Alter Ego #180 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy Thomas' All-Stellar Comics Fanzine

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No. 180 March 2023

CELESTIAL SPOTLIGHT ON TM

STARRING:

(YOU SHOULD FORGIVE THE EXPRESSION)

BRIAN MURRAY HOWARD SIMPSON LOU MANNA ROY THOMAS PLUS A COSMIC CORNUCOPIA OF

Young All-Stars TM & © DC Comics; other art © Brian Murray.

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NEVERPUBLISHED YOUNG ALL-STARS ART!

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Vol. 3, No. 180 March 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

Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll

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

Proofreaders

William J. Dowlding David Baldy

Contents Writer/Editorial/Article: Forever Young? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Roy Thomas’ brief and biased history of DC’s The Young All-Stars (1987-89).

Cover Artist & Colorist

Brian Murray—First Of The Young All-Stars . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

With Special Thanks to:

“We’re All Fans!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Brian Murray

Jim Kealy Heidi Amash Rob Kirby Pedro Angosto Johnny Blaze Leavitt Ger Apeldoorn Art Lortie Richard J. Arndt Frank Lovece Bob Bailey Jim Ludwig Mike W. Barr James E. Lyle Stephen Baskerville Mitch Maglio John Benson Dan Makara Bernie Bubnis Mark Carlson-Ghost Dennis Mallonee Lou Manna Craig Cermak Doug Martin John Cimino Ian Millsted Mike Collins Gary Morgan Comic Book Plus Stanley Moss (website) Mark Muller Kevin L. Cook Mike Mulovsky Chet Cox Brian Murray Al Dellinges Andrew Pepoy Shane Foley Dann Phillips Brendon & Brian Ian Richardson Fraim Richard Rubenfeld Joe Frank Randy Sargent Stephan A. Friedt David Scroggy Susan Fujitani Richard Seetoo Janet Gilbert Rob Shalda J.T. Go Sheep Meadow Press Jared Gold Howard Siegel Grand Comics Database (website) Howard Simpson Bryan Stroud Terry P. Gustafson Dann Thomas George Hagenauer Shawn van Briesen James Hall Delmo Walters, Jr. Ron & Jan Harris Heritage Art Auctions John Watson Ted White Jim Hofrichter Who’s Who of Christopher Ivy American Comic Gerard Jones Books 1928-1999 John Joshua (website) Sharon Karibian

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Frank Thorne, M. Thomas Inge, and Andy Yanchus

Richard Arndt interviews the original illustrator of the All-Star Squadron sequel series. An interview with early Young All-Stars artist Howard Simpson.

Lou Manna & The Young All-Stars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Candid conversations by R. Arndt & Mitch Maglio with the series’ final penciler.

The Young All-Stars: Crisis Averted! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Johnny Blaze Leavitt’s artistic response to the end of Earth-Two.

The All-Star Squadron Covers That Never Were— Till Now! (Part II) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 The counter-Crisis on Infinite Earths legend continues, courtesy of John Joshua & co.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Michael T. Gilbert’s 2023 Comic Art Portfolio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 MTG’s colorful commission work—from Elric of Melniboné to The Spectre.

Tributes To Frank Thorne, M. Thomas Inge, & Andy Yanchus . . . 61 re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 64 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #239 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 The 1943 Fawcett career of critic Stanley Kauffmann, courtesy of P.C. Hamerlinck.

On Our Cover: While we were in the earliest stages of the preparation of this issue, lead-off Young All-Stars artist Brian Murray sent us a scan of this never-published color drawing he’d done of the teenage titans of World War II—and there was never any second choice for this edition’s cover! See its full story, step by step, on p. 17 of this issue. [Young All-Stars TM & © DC Comics.] Above: “Iron” Munro may have been “able to leap tall buildings at a single bound,” but he couldn’t really fly like the aptly named Flying Fox could—so the pair’s Superman- and Batman-derived roles were momentarily reversed in this panel from The Young All-Stars #14 (July 1988). Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; pencils by Howard Simpson; inks by Malcolm Jones III. [TM & © DC Comics.] Alter EgoTM issue 180, March 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.

PART ONE

writer/editorial/article

Forever YOUNG?

The Short Happy Life Of The Young All-Stars by Roy Thomas A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: Yeah, that’s right—no “writer/ editorial” per se this issue, as that space has been given over to this several-page study of the Young All-Stars series instead. When I decided to finally pull together an issue of A/E centered around “my” (and of course DC Comics’) 1987-89 series The Young All-Stars, the successor to the 1981-87 All-Star Squadron, I was faced with a minor dilemma. I’d already written a fairly full account of the backstory behind that mag for TwoMorrows Publishing’s 2008 tome The All-Star Companion, Vol. 3, as prelude to a 40-page issue-by-issue examination by Kurt Mitchell and myself. Unable to improve upon that several-page intro, I decided it was best to simply augment it slightly for this issue….

n the letters section of the final issue of All-Star Squadron (#67, March-April 1987), I addressed the readers in my triple capacity as “writer/creative editor/co-creator.” In response to rampant rumors concerning a “second series” of Squadron as the first came to its end, I said that three months from that date would see the debut of The Young All-Stars. It would have a slightly different cast, yet would be in every way a successor to the series being discontinued.

“As everyone knows,” I wrote, in any post-Crisis on Infinite Earths comic set during the era of the Second World War, there would henceforth be no Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Arrow, or Speedy—“or any memory of

Roy & Dann & Friends Roy & Dann Thomas in the 1980s equivalent of a selfie—and the house ad in the letters section of All-Star Squadron #67 (March-April 1987) that gave fans their first glimpse of the six assembled Young All-Stars who’d be holding forth in the brand new mag the Thomases would co-write just three months later. The illo below, previously credited to Michael Bair, was actually penciled by Brian Murray and embellished (as an inking sample) by Malcolm Jones III. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Forever Young?

same” by anyone on DC’s spanking-new One Big Earth. That septet of heroes would be replaced there by “a smattering of new All-Stars—younger ones”—and those six were duly depicted at the bottom of that “All-Star Squadroom” page. Alert readers immediately recognized Neptune Perkins, Tsunami (Miya Shimada), and Dan (Dunbar) the Dyna-Mite, all of whom had appeared in Squadron at some point—and I revealed that the lady in the golden armor was the Golden Age Fury, “who seems to be the mother of Lyta Trevor of Infinity, Inc.” I had impishly decided to have a 1940s as well as a 1980s heroine named Fury, and indeed the new one’s backstory was only then going on sale in Secret Origins #12 (March ’87), as a harbinger of the forthcoming successor series. As for the other two figures in the drawing, I coyly opined as how we needed to hold a few surprises back for The Young All-Stars #1. But I reminded readers of certain hints I’d laid out in previous letters sections about how the energy represented by the likes of the Earth-Two Superman, et al., displaced when they were rendered retroactively non-existent by the events of Crisis, had to go somewhere. (My theory, as would finally be revealed fully in YAS #3, was that that energy went into the likes of the two heroes “Iron” Munro and Flying Fox, while Wonder Woman’s was re-embodied in the new Fury. Of course, that hypothesis was stretched a bit by the fact that Neptune Perkins and Tsunami existed before Aquaman did not—and where did that leave GA and Speedy? Clearly, I just used that theory as a starting point.) I did assure readers that the likes of Johnny Quick, Liberty Belle, Green Lantern, Hawkman, et al., would appear in the new series—although I pointedly did not tell them that the DC powersthat-be had decreed that I should use the “adult” All-Stars only sparingly. What had happened was that, in November of ’85, DC executive editor Dick Giordano and I had talked over the looming situation post-Crisis and had agreed that All-Star Squadron had been fatally wounded by that company-wide maxi-series. I would have preferred to continue with the original comic featuring the heroes I had left—still dozens strong, after all—but I could read the handwriting on the wall, so I acquiesced to replacing Squadron with a new comic. For a time, the new series was to be called simply The New All-Star Squadron, but that title lacked pizzazz. I felt strongly that the word “All-Star” should be a part of its name. It was apparently on an Amtrak train headed south from New York City to central South Carolina, where

Smart Like A (Flying) Fox Two DC Flying Foxes before the one in Young All-Stars: writer/artist Terry Gilkison’s aviator in More Fun Comics #46 (Aug. 1939)—and a very young Bruce Wayne adopting a temporary secret identity while visiting Clark Kent’s Smallville in Adventure Comics #275 (Aug. 1960). “Superboy” script by Jerry Coleman & art by George Papp. Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © DC Comics.]

my wife Dann’s father had moved from southern California to launch a new branch of Hughes Aircraft, that the name The Young All-Stars was born. The precise wording was Dann’s suggestion—and it was the perfect phrase. (The only previous super-hero group with the word “young” in its title had been Timely’s Young Allies, way back in the first half of the 1940s. But my Lord, how many Young Avengers,Young Justice, Young Etc. gatherings there’ve been since!) From that point, Dann and I had begun creating the new heroes, “whose history and futures are largely unknown—a few blank slates to write upon.”

Dick Giordano A popular artist in his own right, but especially celebrated as the inker of Neal Adams and others, DG was also DC’s managing (then executive) editor from 1981 to 1993.

Wonder Woman needed replacing because somebody had to become the future mother of Lyta (Fury) Trevor of Infinity, Inc. After talking with Dick and with George Pérez, who was then making considerable use of Graeco-Roman myth in his new Wonder Woman series, Dann and I decided, with their blessing, that she and I would “just carve off one little corner [of mythology] for our new heroine—the three Furies of Greek legend.” And so Helena Kosmatos became the “original” super-heroine called Fury. I had considered not doing “displaced energy stand-ins” for Batman and Robin, since they had no super-powers—till I remembered that Jerry Bails’ 1970s publication Who’s Who of American Comic Books had reprinted a panel featuring an early DC aviator hero called The Flying Fox; he had appeared in eight 1939 issues of More Fun Comics. That’s actually the name of a species of bat—or at least it had been considered so until recent years, when scientists had decided it was actually not a bat but a small primate.

The Short Happy Life Of The Young All-Stars

In addition, the teenaged Bruce Wayne of Earth-One had once used “The Flying Fox” as a secret identity in a retroactive-continuity tale. Dann suggested making our character a Native American—a Quontauka descendant of our earlier sword-and-sorcery hero Arak, Son of Thunder. The name “Flying Fox” fit that concept nicely—so Batman’s energy-heir was born. There was no replacement for Robin. (Or maybe his energy was what enabled this Fox to fly?) We didn’t bother to ring in doubles for the vanished Green Arrow and Speedy, either—though the notion of bringing in the bow-wielding Tigress (which would occur in YAS #9) was already in the back of my mind. But we had not one but two hero-subs for Aquaman! As I commented in All-Star Squadron #67: “Hmmm… most groups have trouble finding enough for one water-powered hero [to do], and we have two. Guess we’re just gluttons for punishment.” (Incidentally, Neptune Perkins had been created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Joe Kubert for the “Hawkman” story in Flash Comics #66, Aug. 1945. We just gave him a costume and picked up his life a few years earlier.) Then there was Arn “Iron” Munro, the obvious Superman substitute. I preferred to remain mysterious about his origins for a few issues, but he was actually perhaps the first Young All-Star conceived. He owed much to Philip Wylie’s novel Gladiator, published in 1930 and somehow fallen into the public domain, as I’d learned when arranging to adapt the book for Marvel a few years earlier. Arn would be the son of the novel’s superhuman protagonist Hugo Danner, who was so close in abilities and other ways to the 1938 Man of Tomorrow that it’s almost inconceivable to me that avid sciencefiction fan Jerry Siegel didn’t read the novel and utilize much of it, consciously or un-, in the newspaper comic strip samples that became the debut of Superman in Action Comics #1. The only clue I gave in YAS #3, though: “The fact that

Like Father—Like Son! Author Philip Wylie (in 1944), juxtaposed with the original dustjacket of his 1930 novel Gladiator, which related the life of the superhuman Hugo Danner—and a panel from Shadow Comics, Vol. 1, #1 (1940) spotlighting the original comicbook incarnation of SF writer John W. Campbell’s equally superhuman 1934 pulp hero Aarn/Iron Munro. Script by Otto Binder; art by E.C. Stoner. The eventual connection between the pair was The Young All-Stars’ “Iron” Munro, who was Danner’s son and possessed his dad’s strength and other abilities. Arn and his father would finally meet in the comic’s final issues. Thanks to Gerard Jones, Mike Mukulovsky, & Mark Carlson-Ghost. [© the respective copyright holders.]

he’s from Colorado is indeed significant, as are his precise earlySuperman powers (leaping 1/8 of a mile instead of flying, etc.)… and that the source is even older than the Man of Steel.” I put the character’s nickname “Iron” between quotation marks to stress that it was a near-homonym for his real first name Arn (short for the less dramatic Arnold). “Arn” was taken from a “future superman” of science-fiction: Aarn Munro (yep, two “a’s”), the protagonist of John W. Campbell, Jr.’s, 1934 novel The Mightiest Machine. Aarn, an Earthman raised on the Jupiter of a far-flung century, possessed super-powers when he returned to his native world’s lighter gravity. Street & Smith, the publishing company that first serialized the novel in Astounding Stories pulp magazine, later adapted that protagonist as “Iron Munro” (no “Aarn” in sight), the hero of a super-heroic space opera in its Shadow Comics, later in its Army and Navy Comics. (Yes, you read that last right.) But Dann and I didn’t stop with the heroes. We postulated that all that “displaced energy”—since various super-villains had also been eliminated retroactively by the Crisis—likewise created new super-villains: the group I called Axis Amerika. Übermensch, the German word which can be translated as either “Over-man” or “Super-man,” became a Nazi equivalent of the Kryptonian. The Valkyrie Gudra had appeared in two “Wonder Woman” stories in 1940s Comic Cavalcade, although her actual name there was “Gundra” and I simply mistranscribed it. Die Grosshorn Eule (The Great-Horned Owl) was a goosestepping Batman, of course; back in my childhood I had written and drawn a couple of comics-style stories starring a hero I’d christened The Horned Owl. As for Die Fledermaus—if I couldn’t have a Batman, I could at least turn the Hitler Youth version of Robin into “The Flittermouse”—i.e., “The Bat”! Die See Wolf (The Sea Wolf) was a name used during WWII to refer to German U-boats, so we merely personified it—even if he was a bit hairy for an ocean-dweller. And Usil the Archer took the name of an ancient Etruscan sun-god, which seemed appropriate for an Italian fascist, one of Benito Mussolini’s boys; we didn’t bother with a Speedy fill-in. Incidentally, by this time I was no longer the full editor of the comics I wrote—just one more source of my growing dissatisfaction with the DC regime, and probably vice versa—but

Forever Young?

I took consolation in the in-between title of “creative editor.” This essentially meant that no one but managing editor Dick Giordano could alter my scripts, and it retained for me at least a certain amount of influence in choosing and overseeing artists. Conferring, DC’s artistic director Richard Bruning and I decided to have penciler Brian Murray give the first six Young All-Stars covers a very special look, as can be seen on p. 13. Bruning’s suggestion, I suspect. (Because of the tangled circumstances concerning the art in the first few editions of YAS, I’m not really certain at this stage which artists designed which characters visually, except for Fury. Artist Brian Murray says on p. 15 of this issue that he basically designed Arn Munro and Flying Fox, and I’ve no reason to doubt it.) But, mentioning Brian reminds me that I need to say a few additional words about the early artwork on the series. The illustrators themselves were a bunch of rising young stars; but we had so much trouble alighting on a team for the new title that I spoke, more than once, only half-jokingly, of a “Young All-Stars jinx.” Originally, the series’ artist was to have been Tom Grindberg, who’d just drawn the “Fury” tale in Secret Origins #12 (March 1987). However, at the last minute, he opted out, in favor of continuing to work with Neal Adams at the latter’s Continuity Studios. We then turned to Michael Bair (a.k.a. Michael Hernandez), who had drawn several 1940s-set stories for me in Secret Origins. Michael got off to a good start, even re-designing the new Fury’s armor somewhat, so imaginatively that we had inker Tony DeZuniga graft some of that look onto Tom’s penciled version prior to publication. But it quickly became clear to one and all that Michael was far too meticulous a craftsman to meet a monthly deadline at that time, so he was reluctantly switched to other work—though he’d return later to Young All-Stars. Next up was Vince Argondezzi, the young artist of Comico’s The New Men series. But, just as Vince started drawing the first story— —somehow, Dick Giordano, my artist buddy Ernie Colón (original artist of Arak, Son of Thunder), and I got together and decided things would work out better if, instead, Vince drew Infinity, Inc. and Ernie drew YAS. Vince proved amenable to the switch… only to have Ernie immediately get so “bogged down” on other assignments, including a Cosmic Boy mini-series, that he withdrew from the WWII-set project without really drawing anything. So Dick and I phoned Brian Murray, yet another newcomer. I had encountered him at the 1986 San Diego Comic-Con and mentioned to him our then-nascent plans for the new comic—and he told me he’d love to draw Young All-Stars. Brian was happy to come aboard… and, if he’d popped up earlier, he might well have been the first of our various “first choices.” By now, though, we were so late on the already-scheduled issue #1 that we had to cobble together a story from artwork by no fewer than three different pencilers: Argondezzi, Bair, and Murray. Argondezzi had drawn a dream sequence that began the issue, while Bair had been skipping around, drawing parts of pages out of order. In the end it was Brian who pulled the Bair material together and penciled the majority of the issue, as well as doing the all-important cover.

Knockin’ ’Em On Their Axis! Axis Amerika assembled on the final page of The Young All-Stars #1 (June 1987), in Brian Murray’s homage to Rich Buckler’s classic cover for 1981’s All-Star Squadron #1. Inks by Malcolm Jones III; script by Roy & Dann Thomas. Thanks to Sharon Karibian. [TM & © DC Comics.]

As I recall it, the jinx that I spoke of had become an almost palpable thing. Halfway through YAS #1, Brian seems to have been briefly hospitalized no fewer than three times for “related illnesses.” He came through, though, in between bouts, and would take over full penciling chores with #2. Still, for various reasons, by #3 he was being partly spelled by yet another late arrival, Howard Simpson. Before long, Howard would assume the bulk of the penciling chores for several issues and become an important part of the team. Fortunately, Dick Giordano had fixed me up with such an excellent young inker in Malcolm Jones III that few readers would be able to tell precisely who did what in some of those issues. Malcolm was an up-and-coming penciler as well, and in fact would both pencil and ink a backup story later in the series. [continued on p. 8]

The Short Happy Life Of The Young All-Stars

A Brand New All-Star Game

Nine “young all-stars,” most at or near the beginning of their careers, were the primary artists on the issues of The Young All-Stars in 1987–89. To wit, over the following four pages:

Full Of Sound And Fury… (Left:) A key panel penciled by Tom Grindberg from the origin of Young All-Stars’ Fury in Secret Origins #12 (March 1987), as inked by Tony DeZuniga, who had superimposed part of the look of Michael Bair designs onto the armor originally drawn by Tom. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas. [Panel TM & © DC Comics.]

Tom Grindberg Tom Grindberg (in middle) had a brief but warm reunion with Roy Thomas, his recent collaborator on the ERB Inc. online Tarzan comic strip, at the East Coast Con in New Jersey in April 2018. With them is RT’s manager John Cimino (in the Green Lantern hat).

Mekanique Illustrated (Above:) Vince Argondezzi penciled Helena (Fury) Kosmatos’ nightmare of the living robot Mekanique (from late issues of All-Star Squadron) beginning on page 1 of YAS #1. He had been briefly designated to pencil Young All-Stars before agreeing to be switched to Infinity, Inc. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; inks by Malcolm Jones III. Scan courtesy of Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Vince Argondezzi went on to draw various independent comics. Alas, he passed away a few years ago.

“By The Sea, By The Sea, By The Beautiful Sea…” (Left:) Michael Bair had penciled a number of non-sequential pages of YAS #1 before moving on to other projects, though he’d return to the comic with #11. This 10th page of the first issue, featuring Neptune Perkins and Tsunami, is probably partly his work (the lower panels) and partly Brian Murray’s (panel 1)—but Malcolm Jones III’s inking makes it tricky to tell. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas. Thanks to Gary Morgan & Sharon Karibian. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Michael Bair then a.k.a. Mike Hernandez.

Forever Young?

Close, But No Cigar! (Left:) Though Ernie Colón (who had earlier drawn Harvey’s Richie Rich) moved on to other projects before drawing any of YAS #1, he and Roy & Dann Thomas had co-created Arak, Son of Thunder for DC a few years earlier. Ernie rarely drew superheroes, but he did pencil the cover for Wonder Woman #296 (Oct. 1982), for a story RT had plotted. Inker: Frank Giacoia. Courtesy of the GCD. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Ernie Colón

No Relation To Any Marvel Valkyries, Honest! (Above:) Over the corpse of the Golden Age DC super-hero TNT, “Iron” Munro finds himself face to face with an honest-to-Odin valkyrie, named Gudra. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; pencils by Brian Murray; inks by Malcolm Jones III. Earlier, of course, Roy had co-created the first two versions of the Marvel Valkyrie in the pages of The Avengers and The Incredible Hulk. Thanks to Larry Good. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Brian Murray Jurassic Whirl (Above:) The Young All-Stars and Amazing-Man face a “talking” dinosaur on the splash page of Young All-Stars #13 (June 1988). Pencils by Howard Simpson; inks by Malcolm Jones II; script by Roy & Dann Thomas. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Howard Simpson back in the day.

A digital selfportrait, courtesy of the artist.

The Short Happy Life Of The Young All-Stars

Terror On The Tarmac

By The Dawn’s Early Light

(Above:) Ron Harris’ dramatic splash page from The Young All-Stars #23 (March 1989), as inked by Bob Downs. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas. Roy and Ron are together again these days, preparing new issues of the Alter Ego comicbook hero they (and Dann) launched in 1986. (Ye Editor has never been able to track down embellisher Bob Downs; if anyone out there has any information on him, hope they will share it with us. [TM & © DC Comics.]

(Above:) Hugo Danner’s “Sons of Dawn,” a new race of superhumans predicted in Philip Wylie’s novel Gladiator, lord it over the fallen Dyna-Mite and Georgia Challenger in the splash page of Young All-Stars #31 (Nov. 1989), the final issue. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; pencils by Lou Manna; inks by Bob Downs & Ken Branch. Thanks to Sharon Karibian. [TM & © DC Comics.]

[continued from p. 5]

Ron Harris in the mid-1980s. Photo by wife Jan.

Even so, it was a helluva way to launch a new comics series that already had going against it the fact that it was the successor to one that had been torpedoed by Crisis on Infinite Earths—and which wasn’t going to be allowed to utilize some of the most popular characters who had appeared in its previous incarnation! Along the way, a second “Howard”— Howard Bender—stepped in to guest-pencil Young All-Stars #7.

One other key artist came along partway through the series, to play an integral part: Ron Harris, with whom in 1986 Dann and I had co-created for an independent publisher a super-hero called… Alter Ego. And still another up-and-comer, Lou Manna, was suggested to me by Dick and stepped in for what became the series’ four-issue

“last hurrah”—even if they hadn’t originally been intended to become that. The Young All-Stars never became a real hit, probably for a multiplicity of reasons. Even so, I was genuinely sorry to see it canceled near the end of 1989, and would’ve loved a chance to eventually integrate The Young All-Stars into the main All-Star Squadron, sometime in the future when the Crisis dust had settled.

Lou Manna

Even so, I’m quietly proud of what Dann and I and our various talented artistic collaborators achieved over the course of 31 regular issues plus one annual… …and I’m overjoyed that three of the series’ artists—Brian Murray, Howard Simpson, and Lou Manna—have consented to be interviewed for this special issue of Alter Ego! So, let’s get started…

Forever Young?

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Malcolm Jones III After also working on DC’s Sandman and various other projects in the late 1980s, sadly, Malcolm took his own life in 1996.

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The Human Roadblock (Above:) While inking The Young All-Stars, Malcolm Jones III mailed Roy this penciled and partly inked art sample of “Iron” Munro, and wound up being tapped to draw the backup “Dyna-Mite” feature in The Young All-Star Annual #1 (1988). [“Iron” Munro TM & © DC Comics.]

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

Fury rages against the attacking Axis Amerika above the prostrate forms of her adopted “family,” Liberty Belle and Johnny Quick, in The Young All-Stars #3 (Aug. 1987). Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; art by Brian Murray & Malcolm Jones III. Thanks to John Joshua. [TM & © DC Comics.]

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

PART TWO

BRIAN MURRAY— First Of The Young All-Stars I

Interview Conducted & Transcribed by Richard J. Arndt

NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: Brian Murray was the artist finally brought on to draw most of The Young All-Stars #1… and became the series’ lead artist. Brian has also worked on such series as DNAgents, The Badger, Ms. Mystic, Youngblood, Shadowhawk, Rune, and Batman. In addition, he was the original penciler for Supreme, working with writerinker Rob Liefeld. This interview took place on September 3, 2022. RICHARD ARNDT: Looking at your credits, Brian, I noticed that The Young All-Stars was one of your first professional bylines. You had done a story for Continuity, which was Neal Adams’ publishing company, and you’d done a full issue for Eclipse’s The New DNAgents, but The Young All-Stars was your first regular gig. BRIAN MURRAY: Wow, I’d forgotten all about that DNAgents story. You may know more about my history than I do. [both laugh] RA: For the sake of the interview, I hope not! I have a note here that says you worked on The Young All-Stars #1-10 and perhaps on an annual. But you didn’t do full issues, for the most part. You were often doing the penciling of half an issue. Is that right? MURRAY: Yes, a couple of them I did full issues… but you’re right, for the most part I did pencils for half of the contents of each issue. The work on the annual was really just pin-ups included in the storyline. RA: I assume this was because of the deadlines on a monthly title, combined with you just getting into the industry.

Brian Murray in what he terms a “self-portrait photo” from a few years back— and his first cover for The Young All-Stars that depicted all six of the original cast: Neptune Perkins, Flying Fox, “Iron” Munro, Fury, Dyna-Mite, and Tsunami. A nice piece of composition for YAS #7 (Dec. 1987). Thanks to the artist and the GCD, respectively. [TM & © DC Comics.] In response to our request, Brian sent this brief bio: “Born on Long Island, New York, Brian “Adobewan” Murray moved to Southern California at age 20, where he’s resided since. His career started in comicbooks, crossed over to Saturday morning animation… he spent a number of years as an Advertising Art Director, produced a series of skateboard decks for Tony Hawk, and finally, using Photoshop, ZBrush, and a vast array of digital tools, he landed as a concept story artist for film, TV, and video games, working on projects such as Ready Player One, Star Trek: Picard, Mortal Kombat 12, and Spider-Man: Far from Home, for directors like Stephen Spielberg, Ron Howard, and Martin Campbell.”

MURRAY: Young All-Stars was very labor-intensive. First, I tended to work representationally rather than cartoony, so there was more labor involved. There were also a ton of characters! Each issue had the group of young super-heroes, plus the group of villains they were fighting, and Roy liked to have all the characters within the frame as much as possible. RA: I’ve taken a look at some of those pages, and many members of the Justice Society and All-Star Squadron and Seven Soldiers of Victory also appeared fairly frequently. There were a lot of characters to draw. I guess we should discuss how you came to the attention of Roy Thomas, who was the editor who would have asked for you, I would think. I know he had assistant editors as well, so perhaps they might have been the original contact point. [NOTE: See Roy’s account back on p. 5.] MURRAY: That’s a good question. How did that come about? If I’m remembering correctly, I was working for the DIC animation company. It was a rather low-rent organization. When I was

younger, I was voracious about sending my work around. I sent stuff out to everyone. Anybody who had anything to do with comics, I was going to send work to. I remember sending a packet of art to Gary Groth, the publisher of The Comics Journal, which, at the time, was probably the biggest magazine dealing with the history of comics. I was young and stupid, but his reaction was classic, weird, and funny. He mailed it back, unopened, with a big question mark on the envelope. RA: [laughs] O.K. MURRAY: I’m going to guess that Roy was one of the people I reached out to. Roy may actually remember this better than I do. RA: I’m looking at your artwork on the cover of The Young All-Stars #1 and it’s quite attractive. I’m sure you’ve greatly improved since then, but the cover is quite good. [NOTE: See p. 13.]

Brian Murray—First Of The Young All-Stars

Play Ms. Mystic For Me! (Above:) A page from Continuity’s Ms. Mystic #3 (Jan. 1989), with pencils credited to “Brian Murray & Neal Adams.” Script by Neal; inks by Ian Akin. Thanks to Art Lortie. [TM & © Continuity Comics or successors in interest.]

MURRAY: Thank you. RA: I like the art design used on the first few covers. You had a single member of the group highlighted in a large panel with various guest-stars who were appearing in those issues in action poses around The Young All-Stars here. It was a nice way to spotlight the then largely unknown Young All-Stars while still letting the reader know that there would be a lot of heroes they might recognize as well inside. I recognize the 1940s Green Lantern and what looks like The Shining Knight, as well as Hawkgirl, or Hawkwoman, as she’d be called today. MURRAY: We were also trying, with the periphery characters, to link the Justice Society with Young All-Stars in the reader’s mind. There are times in your artistic career when you do a big job and, for the most part, filled with intense labor. Yet I have

Rough Stuff (Top right to bottom:) Happily, Brian saved some of these early rough black-&-white sketches, the first of which was probably an early #1 cover idea, with the others perhaps suggested for house ads: (From top to bottom:) “Iron” Munro breaking chains à la the early Superman, in a sketch which may have inspired the later six-cover approach… a flying/leaping panorama… and a low-angle approach, as if the guys have just landed and are ready for action. [Young All-Stars TM & © DC Comics.]

The Original Main Illustrator Of The All-Star Squadron Sequel Series

Young (And Old) All-Stars (Above & below:) The covers of the first six issues of The Young All-Stars (June-Nov. 1987) were designed to form a “sextych” (if that’s a word) depicting individual pinups of the six original members, each surrounded with a frame of seven members of the All-Star Squadron (at least, those who were still extant after the Crisis on Infinite Earths). We suspect most of our readers can ID virtually all of the latter. Courtesy of the GCD. [TM & © DC Comics.]

fond memories of having done Young All-Stars, and I have fond memories of those characters.

MURRAY: You’re right. The Seven Soldiers of Victory are also included in the periphery characters.

RA: They are actually pretty nifty characters, I think. I like the idea of including them, and I like the execution of how that was done on the covers of #1-6. Some of the characters framing the shot of the Young All-Star character, however, I don’t recognize. They’re not all Justice Society members, are they? The Crimson Avenger would not have been in the 1940s Justice Society ...but he was in the All-Star Squadron.

RA: Most of the issues using the two-penciler approach split the pages in half, with you doing twelve and the other penciler doing twelve. Since your pages were generally 1-12, whoever followed you had to have a great deal of information as to who the characters were and what they were doing, for him to pick up the action from that point on. The penciled pages had to have been shipped on a very tight schedule.

Brian Murray—First Of The Young All-Stars

sometimes when you combine different pencilers, two or sometimes even three on a single issue, I would think that would put a lot of pressure on the inker to make sure that there are no jarring changes from page to page. MURRAY: Sure, to keep the continuity. Malcolm was a solid illustrator on his own, as well as being a great inker. He could draw and that’s really key. To speak the truth, a lot of inkers couldn’t really draw. They could trace, but they couldn’t really draw.

Fox Flying High… You Know What I Mean! A grouping of dynamically graceful Brian Murray panels from pp. 16 & 17 of Young All-Stars #1 (June 1987) showing Flying Fox’s encounter with a squadron of English Spitfires in the 1942 night skies… although, as noted by writers Roy & Dann Thomas, the Spitfire was primarily a daytime fighter aircraft. Inks by Malcolm Jones III. Thanks to Sharon Karibian. [TM & © DC Comics.]

MURRAY: Roy wrote full scripts. He probably wrote the most detailed scripts I’ve ever worked from in comics. That’s funny, in a way, since the Marvel approach to comics writing was what they called “the Marvel Method,” where the writer gave the artist a plot, the artist developed the plot into a story, and then the writer wrote the dialogue before inking took place. I don’t believe that Marvel did full scripts at any time that Roy was working there. When Roy was the editor—actually he was the editor-in-chief after Stan Lee left the position—he wrote that way. Yet, at some point he must have embraced the notion of doing full scripts. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Bless his heart, it would seem that Brian misremembers those super-detailed synopses I wrote for him for the early issues of The Young All-Stars. I suppose those typed-out plots were so full of incident and action that he recalls them as being full scripts. Actually, however, I’ve never in all my life written a full script for either Marvel or DC—only for The X-Files: Season One for Topps Comics in the 1990s, and of course for 18+ years of ghosting the Amazing Spider-Man newspaper comic strip for Stan Lee from 2000 to 2018.] RA: DC was usually depending on full scripts, but the approach could be hit and miss. I know that Walt Simonson told me that the Archie Goodwin/Walt Simonson “Manhunter” stories were done Marvelstyle. I guess it depended on who was working on what. Which made sense, because even in his Warren days, Archie sent his scripts to artists with the full script written out on thumbnail art pages that Archie drew. MURRAY: Archie was a great, great man. Smart, creative, good writer with a good soul. RA: How important was Malcolm Jones III as the inker? Was he the one who held it all together, because

RA: Or their penciling could be static. Comics are action art, and static art really won’t make the cut.

MURRAY: True, but the point I’m making is that some of them really could not draw. You can tell when the inker can’t draw. The art loses a lot of the structure. A real artistinker can do so much with the form, because they understand what the penciler is going for. Luckily, guys like Malcolm really could do that. He could do beautiful treatments on my cities, seen from above at night… great white on black.

Skid Row “Iron” Munro makes a “traffic stop” in Young All-Stars #1. Art by Brian Murray & Malcolm Jones III; script by Roy & Dann Thomas. Since Arn had roughly the strength of the 1938 Superman, he was drawn having to really brace himself to stop the hurtling auto, with skidded dirt piling up behind his heels. Incidentally, though Dann had often scripted first-draft dialogue for DC titles such as Arak, Son of Thunder and Infinity, Inc., she preferred to limit her work on YAS to co-plotting with her husband. Thanks to Sharon Karibian. [TM & © DC Comics.]

The Original Main Illustrator Of The All-Star Squadron Sequel Series

RA: Which one of the Young All-Stars characters was your favorite? MURRAY: Flying Fox, followed closely by “Iron” Munro. One of the coolest things about working on this book for me was working with Roy. It was the Kree-Skrull War sequence in The Avengers that he wrote and Neal Adams illustrated that was the reason I wanted to become a comicbook artist. Neal’s art, especially on the issue where Ant-Man traveled into The Vision’s body, I remember very well. It was while in the moment of reading that story that I realized that comics was what I wanted to do. I like Flying Fox not only because he was a great character but because his costume was my design, so it was easy for me to draw. I just loved that. RA: You avoided Joe Kubert’s problems with the 1940s Hawkman helmet. [chuckles] MURRAY: I loved Joe Kubert’s work and, as I grew older, had a greater appreciation for his work. I have an original Sgt. Rock of his that I see every day as I walk up my stairs. He did, however, have a problem with the Hawkman helmet in the 1940s. It was never drawn to fit his head properly. RA: Yes, and he admitted it. That’s why he changed it to the generic yellow mask. When he revived the character in the 1960s, he drew a hawk helmet again, but initially it didn’t have the wings. They were added a bit later to complete the look. MURRAY: When it’s done well, that Hawkman helmet, with the wings, is one of the coolest costumes ever. I don’t know if you’ve seen the trailers for the upcoming Black Adam film, but there’s a moment when you see Hawkman and he spreads his wings out. Now, the wings themselves are changed to metal wings, but Holy Crap! He looks rad! The one moment really shows what a cool character he is, visually. RA: He really was a cool-looking character, and when you tried to simplify the look of the helmet, he simply wasn’t. MURRAY: Yes, I agree. Part of what I loved about working on Young All-Stars was that

Again With The Cars! “Iron” Munro hoists a WWII-era automobile in Young All-Stars #5 (Oct. ’87), courtesy of penciler Brian Murray and inker Malcolm Jones III. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Arn [“Iron” Munro] and Flying Fox were the analogs for Superman and Batman. I loved those characters. “Iron” Munro was the son of the Gladiator, a character created by Philip Wylie in a 1930 novel called Gladiator, who influenced the development of Superman. Roy, and I think Tony De Zuniga, adapted that novel as “Man-God” for Marvel Preview #9 [Winter 1976] for Marvel. De Zuniga did a fantastic job on the artwork for that book. Roy and I covered parts of the origin of Wylie’s original character, Hugo Danner, in Young All-Stars #10-11 [Feb.-Mar. 1988]. And Wylie’s character Hugo Danner is “Iron’s” father. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Actually, though not credited properly, Rich Buckler penciled the Marvel adaptation of the first half of the never-finished Gladiator adaptation; DeZuniga was the inker/embellisher.] RA: Were most of The Young All-Stars original characters? MURRAY: Half were, and half were not. Neptune Perkins, Dyna-Mite, and Tsunami had already been introduced in different books before #1, but “Iron” Munro, Flying Fox, and Fury were original to the book. Fury, I think, was designed by Michael Bair. I did the designs for Flying Fox and “Iron” Munro.

A Place In The Sun The final panel of the “Dan the Dyna-Mite” backup story in 1988’s Young All-Stars Annual #1-and-only. Full art by Malcolm Jones III; script by Roy & Dann Thomas. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Brian Murray—First Of The Young All-Stars

The Peripatetic Gladiator (Above:) Since the copyright on Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel Gladiator had somehow been allowed to lapse by the mid-1970s, Roy Thomas worked with artists Rich Buckler & Tony DeZuniga to adapt the first half of the book in the pages of Marvel’s black-&-white mag Marvel Preview #9 (Winter 1976). The writer/editor did arrange, however, for a bit of money to be sent to Wylie’s widow. Seen here is Earl Norem’s painted cover for that issue. RT christened the adaptation “Man-God” because of the Daredevil bad-guy called Gladiator, though he now feels he should’ve used the original title. Sadly, Roy never got Marvel’s okay to complete the adaptation. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Top right:) However, since the novel was in the public domain, Roy saw no reason not to adapt the entire novel, with full art by Brian Murray, as a flashback in Young All-Stars #10 (Jan. ’88). Here he’s seen slaughtering German troops during the First World War. Gladiator protagonist Hugo Danner, who was revealed as the father of “Iron” Munro, would make an in-person appearance in Young All-Stars’ last few issues, as seen on p. 37. [TM & © DC Comics.]

RA: Some of the reboots of the Justice Society that Roy was working on were set in the 1980s, the period when the stories were being written, but The Young All-Stars was entirely set in the 1940s, is that correct? MURRAY: Yes, that’s correct. Roy was in love with that era. RA: He also utilized that era in his Kree-Skrull War story in The Avengers. Because Rick Jones was pulling 1940s-era super-heroes out of his memories for certain segments in that storyline. MURRAY: That’s right! Those segments were done by the Buscema brothers. Both before and after Neal’s work on the story. That stuff really rocked my world. RA: Did you have a favorite story or issue of The Young All-Stars that you liked?

Swing Time Fury cuts a rug at a USO dance in Young All-Stars #5. Art by Brian Murray & Malcolm Jones III; script by Roy & Dann Thomas. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics]

The Original Main Illustrator Of The All-Star Squadron Sequel Series

Battlefield Commission Brian sent us this step-by-step depiction of how he created, then colored, the Young All-Stars commission illustration that we were delighted to make the cover of this issue of Alter Ego—so we thought we’d just present it here and let the various stages of the art speak for themselves. Thanks, Mr. B.! [Young All-Stars TM & © DC Comics.]

SPECIAL NOTE: Interested in contacting Brian Murray for art commissions, etc.? He can be reached at adobewan@gmail.com

Brian Murray—First Of The Young All-Stars

MURRAY: I loved it anytime the Justice Society was involved. I think they appeared to their best advantage in #3. I remember loving that sequence. Roy wrote issues like they were segments of a novel. Each issue had an ending, but they also pointed to future issues. Still, you have to realize that, for me, while I mentioned #3, I really was more thrilled by certain sequences, rather than particular issues. I remember a sequence in one of the books where “Iron” Munro and Flying Fox are flying over, I think, New York, directly towards the camera, and I loved that one. And the opposite page was a full spread of Green Lantern, looking like he was standing for a photo pose. I inked that page as well. I really like those two bits. RA: Why did you leave after #10? MURRAY: Just because of the workload. I think I’d just gotten a job in advertising or animation that had much more of a normal schedule, with probably three times the pay. I also was feeling that I was being a burden to Roy, because I didn’t believe that I was pulling my weight at all times. But Roy was the best person and very accommodating. He was just a sweet guy. RA: You did do the complete artwork for your last issue. MURRAY: That would have been the Gladiator story in #10-11. I did the full art for #10, which was my last issue. I didn’t pencil #11, the second part of the story—that was Michael Bair and Malcolm Jones III. This was when each issue ran 23-24 pages, and Roy packed each issue with story. That’s part of what’s really awesome about the series. And Roy is not a lazy writer. It’s rarely simple stuff. Everything deserves a certain amount of visualization to tell the whole story.

“…And Justice For All!” Brian Murray says he especially loved drawing scenes in which “the Justice Society was involved”—such as (clockwise from above) Green Lantern and Doiby Dickles filming a wartime public-service ad… “Iron” Munro leaping from a hospital window, startled to see The Shining Knight (atop Winged Victory) hovering outside… and the aftermath of a battle in the All-Star Squadron’s Perisphere HQ… in issues #2 & 3. Well, technically, The Shining Knight, Liberty Belle, Johnny Quick, Hawkgirl, and Amazing-Man weren’t JSAers, but we kinda suspect Brian enjoyed drawing them anyway. Art by Brian Murray & Malcolm Jones III; script by Roy & Dann Thomas. Thanks to Sharon Karibian. [TM & © DC Comics.]

The Original Main Illustrator Of The All-Star Squadron Sequel Series

Splish-Splashes A two-page spread (though the scenes aren’t connected storywise) of which Brian is justly proud, from Young All-Stars #8 (Jan. 1988). He inked as well as penciled them. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas. [TM & © DC Comics.]

This whole conversation brings back so many memories from such a long time ago. I’m thrilled to be doing this interview for Roy, after all this time. I still have fans come up to me and want to talk about the book, forty years after it was produced. These characters still have a great potential, even today, to tell an alternative kind of story. I think you could do a great dramatic story about them, set in their time. I don’t mean the cliché of a great danger to the world or the universe and every super-hero alive is called out to help in the effort, but a story specific to

Guardians Of Not The Galaxy— But Of The Universe! Brian went on to work in animation and other film-related fields doing storyboards and concept drawings, including this fabulous Green Lantern illo of which he is justly proud. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Brian Murray—First Of The Young All-Stars

We’ve Got You Covered! (Above:) Three additional covers with full art by Murray: #8 & #9 (Jan. & Feb. 1988) and #23 (March 1989). Some numbskull staffer at DC removed Fury’s left hand and forearm on that of #9; it was reaching out toward Baron Blitzkrieg. The cover of #23 had actually been done as an early, shelved pinup by Brian, but we happily utilized it as a cover a year after he had ceased drawing new material for the series. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Self-Portrait(s) Of The Artist As A Young Man Brian executed this “self-portrait” (times three) as a going-away present in Young All-Stars #10. At right is one of seven solo-hero pinups (plus one group shot) by Brian that were printed in The Young All-Stars Annual #1-and-only (1988) as part of the main story. Depicted is the Golden Age Huntress (from post-WWII “Wildcat” stories), back-dated to 1942 and rechristened The Tigress. Today, the latter name has become the sobriquet of Artemis Crock, the Thomases-created daughter of the original Huntress and Sportsmaster; she’s also been prominent in animated cartoons and the CW TV series Stargirl. Thanks to Rodrigo Baeza. [TM & © DC Comics.]

The Original Main Illustrator Of The All-Star Squadron Sequel Series

The Young All-Stars. Something much more personal.

who could come up with a great “Iron” Munro story. Or even a film. Maybe it could be Roy.

“Iron” Munro is someone you’ve got to figure has a very long life-span, and he’s got incredible powers. What’s he been doing since the 1940s? He’s not been heard from in the DC Universe for years. Unlike most of the 1940s superheroes like Green Lantern or Jay Garrick’s Flash, he has actual reasons why he should not only still be around, but at his full power level. There must be someone somewhere

Richard J. Arndt is a practicing librarian and comics historian in Nevada. His interviews and articles have appeared in Alter Ego, Back Issue, and Comic Book Creator. He is the author of Horror in Black and White and The Star*Reach Companion and co-author of the recent Our Artists at War.

Richard J. Arndt

BRIAN MURRAY Checklist This checklist is adapted primarily from materials available in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Book 1928-1999, established by Dr. Jerry G. Bails, which deals solely with items published through the end of the 20th century. Names of features with that title which also appear in other publications are generally not italicized below. Biographic information re Brian can primarily be found in the caption on the first page of this interview. Key: (p) = pencil; (i) = ink. Name & Vital Stats: Brian Murray – artist, writer, colorist

Young All-Stars Annual #1)

Creator: Supreme (Image Comics)

Eclipse Comics: DNAgents (p?) dates uncertain

COMICBOOKS (US Mainstream Publishers):

First Publishing: The Badger (p)(i) 1988; covers (p) 1988

Big Entertainment: Leonard Nimoy’s Primordials (p)(i) 1995

Image Comics: covers (p) 1992-96; support (colorist) 1992; Supreme (p)(i) 1992-94; Youngblood (p)(i) 1992

Comico the Comic Company: Armageddon Warrior (p) 1984 Continuity Comics: The Basics (p) 1985; Ms. Mystic (p) 1986 DC Comics: Batman (p)(i) 1994, 2017; covers (p)(i) 1987-89; Judge Dredd (p)(i) 1995; The Young All-Stars (p)(some i) 1987-88 (including

Life After Young All-Stars Two non-DC covers of Brian Murray’s: The Badger #38 (Aug. 1988) for First Comics—and Image’s Supreme, Vol. 2, #1 (Nov. 1992). [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Malibu Comics: covers (p)(i) 1995; Red Shift: Ruin (p)(i) 1995; support (colorist) 1992 Marvel Comics: covers (p)(i) 1988

PART THREE

“We’re All Fans!” An Interview with Young All-Stars Artist HOWARD SIMPSON

Conducted & Transcribed by Richard J. Arndt

NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: Howard Simpson made his comics debut on Green Lantern #169 (Oct. 1983), penciling a framing sequence. He also worked on such titles as The Outsiders, Secret Origins, The Young All-Stars, Who’s Who, Showcase ’95 for DC; Flare, Captain Thunder and Blue Bolt, Icicle, and League of Champions for Heroic Publishing; Solar - Man of the Atom, X-O Manowar, Eternal Warrior, Harbringer, Ninjak, Psi-Lords, and Turok, Dinosaur Hunter for Acclaim/Valiant; Deathmate for Image; Grimjack and Munden’s Bar for First Comics; The Ray Bradbury Chronicles for Topps; Blaze: Legacy of Blood and Ghost Rider for Marvel; as well as long runs on such titles as Looney Tunes and Simpson Comics. This interview took place on April 18, 2021. RICHARD ARNDT: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Howard. Was The Young All-Stars #3 (Aug. 1987) your first major work in comics? HOWARD SIMPSON: Actually, it was my second job, but I guess it was my first full book. The first job was a “Green Lantern Corps” story. That would have been in the Green Lantern comic. That story was about a Green Lantern that no one had ever heard of and hasn’t heard from since!

Howard Simpson at a con in Ithaca, NY—juxtaposed with a page he penciled of “Iron” Munro and Flying Fox battling Tisiphone, the Greek mythological entity Fury who had taken over the body of the human Helena Kosmatos in Young All-Stars #14 (July 1988). Inks by Malcolm Jones III; script by Roy & Dann Thomas. Thanks to Sharon Karibian. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Not surprising, I guess, since there’s supposed to be 4,000 of them across a pretty big galaxy. That’s what the back series was supposed to do—give the reader an idea of how many Lanterns there were out there, besides just the ones from Earth. RA: I suspect those back-ups were also used in the same way the DC mystery books were used, to give young artists a chance to do a complete short story and not have to jump feet-first into a full-length monthly title. To show off their chops before dealing with anything bigger. SIMPSON: Yeah, definitely. When I started, Joe Orlando was still the editor there, and he was going to give me a story to do. Joe was all about helping out new talent, giving them a place to develop professionalism. Unfortunately, that was the only story I did for him before he retired from DC in 1996. RA: Did you work as an assistant for anyone before you began doing your own solo work? SIMPSON: I tried to be an assistant to Ernie Colón, but just about that time, he stopped using assistants. However, he did do some mentoring of me. Then I joined a DC Talent program that Dick Giordano started with another person, who was to be the head of that. Ernie Colón took over the program very shortly thereafter. Since I’d previously known Ernie, that was a good thing. Then, when Ernie became an actual DC editor, he was very helpful to me. RA: DC Talent. Is that when they were doing the DC Talent Showcase book? SIMPSON: No, no, this was quite a while before that. This was the very first New Talent program. This was in the 1980s—1981 or ’82.

The Showcase version came out in the mid-’90s. If any of the DC editors wanted to use any of us from that program, well, that was the whole purpose of the program, but it didn’t happen much. It actually became very frustrating in how it actually was practiced. RA: So, kind of a blind alley for artists? SIMPSON: Right. Looking back, my second story wasn’t the Young All-Stars story but rather a “Dr. Occult” story that I did for Roy Thomas’ Secret Origins. Working with Roy on that title was how he got to know of me and how I got the Young All-Stars job. I was sitting up at DC offices, talking with a bunch of other freelancers, when Greg Weisman—who was the assistant editor of Secret Origins at that time—popped his head out the door into the hallway and asked me, “Hey, didn’t you show me some work about magic apples?” I said yes and he said, “Come here.” I went into his office and it turned out that one of the artists assigned to draw the “Dr. Occult” story had gotten sick, and because I’d showed him a sample page dealing with magic, I got the “Dr. Occult” assignment. It was just pure luck that I was sitting in the office at the time. RA: Lucky you! There’s a pretty big gap between the “Green Lantern” story and the “Dr. Occult” story, though… SIMPSON: I was actually still in college—the Tyler School of Arts—when I got the “Green Lantern” story. I was also under the false impression that once I got one story I would be hired for more. That didn’t happen for a long time. Four years, in fact. In college, I had been pushing myself, looking for work and meeting up with editors, showing them my samples, before the “Green Lantern” story and that impression—that false impression—that getting one job would open the door to more jobs—took hold of me for a while. Once I graduated and realized that I still needed to push myself, I

“We’re All Fans!”

the other way around? SIMPSON: Greg Weisman was the editor on Who’s Who as well, so I was basically still working for him on those pin-up pieces. Greg was really my “in” for a lot of this work. I also did the pin-ups for the All-Star Squadron in those issues. Roy told me that DC had bought the rights to a lot of old 1940s heroes from companies that weren’t around anymore. DC had the rights at the time to the Quality characters, maybe some other companies like Fawcett or Charlton. Roy gave me a list and right away I noticed that some of the Quality characters were missing from the list. I called Roy and asked if I could include them, and he said yes. I wanted to include those characters like the Justice League had done in the early days. Head shots that were often lined up on the left side of the cover. I wanted to be sure that all the characters would be able to be identified, because in a big scene—maybe on a two-page spread—the reader wouldn’t necessarily know who all those characters were. I did one pass on the heads and, remember,

Rotten To The Corps? Splash page of the lead story from Green Lantern #169 (Oct. 1983). Script by Joey Cavalieri, pencils by Howard Simpson, inks by Gary Martin. Thanks to Jim Kealy & Jim Ludwig. [TM & © DC Comics.]

started meeting up with editors again on a regular basis. My philosophy eventually became: “The first story is easy. The hardest one to bring about is the second job.” [laughs] Because any editor will give you a chance, but you’ve got to be impressive on that first job, for them to take a second look at you. I think because of my association with the New Talent program, nobody was really looking for new artists. RA: You also did a lot of drawings for the Who’s Who books around this time. SIMPSON: Yes, I was doing a lot of the characters from Young All-Stars, so that job and working on Young All-Stars all came about at the same time. RA: Did doing those Who’s Who pieces lead into The Young All-Stars or was it

Greg Weisman Since his stint on Young All-Stars, et al., as coordinating editor (Wikipedia says “editor,” but that’s not quite correct), Greg has gone on to a stellar career in animation, and has also written several novels. Internet photo provided by John Cimino.

The Doctor Is In—But Also Pretty Far-Out! Howard says his second job in comics was penciling the “Dr. Occult” story for Secret Origins #17 (Aug. 1987), which was inked by Bob Lewis. He got the assignment after the title’s NYC coordinating editor Greg Weisman suggested him to Roy Thomas. Script by RT (co-plotted by E. Nelson Bridwell); inspired by the late-1930s series by “Superman” creators Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster. Roy loved the vintage feel Howard gave the art, which soon led to his working on The Young All-Stars. Thanks to Sharon Karibian. [TM & © DC Comics.]

An Interview With Young All-Stars Artist Howard Simpson

this was before computers, so this was in pencil stage. When I realized that some of the Quality characters were missing, I had to redo the pencils to include the heads of all the characters in alphabetical order. Then I started doing research and discovered even more characters weren’t accounted for, so I had to redo the page again, changing the size of the heads so they were still clear as to who was who but making sure all of them could still fit on the page. [laughs] After two or three passes, I’d certainly made a lot more work for myself. Still, I was happy with the results. I think it’s a good idea to clue new readers in on who’s who in large teams, just so that they know who the heroes are and what their powers are. You know, every book is someone’s first book, and you want them to come back, not to be thoroughly confused as to what’s going on. I suspect that some of that— of not doing that—is why the comicbook audience is not expanding. Because you can’t make heads nor tails out of a continued story that you’ve just come into the middle of. There’s just no jumping-on point. RA: Brian Murray was, I think, originally intended to be the regular artist on The Young All-Stars. On a number of the issues you worked on—#3 through

Gangway! The “Young All-Stars” and “All-Star Squadron” entries, both penciled by Howard Simpson, formed the first three interior pages of DC’s Who’s Who Update ’87, Vol. 1. Inks by Malcolm Jones III and Danny Bulanadi, respectively. The latter spread depicts no fewer than 52 heroes—twice! Thanks to Johnny Blaze Leavitt & Sharon Karibian. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“We’re All Fans!”

RA: How many issues of Young All-Stars did you end up doing? SIMPSON: I did four or so issues co-penciling with Brian, trying to give him a chance to catch up, and then it was supposed to move into a rotating feature, so that Brian, myself, and Michael Bair [who goes by “Mike Hernandez” nowadays] would each do three issues at a time; and following those issues, the next artist would rotate in. It was a way to keep some of the continuity rolling and keep the book on time. Roy announced that in one of the letter pages. Brian had the first rotation, Michael then did one issue, I think, and then I ended up doing three solo pencil jobs [#12-14]. After that I don’t know what happened. Another artist [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Ron Harris] was doing the book, who

Howard Bender

The Mudville Nine? Young All-Stars #7 was the first (and only) issue whose interior art was entirely penciled by newcomer Howard Bender… although Brian Murray drew the cover. Most of the tale concerned a baseball game, with the Young All-Stars vs. the regular All-Star Squadron—although The Atom, the Star-Spangled Kid, and Sandman’s boy partner Sandy had to fill out the youngsters’ ranks on the diamond. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; inks by Malcolm Jones III, with an assist from Bob Downs. [TM & © DC Comics.]

#6—he was a co-penciler on them, doing half of the issue, while you worked on the other half. SIMPSON: Yes, Brian was the lead artist, and I was never really intended to be there at all. But Greg asked me to fill in on all those issues because Brian was late. It was only supposed to be a one-off situation, but Brian continued to be late, and so, since I was quick and Greg knew that I could get the pages in on time, he asked me repeatedly to come in whenever Brian was late and do the rest of the book. RA: Were you doing pencils and inks or just full pencils on those pages? SIMPSON: I just did pencils. The inker was Malcolm Jones. RA: That would be Malcolm Jones III. He worked on Neil Gaiman’s Sandman as well. SIMPSON: Yes, he did! He was a very good inker. Very good inker.

A National Disgrace Because he penciled the last half of YAS #4 (Sept. ’87), it was Howard Simpson who drew the dramatic page on which The Young All-Stars arrive at the Sanita Anita Racetrack in the Los Angeles area. By spring of 1942 it had been turned into exactly what the sign says: a “temporary Japanese relocation center.” There, thousands of resident Japanese—and many young Japanese-Americans who were US citizens!—were forcibly housed before being shipped off to the desert encampments like Manzanar (in California) and Poston and Gila River (in Arizona). The grimly symbolic irony of confining human beings—none of whom was accused of any greater “crime” than Japanese ancestry—in a structure partly built to stable horses has not been lost on later generations. It was perhaps the greatest American failure of decency during the entire Second World War. Roy T. had earlier dealt with the “internment” in The Invaders at Marvel. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; inks by Malcolm Jones III. [TM & © DC Comics.]

An Interview With Young All-Stars Artist Howard Simpson

wasn’t a part of the three, and I was never called to do the book again. I just don’t know what happened there. RA: There was an editorial change right near the start of that rotation idea. Weisman was replaced as assistant editor by Mark Waid, so it’s possible that Waid either didn’t like the rotation idea or just found it difficult to schedule. It could be that he wasn’t even aware of it. Roy was always listed as the creative editor, as opposed perhaps to the guy who made up the deadline schedules and assigned work to the artists. I don’t really know how that sort of thing worked. SIMPSON: Well, Roy was the editor, overall. There was a sort of— not really dual editorship—but I guess Greg was helping Roy. Greg was on the East Coast, while Roy was out in California and the DC office was in New York, so Greg or Mark would have been doing the New York half of the work. RA: I also see a mention of another Secret Origins story—“No Man Escapes The Manhunters!” Which Manhunter would that have been? SIMPSON: [laughs] It was all of The Manhunters! That “Manhunter” story focused on the pre-Green Lantern android Manhunters, but then the story kind of went through the whole history, including both Golden Age Manhunters and the Paul Kirk version, all the way through Jack Kirby’s 1970s Manhunter to the pirate one. That one came into the Justice League as a swashbuckling pirate but later became a Manhunter.

time working on the title? SIMPSON: I’d talked to Brian on the phone, and Michael and I had met as freelancers at DC before either of us got involved with Young All-Stars. Malcolm I spoke to on the phone quite a bit as he was inking me. We definitely had a friendly relationship. I was very sad when he passed away in 1996. He was a very talented individual, and he was gone from us far too young. Mark Waid took over the East Coast editorial reins when Greg left the company, and I worked with Mark. That led to me doing a Flash cover and a small story in the Flash comic as well. It turned out that both Mark and I were big Flash fans. We had a good connection there. I thought I’d asked Mark Waid if I could ink one of the Young All-Stars covers and I was under the impression that he’d said yes, but I guess he wanted to see the pencils before I inked it or perhaps I was so eager that I only heard what I wanted to hear. That was the cover [#13] where Lyta was a demon on the cover, attacking “Iron” Munro. Lyta—a.k.a. Fury—was the Wonder Woman replacement after Crisis [on Infinite Earths] wiped out Wonder Woman’s time in the 1940s. The demon’s name was Tisiphone.

RA: Oh, really? I’m going to have to go through my boxes and re-read that story! Oh, the other thing that I wanted to ask you was, how difficult was it for you, that early in your career, to do team books? Young All-Stars had a lot of characters on the team, let alone all the guest-star appearances of Justice Society and All-Star Squadron members showing up. SIMPSON: Actually, that’s what I always liked about the book, heck, all the team books—Justice League, Teen Titans. I was a big, big fan of those books and they were the ones I really wanted to do. You got a chance to draw everybody working on a team book. RA: I noticed that a fair number of people who worked on Young All-Stars also worked for Heroic Publishing. SIMPSON: Yes, that also had a Roy Thomas connection. He was doing some work for them, and I guess that when Roy found artists he liked working with, he wanted to continue that relationship. That’s a pretty cool thing to happen. I actually did quite a lot of work for Heroic and stopped doing a lot of work for DC because I simply wasn’t getting a lot of work from them. RA: Were the pay rates similar? SIMPSON: Yes! The pay rates were the same. I was getting exactly what DC had been paying me. RA: Since we’ve pretty much covered your work on Young All-Stars, are there any anecdotes that you’d like to share about your

How Do You Hunt A Hungry Man? The Manhunters! While its cover was a solo Walt Simonson effort, the 38-page yarn in Secret Origins #22 (Jan. 1988) was entirely penciled by Howard Simpson, and featured DC’s and Quality’s Golden Age heroes who were both called Manhunter—plus their 1970s successor developed by Simonson and writer Archie Goodwin—plus the cosmos-conquering cabal of towering Manhunter androids, based on a Jack Kirby concept—all related to DC’s “big event” maxi-series titled Millennium, the brainchild of writer Steve Englehart. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; inks by Bob Downs, Howard Simpson, & Damon Willis. Thanks to the GCD and Sharon Karibian, respectively. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“We’re All Fans!”

I was hearing in my head, but Roy didn’t use all of it… although sometimes he would, and I liked that. In fact, I was always a little surprised that he One of numerous assignments Howard fulfilled at Heroic Publishing was thought what I’d doodled in those margins was penciling the cover of Captain Thunder good enough to use in the actual story. It made and Blue Bolt #11 (Dec. 2014), featuring me feel good, like I was contributing more to heroes created and written by Roy & Dann the book than just being a pair of hands. It really Thomas. They’ll be back soon, folks! Inks became Roy and me working in tandem. When by Mark Beachum. Courtesy of publisher you get full scripts, sometimes the writer will Dennis Mallonee. [TM & © Roy & Dann be asking for things that are impossible to draw. Thomas.] Like—there’s a football game, the girlfriend’s in the stands cheering on her boyfriend and he makes the winning So I turned catch and the writer’s asking for all of that in a single panel! That’s in my pencils on actually three different panels. And because they’re writing for the cover and all the panels on the page, there’s no room on the page to break it then I got a call into three panels. Those are the type of things that writers, even from Malcolm experienced writers, will do because they’re not seeing the story Jones asking visually. They’re trying to pace the story based on how many pages if I’d sent in they have to complete the story, but their pacing is not necessarily the pencils for visual. the cover. I said yes, and RA: Did you have a favorite character in The Young All-Stars? Malcolm told SIMPSON: Not really. I did like drawing the issue where Franklin me that Mark Delano Roosevelt appeared. One of my challenges there, because wanted him I was using photo references, was to draw him and not have it to redraw the look like a traced photo. That way he’d fit in with the rest of the cover. I realized that I’d characters. I always tried to use photo references for background likely gotten the wrong idea when I was talking to Mark and told stuff, buildings, and whatnot, because the book was set in the Malcolm to go ahead and do what Mark wanted him to. It’s still my 1940s and those sorts of things needed to be in there, but I always layout but the cover is credited to Malcolm Jones III.

When Thunder Gets Struck By Lightning

I enjoyed working with Roy. He was giving me plots, not full scripts. It gave me, as a storyteller, the ability to really tell the story visually. Also the ability to complement what was going in Roy’s plots and clear ways for him to script the stories. I was just starting out, and there were times when my storytelling wasn’t quite right, but Roy was patient and I was allowed to improve my storytelling skills. Getting advice from him—well, he’s a legend! Even at that time, so it was exciting to work with him. Roy told me that John Buscema was the best storyteller he’d ever worked with, so I started studying what Buscema was doing with his pages. Particularly his work on The Avengers. Looking at what he was doing there, with a team book, really helped me. I incorporated a lot of in-jokes into my stories at the time. Kind of a fanboy reaction. There was a scene in one of the books where the team visited the Statue of Liberty. Around that time, in the 1940s when the stories were set, Will Eisner’s The Spirit was operating. During that particular story’s time period, Denny Colt would still have been alive—he hadn’t become The Spirit yet. So, I had Denny Colt, Ellen Dolan, and her dad, Commissioner Dolan, visiting the Stature of Liberty at the same time as The Young All-Stars. I didn’t put any kind of notes for Roy to see. I just stuck that in there. This is one of the great things about comics. I didn’t put in coloring notes. I didn’t Hell Hath No Fury... let on who those three people were. The horrific cover art for Young I just drew it. Yet the colorist knew All-Stars #13 (June 1988) is credited who they were and colored them to Malcolm Jones III, and the finished correctly! [laughs] It was just a nice work is indeed his—but Howard moment. We’re all fans, you know? Simpson informs us that he drew the We’re all fans! That’s the kind of layout for the illustration, under the thing that keeps everything and assumption he’d be penciling it as well. everybody going. “Iron” Munro battles the Tisiphone Sometimes I’d write in the margins what kind of dialogue that

incarnation of the 1940s teenage heroine Fury. Thanks to John Joshua. [TM & © DC Comics.]

An Interview With Young All-Stars Artist Howard Simpson

Fly Like A—Fox? Howard Simpson’s original art—both the main drawing, and the overlay to be color-held—for the “Flying Fox” entry in Who’s Who Update ’87, Vol. 2. Also seen, smaller, is an image of the page as printed, courtesy of Sharon Karibian. Inks by Malcolm Jones III. Thanks to Delmo Walters, Jr., for the triple image. [TM & © DC Comics.]

tried to use photo references that I didn’t think had been used much. Back then, and even today, you can often instantly tell when someone has drawn the panel from a photo reference. It just stands out. There’s a stiffness to photo reference that can damage the flow of art and action. I was quite pleased with that issue. It didn’t, at least to my eye, look stiff. They all look as if they existed in the same world. I guess that one would have been one of my favorite issues to have worked on. Working on Young All-Stars was definitely a good working experience. Up to that point I basically had just done short back-up stories. Easing my way into working on a monthly title and working with Roy Thomas was good for me as a beginner in the industry. Learning from Roy—we didn’t talk that much on the phone—but when he asked for changes he always explained why, which really helped me. And it wasn’t in a condescending way at all. It was always to make the story better. When I did ask him for advice, it was always forthcoming. That was very encouraging to me as a beginner. I really appreciated that. Working on that book was one of the better experiences I’ve had working in comics.

Getting Into The Spirit Of Things (Left:) When the monstrously mythological Tisiphone frightens a man into fainting inside the dome of the Statue of Liberty, did Howard S. really think Roy T. wasn’t gonna recognize Commissioner Dolan from Will Eisner’s legendary strip The Spirit? But the mag’s co-writer/ creative editor figured nobody was liable to make much of a stink about it, so he happily looked the other way. Script by R&DT; inks by Jones. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“We’re All Fans!”

HOWARD SIMPSON Checklist This checklist is adapted from materials contained in the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999, established by Dr. Jerry G. Bails. Features with that title that also appeared in other publications are generally not italicized below. For more info on possible Howard Simpson work, see Richard Arndt’s introduction on p.22. Key: (p) = pencil; (i) = ink Name & Vital Statistics: Howard Simpson (b. 1959) – artist Pen Name: Poppy Education: BFA, Tyler School of Art Commercial Art & Design: Action News, Accu-Weather, Bantam Books 1983-1992; Instruments of War Records, Newark Library 1983-1992; Sony, New York Newsday, various Fortune 500 companies 1983-1992; designer of toys 1990-1992 COMICBOOKS (US Mainstream Publishers): Heroic Comics: Captain Thunder and Blue Bolt (p) 1992; covers (p) (i) 1991; Icicle (p)(i) 1992; League of Champions (p) 1990-1992

Acclaim Comics (imprint: Valiant): Eternal Warrior (backgrounds) 1992; Magnus (layouts) 1992; Solar, Man of the Atom (i) 1992; support (coloring) 1992 (on Knob Row); X-O Manowar (p) 1992 Dark Horse Comics: Captain Crusader (i) 1988 DC Comics: covers (p)(i) 1988-89; Green Lantern (p) 1983; The Outsiders (p) 1987; Secret Origins 1987-89; Who’s Who Update ’87 (p) 1987; The Young All-Stars (p) 1987-88 First Publishing: Grimjack (p)(i) 1990; Munden’s Bar (p) 1990 Topps Comics: Ray Bradbury’s Comics: Martian Chronicles (adaptation)(p)(i) 1994; support (coloring) 1994 Check out Howard Simpson's blog on creating comics at justcreate.net. Contact him for commissions and assignments at jobz@abbadabba.com

Hitching A Ride The first page Howard Simpson penciled for Young All-Stars was page 16 of issue #3 (Aug. 1987), in which Dan the Dyna-Mite shares a limo ride with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; inks by Malcolm Jones III. With #2, Jean Simek, daughter of the late great Marvel letterer Artie Simek, had come aboard to letter issues, after she moved to San Pedro, California, just a stone’s throw from where the Thomases lived. Thanks to Sharon Karibian. [TM & © DC Comics.]

It’s A Helluva Town! A well-designed page from Howard Simpson’s final foray as the penciler of Young All-Stars: Neptune Perkins and Tsunami tracking the mythicalbut-dangerously-real Tisiphone under New York Harbor. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; inks by Malcolm Jones III. [TM & © DC Comics.]

PART FOUR

LOU MANNA & The Young All-Stars Two Candid Conversations With The Series’ Final Penciler Interview #1

The Lost World Conducted & Transcribed by Richard J. Arndt

NTERVIEWER’S INTRODUCTION: Lou Manna started his comics career as an assistant to artist Jim Janes on DC Comics’ The Legion of Super-Heroes, afterward assisting penciler Rich Buckler on such Marvel and DC titles as What If?, All-Star Squadron, and World’s Finest Comics. He graduated to his own work on J.C. Publishing’s early1980s revival of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. Over the years he’s worked for Archie, DC, Marvel, Heroic Publishing, Fictioneer Books, Conquest Press, Moonstone, and Alias, among others. He recently illustrated two true-life

Lou Manna above the title splash he penciled for Infinity, Inc. Annual #2 (1988) and his cover for The Young All-Stars #31 (Nov. 1989), the comic’s final issue. Inks by Tony DeZuniga and Bob Downs, respectively. Thanks to John Joshua and the Grand Comics Database, also respectively. In the Annual, Todd McFarlane, Michael Bair, and the team of Jerry Ordway & Mike Machlan accounted for four of its 40-page lead story’s pages, but Lou’s penciling 36 pages was still a formidable accomplishment under time pressure, especially for a relative newcomer. He says its first few pages were composed of his “Black Terror” sample pages, slightly redrawn—which makes it likely that Roy and Dann came up with much of the plot for that Annual to accommodate them. Very fitting, since Roy, when he drew the original concept sketch of the skullfaced Mr. Bones, had used the Golden Age Black Terror’s general look as a template, crossbones chest symbol and all. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Lou Manna & The Young All-Stars

war stories for Full Mag #3 (Spring 2021) and is at work on a WWII-era graphic novel. In addition to his comics output, he’s worked in advertising for such clients as Chase Manhattan Bank, Accenture, Barkley’s Bank, Oppenheimer Capital, The New York Mets, Elmherst General Hospital, and others. He’s written and illustrated five nonfiction books on the history of Staten Island for the Statue of Liberty Cultural Arts Association at Gateway. More information on his career can be found at his website louismanna.com. This interview took place on February 11, 2021. RICHARD ARNDT: After Roy contacted me about interviewing you, I noticed your name in the latest Full Mag issue—#3. LOU MANNA: Yeah, I did those two short pieces, and I’m working with the editor of Full Mag, August Uhl, on a book he’s created called Burma Skies. He’s a nice guy and we hit it off pretty well. We’ve been working together for about six months to a year. The book is about a 1940s adventurer. I guess you picking up that magazine right after Roy contacted you proves it’s a small world. August, Roy—and I guess all the good writers in comics—are particular about how the art comes out. I remember Roy sent me a picture of a toucan when I was doing Young All-Stars, and Roy was very exact that that’s how he wanted that toucan to look like in the

Toucan Play At That Game! (Above:) The three-panel sequence from YAS #28 (Aug. 1989) for which writer/ creative editor Roy Thomas sent Lou Manna avian photo reference… though whether or not that included the late-’80s pic below taken by wife/co-writer Dann of Roy and his beloved toco toucan pal Cyrano, Ye Editor couldn’t say at this remove. (Lou shouldn’t feel singled out; earlier, RT had sent a toucan pic to penciler Todd McFarlane for an issue of Infinity, Inc. that featured Northwind’s feathered tribe, the Bird People. Poor Todd had to stick a toucan head on a human body!) Inks by Bob Downs. [TM & © DC Comics.]

comic. He wanted things to be exact. Not just the costume, but the belt buckle, the boots—all of that stuff to be exact, which is really a good lesson. Especially for young guys today. RA: A lot of the old pros had massive reference files. Nowadays, you don’t really need all of that because with the Internet you can usually find reference material rather quickly; but back in the day, things like Greek or Roman temple columns or what a shield for a particular time looked like— you had to have physical references for all of that. MANNA: Yeah, the writer would want a particular car or airplane or machine gun. You had to deliver that stuff, and it wasn’t always easy. Even today, it’s not always easy to find the right reference, even on the Internet. RA: How did you end up working with Roy Thomas?

Full Mag The splash page of the Vietnam War-era lead story of Full Mag #1 (2021), with script by Mark Potes, pencils by Lou Manna, and inks by Bill Anderson. Good to see that Lou’s still active in the business, a third of a century since The Young All-Stars. Thanks to LM. [TM & © Full Magazine Pub.]

MANNA: That’s kind of a long story, but I’ll try to keep it short. I’ve been in this business for forty years now—started out as an assistant for Jim Janes on The Legion of Super-Heroes. There were thirty or forty characters in that book, between villains and heroes. I think we also did Secrets of the Legion, which had a ton of stuff.

Two Candid Conversations With The Series’ Final Penciler

It was great training—taught me how to lay out a page so it didn’t look crowded. I was really happy working on that book. We had a little studio with Janes and Rich Buckler. A lot of other guys dropped in from time to time. I ended up working with Rich as his assistant as well, on books like All-Star Squadron and What If? Rich was doing a lot of comics at the time and we were pretty busy. That studio work got me my first solo gig on T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents; this was the first revival of them, in the early 1980s. Chris Adames was the scripter, but we were both plotting the stories. Mark Texeira and Pat Gabriele were doing the inking. That was for the black-&-white issue [JCP Features the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 (Dec. 1981)]. For the color book we had Willie Blyberg inking, who had kind of a Wally Wood vibe. I thought he did a great job, particularly with the first issue. We got two color issues out, plus the black-&-white. Then we all left, and the revival kind of fell by the wayside. For a few years after that, I had a job with the US Navy Resale as a creative services manager. It was a government job, and I had the time to work up some comics stuff on the side. I did a “Black Terror” story on spec. The Black Terror was out of copyright, so anybody could and, for that matter, still can use him in a story. I was also working in a comicbook store, and another artist came in

What If… Lou Manna Had Drawn An All-Star Squadron Cover? Since there’s no way to tell on which pages Lou Manna “assisted” in either Jimmy Janes’ Legion of Super-Heroes or the early Rich Buckler All-Star Squadron, here’s the faux cover of the latter that Lou penciled and inked for John Joshua’s ambitious project covered in A/E #175 and on pp. 47-51 of this issue. John had our interviewee depict The Young All-Stars battling Ramulus, a.k.a. Simon & Kirby’s creation Nightshade on “#106.” Colors by Rich Seetoo; courtesy of Lou & John Joshua. [TM & © DC Comics.]

and said, “Why don’t you send that stuff in to Roy Thomas?” Well, I wasn’t sure, and I hemmed and hawed. Then I said, “Give me his address.” and I mailed out those “Black Terror” samples to him.

The Sound Of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Lou penciled the cover for the first issue of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents revival from JC Comics, cover-dated August 1983. Inks by Willie Blyberg. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © John Carbonaro.]

If you get the second Infinity, Inc. Annual, the first five or six pages are redrawn versions of the “Black Terror” samples. I got a phone call out of the clear blue sky from Roy asking me what I was working on. I couldn’t believe it was actually Roy Thomas. He wasn’t just a writer. He was a famous writer. I told him what I was up to, and he said he’d like me to draw the Infinity, Inc. Annual, if I had the time. I told him sure, and he said he’d ship the script to me the next day. I was so excited. I still remember getting off the phone and being on Cloud 9, because I hadn’t been in the business for a while, wasn’t getting that much work, and here was a chance to work on a really nice DC book. I did the whole 40 pages of that story in a couple of weeks. I spent every spare minute working on it. Tony DeZuniga and Jerry Ordway did a nice job inking it. It was a big deal. I think DC was only doing 32 titles at the time

Lou Manna & The Young All-Stars

and getting the opportunity to draw one of those… it was just a big deal. That was nice. RA: Now, as Roy described it to me, you worked with him on four issues of Young All-Stars… MANNA: Yes. I actually started with Roy on Infinity, Inc.—a few pages in #50, I think, and then #51, and then the 40-page Annual. Then Roy moved me over to Young All-Stars. I think he actually told me he was moving me over because Young All-Stars was supposed to last a lot longer than Infinity Inc. Then, as I was halfway through penciling the first issue [#28], I got a call from Roy, telling me that Young All-Stars was also being canceled after the current storyline. I never got a chance to really show what I could do in the long run, as I only drew the last four issues. [laughs] Years later, I was having lunch with Dick Giordano and he told me, “If I knew you were on that book, I’d have kept it going.” [laughs] I mean, he was the managing editor—he should have known everything that was going on with all the books. But, you know, he was the kind of managing editor who let the editors under him run their own show, pretty much. I don’t think he interfered that much with the daily work that the editor was supposed to be

“There Is A Raptor On The Lonely Shore” With apologies to a poetic line from Lord Byron, who wrote “rapture.” Oddly, Lou’s penciled version of the cover of YAS #28 (on the right) seems more polished than the printed version (above) which was inked by Bob Downs. Thanks to Lou Manna & the GCD, respectively. Besides predating both novel and film versions of Jurassic Park in the use of a velociraptor, this wasn’t Roy’s first comicbook rodeo with that prehistoric reptile; see Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian #95 (Feb. 1979). Roy decided to stick one as well into this four-part storyline that was a DC Comics sequel of sorts to Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel The Lost World, which postulated an antediluvian world atop a mesa amid the South American jungles. Conan Doyle had to content himself primarily to iguanodons, some of the earliest dinosaurs to be unearthed. [TM & © DC Comics.]

doing. He let them do what they had to do. Dick did look after me. He tried to find me work. My personal wish was that there had been another ten issues of Young All-Stars. I think that would have established me on a steady book. Young All-Stars was set in the 1940s and featured characters from that time period—Neptune Perkins, Dan the Dyna-Mite, Tsunami, Flying Fox, Fury, and “Iron” Munro. Roy wasn’t allowed to use the main DC 1940s characters—Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, those guys—so he created these characters. Not all of them, of course. But I think they all had a link to the original Justice Society. The main character, “Iron” Munro, was based on the character from Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel Gladiator. RA: Right. Theodore Sturgeon wrote some of the 1940s “Iron Munro” stories, which came out from Street & Smith. MANNA: Yeah. The Flying Fox was based on Hawkman. Fury was based on Wonder Woman. They were all variations on the original DC characters he couldn’t use. There was a character, Georgia Challenger, who was based on Professor Challenger from the Arthur Conan Doyle novel The Lost World. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Sorry, but see pp. 3-4 for the actual origins of Flying Fox, which had

Two Candid Conversations With The Series’ Final Penciler

nothing whatever to do with Hawkman.] RA: I was going to ask about that, because the story where she appears is set in South America and features a lot of dinosaurs. That, plus the Challenger name, would put her straight in Lost World territory. MANNA: The main villain in the story I drew was based on the Gladiator novel. Roy had done an adaptation of Gladiator for Marvel, but I think he took the genesis of that novel and used elements in the All-Star Squadron as well as Young All-Stars. I came in at the tail-end of all of that. I liked doing the book—those last four issues. If I’d have found out a little later that the book was canceled, I would have felt it was my fault, but, as it was, it was set for cancelation before I even got my first issue done. I’m not even sure that Roy saw pencils before the cancelation notice came through. After that, Roy left DC and I got lost in the shuffle. When you’re working with a particular editor, he’s either going to feed you work or not. I had steady work with him at first, and had he stayed at DC, I’m sure I would have ended up working on more books with or for him. I’m not sure if he went back to Marvel or just gravitated to other companies. I know he worked for Heroic [Publishing], using E.R. Cruz as his artist. I also did work for Heroic. I did three or four issues of their character Icicle. RA: We mentioned Fury as a member of The Young All-Stars. There was also a female Fury in that time period, created by Tarpe Mills. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Richard Arndt is referring to the newspaper comic strip Black Fury, soon renamed Miss Fury, featuring a non-super-powered woman who wore a skin-tight cat costume.

Homage, Sweet Homage! These two recent commission pieces were produced by Lou for fans John Joshua (left) and Jared Gold (right)—the first based on work Lou’d done for the 1980s JC Comics T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents revival, the latter an homage to John Byrne & Terry Austin’s cover for The X-Men #141 (Jan. 1981). Thanks to LM and the “commissioners” for these scans. [TM & © DC Comics.]

There was no connection between her and either DC Fury I co-created.] MANNA: That may have been the same Fury that Roy was writing in Young All-Stars, but you’d have to ask him, to be sure. He has a history of taking 1940s characters and revamping them for modern-day audiences. He did that with The Vision, created a whole new character that had the same name as an old 1940s Timely character. Roy was really good at that sort of thing. RA: Before we get too much farther along, Roy wanted me to ask about artwork that you did for a story that would have followed #31 of Young All-Stars. MANNA: Sure! Partway through that first issue, when Roy told me they were going to cancel the book after we finished up the current storyline, I told him I thought that was a shame. Roy says, “Yeah, the next story arc was one where I was going to use Victor Frankenstein.” Not the Monster itself but the inventor of the Monster. Of course, if the storyline had Victor Frankenstein, I couldn’t believe that the Monster wouldn’t be too far behind. So, in between pages for the actual story I was drawing, I’d

Lou Manna & The Young All-Stars

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents! I got them all in, anyway! For a while Roy had his own little empire at DC. Pretty much all of the 1940s heroes were his to play with and write about. RA: I suspect that the Wolfman-Pérez Crisis put an end to that because that story put so many of those character out of DC continuity. MANNA: I think that’s one of the reasons he left DC. I personally think they should have left him alone. When you’ve got a guy who’s really good at what he does, and Roy is one of those, leave them alone to create what they’re going to create without interfering. There are people who don’t need an editor. Roy, Steranko, Kirby… although Kirby probably did need a scripter… but plot, story, characters, editing—Kirby could do all of that. That costume thing I was mentioning earlier—that’s really crucial in comics. If the costume’s wrong, then readers don’t know who that is. Not every artist can draw identifiable faces. Every blond guy with a good physique could be Steve Rogers. Black hair, it could be Bruce Wayne. It’s the costume that really makes the hero—that makes them stand out visually.

Helix: The Cats While Lou M. doesn’t mention it, he was briefly slated, after the demise of Young All-Stars, to pencil a Helix mini-series, featuring the offbeat mutants (“genomorphs”) Roy and Dann had co-created (all except Mr. Bones with penciler Todd McFarlane) for the likewise-canceled Infinity, Inc. But the schedule kept getting pushed back… and in the end Helix had to wait for the TV series Stargirl for Bones and company to even begin to get their due. Courtesy of LM. [TM & © DC Comics.]

be doing these layouts for Frankenstein-type covers that I had in mind. Just a short time ago, I found this old sketchbook I’d drawn in back then. In fact, when I got the art director job for Chase Manhattan Bank, it was the art in that sketchbook that got me the job. The guy who hired me either was, or his son was, a comicbook fan. After I rediscovered the sketchbook, I thought I should work up some of those sketches. Back in the day, I’d drawn the covers to Young All-Stars #28, 29, and #31, but I hadn’t done #30. It’s listed on the GCD as me, but it’s not me. It might be Dave Simons. So I’m looking at my old sketch for #30 and decided I wanted to finish it so I’d have a set, because the other covers are hanging on my wall. I finished it and sent a copy to Roy as well. Not only that page, but the two Frankenstein character sketches. He liked them. In the last issue of Young All-Stars, Roy tossed in everybody— the Justice Society, All-Star Squadron, Young All-Stars, even the Quality Comics characters! Thank God I’d had that training drawing big groups from the Legion of Super-Heroes and

We Cover The World! This unused prospective cover by Lou Manna and Bob Downs popped up recently on eBay. Thanks to Mike Mukulovsky for sending it to us. It’s too nice not to be printed in this issue. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Two Candid Conversations With The Series’ Final Penciler

Harris & Manna Meet Frankenstein (Left & above:) Roy T. writes: “Lou wasn’t fully aware of the ‘Frankenstein’ situation in Young All-Stars. In #18-19, Dann and I and penciler Ron Harris had introduced Mary Shelley’s monster looking and acting very much as the author had conceived him for her 1818 novel: an eight-foot, pale, gaunt creature with an intelligence that, because he’d been spurned by his human creator, had become consciously evil. In #18, in the far Arctic where Shelley had left him at novel’s end, he introduced himself to a ‘guest’ as ‘Victor Frankenstein II’; he’d taken that name as if he were the flesh-and-blood son of the man who’d stitched him together well over a century before. In #19, intrigued to learn that much of humanity was then engaged in fighting each other, he’d wandered south, intending to add his own demonic touch to the Second World War. We were poised to reintroduce him into the series when it was sadly canceled.” Inks by Malcolm Jones III. Thanks to John Joshua. [TM & © DC Comics.] (Below:) Lou Manna, on his own, penciled and inked two potential covers for what might have become Young All-Stars #32—finishing the one at left for John Joshua’s “faux All-Star Squadron” series. Nice work, although, if utilized in 1989, Lou would’ve had to redraw “Victor Frankenstein II” to match the more Shelleyesque, less Karloffian version of the monster from a year earlier. Thanks to John Joshua & Lou Manna. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Lou Manna & The Young All-Stars

I’ve Got You Covered! Manna’s covers for Young All-Stars #28 & 31 were seen a few pages back. The series’ two penultimate covers, for #29 & 30 (Sept. & Oct. 1989), are viewed above. Bob Downs seems to have inked both, but Lou says he himself didn’t pencil the published cover of #30 as the Grand Comics Database records; rather, its artist’s identity is uncertain, though he suspects it may be Dave Simons, who’d penciled that of #27. Lou did pencil a potential cover for #30 (seen at right), but it wasn’t used. On it, Dan the Dyna-Mite looks perhaps a bit older than his mid-teen years, but that could’ve been fixed. Thanks to the GCD & Lou Manna, respectively. [TM & © DC Comics.]

I never got a full script from Roy. They were plots with some dialogue. I had a lot of freedom. There were very few edits, except for that toucan. [laughs] I do remember him asking me about a double-page spread I put in one issue, but there were a lot of scenes happening in those two pages. [NOTE: See p. 40.] Still, that was a lesson, too. If the writer doesn’t want it, then don’t do it. He did end up using it. All in all, I really enjoyed working with him. I thought he was terrific! I really regret I didn’t get the chance to work longer with him. When he celebrated his 75th birthday, a lot of artists got together [at TwoMorrows] and each drew a character that Roy had written on a big poster. I drew a character called Firebrand. I’m not sure if that was a DC or Marvel character. Anyways, Roy wrote me and thanked me for joining in on the project. That was nice.

“Luke, I’m Your Father!” For the first time, in this splash that opens Young All-Stars #29 (Sept. 1989), “Iron” Munro encounters his father, Hugo Danner—protagonist of Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel Gladiator—in the “lost world” of Maple White Land in South America. (Well, actually, they’d met in the final panel of #28, but this is an even better image.) At the end of Wylie’s tale, a defiant Danner had been struck down by lightning—but apparently it didn’t kill him quite as dead as the author had intended. Script by the Thomases; art by Manna & Downs. Thanks to John Joshua. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Two Candid Conversations With The Series’ Final Penciler

Interview #2

King Of The Werewolf Western Conducted & Transcribed by Mitch Maglio MITCH MAGLIO: How did you get your start in comics? LOU MANNA: I started assisting an artist named Jimmy Janes in 1979. Actually, the first thing I ever did was “The Rook” for Warren, which they revived recently—and then “The Legion of SuperHeroes” with him. When he did that, I laid out the issues from the scripts. I would take the script, break it down for him, then he would take it fix it and correct it. We did that for about a year. So, in 1975 I started going up to DC. In ’79 I started working with Jimmy, and then I went to DC one day, and I showed my

samples as usual. While Dave Manek and Dick Giordano were on the phone, I picked up my samples and left and went home. When I got home, there was a call: “Where’d you go? We were looking for you. We wanted to give you work.” I said I was so used to getting rejected I just assumed I was [rejected] again. And that’s the first thing I got from DC on my own—and it was a werewolf Western! It was good training. Dick Giordano and Dave Manek were the editors. They were encouraging to me, and from that point on for about a year and a half straight I got House of Mystery stuff… six-page, eight-page stories. It was good training, because it made you draw things you didn’t want to… like werewolves, Westerns, and mysteries. When I was trying to break in, my uncle knew [artist] John Celardo from Port Richmond [High School], I guess. I went to see John Celardo, and he was trying to be diplomatic at the time and said, “It would make a nice hobby, I guess. Think of it as a hobby.” And then, two or three months later, he was inking one of my stories! One of my mystery stories for DC. I had a lot of old-time inkers—Tex Blaisdel, John Celardo, Sal

From “Werewolf Western” To The Lost World (Left:) An image of the original art for the splash page of the story Lou penciled for one of DC’s “mystery” comics in the early 1980s, which was inked by Sam Grainger and written by Mark Pollock. We couldn’t find any listing on the GCD of a story called “Fur Trap,” so either the title was changed (and the GCD didn’t catch it under its new name, either), or else that yarn was never published… though Lou did have at least one story published in House of Mystery (#306). [TM & © DC Comics.] (Right:) “Iron” Munro struggles in vain to escape from a huge hunk of fused rock, in Young All-Stars #30 (Oct. 1989). Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; pencils by Lou Manna; inks by Bob Downs & Dave Simons. Thanks to John Joshua. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Lou Manna & The Young All-Stars

Thereby Hangs A Tale… In Young All-Stars #29 (Sept. 1989), Hugo Danner relates—to his son Arn and Georgia Challenger—the basic plot of Philip Wylie’s 1930 novel Gladiator, with a nod or two to its earlier adaptation in YAS #10. Splash page by the Thomases, Manna, and Downs. Thanks to John Joshua. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Trapani. Sam Grainger inked the first thing I ever did. I couldn’t believe the work that I turned in looked so good! That was all Sam. He cleaned it up beautifully. Gary Martin I had as an inker… Chic Stone when I did the Archie “Jaguar” book. They were pros, for sure. They could make anybody’s work look professional. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: At this point Lou describes how he first came to work for Roy Thomas on Infinity, Inc., then on Young All-Stars. That information was related in the previous Manna interview.] MM: Roy brought you on to Young All-Stars with issue #28? MANNA: Yeah, but before that I was—well, someone was running behind on Infinity, so I did a few pages on issue #51 and started to do #52 , when Roy asked me if I could do the [Infinity, Inc.] Annual.

Two For The Price Of One! Lou Manna has preserved his original penciling of the p. 5 splash from Young All-Stars #28, in which “Iron” Munro rescues Georgia Challenger from a rapacious raptor—but clearly, Lou redrew it considerably for publication, as vouchsafed by the quite different printed version inked by Bob Downs. Perhaps that reflects the phone call Lou says Roy gave him after receiving the pencils? Script by Roy & Dann Thomas. Thanks to Lou Manna and John Joshua, respectively. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Two Candid Conversations With The Series’ Final Penciler

The Lost World—The TV Guide Version! The two-page spread Lou mentions writer/editor Roy being a bit uncertain about was surely this montage of the plot of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost World done for issue #29. Roy’s primary concern, in all likelihood, was to make sure there was no chance the two pages wouldn’t face each other, which would’ve derailed the entire retelling. Such things had happened to Roy before—see King Conan #8 at Marvel, just after he stopped being considered that mag’s editor. Script by the Thomases; art by Manna & Downs. Thanks to John Joshua. [TM & © DC Comics.]

So I penciled a 40-page annual... in two weeks! With all the Infinity characters, with Justice Society characters. Once that was done, he told me, “I’m gonna move you over to Young All-Stars”... Which was great, because it was an ongoing title. I needed a couple of years of steady work to establish myself, I thought. But halfway through the first issue [YAS #28], Roy calls and says, “Guess what? They’re canceling this book, too. But we’re going to finish this four-issue arc, and then we’re going to move on.” So we did the four, and it was done... which was a pity, because I remember doing the last issue and wishing they could have kept it going, because Roy’s next arc was bringing in the Frankenstein Monster, and I was really looking forward to doing that. MM: That sounds like a precursor to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen! MANNA: Come to think of it, you’re right. Roy had a special feel for all of those characters. He knew them inside and out. He’s a real historian, and there was no one better to do that stuff.

MM: You mentioned that Roy was really as much a mentor as he was an employer to you. MANNA: He was really good to me. He wasn’t the type to micromanage you. But he would point out things that needed to be corrected... and he was totally right. Like, for example, if I drew something and didn’t draw say, the belt buckle on that character right, he’d point it out. Another person might say, “What’s the big deal? It’s only a belt buckle.” But Roy knew that characters are identified by the costumes they wear. I remember getting the first script [synopsis] for Young All-Stars. The first scene was a girl on the banks of a lake, and she took some clothes off, jumped in, and was attacked by something— and then “Iron” Munro grabbed a big dinosaur by the tail. And I remember asking myself, how am I going to do that? How am I going to set that up, because I was still fairly new. If I remember correctly I might have done the dinosaur proportions wrong. I remember Roy sending that back to me and my thinking, “I blew it. I don’t know if I can get this down right”—but Roy had patience, and guided me through it.

Lou Manna & The Young All-Stars

Whole Lotta Super-Heroes Goin’ On! Another chance for Lou to draw a whole lot of heroes—this time a climactic page in #31—juxtaposed with his pencils for another projected cover, this one with a pinup approach. Script by the Thomases; inks by Bob Downs. Thanks to John Joshua and Lou Manna, respectively. [TM & © DC Comics.]

There was one particular instance where I had seen something and said to myself, this would be nice as a double-page spread. I remember Roy calling me up and saying, “I didn’t tell you to do a double page.” But he was great about it. He explained to me why he hadn’t wanted a two-page spread, but he did leave it in, which was very encouraging”

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Icicle, even today when I send my samples out to independents they always look at the Infinity stuff and Young All-Stars stuff and are very impressed with that. It’s always the Young All-Stars and DC stuff that people look at and say, “Oh, I guess you were a professional.” [laughs]

I never had any problems working with Roy. He would guide you, firmly. He never belittled you or put you down. He just wanted to make sure that you understood what he wanted and that the artist looked good doing it. That mentor relationship was is important, especially when you are starting out. Back then, it was really important that somebody guided me, and I think Roy was really good at that. Young All-Stars was a real thrill for me, because it gave me a good footing as an artist; and even though I am associated with The Phantom and the

Even thirty years later, Roy’s influence is still there, because if it wasn’t for his giving me a chance, who knows if I would even be in the business today? If you would like to visit Lou’s website, go to www. louismanna.com. To arrange for any art commissions or new work, contact him at asta404@aol.com

Mitch Maglio

Mitch Maglio is a resident of Staten Island, NY. His most recent books are Fiction House from Pulps to Panels (IDW), Jungle Girls (IDW), and The Noir of Matt Baker (Boardman Books).

Two Candid Conversations With The Series’ Final Penciler

LOU MANNA Checklist This checklist is adapted from materials contained in the online Grand Comics Database. Features that also appeared in other publications are generally not italicized below. For other info on Lou Manna’s career, see Richard Arndt’s introduction to his interview, on p. 30. Key: (p) = pencil; (i) = ink. Name & Vital Statistics: Lou Manna – artist COMICBOOKS (US Mainstream Publishers):

Cover Me!

Alias: Soulcatcher (p) 2005

Manna’s covers for Heroic Publishing’s Icicle Color Edition #5 (Aug. 2005) and Moonstone’s The Phantom: Ghost Who Walks #7 (Dec. 2009), “cover B.” The former was inked by John Flaherty, the latter by Lou M. himself. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Heroic Publishing, Inc., & King Features, Inc., respectively.]

Archie Comic Group: Blue Ribbon Comics (p) 1984 Conquest Press: Claws (p) 1993 DC Comics: All-Star Squadron (backgrounds) c. 1981; House of Mystery (p) 1982; Legion of Super-Heroes (backgrounds/ assistance) dates uncertain; Who’s Who in DC Comics (p) 1988, 1991; Who’s Who Update (p) 1988; World’s Finest Comics (assist) dates uncertain; The Young All-Stars (p) 1989

Fictioneer Books: The Southern Knights (p) 1992 Heroic Publishing: The Champions (p) 2011; Chrissie Claus (p) 2012; Icicle (p) 1992, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015; The Morrigan Wars, Part Two (p) 2010 JC Comics: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (p) 1981, 1983, 1984 Marvel Comics: Marvel Super-Heroes (1990 series) 1990; What If? (assist) dates uncertain Moonstone: The Phantom 2003-2004

It’s Nice To Have Powerful Friends Fury is startled to see a sizeable contingent of the All-Star Squadron show up to help her find and rescue her fellow Young All-Stars, on the final story page of YAS #30. Script by Roy & Dann Thomas; pencils by Lou Manna; inks by Bob Downs & Dave Simons (probably the latter on this particular page). Thanks to John Joshua. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Warren Publications: The Rook (p) (dates & details uncertain)

PART FIVE

THE YOUNG ALL-STARS: CRISIS AVERTED!

One Fan’s Response To The End Of Earth-Two by Johnny Blaze Leavitt A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: I’ve got to admit, Johnny Blaze Leavitt is a guy after my own heart! How could I not applaud a fan who, like John Joshua (see next article), simply decides to postulate that the 1985-86 Crisis on Infinite Earths never happened and to go on creating new covers and prospective storylines centered around the original multiverse that included Earth-Two and its fellow alternate worlds! In Johnny’s case, though, he’s double-threaded the needle to have it both ways: both the original Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, et al., and their “energy replacements” from the 1987-89 series The Young All-Stars (“Iron” Munro, Fury, Flying Fox, et al.) find a way to co-exist on an enlarged Earth-Two. Got to admit, that’s not unlike what I’d have wanted to do over the past three-plus decades if I’d had my druthers—but where I have been content to draw a line under my time with the All-Star Squadron and its offshoots, Johnny Blaze Leavitt let nothing stand in his way! But we’ll let him tell you all about it in his own wondrous words….

started digitally crafting homage/fan covers a few years ago. I’ve always been a fan of DC Comics’ Earth-Two. The Golden Age! As a kid, I remember seeing the cover to All-Star Squadron #18 on the magazine rack and not recognizing any of the characters. I needed to know who they were! I read the issue in the store and became hooked. Every issue introduced me to a new hero or villain. Then Infinity, Inc. appeared! Then the Seven Soldiers of Victory returned in Squadron! Then the Quality Comics characters joined! Watching them all interact in issue #31 blew my mind. The possibilities for amazing stories kept expanding. As an adult, I’ll re-read these issues and wonder what other stories could have been told. My playwright brain would start to craft scenarios and plot points. What if Uncle Sam had more obscure Quality Comics heroes join the Freedom Fighters? What if the Golden Age Batman formed an Earth-Two version of The Outsiders? I started imagining what the covers would look like, what would inspire another fan to grab the issue from their magazine rack. What would excite a fellow Earth-Two fan? I like to take familiar, iconic covers and transform them, reimagined for new Golden Age adventures that I wish I could read. These Young All-Stars covers are my answer to the question: “How could Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Robin, Aquaman, Green Arrow, and Speedy be brought back into the Golden Age continuity?” Having them defend their YAS homage characters against their Axis Amerika doppelgängers seemed too much fun to resist. It’s three interpretations of the same character (or characters of that same “energy”) in one place! Who doesn’t love a triumphant return? I love sharing them in the various Justice Society of America fan groups on Facebook, where fellow fans ask who a character is or delight in identifying my source art or propose an idea of their own for a future cover. And it always comes back to the same sentiment:

Just Imagine! JBL even composed his own “house ad” for his concept of The Young All-Stars: Crisis Averted series! [Heroes & villains TM & © DC Comics.]

We, the fans, love these Golden Age All-Stars and we miss them and we want more.

One Fan’s Response To The End Of Earth-Two

Synopsis For Overall Series Baron Blitzkrieg hatches a plan to alter the past to win the war. He sends Kung and Sumo back to the Perisphere headquarters of the All-Star Squadron. Their mission: to retrieve any and all discarded pieces of the Mekanique robot, cast off when Robotman redesigned her. Before they can rendezvous with the Baron, they are intercepted by Axis Amerika. The Great-Horned Owl uses the stolen future tech to prevent the death of his son, Fledermaus.

And, though he successfully restores his son to life, The Great-Horned Owl also unleashes an energy wave that somewhat restores Earth-Two. The Golden Age characters of Quality Comics and Charlton Comics remain in this Golden age timeline, as do the Young All-Stars and Axis Amerika. But the previously lost Golden Age heroes return as well...

The Young All-Stars: Crisis Averted #1 (of 6): Superman returns to help “Iron” Munro defeat Übermensch! But lurking in the background is the Golden Age Lex Luthor. It’s not just the heroes who are back... [Homage to cover of Action Comics #584 by John Byrne & Dick Giordano.]

The Young All-Stars: Crisis Averted #2 (of 6): Arrows aplenty as Green Arrow and Speedy take aim at Usil the Sun Archer and The Tigress! [Homage to cover of Green Arrow (Vol. 2) #98 by Rodolfo Damaggio.]

The Young All-Stars: Crisis Averted!

The Young All-Stars: Crisis Averted #3 (of 6): Before The Flying Fox falls to The Great-Horned Owl, a certain Dark Knight returns… [Homage to cover of Batman #381 by Rick Hoberg & Dick Giordano, as colored by Anthony Tollin.]

The Young All-Stars: Crisis Averted #4 (of 6): Beware the tides of time, as Aquaman rescues Neptune Perkins and Tsunami from the onslaught of Sea Wolf and Kamikaze! [Homage to cover of All-Star Squadron #34 by Rick Hoberg & Jerry Ordway, as colored by Todd Klein.]

One Fan’s Response To The End Of Earth-Two

The Young All-Stars: Crisis Averted #5 (of 6): Gudra’s ambush of Fury is ruined once she clashes with the mighty Amazon, Wonder Woman! [Homage to cover of Wonder Woman #222 by Ernie Chan.]

The Young All-Stars: Crisis Averted #6 (of 6): Die Fledermaus is back from the dead and thirsty for revenge! He’s already defeated The Allies: The Squire, Fireball, Kuei, and Phantasmo. His next targets: Dan the Dyna-Mite and Sandy the Golden Boy! But the original Robin will upset the odds in this boy-wonder battle royal! [Combined homage to covers of All-Star Squadron #25 by Jerry Ordway and Batman #442 by George Pérez, as colored by Anthony Tollin.] Johnny Blaze Leavitt is an award-winning playwright, actor, comedian, and digital artist living in New York City. He’s an occasional cosplayer and a lifelong collector of comicbooks, action figures, and movies. He also customizes action figures from time to time and photographs them in dioramas. More of his work can be found at: https://www.deviantart. com/aradath Special thanks to Pedro Angosto for first bringing this project to the attention of Alter Ego.

Johnny Blaze Leavitt

PART SIX

The ALL-STAR SQUADRON Covers That Never Were— Till Now!

Part II – The Counter-Crisis Legend Continues From A/E #175! by John Joshua A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: As John Joshua knows (because I told him), his wonderful project of commissioning “faux covers” of “my” DC Comics series All-Star Squadron beyond the 67 issues (plus three Annuals) that were published between 1981 and ’87 is one I can and do applaud—even though, if he (or anyone else) were actually producing such a continuation for DC, I would never so much as pick up a copy off the racks, due to my unequivocal hostility to the notion of anyone except myself continuing the All-Star Squadron, Young All-Stars, or Infinity, Inc. series while I’m still alive. (Just keep your shirts on, guys… all things come to those who wait.) Yet, as an exercise in extreme fan creativity, I’ve been the covers series’ biggest booster, determined if possible to eventually print all of the new covers in the pages of Alter Ego—and there are now basically as many faux covers accounted for by John and his enthusiastic cronies as there were in the original series! So here we go again, with more of those covers—some colored, some not—but first, a few comments from the High Commissioner himself….

he first “new” All-Star Squadron issue printed here (see next page) is #85, drawn by Craig Cermak, adapted from the cover of Avengers #72, and bringing back Deathbolt to attack the team in the Perisphere (I saw this as a follow-up to the story in Young All-Stars #15, which saw an earlier attempt by the villain to break into the team’s headquarters). Deathbolt is searching for the Hammer of Thor—which was not actually destroyed at the end of the Ultra-Humanite saga—on behalf of his mystery partner, revealed in #87 as the Lightning Master (from early “Superman” stories). Given their respective electrical powers, I’ve thought the two villains were a natural team ever since All-Star Squadron Annual #3. Over the course of the threeissue story, the Lightning Master threatens a nationwide power shutdown and attempts to use the Hammer of Thor to tap into the mystic lightning which powers The Marvel Family! This cover highlights my love of the visual pun—replacing the Kree Captain Marvel with Freddy Freeman’s alter ego, Captain Marvel Jr., and substituting Air Wave for Yellowjacket, on the basis

All In Color For This Time Two “faux covers” that ran in black-&-white back in A/E #175, colored for this issue by Rich Seetoo: “#70” by Christopher Ivy, and “#74” by Brendon & Brian Fraim, as artful homages to the John Buscema/ Tom Palmer and Jack Kirby/Joe Sinnott covers of The Avengers #75 and The Invaders #6, respectively. [All characters TM & © DC Comics.]

of their similar earpieces. It also highlights one of the recurring issues I faced: Roy wrote a lot of comics (The Avengers, The Invaders) featuring Captain America, as well as the visually-similar US Agent in Avengers West Coast, and while DC’s Guardian is the obvious stand-in for either character, as here, I wanted to find alternatives for the star-spangled Avenger wherever possible. You can judge whether or not I was successful in doing so in some of the other covers in this article. Next in line: the fifth Annual… art by Ian Richardson, adapted from the cover of The Invaders #2, concluding a story started in #88. While I’ve generally used pre-existing villains, whether from the Golden Age like Brain Wave, or later creations such as Baron Blitzkrieg, this was an opportunity to pick up on an idea Roy outlined in Alter Ego #9 (in a plot which eventually became his Heroic Publications comic Anthem) to feature an attack on the West Coast by either a Godzilla-like monster or a Shogun Warriors-esque giant robot. Anthem used a giant creature, so I opted for the gigantic

The Counter-Crisis Legend Continues!

Japanese robot—and asked Ian (and Mike Collins, who drew the cover for #88) to use an obscure Silver Age Flash villain, the Samuroid, here. This issue also revealed my idea for the identity of The Dragon King (SPOILER ART: it’s Vandal Savage), though I later changed this in a story in #129-132 involving Dinosaur Island. I chose to use Batman as my “not The Guardian” substitute for Captain America here, since I thought a thrown batarang made an acceptable replacement for Cap’s shield—and, since Ian had expressed his surprise at how much he’d enjoyed drawing Johnny Thunder and his Thunderbolt on an earlier cover, they stand in for Bucky and The Human Torch respectively. Often the replacement heroes choose themselves, but in some cases I’m able to give the artists characters that they otherwise might not get the chance to draw. Up next is issue #92, adapted from the cover to Legion of SuperHeroes #283 by artist Andrew Pepoy. This is one of the “Altered Egos” issues, in this case casting the spotlight (sorry) on The Ray. Andrew went above and beyond the call of duty on this one, reproducing the vintage logos from the original cover and meeting

my request for some obscure Squadron members, at extremely small size, in the “joining the team” upper right quadrant. Again, this one features some visual punning: Phantom Lady, with her black-light projector, replacing Shadow Lass; The Flash, with his lightning-bolt symbol, in place of Lightning Lad; Starman stepping in for Star Boy; and Air Wave’s antenna earpieces mirroring the pointy-hair look which Timber Wolf sported at the time. Zatara also appears, since I couldn’t—and still can’t—identify the Legionnaire in his spot on the original cover; but by this point I was trying to include as many of the Squadron members as possible in these commissions. It took me until issue #119 (or #122, if you count Little Boy Blue) to find a slot for every character who appeared in the published series, discounting those who had been killed off, such as TNT and Uncle Sam’s original Freedom Fighters from issue #32. Even the dead heroes might get their chance, though: The Red Bee and TNT have both popped up, so there may yet be hope for Magno, Neon the Unknown, The Invisible Hood, and Red Torpedo. [Continued on p. 51]

Presenting—MORE Faux ALL-STAR SQUADRON Covers Continued from Alter Ego #175 (All Heroes & Villains on next 4 pages TM & © DC Comics)

#85: Art by Craig Cermak, colors by Rob Shalda; homage to Avengers #72 (Sal Buscema & Sam Grainger). Deathbolt invades the Perisphere to steal an artifact from the Squadron’s trophy room for his mystery partner. With The Spectre’s powers diminished after the events of Annual #4, can the team prevail?

#86: Art by Brendon & Brian Fraim, colors by Rich Seetoo; homage to Avengers #76 (John Buscema & Tom Palmer). Deathbolt’s battle with the All-Stars continues—as his mystery partner threatens to paralyze the US war effort by shutting down electrical power across the country!

#87: Art by Shawn van Briesen; homage to What If?, Vol. 2, #38 (Paul Ryan). Deathbolt’s mystery partner revealed! The Lightning Master uses the Hammer of Thor to tap into the mystic lightning that powers The Marvel Family—and only Hawkman can stop him!

The All-Star Squadron Covers That Never Were—Till Now! (Part II)

#88: Art by Mike Collins; homage to X-Men #82 (Dan Adkins). In California to assess the need to establish a team on the West Coast, five members of the Squadron face off against The Dragon King—and Imperial Japan’s deadliest secret weapon: the giant robotic Samuroid!

Annual #5: Art by Ian Richardson, colors by Rob Shalda; homage to Invaders #2 (John Romita). With their teammates captured, can Batman, Green Lantern, Firebrand, Johnny Thunder, and his Thunderbolt rescue them from The Samuroid? Plus—The Dragon King’s secret unveiled!

#89: Art by John Watson; homage to Legion of Super-Heroes #281 (George Pérez). When Superman attacks a military base, can a handful of All-Stars—Captain Marvel, Hawkgirl, The Human Bomb, Phantom Lady, Firebrand, and Judomaster—stop the Man of Tomorrow?

#90: Art by Chris Ivy; homage to America vs. The Justice Society #1 (Jerry Ordway). Is the Perisphere haunted—by the ghost of The Red Bee? Mr. Terrific doesn’t think so—but Dr. Occult may prove him wrong! Featuring Johnny Quick, Liberty Belle, Doctor Fate, and The Black Condor.

#91: Art by James E Lyle; homage to Avengers West Coast #66 (Paul Ryan & Danny Bulandi). The secret of the haunting of the Perisphere revealed—as The Spirit King attacks the All-Star Squadron. With special guest-star The Tigress (from Young All-Stars).

#92: Art by Andrew Pepoy, colors by Rob Shalda; homage to Legion of Super-Heroes #283 (Jim Aparo). A special “Altered Egos” spotlight issue, as Jonathan (Tarantula) Law sits down with “Happy” Terrill to explore the secret origin and untold history of The Ray!

The Counter-Crisis Legend Continues!

#93: Art by Dann Phillips; homage to Infinity, Inc. #6 (Jerry Ordway). President Roosevelt orders the Squadron to hunt down and detain their Washington-based comrades—The Freedom Fighters—in the first part of “Uncle Sam—Traitor!”

#94: Art by Stephen Baskerville; homage to Infinity, Inc. #15 (Todd McFarlane & Tony DeZuniga). “Uncle Sam—Traitor!” continues, as Green Lantern and Firebrand must face off against all six of The Freedom Fighters.

#95: Art by Brendon & Brian Fraim; homage to What If? #1 (Jim Craig & Joe Sinnott). With Uncle Sam captured, FDR creates a new Freedom Fighters team (Hourman, Plastic Man, The Jester, Wildfire, and USA, The Spirit of Old Glory) as “Uncle Sam—Traitor!” continues!

#96: Art by John Watson, colors by Rich Seetoo; homage to Infinity, Inc. #2 (Jerry Ordway). “Uncle Sam—Traitor!” concludes, as The Brain Wave is revealed as the villain behind the framing of The Freedom Fighters’ leader—and only a handful of All-Stars can hope to stand against him!

#97: Art by Stephen Baskerville; homage to Avengers #104 (Rich Buckler & Joe Sinnott). At Columbia University, Robotman, The Guardian, Miss America, The Vigilante, and Speedy must face the return of Professor Radium (from Batman #8). Will they fall before his deadly radiation?

Annual #6: Art by Brendon & Brian Fraim; homage to Giant-Size Avengers #1 (John Romita). A re-telling of one of the greatest Golden Age JSA stories of all—“Food for Starving Patriots,” from All-Star Comics #14. Plus, a bonus tale featuring The Crimson Avenger and The Human Bomb!

The All-Star Squadron Covers That Never Were—Till Now! (Part II)

#98: Art by Shawn van Briesen; homage to Avengers #97 (Gil Kane & Bill Everett). With the JSA in Europe and most of the All-Star Squadron in Rioguay (see Young All-Stars #28-31), a handful of heroes must take on comicbook characters brought to life—by Funnyface!

#99: Art by Mike Collins, colors by Rob Shalda; homage to Avengers #71 (Sal Buscema & Sam Grainger). Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman battle three of the greatest comicbook heroes— Americommando, Fireball, and Barracuda— as The Crusaders attack the Perisphere!

[continued from p. 48] Issue #99, with art by Mike Collins and adapted from the cover to The Avengers #71, is the middle installment of a trilogy, and finally brings to life an idea I first had over three decades ago. In 1984 I found a second-hand copy of Michael Fleisher’s Great Superman Book, and came across Superman’s foe Funnyface. Being a fan of the All-Star Squadron at that point, I decided that there really should be a tale in which the villain animated super-heroes, rather than newspaper strip characters (as in All-Star Squadron #66), to face off against the Squadron. As a reader of the 1970s Freedom Fighters series, I recalled the thinly disguised homages to those characters who had appeared as part of an unofficial crossover with The Invaders, and thought they would be the obvious (and DC-owned) heroes to use here. I’m sure Roy might have been attracted to the idea of pitting his two wartime teams against each other in some form, if the opportunity had arisen—and this might have provided a neat way of doing so without an actual inter-company crossover. The fictional Americommando, from The Crusaders, takes the place of Captain America here—it’s convenient that he was depicted with a triangular shield—and, having opted to use imitations of Timely Comics’ biggest stars, it seemed only fair that

#100: Art by Stephen Baskerville; homage to Marvel Premiere #30 (Jack Kirby & Frank Giacoia). The All-Star Squadron’s clash with Funnyface concludes in this anniversary special, as the comic-strip crime-master brings an army of comicbook characters to life to destroy the team!

DC’s leading characters should be the ones to meet them in battle (Wonder Woman seems as if she’d have more of a chance against the Sub-Mariner stand-in than Yellowjacket had against the real Namor). Those are some individualized comments on a few of the black-&-white and colored “faux covers” that have been printed on these several pages. More, hopefully, in a few short issues…. More of the faux All-Star Squadron covers by John Joshua & his talented compeers will be seen in a near-future issue of Alter Ego. John Joshua discovered comics in 1973 (Marvel’s UK Avengers Weekly #2, reprinting the classic Lee/Kirby “Invasion of the Lava Men”). In the years that followed, the annual JLA/JSA crossovers, Marvel’s Invaders, and DC’s mid-1970s All-Star Comics made him a fan of the Golden Age super-heroes—so it’s no surprise that All-Star Squadron is his all-time favourite comic. When he retired a few years ago, he decided to have a go at commissioning some art, thinking that he might come up with an idea or two for some covers which had never seen print. As he’s now the owner of more than 200 faux covers, he’s starting to wonder whether this was such a good idea, after all….

Edited by ROY THOMAS The first and greatest “hero-zine”—ALL-NEW, focusing on GOLDEN AND SILVER AGE comics and creators with ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS, UNSEEN ART, P.C. Hamerlinck’s FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America], MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY’S Comic Fandom Archive, and more!

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

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

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

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ALTER EGO #173

ALTER EGO #174

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

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!

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

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

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

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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!

Celebration of veteran artist DON PERLIN, artist of WEREWOLF BY NIGHT, THE DEFENDERS, GHOST RIDER, MOON KNIGHT, 1950s horror, and just about every other adventure genre under the fourcolor sun! Plus Golden Age artist MARCIA SNYDER—Marvel’s early variant covers— Marvelmania club and fanzine—FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT on Cracked Mazagine, & more!

Golden Age great EMIL GERSHWIN, artist of Starman, Spy Smasher, and ACG horror—in a super-length special MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT by MICHAEL T. GILBERT—plus a Gershwin showcase in PETER NORMANTON’s From The Tomb— even a few tidbits about relatives GEORGE and IRA GERSHWIN to top it off! Also FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and other surprise features!

Celebrating the 61st Anniversary of FANTASTIC FOUR #1—’cause we kinda blew right past its 60th—plus a sagacious salute to STAN LEE’s 100th birthday, with never-before-seen highlights—and to FF #1 and #2 inker GEORGE KLEIN! Spotlight on Sub-Mariner in the Bowery in FF #4—plus sensational secrets behind FF #1 and #3! Also: FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, a JACK KIRBY cover, and more!

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Michael T’s frontispiece for Graphitti’s 1986 Elric of Melniboné graphic novel collecting the six-issue comicbook series from Pacific Comics. Roy Thomas adapted the stories, with P. Craig Russell sharing the art chores. Newly colored for this printing. [Elric & other characters TM & © Michael Moorcock & Multiverse, Inc.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Michael T. Gilbert’s 2023 Comic Art Portfolio!

by Michael T. Gilbert

hen not otherwise engaged writing “Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!” for this magazine, or scripting or drawing comicbooks, your humble host occasionally takes on commissions. Once in a while I even do a comicbook pin-up or two just for fun. I’ve run some of my other drawings in the past, and Roy suggested it might be time for another art display. So, without further ado…

Elric and Arioch! In 1982, P. Craig Russell and I began drawing a six-issue Elric of Melniboné series for Pacific Comics, scripted by Roy Thomas. For those unfamiliar with Elric, he was a sword & sorcery anti-hero, written by celebrated fantasy author Michael Moorcock as something of an anti-Conan. A weak, pale albino, Elric derived magical strength from his demonic sword. In time, Elric became totally dependent on his sword’s magic, not unlike a drug addict. Elric’s greatest foe was the god Arioch, who could take the form of a beautiful boy, or a grotesque monster. I was commissioned to do a picture of Elric, and the chap who hired me told me to draw anything I wanted. Cool! I thought it would be fun to show Elric, his demonic sword, and both aspects of Arioch. I tend to do my best work when I’m given the greatest latitude, and I was very happy with the results here. For this drawing, I attempted to channel my old Elric of Melniboné co-artist, P. Craig Russell. The art was done in black & white, but I later colored it on computer for use here.

Double Trouble! Michael T. draws two aspects of Elric’s foe, the evil god Arioch! [Characters © Michael Moorcock; art © Michael T. Gilbert.]

Michael T. Gilbert’s 2023 Comic Art Portfolio!

NoMan! I’ve always had a fascination for Tower Publications’ NoMan, a member in good standing of Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents (a group of super-powered agents working under the auspices of the United Nations). Tower’s invisible hero’s first story came courtesy of Larry Ivie and Reed Crandall for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #1 in Nov. 1965. NoMan was actually aged Professor Jennings, who traded his failing body for a series of interchangeable bionic bodies, cloaked by a special cape of invisibility.

A number of exceptional artists graced his comic, including Reed Crandall, Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, and Wally Wood. When NoMan got his own short-lived title, the great Wally Wood drew the covers of the two issues. Wood sketched out a couple of different cover layouts for issue #2, the last in the series. Intrigued by the rejected version, I drew an imaginary Wood-inspired NoMan cover. Afterwards, I Photoshopped the NoMan logo for added authenticity. It’s hard to beat Wood’s terrific original cover— but I tried!

The published cover to NoMan #2 by Wally Wood. [All art on this page TM & © John Carbonaro.]

(Above:) Gilbert’s NoMan cover based on Wood’s layout (seen at left). (Left:) Rejected Wood layout for issue #2.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

More Fun! I’ve always had an affinity for macabre heroes, and DC’s Spectre was among the first and possibly the best. Originally created by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily, the Golden Age series appeared in the inappropriately named More Fun Comics. For this commission I decided to draw an alternate More Fun Comics #61 cover. The original featured Howie Sherman’s Dr. Fate (another mystical More Fun feature). My version starred a giant figure of The Spectre battling the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It’s one of my favorites, and even more so when I later colored it. And, speaking of The Spectre…

Howard Sherman drew the eerie Dr. Fate cover at left, for More Fun Comics #61 (Nov. 1940). Later, Michael T. did the imaginary version above, starring The Spectre! [TM & © DC Comics].

Michael T. Gilbert’s 2023 Comic Art Portfolio!

This 1987 Gilbert drawing was originally planned as the splash page to DC’s Secret Origins #15. Instead, a reworked version of Gilbert’s cover drawing replaced it. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Spectre Transformed! (Above left:) Gilbert’s original cover illustration repurposed as the splash page to Secret Origins #15 (June 1987). (Middle:) Gilbert’s cover as he originally intended. (Right:) The published cover, featuring Deadman and The Spectre as drawn by Ed Hannigan and Dick Giordano. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“The Day Jim Corrigan Died… The Spectre Was Born!” Thirty-six years ago, scripter Roy Thomas and I did a retelling of the coming of DC’s Golden Age hero The Spectre. The story appeared in their Secret Origins series (Vol. 1, #15, June 1987, to be precise!). I drew the 23-page story plus a prospective cover. The art on the preceding page was originally intended to be the symbolic splash page. However, Secret Origins was an extra-size two-story comic— and the other half of that issue was to be devoted to another DC mystic hero, Deadman. Unfortunately, that left us with two potential covers and only one comic to display either of them. More unfortunately, mine was the one they decided to toss (the fools!!). The editor (that’s YOU, Roy!) dropped my original splash page, replacing it with my cover image. As a result, readers never got to see my original splash… until now! Spooky, no? That’s it for now, art lovers. Those curious about commission prices can contact me at mgilbert00@comcast.net Special thanks to art patron James Hall. ‘Til next time…

Moving Day (Right:) When Michael T.’s original final page—showing “Gat” Benson blasting Jim Corrigan as The Spectre looms over the scene—was dropped at the last minute, this next-to-last page became the final one. The “The Spectre was born!” lettering was also moved from the aborted final page to the last panel. [TM & © DC Comics.]

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JON B. COOKE’s all-new history of the notorious all-in-one comics company, from the 1940s to the ’70s, with GIORDANO, DITKO, STATON, BYRNE and more!

MICHAEL EURY examines team-up comic books of the Silver and Bronze Ages of Comics in a lushly illustrated selection of informative essays, special features, and trivia-loaded issue-by-issue indexes!

Examines US War comics from EC, DC COMICS, WARREN PUBLISHING, CHARLTON, and more! Featuring KURTZMAN, SEVERIN, DAVIS, WOOD, KUBERT, GLANZMAN, KIRBY, and others!

History of over 300 TV shows and 2000+ comic book adaptations, from well-known series (STAR TREK, PARTRIDGE FAMILY, THE MUNSTERS) to lesser-known shows.

GLEN CADIGAN’s bio of the artist who redesigned the Legion of Super-Heroes and introduced X-Men characters Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Logan!

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST BULLPEN

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JOHN SEVERIN

Collects all seven issues of JON B. COOKE’s A spirited biography of the EC COMICS and little-seen self-published zine, produced just MAD mainstay, co-creator of Western strip American Eagle, 40+ year CRACKED magaafter the original COMIC BOOK ARTIST zine contributor, and Marvel Comics artist. ended its TwoMorrows run in 2003!

IT CREPT FROM THE TOMB

Digs up the best of FROM THE TOMB (the UK’s preeminent horror comics history magazine), with early RICHARD CORBEN art, HP LOVECRAFT, and more!

JACK KIRBY’S DINGBAT LOVE

The final complete, unpublished Jack Kirby stories in existence: Two unused 1970s DC DINGBATS OF DANGER STREET tales, plus TRUE-LIFE DIVORCE & SOUL LOVE mags!

Documents the genesis of JACK KIRBY'S FOURTH WORLD series, his gods in THOR and other strips, how those influenced his DC epic, and affected later series like ETERNALS and CAPTAIN VICTORY!

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HERO-A-GO-GO!

KIRBY & LEE: STUF’ SAID

REED CRANDALL

Illustrator of the Comics

MAC RABOY

Master of the Comics

MIKE GRELL

OLD GODS & NEW

LIFE IS DRAWING WITHOUT AN ERASER

Presents JACK KIRBY and STAN LEE’s own words to examine the complicated relationship of the creators of the Marvel Universe! (176-page COLOR SOFTCOVER) $26.95 (Digital Edition) $12.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-094-6

History of Crandall’s life and career, from Golden Age Quality Comics, to Warren war and horror, Flash Gordon, and beyond!

Documents the life and career of the master Golden Age artist of Captain Marvel Jr. and other classic characters!

Career-spanning tribute to the Legion of Super-Heroes & Warlord comics art legend!

Looks at comics' 1960s CAMP AGE, when spies liked their wars cold and their women warm, and TV's Batman shook a mean cape!

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In Memoriam

Frank Thorne (1930-2021)

“[He] Touched A Lot Of Lives” by Stephan A. Friedt

enjamin Franklin Thorne was born June 16, 1930, in Rahway, New Jersey, and passed away at home in Scotch Plains, NJ, on March 7, 2021. Into the years between those two dates, he crammed a lifetime of exuberant fantasy. I met Frank at the San Diego Comic-Con in 1978, through my friend Wendy Pini. They and others were performing their “Red Sonja and the Wizard” stage show. But Frank wasn’t just a wizard on the stage; he was a wizard at drawing comics as well. Artist Michael T. Gilbert has detailed: “He started out as a pretty straight cartoonist, drawing romance comics for Standard Publications, beginning in 1948. He then worked on a number of newspaper strips and comicbooks, including Perry Mason, Flash Gordon, and The Green Hornet. Lots of work for Dell and Gold Key comics, including the Mighty Samson series.” In the early 1970s he drew “Enemy Ace,” “Son of Tomahawk,” and “Korak, Son of Tarzan” for DC Comics. Frank made his first really big splash in comicbooks with Marvel’s (and Robert E. Howard’s) Red Sonja, beginning in 1976. He went on to do numerous creator-owned projects, including writing and illustrating Moonshine McJugs for Playboy, Lann for Heavy Metal, and Danger Rangerette for National Lampoon. He also produced several erotic graphic novels for Fantagraphics Books, including Ghita of Alizarr, The Iron Devil, and The Devil’s Angel. A scanning of the Grand Comics Database shows over 1100 entries, in 19 countries, linked to his name. Dark Horse Comics executive David Scroggy notes: “For his 90th birthday, his friend Cathy Workman organized a book of messages to Frank and asked me to participate. I am grateful for that opportunity to convey my appreciation to him. Here (in part) is what I wrote: “‘1975. I was a clerk in a comic book store, Pacific Comics. I also was on the committee of a local event called San Diego ComicCon. Most of my duties at those early Comic-Cons revolved around the programs. It certainly caught my attention when you and young Wendy Pini came forth as The Wizard and Red Sonja. The

Frank Thorne as The Wizard, with Wendy Pini as one of the most fetching incarnations of Red Sonja in the late-’70s show that often showcased several Sonjas. Wendy went on to co-create, write, and draw the popular Elfquest comics series. Photo from the Internet, from an unidentified newspaper. [© the respective copyright holders.] Also seen is Thorne’s cover for Marvel Feature #4 (May 1976), in which Red Sonja appeared (following her debut in the pages of Conan the Barbarian) before being awarded her own titular magazine. Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © Red Sonja Properties LLC.]

chemistry between you two was special…. It was a great act, and set the tone for future conventions rife with cosplay. You two made history with those performances. “‘As Pacific Comics grew into something more than a couple of back-issue and new comics shops, my job grew along with it…. When you sent in your Ghita of Alizarr original art, it more than impressed me. Not only the work itself, but the ready-forreproduction, clean, crisp pages. There was no production left to do; it was perfect. I knew I was working with a genuine pro. We were so proud to be the first publisher of that book…. I would often point back to that as an example, most often to newer artists or fledgling packagers. This, boys, is how it is done! “‘Another aspect of our all-too-short working relationship that sticks with me was your unfailing sense of humor. Your positive attitude is as inspirational as the work you do. [Through you] I learned that, although we cannot control the things that life throws at us, we can often control how we choose to react to them.” Frank Thorne touched a lot of lives, and we are all a little bit better because of it…”

In Memoriam

M. Thomas Inge (1936-2021)

“Comics As Culture”

by Stephan A. Friedt

omics as a medium of artistic expression have always gathered more respect in Europe than in the United States. M. Thomas Inge spent his life trying to change that difference. Born in Newport News, Virginia, on March 18, 1936, he attended Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, VA, obtaining Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Spanish in 1960—and from Vanderbilt, in 1964, a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. degree in English and American Literature. After teaching at Vanderbilt, he joined the faculty of the Department of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University, where he taught the first accredited course on American Humor; it included study of comics strips as an important source of cultural identity. In 1969, at Virginia Commonwealth University, he taught and later (from 1974-80) chaired the English Department and the Clemson University English departments. Upon being accepted as a Fulbright Lecturer,

M. Thomas Inge and the cover of his most popular book, Comics as Culture. [Characters TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Thomas spent time as a teacher in Spain (19671968), Argentina (1971), Moscow (1978), and Prague (1994). He worked for the US State Department as Resident Scholar in American Studies with the US Information Agency. Thomas Inge was one of the original founders of the Popular Culture Association… one of the first academics to teach a comics appreciation class… and one of the earliest to write about comic strips, graphic novels, and comicbooks and their place in our culture. He authored or edited more than 60 books, among them the three-volume Handbook of American Popular Culture (1979, 1989, 2002) and the groundbreaking Comics as Culture (1990). In 2017 he was referred to frequently in the book The Secret Origins of Comics Scholarship as “a shaker and a mover in the field of comics scholarship for over 40 years.” Thomas was instrumental in establishing the Comic Arts Collection at Virginia Commonwealth University, donating thousands of books, comicbooks, graphic novels, and miscellaneous materials from his personal collection. An invaluable addition to this was his collection of fanzines, journals, newsletters, and books related to the history and art of all aspects of comic art and popular culture. In 2018, PCA awarded him their highest honor, the Lynn Bartholome Eminent Scholar Award, which recognizes distinguished scholars who have made significant contributions to the study of popular and American culture. He was 85 when he passed, and left behind a legion of students, fans, and colleagues who spoke highly and fondly of his work.

In Memoriam

Andy Yanchus (1944-2021)

“A Great Memory For Details” by Richard Rubenfeld

y old friend Andrew P. Yanchus, who passed away following a long illness last September, had not one, but two, professional careers rooted in his childhood hobbies: comicbooks and plastic modeling kits. According to his sister Pat, while they were growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950s, “there were always comicbooks around… [particularly] Blackhawk, TV Western adaptations, and anything having to do with space.”

to hold his own in a group that included the likes of Len Wein and Marv Wolfman!

Andy Yanchus Also seen: the “Aurora Comic Scenes” booklet illustrated by Neal Adams. [Tarzan TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

True story: In July 1993, my young sons and I ran into Andy at the Star Trek retrospective at the Hayden Planetarium. He astonished us by identifying the many details of the models of the USS Enterprise and USS Excelsior used in filming the original series that were actually comprised of spare parts from old Aurora models. As I said, he had a great memory for details.

He called his skill in assembling models “an obsession that led to a full-time occupation.” By 1965, after studying at the Pratt School of Industrial Design, he became a designer and sculptor in the Research and Development Dept. of Aurora Plastics Company, then a leading toy and hobby kit company. As project manager for the hobby kit line, he worked on or oversaw a wide range of projects, including “Monster Scenes” and the “Black Beauty” car from TV’s Green Hornet. Andy believed that hiring his close friend Dave Cockrum as a designer was one of his best decisions. Dave’s kits for the Frankenstein Monster and the Creature from the Black Lagoon clearly show he was right! [See Alter Ego #163.] Andy was also actively involved in the creation of the “Aurora Comic Scenes” (1974-75), ten model kits inspired by popular comicbook heroes, whose instruction books were illustrated by John Romita, Neal Adams, Curt Swan, et al. In 1976 Andy began a 17-year career as a colorist for Marvel. The key to his success at Aurora and Marvel undoubtedly was his memory for and attention to detail. As noted in Alter Ego #143, we were both active in the late 1960s in the New York-based fan group, TISOS [“The Illegitimate Sons of Superman”]. Strongly opinionated, he was more than able

Art by John Romita. Captain America TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

offspring or by friends) those of Gardner Fox, John Broome, Chester Kozlak, Joe Simon, and Joe Giella—Joe G., of course, is very much alive and well at this writing. I pasted the latter five into the bound volume. That’s 14 autographs in all.

But, by my count, that still leaves me needing 39 more autographs to make my little collection complete… so I thought I’d list the “hold-outs” here and see if anyone out there in fanland (or prodom) can help me attain any of the others. Naturally, I’m willing to make deals for the signatures, but I must warn the terminally greedy at the outset: This is only an interest of mine, not an obsession to be fed at any cost. At any rate, the personal signatures I need are those of: Stanley Aschmeier (a.k.a. Stan Josephs) John Belfi Alexander (“Steve”) Brodie Sam Burlockoff Jack Burnley Bernard Baily Arthur Cazeneuve Ed Dobrotka Lee Elias Whitney Ellsworth Lou Ferstadt Ben Flinton M.C. Gaines Joe Gallagher Frank Giacoia Chad Grothkopf Frank Harry E.E. Hibbard

t’s always a pleasure for me (Ye Editor, Roy, whatever) to see both of this mag’s miraculous “maskots,” Alter Ego (b. 1986) and Captain Ego (b. 1964)—plus their youthful alter egos Rob Lindsay and Alter Albright—in the same illo, and that’s what our Australian-bornand-raised artist Shane Foley has done above with the inspiration of Brian Murray’s cover for 1987’s The Young All-Stars #7. Thanks to him, and to colorist Randy Sargent, for an exemplary job! [Alter Ego & Rob Lindsay TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas – costume designed by Ron Harris; Alter & Captain Ego TM & © Roy Thomas & Estate of Bill Schelly—created by Biljo White.]

Before we get into this issue’s correspondence, I want to make an up-front request for help in a long-term project of mine that I’ve neglected for far too long. Several decades ago, I decided I’d try to collect as many signatures as I could from the writers, artists, and editors of my all-time favorite comicbook, the 1940-1951 All-Star Comics, by getting them to autograph the inside covers of my bound edition of issues #33-41 of that series. While they still walked amongst us, I was fortunate to get the signatures of Julius Schwartz, Robert Kanigher, Mart Nodell, Irwin Hasen, Harry Lampert, Carmine Infantino, Creig Flessel, Joe Kubert, and Sheldon Moldoff. In recent years I’ve been lucky enough to have been sent (by the artists’ generous

Jack Kirby Bernard Klein Dr. William M. Marston Sheldon Mayer Winslow Mortimer Martin Naydel [Nadle] Bill O’Connor Bob Oksner Arthur Peddy H.G. Peter Howard Purcell Paul Reinman Pierce Rice Bernard Sachs Leonard Sansone Harold (Hal) Sharp Howard Sherman Alex Toth Ted Udall (real name: Wes Ingals) Dorothy Roubicek Woolfolk Cliff Young

Thanks for listening! Now, on to missives re Alter Ego #171, whose lead feature was an interview with Terry Gustafson, son of Golden Age artist Paul Gustavson (whose name was actually spelled with an “f,” we learned)… though there were various other features that spoke to the readers as well. First, a few lines from regular and welcome commenter Bernie Bubnis:

“The Will [Or Maybe The WON’T!] Of William Wilson” It’s been several years since we were last informed of a newly discovered specimen of original artwork from the never-published mid-1940s “Justice Society of America” adventure “The Will of William Wilson,” whose curious history has been told in The All-Star Companion, Vol. 1, and elsewhere. No room to go into more detail, but here, courtesy of Jim Hofrichter and Heritage Art Auctions, is a tier of panels from the “Atom” chapter of that long-lost issue, scripted by JSA co-creator Gardner Fox and illustrated by Chester Kozlak… even if The Mighty Mite himself is not in evidence. Thanks, people! We know we’ll never pull together the entire 48-page story, but the hunt is half the fun! At present, there now exist something like 57½ issues of Roy’s all-time favorite comic! [TM & © DC Comics.]

re:

Hi Roy,

I always enjoyed Paul Gustavson’s work as a kid, but never knew his name… only his style. His son does an excellent job with this interview. I learned a lot about an artist I really admired. He was able to fill in some pieces of information and, combined with Arndt’s bottomless pit of info, it was a top-of-the-line interview.

Michael Gilbert is working harder than ever with his features. But Bob Powell is worth the effort. Always one of my favorite artists to steal from. Bernie Bubnis

We doubt there were any readers of #171 who didn’t find something fascinating to read (and to look at) therein, since Gustavson was clearly one of the best of the artists first at early Timely/Marvel, then at Quality Comics. However, we’ll admit we were surprised to receive this e-mail from oft-contributor Ger Apeldoorn: Hi Roy—

I have not yet read the Gustavson issue. I usually read at least the lead article as soon as the magazine arrives, but I have been running into many questionable attributions at the Grand Comics Database, where [the names of] artists like Jack Cole were replaced by [that of Paul] Gustavson. Now, I know my Cole, and I can tell you that most of these are wrong. All of the [re-attributions] were done by Gustavson’s son, who is the subject of the interview in #179. I am not looking forward to reading what he is saying there. Ger Apeldoorn

To date, we haven’t received a follow-up communication from Ger, so we don’t know if, upon reading the interview with Terry Gustafson, he took issue with any of the attributions in the artwork reprinted there. We hope he’ll send us his thoughts and analyses on reading the interview and examining the accompanying art, since, if any errors of accreditation were actually made, we’d like to correct them as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. Naturally, we assume that any errors of identification either way were made in good faith. Mistakes are bound to happen. Next, this from Ian Millsted in the United Kingdom (Britain):

Hi Roy,

With the references to Jim Steranko having contacted Paul Gustavson in the early ’70s, I wondered if Mr. Steranko has shown an indication of being willing to tell Alter Ego the behind-thescenes stories of his contacts with Golden Age creators in general at that time. That would make for an interesting read and a good fit for the magazine.

With regard to the [Abraham] Riesman book, I’d happily read it but will not pay money to do so. Maybe my local library may have a copy at some point. Further related to the many good points you make [in your review of the book], in your recent Ditko issue [#160] you mentioned the letter Stan Lee wrote in which he mentions the development of Dr. Strange and is quite happy to give Ditko the credit. I think Larry Lieber did quite a few covers for Marvel UK titles when he also edited those. I’d love to see a gallery of Larry’s UK covers with commentary from him, if he was able to do so. Ian Millsted

I myself interviewed Larry Lieber back in Vol. 3, #1, of Alter Ego, some 23 years ago… and I recently contacted him with the notion of having Richard Arndt do an in-depth follow-up. However, Larry says he hopes to tell his own story in writing soon, and we wish him Godspeed in doing so. We’ll be avid readers, as, I’m sure, will you, Ian. As for Jim Steranko, I’m afraid that that writer/artist generally prefers not to interact with any of TwoMorrows’ various magazines, for

“Jester” One Of Those Things Paul Gustavson created, drew, and evidently scripted a long run of “Jester” stories for “Busy” Arnold’s Quality Comics Group… including this one for Smash Comics #42 (April 1943). Thanks to Jim Kealy. [Jester TM & © DC Comics.]

reasons I don’t feel I can go into here. Jim and I have personally always gotten along, and several years ago he did allow Michael T. Gilbert to do a “Comic Crypt” episode on his magician days. He knows we’d be delighted to do an interview with him at any time. Issue #171 must have struck some sort of resounding chord in Britain, as, next, Rob Kirby from that sceptred isle weigh in: Hi Roy,

First off, I completely agree with you re Joe Maneely, in that he would surely have found a niche on select Marvel features in the 1960s, perhaps also in the black-&-white magazines a few years later, as his work always looked good in b&w when it appeared in some of the British weeklies.

Moving on to the (slightly odorous?) meat of the issue—I must admit I hadn’t come across [the book] True Believer in the slew of Lee-focused books released since he died, but I’ll be giving this one a miss, I think. However, I’d like to add a few Marvel UK-related footnotes to your own musings, if I may. You mention the [notecards Stan Lee often carried in his pocket to aid his memory]. At one point later in his 1975 appearance at the Roundhouse in London, on the video recording at the AHC in Wyoming, he pulls out a small notebook to jot down a request from one of the audience that he wanted to look into when he got back to America. This concerned FOOM having

[comments & correspondence]

British-oriented features, too, as the magazine had been marked to UK readers right from #1 through their various weeklies post-1972. Soon afterward, these began—fan power in action!

From what I’ve been told by Ray Wergan, the man tasked with heading up the London end of Marvel’s new foreign outpost—as well as from what I’ve seen in various documents Stan gifted to the AHC—it’s clear that Chip [Goodman] certainly wasn’t in a position above Stan. Nevertheless, and this is often the way of these things, his position was more nuanced, and I’m told that he was regularly crossing the Atlantic along with Stan and Al Landau, as well as attending the crucial meeting at High Holborn in London in 1972 that gave birth to The Mighty World of Marvel that autumn. He is also documented as attending a meeting with the advertising agency KMP during late October 1973, which narrows it down a little bit further as to when he [Goodman] may have left Marvel for the new Atlas outfit. I should add that Sol Brodsky also made it across to London at least once during 1973, visiting the print/packaging plant they were using at the time, as there were some issues to resolve. Rob Kirby

Thanks for more on the British perspective on the Marvel Age of Comics as it proceeded across the pond, Rob. Of course, Chip Goodman was Stan’s superior until spring or summer of 1974, when Marvel Comics was split off from the rest of Magazine Management to become a separate company in the Cadence conglomerate, with Stan as publisher and president. Next up: I’m always delighted to hear from Ted White, longtime professional writer and editor who, in the months before the first run of Alter Ego began under Jerry Bails in early 1961, wrote one of the earliest nostalgic/historical articles on comics (on DC, as it happened) as the second installment of the fabled “All in Color for a Dime” series in Dick & Pat Lupoff’s SF/pop culture fanzine Xero. We’ll have a disagreement or two a bit further down, but hopefully all in the spirit of getting at the ever-elusive truth: Hi Roy,

I read—or at least page through—every issue of Alter Ego when it arrives, and marvel (no pun!) at all the detail you cram in. Issue #171 was no exception, and I thoroughly enjoyed the piece on Paul Gustavson (or Gustafson), and even more your review of the book on Stan Lee.

the newspaper Spider-Man strip met its “demise in 2019 following Stan’s death.” I subscribe to The Washington Post, and it’s still running the strip. Are those re-runs/reprints? [EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes. Those are re-runs of strips from a few years earlier, by Larry Lieber, Alex Saviuk, and myself, under Stan’s aegis.] In the letter column, following John Benson’s letter, you state: “The ‘comic meetings’ to which John refers are what were soon called the ‘first Fridays,’ as that quickly became the day of each month on which these informal get-togethers were held, at first (I think) at my apartment….”

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I write as someone who attended most if not all of those meetings from their inception. To begin with, they were never on Fridays. I think they were on Tuesdays. Definitely not Fridays, as all my Friday evenings were taken up by the bi-weekly meetings, on alternate Fridays, of two NYC SF fan clubs, the Fanoclasts (which I hosted and John Benson occasionally attended) and FISFA (hosted by Mike McInerney and Rich Brown).

Nor were you the first to host the comics meetings—which I always referred to as The Comic Art Group. They started before you moved to NYC. I recall the first meeting at your place, which is where I first met you. You were freshly at Marvel, after a very brief stint at DC. After your [1967] move to Brooklyn, meetings were hosted by [fan] Bill Pearson and [pro artist] Jeff Jones. Jeff’s apartment (with those high ceiling, allowing him to hang his massive canvases on his walls) was on a lower floor, but on a much higher floor was an apartment shared by, among others, Mike Kaluta, whom I met through these meetings and became friends with. Sometimes after the meetings at Jeff’s place broke up, we’d go up to Mike’s place to continue hanging out. At some point after I moved back to Virginia in September 1970, Neal Adams took over hosting, and by then it was a different, younger group of people at the meetings. I think the ones I liked best were at Bill Pearson’s, where people like Roger Brand, Gil Kane, Steve Ditko, and Wally Wood were regulars. Less than a dozen people, and convivial conversations (although Ditko said little). Others in attendance included John Benson, Bill Pearson, Dan Adkins, and myself. Roy Krenkel was also there a good bit in the 1968-69 period. And I recall one meeting at your place where I had a really solid conversation with Trina Robbins (whom I’d known for ten years) before Gilbert Shelton dropped by to pick her up for a trip west—the only time I ever met him.

But what stopped me cold was your statement on page 48 that

Ted White

A Spider’s Web Re-spun This “retread” Amazing Spider-Man comic strip appeared for the date Sept. 1, 2022, on King Features’ online comics site. Whether the strip still (re-)runs in any actual newspapers, more than a year after Ted White’s e-mail, we couldn’t say. By way of reference, this daily featuring Spidey, J. Jonah Jameson, and the Hulk originally appeared in newspapers dated April 26, 2018. Script by Roy Thomas; art by Larry Lieber & Alex Saviuk. And no, the creative team members don’t receive financial compensation for the re-use. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

re:

In another e-mail, Ted, our mutual fan/colleague John Benson concurs with you that “the informal comics meetings were not called First Friday. Deliberately on my part, they never had an official name.” I’ll confess to my being in error on that point—at least in part— but I think you’ll see how that happened when you read John’s further commentary below. For decades now, I have indeed heard those halcyon assemblages referred to as “First Fridays,” not as “First Tuesdays” or anything similar… and I guess I sloppily picked up the habit myself, without much thinking about it. Back in the day, I never paid that much attention to the precise day of the week on which they were held; since I lived in Manhattan most of that period, it was no more a problem for me to host (or to attend) on a Friday than on a Tuesday. Many, however, would’ve preferred Tuesdays because, if they worked in “the city,” they desired to depart on Friday afternoons, perhaps for the weekend— something I rarely did. Still, after this day-of-the-week concurrence, even Ted and John begin to diverge somewhat, for John’s e-mail continues:

“They [the meetings] started on October 4, 1966, and met on Tuesdays. The first one to be held on Friday was January 8, 1971, when Jeff moved out of town; shortly thereafter, they ceased.” John then clarifies this by quoting himself in Bill Schelly’s interview with him that was spread over A/E #27-29: “Jeff’s neighbors complained about the noise on a week night, and we moved it to Friday, and then Jeff moved out of town and they ended. Eventually, somebody restarted them again as First Friday…. The later group was a completely different group.” Ah, so there actually was a “first Friday” grouping—two, if you count the earlier occasions at Jeff Jones’ place—and a combination of those two facts is probably how the “First Friday” thing got into my, and others’, heads. Interesting, though, that while Ted refers to an earlier comicsdiscussing group that was meeting for some time before I moved to New York City in June of 1965, a confab I don’t recall ever having heard of before, John Benson definitely recalls the “meetings” as “start[ing] on October 4, 1966”—which surely refers to the ones held at my apartment on East 87th Street, which I inhabited from mid-1966 till sometime in 1967, when I moved for a year to Brooklyn. Although neither Ted nor John notes the fact, my first wife Jeanie and I hosted them for some months circa the late 1960s in our new apartment on East 86th Street—until one night a couple of non-pro scumbags who piggybacked in with some regular attendees swiped a quartet of my valuable Golden Age comics. I ceased hosting the events at once and never did so again, though I was happy to attend the gatherings at Jeff’s and Bill’s. So why do I (aided and abetted by Messrs. White and Benson) give so much space over to what was, after all, not even a formal grouping of comics pros, as ACBA became in the first half of the ’70s? Because they provided an important interface between enthusiastic professionals, both with each other and with knowledgeable fans, resulting in various significant exchanges of information and ideas at a

time when there were no other regularly established assemblings of pros in particular. From my own standpoint, just as one example, I recall meeting Neal Adams at one of them (I’m pretty sure it was at Pearson’s place), not too long before he wandered into Marvel and waltzed out with the X-Men assignment, and I’m dead positive I expressed at that time an interest in having Neal work for Marvel… even though he managed to disremember that occasion and later maintain that he’d never met or heard of me before our teaming on the mutants. No doubt others could provide additional tales of contacts made and strengthened, which means that those “first whatevers” were of some import to the field.

And Ted, of course, is off-date, though understandably so, in believing that I began hosting the meetings very soon after I came to New York City (i.e., “freshly at Marvel”). October 1966 was, in fact, well over a year after my arrival at DC, then Marvel—and my East 87th Street pad was already my third domicile in Manhattan, counting the several months at Dave Kaler’s place on the Lower East Side (with the infamous 177A Bleecker Street address in Greenwich Village in between). Not that that’s a big deal—all of us have minor lapses in memory now and then. And the “re:” section of Alter Ego is a good place to discuss them in public, no? One aspect of A/E #171 mentioned in a number of e-mails was my “book report” (reprinted from the online Hollywood Reporter with a new and lengthy addendum) on Abraham Riesman’s biography True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee. In the new A/E notes, I quoted pro writer Frank Lovece, a good friend of Larry Lieber, Stan’s younger brother and an early Marvel writer and artist, as Frank corrected several statements about Stan attributed to Larry in Riesman’s screed. Frank’s additional recollections and opinions follow: Hi Roy—

I might have given a misimpression that [Abraham] Riesman said these things personally to Larry [Lieber]— Riesman had actually done so in print! On July 2, after Larry, my wife, and I had gone out to lunch, we hung out at his apartment over martinis, his go-to cocktail, and together we read over a couple of passages about him/quoting him in the book. I specify them below in my statement about Riesman that you asked about:

In The Beginning… The controversy over “who-did-what” in the celebrated team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby begins at least with the first issue of The Fantastic Four, cover-dated November 1961. Pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by George Klein: words & editing by Stan Lee. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

As an author and a journalist for more than four decades, writing for the likes of The Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Penthouse, Parents, Newsday, and many others, I’ve found multiple parts of Abraham Riesman’s book to be shoddy journalism, to put it charitably. Given Riesman’s impressive résumé, this seems to me likely the result of a conscious, cynical decision to write a “tellall” tome that fit his commercial agenda, and to ignore or downplay anything that did not fit his thesis. I don’t care that he writes for The New Yorker—this is still, in my opinion, unethical journalism. You don’t alter facts to fit your thesis— you change your thesis.

[comments & correspondence]

Script Tease—Part 1 (Right & below:) The first page of Otto O. Binder’s 1966 script adapting his early-1940s pulp-mag short story “Adam Link… Gangbuster.” As George Hagenauer points out, OOB broke the script down into panels without indicating page divisions—or even how many pages the story should run in Warren Publishing’s Creepy #13 (Feb. 1967). Since Binder’s “sympathetic robot” hero didn’t appear on the splash, we’ve reproduced a later page drawn by Joe Orlando. Thanks to GH. [Adam Link TM & © Otto Binder Estate.]

By the way of example, there were blatant inaccuracies and mischaracterizations in his description of Stan’s brother, Larry Lieber: Larry’s studio apartment with a separate kitchen and an alcove is hardly “microscopic” or “a breadbox”—in fact, it’s large for a studio, by Manhattan standards. And it’s in a luxury doorman high-rise on the tony Upper East Side, a fact Riesman ignored in order to paint the vital, outgoing, and financially comfortable Larry as some sorry old man, which he is not. Add pettiness to Riesman’s sins: Larry does not Otto O. Binder in any sense wear “Coke-bottle glasses.” His goatee does not “straggle across his face”—a way of saying untidy and unkempt, which it is not. Riesman writes unkindly of Larry keeping photos of his deceased wife and his deceased partner—what loving widower doesn’t, for God’s sake? And to write that an 87-year-old man has a “withered chest,” particularly since Larry did not take his shirt off for him, is both unkind and unnecessary—the man was 87 at the time. Except for his slouch, Larry actually looks pretty damn good for, now, 89. Frank Lovece

Thanks for the added information and thoughts, Frank. I didn’t go into Riesman’s gratuitous swipes in his book at Larry’s appearance in my own remarks, but they did indeed seem to me like a series of cheap shots— in a book already crammed full of them. Apparently, that biography’s oft-garbled comments re the so-called “Marvel Method” of writing comicbook scripts led another pro writer, George Hagenauer, to do a bit of textual and historical comparison of his own: Hi Roy,

Thanks for including pages of Stan Lee’s synopses in Alter Ego #171. While people talk a lot about the Marvel Method vs. full

script in the Silver Age, the discussion usually ignores how minimal a “full script” could be at that time. We tend to think of scripts in the modern sense—often with lots of detail about panel size, point of view—what angles to use.

Silver Age and Golden Age scripts were often much more limited. I recently got an Otto Binder script for an “Adam Link” story he did for Warren’s Creepy #13. While it is common today for scripts in whatever format used (and it can vary a lot) to be organized by page, Binder’s script starts with panel 1 and ends with panel 36! The artist then needed to organize it by page (and the script which has “7 pages” written on page 1 came in at 8 pages when drawn by Joe Orlando).

Binder was not the only one from the Golden Age to work in a panel as opposed to page format (though I have also seen scripts done by panels converted to a page format by an editor before they were sent to an artist). Binder’s panel descriptions (which are not captions or dialogues but unpublished guides to what occurs in the panel) are often one line or less. The entire script is seven and a half pages, mostly double-spaced. The synopsis you showed by Stan for a 7-page romance story is about three quarters of a page, densely singlespaced, equal to a page or more of Binder’s script. In contrast, there are single panels in some of Alan Moore’s scripts that equal the word count of Stan’s romance synopsis. But compared to a full script by Binder or others in the 1960s, Stan actually holds up pretty well. If I did a word count of Binder’s panel descriptions detached from captions and dialogue, I would not be surprised if it came close to the word count of Stan’s synopsis, which is mostly panel descriptions done in a broader fashion.

Visualizing a comicbook story like Stan did with page allocations for specific sections, without going through the normal processes many writers use of breaking it down on paper first by

re:

Script Tease—Part 2 (Left & below:) Gardner Fox’s DC scripts in the early 1960s included a small diagram of how the writer saw the individual panels’ relative shapes and sizes on each page. His directions for the JLA-featuring “Adam Strange” story in Mystery in Space #75 (May ’62) were followed to the letter by artists Carmine Infantino & Murphy Anderson. Thanks to Mike W. Barr. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Gardner F. Fox From the Comic Vine site.

page, is pretty amazing—but that is also what made Stan the success he was under often incredibly challenging working conditions. George Hagenauer

As your e-mail suggests, George, there have been almost as many approaches to comicbook scripting as there have been scripters themselves. For instance, in the same era when Otto Binder was writing his spare scripts for Creepy and artist Joe Orlando (perhaps partly because Orlando had previously already co-adapted Otto’s “Adam Link, Robot” stories for EC Comics a decade earlier), the scripts written by Gardner F. Fox for Justice League of America and other Silver Age comics that DC editor Julius Schwartz was mailing out as gifts to key fans were far more detailed—including the fact that Gar drew a miniature page-diagram for each page of script, showing his suggestions for the relative size of each individual panel! That same “book review” also inspired the latter musings from reader Kevin L. Cook: Dear Roy:

Your defense of Stan Lee in Alter Ego #171 brought several thoughts to mind. Before going any further, let me state that I believe Jack Kirby was a genius, and what I am about to write has nothing to do with who created what, Stan or Jack, but rather how Stan’s writing and exploration of comicbook themes, or comicbook tropes if you prefer, has never been given enough credit. I need a bit of space here to explain what follows. When the Covid pandemic broke in March 2020, I realized that I could be locked down at my home for several months, so I decided to embark on a project that I wanted to start for several years: read the entire Marvel Comics line starting with Fantastic Four #1 chronologically through the end of the 1960s….

The point is that, by 1965 and 1966, Stan started exploring a

number of themes throughout the line, and the stories I am pointing to cross over from titles produced by Stan and Jack to other titles with artists such as Don Heck, Gene Colan, or John Romita. In other words, this was something written deliberately by Stan and not something that could be credited to Jack. Stan explored three particular themes, really starting in late 1964 and cross over to early 1967. Themes that, while not controversial, were still rarely if never portrayed in DC Comics. To wit: the effect the death of a character has on the other characters in the comic, the redemption of a villain, and what happens when a hero’s secret identity is revealed or discovered.

The forerunner of the death effect was the death of Franklin Richards in FF #32, but it was examined more closely in 1965. It started with the death of the comic’s most recurring villain, Baron Zemo, in Avengers #15 (April). It was followed by the death of the hero’s girlfriend as illustrated by the death of Pamela Hawley in Sgt. Fury #18 (June) and concluded with the supposed death of Happy Hogan in Tales of Suspense #70 (October). Iron Man’s first thought balloon in TOS #71 reads: “Happy Hogan must not have died in vain.” TOS #70 was also the first example of the secret-identitybeing-revealed theme, as Iron Man realizes that the dying Happy Hogan knew that he was really Tony Stark, and Stan continued in Journey into Mystery #123 (March 1966), in a scene that Superman and Lois Lane readers had wanted to see for 25 years, as Don Blake dramatically reveals to Jane Foster that he is Thor. The two most daring stories are yet to come. The first is having the hero’s secret identity revealed to the entire world as Rick Jones believes Bruce Banner is dead and tells Glenn Talbot the Hulk’s secret in Tales to Astonish #77 (March). The next with that theme took place in

[comments & correspondence]

Spider-Man #39 (August), where SpiderMan’s arch-enemy, The Green Goblin, learns his secret identity. The John Romita cover was shocking to readers, as must have been the Kirby/Romita cover to TTA with Rick’s word balloon, “Bruce Banner is the Hulk!”

pages printed for the first time in A/E #171. We had said, without checking with Terry, that PG might be the writer. In addition, we regret the fact, pointed out to us by several alert readers, that the final two pages of that 3-page tale somehow got printed in reverse order. Still, embarrassing as that fact is, the main purpose was to display Gustavson’s original art, and that it definitely did!

Then, in a story that could not have been created without the idea of totally mocking the numerous DC titles where the hero’s girlfriend discovers the hero’s secret identity and then is fooled into thinking otherwise, Stan had fun introducing Mike Murdock in Daredevil #25 (February 1967) after Foggy Nelson and Karen Page learn Daredevil’s secret identity from reading a letter to DD from Spider-Man.

Bryan Stroud, who wrote the issue’s tribute to the late great Bob Fujitani, said he received a nice note from Bob’s daughter Susan correcting one point: “For the record, he was born on the small family farm in Kripplebush, NY. His father, Tom Fujitani, moved the family—Anna (Bob’s mother) and his two other brothers, Jim and Tom, to Cos Cob when they were very young. That’s where my father grew up and where he moved back to after my mother passed away.” Thanks to both of you for this addition.

Moving backwards a bit, let’s look at the villain-redemption motif. Stan had already made some villains sympathetic, most notably Doctor Doom in FF Annual #2, but here there are two classic examples. The first occurred with The Ox in Daredevil #15 (April 1966), and the second occurred just two months later in the single greatest story Stan ever scripted, FF #51 (June 1968).

Of Roy’s jaundiced review of Abraham Riesman’s True Believer, Howard Siegel ’Round “Midnight” wrote briefly that he feels “Abe Riesman This “Midnight” splash page from Smash Comics #39 did a fine research job and was pro and (Jan. 1943), featuring Quality’s own “Spirit” clone, con fair.” You’re more than welcome to your though unsigned, is attributed in the Grand Comics Rarely do we see Stan credited with opinion, of course, Howard; but you and I will Database to Paul Gustavson. Thanks to Doug Martin. examining these themes. It is not the have to agree to disagree on that. Yes, there [Midnight TM & © DC Comics.] creation of a character or a universe, but was considerable research done—but I feel he the way these themes appear in the book then used much of it in the service of what as you read through them. It is impossible became basically a hatchet job of a book, starting with the subtitle: The to believe that they occurred by accident, or that all plots were Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, indeed! created by the artists. John Romita would hardly have started plotting Daredevil immediately after joining Marvel, nor would he have started plotting Spider-Man with the first issue after he took over from Steve Ditko. Those ideas must have come from Stan. Plus, the progression of stories coming up one after another equals a pattern.

It is especially evident in the secret identity theme, where it is as if Stan in late 1965 wondered what was not done by DC, where he could break the mold, and the most dramatic three ideas were to have the hero reveal his identity to the woman he loves, have the hero’s arch-enemy discover that secret, and have the hero’s identity revealed to the world, all three ideas revolutionary in 1965. Roy, do you have anything to add or subtract from my thoughts here? Kevin L. Cook

Are you kidding, Kevin? We ran out of space for this letters section a couple of pages back! Glad to have your thoughts, though! Here are a few excerpts from others’ letters re A/E #171:

Joe Frank mentions that, while John Romita may have been “present, in the back seat of Stan’s car, for a Lee/Kirby FF plotting session… the issue in question was unlikely to be Diablo’s debut. That, from issue #30, was over a year before John joined Marvel.” You’re right there, Joe. I momentarily conflated two separate events, probably because I was present at neither: the creation of Diablo (which Stan always felt was one of his and Jack’s worst collaborations) and the plotting session that John R. mentioned overhearing in a car, no details of which he recalled. Terry P. Gustafson, son of Paul “Gustavson,” says that his father was definitely the scripter as well as the artist of the three 1973-74 “Jester”

Mike W. Barr, of Batman and The Outsiders and Camelot 3000 fame, writes that “[t]he films cited by Nick Caputo in A/E #171 in which Edward Arnold played a blind detective are Eyes in the Night (1942) and The Hidden Eye (1945). They were based on the Duncan Maclain novels of Baynard Kendrick, who also inspired Stirling Silliphant to create the 1971 TV series Longstreet, starring James Francisus as a blind insurance investigator…. To bring it full circle, Bob Kane later claimed (at least at the 1973 New York Comic Art Convention) to have created Longstreet, though he had nothing whatsoever to do with the show….” Got something to say about this issue of Alter Ego? Send that deathless comment to: Roy Thomas

32 Bluebird Trail

e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com

St. Matthews, SC 29135

Meanwhile, our long-running online chat group “Alter Ego Fans” is still chugging along at https://groups.io/g/Alter-Ego-Fans... and if you have any trouble signing up, please contact our marvelous moderator Chet Cox at mormonyoyoman@gmail.com and he’ll help you climb aboard. Discussions mostly center on Golden and Silver Age matters, interspersed by pleas from Roy T. for help with info or scans for issues of this mag.

In addition, John Cimino runs The Roy Thomas Appreciation Board on Facebook, which covers all things RT-related, including conventions, comics store appearances, obscure information, and whatnot. Try it—you’ll like it!

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“Album of Comic-Book Life” – Concluded The Second Half Of STANLEY KAUFFMANN’s Memories Of Fawcett Comics In The Early 1940s Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck INTRODUCTION: As laid out in detail in our previous issue, Stanley Kauffmann (1916-2013) was a famous and respected New York theatre and film critic for two-thirds of a century. After graduating in 1935 from New York University, he published his first novel, The King of Proxy Street, in 1941. Soon afterward, he spent nearly a year as an editor and staff writer for the B.W. Sangor art shop, which at the time produced material for the Pines/ Better/Nedor line of comicbooks. In December of 1942 he was hired as a comics editor at Fawcett Publications, a large company whose comicbooks were only one of its divisions—though a very profitable one, due primarily to the burgeoning popularity of Captain Marvel, but with the rest of The Marvel Family, Bulletman, Spy Smasher, and others also raking in dimes, many of which came from US servicemen during World War II. Between December 1942 and January 1944, he served as the editor of three Fawcett titles: Captain Marvel Adventures (the company’s top-selling comic), Captain Midnight (a licensed version of the popular radio character), and Wow Comics (featuring Mary Marvel, Mr. Scarlet, et al.)

The Critic & The Captain Alas, we never did manage to score a photo of Stanley Kauffmann in his mid-twenties, around the time he was editing for Fawcett Publications—so this 1971 one will have to do. Photo by Jerzy Kosinkski. By far the most important of the three Fawcett titles that Kauffmann edited from the turn of 1943 until very early ’44 was Captain Marvel Adventures, already well on its way to becoming for several years the top-selling comicbook on the planet. His issue #35 (May 1944) went on sale not long after he had traded in his Fawcett staff job for the freelance life of a novelist and, soon, theatrical and film critic. Art by C.C. Beck. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

After leaving Fawcett, Kauffmann became a critic in the field of the dramatic arts. From 1958 to 2013 he was the film reviewer for The New Republic magazine. Besides publishing several collections of his reviews over the years, he also scribed two memoirs. Ironically, it was the latter of these, Albums of a Life (1980), that included a chapter titled “Album of Comic-Book Life,” in which he playfully discussed his relatively short time in the comics field (though he virtually ignored the months spent with the Sangor shop). He had received his “first draft-call” in April of ’41, receiving a “4-F” classification because of an earlier medical operation. As noted last issue, Kauffmann used pseudonyms for Fawcett itself and for all its personnel, but nearly all of these have been easily identified since. Our only major alterations in the text have been to provide the real names of the protagonists, placing them between brackets after the use of the pseudonyms.

Fawcett itself was altered to “Tappan”; Kauffmann’s fellow comics editor Jane Magill became “Peg Molloy”; editor Henry Avelyn “Lynn” Perkins was “Colin James”; chief comics editor Rod Reed was referred to simply as “Hap”; editorial director Ralph Daigh became “Harold Knight”; Mechanix Illustrated editor Bill Williams mutated into “Virgil Burmeister”; comics heroes Captain Marvel and Captain Midnight were hidden behind the respective alter egos “Major Mighty” and “Nick Noonday”; and so on. The text is © 2007 Stanley Kauffmann, is reprinted with permission of Stanley Moss/Sheep Meadow Press, and was edited very slightly for this reprinting. —P.C. Hamerlinck.

Part 3

here was still another reason why Peg Molloy [editor Jane Magill] liked me. We both loathed Colin James [editor Henry Avelyn “Lynn” Perkins]. Nobody cared much for Colin [Lynn]; although some (like Hap [chief editor Rod Reed]) pitied him

FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America]

a little. She and I loathed him. Colin [Lynn] was British, in his mid-twenties, and tall and fair, with an airy slow-motion manner and a pretty schoolboy face. His accent was British upper middle class; his family were civil servants. Why he was in the United States during the war, apparently able-bodied and certainly exempt, he never explained; rather, he went to some pains to be mysterious about it with a cozy smile. Despite this coziness he lived in some terror of the US draft, though he never explained that, either—why he should be subject to the American draft. He was always importantly busy with the file of folders he kept between bookends on his desk—none of the rest of us had anything like that. He was basically remote even when he chose to be friendly and was always at least patronizing. Usually he was arrogant. I once suggested to Hap [Rod] that Colin [Lynn] might be some sort of British secret agent. Hap smiled wearily and said, “If that’s true, it’s going to be a long war.” Colin [Lynn] was good at his work, which ensured his place, and sometimes he came close to conscious parody of his own hauteur, which was amusing. But Peg [Jane] and I loathed him because he was slimy with his superiors or with anyone who could help him, condescending or cruel with those over whom he had some power. Occasionally we were visited by film people— producers and actors—because Tappan [Fawcett] published [movie] fan magazines, and visitors to that department were taken on a grand tour of the factory. Colin [Lynn] would always give film visitors the cordial British-gent treatment, would try to fasten on to the party, and often got himself invited to lunch or drinks. With the artists and writers who worked for him, he was silkily overbearing. With the messengers and such, he was pure sahib-with-the-gunbearers. He had in fact been born in Brazil, where his father had been a minor upcountry colonial official who lived like a prince. I once asked Colin [Lynn] how he liked Brazil. He shook his head sadly. “The wrong color, you know? And so few of them speak decent English.” It was the sort of remark that almost made me like him, it was almost as if he were capable of self-caricature. But besides the reasons I shared with Peg [Jane] for disliking him, I had a private reason. He adored his job. He edited three or four of the comic-books, the ones with a horror-emphasis, and he loved them. He would arrive in the morning with notes he had made during the night, he said, waking up from dreams about his magazines. His folders were full of projects and cross-references. He had long telephone conversations with artists and writers that were as complicated and rhetorical as if he were discussing foreign policy. (“But, my dear Alvin, let’s look at it from another aspect for a moment, shall we just? Suppose that the dam had burst before Baron Fujimiya fired his super-ray. That rather alters matters, doesn’t it? Give that some thought over the weekend, will you?”) I despised Colin’s [Lynn’s] total immersion in his work; it wasn’t

Henry Aveline (“Lynn”) Perkins Perkins had served from 1939-42 as associate editor of Weird Tales magazine before he (at least according to Wikipedia) gained entry to Fawcett’s comics line with his “Bulletman” story introducing The Weeper, a villain who is “convinced that life is sad and it’s criminal for people to be happy.” The latter made his debut in the “Bulletman” entry in Master Comics #23 (Feb. 1942), as drawn by the Jack Binder studio; he would reappear in several later stories. Perkins’ article on comicbook scripting for the April 1943 issue of the trade magazine Writers’ Journal was quoted and discussed in depth by Will Murray in the FCA section of A/E #157. [Bulletman & Bulletgirl TM & © DC Comics.]

true of anyone else in the office, even those who were not leading double lives like mine. I was Anglophile enough to feel that he was desecrating a good English education by not taking the work with several grains of salt. And I may also have been a bit ambiguously uneasy that he was on to something, as, in terms of subsequent cultural developments, he certainly proved to be. So he repelled and disturbed me, for modestly complex reasons, of which his whip-cracking was by far the worst. One day a black delivery boy brought him a sandwich from the drugstore on the ground floor. Colin [Lynn] made the boy wait while he opened the sandwich, examined the filling, telephoned downstairs and complained to the manager. Then he said to the boy, “Here’s the money for the sandwich since it’s here. But I certainly don’t intend to tip you for bringing me this garbage!” He waved the boy out. This was only the latest of similar actions. Peg [Jane] and I

Stanley Kauffmann’s “Album Of Comic-Book Life”—Concluded

“Twilight” Time Stories in the Kauffmann-edited Captain Midnight ran the gamut from the dramatically adventurous (#19, April 1944) to the outright humorous (#20, May ’44). Sgt. Twilight—a.k.a. Secret Squadron member Ichabod “Ikky” Mudd—was a creation solely of the comicbook version of Captain Midnight; on radio, Cap’s “Squadron” consisted of a couple of teenagers named Chuck and Joyce. Writers and artists of both these comics yarns are unidentified. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

decided to build on them. We hatched a plot with Virgil Burmeister [Bill Williams], who edited a home-mechanics magazine [Mechanix Illustrated] down the hall, a Midwesterner whose dislike for Colin [Lynn] was heightened by xenophobia. The next time Colin [Lynn] phoned down for a sandwich, our plot clicked into place. Peg [Jane] was waiting out at the reception desk for the delivery boy, tipped him and explained a bit of the joke, then took the sandwich out of the bag and replaced it with a well-wrapped three-day-old slice of pizza. I was inside and saw the boy come in with the bag and demand payment before he handed it over. Colin [Lynn] complied, with irritation. The boy left and, under my sidelong glance, Colin [Lynn] opened the bag and the package within. He turned red and white, which he did in continuing alteration when he was furious, and immediately reached for the telephone. He asked for the drugstore, but the switchboard operator had been primed for Peg’s [Jane’s] call. Immediately she connected him with Virgil Burmeister [Bill Williams]. Peg [Jane] was in there by now, standing next to Virgil [Bill] as he answered with a bland “Ye-es?” Colin [Lynn] then launched into a blast about the pig swill

he had just received. When he paused for breath, Virgil [Bill] said grimly, as Peg [Jane] later told me, “Listen, you limey bastard, it took two men twenty minutes to prepare that food for you, and if you don’t shut up and eat it, I’m going to come up there personally and shove every crumb of it down your ***damn throat!” Then he hung up. I saw Colin’s [Lynn’s] jaw wag, saw him fight for air. I saw more red and white. Then he whammed the cradle of his phone and asked for the drugstore again. This time, as per directions, he got the drugstore. When the manager answered, Colin [Lynn], as he thought, resumed the discussion, at the same pitch. I saw him flinch at the reply. I learned later that the manager very nearly did come up and punch his head, but I had to get out of the room before I burst. Peg [Jane] and I and Virgil [Bill] collapsed all over each other in his office. And for days thereafter Colin [Lynn] slunk in and out of the side doors of the building, afraid that the drugstore manager was waiting for him in the lobby. Time was plentiful, there in the comics department, so Peg [Jane] and I staged more counterattacks on Colin [Lynn], though he wasn’t aware of them as such. One day he ordered an artist to redraw three pages that had been done on speculation in the first place, as a sample. When the man left, Colin [Lynn] winked at Peg [Jane] and me and said, “I’ll never take them anyway, but the discipline will be good for him.” Peg [Jane] and I looked at each other. A few days later Colin [Lynn] got a draft notice in the mail.

FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America]

“Whoever I may be,” said Lenny calmly, protecting his turf, “I’m the guy who was hired to replace you.” And turned back to his job. “This is insufferable!” exclaimed Colin [Lynn]. “My files!” exclaimed Colin [Lynn]. “What sort of insufferable nonsense is this?” exclaimed Colin [Lynn]. He turned to us, and Peg [Jane] and I tried to look sympathetic as we bit the insides of our cheeks. “Who is this boor?” exclaimed Colin [Lynn]. “Watch yourself, buddy,” Lenny said quietly. Colin [Lynn] turned to Hap [Rod Reed], whose moon-face showed helpless compassion. Colin [Lynn] looked at me. I looked away as if the spectacle of replacement were too painful. Then Colin [Lynn] said sharply, “Very well. I shall go in directly and take this matter up with Horace Knight [Ralph Daigh].” The editorial director. “Oh, no you don’t, buddy.” Lenny had been coached; he was prepared for this move. He got up. “If anyone is going to see Horace [Ralph], buddy, it’s me. I’m the one who’s being kicked

You Only Die Twice! One particularly creepy story Lynn Perkins allegedly plotted (with scripter Otto Binder) was “The Gangsters from the Grave” in Wow Comics #8 (Dec. 1942), in which Mr. Scarlet and his young sidekick Pinky battle three reallife gunmen who are restored from the beyond. Captured by the cloaked crimebusters, they walk free from the courtroom when it is proved they are legally already dead—so our heroes have no choice but to fight them again and (by sheer luck, you understand) just happen to cause their deaths in the same manner in which they’d died in the first place. Art by the Jack Binder studio. Thanks to Comic Book Plus website. [Mr. Scarlet & Pinky TM & © DC Comics.]

It was obviously a mistake and he expostulated on the telephone three or four times that he was a British national, but he had to go to the board anyway on a specified date to clear it up. He was to be out all morning on the big day. I arranged with an actor friend of mine, Lenny G., who generally played hoods, to come in and sit at Colin’s [Lynn’s] desk, sweep his precious files into a drawer, puff a cigar (Colin [Lynn] hated cigars), and wait. I had explained the reasons, and Lenny agreed that it was all in a good cause. When Colin [Lynn] returned, he found this unshaven thug, tie pulled down, feet up on his desk, chewing on a big green cigar, looking over some sheets of artwork. Colin [Lynn] went his customary red and white, and demanded to know the meaning of all this. “You were drafted, right?” growled Lenny through his cigar. “I was not drafted!” said Colin [Lynn] hotly, while the red and white continued. “And I’ll trouble you, whoever you may be, to get up from my desk.”

Any Bonds Today? A Captain Marvel “public service” page imploring readers to buy “War Bonds & [War] Stamps,” from Captain Marvel Adventures #28 (Oct. 1943). Perhaps Fawcett editor Lynn Perkins figured that making such purchases and editing war-oriented comics should have exempted him from the US military draft. Kauffman says that another such ad “bought a commendation from the Writers’ War Board.” Art by C.C. Beck and his studio. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Stanley Kauffmann’s “Album Of Comic-Book Life”—Concluded

One Foot Out The Door Splash page from the Kauffmann-edited Captain Marvel Adventures #34 (April 1944). This issue would have gone on sale around January or February, about the time SK was resigning his position at Fawcett. Art by C.C. Beck and his studio; scripter unknown. [Shazam hero & Billy Batson TM & © DC Comics.]

was all a joke, yes?” He forced a sick smile as he looked at each of us. “A joke, yes?” We shook our heads in bewilderment and said that all we knew was what we had seen. This was the first time he had suspected anything; I clinched matters by confessing a few weeks later. Colin’s [Lynn’s] dream had come true: he got an offer to go to Hollywood and work for some fleabag studio [Republic Pictures] on horror and fantasy serials. He was to be a writer and story editor. He was ecstatic, in white and red. On his last day at Tappan [Fawcett], we all went out for drinks with him, to wish him moderately well. In the drinkiness, I made the mistake of thinking that, because he was leaving and leaving happily, I could tell him what had been happening to him and it might amuse him. He flushed his colors again, but forced a little laugh. A week later my apartment was raided by police detectives. The mayor of New York at the time was [Fiorello] La Guardia, the best mayor of my lifetime but a maniac on the subject of betting. Someone had written him an anonymous letter reporting that I was booking horse bets out of my apartment. Subsequently a detective showed me the letter; the phraseology was British.

around here.” He strode past Colin [Lynn], shoving him aside. “You just wait here, buddy boy, if you know what’s good for you.” Lenny hulked out and, as arranged, went straight to the elevators and left. Colin [Lynn] stood rigid by his desk, more white than red. After a while his impatience got the better of his fear, and he hurried down the hall to Harold’s [Ralph’s] office, where of course Harold’s [Ralph’s] secretary wanted to know what in the world he was talking about. He came back to our office, furious and curious. He looked sideways around the room with his little sandy eyes and said, “I suppose this

Like Wow! A pair of strong splash pages from Kauffmann’s Wow Comics #24 (May 1944). “Mary Marvel” scripted by Otto Binder, with art by his brother Jack Binder. The “Commando Yank” splash is by artist Edd Ashe; writer unidentified. [Shazam heroine TM & © DC Comics; Commando Yank TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Colin [Lynn] apparently prospered in sleazy films for as long as I could keep track of him. I never saw any of them, but I spotted his name in trade ads from time to time. Then I heard that he had gone into TV action serials and that he carried some extra weight there because he had been at Tappan [Fawcett] in the Golden Age. I’m willing to believe it. Hateful as he was, he was the only one in our office who had convictions about the work. While I was pranking about, bored and slumming and (in a sense) incognito, he was loving it all, with prescience. In cool justice, it was right that he

FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America]

prosper out of it; and that, for more reasons than he was completely conscious of, he hated me.

Part 4 Boredom was the key word. The pranking about Colin [Lynn] was motivated by Colin [Lynn], but I doubt that I would have put as much time and energy into it if I hadn’t been so thoroughly bored with my job and my time-filling around the job. Listening to Peg [Jane] and drinking after hours with Peg and Hap and Virgil [Jane and Rod and Bill], who was Hap’s [Rod’s] best friend, were pleasant but nonetheless irritating because I wanted to be out of the world that made me listen to her, drink with them. I progressed at the job, which only irritated me more because it was so easy. The circulation of my magazines continued to grow. I devised an ad for Major Mighty [Captain Marvel] selling war bonds and stamps [“Bonds and Stamps Will Lick the Tramps”] that brought a commendation from the Writers’ War Board. With Fred B. [a former co-worker at the Sangor shop, whose true identity has not been established], who was now freelancing while looking for newspaper work, I cooked up a special issue of Nick Noonday

A Gathering Of “Storm Klouds” A house ad for Captain Midnight (#14, Nov. 1943)—and that issue’s cover by Ken Bald. Evidently, portraying the antagonist of four stories inside as the mysterious, shadowy “King of Villains” rather than by his name, Storm Von Kloud, paid off for editor Kauffmann. Cover scan courtesy of the Grand Comics Database. [Captain Midnight TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

[Captain Midnight]—the usual four stories in the issue but with one villain, an issue that could be read as four pieces or one four-part story. Congratulations flowed down from above. (The issue is now a collector’s item.) Another raise, to follow the two I had already been given. Success, success. I chafed, relieved only by my other life. Then, in early 1944, thirteen months after I went to Tappan [Fawcett], I finished the novel I was working on [This Time Forever]. A publisher [Doubleday] took it, which was gratifying; a big magazine [Woman’s Home Companion] bought it for serialization, which was liberating. I resigned from Tappan [Fawcett]. When I went in to tell Harold Knight [Ralph Daigh], he asked me to think it over. Just great about my book, great for Tappan [Fawcett] too, but I had a future here. I put on my most sincere voice and said I knew it and appreciated it, appreciated what he had done and what I might be leaving, but I had to go. Then he did what bosses often do when you try to resign, he offered me more money—much more than the small raises I had been getting. I hid my anger. (If I was worth the money, why hadn’t they been paying it all along?) I thanked him, with double-dip sincerity, but said no. I continued to see Hap and Peg [Rod and Jane], but when I left Tappan [Fawcett], I left an environment. To be in comic-books and go out into another world at the end of the day was one chemical compound; to be in the other world and never look at it from inside comic-books was a quite different compound. After a while, Hap and Peg [Rod and Jane] grew less interested in me, as I in them. No quarrels, no dislike. The geographies of our lives simply filtered apart.

Stanley Kauffmann’s “Album Of Comic-Book Life”—Concluded

But my connection with comics didn’t entirely disappear, for a time. A few weeks after I left Tappan [Fawcett] I got a call at home from an artist [Irwin Hasen] who had worked for me there. He had been commissioned to draw a daily newspaper strip—six a week— based on the enormously popular radio serial The Goldbergs. It was a laugh-and-cry soap opera about the rise of an immigrant Jewish family in New York, and Molly Goldberg, with her “Yoo-hoo” had become a household word. The [New York Post] Syndicate wanted to make a comic strip of the characters, with quite different stories so that one could both listen and read every day. Gertrude Berg,

On The Air—And On Newsprint

None Are So Blind… (Above:) One of the final Kauffmann-edited issues of Captain Midnight (#20, May ’44) featured a most unusual enemy. The tale’s title says it all. Scripter & artist unidentified. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Gertrude Berg (the creator and star of the long-running radio-thenTV-series The Goldbergs)—and Irwin Hasen, the comicbook artist who illustrated the mid-1940s comic strip based on the radio incarnation. Hasen (noted in comics for his work on “Green Lantern,” “Wildcat,” and All-Star Comics) would have a much more successful newspaper strip a decade later when he teamed with writer Gus Edson on Dondi. See Alter Ego #140 for a spotlight on Hasen’s career, including another Goldbergs daily. Thanks to Dan Makara for the photo. Seen below are (top) Hasen’s dialogue-less “tryout strip” for the job of Goldbergs artist; and (bottom) one of the published strips, which was surely scripted by Stanley Kauffmann. Thanks to Ger Apeldoorn for the published Goldbergs daily. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America]

the woman who had invented the serial and who wrote it and also played Molly, was too busy to write the strip. The artist thought I could easily write the scripts for a week’s strips in one morning a week, and now that I was freelancing, the magazine money for my novel looked less Himalayan. I accepted. They liked what I did, and I kept on. In fact I could write a week’s scripts in one hour a week. The strip was not a hit, it was never widely syndicated, but I don’t think it would have been better if I had worked harder on it. The voices were what people wanted, not drawings and reading matter. As a strip The Goldbergs ran less than two years, but for its whole life I was the script’s only begetter. Once every three months I had to confer with Mrs. Berg. She had the right of approval of the general storyline for each quarter of the year. I conferred with her for the first time in March. Our next meeting was in June—on June 6, to be unforgettably precise. I was to go to the radio studio where they broadcast the day’s episode and, as I had done in March, would sit through the rehearsal and broadcast, then go to lunch with Mrs. Berg.

I didn’t. I arrived at the studio that morning to find everything in almost mystical disorder. Everyone was moving, talking, chattering, showing papers to one another, but my impressionistic memory is that all this was very busy and very silent, like a frantic film with the sound turned off. I don’t know why I had not seen a newspaper that morning or heard a radio bulletin. I had taken a taxi to the studio and arrived to find this frenzied limbo. June 6, 1944, was D-Day. The Allies were invading Europe.

Menasha Skulnik (Yeah, believe it or don’t—that was his real name!) A Yiddish comic actor who spent time on June 6, 1944, with Goldbergs comic strip writer Stanley Kauffmann.

I spent the whole day in that small radio studio, waiting for Mrs. Berg. The network wasn’t sure when they were going to cut away from news broadcasts to regular programming. There was no such thing as tape in those days, all broadcasts were live, so the entire cast of The Goldbergs was kept on tap all day, and I waited with them. (They never did go on the air that day.) The talkback from the control booth was hooked up to the broadcast line, so we could hear the continuing news reports. Still, people kept sending out for the latest editions of all the newspapers as they appeared, even though the news in them was behind what had already been broadcast—as if print certified what they had heard. That little studio floor was almost ankle-deep in newspapers by the end of the day. At one point in the afternoon I was sitting next to an actor [Menasha Skulnik], an endearing little man famous in the Yiddish theater, who played one of the Goldberg uncles. He finished his newspaper, possibly the seventh, then turned and grasped my wrist pleadingly. “You don’t t’ink the whole t’ing could possibly be a fiasco?” It was a question from his soul, his theater soul. I didn’t use the word “hit,” but I gave him my personal assurance that the invasion would succeed.

The Worm Who Put The “Pop” In Pop Culture Stanley Kauffmann in later years, when he acknowledged the emergence of “pop culture” as a defining influence in the world, and his small part in same—without ever accepting that there was any real importance or quality to such lowly things as comicbooks. All this, from the man who served as editor of the chapter of the “Monster Society of Evil” serial that featured perhaps the best drawing ever of that wormly alien genius Mr. Mind—as seen here on a splash page from Captain Marvel Adventures #34 (May 1944). Script by Otto Binder; art by C.C. Beck Studio. [Photo © New Republic; Mr. Mind & Billy Batson TM & © DC Comics.]

It’s always tempting to make epitomes out of vivid moments, dramatic conjunctions. I know that my life is not epitomized by the fact that I spent D-Day in a radio studio waiting for the broadcast of a soap opera because I was involved in a comic strip. But on particularly depressing days, it’s bitterly comfortable to think so. On better days, when I can afford irony, I see it as part of my early success.

TwoMorrows 2023 www.twomorrows.com • store@twomorrows.com

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

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 #143

BACK ISSUE #144

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #30

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!)

BRONZE AGE SAVAGE LANDS, starring Ka-Zar in the 1970s! Plus: Turok—Dinosaur Hunter, DON GLUT’s Dagar and Tragg, Annihilus and the Negative Zone, Planet of Vampires, Pat Mills’s Flesh (from 2000AD), and WALTER SIMONSON and MIKE MIGNOLA’s Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure. With CONWAY, GULACY, HAMA, NICIEZA, SEARS, THOMAS, and more! JOHN BUSCEMA cover!

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 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 June 2023

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Ships Spring 2023

KIRBY COLLECTOR #86

KIRBY COLLECTOR #87

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.

LAW & ORDER! Kirby’s lawmen from the Newsboy Legion’s Jim Harper and “Terrible” Turpin, to Western gunfighters, and even future policemen like OMAC and Captain Victory! Also: how a Marvel cop led to the creation of Funky Flashman! Justice Traps The Guilty and Headline Comics! Plus MARK EVANIER moderating 2022’s Kirby Tribute Panel (with Sin City’s FRANK MILLER). MACHLAN cover inks.

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!

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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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BACK ISSUE #142

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.

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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!