roy Thomas. Alter Ego is a TM of Roy & Dann Thomas. FCA is a TM of P.C. Hamerlinck. Printed in China. ISSN: 1932-6890.

FIRST PRINTING.

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writer/editorial

My Best Friend—Gary Friedrich

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n some ways, this is the most personal issue of Alter Ego I’ve ever put together.

Sure: because of this magazine’s franchise to deal with (a) comics and their creators from the Platinum Age through the mid-1970s, and (b) any project in which I myself was involved, even if it occurred long after the Gerald Ford Administration; there’ve been far more interviews in it with me than with anyone else.

This time, however—even though the long interview Richard Arndt conducted with me clearly reflects my POV rather than that of my longtime close friend and colleague Gary Friedrich, as how could it not?—nearly every topic covered therein is one concerning both of us. Not just myself, of course, but not even exclusively Gary, because I can know only what he said and did—not what he thought, except to the extent that he expressed himself to me or to others.

When Richard’s questions turned to things Gary did during periods when we weren’t in close contact, such as the latter 1970s when he was writing for Atlas/Seaboard and Marvel UK, I had little to add to the public record, and I said so.

On the other hand, probably no one now alive can speak as knowledgably as I can about the time he and I spent performing rock’n’roll in an amateur and later quasi-professional capacity. Of course, it did occur to me at the outset that A/E’s readership may not be even as interested in Gary’s and my rock-band days (such as they were) as it was in, for example, Don Glut’s amateur hero films or Jim Steranko’s career in stage magic.

The thing is—I decided I was going to talk about what I felt I should talk about.

For, this would be a conversation about Gary’s and my relationship, going back to the day we met in 1956 or ’57… so I let it take Richard and me wherever it led us.

Naturally, I hope that, when you’ve read that interview—plus the extended, loving recollections Richard recorded from Gary’s wife Jean and his nephew-in-law Robert Higgerson about his later life back in Missouri—and the dissection of Gary’s mystery/horror work by From the Tomb’s Peter Normanton—you’ll feel you have a reasonably rounded view of Gary’s life both in and out of comics.

I’d like to think you will.

Oh, and I should add—before we spoke, both Richard and I steeped ourselves in the one long interview Gary ever gave, which was conducted by our colleague Jon B. Cooke for his magazine Comic Book Artist #13 (May 2001). That issue is long out of print in hardcopy edition, but anyone interested can swiftly obtain a digital copy for $5.99 by ordering at https://bit.ly/3psv9x7. It will make a nice addendum—or even prelude—to reading this issue.

All of the above seems rather cut and dried, perhaps. But, in the end, even more so in preparing this issue, I realized that I loved Gary Friedrich as I’ve loved few people during my eight decades on this planet… more than I ever really thought about it at the time… and, at this late stage, I guess this memorial issue was the best I could do: an affectionate, warts-and-all report about both of us, from the Eisenhower years up through the era of Trump. Hope you’ll take it for what it may be worth.

Bestest,

P.S.: To squeeze in all our Groovy Gary-related material, plus “Comic Crypt” and FCA, we really stripped down the rest of this issue—no “re:” or John Broome, alas—and, just this once, virtually no house or freebie ads. Reminded me of the climax of that great old movie The Marx Brothers Go West, in which Groucho, Chico, and Harpo shovel the whole remainder of the train into the furnace to keep a locomotive’s engine going!

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“G O R

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“GARY FRIEDRICH And I Were A Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years”

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” Y R A I G T Y R V PA

Conducted & Transcribed by Richard J. Arndt

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NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: This interview is intended to be an examination and a reminiscence of a long friendship between comicbook professionals Gary Friedrich (Aug. 21, 1943-Aug. 29, 2018) and Roy Thomas (b. 1940).

Besides covering Gary’s considerable comics career, it also reveals how their relationship intersected with that career. In that respect, it’s an adjunct to Jon B. Cooke’s informative conversation with Friedrich for TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Artist #13 (May 2001). Gary’s early years in a small Midwestern town, and his return there in his later life to enjoy a successful marriage and family life and eventually to receive national recognition for his contributions to the field, are every bit as noteworthy as his comics work. The music he loved

“Groovy” Gary Friedrich & “Rascally” Roy Thomas (on right & left, respectively) at the 2011 Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina. This snapshot taken by Bob Bailey accompanies splash pages from Friedrich’s two trademark Marvel series: Sgt. Fury #56 (July 1968), with art by Dick Ayers & John Severin, and Marvel Spotlight #5 (Aug. 1972), with Mike Ploog drawing a brand new Ghost Rider! Thanks to Barry Pearl & Nick Caputo for the scans. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

and performed, as well his work in later years for Alcoholics Anonymous, not only in overcoming his own addiction but in helping others cope with theirs, are all crucial parts of Gary’s life—aspects that should be as celebrated as his writing career.

T. EP D

A Conversation with ROY THOMAS About Their 6-Decade Friendship

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Born and raised in Jackson, Missouri, he honed his writing talents circa 1964 as editor Gary Friedrich and lead writer for the local newspaper. In late 1965, Roy, a friend and fellow Jacksonian who’d recently become a writer and editorial assistant at Marvel Comics, suggested Gary might find profitable work freelancing in the comics. Soon the two were sharing an apartment in New York City, and before long Friedrich was writing comics for Charlton.

A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

Roy Thomas, Jr.

Suddenly, At The Palace…

The long-gone Palace Theatre in Jackson, Missouri, where Gary and Roy first met in 1956 or early ’57. This photo, from a 2016 edition of the town’s CashBook Journal newspaper, probably dates from 1954; the film that would be playing that night, but not at this kids’ matinee, is Suddenly, wherein Frank Sinatra portrayed a would-be Presidential assassin. That’s the year Roy, around the time he graduated from eighth grade, first went to work at the “picture show.” Gary signed on a couple of years later. Thanks to the boys’ JHS schoolmates Beverly Hahs & Kent Wilson; his family owned the movie house. [© the respective copyright holders.]

met in 1956 or early ’57, despite my misstating in Alter Ego #162 that it might’ve been a bit later.

When I was growing up, everybody seemed to have nicknames. Mine was “Junior,” since I was Roy Thomas, Jr., and Gary was “Butch” to some folks. But never once in my life did I ever call him that.

RA: How soon did you become outside-of-work friends?

THOMAS: Pretty quickly. In By early 1967 he was on spring of ’57 I got my driver’s staff at Marvel, scripting a revival license, so I had wheels—a of the 1950s-era Western Ghost two-tone blue ’52 Chevy.

The pics of both lads are from Jackson High School’s 1957 Silver Arrow Rider. He wrote several very funny Actually, it was the family car, yearbook, and were probably taken around the time they met. stories for Not Brand Echh, before but I managed to commandeer And, just for good measure: below is a Kurt Schaffenberger panel from assuming writing chores on the it much of the time, since Fawcett’s The Marvel Family #45 (March 1950), a comic both guys probably title on which he’d have his longest my dad was on the road in a read back in the day, in which Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and Captain run—Sgt. Fury, beginning with Marvel Jr. are flying an entire Palace Theatre to safety! Script by Otto Binder. panel truck a lot for his job. As #42 (May 1967). For it, he Thanks to P.C. Hamerlinck. [Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics.] long as my buddies and crafted a number of stories I kept the car gassed up, known today as the “The” we could drive around series—tales that related most evenings. We’d pool Fury’s World War II exploits our loose change to buy a with the sensibilities of the buck’s worth of gas, which 1960s. He wrote Sgt. Fury took you a fair distance in until #116 (Nov. 1973), though those days. Gary was along some of the latter-day stories on a lot of those rides; after alternated with reprints. Other he turned 16, we took his Marvel characters he wrote family’s car sometimes. included the Hulk, Captain I can hardly picture him America, Daredevil, Black back then without a bottle Widow, Iron Man, X-Men, of Pepsi in his hand. He’d Captain Marvel, the Monster drink a six-pack or more of of Frankenstein, and Nick it a day.

Fury as Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. He also memorably co-created both a new Ghost Rider (the supernatural motorcyclist) and the Son of Satan.

I had friends in my own “class of ‘58,” of course, but I also hung out with several guys from two grades below after I began During 1970-71, Gary wrote for the short-lived Skywald dating a girl in that class, Linda Rahm. Our informal little ridingPublications. In 1975-76 he wrote for Martin Goodman’s equally around group gave ourselves a nickname that somebody—but not short-term comics company Atlas/Seaboard, and “Captain Britain” for Gary or me—ran across in a dictionary: the Gaberlunzies. Several Marvel’s British imprint. His last work in the field was done for Topps centuries ago, it meant “a wandering beggar.” That was us, all right, Comics in 1992. In addition, he co-wrote several paperback reference works pooling our quarters to buy gas. We rarely got up to anything really on rock’n’roll and country music. This interview was conducted by phone bad—although whenever we did, I’m afraid Gary was likely to be at on March 31 & May 15, 2020. the center of it, as he’d have been the first to admit.

RICHARD ARNDT: You two both came from the same small town, Jackson, Missouri, is that correct?

RA: What kind of trouble are we talking about?

ROY THOMAS: Yes. I was born there. I think Gary was, too. It’s the county seat of Cape Girardeau County, 10 miles or so from the Mississippi. We both went to Jackson High School, but we only met when he came to work at the local movie house—the Palace Theatre—where I’d been working for a couple of years as usher and popcorn boy. He said in his Comic Book Artist interview that he was thirteen and in the seventh grade when he started there; that means I’d have been a sophomore—about sixteen. So we must’ve

THOMAS: Well, for example, one Halloween—I don’t recall if I was still in high school, or maybe by then commuting to college in Cape Girardeau—several of us were riding around in my car, and Gary and another guy had us drop them off for a little while. After we picked them up again, we drove by a local milling company that had a big open yard with a 15-foot-high pile of sawdust. And it was smoking… it was on fire! We duly alerted the cops. Later that night, Gary admitted to me that he and the other guy had started the fire as a Halloween prank. They hadn’t meant any real harm, of course.

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

That’s about the only halfway dangerous stunt I can recall him pulling, though.

Another prank of his was a lot funnier. In the early 1960s, Jackson’s city fathers built this big fountain in front of the county courthouse. They were going to officially turn it on for the first time at a big dedication ceremony. Gary and a pal sneaked up to the empty fountain the night before and dumped in a bunch of bubble-bath pellets. Next day, the dignitaries turned on the fountain, the water started gushing in—and in a couple of minutes the fountain was overflowing with foam and bubbles. I don’t think they ever figured out who did it.

RA: I know you were a comicbook fan at the time, but was Gary?

THOMAS: Not when we first met, though he said in CBA that as a kid he’d liked Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel—and The Fox and the Crow. Apparently, he’d even read Mad when it was still a color comic. Then, one night in ‘59, we were both working a shift at the Palace and I split for a few minutes to walk a few doors down to Fulenwider’s drugstore. I came back with an unexpected treasure: the first Showcase “Green Lantern.” I was already collecting the Silver Age Flash, of course. Both of us read that new “GL,” and afterward, Gary kept up with some DC comics, too... and later with Marvel’s comics. But he never became a real “fan” like I was.

We also had other interests in common, especially movies.

We’d often drive to “Cape” to see movies two weeks before they could legally play in Jackson, with its smaller population of 5000 or so. Some we’d go see multiple times between the two towns, like Giant, King Creole, Rio Bravo. Of course, during that period we got in to see movies for free at the Palace, which helped.

And we both loved popular music… not just rock’n’roll. We were both huge fans of Sinatra, who was and is my favorite singer ever. Gary, who played drums in the high school band, also liked 1930s-40s swing; I think his dad got him into it. I didn’t really appreciate swing without vocals till later.

RA: Your homecoming article in Alter Ego #162 mentioned the band you and Gary were in. I’m assuming it was a rock’n’roll band? That would’ve been fairly common for that period.

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few of us started spitballing, trying to come up with a skit to promote Tom in the assembly held just before the election.

Somebody suggested we do a skit centered around George Washington’s troops at Valley Forge. Only, instead of starving and freezing, we’d show them having a high old time—playing ping-pong and I forget what else. Then, my friend John Schuch remembered I’d sung a couple of Bill Haley and the Comets songs in the sophomore play, and he knew I was a big Elvis Presley fan Let There Be [Green] Light! since the day I first heard Gil Kane’s cover for Showcase #22 “Heartbreak Hotel.” So he (Sept.-Oct. 1959)—the first appearance said, why didn’t I do an Elvis of the Silver Age “Green Lantern,” and number in the skit? I’d be the the start of Gary’s revival of interest singer in a USO troupe that in comics. Thanks to the Grand Comics was there to entertain the Database. soldiers. So I lined up Gary to [TM & © DC Comics.] play drums and Pal Hacker, a sophomore friend, on piano, for a makeshift trio—“Evitz Pretzel & the Transjordanaires,” named after Elvis’ backup group, the Jordanaires.

I used a toy ukulele as a stand-in for Elvis’ guitar—it was rigged so it’d shatter into pieces while I was singing and gyrating and banging on it. We did two numbers, and they went over really well. The first, I recall, was “Let’s Have a Party” from [the Elvis movie] Loving You. The closest to rock ‘n’ roll any live band had ever played at our school dances in those days was stuff like “Dance with Me, Henry” and, believe it or not, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” [chuckles] None of those bands ever had a guitar... just sax, piano, drums, maybe a trombone. So, purely by accident, we created a mild sensation when we did some rock songs in that culture-starved environment. And our buddy Tom won the election!

THOMAS: Maybe common in other places, but not in Jackson, Missouri! Not when our first “band,” if it even deserves that name, came about in early ’58.

A bunch of us seniors—not Gary; he was a freshman—were working on some class project at a classmate’s home and got to discussing the upcoming election for the next year’s student body president. Tom Heyde, a junior who worked at You Can Fight City Hall! the Palace, was running. A good The Cape Girardeau County Courthouse in Jackson, MO—with its guy—he later fountain visible in the foreground, though it’s not spurting—or frothing—at the moment. But it definitely did both one day in the became an Air early 1960s, courtesy of Gary F. Force jet pilot. A

RA: So that started off your musical career?

THOMAS: Such as it was. I never claimed to be a great singer, but I was okay. Gary was a very good drummer, far as I’m any judge. Once or twice later, when we were a real band and he couldn’t make a gig, we had to have a friend of ours take his place, but he couldn’t keep a beat all that well. Still, somehow, we never came up with a better alternative.

Anyway, a night or two after that assembly, for the school dance held to celebrate the election, Gary, Pal, and I were asked to perform a couple more songs.

The photo in Alter Ego #162 [also seen on the second page following] was snapped at that dance. It’s a shame Gary can’t be seen in that picture, just Pal and me. Far as I could ascertain, not a single photo exists of Gary ever playing the drums, even though he was also in the high school marching band for years!

Over the following months, we got invited to perform at several events outside school, like a Rotary Club luncheon. Then there was this big dance for employees of the local hosiery mill, where my mother

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A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

“Hey, Kids! Comics!”

The covers of a quintet of 10¢ comicbooks Gary F. might’ve read when he was nine or ten, based on his stated tastes: Superman #78 (Sept.-Oct. 1953); art by Wayne Boring & Stan Kaye… Batman #75 (Feb.-March ’53); art by Winslow Mortimer, Lew Sayre Schwartz, & Charles Paris… Captain Marvel Adventures #146 (July ’53); art by C.C. Beck, assisted by Jack Bowler… The Fox and the Crow #7 (Dec. ’52-Jan. ’53); art by Jim Davis… and Mad #6 (Aug.-Sept. ’53); art by Harvey Kurtzman. All courtesy of the Grand Comics Database. [Superman, Batman, & Fox and Crow covers TM & © DC Comics; Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics; Mad cover TM & © E.C. Publications, Inc.]

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

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Marching To The Beat Of A Different [And Invisible] Drummer (Right:) Roy Thomas, Gary Friedrich, and Palmer (Pal) Hacker were “Evitz Pretzel & the Transjordanaires” at a Jackson High School dance in early 1958—only Pal’s piano is just off-pic at left, and Gary and his drums didn’t make it into the photo at all, sadly! Far as we know, this is the closest anybody ever came to taking a photo of Gary and Roy performing together.

(Far right:) Gary in a detail of the Marching Band photo from the 1960 JHS yearbook. Unfortunately, it doesn’t show him with his drums—so it’s quite possible he was never in his life photographed playing (or even standing near) a drum! Thanks to RT’s sister, Katy Kirn.

then worked. For that one, Gary and I took a rock-type movie song titled “You Ain’t Gonna Make No Cotton-Picker Out of Me” (believe it or not!) and changed it to “You Ain’t Gonna Make No Hosiery Knitter Out of Me.” Naturally, that annoyed the higher-ups who’d invited us. I don’t know why we pulled stunts like that. Neither Gary nor I, nor Pal, was a major hell-raiser in school. They were both bright students, and I was valedictorian of my class. Guess we just wanted to see what we could get away with. We’d been corrupted by James Dean in Rebel without a Cause and Elvis in Jailhouse Rock!

Then there was the Homecomers Talent Contest. The end of every summer, the main streets in Jackson were taken over for six days—still are—by a hired carnival. Each Monday to Saturday night, back then, there was an amateur talent contest on a makeshift stage on the courthouse steps. Gary, Pal, and I entered it in ’58. We placed second or third one weeknight, so we’d be competing in the Saturday finals for the big money—which wasn’t all that big, but it sure would’ve been to us.

Actually, some contestants that year weren’t as “amateur” as they were supposed to be. One weeknight winner was Narvel Felts, a young rockabilly singer from down near the Arkansas border. A nice guy, with a long career in country music since then… but they really shouldn’t have let him compete in that amateur contest. He’d been recording professionally since ’56! There was also a group of 8-10 teenage girls who danced the hula in unison. They weren’t locals, either, and had recently been a paid, featured floor show at a big St. Louis hotel, so some people didn’t feel they should’ve been eligible. But hula-dancers are always a crowd-pleaser—and, in that contest, a judge-pleaser.

We knew we weren’t likely to win, so we decided we might as well have some fun. Gary and I knew this obscure song, “Hawaiian Rock”—a record by Tommy Sands, who’d had a big hit with “Teenage Crush.” On Saturday night, before our second and final number, I said something into the mic about

how we wanted to keep up with the latest trend—then we whipped out some grass skirts we’d dug up somewhere and did “Hawaiian Rock,” shaking our grass-skirted tails all over the stage. Gary and Pal even managed to stand up and do the hula while they played. The audience of hundreds on the courthouse lawn ate it up, but we could see the judges—the same ones who judged every night—glaring daggers at us. Any thought that we might win a prize simply because the crowd liked us pretty much went right out the window. Probably just more bad taste on our part, but we never regretted doing it.

The highlight of our late-’50s trio was when we “played the Palace”—the movie theatre where Gary and I worked. Sharing the bill with us was our buddy John Short, who was a senior like me. John no longer read comics, but he did once sell me an old, incomplete issue of All-Star Comics for a quarter. Anyway, not long after our Elvis shtick at that school assembly, John had entered that year’s JHS talent contest. He sang and played a pumpin’ piano and was a big rockabilly fan, especially of Jerry Lee Lewis. He came in first. Gary, Pal, and I sat that one out, so there was never any real

Lassie Come Home! (Elvis, Too!) (Left:) And they said Elvis Presley had a funny name! A 1956 ad for a live show somewhere, headlining rockabilly singer Narvel Felts—two years before he appeared in an “amateur contest” at the Jackson, Missouri, “Homecomers,” competing (quite successfully) with “Evitz Pretzel & the Transjordanaires.”

(Above:) A vintage photo of part of the town’s annual “Homecomers” carnival that took over (still does) its main streets for one week just before school started up again… taken from a high point in the County Courthouse, above the makeshift stage. Note the tightrope walker at upper left center—and the Palace Theatre a block away on the right.

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A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

competition between us.

Not long afterward, the Palace’s manager, Marv Proffer—who was also, of course, Gary’s and my boss—offered the four of us a percentage of the box office (or maybe it was a flat fee) to play an hour-long set in front of the big Cinemascope screen. This was on a mid-week night, following some movie that otherwise wouldn’t have drawn flies. The only problem was, we couldn’t hoist John’s piano up on the stage, so it was hard for all the audience to see him.

But they could sure hear him—and us—since we had mics. We sold out the place… 550 seats!

RA: You know, that’s how Buddy Holly and his school buddies who’d later become the Crickets got started—playing between shows in movie theatres and giving roller-rink skaters something to listen to as they skated. Your band was following a well-honored tradition. So how long was it before you guys became a real rock’n’roll band?

THOMAS: Two or three years. By then, Pal had gone away to college—and anyway, we couldn’t have hauled a piano around, you know? This is before keyboards.

Around May of ’61, two months or so before I graduated college, Gary decided to start up this actual rock’n’roll band—and it was his band, really, not “ours.” He was the drummer, and the boss, insofar as we had one. The rhythm guitar was a nice, quiet guy named Frank Tripp. He wasn’t a local, but he was going to Southeast Missouri State College in Cape. I don’t know how Gary met him.

Our lead guitar was a virtual Elvis lookalike—Charles “Rocky” Bierschwal. He was roughly Gary’s age, 17 or so.

Gary had met him soon after Rocky was paroled following a stint in reform school... for what, I never bothered to ask.

He’d gone to grade school, maybe some high school, in Cape Girardeau, and a friend tells me that in the eighth grade he’d bring brass knuckles into homeroom. Guess he’d mellowed, at least a little, by the time we met him. Rocky didn’t look especially muscular, but man, was he strong! One time he easily picked up a carrying-case containing two or three of Gary’s bigger drums from my car’s trunk and held it over his head with one hand. It would’ve taken both Gary and me just to lift that case. Rock played a good lead guitar, and naturally the girls loved him. If he’d wanted to sing, the band sure wouldn’t have needed me!

As things stood, Gary invited me to be the singer.

We usually performed around Jackson—mostly on Friday nights at the local roller-skating rink, the Roll-O-Fun—after

the skating ended. Most of our other gigs were elsewhere in Cape County, though occasionally we’d have one an hour or two away.

One, I recall, was down near the Arkansas border, where we had to crash overnight in a motel because we’d all had too much beer to drive home. So much for our profits! That was pretty much the extent of our “touring.” [laughter] RA: Music gigs in small towns can be either pretty benign or pretty dicey.

Did you have any hairy experiences?

THOMAS: Not many. But we did play a couple of reasonably rough joints, especially one called the Country Schoolhouse— because, decades earlier, it had started out as one. It catered to a fairly unruly crowd, by rural Missouri standards, and since they were adults, alcohol was served. One time, our band was walking through the crowd toward the performing area. Rocky’s current girlfriend was with him, and one of the lowlifes drinking at a table made some off-color crack about her. Rocky stopped and looked down at him and said real softly, “You shouldn’t be sayin’ things like that.” The guy smirked and asked what he was gonna do about it—and Rock laid him out with one swift punch. We never had any trouble with anybody else in that hole. Without Rocky, I don’t think Gary, Frank, and I would’ve ventured in there without an armed guard!

Right Here On Our Stage… Clockwise: Roy’s classmate John Short in his “pumpin’-piano” days at Jackson High, spring 1958. He and wife Martha, who supplied this vintage photo, said to take note of the tape attached to the keyboard.

An undated newspaper ad hawking the musical foursome’s 1958 appearance at the Palace Theatre—right after the screening of the film Escapade in Japan, a minor movie left over from ’57. John Short was billed as “Jerry Lee Moose,” combining a sometime nickname and Jerry Lee Lewis, whose hits “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire” were part of his repertoire. (The ad transformed “Evitz” into “Elvitz,” but what’s in a name—especially a fake one?)

Gary, Roy, & John got together again when the former pair were guests at the Cape Girardeau “Cape Con” in April 2007.

Photo by Mrs. Leona Thomas.

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

9

with my girlfriend Linda a few times a night. But Gary and the rest never got to dance at all, even if they’d wanted to.

RA: How smoothly did you guys generally get along as a band? The group dynamic can get tricky sometimes, especially after being together for years.

Meet The Gaberlunzies!

(L. to r.:) Gary F., Roy T., Frank Tripp, and Charles “Rocky” Bierschwal, at about the time they formed the rock’n’roll group that eventually got rebranded as the Galaxies. The first three pics are from early-’60s editions of the Sagamore, the yearbook of Southeast Missouri State College in Cape Giraredeau; courtesy of Tyler M. Koenig. The picture of Rocky B. is courtesy of his brother Danny and his sister Carol. It was only when Gary’s yearbook photo turned up that Roy remembered his buddy had briefly attended college!

Our band did have one minor comicbook connection I should mention. Around ’63, Rocky did something or other, I forget what, that landed him for roughly a week in the county jail in Jackson— which then was right next to Jones Drug Store, where I bought a lot of my comics. Rock got bored and wanted something to read, so Gary and I bought some Marvel comics at Jones’ and just took them around the corner and handed them to him through the bars. He knew a little about Norse mythology, so he especially liked “Thor.”

Luckily, he was released in time that we didn’t miss any gigs.

Gary had named the band the Gaberlunzies, after our old high school “gang.” It lasted from spring of ‘61 till early ‘64. After a year, since nobody we dealt with could spell, pronounce, or even remember the name “Gaberlunzies”—for the record, it’s pronounced “GAB-er-lun-zies,” pretty much the way it’s spelled— he decided he had to change it to the much more pedestrian “Galaxies.” Yech!

Mostly, we did covers of rock songs. Whatever was coming out in the early ’60s, plus “golden oldies” from the late ’50s. We never dreamed of writing our own material. The closest we came was when I’d start out real slow singing “Old Shep,” about a boy and his dog—then after one verse we’d suddenly launch into “Hound Dog.” That always got the crowd jumping. At least, I guess it did. I could never see them all that clearly, since I refused to wear glasses when I sang. Rock’n’roll singers didn’t wear glasses! For our theme song, Gary and I chose “C’mon, Everybody,” which had been a hit for Eddie Cochran. The band played only a handful of instrumentals like “Sleepwalk” and “Tequila,” so I only got to dance

THOMAS: We all got along great, mostly. Oh, Gary would get annoyed at me from time to time when he thought I was trying to sing some ballad too much like Sinatra instead of like Elvis or Bobby Darin. He was probably right about that.

The only time I can recall him really getting mad at me had to do with “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” the big Ray Charles hit. Bobby Darin had done a knockoff of it called “You’re the Reason I’m Living,” and our band did both songs. Only problem was that, once—well, more than once—I’d start out singing the Ray Charles song, and, when we came to the bridge, I’d accidentally veer off into the very similar one from Darin. The teenagers dancing to that “belly-rubber,” as we called slow songs, never noticed, and it didn’t cause any real problems for the band—but Gary’d just get furious. The second or third time I did that, the first I even realized I’d done it was when I heard this big crash behind me, then I saw one of his drumsticks go flying past me out onto the roller-rink dance floor. He’d slammed it down so hard on the rim of his drum, it’d flown out of his hand! But he quickly got over it and we laughed about it.

Like I said, it was Gary’s band, except he couldn’t really control Rocky. [laughs] Getting Rock to show up for practice sessions was hard enough. And sometimes, when he got in a surly mood, he’d just turn around and sit on his amp and play with his back to the dancing teenagers, and nothing Gary could say would make him face front. Once, while we were setting up in the Roll-O-Fun, before they let in the kids, he sort of beat up on Gary when Gary said something insulting to him—well, he didn’t really beat him up, just got him down on the floor and pummeled him for a minute to “teach him a lesson,” as he said to me right afterward. Gary was just shaken, not hurt, and mostly he and Rock got along great. So did Rocky and I, though we were even more different than he and Gary.

The coming of the Beatles around the end of ’63 basically torpedoed our band. Suddenly, group vocals were in, and nobody in our band except me really sang. Well, Gary and I did an

Alias The “Roll-O-Fun” The longtime Jackson Skate Center sported a “Roll-O-Fun” moniker when the Gaberlunzies/Galaxies played there most Friday nights from mid-1961 through early ’64. It was located at the town’s edge and was surrounded by an oft-muddy, potholed parking area. The roller-skating area, in the front of the building, is on the left; Friday night dancing was held in the back addition, seen on right. This drawing by local artist Jeanie Eddleman, based on a photo, appeared in a 2020 “Treasures of Jackson” calendar. [© the respective copyright holders.]

10

A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

Even though it coincided with the years I was teaching high school, a job I never liked, being in that band was one of the high points of my working life—rivaling even my first couple of decades in comics. I’m sure it was fairly high up there for Gary, too, even though we never made much money at it. We usually played for the door, and if we got $10-15 apiece for the night, we were likely to go out and celebrate, swigging beer by some creek.

RA: The article in A/E #162 mentioned that you graduated from high school in 1958. That would have meant Gary was in the class of 1961. Is that correct?

THOMAS: Yeah. He had the same birthday as my sister Katy…

August 21... except she was a year younger. That was [artist] Marie Severin’s birthday, too—and Ozma, in the Oz books I loved as a kid.

RA: You were also involved with early comics fandom—working on the early-1960s version of Alter Ego, and writing articles for other fanzines of the day. Did Gary participate in that?

THOMAS: Not really. But he did use comics to stir up trouble once or twice. His senior year, as editor of the high school newspaper, he raised a minor storm by writing an editorial in favor of comicbooks.

That didn’t go down too well with the school administration or teachers, especially just a few years after Dr. Wertham’s little crusade against them.

Don’t Be A Thor Loser!

Journey into Mystery #88 (Jan. 1963) may—or may not—have been the particular “Thor” issue that, along with other Marvel comics, Gary and Roy bought to entertain Rocky Bierschwal while he was languishing in the local hoosegow for a few days. Thanks to Barry Pearl.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

occasional gag duet like “Paul and Paula” and “Speedy Gonzales,” but that was about it. So we couldn’t do decent covers of the Beatles or the other English groups that soon followed. So, over the next few months, our band kind of faded away, just like a lot of much bigger American rock acts did at the time.

Several years later, Gary and Rocky put together another band, with more of a country sound—I guess it was after he’d moved back to Jackson—and, on one trip back, I went to see them play at some wonderfully sleazy honkytonk in Cape Girardeau and I wound up singing a couple of numbers with them. It was a hoot, and reminded me how much I missed our earlier band.

One thing I remember vividly from the early-’60s band days was trying to talk Gary out of getting married the first time... out of a grand total of five. He’d met some cute younger girl who wanted him to give her drum lessons, and even before she’d had her first lesson, he informed us he was going to marry her. He was impulsive like that. Linda and I, in between sets at the Roll-O-Fun, tried to talk him out of it. So did Rocky. We talked till we were blue in the face, but it did no good. The marriage lasted a couple of years. Sorry, I can’t remember the girl’s name. I barely knew her, and had nothing against her, really. They had a child together... a son.

I’m not sure if it was before or afterward that he used comics to bait his English teacher, Miss Jenkins—who he claimed tried to get him expelled for that editorial. The way he told it to me, one day he brought the new Justice League into class and sat there brazenly reading it. When she admonished him for reading such “trash,” he asked her innocently if Roy Thomas had been in her classes a few years earlier and won the English Award two years running. “Yes,” she said, “Roy was one of my best students.” Then he sprung his trap, waving around the comic: “Well, he’s got a letter in this comic, so it can’t be that stupid!” Of course, I did have a letter in it, one of many I wrote to editor Julius Schwartz.

Besides the school paper and marching band, Gary had a major part in at least one high school class play, adapted from the novel The Egg and I. After the film version, they’d spun off a decade of Ma and Pa Kettle movies—the forerunners of The Beverly Hillbillies. Gary played Pa Kettle. Well, actually, they couldn’t use the name “Kettle” in the play for some legal reason, but he knew that’s who he was really playing and hammed it up… way beyond what the teacher/ director wanted. He really chewed the scenery.

Oh, and he was also in a 15-minute black-&-white horror/ comedy amateur silent movie that he, John Short, and I, and three other guys, made in the late ’50s: Les Ghouls… a ripoff of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. John played a Frankenstein-type monster; we used his brand new movie camera, and it was entirely filmed in his family’s house. I wrote it and played a werewolf. Gary played the Bud Abbott part, but with more than a touch of Leo Gorcey of the Bowery Boys. It was a pretty primitive film.

He never really got involved with the comics fandom that grew up after Xero and Comic Art and Alter Ego... but he did help me out twice after I took over Alter Ego in ‘64. First, after Linda and I broke up—she had posed for me for photos that ran in Ronn Foss’ two issues, as “Joy Holiday,” the costumed mascot he’d designed—Gary arranged for a girl we knew, Pauline Copeman, to pose in that outfit. She appeared in my three pre-pro issues, #7, 8, and 9.

He also arranged for #7, my first issue as editor/publisher, to be printed by Cash-Book Printing in Jackson. A crusty older guy named Leroy Beatty did a wonderful job with it. But Gary told me that, later, Leroy groused, “The best printing job I ever did, and it

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

11

Squawking In The Squaw-ler Justice League of America #5 (June-July ’61) reprinted in full Gary’s editorial from The Squaw-ler—which Roy T. had mailed to JLA editor Julius Schwartz. So that piece eventually had a circulation of several hundred thousand copies. [TM & © DC Comics.]

was for a goddam comicbook!” [laughter] RA: As I understand it, before he went to New York, Gary was working at a newspaper as an editor... writer... I think he was doing pretty much of everything.

THOMAS: Yeah, he sure was! He said in CBA that Jackson’s two weekly newspapers had merged into the Jackson Pioneer, which came out twice a week. The editor was a guy named Tom Stites, who’d worked at the highly respected Kansas City Star. He taught Gary a lot, and Gary really looked up to him.

Taking his cue from Stites, Gary’d get very upset if somebody wrote in an obituary that a loved one had “passed away.” “He died, dammit!” Gary would snarl. “He didn’t ‘pass away’!”

After Stites moved back to Kansas City and the paper’s owner got in an accident, Gary edited the paper for a year or so, around 1964. At 21, he was the youngest newspaper editor in the state. He was working like a dog—80 hours a week for $50, he said, with no other editorial staff. Later he got a raise to a whole $75 a week.

Early on, he raised a furor by writing an anti-Beatles editorial. He was very anti-Beatles at the turn of ‘64, maybe partly because, like me, he was a big Elvis fan. But I liked the Beatles right from the start—well, as soon as I heard something by them besides “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” which I’ve always hated. That editorial brought Gary some hate mail.

But he soon became even more of a Beatles fan than I was. He relished printing articles that outraged Jackson’s city leaders. In some ways, for him, editing that newspaper was just another way of dumping bubble-bath in the courthouse fountain.

In ‘64, after a new girlfriend and I spent a month driving around Mexico and I came back to Jackson to finish out the summer, Gary talked me into writing two or three “Memos from Mexico” articles for the paper. I forget if I got paid anything for them or not. If I did, it just occurred to me—that might well have been my first “professional” writing… and it would’ve been for Gary!

RA: So, you were the first of the Missouri writers to go to New York—in late June of ’65. Were you already writing for Charlton when you arrived there, or were you doing that while waiting to start the job you had lined up at DC Comics?

[Continues after Interlude]

Joy To The World!

(Left:) Roy’s indulgent girlfriend, Linda Rahm, as “Joy Holiday” in Alter Ego [Vol. 1] #6 (Winter 1963-64), wearing a red shirt of Roy’s turned backward. (ThenA/E editor Ronn Foss had christened the mag’s new mascot “Joy Holiday” because he’d created and first drawn her for a December fanzine.) She went on to become a professor of literature at a college in Montreal (Right:) Gary’s friend Pauline Copeman as “Joy” in A/E [V1] #7 (Fall 1964). Photo by Gary, who was credited as “Photographic Assistant” in that issue, whose printing he also arranged.

12

A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

Interlude:

The Great 1964 SEMO Fair Exposé

by Ken Steinhoff [A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: Ken Steinhoff, a 1965 graduate of Central High School in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, has worked in photography and related fields all his adult life. This includes being employed early on by the Jackson Pioneer and Southeast Missourian newspapers in Cape Girardeau County, later by other papers in Ohio and North Carolina, then for 35 years as a staff photographer and in managerial capacities for the Palm Beach [Florida] Post, until 2008. In recent years he has returned to live in Cape County. The text and photos in this interlude are taken, with his kind permission, from a couple of his related online pieces. Photos & text © 2021 Ken Steinhoff All Rights Reserved.]

T

O Pioneer!

(Left:) A 2016 photo of sidebar author Ken Steinhoff, who freelanced as photographer for the Jackson Pioneer in the mid-1960s.

(Above:) Gary Friedrich in 1964 as editor (and basically the whole blamed editorial staff) of the Pioneer. [Photos © 2021 Ken Steinhoff – All Rights Reserved.]

he Southeast Missouri District Fair in Cape Girardeau was my first newspaper undercover investigation assignment.

Jackson Pioneer editor Gary Friedrich decided he and I would go to the fair to see if we could uncover and document gambling violations on the fair’s midway. I have no way of knowing whether or not he had any evidence of the gambling or if he just wanted to go to the fair.

Gary had a number of theories: • The midway games were either rigged…

• Or, they weren’t games of skill, which would make them gambling.

• If they were gambling, the cops had been paid off.

• UFOs were real.

Gary was capable of multi-tasking. He was working on that last theory at the same time.

Soon we meandered over to this game. You might detect some kinda bad vibes coming off the gentleman at the left. I was beginning to get the feeling that he might not like me.

That’s Editor Gary pitching the Krazy Ball, trying to win a piece of plush (a stuffed toy). I presume the enthusiastic gentleman perched on the stool is Mike. Gary was shooting the ball, I was shooting pictures. I’m not sure how Gary rated this stand.

Before long, the nice man on the right came over to talk with me. He was joined by two other burly fellows who wanted to make sure I got back to my car safely at the end of the evening,

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

13

which, coincidentally, was Right Now. Gary shot that picture with a camera I slipped him when I thought things might be going south.

I was 5’10” and weighed maybe 105 pounds in those days, so they wouldn’t have had to be too big to meet my definition of “burly.” At any rate, I thought that maybe, since they were kind enough to offer me an escort off the grounds, it would have been ungracious to refuse.

I don’t remember what kind of story Gary ended up writing. It may have had something to do with UFOs. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: On February 23, 2019, when Ye Ed was guest of honor at the “February Annual” arts event held in Jackson, Ken learned from Cape Girardeau County History Center director Carla Jordan that I would be coming to the center around 5:00 p.m. to sign comics and books and to meet such of the public as might want that particular experience:] When I heard that Roy was coming into town, I made a couple of prints of [my photos of] Gary Friedrich [from his days at the Pioneer] to give to him because I knew they had run around together.

Much to my surprise, when I walked in, I found the plaque above displayed in the museum. It turned out that Gary went on to become a well-known member of the “Marvel Bullpen” in the ’60s.

When I showed Roy the photos, he laughed at the big stack of [Continued from p. 11] THOMAS: By the time I moved to Manhattan to start my job at DC, I’d written two long-distance scripts for Charlton, and an outline of a “Jimmy Olsen” story for Superman editor Mort Weisinger, the guy I’d be working for in New York. But, after two weeks at DC, I met Stan Lee and immediately jumped ship to Marvel. Everybody knows that story who could possibly want to.

Gary came up that November. As he freely admitted in CBA, he’d been a fairly heavy drinker since his late teens. I didn’t really think of him as an “alcoholic” back then, because he never got falling-down drunk and only rarely belligerent… so I thought getting him to move to New York was doing him a favor, ‘cause then he wouldn’t be hanging around with a bunch of Missouri lowlifes and losers. [laughs] I guess, when I lived there, I didn’t count myself.

Pepsi crates in the background.

“I love this picture of Gary,” he said. “All those Pepsis stacked there in the back are probably Gary’s. They were probably all for him. He would drink a whole mess of Pepsis every day. By the time he was in his 30s or 40s, I think every tooth in his mouth was false.

Like other people smoked cigarettes, he drank Pepsis. He looks so young here. I would have been about 23 at that time (1964ish), so he was only about 20 or 21.” [WRITER’S NOTE: I struggled to find how to spell the plural of Pepsi. This was the most common, even if it looks strange.]

“Whatever happened to Gary?” I asked.

“Sadly, he just died recently.”

A very nice obituary for Gary ran in the Missourian on September 4, 2018. My first thought was, gosh, he sure died young. That’s when I realized that he was four years older than me. showing Gary my brand new Fantastic Four #1 one day when he was minding the lot for his dad.

Anyway, back to ’65: when Gary called me back, I told him that if he came up to New York, I’d see if I could help him get some work writing comics. At the time I was staying with fan and pro writer Dave Kaler in what would’ve been called a loft—except it was on the ground floor—in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. They were starting to call it the “East Village,” to make it sound less like the slum it was.

Things weren’t going that well for him back there, anyway.

After the newspaper job went away, he briefly worked in some factory in Cape Girardeau... “putting the heating element in waffle irons,” whatever that means. He didn’t like it much.

RA: So it was you who brought him to New York in ’65?

THOMAS: No, I didn’t “bring” him. He paid his own way up. He said that, when I phoned, I had to leave a message with his dad. I knew Gary’s parents fairly well. His mother, Elsie, often waitressed around town and was an outspoken person, very colorful. His dad, Jerry, was more reserved… a mailman, much of the time I knew him. Later he had an auto franchise in Jackson for a while; I recall

And Gary’ll Make Four!

(Left to right:) Comics scribes Dave Kaler, Denny O’Neil, and Roy Thomas in the former’s Avenue A apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side… taken in the fall of 1965, shortly before Gary Friedrich moved in as well.

This pic accompanied an article on Kaler’s comics-collecting in the Long Island daily newspaper Newsday. Thanks to Sean Howe. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

“Doctor Strange” stories. Soon after Gary and I moved to the Village, [Marvel production manager] Sol Brodsky talked me into letting [artist] Bill Everett stay with us the four or five nights a week he’d be in Manhattan to work on staff; he lived in Massachusetts. So Bill, Gary, and I were roommates for most of that half-year at 177A Bleecker Street.

RA: That probably gave Bill a lot of reference for street scenes after he took over from Ditko on “Doctor Strange.” He’d have only had to look out the window to see what Dr. Strange might have seen walking down his street.

THOMAS: Yeah. “Doctor Strange” was one of the first things he did after returning to Marvel in late ‘65 or very early ’66, because Ditko quit right around Christmas of ‘65.

RA: Just curious: Was Ditko ahead of schedule at that time, because Marvel ran four or five completed strips after December 1965?

THOMAS: No, Steve was on schedule, no more, no less. One day, he walked in and told Sol that he’d finish the Spider-Man and “Doctor Strange” jobs he was currently working on, and that would be it. So he wasn’t ahead... just right on time, like he always was.

Marvel didn’t have any kind of cushion.

When Bill moved in with us, Gary said that, within minutes after I introduced them, he offered Bill a beer—and that was that.

I liked beer, but I couldn’t put it away like they could and still get any work done. So I was usually odd man out in that threesome, with them holding down some bar counter while I sat home typing away. I’d thought Gary might cut down on the booze if he wasn’t around his Missouri drinking buddies, but he just found new ones in New York. I should’ve expected that, of course. But, though I was hardly a teetotaler, I hadn’t had a lot of experience with alcoholics.

Like most people, I was just lucky not to be born with the gene, or whatever, that predisposes a person toward becoming one.

“Wild Bill” Everett (top center) probably in 1967, at the third and last of Kaler’s New York comics conventions—and Mr E.’s very first “Doctor Strange” splash, for Strange Tales #147 (Aug. 1966). The Greenwich Village scene right below his, Gary, and Roy’s Bleecker Street window really did look quite a bit like this when they dwelt there in early ’66—minus the Mystic Master, of course.

Script by Stan Lee. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Dave was about to put on what was only the second real comics convention ever, and he’d invited me to move in with him, two weeks after I arrived. I slept on a mattress on his floor. Early that fall, I helped Denny O’Neil get a job at Marvel. He was a St. Louis U. grad who moved up from Cape Girardeau. I’d met him while he’d been a reporter for Cape County’s daily newspaper, and he was temporarily staying at Dave’s place, too, when Gary hopped a Greyhound bus to the Big Apple. So, for a very short time, all three of us transplanted Missourians were crashing at Dave’s digs... all on mattresses, I think. Four people in one big room made it tricky for me to write “Millie the Model” scripts at night after working all day at the Marvel office, but we made it work for a few weeks.

Before year’s end, Denny had moved out to marry his girlfriend Ann... and Gary and I had moved to a second-floor walk-up apartment on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village.

RA: Which is where the origin of Dr. Strange’s home address comes in.

THOMAS: Yeah. By then, I’d written dialogue for two Ditko

Mostly, though, life was good. As a ferinstance, one day while Gary and I were walking around Washington Square Park, just for kicks we made up a rock’n’roll song we called “Look Out—Here Comes the Spider-Man!” This was before the first Spider-Man TV cartoon, whose theme song by coincidence would use the same line, but with a totally different melody and no other lyrics in common.

The first thing we came up with was the line, “Nobody loves you when you crawl along the wall.” We wrote the song in the style of “Alley Oop”—if you remember that one—and hits by the Coasters, like “Yakkety Yak” and “Charlie Brown.”

Our mutual friend Len Brown was a young executive at Topps Chewing Gum. He put up the money for us to record it in a rented studio, and became basically the producer. It was me on vocals, Gary on drums, and a couple of studio musicians Len hired on lead and rhythm guitar, with Gary’s new girlfriend Cindy and a friend singing girl-group backup.

The recording turned out reasonably well. Somehow, after we played the demo for him, we even managed to get Stan’s verbal blessing—for whatever that was worth—to try to sell it to a record company. That’s how casually things were done at Marvel in those days. Now, what [publisher] Martin Goodman would’ve

Len Brown in a recent pic taken for a newspaper by photographer Ricardo B. Brazziell.

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

done if we’d actually got an offer for the song, I can’t say. But the only pitch Gary and I ever got to make was to Roulette Records.

In the ‘50s, they’d been a hot label with Jimmie Rodgers, who sang “Honeycomb.” The exec we met with turned it down flat. Well, I don’t think Roulette lasted much longer anyway. So that was that. I still have a copy of that recording.

RA: You were probably lucky not to have signed with Roulette. It was notorious for being heavily “mobbed up” and never paying royalties for records they released. Singer Tommy James wrote an autobiography stating exactly that. Apparently, Jimmie Rodgers believed that he was savagely beaten by three LAPD police in a 1967 traffic incident—he couldn’t remember the details due to a severe concussion, and the police officers claimed that he “fell.” Rodgers believed that the beating happened as a result of his demands for his royalties from Roulette. Morris Levy, the president of Roulette, was on his way to prison when he died. You likely wouldn’t have gotten a dime for the song.

THOMAS: Maybe not. But it still would’ve been great to have a song out there, even if somebody else had wound up recording it. I do remember Jimmie Rodgers’ reportedly “hitting his head on the curb” or something during some police stop, and his subsequent memory problems. In ’76 or ’77, after I moved to L.A., I saw him sing at a country music hotspot, the Palomino Club, in one of his rare later appearances, and he was just a shadow of what he’d once been. He seemed barely able to concentrate. A real sad story. I guess the music business has always been pretty corrupt.

RA: During Gary’s Charlton days, it’s possible he may have done some uncredited stories for the company, since they were just beginning to add writer and artist credits in 1966. But his first known credits are for stories listed in Charlton’s romance comics dated September 1966. The lead-time required in that era would indicate he was probably writing those at the very latest in March of 1966.

THOMAS: Probably a bit earlier. When he first moved to New York, there wasn’t an opening at Marvel, since Denny and I were holding down the two editorial-assistant slots. So for a few weeks I paid most of the bills till Gary landed a job at a music store in Queens. That job made sense for him. After graduating high school in ’61, he’d only gone to college very briefly—probably due to a combination of family finances and, I suspect, a lack of interest on his part—too bad, ’cause he certainly had the smarts to make it in college. Then he’d got a job in Cape at Shivelbine’s Music Store, which sold records and musical instruments. That’s where I bought most of my records through the mid-’60s. It’s still in business.

Back to New York: Luckily, Marvel wasn’t the only comics company around. At the moment, I was hardly in a position to recommend Gary—or anybody else—to DC. But, earlier, I’d sold those two stories to Charlton, and since then [artist] Dick Giordano had taken over its editorial reins. I’d had lunch with Dick, we’d hit it off, and we’d get together occasionally when he came to the city from Derby, Connecticut, where Charlton was based. I recommended several writers to him over time. The first was Dave Kaler, who wound up doing some “Captain Atom” stories, and Gary was the second.

Gary said in CBA that, after he returned from a trip back to Missouri over Christmas that year, he didn’t want to go back to work at that music store, so I put him in touch with Dick. Gary took a train up to Connecticut to meet him that first time. Although I knew Gary could write, I told him (and Dick) that I’d work with him if he needed help easing into doing comic scripts. But he turned out to have a real aptitude for it... thank God, ‘cause I don’t know where I’d have found time to “work with him.” I was busy writing at home on top of forty hours a week at Marvel. Matter of fact, he wrote a lot faster than I did. I’d always be stopping, rewriting,

15

hoping to find just the right word, but Gary just plowed straight ahead. He needed to, with Charlton’s rates being so low, but it was also his natural inclination.

Not long afterward, I also sent Denny to meet with Dick, when Stan took him off staff and he needed more freelance writing than Marvel was providing him. I also got my fan-artist friend Grass Green work up at Charlton, first illustrating and dialoguing that “Shape” story I’d plotted anonymously.

After that, Dick assigned Grass to draw the final two episodes of the “Blooperman” series Gary had started in Go-Go Comics. It was a parody of “Superman.” [NOTE: For the record, “Blooperman” began in Go-Go #3 (Aug. 1966), with script by Gary and art by Jon D’Agostino; the artist in #4 was Bill Dubay.]

Dick Giordano Photo of the artist from an issue of the Catholic comic Treasure Chest (Vol. 18, #11, Jan. 31, 1963)… less than three years before he became editor of Charlton Comics and soon hired Gary Friedrich to write for the company. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Gary recalled that I’d told him how, when I was four and my mother would read me “Batman and Robin” stories, I thought at first that, since they wore masks, they must be crooks named “Badman and Robber.” So he asked if I’d mind if he made Badman and Robber characters in “Blooperman.”

Naturally, I loved the idea. Next issue, he asked if he could use the “Bestest League of America” parody heroes I’d made up in 1961 for Alter-Ego #1. That was great by me, too. In his last “Blooperman,” he also parodied Marvel’s heroes and even worked in Stan Lee and Julie Schwartz, with their names slightly altered. I should point out I made no contribution to those stories, beyond giving Gary my blessing to use a couple of concepts I’d thought up—oh, and he quoted Green Trashcan’s oath from my fanzine story. But, in a sense, those stories were precursors of Marvel’s Brand Echh comic months later.

Dick was soon keeping him busy full-time. He wrote fast enough that, even at Charlton’s rates—probably still the $4 a page I’d gotten a year earlier—he could pay his share of our rent. I was making $10 a page at Marvel, plus I had a staff job, so between us we could afford the Bleecker Street pad.

RA: If I’m going strictly by credits, Dave Kaler came in first at Charlton...

THOMAS: Yes. He was writing for Charlton within a few weeks of my arriving in New York. Gary came up a few months later... as I said, a couple of months after Denny, who arrived around September. But Gary wrote for Charlton before Denny did.

RA: From the titles of those romance stories and from the one or two I’ve had a chance to read, Gary had a rather quirky sense of humor.

THOMAS: [bursts into laughter] That’s for sure! It was really the romance comics that Dick most needed him to write. In one interview, Gary said that, just as he was about to leave their first meeting, Dick said to him, “Hey, I wish you could write romance comics.” Without a beat, Gary responded, “I can write romance comics.” And he did. But I think the only way he could stand to write them was to make a lot them really off-beat. I’ve never forgotten some of the titles—“Hootenanny Heel,” “Too Fat to Frug,” “Tears in My Malted,” “Born in the Boondocks,” and “Please Don’t Play B-11.” There’d been a country song called “Please Don’t Play A-11.” In the Grand Comics Database, I found several Charlton romance credits for him I don’t remember. But that’s no surprise.

RA: Some of those titles might also relate to the fact that he was working

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A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

Maybe They Should’ve Named It World’s Fine-less Comics?

Though the two of them probably never met, Gary Friedrich & artist Jon D’Agostino were teamed up by Giordano to debut the 4-page feature “Blooperman” in Charlton’s humor title Go-Go Comics #3 (Oct. 1966)—whose last page introduced Badman and Robber, based on a conceptual misunderstanding by a 4-year-old Roy Thomas. (And note the “SHAZOOM!” lifted from 1953’s Mad #4!) Thanks to the Comic Book Plus website. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Richard “Grass” Green Jon D’Agostino

was a bit of a 1960s rock’n’roller himself!

Seen here is a screen capture from his 1964 appearance on the national TV series Amateur Hour. Thanks to Albert Fisher, via Brian Cremins. [© the respective copyright holders.]

The First DC/Marvel Crossover—Charlton Style!

(Clockwise from above left:) In Go-Go Comics #5 (Feb. 1967), seen at left, Gary F. and Grass Green introduced to a wider audience Roy Thomas’ 1961 parody creations, the Bestest League of America, who had appeared in the first three issues of his and Jerry Bails’ comics fanzine Alter-Ego. The out-of-whack coloring (e.g., of “Green Trashcan”) may be an attempt to avoid a stern letter from DC Comics’ lawyers, rather than ignorance of which colors the takeoff characters should’ve been.

In Go-Go #6 (below), Friedrich and Green ushered in their own rendition of the Marvel heroes, so they could battle the BLA. On that tale’s final page, caricatures of DC’s Julius Schwartz and Marvel’s Stan Lee showed up to straighten things out. By the time this issue went on sale, Gary had left Charlton behind and was on staff at Marvel. Inks by Frank McLaughlin. Thanks to CBP. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

17

Loved Clockwise, But Not Too Well!

Five of GF’s offbeat romance stories for Charlton: “Hootenanny Heel” from Love Diary #45 (Sept. 1966)… “Please Don’t Play B-11” from I Love You #64 (Oct. ’66)… “ – “Tears in My Malted” from Sweethearts #90 (Dec. ’66)… “Too Fat to Frug” from Love Diary #47 (Jan. ’67)… and “Born in the Boondocks” from Teen-Age Love #52 (March ’67). The only artists identified for any of these are Vince Colletta as inker on the first two, and Norman Nodel as artist on the last. Thanks to CBP. [© the respective copyright holders.

in a music store, since an A-11 or B-11 would be the punch buttons on a jukebox. “Born in the Boondocks” was likely a takeoff on the 1965 hit song

by Billy Joe Royal, “Down in the Boondocks.”

THOMAS: I’m sure it was. Gary liked rock’n’roll better than country music, but he liked a lot more country than I did. Like I said, we were both always very interested in pop music. Back in Cape Girardeau, we used to go, both together and separately, to an out-of-the-way outlet where they sold 45s that had recently been taken off jukeboxes, and we could buy them real cheap. That’s one way we could build up our record collections without having much money.

RA: Gary soon moved from romance stories to writing horror stories and then to super-hero stuff, including the “Blooperman” parodies, for Charlton.

THOMAS: Gary also dialogued the first “Blue Beetle” stories Ditko did as a back-up series in Captain Atom. For Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, he and I made up a back-up series “The Sentinels,” though Gary did all the real writing. He named one of those heroes “Crunch Wilson,” which was the nickname of Jim Wilson, one of the young co-owners of the Palace Theatre back in Jackson. (A few years later, I’d name the Hulk’s black teenage sidekick “Jim Wilson.”) “Sentinels” was drawn

by Sam Grainger, a commercial artist from North Carolina who’d done some Alter Ego illos in ’64-’65. I recommended him to Gary as a potential artist for “The Sentinels,” and Gary pushed him to Dick.

Sam could ink in a Joe Sinnott style, and later did a lot of work for Marvel.

Gary also created a CIA agent heroine named Tiffany Sinn. She started out in Charlton’s romance titles. Her stories were really spy yarns with some romance thrown in. [NOTE: Tiffany Sinn appeared in Career Girl Romances #38-39 (Feb.-April 1967), written by Gary, and the final issue (scripted by Dave Kaler) of Secret Agent, #10 (Oct. 1967).] Tiffany Sinn was a great name for a Modesty Blaise-type character. Still, he couldn’t make that much money writing for Charlton.

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A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

A Hero Sandwich Gary Friedrich’s super-hero work for Charlton included conceiving “The Sentinels” for Thunderbolt #54 (Oct. 1966), to be drawn by Sam Grainger… and dialoguing Steve Ditko’s relaunch of “Blue Beetle” in Captain Atom #83 (Nov. 1966), along with a tale or three afterward. Thanks to CBP. [Blue Beetle TM & © DC Comics; Sentinels TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Sam Grainger “The Sentinels” was his first pro-comics work.

RA: You mentioned a “Cindy” earlier, when you were talking about the “Spider-Man” song. You said she was Gary’s girlfriend at that time?

THOMAS: And before long, his second wife. He started dating her soon after we moved to Greenwich Village. I don’t recall how they met, or, sadly, what her last name was. Cindy was a bright young Jewish woman, and a great gal, though I never did quite see how she and Gary made a pair. She was way more sophisticated than either of us at that stage. She worked for something called the Vera Institute of Justice, which had been founded to work with government institutions like the police to promote justice, fairness, and all that good stuff. I never knew much about the organization, but it—or at least Cindy—sure came through for us when we needed help.

Y’see, our Bleecker Street landlord was this surly, rough guy who insisted we pay our $120 rent in cash every month. We went along with it—what the hell did a couple of Missouri hayseeds know? Then, two or three months into our lease, we got a letter from the city rent commission saying that building was under rent control, and our lawful rent was only $95 a month. So Gary and I told the landlord we wouldn’t ask for the excess money back or report him to the commission, but from then on we’d pay just $95. He got angry—“I know what I have to charge for that place!”—but we stood firm.

That’s when we started getting anonymous Steve Ditko late-night phone calls laced with threats. One Co-creator of that I picked up ended, “They’re gonna find you Spider-Man, Dr. two in a garbage can!” It kind of shook us up, Strange—and the of course—me, especially, because I was there 1966 rendition of alone a lot, since Gary was spending a lot of Blue Beetle. time at Cindy’s. One day I managed to talk to the landlord’s wife when her husband wasn’t around, but she said we should pay the $120, because he went “a little crazy sometimes,” supposedly because of something that happened to him in “the war.” So I went out and bought a police lock and a .22, so if he tried to break in while I was there I could fire at the door and hopefully scare him away. But that wasn’t exactly a long-term solution.

Luckily, Cindy, as representative of the Vera Institute, had made some buddies at the NYPD, and she got one of those cops to phone the landlord and read him the riot act. The cop told him, if anything bad happened to “those boys,” he’d be hauled into the police station so fast it’d make his head spin. The threatening phone calls stopped after that, and the landlord left us alone. But Gary and I decided our Greenwich Village idyll had pretty much run its course, so soon afterward we moved out in the dead of night, up to a nice studio apartment on East 87th Street. And no, we didn’t get our deposit back.

Gary and Cindy got married while he was still writing for Charlton, which would make it in 1966. I was best man at

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

19

that’d rent us drums on short notice.

Later, after her parents aimed a couple more barbed remarks my way, I made a conscious decision to get quietly smashed, and f$&% ’em. But I’m not much of a drinker, so pretty soon I got to feeling sick and headed for a bathroom. Only thing was, the day before, I’d bought a new pair of pants for the wedding, and this salesman had talked me into buying this very tight pair—way too tight. He’d persuaded me that tight was “in.”

So now I’m down on my knees by the toilet, Luis Dominguez and my tight pants suddenly split right in the crotch—and next thing I know, Gary comes racing in and tells me Cindy’s mother was screaming at him, “Your best man’s in the bathroom exposing himself!” Anyway, after I got it together, several of the locals kindly kept me company at a table on the fringe of the party till I felt well enough to survive the long cab ride back to Manhattan.

So that’s how I helped Gary’s second marriage get off to a good start! [laughter] RA: You’d think that a bathroom is the one room in a house where you could expose yourself.

Well, Spying Is A Career, Isn’t It?

THOMAS: You would, wouldn’t you? He and Cindy honeymooned in a swank hotel in the Broadway area. He asked me to help him out by writing a romance script for Charlton. I figured it might be a break from my Marvel work, so I started one I called “If You Love Me, Fight for Me!”—about a girl who dumps her boyfriend because he won’t stand up to a bully. But, five pages in, utterly repulsed, my mind rebelled and wouldn’t let me write any more. When Gary “came home” a few days later, he took over—and on page 6, the guy takes karate lessons so he can rip the bully to pieces. In the end, though, he ditches the girl instead. That 8-pager

Gary Friedrich’s female spy “Tiffany Sinn” debuted in Charlton’s Career Girl Romances #38 (Feb. 1967). By her second outing, in #39 (April ’67), she led off the comic—but artist Luis Dominguez was a bit unclear on the size of St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, so his splash page had the villain shinnying up it! Thanks to CBP. [© the respective copyright holders.]

their wedding… a tiny ceremony in the office of some top judge who was a family friend. That night, her parents threw a huge reception under a big tent on their sprawling lawn in Scarsdale, up in Westchester County—X-Men country. Only thing was, and there’s no nice way to say this... they clearly didn’t like Gary or me, apparently mostly because we were goyim... not Jewish. They couldn’t have been less friendly to me, and, to the extent they could get away with it, even to Gary.

RA: Unfortunately, that wasn’t unusual in that time. Italian Catholic parents wanted their kids to marry Italian Catholics, or at the very least, a Catholic. Same with Poles, Irish, etc. Any kind of religion or ethnic group.

I remember as a kid a lot of discussions between adults where they were concerned that their children weren’t marrying or dating in the “right” or same ethnic or religious enclave as their parents. That kind of thing still goes on today in some cultures.

THOMAS: Nearly all of Cindy’s friends and her parents’ friends that I met, though—most of whom were probably Jewish, to judge by the number of times the hired band played “Hava Nagila” that night—were very friendly. Cindy’s parents were the designated bigots. A few of her male friends approached me with the idea of renting some drums so Gary could sit in with the band, which had none. I offered to foot the bill, but they couldn’t locate a local place

“Truck Drivin’ Man” In a second story for Career Girl Romances #38 (Feb. 1967), GF told a more traditional love-comics type of tale… but dig the final caption! Here’s a shocker: “Truck Drivin’ Man” had been the name of a hit country record in 1954. “Len” was probably named after pal Len Brown. Artist unknown.

Courtesy of CBP. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

New Blood, Times Two Al Hartley

(Left:) Short-term Marvel staffer Ron Whyte scripted “The Looters Strike” for Two-Gun Kid #86 (March 1967); art by Al Hartley. Sorry we couldn’t locate a photo of Whyte.

From the 1964 Marvel Tales Annual.

(Right:) But the lead spot in that issue went to Gary’s story “The Challenge of Cole Younger,” penciled by 1950s bullpenner Vic Carrabotta. Thanks for both page-scans to Nick Caputo, a.k.a. “Kid Caputo Outlaw.”

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

was Gary’s and my first real comicbook “collaboration.” [NOTE: Panels from that story were reprinted in A/E #106.]

Anyway, for what she did for us through her NYPD buddy— God bless Cindy! Wherever she is today, I hope she’s happy!

As you said, there may be more uncredited romance stories of Gary’s at Charlton, since I think all the GCD credits for those were added later, probably based on his 2001 interview. Two of his last stories for Charlton were mystery yarns drawn by Ditko, so at least Gary went out with a bang! [NOTE: See p. 56.]

RA: Within a few months of his Charlton debut, Gary was writing Ghost Rider for Marvel. Not the supernatural, blazing-skull one, but the Western Ghost Rider who’d appeared in comics published by Vin Sullivan’s Magazine Enterprises in the 1950s. It was picked up for revival

by Marvel in 1966 as an “abandoned trademark.” So how did Gary’s move to Marvel from Charlton come about?

THOMAS: With Denny moved over to just freelancing, Stan still wanted to hire one other person on staff to write and do back-up proofreading and the like, besides me.

First he hired a recent college grad named Ron Whyte, who I think had written Stan a letter or something. Stan was all impressed because Ron had won a prize for some play he’d written, I guess in

Vic Carrabotta in an early-21stcentury photo.

college. I don’t recall much about him except I think one of his arms was a bit stunted, maybe from a childhood illness. Marie Severin liked his sense of humor, and I’m sure he was a very bright guy, but somehow he and I never hit it off. Years later, when he briefly planned to write a book about Marvel, based on his fifteen minutes on staff, he wrote sample paragraphs on all the Marvel staffers, and the one about me was particularly vicious. Of course, I didn’t see that never-published material till decades later, after he’d died.

Anyway, Stan had him script a couple of Westerns, and quickly realized he didn’t like Ron’s comics prose. Stan felt it was weak—“effeminate” is one word I recall him using. So he let him go. [NOTE: Besides a handful of Western yarns for Marvel, Whyte also wrote a story for Warren’s Eerie #11 (Sept. 1967), a “Dragonella” tale for Wally Wood’s Heroes Inc. (1969), and a 1970 script for DC Comics’ Witching Hour during his short-lived comics career.]

But Stan wanted to replace him right away, so I saw my opening to push Gary. Just like when he hired me from DC, I think Stan liked the idea that Gary was already writing comics for another company, even if it was Charlton. He was given a different version of the Marvel writer’s test from the one Denny and I’d taken. He clearly did well on it, although he said in CBA that he never liked working “Marvel method,” with pencils drawn before dialogue was added. I don’t recall ever knowing he felt that way.

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

21

original secret identity—Rex Fury, the Calico Kid— because the original stories were still under copyright

by Magazine Enterprises. It was only the trademark that had been “abandoned.” So he became Carter Slade, a frontier schoolteacher.

But before I could really get started, Stan changed his mind and decided he didn’t want to “waste” me on a Western! I wasn’t happy about that, but we rang in Gary as writer, and Stan let me work with him on the plot of #1. One character we made up for it was an Indian named Flaming Star… from the name of a movie Western Elvis had starred in in 1960, soon after he came out of the Army.

When Hair Was More Than Just A Broadway Musical (Left:) Gary, of course, wrote the dialogue for this backup “creative team” humor tale in the 1968 Sgt. Fury [Annual]. Art by Dick Ayers & John Severin. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Right:) GF sporting what wife Jean says he referred to as his “Blues Brothers look,” probably sometime in the 1970s. If a pic exists that shows him with long hair and a beard, we didn’t run across it while preparing this interview. Thanks to Jean Friedrich.

Somehow, though, Dick Ayers wound up with full plotting credit on Ghost Rider #1. I can’t for the life of me imagine how. Gary and I had talked out the plot, and I’d be willing to bet he just handed Dick a written synopsis. I’ve always wondered if maybe, since Dick had drawn the ’50s Ghost Rider—in fact, that was apparently a key reason Stan had hired him, a few years later—Dick really wanted that plotting

Gary always said that, in that writer’s test, he used the expression “Hang loose, Herbie!” Stan went ape over it and started using “Hang loose” all over the place, till before long he believed he’d thought it up himself. That annoyed Gary.

Still, he always kind of had Stan’s number.

He came off as borderline hip, and that was close enough for Stan! Well, compared to Stan and me, Gary was a hippie. Soon, he let his hair grow long and grew a beard. So did I—if you count the scruffy goatee I had in ’68—and I wore a Nehru jacket for good measure, but nobody was ever going to confuse me with a hippie. I ditched the Nehru after a truck driver whistled at me on Second Avenue… and my first wife Jeanie made me shave off the goatee when we got married that July. But Gary kept his beard and long hair, or at least a moustache, for years, and they suited him a lot better.

His first writing assignments at Marvel at the turn of ’67 were Westerns, so he was there when Marvel decided to launch the Western Ghost Rider. I’d originally talked Stan into letting me write it, since I’d loved the early-1950s hero, as drawn by Dick Ayers. According to the lawyers, Marvel could use the Ghost Rider name and even costume, but not his

Dick Ayers From the 1969 Fantastic Four Annual.

The First Ghost Rider—a.k.a. Night Rider (Above:) Splash page of The Ghost Rider #1 (Feb. 1967), with art by Dick Ayers & Vince Colletta. Roy T. disputes Ayers’ plotting credit. Thanks to Barry Pearl for this and the following scan.

(Left:) Gil Kane & Tom Palmer supplied a new cover for Night Rider #1 (Oct. 1974). It reprinted the first 1967 issue of TGR—with the masked cowpoke’s moniker altered inside as well, of course. In later guest-star appearances in West Coast Avengers, he became “The Phantom Rider.”

Courtesy of the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

credit, and maybe Gary—or more likely Stan— just gave it to him.

Whatever happened, I’m positive the plot was Gary’s and mine… and of course Gary wrote all the dialogue.

That Ghost Rider comic only lasted a year. But, in 1970, when Stan launched a new anthology—Western Gunfighters—Gary wrote new “Ghost Rider” stories for it. He also wrote “Tales of Fort Rango,” which was drawn by Syd Shores. I seem to recall that as being a concept Stan handed to Gary… but I could be wrong about that. Later, after the motorcycle Ghost Rider hit big, some of Gary’s Western Ghost Rider issues were reprinted under the title Night Rider, to avoid confusion with the new guy. That wasn’t the best title in the world, though, because in the past “Night Rider” had sometimes been used to refer to the Ku Klux Klan. Eventually, the Western hero became the Phantom Rider.

One nice idea Gary had around that time was “The Phantom Eagle.” Herb Trimpe had been an art school buddy of John Verpooten, the new Marvel production man. John helped Herb get a job operating Marvel’s new Photostat machine—it had its own room!—and Herb and Gary hit it off. Gary knew Herb was interested in old biplanes… a few years later, he’d even buy one.

So Gary came up with “The Phantom Eagle,” a costumed World War I pilot, largely to give Herb a chance to show what he could do as an artist. I doubt Gary knew about the hero’s pulp-magazine forebears like G-8 and His Battle Aces, or that 1940s Fawcett comics

had featured a young World War II aviator called “The Phantom Eagle” —I may even have suggested that name to Gary, I don’t remember—but Gary’s concept was a nice combination of World War I aerial battles and retro pulp-style adventure. It was done as a one-shot for Marvel Super-Heroes. It’s a shame he and Herb didn’t get a chance to do more with the Eagle. I later tossed him into a Hulk story, which Herb drew—and in The Invaders I showed him as a member of a World War I group, Freedom’s Five—but he never really became an integral part of the Marvel Universe. Well, there’s still time, right?

RA: That’s a bit of a surprise to me, as I’d thought “Phantom Eagle” was originally Herb Trimpe’s creation. Good to know the real backstory.

I’ve always suspected that “Phantom Eagle” got the go-ahead from Stan because DC was doing “Enemy Ace” at the time. A story about a World War I pilot from Marvel seems likely to be a counter-move. I also suspect that character was special to Trimpe, because he really liked to draw World War I planes. He was known to have large-scale plane models hanging from his ceiling at home.

Besides “Ghost Rider” and “Phantom Eagle,” some of Gary’s earliest writing assignments at Marvel were humor stories for Not Brand Echh.

Do you think he may have gotten that gig because of his parodies of the Justice League and others in the “Blooperman” strips for Charlton’s humor title Go-Go? THOMAS: Not likely. Stan wouldn’t have even seen that material, unless Gary showed him the couple of panels where Stan and Julie Schwartz were parodied. Mostly it was because it was Gary and I who handed Stan the idea for the Brand Echh comic. Gary insisted I was the one who came up with the title Brand Echh for it, using the phrase Stan had coined for the competition—all the competition, not just DC. Gary and I had been discussing how we’d love to start a Mad-type color comic at Marvel, except all the parodies would be of super-heroes.... takeoffs on the DC, Charlton, Gold Key, Harvey, Archie, and Tower heroes, and any others that might come along.

Soon after Gary came on staff, Stan took the two of us out to lunch one day—the same day, I think, he decided that I was “associate editor” and Gary was “assistant editor”—and asked if we had any ideas for new books. Not new super-heroes, but something a bit different that might still appeal to our readers. So we pitched him our idea for Brand Echh. Stan said he loved it—then proceeded to stand our concept on its head! Gary (at least in private to me) was furious about that. I wasn’t initially thrilled about Stan hijacking our idea, either, but I soon came to realize he was right.

Stan’s reasoning was that Marvel’s fans knew little or nothing about most DC characters—okay, Superman and Batman, maybe one or two others, but they wouldn’t necessarily be familiar with most of them, let alone with the heroes of Tower, Charlton, etc. He felt that parodying those companies’ heroes would simply give Marvel readers reasons to go looking for the competition’s books! [laughs]

The “Eagle” Has Landed!

Herb Trimpe

A Herb Trimpe aerial action page for the “Phantom Eagle” origin from Marvel Super-Heroes #16 (Sept. 1968). Thanks to Barry Pearl. Script by Gary Friedrich. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Photo from the 1975 Marvel Con Program Book.

He was okay with doing a little of that, but mainly the new book would lampoon Marvel’s own heroes. Once we got into it, Gary and I had fun with that. But it didn’t make any sense to call it just plain Brand Echh now, so informally it became Not Brand Echh, because we were mostly parodying Marvel, which, of course, wasn’t echhy! [laughs] Before long, the title was officially changed… but, because of the cover copy Stan wrote on #1, the readers called it Not Brand Echh from the get-go.

Not Brand Echh #1 caused a spot of stress

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

Stan Lee

23

between Stan and me, as I’ve related elsewhere [see A/E #95], but also between Stan and Gary, because Gary got teed off at the amount of rewriting Stan did on his “Sgt. Fury” parody. Two issues later, it happened again on his “S.H.I.E.L.D.” takeoff. Those experiences took a lot of the fun out of the mag for Gary… and, for what it’s worth, I think Stan would’ve been better off leaving well enough alone. But Stan was always so proud of his humor writing—which I never really thought was his strong suit— that he couldn’t resist rewriting other people’s humor, especially in the early issues. He did a fair amount of rewriting of me at first, too, but nothing like he did of Gary.

Stan and Gary, just like Stan and I, were not always on the same page when it came to humor.

The closest Gary and I came to a collaboration on Not Brand Echh occurred when I decided to do a parody of West Side Story, with pseudo-Marvel and -DC heroes duking it out like the Sharks and the Jets, so I could write send-ups Jack Kirby of the song lyrics, à la Mad. But then I got too busy, so I had Gary do it instead—and he did a great job with the lyrics. Back in our Palace Theatre days, we used to kill time by making up obscene parodies of rock’n’roll songs; I won’t go into what they were. So Gary spoofed West Side Story, and later I parodied Camelot. We both loved the early-’60s film of West Side Story. When it had first played on a giant screen in St. Louis, we drove the two-plus hours there, at least two or three times, just to see it and then drive back home that same night.

Echh Marks The Spot!

[Not] Brand Echh #1 (Aug. 1967) became the first comics cover on which the names of Gary Friedrich and Roy Thomas, and maybe production manager Sol Brodsky, ever appeared—even though Stan Lee wrote all their “quotes.”

But surely Jack Kirby’s name should’ve been out there, too, since he drew it. Inks by Mike Esposito. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Wild Blue (Pencil) Yonder (Above:) Friedrich holds up the heavily edited original art to p. 4 of the “Sgt. Furious” story in NBE #1. Photo taken by Bob Bailey at the 2011 Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. (Right:) That page as printed. Gary and Stan didn’t even agree on what the name of the parody squad should be. Gary wanted “Sgt. Furry and His Yowlin’ Comanches”—Stan insisted on “Sgt. Furious and His Hostile Commandos.” (Anybody wanna guess which one associate editor Roy Thomas preferred? But Stan had the last word.) Thanks to Barry Pearl.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

24

A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

Gary and [artist John] Verpoorten also did a great takeoff on the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” album, and he and Herb worked up a wonderful spoof of R. Crumb’s cover for that Janis Joplin album with “Piece of My Heart.”

RA: Around the time the first issue of [Not] Brand Echh came out, Gary began his stint on Sgt. Fury, which is, alongside of the motorcycle Ghost Rider, the book that he’s most associated with.

THOMAS: Right. I’d been writing it, but if Stan wanted me to script more super-heroes, I was happy to give it up. Gary’d always been interested in World War II. I think his dad had been in the service then. Gary soon put his own spin on Sgt. Fury and turned out some very interesting work. And you’re right, it’s the work he’s most known for, except for co-creating the 1970s Ghost Rider.

RA: I noticed that, in one of the first issues he wrote, you’re credited with writing the wrap-around story while Gary’s credited with the main story. The main story’s actually a flashback telling the previously unknown history of Fury’s first adventure with his Howling Commandos.

THOMAS: That issue [#44] was also John Severin’s debut as the full artist on the book, and I admired Severin’s work. Gary had just taken over the title, but I wrote this wraparound introduction, just so I could say

I’d worked with John Severin.

Within a couple of issues, Gary was doing his own thing.

I worried he might be straying too far from what Stan, and the readers, wanted to see. And, while it never truly became a real anti-war title, some of Gary’s stories did kind of flirt with that.

Stan would’ve been very sensitive about that, so Gary was walking a kind of tightrope there. He was writing war stories, but they weren’t just the “shoot-up-the-Nazis” stories that were so prevalent at the time.

RA: That brings us to a question or anecdote that artist-letterer John Workman told me about—essentially that Gary’s story in Sgt. Fury Annual #3 (1967), which featured the 1960s Colonel Fury going to Vietnam, had irked some Army general who threatened to pull the title from the Army PXs. That “banning from the PX” thing actually happened to Warren’s Blazing Combat, and the loss of that major market for war comics had played a significant part in its early demise. According to Workman, Stan had to quickly smooth over the waters (and the general) to keep the book on the military bases. Do you know if that story is accurate?

John Severin

THOMAS: Sorry, I’ve no memory of any of that. Stan had told me about a similar thing that had happened in the Atlas days, probably during the Korean War, but I

Hell Hath No Fury… (Or Maybe It Does!)

(Left:) Friedrich’s first scripting on Sgt. Fury was for #42 (May 1967), in conjunction with Dick Ayers & John Tartaglione.

(Right:) Two issues later, when John Severin was piped aboard as resident artist beginning in #44 (July ’67), recent Fury scribe Roy Thomas wrote a severalpage framing sequence, so Gary’s first team-up with “Long John” began on that tale’s fourth page. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

25

Teams Supreme (Left:) With Sgt. Fury #47 (Oct. 1967), the long-running combo of Friedrich, Ayers, & Severin was born. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Above:) Okay, so the Sarge never really went “over the top” alongside Captain Ego, the A/E “maskot” created by Biljo White in 1964, as per this colored drawing

by Shane Foley—but we didn’t have room for a letters section in this issue, and we didn’t want to deprive you of Shane’s fine illo! [Sgt. Fury TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; Captain Ego TM & © Roy Thomas & Estate of Bill Schelly.]

don’t remember what you mention.

left the book over his own dissatisfactions with it.

I know that Severin didn’t like at least one of Gary’s stories, “The Deserter.” He complained to Gary that no American soldier really got shot for deserting during World War II, that it had only happened once, and that had been in World War I. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: This is incorrect, by the way. Private Edward Slovik was executed for desertion on Jan. 31, 1945—the only American soldier since the Civil War to be executed for that crime. See pp.

44, 51, & 52 for more on “The Deserter” and the other tales in the so-called “The” series written by Gary F.]

RA: If he did, he waited three years to do so, because he was the inker on the book until 1970. By that time, the run of the “The” stories was nearly over. I think there was only one more after Severin’s departure. To be fair to John Severin, as mentioned in A/E #164, he did illustrate the Mike Friedrich story “22 Hours to San Francisco” for DC Comics’ Our Army at War, which managed to be both pro-military and anti-war at the same time and was quite highly praised for it at the time.]

By this time, Ayers had returned to penciling the book and John went from doing full art to inking. John was busy doing art for Cracked, the main Mad imitator, so he didn’t care. The reason for that switch was that Severin was a fantastic artist, but didn’t pencil as excitingly as Stan wanted for Marvel’s comics… so after an issue or so, Stan teamed him up with Ayers. Dick would pencil the action, then Severin would give it that wonderful finish. They made a wonderful team.

RA: They certainly did. I should mention that the Sgt. Fury Annual set in Vietnam would not have likely been a story Severin would’ve complained about, since Ayers penciled that annual and John Tartaglione inked it.

THOMAS: I was supposed to oversee Gary’s stories to some extent, but of course he also dealt directly with Stan. As long as the book sold, Stan didn’t pay that much attention anymore to Fury. He was getting more used to just inspiring people to come up with their own ideas, rather than having them just try to please him by imitating what they thought he might’ve done. As long as we didn’t get a lot of complaints from readers—and I don’t remember there being many—Gary could largely go his own way. I don’t think John

THOMAS: I don’t remember that story, because I rarely read any war comics. But Gary put real work into those Sgt. Furys—I remember the medic story as another good one. And “The War-Lover.” I think that was the title of a movie around that time, too, but Gary’s story was completely different.

Before we leave Sgt. Fury, I should mention the infamous “Casablanca” story from Sgt. Fury #72. That was a close call! [laughs] I guess I wasn’t overseeing Gary closely enough. He wove that issue’s story around events in [the 1942 Warner Bros. film] Casablanca, and got Ayers and Severin to do these wonderful likenesses of Humphrey Bogart and the rest of the cast.

When Stan saw the issue, after it was all finished and set to go to the Code and the printer, he hit the ceiling: “You’re gonna get us sued!” Even if Warner hadn’t owned DC Comics, they’d have sued, because we couldn’t just stick Marvel characters into the plot of a copyrighted movie.

This was on a Friday. Stan got the new guy on staff—Allyn Brodsky—to spend the weekend rewriting dialogue to change Casablanca to Marrakesh, etc. Stan had Dick change all the facial likenesses. And we had to replace lyrics from “As Time Goes By,” which would’ve got us sued by whatever music-publishing

26

A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

“You Must Remember—I Mean, You Must Forget—This…”

Allyn Brodsky

(Top left:) Two Friedrich/Ayers/Severin panels scanned from photocopies of the original art for Sgt. Fury #72 (Nov. 1969), in which the hero “Rick,” talking with Happy Sam Sawyer, still sports Humphrey Bogart’s face—and utters one of that screen character’s trademark lines (“I stick my neck out for nobody”).

Photo from 1967 yearbook of University of Pennsylvania, 2-3 years before he worked for Marvel.

Source: Ancestry.com, U.S. School Yearbooks 19001999 (online database). Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operation, Inc., 2010. Thanks to Ray Bottorff, Jr.

(Top right:) Those panels as printed in Sgt. Fury #72. Note that, at Stan Lee’s behest, staffer Allyn Brodsky had steered the re-lettered dialogue even further from the familiar cadences of the 1942 film Casablanca. The story of this troubled tale is told in far greater illustrated detail in A/E, Vol. 3, #6. Scan courtesy of Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

company held those rights. That was a truly unpleasant experience for Gary, and for me. But Stan wasn’t a grudge-holder. I don’t recall his ever rubbing Gary’s or my nose in it later.

At the stage the story was Photostatted, most panels still showed likenesses of the Casablanca actors. Some panels have Stan’s written notes—”Put a mustache on this face.” In the end, none of the drawings looked like Bogart or Peter Lorre and the like. Even so, a few readers wrote in, “Hey, this is a takeoff on Casablanca!” They had no idea how close to Casablanca it had originally been! [laughs] RA: Stan’s worry makes sense. You could parody the story, but you can’t take the actual story wholesale and use it.

THOMAS: Right. Gary had made up a new story that occurred in between the scenes in the movie. It was very cleverly done... a far more creative story than the comic as published. But to use it, we’d have had to license the rights to Casablanca from Warner—and even if they’d allowed it, the easiest and cheapest thing to do was to alter the pages... fast, to make the printing deadline. In retrospect, it makes for a funny anecdote... but at the time, Gary felt Stan had ruined his story. Well, maybe he had, but in the process, he also saved Marvel’s ass... maybe Gary’s and even mine. Goodman was still the publisher, and he’d have gone ballistic if we’d got Marvel sued over such a ridiculous thing!

One funny thing is that Fury plays almost no part in that issue. It stars his captain, Happy Sam Sawyer, all because of that famous line of dialogue from Casablanca—which isn’t actually used verbatim in the movie—“Play It Again, Sam.” Stan changed that to “Play It Alone, Sam.” Gary made Sam the hero because of that line.

Otherwise, it surely would’ve been Fury who went to North Africa.

RA: It seems a little unusual that Gary was writing both Sgt. Fury and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. at the same time. I don’t really know too many writers who were chronicling the same character’s adventures in two different comics with storylines set 25 years apart.

THOMAS: Like all of us, Gary wrote whatever features Stan told him to. But, though he liked super-heroes OK, I suspect he had more empathy for soldier or spy characters. Me, I preferred the super-heroes. Gary was also writing Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders at the same time as the two Nick Fury books.

RA: He also wrote Combat Kelly in the early 1970s.

THOMAS: Oh, yeah! I forgot all about Combat Kelly. Another character by that name had a series back in the Atlas days. The 1970s version didn’t last too long.

RA: No, and when the series was canceled, Gary killed off the entire squad except for Kelly, who quit to care for his girlfriend.

THOMAS: [laughs] Did he? I don’t remember that. That series, like Captain Savage, was Stan’s idea. The original 1950s Combat Kelly was a Korean War comic. There was also a Combat Casey back then.

Two guys both named “Combat.” The two books were practically identical. You know Goodman: If Combat Kelly was doing okay, let’s have Combat Casey as well!

RA: True. If there was a trend going on in comics, Goodman would run it into the ground by producing multiple titles on it. How many of his war titles used the word “Battle” as part of the title?

THOMAS: Yeah, he loved the word “Battle.” Eventually, Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders became Captain Savage and the Battlefield Raiders. Probably it occurred to Stan, or to Goodman, that some kids in 1970 wouldn’t know “Leathernecks” was slang for the Marines. A World War II or even a ’50s kid would’ve likely known that.

RA: It should also be mentioned that Captain Savage was a naval Captain [a much higher rank in the Navy than in either the Army or Marines] commanding a squad of Marines, who were basically acting like today’s Navy Seals. That wasn’t how that usually went. Well, technically, I guess the Marines are part of the Navy.

After Gary’s marriage to Cindy, how did your friendship with him evolve?

THOMAS: As I said, Gary was never as involved with comics as I was—which is certainly no criticism of him. In spring of 1966, before he got married the second time, he and I leased an apartment on East 87th. But I saw more of Bill Everett there as a de facto roommate than I did of Gary, who spent most of his time at Cindy’s.

After the wedding, I took over the entire rent except for what I could pry out of Bill. About the only memories I have of Gary in that apartment are from a party or two we threw, including one small gathering the night before the wedding. For some reason, I

direct order

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

Between Hand Grenades & Motorcycles While noted primarily for scripting other Marvel features, Gary also had popular if limited runs on series that included The Incredible Hulk #107 (Sept. 1968); art by Trimpe & Shores—Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #15 (Nov. 1969); art by Trimpe & Ayers—and Captain America #142 (Oct. 1971); art by John Romita & Joe Sinnott. In that last issue of the original S.H.I.E.L.D. series, he actually talked Stan Lee into letting him “kill off” Colonel Fury—though he was resuscitated by later hands. Thanks to Robert Higgerson and Barry Pearl for the scans. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

recall his younger sister Becky being there, and singing a moving acapella version of the Rolling Stones song “As Tears Go By.” His marriage to Cindy didn’t last all that long. As a wedding gift, her family gave them a high-rise apartment in Queens—I think in Lefrak City—with wall-to-wall carpeting. Cindy and Gary promptly went out and bought a dog, but with them both working, it didn’t often get properly walked, and within a few months that beautiful carpet was totally ruined.

That probably didn’t help endear Gary to his in-laws.

John Romita From the 1969 Fantastic Four Annual.

I get a bit hazy on his relationships after that. Not long after the breakup with Cindy, he and some new girlfriend took off for Nevada... Reno, maybe Lake Tahoe, too. He went AWOL from his staff job—and naturally, Stan was livid. For a little while, I think Gary became a blackjack dealer out there. Then he came back to New York... I think he and that girl had split up by then. I don’t think he got his staff job back, and I thought at the time maybe even his freelancing was history. Stan was pretty pissed.

27

28

A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

War Is Hell! (No, Wait—That Was A Later Marvel War Mag!) The splashes of Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders #1 (Jan. 1968) and Combat Kelly #1 (June 1972), both by the Friedrich/Ayers team… with Syd Shores inking the former, and Jim Mooney the latter. Curiously, of Marvel’s three Silver Age war-hero comics, only on Captain Savage was the name of the hero’s team a part of the actual indicia title; not so for Sgt. Fury or Combat Kelly. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

But, like I said, Gary’d spent time in Reno—and, as many people nowadays know from either Stan’s autobiography or the Stan Lee Story book I wrote, although I didn’t know it back then: When Stan’s wife Joan had divorced her first husband—she’d been an English war bride—she went to Reno for the six weeks of residence there you needed for a quickie divorce. That’s what people who could afford it did in 1947. According to Gary, as soon as he mentioned Reno to Stan, Stan launched into his own memories of how, when he’d wanted to fly out to Nevada to see Joan, he’d been in such a hurry that he told the travel agent to get him on “the first plane to Reno”—which turned out to be one that made “milk stops” all the way out, so it actually took him a day or two to get there. Well, in the course of Stan relating that story, all his anger at Gary just evaporated, and the two of them came out of his office smiling like best buddies. Like I said, somehow, even without always trying to, Gary had Stan’s number.

RA: That’s a pretty good story. [chuckles] THOMAS: It’s the best kind of story: it’s totally true!

Around 1970, Gary worked for Goodman’s men’s magazines for a while, apparently first for David George and later for Ivan Prashker. But I know next to nothing about that work.

When Gary lived in New York, during both his marriages there and especially before his first move out West, we tried to take advantage of the culture—at least the popular culture—New York

had to offer. He wasn’t as into Broadway plays as I was, but we went to a lot of musical events together. I remember that, early on, we were really thrilled to get to see Chuck Berry, a favorite of ours ever since high school. Our band had done “Johnny B. Goode” just about every night we ever played.

Gary really got into the late-’60s rock group Country Joe and the Fish, whose main hit was an anti-Vietnam War song called “The I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.” After they wrote Stan a fan letter, Gary arranged for a couple of them to come up to meet Stan, probably mostly so he could meet them himself. One was David Cohen, the keyboarder... I don’t think Joe himself came up. A night or so later, Gary and I went to see them play at the Fillmore East [theatre] downtown, but it turned out not to be their best night. We were really knocked out by the new band that opened for them...

Ten Years After. When the Fish came on, by comparison, they just seemed to be jamming, and a bit undisciplined. But after the show we went backstage, ’cause they were basically a good band. I was crazy about their song “Not So Sweet, Martha Lorraine.” Gary, of course, preferred “The I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.” Both of us liked various kinds of pop music. There was a Manhattan jazz club called The Riverboat, where we and our current ladies went to see Ella Fitzgerald, whom we both adored.

We saw the Supremes when they played the famous Copacabana night club—and later John Verpoorten dragged Gary and me and several other people there to see [insult comedian] Don Rickles.

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

Interlude

Remembering “Old Yellow Hair”

A

by Warren Reese

s a teenaged Marvelmaniac, my tempestuous, high-tension life was made easier by reading stories written by Gary Friedrich. His clever, heart-filled writing guided the adventures of the Hulk, Sgt. Fury and his Howlers, and more than one Ghost Rider.

In later years, his talent charged Captain Britain with more dynamism. It was in that latter period, as a colleague, not just a fan, that I was privileged to assist Gary and get to know him as a close and trusted friend.

He told me that he was born in Missouri, in 1943, and was related to President Ulysses “Simpson” Grant and General (later Colonel) George Armstrong Custer. He met his close pal and collaborator, Roy Thomas, while they worked in a movie theatre and had some rascally adventures. Gary moved on. Not especially by literary intention, he struck a blow for African-American civil rights as a newspaper reporter. Eventually, he joined Roy up in “Sixties” New York.

There, the intrepid Gary wrote trading cards for Topps while writing comics for Charlton, and later Marvel. I helped Gary, and he helped me, too. He was one of my few professional Marvel friends. He looked like “Yellow Hair” Custer, but he was my rascally, likable pal.

29

Warren Reece (Then Warren Storob.) For more about his time at Marvel, see Alter Ego #108.

International Hotel in Las Vegas for the whole month of August, his first live appearances since the ‘50s, Jeanie and I should come out to L.A. and we’d all drive over to Vegas and see him. So we flew out and spent a week in L.A. As it happened, we arrived just days after the Manson murders—before it was known who the killers were— and there was considerable tension in the air. The movie Once upon a Time... in Hollywood got the atmosphere right. Hollywood Boulevard was starting to look more rundown than in old photos, as the hippies and druggies moved in, but it certainly was colorful.

Country Joe And The Fish Lessee… Ye Editor is fairly sure that’s “Country Joe” MacDonald in the center of the photo, and keyboardist David Cohen (who definitely visited the Marvel offices) wearing glasses at bottom.

One major highlight for both Gary and me was whenever Bobby Darin played the Copacabana. In ’59, after “Mack the Knife” and “Beyond the Sea,” he’d made a wonderful live album called “Darin at the Copa.” Both of us had played our copies over and over back in Missouri. To us, I guess, Darin was sort of “Sinatra Lite.” He usually played the Copa one week a year, and we’d take our wives to see him. Once, in the lobby, Gary came within a hair of getting into a fistfight with one of the club’s burly bouncers, when the guy tried to move him back a bit... but luckily, his wife Nancy pulled Gary away before he got us all thrown out, and probably got himself beaten up.

Oh yes… Nancy. I should tell you about her, right? By ’69, Gary took up with a second nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn—Nancy, who was different from Cindy in lots of ways. She was short and curvy, while Cindy’d been tall and slim and more worldly. Nancy and Gary got married—I think out in L.A., where they’d moved by that spring. Gary often recounted how his grandfather’d been married six times, and that he intended to break his record. At that stage, I think he was at least half-serious.

By that summer, he and Nancy were living in some little warren of cottages in the Hollywood area. Gary phoned me and suggested that, since Elvis had been booked to appear at the new

The four of us rented a car and drove over to Vegas, and Jeanie and I took Gary and Nancy to see Elvis as our wedding present to them. I remember tipping some guy 20 bucks for an almost stage-side table... that’d be like $150 now. Elvis was terrific... better than the other four times I saw him. Gary and I had heard he liked comics as a kid, so, a few hours before the evening show, we tipped some hotel guy to try to get a note to him; I forget the details. It said these two Marvel Comics writers were here to see his show and would love to say hi. Just a shot in the dark. That afternoon, while the other three were elsewhere, I was walking towards the door of Jeanie’s and my room when I heard the phone ringing inside. By the time I got inside, it’d stopped. It wasn’t Jeanie or Gary calling, or the hotel desk—we checked—so Gary and I were convinced it was somebody connected to Elvis. We always felt we’d missed our

“That’s All Right, Mama” Elvis Presley, the crowned king of rock’n’roll, at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in August 1969. Gary, Roy, and their wives saw him from nearringside—black suit and all. In later shows, he tended to wear white, or occasionally red or blue. And always those Captain Marvel Jr. sideburns! [© the respective copyright holders.]

30

A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

chance to meet the King. Ah, well. At least we met Country Joe and the Fish.

RA: And at least you got a good Elvis story to tell. You probably saw him at his peak. The recordings I’ve heard of those ‘69 Vegas concerts are top-notch.

THOMAS: Yeah, though not half as good as being there in person.

Gary didn’t drink or gamble to excess on that trip—none of us did. The only sour note was that he insisted on smoking during the several-hour drive across the desert, both ways. We had to roll down the windows to get rid of the smoke, which meant the desert heat came pouring in.

Reminds me of how, back in New York, when movie theatres still had smoking sections—usually the rows on the right—we’d all have to sit there so Gary could smoke. John Verpoorten would sarcastically refer to him as “Smokey Stover” or as “Cochise,” like an Indian sending up smoke signals. A few other guys Gary hung out with back then, along with Verpoorten and Len Brown, were three of John’s art school buddies: Stu Schwartzberg, a talented cartoonist who operated Marvel’s Photostat room for years… Al Kurzrok, who did some lettering and later became a psychologist… and Bill Peckman, who’d gone into commercial animation. All great, funny guys.

The Four Amigos A quartet of good buddies of Gary Friedrich’s in the late ’60s and ’70s were (l. to r.) artist and later Marvel production manager John Verpoorten… artist/writer Stu Schwartzberg (of Spoof and Crazy Magazine)… staff letterer Al Kurzrok (who also scripted a few Marvel stories)… and TV animator Bill Peckman. Pics, respectively, from the 1969 Fantastic Four Annual… the office-staff photo accompanying Robin Green’s 1971 Rolling Stone Marvel article… and a caricature of himself drawn by Peckman.

[Caricature © the respective copyright holders; Rolling Stone photo detail © Estate of David E. Leach; used by permission of Jean Caccicedo.]

RA: Gary worked for Skywald Publications for a period of time. That’s where he did Hell-Rider, which is very much a non-supernatural prelude to the supernatural biker Ghost Rider.

THOMAS: Sol Brodsky, Marvel’s former production manager, was Skywald’s co-publisher, and he and Gary always got along well.

Once Gary wasn’t on staff, Stan didn’t mind if he did some work for Skywald. Stan never saw Skywald as real competition, like he did DC. He really liked Sol, but he didn’t think Skywald would be around for long. And, of course, it wasn’t. Sol jumped ship back to Marvel some time even before Skywald sputtered out, and Stan welcomed him with open arms. Y’know, I’ve never really read the Hell-Rider series. There were, what, only two or three issues?

RA: Two black-&-white issues that ran 64 pages each. Hell-Rider was a motorcycle guy, dressed in black leathers, who seemed to be based more on the American International film The Wild Angels than anything else. He appeared at Skywald in 1971, a year before the appearance of the Marvel Ghost Rider. Hell-Rider was a non-supernatural or super-powered motorcycle good-guy who spent a lot of time beating the crap out of bad motorcycle guys.

THOMAS: Gary had ridden on motorcycles, but I’m pretty sure he never owned one. When I gave him the Daredevil book to write, I’d recently introduced a costumed motorcyclist villain called StuntMaster. But I hadn’t cared much for the character Gene Colan and I had come up with. Gary said he wanted to use a motorcycle villain in his Daredevil story, but not Stunt-Master. I said no problem, just make up a new bad-guy on a bike.

He already had one in mind, because that’s when he told me he wanted to call the villain Ghost Rider. I don’t recall much else about what he said, but I strongly suspect his original concept of the character was not supernatural, any more than Hell-Rider had been.

Because, at that stage, Daredevil never fought true supernatural foes.

RA: I should mention that the Daredevil comic I’m looking at [#67] doesn’t have either Stunt-Master or Ghost Rider. Instead it features the Stilt-Man—the guy with the long metal legs.

So Where’s The Sundance Kid? Don’t worry—the Kid had his own separate title! When it and Butch Cassidy #1 (June 1971) both appeared from Skywald, it was only a matter of time till there was a crossover, right? Only—can anybody tell us if there was one, before Skywald folded its four-color tent? Script by GF, art by Tom Sutton & John Tartaglione. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

THOMAS: No, no… Ghost Rider never came anywhere close to debuting in Daredevil. All I meant is that I suspect what Gary originally had in mind was a guy whose ghostly actions would be just gadgets and tricks, like with the Western hero. Because, at that stage, a supernatural Ghost Rider would’ve made sense against Dr. Strange, maybe in Fantastic Four, but somehow not in Daredevil.

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

31

drawn by Mike Ploog. At various times, elsewhere, Gary would say he’d had a definite look in mind from the start that was close to what we ended up with—and I’m not saying he didn’t—I just don’t recall ever knowing what it was. Of course, just the name Ghost Rider, plus a motorcycle, gives you certain parameters.

Anyway, Ploog was asked to come into the office—it may well have been the very next day.

He thought he was coming in to discuss reviving the Western Ghost Rider, which he’d have enjoyed doing. [chuckles] Unfortunately, at that time, Gary was still in his “undependable” phase. He was back on staff for a while, mostly to handle letters pages and the like.

And, by his own later admission—I didn’t know about it at the time or I’d have hit the ceiling, and God help him if Stan had found out about it!—he was even hiding booze in a desk drawer, or at least spiking sodas, so he could sneak a drink on the job. And, as it happened, on the day Ploog came in to visually design the character, Gary pulled a no-show.

The Road To Hell…

Covers of the two 1971 issues of Skywald’s Hell-Rider (which, by the way, was written as two unhyphenated words in its indicia), both painted by Harry Rosenbaum. Interior Hell-Rider art can be seen on pp. 49 & 57.

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

Anyway, as soon as Gary told me his rough idea of a motorcycle-riding Ghost Rider fighting Daredevil, I told him no, I didn’t think he should do that. He looked at me like I was crazy.

Didn’t I recognize a good idea when I heard one? But I was just messing with him. I told him this was too good an idea to waste on a bad-guy in Daredevil; he should be the hero of his own series. Stan was looking to start some new monster-hero comics. We already had Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf by Night.

So, right away, I ushered Gary in to see Stan, Gary told him his germ of an idea, and Stan quickly got very enthusiastic about it. As soon as we started talking about this new Ghost Rider starring in his own book, the supernatural aspects just fell into place. For some reason, Stan insisted his civilian name be Johnny Blaze. Marvel already had a Johnny Storm, so Gary and I didn’t much care for that idea, but Stan wanted a Johnny Blaze, so Stan got a Johnny Blaze. Ghost Rider metamorphosed in half an hour from a probably normal-guy Daredevil foe into a supernatural hero, the star of his own series. Nowadays you’d have to have twenty meetings before you got to that point, and you still wouldn’t necessarily come up with as good a character!

When Gary left Stan’s office that day, he had an assignment to write a “Ghost Rider” series for one of Marvel’s Showcase-type books. Stilt-Man inherited the Daredevil Hollywood story.

RA: In the long run, the transition turned very well. Once you got the black suit, the black motorcycle and all that...

THOMAS: Gary and I discussed this a few times over the years, and while we disagreed about a few details, I truly don’t recall his ever insisting to me that we’d ever definitely discussed the visuals of the character before he was first

Stan didn’t bother to sit in, either—it was just Mike and me at my desk, with me explaining the character’s concept and look to Mike. Still, it’s not hard to believe Gary and I might’ve been basically on the same page from the start, assuming the new hero wouldn’t wear an all-white outfit like the old one. We were both

Gene Colan Super-Villain Spin-Outs The cover of Daredevil #58 (Nov. 1969). Writer/ originator Roy Thomas had been dissatisfied with the way the antagonist turned out—and not because of the art by Gene Colan & Syd Shores. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

pirate flag—the one thing, in my opinion, that could’ve improved his look! Mike evidently lumped my costume directions in with his own memories of a shirt John Wayne had worn in The Searchers and other Western films, though I don’t recall him mentioning that at the time. But that does account for the flap on Ghost Rider’s chest.

Mike Ploog at a con. His beard had grown whiter since his “Ghost Rider”/ ”Frankenstein”/”Werewolf

by Night” days, but his drawing hand was as nimble as ever.

Think This Series Has A Ghost Of A Chance At Success?

Cover of Marvel Spotlight #5 (Aug. 1972), autographed by Gary F. for Bob Bailey. Art by Mike Ploog. (See this image bigger on p. 64.) Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

big Elvis fans. And the garb I had in mind, and maybe Gary already did as well, was the black leather motorcycle outfit Elvis had worn in his late-1968 TV special… which Gary and I and our then-ladies had watched together at Jeanie’s and my Manhattan apartment, as a matter of fact. That’s the look I described to Mike, though I’ve always felt like an idiot for not having him add crossbones on his chest to go with the skull. Then he’d have looked like a walking

The Evolution Of Ghost Rider’s Gear The black leather jumpsuit Elvis Presley wore in his legendary 1968 “comeback” TV special was the major inspiration for the starting-point for the new Ghost Rider’s outfit.

Mike Ploog later referenced the shirt that John Wayne wore in the 1956 film The Searchers (as well as in other movies) as an influence on his approach to the comic hero’s look. [TV & movie stills TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

The black-&-white sketch at right, found online, may or (more probably) may not be the actual one that Ploog drew for associate editor Roy Thomas that day at the turn of ’72… but if not, it probably looked a bit like this.

[Ghost Rider TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I don’t recall, either, if Gary and I had discussed Ghost Rider’s head being a skull. Maybe we did, maybe we didn’t. Anyway, that day, however it came about, I told Mike to make his head a skull.

Mike started drawing, in that wonderful Eisneresque art style. At one point I suddenly noticed he was adding flames around the guy’s skull. That wasn’t anything I’d asked him to do, so I asked why the flames, and he said, “Well, I just thought it would look better if his head was on fire.” [laughs] And it sure did!

The basic concept was still Gary’s. If there was one essential person in the creation of that version of Ghost Rider, and thus of all the Marvel permutations of the character since, it would have to be Gary. Stan and Mike and I all contributed, but it was Gary’s baby.

Without him—no motorcycle Ghost Rider!

Mike then designed the motorcycle. I mostly left that to him, as long as it was dramatic and impressive. Ghost Rider was a success for some time. I don’t think Gary wrote it all that long, though, did he?

RA: He wrote all of the Marvel Spotlight appearances and the first four issues of Ghost Rider.

THOMAS: When I saw the first story’s credits as Gary had scripted them, in some early stage, they said it was “conceived and written” by him. I’ve always assumed that, since he hadn’t used the verboten word “created,” Stan let that credit stand when he eventually saw it… and Martin or Chip Goodman, whichever one was officially publisher at that time, didn’t object, either, if they ever saw it. And the credit was, of course, accurate… although I’ll admit I do think of Mike Ploog as a co-creator of Ghost Rider, since he was the first to

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

actually draw him, and was crucial to designing him visually.

But I had contributed to this Ghost Rider, too—especially, by my lights, to his look—and ordinarily, at that time, my name wouldn’t have been in the credits of any story I didn’t also script. So I had the letterer add, at the end of the credits: “Aid and abetment – Roy Thomas.” I wanted some acknowledgment of my contribution, without altering Gary’s main credit. [NOTE: See splash on p. 3.]

He never said anything directly to me about my added credit.

But someone—I forget who—told me that, while the inked and lettered original art was lying on [then production manager] Verpoorten’s desk, Gary saw the credit I’d added, grumbled, “F***ing egotist!,” and stomped out. I never brought that up to him, ’cause what good would it have done? But I guess we both had strong feelings about what we did on “Ghost Rider.”

I don’t remember why Gary left Ghost Rider. Do you remember the dates that he left?

RA: Going by the publication date, he left it in late 1973, after plotting #6. He had introduced the Son of Satan in Ghost Rider #1 & 2. “Son of Satan” would take over Marvel Spotlight when “Ghost Rider” got

33

his own book. Gary wrote the first two of those Spotlight issues as well.

In fact, although up to then he’d been working steadily at Marvel, doing Combat Kelly, Frankenstein, and Ghost Rider, and setting up “Son of Satan,” he appears to leave Marvel entirely at that point, at least for a while. His 1974 credits are sparse.

THOMAS: Gary and Herb Trimpe were the original creative team on “Son of Satan,” but the concept preceded their involvement.

With Tomb of Dracula selling well, one day Stan told me he wanted to start a comic called The Mark of Satan, with Satan as the villain-star, like Dracula in Tomb. He was surprised when I told him I didn’t think that was a very good idea. I said a lot of religious people might not appreciate the Devil as the lead character in a comic, and it might backfire on Marvel. Stan immediately saw my point, but said, “Okay, so what would you do instead?” I thought about it, and soon came back with: “What if we made it The Son of Satan?” I said he should be the offspring of Satan and a mortal woman. Sort of like Rosemary’s Baby grows up, except he’d be a good guy. Stan loved it and said go do it. Somewhere early on, I named the character “Daimon Hellstrom.” I don’t recall having a strong idea as to how he should look, except I wanted him to have a trident. Apparently John Romita designed the costume, so Marvel counts him as a co-creator. Of course, Herb should also be counted as a co-creator of not only Son of Satan but of Wolverine.

By then I was editor-in-chief, so I assigned Gary and Herb to handle the series. They led into it in a couple of “Ghost Rider” stories in Marvel Spotlight and did a fine job. By some dumb oversight, I didn’t bother adding an “aided and abetted” credit to “Son of Satan” as I had on “Ghost Rider”—probably because this time my name would be on the splash page as editor. It was all in a day’s work, y’know? Some of Gary’s later comments suggest he forgot, if he ever knew, how the hero originated. That’s certainly understandable. Hey, even when [my manager] John Cimino had a picture of me with my Marvel “co-creations” drawn for a poster, I forgot to have Son of Satan included!

A weird footnote, though: Right as that series got going, I suddenly remembered to my horror that, in the early ’60s, a fan-artist friend of mine in Missouri—Biljo White—had written and drawn a single fanzine comics story about a hero he called “Son of Satan,” who I think had an origin along the lines of what I’d suggested to Stan! I don’t recall if I ever actually read that fan-comic, but I did see it, because Biljo would’ve sent it to me.

Except for wielding a trident, he didn’t look anything like the Marvel guy, but still…. I phoned Biljo and apologized, but he said it was no big deal: he’d only done one story with him and could see why I hadn’t recalled it a decade later. But I’ve always felt bad about it. Gary, John, and Herb hadn’t known anything about Biljo’s “Son of Satan,” of course. That was all on me.

RA: So why did Gary’s credits suddenly dry up? He’d been doing fairly decent work at the time.

The Son Also Rises The cover of the second full-out appearances of Daimon Hellstrom, “Son of Satan”: Marvel Spotlight #13 (Jan. 1974), drawn by John Romita, who had designed the look of the character. For some reason, there was a threemonth gap between the first two “Son of Satan” issues. See the cover of MS #12 on p. 66. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

THOMAS: It’s hard for me to pin down, but I’ll try. During this general period, Gary was in New York off and on. He often stayed with John Verpoorten, especially when he and Nancy were on the outs. I know he was living in Jackson in January of ’72, when we almost got to perform together onstage at Carnegie Hall, which would’ve been a hoot. Steve Lemberg, the guy who’d recently leased merchandising rights to Marvel’s characters, decided to put on “An Evening with Stan Lee and Marvel Comics at Carnegie Hall.” Of course, it was a big prestigious deal to appear at Carnegie—so, along with other gratis contributions I made to that night’s program, I suggested to Stan and Lemberg that a few of us Marvel pros with rock-band experience should perform. Lemberg went for that idea as a way to involve a few more Bullpen people in

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A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

the show. I knew [Conan the Barbarian artist] Barry Smith and Herb Trimpe both played guitar—I think Barry was lead and Herb was rhythm—I’d be the singer, and Gary’d be the drummer.

I phoned Gary, and he was all set to hop a bus to New York two or three days before the January 5th show, so he could practice with us. Lemberg rented us practice space in Soho—“South of Houston” Street, which was then a low-rent district—and he arranged for some guy to play drums in those sessions. We never got a chance to practice on the Carnegie Hall stage, only in Soho.

Biljo White

Unfortunately, there was this terrific snowstorm a couple of days before the show, and it took Gary till the day of the show to get to New York. He arrived too late to practice with us even once… so Lemberg insisted the other drummer play onstage that night. I recall Gary being pissed at me for a while because I couldn’t change Steve’s mind. But I did what I could, short of refusing to go on myself. I’ll admit I wasn’t going to blow my chance—plus Barry’s and Herb’s—to perform at Carnegie Hall. And neither of those two spoke up on Gary’s behalf, so I had to give in. But I’ve always felt bad Gary got snowed out of playing at Carnegie Hall.

An Earlier Son-Rise As Roy Thomas recalled soon after the first “Son of Satan” story went into production, his fan-artist friend (and mid-1960s art editor of the first volume of Alter Ego) had written and drawn his own “Son of Satan” hero for a single, uncopyrighted story in the Sept. 1962 issue of his fanzine Komix Illustrated #2. See accompanying text for the full story. Thanks to Aaron Caplan & Kirk Hastings. [“Son of Satan” is now a trademark of Marvel Characters, Inc.]

As to why Gary had such sparse credits in 1974… well, he said in CBA that he and Nancy had moved to Jackson in ’71… though he was working in the office when he came up with the idea for Ghost Rider, so I’m a bit shaky on the exact timeline. He and Nancy had been living in a walk-up apartment on West 71st Street, and a young woman was raped and murdered on the floor above theirs.

So they—Nancy mostly, I think—decided they were clearing out of the Big Apple, pronto.

Switching Motorcycles In Midstream

By Marvel Spotlight #9 (April 1973), Tom Sutton had become the penciler of the “Ghost Rider” feature, inked in that issue by Chic Stone— and of course scripted by Gary F. Ploog was still doing the covers, however. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

They moved to Missouri, but unfortunately, Gary was still drinking. Once Bill Everett had joined AA [Alcoholics Anonymous] and sobered up around 1970, he was always on Gary’s case to quit drinking. Sadly, Bill died in early ’73, so he didn’t live long enough to see Gary actually quit. Between the drinking and no longer living in New York, I think Gary probably felt more and more distant from the comics business, and maybe that led him to put less thought into the writing. In the meantime, I was getting complaints from other writers and from my assistants about Gary’s scripts. It wasn’t a mean-spirited sniping campaign, but some of those guys were top Marvel writers with at least quasieditorial status, and they felt Gary was just hacking it out. And I was having a harder and harder time defending him.

Tom Sutton

So, sometime in the first half of ’74, or a little

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

Frankenstein Meets The 20th Century—More Or Less The timeline of the color Frankenstein comicbook skipped from 19th century in the Ploog-drawn issue #6 (Oct. 1973) to the latter 20th century in #7 (Nov. ’73)—though you couldn’t tell it from the splash page by John Buscema & John Verpoorten, or virtually from the entire story, with its gypsy-carnival milieu. Ploog, however, had split between issues, unwilling to draw the series in a modern setting. Scripts by Gary Friedrich. Thanks to Barry Pearl.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

earlier, I wrote a letter to Gary saying he needed to shape up... that he wasn’t putting enough effort into his writing. I’m sure I didn’t accuse him of what I knew was a major part of the problem, the drinking… which he’d later admit was the main problem. But I wanted him to realize he couldn’t just coast his way through his work, just because I was there.

He wrote me back this very insulting letter about how it was all my fault, because Stan wouldn’t pay any attention to his writing if I didn’t bring it to his attention. He said I was getting too big for my britches and one of these days somebody was going to knock me on my ass… his words, almost verbatim… that it wasn’t going to be him but it would be somebody. When I read that letter, I’ll admit I got mad. I just took it, scrawled on the bottom, “You’re fired!,” and mailed it back to him. As it happened, during my 2-plus years as editor-in-chief, he was the only person I ever fired. My best friend!

My plan, already half-formed in my head, was to shake Gary up, because I felt he needed it. I thought maybe firing him would do the job, and later I’d hire him back when he’d shaped up.

Unfortunately, I left the editor-in-chief job right after Labor Day in

35

’74. And the guys who replaced me weren’t likely to rehire him, since they didn’t feel he was turning out good work.

Eventually, Gary took charge of his own life and got into AA, and I’m very proud of him for doing that. My firing him was probably the nadir of his career and of our relationship, but later we made up. In fact, the one conversation we ever had, years later, in which I mentioned that I regretted firing him, he seemed not to even remember that I had!

RA: Gary left Ghost Rider with #4 (Feb. 1974), and his last plot was used by Tony Isabella for #6 (June 1974). Gary was still writing Frankenstein up through #11 (July 1974). I wonder if it was a complaint from the black-&-white magazine editor, Marv Wolfman, that prompted your sending that letter to Gary. The color Frankenstein comic was, throughout Gary’s run, set in the 19th century, and it’s known that Stan wanted the character moved into the 20th century, which both Gary and Mike Ploog were opposed to. In fact, that desire of Stan’s was reportedly what prompted Ploog to leave the title with #6. However, the actual move of the Frankenstein Monster from 19th to 20th century first took place in the black-&-white title Monsters Unleashed #2 (Sept. 1973).

There was a gap between the first 20th-century story and the second, which appeared in #4 (Feb. 1974), because inker Syd Shores died partway through finishing the John Buscema-drawn story. Win Mortimer completed the inking. You were listed as editor of the entire black-&-white line at the time, but I think by then Marv Wolfman was doing most of the editorial work on those titles. The last story Gary wrote in the black&-white “Frankenstein” series was in Monsters Unleashed #5 [Apr. 1974], and it was, frankly, one of the most incoherent stories Marvel ever

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A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

“Now He Belongs To The Ages!”

(Above left:) Just in case the “Frankenstein 1973” logo a few pages earlier hadn’t clued you in, the up-to-date fire department in Monsters Unleashed #2 (Sept. 1973) was a definite sign that the black-&-white mag’s “Frankenstein” series had leaped ahead a century. Art by John Buscema & Syd Shores; script by FG. All scans in this grouping courtesy of Barry Pearl.

(Above right:) In MU #4 & #5 (Feb. & April ’74), Groovy Gary and Big John carried on with the series now labeled “Frankenstein 1974”—with Winslow Mortimer stepping in as finisher after Syd Shores’ untimely passing during the inking of the former. Richard Arndt, while generally admiring Gary’s work with the Monster, admits he had trouble finding his way through the latter tale. It became Gary’s last work with Mary Shelley’s creation. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

John Buscema

published. Gary was then replaced by Doug Moench, first on the black&-white stories and eventually on the color Frankenstein as well. Doug must’ve really struggled to come up with anything logical follow that last black-&-white story of Gary’s, because it is one strange script.

after he moved back to Missouri. His third marriage went to pieces, too; he and Nancy got a divorce and she moved back to New York.

THOMAS: I’m afraid I’m really hazy on details there, because Marv, as associate editor of the black-&-whites while I was editorin-chief, did indeed oversee the day-to-day editorial work on most of them soon after Stan and I got them started. I seem to recall Stan insisting on the Frankenstein Monster coming into the present so he could fight Marvel’s super-heroes, and that Gary wasn’t fond of that idea. I don’t specifically recall Ploog quitting the strip over it, though it sounds right. But I won’t hide behind Marv or anybody else with regard to my firing Gary. I did it because his work had gotten sloppy, and then he got insolent about it, and I really did hope my firing him would make him shape up.

Sometime later, he married his fourth wife, a one-time Jackson classmate of his named Karen Mouser. I didn’t know her well, but by most accounts—including Gary’s—she was a really nice person.

They had a daughter together who had special needs, and they spent years battling the Missouri school system to try to force it to obey state laws about meeting those needs. I was only in touch off-and-on with Gary during that time, but I know his life wasn’t easy. I recall most of our phone conversations then being about his and Karen’s war with the Missouri school system. He later blamed his drinking for the breakup of that marriage. He was still sabotaging himself, unfortunately.

I don’t know—maybe that “Frankenstein” story in Monsters Unleashed [#6] is one of those I heard complaints about. Marv knew Gary was both my friend and a long-time Marvel writer, so he figured he had to give him work, but he might’ve been unhappy with its quality. Things were falling apart for Gary, the more so

RA: A shame, because some of his earlier work, especially on the color Frankenstein, was really good. Those first six issues with Mike Ploog were outstanding!

From 1969 Fantastic Four Annual.

THOMAS: Yes, they were. Originally, I’d intended to write the

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

37

adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, sticking to the storyline of the novel. I’ve loved it ever since I first read it in high school. But, being too busy, I assigned Gary to write the series. He and Ploog did a great, straight-on adaptation of the novel. Those six issues owe virtually nothing to the films, which was just what we all wanted.

A bit later, after I’d left the editor-in-chief job, I heard he was back working for Marvel, through John Verpoorten’s efforts. I certainly didn’t feel John had undercut me. It’d never been my intention to wash Gary out of the comics industry. Besides, what happened after I quit that job was their business.

Pablo Marcos at a comics-signing event circa 2014. Photo courtesy of the artist.

RA: Very shortly after he came back to Marvel, he left the company again to go to work for Martin Goodman’s Atlas/Seaboard line in 1975. He wrote a lot of stuff for the second, and final, wave of Atlas. However, most of those titles only lasted five issues or fewer.

THOMAS: Well, Atlas/Seaboard was paying higher page rates than Marvel at that stage, and he probably wasn’t getting enough work at Marvel. He likely figured Atlas wasn’t going to last, so he wanted to grab as many big paychecks as he could. For a lot of people who worked for Atlas/Seaboard, I think it was a “take the money and run” kind of thing. And indeed, the comics part of the company lasted a year or so, then it was gone. I know Gary did The Cougar and a whole mess of stuff there.

RA: He also wrote the story for that great art team-up of Ditko and Wrightson—Morlock 2001. And he worked on The Brute, Ironjaw, other

things. He seemed to have regained his writing chops, because, while the characters aren’t so great, the stories themselves are decent stories.

THOMAS: Glad to hear it. I didn’t know he wrote “Ironjaw.”

“And Who Will Forge A Jaw Of Iron?”

Who, indeed, but Gary Friedrich and artist Pablo Marcos, in this sword-and-sorcery origin story for Atlas/Seaboard’s Ironjaw #4 (July 1975)? Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

RA: He wrote the last issue and an additional ten-page story for an anthology comic called The Barbarians. Gary took over that sword-and-sorcery character from Michael Fleisher. Ironjaw was lucky he had good artists working on the strip, because that is a very silly name. [laughs]

THOMAS: Actually, I disagree. I think Ironjaw is a great name.

That hero was a mix of Marvel’s Conan and the 1940s Iron Jaw (two words)… a long-running villain in Charlie Biro’s Boy Comics. He was originally a Nazi agent, later a murderous criminal. Atlas lifted his look—a sharp-toothed metal jaw.

RA: That’s the same jaw design as the character “Jaws” in the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker.

THOMAS: Chances are somebody there was remembering the old Boy Comics villain. Somewhere in there, Gary was also writing “Captain Britain” stories for the Marvel-UK unit on Madison Avenue, some of his last comics work. I wasn’t in touch with him much during that period till after he gave up drinking, which he said was at the start of 1979.

Son Rise… Son Set One artistic success at Martin Goodman’s mid-1970s Atlas/ Seaboard company was “Son of Dracula,” a prospective series birthed in Fright #1-and-only (dated July 1975), with art by that distinctive talent, Frank Thorne. Script by Gary Friedrich.

Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

By the way, he mentioned in CBA that, for most of ’78, he’d ridden around the country with a long-haul truck driver. That would’ve been C.L. Slinkard—Cleman Lafayette Slinkard III—a wild and crazy buddy of his, and mine, from Jackson High. C.L. was a pint-sized redhead, a real character, and an absolutely fabulous driver. I seem to recall that at some point Gary put him in touch with some executive at Magazine Management or another company who wanted C.L. to drive racing cars for him, but I don’t think that worked out. By then I may have been living in L.A. RA: We’ve covered most of Gary’s comics career, except for the one story he did for Topps, the bubble-gum company, in 1991.

Frank Thorne

THOMAS: He’d first worked for Topps back in the ’60s.

Soon after he came east, he became good friends with Len

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A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

about other writers, from screenwriters to F. Scott Fitzgerald. But Gary did seem to have trouble writing once he quit drinking. Of course, it’s better that he did that than continued drinking in order to write, since he was slowly killing himself.

RA: That’s certainly true enough.

Don’t Any Corporals Ever Become Super-Heroes?

A full-color splash panel for Marvel UK’s Captain Britain #1 (Dec. 22, 1976), written by GF, with art by Herb Trimpe & Fred Kida. Thanks to Barry Pearl.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Brown, whom I’d met a week after I arrived in New York. Len’s about my age and was an executive at Topps, starting there when he was a teenager. [NOTE: He also wrote early “Dynamo” stories for Tower Comics, and has been interviewed for an upcoming issue. —RA.] Gary, Len, John Verpoorten, and I hung around together in the early days. After Gary married Cindy, Len and I even shared an apartment in Brooklyn for a year, till after I got married in ’68. After that, I didn’t hang out with them as much. Back then, even when he was married, Gary was more one for hangin’ with the guys than I was. He did a lot of work for Len and Topps, especially before he landed the job at Marvel.

Among other things, Gary wrote some “Batman” card sets for Topps after the TV series hit in ’66. I wrote one “Batman” set, but Gary did more. Officially, they were “trading cards,” but back then they were usually packaged with a thin piece of inferior-grade bubble gum, so kids called them bubble-gum cards. Maybe his weirdest Topps assignment was a set of “Superman in the Jungle” cards. Topps had been negotiating with Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc., to do “Tarzan” cards, but the deal fell through, so they quickly got the rights to Superman and plopped him down in some jungle. I don’t think it was a great success like “Mars Attacks!” and “Wacky Packages.” Later, he and Len wrote a few paperback books about rock’n’roll and country music. Gary wrote at least one raunchy paperback novel, too.

In late 1991, Topps started up a comicbook division, something Len had been pushing for, literally for decades. He was too busy with his other duties to be its line editor, and when he spoke to me about interviewing for that job, Dann and I had already bought our place in South Carolina. I recommended they consider Marvel editor Jim Salicrup for the job. Soon afterward, when I was about to write The Secret City Saga, using some leftover Jack Kirby concepts, Jim got an inspiration: besides writing the main mini-series, I was also to plot three solo issues—one starring each of its three main heroes—which I and two other 1960s comics writers would script.

A Silver Age Series Special! Jim got Steve Ditko, Dick Ayers, and Don Heck to do the artwork, and had Gary write dialogue for the Bombast issue. That became Gary’s swansong in comics, although I know he tried hard to get more work from Topps afterward, and he was kind of bitter about not getting to do any more for them.

By that time he was long sober. He always used to say he couldn’t write without drinking. We’ve all heard of that before,

THOMAS: Drinking had done him a lot of damage over the years. His health… his first four marriages… his writing career.

Fortunately, he met Jean, under circumstances she told you about.

[A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: See Jean Friedrich’s interview beginning back on p. 45.] They hit it off, and they stayed married for the last three decades of his life. After all that time, he’d finally found the right life partner. It’s great when that happens. Dann and I were visiting Missouri when they were originally supposed to get married, and we showed up for the wedding, but it didn’t come off that night.

The official story was that Gary had neglected to buy the marriage license until too late. But later, he grinningly admitted to me that actually he and Jean had just had an argument, like all couples do, and that had delayed the wedding for a short time. But it came off without a hitch not long afterward, so no harm done.

Like I said before, Gary used to joke that he was determined to beat his grandfather’s record of six marriages. But, in the end, I know he was glad he didn’t even tie it. [both laugh] I didn’t see nearly as much of Gary in his later years, due to our living a thousand miles apart, though we spoke by phone once in a while, and later we could e-mail, at least for a time.

RA: Jean mentioned that she and Gary would meet you and Dann at comicbook conventions…

THOMAS: Yeah, from time to time. In 2003, for instance, Gary and I were guests at a Gateway Con in St. Louis. One of those nights, we were invited to the home of this older fan who owned one condo that he lived in, and an attached one that, on several floors, housed his humongous collection of comics, Big Little Books, toys, and God knows what else. Gary was walking around carrying this big thermos full of some liquid—maybe tea, or maybe he was back on Pepsi—I guess a substitute for the booze he’d given up.

The collector tried to get him to ditch the thermos, since he was terrified Gary might spill something on a comic, but Gary refused to surrender it and the guy finally gave in.

“Up, Up, And Kreeg-Ah!” These cards from Topps’ 1968 “Superman in the Jungle” set look as if they were at least penciled by Al Plastino. Gary F. wrote the text on the reverse side. [Superman TM & © DC Comics.]

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

39

with his own book about those days. I don’t know if he started it before his health problems made it impossible. Now, I regret we didn’t do that book.

Some of the anecdotes it would’ve recorded are now lost for good, since they’d have been his memories, not mine.

Bombast Away!

Pre-existing Jack Kirby art was used for the cover of Topps’ Bombast #1 (April 1993), as part of its limited Secret City Saga series. The story inside was plotted by Roy Thomas and dialogued by Gary Friedrich, who was reunited by editor Jim Salicrup with his old Sgt. Fury team of Dick Ayers & John Severin. A surprise guest star was The Savage Dragon, popular Image Comics character created by Erik Larsen; that was Jim’s idea, too.

However, contrary to the cover copy, “Big John” at Marvel pretty invariably meant J. Buscema, not J. Severin; the latter was occasionally referred to as “Long John,” owing to his love for drawing adventure stories. Thanks to the GCD and Nick Caputo, respectively. [Page TM & © Topps; Bombast TM & © Estate of Jack Kirby; Savage Dragon TM & © Erik Larsen.]

Gary got a job driving medical supplies and equipment around St. Louis between one hospital and another. It kept him hopping, and he enjoyed driving anyway. But, after a few years, he contracted Parkinson’s disease, and that ended that job. His hearing had gotten steadily worse, too, and he never found a hearing-aid that helped him much. That eventually made it impossible for him to talk on the phone. Later, complications from the Parkinson’s put an almost total end to our communication via e-mail, because it became impossible for him to type more than a sentence or two at a sitting. It was a very sad situation, but Gary and Jean coped as well as possible. They had a strong, wonderful bond.

Sometime before the Parkinson’s, he suggested we write a book together about what it’d been like to be a pair of young comics writers in New York in the 1960s. A good idea, but I felt it would’ve clashed with my plans to eventually write my own autobio, so I reluctantly declined, though I did encourage him to go ahead

Also, sometime in the late ’80s or early ’90s, while I was still doing occasional scripting related to movies and TV, I wrote out a bunch of 3”x5” cards listing ideas for scenes based on our rock band days. I paid Gary an advance to write a screenplay based on his recollections added to mine, mixing truth and fiction. It was to start out in the early ’60s, like our band did, and end just after JFK’s assassination in November ’63. The last scene was to have the band sitting around by a creek listening to Beatles music and then going their separate ways… which isn’t that far from what really happened, since the Beatles first became popular in America around the end of 1963, and, we always felt, did lead to the breakup of our band. We called the screenplay Good Rockin’ Tonight, after one of Elvis’ early Sun records. My plan was to rewrite Gary’s draft and have my Hollywood agent try to sell it. Gary and I would’ve shared co-author credit. But then Dann and I moved to South Carolina, my agent switched to being a producer, and I got discouraged about prospects for selling the screenplay without an agent, so I never did a rewrite. But Gary’s first draft still exists, and at least it preserves—in fictionalized form—a lot of what we were up to in the first half of the 1960s, not long before we got into comics professionally.

He also had this interesting idea, in 2010—I think it was his idea, not mine—to start a “Silver Age Comics” imprint to publish new comics written and drawn by Silver Age guys… the two of us, plus others we could line up. He created a Sgt. Fury-type hero called Sgt. Darkk, who led a Howling Commandosstyle group of vampires.

He figured that might appeal to two different audiences, and it very well might have. Also, he made up an American Indian hero named Doomryder, in a series set in a post-Apocalyptic world… a sort of mash-up of Hell-Rider and Mad Max. I don’t know if Wedding Bells he ever had anyone do Gary and Jean’s wedding picture, any concept drawings for February 1988. Courtesy of Jean Friedrich. either idea; at one point he Jean today is an essential worker in a planned to contact Dick hospital lab, testing for COVID-19.

40

A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

to use his word. I was really touched, but I was caught off-guard and was totally at a loss how to respond. Like I always say, I’m of German heritage: we don’t hug; we salute. (Actually, of course, Gary was every bit as “German” as I am.) What he said that day meant a lot to me, even if I don’t feel like anybody’s “hero,” and I wish I could’ve made a better response than whatever fumbling one I came out with. I suspect his actions came out of AA, which encourages you to communicate your feelings… but that didn’t make his words any less meaningful to me.

“Silver Age Comics” (Above:) A glimpse at the first pages of Gary’s concepts for Sgt. Darkk and the Vampire Squadron and Doomryder, conceived for his and Roy’s then-contemplated “Silver Age Comics” imprint. If any concept drawings were done for either series, neither Roy nor Jean F. recalls seeing them. [©2021 Estate of Gary Friedrich.\]

Ayers about them. For one of my two series—and I know this will shock you—I came up with a group of World War II super-heroes, for which Rich Buckler did concept sketches. But in the end the imprint idea didn’t go anywhere.

RA: Were there other comics conventions besides that St. Louis one?

THOMAS: Several. One especially memorable one happened in 2007, the second of several cons held in Cape Girardeau. He and I and Denny O’Neil were guests—three hometown boys who made good. All of us had lived in Cape at one time or another in the ’60s (me just for one summer), and two of us had grown up in nearby Jackson.

The three of us did a panel together… I wish to God somebody’d recorded it, since it was the only time we three ever appeared together. Some people in the comics industry used to refer to the three of us—plus, by the early ’70s, Steve Gerber—as “the Missouri Mafia,” but in reality we weren’t really all close friends, except for Gary and me.

At cons in those days, Gary sold signed Ghost Rider reprint comics and a Ghost Rider poster he’d got Herb Trimpe to draw. He and I were both guests at one or two other Cape Cons, and he went to at least one more. He sold enough at one con we both attended that he handed me a nice cash donation for the comics industry’s Hero Initiative charity. He also introduced me to a great pizza chain, Imo’s, which he knew I’d like. It reminded us both of one of the great pizzerias in St. Louis that we’d frequented back in the day.

He and I and our wives were guests at the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con. Gary got an Inkpot Award and really enjoyed himself. At one point as we all walked into the convention hall, he exchanged some prearranged signal with Jean and drew me aside. He told me how much I’d always meant to him… that I’d always been his “hero,”

In 2011 he was a guest at the Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina, a couple of hours from where Dann and I live. We got together there—I’ve attended all but one of those cons since moving to South Carolina in ’91—but unfortunately he couldn’t spare the time to come back with me to our place. I was hoping he’d have

The Cape Of Good Hope (Right:) The cover of the program book for the 2007 “Cape Con” held that spring in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Home-county lads Gary Friedrich and Roy Thomas and former CG-resident Denny O’Neil were pro guests of honor. Between the three of them, over the course of four decades, they had written for Marvel, DC, Charlton, Skywald, Atlas/Seaboard, Warren, Dark Horse, First, Eclipse, Heroic, Topps, Cross Plains, Pacific, Star*Reach, Millennium, and a few other comics companies. The cover is

by Jonnie Allan, creator of the independent comic Stykman. [Ghost Rider TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; rest of cover TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

41

just wanted the facts, ma’am… as Jack Webb used to say.

After it was settled, I’m sure Gary was legally bound not to reveal the terms, so I never asked about them, and he never told me anything. I’d like to think they reached a meeting of the minds.

And nowadays Marvel has much better relations with most of us “old-time” creators.

RA: When was the last time you saw Gary face to face?

THOMAS: May of 2016. I’d flown down to Missouri for my mother’s funeral. Driving down from the St. Louis airport to Jackson, 100-plus miles south, I stopped at his and Jean’s home in Imperial... just south of St. Louis, not far from where I’d taught in the early ’60s. Jean was at work. I could only stop by for an hour before I had to get back on the road to make the funeral. But we managed to talk about a little bit of everything, from the Palace Theatre and high school days to the band to Marvel and Stan.

He kept apologizing for his Parkinson’s and his lousy hearing, but I tried to minimize the difficulties it caused in our conversing: “Hey, something gets all of us sooner or later.” Since 2002 I’ve had extremely limited vision in my right eye, due to a detached retina and, in recent years, glaucoma. Of course, that wasn’t nearly as bad as his Parkinson’s on top of his severe hearing loss. This time, as I left, we both expressed our affection for each other. I hoped I’d see him again soon, and that he’d finally locate a decent hearing-aid, so we could talk by phone again. We still talked about plans for an Alter Ego interview. But none of those things came to pass.

Ghost Rider Goodies Besides a Trimpe-drawn Ghost Rider poster that can be viewed on p. 45, Gary sold an autographed “facsimile script page” of the premier page of his script for Ghost Rider’s origin in Marvel Spotlight #5—with a bit of Ploog art added. Thanks to Jean Friedrich & Robert Higgerson. [Ghost Rider TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

In spring of 2018, Carla Jordan of the Cape Girardeau Historical Society invited me to be guest of honor at the annual “arts event” to be held in Jackson the following February. And she sparked to my suggestion that, if Gary felt up to attending, he and I would be co-guests of honor, as two local guys who’d made it in the comics field and whose creations were now appearing in blockbuster movies. It would’ve been a blast. [NOTE: See A/E #162,

another chance, but he contracted Parkinson’s not long afterward.

I’m glad he was around to get that Bill Finger Award in San Diego a few years before he died.

Of course, a decade-plus ago, when the first Ghost Rider film came out and Marvel hadn’t given him the credit and money he’d sought, Gary sued Marvel over the character. That occupied a lot of his time for years. Lawsuits can be poisonous things. That’s one reason I’ve never filed one myself.

RA: What can you tell us about Gary’s lawsuit with Marvel over Ghost Rider—and theirs back against him?

THOMAS: Precious little. Since I’d been there when he’d dreamed up that Ghost Rider, Marvel deposed me in that lawsuit. I suspect some things I said in my deposition bolstered Marvel’s case, others bolstered Gary’s. But all I did was relate events as I recalled them, just as I’d had to do in Steve Gerber’s suit over Howard the Duck, Marv Wolfman’s over Blade, and the Kirby family one. I hated being involved in those suits, even peripherally! Those guys were friends of mine, and I felt Marvel should pay them something when using concepts they’d created, whether they legally had to or not.

Marvel knew how I felt… because, each and every time, before I’d do a deposition, I’d make Marvel’s attorney endure my short spiel about how, if Marvel would just give these guys a bit of credit and money, they could avoid lawsuits and make cheerleaders out of them instead, which would even be good for business. But of course I was talking to the lawyers—people who were getting paid because of the lawsuit. Still, I have to say that Marvel’s attorneys never pushed me to “remember” anything I didn’t actually recall. They

Son Of A Gun! At the behest of Stan and Roy, Gary introduced the mysterious Daimon Hellstrom—soon revealed to be The Son of Satan—in Ghost Rider #1 (Sept.

1973). Pencils by Tom Sutton; inks by Syd Shores. Thanks to Barry Pearl.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

42

A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

Gary Friedrich & Roy Thomas flank fan/collector Bob Bailey at the 2011 Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC—and are flanked, in turn, by the Friedrich & Severin splash page from Sgt. Fury #45 (Aug. 1967) and a primo Ploog-drawn page from Marvel Spotlight #5.

Page scans courtesy of Barry Pearl; thanks to Bob B. for the photo, which was snapped by Jim Clark. [Pages TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

as well as p. 13 of this issue. —RA.] But, late that August, I learned from Jean that Gary’d been taken to the hospital. His health had deteriorated to the point where she could no longer care for him at home. Dann and I discussed plans for me to fly down to see him in a week or so. But I hadn’t realized how critical his situation had become. He died just a day or so later, a week past his 75th birthday. I say “died,” not “passed away,” because I don’t want the spirit of Gary the crusading newspaper editor to come down and haunt me!

I doubt anyone else’s death has ever hit me as hard as his did, except those of my parents. Through thick and thin—frankly, through a fair amount of both those things—Gary Friedrich and I were a part of each other’s lives for over sixty years—since we were teenagers. Somehow, it never seems quite possible that people that close to you are ever going to leave you, but of course they do.

Unless you leave them first.

Anyway, I’ve gone on at length in this interview because Gary Friedrich and I were good friends for six decades, and I wanted to cover the whole story of our friendship, at least as I remember it. I wish he’d left his own account, beyond a bare handful of interviews. I know his main focus in later life was his AA work, helping other recovering alcoholics, and I applaud him for that.

Even so, I think we both appreciated that we were fortunate to have landed in New York at just the right time, when comics were enjoying a Silver Age… and when we could wind up writing for Stan at Marvel, which had become the driving force of that age.

We were just a couple of guys from small-town Missouri who made good, with a bit of talent and a lot of luck.

“Gary Friedrich And I Were Part Of Each Other’s Lives For Over 60 Years!”

43

GARY FRIEDRICH Checklist [This checklist is adapted primarily from information in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999, established by Dr. Jerry G. Bails and viewable at www.bailsprojects.com. Names of features that appeared both in comics of that name and in other magazines as well are generally not italicized below. Key: (w) = writer; (ed) = editor; (art dir) = art director; asst ed = assistant editor.]

Name & Vital Stats: Gary Eugene Friedrich (1943-2018) – writer, editor Pen Name: Carter Cash (for paperback novel) Print Media (Non-Comics): co-writer, 1966 Topps trading cards; co-writer with Len Brown, Encyclopedia of Country and Western Music 1971, Encyclopedia of Rock ’n Roll 1970, and So You Think You Know Rock ’n Roll 1971; writer (fiction) Nashville Breakdown 1977; writer (fiction) Nashville Rebel 1970. [NOTE: It seems likely that the 1977 Nashville Breakdown from Manor Books, listed in GF’s Wikipedia entry, is simply a re-titled printing of the 1970 Nashville Rebel listed in the online Who’s Who.] Awards: Alley (fandom) 1967, 1968 (a shared Alley for Sgt. Fury as Best War Title); Inkpot Award (San Diego Comic-Con) 2007; Bill Finger Award (also SDCC) 2010 Promotional Comics: Vote-Man (w) 1968 for League of Women Voters (educational) Marvel UK: Captain Britain [all work done in U.S.] MAINSTREAM U.S. Comicbooks: Atlas/Seaboard: [all (w) 1975] The Barbarians; The Brute; The Cougar; Fright; Ironjaw; Lomax; Luke Malone, Manhunter; Man-Monster; Morlock 2001; Phoenix; Police Action; Son of Dracula; Tales of Evil; Tarantula; Weird Suspense [NOTE: There is considerable duplication in the preceding list, since the italicized titles featured stories starring some of the non-italicized features.]

Charlton: Blooperman (w) 1966-67; Blue Beetle (w) 1966-67; Career Girl Romances (w) 1967; cartoon & funny animals (w) 1966; Farthest Out Fairy Tales (w) 1967; Ghostly Tales (w) 1967; humor (w) 1966-67; I Love You (w) 1966; Go-Go Comics (w) 1966-67; Love Diary (w) 1966-67; romance (w) 1966-67; Romantic Story (w) 1967; The Sentinels (w) 1966-67; Sweethearts (w) 1966; Teen-Age Love (w) 1967 Marvel Comics: backup feature in Rawhide Kid 1967; Black Widow (w) 1970; Captain America (w) 1971-72; Captain Marvel (w) 1969; Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders (w) 1968-70; Chamber of Darkness (w) 1969; Combat Kelly (w) 1972-73; Daredevil (w) 1970-71; Frankenstein (w) 1973-74; Ghost Rider [Western] (w) 1967, 1970-71; Ghost Rider (supernatural) (w) 1972-74; The Gunhawks (w) 1972-73; The Headless Horseman

The More The Merrier Gary Friedrich collaborated with buddy Len Brown on the 1970 paperback Encyclopedia of Rock ‘n Roll—and with a whole passel of fellow pros on Atlas/Seaboard’s “Man-Monster” feature in Tales of Evil #3 (July ’75). Gary scripted it from a plot by Tony Isabella and penciler Rich Buckler; it was inked by Mike Vosburg and edited

by Larry Lieber, who (like Stan Lee) was a nephew-by-marriage of publisher Martin Goodman. We assume the shot of the Man-Monster on the splash page is meant to be strictly symbolic, or else all those beach bunnies would be heading for the hills! [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

(w) 1973; Hulk (w) 1968, 1971-72, 1975; Iron Man (w) 1972; Ka-Zar (w) 1971; Kid Colt Outlaw (w) 1967-68, 1975; Millie the Model (w) c. 1967-68; My Love (w) 1972; Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (w) 1969; [Not] Brand Echh (w) 1967-69; Our Love Story (w) 1972; Outlaw Kid (w) 1972-73; Phantom Eagle (w) 1968; Rawhide Kid (w) 1967-68, 1972; Red Wolf (w) 1972-73; Sgt. Fury (w) 1967-73; Son of Satan (w) 1973-74; Spider-Man & Daredevil (w) 1978; support (asst ed) 1967-71; Tales of Fort Rango (w) 1970; Tower of Shadows (w) 1969-70; Two-Gun Kid (w) 1967-68; What If Sgt. Fury… (w) 1979; X-Men (w) 1968 Skywald Publishing: backup feature (w) 1970-71 in

44

A Conversation With Roy Thomas About A 6-Decade Friendship

Hell-Rider; Blazing Six-Guns (ed/art dir) 1971; The Bravados (ed/ art dir) 1971; Butch Cassidy (w) 1971; Butch Cassidy (ed/art dir) 1971; Butterfly (w) 1971; Crime Machine (ed/art dir) 1971; Hell-Rider (w) 1971; Hell-Rider (ed/art dir) 1971; Jungle Adventures (ed/art dir) 1971; Nightmare (w)(ed/art dir) 1970-71; Psycho (ed/art dir) 1971; Sundance Kid (w) c. 1971; Sundance Kid (ed/art dir) 1971; Tender Love Stories (ed/art dir) 1971; Wild Bunch (w) 1971; Wild Western Action (ed/art dir) 1971 Topps Comics: Bombast (w) 1993 Western Publishing: Tweety and Sylvester (w) 1978 [unconfirmed]

“Groovy Gary” and Stan “The Man” Lee in a panel from the lead-in to the 1970 Sgt. Fury Annual… plus the splash page of “The Deserter” from Sgt. Fury #75 (Feb. 1970). Script by GF, pencils by Dick Ayers, inks by John Severin.

Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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“G O R O ” Y R A II G T Y R V PA

Wife JEAN FRIEDRICH & Nephew ROBERT HIGGERSON On the Marvel Writer’s Later Years— With Echoes of His Earlier Ones Conducted & Transcribed by Richard J. Arndt

I

NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: Jean Ellen Friedrich was married to Gary Friedrich from 1988 until his death in August 2018. Robert Higgerson, Jean’s nephew, whose interview directly follows Jean’s, was Gary’s nephew-by-marriage. Both of them met Gary some years after he had largely stopped writing comics, but each was able to give an informative account of Gary’s later years. The interview with Jean took place on January 11, 2020… the one with Robert Higgerson on January 4, 2020.

Jean & Gary Friedrich and their granddaughter Ava, a few years back—juxtaposed with a Ghost Rider poster drawn by Herb Trimpe especially for Gary to sell at comics conventions. The poster hangs in their home; they also have the original art.

Thanks to Jean Friedrich for both scans.

[Ghost Rider TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Interview #1: JEAN FRIEDRICH RICHARD ARNDT: Today we’re welcoming Jean Ellen Friedrich, the late Gary Friedrich’s wife. Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Jean.

JEAN FRIEDRICH: Roy was a very good friend of Gary’s, so I’m happy to do this.

RA: Both you and Robert met Gary after he left the comics field, by and large... so I don’t expect you to know the ins and outs of his comics career.

This will be more of a character study.

FRIEDRICH: Okay, good, I’m much more comfortable with that. I met Gary in 1986 at an AA—Alcoholics Anonymous—meeting.

RA: Before we get too far on that—is it OK with you to mention AA? I want to be sure you’re comfortable talking about it before we get too far in depth about that.

FRIEDRICH: It’s fine with me. Both Gary and I felt that, as long as we weren’t breaking someone else’s anonymity, it would be fine— we can break our own. Gary was of the opinion that it’s very hard to help people if you’re completely anonymous. He totally believed in that.

RA: So then I guess my first real question is: “How did you meet Gary?” [both laugh] FRIEDRICH: Well, it was at an AA meeting. It was so funny, because I had returned to St. Louis—I had been raised in Perryville, Missouri, but I’d been living in Texas for some time. Anyhow, I

came back and started going to the local AA meetings. I was going to them in Jackson, Missouri, which was Gary’s hometown. I walked into the meeting and sat down and Gary was chairing the meeting. It was just—BOOM! RA: I’m guessing it was a good BOOM? FRIEDRICH: Well, yeah! [laughs] It was. Our marriage lasted 30 years and only ended because Gary passed away.

RA: So you met Gary when he was about 43, is that right?

FRIEDRICH: Yes! That’s exactly right. We got married in 1988.

RA: Do you know when he moved back full-time to Missouri? Because he

T. EP D

Remembering GARY FRIEDRICH

45

46

Jean Friedrich & Robert Higgerson On The Marvel Writer’s Later Years

was living, off and on, in New York for much of his years writing comics.

FRIEDRICH: I don’t know if he lived in New York all that long.

Roy could probably tell you more about that than I can. What Gary was doing when I met him—and it was still in arts and entertainment—was, he was a manager at a video store, back when everyone was watching videos on their VCRs. RA: Yeah! Before Blockbuster wiped them out by undercutting them pricewise, the mom-&-pop video stories were actually treasure troves of different, often oddball, movies. Waaaay better than anything we have today, including many of the streaming services.

FRIEDRICH: That’s right! Gary was a manager, so he was picking out the videos to buy for that particular store. He worked there quite some time, from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.

RA: I don’t think people today realize what great places video stores were from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s or so. When you go to, say, Redbox today, each kiosk has the exact same movies in them. Back then, you could have as many as 10-15 little video stories in your immediate vicinity, even in rural areas—some of them run out of a garage; I remember one in my small hometown that was set up in the back of a camper trailer—and none of them would feature the exact same films. Like Redbox does today, Blockbuster—no matter which store, or where it was located—had the exact same recent movies taking up most of the store, along with a quite small selection of older films. Most times, the managers and service people who worked there weren’t really movie buffs and didn’t care anything about or know enough about older films to recommend them to customers.

FRIEDRICH: That’s right. Each one of the little video stores was completely different from the next one! They really were!

RA: Yep, you’d walk into one and it would be focused on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean chop-socky movies. The next might have Westerns and romance titles. The next might be heavy on horror. And there wouldn’t only be mainstream Westerns or foreign or horror films. There would be very weird stuff there that you not only wouldn’t see in any other video store but films that would never play in any theatre around you. There was often no rhyme or reason to what was on the shelves, other than that the manager or owner saw something in the catalog that they thought was interesting to them and would be interesting to their customers.

FRIEDRICH: Those video stores were customer-oriented, not movie-oriented. They got stuff they thought their customers would like. Not just the recent big pictures but all the little odd stuff, too.

Gary was very good with keeping up with what was out there, reading reviews, making those choices. He was a very artistic person, and I think that came through whether he was writing comics or newspaper articles or selecting movies that he thought were worth watching, no matter what they were about.

could care less about. I think people miss having a lot of choices in entertainment. When everything is the same, it’s boring.

RA: Comics, to some extent today, are the same way. You can get into comics and find beautifully done children’s books, and then you can also find straight-out pornographic material. There really is something for everyone there.

FRIEDRICH: [laughs] I think Gary sold a fair amount of that range of material, too!

RA: Well, sure. Nearly every little mom-&-pop store had a little back room where you could look over the latest X-rated movies. That doesn’t happen in any mainstream corporate store—ever.

FRIEDRICH: For a lot of those shops, that’s where the money was.

Gary loved working in the video store.

RA: Back to his writing: What, if anything, did you know about his comics career?

FRIEDRICH: I knew nothing at the start. That’s not what he was doing at the time I met him. Gary was, how should I put this, very nonchalant about his work in comics. Well, perhaps not nonchalant, but more like humble than anything else. He didn’t make a big deal out of it.

RA: Looking at his credits, he probably ended his career for the most part in 1975 or 1976, although he wrote one comic in the early 1990s for Topps, which is more remembered as a bubble-gum card company than as a comicbook company. But he had largely left comics as a regular career by the late 1970s.

FRIEDRICH: I think a large part of leaving comics was because he’d gotten sober. You may have heard this before, but there are a lot of writers who can’t write or produce writing while sober, if they’re used to writing when they’ve been drinking. It takes them out of the groove, or something like that.

Understand that, when I met Gary, he’d been sober for probably ten years. And that ten years started just about the time he quit writing comics. Pretty close, within a year or two. I know that he stopped drinking on New Year’s Day, but I don’t remember, if I ever knew, the exact year. I think he had a spiritual epiphany—not

RA: You might be surprised to learn that a fair number of comicbook professionals, writers at least, worked in or managed video stories of that sort after their comicbook days were over. It might be that the freedom of being allowed to pick and choose whatever movies their customers might like, from high-class films to lowbrow ones, was exciting to them… was perhaps a bit or part of what moved them into both the comics and video businesses in the first place.

FRIEDRICH: Yeah, you would find these little films, from film companies or even countries, that you’d never heard of before, and there they’d be, in your hometown, and they’d be the most interesting movie you’d ever seen. I remember when Gary would get a new movie in and he’d bring it home and preview it. He was really, really into movies. Music, too. Movie and music stories were both kind of like that then. Not today, though. I think that’s why Netflix is exploding right now. You can find all kinds of stuff there.

Some you might have been searching for years to see, and some you

A Blockbuster—At Blockbuster The cover of a South American Ghost Rider VHS tape—which Gary would’ve sold in his video store, if he’d still been in that biz in 2007— and if VHS hadn’t been discontinued in the U.S. the year before.

[Ghost Rider TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Remembering Gary Friedrich

a religious thing—but one of spirituality, that let him make that decision.

RA: I heard Gary had been married a number of times before he met you.

FRIEDRICH: I was the fifth and final wife. [laughs] RA: That’s a good way to put it. Yours was the one that worked.

FRIEDRICH: A lot of that was that Gary had changed quite a lot, from things he’d told me about his past. He had matured. And getting sober was a big deal! Not being sober had caused a lot of problems between him and other people.

Those four previous wives, from what he told me, were very good people. They just couldn’t live with the drinking and the irresponsibility. When I met him, he’d already been through all that stuff and wanted a different life.

RA: Is it possible that his writing career in comics was wrecked, at least in part, by his drinking? He either lost, or left, all of his Marvel titles within a very short time-frame. Now, mind you, I might be wrong on that. I admit I’m speculating to some degree.

He really was a good writer. He wrote some very good stories for

47

Sgt. Fury. He wrote a superb adaptation of Frankenstein—in fact, I personally believe that his adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel, which was illustrated by Mike Ploog, is the best graphic adaptation of that novel to date. Marvel’s missing a bet by not putting those Friedrich/Ploog stories out as a hardcover collection for libraries and readers. The first six issues of [The Monster of] Frankenstein are very strong in both art and story. In addition, he wrote good stories for the early issues of Ghost Rider. I liked his Hulk stories as well.

He didn’t really concentrate on super-heroes. I don’t know if it was because he wasn’t particularly fond of that genre, but there aren’t any long, sustained runs on any super-hero titles. He did work on quite a number of them, but those four issues of The Incredible Hulk and the double-sized special, all published in 1968, were probably his most-sustained work in the super-hero genre, with the exception of his parody work in Not Brand Echh. We should also point out that at one point of time, in 1968-1969, he was writing both Sgt. Fury and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. at the same time—neither of which was a super-hero title, though.

However, even though his runs were not for very extended periods, the stories themselves are generally pretty good. He did seem to last the longest on either war or horror comics.

FRIEDRICH: I really liked his Sgt. Fury stories. I thought those were pretty brilliant!

RA: They are, with the exception of Ghost Rider, what he’s most known for, and he wrote them for quite some time—from 1967 to 1973.

FRIEDRICH: I’d like to help you more on that, but the truth is that comics were not a big part of Gary’s life during the time I knew him until the movie—Ghost Rider—came out, or was going to come out, in the early or mid-2000s. It wasn’t until then that he started getting invited to comicbook conventions. That was when he started being rediscovered, because he was out there, being seen by the fans and the professionals again.

Going to those comicbook conventions was fun, because I got to see people that he’d worked with many years ago. Herb Trimpe was one, and we became really good friends. Flo Steinberg. I had never met Roy Thomas until we got together at a convention. We also met, briefly, Mike Ploog. Ploog was living in England at the time. He may still be living there, but he actually showed up at a convention over here, which I guess was kind of unusual for him. It was through those comic conventions that I really got introduced to Gary’s work and influence and the people that he actually worked with in comics.

RA: How would you describe Gary’s personality?

“Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” That’s what the splash page of the comicbook officially titled Frankenstein #1 (Jan. 1973) promised—and that’s what writer Gary Friedrich and artist Mike Ploog delivered, albeit within a framing sequence set in 1898, a century after the events of the novel. The early issues of Frankenstein may not yet have been collected in hardcover, but at least they have been preserved in a quality softcover volume. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

FRIEDRICH: In the years I was with him, I saw Gary go though some personality changes. When I first met him he was impatient, had a temper, but his true nature was as a loving and giving person.

He had a lot of anger, though, just from his past. It took him a while, but later on, he was a much more mellow person. The first ten years of our marriage were kind of rough, because in some things we were really opposites. I was a neat freak. Gary was a slob. Finally, though, we both came to the conclusion that it was ridiculous fighting over those kinds of things. One day he just told me that he loved me and that he wanted me to be happy and he was really going to try to do better. And he did!

RA: Good!

FRIEDRICH: I know! Gary went from being an atheist to being a very spiritual man. Again, I’m not talking a religious man, but a spiritual one. He really tried to live a spiritual life because, I think, it made him a better person. He was always reading books on the subject. He was a reader! From the moment we came together, he

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Jean Friedrich & Robert Higgerson On The Marvel Writer’s Later Years

said, his sobriety were the center of his life.

RA: What was Gary’s sense of humor like? He clearly enjoyed writing funny stories.

FRIEDRICH: Gary was a real entertainer. He loved being the center of attention. He basked in the spotlight. He was funny! Well, he often thought he was funny! [laughs] RA: Thinking you’re funny is half the battle! If you laugh at your own jokes, that’s a big audience right there! [both laugh] FRIEDRICH: He really was a funny guy! He was funny in a really creative way. That doesn’t always translate to everyone.

RA: After he quit writing, what was he channeling his creativity into?

Because creativity doesn’t just stop. Writers who’ve quit writing or are suffering from a writer’s block may not be writing but they’re usually

There’s Family—And Then There’s Family!

(Top center:) Gary beams as he poses at Christmas with his and Jean’s daughter Leslie, and with granddaughters Ava and (baby) Sutton.

Courtesy of Jean Friedrich.

(Above:) A considerably more dysfunctional family unit—father and halfbreed son—on the splash page of Marvel Spotlight #13 (Jan. 1974).

Art by Herb Trimpe & Frank Chiaramonte; with thanks to Barry Pearl. This second full “Son of Satan” story (after his introduction in Ghost Rider #1 & 2) was the last Friedrich would scribe of the hellish hero. [Page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

always had his nose in a book! Always!

When we moved for the last time, oh, my God! We had all these bookcases and boxes and boxes of books. [laughs] He was a big Stephen King fan, for sure. He just loved to read.

As for comics, I don’t look at Gary as the typical comicbook writer. Take Roy… Roy lives and breathes comics. He’d done so much in so many different parts of the field. And he still is!

I’m amazed at the amount and quality of the work that he’s still doing! But that’s not the way Gary was.

Comics was not the center of his life. The center of his life, during his time with me, was family. Me, our daughter, and our grandchildren. That was his main concern during the years I was with him.

He’s Got Those Webbing-Bell Blues!

RA: There’s nothing wrong with that at all.

There’s a lot of ways and different paths to contribute to the good in the world.

FRIEDRICH: Right. His family, and, as I’ve

Marie Severin

One of Gary’s funniest and most-reprinted stories for Not Brand Echh was Spidey-Man’s wedding in #6 (Feb. 1968). Guess who he married in this yarn! (Hint: It’s not a parody edition of either Gwen Stacy or M.J. Watson.)

Art by Marie Severin. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Remembering Gary Friedrich

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RA: Yeah, he was a guy on a motorcycle, beating the crap out of bad guys on different motorcycles. He didn’t last very long—only two issues— but it was clear that he and Ghost Rider had a lot in common, since they appeared only a year apart from each other.

They rode across the country on motorcycles, dressed in black leather, solving crimes and smiting the bad guys.

Hell-Rider was a black-&-white title, from a company called Skywald. I suspect that bolsters Gary’s claim to creating, or co-creating, Ghost Rider, since he’d already created a similar character only a short time before.

Hogs From Hell (& Other Places) Motorcycle heroes loom large in Friedrich’s legacy, as witness: a page drawn by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito for Skywald’s Hell-Rider #1 (Aug. 1971)—the splash page of Marvel’s Ghost Rider #4 (Feb. 1974), drawn by Jim Mooney & Vince Colletta (Gary’s final issue)—and this rare photo of Gary and Jean on a Ghost Rider motorcycle, which its owner, a huge Johnny Blaze fan, had had especially made for himself! Thanks respectively to Peter Normanton, Barry Pearl, and Jean Friedrich. [Hell-Rider art TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; Ghost Rider page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

doing something— sculpture, gardening, painting— something that displays creativity.

FRIEDRICH: The only thing I can think of is the ways he helped others in AA. He wanted to stay sober and he wanted the people he was helping to stay sober, one day at a time.

Each day renewed. He made his living from the video store, but his mission, if you could call it that, was helping people who were having a hard time of it, stay sober. I think that gave him purpose.

Living each day like that—in some way renewed—I think, involves a great deal of creativity.

Drinking is not the problem. It’s a symptom. The problem is always selfishness. When you’re helping other people, you’re not thinking about yourself. The luxury of sinking back into your own selfishness is just not there.

RA: I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but before he created Ghost Rider— the motorcycle guy— he’d already done an earlier motorcycle character named Hell-Rider.

FRIEDRICH: Yeah, I remember him. No super-powers, though.

character.

FRIEDRICH: Exactly. Gary never gave up on the idea that he was responsible, to some degree, in creating that

RA: I don’t know how much you want to get into his struggle with Marvel over the creative rights to Ghost Rider. The movie came out in 2007, and my notes say the lawsuit was concluded on Dec. 28, 2011.

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Jean Friedrich & Robert Higgerson On The Marvel Writer’s Later Years

the New York Comic Con, and Gary loved being back in New York.

We’d get there and we’d just run the streets. He’d remember certain places he’d gone to. It was exciting!

RA: It’s fun to share that sort of thing with someone, especially if it’s all new to the person you’re sharing it with.

FRIEDRICH: I had a wonderful time with him at those conventions. Some of the best times of my life, sharing that with Gary, meeting all those comics people. After a few conventions, you’d start seeing the same people at different conventions, and you’d become friends that way. It becomes a big family in a way.

You’re always going, “Good to see you again!” For many of them, the only time they see each other is at a convention.

Stan The Man & Groovy Gary—Together Again!

Although he received a well-deserved Inkpot Award that year, Friedrich’s happiest memory of the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con was reconnecting with his old boss Stan Lee, and the two of them having their picture taken together.

Hey, and Gary didn’t even have to pay for it! Photo snapped by Jean F.

FRIEDRICH: I’m not really at liberty to talk about it.

RA: Fair enough. Gary won the Inkpot Award in 2007, the year the movie came out. To get the Inkpot, you have to actually be in attendance at the San Diego Comic-Con. What did Gary think about that?

FRIEDRICH: Yes, we were treated well when we were there. Gary was really happy, and one of the happiest moments was when Stan Lee—I don’t remember if this was the first Comic-Con we attended or the second—but Stan was going to be there. Gary e-mailed Stan’s assistant to see if Stan had any time available to talk with Gary. That assistant said that Stan was really busy, and, of course, he was, but that after Stan did his forum he was scheduled to be meeting with the press and he’d have a little time in between.

What’s amazing to me is that this little town of Jackson, Missouri, produced two really talented people. Not just in writing.

Gary and Roy were in a band together. They were both so artistic.

It’s mind-boggling. Gary played the drums in that band, but all the years I was with him, I never heard him play the drums. His brother told me, after Gary passed away, that Gary was a really good drummer. In turn, Gary had told me Roy was a very good singer. The only time I heard Gary play anything like drums was when he was bouncing his finger on the console of the car when he was driving or on the table!

RA: Gary also received the Bill Finger writing award in 2010. Like the Inkpot, you have to attend Comic-Con to receive that, if you’re the living recipient. Unlike the Inkpot which is for contributions to comics in general, the Bill Finger Award is given out only for underrated writers.

FRIEDRICH: Yes, you only get it if you’ve been ignored for too long! The people who have won that award are all good writers.

Receiving that award was one of the few times I saw Gary really nervous. The Inkpot is usually given to you after or during a panel you’ve been participating in and you don’t even know you’re getting it until they hand it to you. But the Bill Finger Award is in a

So we’re at the convention and Stan’s done his forum and has gone rushing out of the room. We could not keep up with him! He was 80 then and we were running down the hallway trying to catch up! However, we did get in the room and Gary got to talk to him again for a little while. I got a picture of the two of them together.

RA: I did an interview once with Stan Goldberg, who was a colorist for Marvel from the 1940s through the mid-’60s, and he told me that Stan [Lee] didn’t like to sit down.

When he was writing, Stan would stand up. He didn’t take taxis, he walked everywhere he could, as fast as he could. Stan G. told me that, if you were walking alongside of him on one of those walks, you were really going to have to hustle! He thought that particular habit was why Stan was so spry in his later years.

He was always exercising, by walking whenever he could. He said, “Stan walked really fast!”

FRIEDRICH: It’s true! He did! [laughs] It was unreal! I couldn’t get over how a man that age could move so fast! I was running to keep up!

We were also invited to

The Finger Of Fury Gary with his Bill Finger Award, 2010—and part of one of many Marvel pages that remind us how much he deserved it: a key scene from “The War Lover!” in Sgt. Fury #45 (Aug. 1967). Art by Dick Ayers & John Severin. Thanks to Scott Rowland for the photo, and to Barry Pearl for the comics scan. [Page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Remembering Gary Friedrich

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big hall, where you know about it in advance, and then you have to get up on stage and give a little talk. It was a big hall and it was full of people. Gary liked to talk, but that was one day when I could tell he was really nervous.

Before Gary passed away, I think he was really recognized for his contributions to comics and to writing. So much of his work is back in print. I like that.

Interview #2: ROBERT HIGGERSON RICHARD ARNDT: We’re welcoming Robert Higgerson, to talk about his uncle, Gary Friedrich. Thank you, Robert, for agreeing to this interview. I guess we should start off by discussing how your connection to Gary Friedrich started.

ROBERT HIGGERSON: I first met Gary in 1986. I was an undergraduate, attending Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. It turned out that one Robert Higgerson of my maternal aunts, Jean Ellen, was attending the same university and was also attending AA—Alcoholics Anonymous—as was Gary at the time.

She persuaded me to attend the meetings with her. That’s where she met Gary.

By the late autumn of 1986, she was dating Gary, and they eventually moved in together in an apartment complex in Jackson, Missouri. That was Gary’s hometown. That’s not too far, actually just outside Cape Girardeau, where I was living. I believe Gary and Aunt Jean Ellen got married on Valentine’s Day of 1988. So that’s how I met Gary personally.

When I was younger and collected comicbooks—like a lot of kids at the time, I was obsessed with comicbooks; still am, I guess—I knew of Gary’s work, but the fact that he would become one of my maternal uncles was pretty awesome.

RA: You mentioned, in our correspondence leading up to this interview, that Gary’s work had changed your life in some way. Can you discuss that?

HIGGERSON: Gary’s work was amazing. He wasn’t the only writer that had a strong influence on me, but as I grew older and began to re-read older issues of Sgt. Fury, I could see that even though the narrative context being discussed was supposed to be European-based and set in World War II, there were still certain implicit statements about things in that comic that were contemporary to the 1960s rather than the 1940s. Especially regarding the Vietnam conflict in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Mind you, the Sgt. Fury comic didn’t deal with that explicitly, but Gary wrote those implicit notions into the comics, and you could read them into the stories, and I thought that was very clever on Gary’s part. His ability to make statements about some of the consequences of war, especially during that time period, from the angle or around the title of a comicbook that didn’t necessarily or normally deal with much of that sort of thing was impressive—contemporary notions being addressed in a World War II comicbook.

I thought that was very interesting. I’m not the only person who read that sort of thing into those Sgt. Fury issues.

RA: I believe you’re referring to the “The” series, as it’s come to be known.

A series of stories, written by Gary, such as “The War-Lover,” “The Informer,” “The Peacemonger,” that sort of thing.

“Gary And Dick Up Front” As decreed by editor Stan Lee, each of Marvel’s 1968 annuals featured a short backup tale starring that issue’s creative team. Here’s the splash from the one done for that year’s Sgt. Fury Annual, featuring writer Friedrich and penciler Ayers. John Severin inked the tale, but evidently preferred to go AWOL from the actual yarn. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

HIGGERSON: Yes, exactly. I was particularly impressed by “The War Lover” from #45, published in 1967, “The Peacemonger,” and another one I found very interesting was #46—not one of the “The” series—entitled “They Also Serve!,” where Gary is writing about the medics, physicians, and nurses who were not involved in fighting but were in the war on the front lines and the things they had to go through. I thought those stories were very interesting.

RA: I suspect that any decent contemporary writer, and Gary was certainly that, would be doing something similar because if they were writing an historical story they’d have to view that story through contemporary eyes.

HIGGERSON: That’s right. Also, during that period there were many student protests against the Vietnam War, taking place all over the country. I remember one protester from the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, who was opposed to campus job recruiters from the Dow Chemical Company, which supplied the napalm to the military for use in Vietnam. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Napalm was jellied gasoline that clung to whatever it came in contact with and created horrible wounds, for those who survived coming into contact with it.] There was another protest against an Army medical research facility that actually resulted in a bombing of the facility. There was

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Jean Friedrich & Robert Higgerson On The Marvel Writer’s Later Years

The “The” Series Pages (clockwise from top left) from three of the above informal “‘The’ series,” all written by Gary Friedrich, penciled by Dick Ayers, and embellished by John Severin: “The Informer” from Sgt. Fury #57… “The Peacemonger” from #64… and “The Deserter” from #75. With thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] As compiled by Robert Higgerson, the “The” series consists of the following Sgt. Fury adventures, in order: “The War-Lover!” (#45, Aug. ’67)… “The Assassin!” (#51, Feb. ’68)… “The Informer” (#57, Aug. ’68)… “The Peacemonger” (#64, March ’69)… “The Deserter!” (#75, Feb. ’70)… “The All-American” (#81, Nov. ’70), and “The Reporter!” (#110, May ’73). Robert points out that #81 was actually scripted by Gary’s good friend Al Kurzrok, but that “it reflects quite well on what [Friedrich] had been doing and would do with the series.”

a considerable amount of vandalism committed as a form of protest.

Gary was fully aware of those kinds of things. Some of those events show up indirectly in some of his stories. Not just the war titles, but in some of the super-hero material that he wrote. An example of that would be Daredevil #70 [Nov. 1970], which featured the first appearance of a character called The Tribune. The story has a film mogul or big-shot Hollywood actor named, I think, Buck Ralston, who decides to deal violently with student protesters whom he deems to be un-American. He blows things up in that effort, and Daredevil himself is actually caught up in one of the explosions and knocked unconscious.

A lot of people still believe comicbooks are total fantasies, but I found it interesting that Gary grounded as many stories as he did in current events. In this particular story, he featured a couple of brief cameos— one being Spiro Agnew, who was Vice President of the U.S. at that time, under Richard Nixon, and the other being the much-revered anchor for CBS-TV news, Walter Cronkite.

Remembering Gary Friedrich

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HIGGERSON: There was also another such story in an issue of Daredevil [#79, Aug. 1971], which he co-wrote with Gerry Conway, called “’Murder!’ Cries The Man-Bull!” There’s a street scene in which Stan Lee appears, and he’s mentioning going home and writing some stuff on Spider-Man. Shortly after that, Stan’s recognized by Daredevil and DD refers to him as “Fearless Leader.”

That kind of thing I think is rather cool.

To be fair to other war comics writers of the day, I would suspect that the safest war comic to write in the country at that time would have been Harvey Comics’ Sad Sack. You wouldn’t see anything like controversy in that title. [both chuckle] RA: It is true that the death of [Warren Publications’] Blazing Combat and the rising anti-war sentiment really put the kibosh on regular titles featuring Vietnam-centered stories. After 1968, through the end of the conflict, I can remember only a few back-up tales appearing from either DC or Marvel. Charlton published some, but they were generally written from a very conservative viewpoint towards protesters or simply ignored home-front opposition to the war altogether.

HIGGERSON: In regards to Nick Fury, the “S.H.I.E.L.D.” version first showed up in Strange Tales, but Gary’s own contributions to that version of the character were mostly written in 1968-1969.

When he came to the series, it had already been turned into a pop-arts extravaganza by Jim Steranko—starting in Strange Tales #51 and continuing to Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #5. Gary did a number of stories starting in #9 (Feb. 1968). Herb Trimpe or Frank Springer did most of the artwork on his issues. I think the story I liked best was entitled “Nick Fury… A Day in the Life” from #14 [Sept. 1969].

RA: Just before that issue, Gary did a series of Hate-Monger stories in the “S.H.I.E.L.D.” series. Hate-Monger wasn’t Gary’s character, but he certainly made the character his own.

I should mention that I never heard that sort of information from Gary himself. However, I can see how a publisher, who’s in the business of selling comics to as wide a group of people as he can, might not want certain stories to be controversial. Still, Gary slipped in those kinds of statements whenever he could. Even if it was usually indirectly.

HIGGERSON: I have a number of Sgt. Fury issues that Gary signed for me. I don’t know if Roy told you this or not, but my parents worked for a printing facility called Spartan Printing in Sparta, Illinois. It was the first printing facility of World Color Press. From roughly the late 1960s until the 1980s, World Color printed every copy of Marvel Comics, DC Comics, and the shortlived Atlas Comics, as well as Harvey, Archie, Gold Key, and all the rest, except maybe Charlton, who did their own printings of their books. They also did the Warren titles in the late 1960s-early 1970s.

RA: In a way, he was following Stan Lee’s own lead on that. Stan wrote one of the first anti-racism stories in comics, in the pages of Sgt. Fury #6 [Mar. 1964], since EC stopped doing Comics Code-approved titles in 1955.

Those comics would come into my house all the time.

Tangling With The Tribune Friedrich teamed up with penciler Gene Colan and inker Syd Shores for the “ripped-from-the-headlines” story in Daredevil #70 (Nov. 1970). Glimpsed in the tale were Vice President Spiro Agnew and CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

When I saw those kinds of things, it blew me away, because he was making very sharp observations on very current events, working in these really iconic cameos while doing so.

[INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: It should be mentioned that the stories Robert is referring to appeared months before the Green Lantern/ Green Arrow title launched the “relevancy” tide of stories appearing in 1970-1972.] For the time period, that was rather daring. Anytime anyone who was actually real had appeared in a comic before this, they were treated very reverently. I’ve heard or read somewhere that in some of Gary’s Sgt. Fury stories he was asked to tone that kind of thing down a bit. Stan Lee, or maybe the publisher, may not have wanted references to the Vietnam conflict to be too strong.

“The Man,” Minus The Man-Bull Stan and Joan Lee do a cameo in Daredevil #79 (Aug. 1971), “‘Murder!’ Cries The Man-Bull!”—a story actually plotted by Gerry Conway. But it was up to Gary F. to put deathless dialogue on the lips of Our Leader and his lady. Pencils by Gene Colan; inks by Tom Palmer. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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better than the Eastern, but there was a discernable difference. The color, for instance, was heavier and had more saturation.

You mentioned in our correspondence that you liked Gary’s work at Charlton, but I don’t know which stories you’re referring to.

RA: Some of that is based on research. When I was a kid, I didn’t read romance comics, but while doing research for other interviews, I’ve picked up a number of the Charlton Frank romance comics, mostly looking for early Dick Giordano, Springer Jose-Luis Garcia-Lopez, Michael Kaluta, or Jim Aparo material… but I started noticing Gary’s name in there, and he wrote some very odd romance tales back in the day. Some of them have been reprinted in Craig Yoe’s recent Weird Love series of books. Stuff like “Hootenanny Heel” from Love Diary #45 [Sept. 1966], “Tears in My Malted” from Sweethearts #90 [Dec. 1966], and the all-time classic “Too Fat to Frug” from Love Diary #47 [Jan. 1967]. “Too Fat to Frug” concerned a not really fat but rather plump young woman who couldn’t dance the newest dance craze—the Frug—because she was afraid to get out and shake it, largely because she feared ridicule for being heavy. Of course, in 1960s romance comics, if you couldn’t dance, then you couldn’t get a fella, so she was in tears for most of the story. Finally, true love convinced her that she could shake it, but not break it, and she got her fella. As you can probably tell from the titles, Gary probably wasn’t being completely serious in writing these stories, but they are fun to read.

HIGGERSON: Yes, I think that story reflected Gary’s very down-to-Earth sense of humor. When I first saw that story, it kind of threw me off, because I wasn’t familiar with what “Frug” meant. I wasn’t sure if it was a spin on the “F”-word or not, but I discovered that it was a dance popular in discotheques of the time, that time being the mid-late 1960s. The story is very funny.

An Agent Of Change The Hate-Monger (who may or may not have been a very old Adolf Hitler behind that KKK-style hood) harangues at Col. Fury in Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. #9 (Feb. 1969). Art by Frank Springer. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RA: Very politically incorrect for these days, but there is a kernel of truth in the story that makes it not only funny but, in a way, rather spot-on. Far more than most weepers of the time period, it actually has a little relevance to today.

My parents, because they worked there, got the comics for free. My house was filled—wall-to-wall—with all the comics from all the companies then publishing. It was pretty awesome!

HIGGERSON: She got too heavy to do the dance because of depression, if I remember right. What I thought was so intriguing about that story was that it was not the type of romance story that would usually appear, not just in romance comics but in any comic of that time period. You can see how people, especially today, might be offended perhaps by the story, even though it was clearly not written to offend someone—not then, and not now.

RA: That’s a good connection to have if you’re a comicbook lover. [chuckles]

RA: I suspect that people today would be more offended by the mention of a “fat” girl than people back then.

HIGGERSON: It really was. Based on information that I have, and I don’t know if this happened on a gradual basis or all at once, but there was a printing facility in Waterbury, Connecticut, called Eastern Color Printing, and they manufactured the Marvel Comics for a while. My Sgt. Fury issues #45-46 were published there. By 1968, however, World Color Press and Spartan Printing were printing all the Marvel titles.

HIGGERSON: I think that’s right. One Charlton character that I always found interesting—although it may have been created elsewhere—was Blue Beetle. I think Gary dialogued the debut issue of Blue Beetle. The plotting and art were by Steve Ditko. I found the Blue Beetle interesting, but he seemed to be a bit of an open-ended generic character that no one could quite figure out what to do with.

RA: That switch-over may have happened because Marvel had a big expansion in their number of titles in 1968.

HIGGERSON: Spartan Printing was using old letterpresses they’d been using since the 1950s. They could still crank out quality comics, 24/7, with those. They were also one of the first facilities to obtain an off-set press, which at the time printed a very high-quality copy. Not to say that the comics at the time were manufactured that way. You can really tell the printing difference between Sparta and Eastern Color. It wasn’t so much that the Spartan quality was

RA: The original Blue Beetle ran for 19 issues in the early to mid-1940s and was put out by Fox Comics. At some point in the 1950s, Charlton got hold of the copyright and launched several series (1955, 1965-1966) in an effort to revive him. The 1965-1966 version was pretty dreadful.

In late 1966, Ditko created an all-new Blue Beetle, which retained very little besides the name of the original, for Captain Atom #83-86 (Nov. 1966-June 1967). Oddly enough, at least for that time period, it was acknowledged in Ditko’s version that the old Blue Beetle had existed and had died in the few months between the cancelation of the ’65-’66 version and Ditko’s reboot. Gary had written the dialogue for the back-up stories in

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Weight-Watchers Beware!

You saw the splash page of Gary’s story “Too Fat to Frug” (from Charlton’s Love Diary #47, Jan. 1967) back on p. 17—so we thought you might like to see how it turns out. A very atypical ending for a ’60s romance yarn!

Thanks to Comic Book Plus website—but no, we still don’t know who the artist is. Incidentally, “Ron Lowes” was the name of a friend of Friedrich (and Roy Thomas) back in Jackson, Missouri—and yeah, he once worked at the Palace Theatre, too! [© the respective copyright holders.]

Had Three Wishes” is not an exact adaptation, but it’s certainly strongly inspired by “The Monkey’s Paw.” those four issues of Captain Atom, but not when the Ditko Blue Beetle got his own title.

In #2 Ditko did a story that told what had happened to the old Beetle and provided the origin of the Ted Kord version of Blue Beetle. Officially, the dialogue for this and the next three issues of 1967’s Blue Beetle is by D.C. Glanzman, Louis and Sam Glanzman’s brother; but Dick Giordano, then Charlton editor, went on record saying Glanzman wasn’t the scripter. He believed that Ditko was, but, to me, it doesn’t read like other Ditko-written stories of the time period, so there’s just a chance that an unidentified Friedrich—who was still working at Charlton at least part of this time—may be the actual scripter. It’s the Ditko version of Blue Beetle that Alan Moore noticed and used as the template for his own Owl Man in Watchmen.

The only characters I know Gary created while at Charlton were “The Sentinels,” a back-up series illustrated by Sam Grainger, and a C.I.A. agent called Tiffany Sinn. There were three stories of her, illustrated by different artists—the first story was drawn by Charles Nicholas & Vince Alascia, the second by Luis Dominguez. The first two stories appeared in a romance title, Career Girl Romances #38-39 (Feb. 1967-Apr. 1967), although they were spy stories, not romance tales.

The third story appeared as the back-up story

HIGGERSON: Now that you mention it, I can see the resemblance between the two. I never made that connection before. There’s also another Gary Friedrich-Steve Ditko story. One of the last he wrote for Charlton, called “If I Had Three Wishes,” which I’ve never read, from Ghostly Tales #60 [March 1967]. [NOTE: For the record, the last Friedrich-credited scripts for Charlton, at least in terms of going Living In “Sinn” on sale, were a pair of stories for You probably noticed a “Tiffany Sinn” splash page Go-Go #6 (April 1967). If Gary did back on p. 19… but here’s a shocker: By her second script the “Blue Beetle” stories in his appearance (her final one written by Gary F.), she had earned a spot on the cover of Career Girl Romances #39 actual series, you could extend that (April 1967), illustrated by editor Dick Giordano. Before to Blue Beetle #5 (Nov. 1968).]

RA: Yes, I’ve read that one. It’s a take-off on the old supernatural story “The Monkey’s Paw.” “‘If I

long, GF would be scripting the adventures of another career girl—Millie the Model—for Marvel ! Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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Jean Friedrich & Robert Higgerson On The Marvel Writer’s Later Years

The Dreaded Ditko (L. to r.:) Steve Ditko’s splashes for Friedrich-scripted yarns in Charlton’s Ghostly Tales #60 & #61 (March & June 1967). The second was inked by Rocky Mastroserio. Thanks to Comic Book Plus. [© the respective copyright holders.]

in Secret Agent #10 (Nov. 1967), though that one was written by Dave Kaler and illustrated by Jim Aparo. I suppose Gary didn’t continue the series because he’d left Charlton and gone to Marvel shortly after she appeared.

Eagle, who flew a biplane during World War I. The title had been a reprint title, but “The Phantom Eagle” was an original tale, created exclusively for that issue. When I first got wind of that, I had to have a copy, so I got onto eBay.com and tracked one down.

Of course, after he’d been working at Marvel for two or three years, he also did some work for Sol Brodsky’s Skywald comics, which included co-creating a few characters.

Also in 1968, Gary took over “The Hulk,” when the title was changed from Tales to Astonish to The Incredible Hulk with #102 (Apr. 1968). He retold the Hulk’s origin in that issue. I became interested in those. Gary wrote the title through #104, then the next two issues were written by Roy Thomas, Bill Everett, and Archie Goodwin, probably because Gary was writing the Hulk Special #1 (Oct. 1968), the one Jim Steranko did the cover for; then he returned to write #107, a direct sequel to the Special, which had that great title “Ten Rings Hath The Mandarin!” Following that, in #108 Stan Lee returned to write the stories.

HIGGERSON: Yes. In particular, there was [the black-&-white comic] Hell-Rider #1. In collaboration with a number of artists, Gary co-created three characters for that one.

First, Brick Reese (a.k.a. Hell-Rider), a member of the Wild Bunch, who has a black belt in martial arts, a law degree, and enhanced strength and stamina due to the experimental drug Q-47… second, the motorcycle gang, the Wild Bunch… and third, Marian Michaels, a.k.a. The Butterfly, presumably the first black super-heroine, who fights crime equipped with a jet pack and blinding strobe lights.

When people think of characters that Gary created or co-created, whatever the case may be, it’s usually the motorcycleriding Ghost Rider, not the Western Ghost Rider, which he also wrote, and perhaps, some aspects of Son of Satan.

However, Gary signed a copy of Marvel Super-Heroes, from 1968, for me, which featured a character called The Phantom

A lot of people don’t realize that Gary wrote stories and sequences for titles like The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, or Daredevil.

He’s usually just thought of as a war or horror writer. He never wrote the super-hero stuff for any great length of time.

RA: It probably didn’t help that on a number of those titles he was the writer just before they were canceled. His last major work was doing exactly that just before the 1970s-era Atlas Comics collapsed. I don’t think it marks any kind of bad storytelling. Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. failed because he was a secret agent, and the secret agent fad had faded away by 1969… Sgt. Fury because war comics just weren’t making the

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Butterfly By Night Along with the title character, another notable co-creation of Gary Friedrich’s debuted in Skywald’s Hell-Rider #1 (Aug. 1971)—namely, The Butterfly, whom Robert Higgerson calls “presumably the first black superheroine.” Pencils by Ross Andru, inks by Mike Esposito. She also appeared in the second and final issue. Thanks to Peter Normanton & Robert Higgerson for the scans in this grouping.

Also introduced in Hell-Rider #1 was the motorcycle gang “The Wild Bunch,” by GF, Dick Ayers, & Mike Esposito. The member named “Slinker” was surely named after Gary’s Missouri pal C.L. Slinkard, who’s mentioned back on p. 37. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

kind of money that super-heroes were in the 1970s.

HIGGERSON: A lot of his super-hero work was done on titles that were in some form of transition as well. “The Hulk” was moving up from half a book to a whole book. Daredevil was in the process of moving from a solo hero to being teamed up for several years with The Black Widow. The Hulk special wasn’t a solo Hulk adventure; he was teamed up with The Inhumans. It was a thick book, with more pages than the average comic.

He wasn’t one of my favorite characters, and I haven’t collected the comics he was in yet, but Gary also did some work with the original Captain Marvel, who was a male Kree spy. He worked on Captain Marvel #13-15 (May-Aug. 1969). They were, again, transition issues. In #16, they traded out the character’s Kree uniform for a super-hero costume, and his purpose for being on Earth was greatly changed.

Gary also wrote some of The Black Widow’s adventures in Amazing Adventures in 1970. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: #1-3 (Aug.-Dec. 1970).] This was shortly after she got a new costume—an all-black cat suit. I don’t really remember her original costume— it may have had fishnet stockings or something like that. I’m curious as to whether Gary designed that costume or if it was John Buscema’s idea.

Man’s Inhuman-ity To Man Friedrich scripted the 51-page story in Incredible Hulk [Annual] #1 (1968), which co-starred The Inhumans, and introduced several new specimens of that super-powered species. Pencils by Marie Severin; inks by Syd Shores “and almost the whole blamed Bullpen,” if you can believe the credits—and you probably can. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Jean Friedrich & Robert Higgerson On The Marvel Writer’s Later Years

Making A Splash Sometime in 1968, influenced by the fans’ enthusiasm for the groundbreaking S.H.I.E.L.D. work of Jim Steranko, editor Stan Lee finally directed Marvel’s writers and artists to do what some of them had been chafing at the bit to do even before Steranko came along: namely, to get more creative with splash pages, title & credits design, etc. Hence these splashes conceived by GF for Captain Marvel #13 & #15 (May & August 1969). Pencils by Frank Springer and Tom Sutton, respectively—inks by Vince Colletta and Dan Adkins, also respectively. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RA: Well, Gary wrote her first solo adventure wearing it, but she’d appeared in it a month earlier, in Amazing Spider-Man #86 (July 1970) where she debuted it. I’m pretty certain that John Romita designed that costume. I believe the idea was inspired by the jumpsuit that Emma Peel—actress Diana Rigg—wore in the 1960s British TV spy show The Avengers. That issue of Spider-Man was used as a launching pad for the revamped Black Widow debut and was followed by the new series in Amazing Adventures.

HIGGERSON: That explains a lot. John Romita’s work is totally awesome! To me, particularly in the early 1970s, Romita’s work is the signature Marvel look. His Spider-Man work is simply amazing.

Nobody could draw a pretty girl crying better than John Romita!

John Buscema drew “Black Widow” quite nicely in those early issues of Amazing Adventures as well. His style is somewhat generic to me and possibly over-polished but pretty fantastic at the same time. When I say generic, I don’t mean poorly done, only that there’s a bit of sameness to the art.

Gary also did quite a few stories for Marvel’s 1960s’ humor

The “Widow”-Makers The John Buscema/John Verpoorten splash for the “Black Widow” solo story in Amazing Adventures #1 (Aug. 1970); script by Gary Friedrich. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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title, Not Brand Echh, starting in #1 (Aug. 1967). One of my favorites was one in #3, dealing with “The Incredible Bulk” and the origin of Brucie Banter. I think it was illustrated by Marie Severin. It was a very funny and pretty awesome story.

RA: That was the kind of title that Marie Severin could really sink her teeth into. She and Tom Sutton were made for that kind of humor.

HIGGERSON: You mentioned in an e-mail that you really liked [The Monster of] Frankenstein, a.k.a. The Frankenstein Monster, of which Gary wrote the first eleven issues. I think the first several issues were adaptions of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus.

RA: #1-3 featured the adaptation, in my opinion the best adaptation of the novel out there. A faithful script and fantastic art by Mike Ploog—what’s not to like? Most of the adaptations done prior to Gary’s were extremely disappointing to me. They were either just horribly done, or dull to the point of stupor.

HIGGERSON: Both Gary and the artist were trying to preserve the 19th-century Gothic flavor of the novel. I think it’s in #2 where Gary gives his own spin on “the Monster needs a bride.” I rather like that one. After a point, Marvel changed the title [#6] and cut the pages from 19 to 15, filling up the back with 1950s-era reprints [#7].

Gary left after #11. Whoever replaced him immediately moved the Monster from the 19th century to the 20th. Those stories that came after aren’t bad, but I found Gary’s take from the early 1800s to be more interesting.

RA: Gary left or lost all of his Marvel titles in a very short period of time—Sgt. Fury with #116 (Nov. 1973), “Son of Satan” in Marvel Spotlight with #13 (Jan. 1974), Ghost Rider with #4 (Feb. 1974), Two-Gun Kid with #117 (Apr. 1974), and Frankenstein with #11 (Nov. 1974). He next appeared at Atlas/Seaboard with issues cover-dated early 1975, those coming out in late 1974.

HIGGERSON: When I was in third grade, I loved both Marvel and DC, with Marvel being my real preference of the two. But when the Seaboard stuff, really the new Atlas—from 1974-1975—started coming out, the covers looked a lot like Marvel comics of the day.

The Destructor was one of my favorite Atlas titles. That was by Archie Goodwin, Steve Ditko, and Wally Wood. Later, I discovered that Gary scripted quite a few issues for Atlas. He wrote some of the last issues of Police Action, Barbarians, Fright, The Brute, The Cougar, Ironjaw, Morlock 2001, Tales of Evil, Weird Suspense, and Phoenix—all of them cover-dated from February 1975 to October 1975.

You might remember The Cougar, who was a Hollywood stuntman turned night stalker. Gary wrote the first two issues of that title. I find those two issues interesting because they also involve classic monsters. #1 was entitled “Revenge of the Vampire,” with #2 “A Walk with the Werewolf.” I like those. He also did a one-issue appearance of the “Son of Dracula” for Fright #1-and-only.

Gary did the 4th and final issue of Ironjaw, who was a barbarian warrior.

RA: Barbarians #1-&- only also featured a Gary-written “Ironjaw” tale.

HIGGERSON: Gary did the last issue of The Brute, a kind of take-off on the Hulk, called “Live or Let Die.” I recall that Atlas had a character called Man-Monster that appeared in Tales of Evil #3 [July 1975], which Gary apparently co-wrote with Tony Isabella.

RA: It was drawn by Rich Buckler. Penciled, anyways.

HIGGERSON: I like Gary’s monster stuff. He was very good at that type of story. His work on Ghost Rider, “Son of Satan”—although he didn’t do a lot on that character, only two or three stories, one of

Bride Wanted?

You’ll see the first page of the “Monster needs a bride” sequence from Frankenstein #2 (March 1973) on p. 65. Here’s the other one. In case you’re wondering why Robert H. says his uncle gave this sequence “his own spin,” it’s because Franky’s prospective wife never really comes to life in Mary Shelley’s novel. What GF and artist Mike Ploog do is rather different from the ending of the 1935 film classic Bride of Frankenstein as well.

Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

which was the character’s debut in Ghost Rider. Son of Satan was the lead character after that in Marvel Spotlight, starting with #12. Gary signed #13, his last issue, for me.

“Son of Satan” wasn’t one of my favorites, but he was certainly interesting. I asked Gary if “Son of Satan” was from something deep within him to have come up with that, and he said “Oh, no, no. As I recall, Stan Lee just came up and said, ‘I’d like to do a character called Son of Satan.’” Stan didn’t explain why. Gary thought, “I think I can do that.” I think Roy [Thomas] told me that Satana came from something similar. That Stan wanted a Satanic character, and Satana was what Roy came up with. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Actually, Roy has always said that the name and general “Satana” concept was Stan Lee’s, although Roy wrote the first, very short story of her with artist John Romita. Roy discusses the origins of the “Son of Satan” feature back on p. 33.]

Gary had a lot of praise for Charlton Comics, which unfortunately quit doing original stories shortly after Atlas folded.

He was disappointed that Atlas didn’t make it. He loved Marvel, but he was always critical of DC Comics, for some reason. He felt that their format was too inflexible. They weren’t experimental

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Jean Friedrich & Robert Higgerson On The Marvel Writer’s Later Years

Atlas Escapades (Above left:) Actually, Gary didn’t script Atlas/Seaboard’s The Cougar #1—but he was piped aboard to do the werewolf story in #2 (July 1975), which turned out to be the final issue. Art by Frank Springer.

(Above right:) GF also scribed the third and final issue of that company’s The Brute (July 1975), with art by Alan Weiss & Jack Abel. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

enough for Gary. He described some of their characters—particularly Superman and Batman—as pieces of cardboard. I didn’t agree with him myself, but he personally had told me that on a number of occasions.

RA: When he was starting out, in 1966 or 1967, he would have been absolutely right on every observation he was making. By 1975, when his career was winding down, he would have been on much shakier ground, although both Batman and Superman were going through somewhat of a fallow period at that particular time.

HIGGERSON: A lot of DC titles from that period didn’t read all that well to me next to the Marvel titles, but today I find a great deal to be interested in by them.

However, back in the day, DC titles like Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane did not appeal to me at all. I did like the cover of Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen where he had his head stuck in the Phantom Zone. You can’t accuse DC of not being creative in certain ways. [laughs] RA: Gary was coming from a period at both Charlton and Marvel where the writers had a considerable amount of freedom to write whatever they wanted to. DC didn’t allow that sort of freedom at that time. The DC editors of the late 1960s had an iron grip on what was going to come out in their books.

HIGGERSON: That flexibility at Marvel and Charlton would have been something that Gary would have liked.

“Groovy Gary” Friedrich will be especially remembered, perhaps, for two co-creations—Ghost Rider and the Son of Satan (a.k.a. Daimon Hellstrom). Following the full-face-frontal debut of “Son of Satan” in Marvel Spotlight #13 (after foreshadowing in Ghost Rider #1 & 2), the two supernatural stalwarts shared a dramatic splash page in Ghost Rider #3 (Dec. 1973), Gary’s penultimate issue of that mag, shown above.

Both heroes have achieved a long afterlife in comics and elsewhere— as witness the 2007 and 2011 Ghost Rider films with Nicholas Cage (plus a stint by a later incarnation on TV’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), and Daimon Helstrom in the recently streaming Hulu series Helstrom. (Hey, what’s an extra “l” between friends?) The latter starred Tom Austen as Daimon and Sydney Lemmon as Ana (read: Satana). That series’ credits laudably listed “Roy Thomas, John Romita Sr., Gary Friedrich, & Herb Trimpe” as creators of the two lead characters—though Stan Lee surely deserved a shout-out as well. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“G O R O

Headline

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” Y R A II G TI Y R V PA T. EP D

Headline 2 Author

by Peter Normanton

G

ary Friedrich was one of the first names I got to know when, as a teenager, I became obsessed with comics—essentially those of the Marvel ilk. He was the scribe assigned to [The Monster of] Frankenstein and The Incredible Hulk, and my rapport with his writing was almost immediate.

Soon after Gary arrived on the scene in 1966, the wind of change was once again billowing through the industry, thus ensuring this period would be every bit as exciting as those which had gone before. My interest in comics had been growing for some time, so it was no surprise when, in February of 1975, having picked up a copy of the British Marvel reprint Dracula Lives #19, comicbooks became my thing. Amid the contents of this issue, which included “Tomb of Dracula” and “Werewolf

by Night,” were the last six pages of “The Last Frankenstein” from Frankenstein #10, a tale originally published some months before in May of 1974.

For those of you unfamiliar with these British reprints, their black-&-white pages were appreciably larger than their US counterparts.

Those released in the mid-1970s ran to 36 pages, with only three of them given over to in-house advertising, leaving another couple

The Frankenstein Monster and Ghost Rider, both drawn by Mike Ploog, from the covers of Frankenstein #1 (Jan. 1973) and Marvel Spotlight #5 (Aug. 1972). [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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From The Tomb Presents

of pages reserved for readers’ letters. The lack of colour never detracted from the impact of these stories; rather, the artistry of Messrs Colan, Palmer, Ploog, Kane, Sutton, and Buscema was showcased in a format befitting their masterly line. In allowing the art to thrive in this way, the stories penned by Gary and his compatriots appeared all the more impressive.

Just before he began freelancing for Topps in the mid-1960s, working for Woody Gelman and Len Brown, the same warped minds that only a few years before had conceived the Mars Attacks! bubble-gum cards, Gary received an offer of work from Charlton Comics, following a conversation between Roy Thomas and editor Dick Giordano. It was towards the end of his brief sojourn with Charlton, a period spent largely on their romance titles, that he ushered in the first of his monsters, the avaricious Gertrude Partridge. Ghostly Tales #60’s “If I Had Three Wishes,” cover- dated March 1967, observed the grieving Gertrude’s refusal to listen to her imploring husband as she schemed to use one of the wishes alluded to in the title to resurrect her deceased son. In but six pages, Gary’s endeavour would help lay the foundations for Charlton’s revival as a horror comics publisher, in due course elevating them to a deservedly loftier status. Mr Dedd served as master of ceremonies, as he had for almost 12 months, introducing a piece which outshone everything else on show in this issue, neatly penciled by Steve Ditko before being embellished by the brush strokes of Rocke Mastroserio.

This same artistic team joined forces for Gary’s finale at Charlton, coming just one issue later in Ghostly Tales #61’s “The Wee Warriors,” cover-dated June 1967. It was a riveting excursion that surely bode well for both Gary’s and Charlton’s future. Alas, this duo of horror stories would be his last for the company, as Marvel Comics were offering him an abundance of better-paid work, originally on their Westerns Kid Colt Outlaw and Two-Gun Kid. With only a couple of horror stories to his name, Gary had revealed a clear understanding of what it took to chill his spirited readership. However, it would be another two years before he stepped anew into this darkened world, beholden to the success of his Westerns, along with a bounty of tales for The Incredible Hulk, Not Brand Echh, and Sgt. Fury. He was enjoying the moment, as were his employers, who continued to reap the rewards felicitous with their enormous popularity, yet remained rightly conscious of the competition.

They would have been all too aware of how well-received their rivals’ horror/ mystery titles had been on the newsstands.

(From top of page:) Pablo Marcos’ cover for the premiere of the UK edition of Dracula Lives, in October 1974, left the reader in no doubt as to that which lay within… followed by the Gil Kane/Tom Palmer collaboration for Dracula Lives #19 released at the end of February 1975, a cover first seen adorning the US Tomb of Dracula #29, published for that same month.

(Right:) Rocke Mastroserio’s Mr Dedd cover for Charlton’s Ghostly Tales #60 (March 1967), and Don Heck’s Marvel splash for Chamber of Darkness #1’s “Always Leave ’Em Laughing!”

[TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders & Marvel Characters, Inc., respectively.]

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Not wanting to get left behind, Marvel made their foray into this domain in the summer of ’69, commencing with Tower of Shadows, cover-dated September 1969, before launching the first issue of Chamber of Darkness just one month later. It was in these pages that Gary made his return to comicbook terror, banding together with Don Heck, an artist whose reputation had been forged prior to the Comics Code on the covers to Comic Media’s Weird Terror and Horrific. The hideous spectacle once relished by Don’s brush strokes was no longer permissible, outlawed by the Code’s inflexible attitude towards horror, but this didn’t prevent Gary setting loose another monster, one who journeyed into the past in a foolhardy bid to prove his worth in “Always Leave ’Em Laughing!”

He was then promptly lined up for an appearance in Tower of Shadows as it prepared for its second issue, cover-dated November 1969. “Look Out, Wyatt...

Automation’s Gonna Get Your Job!” paired him alongside the formidable draughtsmanship of John Buscema as they confronted a bully and his fear of automation at the mine where he was employed.

A couple of months down the line Tower of Shadows #3 hit the newsstands.

“Midnight at the Wax Museum” promoted Gary to the position of host for a seven-page piece rendered by comicbook veteran George Tuska. Here he drew upon his time working almost singlehandedly for his local newspaper to uncover a series of bizarre events following the appearance of an unearthly wax museum. This episode would have made the headlines on any national newspaper, but not necessarily one destined for publication on this world.

In each of these tales, Gary went light on the narrative, thus priming each of his highly talented artists to deliver the action, while keeping the dialogue just the way Marvel Comics preferred, sharp and snappy. In a short space of time he had very swiftly matured, standing proud amongst Stan Lee’s finest creative teams.

Elsewhere in the comicbook world, the fledgling Skywald Publishing Corporation was about to take its first tentative steps. In the latter months of 1970, their baptism of fire came with a couple of horror magazines, Nightmare (cover-dated December 1970), then just weeks later the provocatively entitled Psycho, each of them plainly influenced

by Jim Warren’s pioneering terrors Creepy and Eerie. Those early months weren’t exactly earthshaking for the new kid on the block, established by a man synonymous with basement-budget reprints, Israel Waldman, together with former Atlas and Marvel production man Sol Brodsky. The advent of the Alan Hewetson-inspired Skywald Horrormood in the spring of 1972 would eventually give rise to their ascendancy as a distinguished publisher of horror.

At the top of the page: Marie Severin & Frank Giacoia’s cover for Marvel’s Tower of Shadows #3 (Jan. 1970), followed by John Romita’s chilling image promoting the debut of its companion title Chamber of Darkness (Oct. 1969). [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] To our left: John Buscema’s unmistakable artwork for “Look Out, Wyatt ... Automation’s Gonna Get Your Job!,” as inked by John Verpoorten—first seen in Marvel’s Tower of Shadows #2 (Nov. 1969)—followed by Steve Ditko’s depiction of the mourning Gertrude Partridge’s desperate attempt to raise her dead son in Ghostly Tales #60’s “If I Had Three Wishes” from Charlton, cover-dated March 1967. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc., & the respective trademark & copyright holders, respectively.]

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From The Tomb Presents

However, we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss those issues circulated in the months prior to Hewetson’s appointment as editor; they contained many moments of note, amongst them Gary’s sinister collaboration with Tom Palmer, “A Living Death,” from the contents of Nightmare #4, cover-dated June 1971. His narrative style moved at a steady pace, introducing a blood-sucking Manson-esque degenerate who wasn’t about to short-change those who had willingly shelled out for this issue. No longer constrained by the Comics Code, Gary’s grasp for horror had come of age, his style encapsulating the mood of the day, while at the same time catching the eye of Alan Hewetson, who had briefly worked at Marvel himself. Hewetson set off to Missouri to meet up with his former workmate, hoping to bring him into the “Skywald Horrormood.” Sadly, his long journey would prove fruitless; Gary was forced to decline, as Marvel Comics were about to put even more work his way.

Now established as a formidable writer on Marvel’s war line, Gary was afforded the opportunity to take on a new project following his conceiving a radical kind of hero, one very much in keeping with the new decade and consistent with the prevailing zeitgeist. This zeitgeist was shaped into a nightmare figure we would call the Ghost Rider, a being tormented by the monster within. This wasn’t the first time Gary had been stirred by the leather-clad motorbiking fraternity; he had recently created Skywald’s Hell-Rider, an anti-hero whose origins dated back to Marlon Brando’s portrayal in the 1953 movie The Wild One, stirred by the contemporary craze for motorcycle exploitation films such as Wild Angels (1966) and the now archetypal biker movie Easy Rider (1969). Skywald’s entry into motorcycle exploitation would last just two issues, their black-&white magazines dated August and October 1971 failing to capture the imagination of the comic-buying public. While a brave attempt, the character needed something more.

(Top of this page:) Mike Ploog’s cover fronting Marvel Spotlight #5 (Aug. 1972) heralded the beginning of an unbroken 11-year run for the Ghost Rider, before he made a triumphant return in the 1990s.

(Directly above:) Gil Kane and Joe Sinnott were on cover duties for Ghost Rider’s debut in his own magazine, cover-dated Sept. 1973— and another masterpiece by Mike Ploog for Marvel Spotlight #7 (Dec. 1972).

(Right:) Daimon Hellstrom’s cameo in Ghost Rider #1, rendered by Tom Sutton and Syd Shores, with script by Friedrich. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Could that something more have been a flaming skull? Many years later the debate would continue as to who conceived this infernal image, Gary insisting a red-haired motorcycle friend had been his source of inspiration, while Roy Thomas has remained firm in his belief the idea was birthed by artist Mike Ploog. At the time it would have been of little import, because Gary was revving up beside Marvel newcomer Ploog to present the first of their “Ghost Rider” stories in Marvel Spotlight #5, dated August 1972. The events thundering through the ensuing issues could be compared to one Evel Knievel’s death-defying stunts, but these pages went so much further in hauling open the gates of hell as the show raced to its accursed finale.

Following a seven-issue stint on the character in Marvel Spotlight, Gary

The Friedrich Monsters

65

would script the first six issues of Ghost Rider before taking his leave. This series would outlast its fellow horrors at Marvel, notching up 81 appearances by June of 1983, before returning in 1990 for another 94 issues, which in turn precipitated two appearances at the movie box office, starring Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, in Ghost Rider (2007), and four years later, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011). Unfortunately, controversy would follow in the wake of this cinematic success, plunging Gary into a court battle with his former employers; the whys and wherefores surrounding the fiery skull suddenly became paramount. Many long-standing fans made it known, however, that they had no regard for this saga as a bona fide horror strip. Mike Benton, in his celebrated The Illustrated History of Horror Comics, first published in 1991, omits any mention of Ghost Rider, most likely consigning him to the realm of the super-hero.

Whether the Ghost Rider was a super-hero or a supernatural terror was by the by; Gary’s spell on Marvel Spotlight was all set to continue as “The Son of Satan” now assumed centre stage. Stan Lee had previously suggested “The Mark of Satan” as the name and subject of this new series, the title announced as the curtain came down on the first issue of Ghost Rider, sequent to Gary having surreptitiously insinuated the character into a two-page interlude that same issue. While the Comics Code may have witnessed a degree of relaxation, there were still those who sensed Stan’s idea was maybe a little too strong.

With the team finally in accord, the Son of Satan he duly became, relinquishing Gary the latitude to unleash yet another monster for the first of a thirteen-issue residence in Marvel Spotlight prior to his starring in seven issues of his own title. Gary’s tenure as writer was all too short-lived, coming to an end after just two issues with Marvel Spotlight #13, dated January 1974. He had given birth to Damian Hellstrom amidst the shadowy realms of Marvel’s supernatural ilk, but as time went on, this hell-spawned character would take his place in the Marvel Universe, joining forces with countless super-heroes to form part of a number of super-teams, amongst them The Defenders, The God Squad, and Midnight Sons.

All fared well for the Ghost Rider and the Son of Satan as they were each bestowed a credible place in Marvel’s ever-expanding universe. The same could not be said of the supernatural character for which Gary was to receive his greatest acclaim, and who has always been denied this honour. By the fall of 1972, Marvel had successfully introduced two enduring terrors into their fold, Dracula and the Werewolf by Night. It was those accomplishments that paved the way for yet another well-established horror, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein Monster. Her misunderstood creation was to lumber into the world of Marvel Comics as [The Monster of] Frankenstein, premiering in the January of 1973.

Prior to this appearance of Frankenstein’s monstrosity, Roy Thomas had been very careful in his consideration of the way in which this new series should be addressed. Here, he decided upon an adaptation of the original; then, as Skywald had done a few years previous, it was his intention to take the saga on a new course. Gary was handed the task of breaking down the plot, necessitating a hectic couple of months of work. By now, he had become an experienced comicbook writer, but even with his know-how this was going to be a very difficult undertaking. Before taking pen to paper, he immersed himself in the lustre of Mary’s rich text, the body of which for many now appears overly indulgent.

Yet, despite the enormity of

(Left:) Mike Ploog’s interpretation of Gary’s words for Frankenstein #2’s “The Bride of the Monster” (March 1973).

Next, from top right, Ploog’s artwork brought [The Monster of] Frankenstein to life for its premiere in January 1973, sitting above Gil Kane & John Romita’s cover for Frankenstein #10 [May 1974], now informally retitled The Frankenstein Monster

by Stan Lee, though the indicia still read simply “Frankenstein.” [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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From The Tomb Presents

this venture, [The Monster of] Frankenstein debuted with a cover dated January 1973. Mike Ploog’s cover paid homage to James Whale’s film Frankenstein (1931), with Roy Thomas pre-empting the film’s most famous line of dialogue (“It’s Alive!”), while the art itself avoided any visuals too close to Universal’s interpretation of the Monster. Upon turning the page, it was obvious Gary had been truly inspired by Mary’s style, making use of her words wherever possible, yet doing all he could to make it palatable for his young audience, who would have been over-awed, if not bored, by the original text. The four issues that accounted for this retelling would rate as some of Gary’s finest moments attributed to his time in comics, surpassing even his laudable work on Marvel’s war titles.

Unfortunately, the way forward could not match the sense of anticipation amongst the readership, when with issue #5 the Frankenstein Monster travelled on into the world of 1898 to seek out the last of the Frankenstein family. Hampered by the Marvel Universe’s inability to blend with the 19th century, the series would soon struggle, cast adrift from the rest of the company’s illustrious cast. Issues #7-9 would see the Frankenstein Monster in a problematic crossover with Dracula, prompting questions about continuity.

All the while, pressure was mounting to channel this troubled creature into the 20th century, as had been done in the “Frankenstein 1973” saga in the pages of Marvel’s black-&-white comic magazine Monsters Unleashed. This was all too much for Mike Ploog; he parted company with the series, unhappy about the prospect of bringing Frankenstein into a 20th-century New York. Gary would eventually follow in his footsteps, after the release of the eleventh issue of Frankenstein, cover-dated July 1974. His time writing horror comics for Marvel was now at an end; the industry was once again going through a process of change.

Lured by the prospect of greater creative control and a better rate of pay than he had enjoyed at Marvel, Gary went to freelance for Atlas/Seaboard Comics in 1975. After having sold Marvel Comics to Cadence Industries in 1970, publisher Martin Goodman had set up a new company in 1974 to rival the monolith he had once owned.

Goodman’s new line never really got the chance to take on its eminent predecessor, folding in the summer of 1975. However, Gary’s creation with artist Frank Thorne, “Son of Dracula,” featured in the only issue of Fright, cover-dated June 1975, would acquire a cult following fans of the genre, with his supernatural-styled scripts for The Brute #3 and “The Man-Monster” from Tales of Evil #3, both appearing for July 1975, attracting some interest. These entries paled before his work on Marvel’s supernatural brethren, for they were never given the time in which to develop.

As Gary was moving away from horror comics, I was about to get into them, and the work he produced between 1969 and 1974, oblivious to the fact that both he and Marvel were momentarily becoming distanced from the genre. Although he will be best remembered for his work on Marvel’s war titles and The Incredible Hulk, I am one of those readers who remains eternally grateful for the horror comics he wrote in his time at Marvel. Few horror comics will compete with his work on those first four issues of Frankenstein, and at the last I consider myself amongst the Ghost Rider readers who firmly believe those early appearances were definitely authentic tales of terror.

In 1975, several Marvel regulars were working for Martin & Chip Goodman’s Atlas/ Seaboard. Gary contributed scripts to Fright #1 (introducing “Son of Dracula”), with the cover as well as interiors rendered by Frank Thorne… The Brute #3 with Pablo Marcos on tap… and Tales of Evil #3, which ran with a Rich Buckler “Man-Monster” cover. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Herb Trimpe supplied the frenetic cover of Marvel Spotlight #12 (Oct. 1973), with Gil Kane & Ernie Chan’s handiwork embellishing that of Supernatural Thrillers #6 (Nov. 1973). [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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(Above:) The 1965 Tales of the Incredible paperback.

[Art © the respective copyright holders; Incredible Science Fiction log & EC sigil TM & © Wm. M. Gaines Agent.]

68

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Frazetta at EC: The Covers That Never Were!

F

by Michael T. Gilbert

rank Frazetta had a complicated relationship with Entertaining Comics publisher Bill Gaines. Gaines was a huge Frazetta fan, and desperately wanted Frank to work for EC. Frank had similar ideas. Gaines paid well, respected his creators, and encouraged artistic individuality. But there was a problem. Like most comicbook publishers in the ’50s, Gaines insisted on keeping the rights to the stories, as well as owning all the original artwork he commissioned.

That didn’t sit well with Frank, who (rightly!) held his work in high regard. He was an early advocate of creators’ rights, specifically his own. As such, he insisted on keeping his original art.

Which created a bit of a logjam between the two.

Despite Gaines’ attempts to find some compromise, things didn’t pan out, and Frank took his talents elsewhere.

At the time, Eastern Publishing was reprinting Buck Rogers newspaper strips in their venerable Famous Funnies title. They hired Frank to illustrate a series of Buck Rogers covers. Frank drew nine in total, classics all.

The last of these covers was likely intended for Famous Funnies #217 (May 1955). This was the first issue under the dreaded Comics Code (which quickly rejected Frank’s ultra-violent cover!).

Undeterred, Frazetta took the finished art and offered it to Gaines, providing Frank could keep his original art. This time Gaines accepted the offer, and the cover (reworked slightly to remove Buck’s helmet) graced the front of Weird Science-Fantasy #29 (March 1955), the comic’s final issue.

In the decades since, fans have speculated as to how Frazetta’s Famous Funnies covers might have looked had they all appeared on EC’s sci-fi comics as God (and Bill Gaines!) intended.

The Weird Science Is Settled!

(Below left:) Frazetta’s original covers to Famous Funnies #213 (Sept. 1954) and #214 (Nov. 1954). [© the respective copyright holders.]

(Above & atop facing page:) The abovementioned cover art, re-positioned as a pair of covers for issues of EC’s seminal SF title, Weird Science. [Weird Science logo & EC sigil TM & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.; art © the respective copyright holders.]

Frazetta at EC: The Covers That Never Were

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Frazetta Reimagined!

I decided to find out, using a little Photoshop magic to graft Frank’s Famous Funnies covers with classic EC logos. The results clearly show that Frazetta would have been one of EC’s finest cover artists.

Then I had another idea. Why not also reverse-engineer Frazetta’s Weird Science-Fantasy illustration, changing it back into a Famous Funnies cover? This time I traded the EC logo for some Famous Funnies lettering, while digitally adding Buck’s helmet (which had been removed for the EC printing). For added authenticity, I scanned the logo from the actual published issue. The result was the cover as it might have appeared in 1955, had it not been scuttled by the Comics Code. (See next page.)

The Horror! The Horror!

Frazetta’s sci-fi art was out of this world, but Frank was equally adept at the spooky stuff. Beginning in 1964, Frank painted horror and sci-fi covers for a series of Ballantine Books paperbacks reprinting old EC comics. We’ve added classic EC logos to approximate how Frazetta’s paintings might have looked as Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror covers a decade earlier.

Interestingly, these paintings were done around the time that Warren Publishing started their own horror magazines, Creepy and Eerie. Frazetta’s magnificent covers for Warren helped usher in a second wave of EC-inspired comics.

Painted covers were a rarity in the 1950s, so what might an actual pen-and-ink Frazetta EC horror cover have looked like in the ’50s? The cover to Trojan’s Beware #10, a collaboration between Frazetta and fellow EC artist Sid Check comes pretty close.

Check was something of an honorary Fleagle… a term Harvey Kurtzman coined to affectionally describe Al Williamson and his friends who assisted him on various stories for EC; primarily Frank

From One Crypt To Another (Left to right:) Frazetta’s original cover to Ballantine’s Tales from the Crypt paperback collection (Dec. 1964) re-imagined as a cover for EC’s comicbook of that title. [Art © the respective copyright holders; EC sigil & Tales from the Crypt logo TM & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Bucking A Trend (Right:) Frank’s cover art as it would have looked had it appeared on that of Famous Funnies #217 (May 1955) as intended. But the publishers and editors thought it too violent. Y’think? [Art © the respective copyright holders; Buck Rogers logo TM & © Frank Dille Trust, Inc.]

Frazetta, Angelo Torres, and Roy Krenkel, with George Woodbridge and Wally Wood occasionally lending a hand. Amusingly, EC’s Fleagles were named after a gang of murderous real-life bank robbers led by brothers Jake and Ralph Fleagle. (They also probably inspired Carl Barks’ Beagle Boys, of course.)

I’m uncertain if Check helped Williamson on any EC stories, but he did illustrate a few for the company (though he wasn’t quite good enough to score a permanent berth at EC). However, Check was a good mimic of styles, especially Wally Wood and Frank Frazetta. For Beware #10 he inked a stunning Frazetta-penciled cover. The resulting image would have made a great EC horror cover—as Tommy OBrien’s faux Tales from the Crypt cover demonstrates!

One Final Mystery!

Earlier, we discussed how Frank insisted that he keep any original art he did for comic companies. That being the case, why did Frazetta agree to do a single EC story, “Squeeze Play,” for Shock SuspenStories #13?

And why did Jack Kamen, not Frank, do the cover for that issue?

In part, it was because Frank wasn’t even supposed to draw “Squeeze Play.”

That script had been given to Frank’s pal, Al Williamson. But Al decided he didn’t want to draw the story, and begged Frank to take over.

Vanguard publisher J David Spurlock explains what happened next: “Well, it was still Al’s assignment. Al gave it to Frank—EC did not. Al gave up the story and the pay to get out of having to draw/ ink all those roller coaster trestles—he sold Frank on doing it by pointing out it

How About A Combined Mag Called Funny Science-Fantasy?

(Above, top:) The published version of Famous Funnies #217. Artist unknown.

(Directly above:) Frank’s rejected cover was actually printed on the final issue of EC’s Weird Science-Fantasy, #29 (May 1955). [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders & William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., respectively.]

Now That’s What We Call An Open-Casket Funeral!

(Above:) Frank’s original cover painting for Ballantine’s The Vault of Horror (Aug. 1965)—and an imaginary version fixed up by Patrick Ford.

[Art, logo, & EC sigil © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.]

Frazetta at EC: The Covers That Never Were

71

had lots of scantily clad women in bathing suits. So Al had to pick it up from Frank, and then Al had to go turn it in to EC. Al called Frank to see it was done, as he had to pick it up and turn it in. Frank said, “Come on over, I’m just finishing it up now.” Al shows up and Frank says, “Just help me out here, inking these roller coaster trestles.“ So Frank got the last laugh after all. And EC fans got a story that was almost pure Frazetta. Which also explains why Frank didn’t do the cover that went with his story. Frank drew “Squeeze Play” to help his buddy Al, and wasn’t working directly for Bill Gaines. That wasn’t the case with the cover, so Frazetta stuck to his principles and Kamen did the job instead. But if you’d like to see how Frazetta’s version might have looked, we’ve taken a panel from Frank’s story to create a new imaginary Shock SuspenStories cover.

As for Frank, retaining his art turned out to be a wise move. In fact, one of his Famous Funnies covers recently sold for over half a million dollars. Smart boy, that Frank! ’Till next time…

Grave Undertakings (Above:) Frank Frazetta penciled and Sid Check inked the cover to Trojan Magazines’ Beware #10 (July 1954), seen at bottom right—and Mr. Monster (or somebody) has re-positioned that art directly above as the cover of a 1950s issue of Tales from the Crypt. [Art © the respective copyright holders; Tales from the Crypt logo & EC sigil art TM & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.]

Let’s Ride On The Roller Coaster!

(Left to right:) Jack Kamen’s cover for Shock SuspenStories #13 (Feb. 1954) and Michael T.’s “what if” version, utilizing a Frazetta panel from the cover story.

[TM & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.]

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Golden Age artist/writer/editor NORMAN MAURER remembered by his wife JOAN, recalling BIRO’s Crime Does Not Pay, Boy Comics, Daredevil, St. John’s 3-D & THREE STOOGES comics with KUBERT, his THREE STOOGES movies (MOE was his father-inlaw!), and work for Marvel, DC, and others!

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All Time Classic Con continued from #148!

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75

KEN BALD Saw Battle In The Comics—And In Real Life!

by Mark Voger

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

H

e was a Marine who saw battle during World War II… a super-hero artist during the Golden Age of Comics… a commercial artist who illustrated everything from movie posters to advertisements to syndicated comic strips… a family man married for 75 years… and a presence in Fawcett publishing history.

So Kenneth Bruce Bald had already amassed plenty of career accolades by 2016, when Guinness World Records named him the oldest living comicbook artist still working.

“There’s not many of us left,” he then said of fellow artists from his generation. Bald was born in New York City on August 1, 1920, and died in Mount Arlington, New Jersey, on March 17, 2019.

He was 98.

Bald grew up in Mount Vernon, New York.

“My father had been a policeman in Pelham Manor, and got a job (also as a police officer) in Mount Vernon in 1925, I think it was,” he once told me. (I interviewed the affable artist

on four occasions, in 1997, 2002, 2012, and 2016. His wife, Kaye Bald, sometimes contributed her reflections to our conversations.)

As with most artists of his era, Bald was introduced to the world of illustration by way of newspaper comic strips.

“I started to draw, like so many kids.

At the beginning, I used crayons or whatever I could get ahold of,” he said. “I noticed the artwork of Hal Foster, who did Tarzan. Then later, of course, he did Prince Valiant.

The first thing I can recall was [the storyline] ‘Elephants’ Graveyard’ in Tarzan.”

Kenneth Bruce Bald in a press photo from 1962—the year he began writing and drawing the Dr. Kildare syndicated strip for King Features, whose Sunday title panel for Jan. 31, 1971, is seen below. At left is his “Bulletman” splash from Master Comics #26 (May 1942), although other artists of Jack Binder’s shop may also have worked on it; script by Otto Binder. [Bulletman & Bulletgirl TM & © DC Comics; Dr. Kildare panel TM & © Kim Features Syndicate, Inc.]

Fawcett Collectors Of America

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Jack Binder (older brother of prolific Fawcett writer Otto Binder).

There, Bald was not alone among Pratt alums.

Recalled the artist: “I started working there with the whole gang—Vic Dowd, Bob Boyajian, Kurt Schaffenberger—after we graduated from Pratt in May of 1941. Jack started out in Englewood, but it got so big, he moved to 507 Fifth Avenue [in Manhattan]. He was always good to me. When I was 20, he made me the art director for a bunch of guys who were 35 and 40.

“When we worked for Binder out there in Englewood on Saint Nicholas Avenue and—where the hell was it?—maybe Tenafly Road, he had a big barn that he converted the top of into a studio.

Everything we did was ‘piecework,’ so to speak. Maybe six guys would work on the same page. A fella by the name of Bill Ward, who was a fraternity brother from Pratt, would do the layouts. I know I did pencil the main figures and ink. Somebody would do the secondary characters. Somebody would do the backgrounds.

And then there’d be a lettering man involved. There might be six or seven names on the back of this big piece of art that we’d be working on. At that time, the pages were quite large.”

Shop Talk 1941 photo taken at the Jack Binder studio—a renovated barn next to Jack’s home in Englewood, New Jersey, which cranked out comicbook pages assembly-line style for Nedor, Lev Gleason, Street & Smith, and (mainly) Fawcett Publications. (L. to r.:) Kurt Schaffenberger (cut off), Bob Boyajian, Jack Binder (standing), Ken Bald, Samuel Memphis Brooks (far right background), Victor Dowd, Ray Harford. The following year, Binder appointed Bald as the studio’s art director. Photo provided to the FCA editor a decade and a half ago by Dorothy Schaffenberger.

But art wasn’t a passing fancy for Bald, who had aspirations of becoming a professional. After graduating from Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute in 1941, he landed a job doing “assembly line” comicbook artwork at a studio in Englewood, New Jersey, operated by artist

Fawcett Publications and Street & Smith were among Binder’s clients.

Characters that Bald worked on during this time included Captain Marvel, Ibis the Invincible, Bulletman & Bulletgirl, Captain Midnight, Spy Smasher, Mr. Scarlet, Blackstone the Magician, The Shadow, and Doc Savage.

Since many of Binder’s artists were in their 20s, they needed to let off some steam during their lunch breaks. “We would play a seven-inning game of softball,” Bald recalled. “We would also play softball

Number One With A Bullet, Man! While generally done as collaborative works by various artists from the Binder studio, some pages produced were predominantly done by individual artists. Ken Bald is attributed as the main artist in, among others, these two “Bulletman” stories for Fawcett: “Their First Split-Up” scripted again by Otto Binder and appearing in Bulletman #9 (Nov. 1942), whose splash page appeared in a previous issue… and “Killer Gorilla” (writer unknown) from Master Comics #34 (Dec. 1942).

Seen above is an undated Bulletman sketch by Ken Bald, courtesy of Troy R. Kinunen, who also kindly supplied the original artwork of “The Flying Detective” for this issue’s FCA cover by Bald and Josef Rubenstein. [Bulletman TM & © DC Comics.]

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Recalled Kaye: “Ken said, ‘Can you marry me in a week?’ I said, ‘A week? Who can get married in a week?’

He said, ‘You have to.’”

“Let me interject,” Bald added here. “I knew I was leaving in a week, but I couldn’t tell her [since his orders were classified]. But she pulled it together. We had a big wedding on that Saturday.”

A Midnight Run Ken Bald is confirmed as the cover artist for Fawcett’s Captain Midnight #14 (Nov. 1943). In his twilight years, the artist signed limited edition prints of this cover from his New Jersey home on January 20, 2017; photo courtesy of Troy R. Kinunen/Mears Auctions [mearsonlineauctions.com]. [Captain Midnight TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

teams from Fawcett and maybe Street & Smith. We had this ball field right across the way from us in Englewood. And because we worked late at night, pretty often—as I say, most of us were living away from our homes, so we were all bachelor guys—we’d work late up in the studio.”

During the Pratt and Binder years, Bald formed a lifelong friendship with Schaffenberger, who made his mark illustrating the exploits of Captain Marvel, Superman, and Lois Lane. Bald was a member of the wedding party when Schaffenberger married his wife Dorothy in 1946, and the two couples would get together periodically. [EDITOR’S NOTE: See a photo of the Schaffenberger wedding party in A/E #166 / FCA #225.] Their final reunion occurred at Schaffenberger’s 80th birthday party, a little more than a year prior to his death.

The War Years Then came the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Following the surprise bombing of the U.S. naval base on December 7, 1941— which claimed 2,403 lives and drew the United States into World War II—some of the Binder artists began departing the studio to enter the service. Bald enlisted in the Marine Corps on December 7, 1942, “one year to the day after Pearl Harbor. Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

Honeymoon accommodations were not the ritziest, as Bald recalled.

“All we could get was one room that didn’t even have a door; it had a curtain,” he said. “And then it was back to Camp Lejeune on Wednesday.

We were married for just one week when they shipped me out to the West Coast.”

Kaye followed her husband out to San Diego before he shipped off, and then stayed with his aunt and uncle in Los Angeles for a while.

“She started working in movies while I was overseas,” Bald said. “She worked at Republic Pictures. She even starred in a movie: An Angel Comes to Brooklyn [1945].”

“It was fun,” Kaye said of acting in such mid-’40s movies as She’s a Soldier Too (1944) and I Love a Mystery (1945).

“Of course, it took the curse off of Ken being away. People on the sets were always nice—Edward G. Robinson and the man who was in King Kong [Robert Armstrong]. The first picture I did was with Edmund Lowe. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Girl in the Case, Columbia Pictures, 1944.] I was supposed to be a secretary who opened the door and let someone in. He [Lowe] said, ‘Come on, let her have a part.’ So they gave me something to say to him.”

Before long, Bald was with the 5th Marine Regiment-1st Marine Division on a ship headed for New Guinea. “We were on Guadalcanal, we were on New Britain and Peleliu and Okinawa, and then we went to China just before I came home,” he said. “I was overseas for 25 months.”

Bald saw action for the first time in Cape Gloucester, New Britain. “I was given a machine-gun platoon,” he said. “After New Britain was declared secure, I was promoted upstairs to assist intelligence officers.”

At Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, he got a lot of practice “going up and down the side of a cargo ship.” Bald says he and his fellow recruits were called “90-day wonders,” owing to an intense three-month training program. During this early period in his service, Bald laid eyes on three movie stars: actors Tyrone Power and Sterling Hayden (who both joined the Marines) and actress Maureen O’Hara.

He committed to memory the exact date the Battle of Peleliu began: September 15, 1944.

When he received orders to be sent overseas, Bald first wanted to marry his sweetheart, model/actress Kaye Dowd (the sister of Vic Dowd, a fellow Binder studio artist). “She was a singer and dancer in Broadway shows,” Bald said. “I had to take her out of a Broadway show to get married.”

“During Okinawa, the fabulous thing there was: I remember not only the battle, but that the [Japanese], in desperation, were sending out all the kamikaze planes they could muster. Every time one of them was hit, the sky seemed like it was on fire. We took off our helmets and cheered every time one of their planes went down.”

Bald proposed to Kaye and asked if she could prepare a wedding in one week. “She sent back a telegram asking if I can make it two weeks,” Bald said with a laugh.

“It’s a battle that should never have happened,” Bald said. “It was awful. It ended up being a bloody battle. Some outfits lost 50, 60 percent of their men. It was a terrible mess. Anyway, when it was over, we then got ready for Okinawa.

During his service, Bald had an odd superstition. He never thought he would be killed in battle (“Every time I hit the deck, I put my right hand under my chest”), but feared he might be killed

Fawcett Collectors Of America

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Captain America, the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, Namora, the Blonde Phantom, Sun Girl (a character Bald co-created) and Millie the Model, in comicbooks published in the late ’40s and early ’50s (the period during which Timely became known informally as Atlas Comics). “By the middle ’50s, I was just about finished doing comicbook stuff, except for covers,” Bald said. (He also drew covers for editor Richard E. Hughes at American Comics Group.)

In the meantime, Bald’s freelance work began picking up. He did advertisements, movie posters, and storyboards.

The artist also made his mark in syndicated The Spy Who Loved Crime comic strips, beginning As a freelancer in the post-war years, Bald still illustrated occasional comicbook stories for Fawcett. It was only fitting that in 1957 with Judd Saxon, one of the artists who’d helped draw WWII-era “Spy Smasher” stories would later draw a short run of the character’s post-war an office drama that adventures in the guise of “Crime Smasher.” “The Footloose Cinderella” (writer unknown) appeared in Whiz Comics #82 (Feb. Bald illustrated for King 1947); note the references to Spy Smasher on the page. Ken also did some Fawcett romance work, such as “Love on a Bet” for Features. In 1962, Bald Sweethearts #75 (May 1949). [TM & © the trademark & respective copyright holders.] inaugurated the Dr. Kildare strip, also for after the war, perhaps on the way home.

King Features, displaying his penchant for capturing likenesses in his depiction of series Bald entered the service at 145 lb., and left it at 130. “I just star Richard Chamberlain. Kildare offered could not eat those damn K Rations,” he said. “I lived on food bars and cigarettes and packages from home.”

After Bald’s two years in the service, the Marines were enticing him to stay on. Bald was assigned two assistants, and at one point was given the enviable task of escorting a politician’s daughter. But he chose not to extend his service. “I didn’t want to stay away from the people I love any longer,” he said. Shortly after New Year’s Day 1946, Bald was finally sailing home to his bride.

“Kaye gave up the movies when the war was over, and we came back East,” Bald said. Their first child was born in 1949, which Bald said “kept me out of Korea.” In all, the couple had five children. “There’s a lot of love involved,” Bald said.

Back To The Drawing Board Eager to re-establish himself in the art field, Bald went back to work for Jack Binder for about a month before trying his luck as a freelance artist—a move that sustained him for the rest of his career.

“That’s when I went to meet the ‘boy wonder,’ Stan Lee,” Bald said of the legendary editor of Marvel Comics (then known as Timely Comics). “Stan had been in the Army, but he was writing pamphlets. He was impressed that I was a Marine and saw action. He gave me work. We hit it off right away. We’ve been the best of friends ever since.” (Lee died in 2018 at age 95.)

While working for Lee, Bald illustrated the exploits of

Some Time At Timely After returning from his service with the U.S. Marines, Bald became friends with Stan Lee and was very prolific for several years at Timely Comics.

Juxtaposed with an undated Ken Bald Captain America pencil sketch (courtesy of Troy R. Kinunen) is that artist’s cover for Sun Girl #2 (Nov. 1948). [TM & © Marvel Comics.]

Ken Bald Saw Battle In The Comics—And In Real Life!

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Dark Shadows Days—And Of Course Nights!

From March 15, 1971, to March 11, 1972, the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicated a comic strip of television’s Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. Ken Bald wrote and drew the entire 52-week run of the daily and Sunday strips under the pseudonym “K. Bruce” (due to his contractual obligations with King Features), with the artist’s stark likeness of the show’s star, actor Jonathan Frid as Barnabas the vampire (at left). Ken and his wife Kaye often posed for photos as references for the strip, as per both photos above. [Dark Shadows art TM & © the respective trademark & copyright owners.]

Fawcett Collectors Of America

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many television commercials through the 1960s and ’70s. (A son, then age 3, did a Tide commercial with her.) “She had this white streak in her hair that made her very recognizable on the street,” Bald said.

Kaye died on April 18, 2020, a little more than a year after her husband’s death. She was 96.

Capping His Career

Strip Mining Ken Bald established himself as one of King Features’ top syndicated comic strip artists, drawing the Judd Saxon daily and Sunday strips from 195762… before moving on to writing and illustrating the Dr. Kildare daily and Sunday strips where—for the next 22 years (1962-84)—Bald captured the likeness of actor Richard Chamberlain, star of the Dr. Kildare television series, as seen on p. 75. Above are a panel from the Judd Saxon 2-21-59 daily, and a circa-1960s shot of Ken at work on the good doctor’s latest storyline. [Judd Saxon panel TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

Bald the opportunity to do a Sunday page, which particularly appealed to the artist. He illustrated the strip until its cancellation in 1984, 18 years after the series went off the air.

For one year, beginning in 1971, Bald did double-duty (under the nom de plume “K. Bruce”) illustrating Dark Shadows, a comic strip based on ABC’s wildly popular 1966-71 Gothic soap opera.

The daytime series about vampires, witches, and werewolves made a cult figure out of Canadian actor Jonathan Frid, who played 18th-century gentleman vampire Barnabas Collins. “[Producer] Dan Curtis interviewed me, he saw my art, and thought it would be a good idea,” Bald said. “We presented the idea and some drawings to King Features—who were happy with me— but they didn’t think the Bible Belt or so many other Southern cities would go for the idea of Dark Shadows. They were right.”

NEA eventually syndicated the Dark Shadows strip, but it wasn’t universally embraced. Said Bald: “Dark Shadows was a big success in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, and some of the big cities. But in the Bible Belt, they couldn’t buy a vampire hero.”

Bald capped his career by revisiting the comicbook milieu. He produced commissions for art collectors, who mostly requested illustrations of the super-heroes he had drawn decades earlier, such as Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch, and Namora.

“I’ve been doing them now for about ten years,” Bald said in 2016. “I get requests from overseas—from Germany, Belgium, England, and France, and a lot in the U.S. The crazy part of it is, I’ve done movie posters; I’ve illustrated books; I did syndicated stuff for 28 years. But the biggest thing is the Golden Age stuff, from when I got out of Pratt in ’41 and did Bulletman, Spy Smasher, and Captain Marvel. I haven’t done comics since the middle ’50s, but that’s what they remember.”

At the time, he was even appearing at comicbook conventions.

“I’m pushing 96,” he then said. “When I go to the comic-cons, I use a wheelchair to cut down on all that walking. When I get there, I walk around a little with the use of a cane. And I have a good time meeting everybody.”

Of Bald’s career highlights, being named the oldest living comicbook artist still working by Guinness World Records was the least expected. (Guinness also named him the oldest artist to illustrate a comicbook cover.)

Toward the end of the conversation during our final interview in 2016, Bald struck a philosophical tone. Said the artist: “It’s been a good life. Nobody ever stiffed me. Everyone was nice. I’m a lucky guy.”

Mark Voger is the author of Hero Gets Girl: The Life and Art of Kurt Schaffenberger (TwoMorrows), for which Ken Bald contributed the foreword. Visit Mark at MarkVoger.com.

While simultaneously illustrating Dr. Kildare and Dark Shadows, Bald produced an incredible 12 daily strips and two Sunday pages every week. “I didn’t have a day off for that entire year,” he added, laughing again. Despite his heavy workload, Bald cut no corners in illustrating Dark Shadows. His rendering of Frid was dead-on, and he imbued his backgrounds with Gothic detail. It didn’t hurt that he had a model for a wife. (“I used the best model that there was.”)

“I loved it,” Kaye said of posing for female characters of Dark Shadows. “When I was doing it, I had a lot of wigs. I could change my look. I used to be a dancer. Whatever Ken wanted me to do, I did. One time, I frightened our dog. I didn’t look like myself when I was coming up the stairs. He began to back up and go ‘Woof!’”

Bald lamented giving up Dark Shadows. “It was my favorite strip that I did, but it didn’t make the money,” he said. “I really enjoyed drawing the strip. It was a little more exciting than squeaky-clean Dr. Kildare.”

In the meantime, Kaye had returned to work, appearing in

Ken & Kaye Bald in 1997 at a Dark Shadows convention held in New York City.

Photo by Kathy Voglesong.

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

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