Alter Ego #179

Roy Thomas' Fantastically Forgetful Comics Fanzine

Celebrating the FANTASTIC FOUR’s

61st Anniversary 10.95 $

(’cause we sure blew their 60th!)

& STAN LEE’s 100th Birthday!

In the USA

No. 179 January 2023

DOUBLE BONUS!

KLEIN GEORGHE & “W EN THE INER SUB-MAR A

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82658 00472

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Fantastic Four, Sub-Mariner TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

WAS BOWERY BUM!”

EXTRA! Will Murray, et al., on

THE EARLY F.F.

and John Cimino on

STAN’S GREATEST STORIES!

Vol. 3, No. 179 January 2023 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

Contents

Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll

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

Writer/Editorial: A Celebration For The Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Fantastic Four #1—A Patchwork Classic? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Startling speculations by Michael Feldman—plus a sidebar by Roy Thomas.

Proofreaders

Origin Of The Origin Of The Fantastic Four? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Cover Artists

Was The Fantastic Four CANCELED In 1961? . . . . . . . . . . . .13

William J. Dowlding David Baldy

Ken Quattro uncovers a possible source in a 1940 Marvel Tales pulp mag.

Will Murray probes some mysterious lapses in the early Marvel schedule.

Jack Kirby & Sol Brodsky

Under The Microscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Tom Ziuko

When The Sub-Mariner Was A Bowery Bum . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Nick Caputo analyzes the original art from FF #3—including its backside.

Cover Colorist With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Bob Bailey Diane Boden Tom Brevoort Nick Caputo John Cimino Eileen Clancy Pierre Comtois Chet Cox Bob Cromwell Courtney Boden Ellender Mark Evanier Justin Fairfax Michael Feldman Shane Foley Joe Giella Janet Gilbert J.T. Go Keith Gleason Grand Comics Database (website) Heritage Art Auctions (website)

Ben Herman Jim Holden James Kealy Michael Kelly The Jack Kirby Estate Charles Kochman Richard Kolkman Larry Lieber Art Lortie Ralph Macchio Frankie Mastropaolo Brian K. Morris Will Murray Barry Pearl Ken Quattro Trina Robbins Randy Sargent David Saunders Alex Saviuk Dann Thomas Dr. Michael J. Vassallo Mike Zaloudek

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

George Klein, Stan Lee, & Jack Kirby

Bob Cromwell takes a close-up look at a primary (and colorful) locale in FF #4.

First & Four-most . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Ben Herman’s brief bio of FF #1 & 2 inker (and veteran comics artist) George Klein.

The Lee/Thomas Spider-Man E-mails–Part 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Cyber-messages from Stan the Man to Roy the Boy (2000-2018… esp. 2003).

The Top Ten Greatest Stan Lee Stories Of All Time! . . . . . . 56 John Cimino lists some of the tales that defined the Marvel Universe.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! That’s Just Sick! . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Michael T. Gilbert on Joe Simon’s longtime challenger to Mad magazine.

re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 67 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America #238] . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 P.C. Hamerlinck presents critic Stanley Kauffmann’s account of early-1940s Fawcett.

On Our Cover: Our esteemed publisher John Morrow came up with the precise concept for this issue’s cover, and put together a montage of Jack Kirby art: The Fantastic Four from the head shots on an old MMMS (or was it Marvelmania?) T-shirt, and the Sub-Mariner from a house ad in The Avengers #2 (Nov. 1963). Inking by an unidentified inker & most likely Sol Brodsky, respectively.

Ye Editor has said it before and he’ll say it again: “Jack Kirby drew the second-best Namor ever (after creator Bill Everett, of course)!”

Above: Ben Grimm, having just mutated into the Thing for the first time, goes on a mini-rampage on p. 12 of The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961). Script by Stan Lee; pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by George Klein. Thanks to Bob Bailey for the scan from his copy of the original comic. In fact, we’ve tried to utilize scans from the first newsstand editions for all art spots in this issue related to FF #1-4.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] Alter EgoTM issue 179, January 2023 (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: $73 US, $111 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

A Celebration For The Ages A ll his life, Stan Lee was 38+ years older than 1961’s Fantastic Four, his most important co-creation (with all due respect to The X-Men, The Avengers, Hulk, Spider-Man, Thor, Ant-Man, et al.—the latter three of whom celebrate their 60th anniversaries this year).

As is the case with all enduring creations, however, that monumental first issue and its ongoing importance to the comicbook industry (and indirectly to film and other visual media as well) will continue to have anniversaries—or birthdays, if one prefers to call them that—while Stan’s eventful life ended a few weeks before what would have been his own own 96th birthday.

Still, we celebrate the 100th, 200th, or even far more distant birth dates of various folks who have walked this planet, so why not celebrate Stan’s centennial as well? (He was born on December 28, about the time this issue will hit comics stores.)

Since we were too distracted at A/E last year, what with one thing and another, to salute the FF’s 60th anniversary, we figured we’d combine it with Stan’s 100th and laud them both this time around. And, since we’ve had two big Stan Lee issues in the past few years (#150 & #161), I contented myself with presenting an opening salvo of the e-mails he and I exchanged between 2003 and 2018 while I was ghost-writing the Amazing Spider-Man comic strip, plus a subjective listing of his “top ten stories” by John Cimino.

But Stan’s presence, just like Jack Kirby’s, hovers iconically over the rest of this issue’s commemoration of The Fantastic Four, and I’ve long since given up any attempt to pretend respect for the nutcases who’d try to deny Stan an equal share in the creation of the super-hero group that spawned what would soon be known as Marvel Comics.

Comics researcher Michael Feldman and a few others have posited, over the years, that FF #1 might’ve been

assembled at least in part from artwork originally produced for a different story, one that may not have featured anyone with cosmically induced powers. I’ll admit up front they’ve never convinced me—but hey, I’m a fallible human being just like everyone else on planet Earth, so I wanted to let Michael and company have their shot at convincing you. Even so, in the end, I couldn’t resist inserting my own brief “Interlude” between his piece and the next, just as I let my own not-totally-uninformed opinions seep over into a few of the art captions or even as the occasional “editor’s note” in the text of this writer or that.

Ken Quattro has a different take on FF #1, suggesting a source from which Lee and/or Kirby could’ve got the notion of gaining super-powers from a bombardment by cosmic rays. Not as potentially myth-shattering as Michael’s thesis, but still intriguing and worthy of inclusion.

Will Murray, who yields to few in his deep dives into the history of comics, suggests that, whatever the FF’s origins, the whole Marvel Comics Group may have come within a hairbreadth of slipping into total oblivion in late ’61—which would have wiped out much of the four-color footprint of these past six decades, including maybe the entire industry.

To cap it all off, Nick Caputo takes us on a guided tour of the original art for FF #3, the earliest Marvel issue for which any original art is known to exist (it yields a few revelations all its own)—Bob Cromwell gives us welcome background on issue #4— and we welcomed the opportunity to run Ben Herman’s study of George Klein, now almost universally acknowledged to have been the inker of the first two issues of “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.”

If all the above contents together don’t constitute a celebration for the Ages... Silver, Marvel, and more… well, frankly, we’ll probably never know what does!

Bestest,

COMING IN FEBRUARY #180

YOUNG ALL-STARS SPECTACULAR!

n Comics; other art © 2023 Bria Young All-Stars TM & © DC

Murray.

• Brand new cover of “Iron” Munro and friends by YAS artist BRIAN MURRAY! • ROY THOMAS talks about his 1987-89 DC All-Star Squadron sequel series THE YOUNG ALL-STARS—and RICHARD ARNDT interviews three of its prime artists: BRIAN MURRAY, HOWARD SIMPSON, & LOU MANNA! Includes rare illustrations and never-before-seen art!

• “The YOUNG ALL-STARS covers that never were”—courtesy of JOHNNY BLAZE LEAVITT— plus more of the All-Star Squadron post-#67 fan-covers commissioned by JOHN JOSHUA (continued from A/E #175)—& a few all-star surprises!

• Not to mention (which we will!): FCA presents Part 2 of STANLEY KAUFFMANN’s early1940s Fawcett memoirs—MICHAEL T. GILBERT’s 2023 comic art portfolio—& MORE!!

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY! The FANTASTIC FOUR Turns 61! — Part 1

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FANTASTIC FOUR #1– A Patchwork Classic?

The Story—& Some Speculations—Behind “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!”

by Michael Feldman A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: As I mentioned in this issue’s writer/editorial (see facing page), the possibility that The Fantastic Four #1 was some sort of Frankensteinian hybrid, cobbled together from a combination of new material and a pre-existing SF/fantasy story of some kind, was first brought to my attention a decade or two ago, during correspondence with fan/researcher Michael Feldman. A year back, I invited him to revisit and expand upon that theory and analysis in this issue of Alter Ego, and he accepted the offer. However, after sending me the introductory material below, in the end he felt that he did not have the time, inclination, or whatever to finish it… so I’m presenting the part of it that he sent, to underscore his chronological primacy in this particular “debate,” following with the speculations of Ken Quattro, Will Murray, and Nick Caputo on the same and related subjects….

S

ome years ago, British artist, author, and educator Steve Whitaker and I entered into a long dialogue about various aspects of comicbook history… an exchange cut off by my friend’s premature death a few years back.

Steve was exceptionally knowledgeable and insightful with regards to comics. He had an uncanny and unerring eye for the individualistic styles and nuances of many comicbook artists. He could look at a piece of work and pick out something like a Ditko ink line or a Kirby panel design. And he would be invariably right.

Most artists have a sort of signature [style] that differentiates them from their peers no matter how much they may be trying to draw like someone else or adapt a new style. Execution of line, the mathematics of composition, and the combinations of detailing and approach are unique, just as writing styles can be.

I bring this up because I want to make clear at the outset that many of the statements and claims you will read here are the observations of Steve Whitaker, or were activated by things he pointed out to me. At some later date I will backtrack and quote him directly from e-mails we exchanged back around 2004-5.

We both agreed there were some very-difficult-to-explain aspects of The Fantastic Four #1—and of the second issue, for that matter.

For starters, in our view, a number of panels simply are not the work of Jack Kirby or any recognizable artist of the small freelance regulars [at Timely]. On the very first page, the third panel is a rather poorly executed image of Reed Richards seen through a window after having just fired the flare gun that sent the words “THE FANTASTIC FOUR” into a cloud above the city.

Noticeably, the face is in shadow and undefined. The anatomy is crude and very un-Kirby-like, with overly large hands, the disproportional arm at an impossible angle, etc.

It Came From The Subway!

The cover that rocked the comics world forever—Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961)! Jack Kirby’s penciled vision of mayhem in Manhattan produced under the direction of editor Stan Lee, who also provided the cover text. Inks by George Klein.

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database & Marvel Tales Annual #1 (1964).

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Jack Kirby Significantly, most of the other questionable panels in the issue are likewise in shadow. For example, the third panel on page 11, in the origin sequence, has another Stan Lee group picture with no faces distinguishable and equally poor delineation that is not Kirby even at his most rushed. Two pages later, the fourth panel on page 13 is another apparently inserted panel, all in silhouette and looking more like it was drawn

by Stan Lee rather than Jack Kirby.

There are a number of other places where the drawing attributions are questionable, and in a future installment we’ll assemble them for easier reference.

It is pretty clear Stan and Jack were rushed in putting this issue together and a lot of slack is given for hasty, last-minute corrections, possibly even Comics Code demands for alterations, though that seems unlikely.

But there are just so many small points that are internally conflicting, don’t make sense, or just defy common sense.

Let’s start with the cover. The monster rising out of the ground and grabbing an available female figure is a staple of pulp fiction and comicbooks. One does have to wonder why Reed Richards is tied up with ropes and who did this to him. The clawed monster?

And why does Johnny Storm say “Just you wait and see, sister!” Now, in vintage street parlance, calling a woman “sister” is not unusual—but your own sister—?

4

The Story—& Some Speculations—Behind “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!”

trenchcoat, hat, and shades we saw him in initially. Odd for a guy having trouble finding clothes that he has a spare set there. Far more oddly, in continuity on Monster Isle, he’s seen in a couple of panels wearing generic climbing gear with brimmed cap. A couple of pages later he’s back in trenchcoat, hat, and shades, which he dramatically removes to reveal himself as the Thing in preparation for battling a spined monster threatening Sue. Now, what the logic is of Ben Grimm wearing a disguise to mask his monstrous form among the people who already know his secret, on an isolated island [peopled] with monsters—eludes rationality. We’ll call this an oversight and move on. Ben puts back the trenchcoat, hat, and shades and for a third time dramatically tears them away to reveal himself as the Thing near the end of the issue.

In the outfitting department Johnny Storm also goes through a few transformations that are difficult to rationalize. When we first see him, he’s wearing mechanics’ overalls, working on his car in a service station. He torches up to respond to the FF call and is saved from falling in the sky by an outstretched Mr. Fantastic. But after the 5-page origin, we see a more schoolboyish Johnny wearing a sweater and tie. One has to wonder, too, what the emergency was for them to rush to the meeting and risk life and limb as Reed

“The First Time I Have Found It Necessary…”

(Above:) Michael Feldman and his late associate Steve Whitaker were some of the first folks to become convinced—and they may well be right—that the final panel on p. 1 of the first “FF” story was the first of a number of panels in the issue that were not the work of penciler Jack Kirby. Certainly Ye Editor (Roy T.) thinks Reed Richards more nearly resembles a figure drawn by EC/Mad artist Jack Davis than one by Kirby. Art scan courtesy of Jim Kealy.

If Messrs. Feldman & Whitaker are correct, that panel (slightly enlarged above) is quite possibly an interpolation drawn at writer/editor Lee’s behest by one of the two artists who were reportedly handling most of the Marvel/ Timely production chores in the very early 1960s: Stan Goldberg (the Millie the Model artist who did, at least, color the issue)—or Sol Brodsky (who would soon officially become the company’s production manager, who designed the FF cover logo, and who inked #3 & 4). It could even be totally by inker George Klein! Roy’s bet is on Sol… and he only wishes he’d known enough to ask him about the matter sometime between mid-1965 and mid-1976, when the two often worked in close proximity.

We’ll give Stan the benefit of a doubt that these things were the result of dramatic license, but when we get inside there are quite a few anomalies. Let’s start by tracking the Thing’s activities. He is first seen in a clothing store being told by the salesman that they have nothing available in his size. It does beg the question of where Ben Grimm got the coat and trousers he’s wearing and why didn’t he get outfitted by that source. Then, when the salesman sees the sign in the sky out the window, Ben shucks off his coat and breaks through a narrow door to get outside, complaining: “Why must they build doorways so narrow?” Well, apparently, he had had no trouble getting through the door into the store initially. Again, we’ll call it dramatic license.

Ben shows up at home base, where he’s again in the same

Silhouettes On The Shade (Above:) These two “silhouette shots,” as they were often called in the comics industry, looked to Feldman and Whitaker as if they’d been added by someone other than Jack Kirby. Again, the most likely candidate for the redrawing, if redrawing there is, is Sol Brodsky (or maybe George Klein). Art scans courtesy of Jim Kealy. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Below:) The final word on this kind of panel had already been said circa 1955

by Pogo creator Walt Kelly when he drew the panel below, in order to fill out a page of collected daily comic strips in his third Simon & Schuster tradepaperback volume, Potluck Pogo. This art had not appeared earlier in a daily.

[TM & © Estate of Walt Kelly.]

5

Fantastic Four #1—A Patchwork Classic?

Who’s That Behind The Foster Grants?

(Above:) The Thing’s first appearance in the interior of Fantastic Four #1, complete with dark glasses, hat, and trenchcoat—and (right) he’s back in the discarded items at the FF’s headquarters… but who says it’s the same dark glasses, hat, and trenchcoat?

He could have a whole closet full of ’em.

He doesn’t shed them a second time till he reaches Monster Isle a few Lee/Kirby/Klein pages later. As for the Feldman-questioned “logic” of wearing his disguise even when he’s around his buddies—well, chances are that Stan and Jack just saw it as more of that “dramatic license” Michael Feldman mentions three times in the course of his article. Scans courtesy of Jim Kealy.

(Top right:) If any formal concept sketches for the FF were drawn, it seems not unlikely that they formed the basis of the hero pin-ups that appeared in the next few issues… like this one of the Thing from issue #2. By Kirby, Klein, & Lee. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

announces: “I called you together because I have some pictures to show you!” But again, we’ll write it off to dramatic license.

On the island Reed and Johnny fall into a pit engineered by The Moleman. They awake from unconsciousness in full-body protective coverings that Reed describes as “strange adhesive-type suits” that are open to expose the mouth and eyes. They cannot see anything, and The Moleman tells them they are blinded by the glare of the Valley of Diamonds. How cut polished diamonds got there and how they can reflect so much light in an underground cavern is not explained.

Reed and Johnny as captives of The Moleman hear his story, and Reed fights him with a pole. From a storytelling point of view, the suits contribute nothing. They are not protective. Reed just takes his off when he wants to stretch, and Johnny burns through his. I think there’s a reason they are shown wearing these outfits, with the storyline originally being somewhat different, but we’ll get to that in time.

Nice Suit!

Reed and Johnny’s “adhesive-type suits” don’t seem to serve much of a purpose, leading Feldman and Whitaker to suspect that these panels are left over from a story in which a non-super-powered team were the original folks who faced The Moleman (later spelled “Mole Man”) on his home turf.

Could be. It’s impossible to prove, one way or the other, especially in the absence of viewing the original art from FF #1, which may or may not still exist somewhere. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The actual sequence of events and pacing of the entire issue raises some questions….

At this point the first part of Michael Feldman’s article ends.

Alter Ego will be pleased to present the remainder of it at any time it is received.

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The Story—& Some Speculations—Behind “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine!”

INTERLUDE Provided By Your Friendly Neighborhood Alter Ego Editor:

Two Big Guns Check In (Well, Maybe Three)

by Roy Thomas

E

asily the highest-profile examination of the (arguably) tangled origins of the FF is the 2021 Abrams ComicArts volume Fantastic Four No. 1: Panel by Panel. This beautifully produced tome was fashioned by designer Chip Kidd to reproduce the entirety of that first issue, as the title says, “panel by panel”—although, in point of fact, it falls quite a bit short of that mark. Parts of the art from quite a few panels therein, including but not limited to designated borders, get chopped off and not reproduced due to Kidd’s puzzling insistence on filling virtually every leaf in the title-justifying section of the book with page-edge to page-edge to page-edge art, with more bleed-off than anyone would care to admit. Also, inexplicably, the very first panel that features the Thing (p. 3, panel 4) has somehow been omitted entirely!

Thankfully, the book is enlivened by a pair of commentaries written by longtime Marvel editor Tom Brevoort and one-time Kirby assistant Mark Evanier, who’s had a rich career in TV and comics since. Both their pieces deal with the secret origins of FF #1—and mostly not, thank Crom, with the usual who-did-what or it-was-all-my-guy’s-idea stuff. (Brevoort admits that, “at this late date,” those debates are probably impossible to settle.)

He also points out two particular kinds of divergences in FF #1 from the usual way the Lee and Kirby quasi-team had been producing comics for the couple of years prior to mid-1961. The first is that, in Brevoort’s as in others’ view, “a whole lot of changes were made to Fantastic Four no. 1 as it was being produced” (which mostly just demonstrates that more attention than usual was being paid to that issue)—and the second is the possibility that “some or all of [the story] may have been intended to run in another magazine entirely,” most likely Amazing Adventures, which around that time was transmutated into the all-Lee-and-Ditko Amazing Adult Fantasy.

Brevoort inevitably feels he must briefly deal with Stan Lee’s oft-reprinted two-page synopsis for the first half of FF #1; and, although it has little to do with the twin “divergences” brought up in the preceding paragraph, I myself feel obliged to insert here that I certainly have never seen any hard evidence that that synopsis is “the summation and organization of a conversation [Lee and Kirby] may have had prior to this”— though it may well be that, as Stan himself sometimes suggested. Far less do I see any Tom Brevoort indication that the synopsis “may have been intended as much for Marvel publisher and owner Martin Goodman as it was for Kirby”… though that, too, is not impossible. We simply don’t know, but in my opinion the evidence doesn’t point strongly in that direction.

There’ll Be Some Changes Made?

(Left:) As Tom Brevoort notes in the new Abrams book: fellow comics historian Will Murray once pointed out that page 17 of FF #1 starts out with Ben Grimm in hat, dark glasses, and overcoat—in panel 5 he’s switched to a workman’s cap and baggy clothes—but a couple of pages later he’ll be back in the overcoat, et al. This might well suggest art changes of some kind. Still, Roy T. can’t help recalling cases in Kirby’s latter-1960s Thor wherein Odin would abruptly have changed ornate outfits in between pages for no apparent reason except that the artist probably didn’t bother to remember what the All-Father had been wearing a page earlier. It was a common complaint of Stan Lee’s.

(Above:) Brevoort also suggests that p. 19’s Valley of Diamonds “seems a bit crudely drawn for Kirby” and wonders if “something else might have been there initially (the stolen nuclear plants perhaps?).” Makes sense, since the purloined plants are totally forgotten once the FF get to Monster Isle. That would explain the hazmat-type suits, as well, which make little sense in the published account. Scans courtesy of Jim Kealy.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Fantastic Four #1—A Patchwork Classic?

The history-minded Marvel editor’s concluding remarks indicate that, unless (a) the Lee synopsis is a clumsy forgery and/or (b) I myself have been lying for the past several decades about having first seen it sometime in the latter half of the 1960s (if not precisely in 1966)—two charges made by certain over-wrought souls that Brevoort wisely dismisses—the half-plot’s very existence “does put a pin in the notion that FF #1 was assembled from parts,” since it, coupled with Kirby’s one-at-a-time introduction of the four heroes, winds up accounting for the first 13 of the issue’s 25 story pages.

Brevoort finds numerous A Date That Will Live In—Well, Definitely Not In Infamy! places where he thinks Lee may have This final tier of panels in FF #1 may have been originally penciled this way by Kirby— had new panels drawn in place of or Lee may have knocked out a panel in the sequence and had the group torso-shot Kirby’s original ones—starting in inserted at the end. Either way, as Mark Evanier states, “August 8, 1961,” was “the day his case not with page 1 (as Feldman everything changed. In comics, at least.” Because that’s the day, in many if not quite does) but with page 2, where he all parts of the country, that the first issue of Fantastic Four went on sale. Scan courtesy suspects that panels 5 & 6 replaced of Jim Kealy. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] an earlier, wider panel 5. He admits this can only be speculation, but his observation isn’t far-fetched. Of course, as I said, that merely indicates that more care than usual was paid by editor/scripter Lee to the story as drawn Mark Evanier by penciler/co-plotter Kirby… something that would make perfect sense, given that it was a new entry in a comics genre that Timely hadn’t entered for more than half a decade—and one that Lee and Kirby had never before and Human Torch… and a few years ago Stan told me, when I asked, ventured into together. that he had no memory of Goodman ever commenting on FF #1 after its publication. In between, Goodman got his super-group title, and that may Tom B. offers some interesting educated guesses, too, on precisely very well have been good enough for him. when and where Kirby panels may have been altered or entirely replaced in the 12 pages of the Moleman arc that constitutes the concluding nigh-half of FF #1. Perhaps, although I don’t believe he specifcally suggests this, Goodman was originally thinking of introducing his company’s new JLA-inspired super-hero team not in an eponymous magazine but merely as the lead feature in an anthology title, à la the debut of “Dr. Droom” a few months earlier in Amazing Adventures. That would’ve been very much in character for Martin Goodman… as would his changing his mind in the eleventh hour and publishing a Fantastic Four title instead.

For his part, Mark Evanier first offers some logical musings concerning possible/probable consultations between Lee and Kirby before the former typed up the infamous partial-synopsis. He suggests that the half-plot (which Jack later claimed he never saw—which could also mean simply that he didn’t remember seeing it, which isn’t the same thing) might well have arrived at the Kirby home after Jack had already begun drawing the issue’s early pages, which do not reflect that plot at all.

Unprovable, of course, but that would go a long way toward explaining why the origin that Stan intended to take up the story’s initial 13 pages got compressed into a mere five… without, as it happens, that turning out to constitute much of a loss. As a matter of fact, my own viewpoint is that the dramatic one-at-a-time introduction of The Fantastic Four and their powers on pp. 2-7 is far superior to the drawn-out chronological origin called for by the synopsis.

Mark supports Brevoort’s view that the plot may have been intended as much for Goodman’s eyes as for Kirby’s; but again, while that’s possible, I believe that it’s not only unproved and unprovable but even fairly unlikely. Do we know of any verified instances of Stan Lee having to write a synopsis for his publisher about a forthcoming comicbook? Goodman had told him to create a super-hero group… perhaps but not necessarily one composed of vintage Timely stars Captain America, Sub-Mariner,

“No convincing evidence” is seen by Mark, any more than by Tom, that pages of a non-super-hero yarn were incorporated into the issue’s Moleman sequence… and I think that’s probably because it never happened. Still, this “doubting Thomas” is willing to be convinced otherwise—perhaps by the unearthing of the original art to FF #1.

Now it’s time to let a couple of other skilled and ardent researchers offer their own considered views, insights, and speculations on Fantastic Four #1 and the issue or two after that….

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Nope, this isn’t The Fantastic Four! Actually, it’s a quartet of evil Skrulls masquerading as the FF early in #2 (Jan. 1962). Not to worry—three of them get turned into cows by issue’s end! Script

by Stan Lee; pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by George Klein. Thanks to Bob Bailey, who says he bought this one off the stands in late ’61.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! The FANTASTIC FOUR Turns 61! — Part 2

9

Origin Of The Origin Of The FANTASTIC FOUR?

Did “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” Have Its Roots In An Old Timely Pulp?

by Ken Quattro

H

ow do you determine the germ of an idea?

There has been much gnashing of teeth, vituperative prose, and verbal bloodshed over who should get credit for the creation of The Fantastic Four.

Jack Kirby fans are steadfast in their belief that their man brought the concept to Stan. Kirby had, after all, just finished a John L. Chapman run on the Challengers of the Unknown for DC Comics. In their eyes, Ace, Prof, Rocky, and Red had just been reimagined as Ben, Reed, Johnny, and Sue. Stan Lee, however, saw it differently. The story goes that publisher Martin Goodman had noticed that National’s (DC’s) new Justice League of America comic was selling particularly well. He then ordered Stan to create a super-team to headline a new comic for their company.

“I would create a team of superheroes if that was what the marketplace required,” Lee wrote in Origins of Marvel Comics. “But it would be a team such as comicdom had never known. For, just this once, I would do the type of story I myself would enjoy reading if I were a comic-book reader.”1 Lee’s words are red meat to Kirby fans. Personal biases aside, perhaps there is some truth to both versions.

And perhaps there is a third person deserving of credit, as well: John L. Chapman.

“If momentary exposure to the cosmic rays beyond the Heaviside Layer made a super-man of an ordinary mortal--what fabulous titan of strength and intelligence might the human become who’d spend hours under such forces!”

So reads the blurb accompanying the short story “Cycle” by the above-mentioned Mr. Chapman in Marvel Stories, Vol. 2, #2, dated Nov. 1940.

Chapman was an early science-fiction fan from Minneapolis who had made it into the professional ranks by the ’40s. His rather unremarkable career as a writer likely wouldn’t even be under consideration if it were not for this barely six-page effort that bears some interesting similarities to the origin of an iconic comicbook team some twenty years later.

“Cycle” was the story of a man named Drake, who had been sent in a rocket on a trip to the moon, the “first man to leave the earth’s atmosphere.” Suddenly, the “jets” on his ship misfired, “in

A Pair Of Marvels The cover of the Timely pulp Marvel Stories, Vol. 2, #2 (Nov. 1940), doesn’t mention “Cycle” by John L. Chapman, one of the various science-fiction tales within; but it’s in there, just the same… and Ken Quattro wonders if it might have had a seminal influence on the first issue of Fantastic Four, 21 years later. Cover painting by John W. Scott; scans from Ken Quattro & David Saunders; thanks to DS for the artist ID. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

the vicinity of the Heaviside Layer,” and he began plummeting back toward the ground. (Note: The Heaviside Layer is one of several layers making up the ionosphere.)

Apparently, upon reaching this point, Drake was exposed to

10

Did “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” Have Its Roots In An Old Timely Pulp?

exposed to the natural cosmic ray forces, the same forces that the Heaviside Layer prevents from reaching the earth.

You recall, Dr. Tinsley, an age-old theory of evolution concerning cosmic rays? The life forces they were called, the origin of the animate impulses. Yes—you begin to comprehend, don’t you? You understand now what has happened to Drake. He has been exposed to naked cosmic rays, and as a result he has super-evolved.

Cosmic, Man! Could this Lee-Kirby page from Fantastic Four #1 have been simply an amplification of the scene in “Cycle” in which the hero, Drake, is exposed to cosmic radiation? Inks by George Klein. Thanks to Ken Quattro. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

cosmic radiation: At first he thought it was the weightlessness of deceleration.

But as the minutes fled by, and the ship’s velocity decreased steadily, the certainty of a change became more prominent in Drake’s mind.

Drake survives the crash and is subsequently brought to the World Tower (!) and into the presence of the Western Hemisphere’s dictator (!!), Michael Gurth: The body and build was [sic] perfect. A wide chest tapered from broad shoulders. The hands were huge and strong. The legs were long and muscular. The hair looked as though it might have been dark at one time. Now it possessed a golden luster, matching the slitted gray eyes whose piercing gaze sent a chill down Tinsley’s spine. Never before had the little scientist seen such masculine beauty.

If It Walks Like A Drake…

The above illustration of the hero Drake (Ken Q. suspects it’s primarily the work of Joe Simon) accompanies John L. Chapman’s yarn “Cycle” in 1940’s Marvel Tales, Vol. 2, #2. All art in that issue is attributed up front to the team of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby—logical enough, since artist/writer Joe Simon had, just a few months earlier, become Timely Comics’ first really functioning editor, and had brought along his partner Jack Kirby from Novelty (where they had been producing Blue Bolt, among other things).

As Ken Q. says, Kirby may well have contributed to this artwork—and also may well have read that story, at that time or later.

By the time Stanley Lieber (the future Stan Lee) came to work at Timely as a gofer in the latter part of 1940, that particular issue of Marvel Tales was probably already on sale… but Stan, either earlier as an avid teenage reader of pulp magazines or later because a copy may have been lying around the office, might well have read it.

Overlooking the homoerotic and Master Race implications (and poor writing), what Chapman was describing was Drake’s transformation into a super-human.

And, do we ever truly forget something we read, even twenty years earlier?

(Equally, is there any way to prove that we really remember it, either—even deep in our psyche?)

“Drake was the first man to pass the Heaviside Layer, the first human being to meet with the utter unknown. He was

Surely, any influence of “Cycle” on Fantastic Four #1 must remain problematical and can probably never be proven, but it will remain a possibility. It seems there’s really nothing new under the sun—not even cosmic rays! [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Origin Of The Origin Of The Fantastic Four?

11

This long-winded and scientifically goofy explanation2 sets the stage for the dictator’s own trip into space to expose himself to cosmic radiation in order to “be gifted with unlimited power and military prowess that would enable me to dwarf the Eastern Hemisphere in a matter of weeks!”

Although the illustration looks more Simon than Kirby, Jack may well have had a hand in it. And though the “cosmic radiation” twist was probably Lee’s contribution (consider the role of radiation in other Marvel heroes’ origins—be it cosmic, gamma, or spiderborne), Kirby may have read “Cycle,” too.

I won’t spoil the ending in case you wish to seek out this story, but needless to say, it doesn’t work out as the dictator Gurth imagines.

All that I’ve proposed is conjecture, obviously. What Kirby and Lee were creating in 1961 was “just” a comicbook--not a cultural icon. They were looking at producing a saleable comic, and the hook they came up with—cosmic-radiation-created super-heroes— may have just been plucked from out of thin air.

So how does this all tie into The Fantastic Four’s origin?

If somehow you don’t know the story, Dr. Reed Richards is planning a rocket trip into space, but his pal, pilot Ben Grimm, angrily confronts Reed with his concerns about space travel.

Then again, they had the means, motive and opportunity, and that usually is enough to convict.

Sources:

Nothing like the girl you have a crush on shaming you into doing something you know is dangerous!

1 Origins of Marvel Comics, p. 17.

Coincidence? Maybe, but consider this: Both creators of The Fantastic Four were around and possible readers of Chapman’s “Cycle” story.

Stanley Lieber (Lee) was on the premises at Timely in 1940, “assisting.” It is a fair assumption that he read that issue of Marvel Stories when it came out, and perhaps it was a latent memory of it that he grafted onto Kirby’s Challengers concept. It’s even possible that Lee pulled copies of the Goodman pulps upon occasion for “inspiration.” After all, Lee said many times that he was an avid reader of pulp magazines, including before he became a Timely Comics staffer.

2 Perhaps not so goofy, according to the science of the era!

According to an article titled “Secret of Life Sought” that appeared in the Oct. 1930 issue of Popular Mechanics: “As the evidence piles up, the daring theory is being advanced that X-rays, radium rays, and cosmic rays are among the primary causes of evolution—if they do not happen to be the sole cause.”

And Kirby? Just look to the bottom of the contents page of that issue of Marvel Stories: “Inside Story Illustrations… by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.”

Ken Quattro is a long-time comicbook fan and “comic detective.” Over the years he has written hundreds of articles for various publications (including Alter Ego), has contributed to dozens of books, and has been a historical consultant for several documentaries and the Hollywood movie Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. Quattro’s latest book, Invisible Men: The Trailblazing Black Artists of Comic Books, was the winner of the 2021 Will Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Book.

Ken Quattro

Spawn Of Goodman Another “Simon and Kirby” illo—this one a so-called “double truck” that extends across two facing pages—from the Nov. 1940 issue of Marvel Tales, and accompanying the cover story. Was this one “all Kirby”—“all Simon”—or a combination of the two? Hard to tell! Thanks to David Saunders.

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

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY! The FANTASTIC FOUR Turns 61! — Part 3

13

Was THE FANTASTIC FOUR CANCELED In 1961?

Some History & Conjectures

T

by Will Murray

he groundbreaking Fantastic Four is remembered more than 60 years later as the single comicbook that revitalized Marvel Comics after approximately a decade of its being virtually moribund.

Although the monthly Amazing Adult Fantasy was also launched later that same month, using the same quirky lettering style meant to signal that this title, too, was pitched to an older audience, AAF soon fell by the wayside, while The Fantastic Four rapidly shifted from a tentative bimonthly to a monthly title.

It was not a smooth launch, however. In fact, there exists circumstantial evidence to indicate that The Fantastic Four might easily have ended with issue #2, along with the rest of the company’s line, which had just been rebranded with a modest “MC” in a box on the covers. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: See p. 69 of this issue “re:” section for an informative letter about the mysterious “MC” marking.]

A recap of the state of Martin Goodman’s otherwise-nameless comics line is in order here.

It was in sorry shape. Jack Kirby recalled coming into the office at some point in the late 1950s and finding Stan Lee visibly upset and talking about the whole line shutting down.

Did this visit occur very shortly after artist Joe Maneely’s tragic passing in June 1958?

That’s one theory. At any rate, Kirby resumed working at Marvel on a steady basis that summer, around the time Maneely

Highway 1961 Revisited

Martin Goodman

(Left:) This “cover production Photostat” of Fantastic Four #1, according to the huge and welcome volume Marvel: August 1961 Omnibus, “was shot before final revisions. After slipping into reprints, it became known as the ‘missing man’ cover for the missing police officer added to the final print artwork.” Actually, there are two more bystanders on the cover as printed (see p. 3). In addition, one of the men there has been totally redrawn, in a different stance.

Alas, this photo published in 1964’s Strange Tales Annual #2 came out therein a bit darker than those of Lee, Kirby, and the rest of the Marvel Bullpen.

Thanks to Bob Bailey & Justin Fairfax.

(Above:) On sale within a few weeks of Fantastic Four #1—in late August to early September of ’61, depending on locale—was Amazing Adult Fantasy #7 (Dec. ’61). This was actually the first issue of the all-Stan-Lee-&-Steve-Ditko comic chock-full of short stories with supposedly “surprise endings.” Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

passed away. The first Kirby work of this return appeared in Strange Worlds #1, which went on sale September 1, 1958; it would have gone to press in August. The art had to have been prepared over June and July.

An examination of the release dates of Goodman’s comics in that year shows that no Timely comicbooks went on sale in the

14

Some History & Conjectures

ink Kirby. He also embellished Kirby’s sometimes skeletal pages, adding background and other details, enabling Kirby to turn out more work faster.

Others recalled that Goodman would kill (or at least severely decrease) his comics line at the first hint of a circulation slump, only to reverse course if subsequent newsstand reports showed the slightest uptick in sales.

The Fantastic Four was probably conceived in April or May 1961. The springboard was almost certainly Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering flight into space on April 12 aboard the Vostok I space capsule. America had been caught flat-footed. The space race was on and Jack Kirby, if not Stan Lee, swiftly realized that here was perfect fodder for comicbook stories.

The Fantastic Four #1 went on sale on August 8, 1961, three weeks before Amazing Adult Fantasy #7. Issue #2 of FF was released on September 28, approximately seven weeks later, one week earlier than the typical eight weeks that would normally pass between bimonthly issues. Fantastic Four #3 should have been released either at the end of November or the first week of December of 1961, depending on whether the early release of #2 was a fluke or an adjustment to Goodman’s release schedule.

This was not unusual for Martin Goodman. He was often erratic with his release dates. Even back in his pulp-magazine days, this was his M.O. His bimonthly science-fiction magazines were often released on a quarterly basis, regardless of what the indicia said. Ka-Zar, his jungle hero title of the mid-1930s, had been technically a bimonthly magazine… but its three issues had straggled out over the course of nearly a year.

Strangely, Goodman published no comicbooks during the following month, October. Once again, his entire line disappeared for better than thirty days.

Strange As It Seems…

Yuri Gagarin

The first Timely cover penciled by Jack Kirby after his ouster from DC Comics was that of Strange Worlds #1 (Dec. 1958)—although the new title lasted only five issues. Of course, it was basically interchangeable with Strange Tales, Journey into Mystery, et al., in any event. Inks by Christopher Rule, one of the two “usual suspects” believed for years to have been possibilities as the inker of Fantastic Four #1. (See pp. 36-38 for more about this matter.) Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The Russian cosmonaut who became the first-ever “man in space,” courtesy of the technology of the U.S.S.R. Also seen is an artist’s concept of Gagarin’s flight and spacecraft; he completed one orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961… just in time, probably, to have influenced the origin of The Fantastic Four. Ironically, Gagarian was killed in a training flight in a MiG-15 in February 1968, at the age of 34.

month of August 1958, which would correspond to a temporary halt in production that June or July. The same had been true for August 1959. And in 1960, Goodman skipped all of November and most of December, finally releasing a paltry four comics titles on December 29. That’s nine weeks without any Timely titles on the stands.

Writer Larry Lieber recalled going to work for Marvel in 1958.

“I guess business was not good,” Lieber told me. “As a matter of fact, when I started writing, I said to Martin, ‘Goodness, [I’m thinking of my future] tell me how would you describe the comic industry?’ He said, ‘I’d call it a dying industry.’ And it was just hanging on. They’d put out these few books. Stan was there alone, and he was making most of the corrections himself.”

Artist Dick Ayers remembered Lee telling him circa 1959, “It’s like a sinking ship, and we’re the rats.” Things got so bad that Ayers applied to the US Post Office for a regular job, only to receive a reprieve after Lee had him ink Jack Kirby’s pencils for the first time. This turned around Ayers’ fortunes, and may have helped Lee gear back up into serious production, since Ayers did more than

15

Was The Fantastic Four CANCELED In 1961?

evidence is entirely circumstantial. But it is also compelling.

The same month The Fantastic Four debuted, Goodman’s fantasy books underwent a drastic change in format. During the previous three years, the cover-featured Jack Kirby stories had gradually expanded from a modest 6 pages until they usually ran 13 and even 18 pages, dominating the issues in which they appeared.

Abruptly, in August 1961, these two-part epics were replaced by a pair of back-to-back Jack Kirby stories, the first only six pages long, followed by a five-pager. Many of the six-pagers looked rushed, cramped, with tell-tale horizontal panels struggling to contain one stupendous Kirbyesque brute after another. “Orrgo… the Unconquerable!” in Strange Tales #90 and “Lo-Karr, Bringer of Doom!” in Journey into Mystery #75 are two of the most egregious examples of this absurd story compression.

Even Dick Ayers’ usually effective inking appears hurried and sloppy.

On Sale Now—Only, When Is “Now”?

Fantastic Four #2 (Jan. 1962) hit the nation’s newsstands on or around Sept. 28, 1961—only seven weeks after FF #1 had gone on sale—but #3 (March ’62) didn’t reach readers until December 12, eleven weeks after #2. Will Murray attempts to tell us why that may have happened. Thanks to the GCD. Pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by George Klein and Sol Brodsky, respectively. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

When production resumed the following month, Fantastic Four #3 finally made its newsstand appearance on December 12… approximately eleven weeks after #2. That’s three weeks longer than the standard eight-week interval between bimonthly issues. In fact, it’s only a week short of what one would expect of a quarterly title! It must be said that the release of FF #3 tracks with its presumed release date, based on FF #1.

Still, in the competitive world of magazines, eleven weeks between issues of a bimonthly is something to be avoided at all costs.

Especially for a title that had just been launched.

Fickle readers will forget about an absent title, assume that it was canceled, and move on to something else.

So what happened?

Had the entire Marvel line been canceled for a month?

Again, the

It’s clear that the giant-monster era was winding down. Yet the monsters continued in one form or another, intermixed with

The Days Were Getting Shorter… …and so, by late summer and early autumn of 1961, were the lead-off Kirby-drawn monster stories in Goodman’s comics— with “Orrgo… the Unconquerable!” in Strange Tales #90 (Nov. ’61) and “Lo-Karr, Bringer of Doom!” in Journey into Mystery #75 (Dec. ’61) being two prime examples. Both were probably written by Stan Lee (plot) and Larry Lieber (script), with inking by Dick Ayers. Thanks to Barry Pearl for the scans.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

16

Some History & Conjectures

other types of fantasy tales, such as the seminal “The Man in the Ant Hill” (introducing biochemist Henry Pym, who would soon become Ant-Man), until the arrival of a new flock of super-heroes in mid-1962.

So what was going on? At this point in time, Larry Lieber was scripting most of Timely’s fantasy stories, with Jack Kirby drawing from his scripts. Whether he followed those scripts closely or not is another question. But it looks to me as if Goodman might have been burning off his script inventory, with Stan Lee instructing Kirby to compress Lieber’s long scripts to a shorter story compass so that two could be used per issue.

This transitional period was short. By the end of the year, the stories appear to be scripted and paced for the new lead lengths.

This suggests that all longer Larry Lieber scripts had finally been burned off.

Why would Goodman order scripts consumed at such a rapid pace? If he planned to cancel the comics line, this would be a simple yet an economically shrewd move. It would also explain why Fantastic Four #2 came out at the end of September instead of the first week in October, as it should have. Goodman was pushing the issue out the door as part of his inventory-burning pre-cancelation program.

If that is what happened, I can see only one reason why protoMarvel Comics was subsequently restarted: Early sales reports on The Fantastic Four encouraged Goodman to give the line a reprieve.

Sales of FF #1 would have been known in November.

This explains why Lee and Kirby went all-out to make issue #3 something different. That’s the issue that introduced the group’s uniforms, their skyscraper headquarters, and the Fantasticar.

Ol’ Grayskin According to some researchers, Jack Kirby may have inked as well as penciled the cover of The Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962). More at issue, in certain quarters, is whether the offbeat monster-hero who’d soon be known as “Ol’ Greenskin” was originally conceived by Stan Lee or Jack Kirby—or both together—yet another probably ultimately unknowable mystery of early Marvel. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A rejected cover for that issue survives.

It shows the FF fighting a giant monster, surrounded by vignettes of the four characters. Their uniforms are not played up. The composition is crowded, weak, and disjointed.

Since covers are usually drawn after an issue is

completed, it’s difficult to guess the thinking here. But obviously, as indicated by the published cover, The Fantastic Four was abandoning its early giant-monster focus.

I suspect that when production geared up again for titles to be released in the month of December, Jack Kirby brought in other fresh concepts, such as The Incredible Hulk. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: I feel compelled to point out that it is equally possible that Lee, rather than Kirby, had the original idea for the Hulk at about that time; I know of no real evidence that Kirby brought the idea to Stan and Marvel.

Does anyone?] In order for the first issue to go on sale on March 1, 1962, the Hulk was likely created in the latter months of 1961.

Typically, three or four months were required to take a new Marvel comicbook from conception to publication.

Martin Goodman issued an inconsistent number of comicbooks during 1961. Most months, he released between 10 and 12 titles. But in August and September, the number jumped to 17. Then nothing in November. After that, he went back to printing between 10 and 12 titles into 1962.

Once again, the increase before the October of no releases would signify an attempt to burn off inventory before a hypothetical shutdown. Given that titles are printed approximately a month before they go on sale in order for them to get into the nationwide distribution networks, it appears as if Goodman put a hold on printing in September, before he could see solid sales figures on Fantastic Four #1. A stop-work order could have been part of that suspension.

If so, fortunately, any work stoppage proved short-lived.

One way to look at the 1961 revitalization of what would become Marvel Comics is that it was the result of a chain reaction.

If Joe Maneely, Stan Lee’s artistic right arm, hadn’t been killed in a freak accident in June 1958, Kirby might not have gotten a significant foothold into Marvel in the weeks immediately following. And if Kirby hadn’t become Lee’s new star artist, The Fantastic Four would not have come into being. We can be certain of that because, as much as anything, the FF were a supercharged reimagining of Kirby’s Challengers of the Unknown at DC, from which he had been summarily dismissed that year.

Collectors and historians have analyzed Fantastic Four #1, attempting to understand its unusual story structure. It’s essentially three stories: an introduction to the characters, then an origin flashback, followed by a segue into the battle against their first opponent, the Moleman.

There is a distinct discontinuity between the three sections, leading some scholars to theorize that the Moleman story was meant to be an introductory tale intended for one of Goodman’s fantasy anthology titles, such as Tales to Astonish or even Amazing Adventures, before it was converted into Amazing Adult Fantasy.

I asked Stan Lee about this once and he laughed, saying The Fantastic Four were always intended to star in their own magazine.

I must take him at his word, his notoriously unreliable memory notwithstanding.

Yet a great many plot threads were left dangling from Reed Richards’ abortive attempt to reach Mars (or “space”). For example, The FF steal their guarded spaceship, yet no official repercussions result. Instead, they immediately set up as a team of super-powered troubleshooters. What are we to make of that?

Here, I theorize. I have no proof. But if we jump ahead to issue #2, the last two pages of Chapter 1 find the FF having taken refuge from authorities in a woodland hunting lodge. In this story,

Was The Fantastic Four CANCELED In 1961?

they go into hiding because the Skrulls impersonated them, making it look as if they had turned renegade.

What if these pages were originally drawn for FF #1? It’s plausible.

The origin flashback on page 6 of FF #2 looks as if it has been squeezed in, and the final panel returning to the present also looks cramped.

Challengers Of The Fantastic?

A similar Editor Roy Thomas admits that, back in his instant sequence in fanzine review of Fantastic Four #1 in August 1961, his 20-year-old incarnation spoke of the new comic the next issue as staking out territory somewhere “between the was given Challengers [of the Unknown] and the new Justice more than a League of America”—but he feels it’s going a bridge page of recap. too far to say that the FF were “as much as anything…

And the first a supercharged reimagining of Kirby’s Challengers of telling of the the Unknown at DC,” since that implies a direct causeorigin in FF #1 and-effect. The cover of Showcase #7 (March-April ended with a 1957) was reportedly both penciled and inked by Kirby. static panel of Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © DC Comics.] the assembled four in civilian garb designed to lead into the Moleman chapters that looks out of place to my eyes. I think that panel replaced a different one, now lost.

17

and has the brilliant of idea of destroying it in order to flush out their enemies.

This is comicbook logic, so we have accept it on those terms.

But does it really make sense for the four fugitives to destroy a US rocket on its launch pad, further compounding their legal problems?

It does, if it was a Soviet missile or, in a more plausible scenario, to prevent unsuspecting US astronauts from being mutated by the very cosmic rays that transformed the FF. And here I may be going off the deep end, speculation-wise. This is, after all, the issue where Lee and Kirby showed three Skrulls being captured in the end, inexplicably forgetting that four alien shape-shifters were behind their troubles. And who can forget the page where Reed Richards convinced the Skrull leader to call off his planned invasion of the Earth by showing him pages clipped from Strange Tales and Journey into Mystery, depicting various giant Kirby monsters?

Otherwise, this lengthy hunting lodge sequence—part of the longest chapter in that issue—contributes nothing to the Skrull story, other than to demonstrate the FF’s powers when they use them to escape their separate cells. Once again, this makes more sense if these powers were newly acquired. Lee and Kirby would naturally need to demonstrate what this new team can do.

It’s easy to imagine that Kirby produced this sequence as depicting the FF’s post-crash plight and their attempts to extricate themselves from custody, but Lee decided that they needed to get into their first scrimmage as a team against a legitimate enemy. So Kirby drew an introduction where the FF assemble for the first time to accomplish that for issue #1.

Additionally, if one adds these 6 FF #2 pages to the 5-page origin sequence, this leaves approximately 13 pages remaining in this hypothetical abortive first issue––plenty of room to introduce a villain and wrap up loose ends, such as the FF’s legal status.

Often, in those days, Jack Kirby turned in pages that were rejected because Lee didn’t like the direction of his narrative. A prudent Kirby would have set those declined pages aside and cannibalized them for issue #2, conceivably constructing the Skrull story around these orphaned pages in order to salvage them—and

Chapter 2 opens with US soldiers surrounding the lodge. Much of this chapter also flows seamlessly from the end of the origin sequence, after the quartet pledge to fight the forces of evil while their destroyed spaceship burns in the wilderness. It’s four pages of circular action, showing their capture, imprisonment, and escape from US government custody. The four are not wearing the astronaut suits in which they crashed, but this is easily explained by their finding appropriate outfits in the deserted hunting lodge. In fact, Ben Grimm is wearing a hunting cap similar to the one he wore on some pages of the Moleman story. The scene where Ben rails against his fate as the misshapen Thing also fits my crash-aftermath theory.

Another suspicious element is that, once the FF escape custody, they repair to Reed’s apartment hideout and plot a counterattack against the Skrulls. There, Johnny Storm reads in the papers about a new rocket being tested

Hide-And-Seek Will Murray theorizes that, as originally plotted and drawn, the FF (in issue #2) might have been hiding out from the authorities because of their hijacking (and wrecking) of a U.S. spacecraft in #1, rather than because a quartet of Skrulls were impersonating them and causing destruction. But he admits this can be no more than conjecture. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

18

Some History & Conjectures

get paid, too!

We know this sometimes happened because pages for what appear to have been a storyline meant for The Incredible Hulk #3 or #4 surfaced decades later, depicting a fragmentary storyline never seen in the printed page in that short-lived title.

From time to time, unused early Kirby Fantastic Four pencil pages, which don’t easily fit any given issue, have also turned up, indicating a plot trajectory Kirby was forced to abandon by editorial instruction.

I’m not asserting that this is what actually happened with Fantastic Four #1. I’m only pointing out that the fugitive-FF/capture-and-escape scenes from the second issue are a seamless continuation of the origin sequence of FF #1, as is the cosmic-powered quartet’s precarious legal situation.

Even if I’m off the beam in my thinking, I wouldn’t be surprised if the origin sequence in FF #1 wasn’t Kirby’s original concept “presentation” produced for Lee and Goodman, and the awkwardness of the surrounding story segments were the result of constructing a coherent story around those 5 pages after the fact.

If only Stan and Jack were still with us to set the record straight….

Sources “Monster Master.” Will Murray. Comic Scene Vol. 2, #52, Sept. 1995.

“To Keep Busy as a Freelancer, You Should Have Three Accounts.” Roy Thomas & Jim Amash (interview with Dick Ayers). Alter Ego #31, Dec. 2003.

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

Will Murray

There Was A Race In More Than Just Space!

(Top left:) A newspaper account from United Press International, as printed in a Springfield, MO, newspaper in December 1961. During that month, as Will Murray writes, “UPI reported that the comicbook industry was emerging from its post-Frederic Wertham [and post-Congressional hearings] slump. Sales had risen 50 million copies over the previous year, achieving a total of 300 million copies sold. Was this a factor in Martin Goodman’s decision to reverse the cancelation of his comics line late in ’61? Perhaps. But his titles don’t seem to have experienced the same uptick as the bigger houses. Otherwise, Goodman would not have suspended production that fall. No doubt the report encouraged him to continue through the important year of 1962, when so many new Marvel characters were introduced.” [© the respective copyright holders.]

Of course, if DC editor Julius Schwartz were still around today, he’d just laugh and say that he and his super-hero revival titles such as The Flash, Green Lantern, and especially Justice League of America had bailed Goodman out, thank you very much. And you know what?

He might be right—even though, over the next decade, Marvel’s burgeoning lineup would gradually make four-color mincemeat out of DC’s. But we comics fans owe a debt to both lineups!

(Above:) By the final page of Fantastic Four #1, a sizable percentage of the folks who’d purchased a copy knew that something a wee bit new was afoot in the comics world—even if some of the comics historians writing for this issue of A/E feel that Stan Lee had Sol Brodsky “fix up” some of Kirby’s work, including the Thing in the final panel! Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! The FANTASTIC FOUR Turns 61! — Part 4

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Under The Microscope

Analyzing The Original Art Pages Of FANTASTIC FOUR #3

by Nick Caputo

I

t’s a great feeling to be in the right place at the right time. I had that opportunity when I accompanied noted Timely-Atlas historian (and Alter Ego contributor) Dr. Michael J. Vassallo on a trip that placed me in direct contact with original artwork pages from The Fantastic Four #3, material of great importance to those who value comicbook history. It might not rank with the discovery of a Picasso painting, unseen Chaplin footage, or an unreleased Elvis song circa 1955, but it clearly tells a story unique to the world of popular culture.

An original comicbook page from the days before PC technology was a singular work of art. All the individuals involved in its production—writer, artist, inker, letterer, editor—played a direct part in completing the job for publication.

It should be noted for the benefit of anyone out of the loop that colorists never touched the original art. This stage of the process occurred after the original art was copied and color guides were marked, before being sent to the specialists in this line of work. That being said, it might be considered presumptuous to compare the study of the comics medium with the uncovering of an Egyptian tomb, but to aficionados of the art form it’s probably just as exciting. Holding pages from Fantastic Four #3, dated March 1962 and likely worked on in summer/fall of 1961, was indeed a memorable experience.

Being able to observe the handiwork of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby at the dawning of Marvel’s Silver Age (following the company’s initial super-hero era in the 1940s), filled with markings and notations unseen in the printed comic, is—at the very least—worth recording for posterity.

What do these pages tell us in regard to the working methods of Lee and Kirby in the pivotal year of 1961? For starters, during this early period Kirby’s margin notes to Lee had not begun. Instances of their initial usage date to 1964, perhaps at the request of Lee. Dick Ayers’ and Don Heck’s distinctive handwriting surfaced at the same time, when they became involved in the Marvel method of drawing a story based on Lee’s plot synopsis (given either verbally or as a short typed-out page). According to Ayers, he originally placed a few of Lee’s own words above the panels to refresh his memory of their discussions. This became the rule everyone followed, except for Steve Ditko, who penned his descriptions on separate pieces of paper. In time some of the artists provided more detailed exposition and played a larger role in the finished product. While Kirby’s visual contributions were concrete and speak for themselves, they

It’s A Miracle, Man! Nick Caputo (on left) and Dr. Michael J. Vassallo (below) hold up the original art to the splash page of Fantastic Four #3 (March 1962). See Nick’s article for the story behind that event—and thanks to him, as well, for both photos.

In addition, we’ve blown up the bottom of the signed p. 1 artwork, so you can hopefully just barely make out hard-working letterer Artie Simek’s plaintive message to Stan. [Artwork TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

do not give us access to the exchange of ideas or story development before the pages were drawn. Lee’s notations, however, provide some insight into his role as writer, editor, and art director.

What better place to begin the analysis than the splash page of FF #3, the earliest page from the early “Marvel” days known to exist thus far. A number of interesting discoveries appear. On the top space where the production info appears (book, date, job number) “March ’62” is crossed out and replaced with “Nov ’61.”

March 1962 was the date on the actual cover, but most comics were dated two to three months ahead of publication in order to have a longer shelf life. FF #3 was on newsstands in December 1961, so November was probably when the book was due at the printers.

Alongside the date info the word “Timely” is written, probably

by Sol Brodsky, who in addition to inking the story handled the production chores. Some staffers and freelancers still referred to the company as Timely, not Magazine Management or Marvel.

Another reason I suspect these are Brodsky’s notations is quite elementary—Lee’s scribbles are worse than a doctor’s scrawls! I’ve often struggled to read his editorial corrections, examples of which can be seen on countless original art pages. The bottom of the page has an amusing, if not earth-shattering, grievance penned in green ink from uncredited letterer Artie Simek: “WHEW! VERY HEAVY PAGE OF LETTERING FOR A FIRST PAGE, STAN!!” Apparently, Lee and Simek had a good relationship, or at least a friendly one!

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Analyzing The Original Art Pages of Fantastic Four #3

“It’s YOUR Turn!”

As Nick C. notes, the lettering change “It’s YOUR” in panel 6 of p. 3 doesn’t appear to be Simek’s work. (Plus, either a comma or a period got “whited out” after the word “guy.”) Although occasionally in the early days (and even in the mid-1960s) Artie would be pulled into the offices by Stan or production manager Sol Brodsky to do a bit of re-lettering, it was more usual to call in some other, less essential freelance letterer to do such work. Either way, that person’s time had to be paid for; thus, in the very early days of FF #3, it might well have been Solly B. himself who did the issue’s relatively few corrections. Script (and proofreading note) by Stan Lee; pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by Sol Brodsky. Thanks to Nick and Heritage Art Auctions for the scan. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

If you look closely, it seems that Lee wrote his dialogue directly on the penciled pages, perhaps putting down his initial, rough dialogue and later refining and typing it up into its finished stage (at least I hope that’s the explanation and poor Artie didn’t have to decipher his bosses’ barely legible scribbles!).

[A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Generally, Stan penciled dialogue directly only on splash pages.]

Next up for study is page 3. Panel 6 has a margin note by Lee to alter two words in the Thing’s speech balloon to: “It’s YOUR,” perhaps from his original, more formal “It is YOUR.” The crudely lettered correction was clearly not the work of Artie Simek. Lee was a stickler for getting a character’s speech just right (as observed on many original art pages over the years), and this might be the case here. Also, the bold lettering could have been added for emphasis.

The Thing’s face has touch-ups in this frame, likely by inker Sol Brodsky, where beads of sweat appear to have been hastily added,

doubtless at Lee’s discretion.

Page 4 (see bottom of page) has a red circle in the margin next to panel 3, which was Lee’s method of denoting a change of some kind, but it’s hard to decipher exactly what alteration he wanted. I suspect Lee was either instructing Sol Brodsky to make Sue visible or explaining to colorist Stan Goldberg that Sue is visible, in order for him to apply the proper hues. Panel 4 has a notation to add the “4” logo on the Fantisticar and to fix up the front area of the vehicle (Lee seemed to prefer having a roundish, more circular design, which he may have felt accentuated the insignia, especially when broken up into sections). The back of this page has an undecipherable sketch; I’m unclear as to its meaning.

Page 5 (see facing page) has a particularly interesting discovery. Along with the continued notations to make the Fantasticar corrections, it provides us with Lee’s panel design and partial dialogue on the back of the page, apparently as a guide for Kirby before it was penciled. If true, it would explain why FF #1 differs from Kirby’s standard layouts. Historians have debated this anomaly over the years, with some theorizing that the comic was cobbled together and expanded from a feature (perhaps for Amazing Adventures) into a solo title at the last minute. Another possibility suggested is that Lee had a more hands-on approach in his early collaborations with Kirby. Panel 1 notes: “MM [Miracle Man] looks out of window – sees monster display in street.” Panel 2 is hard to ascertain; it reads in part: “..will use monster.” Panel 3 has a crudely drawn caricature of a frowning Miracle Man saying: “Only I know how to bring him to life.” Kirby follows Lee’s panel configurations fairly closely. The second tier has three slight sketches of the FF in their car, and the last panel notes: “showing Apt” which was a diagram of the headquarters in the comic. Are there any other examples of Lee providing a layout for Kirby on the back of original art pages?

We now jump to page 16, another noteworthy example that

Wite-Out Wipe-Out Hopefully, the Wite-Out fluid utilized in making corrections will be visible in the panel at right (from p. 4) where it was used. Nick explains the matter of the “4” on the Fantasticar; why Wite-Out was used beneath the word balloon in the right-hand panel is unknown. Unfortunately, we don’t have a scan of the “undecipherable sketch” he found on the back on that page. Script by Lee; art by Kirby & Brodsky. Thanks to NC & Heritage. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Under The Microscope

My Back Pages (Above:) This very rough penciled layout on the back of the original art for p. 5 of FF #3, probably laid out by writer/editor Stan Lee, indicates that the page as printed (see right) must’ve been radically changed from what Kirby had originally drawn. It’s an additional anomaly, however, that the sketch is on the back side of the art: Wouldn’t it have been easier for the artist to draw the new page on a separate sheet, so he could check the sketch from time to time as reference? But then, we’re talking about Jack Kirby here; he probably looked at Stan’s sketch once, said “Got it!,” and went to work.

Inks, of course, by Sol Brodsky. Thanks to Nick C. for the scans.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

appears to confirm historian Will Murray’s theory that Sol Brodsky redrew The Human Torch throughout the story. Panel 4 (on the following page) has a pencil line around the front of the Torch figure and either a stat was added or Kirby’s figure was cut out and replaced by Brodsky’s. The margin notation by Lee appears to read: “in,” which is probably shorthand for “insert.” Apparently there was a last-minute decision to change the look of the Torch. FF #s 1 and 2 had Kirby drawing the character as a loosely defined, barely human-looking figure similar in appearance to a flame monster he’d depicted only a year earlier (“I am Dragoom! The Flaming Invader!” in Strange Tales # 76, Aug. 1960); someone, either Lee or publisher Martin Goodman, demanded a character that more resembled the original, once-popular version of The Human Torch. Without this request we might have seen a vastly different Torch emerge over the years, much as the Thing changed in appearance over time in the

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early days of the feature. Kirby’s inclination was to innovate and not use other artist’s creations, while Lee and Goodman were more concerned with past properties and proven sellers. Lee’s margin notations asked for corrections on Johnny’s uniform. Apparently Kirby drew it as a one-piece costume and Lee had Brodsky add trunk lines, since white paint can be seen on the original art.

Page 19 has Lee once again asking for art fixes, notably on the Thing. Kirby’s mind often wandered off into new concepts and in the process he would forget the smaller mundane details, including the repetitious need to draw characters consistently. This was probably the case with the Thing’s inconsistent clothing, which was eliminated after this appearance (not his trunks, though… they did have the Comics Code Authority to contend with!). Earlier, the Thing had torn off the top portion, but Kirby left his gloves on, which Brodsky deleted at Lee’s request throughout the story. The Miracle Man’s “Key” also shows signs of slight modifications.

Page 20 (see p. 23 of this A/E) was last in the set. The back of the page continued Lee’s notes on the Thing’s attire, but of greater import are the doodles and sketches relating to the development of the team’s costumes. First seen years ago in Greg Theakston’s fanzine Pure Images, it shows how much thought was put into the uniforms before the final “4” symbol was settled on. These sketches do not appear to be the work of Kirby, who originally drew the costumes without any designs on them; they actually resembled the jumpsuits he had fashioned a few years earlier for the Challengers

22

Analyzing The Original Art Pages of Fantastic Four #3

The Torch Is Passed—But Not Past!

(Top row:) In FF #1 & 2,The Human Torch had looked far more “torch” than “human,” as per this Kirby & Klein panel (script by Lee) from #2… closely resembling, except for sheer size, the monstrous “Dragoom” in Strange Tales #76 (Aug. 1960), as per the cover by Kirby & Dick Ayers. However, a number of early readers—including, Ye Ed blushingly admits, himself in a fanzine review published only 2 or 3 weeks after FF #1 went on sale, a piece mentioned by Stan Lee himself in a letter to Alter Ego founder Dr. Jerry Bails—had been “crying for a return to something like the old [Carl] Burgos version,” to use RT’s words of August 1961.

(Right & below:) It’s widely believed—probably correctly—that the Torch figure in the original art for the depicted panel from FF #3, p. 16, was redrawn/re-inked by embellisher Sol Brodsky to approximate the “Burgos version.”

Note the proofreading note from editor/writer Stan, and the fact that the Torch figure appears to have been pasted onto the page to the Thing’s right. Also seen is the type of visual that “we” were all “crying for”: Carl Burgos’ cover for The Human Torch (#38, Aug. 1954), his last ever for the feature. FF #3 scan from Nick C. and Heritage Art Auctions. Thanks to the GCD for the two cover scans on this page. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Sol Brodsky of the Unknown at DC. I doubt that Lee was the culprit, since they look far too professional. Candidates range from either Brodsky, who came up with the original FF logo, or letterer Artie Simek, who produced the finished version. Whatever the case, Lee would have given final approval.

While there are many fascinating discoveries on these pages, it is still an incomplete puzzle inviting countless questions. The answers may never be fully known, but another layer might be peeled away if the original art to FF #1 & #2 someday emerges. Did Lee lay out those stories in the same manner? Would either issue reveal George Klein’s name? (Those of us who have studied art styles –with the aforementioned Dr. Vassallo being the preeminent scholar

Under The Microscope

23

Special thanks to fellow Yancy Streeter and scholarly wise guy Dr. Michael J. Vassallo (a.k.a. Doc V) and that paragon of punctuation and perfection, “Fearless” Frankie Mastropaolo!

Nick Caputo has written articles for The Jack Kirby Collector, Comic Book Artist, Alter Ego, Comic Book Marketplace, Jack Kirby Quarterly, Fantaco Publications, and Marvel’s Omnibus and Masterworks collections. He also contributed to Taschen’s 76 Years of Marvel: From the Golden Age to the Silver Screen and The Stan Lee Story, providing research and supplying captions and biographies.

Nick studies artists’ styles and has indexed thousands of entries for the invaluable Grand Comics Database. You can read his blog at https://nick-caputo.blogspot.com/

He Never Laid A Glove On Me! This time, the effects of Wite-Out are visible on the hands and legs of the Thing, who apparently was originally drawn by Kirby (and inked by Brodsky) wearing gloves and leggings that Lee decided to get rid of at the last minute. The art re-do was probably done by Brodsky. Thanks to Nick C. & Heritage Art Auctions.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

for the Timely-Atlas era—have identified Klein as the uncredited inker on both issues.) Was Amazing Adventures written on the splash page to #1, scratched out and replaced with Fantastic Four? It has long been speculated by comics scholars, most notably Michael Feldman, that the strip was originally prepared as a lead feature for the anthology title, but, based on the sales of DC’s Justice League of America, Martin Goodman rushed out the FF in its own magazine.

Did Kirby present the pages to Lee, affording him the opportunity to scrutinize and modify them, or was Lee more directly involved with plotting stories in this nascent period? If all the original artwork from Marvel’s early years were available for study, what surprises would they reveal? Hopefully more such artifacts will surface in the future, enriching our understanding of the creative process and providing further insight into a monumental period in comicbook history.

(Article originally written in 2003 and revised in 2021.)

What 4?

Any additional “notes on the Thing’s attire,” to quote Nick’s words, must be on the original-art side of this page; but the back clearly shows either Stan Lee, Sol Brodsky, or somebody playing around with various concepts for the Fantastic Four’s chest symbol… perhaps before the story was inked. Thanks to NC & Heritage Art Auctions. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! The FANTASTIC FOUR Turns 61! — Part 5

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When The Sub-Mariner Was A Bowery Bum A Historical Look At A Primary Setting Of Fantastic Four #4

by Bob Cromwell

A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: Back in issue #138, journalist Paris Liu provided a history of 177A Bleecker Street and environs in New York’s Greenwich Village—the address, in Marvel Comics, of Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts (and, not so incidentally, the real-world locale where fellow pros Gary Friedrich, Bill Everett, and Roy Thomas had dwelt for half a year in 1965-66). That article and his own interests led A/E reader Bob Cromwell to take a long and informative look at an even earlier, basically true-life Marvel landmark—the “flophouse” in the Bowery sector in lower Manhattan where, in Fantastic Four #4 (May 1962), a disgruntled Johnny Storm, a.k.a. The Human Torch, decided to temporarily hide out from the other members of that fledgling super-hero team. Only, it wasn’t really a “flophouse” (not that Johnny or scripter Stan Lee used that precise phrase), as Bob explains below.

The Prince On The Bowery How do the two above images tie together? Well, the one on the right, of course, is the cover of Fantastic Four #4 (May 1962) by penciler Jack Kirby & inker Sol Brodsky—the issue that brought the Golden Age antihero known as the Sub-Mariner into the earliest days of the a-borning Marvel Universe by having him discovered living on what was often called “the Bowery.” FF #4 cover courtesy of the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] The photo depicts the location where, decades earlier, the family of Jacob Kurtzberg/Jack Kirby reportedly lived for a time. That address, 147 Essex Street, was just a few blocks east of Bowery, and is the red brick building with the blue “Lazar Mechanical” sign. The photo, of course, is from a more recent day, courtesy of Bob Cromwell.

Unfortunately, we were forced to abridge Bob’s article slightly, and to utilize only half or so of the numerous photos that accompanied it when it was first posted online at https://cromwell-intl.com/namor—but, if you want, you can revel in the entire piece and all the images by clicking on that still-valid URL. Meanwhile, here is the Alter Ego version, with thanks to Bob C. for making it accessible to our ever-questful readers….

I

was at a Ukrainian dive on the Lower East Side when the guy on the adjacent bar stool asked me a question that led to American history throughout the 20th century, the return of Namor the Sub-Mariner in the Silver Age, and, just possibly, Thor’s search for Odin.

Who said the comics weren’t educational?

I was at Karpaty Bar on Second Avenue near 9th Street. Dave on the adjacent stool asked me if I lived in the neighborhood. “No, I’m from out of town, but I get to New York fairly often,” and my

local home away from home at the time was the White House nearby on Bowery. Dave was surprised to hear that, as he knew what the place was like when we’re told that the Sub-Mariner lived there or somewhere very similar.

The White House had been home for indigent men since 1899. Around 2000 it was converted, half for permanent residents and the other half a hostel for independent travelers. It was a few years afterward that I started staying there, on the hostel side. It was a little scruffy, but you got a tiny private room for only $30 in Manhattan. But—the Sub-Mariner?

Prince Namor In The Bowery In Fantastic Four #4, cover-dated May 1962, Johnny Storm has left The Fantastic Four. He goes to the Bowery to find a place to stay. This was during a period when Marvel was moving toward a realistic New-York-based setting. No more Central City, but actual New York City settings and details.

Johnny selects a place “no worse than the others.” Once inside, things become very self-referential. He finds an old comicbook from two decades before—an issue of Timely’s Sub-Mariner. It’s an “old, beat-up comic mag… from the 1940s.” But Johnny remembers his older sister Sue Storm talking about Namor as an actual person.

“When The Sub-Mariner Was A Bowery Bum”

(This was from the early days when Sue Storm had been supposed to be alive during the Second World War.) One of Johnny’s fellow flophouse bums comments that someone very similar is living there at that very moment.

Hang On—What’s The Nomenclature?

First, “the Bowery.” That’s the English spelling of a now-archaic Dutch word “Bouwerij.” The Dutch established the settlement of Nieuw-Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan island in 1624. By the mid-1600s there were several large farms north of the settlement. The Dutch called the area and the road leading through it “Bouwerij,” meaning “farm.” The British took over the territory in 1664, renaming it “New York” and spelling that Dutch name “Bowery.”

By the early 1800s the city had grown. Wealthy residents’ homes replaced farms, and the Bowery became the theatre district.

The city continued to expand, with the wealthy moving to follow the northern edge. By the 1860s, the Bowery’s classy theatres were changing to lowbrow music halls, beer gardens, dime museums, gambling parlors, and brothels.

Now, “flophouse bum.” Low-cost residential choices of SROs, dormitories, and flophouses were occupied by hobos, tramps, and bums.

Hobos were skilled laborers who rode freight trains to follow seasonal work. Western expansion had scaled back through the 1910s, starting with the addition of Arizona and New Mexico as the

Rules Of The Road (Above:) In FF #4, Johnny Storm, on the lam from his teammates, winds up in the decidedly low-rent Bowery area of Manhattan, and soon discovers that his new digs stock at least one 20-year-old comicbook, a Sub-Mariner Comics whose cover doesn’t match any actual Golden Age illustration. Script by Stan Lee; pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by Sol Brodsky. Thanks to Barry Pearl.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Right:) The sign on the wall in panel 3 may have its equivalent in the one seen in this old photo, which was taken in The White House, a similar locale mentioned in his text by Bob Cromwell. These house rules, he says, probably date back to the 1930s and 1940s. By the 2000s, a newer sign on the permanent resident side started with “NO SCREAMING, NO FIGHTING.”

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47th and 48th states in 1912. Then the Great Depression began in 1929, bringing an end to most itinerant work.

Tramps, some of them recently unemployed hobos, traveled by freight train but didn’t work, at least not very much.

Bums didn’t even travel; they were the stationary unemployed.

An SRO or “Single-Room Occupancy” hotel had small private compartments, maybe just six by four feet. They were often called “cage hotels” because the compartment walls didn’t reach the floor or ceiling.

Wooden lattices or chicken wire mesh kept men from crawling or climbing into adjacent “cabins.” The cage design greatly simplified (and thus cheapened) heating, ventilation,

“They Say Such Things, And They Do Such Things, On The Bowery…”

Or at least so went the lyrics of the once-popular song “The Bowery,” from a musical play that opened on Broadway back in 1891—after several years on the road.

“Reginald Marsh,” writes Bob C., “painted scenes of Depression-era New York. His painting ‘The Bowery’ (1930), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, shows a typical scene. The Third Avenue Elevated line runs overhead, making things even darker, dirtier, and noisier. The ‘El’ ran down Third Avenue and the Bowery from 1878 until 1955. Wolverine Noir (2009) [the Marvel Comics limited series by writer Stuart Moore and artist C.P. Smith] is set in the Bowery in 1937. James Logan is a private detective with an office under the 3rd Avenue El.” Marsh’s painting shows a sign that advertises rooms for 30 cents. This, says Bob, would be a small SRO “cabin.” The second panel from the FF #4 page reproduced at left, showing Johnny selecting a place to stay, features a sign reading “Mens Hotel” and what might be “25¢” for a bed in the dormitory. That would probably be a rather low price for 1962, but then he was in the heart of Skid Row. The panel before that, where Johnny is entering the Bowery, shows what might be the Third Avenue Elevated in the background. So, some of the details of that story’s setting might have been left over from about ten years before.

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A Historical Look At A Primary Setting Of Fantastic Four #4

and lighting. Once safety codes began requiring fire suppression, a few sprinkler heads covered an entire floor.

A dormitory had one or more large open rooms with several beds or cots.

A flophouse charged even less to flop on the floor and sleep indoors.

Technically, Johnny in FF #4 was in a dormitory, surrounded by bums.

“Room To Let—Fifty Cents” That’s the description and price that the ultra-talented Roger Miller would include in his brilliant lyrics for the classic 1965 song “King of the Road.” The situation in many “SRO” locations on the Bowery, according to Bob Cromwell, who took this photo, was even more stringent.

The “cabin” or “compartment” in this pic could be called a “room” only by a generous stretch of the imagination… still, it was far better than sleeping on the street. “Here’s the whole layout of a compartment inside. The bunk, a foam mattress on a wooden shelf, takes up over half the space. The compartment walls reach the floor, but not the ceiling.

Wooden trellis material fills today's gap.

It probably was chicken wire mesh before this half was renovated as a hostel.”

World Wars & The Depression Many hotels in the Lower East Side of New York were converted to SROs around the end of World War I. Men returning from Europe were processed out of the military in New York. They were given enough money to stay for a short time before making their way home. However, many checked into SROs and never left.

Bowery, today’s southern extension of Third Avenue plus a few blocks to either side, became the city’s Skid Row during the Great Depression. The indigent population peaked around 75,000 in the 1930s. SROs, dormitories, and flophouses filled the upper floors of many of the buildings along Bowery.

The American public had seen the Bowery depicted in films since the 1930s, including the evolving film series that featured first the Dead End Kids (1937-1940), then the East Side Kids (1940-1945), and finally the Bowery Boys (1945-1958). Comics writers and artists wrote and drew what they observed, and what their audience would recognize.

Meanwhile, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee had been observing the Bowery and the rest of New York through the 1930s. Jack Kirby drew cartoons for Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate in 1936-1939, and in 1939 (at age 17) Stan Lee (born Stanley Lieber) became an assistant at Timely Comics, which would later become Marvel Comics. Stan’s family lived in northern Manhattan, and he attended high school in the Bronx, but the Kirbys lived at 147 Essex Street, just a few blocks east of Bowery.

Another wave of demobilized men moved into SROs at the end of World War II. However, the G.I. Bill of 1944 was a huge help. The Bowery’s indigent population fell to about 15,000 by 1949. Even so, the area remained unofficially “Skid Row” into the 1980s. In 1962 Johnny Storm was in a notoriously bad part of town.

The Sub-Mariner Unmasked Namor the Sub-Mariner was originally an agent of chaos, almost like Loki (of whom more later). But during the US involvement in World War II, Namor was of course on the side of the Allies.

The Golden Age Sub-Mariner Comics, as well as his appearances in Marvel Mystery Comics, lasted through mid-1949. Namor disappeared when super-heroes were by and large replaced by true-crime, horror, war, and romance storylines. The character was revived for two years in the mid-1950s, then vanished again… for what turned out to be approximately seven years.

Which brings us to 1962 and Fantastic Four #4. A mysterious bearded resident has been living on the Bowery for several years.

He displays uncanny strength and fighting skill, but he can’t remember who he is or why he is there. Intrigued, Johnny burns off his overgrown hair and beard—and discovers that he is Namor the Sub-Mariner… a character about whom, only a few moments before, by an amazing coincidence, the young Torch had been reading in that old, dog-eared comicbook!

Johnny carries Namor out to sea and drops him into the water.

The Sub-Mariner’s memory returns once he’s back in his native element. Discovering that atomic testing has destroyed his native Atlantis, Namor vows revenge upon humanity. The Fantastic Four must reunite and stop him—on the piers and docks of New York City, but no longer on the Bowery.

A 1968 comics story revealed that Namor had been made amnesiac by a foe in the mid-1950s. FF #4 in 1962 is the character’s recovery from that amnesia—and his return to publication. The original Human Torch, who was actually an android, had made his debut in Oct. 1939’s Marvel Comics #1, the same magazine and issue in which the Sub-Mariner first appeared. So it’s appropriate that Namor reappears in the company of a second (and entirely human) Human Torch.

What Can You See And Experience Today?

The aforementioned White House at 340 Bowery was the Bellevue Hotel in 1899. It was a flophouse or possibly a dormitory.

In 1905 the census recorded 70 men living there. In 1916-1917 the Ghelardi family bought the property and renamed it the “White House,” a name that reflected their racial policy through most of the 20th century. In 1928-1929 they expanded the White House into the adjacent lot to the south. By 1950 there were 234 cubicles in the combined structure. The Ghelardi family sold the property in 1998.

The number of permanent residents was rapidly dropping, so the new owners converted the original section into cheap lodging for independent travelers. It was cleaned, refurbished, and started operating as a hostel around 2000.

The White House transient side—the hostel—closed from September 2009 until January 2011. Further renovations were needed to get up to code for hotel/hostel standards. Then it shut down again, apparently forever, in September 2014. The end was near. Just a few permanent residents remained. Mac, with the unmistakable Marine Corps bearing and cap. Lou, from whom diabetes had taken half a leg. Maybe six men total.

But there is still a place where you can channel your inner Sub-Mariner or Human Torch, just three blocks further down Bowery....

“When The Sub-Mariner Was A Bowery Bum”

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Bowery Mission, but they have moved that branch to Brooklyn.

To Learn More Joseph Mitchell’s book Up In The Old Hotel is a collection of his articles in The New Yorker. Many of them involve various “characters,” eccentrics, and the indigent living in the Bowery and Greenwich Village. And I have more on the history of SROs and New York’s Lower East Side on my web site: https://cromwell-intl. com/sro/

So How Were Loki & Thor Possibly Involved?

The modern-day Marvel version of Loki first appeared in Journey into Mystery #85 (October 1962), solidly Silver Age. Of course, the current Marvel Cinematic Universe makes an enormous number of changes, but Thor: Ragnarok in 2017 originally had a connection or at least an homage to FF #4.

And see the mid-credits scene in the first Doctor Strange movie.

Thor is visiting the Sanctum Sanctorum. The Sorcerer Supreme is peeved that Thor has brought the rather dangerous Loki to New York. Thor explains that it’s “a long story, family drama, that kind of thing. But we’re looking for my father.” They will return to Asgard as soon as they find him.

“Ya Mangy Bum!” A somewhat surly and passively violent bearded denizen of a Bowery-area “dormitory” will soon stand revealed as an amnesiac Sub-Mariner. From FF #4

by Lee, Kirby, & Brodsky. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

The original screenplay for Thor: Ragnarok had Odin lost in New York and unaware of his own identity. Thor and Loki found Odin in an alley, confused and indigent. Photographs of the filming

The Prince Hotel Becomes The Bowery House The Prince Hotel at 220 Bowery opened as a conventional hotel in 1927. Around the end of World War II it was converted into an SRO to pack in the soldiers arriving by troopship for processing out of the military. The G.I. Bill of 1944 made things much better than after the First World War, but there were still too many men who checked in and never left. The Prince Hotel was renovated and reopened in 2011 as the Bowery House, a low-cost hotel for travelers with a taste for history. For about $60-80 per night you can stay in a “cabin” or compartment still in the mid-1940s design. It’s my new pied à terre.

The rooms are a little larger, about six feet on a side. And, you get an electrical outlet, an upgrade from the White House! Toilets and showers are, of course, down the passageway. A shared area looks out over the Bowery from the second floor. Three or four permanent residents remain here from the 1970s. You might meet one of them here. A stay here is immersive history.

The Bowery House is a clean and safe place to stay. Some very cheap hotels a few blocks further down Bowery into Chinatown have recently been converted from SROs. Online booking sites don’t make their history and current state clear. They’re not nearly as clean or carefully rebuilt. The Bowery House staff told me about guests who started their visit to New York in one of those places, and found they then considered the move to the Bowery House a big upgrade.

The last of the SROs are closing, and missions are moving out. The Bowery Mission is right across the street from the Bowery House. It was founded further south into Chinatown in 1879. It was the third rescue mission established in the U.S. and the second in New York City. The Salvation Army had a location next door to the

“A Bowery Flop-house” (Above:) Johnny Storm gives a “Bowery bum” a unique type of shave and haircut in FF #4, by Lee, Kirby, & Brodsky.

(Below:) The heading of this caption is the phrase writer Roy Thomas used to describe Johnny’s temporary lower-Manhattan surroundings when re-telling the story of Namor’s re-discovery in the May 1968 Sub-Mariner #1. Pencils by John Buscema; inks by Frank Giacoia. Thanks to Barry Pearl for both art scans.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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A Historical Look At A Primary Setting Of Fantastic Four #4

No, Not That White House!

(Above:) Believe it or not, the “White House” is the dark brick building with bright blue and red doors. “When I stayed there,” Bob Cromwell says, “it was transients on the right, the north, and residents on the left, the south.”

Photo courtesy of BC.

process and early trailers depicted that New York setting and Odin’s disheveled appearance. That scene was re-shot to place the reunion in Norway, to better reflect the emotions of what was happening and to retain Odin’s dignity. However, until that re-write and re-shoot, the 2017 movie re-created the Silver Age return of the Sub-Mariner—an amnesiac super-hero living anonymously in a Bowery SRO, dormitory, or flophouse!

The View From The Bowery (Above:) “The Prince Hotel,” Bob C. IDs for us, “is the lighter brick building, eight windows wide, in the left half of this picture. The darker brick building at right is the former YMCA. That organization had moved out by 1970, when the area was still Skid Row and the Prince was an SRO. The writer William S. Burroughs lived in the ex-YMCA, in ‘The Bunker,’ an apartment in the windowless former locker room. He appreciated its physical security, with no windows and a locked gate and two more sturdy locked doors between his home and Skid Row. Burroughs lived there from 1974 until 1981. He knew all about the SROs, living next-door to one and undoubtedly spending time in some as a resident. In Naked Lunch he wrote, ‘I lay there in my open-top cubicle room looking at the ceiling…. I listened to the grunts and squeals and snarls....’”

(Directly above:) The club called “CBGB, associated with the Ramones [seen here], the Talking Heads, Blondie, and other New York bands of the 1970s,” Bob adds, “was on the ground floor of the Palace Hotel, another SRO. It was at 315 Bowery, across from where Bleecker Street [emanating from Greenwich Village] came to an end. CBGB closed in 2006 after a long rent dispute, and became a designer clothing store.”

A Pair Of Thor Losers?

While Thor and his adopted brother Loki are probably facing off in a better part of town than the Bowery in this splash page from Journey into Mystery #85 (Oct. 1962), by writers Stan Lee & Larry Lieber, with art by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers, Bob Cromwell draws attention in his article to an almost-connection between Fantastic Four #4 and Thor: Ragnarok, the movie. An amnesiac Odin “lost in New York” was slated to appear in that 2017 film? Very interesting, as they used to say on TV’s Laugh-In. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] Probably by coincidence, isn’t that likewise a quasi-description of events in the TV series American Gods, based on a 2001 novel by Neil Gaiman, which debuted the same year Thor: Ragnarok was released, featuring its aged wanderer “Wednesday”—who’s named after a day named for “Wotan,” a variation on “Odin”?

And, by an even weirder coincidence, Ye Editor (Roy Thomas) had been trying since the 1990s to sell to DC Comics a modern-day sequel to the graphic-novel adaptation he and artist Gil Kane had done of Richard Wagner’s four-opera Ring of the Nibelung, which would also have featured an Odin wandering about NYC years after the Norse Twilight of the Gods. Small world, no?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! The FANTASTIC FOUR Turns 61! — Part 6

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First & Four-most

A Brief Biography Of GEORGE KLEIN— Inker Of Fantastic Four #1 & 2— And A Fine Artist In His Own Right

by Ben Herman A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: I suppose Alter Ego and I have been two of the last hold-outs. Ever since art-intensive comics historians first began proclaiming a decade or so ago that the inker of Fantastic Four #1 & 2 was almost certainly George Klein, I’ve usually added the adjective “probable” to that designation when reprinting pages from those issues in A/E. Of course, final proof of the inker’s identity is highly unlikely, since virtually all the Timely/Marvel professionals who were around in 1961—writer/ editor Stan Lee, penciler/co-plotter Jack Kirby, FF logo designer Sol Brodsky, letterer Art Simek, colorist Stan Goldberg, even ancillary Marvel artists such as Dick Ayers, Don Heck, Steve Ditko, and Paul Reinman—have all left the scene without providing us with so much as opinions, let alone proof. Only Stan’s brother, Larry Lieber, remains of those who were in and out of the Timely offices in 1961… and Larry, who wasn’t involved with FF #1, has never ventured an opinion as to that comic’s initial embellisher. Only some long-lost document—a personal letter, a scrap of some old accounting record, etc.—could possibly shed any definitive light on the subject.

Still, henceforth, I shall assume, as do most people nowadays who consider the subject, that George Klein—whom I worked with on The

George Klein If George had returned to Marvel Comics a couple of years earlier, no doubt editor Stan Lee’s cavortin’ credits would’ve dubbed him “Gorgeous George” (after a prominent 1950s wrestler)—and maybe they did, somewhere. Above photo courtesy of Todd Klein (no relation, far as we know.) Also on this page are a trio of counterclockwise highlights of Klein’s post-Timely career: The first Superman cover inked by Klein—for #150 (Jan. 1962), over pencils by Curt Swan, who was then fast becoming the Man of Steel’s major delineator. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © DC Comics.]

The splash page of the second chapter in Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961)—probably done within a few weeks of the Superman #150 cover—was evidently inked by GK over pencils by Jack Kirby.

Script by Stan Lee. Thanks to Jim Kealy.

Since George’s first assignment at late-’60s Marvel was The Avengers #55, he was on hand to lend his considerable embellishing skills to John Buscema’s dynamic pencils for #57 (Oct. ’68), which introduced the Marvel Age Vision. Script by Roy Thomas. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [FF & Avengers pages TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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A Brief Biography Of George Klein

Avengers, et al., and who was even briefly my “neighbor” in late-1960s Manhattan (when I could’ve asked him the question face to face, had I then had any, er, inkling that he might have labored on FF #1 & 2)—did indeed embellish, in the spring and summer of ’61, the first two issues of what would soon be designated “The World’s Greatest Comics Magazine!”

Of course, those were only two comicbook issues to which George applied his considerable talents, out of many over nearly thirty years in the field—two issues that, to him, were doubtless of no more importance than countless others he’d done. So here is Ben Herman to tell you the full story, with the aid and cooperation of several of George’s kinfolk….

G

eorge Klein was a talented, yet often-underrated artist, who worked in American comicbooks, pulps, and magazines over a three-decade period in the middle of the 20th century.

One of the main reasons he is not better-known among comics fandom is that he tragically passed away at the relatively young age of 53 on May 10, 1969.

George Dunsford Klein was born on September 11, 1915. His parents were George Jacob Klein and Matilda Lenore Dunsford. His father worked for the railroad and moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to Dragon, Utah, and then to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where Klein grew up. He was the family’s second child, preceded two years

earlier by his sister Edna.

As a child and teenager Klein was possessed of a great fascination for the natural world. His niece Diane Boden told me, “He had tons of rock, shells, and fossils that he collected and categorized in small match boxes. I still have them. I have many scrapbooks of wildlife sketches that he did…. George always wanted to be a Park Ranger, like at Yellowstone, and probably would have if [the family] hadn’t moved east.” Boden’s mother Edna attended Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, and so Klein moved to the Bay State with the rest of the family.

It was in Massachusetts that he also attended school. As per Eileen Clancy, curator of the Salmagundi Art Club, “[George Klein] studied at the Massachusetts School of Art in Boston, and [the] Scott Carbee School of Art in Boston, [and] he studied privately with artist Elmer Greene.”

His earliest published work appears to be a painted cover for the December 1939 edition of National Sportsman. He signed this piece under his full name: “George Dunsford Klein.”

Between 1941 and 1943 Klein was employed by Timely Comics, the precursor to Marvel. Creator credits in the Golden Age are often missing or inaccurate, but it is generally believed he worked there on such titles as All Winners Comics, Captain America Comics, and Young Allies Comics, among others.

In 1943 Klein was drafted to serve in World War II. He was well-regarded by his co-workers at Timely, who threw him a party at the Copacabana night club to see him off. He became a Technician fifth grade in the 1165th Engineer Combat Group of the U.S. Army, stationed in the Pacific. He was awarded the Good Conduct Ribbon and Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon, and was honorably discharged in 1946.

Returning to civilian life, Klein resumed his career as an artist.

He moved to New York City, living at 155 East 52nd Street, and later (near the end of his life) at 425 East 86th Street. His first love, artistically, was painting. Unfortunately, as his niece observed to me, “He could never make a living selling his paintings.” Instead, he returned to comicbooks, primarily as an inker, again finding employment at Timely, or Atlas Comics as it came to be known for much of the 1950s.

Early Images (Above:) George during his college years. He inscribed this photo to his sister, the mother of his niece Diane Boden, who provided it to us via Ben Herman.

(Right:) The 24-year-old artist’s painted cover for National Sportsman magazine for December 1939—probably his first professionally published work. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Among the various titles he worked on at Timely/Atlas in the late ’40s and early ’50s were the romance series Girl Comics and the well-regarded fantasy/ romance series Venus, although (again due to the lack of credits) the exact details of his involvement are a matter of guesswork and analysis. He also worked, both before and after the war, for the various pulp magazines published by Timely owner Martin Goodman. Throughout the decade the Goodman publications Best Love, Complete Sports, Complete War, and Detective Short

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Costumes & Caricatures Must’ve been a fun time in the pre-WWII Timely bullpen, as witness, clockwise from top left: George Klein did full Kirbyesque art on “The Defender” in U.S.A. Comics #3 (Jan. 1942). The writers of this and the following pieces are unidentified.

These two “Oscar the Pig” panels from Terry-Toons Comics #10 (July 1943) introduced a knight-errant modeled after Klein, who inked Ed Winiarski’s pencils—then, atop the next page, a royal court consisting of caricatures of (l. to r.) artists Dave Gantz, Mike Sekowsky, Syd Shores, two unknowns, and (with big lips) Al Jaffee.

Soon afterward, in “The Creeper” feature in Krazy Comics #12 (Nov. ’43), the Winiarski/Klein team produced a several-page sequence enlivened by caricatures of Timely staffers. George is the guy shown inking a page, while “Win” holds up the drawing board and a blond Sekowsky stands opposite Klein. While not all these guys can be ID’d, the man in the dark coat beneath GK’s knees is bigfoot cartoonist Vince Fago, who served as Timely’s editor while Stan Lee was in the Signal Corps during World War II. More of this story was seen (but only in black-&-white) in A/E #13. Thanks to Michael J. Vassallo for all four art scans. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Lord Have Percy!

Mike Sekowsky penciled much of the work that Klein inked at Timely during the 1940s. Seen at left is a Sekowsky/Klein page from Comedy Comics #11 (Sept. 1942). Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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A Brief Biography Of George Klein

Stories all featured signed illustrations by Klein.

happened, but [Timely funny animal artist] Dave [Gantz] was there with Al Jaffe and their wives. They saw George and I were dancing, and of course Mike knew about it the next morning.”

One of the few Timely comics series to contain stories credited to Klein was U.S.A. Comics. Issues #2 (Nov. 1941) and #3 (Jan. 1942) contained installments of “The Defender” with Klein’s byline.

U.S.A. Comics #5 (Summer 1942) included a “Black Widow” story that was “drawn by” Mike Sekowsky & George Klein, most likely meaning that Sekowsky was the penciler and Klein the inker.

Sekowsky was also on staff at Timely in the 1940s. He and Klein were friends, although that friendship became severely strained. In the mid-1940s Sekowsky was dating Violet Barclay, another artist and one of the few women on staff at Timely. When the war ended and Klein returned to Timely, problems soon commenced.

As Barclay related to Jim Amash in Alter Ego #33, “George Klein came back from the Army, and I liked George. I was very attracted to him and I did not love Mike. So George took me out to Tavern on the Green and we went dancing. I don’t know what

“You’re In The Army Now!” George Klein in uniform during World War II. Courtesy of Diane Boden.

The love triangle between Klein, Sekowsky, and Barclay soon affected work at Timely, with Sekowsky at one point reportedly attempting to provoke a physical confrontation with Klein. On another occasion Sekowsky reportedly tried to get Barclay fired.

Allen Bellman, another artist on staff at Timely, remembered the occurrence. As he related to me: “I believe George was an inker and he sat next to Violet Barclay, a very beautiful woman who was an inker, too. Now, she sat next to Mike Sekowsky, who was a great

“Venus, If You Will…”

(Above:) This splash page from Timely’s Venus #1 (Aug. 1948) was penciled

by Klein and (quite possibly) inked by Lin Streeter. Writer uncertain. The comics series was inspired by One Touch of Venus (1948), the film version of a successful 1943 Broadway musical. Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo for this and the following scan.

(Right:) An all-Klein splash for Love Tales #55 (May 1952). Writer unknown.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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penciler, fast and good, but a guy with a bad attitude. It was known that Mike and Violet were romantically linked. With George sitting next to Violet, rumors were that [the two of them] had something going. Mike went into [editor] Stan Lee’s office demanding Stan fire Violet or he [would] quit. As it was told to me, Stan said, ‘Goodbye.’ Mike went back to his drawing board.”

Barclay was left with the impression that her dating Klein while she was also involved with Sekowsky, and the subsequent feud between the two men, diminished Klein’s standing at Timely.

As she told Amash, “George “Glamorous Girl Inker” just wanted to get rid of me That’s how Stan Lee referred to Violet because Mike was making Barclay in his 1947 mini-book Secrets problems for him. And behind the Comics. She later changed her George liked all the guys first name to Valerie. Photo courtesy of Trina Robbins. there; he was friends with them. I was just another girl. They were his friends, including Dave Gantz, but they all put George down after that, figuring George wasn’t a nice human being to do that to Mike.”

Comics. Outside of comicbooks, Klein was a regular contributor to Wyoming Wildlife, the award-winning magazine published by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Although he experienced difficulty establishing a career as a fine arts painter, Klein’s work for Wyoming Wildlife and other publications nevertheless gained him acclaim as a landscape and wildlife artist. In 1957 Klein joined the prestigious Salmagundi Art Club, located at 47 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. As per curator Eileen Clancy, Klein was admitted to the Club as an Artist Member on the basis of his work as “a fine artist of portraits and landscapes.”

By the early 1950s much of Klein’s work in comics was for National Periodical Publications, a.k.a. DC Comics. Giella had also gone to work for National/DC around this time. However, he seldom had an opportunity to connect with his old friend from Timely. Giella recalled that “Klein popped in there occasionally, but I didn’t see much of him, because we worked for different editors,” with Giella receiving most of his assignments from Julius Schwartz, whereas Klein was working primarily for Mort Weisinger.

Beginning in 1955 Klein was regularly paired up with penciler Curt Swan on the various “Superman” titles edited by Weisinger.

Looking at the Grand Comic Database, the first collaboration between Swan and Klein appears to have been on Adventure Comics #216, cover-dated Sept. 1955, with the two of them drawing the “Superboy” story “The Wizard City,” written by the legendary Bill Finger. Swan and Klein continued to work together for the next 12 years, with their art appearing in numerous issues of Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Superman, Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane, and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen.

Bellman disagreed with that assessment, declaring to me: “All in all, George was a good guy, a true gentleman, and well-liked by everyone except by Mike Sekowsky.”

In fact, Klein appeared to have made quite a positive impression overall on his co-workers at Timely. All these decades later, Bellman vividly recalled his fellow artist: “George Klein stood out from the rest of the comicbook staff. He was the best-looking guy, who dressed as if he stepped out of the cover of GQ Magazine, a really nice chap who kept to himself. I always admired his homburg hat which was a couple of steps above the fedora men wore at that time.”

Joe Giella was another artist on staff at Timely in the late 1940s, and he also clearly remembered Klein. Giella recounted his memories of Klein to me: “Klein was tall and statuesque. He had blond hair and blue eyes. He always smoked a pipe. He looked like a movie star. He was very pleasant to talk to. He didn’t look down on you. He never had a harsh word to say about anyone.”

At the time Giella was in his late teens, and Klein was already in his early 30s. Despite the age difference, the two men became friends. “I walked through Manhattan with him, and went to restaurants with him,” Giella told me. “Once I went with my brother Frank to visit Klein [in Massachusetts] at his mother’s home.”

As far as his relationships with the rest of the staff at Timely went, Giella told me Klein had one close friend in particular: “When [Klein] was at Timely he was very friendly with Chris Rule.”

During the post-war years Klein also branched out to work for other publishers, such as American Comics Group (ACG) and Ace

“Flowers In Pot With Statue” That’s the name given by George Klein—or perhaps by niece Diane Boden, the current owner—to this painting of his. He’d have preferred making a living as a painter, but times were tough, and comics beckoned.

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A Brief Biography Of George Klein

one of the best inkers Swan ever got during his lengthy career.

The Check Is In The Male!

Besides drawing the occasional full-art comics story for Timely when he returned after the war, such as the above splash from Marvel Tales #100 (April 1951), Klein also contributed illustrations to the company’s so-called “men’s magazines,” including (above right) one for Male, Vol. 1, #3 (Oct. 1950). [© the respective copyright holders.]

Speaking truthfully, Swan is a penciler who at times in the past has left me a bit cold. He was one of those artists who I recognized as technically proficient, someone who is a good, solid storyteller.

However, often his work just did not connect with me personally.

Quoting from the bio of Klein written by Mark Waid for DC’s Legion Archives hardcover volumes: “Klein set new standards for his craft with his razor-crisp brushline, which brought new dimensions to the art of Curt Swan, the penciler with whom Klein was most frequently paired. Together, Swan and Klein defined for years to come the look of Superman and his cast of characters; to this day, most Legion of Super-Heroes aficionados consider Swan and Klein to be the all-time finest Legion art team.”

That said, with the benefit of hindsight, and having spoken to people who are fans of Swan, my appreciation for his penciling has increased. I think there were a number of occasions at DC when Swan was paired with inkers who were not a good match for him. However, when Swan was inked by Murphy Anderson during the 1970s and ’80s, the results were amazing. Likewise, looking to the prior two decades, there is something about the teaming of Swan and Klein that genuinely appeals to me.

Having been born in 1976, obviously I did not read the stories drawn by Swan & Klein when they first came out. About 20 years ago I became interested in the Legion of Super-Heroes and began picking up the hardcover Legion Archives. I was immediately taken with the work that Swan & Klein did on those “Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes” stories from Adventure Comics in the 1960s. I regard Klein as

Curt Swan Lights—Camera—Action!

This cover for Action Comics #188 (May 1962), penciled by Curt Swan, was the first for that title inked by George Klein.

Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © DC Comics.]

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Probably the stand-out stories of this era were written by the then-teenage Jim Shooter, who introduced Karate Kid, Princess Projecta, and Ferro Lad to the Legion, as well as the villainous Fatal Five. Swan & Klein did a superb job illustrating these now-classic stories.

Among the other noteworthy pieces by the Swan & Klein team is their iconic cover for Action Comics #300 (May 1963). This incredibly striking image featured a forlorn, powerless Superman as the “Captive of the Red Sun,” stranded a million years in the future on a desolate, abandoned Earth.

Boden has fond memories of her uncle from this time period. “I remember when he used to visit us at Christmas (we were living in Westwood, Massachusetts—his mother, Matilda Lenora Klein, and my mom Edna and dad Herman Matthei). Anyway, George was usually inking Superman cartoons [=comics] in our basement when he came to visit. I remember watching him.

“My mother and I used to go to NYC every spring vacation from school, and George would take us to Broadway musicals and out to dinner. The one thing that sticks out in my mind is, he had a cat named Tinker. George would put on a heavy glove and Tinker would jump directly onto his arm from the floor. It was a great trick!”

That Old Black Magic Klein’s covers for the Prize group’s Black Magic #40 & 41—cover-dated Sept.-Oct. & Nov.-Dec. 1958 respectively, and also listed as Vol. 7, #1 & 2. Courtesy of the GCD. [© the respective copyright holders.]

While the majority of Klein’s work in the mid- to late 1950s was for DC, he still did occasional jobs for Stan Lee at Atlas, and for a few other publishers. In 1958 Klein illustrated two stunning covers on back-to-back issues of Black Magic for the Prize Comics Group. Issue #40 (Sept.-Oct. 1958) featured a wetsuit diver in a life-and-death struggle with a sinister sea serpent, while #41 (Nov.-Dec. 1958) depicted an ominous cloud creature with lightning-bolt hands terrorizing the countryside.

Bearded In His Lair The Swan/Klein cover of Action Comics #300 (May 1963)—a favorite of author Ben Herman’s.

Courtesy of the GCD. [TM & © DC Comics.]

One cannot discuss Klein’s work in the Silver Age without mentioning The Fantastic Four.

Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1961, that title was the birth of what came to be known as the Marvel Universe.

For many decades the specific details concerning the creation of the early “Fantastic Four” stories have been shrouded in mystery.

One of the most frequently pondered questions is who exactly inked Kirby’s pencils on the first

two issues. After much debate and analysis, the conclusion reached

by Dr. Michael Vassallo, one of the foremost authorities on Timely/ Atlas/early Marvel artwork, is that it was George Klein. As Klein worked on several stories for Atlas in the late 1950s and early ’60s, this would put him in exactly the right place when the first two issues of Fantastic Four were being assembled in 1961.

As to why Klein in particular was chosen to ink these two issues, on his blog longtime Marvel editor Tom Brevoort offers up this theory: “I would also conjecture that perhaps the choice of George Klein to ink these early issues—if indeed he was the inker, as is generally believed today—was to try to give them more of a super-hero feel than Kirby’s monster or romance or Western work.

Klein at the time was inking Curt Swan on ‘Superman,’ and you really can’t get a more classic super-hero finish than that.”

Absent the original artwork for those first two Fantastic Four issues resurfacing, or some previously unknown documentation being discovered, it will probably never be established with 100% certainty; nevertheless, the general consensus is that Klein very likely inked those two issues, placing him right at the birth of the Marvel Age of Comics.

The late 1960s saw an editorial shake-up at DC. Although Weisinger would remain in control of the Superman books for another two years, this behind-the-scenes instability is reportedly what led to Klein departing the company in 1968. He quickly found work at Marvel which, eight years after the introduction of the Fantastic Four, was now achieving both commercial success and critical acclaim.

Klein’s first assignment at Marvel was inking John Buscema’s pencils on The Avengers. After inking a couple of covers, Klein became the regular inker with issue #55, cover-dated August 1968.

Klein remained on Avengers for nearly a year.

The late 1960s is now considered one of that series’ most important and influential periods. Writer Roy Thomas, working with John Buscema, introduced The Avengers’ robotic arch-nemesis [continued on p. 39]

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A Brief Biography Of George Klein

Sidebar:

KLEIN VS. RULE

T

by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo

here just wasn’t any time.

When Roy asked me whether I could contribute to Alter Ego’s coverage of George Klein, I hefted out scans of Timely material I’d been collecting and indexing for years.

I had a bunch of Timely hero stories… “Sub-Mariner,” “The Defender,” “Blast Revere,” rare Timely romance comic stories and pulp illustrations, Atlas horror, and even Goodman crime-digest paperback covers, all rendered by George Dunsford Klein.

I even had an actual photo of Klein with two Timely colleagues in the actual Timely offices in the Empire State Building! Klein is in the background, John Cuddy (Dan DeCarlo’s inker before Rudy Lapick) is in the middle, and someone named “Whit” is in the foreground.

Of course, Klein’s prodigious ink work over other Timely artists was also included: inks over Ed Winiarski in the infamous Krazy Komics “The Creeper” story that parodied the Timely offices and George himself; inks over Winiarski again in a WWII propaganda story written by Stan Lee; even inks over Mike Sekowsky. Left out due to lack of good-quality images were Simon

More Time At Timely George Klein and compeers in a previously unreleased photo, taken in Room 1407 of the Empire State Building, circa spring of 1948; it depicts (l. to r.:) Klein… John Cuddy… and an artist identified only as “Whit.” The pic was probably snapped by fellow Timely artist Pete Tumlinson, says provider Dr. Michael J. Vassallo.

Besides a whole lot of inking, Klein also contributed occasional full comic art after his post-WWII return to Timely, including this “Sub-Mariner” splash page for Blonde Phantom #13 (Spring 1947) and another for “Blast Revere” in Space Worlds #36 (April 1952). Thanks to Doc V. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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What’s Proper For The Goose Is… Propaganda!

(Left:) This special feature on war stamps with animated screen stars Gandy and Sourpuss was written by Stan Lee, with art by Winiarski & Klein for Terry-Toons #2 (Nov. 1942). Thanks to MJV. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

and Rule, had styles that were somewhat muted in art-spotters’ mental encyclopedias. Except for a tiny handful of people, no one in fandom knew Chris Rule’s work at all. And George Klein was primarily known as Curt Swan’s inker on “Superman” at DC. I realized I had to figure this out once and for all. I began an exhaustive search and collection of comic art featuring both artists and filled two 5-inch binders with scans and photocopies. All of this was ordered sequentially from the early 1940s onward. In the case

Like A Book On A Shelf & Kirby Captain America Comics background inks and “Whizzer” and “Black Widow” stories penciled by Mike Sekowsky and inked by Klein.

But what there really wasn’t enough time for was a deep look at the Fantastic Four #1 & #2 inker controversy. Long unknown, years ago I made the definitive identification that George Klein was the inker on both those issues. I was not the first person to suggest Klein. That privilege goes to Mike Lake. After that, several articles appeared in Kirby-centered publications about the inker controversy, all discussing George Klein as a possibility. Christopher Rule was also proposed, as he was then known to have inked most of the pre-hero Kirby sciencefiction stories that pre-dated the arrival of Dick Ayers as Kirby’s main 1960-63 inker.

Rule at that time was seemingly a logical choice. But both of these inkers, Klein

Blond On Blonde?

Maybe that’s what Bob Dylan would’ve named his iconic 1966 double-album Blond on Blond if he’d seen this romance-mag illo done by Klein for Goodman’s Best Love, Vol. 1, #2 (April 1943).

If the “blond” of the title is the male, the word’s misspelled; if it’s one of the ladies, then she’d dyed her hair dark. Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. [© the respective copyright holders.]

(Above:) These bookshelves of Doc V’s hold just some of the notebooks in which the Yancy Streeter has collected photocopies and scans of Timely artwork. The “Klein” and “Rule” volumes are on the far right of the bottom shelf.

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A Brief Biography Of George Klein

of Rule, I also tracked down about 12 children’s books he had illustrated going back to the 1920s and assembled his comics history by indexing every single Timely/Atlas romance issue as well as all the Timely teen titles. The end result was that I, er, ruled him out as the inker of FF #1 & #2.

That left George Klein. From my pal Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., the appearance of Klein’s pencils were pointed out to me and I ran them stylistically through nearly every Atlas issue in existence. The end result was a definitive encyclopedia on the artwork of George Klein.

From there, utilizing all the inking quirks and traits, it was simple to crossreference this to FF #1 & #2 and definitively give the inker credit to Klein (as well as identifying him as the inker of other Kirby

Christopher Rule Detail from an early1940s group photo (fully seen in A/E #177), courtesy of Jim Amash & the late Dave Gantz, who took the pic.

Klein Rules!

Both George Klein and Christopher Rule inked Jack Kirby’s Timely pencils during the period leading up to Fantastic Four #1—as witness Rule’s inks from Battle #67 (Dec. 1959; writer unknown) and Klein’s for Amazing Adventures #6 (Nov. ’61), the latter coincidentally the same month FF #1 hit the stands. Thanks to Barry Pearl and the GCD, respectively.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

stories from this same period). During the assembling of several Marvel Masterworks volumes reprinting these earliest issues, I ran my evidence by Marvel Comics and was able to convince them to finally stop with the “Unknown,” “Artie Simek,” or “Klein? & Rule?” inker guesses.

It’s Klein.

But what about the proof? Well, that goes back to the start of this short story. I’ve long wanted to write a long, definitive article outlining the history of this controversy and then lay out all my physical evidence. It’s been planned for my blog, Timely-AtlasComics, for years. But I’ve just never had the time to devote to it, as I was pulled in a million different directions with other comic-related projects, as well as my day job.

And so it will have to wait. But I guarantee it will be worth it!

Just One Of Those Things The Thing goes on his first rampage, in Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961)—with script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, and inks now firmly established as being by George Klein. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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First & Four-most

#67. Klein’s finishes gave some much-needed support to WindsorSmith who, although he was already showing quite a bit of promise, was still honing his craft.

Last, but certainly not least, Klein was assigned (again?) to ink Jack Kirby. Klein’s quality embellishment of the King’s cosmic pencils saw print in Thor #168-169 (Sept. and Oct. 1969).

It has often been opined that Vince Colletta’s inking of Kirby was a good fit on Thor, as the feathery linework provided a specific tone that was well-suited to the mythological characters and settings. In my estimation it was less appropriate to Kirby’s sci-fi concepts, which is why I believe Colletta was a poor fit for Fantastic Four. Joe Sinnott’s slick ink line was much better suited to embellishing stories featuring the bizarre alien entities and high-tech civilizations that Kirby began to introduce in “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” in the mid-1960s.

Similarly, when Kirby began to take Thor away from the myth-inspired epics set in Asgard and in a more science-fiction direction, Colletta’s inking felt out of place. Therefore, Klein’s much more polished inking on these two issues, which saw the god of thunder learning the origin of one of Kirby’s most cosmic creations, Galactus, was very appropriate. Klein’s embellishing certainly complemented Kirby’s pencils as the King chronicled this key moment in the history of Marvel cosmology. Unfortunately, these

Now You See Her… Sue Storm, a.k.a. The Invisible Girl, makes her first-ever appearance, on the second page of The Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961), as scripted by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, and almost certainly inked by George Klein. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

[continued from p. 35] Ultron, new member The Vision, and Hank Pym’s new costumed identity Yellowjacket, among other crucial developments. Klein did a superb job inking Buscema on many of these key stories.

Back in 2001 Thomas spoke with Buscema about their work together on Avengers, a conversation that saw print in Alter Ego #13.

In it they briefly touched upon Klein: ROY THOMAS: So how did you feel about George Klein’s inking compared to some of the others?

JOHN BUSCEMA: From what I’ve seen, a very credible job, not bad.

Considering that Buscema was often notoriously critical of artists who inked his work, I suppose by his exacting standards this was high praise indeed!

Klein also inked Gene Colan on Avengers #63-64, Sub-Mariner #11, and several issues of Daredevil. Klein was probably one of the best embellishers to ever work over Colan, whose penciling, with its subtle shading, could be a challenge to ink.

Additionally, in early 1969 Klein inked two very early jobs by a very young Barry Windsor-Smith, in Daredevil #51 and Avengers

Klein, Be Thou Proud!

George’s first inking work on The Avengers—or any other Marvel-era series— was done for issue #55, over pencils by John Buscema. We’ve chosen to feature their splash for #56 (Sept. 1968). Script by Roy Thomas. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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A Brief Biography Of George Klein

The Men Without Peer

George Klein

Klein’s first inking on Daredevil was for #46 (Nov. 1968), over Gene Colan pencils, with a scenario by Stan Lee—but he stuck around long enough to also ink a young Barry Smith in DD #51 (April ’69), scripted by Roy Thomas. Thanks to Barry Pearl and Bob Bailey, respectively. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

“in middle age,” according to the notation sent by Diane Boden and Ben Herman.

two Thor issues were very likely the last work that Klein did before he died.

Klein’s untimely death was made even more tragic by the fact that he had only gotten married just a few months earlier. In November 1968 Klein married Patricia Perreira, originally of Fall River, Massachusetts.

This event was announced in the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins for August 1969 cover-dated issues, which would have had an on-sale date of May: ITEM! Generous GEORGE KLEIN finally took the plunge and got himself wedded a few weeks ago—after one of the longest engagements on record—a mere 18 years! One thing we’ve got to say about ol’ George—he’d be okay if he wasn’t so impetuous!

I asked Boden if she had any memories of her uncle’s all-too-short marriage, and she recalled, “I was told that he had many girlfriends, but [he] didn’t get married until I was a sophomore in college, and he died about a year later. I went to the wedding... Pat was very beautiful and very nice. She was a lot younger than he was and had a daughter who I don’t remember ever meeting. Maybe at the wedding. I don’t remember.

[After her husband’s unexpected death] Pat moved to California and no one heard from her.”

Galactus Revisited This splash page for Thor #169 (Oct. 1969), his second of two in a row for the series over Jack Kirby’s pencils, may well have been the last work George Klein inked for Marvel before his unexpected death.

Script by Stan Lee. Thanks to Bob Bailey.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Roy Thomas, when asked if he had any memories of Klein and his short tenure at Marvel, told me, “All I recall personally about George Klein is that, after he was married after that long engagement, he and his new wife moved into an apartment just a block or two from Jeanie and me,

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George & Pat Klein They had enjoyed an 18-year engagement, but their married life was unfortunately cut tragically short.

Thanks to niece Diane Boden, via Ben Herman.

also on East 86th Street, I think to the east of us (in the direction of Gracie Mansion, where New York City’s mayor resides). I recall that we visited them once there... either a personal visit or a very small gathering... but unfortunately I don’t recall anything else in particular.” He adds that, on the handful of occasions when he had any personal contact with Klein, he found him amiable and down-to-Earth, a real professional who could be depended on. His inking was especially valued at Marvel at that time because, albeit probably by coincidence, it strongly resembled that of Joe Sinnott, then the gold standard of embellishers at Marvel.

definitely a tragedy. He was still fairly young, he was a very talented artist, he was well-regarded by those who knew him, and he had only gotten married a few months earlier.

Boden was among those deeply affected by Klein’s death. “I was a junior in college when he died, but we were very close. I was devastated when he died. I loved him very much.” Klein’s passing regrettably received little attention at the time. Unfortunately, all of his work magnificently inking Curt Swan at DC had appeared uncredited. His inking for Marvel in the late 1960s was apparently well-received, but he was there for too short a time before his death to have made a significant impact on the consciousness of burgeoning fandom.

Nevertheless, the Bullpen Bulletins in the Marvel titles coverdated Nov. 1969 did contain a short item on Klein’s passing: With the most profound regret, we sorrowfully announce the untimely death of George Klein. George had been associated with the Bullpen for a period spanning more than two decades, as both a penciler and inker. He was also a gifted painter, a valued friend, and a gentleman in the truest sense of the word. We deeply mourn his loss.

It is difficult to locate all that many details regarding George Klein’s final days. Consulting the entry on him from the “Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists” website, we read that he was hospitalized at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village for cirrhosis of the liver at some time in April, and passed away only a month later.

Those who knew Klein had observed that, despite his handsome features and fit condition, he was clearly suffering from an illness. Giella told me, “Klein had some sort of a disease. He was jaundiced. You could also tell by the pupils of his eyes.”

Despite their rivalry over Violet Barclay at Timely in the late 1940s, over the long run Klein and Mike Sekowsky had remained friends. Sekowsky’s wife Pat got to know Klein through her husband. Interviewed by Jim Amash for Alter Ego #33, she wistfully recalled: “George Klein. That was another sad story. He died of cirrhosis of the liver. He was a handsome guy. He married a very nice young girl, and six months later he died. George was my friend.”

Pat Sekowsky believed that Klein had a problem with alcohol, stating, “He drank, but you didn’t know it. He was so perfect and neat; his books were in order… you’d open his desk drawers and everything was nicely arranged.”

However, Giella firmly disputes the suggestion that Klein suffered from alcoholism: “He didn’t have a drinking problem. He was not an alcoholic.”

Boden, remembering her visits to New York City to see her uncle, stated, “I never saw him drink too much. But when you’re used to drinking, you can drink a lot without becoming drunk.”

Certainly there are other conditions besides alcoholism that can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, such as chronic viral hepatitis, autoimmune hepatitis, and primary biliary cholangitis. In fact, when considering the state of her uncle’s health, Boden informed me, “I swear my grandmother said he had contracted hepatitis in the South Pacific where he was stationed.”

Whatever the specifics of Klein’s death, his passing was

Captain Flash-In-The-Pan George Klein is reported to have been the inker of the entire 4-issue 1955 super-hero series Captain Flash for Sterling Publications. The penciler was his old Timely sparring-partner Mike Sekowsky! Courtesy of the GCD. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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A Brief Biography Of George Klein

An Earlier Avengers Endgame George’s last inks over John Buscema on The Avengers coincided with Big John leaving the title after #62 (March 1969). GK stuck around to embellish Gene Colan’s pencils on #63 & 64 (the former cover-dated April ’69). His final Avengers work was inking Barry Smith’s pencils for #67 (Aug. ’69). Thanks to Barry Pearl for the interior pages and to the GCD for the cover. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Klein’s death was briefly noted in The New York Times on May 12, 1969, which referred to him as “a landscape and portrait painter.” Klein was also memorialized in the Boston Herald on May 13th: “Klein—Of New York City, a noted artist, George Dunsford Klein; husband of Patricia Klein of 425 East 86th St., died Saturday, May 10 at St. Vincent’s Hospital, following a brief illness. Survived by his mother, Mrs. Matilda L. Klein and sister Mrs. Edna Matthel of Westwood. Graveside services at Mount Wollaston Cemetery, Quincy, Wednesday at 12 noon. Relatives and friends are invited.

In lieu of flowers donations may be made to The National Wild Life Society.”

Portraits Paintings by George Klein of his sister Edna Klein Matthei and himself. Thanks to Diane Boden, daughter of Mrs. Matthei, via Ben Herman.

I really believe that Klein would be much better remembered as an artist if he had not died so young. He did very well-regarded work on comicbooks in a career that lasted almost 30 years. As can be gleaned from his newspaper obituaries and his admission to the Salmagundi Club the previous decade, he had also gained acclaim for his work as a painter.

The reissuing of so much of DC‘s and Marvel’s material from

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First & Four-most

the 1960s does mean that younger fans such as myself have now been able to rediscover Klein’s work. Additionally, all these decades later, Klein, as well as many others who worked on those early DC stories, is at long last receiving proper credit for his work in those reprints.

There are so many creators from the Golden Age and early Silver Age who helped to make the comicbook industry what it is today, creators who in the past were unfortunately uncredited and overlooked. I hope this short profile on one of those creators, George Klein, will inspire readers to seek out some of these classic stories and to develop more of an appreciation for the people who crafted those imaginative tales.

My gratitude to the websites from which I gleamed information about George Klein, and to the following individuals who helped make this article possible: to Jim Amash for allowing me to quote from his interviews

with Violet Barclay and Pat Sekowsky; to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo for his dedicated efforts at identifying Klein’s work for Timely and Atlas; to Eileen Clancy for providing me with information on Klein courtesy of the records of the Salmagundi Club; to Allen Bellman, Joe Giella, and Roy Thomas for searching through their decades-old memories to share their recollections of Klein; and to Courtney Boden Ellender for putting me in touch with her mother.

Finally, and most importantly, I offer my sincere thanks and appreciation to Diane Boden for sharing her memories of her uncle George Klein.

Ben Herman

Ben Herman grew up in Westchester County, NY, in the general vicinity of Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. He lives with his girlfriend, two cats, a turtle, and too many comicbooks in Queens, NYC, just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Peter Parker’s hometown of Forest Hills.

GEORGE KLEIN Checklist This checklist is adapted primarily from materials contained in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999, established by Dr. Jerry G. Bails. Some information has been added here based on the preceding article by Ben Herman, and on information supplied by Dr. Michael J. Vassallo.

Names of features with a particular title that also appeared in other publications are generally not italicized. Key: (p) = penciler; (i) = inker.

Name & Vital Stats: George Klein (1915-1969) – artist Pen Name: Mark Midnight Education: Massachusetts School of Art [Boston]; Scott Carbee School of Art [Boston]; New York School of Visual Arts; Kansas City Art Institute – all dates uncertain COMICBOOKS (US Mainstream Publications): Ace Periodicals: crime (ink) 1952-53; horror (ink) 1952-53 American Comics Group: Adventures into the Unknown (ink) 1950-51, 1953-54; covers (p)(i) 1948-50; Forbidden Worlds (i) 1953-54; mystery/occult (i) 1959-60; Operation Peril (i) 1952-53; Out of the Night (i) 1953-54; science-fantasy (i) 1952-53; Skeleton Hand (i) 1953 DC Comics: Boy Commandos (i) 1944-45, 1948-49; Challengers of the Unknown (i) 1958; covers (i) 1950-53, 1961-68; Pow-Wow Smith (i) 1959; public service page (i) 1960; Superboy (i) 1954-67; Supergirl (i) 1963; Superman (i) 1959-68, 1971 [latter story probably from inventory or a reprint]; Superman & Batman (i) 1961-68; Superman of 2965 (i) 1965; Tales of the Bizarro World (i) 1961-62; war (i) 1952 - uncertain Feature/Prize Comics: Black Magic (p)(i) 1958; romance (p) (i) 1957-60, 1963 Gilberton/Classics Illustrated: The World around Us (i) 1958-59 Lev Gleason Publications: Chuck Chandler (i) 1955

Undercover Inker One of Klein’s early inking assignments at DC Comics was embellishing Carmine Infantino’s “Boy Commandos” pencils for Detective Comics #145 (March 1949). Of course, there were relatively few bylines in those days, including for the unidentified scripter. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

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A Brief Biography Of George Klein

Murder For What?

That was the intriguing title of A Crime Novel Selection #4 (1943), a comic-style cover that Klein drew—and signed—for a book (maybe an early paperback?) published by Martin Goodman’s company. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Marvel/Timely Comics: The Avengers (i) 1968-69; Battle (p)(i) 1958; Black Marvel (p)(i) 1942; Black Panther (i) 1972 [from inventory-unconfirmed]; Black Widow (i) 1942; Blast Revere (p)(i) 1952-53; The Challenger (p)(i) 1941-42; covers (i) 1968; Daredevil (i) 1968-69; The Defender (p)(i) 1941-42; Fantastic Four (i) 1962 (inker on issues #1 & 2); funny-animals/cartoon (p)(i) 1943-45; Gus the Gnome (i) 1942; Human Torch (i) 1943-44; Krazy Komics (p)(i) 1942; Sub-Mariner (p)(i) 1947; Thor (i) 1969; The Whizzer (i) 1941-42, (p) 1943; Young Allies (p)(i) 1942 Sterling/Nesbit Comics: Captain Flash (i) 1954-55

Villainy By Klein (Below left:) One of Klein’s earliest bylines is this splash-page credit on the Mike Sekowsky-penciled “Black Widow” story in U.S.A. Comics #5 (Summer 1942). Scripter unknown. Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo.

(Below right:) In the very first Avengers issue he inked over pencils

by John Buscema (#55, Aug. 1968), GK embellished the final panel on p. 10 to clearly reveal the malevolent living robot whose name would soon be revealed to be Ultron-5. Script by Roy Thomas. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY To STAN LEE – Part 1

46

The LEE/THOMAS Spider-Man E-Mails Cyber-Messages From STAN THE MAN To ROY THE BOY (2000-2018) – Part I

A

Presented & Annotated by Roy Thomas

N UNFORTUNATELY NECESSARY INTRODUCTION: In the early months of 2000, Stan Lee Media, as a well-publicized part of the now-infamous “dotcom boom,” seemed to be going like Gangbusters. Stan, from his Beverly Hills office and Hollywood Hills mini-mansion, presided over a company with more than 100 employees and an on-paper worth at one point of many millions of dollars.

In the meantime, while nobody was throwing benefits for my wife Dann and me, ensconced as we were on our 40-acre, two-house spread in rural South Carolina, I had seen much of my work from Marvel, and virtually all from DC, gradually evaporating, to the point where I felt I could use another, more reliable source of income than writing comicbooks.

The previous year, Dann had persuaded me (against my better instincts) to take a job teaching high school English again, and the year before that (1998) I’d accepted an offer from Jon B. Cooke to re-start Alter Ego as the flip side of his new TwoMorrows publication Comic Book Artist, for which I produced an average of 14 pages per edition for five issues. By ’99 A/E had already been spun off as a separate quarterly magazine, Alter Ego, Volume 3… but that was merely a pleasant avocation, not a serious attempt at earning a living wage.

So, sometime around the spring of 2000, eager to end my brief second go-round as a teacher of surly teenagers, I decided to approach my old mentor Stan, with whom I’d nearly always had good relations, even during the six years I’d been under contract to DC. I sent him an e-mail, not my first to him as head of Stan Lee Media—but this time making it politely clear that I was looking for work and hoped that perhaps there might be some available, on one project or another, from his dotcom behemoth. After all, it had only been half a decade since I’d written several issues of a comicbook series for his aborted “Excelsior” Marvel imprint.

Smiley & Rascally (seated & standing, natch) at a September 2005 recording session for the book Stan Lee’s Amazing Marvel Universe, which Roy wrote and for which Stan provided audio clips that could be accessed by touching an icon therein. (A full transcription of those sessions appeared in Alter Ego #104.) Behind them is the book’s editor, Jenna Land Free. This photo is one of the closest in time to the date of Lee’s 2003 e-mails which shows the two Marvel madmen together.

Seen below are the second and third Amazing Spider-Man dailies scripted

by RT (since the first was mostly just a footnote to the previous adventure), penciled by Larry Lieber & inked by John Tartaglione. The dates are July 18 & 19, 2000. Thanks to Art Lortie for all color strip scans that accompany this article.

Ye Editor is not aware quite when dailies started being printed in color, like the Sundays, in many newspapers. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Stan quickly replied—with a phone call. He informed me right off the bat that he felt one had to live in Southern California (which I hadn’t, since late ’91) in order to work for SLM. His words were hardly unexpected, and I was quietly appreciating the fact that he’d called me personally instead of just e-mailing me with the bad news. However, he then surprised me by quickly going on to say that he had a separate proposition for me.

He said that former Marvel (and Topps) editor Jim Salicrup had been

47

The Lee/Thomas Spider-Man E-Mails

comic strip for nearly two years from 1978 to 1980, so I wasn’t exactly a novice in this area. But the Spider-Man strip was different. Whereas I’d been mostly my own (and the artists’) boss on Conan, with the syndicate and Marvel basically accepting whatever I wrote, this time I’d be working directly for Stan—not for the syndicate (now King Features), not even for Marvel. He, either in person or through his hardworking assistant Mike Kelly (my only other source of contact re the strip, ever), gave me my marching orders. And Stan, not Marvel, wrote the checks once a month.

Jim Salicrup ghost-scripted the Amazing Spider-Man comic strip for a time at the turn of the 21st century, working with creator Stan Lee. Later he founded his own comics company, Papercutz, which in 2007 launched an authorized revival of EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt, featuring an initial cover by Kyle Baker. [TM & © William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., or successors in interest.]

ghostwriting the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper comic strip for him for the past little while, and while Jim was a talented guy (obviously), writing scripts was less his forte than were other areas. (In Back Issue #136, Jim says he had already decided to quit the strip, and the two men’s versions of events aren’t mutually exclusive.) Stan assured me he had “a zillion other things” that Jim could do for SLM, so he could keep him plenty busy elsewhere—if I wanted to become the uncredited scripter of the strip.

I probably said yes almost before he had put a verbal period to his sentence.

“Wait a minute,” he went on hastily. “Don’t say yes till you hear the offer. It’s so little money, it might not interest you. It pays $300 a week, for six dailies and the Sunday. That’s not very much money.”

I couldn’t help laughing, or at least chuckling. “Stan,” I said, “you have no idea how little money it takes us to live out here. When do I start?”

Immediately, as it turned out—with my first daily strip (written two or three months earlier, of course) appearing on Monday, July 17, 2000. Stan’s brother, Larry Lieber, had been penciling the Mondayto-Friday strips since 1986, with John Tartaglione inking. The Sundays, which had to be drawn and prepared several weeks earlier than the dailies (since they were printed in color in separate supplements), were penciled by Alex Saviuk and inked by an otherwise retired Joe Sinnott. I had to submit to Stan at least two weeks of scripts at a time, which always began with a Monday strip and ended with a Sunday. The story itself had to be told in the Monday-to-Friday dailies, since the syndicates assumed that fewer people read newspapers (and thus the funnies) on Saturday. In fact, neither the Saturday nor the Sunday strip was really supposed to advance the plot, since some papers carried only the dailies, while others printed only the Sundays. (How the hell any reader could possibly hope to follow the storyline if he/she saw the strip only on Sunday, no one ever bothered to even try to explain to me.)

I’d written Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian

Michael Kelly Stan’s personal assistant since the mid-1990s.

Speaking of checks: I’ve estimated that I spent an average of two days each month writing for my $1200 fee… plus another 3 or 4 days a year plotting, for no extra payment. After a few years, it occurred to me that being paid 12 times a year for 4 weeks each time added up to payment for 48 weeks’ worth of strips… leaving me one $1200 paycheck per year short. I brought that to Stan’s attention and was swiftly allowed to play catch-up till things were evened out. Thereafter I received 13 checks a year—each sporting a “Stan Lee” signature, and thus worth a bit of additional coin, once Dann discovered the joys of banking by e-mail, which allowed us to keep the physical checks.

For the first few years of my ghost-writing (for such it was—a time-honored tradition in the world of comic strips), Stan was very much a hands-on employer. This remained true despite some turmoil in his own professional life—for, to my (and his) great shock, Stan Lee Media abruptly tanked around the end of 2000, the result of much-reported fraud (not Stan’s, of course) and the general bursting of the “dotcom bubble.” Luckily for him, he quickly resurfaced with POW! Entertainment. For my part, all of a sudden I was still working for Stan—but Jim Salicrup wasn’t. (Jim, however, was a resilient and resourceful fellow, and soon re-emerged with his own small comics-publishing company Papercutz, which endures to this day. Way to go, Jim!) Working directly for Stan in his (and my own) later decades, as I’d discovered during the brief half-life of the Excelsior line in the mid-’90s, was rather different and generally less enjoyable than working for him at Marvel Comics in the 1960s and ’70s had been. Or maybe it’s partly that by the turn of the 21st century I’d been around long enough that I’d

Stan & Roy’s Partners In Crime, 2003

Larry Lieber

John Tartaglione

Alex Saviuk

Joe Sinnott

Stan’s younger brother had been penciling the dailies since 1986.

“John Tartag,” as he was known around the Marvel offices, unfortunately passed away on November 12, 2003.

This veteran artist had been penciling the Spidey Sundays since 1997 and would ink them as well beginning in 2018.

inked most Sunday Spideys for decades until his full retirement in 2018.

He passed away in 2020.

48

Cyber-Messages From Stan The Man To Roy The Boy (2000-2018)—Part 1

Maybe They Should’ve Just Called Him “The Firebug”?

The first criminal Spidey faced under new ghost-writer Roy Thomas was a high-tech firebug called The Demolisher. Stan had briefly decided he wanted a pivot to less fantastical foes than Dr. Octopus and The Rhino, but soon changed his mind. Strip for Aug. 28, 2000. Pencils by Larry Lieber, inks by John Tartaglione. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

developed my own style, my own approach to doing things, and those were inevitably not as solidly in line with the Stan Lee way of doing things as they had been earlier in my career. Still, I retained such a great respect for him and for what he had accomplished—for what he was still accomplishing at 80 years of age and counting—that I never allowed myself to get into an argument with him about anything in the strip, however I felt about a particular directive. (He’d never much liked arguing with underlings anyway, not even back in the day.)

Besides, it was his strip, not mine. He was the guy who’d made The Amazing Spider-Man the only adventure/continuity comic strip introduced in recent decades that had survived and was, at least to a certain extent, even thriving. For my part, though I’d been a Spidey fan since I bought Amazing Fantasy #15 off the stands in 1962, I didn’t even really want to write the wall-crawler’s exploits; I had always much preferred to relate those of The Fantastic Four, The Avengers, The X-Men, The Invaders, Conan—even Sub-Mariner, Daredevil, Dr. Strange, Thor, whoever. Well, maybe not Code Blue.

Because, in 2000 and for some time afterward, Stan was very much a hands-on editor (and to some extent co-writer, or at least re-writer, especially in the first few years), I swiftly got used to a bombardment of

e-mails and even, though less often, phone calls… the latter occasionally at a later hour than I would generally even answer the phone, since he was out on the West Coast and I was three later time zones away.

When my always-surprising wife Dann one day informed me out of the blue that she had done me the unasked-for favor of saving printouts of all Stan’s e-mails to me from 2003 (when she’d purchased a certain hard drive) through 2018, for just such a project as this, I was delighted and grateful. I discovered that the saved e-mails went back not all the way to 2000, when I’d started ghost-writing the strip, but only to the beginning of 2003, a year and a half after I’d been piped aboard. Still, they were a revelation, even to me.

For, while Stan’s e-mails contained everything from “marching orders” to vague or specific “suggestions” to amiable chitchat to casually tossed-off gags to occasional introspection, Stan was almost always “on” in those cyberspace communications. He was, for the most part, much the same Stan Lee I’d worked with from 1965 to 1980, first as an editorial assistant/associate editor, then as editor-in-chief under him as Marvel’s publisher, then as a contractual writer/editor with him as, legally, my only superior at the company.

Where Wolf?

One of the earliest RT-scripted Spider-Man storylines involved a rampaging werewolf whose human name was Wagner—taken from an 1847 English pennydreadful serial. In this 1-2-2001 daily, Spidey uses a planetarium’s Zeiss projector to induce an artificial sunrise that turns the loup-garou back into a man.

Art by Larry Lieber & John Tartaglione. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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The Lee/Thomas Spider-Man E-Mails

It’s My Party & I’ll Morph If I Want To! In this episode, Spidey’s foe The Chameleon ill-advisedly chooses Peter Parker’s face to imitate, which of course clues the wall-crawler in as to which party guest is his early foe. Also seen at the celebrity bash on Jan. 4, 2002, are likenesses of Robin Williams, Clint Eastwood, and Matt Damon. Art by Lieber & Tartaglione.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

It swiftly occurred to me that there was a whole book in this mountain of e-mails… a book that could be composed of something like 15 years’ worth of Stan’s comments and quips, with my own initiating correspondence retained only in the (relatively rare) instances where Stan chose merely to hit the “reply to” button rather than to create an entirely new e-mail. However, I soon realized that making a real book out of them would probably be too, well, complicated. All sorts of legal contracts, probably years of negotiating, particularly once Stan himself shuffled off this mortal coil in November 2018 at nearly 96. So I gave up on that aspect of things. Yes, there was bigger potential money in a book, both for me and for Stan’s estate, but who needed the hassle? Somebody else, not me at the beginning of my ninth decade on this Earth.

about the guest stars’ histories, because Stan also vented a bit on his philosophy regarding the use of that device in a comic strip. Not for the first or last time, I at least partly disagreed… but acquiesced with a digital smile. He also remarked on the success of 20th Century-Fox’s first X-Men film, under producer Ari Avid… though he (like the rest of us) had little inkling of what was to follow over the next two decades. And he ended his communiqué with some comments on the Spider-Man strip itself, making it the perfect e-mail to (finally) launch the body of our article….

Meanwhile, a year or two before his passing (and before I realized that the stack of printed-out e-mails would stand three inches tall!), I originally had in mind merely an article for Alter Ego. At that time, I e-mailed Stan asking for his permission to reprint our digital exchanges for $10 per page—that is, $10 for each page they would take up in Alter Ego itself.

Stan somehow managed to misread that and to think I had typed “$100” a page, and he immediately accepted. Still, when I explained that, no, I had written “$10,” not “$100,” Stan was gracious about it and still accepted my offer. It’s taken a few years (the e-mail reprinting was originally announced for A/E #161, our “Stan Lee Tribute” issue, but got squeezed out at the last minute)—but here they are at last, as retyped for A/E by the intrepid Brian K. Morris.

Subject: Re: Spidey vs. Wolverine? Hulk?

Or, perhaps I should say—here are the first handful of them—the relatively few I could shoehorn into this issue of Stan Lee e-mails I received between January 18, 2003, and the last one I received, nearly a decade and a half later. Mostly, I’ve had to simply paraphrase parts of my own e-mail that led to Stan’s—although occasionally I’ve printed part of my own message as well. (And a special thanks to Brian K. Morris for retyping all 3 inches’ worth of e-mails onto a humongous Word document for me!)

Perhaps what amazed me the most in prepping this piece is that, while I’m dead certain Stan never looked over his past e-mails before writing me, he almost never repeated any of the various humorous quips with which he studded them. Like he could’ve said: “I’ve got a million of ’em!”

The earliest of those e-mails, directly following, dealt with my very recent suggestion, apparently, that Wolverine and the Hulk co-star in the next storyline, in keeping with my own desire to feature other Marvel characters in many episodes... plus maybe a separate super-villain. But I must’ve also said something about using a “flashback” to relate info

2003: Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 5:24 PM Why the hell not?!!

Let’s see whatcha come up with.

But keep it uncomplicated. Forget about an additional villain as well. Stick to just the Hulk and Wolvie. Perhaps Spidey is going after one of them, for whatever reason, and the other one pops up to cause complications The big thing is—try and avoid anything that requires flashbacks or explanations to the reader. Flashbacks are always difficult because if the reader misses the episode that started the flashback, he’s confused. Which means you have to keep injecting captions reminding that we’re watching flashbacks, and those captions are a nuisance. Just keep the story moving straight ahead with as little need to explain who or what the characters are or where they came from as possible.

It’s incredible. Marvel’s Avi Arad must be one of Hollywood’s biggest and most successful producers! The sequel to X-Men will probably be dynamite as will Daredevil, the Hulk, Spidey II, Blade III (if they do it), the FF (still in the works), Silver Surfer (likewise) and Punisher, Dr. Strange, Captain America, etc. all warming up in the bullpen!!!

When I used to call it “The Marvel Age of Comics” I never realized how prophetic I was!

The strip itself is tremendously frustrating to me. While I think we’re doing a good enough job, nobody seems to care about it, write about it, or even notice it. There is simply no fan mail!! And y’know something? I have no idea what papers it’s in—if any! I never see it anywhere! It’s certainly not in N.Y. or L.A. and I don’t imagine

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Cyber-Messages From Stan The Man To Roy The Boy (2000-2018)—Part 1

you see it where you are. Sinnott doesn’t see it in Saugerties, nor does Saviuk in Port Orange, Florida! I wouldn’t be surprised if your “Alter Ego” has more readers!

Marvel just signed a new contract for the strip with King Features for a few thousand dollars a year less money! –Not a good indication that King is wild about it.

Another frustrating thing is—whenever I phone the syndicate to ask how the strip is doing, they say “fine.” When I ask how they like the stories and artwork and if they have any suggestions, they say, “No, everything’s fine.” I have a feeling that they don’t read it either.

Oh well, if we ever decide to write a book, it won’t be hard to fill it with ironic items!

Hope all is well with you and Dann down on the farm.

Regards to all the wildlife.

Excelsior!

Stan

All Creatures Great And Small (Top:) This strip featuring the ever-lovely Lizard (and the ever-lovelier Mary Jane Parker) appeared in newspapers the day Stan sent Roy his 1-18-03 e-mail.

(Bottom:) Roy ditched the idea of guest-starring both Wolverine and the Hulk in the same storyline, and settled for just the former. Ol’ Greenskin would get his shot in the following caper. Art by Lieber & Tartaglione for 6-6-03 by Alex Saviuk & Joe Sinnott. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Hmmm… re that new comic strip contract for less money: Under the circumstances, I guess I’m lucky Stan didn’t try to whittle down the weekly stipend he was paying me! But, though I never got a raise during my 18-plus years ghosting Spidey, and inflation was always eating into the flat sum, year after year, at least I never got a decrease in pay. (Would Stan have given me a raise at some point? I dunno—’cause I never asked!)

A couple of months later, I must have commented to Stan in an e-mail on his being billed in the credits of Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man film as “Old Man at Crossing”… about the lack of credits for others whose contributions to the comics were utilized in that movie… and about my sincere wish that he’d gotten a chance to play J. Jonah Jameson in it…

Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 3:10 Yeah, I don’t know why the credit couldn’t have just read “Man at crossing” instead of “Old man etc.” Maybe they felt it sounded more colorful.

As for lack of credits, I don’t even wanna go there. Obviously, I have no authority over them and, since I’m now suing Marvel, as you might imagine my suggestions and wishes don’t carry very much weight.

Believe it or not, I’ve already done my Hulk cameo but just got a call from Ang Lee’s assistant to say he’d prefer me to do a different cameo, so I’ve gotta go back to Berkeley and do a different one! I’m like the world’s greatest practitioner of cameos!

Yep, I’ve always wished I could play J. Jonah Jameson, but believe it or not, even considering the limitless extent of my conceit, I don’t think I could have done it as well as the guy (I forget his name) who did play him!

Excelsior!

Stan

Happily for all concerned, Stan’s lawsuit against Marvel—which had to do, I take it, with moneys he felt owed him for the making of the films—was soon settled and Stan continued to work under contract to Marvel, devoting at least part of his workday to the company. In July I said something about the lawsuit over Stan’s Playboy animated series Stripperella, to which he replied: Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 9:37 Thanks, Roy. That Stripperella lawsuit is totally insane. [NOTE FROM ROY: Third sentence deleted, for potentially legalistic reasons.

Don’t worry—you’re not missing any new information.] Oh well, my lawyer and the network both tell me not to give it a thought—but it sure is annoying. Anyway, no one can ever convince me that life is dull.

Hope all is well with you and Dann and the animals.

Will try to edit the two weeks you sent over this weekend.

Till then—

Excelsior!

Stan

Re the above: Stan was always, up to the last time I saw him face to face in November 2018, less than 48 hours before he passed away, mildly fascinated by the fact that I, whom he had known first in Manhattan, then in Los Angeles, was now happily living on this sizable spread in the middle of the South Carolina countryside, with a stock of Scottish highland cattle, goats, donkeys, dogs, free-range pigs, guinea pigs, chinchillas, guinea fowl, a trumpeter hornbill, llamas, and a pair of capybaras (the world’s largest rodent—and they’re aquatic, to boot). He once asked Dann and me to film some footage of them for him, which Dann duly did. Not having known me when I was growing up in a small Missouri town surrounded by farmland (including paternal grandparents who were farmers), he couldn’t imagine my giving up city life for the “country.” (Actually, neither could I, until

The Lee/Thomas Spider-Man E-Mails

Here’s Looking At You, Logan!

Roy enjoyed scripting this Sunday denouement to the Spidey/Wolverine story arc (on 9-7-03), which gave them a chance to trade quips rather than blows. Art by Alex Saviuk & Joe Sinnott. Thanks to Art Lortie.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

I decided one day to suggest to Dann that we do so… and we bought our current place less than two days later. As a very young Ricky Nelson used to say on the old Ozzie and Harriet radio show: “I don’t mess around, boy!”)

Re this next e-mail, Dann and I had obviously just returned home from a brief trip somewhere, so Stan welcomed us back—then proceeded to offer a Hulk-guest-starring concept of his own for the next Spider-Man story arc: Sent: Saturday, May 17, 2003 1:51 Hi, Roy,

Welcome home!

Regarding your suggested Hulk story—I’m afraid portions of it may seem too much like our previous story about the Lizard and Mary Jane. I suggest leaving Mary Jane out of this one—except for domestic scenes between her and Peter, of course.

Perhaps, while taking MJ home from a movie at night, they realize that they’re being followed by a couple of gang bangers. Luckily, says MJ, they’ve reached their apartment building in time to get safely inside before the two hoods can try to mug them. But Peter says if the hoods don’t attack them, they’ll simply go after someone else and he wants to prevent that. He gets

51

MJ safely inside their building and then he walks about again, intending to find the thugs.

Before Peter can find the two thugs, he sees a scruffy-looking man (Bruce Banner) walking slowly, weakly, down a dark street.

Peter sees that he’s slightly disorientated. He holds onto a lamppost for support and, while Peter watches him, he starts to collapse.

Peter figures he’s hungry, maybe starving. Peter takes Banner to his apartment where he and Betty [sic] feed him and put him to bed on the couch.

But the man doesn’t go to sleep. He acts panicky. He says he’ll remember their kindness but he’s got to go. They tell him there’s no rush. They say they can give him something more to eat and ask what’s wrong, how can they help? But he tells them to stay away from him, it’s too dangerous. He breaks away and rushes out of the apartment.

Peter says he’s going after him because the man may need psychological help. Peter will see if he can bring him to a hospital.

Peter sees him in the street, walking away. But before Peter can reach him, he sees those same two hoods he saw earlier. They saw

On The Street Where You Live In this Saturday (9-13-03) daily, the “homeless man” who seemed to be stalking Peter and MJ has passed out, so Peter uses his spider powers to get the poor guy up to their apartment fast. Guess the elevator was good enough for his wife!

Without checking earlier strips (and ignoring comicbook continuity), Stan decided Peter and the gent who turns out to be Bruce Banner don’t know each other from previous Spidey/Hulk encounters—and Roy was fine with that. Art by Lieber & Tartaglione. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

52

Cyber-Messages From Stan The Man To Roy The Boy (2000-2018)—Part 1

Banner first. They grab Banner, and drag him around a corner, about to mug him. Peter switches to Spider-Man. When he quickly reaches the corner and runs around it, he sees the Hulk effortlessly hurling the two guys into the back of a garbage truck or some such.

When the hoods climb out of the truck, dazed, the Hulk uproots a lamppost and heads for them, as if about to beat them with the lamppost. Even though they deserve it, Spidey can’t let that happen so he tackles the Hulk before the Hulk can smash the two thugs with the lamppost. (We might see the Hulk hitting the garbage truck with the lamppost and breaking it in two, just to show his strength.)

From here on, let Spidey bravely battle the Hulk until the Hulk knocks him out briefly as Dawn is breaking. When Spidey comes to, the Hulk is nowhere to be seen, but a lot of people are walking in the street, heading for work. Banner, unnoticed by anyone, is in that crowd of people.

When Peter returns home, MJ was worried about him. He tells what happened (I think he shouldn’t yet know that Banner is the Hulk—even if he knew it in a previous episode. I doubt any readers will even remember it).

From here on, show Banner trying to find a place to hide while he recuperates. He’s afraid of a hospital or any place near people because he may hurt them as the Hulk.

Spidey, of course, is hunting the Hulk. Jonah Jameson is editorializing about the Hulk—maybe accusing Spidey of being in cahoots with him.

In the final battle, the Hulk may be about to hurt Spidey when he sees MJ and dimly remembers MJ and Peter helping him (at the beginning of the episode) so he runs off without hurting them.

Perhaps Peter is the only one who knows where the Hulk went (to Banner’s laboratory where he’s working on a potion to cure himself) but, even though Jameson would pay a fortune for that info, Peter won’t tell.

See if you can make something of the above, Roy. And remember—keep it SIMPLE. Just one or two people in each panel— with an occasional panel with 3 people, but not much dialogue in those 3-people panels—and make those two-panel episodes. (In fact, not much dialogue anywhere!)

Go get ‘em, Tiger!

Stan

Frankly, although I definitely followed Stan’s “suggestions” as a starting-point for the Hulk-featuring story arc, I veered off somewhat

in the sequence that ran from Sept. 8 to Dec. 14, 2003. Actually, that storyline was simple enough that it became probably one of the shorter ones that ran under my informal “tenure.” As I recall, episodes in the strip— as in most of the few remaining “story” comic strips of the day—were supposed to run no more than 16 weeks or so, and that’s about what this one did. However, since no one was watching—not Stan, and least of all King Features—I tended to write my outlines for stories that would run the requisite 16 weeks or thereabouts… but then I’d expand them and add incidents to them as I saw fit, so that they often ran 20 or even more weeks.

That meant we got only 2 or 3 instead of 3 or 4 stories into the strip each year… and nobody seemed to notice.

One thing I tried never to let get away from me was the deadlines.

Comic strip deadlines were even more relentless than those of the comicbooks, with even less room for play. Occasionally, Stan’s assistant Mike Kelly had to nudge me a little bit, but that was about it. Besides, it really took me only about one eight-hour day to write two full weeks’ worth of strips and thus earn my $600, so I could usually keep on top of things without burning much midnight oil. Well, actually, any midnight oil, since my arrangement with Dann at the time was that I’d knock off work by 7:00 every evening and we’d spend the rest of the night together.

Stan, at least if I can believe his good-natured e-mails, came to dread receiving an e-mail from me, since it meant that he was going to be required, in short order, to proofread and comment on two new weeks’ worth of scripting, and he was always in the middle of some other, far more important undertaking. Still, instead of just ignoring my cyber-message, he’d usually at least respond in a way that let me know he’d received the work: Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 1:27 Roy, when it comes to reference you’re King of the Hill!

Just got back from Chicago and received your e-mail with the script. Won’t be able to get to it for a few days, but thanks for being so dependable.

Gotta hit the sack before I cave in.

Excelllszzzzz…..

Stan

See what I mean? Even when he basically had nothing to say, Stan said it with (light) style.

In this next one, I had surely noted to him that, in his 2001 comicshistory book Comic Book Nation, author Bradford W. Wright had referred to his birth name as being “Stanley Lieberman,” not the correct “Stanley Lieber.” (Wright also referred to Tony Isabella as “one of the few

Like A Bridge Over Troubled Waters Naturally, there had to be a battle between the web-spinner and the Jolly Green Giant—and just as naturally, Spidey would come off second-best if it came down to sheer might. From Nov. 24, 2003. Art by Lieber & Tartaglione. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

53

The Lee/Thomas Spider-Man E-Mails

to fall victim, to such a scam and Peter learns of it. To trap the scammers, he sets himself up as a victim and we learn that there’s a big, powerful mob behind the whole thing and Spidey has to clobber them.

User-Friendly?

Aunt May enters the computer age in the strip for Jan. 15, 2004—and she’s swiftly destined for trouble, just as Stan had suggested the preceding August 16. Dailies inker John Tartaglione had passed away on Nov. 12, but had probably finished this strip by Larry Lieber prior to that. Around this time, Sunday penciler Alex Saviuk added the inking of the dailies to his schedule for the remainder of the strip’s run. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

black writers working in the field” in the early 1970s—but, these careless mistakes aside, it’s actually not a bad book. The Isabella-related goof was corrected in the 2003 trade-paperback edition, but Stan Lieber/Lee remained Stanley Lieberman.) To which Stan replied: Sent: Friday, June 27, 2003 2:05 Gonna be real busy this weekend so I figured I’d better do your two weeks now.

So, I’ve been Stanley M. Lieber, Neel Nats, S. Martin, S.T. Anley, Stan Lee—and now I’m Stanley Lieberman! Looks like I just can’t make up my mind!

Excelsior!

Stan

As for that unauthorized bio of me—I hate it. ‘Nuff said!

Excelsior!

Stan

Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 3:37 Here are the 2 weeks, Roy, right back atcha.

I like this kind’a story. Simple, contemporary, with nothing difficult to comprehend or draw.

Onward! (I forgot how to spell “Excelsior!”)

Stan

In the middle of 2003, my father-in-law Dan Peck, who had come to South Carolina from the Los Angeles area in 1984 to set up a Hughes Aircraft plant in Orangeburg, SC, passed away after a fairly long illness, and I mentioned the fact to Stan, along with ideas for the next Spidey storyline. I also mentioned to him the new “Stan Lee bio,” Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book by Jordan Raphael & Tom Spurgeon and asked if he’d read it and what, if anything, he thought of it.

Sent: Saturday, August 16, 2003 4:33 Awfully sorry to hear about your father-in-law. Both Joanie and I express our sincerest condolences to you and Dann. If it happened quickly, I hope it was also painlessly.

Regarding the next theme for Spidey, I too feel we’ve had enough of raging monsters for a while. How about a human interest story about Aunt May? Can you think of something involving one of those crooks who preys on older people via the Internet? You know, the rackets where they offer all sorts of inducements to get unsuspecting victims to give them their credit card info and bank account numbers. Perhaps Aunt May has fallen victim, or is about

Do something of that sort—a personal story that readers can identify with. And, of course, find a way to bring MJ into it.

At other times, Stan’s e-mails were short and sweet… but always with a light touch:

Hi, Roy…

Hi, Roy,

Why not also try the old gag I love—where, at the end, Spidey gets a reward—via a check—and can’t cash it because he doesn’t have an account in the name of Spider-Man and can’t prove he’s Spider-Man without revealing his identity?

Then, I’d mention something in passing—like having to have one of our new puppy Onslow’s back legs amputated, and I’d learn a bit about the Lee household in return: Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2003 7:28 Thanks for the two weeks, Roy.

Sorry about Onslow’s leg. (Love that name—Onslow!) Had a similar thing happen a few months ago. My daughter brought her chiuwawah (I can’t spell it and haven’t time to look it up— you know, those very, very small thin Mexican dogs with big ears) to visit us. I picked him up, he jumped out of my hands and whamo—a broken leg which took months to heal and a king’s

Next Month—Hammerfoot?

The villain in the Aunt May/PC storyline turned out to be Hammerhand, a bad-guy Stan had Roy devise when his ghost writer suggested a story utilizing the comicbook foe Hammerhead. Turns out Stan didn’t care for one name/concept, but liked the other. Well, Roy’s was not to reason why…. Art by Lieber & Saviuk. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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Cyber-Messages From Stan The Man To Roy The Boy (2000-2018)—Part 1

ransom at the vet. But he too managed well on 3 legs tor all that time.

Aside from Onslow’s situation, I hope everything else is great with you and Dann and, as always, Joan and I wish the two of you and God knows how many animals all the best for Thanksgiving and always.

Stan

PS: I’ll get to those 2 weeks you sent me in the next day or so.

By the way, the aforementioned Onslow (named for a character on the splendid BBC TV comedy Keeping Up Appearances) lived to the ripe old age of nearly 14, and had a good life with our other (up to) seven dogs over those years.

I’ll let you digest this next e-mail, from near year’s end, before I add my own explanatory notes: Sent: Monday, December 15, 2003 9:41 Hey, Roy,

You’re really cookin’ on all cylinders! I like all the ideas you suggested.

The Punisher plot sounds good if, as you mention, we watch the violence. At the end you say “he still puts him away.” Do you mean kills him? I hope not. If you means gets him to jail that’ll be fine.

The Tarantula sounds good to me too. I don’t really know who or what he is but I like the idea of a Latin flavor. If the Tarantula is a bad guy be sure there’s a heroic Latin or two to offset him.

I’m concerned about Dr. Strange. If you can find a way to make it not too fantastic we can discuss it, but I’m afraid it may be too far-out for the ordinary non-comicbook readers we’re trying to attract (with very little luck apparently, according to the sales reports!).

I love the idea of Mandrake and/or the Phantom. Thing is, we’d have to first check with the syndicate and see if we can legally use one or both of them. Let’s try the Punisher first, then we’ll look into it.

One thing more—I’m busy as hell this week and may not be able to get to the two weeks you just sent till the weekend. Will try to get to them sooner, but it’s gonna be tough. I shouldn’t even be taking the time to type this now—so I’ll sign off.

HAPPY HOLIDAY! Stan

Stan didn’t recall that, back when he was publisher, Amazing Spider-Man comicbook writer Gerry Conway had come up with a South American villain called The Tarantula, who became reasonably popular with readers. In the strip, for some reason, I decided to turn the character into a hero instead. Stan didn’t care, since we felt no obligation to make the strip’s storyline concur in any but the most general way with what was going on in the comicbooks.

One of my pet projects, which I brought up to Stan from time to time over the years, was to guest-star either The Phantom or Mandrake the Magician—two of King Features’ biggest surviving adventure-strip stars (both created by writer Lee Falk back in the 1930s)—with Spidey.

The Phantom was a particular Grail of mine, mostly because he was one of the first costumed heroes ever, coming along in the funnies years before Superman had leaped his first tall building (at least in print). Probably I’d have regretted ever making the suggestion if Stan had ever got permission from King for one or both to appear in Spider-Man, because that might have made somebody back at the syndicate actually pay attention to what we were doing, and that’s nearly always a mistake. Sadly, or perhaps happily, I never got my wish.

Needless to say, despite his schedule, Stan soon turned the scripts around. He was a real pro.

In January of 2002 I had suddenly been diagnosed with a detached retina in my right eye, and only swift surgery saved even a relatively

Letting The Punisher Fit The Crime Roy didn’t feel all that comfortable writing The Punisher, considering the way he was being handled in comicbooks at the time, but he felt Frank Castle ought to appear in the Spider-Man strip, so he gave it a shot. Art by Saviuk & Sinnott. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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The Lee/Thomas Spider-Man E-Mails

Of Magic & Masks Two other early and still-popular King Features comic strip heroes were Mandrake the Magician (then drawn by Fred Fredericks) and The Phantom (as per the Sy Barry panel above right)—and Roy tried several times to get permission to utilize one or both in Spider-Man. But if Stan ever actually approached King’s editors about the idea, RT never heard back about it. On a later occasion when Roy pushed to guest-star Lee Falk’s two 1930s creations, Stan said he’d much rather see a crossover with the popular teen-slacker strip Zits. Roy was willing to give even that a shot, but nothing ever came of that notion, either. [TM & © King Features Syndicate, Inc.]

small part of the vision in (the bottom half of) it. Apparently, nearly two years later, I had another spot of eye problems… maybe that was cataract surgery, which fortunately for me turned out quite well.

Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2003 2:59

Sorry about your eye, Roy. Hope it turns out perfectly.

Actually, I have the usual ambivalent feeling about you sending me material. On the one hand, I’m happy to hear that you’ll be sending it because of our deadlines. On the other hand, it’ll mean work for me, so any delay makes me happy.

Come to think of it, after re-reading the previous paragraph, it seems that whatever you do makes me happy. If only everyone was as considerate of my well-being Forgive me for rambling. It’s been a tough day.

Good luck with your eye, Stan

The final entry of 2003—a convenient-enough stopping point for this initial sampling—was sent by Stan on the day after his 81st birthday. It’s not lost on me that at that time he was almost exactly one year younger than I am when this issue of A/E goes on sale. And Stan Lee still had nearly a decade and a half to go….

Sent: Monday, December 29, 2003 11:05 Hi, Roy,

Here are your two weeks. This looks like it’ll be a good episode.

Sure, I’ll be glad to do those interviews. I’ll try to call you sometime tomorrow from the office. If there’s a good time to call (or a time I shouldn’t call) e-mail me and lemme know. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll just take pot luck.

I wouldn’t dream of asking you to research the Playboy show.

It would mean you’d haveta stay at the Playboy mansion doing many intimate interviews and countless photo shoots with the Playmates. Hey, you’re a friend. I wouldn’t wanna put you through such a tough assignment.

No, don’t bother thanking me. It’s just further proof of what a caring guy I am.

Till later—

Excelsior!

Stan Good ol’ Stan—lookin’ out for me every minute!

As for the “interviews” Stan mentions—I suspect he must be referring to the short one he gave me over the phone that wound up transcribed for A/E #35 (April 2004), dealing with the brief 1953-55 revival of The Human Torch, Captain America, and the Sub-Mariner… but if so, I must’ve got it into print almost as fast as we conducted it!

Want to see more of Smilin’ Stan’s 2003-2018 e-mails to Rascally Roy? Want to see fewer? Want to see none? Let us know, okay?

Meanwhile, once again, wherever he may be, I wish Stan a happy birthday. I know for certain that he’s made my birthdays a lot happier, ever since 1965!

And Wasn’t There Even A Comicbook Hero Called “The Vigilante”?

In these dailies from April 22 & 23, 2004, Peter Parker muses about the differences—and the similarities— between Spider-Man and The Punisher. Art by Lieber & Sauvik. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Roy Thomas worked directly for Stan Lee from 1965 to 1980 and again from 2000 to 2018. He considers that the best job (or jobs) he ever had.

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HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY To STAN LEE – Part 2

The TOP TEN Greatest STAN LEE Stories Of All Time!

The Tales That Defined The Marvel Universe According to John “The Mego Stretch Hulk” Cimino Stan Lee & John Cimino (not necessarily in that order) at the Chicago Con in 2007, four years after John had retired from the legendary hardcore rock band Grimlock. Not that Smiley had any particular reason to remember that Kodak moment when the two of them met for a second, and last, time in November of 2018. Remind us to have John tell you the hilarious tale of that first brief encounter sometime! Photo courtesy of JC, taken

by Keith Gleason.

project. Hey, the guy started writing comics at the tender age of 18 with his text-filler debut in Captain America Comics #3 (May 1941). Even in that little diddle, Stan had Cap throw his mighty shield for what was apparently the first time ever. Stanley Lieber was bound to go only up in the crazy new world of comicbooks. Turns out he had an infectious energy that, in the 1960s and early ’70s, brought out the best from his collaborators Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, John Romita, and so many others; in fact, it can be argued that some, if not all, of those artists never reached that peak again without him.

While any “top ten” list is, of course, strictly subjective, I based my choices on how I felt at the time I first read them, and how they impacted me and the decisions I made in my life (yes, Stan Lee’s comics were that important to me). I’ve tried to select stories largely, though not solely, on the quality of Stan’s contribution as scripter.

That eliminated some of the biggest cosmic Kirby battles, where all that any scripter could’ve hoped to do was to complement the visual excitement on the page (even if, in some of those cases, much of that “visual excitement” might’ve been drawn by direct instructions from Stan). These are stories that are at least as dependent on the quality of the writing as on that of the art.

(Below:) John mentions Stan’s professional debut as writer of a two-page text story in Captain America Comics #3 (May 1941)—which was also apparently the occasion of The Man’s first team-up with artist Jack Kirby, who seems to have at least penciled the illo that headed that mini-yarn. All scans and photos accompanying this article were provided by John Cimino, unless otherwise noted. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

B

ack in Alter Ego #170, the Jack Kirby issue, editor Roy Thomas asked me to write a now infamous article on “The Top Ten Jack Kirby Marvel Slugfests (1961-1970).” It was tough to pull such an article together, because of the level of awesomeness of Kirby’s illustrated battles, plus the sheer volume of his work I had to go through to rank a mere ten of them. But I must’ve done something right, since Roy invited me to do another soon-to-be infamous write-up on his own mentor and Jack Kirby’s greatest collaborator, the big kahuna himself, comicdom’s most eminent editor/writer and most famous face-fronter, Stan “The Man” Lee—and to rank his ten greatest stories ever… gulp.

I should be primed and ready for this, because I did my first book report on Stan back in the fourth grade when assigned to write about my favorite writer (it was glorious to read that in front of the class with my chest out and chin sticking way up high).

But now, all these years later, I find it far more intimidating. Since his death in 2018, Stan has ascended into the realm of myth; and regardless of what you think of him, the guy simply changed everything when it came to super-heroes with words, stories, and phrases that captured the imagination of the world… and had a crucial role in founding the comicbook Marvel Universe which now forms the basis of the biggest movie franchise in the history of… well, movies. Yeah, nothing to be intimidated by. Sheesh!

But how to rank Stan’s “best of the best”? Stan wrote so many magical tales that listing just ten of them is truly a mind-boggling

I hope you have as much fun reading this article as I did writing it, because, regardless of what your own favorite stories may be, Stan Lee always kept us smiling—and always kept us wanting more. Excelsior!!!

The Top Ten Greatest Stan Lee Stories of All Time!

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a “Man without Fear” and take on an opponent far more powerful than himself. Stan and artist/ co-plotter Wally Wood craft a mighty fine yarn here of an underdog fighting to his last breath and turning back an adversary because of the lengths he is willing to go—despite his inevitable physical defeat.

8) THE INCREDIBLE HULK #1 (1962) – “The Coming of the Hulk” I’ve never been shy about my love for the Hulk! Marvel’s physically strongest character entered the scene after the debut of The Fantastic Four. But where his brutish counterpart, the Thing, hated what he had become, the ever-incredible Hulk reveled in his absolute power. At first, the meek

Daredevil #7 (April 1965) Artist Wally Wood would soon depart the title, feeling he didn’t get enough credit or pay for co-plotting the stories… and maybe he didn’t… but is it really likely that the yarn’s climax, in which the Man without Fear is defeated yet unbowed by Prince Namor, was his idea rather than editor/ scripter Stan Lee’s? After all, the pair always conferred on the tales in Lee’s office before the immensely talented Wood began to draw them. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Amazing Spider-Man #50 (July 1967) The most iconic moment in the issue is surely this full-page shot of Peter Parker walking away (in the rain, yet!) after depositing his Spidey costume in a trashcan. Script & editing by Stan Lee; art & co-plotting by John Romita.

Inked by Mike Esposito (as “Mickey Demeo”). Thanks to Barry Pearl.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

10) THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #50 (1967) – “Spider-Man No More!”

Aside from The Kingpin making his first appearance in this classic issue, this is a Stan and Johnny Romita story that resonates with all of humanity. It’s about the internal battle we all face when the pressures of life are closing in all around us. Do we have the will to do what’s right, despite everything? Peter Parker has always been his own toughest critic, and here he puts a tremendous amount of pressure on himself. In this story, he has a moment of weakness and gives up the mantle of Spider-Man, walking away from that life. But when the city calls for a hero, Peter knows he must reassume his destiny as Spider-Man and save the day, because that’s what heroes do.

9) DAREDEVIL #7 (1965) – “In Mortal Combat with… Sub-Mariner!”

When the Sub-Mariner goes to New York to find a lawyer to sue the human race for depriving the Atlanteans of their birthright of a place upon the surface, he comes into contact with attorney Matt Murdock. Not getting his way through the system, Namor takes out his rage on the city. Now Daredevil has to truly become

The Incredible Hulk #1 (May 1962) One of the Hulk’s early transformations—due strictly, as it happens, to a lighting effect thrown in by colorist Stan Goldberg—is the only panel in the issue in which he’s green, though that would become his color of choice with the second issue. Script/editing: Stan Lee; pencils/co-plotting: Jack Kirby; inks: Paul Reinman. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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The Tales That Defined The Marvel Universe

and mild Bruce Banner turned into the Hulk at nightfall after being bombarded with gamma rays, and he was gray in color. Stan and his co-plotter, penciler Jack Kirby, also based aspects of the story on the 1931 Frankenstein movie, plus a “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” twist. Yes, it was a little crude, and that first Hulk series lasted only six issues. But he would soon return and become one of Marvel’s most popular and enduring characters, smashing everyone and everything in his way.

7) THE AVENGERS #4 (1963) – “Captain America Joins… The Avengers!”

With Stan and Jack Kirby’s ever-expanding Marvel Universe underway, they needed more characters to join in on the action.

Looking into the comics of their past, why not bring back one of Jack’s old co-creations—Captain America, one of Timely Comics’ most popular super-heroes of the Golden Age. This was a great move, but then making Cap an Avenger in the contemporary Marvel Universe was an even better one. Stan and Jack had even done a tryout of Cap’s return (with a fake shield-slinger) a few months earlier in Strange Tales #114, just to put out feelers on how comic readers would respond to his coming back. And respond they did, when the one true Captain America made his triumphant return from being frozen in ice since 1945 and was thrust into the Silver Age, soon becoming the greatest leader The Avengers ever had.

Fantastic Four #51 (June 1966) The never-named schemer who managed to take over the Thing’s physical appearance (and even speech patterns) sacrifices himself to save the life of Reed Richards in the Negative Zone. Inks by Joe Sinnott. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

series that it truly was “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” for some years! A testament to that is this heartfelt tale that stands above most others. When the Thing is impersonated by a rejected scientist who wants to destroy Reed Richards, the imposter slowly begins to change his mind when he realizes how selfless Reed really is. Eventually, the scientist becomes ashamed of his preconceived notions and sacrifices himself to save Reed from the Negative Zone, finding redemption and peace in his inevitable death. There was so much emotional depth to this story on so many levels that it captured readers in ways not ever thought possible from a “simple” comicbook. That’s the type of ground Lee and Kirby were breaking.

5) THE SILVER SURFER #4 (1969) – “The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny!”

The Avengers #4 (March 1964) Probably one of Stan’s bright ideas: Captain America rescued from years frozen in suspended animation, as brilliantly realized by penciler/ co-plotter Jack Kirby. Inking (uncredited) by George Roussos. Thanks to Barry Pearl. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

6) FANTASTIC FOUR #51 (1966) – “This Man… This Monster!”

There can be no doubt that when Stan and Jack did The Fantastic Four it was one of the best comic series ever produced and set the standard by which everything else was thenceforth measured. They whipped up so many incredible stories for the

This Stan and John Buscema classic that I’ve described throughout the years as “magnificently beautiful” sports one of the greatest covers of all time. Stan’s superb dialogue combined with John’s incredible pencils to tell a story of two heroic souls misguided. The Surfer gets conned and powered up by Loki to attack Thor, even while all his instincts tell him not to. It turns into a beautiful symphony of Earth-shattering power displays as the alien and the thunder god discover an urgent need to become allies. Eventually, the Surfer refuses to continue the fight, angering Loki, and is banished back to Earth, where he is trapped.

4) JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #125, THE MIGHTY THOR #126-130 (1966) – “When Meet the Immortals!,” “Whom the Gods Would Destroy!,” “The Hammer and the Holocaust!,” “The Power of Pluto!,” “The Verdict of Zeus!,” & “Thunder in the Netherworld!”

Stan and Jack had always made Thor “epic” in their legendary adventures. But one of the thunder god’s first true grand-scale storylines is this 6-issue super-spectacular that has Thor and Hercules fighting over Jane Foster, who is being manipulated by the god Pluto as he tricks the Son of Zeus into taking his place in the Underworld, from which Thor must save him. Stan’s

The Top Ten Greatest Stan Lee Stories of All Time!

59

pages of Fantastic Four #5 with only hints of his backstory. But this blockbuster finally reveals the complete origin and motivations of Victor von Doom and why he obsessively despises Reed Richards.

It’s nothing short of a complete masterpiece that shows us why Dr. Doom was bad to the bone right from the start and why he’s one of the most popular and influential bad-guys ever created.

2) FANTASTIC FOUR #48-50 (1966) – “The Coming of Galactus!,” “If This Be Doomsday!,” & “The Startling Saga of The Silver Surfer!”

The Silver Surfer #4 (Feb. 1969) Thor slams the Surfer in these panels by Lee and penciler/co-plotter John Buscema. Inks by Sal Buscema. Amazingly, Stan gave Big John serious grief over the penciled art when he brought it into the office one day in 1968; in later years, totally forgetting that early lapse in judgment, Stan lauded it as their best-ever work together. Inks by Sal Buscema. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

dialogue is at his pseudoShakespearian best and Kirby’s art is as always— unparalleled. There are few comicbook sagas that can match this run of issues for sheer glory and grandeur.

3) FANTASTIC FOUR ANNUAL #2 (1964) – “The Fantastic Origin of Dr. Doom!”

Stan and Jack had introduced Marvel’s greatest villain in the

Without a doubt, Lee and Kirby are the greatest collaborative duo in the history of comics. If you ask me, the year 1966 was when they were both at their absolute peak of creativity, producing hit after glorious hit. And the “Galactus Trilogy,” which included the introduction of The Silver Surfer, is the culmination of all that creativity. This was the story of a cosmic demigod coming to Earth in order to consume it. Humans were nothing more than gnats that needed to be swatted away, while his motivations were well beyond their comprehension. Only The Fantastic Four stood tall in the face of such power and weren’t going to give Galactus the planet without a fight. There wasn’t anything like this being produced at the time by anybody in the industry—just another reason the Marvel Age of Comics took over the world.

1) AMAZING FANTASY #15 (1962) – “Spider-Man!” Who would’ve thought that an 11-page super-hero story that was shoved into what became the final issue of a failed comics series would become the greatest and most influential character and story Stan (or much of anybody else) ever co-created? I guess, looking back, it was the perfect way to introduce The Amazing Spider-Man, because, after all, he was an underdog from the start. You know the story as co-plotted by artistic collaborator and co-creator Steve Ditko: Flunky nerd Peter Parker gets bitten by a radioactive spider, gains super-powers, and tries to use them to acquire fame and fortune until that fateful day when his ego lets a lowly criminal escape—a criminal who will soon murder his Uncle Ben. This incident prompts Peter to see the error of his ways, learning that “with great power there must also come--great responsibility.”

Thor #130 (July 1966) This single panel from the climactic issue of the six-part Thor/Hercules epic featured, of course, the powerful visual storytelling of penciler/co-plotter Jack Kirby—but gave writer/editor Stan Lee an opportunity to crowd a universe of Herculean pain, despair, and shame into a single unforgettable panel. Inks by Vince Colletta. Thanks to Barry Pearl.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Fantastic Four Annual #2 (1964) The already long-awaited origin of Dr. Doom culminates in these power-packed panels. By Lee, Kirby, and inker Chic Stone. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

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The Tales That Defined The Marvel Universe

Yeah, Stan Lee’s greatest story ever is a timeless and relatable origin of a flawed hero that would usher in the new wave of super-heroes that Marvel was pushing in the 1960s and which would eventually capture the imagination of the world. And as a result, Spider-Man became the arguably most popular super-hero ever created (take that, Superman and Batman). As I said in the introduction, Stan Lee was bound to go up in this business of funny books— and none has ever soared higher.

Thanks for everything Stan, RIP.

Fantastic Four #50 (May 1966) The story arc that fans almost immediately crowned “the Galactus Trilogy” actually consisted of only the last half of FF #48, the entirety of #49, and the first half or so of #50… but it sure seemed like three whole issues! Here, Stan gives Galactus some parting words that may (or may not) have been inherent in what Jack penciled and wrote notes about in the margins. And to think that this tale of tales was taking place simultaneously with the Thor/Hercules/Pluto saga which placed as “#4” on John Cimino’s list! Stan & Jack (and inker Joe Sinnott) were really racing ahead on all cylinders!

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

Amazing Fantasy #15 (Aug. 1962) Jack Kirby penciled and Steve Ditko inked the cover of the comicbook that introduced Spider-Man… under the direction, of course, of editor/scripter Stan Lee, who (either on his own or in conjunction with publisher Martin Goodman) had rejected Ditko’s original rendition. And, excellent as Ditko’s drawing and storytelling were in that origin, it was Stan’s up-front informing surprised readers that pros in “the comic mag business” often referred to superheroes as “long underwear characters” that more than anything set the stage for the two-man tour de force that followed. Thanks to Bob Bailey for the scan from AF #15. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Steve Ditko This post-World War II newspaper piece on a young Ditko emphasized that he “would like to draw a comic strip.” Stick with it, Steverino—you’ll make it yet!

(But seriously—how many comic strip, comicbook, or other commercial artists ever co-created something as enduring as “Spider-Man”?)

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(Above:) Joe Simon and Sick’s mascot, Huckleberry Fink, poke fun at Mad on the cover of Sick #56 (Nov. 1967). [TM & © Estate of Joe Simon]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

That’s Just Sick!

by Michael T. Gilbert

P

reviously, the “Crypt” put the spotlight on Mad magazine and its many rivals. One of the most successful of these was Joe Simon’s Sick.

Sick began relatively late in the game, with the first issue coverdated August 1960 (sporting a goofy Joe Simon cover). While most of the Mad wannabes tried aping Mad’s humor, Sick took a different approach.

At the time, “sick humor” was the order of the day among the hip. Aging comedians like Henny Youngman and Bob Hope were being replaced by harder-edged funnymen such as Lenny Bruce.

Over at the Village Voice newspaper in Manhattan, Jules Feiffer enjoyed popularity with his darkly cynical comic strip Sick! Sick!

Sick! And on The Tonight Show, Jack Paar was shocking middle America by daring to reference… toilets, of all things!

Similarly, Joe decided to set his new magazine apart from the other satire magazines by using a more irreverent, sophisticated approach. In later years Sick gravitated to relatively conventional fare, with Mad-style movie parodies and such. But early on, Sick dared to be different.

However, even later, Simon kept experimenting. In Sick #42 (Feb. 1966) Joe tried to cash in on the new super-hero craze by devoting a full 15 pages to a faux fanzine titled “Superfan.” Joe explained the idea behind the feature in the issue’s editorial:

“The inspiration for this issue on comic-book heroes stems from the current ‘IN’ trend that these heroes are enjoying.

The collection of comic books is now a big rage in our culture. Old issues are selling for as much as one hundred dollars apiece.

There’s even a national Hall of Fame for ‘The Immortals’ who created Paar For The Course them.

(Above:) Joe Simon’s organ-grinder monkeys around on World-wide his cover for Sick #1 (Aug. 1960), flanked by a Jack Paar conventions inset. [© Estate of Joe Simon.] are held every year, where collectors get together and compare old memories. The collectors are from every age group and range from college professors and newspaper editors to used-car dealers and chicken flickers.” [MTG NOTE: The national ‘Hall of Fame’ Simon refers to is likely the early Alley Awards given out by “organized fandom.” Joe also did a tip o’ the Hatlo hat to comics fandom pioneer Dr. Jerry Bails.]

Joe continued: “Furthermore, these collectors publish hundreds of so-called ‘fanzines’ in which they discuss the old characters as if they had really lived. Many of these fanzines make more sense and are better written than the comic books themselves. An exception to this rule is our parody called ‘SUPERFAN’ which lampoons the rare but schlock kind of fanzine.

Twice-Told Tales!

(Left:) The classic Simon & Kirby origin panel from Prize’s Fighting American #1 (April 1954). (Right:) On the cover of Sick, Vol. 6, #2 (a.k.a. #42) (Feb. 1966), Sick’s mascot, Huckleberry Fink, replaces Nelson Flagg (who, in the original comic, was about to have his mind transferred into Fighting American’s body!). [Fighting American panel & Fighting American TM & © Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby; other Sick art & text TM & © Estate of Joe Simon.]

“The interest in comic book superheroes has already been recognized by many of the big national magazines which have written features on them. Recently, Playboy published a condensed version of a new Jules Feiffer book on pop culture in which our own Bob Powell… emerges as a prominent figure. Even ye olde editor is mentioned in the listings of the great. On the cover of this magazine

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That’s Just Sick!

is none other than FIGHTING AMERICAN, a collector’s prize created some years back by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.”

Fighting American & Company!

This was the introduction to Sick’s unusual 15-page (plus cover) super-hero section. In the service of their satirical super-hero skewering, Sick employed some of the genre’s greatest artists--namely Bob Powell, George Tuska, and Joe Simon himself.

The issue was interesting for a number of reasons. First, we had Simon & Kirby’s Fighting American featured on the cover, re-emerging from limbo after a decade’s absence. This series, originally published by the Prize Comics Group, lasted seven glorious issues (from April 1954 to April 1955). Additionally, Joe’s cover was actually a preview of things to come, as Simon was in the process of launching a new line of

Alter & Captain Ego (Above:) “Many of these fanzines make more sense and are better written than the comic books themselves.” Like this one from 1964’s Alter Ego, Vol. 1, #7, Roy? Art by Biljo White. This was the first (but far from the last) time Black Adam ever appeared on any magazine cover! [Alter Ego TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas; Shazam heroes incl.

Black Adam TM & © DC Comics.]

It’s A Bird… It’s A Plane… It’s Superfan!

(Top right:) Joe Simon swipes Jack Kirby and.… Joe Simon! Joe’s “Superfan” illo reinvents the panel directly above from Fighting American #2 (June 1954). There the mighty Birdbrain and Deadbeat (or Superfan himself?) replace Fighting American and some generic bad guy. [Fighting American panel & Fighting American TM & © Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby; Sick panel © Estate of Joe Simon.]

They’ll Knock You Clear To Moon River!

(Left:) Sick’s mascot, Huckleberry Fink, gets the old one-two punch courtesy of the not-sopeaceful Peace Man and Little Peace Man in this Joe Simon “Superfan” spread––swiped from Simon & Kirby’s Fighting American #2 (June 1954). [Fighting American panel, Fighting American & Speedboy TM & © Estates of Joe Simon & Jack Kirby; other Sick art © Estate of Joe Simon.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

super-heroes for Harvey comics— the Harvey Thriller line. One of those comics would be a double-size Fighting American reprint, cover-dated October 1966. Sadly, the line (inspired by the success of the Adam West Batman TV show) only lasted a couple of years. At the time everyone and their brother was trying to catch the super-hero wave.

Most drowned in the process.

First & Foremost (Above:) Jules Feiffer’s 1965 seminal book on comics, The Great Comic Book Heroes, helped legitimize Golden Age cartoonists like Joe and fellow Sick artists George Tuska and Bob Powell.

[Superman art TM & © DC Comics.]

comicbook pioneer since the 1930s.

Of course, Joe (who wrote, illustrated, and sometimes lettered his comics) was more qualified for the job than most, having been a

When he teamed up with cartoonist Jack Kirby in 1940, the duo proved to be a sales juggernaut, creating blockbusters like Captain America Comics, Boy Commandos, and Young Romance, among others. Still, in the mid-’60s, it was almost impossible for any company to compete with Marvel and DC in the super-hero

Let George Do It! (Above:) By the late ‘60s George Tuska had become a major super-hero artist at Marvel, drawing Iron Man in particular. But this “Invasion of the Finkmen” parody (scripted by Calvin Castine) may have been the first time Tuska actually drew the heroes pictured. As an extra bonus, a couple of characters from Simon’s Harvey Thriller line make an appearance. That’s Pirana and Jack Q. Frost posing in the final panel. And say, isn’t that Brooklyn from the Boy Commandos (another Simon & Kirby creation) next to them? [Super-heroes TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; other Sick art & text © Estate of Joe Simon.]

field (though Harvey and others gave it the ol’ college try). Still, Joe knew his stuff and was the perfect guy to spoof the genre. He and Kirby had already done that years earlier with their hilarious Fighting American comic.

The “Superfan” stories (some written by the talented Paul Laikin and Calvin Castine) were a real treat to the hardcore comic geeks of 1966. There were comicbook “in” jokes, such as the caption “Next issue: The FLY meets The Zipper.” Knowledgeable fans remembered that Joe and Jack Kirby had actually created Archie Comics’ hero The Fly a few years earlier.

Taking His Marvels & Going Home It’s likely cartoonist Bob Powell (who was also Sick’s art director) had fun spoofing comic stars like Thor, Captain America, Sub-Mariner, and Will Eisner’s Spirit (a character Powell had ghosted in the 1940s). At fifteen, I thought Powell’s depiction of the naked heroine was pretty racy stuff! [Marvel heroes TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; Sick art © Estate of Joe Simon.]

The issue was something of a love letter to young comic fans of the day. Possibly that was in response to the love that fandom had recently showered on Joe and his former partner Jack Kirby.

As a 15-year-old rabid fanboy myself, I treasured the issue when it came out.

There were amusing pokes at fandom, too, such as a scene in the “Adventures of Superfan” story where an aging college student begs his daddy for comicbook money. Pop is having none of it!

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That’s Just Sick!

Angelo Torres and Jack Davis, as well as Bob Powell, Dick Ayers, Vic Martin, Arnold Franchioni, Jack Sparling, Howard Cruse, Paul Laikin, Arnold Drake, National Lampoon’s B.K. Taylor, and (of course!) Joe himself.

Joe Simon died on Dec. 14th, 2011, at the age of 98, outliving his most enduring solo creation by over 30 years.

However, a quick Internet search shows that Sick is still being published. But not Joe’s Sick. Instead, an unusual British magazine has taken over the name. Their website states: “Sick is committed to elevating the voices of sick & disabled people by publishing essays, feature poetry, visual arts, interviews and more… to increase representation of sick & disabled people in publishing and the arts.”

In other words, this Sick is a magazine for, well, actual sick people! I suspect Joe would get a morbid chuckle out of that.

Before consulting his lawyers…

Postscript!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our recent articles concerning the battle between Mad and its many rivals. We’ve taken a little super-hero detour this episode, so before we go, let’s return to our main subject.

The letters page of Sick #14 featured a number or references to Mad. One wonders if Joe was a little mad at all the comparisons between Sick and Mad. Or maybe even slightly sick of wiseguy letters like the one on the following page:

Super Is As Super Does!

In addition to thinly disguised versions of DC’s Superman and Marvel’s Quicksilver, Fighting American himself makes an appearance. Shortly after, artist George Tuska drew a new “Fighting American” story for Harvey’s Fighting American #2, which was canceled before it could see print. [Superheroes TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; other Sick art & text © Estate of Joe Simon.]

“Look, son,” he says. “I didn’t mind buying you comics when you were in grammar school, or when you were in high school, or even when you were in college. But don’t you think it’s time you bought your own? Why don’t you read Playboy or Sick like the rest of the fellows your age?”

Ouch! That stings! But it was all in good fun. And Joe even got a plug for Sick in the process!

And Finally…

Sadly, we don’t have space to detail Sick’s storied past.

One could write a book on Sick in all its various incarnations, and perhaps Joe’s grandson, Jesse Simon, will do just that someday.

But suffice it to say that, under Joe Simon’s watchful eye, Sick lasted an impressive 134 issues (plus numerous collections) before finally throwing in the towel in 1980. Throughout its run, Joe packaged Sick for Crestwood Publishing (a.k.a. Prize) (1960-1968) and for Hawfred Publishing (1968-1976), wih reprint collections from Pyramid Books (1974-1976), before finally calling it a day with good ol’ Charlton (1976-1980).

Over its lifetime, Sick’s list of talent included Mad regulars

Powell By Powell!

Part of the issue was a humorous one-page interview with the artist, likely written by Powell himself. This 1966 illustration (completed a year before his death) pictured a fascinating collection of comicbook characters Powell had drawn over the decades, drawn as if the characters had aged in real time. Among the cartoon luminaries were The Shadow, Mr. Mystic, The Man in Black called Fate, Black Cat, Sheena, and Lady Crime! [Characters TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; other material © Estate of Joe Simon.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Hello Dere, you SICKniks!

Whose sick idea was it to have a “pull-out” section in your March issue? I’m not complaining, it’s just that MAD gives you dotted lines.

Rickey Lieberman 50 Elm Drive Roslyn, New York ED: They have to give dotted lines; their readers wouldn’t know where to tear.

You’re Going To Need A Bigger Piece Of Paper!

Here’s Joe himself, holding a drawing featuring some of his most famous comicbook creations. [© Estate of Joe Simon.]

More likely, Joe just smiled and shrugged it off. He had a successful magazine, so who cared if he was number two? Or even number three (as was likely the case!)?

And as we conclude our series about the feud between Mad and its rivals, we’ll let Joe Simon have the last word (at right) on this Mad-dening controversy. We’re printing (at right) Joe’s editorial commentary as originally published in Sick #14, in which he specifically references Mad publisher Bill Gaines and editor Al

A Piece Of His Mind Joe Simon’s poison pen letter to Mad, as it appeared in Sick #14 in Aug. 1962.

Harsh, Joe! [© Estate of Joe Simon.]

Feldstein (who started this whole furshlugginer controversy in the first place!).

I got a chuckle watching Joe subtly put down Mad, while describing their early days.

We remember when Mad was published from the heart of the city’s publication hub—the garment center down on Lafayette Street. We’ve watched it grow from an inane, formula-ridden, backward, pompous comic book into the magazine it is today. Now they use better paper!

Which, one may assume, exactly mirrored Joe’s opinion of the then-current day Mad! The kids might not have gotten the joke, but I’ll bet Bill and Al did!

‘Till next time…

“I’m Sick And Tired Of…” Sick reveals “The Monkey Business behind…That Sick-Mad War!” Or, to quote the chimp: “I’ll never get Mad again. I think I’m getting Sick!” From Sick #14 (Aug 1962). Art by Leo Morey. [© Estate of Joe Simon.]

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Mr. Machine, later changed to Machine Man, who debuted in the pages of the monthly 2001 comic and later got his own comic. I’m sure it’s no coincidence, Roy, as both Iron Man and Machine Man are robotics-based. Just another fun connection to be made in the Marvel Universe.

Ralph Macchio

Roy here. I’m always happy, Ralph, to hear from the editor who assigned me to write both Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme (with the incredible Jackson Guice) and the Marvel Illustrated series that allowed me to adapt classic tales of literature like Moby-Dick and The Iliad!

I know you’ve been keeping busy since stepping down from a full-time Marvel position to a more advisory one… including writing the 22,000word introduction to Taschen’s Eisner-winning giant-size reprinting of the early issues of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Your observation re Iron Man and X-51 was so new and fascinating to me that I forwarded it at once to the article’s writer, Will Murray, who responded:

“Ralph Macchio makes an interesting point. While coincidence can’t be ruled out, I wouldn’t put it past Kirby to recycle that job number as a silent comment on having his Iron Man concept taken away from him by Stan Lee and given to others to develop.”

I

n honor of this issue’s dual nature—saluting both the 60th (okay, the 61st) anniversary of Fantastic Four #1 and what would have been the late great Stan Lee’s 100th birthday, on Dec. 28th—our esteemed Australian “maskot” artist Shane Foley pulled out all the stops and produced not one but two such illos for us, both ably colored by Randy Sargent. One is printed above—the other at the end of this section.

Thanks, guys! Great work, as always! [Alter Ego hero TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas – costume designed by Ron Harris; the Thing TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

It’s merely a happy coincidence that this issue’s coverage of Stan and FF #1 overlaps with coverage of the comments received re Alter Ego #170, our first-ever Jack Kirby special. And first up with his cogent remarks—and a surprising revelation—is longtime Marvel editor Ralph Macchio, from the wilds of New Jersey: Hi Roy,

I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed the Kirby issue of Alter Ego. I’ve got all the Jack Kirby Collector magazines, and I still found the articles you ran stimulating and highly informative. I especially liked the Iron Man origin piece. Wow, I thought it was impossible to figure out who created Spidey, but the Shellhead origin outdoes it big-time.

I also noticed something I wanted to bring to your attention as a kind of addendum to the article. I noticed that there was a reference made to the “Iron Man” origin story in Tales of Suspense #39 as “job number X-51.” That reminded me that, when the King came back to Marvel in the mid-’70s, one of his creations was a robot who was part of a government program to use them en masse as weapons for national defense until the project was discontinued. The name of the robot in Kirby’s story was… X-51!

I’ll bet my rusty repulsors that Kirby recalled that job number for another similar robotic type of hero from the ’60s called Iron Man and decided as an in-joke to call his new robot X-51. He later took the name of his creator, Aaron Stack, and had a third moniker:

Will adds: “By the way, I noticed some Facebook responses to my article pointing out that I overlooked a Kirby-drawn ‘Green Arrow’ story in which Oliver Queen was placed in the same position as Tony Stark was in his origin. That is, being kidnapped and forced to make advanced weapons for a group of isolated Japanese soldiers who didn’t know WWII was over. The parallels between these two stories convince me that Kirby probably gave Stan Lee more than simply a design/ concept sketch, but probably some level of backstory which included Tony Stark’s specific plight. The story ‘The War That Never Ended!’ appeared in Adventure Comics #255, December 1958, and is believed to have been scripted

by Dave Wood. Whether or not all of these ideas were given to Don Heck [for “Iron Man”], I don’t know. I have no doubt that they were shared with Larry Lieber, who scripted the story. Lee always credited Heck as his Iron Man artistic co-creator, but it’s clear that Jack Kirby was the prime mover on the core concept.”

Sorry to have to disagree in part, Will, but it’s not quite that clear to me— the more so since it wasn’t Kirby who scripted that “Green Arrow” yarn—even though I certainly wouldn’t deny the possibility, given Jack’s nearly bottomless talent. Even so, as you yourself pointed out in A/E #170, there were at least

2001: A Space Oddity

Was this Jack Kirby’s own personal revival/ mutation of Iron Man? His cover for Marvel’s 2001: A Space Odyssey #8 (July 1977) was inked by John Verpoorten. That issue introduced “X-51,” a.k.a. “Mr. Machine.”

That living robot was created, written, and penciled by Kirby in the final three editions of a ten-issue series that followed his adaptation of the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film—and, rechristened Machine Man, ran for another 19 issues of his own series, beginning in 1978. Thanks to the GCD. [X-51/ Mr. Machine TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

68

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

Putting Some Iron Man In Their Diets (Above:) These couple of panels from the Kirby-drawn “Green Arrow” yarn in Adventure Comics #255 (Dec. 1958) do bear a fleeting thematic resemblance to Tony Stark’s plight four years later in Tales of Suspense #39. Script credited to Dave Wood. Reproduced from the trade paperback collection The Green Arrow

by Jack Kirby (2001). [TM & © DC Comics.]

(Right:) The third page of “I Made the Hulk Live!” from Strange Tales #75 (June 1960), by Stan Lee (plot), Larry Lieber (script), and Don Heck (art)—in which, 2½ years before the debut of Iron Man, a scientist built a suit of mechanized armor.

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

one or two Iron Man precursors in earlier Goodman-published comics, including “I Made the Hulk Live!” in Strange Tales #75 (June 1960), drawn by Don Heck with no known Kirby participation, “suggesting,” in your own words, “that the man in a suit of modern, mechanized armor might well have originated at Timely with plotter Stan Lee.” The plain fact is that, as in so many areas involving the co-creations of Stan and Jack, we simply don’t know—and we probably never will.

Pierre Comtois apparently learned something from my own piece on my basically admiring yet ambivalent relationship with Jack Kirby: Roy,

Just finished reading Alter Ego #170 (yeah, I’m about as far behind in my reading as you are behind in the letters pages!) and enjoyed your personal reminiscences of Jack Kirby. One thing from those comments struck me, though: your mention that Kirby had tried to sell Stan on a new concept before leaving Marvel, one that you guessed was likely the Fourth World stuff. Don’t think I’d ever heard that before! I’ve always heard that Kirby had these new characters in mind but that he held them back from Marvel. Do you have any more info on whether Kirby would in fact not have minded if Marvel had gone ahead with them? And did Stan turn the concept down because he felt Kirby was more valuable on the FF and Thor? Or did he think the concept was half-baked? Just wonderin’.

The rest of the ish was fun as well, but I especially liked Will Murray’s piece in which he delves into the origins of early Marvel as he did this time with the Iron Man article. Like, too, how he can bring in information from his past interviews with now-departed Marvel stalwarts like Don Heck or Steve Ditko. You should invite him to do more of these kinds of pieces!

Pierre Comtois

As you probably know, Pierre, Will’s work appears often in A/E, and we have more of it coming up, including continuing the serialization of his long study of early Marvel alternate covers, which began in A/E #177.

Meanwhile, this issue, he’s provided a few pages on one of the numerous anomalies concerning Fantastic Four #1.

As for the new concept that Jack sent Stan sometime in the last year before he departed for DC in ’70, I can’t add much hard info to the little I recalled in #170. At the time, I didn’t get a chance to read anything Jack might’ve sent along in writing, but Stan did show me the various drawings Jack had provided concerning his new idea. I strongly suspect

they were the various proto-Fourth-World characters sketches that were printed in The Jack Kirby Collector #80 about a year ago. The fact that I felt those to be relatively visually lackluster by Jack’s high standards may account for the fact that, out of all of them, only the ancient-Egypt-themed hero rang even the possible echo of a bell in my distant memory.

As to why Stan decided against trying to persuade then-publisher Martin Goodman to launch a new Kirby-concocted title, I can only theorize. Well, I do remember Stan’s mentioning at the time that he preferred to keep Jack on the important titles he was already doing (and of course he’d probably have had to drop one of them to draw the new book)— but I suspect that, if Jack suggested to him that the new concept was any kind of “replacement” for Thor, that alone might well have made it a non-starter for Stan, with good reason. I recall, too, that, big Kirby fan that he was, Stan displayed little enthusiasm for the proffered illustrations (as I said, I felt much the same—though Jack’s later actual designs for the New Gods, et al., were considerably superior to what he sent Stan that day).

There’s also the possibility—but I’m only speculating here—that Jack may have told Stan he wanted to script that new series as well as draw it. Stan, as I’ve previously noted, did not care for Kirby’s dialogue (e.g., in that single “S.H.I.E.L.D.” tale in the latter ’60s), and while he soon allowed Jack to script “The Inhumans” in Amazing Adventures, that was mostly just a concession to try to keep Jack contented, added to the probability that Stan didn’t feel he had time to add the scripting of both “Inhumans” and “Ka-Zar” to his own schedule, and he knew Jack wouldn’t want to work with any other current Marvel scripter.

Whatever else may be said, of one thing I’m reasonably certain: Jack offered Stan (and Marvel) the chance to publish either The New Gods and company, or else some precursor of same, in the last months before he left the company.

re:

69

I was surprised to see Goodman identifying his comics as “the Marvel Comics Group” with his distributor and wholesalers in November 1961, fifteen months before the brand appeared on the comicbooks themselves. A tiny “MC” box began appearing on Goodman’s comics on sale in April 1961 and thus appeared on FF #1, on sale in August ’61, and on the following twelve issues.

I always have been puzzled by the “MC” box. Did it stand for Marvel Comics, or did it refer to Magazine Management Company?

That mystery appears to be solved. Since Goodman was using the Marvel Comics brand behind the scene in 1961, “MC” apparently

Gods & Heroes This illustration, drawn and colored by Jack Kirby circa 1969-70, depicts one of various god-like heroes he created around that time… and is possibly one of those he sent to Stan Lee in connection with a new series idea, not too long before he split for DC. Inks may be by Don Heck. Thanks to John Morrow and the Kirby Estate. [TM & © the Jack Kirby Estate.]

Do I think, at this late date, that Stan erred in not trying a bit harder to find a way to accommodate Jack on that “new series” he wanted to do? Most assuredly, since an editor can’t just turn a primal creative force like Jack (or even many another, lesser talent) on and off like a spigot, depending upon his/her own needs and wants. Sometimes, you’ve got to just go with the flow. But did I necessarily think that clearly in 1970, let alone say as much to Stan? I doubt it. Stan had called me into his office not to seek my advice, but merely to inform me of his decision.

Next, some perhaps surprising observations from Jim Holden on an intriguing aspect of #170: Roy,

On page 24 of Barry Pearl’s article, the caption accompanying the panel from FF #10 (Jan. ’63) that depicts Stan and Jack in their Madison Avenue studio notes that the story appeared “four months before the name Marvel Comics would be slapped on any of their work.” Indeed, the first FF issue to carry the Marvel Comics brand was #14 (May ’63), on sale in February of that year.

Recently, I was perusing the Comichron website and stumbled on a letter, dated November 13, 1961, written by a VP of Independent News to comicbook wholesalers announcing that “Martin Goodman is offering U.S. and Canadian wholesalers a bonus on his Marvel Comics Group, effective on sale in November…. The Marvel Comics Group contains 17 titles currently, each of which is extremely well established and familiar to all.”

The “M.C.” Hammer This letter on official Independent News Co., Inc., stationery, dated 11-1361 (only three months after Fantastic Four #1 went on sale), was sent by the distribution company’s Vice President and General Manager, Harold Chamberlain—from the same street address that its parent company, National Comics Periodicals, Inc. (a.k.a. DC Comics), occupied at the time.

Roy T. says he’s sorry he can’t shed any additional light on the matter, except to say that, from what he could tell when he came aboard in mid-1965, Goodman’s comics company was still called “Timely” by most of its staffers and freelancers until at least 1963 when the “Marvel Comics” name was officially unveiled. And Stan told Roy, sometime in the mid-’60s, that when he and his publisher discussed a possible “brand” name for the comics circa ’63, he himself had suggested “Atlas,” and it was Goodman who had decided it would be “Marvel.” If Stan had had any inkling that the company had officially been called Marvel Comics Group in documents going back at least two years before ’63, it’s highly unlikely that he would’ve suggested “Atlas”! Does anybody else out there have any thoughts—or, better yet, good solid information—on this matter?

70

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

stood for “Marvel Comics.”

But that only opens the door to a bigger mystery: Why not use the far catchier Marvel Comics brand from the beginning? Stan’s promotional genius was unleashed once the Marvel brand came out into the open. I don’t think “the MC Age of Comics” would have gone over nearly as well with readers.

Any light you can shed on this in A/E will be appreciated. The evolution of Goodman’s comics from no brand to MC to Marvel Comics might be worthy of an article, or at least a long comment.

Jim Holden

Thanks for your information-crammed letter, Jim—and for the image of the 11-13-61 letter from a vice president of Independent News (the DC Comics-owned company that was then distributing Goodman’s comics line). See Ye Editor’s comments under it.

My manager and friend John Cimino wrote for #170 an essay on the “Top 10 Jack Kirby Marvel Slugfests” between 1961 and 1970, which led reader Mike Zaloudek to write directly to him about it, perhaps via Facebook’s Roy Thomas Appreciation Board, which John runs. John forwarded Mike’s e-mail to A/E: Dear John,

I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your essay on Jack Kirby in Alter Ego #170. The “slugfest” selections were perfect, and I loved that you write like a fan and not a professor, like some of the other contributors.

I also liked that you gave equal credit to Stan Lee, something that would cost most readers (and Mr. Morrow) some discomfort had you submitted to The Jack Kirby Collector instead!

I’d like to suggest Thor #166 (1969) as #11 on your list. There are seven pages of Thor battling Him on a distant world, the result of Him abducting Sif as his mate.

What makes this slugfest spectacular is that Thor is overcome with a berserker rage, identified as “Warrior Madness.” First he pushes Balder down, then suddenly attacks Him. How savagely?

Thor vows to batter Him “into lifelessness!”

There are no toppling buildings or collapsing subways in Jack’s art, just two strong-armed warriors going at each other.

Him senses he will be on the losing end, so he flees the battle,

It Must Be Him! The Son of Odin battles Him—the near-future Adam Warlock—on the cover of Thor #166 (July 1969). Art by Jack Kirby & Vince Colletta. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A Thor Point Reader Richard Kolkman e-mailed us that the Thor figure repainted for the cover of the late-1970s British Marvel Comic Album and seen on p. 41 of A/E #170—rather than being based on the cover of Thor #177 as Robert Menzies wrote in his piece about 1970s UK reprints—was more likely based on the covers of Thor #146 or #151. “So very strange,” he notes, “that Kirby used almost the same figure on two covers, Thor #146 and #151.”

Actually, Richard, it’s even weirder than that! Hying me to the online Grand Comics Database, I compared the three U.S. Marvel covers you mentioned— only to discover quite by accident, when I later cracked open my bound volumes of Thor, that the main figure on the splash page (not the cover) of Thor #151 (April 1968) is a virtual dead ringer for the Album figure. Check ’em out and see for yourself! Note that, on both versions, a corner of the thunder god’s cape is hidden by the top flap of his left boot. Thanks to Barry Pearl for the scan. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

leaving Sif behind.

To tell the truth, I never enjoyed “slugfests” until I read your essay. I thought those pages could have been better devoted to character development or intricate subplots. But you have convinced me there is much to see, and I will definitely be re-reading these with a new appreciation.

Mike Zaloudek

Glad you liked the article, Mike. Wasn’t Thor #166 the last time the entity called Him appeared prior to artist Gil Kane and me transforming him into Adam Warlock? I recall that I felt the Thor story virtually utilized Him as a sort of gold-skinned Silver Surfer, albeit a bit more aggressive, and I myself wasn’t wild about that yarn. Maybe that’s part of the reason I decided to utilize him as the rough clay of the Warlock concept I was developing—that, and the fact that adapting Him instead of totally making up a new hero from scratch was something I was inclined to do, since I knew I wouldn’t have any kind of ownership in him (er.

re:

Him). Of course, if I’d been able to visualize the Marvel Cinematic Universe in my foggy crystal ball half a century ago, Warlock would have had no connection with Him—since he never really had much anyway.

Talking about John Cimino—he had a few afterthe-fact thoughts about his article in #170 himself, and here they are: Roy,

It’s time I came clean to the readers of Alter Ego. The “Top 10 Jack Kirby Marvel Slugfest (1961-1970)” article in #170 was actually an article I’d written ten years prior. Hell, back in the day, I wrote so many articles for anybody who cared and gave them away at Christmas (a cheap gift made with love), so I have no excuse for what I’m about to reveal. But dare I say I made a small error on “Wuxtry! Wuxtry! Read All About It!” page 34, listing This alternate “maskot” tribute drawing prepared #10, The Amazing

by Shane Foley and colored by Randy Sargent has Spider-Man the young newshawk from the first splash page in #8 (1963), Fantastic Four #11 (Feb. 1963) sporting a Captain Ego “Spider-Man costume. [Captain Ego TM & © Roy Thomas & Estate of vs. The Human Bill Schelly – hero created by Biljo White.]

Torch.” It should read in the description: “Matter of fact, all the early interactions between the Torch and Spidey (in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 & #3, Strange Tales Annual #2, Fantastic Four Annual #1, and Strange Tales #115) were stellar encounters, filled with teen angst and fun that captured the magic of the early Marvel heroes.”

So please find it in your heart to forgive me for leaving out three issues that rightfully should have been listed with the others.

I know Jack Kirby, Jerry Bails, and Reed Richards himself would have pity on me.

John Cimino

Point noted, John… though I doubt if you would’ve wanted to take up half of your “top ten” list with encounters between Spidey and Johnny Storm.

It was a kick to finally do a Kirby issue of Alter Ego, which was marred only by a couple of anti-Stan Lee die-hards declaring that, because of some unspecified offense committed in A/E #170, they would never again buy either another issue of this mag or anything published in TwoMorrows. Really, it’s a shame they let these people out of their self-imposed boxes. But we’ll live without their commerce.

Got a bona fide comment or even carp about this issue? Send it to:

71

Roy Thomas e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135

Nostalgic about the old online chat groups? The Alter-Ego-Fans one is still going strong at https://groups.io/g/Alter-Ego-Fans, if you can type that many letters without making a mistake. If you have any trouble getting in to sign up, please contact Chet Cox at mormonyoyoman@ gmail.com and he’ll escort you on board. The discussions deal mostly with Golden and Silver Age stuff, and Roy selfishly often uses it to solicit help with info or scans for this magazine… so be warned!

Also, the abovementioned John Cimino oversees and operates (and even named) The Roy Thomas Appreciation Board on Facebook, which deals with all things RT-related, including convention and comics store appearances, historical tidbits, and a lot of other matters related to Ye Ed’s nigh-six-decade career in the nutty comics medium.

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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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ALFREDO ALCALA is celebrated for his dreamscape work on Savage Sword of Conan and other work for Marvel, DC, and Warren, as well as his own barbarian creation Voltar, as RICH ARNDT interviews his sons Alfred and Christian! Also: FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, PETER NORMANTON’s horror history From The Tomb, JOHN BROOME, and more!

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

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Spotlighting the artists of ROY THOMAS’ 1980s DC series ALL-STAR SQUADRON! Interviews with artists ARVELL JONES, RICHARD HOWELL, and JERRY ORDWAY, conducted by RICHARD ARNDT! Plus, the Squadron’s FINAL SECRETS, including previously unpublished art, & covers for issues that never existed!

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The Golden Age comics of major pulp magazine publisher STREET & SMITH (THE SHADOW, DOC SAVAGE, RED DRAGON, SUPERSNIPE) examined in loving detail by MARK CARLSON-GHOST! Art by BOB POWELL, HOWARD NOSTRAND, and others, ANTHONY TOLLIN on “The Shadow/Batman Connection”, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, JOHN BROOME, PETER NORMANTON, and more!

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ight #10–1943]. Captain MidnightTM

Art by Mac Raboy [Captain Midn and © the respective trademark & copyright holders.

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“Album of Comic-Book Life”

by Stanley Kauffmann

Stanley Kauffmann in a 1957 photo (taken by Richard Avedon)—flanked by C.C. Beck’s cover for Captain Marvel Adventures #26 (Aug. 1943) and that of Kauffmann’s 2007 memoir Albums of a Life.

Since the celebrated stage and film critic reports that he was employed as a Fawcett (well, okay, “Tappan”) comics editor beginning in December 1942, a CMA issue with such a date might well include some of his earliest efforts there… though the Grand Comics Database lists Rod Reed as editor through #29, Will Lieberson for #30-33, and J.B. [or sometimes “Janice,” a.k.a. Jane] Magill starting with #34. Some of the GCD’s editorial data is clearly inaccurate, since the contents page of CMA #34 lists “Stanley Kauffmann,” not Magill, as line editor. [Photo © Richard Avedon; Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

INTRODUCTION: Stanley Kauffmann (1916-2013) was a renowned New York theatre and film critic.

A 1935 graduate of New York University, he began writing novels—his first was published in 1941—and also spent a brief period in the prospering comicbook industry, first at the B.W. Sangor Shop (1942), then as an editor at Fawcett Publications. But his true passion was drama, theatre, and film. In 1958 he was hired by The New Republic to write movie reviews, a position he held with them right up to August of 2013, just weeks before his death at age 97. Kauffmann’s novels included The Hidden Hero (1949) and The Philanderer (1953); his later books were comprised of critique collections: A World on Film (1966), Living Images (1975), Regarding Film (2001), and two memoirs: Albums of Early Life (1980) and Albums of a Life (2007). In this issue of FCA (and concluding next issue), we excerpt a chapter from the latter memoir titled “Album of Comic-Book Life,” in which Kauffmann delightfully describes his succinct time in the comics field, primarily with Fawcett, where he immediately became one of their top editors. In an effort to “protect the innocent,” Kauffmann had used pseudonyms for all places, people, and things throughout this chapter. (Fawcett was called “Tappan”; Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang was referred to as “General Jack’s Jamboree”; Captain Marvel became “Major Mighty”; Captain Midnight was “Nick Noonday”; Editorial Director Ralph Daigh was re-named “Horace Knight”; chief comics editor Rod Reed was simply called “Hap”; editor Jane Magill became “Peg Molloy”; editor Henry “Lynn” Perkins was rechristened the notorious “Colin James”; and so on.) For the benefit of our readers, I’ve taken the liberty of including the characters’ true names in brackets following the false ones; all information between brackets in what follows has been added by Ye FCA Editor. Aliases aside, Stanley Kauffmann’s chronicle of his time during the Golden Age of Comics is a candid, precious look at that celebrated bygone era. The text is © 2007 Stanley Kauffmann,

and is reprinted with permission of Stanley Moss/Sheep Meadow Press. It was edited slightly, as per above, for this edition of FCA by —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

I

PART 1

became a success in December of 1942. For the previous ten months I had been an editor and staff writer for a small company [the B.W. Sangor Shop] that supplied comic-book pages, all lettered and ready for engraving, to a magazine publisher [Better/Nedor/Pines Publications]. We were subcontractors.

Now, after less than a year in the business, I had been hired as an editor at Tappan [Fawcett] Publications, a huge firm whose comic-books, which were just one division of their line, were among the biggest in the field. My friends in the comic trade were agape. Not only had I zoomed to the top in less than a year, I wouldn’t even have to write scripts any more. This was prestige—just editing. I was given three magazines at Tappan [Fawcett]: Major Mighty [Captain Marvel Adventures], which was one of the big three in the country, Nick Noonday [Captain Midnight], which was a runner-up, and another one [Wow Comics]. And, said my trade pals, I was still in my twenties. What would I not accomplish!

I liked their wonderment all the more because this was only the secondary part of my life, as a few of them knew. Every morning I got up at five-thirty and for a couple of hours worked on writing of my own before I went to the office. I arrived at nine or so feeling invigorated because I had got up early and had already done some of my own work. And here I was, sparkling at my Number Two job, pushing ahead of people to whom it was Number

“Album Of Comic-Book Life”—Part 1

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Three To Get Ready…

Besides Captain Marvel Adventures, two other titles Kauffman edited were Captain Midnight and Wow Comics. Seen here are Shelly Moldoff’s cover for Captain Midnight #14 (April 1944) and Jack Binder’s for Wow #21 (Jan. ’44). [Shazam heroine, Mr. Scarlet & Pinky TM & © DC Comics; Captain Midnight, Phantom Eagle, & Commando Yank TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

One, Number Only. I felt luxurious. I enjoyed the praise, enjoyed it doubly because I had private superiority, and I enjoyed the job, too, as one always enjoys to some degree any work that one can do well.

The earlier comic-book job, which I had taken after my first novel [The King of Proxy Street (1941)] had been published in relative secrecy, had meant some pleasure and much drag. I liked working with the three or four old men, freelancers, who did the hand-coloring on the “silver prints.” These were small photostats of the artists’ large black-and-white pages which were hand-colored as guides for the engraver. The old men were Hitler refugees, painters down on their luck. I particularly liked old Schlosser [real name unknown] whose father had been chief prompter of the Vienna Opera for years and who had many stories about singers and conductors who were mythical to me. But I disliked having to grind out three or four five-or-six-page scripts a week. Nowadays, when I see James Bond films with pits of alligators, with cannons concealed in hubcaps, I recognize that they are doing now what I was doing then, and see once again a dominant element in my life: bad timing.

My best pleasure in that first job had nothing to do with the job itself. I got my draft-call in April—there was a war on—and the boss hired someone to replace me. I was given a 4-F rating by the examiners because of an operation I’d had a few years before, and when I went back to tell the boss, there was someone else at my

desk. Times were good, the boss was feeling flush, so he kept both me and Fred B., the new man. [FCA EDITOR’S NOTE: The Sangor staffer referred to in Kauffmann’s text as “Fred B.” is one of the few people mentioned in this chapter that no one has been able to positively identify.]

Fred had done some newspaper work and later went back to journalism—today he is a well-known television correspondent— but he had another talent. In the months we worked together, he taught me something about billiards during the lunch hour. A quick sandwich or a frank-and-beans pot at the Automat on Sixth Avenue, then upstairs to the billiard parlor. Not pool, which he thought vulgar and debased, but classical billiards. It was Fred who passed on the tip about the opening at Fawcett, which didn’t interest him because he wanted to get back to journalism, and it meant the end of my billiard lessons when they hired me. What I remember most vividly about that earlier job—I can’t remember the name of one of the magazines [FCA EDITORS NOTE: One was Thrilling Comics]—is the smell of chalk and the rich way those three heavy balls rolled over the green cloth and the way they clicked—for Fred much more than for me.

My new office at Tappan [Fawcett] was high in a high Broadway office building, a large room with a fine view and seven other desks, the entire editorial staff of the comics department.

I had been hired by the editorial director of the whole company [FCA EDITOR’S NOTE: “Horace Knight,” a name standing in for editorial director Ralph Daigh] and had met the head of the comics

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Fawcett Collectors Of America

department [FCA EDITOR’S NOTE: “Hap,” standing for chief comics editor Rod Reed] only once. He sat in the far corner of the room from me, sometimes with his hat on, and occasionally glanced at me, pleasantly. On my first day the other faces had not yet come into focus for me. I was busy trying to look competent and accustomed to a high and airy office as part of a big corporation, trying to conceal the fact that I had come from a small office of a small company on a side street. I was just beginning to feel busy and hungry as lunchtime approached, I was just really beginning to realize the absence of billiards, when Hap [Rod], the head with the hat on it, shuffled beefily down the room to my desk. He was a solid, quiet-spoken man who utilized his quietness.

“Coming to the party?” he inquired sweetly.

“Is there a party?” I said.

He nodded. “Luncheon of goodies and things in the board room upstairs and the whole entire complete afternoon off. The works.”

“For me?” I said. “A welcome?”

He laughed, in soft separate spurts, and turned to the woman whose desk faced mine. She laughed too, beating her desk top a couple of times.

“Pretty good,” said Hap [Rod], his moon-face beaming, and turned back to me. “Don’t mean to offend you, but the party’s for something else. This is the last working day before Christmas.”

The board room was in Spanish style. Out of the ordinary office hallway I entered a small lobby that had black wrought-iron gates. They opened on a huge stucco-walled room with a big hacienda fireplace, which had andirons and pokers and bellows— everything but a chimney. The room was jammed and noisy, and the noise all the more impressive because it bounced off the two-story-high beamed ceiling. A big table down the side was loaded with food. Two small bars at the ends were busy.

This was the moment when I first felt fully the success I had been told was mine. This was my first office party, the first time I had worked for a company substantial enough to have such quarters and to put on such a spread. I felt a glowing bureaucratic snugness at settling into such a big upholstered mechanism, a snugness

A Thrilling Exit Prior to landing the Fawcett position, Kauffmann had written a published novel titled The King of Proxy Street—after which he says he became an “editor and staff writer” for the B.W. Sangor Shop, which supplied work to Ned Pines’ company variously known as Better, Nedor, or (later) Standard. Seen at right is the splash page of a (possible) Kauffmann story for that studio, drawn

by Al Camy for Thrilling Comics #33 (Feb. 1943). Reportedly, when Kauffmann left the Sangor Shop for Fawcett, his spot at the latter was filled by a young Patricia Highsmith, who would later become the author of such major novels as Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

The Powers-That-Were (Left:) Ralph Daigh was, circa 1943, “the editorial director of the whole company.”

(Right:) Rod Reed was the editor of the comics department.

heightened by the fact that I had an escape hatch—my private work. It was like deep-sea diving with an aqualung. I was down there with the fish, but they were fish and I, swimming about with them, was a human being.

Tappan [Fawcett] was run by the four Tappan [Fawcett] brothers, sons of long-dead Captain Tappan [William Fawcett] who had founded the family fortune with an outhouse monthly called General Jack’s Jamboree [Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang]. The Tappan [Fawcett] brothers, whom I saw now for the first and last time, were all cast in the same hearty endomorphic mold. They had

“Album Of Comic-Book Life”—Part 1

77

Thicker Than Water (Above:) In this photo that appeared in the Minneapolis Star Journal for March 9, 1942, the four Fawcett brothers are seen giving blood for the war effort. That was very blue blood, by comics-publishing standards, as their flagship hero Captain Marvel was already giving Superman a faster-than-a-speeding-bullet run for his money on the nation’s newsstands. That rivalry led National/DC Comics to first sue, then years later actually purchase the major Fawcett super-hero properties. [© the respective copyright holders.]

(Right:) The cover to Captain Marvel Adventures #34 (April 1944)

by C.C. Beck and Pete Costanza. Edited by Stanley Kauffmann.

[Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

reputations as hard businessmen, relied on their seeming stupidity to mask their trading acumen.

During the year they were inaccessible to the staff; not today.

I met them soon after I got to the party, when they were merely damp-palmed. Later in the afternoon they were sweating, wet, open-collared, hilarious. They dropped ice cubes down women’s fronts and backs. They ripped open the buttons on men’s flies— zippers were not yet universal—and shouted the scores. (One button was a single, two buttons were a double, three a triple, and four a home run.) Everyone loved it, apparently. I loved it, too, because I was there.

About five o’clock I went down to my office to get my overcoat and go home. The room was empty, darkening. Outside, Broadway was brightening. It was quiet—New York quiet, which means that the noise was a couple of concentric circles away for the moment.

Outside was the city, and around all of us was the Second World War. In here, in this high dimming room, I was safe, and within that safety, within my private work, I was even safer.

PART 2 The woman whose desk faced mine was named Peg Molloy [Jane B. Magill]. She was in her early thirties, voluptuously built, pigeon-toed, red-headed, small-eyed, generous sometimes, and quick-tempered. She wasn’t Irish. Peg [Jane] had a husband along the way, the last of several. She came from an Anglo-Saxon family, very proud of it, that had been ranching in Wyoming ever since the territory was opened. She kept in her drawer, and showed me often, a snapshot of her father and herself when a child, standing in front of horses, with so much space behind them that it seemed as if the picture had no back. That snapshot, in that Broadway building, made her exotic to me. Once she told me that she had come east to go to college. When I asked where, she said, “Chicago.” She was the first Westerner I had known. I had met people from California, but that was quite different.

On her desk she often kept a glass of what looked like water, which she sipped from time to time. When it was empty, she stepped out of the office to refill it. I thought she had some sort of dehydrated condition. Then, in my second week or so, I was on her side of the double desk talking to her about something when she took a sip and I got a whiff. Pure gin.

Today that memory seems like half of a Victorian temperance poster, the Before of the Before and After. The very last time I saw Peg [Jane], some twenty years after I left Tappan [Fawcett], was in a Greenwich Village shop into which she stumbled at nine-thirty in the morning, blind drunk in the maneuverable way that only drinking drunks can manage. I spoke to her and she looked at me.

Her eyes took about five seconds to fix on my face, and her mind

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Fawcett Collectors Of America

The Magill Mags (A Couple Of Them, Anyway) (Above & below:_Being sadly unable to locate a photo of Jane B. Magill, we had to settle for representative covers of two of the Fawcett titles she edited: Master Comics #53 (Aug. 1944) and Whiz Comics #58 (Sept. ’44). Actually, as noted above, Magill is listed—at least by the GCD—as editor of Captain Marvel Adventures as well from #34-46… followed by Will Lieberson for #47, then Wendell Crowley for the rest of the comic’s run. However, Kauffmann was editor of CMA from 1943 through 1944. [Shazam, Shazam heroes, Billy Batson, Dr. Sivana, Radar, & Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.]

another five seconds to remember my name. Her face struggled through puffy anesthesia into pleasure, then she croaked a question about some work I had been doing fifteen years before and had long forgotten. How was it going? I said it was going well and sent my best to her current husband. A few months later I heard that she had died.

But back in the Tappan [Fawcett] office she was energetic, scheming, volatile, and giggly. She seemed hard-working but actually she was a sloppy editor with the quick highhandedness of the insecure, and she depended on others, including me, to get her out of jams. She spent a lot of time talking to me about her friends in the literary

took

Credit Where Credit Is Due (Above:) The contents page of Captain Marvel Adventures #34 (April ’44). Art by Beck & associates.

Kauffman is listed theron as editor.

world whom she usually met at poker parties, and she also confided in me about her men.

She had a lot of quick expeditions, including a judge, but the man she was seeing the most was a young intellectual, a sociologist who was insane about her, so much that he was hostile to me when we met simply because I sat facing Peg [Jane] all day. But the man she liked more, who eventually became her next husband, was another intellectual, a classical scholar who was in the army overseas in South Africa. I asked her once what she talked about with these types.

She said “Not that ***damned intellectual crap” and rumpled her big breasts and giggled. Since she wasn’t dumb, her playing the tootsie had its charm.

She showed me the letters of Daniel, the overseas lover, which were exquisitely written and full of very intimate remembrance; she was proud of both aspects. She showed me nude

“Album Of Comic-Book Life”—Part 1

79

widened my eyes a bit, which she enjoyed. And I helped her with her work when she was late or lazy or fuzzy with hangover.

And, too, she liked me because she thought I was smart. She admired the fact that I worked an aggregate of about five days in the month. It was about the same amount that she worked, but I accomplished more; and could easily help her when needed.

That was the total time, about five days a month, that it took me to run my three magazines. The rest of the time I did some letter-writing, visited other offices pretending to confer, or fiddled; it’s hard work pretending to be busy. But mostly I read. I kept a book in the middle drawer of my desk and read with the drawer open. If a stranger— meaning someone outside our group—came in, I simply slid the drawer shut without touching the book. I read dozens of books that way during my stay at Tappan [Fawcett], while the circulation of my magazines went up and I got congratulatory memos and salary raises.

Hap [Rod Reed] knew I read books, of course. He didn’t care a hang as long as the magazines got out on time and sold. In fact, he enjoyed it. His favorite trick was to stop in the hall just outside our door and say, “Oh, Horace [Ralph], can you come in a moment?”

Horace Knight [Ralph Daigh] was the editorial director of the whole firm. I would slam my center drawer shut, and Hap [Rod] would enter alone, grinning at me.

Wow! What A Comic!

Jack Binder’s cover for Wow Comics #25 (May 1944), edited by Stanley Kauffmann—plus the same artist’s splash page for the “Mr. Scarlet and Pinky” entry from Wow #24 (April ‘44). The dated and offensive racial caricatures, of course, are to be regretted. [Shazam heroine, Mr. Scarlet & Pinky TM & © DC Comics.]

photographs of herself that had been taken by a friend of Dan’s, at his request, to send to him. She asked my advice about how she was going to handle Tom, her jealous lover, when Dan came back on leave and for good; and out of my store of worldly wisdom I advised her to make clear to Tom that he was, at most, her man for the duration of the war.

She shrugged and looked dubious.

After the next weekend she rushed in—she always rushed—opened her bag and took out three sheets of paper. “You son of a b*tch, you gave me an idea for a novel!

Duration Man. I worked out the whole ***damned outline over the weekend!” I knew this meant that someone had worked it out with or for her, but I said it was great. I asked when she was going to start writing. “Me?” she said.

“Hell, I couldn’t write a book. I’ve made a deal with Sally Frisbee—she’s an absolutely top confessions writer. I pay her something every week she’s working on it and half the take. Hot damn!” She slapped the desk. “I can see the jacket now, Duration Man by Peg Molly [Jane Magill]!”

The deal was made, but I don’t think the book was ever finished. I never heard that it was published.

Peg [Jane] liked and confided in me for three reasons.

She knew I was interested in another girl, so she could talk to me without flirting. She could see that her stories

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Fawcett Collectors Of America

It always worked because once in a while Horace did come in with him, so I played it safe.

Scattered through the months were those forty hours or so in which I talked with my regular freelance scriptwriters and artists and sometimes interviewed new ones; read outlines, made suggestions or disapproved; read scripts and did the same; assigned scripts to artists, checked their sketches and finished pages; and, where the artist’s studio hadn’t done the lettering of the balloons, assigned the pages to a letterer and proofread the results. Not forgetting the exclamation points. (“Take that, Nazi rats!” “Goot heffens!! Bullets bounce off him!!!”) It was all easy. I just thought of the form as frozen film—stills from films.

Sometimes I even got an artist to try a montage effect.

But as easy as I found the work, it wasn’t my gifts that made Major Mighty [Captain Marvel Adventures] grow from 600,000 a month, where it was when I took over, to more than 1,000,000 a month in less than a year, that made Nick Noonday [Captain Midnight] a contender for the front rank shared by Major Mighty [Captain Marvel Adventures] with a couple of competitors.

Magazines of every kind sold well during the war, and comic-books sold phenomenally. Besides the children and others whom they pleased and who now had plenty of pocket money, comic-books were the favorite reading of the armed forces. There was a Major Mighty [Captain Marvel] Club, with membership cards and secret code; there were hundreds of thousands of members, about half of whom were servicemen. I saw many a letter from a serviceman overseas confiding his troubles to the Major [Captain] because there was no one around he could really talk to. I had to answer these “specials.”

I saw more than one letter from a serviceman overseas applying for membership and asking Major Mighty [Captain Marvel] to rush the membership card so that the soldier or sailor could have it before he went into combat. I didn’t write to those men; I had nothing to say.

I just airmailed the card myself instead of processing the application through the department that handled routine club stuff.

I took the work seriously during the actual work hours, minutes, seconds that I was doing it: my ego was involved.

But I didn’t see—even remotely—that I was in the middle of something portentous. The war was the immediate cause of the skyrocketing sales, but I was in the middle of an immense cultural shift— the gradual canonization of pop art—and I had no clue. I was in a moderately significant job right in the middle, I was contributing to the shift, and I had no clue.

Put On A Happy Face!

Full-page ad for the Captain Marvel Club, from Captain Marvel Adventures #31 (Jan. 1944). Art by the C.C. Beck studio. [Shazam hero & Billy Batson TM & © DC Comics.]

Nothing that has happened in the elevation of pop art has changed my mind about those comic-books, but I was certainly blind about their eventual consequence to others. If it’s any comfort to me, so was nearly everyone else. I, in my way, was like all those workers in the Hollywood mills who were just trying to turn out good products and were told twenty years later that, whether they had known it or not then, whether they believed it or not now, they had been creating classics.

Comic-books are now regarded with esthetic seriousness by some, not just as sociological data. Particular writers and artists are objects of veneration by collectors, young and old. Recently I went to an exhibition held by such collectors in New York and learned that the period when I was in the field, before 1950, is now called the Golden Age. When I left Tappan [Fawcett], I threw away all my copies. I wish—sometimes, anyway, in common humanity I wish—I could feel a twinge of regret at what I missed, instead of thinking it was all either humdrum or funny.

Stanley Kauffmann in 1973.

Stanley Kauffmann’s Fawcett memoir will be concluded next issue.

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THE BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S

MAINLINE COMICS

by JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY Introduction by JOHN MORROW

In 1954, industry legends JOE SIMON and JACK KIRBY founded MAINLINE PUBLICATIONS to publish their own comics during that turbulent era in comics history. The four titles—BULLSEYE, FOXHOLE, POLICE TRAP, and IN LOVE—looked to build off their reputation as hit makers in the Western, War, Crime, and Romance genres, but the 1950s backlash against comics killed any chance at success, and Mainline closed its doors just two years later. For the first time, TwoMorrows Publishing is compiling the best of Simon & Kirby’s Mainline comics work, including all of the stories with S&K art, as well as key tales with contributions

by MORT MESKIN and others. After the company’s dissolution, their partnership ended with Simon leaving comics for advertising, and Kirby taking unused Mainline concepts to both DC and Marvel. This collection bridges the gap between Simon & Kirby’s peak with their 1950s romance comics, and the lows that led to Kirby’s resurgence with CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN and the early MARVEL UNIVERSE. With loving art restoration by CHRIS FAMA, and an historical overview by JOHN MORROW to put it all into perspective, the BEST OF SIMON & KIRBY’S MAINLINE COMICS presents some of the final, and finest, work Joe and Jack ever produced. SHIPS SUMMER 2023!

(256-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $49.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-118-9

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

DESTROYER DUCK GRAPHITE EDITION

by JACK KIRBY & STEVE GERBER Introduction by MARK EVANIER

In the 1980s, writer STEVE GERBER was embroiled in a lawsuit against MARVEL COMICS over ownership of his creation HOWARD THE DUCK. To raise funds for legal fees, Gerber asked JACK KIRBY to contribute to a benefit comic titled DESTROYER DUCK. Without hesitation, Kirby (who was in his own dispute with Marvel at the time) donated his services for the first issue, and the duo took aim at their former employer in an outrageous five-issue run. With biting satire and guns blazing, Duke “Destroyer” Duck battled the thinly veiled Godcorp (whose infamous credo was “Grab it all! Own it all! Drain it all!”), its evil leader Ned Packer and the (literally) spineless Booster Cogburn, Medea (a parody of Daredevil’s Elektra), and more! Now, all five Gerber/Kirby issues are collected—but relettered and reproduced from JACK’S UNBRIDLED, UNINKED PENCIL ART! Also included are select examples of ALFREDO ALCALA’s unique inking style over Kirby on the original issues, Gerber’s script pages, an historical Introduction by MARK EVANIER (co-editor of the original 1980s issues), and an Afterword by BUZZ DIXON (who continued the series after Gerber)! Discover all the hidden jabs you missed when DESTROYER DUCK was first published, and experience page after page of Kirby’s raw pencil art! SHIPS SPRING 2023!

(128-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $31.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-117-2

ALTER EGO COLLECTORS’ ITEM CLASSICS

By overwhelming demand, editor ROY THOMAS has compiled all the material on the founders of the Marvel Bullpen from three SOLD-OUT ALTER EGO ISSUES—plus OVER 30 NEW PAGES OF CONTENT! There’s the STEVE DITKO ISSUE (#160 with a rare ’60s Ditko interview by RICHARD HOWELL, biographical notes by NICK CAPUTO, and Ditko tributes)! The STAN LEE ISSUE (#161 with ROY THOMAS on his 50+ year relationship with Stan, art by KIRBY, DITKO, MANEELY, EVERETT, SEVERIN, ROMITA, plus tributes from pros and fans)! And the JACK KIRBY ISSUE (#170 with WILL MURRAY on Kirby’s contributions to Iron Man’s creation, Jack’s Captain Marvel/Mr. Scarlet Fawcett work, Kirby in 1960s fanzines, plus STAN LEE and ROY THOMAS on Jack)! Whether you missed these issues, or can’t live without the extensive NEW MATERIAL on DITKO, LEE, and KIRBY, it’s sure to be an AMAZING, ASTONISHING, FANTASTIC tribute to the main men who made Marvel! SHIPS SPRING 2023!

(256-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $35.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-116-5

CLIFFHANGER!

CINEMATIC SUPERHEROES OF THE SERIALS: 1941–1952 by CHRISTOPHER IRVING

Hold on tight as historian CHRISTOPHER IRVING explores the origins of the first on-screen superheroes and the comic creators and film-makers who brought them to life. CLIFFHANGER! touches on the early days of the film serial, to its explosion as a juvenile medium of the 1930s and ‘40s. See how the creation of characters like SUPERMAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, SPY SMASHER, and CAPTAIN MARVEL dovetailed with the early film adaptations. Along the way, you’ll meet the stuntmen, directors (SPENCER BENNETT, WILLIAM WITNEY, producer SAM KATZMAN), comic book creators (SIEGEL & SHUSTER, SIMON & KIRBY, BOB KANE, C.C. BECK, FRANK FRAZETTA, WILL EISNER), and actors (BUSTER CRABBE, GEORGE REEVES, LORNA GRAY, KANE RICHMOND, KIRK ALYN, DAVE O’BRIEN) who brought them to the silver screen—and how that resonates with today’s cinematic superhero universe. SHIPS SUMMER 2023!

(160-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-119-6

New from TwoMorrows!

BACK ISSUE #142

BACK ISSUE #143

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #30

SUPER ISSUE! Superboy’s Bronze Age adventures, and interviews with GERARD CHRISTOPHER and STACY HAIDUK of the Superboy live-action TV series. Plus: Super Goof, Super Richie (Rich), Super-Dagwood, Super Mario Bros., Frank Thorne’s Far Out Green Super Cool, NICK MEGLIN and JACK DAVIS’ Superfan, and more! Featuring a Superboy and Krypto cover by DAVE COCKRUM! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

A special tribute issue to NEAL ADAMS (1941–2022), celebrating his Bronze Age DC Comics contributions! In-depth Batman and Superman interviews, ‘Green Lantern/Green Arrow’—Fifty Years Later, Neal Adams—Under the Radar, Continuity Associates, a ‘Rough Stuff’ pencil art gallery, Power Records, and more! Re-presenting Adams’ iconic cover art to BATMAN #227.

(Plus: See ALTER EGO #181!)

Canadian comic book artist, illustrator, and graphic novelist MICHAEL CHO in a career-spanning interview and art gallery, a 1974 look at JACK ADLER and the DC Comics production department’s process of reprinting Golden Age material, color newspaper tabloid THE FUNNY PAGES examined in depth by its editor RON BARRETT, plus CBC’s usual columns and features, including HEMBECK! Edited by JON B. COOKE.

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships June 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships March 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships May 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Spring 2023

KIRBY COLLECTOR #86

RETROFAN #26

RETROFAN #27

BRICKJOURNAL #79

VISUAL COMPARISONS! Analysis of unused vs. known Kirby covers and art, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH on his stylizations in Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles, Kirby’s incorporation of real-life images in his work, WILL MURRAY’s conversations with top pros just after Jack’s passing, unused Mister Miracle cover inked

by WALTER SIMONSON, and more! Edited

by JOHN MORROW.

The saga of Saturday morning’s Super Friends, Part One! Plus: A history of MR. T, TV’s AVENGERS (Steed and Mrs. Peel), Daktari’s CHERYL MILLER, Mexican movie monsters, John and Yoko’s nation of Nutopia, ELIZABETH SHEPHERD (the actress who almost played Emma Peel), and more! With ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, MARK VOGER, & MICHAEL EURY.

Interview with Captain Kangaroo BOB KEESHAN, The ROCKFORD FILES, teen monster movies, the Kung Fu and BRUCE LEE crazes, JACK KIRBY’s comedy comics, DON DRYSDALE’s TV drop-ins, outrageous toys, Challenge of the Super Friends, and more fun, fab features! Featuring columns

by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER! Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Create Brick Art with builders ANDREAS LELANDER and JACK ENGLAND! Learn how to build mosaics and sculptures with DEEP SHEN and some of the best Lego builders around the world! Plus: AFOLs by cartoonist GREG HYLAND, step-by step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BrickNerd’s DIY Fan Art, Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Spring 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships June 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships April 2023

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Explores when America went wild in the ’60s for All Things British! MOVIES (A Hard Day’s Night, Having a Wild Weekend), TV (The Ed Sullivan Show), COLLECTIBLES (toys, games, trading cards, lunch boxes), COMICS (real-life Brits in DC and Marvel Universes) MUSIC (features interviews with members of the BEATLES, the ROLLING STONES, THE WHO, HERMAN’S HERMITS, the YARDBIRDS, the ANIMALS, the HOLLIES), & more! By MARK VOGER. (192-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $43.95 (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN 978-1-60549-115-8 • Now shipping!

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ALTER EGO #182

An FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) special, behind a breathtaking JERRY ORDWAY cover! Features on Uncle Marvel and the Fawcett Family by P.C. HAMERLINCK, ACG artist KENNETH LANDAU (Commander Battle and The Atomic Sub), and writer LEE GOLDSMITH (Golden Age Green Lantern, Flash, and others). Plus Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt by MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more!

PRINTED IN CHINA

ALTER EGO #181

Special NEAL ADAMS ISSUE, featuring in-depth interviews with Neal by HOWARD CHAYKIN, BRYAN STROUD, and RICHARD ARNDT. Also: a “lost” ADAMS BRAVE & THE BOLD COVER with Batman and Green Arrow, and unseen Adams art and artifacts.

Plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS. (Plus: See BACK ISSUE #143!)