Alter Ego #171 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy Thomas' High-Quality Comics Fanzine

PAUL GUSTAVSON AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF QUALITY!

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No. 171

Jester, Midnight, Plastic Man, & Human Bomb TM & © DC Comics.

82658 00442

Sept. 2021

Vol. 3, No. 171 / Sept. 2021 Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editor Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

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Contents

Writer/Editorial: A “One-Man Band”...? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Paul Gustavson—With An “F”! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Richard Arndt interviews the great Golden Age artist’s son, Terry Gustafson.

Cover Colorists

Tom Ziuko, et al.

With Special Thanks to:

Douglass Abramson Paul Allen Heidi Amash Richard Arndt Dick Arnold Bob Bailey John Benson Al Bigley Lee Boyette Chris Boyko Bernie Bubnis Aaron Caplan Nick Caputo John Cimino Shaun Clancy Comic Book Plus (website) Gerry Conway Aaron Couch Chet Cox Craig Delich DitkoCultist.com (website) Scott Edelman Wendy Everett Danny Fingeroth Shane Foley Four Color Shadows (blog) Joe Frank Sidney Friedfertig Stephan Friedt

www.twomorrows.com

Janet Gilbert Mark Glidden Grand Comics Database (website) Terry Gustafson Bruce Guthrie George Hagenauer Heritage Auctions Tony Isabella Jim Kealy Jack & Roz Kirby Estate Robin Kirby Mark Lewis Art Lortie Frank Lovece Doug Martin Robert Menzies Mike Mikulovsky Bill Mitchell Brian K. Morris Martin O’Hearn Barry Pearl Warren Reece Al Rodriguez Randy Sargent Bryan D. Stroud Dann Thomas Irene Vartanoff Dr. Michael J. Vassallo

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Paul Gustavson, Joe Sinnott, Bob Fujitani, & Marty Pasko

“There Are Lies… And Damn Lies…” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Roy Thomas’ Hollywood Reporter piece on Abraham Riesman’s bio True Believer— plus “fact-checking the fact-bender.”

It’s All About Family! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 Part XVI of John Broome’s 1997 Memoir.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Frankenstein Unstitched! . . . . 53 Michael T. Gilbert resurrects (and rearranges) a classic horror story by Bob Powell.

Tributes to Bob Fujitani, Joe Sinnott, & Marty Pasko . . . . . . 53 re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections . . . . . . . . . . 59 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #230 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 P.C. Hamerlinck showcases Sidney Friedfertig on Fawcett’s pint-size editions.

On Our Cover: Since featured artist Paul Gustavson produced some of his most noted Golden Age work for Timely/Marvel (“The Angel”) and for Quality Comics (“The Jester,” “Human Bomb,” et al., now owned by DC Comics)—and since we don’t have permission to “mix and match” properties from the two surviving companies on our covers, we decided to go with a montage of art from Quality, for which he wrote and drew a multiplicity of series. Depicted are splashes of “Midnight” (from Smash Comics #43, June 1943)… “The Human Bomb” (from Police Comics #6, Jan. 1942)… “Plastic Man” from Plastic Man #41 (May 1953)… and a never-before-published “Jester” sequence he wrote and drew as a special commission in 1973-74, and which was specially colored for us by veteran colorist Tom Ziuko. All three pages of that “Jester” art can be seen on pp. 22-24 of this issue, courtesy of Heritage Auctions. Thanks for the other scans to Jim Kealy, Michael T. Gilbert, Martin O’Hearn, Richard Arndt, and Doug Martin—and to Terry Gustafson for the photo of his father. [Jester, Midnight, Plastic Man, & Human Bomb TM & © DC Comics.] Above: The Angel, a 1939 creation of Paul Gustavson, ranked up there in popularity with The Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner in the earliest days of Timely. Like the other two series, the “Angel” stories were often continued from issue to issue—e.g., the above splash page from Marvel Mystery Comics #20 (June 1941), which launches the third and concluding installment of an encounter with a female antagonist calling herself The Cat’s Paw. Thanks to Warren Reece 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.

writer/editorial

A “One-Man Band”—With A Great Bunch Of Sidemen!

aturally, I’m proud to be the editor and co-creator of the comics-history magazine Alter Ego. However, A/E has never really been a “one-man band.” Not even at the start in 1961, when Jerry G. Bails came up with its name and notion and tapped me to “co-edit” it (by which he meant, as it turned out, contribute roughly half of the first couple of issues).

When Ronn Foss took over the fanzine from Jerry in 1963, it was as a project for a trio… but Ronn’s wife soon split, and his buddy Richard “Grass” Green decided he’d rather keep drawing amateur comics than handle the zillion details associated with co-publishing/-editing a text-heavy magazine. Matter of fact, by the time he’d put together #5 & 6, Ronn decided the same thing. So I inherited A/E [Vol. 1] in 1964—originally as the bottom half of a two-man team headed by talented fan-artist Biljo White… only Biljo changed his mind after doing a single “press release,” never mind an issue of the actual magazine, and it was dumped in my lap. Thus did I back into being a fanzine editor/publisher. My three fan issues (#7-9, in 1964–65)—except for Mike Friedrich’s #11 more than a decade later—were the closest my A/E ever came to being a “one-man” operation, but even then Biljo stuck around as titular “art editor,” which meant that he produced masterful drawings (including covers) to order. But, like Jerry (by #3 & 4) and Ronn, I also relied upon a number of other contributors, including writers I approached (like fans Richard Kyle and Fred Patten) or whose already-extant work somehow found its way into my hands (see: E. Nelson Bridwell)… plus artists like Biljo and Ronn, who allowed me to publish their fan-strips. To skip ahead: That situation has continued to the present, starting with A/E’s short-lived “Vol. 2” in the flip pages of Jon B. Cooke’s 1998-99 Comic Book Artist, and coming to full fruition once

Vol. 3 was launched in the latter year. From its beginning, other talents have provided much of A/E’s momentum. Michael T. Gilbert began “Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!” in Vol. 2, #5—while fan expert Bill Schelly, with whom I’d co-edited a Best of Alter Ego [Vol. 1] book in ’97, signed on with A/E, Vol. 3… as did P.C. Hamerlinck, who had recently published FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America] as a standalone fanzine. And that winning combination stayed intact… until Bill’s untimely passing a couple of years ago. The interviewers, too, have contributed more than just the questions at one end of a telephone… particularly Jim Amash for most of our first hundred-plus issues (he retains the title Assistant Editor even now), and Richard J. Arndt since Jim had to decrease his participation a few years ago. It’s on these two gents in particular that I’ve been lucky enough to be able to lean for two decades… aided and abetted by interviews and articles by the likes of Will Murray, Ken Quattro, Mark Carlson-Ghost, Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, and a number of others. You know who you are… and, if they’re regular readers, so do the fans of this magazine. Sometimes, I suggest to Richard a person who’d make good interview subject—but often, he or others just show up in my e-mailbox with suggestions. So it was this time, with Terry Gustafson, son of the esteemed Golden Age artist Paul Gustavson, the third leg of the early Marvel Mystery Comics tripod that also included Carl Burgos and Bill Everett. Which is just my way of saying: Take it away, Richard… on the facing page, of course. I couldn’t have done it without you. You and all the others. I just wanted to make sure that everyone knows that.

Bestest,

COMING IN OCTOBER #172 Silver & Bronze Age Star Artist of Two Hemispheres—

la. Art © Estate of Alfredo Alca

ALFREDO ALCALA!

• Cover by ALCALA—featuring his sword-and-sorcery hero VOLTAR! • From the Philippines to the U.S.—at Marvel, DC, Warren, et al.—ALFREDO ALCALA was an acclaimed master of fantasy art: CONAN—BATMAN—HULK—KULL—STAR WARS— SUPERMAN—ARAK, SON OF THUNDER—HELLBLAZER—TARZAN—KAMANDI—SWAMP THING—MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE—DESTROYER DUCK—ARION—PLANET OF THE APES—THE ZOMBIE—SCOOBY-DOO—and just about anything in between! You name it— Alfredo probably drew it! • RICHARD ARNDT interviews sons ALFREDO ALCALA, JR., & CHRISTIAN ALCALA—plus bonus features by MARK EVANIER & ALFREDO himself! • Plus: FCA presents pulp artistic great NORMAN SAUNDERS at Fawcett—MICHAEL T. GILBERT on the 7 Faces of ACG’s RICHARD HUGHES—JOHN BROOME—& MORE!!

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PAUL GUSTAVSON— With An “F”! Paul Gustavson in a vintage photo that appeared in Jud Hurd’s magazine Cartoonist PRO-files #36 in the 1970s. Photo taken by Paul’s brother Nils. Thanks to Terry Gustafson & Shaun Clancy.

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son Of The Golden Age Great

Conducted & Transcribed by Richard J. Arndt

NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: Paul Gustafson’s “comics name” was “Paul Gustavson,” although he also used the name “Paul Carroll,” or simply “Carroll,” for a short while at Quality Comics. The artist was born in Finland on Aug. 16, 1916, and moved to the U.S. when he was five. His first professional work as a cartoonist was as an assistant to Frank Owen on the Collier’s Magazine strip Filbert, but he was soon writing and drawing his own gag cartoons for Collier’s. In 1937 he gained entry to the comicbook world with a short stint in the Harry “A” Chesler shop. By the summer of 1937 he was producing filler material for Funnies, Inc., a comics studio headed by Lloyd Jacquet, which, in turn, led to his doing work for Centaur Publications (of which Jacquet was a co-founder). While working for Centaur from 1937-1940, he became a quadruple threat, as he usually wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered his work. For Centaur he created several memorable characters,

including The Arrow, Fantom of the Fair, and Man of War. At the same time, his very early work appeared at National/DC Comics and Timely/ Marvel (where he was the creator of the hero called The Angel). In 1940 he moved to Quality Comics, where he created The Human Bomb, Alias The Spider, The Jester, and Rusty Ryan. His comics career was interrupted, as were so many, by World War II. According to

A Timely Quality Centaur! Splendiferous splashes and covers from the three main comics companies for which Paul Gustavson drew (and wrote— including this trio of beauties!): “The Angel”—from Timely’s Marvel Mystery Comics #2 (Dec. 1939). Thanks to Jim Kealy for this and the following scan. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] “The Arrow” – the cover of Centaur’s The Arrow #3 (Oct. 1941). [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.] “The Human Bomb” – splash page from the Quality group’s Police Comics #14 (Dec. 1942). Thanks to Doug Martin. [Human Bomb TM & © DC Comics.]

Terry Gustafson Our intrepid interviewee, with his grandchildren (and Paul G.’s great-grandchildren) William and Thea (pronounced “Tay-ah”). Thanks to TG for the photo.

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Chop-ping Him Down To Size Chop Chop, who was somehow both a member of and mascot to the Blackhawks, was unfortunately drawn as a racial caricature for more than two decades—yet he was still an endearing character, popular enough to have his own humorous series for years in Quality’s Blackhawk title. This splash page from issue #40 (May 1951) was one of many illustrated by Paul Gustavson. Scripter unknown. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [Chop Chop TM & © DC Comics.]

Jim Steranko’s The History of the Comics, Vol. 2, Gustafson was in the Air Tech Training Command from 1942-1945, where he also studied aerodynamics at Rutgers University. Following the war, he also worked on such characters as Blackhawk (including a long run illustrating the adventures of Chop Chop), and Kid Eternity, among others. Circa 1953-54 he left Quality to work for ACG—the American Comics Group—doing a number of humor strips for its regular comics as well as commercial art for advertisers.

Gustafson left comics behind sometime in the mid-1950s. His last known comics work was a three-page story done as a commission in 1973-74, which is printed on pp. 22-24 of this issue. He passed away on April 29, 1977. This interview was conducted with his son, Terry Gustafson, on March 25, 2020. Brief comments were also taken from e-mails by Terry to either Roy Thomas or Craig Delich (the latter did a great deal of behind-the-scenes work with Terry prior to this interview) and are used by permission. Martin O’Hearn’s website [www.martinohearn.blogspot.com] also provided useful information for this interview. RICHARD ARNDT: We’re talking today with Terry Gustafson, son of Paul Gustafson/Gustavson. Thanks for agreeing to the interview, Terry. TERRY GUSTAFSON: You’re welcome. I hope I have something useful to tell you. RA: Well, why don’t we start with what you know of your dad’s early life? GUSTAFSON: Father was born in Finland. He emigrated to the United States at the age of five in 1922 with his father Karl Gunnar Gustafson, mother Lydia, and his brother Nils and sister Elsa. Elsa died at a young age in New York City. Nils became a commercial portrait photographer in New York City. My grandparents, father, and uncle used their middle names as their personal names. Sometimes, my grandfather Karl Gunnar was known as Gunnar. Grandmother Lydia Marie was known as Marie. My father was known as Paul, although his full name is Karl Paul Gustafson, and so on. My grandfather Gunnar and grandmother Marie were very strict on a few things. Everything had to be American. Only English was spoken at home. As a result of that, my father could only

understand some of what the relatives were speaking and could only answer them sometimes. I wasn’t taught Swedish, either. When the relatives came to visit when I was a child, we were put outside or into another room. RA: Wait, I thought your dad came from Finland. Where does the Swedish come in? GUSTAFSON: Most of Finland speaks Finnish, but there are sections of the country, mostly on the coast or the Aland Islands, off the coast in the Baltic Sea, where Swedish is the predominate language. The family came from Bertby, Saltvik, Aland Islands, which were once part of Sweden. RA: OK, that makes sense. Perhaps you can tell me why your dad’s name appears as “Paul Gustavson,” with a “v,” in the credits for all the comics he’s known to have worked on, but your name is Gustafson? GUSTAFSON: I don’t know the exact reason why, but my father changed his name in the 1930s to Paul Gustavson for his comicbook work, although he used Gustafson for everything else. I’ve been doing genealogy research on my family, both here and in Finland, and the original spelling for my family is “Gustafson.” The spelling of the two names is similar but the pronunciation of those names in Swedish is different. RA: That explains some of it, I guess. I have to tell you that, while doing some of the research for your dad’s work, following the ins and outs of the comicbook publishers involved was a bit like figuring out Charlton’s convoluted history of titles and the numbering of their issues. Titles of a comic would change at the blink of an eye. So could publishers. For example, your dad’s early humor fillers were mostly appearing in 1937 in a comic called Funny Picture Stories, put out by a company called Ultem, which had something to do with the Chesler Studio. After five issues, however, Funny Picture Stories is listed as a Centaur Publications title. It’s in the Centaur comics that your dad moved from producing one-page fillers to full stories. His first full story appears to be a strip called “Phony Crimes,” where a detective called the Phony Detective solves crimes—one would suspect crimes dealing with fraud of some sort. His first super-hero creation—The Arrow—made his debut in Centaur’s Funny Pages, Vol. 2, #10 (Sept. 1938), which is actually the 21st issue of the comic. See what I mean about confusing? GUSTAFSON: There were a lot of changes like that back then. I sent in a lot of the details that appear on the Grand Comics Database, so a lot of the information there is actually from me. The Arrow was the first super-hero to use archery as his special ability. He was dressed all in red. He appeared years before the rest of the archer-type super-heroes, including Green Arrow. RA: Do you happen to know where your dad got the inspiration for The Arrow? GUSTAFSON: I’m not sure. I know that he wrote and drew “The Arrow” for two full years, from his first appearance through the first issue of The Arrow’s own title. RA: Bob Lubbers replaced your dad as artist in The Arrow #2-3 (Nov. 1940 & Oct. 1941), although reprints of your dad’s work appeared in #2. There’s also a possible new story by your dad in #3, along with a new cover that’s also by your dad. A year’s gap occurs between #2 and #3. It’s interesting to look at The Arrow’s hooded costume, which, based on the covers I’ve seen, actually appeared in a variety of colors: red, black—even an orange/green mix for The Arrow #1—and to see how closely design-wise it resembles the hooded Green Arrow costume of today, particularly as it’s seen on the TV show, as well as Howard Pyle’s drawings of the original Robin Hood. Your dad really did nice, lush artwork for that time period. It reminds me a little of Lou Fine, although

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

Funny Business Far as we can tell, Gustavson’s “first comics work” appeared more or less simultaneously in Ultem’s Funny Pages (on left) and Funny Picture Stories—both issues being numbered “Vol. 2, #3” and cover-dated “Nov. 1937,” some time before the titles became part of the successor Centaur group. Harry “A” Chesler was listed as editor; his art shop probably produced the issues’ contents. Both scans courtesy of the Comic Book Plus website; the FP page, alas, was available only from microfiche. [© the respective copyright holders.] The Gerbers’ monumental PhotoJournal Guide to Comic Books explains the progression of the early companies that culminated in the Centaur line thusly, under the heading “The Comics Magazine Co./Chesler/Ultem Publ./Centaur puzzle”: “Harry Chesler (Chesler Publ. Inc.) started Star Comics, first issue 1937. Frank Temerson and Ulman took it over, kept Chesler as Editor. Ultem Publ. came from combin[ing] their last names. Comic Magazine Co. ran their last issues dated June 1937. Ultem Publ. took over and ran their own issues with the same titles, but restarted the numbers as ‘Vol. 2, No. 1,’ all in Sept. 1937…. [After] a few issues, [Ultem] sold out their titles to Centaur Publications, with [Ultem’s] last issues being Jan. 1938. All the first Centaur issues started with March 1938.” There… does that straighten everything out?

“Phony” Pages Probably the first credit Gustavson had (as “Gus”) for anything other than a single-pager was for “Phony Crimes” in Centaur’s Funny Picture Stories, Vol. 2, #6 (March 1938). At tale’s end, the writer/ artist reveals that no crime has actually been committed. Gustavson both wrote and drew. [© the respective copyright holders.]

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

The Fantom first appeared in Amazing Mystery Funnies, Vol. 2, #7 [which made it actually #11] (July 1939) and ran through Amazing Mystery Funnies #24 (Sept. 1940), so for a little over a year. My father left the character, however, with #22 (July 1940). It was in the story from #24, that my father didn’t do, that Fantom was first called Fantoman. In fact, they have him named Fantom of the Fair on the cover and Fantoman in the actual comic. There were also three issues published in 1940 of the solo Fantoman book [numbered #2-4]. My father’s stories in those three issues were reprints of the original “Fantom” stories he wrote and drew. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Except, as mentioned earlier, for a Gustavson story in #3 that may be an original.] There was also an issue of Amazing Adventure Funnies which reprinted my father’s “Fantom of the Fair” stories that was dated June 1940. The “Fantom of the Fair” stories in that issue used his original name, not Fantoman. RA: Considering Amazing Adventure Funnies was a first issue that reprinted a lot of “Fantom of the Fair” stories—the lead story was an original “Fantom of the Fair” story, but it wasn’t done by your father— and Fantoman started two months later with an issue #2, following the same format of that first issue of Amazing Adventure Funnies, it’s entirely possible that Fantoman carried on its numbering from Amazing

Seeing “The Arrow” Of His Ways The fifth and final page of Paul Gustavson’s (or anybody else’s) first story of “The Arrow,” in Centaur’s Funny Pages, Vol. 2, #11 (Nov. 1938). We chose it because the red-robed hero doesn’t make his first appearance until p. 3, and the yarn’s second-from-last panel is the only one therein in which he uses the bow and arrow that was earlier slung across his back. Gustavson scripted as well as drew the “Arrow” series. Thanks to Comic Book Plus website. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

it’s unlikely that he was influenced by Fine, who was just starting out himself in 1938. Perhaps he was influenced by the same artists that Fine was. GUSTAFSON: I know he did some apprentice work with [artist] Frank Owen at Collier’s magazine. I can remember [Quality publisher] Busy Arnold and Frank Owen visiting at the house. I think Owen’s wife was named Vera. She was a childhood friend of my father’s from the Aland Islands. RA: What can you tell me about Fantom of the Fair? He was also an early creation of your father’s for Centaur. By the way, I love that name. It’s very cool. GUSTAFSON: My father created that character for the New York World’s Fair. Fantom fought bad guys who came to the Fair. He lived in a cave underneath the Fairgrounds. While the Fair was running he was Fantom, but after the Fair closed in 1940, I guess they renamed him Fantoman. Same guy, different name. On the first issue in which Fantom appeared, my dad even signed the cover. That didn’t happen very often. My father didn’t sign much of his work.

“Crane Of Scotland Yard” This feature written and drawn by Gustavson appeared in a Centaur comic in which, to save money, only two colors (red and black) out of the usual comicbook four were utilized! From Keen Detective Funnies, Vol. 2, #6 (June 1939). Thanks to Jim Kealy. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

The Straight An’ Arrow (Near right:) The cover of The Arrow #1 (Oct. 1940)— and of #2 to follow—is by Gustavson’s successor artist on the feature, Bob Lubbers. (Far right:) However, the three interior “Arrow” stories in that issue were reprints of the fifth, sixth, and seventh “Arrow” tales, all written and drawn earlier by Gustavson. This is the splash page of the earliest of these, picked up from Funny Pages, Vol. 3, #2 (March 1939). None of these stories had true splash panels, and their first pages never featured more than a symbolic image of The Arrow himself. Thanks to CBP. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

The Golden Age Of Comics Fantom! “The Fantom of the Fair” debuted in Centaur’s Amazing Mystery Funnies, Vol. 2, #7 (July 1939), with both cover and lead story by Gustavson. The New York World’s Fair had opened in April, around the time this issue was going on sale—though the first caption refers only to “a World Fair.” Like the ghoulish protagonist of Gaston Leroux’s (and Universal Films’) The Phantom of the Opera, this Fantom operated out of a subterranean lair, complete with its own river—in this case, beneath the Fairgrounds in the borough of Queens. The “F” in “Fantom” was doubtless to avoid confusion with (and perhaps legal action by) other “Phantoms,” particularly the newspaper comic strip launched in 1936 by Lee Falk and Ray Moore. Thanks to the CBP. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

A Fantom Of Delight? Gustavson’s “Fantom of the Fair” splash page for Amazing Mystery Funnies #19 (Jan. 1940). By now, the hero had lost his full face-mask and much of his, er, amazing mystery. By year’s end, this story would be reprinted in Fantoman #4 (Dec. ’40). Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Adventure Funnies #1, even though that title also had a #2. Like I said, tracking these titles and publishing moves can be a little dizzying. [NOTE: Further investigation confirms that the above speculation about the numbering is correct, as Fantoman #2’s cover mentions that it was formerly entitled Amazing Adventures Funnies—even though that title did indeed have a second issue (not featuring Fantom of the Fair or Fantoman) of its own.] GUSTAFSON: You aren’t kidding. [chuckles] Whenever I come across something of my dad’s on the Internet that I haven’t seen before, I try to save the images or the information. RA: It’s pretty likely that your father left “Fantom,” as well as “The Arrow” and any other series he may have been doing for Centaur, because he’d begun moving over to Quality in 1939. His first credits for Quality appear in Smash Comics #5 (Dec. 1939), a title in which Will Eisner had a big hand. Your dad was doing “Flash Fulton” in that title. That may not be a coincidence, as we’ve mentioned that your dad’s and Lou Fine’s art were similar and Fine did a lot of work for both Eisner and Quality. I suspect that anyone who could work in that same lush, energetic style as Eisner or Fine would have found a welcome home at Quality at that time. GUSTAFSON: My father did “Alias The Spider” for Quality’s Crack Comics. Also “Rusty Ryan” in Feature Comics. Quality had a lot of comics either out or coming out at that point in time. My father jumped all over from title to title in those years. RA: Rusty Ryan was a teen-age super-hero who apparently led a kid gang of other teens called the Boyville Brigadiers in battling crooks and the Japanese. His costume looks like a combo of Captain America’s shirt and Blackhawk’s trousers and boots.

A Couple of Centaur Pieces Paul G. illustrated the covers of both Amazing Mystery Funnies #12 & 13 (Aug. & Sept. 1939—a.k.a. Vol. 2, #8 & 9), which showcased features “Speed Centaur” and “The Fantom of the Fair,” respectively. Thanks to CBP. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

A “Flash” Or Two Of Quality (Far left:) “Flash Fulton” represents the first work Gustavson did for Everett “Busy” Arnold’s Quality comics group—although it appeared a couple of months after his “Angel” debut at Timely. This splash is from Smash Comics #5 (Dec. 1939). Thanks to CBP. (Near left:) Another early Quality feature by Gustavson was “Rusty Ryan and the Boyville Brigadiers.” This third entry in the series, which shows the “Lou Fine” look mentioned by interviewer Richard Arndt, is from Feature Comics #46 (July ’41). Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

If I Had The Wings Of An “Angel”… (Left:) The Angel makes his dramatic entrance in his debut tale from Timely’s Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939). Thanks to Warren Reese, one of the few guys on the planet who actually owns a copy of the first edition of the first comic ever published by what would in 1963 finally become the Marvel Comics Group. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Below left:) Author Leslie Charteris’ famous fictional detective The Saint had made his own film debut the previous year, in the movie The Saint in New York, starring Louis Hayward as the hero—the first of a series of eight Saint films in that era, though George Sanders would inherit the role with the second flick. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Everett “Busy” Arnold Courtesy of son Dick Arnold.

Paul Gustavson is the guy on the left in this photo snapped on New Year’s Eve, 1940, showing a trio of Marvel Mystery Comics’ artists with Timely’s publisher. (Left to right:) PG, “Ka-Zar” artist Ben Thompson, publisher Martin Goodman, and “Human Torch” writer/artist Carl Burgos. The pic was probably taken by “Sub-Mariner” writer/artist Bill Everett, and is used courtesy of Bill’s daughter Wendy. See it bigger in A/E #165.

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

GUSTAFSON: I think he was a college kid, so a little older than most kid heroes. He was a regular in Feature Comics. RA: Your dad was also starting to draw comics for Timely around this time. GUSTAFSON: Yeah, he was working on Marvel Mystery Comics for a while. He created The Angel, who was one of Timely’s early super-heroes, though he didn’t actually have any super-powers. The Angel first showed up in the same issue that introduced The Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner—Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), which [title] changed to Marvel Mystery Comics with #2. The Masked Raider also was in those comics. RA: I’ve read that The Angel was inspired by Leslie Charteris’ pulp hero The Saint, and that his initial appearance was based on the first RKO film in which The Saint appeared. The Angel apparently appeared as a pulp hero in at least his first story. Do you happen to know why Martin Goodman, who was the publisher of Timely—today’s Marvel Comics— wanted to change The Angel into more of a super-hero, starting in Marvel Mystery Comics #2?

Along Came A Spider… (Left:) The bow-wielding Spider first pops up on the second page of his first adventure, in Quality’s Crack Comics #1 (May 1940), as written and drawn by Gustavson… carrying on a theme he began with his work on “The Arrow” for the Centaur group. Courtesy of Comic Book Plus. (Right:) On the splash page of his exploit in Crack #18 (Nov. 1941), we see the archer hero performing some of his “spider-like” actions. Interestingly, the then-already-extant hero of The Spider pulp magazine, who really had nothing spider-related about him except his name, is probably the reason the word “Alias” was added to the feature’s title— those possible pesky lawyers, again! Thanks to Doug Martin. [Alias The Spider TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

GUSTAFSON: I don’t know the answer to that one, either. RA: On a couple of early covers, they seem to have deliberately left off The Angel’s mustache. On #2 he’s wearing his blue costume with the eagle wings across the chest, somewhat like [the later] Wonder Woman’s, along with a red cape. He couldn’t really fly, and he wore a cape, not wings… except that from time to time his shadow apparently did have symbolic wings. In all other ways, he was pretty much a regular human being. He was a pretty violent character for the time as well. Had no problem using a gun… at least early on. GUSTAFSON: Last year I heard that Stan Lee was the first writer to create an “Angel” with super-powers for Timely, when he created The Angel. That can’t be right, though, because my dad created The Angel and he didn’t really have any super-powers. In fact, he was created before Stan Lee wrote anything, as far as I can tell.

Got A Date With An “Angel”! (Left:) In neither the first nor second issue did The Angel appear on the first page of his story, so here once again is an interior page from Marvel Mystery #2 (Dec. 1939). He does sport his mustache in the yarn, although not on the issue’s Angel cover (see in A/E #165), which Gustavson didn’t draw. (Right:) Splash page of “The Angel” from Marvel Mystery Comics #12 (Oct. 1940). Thanks to Jim Kealy for these two scans. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

RA: I think you were reading someone either making stuff up or confusing characters. The Angel was indeed created by your dad in 1939, and Stan Lee’s first writing credit is for a text story for Captain America Comics #3 (May

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

Spider, Spider, Burning Bright… Perhaps the most dramatic Gustavson splash panel of the entire “Alias The Spider” series appeared in Crack Comics #19 (Dec. 1941). Thanks to Doug Martin. [Alias The Spider TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

you could come up with a lot more characters who used spider symbols or even weaponry before Spider-Man actually showed up. The comments you’re referring to seem to be coming from a person or persons who doesn’t or don’t seem to have a good grasp on comicbook history. GUSTAFSON: Regardless, my father created The Spider first. I don’t think that takes anything away from Stan Lee’s accomplishments. RA: No. Stan Lee’s often mistakenly given credit for characters where he had nothing to do with creating the character—Captain America, for example—and most of what he did create were generally co-creations. Your father actually created quite a number of characters, at least in his early years. Did he ever tell you the inspiration behind any of them? GUSTAFSON: A lot of them just popped up in his head as he was working. One time he was having a hard time figuring out how to get this character into the first “Man of War” story, and he asked his brother Nils to give him a hand, so my uncle helped him out with it. That was the only time I ever heard of my uncle helping him out with a comic. There was an interviewer from Finland, Ilpo Laderstad—I’m not sure on the spelling of that name—who came over and got an interview with my father back in the late 1960s or early 1970s. He gave the indication in his published piece that my uncle had helped draw Man of War, but I don’t think that’s right. My father created and drew him, while my uncle helped him with inserting a new character into the story’s plot in the “Man of War” comic. 1941). I don’t know where that sort of thing could have come from, unless whoever claimed that got the 1960s Angel, from The X-Men, which Stan did co-create, confused with the 1930s-1940s Angel, which your father created. They are two completely different characters. No connection between them at all, except that they came from the same company twenty years apart and of course share a name. GUSTAFSON: I’ve also heard that Stan Lee, in [co-]creating Spider-Man, was the first writer to create someone who used spider-like powers, but my father’s character “Alias The Spider” had spider-like powers as well, in that he swung back and forth on ropes or spider-webs and stuff like that. RA: “Alias The Spider” was a Quality character. He was an archer, like The Arrow. He even had nearly the same [other-identity] name as The Angel—Tom Hallaway for The Spider and Tom Halloway for The Angel, which is a pretty good clue that your father created both characters. It might even have been a bit of an “‘in-joke,” as your father’s real name was Paul Gustafson and his professional name was Paul Gustavson. As far as that statement about Stan Lee and Spider-Man, Archie Comics’ 1959 character The Fly had a gun that shot spider-web-like material that he used to swing back and forth on, not to mention the ability to cling to walls. I suspect that

Working For The Corporation (Left:) “Man of War” premiered in Liberty Scouts #2 (June 1941), with a credit for Paul Gustavson and his brother Nils. In real life, of course, both spelled their surname “Gustafson.” The mag’s publisher, Comics Corporation of America, was the successor to the Centaur group. Thanks to Jim Kealy for this and the following scan. (Right:) The first “Black Panther” in comics was written and drawn by Paul Gustavson, as per this splash from CCA’s Stars and Stripes Comics #3 (July ’41). [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Two More Counties Heard From Two features Paul G. drew for Novelty Comics were “Runaway Ronson”—as per this splash page from Blue Bolt, Vol. 1, #9 (Feb. 1941)—and “The Twister,” a super-hero introduced in Blue Bolt, Vol. 2, #1 (June ’41). Ray Gill is attributed as the writer of the latter; probably Gustavson himself scripted the former. Thanks to Doug Martin & Jim Kealy, respectively. Reportedly, Gustavson also did a spot of work for the comicbook arm of pulp publisher Street & Smith around this time—including this “Hooded Wasp” tale in Shadow Comics, Vol. 1, #18 (Jan. 1941)—but this art is a bit less polished than what the artist was drawing in “Alias The Spider” for Quality around that same time, so who knows? Courtesy of Jim Kealy, who isn’t too sure about it himself. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

RA: By 1941 your father was working for at least four different companies—Centaur, Quality, Timely, Novelty, and possibly Street & Smith. The Centaur stories may have been reprints by this time. That company only lasted another year before going under. GUSTAFSON: Not all of those Centaur stories may have been reprints. I’ve got him doing Amazing-Man in August of 1941. RA: It was during this period that he created The Human Bomb for Quality. GUSTAFSON: I believe that would have been in Police Comics #1. RA: That’s the super-hero who was in what we’d call the “bomb suit” today. He gained the ability to blow things up by contact, particularly through his hands. He wore the bomb suit—which was made of asbestos—not to protect himself from explosions but to prevent the explosive powers of his own body from harming others.

Human Bombs Away! Paul Gustavson, alias “Paul Carroll,” sure didn’t waste much time getting The Human Bomb into action in his very first adventure, in Police Comics #1 (Aug. 1941)! By page 2, he’s already taken the pill that gives him explosive power. Script & art by PG. Thanks to Comic Book Plus. [Human Bomb TM & © DC Comics.]

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

We Bombed In Police Comics! In Police #7 (Feb. 1942), “The Human Bomb” still bore the “Paul Carroll” byline… but by #14, as seen back on p. 3, it had been replaced by that of “Paul Gustavson.” Thanks to Doug Martin. [TM & © DC Comics.]

on “Kid Eternity” for a while in 1942-1943. Some of what he worked on were only a few issues or so. But there were, at the least, about thirty pages or so a month. That’s a lot of work. The stories in those days were only generally six to ten pages apiece, sometimes less. It all built up. He was working like crazy. Most of his stuff was him doing the script, pencils, inking, and lettering. He did complete art right up to color. Us kids were not allowed anywhere near the studio, nor we were allowed to play there, because it would break his concentration. I used to stand at the door where he had the oak studio in Mahwah [New Jersey] and watch him draw. I tried to be real quiet, but every once in a while I’d get caught. [laughs] “Get out of here! Go Away!” he’d say, and my mother would grab hold of me and out the back door I’d go! RA: Was it a separate little building off of the main house, then? GUSTAFSON: No! This was part of the original field-stone house. It was sort of like a castle. The entrance to the house was rounded, with a spire on top, and then the studio went around the rest of the front of the house. It had big windows in it. My father remodeled it himself. It was a northern-like sunroom with windows. He refinished it in solid oak with bookcases for a library, but the comics intended to go there never made it to the library. I remember drilling holes to start off where the nails would go in. We’d soap the nail with Ivory Soap and then drive it home.

GUSTAFSON: That’s right. His original stories ran for five or six years, then he was revived in the 1960s or 1970s, although my father didn’t do those. I don’t know if they were reprints or original stories. The Human Bomb was the only one of my father’s super-heroes that I remember going on long after he left comics. RA: I think a few other ones got brief revivals over the years. I seem to remember the 1940s Angel popping up somewhere. [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Formed out of Rick Jones’ brain at the climax of the Kree-Skrull War in The Avengers #97 (March 1972), then more corporeally in Hulk, Vol. 2, #432-433]. I noticed that bomb suits haven’t changed all that much in appearance over the last eighty years. They’ve gotten bulkier, and the material used to make them is completely different, but the basic appearance is quite similar. GUSTAFSON: My father did a lot of different work, some of it a little here and a little there. [chuckles] I remember he worked

Hit & Miss (Left:) We couldn’t learn for sure if Gustavson had ever drawn Hit Comics cover star “Kid Eternity”—but, if he did, it may have been a story like this one from Hit #34 (Winter 1944), which the Grand Comics Database says (with question marks appended) might have been penciled by Bob Fujitani and inked by Emil Gershwin. Script attributed to Joe Miller. [Kid Eternity TM & © DC Comics.] (Right:) But, for five issues culminating in this story from Hit Comics #29 (Sept. 1943), PG did write and draw the 11-page “Bill the Magnificent” comedy feature, about a hare-brained detective. Thanks to Comic Book Plus for both scans. [© the respective copyright holders.]

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Quality Goods Three of the Quality features the Finnish-born artist drew and wrote in the early ’40s were: “Quicksilver” (even if the strip continued to sport Nick Cardy’s byline), as per National Comics #14 (Aug. ’41)… “Midnight,” Jack Cole’s physical clone of Will Eisner’s “Spirit,” whom Cole and others had turned into a distinctive character on his own, as seen in Smash Comics #48 (Nov. ’43)… …and the aforementioned “Rusty Ryan and His Boyville Brigadiers,” in Feature Comics #50 (Nov. ’41). Thanks to Doug Martin for the scans. [Quicksilver & Midnight TM & © DC Comics; Rusty Ryan © the respective copyright holders.]

RA: Like a lot of artists, your dad joined the war effort in 1942… GUSTAFSON: Yeah, he worked for Air Tech training at WrightCaldwell, drawing and drafting pages and blueprints for aircraft manuals and prototypes. The positions were so critical to the war effort that when the guy working in the next desk to my father’s wanted to enlist, they took him, but he was back in the same desk wearing a military uniform the next day. [chuckles] RA: Following your dad’s time in the service and his return to comics, he started doing humorous comics. Part of this would have been from the dropping popularity of the super-heroes from 1946-1949. Humor comics were the first effort launched by the publishers of the time to replace super-hero material, but there was another advantage to the artist. I’m told that you could get two pages of humor comics drawn in the same time it took to do one realistic page. So, more money for the artists. He did a lot of a character called “Honeybun” for a number of different titles. One of his strips was called “Slim Pickens.” He also drew “Midnight” for Smash Comics.

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

GUSTAFSON: “Slim Pickens”! [laughs] I’d forgotten about that one! RA: Not the famous Western character actor, I’m sure. This was a character who appeared in one-page fillers in Crack Comics in 1948. He was also drawing a character called “Poison Ivy,” but not the DC character. She didn’t come along until 1966. GUSTAFSON: There were a lot of short humor series. RA: “Arizona Raines” [laughs] was a Western character he worked on for Crack Western. If you’ve been in Arizona, you’ll know how funny that name is. GUSTAFSON: He was working on all kinds of stories by that time. RA: “The Jester,” who turned out to be your father’s last work in comics, was originally a Quality character, created by your dad. He was a super-hero— today most Jesters-JokersHarlequins in comics are super-villains—who appeared in Smash Comics from 1941-1949, when the bottom

In Them Cold “Arizona Raines” When Quality’s super-hero title Crack Comics became Crack Western with issue #63 (Nov. 1949), Gustavson became for a time the cover artist, as well as writing and drawing its lead feature, “Arizona Ames” (changed to “Arizona Raines” with #66). Seen at right is the splash page from #73 (July ’51). After a few issues, though, publisher Busy Arnold began alternating illustrated covers with photos from Hollywood cowboy movies. Thanks to CBP. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

“Jester” One Of Those Things The Jester makes his first curtain call in Quality’s Smash Comics #22 (May 1941), as per image at far left, with art and story by Gustavson. Anybody wanna guess which rookie cop on the yarn’s very first page will turn out to be The Jester, whom the police think is a crook but is actually, of course, one of the good guys? “The Jester” wasn’t pitched as a particularly humorous feature, despite the hero’s name and colorful outfit, but it lasted through issue #85 (Oct. ’49)—pictured at near left—after which Smash became Lady Luck, reprinting stories from Will Eisner’s Sunday supplement comicbook. Thanks to CBP. [Jester TM & © DC Comics.]

fell out for most super-heroes for most of a decade.

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Jester Drawers (Pun Intended) A trio of inventive Paul Gustavson “Jester” splash pages, from (clockwise) Smash Comics #38 (Dec. 1942)… #39 (Jan. ’43)… and #43 (June ’43).

GUSTAFSON: That was when things went haywire in New York. Most of the superheroes just stopped, very suddenly, from all the companies that were producing them.

RA: That’s right. They fell out of favor and were replaced by romance, horror, Western, and war comics. A lot of crime comics as well. All of that took place over the course of 1949-1950. GUSTAFSON: Yes, he did a lot of romance comics too, once they started up. RA: Do you know where your father would have studied art? GUSTAFSON: You’ve got to remember that, on things like that, you’re asking me questions about stuff that happened before I was born. I know Father attended Quentin High School in New York City. He also studied civil engineering at Manhattan’s Cooper Union. He likely had drafting training at Cooper Union, as that would be done as part of learning mapping. When I took drafting in high school, part of it was learning how to letter, so he probably learned lettering as a part of Civil Engineering at Cooper Union as well. I don’t know anyone who didn’t learn to letter from taking drafting classes and map-making. From what I saw growing up, he spent a lot of time studying human anatomy and pictures of animal figures which he practiced until he got it right. Not just in one position, either, but in many different positions. I guess you could say he was self-taught.

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

He may have had some of it in his genes. The whole family showed various mechanical, drafting and drawing abilities. My father could design water systems and sewer systems, housing subdivision, roads, and the like. A lot of our family members, including myself, had technical and electronic skills. Nearly all of our Swedish relatives worked in construction. My father could design water systems and the like. I do know that all the work I saw leave my father’s studio was penciled, lettered, and inked before they left his drawing board. I remember as a child that you didn’t touch those camel hair brushes, no matter what. I think that, prior to our move to Mahwah in 1948 and him building that studio, he worked in the Quality bullpen in New York. I don’t remember him having a home studio before 1948 in Bogota, New

“I’ve Got One Word For You: Plastic!” Terry Gustafson was right when he told folks he recalled his father drawing “Plastic Man” stories. All three featured tales in Plastic Man #41 (May 1953) were at least penciled by Paul Gustavson, although providers Martin O’Hearn and Richard Arndt feel that at least one of them was inked by other hands. Scripters unknown. This issue came out during Plas’ later period, when a more serious approach to Jack Cole’s marvelous creation was being utilized. [Plastic Man TM & © DC Comics.] Fortunately, every single Golden Age “Plas” yarn has been reprinted since 1998: Between then and 2006, DC Comics published eight hardcover Plastic Man volumes as part of its late, lamented Archives series; more recently, Gwandanaland Comics (look ’em up on the web) has brought out all the rest, up through Quality’s end in ’56, in a number of print-on-demand softcovers reprinting exploits from both Plastic Man and Police Comics, all of which had fallen into the public domain. Still, it’d be great to see DC finish up its hardcover series, wouldn’t it?

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Jersey. Of course, I would have only been seven in 1948. I might be mistaken.

have no idea who drew it. Never heard anything about it from Dad. I remember wondering where it came from.

RA: By the way, I was doing my regular check on Martin O’Hearn’s website/blog—O’Hearn is a comics forensics detective, ferreting out the identities of uncredited artists and writers—and he’s just sent out a discovery that your dad likely penciled the three main stories in Plastic Man #41 (May 1953). Three stories in all, except for the “Woozy” story, which Jack Cole drew. O’Hearn believes the inkers were at least two different Quality Comics staff artists.

RA: So it was apparently drawn by someone other than your dad. I guess that artist will remain a mystery. Roy had some other artists or writers he wanted me to mention. Do you know of any work your dad may have done with Mickey Spillane? Spillane was a famous mystery-writer, but he started out working in comics—doing the text pieces and short stories.

GUSTAFSON: That proves what I’ve been saying for years, but without any real proof—that my father had drawn Plastic Man. I remember seeing him do so when we lived in Mahwah. You just made my day! Thanks! However, like I said, I remember my father doing the complete art and lettering on his pages. RA: I’ll send you scans of those stories and you can take a look at them. They’re currently listing “Blackhawk” co-creator and inker Chuck Cuidera as the inker for the first two stories. The inker for the third story is unknown. In an interview he did with Jim Steranko in the early 1970s, your dad mentioned that, during his time at the Chesler Studio, he worked with people like Jack Cole (whose art also appears to have some aspects of your dad’s art, or vice versa), Mort Meskin, Gill Fox, Fred Guardineer, Charlie Biro, and Bob Wood. Are any of those names familiar to you? GUSTAFSON: Sorry. I remember Jack Cole, who did “Plastic Man.” Also Gill Fox and, vaguely, Fred Guardineer, but just as names. The others don’t ring any bells. RA: A question that [A/E editor] Roy Thomas wanted me to ask was if you remembered who drew the portrait of your dad that appeared in Centaur Comics back in the early 1940s? GUSTAFSON: Oh, my God! I remember seeing a picture of that! I

GUSTAFSON: I don’t know anything about him. I’ve never heard of him before. RA: The next was Carl Burgos, who drew “The Human Torch” for Timely. GUSTAFSON: I know that he had stories in the same Timely Comics as my dad, but I don’t have any stories about him. RA: The next was Bill Everett, who was the creator of “The Sub-Mariner.” GUSTAFSON: I remember hearing that name, but as far as anything about him, I just don’t know. I know my father did work on Blackhawk. He did the back-up series about the Chinese guy in the group—Chop Chop? RA: Yes, that was his name. He was doing “Chop Chop” stories for both Blackhawk and Modern Comics, formerly Military Comics. GUSTAFSON: At that time, in the early to mid-1950s, my father was also doing romance and Western stories for Quality. The superheroes had pretty much ended in the late 1940s. There was some kind of big blow-up at Quality in 1953 or 1954. I don’t know if my father had gotten wind of the impending sale to DC Comics or not, but something else was going on at the company and he ended up leaving—and he wasn’t the only person there to leave at that time—and going to the American Comics Group (ACG). It may have been because that sale would also take all the rights to the characters and all their pages that my father had created at Quality and hand them over to DC Comics. He never actually explained exactly what the big blow-up at Quality was that led to him leaving the company. RA: Your dad’s last new stories for Quality seem to have appeared in 1954. His original “Chop Chop” stories for Blackhawk actually ended in #67 (Aug. 1953), but continued on to the end of 1955 as reprints. After that, his only recorded original work for Quality is a few Western stories in 1954, as well as crime stories for Prize Comics and humor and adventure stories for ACG. All of the stories that appeared at Quality, of course, could have been drawn in 1954 and held in inventory. All of his known original stories stop completely after comics cover-dated May 1955.

Fantom Of The Funnies Centaur’s Amazing Mystery Funnies, Vol. 2, #10 (Oct. 1939), featured both illustrative and verbal sketches of then-“Fantom of the Fair” artist Paul Gustavson. Coincidentally, that was the very same cover-date of Timely’s Marvel Comics #1, for which PG produced “The Angel.” The above bio sports a byline for publisher “Uncle Joe” Hardie. Thanks to Lee Boyette, whose invaluable piece on Centaur appeared back in A/E #85. The artist of the drawing is unknown; his son doesn’t believe it was done by Gustavson himself. [© the respective copyright holders.]

GUSTAFSON: My father worked for ACG doing adventure, humor, and some horror work until his eyes started to fail. Besides their regular comics at ACG, he was also doing pocket comics for Wrangler Jeans and Structo Toys [see p. 21]. ACG had the commission on them. These would have been commercial or advertising comics. A lot of advertisers did stuff like that back in those days. Those comics had a yellow cover and a hole punched in them with a string attached. The string would attach the comic to the belt loop or to something on the toy truck. He did that for a few years. Like you said, he also did some crime comics for Prize in Justice Traps the Guilty. Do you remember the girl on the Sunbeam Bread package? He did that as well, sometime in the 1940s or 1950s.

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

Alias The Scripter! Here’s an oddity! Beginning with Crack Comics #27 (Jan. 1943), a new artist— Joey Cavallo—took over illustrative chores on the “Alias The Spider” feature. But—the scripts for the archer’s final four adventures were still written by Paul Gustavson, and Cavallo achieved a reasonable approximation of PG’s art style. On this page are depicted the splash and two additional pages from Crack #30 (Aug. ’43). Thanks to CBP. [Alias The Spider TM & © DC Comics.]

RA: Might his departure from Quality also have been due to the advent of the Comics Code and the restrictions that caused a lot of comic book publishers to go out of business at that time? GUSTAFSON: I’m just not sure. I was only 14 at the time and just don’t know. Dad never exactly spelled it out. I think it was the upcoming loss of his rights regarding “The Human Bomb.” That was in the works, I believe, when he left Quality. He may have gotten wind of the sale, and other guys may have done so, too, because, as I understand it, a lot of guys left Quality when my father did or shortly after that. I’m not sure of that actual time, but it was after we moved to Warwick. RA: That does make sense, although the actual sale or transfer didn’t take place until 1956. The last Quality comics were cover-dated Dec. 1956, and the DC issues, particularly Blackhawk, continued the Quality numbering with issues cover-dated January 1957. However, it’s possible the actual sale, or Busy Arnold’s searching for someone to sell the company’s publications and rights to characters and whatnot, may have been going on since 1954, when all the negative publicity over comics really went into high gear. I’ve never heard that before, but it’s certainly possible and it does fit the timeline we know of. GUSTAFSON: Dad didn’t do much comic work after the flood in Mahwah. This was because he didn’t really have a studio anymore

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Bury Your Dead, Arizona! (Above & right:) Gustavson seems to have left Quality Comics circa 195354, perhaps soon after the publication of the final issue of Crack Western (#84, May 1953), for which, as usual, he wrote and drew the lead “Arizona Raines” oater. He also drew the issue’s cover. Thanks to CBP. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Once Forbidden, Twice Shy While it’s uncertain whether he did any other work for the American Comics Group, Gustavson did pencil (and perhaps ink) the lead 5-pager in Forbidden Worlds #34 (Oct.-Nov. 1954), not long before the Comics Code swooped in. The Code must’ve considered PG’s apocalyptic splash panel too violent, however, so when the story was reprinted in FW #65 (Aug. 1965) with a different title, a new splash was drawn by an unidentified artist. Scripter uncertain. Thanks to CBP & Jim Kealy, respectively. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

When we moved into the house in Warwick, it was nearly winter. The last thing in comics that my dad ever drew was a three-page-piece for Jim Steranko. That was around 1973. It was the “Jester” strip that you mentioned earlier. RA: This would have been a revival of “The Jester” from Quality Comics, the one your dad created. GUSTAFSON: That one story in 1973 wasn’t, I think, ever published. It was done for Steranko. My father did the title page and two other pages. Years later, Steranko turned around and sold the pages at Heritage Auctions without letting me, or any of my family, know. I wanted to see if I could find them and get hold of them for the family, since most of my father’s actual comic art pages were destroyed in the flood back in the 1950s. It upset me a lot, because those three pages were the last comic work my dad did.

Crime Does Too Pay—At Least For A Little While Longer

When I heard Steranko had sold them, I got hold of the auction house before the auction was final, and the guy told me to make a bid of $450 bucks per page, but the first page actually sold for $334. The second page went for $191 and the third page went for $155. I would have had to pay way over that actual selling price if I had bid the auctioneer’s request. The auction sale was on May 23, 2009.

In the immediate pre-Code days of 1954, virtually every comics company had at least one “true crime” title (as they tended to be called, whether the stories were based on fact or not). Prize/Feature Comics had Justice Traps the Guilty, and Paul Gustavson drew stories for its issue #60 (dated March ’54), seen at left—and for #74 (May ’55), one of the first of the milder post-Code editions. Thanks to Jim Kealy for both scans. [© the respective copyright holders.]

to work in until he finished remodeling the house we bought in Warwick, New York. My father designed and built the house in Warwick with the help of one 65-year-old mason and a carpenter. The elderly mason was in better shape than my father, and my father couldn’t keep up with him getting him cinder block, stone, brick, and mortar. That house wasn’t ready to move into, so we rented a house from a guy who owned the oil company that supplied fuel oil in the area. This would have been in October of 1953. I went upstairs to the attic one day and all of a sudden I was looking at the ground, from inside the house. There was no insulation in the house and the outside clapboards had separated and the wind was howling though the house! [laughs] My father had been going nuts to feed the furnace because it was so cold in the house, and who was he buying the fuel oil from? The same guy who owned and rented us the house! [laughs]

I wish Steranko had let me know before sending them to auction, because I would have bought them. I would have bought them for the price they actually sold for, because those three pages were the only ones that I knew at the time still existed. Dad’s original art is very hard to find since all that he still had possession of went down the Ramapo River after the flood. [continued on p. 25]

RA: Sounds like a classic case of double-dipping by the owner. GUSTAFSON: He had the oil business. It was a goldmine for him!

And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor… (Left:) A Wrangler pocket-sized comicbook one-shot was published for the jeans company circa the mid-1950s. The cover art may well be by “Arizona Raines” artist Paul Gustavson. (Above:) PG also reportedly designed the Sunbeam Bread girl that appeared on bread wrappers during the same period. Courtesy of Terry G. [© the respective copyright holders.]

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Jest, Jester, Jestest In 1973-74, Paul Gustavson drew three pages of a new “Jester” story on private commision. Those art boards, reproduced on this and the following two pages of this issue of Alter Ego, were sold some years later via Heritage Auctions, under circumstances that still clearly bother son Terry Gustafson. Scripter unknown; may be PG himself. Copies provided by Terry G. via Richard Arndt. [Jester TM & © DC Comics; other art © 2021 the respective copyright holders.]

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

Perspectives A vintage published “Jester” splash page written and drawn by Gustavson, from Smash Comics #28 (Nov. 1941)—and a sort of “bio” page from Jud Hurd’s Cartoonist PRO-files #36 in the 1970s, sent by Shaun Clancy and featuring the comments of artist C.C. Beck and Paul’s wife. [Jester TM & © DC Comics; bio page © the respective copyright holders.]

[continued from p. 21]

Not just his original artwork, but all of the comicbooks that his work appeared in. We had a copy of each of the comicbooks. They were in the cellar. There were stacks of them. Also original art. All completely destroyed. There were soggy comics strewed for miles along the riverside. It was a horrible thing to have happened but, in an odd way, funny,

Quality—Day In, Day Out While not two of the series for which he is best remembered, Paul Gustavson also did far better than yeoman’s work on the likes of “Magno, the Magnetic Man” in Smash Comics #21 (April 1941)—and on the “Espionage” series, starring a hero called Black X, in Smash #48 (Nov. ’43). Thanks to Doug Martin and the great but apparently defunct Golden Age Comic Book Stories website. [Magno TM & © DC Comics; other art © the respective copyright holders.]

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

Help Stamp Out Super-Villains! In November of 2011, the government of Finland, Paul Gustafson’s ancestral homeland, issued three stamps commemorating the U.S. success of the writer/artist in creating the comics heroes Alias The Spider, The Fantom of the Fair, and The Arrow… as per the accompanying article from a magazine there. Courtesy of Terry Gustafson. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

Away Went “The Spider”… Thought we’d close with a couple of great vintage splash pages drawn (and scripted) by Paul Gustavson, both from comics cover-dated March 1942: “Alias The Spider” from Crack Comics #22… and “The Jester” from Smash Comics #32. Thanks to Doug Martin for both scans. [Alias The Spider & The Jester TM & © DC Comics.]

too. [chuckles] Miles of comics! When we came home, our two-door garage had barn doors on it and two of them were lying at the bottom of the driveway and the other two were hanging by one hinge. you.

I have scans of those three “Jester” pages and can send them to

There’s another original piece that I’m aware of that was given by Busy Arnold to Murphy Anderson—the colorist and cartoonist. That piece was also of The Jester. It was from Smash Comics #27 [Oct. 1941]. I didn’t know for many years that Anderson also was a cartoonist himself.

don’t think the information has been touched since his death in 2006. RA: Jerry Bails is among the first, if not the actual first, of the true comics historians and comics forensics detectives. He dug up names and credits for a huge number of cartoonists and writers that much of the public had never heard of before. The Who’s Who website has been maintained since Bails’ death. GUSTAFSON: My understanding is that, after he died, his wife kept the site going but didn’t want to change anything because it was his original work. Based on what Craig had told me, I never even wanted to approach or contact her about any inaccurate information there. I didn’t want to cause any problems. RA: I should say that, over the course of doing research for this and talking to you, I’ve become quite impressed by the quality of your father’s artwork. It stands up very well—which sometimes, for various reasons, most 1940s artwork doesn’t.

GUSTAFSON: Yeah, I knew of him as a colorist. There may have been other colorists working there, but he was the main colorist on a lot of my father’s work. At least, that’s the name I remember. I didn’t find out about Anderson’s solo artwork until I started doing research on my father.

GUSTAFSON: Yeah, I had an artist who does commissions who tried to re-create some of my father’s work and he wrote me to tell me that he “couldn’t compete with my father and his artwork. I’ve been trying to re-create his artwork and it’s almost impossible.” My father was a stickler for detail, and the editors would get so mad at him for putting so much detail into his comics’ pages, because they claimed that all that detail wouldn’t be seen once it was colored and shrunk down to comicbook size. The pages were twice-up, remember. But he was a stickler for detail.

There’s information online, put up by Jerry Bails on his Who’s Who site, that has some accurate stuff and some incorrect, but I

RA: Well, thank you for taking the time to do this. It’s much appreciated.

RA: Murphy Anderson is quite well-known in the comics field as a penciler and inker. I wasn’t aware that he was a colorist at Quality.

An Interview With Terry Gustafson, Son of The Golden Age Great

PAUL GUSTAFSON Checklist [This checklist is adapted primarily from information provided by 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 magazines with that title and also in other publications are generally not italicized below. Some additional information provided by son Terry Gustafson. Although Terry Gustafson informs us that his father wrote many of the stories he drew, especially for certain series, we have not included a writer’s credit except where scripting credits are also listed elsewhere; however, that does not in any way mean that we doubt Terry’s claim. Who’s Who credits have been augmented by information gleaned from the Grand Comics Database, much of which was provided to them by Terry Gustafson and Craig Delich. Key: (w) = writer; (p) = penciler; (i) inker.] Name & Vital Stats: Karl Paul Gustafson [real spelling of name of artist who drew in comics as “Paul Gustavson”] – (1916-1977) – artist, writer Pen Names: Paul Gustavson; Paul Carroll (also Paul Carrol) Influences: Frank Owen (creator of Jaspar) Studios: Harry “A” Chesler Studio; Funnies, Inc. Family in Arts: Nils Gustafson (brother), photographer Syndication: Fantom of the Fair (p)(i) 1939; Jaspar (asst. p & i) 1935 COMICBOOKS (U.S. Mainstream Publishers): American Comics Group: The Clutching Hand (p)(i) 1954; Cookie (p)(i) 1953-54; Forbidden Worlds (p)(i) 1954; Hubley (p) (i) late-1950s premium – imprint Custom Comics]; Jitterbuck (p) (i) 1954; The Kilroys (p)(i) 1954; Miss Sunbeam (p)(i) late-195s premium – imprint Custom Comics]; mystery/occult (p)(i) 1953; Prince Athel (p)(i) 1955; Structo (p)(i) late-1950s premium – imprint Custom Comics]; Uncanny Mysteries filler 1952; Wrangler (p)(i) late-1950s premium – Custom Comics] Centaur Comics Group (& predecessor/successor companies, including Chesler imprint, Comic Corporation of America, Comic Magazine Co., Ultem): Amazing Man (p)(i) 1941; The Arrow (w)(p)(i) 1938-41; Black Panther (p)(i) 1941; Blood on the Rio Grande (w)(p)(i) 1937; Canvas Dusters (w)(p)(i) 1939; Cheerio Minstrels (w)(p)(i) 1938; Crane of Scotland Yard (w)(p) (i) 1939; Detective O’Leary (w)(p)(i) 1939; Fantom of the Fair (p) (i)(possible w) 1939-40; The Firehouse Gang (w)(p)(i) 1938; Goofy Gags (w)(p)(i) 1938; High Pressure Preston (w)(p)(i) 1938; Homer Butts (w)(p)(i) 1939; Jingle Jingle (p)(i) 1938; Liberty Scouts cover (p)(i) 1941; Ma and Pa (w)(p)(i) 1938; Man of War (p)(i) 1941-42; Out on the Farm (w)(p)(i) 1938; Phony Crimes (p)(i) 1937-38; Sand Hog (p)(i) 1930s; Speed Silvers (p)(i) 1937; Spider-Legs (w) (p)(i) 1938; spots [filler] (w)(p)(i) 1938; Star Ranger (w)(p)(i) 1938;

He, Robot Paul Gustavson wrote and drew the story of The Fantom of the Fair battling a renegade Elektro, the robot (or “Moto-man”) that was actually appearing at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City—but his version of “the Electro-robot” didn’t look anything like the “real life” Elektro. (Neither did the robot on that issue’s cover, illustrated by Frank Thomas, as seen in A/E #151.) Seen at left is the true Elektro—who, A/E’s editor is proud to say, became the robot butler Gernsback in his 1980s DC series All-Star Squadron. But maybe Paul G. felt he had to steer clear of the actual image of Elektro for legal reasons! [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Paul Gustavson—With An “F”!

Their Last Bow (Left:) A Gustavson “Angel” page from Marvel Mystery Comics #12 (Oct. 1940). Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Right:) Another powerful all-Gustavson “Human Bomb” splash page— virtually a pin-up—this one from Police Comics #14 (Dec. 1942). Thanks to Doug Martin. [Human Bomb TM & © DC Comics.]

Spurs (p)(i)(prob w) 1938; Stars and Stripes Comics cover (p)(i) 1941; Surprise for Moe (p)(i)(prob w) 1938 DC Comics: Catnip (w)(p)(i) 1940; Diddle Family (w)(p)(i) c. 1938-40; Flatfoot Flannigan (w)(p)(i) c. 1937-40; Here and There (w) (p)(i) dates uncertain; Speedin’ Sam (w)(p)(i) 1940 Fox Comics: filler in Mystery Men Comics (p)(i)(prob w) 1941 Marvel/Timely: The Angel (w)(p)(i) 1939-42; The Patriot (p)(i) c. 1941; Super Slave (p)(i) 1941 Novelty Comics: Runaway Ronson (p)(i) 1940-41; The Twister (p) (i) 1941 Quality Comics: Alias The Spider (w)(p)(i) 1940-43; Arizona Ames (w)(p)(i) 1949; Arizona Raines (w)(p)(i) 1949-53; Ban Tootin (p) (i) 1946; Bill the Magnificent (p)(i) 1943; Broadway Romances (p)(i) 1950; Campus Loves (p)(i) 1950; Chop Chop (p) 1946-55; crime (p) (i) 1949-52; Diary Loves (p)(i) 1949, 1951; Flash Fulton (p)(i) 1939-40; Heart Throbs (p)(i) 1949-50; Honeybun (p)(i) 1947-49; The Human Bomb (w)(p)(i) 1941-46; Jasper Dewgood (p)(i) 1948-49; The Jester (p)(i) 1941-43; Jitterbug (p)(i) 1948; Jitters (p)(i) 1947, perhaps 1949; Love Confessions (p)(i) 1949; Love Letters (p)(i) 1950, 1956; Magno the Magnetic Man (p)(i) 1940-41; Midnight (p)(i) 1943-46; Peachy (p)

(i) 1949; Plastic Man (p)(i) 1953; Poison Ivy (p)(i) 1946; Quicksilver (p)(i) 1941-42; Range Romances (p)(i) 1950; romance (p)(i) 1951-52; Rusty Ryan (p)(i) 194043, 1946-49; Secret Love (p)(i) 1950; Slap Happy Pappy (p)(i)(prob w) 1946; Slim Pickens (p)(i) 1948; Speed Silvers (p)(i)(prob w) 1938-39) Uncle Fuddly (w)(p)(i) 1946-49; Untamed Love (p)(i) 1950; Will Bragg (p)(i) 1946-53; Wun Cloo filler (w)(p)(i) 1946 Prize/Feature: Justice Traps the Guilty (p)(i) 1954-55 Street & Smith: The Hooded Wasp (p)(i) 1941 (unconfirmed)

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“There Are Lies… And Damn Lies…” And Then, Apparently, There’s STAN LEE!

A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By ABRAHAM RIESMAN by Roy Thomas

When Stan And Jack Made “True Believers” Of Nearly All Of Us (Left:) This splash page from The Fantastic Four #4 (May 1962) shows what the team of Stan Lee (writer/editor) and Jack Kirby (penciler, unofficial co-plotter) could accomplish together. A real departure from super-hero comics that had gone before. Inks by Sol Brodsky. Scan courtesy of Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Above:) This 2020 ad for Abraham Riesman’s True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee reveals, in advance, the point of view that the then-upcoming biography was going to take. Should anything inside, then, have come as a surprise? [© the respective copyright holders.]

AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION, MARCH 2021: The following article was written for the Feb. 23, 2021, online edition of The Hollywood Reporter—a publication which, as a print daily, I used to read avidly back in the first half of the 1980s when Gerry Conway and I were pursuing (with some mild success) a screenwriting career together.

To say that I was incensed by much of Abraham Riesman’s then-just-out biography of Stan Lee would be an understatement. But I’ll let the “review” below stand or fall on its own merits. I have no delusions that it will derail the (I feel) largely undeserved success saleswise and even review-wise that the book may have had; that is not its purpose. The purpose of this review is simply to exist, to be an alternative to both

A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By Abraham Riesman

the book itself, and to the quasi-fawning, wanting-to-believe reception it received from much of the press. So, simply by being published—by being “out there” for anyone interested to read and/or research, it has already achieved that purpose… and I thank my manager John Cimino and Aaron Couch, editor of THR Heat Vision Blog, for arranging for its digital publication. A poor thing, but mine own, as somebody once said. (I’m also happy that my piece was written after reading a copy of the book that I actually paid for, and not the promised comp copy which John C. eventually managed to pry out of the author only by mailing him postage money with which to send it. Thus, I can in no way be accused of biting a hand that fed me even a crumb.) What follows is, except for my preferred quasi-Mark-Twain title, a few words here and there adjusted for clarity, one scatological expletive which was fine for the THR but off-base for A/E, and the correction of one minor error (which was fixed online, later the same day it was published), the article as I originally submitted it to THR. I hadn’t been given any suggested word count, but I figured it would run a bit long for full inclusion even in the publication’s online edition. It was… and Aaron Couch did an excellent job of keeping the parts that were the most important. (Good enough that Guardians of the Galaxy director/co-writer James Gunn posted the article on his Twitter account for his zillions of followers.) However, since space is less of a limitation in Alter Ego, I’ve printed the full version below… followed by my own “fact-checking” of some of the errors or misjudgments I feel Riesman made in between his gratuitous attempts at character assassination in the guise of biography….

omething like 95% of the time, Abraham Riesman’s True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee is a very good biography. However, the remaining (and crucial) 5% of its content, scattered amid all that painstaking research and well-written prose, renders it often insidious and untrustworthy… i.e., a very bad biography. Because the author often insists, visibly and intrusively, on putting his verbal thumb on the scales, in a dispute he seems ill-equipped to judge. As Marvel Comics visionary Stan Lee’s long-time employee and de facto protégé, and as a known student of the history of comicbooks, I suppose I would be expected to denounce Riesman’s book as scurrilous, a pack of lies. But it’s both better—and worse—than that. “In the New Jerusalem they called the United States, you could make it just fine as a bull****ter.” Thus nakedly, on the third page of his introduction, does Riesman articulate what we soon discover to be the main thesis of his new book from Crown (an imprint of Random House), which chronicles the life and legacy of the talented New Yorker who was both the chief editor and a major writer from 1941 through 1972 for the company now hailed as Marvel Comics—and who, from the 1980s on, was more a spokesman (some claim a huckster) for Marvel, for comics—and, yes, I’d hardly deny it, for himself. But, I contend, it’s primarily what he did between 1961 and 1972 that defines the importance of Stan Lee to popular culture— and that was a period of solid accomplishment. In the quotation three paragraphs back, although he’s ostensibly writing about a Romanian Jew who in 1899 spouted what turned out to be tall tales concerning his achievements overseas in America, Riesman is, of course, really referencing Stan Lee—nee Stanley Martin Lieber—as anyone literate enough to be reading the book will garner at first glance. In its remaining 300-plus pages, he attempts to bolster that debatable and not-so-subtle theme at every turn. He’d have

The Marvel Age Of Colorful Characters When Alter Ego published its first issue devoted to interviews with Stan Lee, it was graced by a great Kirby the-gang’s-all-here scene, which was apparently inked as well as penciled by the man Stan had crowned “King.” Jack was the co-creator of every costumed cut-up in this illo except the Sub-Mariner… and, arguably, Spider-Man. Thanks to John Morrow and the Jack & Roz Kirby estate. [Heroes & Dr. Doom TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

been better advised—well, maybe not in terms of book sales but in the interests of historical integrity—to have confined such ill-considered judgments to his wastebasket and let the facts he’s gathered simply speak for themselves. He doesn’t do that nearly often enough. That Stan Lee was the co-creator, and not the sole creator, of the key Marvel heroes from the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man through Daredevil and the Silver Surfer can hardly be in dispute at this late stage. I myself, back in the ’80s at a time when I wasn’t working for him, had a friendly argument with him on that score over lunch. I soon realized that, as much as he respected the talents and contributions of artists (Riesman would say “artist/writers” and he’s right, at least by his own definition) such as Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to the characters introduced in the 1960s, he could never really bring himself, in his own mind, to think of them as “co-creators.” The two of us had to agree to disagree about that, and I never saw any use in bringing it up again. If I can judge from Riesman’s writings, and from other sources over the years, I’m sure I’d have encountered the same kind of blinders-on stubbornness in Jack Kirby, who (as oft quoted in this book) saw Stan as little more than the guy who scribbled a few words of dialogue and rode to unearned glory on his back. Both men were, I think, wrong… and that’s why Riesman is so ill-advised to use nearly every opportunity he gets to weight things

“There Are Lies... Damn Lies...” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee!

in Jack’s favor and against Stan. (By the way, if someone objects to my referring to Jack Kirby as well by his first name, it’s because the two of us were indeed on a first-name basis from 1965 till the last time we met, sometime in the 1980s. I considered him then, and I consider him now, to be by far the greatest super-hero artist in the history of the medium, and, along with Stan, one of its preeminent pop-culture geniuses.) You think I’m exaggerating when I suggest that Riesman finds gratuitous excuses to favor Jack’s vision of things over Stan’s? I’m not. For one thing, just a dozen pages into the book, he waxes eloquent to inform us that Stan (apparently unlike Jack and one or two other people he covers) “lied about little things, he lied about big things, he lied about strange things”… adding that Stan quite likely lied about “one massive, very consequential thing” that, if so, “completely changes his legacy.” (By saying “quite likely,” Riesman puts the burden of proof on himself to demonstrate that Stan was lying about coming up with the basic idea for some, if not necessarily for each, of the early Marvel heroes—and that he never really does. He simply weighs Stan’s statements against Jack’s, without offering any real evidence that Jack’s memories are any more reliable than Stan’s. In fact, he will later cite a number of instances in which they are not.) Then, on the very next page, he puts flesh on his earlier “bull****ter” depiction by writing: “It’s very possible, maybe even probable, that the characters and plots Stan was famous for all sprang from the brain and pen of [artist/writer Jack] Kirby….” “Possible,” yes. Lots of things are “possible.” But—“even probable”? Why? Riesman never really makes a credible case for that. He merely piles up verbiage and quotations: “He said… he said.” And he weights things toward Jack’s viewpoint with statements like the foregoing despite the fact, for instance, that partial synopses written by Stan for two of the first eight issues of the crucial Marvel flagship title Fantastic Four (including for #1)

have been vouched for as existing since the 1960s. Riesman gives a lot more credence than he should to “a rumor that [Stan’s synopsis for the first half of FF #1] was created after the comic hit the stands” in August of 1961. The sources of said rumor? The “significant reason to suspect the synopsis was written after Stan and Kirby spoke” in person about the FF concept? (1) A one-time teenage assistant of Kirby’s, who only went to work for him circa 1969, says that Jack “told me that it was written way after FF #1 was published. I believe him.” Fine. The guy believes his old boss. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we should. Oh, and (2) Kirby is quoted as once saying of that synopsis: “I’ve never seen it, and of course I would say it’s an outright lie.” So on this occasion Stan Lee is apparently lying by coming up with that synopsis—but Jack Kirby, who Riesman points out told a whopper or three himself, isn’t lying when he says he never saw it? Or, giving both men the benefit of a doubt, couldn’t it be that Jack, after several decades, had simply forgotten it? Okay—so Stan Lee personally handed this two-page document to me, as his editorial assistant, sometime in the latter half of the 1960s, only a few years after the publication of FF #1, at a time when virtually nobody, except I myself once in a while, was asking him how the Marvel Age of Comics had started, and when there’d not yet been any public or private disputes between Lee and Kirby about the creation of the Fantastic Four or any other Marvel heroes… …yet Riesman says it’s “maybe even probable” that the Fantastic Four (and everything else at Marvel) all came solely from Kirby’s admittedly fertile brain. Why is it “maybe even probable”? No supportable reason is ever given. As support for the likelihood that Stan wrote that FF #1 synopsis at a very early stage in the creative process in 1961, dare I suggest one extended proposition….

“Give Me Just A Plot Of… Not A Lot Of…” (Left:) The top half or so of the first page of Stan Lee’s two-page synopsis for The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961), reproduced from Alter Ego, Vol. 2, #2 (1998), soon after Roy Thomas received it by mail from Stan himself—although Roy had first seen and perused it sometime in the latter 1960s. Since it’s been reproduced a number of times, we’ve only depicted part of it here. Frankly, Ye Editor finds it ludicrous that anyone would believe that Stan would’ve bothered to fake such a document anytime… but especially back in the 1960s! (Above:) In these two panels from FF #1, Sue Storm turns invisible for the first time, and her companions wonder (as per Stan’s synopsis) if she’ll ever be able to reappear. But in the very next panel, she does pop up in the visible spectrum—in line with Stan’s synopsis note to penciler Jack Kirby that they might have to rethink the original intention to have her remain invisible permanently. That subsequent panel isn’t shown here because these two are repro’d from Roy’s bound volumes, and the rightmost part of that row’s third panel would’ve been partly lost in scanning. Script by Lee; pencils by Kirby; inks (probably) by George Klein. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By Abraham Riesman

Namely this: If he had decided to “forge” such a document in the latter 1960s, to bolster his role as creator, it’s highly unlikely that he would’ve included in it a number of directions/ suggestions to Jack that failed to make it into the published comic: Susan Storm being an “actress” (there was never any mention of this in the series)… Reed’s intention of flying his completed rocket “to Mars” (in FF #1, they’re trying vaguely to make it to “outer space” or “to the stars”)… Ben Grimm being listed as a newly hired pilot (he acts more like a longtime colleague in the comic)… Susan’s never-enforced inability to become visible again (with Stan writing that later she’d have to wear a face-like mask in order to be seen— he adds, “talk to me about that, Jack—maybe we’ll change the gimmick somewhat)”… and that Grimm “has a crush on Susan” (one passing reference to this in #1, then nothing in future stories—ever). [MARCH 2021 NOTE: I neglected to mention in the THR piece: Johnny Storm was never a “star athlete,” either!] If Stan Lee was engaging in an act of ex post facto forgery with that half-synopsis, it was surely the most inept attempt ever seen by man. And Stan was far from inept. Now, about that second early synopsis I mentioned above: While reading Riesman’s heavy-handed attempt at a dismissal of the first one, I found myself wondering how he was going to handle it. It was a typed sheet sent by Stan circa 1963 to my late friend Dr. Jerry Bails, a 30ish university science professor whose avocation was gathering data on super-hero comicbooks. When Jerry asked Stan by mail if he might be sent any artwork or scripts lying around the office for his own small collection, Stan mailed him a piece of paper on which he had earlier typed the synopsis (complete with title!) for the first part of Fantastic Four #8, which had been published in ’62. I read that sheet when I visited Jerry I’m Your Puppet! in Detroit over Thanksgiving in ’63. While (Above:) This page from the second issue of A/E founder Jerry Bails’ “apazine” CAPA-Alpha (1964) eschewing any actual dialogue and leaving represents the first time a Stan Lee “Marvel Method” plot ever saw print. It’s a synopsis for the first 13 ample choreography for artist Kirby to do, pages of Fantastic Four #8 (Nov. 1962). As Roy mentions, Lee had sent it to Bails in 1962 or ’63. This page it is otherwise fairly detailed, complete with as printed had been retyped by Bails, since it was impossible to reproduce such an artifact directly in a actions such as Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) magazine printed on a spirit duplicator (a.k.a. ditto) machine. The version seen in AE V2#2 in 1998 had trying to stretch his malleable arms far enough been retyped by Roy Thomas from the k-a sheet. to save a man falling from a building but not (Next page:) Pages 4 & 5 of FF #8 show what first Jack Kirby as penciler, then Stan Lee as scripter, did with quite reaching him, so that the Human Torch Stan’s plot. Kirby added the scene showcasing The Puppet Master, but otherwise stayed close to what Lee had written. Inks by Dick Ayers. Thanks to Aaron Caplan & Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] has to catch him on the fly—while a secondary plotline, woven through the three longish paragraphs, relates how Richards is secretly yarn’s ending as printed harks back to a horror story Kirby had building a machine he hopes will restore the monstrous, tormented drawn in the 1950s. Either way, a good part of the story is nicely Thing to his true human form. All these things, and others outlined on that single sheet—which Bails retyped and published described on the page, are reflected in the comics pages as drawn in 1964, and whose verbatim re-retyping I myself printed in 1998 in and published. You could read the synopsis as you paged through my comics-history magazine Alter Ego. the finished comic, and you’d find no major surprises, except that Knowing by this point in True Believer that, whatever his Kirby skillfully covers that material in seven pages instead of shortcomings as a dependable analyst of “who did what” in the thirteen. Lee-Kirby relationship, Abraham Riesman was a fairly thorough Perhaps the synopsis for the remainder of that story was sent researcher, I gazed eagerly over the ensuing pages to see if he to Jack later and wasn’t preserved—or maybe it was merely covered would claim that, circa 1963, Stan had also “forged” this primary in a follow-up phone call with details left to the artist, since the document.

“There Are Lies... Damn Lies...” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee!

And I found—nothing. No mention of the FF #8 synopsis at all. Hmm. Three pages of typed-out Stan Lee synopsis material seem to still exist from the first year of Fantastic Four—and Riesman doesn’t think one of them is worth so much as a mention? Could it be, I couldn’t help wondering, because the heady amount of story detail in the FF #8 part-synopsis undercut his thesis that Jack Kirby did it all, and that Stan Lee “merely” added the precise dialogue and captions that floated over the heads of the characters? It’s not for me to say. It could have been simply an unaccustomed (and very convenient) lapse in the author’s research. We all make mistakes—though this was, I maintain, a rather crucial one. Over and over again in the book—there isn’t room here to list them all—Riesman attempts to undercut Stan’s veracity. Even regarding the story Stan told of his high school days, when he was impressed by an older kid’s classroom spiel intended to sell subscriptions to The New York Times, Riesman says that much of the tale “may well be apocryphal”—though he gives not a single reason why we should distrust Stan’s account. (That kid did at least exist, as seen in the 2018 book I wrote for Taschen Publishing, The Stan Lee Story.) When a Timely secretary later related a credible anecdote about Stan going to the restroom to throw up in between the publisher-forced firings of artists he had to do, that becomes for Riesman “one possibly apocryphal story,” for what seems no greater reason than his inability to accept any laudable act on Stan’s

part at face value. I could go on and on with examples from the book… but you get the idea. (You’ll get it even more forcefully if you read the book… which, really, you should, in spite of its crippling lapses in fairness and simple logic.) At the same time, to give the author his due, he is at least capable of occasionally calling Jack Kirby out on claims of his own that won’t hold water. But he tends to let Jack, far more than Stan, off the hook concerning them. For instance, Jack said more than once that, as a soldier, he had landed on Omaha Beach just ten days after D-Day, when it was actually 2½ months later (Riesman dismisses this as “either poor memory or an exaggeration”— certainly not a “lie.”) Jack also seems to have stated numerous times that he held Stan personally responsible for artist Joe Maneely falling to his death from a commuter train in 1958—that it was due to “overwork” caused by Stan—a totally unsupported analysis that seems pretty much like sheer vindictiveness on Jack’s part, but which Riesman pretty much lets slide. Now, all the above said, I’m hardly about to deny some of Jack’s claims, based on my own limited yet not-inconsiderable first- and second-hand knowledge from mid-1965 onward. Jack Kirby did do an increasing amount of the plotting of individual stories as time went along and the demands on Stan of overseeing the expanding Marvel line kept growing. In fact, as Riesman’s quotes testify, Stan often—not invariably, but often—gave Jack credit for doing much, even most of the actual plotting. By mid-1966, Stan, eager to accommodate Jack, stopped listing himself as “writer” in the [continued on p. 38]

A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By Abraham Riesman

When Scripts Are Lost! Although most synopses written by Stan Lee (and other early Marvel writers) are long since destroyed because they weren’t deemed worthy of saving once the story was drawn and lettered, this one for a 7-page yarn penciled by Ross Andru for Our Love Story #17 (June 1972) was preserved by the late Ellen Vartanoff, and was recently sent to Roy Thomas by her 1970s-80s fellow Marvel staffers Scott Edelman and his wife (Ellen’s sister) Irene Vartanoff. While this is hardly a synopsis on a par in importance with those for Fantastic Four #1 & #8, it is another surviving example of Stan’s plotting (as opposed to simply editing and/ or dialoguing/scripting). Seen at the bottom of this page are Andru’s pencils and printed art for the tale’s first page… and on the facing page, the same stages for its final page, as inked by Jack Abel. Again, courtesy of the Ellen Vartanoff Collection. Scott E. points out that he “thought something could be gained from a comparison of Stan’s plot to Ross’ art to Stan’s final dialogue. Though I’m fascinated by Stan’s direction to Ross that he should—‘Always make sure most of the panels in a romance story show the heroine looking sad rather than happy. For some reason, girl readers want to read about people with PROBLEMS, not happy-looking people’—that’s not the part that speaks most to the collaborative process. For that, I direct your attention to the ending. [continued on next page]

“There Are Lies... Damn Lies...” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee!

“As you can see, Ross drew the final sequence pretty much the way Stan asked him to—the woman who thinks English Literature pointless loses the guy she thinks she loves to her friend who digs books as much as he does. “But there’s something different about the ending as published— something which didn’t exist in either Stan’s original plot or the notes Ross scribbled in the margins of his art (a thing all artists did back then to guide the scripter through their pencil art)— “It’s revealed that the guy she loves had been dating her while on a deliberate break from her friend, one intended to make sure he really loved her. It made the ending a bit more complex as far as the ’70s-era romance comics went. And I have to believe that the idea for the twist only occurred to Stan as he sat there with the pencils in hand and began placing dialogue. And also—that such a spark wasn’t an isolated incident. “That’s a part of the collaborative nature of the Marvel Method which some people tend to overlook—aspects get added to the story which existed neither in the original plot nor the pencil art, but only when the writer is inspired while writing the connective tissue of the story. “This won’t answer the question of who truly created the Fantastic Four—a subject which Roy addresses in his Hollywood Reporter piece—but I think it’s a piece of the puzzle which you need to know and understand.” Roy here: Truer words were never spoken (or written), Scott, with regard to the Marvel Comics of the 1960s and ’70s and even beyond, the more so given the simplistic approach exemplified in analyses of the Marvel Method in Riesman’s book. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Ross Andru

A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By Abraham Riesman

[continued from p. 35] credits and readily agreed to the mutual credit Jack suggested: “Produced by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.” If Jack wanted still more credit than that, it doesn’t seem he ever made his wishes clearly known to Stan. To Stan, it wasn’t all that important whose idea a particular story was; what mattered was that it sold comic books, and Stan had every reason to believe that both his editorial guidance and his command of the dialogue contributed materially to that popularity. No, Jack may not have gotten rich drawing comics—few of us did—but the decade from 1959 to 1970 that he was employed full-time by Marvel Comics was probably the most financially stable job that he ever had in the comics industry, a field not exactly known for offering long-term security. As for the page rates: Riesman insists artists “weren’t being paid for the massive amounts of writing they were doing.” Well, that kind of depends on how you figure it. Certainly by the mid-’60s at least, whenever a new artist came on board, he knew that choreographing the story, including adding details, was part of the job description of “artist” at Marvel. If he/she didn’t want to accept that way of working, he/she was free to work for some other company. Stan got the publisher to raise artists’ page rates whenever he could, and part of the reason he fought for that was because he knew how important the artists were to the process. Maybe the latterly-despised “controversial Marvel Method” (as Riesman anoints it) of doing a story is one reason that writers’ rates generally tended to lag behind DC’s for some years… so that the artists could be paid as well as possible. Artists such as John Romita and John Buscema—each very important to Marvel’s post-Kirby and even post-Stan success—have gone on the record as saying they preferred the “Marvel Method” to the full-script way of doing comics. And certainly it led to success for Marvel… which in turn led to fuller employment at higher wages for more artists and writers. There’s certainly more than one angle from which to view the matter of artists “being paid for writing.” But Riesman, like many another artist (or comics historian), prefers his own somewhat myopic vision.

the guy who typed out the precise words the characters would say, based (Jack believed, not nearly always correctly) on what he wrote in the margins. But, from the very beginning (i.e., Fantastic Four #1), Stan had felt that a different approach to story, script, and dialogue was called for compared to what he and others had been doing for two decades. And Marvel’s success would seem to bear him out, because it wasn’t only the comics drawn by Jack Kirby that sold well when Stan scripted them. So did material drawn by the talented but lesser-known Steve Ditko and Don Heck and Dick Ayers and Wally Wood and John Romita and John Buscema and Gene Colan and several others. I myself am a living witness of that indisputable fact. The day in August 1961 that I bought FF #1 off the stands at age twenty, I became at least as much a fan of the writing (by “Stan Lee,” someone whose name meant little to me at that time) as of the

Those artists, on the other hand, often failed to realize that the writers— particularly Stan— were important. Jack, in particular, continually dismissed Stan in interviews as simply “my editor,”

Battlestar Galactus (Above left:) Jack Kirby (on right) and his ultimate Fantastic Four inker, Joe Sinnott, at the 1976 New York comics convention—ten years after FF #48 (March 1966) had introduced both Galactus and The Silver Surfer to the waiting world. (Left:) The two panels from FF #48 that introduced The Silver Surfer—which artist/co-plotter Kirby had tossed into the mix without telling Stan in advance. Roy recalls, however, that it was Stan who turned the black-&-white-penciled entity (called by Jack simply “the Surfer” in his margin notes) into The Silver Surfer when he dialogued the issue. Norrin Radd could have wound up scarlet, cerise, or even green. (Above:) Galactus, the sequence’s “God-figure,” is introduced in FF #48’s final panel. Note that Stan has signed the final blurb “Stan and Jack!” Thanks to Barry Pearl for these two scans. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“There Are Lies... Damn Lies...” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee!

that example. They had to, or Stan (and later I) wouldn’t have hired them. Later, inevitably, various writer and artist teams evolved their own ways of working—e.g., in the early 1970s Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner would get together to co-plot Doctor Strange, but that was because Brunner wanted to be involved, not because Englehart couldn’t have come up with a synopsis all by himself and simply mailed it to the artist. [MARCH 2021 NOTE: The same was true of most of my work with artist Neal Adams.] Riesman even manages either to misunderstand Stan’s brother Larry Lieber on the way many of the early Marvel stories were written—or else, back in 1999, Larry himself was totally misremembering when he told me in a published interview that, to the best of his recollection, every single story he wrote was done in the script-in-advance format, never by the Marvel Method: “A full script is the only way I know how to write.” That quotation Riesman couldn’t seem to locate, even though he quotes liberally from my magazine Alter Ego throughout his book.

artwork and even the visual storytelling (by Jack Kirby, a major artist whose work I’d been following since the age of seven). Riesman himself doesn’t seem to understand the full variety of ways that the “Marvel Method” worked. Begun primarily to benefit the artists—so that, at a time when Stan was virtually the company’s sole writer, they wouldn’t have to sit on their hands earning no money until he had time to bang out a full script for them—it turned out to have other, unintended consequences, like increasing the action quota and visual appeal of the stories. Then the scripter would swoop in and tie things together with whatever words were needed to augment the pictures and add flavor to the sequence. In truth, the titular writer surrounded the story at both extremities, beginning and end. On page 99 of his book, Riesman makes a more or less blanket statement concerning the “Marvel Method” that “critically, no script was written” before the artist drew it following “some kind of discussion between writer and artist”—but he’s demonstrably wrong on that. Maybe Stan quit writing synopses for Kirby and Ditko (and the credits eventually reflected that)… but I know for a fact that, at least into 1966, he was still writing out synopses for some artists, such as Gene Colan. I myself began scripting for Marvel in July of 1965. And with relatively few exceptions of stories plotted or partly plotted over the phone (usually so that an artist could make some money by starting work a day or so sooner on a story), I wrote out my synopses—usually two or three or more pages for a 20-page story. A number of them still exist and have been printed. Sure, a lot of fight choreography therein got left to the Hecks, Buscemas, and Colans, but the motivation and the storyline were there. And other writers that came along followed

But, no matter how well the Random House publicity machine manages to hype this book, as long as it stands as currently published, with Stan all but written off as an inveterate liar whose most important creation was his public persona (when it was actually the concept and direction of the Marvel Universe, an idea that was anathema to Jack Kirby, as per in-book quotes), it will remain undeserving of the high praise heaped upon it by people who, for the most part, don’t really know what the hell they’re talking about. NOTE: Turn to next page for Roy Thomas’ previously unprinted addendum to the preceding article...

www.comics.org

The Doctor Pays A House Call The bottom two tiers of panels on p. 5 of Fantastic Four #10 (Jan. 1963), in which Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were shown in their office (not yet christened Marvel Comics) trying to come up with a new storyline. In these panels, none other than Dr. Doom waltzes in and takes over. Whether this interaction between creators and created was Stan’s idea, or Jack’s, or a joint notion, it seems unlikely that Stan would’ve approved such a scene a couple of years later (despite their attempt at wedding-crashing in the 1965 FF Annual), because it would’ve undermined the reality he was increasingly seeking in the Marvel line. Jack’s views on the matter are perhaps harder to ferret out. Script by Lee, pencils by Kirby, inks by Ayers. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

All that said: If you slice and dice the more than occasional bits of unhealthy fat off Riesman’s book—the places where he goes off on unsupported flights of fancy to declare on his own recognizance that “Kirby… may well have been the sole creator of the whole kit and caboodle” of Marvel concepts and characters—you wind up with a book that could be a welcome, even major addition to the handful of biographies written to date about Stan Lee.

A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By Abraham Riesman

Addendum:

Fact-Checking The Fact-Bender

rom knows, I’m sympathetic to errors made in the earnest attempt to relate history and/or biography. Every issue of Alter Ego contains a few mistakes; I try to acknowledge those I learn about in later letters sections. And the ink was scarcely dry on The Stan Lee Story, the massive (and expensive) tome I wrote in 2018, before Taschen Publishing and I were informed that, back in 1934, Timely Comics founder Martin Goodman was the employee/editor of Louis Silberkleit, not his partner as various others had previously reported (as did we)… and that a handful of other minor factual errors had crept in, thankfully mostly re Stan’s endeavors in the 1990s and after, a period for which the existing sources are less plentiful (and dependable) than those that deal with the Marvel Comics years. So, like I said… I’m sympathetic to honest errors. Still, I feel the chief transgression of this book is how the author goes so far out of his way to undermine much of the received history and biography of Stan Lee. Thus, it behooves me to try to set the record straight wherever I can—sometimes aided and abetted by Barry Pearl’s 2-17-21 post to his online “Barry’s Pearls of Comic Book Wisdom.” In what follows, I’ve made scant attempt to deal with Stan’s personal/non-professional life, let alone with the tribulations that became part of his story during the final two years of his life. But, just as I’ve worked with Taschen to correct a few missteps in a forthcoming edition of The Stan Lee Story, even so do I figure that (if there ever is a second edition) Riesman and Crown Books might wish to reconsider a few statements presented as “facts” in True Believer, when they are often at best ill-supported opinions. To wit: Actually, although it might manage to get off on a technicality here, the book’s very subtitle—as more than one person pointed out to me as soon as they’d seen a copy—seems like such a stretch as to make one doubt the intent and honesty of everything one is likely to find within its covers. The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee? Well, okay… so Stan died, as all humans must. If that’s the “Fall” Riesman and Crown are talking about, it might as well be part of the title or subtitle of every biography ever published. But its use here is extremely dubious. Because, really, Stan never fell. Sure, in his last couple of years on this Earth, various people were accused of stealing money from him (so that the poor guy died with a mere eight digits—and not in the low eight digits— in his combined bank account and estate)… or of “elder abuse” (though these charges are problematical, and largely unproven— and anyway, Stan was well cared for at the end, at least so far as I could judge the last time I saw him at his home, less than two days before his death)… or even a modicum of geriatric sexual scandal (charges which always sounded potentially frivolous, and now seem to be mostly gone with the wind).

Visiting Day An early Fantastic Four yarn that cracked, if it didn’t quite break, the fabled “fourth wall” was the lead tale in #11 (Feb. 1963), in which the latest issue of FF is being proudly brandished by a youngster (but not the youngest type of comics reader, note!) as the colorful quartet themselves come walking up. Script by Stan Lee; pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by Dick Ayers. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Into each life some rain must fall, and Stan endured a few thunderstorms very late in his; but the word “Fall” seems more designed to sell books than to complete an accurate picture of this particular man’s journey through life. As Barry Pearl pointed out on his blog: “While Mr. Riesman points out every perceived failure [of Stan Lee], he ignores Stan’s successes.” What kind of biography is that? Stan more than once related how, when he was a boy and his family had to move continually from one low-rent apartment to another, he always seemed to wind up with a rear room whose window looked out directly on a brick wall across an alley, and that his greatest desire was “to one day be rich enough to have an apartment that faced the street.” The day I saw him last, thirty-some hours before he passed away, Stan was seated well-attired on a comfortable chair facing a huge picture window that looked out on a spacious terrace and swimming pool… and past it to the sprawling city of Los Angeles, far below those famous and expensive Hollywood Hills. I’d say that, by his own standards, Stan had pretty much made it… and, while he could have wished at that point for youth and

“There Are Lies... Damn Lies...” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee!

vigor, he was otherwise just exactly where he had always wanted to be. Some “Fall”! But suddenly—I have a sort of epiphany: Maybe the “Fall” Riesman wants us to consider isn’t any that Stan Lee had in his lifetime—but a “fall from grace” that the biographer himself wants to bring about, if only posthumously, by accusing him, as that 2020 book ad back on p. 31 says, of “pull[ing] off one of the most daring acts of artistic theft in modern history.” If that’s the “Fall” Riesman is talking about—and really, once you think about it, it’s almost impossible to imagine that it could be anything else—then I feel that, in any subsequent edition, Crown Books should change the book’s subtitle. Because he isn’t likely to have convinced anyone who has access to (or interest in) any facts or intelligent observations that lie outside its pages. Well, let that go. Let’s move on to a few “facts” that are a bit more susceptible to objective “checking”… identified below by the page numbers of the book on which the dubious statement occurs: P. 14: “[A]t his core, Stan was a man whose success came more from ambition than from talent.” So, can you see the problem, right off the bat? Riesman begs the question early and often, here simply assuming and stating that Stan’s talent was grossly inferior to his ambition. Of course, this isn’t the kind of “error” that can be dissected and refuted, because it’s really just a judgment call—one of what seems an almost infinite number that the author makes in this holier-than-thou tome. And anyway, if I stopped to nitpick over every nasty aspersion Riesman casually tosses off in the course of his book, I’d still be typing away here when the deadline rolled around for Alter Ego #172. Let’s just say—the statement is of virtually no use whatever from a historical or biographical perspective. It’s just a value judgment, and a pretty worthless one, at that. P. 42: “[Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s National Allied Publications] “put out New Fun, the first comic book to feature new material, but it lasted only a handful of issues.” This is emblematic of Riesman’s generally poor knowledge of

Larrupin’ Larry Lieber (on right) with Roy Thomas at the East Coast Con in New Jersey, 4-28-18. Taking care of business in the background is Sharon Rice of Desert Wind. Photo by John Cimino.

(or research on) the field. New Fun wasn’t the “first comic book to feature new material,” just the first one of that type to be regularly published. Far more importantly, Riesman can write that it “lasted only a handful of issues” only because he didn’t bother to learn that, after six issues, the name of the magazine was changed (in a couple of stages) to More Fun Comics—after which it thrived for 121 more issues, being discontinued only in 1947, after a run of more than a dozen years. P. 72: “The living arrangements [young Larry Lieber living with brother Stan and his wife Joan after their mother’s death] lasted only a few months before Larry opted to live with his cousins Martin and Jean Goodman.” Through his friend Frank Lovece, Larry has recently corrected this bit of misinformation on Facebook. He says that, when he left Stan’s, he “moved into a hotel on the Upper West Side and lived there by myself until the Korean War, and then I went into the Korean War for four years.” When he returned to civilian life, he lived with an aunt and uncle for a time, occasionally visiting the Goodmans on weekends. It was actually about “six, seven years” after he had lived with the Lees that the Goodmans invited him to move into their home. Thanks to John Cimino and Robert Menzies for bringing this to my attention. P. 73: “‘When my mother died, our life changed dramatically.’ The change was not born of grief but rather of logistics.” More of the same as on p. 14, really… this time, a quotation from Stan, followed by a judgment by Riesman. But perhaps, rather than criticize the author, we should all simply marvel at his ability to look inside the mind and heart of Stan Lee and know precisely what he meant by that quote, when the man was known for playing his emotional cards very close to his vest.

The Doctors Are In! (Left:) Dr. Frederic Wertham (on left) on the TV series Firing Line, circa the 1960s or ’70s. (Right:) Dr. Hilde L. Mosse, in an undated photo that appeared in Fingeroth and Thomas’ 2011 TwoMorrows volume The Stan Lee Universe.

In other words—not a verifiable error, just another cheap shot. Collect them all. P. 81: “There’s just one problem with these ‘Lee/Wertham debates,’ as Stan called them: They don’t appear to have ever happened.”

A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By Abraham Riesman

researching Stan Lee for donkey’s years would have noticed (and mentioned) that his subject at least had a contentious run-in with a major Wertham colleague and champion whose credentials and views were nearly identical to those of the good Doctor himself? Yet, one searches in vain, on that page or anywhere in True Believer, for any mention of Dr. Hilde L. Mosse. Wouldn’t you think that Stan’s very public clash with her, in which Wertham’s name and views are prominently referenced, would be worthy of some sort of passing mention in this section of the book? Like maybe on the page where it’s noted that no actual “Lee/Wertham” debates can be confirmed? Instead, Riesman says that the “closest thing to a contemporary broadside against Wertham” by Stan was the script for the story “The Raving Maniac” in Suspense #29. Well, let’s be generous. Maybe Riesman just didn’t know about Stan’s mutually hostile encounter with Hilde Mosse. After all, it’s not like it happened on a mass medium or anything. (Oh, wait… it did!) Or else Riesman never cracked open a copy of Danny

These Men… These Monsters… After the cosmic conflagrations of Fantastic Four #48-50’s “Galactus Trilogy,” Stan and Jack showed in FF #51 (June 1966) that they could turn on a dime and produce a human-interest tale that has had nearly as much impact over the years. Script by Lee; pencils by Kirby; inks by Sinnott. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Actually, Riesman is technically correct here, in the sense that there were probably no in-person confrontations between Stan and Frederic Wertham, M.D.; most likely Stan erred in claiming that, whether or not he intended to deceive anyone. However, it’s likewise arguable that he was simply forgetful of the precise person or persons with whom he definitely did take issue over charges made at mid-century by Wertham against what he called “crime comic books.” It’s well-documented, for instance, that on November 12, 1968, Stan appeared on “The Barry Farber Show,” a popular radio talk-show in the New York City area, where he grappled verbally with Dr. Hilde L. Mosse, a prominent colleague and supporter of Wertham’s, at a time when Doc W. himself was still working that particular vein (as per a chapter in his 1966 book A Sign for Cain). Farber introduced Mosse, in fact, by saying she was “just as official as Dr. Frederic Wertham,” whatever that precisely means… and the main feature of the hour was a spirited brouhaha between Stan and Mosse. Now, I wouldn’t bother to bring this up—I’d just accept the fact that Stan misspoke, misremembered, or whatever when he referred to “debates” with Wertham himself, except that… well, wouldn’t you think that a conscientious author like Riesman who’s been

Triton True In a string of several issues that culminated in FF #47 (Feb. 1966), Lee and Kirby introduced the incomparable Inhumans, starting with Gorgon and Karnak (Medusa had debuted earlier as one of the Frightful Four), followed by Black Bolt and finally Triton. Chances are that Stan gave Jack his head in this instance, and that the Inhumans were primarily a Kirby concept… but the combination of Stan’s dialogue and Kirby’s storytelling kept their Marvel collaborations at a sales and creative height that, one may argue, was rarely if ever achieved by either man working without the other. That ought to be a clue of some kind for the wise. Script by Lee; pencils by Kirby; inks by Sinnott. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“There Are Lies... Damn Lies...” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee!

Fingeroth’s and my 2011 book The Stan Lee Universe, or Danny’s fine 2019 bio A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee. But maybe Riesman couldn’t tell from the titles of those two books that they dealt with the guy he was researching. Sometimes these things just kind of fall through the cracks. P. 96: “The general public is typically aware of only one narrative of the Marvel revolution: ‘Stan came up with all the characters, plots, and dialogue; Jack just came up with the visuals.’” Actually, if the “general public” knows only the version of events that Riesman paraphrases above, that’s hardly Stan’s fault. First, it’s because the “general public” never read the many, many places in the pages of Marvel’s 1960s comics wherein Stan praised Jack Kirby’s contributions to the skies, often giving him credit for what amounts to co-plotting stories, and on occasion even saying that Jack was likely to come up with a particular story all on his own. True, Stan was inconsistent on this point over the decades, probably partly because of his audience: he was aware that Jack’s name, or Ditko’s, or Romita’s, or whoever’s, would not ring a bell with the more general viewer/listener, and lazy reporters often wanted to keep the story simple by focusing all the attention on one person… something, admittedly, to which Stan was not averse, when that person was him. Personally, I could wish Stan had done more, in non-comics-specific settings, to credit his various collaborators, Kirby in particular… but it’s definitely not true that Stan ever claimed to have come up with “all the characters, plots, and dialogue,” with Jack and others merely supplying “the visuals.” Riesman’s paraphrase above is a vast over-simplification, a way-too-broad generalization of Stan’s usual spiel. If the “quote” at the head of this section is accurate at all, it’s a quotation of the words of others, not of Stan himself.

But hey—guess what: Stan Lee proclaimed to his dying day that he had had the initial idea for most of the 1960s Marvel heroes, with Jack being brought in later to help develop those characters. So why are we supposed to believe one man’s claim and not the other’s, given the lack of hard evidence? Of course, Riesman surely realizes that, since Stan was his editor and de facto boss, Jack could never have simply informed him of “what was going to happen in a given plot”—unless Stan agreed and gave the go-ahead. Whether Jack ever thought about it or not, everything he ever told Stan he was “going to” do in a given issue was really just a suggestion… the same way it was when, for instance, I told Stan one day in 1966 that I wanted to introduce a new X-Man who was of Japanese descent (Stan said no to that one) or to launch an intergalactic war between the Kree and the Skrulls (to that one, happily, he said yes)… or when Gerry Conway, John Romita, and I said we wanted to off Gwen Stacy in The Amazing Spider-Man (Stan said yes, though he did later regret doing so and even sincerely managed to forget he’d ever heard that notion before it was published). One of the things people have to realize about Stan Lee is that, like many another busy, forward-looking professional—and Stan was, as my keen-eyed wife Dann put it after a bit of observation, “one of the most future-oriented people” she ever met—he tended to discard (i.e., forget) events or discussions even in the recent

For instance, as late as October 1975, when Jack called in to Carole Hemingway’s popular L.A. radio talk show on which Stan was the interviewee, Stan not only refers to Jack as “one of the greatest artists in the whole world,” but, in the very next sentence, acknowledges that Jack “started most of the characters with me.” [See Alter Ego #161.] Yeah, he’s saying that about the guy who he felt had stabbed him in the back in 1970 when he started working for DC Comics before even bothering to tell him he was quitting, and who had then viciously lampooned him as “Funky Flashman”! And Barry Pearl, on the above-mentioned blog, points out that Stan went into greater detail in that area in a speech at a 2007 West Coast meeting of CAPS (Comic Art Professional Society), before an audience composed primarily of his fellow pros in the comics and related fields, where he said the following: “Comicbooks are a collaborative medium. Had I not worked with artists like Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita, John Buscema, Gil Kane, all the rest of them, Gene Colan, Syd Shores—yes, Syd Shores, too—Dick Ayers, Joe Sinnott, all those guys… my stories would not have looked as good…. Those guys were writers themselves. But they would write with pictures…. It was a total collaboration affair and sometimes I feel a little guilty, you know: ‘Stan did this, Stan did that.’ I did it, but I did it with them. And they really deserve as much [credit] as I ever get.” You won’t find that quote, in full or in part, in Riesman, either. P. 99: “It was just two men in a room. Kirby relentlessly claimed until his dying day that his discussions were merely a matter of his telling Stan what was going to happen in a given plot, then going home and creating what he’d said he would create….”

They’re Only (In)human! Splash page for the beginning of a new monthly “Inhumans” series written and penciled by Jack Kirby for Amazing Adventures #1 (Aug. 1970). Inks by Chic [misspelled “Chick”] Stone. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By Abraham Riesman

past, once they were over and done with. That aspect of Stan’s personality could be maddening at times, but the fact remains: Stan was, in many ways, almost as forgetful as he generally portrayed himself as being. From the day I met him in 1965, he walked around with 3”x5” note cards in his shirt pocket, on which he’d scribble down things because he didn’t trust his memory. And, while some have argued that his “poor memory” was only a convenient shield against being held responsible for earlier decisions, I feel I spent more than enough time working with him between ’65 and ’74, in particular, to be certain that his notoriously bad memory was way more than just an artful dodge. P. 106: “[The synopsis for the first portion of Fantastic Four #1] has since been reprinted by Thomas on multiple occasions as his way of identifying Stan as the prime mover.”

A minor error, but still: Riesman has it backward. As I’ve often stated, I was officially hired as “staff writer,” with no mention of any editorial duties. That acknowledgment came a couple of weeks later. Pp. 161-162: “One day, Stan and Larry [Lieber] had a rare lunch together and Stan told him that he’d just made an investment that had yielded him $250,000. ‘And I thought to myself, What are you telling it to me for?’ Larry recalls with a slight sneer. ‘To me, that’s like walking out in the street if you just had a good meal and telling a beggar… “Hey, you know what a good meal I just had?”… I wondered if he didn’t do it just to be cruel.’” A pretty damning reminiscence by Stan’s younger brother,

But not just by me. For instance, Marvel Comics itself reprinted that synopsis at least once (in an annual, I believe), and I was in no way involved in that reprinting. Riesman’s statement is factually true enough, but I don’t think I’m being especially paranoid in suspecting that he’s trying to make it seem as if my reprinting that FF #1 synopsis is somehow a vaguely sinister plot to give Stan credit he doesn’t deserve. Especially since, as I stated in the Hollywood Reporter article, he gives unwarranted credence to the “rumors” that that partial synopsis was a latter-day fake. P. 152: “Kirby was being disrespected and underpaid in the present as of 1966…” I’m hardly going to argue Jack was overpaid or underpaid at Marvel. For one thing, I haven’t seen his tax returns for those years. However, as I said in my THR article, his decade-plus there was “probably the most financially stable job that he ever had in the comics industry.” Perhaps that needs elucidating. A very knowledgeable executive and creator in the field (who prefers not to be named, for personal reasons) made a rough estimate of Jack’s annual income around the end of his Marvel run, and adjusted it into current dollars. Depending upon whether Jack’s rate in 1970 was $50 (as I seem to recall) or $40 (as this person calculated), Jack was probably making between $250,000 and $400,000 a year in today’s money. Not a total king’s ransom, certainly—and of course Jack (like other professionals) should have had more of a share in the properties and stories by then—but it was hardly the “just making a living” for which it gets derided. P. 159: “Roy Thomas was given writing duties in addition to his assistant editing.”

Giving Comics The Shaft (Left:) A scene from the 1971 film Shaft, starring Richard Roundtree as the African-American gumshoe. By an odd coincidence, John Shaft had been created by Ernest Tidyman, who shortly before had worked on staff at Magazine Management. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.] (Above:) The splash page of Hero for Hire #1 (June 1972), a series developed by Marvel’s brain trust, which in that instance consisted of writer Archie Goodwin, associate editor Roy Thomas, future art director John Romita, and most especially editor Stan Lee, who came up with the original concept and guided the creative discussion… which consisted of maybe an hour of conversation. A few days later, penciler George Tuska was brought aboard—and up-andcoming African-American artist Billy Graham was recruited as inker. Graham eventually became the series’ full artist and even scripter for a time. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“There Are Lies... Damn Lies...” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee!

who at that time was just scraping by as a comics writer/artist. Except that—Stan isn’t the guy Larry was telling Riesman about in that story! According to Larry in his recent remarks put on Facebook by his friend Frank Lovece, it was his older cousin-bymarriage Martin Goodman who committed that particular verbal vulgarity: “Martin Goodman invited me to lunch and he was telling me… that he was in an investment group with some other men…. [T]hey didn’t expect to make money. And lo and behold, they did make money. He made $250,000, he told me. I’m sitting there eating and saying, ‘Gee, that’s very nice…congratulations.’ He was almost bragging about it. And I thought at the time I can hardly pay my rent, I’m making so little. So I thought he was going to say to me, ‘Larry, how are you doing? Can I help you out?’ Nothing. He paid for the meal. So I said to the interviewer, Riesman, that’s almost like a guy who comes out of a fancy restaurant and sees someone begging on the street and says, ‘Boy, I just had a great meal!’ So the guy writes that. And the only problem is, instead of saying it’s Martin Goodman I had lunch with, he made it Stan. And it wasn’t Stan. It’s possible I accidentally said Stan, but I don’t think so. That wasn’t Stan.” ’Nuff said? P. l70: “Stan told Kirby he could finally have an Inhumans series all to himself, with no shared creative credits for writing, but the book kept getting pushed further and further back in the schedule and never materialized.” That’s true only if you assume that the “Inhumans” series had to be a full comicbook to fulfill Stan’s promise. With a cover date of August 1970, Stan got Marvel to launch a new monthly title, Amazing Adventures, whose leadoff feature was “The Inhumans”—written and penciled by Jack Kirby. (See p. 43.) Could Riesman really not locate this information? P. 178: “While Thomas’s rock band played, secretaries danced in Fantastic Four costumes….” Another minor point: It wasn’t really “my” rock band, though I was the singer in the four-man combo that performed two songs onstage at the “Stan Lee and Marvel Comics at Carnegie Hall” event in January 1972. As for garb, only one of the three young ladies who danced while our band played—namely, my first wife, Jeanie—either wore an F.F. costume or had ever been a “secretary” at Marvel (and she hadn’t been one since at least 1969). Our friend Linda Parente and one of the models at her small New Jersey agency sported the Medusa and

Wasp outfits. Figured I might as well point that out, for the record. P. 179: “Chip would be publisher of Martin Goodman’s overall company, Magazine Management, meaning he’d still be Stan’s boss….” Now, maybe such a hierarchical diagram did exist somewhere on paper, I dunno… though I’d have to see it to believe it. I do know that, from the moment in 1972 Stan told me that henceforth he would be the president and publisher of Marvel Comics and that the latter was about to become what amounted to a separate company under the conglomerate umbrella, there was, so far as I ever knew over the next few months before Chip was totally gone from Magazine Management, never an instance in which Stan Lee reported to Chip Goodman or had to defer to him in any way, shape, or form. In fact, the entire point of Stan’s little power play that had made him Marvel’s publisher and president was to make certain that he wouldn’t be subject to Goodman the Younger. Stan never, from that moment forward, considered Chip his “boss”— and I doubt if Chip felt that way, either. P. 184: “[S]eeing the box-office success of movies like Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Stan said Marvel should have its own blaxploitation hero….” Just a little backhanded compliment there from Riesman, because it’s never been denied that the boxoffice

Larry Lieber Presents… After departing Atlas/Seaboard, Larry not only edited but drew the cover of Marvel’s Captain Britain #1 (Oct. 13, 1976)… penciled the early Incredible Hulk newspaper strip, as per the Stan-scripted example directly below for Dec. 12, 1978… and penciled the Amazing Spider-Man comic strip six days a week for well over two decades, including the specimen at page bottom from Feb. 10, 2017, featuring Rocket Raccoon and Ronan the Accuser (officially scripted by Stan and certainly supervised by him, though actually ghost-written by Roy Thomas). Clearly, as far as Stan was concerned, Larry was neither gone nor forgotten. Spider-Man inks by Alex Saviuk; Hulk inker uncertain. [Comics material TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By Abraham Riesman

success of the 1971 Shaft film provided the impetus for Stan to finally stop waiting for the right opportunity to launch a Black Panther solo series without getting embroiled with echoes of the political organization, or for there to be a groundswell for The Falcon to get his own title. However, contrary to Riesman’s characterization, neither Stan nor I nor original writer/co-creator Archie Goodwin ever intended Luke Cage to be a “blaxploitation” character. That’s just another of Riesman’s nearly bottomless quiver-full of cheap shots. I saw many of the early so-called “blaxploitation” flicks that succeeded Shaft (lots of them played just a couple of blocks from my apartment on E. 86th Street), and they nearly all consisted of African-American heroes and victims on one side and white bad-guys on the other (though there were some black criminals in the mix, as well). Far as I could tell in the early ’70s, that black-vs.-white aspect was pretty much the formula, even if those films were often written, produced, and directed by white men. Hero for Hire, however, was an equal-opportunity employer in terms of both heroes and villains. It was black hit men who killed Cage’s girlfriend Reva in the first issue… while the Caucasian prison doctor Noah Bernstein was a sympathetic character. Stan, Archie, and I were determined not to follow the lead of the “blaxploitation” films—besides, Hero for Hire was launched before most of the latter had even come out. Diamondback, a black man, was Luke’s first costumed foe… and while many of the mobsters Cage encountered were white, others were not.

In the series’ initial 16 issues (I choose that number simply because my first Cage volume happens to have those bound together), antagonists Gideon Mace, the Phantom of 42nd Street, Dr. Doom, and Stiletto were white—while Diamondback, Black Maria, Mr. Death/Señor Muerte, Chemistro, Lion-King, and Big Ben were black. From the very beginning, Cage battled criminals of any creed and/or color that came along, because that’s how we figured things should be. That’s quite different from the “blaxploitation” films. Does Riesman really not see that? P. 186: “So the creative duo [Gerry Conway and John Romita] met at Conway’s apartment to hash out alternative ideas [which led to the death of Gwen Stacy].” Whatever else happened in the lead-up to that story in Amazing Spider-Man #121, Gerry Conway recently confirmed what I already strongly suspected: that he and John Romita never met at the former’s apartment to discuss any storyline, nor did he ever say they did. Not important, just a bit of sloppiness on the author’s part. P. 188: “Around this time [i.e., of the June 1974 founding by Martin Goodman of Atlas/Seaboard]… [Larry Lieber] asked Stan for work and got that comment from an editor that Stan didn’t consider Larry to be part of his family…. Indignant, Larry made a rare stand against his brother and went to Atlas/Seaboard.” This is something I’d definitely need to check with Larry himself about before I believed it, because it’s hard to imagine any Marvel “editor” in the mid-1970s (as per Riesman’s phrase “Around this time”) stupid enough to have made the comment he paraphrases in the first sentence above. I myself was editor-in-chief through early September of ’74, by which time the Goodmans had launched Atlas/Seaboard, and I certainly didn’t. And by the time I stepped down, Larry was already gone… so it couldn’t have been my immediate successors Len Wein and/or Marv Wolfman… nor is it likely some then-editorial assistant such as Don McGregor or Doug Moench or Dave Kraft would’ve made it, either. For my part, while EIC, I saw to it that Larry had as much work as he needed. Though I can’t recall any particular directive from Stan, I assumed this was what he wanted. Larry was, after all, not only Stan’s sibling, but the first writer of “Iron Man,” “Thor,” and “Ant-Man.”

Down—But Probably Not Out Mark Glidden’s artistic conception of a scene from the 1984 X-Men screenplay by Roy Thomas & Gerry Conway: Peter Rasputin (Colossus) in bad shape after rescuing Professor Xavier. This and a few other illos by MG related to that screenplay were on display when Roy and Gerry talked about that cinematic near-miss back in A/E #58. [Heroes TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

As for post-1975, when Larry left Atlas/Seaboard: Jerry Bails’ Who’s Who in American Comic Books 1928-1999 lists him as editing the “Marvel UK” Captain Britain starting in 1976, as well as drawing covers for Marvel in 1977. He was also the penciler of the Incredible Hulk newspaper strip from the beginning in ’78 (with Stan as the writer, of course). After that, there is a gap in his Marvel credits— which lasts until 1986. You figure it out. But, after a brief stint penciling the Spider-Man comic strip circa 1980, Larry re-assumed those chores for Stan in 1986 and drew at least the six dailies a week for the last two decades of the strip. In all these cases, the hiring was done by Stan, so it sure doesn’t sound as if he didn’t count Larry as his brother. The full-time Spider-Man gig ended only very shortly before Stan’s death, when Larry retired from it to work on a novel. As for Larry “ma[king] a rare stand against his brother” by becoming an editor at his uncle Martin’s new company, well, maybe that’s the way Larry saw it, or at least sees it today… but again, I’d want to hear that description from his own lips. I was dealing with Stan virtually every day at the time Atlas/Seaboard was launched

“There Are Lies... Damn Lies...” And Then, Apparently, There’s Stan Lee!

it’s going way too far to say that negotiations over Marvel movies in that era “never went anywhere.” If Orion itself had survived, there very well might have been a mutant movie before the 1980s were over. Pp. 281 & 304: “Stan Lee went to his grave having to contend with the fact that he finally became a worldwide legend mostly thanks to the mercy of movers and shakers who weren’t him…. The MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe]… was built on Stan’s notion from the sixties of an interwoven and addictive shared universe. Stan had walked so that movies like [Spider-Man:] Homecoming could run.”

“Super-Heroes? In New York? Give Me A Break!” Point of personal privilege: Perhaps Ye Editor’s favorite Stan Lee cameo (out of some three dozen or so) is the one from Joss Whedon’s The Avengers (2012), in which Stan portrays one of the old guys who play chess in the city’s parks, who has clearly just been asked by a TV reporter what he thinks about real-life super-heroes. Our heading above is his reply—which Roy found hilarious, coming from the guy who’d been helping to people the Big Apple with costumed comicbook cut-ups since 1961. [TM & © Marvel Studios.]

in June ’74 (I myself fielded an editorial offer from Chip Goodman soon afterward, in a restaurant, while, over a radio in the background, Richard Nixon was delivering one of his last speeches as President)… and when Stan informed me that Larry was leaving Marvel to work for Atlas, I didn’t sense an ounce of anger or resentment in his voice. My takeaway from what he said then was that he knew Larry had always been in his shadow at Marvel, so he’d felt he should give him his blessing to go out on his own and give it a try with the new company. Stan reserved all his scorn for the Goodmans, not for Larry. By the time Larry left Atlas/Seaboard roughly a year later, I was no longer editor-in-chief and was headed for L.A…. but clearly, as detailed above, Stan welcomed him back. Again, it’s not that the lead-off pair of statements made by Riesman are necessarily untruths… I wasn’t in the room to hear precisely what Larry told him, and neither were you… but I’d want to hear it from Larry before I didn’t believe that he was, at the very least, misquoted. P. 212: “[Stan’s] most cherished goal remained live-action Marvel movies, and he made that clear to his audience, telling them that he was this close to closing deals on… [among other things] an X-Men movie written by Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway. Such negotiations never went anywhere.” Well, actually, they did, even if no movie resulted in the end. I’ll let others speak about other Marvel film projects of the 1980s if they wish to, but the fact remains that in 1984 Gerry and I were hired by an independent production company named Nelvana, for which we wrote (and received payment for) the first draft or two of an X-Men movie, as detailed in A/E #58. The ultimate releasing studio was to have been Orion Pictures, of late a major player in the film field. Unfortunately, Orion turned out to be pretty much on its last legs by then. Even so, a more experienced screenwriter, Stephen E. McDonald, wrote at length in A/E #71 of how he was hired by Orion a short time later to do a major rewrite of our screenplay (partly due to budget considerations), only to see the project quickly go into “turnaround” (i.e., shopped to other studios) because of Orion’s looming demise. So, true enough, that particular X-Men film wasn’t made… but

Could this, perhaps, be what Abraham Riesman snidely intends to be perceived as Stan’s “fall”? Well, probably not, because while it’s true that other, more experienced Hollywood hands were ultimately responsible for the likes of Blade, then X-Men, then Spider-Man, and eventually the entire Marvel Studios body of work reaching film, Stan always seemed to me to be quite pleased, both personally and financially (except briefly when he sued over profits from Spider-Man, of course), to see the Marvel Universe conquer the cinematic world—especially after all his years of vocally expressed discontent at witnessing nothing but Saturday morning cartoons aimed at young children. Riesman seems to want the reader to believe that Stan was frustrated because movies starring characters he had either co-created or at least midwifed were now making billions of dollars, with some of that money finding its way to him (directly and, also, indirectly, by increasing his fees for appearances at comics conventions, etc.), and were featuring him in cameos that had made him almost as recognizable on the screen as Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man. How does that even make sense? Riesman doesn’t back up his assumption with anything resembling evidence… nothing Stan wrote, nothing somebody remembers Stan saying. He just tosses his little stinkbomb and moves on to the next perceived target. P. 330: “Stan had one more visitor, a man who had had a tumultuous relationship with him but who ultimately forgave and embraced him: his protégé, Roy Thomas.” I felt I should respond to the above statement, which is both true and yet somehow, in the end, misleading. I suppose it’s not unreasonable to say that, at least on one level (climaxed by a trio of occasions over more than half a century), Stan and I had a “tumultuous relationship.” I was genuinely furious at him—and told him so to his face—in early 1972 when he reneged on a promise made to my first wife Jean that she could have a job at Marvel again after she graduated from Hunter College… certainly I was unhappy and even a bit disgusted by the precise events that caused me to leave the editor-in-chief position in 1974 (details elsewhere)… and I was disappointed, though not particularly surprised, in 1980, when he made only a half-assed attempt to intervene to keep me at Marvel when I felt the then-editor-in-chief had basically lied to me during negotiations over a renewal of my writer/editor contract. So I suppose I did ultimately “forgive and embrace” Stan… but if so, that was a process that was pretty much complete by the early 1980s, a third of a century before his passing! Other than the above three occasions, Stan and I had only the usual disagreements over the years that any boss and employee have, whether when I was working directly for Marvel Comics or, from 2000 on, directly for

A “Book Report” On The Controversial Biography By Abraham Riesman

him as ghost writer of the syndicated Spider-Man comic strip.

Summing Up As I said above somewhere, I basically stand by what I said in my online article for The Hollywood Reporter. When I wrote the original piece back in February, I stated that, in spite of the errors and snide misjudgments therein, I felt that persons interested in the life and times and even legacy of Stan Lee should nonetheless read Riesman’s biography of Stan. I believed that anyone with the ability to read a book “critically”—i.e., to assess its dependability and trustworthiness as one goes along, using one’s own knowledge, insights, and common sense—could

easily spot the many, many points at which Riesman was putting his thumb, if not his hob-nailed boot, onto the scales. And I still do believe that. However, a second hurried reading of True Believer, in preparation for this addendum, has caused me to somewhat rethink my earlier recommendation. If you haven’t already read it by now, more than six months after its original publication— Nah, save your money. You won’t be missing that much. Roy Thomas worked for Stan Lee at Marvel Comics from 1965 through 1980 as writer and editor (and has freelanced off and on for Marvel again since 1987, although by then Stan was no longer involved in the company’s day-to-day activities). Circa 1995, he wrote several unpublished issues of a comics series for Stan’s aborted Excelsior line… and from mid-2000 until its demise in 2019 following Stan’s death, he ghosted the Spider-Man newspaper strip directly for his former mentor. He’s also been a fan of Jack Kirby’s work since at least the age of seven.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Houseroy (Left:) Roy Thomas circa 1969, wearing the first-ever professionally made Spider-Man costume, poses in Stan Lee’s office with (left to right ) Stan and artists Marie Severin and John Romita. Thanks to John Cimino. (Below:) The Amazing Spider-Man newspaper strip for Sunday, August 20, 2000, as ghosted by Roy Thomas for Stan Lee. Art by Alex Saviuk & Joe Sinnott. With thanks to Art Lortie. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

It’s All About Family!

Part XVI Of JOHN BROOME’s 1997 Memoir My Life In Little Pieces A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: As we commence the last few installments of the self-styled “Offbeat Autobio” by Irving Bernard Broome (1913-1999), the author relates a number of brief anecdotes related to himself, his wife, and his daughter, now Ricky Terry Brisacque, who generously allowed us to reprint her father’s short book. “John” Broome wrote comicbook and pulps in the middle years of the 20th century, most notably later issues of the Golden Age All-Star Comics and early adventures of the Silver Age Flash and Green Lantern, co-creating the latter. This episode, as usual, is © the Estate of John Broome, and was retyped by Brian K. Morris….

Short Takes

n the question how it came about that Marxist Communism first gained power in Russia of all places: “Fools Russian where Anglos fear to tread.”

The Broome Family Unit, Christmas 1956 Sigh… we most recently ran the above photo just a couple of issues ago, and before that when we launched this serialization in A/E #149. However, it’s the only pic we have of John, Peggy, and Ricky Broome all together. Thanks to Ricky Terry Brisacque. Early in this chapter, JB recalls how, when younger, he sold the ice-cream confection known as “Eskimo pies” at Steeplechase Park (in the Coney Island amusement park in Brooklyn, NY). Maybe it’s that memory that led him, collaborating with DC editor Julius Schwartz, to create airplane mechanic Thomas Kamalku—“a wizard with jet engines”—in the Silver Age Green Lantern #2 (Sept.-Oct. 1960), and to give him the nickname “Pieface” because he was an “Eskimo”—a now-outdated term for one of the Inuit or related peoples of northern Canada. The allusion to “Eskimo pie” was not a great joke, even back in the day… but Kamalku became a wellrounded and beloved character in the long-running feature, and was the first to be trusted with Hal Jordan’s identity secret. Pencils by Gil Kane; inks by Joe Giella. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

In 1987, Anchorman Dan Rather dealt rather harshly with Vice President [George H.W.] Bush in a CBS-TV interview, leading someone to say: “It’s clear Rather would rather be Rather than president.” Before the Tiananmen massacre in Beijing, the same person was asked if he thought the students could win and replied: “They don’t have a Chinaman’s chance.” Peggy and I read in the papers about a fellow Brooklyn College alumnus, Bernie Cornfeld, who had become a famous millionaire businessman, and who was quoted as saying that as a child, he had sold lollipops in Steeplechase Amusement Park.

Part XVI Of John Broome’s 1997 Memoir My Life In Little Pieces

I am intoning inwardly. “Come on, you white blood corpuscles! Come on you red blood corpuscles! Come on you red, white and blue blood corpuscles! Get in there and fight!” (Sometimes it seems to work pretty well, and in any case it never does me any harm as a medicine just might.)

Daughter Ricky (There is a special language, sometimes a poetry, that springs unbidden from the lips of small children.) Age 5 : ...describing a country thunderstorm during the night... “The rumbling and drumbling and falling down rain...” Age 7: “My bed is all up in a roar…” “Would you unapprove if I invited Marjorie?” “Oh, you’re such a botherous person!” (To which I had to reply that I was only being fatherous.) Age 11: …to me. “You’re just a big fat vegabletarian.” I was on a vegetable diet. When she was sick and I kissed her... “You almost smothacated poor little invalidic me.” Same: Ricky to Marjorie on the telephone excitedly: “And when you come over on Saturday, we’ll make a batter and put it in the oven. Then we’ll sew. When the cake is ready, we’ll eat it!” Age 12: …learning how it is done... “You know, daddy, real fancy people, when they eat, they keep their lips dry.” Same: …about her friend Marjorie, “She’s the most pickley nice girl in the whole world.”

Wingdale

Is There A Doctor In The Underground? John and his wife may have avoided doctors like the plague, but that didn’t stop him from writing a solo Dr. Mid-Nite chapter for the final Golden Age “Justice Society of America” adventure, set mostly in the London Underground (i.e., subway), in All-Star Comics #57 (Feb.-March 1951). Pencils by Arthur Peddy; inks by Bernard Sachs. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Me: Well, whaddya know? I sold Eskimo pies in Steeplechase when I was a kid… She: You sold Eskimo pies? And look where you are! Dope! Why didn’t you sell lollipops? Neither Peggy nor I go to doctors. Going to doctors can be a habit and it’s one we could never really afford so we never acquired it. Instead, we acquired the habit of taking care of ourselves by ourselves one way or another. When something bothers me, I’m likely to talk to the holons involved. Supposing I have a general bodily infection, say, robbing me of energy and making me feel poorly. Well, then I’ll address the particles in the body which are supposed to guard against such an ailment. Even as I walk along the street, for example, my jaw is set and my fists clenched, and

After World War II, with Peggy pregnant, our need became a cheap house with an oil burner, so she wouldn’t have to shovel coal on days I was away. At length, we found one, two miles from a whistle-stop in Dutchess County, New York, in an area so un-urban we once counted thirty deer grazing in the broad meadow across our country road. An alarmed clatter of birds outside our upstairs bedroom window woke us. The birds, the many wild birds around the old house we’d bought on the G.I. Bill—together with its one-point-six acres of land, “be it the more or less”—were often noisy (one twilight, I called down an overly persistent whippoorwill—the easiest call of all to mimic—but when he (she?) dove expectantly over the thick driveway hedge, only to veer off in a flash at the sight of me scrunched down there, I don’t know which of us was the more astonished) but the sounds this time were tinged with panic. I yanked on some duds and ran out. Even half-asleep, I had recognized the piteous piercing cries of our local robin redbreast in all the clamor outside, and now I saw she was leading half our bird colony—blue jays, blackbirds, chickadees, and our special favorites, a catbird couple (the same two had been coming back, I could swear, to our ramshackle barn behind the house each year)—in a kind of whirligig aerial onslaught with Mother Robin herself plus some belligerent jays making pass after pass with stiffened clapping wings at something

It’s All About Family!

Snake In The Grasp Another minor tussle with serpents—this time, in the long-running “Sargon the Sorcerer” feature, in Sensation Comics #71 (Nov. 1947). Script by John Broome; art by Paul Reinman. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.]

in the stout 50-year-old maple at the head of our dirt driveway, where, as everyone around surely knew by now, she had recently and most proudly laid her eggs. Then I saw it, a six-foot blacksnake up in the tree, and ran to get my old baseball bat from the pantry; but as I scurried back, with lethal intentions—for I didn’t know then that one doesn’t kill a blacksnake, one just frightens it off—the snake loosed its hold on a branch and dropped to the ground and slithered into the unmown grass between the road and our low-level wire fence. I thought I’d lost him, and even the bird armada seemed to have lost interest in the would-be-nest raider they could no longer see—all except one catbird (I chose to think it the female) who was perched on the top rung of the wire fence and was moving along it in little hops, her head down as if following something moving underneath her invisibly in the high grass. Gods Above: Wasn’t she tracking the snake—a true “snake in the grass”—for me? I decided she was and, stifling an inborn revulsion, waded in and clubbed the poor serpent to death. And after the deed was done, didn’t the catbird give me out of her bright eyes a rousing hip-hip-hooray as she flew off to join her mate who had been hovering nearby anxiously throughout the proceeding? I say she did, friends, and who is to gainsay me— about an event that took place in that other world fifty years ago… John Broome’s memoirs will continue next issue….

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Art by Jack Kirby, 1941. Thanks to Warren Reece. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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(Right:) Bob Powell’s “The Unbeliever” from Eerie Tales #1 (Nov. 1959). Writer unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Frankenstein Unstitched! by Michael T. Gilbert

kay, I’ll admit it. As a fan of old films, I love hearing tales about how a decaying print of some seemingly-lost-forever film is somehow discovered rotting away in some old barn or closet. And maybe that sole existing copy is an incomplete print, horribly butchered by the movie studio or damaged by time. But somehow the digital wizards at Turner Classic Movies or Criterion Films somehow manage to reconstruct and restore the movies to their original splendor. It made me think: “Why not comicbooks?” More specifically, “Why not ‘The Unbeliever’?” “The Unbeliever” was a fun little story from Hastings Publications’ 1959 one-shot Eerie Tales, beautifully illustrated by Bob Powell. But it was clearly altered before publication to make a short story longer. As we discussed in this column’s introductory page, it was restored by cutting out extra panels and moving the remaining ones to different pages. I tried to be true to the original, but took a few liberties. First, I decided to get rid of the clunky typesetting used in the original, replacing it with a conventional comicbook font in order to make the lettering more organic and readable. I’ll bet the Joe Simon studio would have killed to have Photoshop’s text-changing ability back then! I also altered the title of my version to reflect what I believe was the writer’s original one, before it went through the editing process. Our new “Doubting Thomas!” title reflects back to the pun-ny punchline on the final page, typical of EC-style horror humor. Though it’s an assumption on my part, it makes more sense in that context than the published title. See if you agree. In two instances, I also split a single word balloon into two, moving the second balloon to the following panel. This was done for space reasons, and for continuity’s sake. You’ll find those on page 2, panels 4 and 5, as well as the first two panels on page 3. Compare the top three-panel sequence on that page to the published version (above right) to see how powerful the original one was by contrast.

True “Unbeliever” (On this & previous page:) The 6-page “The Unbeliever” from Eerie Tales #1 (Nov. 1959). This is p. 3; pp. 4-6 are directly below. Art by Bob Powell, writer unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

And finally, please note just how much story the writer was able to squeeze into a short four pages. No wonder the editor thought he could stitch together an extra two pages and no one would notice!

Frankenstein Unstitched!

“Doubting Thomas!” Starting here: The 4-page version of “The Unbeliever,” retitled ”Doubting Thomas!,” as recently reconstructed by Michael T. Gilbert. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Frankenstein Unstitched!

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

That’s all, folks! We hope you enjoyed our twice-told “Frankenstein Unstitched!” comparison. I had fun with the experiment, and hope you did, too! And for more about Eerie Tales and its companion magazine Weird Mysteries, check out my two-part article in Alter Ego #31 & 32 (Dec. 2003 & Jan. 2004). It’s worth searching out! ‘Till next time…

[A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: I rarely recommend books, but I do want to advise fantasy lovers to pick up a copy of the recently published giant-size hardcover Fantastic Paintings of Frazetta, edited by J. David Spurlock. It contains not just some of that legend’s greatest oils, but in many cases the sketches and photos that preceded them. The stories and sketches behind a couple of the artist’s key Conan paintings, alone, are worth the price of admission.]

In Memoriam

Bob Fujitani (1921-2020)

“A Prolific Artist [Of] The Golden Age” By Bryan D. Stroud

obert “Bob” Fujitani, a prolific artist who began his career in the Golden Age, working for many comicbook publishers, as well as drawing the Flash Gordon syndicated newspaper strip, passed away on September 6, 2020, just a few weeks shy of his 99th birthday. He was born October 15, 1921, in Cos Cob, Connecticut. Like so many others, he was enthralled with Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon adventure strip, reading it in the Journal American newspaper. He maintained his interest in art and, thanks to the encouragement of his high school art teacher, applied for and won a 1-year scholarship at the American School of Design in New York City.

Bob Fujitani holds a Sunday Flash Gordon strip that he drew, in a photo juxtaposed with a splash from The Hangman #8 (Fall 1943)—writer unknown— courtesy of the Four Color Shadows blog. [Page TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Soon afterward, artist Tex Blaisdell invited him to work at the Will Eisner Studio, alongside such legends as Bob Powell, Nick Cardy, Chuck Cuidera, and Lou Fine. After a brief enlistment in the U.S. Navy, Fujitani worked for numerous publishers such as Avon with its Eerie Comics early-horror title; Hillman’s Air Fighters (as “B. Fuje”), “Shock Gibson” and “Zebra” for Harvey, “Hangman” for MLJ, and Lev Gleason’s Crime Does Not Pay under editor Charles Biro. In a 2018 interview, Bob recalled plotting sessions with short, stocky MLJ editor Harry Shorten: “He used to call me up and I’d go down there and then he’d forget that he had called me and he didn’t have anything ready. And he’d say, ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter. I’ll write it right now.’ He’d just start. ‘Now let’s see. First we have to get a setting.’ He’s walking up and down while he’s doing this in this little office. ‘Let’s see. A circus. That’s a good setting, because they can be swinging on trapezes and you can set tents afire.’ So, he’s writing this story. He’s also laying out the pictures. I have a pencil and I’m taking it all down as he’s writing it. So, between [that and] his narrative, I get a 9-page story. Then he’d say, ‘Okay, can you have it ready in a couple of days?’ ‘Sure.’” Bob was the co-creator, with writer Bob Bernstein, of the short-lived Judge Wright syndicated newspaper strip, under their respective pen names “Bob Wells” and “Bob Brent.” In a serendipitous bit of good fortune, Fujitani later illustrated his beloved Flash Gordon strip with writer Dan Barry. He particularly enjoyed working for Western Printing on specialty books such as a history of the West Point Military Academy and a Prince Valiant comics series. Fujitani was the recipient of an Inkpot award at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con and spent his retirement back in his native Cos Cob. He and his wife Ruth enjoyed a happy 73-year marriage and raised a daughter, Susan.

In Memoriam

Joe Sinnott (1926-2020)

“The Gold Standard Of Silver Age Inkers” by Roy Thomas

oseph Leonard Sinnott is one of only a couple of artists at 1960s-70s Marvel Comics who, working primarily as an inker, was valued more highly than most pencilers.

Not that Joe was “only” an inker. For most of his working life after he grew up in Saugerties, New York, he both penciled and inked most stories he drew, from his first work (a 1950 backup feature in St. John’s Mopsy comic) through his stint on Marvel’s “Thor” feature in 1963. In between, he’d drawn a bit of everything for just about everybody: spies, crime, Westerns, horror, war, science-fiction, Bible tales, you name it—for Timely, Dell/Western, Treasure Chest, DC, Classics Illustrated, Charlton, ACG, whomever. Around 1950, he and his wife Betty were married; they had four children. Destiny always seemed to draw him back to Marvel. After Timely/Atlas bottomed out circa 1957, Joe had to tread water for only about six months before editor Stan Lee could start giving him work again on the sci-fi/supernatural titles such as Strange Tales and Tales to Astonish. With Journey into Mystery #91 (April 1963), he became for about half a year the regular penciler of “Thor”; however, the kind of Jack Kirby-inspired action that Lee wanted for

Joltin’ Joe Sinnott with the just-inked cover of What If? #11, Jack Kirby’s last-ever comics penciling job on The Fantastic Four. Seen below are his cover for Journey into Mystery #50 (Jan. 1950) and a fabulous interior page from FF #5 (July 1962). Of the latter, Roy T. says: “It was when I first glimpsed this page, with its exquisite inking of The Human Torch, that I knew that I wanted whoever had inked that issue to go on inking FF forever!” Thanks respectively to Bill Mitchell, Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, & Bob Bailey for the photo and scans. And see Doc V’s Timely-Atlas-Comics.blogspot under “Atlas-at-War-interviews” for perhaps the last interview with Joe Sinnott. [Pages TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Marvel yarns was not Joe’s specialty. In the meantime, however, he had filled in as inker of the Kirby-penciled Fantastic Four #4 (July 1962), which introduced Dr. Doom. Both the readers and Stan himself responded very favorably to Joe’s work on that issue, but Joe was too busy just then with assignments for Treasure Chest to accept a regular inking gig for Marvel. Three years later, it was a different story when Stan asked him to ink Kirby again, on FF #44 (Nov. 1965). Joe inked that one, and every issue thereafter through #102 (Sept. 1970) when Kirby departed. A few issues later, he returned to FF and remained except for an occasional issue through 1981… even returning briefly in the late ’80s. He was indeed “the Gold Standard of Silver Age inkers”— and beyond. Along the way, he was in demand to embellish any Marvel comic he could find time to do. Noteworthy runs include Jim Steranko on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the first three giant-size issues of The Silver Surfer over John Buscema. In 1992 Joe basically left comicbooks per se, but [continued at bottom of next page]

In Memoriam

Marty Pasko a.k.a. “Pesky Pasko” (1954-2020)

By Stephan Friedt artin Joseph Pasko was born “Jean-Claude Rochefort” in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on August 4, 1954.

In his teens he frequented the letter columns of comicbooks, and co-published the fanzine Fantazine with his friend, novelist Alan Brennert. Marty attended Northwestern University and New York University, before settling in New York. Beginning in 1968, he popped up in many of the letter columns in Julius Schwartz-edited DC Comics titles, with Julie nicknaming him “Pesky” Pasko for his often-critical letters. His first pro writing credit was “Package Deal” in Warren’s Creepy #51 (March 1973)— because his earlier story “Eye Opener,” in Vampirella #20 (Oct. 1972), had accidentally been credited to his friend and benefactor Doug Moench.

Marty Pasko and the splash page of Superman #320 (Feb. 1978), penciled by Curt Swan and inked by Frank Chiaramonte. With thanks to Bruce Guthrie for the photo, and to Bob Bailey for the page scan. [Page TM & © DC Comics.]

Marty joined DC Comics in 1973, his first Superman-related entry being a “Private Life of Clark Kent” story in Superman #277 (July 1974). From 1977-79 he was a featured Superman writer, including of the new team-up title DC Comics Presents in 1978 and Superman Family from 1979-82. He also had stints on Justice League of America (1974-79), Metal Men (1976-77), and the entire run of Kobra (1976-77). During this time he also scripted the syndicated newspaper strip The World’s Greatest Heroes. In the 1980s Marty wrote Marvel’s licensed Star Trek comic (1980-81), helping his friend Alan Brennert enter the field by having him script one issue. Marty would also write the Star Trek newspaper strip (1982-83), and in 1988 he wrote one issue of DC’s run on Star Trek. In the ’80s and ’90s, he worked in TV, providing animation scripts for Thundarr the Barbarian, G.I. Joe, Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles, My Little Pony, et al. He also worked in live-action TV, as a writer/story editor on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Twilight Zone, and Max Headroom, among others. In 1982 he and artist Tom Yeates revived DC’s Saga of the Swamp Thing for a time before Alan Moore took over. During the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Marty wore many hats, scripting for Marvel and for Disney’s own line of comics. Later, he joined the staff of Batman: The Animated Series as a writer/ story editor, winning a 1993 Daytime Emmy Award. He also co-wrote the animated feature Batman: The Mask of The Phantasm. He was head of the Special Projects Group at DC, overseeing everything from web series for Warner Bros. to licensed titles like Star Trek and projects at Six Flags, as well as being the liaison between DC and Warner Bros. Studios for the TV series Birds of Prey and Smallville. In the 2000s he spent much of his time working on projects such as children’s fiction and video games, as well as on several comics-related book projects. Marty passed away from natural causes at the age of 65 after a number of years of health issues. Those who worked with him were devastated and tributes were many on social media.

[SINNOTT, continued from previous page] continued to ink the Sunday edition of the Spider-Man newspaper comic strip, as well as drawing art commissions. He finally retired in March 2019, at age 92—only because Marvel canceled the strip shortly after Stan Lee’s death. In later years, Joe seemed to enjoy long phone calls—such as with his younger colleague Jim Amash (who spelled him once or twice on the strip) and occasionally with me, even though our paths had rarely crossed during the years we were both slaving away for Marvel. Usually, we’d end up good-naturedly arguing about who was the better and more important pop singer—Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra. (I conceded Der Bingle as the more important, but preferred Ol’ Blue-Eyes’ voice… but Joe was insistent on Crosby in both categories. He never gave an inch.) Joe passed away on June 25, 2020, at age 93… and loved drawing the whole time.

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The Angel faces a demonic menace in this Paul Gustavson splash panel from Marvel Mystery Comics #17 (March 1941). Courtesy of Warren Reece. [TM & © Marvel Characters, inc.]

THE OFFICIAL ROY THOMAS CHARACTERS, CONCEPTS, AND CREATIONS DATABASE

Art by Joe St. Pierre. TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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fiction fandom many decades ago (which is probably the great majority of you): To “gafiate” means to “get away from it all”—i.e., to turn your back on fandom (or some other activity), at least for a time, perhaps for the sake of one’s mental well-being. It’s not nearly as well known as two other SF-fandom contributions to the language—“fanzine” and “prequel”—but it ought to be! This next letter, from oft-correspondent Joe Frank (the first of two in this “re:” segment), had to be trimmed in order to fit in here, but we wanted to squeeze in all of it we could…. Dear Roy,

Quite a range of Steve Ditko memories and tributes! I appreciated your candor in your relation to him and his work. Unlike me, who enjoyed most of it, you’re more focused on his biggest success, yet open to reading or following some of what came later. That still may be more than many who showed no further interest in his subsequent work. Loved his Warren wash-and-pen stories. How novel to see him and Archie Goodwin experimenting with barbarians a few years before you and Barry Windsor-Smith showed everyone how it should be done.

Loved his Blue Beetle, Question, Shade, Kill-Joy, etc., work of the late ’60s and ’70s. Enjoyed and appreciated most of his self-copyrighted characters. It was Steve doing what he wanted to do, his own way. That takes in Mr. A, Static, Mocker, up through his

he previous pair of A/E issues was the first time in 171 editions that we’ve had to drop our letters section for two issues in a row— thanks to our extra-heavy coverage of Gary Friedrich in #169 and Jack Kirby in #170—so let’s get right to it, shall we? Well, at least as soon as we’ve thanked our esteemed Down-Under donor Shane Foley for drawing and Randy Sargent for coloring a Paul Gustavson-inspired rendering of Biljo White’s 1964 fan-hero creation Captain Ego! [Captain Ego TM & © Roy Thomas & Estate of Bill Schelly.] Alter Ego #160 was a very special issue—the first ever devoted to Steve Ditko, one of the most important comics artists of the latter half of the 20th century. It quickly became one of the fastest issues ever to totally sell out its print run, so that before long it was available only in the digital edition—soon followed by #161, which dealt with the legacy of Stan Lee. Following are a handful of the most interesting missives and e-mails we received re #160, beginning with a letter from reader Paul Allen…. Hi Roy—

As a kid, I remembered Steve Ditko’s stories in the Atlas/ Marvel days, but never really paid undue attention to him. I guess I viewed him as just another Marvel artist. So I very much enjoyed A/E #160, which really gave me a new perspective on his writing and on him as a person. I particularly enjoyed the essay by Barry Pearl. I never realized how much Ditko contributed to the writing, storytelling, and character development in the work he illustrated. I gafiated from comics in 1964 when I went off to college, and teenagers don’t appreciate such subtleties. I plan to go back through all his stories in the Marvel Masterworks and will re-read them from a much fresher and more adult perspective than 60 years ago. Paul Allen

You’ll find a lot there to admire and ponder over, Paul. By the way, for those who didn’t recognize the word above that was coined by science-

Present At The Creation An amazing find—by way of DitkoCultist.com as reportedly the “source from Rip Jagger’s Dojo” and “Fester Faceplant” sites: Steve Ditko’s original 1965 designs for his revamping of Blue Beetle for Charlton! And wouldn’t the world dearly love to locate his original designs for Spider-Man, if they still exist! [Blue Beetle TM & © DC Comics.]

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

more recent troupe of characters such as Madman and the !?.

In fact, it’s much easier for me to note series he drew that I didn’t care for as much: the Hulk run in Tales to Astonish, the ’65 Captain Atom, Starman, Indiana Jones, and Speedball. The common element: lesser inking by outsiders.

Yes, his leaving in ’65 was a loss for Marvel. But he took his skills and talent with him, as does anyone who leaves a company. His costuming, intricate plotting, suspense, and athleticism weren’t confined to Marvel alone. I found that many of his post-Marvel works were aimed at an older or deeper-thinking audience. They were entertaining but had a philosophical subtext. I read his “Blue Beetle” and “Question” stories as back issues in my mid-to-late teens. Had I read them at eight or nine, upon release, I’d have liked the art but not fully understood them. One other option, partly used on “Dr. Strange,” would have been to have Steve work with someone other than Stan. You and Denny [O’Neil] wrote the dialogue and captions for his last four installments. But with [Amazing] Spider-Man, as such a key book, I doubt he’d have allowed anyone, at that point, to step in. Could you or a different writer have worked with him more directly, or would it just have been awkward considering the rift between him and Stan?

Certainly, over at DC in 1980, hard feelings would have been a moot point. I mean, at the time, so far as I know, you had nothing against him. Was it mostly just a casual or rare interaction, not someone you had strong feelings about either way? The relationship

between the two of you started out exceedingly well, from the sound of it, with Steve’s cartoon sent to you in 1964.

Here, you gave some candid assessments I didn’t expect: confirming who started the silent treatment [at Marvel]; the confusion between the unknown guy actually being the Crime Master rather than The Green Goblin; Steve not mailing art in; and the probable insincerity of Stan’s ’99 public-record statement. So, if annoyed with the Marvel situation, as it stood, and later claims, Steve was genuinely correct to feel that way.

One thing that disappointed me, however, was no visual representation for his most recent (2008-2018) characters published with Robin Snyder. Yes, they were mentioned in passing at the end, but it seems his final ten years could’ve had at least one or two images shown. To me, they represent that there’s no barrier or age where one can’t be creative if he or she wants. Plus, they were great fun. Found a few mistakes along the way:

The Iron Man armor-revision story in Tales of Suspense #48 was inked by Dick Ayers, not George Roussos as stated… Steve did a “Mr. A” shirt, not “Mr. T”… Russ Maheras wrote to Steve in ’73 but actually met him in only ’03… Dr. Strange met Spider-Man in Spider-Man Annual #2, not the second Strange Tales Annual (where Spider-Man met the Torch)… the “Starman” page and Speedball cover shown on page 52 have the wrong inkers listed. Romeo Tanghal inked the “Starman” splash; Bob Layton inked Speedball. Joe Frank

Skipping back to your point re Steve Ditko and yours truly, Joe, I’d have to say that, while I greatly admire his Marvel and Charlton “Captain Atom” work, and to some degree that which came later at DC and elsewhere, and naturally I’d have been pleased if the two of us worked together at DC in the 1980s, it was never really a priority of mine to work with him again… because I wouldn’t have cared much for simply dialoguing a story he had plotted (as I did in the two “Dr. Strange” stories), nor did I figure he’d want to just draw whatever plot I gave him. When the two of us were teamed up in the early ’90s on Topps Comics’ Secret City Saga series, I was largely unhappy with the result, mostly because I truly believe Steve was consciously holding back, making certain he didn’t give the stories one ounce more of thought or input than he absolutely had to. I felt his lack of commitment worked to the detriment of the series, so I regretted that the original artist scheduled to do the group issues of that series, Gil Kane, had begged off at the last minute. Still, I’ve always respected Ditko both as an artist, and as a person who did things “his way,” even if that way didn’t always necessarily wind up being the best one for him or for others. In that manner, he truly lived up to being the Ayn Rand protagonist (Howard Roark, John Galt) that he and I both admired, in our quite different ways. As for showing more of Steve’s work from outside our usual up-through-1975 franchise point, rest assured that we invited his friend, collaborator, and sometime publisher Robin Snyder to write a piece for the issue, in which he could have illuminated those days. However, Robin felt he had his hands full with his own newsletter The Comics! and that one of these days he’d be coming out with major publications about Ditko’s life and career, so he declined. John Benson was an important fixture on both the science-fiction and comics fan scenes in the 1960s (and at other times)… and is, moreover, someone who had numerous personal interactions with Steve Ditko during that era. I’m pleased he has allowed us to share his memories here…

“A” Is For… The beginning of a 1976 “Mr. A” tale in Martin Greim’s Comic Crusader Storybook #1. Provided for A/E #160 by the late Bill Schelly, though not used in that issue. [TM & © Estate of Steve Ditko.]

Roy,

My recollection of Ditko as a person is strongest from his attendance at the monthly comic meetings. I’m wondering if you have memories of that. I recall his being there fairly regularly for a while.

re:

The meetings ran from 10/66 to ca. 1/71, and I actually kept a record of attendance from 3/68 to 5/69. During that period Ditko attended twice, on 2/3/68—which was held at Archie Goodwin’s and you weren’t there—and 2/4/69, which you did attend, but I’m not sure where it was, perhaps even at your place. I think he continued to attend into 1969, maybe another half-dozen times or more. In my recollection, I see him at [Bill] Pearson’s place, arguing with Neal Adams about whether our taking over the New World from the Indians was genocide or not (he argued not).

I wonder who invited him to the comic meetings. It could have been me, but was probably someone who knew him better than I did.

The first time I talked to Ditko, I called him up on the phone cold and asked him for an interview. I’d guess this was 1964 or 1965. I think he seemed a bit surprised. It was a cordial conversation. At the time I thought I was probably the first to ask him for an interview (and the first to be turned down). I know I talked with him off and on, enough for him to know who I was, but probably mostly brief and inconsequential conversations.

I don’t know if you remember or were involved in The Grab Bag Film Society, which I believe had five sessions ca. 1969, three at Goodwin’s and two at Pearson’s. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Back in the pre-video era, some film buffs had 16 mm. projectors and got together to watch old films.] Ditko came to at least one. Bill rented a Cinemascope lens and we rented The Girl Hunters, starring Mickey Spillane as Mike Hammer. I know I discussed renting that film with Ditko. I liked the film (and felt seeing it in wide screen was important, this being the era when TV was all pan/scan), and I knew Ditko liked Spillane. Our conversation may have been as brief as: ME: “How about we show The Girl Hunters?” DITKO: “Great!” Well, no, there was probably more; at the least I must have talked some about why I liked the film.

Anyway, as you said, knowing him and yet not knowing him… John Benson

The “comics meetings” to which John refers are what soon were called the “first Fridays,” as that quickly became the day of each month on which these informal get-togethers were held, at first (I think) at my apartment on East 87th Street in Manhattan (and later for a time at my first wife Jeanie’s and my place on East 86th), at other times at the abodes of Archie Goodwin, Bill Pearson, Jeff and Louise Jones, and others. Sadly, John, I myself have no memory of Steve being at those meetings, though if you remember that, I’m sure he was. I suspect neither of us ever sought the other out, though we probably exchanged pleasantries from time to time, since there was never really any bad blood between us. Thanks for recording your recollections for us! Chris Boyko was particularly moved by Bernie Bubnis’ account of his several visits to Ditko’s office in the 1960s… as were several other people who sent messages…. Dear Roy,

While I read each Alter Ego with great enjoyment and learn something new in every issue, I don’t think I have ever experienced quite the prolonged jaw-dropping moments I had while reading Bernie Bubnis’ take of his encounters with Steve Ditko in the 160th issue. Most Ditko encounter tales, be they of personal interactions or through correspondence, are very similar: Ditko would communicate about certain subjects but not others, and pretty much stick to the facts as he saw them in a rather clinical, detached way. He generally came across as a man with a very particular and sometimes peculiar philosophy of life, even if sometimes you were not quite sure how he saw that philosophy himself. My own two

Hail, Hail, The Gang’s Almost All Here! Maybe Steve would never again agree to draw Spider-Man or Dr. Strange in a Marvel mag, but in this page from ROM Spaceknight #65 (April 1985), he drew quite a few others! Roy T. admits he was really pleased to see Ditko versions of his personal co-creations The Vision, Valkyrie, and Black Knight... proving he’s really still a fan at heart! [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

back-and-forth letters with Steve were in that same vein.

However, Bernie’s story of his Ditko relationship is nothing short of incredible. Bernie showed a side of Ditko that I don’t think I have ever seen noted elsewhere and really made Steve come across as an even more complicated human being with an emotional side that he seemed to hide from most people. What is perhaps even more amazing is that Bernie was willing to share these very personal moments with the readership of A/E. I came away feeling I actually knew Steve Ditko as a person better than I ever did by reading any of the books written about him. Kudos to you, Roy, for publishing this wonderful piece, and especially thanks to Bernie for sharing a little bit of “his” Steve Ditko with all of us. Chris Boyko

That piece was a revelation to me as well when I first read it, Chris, which is why I was so happy Bernie was willing, finally after so many years, to commit those memories to paper. Anything that gives us a fuller, rounder picture of a talent such as Steve Ditko is always welcome. Matter of fact, that selfsame Bernie Bubnis sent us a few additional thoughts about those days… Hi Roy,

Noticed an “error” of sorts on page 5 in crediting a 1960s Ditko

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

photo to (maybe) the wrong person. All those existing 43rd Street studio photos were taken by and with [his then studio-mate] Eric Stanton’s camera. His daughter Amber holds the copyrights to them all. After she published them in her own book, the cruel and demanding Internet took control of them sans copyright. She has been very kind to allow their theft without arguments.

When I met Eric Stanton at a 1970s comicon, he commented to me that I had “ruined” a photo he took of Steve by standing behind Ditko and making a “funny face.” I know I’m not now nor was I ever the type of person to make a “funny” face. That “funny” face is MY FACE. Simple as that. I was born with a “funny” face. I did not correct him, but years later I did get in touch with Amber and asked if any photos were not used or discarded from those studio photo sessions. To my disappointment, no Ditko photos of a gawky kid with a funny face were found. Bernie Bubnis

Maybe they wound up on the darkroom floor at an early stage, Bernie. But thanks for informing us about the ultimate source of those photos, which now seem to belong to the ages. Still, we do owe a debt of gratitude to Amber Stanton for releasing them. At this point, I’d like to call attention to the fact that, on July 5, 2018, a few days after Steve Ditko’s passing, Stan Lee made the following statement about the artist on Twitter:

Steve was certainly one of the most important creators in the comicbook business. His talent was indescribable. I worked with him for many years, and was always impressed with how he saw everything in terms of photos and pictures and movement and scenes. He told a story like a fine movie director would. I think that he will be very greatly missed by the public and by his fans, and I’m sure there will be a lot written about him as time goes by and I will be one of the guys who buys the first book. You made a real impression here in the world. Excelsior. Of course, only four months after Steve’s death, Stan followed him into “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns.” Like I said in A/E #160, it was a bad year for fans of Silver Age comics, since those two men—as well as artist Marie Severin and my good friend Gary Friedrich—all passed away during that twelvemonth. A few fast comments and corrections re #160: Nick Caputo informs us that the Ditko Spider-Man drawing often sent by Marvel to fans (and used as the cover art of A/E #160) was first published in Marvel Tales #7 (March 1967) as “A Marvel Masterwork Pin-up.” Also, on p. 11, Ditko is credited as working over Kirby layouts; “Not so,” says Nick. “Ditko did full pencils.” Oh, and on p. 94, the cover of This Magazine Is Haunted #14 at top right is not by Ditko, but by Shelly Moldoff, and “Charlton’s second volume of This Magazine Is Haunted #14, drawn by Ditko, is reproduced on the same page.” Sorry, Nick… the two #14s clearly confused us! Al Rodriguez says the inker of the Speedball #2 cover on page 52 was Bob Layton, not Romeo Tanghal… and indeed, that cover is clearly signed by the former. P.C. Hamerlinck, our effervescent FCA editor, points out that a caption on p. 70 states that the Flash Gordon serials starring Buster Crabbe were produced by Republic; they were actually from Universal. Douglass Abramson noticed that, in Mike Tiefenbacher’s e-mail of corrections for the first part of his Captain Marvel copyrights article, Sonny Bono is listed as having once been the mayor of Pasadena, California—when it was actually Palm Springs. Now, we move right along to Alter Ego #161, an issue dedicated to the memory of Stan Lee. Because we had saluted Stan’s 95th birthday only eleven issues earlier, we’ll probably truncate these letters a bit more than usual—but rest assured that the outpouring of e-mails and other epistles was nearly as heavy as on ##160. First, here’s Robin Kirby: Hi Roy,

I fear I may have misled you with the info I attached to one of the images you utilized in #161’s main article. That Hulk “transfer” was not a self-adhesive sticker, but a T-shirt transfer!

I realize that the revelation that Stan was absolutely the driving force behind the British line [of Marvel reprints in the early ’70s] might be less than pleasing for those who feel his reputation is overhyped and tarnished by a need to take credit for everything— not for me, I hasten to add—but that’s how it was. You won’t be surprised to learn that I’ve concluded that, despite the occasional interview that muddied the waters, such gaffes were more than countered by his early additions of credits on contents pages in the 1950s and his adoption and expansion of ever-fuller credit details at the head of stories as the 1960s rolled on… never mind all those shout-outs for creative talents on the Bullpen page. Hardly the actions of a credit-hogger, I feel.

That Old Black Magic Some of Ditko’s earliest solo work—the splash page of a story in Prize’s (and Simon & Kirby’s) Black Magic #27 (Nov.-Dec. 1953). He was learning fast—and he never stopped! [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Finally, a brief musing on Roger Hill’s comments concerning Lee’s huge respect for the work of Joe Maneely. While I much admire the artist, especially his work on the “Black Knight” stories, I remain yet-to-be-convinced that he had the sort of stylistic tendencies that would have suited the wilder outpourings of the Marvel explosion. Most of the most successful Marvel artists tended

re:

to have a much clearer, open line style, which I’ve always felt is why Don Heck was never truly suited to the more overt super-hero books, despite his sterling work on “Iron Man.” Maneely had a similarly more detailed line style that, like Heck’s, would probably have been more effective on Marvel’s revived romance and war comics later on. But feel free to disagree! Robin Kirby

Oh, I do, Robin, I definitely do! While this is hardly the place to go into detail on the subject, my own feeling is that, while Joe Maneely would not have been a trend-setter and universe-generator the way Jack Kirby was at Marvel in the 1960s (but then, I can’t think of any other artist who would have been, either), he would likely have found a strong niche as an artist in the individualist vein of a Ditko, doing just a handful of features but making them his own… while he would also have proven capable of jumping in and doing a credible, often influential job on almost any strip he did, as Steve did on both “Hulk” and “Iron Man” at crucial moments in those heroes’ four-color careers. If Stan had had Kirby, Ditko, and Maneely to collaborate with, the ultimate triumph of the Marvel Universe might well have occurred even earlier! (Of course, that’s just a personal opinion… and is in no way meant to denigrate the creations of DC Comics or other companies of the 1960s and early ’70s. The landmark 1956-65 comics of DC editor Julius Schwartz, and to a certain extent the “Doom Patrol” and “Deadman” creations of Arnold Drake as rendered by Arnold and other hands, were then and still remain very high on my personal list of all-time favorites!) Nick Caputo had this to add to Stan’s 1975 reminiscences about the creation of the Marvel Daredevil: Hi Roy,

I noticed on page 11 the caption on Daredevil and Stan’s possible influences. I recalled him mentioning, in an interview conducted by Chris Claremont in F.O.O.M. #13, 1976: We had done a number of super-heroes before Daredevil and, as you know, they were all flawed. And I was trying to think… well, readers seem to like characters that are flawed. What is the ultimate flaw you can give somebody? And… well, anybody who can make a super-hero out of a blind fellow is going somewhere. And then I remembered that there had been some movies about a blind detective— Edward Arnold played the role. He was a heavy-set guy and he had a white dog and a cane. And it was fascinating, this guy who was blind and yet a detective at the same time. Nick Caputo I wasn’t familiar with that film series, Nick, but there’s no reason to discount Stan’s comment that it was among his influences. Of course, we can’t totally discount, either, the fact that Bill Everett’s daughter Wendy has, as she has mentioned at various times, been counted as being legally blind since an early age, so that the co-creating artist of Daredevil may well have made his own contribution in that area. Creative people seem generally better at remembering what they themselves brought to the party than what was tossed in by others present at the time.

Another County Heard From Cartoonist Al Bigley writes: “Greatly enjoying the new Stan issue of A/E! I miss him so much. Regarding the endless bashing of Stan re fans thinking Stan was nothing but a glory-hound, I created the attached cartoon, which has, in the past five years or so, been whipped out more times than I’d like to recall.” One more time in the present context seems like a good idea to us, Al—so thanks for forwarding it! [© 2021 Al Bigley.]

Tony Isabella, of course, has worked in and around the comics field since the early 1970s, when Stan asked me to recommend someone who could help him write various types of publicity releases and the like… and is currently reaping some of the rewards of a long career with the success of his DC hero Black Lightning on television. As an inveterate Stan-watcher, Tony has his own take on the apparently unending controversy, covered in the “re:” department in A/E #161, over who did what in the early Marvel Universe (which consisted largely of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, with a sprinkling of Steve Ditko, Don Heck, and Larry Lieber)…

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

Roy…

I admire your running that insulting letter from a fan who will not get one more second of fame via my mentioning his name. My dear friend Larry Lieber has always been consistent about his work on those monster comics. Based on that, here’s my take: Stan and Larry plotted the stories together. Maybe Stan came up with the idea. Maybe Larry did sometimes. I think Stan came up with the crazy names, but that’s not even 100% in my book. After all, Larry coined the names Henry Pym and Uru (hammer).

Jack Kirby and others were given these full scripts. Now, if I’ve got a talent like Jack Kirby doing the story, I would almost certainly have him design the monsters and re-pace the stories to allow for large and dramatic panels. Maybe I’d even do some rewriting on the final boards to cover any differences between the art and the full script. It is folly to suggest that neither Stan nor Jack ever exaggerated their roles in the creation of so many classic comics. I love them both, but they were human beings. Jack made claims I consider outrageous when he was at his angriest. There are times when I think the usually mild-mannered Stan responded to the Stan-hate from unknown fans. But, since I wasn’t in the room when they worked together, I can’t state with 100% accuracy what went down in their creative meetings. I can state how much I loved their work from the start and how much I learned from their work and directly from Stan when I worked in the Marvel Bullpen. I also learned a lot from you and the late Sol Brodsky, but no one was attacking either of you in Alter Ego #161.

Arguing “Stan or Jack” is a colossal waste of energy in my book, an argument that entices zealots on both sides. There are few absolutes in life. Except that maybe Curly was the funniest of the Three Stooges. Save for those days when I think it was Moe. Tony Isabella

Watcher, Watcher Everywhere... A mention of The Watcher in A/E #161 led fan and pro writer George Hagenauer to send this background on the name and concept: “The first Watcher story: Over two decades ago, I picked up a sciencefiction illustration by Paul Orban for a story called “Little Brother” by D.A. Jourdan [perhaps a pen name], a woman writer, in The Original Science Fiction Stories, August 1958. Today I finally obtained a copy of that magazine. While the illustration of the alien shows him as having hair, he is bald and hairless in the story. He is a Watcher—from another race that is long-lived and from a nearby system. His job is to watch and observe and not interfere with activities on Earth. They are worried that Earth people have a destructive tendency and soon may be able to leave their planet. So they watch, to better understand us and evaluate what they should do. A plane falls past his saucer ship and crashes into the ocean. Four people (yep) are saved on a life raft and threatened by sharks. The Watcher breaks his oath of noninterference and takes them aboard to see if he can get some basic questions answered about human nature. Wrong answers and the Earth is doomed. I won’t reveal the ending, but the similarities to the character in Fantastic Four #13 are really interesting and make me wonder if Jack or Stan ever read the story.” Jack may or may not have read it, George—but I’m relatively sure Stan Lee didn’t read any science-fiction magazines in his middle years. “The Watcher” is such a great and obvious name that there’s a good chance a number of creators came up with that—and even with the basic concept— separately and on their own at various times. We’ll probably never know—but the 1958 Jourdan Watcher is definitely an intriguing contender for an influence on the Marvel character! [Art © the respective copyright holders.]

I pretty much confer in what you say, Tony… except that I don’t recall Larry Lieber saying anywhere that he and Stan “plotted the stories together.” Of course, as you say, that’s your “take” on what might have happened. And it certainly is correct if one considers that, in the act of taking a plot written (or merely delivered aloud) by Stan and turning it into a full script-in-advance, Larry of necessity had to add a lot of details that could definitely be counted under the heading of “co-plotting.” Nobody else was usually “in the room when [Stan and Jack] worked together,” of course. I certainly wasn’t, though I came to work there in ’65. Artist John Romita has recounted how he once shared a car ride with them during which they came up with the storyline involving a new villain, Diablo, whom Stan later considered a failure… but that’s pretty much it. So what happened in Stan’s office or on the occasional drive out to Queens and Long Island is pretty much unknowable, and anybody who says different is mostly blowing smoke. Joe Frank, whose comments on A/E #160 were recorded just a few pages back, had some cogent remarks about #161 as well, so we felt we should excerpt them: Dear Roy,

An interesting mix in your Stan Lee tribute issue.

The 1975 radio interview was compelling to me for the revived pleasant rapport between Stan and Jack. The rest of the interview was less vital, as it seemed more jovial banter than content. Light verbal sparring, but all the joshing really doesn’t tell us much. More a performance than a learning experience. Kind of off-putting, with the forced lovey-dovey bit, knowing Stan had a wife at home. But, no doubt, it was all in fun, looking to come off comedic in some way.

I thought Stan was more successful earlier on, in his mid-tolate-’60s promotion in the comics, where he’d be humorous but with a point in specific promotions. I really noticed it later, at convention

re:

appearances, where he could do an hour of light, breezy banter but nothing much of substance was conveyed.

Liked the variety of recollections. Some were touching or demonstrated that Stan did make a personal difference to both readers and fellow professionals. That said, I didn’t like Jim Shooter singling him out as “the most important creator” in Marvel’s success. It’s that same striving to push one man up that kept others down, which caused so many problems and needless hard feelings. Jim or anyone can say Stan was their “favorite.” But, in a collaboration where creative artists co-plotted their stories, can they be so easily devalued? Stan was vital, true. But so were Jack and Steve, who went far beyond just drawing pictures and added conceptual ideas. Had that been acknowledged and not undercut, everyone could have shared in their earned accomplishments without all the rancor.

One aspect I really enjoyed, even to the point of laughing aloud at the fixation and tenacity, was the investigation of Martin Goodman’s supposed golf game in the legend of The Fantastic Four’s instigation. Thought it was great that so many people desperately cared enough to attempt to dig that deep, especially at this late date.

Also liked that you traveled cross-country, Roy, to see Stan one last time. That it went off as planned seemed meaningful to you both and came not a moment too soon. A welcome chance to say goodbye just under the wire. You said you weren’t particularly close friends. Yet, obviously, there was a fondness and creative debt. You did top Stan in one area: your recognizing the talent and your increased use of Gil Kane. I loved his 1966 work for Marvel, just after I started as a reader. Yet it didn’t last long. But when you were involved and calling the shots [in the late ’60s and early ’70s], you made excellent use of his skills. You both suddenly made Captain Marvel interesting (starting with #17) and, later, there were so many tremendous covers. Stan missed a sure bet on that one! I thought this issue was to have e-mail correspondence between you and Stan, which he approved for your use. Did you run out of room? If so, could you run it in a subsequent issue? Curious to see what he was like when not performing. Finally, happy birthday tomorrow, Roy. Hope it’s a fun one! Joe Frank

Thanks for this e-mail (apparently sent on Nov. 21, 2019), Joe. You’re right, we had no room in #161 for even the relatively small number of e-exchanges between Stan and me that I had on hand at that time… so we’ve delayed them for some future issue. Meanwhile, my ever-resourceful wife Dann, on her own initiative, went back and ran off copies of such exchanges as far back as our current PCs would allow, and we wound up with a stack of papers several inches high! Very few major revelations there… mostly just verbal jostling… but one of these fine days (well, more like weeks, because it’ll take that long!), I’ll try to put them in some semblance of order and make a feature presentation out of them. The “golf game” thing is, of course, not all that important in the greater scheme of things—all that really matters is that in early 1961 Martin Goodman tasked editor Stan Lee with coming up with a super-hero group to divert a bit of coin that might otherwise be going to Justice League of America—but since Stan was certain that his publisher had mentioned playing golf with some higher-up at DC (or, because Stan would’ve considered them both as basically the same thing, distributor Independent News), Michael Uslan, Paul Levitz, and a few of us would like to know if it really happened, and, if it did, precisely who was Goodman teeing off with? Wouldn’t any of us like to know if an apple really fell on Isaac Newton’s head? And, while I know I risk the wrath of certain die-hard contingents in fandom by agreeing with fellow former Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter on this, I do think that Stan Lee was, indeed, “the most important creator”

of the Marvel Universe—although I can understand why others might feel that honorific belongs to Jack Kirby. But, in the end, does it really matter, now that both men are gone, while what they (and a few others in the early days) built endures and thrives? Just room for a couple of additional notes re #161: Al Rodriguez asks: “On page 30, did Tom Palmer or did Frank Chiaramonte ink Curse of Dracula? Or did both of them?” Shaun Clancy points out that, in the Ed Silverman obit/tribute in #161, the date of his passing was listed as 2014 when it should have been 2019, of course. Our apologies for the typo that somehow all of us proofreading the issue managed to miss! Got some thoughts you want to shoot our way concerning this issue? Send ’em to: Roy Thomas e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135 And, while awaiting next issue’s in-depth coverage of artist extraordinaire Alfredo Alcala, hope you’ll check out The Roy Thomas Appreciation Boards on Facebook, named and operated by my manager and pal John Cimino. John never lets a chance go by to tell you what I’m up to—even if I might want him to! It’s informative and “interactive,” whatever that means! Meanwhile, what had been the Alter-Ego-Fans group at Yahoo has now switched to a new location. Seek it out today at https://groups. io/g/Alter-Ego-Fans... and if you can’t find it, give moderator Chet Cox a wahoo at mormonyoyoman@gmail.com. The group is dedicated to this magazine founded by the late great Jerry Bails and continued by Ye Editor, but is liable to discuss any comicsrelated matter that somebody wants to bring up!

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Interview with JOYE MURCHISON, assistant to Wonder Woman co-creator DR. WILLIAM MARSTON, and WW’s female scriptwriter from 1945-1948! Rare art by H.G. PETER, 1960s DC love comics writer BARBARA FRIEDLANDER, art & anecdotes by ROMITA, COLAN, JAY SCOTT PIKE, INFANTINO, WEISINGER, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, and others! Extra: FCA, JOHN BROOME, MR. MONSTER, & more!

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WILL MURRAY presents an amazing array of possible prototypes of Batman (by artist FRANK FOSTER—in 1932!)—Wonder Woman (by Star-Spangled Kid artist HAL SHERMAN)—Tarantula (by Air Wave artist LEE HARRIS), and others! Plus a rare Hal Sherman interview—MICHAEL T. GILBERT with more on artist PETE MORISI—FCA— BILL SCHELLY—JOHN BROOME—and more! Cover homage by SHANE FOLEY!

The early days of DAVE COCKRUM— Legion of Super-Heroes artist and co-developer of the revived mid-1970s X-Men—as revealed in art-filled letters to PAUL ALLEN and rare, previously unseen illustrations provided by wife PATY COCKRUM (including 1960s-70s drawings of Edgar Rice Burroughs heroes)! Plus FCA—MICHAEL T. GILBERT on PETE MORISI—JOHN BROOME—BILL SCHELLY, and more!

Spotlight on MIKE FRIEDRICH, DC/Marvel writer who jumpstarted the independent comics movement with Star*Reach! Art by NEAL ADAMS, GIL KANE, DICK DILLIN, IRV NOVICK, JOHN BUSCEMA, JIM STARLIN, HOWARD CHAYKIN, FRANK BRUNNER, et al.! Plus: MARK CARLSONGHOST on Rural Home Comics, FCA, and Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Justice League of America cover by NEAL ADAMS!

WILL MURRAY showcases original Marvel publisher (from 1939-1971) MARTIN GOODMAN, with artifacts by LEE, KIRBY, DITKO, ROMITA, MANEELY, BUSCEMA, EVERETT, BURGOS, GUSTAVSON, SCHOMBURG, COLAN, ADAMS, STERANKO, and many others! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt with more on PETE MORISI, JOHN BROOME, and a cover by DREW FRIEDMAN!

FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA (FCA) Special, with spotlights on KURT SCHAFFENBERGER (Captain Marvel, Ibis the Invincible, Marvel Family, Lois Lane), and ALEX ROSS on his awesome painting of the super-heroes influenced by the original Captain Marvel! Plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT’s “Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt” on Superman editor MORT WEISINGER, JOHN BROOME, and more! Cover by SCHAFFENBERGER!

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Salute to Golden & Silver Age artist SYD SHORES as he’s remembered by daughter NANCY SHORES KARLEBACH, fellow artist ALLEN BELLMAN, DR. MICHAEL J. VASSALLO, and interviewer RICHARD ARNDT. Plus: mid-1940s “Green Turtle” artist/creator CHU HING profiled by ALEX JAY, JOHN BROOME, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and Mr. Monster on MORT WEISINGER Part Two, and more!

Two RICHARD ARNDT interviews revealing the wartime life of Aquaman artist/ co-creator PAUL NORRIS (with a Golden/ Silver Age art gallery)—plus the story of WILLIE ITO, who endured the WWII Japanese-American relocation centers to become a Disney & Warner Bros. animator and comics artist. Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, JOHN BROOME, and more, behind a NORRIS cover!

Spotlight on Groovy GARY FRIEDRICH— co-creator of Marvel’s Ghost Rider! ROY THOMAS on their six-decade friendship, wife JEAN FRIEDRICH and nephew ROBERT HIGGERSON on his later years, PETER NORMANTON on GF’s horror/ mystery comics, art by PLOOG, TRIMPE, ROMITA, THE SEVERINS, AYERS, et al.! FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and Mr. Monster, and more! MIKE PLOOG cover!

JACK KIRBY is showcased cover-to-cover behind a never-before-printed Kirby cover! WILL MURRAY on Kirby’s contributions to the creation of Iron Man—FCA on his Captain Marvel/Mr. Scarlet Fawcett work—Kirby sections by MICHAEL T. GILBERT & PETER NORMANTON—Kirby in 1960s fanzines—STAN LEE’s colorful quotes about “The King”, and ROY THOMAS on being a Kirby fan (and foil)!

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Miniatures and Midgets Big Things Came In Small Packages In The Golden Age Of Comics by Sidney Friedfertig

iminutive in size, yet with larger-than-life heroes, the miniature-sized comicbooks—some which were referred to as “Mighty Midgets”—were published during the 1940s by the Samuel E. Lowe Company.

How Lowe Can A Comic Size Go? Samuel Edward Lowe (1890-1952) was a German immigrant who, shortly after World War I, went to work at the Western Printing and Lithographing Company of Racine, Wisconsin, where he moved his way up the ladder to assume the presidency of a Western subsidiary, Whitman Publishing Co. Whitman was a popular children’s-book publisher with genres that included Westerns, mysteries, science-fiction… and also published a brand of books called Whitman Authorized Editions, which featured fictional adventures starring popular movie actresses of the day. (Years later, in 1962, Whitman would brand the comicbook imprint Gold Key Comics.) In 1940 Samuel Lowe left Whitman to start his eponymous company, which manufactured and sold inexpensive books and paper toys, such as cut-out books, coloring books, and puzzles. The Lowe catalog eventually comprised over 1,000 titles, retailing for between one cent and $2—with most selling at 5 to 25 cents each. First appearing in 1942, the comicbooks many have come to

It’s A Small World, After All! (Above:) Whiz Comics Wheaties Mini Edition (1947). The exclusive giveaway comicbook series also had editions of Flash Comics and Funny Stuff (using DC Comics material) and Captain Marvel Adventures. The books were originally taped to boxes of Wheaties cereal. This particular copy was obviously torn off the box by an overeager reader. Art: C.C. Beck, et al. [Shazam hero & Ikis TM & © DC Comics; Golden Arrow TM & © the respective trademark and copyright holders..] (Left:) The original 1943 “Mighty Midget” comics display rack, with the 2-for-5-cents price tag pasted over the original 2-centsapiece price. Photo: Sidney Friedfertig.

recognize under the “Mighty Midget” umbrella began when Lowe obtained a license from Fawcett Publications to publish pocket-sized versions of its most popular titles. However, the comics were not yet called “Mighty Midget” by Fawcett or Lowe.

Miniatures & Midgets

The Number Elevens Lowe was a trailblazer in the publishing industry, and his company became one of the field’s first book packagers. For his first deal with Fawcett, four mini-sized comicbooks were bundled together in a label promising “128 pages of action” and were included in a “box full of books” together with other Lowe’s children’s books. The first series/iteration of these comics were all numbered #11. The titles and their contents were: Bulletman Cover by Mac Raboy; backgrounds by Bob Rogers (Bulletman #3) “Mr. Murder Comes Back” (Master Comics #27) “Bulletman Meets The Red Pirate” (Bulletman #7) “Meets The Mocker” (Bulletman #6) (Note: Overstreet reports that a second edition Bulletman miniature [#12] was also published; however, not a single copy has ever officially surfaced.) Captain Marvel Cover art by C.C. Beck (Whiz Comics #22) “Captain Marvel and the Bumble-Brained Bridegroom” (America’s Greatest Comics #4) “Captain Marvel and the Alaskan Adventure” (Captain Marvel Adventures #16) Captain Marvel Jr.

The 5” x 4” miniature comics containing previously published material from Fawcett’s 10 ½” x 7 ¾” regular-sized comicbooks attempted to appear larger by touting their lengths of 32 or 34 pages on the cover—a designation that would require quick thinking later on. The comics are all the same size in total cover-tocover pages—the difference is that some story lengths required the printing to extend to the inside covers. The mini-comics had full-color front covers on heavy paper stock and black-&-white newsprint interiors, with some pages enhanced with a red tint. The back covers were blank, although some were printed with a World War II victory bond stamp. Canadian editions of the initial series of minis were published in 1942-43 by Anglo-American Publishing—with the U.S. stories redrawn by Canadian artists. The entire books, including covers, were printed on newsprint in black, white, and red, and a Canadian war bonds stamp appeared on the back cover. There was also another, much rarer version of this first iteration of the miniature comics. In a gimmick unique among Golden Age comicbooks, some of the mini-comics were glued to the front cover of a small percentage of the print run of Fawcett’s flagship title, Captain Marvel Adventures—specifically issues #20, #21, and #23. Instead of leaving it blank, the back cover of these books featured a baseball bat-slugging Captain Marvel in a full-color advertisement for the Captain Marvel Adventures comicbook. It’s not known what exact percentage of regular-sized comics came with a mini-comic, as

Cover art by Mac Raboy; backgrounds by Bob Rogers (Master Comics #27) “The Iron Heel of the Huns” (Master Comics #29) [“Floda Reltih”] – ‘Sir Butch’ (Spy Smasher #7) “The Return of Mr. Macabre” (Master Comics #26) Golden Arrow Cover art by Al Carreno (Golden Arrow #1) “Mystery of the Lost City” (Golden Arrow #1) [“The Gun Ghost”] (Golden Arrow #1) Ibis the Invincible Cover art by Mac Raboy (Ibis the Invincible #1) [“Origin of Ibis the Invincible”] (Ibis the Invincible #1) [“The Headless Horseman”] (Whiz Comics #30) [“The Return of Trug”] (Whiz Comics #31) Spy Smasher Cover art by Irvin Steinberg (Spy Smasher #4) (Note: This comic also had a rare U.S. Navy edition containing identical interior—but with a red patterned cover and subtitle “Story of the Navy.” The U.S. Navy has a history of distributing comicbooks; in 1944, a naval officer was assigned to work with DC managing editor Jack Schiff to rewrite the text of several Superman titles into editions specifically for the troops.) “Once a Navy Man, Always a Navy Man” (Spy Smasher #6) “The Island of Whanno” (Whiz Comics #34) As part of a package and not meant to be offered for sale individually, the comics did not have prices printed on the covers.

O Canada! As an example of the Canadian editions of 1942 Fawcett Miniatures, here’s the Golden Arrow one (also #11) from that year, as published there by Anglo-American. The reprinted books’ artwork, in accordance with Canadian law, was entirely re-drawn by Canadian artists! [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Fawcett In Miniature, 1942 Bulletman Fawcett Miniature (#11) - 1942, with three stories starring the Flying Detective. Art: Mac Raboy. Captain Marvel Fawcett Miniature (#11) from 1942 contained a double helping of Big Red Cheese. Art: C.C. Beck. Captain Marvel Jr. Fawcett Miniature (#11), 1942. Art: Mac Raboy, with Bob Rogers (backgrounds). Mini-comic readers were treated to two Raboy “Junior” tales, in addition to Dave Berg’s imaginative “Sir Butch” strip. Golden Arrow Fawcett Miniature (#11) from 1942 had a pair of yarns from the first issue of the Western hero’s solo comicbook. Art: Al Carreno. Ibis the Invincible Fawcett Miniature (#11) from 1942 contained three “Ibis” adventures. Art: Mac Raboy. Spy Smasher Fawcett Miniature (#11) - 1942 - had a double-dose of Axissquashing escapades with the goggled wartime hero. Art: Irvin Steinberg. [Bulletman, Shazam heroes, Ibis the Invincible, & Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics. Golden Arrow TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Miniatures & Midgets

most issues were circulated without the mini attached to them. Captain Marvel Adventures had become one of the industry’s best-selling comicbooks, and there was perhaps no better way of introducing kids to Fawcett’s other titles than by giving readers free copies. What kid (or parent) could resist paying the regular ten-cent price for a comic and receive a free comic in the Spies At Sea bargain—especially A Navy Edition variant of the Spy Smasher Fawcett one touted on the Miniature (#11) from 1942 was titled Spy Smasher: cover by Captain Story of the Navy. [Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.] Marvel himself (CMA #20), with the breathless exhortation, “Look pals! Here’s a special thrill for you!” According to The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide: “Only the Captain Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., and Golden Arrow number #11 miniatures have been positively documented as having been affixed to these covers. Each miniature was only partially glued by its back cover to the Captain Marvel [Adventures] comic, making it easy to see if it’s a genuine miniature rather than a Mighty Midget.”

to select copies of Captain Marvel Adventures.

The Number Twelves When the next wave of the Fawcett miniature comicbooks appeared, changes were made to the comics, and to the method by which they were marketed. Published one year later (1943), the second series of mini-comics expanded to offer six more Fawcett characters to the ranks: Balbo the Boy Magician Cover art by Bert Whitman “Death Walks The Stage” (Master Comics #33) Commando Yank Cover art by the Jack Binder Studio “Commando Yank and the Terrific Toy” (Wow Comics #9) Lance O’Casey Cover art by Harry Anderson “The Lost City of Kazar” (Whiz Comics #37) “Lance O’Casey Sinks the Japs” (Whiz Comics #38) [“South China New Year’s”] (Whiz Comics #39) Minute Man Cover art by Phil Bard [“The Flying Tigers”] (Master Comics #33)

New Discoveries Comicbook history is far from complete, and new discoveries are still being made. The Captain Marvel Adventures #20 with the Ibis the Invincible mini-comic having the rare CMA color promo ad as its back cover was attached with tape—not glued to the regular-sized comic—therefore, there may be none of this version in existence that were ever pasted to the front cover. Yet, after a thorough examination, JD Conservation’s Jonathan Derow—a highly-respected paper conservator from Brooklyn, NY— felt confident in concluding that this rare version of the mini-comic with its full-color ad on the back cover was at one time glued to the larger book due to a revealing glue residue spot. Another mini-comic not listed in Overstreet is the issue of Bulletman with the full-color ad as its back cover (see photo at right). The two presented herein raise the number of documented first printings of mini-comics with the full-color back-cover ad to all six titles from the initial iteration/ number elevens series that had been attached

Tiny Bullets Can Still Be Deadly Bulletman Fawcett Miniature (#11) first printing with rare, full-color (if somewhat damaged) Beck back cover, 1942. Front-cover art: Mac Raboy. Photo: Sidney Friedfertig. [Shazam hero & Bulletman TM & © DC Comics.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Second-Banana Small Fry Balbo the Boy Magician Fawcett Miniature (#12), 1943. Art: Bert Whitman. Balbo’s career ran from Master Comics #33-47. Commando Yank Fawcett Miniature (#12), 1943. Art: Jack Binder studio. Lance O’Casey Fawcett Miniature (#12), 1943. Art: Harry Anderson. Minute Man Fawcett Miniature (#12), 1943. Art: Phil Bard. Coloring by somebody who had no idea that the hero’s costume was red, white, and blue. Mr. Scarlet and Pinky Fawcett Miniature (#12), 1943. Art: Jack Binder studio.. Phantom Eagle Fawcett Miniature (#12), 1943. Art: Bert Whitman. [Commando Yank, Minute Man, Mr. Scarlet, & Pinky TM & © DC Comics; Balbo, Lance O’Casey, & Phantom Eagle TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Mr. Scarlet and Pinky Cover art by the Jack Binder Studio “The Mystery of the Make-Believe Master Mind” (Wow Comics #9) The Phantom Eagle Cover art by Bert Whitman “Phantom Eagle Defeats the Flying Radios” (Wow Comics #8)

Of these Fawcett second-stringers, only Minute Man had previously appeared in his own comicbook. It did mark the first time Lance O’Casey appeared in a comicbook devoted solely to his sailing tales in the South Seas; he was later awarded his own (shortlived) series in 1946. For Balbo, Commando Yank, Phantom Eagle, and Mr. Scarlet and Pinky, it was the only time they had starred in their own book. This second series of Fawcett miniatures were all numbered

Miniatures & Midgets

#12 and, as with the first six mini-comics, their back covers were blank. Strangely, the interior pages’ uneven printing quality for the number twelves are often illegible—far worse than the first series of books. This time around, no copies of the comics were attached to any Captain Marvel Adventures cover; accordingly, none had the rare full-color ad on the back cover. Again appearing without a printed price on their covers, the second series of books were not bundled together in a box with other children’s books, as was done previously with the first set of books. Instead, they hitched a ride in a comicbook rack designed for a completely different set of comics!

The Mighty Midgets The third iteration of these comics proudly proclaimed themselves to be “The Mighty Midget Comics” on their covers. The sobriquet was new but the comics did not introduce fans to any new characters—instead, they recycled stories from a defunct publisher. Worth Publishing was Worth B. Carnahan (1896-1972), a New York-based commercial artist who, under the name Billbara

Publishing, published inexpensive pulp “cheesecake” magazines such as Peek and Girls in the News that featured photographs of leggy models in suggestive poses. In 1939 Carnahan teamed with Charles M. Quinlan (1899-1952) to become one of the first publishers to enter the burgeoning comicbook field with Champion Comics, followed by Cyclone Comics and O.K. Comics in 1940. The comics were essentially character tryouts. Issues contained as many as “‘ten great features” introducing all new heroes. Readers were asked to write in and, in 25 words or less, tell the editor which of the features they liked most, enticed by the possibility that their opinions could win a share of cash prizes of up to $20 each. History records that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were turned down by many publishers before National Comics decided to give their new feature, “Superman,” a try. To his everlasting regret, Carnahan was one of those unimpressed publishers. Champion Comics lasted ten issues; Cyclone Comics made it to five issues; and only two issues appeared of O.K. Comics. Carnahan left comics and went on to a distinguished career as

The “Mighty Midgets” Dr. Voltz The Human Generator “Mighty Midget” comic from 1943. Art: Charles M. Quinlan. Tornado Tom “Mighty Midget” comic from 1943. Pat Wilton and His Flying Fortress “Mighty Midget” comic from 1943. State Trooper Stops Crime “Mighty Midget” comic from 1943. Mister Q “Mighty Midget” comic from 1943. Leatherneck the Marine “Mighty Midget” comic from 1943. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

one of the few American heraldic artists. Quinlan had a prolific comicbook career, going on to draw Captain Aero Comics, Real Life Comics, and, most notably, Cat-Man Comics. Harvey Comics bought the rights to Champion Comics and the title continued as Champ Comics. The rights to Cyclone Comics and O.K. Comics were apparently acquired by Lowe or Fawcett. Fawcett Distribution Co. distributed Champion Comics; therefore, it’s reasonable to surmise that they did the same with Worth Publishing’s other titles, indicating that a relationship between the two companies already existed. When the “Mighty Midget” comics appeared (copyright Samuel E. Lowe) in 1943, the comics reprinted stories that had appeared in Cyclone and O.K. Comics three years earlier. Lowe simply repackaged them. There were six “Mighty Midget” titles, but the comics contained the adventures of ten different heroes. Overstreet states that these books were the “only comic devoted entirely to one character”; that’s true for Tornado Tom and State Trooper Stops Crime, whose stories make up the entire Mighty Midget comic… but Leatherneck the Marine, Dr. Voltz The Human Generator, Mr. Q, and Pat Wilton and His Flying Fortress all contain more than one hero. The book Dr. Voltz the Human Generator (featuring the multi-part tale “The Electrical War on Crime”) had been re-titled from Quinlan’s Volton the Human Generator. After leaving Worth Publishing, Quinlan took the character’s name (but nothing else pertaining to the character) with him when he went to work at Holyoke Comics; the character’s first appearance under the new banner was in Cat-Man Comics #8, penciled by Joe Kubert. Also included in this comic was a tale of “The Red Knight of the First Crusade” in “The Rescue of Princess Melisand” by Charles A. Winter (1896-1967), a one-pager titled “Treasure Island of the Spanish Main,” and two puzzle pages.

Comics On Display His miniature comics no longer included in a box as part of a package, and needing to avoid becoming lost on the racks while showcased next to their normal-sized comic competitors, Lowe needed to devise a way of focusing attention on his pocket-sized books. He solved this problem by creating a foldable cardboard rack that displayed only his books; a rack that contained 6 pockets that precisely fit these 5” x 5” comics. Intended to stand on countertops at kid’s-eye level, the “Mighty Midget” comics rack enticed young WWII-era readers with promises of action and chills, adventure and thrills, amazing commandos, and war with victory. Most importantly, these books were easily seen while vying for attention with their Golden Age comicbook bigger brothers. But there were changes made between the initial idea and final implementation. The racks required alterations to accommodate the earlier comics—however, destroying and remaking the already printed racks would be expensive. The solution was masks. The “Mighty Midget” comics racks all contain plain paper paste-ups covering text underneath. Because the paste-ups are all the same size and in the same places, it’s clear that these were applied by the publisher, prior to distribution. What was not meant to be seen? When the paste-ups were carefully removed, the unmasked

The Tornado Tom comic presented three adventures of the title character, along with several one-page features on Peru, India, the Pony Express, and the latest men’s fashions. The Pat Wilton and His Flying Fortress comic also contained a story of a medieval knight “Reynard the Fox” and three stories featuring mechanical man “Robo of the Little People”—comprising many more story pages than that of cover star Pat Wilton. State Trooper Stops Crime (featuring a different “Buzz Sawyer”—not the comic strip hero created by Roy Crane) was another feature by Quinlan… while Leatherneck the Marine was by Carnahan. The latter comic also featured “Don Ramon of the Rurales” and two “King Vito of the Moon” stories by Quinlan (formerly titled “Kingdom of the Moon” in Cyclone Comics). The “Vito” stories make up the majority of the comicbook. Mr. Q featured three adventures of Quinlan’s (as “Carl Quinn”) detective strip from Cyclone Comics. This book also featured two “King Anthony” stories drawn by future “Superboy” artist George Papp, as well as two fillers—one on the Panama Canal, the other featuring Detective Patrick O’Tool. There were no blank back covers in the “Mighty Midget” books. All the back covers sported ads offering a novelty collapsing telescope, declaring that “everyone must be on alert, to identify high-flying airplanes”—presumably appealing to fans too young but otherwise eager to help with the war effort.

Breakfast Of [Fawcett] Champions Captain Marvel Adventures Wheaties Mini Edition, 1947. The exclusive giveaway comics of this series were taped to boxes of Wheaties cereal; consequently, upon removal, the surviving comicbooks either have tape marks on them or four torn corners. Art: C.C. Beck. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.] The cover of the 1947 Whiz Comics mini edition was seen on p. 72.

Miniatures & Midgets

The Fawcett Miniatures (1946) Captain Marvel and the Horn of Plenty Fawcett miniature comic (1946) dusts off an earlier tale from Captain Marvel Adventures #20 by Otto Binder and C.C. Beck’s CM art staff. A “Bulletman” story is also included in the package. Captain Marvel and the Raiders From Space Fawcett miniature comic (1946) was another earlier tale from CMA #20 by Otto Binder and C.C. Beck’s CM art staff. Golden Arrow rides in for the back-up story. Captain Marvel Jr. and The Case of the Poison Press Fawcett miniature comic from 1946 reprints an earlier “CMJr” adventure, plus a bonus “Bulletman” tale. [Shazam heroes & Bulletman TM & © DC Comics.] There were three different Delecta of the Planets Fawcett miniature editions, which between them reprinted the entire saga of C.C. Beck’s underrated creation from Don Fortune Magazine—a comicbook series which had been packaged by the Beck-Costanza Studio and distributed by Fawcett. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

The Long & Short Of It (Left:) Captain Marvel and Billy’s Big Game mini-comic giveaway from 1948, distributed primarily by Wisco ’99’ service stations as well as other companies. The story originally appeared in Captain Marvel Adventures #76. Art: C.C. Beck/Pete Costanza. (Below:) Captain Marvel Meets The Weatherman was one of three Captain Marvel mini-comics distributed by Bond Bread in 1950. The story was reprinted from Captain Marvel Adventures #80. Script: William Woolfolk; art: C.C. Beck/Pete Costanza. [Shazam hero & Billy Batson TM & © DC Comics.]

text that was uncovered proved as enlightening as it was revealing. The Midgets were the biggest deal in comics. Advertised as “the world’s greatest comic book value,” the price of the comics had increased. Initially intended to sell for two cents each, the cost had risen 25%, to 2 books for 5 cents. This small change accomplished three objectives. The higher price generated more income for the publisher and the dealer—the requirement to buy two books at a time meant that twice as much inventory was moved and, perhaps of greatest importance, the comicbook reader was introduced to several additional heroes instead of only one. The text proclaiming six titles was also covered up. Between all three series—the Elevens, Twelves, and Mighty Midgets—there were now a total of 18 titles available and removing the number limitation intended for the final six allowed the earlier books to also be offered for sale side by side in the same rack. For this same reason, the advertised 44-page length had also been covered up, which made it possible for the earlier, less lengthy comics to be included.

More Miniatures As with Samuel Lowe, Fawcett Publications had always been leaders of test-driving divergent publishing formats. And, while the two companies continued to collaborate on various projects (such as Captain Marvel Comic Hero Punch-Out Book, Comic Story Paint Book, and the puzzle-filled Captain Marvel’s Fun Book), this was not the end of Fawcett’s venture into mini-comic territory. In 1946 Fawcett produced an even smaller edition of comicbooks, regularly referred to as Fawcett Miniatures. These were 4” x 5” in size and only 12 to 24 pages in length. Printed on newsprint, with newsprint covers, the titles were: Capt. Marvel and the Horn of Plenty! (from Captain Marvel Adventures #20); secondary story: “The Gorgon’s Head!” (from Bulletman #4) Captain Marvel and the Raiders From Space (from CMA #20); secondary story: “Golden Arrow and the Dread Secret of Misty Valley” (from Golden Arrow #2) Captain Marvel Jr. and the Case of the Poison Press (from Captain Marvel Jr. #13); secondary story: “Mystery Island” (from Bulletman #3) Delecta of the Planets - three different editions. “Delecta” was the often-overlooked C.C. Beck creation produced by the Beck-Costanza Studio as a back-up feature for Don Fortune Magazine—a comicbook the studio packaged for the “Don Fortune Publishing Company” imprint distributed by Fawcett. Released in the following year were the Wheaties Miniature Editions. The 32-page 6½” x 8¼” giveaway comics were taped to

boxes of Wheaties cereal—hence the tape marks and torn corners found on existing copies. The four comicbooks that were part of the promotion were Flash Comics, Funny Stuff, and two Fawcett titles with the following contents: Captain Marvel Adventures: “Captain Marvel and the Threads of Life” “Captain Marvel and the Bridge of Sighs” “Captain Marvel and the Man Who Made Earthquakes” Whiz Comics: “Captain Marvel and the Water Thieves” Crime Smasher in “Suspect” “Golden Arrow and the Curly-Haired Menace” “Ibis the Invincible and the Devil Dolls” Other Fawcett-related miniature-sized giveaway comics were Captain Marvel and Billy’s Big Game (from Captain Marvel Adventures #76) —a full-color, 24-page-all-newsprint 7” x 3½”-sized comicbook distributed in 1948 by Wisco “99” Service Stations as well as by Carnation Malted Milk, Klarer Health Wieners, Fleer Dubble Bubble Gum, Rodeo All-Meat Wieners, Perfect Potato Chips, and other companies. In 1950, three different Captain Marvel 7” x 3½”-sized, full-color, 24-page all-newsprint comicbooks appeared: The Boy Who Never Heard of Captain Marvel (from CMA #81), Captain Marvel and the Stolen City (from CMA #87), and Captain Marvel Meets The Weatherman (from CMA #80); all three of these mini-comicbooks were distributed in loaves of Bond Bread. More than a mere contrivance of passing interest, the miniature-sized comicbooks served as economical entertainment, as well as effectual promotional pieces, and have endured well beyond the Golden Age, recurrently bringing awareness of an American art form to greater audiences. Sidney Friedfertig’s decades-long quest has been to obtain suitable copies of every Superman daily newspaper comic strip. Working closely with The Library of American Comics creative director Dean Mullaney, their joint goal is to see the entire 1939-1966 run reprinted. Friedfertig has written the introductions to all five Superman volumes published thus far.

FROM TWOMORROWS & JON B. COOKE SUMMER/FALL 2021

JOHN SEVERIN: TWO-FISTED COMIC BOOK ARTIST A spirited biography of the EC COMICS mainstay (working with HARVEY KURTZMAN on MAD and TWO-FISTED TALES) and co-creator of Western strip AMERICAN EAGLE. Covers his 40+ year association with CRACKED magazine, his pivotal Marvel Comics work inking HERB TRIMPE on THE HULK and teaming with sister MARIE SEVERIN on KING KULL, and more! With commentary by NEAL ADAMS, RICHARD CORBEN, JOHN BYRNE, RUSS HEATH, WALTER SIMONSON, and many others. By GREG BIGA and JON B. COOKE. SHIPS NOVEMBER 2021! (160-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-106-6

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #28:

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A double-size book-format tribute to RICHARD CORBEN, the transcendent master of fantasy and horror, featuring testimonials from innumerable peers, collaborators, collectors, and aficionados of the late artist. Included is a comprehensive examination of Corben’s work, from his start in fanzines and startling debut in underground comix, to groundbreaking work in the WARREN horror mags and worldwide acclaim in HEAVY METAL, and ascendancy into European comics albums. We also examine his own selfpublishing efforts with FANTAGOR PRESS and his Poe- and Lovecraft-inspired stories for DARK HORSE, as well as the man’s early dalliance in animation and the adaptation of his work in the HEAVY METAL ANIMATED FILM. Edited by JON B. COOKE and JOSÉ VILLARRUBIA, this is the definitive study of a visionary storyteller and master craftsman who elevated the art form to brilliant new levels, and a joyous celebration of his extraordinary life and career. (Counts as TWO subscription issues!) (Subscribers: upgrade to Hardcover Edition for $12)

(160-page FULL-COLOR TRADE PAPERBACK) $26.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.99 • (LIMITED HARDCOVER EDITION) $35.95 SOFTCOVER ISBN: 978-1-60549-109-7 • HARDCOVER ISBN: 978-1-60549-110-3 • SHIPS SPRING 2022

CBA BULLPEN: The Magic Is Back! COLLECTING THE UNKNOWN ISSUES OF COMIC BOOK ARTIST! COMIC BOOK ARTIST BULLPEN collects all seven issues of the little-seen labor of love fanzine published in the early 2000s by JON B. COOKE (editor of today’s COMIC BOOK CREATOR magazine), just after the original CBA ended its TwoMorrows run. Featured are in-depth interviews with some of comics’ major league players, including GEORGE TUSKA, FRED HEMBECK, TERRY BEATTY, and FRANK BOLLE—and an amazing all-star tribute to Silver Age great JACK ABEL by the Marvel Comics Bullpen and others. That previously unpublished all-comics Abel appreciation (assembled by RICK PARKER) includes strips by JOE KUBERT, WALTER SIMONSON, KYLE BAKER, MARIE SEVERIN, GRAY MORROW, ALAN WEISS, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, MORT TODD, DICK AYERS, and many more! Includes the never-released CBA BULLPEN #7, a new bonus feature on JACK KIRBY’s unknown 1960 baseball card art, and a 16-page full-color section, all behind a KIRBY COVER! (176-page TRADE PAPERBACK with COLOR) $24.95 • (Digital Edition) $8.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-105-9 • SHIPS AUGUST 2021!

New Comics Magazines!

ALTER EGO #175

RETROFAN #18

RETROFAN #19

Spotlighting the artists of ROY THOMAS’ 1980s DC series ALL-STAR SQUADRON! Interviews with artists ARVELL JONES, RICHARD HOWELL, and JERRY ORDWAY, conducted by RICHARD ARNDT! Plus, the Squadron’s FINAL SECRETS, including previously unpublished art, & covers for issues that never existed! With FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and a wraparound cover by ARVELL JONES!

Our BARBARA EDEN interview will keep you forever dreaming of Jeannie! Plus: The Invaders, the BILLIE JEAN KING/BOBBY RIGGS tennis battle of the sexes, HANNABARBERA’s Saturday morning super-heroes of the Sixties, THE MONSTER TIMES fanzine, and more fun, fab features! Featuring ERNEST FARINO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW!, and MICHAEL EURY.

Interview with Bond Girl and Hammer Films actress CAROLINE MUNRO! Plus: WACKY PACKAGES, COURAGEOUS CAT AND MINUTE MOUSE, FILMATION’S GHOSTBUSTERS vs. the REAL GHOSTBUSTERS, Bandai’s rare PRO WRESTLER ERASERS, behind the scenes of Sixties movies, WATERGATE at Fifty, Go-Go Dancing, a visit to the Red Skelton Museum, and more fun, fab features!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Dec. 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Feb. 2022

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2022

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Dec. 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Feb. 2022

KIRBY COLLECTOR #82

KIRBY COLLECTOR #83

BACK ISSUE #132

BACK ISSUE #133

BACK ISSUE #134

“Famous Firsts!” How JACK KIRBY was a pioneer in comics: Romance Comics genre, Kid Gangs, double-page spreads, Black heroes, new formats, super-hero satire, and others! With MARK EVANIER and our regular columnists, plus a gallery of Jack’s pencil art from CAPTAIN AMERICA, JIMMY OLSEN, CAPTAIN VICTORY, DESTROYER DUCK, BLACK PANTHER, unseen ANIMATION CONCEPTS, & more!

1980s MARVEL LIMITED SERIES! CLAREMONT/MILLER’s Wolverine, Black Panther, Falcon, Punisher, Machine Man, Iceman, Magik, Fantastic Four vs. X-Men, Nick Fury vs. S.H.I.E.L.D., Wolfpack, and more! With BOGDANOVE, COWAN, DeFALCO, DeMATTEIS, GRANT, HAMA, MILGROM, NEARY, SMITH, WINDSORSMITH, and more. Cover by JOE RUBINSTEIN. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

STARMEN ISSUE, headlined by JAMES ROBINSON and TONY HARRIS’s Jack Knight Starman! Plus: The StarSpangled Kid, Starjammers, the 1980s Starman, and Starstruck! Featuring DAVE COCKRUM, GERRY CONWAY, ROBERT GREENBERGER, ELAINE LEE, TOM LYLE, MICHAEL Wm. KALUTA, ROGER STERN, ROY THOMAS, and more. Jack Knight Starman cover by TONY HARRIS.

BRONZE AGE RARITIES & ODDITIES, spotlighting rare ‘80s European Superman comics! Plus: CURT SWAN’s Batman, JIM APARO’s Superman, DAVID ANTHONY KRAFT’s Marvel custom comics, MICHAEL USLAN’s unseen Earth-Two stories, Leaf’s DC Secret Origins, Marvel’s Evel Knievel, cover variants, and more! With EDUARDO BARRETO, PAUL KUPPERBERG, ALEX SAVIUK, and more. Cover by JOE KUBERT.

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Winter 2022

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Spring 2022

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Nov. 2021

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Jan. 2022

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships March 2022

2021

“THE MANY WORLDS OF JACK KIRBY!” From Sub-Atomica to outer space, visit Kirby’s work from World War II, the Fourth World, and hidden worlds of Subterranea, Wakanda, Olympia, Lemuria, Atlantis, the Microverse, and others! Plus, a 2021 Kirby panel, featuring JONATHAN ROSS, NEIL GAIMAN, & MARK EVANIER, a Kirby pencil art gallery from MACHINE MAN, 2001, DEVIL DINOSAUR, & more!

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Alter Ego (Six issues) Back Issue (Eight issues) BrickJournal (Six issues) Comic Book Creator (Four issues) Jack Kirby Collector (Four issues) RetroFan (Six issues)

ECONOMY US $68 $90 $68 $46 $49 $68

EXPEDITED US $80 $103 $80 $56 $59 $80

PREMIUM US $87 $113 $87 $60 $63 $87

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

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ALTER EGO #174

FCA [FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA] issue—spearheaded by feisty and informative articles by Captain Marvel co-creator C.C. BECK—plus a fabulous feature on vintage cards created in Spain and starring The Marvel Family! In addition: DR. WILLIAM FOSTER III interview (conclusion)—MICHAEL T. GILBERT on the lost art of comicbook greats—the haunting of JOHN BROOME—and more! BECK cover!

PRINTED IN CHINA

ALTER EGO #173

BLACK HEROES IN U.S. COMICS! Awesome overview by BARRY PEARL, from Voodah to Black Panther and beyond! Interview with DR. WILLIAM FOSTER III (author of Looking for a Face Like Mine!), art/artifacts by BAKER, GRAHAM, McDUFFIE, COWAN, GREENE, HERRIMAN, JONES, ORMES, STELFREEZE, BARREAUX, STONER—plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS.