Alter Ego #178

Roy Thomas' Star-Gazing Comics Fanzine

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Starman art & Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.

HEH! THIS ISSUE WE FEATURE...

MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT PROUDLY PRESENTS:

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors!

$10.95

In the USA

No. 178 November 2022

TM

AND MORE!!!

MICHAEL T. GILBERT PETER NORMANTON & The FCA Salute A Great Golden Age Artist!

TM

Vol. 3, No. 178 November 2022 Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editor Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor

P.C. Hamerlinck 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

Proofreader

William J. Dowlding

Cover Artist

Emil Gershwin

Cover Colorists

Contents

Unknown

With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Richard Arndt Bob Bailey Lindsey Baird, Jr. Alberto Becattini Jerry Beck Danny & Carol Bierschwal Christopher Boyko Mitchell Brown Nick Caputo Mark CarlsonGhost John Cimino Shaun Clancy Pierre Comtois Chet Cox Comic Book Plus (website) Brian Cremins Shane Foley Joe Frank Jean Friedrich Nancy Gershwin Janet Gilbert J.T. Go

Frances Goulart Grand Comics Database (website) George Hagenauer Beverly Hahs Robert Higgerson Jim Kealy Bryan McMillan Peter Normanton The Paul Norris Family Barry Pearl Rick L. Phillips Bob Rozakis Jim Salicrup Randy Sargent Dann Thomas Jean Thomas Steve Thompson Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Dr. Michael J. Vassallo & the late Hames Ware

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Emil Gershwin, Lee Goldsmith, Mel Keefer, Ron Goulart, & Albert DeGuzman

Writer/Editorial: Emil Who?? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors (Parts 1-4) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Michael T. Gilbert & daughter Nancy Gershwin salute a great but almost forgotten comicbook artist.

From The Tomb: The Horror Of Emil Gershwin . . . . . . . . . . 48 Peter Normanton on the vintage terror-tales concocted by this Golden Age talent.

re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 55 Tributes To Lee Goldsmith, Ron Goulart, Albert DeGuzman, & Mel Keefer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #237 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 P.C. Hamerlinck presents Brian Cremins on Gershwin’s Spy Smasher #4— & Citizen Kane!

On Our Cover: Michael T. Gilbert assembled this issue’s montage cover, composed of classic images by our featured creator, artist Emil Gershwin. Its ultimate sources: the “Starman” splash panel from DC’s Adventure Comics #100 (Oct.-Nov. 1945), the Astral Avenger’s third-from-last solo appearance, from a script by Joe Samachson. Also seen is a Gershwin panel from Fawcett’s Spy Smasher #4 (April 22, 1942)… and a distinctively devilish-looking vampire from ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown #20 (June 1951). Curiously, Michael T. chose to “flop” both the Starman and vampire pics—i.e., utilizing a “mirror image” of them. [Starman art & Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics; other art © the respective copyright holders.]

Above: This “Spy Smasher” splash page, likewise attributed to Emil Gershwin, although with a bit less certainty than the cover drawings, is from Whiz Comics #38 (Dec. 25, 1942). Gershwin’s art on the “Spy Smasher” series strongly resembled that of its previous series artist, Mac Raboy, but Raboy apparently didn’t draw this one. Scripter unknown. [Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.]

Alter EgoTM issue 178, November 2022 (ISSN 1932-6890) is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Periodicals postage paid 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.

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writer/editorial

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Emil Who??

ave we got a special issue for you! In fact, it’s so special, it might take you a while to recognize that fact.

For, this issue, unlike most editions of Alter Ego, is devoted to the life and work of a single person… the Golden Age comicbook artist Emil Gershwin.

Sure, we’ve dedicated something approaching 100% of an issue to one particular creator before; but it’s always been someone who’s a household name… at least, a household name within the four walls belonging to comicbook aficionados. Stan Lee, for example, once or twice… or Jack Kirby (whose stature in fan circles is so momentous he even has his own TwoMorrows mag)… or Steve Ditko (co-creator of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange). And we’ve done more or less the same on occasion with the likes of titans Alex Toth, Joe Maneely, Will Eisner, maybe a couple of others. More: I can state truthfully that, if enough material surfaced at just the right time, there are several more who might receive the full-issue treatment: Gil Kane… Carmine Infantino… Joe Simon… Neal Adams (who actually will be spotlighted just a few issues from now)… Harvey Kurtzman… it’s not a long list, but there is a list.

But… Emil Gershwin?

Though he was a skilled artist with a two-decade career in comics, Gershwin is hardly a “household name” even in the sense the above gents are. In the super-hero-oriented 1940s, he had extended runs on only two such: DC’s “Starman” and Fawcett’s “Spy Smasher”… plus a fair number of mystery yarns, mostly for the American Comics Group that pioneered horror comics beginning in 1948.

Even so, once “Comic Crypt”-keeper Michael T. Gilbert made us aware of all the Gershwin material he proposed to present over several issues, it seemed an even better idea to showcase

the illustrator in one issue, rather than spreading it out. That way, readers will get an even better picture of Gershwin’s life and art. (The fact that we also had on hand an earlier piece on EG by Jim Vadeboncouer, Jr., and Hames Ware which Michael T. could incorporate, plus access to a Shaun Clancy interview with his daughter Nancy, plus comics featuring his famous kith and kin, American song’s George & Ira Gershwin, was just icing on the cake.)

How could we resist?

So we didn’t.

Along the way, we mentioned this theme issue to From the Tomb proprietor Peter Normanton and FCA editor P.C. Hamerlinck, and they carried the ball from there, coming up with their own particular takes on Gershwin’s contribution to comics.

So—never mind whether or not you ever heard of Emil Gershwin before. The above-named folks all love and respect his work, as do I—and no less a giant than graphic-art grandmaster Alex Toth was one of his biggest boosters, which speaks volumes.

Hop on for the ride. You’ll be glad you did.

Bestest,

P.S.: Just wanted to add that I’ve never been prouder of completing a project in my life than, recently, working with the UK’s PS Artbooks to finally collect the entire canon of artist/writer Dick Briefer’s 1940s-50s Frankenstein between quality book covers, now that Vol. 1 & 2 have finally been published. Check ’em out online! (And see ad on p. 54.) Briefer was one of the greats!

COMING IN DECEMBER #179 Celebrating The 61st Anniversary Of

FANTASTIC FOUR #1

(’Cause We Blew Right Past Its 60th!)

—& STAN LEE’s 100th Birthday!

TM & © Marvel Characters,

Inc.

• Secrets & speculations about the first few issues of “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine”—by WILL MURRAY (“Was the F.F. actually CANCELED in 1961??”)…

MICHAEL FELDMAN & KEN QUATTRO (“Are there HIDDEN SOURCES for F.F. #1?”)…

BOB CROMWELL (“What the heck was the Sub-Mariner doing in a Bowery flophouse in FF #4?”)… NICK CAPTUTO on FF #3… & MORE! • At last! BEN HERMAN with long-overdue coverage of GEORGE KLEIN, inker/embellisher of FANTASTIC FOUR #1!

• STAN LEE on his way to being 100! His 21st-century effervescent e-mails traded with protégé & Spider-Man comic strip ghostwriter ROY THOMAS—also, The Man’s greatest stories, selected by JOHN CIMINO… and other titanic tidbits from Smiilin’ Stan!

• Plus—FCA presents the memoirs of 1940s comicbook writer (& future NY Times drama critic) STANLEY KAUFFMANN… MICHAEL T. GILBERT on Sick magazine… & MORE!!

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(Above:) Gershwin’s “The All Night Diner!” from Adventures Into The Unknown #77 (Oct. 1956). [© the respective copyright holders.]

Emil Gershwin.

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Two By Gershwin (Above:) A double-page splash drawn by Emil Gershwin for Fawcett Publications’ Spy Smasher #4 (April 22, 1942). Scripter unknown.

[Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.]

(Right:) A few months before this “Starman” splash from Adventure Comics #91 (April-May 1944), the artist had switched from Fawcett to its rival, National/DC. Though he penciled this story, it’s uncertain if he inked it as well.

Script by Don Cameron. [TM & © DC Comics.]

EMIL GERSHWIN’S Rhapsody In Four Colors (Part 1)

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by Michael T. Gilbert

first discovered Emil Gershwin in an old issue of Adventures into the Unknown, which seems fitting, as the cartoonist was virtually unknown even to his fans. Gershwin rarely signed his work, so even diehard aficionados were hard-pressed to name the man whose crisp, clean style they admired.

Alex Toth was one of these. That cartooning legend shared his admiration for Emil with the latter’s daughter, TV and film producer Nancy Gershwin. She writes: “After he [Emil] passed away in 1999, we were contacted by a number of people who wanted to know more about his life and work. One of those people was legendary comicbook artist and animation designer

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

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Alex Toth. A few years before he himself passed away [in 2006], we spoke at length, and he followed up our conversation with a long letter about my dad, whom he called comics’ ‘Mystery Man’—both because he was prolific in the crime and mystery genres and because he often preferred to ghost or draw under pseudonym.“ Toth’s expressive letter was written in his unique stream-ofconsciousness style:

Toth Talks Gershwin!

“Gershwin was Gershwin! He knew how to draw! Very well! Faces, figures!

Didn’t need tricky stylized-embroideries to do convincing jobs of it—He was subtle, quiet, sure, and correct in articulating them convincingly—attractively, honestly—his way! His crime comics for the ‘Hillman’/ ‘Prize’ comics folks raised the bar of quality up quite a few notches—then, again, I lost sight of him!

“Emil Gershwin drew starkly-simple and strong, dramatically-well/cross-lit/ faces/figure, and—by gum!—set pieces, props, background!!! Full-bodied and—very lively, animated, articulated, gesturallyexpressive, bouncy, upbeat, playfullyinventive artwork—for love stories! Mystery!

Suspense! Horror! Too—so prolific was he there—obviously! Again showing his deft

“Sadface Charlie” (Above:) Drawn by Emil Gershwin, for All Funny Comics #4 (Fall 1944).

Scripter unknown. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Emil Gershwin strikes a pose! [Photo © 2022 Nancy Gershwin.]

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way of blending the illustrative/realistic/fotobased/ style with freer cartoony fun—exaggerations, extremes allowed—within reason, mind!”

Beatty Talks Gershwin!

Cartoonist Terry Beatty is another Gershwin fan. Terry co-created the Ms. Tree comic series and currently illustrates the Rex Morgan syndicated strip, and before that, The Phantom. He commented on Gershwin on his website: “One of the major treats in looking through the early issues of the American Comics Group’s Forbidden Worlds is discovering artists I’d not known about previously. This may be considered heresy by some comics fans—but as lovely as the Frazetta/Williamson story from 1951’s FW #1 is, for me the real stunner in the issue is “The Way of the Werewolf,” drawn by Emil Gershwin. Just look at how strong the drawing, storytelling, and composition are in this tale! Who else was drawing like this in 1951?”

Terry goes on to say: “This dramatic clean line look seems startlingly modern to me. It does have some visual elements in common with some of the newspaper strips of the day—and I’m reminded a little of Alex

The Vampire Strikes Back!

(Above:) The Undead make their move in Gershwin’s “The Vampire’s Victim,” from the American Comics Group’s Adventures into the Unknown #20 (June 1951).

Pretty scary, huh, kids? Maybe that’s why the scripter didn’t identify himself! But we love that final word balloon! [© the respective copyright holders.]

Kotzky and William Overgard—but this is more stylized than their work. The open panels, the great black spotting—great character drawing—all of this just knocks me out!”

Terry concluded with this thought: “I can’t believe I never knew about Gershwin until now—and seeing how good his work is, I’m surprised there isn’t more fuss made about the man in comics circles. I hope this post will send some of you looking for more work by him. He passed away in 1999—and I have no idea what he did in the years between his last published comics work and his death. I do know I now have a ‘new’ cartoonist to add to my favorites list.”

Emil’s All Night Diner!

Consider me a charter member, Terry. But that wasn’t always the case. When I was a kid, Gershwin failed to impress.

His understated style couldn’t match the flashy rendering of fellow ACG artists John Buscema and Al Williamson. But as I got older and wiser, I grew to greatly admire Gershwin’s restraint.

While his crisp, clean style wasn’t especially suited to traditional horror, his understated art made for extremely readable stories.

And though I didn’t fully appreciate him until later, Gershwin’s visualizations of Richard Hughes’ stories made a lasting impression on this kid.

Where Wolf?

(Left:) Gershwin drew this action-packed werewolf story for ACG’s Forbidden Worlds #1 (July 1951). Writer unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

Take, for instance, “The All Night Diner!” in Adventures into the Unknown #77 (Oct. 1956).

I still remember reading about wealthy John Shaw, the high-powered exec who got his kicks browbeating his employees. In the story he gets caught in a thunderstorm while driving home and pulls into a greasy spoon diner. The waitress offers to get him absolutely anything he wants to order… as long as he can pay the price.

Calling her bluff, he orders pheasant and Pate De Fois Gras. To his amazement, the waitress brings him his order, perfectly prepared. But when it’s time to pay the piper, Shaw is horrified to discover his wallet’s empty. Broke, he’s forced to work as a common dishwasher, bullied by workers who resemble the employees he’s bullied!

An exhausted Shaw slaves through the night, until he’s finally able to slip away. He returns the next day, vowing revenge, only to find that the diner has been boarded up

“All Night Diner” More of Gershwin’s excellent facial expressions and body language, as seen in the above-named story from ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown #77 (Oct. 1956). Script probably by editor Richard Hughes. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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for decades. Shaw is so shocked he can barely speak. However, by story’s end he’s learned to respect others. In fact, after dining in another restaurant, he leaves their stunned dishwasher a $100 tip!

Hughes’ story is a charmer, and Gershwin did a remarkable job depicting it. His storytelling is impeccable throughout, with completely convincing characters and backgrounds. Gershwin must have been pleased, too, as it was the only ACG story signed with his real name.

So Who Was Emil Gershwin?

Emil Gershwin was born in 1922, the first cousin of the famous composer George Gershwin and brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin.

Emil began his comicbook career in the early ‘40s, drawing stories

for Fawcett (“Spy Smasher”), Quality (“Merlin the Magician”), Fiction House (“Rip Regan”), Fox (“The Eagle,” “Marga”), Hillman (“Sergeant Flagg,” “Private Parker”), and Novelty (“White Streak”).

Gershwin also worked at Atlas (World of Suspense), Gleason (Crime and Punishment), and Buster Brown Comics. Over at DC, he had a long stint in Adventure Comics illustrating “Starman” in the middle ‘40s. Gershwin also drew “Sadface Charlie” for DC’s All Funny Comics. He did this in a crisp, energetic style similar to his later ACG work. In 1948 he also assisted on the Flash Gordon and Tarzan newspaper strips.

On her website, daughter Nancy Gershwin stated that Emil “graduated from DeWitt Clinton High at 14 or 15, before he studied at NY’s Art Students League. Also musically gifted, he could play the piano by ear, loved tennis, boating, animals, and listening to people tell their stories. The particular words that come to mind.... brilliant, funny, wise... and, missed, every day.”

Most of Gershwin’s ACG stories were uncredited. Nancy commented on why her father rarely signed his work: “So many people are self-promoters, overplaying the importance of what they’ve done, or even taking credit for what they didn’t. He was the opposite of that. Very humble, not into placing himself into any spotlight, and I think just truly enjoyed drawing. Ever since he was a kid, all this came easily. Art was second nature to him. I don’t think he ever thought it was a big deal. And many decades later, when the Internet was up and running and he was in his 70s, I think he was amazed that people knew his work (especially with his alias) and started calling him and that he had fans.”

Though only one of ACG’s mystery comics was signed “Emil Gershwin,” he also used the penname “Peter Abbott,” a play on Peter Rabbit.

That Soldier’s First Name Wasn’t Peter, Was It? This early “Private Parker” page from Hillman’s Victory Comics #1 (Aug. 1941) is another rare example of a story with a Gershwin byline, as witnessed by the enlarged credits box just above.

Script attributed to George Kapitan. [© the respective copyright holders.]

“Peter Abbott” This play on the name “Peter Rabbit” was one of Emil’s pseudonyms.

Commenting on this, Nancy Gershwin wrote, “As to that particular alias, Peter Abbott (yes, play on ‘Peter Rabbit’ intentional) was a playful play on words homage to his mother’s side of the family. Her last name was Abbott. As I think you know, my father was George and Ira Gershwin’s much younger first cousin. And though he loved them and their music, he would be the last one who would want to call attention to himself through their fame... which would likely have been the case had he gone with his actual last name, Gershwin.”

Emil Gershwin became a regular member of the ACG stable, producing new work for them from 1949 to 1959, when he left comics

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

Twice- (Or Is It Thrice-) Told Gershwin

Taking A Swipe…

(Top left:) Mac Raboy’s stunning cover to Fawcett’s Master Comics #25 (April 1942), featuring Captain Marvel Jr. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

(Top right:) Emil Gershwin swiped Raboy’s junior-Shazamic figure for his “Starman” splash page in Adventure Comics #85 (April 1943). Script by Gardner Fox. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Wizard Redux And here we have a wizard, painted by renowned artist N.C. Wyeth, which made its way onto the above Gershwin splash from Adventure #85. As the saying goes, always steal from the best!

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for a business career. According to Nancy Gershwin, her father “was entrepreneurial in spirit and quite good with financial investments.” Gershwin continued in his second profession until succumbing to cancer on July 18, 1999, at age 77.

I asked Nancy, a toddler in 1959, why her father changed professions.

“I don’t really know much about this... what was going on in the comic strip industry back then. I do know that was around the time he was starting a family. He also was gifted in business. He continued drawing through my youngest years, but he was very self-critical. He set very high artistic standards for himself. It wasn’t so much what others thought of his work. It was whether he thought the work had merit. He wasn’t able to sell out. Usually he would destroy his own work if he wasn’t happy with the results. This is why we have little of his art.”

In hindsight, it’s not surprising that he left the field. The late 1950s were a terrible time for comics. With sales plummeting in the post-Comics Code era, it became increasingly difficult for comicbook artists to make a living. Gershwin’s time at ACG was coming to an end.

First Love!

Gershwin’s first work for ACG was “Love Is for the Living,” in Romantic Adventures #5 (Nov. 1949). Scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

And So… At ACG, Emil’s initial entry was “Love Is for the Living” in Romantic Adventures #5 (Nov. 1949). A year later he drew his first horror story, “The Haunted Morgue” for Adventures into the Unknown #14 (Dec. 1950). Here, Gershwin masterfully integrates line, shape, and shadow to create a veritable four-color symphony… the equivalent of his famous relative’s legendary “Rhapsody in Blue,” but in cyan, magenta, yellow, and black instead.

But don’t take our word for it. Check out his art this issue. I think you’ll see a cartoon master working at the top of his game.

In his own understated way.

“Merlin”… “Merlin”… Now Where’ve We Heard That Name Before?

“Merlin the Magician” from Quality’s National Comics #10 (April 1941). Script

by Toni Blum as “Lance Blackwood.” [© the respective copyright holders.]

[Our thanks to Charles Burns, Nancy Gershwin, and sister Patty. For more about Emil Gershwin, visit Nancy’s website at nancygershwin.com.]

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

Sidebar:

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Toth Talks (Some More) Gershwin

few years before his own passing in 2006, cartoonist and long-time comics fan Alex Toth mailed a series of postcards to Nancy Gershwin, discussing her late dad’s comics. With her blessing, we’ve transcribed them for easier reading.

“Well, I suspect Mr. Gershwin’s work: Polaroiding-it, as we called it then and still do [MTG NOTE: using a Polaroid camera to take reference photos for the story], is what I saw in [Gershwin’s] Biro/Gleason ‘crime comics’—all heavily written copy-laden pages with too many panels per, left little room in them for pictures— figures—so Emil’s same sized small-figures’ way of working stories was well met—ham ’n eggs! In sporadic glimpses of his work then, I noted his touch! My surveys of comics turned up his; similar, crime storywork for ‘Hillman’/‘Prize’ /comicbooks/series — but then, big panels, fewer per pages, big figures, big closeups and very foto-based, but now strongly-lighted solidly clean lined and ‘modeled,’ light/shadow—dramatized figures/ faces/more technique/slick /illustrative, more technique/ slick /illustrative/with still minimal-backgrounded scenes, the barest of props/setpieces, the Gershwin ‘I.D.’ factor, noted, I loved it!” [© Estate of Alex Toth.]

Hmm… What Kind Of Scheme Do You Suppose Ponzi Had In Mind?

Gershwin drew “big panels” for this story about Charles Ponzi in Crime Detective Comics, Vol. 1, #3 (July 1948). Scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

[Art & postcard message © Estate of Alex Toth.[

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ALEX TOTH Says: “Still Alex Raymond/‘Flash Gordon’-ishly-influenced, his ‘Starman’ figures, in tights, cloak, helmet, echoed Flash’s figural perfections—mixed with street clothes.

Dressed Men/Women characters that echoed his simple cartoon-based renditions of dear old ‘Wash Tubbs’/‘Captain Easy’—maestro-cartoonist Roy Crane— his quietly-rendered/inked/staged ’Starman’ art was a delightful ‘shorthand’ style that I loved! Emil Gershwin, then, drew small figures, in big or smaller panels, small.

He didn’t go ‘big’ to dramatize his superhero—not at all! Dunno if he was ‘cheating,’ creatively or not—but, for me, it was fun to ‘see-thru’ his surfaces and enjoy how skillfully, casually, quietly, naturally he drew face/ figures—with aplomb! I wanted more, much more, of this unnamed illustrative cartoonist mystery man—I dunno how I ever got his name—or from whom—nor was I sure it was all so—? But, his recognizable work, small figures and all, heavily-foto-based, I saw—in Charles Biro’s very popular ‘Crime Does Not Pay’ and ‘Crime and Punishment’ books!” [© Estate of Alex Toth.]

Catch A Rising Starman!

(Right:) Two issues after the Mac Raboy “Starman” swipe shown two pages back, Gershwin swiped his own Raboy swipe for Adventure #87 (Aug. 1943). Well, why not? Raboy himself swiped his own poses a zillion times in his “Captain Marvel Jr.” work—and later had assistants swiping them for him! Script attributed to Gardner Fox. Thanks to P.C. Hamerlinck.

Emil Gershwin drew “Starman” in Adventure Comics #83-102.

The full Golden Age run of the “Starman” feature was reprinted by DC in two lush volumes of its hardcover Golden Age Starman Archives a decade or so ago, most of it drawn either by Gershwin or by the strip’s artistic co-creator, Jack Burnley... with a bit of the equally great Mort Meskin thrown in! [TM & © DC Comics.]

Alex Toth Photo courtesy of Jim Amash. [© Estate of Alex Toth.]

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

Bongo, Bongo, Bongo—I Don’t Wanna Leave Mongo!

Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon— a panel from the classic comic strip for Sunday, July 3, 1938. Writer: Don Moore. Raymond was a major artistic influence on Gershwin’s work.

Thanks to Alberto Becattini for the scripter ID. [TM & © King Features, Inc.]

Stars Get In Your Eyes!

(Clockwise from right:) Gershwin’s elegant and stylish “Starman” splash pages for Adventure Comics #95 (Dec. 1944), #98 (June 1945), and #100 (Oct. 1945). Scripts attributed to Joe Samachson. [TM & © DC Comics.]

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ALEX TOTH Says: “Emil Gershwin drew starkly-simple and strong, dramatically-well/cross-lit/faces/ figures, and—by gum!—set pieces, props, backgrounds!!! Full-bodied, and… very lively, animated, articulated, gesturally-expressive, bouncy, upbeat, playfully-inventive artwork— for love stories! Mystery! Suspense! Horror! too—so prolific was he there—obviously!

Again showing his deft ways of blending the illustrative/realistic/foto-based/style with freer cartoony fun—exaggerations, extremes allowed—within reason, mind!?” [© Estate of Alex Toth.]

The Devil You Say! (Below:) A panel demonstrating Gershwin’s ”starkly simple and strong” art from Adventures into the Unknown #20 (June 1951). Scripter unknown. See the whole page on p. 49. [© the respective copyright holders.]

We Knew That Name Sounded Familiar!

As noted a few pages back, Charles Ponzi (of “Ponzi scheme” fame!) was featured in Crime Detective Comics, Vol., #3 (July 1948). This page is a good example of Gershwin’s “expressive, bouncy, upbeat” art. Scripter still unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

[© Estate of Alex Toth.]

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

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ALEX TOTH Says: “I watched for signs of his work, anywhere, everywhere, but I suspect I missed much-too-much of it then/ later—I know—spotted telltale signs of—his ghosting of Dan Barry’s ‘Tarzan’ dailies-only strip—(later, for Barry’s daily-only ‘Flash Gordon’ strip, too! In the early (mid ‘50s) inked-over by Dan or brother Sy, to gild the lily etc.—make it seem all-Barry! etc. etc.—yet evidence was hard to destroy/disguise/ subvert—Gershwin was Gershwin!

Fotos or no—he knew how to draw!

Very well! Faces, figures! Didn’t need tricky stylized-embroideries to do convincing jobs of it—he was subtle, quiet, sure, and correct in articulating them convincingly–– attractively honestly––his way! His crime comics for the ‘Hillman’/ ‘Prize’ comics folks raised the bar of quality up quite a few notches––then, again, I lost sight of him!” [© Estate of Alex Toth.]

Me Tarzan—You Gershwin!

(Above:) According to Italian comics scholar Alberto Beccatini, Emil Gershwin very likely penciled and inked these two Tarzan dailies from Jan. 12 & 13, 1949—but the official artist was Dan Barry (although there were no credits on the strip at that time. Scripts by Rob Thompson. [© King Features, Inc.]

Flash Forward (Above:) There’s no way to know if this specific strip was one of the Flash Gordon dailies Gershwin penciled, ghosting for official artist Dan Barry; but this daily for March 25, 1952, was drawn during that period. Probably scripted by Barry. [TM & © King Features, Inc.]

The Man Himself An Alex Toth self-portrait, plus one of his original postcards… in fact, the very one transcribed at top of page for easier reading. [© Estate of Alex Toth.]

[© Estate of Alex Toth.]

GET READY FOR THE ELECT RIF YING RETURN OF TM

TM

by ROY THOMAS & BENITO GALLEGO

FIND OUT MORE— PLACE AN ADVANCE ORDER!

www.heroicmultiverse.com/thunder

The WHO’S WHO of American Comic Books 1928-1999

Art by John Romita.

Captain America TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

“Starman” splash panel by Emil Gershwin, from Adventure Comics #94 (Oct. 1944). The title was a takeoff on the name of a popular song, “Stars Fell on Alabama.” Script by Joe Samachson. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Online Edition Created by Jerry G. Bails FREE – online searchable database – FREE www.bailsprojects.com – No password required

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(Above:) George Gershwin stars in True Comics #46 (Winter 1945).

(Right:) George and Ira. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Four Colors (Part 2)

omics pioneer Emil Gershwin had a very impressive cartooning career. But his world-famous cousins, George and Ira Gershwin, had a bit of comicbook fame themselves.

Oh, sure, we know them as one of the most famous musical songwriting teams of all time. Early on, composer George had worked with lyricist Buddy DeSylva on a series of revues, George White’s Scandals, while older brother Ira (a lyricist) enjoyed success with composer Vincent Youmans on Two Little Girls in Blue.

But from 1924, when the two collaborated on the Broadway hit Lady Be Good, the brothers wrote almost exclusively together, composing over two dozen scores for Broadway shows and Hollywood musicals.

Their classic hits included Pulitzer Prize winner Of Thee I Sing and Porgy and Bess, among others.

George attained great success in the concert arena as

“Strike Up The Band!”

(Above:) Standard/Nedor/Pine’s Real Life Comics #47 (Feb. 1949) featured a lovely four-page George Gershwin biography. Writer & artist uncertain. [© the respective copyright holders.]

a piano virtuoso, conductor, and composer of such celebrated works as Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and Concerto in F.

Kith & Cousin (Above:) Nancy Gershwin writes that this is “a rather formal autographed photo my father had requested because his friends didn’t believe George was his cousin.” Emil was ten at the time. The inscription reads: “For my cousin, Emil — Every good wish, George Gershwin May 17, 1932.” [© 2022 Nancy Gershwin.]

Their partnership lasted until George’s sudden death from a brain tumor in July 11th, 1937, at age 38. After a three-year hiatus, Ira continued on with a very successful career, collaborating with composers Jerome Kern (Cover Girl); Kurt Weill (Where Do We Go from Here? and Lady in the Dark); and Harold Arlen (Life Begins at 8:40 and the 1954 Judy Garland film A Star Is Born). Ira died at age 86 on August 17, 1983.

But who cares about any of that old stuff? We wanna know about their comicbook careers!

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

A Life Lived In Five Pages (Left & right:) The Gershwin boys debut the operatic Porgy and Bess— and George begins to feel the effects of a soon-to-be fatal brain tumor, in True Comics #46 (Winter 1945). And all in less than half a dozen pages!

Artist & writer unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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All three titles specialized in various celebrity true-life stories.

They’re the kind of comics young Michael T. hated as a kid.

However, I assume there were those who loved them—or at least their parents hoped so!

The Comic Connection?

In addition to their musical triumphs, the Gershwin boys enjoyed a few brushes with comicbook fame. George had at least three four-color biographies: one in Nedor’s Real Life Comics, another in Parents Magazine’s True Comics, and a third in the Spanish magazine Vidas Ilustres. We’ve provided samples of each.

The Reign In Spain The Spanish magazine Vidas Ilustres #135 (April 1966) devoted a special 36-page issue to the life of George Gershwin. This edition was also translated into English. Written by Alfredo Gursa and drawn by Eduardo Martinez. [© Ediciones Recreativas, S. A.]

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Fightin’ Ira Gershwin!

Swing Sisson was the band leader at the hep ‘n’ happenin’ Clover Club. Somehow, he always seemed to be getting into scrapes. But Swing must have been tough, since his series outlasted star attraction Doll Man in Feature Comics!

This particular 1943 Swing episode begins with the battlin’ bandleader’s luscious lead singer Bonnie asking a simple question: “So we are going to introduce Irving Gershwin’s new patriotic song next? Isn’t it grand of Mr. Gershwin to let us introduce all the war songs he’s writing these days!”

“You bet!” answers Swing. “And I think this one, ‘America Is Worth Fighting For,’ is the best yet!”

I’m not sure it’s as up there with “Embraceable You,” Swing, but hey, it was the war. Whaddaya want? And isn’t “Irv’s” name actually “Ira”? Well, no use getting sued, I suppose. I’m guessing the editor told the writer, “We’ll just add Irving Berlin’s first name to the mix. One songwriter’s the same as the next!”

And since this was a “Swing Sisson” story, a group of surly Nazi spies just had to be lurking at a table in the background (probably nursing free water and Ritz crackers!).

When Swing and the band start singing, “WE’VE GOT TO FIGHT TO SAVE OUR FREEDOM!,” the “Boys from the Bund” start smashing up the club. That’ll stop Irv’s song from turning the tide of war, all right!

Swing and the band give as good as they get, but our boy gets slugged from behind and the sneaky Fifth Columnists escape.

But they’re not through yet. “Today we make our first big move… which will be murdering Irving Gershwin, the greatest of all war song writers. And later we’ll get Swing Sisson!”

Well, with the hindsight of history we know that Irv, er…

Ira, lived until ‘83, so it’s a good bet those rotten Nazis didn’t succeed.

A Session With Swing Sisson Musical mayhem ensues when musician Swing Sisson (the name is doubtless a quasi-homonym for the term “swing session,” of course) prevents Nazi spies from killing a new patriotic Ira Gershwin song… and Ira, too! For some reason, Ira is renamed “Irv” in the story. From Quality’s Feature Comics #64 (Jan. 1943). Art & script byline for Phil Martin. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Gershwin & The Goosesteppers Poor Irv/Ira gets a slug to the puss from one of the swastika boys! But it turns out all right in the end! From Feature Comics #64. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

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Actually, We Kinda Suspect George Preferred The Piano To Heavy Metal George Gershwin makes a brief appearance in Heavy Metal #259 (July 2012).

Script & art by Andy Kuhn. [© Heavy Metal.]

Still, I’m sure the kids reading this in 1943 had a few moments of mild concern. And well they might, as the goose-stepping saboteurs devised a foolproof plan to kill the great songwriter, installing a pistol inside Irv’s piano, set to “send a slug right through his heart” when he plays “a certain key.” Yow! For the record, Nancy says that her uncle Ira never played the piano.

Needless to say, they don’t succeed—thanks to Swing and his intrepid band. In the course of the fight the Ratzis smack Gershwin right in the jaw. “And now we’ll wreck Gershwin!” they growl.

Always quick with a quip, Irv responds with a witty “Ooof!”

Swing takes up the slack, smacking Von Brunt, the head Nazi, into Irv’s piano. This sets off the hidden pistol, ending Von Brunt’s life on a distinctly sour note.

That night Irv plays his song at the Clover Club, as Swing and Bonnie cut a rug.

“Did you ever hear such an inspiring song before?” asks Swing. Bonnie responds, “It’s wonderful. Songs like that surely will carry us on to victory!”

Where Monsters Dwell Says Nancy: “If there were anyone who was at least as humble as my father, it was Ira. He, too, didn’t want to trade on George’s success, so he began writing under the name ‘Arthur Francis’ (a name-combination of his younger brother and sister). If there were anyone in history, or the comicbook universe for that matter, least likely to slug a monster, it was Ira. But, other than that…” From Heavy Metal #259. [© Heavy Metal.]

And indeed they did, Bonnie. Thanks to American pluck… and Irving Gershwin!

Ira Gershwin, Monster Puncher!

Lest anyone think comicbook history has forgotten the Gershwin boys, let me discuss one final story of more recent vintage.

Perhaps inspired by the 2012 movie Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, cartoonist Andy Kuhn came up with a story for Heavy Metal magazine that same year titled “Ira Gershwin, Monster Puncher!”

The year is 1931 and George Gershwin is putting on a grand party. When one guest inquires about his brother’s absence, George (sipping a martini) explains that Ira’s out of town and assures everyone that ”wherever he is tonight, he’s having a cracking good time!”

The Gershwins On Easel Street (Above:) Art runs in the family! George (left) and Ira (right) each painted self-portraits. Emil must have been proud of his cousins! [© The Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts.]

Indeed he is, as we see Ira trading punches with a 20-foot monster on our dramatic splash page. In a series of flashbacks, the giant monster attacks the town while Ira casually passes out business cards to the townspeople. The cards say (in the best Have Gun, Will Travel tradition): “Ira Gershwin, Monster Puncher!”

Soon a big fight is set between the massive

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monster and Ira, and the tickets to it are selling briskly. After a spirited donnybrook, Ira captures the fallen monster and transports it to his hotel room. In a final twist, we discover that the monster and Ira are in cahoots together, putting on a good show as they travel from town to town, staging phony fights. The monster makes a clever reference to one of Ira’s songs as our story ends.

So you see, readers, Emil Gershwin wasn’t the only Gershwin in the family who made a name for himself in comics.

He’s just the only one who drew the darn things!

Bonus Gershwins Section!

Here are a few notes from Michael Morris’ Gershwin 100 site, primarily dedicated to George and Ira Gershwin. We’ve culled some quotes describing the relationship between Emil and his much older musical cousins. But first a brief tutorial on how to pronounce Emil’s name: “First off, let’s get his name straight: Emil’s name’ll be pronounced AIM-uhl (rhymes with ‘name’ll’).”

With that out of the way, Mr. Morris tells the rest of the story (as relayed to us by Emil’s daughter, Nancy): “By the time Emil was born in 1922, both of his famous Gershwin cousins had firmly established themselves as Broadway tunesmiths. But, as Emil grew, he did occasionally get to spend quality, if not quantity, time with the cousins. Nancy Gershwin had one particularly unconventional story about her father at a Gershwin family gathering, where Emil shared the stage with his cousin George at the piano.

“George used to teach him to sing George’s songs. George would prop him up on the piano and have him sing. Well, once when my father was about 4 years old, George actually got him drunk! Looking back on it, my father thought it was hilarious when he would talk about it. You have this drunken little kid on a piano singing Gershwin songs, entertaining everybody.

“Besides having THE George Gershwin as his accompanist, Emil had a special fondness for this particular cousin because, as Nancy described it, ‘George was just like a big kid, and my father was so impressed that George used to walk across the room on his hands. That was as cool as you could get!’

“At the age of 10, Emil said to George, ‘The kids at school don’t believe you’re my cousin. Can you give me some proof that I can show them?’ George gave Emil an autographed photo which always had a place on his wall near his photo of Ira. [See p. 18.]

“When George died in 1937, Emil was 15 years old and attended the funeral in New York, fully aware of the tragic loss to both the world of music and to himself personally.

“Ira, being the more reserved cousin, may not have made the same, high-spirited impression that George did. Emil did visit Ira and Ira’s wife Lee at their home in Beverly Hills. As Nancy told it, ‘There’s no one who couldn’t like Ira. Ira was lovely, and he and his wife allowed my father to stay there a while, and they were just very gracious. My father told me that he remembers Ira being so proud in the 1940s that Lee and Ira’s house was fully paid for. That was a big deal for Ira.’ “Nancy became very close to Lee Gershwin, who invited her to move in after Ira died in 1983. Though she didn’t move in, she was able to spend a great deal of time with Lee at the Roxbury Drive home.”

The Gershwin 100 site also had this tidbit: “Nancy Gershwin’s memories of her father include his playing George’s relatively obscure but dramatic ‘Song of the Flame’ on the piano, as well as ‘Swanee,’ ‘Somebody Loves Me,’ and ‘Lady Be Good.’ Another fond memory of her father was his nightly singing of ‘They All Laughed’ to her when she was very young, in what she described as his ‘very beautiful and natural’ singing voice.”

Michael Morris’ article continues with a mention of Arthur Gershwin, youngest of the three Gershwin brothers: “Emil Gershwin withdrew from the comic book world in 1960 and focused on business and investing. I asked Nancy if this brought Emil closer to Arthur Gershwin’s world, since Arthur was a stockbroker by trade (when he wasn’t writing songs). She said that Emil liked Arthur and had nice things to say about him, but their work in the investment world did not intersect.”

Michael’s article concludes with: “It’s your typical family story: The younger cousin goes from singing as a drunken toddler to making world-class comic books. And through a lot of talent, hard work, and dedication to his craft, Emil was able to achieve a level of mastery worthy of the creative standard set by his older cousins.”

Nancy, as a young girl, wrote a letter introducing herself to Ira (that letter is now in the Library of Congress among Ira’s correspondence), and he responded by sending the musicallyminded Nancy a signed copy of The George and Ira Gershwin Song Book later that month, September 1965... as seen on page 37.

A Family Photo Ira Gershwin’s widow, Lee Gershwin (on left), with Nancy Gershwin, late 1980s. [© Nancy Gershwin.]

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(Above:) Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. (Right:) Hames Ware.

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors (Part 3) “The Great Unknowns”

J

Introduction by Michael T. Gilbert

im Vadeboncoeur Jr. and Carlton Hames Ware remain two of the most respected analysts of comicbook art in the field.

Hames (who succumbed to cancer in 2018 at age 75) was Jerry Bails’ co-editor in their groundbreaking Who’s Who In American Comic Books, published in magazine/book form during the 1970s. A professional voice artist by trade, Hames also assisted William B. Jones, Jr., on his seminal book, Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History.

Jim V. has had many careers, book publishing being his most recent. Jim also co-wrote (with Hames) several installments of “The Great Unknowns” for Alter Ego years ago, turning the spotlight on little known masters of the comicbook field.

In 2010 Jim and Hames decided to explore cartoonist Emil Gershwin’s career. It was no easy task, as most of Gershwin’s art was unsigned. Making things harder was the fact that, ten years ago, the comicbook digital revolution was still in its infancy. Today we have thousands of rare Golden and Silver Age comics available for downloading and research. That wasn’t true then.

Despite those obstacles, Jim and Hames did an amazing job tracking down and categorizing Emil Gershwin’s career. Better yet, their article gives us an excuse to run some extremely rare art by one of the unsung masters of the form.

Unfurlin’ “Merlin”

Jim, citing health reasons, has chosen The “Merlin the Magician” splash page from the Quality group’s National Comics #11 (May 1941). Jim not to update this article for this printing.

Vadeboncoeur says it’s the earliest Gershwin-drawn strip he can identify with any degree of certainty.

Nonetheless, the information they gathered Lovely stuff! Scripted by Toni Blum as “Lance Blackwood.” [© the respective copyright holders.] is still solid. Happily, some questions about Gershwin’s personal life have subsequently Meskin, Jerry Robinson, and Lou Fine.” Almost everyone who read the been answered and can be found elsewhere in this issue. names stumbled over the first one. Who on Earth is “Emil Gershwin”?

What did he do? When? If Toth thinks so highly of him, why haven’t I And now, let us explore… heard of him?

The Great Unknowns: Emil Gershwin!

W

by Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., and Hames Ware hen asked to name some of his artistic influences, Alex Toth responded with a short and pithy list: “Emil Gershwin, Mort

Well, nobody really knows much about him. He was credited on some Hillman work back in 1941. There was a “Private Parker” strip in Victory Comics #1 (Aug. 1941) and “Sergeant Flagg” strips “Handcuffs of Doom” in Victory #2 (Sept. 1941) and “Ordeal by Fire” in #3 (Nov. 1941).

His early material is influenced by Alex Raymond, as were many of the artists of the day. These early Hillman books appear to have originated, at least partially, in Lloyd Jacquet’s Funnies, Inc., shop,

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

25

although no one has ever placed Gershwin there. And tracking down his early appearances is doubly difficult.

For one, the books he worked on are incredibly scarce and expensive. We simply can’t even look at many of them. Secondly, the indications of his work are often off base. For instance, he’s been credited with the “Eagle” and “Marga” stories at Fox in early issues of Science Comics, yet none of the three issues we’ve seen actually feature his art. For the record: “The Eagle” in #2 is probably by Arnold Hicks, #4 is a “?,” and #5 is August Froehlich—yet all three are listed as Gershwin in the Grand Comics Database. It’s unlikely that these would have been his work, as we’ve yet to conclusively document anything by him in 1940.

The earliest we’ve been able to place him with much confidence is at National Comics #11 (Quality, May 1941) on the “Merlin the Magician” strip. This would likely place him at the Iger Shop, but again with no corroborative evidence that puts him there. It’s informative to notice just how sophisticated his art is at this stage.

He’s already producing first-rate work, which does imply that he’s had prior experience.

The man seems to be everywhere that year. He draws a “Power-

Give Us The Power, Man! “Rip Regan, the Power-Man” from Fiction House’s Fight Comics #14 (Aug. 1941). Scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Man” story at Fiction House (Fight Comics #14, August) and a couple of “White Streak” strips in Target Comics at Novelty. Here again, the attributed work far outstrips his actual contributions. GCD credits place him there with issue #15 (V2, #5) on a story that is almost certainly Carl Burgos. Vol. 2, #s 4 & 5, retain that Burgos look, and Vol. 2, #7, is most likely Ken Battefield pencils with some Funnies, Inc., inker. Gershwin appears only in Vol. 2, #s 8 & 9 (Oct. and Nov.).

Sadly, Vol. 2, #9, is the last issue with “White Streak.” This Novelty work implies a Funnies, Inc., connection, while the Fight and the National stories both hint at Iger.

The next place we encounter him is a rung up the comic prestige ladder in some Fawcett books, now under the “spell” of Mac Raboy as much as Raymond. Gershwin, later in the decade, eventually goes on to assist Raboy on the Flash Gordon newspaper strip, but here he’s an unindicted co-conspirator in many Fawcett strips that have been attributed solely to Raboy and/or to Gene Mac Donald—whose credits in the “Who’s Who” don’t begin until two years later.

Well, It Was A Better Name Than Yellow Streak!

Target Comics, Vol. 2, #8 (Oct. 1941), featuring “The White Streak and The Red Seal,” for the Novelty comics group. Art by Gershwin; script by Ray Gill. [© the respective copyright holders.]

In Whiz Comics #27-29 (Feb.-April 1942), we think he’s doing the “Spy Smasher” story. He seems to be doing three of the four “SS” strips in Spy Smasher #4 (April 1942) and #5 (June 1942) and all of them in #6 (Aug. 1942) and #7 (Oct. 1942), but it’s difficult to be positive. Fawcett seems to have had several Raboy-emulators at this time. Though Gershwin may have been the most adept, it’s hard to distinguish a unique style this early, especially when looking at microfiche. We can be pretty sure that his “Spy Smasher” work didn’t span much more than six or eight months. By Spy Smasher #8-10,

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most of the attributions belong to Alex Blum—the others we can’t place, but we feel certain they are not Gershwin.

Other Fawcett work on “Captain Marvel Jr.” (and supposedly the Big Red Cheese himself) is indicated and may never be isolated from the Raboy and Beck Studio efforts of which he was a part.

[The “Who’s Who” lists 1942 credits at True Comics, but we reviewed every issue and failed to find his work. There is also a “Who’s Who” entry for 1940s Heroic Comics at Eastern that was based on tentative IDs that we made 25 years ago. It should be removed if the “Who’s Who” ever gets updated.]

In February 1943, with issue #83 of Adventure Comics, Gershwin begins a years’ long run on the “Starman” strip. DC has reprinted these in The Golden Age Starman Archives, Vol. 2. Check it out and watch the development of a major talent. Other work for DC in the mid-1940s was the “Sadface Charlie” strip in All Funny Comics. Both this and the “Starman” efforts ceased in early 1946. That year was also the

“Poor Little Rich Girl” Heiress Barbara Hutton and one-time husband Cary Grant appeared in this story drawn by Emil Gershwin for Lafayette Street Corp.’s Picture News #1 (Jan. 1946).

Scripter unknown. This mag, which lasted a mere ten issues, was an unsuccessful attempt to do comicbook versions of recent news stories. Just what kids were waiting for, for sure! [© the respective copyright holders.]

Smashing Spies For Fun & Profit (Above:) Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., speculates that Gershwin may have worked on this story from Fawcett Publications’ Spy Smasher #6 (Aug. 26, 1942). Scripter unknown. You’ll see a lot more of Fawcett’s aviator hero in this issue’s FCA section, beginning on p. 71.

[Spy Smasher is now a trademarked character of DC Comics.]

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

27

beginning of Alex Toth’s comic career—to reintroduce the focus of this installment of “The Great Unknowns.” Up till this point, Gershwin’s work was distinguished by its polish and its homage to the stylistic innovations of Alex Raymond and his disciple, Mac Raboy. This school of comic art has never been much associated with Mr. Toth, so whence comes the “influence” and how does Gershwin become “unknown”?

Some of the first work Alex might have noticed was when Gershwin switched allegiance to and simplified his style at a new publisher, Lafayette. The comic was titled Picture News and Gershwin’s skills at likenesses was a strong component of his work there. Claude Raines, Elizabeth Taylor, and Madame Curie were among the celebrities and newsmakers he portrayed. The title ran from January 1946 to January 1947.

We have no credits for Gershwin in 1947.

He re-enters the comicbook world in a pretty low-key fashion with a story called “Shark Drum” in Buster Brown Comics #13 (Fall 1948). Interestingly, the non-cartoony work in this and preceding issues has been from Dan Barry and/or Ruben Moreira.

Almost simultaneously, he appears back at Hillman in one issue of Airboy (Vol. 5, #9, Oct. 1948).

Star Light, Star Bright, First “Starman” I See Tonight!

Gershwin’s simplicity and grace are on display in this “Starman” page from Adventure Comics #84 (March 1943). One can see why Alex Toth was a fan!

Script by Gardner Fox. [TM & © DC Comics.]

With Buster Brown Comics #14 (Winter 1948), Gershwin begins a continued series called “Jinni of the Jug.” It’s not a great stretch to connect the dots from Gershwin at Fawcett with Mac Raboy to Raboy on the Flash Gordon Sunday page assisted by Gershwin to Dan Barry on the Flash Gordon daily strip with a “studio” producing work for Buster Brown to Gershwin drawing a strip for that comic. In fact, Dan Barry does the cover and another adventure strip in Buster Brown #14.

What is somewhat of a stretch is connecting the Gershwin art on “Jinni” with his “Starman” work. Here he’s given up on Raymond (and Raboy) and has simplified his approach to comics to the beginnings of a style that Alex Toth could/would/did appreciate.

The stylistic transformation continues in issue #15 (Spring 1949), which also boasts the return to comics of another of our “Great Unknowns” subjects, Ray Willner, who will grace the pages of Buster Brown for years to come. Dan Barry draws the Jinni on the cover of this issue.

“Sad Sack”? Wasn’t That Another Strip?

Emil draws “Sadface Charlie” for All Funny Comics #5 (Winter 1944). So what’s a sad sack like Charlie doing in a book called All Funny Comics?

Scripter unknown. [© DC Comics.]

Barry’s “studio” continues to provide material for issues #16 and 17, and it is possible that Gershwin is inking some of Willner’s “The Sultan’s Ruby” in #17. This issue also features art by another “Great Unknown,” Maxwell Elkan. The Jinni returns in issue #18 (Winter

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1949), and Gershwin’s art appears for all the world to have been penciled by Wayne Boring. It’s a surreal combination.

Concurrent with his “Jinni” strips are several “Lady Danger” stories in Sensation Comics back at DC in the second half of the year.

Look in issues #90-93.

The Jinni’s swan song is in Buster Brown #22 (Winter 1950), but is it Gershwin or is it Willner or some mysterious meld of the two? By this point, Gershwin should be more distinct than we see “him” here.

Let’s backtrack a bit to understand the path he took and the stylistic simplifications he developed. Let’s go to ACG [American Comics Group].

But first, some perspective: It’s a long way from the signed Emil Gershwin at Hillman in 1941 to the stylized art we encounter at Buster Brown in 1948/49 and ACG in 1949 onward. It’s even longer when you view it through the somewhat distorted lens of comics fandom. We owe some thanks to Alex Toth for making us aware of the fact that Gershwin’s career extended past the beginnings of his own.

Without his comments, we might not have known that. Or perhaps we would.

In 1980, Jerry DeFuccio visited the Richard Hughes collection at the Fairleigh-Dickensen University library in New Jersey. Among the many notes and records of Hughes’ long career was an undated typed “rate sheet” listing the page rate of a slew of ACG artists. The typed name of Bob Forgione and the penciled additions, which include Al Williamson, put the time frame for the original list at circa 1952 at the

Lady Be Endangered (Above:) “Lady Danger” from Sensation Comics #91 (July 1949). Pencils by Emil Gershwin; inks by Bernard Sachs; scripter unknown. A story drawn by Gershwin fan Alex Toth appeared in the same issue. [© DC Comics.]

“Take That, You Rat!” (Above:) Crime Detective, Vol. 1, #3 (July 1948), from Hillman Publications. Art by Gershwin. Writer unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

A Fast Flash Of Flash (Above:) Panels from Mac Raboy’s Flash Gordon comic strip for Sept. 5, 1948.

Writer: Fred Dickenson. Thanks to Alberto Becattini for the scripter ID. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

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“…Everybody’s Gotta Have Shoes!”

(Left:) Dan Barry’s cover for Buster Brown Comic Book #15 (Spring 1949).

The numerous issues of that long-running comics series were handed out free at shoe stores owned by the Buster Brown Shoe Company, and contained beautiful, if unsigned, art by Dan Barry, Gershwin, and others.

The above heading is from the lyrics for the theme song that for years began the kids’ radio (later also TV) program Smilin’ Ed’s Gang (later Andy’s Gang, starring Andy Devine), which was sponsored by Buster Brown Shoes and spotlighted several alternating hero-series that also appeared in its giveaway comic. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Shark Tank—1945 Version?

(Above:) A more stripped-down Gershwin art style, as seen in Buster Brown Comics #13 (1945). Script by Hobart Donovan. [© the respective copyright holders.]

I Dream Of “Jinni” (Left:) From Buster Brown Comics #14 (Winter 1948).

Gershwin penciled and Sy Barry inked this very first “Jinni of the Jug” story, related to an ongoing series of tales dramatized on Smilin’ Ed’s Gang. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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Tarzan The Terrific Emil Gershwin assisted on both the Flash Gordon and Tarzan strips from 1947-1948. Alberto Becattini believes the above Tarzan daily #2910 (Nov. 29, 1948), from the “Fires of Tohr” storyline, was penciled by Gershwin and inked by Sy Barry, brother of official artist Dan Barry. The script, Alberto says, was by Rob Thompson. [© Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

earliest. Among the names is Emil Gershwin. So fandom would have had at least one indication of his later career—he worked at ACG in the 1950s.

It turns out that with the perspective of understanding his

developing style and the certain knowledge that he was there, it becomes very apparent that he did quite a bit of work throughout the decade in the mystery and romance titles. We first recognize him in Lovelorn #1 (Aug. 1949), the same month he does “Lady Danger”

Isn’t It Romantic?

All About “Evil”

(Above:) ACG’s Romantic Adventures #26 (Oct. 1952). Love comics were a genre for which Gershwin’s style was well suited. Scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

(Above:) One of only two Timely/Marvel stories credited to Emil Gershwin by the Grand Comics Database. This one’s from Crime Cases Comics #6 (July 1951). Scripter unknown. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

31

for DC in Sensation #92. With the exception of perhaps a few crime stories for Lev Gleason in 1950 (Crime and Punishment #28 is one), an Atlas story in Crime Cases #6 (July 1951), and another Atlas four-page effort in World of Suspense #8 (July 1957), he spent the ’50s laboring in anonymity at ACG. He lasted long enough for Hughes to print his pen name, “Peter Abbott,” as seen in Adventures into the Unknown #106 (March 1959), though at this stage he appears to be working with an inker— perhaps Al Wenzel? And, if you’re really a completist and search through every issue of every ACG comic, you’ll eventually find that he resisted being “unknown” and that he signed one story—in Adventures into the Unknown #77 (Oct. 1956).

Wonder if Alex Toth saw that issue?

Peace, Jim & Hames

That’s it for this chapter, readers…except to state our appreciation to Jim V., Hames (who has passed on since these words were written), Jerry Bails, Roy Thomas, Jim Steranko, and all those who’ve worked tirelessly over the decades to credit those creators whose identities otherwise would have been lost to history.

We salute you all!

The Thing In The Credit Box (Above:) Gershwin signed this page “Peter Abbott”—which, as noted earlier, was a play on “Peter Rabbit.” From ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown #106 (March 1959). [© the respective copyright holders.]

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Bravo For Alex Toth (Above, left to right:) Alex Toth’s heroes Jesse Bravo (created for the writer/ artist’s Bravo for Adventure series) and The Fox, and Alex himself—drawn by Toth. [© Sandman TM & © DC Comics; other art TM & © Estate of Alex Toth.]

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

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(Above:) Janet Gershwin and husband Emil relax while visiting daughter Nancy at sleepaway camp in the mid-1960s. [© Nancy Gershwin]

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Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors (Part 4)

A

conversation. I think he was just one of those people who doesn’t like to talk on the phone until there’s something he wants to talk about.

There was somebody who wanted to do something on my father. Did you know Jack Elmy? This was before 2001.

SC: No, I don’t know that person.

Introduction

lter Ego is pleased to present Shaun Clancy’s interview with Emil Gershwin’s daughter Nancy, as transcribed by Steve Thompson and edited by yours truly. We think you’ll find their discussion fun and informative. —Michael T. Gilbert.

NANCY GERSHWIN INTERVIEW 8-21-13 Conducted by Shaun Clancy SHAUN CLANCY: Hi, Nancy. I’m really glad we finally get to talk. As I mentioned, I’ve been working with Alter Ego and Roy Thomas for about 16 or 17 years now. The magazine’s been around [off and on] since ’61! We try to specialize in people who haven’t been covered in the past before at length. I actually tried contacting your dad in ’96 or ’97.

GERSHWIN: Was he able to tell you anything?

SC: Well, that’s the part... See, I talk to so many people I have notes in this phone book that sometimes I forget! I wrote down that he was in Danbury, Connecticut. I wrote down that he ghosted Tarzan. He was terminally ill at that time according to his wife, Janet.

GERSHWIN: It was weird, because he just seemed to disappear altogether—like, literally disappear! I hope he’s okay. We had a three-way phone conference with Alex, and Alex went on and on and on and on.... [Shaun laughs] I mean, really! He was saying at the time that he didn’t go out very much and that he really didn’t want to. He was a widower at that point. It sounded like this was really exciting for him. He sent me some doodles of his along with a long letter from which I took the excerpts for the web page you saw. It was nice. My father, as you can guess at this point, was pretty private about most things, so I didn’t know a ton of stuff. A lot of what I know I just put on that page on my website… and I put a few links at the bottom.

SC: Do you remember where your dad got his art schooling?

GERSHWIN: Art Students League. The interesting thing about it is, he went to DeWitt Clinton High School, but we’re not sure when he went there. I know he left school when he was around 14 years old and he was born in 1922, so maybe 1936 or 37?

SC: I have a friend who has a couple DeWitt Clinton yearbooks, but [your dad] wasn’t in those. So if he was born in ’22, then he was probably at the Art Students League around 1940? That would have been right around the war. So, did he go into the war?

GERSHWIN: Yes, he did. He drew comics in the war. He was stationed in this country. I have a picture of him in his uniform.

SC: Do you know the publication he was drawing these cartoons for?

Stars and Stripes? Yank? Any of those?

GERSHWIN: Yes. [NOTE: Emil Gershwin passed away on July 18, 1999.]

SC: So, at that time he didn’t want to really talk.

What did he have that was terminal?

GERSHWIN: Oh, he had cancer.

SC: I had him born in 1922 and I also wrote that he worked on The Spirit backgrounds with Will Eisner. His middle initial was “J.”?

GERSHWIN: Yes, [his middle name was] J-A-Y. SC: He worked on “Kid Eternity,” “Spy Smasher,” and “Starman.” In fact, “Starman” was the reason I called him at that time. There’s a lot of people wanting to cover his career. [laughs] GERSHWIN: Yeah, it’s funny, isn’t it? If you Google him now it gets you a lot of pages, but in ’97 nobody really Googled.

SC: In fact, I think I did it the old-fashioned way, through the White Pages. You know, I had corresponded with Alex Toth and he had mentioned your dad to me once, but never mentioned him again.

GERSHWIN: He [Toth] had called me and we had a long talk.

SC: He didn’t like to talk on the phone. How did that conversation go?

GERSHWIN: It was probably a two-hour

On The Wings Of A Bat Emil drew this spooky scene for Adventures into the Unknown #20 (June 1951). [© the respective copyright holders.]

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Father & Grandfather Nancy Gershwin says: “The photo is [my father] Emil Gershwin, on the right, with his father Aaron Gershwin at left. Aaron was George and Ira Gershwin’s uncle. My father was George and Ira’s first cousin. At the time this photo was taken, he was probably already at work as a comicbook artist, having graduated from DeWitt Clinton High at 14 or 15, before he studied at New York’s Art Students League. Also musically gifted, he could play the piano by ear, loved tennis, boating, animals, and listening to people tell their stories. The particular words that come to mind… brilliant, funny, wise... and, missed, every day.” [Photo © Nancy Gershwin.]

GERSHWIN: No, but it was for the government. He was in the [Army] Air Force, and I’d be interested if you find anything on that.

SC: Do you know why he chose drawing as a career?

GERSHWIN: It’s why George Gershwin chose music.

[Shaun laughs] I don’t think you choose it. I think it chooses you, basically. Some of us could work doing art and we could get good, but

Alex Toth self-portrait, from the Billy Ireland Museum archives. As mentioned earlier, Toth was a huge Emil Gershwin fan. [© Estate of Alex Toth.]

Gazing At The Stars, Man A particularly elegant Gershwin “Starman” splash page from Adventure Comics #84 (March 1943). Script by Gardner Fox. [TM & © DC Comics.]

he liked to sketch when he was around 14 and it was museum quality.

It was just not anything he had to put any effort into. I think he regretted not putting more effort in, but it was kind of like that movie The Natural. I mean, Churchill had to overcome a speech impediment so he worked really, really hard and became a great orator. With my father, he’d just do what came naturally, pretty much. He wasn’t used to studying and trying to get to whatever level. I do think he had issues with perfectionism. His vision of what was good was really high.

SC: What kind of artist did he admire?

GERSHWIN: Rembrandt. I don’t know in terms of cartoonists. I mean, he could do all mediums. He just chose illustration and it really took off.

SC: What would be on the walls of his home?

GERSHWIN: A lot of his artwork.

SC: Still life, scenery?

GERSHWIN: Yeah, he did that. There’s one that I have somewhere. I wish I had a picture of it. It’s probably in storage. It’s more in line with the Dutch Masters kind of thing, although it was chalk. He did work in chalk.

SC: Did he venture into other types of artistic areas?

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

“Sisters, Sisters… There Were Never Such Devoted Sisters” (Left:) Nancy, on right, and her younger sister Patti in their weekend house in Connecticut, in the 1960s.

(Right:) Nancy and Patti again. According to their dad: “Neither of you has any discernible art talent!” But he loved his girls anyway! By the way, the heading of this caption is the opening lyrics of a popular song from the mid-1950s… but one composed by Irving Berlin, not by anyone surnamed Gershwin. [© Nancy Gershwin.]

GERSHWIN: Not like sculpture. He could do watercolor. He worked a lot with chalk, I think.

SC: Did he have any brothers or sisters?

Were you aware of that before reading that on our site?

GERSHWIN: I think from Alex Toth. He was talking about it, but I think they tried to make it look like he wasn’t the one doing it.

GERSHWIN: No, he was an only child.

SC: Right. He was ghosting. What that means is that most of those famous names associated with those strips were hiring other people to do their work for them.

SC: And when did he meet your mom?

GERSHWIN: You know, I don’t know exactly what year. I really don’t. Maybe around 1950? Somewhere in there. Early 1950s. They met playing tennis at the tennis courts down by Riverside Drive in New York. Their first date was walking across the George Washington Bridge.

GERSHWIN: I wanna do that! [both laugh] I wanna be one of those categories of people. I like that.

SC: How they would get away with it without people knowing, was that the artist himself would actually draw the faces on the main characters or correct the faces. That’s still being done today and hasn’t changed in 70 years. So your dad passed away in 1999 and your mom passed away when?

SC: He would have been about 28 then.

And he would have already been an established comicbook artist.

GERSHWIN: I think he was doing that from a really young age. I don’t know what the work laws were then, but he would have been earning money from his teens, for sure.

GERSHWIN: In 2003.

SC: Were there comicbooks around the house growing up?

SC: Do you think he submitted gag cartoons to magazines at all? One-panel gags and stuff?

GERSHWIN: I think so.

SC: Was he working at home a lot?

GERSHWIN: Probably. That was the culture then, right?

GERSHWIN: Oh, no. He had a studio. By himself. He had his own studio.

SC: Yes. Comicbooks didn’t really take off ‘til around ’39. Was he a part of the National Cartoonists Society?

GERSHWIN: I’m really not sure. You know, it is interesting when you think, how did he break in at all, because he was not really a clubby type person.

SC: Right. I saw that he assisted Dan Barry and Mac Raboy on the Flash Gordon strip.

SC: Do you remember what he was working on when he was in his own studio?

A Scene Right Out Of A Movie Nancy writes: “My parents (my mother’s name, Janet— nee Jeanette Lomask, seen here) met on the tennis courts at Riverside Drive [in Manhattan]. Their first date was walking over the George Washington Bridge.” [© Nancy Gershwin].

GERSHWIN: Not really. I was pretty young.

SC: He left the comicbook industry in the late ‘50s, I think. What did he do after he left comics?

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

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Chalk It Up to… Emil Gershwin An Emil Gershwin chalk painting. [© Patti Gershwin.]

And You Know That’s Some Song Book!

A copy of The George and Ira Gershwin Song Book, inscribed to Nancy Gershwin. It reads: “For Nancy Gershwin—with affection and admiration from her two-generation-older cousin. Ira Gershwin Sept. 1965).” [Photo © Nancy Gershwin.]

Art For Art’s Sake Nancy says: “My father could play piano by ear, but his gift/passion was art. At 15 he left DeWitt Clinton High School to study at the Art Students League (which would have probably been pretty cool in the ‘30s/’40s... both schools actually).” Was Emil’s wife the inspiration for this drawing? [Photo © Patti Gershwin.]

Chalk Talks!

Another Gershwin chalk illustration. [Photo © Patti Gershwin.]

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GERSHWIN: He did businesses.

He was always good at business.

Just different types of things. Not particularly advertising. He didn’t continue in art. He was very independent, but he had different businesses and he was really good with investments. He was pretty natural in that. But what he loved was art.

SC: So he continued on with it as a hobby?

GERSHWIN: At a certain point he didn’t. I think, as I said earlier, he had high expectations. He didn’t like hacks. He was very particular and I think he was pretty hard on himself with stuff like that. I’m like that with piano. It’s like somebody’ll go, “That’s good,” and I’ll go, “That sucked.” I mean, I can make myself ill playing the piano, actually. It was that type of thing. Doing the comics was really, really easy for him. It just wasn’t challenging. It was fun and easy.

SC: Well, a lot of people did it as a stepping-stone for something or to keep busy while other stuff wasn’t coming along. Did he do magazine covers? Pulp covers? Any other magazines besides comics?

GERSHWIN: I just don’t know. He didn’t talk about it. As you can tell, he was pretty private. I never saw him trying to, quote, “gain recognition.”

He would just be happy that other people were getting the attention.

SC: Did he do family portraits?

GERSHWIN: Yeah, he did some of us.

SC: Did he try to steer you in that direction? Or your sister?

GERSHWIN: No, I think he was horrified. [Shaun laughs] “Neither of you has any discernible art talent!” [both laugh] He really couldn’t believe it. I was good at music and had a good visual eye, but drawing… no. He didn’t understand how the drawing gene had missed us both. It was very funny.

SC: And your mom? Did she have any drawing abilities?

GERSHWIN: No. SC: Would she be the model for a lot of his work?

GERSHWIN: Yes. He’d take photos. There was probably some of that.

Actually, now that I think of it, when I was growing up my father did have models coming by.

Private Screenings Pvt. Emil Gershwin in 1943, standing, with fellow cartoonist Pvt. Fred Wright. Their cartoons can be seen on the bottom of the page. From the Miami Herald (May 29, 1943). [© the respective copyright holders.]

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SC: Did he have any artist friends?

GERSHWIN: I don’t know.

SC: Did he have an opinion on censorship at all, or was he very vocal with politics? What type of person was he? Was he into hobbies?

GERSHWIN: He liked boating.

I’d say tennis. He liked sports. He liked football. In terms of politics, he was certainly pro-civil rights, anti-Vietnam. Just very moral. Not moral in a buttoned-up way, but just very much about honesty. He wasn’t quote, “a player.” He was not a hustler. He wasn’t going to tell somebody something that wasn’t true. Pretty much he was just very charming. He was somebody who was always good to have around, who could make conversation with anybody and who loved to talk with people about their lives.

SC: And when he was in this business, did he ever do any other painting work that was sellable? Did he take on any accounts?

GERSHWIN: I don’t know that he did. I think in a way he made a decision that he wasn’t going to. I think he just felt that he was going to go in different directions from where he had been. He had done it to where he wanted to do it as a business. I didn’t see that there was any kind of disappointment or “I’ll get my next break.” He did well financially and I didn’t see any kind of searching or desperation.

SC: Well, he was very prolific up to ’57. He did a lot of things.

GERSHWIN: Yeah, and he was very good with investments. We grew up in Riverdale and we had a weekend house in Connecticut. So, every weekend, we were boating, doing different stuff. He was a really loving father.

SC: So your mom was a stay-at-home mom?

Singin’ In The Draft And here’s the second half of the two-page spread from the previous page, drawn by Emil Gershwin and Fred Wright. [© the respective copyright holders.]

GERSHWIN: No, she worked also.

My mom got her nursing degree and she ran a business. They were always busy, doing different things, but there was never a financial issue in the house. You know, today everybody has a financial issue. Did anyone in that time have a financial issue?

[Shaun laughs] No! You didn’t! Houses were paid for, my sister and I went to only private schools and private camps, non-scholarship colleges. It was just fun. Money was never a worry, and I think maybe because he was very good with investments.

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Pictures Within Pictures (Above:) Nancy poses with her pogo stick at Christmas 1965. The picture in the background had been drawn by her father, Emil, when he was 15. [© Nancy Gershwin.]

(Right:) Not exactly a Christmas story, but coming out in late 1942 with a cover date of Feb. 1943 was this “Starman” yarn for Adventure Comics #83.

Script by Gardner F. Fox. [TM & © DC Comics.]

SC: Now, he was busy in the industry for 15-16-17 years. I would assume he amassed a bunch of material sitting around—they call them swipe files, where he’d have a reference to use if he needed a picture of a vehicle, he would go to a swipe file, etc. Did he have a lot of reference material around the house or was everything at the studio? Would he bring work home?

GERSHWIN: No, I don’t remember him bringing work home. I think his studio, also, as I remember it, was broken into or something. That was when I was pretty young.

SC: And were there any stories about people he met that were famous at all? Or maybe he ran into somebody I would recognize the name of?

GERSHWIN: No. Well... I mean, he was George Gershwin’s first cousin.

SC: No, I didn’t know that! Wow! Did the family mingle with that side of the family?

GERSHWIN: At that time, yeah. For sure.

SC: And you’re going into the music industry… your dad was very supportive?

GERSHWIN: Well, I went into television, but I was good at music.

Yeah, he would be fine with anything. He wasn’t like somebody who’d suggest that I should be a doctor or anything like that. Yeah, he was George Gershwin’s much younger first cousin. He used to go over to visit George and Ira with his father—my grandfather. His name was Aaron Gershwin, and he was George and Ira Gershwin’s uncle, but he was their same age. So it was funny. My father really liked

George. George used to walk on his hands. [Shaun laughs] There was one time he put my father up on a piano when he was like four years old, got him drunk, and had him sing Gershwin songs. [Shaun laughs] Yeah, he was really fun. George died in ’37. Ira died in ’83. So I mean he had that, certainly.

SC: Was he the type of father who would help you with homework?

GERSHWIN: Yeah!

SC: So he was very involved. You said you went to private school.

Does that mean he was religious?

GERSHWIN: No, it wasn’t that type of private school. I went to Riverdale Country School and Hackley. He was not religious at all. He just didn’t want us in public school.

SC: But comicbooks weren’t prevalent around the house that you recall growing up? Maybe Archies or Disneys or...

GERSHWIN: I mean, there were... Yeah. They were. But wasn’t everybody reading comics? Also, I went to Riverdale Country School.

Archie was Riverdale, but it wasn’t that Riverdale. [Shaun laughs] There was always that, and we used to love getting the comics in the gum packs. I mean, comics were a big deal.

SC: Did your dad ever want to do a daily strip himself? Did he ever try to create one?

GERSHWIN: I don’t know. Here’s a thing. You see that first thing, “vital stats—Peter Abbott”? His mother’s maiden name was “Abbott,” so it was a homage to her, but at the same time “Peter Abbott” sounds like “Peter Rabbit.” That was his joke. He liked doing it. He

Emil Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Four Colors

41

didn’t really need the attention or want the attention, but he had an amazingly funny sense of humor. He was just hilarious. He got everything and he was just happy doing what he was doing.

SC: Well, when comicbooks were being reprinted in the ‘80s and ‘90s, was he upset that maybe he wasn’t getting any recognition or reimbursement for any of his old work?

GERSHWIN: No, but I am! [both laugh] Here we go! New angle to the story!

SC: The good news is that DC is very open to paying for reprints to the creators. They just need to know who to send the money to.

GERSHWIN: Is this a joke?

SC: No, it’s not a joke. It’s not very much, though.

GERSHWIN: I don’t care. That’s hilarious! If you could give them my name and address….

SC: Of course I will! They do that once they are informed by the family that this is where it should be sent.

GERSHWIN: That’s cool! That would be great! That’s funny, wow.

SC: You said you were in television. What parts of television?

“Movie Star Looks”?

Pvt. Emil Gershwin (far left) and a couple of unidentified Army Air Force buddies during World War II. [Photo © Nancy Gershwin.]

GERSHWIN: Usually news-based. But two years ago, I invented a toy that got on the Top 10 toy lists. It was a Pet Lawyer. I also made my own little animation on that. So yeah, I’m open to anything. I love animation. I have a 14-year-old and his dream is to be in animation and be a voice actor.

SC: Do you have any photos of the time period we were talking about? With your dad at the drawing board? I know of the one you had on the website.

GERSHWIN: That’s just the one with his father. Also, an Air Force picture when he was drawing for the Air Force, so if you wanted that.

I really don’t have a ton. He’s the opposite of a Hollywood type.

Definitely had the movie star look, but not into the self-promotion.

SC: Would your sister have material?

Another Kind Of Super-hero Pvt. Emil Gershwin drew this portrait for the June 7, 1943, issue of the Miami Herald. [© the respective copyright holders.]

GERSHWIN: She may have some. She may have some sketches and stuff like that. I think a lot of stuff was lost. There was something that happened with the studio. I think it was broken into or a flood or something like that. I don’t remember. That was pretty early on.

SC: Yeah, but examples of even photos of a vase with flowers, anything that he had done that was painting-wise would be interesting. Did he have any gallery openings or anything?

GERSHWIN: No. If he did, he was so private that he probably would

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My Pet Lawyer Nancy successfully marketed her “My Pet Lawyer” toy. It growls nine pre-programmed statements, including “Pro Bono? Never heard of him!” and “I care? Hahahahahahaha!” To the right is a Jaws-dropping ad for same. Nancy says: “One could buy their private practice attorney or the entire firm… which growled, laughed, argued back and forth, or sang in harmony. I also promoted it with comics (unfortunately not drawn by my father!).” [© 2022 Nancy Gershwin.]

have done it as Peter Abbott or something. [Shaun laughs] SC: When he passed away, wasn’t there an obituary?

GERSHWIN: No. He didn’t want one. [both laugh] I’m sorry. He was like... no funeral, no obituary.

SC: And interviews? He never gave any, previously?

GERSHWIN: No. SC: I was the only one who contacted him? I can’t believe it!

GERSHWIN: No, there were other people contacting him, but if you actually got through, then you probably got further than the others.

It’s not that... he was incredibly gracious. He wasn’t a grumpy person at all.

SC: When and where was he born? I forgot that part.

GERSHWIN: He was born in New York, April 28th, 1922. [NOTE: Emil was the only son of Aaron Jacob Gershwin and Zena Gershwin.]

SC: Did he take up music himself?

GERSHWIN: He wasn’t George, but he could play the piano by ear.

And George actually taught him to play some of his songs.

SC: Well, everybody during that time frame had a piano.

GERSHWIN: And now people don’t! Which is really weird. My grandfather always had a piano. We’re just selling that. It’s from 1926, so likely George played on that one.

SC: Was your dad a packrat?

GERSHWIN: No, not at all. Unfortunately. Nobody wants to be a packrat until instances like this, and then everybody’s hoping they were.

SC: If you still had the original artwork from any of those comics, there’s thousands of dollars there, so... if you still had a cover, it’d be tens of thousands of dollars!

Quick! Get This Guy A Pet Lawyer!

Since the Grand Comics Database lists only one story drawn by Emil G. for Lev Gleason’s Crime and Punishment —namely, “Over the Wall!” in issue #28 (July 1950), we suspect that may be the source of this page. Scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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The Grandson Also Rises Nancy’s son, Bennett Gershwin, is currently studying animation at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Bennett was born shortly before his Grandad’s passing in 1999. [Photo © Nancy Gershwin.]

Collectible?

Her father didn’t leave Nancy any of his original comic art. A pity, since he did great work. Just look at those expressions! From Hillman’s Crime Detective Comics, Vol. 1, #3 (July 1948), spotlighting famous fraudster Charles Ponzi. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Home Sweet Home!

The Gershwin house in Connecticut, early 1960s. [Photo © Nancy Gershwin.]

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GERSHWIN: My sister may have some of that. I think we have some original comicbooks here.

E-MAIL FOLLOW-UP: SC: I have Stan Lee’s Dewitt Clinton yearbook, which is 1940.... he was called Stan Lieber in those days........ did your dad ever mention knowing any other comicbook people from high school? I have Will Eisner’s year which is 1933 and Bob Kane was 1934.... I’m pretty sure Sheldon Moldoff was 1935/36..... They had a school newspaper called the Magpie which I also have a few of...but from the 1920s.

What is very weird about Emil Gershwin is that he was born in 1922, which puts him in Stan Lee’s class year.

GERSHWIN: I never heard my dad mention Stan Lee... but that doesn’t mean he didn’t know him then.

Shaun, please let me know if you can open these pictures. There’s a headshot pic of my father, also I think an Army/ Air Force picture (where he was drawing), a picture of my mother (Jeannette “Janet” Gershwin) when she and my father were first married and lived in Florida (hence, the bathing suit pictures), and a picture of George Gershwin at the piano. Trying to find a photo of my dad around 4 years old (at the time when George had him up on the piano drunk singing Gershwin songs).

Emil & Nancy Gershwin in the late 1980s. [Photo © Nancy Gershwin.]

And there you have it. Nancy couldn’t find the picture of four-year old Emil, but she did locate his military photo, which we’ve included here. Our thanks to Shaun, Nancy, and younger sister Patti, for allowing us to take a rare peek into the (very!) private life of Emil Gershwin.

Nancy Gershwin… & Friend.

[Photo © Nancy Gershwin.]

A Falling Starman Emil G. drew his—and DC’s—final Golden Age “Starman” story, for Adventure Comics #102 (Feb. 1946). Script by Joe Samachson. [TM & © DC Comics.]

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EMIL GERSHWIN Checklist This checklist is adapted primarily from materials available in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Book 1928-1999, established by Dr. Jerry G. Bails. Names of features with that title that also appeared in other comicbooks are generally not italicized. Some information added to this checklist has come from the Grand Comics Database and from the articles and interviews published in this issue of Alter Ego. Key: (p) = pencils; (i) = inks; (S) = Sunday newspaper comic strip; (d) = daily newspaper comic strip.

Name & Vital Stats: Emil Gershwin (1928-1999) - artist Pen Name: Peter Abbott Syndication (Comic Strips): Flash Gordon (S)(asst. i) c. 1948-1949 with Mac Raboy, possibly daily as well, for King Features Syndicate; Tarzan (d)(asst. p & i) 1948 for Dan Barry, for United Features Syndicate Promotional Comics: Kulah and the Jinni in the Jug (p)(i) 1948-49 for Buster Brown Shoes Comics Shop/Studio: Funnies, Inc. (p)(I) unconfirmed COMICBOOKS (U.S. Mainstream Publishers): American Comics Group: Adventures into the Unknown (p)(i) 1950-52, 1956-62; [Confessions of the] Lovelorn (p)(i) 1950-52, 1955, 1958; Forbidden Worlds (p)(i) 1951, 1954, 1956-58, 1960-65; [My] Romantic Adventures (p)(i) 1949-57 Better/Standard/Nedor/Pines Publications: crime (p)(i) 1948 DC Comics: Gang Busters (p)(i) 1948; Lady Danger (p)(i) 1949; Sadface Charlie (p)(i) 1944-46; Starman (p)(i) 1943-46 Eastern Color: Heroic Comics (p)(i) 1940s Fawcett Comics: Captain Marvel (p)(i) 1942; Captain Marvel Jr. (p)(i) 1943-44; Hunchback (p)(i) c. 1941-42; Spy Smasher (p)(i?) 1942-43 Fiction House: Rip Regan the Power-Man (p)(i) 1941 (unconfirmed) Fox Comics: The Eagle (p)(i) 1940 (unconfirmed); other work (ditto) Harvey Comics: How Good a Detective Are You? (p)(i) 1952 Hillman Periodicals: Crime Detective Comics (p)(i) 1948; Real Clue Crime Stories (p)(i) 1948; Handcuffs of Doom [Victory Comics] (p)(i) 1941; Sergeant Flagg (p)(i) 1941 Lafayette Street Corp.: Picture News (p) (i) 1946 Lev Gleason Publications: Crime and Punishment (p)(i) 1950

Smile! You’re In A Candid Comicbook!

The smiling, demonic head seen on the cover of this issue of Alter Ego appeared in the story “The Vampire’s Victim” from ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown #20 (June 1951). Scripter unknown. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Hitching His “Eagle” To A “Star” (Above:) This “Eagle” splash page from Science Comics #6 (July 1940) may— or may not—be the pseudonymously bylined art of Emil Gershwin and an unknown writer, as reported by the Grand Comics Database. Thanks to Comic Book Plus website for the scan. If publisher Victor Fox was running true to form that month, there’s a good chance young Emil (or whoever) never got paid for this art! [© the respective copyright holders.]

(Right:) Assuming for that sake of argument that the aforementioned “Eagle” yarn is his work, Gershwin’s “Starman” splash from Adventure Comics #93 (Aug. 1944) shows how far he’d come in four short years.

Scripted by Joe Samachson. Repro’d from the hardcover Golden Age Starman Archive, Vol. 2. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Marvel/Timely Comics: crime (p)(i); mystery/occult (p)(i) 1957; The Terror (p)(i) 1941 (unconfirmed) Novelty Comics: The White Streak (p)(i) 1941 Parents Magazine Press: True Comics (p)(i) 1942 Quality Comics: Kid Eternity (p)(i) 1940 (unconfirmed); Merlin the Magician (p)(i) 1941

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48

N

by Peter Normanton

ancy Gershwin, as detailed earlier in this issue, remembers her father Emil with great affection. While she can readily recall a man who was private in his ways, to her he was first and foremost a warm and loving father.

So how did such an affable chap become lured into the nightmare comics of the early 1950s?

Emil’s name isn’t automatically associated with this dark epoch, yet like so many others he played his part in the terror so wilfully spawned during this period. As referenced elsewhere, he

was one of the trailblazers of the Golden Age, the precision in his line on Fawcett’s “Spy Smasher” arousing the interest of many of his aspirant colleagues as well as the teenage Al Williamson, ahead of making his mark on “Starman” in the pages of Adventure Comics at DC/National. Soon after being picked up by the American Comics Group, initially drafted into their romance titles, he was offered work embellishing their tomes of terror. Long after these tales were first published in the pages of Adventures into the Unknown and Forbidden Worlds, I came upon Emil’s artwork in the contents of the black-&-white post-Code reprints released

The Horror Of Emil Gershwin

by Alan Class over here in the UK. As with so many stories from this period, they were unsigned, meaning it would be many years before I discovered the name of the man responsible for rendering these whimsical sojourns into comicbook fantasy.

Having spent a little over two years at the drawing board in the then fledgling world of comicbooks, Emil turned his hand to the macabre in a surprising turn for the lead story to Spy Smasher #5, dated 24 June 1942. Regular readers of this title would have been aghast at the nefarious scenes depicted in the opening pages to “Death over Washington,” maybe thinking there had been some terrible mistake, since this was horror of the foulest kind, not the super-heroing fare to which they had become accustomed. This sadistic portrayal of the netherworld was one of the most shocking of this or any other period in comicbook publishing, his rendition evocative of Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell. During Shaun Clancy’s conversation with Emil’s daughter Nancy in August of 2013, she alluded to her father’s natural ability as an artist, his meticulous attention to detail in these pages bearing testimony to her words.

While an element of his styling was reminiscent of the work of both Canadian-born newspaper strip artist Hal Foster and Flash Gordon co-creator Alex Raymond, for whom he had such admiration, his visualisation of this fiery netherworld was manifest in its unrelenting arrayal of depravity. As this monstrous glimpse of hell gradually unfolded, Spy Smasher fell to the machinations of the merciless figure of Death, aided and abetted by Satan himself, who proved unusually adept behind the wheel of an automobile.

After being secured as their prisoner, Spy Smasher was escorted into the depths of the Earth to face the damning torment of the inferno. There was an insane gusto evidenced in Emil’s brush strokes, their fervour unashamedly forging this hellish landscape, all the while their dexterous invention weaving an unholy tapestry of torturous debauchery so far unknown in the pages of a comicbook.

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If this abhorrent spectacle had been laid before America’s youth a decade later, it would have most certainly inflamed the vehemence of those at the core of the emerging anti-comics crusade. Thankfully, all was not quite as it seemed. With Spy Smasher’s fate seemingly sealed, this deathly domain was unearthed as a diabolical fabrication devised by the scions of Nazi Germany, intent on spreading their evil doctrine in the very heart of America’s capital. There were no doubt a few welcome sighs of relief at the denouement, the outcome stirring a spirited clarion call ensuring the unrelenting fight for global freedom could proudly continue on its valiant march. Fawcett had done their best to disguise this perturbing episode behind a cover true to the Nazi-bashing heroics of the day, but the malfeasance in these pages made it a horror story to rival any of those that would soon follow during the early 1950s. For an artist making a name amongst these lofty super-heroes, Emil appeared curiously at home with this demonic imagery.

For those of you with a passion for their horror comics, these pages should be savoured, for Emil’s artistry would never again be consumed by such graphic ferocity, even a decade on when this gruesome tide had usurped the newsstands of North America. Whether any of the horror-comics publishers of this dark era were privy to these pages remains unknown, as do details

Spy Smasher The Spy Swatter (Left to right, from facing page:) The two opening pages from Emil Gershwin’s terrifying vision of the underworld, as presented in the pages of Spy Smasher #5 (24 June 1942). His depiction of the skeletal hand on the splash page of “The Ghost Squadron”in Spy Smasher #6 (26 Aug. 1942) was every bit as scary. The line work on show in these three pages is quite astonishing, so much so that it brought him to the attention of many of his peers. His surreal introduction to SS #7’s “The Terror in Exile” (28 Oct. 1942) alluded to a vampire weapon, but not one of that undead ilk was in evidence anywhere in this tale. [Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.]

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From The Tomb Presents

of much of Emil’s time in comics, yet if they noted them, surely more of them would have been crying out for his eldritch penmanship, for few of his contemporaries ever succeeded in conjuring scenes quite so grotesque.

Although the Golden Age was the era of the super-hero, these pages could be considered the harbinger for that which would eventually follow. Under any other circumstances maybe this would have been the moment when horror found a place in these comics, but the timing was hardly right; there were horrors enough across the Pacific Ocean and on the war-torn battlefields of Europe. Maybe the anonymous writer of this tale, who would have been all too aware of the devastation in these far-flung fields, was hoping to impart a chilling metaphor condemning the atrocities being committed the world over, as the Nazi spectre conspired to rage hell on Earth.

Just a couple of months later, Emil was tasked with pencilling the resident hero’s confrontation with “The Ghost Squadron” in Spy Smasher #6, cover-dated 26 August 1942, a tale he introduced with another spinetingling splash (see p. 53). Following the events of the previous issue, the gathered readership must have been on edge, fearing another journey into a world of blood-curdling dread. Mercifully, they were spared the perturbation of the previous issue, for Emil had been taking notice of the way in which the horror motif was used in countless movie posters promoting the thrillers of the day. Shrewdly seizing upon a scene of electrifying terror, he used this as a pretext for what turned out to be a gripping adventure yarn of the super-heroic spy-smashing persuasion.

He continued in this manner for the surreal Nazi-styled splash to Spy

The Lethal & The Lady (Counterclockwise from top left:) The vampires created by Gershwin for ACG’s Forbidden Worlds #3’s “Lair of the Vampire” (Nov.-Dec. 1951) and Adventures into the Unknown #20’s “The Vampire’s Victim” (June 1951) seem unusually similar, their pallid features belying an incredible strength. Strangely, his illustrations for the“Lady Danger”episode in Sensation Comics #93 (Oct.-Nov. 1941) would be the only splash he produced with any element of horror during his time at DC Comics. [“Lady Danger”page TM & © DC Comics; other pages © the respective copyright holders.]

The Horror Of Emil Gershwin

Smasher #7’s (28 October 1942) “Terror in Exile.” In each case he made the most of the single page preface in the same way Jack Kirby had in his time with Timely, initiating an illusion of horror as an antecedent to furthering the thrills and spills of a super-doing escapade.

Only once did Emil give us the faintest hint of horror in any of his submissions to DC, a company that preferred to remain detached from the more ghoulish. Seven years after these issues of Spy Smasher, he immersed himself in a strangely surreal splash for the “Lady Danger” episode “The Purple Thread” in the pages of Sensation Comics #93 (Oct.-Nov. 1949), as shown on the facing page. However, as the reader turned the page, it became patently obvious this was in essence another crime caper, a genre in which he was proving himself eminently proficient. The supernatural was never in evidence in these pages, but elsewhere the darkness was beginning to fall.

It was during his time pencilling crime comics for Hillman and Lev Gleason, in a series of titles which for several months benefited hugely from his ease with a brush, that he came to the notice of the American Comics Group. They could lay claim to the first ongoing horror comic anthology, Adventures into the Unknown, released in the late summer of 1948. Given his partiality for this tenebrous genre, Emil should have been an obvious candidate for these contents. Instead, with Adventures into the Unknown already having reached its seventh issue, he was assigned to the company’s romance line, debuting in the sinisterly entitled “Love Is for the Living,” as presented in Romantic Adventures #5, cover-dated Nov.-Dec. 1949. Remarkably, there actually was a slightly eerie aspect to this tender tale, although much of Emil’s fastidious design was tempered so as to meet with the approval of the house style laid down by ACG.

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Their young readership would have to wait another 12 months before they were treated to one of his forays into horror, the first of which appeared in Adventures into the Unknown #14, dated Dec. 1950-Jan. 1951. In the nine-page account of “The Haunted Morgue,” he guilefully manipulated the light and dark to dispense a tale of true horror. However, for those able to recall the menace in that accursed domain previously encountered in the pages of Spy Smasher #5, his odious invention was significantly toned down, thus ensuring he did not cross the line with his seniors and end up terrorising the company’s dedicated readers in the same way as those exposed to the grisly outrage of their rivals. It was indeed a fine line, but on this first outing Emil did everything required of him. As with every other artist at the company, his figures remained well within the borders of each panel, with these panels running to a uniform six to seven frames per page.

In view of his working hours being divided between horror and romance, along with the occasional filler piece for Harvey’s Dick Tracy and Kerry Drake Detective Cases, he completed less than a dozen horror-related stories prior to the Comics Code coming into force at the end of 1954. Yet, he accomplished everything the editorial team would have expected, mastering the uncluttered house style, while allowing his deft brush strokes to gift his readers something of his very own.

ACG had a preference for the more traditional horror fare, regaling their titles with an unruly assemblage of ghosts, werewolves, and vampires, rather than feeding off the shortcomings of the human condition, as had become the hallmark at EC. When the moment came, Emil eagerly set about unleashing a most despicable vampire for “The Vampire’s Victim,” as printed in Adventures into the Unknown #20, from June of 1951. His seniors couldn’t have asked for anything more fitting, as his splash page

A-Haunting We Will Go! (Left to right:) The imagery that Emil Gershwin conjured up for both Adventures into the Unknown #14’s “The Haunted Morgue”(from the issue for Dec. 1950-Jan. 1951) and #16’s “Demon in the Dark”(Feb. 1951) was suitably creepy, while affirming his adroit line. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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From The Tomb Presents

he embarked on his first werewolf saga, aptly entitled “The Way of the Werewolf.” The episode was an action-adventure affair laced with an ample smattering of the supernatural, Emil’s smooth line supplementing the drama in this piece as it flowed at an ever so sprightly pace. He would return to this lycanthropic pack just ahead of the implementation of the Code, in the pages of Forbidden Worlds #34, cover-dated Oct.-Nov. 1954. While his artwork didn’t shine in the way fans of these series had come to expect, his line appearing rushed, “My Fanged and Fiendish Darling” was a decidedly extreme account. This excess was no doubt in answer to the continuously twisted demands of an insatiable readership; here they were rewarded with an emphatically nasty finale.

Wolves, Witches, and Whatever

(Left to right, across facing pages:) The American Comics Group enjoyed their werewolves almost as much as their vampires. The actionstyled “The Way of the Werewolf”appeared in Forbidden Worlds #1 (July-Aug. 1951), with the uncompromising“My Fanged and Fiendish Darling” surprising many of ACG’s regular readers in issue #34 (Oct.-Nov. 1954) of this long-running series. Here, Emil attempted to return to the detail he had used in Spy Smasher #5’s descent into hell. At first glance, his splash for Adventures into the Unknown #101’s “The Witch Who Wouldn’t” (Oct. 1958) could have been mistaken for a pre-Code horror story, but the ensuing tale would not offend the Comics Code Authority. Both“Mr. Hobbs’ Vacation” from Adventures into the Unknown #104 (Jan. 1959) and “The Amazing Bardini,” his last story for Timely/Atlas, in World of Suspense #8 (July 1957), observe a return to the assured brush strokes evident in his earlier work.

[World of Suspense page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; other art © the respective copyright holders.]

brought forth a truly hideous creature, encapsulating the image of this heinous breed with seemingly little effort.

ACG preferred to avoid continuing sagas in the pages of their anthologies; be that as it may, the vampire Emil set loose in “Lair of the Vampire” in Forbidden Worlds #3, cover-dated November 1951, bore an uncanny resemblance to the fiend seen running amok in “The Vampire’s Victim.” Once again the reader found himself in the gaze of an ashen-faced predator imbued with tremendous physical strength, clearly well-nourished on the blood of his victims. In each of these stories there would be a familiar twist at the last, one that would bring a deserved end to these vile monstrosities. While young readers could rest easy knowing justice had been served, they would have still been chilled by Emil’s depiction of those foul brethren, which may well have attracted the unwanted attention of those who sought to persecute these comics.

The curtain-raiser for the premiere of Forbidden Worlds, from July-August 1951, was a tale illustrated by a man altogether familiar with Emil’s technique, none other than Al Williamson, who in this case was working alongside Frank Frazetta. It has to be said that neither of this team made any attempt to adhere to the house rules; for once, the editorial staff at ACG turned a blind eye. Emil, on the other hand, made every effort to abide by their precepts as

This wasn’t the first time Emil had been presented with a gruesome script while in the employ of ACG. “The Man Who Couldn’t Die” from Adventures into the Unknown #35, dated September 1952, had resorted to several pages of torture and excessive violence. While the bloodshed was kept to a minimum, such malevolence was rarely seen in the ACG portfolio of terror, yet Emil delivered with exactly the same verve as witnessed in Spy Smasher #5. As exciting as this story may have been, it was of that unseemly ilk destined to bring about the demise of the horror comic.

With the Comics Code having been put into place during the latter months of 1954, ACG editor and writer Richard Hughes

The Horror Of Emil Gershwin

was amongst those who felt an overwhelming sense of relief.

He had become increasingly uncomfortable with the lengths to which he had to go in making his horror comics appeal to the depravity craved by his readers. From the early months of 1955, an appreciable mellowing was observed in the comics appearing on the newsstands, their bloodthirsty rule now at an end. Under Hughes’ guidance, ACG would become one of the few publishers to thrive on the frivolity of these heavily sanitised years. Emil would remain with the company, illustrating a dozen or so fantasy tales, all of which appeared in Adventures into the Unknown and Forbidden Worlds through the beginning of 1959, some of which were reprinted in 1960s with new titles.

Amongst these stories was “The All Night Diner” from the pages of Adventures into the Unknown #77, cover-dated October 1956… the only tale he signed his name to during his tenure at ACG. In the first three pages you could see he was striving for the detail which had been so much a part of his style during the early years of his time in the industry, yet I wonder if in this cleaned-up world of the comicbook he had become disillusioned. If you look closely, you can see his ability as an illustrator was as strong as ever, but sadly the fire that had burned so brightly all those years ago had somewhat diminished. He wasn’t alone; there were many artists who, having prospered prior to the Code, were now questioning their culpability in the alleged misconduct of their young readers.

It would appear Emil never made his thoughts known on this issue, but the stipulations of the Code seemed to have curbed some of his panache. We should keep in mind that ACG may well have imposed their own code of practice. Despite these drawbacks, every once in a while some of the Emil of old could be seen, “Mr. Hobbs’ Vacation” from Adventures into the Unknown #104, coverdated January 1959, being a perfect example. The confidence in his

53

use of the brush harks back to those days when he first joined ACG. The same can be said of “The Amazing Bardini,” the second of two stories he drew for Timely/Atlas, this time in World of Suspense #8 (July 1957). In each of these stories his approach seems revitalised, the relish in his draughtsmanship brimming with the excitement of days gone by.

Sadly, Emil’s work appeared as Atlas were thrown into crisis following Martin Goodman’s decision to shut down his distribution wing, the Atlas News Company, turning to the American News Company in November of 1956 to carry out the handling of his publications. When American News went out of business in May of 1957, Goodman was left with a considerable inventory of material, which had to be used rather than engage his bullpen with new work, thus dashing any hopes Emil had of advancing his career.

Emil was one of the quiet men in the industry, preferring to remain in the background, reluctant to sing his own praises. He may well have drifted into complete obscurity but for the tireless work of several comicbook researchers, to whom we should be grateful. Thanks to their efforts, Emil’s artistry will never be forgotten. Those of you preparing for a career at the drawing board should take a leaf out of Al Williamson’s book and spend time with Emil’s work, for there is so much to appreciate in the care he took with his assiduous line. While he may not be one of the names we immediately call to mind in this dark domain, his imaging of the netherworld in the pages of Spy Smasher #5 remains some of the most unsettling to see print in the entire history of the comicbook.

Peter Normanton is the founder of the long-running English magazine From the Tomb, which dealt primarily with U.S. horror comics.

Two collections from that series have been gathered by TwoMorrows Publishing. He is continuing From the Tomb with these pieces in Alter Ego.

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55

Everett producing comicbooks.

Nick Caputo

So would we all, Nick… but both of those stellar talents passed away in 1973. Hard for me (Roy) to realize it’s been nearly a half-century since I was walking and talking with those two fine gents, feeling honored just to know them. I still would be.

Next up, Nick’s Yancy Street Gang buddy Barry Pearl has this to say: Roy,

Among the uncommon features at the beginning of the Marvel Age of Comics of the 1960s was to list full credits for every story. I began to recognize how artists looked different when inked by different people. Artists are not just illustrators; they are also storytellers. The art helps tell the tale, and pencillers and inkers add to the style, mood, and atmosphere of a story.

In [the reprint title] Fantasy Masterpieces, Marvel printed stories from the 1940s, giving a young reader like me a chance to

“M

askot” artist Shane Foley pulled a fast one on us this time.

His drawing of the Thomas/Harris super-hero Alter Ego (who, as you may have noticed via ads this issue and last, is returning for a new round of adventures from Heroic Publishing) looks for all the world as if the Emil Gershwin figure on which it’s based must’ve appeared in one of that artist’s “Starman” outings. In reality, though, Shane says it’s actually adapted from a Gershwin “Spy Smasher” drawing in Fawcett’s Whiz Comics #29 (April 17, 1942). Either way, as colored

by Randy Sargent, it’s a great way to start this issue’s letters-and-e-mail section, so thanks, guys! [Alter Ego hero TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas; costume designed by Ron Harris.]

A triple helping of comments this time, beginning with remarks on Alter Ego #167, where the spotlight shone on the work of Golden and Silver Age artist Syd Shores, beginning with this note from Nick Caputo: Hi Roy,

I very much enjoyed the tribute to Syd Shores in A/E #167.

The interviews with Nancy Shores Karlebach, Allen Bellman, and my pal Michael Vassallo all brought a perspective of Shores’ wide-ranging efforts in comics—from the Timely era and his superlative work on “Captain America,” often overshadowed by the Simon-Kirby stories, to his Western, war, jungle, crime, and other genre stories. And I’d be remiss to ignore his fine inking over Kirby, Colan, John Buscema, and other superstars.

I was first introduced to his work when he inked Kirby on “Captain America” in Tales of Suspense [in the late 1960s]. It had the feeling of a different era. Shores also added atmosphere to Colan’s Daredevil. His moody illustrations were effective in Tower of Shadows and in Warren’s black-&-white mags. It would have been nice to see him take over Cap, but I would have been equally thrilled if he’d had a long run on Red Wolf or on a war title like Captain Savage.

Shores was a distinctive artist who left us too soon. I would have enjoyed seeing many more years of the likes of him and Bill

Next Issue: “The Agony Of Dr. Chambers!”

A powerful Syd Shores splash page for the Golden Age Captain America Comics #37 (April 1944), inked by Vince Alascia. Scripter unknown. There was a “hypnotice black panther” in this story, too! Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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[corrections & correspondence]

read stories printed before his time.

know, though I greatly suspect Jack would have plotted and penciled his co-creation’s adventures as long as he wanted to. Perhaps it was simply a matter of giving Shores a job on a familiar character he had spent many years drawing.

Syd Shores quickly became my favorite inker for “Captain America” because his style was so reminiscent of those 1940s stories. Cap looked best when he had one foot in the past. Yet, when Shores inked Barry Windsor-Smith in The Avengers, the characters looked beautiful, three-dimensional, and very modern.

I thought his best inking work over another artist was on Gene Colan’s Daredevil, and I remember my disappointment when he left the book.

Shores did have a flair for horror, crime, and Western stories, too. What would have lay in store for him career-wise is interesting speculation, and it’s a shame it must remain so because he passed away while he was still a vital artist.

Shores, however, was also a talented penciler and not just of super-heroes.

I remember how wonderfully drawn, inked, and spooky was his take on Frankenstein and Igor in Creatures on the Loose #12. It was another example of how he used shadows and details to create a mood. His penciling didn’t need color; Syd did wonderful work in Marvel’s black-&-white magazines of the mid-1970s. In his Dracula Lives! story (in issue #1, written by Tony Isabella), he eliminates most of the backgrounds and tells a story, mostly, by the faces and expressions of the characters in each panel. Of course, he does use a bit of color in his mostly black-&-white story in Monsters Unleashed #1.

Apparently, in 1973, Shores had to convert his Red Wolf from a Western hero into a modern one in then-current times.

He did this seamlessly, creating a new modern hero and the new world he would live in.

I would like to make one correction.

On page 21, Allen Bellman referred to Robby Solomon as Robby Sullivan, although on page 26 his name is rendered correctly.

Cry Wolf!

Shores’ powerful cover for Red Wolf #4 (Nov. ’72) suggested that he might soon have got his chance to play a larger part in the Marvel Universe, had he not passed away in 1973. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I sadly remember Stan mentioning in the December 1973 Bullpen Bulletins that Syd Shores had passed away. Stan referred us to Monsters Unleashed #4, where he gave a longer tribute, mentioning how Syd was proficient at Westerns, mysteries, romance, and more.

Stan was right. Syd was proficient in keeping his readers involved and entertained. He is missed to this day.

Barry Pearl

Amen, Barry. By coincidence, the third member of the informal “Yancy Street Gang” tripod of the East Coast, Dr. Michael J. Vassallo—who interviewed Syd’s daughter Nancy Shores Karlebach for A/E #167—dropped us a line to point out that the woman shown beside him in the photo on p. 40, which we identified as being his wife Maggie, was actually Nancy herself. My dumb slip-up—please forgive!

Jim Amash, our associate editor, added these thoughts of his own:

Roy,

I enjoyed the Syd Shores tribute in A/E #168, as it was far past time to learn more about him as a person. His 1940s Timely covers were eye-catching, and he certainly was an important artist for that company during that period and the 1950s. His influence on the art staff and freelancers was important, whether he had a designated art director title or not.

While I was not a fan of his inking of Jack Kirby’s printed 1960s “Captain America” work, I must say that the originals were more interesting to look at. Was he, as some Marvel inkers were in the 1960s, being groomed to take over the title as the penciler, so that Kirby could move on to something else? Guess we’ll never

Jim Amash (Yeah, I’m still around.)

That you are, Jim, and we’re always glad to have your informed comments on a given issue of A/E. We both know that, if Syd had still been alive 20 years ago when you began conducting interviews for this magazine, he’d have been one of the first people you’d have sought out!

Next, this from Pierre Comtois:

Roy:

As you know, I’m a Silver Age Marvel fan, so when Alter Ego #167 spotlighted Syd Shores, even though he was a lesser light in the Marvel firmament, it caught my attention. The first time I encountered Shores’ work must have been over his inks on Gene Colan on Daredevil, which I liked, but it wasn’t until I saw his work on Jack Kirby’s pencils for Captain America that I really stood up and paid attention. Wow! His interpretation of late-period Kirby blew me away! Yeah, Joe Sinnott’s inks on the strip were solid and Dan Adkins’ somewhat less so, but both kept a little too closely to Kirby’s line. Shores took a bolder approach, I think, investing more of his own style over Kirby and turning those issues into things of beauty. He gave them more warmth and a three-dimensionality that literally popped off the page. I speak of that full-page illo for Captain America #103, with a foreshortened Cap swimming toward the reader wearing a re-breather. Unbelievable!

My next shock came with Tower of Shadows #5. “Oh, my gosh!”

I thought, “Shores can draw, too!?” After that, I often wondered why Shores hadn’t been assigned more penciling work. Unfortunately, he started to, but he died too soon.

So imagine my third shock with this ish of Alter Ego, when I saw those men’s-magazine illos. Fantastic! My only question is: Why didn’t he show this level of skill with his Golden Age comics work? As you likely realize by now, I’m just not there as a fan of Golden Age art, including Shores’, but man, now I know that, the whole time, he could really draw! So why didn’t he show the same level of skill in his comics work? This is a phenomenon I’ve noticed with other Golden Agers who produced beautiful work in other media but not in their day-to-day comics work. Was it a question of

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many 1940s-50s comicbook artists aspired to, so they would give these assignments their all, hoping to get more of them!

Another feature in A/E #167 was Michael T. Gilbert’s “Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!,” and its reprinting of a vintage study of longtime “Superman” editor Mort Weisinger spawned this commentary from reader Jerry Beck: Hello, Roy,

As a huge fan of Mort Weisinger’s Silver Age Superman Family—and an equally huge buff of the Columbia Sam Katzman movie serials (Superman, Batman and Robin, Blackhawk, Congo Bill, etc.), I find mention of Weisinger’s involvement with the live-action Superman serials (and TV series) quite intriguing, as both were major influences on my childhood and my succeeding life.

I’m still confused after reading Sam Moskowitz’s profile as to the timeline of when Weisinger returned to DC after the war. There is an implication that National asked him to consult (or write) for the movie serial before returning. Strangely enough, I always saw a more Weisinger-like influence in the second Kirk Alyn serial, Atom Man vs. Superman (1950), as this film introduces the concept of “The Empty Doom,” a phantom dimension in which Luthor imprisons his enemies, but from which a trapped victim can observe life on Earth. Sounds much like “The Phantom Zone.”

Moskowitz also mentions the “atomic energy” “Superman” stories which Weisinger was prevented from publishing in the 1940s; that lends itself to the theory that he may have suggested the character of Atom Man to the radio show (in 1945) and perhaps that Luthor be the Atom Man in the second live-action serial five years later.

Mort Weisinger only received a “Story Editor” credit on the George Reeves TV show. He may not have been the nicest guy in the world, but his contribution to the Superman mythos and canon are clear—and, by now, well-established.

Jerry Beck

Out Of His Depth?

The full-page shot of the Star-Spangled Avenger from Captain America #103 (July 1968) that so impressed young Pierre Comtois—with penciling by Jack Kirby and inks by Syd Shores. Script by Stan Lee. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

time, due to the number of pages Shores (and other Golden Agers) had to churn out, or lack of enthusiasm or respect for comicbooks themselves?

I must also give a tip of the hat to Michael J. Vassallo’s obit for Allen Bellman. I’ve read many obits now over the years, and though many have been touching, I this one was particularly heart-rending.

Maybe because Bellman’s age at 95 so closely paralleled that of my own father’s death at nearly the same time and at the same age.

Regardless, an excellent tribute to a pillar of comics history.

Pierre Comtois

Agreed, Pierre. Doc V. had a personal friendship with Allen that, I’m sure, contributed to what you felt when you read that tribute. Allen was such an enthusiastic, full-of-life individual that his passing could not help but affect all of us who knew him, even if only during his later years when he had resurfaced on the comics convention circuit.

Re the excellence of Syd’s men’s-magazine offerings shown in #167: We feel much more kindly toward much of his Golden Age comics output than you do, but the odds are that not only did the illustrations pay somewhat better than comics-page rates (though probably not as much more as you might imagine)—magazine illustration was a field that

Agreed, Jerry—and I felt that way even on the day in July 1965 that I quit my DC staff job working for him. After all, he had also had at least a co-creative hand in the development of Aquaman, Green Arrow, Johnny Quick, and several other Golden Age heroes. But I’m afraid I can’t add anything to your speculations about precisely what Mort W. might’ve had to do with Atom Man vs. Superman.

Since ideally we’d love to be printing comments on A/E issues within a few months of their on-sale dates, we’re taking a stab at covering three issues in this “re:” section. Hence, next, these reader-views on Alter Ego #168, whose cover features were artists Paul Norris and Willie Ito, in particular their connections to the Second World War. One A/E regular who’s done more than his share of research on this and other periods of comics and pulp history is George Hagenauer: Hi Roy,

Really enjoyed the Paul Norris piece in A/E #168. Like you, I have been interested in WW2 and how it affected the comics.

Richard Martin Fletcher, like Norris, went back and forth between comic strips and comicbooks (1939-1942 and early ’50s) and did a bunch of WW2 home front educational comics, including some fun paper-drive ones. I have a bunch of the art and a sketchbook of that material.

There is one mistake in the Norris material. The black-&white piece on page 24 is from a King Features mystery serial, not the Perry Mason comicbook. While often misidentified as solely black-&-white, the later Feature Books were full color. I own the first Perry Mason and have checked enough of the second issue that Norris did to know this is not from the comic. Can get you some scans if needed. The corner “1-AB” code indicates it is the first

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people’s literature” that can never really be definitively written. But we all contribute what we can, so thanks!

Next, an overview of much of #168 from Joe Frank:

Dear Roy,

Assuming that while both your Paul Norris and Willie Ito stories did have comicbook connections, it was the human-interest angles in both that made them intriguing. Norris, in the drawings and letters to his family, came across as a devoted, loving husband and father. But even with the surrender leaflets, there was an attempt to lessen the loss of lives on both sides. So, a humanistic outreach. Plus the mutual interest and bonding over brush techniques. Cool that his children, now grown, got to attend the movie premiere based on his 1941 co-creation Aquaman.

For what Willie Ito went through as a kid, his categorizing it as an “unfortunate situation” is a massive understatement. Harsh and unnecessary. Based simply on heritage, what could a preteen do that would rate him being incarcerated that way?

I looked up the internment camps on your map (p. 31). Gila River is nearby. I can’t imagine thousands in the desert with blazing heat and rattlesnakes. Even with a/c, summers here are no picnic. These weren’t convicted criminals… just treated as such because of their ethnicity. Sad.

I don’t recall many of the Disney characters in the ’60s, but I sure remember Beany and Cecil and the Jetsons. One that I’d heard about, but never encountered, was Wham-O Giant Comics #1.

Released shortly after I started collecting, I never saw the thing on the stands. Too big for the spinner rack, maybe it would have taken up too much shelf space? Poor distribution? Sure, I would’ve been interested, but you can’t buy what you don’t see. The Ito page seemed the equivalent of a short story, perhaps five or six pages in a regular comic.

“A” Is For “Aquaman” A 1993 color drawing by Paul Norris of his most famous artistic co-creation.

Courtesy of the Norris family & Richard Arndt. [Aquaman TM & © DC Comics; other art © Estate of Paul Norris.]

illustration for one of the mystery serials—a story with “AB” in the title.

Serialized fiction in newspapers was common from about the 1890s to the 1960s. A number of the syndicates provided it—sometimes as a condensed “novel” section on weekends. The King Features stories tend to be novelettes adapted to the serial format. Sometimes, as with Raymond Chandler, these were done to promote short-story editions of the author’s work. In other cases they were just recycled stories, usually from the pulps. In many cases the title was changed to make the story look like it was done for the paper. I own a lot of art by Norris from the series and use it in my museum exhibit on mystery-related art. He worked with a lot of major authors: Chandler, Woolrich, Ellery Queen, and even “Doc Savage” creator Lester Dent. Other artists who worked on the serials included pulp artists Ed Cartier (who also did some issues of Street & Smith’s Red Dragon) and Fredrick Blakeslee. Neil O’Keefe, who did another King Features strip, also did some.

George Hagenauer

We’re always happy—at least in one sense of the word—to stand corrected re any errors that creep into Alter Ego, George, whether it’s we or our cavortin’ contributors who offer them up. After all, the information that’s been gained concerning comicbooks, pulp magazines, newspaper strips, and the like was never saved and gathered by mainstream historians, but by popular-culture pack rats like us who, as I’ve often said, are accumulating piles of info for some ultimate history of “the

Thanks, too, for the remembrance of the late Mort Drucker. He was terrific! Should Alter Ego ever find a knowledgeable collector/ writer who can share what he or she knows about this great talent when he was in comics, please surprise me with a nice long article.

He’s justifiably beloved for his Mad work, but that was still panels and dialogue balloons.

Joe Frank

If someone puts together a thoughtful piece on Mort Drucker, Joe, especially on his work in four-color comics, we’ll be glad to feature it!

Meanwhile, there was speculation in the Paul Norris interview that well-known science-fiction writer Cordwainer Smith might’ve written the so-called “Propaganda Comic Book” that Norris drew during the siege of Okinawa, and interviewer Richard Arndt followed up on that: Roy,

I contacted Cordwainer Smith’s daughter about the possibility of Smith having written the surrender pamphlets that Paul Norris drew and this was her response: “Hi Richard—

“I simply don’t know. If I had had any idea how popular my father’s writings would continue to be, I probably would have paid more attention to him and his work when I was young!

“Best, Rosana”

So, not a yes, but the possibility is there.

Rich Arndt

We appreciate your extra efforts, Rich.

In closing, if a bit belatedly, Mark Carlson-Ghost, who wrote the excellent article back in A/E #164 on Rural Home and other fly-by-

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liking them for what they did during the war, he sent all the odd-size paper he could find… since they did not specify paper sizes. The Japanese would not accept the cargo—and a major court action lasted 20 years, resulting in my dad being fined $20K.

“5- We had a house in Oyster Bay, NY, and the cellar was half full to the ceiling with cases of liquor. I asked my dad why so much & he said he used to supply 3 local speakeasies with booze. He used to take a dinghy, row out on LI [Long Island] Sound to meet a waiting ship & bring the booze back.

Gorilla Warfare With regard to A/E #168, Christopher Boyko writes: “A little clarification is in order on the matter of The Whispering Gorilla by [sometime comics scripter] David V. Reed, the paperback cover of which is shown in the John Broome autobiography chapter. The UK paperback was actually published by Sydney Pemberton (not L.W. Curry, who are US booksellers, not publishers; probably their website was the source of the photo) in 1950. This paperback, despite the name, is not a reprint of the pulp story of the same title published in the May 1940 issue of Fantastic Adventures, which was written by Don Wilcox [seen above left]. It’s actually the text of the follow-up story ‘Return of the Whispering Gorilla’ [by Reed] from Fantastic Adventures, February 1943 issue [seen above right]! That issue is also where the cover art by Robert Gibson Jones, as used on the paperback, was originally published (and I’ll bet Jones never saw a dime from that, especially as the UK publisher scrubbed his name off the art!). For all its slipshod creation, the UK paperback is really rare and pricey these days. People really seem to go ape for it (sorry!).” [Art © the respective copyright holders.]

night comics publishers of the later World War II years, forwarded the following communication he had received from regular A/E contributor Shaun Clancy, who seems to have known the son of colorful Rural Home publisher Lindsey Baird: Dear Mark—

I saw the Lindsey Baird article, and I am friends with his son, but I don’t recall telling you that or sharing my interview with him. I did share with a Facebook private group… I haven’t had a chance to read the article in A/E, but I’ll summarize what I have from Lindsey’s son William in a later e-mail. Enclosed is a photo of Lindsey for his son Lindsey Jr.’s wedding to Elizabeth (whom I also interviewed) and I’ve copied and pasted a summary from Bill about his dad: “A few stories I heard when growing up:

“1- He had 58 employees in his printing company in NYC.

“2- During WWII the U.S. Navy had my father print European invasion maps in NYC. The Navy moved the operation to New Orleans for security reasons. They asked my Dad to work there & install the printing presses on the ships & only uniformed personnel were allowed on board. So they fitted my dad, weighting 300# [pounds], with a Navy uniform.

“3- He was drafted in the Army in WWII as an Artillery shore battery Sgt. In NYC. The enlisted men did not like the officer in charge, and when he was riding on the boat pulling a boat target my father read off the numbers to the gun battery but the EM changed them so the rounds would hit the lead boat. Since he was in charge, they relieved him and made him a cook.

“4- After WWII he sold 2 shiploads of paper to Japan. Not

“6- He said he was on the board of the St. Register Paper Co. He bet another member that he could increase paper production by 20% in any paper mfr. [manufacturer]. So he went to a paper mill for a week & told the owner ‘the place was dirty & to waterspray the floor.’ This happened every day. At the end of the week, they weighed the rolls of paper on the train and there was a 21% increase. The [increased] weight was due to the water evaporation being absorbed by the paper during the drying process.

“7- My dad was fantastic with numbers. At random, I gave him 6 numbers to be multiplied by another 6 numbers. He did it in his head & in a minute, he told me to write his answer down. It took me 15 minutes to get the number by longhand—his answer was right.

“8- I never heard that he went to jail. With the Navy employing him, I do not think they would [have] hire[d] him if he went to jail.”

Shaun Clancy

Our thanks for this wealth of info to Lindsey Baird, Jr… to Shaun Clancy… and to Mark Carlson-Ghost. See why we’ve often said that Alter Ego is, in its way, a group enterprise?

Now, to our e-mails and letters on the third issue covered this time around, Alter Ego #169, which spotlighted the life and career of my late longtime friend Gary Friedrich. Here are a few of the missives received on it, beginning with one from Bryan McMillan of Chicago: Hi Roy—

From the front cover (loved seeing Gary’s face on this!) to the back, #169 was an exceptional issue.

I greatly enjoyed reading about Gary and Roy and friends playing rock’n’roll in a pre-Beatles age in rural Missouri. My job takes me through Jackson, Perryville, the Cape [Cape Girardeau], and environs—or at least it used to, and I’m sure it will again soon enough—and I could easily picture some of the described goings-on and scenery. It’s a gift when that happens, peering through some portal opened only by words and affection for the departed. Very moving tribute. Thank you, Roy (and Gary’s family), for sharing such nice memories.

The role of the eloquent memorialist is not celebrated often enough, and—like joining the “My

Lindsey Baird Photo sent by his son Lindsey Baird, Jr., via Shaun Clancy.

As detailed by Mark CarlsonGhost in Alter Ego #164. Baird was the virtual uncrowned king of the fly-by-night comics publishers of the later World War II years. Still, you’ve got to admit… when anyone is that persistent, he’s clearly flying a lot more nights than one!

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Rock & Roll (Above:) As this issue was being assembled, Beverly Hahs, an old hometown friend of both Gary Friedrich and Roy Thomas, ran across this clipping from an August 1958 copy of the Jackson Missouri Cash-Book, which featured a photo of (left to right) Gary on drums, piano-player Pal Hacker, and Roy holding (but definitely not playing) a borrowed guitar—exact occasion and location unknown; maybe a rare practice session? The newspaper piece heralded the “Homecomers Talent Contest” mentioned on p. 7 of A/E #169.

And, lo and behold—for the only time in RT’s memory, a photo actually shows Gary playing the drums!

(Right:) Jim Mooney’s splash page for Ghost Rider #2 (Oct. 1973), as scripted by co-creator Gary Friedrich. The demon motorcyclist (or should we call him “the brimstone biker”?) has been thunderously rolling along ever since, including in films and on TV. Inks by Syd Shores. Thanks to Barry Pearl.

least I could do for a guy who meant so much to me—and to the comicbook industry. Without him, among other things—no Ghost Rider!

(Bottom right:) A placard that Gary had commissioned (from artist Robert A. Kraus) for selling autographed at conventions during the years when he was pressing his legal case with Marvel… which was eventually settled amicably. Of course, Gary well knew that artist Mike Ploog had co-created Ghost Rider, having designed the look and drawn the first stories. [Ghost Rider art & story TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Here, with more commentary, is Jim Salicrup, long an editor first at Marvel, then at Topps Comics, and now with his own Papercutz company, which among other things has revived the classic EC title Tales from the Crypt:

Best Friend Died” club—it’s a role no one really wants or asks for. But thankfully for the rest of us, Gary—and so many others memorialized so well in Alter Ego—had Roy to do it.

Roy,

Also a shout-out to the Ken Bald piece. I’m ashamed to discover another brilliant artist with a long career who knew everyone that I never heard of! Great picture of him and Kaye at the end.

Bryan McMillan

I’ve had friends, even relatives, in all the Missouri towns you mention, Bryan—and so probably did Gary. By the time these words are printed, I’ll have been back to Missouri yet again—this time as guest at the Cape Girardeau Comic-Con on September 30th/October 1st. They say you can’t go home again—but I keep dropping by for short visits every few years, it seems. Lots of good people there.

Devoting an issue to Gary, following his and my years-long discussions trying to arrange for a way to interview him for A/E, was the

I love Alter Ego. Papercutz and Alter Ego are both spelling “comicbook” as one word as a tribute to Stan… and because I think he was right.

The Gary Friedrich issue was excellent. I wish I could’ve given more work to Gary [at Topps], but it wasn’t like I had a line of 60 ongoing titles. I was lucky when Stan Goldberg contacted me

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when he was let go by Archie Comics—we were about to start two series that he was right for: The Three Stooges and Nancy Drew’s Clue Crew.

Thanks for hiring me at Marvel, back in 1972, then hiring the guy who would become my best friend, David Anthony Kraft, then virtually hiring me at Topps Comics. I guess I truly can’t thank you enough.

Jim Salicrup

Actually, Jim, as you know, it was Marvel VP and Marvel-UK overlord Sol Brodsky who actually hired you. All I did was show him the letter from a teenage Jim Salicrup who said he’d be happy to work for Marvel for free. Sol liked the sound of that, and of your very literate letter, and snapped you up—though I assume he did pay you a salary. From which you went on to a very successful career, which is still chugging ahead. (And it was my long-time buddy Len Brown—and your own track record at Marvel—that got you hired at Topps.)

Also, glad to hear you have Papercutz spell “comicbook” as one word, as Stan always preferred.

Deciding to do so permanently in A/E was my 95th birthday present to him… and I wish he’d stuck around so I could give him something for his 100th, in addition to the Lee coverage in our very next issue.

Happy to have received an e-mail about A/E #169 from someone I’ve known since 1962: Jean Thomas—always “Jeanie” to me. As many of you know, she and I were married from 1968 through sometime circa 1976-77… and in the ’70s she contributed her writing skills to the likes of Spidey Super Stories, Marvel’s romance comics, the origin tale of “Werewolf by Night,” and Night Nurse—the latter meaning that she was the major co-creator of Christine Palmer, most recently portrayed in the Marvel blockbuster Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. And, of course, from the late ’60s on, she knew Gary Friedrich as well….

Hi Roy—

Thank you so much for the issue dedicated to Gary. While I only knew him during the “Groovy Gary” years, of course I remember him also from the oft-told tales of your many youthful escapades.

And that trip to see Elvis—I 100% believe it was one of the Memphis Mafia calling.

Not to forget [his third wife] Nancy and Yoko the dog (“Yokums doesn’t like the curb”), and Gary perpetually in a cloud of smoke and fumes.

I’m glad he found AA, a happy marriage, and peace, whatever infirmities befell.

Jeanie Thomas

Thanks for writing, Jeanie—and for validating (after 53 years) Gary’s and my conviction that we nearly got a chance to meet our rock idol, Elvis Presley, in 1969, during his first-ever month-long stint in Las Vegas, as he

The Kid & The King (Above left:) Artist Mac Raboy’s dynamic New Year’s cover for Fawcett’s Captain Marvel Jr. #1 (Jan. 1, 1945), which would have gone on sale shortly before Elvis Presley turned eight in Memphis, Tennessee.

[Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

(Above right:) Not sure of the color of the cape in this black-&-white photo, but Elvis’ outfit here was basically white, the shade in which he most often appeared. Still, the short cape and sideburns would seem to be memories of his childhood love for Captain Marvel Jr. (Left:) Elvis’ “TCB” [“Taking Care of Business”] logo, which he put on rings and other items he gave out to friends and associates, was definitely descended from the original Shazam lightning bolt. The connection was made even clearer in the 2022 film Elvis, directed by Baz Luhrmann. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

launched a comeback that was like no other. If we’d known then to mention in the note we’d sent him that we’d been fans of Captain Marvel Jr., and not just that we were writers for “Marvel Comics,” he’d probably have charged out to meet us himself! As everybody knows since Elaine Dundy’s excellent 1985 biography Elvis and Gladys, Freddy Freeman and his Shazamic alter ego were not only loved by the King as a child, but also influenced his early sideburns, the lightning bolt on his “TCB” logo, even his short-caped Vegas-style costumes.

I’d totally forgotten that Gary’s third wife Nancy didn’t like to walk their pet pooch any more than his second wife had—and when Nancy took Yoko on walkies, she usually refused to “curb your dog” as NYC law required. We’d good-naturedly castigate her for that, but she was a good kid, and I hope she’s lived a happy and prosperous life since the ’70s.

Another personal note re my interview about Gary came from LaVona Robinson, with whom I’d shared classes during my early-’60s college days in Cape Girardeau. While she never met Gary, turns out she was familiar—at least from a distance—with one of the other members of our 1961-64 local rock’n’roll band, the Gaberlunzies/Galaxies, and sent this note after I sent her a copy of A/E #169: Hi Roy—

I’m really enjoying reading your magazine about your relationship with Gary—a great read! I’m looking forward to your autobiography.

What a shock to read that Rocky Bierschwal was in your band!

He went to my grade school (Washington [in Cape Girardeau]) and seemed to be on his way to a life of crime from early on. I didn’t know him, but his rep was well known in town. One of my friends told me that he was featured in a true-crime magazine at one point.

Gary was lucky in his “scuffle” with him, because later in life he served eight years in prison for nearly beating a man to death in

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Marble Hill [Missouri]. My brother said that Rocky worked as an enforcer who beat up union scabs, policemen, and anyone else who ticked him off. You and your friends were maybe a good influence on him, or were just lucky you didn’t piss him off.

A memory we share was the used-45 store, where one could buy old ex-jukebox records cheap. My friends and I loved that place. But you were right about it: we never saw anyone else while we were there.

The name “Narvel Felts” rang a bell. He had performed all around Southeast Missouri and Arkansas.

Your anecdote about Gary and [his English teacher] Miss [Sarah] Jenkins reminded me of an incident when I was teaching at Jackson High School between ’61 and ’63. A few boys had a folk group in the talent show and had received the most votes, but were disqualified because they had a line in their song about “Sarah somewhere dyeing her hair.”

You mentioned in your letter that you wondered how long Miss Jenkins had been at Jackson. I don’t know, but she was my dad’s teacher, and he would have been 108 this year. He idolized her. I had heard that she lost her sweetheart in the war [World War II], but I don’t know if that’s true. The older [female] teachers there hadn’t been allowed to be married when they started teaching.

Mrs. Wagner [a history teacher at JHS] told me that she had secretly married.

It was good to see the inspiration for “Boom Boom LaRahm.”

LaVona Robinson

Don’t Knock The Rock!

Charles “Rocky” Bierschwal’s brother Danny and sister-in-law Carol kindly sent us this touched-up photo from amongst the tributes that were put online when Rocky passed away in January of 2018… just a little over a half a year before his former fellow rock-band member Gary Friedrich did. According to Danny and Carol, Rock often played his guitar in church—and even sang, which he would never even attempt back in the early ’60s. Roy’s happy to have a pic of Rocky playing the guitar!

That last, folks, refers to why LaVona contacted me two or three years back: In the early 1960s, when we were in a writing class together, she had asked to borrow the “manuscript” of a humor story I’d written for class, “The Girl in the Target-Studded Bikini,” which included the above-monikered character, who was named after my then-girlfriend Linda Rahm… who herself appeared in two early1960s issues of Alter Ego as the super-heroine “Joy Holiday.” I’d told LaVona to keep the story as long as she wanted and forgot about it… but she reached out to me two or three years ago so she could finally return it… which has led to an enjoyable correspondence.

Thanks, LaVona, for the additional information about Miss Sarah Jenkins (to whom neither Gary nor I was probably half nice enough)… and about our band’s Elvis look-alike guitarist, Charles “Rocky” Bierschwal. You’re right that he led a rough life in later years, which included

Medic!

Splash page of Sgt. Fury #46 (Sept. 1967) by Gary Friedrich (writer) and John Severin (artist). This was Gary’s acclaimed “medic” story for the series. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

a spell or two in prison… but for the several years Gary and I knew him, we both really liked the guy, and he liked us. And yes, he was once covered in a national true-crime magazine, having been as involved as a suspect in a murder case while in his twenties… but he turned out to be innocent as a new-born babe, I’m happy to say. I’m also glad to report that Rocky settled down in later years, and perhaps the notation under the photo of him at left will surprise you a bit, just as it did me.

Got a comment or critique or correction for this issue? Contact us at: Roy Thomas e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135

The Alter-Ego-Fans online chat group is still going strong at https:// groups.io/g/Alter-Ego-Fans. If you have trouble joining, contact moderator Chet Cox at mormonyoyoman@gmail.com and he’ll help you get on board. This discussion group deals with all things Golden and Silver Age, and Roy pops his head in occasionally—mostly to ask for help with scans for Alter Ego! Oh, and Roy’s manager/pal John Cimino operates (and named) the Roy Thomas Appreciation Board on Facebook, covering Ye Editor’s doings and undoings, including upcoming convention appearances, comicbook sightings, and the like. Check it out—and see ad on p.46!

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65

In Memoriam

Lee Goldsmith (1923-2021)

“The Comic Stories Were Probably The Most Fun”

“I

by Mitchell Brown

got out of the Army in December of 1945,” Lee Goldsmith said in an interview with the local newspaper in Cutler Bay, Florida, in 2015. (He had been born in 1923). “I had done a little bit of writing in high school and in the Army. He [the editor at DC Comics, probably AA sub-group editor Sheldon Mayer or his story editor Julius Schwartz] gave me a plot outline and a couple of comicbooks to read, ‘The Flash’ and ‘Green Lantern,’ and I went home and sat down and tried to write a script for one of those characters. I showed it to him and he must have liked it, for he bought it. I was very lucky. I had no experience whatsoever in writing comicbooks, but I learned that

Lee Goldsmith at age 92, in an event held at the East Ridge Retirement Community in Cutler Bay, Florida. That day, he was signing color copies of the covers of several comicbooks in which he had authored stories, including those shown in this photo: Flash Comics #102 (Dec. 1948), Wonder Woman #31 (Sept.-Oct. ’48), and Green Lantern #27 (Aug.-Sept. ’47). Photo by Jessica Bal of the Miami Herald, with special thanks to Mitchell Senft. [Photo © the respective copyright holders.]

Seen below is the Goldsmith-scripted splash page from Green Lantern #30 (Feb.-March 1948), with art by Alex Toth; thanks to Bob Bailey for the scan.

[TM & © DC Comics.]

there’s a lot to it. It’s like writing a movie script.”

It wasn’t a lot of money, as he recalled, but it was enough to afford a little apartment in his hometown. “I was only 22 or 23, so it was great for me. I averaged two scripts a week. I got paid $17 a page, and I made a couple of hundred dollars a week, which is nothing now but in the late ’60s and early ’70s it was very nice in Manhattan.” [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: In another interview shortly afterward, Goldsmith gave his rate as $12 a page… but doubtless the rate varied over the years. The $17 is most likely a rate fairly late in his career.]

As time went on and super-heroes lost their luster in the 1950s, he turned to writing scripts for DC’s war, Western, and romance lines, coming up with stories for DC romance titles like Girls’ Love Stories, Young Love, and Heart Throbs until the early 1970s.

Beginning in the ’50s, Goldsmith also worked as a lyricist writing for Broadway shows like Shine!, Chaplin, Quality Street, Ladykiller, and Abe, but he told the reporter that the comics stories were probably the most fun for him.

“I was on a bus once, going back to my apartment, and there were two guys in front of me who were talking about the comicbook they were reading,” he said. “I had written the script and it was all I could do not to lean forward and say, ‘I know how it ends.’”

Lee Goldsmith died on October 5, 2021.

Mitchell Brown contributed this brief obituary, and numerous others, to the site https://comiclists.wordpress. com/2021/12/27/gone-but-not-forgotten-20212-edition/.

A fuller interview with Lee Goldsmith, from another source, will see print in a forthcoming issue of Alter Ego.

66

In Memoriam

Ron Goulart (1933-2022)

“The Type of Career That Most Writers Dream About”

P

by Rick L. Phillipps

rolific author Ron Goulart passed away at the age of 89 on January 14, 2022. He was born in Berkeley, California, on January 13, 1933, to Joseph Silvera Goulart and Josephine Macri Goulart.

He had the type of career that most writers dream about.

He wrote almost every type of genre, when most writers usually stick with one. He wrote science-fiction, mystery, comic strips, comicbooks, pop-culture history, non-fiction, and more. While often using his real name, he also wrote under various pen names, among them Chad Calhoun, R.T. Edwards, Ian R. Jamieson, Josephine Kains, Jillian Kearny, Howard Lee, Zeke Masters, Frank S. Shawn, and Joseph Silva.

Ron Goulart in a photo taken a few years back, courtesy of Mrs. Frances Goulart & Rick L. Phillipps—and the title page from Warlock #5 (April 1973), penciled by Gil Kane & inked by Tom Sutton. It was Kane, then Goulart’s neighbor in rural Connecticut, who recommended him to Marvel as a scripter. Thanks to Barry Pearl.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Through the years he has worked with people like William Shatner through their series of TekWar novels and artist Gil Kane on the comic strip Star Hawks. He has written novelizations of movies and television shows as varied as the 1977 movie version of The Island of Dr. Moreau to Laverne and Shirley. His books such as After Things Fell Apart, The Same Lie Twice, and Calling Dr. Patchwork were nominated for Hugo and Edgar Awards.

His “Groucho Marx” mystery series entertained and delighted many, and he has worked for both DC and Marvel Comics. For DC he did the novelization of their Challengers of the Unknown.

For Marvel, under the name Joseph Silva, he did novels based on Captain America and The Incredible Hulk as well as (under his own name) comicbooks such as Supernatural Thrillers, Warlock, and Marvel Preview. He has also written many books on the history of comics, making him one of the world’s greatest comicbook historians.

His talents and contributions to the art and craft of writing are too numerous to mention in just a few brief paragraphs. The world of literature has lost a quiet but still towering and generous figure.

He was generous to a fault. He would write his fans long and lavish helpful letters, even though it would cost him the time he held so precious. It was time that he could have spent writing one of his stories. There were occasions when a fan would mention to him that he was having a hard time finding one of his books. He would take one from his own library and sign it and give it to him.

Sometimes he would even add a drawing next to his signature.

Ron leaves behind his lovely wife Frances Goulart and sons Sean Lucien and his partner Monique of Connecticut and Steffan Eamon and his wife Jennifer of Florida.

67

In Memoriam

Albert DeGuzman (1948 [or 1951] to 2022)

“[He] Always Figured Out The Best Way To Do It!”

A

by Bob Rozakis

lbert DeGuzman was always smiling. That’s what I remember whenever anyone asks about him. No matter the task, even something he’d never done before, Albie welcomed it with a smile and always figured out the best way to do it. That, and he always called me “Boss,” even years after we both left DC. Though he was always warm and friendly, Albie was very private about his personal life. Few of the people he worked with knew much about his past or about his wife Vicky and daughter Michelle. We knew his birthday was February 15th, but there appears to be conflicting information about whether he was born (in Manila, the Philippines) in 1948 or 1951. He passed away on January 3, 2022.

Albie started working for DC in the early 1970s, cleaning up Photostats of the art for the Famous First Editions, a series of tabloid-sized reprints of the earliest classics from the company’s history, such as Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27. This was a painstaking process that involved cutting apart an actual copy of the original book, shooting stats of the pages, cleaning the art with white-out, and then re-inking the line work as needed. (A search of the Internet will turn up a number of the stat pages from the first “Superman” story for sale, listed as “pencils by Joe Shuster, inks by Albert DeGuzman.”)

Albie then joined the staff as a production artist, teaming up with Bob LeRose as our “Cover Department.”

Every piece of DC cover art went Albert DeGuzman through their hands, as they (on right) with fellow production man Bob LeRose, circa added logos, the 1980s—and several of the key “Batman” panels DeGuzman helped restore for DC’s tabloid-sized typeset and reprinted of the Dark Knight’s first outing, in Famous hand-lettered First Editions #C-28 in 1974. 1940s art by Bob Kane; script bursts and

by Bill Finger. Photo by Bob Rozakis. [TM & © DC Comics.] balloons, and the occasional art correction to create the finished product. He also established himself as a freelance letterer, working on hundreds of stories from 1978 through 2003.

When it was decided that DC needed high-quality photos of its Golden and Silver Age issues, Albie took on the role of staff photographer. This included a two-day stint at my house, shooting cover after cover of the books in my collection. It was a tedious process, but he never complained, doing it with his ever-present smile.

Albie also enjoyed joining in some of DC’s after-hours activities.

When a group of staffers organized a weekly bowling night, he was there.

And when I started the DC softball team, he was quick to join. However, after seeing him swing the bat and attempt to play the field, I had to ask, “Albie, have you ever played this game?”

He smiled and said, “No, Boss, but I’ll figure it out.”

And, of course, he did.

Bob Rozakis was a writer and editor at DC Comics during the 1970s and 1980s, and headed the company’s production department from 1981-98.

68

In Memoriam

Mel Keefer (1926-2022)

“The Better You Are Able To Draw The Human Figure, The Better A Cartoonist You’ll Become”

by Alberto Becattini

A

rtist Melvin James Keefer passed away on February 11, 2022. He was 95.

Born in Los Angeles on July 2, 1926, he graduated from LA High School in 1944, then served in the US Navy until 1946. Back in civvies, he attended college for two years under the “GI School Bill” to become a dentist, but realized he was better suited for art, so he attended the Art Center School in LA and later Jefferson Machamer’s school in downtown Santa Monica. While there, he met his future wife Rosanne. They got married on July 29, 1951, and raised three children.

His first professional art job was drawing the Perry Mason comic strip, based on the Earle Stanley Gardner books, for three months... after which he turned to comicbooks, including a Clyde Beatty book.

From 1952-53 he drew stories for Toby Press, developing his recognizable photorealistic style. From 1953-61 he worked off and on for Dell/Western Printing, drawing likenesses of movie and TV actors for such titles as Restless Gun, Swamp Fox, Tales of the Texas Rangers, The Detectives, and Zorro, as well as the Gene Autry newspaper strip in 1954-55.

In 1953-54 he drew another TV-based strip, Dragnet, for the Los Angeles Mirror Syndicate; from 1955-73 came Mac Divot, a Chicago Tribune Syndicate strip about golf written by Jordan Lansky. In 1961 he illustrated a book on golf, It’s the Damned Ball. From 1961-63 he drew yet another daily strip, Thorn McBride, featuring the Naval commander of a US atomic submarine, for the Copley News Service.

In 1959-60 Keefer contributed to Zeke Zekley’s Sponsored Comics with a parody weekly page, Willis Barton, M.D., which was bylined “Otto Graff” or “Orson.” In 1964 he drew the “comic strip” Bash Brannigan – Secret Agent for the Richard Quine film How to Murder Your Wife, starring Jack Lemmon as a comic artist.

Mel spent the 1960s working primarily in TV animation, doing character design and drawing layouts and storyboards for HannaBarbera, Grantray-Lawrence, Filmation Associates, and Pantomime Pictures. He and his family lived in Rome and London during 1965-66. While in England, he did some comic work for Fleetway Publications.

Mel Keefer and a page of his Flash Gordon parody “Crash Gordon” from Drag Cartoons #2 (1963). The artist drew many more notable pieces of art than tto represent his work done in a comicbook/comic strip style.

Thanks to Alberto Becattini. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Back in the USA, Keefer drew stories for Pete Millar Publishing’s and Petersen Publishing’s magazines Drag Cartoons, Big Daddy Roth, Motorcycletoons, and Hot Rod Cartoons. From 1978-81 Keefer took over the strip Rick O’Shay.

For roughly seven years, he worked for two companies that produced books and filmstrips for public education schools, Canoga Industries and the US Historical Society, doing portraits of hundreds of famous people.

He continued to work in animation and storyboards almost until his retirement in 1990.

Mel’s first wife Rosanne died in 1982. Six years later he met Joyce Eisenberg, who in 1990 would become his second wife. With her, he became involved in charitable organizations, most notably the Joyce Eisenberg Keefer Breast Center in Santa Monica. He would also share a studio with his daughter Susan and occasionally paint. The present writer interviewed him in depth for Alter Ego #119 (2013).

Mel Keefer was a multi-talented artist and a real gentleman.

He will be sorely missed by all those who had the good fortune to know him.

Alberto Becattini is an Italian historian of comicbook and comic strips who, in addition, has translated and/or written numerous stories and articles for Disney-related comics and other publications.

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

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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!

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BLACK HEROES IN U.S. COMICS! Awesome overview by BARRY PEARL, from Voodah to Black Panther and beyond!

Interview with DR. WILLIAM FOSTER III (author of Looking for a Face Like Mine!), art/artifacts by BAKER, GRAHAM, McDUFFIE, COWAN, GREENE, HERRIMAN, JONES, ORMES, STELFREEZE, BARREAUX, STONER—plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS.

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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 NOVEMBER 2022!

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TEAM-UP COMPANION

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73

Emil Gershwin’s Spy Smasher—& Orson Welles!

Or—How To Draw Comics The Gershwin Way!

I

by Brian Cremins

n an interview with Michael William Kaluta for his 1989 book The Great Comic Book Artists, Volume 2, Ron Goulart asked that artist/author—already legendary for his atmospheric and innovative work on titles like The Shadow—about his influences.

After mentioning inspirations ranging from Aubrey Beardsley and Edgar Rice Burroughs to Al Williamson and Philip K. Dick, Kaluta replied, “You cannot be a comicbook artist without seeing Citizen Kane.” In another nod to actor and director Orson Welles, Kaluta urged Goulart’s readers to pay close attention to the work of British filmmaker Carol Reed: “You can’t become a comicbook artist without seeing The Third Man,” the 1949 thriller featuring Welles and his fellow Mercury Theater performer Joseph Cotton.

“You’ve just got to see it… [It’s] something that’s going to change your perspective” [Goulart 64].

The Man In The Iron Director’s Chair A 1960s reissue poster of director/actor/co-writer Orson Welles’ influential film Citizen Kane (1941)—juxtaposed with artist Emil Gershwin’s splash page for “The Man in the Iron Mask” from Spy Smasher #4 (April 1942); script by Otto Binder. [Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics; movie poster © the respective copyright holders.]

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The Third Man Orson Welles was a force not only in Citizen Kane, which he directed as well as starred in, but also as a major actor in director Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949), one of the great “film noir” outings. Welles is seen above left as Harry Lime in the big “reveal” scene… while the image above right captures the feel and mood of the movie, which is set in postwar Vienna. At right is a poster for the film. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

When I was asked to write a piece about Emil Gershwin’s work on Fawcett’s “Spy Smasher” feature in the early 1940s, I thought I’d focus on his elegant and dynamic line work, which reminds me so much of Lou Fine’s beautiful art on “The Flame” for Fox. But, as I did more research on Gershwin’s career, and as I studied “The Man in the Iron Mask,” written by Otto Binder and published in Spy Smasher #4 (April, 1942), I began to fixate on a panel from page 6 of the story, one that resembles closely Welles’ opening sequence from Citizen Kane, which was released in the U.S. in the early fall of 1941.

While I can’t confirm whether or not Gershwin saw Kane on its first release, there’s no denying that his use of perspective— especially of bird’s-eye-view shots that establish the atmosphere of a scene—echoes some of the images in Welles’s first and most ground-breaking film. At the very least, Welles and Gershwin must have been fans of the same kinds of films, the German Expressionist classics that changed the nature of cinema in the 1920s before Hitler and the Nazis came to power and tried to destroy what those Expressionist painters and directors had created. Or maybe Gershwin, like Welles, simply understood that any two-dimensional medium requires some sleight-of-hand— the manipulation of anatomy, perspective, and composition—in order to move audiences.

Early in Citizen Kane, the reporter who’s trying to piece together Kane’s life visits his widow Susan, played by the resplendent actress Dorothy Comingore. Still reeling from her tumultuous relationship with Kane, Susan, now a heavy drinker, is working as a nightclub singer. To introduce her, Welles includes a shot in which the camera leads us over the roof of a club called the El Rancho, where she is performing. Through the building’s skylight, we soon see her sitting at a table and drinking. In his analysis of this innovative scene in The Magic World of Orson Welles, an essential book on the filmmaker, film scholar James Naremore describes the rain that covers the “garish, dripping poster” we first see of Susan, then the way that “the camera moves upward, sliding over the roof of the El Rancho and down through the skylight” [Naremore 61].

The reporter has asked to speak to Susan because he’s trying to solve the mystery of Kane’s final utterance. Of this scene, Naremore writes, “Here again we are made to feel that the search for ‘Rosebud’ is tawdry and sensational, notably so in a deep-focus shot that concludes [the reporter] Thompson’s abortive interview with Susan.” This first step in Thompson’s journey to discover Kane’s secrets is a failure, and, even at the end of the film, he is

Emil Gershwin’s Spy Smasher—& Orson Welles!

Through A Skylight Darkly (Above:) Welles’ 1941 camera looks through the skylight of the El Rancho and we see actress Dorothy Comingore in one of the many famous shots from Citizen Kane. [© the respective copyright owners.]

(Right:) This Gershwin panel from the “Iron Mask” story in Spy Smasher #4 sure looks like a tribute to the El Rancho scene from Citizen Kane, right? Of course, chances are fairly good that this cinematic camera angle was in writer Otto Binder’s script; he was a big movie fan, too, and had almost certainly seen Kane. [Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.]

unable to explain what this “Rosebud” business is all about. Of course, if you stick around until the end of the movie, you’ll learn the truth that eluded Thompson; but, for those of you who haven’t seen the film, I’ll avoid any spoilers here. The bigger question for us is this: Did Emil Gershwin have this atmospheric and dynamic skylight shot in mind when he was drawing Binder’s “The Man in

What’s Opera, Doc? (Right:) Lon Chaney plays a mean organ in the 1925 film The Phantom of the Opera. Accept no [remake] substitutes!

(Below:) Two panels from Spy Smasher #4 that seem just a little bit, shall we say, influenced by that eerie silent-screen classic. [© the respective copyright holders.]

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the Iron Mask” for Fawcett?

It sure looks like it. On page 6 of the story, Gershwin gives us another glimpse of Spy Smasher’s protagonist, a Nazi saboteur wearing what looks like a helmet made on the planet Mongo by Alex Raymond-worshipping artisans who’ve been tasked with designing Iron Man’s armor (the original version, where he looks like a walking hot-water heater). “And as the night hours slip by,” Binder writes in the caption that appears in the upper left-hand corner of the panel, “a weird figure of the night prowls endlessly through the musty halls of Castle Fenris!” That figure is nothing more than a tiny silhouette striding to the center of the panel, the light of the fireplace illuminating the castle’s flagstones, its stone walls, and the wooden grate which we, as readers, are peering through, down and below, into what looks like a scene from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death.”

(A few pages later, Binder and Gershwin will include an allusion to Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.”)

It’s a stylish, dramatic panel, one drawn with humor, confidence, and courage. It takes a lot of guts to draw like that, to pull the reader’s attention away from the words and towards a space of distortion and abstraction.

Or is it really a kind of distraction, a sleight of hand, Dale Arden sawed in half, or Hoppy the Marvel Bunny pulled out of a hat by Patton Oswalt’s Old Magician? You can look and see for yourself. What’s looking back at you when you see this panel? Like a good magic trick, a good drawing should keep your eyes off the magician and on the trick itself, a substitution of disbelief, a willingness to dismiss the reality that this is nothing more than a series of pen or brush strokes printed on a piece of newsprint. It’s nothing. It’s dust. But in magic, like in good comicbooks, you trust that Dale Arden will return in one piece, that Hoppy will team up with Mr. Tawny, and it will be good.

I’m a writer, but I’ll tell you this: I’m but a poor cousin to the drawer, the painter, the seer. I love you, Shakespeare, but you’re no Rembrandt. David Bowie, let’s dance, but I’m still going steady with David Hockney.

“It Was Greek To Me…” A couple of Orson Welles’ drawings from The Mercury Shakespeare - Julius Caesar, edited by Welles and Roger Hill (Harper & Brothers, 1939). [© the respective copyright owners.]

Do you remember when you first learned to draw? Of course you do. Just think back for a second. Maybe you were sitting at the Ground Round and scribbling on a placemat as you waited for your fries. Or maybe it was on a sheet of soft, lumpy manila paper on a kindergarten desktop. Or, like a lot of us, it might have had something to do with the first time you discovered your favorite artist. It could have been one of John Buscema’s thumbnail sketches of Conan the Barbarian, or Gene Colan’s Dracula drifting in a cloud of pencil strokes, or one of Ramona Fradon’s crisp, clean renderings of Aquaman and his undersea kingdom. I hope it’s a nice memory for you, that feeling of looking at a drawing and asking, “How did they do that? And could I do that, too?”

So how did Emil Gershwin draw this story? What were his inspirations? As you probably already know, thanks to Michael T. Gilbert’s careful research, the great Alex Toth, who’s inspired generations of cartoonists from Keith Giffen to Dylan Williams, was a huge fan of Gershwin’s work. In what Gilbert calls an “expressive letter” that Toth wrote to Gershwin’s daughter Nancy not long after her father’s death in 1999, one of the great masters of comic art expresses his awe and admiration: “Gershwin was Gershwin!” Toth wrote. “He knew how to draw! Very well! Faces, figures! Didn’t need tricky stylized-embroideries to do convincing jobs of it—” [See pp. 5 & 6 of this issue.]

Emil Gershwin’s Spy Smasher—& Orson Welles!

Later in the letter, Toth also praises Gershwin’s “deft way of blending the illustrative/realistic/fotobased/style with freer cartoony fun—exaggerations, extremes allowed—within reason, mind!” Even a quick glance at a Gershwin story like “The Man in the Iron Mask” reveals that just about everything Toth wrote is true. Gershwin could certainly draw “very well,” but I’ll have to take issue with some of Toth’s arguments. Yes, as Toth puts it, “Gershwin drew starkly-simple and strong, dramatically-well/ cross-lit/faces/figure, and—by gum!—set pieces, props, background!!!” But good rendering isn’t enough, and neither is perfect perspective, or impeccable, balanced composition. I’m not so sure how “fotobased” Gershwin’s work is, either. No, to get to that next level of what it means to be an artist—not just a person who draws or paints—you need to enter a new landscape, one where “exaggerations” and “extremes [are] allowed,” that place where “reason” makes room for intuition, or magic. That’s the kind of work that Emil Gershwin does in “The Man in the Iron Mask,” an otherwise unremarkable, forgettable story that remains interesting not for its script, and not even for its pacing or figure drawing, but for Gershwin’s striking and remarkable use of space.

If you want to learn how to draw, don’t read “The Man in the Iron Mask.” But, if you want to learn how to create a piece of art, this is the tale for you.

If Kaluta is right that every comicbook artist should study Welles’ work, it’s important to remember that Welles was a pretty good draughtsman himself. But, apart from his varied talents as writer, director, producer, raconteur, and occasional pitchman for wine and frozen peas, his true love was stage magic. In his book, Naremore points out that, “[a]ccording to John Houseman, Welles ‘was at heart a magician whose particular talent lies not so much in his creative imagination (which is considerable) as in his proven ability to stretch the familiar elements of theatrical effect far beyond their normal point of tension.’” [Houseman qtd. in Naremore 30] Naremore agrees, pointing out that “watching [Welles films such as Kane or The Magnificent Ambersons] is sometimes like attending a performance by Blackstone or Sorcar,” a cinematic style that owes as much to magicians like Henry Houdini (or Walter B. Gibson) as it does to an “illusionism as old as [the films of Georges] Méliès” [Naremore 30]. Part of what it means to be a magician, like being a teacher or a stand-up comedian, is inviting the audience

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Let’s All Go To The Movies!

Alan, Eve, and Admiral Corby all agree that Castle Fenris “looks like a movie set” here on the second page of “The Man in the Iron Mask.”

[Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.]

to enter a realm of pure delight, a landscape that resembles the world around us, but one in which our only responsibility is to pay close attention, knowing full well that what we are seeing is a prank, a joke, an illusion, a good-hearted and joyful poke at reality. Drawing at its best does the same thing. After all, drawing, as you’ll remember from your childhood art classes, is more about seeing than it is about rendering. It’s not how you draw it, but what you saw in front of you in the first place.

I won’t spend too much time on the script of “The Man in the Iron Mask.” Despite the allusion to Alexandre Dumas in the title, the story ends with that swipe from Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum,” as Eve Corby and her father nearly perish beneath the swinging blade set in motion by the story’s villain. Gershwin, however, shows us in one scene after another that he’s a film buff, with loving references not only to Kane but also to Lon Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera (1925).

Both Binder and Gershwin give us a hint of what we’re in for in the first panel of the story’s second page, where Spy Smasher and his companions remark that the old castle they are approaching “looks like a movie set!” A page earlier, as the story opens, we see Spy Smasher in his dashing alter ego as Alan Armstrong, the “millionaire sportsman” (as he describes himself), sitting beside his lady friend Eve and her father, Admiral Corby, who wants to show his daughter and his future son-in-law the ruins of Castle Fenimore, which, Eve explains, is currently being renovated. Once that work has been completed, the castle will be named Fort Corby as a tribute to her dad: “They’ve promised to honor Daddy with that name for superintending the job! I’m so proud!” Eve exclaims, just after we see a close-up of the castle. Little do Alan, Eve, and Admiral Corby know that the only real ghost in what Binder describes as the “crumbly old castle, once brought stone by stone from Europe,” is that Nazi saboteur, a former musician who made the mistake of not showing respect to Hitler. As a result, his head has been sealed in an iron mask, one which can be removed only when the villain finds and murders Spy Smasher.

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The Battle Heats Up A goggled hero gets iron-masked… and treated to a “dirge of death” in these panels from the tenth page of “Iron Mask.”

[Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.]

Of course, by the end of the story, Alan defeats the spy by knocking him out cold and casting him into the moat that surrounds the castle. Though he’s not able to save all of the workers rebuilding the castle, Spy Smasher manages to rescue Eve and her father from certain doom, and he even manages to keep the Castle Fenimore renovations on track. In the closing panels of the story, the narrator tells us, “Fort Corby is completed and dedicated,” prompting two bystanders to remark, “Hurray for Fort Corby!” and “They say if it wasn’t for Spy Smasher—” While Binder’s script is an early effort, one where he’s just beginning to develop his style as a comicbook writer, Gershwin’s art is a master class in how to manipulate perspective and composition to entertain the reader.

Take a closer look at page 3 of the story, and it’s clear that Gershwin took Binder at his word. Not only does Castle Fenris “[look] like a movie set,” but so do the drawings in these panels.

On this page, “The Man in the Iron Mask” begins to look like a miniature film, one with sometimes bizarre and eccentric camera angles that represent visually the madness and brutality of the Nazis. Especially striking is a three-panel sequence in the center of this page, where the antagonist, Lon Chaney-style, plays what one of the visitors calls “a funeral dirge!” on an organ with a skull perched above its keyboard.

In the first of these three panels, as Alan, Eve, and her father explore what lies “within the heavy castle walls,” Gershwin includes subtle but creepy details to establish what Binder describes in a caption as “the silence of the tombs….” For example, in the lower left-hand corner of the page’s third panel, Gershwin includes a leopard carpet at the foot of a grand staircase as a bar of music floats from one side of the image to the other. That fragment

Emil Gershwin’s Spy Smasher—& Orson Welles!

Let There Be Battle!

The fight begins! Panels from page 4 of the tale. [Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.]

of “weird, spine-tingling music” leads the reader’s eye up the staircase, one that leads to “a secret room” where the villain “softly [runs] his fingers” across the keyboard, the cobwebs shadowed by the single candle jutting out of the skull’s crown.

Gershwin then fills most of the next panel with an image of “the winding stairs” that lead to the tower, a series of steps that, at first glance, look like triangles, or like the disembodied geometrical shapes from Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy’s early 1920s experimental film Ballet Mécanique, which you can find on YouTube. For all his simplicity and directness of style, Gershwin’s an artist who plays with form in a clever and visually satisfying way. Using the staircase motif in both the first and the last panels of this sequence, Gershwin is showing us how an artist with skill, sensitivity, and intuition can bring to life even the most hackneyed script. He leads us from one panel to the next using the staircase, the cobwebs, the pipes, and then the staircase again, only, this time, we see the Man in the Iron Mask descending the steps. Are these drawings also a sly allusion to Marcel Duchamp’s painting “Nude Descending a Staircase” (1912)? I’d like to think so. Gershwin’s use of distortion in these three panels, not to mention the clear debt he owes to the Futurist and Cubist artists of the early twentieth century, provides the “weird atmosphere” that Alan Armstrong had described just a page earlier.

When I look at Gershwin’s drawings, I’m again that kid who tried so hard in kindergarten to draw Aquaman. Even though the Sea King came out looking like a tiny goldenrodyellow and asparagus-green egg, in my imagination he looked just like one of Ramona Fradon’s beautiful drawings, suave and handsome. It was enough to keep me drawing, and I still keep a 64-pack set of Crayolas next to my drawing table. A few years

The Iron-Masked Phantom Of The Opera In The Castle A fantastic sample of Gershwin’s innovative, film-inspired drawing style, from page 3 of the story in Spy Smasher #4—with still another organ recital! [Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.]

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later, in the mid-1980s, I took a used VHS tape and recorded Citizen Kane when it played on the TBS network. I think I taped over The Wrath of Khan or Eddie Murphy’s Delirious or the documentary What Happened to Kerouac? The tape, I discovered too late, ran out before the final scenes of Citizen Kane. It would be another couple of years before I’d discover the meaning of the word “Rosebud.”

On my old drawing of Aquaman, I swear that’s a true story! Meanwhile, does anyone know where can I mail in my $5 and proofs-of-purchase for a charter membership in the Emil Gershwin Fan Club? I’m in.

Postscript: It’s 5:01 p.m. on Friday, April 15, 2022, and here on this rainy afternoon in Chicago I’m listening to the Mercury Theater on the Air’s The War of the Worlds (October 30, 1938). Beside me I have a copy of Secret Origins #5, August 1986, in which Welles’ infamous broadcast plays an important role in Roy & Dann Thomas’ re-telling of The Crimson Avenger’s origin, drawn by Gene Colan—another master who found inspiration in the films of the 1930s and 1940s—with inks by Mike Gustovich, colors

by Carl Gafford, and lettering courtesy of David Cody Weiss.

It’s one of those comics I would copy when I first learned to draw as a kid, and it’s just as good as I remember it.

Works Cited: Gilbert, Michael T. “Into the Unknown!” in Adventures into the Unknown! The Pre-Code Horror Anthology, Issues 13–16 (Vol. 4).

Dark Horse Books, 2015: 7–12.

Goulart, Ron. The Great Comic Book Artists, Volume 2. St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

The Pit And The Pandemonium Gershwin’s cinematography-on-paper finale begins to unfold on page 12 of the “Iron Mask” saga.

[Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.]

Lee, Stan and John Buscema. How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. Fireside Books, 1978.

Naremore, James. The Magic World of Orson Welles. Southern Methodist University Press, 1989.

Brian Cremins is a Professor of English at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois. He is the author of Captain Marvel and the Art of Nostalgia and co-editor with Brannon Costello of The Other 1980s: Reframing Comics’ Crucial Decade.

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