Alter Ego #176 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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Cover art & The Shadow TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./Condé Nast.

Roy Thomas' SHADOW-Haunted Comics Fanzine

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No. 176 July 2022

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Vol. 3, No. 176 July 2022 Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editor Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck J.T. Go (Assoc. Editor) Mark Lewis (Cover Coordinator)

Comic Crypt Editor

Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll

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

Proofreaders

William J. Dowlding David Baldy

Cover Artist

Writer/Editorial: On The STREET & SMITH Where You Live . . . . 2 What The Shadow Didn’t Know! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Mark Carlson-Ghost relates the star-strewn history of Street & Smith in four colors.

Walter Gibson Remembers Street & Smith’s Comics . . . . . . . . 42

Charles Coll

The Shadow’s most important author, pulp & comics—interviewed by Will Murray.

Cover Colorist

The Greene Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Unknown

With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Ger Apeldoorn Dave Berge Ricky Terry Brisacque Bernie Bubnis Mark CarlsonGhost John Cimino Chet Cox Mark Ellis Shane Foley Joe Frank Jeff Gelb Janet Gilbert Grand Comics Database (website) Jill Greene The Vernon Greene Family

Contents

Gwandanaland Comics William B. Jones, Jr. Jim Kealy Jim Ludwig Dennis Mallonee Bruce Mason Mike Mikulovsky Brian K. Morris Mark Muller Will Murray Warren Reece Randy Sargent David Saunders Scott Shaw! Carl Lani’Keha Shinyama Dann Thomas Anthony Tollin Geoffrey Wyncoop

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Richard Lupoff, Steve Perrin, & Dan Nakrosis —also of Walter Gibson & Vernon Greene

The life and times of S&S artist Vernon Greene, explored by Anthony Tollin.

ForeSHADOWing The Batman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 The pulp-to-comics connection between the Knight of Darkness and the Dark Knight.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! It’s a Cracked, (etc.) World—Pt. 2 . . . 55 A Michael T. Gilbert salute to Cracked’s greatest-ever artist—John Severin.

John Broome – The Penultimate Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Part XIX of the Golden/Silver Age scripter’s 1998 memoir.

Tributes to Richard Lupoff, Steve Perrin, & Dan Nakrosis . . . . . 65 re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #235 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 P.C. Hamerlinck presents Carl Shinyama’s look at Captain Marvel’s split personality.

On Our Cover: There were quite a few covers of Shadow Comics that would’ve made viable fronts for this issue centered on The Shadow and his colorful Street & Smith compeers, drawn by the likes of George Rozen, Vernon Greene, and Bob Powell, impressive talents all—but this fine symbolic image for Vol. 7, #2 (May 1947), by Charles Coll, with its overlapping pages, gave us a chance to ballyhoo what’s inside our issue, and we’re more than happy with our choice! Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.] Above: Probably the most endearing (and enduring) Street & Smith creation conceived especially for its comics line (as opposed to its pulps) was Supersnipe, “The Boy with the Most Comic Books in America”— and who lived a rich fantasy life because of them—the ultimate wish-fulfillment of just about every kid who ever read a comic. Incidentally, the archetypal cover of Supersnipe Comics, Vol. 1, #6 (Oct. 1942) by his creator, George Marcoux, was actually the first issue of his own title. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.] Alter Ego TM issue 176, July 2022 (ISSN 1932-6890) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Periodicals postage pending at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Alter Ego, c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. 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, $29 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. FIRST PRINTING.

writer/editorial

On The STREET & SMITH Where You Live!

ime was when a huge segment of America lived on what could’ve been called “Street & Smith” Street.

short-lived comic strip from 1940-42… and of course the Street & Smith comicbooks, also commencing in 1940, which straddled the gun-toting pulp and mind-clouding radio versions, often in the same story.

The principal reason, of course, was The Shadow. Back between 1937 and 1954, the Street & Smith company’s flagship hero was probably nearly as well known as Superman— certainly familiar to more people than his comicbook colleague Batman… because The Shadow was damn near everywhere, as Mark Carlson-Ghost, Will Murray, and Anthony Tollin will make clear in the pages that follows. To most of the public, it was the radio Shadow who was best known: a cloaked, masked figure who could “cloud men’s minds,” thus making himself basically invisible, so he could frighten criminals into confessing their sins. (Presumably, they stayed scared long enough not to recant those confessions in court.) That macabre hero’s opening and closing radio taglines remain iconic enough that they are often quoted or paraphrased in various contexts even today. Opening: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” (Followed by a sinister, echoing laugh and a groundswell of menacing music.) Closing: “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit! Crime does not pay! The Shadow knows!” (More laughter, more weird music.) Compared to the radio Shadow, his other incarnations were simply the icing on the cake: the pulp magazine that had begun in 1931 (because of radio, as Mark Carlson-Ghost will elaborate)… a popular Saturday-matinee movie serial released in 1940… a

As Anthony Tollin will remind us, the pulp-mag Shadow was an indisputable and profound influence on 1939’s Batman debut in DC Comics—to the point where the original Batman was not much more than The Shadow in a different set of threads. Still, because there’s really nothing ever totally new under the sun, even The Shadow was part of a long, long line… partly influenced, no doubt, by the 1905 novel The Scarlet Pimpernel and 1919’s masked pulp-mag swordsman Zorro… and by other progenitors who are usually overlooked. Shadow pulp co-creator Walter Gibson said he was inspired by nothing less than Bram Stoker’s Dracula—as well as by Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1859 haunted-house story “The House and the Brain.” And Wikipedia lists a French character called Judex, whose first film-serial episode was released in the U.S. as The Mysterious Shadow, while one author also notes that another silent serial, The Shielding Shadow, featured a “protagonist [who] had a power of invisibility.” Yeah, Doc Savage was the 1930s-40s Street & Smith hero whose magazine adventures would loom largest when republished in paperback beginning in the 1960s… but The Shadow is the one who’s cast the longest, well, shadow. But now I’ll turn things over to a handful of guys who know a lot more about The Shadow, Doc Savage, Street & Smith, and the whole macabre megillah than I could ever hope to….

Bestest,

COMING IN AUGUST

177

A DON PERLIN-Led Potpourri!

acters, Inc. n Knight TM & © Marvel Char Werewolf by Night & Moo

• MOON KNIGHT vs. WEREWOLF BY NIGHT—a PERLIN action re-creation! • Artist DON PERLIN talks to RICHARD ARNDT about his long career at Marvel, DC, Hillman, Ziff-Davis, Fox, Harvey, St. John, and Charlton! Re-live his stellar stints on GHOST RIDER, WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, MOON KNIGHT, THE DEFENDERS, et al! • Mini-Marvel spotlights on Golden Age artist MARCIA SNYDER—the MARVELMANIA FAN CLUB of the 1970s—& WILL MURRAY on early Marvel variant covers! • Plus—FCA explores FREDDY FREEMAN’s friends & relations—MICHAEL T. GILBERT’s still CRACKED—a JOHN BROOME finale—& MORE!!

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CRED! Part One

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line by Mark Carlson-Ghost

hat evil lurks in the hearts of men, The Shadow knew all too well. But the motives of the publisher, editor, and writer who produced his stories were far more complicated. The tone and tenor of the comicbooks published by Street & Smith were largely driven by three decidedly different men: publisher Allen Grammer, editor William de Grouchy, and writer Walter Gibson. Bits and pieces of their story have been scattered across various articles and books. Most popular culture historians have been more interested in the history of the characters of The Shadow and Doc Savage. Yet the story of the company that published them has its own intriguing twists and turns. The focus on their two star characters is understandable. In pulp magazines and later comicbooks, these heroes operated in a world of dark forces at work behind the scenes, a realm in which light struggled to break free of—yes—shadow. A feel of ’30s Pulp Fiction—The Mags, Not The Movie! menace permeated their stories, in which The two kingpins of Street & Smith’s pulp-hero line, depicted on classic magazine covers: The Shadow heroic vigilantes were almost as unfettered (Jan. 1, 1933) and Doc Savage (August ’33). Art by George Rozen & Walter Baumhofer, respectively. Thanks in their methods as their foes. (More on them to Anthony Tollin. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.] later.) But to understand the forces behind the creation of these compelling characters, we The reader will not be surprised by the last names of the two need to explore an origin story of a decidedly different sort. And it entrepreneurs. Francis S. Street, 36, was a businessman. Francis first unfolds in 1855! S. Smith, 24, was a writer. Smith’s first byline appeared on an

Street & Smith’s Popular Fiction Roots Street & Smith’s stewardship of popular fiction stretches back to the 19th century. That story is most fully told in the company’s official history, The Fiction Factory by Quentin Reynolds. Therein, Reynolds relates how in 1855 two employees purchased The New York Weekly Dispatch, the struggling periodical for which they worked. The Weekly’s subtitle was “A Journal of Useful Knowledge, Romance, Amusement, etc.” Though to say “purchased” doesn’t quite capture the arrangement. The owner, one Amos Williamson, offered his two employees a sweetheart deal: no down payment required, just pay him the $50,000 asking price from whatever profits they managed. The two employees readily agreed.

excitingly sordid serial entitled “The Vestmaker’s Apprentice; or, The Vampyres of Society.” Sales of the Dispatch doubled before the serial ended. By 1859, their debt largely paid, Williamson declared the two men fully in charge of the Weekly. The partnership of Street & Smith (always with an ampersand, not an “and”) was successfully launched. It was a venture that would flourish for over a hundred years!

Street & Smith, In The Flesh The two founders of a great magazine empire: Francis Scott Street (1831-1883) and Francis Shubael Smith (1819-1887). Thanks to Jim Kealy.

The success of the Weekly meant better rates for writers. By 1869, the periodical was home to the first serial written by Horatio Alger, Jr., who would soon find a lucrative niche in telling stories of

ambitious American boys overcoming poverty. Later that same year, the first of a series of extraordinarily popular sagas featuring Buffalo Bill saw print.

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

to romance. As told in Theodore Peterson’s Magazines in the Twentieth Century, the wildly successful Love Story was the brainchild of editor Anita Fairgrieve. But it achieved its greatest success under the watchful editorial eye of Daisy Bacon. Love Story quickly progressed from a quarterly to a weekly publication schedule.

Having Ormond Smith served as the (1860-1933), flanked creative force by a 1908 issue of behind Street & the New Nick Carter Smith’s success Weekly and an 1897 for thirty-some edition of Tip Top Library, starring years, Francis “Frank Merriwell at Smith died in Yale.” Thanks to Jim 1887. His son Ormond took over as president of the Kealy for the photo. The Shadow’s History On Radio company, a position he would hold for the next four decades. His brother George served as vice president & In The Pulps equally as long. Members of the Street family were no The Shadow’s origins are deeply rooted in the history of Street longer involved in the publishing venture, though their presence & Smith. It is commonly known that The Shadow was originally in the company’s name proved just the unseen host of a radio show enduring. who would utter the famous words, Street & Smith continued to “Who knows what evil lurks in the be home to some of the best-known hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” popular-culture characters of the at the start of every episode. Those era. Nick Carter, splendid detective lines and the eerie laugh that followed and master of disguise, first made enlivened the imaginations of listeners the scene in 1886. With 1889, Ormond across the country. Smith began publishing dime novels, What is less commonly known is singularly devoted to unbridled that the name of the radio show that and often fantastic adventure. Frank The Shadow hosted was The Detective Merriwell, military school cadet, Story Hour, which had debuted on likewise began his adventures in that the CBS network in 1930. Detective format in ’96. Story was another of Street & Smith’s Under the leadership of Ormond highly successful pulps. The yarns Smith, the company seamlessly that unfolded on the radio show made a necessary transition from were adaptations of ones that had dime novels to pulp magazines appeared in the magazine. Street & to better cater to changing tastes. Smith sponsored the show as a way Pulp historian Ed Hulse describes of promoting its pulp line, as well as how New Buffalo Bill Weekly became broadening the scope of its business. Western Story Magazine, with editor Radio was a booming market, and the Frank Blackwell overseeing the savvy publisher capitalized on it. The transition. By 1921, Western Story was radio show would continue with The enjoying a circulation of over half a Shadow as nothing more than its host million. Other pulp magazines were until 1937. The total Shadow takeover soon added. Western Story rose to of the program followed. But that new heights, making a home for the was only long after the debut of The wildly popular stories written by Shadow’s own periodical. “Max Brand” (real name: Frederick Fascination with the mysterious Faust). His best-known characters, Casting A Long Shadow radio host prompted Street & Smith’s Destry and Silvertip, first appeared in The cover of the first issue of The Shadow pulp magazine, decision to develop a fully developed Western Story serials. cover-dated April 1931. Coming along just as the Great character to be featured in a pulp Depression was moving into high gear, Street & Smith’s Nor was Street & Smith only magazine devoted to his adventures. new magazine would nonetheless prove a considerable interested in action pulps for men. The Shadow Magazine appeared on success. Cover by Modest Stein. Courtesy of Anthony Tollin. In 1921 the company also issued the newsstands in the spring of 1931. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./ first pulp magazine entirely devoted The Condé Nast Publications.]

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Street & Smith approached a promising new writer to pen the character’s initial story under the pen name “Maxwell Grant.” His real name was Walter Brown Gibson.

Walter B. Gibson & The Shadow Pulps At the time he was tapped to do the “Shadow” stories, the 34-year-old Gibson was making a catch-as-catch-can living as a writer, though an interest in magic and mystery pervaded all his endeavors. Gibson recalled in The Shadow Scrapbook the work he was doing for newspapers at the time, providing everything from puzzles, magic tricks, and intelligence tests to exposés of fake psychics. Along the way, he had also sold a number of detective stories to Street & Smith. Hoping to do more, Gibson was in the right place at the right time, and was assigned the task of creating the first Shadow novel. As the story of the Shadow pulps has often and extensively been told, their history will not be a focus here. Let it suffice here to recognize that Gibson’s creation of the vigilante hero, his [fake] alter ego Lamont Cranston, and associated operatives (Harry Vincent and Moe Shrevnitz chief among them) proved wildly popular.

Walter Gibson as a young man. He recalled purchasing a copy of The Shadow, Vol. 1, #1, the day it came out in early 1931—and it sealed his destiny.

The success of The Shadow Magazine prompted the creation of several new “hero” pulps that featured their title characters in action rather than following the anthology format for stories Street & Smith had been accustomed to using. 1933 saw the debut of a modernized Nick Carter, a new character named Doc Savage, and Pete Rice (a modern-day cowboy), each featured in his own magazine. The following year, Bill Barnes, Air Adventurer also achieved immediate success.

The End Of A Family Dynasty: Enter Allen Grammer In the midst of this period of remarkable growth, tragedy hit the company’s leadership. In April of 1933, over two wrenching weeks, both Ormond and George Smith died. Incredibly, the two men had overseen the Street & Smith

operation since 1887. Bad news continued to plague the company. As Quentin Reynolds tells the story, one of George’s sons took over but died four years later. A son-in-law of George’s succeeded him and resigned after a year for reasons of poor health. The company was lacking clear direction at the worst possible time, as pulp-magazine sales in general were in a slump. A number of pulps introduced in 1936, The Whisperer and The Skipper among them, proved unsuccessful, adding to the company’s distress. Two years later, business consultants urgently advised family members with stock in Street & Smith to hire an outsider to run the firm for the very first time. They recommended a fellow by the name of Allen Grammer. What led the consultants to suggest this particular man as the company’s savior? A decidedly brief bio in Time magazine gives some clues. Grammer, described at 50 as “white-haired” and “supercharged,” had spent the last twenty years working for the Curtis Publishing Company, owners of The Saturday Evening Post and Ladies’ Home Journal, two powerhouses in the world of magazines. Grammer’s role at Curtis had largely been in improving efficiencies. He also “made a small fortune inventing new printing processes” along the way. Grammer had slowly worked his way up the corporate ladder, most recently serving as Secretary of the company. The consultants declared that it would take a fresh perspective to ensure the continued solvency of the operation. The Smith family promptly hired him. Grammer held a markedly more modern perspective than his predecessors. While Ormond Smith had been a cultured fellow, he believed the foundation of his family company was solidly grounded in popular culture. Grammer, for his part, felt little sentimentality for Street & Smith’s less than glamorous past. Given his experience with Curtis, what seemed to interest Grammer most was the modest success of Mademoiselle, a new “slick”-paged publication Street & Smith had introduced in 1935. Employees grumbled when Grammer decided to rid the company of the old-fashioned roll-top desks to which many felt emotionally attached. What’s more, in the ensuing years, Grammer moved Street & Smith’s offices “into a skyscraper, and fixed up the foyer like a cocktail lounge,” as one disgruntled staffer recalled—a setting far more suitable for the more modern enterprise Grammer hoped to foster. More substantive was Grammer’s mass cancellation of pulp magazines. Based on Jess Nevins’ calculations (in his excellent

A Bunch Of Guys Not Named Street &/Or Smith Workers in the stock room, and in the “work area,” at Street & Smith during its heydays. Jim Kealy says he found these in Wikipedia, and bless him for it!

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

history The Pulps), the new publisher promptly cut ten titles, reducing the line from 24 to 14. As a result, Street & Smith could no longer claim to be the most prolific publisher of pulps. That said, it was likely a necessary business move. Other pulp publishers were making similar adjustments, just not as severe. And seven Street & Smith titles had been canceled the previous year, so Grammer wasn’t entirely responsible for the retrenchment. Nonetheless, the move must have sent shock waves through long-time employees. Pulp-magazine devotees sometimes blame Grammer for such actions. But Grammer was not adverse to popular fiction, per se. If he correctly saw that the slick-paper format was the future of print magazines, he also saw the potential in the upstart child of pop culture, the comicbook. The choice of a lead character for the new comicbook line was easy enough (The Shadow was more than ready, willing, and able), but finding an editor to oversee the new effort was more difficult. Not every pulp editor was interested in or suited to the task. Ultimately, Allen Grammer chose longtime employee and Street & Smith editor William de Grouchy.

Allen Grammer recognized the need to break with the old way of doing things and moved forward with a plan to send the printing to another firm. As noted, Grammer was well acquainted with the technology of the printing process. His obituary noted that Grammer had in fact “devised a machine to accelerate the drying of four-color printing” (New York Times, 8/12/69). The main obstacle removed, Grammer proceeded with his plans to start publishing a Shadow comicbook. According to Will Murray, the story goes that Walter Gibson was not asked to write the first comicbook story, which was to be adapted from one of his pulp novels. Frustrated, he asked to write and receive writer’s credit for all scripting subsequent “Shadow” stories for the comicbook. De Grouchy denied his request but counter-offered to double the page rate for his scripts. Gibson agreed to the alternative offer, which turned out to be a fairly lucrative deal. He was soon writing other characters as well. Early stories were either adapted from the pulps or featured reconfigured panels from the soon-to-be-launched Shadow comic strip.

De Grouchy Takes Charge Just who was William de Grouchy, and why did Allen Grammer pick him to be in charge of the new comicbook venture? What follows is a recounting of what biographical details remain available, along with a little informed speculation. It turns out that 51-year-old de Grouchy had served as art editor at Ladies’ Home Journal from 1913 to 1932 before beginning work at Street & Smith. That means that he and Grammer worked for Curtis Publishing at the same time for over a decade. It seems reasonable to assume that Grammer was pleased to find a familiar face upon taking over the reins at Street & Smith. Though he was working for a women’s magazine during the twenties, it appears de Grouchy’s heart lay with far grittier material. His greatest success was co-authoring a non-fiction book entitled Jungle Gold, the true story of a fellow named Dad Pedrick and his harrowing experience of building 18 miles of railroad track in the jungles of Dutch Guiana. A November 29th, 1930, review of the book in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described it as “probably one of the most gruesome stories ever written.” Good training, indeed, to oversee the adventures of The Shadow! De Grouchy started his tenure at Street & Smith in 1932. He was responsible for the launch of Nick Carter Magazine, rebooting the classic Street & Smith character as a more modern private detective. He likely oversaw other pulp magazines during the ’30s as well, though specific details are hard to come by. At some point de Grouchy also was put in charge of merchandising associated with The Shadow and other popular Street & Smith characters. All in all, he seemed well suited to take charge of producing the company’s proposed line of comicbooks.

The Shadow In Comicbooks & Newspapers Street & Smith was late in entering the burgeoning comicbook field. In his book The Shadow Scrapbook, Walter Gibson provided insights into their reluctance: “The main reason Street & Smith did not enter the comic field much sooner was that they printed all their magazines and their plant was not equipped with color presses.”

A Four-Color Shadow Sadly, we’ve been unable to lay our hands on photos of either Allen Grammer or William de Grouchy—but their many four-color works live after them. Above is the final page of the first story in Shadow Comics, Vol. 1, #1 (1940), adapted from a Walter Gibson pulp novel but actually scripted and illustrated by unknown hands. (See the issue’s cover on p. 42.) In the earliest comics, The Shadow was still a man of violence wielding his .44s, but his radio-spawned power to “cloud men’s minds” and thus seem invisible would soon follow. Thanks to Anthony Tollin. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Magazines.]

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Astounding But True! At one point, John W. Campbell’s Jupiter-born Earthman hero “Iron Munro the Astounding Man” was intended to be the star of Street & Smith’s first comicbook venture—mostly because Campbell, among others, suspected the star of his serialized 1934-35 novel The Mightiest Machine had influenced Siegel & Shuster’s “Superman”; but wiser heads prevailed. “Iron Munro” art in Shadow Comics #1 by African-American artist E.C. Stoner. Otto Binder (seen on p. 73 of this issue) apparently provided the first two “Iron Munros” scripts, while his fellow science-fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon scribed the remaining yarns of the short-lived series—reportedly Sturgeon’s only comicbook work. (See more of Aarn Munro on pp. 47-48.) Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert, Jim Ludwig, & Anthony Tollin. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Naste Publications.]

Contrary to some accounts, the comic strip was launched June 17th, 1940, according to comic strip historian Allan Holtz, months after the comicbook debut. That said, comic strips would frequently be used as a basis for the comicbook stories, recut and reprinted. The art for both the early comicbooks and comic strip was handled by Vernon Greene. By and large, the comicbook E.C. Stoner followed the radio show format in terms of featured characters and format, even though both pulp plots and radio scripts were adapted. In the comicbooks, Lamont Cranston, wealthy gentleman about town, was portrayed as the actual secret identity of The Shadow. From his time among the lamas of Tibet, Cranston learned the powers of hypnosis, invisibility, and extraordinary stealth. There was no reference to the Cranston persona being a concocted identity. The number of his agents was largely limited to Moe Shrevnitz and Margo Lane. Created for the radio show, Margo ably embodied the popular comicbook trope of the damsel in distress. Despite the comicbook being called Shadow Comics, in early issues The Shadow appeared in only one story per issue. The rest of the comic’s line-up was a who’s who of Street & Smith’s pulp-hero line. Nick Carter was naturally included, periodically assisted by a group of associates known as the Inner Circle Club. It must be said

that adaptations of old “Nick Carter” stories in comicbook form largely lacked energy or fresh life. Despite this, Carter’s stature as a longtime Street & Smith mainstay assured his presence throughout most of Shadow’s run as a comicbook. Carter’s longtime arch-enemy, Dr. Quartz, appeared in issue #3. After being exposed as the murderer of a lovely opera singer, Quartz swallowed a poison capsule rather than face imprisonment. But Quartz had faked his own death before, so his demise was by no means certain. Also featured in Shadow Comics #1 were Doc Savage, Aarn [now Iron] Munro, Bill Barnes, and college athlete Frank Merriwell. Likewise notable as an early Shadow Comics back-up series (starting with the second issue) was a relatively new pulp character. Richard Henry Benson, better known as The Avenger, was an ace detective and a master of disguise. He had a number of agents who reported to him via “super-television.”

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

The All-Star Backups In Shadow Comics, Vol. 1, #1 (Clockwise from top left:) “Doc Savage,” adapted from a 1934 “Kenneth Robeson” (in this case, Lester Dent) Doc Savage radio script—“the only time this was done,” according to scans provider Anthony Tollin. “Frank Merriwell,” “Carrie Cashin,” & “Nick Carter” – artists & scripters of the preceding four features all unknown. “Bill Barnes,” a story assembled from sample newspaper comic strips drawn by Frank Tinsley. Writer unidentified. The above quintet are reproduced from comics pages from which all color had been filtered out by Anthony Tollin, for use in his Sanctum Books reprinting of Shadow and Doc Savage pulp stories—a reprinting project which is now complete. Check out the listings online. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

dark-robed villain who disguised his identity with a black domino mask and controlled “the smoke of eternity,” a gas which could reduce a man to mere vapor. To complicate matters, Doc had to confront Kar on Thunder Island, a lost land of prehistoric creatures carried over from one of the pulp stories. The serial lasted until the second issue. Ham and Monk Mayfair were the only ones of Doc’s assistants featured in most stories. Cap Fury followed Doc over from Shadow Comics after only one appearance. Another former pulp hero, Cap Fury had starred in the unsuccessful pulp The Skipper. Fury was the handsome blond-haired captain of a mystery ship called the Whirlwind. The Whirlwind appears to be a beat-up old vessel, but once its “tubular power plant” is activated, it can move at incredible speed. It’s also equipped with powerful weaponry. Fury’s first mate is named Hurricane Dan. The Whisperer also made his comicbook debut in Doc Savage. Secretly “Wildcat” Condon, police commissioner, he adopted his Whisperer guise simply by changing into casual slacks and shirt and adopting an eerie whisper. Amazingly, and somewhat unconvincingly, he conveyed a change of identity without the use of a mask. He only appeared in two issues.

Avenger Assemble! Though The Avenger was a reasonably successful S&S hero-pulp for years, the white-haired Richard Henry Benson only rarely made it onto the splash page of his comics adventures, except symbolically. “The Yellow Hoard” appeared in Shadow Comics, Vol. 1, #2 (Feb. 1940), adapted by an unknown writer and artist from a pulp novel by Paul Ernst (as “Kenneth Robeson,” the house-name author of Doc Savage as well). Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Danny Garrett, a shoeshine boy and amateur sleuth, was also from the pulps. He would later find a home in the back of Shadow Comics, facing an occasionally colorful foe, including The Clown (Shadow, Vol. 2, #11, and Vol. 3, #7) and The Mad Hatter, who dressed like the classic Alice in Wonderland character.

The oddest feature tapped from the pulps was “The Talking Toad”... “a Gadget Man cartoonette.” The Gadget Man was Click Rush, an inventor of a trunk full of crime-fighting gadgets. He hoped New York’s police force would welcome his help, but he was coldly rejected. Ready to give up, Rush received a three-foot-tall metal talking toad in the mail. The toad apparently contained a radio transmitter. He called himself Bufa. “I live on slugs of the human variety,” Bufa declared. “I’m thinking of hiring a private detective to investigate crime. Don’t you want to work for me?” The Talking Toad pledged to supply Rush with information on “crimes which I think need solving” and to finance their mutual crime-fighting operation. The peculiar detective team appeared in Shadow Comics #5-6 and Doc Savage #3. Carrie Cashin was the only heroine among Shadow Comics’ back-up features. The “famous girl detective” Carrie’s adventures had also previously been told in pulp magazines. Intelligent and resourceful, she was unfortunately only featured in six stories before doing a disappearing act from Shadow. None of these characters was ever awarded their own comicbook, despite the prominence several of them had enjoyed in the pulps. But two stalwarts featured in that first Street & Smith issue did go on to star in their own comicbooks: Doc Savage and Bill Barnes, “America’s Air Ace.”

Doc Savage In Early Comicbooks The success of Shadow Comics prompted Street & Smith to promote Doc Savage to his own title. The first issue continued a serial started in Shadow Comics, in which Doc struggled with Kar, a

Don’t Get Toad Away! Years before Warner Bros.’ cartoon immortalized its “Singing Frog,” the phenomenon known as “The Talking Toad” debuted in Doc Savage, Vol. 1, #3 (Feb. 1941). Scripter & artist unidentified. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace

The Mad Hatter had an interesting history. He was originally a villain named The Steel Claw, who was undone by Danny in Shadow Comics, Vol. 2, #12. Badly harassed by the underworld for being defeated by a mere boy, The Claw decided to disguise his identity as The Mad Hatter for his subsequent encounters with the youthful detective (Shadow, Vol. 3, #5-6). The Hatter’s partner in crime, a thug named Nick, inexplicably wore a green frog suit, as if that would in any way end the disrespect.

Pulp-mag star Bill Barnes graduated from his backup status in Shadow Comics after six issues and debuted in his own comicbook in October 1940. As with The Shadow, Walter Gibson opted to provide scripts for the character, adapted from pulp stories he had written. The series was drawn by Frank Tinsley, whose other comics work was writing and drawing Captain Yank for the McNaught Syndicate. Barnes, while looking like a rather typical heroic pilotadventurer, had adventures like no others in comicbooks.

Mark Mallory of West Point also had a pulpy past, his series of juvenile novels beginning in 1903. In the comics, he was the same upright and athletic cadet, thwarting the plans of whatever gangsters and saboteurs he encountered. Sheriff Pete Rice, the former star of his own pulp magazine, managed only one appearance, albeit in Doc’s debut issue. None of these pulp adaptations were to catch fire and were soon phased out to be replaced by more modern and colorful characters.

The Yellow-Jackets, who squared off against Barnes in his first issue, were described as “a ring of spies… men of all nations, outlaws who get by force what they cannot get by cleverness.” In his second issue, Barnes faced the War-Lord. This ambitious villain engineered an actual invasion of the United States, landing on New Jersey and

What’s Up, Doc? The covers of Doc Savage Comics, Vol. 1, #1 (April 17, 1940) & V1#4 (May 1941)—and the “Doc” splash page from DSC V1#3 (Feb. ’41)— with art respectively by Walter Baumhofer (re-purposed from a Doc pulp cover) and a pair of unknown artists. “The Polar Treasure” was adapted by an unidentified scripter from the Doc Savage pulp novel of the same name. Courtesy of the GCD and Jim Ludwig. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Torn (Clockwise) From Yesterday’s Headlines—Or Somewhere! Sadly, “Cap Fury” didn’t make it as either the titular star of the one-issue S&S pulp-mag The Skipper or as a feature that appeared briefly in Doc Savage Comics, beginning with Vol. 1, #1. Writer & artist unknown. Stan Lee admitted that the pulp was his inspiration for christening a submarine captain in 1960s Sgt. Fury initially just “The Skipper”—though he never mentioned specifically if the name “Cap Fury” had any connection to the Howlers’ scowlin’ Sarge. Ironically, when Marvel’s “Skipper” got a real moniker, it was—Captain Savage, no doubt in homage to Doc himself. Is your head spinning yet? Thanks to Will Murray for this trio of images, which come from his self-described “ratty copy” of Doc Savage, Vol. 1, #1. (We thought you might enjoy glimpsing its tattered pages. Besides, we couldn’t locate another copy of that ish.) “The Whisperer” was an unsuccessful S&S attempt to imitate its own “Shadow.” Strangely, neither this splash page nor the following one shows their series’ title characters. Believe it or not, “Sheriff Pete Rice” also had his own pulp magazine for a time—but lasted only this single sighting in a comic. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

succeeding in taking control of Philadelphia. Even more pernicious were the actions of Emperor Philip in issue #3. This unseen despot engineered the uranium-fueled bombing of multiple American cities, including Boston, Miami, Nashville, and St. Paul. A native of Minnesota, I can testify that no one dares speak of this in St. Paul, even today. Emperor Philip was finally destroyed when Barnes dropped an atomic bomb on his explosive-filled headquarters. If fought by a more colorful-appearing protagonist with a colorful costume, à la Airboy or Blackhawk, these epic struggles might still be fondly remembered. Back-up features in Bill Barnes included “‘Rocket’ Rooney.” A

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

Frank Tinsley A later photo, courtesy of David Saunders at www.pulpartists.com.

masked pilot; Sonny Tabor, an undercover G-man operating out of the Old West; and Danny Hawk, the Boy with the Camera Eye. Despite some exciting adventures, Barnes proved to be too bland a character in a market full of colorful Air Male super-heroes. Before long, the comicbook was Street & Smith’s aviator hero parachuted from Shadow Comics into a single 1940 issue of Bill Barnes Comics—which was continued as Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace with issue #2 in 1941. Beginning with the latter, the pilot’s fantastical adventures rechristened Air Ace, and were more like those of pulp magazines’ Operator #5 than Charles Lindbergh or Eddie Rickenbacker. Art by Frank Tinsley. Barnes was soon phased [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.] out entirely. He was briefly replaced by an international chemist and expert pilot, Rooney discovered “the perfect formula air crew (sound familiar?) for extracting and harnessing a constant and unlimited flow of called The Four Musketeers, featuring American, English, Chinese, propulsion energy from the atmosphere.” Sharing his discovery, and Russian pilots. Then they, too, were gone. Air Ace turned into a his lifelong friend and sponsor Professor Watts builds a rocket ship hybrid periodical, comprised of half comicbook material and half capable of utilizing this new discovery, a vessel capable of traveling print articles with aviation-related photos. through space. The two men discover a mysterious planet named Gigantia, whose Army And Navy Comics advanced science provides an impetus Street & Smith’s next venture was aimed at the growing for subsequent number of men in the armed services in the months leading up to adventures. The Bill World War II. Titled Army and Navy Comics, its first issue was dated Barnes line-up was May 1941 and it soon styled itself as “every army camp’s favorite rounded out by The magazine.” Covers featured gag cartoons that usually incorporated Phantom Flyer, a a serviceman and a pretty girl.

Look! Up In The Air! As Mark Carlson-Ghost relates, Bill Barnes was gradually aced out as the comic’s star— until the retitled mag became half-comics, half-aviation-oriented print articles with photos, as indicated by the cover of Air Ace, Vol. 2, #12 (Nov. 1945). Art by Charles Payne. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Inside, contents were a bit of mix. The lead feature was “Private Rook,” featuring the often hallucinogenic adventures of Rufus R. Rook, a goofy wise-acre of an enlisted man. Rook often tussled with Hitler in his imagination—wildly frenetic tales that typically ran 20 pages. In one story, Hitler is portrayed as an onion while Rook is doing kitchen duty. In another, Rook captures Hitler trying to rob the U.S. treasury by dousing himself in invisibility gas. Equally strange and satirical was Army and Navy’s other main feature, “Dizzy Diaries,” which purported to reveal a day in the diaries of leading Axis figures including Mussolini, Goebbels, and Goering. Mussolini’s begins with Benito exhaling “phooey!,” which a caption describes as his “love call to his mate, Adolf.” Later we see Mussolini trying to eat his phone after Berlin refuses to accept his call as a “foreigner.” The end of the story promises “another all-absorbing, soul-stirring, heart wrenching, inside low-down dizzy diary of another one of the world’s greatest no-accounts.”

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Army and Navy‘s first issue promised a $2.50 prize for the best suggestions for gag cartoons sent to the editors. By the second issue, de Grouchy informed readers that servicemen “swamped the editors. We received several thousand. We have picked out what we believe to be the best.” The resulting effort filled up six pages, “The Navy Gets The Gravy, And…” along with the Cover of Army and Navy Comics, Vol. 1, #2 (Aug. 1941). name of each The comicbook would not long outlast the opening of enlisted man. hostilities with Pearl Harbor that December, however. Artist uncertain. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, De Grouchy Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.] promised to publish more of “these swell drawings” in the next issue. The gag cartoons became a regular feature.

The rest of Army and Navy Comics was a mishmash of adventure and true story features seemingly borrowed from other magazines. The uneven effort lasted just five issues, through July 1942, a resolutely jingoistic effort to the end.

“True Picture Stories” While the primary emphasis in the early months of de Grouchy’s efforts was naturally on depictions of Street & Smith’s vast inventory of pulp heroes, there was also a secondary focus on true-fact tales—or, as de Grouchy styled them, “true picture stories.” The first issue of Street & Smith’s Sport Comics, cover-dated October 1940, began with what seemed like a sure thing: a pictorial biography of baseball great Lou Gehrig. Nevertheless, the comicbook soon fizzled, canceled after four issues. Trail Blazers debuted in 1941, also lasting only four issues. During its short shelf life, it featured illustrated biographies of figures such as the Wright Brothers and Benjamin Franklin. Pioneer Picture Stories, debuting in December of 1941, did nominally better, lasting nine issues despite being one of the most poorly titled comicbooks ever. With a name that evoked true stories of the Old West, the comic actually featured a mix of historical and contemporary accounts. Featuring biographies as wide-ranging as Errol Flynn and Leonardo Da Vinci, the title had a decided lack of focus. The most interesting thing about Pioneer Picture Stories was “The Legless Ace,” a “true” feature that appeared every issue. The so-called Legless Ace was Douglas Bader, an actual Canadian pilot for the R.A.F. who had lost both his legs in a crash. Truly possessing an indomitable spirit, Bader went on to fly in World War II, downing more German planes than most of his peers. The comicbook tales were inspired by his life story.

Sporty Pioneer Trail Blazers (Above:) Three of the company’s more or less “true-to-life” comics: Street & Smith’s Sport Comics #1 (Oct. 1940), the forerunner of True Sport Picture Stories… Trail Blazers, Vol. 1, #1 (1941)… and Pioneer Picture Stories V1#1 (1941). The Trail Blazers cover was drawn by Vernon Greene; the other artists are unidentified. Thanks to Jim Ludwig & the GCD. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! It’s Super-Magician! (Above:) A promotional poster (artist unknown) for Blackstone the Magician’s world-famous act during his later years, when his hair had turned white and he found himself often performing for young audiences—which led to Super-Magic Comics #1 (May 1941), which by its second issue was renamed Super-Magician Comics. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.] (Right:) The cover of Super-Magician, Vol. 1, #7 (Sept. 1942); artist unknown. Incidentally, while the hyphen was generally left off the logo in later issues, it was apparently a part of the actual indicia title. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Magazines.]

Gibson & Blackstone The Magician In addition to The Shadow and Bill Barnes, Walter Gibson also wrote “Blackstone the Magician.” Gibson is known for writing the Shadow pulps, but he also spent time as a professional magician, albeit a minor one. As noted earlier, Gibson was fascinated by magic tricks and magicians. Besides writing a good deal about the performance of stage magic, he also served as a ghost writer for actual magicians and escape artists such as Houdini, Howard Thurston, and Harry Blackstone, Sr. It was in this way that Gibson came to know and become friends with the latter performer. Blackstone had been a professional magician since 1904. As he grew older and the tastes of audiences changed, Blackstone found his audience included an increasingly large percentage of children. Now 57 years of age, Blackstone had added Saturday matinees to his touring schedule to accommodate those fans. Gibson, who was rather enjoying the easy money writing for comicbooks afforded, proposed that he and Blackstone collaborate on a comicbook, which would become Super-Magic (for just one issue) and then, more enduringly, Super-Magician Comics. We know this from the pioneering research by Michael Lauck in a blog for iTricks.com. The plan that ultimately emerged was this: Using Blackstone’s name and likeness, Gibson would write exotic adventure stories about the magician, who would be seen in his tuxedo and elegant white bow tie. Blackstone, for his part, would buy 50,000 copies of every issue’s print run from Street & Smith to give out as giveaways to children at his performances. For a little sex appeal, Gibson gave Blackstone a shapely female assistant named Rhoda to serve as his companion and frequent damsel in distress.

The scheme worked marvelously well, and Super-Magician proved to be a sales success in its own right, selling a very healthy 480,000 copies an issue by 1945. A radio program based on the comicbook soon followed. The Saturday Evening Post ran an article about Blackstone’s huge following among children, declaring that among young boys he was as popular as Frank Sinatra was among teen girls, which was saying a lot! The premise of Blackstone’s comicbook series was that globe-trotting magician Harry Blackstone took his show on the road, all the while exposing practitioners of bogus magic that was being used to mask criminal or subversive wartime intent. Only occasionally would he encounter a truly supernatural phenomenon, as he did in Super-Magician, Vol. 3, #1. Wilfred Spiegelpflug was a genuine warlock who studied actual black magic. He obtained the Hand of Glory, a severed hand which spurts flame from its fingertips. Blackstone had no arch-enemy but did battle a Japanese magician with the unlikely name of Ichi Ichi. He encountered that villain on three different occasions (Super-Magician, Vol. 2, #1; Vol. 2, #3; Vol. 2, #11). In their second clash, Ichi Ichi pretends to have mastered the secret of a tree of living skulls on an island off the coast of Australia. With a single word, he suggests the skulls can grow flesh and materialize into warriors. It turns out to be a hoax, however. While on the island, Ichi is exposed to poison ivy and becomes “itchy” as well. Ichi Ichi wears round glasses and is portrayed with stereotypical buck teeth. Like Blackstone, he appeared to possess no actual magical powers. Other magicians were included in Super-Magician as back-up features. Tao-Anwar, the Persian Mystic, was just the stage name

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Blackstone Does Africa On this particular splash page from Super-Magician Comics, Vol. 1, #11 (March 1943), Blackstone looks more like a Frank Buck-style big-game hunter than like a stage magician—but rest assured, there was plenty of prestidigitation and hocus-pocus in the “Fire Wizards” yarn itself! Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

of a boy magician named Ted. First appearing in Super-Magician, Vol. 1, #3, he also lacked real powers. Ted thwarted the schemes of those criminals or Axis spies he just happened to encounter at his magic shows, always doing so with his wits, never his fists. He was friends with Blackstone and helped him solve “The Case of the Hollow Crutch.” The two were also shown sharing ideas for magic tricks in short features. Simon Savant, “Magician of Science” came later, beginning a brief run in Super-Magician, Vol. 1, #8. Savant was a bespectacled scientist and an expert criminologist. He was rejected by the Army due to flat feet, but continued to support the American effort at home.

Supersnipe Koppy McFad, “the boy with the most comic books in America,” was the most original creation of Street & Smith’s comicbook line. The brainchild of cartoonist George Marcoux, Koppy is a 10-year-old boy who dons his grandfather’s red underwear and a blue cape to further his fantasy of being the heroic Supersnipe. Supersnipe’s adventures began as mostly fantasy or featuring mundane neighborhood happenings. First appearing in 1942 in a story in Shadow Comics, Vol. 2, #3, Supersnipe was quickly awarded his own comicbook, a renamed but not renumbered Army and Navy Comics, with Vol. 1, #6 (Oct. 1942). Not long afterward, de Grouchy brought in Ed Gruskin, a young writer of considerable promise, to assist Marcoux in more fully realizing Koppy’s world to ensure sufficient story possibilities.

Look! Down On The Ground!... This very first “Supersnipe” tale, in Shadow Comics, Vol. 2, #3 (March 1942), deals with young Koppy McFad in his original makeshift costume, imagining a sinister plot behind an outbreak of German measles. Script & art by George Marcoux. Thanks to Jim Kealy (who apologizes for the missing line of text from the bottom of the splash page, but that’s all he could find, honest!). [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

The Justice Supersnipes Of America A Marcoux splash panel in which Supersnipe appears with The Shadow, Doc Savage, Ajax the Sun Man, Blackstone the Magician, and a couple of lesser S&S heroes (precise issue unidentified). Thanks to Will Murray & the GCD. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Gruskin introduced a neighborhood-full of children who could drive plots and with whom Koppy could interact to humorous effect. Most memorable comics characters have a rival, if not an antagonist, and Diana “Roxy” Adams, “the girl guerrilla” and excellent archer, filled that role quite nicely. His rival in catching crooks, Roxy first appeared in Supersnipe Comics, Vol. 1, #9. Other key additions to Koppy’s world were Herlock Domes, boy detective with a Sherlock Holmes cap, and Ulysses Q. Wacky, boy inventor and “genius unlimited.” As the years passed, Koppy began to confront genuine wrongdoing and even violence. One of Street & Smith’s most popular titles, Supersnipe Comics appeared on newsstands until 1949.

The Shadow & Doc Savage Turn Super-Hero Recognizing that simply condensing whole novels into text-heavy comicbook adaptations was unwieldy, editor de Grouchy oversaw makeovers for both “The Shadow” and “Doc Savage.” Beginning with issue #9 (March 1941), Shadow Comics began to feature reprints of the Shadow newspaper comic strip. This move accomplished two things. One, it allowed for stories to unfold in a more natural pacing necessitated by the comic strip’s daily unfolding of plot. It also meant longer and more complex stories. The first comic strip reprint, “The Mystery of the Sealed Box,” ran 30 pages. Vernon Greene’s workmanlike artwork was also an improvement. Just as important, however, was the fact that the newspaper comic strip The Shadow displayed the hero’s powers of invisibility. And de Grouchy and his art team found a creative way to portray that invisibility in the color that comicbooks afforded. The colorist used a light blue to color the Shadow’s figure when he was invisible. And then the black ink-lines that had originally rendered

George Marcoux was one of the artists whose work was utilized, and whose biography (and portrait) thus appeared, in the Street-&-Smith-published 1940s book How to Draw Comics… utilizing a semi-finished panel from his “Supersnipe” work. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./ The Condé Nast Publications.]

his figure were removed. This so-called “color-held” effect was, dare I say it, a shadowy impression of the hero’s figure. With Doc Savage #5, cover-dated August 1941, that pulp hero was completely transformed into a super-hero. A trip to Tibet led to Doc adopting a legit super-hero costume with form-fitting blue tights, a bare chest, and a modified blue hood embedded with a red ruby. The ruby, with its mystic attributes, granted Savage superstrength and hypnotic powers. The ruby also had the power to ward off bullets. Taking over the hero’s scripting duties, Ed Gruskin quickly realized that Savage also needed a villain of substance. The Skull was introduced in the tenth issue of Doc Savage. Zashu Mittory, the narrative informs us, had once been an assistant and friend of Savage’s at his laboratory. A chemical explosion in the laboratory had left Mittory with burns too severe to ever permit skin-grafting. Prone to hysterical laughter, the skull-faced villain wore a tuxedo and vowed to release the gas-germ that the two of them had accidentally discovered, in hopes of wiping every living thing off the face of the Earth. The Skull returned a year later for a three-part epic battle with Doc (Vol. 2, #3-5). More details were revealed about the

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Now You See Him… (Left:) The second Shadow Comics cover on which the image of the Night Master was “color-held” in order to indicate his invisibility was that of Vol. 2, #1 (Jan. 1942), by by Vernon Greene (see photo on p. 49). Hopefully The Shadow was able to cloud the minds of insects as well as men. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Fools Gruskin Where Angels Fear To Tread (Bottom left:) A page from the lead story in Supersnipe Comics, Vol. 2, #12 (a.k.a. #24, Nov.-Dec. 1945) by writer Ed Gruskin and artist/creator George Marcoux. (Bottom right:) This immediately post-WWII letter from Gruskin to editor William de Grouchy led to Marcoux drawing (from a photo) a sketch of Gruskin in uniform. A real behind-the-scenes treasure from the Golden Age of Comics… (Right:) …and Marcoux’s cover of Supersnipe V2#12 that de Grouchy requested in response to Gruskin’s letter. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Magazines.]

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

Orson Welles Knows… This somewhat whimsical four-page feature on The Shadow radio program appeared in Shadow Comics, Vol. 2, #11 (Feb. 1943). We’ve repro’d the first two pages. Scripter & artist unknown. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

villain, inextricably linking The Skull to Savage’s own origins. It emerged that Doc Savage’s father had tried to create a superior man prior to the birth of his son, but that experiment had gone badly awry and his guinea pig had become the Nazi known as The Skull. The villain returned a final time after the war, revealed to be the behind-the-scenes leader of the Black Room Society, actively pursuing atomic secrets he believed only Savage possessed (Shadow, Vol. 6, #7-9).

Other Street & Smith Heroes The Hooded Wasp and his identically dressed sidekick made a rather impressive appearance on the cover of Shadow Comics #7, which promised the story of his origin inside. An explorer named Bob—no last name supplied—traveled to ancient Egypt to find a magic scarab. In a bit of logic only the 1940s might have allowed, the scarab transformed Bob into The Hooded Wasp, who actually sported a helmet instead of a hood. And while Bob seemed to have a secret identity, his similarly costumed young ally was simply known by his name, Jim Martin. It took several issues before Martin was christened Wasplet, which may not have felt like much of an improvement.

“They Say, Ruby, You’re Like A Dream…” The first-ever cover of Doc Savage as a super-hero sporting a “red ruby… with mystic attributes”—Vol. 1, #5 (Augt. 1941), drawn by Jack Binder—who can be glimpsed on p. 73 of this A/E issue. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

all total, he managed 22 stories in Shadow Comics. In Doc Savage Comics #2, Ajax the Sun Man was introduced even before Doc adopted his super-hero attire. This solarpowered hero’s series was played up in a giant blurb on the cover of that issue, perhaps reflecting de Grouchy’s lack of confidence that a non-powered adventurer, however famous in his own pulp magazine, could move comicbook sales. In that first story, the reader learned how Jim Wilson accompanied his mentor Dr. Elbe on what was humanity’s first space ship journey—to Venus. An act of sabotage sent the ship hurtling into the sun instead. Elbe was killed, but “by a strange twist of fate,” Wilson survived to become “the fastest and strongest man alive.” Ajax had power to project solar energy, could master gravity, and was largely impervious to harm. Wilson, in his domestic life, assumed a career as a police officer. As Ajax, he wore a yellow costume with red boots, belt, and cape. Ajax faced foes like Dr. Coven, the so-called “Monster Master,” and Hatar, an ambitious dictator whose stated ambition was to “rule the entire stupid Earth!” With issue #5, “Astron, Crocodile Queen” was added to the Doc Savage line-up. A priestess of Cleopatra’s Hidden Light of Lasting Youth (who knew?), Astron was immortal and had lived since the time of ancient Rome. In exile from her native Egypt, she

Out Of His Skull The Skull had a long life as an arch-enemy of Doc Savage—as seen by the above splash page for Doc Savage Comics, Vol. 6, #9 (Nov. 1946). Writer & artist unknown. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Whatever magical powers were hinted at in the origin story soon evaporated, and The Hooded Wasp and Wasplet became acrobatic heroes good in a fight, Street & Smith’s Batman and Robin surrogates. This, at least, resulted in a moderately interesting rogue’s gallery. Dundril was a dwarf assistant to two different criminal masterminds, The Head and The Mask, both of whom died in battle with the heroes (Shadow V1/#8-9). The Flame was a bearded, scientific wizard who specialized in inventions that created havoc with fire, such as a deadly fireball machine (Shadow, Vol. 3, #2-4). The ultimate Biblical betrayer, a gray-bearded Judas summoned all the devils of human history to form the Devils Incarnate, a group devoted to making this a world of utter sin and depravity. Judas was assisted in his efforts by the world’s first murderer, a brutishlooking Cain (Shadow, Vol. 3, #6). In 1943, towards the end of The Hooded Wasp’s career, Babe— Bob’s attractive blonde-haired girlfriend—became the costumed Honey Wasp (as told in Shadow, Vol. 3, #3). No matter that wasps can’t produce honey, though they have been known to steal it from bees. All in all, not the best moniker for a new heroine to adopt. Then again, very little about The Hooded Wasp made sense. Still,

O Wasp, Where Is Thy Sting? In the pages of Shadow Comics, Vol. 1, #38 (Jan. 1941), among others, where he and his young sidekick Jim (other identity: “Jim”) battled the criminal known as—The Head! Script & artwork reportedly by Paul Gustavson. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

As told in Super Magician #1, the origin of Rex King was more complicated and frankly a little weird. While in Borneo, King, a world adventurer, saved the life of a panther with a mysterious white star on its throat. When the panther soon returned the favor by saving his life, King was so impressed that he named the panther Kato and promised the jungle cat he would “get a sleek black outfit to look like you,” all in order to fight evil across the world, you understand. Together, King told the feline, they’d be known as Black Fury. King’s black outfit sported a matching white star on its chest and white cloth attached from shoulder to wrist to aid him in gliding. (Just like all jungle cats?) But King turned out to be rather fickle, later adopting a black leopard named Jet as his new faithful companion. King traversed the globe, driving his well-traveled and apparently fearsome vehicle (“the Japs tremble with fear when they hear the backfire of his jeep”), all the while accompanied by his panther pal. King enjoyed surprising longevity, managing a total of ten appearances in Super-Magician Comics, Supersnipe, and Red Dragon Comics. Tigerman came along in 1943, debuting in Super-Magician Comics #17. By swallowing “tiger pills” given to him by a dying Burmese priest (and quickly stripping naked so as not to tear his clothes), Prof. Greg Lee could transform himself into a large and powerful tiger. In his five adventures in Burma, the tiger managed to steer clear of Rex King.

“We Got The Sun Man In The Mornin’…” “Ajax the Sun Man” splash page from Doc Savage Comics #3 (Feb. 1941). Art by E.C. Stoner; script by Otto Binder. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

learned the secret of controlling the crocodiles that lived with her on her secret jungle island. She squared off against supernatural foes, including such mythological figures as Pan himself. After people stopped believing in the ancient gods, as told in Doc Savage #10, Pan descended into an underground realm where he became the leader of a group of bat-winged demons. Charles M. Payne was the unlikely artist to draw “Astron.” Already in his sixties, he was known almost entirely for having written and drawn the humor panel S’Matter Pop. But the panel had gradually lost its following and had been canceled in 1939. Needing money, Payne drew whatever de Grouchy could find for him. He did side features for Bill Barnes and later Air Ace, but found a temporary home with the immortal crocodile queen. Astron, as drawn by Payne, had a vaguely Victorian feel, as though he might have been channeling H. Rider Haggard’s She. The old-fashioned style undoubtedly hurt the feature’s longevity. All things considered, Astron had a healthy 14-issue run. Street & Smith also debuted a trio of jungle-themed heroes, well aware of Fiction House’s success in that area. Beebo of Jungle Isle was a heroic, loin-cloth clad boy whose story of being stranded there was told in Shadow Comics, Vol. 2, #9. The lad was joined by The Shadow himself in Vol. 3, #8, in his climactic battle with James Botel, his arch-rival for dominion over the island.

“After While, Crocodile…” “Astron, Crocodile Queen” was drawn by Charles Payne for Doc Savage Comics, Vol. 1, #10 (Nov. 1942). Scripter unknown. Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

It’s A Jungle Out There On The Street (& Smith) Three jungle features in Golden Age S&S comics: “Beebo” was a Bomba wannabe in Shadow Comics, Vol. 3, #6 (Sept. 1943). Script by Ed Gruskin; art by Jack Binder. Thanks to Mark Muller. “Rex King” was also known as “Black Fury”—in conjunction with his panther pals— first Kato, then Jet. Maybe The Green Hornet’s chauffeur complained? Anyway, this appearance in Red Dragon Comics, Vol. 1, #8 (Oct. 1943) was Rex’s last hurrah. Pencils by Jack Binder; inks by Mike (Curley) Binder; scripter unknown. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. Prof. Greg Lee (“Tigerman”) metamorphoses into a “giant snow tiger” in SuperMagician Comics, Vol. 2, #8 (Dec. 1943), to save a panda cub. Script by Edna Hull; art by John Meditz. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./ The Condé Nast Publications.]

The final noteworthy Street & Smith super-hero was named Red Dragon. Unfortunately, he was a hero so heinously racist that his story must wait until the impact of World War II on Street & Smith is discussed.

The Checkered Past Of Valda Rune Rather stodgy at its core, Street & Smith was not particularly known for its attractive women. Astron was drawn in too old-fashioned a style to ever inspire a lingering gaze. And the Shadow’s associate, Margo Lane, was not likely to be anyone’s fantasy in the comicbooks, however plucky she might be. But the other woman in The Shadow’s life, Valda Rune, could definitely turn more than a few heads.

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

shapely beauty dressed in black, as has sometimes been claimed— including Gibson himself. But she did liven up the otherwise rather sedate pages of Shadow Comics for a number of years.

Defending The Worth Of Comicbooks De Grouchy may have had reason to be wary of letting the comicbooks under his editorial supervision seem too wild. With so much focus on the censorship that emerged in 1954 with the imposition of the Comics Code, it is often forgotten that there were actually three waves of anti-comicbook concern, the first stretching across the early years of the 1940s. While not a serious threat to the action-oriented comics of the war years, it was enough for Street & Smith to feel the need to publish an eight-page defense of their comicbooks. The editorial aside appeared in Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace Comics #10, the April 1943 issue. Just why the powers-that-be didn’t choose to publish it in one of their betterselling comicbooks is an open question. Perhaps the order came from Street & Smith president Allen Grammer and a resentful de Grouchy chose to bury it in the soon-to-be-transformed Bill Barnes. In any case, the story titled “Ouch!” provides an interesting window into the current leadership’s thinking regarding Street & Smith’s long history and its current line of comicbooks.

The Women In The Shadow’s Life Valda Rune faces Margo Lane in Shadow Comics, Vol. 2, #6 (Sept. 1942). Script by Walter Gibson; art by Jack Binder. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. See a bit more of Valda Rune in Will Murray’s interview with Gibson, which begins on p. 49. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Valda began her history in The Shadow newspaper comic strip in January of 1941. Nearly every other story in said strip was shortly reprinted in the comicbook, but not the saga of Valda Rune. Speculation was that it was deemed too sexy by Bill de Grouchy for his line of comicbooks and was left out. Valda of the comic strip was a femme fatale, a shapely dark-haired dancer and—initially at least—a criminal associate of a nefarious fellow named Althor. As a result of this editorial decision, when de Grouchy reversed his ban, Valda’s first appearance in Shadow Comics, Vol. 2, #6 (Sept. 1942) was clearly the second in the narrative. “Say, Margo,” young Skeet Harley exclaims, “remember Valda, the girl who used to work for Althor?” Margo was none too happy at the news of Valda’s return, skeptical of Skeet’s insistence that she had reformed. Unfortunately, Valda’s second appearance is none too compelling, as she is captured along with Margo within moments of appearing on the scene. Even so, now portrayed as a blonde, Valda continued to pop up in subsequent stories, a more colorful personality than Margo, with whom she often sparred. Gibson was clearly fond of the character, and with the newspaper strip canceled, comicbooks were the best place for him to use her. De Grouchy finally gave the green light for a new version of her time working for Althor to be published in Vol. 3, #2 (May ’43). Readers were treated to scenes of Valda in a form-fitting black cat outfit she found in a costume shop. She wore it in hopes of appearing to disappear into the darkness. Valda continued to appear in the comicbooks through 1946. The Shadow might encounter her doing undercover work as a hat-check girl, singer, or dancer in night clubs, a milieu with which she was quite familiar. Valda was not afraid to show a little leg, unlike the more conservative Margo. One last thing: Valda Rune’s comic strip debut did not predate the first newspaper appearance of Miss Fury, another

The feature begins by showing a boy of an earlier time getting spanked for reading dime novels. “Boy, oh boy,” the unseen narrator observes, “did Grandpa get whammed for reading stories in ten-cent books about contraptions like the ones below!” (In context, “whammed” clearly means “spanked.”) The narrator goes on to detail how dime-novel portrayals of fantastic inventions anticipated the automobile, airplanes, and submarines, among other modern realities. As such, the narrator suggests “it might be asked how the education on the course of the future might benefit from the stuff in the comicbooks we are publishing now?” The hypnotism of The Shadow, for example, might lead in the future to the use of telepathy to anticipate the commission of crimes before they’re actually committed. The mere thought of criminal activity might lead to arrest. Or what if Ajax the Sun Man’s mastery of gravity led to a wider freedom for everyone from the limitations of gravitational pull? Similarly, cellular manipulation might lead to control over aging just like that enjoyed by Astron, the Crocodile Queen. “The girls will like this idea,” the narrator observes. The narrator concludes: “When Grandpa was a boy, we published stories based on science of the future. The future of that time is now. Today we continue to print books of stories with science of our future. As a background, boys of today will grow to be scientists and make some of the things we print come true. If one single story has the slightest influence to cause a single boy to decide to be a scientist and to grow up to solve even one of the problems, then all the millions of books we publish have been, and will be, worthwhile.” If one story has the slightest influence on just one boy to solve even one problem…. The folks at Street & Smith seemed to purposely setting the bar rather low. They might have better worried about the impact on readers of the racism of the one character they neglected to mention in “Ouch!”

Red Dragon & Wartime Racism Few Golden Age heroes captured how wartime could lead to the dehumanization of the enemy as concretely as Street &

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Smith’s Red Dragon. His origin provided a basis for the terrible hatred young Bob Reid felt for the Japanese. How he acted on that hatred is particularly sobering for the modern reader. The story of how Bob Reid became the Red Dragon was told in Red Dragon Comics #6 (3/43). Red Dragon, the comicbook, had debuted the issue before without its eponymous hero, a continuation of the poor-selling Trail Blazers.

“Ouch!” This odd 8-page feature attempted to defend kids’ reading of comics by showing how the latter were often harbingers of the future. Sadly, Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace Comics #10 (April 1943) seems to be one of the most difficult issues to track down. Mark Carlson-Ghost, who sent these scans, writes: “Thirty years or so ago… I traveled to Michigan from Minnesota to spend five days of a vacation researching what MSU had on everything Golden Age, not just Street & Smith. And of course with no thought of the scans being for publication. I remember the frantic ordering up of microfilm reels, taking super-quick notes and a few select scans [off microfilm readers] when I felt there was too much relevant info to quickly transcribe or summarize in notes, all the while knowing the hours left of my trip were rapidly evaporating. It was then I knew for sure I was a genuine comic history geek! Hope you find something in this that meets your needs.” We certainly did, Mark—even if the microfilm was in black-&-white and some of the lettering had already faded to nigh-incomprehensibility. We wanted to reproduce the first page of “Ouch!,” which sets up the anti-comicscensorship premise… and page 4, in which the comic art of Charles Coll, Peter Riss, Jack Farr, and Jack Binder seems to have been utilized to demonstrate that S&S heroes were downright educational! [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Now That’s Our Idea Of A Red Scare! The cover of Red Dragon Comics, Vol. 1, #7 (July 1943)—actually just the third issue of a five-issue title that began with “#5”—and only the second issue that actually featured the young hero Red Dragon! Here he uses his own “war powers”—in a method that was only a little more violent than some other comics covers out there during World War II. Did we mention that feelings ran high in the U.S. against the architects of Pearl Harbor? Yes, there was doubtless some racism involved—but, in the view of A/E’s editor, since the Chinese were treated sympathetically in these comics, it probably had more to do with an enemy than it did with “race.” Artist unknown. Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Living with his parents in China, the adolescent is studying magic under a learned Chinese scholar. After mastering the last of his teacher’s secrets, Bob learns the Japanese have killed all the whites in Hong Kong, including his mother and father. The boy declares that “It is the nature of the wronged to avenge!” He proclaims Bob Reid dead as

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

He’s Not Dragon Around! (Left:) A not untypical “Red Dragon” splash page from Vol. 1, #8 (Oct. 1943). Thanks to Jim Ludwig. (Right:) When Red Dragon Comics was discontinued in 1944, the hero hopped into Super-Magician Comics. In Vol. 3, #1 (May ’44), he hatched a plot to send swarms of weevils to Japan to destroy their houses and devour the Emperor Hirohito’s clothes. Art by John Meditz; writer unknown. Thanks to Bruce Mason. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

well and takes on the name Red Dragon. “Red for the blood of my mother and father,” the vengeful youth explains, “and all the other innocents who have died at the hands of the Japs… the dragon for the ancient knowledge of China!” When Red Dragon said the words “Po she lo,” he gained the powers of flight, transubstantiation, thought projection, and telekinesis, among others. As his mentor Tsoo Wong—master of arcane knowledge from the ancient city of Yhassa—explained to his charge: “This inferior person has taught thee the last and most difficult of his secrets. This one is pleased.” The blond-haired Red Dragon often wore no more than a pair of red trunks. Initially, he also wore a peasant vest or “coolie” jacket (entirely red or white with a red dragon insignia on its back) over his bare chest. Red Dragon didn’t operate alone, but continued to be assisted by Tsoo Wong; Ching Foo, a young Chinese boy; and Komodo, a giant dragon-lizard that befriended the hero on his first mission against the Japanese. Perhaps the most murderously racist hero ever, Red Dragon often declared: “The only good fascist is a dead fascist.” He often used his magic to kill Japanese soldiers en masse, even when they took no particular action against him. In one story he levitated a

group of Japanese into the sky in the configuration of an enemy plane so they could mistakenly be shot down by their own countrymen. Far from discouraging Red Dragon’s homicidal instincts, his friends shared his singular negation of the humanity of the Japanese people. When Reid asked his teacher why the Japanese would kill his family, Tsoo Wong explained: “Why does a cobra spit venom, my son? Why does a crawling tarantula kill? It is the nature of these beasts… so also with the Japanese!” Such comments embodied the worst of a wartime tendency to demonize the enemy. In contrast, Red Dragon is very sympathetic to the Chinese and works with them to defeat their common enemy. Red Dragon appeared in five issues of his own title, before it was canceled due to paper shortages. He was promptly moved to Super-Magician as a back-up feature, beginning with Vol. 2, #8, for what would be a run of 25 stories—with a solo-comic two-year revival to follow in 1947. “Red Dragon” was the most successful feature especially created for Street & Smith besides “Supersnipe.” It is just a little sad what this “hero” needed to do to achieve that distinction.

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Red Dragon Redux After the war, Street & Smith revived Red Dragon Comics for a 1947-49 run of seven additional issues— numbered “1” to “7” just to keep things confused. The cover of issue #6 (Jan. ’49) (right) was by Bob Powell, then the major “Shadow” comics artist, while the story inside (left) was drawn by a young Joe Maneely, not long before he began his illustrious career at Timely/ Atlas. Scripter unknown. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Wartime Measures Take Their Toll The Jack Binder Studio had been producing most of the non-Gibson-oriented material for Street & Smith for the last few years. But so many of the Binder staffers had enlisted or been drafted that the studio finally had to close. With it, most of the features they created for de Grouchy disappeared as well. 1943 saw the last appearances of Astron the Crocodile Queen, The Hooded Wasp, and Beebo the Jungle Boy, among others. Only the bitter heart of the Red Dragon survived. That same year, Congress passed a bill requiring publishers to reduce their use of paper, which was seen as a valuable wartime resource. In the comicbook arena, Street & Smith first reduced the size of their comics from 64 to 56 pages per issue. They also decided to cancel Doc Savage Comics, Red Dragon Comics, and Pioneer Picture Stories. “Doc Savage” immediately became a back-up feature in Shadow Comics and “Red Dragon” in Super-Magician Comics. Pioneer Picture Stories, well, just stopped. De Grouchy used this transition to make another change, eliminating Doc Savage’s super-hero costume and all reference to the mystic ruby and the super-powers it had granted. Stories still retained fantastic elements, though they in general were not particularly memorable. The Shadow and Doc Savage met for their first and only time in comicbooks in 1944, although their encounter was portrayed as one between old friends. They only exchanged a few words, setting up Doc’s subsequent battle with a foe who possessed The Shadow’s power of invisibility (Shadow Comics, Vol. 4, #7).

Hello, I Must Be Going! The Shadow and Doc Savage appear in a single panel together in Shadow Comics, Vol. 4, #7 (Oct. 1944). Wouldn’t you think some more stellar encounter might have been recorded at some time during the four-color 1940s? Art by Al Bare; scripter unknown. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

Replacing The Hooded Wasp, Beebo the Jungle Boy, and even his own father in the new and smaller Shadow Comics was Chick Carter. Adopted son of Nick, the younger Carter was also a detective, operating with the assistance of the Inner Circle Club. He one-ups his father in the arch-enemy department as well, boasting two arch-foes. The Rattler wore a snake-like mask complete with a narrow, darting tongue. The Rattler hissed as he went about his attempts to profit from the black market in industrial supplies and other products (Vol. 3, #10-12; Vol. 4, #2). The Bat, for his part, was a physically fit villain operating out of the western United States and wore a form-fitting black shirt and bat-mask. Once his long-nosed mask was removed, it’s clear that The Bat had an equally long nose and rather rodent-like face (Vol. 4, #1, 4-6). Red Dragon’s racism continued unabated in his new home in Super-Magician Comics. He had only one enemy who posed a challenge, facing him twice in Super-Magician, Vol. 3, #3-4 (1944). Never specifically named, Japan’s Emperor employs a sorcerer to destroy Red Dragon, a rare adversary to pose a genuine challenge. In their first battle, the sorcerer conjure up demons by using a word that “only a Japanese could pronounce.” During their second battle, the sorcerer used voodoo-like dolls to inflict harm on his enemies. After killing him, Red Dragon visited the sorcerer in hell, observing: “This is where all good Japs belong!” For his part, “The Shadow” continued to be a vital enterprise, albeit with the rather mundane artwork of Charles Coll. Coll was part of a group of artists laboring in a new art shop called Penn-Art, pulled together by none other the de Grouchy himself, who apparently sought to make some extra money from the demise of the Binder Studio. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: On p. 45, Walter Gibson is noted as being very much involved in Penn-Art.] Artist Howard Nostrand recalled the situation in an interview in Graphic Story Magazine #16, partially reprinted in Alter Ego #83: “Back in 1944, Bill de Grouchy had a little studio he ran called Penn Art. I think he must have been paying $10 a page to turn out finished artwork. The stuff was really just miserable. We’d just sit there and look at the crap being bought.”

And Wait’ll You See Nick’s Grandson Flick! (Above left:) The Shadow and the even earlier pulp hero Nick Carter met in a single story, in Shadow Comics, V3#12 (March 1944), with a story that some researchers believe was written by Walter Gibson. The artist is unidentified. (Above:) Nick’s son Chick had a respectably long career in Shadow Comics. In Vol. 8, #12 (March 1949) he was drawn by Bob Powell. Scripter unknown. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Some went so far as to speculate that de Grouchy was taking kickbacks and charging Street & Smith a higher rate, keeping a larger than usual amount as head of the shop for himself. Times were tough and de Grouchy’s glory days seemed to be behind him. The editor found satisfaction during the war teaching short storywriting to adult learners. It was also during this period that de Grouchy took over as editor of the Shadow pulp magazine. He apparently felt he had enough on his plate and—according to Will Murray—largely left editorial responsibilities to fall on his assistant, Babette Rosmund. These developments coincided with the decision to print The Shadow and Doc Savage pulp magazines in a new digest size. This change required Gibson to write shorter “Shadow” tales and, under Rosmund’s influence, even de-emphasize the presence of The Shadow in these adventures in favor of Lamont Cranston. Thanks to details provided in Robert Sampson’s book The Night Master, one suspects the hand of the decidedly modern Allen Grammer in all of this. Whoever wrote the editorial missive explaining the change to digest size to readers, they were

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Three To Get Ready—Again! A trio of covers and splashes featuring retread villains. (Clockwise from above left:) Shiwan Khan on Vernon Greene’s cover for Shadow Comics, Vol. 2, #7 (Oct. 1942)… The Crime Wizard in the lead yarn in Vol. 3, #6 (Sept. ’43)… and The Voodoo Master by Jack Binder for Vol. 3, #1 (April ’43). The “Crime Wizard” tale was written by Walter Gibson & drawn by Al Bare. Thanks to the GCD and Mark Muller. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

echoing the boss’ sentiments. Explaining the shift, the editor declared: “We think it is a better size, war and the demands of the paper situation being what they are. However, we also believe there is a trend in the direction of this size periodical which cannot be stopped…. Let us not, therefore, look too closely and too critically at the change. It is progress.” (From Robert Sampson’s The Night Master, p. 105.)

Colorful Villains Take Center Stage In the midst of editorial pressure to make the pulp Shadow a less colorful character, Walter Gibson the comicbook writer seemed to relish crafting outlandish and larger-than-life villains for Shadow Comics. Whatever the precise motivation, it was a necessary change to accommodate the more visual medium of comicbooks and its younger readership. Gibson increasingly relied on recurring villains from 1943 on, most of them in adaptations of their original pulp magazine appearances. Shiwan Kahn appeared again (Vol. 2, #7-9, 11), as did The Crime Wizard, the inventor of the mind-bending hypnograph (Vol. 3, #4 & Vol. 3, #6). Garbed in head-feathers, an over-the-shoulder robe and other tribal finery, Dr. Rodil Mocquino—The Voodoo Master—was a physically impressive figure who could turn living men into zombie-like figures obedient only to him. Haitian by heritage, Mocquino could feed the

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

Monstrodamus’ key ally was Princess Theba. This darkly beautiful woman was actually a mummified Egyptian princess revived by Monstrodamus’ elixir of life. Theba’s knowledge of ancient ways and mystic secrets proved invaluable, though she and Monstrodamus frequently sparred. Theba allied herself with The Shadow in the latter half of the serial, but her boredom with conventional American life made her loyalty unreliable. When asked if she recalled much from her centuries entombed, Theba replied cheerily, “Sorry, Margo. Time flew in a jiffy while I was in my mummy case!” Thade was another pulp villain whom Gibson adapted for a comicbook serial that ran in Shadow Comics, Vol. 3, #11-12, & Vol. 4, #1-2. The letters of this cadaverous villain’s name could also spell death. Thade’s eyes were dramatically sunken, while the upward swirl of two curls of hair created a horn-like effect. He was assisted by a muscular henchman, Durrem, whose name similarly embodied “murder.” Thade devised a method which allowed him to mobilize skeletons through Durrem’s synchronous movements (and later by simple remote control). Unlike in the pulp, Thade returned for a brief second encounter with the hero in Shadow Comics, Vol. 5, #6. Walter Gibson created Solarus, an earthly professor, especially for the comicbooks. Professor Solarus was able to

We Have Seen The Future—And It Is Monstrodamus! Vernon Greene turned out some fine covers for the “Monstrodamus” run—including this one for Shadow Comics, Vol. 3, #3 (June 1943). Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

fire in his hideout via flash powder (Shadow, Vol. 2, #2; Vol. 3, #1 [1942-43]). Created especially for the comicbooks in 1943, Devil Kyoti was a Japanese fire demon summoned from his home within the Fujiyama volcano by Shinto wizards. As such, Kyoti had the power to generate heat and fire at a primordial level. His slicked-back hair created the effect of devil horns and amplified his temperamental nature. Resting in the fiery furnace of a ship, Kyoti waxed poetic: “How I enjoy the fragrant atmosphere! Still, I would prefer some sulphur with my cool gas.” After a struggle that stretched across five issues (Shadow Comics, Vol. 2, #11-12 & Vol. 3, #1-3), The Shadow was finally able to trap him in a frozen glacier.. The struggle with Monstrodamus lasted even longer—a full eight issues (Shadow Comics, Vol. 3, #3-10). Based on a single issue of the pulp magazine, Monstrodamus pretended to be Compeer Chandos. A tall, balding old man with a long white beard, Chandos claimed his occupation was collecting exotic gems and plants for wealthy men. But he was secretly Monstrodamus, a purplerobed madman from the past who controlled the elixir of life. His real vocation was collecting monsters that everyone else thought no longer existed or never had. Over the course of the serial, Monstrodamus summoned a tyrannosaurus, a giant worm, and the not-so-mythical basilisk to dispatch his enemies.

Come Back, Thane! Another classy Greene cover, for Vol. 3, #11 (Feb. 1944). Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Shrinking Violence This cover by an unknown illustrator may not be overly artful, but it gets across its point—The Shadow and his ladyfriends Margo Lane and Valda Rune have been severely shrunk down, and our hero is having trouble firing his trusty .44! Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

shrink individuals and objects in size without reducing their mass. He created a miniature space ship capable of interplanetary travel, kidnapping Margo and Valda and allying himself with evil Venusians in the process. Like Thade, Solarus returned for a second scuffle (Shadow Comics, Vol. 4, #3-4, & Vol. 4, #7).

Gibson was clearly letting go of plot restraints he had entertained while writing for The Shadow’s pulp magazine. As an approach, it appeared to be working, at least at first. It was during this period from 1943 to 1944, while he was spinning these serialized tales, that Shadow Comics and its companion titles reached their highest level of sales. Street & Smith’s five main comicbooks reached average combined sales of 3,186,863 per issue. Assuming Shadow Comics as its top seller, that means the comicbook probably enjoyed a paid circulation of over 750,000 copies every issue. That said, sales began to drop rather dramatically beginning in 1945, for reasons not entirely clear. Stories were still entertaining, though perhaps no longer told in such grand fashion.

Villains, Villains, Who’s Got The Villains? An unknown artist contributed a nice octopoidal “Hydra” cover to Shadow Comics, Vol. 4, #10 (Jan. 1945)—while Charles Coll drew the “Talon” teaser for Vol. 5, #8 (Nov. 45). Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

Still, the immediate post-war period had its moments. The most entertaining of The Shadow’s post-war antagonists were the unlikely team of The Hag and The Talon. The Hag was a wizened old woman who wore a hooded robe to enhance her witchlike appearance. In actuality, though, she was a keen criminal strategist. Originally allied with a Professor Malbona, she ran off with their loot when he was captured. The Hag soon found a more suitable partner in the behind-the-scenes mastermind, The Talon. Conventionally dressed with a healthy head of hair, the villain did occasionally affect a talon-like posture of his hand. Rather good-humored, The Hag would say things like “Well, my silly” to a female adversary and “Toodle-doo” to The Talon upon departing to enact some nefarious action. Original to the comicbooks, the two felons bedeviled The Shadow on four different occasions (Shadow Comics, Vol. 5, #7-9; Vol. 5, #11-12; Vol. 6, #2; and Vol. 6, #8). Finally, it’s worth mentioning that The Shadow fought Hydra before Captain America—in Shadow Comics, Vol. 4, #10, coverdated January 1945. As the story’s breathless narrative detailed: “It remained for a group of modern criminals to apply the legend of the Hydra to their own ways, forming an organization of master minds that would double its brains as fast as they were destroyed.” The members of the group referred to themselves by number and repeated the slogan “We are the Hydra” at all of their meetings.

Exit Gibson & Blackstone Shifting priorities at Street & Smith allowed for what would have seemed unthinkable only a few years earlier: letting Walter Gibson go. The story of Gibson’s ignominious firing from writing The Shadow pulp and comicbook has been widely told. The exact details are no longer known, but one guesses it had something to do with a proposed decrease in Gibson’s rate of reimbursement for his writing. Rapidly declining sales in both the comicbook and pulp lines would have necessitated it. What is never mentioned is the ripple effect this had on Blackstone’s appearances in Super-Magician Comics. As will be remembered, Gibson and Blackstone were friends, and Gibson wrote the vast majority of Blackstone’s comicbook adventures. When news of Gibson’s firing reached Blackstone, whether out of friendship, contractual realities, or some combination of both, Blackstone withdrew from his arrangement with Street & Smith.

As for Doc Savage, his most colorful adventure during this later period was a four-part serial (Shadow Comics, Vol. 5, #10-12, & Vol. 6, #1) in 1946, detailing his encounter with Sinistari and the Elders of Evil. Doc discovers that the Elders have plotted and secretly influenced human affairs for millennia, preparing for the day when they would rid the world of all human life. Savage first encountered them in a pyramid near the Amazon River where a beautiful woman named Sinistari stands guard—a robot, as it turned out. The universal loss of human life didn’t seem so bad to the Elders, as they were also robots, creations of a mad Atlantean from the distant past.

Allen Grammer Gets Good Press Allen Grammer was well aware of the precipitous drop in collective comicbook sales, by 1945 down to just over a million combined copies per issue for the five Street & Smith titles (Shadow Comics, Super-Magician, Supersnipe, Air Ace, and True Sport Picture Stories). Air Ace, for its part, was no longer just a comic, having been transformed into an awkward half-comicbook, half-slick-magazine format. With World War II ended, Grammer continued “going Mademoiselle,” as Walter Gibson ruefully called it. He also had other plans in mind, none of which seemed to focus on comicbooks. In their August 20th, 1945, issue, Time magazine cheerfully touted Grammer’s transformation of Street & Smith’s Pic from a girly mag into a lifestyle magazine for returning G.I.s. The move seemed to be an attempt to mimic the recent success of Esquire. The effort ultimately failed, but Time’s treatment of Grammer and his vision for Street & Smith are telling. “Just like the dime novel, the pulp magazines had their day,” Time breathlessly declared. “It began to end just about the time Grammer moved in. The pulps (only 7 are left) are almost a sideline now…. Deadeye Dick might not recognize the old place, but Horatio Alger would.” Walter Gibson had reason to be concerned.

That Old Blackstone Magic If Nigel Elliman, Ace of Magic, looks a bit familiar on Charles Coll’s cover for Super-Magician Comics, Vol. 4, #12 (April 1946)—Mark Carlson-Ghost will spell it all out for you in the accompanying paragraphs. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Can “Mary Shadow” Be Far Behind? “Shadow Junior” made his solo debut in Shadow Comics, Vol. 7, #2 (Aug. 1947), complete with color-held “mind-clouding” effects. Scripter unknown; art by Charles Coll. Thanks to Bruce Mason. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

This left Street & Smith with something of a dilemma. They had fairly easily called upon the new Shadow pulp writer, Bruce Elliot, to do the Shadow comicbook. But de Grouchy had a fairly extensive backlog of “Blackstone” adventures, written by Gibson and already paid for. However, they no longer had permission to use Blackstone’s “character.” A swift solution needed to be implemented. The very next issue featured a “new” magician named Nigel Elliman, who not surprisingly resembled Blackstone a great deal, dressing in an identical tuxedo, except that Elliman’s hair was inked in black and he sported a bowtie colored red instead of Blackstone’s signature white one. Having seemingly pulled off this editorial deception, de Grouchy found the will to take an even more brazen move, trumpeting the debut (read: second appearance) of the new “Ace of Magic.” Elliman, of course, was assisted by a strikingly similar assistant, this one newly named Lorna. The ploy successfully served to use up the backlog of “Blackstone” stories but not much else. No one particularly wanted to read the adventures of a nobody named Nigel Elliman. Red Dragon began to be more prominently featured on the cover of Super-Magician, its last two issues declaring “featuring Red Dragon” more prominently in print size than the actual title of the comicbook. Street & Smith was preparing to launch a new Red Dragon comicbook with pretty much the same line-up as SuperMagician and was likely hoping to avoid paying for a new postal registration fee. No such luck. Red Dragon appeared a few months later, with a new “#1.” It ran for an additional seven issues. With Gibson’s departure, de Grouchy signed off on something

Blackstone Has Left The “Street” Unfortunately, there were only four non-S&S Blackstone comics: (Left:) EC Comics’ Blackstone #1 (Fall 1947) had only a one-word title on the all-important indicia, but was styled as Blackstone the Magician Detective Fights Crime on the anonymously drawn cover, around the time EC also published an issue labeled Moon Girl Fights Crime. [TM & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc.] (Right:) Timely Comics picked up the numbering with #2-4. The cover artist of Blackstone the Magician #3 (July 1948) is likewise unknown. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

The Shadow Of His Smile

that likely would have driven his old friend up the wall. He introduced… “Shadow Junior” Identified as either Donald Jordan or Donald Dart, the youth studied in Tibet just as The Shadow had and similarly could turn invisible. He appeared with his mentor in Shadow Comics, Vol. 6, #9, and twice in his own adventures: Shadow, Vol. 7, #2, & Vol. 7, #5. The character was just as ill-advised as he sounds and soon did a disappearing act.

(Left:) Powell’s moody crime cover for Shadow Comics, Vol. 6, #12 (March 1947). Thanks to Mark Carlson-Ghost. (Below:) His cover for Vol. 8, #12 (March ’49) was basically reimagined inside as the lead splash page—except that the Shadow figure was color-held to reflect his mental invisibility. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

As for Gibson and Blackstone, their collaboration didn’t end, it simply switched venues. In 1947, Bill Gaines published a single issue of Blackstone the Magician Detective Fights Crime for his new Educational Comics line, better known as EC. For whatever reason, the title never had a second issue. But Gibson and Blackstone were back again the following year, with more issues of a Blackstone comicbook, this time published by Timely/Marvel. However, lightning rarely strikes twice in just the same way. Gibson and Blackstone were never able to recapture the old magic but did remain lifelong friends until Blackstone’s death in 1965.

Enter Bob Powell The unfortunate departure of Walter Gibson (his last story appeared in the Dec. 1946 issue) did create an opportunity for some fresh blood at Street & Smith. Mediocre artwork now paired with lifeless writing seemed destined to lead to even a steeper decline in sales. De Grouchy moved quickly, even though it meant a loss of business for Penn Art. With the March 1947 issue, he hired Bob Powell to begin doing covers for Shadow Comics and to draw (and perhaps write) the interior stories as well.

Bob Powell in uniform during World War II. Courtesy of Michael T. Gilbert & the Powell family.

Powell, only 30 years old, was anxious to strike out on his own and display all of the skills he’d mastered while working with the master of layout and nuanced storytelling, Will Eisner.

The covers that Powell did for Street & Smith were some of the most sophisticated ever done in the Golden Age of Comicbooks. They were also very much in line with the modern look the president of the company preferred. They are frankly a joy to look at, representing some of the best work of this talented artist’s career. Doc Savage didn’t fare quite as well under the new regime, becoming little more than a plain-clothed adventurer. Although the character was now better drawn than he ever had been, very little of his pulp dynamism remained.

Final Days At Street & Smith With pulp sales of the Shadow pulp continuing to fall, and a new pulp editor taking over, Walter Gibson was invited back to

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

write the pulp adventures of The Shadow, beginning in late 1948. He also returned to writing the comicbook, though for how many stories it isn’t clear. Gibson also attempted to restore his presence in the magician end of things. Super-Magician had been canceled, and Gibson and Blackstone were already pursuing other options. But Gibson approached a dynamic and up-and-coming magician named Bill Neff about whether he’d like to break into comicbooks. The 43-year-old Neff had a touring show entitled The Madhouse of Mystery. He innovated midnight showings to enhance their spookiness and always ended his performances by wishing the audience “pleasant nightmares.” Gibson imagined him headlining the title, and Neff was agreeable, all of this according to William V. Rauscher’s book, Pleasant Nightmare: Dr. Neff and his Madhouse of Mystery. Gibson approached de Grouchy with the new concept. The longtime editor appears to have been wary. Neff was nowhere near as well-known as Blackstone, so de Grouchy decided to do a test run. He had Powell draw up a dynamic cover featuring Neff and ran it instead of Red Dragon on that hero’s revived comicbook. Inside, there was only a text feature concerning the magician, no illustrated story at all! That cover so pleased Neff that he later had it blown up as a promotional poster for his stage show. The cover must also have increased sales, because de Grouchy green-lit a new Ghost Breakers comicbook, which debuted with a September 1948 date. Gibson almost certainly did the writing, and Powell provided the interior art as well. Dr. Neff was portrayed as a youthful and dynamic ghost breaker. Evocative titles like “The Jinx from Hoodoo City” enticed. Sadly for Gibson and Neff, however, Street & Smith’s fortunes on the newsstands continued their death spiral. Collective monthly sales on their five main titles dropped from 1,139,476 in 1945 to only 438,254 in 1948. Individual titles were selling less than 100,000 per issue during a period when healthy titles in other companies often sold a half a million or more.

Neff Said! (Above:) A youngish Bill Neff and writer Walter Gibson, who’s trying to read his newspaper. Photo courtesy of Anthony Tollin. (Right:) “Dr. Neff, Ghost Breaker” was featured on Bob Powell’s cover for Red Dragon Comics, Vol. 1, #3 (May 1948)—which was actually part of the second volume of a Red Dragon series, as explained previously. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Ghost Breakers was canceled with its second issue. Red Dragon was canceled just a few months later. De Grouchy struggled to find something that would sell. He launched Top Secrets with a November 1947 issue. Comprised of true “fact picture stories,” the title could boast some appealing art by Powell but not much else. The highlight of the run was issue #5’s four-page “Match Wits with The Shadow.” Street & Smith’s final effort at a new comicbook felt half-hearted and harkened back to former glories. Even its title, Buffalo Bill Picture Stories, felt like something from the 1930s. The cover feature, “Buffalo Bill,” enjoyed some of the first published work of artist Doug Wildey, who had yet to master his craft. Back-up features included the youthful adventures of Cal Colt. After his father was killed in a gunfight, and his uncle and grandfather before that, Cal’s mother made him swear never to hold a gun in his hand. She never said anything about a whip, however, which Cal mastered in short order. Like Ghost Breakers, the new title was canceled after only two issues.

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

Only this time, it wasn’t just one title getting canceled but the entire line-up. In a letter to Jerry DeFuccio, quoted in Alter Ego #66, Bob Powell recalled his work for Street & Smith and how quickly that work ended in 1949. “Then they folded. And boom! Dead. Kaput. Bum.” Nor was Street & Smith only closing the door on their comicbooks but their pulp magazines as well. On the Mademoiselle, If You Please… comicbook side of By the end of the 1940s, only “slick” magazines things, Shadow Comics, interested publisher Allen Grammer—in Supersnipe, Top Secrets, particular, the company’s Mademoiselle and True Sport Stories magazine. Seen here is the Oct. 1949 issue. all got the axe. On [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./ the pulp-magazine The Condé Nast Publications.] side, The Shadow, Doc Savage, Detective Story Magazine, and Western Story Magazine were snuffed out. Allen Grammer was cleaning house and taking no prisoners. He clearly felt dramatic changes were necessary for the health of the company. In an April 8, 1949, press release to the Associated Press, Grammer indicated that the demand for “pulp fiction” was no longer great enough to justify their continued existence. Grammer, now the publisher’s board chairman, attributed this to a “great change in the material offered at newsstands throughout the country.”

Not only did Grammer cancel all of his comicbooks and pulps; he also changed distributors for the company’s slick magazines that remained. Grammer ended Street & Smith’s association with American News to take his business to S-M News. As a distributor, S-M News was launched by the publisher of McCalls in 1919 and was far more adept at getting higher-end magazines on newsstands. The primary focus for Street & Smith moving forward was Working At The Factory on their magazines Noted journalist Quentin Reynolds scribed geared towards women: the more or less official history of Street & Mademoiselle, Charm, Smith in 1955’s The Fiction Factory: From and Living for Young Pulp Row to Quality Street. Alas, neither Homemakers. The The Shadow nor Doc Savage made the company also kept cover, but at least Buffalo Bill was present publishing several slickand accounted for! [Cover © the respective paper, sports-oriented copyright holders.] periodicals and a lone digest, Astounding Science Fiction. The nature of the magazine game was changing rapidly. Historian Theodore Peterson noted the increasing incentive for publishers like Street & Smith to put out magazines that could attract up-market, national advertising. Later that same year, Allen L. Grammer retired. He was now in his early sixties. Having successfully executed the company’s total transformation, Grammer likely felt his work there was done. For fans of The Shadow and Doc Savage, it looked more like fleeing the scene of a crime. In 1955, the company commissioned the writing of The Fiction Factory, a centennial history of Street & Smith, by Quentin Reynolds. The subtitle of the book told the story of the current owners: From Pulp Row to Quality Street.

Crimes East & West Two later Street & Smith titles that failed to make the grade. (Left:) Top Secrets related stories allegedly from FBI and Secret Service files, in an era when crime comics were a going thing—but despite a few fine covers by Bob Powell, it lasted only ten issues. This first cover was dated Nov. 1947. (Right) Buffalo Bill Picture Stories, however, lasted only two. Cover artist of #1 (June-July ’49) unknown. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Gibson Moves On, De Grouchy Retires Still relatively young at 51, Walter Gibson didn’t have the luxury of folding up his tent and going home. He continued to write for comicbooks, creating some interesting new characters. He wrote the adventures of Chip Gardner, tough-as-nails private detective, for a newly respectable Crime Does Not Pay (the “Does Not Pay” part of the title was gradually growing larger). In a burst of creativity, Gibson also conceived Space Western for Charlton. The wonderfully unlikely premise—cowboys fighting Nazis on the moon—deserved more than its scant six issues. But nothing Gibson did thereafter ever quite measured up to the success of The Shadow. As for William de Grouchy, he retired after the mass

cancelation of the Street & Smith comicbooks and pulps. While Grammer could retire with a sense of mission accomplished, de Grouchy ended his career with nothing of the last 17 years of his work life still standing. His four children grown up, he likely felt older than his sixty years. He would die five years later.

The Afterlives Of The Shadow & Doc Savage Throughout the 1950s, Street & Smith retained rights to The Shadow and Doc Savage, but never used them. But they were able to sell the names of Detective Story, Western Story Magazine, and Love Story Magazine (which had already been canceled in 1947) to Popular Periodicals, one of the few remaining pulp publishers. Back in 1945, Time magazine noted that “publisher Grammer has emerged as something of a teenagers’ Condé Nast.” Condé Nast published the fashion magazines Vogue and Glamour. The observation proved to be prophetic. In 1959, Condé Nast found that Street & Smith’s line of magazines nicely complemented their own. They bought the company and with it, almost accidentally, rights to The Shadow and Doc Savage. Walter Gibson had one last dance with The Shadow, writing a new paperback about his beloved character in 1963. But he objected to editors’ attempts to update his hero into a sort of secret agent à la James Bond. A series of new paperbacks starring The Shadow followed along those lines, but written by Dennis Lynds. However, the new novels were nowhere near as popular as the Doc Savage paperback reprints that were appearing alongside them. So much for the

Life After Pulps—And Street & Smith Since the end of the 1940s, the heirs to the S&S empire have been content to have others either reprint, adapt, or continue the adventures of The Shadow and Doc Savage… beginning in the 1960s with highly successful paperback reprints of Doc Savage behind powerful James Bama covers and a line of Shadow reprints originally with covers by Jim Steranko. In the 1970s, DC launched an exquisitely drawn The Shadow comic with art by Michael Wm. Kaluta (#1 was cover-dated Oct.-Nov. 1973)… and in 1975 Marvel published Doc in both color and black-&white comics, starting with Giant-Size Doc Savage #1. The splash reveals that the script was by Steve Englehart & Roy Thomas, the art by Ross Andru, Jim Mooney, & Ernie Chan (Chua). Other comics series by other companies followed. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

claim that the demand for pulp fiction was dead. New versions of the Street & Smith characters also began to appear in comicbooks and have continued to reappear periodically to the present day. The fantastic threats and dynamic characters of a bygone era continue to draw in readers of successive generations. To tell the story of all of those appearances, however, would require another article beyond the scope of this one. Walter Gibson, William de Grouchy, and Allen Grammer

engaged in a decade-long struggle between practical realities and creative visions, played out on the pages of a comicbook company that few talk about today. It seems only right that it is Gibson’s memory that’s most celebrated. There’s nothing wrong with making a profit, a necessary evil many might say. But it has always been bright dreams fueling the most successful fiction factories, then as now. That’s something, for all the darkness that still surrounds him, even The Shadow surely knows.

Bonus Feature:

A Baker’s Dozen Street & Smith Heroes You’ve Never Heard Of Biff Morgan

The Black Crusader

When youthful air cadet Morgan rescues a paralyzed scientist named Dr. Harrison from a saboteur’s explosion, the scientist advises the youth to remove a belt from a hidden drawer. There, Morgan finds a chronogen belt. Dr. Harrison explains to him that, “when you turn that dial, the chronogen gas will be released from the capsules, giving you the power of a speed such as no human has ever dreamed.” Indeed, Morgan goes so fast that he appears to fly and his clothes are burned off of him in the process. Harrison directs him to a closet where a friction-resistant costume awaits. [Bill Barnes, Vol. 1, #7-10; Supersnipe, Vol. 1, #4 (1942-43).]

“From out of the misty vale of time that is history, Joe Mills, the man of a thousand faces, draws on the creed of the Crusaders, liberators of the oppressed, liberators of the sacred ideal of human freedom. And robed in the dark secrecy of his supreme disguise this master of masquerade pledges his life to his native America and sallies forth to battle her enemies as the Black Crusader!!” Mills’ ancestry includes a Knight Templar. When his father is kidnapped by a group of hooded Nazi sympathizers, Mills adopts a form-fitting black costume (with a white two-barred cross on chest and cowl) to save him. Sadly, he fails and his father dies and Joe is severely beaten. So badly, in fact, that Joe discovers he has a blood clot in the brain and could die at any time. Unswayed by risk, Mills resolves to conduct a Crusade of his own against evil men, adopting a variety of disguises to do so. [Red Dragon, Vol. 1, #6 & 8 (1943).]

Biff Morgan

by Bruce Elliot (writer) & Jack Binder (artist) in Red Dragon Comics, Vol. 1, #8 (Oct. 1943). Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

was the star of the “Air Warden Cadets” feature that began in Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace, Vol. 1, #7. This splash is from #8 (1942). Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Black Crusader

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Captain Jack Commando The Captain represents the Spirit of Liberty in World War II, just as famous heroes embodied that spirit before him. Captain Jack wears a red, white, and blue paramilitary uniform and wields both a rifle and a dagger. ]Red Dragon, Vol. 1, #5-7 (1943).]

Chuck Magnon, Immortal Man Chuck is a Cro-Magnon man who obtained the secret of immortality thousands of years ago in prehistoric times. He lives on today, dedicating his unending life to fighting evil. [Red Dragon, Vol. 1, #9 (1944).]

Captain Jack Commando Apparently, at least mentally, there’s supposed to be a dash between “Jack” and “Commando,” since the latter wasn’t actually his last name. From Red Dragon Comics #5 (Jan. 1943). Scripter & artist unknown. Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Don’t STEAL our Digital Editions! C’mon citizen, DO THE RIGHT THING! A Mom & Pop publisher like us needs every sale just to survive! DON’T DOWNLOAD OR READ ILLEGAL COPIES ONLINE! Buy affordable, legal downloads only at

Chuck Magnon, Immortal Man

or through our Apple and Google Apps!

(Above:) Don’t worry, folks! The thunderbolt doesn’t turn the Cro-Magnon man into a charred slagheap—it just makes him immortal, so that on the next page he lives to see the fall of Atlantis, the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, and the Middle Ages—finally emerging by p. 3 into the present day (as a doctor named Chuck Ro-Magnon) in Red Dragon Comics, Vol. 1, #9 (Jan. 1944). Art by Jack Binder; scripter unknown. Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

www.twomorrows.com

& DON’T SHARE THEM WITH FRIENDS OR POST THEM ONLINE. Help us keep producing great publications like this one!

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

The Iron Ghost The Iron Ghost is a heroic “man of metal” invented by robotic expert Frank Reed. With his copper-colored skin, The Iron Ghost can pass for human. When he strips off his human disguise he wears only red boots, red trunks, and a red cowl that covers his scalp and neck. The Iron Ghost possesses a “super-human brain” and exceptional strength. He is able to fly into outer space and his super-durlamine skin is impervious to heat. [Shadow Comics, Vol. 1, #10-11 (1941).]

Kon Fu “Dr. Kon Fu, master of oriental and occidental cultures, stands bravely between his people and oppression, defying even monsters of evil magic.” An athletic young man, Kon Fu wears circular magic glasses that allow him to see the true nature of individuals, good or bad. He is also a master of Chinese martial arts. Kon Fu maintains a hidden cellar in Chinatown in which he hides his secret “temple of magic.” Whom he prays before a statue of the Green Goddess, the goddess comes to life and gives Kon Fu valuable advice on how to combat evil. [Doc Savage, Vol. 1, #3 (1941).]

The Iron Ghost From the second page of the origin story in Shadow Comics, Vol. 1, #10 (May 1941). Writer & artist unknown. Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Kon Fu Scripter & artist unknown. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

Mr. 13 “Mr. 13 can press his flexible face into any mold, becoming any one of a dozen personalities. Using only trifling items to complete each disguise, long training enables him to shrink or stretch as required. He lives these personalities and thru them battles crime.” In point of fact, Gary Gray is seemingly more than a little eccentric, perhaps even crazy. At the close of his lone recorded adventure, he uses his skill at ventriloquism to talk to his butler (another of his personalities) about the recent impressive scoop of Larry, his reporter persona. ]Shadow Comics, Vol. 4, #7 (1944).]

Mr. 13 popped up just once, in Shadow Comics, Vol. 4, #7 (Oct. 1944), drawn by Charles Wessell. Scripter unknown. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Minute Man Maybe this time-tossed hero changed his name with his second (of three) appearances to “Mr. Minute Man” because Fawcett Publications reminded S&S that they already had a red-whiteand-blue super-hero of that name. Repro’d from microfiche of Red Dragon Comics, Vol. 1, #5 (Jan. 1943). Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Minute Man A.k.a. Mr. Minute Man. “The spirit of America was born when the Minute Men fought for a free way of living. Again The Minute Man lives! In spirit and action he is with every loyal American.” Dressed in 18th-century garb (white shirt and blue trousers, vest, and hat), the musket-carrying Minute Man can appear out of nowhere. He has superior strength, can walk on air and grant others the same ability. When injured, Minute Man pleads for youths to buy war stamps and bonds immediately because “Minute Man is America’s spirit! Stamps and bonds are his strength!” [Red Dragon, Vol. 1, #5-7 (1943).]

Mr. Twilight Sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit, reporter Kenshaw Reed escapes from prison. However, due to a subsequent accident, he is presumed dead. He decides to come to back to life as Mr. Twilight, a shadowy figure with a slouch hat, cloak, and star insignia as a clasp just below his neck. [Super Magician, Vol. 3, #5 (1944).]

Mr. Twilight made his debut—and said his goodbyes—in Super-Magician Comics, Vol. 3, #5 (Sept. 1944). Maybe he was just too much like The Shadow for his own good? Scripter & artist unknown. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Secret History Of Street & Smith’s Comicbook Line

The Phantom Flyer

Red Rover

This mystery man pilots an oddly colored yellow- and red-winged plane that suddenly appears out of a cloudbank when injustice is near and vanishes “back to his mysterious realm behind the clouds” when no longer needed. The Flyer wears a wraparound black eye mask even while on the ground. He is good with his fists and doesn’t appear to have supernormal abilities. [Bill Barnes, Vol. 1, #2 (1941).]

“In everyday life, Jimmy Rover is a plain messenger boy. But in his pocket he carries a prize possession, two parts of a ring. When joined together on his finger, he becomes that outstanding, dynamic Red Rover, the crimson crime buster!” Red Rover appears to have extraordinary strength and wears no mask. [Red Dragon, Vol. 1, #5-7 (1943).]

The Phantom Flyer

From the name of a children’s game to a costumed super-hero—that was the brief trajectory of Red Rover, who first appeared in Red Dragon Comics, Vol. 1, #5 (Jan. 1943). Scripter & artist unknown. Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Red Rover Sorry—turns out that Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace, Vol. 1, #2 (1941) is a rare bird among Golden Age collectors, so Street & Smith’s “Phantom Flyer” eluded us. However, so as not to let this space go to waste, here’s a totally different “Phantom Flyer” who appeared in Aviation Press’ Contact Comics #5 (March 1945)—and nowhere else. Tell you what—when we (or you) find a copy of S&S’s hero, you can paste his pic over this one, okay? Scripter & artist unknown. Image courtesy of Gwandanaland Comics’ big volume The Best of Contact Comics—look up that public-domain reprint company’s multitudinous output online! [© the respective copyright holders.]

What The Shadow Didn’t Know!

The Thunderbolt

Transo

A brilliant young scientist named Dr. Adams attempts to find help for the rampant evils of the present by using his time machine to travel to what he hopes will be a more optimistic future. There Adams encounters the lovely Princess Ione who bids him to return to his time with the costume and powers that she will give him. With the mere touch of her hand, Ione fills Adams with the “fire of science,” which gives him unlimited strength. Returning to the present, Adams adopts the name she gave to him, the Thunderbolt. Ione promises to watch Adams from the fourth dimension and come to him in times of need. [Doc Savage, Vol. 1, #10 (1942).]

Lee Benton, a track star, is selected by a Professor Delco to don a red, yellow, and blue costume that will allow him to mimic the appearance of anything from a shapely woman to a monstrous animal. As Professor Delco explains, “My belt is for Z-ray storage. I select an image impressed on transparent plastic. I place it in my breast plate. It is transferred to the will power Z-ray projector on my head.” In so doing, the image the viewer would actually see (Transo) is blotted out and the image in the breast plate is perceived. Delco selects an athletic young man, as the only use he can conceive of for his device is to “scare the daylights out of someone.” Delco urges Benton to use that ability to catch crooks. SuperMagician, Vol. 1, #4 (1942).]

Mark Carlson-Ghost

The Thunderbolt Another one-shot hero, this one was blessed with the art of a young Rafael Astarita—but that wasn’t enough to get it past Doc Savage Comics, Vol. 1, #10 (Nov. 1942). Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications, Inc.]

Transo was a shape-shifting super-hero who appeared in SuperMagician Comics, Vol. 1, #4 (March 1942). Scripter & artist unknown. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Mark Carlson-Ghost is a popular-culture historian when not teaching psychology at the graduate level. His eclectic website markcarlson-ghost.com features comprehensive histories of a wide variety of comics, as well as various compendiums of super-heroes by company, ethnicity, disability, and sexual orientation. Carlson-Ghost lives in Minnesota with his husband and the indomitable Jake the cat.

CRED! Part Two

WALTER GIBSON Remembers Street & Smith’s Comics The Shadow’s Most Important Scribe— On Pulp Paper & In Four Colors

by Will Murray

ne of the most significant contributors to Street & Smith’s comicbook line was Walter B. Gibson, who wrote their Shadow novels as Maxwell Grant and scripted the character’s adventures in Shadow Comics between 1940 and ’46. Gibson’s involvement went beyond scripting. He conceptualized many titles for S&S, including Super-Magician Comics, which starred his friend, magician Harry Blackstone. Coordinating with editor William de Grouchy, Gibson organized Penn-Art, a “shop” consisting of out-of-work Philadelphia Ledger Syndicate newspaper artists, which produced many S&S comics features. It was also Gibson’s idea to depict The Shadow as a blue surprint whenever he was invisible. On January 27, 1985, I interviewed Walter about his comics career. It was fortunate I did so when I did. He passed away that December. Otherwise, most of this information would have been forever lost…. WILL MURRAY: When did your comics career begin?

Walter B. Gibson in his later years, with George Rozen’s cover for Street & Smith’s Shadow Comics, Vol. 1, #1 ([Jan. 12] 1940). Photo courtesy of Geoffrey Wyncoop, via Will Murray; thanks to Jim Ludwig for the cover image. [Cover TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

WALTER B. GIBSON: In 1937, I talked to Street & Smith about doing comics, and [S&S General Manager] Bill Ralston said, “The trouble is the syndicate comics are all being used up. You can’t get them anymore.” I said, “That means getting up your own.” He said, “That’s a lot of expense. The way to do these comics is to buy old ones from syndicates.” I said, “Why not get up some and sell them to syndicates, start comics, get paid by the syndicates, and get the rights to use them in comicbooks?” And I said we should begin with The Shadow. We didn’t do that right away. William de Grouchy later came in, and then they decided to do comics, starting with The Shadow. De Grouchy was a promotion man. Street & Smith was treating comics as promotion. As soon as they began, I went right in and insisted they use my scripts. Ralston okayed that, and so I did all the Shadow Comics. But I also did some “Doc Savages” and particularly some of the “Nick Carter” stuff. De Grouchy didn’t know how to get hold of artists, so he looked for someone to do it, and ran into that guy “Chiseler.” His real name was Chesler, but we called him “Chiseler.” He was a character, kind of a whimsical guy. WM: Harry “A” Chesler was one of the early comic “shop” proprietors.

GIBSON: Jack Binder was his right-hand man. So they gave Binder the first Shadow comic. Now they gave him a sort of synthetic “Shadow” script. They may have taken one of the radio plots. They just wanted to see what he could do with it. When I came in, they had that made up. So I said, “Go ahead and run it.” That was the first issue. From then on, I took over and tied them in with the pulp magazine. So de Grouchy broke off with Chesler and went with Binder. WM: I noticed that you recycled some of your Philadelphia Ledger Syndicate Shadow newspaper strips for Shadow Comics. GIBSON: The Shadow comic strip was actually my comic. I was the agent. I sold it, and I said they will also give us the rights to use it in any way. And so the same comic stories could be taken later and used in the Street & Smith comicbooks by breaking them into episodes. In one story, there was a blonde named Valda. The Shadow got into some place that had costumes and was moving around in the dark. And she found a black cat costume. She put that on and she was doubling for The Shadow. You couldn’t see her because she moved around in the dark, like he did. Well, that ran

Walter Gibson Remembers Street & Smith’s Comics

Harry “A” Chesler in a news photo from later years—and Gus Ricca’s cover for the Chesler-published Dynamic Comics #12 (Nov. 1944), whose chess-playing mobster type was rumored to have been visually modeled after Chesler himself. [© the respective copyright holders.]

and was later reprinted in Shadow Comics. One day I walked into Street & Smith and talked to de Grouchy. He said, “We’re going to get sued by the Bell Syndicate.” “What do you mean?” “What have you been doing—stealing their comic?” “What do you mean, stealing their comic?” “They’ve got a comic [strip] called Miss Fury, and Miss Fury goes around dressed as a black cat.” “Hey, don’t you remember my Valda in the Shadow strip two years ago? That’s where they got the idea.” They didn’t sue. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: According to Mark Carlson-Ghost in our lead article, Valda Rune’s

The Shadow Nose! (Above:) A page from the lead story from Shadow Comics #1, drawn by Jack Binder. Scripter uncertain. Courtesy of Anthony Tollin. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

cat-suit did not actually precede the launching of Tarpé Mills comic strip Black Fury (soon retitled Miss Fury).] WM: Super-Magic Comics came next, I believe. GIBSON: Street & Smith were always thinking of doing new comics at that time. So, the deal I proposed was this: The comics were selling for a dime, and would they give Blackstone returns at 5 cents apiece? That meant that Blackstone could order a thousand

Full Of Sound And Miss Fury (Above:) Valda Rune gets bereft of her cat costume in a “Shadow” story scripted by Walter Gibson and drawn by Vernon Greene. From Shadow Comics, Vol. 3, #2 (May 1943), reprinted from earlier newspaper strips. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.] (Right:) The masthead of Tarpé Mills’ Black Fury Sunday comic strip, which debuted on April 6, 1941, and was soon retitled Miss Fury. Reproduced from IDW’s hardcover Tarpé Mills – Miss Fury – Sensational Sundays 1941-1944, edited by Trina Robbins. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]\

The Shadow’s Most Important Scribe—On Pulp Paper & In Four Colors

Blackstone the Magician became, with the aid and abetment of Gibson, the star of the single issue of Street & Smith’s SuperMagic Comics (May 1941), then of 55 editions of Super-Magician Comics, beginning with Vol. 1, #2 (Sept. ’41). Both covers drawn by Charles Sultan. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

a week, hold a matinee on Saturday, and the theatre would pay 5 cents. So I called Street & Smith and talked to de Grouchy: “How many do you have to print to make a comicbook go over?” He said, “We could get by with 50,000 returns and stash 50,000 or so.” I said, “Fine, I’ve got your 50,000 for a year. Blackstone will buy them at a nickel apiece. At cost.” “Oh, boy!” he says, “that’s great! You can’t lose.” So we made a deal right then. I took a drawing room on the day train from Boston to New York and knocked out the first script to Super-Magician. They had some other things they could throw in the first issue. But we began to run more magic-related things as Super-Magician went along. They sold that so fast and did so well with it that they couldn’t supply Blackstone with the copies he wanted. They were selling everything out. See, what they did, they did not send them all out. They kept some in reserve. Every newsstand that sold its quota could get more. So when they finally came to take stock of what they had left over, they had been shipped out. They didn’t do that business of just returning a cover to get credit. They had them all sitting at the place. They gave Blackstone the surplus, you see. He plugged it at the show. It was beautiful. The only reason I had to quit it eventually was because it involved Blackstone the Magician. That’s what made [his comic] so successful, because he plugged it with the shows; he was tied in with it. But then, in their stupidity, [Street & Smith] said they had all rights to any comics, as well as to magazine stories. Well, that was all right with The Shadow and other things, but it wasn’t all right with Super- Magician. So I just told them they couldn’t. I called a lawyer on it… Whittenberg. He represented Blackstone on it, and Blackstone was letting them use it without any payment. He said no, he wasn’t going to let them use the stuff. Blackstone reserved the rights to do whatever he wanted with his own name. In fact, the Blackstone radio program that we were getting up was utilizing some of the same plots that were in the comics, so we had to stop it. That was when we started Blackstone, Master Magician for Vital. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: This was a 3 ¼”x6 ½” comic, probably produced in

Out On Baal! Jack Binder illustrated many of the “Blackstone” comics stories written by Gibson, including this one for Super-Magician Comics, Vol. 1, #12 (April 1943). Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./ The Condé Nast Publications.]

Walter Gibson Remembers Street & Smith’s Comics

1948 as a giveaway premium.] WM: What else did you script? GIBSON: I also did “Norgil the Magician” because the “Norgils” were my own stories. And I did “The Rangers.” WM: I understand you scripted that entire 1942 one-shot Devil Dogs Comics, which followed the evolution of the Revolutionary-era Rangers into the modern Marine Corps.

WM: Tell me about Supersnipe. GIBSON: Ed Gruskin was one of the fellows who came in when de Grouchy was starting his comics. He was something of a radio writer. I don’t know if he was trying to get Shadow radio scripts or not, but when he came in, they steered him in to de Grouchy. And, of course, Gruskin was the one who brought in “Supersnipe.” He wrote the scripts. That was a very good comic. The guy that drew it, George Marcoux, had been the ghost for the guy who did [the classic comic strip] Skippy, Percy Crosby. So his Supersnipe is very much like Skippy. Ed got this thing up and they ran “Supersnipe.” I had a hell of a good “Supersnipe” for him one time. Supersnipe hears two men talking. They were talking about the Planetarium. Oh, boy! He figures that’s the name of a new planet that they’re discovering and that they’re getting ready to take a space trip. So he follows them and he winds up in this place and sees this big machine there. The lights all go out, and the next thing, they’re up among the stars and Supersnipe thinks that they are on their way to the planet Arium! We loved to come up with crazy stuff like that. Marcoux had a brother who was very good, another artist very much like him. WM: You also scripted Ghost Breakers.

Dogs Days

GIBSON: That’s right. We even had the Canine Corps. That was one of the best ones. Russell Henderson just laughed his head off when he drew it. They were training the dogs, and the dogs were holding these conversations. They only came knee-high to these guys, so I had the voice balloons down there for what the dogs were saying while the men were talking above: “I wonder what these goofs are gonna make us do next.” Things of that sort. That was a great comic. Most of these were done at the Ledger Syndicate place that I took care of during the war. The (probable) Jack Binder cover for Devil Dogs Comics, Vol. 1, #1 (1942). The issue was scripted by Gibson. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./ The Condé Nast Publications.]

WM: That was Penn-Art, which you ran. GIBSON: When the Philadelphia Ledger closed, there were a lot of artists who weren’t working. I was living down there in the ’40s and would travel up to New York. We were selling comics to Street & Smith and to Fawcett. And I was the copy editor. We had very unusual artists. We had one fellow named Russell Henderson. He did “Blackstone.” There was Al Bare. Our art director was Charlie Coll; he was Jack Binder’s right-hand man. Charlie Coll was an old Ledger artist from Philadelphia. He came to New York and did a lot of comics work. He wanted to stay in Philadelphia, so we opened the studio there. Charlie Coll was working with Binder. So he came in handy when we needed him down in Philadelphia. Some of the artists were excellent. They were illustrators and put a real dash in the comics. WM: Who were some others? GIBSON: One fellow named Frollo, Frank Frollo. The other was Lloyd Birmingham. Lloyd was not a regular comic artist. He was more of an illustrator. We got him through Elmer Stoner. We had him doing the Blackstone Master Magician. Well, Stoner had some odd work that he didn’t want to take on, and he recommended Lloyd Birmingham, who was a young artist and quite good. So we got him to do the stuff. I showed him how we wanted the comic done.

Man And Supersnipe George Marcoux’s cover for Supersnipe Comics, Vol. 1, #11 (Oct. 1943), the sixth issue of the solo title. The lead story inside by Marcoux and scripter Ed Gruskin ran a hefty 26 pages and dealt with Nazi spies—and there was also a three-page “Supersnipe” text story by Gruskin with illos by Marcoux. The series lasted through Vol. 5, #1 (Jan. 1949)—a hefty 43 issues… and that doesn’t count the earliest yarns in Super-Magician Comics. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Conde Nast Publications.]

The Shadow’s Most Important Scribe—On Pulp Paper & In Four Colors

Who You Gonna Call? Bob Powell’s cover for the first of the two Street & Smith issues of Ghost Breakers. This one was cover-dated Sept. 1948. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

GIBSON: The way that happened was another one of those phenomenal things. It was the year Blackstone—I traveled with him around ’47—had been laid up and wasn’t out with his show. I stopped in Corinth, Michigan, his hometown, to pick up things that belonged to me. And there is Bill Neff, at the shop of Percy Abbotts, the magical place, to get some equipment. He had a great big truck that said DR. NEFF’S MADHOUSE OF MYSTERY and had all these weird things painted all over it––ghosts and everything. We were talking about comicbooks and I said, “Bill, how about one

called Ghost Breakers?” So I picked up the phone and sold that. WM: There was an issue of Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace Comics, where an atom bomb was dropped on Japan years before Hiroshima. GIBSON: That’s right, and I did the script for it. WM: Oh, you did? GIBSON: [Astounding Stories editor] John Campbell gave me the idea. He said to me, “Look, I have this great idea for a comic story.” In a sense, he almost did the script for that. That is, he laid out what was to happen and I just laid the dialogue and so forth. Campbell said we will have these aviators. They’ll get orders to do this. These fellows take a plane from a hidden island and they fly [to Japan]. It looks like they’re bombing Tokyo. They drop all these bombs in the harbor. There was a dud bomb, and the dud bomb just sits and sinks. But Campbell says its inside casing will melt in the water, and when that melts, it’s going to go off. So these fellas have got to escape. And this dud they don’t even think anything about, because it just wasn’t due to go off while they’re dropping real live bombs, why, that’s the one that’s going to do the damage. So I dug into some Japanese lore which I had, and I found out that there was a tradition that someday the whole of Japan would tilt up and flop in the Pacific deep, which is off the coast of Japan. So that’s all our bomb did to it in the double spread––it showed the whole island going over! The cover said: “How to Actually Wipe Japan off the Map!” Well, that was written up by Justin Phillips for the New York Mirror. And immediately the government wants to know where the hell has this Campbell gotten this stuff? Well, Campbell showed them where he picked it up. They’d done so much writing in scientific magazines, mentioning the possibilities of this thing, that he’d put it all together! The atom bomb came shortly afterwards. Isn’t that fantastic?

Atomic Comics In 1942—more than three years before the first atomic bomb explosion—Walter Gibson wrote and Jack Binder drew this story of an A-blast ending World War II in the Pacific… which then had barely begun, from an American perspective. But of course, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the preceding December 7th, feelings ran very high. This story appeared in S&S’s Bill Barnes, America’s Air Ace, Vol. 1, #7 (July 1942). Our apologies for the partly defaced splash page scan. Courtesy of Anthony Tollin. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Walter Gibson Remembers Street & Smith’s Comics

Addendum:

Origins Of Street & Smith’s Comics

treet & Smith’s top-selling comics line emerged from the efforts of newly hired promotions manager William J. de Grouchy to spin off such properties as Doc Savage and Bill Barnes into radio programs and newspaper strips in 1939. One property was John W. Campbell’s Aarn Munro, who had appeared in “The Mightiest Machine,” a long prose story of his (basically, a novel) that had been serialized in the pulp science-fiction magazine Astounding Stories years before. Munro was a scientist who was born on Jupiter and possessed immense physical strength as a result; he was reportedly one of the inspirations for Superman. In September 1939, Campbell, now editor of Astounding, wrote to a correspondent about plans to turn Munro into a newspaper comic strip to rival Superman: “The process of turning The Mightiest Machine…into a (comic) strip has been started. The promotion department is at work on a preliminary work–up of the thing, all agreeing that it ought to be a natural, having the best features of Superman and Buck Rogers, plus some new items of its own. Aarn Munro makes a nice superman, you know, and further, we’ll make him look like a superman.” Either the strip did not sell or de Grouchy realized the importance of the emerging comicbook market and swiftly changed course. Working with the Harry “A” Chesler shop, he began assembling the first issue of Astounding Comics, which would headline “Iron Munro, the Astounding Man,” written by Astounding Stories contributor Otto Binder and drawn by Elmer C. Stoner, from a synopsis drafted by Campbell. “Campbell’s synopsis was loaded with science, naturally,” Binder wrote a friend in November 1939, “so I slashed most of it out, with a pleased grin. An author editing an editor’s work, ha!” For reasons unknown, those plans swiftly changed. Late in 1939, a generic anthology title called Street & Smith Comics, featuring Doc Savage, The Shadow, Nick Carter, Bill Barnes, as well as Iron Munro, was announced. Then, no doubt motivated by the planned release of Columbia Pictures’ Shadow serial in January 1940, at the eleventh hour, de Grouchy retitled the project Shadow Comics and released it concurrently with the Victor Jory-starring serial. The contents remained much the same, with “The Shadow” promoted to lead feature and “Iron Munro” moved to the back. Munro soon faded out, despite being scripted by Astounding Stories’ Theodore Sturgeon, beginning with the third episode. “Doc Savage” and “Bill Barnes” were quickly spun off into their own titles. An issue of Avenger

John W. Campbell Even before he became one of the most important science-fiction editors in history, Campbell wrote the novel The Mightiest Machine, which was serialized over five 1934-35 issues of the pulp magazine Astounding Science Fiction. It starred Aarn Munro, one of the earliest SF “supermen”—but though Munro is depicted in the Elliott Dold illo below from the April ’35 issue, the artwork nearly always emphasized spaceships and heavyduty machinery over human figures. Thanks to Mark Ellis for the illo, and to Anthony Tollin for the photo of Campbell. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

The Shadow’s Most Important Scribe—On Pulp Paper & In Four Colors

“This Looks Like A Job For…” SF and comics writer Otto Binder (see photo on p. 73) adapted part of Campbell’s Mightiest Machine in the pages of Shadow Comics, Vol. 1, #1. Its hero, Iron Munro, even sported a red cape, perhaps in keeping with Campbell’s (and others’) belief that his pulp creation Aarn Munro had been an influence on Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster’s Superman. Art by E.C. Stoner. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Comics was prepared, featuring the star of that S&S pulp title, but it was never released, its orphaned features scattered over several titles. A significant footnote to comics history was once revealed by Walter Gibson. In 1939, Everett M. “Busy” Arnold approached him about licensing The Shadow for a planned newspaper comicbook supplement. But Street & Smith refused to license the character. Consequently, Arnold turned to artist Will Eisner, who created the legendary Spirit as a Shadowy substitute hero!

Sources: “Inside John W. Campbell,” Sam Moskowitz. Fantasy Commentator, Vol XI, Numbers 3 & 4, Spring 2011. “Spotlight on Iron Munro,” Anthony Tollin. The Shadow, Volume 105, Sanctum Books, 2016.

Will Murray

Will Murray is the author of pulp crossover novels such as Doc Savage: Skull Island, Doc Savage: The Sinister Shadow, King Kong vs. Tarzan, and Tarzan, Conqueror of Mars. He created the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl for Marvel Comics.

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CRED! Part Three

The GREENE Shadow

The Life & Good Times Of Artist VERNON GREENE by Anthony Tollin

he Shadow has appeared in numerous comicbook series since his four-color debut in Shadow Comics #1, with his adventures visualized by many talented cartoonists and illustrators. However, Vernon V. Greene holds the distinction of drawing The Shadow’s first illustrated adventures in both comicbooks and newspaper strips! Vernon Van Atta Greene (Sept. 12, 1908–June 5, 1965) was born in Battle Ground, Washington, and grew up on a 650-acre ranch. After working as a logger and blacksmith, he attended the University of Toledo before beginning his art career in 1927, producing sports cartoons for the Portland Telegram. He moved to the Toledo News-Bee in 1929, and continued his career at the Toledo Blade (1930-32). “Around that time, Vernon Greene left Toledo, Ohio, where he had been doing sports cartoons, and came to New York to do political cartoons,” Walter Gibson recalled. “A highly versatile artist, Vernon took on other assignments and in 1935 began ‘ghosting’ the black-&-white daily strip for the popular comic Polly and Her Pals. He liked the work so much that he began looking forward to the day when he could illustrate a comic strip on his own. “Late that same year I met the manager of the Ledger Syndicate on a train from New York to Philadelphia. I gave him a copy of Zemba, my latest Shadow novel, and after he read it, he called me up and said that when the time was right, he would like to start a new comic strip based on my Shadow novels. “That time came in 1940 when Street & Smith decided to add comicbooks to their magazine line, with The Shadow as the leader. I reduced excerpts from ‘Shadow’ stories to short comic strips, and one was turned over to Vernon Greene, who was intrigued by the possibility of extending the continuity to cover the entire novel. I contacted the Ledger and they liked the idea, so Vernon finished the first week of art while I was finishing several weeks of continuity. We went to Philadelphia together and made an instant sale. Back in New York, terms were approved by Street & Smith, who arranged to have the strip remade into pages for the Shadow Comics. “From then on, the project really rolled. We went over the scripts together in New York, except when I mailed them in from Maine or Florida, though there were times when I sent them out to Washington; Vernon liked to go there for vacations, but he

Vernon Greene as a young man with his own 1942 Christmas card—and (below) a 1940 sample of his Shadow comic strip, as scripted by Walter Gibson. Thanks to Anthony Tollin, Jill Greene, & the Green Family Archives. [Shadow strip TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

always took some work along. The finished artwork went directly to Philadelphia, where it was duly processed into strips that the syndicate sold to an increasing list of newspapers; then it came to Street & Smith, where it was made over into comic pages.” As the strip’s newspaper list shrunk during the early months of the war, Gibson often didn’t receive compensation for his newspaper continuities until he resold the scripts to Street &

The Life & Good Times of Artist Vernon Greene

Smith for the comicbook, since Vernon Greene was guaranteed the first $200 of each week’s comic strip royalties. “Following Pearl Harbor, newspapers were so full of war news that they stopped adding new features such as comic strips; and when the paper shortage threatened, they began to discontinue those that they had most recently taken on,” Gibson explained. “With sales declining, the Ledger Syndicate suspended the series during its second year. I felt it was just as well, as Vernon Greene had joined the Air Force and was no longer able to provide his inimitable artwork.” In the military, Greene turned his photography hobby into a vocation, serving as an Army Air Corps medical photographer at Kearns Air Base in Utah, while moonlighting for Street & Smith’s Pic magazine producing the service-related cartoon features, Charlie Conscript and Mac the Medic. Following his military service, Greene produced the Bible Bee panel for the Register and Tribune Syndicate from 1946 to 1954, when he succeeded creator George McManus on King Features’ hugely popular Bringing Up Father daily strip. He continued to illustrate the comic misadventures of Maggie and Jiggs until his own death in 1965. An enthusiastic fan of comic art, Greene hosted the syndicated radio program The Cartoonist’s Art, and was selected as resident artist for the closed-circuit color telecasts at the New York World’s Fair’s RCA Pavilion, where he hosted the “Comics Cavalcade” series of cartoonist interviews. He also served two years as vice president of the National Cartoonists Society and received the organization’s prestigious Golden T-Square Award in 1964.

Loose Lips—And The Shadow—Sink Ships! Greene’s dramatic cover for Shadow Comics, Vol. 2, #3 (March 1942). Courtesy of the GCD. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

“Vern Greene was one of the warmest and friendliest men in the cartooning profession,” observed comic historian Richard Marschall. “Greene adapted well to any genre he tackled; certainly the style of Sterrett’s Polly and The Shadow were at the opposite ends of the artistic pole, but he handled both splendidly and simultaneously. The ever-active Greene seemed always engaged in half a dozen projects; in his last years he was drawing, attending to NCS duties, doing USO shows, hosting his radio program, and earning a degree in philosophy from

Getting Your Bund In An Uproar The 1-29-41 Shadow daily by Gibson & Greene, from the storyline “The Shadow Battles the Bund.” Thanks to Anthony Tollin. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The Greene Shadow

Bringing Up Vernon Vernon Greene in his studio during the 1950s, hard at work on the popular comic strip Bringing Up Father—juxtaposed with a sterling daily from 1954. Greene had succeeded the strip’s originator, George McManus. Thanks to Anthony Tollin and Jill Greene. [Strip TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

Columbia University. He was a talented and unselfish lover of his profession and is sorely missed.” Vernon Greene never forgot the shadowy crimebuster who provided him with his first syndicated strip byline, and Graves Gladney’s original “Prince of Evil” Shadow pulp cover painting remained in his art studio throughout his life. This article originally appeared in the Sanctum Books reprint The Shadow, Vol. 110. [©2016 Anthony Tollin.] For more on The Shadow’s first comic artist, visit his Facebook tribute page: https://www.facebook.com/Vernon V. Greene-420146014848725/ Anthony Tollin, co-author with Walter Gibson of The Shadow Scrapbook, began his half-century popular-culture career at Warren and Marvel in 1973, before working exclusively for DC Comics from 1974-95 as proofreader, asst. production manager, and cover and interior colorist. He is a major broadcasting historian, authoring more than 70 historical booklets for the Smithsonian Institution, Radio Spirits, and other publishers, and scripted some 1400 episodes of Stan Freberg’s When Radio Was syndicated series. Most recently, Tollin has published more than 300 double-novel trade paperbacks under his Sanctum Books imprint, reprinting the original pulp adventures of The Shadow, Doc Savage, The Avenger, and other legendary pulp heroes.

Anthony Tollin (c. 1983) at an FOTR (Friends of Old-Time Radio) convention—sporting the slouch hat worn by various models posing for twin brothers Jerome G. & George J. Rozen’s Shadow pulp-mag cover paintings between 1931 & ’49—and the cape worn by The Shadow’s longtime radio voice, Bret Morrison, when he posed for publicity photos.

CRED! Part Four

ForeSHADOWing The BATMAN The Pulp-To-Comics Connection Between The Knight of Darkness & The Dark Knight by Anthony Tollin

hile visiting with a wealthy friend, Gotham’s police commissioner receives a call informing him that a chemical executive has been murdered. Arriving at the crime scene, the commissioner and the young socialite learn that detectives consider the victim’s heir to be the prime suspect. However, the relative reveals that the murdered man had three business partners in a chemical syndicate, one of whom phones to report that he, like the victim, has received a death threat. The commissioner, minus his friend, departs for the caller’s mansion where murder is already claiming its second victim. The killer steals a document from his victim’s safe, but he and an accomplice are stopped by a “bat-like” crimefighter during their rooftop escape. Arriving police The Shadow Of The Bat mistake the black-garbed crimefighter The Shadow may have preceded Batman as for the murderer, but the mystery man a fictional character by several years—but escapes with the recovered document. Batman made it into comicbooks first, on Meanwhile, one of the two surviving Bob Kane’s iconic cover for Detective Comics partners arrives at the laboratory and #27 (May 1939). The cover of 1940’s Shadow is imprisoned in a glass gas chamber, Comics #1 was seen on p. 42, so at right is but the mystery man enters the a later Vernon Greene cover (for Vol. 2, #6, deathtrap and plugs the gas jet with Sept. 1942) on which The Knight of Darkness a handkerchief. Escaping from the swings on a rope à la the Dark Knight. Thanks to the GCD & Mark Carlson-Ghost. [TM & © DC gas chamber, he captures the hidden Comics & Advance Magazine Publishers/The plotter’s accomplice and prevents Condé Nast Publications, Inc., respectively.] the murderous mastermind from killing his final partner. The Knight of Darkness reveals the details of a sinister plot to take over ownership of the chemical plant, gleaned from the recovered document. The next day, a police official expresses interest in the Dark Avenger’s crimefighting activities, while the socialite discusses the events with a man who has no inkling that the millionaire is secretly the master sleuth who solved the case. This plot, originated by pulp writer Theodore Tinsley for Partners of Peril, is familiar to legions of comics fans who have never read his 1936 Shadow novel—since every key plot point in it was lifted by Bill Finger for Batman’s

1939 debut, “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate”! In fact, Batman’s co-creator freely admitted that his “first script was a take-off on a ‘Shadow’ story.” Bob Kane also acknowledged The Shadow as a major influence on Batman’s creation: “I suppose both The Shadow’s cloaked costume and double-identity role, as well as the extraordinary acrobatics of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., did more to my subconscious to create the character and personality of Batman than any other factors.” Later statements by Bob Kane assigned more credit to Johnston McCulley’s Zorro, as portrayed by Fairbanks in the 1920 film The Mark of Zorro. However, it now appears that even the connections to Zorro and Fairbanks’ acrobatics may have originated with Finger rather than Kane. As historian Jerry Bails observed, “Bill maintained (well into the 1960s) a file of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., photo stills. He showed me the file and said that he would attach selected photos to finished scripts for Bob and his assistants to use as models. I recognized pose after pose. The stills I saw (and had never

ForeSHADOWing The Batman

Pardon Me, May I Borrow That Giant Inverted Bowl? The Tom Lovell two-page (“double-truck”) illustration for the Nov. 1936 issue of The Shadow pulp magazine… contrasted with a “Batman” panel from Detective #27 that reveals some of the machinery Bob Kane swiped from the Lovell art. “Batman” script by Bill Finger. Thanks to Anthony Tollin. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications & DC Comics, respectively.]

seen before that date) were the familiar swinging poses that characterized the Acro-Batman that was so popular in my youth.” Kane’s claims of a Zorro influence were accepted for years, even though there is virtually nothing of Zorro in the first year of Batman. The grim Batman mimics the somber Shadow, not the devil-may-care caballero, while Bruce Wayne’s actions parallel Cranston’s and lack the effete behavior of Don Diego. Certainly, the friendship between a police commissioner and his crimefighting ally’s alter ego had already been developed in The Shadow Magazine and the popular radio series. Kane fully participated in the Bat-adaptation of Partners of Peril, swiping a rooftop chimney and laboratory machinery from the Tom Lovell Shadow illustrations reproduced on this page. Many other elements from The Shadow Magazine filtered into Batman stories. The Dark Knight inherited The Shadow’s talent or escapes from diabolical death traps, beginning with Partners of Peril’s glass gas chamber in Detective Comics #27. Batman’s mastery of escape was a legacy from Houdini to his biographer Walter Gibson and on to Bill Finger via The Shadow. Partners of Peril is the smoking gun that proves the Shadow/

Batman connection. It also raises questions about Bob Kane’s actual contribution to Batman’s creation. It’s fair to ask: If Bill Finger’s first “Batman” script was lifted from an earlier Shadow novel and the writer also suggested the Caped Crusader’s bat-eared cowl, bat-scalloped cape, black-and-gray costume, and utility belt, what did Kane personally contribute to the feature that bears his creator credit, other than its title? In later years, Bob Kane publicly lamented that Bill Finger had not shared byline credit, though the artist claimed to be the sole creator of Batman while Finger was alive, even threatening lawsuits against researchers who reported the writer’s contributions. While his initial “Batman” story was lifted from Partners

The Pulp-To-Comics Connection

of Peril, Bill Finger quickly developed into one of comics’ most innovative scriptwriters. The strip that had started as a virtual clone of The Shadow came into its own with the introduction of Robin, the Boy Wonder—a character who brought a touch of humanity to the formerly grim Batman, and provided a point of identification for young readers. Even Gibson recognized the value of Batman’s sidekick, and later provided the Master of Darkness with a similar protégé, Shadow Junior, in Shadow Comics. Theodore Tinsley has long been overshadowed by Walter Gibson, and is remembered primarily as “the other Shadow writer” who crafted 27 capable fill-in stories utilizing the characters and formats originated by his illustrious predecessor. However, with the discovery that his premier Shadow novel provided the inspiration for Batman’s creation, Tinsley must now be recognized, along with Gibson, as a major figure in the development of one of our iconic comicbook heroes. Without the Knight of Darkness, there would be no Dark Knight. The Shadow was a master of the art of disguise. Perhaps his greatest masquerade was transforming himself into Batman, and in that guise continuing his reign as the world’s greatest detective super-hero into the 21st century. This piece originally appeared in Vol. 9 of Sanctum Books’ The Shadow, which reprinted the short novel Partners in Peril. [©2006 Anthony Tollin.]

Partners In Peril George Rozen’s cover for The Shadow Magazine (Nov. 1936), the issue from whose Theodore Tinsley story the first “Batman” yarn, “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” was swiped by Bill Finger & Bob Kane. Thanks to Anthony Tollin. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

The WHO’S WHO of American Comic Books 1928-1999 Online Edition Created by Jerry G. Bails FREE – online searchable database – FREE www.bailsprojects.com – No password requiredrequired After a trio of 1942 issues that probably didn’t set any sales records, Street & Smith mostly avoided depicting the colorheld, mind-clouding version of their hero on covers of Shadow Comics. An exception was Bob Powell’s for Vol. 7, #12 (March 1948)—though it featured just a head shot. Courtesy of the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © Advance Magazine Publishers, Inc./The Condé Nast Publications.]

Severin by Severin from Cracked #347 (Sept. 2000). [TM & © Cracked Entertainment or successors in interest.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

It’s A Cracked, Cracked, Cracked, Cracked World! (Part 2) by Michael T. Gilbert

hen I was a kid, Cracked was the magazine you’d buy if Mad was sold out. Unless Sick was on sale.

It’s not that Cracked was bad. There were actually some excellent art and some decent articles. Early on, you might find stories illustrated by Russ Heath, Al Williamson, Joe Maneely, Bill Elder, or Jack Davis, and in later years, excellent work by Steve Ditko, Bill Wray, Dan Clowes, and Mort Todd. I even sold them a story once (which gives you a rough idea of their sometimesquestionable standards!). And of course, Bill Ward’s sexy women got young male hearts beating a little faster. But it wasn’t Mad. Still, over the years Cracked grew on me, as the magazine developed its own distinct personality. And a large part of that personality came courtesy of former Mad artist John Severin. He became Cracked’s house artist, often drawing multiple stories each issue, as well as most covers. Fantagraphics co-publisher Kim Thompson once wrote, “I don’t think I’m alone in thinking of Cracked for most of its run as ‘a bunch of crap… and John Severin.’” Not entirely fair, but I think you get the idea.

Certifiably Mad The Western parody “Varmint!” in the color comicbook Mad #1 (Oct. 1952) was Severin’s debut in that mag, years before he defected to Cracked. [TM & © EC Publications, Inc.]

The Original Mad-Man! Severin was one of the original Mad-men, drawing his “Varmint!” story for Mad #1 for October 1952. The artist contributed to nine issues between 1952 and 1954 before parting ways with Kurtzman, the only one of the original Mad artists to do so. Severin and Kurtzman both stated that the two old friends had a falling out over critical comments Harvey had made concerning John’s art. Additionally, Kurtzman insisted on providing layouts for all the artists, which Severin resented. That would explain why he also opted not to join Kurtzman on his other ill-fated ventures (though Severin did take over the editorial reigns of ECs Two-Fisted Tales when Kurtzman quit the title due to Harvey’s ever-increasing Mad workload). Severin didn’t lack work in 1954. Fast and talented, he was kept busy by Marvel doing war, horror, and even humor for some of their own short-lived Mad clones (Crazy, Wild, and Riot). He also did a long stint on Prize’s Prize Comics Western, illustrating his signature character American Eagle (your typical “noble Indian” warrior).

John Severin in the 1960s, flanked by a few his many covers. In addition to Cracked, we can see EC’s Two-Fisted Tales, Prize’s Prize Comics Western, and Timely/Atlas’ Sailor Sweeney.

Enter…Cracked! But Sev really made his mark when he drew a quiz show parody called “The $64,000,000 Cracked-Pot Question” for Cracked’s

It’s A Cracked, Cracked, Cracked, Cracked World (Part 2)

Fly Like An Eagle! The Native American hero American Eagle was Severin’s signature character in the late Golden Age of Comics. His feature ran from Prize Comics Western, Vol. 9, #6 (Jan. 1951), until issue #113 (Sept. 1955). Severin usually inked his own work, but would occasionally team up with fellow Mad (and Cracked) artist Bill Elder. Kurtzman actually preferred Elder’s inking to Severin’s own on the penciler’s work, which proved a point of contention between Harvey and John. (Left:) Severin’s cover for Prize Comics Western #100 (July 1953). (Right:) Elder inks Severin in this tale from Prize Comics Western #99 (May 1953). [© the respective copyright holders.]

premier issue in February 1958; he also designed the cover for that issue, executed by Bill Everett. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful association between one of comics’ greatest cartoonists and the #2 humor magazine in America. Severin and Cracked’s marriage lasted for over forty years in a combination of new material and reprints. During that time the prolific artist also drew stories for Marvel, DC, Warren, and other publishers. In 1985—interestingly, the same year Al Feldstein retired as Mad’s editor––publisher Robert Sproul sold Cracked to Globe Communications Corporation. Issue #213 (Aug. 1985) was Globe’s first, and shockingly Severin was nowhere to be found––even though his art had been well represented in the previous one (the last from Sproul’s Major Publications). The geniuses at Globe apparently thought the magazine needed a Major overhaul (pun intended!), and dumped their long-running (and expensive!) Cracked superstar. John didn’t appear in the next few issues either, but loyal Cracked fans must have voiced their displeasure––or possibly new, disappointing sales figures came in––and Cracked’s new owners

quickly reversed course. With issue #218, Severin’s art once again began appearing regularly in Cracked. His distinctive style could be seen there into the 21st century.

Cracked’s Granddaddy! In a biographical page for Cracked #347 subtitled “Artist John Severin: The Granddaddy of Cracked,” writer Barry Dutter wrote: “Over the years, John has drawn hundreds––maybe even thousands––of pages for Cracked, including movie and TV parodies, as well as regular features like ‘Hang-Ups’ and the western spoof ‘Sagebrush!’ At one time, John was drawing so much material for each issue, he started using pseudonyms, just for fun! One of the names he used was ‘Nireves’ –– ‘Severin’ spelled backwards! And then there are all those covers, covers, covers!” Dutter’s bio then added: “John clued us in to the origin or our own mascot, Sylvester. Jackie Gleason used to have a skit on his TV show where he played a guy who ran a moving company, and there was a little guy who worked with him. Bob Sproul, the publisher, said, ‘Let’s do

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

a take-off on the little guy from Gleason’s show.’ So we put him in Cracked. The only problem was, the guy was ugly as sin. So I changed the look of Sylvester to make him more like an elf. He’s not a little old man. I made him happier-looking, more pleasant looking.” After noting that Severin was then in his late 70s, Dutter predicted that “You can look forward to seeing John’s work for another 70 years, at least! After all, he’s the only artist whose work has appeared in just about every issue of Cracked ever published! To this day, when fans think of classic Cracked artists, John’s name is the first one that comes to mind! One thing is for sure––we have no intention of ever ‘severin’ our ties with him!” Naturally (this being Cracked, after all!), the following issue featured the last new work John would ever do for the magazine. Hmmm! Wonder if Johnny made the mistake of hitting them up for a raise after reading that gushing article? However, even without new work, Severin reprints continued to pop up as late as Cracked #365 (Nov. 2004), the final issue.

The Long Goodbye! I recently asked former Cracked editor Mort Todd why John and Cracked finally parted company. If I was expecting whispered tales of nasty creative battles between John and his editors, this writer was doomed to disappointment. Mort’s answer was surprisingly mundane: “After [publisher] Globe sold [Cracked], the last publisher couldn’t afford him.” Mort added, “The last publisher, Dick Kulpa, had high hopes

They Done Him Wrong—And Right! (Below left:) Sylvester Done Wrong: Jack Davis’ “puzzlingly” repulsive version of Sylvester for Cracked #12 (Jan. 1960). (Center:) Sylvester Done Weird: A few issues later, Davis overcompensates with his oddly heroic version of the magazine’s mascot for Cracked #16 (Oct. 1960). Sorry, no sale! (Right:) Sylvester Done Right: Finally, John Severin perfects the cute, “elfish” Sylvester we know and love! This example is from Cracked #71 (Sept. 1968). [TM & © Cracked Entertainment or successors in interest.]

Go Western, Young Man! (Above:) Cracked Mazagine (as they sometimes misspelled the periodical’s name!) #39 (Sept. 1964). This cover demonstrates Severin’s uncanny ability at caricature, as well as his attention to detail. His drawing is a clever mash of fanciful TV cowboys and their historically more accurate Western counterparts. [TM & © Cracked Entertainment or successors in interest.]

It’s A Cracked, Cracked, Cracked, Cracked World (Part 2)

but didn’t have much of a budget, so he drew a lot of material in those last issues himself.” As sales continued to dip, Globe Communications Corp. sold Cracked to American Media Consumer Entertainment. The first issue under the latter’s reign was #342 in March 2000. Much of the art was a far cry from Cracked’s glory days. Some, in fact, seemed downright amateurish, likely due to lower page rates. By then the writing had devolved into multi-issue jokes about Brittney Spears’ breast implants and similar “topical” humor. It’s just as well Severin was gone. Frankly, he deserved better. As Cracked’s sales continued to spiral, yet another company, Mega Media Entertainment, took over with issue #352 (Feb. 2001). The magazine sputtered along for another twelve issues before it finally ended its impressive 46-year run. The reason behind the cancellation is actually a darkly funny story in itself, worthy of the magazine. Remind me to tell you about it next issue…. Severin’s last new work for the mag was a pin-up in Cracked #350 (Dec. 2000). It’s worth noting that in the following issue (American Media’s last), they reprinted his very first Cracked

Severin, First Blood! This was John’s first art job for the magazine, published in Cracked #1 (Feb. 1958). (TM & © Cracked Entertainment or successors in interest.]

story from way back in 1958. This was clearly a loving farewell to the greatest Cracked artist of all. Oh yes, and it’s also worth mentioning that yet another company, Teshkeel Media Group, scooped up Cracked in 2007. They, too, had lofty plans to revive it, starting with a new #1 numbering. In their glossy celebrity-photo-filled pages, Severin was nowhere to be found. The new Cracked bit the dust after only three issues. Coincidence? Cracked’s loss was Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse’s gain, as John produced some of his finest work for them

The Bitter End! This page from Cracked #350 (Oct. 2000) was Severin’s last work for the magazine he had helped birth. [TM & © Cracked Entertainment or successors in interest.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

on a variety of projects in his later years. John Severin died February 12, 2012, at age 90, leaving behind a legacy of remarkable consistency, talent, and integrity. And an awful lot of happy Cracked memories! Till next time…

Next: “Spy vs. Spy”? Nope! Cracked vs. Mad—to the death!

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JOHN BROOME – The Penultimate Chapter Part XIX Of The Golden/Silver Age Scripter’s 1998 Memoir

A/E

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: For nineteen issues now, though not quite in an unbroken string, this magazine has serialized writer Irving Bernard (“John”) Broome’s slim volume My Life in Little Pieces – “An Offbeat Autobio,” which was published at the turn of 1998, roughly a year before he passed away at age 85. Our thanks to his daughter, Ricky Terry Brisacque, for her kind permission to reprint this very limited-edition book… and to Brian K. Morris for retyping it onto a Word document….

Temper, Temper I once asked wife Peggy: Why, when the world could so quickly forgive tennis wight John McEnroe his court antics and temper tantrums and take him so lovingly to its bosom on his retirement, she couldn’t seem to forgive or ever forget a single one of her spouse’s occasional outbursts down the decades of our marriage; and she replied: “I’m sorry. You’re just not a good enough tennis player.” And yet a reasonably mercurial temper came to me legitimately enough, it’s pretty clear, via my paternal grandfather, squat, burly, mustachioed lgnatz Broome, he who presciently spared his progeny-to-be (three girls and two boys, not to speak of their offspring) such unenviable life experiences as being frozen to death in an experimental ice-filled Jacuzzi, or being done equally to death in showers unexpectedly laced with—of all things—potassium cyanide, by shaking the dust of his native Poland from off of his feet fifty years before Hitler and making his way young and alone to the terrifying but alluring New Land across the seas. ****** In the family, Grandpa Broome’s temper was as celebrated as Grandma Broome’s cooking—twin memory bits that segued together at the yearly Passover seder evenings, held usually in their home, where a single look from Grandpa’s dark flashing eyes lasering across the spotlessly white tablecloth laden with pitchers of Grandma’s honeycolored raisin wine and platters piled high with succulent patties of her special gefilte fish—the gentle lady, it was said, had as a young girl been a cook, or at least a scullery maid, in the kitchens of Emperor Franz-Joseph of Austria-Hungary—could instantly immobilize a restless l0-year-old, seated foremost among the small fry as the family’s first male grandchild, with the force of a true laser shot. ******

John & Peggy Broome on the left, during the period of his service in World War II, with a pair of unidentified friends—and a page from JB’s Carmine Infantino-illustrated yarn “Danger on the Martian Links,” one of the “Strange Sports Stories” in The Brave and the Bold #46 (Feb.-March 1963). Maybe the renowned Golden/ Silver Age comics scribe wasn’t a “good enough tennis player” for his wife’s tastes, but he could sure spin a mean tale about playing golf on the Red Planet for his editor (and the best man at their wedding), Julius Schwartz. Thanks to Ricky Terry Brisacque & Jim Kealy. [Page TM & © DC Comics.]

Part XIX Of The Golden/Silver Age Scripter’s 1998 Memoir

Even with the Alzheimer’s that developed in his early seventies—in those days it was senility or senile debility— Grandpa’s temper remained stubbornly undiluted, though the condition did make rapid progress, and Grandma and two of her married daughters, Rosie and Estie, who lived all of them in the same apartment house on Bay Parkway, Brooklyn, had to watch over him constantly and, above all, keep any money from him (this was, of course, some years after he had stopped making pocketbooks in the small downtown leather factory where a half century of unchanging activity at the same bench had, it seems, done little to stave off the dreaded illness), for if he got hold of a nickel, he would get on the El that ran above nearby 86th Street and head for the place they had lived decades before.

Now as he stared up at Rosie, with a peculiar kind of stare that made her ever unreliable heart sink into her stomach, thick saliva dribbled down the corner of his mouth on the side where his S-shaped pipe, his favorite, the one with the all but burnt-away bowl, usually protruded—for he was an inveterate pipe smoker and the raw rank pungent odor of burning wood and tobacco combined that always clung to him and his clothes, as well as the heavy underslung lower lip on the pipe side, attested to the powerful force of this lifelong indulgence— and Rosie moved hurriedly with a clean kerchief to wipe off the drool, but he pulled away irritably from her touch as the other two women also came around him, Grandma bearing a cup of tea she’d rapidly poured – tea, the household’s universal balm in any and all emergencies—but he didn’t seem to focus on her or on the cup and saucer she was so dutifully extending...

****** Once, when he had eluded family vigilance and with a dully puzzled expression on his heavily-seamed be-whiskered face was chufﬁng through the streets of a much-changed uptown neighborhood, the police, alerted, picked him up and brought him home, gently enough, to a weeping Grandma.

“Who are these women?” was the thought that passed through his brain. But then at once John Broome, like other Golden (or should we call it “Atomic”?) he realized he knew who they Age writers, didn’t often get an opportuity to ruminate on life’s were: his wife Reba and their two mysteries—but he took this one when it came, in Strange Adventures daughters Rosie and Estie: that is, #34 (July 1953). The tale was, of course, a riff on the 1882 short story he knew but he didn’t know! His “The Lady or the Tiger” by Frank Stockton—a story that leaves the mind, his thoughts, were going on ending (which of two doors did the protagonist choose to open?) up to the reader’s mind, an early “interactive” offering. Broome’s and off like a slow blinker-light “Oh. Ignatz, Ignatz, what co-creation “Captain Comet” was the first self-styled mutant superout of control, while a strange is happening to you?” she cried hero in a comicbook series, drawn here by the esteemed Murphy screeching sound went ping you... as she dusted him off and did Anderson. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.] ping you in his head. A pulse of her best to make him look less anger surged up in him, anger like a Bowery bum, a homeless at this woman—his daughter?— unfortunate, especially since he had wound up in the hands of the trying to wipe his mouth as if he were a child—anger at the world police, an ultimate disgrace in her eyes conditioned by her childish that kept changing around him, not staying still the way it should horror of “cossacks” in the old country. stay—and at the forgetfulness that hounded him—where in God’s “Oh, papa, really, you made us so worried,” exclaimed Rosie, name was his pipe?... Had he lost it?... A true disaster...! —but most of all, his elder daughter, as she sat him down in his own worn armchair anger at his own weakness and sense of sick impotence that filled while younger sister Estie saw to ushering out the two overcurious him... body and soul... bluecoats with many humble words of thanks for rescuing their Beset almost to the uttermost limit of his endurance, he father. allowed the anger to flood up in him, knowing instinctively it ****** would, druglike, give him a jolt of physical and mental energy, make him feel once more the way a man should feel in this world, “Really, papa, where did you go? I mean, was it something you like an honored Lord of the Universe—for hadn’t Jehovah, the one were looking for, was that it?” Rosie, easily brought to the verge true God, blessed be His name, promised that to all males of his of utter despair, tried to sound just normally curious, as if the race, and his race alone? He raised his head and lifted his chest, not hopelessly nonsensical flight of the old runaway seated before her, without a certain “animal at bay” spirit. plus other growing proofs of his dreadful affliction, had been— really—only passing aberrations from which he was bound sooner “Where did I go?” he snarled, mostly at poor Rosie. “I went or later to recover completely: for to be sure there were no visible home, that’s where did l go!” signs of his mysterious illness and it was hard sometimes for the “lgnatz, what are you saying?“ protested Grandma between family to believe—even after the solemn assurance of the specialist sobs. “Isn’t this your home? And I-I’m not your wife? Oh, Ignatz,” doctor they took him to—that he was actually and permanently she almost shrieked, “don’t you know me!?” This tragedy that had stricken. struck their peaceful house, perhaps it came because they hadn’t

“The Lady Or The Tiger-Man”

John Broome—The Penultimate Chapter

been religious enough?… Surely, they had always observed the high holidays and hadn’t she always scrupulously lit candles on all the required days of the year? But she knew other families had gone to synagogue much more often and it must be that the Great Above was displeased with them and had visited His wrath on her husband in this terrible and agonizing way. “No,” he was saying in that positive tone that was so characteristic and went with the temper, “no, missis, you are not my wife. It’s not possible. My wife is young and beautiful. Not an old woman—!” He glared at them. All three women were openly weeping now, but especially Grandma, despite the unintended compliment he had bestowed on her; and all three had joined hands to sustain, collectively, their bleak despair, but he was too far gone to notice something like that. It was a classic case. He was a true Time Traveler bound for other worlds and other climes and at breathtaking speed: from old age to maturity, from maturity to childhood, from childhood to infancy, and hardly pausing there, plunging with a will into birth itself and the womb—where mercifully, and at long last, he could ﬁnally perish a burbling glapping 75-year-old foetus. Shakespeare’s Jacques could hardly have found an apter illustration for “sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything...” and yet I wonder, didn’t my grandfather’s vaunted temper somewhere along the line reassert itself? Wasn’t there, before the end came, at least one last ﬂicker of rage, perhaps directed—and why not?—at the Great Above Himself? After all, as much as anyone, it seems to me, he had a right. John Broome’s memoir will be concluded next issue.

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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!

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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!

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!

PAUL GUSTAVSON—Golden Age artist of The Angel, Fantom of the Fair, Arrow, Human Bomb, Jester, Plastic Man, Alias the Spider, Quicksilver, Rusty Ryan, Midnight, and others—is remembered by son TERRY GUSTAFSON, who talks in-depth to RICHARD ARNDT. Also, ROY THOMAS reviews the new anti-STAN LEE bio! Plus—FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, JOHN BROOME, and more!

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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!

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!

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In Memoriam

Richard A. Lupoff (1935-2020)

The Godfather Of Comics Fandom by Roy Thomas

ick Lupoff was only tangentially a comicbook professional—yet he had a considerable if indirect effect on the field, beginning back in 1960. That’s the year he and his wife Pat, as young Manhattanites, launched Xero, superficially a science-fiction fanzine, yet actually an ambitious publication dealing with many aspects of pop culture—including, from the start, comicbooks. It was in Xero #1, distributed by hand at the 1960 World Science Fiction Convention, that the iconic series of comics history/nostalgia “All in Color for a Dime” made its debut, spotlighting Dick’s own contribution, “The Big Red Cheese,” which dealt with the original Captain Marvel and his Shazamic offspring. Over the next few years, Xero cast a long shadow over the nascent comics fanzines that began in 1961 with the Jerry Bails/Roy Thomas Alter-Ego and Don & Maggie Thompson’s Comic Art, influencing the style and content of both… and through them, the comics fandom that grew up during that decade and soon provided a string of talented writers and artists to the pro-comics field. Xero also attracted contributions from such SF notables as James Blish, Harlan Ellison, Frederik Pohl, et al. Most of the All in Color for a Dime articles (plus some new material) were collected in book form in 1970, one of the first hardcovers to deal exclusively with the comicbook industry; Dick and Don Thompson co-edited it and a 1973 sequel, The Comic-Book Book. Dick was born on February 21, 1935, in Brooklyn, New York, and studied at the University of Miami, becoming first a journalist, then a technical writer at Sperry Univac and IBM. In the mid-1960s he edited Canaveral Press’ line of hardcover Edgar Rice Burroughs reprints, and in 1965 he wrote Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure, the first serious look at the creator of Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, and an influential school of science-fiction and fantasy fiction. In 1967 he launched his SF-writing career with the novel One Million Centuries. Eventually, he scribed more than fifty books of fiction and non-fiction, including the Nebula-nominated Sword of

Dick Lupoff flanked by the title page of his “Big Red Cheese” article in Xero #1 (1960) and the cover for the Gangsters at War comic inserted with his 1988 novel The Comic Book Killer. “T.Hief” was listed as the artist of the Captain Marvel figure on the former, while pulp and 1940s comicbook cover artist Alex Schomburg drew the latter. Inside, the stories were by Lupoff and artist Trina Robbins. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics; Gangsters art © the respective copyright holders.]

the Demon (1977), The Comic Book Killer, the duology Circumpolar! and Countersolar!, and a 2016 memoir, Where Memory Hides: A Writer’s Life. Along the way, he wrote a handful of comicbooks, including the Gangsters at War comicbook insert in his 1988 novel The Comic Book Killer and several stories for Heavy Metal between 1977 and 1982. Pat Lupoff passed away in 2018. They had three children, and had lived their later decades in Northern California. Dick left us on October 22, 2020… but his influence, and his inspiration, remain. If Jerry Bails was, as he is often called, the father of comics fandom, Dick Lupoff could be said, with equal justification, to be its godfather.

In Memoriam

Steve Perrin (1946-2021)

“One Of An Extraordinary Group”

by David Berge & Dennis Mallonee

e must say goodbye to Steve Perrin, our friend and longtime writer for Heroic Publishing’s “Huntsman” character. But Steve will be remembered for much greater things than contributions to a single line of super-hero comicbooks. Steve earned a degree in English from San Francisco State U., but did not use it in ways that his educators likely anticipated. In the nascent role-playing game (RPG) industry of the 1970s, he co-designed for the emerging game company Chaosium the classic game RuneQuest, which was based on Greg Stafford’s magical world of Glorantha. Chaosium has recently resumed the publication of material for its iconic game, and you will see the Perrin name on some of those recent covers. Steve also designed the super-hero RPG SuperWorld for Chaosium and contributed to Chaosium’s most popular game, Call of Cthulhu. Most recently in the RPG world, he wrote adventures and supplements for many other super-hero games. He contributed to Champions, Mutants & Masterminds, and ICONS, the last such effort featuring several of Heroic Publishing’s World War II characters. And, in his best appropriation of a day job, Steve wrote

Steve Perrin While Steve spent much of his life in the role-playing game industry, it’s his comics-related contributions to which Alter Ego would like to pay special homage: “The Black Phantom,” one of the first fan-strips starring an African-American hero, written by Steve and illustrated by Ronn Foss for Bill Spicer’s Fantasy Illustrated #6 (1966)… and the “Huntsman” splash from Heroic Publishing’s Champions Adventures #2 (May 2015), with art by Pete McDonnell & Willie Blyberg. [“Black Phantom” material © Estates of Steve Perrin & Ronn Foss; “Huntsman” TM & © Heroic Publishing, Inc.]

manuals for various computer games and designed and playtested others. At least one of Steve Perrin’s contributions to pop culture involves more the sword than the pen. Looking in from the outside, the Society for Creative Anachronism may be seen as a group of medievalists who hit each other with wooden swords while addressing each other in polite, flowery language. We are, however, assured that the SCA is a rich, if idealized, re-creation of medieval [Continued on next page]

In Memoriam

Dan Nakrosis (1963-2020)

“There Was No One In The Comics Field More Generous” by Scott Shaw!

lthough never a “big name” in the comicbook industry, my friend Dan’s surname “Nakrosis” always raised eyebrows. But he considered himself lucky—because his uncle immigrated through Canada and wound up with the scratchy last name of “Neckrash.” Daniel “Dano” Nakrosis (July 4, 1963 - July 21, 2020) was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, and had a 30-year career in the U.S. comicbook industry. The son of an architect, Dan was a 1986 graduate of Dover, NJ’s Joe Kubert School of Cartoon Art. After graduation, he lived in Japan for two years, an experience that would pay off years later. His first solo creation was Agent Orange for Valkyrie Press in 1986. He followed this up with stints on Chicago’s Now Comics’ production staff and in DC’s production department in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Soon, Dan became a professional letterer, working for Now, Comico, Malibu, Marvel, Marvel UK, Disney, DC, Archie, Harvey, and many others. He did touch-up restorations of vintage comic art for the DC Archives, Marvel Masterworks, and the Archie Americana series, as well as production on “custom” comics projects for various clients. He was also an assistant editor for Marvel, Image, and WildStorm, and a full editor for Marvel (X-Men: The Manga and Spider-Man: The Manga). When the two Marvel manga reprint series were canceled early, Dan made a history-making deal with Marvel to quietly publish the last few issues himself. In 1992, Archie published his and writer Paul Castiglia’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Meet the Conservation Corps, then followed it up the next year with a three-issue Conservation Corps mini-series. When Japanese manga became popular in America, Dan combined his expertise in that language with his lettering skills, boosted by the then-revolutionary concept of digital lettering. He became one of the “go-to guys” in the emerging manga industry, overseeing the flipping, translation, lettering, and packaging of dozens of mangas in his own studio. In recent years, he also designed displays for the Trader Joe’s chain, and had a thriving business drawing caricatures of people that he called “DK Zombify,” visualizing his clients as zombies. He also colored and lettered my comicbook stories, book covers, prints, decals, and T-shirt designs.

Dan Nakrosis with his cover for Conservation Corps #1 (Aug. 1993). Courtesy of the GCD. [TM & © Archie Comic Publications, Inc., or successor in interest.]

Danny was a lifelong sports fan, with a special love for the New York Mets. He dug prog-rock music, especially by Marillion, Kansas, and Yes. He could be seen in a number of TV series and music videos, including a Super Bowl commercial featuring the rock band Foreigner. There was no one in the comics field more generous than Danny, a guy who was always willing to help out friends and strangers with equal enthusiasm.

[Steven Perrin, continued from previous page] culture. Whatever the truth may be, Steve was in the mid-1960s a founding member of SCA. He was also a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shareduniverse novels. Sleazy reporter Digger Downs, you will not be missed as much as your creator will be. Finally, going deep into the history of comicbooks, Steve Perrin was one of that extraordinary group of fans, including such luminaries as Dr. Jerry Bails, Don Thompson, Dick Lupoff, Biljo White, Ronn Foss, and Roy Thomas, who almost by sheer force of will brought into being the Golden Age of Comic Fandom that grew out of the Silver Age of Comics. Steve leaves us at age 75, survived by his artistic wife Louise. He leaves behind a few unfinished works, some of which will, if we have anything to say about it, still be published. As Chaosium wrote in their own tribute, which can be found here: https:// www.enworld.org/threads/chaosium-vale-and-farewell-steveperrin-1946-2021.682056/ … vale and farewell, Steve. Dennis Mallonee and David Berge are the publisher and vice president, respectively, of Heroic Publishing.

came back, re-established himself, and built a career on his own terms from that. So many accomplishments. Joe Frank And Bill doubtless had a number of other carefully researched, well-written works still ahead of him, Joe, when his life was cut unexpectedly short. There’s not a day that goes by that his erstwhile colleagues at A/E don’t think of him and wish he was still around—and not just so he could answer some question about the estoerica of 1960s or ’70s fandom! On p. 11 of A/E #165 we printed a sidebar by Will Murray concerning the famous/infamous first issue of 1939’s Motion Picture Funnies Weekly, and which outlined Will’s (and others’) assessment of whether MPFW or Marvel Comics #1 was released first, since each sported eight pages of Bill Everett’s first “Sub-Mariner” story (with the latter printing having four additional pages). Will sides with those who feel MPFW #1 was conceived first; but, back in A/E #108, longtime collector and onetime Marvel staffer Warren Reece made a strong argument in the other direction. Since Warren’s 2020 letter restating his position is among those deemed “lost,” we invited him to re-send or rewrite it. He never got around to doing so, but because he feels so strongly about the matter, we decided we should re-present Warren’s relevant comments on the subject from that 2012 issue:

bove is an homage to an unidentified (but obviously talented) artist, executed by Shane Foley utilizing one of this mag’s “maskots,” Captain Ego, as a tribute to the cover art for Street & Smith’s Doc Savage Comics, Vol. 1, #8 (June 1942). Whoever the sadly unknown artist was, though, Shane and his colorist buddy Randy Sargent have done him—and themselves—proud! [Captain Ego TM & © Roy Thomas & Estate of Bill Schelly; character created by Biljo White.] Alas, Ye Olde Editor is still operating under the constraints of being unable to find the massive folder in which he was keeping the letters and e-mail printouts related to a number of issues of A/E, so he (I) looked up the few he could locate in his PC’s “deleted” files related to Alter Ego #165, beginning with a missive from Joe Frank: Dear Roy, Really enjoyed the Martin Goodman article by Will Murray. The highlight was a “what if” I hadn’t heard previously: that DC offered to buy the Atlas heroes in 1957. Think how much would have been changed for all sides had that happened. An additional irony: Jack Kirby was at National [DC] at that time and could have reintroduced Cap seven years earlier. Or that the FF, even if it happened, would have had a much different fourth member than the reconstituted Torch. Also intrigued by what was canceled at Atlas/Marvel to make room for new titles. The worst swap: Amazing Fantasy (with Spider-Man) for Two-Gun Kid. The best? Linda Carter, Student Nurse for The Amazing Spider-Man. Of course, Martin Goodman was making business decisions under severe restrictions and didn’t have our knowledge, in retrospect, of what happened. In some ways, the limit on books was unintentionally positive. I loved the old split titles (Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, and Strange Tales). They called for faster-paced storytelling, offering shorter stories of the various heroes every month, rather than a full book every month or so. Your two C.C. Beck Captain Marvel drawings, in the Fawcett section, were really charming. Such happy expressions in contrast to today’s grim-and-gritty grimaces. I was pleasantly surprised with how touching all the memories and tributes to Bill Schelly were. Comic fandom really made solid connections for him in his early and later years. He

As detailed in my article in Comic Book Marketplace #21, which editor Gary M. Carter retitled “The History, Contents, & Controversy of Marvel Comics #1,” Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1 was never received for copyright by the National Library of Congress. Its back cover carried a solicitation to theatre managers, asking whether they would be interested in carrying such a premium, and advising them where to contact Funnies, Inc. All the known copies of MPFW #1 came from “the estate of the deceased publisher” [Lloyd Jacquet]—all the surviving ones, anyway. [During my period on staff at Marvel in the 1970s, my new correspondent Ed Lahmann, in a letter to me,] recounted how, as a boy in Indianapolis, Indiana, he had owned both Marvel Comics #1 and Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1: “Now, when I was a boy, we lived next door to a distributor for periodicals, and I remember very well the various old comics, as he used to give me his extra or damaged copies…. A small neighborhood movie theatre used to give several different kinds of premiums, and I remember that one of the premiums was Motion Picture Funnies, so it did see some distribution in some areas. I had it, but like many of my other old comics, it flew by the way; however, I remember very well that I had gotten a copy of Marvel Comics #1 from the guy next door some time before I got the movie premium…” According to [Ed’s later, fuller] account, Ed’s next-door neighbor, a certain Mr. Ringer, a “distributor,” gave him two coverless copies of Marvel Comics #1. Inasmuch as it was the practice of distribution people to send the covers, or at least the mastheads (title logos), of unsold issues back to the publishers (or to their main distribution people) for credit, this indicated that the copies of Marvel #1 received by Ed were the remains of unsold copies from some time before. As for his specimen of Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1, Ed explained that a local theatre used to give a voucher to each customer who paid to see a certain number of movies. That voucher was good for a grab-bag at the candy store adjacent to the theatre. It was in one of those grab-bags, Ed said, that he got his specimen of MPFW #1. The magazine was apparently not given to patrons in the theatre. It’s quite possible that the candy store was owned by the same

re:

party who owned the theatre next door. The theatre’s manager probably got the magazine as a solicitation, and had no intention of paying for copies to be made available for patrons, but the solicitation piece looked good enough for a grab-bag—and didn’t cost anything! Why throw them into the ashcan when they could be put to a good purpose—and why would the candy store owner honor a voucher from the theatre unless they were both owned by the same party? The significance of the evidence for cartoon-magazine historians and collectors is nothing short of monumental. The only reliable person who ever claimed to have owned both mags back in the Golden Age provided the account directly quoted from his letter to me, and augmented it with the details provided by telephone. The evidence that MPFW #1 was an inexpensive black-&-white reprint compilation, made as a sample for the purpose of solicitation to theatre managers, and not distributed to patrons, with its contents never able to be copyrighted since they were already copyrighted by the publishers for whom they had previously been produced, is overwhelming. What remains to be done is definitive correction. I submit that it has been proven, after more than three decades of controversy, and beyond any reasonable doubt, that Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1 is not the magazine from which Bill Everett’s “Sub-Mariner” was reprinted in Marvel Comics #1, but rather vice versa….

for my not recognizing a large chunk of Palais’ later work for Prize. When I was researching the career of Jack Kirby, I bought loads of Prize comics with his work in it. That led to a fascination with Mort Meskin, which led to buying more of the post-Simon-&Kirby books as well. Peter mentions that toward the end of Palais’ career he was forced to downplay his trademark weirdness in his work for Classics Illustrated. In the later issues of most Prize titles, I discovered that he had done the same for them. It may not have been forced by Gilberton [CI], but a natural evolution of his style. Not a unique one; there were other artists who dropped their eccentrics and “imperfections” to move toward that blander American Realism style. As I got a handle on that particular style, I saw that I was not the only one who missed this change in Palais’ style. Most of these (unsigned) stories were not noted in the Grand Comics Database. I proceeded to send an error report for each one I came across, sadly not keeping a list for myself. As far as I can see, they have not yet been processed. Ger Apeldoorn If you ever do compile such a list of Palais stories that have not yet been properly credited on the Grand Comics Database, Ger, we hope you’ll ship it along to us so we can publish it in a future “re:” section—and maybe help bring these updates to the GCD’s attention.

Roy here: I’m going to bow out of this argument, because despite the memories of my late fan-colleague Ed Lahmann, I personally consider the comparative chronological primacy of MPFW #1 and Marvel Comics #1 as not proven one way or the other… and I’ll let others decide what to believe, if anything, on the matter. For my part, it has always seemed crucial that the first “Sub-Mariner” story has the earmarks of having been created by Bill Everett originally as an eight-page installment, with a caption box in the final panel in which, at some stage, the words “Continued next week” were added. That panel, on the eighth page of the Namor entry in Marvel Comics #1 (Oct. 1939), retains the box, but contains no text… and then is followed by four additional pages of “Sub-Mariner.” To me, that suggests at least a distinct possibility that Bill prepared his story for an eight-page slot… though who’s to say that those eight pages weren’t originally done for Marvel #1, not for Lloyd Jacquet’s giveaway? It’s always seemed likely to me that MPFW #1 was prepared first—even if that publication either wasn’t circulated at all or only to the tune of a few samples—so that when Timely publisher Martin Goodman put in an order for Funnies, Inc., to produce his first comicbook for him, those eight pages were pulled back and added to. But that’s not provable any more than it’s un-provable, and it quite probably never will be. Golden Age artist Rudy Palais was the subject of the installment of Peter Normanton’s From the Tomb that saw print in A/E #165, and our Dutch associate Ger Apeldoorn had this to say about that: Hi Roy— Much to enjoy in the new Alter Ego. Not only the Martin Goodman piece, but also the equally well-written Rudy Palais article by Peter Normanton. Good as it was, it also made me realize that it was responsible

Rudy Palais in the late 1940s—and his splash page for “Crypt of Death” in Harvey’s Tomb of Terror #2 (July 1952). The photo is from William B. Jones, Jr.’s Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History. [© the respective copyright holders.]

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

Now, a few words about the Bill Schelly tribute in A/E #165, from regular correspondent Bernie Bubnis: Hi Roy— Just a moment to remember, please… just why Bill Schelly means so much to me. This is a story about a friend who passed away. I will tell a portion and then I will turn this page over to him. After all, he is the poet whose words have entertained and taught the majority of the people who may read this. There was a time, before caller ID: If a phone rang after the 9:00 P.M. Witching Hour, you knew this had to be bad news. As my heart beat louder, I put the receiver to my ear. “Hello?” Bill Schelly You are not going to believe this, but it hard at work on a fandom project circa 1999—and the original 1964 Comicon button that Bernie Bubnis sent him was a guy in Seattle with a clock that for his Comic Fandom Archive in 2010, along with his note to Bill. It became one of Bill’s proudest possessions. read 6:30 P.M. asking me questions Photo courtesy of Jeff Gelb. about things I did as a kid thirty years earlier. And Holy Cow, he knew more for me. Something I can remember every time I look at the about me than I remembered myself! It was Bill Schelly, and he was button. He was impressed by how thrilled I was. Maybe for the preparing a book on early-1960s comic fandom and wanted to check first time, he “got” how much my experience in fandom when I his facts about my involvement with an early comic convention in was a teenager meant to me. 1964. I’m glad I did not hang up, because I would never have gotten The year 1964 resonates with me because that’s the year I to know one of the finest men I have ever known. heard about, and became active in, fandom. I kept in contact with him over the years and routinely asked I can’t think of anything that’s happened during all my for his advice on a number of issues. One phone call, and the rest of research that tops this. our friendship existed only as e-mails. Hard to believe that you can develop a friendship with merely printed words from a computer The 1964 Comicon button is now proudly displayed in the keyboard, but then, this is Bill Schelly I’m talking about. Comic Fandom Archive, perhaps the coolest item in the aforesaid collection. I shared some bad family news with him, and he wrote on August 16, 2010: Thanks from the heart. I have my own personal family tragedy going on right now, with my son who is terminally ill, so I am extremely empathetic toward those who lose loved ones prematurely. My son Jaimeson is just 20. The attached photo is me and him visiting Stephen Colbert in NYC back in April. This was my first introduction to his son, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. We talked about collecting Holy Grails. Mine was an old fanzine I published but could not ever find a copy of for sale. He wrote me: As a fandom historian, obsessive as hell about this stuff, the Holy Grail for me is 1964 Comicon pins that Art Tripp got made. You don’t have a stash of ’em, do you? Of course not… but what’s odd is, I’ve never seen one, or run across anyone who ever had one. And you know how fans save things! I only had one left. To me it was just like all the other fan memorabilia I ever had. Fun to look at and then I put it back in its box. Maybe put it in my coffin with me someday. It just was not my Holy Grail. I never forgot that 9:30 P.M. phone call years before. Bill made sure that a forgotten day in 1964 would never be forgotten again. This button belonged with someone who would treasure it. I also never forgot the letter he sent me after I mailed him the Art Tripp Comicon 1964 Button: The button arrived yesterday! I had my son, the one who is seriously ill, open the package

Bill My love always to two people I have never met, Bill and Jaimeson. My new Holy Grail is to see Bill again… someday. Bernie Bubnis Amen to that, Bernie. There isn’t anything left for us to add—except to say that our next letters section will probably have additional comments about Bill, responding to the second part of Jeff Gelb’s assembled tribute to him. Any praise, plaudits, or pans to send concerning this issue? Address all such comments to: Roy Thomas e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135 The Alter-Ego-Fans chat group is still holding forth at https:// groups.io/g/Alter-Ego-Fans. If you can’t get in to join, just contact moderator Chet Cox at mormonyoyoman@gmail.com and he’ll escort you on board in friendly fashion. This long-running discussion group deals with various Golden and Silver Age matters, and also gives Ye Editor (Roy) a place where he can plead for help from time to time to time. Roy’s manager John Cimino operates the Roy Thomas Appreciation Board on Facebook, making it the major source of info on my comics convention appearances, store signings, and other sightings. Check it out and sign up! [See ad on p. 80.]

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Getting In The Spirit Of Things

Captain Marvel’s (and Billy Batson’s) Forgotten Ability! by Carl Lani’Keha Shinyama

n age-old question: When Billy Batson says his famous magic word and transforms, does he actually become Captain Marvel, or does Billy go into limbo once Captain Marvel appears? This puzzler has been asked over the course of many decades, following the original Captain Marvel’s heyday at Fawcett, one that fans continue to inquire about and debate to this day. It has, at different points in time, been posed to C.C. Beck, Captain Marvel’s artistic co-creator, and to Otto Binder, Captain Marvel’s main and most prolific writer in the Golden Age. In what is arguably a surprising fact, despite both Beck and Binder being Captain Marvel’s longest-tenured artist and writer respectively, Beck and Binder each gave differing answers.

Jack Binder, C.C. Beck, & Otto Binder (Left to right:) The “Mary Marvel” artist≥… the artist/co-creator of “Captain Marvel!”±… and the major writer of “Captain Marvel”… all enjoying a convivial moment in the 1940s. This is part of a photo sent by Binder to A/E’s editor circa 1964.

In Beck’s case, citing his work from Whiz Comics #2 (Feb. 1940—actually the first issue), he made it plain that in Captain Marvel’s first appearance, Billy Batson became Captain Marvel. Nothing more, nothing less. States Beck: “In the first issue of Whiz Comics old Shazam told Billy that by speaking his name he would become Captain Marvel and vice versa. It was that simple; I don’t know why anyone ever felt the need to analyze it.” [Fawcett Companion, p.143] Indeed, as Beck correctly says, in Whiz #2, when Billy Batson first said the magic word and transformed into Captain Marvel, the text in the caption box stated plainly: “As Billy Batson speaks the magic word he becomes Captain Marvel!” Meanwhile, Binder’s answer was that Billy Batson and Captain Marvel were separate individuals. Or rather, he acknowledged that that was how they were written in the comics:

When Friends Fall Out This installment of FCA explores the question of whether Billy Batson and Captain Marvel were one entity—or two. If the latter, then what could’ve been more inevitable than that, sooner or later, they’d have a quarrel! Art for the cover of Whiz Comics #53 (April 1944) by C.C. Beck & Pete Costanza. [Shazam hero & Billy Batson TM & © DC Comics.]

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and even minor telepathy. However, unlike those abilities, Billy Batson’s and Captain Marvel’s astral communication with their other self was truly one of a kind. This ability first appears in Whiz Comics #11 (Dec. 1940). Billy Batson, under orders from WHIZ radio-station owner Sterling Morris to gain admission into Marvel College to expose suspected corruption in the school’s football program, undergoes the school’s entrance exam. Unable to answer the test questions on his own, Billy rationalizes that, because he and Captain Marvel are the same person, the latter’s powers are his as well, so he summons Captain Marvel by whispering, “Shazam!” This brings Captain Marvel forth in something of an astral form, where he stands next to Billy, whispering the test answers to his younger counterpart. With Captain Marvel’s help, Billy scores perfect marks in every category, ensuring his admission into the school.

Boy, What A Man! Billy Batson and Captain Marvel captured the imagination of thousands—indeed, millions— following their first appearance in Whiz Comics #2 (cover-dated Feb. 1940) by writer Bill Parker and artist Charles Clarence Beck. [Billy Batson & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

“We at Fawcett didn’t bother about such esoteric details and simply treated it as if Captain Marvel was Billy as a grown man. I know that Cap always referred to Billy as a separate person, and vice versa, so perhaps the more logical viewpoint is that they were separate individuals and that when one appeared, the other went into some sort of ‘limbo’...” [Fawcett Companion, p. 62]

While some might debate the ethics of Billy’s actions and whether or not it was cheating, I feel compelled to note here that Billy Batson did not use this ability for personal gain, whether in that instance or in any other, and that it was ever used only in the pursuit of helping others.

Of particular note is Billy Batson’s spoken dialogue, which contrasts the panel before, wherein he said that he and Captain

Binder did, however, say that he felt that readers more or less assumed that the two of them were one and the same. “I think most readers simply assumed that Billy changed to a grown man, the World’s Mightiest Mortal. That was the great secret of why Captain Marvel outsold Superman and all the other superheroes. What boy reader, identifying with Billy, didn’t feel the thrill of changing into a big and powerful hero? It was the perfect formula.” [Fawcett Companion, p. 62] Naturally, with differing answers from those directly involved in the production of Captain Marvel’s adventures, how can fans know the truth? Which of them is right? Both are right. Of course, it is not quite that simple. To truly understand the answer to that question, we must look to the comics, where we find a forgotten ability of Captain Marvel’s (and Billy Batson’s, for that matter). The ability I speak of was Billy Batson’s and Captain Marvel’s unique power of astral communication. That is, the ability of either Billy Batson or Captain Marvel, whichever of the two is physically present in the material world, to be able converse with his other self virtually at will, the latter of which may appear either in astral form (like a Jedi ghost) or otherwise in the thoughts of the other. Like any long-established character, Captain Marvel has a history of forgotten abilities from his early years, which included and ranged from such powers as super-hypnosis, intangibility,

Let’s You And Him Fight! Even with Captain Marvel’s astral form advising him, Billy’s own courage is impressive, going against an older boy who is a whole foot taller than he! This panel appeared in “The Adventures with the P.A.L.” (writer & artist unknown) from Captain Marvel Adventures #8 (March 1942), and is the basis of this issue’s FCA cover illustrated by our author, Mr. Shinyama. [Billy Batson & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

Getting In The Spirit Of Things

appears to Billy Batson in the form of a thought. Unfortunately, this particular variation of the ability makes only one more appearance, in Whiz Comics #36 (Oct. 1942), in a scene in which Captain Marvel and Billy Batson quarrel, ending with Captain Marvel refusing to help Billy deal with a problem that Billy should be handling on his own. Of note is that, on both occasions, Billy Batson continues to speak to Captain Marvel as if he were a person other than himself. At this point, it has become arguable, if not undeniable, that Billy and Captain Marvel regard each other as individuals of their own agency. When this forgotten ability makes its next and final appearance, we learn something new: Billy can feel Captain Marvel’s presence, even if they are not communicating to each other. In Captain Marvel Adventures #60 (May 1946), Captain Marvel once appears offering Billy moral support after the latter has experienced a close brush with death. Upon Captain Marvel’s appearance, Billy can “feel” Captain Marvel’s spirit hovering near him.

Now, If Billy Just Had X-Ray Vision…! Over the years, many fans have considered Billy Batson’s test-taking sequence as unethical. While there is an argument to be made for that view, Billy never used this ability for personal gain. Panel from the story commonly referred to as “Mystery of Marvel College,” from Whiz Comics #11 (Dec. 1940). Script: Bill Parker; art: C.C. Beck & Pete Costanza. [Billy Batson & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

Marvel are the same person. Here, Billy thanks Captain Marvel as if he were another person, indicating that he was not actually speaking to himself. Keep that in mind for later. Though Captain Marvel was shown in the panel, seemingly for the benefit of the reader, nothing was said about the nature of Captain Marvel’s form in this seemingly paranormal state. There’s no mention of whether they were visible or whether they were tangible. That’s okay, because not very long after, when we see this ability make its second appearance, in Captain Marvel Adventures #10 (May 1942), we are told that Captain Marvel, as Billy’s other self, appeared as a “hazy figure.” This would indicate that Captain Marvel assumes a ghost-like or translucent form that at least Billy can see, which means that in this form Captain Marvel is closer to being translucent than invisible.

Billy Batson and Captain Marvel would not communicate in this fashion, or in one similar to it, ever again during the Fawcett era. Ultimately, the biggest takeaway from this forgotten ability is that it more or less established that they were two separate persons. Of course, it must be said that it isn’t quite that simple. While they are separate entities (something that E. Nelson Bridwell later took and expanded upon in his own stories for DC Comics), Captain Marvel is still Billy Batson, but older. Indeed, in Whiz Comics #47 (Oct. 1943), Billy explicitly states the latter. This is why both Beck (and Bridwell) are correct. Any time that Billy Batson said his magic word and transformed, he became Captain Marvel. And yet, Captain Marvel was completely his own person, distinct from Billy. Both of these positions are supported by the comics that Binder and Beck produced. It is a strange and wonderfully charming duality, one that lent itself quite naturally

Of course, this also meant that the same was true for Billy Batson. As mentioned above, Billy could appear to Captain Marvel in the same way that Captain Marvel could to Billy. In Captain Marvel Adventures #13 (July 1942), Billy does exactly that in one instance where he implores Captain Marvel to let him take over, to which Captain Marvel happily obliges. Noted in this story is that both talk to each other as if they were different people. As this is the third such instance in which Cap and Billy talk to each other as disparate individuals, we have now entered the start of a trend. But there’s also something else shown in the story. Billy Batson is touching Captain Marvel’s hand. That’s a new clue. From that alone, we can safely assume that, in this form, they aren’t completely intangible, but able to be felt by their other self. Fascinatingly, in this same exact story, we see the ability manifest in a new way. For the first time ever, Captain Marvel

Radio Free Batson An astral Captain Marvel gave a helping hand to Billy again in “The Radio Racketeers,” in Captain Marvel Adventures #10 (May 1942). Writer/artist unknown. Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.

Fawcett Collectors Of America

Marc X’s The Spot! Even early “Captain Marvel” relief artist Marc Swayze, who was long a regular contributor to FCA, got into the two-for-the-price-of-one act on at least one occasion, as per these panels from Captain Marvel Adventures #13 (July 1942). “The Job He Couldn’t Do!” was the first time we saw Billy appear in astral form to Captain Marvel. We also learned that, in this astral form, Cap and Billy aren’t completely intangible. And, in the same story and also for the first time, we see the ability manifest in a new way: Captain Marvel appears to Billy in the form of thoughts! Scripter unknown. [Billy Batson & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

to the often whimsical and satirical nature of Billy’s and Captain Marvel’s adventures. Could you imagine if the two of them ever got into an argument and decided that they were no longer friends? That would be a fun story, right? Well, Fawcett Publications thought so, too. In Whiz Comics #53 (April 1944), after Captain Marvel was hit by Cupid’s arrow, making him fall in love with Billy Batson’s boss, Delia, at his second job, it caused Captain Marvel to be so taken with her that he would be up all night thinking about her. Unfortunately for Billy, Captain Marvel being up all night meant that Billy had no sleep at all, which affected his performance at both of his jobs. After Captain Marvel pulled a second all-nighter in a row, Billy Batson fell asleep at his factory job, where Delia caught him and reprimanded him with the threat that if he did it again he would be fired. No longer able to tolerate Captain Marvel’s nocturnal moonlighting, Billy got into a spat with him, with the pair having an exchange in which they (rather humorously) both changed back and forth to argue with one another. Clearly, Billy Batson and Captain Marvel had their own individual agency, with each of them being capable of their own thoughts and feelings separate from the other, which again, supports Binder’s statements that the two of them were separate entities. Beck, meanwhile, had evidentiary support of his own beyond Captain Marvel’s first appearance in Whiz Comics #2. In Billy

Getting In The Spirit Of Things

Billy outright states that he and Captain Marvel are the same person. All in all, Beck was right, too.

“I Prefer Not To” In “The Haunted Halloween Hotel” (Whiz Comics #36, Oct. 1942), for the first time ever, we amazingly learn that, if called upon, Captain Marvel could refuse to take Billy’s place! A fascinating concept that hasn’t been explored since! Writer unknown; art by Ray Harford. [Billy Batson & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

Unfortunately for Beck, while he was not wrong in saying that Billy Batson became Captain Marvel whenever he spoke his magic word, he was not quite correct in his claim that it was as simple as that. While Beck may not have felt the subject needed any analysis, the subject does at least warrant a thorough examination because, as early as Whiz Comics #11, Fawcett writers began to establish that Captain Marvel and Billy Batson were actually separate entities. Once this aspect was introduced, then later expanded on considerably, it became necessary to investigate, if not to outright scrutinize the subject, because comprehensive analysis would be the only way for any given fan to truly understand it all. (Ironically, as was shown earlier in that same story, right before Captain Marvel appeared in his astral form alongside Billy, the boy said that he and Captain Marvel were the same person, so it also supported Beck’s position.) Moreover, after Whiz Comics #11, it was only rarely shown

Batson’s early adventures, there were occasional text statements to the effect, in no uncertain terms, that Billy became Captain Marvel. For instance, in Whiz Comics #6 (July 1940), the text in the story’s masthead read: “Billy Batson, radio reporter who can become Captain Marvel, World’s Mightiest Man, merely by speaking the magic word Shazam...” Another occurrence, one that is found in-story, is from Whiz Comics #12 (Jan. 1941). When Billy Batson called down the magic word so that Captain Marvel could pursue a submarine, the text in the panels stated: “Instantly a flash of lightning streaks across the sky and Billy Batson becomes—Captain Marvel, who reaches the vessel in one long, underwater dive.” Additionally, there were stories in which the text would actually spell out to the reader that Billy Batson and Captain Marvel were one and the same, such as the one in Captain Marvel Adventures #26 (Aug. 1943). There was even the classic story in Captain Marvel Adventures #69 (Feb. 1947) where, despite each referring to the other as if they were different people and getting each other Christmas presents,

Just Look Over Your Shoulder… A panel from “Billy’s Big Day” in Captain Marvel Adventures #60 (May 1946). Sometimes, there is no one better to comfort or support you than yourself! Scripter unknown; artwork by the Beck-Costanza Studio. [Billy Batson & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

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else did, like, say, Tawky Tawny. Last but not least, the story in which Billy Batson and Captain Marvel meet each other for the first time ends any argument that Beck could make that any analysis into the exact nature of Billy Batson’s transformation was unnecessary.

A Shocking Disagreement In “Captain Marvel Falls in Love” (Whiz Comics #53, April 1944) by Otto Binder, C.C. Beck, and Pete Costanza, Billy and the Captain quarreled with each other by transforming back and forth to carry out their argument. They supposedly could’ve carried out their argument via astral communication or each in the thoughts of the other, but how Binder wrote it allowed for a more humorous effect. [Billy Batson & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

or stated outright that Billy and Captain Marvel were one and the same, or that Billy became Captain Marvel, which further weakened Beck’s stance. Even in the stories where Billy Batson and Captain Marvel did not communicate paranormally, many of them would still go on to portray Billy and Captain Marvel continuing to regard each other as individuals who had thoughts and memories of their own, separate from the other, enough to be confused by the other.

Up to this point in their history and continuity, Billy Batson and Captain Marvel’s interactions were that of paranormal communication or otherwise changing back and forth with each other to converse. Never once did they both meet each other physically. That is, they didn’t until Captain Marvel Adventures #73 (June 1947), a story scripted by Otto Binder, when Billy Batson and Captain Marvel finally met each other for the first time. For those who may not know, in the Golden Age, it was usually Zeus who threw Billy Batson’s and Captain Marvel’s magic lightning down for them when they spoke their magic word. When the story begins, we meet Zeus who, for reasons unknown, had an ailing shoulder. This meant that his aim with throwing lightning bolts became woefully errant. Unfortunately for Billy and Captain Marvel, each time Zeus threw down a mystical lightning bolt, instead of them hitting Billy as per usual, they hit people who were near Billy, transforming them into Captain Marvel himself! The result is that, for the first time ever, both Billy Batson and

In America’s Greatest Comics #4 (Aug. 1942), after Captain Marvel intervened in Beautia’s wedding to prevent a group of men from committing suicide, Cap wondered aloud if he had actually done it because he cared for her. Billy, meanwhile, found himself mystified by Captain Marvel, showing that even he didn’t know whether Captain Marvel cared about Beautia or not. It wasn’t limited to just Billy Batson and Captain Marvel, either. Old Shazam himself once addressed a letter to both of them as if they were two different people. It gets worse for Beck’s stance because more evidence of Billy Batson and Captain Marvel being separate individuals surfaced in Captain Marvel Adventures #136 (Sept. 1952) and #144 (May 1953) where, in both instances, Billy did not retain the memory or consciousness of Captain Marvel after he transformed back. Interestingly, from the same story in Captain Marvel Adventures #144, Shazam once more makes a clear distinction between Captain Marvel and Billy Batson, telling Dr. Sivana that the mad scientist would defeat Captain Marvel, but not Billy, which further supports the idea that Shazam regarded the two as different people. In Captain Marvel Adventures #75 (Aug. 1947), when Billy worked as an editor for his school newspaper, he refused to accept an award for a story he reported because it was Captain Marvel who did the work of digging up the pertinent facts. This implies that Billy Batson regards his accomplishments separate from Captain Marvel’s and that of Cap’s are separate from his own. For that reason, Billy cannot accept credit for Captain Marvel’s work the way he can’t accept credit for work that someone

Cap Is No Dummy! Among the many talents and skills that Captain Marvel possesses is the ability to perform ventriloquism—an ability seen only once during the Golden Age, in “Sabotage in Seattle!” by Otto Binder, C.C. Beck, and art staff (Captain Marvel Adventures #26, August 1943). [Billy Batson & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

Getting In The Spirit Of Things

All I Want For Christmas… In “Billy Batson’s Xmas!” by Binder, Beck, & Costanza (Captain Marvel Adventures #69, Feb. 1949), Billy is given the rest of the day off by Sterling Morris on Christmas Eve. When trying to remember if he got presents for everyone, he realizes that he didn’t get anything for Captain Marvel—further showing that he regards Cap as someone separate from himself, even if he says that he and Cap are the same person. [Billy Batson TM & © DC Comics.]

separate beings thus far, they were stories written by Otto Binder, so it does figure that he’d say that they were separate entities.

However, that brings us back to the forgotten power. The ability to communicate astrally is what first established Billy Batson and Captain Marvels as two individuals. Billy was not communicating with himself, but with a Captain Marvel, who had his own mind. The truth is, it was not Binder’s idea originally. In fact, according to Binder’s own meticulous records, he did not write any of the stories in which the forgotten ability made an appearance. The credit for that goes to Bill Parker, Captain Marvel’s co-creator, and the writer of Cap’s adventure in Whiz Comics #11. If anything, the stories in which Billy and Captain Marvel were shown as two different individuals in Binder’s stories was something that he expanded on. Binder just never wrote the two of them communicating to each other paranormally. Which is a shame, because as Billy Batson was the true protagonist of his adventures (whereas Captain Marvel was

Captain Marvel occupied real space simultaneously and came face to face. The item of note is that whenever the lightning bolt hit another person, they didn’t become a super-powered version of themselves. No, they became Captain Marvel himself, who retained his full personality as a grown up Billy Batson. Afterwards, when Captain Marvel transformed back into the nearby bystanders, they had no memory of what happened during the time that Captain Marvel was present, supporting the notion that when Captain Marvel was present in the material, he retained his full personality. Similarly, Captain Marvel had moments of confusion upon his appearances (or reappearances, such as it were), like the scene where he co-opted the body of the gang boss, holding his gun. Captain Marvel was somewhat befuddled to be holding the weapon, entreating the nearby Billy as to the reason why there was one in his hand. Cap had no idea that he had taken over the body of the gang leader. This seemingly means that whenever he appears, Captain Marvel expects to appear where Billy Batson stands, doing whatever activity that Billy was engaged in. Of the examples that showed Billy Batson and Captain Marvel as

Small Packages Robbed of his powers by a stunt of Dr. Sivana’s, Captain Marvel turned to Billy Batson in order to make use of the one thing Billy can do better: employ his smaller size to get out of problematic situations. Panels from the Binder and Beck classic “Captain Marvel and the Stolen Shazam Powers” in CMA #144 (May 1953). [Billy Batson, Shazam, & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

Fawcett Collectors Of America

Put ’Er There, Pal! “Captain Marvel Meets Billy Batson!” (CMA #73, June 1947) by Binder, Beck, & Costanza. This splash page is the perfect encapsulation of the whimsy and satire for which Captain Marvel’s stories were known. [Billy Batson & Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

functionally the plot device intended to get Billy out of trouble), being able to communicate with Captain Marvel whenever he was in a jam would have been marvelously entertaining. Carl Shinyama is a freelance comicbook editor and artist from Maui, Hawaii. He is a lifelong Captain Marvel fan who runs a fan account, “Captain Marvelology,” dedicated to sharing facts and trivia about the original Captain Marvel.

Carl Shinyama & Son

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CHARLTON COMPANION by JON B. COOKE

An ALL-NEW definitive history of Connecticut’s notorious all-in-one comic book company! Often disparaged as a second-rate funny-book outfit, Charlton produced a vast array of titles that span from the 1940s Golden Age to the Bronze Age of the ’70s in many genres, from Hot Rods to Haunted Love. The imprint experienced explosive bursts of creativity, most memorably the “Action Hero Line” edited by DICK GIORDANO in the 1960s, which featured the renowned talents of STEVE DITKO and a stellar team of creators, as well as the unforgettable ’70s “Bullseye” era that spawned E-Man and Doomsday +1, all helmed by veteran masters and talented newcomers—and serving as a training ground for an entire generation of comics creators thriving in an environment of complete creative freedom. From its beginnings with a handshake deal consummated in county jail, to the company’s accomplishments beyond comics, woven into this prose narrative are interviews with dozens of talented participants, including GIORDANO, DENNIS O’NEIL, ALEX TOTH, SANHO KIM, TOM SUTTON, PAT BOYETTE, NICK CUTI, JOHN BYRNE, MIKE ZECK, JOE STATON, SAM GLANZMAN, NEAL ADAMS, JOE GILL, and even some Derby residents who recall working in the sprawling company plant. Though it gave up the ghost over three decades ago, Charlton’s influence continues today with its Action Heroes serving as inspiration for ALAN MOORE’s cross-media graphic novel hit, WATCHMEN. By JON B. COOKE with MICHAEL AMBROSE & FRANK MOTLER. SHIPS OCTOBER 2022! (256-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-111-0

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TEAM-UP COMPANION by MICHAEL EURY

THE TEAM-UP COMPANION examines team-up comic books of the Silver and Bronze Ages of Comics—DC’s THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and DC COMICS PRESENTS, Marvel’s MARVEL TEAM-UP and MARVEL TWO-INONE, plus other team-up titles, treasuries, and treats—in a lushly illustrated selection of informative essays, special features, and trivia-loaded issue-by-issue indexes. Go behind the scenes of your favorite team-up comic books with specially curated and all-new creator recollections from NEAL ADAMS, JIM APARO, MIKE W. BARR, ELIOT R. BROWN, NICK CARDY, CHRIS CLAREMONT, GERRY CONWAY, STEVE ENGLEHART, STEVE GERBER, STEVEN GRANT, BOB HANEY, TONY ISABELLA, PAUL KUPPERBERG, PAUL LEVITZ, RALPH MACCHIO, DENNIS O’NEIL, MARTIN PASKO, JOE RUBINSTEIN, ROY THOMAS, LEN WEIN, MARV WOLFMAN, and other all-star writers and artists who produced the team-up tales that so captivated readers during the 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s. By BACK ISSUE and RETROFAN editor MICHAEL EURY. (272-page SOFTCOVER) $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-112-7 • SHIPS AUGUST 2022!

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From the letters pages of Silver Age comics to his 2021 induction into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, the career of DAVE COCKRUM started at the bottom and then rose to the top of the comic book industry. Beginning with his childhood obsession with comics and continuing through his years in the Navy, THE LIFE AND ART OF DAVE COCKRUM follows the rising star from fandom (where he was one of the “Big Three” fanzine artists) to pro-dom, where he helped revive two struggling comic book franchises: the LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES and the X-MEN. A prolific costume designer and character creator, his redesigns of the Legion and his introduction of X-Men characters Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Thunderbird (plus his design of Wolverine’s alter ego, Logan) laid the foundation for both titles to become best-sellers. His later work on his own property, THE FUTURIANS, as well as childhood favorite BLACKHAWK and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, plus his five years on SOULSEARCHERS AND COMPANY, cemented his position as an industry giant. Featuring artwork from fanzines, unused character designs, and other rare material, this is THE comprehensive biography of the legendary comic book artist, whose influence is still felt on the industry today! Written by GLEN CADIGAN (THE LEGION COMPANION, THE TITANS COMPANION Volumes 1 and 2, BEST OF THE LEGION OUTPOST) with an introduction by ALEX ROSS. (160-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $27.95 • (LIMITED EDITION HARDCOVER) $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $14.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-113-4 • SHIPS JUNE 2022!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #85

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KIRBY: ANIMATED! How JACK KIRBY and his concepts leaped from celluloid, to paper, and back again! From his 1930s start on Popeye and Betty Boop and his work being used on the 1960s Marvel Super-Heroes show, to Fantastic Four (1967 and 1978), Super Friends/Super Powers, Scooby-Doo, Thundarr the Barbarian, and Ruby-Spears. Plus EVAN DORKIN on his abandoned Kamandi cartoon series, and more!

BRONZE AGE COMICS STRIPS! SpiderMan, Friday Foster, DC’s World’s Greatest Superheroes starring Superman, Howard the Duck, Richie Rich, Star Hawks, Star Trek, MIKE GRELL’s Tarzan, and more! Plus Charlton’s comic strip tie-ins and the MENOMONEE FALLS GAZETTE. With COLAN, GOODWIN, GIL KANE, KREMER, STAN LEE, ROMITA, THOMAS, TUSKA, and more.

1980s PRE-CRISIS DC MINISERIES! Green Arrow, Secrets of the Legion, Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, Krypton Chronicles, America vs. the Justice Society, Legend of Wonder Woman, Conqueror of the Barren Earth, and more! Featuring MIKE W. BARR, KURT BUSIEK, PAUL KUPPERBERG, RON RANDALL, TRINA ROBBINS, JOE STATON, CURT SWAN, ROY THOMAS, and others. VON EEDEN and GIORDANO cover.

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PETER BOSCH’s history of over 300 TV shows and 2000+ comic book adaptations across five decades, from well-known series (STAR TREK, THE MUNSTERS) to lesser-known shows (CAPTAIN GALLANT, PINKY LEE). With profiles of artists who drew TV comics: GENE COLAN, ALEX TOTH, DAN SPIEGLE, RUSS MANNING, JOHN BUSCEMA, RUSS HEATH, and more!

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Amazing LEGO® STAR WARS builds, including Lando Calrissian’s Treadable by JÜRGEN WITTNER, Starkiller Base by JHAELON EDWARDS, and more from STEVEN SMYTH and Bantha Bricks! Plus: Minifigure Customization by JARED K. BURKS, AFOLs by GREG HYLAND, stepby-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK (including a LEGO BB-8), and more! Edited by JOE MENO.

STEVE BISSETTE career-spanning interview, from his Joe Kubert School days, Swamp Thing stint, publisher of Taboo and Tyrant, creator rights crusader, and more. Also, Part One of our MIKE GOLD interview on his Chicago youth, start in underground comix, and arrival at DC Comics, right in time for the implosion! Plus BUD PLANT on his publishing days, comic shop owner, and start in mail order—and all the usual fun stuff!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #84

STEVE SHERMAN TRIBUTE! Kirby family members, friends, comics creators, and the entertainment industry salute Jack’s assistant (and puppeteer on Men in Black, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, and others). MARK EVANIER and Steve recall assisting Kirby, Steve discusses Jack’s Speak-Out Series, Kirby memorabilia from his collection, an interview with wife DIANA MERCER, and Steve’s unseen 1974 KIRBY/ROYER cover!