Alter Ego #182

Roy Thomas’ High-Flying Comics Fanzine

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No. 182 July 2023

PRESENTS:

WHICH IN TURN PRESENTS:

UNCLE MARVEL And the Fabulous

9

82658 00498 1

Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics; art © Jerry Ordway.

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Vol. 3, No. 182 July 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

Proofreader

Contents

Cover Artist

Writer/Editorial: Locate—And Listen! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #241 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Cover Colorist

Uncle Marvel: The Un-Marvelous Marvel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

William J. Dowlding

Presented by P.C. Hamerlinck, with a stupendous cover by Jonathan Dhenry.

Jerry Ordway

Call him Uncle Dudley—call him “fraud”—Carl Shinyama calls him entertaining!

Glenn Whitmore

With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Pedro Angosto Bob Bailey Alberto Becattini Al Bradford Gary F. Brown Mitchell Brown Bernie Bubnis Nick Caputo John Cimino Shaun Clancy Comic Book Plus (website) Pierre Comtois Bob Cosgrove Chet Cox Ray Cuthbert Jonathan Dhenry Joseph Eacobacci Mickey Angel Estefan, Jr. Jackie Estrada Shane Foley Joe Frank Stephan A. Friedt Janet Gilbert J.T. Go Grand Comics Database (website)

Walt Grogan Rob Hansen Bill Jones Sharon Karibian Jim Kealy Dave Lazarov Jim Ludwig Maranee Landau McDonald Jerred Metz Mark Muller Rick Norwood Joe Palmer Barry Pearl Larry Rapchak Al Rodriguez Randy Sargent Dave Scroggy Mitchell Senft Carl Lani‘Keha Shinyama Brian Stewart Bryan D. Stroud Tim Stroup Joel Thingvall Dann Thomas Michael Vance Clifton Wellman

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Kenneth Landau, Lee Goldsmith, Roscoe “Rocky” Fawcett Jr., Tony Tallarico, George Olshevsky, & Vic Carrabotta

The Fabulous Fawcett Family – Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Shaun Clancy interviewed the late Roscoe “Rocky” Fawcett, Jr.

There’s Still Time For Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 When Golden Age writer Lee Goldsmith talked with Mickey Angel Estefan, Jr.

Chris Welkin, Planeteer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Roy Thomas wants to introduce the world to a great 1950s sci-fi comic strip.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! The Post-est With the Most-est! . . 39 The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s nutty 1951 features on great comic strip creators.

Tributes To Tony Tallarico, George Olshevsky, & Vic Carrabotta . . 45

re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 50 Kenneth Landau: The Artist Who “Signed Everything!” . . . . 57 Daughter Maranee Landau McDonald on her father’s work at ACG and elsewhere— plus Larry Rapchak, and a Kenneth Landau chat with Shaun Clancy.

On Our Cover: Surely one of the finest artists to handle the original Captain Marvel since the heady Golden Age days of C.C. Beck and crew is Jerry Ordway, the magic lightning behind the 1990s Power of Shazam! series. And one of our all-time favorites of his many commissioned pieces starring the World’s Mightiest Mortal is this 2015 panorama of Billy Batson’s grown-up alter ego transporting a distraught Uncle Marvel high above the Earth! Thanks to Jerry for allowing us to use it as this issue’s captivating cover—Tom Ziuko for colors—and to Pedro Angosto across the pond in Spain for first bringing it to our notice! [Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics; other art © Jerry Ordway.]

Above: Artist Kenneth Landau, as per the title of the section about him listed above, signed nearly all of his work for the American Comics Group and elsewhere—including that done for ACG’s Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub #4-7. Here’s his lead splash page for issue #7, cover-dated Sept. 1955. Writer, alas, unknown. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Alter EgoTM issue 182, July 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.

2

A

Article Title writer/editorial

Locate—And Listen!

lmost from its conception by Dr. Jerry G. Bails back in 1961, Alter Ego has walked a tightrope between twin focuses: the history and heroes of the adventure comicbook, and the reminiscences of those who wrote, drew, edited, created those heroes and those comics.

In the very earliest days, it’s true, it was the former that predominated, with articles on the All Winners Squad, the Green Lanterns of two Ages, the heroes of MLJ, and such like. That was only fitting, since Jerry had founded the fanzine to help spur the burgeoning return of comicbook super-heroes, partly by illuminating their backstory in the so-called Golden Age of Comics.

From the beginning, though, Jerry also wanted to shine a spotlight on the people who produced the comics—and, in the early 1960s, those were mostly the same people who’d been doing so since the ’40s, such as Julius Schwartz, editor of DC’s new Justice League of America… though it was actually second A/E editor/ publisher Ronn Foss who introduced the notion of creator interviews to the mag, beginning with a postcard talk with Joe Kubert.

When I took over in ’64, I found the idea of a back-and-forth interview-by-mail generally unsatisfactory—and the long-distance rates of the day made phone conversations prohibitive—so I continued the historical approach. Still, the long informative letter about Captain Marvel from Otto Binder I published in my first issue (V1#7) convinced me interviews were essential to A/E, so I made plans for a by-mail one with DC writer Gardner Fox, with whom I’d been exchanging letters since late 1960. Alas, that interview never got off the ground, due to my “turning pro.”

But, by the time I briefly revived Alter Ego as a more professionally oriented publication in 1969, I was definitely on board for the interview approach. SF/comics fan John Benson produced a splendid and wide-ranging one with Gil Kane…

and I followed it up with a long career-based talk with my colleague and sometime roommate Bill Everett, though that one took nearly a decade (and a fourth editor/publisher, Mike Friedrich) to finally appear.

By the time John Morrow and Jon B. Cooke talked me into putting out a “Volume 3” of Alter Ego, I’d been totally converted by the in-depth interviews Jon was doing for his own magazine, Comic Book Artist. I started out with Irwin Hasen (in #1) and Larry Lieber (#2), to represent the Golden and Silver Ages. By the time interviewer par excellence Jim Amash took over major interviewing duties around #9, the pattern was set… though nowadays conversations are more likely to involve the children of Golden (and even Silver) Age creators, due to the inexorable passage of time.

This time around, for instance, P.C. Hamerlinck’s expanded FCA section is divided between a “hero-history” (of Uncle Marvel, no less) and a talk with one of the sons of the founders of Fawcett’s comics line (himself now deceased). And while daughter Maranee Landau McDonald is the main source re her artist father Kenneth Landau, we’re also fortunate to have Shaun Clancy’s 2012 phone conversation with Landau himself. Even the late Golden Age DC writer Lee Goldsmith gets his posthumous say, via an online article

by Mickey Angel Estefan, Jr. It’s pieces like these—augmented by the mini-bios of comic strip artists tossed at us by “Comic Crypt’s” Michael T. Gilbert— that make me glad that, back in 1999, I let Messrs. Cooke and Morrow talk me into re-launching Alter Ego as a self-contained magazine.

Because yesterday’s creators, as well as today’s, still have a lot to say to us. All we have to do is locate their words, their truths, one way or another… and then listen.

Bestest,

COMING IN AUGUST

183

#

IRV NOVICK—

up TM & © Archie Comics Gro

A Heroes’ Artist!

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4

UNCLE MARVEL: The UN-Marvelous Marvel!

by Carl Lani’Keha Shinyama

“A

nd of course there was the wonderfully funny Uncle Marvel with a hilarious face and wry personality that could have been traced directly to comedian W.C. Fields.”

—Dick Lupoff (in Xero #1, “The Big Red Cheese,” first episode of the series “And All in Color for a Dime”)

CREATION It is not known why some characters endure or are remembered fondly by fans across multiple generations, but Uncle Dudley seems to be one such character. In the Golden Age, at the height of Captain Marvel’s success, he obviously had a charm that allowed him to appear in more stories than the likes of the Lieutenant Marvels, Cissie Sommerly (Billy Batson’s girlfriend), and Black Adam, despite making limited appearances himself (21 in total).

Few may know that, when Uncle Dudley made his debut in Wow Comics #18 (Oct. 1943), it was as a supporting character in the “Mary Marvel” series. In fact, he would not meet Billy Batson until more than a year later, and he would not meet Freddy Freeman until the year after that.

When Mary Marvel’s co-creator, Otto Binder, worked on Mary’s stories in Wow Comics, he wanted her tales to be distinctive from Billy Batson’s and Freddy Freeman’s, with less emphasis on the super-heroics and more on the human interest side. However, like other authors, Binder had a style of writing, and certain attributes that were always present, no matter the story. He had a penchant for incorporating humor—and its cousin, satire—usually about the flaws of humans, which permeated the adventures of all those who were a part of The Marvel Family, including especially Billy Batson and Captain Marvel.

Uncle Marvel’s Finest Hours Probably two of the best presentations ever of Uncle Marvel are his proud presence above in the cover lineup for The Marvel Family #1 (Dec. 1945), as penciled by C.C. Beck and inked by Pete Costanza—and the neverbefore-published art at left, in which Shazam-fan Walt Grogan turned Jerry Ordway’s fabulous illustration of Captain Marvel and his “uncle” into a faux splash page, even adding dialogue and splendiferous colors to it! Incidentally, while the cover of issue #1 declared the group mag to be Marvel Family Comics, its official indicia title for all of its 89 issues was The Marvel Family. Thanks to the Grand Comics Database and Walt Grogan, respectively. [Shazam heroes & wizard Shazam TM & © DC Comics; other art on Ordway page © Jerry Ordway.]

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Uncle Marvel: The Un-Marvelous Marvel

the idea may have been Fawcett editor Wendell Crowley’s, since the two of them used to regularly brainstorm ideas in plotting sessions.

Regardless, it was Otto Binder who developed Uncle Marvel, a.k.a. Uncle Dudley, as a character.

CONCEPT As per many characters in the Fawcett library, it’s reasonable to assume that Uncle Dudley was inspired by a real person or persons.

It is widely accepted that Uncle Dudley was based on the comedian W.C. Fields. The character as drawn bore an uncanny resemblance to the actor/comedian, and had a similarly blustery persona, for which Fields was known.

Interestingly, C.C. Beck, Captain Marvel’s co-creator and chief artist, when recounting in 1983 how the Captain Marvel characters were generally based on real people, claimed that Uncle Dudley was based on Otto Binder’s brother, “Mary Marvel” artist Jack Binder. Perhaps Mr. Beck meant personality-wise, since Jack Binder did not resemble Uncle Dudley much at all in 1943, the year that Uncle Marvel made his debut. [FCA EDITOR’S NOTE: However, it must be said that, in Jack Binder’s later years, he did somewhat resemble Dudley.]

Either way, it is clear that he was meant to be a grandiloquent yet lovable fraud who pretended to have the powers of a Marvel, perfect for the aforementioned brand of satire that Binder loved to write. Uncle Dudley was human and fallible in a way that Billy Batson and Mary Marvel were not, a fact supported by the way he interprets the “SHAZAM” acronym: S - Superiority H - Hugeness

A - All Powerful

Cry “Uncle”!

Uncle Dudley/Uncle Marvel’s debut appeared in Wow Comics #18 (Oct. 1943). Script: Otto Binder; art: The Jack Binder Studio. [Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics.]

According to Binder, when describing the proverbial secret ingredient behind the humor in Captain Marvel’s adventures:

Z - Zealousness

A - All Right M - Mighty

“The Captain Marvel and Marvel Family stories aren’t humor in the strictest sense but rather satire and period of life situations and the doings and shortcomings of humans. It is often said that [the tone of the Captain Marvel stories was] ‘whimsical,’ a reflection of life through ‘funny mirrors’ like those at an amusement park. The subject matter is recognizable but distorted by exaggeration, spoofing, or running jokes. The secret of it all was that Cap and Billy were dead serious and never made a joke at all.”

To Uncle Dudley, an unimportant, aging, bald, and overweight man who compensated for it all through ostentatious boastfulness, the famous magic acronym that Billy Batson said out loud to transform into Captain Marvel might as well have meant those things. Which is probably the whole idea. Bumbling Uncle Dudley has all of the wrong notions about who the Marvels are—seeing them as a power fantasy through the lens of his own shortcomings—but sympathetically so. We can all relate to wishing we were more fantastic than we are.

Since Mary Bromfield was a serious and straight character like her brother Billy, she was not an ideal vehicle for Binder’s brand of satire. But since The Marvel Family lived in a surreal world, there was still a limitless well that Binder could tap into. It was a world of talking alien worms, crocodile men, and wizards, a world where Captain Marvel riding a chariot of pigs could—and did—happen.

Uncle Dudley would virtually always succeed (or fail, depending on how one sees it) through impossible luck or sheer mishaps, yet always took credit for his success… while he routinely made excuses for why he was less than Marvel-ous, oblivious to the fact that the Marvels knew that he was not actually a Marvel— or their real uncle.

The humor could easily come from anywhere—or anyone.

Enter: Uncle Marvel.

Concept aside, there was the matter of making the character work in The Marvel Family. It is one thing to have the concept of Uncle Dudley as an imposter; it is another to make the character fit in and be accepted by the Marvels as an actual member of The Marvel Family, a group of virtuous paragons. For that to happen,

Even Binder himself was not entirely sure the idea for the Uncle Marvel character was originally his. Indeed, he allowed that

6

Fawcett Collectors Of America

there had to be something about the character that would make true Marvels accept him.

Binder was obviously aware of this. Uncle Dudley had to be a character who, despite his pretense of being a real Marvel, deep down had the spirit of one. That is, he was ultimately a good man. His first story was about an imposter who, thanks to his true nature as a good person, came to be accepted and welcomed into a new family—at least by Mary Marvel.

“We Had Faces Then!”

(Left:) The great 1930s movie comedian W.C. Fields once said, “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.” A quote that could not be more appropriate for Uncle Dudley, who saw himself as a Marvel.

(Below left:) Brothers Jack [standing] and Otto Binder in Chestertown, New York, in 1973. During this particular era, two decades after Fawcett’s Marvel Family went out of business, Ye FCA Editor believes that Jack did indeed begin to resemble Uncle Marvel just a bit. Photo from Comic Crusader #15, courtesy of Al Bradford & Bob Cosgrove. Join us in a future FCA for a celebration of Martin L. Greim’s superb fanzine and its entire run, recently-released as a 535-page Omnibus.

(Below:) Jack Binder’s cover for Wow Comics #35 (April 1945) spotlights not only Mary and Uncle Marvel, but also Mr. Scarlet & Pinky, Commando Yank, Phantom Eagle, and Freckles (not in her Marvel outfit), and Mary Batson as a separate entity. [Shazam heroes, Mr. Scarlet & Pinky, Commando Yank, & Freckles TM & © DC Comics.]

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7

Uncle Marvel: The Un-Marvelous Marvel

His first appearance began with Mary’s “Good Deeds” ledger (which held all her Shazam secrets) missing. And somehow, even worse for Mary, she was feeling lonely as an orphan. She longed for a biological family that would spend time with her. While Mary had Billy Batson as a new-found twin brother, he was always busy with his duties at the WHIZ radio station and as Captain Marvel, so she seldom saw him.

Then, as if on cue, Uncle Dudley appeared suddenly to fulfill Mary’s desperate wish. He introduced himself as her biological uncle (“Tut, tut, my dear! Everybody has an unknown uncle from California!”). Mary was overjoyed.

Of course, he was not really her uncle, and once Mary gathered her wits, she had a nagging suspicion that was the case.

Realizing he might be a fraud, she decided to see if he was telling the truth. And she knew a way of testing that, thanks to a certain magic word.

Fans will recall that, in Captain Marvel Adventures #18, in Mary Marvel’s first appearance, Mary Bromwell said “Shazam!” out loud and transformed into her super-powered self without meaning to.

Though the ghost of the wizard Shazam later explained that Mary had the same powers as Billy due to having her own pantheon, we never got a logical explanation as to why she was able to transform upon saying the magic word.

No explanation would come until Wow Comics #18. According to Mary, this was because “It’s in the family!” Thus, if Uncle Dudley was really her uncle, he could transform simply because of his biological relation to Mary.

Still, it should be noted that wasn’t an ironclad rule. In 1946’s Captain Marvel Adventures #53, Uncle Ebenezer, who was Billy Batson’s and Mary Bromfield’s blood relative, once said “Shazam” out loud and did not change into a super-powered version of himself.

But that was not the case in 1943. With that in mind, Mary asked Uncle Dudley to repeat her magic word. To Mary’s astonishment, when he did, he became Uncle Marvel. That settled it, as far as Mary was concerned: Uncle Dudley really was her biological uncle.

At this point, the readers would have had their doubts allayed as well. Or would they?

Despite having a Marvel costume, in short order it became evident to readers—via the usual Binder humor—that Uncle Marvel was not as “Marvel-ous” as he claimed to be, as he bumbled his way against thugs through dumb luck rather than by a display of might, such as when he fell on some gangsters or when he swung from a tree using a thin line, with the result that it snapped and he fell on his behind, a poor showing that Uncle Dudley conveniently blamed on his “Shazambago.”

Ah yes, “Shazambago”—the Marvel-ized equivalent of lumbago in normal mortals, which according to Uncle Dudley occurs from flying on cold, damp nights. The non-existent Shazambago was the go-to excuse Dudley used to account for why he couldn’t do things the Marvels could do, at any given moment.

Naturally, such things reignited Mary’s doubts. Still, being fair-minded, she gave him the benefit of the doubt. It didn’t take

It’s All Relative!

(Left:) Mary meets Dudley for the first time. From Wow Comics #18.

(Above:) A return to Uncle Dudley’s roots in “The Big Test,” from Mary Marvel #7 (Nov. 1946). Both stories by Otto and Jack Binder. [Shazam heroine TM & © DC Comics.]

8

Fawcett Collectors Of America

Inc. was born. In true Dudley fashion, he became its president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer!

Locating it on the 13th floor in Suite 1313 of the Greeley building, Uncle Dudley invited Mary to his new office and introduced her to his new endeavor… reasoning that, if lawyers and policemen could earn money for their work on behalf of others, The Marvel Family should likewise be paid for their help.

To assuage Mary’s doubts, Uncle Dudley told her that all proceeds would go to the American War Drive.

However, after their first case, Uncle Dudley changed the terms of Shazam, Inc.’s money policy: half for the war drive and half for him—er, rather, for office expenses. Ostensibly, it would appear that Shazam, Inc. was as much a fraud as Uncle Dudley.

In the end, though, he revealed to Mary that he had decided the business was to be a non-profit organization where all of proceeds went to charity. It had the effect of the Marvels going from never accepting any pay to accepting some payment, but still never taking even a dime for themselves and donating it all instead.

Is “Shazambago” A Disease—Or A Latin American Dance?

Uncle Marvel’s Shazambago acted up early on in his illustrious career. Panels from Wow #18 by Otto Binder & the Jack Binder Studio. NOTE: The FCA editor thanks author Carl Shinyama for stepping up and delivering this issue’s Alter Ego cover story while PCH’s own Shazambago had limited his abilities for a stretch.

[Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics.]

long before he slipped up and said the magic word in front of Mary without changing form. It was then she realized that he was indeed a fraud. However, despite that revelation, she witnessed him run into oncoming traffic to save a boy from being hit by a car. Upon seeing him risk his life, she realized that, despite his pretense to be a real Marvel, deep down, Dudley was a good man who would put his life in danger to help others.

So Mary decided she would indulge his fantasy of being Uncle Marvel and accept him as a family member.

SHAZAM, INC. With Uncle Marvel now accepted into a new family (at least so far as Mary was concerned), Otto Binder also introduced several concepts in his first appearance that would be a mainstay of his character.

One was Uncle Dudley’s “Shazam, Inc.,” a non-profit organization through which The Marvel Family could be hired out to those who needed help.

Interestingly enough, much in the way that Uncle Dudley’s Marvel persona was a sham, Shazam, Inc. was at first a seemingly illegitimate enterprise that Dudley cooked up to enrich himself.

After he saved a wealthy man from an unwanted fate involving thugs, the man offered a $1,000 reward to Uncle Dudley and Mary Marvel for their good deeds. Where Billy, Mary, and Freddy would have turned it down, Dudley did not hesitate to accept it. Naturally, he saw an opportunity at hand – or was it dollar signs?

Mary, meanwhile, was indignant: “I’m surprised at you, Uncle Marvel – wanting to take money! We Marvels NEVER accept pay for our fight against evil!”

Undaunted, Uncle Marvel decided to put The Marvel Family into business and immediately set up an office. Overnight, Shazam,

Shazam, Inc. “The Return of Uncle Marvel” by Otto & Jack Binder, in Wow Comics #24 (April 1944) is a perfect example of the contrasting sides of Uncle Dudley’s personality. He’s the sort who would anoint himself the President, Vice President, Secretary, and Treasurer of Shazam, Inc., so you’d think he’d place his name at the top … but he put himself last. [Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics.]

Uncle Marvel: The Un-Marvelous Marvel

Shazam, Inc. was not only a clever way to showcase Uncle Dudley’s nature and provide an explanation to keep him as a recurring character by giving him a functional role in The Marvel Family, but as a concept it was distinctly a pioneering one.

It was likely the first time that a hero-for-hire concept was introduced to the super-hero genre, preceding Marvel’s Luke Cage, who had his own hero-for-hire concept as a staple element of his stories, by about three decades.

Fifteen of Uncle Dudley’s 21 appearances also included Shazam, Inc. (Alas, however, the organization was never featured in any story that Uncle Dudley was not in.)

THE MARVEL FAMILY Uncle Marvel met Billy Batson for the first time in Captain Marvel Adventures #43 (Feb. 1945), his third appearance. The story of Uncle Dudley meeting the young radio reporter was a charming one, in which the two teamed up to save a circus from going out of business by putting on performances on its behalf.

Despite making an appearance in the biggest comics title on the market at the time, Uncle Marvel never graduated to being a full-time supporting character to Billy Batson and Captain Marvel. In fact, Uncle Dudley would only make three more appearances in Captain Marvel Adventures, his final one occurring two years later in CMA #69.

Uncle Dudley remained mostly in Wow Comics, where he made only two more appearances, issues #34 and #35, the latter of which introduced his actual niece, Freckles Marvel, who also was an imposter pretending to be a real Marvel.

Like Pippi Longstocking, whose books would debut in the United States five years The Bear Truth About Uncle Marvel after her debut, Freckles Marvel was actually Jack Binder’s cover for Wow Comics #34 (March 1945). [Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics.]

Mary Dudley, who, as her name suggested, was a freckled and unrefined redhead (though With only six appearances for most of two years, it would originally she had light brown hair and, in some adventures, bright seem Uncle Dudley was not going to catch on as a major blonde hair) with ponytails on either side—from Skunksville (later supporting character. But then, just months after his appearance named Marveltown in her honor). in Master Comics (May 1945), he would begin appearing for a short time in The Marvel Family, including its inaugural issue, where a Freckles Marvel had the same modus operandi as her Uncle certain villain made his first and only Golden Age appearance.

Dudley, changing out of her clothes and into her own Marvel outfit so as to pretend that she was a Marvel. Like her uncle, she often got herself in trouble that required her being rescued.

BLACK ADAM However, unlike her uncle, Freckles Marvel appeared only in “Mary Marvel” stories and (unless you count a masthead image in Mary Marvel #9) never once met Billy Batson or Freddy Freeman in a Golden Age story. Meanwhile, Uncle Dudley met not only Billy Batson, but also Freddy Freeman—in Master Comics #61, his first and last appearance in that title.

Uncle Dudley was featured in The Marvel Family #1 (and on its striking cover!) as if he were an established regular, a notion supported by the fact that he was in both stories featured in that title, including the less-remembered story of Baby Marvel.

When Marvel Family #1 debuted in 1945, it introduced to the world a miscreant who would make only one appearance under

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the quick thinking to ask Shazam the only thing that mattered: How do you defeat Black Adam?

Shazam advised Dudley to get Black Adam to speak his (the wizard’s) name, which would transform Black Adam back into Teth Adam. In what was arguably Uncle’s finest moment, he cleverly got Black Adam to say “Shazam” by appealing to the villain’s arrogant nature: “Stop, kids!,” he addressed Cap, Junior, and Mary. “He’s so strong, let’s make him a member of The Marvel Family! After all, he got his powers from old Mazham! I mean… Hamshaz! No, I mean Shamhaz!... er… uh…”

Somehow Uncle Dudley knew that Black Adam would respond condescendingly to correct him, regarding him as an “overstuffed imbecile”: “You sputtering old fool! You mean Shazam!” shouted Black Adam.

Of course, when the magic lightning struck him, he instantly turned back into a 5,000-year-old mortal Egyptian—who promptly died of old age, turning to shimmering dust.

Hair Today…

Captain Marvel meets Uncle Marvel for the first time in Captain Marvel Adventures #43 (Feb. 1945), written by Otto Binder and illustrated by C.C. Beck and staff artists. This was also the first time Uncle Dudley was depicted with white hair. In the majority of his Fawcett appearances, he has brown (or red) hair! [Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics.]

the banner of his original publisher: Black Adam, supposedly Shazam’s original champion.

Black Adam was really Teth Adam, who had lived 5,000 years ago… an Egyptian whom the wizard Shazam had thought to be a good man.

Except he wasn’t. Originally called Mighty Adam after he received his powers from Shazam, he was the ultimate metaphor of absolute power corrupting absolutely—a man who, the moment he possessed godly powers, wanted more.

After Mighty Adam betrayed Shazam by killing the pharaoh and attempting to take over the world, Shazam banished him to the farthest star in the universe and renamed him Black Adam.

In the modern day of 1945, Black Adam returned and immediately resumed his quest to conquer the world—and to exact his revenge against old Shazam. What he didn’t anticipate was that there would be mortal champions who would stand in his way: The Marvel Family.

Only, it would not be three super-powered members of The Marvel Family who defeated Black Adam, for the four of them possessed equal powers… which meant none of them could hurt the others, not even with three good-guys teaming up against the evil-doer.

No, it was the only non-Marvel-ous member of The Marvel Family who would ultimately defeat the once-champion of Shazam. It was Uncle Dudley who had

All In The Family Uncle Marvel is delighted to be part of the Family in this Pete Costanza-illustrated cover portrait for The Marvel Family #6 (Nov. 1946).

[Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics.]

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Uncle Marvel: The Un-Marvelous Marvel

This issue had a few other milestones for Uncle Dudley as well.

Not only was it the first time he met Black Adam; it was also the first time he met Shazam, and the first time he visited the Rock of Eternity, an honor shared later on by one other supporting character, Mr. Tawky Tawny.

It was also the first time Uncle Marvel had an adventure with the entire Marvel Family.

He also became the first supporting character (before Mary and Freddy, even) ever to light the mystical brazier to call forth the spirit form of Shazam—a concept that got its start in The Marvel Family #1.

THE MARVEL FAMILY ROUNDTABLE In what is probably another pioneering concept in comics, The Marvel Family had a radio and TV show where they would discuss their adventures and means of fighting evil and upholding justice. .

In The Marvel Family #8, Billy Batson, inspired by a science roundtable radio program, proposed the same exact program to his boss, Sterling Morris—except, instead of scientists as the featured speakers, it would star The Marvel Family. Morris loved the idea. Unfortunately for them, the super-powered trio didn’t have a round table.

So Billy asked Uncle Dudley to do the honor of buying one. At an antique store, Uncle Dudley located the type of solid oak table they needed, and as it happened, it was a really old table that was more solid than most modern tables. He purchased it for a bargain price.

However, another prospective buyer, a man named Goondock, had realized its true worth and stole it from Uncle Dudley. After The Marvel Family recovered it, they, through Goondock’s repeated attempts to steal it back, learned the table was actually the famed Round Table of King Arthur and his Knights.

Between “The Rock” And A Hard Place?

Uncle Marvel’s finest hour: outsmarting Black Adam. From The Marvel Family #1 by Otto Binder, C.C. Beck, & Pete Costanza. [Shazam heroes, Black Adam, and wizard Shazam TM & © DC Comics.]

It is appropriately poetic that, at the same table that Captain Marvel and The Marvel Family would discuss ways to fight crime and bring forth justice, fairness, and egalitarianism, King Arthur had once presided over his fabled group of valiant knights. After all, King Arthur was something of an archetype to Captain Marvel. Just as Arthur had been the only one worthy to pull out the sword in the stone, so too was Billy Batson the only one initially worthy of being chosen by Shazam to become his champion, Captain Marvel.

In fact, in his court testimony during the DC-Fawcett lawsuit, Captain Marvel co-creator Bill Parker testified that his idea for Billy Batson being a kid with a mysterious past came from King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table … and that he originally imagined Captain Marvel to be a leader of men the way King Arthur had been.

However, with the Roundtable’s [sic] introduction came the temporary phasing out of Shazam, Inc. Instead of starting his adventures in his office (similar to the way that Billy Batson would begin his stories by working as a reporter), Uncle Dudley and the rest of The Marvel Family would start their stories together at the Roundtable.

Unfortunately for the Roundtable idea, it would be a concept used sparingly, with only 14 appearances, its last one in Marvel Family #47.

UNCLE EBENEZER If there was ever the perfect example of how family is not always blood and that the family we ultimately end up with is the family we choose, look no further than the tale wherein Uncle Dudley met Billy Batson’s Uncle Ebenezer—and the two became rivals.

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In Whiz Comics #2, we met Uncle Ebenezer for the first time. He was indeed Billy’s real uncle, but he was a cruel and cold-hearted man, who kicked Billy out onto the streets after stealing his inheritance. In a later story, in Captain Marvel Adventures #88, we learned that Ebenezer forced Billy to steal money for him (Billy refused to, choosing to beg instead), beating and starving the boy no matter how much money he brought home.

One night, after seeing Billy’s inheritance letter, he kicked him out to sleep in the snow, where the lad was found by a policeman the next morning and had to be hospitalized.

In Captain Marvel Adventures #53, Billy met Uncle Ebenezer again for the first time since being kicked out. Ebenezer had fallen on hard times after spending all of Billy’s inheritance money and was scheming to get rich again by conning his way back into the boy’s life.

Though he didn’t forgive Uncle Ebenezer for how he’d been treated, Billy tried to help by getting him a job at Shazam, Inc. Little did he know that had been Ebenezer’s plan all along. The older man’s true aims were to expose Uncle Dudley as a fraud and to take over its finances.

Upon meeting Ebenezer, Uncle Dudley didn’t hesitate to give him a job as a clerk, a gesture that proved the two men were diametric opposites. Where Uncle Ebenezer always took for himself, Uncle Dudley always gave to others.

Ebenezer wasted no time in calling out Dudley as an imposter and promptly moving to take possession of Shazam, Inc. Billy transformed into Captain Marvel and told Ebenezer to sit down and work, since Uncle Dudley had been kind enough to give him a job.

Ebenezer was not one to sit idle for long.

Wanting to crack the safe in Dudley’s office, he used a fake phone call to lure Captain Marvel and Uncle Marvel out of the office. Believing there was an ore boat out in the storm (which as it turns out, there was!), the pair made their way there and rescued a crew.

Meanwhile, Uncle Ebenezer cracked the safe and cleaned it out. When they got back, they found Ebenezer tied to a chair, claiming to have been robbed by 15 men. Suspicious, Uncle Dudley asked Ebenezer to repeat his story. This time, Ebenezer said there had been 19 men, proving he had lied.

Following Ebenezer home, Dudley discovered it was Ebenezer who actually stole the money. An Uncle Marvel kidnapping and a phone call to Billy Batson later, Captain Marvel dealt with Uncle Ebenezer after catching him trying to loot Billy’s place.

In the end, Billy Batson chose to stick with Uncle Dudley even though he wasn’t really his uncle, proving that family is not always the one you were born into but, but the one you choose.

UNCLE BLACKY Both Captain Marvel (Marvel Family #1) and Chad Grothkopf’s Hoppy the Marvel Bunny (Fawcett Funny Animals #32) battled an evil opposite dressed in black. And so did Uncle Marvel!

Though he was no relation to Black Adam, Uncle Blacky was basically the evil version of Uncle Dudley, much as Black Adam had been of Captain Marvel—or, for that matter, the way Captain Black Bunny (who appeared one month before Black Adam) was of Captain Marvel Bunny.

“Don’t Let It Be Forgot…”

Along with Shazam, Inc., the Marvel Family Roundtable was further conceptual brilliance from Otto Binder. Marvel Family #8 (Feb. 1947); cover by Beck & Costanza. [Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics.]

There weren’t many traits that Uncle Blacky had in common with Uncle Marvel.

Outside of the Fieldsian physique and features, the only commonality the two had was their entrepreneurial tendencies. Where Uncle Dudley had Shazam, Inc., Uncle Blacky had Crime, Inc., a criminal organization he led.

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Uncle Marvel: The Un-Marvelous Marvel

Perhaps the lack of Dudley-like traits was because Uncle Blacky was not co-created by Otto Binder. If he had been, perhaps he would’ve been more blustery. He might even have pretended to be an uncle to a family of super-powered anti-Marvels—or Black Adam, for that matter.

It’s unknown who created Uncle Blacky, though he was drawn

by Jack Binder, Otto’s brother and main “Mary Marvel” artist. Indeed, Jack’s name is found on a printed page in the very issue Uncle Blacky appears in—Mary Marvel #9—a rarity during that era.

It’s notable that Uncle Blacky Maybe He’s Black Adam’s Distant… Nephew? was not a nemesis to Uncle Marvel.

Uncle Blacky made trouble for Mary and Dudley in Mary The two “uncles” never met each other, Marvel #9 (Feb. 1947); scripter unknown. Art by Jack Binder. One has to wonder if Crime, Inc., actually is a depriving the world of a Dudleyian legal corporation. If so, do they pay taxes? Are they a showdown that might have been one non-profit? [Shazam characters TM & © DC Comics.] for the ages. The only Marvel that Uncle Blacky went up against was Mary Marvel. As Uncle Blacky wanted to destroy Shazam, Inc. by ridding the world of Marvels by arming his thugs with rocket pistols and atomic flamethrowers, it wasn’t the sort of job Uncle Marvel could’ve handled on his own anyway.

RETURNING TO MARY MARVEL As previously stated, Uncle Dudley had begun life as a supporting character to Mary Marvel. So it’s fitting that, when he was brought into The Marvel Family, Uncle Dudley would also return to his roots. In fact, despite jumping back and forth between the two series after Marvel Family #5, Dudley’s final appearances in the Golden Age would be in the Mary Marvel book.

Though Fawcett had briefly veered away from Shazam, Inc. following the introduction of the Marvel Family Roundtable, in the Mary Marvel title it returned to being a mainstay of Uncle Dudley’s adventures. He was a free agent who ran his business, and those who needed help came to him for it.

Despite his limited appearances, Uncle Marvel did appear in more stories than the likes of Cissie Sommerly, the Lieutenant Marvels, and Black Adam combined. His legacy begat other memorable characters such as Freckles Marvel, Uncle Blacky, and Aunt Minerva.

WHEN UNCLE MARVEL HAD POWERS Mary Marvel #28 marked Uncle Dudley’s last Golden Age appearance.

And there could have been no more appropriate send-off than to make his final story under the Fawcett banner one where he had finally acquired the powers of a Marvel, even if only for a brief time.

The story, crafted by the Binder brothers, began with Mary visiting Uncle Dudley at Shazam, Inc. While she was there, a wealthy man named Henry Hibbs came to the office in need of The Marvel Family’s services. His son Herbert had gambled and lost $50,000 and was being held hostage by one Ace Spaid in an illegal casino on a cruise ship. Hibbs had been ordered to pay the ransom at a pier.

“Cry Uncle!”—The Sequel In “Uncle Marvel’s Rival” by Otto Binder, C.C Beck, & Pete Costanza—from Captain Marvel Adventures #53 (Feb. 1946)—readers learned for the first time that Uncle Ebenezer’s last name is also Batson, meaning he is likely related to Billy from his father’s side. [Shazam heroes TM & © DC Comics.]

Going into Hibbs’ place, Uncle Marvel and Mary Marvel confronted several hire-thugs waiting there. At one point, Uncle was knocked unconscious by one of them. Upon seeing this, Mary Marvel let the crooks get away so she could attend to him. Admiring his bravery despite how often he got the worst of it from criminals, she made a fervent wish for Uncle Marvel to get the same Shazam powers that Captain Marvel enjoyed, not realizing that

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Olympians Minerva and Zeus were listening in.

Minerva proposed to Zeus that Uncle Dudley should be rewarded with the powers of a Marvel for his courage, good deeds, and fighting evil through his Shazam, Inc. organization—at least for a day.

Zeus agreed, saying Dudley will have powers equal to Mary Marvel (who had been said on one occasion to be second only to Captain Marvel) for 24 hours. With that, the king of the Greek gods pointed his finger down at Earth and the magic lightning bestowed on Dudley the powers of the same immortals (plus Solomon) from whom Captain Marvel got his powers. Uncle Dudley regained consciousness with a significant reduction in his waist size—and the powers of Captain Marvel.

He was promptly fired upon by thugs, but the bullets bounced off of his chest. However, not knowing he had super-powers, he thought they had missed him. It wasn’t till he discovered he could really fly that he came to the realization that he had Shazam powers. He was elated to finally be what he had always falsely pretended to be: Uncle Marvel.

The Last Hurrah—The Last “Shazam!”

As a gesture of obeisance, Uncle Marvel received powers (for 24-hours) in his final Golden Age appearance, published in the last issue of Mary Marvel (#28, Sept. 1948). Story produced by the Brothers Binder. After the cancellation of Mary’s title, the issue numbering was continued on what was really a new title—Monte Hale Western, featuring a movie cowboy from Saturday matinees. [Shazam heroes & wizard Shazam TM & © DC Comics.]

It was to Dudley’s credit that having Shazamic powers didn’t go to his head when he apprehended the lowlifes who had attacked him. Instead, he simply subdued them and rescued Henry Hibbs. Then he and Mary towed the gambling ship to the police.

Unfortunately for Dudley, his 24-hour Uncle Marvel powers ended soon afterward, while he confronted another villain, who was pursuing a man Dudley was protecting at his Shazam, Inc. office. So Uncle Dudley was knocked unconscious yet again. Mary Marvel soon rescued him, however.

Afterwards, when Uncle regained consciousness, he was quick to fall back on his go-to excuse: Shazambago. When he’d settled back into his normal self, he wistfully concluded that he must have dreamt of having the powers of a Marvel. Only, it hadn’t been a dream. For once in his life, he had been a Marvel instead of the un-Marvelous Uncle Marvel.

References: 1.

All In Color for A Dime, Dick Lupoff, “The Big Red Cheese”; Don Thompson, Dick Lupoff, editors.

2.

Fawcett Companion, Matt Lage: Otto Binder-“We Were More Or Less Inspired”; P.C. Hamerlinck, ed.

3.

Fawcett Companion, C.C. Beck: “The Human Quality of the Captain Marvel Characters”; P.C. Hamerlinck, ed.

4.

Alter Ego #131/Fawcett Collectors Of America #191 (March, 2015), Brian Cremins, “‘A Leader of Men’: Bill Parker on King Arthur & The Origin of Captain Marvel”; P.C. Hamerlinck, ed.

UNCLE MARVEL FAWCETT INDEX Appearances in comicbook stories, in chronological order: 1. Wow Comics #18 (Oct. 1943), “Mary Marvel Meets Her Uncle Marvel” 2. Wow Comics #24 (April 1944), “The Return of Uncle Marvel” 3. Captain Marvel Adventures #43 (Feb. 1945), “Captain Marvel Meets Uncle Marvel” 4. Wow Comics #34 (March 1945), “Case of the Missing Uncles”

8. The Marvel Family #1 (Dec. 1945), “The Marvel Family and Baby Marvel” 9. Captain Marvel Adventures #53 (Feb. 1, 1946), “Captain Marvel Meets Uncle Marvel’s Rival” 10. Captain Marvel Adventures #59 (April 26, 1946), “Captain Marvel and Uncle Marvel’s Wedding”

5. Wow Comics #35 (April 1945), “Mary Marvel Meets Her Rival”

11. The Marvel Family #2 (June 1946), “The Marvel Family and Aunty Anti-Marvel”

6. Master Comics #61 (May 1945), “Captain Marvel Jr. Meets Uncle Marvel”

12. The Marvel Family #3 (July 1946), “The Marvel Family Moves a Town”

7. The Marvel Family #1 (Dec. 1945), “The Mighty Marvels Join Forces”

13. The Marvel Family #5 (Oct. 1946), “The Marvel Family and the Shazam Robot” 14. Mary Marvel #17 (Nov. 1946), “Mary Marvel and the Big Test”

Uncle Marvel: The Un-Marvelous Marvel

15. Captain Marvel Adventures #69 (Feb. 1947), “Captain Marvel and Billy Batson’s Xmas”

19. The Marvel Family #14 (Aug. 1947), “The Marvel Family and the Disappearing Barges”

16. Mary Marvel #9 (Feb. 1947), “Mary Marvel and Her Thrilling Birthday Party”

20. Mary Marvel #17 (Oct. 1947), “Mary Marvel and the Dog-Nappers”

17. The Marvel Family #8 (Feb. 1947), “Introducing: The Marvel Roundtable”

21. Mary Marvel #28 (Sept. 1948), “Uncle Marvel’s Powers”

18. The Marvel Family #10 (April 1947), “The Sivana Family Strikes at The Marvel Family”

From Uncle To Mentor After DC Comics licensed the rights to The Marvel Family characters in the early 1970s, Uncle Marvel made a few appearances, as per Shazam! #19 (July-Aug. 1975), above, drawn by Bob Oksner.

Later, following the debut of the popular Saturday-morning Shazam! CBS-TV series from Filmation, co-starring veteran actor Les Tremayne as Mentor, who accompanied Billy Batson on his cross-country journey, DC switched Uncle Dudley’s role (and title) to that of “Mentor” in the comicbook, beginning with Shazam! #26 (Nov. 1976), illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger. Both stories scripted by E. Nelson Bridwell. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Carl Shinyama is a freelance comicbook editor and artist from Maui, Hawaii. He is a self-proclaimed Captain Marvel-ologist, a lifelong fan dedicated to sharing facts and trivia about the original Captain Marvel.

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The WHO’S WHO of American Comic Books 1928-1999 Online Edition Created by Jerry G. Bails FREE – online searchable database – FREE http://www.bailsprojects.com/whoswho.aspx – No password required

Art by Neal Adams & Tom Palmer.

Captain America TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

Green Lantern challenges The Gambler’s lethal gang in “Perfect Crimes for Sale” in Green Lantern #35 (Dec. 1948-Jan. 1949), with script by Lee Goldsmith & art by Irwin Hasen. Thanks to Brian Stewart. [TM & © DC Comics.]

The Fabulous FAWCETT FAMILY

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Part I – Featuring ROSCOE “ROCKY” FAWCETT, JR. Interview Conducted by Shaun Clancy Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year (Above:) Roscoe “Rocky” Fawcett, Jr., at far left, with his brothers on Christmas Day 1947 at their home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, with “about a hundred presents under the tree!”

(Right:) The 1942 Fawcett one-shot comicbook Holiday Comics repackaged the contents of remaindered copies of Captain Marvel Adventures #15, Jungle Girl [Nyoka] #1, and Whiz Comics #34 just in time to entice Christmas shoppers. The cover is a montage of various artists’ work, including C.C. Beck, Harry Anderson, Pete Costanza, and Alex Blum. [Shazam hero, Spy Smasher, Ibis the Invincible, Golden Arrow, & Lance O’Casey TM & © DC Comics; Nyoka the Jungle Girl TM & © AC Comics.]

(Below:) Shaun Clancy, on left, and Roscoe “Rocky” Fawcett, Jr., on October 24, 2013. Photo courtesy of Shaun Clancy.

FCA

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: In 1997, Golden Age super-fan Shaun Clancy’s diligent detective work resulted in him acquiring—and placing in my hungry hands—the contact information for Roscoe K. Fawcett, former VP/Circulation Manager of Fawcett Publications and the last living and youngest of Wilford “Captain Billy” Fawcett’s four sons. It was Roscoe who had convinced his brothers to enter the growing comicbook field with the concept of a young boy who gained the ability to turn into a larger-than-life hero. I enjoyed a memorable Saturday afternoon in October ’97 with Mr. Fawcett at his home in Nisswa, Minnesota (just minutes away from Captain Billy’s legendary Breezy Point Resort—the lodge later renamed The Fawcett House), resulting in the published interview “The Fawcetts Could Do It As Well,

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or Better, Than Anybody”— later reprinted in the 2001 TwoMorrows book Fawcett Companion.

Roscoe K. Fawcett passed away on 12-23-99. Fast forward to 2011 and Shaun Clancy had located one of Roscoe’s sons, Roscoe “Rocky” Fawcett, Jr. [1936-2018], who was enthusiastic to talk about his father and his family, as well as Fawcett Publications, and to share rare photographs from the Fawcett family album.

The following interview was conducted by Shaun over Across The Ages the phone on Rocky was too young to remember meeting his 3-28-2011. Shaun grandfather—but it happened! Here, Captain Billy later visited Fawcett holds baby Roscoe “Rocky” Fawcett, Jr., Rocky at his in 1937. home in Lyons Falls, New York, and subsequent conversations were done via e-mail correspondence. Next issue’s Part 2 of “The Fabulous Fawcett Family” will feature the life of Captain Billy and his escapades as a publisher. —P.C. Hamerlinck SHAUN CLANCY: Did you work at Fawcett Publications yourself?

ROCKY FAWCETT: I only worked there for a few summers. My cousin, Jack Fawcett, also worked there for a couple of summers.

But none of us Fawcett sons of the four Fawcett brothers were involved with Fawcett Publications. They made a pact, my dad and his brothers, that no one [in our generation] would really be associated with the company except summer jobs for some of the kids. The main reason for that was that my dad and his brothers saw that certain family members could never work at Fawcett and were merely waiting around to reap the rewards of the business. That’s the way it was back in those early days.

SC: Did you ever meet your grandfather, Wilford “Captain Billy” Fawcett?

FAWCETT: I never met him that I remember. I was born in 1936 and he died in 1940.

SC: Besides his three brothers, didn’t your dad also have a sister?

FAWCETT: Yes, her name was Miriam. Let me bring you up to speed on the way things were. Wilfred “Buzz” Fawcett was the oldest brother. The next oldest brother was Roger, then Gordon, and then my dad, Roscoe. Around 1965 Roger, Gordon, and my dad sort of “retired” Buzz because he wasn’t very good at business— but they still kept him on salary and he retained his stock holdings and all that jazz. Miriam was the only girl in the family. She was never really involved with Fawcett Publications, but she still held the same stock and shares as her siblings.

SC: Did you ever meet any of the celebrities that the Fawcett brothers associated with?

FAWCETT: Let me read you something that my brother Steve sent to me when my dad died in 1999. I received a teacup with a note that said, “Dear brother Rocky: Enclosed is one of the three demitasse cups and saucers that survived the 1959 fire at Breezy Point Resort. Dad and Elizabeth had them on display in their dining room. I thought each brother should be in possession of a piece of the family heritage. Perhaps your cup touched the lips of Sinclair Lewis, Carole Lombard, Clark Gable, Jack Dempsey, Tom Mix, or Dolores del Rio. Merry Christmas! Love, Steve.”

SC: That’s a great story! Have you stayed in contact with other Fawcett relatives?

FAWCETT: We’re not a tight family, but I’ve remained very close friends over all these years with my cousin, Jack Fawcett—Roger Fawcett’s son. We’re probably the two closest of all the Fawcetts.

SC: Did your dad bring comicbooks home from work?

FAWCETT: Let me tell you something: I was a member of Christ Church in Greenwich, Connecticut, and my voice was terrible, but they let me into the choir because I brought comicbooks to the choir members. [both laugh] That’s why they let me in!

SC: Was your school the same way?

FAWCETT: No, the school didn’t care too much for comicbooks!

SC: What years would you have been working there during the summers?

FAWCETT: 1958 through 1960.

SC: Long after the comicbooks were gone.

FAWCETT: Exactly.

Turning On The Fawcett(s) Fawcett family photo from 1942 taken in Greenwich, CT. (L to r:) Gordon, Miriam (her legal name, but she went

by Marion), W.H. (Buzz), Roscoe, Claire (their mother), and Roger.

The Fabulous Fawcett Family—Part I

When The Father Of “Rocky” Met Dempsey (Above & top right:) Roscoe “Rocky” Fawcett, Jr., on Oct. 24, 2013, holding the ancient teacup his brother sent him from Captain Billy’s legendary lodge at the famed Breezy Point Resort. That august structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and was later renamed The Fawcett House. 2013 photo by Shaun Clancy. (Right:) One of the many celebrities who may well have wielded that teacup, as Steve Fawcett wrote, was the far-famed onetime world heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey, seen here with his friend Roscoe.

SC: Did you meet Editorial Director Ralph Daigh?

FAWCETT: Yes, Ralph was like part of our family. Fawcett Publications was a company that didn’t care about making money.

Fawcett was in business to take care of family, and that was from day one. My grandfather, Captain Billy Fawcett, owned a resort in Northern Minnesota called Breezy Point, and he’d have many celebrities stay at his place.

SC: What can you tell me about the CBS purchase of Fawcett Publications for fifty million dollars in January of 1977?

FAWCETT: CBS knew about radio and television, but they knew nothing about the magazine business. They had previously hired a guy from Fawcett to stay on after the sale, and they soon let him go.

My cousin Jack Fawcett was a lawyer for Fawcett Publications when it was sold to CBS, so he’d know much more about the sale than I would. And maybe my mom, who’s now 97, would know some details about it. My dad left her when I was about 15, but he really left before that, probably when I was about 12. From when I was between 11 to 14 years old, I used to travel with him. He had his own plane. He was VP and Circulation Manager at Fawcett. His job was mainly entertaining the wholesalers in different towns across the United States in order to try and get Fawcett a better position on the magazine racks.

SC: Let’s go over some of the names on the Statement of Ownership I sent to you, which was originally published in Fawcett’s George Pal’s Puppetoons #2 comicbook.

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Fawcett Collectors Of America

The Cowboy & The Cowboys (Top right:) The movie set of Boss of Boomtown (Universal, 1944) was where its stars Rod Cameron and Fuzzy Knight met Roscoe Fawcett’s sons (l. to r.) Roger, Peter, and Roscoe, Jr. (“Rocky”). In one sense, that film coincidentally co-starred none other than Captain Marvel himself, Tom Tyler. Tyler, also a Hollywood stunt man, had played the World’s Mightiest Mortal in the 1941 serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel. (Above:) Cameron later had his own cowboy comicbook series, published by Fawcett, as per the cover of Rod Cameron Western #2 (April 1950).

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

FAWCETT: Jack Fawcett, who’s Roger Fawcett’s oldest son [he passed away in 2014], and myself are six months apart in age, and we’re the only two family members that communicate and keep track of Fawcett’s past. The only reason that Jack and I know anything about the Fawcett history was that Jack ended up as a lawyer for Fawcett in the company’s final years. He didn’t work for Fawcett, but rather he worked at an outside law firm and Fawcett was a client. As previously mentioned, no Fawcett family member was allowed to work for the company because the brothers thought most of them would just be sitting around waiting for a paycheck.

When Fawcett went up for sale, they had already sold their printing presses in Louisville, Kentucky. When Fawcett decided to sell, Jack was the one who had to go around and collect all the signatures.

Captain Billy Fawcett owned 100% of Fawcett Publications. Then, at some point along the line, he gave roughly 10% to his brother, Roscoe—who my dad named me after. I’m not sure if he bought the stock or if it was given to him. Anyway, that’s how it ended up, but then Roscoe had two daughters, Gloria Fawcett in California and Eva Roberts from Washington state.

SC: Which would be your dad’s cousins?

A Marvel-ous Family Portrait Captain Billy Fawcett’s family circa 1915: Capt. Billy at top; from left to right: W.H. Jr. (Buzz), Roscoe held by Claire (the Captain’s wife), Roger, Miriam (Marion), and Gordon at the bottom.

The Fabulous Fawcett Family—Part I

21

worked at Fawcett. Anyway, he would buy places in different areas like Clear Lake, Wisconsin, to entertain magazine wholesalers, and he even bought a ghost town in Nevada.

SC: I found a bound volume set of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, and some of the published letters reveal that your grandfather was doing very similar things to what your dad later did as Circulation Manager, like keeping good relationships with his salesmen and wholesalers. Do you think your dad learned this from your grandfather, and was he the only Fawcett brother doing that sort of thing?

FAWCETT: He was the youngest Fawcett son, so he got the job nobody wanted!

SC: Were the Fawcett brothers equal owners of the company?

FAWCETT: As far as I know. W.H. (Buzz) was made President because he was the oldest. He was not a business person at all, and really never was the boss. He was a little bit crazy. I do remember that every time he was given something to do, he would mess it up!

SC: Did you ever attend the Whiz Bang Days celebrations which are still

The Puppets’ Pal In the interview, Rocky Fawcett and Shaun Clancy discuss the Statement of Ownership listed in George Pal’s Puppetoons #2 (Jan. 1946). Art by Joe Orioio.

Stop-motion puppet-master Pal, of course, would later direct such live-action film fare as War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

FAWCETT: Correct—Captain Billy Fawcett’s brother Roscoe’s children. Harry Fawcett, who was W.H. Fawcett’s brother, was my godfather. Lillian Bushley, the Notary Public listed on the Statement, was my dad’s secretary. Lillian did everything for him, because my dad traveled all the time. I can remember for a period of time when we moved from Minneapolis to Old Greenwich, Connecticut (and later, to Rochester, New York), and we didn’t have a lot of money at first. Then Fawcett Publications really began to take off. I was eleven years old when we had our first Christmas at the new house in Old Greenwich, and we had about a hundred presents under the tree! They were almost all purchased by Lillian, not my father.

SC: How did your parents meet?

FAWCETT: They met in high school in Minnesota.

SC: Did you ever travel back to Minnesota with your family?

FAWCETT: We went there quite a bit, mostly to Breezy Point Resort. Dad always had—I call them bodyguards, but they weren’t really bodyguards—and they’d go with him on his business trips, like when he’d visit Chicago and L.A. They were actually guys that

In The Beginning…

Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang No. 93 (Dec. 1926). This highly successful joke-andcartoon mag was the original foundation of Wilford Fawcett’s publishing empire… and, probably not by coincidence, three of the four words in its title were utilized in 1939 in the creation of Captain Marvel, a.k.a. Billy Batson, in Whiz Comics #2. Fawcett also briefly published a Slam-Bang Comics, but that one didn’t last long. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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Fawcett Collectors Of America

Family Matters (Left:) Rocky Fawcett’s parents, Roscoe Fawcett and Marie Ann Formanek wedding announcement photo, March 22, 1935. (Right:) Roscoe, Jr. (Rocky) and his mom, Marie, on 8-10-1937.

held in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, home of Fawcett’s very first business offices?

of Fawcett, died a couple of years after the sale. My dad always looked up to Roger.

FAWCETT: No, we pretty much only went up to Breezy Point Resort while in Minnesota. Actually my youngest brother, Steve, lived up in that area for a few years with my dad during the last years of his life.

SC: Were you aware at the time that CBS was interested in buying Fawcett?

SC: Your dad served in World War II, correct?

FAWCETT: Yes, he was stationed stateside in the Army in the anti-aircraft division.

SC: The ownership statement lists Gordon Fawcett as Business Manager.

FAWCETT: Yes, and he was also Vice-President.

In fact, Gordon—an important person at the company—said, “We will sell Fawcett to CBS, but you’re gonna retain me as a consultant” … whereas my dad couldn’t have cared less.

Then Roger Fawcett, who had been President

Hope Springs Eternal (Right:) Originally published in the Fawcett Distributor newsletter for Nov. 1, 1939, is a snapshot from a convention at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. (L. to r.:) Fawcett VP/Business Manager Gordon Fawcett; musician/actor Jerry Colonna; comedian/actor Bob Hope (holding an issue of the Fawcett magazine Life Story); Bill Dennis (Hollywood Fawcett supervisor); and Allan Adams (Fawcett’s “Assistant Circulation Director”). Adams, whom Rocky mentions in the interview, later went to work for Charlton after leaving Fawcett Publications.

FAWCETT: Oh, yeah. In fact, one of the CBS guys came to me initially and said, “I understand it’s for sale?” and I said, “Well, I

The Fabulous Fawcett Family—Part I

23

think it is.” I then called Roger. My dad and Roger were the closest of the brothers, and I believe that’s why my cousin Jack and I have remained friends all these years.

Fawcett started in the comicbook field. He had said that it looked like a money-making kind of business and convinced his brothers to go along with it.

SC: Was Mechanix Illustrated one of Fawcett’s best-selling magazine?

SC: I have a 1940s issue of Writer’s Digest magazine, and it mentions all the publishers at that time and what they were doing, how much they were paying, where they were located, and so on. I noticed Fawcett was still listed as being in Minneapolis, but also had offices in Boston and New York. The magazine mentions Fawcett bought a 21-story building in Manhattan that was located at 67 West 44th Street.

FAWCETT: No, Woman’s Day was by far the best-seller, followed

by True Magazine, and then True Confessions and the various movie magazines, with Mechanix Illustrated following after those.

SC: Was the sale of the company all cash plus stock?

FAWCETT: It was all cash. Five years later [1982], Random House bought Fawcett from CBS for 250 million dollars. That shows you how bad our timing was.

SC: Did your father ever mention the cancelation of the comicbook side of the business? Did he ever talk to you about that?

FAWCETT: No, but when I started in the advertising business in New York, I ended up at Young & Rubicam for about six years and left there to be a Circulation Director at Erickson Publishing, and there was an employee in my department who said he worked on Superman comics and wrote the stories. I don’t remember his name.

SC: Who distributed Fawcett’s magazines/comics?

FAWCETT: Fawcett; they distributed themselves. My dad was in charge of circulation and made the decision to stay away from using outfits like, for example, Independent News. I can tell you this, if you don’t already know: it was my Dad’s idea to get

Hello, Halloween!

On a 1942 afternoon, Mrs. Roscoe Fawcett (Marie) reads Whiz Comics #36 to her boys. Also seen is a clearer shot of the cover of that issue (dated Oct. 1942); cover art by Ray Harford. Oddly, though it’s clearly a “Halloween” issue, it would have wound up being on sale at least two months prior to that horrific holiday! [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

FAWCETT: Fawcett had several small offices all over New York, which was one of the reasons why they bought a building to consolidate all their offices. [EDITOR’S NOTE: According to Writer’s Digest, Fawcett had a half-dozen floors in the Paramount Building in Times Square, offices at 52 Wall Street, and two more offices in separate buildings on Madison Avenue.] I can tell you this, when they built the one in Greenwich, Connecticut, on One Fawcett Place in 1946, I got to set a few bricks on it. They put the finance and circulation departments in the Greenwich building, while editorial and advertising were in New York. There was never an office in Boston, unless a wholesaler was using the space. I would travel to all the offices with my dad and don’t remember ever going to Boston with him.

SC: So the sale to CBS also included the buildings?

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Fawcett Collectors Of America

SC: Let’s return now to finishing identifying the people in the “Statement of Ownership” listing that I got from the Puppetoons comicbook.

FAWCETT: We’ve already covered W.H. (Buzz) Fawcett and Roger Fawcett. V.D. Fawcett is Vivian Doris Fawcett. Vivian was Gordon Fawcett’s wife. M.B. Fawcett is Mary Blair Fawcett, and she was Billy Fawcett Junior’s wife. H.A. Fawcett is Helen Aline Fawcett, and she was Roger’s wife. Of course, Roscoe Kent Fawcett was my dad. M.F. Fawcett is my mom, Marie Formanek Fawcett.

The W.H. Fawcett Trust mentioned probably had something to do with Captain Billy Fawcett’s widow.

Rocky Fawcett in 1969.

SC: So Captain Billy’s widow was probably still alive at this time?

FAWCETT: Probably. I recall Captain Billy’s brother Roscoe Fawcett had two daughters. M.B. The Fawcett Building in Greenwich, Connecticut, located at One Fawcett Place—to which Rocky Fawcett added King was probably Captain Roscoe a brick or two during its construction in 1946.

Fawcett’s second wife, Mira Fawcett, as Roscoe passed away in 1937. As FAWCETT: Correct. The One Fawcett Place building in CT is still previously mentioned, Captain Roscoe Fawcett’s two daughters there. were Gloria Fawcett and Eva Roberts. My cousin Jack Fawcett told me a funny story… that Eva Roberts flew into New York carrying a SC: Jack Dempsey had a restaurant in downtown New York. Did you fur catalog as she signed over her share of the business during the ever… ? sale, and then immediately went down the street and bought a fur FAWCETT: We went to it a lot! I think it was right on Broadway. coat with a portion of her funds! She was quite the character. As for Jack was a friend of my dad’s. In fact, I have photos of Jack V.L. Buckley, both Jack and I have no idea who that is. There was Dempsey with me as a baby. also someone named Allan Adams. His brother was a magazine

“He’ll Always Be A Cornerstone In This Organization”

SC: I assume you also have photos of your family with various Hollywood celebrities?

FAWCETT: We have an album with photos from our Hollywood trips where we met stars on movie sets, such as Abbott and Costello. My Dad loved to take pictures. He also made home movies when we were growing up. He’d splice the film together to make a feature-length home movie.

SC: Do you have any memories of the office visits to Fawcett, and did you do that often with your Dad? FAWCETT: I was in the Greenwich offices a lot. I remember when my dad convinced me to do a prank. Gordon Fawcett would drive to work in a 1930s automobile, and my dad gave me a bucket of water to throw at him as he got out of his car.

SC: [laughter] He must’ve been angry!

FAWCETT: No, not really, since the prankster would pay to clean or buy a new suit for the person who got pranked, so they’d reap the rewards! [laughter] All of the Fawcett brothers would participate in occasional pranks, not just my dad, and even Gordon got into the act. Buzz and Roger worked out of the New York offices, while Roscoe and Gordon were at the Greenwich offices— even though Roger lived in Greenwich, he still worked in the NY offices.

SC: How did your “Rocky” nickname come about?

FAWCETT: I’m not sure; I guess it’s because there were two Roscoes in the house.

Abbott & Costello Meet Captain Marvel—Almost!

Here’s a 1948 photo of the popular film comedy team Bud Abbott & Lou Costello on the Universal Studios movie set of Mexican Hayride, with Rocky Fawcett on the left and Jack Fawcett on the right. (Lou’s the one seated in the chair.)

The Fabulous Fawcett Family—Part I

25

Keep ’Em Flying!

(Left:) Roscoe Fawcett with his wife Marie and their children, (l. to r.) Roscoe, Jr. (Rocky), Steven, Roger, and Peter, pose for a family photo next to their father’s private plane on Thanksgiving Day, 1940. (Below:) The Roscoe Fawcett family, Thanksgiving Day 1949. (L. to r.:) Steven, Roger, their mother Marie, Peter, Roscoe, Jr. (Rocky)… and the back of Roscoe’s head!

wholesaler in the state of Washington. Alan used to go around telling people he owned Fawcett Publications, and my dad would just laugh about it. Alan was actually hired at Fawcett. I’m not sure what he did there. He may have just hung around the office!

SC: Captain Billy’s first wife, Claire—your grandmother— did she ever remarry?

FAWCETT: No, she didn’t.

SC: Did you receive a lot of the Captain Marvel-related merchandise as a kid, maybe as gifts?

FAWCETT: While I don’t remember having Captain Marvel Club stuff while growing up, I still could’ve been a part of all that.

SC: Did you know if your dad was angry over the lawsuit between Superman and Captain Marvel, or was he like, “Oh, well…”

FAWCETT: No, he was pretty upset over it. Captain Marvel had a real following, and I think he just wanted to leave it all behind and end the comics, which is what I would have done, too.

SC: Would your house be littered back then with comics and magazines from Fawcett?

FAWCETT: Oh, yeah, but I don’t know what happened to it all. My dad had kept some with him before he passed away.

SC: Your dad was the last living Fawcett brother out of the four, correct?

FAWCETT: Yes. He died at 86 years old on December 23, 1999.

I remember that, near the end, he was telling his lawyers and doctors that they needed to keep him alive until January 1st because his kids would get more money from his estate at the beginning of a new year [laughs], but he didn’t quite make it.

Join us next issue for Part II with more Fawcett family and Fawcett Publications history, and the adventures of Captain Billy.

Patch It Up! Rocky Fawcett didn’t recall having any of the Captain Marvel Club items, such as this felt patch from 1943… but he certainly knew that the World’s Mightiest Mortal had a “real following.” [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

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Fawcett Collectors Of America

And, In Conclusion…

(Left:) The most close-knit of the four Fawcett brothers: Roger and Roscoe.

Photo dated August 8, 1930. (Right:) The final page of a very powerful full-length story, “The Freedom Train,” from Captain Marvel Adventures #85 (June 1948). Script by Otto Binder; art by C.C. Beck & Pete Costanza.

[Shazam hero & Dr. Sivana TM & © DC Comics.]

TM

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29

There’s Still Time For Heroes An Interview with Golden Age Writer LEE GOLDSMITH

by Mickey Angel Estefan, Jr. A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: This interview with the late DC scripter Lee Goldsmith was conducted on Sept. 1, 2015, and is © Mickey Angel Estefan, Jr. It previously appeared on the Gay League website on 8-1-15, operated by Joe Palmer, whose help with this piece we gratefully acknowledge. See end of article for more information.

O

ff a main interstate in Cutler Bay, Florida, through a couple of long neighborhood streets and a roundabout, you end up at the security house entrance of East Ridge at Cutler Bay, a 76-acre retirement village tucked away like a secret magical hamlet.

Lee Goldsmith signs prints of comics covers at an event held at the East Ridge Retirement Community in Cutler Bay, Florida, in 2015, when he was 92. Though he had actual comics yarns in most of those issues, in a few (such as Flash Comics #102) he was represented only by two-page text stories. Photo taken by Mickey Angel Estefan, Jr. (See the obituary/tribute to Lee Goldsmith in A/E #178.)

Howard Purcell penciled and Bob Oksner inked the Goldsmith-scripted Gambler story in Green Lantern #27 (Aug.-Sept. 1947). Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert.

[TM & © DC Comics.]

The security guard at the entrance asked the purpose of my visit, to which I replied, “I am here for Super-hero Saturday!” The event was in honor of Golden Age comicbook scribe and World War II veteran Lee Goldsmith, a resident of the community who at age 92 had apparently become a town celeb and had recently made it known in a Miami Herald interview that he was gay.

The guard instructed me to park my car in a designated lot for visitors and to wait on a bus that would take me into the community. I had thought I would be able to just drive in, and I pondered how carefully the little village was protected.

Another security staff member, a middle-aged man with a short-sleeve work shirt and security patch, lifted a police tape and moved a traffic cone so I could park in the almost-full visitor parking. He directed me to a small van that would take me into the secluded neighborhood. As I boarded the bus, a young boy about 11 years old sat in the driver seat. With amusement I asked, “Are you driving?” to which he replied, “I wish!” I imagined his fantasy of tearing through this quiet nook with 20-miles-per-hour street signs on every block and corner.

The guard in the lot turned out to be the actual driver and, I presumed, the kid’s father. After confirming I was heading to the event, we set forth to the village’s community center. As we drove through at the most prudent of speeds, we passed by row upon row of pretty garden homes and villas, in light sunny colors, with manicured lawns—with not a soul on the street or sidewalk. This almost make-believe town was a mishmash of Pleasantville meets Smallville meets Riverdale.

For a moment, though, the beauty and isolation and lack of human sightings made me wonder if I hadn’t stepped into Stepford, Connecticut—but instead of Stepford Wives, Stepford Seniors. And I thought to myself, “No one knows I am here and I don’t know how to get back to my car.”

When we arrived to the community center I was instructed to simply “go through those double white doors and make a left.” Now I knew for sure I was going to disappear. I grabbed my bag and camera and thanked the father and son as I stepped off and followed the directions.

I entered the building, made a left, and followed a small

30

An Interview With Golden Age Writer Lee Goldsmith

hallway that opened into a cacophony of sights and sounds of banquet tables; super-hero décor; kids running around; a face painter; a cotton candy machine; catering tables with food; and staff and residents dressed like comicbook characters. I felt like Dorothy Gale stepping out of my tornado-blown house into a world of MGM color.

I was greeted by a woman in a Spider-Man webbed shirt, who immediately gave me a pencil and a raffle ticket. I thought for sure someone would ask me who I was and why I was there, a complete stranger to the village. But they welcomed me without question. I took a seat at a banquet table to fill out my ticket. All around me were either staff or residents’ familiar members dressed up in costumes. There was a Supergirl, a Batgirl, about two dozen children of all ages, and at least one resident of the retirement community dressed as Wonder Woman with a sign at her waist stating “RETIRED.” When I returned my ticket, I advised Spider-Woman that I was here to write a story and would it be okay for me to take pictures?

Overhearing the conversation, Rick Drew, the village’s Director of Sales, attired in a Spider-Man shirt and baseball cap, asked me, “Well, have you met Lee yet?” I hadn’t, and he quickly walked me over to a table at the far end of the room where Lee, surrounded by friends, was sitting. “Lee, this man is here to write a story about you.” And just like that I was in business.

Lee Goldsmith sat in his wheelchair wearing a Dickies black short-sleeved shirt with its East Ridge name tag pinned over his shirt pocket. Behind his thin-rimmed glasses were kind bright eyes matched by a huge smile as I introduced myself and shook his hand. While I sat down, a woman had also come by to greet him and kissed him on the forehead. He turned to me and said, “You

From Canyon City To Big Town Goldsmith scripted these tales for All Star Western #86 (Dec. 1955-Jan. 1956) and Big Town #15 (May-June 1952). The former was illustrated by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito, the latter (a license from a long-popular radio series) by Jack Lehti & Bob Landers. Thanks to Jim Ludwig & Mark Muller, respectively.

[TM & © DC Comics.]

didn’t give me one of those.” So I stood up and kissed him on the head. When in Rome….

He asked me what I would like to talk about, and I answered, “How does it feel to be the Super-hero of the Day?” “Well, this is all kind of funny. I haven’t written a comicbook for over forty years.” As a matter of fact, the body of work Goldsmith is probably most known for is as lyricist and book writer for musicals such as Come Back, Little Sheba, a 1974 musical adaptation of the 1950 play; and his collaborations with composer Roger Anderson: Shine! (1983), Chaplin (1993), and the most recent one about the life of Abraham Lincoln, Abe, the Lincoln Musical (2009).

An interesting story from his early stage years involved his work on Sextet (1974), a musical with six characters about straight and gay couplings which starred Dixie Carter. Estelle Getty of Golden Girls fame had seen Goldsmith’s name on the marquee of the Bijou Theatre in New York and had demanded to see Lee. Getty was Goldsmith’s fiancée before the war, an engagement Goldsmith broke off after realizing he was gay after some experiences in the Army. They had lunch and remained close friends until her death.

Goldsmith is a little surprised at comic fandom or that people would even care so many years later about stories he wrote so long

There’s Still Time For Heroes

in it the rest of the trip without anyone ever finding him.

Something For The Girls Scripts by Lee Goldsmith. There were probably more boys who read Wonder Woman #40 (March-April 1950) than picked up a copy of Girls’ Love Stories #94 (April 1963)—but the enthusiastic female fans of romance comics made up for the dearth of young males. The WW art is by H.G. Peter; that of the love yarn was officially credited to Mike Peppe, although at least one analyzer for the Grand Comics Database thought that John Romita might have ghosted the pencils. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [TM & © DC Comics.]

ago. As a matter of fact, back in the ’40s, extra copies of what we now consider Golden Age comic treasures were thrown into the incinerator, a fact that would make comicbook collectors cringe in horror.

He arrived in New York with “no job, no skills, and no college degree.” He had done some writing in high school and the Army, and encountered a “friend of a friend of a friend,” who turned out to be the wife of an editor at National Comics—the predecessor in 1944 of National Periodical Publications, which would much later officially become DC Comics.

Goldsmith had never even read a comicbook before the day he sat down with the editor, who gave him the following synopsis for a comicbook script: “Flash is on a deserted island, tied to a tree, with no one to help him. How does he escape?” Goldsmith came back with a script and was hired on the spot.

[A/E EDITOR’S

In the 1940s, many writers in the comicbook industry weren’t fans of the medium trying to break in, but everyday Joes needing a job. Goldsmith had served in the Pacific arena of World War II, fighting “on our side,” he pointed out just to be clear. He told me “the only job for a man in the time of war is to survive. That was all one could do in a war. Survive.” It was the only solemn remark he had made all day in an afternoon otherwise Come Back Little Sheba full of quick-witted quips.

“The year was 1492. I am kidding, it was 1493,” he told the audience as he began his tale. Goldsmith returned stateside to San Francisco and made his way back to New York by train over four days and three nights. In his boxcar there was a door next to his seat, which he opened to find a luxurious state room with its own private bathroom. He entered the room and rode

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A poster for the 1974 Broadway musical version of William Inge’s drama Come Back Little Sheba, for which Lee Goldsmith wrote the “book” and lyrics. It starred Donna McKechnie, who a year later would be the featured dancer in the smash hit A Chorus Line. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

32

An Interview With Golden Age Writer Lee Goldsmith

continued to work with DC Comics until Warner Bros. bought DC and moved a portion of the operation to California. They offered to move him out there, but he didn’t want to leave New York City and from then on continued with the real love of his life, musical theatre.

Why Is This Man Smiling?

Perhaps because, as he indicates in the accompanying online profile, he had such a good time writing comicbooks, Broadway shows, and everything in between. Here his image is flanked by two more four-color stories he scribed: for Green Lantern #35 (Nov.-Dec. 1948), with art by Irwin Hasen… and for Star Spangled War Stories #28 (Dec. 1954), with art by Mort Meskin. Photo courtesy of Mickey Angel Estefan, Jr. With thanks to Michael T. Gilbert & Jim Ludwig.

[TM & © DC Comics.]

NOTE: If that try-out “Flash” story was ever published, we sure haven’t been able to find it!]

He earned $12 a page for ten-page scripts, writing two scripts a week. At just over $200 a week in earnings right after the war, Goldsmith was making good money and was able to afford the rent on his own apartment in New York City. “Most of the writers and artists worked at home in their apartments. Only the editors worked in the offices on Lexington [Avenue].” He then added jokingly, “I wrote from home because I was too busy drinking.”

Goldsmith wrote Golden Age classic stories of Green Lantern, The Flash, and Wonder Woman, his favorite, in Sensation Comics. He remembers the high quality of the writers, who in those days didn’t receive any author credits in their books. Batman and Superman were hands off except to the original creators of those characters, and contracted writers like Goldsmith just churned out story after story on a dearth of books. “It wasn’t as easy as you might think.

Writing a script for a comicbook was like a movie script with screen shots.”

After the war, super-hero comics lost popularity, and companies like DC started to produce all-genre fare like Westerns, war stories, horror, science-fiction, and romance comicbooks.

Goldsmith spent nearly thirty years writing love-story comicbooks like Girls’ Love Stories, which ran from 1949 into the early ’70s.

“I was very successful with love-story comics. If you want to know how I knew to write the pent-up passions of a teenage girl so well, let my psychiatrist answer that question for you.” He

His love of music not only led him to his career as musical book writer and lyricist but also to his longtime partner and husband of eighteen years. Goldsmith had pointed over his shoulder and said proudly, “See this handsome man behind me?

That’s my husband.” And Jeff Haller, a fellow lover of opera and a critic in his own right, stood loyally as he has since he and Goldsmith met

There’s Still Time For Heroes

33

by chance in 1997, in a restaurant near the Miami-Dade County Auditorium while attending an opera.

I asked Goldsmith about the recent United States Supreme Court decision that made marriage equality the law of the land. “Did you think this would ever happen in our lifetime?”

To which he replied, “For most of my life I would go to other people’s weddings and hear them ask the bride, ‘Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?’ I never thought those word would be spoken to me!” I added, “Well, been almost a month now since the SCOTUS decision and, despite the doomsayers, the world hasn’t ended.” Goldsmith looked at me, then down at his watch, and back up at me with a big mischievous grin on his face. “There’s still time yet!”

Mickey Angel Estefan, Jr., is a freelance writer for a performing arts site and his personal blog Mickey’s Ramblings (http:// mickeyangel.blogspot.com/). Read Mickey’s Gift of Saying Goodbye (https://gayleague.com/the-gift-of-sayinggoodbye/). The original online version of this article can be accessed at https://gayleague.com/theres-still-time-yetfor-heroes-an-interview-with-golden-age-writer-leegoldsmith Photos accompanying this article were taken by Mickey. Appreciative thanks to Dave Lazarov, who first brought Lee Goldsmith to Mickey’s and Gay League’s attention.

Special thanks also to Joe Palmer—and to Michael T. Gilbert & Mitchell Brown for initially making Alter Ego aware of this interview with Lee Goldsmith.

The Book Of Toth Two beautifully rendered pages from Lee Goldsmith’s story “The Fatal Chance” in Green Lantern #30 (Feb.-March 1948). The artist, for the uninitiated, is the late great Alex Toth… and the splash page to this tale appeared with the Goldsmith obit/tribute in A/E #178. Thanks to Bob Bailey for the scans. [TM & © DC Comics.]

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CHRIS WELKIN, PLANETEER

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The Rapturous Return Of A Forgotten, But Classic Science-Fiction Comic Strip

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A Personal Perspective by Roy Thomas

hile I yield to few in my admiration for Milt Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes, and Scott Adams’ Dilbert, there are a few other newspaper comic strips that have also had a special hold on my affections over the past eight-plus decades of my life, a mix of humor and adventure offerings: There’s Pogo, of course—one of the great comic strips by any sane standard of judgment…

Krazy Kat by George Herriman—ditto…

King Aroo, Jack Kent’s whimsical early response to Walt Kelly’s Okefenokee antics, with enough quiet genius of its own that it deserves to be much better remembered today…

Alley Oop, which under V.T. Hamlin was a nigh-perfect combination of laughs and excitement (the more so for a lover of history)… …and Chris Welkin, Planeteer.

Huh? Chris Who? Even most of the comic strip aficionados who’ve been made aware of Kent’s mini-masterpiece King Aroo

by IDW’s two exquisite volumes a few years back will probably draw a blank at the mention of Chris Welkin, Planeteer.

Welkin was a daily, and later Sunday, comic strip from the NEA (Newspaper Enterprise Association) that debuted in late 1951, after illustrated ads had appeared for a day or two previously in Cape Girardeau’s Southeast Missourian, whose comics section I devoured

Let The Welkin Ring!

(Above:) A Nov. 3, 1951, ad for the forthcoming Chris Welkin, Planeteer comic strip heralded the creation of writer Russ Winterbotham and artist Art Sansom, pictured at left.

The notice appeared in many newspapers, including the Boston Traveler. The photo is from the Escanaba Daily Press 12-20-51. Thanks to Rick Norwood & Art Lortie.

[TM & © the respective copyright holders.]

Incidentally, the word “welkin” means “sky”—and the “Chris” apparently came from a combination of Christopher Columbus and St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers.

six days a week, there then being no Sunday edition of that paper.

The new Space Age/science-fiction strip was written by Russ Winterbotham, who’d authored a smattering of pulp-mag SF (and the Big Little Book Maximo, the Amazing Superman) a decade earlier… …and was drawn by Art Sansom, who would later find success with the daily strip The Born Loser, which is still being produced by his son Chip.

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The Rapturous Return Of A Forgotten, But Classic Science-Fiction Comic Strip

“It Moves Like A Meteor, But… Its Shape Is All Wrong!”

The first two Welkin strips, dated Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 5 & 6, 1951, introduced both Chris himself and the visually unique Flying Triangle that had come to Earth from another star system. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

The first thing I recall being aware of about the Welkin strip is… the Flying Triangle.

The strip’s second daily, sporting an image of that fascinatingly shaped alien spaceship—a permutation of the “flying saucers” that had been making news since 1947—had run in an ad for the upcoming feature a couple of days before it was formally launched. There was a different ad on another day, that one spotlighting the strip’s hero.

Then, on Monday, November 5, 1951, Chris Welkin, Planeteer lifted off as a six-days-a-week strip, quickly introducing both the Flying Triangle and the eponymous hero, an Earthman scientist who was tracking the strange craft’s approach to our planet in 1999… long before Martin Landau and company claimed that year for their own TV series.

Just turning eleven and living in a small Missouri town where I only saw one or occasionally two big-city Sunday papers (St. Louis’ Globe-Democrat with King Aroo and, more rarely, the Post-Dispatch with Pogo), I was only vaguely aware of the vast panoply of comic strips that were out there in the universe… even though comicbooks had given me a taste for them by reprinting vintage and/or recent Flash Gordon, Tarzan, Buck Rogers, Terry and the Pirates, Dick Tracy, et al. But few of those newspaper strips were science-fiction, a comics genre I liked second only to super-heroes.

And here, clearly, was a brand new such strip, one where a kid like me could get in on the ground floor and follow it from Day One!

Actually, I didn’t just follow Chris Welkin, Planeteer. I cut the strips out of the newspaper, six days a week, and duly pasted them onto both sides of sheets of typing paper… eight to a sheet.

Later, I’m sorry to say, I even colored the earliest ones with colored pencils. I’ve saved them ever since, as there’s never been a really satisfactory collection of the strip. (Kari Therrian’s Golden Age Reprints put out one 200-page softcover collection and I’m pleased to have it, but after the first few weeks of continuity it suddenly skips ahead several months, after which it becomes more an intriguing sampler than anything else.)

For me, the joys of Welkin were many-fold: Chris himself and his cohorts, the eccentric academic Dr. Budd and excitable college student Rocky Starr, and soon the extra-terrestrial blonde stunner Amaiza (and yes, she’s the source of the name of the female adventurer I added to Marvel’s Star Wars comicbook #8-10)… Mr. 7, the bearded alien whose “spectacles” would be appropriated

by Marvel’s Mole Man a decade later… the Icthusians, with their Mohawk haircuts… the robed ascetics of Cyano, with their lethal touch. Even flying saucers—and an early man-made space station, years before even Sputnik—would soon get into the act.

Being familiar with vintage Caniff Terry and the Pirates from its reprinting in late-’40s comicbooks, I immediately sensed what Winterbotham and Sansom were about. Virtually from the outset, I thought of Chris Welkin, Planeteer by an alternate title: Terry and the Pirates Go to Mars.

Chris Welkin, Planeteer

Amaiza Adult Fantasy One of the first dailies (for Jan. 9, 1952) depicting Amaiza, the beautiful alien from Proxima Centauri. From the RT collection.

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

Well, not to Mars, initially.

At first the heroes and the Flying Triangle skipped the red planet and went directly into the far reaches of space, landing on a poisonous little planet called Cyano before the main cast returned to Earth and its outer-space environs for the rest of the series. (Still, they did get to Mars itself, a bit later. And to Mercury.) To me, Chris was Pat Ryan in the early Terry years, with Rocky Starr the equivalent of young Terry himself, before he turned adult. And Amaiza was definitely a Dragon Lady from the stars. Sansom wasn’t Milt Caniff (no one was, except maybe Noel Sickles), but he did a fine homage to the master’s artistic style… and Winterbotham’s prose reminded me at age 10-11 (and still does) of the repartee in the vintage Caniff Terry. I can’t give an adventure strip any higher praise than that. After Welkin’s adventures became more Earth- and Solar System-bound beginning in mid-’52, the strip

East Of The Sun, And South Of The Border This early-1950s Sunday of Chris Welkin, Planeteer may have been retitled and translated for El Diario, the longest-running Spanishlanguage newspaper in the United States… but we’re printing it here because it was the easiest way at this moment to show you a sample of the strip in Sunday color. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

37

38

The Rapturous Return Of A Forgotten, But Classic Science-Fiction Comic Strip

changed a bit… resembling less Terry and more Caniff’s post-WWII strip Steve Canyon, only set in 1999. Still pretty good, even if I’d have preferred Chris had continued wandering the spaceways in the Flying Triangle.

Alas, after approximately two years, the strip abruptly ceased… at the climactic point of an ongoing storyline. I was devastated, convinced that surely the strip was still running in other newspapers across the country, and only southeastern Missouri was now bereft of it.

Turns out, though, that that had been the very real end of Monday-thru-Saturday strip, no matter where you lived. In the local paper, it was replaced overnight by Bugs Bunny.

What I didn’t know at the time, because of the lack of a Missourian Sunday edition, was that, some time after its debut, Chris Welkin had added a Sunday color strip. And, amazingly, that incarnation would continue for another decade after the daily ended, surviving till 1964! (I first learned it existed in the latter 1950s when I drove to Columbia, Missouri, to visit a couple of slightly older friends who were enrolled at the University of Missouri, and I stumbled across the color Welkin in that small city’s Sunday paper.)

Since not long after TwoMorrows and I revived Alter Ego, more than two decades ago now, I’ve wanted to begin reprinting a week or two of the Welkin dailies in each issue of this magazine… as the strip has long since fallen into the public domain and thus can be freely shared with the world. Along the way, from time to time I would hint or plead to Rick Norwood, longtime editor and publisher of the bimonthly Comics Revue magazine, that he add Welkin to his regular cast of reprints of such classic comic strips as Tarzan (by Russ Manning and others), Flash Gordon (by Mac Raboy and Dan Barry), The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, Buz Sawyer, the English quasi-super-hero strip Garth, Alley Oop, and several other vintage adventure strips (plus a smattering of Krazy Kat dailies thrown in for good measure).

Recently, Rick agreed that the Winterbotham/Sansom feature was well worth adding to that lineup of great strips, as a sort of “Roy Thomas Presents” section. Thus, courtesy of strip scans provided by Art Lortie, a from-the-beginning reprinting of Chris Welkin, Planeteer will commence in Comics Revue’s June issue (now on sale!), along with an informative 1951 article on the strip by writer Winterbotham himself… so I’ve happily prepared this short piece for Alter Ego in order to encourage our readers to give Comics Revue a try (if they haven’t already). See ad below for ease of ordering.

Check out Comics Revue—and Chris Welkin, Planeteer. We think you’ll be glad you were so open-minded!

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40

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

The Post-est With The Most-est!

W

by Michael T. Gilbert

e at the Comic Crypt have something very special for you! Back in 1951, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper began publishing a series of mini-biographies devoted to each of the creators of the comic strips that appeared in its Sunday edition. Is that a cool idea or what? There were at least 24 in all.

We’re proud to reprint some here, starting on the preceding page with a fantastic foursome and continuing here with…

Ham Fisher & Al Capp After a test run in 1928, Hammond Edward Fisher’s strip about boxer Joe Palooka officially debuted on April 19, 1930. Joe Palooka quickly gained popularity, and Fisher soon hired “ghosts”

to do most of the work. One of these assistants was Al Capp, who eventually left Fisher to create his own strip, Li’l Abner (launched on August 13, 1934). Fisher later accused Capp of stealing the idea from a Palooka hillbilly sequence Al had worked on, and a bitter rivalry ensued. That feud ended on December 27, 1955, when Fisher, age 55, committed suicide after being thrown out of the National Cartoonist Society. (He’d been caught clumsily altering Li’l Abner photostats to make them seem pornographic!)

Capp continued to draw Abner until he ended the strip on November 13, 1977, a result of falling circulation and the creator’s declining health. Seventy-year-old Capp died November 5, 1979, a lonely and bitter man. We’re printing both biographies on the same page—just because they’d absolutely hate it!

By the way, Capp’s brother Elliott Caplin (Al’s birth surname) created the Toby Press comicbook line, producing 28 issues of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comics and some Abner spin-offs such as Shmoo Comics (as well as other titles like John Wayne Adventures) from 1949 to 1955.

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The Post-est With The Mostest!

Later, Harvey Comics published nine more Li’l Abner issues.

However, Harvey’s Joe Palooka comics won that later round by a knockout—lasting an impressive 118 issues before finally ending on March 1961.

Walt Kelly Kelly gained worldwide fame as the creator of the satirical syndicated strip Pogo. However, Pogo Possum and his pal Albert the Alligator first began as a feature in Dell/Western’s Animal Comics, beginning with issue #1 (Dec. 1942). At Dell, Albert and/ or Pogo appeared in 27 (of 30) issues of Animal Comics, and 18 of his own Dell title. From there, the talented Mr. Possum scored his own newspaper strip, beginning in one newspaper on October 4, 1948, then starting over for national distribution a year later. Soon after that, Pogo and friends were also reprinted in numerous paperbacks and collections.

Kelly continued his strip until his death from complications

of diabetes on October 18, 1973, at age 60. The Pogo strip was later continued by Kelly’s wife Selby and son Stephen but ended on July 20, 1975.

Gus Arriola Gustavo Arriola was born on July 17, 1917. Though he was born in Florence, Arizona, his father came from Mexico, and Gus grew up speaking Spanish (he learned English by reading the funny papers!). The series Gordo, launched on November 24, 1941, was set in Mexico. It was, initially, a broad caricature of the fat (gordo) lazy Mexican. But as the strip matured, tour guide Gordo became (in Gus’ words) an “accidental ambassador” for Mexican culture.

Suffering from Parkinson’s disease, Arriola died on February 2, 2008. The last Gordo strip had been published on March 2, 1985. Charles Schulz once described Gordo as “probably the most beautifully drawn strip in the history of the business.”

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

The Big Three… Plus One! What can you say about the talent on these two facing pages?

Alex Raymond, Roy Crane, and Hal Foster were three of the four most influential adventure strip artists of the genre’s “golden age.”

And did we somehow miss a strip highlighting comics’ fourth musketeer, Milt Caniff (of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon fame)? This quartet were all major influences on early comicbook artists.

We begin with Alex Raymond, who cut his teeth drawing Secret Agent X-9 (beginning January 22, 1934), and a truly glorious run on Flash Gordon (first published January 7, 1934). Jungle Jim soon

followed. Next, he debuted his own Rip Kirby comic strip on March 4, 1946. The series was continued by other hands after Raymond perished in a car crash in September 6, 1956, at age 46. The strip finally ended on June 26, 1999.

Then we have Roy Crane, who drew the adventures of Wash Tubbs (which morphed into Captain Easy) and, later, Buz Sawyer.

Crane’s use of the textured Craftint was unmatched, and he knew how to tell a fast-paced story. His art was also a huge influence when Joe Shuster designed the look of Superman. Crane died on July 7, 1977, at age 75.

The Post-est With The Mostest!

Harold R. (“Hal”) Foster was another adventure strip legend. He illustrated a ten-week British Tarzan strip sequence in 1928 (reprinted in America the following year). He returned to the character in 1931, drawing a syndicated Tarzan that began September 27 of that year. Foster continued until Burne Hogarth took over the Sunday Tarzan on May 9, 1937. On February 13, 1937, Foster launched his own Prince Valiant strip, which continues to this day. Hal Foster passed on July 25, 1982, at age 89.

Finally, we have Alfred Andriola. Though not as famous as the other three, Andriola was nonetheless an accomplished comic creator. Al’s first strip, which he drew from 1938 to 1942, featured “Oriental detective” Charlie Chan. He also illustrated “Captain

43

Triumph” for Quality’s Crack Comics. For a year Andriola drew the Dan Dunn detective strip with writer Allen Saunders. That series ended on October 3, 1943, and Alfred began Kerry Drake the next day.

Kerry Drake, a detective strip, was quite popular and lasted into the 1980s. Andriola’s early style was more in the Chester Gould/ Dick Tracy mold, with fast-moving and often violent stories starring freakish villains, including Bottleneck, Mother Whistler, and No-Face. Andriola died on March 29, 1983, at age 70, after which his strip was canceled.

44

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Chic Young

Mort Walker

Chic Young’s Blondie has proven to be one of comics’ most enduring and beloved strips. The series (created by Murat Bernard “Chic” Young), debuted on September 8, 1930. It began as a “flapper” strip, typical of the era, with leading lady Blondie Boopadoop enjoying a fling with Dagwood Bumstead. Dagwood, scion of a rich tycoon, was soon disinherited. When the unlikely couple married in 1933, the strip became an extremely popular domestic comedy. Eventually son Alexander, daughter Cookie, and dog Daisy were added to the mix. Harvey Comics published 147 issues of Blondie Comics Monthly and 140 of Chick Young’s Dagwood Comics. Sadly, Daisy and Her Pups rated a mere 17 issues.

Walker’s inclusion in this 1951 series symbolized something of a changing of the guard. Walker’s Beetle Bailey was launched on Sept. 4, 1950, less than a month before Charles Schulz’s Peanuts debuted on October 2, 1950. Both strips employed sophisticated humor and a spare drawing style that worked well as the comic strips themselves began to shrink. Mort’s Post-Dispatch mini-biography appeared a little more than year later. Walker was still involved creatively with Beetle until his death on January 27, 2018, at age 94. Before then, Beetle Bailey was among the oldest comic strips still being produced by its original creator.

Chic kept creative control of the strip until his death on March 14, 1973, at age 72. After that, Blondie’s scripting was taken over by his son, Dean Young. However even as early as 1951 (when this biography appeared), Young was no longer actually drawing the strip. In 1950, Young’s assistant, Jim Raymond––Alex Raymond’s younger brother, who began assisting Young in 1935—took over all the art after Young’s eyesight began to fail.

And that’s my last Post-ing for today, strip fans! We’ll have something different next ish!

‘Till next time…

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In Memoriam

George Olshevsky (June 12, 1946 – December 12, 2021)

“Each Comicbook Is A Window Onto This Universe…”

G

by Stephan A. Friedt eorge Olshevsky was a freelance editor, writer, publisher, paleontologist, and mathematician living in San Diego, California, after being raised in Buffalo, New York

A graduate of M.I.T. with a degree in mathematics and of the University of Toronto with a degree in computer science, George

George Olshevsky and the John Byrne cover to the Marvelpublished Official Marvel Index to The Fantastic Four #1 (Dec. 1985). [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

had a letter printed in Doctor Strange #169 (June 1968). He set out in the 1970s and early ’80s to index all the major Marvel Comics titles, aided by a complete personal collection of Marvel’s comics.

He employed Lou Mougin and others in the project, which came to one dozen volumes.

In an interview for the Canadian newspaper insert Weekend Magazine (April 1978), conducted

by Margaret Wente, George noted: “The Marvel Universe is a place removed from this reality in time and space, a sort of tangential universe. Each comicbook is a window onto this Universe, and the things that happen there are reported by the people who write and draw the comicbooks.” He and his Index co-publisher Tony Fruitti would also publish the “pro-zine” Collector’s Dream, which ran for five beautiful issues in 1977.

In the 1980s, George produced updated indexes directly for Marvel as the Official Marvel Index Series.

As a paleontologist, he maintained the comprehensive online Dinosaur Genera List. He was a champion of the Birds Came First hypothesis in the descent of bird debate, which states that all dinosaurs are the descendants of small arboreal and perhaps flying ancestors. He later reveled in the nickname “DinoGeorge.”

According to fan Joel Thingvall, George’s skill with a typesetting machine—“fastest typist with an accurate eye for correcting any mistake”—also made him a “sought-after resource” of many publishers.

George Olshevsky loved comicbooks and their history, and he will be missed.

Thanks to Ray Cuthbert, Joel Thingvall, Jackie Estrada, and David Scroggy, all of whom participated in this piece.

Previously Unpublished Brunner Artwork!

Frank is now accepting art commissions for covers, splash panels, or pin-up re-creations!

Also, your ideas for NEW art are welcome!

Art can be pencils only, inked or full-color (painted) creation!

Contact Frank directly for details and prices.

(Minimum order: $500) Visit my website at: http://www.frankbrunner.net

[Daredevil & Black Cat TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

ATTENTION: FRANK BRUNNER ART FANS!

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In Memoriam

Anthony F. Tallarico (Sept. 20, 1933 – Jan. 6, 2022)

“Well Over 1000 Different Children’s Books”

T

by Stephan A. Friedt ony Tallarico was born in Brooklyn, New York, and attended New York City’s School of Industrial Art, the Brooklyn Museum Art School, and the School of Visual Arts.

Tony Tallarico in recent years, and the cover of Dell/Western’s groundbreaking Western comic Lobo #1 (Dec. 1965). In this particular case, Tallarico evidently contracted with his friend/colleague Bill Fraccio to do the penciling, since the two artists had similar artistic styles. Lobo was written by co-creator D.J. Arneson. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

He started in comics in 1953, drawing for Charlton, Trojan, and David C. Cook Publishing Company. In 1961 he went to work for Gilberton, supplying artwork on Classics Illustrated and related series, also creating several second-edition painted covers.

In 1965-66, Tony drew the Dell/Western comicbook Lobo, a Western about a gunslinger in the Wild West, which lasted two issues. Lobo was the first African-American hero with his own comics series. The title was discontinued, reportedly because many retailers refused to carry the comic.

Tony would also work on Dell’s super-hero versions of Frankenstein, Dracula, and Werewolf.

At Charlton he drew TV tie-ins Bewitched and Bobby Sherman, as well as Blue Beetle and Son of Vulcan. For Harvey he provided art for the shortlived Jigsaw. And his was the artwork behind the much-publicized 1966 political comics The Great Society Comic Book and its sequel, Bobman and Teddy.

He often teamed up with his long-time friend Bill Fraccio (1920-2005) to produce work for Charlton and others. Together they provided stories for Warren Publishing’s Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella under the pseudonym “Tony Williamson”/“Tony Williamsune,” with Bill usually doing pencils or layouts and Tony finishing and inking.

In 1973, Tony left comics…sort of. He would work nonstop producing puzzle books, game books, the Where Are They? series of kid’s books, and many cartooning and art instruction books such as I Can Draw... geared towards younger readers.

Tony Tallarico was active well into the 2000s and believed he had had a hand in well over 1000 different children’s books.

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In Memoriam

Vic Carrabotta (1929-2022)

“Jack Says You’re Good”

V

By Bryan D. Stroud

ictor S. Carrabotta was born in the Bronx on June 24, 1929. His education included the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, along with the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, which later became the School of Visual Arts.

In a 2006 interview with Daniel Best, Carrabotta recalled: “[At 21,] I had just come back from the Marine Corps.

One of my mentors was Jerry Grandentti, who worked with DC.” As Vic struggled to break into the industry, he met with Jack Kirby at the Simon & Kirby studios. In a 2017 interview with Jesse Stillman, he recounted: “It was a ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ situation,” but when Jack and Vic hit the lobby and Jack saw Vic’s pregnant wife, Kirby walked Vic back up to his office. “He wrote something on a letter, sealed it in an envelope, and said take this over to Stan Lee.” So he did, portfolio in hand: “I said to Stan, do you want to see my work? Stan opened the envelope, read the letter, and said, ‘No. Jack says you’re good,’ and he threw a script across the desk and tells me, ‘I want this back in a week.’”

Vic Carrabotta in his later years, holding a cap inscribed with drawings of Captain America by various pro artists, including doubtless himself—and a sketch of Cap he did around that time. Actually, however, Vic never drew any superheroes during his time at Timely/Marvel. [Captain America TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

That first assignment, titled “The House on the Hill,” for Astonishing #13, led to steady work for the next five years, encompassing such Timely titles as Journey into Mystery, Strange Tales, Kid Colt Outlaw, Combat Kelly, Two-Gun Kid, Journey into Unknown Worlds, and Mystery Tales, among others.

With the industry implosion in the ’50s, Vic left for the field of commercial advertising and had a long career with companies such as McCann-Erickson, Disney, Reader’s Digest (where he became art director), Coca-Cola, Kenner Toys, et al. He also designed movie posters for the live-action 101 Dalmatians and Pirates of the Caribbean.

In the last years of his life, Vic became a regular on the convention circuit, as one of the last handful of artists to have been with Timely Comics in its Golden Age. He maintained a busy schedule and offered commissions through his website as well.

Vic passed away in South Carolina on November 22, 2022, at the age of 93.

Art by John Romita.

Captain America TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

In Memoriam

From First To Last The first and last professional comics stories Vic Carrabotta ever drew, almost exactly 70 years apart: “The House on the Hill” from Astonishing #13 (May 1952), with inks by Jack Abel, scripter unknown—and the cover of the 2022 graphic novel The Last Eleven Days of Earl Durand, written

by Jerred Metz, published only a few months before the artist’s passing.

[Astonishing page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.; g.n. cover © Jerred Metz & Estate of Vic Carrabotta.]

While he lived in Columbia, South Carolina, during his later years, Vic and fellow SC resident Roy Thomas joked about the fact that, when Roy moved to a rural county in that state in 1991, he actually became only the second person to be living in Calhoun County, SC, while producing comics for Marvel: For half a year during the 1950s, when the company had been known as Timely/Atlas, Vic had lived and drawn in Lone Star, SC, less than ten miles from Roy’s present home.

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49

50

except for that silver circlet on his head.) I recall buying this ish at the time and thought his look was pretty sharp. Was I alone in this?

Count me among those who loved both Brother Voodoo and Black Goliath, especially Brother Voodoo with its Gene Colan art. It never occurred to me that he was just a black Dr. Strange. Thought he was a very original character and was just beginning to find his footing with supporting characters and a romantic interest when the rug was untimely pulled out from under him.

Finally, count me among the disappointed when Kirby took over the “Black Panther” strip. Loved what Don McGregor had been doing with the strip (albeit seeming to run out of juice with the Klan storyline). But Kirby’s transition was just too jarring.

I also enjoyed the first part of William Foster’s interview, but will be more interested when he gets to his comments on the Silver Age in part two.

Pierre Comtois

Yeah, Pierre, I forgot all about the fact that I had utilized Willie Lincoln in, actually, no fewer than three issues of Daredevil after Stan handed over its scripting to me. (See the other two listed on p. 53.) As for the disparagement of Luke Cage’s original costume, it seems fairly widespread these days; but, as I said in A/E #173, I consider that criticism

“U

ncle Ego,” I guess we’ll call him—the above “maskot” version of Captain Ego that Shane Foley surprised us with this time, based on a C.C. Beck/Pete Costanza Golden Age drawing of Uncle Marvel of Fawcett’s Shazam-minded Marvel Family! Shane and colorist Randy Sargent have done their usual superlative job to lead your errant eye into this issue’s letters section.

[Captain Ego TM & © Roy Thomas & Estate of Bill Schelly; created by Biljo White.]

Now, on to monumental missives re Alter Ego #173, with its double-barrel look at black characters in comicbooks, both super-hero and other… but first, I (Roy) feel I should explain an A/E policy matter that commenced in that issue and has been followed through since, including in this letters section. A few years ago, when the Associated Press first announced its illogical policy of capitalizing the word “black” but not the word “white” when referring to groups of human beings according to race, a system soon become widespread (though hardly universal) in the U.S., I decided that in Alter Ego either both words would be capitalized, or else neither would… and I came down on the side of “neither.” Like most of A/E’s readers, I suspect, I believe in equality… and what could be more equal than that?

Now, onward, beginning with comments from Pierre Comtois:

Roy,

Being of a Silver Age bent of mind, I of course found Alter Ego #173 right up my alley. Enjoyed Barry Pearl’s lengthy coverage of blacks in comics, but I think the subject can stand to be revisited more thoroughly in some future ish. But I must correct Barry on his claim that the Willie Lincoln character was “not seen again in the Silver Age.” He was! He returned in ish #59, scripted by none other than yourself! I recall at the time being disappointed that, with his connection with the police department, you didn’t make him a regular supporting character.

And what’s with this derision of Luke Cage’s original “costume”? First I’ve heard of this. It looks pretty sharp to me (well,

Did Anybody Ever Give That Dog A Name?

Willie Lincoln and his German shepherd made a second dramatic appearance in Daredevil #59 (Dec. 1969), courtesy of Roy Thomas, writer; Gene Colan, penciler; and Syd Shores, inker. And there were more to come!

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

re:

51

foolishly overblown, since his garb was very much in tune with outlandish outfits and attitudes in the heady days of Shaft, Super Fly, and the like, as modified for a super-hero comicbook. Still, even the Netflix series got in a dig at Cage’s original look. It’s a free country.

Since the Black Panther’s 1966 debut in Fantastic Four #52 was definitely a landmark in American comics, we tried to deal at least in passing in A/E #173 with the problematic overlap of the names of T’Challa and the Black Panther Party of that period. But reader Clifton Wellman has something to say about that, and we want to hear him out: Hello Roy,

I read with great interest your issue concerning the way comicbooks treated the “Black Power” movement of the 1960s and 1970s. You note that the first [story] of Marvel’s Black Panther was cover-dated July 1966, and appeared on the newsstands perhaps two months earlier, half a year before the Black Panther Party was formed in Oakland [California] in October 1966. You suggest that this was just a remarkable coincidence. But actually, not a coincidence. There is much more to the story.

Immediately after its formation, the BPP created dozens of outposts all across America, the largest ones being New York City, Chicago, and (briefly, before it self-destructed via a murder) New Haven [Connecticut]. In the spring of 1969, a city-statefederal task force rounded up the Black Panther 21 in New York City in a series of massive indictments. The legal proceedings went on for two years, cost tens of millions of dollars, and constituted the largest criminal case in New York City in the entire 20th century. It was a huge story, nothing ever bigger in New York, though today it has faded away into obscurity and few remember it.

Shortly before the trial was concluded, I interviewed one of the defendants, who was quite forthright with me because, by a remarkable coincidence, I had been a school classmate of his years earlier. Among other things, he described to me the exact mechanism by which the Black Liberation Army (a superviolent terrorist group which deliberately killed police officers just for fun) was being split off from the Black Panther Party (an organization that generally avoided contact with the police and that, thoughtfully, usually refrained from killing them). This is a long and very complicated story that I will not get into here, but will just note that the interview occurred shortly before the first BLA killing occurred. Of interest to you is the following:

The BPP member knew, from my prior contact with him, that I was a comicbook collector. He casually mentioned to me that “the California people” (Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and others) had chosen the name “Black Panther Party” because they had read it in a comicbook! Fantastic Four #52. In the summer of 1966 they got the idea to set up a black power organization to protect themselves from what they regarded as police misconduct, and someone brought to their attention that particular issue of Fantastic Four.

They liked the name, which had a dynamic, inspiring sound to it, and appropriated it as the name of the organization they intended to set up.

A true story—life really imitates art, after all!

Clifton Wellman

We sure hadn’t heard that before, Clifton… but if you got that story straight from one of the defendants in that far-famed trial, we’ll take that as an intriguing reportorial account. Thanks for sharing it with us!

I know that Stan Lee always figured the similarity of names was just a coincidence, but then he wasn’t privy to the information you evidently were. Anybody else out there have any information on this matter?

Panther’s Prey?

Roughly half of one of Jack Kirby’s penciled pages that was not used in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966) was utilized by fan John Benson as the cover of the program book for his New York City comics convention held that same year. Then Marvel editorial assistant Roy Thomas suspects that editor/ scripter Stan Lee nixed that page because it showed non-super-powered civilian Wyatt Wingfoot getting the better of the Black Panther, which The Man probably felt de-glamorized T’Challa in his debut. Thanks to John Morrow. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Here’s the report on A/E #173 from our regular correspondent, Bernie Bubnis—who starts out on a more serious note than usual….

Hi Roy—

I don’t tell war stories because I learned to finally sleep ignoring their existence. But… some things you never forget. My corporal and I were brought to the Naval Support Hospital in Da Nang to patch us up. Cpl. Caupaine is black and I am white.

Band-Aids were not going to help us, so the fact that a box of Johnson & Johnson Band-Aids sat near us was very noticeable.

“Flesh Colored” read the words on this damn box. Caupaine could barely stand, but he propped himself up with one arm, grabbed the box with the other, and threw it at a nearby medic. “That’s not the color of my flesh, you son of a b***h!” We later laughed about that moment because the stress of war does that to you. But… it was never funny. Just haunting.

Today there are “clear” Band-Aids but still none that are “flesh” color for people of color. Unlike the tortured Tony Isabella, I never labored over thinking I was championing civil rights. I have

52

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

hired a lot of people to work for and with me over the years. If the best candidate was black, then he/she had the job. If he/she was not, then I would hire the person who was.

Whew! Sorry… getting too far off subject. Let me start over.

The Barry Pearl piece was excellent. And one moment of this article was so well-written that it created a “DEAD STOP AND READ” moment. Page 5, the Happy Days finish:

“…AND THEY ARE NEVER SEEN AGAIN.” All caps and white space galore. It was the perfect way to showcase a one-on/ one-off performance by the single appearance of an all-black family on that all-white show.

Pearl chronicles the history of comicbooks and the part it eventually plays in the evolution of racial justice so seamlessly that it is a pleasure to read… and remember. Racism has a lot of faces. Growing up in Mohonoy City, PA, the only foes I feared were Polish gangs from Miners City, the next-door town to us. We Lithuanians were a chop below our Polish brothers on this totem pole. TwoMorrows has gotta get this issue of A/E to more people than just our comicbook-centric genre.

William Foster III… he “gets it,” for sure. White history… no problem… he gets it… things change… a white kid who never even spoke to a black kid till the service forced him to understand the pure insanity of a “flesh colored” Band-Aid coming to that white kid’s rescue. Cannot wait for Part 2 of this interview.

I sometimes cannot believe the ability of M. Gilbert to mine a new subject that has not already been covered by his own column.

I knew of Mad imitators, but I had no idea of the depth of their attacks on that Mother Ship at EC. Maybe a few too many PAM papers, but when he hits the bull’s-eye he hits it squarely.

The FCA and Norman Saunders… great storytelling and great graphics.

Bernie Bubnis

child probably should have had, given our shared enthusiasms.

A one-time copy editor, John proofread both the first and second editions of my book, as well as all the introductions I wrote between 2003 and 2015 for the Canadian CI reissues. His brother Mark notified me on January 24 [2022] that John died on Sunday after a long, debilitating illness. He had wanted me to have his collection of Classics Illustrated issues, photos, correspondence, notes, and ephemera, and in September I drove to Dayton to see him and to receive his meticulously arranged archives, which I hope ultimately to donate in his name to an academic library, along with my own files.

Bill Jones

Yes, Bill, John Haufe and I communicated for years, and I purchased several of his reprints of Classics Illustrated issues. I was always trying to persuade him to find a way to publish them all in a series of hardcover volumes containing a number of adaptations apiece… but I understood that might prove a difficult way to sell them, as the prospective buyer who wanted to copy of CI’s rendition of The Three Musketeers might not necessarily want to see Frankenstein or even Ivanhoe in the same book. I was very sorry to learn of John’s passing.

One art spot and caption we knew might well be superceded even when we printed it/them on p. 33 of A/E #173 was the one that credited the kiss between Iron Fist and Misty Knight as the first “interracial” one in a Marvel comic… so here is Rob Hansen with another contender…

Roy,

In the latest A/E you ask if anyone knows of an earlier interracial kiss than the one in Marvel Team-Up #64 (Dec. 1979). Yes, there was one four years earlier in Marvel’s Amazing Adventures #31 (July 1975). Don McGregor told the story at https://13thdimension. com/don-mcgregor-pr-1-marvels-first-interracial-kiss.

Rob Hansen

Sounds like you enjoyed the whole issue, Bernie— and we’re always happy if that happens. Us, we’re wild with excitement if everybody just likes one thing in each issue… hopefully likes it enough to make that person come back for another helping the next issue. And yeah, the line you quote from Barry Pearl’s article was a high point of it to us, too… because it really seems to tell it the way it was back in the day.

Next, we hear from Bill Jones, the author and editor of the indispensable volume Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History: Hi Roy,

What a cover and what an issue, with Alex Grand and Jim Thompson’s interview with William Foster III, to boot! These pieces you’ve published are invaluable resources. And David Saunders’ second part of his account of his father’s time with Fawcett is absolute lagniappe. I’m planning to expand my coverage of black artists and scriptwriters in the third edition of my Classics Illustrated book, thanks to the inspiration provided by Ken Quattro’s wonderful book Invisible Men.

I don’t know whether you knew John Haufe of Kettering, Ohio. He was Dan Malan’s assistant editor on the St. Louis-based fanzine The Classics Collector in the 1990s and an authority on the publication history of the Gilberton series. More than thirty years ago, John and Hames Ware welcomed me into the realm of comics research. He’s the brother this only

“You Must Remember This/A Kiss Is Just A Kiss” (Left:) Often considered the first interracial kiss in Marvel Comics is this sequence from the “Killraven” story in Amazing Adventures #31 (July 1975), by writer Don McGregor & artist Craig Russell. Certainly it well pre-dates the Iron Fist/Misty Knight lip-merger depicted in A/E #173.

Thanks to Mark Muller.

(Right:) However, two years earlier had come this panel from Hero for Hire #11 (July ’73), also mentioned in A/E #173, of the villainous Señor Suerte/Muerte (Spanish for “Mr. Luck/Death”) and his ladyfriend Carlotta. Perhaps some will argue that both are Hispanics—for whatever alleged relation that might have re the situation—but to most readers of the comic, this would have appeared an “interracial” kiss, if that is what one is looking for. Script by Steve Englehart; art by George Tuska & Billy Graham. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

re:

53

Jim Wilson in The Incredible Hulk #131 (Sept. 1970). Art by Herb Trimpe and John Severin, script by some guy named Thomas. I wonder whatever happened to that guy??

I love bugging my friend and fellow Yancy Streeter Barry, but in all seriousness he wrote a fine overview of black characters in comics spanning a period of several decades… and I’m sure other fan-detectives will find further instances of characters we missed. All for the betterment of comicbook history.

Nick Caputo

We’re all working on it, Nick, as you know as well as anyone. Thanks for your contribution to the conversation. The relatively few errors that made it into Barry’s long article didn’t undercut its value. Our captions elsewhere on this page, the preceding one, and the next, and relating to a few of the items you mention, will contain our own comments and additional info.

Vietnam Encounter Captain America locates American POW Jim Baker in Tales of Suspense #61 (Jan. 1965). Script by Stan Lee; pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by Chic Stone. Thanks to Barry Pearl.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Thanks for reminding us of that, Rob. However, if you glance at the paired panels on the preceding page, you’ll see that it was actually not the first. And Nick Caputo, besides mentioning the “Killraven” kiss, added a few other corrections and comments of his own: Hi Roy,

Having assisted Barry [Pearl] with a bit of research and such, I re-read his lead article again to see if we had missed anything or if errors had cropped up. There are just a few: Pages 14 and 16 date Your Future Rests… in Your Hands as being published in 1966; it is actually copyright 1964. (Also, inks are by Sol Brodsky.)

We missed noting the Lee-Kirby-Shores “Captain America” story in Tales of Suspense #61 (Jan. 1965), “The Strength of the Sumo,” where Cap goes to Vietnam to rescue Lt. Jim Baker.

On page 17 Barry states that neither of the [black] characters introduced in JLA #57 OR Daredevil #47 is ever seen again in the Silver Age. Not true. Willie Lincoln reappeared in DD #49 and in #58-59.

On page 37 Barry mentions that readers often refer to Misty Knight and Danny Rand’s smooch as the first interracial kiss in comics. Don McGregor has noted that the kiss between M’Shula and Carmilla Frost in the “Killraven” story in Amazing Adventures #31 (July 1975) was the first. Perhaps at Marvel—but I’ve discovered that the story in DC’s Korak Son of Tarzan #54 (Nov. 1973) by writer Robert Kanigher and artist Murphy Anderson beat that out.

And, while the couple in this story didn’t actually kiss, “Black + White = Heartbreak” from Girls’ Love Stories #163 (Nov. 1971), with art by Werner Roth and Vince Colletta and almost certainly an uncredited script by Kanigher was an early interracial romance, as detailed in Jacque Nodell’s “Sequential Crush” blog.

And lastly, we also forgot to mention the debut of

Night Of The Nurse We accidentally forgot to make mention in A/E #173 of Marvel’s Night Nurse series, for which scripter Jean Thomas had conceived a trio of heroines, one of whom was black. In this sequence from issue #1 (Nov. 1972), fledgling nurse Georgia Jenkins gets a whole page of her own, away from her two new roommates. Art by Winslow Mortimer. Thanks to Jim Ludwig.

[TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

54

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

DC Diversity – Romance Style (Left & above:) The splash page and final panels of “Black + White = Heartbreak” in DC’s Girls’ Love Stories #163 (Nov. 1971) first lay out the racialrelationship problems brought to light in the story—then drop it in the reader’s lap in its final panels. Script by Robert Kanigher; art by Werner Roth & Vince Colletta. Thanks to Jim Ludwig. [TM & © DC Comics.]

(Below:) A happy ending in DC’s Korak, Son of Tarzan #54 (Oct.-Nov. ’73), again courtesy of Kanigher, this time collaborating with artist Murphy Anderson. Thanks to Gary F. Brown. [TM & © Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.]

Now, a few short takes on possible errors of omission and commission in #173:

Joe Frank points out (as did Nick Caputo) that the black officer shown with Flash Thompson on p. 9 of A/E #173 is from Amazing Spider-Man #18, not 13—and that the shot of Peter reading the newspaper is from #23, not #24.

Al Rodriguez says: “[T]hat is Superman #156 on p. 38 of Alter Ego #173, not Superman #126.” He also points out some confusion, on p. 58, as to whether the article about how to imitate Mad appeared in issue #41 or 43. And he asks how Douglas Jones/Carl Gafford can have colored the cover of Adventure Comics #380 (May 1969) “if he began his professional career in 1973.” We’ve no idea, Al; somehow, that pic cropped up as having been colored by Gaff and I failed to note the date. Oh, well, Gaff colored lots of other stuff.

Want to exchange more such views online? Try the discussion/chat group https://groups.io/g/Alter-Ego-Fans. If you have trouble locating it or have any trouble getting into the group, please e-mail our mischievous moderator Chet Cox at mormonyoyoman@gmail.com. I try to keep folks up to date on what’s coming up in Alter Ego, but mostly it seems I wind up pleading for help with some tricky-to-find scans.

While, over on Facebook, hope you’ll check out what moderator John Cimino has christened The Roy Thomas Appreciation Board, which will help anyone interested keep up with what I’m up to these days. Lots of great discussion and information flow thereon as well.

I should add that any inquiries about booking the editor of Alter Ego (and sometime Marvel and DC writer and editor) for future conventions, or about setting up interviews or podcasts, etc., should please contact John Cimino at: johnstretch@live.com.

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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! NOW SHIPPING! (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! NOW SHIPPING! (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. NOW SHIPPING! (160-page COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-119-6

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KENNETH LANDAU: The Artist Who “Signed Everything!”

From Commander Battle To Tom And Jerry & Back Again!

A/E

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: If “Kenneth Landau” isn’t a vintage 1950s comics artist whose name you recognize up front, you’ll be quite familiar with it by the time you finish this special section on that (mostly) ACG stalwart. His daughter Maranee Landau McDonald prepared and supplied much of the following segment, originally for a personal blog, consisting of her own warm memories of her talented father… a brief interview with her conducted by Richard J. Arndt… notes by blogger Larry Rapchak on a specific twice-told science-fiction tale by Landau… and a short phone interview with Kenneth Landau himself, conducted

by Shaun Clancy in 2012, a few months before the illustrator’s passing.

We begin with Maranee’s own account of her father’s life, written for a book she is compiling on his life… and edited slightly here for space and to avoid duplication with the other pieces in this special Landau coverage….

Landaus Of The Lost (Top & bottom:) Artist Kenneth Landau, back in the day, and his daughter Maranee Landau McDonald in a recent photo— bookending a splash page drawn by Landau for the American Comics Group’s Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub #5 (March-April 1955). Script may be by editor Richard Hughes.

Thanks to Maranee McDonald & Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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From Commander Battle To Tom and Jerry & Back Again!

Part I

An Introduction To Kenneth Landau

by Maranee Landau McDonald

K

enneth Landau was a comicbook artist who worked for several New York comics publishers from 1951 until 1967, American Comics Group (ACG) being the longest. Both before and after this period, he also served as a full-time layout animation artist who worked for every major animation studio at the time, such as Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng, and Disney, from 1941 to 1988. He sometimes did both comicbooks and animation at the same time, but his heart was always in comicbooks and comic strips.

Ken’s personality was unlike that of most nerdy cartoonists. He was a fun-loving jokester who smoked, drank, and gambled on the horse races. Always the life of the party at whichever studio he was doing work for, Ken would often blow off steam by changing the

funny innocent cartoons he was working on into sexual scenarios just to get a laugh out of his fellow artists.

Prior to his first professional work, Ken was constantly working on comic strips and making stories of his own. He would show his parents and friends his drawings. They knew how talented he was, and he hadn’t even gone to art school yet.

He was precise, and creative. He loved working at Disney, but what he really wanted was his very own comicbook or comic strip. He dreamed of being as successful as his mentor and idol, Alex Raymond, creator of Flash Gordon. In their voluminous correspondence, Ken often asked Raymond how he could succeed with his own syndicated comicbook or newspaper comic strip.

Ken began working at Disney in 1941, when he was just 15 years old. His father, Otto Landau, was then a first-string violinist for the Disney Orchestra and got him the job. Ken had the opportunity to work as an extra, or “inbetweener” as they were called, on the 1942 film Bambi, doing the raindrops for the “April Showers” scene. Fascinated by the world of cartoons and animation, he dropped out of high school in his senior year and continued working on Bambi, then went on to contribute to other Disney projects as he was needed, including cartoon shorts featuring Goofy, Pluto, et al.

Ken was hired often because he was good at copying anything he was told to. He had a particular style but could conform to whatever was needed at the time. He could copy any cartoon so well, most could hardly tell if he had done them or they were the original artist’s work.

The Children’s Crusade

Once Ken had started working at Disney, he saw how many other cartoonists there were doing what he was doing. While others quit their jobs, Ken stayed on. It was a learning experience and he knew he had to keep moving forward. His style and perfection with drawing came naturally, and the Disney crew saw that.

A page from an amateur comicbook drawn by 10-year-old Landau. The full legend on the mag’s cardboard cover reads: “An Adventure of King Richard the Lionhearted – Picturized by Ken Landau – Jan. ’41.” Clearly, the lad was already well on his way. Thanks to MLM. [© Estate of Kenneth Landau.]

As I talked to people in the animation field who had worked with

Inbetween The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea A photo from an unidentified vintage newspaper of Landau and two fellow inbetweeners, at one animation studio or another. The original caption reads: “Inbetweeners such as George Camata, Dan Bessie, and Ken Landau may draw approximately 50% of all the sketches of every cartoon, following the characterization set by the more experienced animators.” Thanks to MLM. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Kenneth Landau—The Artist Who “Signed Everything!”

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yet others that were not as good made it bigger.

He brought humor and change into the studios, but he also had a “alternative” side, and he spent four years working under a pseudonym doing comic pornographic books with the titles Cuthbert Crotchpheasant, How to Make Sexy Doodles in 32 Easy Pages, and Dudley Studley, all under the name “Vern Kent.”

After being drafted into the Army at age 18, he created a comic strip for the Army newspaper called Lucky, a self-image portrayal of funny Army life. He got married at age 19 to a cadet nurse he met at the USO, as he played boogie woogie on the piano.

They Call Them “The Greatest Generation” (Left:) Ken Landau in uniform during the Second World War. (Right:) The young married couple after the war—Ken and Arra Marie Landau. Courtesy of MLM.

him and knew him well, I was told there were more cartoonists who did this kind of work than anyone knew. Mark Evanier, a top comedy writer also noted for his work in comicbooks and on the comic strip Garfield, told me it wasn’t uncommon for studios back then to hire many artists to do these jobs for two to four weeks, then get laid off… with some artists being added at the end of a job. For instance, Tom and Jerry and Scooby-Doo, on which my father worked as well, sometimes had as many as 40 artists working on them at any given time. It wasn’t uncommon for the names of animators who had worked on a given cartoon to wind up on the cutting-room floor… yet some guys who were just hired to do two or three days would get credit. It was the luck of the draw, and no one ever knew if their names would end up in the credits or not.

I wonder if this would be why my father was so frustrated at times to be in this business at all. Seems like so much glamor, but it really wasn’t. It was a lot of hard work and he was good at what he did,

He created multiple comic strips that were never published.

In the beginning of his career, he took odd jobs drawing for advertisements for Bullocks and other catalogs, as well as working full time at McDonnell-Douglas making airplane parts.

After six years of doing this while drawing nonstop to try to sell one of his comic strips, he went to New York to begin a career as a comicbook artist in 1951.

In 1952 he started work for the American Comic Group publishers. The best-known comicbooks he worked on were Adventures into the Unknown, Forbidden Worlds, and Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub. He is still talked about and admired to this day by people of all ages on many comicbook-era website blogs.

“The Horror—The Horror!”

(Left:) The earliest horror story drawn by Kenneth Landau that we’ve unearthed to date—or rather, “Comic Crypt” keeper Michael T. Gilbert unearthed it for us—is this effort from Timely/Marvel’s Adventures into Terror #171 (March 1953). It’s one of only two known tales he illustrated for Timely. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Right:) Before long, he was turning out the bulk of his comics work for ACG, as per this splash from Adventures into the Unknown #49 (Nov. 1953). Writers of both tales unidentified. Thanks to MTG for this one, too. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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From Commander Battle To Tom and Jerry & Back Again!

By 1961 he began working for Hanna-Barbera and DePatieFreleng on cartoons such as The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, Scooby-Doo, The Smurfs, and many others at the same time he was doing comicbooks. After the popularity of comics declined, he began working full-time in cartooning, while still creating his own comic strips, which was his passion.

When my father passed away in 2012, he left behind a treasure trove of artwork that should be shared with the world. This archive consists of multiple comic strips, most of which have never been published, beautiful classic nude art, and copies of animation paraphernalia and three boxes of old comicbooks dating back to 1935. He saved letters from two of the greats who kept in contact with him through the mail to inspire him: Milton Caniff, who wrote and drew Terry and the Pirates, and of course Alex Raymond.

Addendum: A Personal Message from MARANEE LANDAU McDONALD As the only daughter of Kenneth Landau and having a close relationship with him growing up, I witnessed the many struggles

as well as the constant enjoyment he had during his long and prolific career. I watched the ups and downs of the life he chose to live. I still remember sitting on his lap while he was at his drawing board in our den! Throughout my life I recall many times he would make up funny comic characters while at the dinner table or at family gatherings just to make everyone laugh. My father was a comedian at heart, and any way he could bring laughter into a room, he would! He had a charismatic personality that drew many people close to him and he was very outgoing and friendly.

He would show me how Fred Flintstone would walk across the room towards Wilma and show me what the next scene would be.

At the time, this was just what Dad did.

I laughed, but didn’t give it much thought at the time. Until he passed away and left me with so much magical and beautiful artwork along with hundreds of comicbooks, contracts, Disney and Hannah-Barbera studio paraphernalia, and his personal comic strips that were never published. I want to continue his legacy, so I’ve included a few in this book. I also came across letters to and from different successful comicbook creators dating back to the early ’40s!

A Lover’s Leap—Into Four Colors (Left:) This sweethearts saga from Lev Gleason Publications’ Lovers’ Lane #23 (April 1952) may be the first comicbook story illustrated by Landau. Many of his earliest efforts were in the romance genre. But he was signing his work from the very start! Courtesy of Comic Book Plus website.

(Right:) The artist, however, preferred illustrating science-fiction stories, such as this one from ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown #63 (May 1955), the first issue published under the strictures of the new Comics Code. Both writers unknown; scan courtesy of Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Kenneth Landau—The Artist Who “Signed Everything!”

61

an interview towards the end of his life: “I loved drawing sciencefiction and horror, the gorier the better—it was a hell of a lot of fun.”

After drawing in his hometown of Los Angeles, California, he left his then-pregnant wife to go to New York to hit publishing companies with his extensive portfolio. After pounding the pavement there for over three weeks, he finally hit a publishing company that loved his work and also had an opening. He was told he would have to move to New York for at least a year but was guaranteed a job with them. Then, if he did well, he could move back to California and send the work through the mail, which he did for over ten years. Luckily, he was able to work through the mail that way after less than a year, and he was able to move his family back to California.

He hated New York living and couldn’t wait to move the family, with their new son, back home.

He drew more than two dozen comic “love and romance” stories between 1951 and 1957. He slowly began incorporating science-fiction and horror comicbook tales as he had always wanted, and created many that became very popular. The popularity and circulation of comicbooks about super-heroes had declined following World War II, and comicbooks about horror, crime, and romance took larger shares of the market.

One of his earliest published horror comicbook stories was called “Decapitation,” released July 1953, which of course was very shocking and gruesome. Ken loved drawing this and began his

A “Head” Start Another early horror story drawn by Landau was this heads-up (or rather, heads-off) entry in Comic Media’s Weird Terror #6 (July 1953). Writer unknown. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Not knowing any of this existed, my passion took over as I cleaned out the home my parents retired in, and found multiple boxes of his collection of comicbook artwork and memorabilia.

Ken’s first comicbook story, published for April 1952 with Lev Gleason Publications, Inc., was in a title called Lovers’ Lane. The story he drew was called “Wrong Date.”

These soap-opera type stories were popular after the war and were read by housewives all over America.

Ken wasn’t that happy about doing these stories and shared that with the editor.

He always wanted to draw and create graphic sci-fi and horror comics. As he said in

Slings & Arrows ACG editor Richard Hughes, minus the jaunty moustache he sports in most photos we’ve seen—juxtaposed with his letter to Ken Landau circa 1967, after the company’s demise. Thanks to Joseph Eacobacci & Michael Vance.

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From Commander Battle To Tom and Jerry & Back Again!

“horror” comicbook career. His love of science-fiction was his next venture, and he was able to work on multiple comicbooks doing just that.

“Your dad signed everything! He was a chameleon in style. He could do anything and copy anyone’s work in such detail, so much so you couldn’t tell them apart.”

To elaborate: Ken was a perfectionist when drawing. He made sure everything was perfect, all the way to extremely detailed backgrounds. He was known for his intense shading of each story.

Most artists in other comicbooks were not as detailed as Ken. In a comment in a blog called Pappy’s Golden Age of Comic Books, a reader pointed out that Ken’s inking and artwork was by far the best for those comicbooks, and he mentioned that he wondered where Ken eventually went.

Once Ken was on his roll doing sci-fi comicbooks, he didn’t want to look back. His work was so precise, however, that Richard Hughes, the editor he worked with at ACG, wanted him to continue on with his romantic stories in Lovers’ Lane. Dick Hughes worked closely with Ken on all projects. Although Ken was working from home in Los Angeles, he sent all his work to New York days before they were due. Hughes kept in touch with Ken, writing him letters with specifics on each project.

Ken was also very proud of his work. Mark Evanier told me,

KENNETH LANDAU Checklist This checklist is adapted primarily from materials available for view on the online “Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999,” established by Dr. Jerry G. Bails. Names of features that appeared both in their own titles and in others are generally not italicized. Some information has been provided

by Tim Stroup; additional information has been added for this edition of Alter Ego based on entries in the Grand Comics Database. With special thanks to John Cimino and Michael T. Gilbert, to Alberto Becattini for much of the animation information, and to Maranee Landau McDonald. Key: (p) = penciler; (i) = inker; (d) = daily [Monday to Friday] comic strip; (S) = Sunday comic strip Names & Vital Stats: Kenneth Landau (1931-2012) – artist Pen Name: Vern Kent [for Greenleaf Classics only] Education: Art Students League; Pratt Institute Print Media (non-comics): writer & artist – staff, New York Daily News [newspaper] Other Comics/Illustrated Material: Greenleaf Classics, early 1970s, all (p)(i) – Cuthbert Crotchpheasant; Dudley Studley; How to Make Sexy Doodles in 32 Easy Pages Animation: animator at—Bzz Films/Sepp, Bibifoc 1094; Cambria, Capt. Fathom 1960; -Freleng, Super President 1967 (graphic designer on The Lorax 1972 and The Oddball Couple 1975; Disney (primarily as inbetweener), Bambi 1941-42, Goofy, Pluto 1941-43, Sleeping Beauty 1959 (unconfirmed); Hanna-Barbera on Jonny Quest 1964, The

Flintstones Family Adventures 1980, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang 1980-81, Super Friends 1980-81, The Kwicky Koala Show 1981, Space Stars 1981, The Smurfs 1981-84, Christmas Comes to PacLand 1982, Pac-Man 1982, The Dukes 1982, The New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show 1982, Yogi’s Treasure Hunt 1985, The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby-Doo 1985, Paw Paws 1985-86, The All-New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Hour 1986-87; Tommy J. Production Once upon a Girl 1976 Syndicated Newspaper Strips: The Gumps (asst. p & i) (d?)(S?); Dragnet (p)(i) (d) 1955 COMICBOOKS (U.S. Mainstream Publishers): American Comics Group: Adventures into the Unknown (p)(i) 1953-55, with reprints 1961 & ’67; Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub (p)(i) 1955; The Clutching Hand (p)(i) 1954; Confessions of the

Life Is A Dragnet!

Comic strip historian Alberto Becattini writes from Italy that the Dragnet daily comic strip (no Sunday) ran from June 16, 1952, through June 25, 1955, with John (Jack) Robinson scripting. It was based, of course, on the popular radio and TV series of the day, created by and starring Jack Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday. Landau drew the strip from 5-16-55 to the end, but his work appeared in the newspapers uncredited. Since both scans we ran across online were signed, the Los Angeles Mirror Syndicate must have removed his byline. Nice guys, huh? [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Maranee Landau McDonald is offering for sale the original art to a number of Dragnet dailies drawn in 1955 by Kenneth Landau.

Anyone interested should contact her at KennethLandauArtist@gmail.com.

Kenneth Landau—The Artist Who “Signed Everything!”

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Lovelorn (p)(i) 1957, 1959; Forbidden Worlds (p)(i) 1960; Lovelorn (p)(i) 1953-55; My Romantic Adventures (p)(i) 1957, 1959, 1960; Out of This World (p)(i) 1954; Romantic Adventures (p)(i) 1953-55 Better/Nedor/Standard Publications: Exciting War (p)(i) 1953 Comic Media (a.k.a. Harwell Publications): All True Romance (p)(i) 1953; Dear Lonely Hearts (p)(i) 1953; Horrific (p)(i) 1953; Weird Terror (p)(i) 1953 Dell/Western Publications: Tom and Jerry (p)(i) 1953, 1971 (latter a reprint) [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: In her interview conducted by Richard Arndt, following, Landau’s daughter mentions finding original artwork done in the early 1960s for animation-related series “Dixie and Pixie” and “Speedy Gonzales” among her father’s artifacts. However, it is not known if these stories were ever published.]

Lev Gleason Publications: Boy Loves Girl (p)(i) 1953; Crime and Punishment (p)(i) 1953; Crime Does Not Pay (p)(i) 1953; Lovers’ Lane (p)(i) 1952; Rocky X of the Rocketeers (p)(i) 1950s Marvel/Timely: Adventures into Terror (p)(i) 1953; Spy Cases (p)(i) 1953 St. John Publications: Authentic Police Cases (p)(i) 1953

A Cat-&-Mouse Game Maranee notes her dad was good at copying styles—as he demonstrated in Dell/Western’s Tom and Jerry #106 (May 1953). Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert.

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

Beneath “The Big Sky” Kenneth and Arra Landau vacationing in Glacier National Park, Montana, on July 1, 1947.

Courtesy of Maranee Landau McDonald.

“A Day In The Life…”

A Landau-drawn page from ACG’s Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub #4 (Jan.-Feb. 1953). The series was a sort of sub-sea Blackhawks, except that the Atomic Commandos were in the service of the U.S. government. Shelly Moldoff drew issues #1-3. Scripter uncertain. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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From Commander Battle To Tom and Jerry & Back Again!

Part II

“He Wanted To Get Into Comics”

An Interview with Maranee Landau McDonald

A/E

Conducted & Transcribed by Richard J. Arndt

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: This short interview took place on August 13, 2022.

Because of Ms. McDonald’s own remarks, printed on the immediately preceding pages, we’ve chosen to print mostly just those aspects of the interview that are not duplicatory of what came before.

RICHARD ARNDT: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview, Maranee.

MARANEE McDONALD: I’m excited to do this. My dad and I loved to watch Saturday morning cartoons—a number of which he worked on. My dad was not like most cartoonists. I was told that he was a partying, smoking, drinking, gambling, outgoing guy. He was that way in everything. My mother was not as outgoing, and she would just go, “Oh, you two!” when we were watching the Saturday morning toons.

When he and my mom passed away, I went to their home in Las Vegas, which was a massive place, over 8000 feet of living space, and in every room there’d be stacks and boxes, not just of his artwork, but of hundreds of comics, contracts, his personal neverpublished efforts at comic strips, which he not only drew but wrote, and Disney, Hanna-Barbera, and other animation studios’ work. I really had a hard time getting a grasp on it. There was just so much.

I’d get anxiety attacks just at the idea of dealing with all of it or even opening another box.

While going through the boxes, I discovered a photo of a dog, drawn by my father at age fourteen, and on the back there’s a notation that says “Christmas, 1940.”

Later, when I was researching the book I’m writing on my father, I located a childhood friend of his to interview. While we were talking, that friend said, “You know there was a drawing of a dog that your dad made for his parents for Christmas, and [the dog] was looking to the side…” I said “Bill, I have [that drawing] right here.” He told me he’d asked my dad how long it took him to draw and my dad said “Not very long, maybe ten minutes at the most.”

This drawing was obviously done long before he’d attended any kind of art classes. My dad was a natural-born talent.

RA: You can see why Disney gave him a job at age fifteen, if this was what he was capable of. This is a really nice drawing for a fourteen-year-old. I learned, when I interviewed animator Willie Ito, that there were two levels of employment in animation: full-time employment, and “for the duration of the project” employment. Which version was generally your dad’s employment?

McDONALD: The second one. Once Bambi was done, Dad was laid off until Disney had another project that Dad could hire on for.

Dad would get so angry that he had to pay union dues to keep in

Choking In The Clutch This Landau-drawn story appeared in ACG’s The Clutching Hand #1 (July 1954)… which turned out to be the only issue. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert.

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

good standing when he was laid off. He was also very opinionated.

But that’s what also made him so particular about his art. If the Smurf he was drawing wasn’t exactly right, Dad would throw the drawing in the trash and start over. Every line, every detail of every woman, every shadowing of the face had to be just so. He was very specific. But that animation practice of laying you off whenever a project was over led to him doing other projects outside animation, including comics. A lot of his comic strip projects were done in

Kenneth Landau—The Artist Who “Signed Everything!”

65

the late 1940s-early 1950s when he hadn’t entered the comicbook field yet. A comic strip in a weekly newspaper was a dream of his, but, although he was successful at what he did do, that particular dream was something that never transpired. Comics, comic strips, advertising, that was the type of work he did when he wasn’t on the clock for an animation project.

RA: You may not know this, but DePatieFrelang, one of the studios your dad did a lot of work for, was the animation studio that supposedly animated the light sabers for the original Star Wars trilogy. Your dad was working for them during that period of time. Do you think he had any hand in that work?

McDONALD: Really?! This is the first I’ve heard of anything like that. I don’t have an answer, I’m afraid.

RA: So your dad didn’t actually get involved in comicbooks until the early 1950s?

McDONALD: Yes. He was a native Californian, but he wanted to get into comics, and the only way to do that at that time, I think, involved him moving to New York, where all the publishers were. He first got work at a company called Lev Gleason Publications. His first published comic story was called “Wrong Date,” which appeared in Lovers’ Lane #23 [April 1952]. He also worked for a brief time at companies like Atlas, St. John’s, Pine, and Dell, but the bulk of his comic art was for the American Comics Group. Richard [Hughes], the editor/writer there, first put him to work on romance comics, too, but he never really liked that field.

He gradually moved into drawing horror and science-fiction stories for ACG, which he enjoyed a lot more. He did so well with them that in less than a year he was able to move back to California and mail his artwork back to New York, so he could continue to work for the animation companies and do comicbook work as well.

RA: That kind of arrangement was pretty rare at that time. That pre-dates Jack Kirby’s move to California by a good fifteen years or more.

Every Dog Has His Day—Or His Century When speaking to Maranee Landau McDonald, a man who’d been a friend of Ken Landau’s when the latter was only fourteen (shortly before he went to work for Disney) remembered this drawing of a dog done more than half a century before. [© Estate of Kenneth Landau.]

McDONALD: Dad hated New York, not his kind of city at all. His first comicbook stories were all “boy meets girl” stories.

RA: The romance stories.

Unfortunately, artists don’t really

Gag Me With A Spoon!

(Left:) Landau also drew and sold a number of cartoons to “gag mags.” Here’s one that apparently never sold, so it was in the possessions that Maranee McDonald sorted through after her father’s death. You can write your own punchline! [© Estate of Kenneth Landau.]

(Right:) This one appeared in Hustler magazine, according to daughter Maranee—but it was a pretty mild entry in that ultra-prurient publication! [© the respective copyright holders.]

get recognition for their romance work. They should. Some of that stuff is really incredible work, but fans often overlook that material. His first horror story was a horror/science-fiction combo called “Decapitation,” correct?

McDONALD: One of his first ones. It might be the first published one. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: See p. 59 for what is probably Landau’s first published horror story.] He wrote a note in his personal copy that reads, “Last Story in Book… Ugh.” In romance, he usually had the first story slot.

RA: I’m not certain if your dad, at that stage of his comicbook career, would have been aware that the first and last story slot in a horror comic usually went to the two best stories in that issue. You started with a really good shocker and ended with a really good shocker, and in between you put the stuff that was a bit more average.

McDONALD: Oh, that’s interesting! His favorite stories appeared in titles like Adventures into the Unknown, Forbidden Worlds, and Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub. Oddly enough, when the Comics Code was in the offing, but before it actually took effect, one of my Dad’s pre-Code stories was censored before it was published.

[A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: See Larry Rapchak’s article following.]

RA: Your father wasn’t involved in doing any complete books [except for Commander Battle #4-7], only the short stories that appeared in various anthologies, correct?

McDONALD: Well… that’s an interesting story. In the mainstream comics he did just do short stories. Most of those were for the American Comics Group, which stopped publishing in 1967. But in the early 1970s, over about four years, he published a number of… well, I hate to say it… but he did three separate titles that were

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From Commander Battle To Tom and Jerry & Back Again!

All You Need Is Love (Above:) You viewed the splash of Landau’s first romance art (for Lev Gleason Publications) back on p. 60—so here’s another from that publisher, from Lovers’ Lane #29 (Oct. 1952). Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert.

(Above right:) ACG editor Hughes had him drawing the “love stuff” at first, too, as per Lovelorn #43 (Nov. 1953)… this one with a bad-girl twist! Both scripters unknown. Thanks to Sharon Karibian. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

comicbook porn, for Earl Kemp’s Greenleaf Classics imprint. He used the name Vern Kent for those. He used the pen name because he was working for Disney and Hanna-Barbera and he didn’t want to be frozen out of those accounts. One of the comics was called Cuthbert Crotchpheasant and ran for three issues, another was How to Make Sexy Doodles in 32 Easy Pages, and the last was called Dudley Studley. There are some pages that were apparently for Cuthbert Crotchpheasant #4 but that comic was never printed.

The second book was one on how to draw the female body, and I mean every inch of the female body. I actually found a copy of that one on Amazon. I had discovered these very graphic original pages in a box in storage and I was wondering what this stuff could have been intended for. I had no idea at all until this guy contacted me a year later and I realized what they were actually used in comicbook form.

Apparently, Dad was working for this Earl Kemp on these books and there was a clipping in the storage box that said Kemp had been convicted of distributing porn and given a “Monster” Rally three-year prison sentence.

RA: [laughs] By coincidence, I just finished a paper for a college class this spring pointing out the close ties between

An inventively grotesque creature took center-stage in this story from Adventures into the Unknown #51 (Jan. 1954). Scripter unknown. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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A Stud[y] In Scarlet “Vern Kent” (really Kenneth Landau) drew the, shall we say, risqué cartoon book Dudley Studley, according to Maranee Landau McDonald. Sorry, this lone Internet image contained no publication date, writer name, or other information. [© the respective copyright holders.]

porn publishers from the 1930s to the early 1970s and the publishers of science-fiction, sword & sorcery, and comicbooks of the same era and how their paths kept intertwining. Kemp, who was a Hugo Award winner for his science-fiction fanzine work, was a full-time publisher of legitimate books and magazines as well as porn. One of his porn imprints was Greenleaf Classics. He ticked off the Nixon administration in 1971 or so by publishing an anti-porn government study paper they’d put out along with the actual pictures and illustrations the commission used in determining that porn was bad for you and sold it through his porn publishing line. The government couldn’t charge him with publishing pornography since he didn’t change a word of the commission’s paper or research photos and that was all public record, so they nailed him for mailing the resulting book through the US mail. He got three years, not for publishing the actual porn that he did publish but for mailing that

This Means War! Landau drew relatively few war comics, but here two of them, starting at left with a splash from Standard/Nedor’s Exciting War #8 (May 1953). The one at right is actually from a yarn with a supernatural twist, in ACG’s Forbidden Worlds #144 (July 1964). Written by Richard Hughes as “Zev Zimmer.” Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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RA: Lots of children and grandchildren of comic artists and writers have mentioned that to me: “What Dad or Mom was doing was just their work and I never really paid attention.” It isn’t until after they die that the kids realize what their parents may have accomplished in their lives.

McDONALD: Apparently, Dad also did uncredited comics work for Dell in the early 1960s—on strips for the Hanna-Barbera characters “Dixie & Pixie” and Warner Bros.’ “Speedy Gonzalez.”

I’ve found artwork for those characters in the boxes in the house.

RA: I suspect that he had a number of stories between 1951 and the early 1970s that he’s not been credited for. Especially if he didn’t ink those stories himself. Is there anything you’d like to say to sum up your dad’s career?

McDONALD: Deep down I knew he was very good at what he did, and I watched how he loved creating new material, regardless of what it was. Like his signature, he was a bold man, not at all quiet, like a lot of artists were. He was the life of the party. He dreamed of being as successful as his mentor, pen pal, and idol Alex Raymond was. When he passed away in 2012, he left behind a treasure trove of artwork that should be shared with the world. I hope that this is the start of that sharing.

If You Do The Crime…

Another genre in which Landau drew a few entries was the so-called “truecrime” comic, as per these tales for (above) St. John Publishing’s Authentic Police Cases #27 (May 1953) and (at right), the industry leader, Lev Gleason’s Crime Does Not Pay #118 (Jan. ’53). Writers unknown. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert for both scans. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

anti-porn study through the mail. He apparently only served one year out of the sentence, however.

McDONALD: That’s funny. Kemp actually stiffed my dad on those books, because they paid Dad for the books sold in the US, but he didn’t receive any money for the massive sales those books did overseas. And, of course, when Kemp was in jail, there was no money coming in, either, so that was the end of those comics.

Dad also, of course, did a lot of artwork that was personal. He had a huge drawing of a black panther walking through the jungle that hung in our garage for years and years. After he passed away I found it in one of the rooms and, luckily, it had been framed and was under glass. The frame and glass were filthy but the drawing was in great condition. I re-framed it under new glass and a new frame and have been displaying it as an outstanding example of my dad’s art. It’s gorgeous! I probably saw that drawing a million times when I was a kid but never really paid any attention to it until he passed away. [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: See p. 80.]

Kenneth Landau—The Artist Who “Signed Everything!”

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Part III

“Interplanetary Episode”

by Larry Rapchak

A/E EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION: This article was originally printed in two parts on Larry Rapchak’s online blog “bare-bones e-zine,” which was found online by Maranee Landau MacDonald and included with the materials related to her father that she forwarded to me in 2022. I contacted the writer, who graciously gave Alter Ego permission to reprint it, with some abridging for reasons of space. Both versions are © Larry Rapchak.

I

n retrospect, I am very thankful that I never encountered any EC comics when I was a kid. I was way too impressionable, and would have probably ended up in kiddie therapy had I come across Ingels, Davis, Craig, etc., from the early ’50s. Luckily, I was too young to have seen them firsthand, for by the time I reached comicbook age, things were well into the Comics Code era. My parents were not really disposed towards filling my 9-year-old mind with monsters, aliens, etc.; but for some unknown reason, they began bringing home comics—3 per week, every Friday morning—in late 1959. Harmless stuff: House of Mystery, World’s Finest, Challengers of the Unknown… standard DC fare.

Occasionally a pre-super-hero Marvel—the great Kirby Giant Monster cover stories with the brilliant Ditko fantasy in the back. And I handled it all with no problem.

But on Friday, January 29, 1960, I hit a wall. A free day from my Catholic school’s 3rd-grade regimen, my siblings and I were looking forward to a fun, relaxing

He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands!

Landau’s splash page for “Interplanetary Episode” from ACG’s Forbidden Worlds #86 (March-April 1960)—minus his signature. There turned out to be a weird backstory to this tale of doom. Read on! Scripter, alas, unknown. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Still More CreepyCrawlies From The Cosmos How could Landau’s interstellar tale of terror possibly compete with this one on sale at the same time: Sheldon Moldoff’s cover for Detective Comics #277 (March 1960)? Well, actually, the chances are that Batman and Robin actually pulled in considerably more coinage… but they didn’t make nearly as great an impact on young Larry Rapchak! Thanks to the Grand Comics Database.

[TM & © DC Comics.]

three-day weekend. My mother made her usual Friday morning trip to the local Kroger’s, where she randomly chose three comics from the store’s carousel. I remember sitting at the kitchen table, TV on, preparing to eat lunch, as my brother and sister and I passed the new comics around for a quick look. One of the new trio was Detective Comics #277 (the silly “The Jigsaw Creature from Outer Space”), a second one I can’t remember, and a third title that was new to us: ACG’s Forbidden Worlds #86, with a not-too-interesting Schaffenberger cover showing an army machine-gunner fighting off a flying saucer against a bright yellow sky.

I paged through it quickly… standard stuff of the day: friendly aliens who help humans, a tale of a nerdy guy who goes back to prehistoric times and becomes a hero, etc…. and then I came face to face with the splash panel of the issue’s final story, and without really realizing why, I froze.

The image I beheld is printed at the top of this page.

Years later I discovered that the creator of this bizarre image was named Kenneth Landau, a seemingly run-ofthe-mill guy from the early-’50s pre-Code era whose rather

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From Commander Battle To Tom and Jerry & Back Again!

In late 2002, while attempting to learn more about the mysterious artist Kenneth Landau, I discovered that the appearance of “Interplanetary Episode” in January of 1960 was not its first; it had, in fact, served as the cover story of ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown #61 (Jan.-Feb. 1955), which was, I believe, the final pre-Code issue of that particular title.

At the bottom of this page you can see the original splash panel, drawn (and signed)

by Kenneth Landau in late 1954. Compare and contrast with the 1960 version shown on p. 69.

Was the roulette-wheel thing a part of Landau’s original drawing, or was it grafted The two bottom panels of the splash page of “Interplanetary Episode” revealed the end of the world— on later? The “wheel of fate” idea mentioned and then a flashback, commencing with a moralistic message. Art by Landau; scripter unknown. Thanks in the text has very little bearing on the story, to Jim Kealy. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.] and it was eliminated in the 1960 version. But Landau’s crackling lightning and millions of sketchy, scratchy work managed to convey a sinister, troubling sort little scratch-marks for the background give us of caricature, for lack of a better word, which still strikes me as very a preview of the crazy, out-of-kilter feel of the story. creepy in an odd way… like a bad dream that haunts you in a way However, things get really interesting upon discovering that’s difficult to describe. that most of the 1955 version’s crucial plot set-up—the brutal This story, with the oddly generic title “Interplanetary mistreatment of the simpleton Simon by the townsfolk—has been Episode,” begins at its ending, actually… with the fiery destruction entirely altered in the 1960 version! Yes, totally re-drawn by another of Earth… but then begins to flashback in a rather somber, artist and, oddly, softened a great deal in its emotional impact! moralistic way. Directly above are those two panels, including the That’s right—the pre-Code version of the story as it appeared in funereal, Catholic-style calm warning me not to continue reading: January 1955 was much more mild and inoffensive than its Code-era But I was lost… and as I made my way through the story, I felt reissue in January 1960! this creeping, crawling, debilitating sense of dread begin to grip me (this is not hyperbole). For here was a tale of a rural hick town with its own pathetic village idiot, a clownish, teenaged scarecrow of a guy named Simon, who was routinely tormented by the crude, low-down inhabitants of Miller’s Gap, Kansas. Ultimately, we meet a scouting group of incredibly bizarre aliens… whose own planet is nearing destruction (thus necessitating—guess what?—their take-over of another inhabitable planet). But, despite this threadbare plot device, there is a neat twist; for these aliens, despite their hideous appearance, are basically benevolent, and refuse to destroy the inhabitants of another planet… as long as said inhabitants exhibit a modest level of intelligence.

“Do Unto Others…”

So guess what tiny backwoods town the aliens land in, and guess who happens to be wandering around in the middle of the night and gets himself captured and examined as a representative specimen of the human race in order for the aliens to decide whether or not to obliterate Earth’s population? It’s a terrific story, which could easily stand on its own as a sophisticated, in-depth critique of the nature of humanity, the sort of thing that Outer Limits would do so well. If only Joe Stefano and friends had come across this tale in 1963….

Anyway, the young Larry Rapchak was pretty much traumatized for the next few weeks after discovering this story; a real lost cause emotionally. But, even back then, I was puzzled by the stark difference between this story and all of the other Comics Code stuff we were then reading. How was this story allowed to appear under the stringent guides of the Code in early 1960?? It was far darker and more disturbing—driven home by the peculiar decayed look of Landau’s characters—than anything that was being printed at that time. It continues to haunt me to this day.

The Splash Panel That Was! The splash panel that fronted “Interplanetary Episode” when it was first published, under the title “The World That Was!,” in Adventures into the Unknown #51 (Jan.-Feb. 1955). The writer was unknown then, too; but the original version at least featured artist Landau’s credit. Thanks to Jim Kealy.

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

Kenneth Landau—The Artist Who “Signed Everything!”

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As the 1955 version progresses, (page 3 of the story, below), Simon finds a wallet which he intends to return to its rightful owner (see art below). Problem is, those nasty townsfolk spy him with the wallet, assume he’s the one who stole it, and are instantaneously transformed into a lynch mob. In a very one-dimensional, contrived way, this five-panel sequence establishes Simon as a sympathetic (and a fully rational, seemingly normal) guy whose only quirk is that he happens to look like a bum.

Before & After—Or, Putting It Another Way: After & Before!

(Above:) Simon and the Italian hot-dog vendor, in the version of the story published in 1955 in Adventures into the Unknown #61. Art probably by Ogden Whitney.

(Below:) Its replacement scene in the 1960 rendition, Forbidden Worlds #86— which is actually the original rendering of the scene by Landau, different dialogue and all. Art probably by Ogden Whitney. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Here are a few samples which illustrate these changes along with a bit of a spoiler (as if anyone is going to run out and track this thing down): the climactic outcome of the story is the result of Simple Simon’s gradual realization that the people of Earth are, in fact, basically cruel and not worthy of salvation. Thus, the entire plot hinged on our seeing Simon’s kindly nature and trust in humanity ultimately destroyed by his personal encounters with the evil townspeople.

Seen above, from the 1955 version of the story, are a few re-drawn panels from page 2 that illustrate some of these encounters: Simon first rushes to the aid of a stereotypical Italian hot-dog vendor, who has made the mistake of peddling his wares in front of the local butcher shop. The butcher, being a jerk, goes berserk and knocks over the vendor’s cart (big deal), as Simon rather sanctimoniously comments: “Folks are good... even if they don’t think sometimes.” (Oi!) Next, Simon happens upon a big thug stealing a lunch box from a little kid. Again, big deal.

Seen directly below the two 1955 panels are those that replaced them in the story as “reprinted” in 1960.

A few things leap out at the reader. The artwork of the two 1960-published panels is on an entirely different stylistic plane than the first version above; they were obviously drawn by Landau.

This meant that the version seen in 1960 contained Landau’s original artwork! Its second panel is an example of the artist’s quintessentially creepy, sardonic, cartoon-y stylization of his characters, recalling the famous tragic/comic masks that represent opposite poles of human nature. At this point early on in the story, you’re not quite sure if you’re supposed to be laughing at the main character or not.....

This Sequence Packs A Wallet—Or Does It? (Above:) The “five-panel sequence” of Simon finding the wallet, and that action’s consequences, from the 1955 printing in AIUW #61. Art probably

by Ogden Whitney.

(Below:) The 1960 Landau version from FW #86 dispenses with the wallet as a rationale for the mob’s bullying. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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From Commander Battle To Tom and Jerry & Back Again!

But, when the story reappeared in 1960, the four-panel sequence below the 1955 version shows how the plight of the pathetic Simple Simon unfolded... again, in Landau’s original panels from the same position on page 3.

Here, Simon’s “folks are good...” line, spoken to his little four-legged pal, acquires a whole new sense of pathos. I can’t begin to describe the way that this portion of the story left me stricken... for lack of a better word.... numb... when I first read it. Landau’s (and the author’s) original conception of Simon as helpless, pitiful, and intellectually primitive reaches far deeper into the conscience of the reader than does the silly attempt to sanitize the story in its 1954-55 re-write.

Seen below is the final 1955 panel of Simon’s interaction with the townsfolk—which then cuts to the first appearance of the aliens—contrasted with the 1960 Landau panel that fried my poor young mind, as a far less forgiving Simon is determined to “get even on the whole world”!

From this point on in both the ’55 and ‘60 versions, the stories are identical, except for a couple of flashback panels near the end, as Simon recalls his encounters with the residents of Miller’s Gap. A few thoughts, questions, etc: 1.) I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the comics industry; I’m aware of the major controversy which led to the establishment of the Comics Code, and I’m sure that the turmoil during the 1952-54 period left publishers to deal with the impending censorship in any number of ways (the E.C. “New

So, Okay—Revenge!

On the last page of the story, identical in both the 1955 and 1960 printings, after the aliens decide to spare the Earth, an unforgiving Simon takes vengeance into his own hands. And that’s how the scene came about that the reader had already seen on page 1. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Retreat—Or Revenge?

(Above:) In 1955’s AIUW #61, the besieged Simon merely cowers under a bridge.

(Below:) In the original 1960 version, Simon vows vengeance, as the guffawing townsfolk mock him. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Direction” titles, for instance). I assume that the reworking of “The World That Was” after Landau had completed it was one of many examples of a publisher’s last-ditch attempt to placate the incoming Code regime.

2.) It’s fascinating to observe the ludicrously bad attempt to match the artistic style of the 1954 re-drawn panels (I’m certain that ACG staffer Ogden Whitney was the culprit) with Landau’s unique originals. One assumes that the re-written/re-drawn work was done quickly, and that Landau was not available (or perhaps was unwilling) to revise his original work.

3.) Also intriguing is the fact that, under the incoming new Code guidelines, the entire story should have been scrapped, since the alien plot and the final outcome of the story were considerably stronger than anything that would be sanctioned during the ensuing period of censorship. However, in salvaging the story for publication, the folks at ACG knew exactly which specific panels had to be jettisoned---those which depicted the brutal treatment of the retarded main character at the hands of the vicious townsfolk.

And I am living proof of the effect of those images upon a sensitive young mind...when they were finally published six years later.

Kenneth Landau—The Artist Who “Signed Everything!”

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emaciated simpleton—those skeletal, black eye-sockets weeping tears of grief over his mangy little pooch, just prior to his being pounded by his tormentors; you would have expected that vicious punch from the Neanderthal farmer to have pulverized the poor kid into dust and blown him away along the dirt roads of Miller’s Gap, Kansas, for all his life was worth; it’s so damned upsetting. But, luckily for Simon, things would change dramatically when those repugnant yet noble aliens appeared. And even though, from that point on, the story brightens considerably, I could never begin to shake the emotional trauma of the opening scenes, so devastatingly effectively were they rendered. A powerful and deeply disturbing experience for me, one that fascinates and frightens me more than 50 years later.

Cover Me! (Above:) Ogden Whitney’s cover for Adventures into the Unknown #61 (Jan.Feb. 1955) spotlighted the Landau-drawn lead story—which is perhaps only fitting, since it was probably Whitney who redrew several story-altering panels of it. At top center is a mini-portrait of Whitney (probably a selfportrait) from a later ACG comic. Thanks to Comic Book Plus. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

4.) How bizarre is it that ACG chose to publish Landau’s ORIGINAL, UN-EDITED artwork in 1960!!? WHY??? If, say, they were behind schedule and needed to fill the issue with a previously published story, why in heck would they not simply reprint the “softer” 1955 version with the Whitney redrawn panels?? Why would they choose to unleash the raw, disturbing ORIGINAL Landau images on an unsuspecting Code-era readership that had been lulled into accepting the “horror-lite” material of the day?

I realize that the case of “The World That Was”/”Interplanetary Episode” wouldn’t even register as a miniscule speck on today’s comic consciousness...but it sure is fascinating. As far as I am aware, virtually nothing is known of artist Kenneth Landau, who was but one of a sizable stable of artists cranking out their work as part of the thriving comicbook industry way, way back in the early 1950’s; I would imagine that, barring some sort of extremely lucky break, very little will ever come to light about Landau himself... and certainly nothing about the bizarre and unsettling story that has served as the topic for this article. In retrospect, I’m sure that, had I seen them, the typical pre-Code comicbook skeletons, vampires and zombies would have freaked me out in a fairly predictable way. But nothing could have prepared me for the effect of Landau’s pathetic,

Calling All Alien Invaders!

(Above:) Kurt Schaffenberger’s cover for Forbidden Worlds #86 (March-April 1960) had no connection with the twice-printed Kenneth Landau yarn within, but instead depicted a different attack from another planet. Schaffenberger often used pseudonyms when he drew covers for ACG, but not in this case.

Courtesy of the Grand Comics Database. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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From Commander Battle To Tom and Jerry & Back Again!

Part IV

Interview With KEN LANDAU Conducted & Transcribed by Shaun Clancy

Movies Are Beastlier Than Ever!

A young Ken Landau seems to relish seeing the monster emerge from a movie screen on this splash page from ACG’s Out of the Night #14 (April 1954). Thanks to Sharon Karibian & Maranee Landau McDonald. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

magazine called Alter Ego. They do research on comicbooks.

LANDAU: Oh, for God’s sake! [laughs] SC: I’ve been looking for you for, believe it or not, almost ten years.

LANDAU: You gotta be kidding me!

SC: I am not kidding you. You’re the biggest mystery in comics right now.

LANDAU: [laughs uproariously] Get outta here!

SC: I am not kidding you! And you wanna know why? It’s because your name is associated with [actor] Martin Landau. People think Martin Landau was really you!

LANDAU: Oh, for God’s sakes! Well, my name’s Lan-DAW! It’s not pronounced Lan-DOW. I’m German-French, and it’s Ken Lan-DAW! [both laugh] I don’t know. It makes no damn difference. I’m 86 years old, so what the hell difference does it make?

A/E Landau passed away….

EDITOR’S NOTE: This telephone interview, which is presented virtually in its entirety, took place in April 2012, three months before Kenneth

SHAUN CLANCY: Hi, I’m looking for Ken Landau, please?

KEN LANDAU: Yeah, speaking.

SC: The Ken Landau I’m looking for used to be an artist in the ’40s and ’50s. Would that have been you?

LANDAU: That’s me. Who’s this?

SC: This is Shaun Clancy up in Seattle, and I write for a comicbook

“Landau Ho!” Actor Martin Landau may never have drawn a comicbook, as was rumored for years in fandom—but his likeness appeared in a few, as witness Joe Staton’s cover for Charlton’s adaptation of his TV series Space 1999 #1 (Nov. 1975). Thanks to the GCD. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Kenneth Landau—The Artist Who “Signed Everything!”

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Boy Meets Girl… Boy Loves Girl…

Then What?

Landau drew the story above not for Lev Gleason’s (and Biro & Wood’s) romance series Boy Meets Girl, as Shaun Clancy suggests, but rather for its successor Boy Loves Girl, which picked up the earlier title’s numbering with #25. “Party Girl” appeared in Boy Loves Girl #39 (Oct. 1953); writer unknown.

Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. However, while “Party Girl” was one of the earliest love yarns Landau illustrated, it was not the first to see print—as seen by the image from Lovers’ Lane #23 (April 1952) back on p. 60 of this issue. Other early sob-sister entries, not shown, were a yarn done for Comic Media’s Dear Lonely Hearts #1 (Aug. ’53) and ACG’s Lovelorn #42 (also Oct. ’53). And if you think Ye Editor had fun researching this caption in the Grand Comics Database, you’ve got another think coming! [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Kenneth Landau may have had fun drawing these romantic epics, though— or at least the scenery was nice in his studio at the time of this photo of him and what daughter Maranee calls his “model sheets.”

SC: You’re gonna be very surprised to hear that the American Comics Group has quite a bit of people still with us, and that’s including Norman Fruman, Fred Iger, Zeke Seligsohn… He was Isaac, actually, at that time.

Still several people left from the American Comics Group!

LANDAU: Well, I’ll be damned. I thought we were all dead except me, and I wonder about me. [both laugh]

SC: Was it Victor Fox? LANDAU: No, no. Lord, I’m tryin’ to think of the damn name of it.

Was it… Biro/Wood?

SC: Oh, yes. Charles Biro and [Bob] Wood.

LANDAU: They had “love/ romance” comics, too, didn’t they?

SC: Your artwork is just outstanding.

SC: Yeah, they did. They worked for Lev Gleason.

LANDAU: Oh, come on!

LANDAU: My first place for a job was with Biro/Wood.

SC: I am not kidding you. I collect it myself! I have many—

SC: You know what happened with Bob Wood, don’t you? No? Probably not. He killed a woman and went to jail over it.

LANDAU: Thank you very much. I appreciate it!

SC: Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about how you got into comics?

LANDAU: Ah, yeah. Yes! I remember that.

SC: And Charles Biro was his partner.

LANDAU: Yeah, sure. Let me adjust this phone.

LANDAU: Yeah, that’s right.

SC: So, is American Comics Group the first comics company you worked for?

SC: And they had a studio in the basement of his house, I think. They packaged books for Lev Gleason.

LANDAU: Ah, good Lord. That’s goin’ back. The first one, I think…

I think it was called Standard…. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I gotta go back… Not Standard. I worked for Standard a little, but there was one before that. I’m tryin’ to think of it.

LANDAU: I’ll be damned.

SC: So that was your first job [in comics]?

LANDAU: That was the first one. I have a collection of comicbooks

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Grime And Punishment Besides a story or three in Lev Gleason’s Crime Does Not Pay, Landau also drew this entry in the company’s second mag in that genre, Crime and Punishment (#61, May 1953). Writer, of course, unknown… unless maybe it was a guy named Dostoyevsky. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

some place here, with all the crap in my house. It was a love story.

“Lesson at Love” or something.

SC: Maybe Boy Meets Girl?

LANDAU: Yeah, that’s it. It was the first one I got!

SC: Okay. And from there, how did you hear about ACG, which is where you had the majority of your work?

LANDAU: Of what, now?

SC: ACG… American Comics Group.

LANDAU: Oh, yeah! They were very good to me. I’m trying to think of his name. Hughes?

SC: Yes, Richard Hughes was their editor.

LANDAU: Yeah, that’s it! Dick Hughes. That’s right. He was very, very nice. He gave me a job the very first time I walked in there.

SC: And he was a writer himself.

LANDAU: That’s right.

SC: A lot of the stuff that you’re renowned for… It was a time period in the ’50s where 3-D comics were taking off.

LANDAU: Oh! Those horrible things! [Shaun laughs] I think I did two or three.

Another Reptile Dysfunction!

Landau drew a mean dinosaur or other reptilian menace, as seen with this final story page from ACG’s Out of the Night #14 (April 1954)—but the creature on the splash page at right from Out of the Night #17 (Oct. ’54) is supposed to be a minotaur!

Oh, well… dinosaurs are a lot scarier, right? Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Kenneth Landau—The Artist Who “Signed Everything!”

Don’t Knock The Rocket!

Since Kenneth Landau’s “favorite type of stuff” to draw was science-fiction, we can assume he enjoyed drawing both “Rocky X of the Rocketeers” in Lev Gleason’s Boy Comics #92 (Aug. 1953)—and the one-shot story in ACG’s Adventures into the Unknown #63 (May ’55), from which we’ve reproduced two exquisite pages. Writers unknown—but Landau says he scripted one SF story for Gleason/Biro/Wood, so maybe “Rocky X” is it? The Claw, of course, was returning from early issues of Silver Streak Comics, where he often battled the original Daredevil. Michael T. Gilbert sent us all three scans. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

SC: Right. You and Mell Lazarus.

LANDAU: That’s right!

SC: A lot of people actually think that’s some of your better work!

LANDAU: Shee…!

SC: Yeah, I know. Isn’t that funny?

LANDAU: It stunk!

SC: [laughs] But you do remember that 3-D process?

LANDAU: Oh, yes, I do.

SC: And you were doing a lot of horror at that time.

LANDAU: Horror and science-fiction.

SC: How do you go from Boy Meets Girl to Forbidden Worlds or Adventures into the Unknown?

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LANDAU: No, something else. I honest to God can’t remember….

I’m not senile yet, but it’s a long, long time ago. I’m 86 now. I can hardly hold this phone up anymore. [Shaun laughs] If someone were to ask me to draw anymore, I can’t even hold a pen in my hand.

SC: That’s okay. In the early ’50s, there was a man by the name of Dr. Wertham who was going around saying comics were bad for kids.

LANDAU: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That bastard!

SC: Dr. Wertham. They had Senate hearings over this stuff.

LANDAU: Seducing the Young or something like that.

SC: Seduction of the Innocent, yeah.

LANDAU: Yeah. I know that jerk!

SC: That killed off a lot of comics, and you were drawing during that time frame. Do you remember any of the fall-out? Did you get less work or was it more rejected work?

“Antarctic Attack!”

The interiors of the four issues of Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub drawn

by Kenneth Landau often combined nuclear-submarine action with elements of science-fiction, as in the lead story from #6 (May-June 1955), in which Bill Battle takes on the technological wizards of “a huge empire that had existed unknown for thousands of years—hidden under ice a half-mile thick.” Writer unknown.

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

LANDAU: Actually, my favorite type of stuff was science-fiction, and they just gave me a job doing that boy-meets-girl stuff, and I didn’t care. I was just happy to get a chance with this work. I think they paid a grand total of $20 a day! [Shaun laughs] God! SC: Did you ink your own work?

LANDAU: Oh, yeah. I did everything except the lettering.

SC: Okay. And did you ever write?

LANDAU: Yes, sometimes. I could do stories as well.

SC: And did you ever use any pen names?

LANDAU: I wrote a couple of the science-fiction. No, wait! One was a horror and one was science-fiction. I remember doing two of ’em, and that was for, I think, Biro/Wood.

SC: Oh, on the love/romance stuff or something different?

I Spy With My Little Jaundiced Eye… This second of the two stories Landau illustrated for Timely/Marvel—this one from Spy Cases #6 (April 1953)—would surely have counted as a “crime comic” to Dr. Frederic Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent, the scurrilous 1954 book that nearly destroyed the comicbook industry. Writer unknown.

Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Kenneth Landau—The Artist Who “Signed Everything!”

79

LANDAU: No, no. Everything was the same. I’ll tell you what I did. Personally, I just hated New York, so I finally got approved permission to move back to California. So I worked through the mail, you know? Everything I did was all through the mail.

SC: That makes sense. They told me you weren’t in the state of New York and that made sense. I always thought you were in California, myself. That makes more sense. Like Norman Fruman. I don’t know if you remember this, but he went on the $64,000 Question TV show. Does that ring a bell at all?

He won.

LANDAU: That name rings a bell. I just can’t remember, really…

SC: He was Richard Hughes’ assistant editor. Norman Fruman won the TV show contest and moved out to California himself. He’s still with us, by the way.

LANDAU: I’ll be darned. Who’d he work for in California?

SC: A university. He was a professor at a university.

LANDAU: Oh my God!

The Ballad Of Sam Singer Apparently, the late-1950s Sam Singer TV animated series Bucky and Pepito and The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican are considered “cartoon catastrophes” by critics and historians… and searching under that heading is just about the only way to find any of this stuff on the Internet! As Kenneth Landau told Shaun Clancy: “Nobody knows Sam Singer!”

If he worked on these TV cartoons, Ken probably wanted to forget the experience! [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

SC: That’s how he left the industry in ’57. When did you leave comics—and why?

LANDAU: Oh, lord. The last—Oh, God. [both laugh] Boy, you’re really wrackin’ my brain.

SC: Was it in the ’50s or ’60s?

LANDAU: Oh, it was definitely in the ’60s. I’m tryin’ to figure about… They were doing science-fiction… animated. So I more or less got out of the industry and into animation. I was what they called a layout man in animation. I got into that because I was in

California and the studios were half an hour away from me. They were looking for anybody that could do that kind of stuff, and I heard about it, I went out there, and they welcomed me with open arms. Everybody else was drawing Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and I came in and showed ’em my stuff and I got hired immediately. I came home to my wife and I told her, “I’ve got a job that pays $95 a week!” She said, “Oh, my God! How wonderful!”

Oh, lordy!

SC: [laughs] Was that with Terrytoons?

LANDAU: No, it wasn’t. You’ve never heard of it. It was Sam Singer.

SC: Actually, I do know that.

LANDAU: You’re kidding!

Nobody knows Sam Singer!

SC: Well, Ben Sangor worked there.

Ben Sangor, the other owner of Fred Iger’s shop. The American Comics Group, the guy who died, he had a shop in California and it was an animation studio in California that was the Sangor Shop.

LANDAU: I’ll be damned.

Panther’s Progress Back on p. 68, Maranee McDonald spoke of a large drawing that her father had done of a black panther stalking the jungle—an image that had hung in the family’s garage for many years. She sent us a scan of it—so since we didn’t have room to print it eleven pages ago, we’re sneaking it in right before we run out of magazine! [© Estate of Kenneth Landau.]

80

From Commander Battle To Tom and Jerry & Back Again!

Kenneth Landau—All-American (Comics Group, That Is)!

We couldn’t end this special section with the Sam Singer cartoons—so here’s a photo of a moustachioed Kenneth Landau flanked by two fine splash pages he drew for Richard Hughes and the American Comics Group: for Out of the Night #16 (Sept. 1954) and Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub #6 (May-June 1955).

Writers unknown. Thanks to Maranee Landau McDonald & Michael T. Gilbert, respectively. [Art TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

SC: He was actually hiring artists from there in the ’40s to do comicbook work and then stopped in the ’50s.

LANDAU: Sam Singer—he was the sleaziest bastard that ever lived.

He used to walk around with a cigar in his mouth and never lit it.

It just dripped all the time. He’d lean over to see what you were doin’ and I’d say, “Sam! Get that damn cigar outta my face! Ugh! It’s drippin’ all over my drawings here!”

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

THE

PACIFIC COMICS COMPANION

by STEPHAN FRIEDT & JON B. COOKE

Author STEPHAN FRIEDT shares the story of the meteoric rise of the Schanes brothers’ California-based imprint PACIFIC COMICS, which published such legends as JACK KIRBY, SERGIO ARAGONÉS, STEVE DITKO, NEAL ADAMS, MIKE GRELL, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and DAVE STEVENS. From its groundbreaking 1981 arrival in the fledgling direct sales market, to a catastrophic, precipitous fall after only four years, THE PACIFIC COMICS COMPANION reveals the inside saga, as told to Friedt by BILL AND STEVE SCHANES, DAVID SCROGGY, and many of the creators themselves. It also focuses on the titles and the amazing array of characters they introduced to an unsuspecting world, including THE ROCKETEER, CAPTAIN VICTORY, MS. MYSTIC, GROO THE WANDERER, STARSLAYER, and many more. Written with the editorial assist of Eisner Award-winning historian JON B. COOKE, this retrospective is the most comprehensive study of an essential publisher in the development of the creator’s rights movement. Main cover illustration by DAVE STEVENS. SHIPS NOVEMBER 2023!

WORKING WITH DITKO

by JACK C. HARRIS

WORKING WITH DITKO takes a unique and nostalgic journey through comics’ Bronze Age, as editor and writer JACK C. HARRIS recalls his numerous collaborations with legendary comics master STEVE DITKO! It features never-before-seen preliminary sketches and pencil art from Harris’ tenure working with Ditko on THE CREEPER, SHADE THE CHANGING MAN, THE ODD MAN, THE DEMON, WONDER WOMAN, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, THE FLY, and even Ditko’s unused redesign for BATMAN! Plus, it documents their work on numerous independent properties, and offers glimpses of original characters from Ditko’s drawing board that have never been viewed by even his most avid fans! This illustrated volume is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience the creative comic book process by one of the industry’s most revered creators, as seen through the eyes of one of his most frequent collaborators! SHIPS OCTOBER 2023!

Star Glider TM & © Jack C. Harris.

Shade TM & © DC Comics.

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THE CHILLINGLY WEIRD ART OF

MATT FOX

by ROGER HILL

MATT FOX (1906–1988) first gained notoriety for his jarring cover paintings on the pulp magazine WEIRD TALES from 1943 to 1951. His almost primitive artistry encompassed ghouls, demons, and grotesqueries of all types, evoking a disquieting horror vibe that no one since has ever matched. Fox suffered with chronic pain throughout his life, and that anguish permeated his classic 1950s cover illustrations and his lone story for CHILLING TALES, putting them at the top of all pre-code horror comic enthusiasts’ want lists. He brought his evocative storytelling skills (and an almost BASIL WOLVERTON-esque ink line over other artists) to ATLAS/MARVEL horror comics of the 1950s and ’60s, but since Fox never gave an interview, this unique creator remained largely unheralded—until now! Comic art historian ROGER HILL finally tells Fox’s life story, through an informative biographical essay, augmented with an insightful introduction by FROM THE TOMB editor PETER NORMANTON. This FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER also showcases all of the artist’s WEIRD TALES covers and interior illustrations, and a special Atlas Comics gallery with examples of his inking over GIL KANE, LARRY LIEBER, and others. Plus, there’s a wealth of other delightfully disturbing images by this grand master of horror—many previously unpublished and reproduced from his original paintings and art—sure to make an indelible imprint on a new legion of fans. SHIPS SEPTEMBER 2023!

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New from TwoMorrows!

RETROFAN #27

ALTER EGO #183

ALTER EGO #184

BACK ISSUE #144

BACK ISSUE #145

Golden/Silver/Bronze Age artist IRV NOVICK (Shield, Steel Sterling, Batman, The Flash, and DC war stories) is immortalized by JOHN COATES and DEWEY CASSELL. Interviews with Irv and family members, tributes by DENNY O’NEIL, MARK EVANIER, and PAUL LEVITZ, Irv’s involvement with painter ROY LICHTENSTEIN (who used Novick’s work in his paintings), Mr. Monster, FCA, and more!

Known as one of the finest inkers in comics history, the late TOM PALMER was also an accomplished penciler and painter, as you’ll see in an-depth interview with Palmer by ALEX GRAND and JIM THOMPSON. Learn his approach to, and thoughts on, working with NEAL ADAMS, GENE COLAN, JOHN BUSCEMA, and others who helped define the Marvel Universe. Plus Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, FCA, and more!

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!

SPIDER-ROGUES ISSUE! Villain histories of Dr. Octopus, Lizard, Kingpin, Spidey’s mob foes, the Jackal and Carrion, Tarantula, Puma, plus the rehabilitation of Sandman!

Featuring the work of ANDRU, SAL BUSCEMA, CONWAY, DeFALCO, GIL KANE, McFARLANE, MILLER, POLLARD, JOHN ROMITA JR. & SR., STERN, THOMAS, WEIN, WOLFMAN, and more!

DUSTY ABELL cover!

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All characters TM & © their respective owners.

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.

BACK ISSUE #147

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #31 KIRBY COLLECTOR #88

BRICKJOURNAL #81

Great Hera, it’s the 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF BACK ISSUE, featuring a tribute to the late, great GEORGE PÉREZ! Wonder Woman: The George Pérez Years, Pérez’s 20 Greatest Hits of the Bronze Age, Pérez’s fanzine days, a Pérez remembrance by MARV WOLFMAN, a Wonder Woman interview with MINDY NEWELL, and more!

With a stunning Wonder Woman cover

by Pérez!

MEN WITHOUT FEAR, featuring Daredevil’s swinging ’70s adventures!

Plus: Challengers of the Unknown in the Bronze Age, JEPH LOEB interview about his Challs and DD projects with TIM SALE, Sinestro and Mr. Fear histories, superheroes with disabilities, and... Who Is Hal Jordan? Featuring CONWAY, ENGLEHART, McKENZIE, ROZAKIS, STATON, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, & more! GENE COLAN cover!

THE COLLECTORS! Fans’ quest for and purchase of Jack’s original art and comics, MARV WOLFMAN shares his (and LEN WEIN’s) interactions with Jack as fans and pros, unseen Kirby memorabilia, an extensive Kirby pencil art gallery, MARK EVANIER moderating the 2023 Kirby Tribute Panel from Comic-Con International, plus a deluxe wrap-around Kirby cover with foldout back cover flap, inked by MIKE ROYER!

Head to the city: Ellis City by GARETH and CATHY ELLIS, New Hasima by STEFAN FORMENTATO, and Fabuland City by STEVEN LAUGHLIN! Plus a wealth of other MOCs (”My Own Creations”) are showcased, along with: Nerding Out with BRICKNERD, AFOLs by GREG HYLAND, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions

by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS!

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BACK ISSUE #146

MEN WITHOUT FEAR, featuring Daredevil’s swinging ’70s adventures!

Plus: Challengers of the Unknown in the Bronze Age, JEPH LOEB interview about his Challs and DD projects with TIM SALE, Sinestro and Mr. Fear histories, superheroes with disabilities, and... Who Is Hal Jordan? Featuring CONWAY, ENGLEHART, McKENZIE, ROZAKIS, STATON, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, & more! GENE COLAN cover!