Alter Ego #187 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy Thomas’ Lightning-Rod Comics Fanzine

$10.95 In the USA

SCIENCE-FICTION AND COMICBOOKS! THE ELECTRIFYING ENERGY OF

EDMOND HAMILTON

No. 187 May 2024

by Glen Cadigan Legion of Super-Heroes TM & © DC Comics.

“WRITER OF TWO WORLDS!”

82658 00519

WILL MERGE THEM BOTH INTO ONE FABULOUS FOUR-COLOR HIT SERIES!

The Best in POP Culture! ZOWIE!

THE TV SUPERHERO CRAZE IN ’60s POP CULTURE by MARK VOGER

HOLY PHENOMENON! In the way-out year of 1966, the action comedy “Batman” starring ADAM WEST premiered and triggered a tsunami of super swag, including toys, games, Halloween costumes, puppets, action figures, and lunch boxes. Meanwhile, still more costumed avengers sprang forth on TV (“The Green Hornet,” “Ultraman”), in MOVIES (“The Wild World of Batwoman,” “Rat Pfink and Boo Boo”), and in ANIMATION (“Space Ghost,” “The Marvel Super Heroes”). ZOWIE! traces the history of the superhero genre from early films, through the 1960s TV superhero craze, and its pop culture influence ever since. This 192-page hardcover, in pop art colors that conjure the period, spotlights the coolest collectibles and kookiest knockoffs every ’60s kid begged their parents for, and features interviews with the TV stars (WEST, BURT WARD, YVONNE CRAIG, FRANK GORSHIN, BURGESS MEREDITH, CESAR ROMERO, JULIE NEWMAR, VAN WILLIAMS), the artists behind the comics (JERRY ROBINSON, DICK SPRANG, CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE GIELLA), and others. Written and designed by MARK VOGER (MONSTER MASH, HOLLY JOLLY), ZOWIE! is one super read! (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $43.95 (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-125-7 SHIPS JULY 2024!

CLIFFHANGER!

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

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

COMIC BOOK IMPLOSION (EXPANDED EDITION) by KEITH DALLAS & JOHN WELLS

NOW IN FULL-COLOR WITH BONUS PAGES! In 1978, DC Comics launched a line-wide expansion known as “The DC Explosion,” but pulled the plug weeks later, cancelling titles and leaving dozens of completed comic book stories unpublished. Now, that notorious “DC Implosion” is examined with an exhaustive oral history from JENETTE KAHN, PAUL LEVITZ, LEN WEIN, MIKE GOLD, AL MILGROM, and other DC creators of the time, plus commentary by other top pros, examining how it changed the landscape of comics forever! This new EXPANDED EDITION of the Eisner Award-nominated book explodes in full cover for the first time, with extra coverage of LOST 1970S DC PROJECTS like Ninja the Invisible and an adaptation of “The Wiz,” Jim Starlin’s unaltered cover art for BATMAN FAMILY #21, content meant for cancelled Marvel titles such as Godzilla and Ms. Marvel, and more! SHIPS MAY 2024! (144-page FULL-COLOR SOFTCOVER) $26.95 • (Digital Edition) $10.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-124-0

IT ROSE FROM THE TOMB An all-new book written by PETER NORMANTON

Rising from the depths of history comes an ALL-NEW examination of the 20th Century’s best horror comics, written by PETER NORMANTON (editor of From The Tomb, the UK’s preeminent magazine on the genre). From the pulps and seminal horror comics of the 1940s, through ones they tried to ban in the 1950s, this tome explores how the genre survived the introduction of the Comics Code, before making its terrifying return during the 1960s and 1970s. Come face-to-face with the early days of ACG’s alarming line, every horror comic from June 1953, hypodermic horrors, DC’s Gothic romance comics, Marvel’s Giant-Size terrors, Skywald and Warren’s chillers, and Atlas Seaboard’s shocking magazines. The 192-page full-color opus exhumes BERNIE WRIGHTSON’s darkest constructs, plus artwork by FRANK FRAZETTA, NEAL ADAMS, MIKE KALUTA, STEVE DITKO, MATT FOX, WARREN KREMER, LEE ELIAS, BILL EVERETT, RUSS HEATH, THE GURCH, and many more. Don’t turn your back on this once-in-a-lifetime spine-chiller—it’s so good, it’s frightening! (192-page SOFTCOVER) $31.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-123-3 • NOW SHIPPING!

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Vol. 3, No. 187/May 2024 Editor

Roy Thomas

Associate Editor Jim Amash

Design & Layout

Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor

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

Comic Crypt Editor

Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll

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

Proofreader

William J. Dowlding

Cover Artists

Curt Swan, George Klein, & John Forte

Cover Colorist Unknown

With Special Thanks to:

Ron Greilich Heidi Amash George Hagenauer Pedro Angosto Rob Hansen Bob Bailey Heritage Art Alberto Becattini Auctions [website] John Benson John Joshua Mark Bowen Sharon Karibian Bernie Bubnis Jim Kealy Glen Cadigan Calisphere [website] Jay Kay Klein Richard Kolkman Chris Calloway Jean-Marc Lofficier Nick Caputo Art Lortie Mike Catron Jim Ludwig John Cimino Bruce Mason Comic Book Plus Leslie Mason [website] Kevin McDougal Comic Connect Richard Mrozek [website] Comic Vine [website] Mark Muller Bud Plant Chet Cox pulpartists.com Dwight Decker [website] John Fahey Charlie Roberts Shane Foley Randy Sargent Joe Frank David Saunders Stephan A. Friedt Jim Sikela Nancy Gershwin Dann Thomas Janet Gilbert Dave Truesdale Grand Comics Database [website] Bradford Verter Eddy Zeno

This issue is dedicated to the memory of

Edmond Hamilton —and of

Carlos Pacheco, John Floyd, Jose Luis Ruiz Pérez, Bill Mason, & Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.

Contents Writer/Editorial: One Issue—Two Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Writer Of Two Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Glen Cadigan on the science-fiction and comicbook careers of the great Edmond Hamilton.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! We All Have To Start Somewhere! . . . 45 Michael T. Gilbert spotlights the early work of cartoonists Gray Morrow & Leonard Starr—with a postscript on a lost “Giant-Man” splash page by Dick Rockwell.

Tributes to Carlos Pacheco, John Floyd, José Luis Ruiz Pérez, Bill Mason, & Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 re: [correspondence, comments, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 64 FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America] #246 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 P.C. Hamerlinck showcases the Beck & Costanza Studio of the 1940s.

On Our Cover: The Legion of Super-Heroes cover of Adventure Comics #312 (Sept. 1963) celebrates the “two worlds” that were the double domain of our featured writer Edmond Hamilton, who had one very skilled foot in each camp, one after the other: science-fiction and comicbooks. The main artwork was done by Curt Swan & George Klein, but for some reason editor Mort Weisinger decreed that interior “Legion” artist John Forte redraw all the heads. To compare this art with the interior splash from #312 that depicted the same scene, see p. 41. [Art TM & © DC Comics.] Above: While Hamilton wrote far fewer “Batman” yarns than “Superman” ones, the former counted among them such classics as the story from Detective Comics #158 (April 1950), the most memorable visit to the Batcave during the latter years of the Golden Age of Comics. Hamilton came up with a reasonably good name for the one-time villain, too: Dr. Doom. Of course, there’d been Dr. Dooms in comics before—and there would be at least one more in 1962. Pencils by Bob Kane (apparently on his own this time around, and a good job he did of it, too); inks by Charles Paris. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.] Alter EgoTM issue 187, May 2024 (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.

Article Title writer/editorial

One Issue—Two Worlds!

ecause we needed to showcase both “flip” covers of the next issue of A/E (#188), as seen below, we didn’t leave ourselves a whole lot of room to ballyhoo this issue before you tear into it. But then, we shouldn’t really need to! If you’re a fan of Golden and Silver Age comics—and/or of magazine and book science-fiction in the first two-thirds of the 20th century—you probably already know the name “Edmond Hamilton.” Because the man was a “great” in both fields, occasionally at the same time! He was one of the first truly cosmic SF authors—while his 1940s-60s scripts for DC Comics starring Superman, Batman, and The Legion of Super-Heroes, on top of a host of stellar science-fiction yarns for Strange Adventures and Mystery in Space, make him important in the four-color field, as well.

So it was a natural for writer/researcher Glen Cadigan to title his study of Hamilton’s career “Writer of Two Worlds”—as an homage to EH’s oft-editor Julius Schwartz’s autobiography Man of Two Worlds, which in turn had tipped its conceptual hat to the “Flash of Two Worlds” comics tale that had combined super-heroes and SF concepts back in 1961. I myself was never fortunate enough to meet Edmond Hamilton—or his equally talented wife, writer Leigh Brackett (co-scripter of one of my favorite films, Rio Bravo), also celebrated in these pages—but, after reading Glen’s thorough and entertaining coverage of his life and work, I almost feel as if I had. So fasten your seat-belts and get set for several G’s of enjoyment in this star-studded issue of Alter Ego!

Bestest,

188

COMING IN JUNE

25 YEARS OF ALTER EGO AT TWOMORROWS! A DOUBLE-SIZE CELEBRATION DESIGNED TO FLIP YOU OUT! ers, Inc. Art TM & © Marvel Charact

• Twice the pages—twice the thrills! 160 pulsating pages—with a pair of calamitous covers (Marvel & DC) and nostalgic “flip-book” format! • On the Marvel side: DAVID ARMSTRONG’s turn-of-the-century Comic-Con mini-interviews with JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, GEORGE TUSKA, & JIM MOONEY— plus SEAN HOWE on “STAN LEE’s Dinner with New Wave Filmmaker ALAIN RESNAIS!” • And, in this (DC) corner: Dave’s mini-interviews with CARMINE INFANTINO, JOHN BROOME, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JOE KUBERT & MURPHY ANDERSON—and a special family photo-feature on writer GARDNER FOX by JENNIFER DeROSS! • All this, plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT on the early work of MURPHY ANDERSON—an FCA look at C.C. BECK’s correspondence during his contentious days drawing DC’s Shazam! in the 1970s—and MORE, if we can squeeze it in!

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History.

Art TM & © DC Comics

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Writer Of Two Worlds

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of EDMOND HAMILTON

“I

by Glen Cadigan

began writing science-fiction when I was twenty years old, back in the first months of 1925. In fact, there weren’t any science-fiction magazines yet published when I wrote my first SF stories, and I sold them to the old Weird Tales.”1 So began the career of Edmond Moore Hamilton. When it ended, over fifty years later, he was the author of dozens of novels, hundreds of short stories, and numerous comicbooks. From the Interstellar Patrol through Captain Future into the worlds of Superman, Batman, and The Legion of Super-Heroes (and out the other side with the Star Kings and Starwolf), Hamilton was a professional writer for his entire adult life. He influenced young readers like Isaac Asimov, who wrote in Before the Golden Age: A Science Fiction Anthology of the 1930s, “The earliest serial I remember reading and slavering over was ‘Cities in the Air,’ by Edmond Hamilton.... I still remember the dramatic [Frank R.] Paul cover illustration for that serial, with skyscraper cities shown on huge circular slabs in mid-air.

Edmond Hamilton holds the First Fandom Award with which he was presented at the 1967 NYCon, science-fiction fandom’s big event of that year. He’s flanked by specimens of noteworthy work from the “two worlds” in which he excelled: Malcolm Smith’s cover for Amazing Stories (Sept. 1947) showcases The Star Kings, one of Hamilton’s best-remembered science-fiction pulp novels, which would later be published in book form and spawn several sequels— —and, from the world of comicbooks, a splash page for Superman #76 (May-June 1952), the first-ever full-fledged teaming of DC Comics’ (and, at that time, the planet’s) best-known super-heroes, Superman and Batman. Pencils by Curt Swan; inks by John Fishetti. With thanks to Glen Cadigan (photo taken by Jay Kay Klein; from the University of California Riverside Libraries Eaton Collection, hereafter referred to as “Calisphere”), and to Bob Bailey for the comics page. [Superman #76 page TM & © DC Comics; SF art © the respective copyright holders.]

“The next serial I remember is ‘The Universe Wreckers’.... This one was also by Edmond Hamilton. Considering that, and the fact that Ed is the best-represented in this anthology (three stories) of any of the authors included, I can only deduce that Ed was my favorite author in those very early days.” 2 Hamilton also had the respect of his peers. Robert Bloch, author of Psycho, wrote, “In more than a half century of varied and prolific output he has been acclaimed as a brilliant new discovery, derided as a one-plot ‘world-saver,’ hailed anew as an innovator, dismissed as a hack, rediscovered for mature literacy—and now enthroned as science fiction’s Grand Master. “Let us hope that this enthronement is permanent. Certainly it is deserved—not just by reason of longevity and volume of published

A/E EDITOR'S NOTE: We prefer the spellings "comicbook" and "science-fiction." However, we have left those terms as two words where rendered thus in quoted material.

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

Isaac Asimov One of sciencefiction’s most prolific and respected authors, whose most famous work was the Foundation Trilogy. He included Hamilton’s “Cities in the Air” and “The Universe Wreckers” in his landmark 1974 collection anthology Before the Golden Age.

Before The Golden Age (Left:) The cover of Air Wonder Stories (Nov. 1929) spotlighted Hamilton’s story “Cities in the Air.” Cover by Frank R. Paul—who, ten years later, would draw the Human Torch cover of Marvel Comics #1. Thanks to Art Lortie. (Right:) Interior title art (minus half the title) by Hans Waldemar Wesso for Hamilton’s “The Universe Wreckers” in Amazing Stories for May 1930. Courtesy of Comic Book Plus website & Glen Cadigan; thanks to Art Lortie for the full name of the artist who signed his name simply “Wesso.” [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Julius Schwartz in 1941, while Hamilton’s agent. After 1944, when he became an editor for All-American Comics, which was soon absorbed into National/DC Comics, Julie was often Hamilton’s editor. Thanks to Glen Cadigan.

Imperious Wrecks! Ed Hamilton’s story “The Accursed Galaxy” didn’t rate the cover when his agent Julius Schwartz sold it to the more prestigious (and better-paying) Astounding Science Fiction for its July 1935 issue, but it did garner a nice title drawing inside by Elliott Dold, Jr., for the author’s rather Lovecraftian tale of a close encounter with an alien life force. Thanks to David Saunders and his website pulpartists. com for both art and artist info. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.] Some years later, for Schwartz as editor, Hamilton scripted another weirdo monster outing in comics format for Strange Adventures #13 (Oct. ’51); art by Alex Toth & Sy Barry. Thanks to Jim Kealy and Mark Muller. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Writer Of Two Worlds

wordage, but by virtue of Hamilton’s amazing versatility, imaginative range, and continual development of style and skill in a field whose growth he had done so much to stimulate.” 3 Hamilton’s one-time agent and editor, Julius Schwartz, had this to say about his friend and former client: “In my entire career as a SF literary agent, one of the high points was selling a story of Hamilton’s entitled, ‘The Accursed Galaxy.’ It dealt with the theory of all galaxies receding from Earth. I was so impressed with it, with the principle, which had never appeared in SF before, that I rushed it off to Astounding, which in those days paid the highest rates in the field. Ed had been receiving a half-cent per word from Amazing and Wonder (on publication), but Astounding bought the story for a ‘whopping’ one cent per word on acceptance! We were both thrilled.” 4

Early Years “My birthdate was October 21, 1904—place, Youngstown, Ohio. Moved after a few years to Pennsylvania, where I had my school and college.” 5 Edmond Hamilton was the only son of Scott and Maude Hamilton, and was preceded by two sisters: Esther (b. 1901) and Adeline (b. 1903). He was followed by a third sibling, Betty (b. 1910), with whom he was closest. Remembered lifelong friend Jack Williamson, “He was an inveterate punster; he and his younger sister, Betty, used to enjoy duels of puns.” 6 According to a profile of the author written by Sam Moskowitz, his father was a newspaper cartoonist and his mother taught school before her marriage. The family attempted farming near Poland, Ohio, but moved to New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1911 when Scott Hamilton was hired by a local newspaper. 7 Regarding Hamilton’s parents, Williamson recalled, “His mother was Pennsylvania Dutch, a small, vigorous, sharp-tongued woman, and I think the real head of the family. His father... struck me as an easy-going type, glad enough to leave responsibility to her.” 8 In his memoir Wonder’s Child: My Life in Science Fiction, Williamson added, “[Ed’s father] had taken leave of his family to join up for the Spanish-American War, serving in Alaska. Ed’s mother, perhaps since then, had been the real head of the household. She was... full of sharp-tongued advice which her husband and her children cheerfully ignored.” 9 The true celebrity in the family was Esther, a daily columnist for the Youngstown Telegram (and later, the Vindicator). Her feature “Around Town” covered community news such as “naming the YMCA swimming pool, new babies, news of retirees, people returning from vacations, an urgent need for a refrigerator, and her memories of interviewing Al Smith, a New York governor and presidential candidate.” 10

She was the sort of local celebrity immediately identifiable from her headshot in the paper, the kind who hosted spelling bees and annual Christmas fundraisers. She even had her own weekly radio show (starting in 1946), and, in 1934, the Vindicator sent her to New Jersey to cover the Lindbergh trial. 11 Concerning her brother, Williamson said, “Ed regarded her with some awe; he once told me that the scar on his nose came from a knife she had thrown.” 12 According to a 1940 census, Esther, who was divorced, lived with their sister Adeline and her husband Bill, who was a steel company executive.

Influences “[T]o me, the all-time greats in the fantasy field are [H.G.] Wells, [A.] Merritt, [H. Rider] Haggard, [Olaf] Stapledon, the [M.P.] Shiel of ‘The Purple Cloud’ and the [E.R.] Eddison of ‘The Worm Ouroborous’.” 13 While growing up, Hamilton preferred the world of sciencefiction to conventional tales. “My interest in SF dates back to a time when I was so young I could barely read, but was fascinated by the illustrations of an H.G. Wells article, ‘The Things That Live on Mars,’ in the old Metropolitan Magazine.” 14 [NOTE: That article was actually published in Cosmopolitan Magazine, March 1908.] He later elaborated, “This was on a farm in Ohio back in 1908 when I was four years old.... It was, as I see it now, a follow-up to his very successful The War of the Worlds. And it had these pictures of tall, slender trees; strange-looking Martians moving about. I looked at that magazine until it wore out. I wasn’t yet able to read it, to read the article, but those pictures! I sat and wondered if Mars was a long way off and if it was a very strange place.” 15 Hamilton later said about the author, “Wells was a great literary artist, and also a very great mind. I think that [The Island of Dr.] Moreau was not only the best science fiction story, but the best

“The Things That Live On Mars” H.G. Wells’ article in the March 1908 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine was a seminal influence on young Edmond Hamilton. Hmm… maybe on Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well? After all, Under the Moons of Mars (book title: A Princess of Mars) was serialized in a magazine in 1912. Courtesy of Glen Cadigan. [© the respective copyright holders.]

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

short novel of that length in the English language. I read it very carefully again last winter, and... it succeeded on... different levels. It’s a thoughtful story about the biggest theme of all, why human beings are the way they are, and it’s also a story of adventure on a straight level of escape, of conflict. It was a masterpiece and he was able to write it so that anyone could read it. You didn’t have to be a scientist or even a well-educated person to get the impact of that story. But there was only one H.G. Wells, and the rest of us aren’t fit to tie his shoelaces.” 16 From there, the future author “graduated to the Argosy and All-Story magazines, with the mighty Martian stories of Burroughs and all the other great fantastic stories they published for so many years.” 17 In 1948, he told The Fanscient, “I think the most underrated writer of the whole fantasy field is Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’ll admit a lot of his later stories bear a mimeographic resemblance to each other, but his early Mars stories were pioneering epics in their way, and to this day remain better yarns by a long shot than are written by many who scoff at him.” 18 In 1976, Hamilton admitted to Dave Truesdale, “I totally admired H.G. Wells. But Burroughs seemed to be the one we all tried to model after.” 19 Another author who molded the imagination of the young Mr. Hamilton was A. Merritt. He told Paul Walker in 1973, “Merritt was the writer who inspired me, if I can use so grandiose a term. He is thought of as a fantasy writer but actually was, except for a few fantasy stories, a straight SF writer and a hell of a good one. In 1919-1920 he was using Eddington’s exposition of the Einstein theory in a story! He was my idol... and when I met him in later years, I was delighted to find out that the idol did not have feet of clay but was a very wonderful man. I think his stories are as great as ever, and I note that they stay in print forever.” 20 In 1933, Hamilton wrote in Fantasy Magazine, “I have been a strong sciencefiction fan since 1916, when I started in with the old Argosy tales of Burroughs, Julian Hawthorne, Homer Eon Flint and others. I had a newspaper route about that time and when Merritt’s long-awaited sequel to ‘The Moon Pool’ came out, I carried papers one night each week with the All-Story Magazine held three inches before my eyes, avoiding automobiles and street-cars by the grace of God and heaving every paper on the wrong porch.” 21 He added, “A constant preoccupation with science-fiction themes led me to supplement the scanty science-fiction of the time with my own imaginings. I finally put one of them down on paper. It seems to

me that science-fiction writers have a stronger interest in their stuff than almost any other class of writers. I doubt that anyone could write much of it without such an interest.” 22 In 1964, Hamilton remembered, “I wrote my first SF story when I was fourteen. It was ‘The Plant That Was Alive.’ It was also Terrible. No one bought it. I was at that time, however, unquenchable....” 23 Looking back on his youth from the perspective of 1964, the author told the fanzine Vector, “I don’t subscribe to the theory that SF writers turn to imaginary worlds because of some Freudian dissatisfaction with this world. It’s one of those glittering, plausible ideas that is just too pat. The essence of science fiction is differentness; it’s the off-on of literature. I think that those who read and write it are themselves so different that no sweeping generalizations about them are possible. “L. Sprague De Camp has long nourished this same theory that SF writers became so because they were lonely, introverted and unhappy as small boys. When he questioned me, I disappointed him by telling him that I was a magnificently normal bad-boy, with no frustrations whatever. When I went on to say that I had been a lonely, introverted adolescent, he brightened up. But, I added, my passionate interest in SF came during my bad-boy phase.” 24 The writer whom Hamilton described as his greatest influence was “Homer Eon Flint.... He’d write stories about moving the Earth to Jupiter and things like that. And those fired my imagination. I’ve always been glad to say, I owe this and that to Mr. Flint.” 25 He later wrote, “His stories in 1918-1919, though sometimes wooden in style and heavy in conception, set my young imagination ablaze with their vaulting visions of what vast

To The Nth Degree Today almost forgotten, popular early SF writer Homer Eon Flint (1888-1924) was, during the final six years of his life, a major influence on Hamilton and others. One of his most famous stories was printed (reprinted?) in Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories Quarterly for April 1928, and again in Amazing Stories Classics, the latter time with a dramatic Frank R. Paul cover. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Writer Of Two Worlds

possibilities future time and space might contain. I have, through the years, often testified my debt to this now somewhat forgotten writer, and I am glad to do so again.” 26 Flint, it seemed, was a story unto himself. “You know, Flint’s death was a strange mystery. He was a steady, quiet man, and all of a sudden he was found to have stolen a car, taken it out into the California mountains, and crashed it off a cliff. Nobody has ever been able to explain that.” 27 In 1956, the author wrote, “Recently, Dr. C.L. Barrett of Bellefontaine, Ohio, was kind enough to let me dig through his magnificent collection of the old magazines—and it was like vividly re-living years of my younger days, to look over those well-remembered stories again—Burroughs, and Merritt, and the ‘Polaris’ stories of Stillson, the cosmic adventure stories of Homer Eon Flint, to my mind still underrated as a pioneer; the eery [sic] yarns of Tod Robbins; the Glesy novels of the Dog-Star Pack; the ‘Flying Legion’ of George Allan England; and a host of others. I loved them all, and in time wanted to write such stories myself. So I tried, and I’ve been trying ever since.” 28

Education “Born thirty-four years ago, and lived ever since in a small Pennsylvania city. High school and then college, where I majored in physics and drove my instructors crazy by continually propounding original scientific ‘theories’ of my own.” 29 Edmond Hamilton graduated high school in 1919 and “[e]ntered Westminister College at the ripe age of fourteen. Three years later the dean summoned me and gently informed me that regular attendance was necessary to an education and that mine had become so irregular he had decided to suspend it altogether.” 30 His wife Leigh Brackett, in her introduction to The Best of Edmond Hamilton, wrote, “He was a child prodigy, but that does not seem to have affected his boyhood materially. He looks back on it as an active and happy time, full of the normal fun and scrapes and pummellings. Only one thing set him apart from his playmates. He read everything he could get his hands on, and especially anything that was fantastic or science-fictional. He was in college at fourteen and out again three years later, leaving his professors to wonder why a kid with a genius IQ didn’t do better at his studies. He was just too busy reading, and dreaming. “He had planned to be an electrical engineer, but when the crunch came, he knew what he really wanted to be, what he had to be, and that was a writer of fiction—specifically, of science fiction.”

In 1973, Hamilton told Paul Walker, “My interest in science led me to major in physics when I entered college, and came from the fact that I was at that time a fanatic amateur in wireless telegraphy (we didn’t use the word ‘radio’ in those days). So I decided I would like to be an electrical engineer.” He elaborated, “It’s very difficult to look back fifty years and more and be truthful about my early days at my small academic college and why I became alienated from academic life. One’s mind paints up a plausible scheme of things that maybe didn’t really happen like that at all. “I was, first, alienated because of the difference in ages between myself and other students. I was, actually, fourteen years old when I matriculated... but became fifteen on October 21, 1919. I am glad to say that I made friends, I was invited to join one of the social clubs that took the place of fraternities in our college. But all the same,

The Best Of Edmond Hamilton Edmond Hamilton had more than half a century of productive work behind him when his wife, fellow writer Leigh Brackett, edited the ultimate collection of his fiction in 1977. Cover by Don Maitz. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [Art © the respective copyright holders.]

there was a difference there. “I think that difference in ages was one of the main reasons why I didn’t do well in college. But also I have a dislike for the academic life. With joy I exchanged the atmosphere of books, papers, politeness, for the work I took to on the railroad... the gusty, profane and likeable men I worked with, I preferred infinitely to professors.” 32 Whatever the reason for his poor academic showing, the future author did not blame it on his passion. “But I am sure that my fascination with science fiction, with the world of the imagination, did not alienate me from college. I had that fascination before I ever entered college, I maintained it, but it was something apart from classes and learning. I feel I’m vague here, but as I say, I’m sure that my lifelong obsession with imaginative scenes and possibilities did not turn me off formal education. In fact, many an idea I used later in stories, I got from my physics classes at school then…. “But I was at that time far more profoundly interested in literature than in science. The rather hard cruel logic of physical science was no doubt good for my wandering mind, though.” 33

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

Weird Tales “I wrote my first fantastic yarn back in 1925. Farnsworth Wright of Weird Tales bounced it back with some sage comments, so a year later I revised it and he took it.” 34 Hamilton’s writing career did not actually begin with his first fiction sale. In 1933, he wrote, “Education over, I did some newspaper work, for a while getting out a most unhumorous humor column. Then because I hated, and still hate, indoor work, graduated to railroading and an assistant-yardmaster’s job. I never did learn to chew tobacco like a real railroader, but liked the rush and freedom of the work immensely and stuck to it.” 35 Even before his professional debut, the author was accustomed to seeing his name in print. “I was an enthusiastic science fiction fan before I could read... Later on, I graduated to the old weekly magazines that ran occasional fantasies. Julius Unger, that indefatigable bibliophilist of science fiction, once dug up some of my own published fan-letters from those old journals and cast them in my teeth.” 36 In the mid-1920s, Hamilton took his first steps toward a professional writing career. “Early in 1925 I wrote a weird short story which I sent to Weird Tales and which Farnsworth Wright rejected with some helpful hints. A year later I rewrote it, he took it, and thus I started on the downward path.” 37 Said the author in 1975, “I was luckier than most, because, while I didn’t have too much confidence in myself, there was a very slender market and material was very much in demand, and [I sold] my first forty stories without a rejection. As a matter of fact, Weird Tales never rejected one of my stories.” 38 About his first sale, Hamilton wrote in 1976, “A writer’s first story is always dear to his heart, and so is ‘The Monster-God of Mamurth’ to mine. It was directly inspired by my great admiration for A. Merritt’s classic short, ‘The People of the Pit.’ I, too, wanted to write a story of a man who found an alien, horror-haunted place in the wilderness. Ironically, this story was published in the same issue as the only story Merritt ever had in Weird Tales—the great novelette of fantasy called ‘The Woman of the Wood.’ Against such competition I was lost, but didn’t mind because I did place second, in the readers’ poll, to a story by one who, to me, was The Master.”

Hamilton confessed the year before, “I told Merritt this in later years, and he said—he was a kindly man—he said, ‘I’m flattered.’ And I said, ‘I’m happy you are—I thought, frankly, that you’d resent it.’ And that’s the way I began.” 40 An audience that was not particularly impressed with his new career was that of his own flesh and blood. “I had a very large family and I Showing His Metal don’t think One of the earliest Hamilton stories to merit a cover on any of them Weird Tales was “The Metal Giants” (Dec. 1926 issue)— read anything which actually smacks more of science-fiction than the eldritch fantasy that was the usual fare of the pulp but maybe magazine that also introduced H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. my first story. Howard to the waiting world. Cover art by Joe Doolin; ID by They just had David Saunders. Thanks to Glen Cadigan and Art Lortie. [© no interest in the respective copyright holders.] science fiction. They were all great readers, but not science fiction.” 41 The author was a regular in the pages of Weird Tales, and his name often appeared on the same table of contents as Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. When Lovecraft passed away in 1937, Hamilton wrote to the magazine, “I just heard the news of H.P. Lovecraft’s recent death. This is quite a shock, coming so soon after the death of Howard. While I never met either of them, I have been appearing with them in Weird Tales for so long that I had a dim feeling of acquaintance. I think I read every one of Lovecraft’s stories from ‘Dagon,’ years ago. It is too bad he is gone—there will never be another like him.” 42 The editor of the magazine, Farnsworth Wright, was “venerated” 43 by Hamilton. Wright evidently held the work of the author in similar esteem: Pulp Fiction— in addition to never rejecting a story, after The Real Stuff his debut, the work of Hamilton appeared in

“The MonsterGod of Mamurth,” Hamilton’s first sale to Weird Tales, appeared with an interior illustration by G.O. Olinick. Precise date uncertain. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Farnsworth Wright Editor of Weird Tales, 1924-1940. He introduced to the world Edmond Hamilton, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and numerous other writers who continue to loom large nearly a century later.

Writer Of Two Worlds

And so Hamilton earned the nickname “World-Saver,” or, alternately, “World-Wrecker.” In 1976, he wrote:

Across A Very Weird Space G.O. Olinick’s interior illo for Hamilton’s generically titled “Across Space” in Weird Tales for Sept. 1926. [© the respective copyright holders.]

the next four issues of Weird Tales. After an absence in the January 1927 issue, Hamilton returned with back-to-back tales in February and March. Over an eight-issue stretch which began with “The Monster-God of Mamurth,” he appeared in seven issues, including five consecutive. Wright kept statistics regarding the popularity of the stories published in Weird Tales, and these notecards were analyzed by fan/critic/author Sam Moskowitz, who tabulated the results. The authors who had the highest number of most popular story in any given issue were Seabury Quinn (30), H.P. Lovecraft (16), and Robert E. Howard (14). In fourth place was Edmond Hamilton (8). 44 Years later, when he looked back upon his debut, Hamilton wrote, “Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to publish several hundred yarns in many different magazines here and in England, including some in Spanish and Swedish versions which I’m wholly unable to read. But I doubt if all of them together ever gave me the thrill I received when the August, 1926, issue of Weird Tales appeared with my ‘Monster-God of Mamurth.’” 45

The Interstellar Patrol “I started making a living writing, although it was a pretty thin living, three or four years after I first started writing. Before that time I didn’t really make a living.” 46 Hamilton didn’t consider “The Monster-God of Mamurth” to be his first science-fiction sale, given its topic matter. He reserved that distinction for his second published work, which took the form of a three-part novel. “My first science fiction story, a serial entitled, ‘Across Space,’ appeared in Weird Tales magazine in the summer of 1926. In it, evil Martians attempted to take over the Earth by means of a great machine on Easter Island. Their plans were defeated by a scientist who perished heroically in the struggle... and who was memorialized as the man who saved the whole Earth. “The readers liked that story. So did I. Therefore, being a new and very young writer, I wrote basically the same story over and over again fourteen or fifteen times. In each tale, a scientist-hero saved Earth from a terrible menace.” 47

“It is not surprising that I soon became known among the readers and fans as ‘World Saver Hamilton.’ In fact, in 1930 in one of the earliest issues of Astounding Stories, the letter section carried a long, not-tooEdmond serious poem of tribute to Hamilton Hamilton the World Saver, written by a young as a young man. reader named Mort Weisinger. Chuckling over that, I little dreamed that Mort and his young pal, Julius Schwartz, would in days to come be foremost among my editors.” 48 [NOTE: “Eulogy to Mr. Hamilton” actually appeared in the November 1932 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Weisinger was seventeen years old at the time; in the same issue, a letter from fifteen-year-old Forrest J. Ackerman announced the creation of his, Weisinger’s, and Schwartz’s joint fanzine, The Time Traveller.]

The next serial to spring from the typewriter of Hamilton was “The Time-Raider.” According to its author, “The Raider of the title was a mysterious entity of mind and force that could travel into the past and future, and could drag people along with him from other ages.” The Raider was “[i]ntent upon a total conquest of Earth...” 49 Parallels to the Legion of Super-Heroes villain the Time Trapper should be self-evident. In 1928, Hamilton wrote the first of a series of serials about a group of heroes called the Interstellar Patrol, “the officers of which came from many different star-worlds. Only one of these officers was a human man of the future Earth. The others were nonhumans but intelligent aliens from many far stars...” 50 In his afterword to The Best of Edmond Hamilton, the author remembered, “The old Interstellar Patrol and other star-war series I wrote in the period 1927-1930 had their genesis in the cold winter of 1927. Living in a small Western Pennsylvania city, I hesitated to take my first car (it was a Model-T roadster) out on the icy streets, and of nights would walk the mile and a bit to downtown, rather than drive. “Very clear in my mind is the walk home on the dark, long, ice-sheathed streets, with the great belt of Orion and the Pleiades burning in frosty splendor above the roofs. Dreaming of them as huge and awesome suns, I visualized a far-future civilization that would web the star-worlds. It would require a long-reaching arm of law and order to deal with cosmic menace—and there began the Patrol. “I could not get this, to me, staggering vision down on paper fast enough. I well remember that, working on a big old flat-top desk on a small portable typewriter, my feverish banging on the keyboard when I came to the great space-battles made the little machine ‘walk’ all over the desk—and how I would get up from my chair and follow the typewriter, still banging away in my excitement.” 51 The adventures of the Interstellar Patrol ran from 1928-30, with a final adventure in 1934. “I was immensely pleased that my hero, A. Merritt, liked them and wrote in praise of them.... He even tried to get his own publisher, Horace Liveright, to publish them in book form, but Mr. Liveright did not think they would sell, and doubtless was quite right….

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

Taking His Time We’re not quite sure what’s going on above left in Hugh Rankin’s illo for Hamilton’s story “The Time-Raider” from Weird Tales for October 1927 (the first of four parts)…. …but he used the same concept of a time-thief villain when he co-created the Time-Trapper as an off-stage baddie in Adventure Comics #317 (Feb. 1964). The comicbook antagonist first appeared on-panel (as seen above right) in Adventure #318 (March ’64), with art by John Forte. [Comics panel TM & © DC Comics; Weird Tales cover TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.] An aside from Ye A/E Editor: In the 1980s, artist/writer Scott Shaw! and I created a funny-animal homage to Hamilton’s concept, called the TimeKeeper! (‘Got a minute? Then watch out for—the Time-Keeper!’).”

“Another young reader who liked them was a lad in Cleveland who started writing to me early in 1930. He was instrumental, by his letters, in bringing together Jack Williamson and myself in a long friendship. He wrote me that he had an idea for hero stories himself, and that he and a friend were going to try to work up a new character. This youngster’s name was Jerry Siegel, and the hero character he and his friend eventually created was... Superman!” 52 In his memoir Wonder’s Child, Williamson recalled, “Jerry Siegel gave me Ed Hamilton’s address and sent me a story of his own for comment. His characters were all geometric solids, not terribly exciting, but I think their world was an earlier vision of Krypton, from which Superman came.” 53 Hamilton and Siegel evidently kept in touch; in 1933, the latter published an abridged version of the author’s third published story, “The Metal Giants,” as a chapbook. According to historian Eddy Zeno, it was sent as a premium with orders from the Swanson Book Company. 54 It is listed on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database as “Advertised in Science Fiction Digest, October 1932, Star Light, Star Bright, as available.” Science Fiction First Star I Steal Tonight… Digest was the successor to This cover by Hugh Rankin, for the The Time Traveller; its editors February 1929 issue of Weird Tales, were Mort Weisinger and illustrated one of Hamilton’s Interstellar Julie Schwartz. Patrol stories—featuring an alien who

appears, at least visually, to owe, again, a bit to the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Thanks to Art Lortie & Glen Cadigan. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Writer Of Two Worlds

SIDEBAR:

A Mini-Tribute to EDMOND HAMILTON by JACK WILLIAMSON

ack Williamson, born in 1908, is the only author to have new science-fiction work published in each decade from the 1920s into the 21st century. He has sold stories to every editor of Analog since it began as Astounding Stories of Super Science. In December 2003, Jack had this to say about Edmond Hamilton: “Ed and I were early contributors to the science fiction magazines. I got his mail address from Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman. Both of us admirers of Mark Twain, we arranged to meet in Minneapolis for a cruise down the Mississippi. That was a great adventure and we were friends as long as he lived. “About the comics, he used to say that writing the scripts was drudgery the editors wouldn’t let him escape, but he did it so long and so well that he must have enjoyed it. He was good at it, well-seasoned by a long career in the pulps and clever at inventing action plots. “As a pulp writer, he began his career writing space operas for the early Weird Tales. His stories were well-imagined pictures of a far-off future, with bold heroes and action on a grand scale. The battles to avert cosmic catastrophe earned him the title ‘World Saver Hamilton.’ He may be almost forgotten now, but he pioneered the use of tropes still to be seen in books, films, and TV. I’m glad to see him remembered.” When queried about specific tropes, he added, “Hamilton’s Interstellar Patrol stories in the old Weird Tales are the earliest space operas I know. They set a pattern for tales of far-future cultures and wars between them that we still see in the likes of Star Trek and Star Wars.”

The Pulps “All through the ‘30s I kept trying my hand at various different kinds of fiction ... mystery and detective stories, supernatural stories, and also science-fiction of a more serious sort.”55 As if timed to coincide with the arrival of Edmond Hamilton, the pulp industry expanded in the late 1920s to include periodicals devoted exclusively to science-fiction. In addition to the already established Weird Tales (1923), which covered a wide range of stories, Hugo Gernsback launched Amazing Stories in 1926, then Amazing Stories Quarterly in 1928. When he lost control of his company in 1929, he responded by forming a new one that published Science Wonder Quarterly, Science Wonder Stories, and Air Wonder Stories. The latter two were combined into Wonder Stories in 1930, and Science Wonder Quarterly changed its name to Wonder Stories Quarterly that same year. Remembered Hamilton in 1964, “[I]n February, 1926, [I] succeeded in selling [to] the old Weird Tales. What a thrill it was when, a month later, a science-fiction magazine appeared! A couple of years later, when a second SF magazine appeared, I decided to become a professional writer. I’m filled with retrospective admiration for a decision so cosmically heroic and stupid.”56 Astounding Stories (edited by Harry Bates) joined the parade in 1930. Combined with a new editor on Amazing (T.O’Connor Sloane), Hamilton now had at least four different markets for his work. Although his loyalty was still with Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales, the author branched out. In 1928, his first story for Gernsback, “The Comet Doom,” appeared in the January issue of Amazing Stories. He followed the publisher to his new company the next year, where “The Hidden World” appeared in the initial issue of Science Wonder Quarterly, and was quickly followed by the two-part “Cities in the Air” in the November and December issues of Air Wonder Stories. Gernsback was notorious for not paying his authors well, if at all. In 1975, Hamilton recalled, “[H]e was not generous with his writers, and sometimes you would wait a year to get fifty dollars for a story that would be 10,000 words long. I would have to dun him personally when I was in New York to get that much from him. He could have been a little more generous with us, let’s say.”57 The author also didn’t limit his writing to science-fiction. He used the pen name “Hugh Davidson” to write horror, including tales that featured his psychic investigator character, Dr. John Dale. In addition to his usual haunts, stories by the author later appeared in Scientific Detective Monthly, Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, and Thrilling Mystery. Hamilton was so prolific he sometimes used pseudonyms whenever he had more than one story published in the same issue. In addition to Davidson, he also wrote under the names “Robert Castle” and “Robert Wentworth,” and was occasionally assigned a house pen name, such as “Alexander Blade,” “Will Garth,” “Brett Sterling,” or “S.M. Tenneshaw.” It was during this period that he received his first rejection after forty consecutive sales. “Dave Lasser from Wonder Stories... wanted something changed and this so hurt me that I just threw the story away,” he told Dave Truesdale in 1976.58

Jack Williamson & Edmond Hamilton Two old friends share a moment at 1967 NYCon 3. Photo by Jay Kay Klein, via Calisphere.

Two tales, in particular, that were published during this era left a vivid impression on future authors: “The Man Who Evolved” and “A Conquest of Two Worlds.” About the former, Isaac Asimov wrote, “Three months before my exciting promotion to an adult

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

reached my typewriter.”63 In reference to the name change, he told Patrick Nielsen Hayden, “Oh, well, they all did [it]. Gernsback was the worst.”64

The Time Traveller “I hear from a good many science-fiction fans now and again and am genuinely glad to get their letters.”65 It was in 1931 that two young fans met and formed a friendship which led to relationships with the author that lasted until his death. “[T]here was a reader’s department in [Amazing Stories] that had names and addresses on the letters, an idea I copied much later on in the comicbooks, giving full names and addresses,” remembered longtime DC Comics editor Julie Schwartz in a 1989 interview with Paul Kupperberg. “It led to people corresponding with one another, and I found out there was a club in the Bronx, where I lived, called the Scienceers. I was 16 years old and was allowed to become a member and it was there that I attended my first meeting and met my lifelong friend named Mort Weisinger. “An interesting sideline... when I got to the meeting, the meeting broke up because Mort informed them, being the treasurer of the Scienceers, that there was no money left in the treasury because he’d gone out and bought all the science fiction magazines he could find. Therefore, the treasury was empty.”66

“Forgotten World” We’re not sure which of the three stories is artistically spotlighted on this cover for the Winter 1946 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories, but Hamilton’s name clearly brought in paying customers. Art by Earle Bergey; ID by David Saunders. Thanks to Glen Cadigan. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

In his memoir, Man of Two Worlds, Schwartz elaborated, “We became fast friends and would often meet halfway at a public library and talk and talk about the science fiction stories we read and who our favorite writers were... we considered ourselves two of the foremost experts on science fiction in 1931, and to the best of our knowledge, no one disputed our assertion.”67 In 1974, he told Guy H. Lillian III, “We began to write to the sci-fi authors whose work appeared in the magazines... asking them, ‘What stories of yours are going to appear next?’ and so on. They’d write back and tell us a little bit about themselves.

library card, I had read the first science fiction short story (as opposed to novel) that impressed me so much it stayed in my mind permanently. I never read it again after that first reading, never, until... the preparation of this anthology. And then, when I read it again, after forty-two years, I found I remembered it all in complete detail.”59 About the latter, Hamilton recalled in 1975, “I’m proud to say that that story was remembered thirty-five years later by Arthur C. Clarke. He told me, ‘Ed, you know, I read that story when I was a fan. I’ve been a long time in the business, and that’s one story that I never forgot.’ That’s the greatest compliment I ever received on that story.”60 Originally entitled “Renegade” (“They thought the title wasn’t science-fictional enough.”61), “Conquest” was an anti-colonial tale about an Earthman who sides with the Jovians during Earth’s settlement of Jupiter. Two years after its publication, Hamilton said in Fantasy Magazine, “I wrote [it] because I was sick of the usual science-fiction assumption that in interplanetary struggles the Earthmen would always be in the right.”62 In The Best of Edmond Hamilton, he added, “In those days, and for many years, I did a five-mile walk every morning to get some exercise and fresh air, and I still recall how, smitten with that idea as I tramped along in the Pennsylvania hills and woods, I hurried home at such high speed that I was practically breathless when I

History In The Making (Left to right:) Julius Schwartz, Edmond Hamilton, & Jack Williamson in the late 1930s. From James Gunn’s 1975 tome Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Writer Of Two Worlds

“One day I remember sitting at the typewriter, and whether Mort suggested it or I suggested it—probably we both suggested it together—we decided to put out a fan magazine which would put all this news we were getting together.”68

most exciting things we ever did was a ‘round robin’ serial to which most every famous SF writer of the time contributed. It was an epic story with sections by A. Merritt, Otto Binder, Doc Smith, Ralph Milne Farley, Dr. David H. Keller, even John Campbell.

The first nationally distributed science-fiction fanzine, The Time Traveller premiered on January 9th, 1932. Schwartz was managing editor; Weisinger was associate editor. Allen Glasser, a member of the Scienceers, was editor, with Forrest J. Ackerman, who lived in California, listed as contributing editor. As to why they brought in others, Schwartz recalled, “At sixteen, neither of us had the confidence to call himself the editor, so we shanghaied a fellow Scienceer [Glasser] whose claim to fame was an extensive array of letters published in pulp magazines.... We rounded up several other of the better known fans of the day to supply us with news and gossip. Among them was fifteen-years-young Forrest J. Ackerman, our ‘scientifilm’ editor from Hollywood who years later coined the term ‘sci-fi.’”69

“The story [called ‘Cosmos’] appeared in 1933 in seventeen or eighteen chapters—a feat which has not been topped to this day! When we got to the end of this epic, we dumped the story into the typewriter-hands of Ed ‘World Saver’ Hamilton, who was, by reputation, everybody’s choice to save the planet from sixteen other chapters of invasion and chaos. Of course, he proved worthy of the task!”73

In Man of Two Worlds, Schwartz clarified, “[The name] was my idea. It was called The Time Traveller (inspired by the English spelling of the name of the main character in H.G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine).”70 Schwartz also told Brian M. Thomsen, “Among The Time Traveller’s first subscribers was a fellow named Jerome Siegel from Cleveland. So enthusiastic was he about the magazine that it inspired him to put out one of his own. It was called Science Fiction and it featured fiction stories rather than articles.”71 One such story was “The Reign of the Superman,” published in January, 1933. In fact, according to Weisinger, Siegel, Schwartz, and Weisinger had an arrangement where each would promote the other’s fanzine through reciprocal ads.72 The Time Traveller underwent two name changes: first to Science Fiction Digest and then to Fantasy Magazine before it was discontinued in 1937. In 1976, Schwartz told Byron Preiss, “In the history of the magazine, one of the

It wasn’t long before Weisinger and Schwartz were the WorldSaver’s agents. Schwartz told Lillian, “Mort came up with the idea that, as long as we were so familiar with the field’s writers, and were always going up to see editors... we might as well make a living at it.”74 Schwartz later explained to Kupperberg, “The editors told me what their needs were. For example, once in a while an editor would tell me, ‘Gee, I have to fill up the book and I’d love to have a time travel story. I have nothing but interplanetary stories,’ but he didn’t have any time-traveling stories on hand, so I thought it would be a good idea if I contacted a guy like Edmond Hamilton and told him to write a time travel story of six to eight thousand words and it would practically be a sure sale.”75 In a letter that was sent to authors to promote their services, the pair of teenagers wrote, “We ask only that all stories sent us be accompanied with a dollar sales service fee. This fee is waived just as soon as we sell three stories for the client.”76 Remembered Schwartz, “Practically right out of the box we got a package from Edmond Hamilton, a well-known writer from New Castle, Pennsylvania, dozens of whose stories we had read and enjoyed.... The seven thousand word story was called ‘Master of the Genes,’ and it came with a dollar bill folded up inside it; our first reading fee.

Three Amigos Of Two Worlds (Left to right in photo:) Julius Schwartz, Edmond Hamilton, & Mort Weisinger in a slightly fuzzy pic taken in an eatery near the Thrilling Wonder offices in 1937. At left is the cover for the Dec. 1940 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories, spotlighting a Hamilton story, edited by Weisinger—and probably agented by Julie. Art by Earle Bergey; ID by David Saunders/ pulpartists.com. Thanks to Glen Cadigan. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.] At right is the splash page of the first “Chris KL99” story, for Strange Adventures #1 (Aug.-Sept. 1950), edited by Schwartz, scripted by Hamilton, and drawn by Howard Sherman. The hyphen in “KL-99” was added with the second issue. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.]

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

“Mort and I opened the envelope together, all excited about the unread story inside, and looked at the dollar bill. Then I looked at Mort and he looked at me and we burst out laughing. For years we had paid to read Hamilton’s stories, and now he was paying us a dollar to have us read a new one? “We sent the dollar back, along with the news that Wonder Stories had accepted the story for thirty-five dollars, 1/2 cent a word.”77 With the addition of their first client, the two teenagers were in business. Solar Sales Service was born.

Solar Sales Service “There must be some people who like to read about science-fiction authors, since Julius Schwartz says so.”78 Working as his agents, Weisinger and Schwartz continued to place stories of Hamilton’s in the pulps. In 1935, Weisinger left the agency in the solo hands of Schwartz to pursue an editorial career. The former told Will Murray in 1976: “It was while hustling for my clients in and out of editorial offices that I met Leo Margulies, chief at Standard Magazines. A short while later one of Leo’s associate editors left, leaving him in a hole. He hired me to plug the dike.”79 Both Weisinger and Schwartz were college students who worked as literary agents part-time. Weisinger was twenty; the job paid $15 a week. He approached Margulies about the position when he heard about the vacancy at a meeting of the American Fiction Society, where Weisinger was secretary.80 The future Superman editor switched to night school, then no school at all. In the same year, Hugo Gernsback sold Wonder Stories to Standard, where it was renamed Thrilling Wonder Stories to match their other Thrilling titles. It was the Great Depression and Gernsback was suffering financially; the circulation on Wonder Stories had dropped precipitously over the previous years. Reportedly, the title was to retain its editor, Charlie Hornig, but Weisinger convinced Margulies to hire him for the job instead. According to Schwartz, Weisinger’s argument was, “[I]f Charlie had done such a wonderful job at Wonder, why had it failed?”81 It was the only science-fiction magazine published by Standard, and Weisinger was now in charge. He did not see a conflict of interest when it came to buying stories from his former partner, and so tales by Hamilton continued to appear within its pages. In the same way that Weisinger had graduated from being Hamilton’s fan to his agent, he was now his editor. Whereas others were adversely affected by The Great Depression, Hamilton seemed to skate through it unscathed. “Ed had found a happy-seeming and undemanding way of life, still at home with his parents in the big old family house in the outskirts of the city,” recalled Jack Williamson.82 “He had what seemed to me an enviable existence... he was more or less immune to the financial uncertainties of writing for the pulps.”83 Which is not to say that money did not matter. Regarding the early years of the decade, Hamilton told an audience at Pacificon II in 1964, “There was [a] house that published science fiction, which I shall not name, who were wonderful people, but they almost never paid. Not on publication, or long after. And I want to say the rule [is] to try and get payment in a friendly manner, if you have to do it. “And so in the black year of 1933, I went into their office, asked

“The Second Deluge”—And That’s Just In Strange Adventures #1! Believe it or not, Hamilton also scripted a second story that appeared in Strange Adventures’ premier issue—but somehow it got credited to his fellow writer Gardner F. Fox. The matter was later straightened out by access to DC’s pay records. Art by Jim Mooney & Sy Barry. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.]

for payment, and was received friendily, but the bookkeeper was out. It was impossible to pay me. But the bookkeeper would return. So I sat and waited. For four long hours of a summer afternoon I waited, petting the office cat. At the end of that time, they became sick of my face and finally paid me. I had gotten my money, and I had made a friend—the cat wanted to go home with me.”84

Worldcon I “The NY SF scene in the later ’30s and early ’40s was a yeasty and exciting one. New magazines were appearing, new writers popping up, and we were all fascinated by the field.”85 For Hamilton, the second half of the ’30s progressed much the same as had the first. He continued to sell stories to the pulps, and in 1936 he received a particular honor: an anthology of his work, Horror on the Asteroid and Other Tales of Planetary Horror, was published in Britain. It is widely considered to be the first hardcover collection of science-fiction stories by a single author. One way in which things had changed was in how pros interacted with fans. Previously, all contact had been through the mail. But now that science-fiction clubs had formed, it was possible

Writer Of Two Worlds

was a nice size, and everyone knew everybody else. There were probably, oh, 150-180 people there. We all met in a hall. We didn’t have a hotel, or anything.”87 Famous future writers in attendance were Isaac Asimov (then nineteen) and Ray Bradbury (also nineteen). The latter had crossed the country from Los Angeles, by bus, with money borrowed from Forrest Ackerman, with the goal of acquiring Schwartz as his agent. Remembered Bradbury, “I kept bugging Julie to become my agent and he looked at my manuscripts and said, ‘Come back again, later, keep writing, keep moving, and some day—’”88 Hamilton shared another memory of the first Worldcon when he was a guest of honor at Pacificon II in 1964: “I wrote... a great many stories which had to do with the imminent destruction of the world, but very often the world was saved by the hero reaching a switch and pulling it, stopping a machine, and the world is saved. In 1939, at the World’s Fair, I was going with some fellow writers through the grounds and we came to the Westinghouse Electric Pavilion. On the side of it, as a display, they had a switch some sixty feet tall. Instantly, without even taking any communication between themselves, Eric Frank Russell, Otis Klein, Jack Williamson, Otto Binder, and Mort Weisinger lined up and said, ‘We salute the switch that saved the world!’”

New York City “At about the same time I was meeting a good many of the writers based in New York. In 1934 Mort Weisinger, my one-time fan, was working for Standard Magazines’ editorial department, and he and the editorial director, Leo Margulies... acquainted me with many of the great group in New York.”89

“Murder In The Void” Howard V. Brown’s cover for the June 1938 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Informal get-togethers between pros happened on a weekly basis in New York City. In 1976, Hamilton recalled, “Every [Thursday] an unofficial meeting of SF writers was held at Steuben’s Tavern in mid-Manhattan, and when I was in town I enjoyed it very much. Henry Kuttner, Alfred Bester, Manly Wade Wellman, Otto Binder, and many others were regulars. We had great discussions

for writers to meet them in person. The Queens Science Fiction League (whose membership included a teenaged Isaac Asimov) was one such group. Remembered Julie Schwartz, “When I mentioned that I would be bringing along the professional science-fiction writer Ed Hamilton to the next meeting, the amount of people who wanted to attend doubled.”86 After subsequent meetings with authors like Otto Binder and Jack Williamson were successful, the idea for a convention formed. The Eastern Science Fiction Convention happened on May 29th, 1938, in Newark, NJ, and was a precursor for the first Worldcon the following year in New York City. The inaugural World Science Fiction Convention was launched with Sam Moskowitz as chairman; Schwartz was responsible for the convention’s souvenir book. It was held over the Fourth of July weekend, unofficially in conjunction with the New York World’s Fair. Remembered Hamilton, “I went to the first Worldcon—so-called—in New York in ’39. It

Take Me To The Fair! Famous photo taken at the time of the 1939 (first) Worldcon, held to coincide with the opening of the New York’s World Fair that year. (L. to r., standing:) Myrtle Douglas, Julius Schwartz, Otto Binder, Mort Weisinger, unknown. The guy seated at right is a very young Ray Bradbury, who had made it east from Los Angeles to the Worldcon—but didn’t have the money to attend the Fair itself.

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

and hot arguments about new developments in SF. Julie, Mort, and David V. Reed were also regulars.”90 Schwartz told Robert Greenberger in 1986, “Since I was an agent and had no business office, my clients and I used to meet regularly at Steuben’s Tavern on 47th Street.... I collected their latest manuscripts and handed out checks. We would hang around for several hours and, in a way, these really were the first professional SF conventions!”91 One time of year when Hamilton preferred to visit the Big Apple was in the spring. Schwartz recalled, “Ed lived in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and we worked mainly by mail, although he could always be counted upon to visit New York every April and spend some time at the Blue Ribbon Restaurant, on 44th Street. I eventually learned that it was because bock (dark) beer was distributed only in the spring. The Blue Ribbon was one of the few restaurants in the city which carried it.”92 By the end of the ’30s, there were even more markets for sciencefiction. The former editor of Wonder Stories, Charles Hornig, was the editor of a new magazine, Science Fiction, which launched in 1939. Its debut issue had not one but two Edmond Hamilton stories, although the second, “The Conqueror’s Voice,” was written under the pseudonym of Robert Castle. The first, “Under the White Star,” was featured on the cover. The inaugural issue of Science Fiction also contained an editorial by Hugo Gernsback in which he wrote, “The mere fact that, today, there are more magazines of this type than ever before is a very healthy sign and augurs well for the future of this type of literature.” In 1939, the publisher of Thrilling Wonder Stories launched a

Do You Find It Startling… …that Hamilton’s story “Prisoner of Mars” formed the inspiration for Howard V. Brown’s cover for the third issue of the pulp magazine Startling Stories (May 1939)? Thanks to Glen Cadigan for the scan, and to David Saunders/pulpartists.con for the artist ID. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

SIDEBAR:

FUTURE FICTION A/E EDITOR here: I read the paragraph above about the Charles Hornig magazine Science Fiction launched at the end of the 1930s—and that made me curious about another pulp-mag cover that Glen Cadigan had sent me: that of a publication titled Future Fiction. Could the two of them be related? I asked the expert David Saunders, he of the invaluable website pulpartists.com, and he had this to say: “The specific issue [of Future Fiction] you sent a photo of is dated March 1940, and the cover artist is John Walter Scott (1907-1987). “[Future Fiction] was a publication which started in 1939 and lasted until 1968. The magazine title was, in fact, undergoing a series of ‘permutations.’ The actual publisher was Louis Silberkleit (1900-1986), who owned MLJ Comics, which became Archie Comics. He published pulp magazines under a variety of names, including Blue Ribbon Magazines, Columbia Publications, Winford Publications, and Double-Action Magazines. Silberkleit was an ambitious publisher, and he had pulp magazines about Westerns, detectives, adventures, and romance. “His SF pulp was dated March of 1939. It was first titled Science Fiction, and it continued until September of 1941. His second sci-fi pulp was dated November 1939 and was titled Future Fiction; it lasted until August of 1941. Then, in October of 1941, he combined both of them into a single magazine titled Future Combined with

Science Fiction, and that ran until July of 1943, after which it died—until he revived it in May of 1950, after which it continued until October of 1954. Then, in January of 1955, it resumed under the title Science Fiction Stories, and it ran until June of 1960. Period. The end! “I hope this clarifies things, although it seems additionally confusing. Some pulp publishers preferred to work in this ever-changing way in order to periodically declare their business “bankrupt,” after which time they could avoid all of their accumulated creditors, but then “miraculously” re-organize their “struggling” business under a new name and proceed as usual, over and over again.”

Writer Of Two Worlds

Best of Edmond Hamilton to the editor who bought his first story.

sister periodical, Startling Stories, also edited by Mort Weisinger. Tales by Hamilton appeared with the second issue. In the third, his short novel The Prisoner of Mars was the cover story; he was also the subject of the “Meet the Author” feature.

Captain Future “But adventure science-fiction was still my chief interest, and I wrote a lot of it for Leo Margulies and Mort Weisinger, especially after Standard Magazines started Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories.”98

It was in 1940 that Hamilton met the sciencefiction author who would have the greatest effect on his life. He told Dave Truesdale in 1976, “Mort Weisinger and Julie Schwartz, my old friends, were out in Beverly Hills from New York on vacation. Julie was my agent at that time, and Jack Williamson and I went over to see him in Beverly Hills, and Julie said, ‘I have a client here, a young girl who lives in Los Angeles, and she’ll be coming through this morning to see me.’ So when she arrived she was overcome with awe to meet two great science fiction writers like Jack Williamson and myself[.]”93 In the same interview, Leigh Brackett recalled, “I nearly fell through the floor. Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton, they were the two great names.”94

During the first Worldcon in 1939, Leo Margulies, who had been talked into attending by his employee, Mort Weisinger, was impressed by the devotion to science-fiction that was exhibited by the attendees.

Leigh Brackett A photo of the future Mrs. Edmond Hamilton in her younger days.

Earlier in 1940, the longtime editor of Weird Tales, Farnsworth Wright, was let go by the publisher and there was a movement amongst many of his longtime contributors—including Hamilton—to boycott the magazine in protest. In February, Clark Ashton Smith wrote to Margaret St. Clair, “Wright is hit pretty hard, and our gang has pledged to boycott the mag. If Wright succeeds in getting another publisher interested in backing a new weird mag, we’ll submit only to him. It’s all we can do for one of the best and most liked editors in our field. With Wellman, Kuttner, Hamilton, Quinn, Williamson, and others not submitting to Weird, I’m thinking [new editor Dorothy] McIlwraith will have to print blank pages.”95 On June 12, 1940, Wright passed away at the age of fifty-one. In the essay “He That Hath Words,” Hamilton wrote, “After Wright left Weird Tales (banished into outer space, is the way he wrote me about it), I happened to be in New York. I found out that he was living out at Jackson Heights, so I went out to see him, and was always glad I did, for he died only a few weeks later.”96 Hamilton told Hayden in 1975, “Wright was a wonderful man. He was not well, you know. He suffered from... partly from shell shock, in WWI. [NOTE: Wright actually had Parkinson’s Disease.] He would sit with his hands on his desk—he was a tall, dignified, and extremely handsome man—and would try to keep them still, but they trembled, and all, as mine are beginning to do a little bit. And we’d go out to a restaurant together, and I’d have to cut up his meat for him, and he was quite dignified about it: He’d simply say, ‘I can’t do this,’ and I’d cut it for him.”97 In 1976, the author dedicated The

“I didn’t think you boys could be so damn sincere!” he reportedly said, and committed to the launch of a new science-fiction magazine. The catch was, it would revolve around a central character, the yet to be named Captain Future.99

“I had a feeling that a personality character and a team—a science-fiction parallel to Doc Savage—would go,” Weisinger told Will Murray in 1976. “And we gave him some unique props, a robot, an android, and a living brain. It did well while Ed Hamilton was writing them.”100

In “Fifty Years of Heroes,” Hamilton wrote, “Their first title for it was ‘Mr. Future, Wizard of Science’…. Their original prospectus—I still have it—outlined three comrades Captain Future would have…. I convinced Leo and Mort that these three characters would be very hard to use in a story, and suggested changes in them. Simon Wright became an aged scientist who, about to die, had his living brain transferred into an artificial serum-case, and was known as the Brain.... Otho became an android, a living man of synthetic flesh created in their moon laboratory by the Brain and Captain Future’s father. And the automaton became Grag, the intelligent robot, who was not very brilliant but was immensely strong and very faithful.”101 The author once revealed to Murray, “I had to go to New York and argue with them for days before they would let me change their proposed set-up.”102 According to Schwartz, “[Weisinger, Hamilton, and I] plotted the first few stories on the open air bus, riding up and down Fifth Avenue. Sometimes, Otto Binder participated in these plotting sessions.”103

Wasn’t The Future Wonderful? The Captain Future issue for Fall 1940. Cover by Earle Bergey. Thanks to Glen Cadigan. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

One person who noticed the similarities between Doc Savage and Captain Future was Lester Dent himself. Hamilton and the co-creator of the Man of Bronze had previously met “at the old Tale Twisters group of pulp writers

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

Leo Margulies He was the top Thrilling Wonder editor who reasoned in 1939 that a science-fiction pulp built around a central hero like Doc Savage could be a hit—hence, Captain Future. Magulies seen on the right, walking with Ray Bradbury. Courtesy of Glen Cadigan.

I Have Seen The Future(s) (Above:) The cover of the first issue of the pulp magazine Captain Future, dated Winter 1940. Art by George Rozen; thanks to David Saunders/ pulpartists.com. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.] (Right:) As can be deemed from reading the caption as well as looking at the Murphy Anderson art, Hamilton introduced a quite similar character in DC Comics’ Strange Adventures #1, seen a few pages back. Here is the splash page for the “Chris KL-99” yarn from SA #9 (June 1951). Julius Schwartz was the mag’s editor. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Murphy Anderson During the 1950s and ’60s, he became a major artist at DC Comics.

who foregathered at the Algonquin. Lester was a heck of a nice guy... big, genial, and friends with everyone…. Leo Margulies and Mort got me into the group.”104 Dent was looking for a ghost writer, and he offered Hamilton the job. “I was flattered, but had to say I was too damn busy with Captain Future to think of more work.”105 There was another aspect to the Captain Future series that the author revealed at Pacificon II: “The magazine publishers had started a little outfit called The Futuremen. It was one of those things where you would give the kid a badge and a card and so on and that you were of the future—a Futureman. And it occurred to

me... that I had never seen a card and a badge. And I wrote Mort, who was the editor then, ‘Why don’t I get a card and a badge?’ and he wrote back. He said, ‘Your last story was one week late. You have been blackballed.’” In late 1940, Hamilton’s editor on Captain Future and former agent left the pulps behind for the four-color world of comicbooks. Weisinger was recruited by Whit Ellsworth at Detective Comics, Inc. (DC), who promised the 25-year-old a $15-a-week raise over what Standard Magazines paid. Weisinger told Will Murray, “That was a lot of money then.... But he said, ‘What I want you to do is shape up Batman and other

Writer Of Two Worlds

magazines because Superman is in a groove with Jerry Siegel. By the way, he recommended you.’ Siegel and I were old friends. We used to work on a fan magazine together.”106 [NOTE: Weisinger is referring to Siegel’s connection to The Time Traveller.] Hamilton told Dave Truesdale in 1976, “In 1941 he wanted me to work for him over there, and I thought about it and then told him I didn’t want to be bothered by it.”107

Los Angeles: 1941 “Height, five feet ten, weight, one hundred and fifty, white and unmarried. Swimming is my favorite amusement, though I like hiking, too.”108 After spending part of the summers of 1939-40 in Los Angeles,109 Schwartz elected to continue the tradition for a third year in a row, and he took his client Hamilton with him. “In the summer of 1941, Ed and I drove cross-country to Los Angeles.... We were driving out to sell Hamilton’s car in California. We met in Pittsburgh and journeyed west, making a side-trip along the way to see a SF writer named Ted Sloat.... “At the time I was twenty-six and Ed was in his mid-thirties. We went to a local Elks club and—for the first time in my life—I got loaded. So bombed, in fact, that when we returned to our hotel room, neither of us could maneuver the key into our door. Ed had to call the bellboy to do it. To this day, Hamilton never fails to remind me of the comment he made as we finally fell into the room. ‘Wellman would be proud of you!’ he shouted, alluding to Manly Wade Wellman, another SF writer who knew how to hoist a few.”110 Their side-trip completed, they then continued on their way. Schwartz later recalled, “The 1941 World Science Fiction Convention was in Denver. Ed Hamilton and I drove out there and then to Los Angeles to meet some writers, touch base with people we had theretofore known mostly by correspondence, and to deliver a check for the first client I had ever taken on who was not already an established writer.”111 That person was Ray Bradbury. At the first Worldcon in 1939, Schwartz had agreed to look at the young author’s work via the mail and would send the stories back, with comments. Eventually, the agent sold “The Pendulum” (co-written with Henry Hasse) to Super Science Stories for ½ cent a word, and “[r]ather than mail the check, I decided to bring it with me and deliver it in person so I could see Ray’s beaming face.”112 “[Ed and I] wandered around Los Angeles for a bit before we arranged to stay at a little rental cottage on Norton off Olympic Boulevard,” Schwartz told Brian Thomsen. “Famished after our long trip and the toil of unpacking, we hiked down the street to find a place to eat and maybe a newspaper. And there on the corner of Olympic, hawking newspapers, was a young ‘polar bearish’ looking kid by the name of Ray Bradbury[.]”113 Years later, Bradbury wrote, “I was selling newspapers even then, at the corner of Norton and Olympic. Income ten bucks a week or maybe eleven.... Malts were a dime. Some hamburgers a nickel....”114 Hamilton remembered that “Ray was very young, and he would bring his stories over for Julie and I to read. Finally I told him, ‘You don’t want us to tell you how to write. You know very well what you want to do and you’re going to do it your own style. What you’re bringing these stories over for is that you want us to tell you they’re good. They’re good. So just go ahead and write them.’”115

Solar Sales Goes West These two photos from Hamilton and Schwartz’s trip to Los Angeles to visit Ray Bradbury were included in Julie’s article “Solar Sales Service” in Starlog #115 (Feb. 1987). Thanks to Art Lortie & John Morrow. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Schwartz told Elliot S. Maggin in 1993, “We were a hangout that month for the Los Angeles Science Fiction League, where we would gossip and exchange ideas and stories, and party. Everyone would drink beer except Ray, who stuck to Coke.”116 Bradbury himself recalled, “It was the greatest summer in history because, with his arrival, Julie brought the news, the superb surprise, that our story had sold to Super Science. The story was published on my twenty-first birthday, August 22, that year. I ran to Julie’s apartment with a copy of the magazine and we sat around, Julie and Ed drinking beer and myself downing five or six Cokes, jubilant.”117 Hamilton told Dave Truesdale, “Well, he brought the magazine over to show us and he showed it around, was just beaming like the sun, and then he was so overcome that he took the magazine like this and he kissed it and kissed it.”118 The former newspaper boy later told Schwartz that summer was “wonderful.... because I didn’t know I was poor and I had good friends finally, like Forrie, Ed, Leigh, and you.”119

World War II “The statistics—white and unmarried and a little too old for the military, say they; some two hundred-odd published stories behind me, and I hope some more ahead.”120 During their month in Los Angeles, Hamilton still had to earn a living. He remembered in 1973, “Julie was my agent... and I was laboring hard on Captain Future novels. In afternoons, while I was beating the typewriter, Jules would sleep peacefully on a couch. He said that every time he heard my typewriter ping, he realized that I had written ten words more.”121 Since Hamilton was paid one cent a word and Schwartz’s take was ten percent, after every ping the agent announced, “Another penny!” One of the members of the Los Angeles Science Fiction League who gathered in their apartment that summer was Leigh Brackett,

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

who had been a client of Schwartz’s since 1939. The latter told Kupperberg in 1989: “[T]here was an agent out in California named Lawrence Dorsey, and the fellow who worked for him was a young would-be writer named Henry Kuttner, who eventually did become a science-fiction writer. But he felt that Dorsey knew nothing about the market, so he contacted me, and I became Henry Kuttner’s agent. And then some young girl started submitting stories through the Dorsey agency and Kuttner thought it was pretty good and told me about her. Her name was Leigh Brackett.”122 In 1976, Hamilton told Truesdale, “We lived in Los Angeles in a bungalow that was kind of the center of the science fiction group out there, and we would get together with some beer and booze and sit around and drink. Well, she would come sometimes in the afternoon and we would always have some cake for her. We didn’t feel that a nice young lady should be offered booze so we always had a nice piece of cake for her.” Said Brackett, “I would have preferred the booze, except when I went home my mother would have said, ‘(Gasp!) You’ve been drinking with those terrible people!’”123

The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be (Left:) Captain Future cover for Summer 1940. Cover by Earle Bergey. Thanks to Glen Cadigan. (Right:) After the war, Captain Future reappeared—this time as the lead feature in Startling Stories, beginning with this tale by Hamilton and its oft-reprinted cover, again by Earle Bergey. Thanks to David Saunders/pulpartists.com for both artist IDs. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Remembered Forrest J. Ackerman in 1976, “My principle claim to fame, Hamilton/Brackett-wise, is that Ed borrowed my copy of the fantasy classic cum collectors’ item [E.R.] Eddison’s The Worm Ouroborous, with which to woo Leigh. (Wooed by a worm? Now how can you squirm out of that?)”124 When their summer adventure was over, Schwartz and Hamilton returned to the East Coast. In December, Pearl Harbor was attacked and the 37-year-old author enlisted. “He volunteered for service, was put in 1B because of a sinus condition, and then was called up only to be caught at the last minute by the ‘over-38’ edict,” Brackett wrote in her introduction to The Best of Edmond Hamilton. “He kept on trying. He even volunteered for the Merchant Marine, but when he learned that the only rating open for him was that of cook, he decided—mercifully, for the health and well-being of merchant seamen—to go back to writing.”125 During the war years, the field for science-fiction periodicals contracted due to paper rationing. According to Brackett, “Hamilton was not at first greatly worried about the shrinking market[,]”126 and stories by the author continued to be published throughout the war. Seven appeared in 1942, but only three in 1943 and two in 1944. That same year, his agent left the field entirely to become a comicbook editor. Schwartz later recalled, “I was the agent for a writer who was coming along pretty well and would someday become one of the really top writers. His name was Alfred Bester.... he told me there was an opening up at All-American Comics, which sort of was a cousin or relative of DC Comics at the time[.]”127 Based upon the recommendation of Bester, Schwartz was interviewed for an editorial position by Sheldon Mayer. Bester himself had entered the comics field through Mort Weisinger, who

knew the author from the pulps. When Bester heard that story editor Dorothy Roubichek was leaving All-American to get married, he entered Schwartz’s name into contention for the position. “I told Alfie I could see no reason for going down and applying for the job. I had no qualifications whatsoever…. I was interviewed by... [editor] Sheldon Mayer. He must have been delighted by my abilities and qualifications, so he hired me.”128 Both agent and author had suffered financially due to the wartime paper shortage. Bester had elected to do his friend and agent a favor by nominating him for the position. With the change in Schwartz’s career, Solar Sales Service was disbanded. One area in which Hamilton continued to work was Captain Future. “I wrote all the Captain Future novels until Pearl Harbor in December 1941,” he recalled in “Fifty Years of Heroes.” “As I was then a bachelor and figured I’d soon be in the army, I notified Leo I wouldn’t be able to write any more, so he got two other writers and changed the authorship of the magazine to the pseudonym ‘Brett Sterling.’ But in 1942 the army ruled they would not accept men over thirty-eight years old, so, on the verge of being inducted, I was ruled out, and went back to writing Cap[tain] Future again. Some of my stories then appeared under the ‘Brett Sterling’ byline, and others under my own name[.]”129 Of the seventeen Captain Future novels that were published, Hamilton wrote all but three. A series that he started during the war but was not published until after it was The Star Kings. “[B]eing tired of a set pattern, I decided to write a star-adventure novel completely on my own, with no editorial suggestions whatever,” the author wrote in 1976. “While I don’t think it was my best story, The Star Kings has been far and away my most successful one.”130 The first adventure appeared in the September 1947 issue of Amazing Stories, but the author did not return to the series until 1964.

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In 1945, the year the war ended, the number of short stories published by Hamilton in the pulps increased to ten. Throughout the remainder of the decade, that number decreased to six (1946), four (1947), six again (1948), and one (1949) as he essentially left the field to enter a new one: comicbooks.

Superman, Batman, & The Legion of Super-Heroes “Well, of course, the main attraction with comic books was that they paid so much more than science-fiction.”131 In 1976, Hamilton wrote, “About this time, in 1946, I heard again from Mort Weisinger. He had returned from his war service to take up his job again at National Comics Publications, as DC Comics were known at the time. He and Jack Schiff had left Standard Magazines in 1941 to work in the comics field, and later on Julie Schwartz had joined them at DC.”132 [NOTE: Schiff actually became a comicbook editor in 1942, when he replaced Mort Weisinger, who had been drafted.] It was in 1945 that All-American Publications merged with Detective Comics, Inc., and the stage was set for a Schwartz and Weisinger reunion. Weisinger, however, did not return from the military until 1946. In 1976, Hamilton told Dave Truesdale, “After the war, actually it was VJ Day, [Mort] wrote and said, ‘Ed, have you thought better about it?’” “It” was writing comics. In “Fifty Years of Heroes,” Hamilton recalled, “Mort wanted me to... start with Batman. I had some doubts at first, as the format was quite different from fiction stories. But in those days after the war, the pulp magazine market was very poor, and so I decided to try it.”133

Hamilton had actually dabbled in comics earlier. He had written a story for Batman #11 in 1942, and “The Connoisseur of Crime” in Green Lantern #18 (Winter 1945) for Julie Schwartz. In 1976, the author remembered, “I went up to New York [in 1946] and had long conferences with the boys. They were very helpful, realizing that this was a new form of writing for me, but even so, I had to write a few very poor scripts before I began to catch on to the ways of comic writing. But once I started, I found that it wasn’t really too different from fiction writing. “For the first year or two, all my scripts for DC were Batman stories. As I learned the ropes, they became fun to do. But anyone who thinks comic scripts are just dashed off any old way is totally wrong. Mort and Jack Schiff were the nicest guys in the world to work for, but they took their work seriously, and if I made a stupid error or scuffed over anything, they told me so at once, and loudly.”

134

Hamilton confessed to Truesdale that “To me, comics were a temporary thing,” but the author remained in the field for twenty years. “It was fun to think up new wrinkles for [Batman],” the author recalled in 1976. “Most of them Mort thought up himself, but I did have some ideas which were used. If I remember rightly—and it’s hard to be sure after all this time—I thought up some things like Batwoman, the Batman of the future, and so on. But Batman was a valuable character and no quick, off-the-top-of-my-mind ideas were taken. I would say that, generally, Mort was more gag-minded on the stories and that Jack was more logical-minded. Together, they made a great editorial team. “After a year or two I started to do Superman stories also. Here I was, working on this immortal character dreamed up by my

Mart Nodell Original artist and co-creator of the Golden Age Green Lantern. Read more about and by Nodell in Alter Ego, Vol. 3, #5 & 102.

Connoisseur Of Comics? Two pages from one of Hamilton’s earliest forays into the weird world of comicbooks: in 1944, he scripted this story for Green Lantern #18 (Winter 1945), with art by Mart Nodell, for AA editor Sheldon Mayer and his story editor, Julius Schwartz. Thanks to Mark Muller. [TM & © DC Comics.]

young fan-reader who had written me back in 1930! I think I did better on Superman than on Batman, simply because it was more science-fictional. But, on the other hand, Superman could present some knotty problems in plotting.

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

Jack Schiff edited the “Batman” titles during the 1940s and ’50s. This is a detail from a 1948 DC staff photo, courtesy of Todd Klein, which appeared in the Taschen/ Paul Levitz volume 75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking.

“Recently, somebody—I think it was Julie Schwartz— said that kryptonite, the substance which makes Superman vulnerable, was just a crutch for the writer. This is absolutely true. On the other hand, the writer needs such a crutch. It’s difficult to make up a suspenseful story about Superman, who’s invulnerable to ordinary harm,

From Batman To Batwoman Edmond Hamilton scripted a number of “Batman” stories over the years—from early efforts like “Bandits in Toyland” in Batman #11 (July-July 1942) penciled by Bob Kane with inks by Jerry Robinson & George Roussos, to the introduction of Batwoman in Detective Comics #233 (July 1956), with art by Sheldon Moldoff & Stan Kaye. Thanks to Sharon Karibian, Bruce Mason, Mark Muller, & Mark Bowen. [TM & © DC Comics.]

unless he’s vulnerable to something. And green kryptonite is a great help, as is the fact that Superman loses his powers when he is under the rays of a red sun. “In fact, my favorite of all the scripts I wrote was one entitled ‘Superman under the Red Sun’ (Action Comics #300, May ’63). In that story, Superman traveled into time by using his superspeed to ‘burst the time barrier.’ But unwittingly he went too far, into a time when Earth’s sun had become old and red. The result was that he had no super-powers—and couldn’t get back. Earth was dead, and he was condemned to wander alone upon it. Mort objected to the fact that, being alone on Earth, Superman wouldn’t have any companions to talk to, and the pictures, always an important element, would be dull. I got around this by having Superman, in his loneliness, constructing robots who were doubles of Lois Lane, Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, and his other pals.”135 Given his familiarity with both Batman and Superman, it made sense for Weisinger to select Hamilton to write the first story to feature the pair working together. Superman #76 (May-June,

Under The DC Sun Hamilton’s favorite among his “Superman” scripts was one of the fans’ favorite stories from the 1960s as well: “Superman under the Red Sun,” done for Action Comics #300 (May ’63), with art by Al Plastino and editing by his old pulp-mag boss Mort Weisinger. Thanks to Bob Bailey, who points that that Hamilton used elements from his 1952 novel City at World’s End in the story’s plot—so we’re showing you the cover of that one, too, courtesy of Glen Cadigan. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Mort Weisinger From the same 1948 DC staff photo as per Jack Schiff pic on previous page.

Al Plastino Longtime “Superman” artist.

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’52) revealed how, on a cruise, they each discovered the other’s secret identity. Despite having appeared on the covers of World’s Finest Comics together since 1941 (and both being reserve members of the Justice Society of America in All-Star Comics), it was the first time they teamed up outside of the Superman radio show.

Curt Swan The renowned “Superman” artist at work.

Hamilton was also the writer of record for the first appearance of Nightwing and Flamebird, the Kandorian alter egos of Superman and Jimmy Olsen, in Superman #158 (Jan. ‘63), and was the co-creator (with Gardner Fox and Bob Brown) of Space Ranger in Showcase #15 (July ’58). In addition, years earlier, he had written a “Batman” story in Detective Comics #201 (Nov. ’53) called “The Human Target” about a man who disguises himself as potential murder targets in order to prevent their assassinations. Not to be confused with the Len Wein-written “Human Target” series that was published decades later,

“The Mightiest Team On Earth!” Though it was probably editor Mort Weisinger who wrote the text on Winslow Mortimer’s classic cover for Superman #76 (May-June 1952), we couldn’t resist throwing it into the mix as well. The 12-page team-up story was a modest, non-Earth-shattering affair that took place entirely during an ocean cruise. Hamilton wrote and Curt Swan penciled the tale; pp. 1-8 were inked by John Fishetti, pp. 9-12 by Stan Kaye. Seen here are p. 7 (whereon Superman and Batman first discover each other’s secret identities) and the finale, where the heroes protect their alter egos while Robin struts off with Lois Lane. Cover art supplied by Glen Cadigan, interior pages by Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

Lightning In A Bottle Superman entered the Bottle City of Kandor in Superman #158 (Jan. 1963) and soon teamed up with Jimmy Olsen to form the team of Nightwing and Flamebird. Script by Hamilton, pencils by Swan, inks by George Klein. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Hamilton’s story featured a character called Fred Venable, not Christopher Chance. Another precursor to a long-running DC character was Roh Kar, “The Manhunter From Mars,” who appeared in Batman #78 (Aug-Sept. 1953). Two years later, the concept was retooled as John Jones, Manhunter from Mars, in Detective Comics #225 (Nov. 1955). But when it came to writing super-hero tales, the author preferred their opponents. “I have to admit that the villains of the Batman and Superman stories interested me more than the heroes themselves,” he wrote in 1976. “The Joker was my favorite Batman villain... he had a flair for zany crime that I liked. I also was fond of Catwoman, but I never did too many scripts with her as a villainess. In the Superman characters, Luthor the evil scientist was a favorite... I suppose, again, because he was more science-fictional. The Superman villain I hated to write about was the zany Mr. Mxyzptlk... not only because I could never spell his name right, but also because it was hard to think up tricks to make the imp spell his name backwards... that being the only method of sending him back to his own dimension.”136 The comicbook series with which Hamilton is most closely identified is “The Legion of Super-Heroes.” In “Fifty Years,” he wrote, “I also did some of the Superboy stories, although someone else did most of those. Later on, when Mort launched the ‘Legion of Super-Heroes’ series, I did a lot of those. Superboy was one of them,

but all the super-heroes had some terrific super-power or other. One of them was a girl, Shrinking Violet, who could make herself tiny at will. That wasn’t so hard to use. But one character I found it the devil and all to use: the girl called Triplicate Girl. Her power was that she could split herself into three different girls, all exactly alike. You think that’s easy to use in a story? Triplicate Girl was one character who consistently baffled me.”137 Legionnaires co-created by Hamilton include Element Lad, Lightning Lass, Dream Girl, and Timber Wolf. He was also the co-creator of the Legion of Substitute Heroes and the Heroes of Lallor, two groups whose membership contained characters suggested by readers. He was the writer of record for several memorable “Legion” tales, including the resurrection of Lightning Lad (Adventure Comics #312, Sept. ’63), “The Super-Moby Dick of Space!” (in which Lightning Lad loses an arm (Adventure #332, May ’65)), the Starfinger saga (Adventure #335-36, Aug. & Sept. ’65), and “The Legionnaire Who Killed!” (wherein Star Boy is expelled from the Legion for killing a man in self-defense, in Adventure #342, March ’66). Today, his “Legion” work is consistently kept in print, his only series, prose or comics, about which this can be said. In an interesting twist of fate, Hamilton platooned as writer on the “Legion of Super-Heroes” with Jerry Siegel. From 1962-66, stories that featured the characters in Adventure Comics were either written by one or the other. Ever since the Cleveland native wrote to the author of the Interstellar Patrol back in 1930, their lives had been entwined. The “Legion” wasn’t the only sci-fi writing that the author did for the publisher. “Julius Schwartz first edited the science-fiction magazines at DC—Strange Adventures, Mystery in Space, and so on. I did a good many SF stories for those, and when I started doing

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Gardner Fox as writer also co-created The Flash, Hawkman (both Golden and Silver Age versions), Dr. Fate, the Justice Society of America, and the Justice League of America— among others. Courtesy of Comic Vine website.

Watch This Space! (Above left:) Fellow longtime pro Gardner Fox reportedly plotted and Edmond Hamilton scripted the premier adventure of “Space Ranger” for Showcase #15 (July-Aug. 1958), under editor Schwartz. Reportedly, DC’s big brass wanted two SF heroes created at the same time: one set in the future (which became Space Ranger) and one set in the present (that gave rise to Adam Strange). Art by Bob Brown. Thanks to Jim Ludwig & Bob Bailey. (Above right:) After two “Space Ranger” issues, Showcase #17 (Nov.-Dec. ’58) introduced “Adam Strange,” with a script by Fox and co-plotting by Hamilton. This is the splash page of Part II. Pencils by Mike Sekowsky, inks by Frank Giacoia & Joe Giella. Thanks to Jim Hofrichter & Bruce Mason. [TM & © DC Comics.]

them I thought, ‘This will be a breeze... writing for an old pal like Julie will be no trouble.’ I was wrong! Friendship cut no ice when Julie read a story, and he was as strict with me as with anyone else. I guess that’s why he became one of the greatest editors in the business.”138 Schwartz recalled in 1986, “While he mostly wrote Superman and Legion of Super-Heroes stories for Mort, I did persuade him to do some SF stories for my magazine... and he created the series ‘Chris KL-99.’”139 Dubbed “The Columbus of Space,” “Chris KL-99” appeared eight times over the first fifteen issues of Strange Adventures. Hamilton was cover-credited on issues #1-5; with the sixth issue, the practice of putting author names on the cover was discontinued. “DC was one of the first companies in the business to give cover credit for stories, and Ed’s byline appeared on many an issue of Strange Adventures,” Schwartz told Byron Preiss in 1976.140 As to why the cover credits stopped, he admitted in

Sheldon Moldoff The longtime Bob Kane ghost on “Batman”—seen a few years earlier, when he was better known as an early artist of “Hawkman.” From Comic Vine website.

Target For Tonight Sheldon Moldoff’s splash for a Hamilton script in Detective Comics #210 (Nov. 1953); inks by Charles Paris. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

Dick Spring & Charles Paris in later years, at a North Carolina comics convention co-hosted by A/E associate editor Jim Amash, who supplied this photo.

John Sikela

Catting Around Edmond Hamilton scripted this story co-starring Catwoman for Detective Comics #211 (Sept. 1954), with pencils by Dick Sprang and inks by Charles Paris. Thanks to Bruce Mason & Mark Muller. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“The Adventures Of Superman When He Was A Boy”—Even In The 30th Century! Hamilton wrote a few early “Superboy” yarns, such as this one for Adventure Comics #145 (Oct. 1949), drawn by John Sikela—but he became especially associated with the Boy of Steel during his 30th-century escapades with The Legion of Super-Heroes. Seen at far right, EH’s fifth “Legion” script, for Adventure #310 (July 1963) was the first of his outings in which Superboy appeared, though he isn’t around for the splash page. Art by John Forte. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

had been an artist for the Joe Shuster art shop that produced “Superman” and related material for DC Comics in the 1940s. Courtesy of brother Jim Sikela and Eddy Zeno. The latter’s study of the early post-Shuster Superman artists will appear in Alter Ego #194.

John Forte was the long-running artist of the early tales of The Legion of Super-Heroes.

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Man of Two Worlds, “I was quickly ordered to refrain from doing so by the top brass.” On two occasions (Mystery in Space #2 and Strange Adventures #13, both published in 1951) Hamilton even revived his “Hugh Davidson” pseudonym, due to having two stories in each issue. He had last used it in Weird Tales in 1936, and had retired it when reader Charles H. Bert deduced that the two men were one and the same.141 Hamilton did not work exclusively in comics during this period. “During that time, I was still writing science fiction and produced a good many SF books and magazine stories. Working on both projects sometimes kept

My Name Is Legion! (Above:) Two intriguing splash pages written by Edmond Hamilton—for Adventure Comics #312 (Sept. 1963) and #342 (March ’66) , left to right. The first was drawn by John Forte, the second by Curt Swan & George Klein. Thanks to Mark Bowen & Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

John Giunta Courtesy of David Saunders’ pulpartists.com site.

Two For Mystery In Space #2 Julius Schwartz kept Hamilton busy in early issues of his two science-fiction comics—and Julie believed in crediting writers, if not artists, probably because so many of his writers had come over from the pulps where they got bylines. But when Ed scripted two stories for Mystery in Space #2 (June-July 1951), one of them had to appear under the pen name “Hugh Davidson.” Art by Murphy Anderson & John Giunta, respectively. Thanks to Bruce Mason & Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © DC Comics.]

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

She had to turn over the writing of the in-progress novella “Lorelei of the Red Mist” to friend and fellow author Bradbury in order to begin work on the screenplay. Both were members of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society, and Brackett had served as a mentor to the younger writer in the years before his first publication: “Bradbury was an ebullient kid, bursting at the seams with drive and talent that he hadn’t yet learnt to control, a maker of horrible puns, making a living selling papers, dressed usually in faded-blue denims, and confining himself to a diet of hamburgers and pineapple malts.... He and I, of course, became close friends and spent many a Sunday at the beach going over each other’s manuscripts, talking writing and science fiction... a couple of thirsty castaways in a cultural desert.”146 Other movies scripted by Brackett include Rio Bravo (1959), El Dorado (1966), and The Long Goodbye (1973), among others. She also wrote the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the only time she combined screenwriting with science-fiction. Her husband wrote in 1976, “[W]hen I returned to California in the summer of 1946, the whole movie business had been closed down by a craft-union strike. And so by the end of 1946, when Leigh and I were married, she went back to her first love, science-fiction….”147 Hamilton and Brackett were wed on December 31st, 1946. Their best man was mutual friend Bradbury. In 1973, she said about her spouse, “He promised me when we married that, though I might have to pull the plough, he would never ride it. He never has.”148

Future Feature On the second page of the first “Chris KL99” adventure (see splash back on p. 13), Hamilton established the future era in which his hero became “the Columbus of Space.” Art by Howard Sherman. Thanks to Mark Bowen & Michael T. Gilbert. [TM & © DC Comics.]

With two writers living in the same house, each became the other’s first reader. She told Paul Walker, “Just after we were married, I had an order for a novel from Startling Stories. I had an idea for an opening and plunged in with zest, wrote three or four chapters, and gave it to Ed to read. ‘Fine,’ he said, ‘now where do you go from here?’ I had no idea and told him so. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is the goddamnest way to write a story I ever heard of.’”149

me hopping. When I resigned from comic work in 1966, it was only because Leigh and I were about to go on some long-deferred world travels—to Egypt, India, and so on—and I would not be able to fill my schedules. But I always enjoyed working for the hero comics, particularly for such a great bunch of guys.”142

Hamilton’s own approach was different. “He was a natural-born genius on construction,” Brackett wrote. “I, on the other hand, had always worked in exactly the opposite way. I was a great one for openings, never knew where I was going until I got there, and if I tried to think ahead and outline I simply killed the story.”150

Leigh

In 1976, she told Dave Truesdale, “He used to write the last

“I changed my residence to Los Angeles a couple of years ago. On the last day of 1946, Leigh Brackett and I were married, and our two typewriters now rattle in the same apartment.”143 Throughout the Second World War, Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton kept in touch. He remembered in 1973, “I went back out to California in the summer of 1946, and Leigh and Ray Bradbury met me at the Hotel Roosevelt bar in Hollywood and welcomed me back to the coast. I fell hard for her at once and have remained that way ever since!”144 For her part, she had discovered a second career as a Hollywood screenwriter. Brackett told Paul Walker that same year, “My first full-length, hard-bound novel [No Good from a Corpse] was a murder mystery... It set no worlds afire, but [film director] Howard Hawks read it and liked the dialogue, and I found myself suddenly, in 1944, working for him on the script of The Big Sleep, which was the beginning of my in-and-out film-writing career.”145

Leigh Brackett & Edmond Hamilton at NYCon 3 in 1967. Photo by Jay Kay Klein, via Calisphere, provided by Glen Cadigan.

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line of the story before he’d ever write the first one.” Her husband replied, “That’s just a fetish of mine. That is to say, the last word you speak to the reader, the last impression, is the last line of the story. I used to plot my adventure stories very carefully and she was just used to sitting down and writing.”151 Unofficially, the two did collaborate. Hamilton told Truesdale, “For years I worked on comics and I had a pretty heavy schedule. When I’d be trying to do a story I’d call her on over and say, ‘Leigh, nobody can do a scene like this but you.’” In 1986, Julie Schwartz revealed, “On several occasions, Leigh ghost-wrote stories because Ed was ill. One was a Batman, and the other, a Strange Adventure.”152 Hamilton also admitted, “[Doc Lowndes] said there was one part in my Valley of Creation that was the highest point in the book. I told him... ‘Thank you for nothing. My wife wrote it.’ She wrote just those three chapters.”153

The Fabulous ’50s

from 1950-51, at the end of which the series was completed. The early years of the decade were also a period of growth in the field. New magazines appeared, among them Fantasy and Science Fiction (technically in late 1949), Imagination (1950), and Universe (1953), all of which published stories by Hamilton. The boom led the author to dust off an unpublished tale he had written almost two decades earlier. In the mid-’70s, he told Darrell Schweitzer, “It appeared in 1953, or thereabouts, but it had been written in 1933… every magazine in the business rejected it.... They all said the same things. They said it was too grim, too horrifying. It was not until the field had changed quite a bit that by shortening it and writing it from a slightly different standpoint… I was able to sell it, and then it was met with great joy.”158 What might not be immediately apparent from the perspective of the present is that the reputation of Hamilton had taken a drubbing due to his assignments. Captain Future was aimed at adolescents, as were the contents of Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories. The very nature of the latter magazines, in which

“Just as so many of today’s youngsters are doing, we set in to restore the old wreck and return to life in the woods.”154 In 1949, the husband and wife left California and drove back east with another married science-fiction couple, Henry Kutner and C.L. Moore. In 1950, they purchased the house that would be their home for the rest of their lives. Hamilton wrote in The Best of Leigh Brackett, “It was an ancient little Ohio farmhouse, built in 1819, a mile outside of the quiet, New England-like village of Kinsman. We did not realize that we were buying trouble... the house had been vacant and abandoned for years, it had never had electricity, and its water supply was a stonelined well dug out sometime before the Civil War.”155 Brackett herself remembered “the day on which the house became officially ‘ours.’ We were looking around it with fond and foolish pride, and Ed said, ‘That old paper on the ceiling will have to come off.’ He reached up to tear away a strip, and the whole ceiling fell on his head.”156 1950 was also the year that her husband returned to writing Captain Future. No longer in his own title, the adventurer was now published in the pages of Startling Stories in novelettes instead of novels. According to Bertil Falk, a Swedish journalist (and Captain Future fan) who visited the author and his wife in 1975, Hamilton confessed that “He wrote the first story ‘The Return of Captain Future.’ Then he wrote the synopses for the other stories. But when I visited them, I was told that it was actually Leigh Brackett who wrote them Lew Sayre under his guidance Schwartz using the ‘pen Bob Kane name’ Edmond at the classic 2000 con held in White Batman’s co-creator, Hamilton.”157 All Plains, NY. Thanks to courtesy of Charlie told, there were Joe Petrilak. Roberts. seven installments

Mars Calling! When Hamilton returned to writing science-fiction in the 1950s, he kept on scripting comicbooks as well… as witness this SF-style splash for Batman #78 (Aug.-Sept. ’53), with art by Bob Kane, Lew Sayre Schwartz, & Charles Paris. Kane apparently drew the Batman and Robin figures, with Schwartz penciling the rest and Paris providing the inks. This story probably provided the inspiration (both the title and the alien’s green skin) for the “Manhunter from Mars” feature that began running in Detective Comics a couple of years later. Thanks to Jim Kealy and Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

tales were sometimes written around a cover image (a practice Mort Weisinger took with him to comics), led to their contents to be perceived as hackwork. The readers who had devoured the “WorldWrecker’s” work in the past were now older and demanded more from their science-fiction than adventure tales. Hamilton delivered with 1952’s “What’s It Like Out There?” In the issue in which it was published, Thrilling Wonder Stories editor Samuel Mines wrote, “In various and sundry editorial notations we have before now mentioned the new Ed Hamilton who rose, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of Captain Future, and the mature skill of his current writing. “Pick up a fifteen-year-old SF magazine, and unless you’re one of the die-hards who insist that the creaky, ill-written mellerdrammers of that era are just wonderful, you’ll suspect that yesterday’s science fiction is as dated as silent movies, the Charleston, and goldfish swallowing. “It was during that primitive period that ‘World-Wrecker’ Ed Hamilton earned his reputation for more muscular heroes, more voluptuous gals, more spectacular disasters, more menacing villains... and because he has always been a good, skillful writer, he rated tops in the space-opera field. “Now science fiction has grown up. And so has Hamilton.

He has adjusted his sights to the new goal, as have other seasoned scribes who really had the stuff inside of them and were just waiting around for the right audience. And this story—thoughtful, mature, sensitive, warm with human emotion and touched with acid—is living proof of his growth as a writer. It is little short of a masterpiece. We think it is one of the finest stories we’ve ever published—by Hamilton or anyone else.”159 In her introduction to The Best of Edmond Hamilton, Brackett wrote, “The writer had added a new dimension to his talents. His style had matured and his grasp of character had deepened. Mood and introspection had replaced some of the driving action, and his people had acquired a full-set of human insides.”160 Jack Williamson noted in his introduction to World Wrecker: An Annotated Bibliography of Edmond Hamilton, “I think he learned from Leigh Brackett after they were married, as I think she learned from him.”161 Hamilton’s former agent and sometime editor, Julie Schwartz, told Robert Greenberger, “Ed and Leigh had the same storywriting ability as their close friends, Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. Kuttner was a better plotter than Catherine but she was the better writer. The same holds true for Leigh and Ed. She was a finer literary writer, but Ed was a better plotter.”162 Unfortunately, the science-fiction boom didn’t last long. Brackett recalled in an interview with Schweitzer, “There was a moment where everybody rushed to get into the pack and presently there was a tremendous proliferation of magazines and just more than the market would bear.”163 Her husband added, “This has happened many times... when there were so many magazines coming out you couldn’t read them all.”164 Two of the casualties were frequent homes for Hamilton’s work: Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories. Both ceased publication in 1955, largely due to a strike at the distributor level. The titles that Mort Weisinger had edited for Leo Margulies were canceled. If Hamilton had designs on altering the balance between his prose and comicbook work, market conditions took the matter out of his hands. About comics during this period, he wrote, “Mort and I worked out our plots on the phone. But for the first year or two we lived [in Ohio], we couldn’t get a private phone line. There were nine different parties on that country line! Not only did that make it hard getting through, but also some nice old ladies on our line who happened to overhear our conversations really got an earful. Mort would say, ‘Then we tie this fellow hand and foot and lock him in a safe and drop it in the ocean...’ and so on, detailing a plot sequence he wanted. I would hear one of the old ladies on the line say, ‘Ulp!’ I sort of got some queer looks around the village in those days. But after we got a private phone line, my reputation improved.”165

Star Novels, Star Kings, and Starwolf “In fact, for many years I planned each story rigorously and the longer ones in a chapter-by-chapter synopsis. I ceased to do this in later years. I suppose by then I had confidence enough that I would not go badly astray....”166

Tomorrow, Tomorrow… You’re Always An Issue Away! Why write one SF comics hero when you can write two, or even more? Besides “Chris KL-99,” Hamilton also scribed this “Tommy Tomorrow” story for Action Comics #147 (Aug. 1950), with art by Swan and Fishetti. [TM & © DC Comics.]

After the cancellations of Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories in the mid-’50s, Hamilton’s main home for science-fiction was William L. Hamling’s Greenleaf Publishing Company in Chicago. But after the demise of distributor American News Company in 1957 (along with the rise of Greenleaf’s Playboy

Writer Of Two Worlds

Sy Barry This veteran artist, who drew The Phantom comic strip for years, was interviewed in A/E #37.

Lions & Tigers & Bears—Not To Mention Gorillas And Bats! Two more 1950s DC Comics gems from the typewriter of Edmond Hamilton: one of those infamous cover-featured gorilla stories, from Strange Adventures #55 (April 1955), drawn by Sy Barry—and a tale from Batman #99 (April ’56), with art by Moldoff & Paris. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.]

competitor, Rogue), Hamling cancelled his science-fiction magazines altogether in 1958. That same year, Hamilton and Brackett returned to Hollywood as the latter was reunited with director Howard Hawks to write the screenplay for Rio Bravo. Earlier that year, with Otto Binder at the helm, The Legion of Super-Heroes made their first appearance in Adventure Comics #247.

Hamilton.

from their world travels, he wrote a new series of original paperback novels under the header of “Starwolf.” From 1967-68, three installments appeared: The Weapon From Beyond, The Closed Worlds, and World of the Starwolves. They were followed by two more trips to the Star Kings universe: “The Broken Stars” (1968), and “The Horror from the Magellanic” (1969).

Concurrent with his years as a comicbook author, reprints of Hamilton’s novel-length work from science-fiction magazines appeared for new audiences to discover. With paperbacks having essentially replaced pulps as cheap reading material, the wealth of stories available to be reprinted benefited not only Hamilton, but also many other authors. Oddly enough, it was not until 1974 that his first American short story collection, What’s It Like Out There? and Other Stories was published. It was followed in 1977, the year of his death, by The Best of Edmond

Despite thirty years of marriage, Hamilton and Brackett officially collaborated only once, on a story commissioned by SF writer and editor Harlan Ellison for his never-published The Last Dangerous Visions anthology. In 1976, Hamilton told Dave Truesdale,

In 1962, the same year that Hamilton became the regular “Legion” writer, stories by the author began to appear in Amazing Stories, edited by Cele Goldsmith. This lasted for three years, and included his return to the Star Kings universe with “Kingdoms of the Stars” (1964) and “The Shores of Infinity” (1965). While the author’s day job of writing comicbooks consumed the bulk of his time, he still managed to write novels. In 1960, The Haunted Stars appeared. After time out to pen the Star Kings sequels, in 1966 he returned to standalone books with Doomstar. In 1966, when the author officially retired from the comicbook field, his absence created an opportunity for a thirteen-year-old writer to get his first break. Remembered Jim Shooter in 2003, “I sent [a ‘Legion’ script] in and got back a letter.... It was signed by editor Mort Weisinger, and he invited me to send more like I’d sent.”167 Shooter remained on the feature until 1969 and also wrote for other Superman family titles. From 1978-1987, he was the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. When Brackett and Hamilton returned

Accept No Substitutes? (Left:) Hamilton’s first “Legion of Super-Heroes” script, written in 1962, saw the formation of the Legion of Substitute Heroes, in Adventure Comics #306 (March 1963). Art by Forte. Thanks to Jim Kealy. [TM & © DC Comics.] (Right:) The cover of EH’s 1960 novel The Haunted Stars. [© the respective copyright holders.]

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

Cry Starwolf! This paperback edition later reprinted Hamilton’s three late-’60s Starwolf novels together. [© the respective copyright holders.]

“The fact is, I was out of the running for a couple of years with a sickness. When I was recuperating in the hospital I wrote the first half of this story with a pencil and pad.... The story is called ‘Stark and the Star Kings,’ and if I may say what’s funny about it: the first half of it I wrote and it’s all about Stark. [Leigh] wrote the part about the Star Kings.” The story was finally published posthumously in 2005 by Haffner Press as part of an omnibus collection of the complete John Stark novels by Brackett and the Star Kings stories by Hamilton.

have typed his scripts when he was too rushed to do the final copy himself. So I was pretty familiar with all the DC characters and their doings, and also with the high quality of Ed’s work. He put just as much of himself into each script as he did into his novels, and more than once I have seen him throw away a nearly-finished job and start over again because he didn’t like what he had done. He had indeed a remarkable imagination and a tremendous grasp of technique. “I also came to know and appreciate that quality of friendship and mutual respect, the feeling of family that exists among the people who work in the field. This too was a very important part of Ed’s life, and of mine.”170 In a private letter to author E. Hoffman Price, another veteran of the science-fiction pulps, she wrote, “Ed did his ball-carrying in the comics, during the falling in time of the magazine markets. And it was a man-killing business, even though he was doing it for old friends for whom he had great affection, and they for him.”171 One of those old friends, Julie Schwartz, told Robert Greenberger in 1986, “I remained in constant contact with Ed and Leigh. My wife Jean and I visited them frequently in their Kinsman, Ohio home. On one occasion, in 1955, they had to cut our visit short to attend the World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland. Jean and I decided to go along—a trip made memorable because it was

In 1975, he confessed to Hayden, “Well, I was working on another of these Starwolf novels. I had it almost finished, and I began to wonder whether I wanted to finish it, for this reason: I’m tired of series. You get into a bind, and pretty soon you’re caught and you can’t break out.... So I don’t think I’ll finish this last Starwolf novel—I think I’ll do something else for a change.”168 [NOTE: According to The Edmond Hamilton Papers, located at Eastern New Mexico University, there is an incomplete draft of Run Starwolf that contains a synopsis of chapters 11-16.] That same year, he told Truesdale, “I’m picking away at the beginning of a very long novel, but it’s more of an excuse to say I’m working than anything else.” On February 1st, 1977, Edmond Hamilton passed away due to complications following kidney surgery. He was seventy-two years old. A little over a year later, on March 17, 1978, Leigh Brackett died of cancer; she was sixty-two. Remembered lifelong friend E. Hoffman Price, “[He] had outlived his parents, his brothers-in-law, and the youngest of his sisters…. After his almost terminal illness of 1972, in the few years which followed his slow recovery, he may well have sensed that he was running out of time and accordingly spoke his mind without unkindness and with the full awareness that one whose mission is so nearly accomplished can no longer be moved by anything as trivial as professional jealousy.”169

Going Out With A Bang

After her husband’s passing, Brackett replied to a letter of condolence from DC Comics’ Jenette Kahn and Sol Harrison with: “The comics were a very important part of Ed’s life, and mine as well, since he often used me as a sounding-board for his ideas and I

“The Execution of Matter-Eater Lad” was the final “Legion”—or comics— story written by Edmond Hamilton before he returned to prose sciencefiction for the remaining decade-plus of his life. Curt Swan penciled and George Klein inked this tale for Adventure Comics #345 (June 1966). Thanks to John Joshua. [TM & © DC Comics.]

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there that I first met this brash kid named Harlan Ellison.” He continued, “The next to last time I saw Ed and Leigh, I was visiting my daughter and son-in-law in Canoga Park, California. Just before I left New York, Ed and Leigh visited me in my office, just having returned from England. They were very disappointed to learn about our leaving the next day for California, because they were planning to stay in New York for a week. Nevertheless, they asked for my daughter’s phone number so they could call us later. I wasn’t in my daughter’s home an hour when Ed and Leigh phoned and invited us to visit them in their California retreat. They had decided to follow us out there!....

A Colonel Of Truth The cover and a key interior page from the story in Superman #378 (Dec. 1982) that introduced “Colonel Future,” a.k.a. Col. Edmond Hamilton, in a story written by Paul Kupperberg. Cover art by Rich Buckler & Dick Giordano; interior art by Curt Swan & Dave Hunt. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“Before leaving for our visit, I got the wild idea of calling Ray Bradbury and having him come along.... We arrived at the house, honked the horn, and Leigh came out. She did a triple-take when she saw Ray sitting in the back, for she hadn’t seen him in a year. Ed had started to fail, by then, and couldn’t get around. Leigh later told me that it was one of the happiest days of Ed’s life as we reminisced for hours.”172

Legacy “To my mind, the core of science fiction is the great theme of the coming conquest of space. And, as I have asked before, if that is not adventure, what is?”173 The year after Hamilton’s death, Schwartz used his capacity as Superman editor to introduce an opponent for the Earth-2 version of the character. In an issue written by Cary Bates (Action Comics #484, June ’78), the Kryptonian faced Colonel Edmond H. Future in a story that revealed how the Earth-2 Superman married Lois Lane. Four years later, Schwartz did it again, this time with a version of the character on Earth-1. Colonel Edmond Hamilton (nicknamed “Colonel Future” because he shared the same name as the author) has a premonition of disaster and creates a costumed identity to help avert a planet-wide catastrophe. Remembered Paul Kupperberg, the author of the issue (Superman #378, Dec. ’82), “Colonel Future was co-created by me with considerable kibitzing by Mr. Schwartz.... [A]s an homage to his old friend, Julie thought we should (A) give Hamilton’s Captain Future a promotion to

Colonel, and (B) use Hamilton’s name as the secret identity of Colonel Future.”174 In 1986, Marv Wolfman introduced the character of Professor Emil Hamilton to the Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths (and post-Schwartz) DC Universe. In 2005, Wolfman told Eddy Zeno, “I did indeed create him and he was named for Edmond Hamilton. I was a huge fan of his Superman comics as well as his SF work.”175 Perhaps the best Edmond Hamilton story comes from someone who didn’t even meet the man. “The first couple stories I did [for DC], I was getting $4 a page, basically,” recalled Jim Shooter, who followed Hamilton on “The Legion of Super-Heroes.” “In 1966, that was money. Then, mysteriously one day, my rate [was] at $8 a page. Never discussed, never mentioned. I didn’t ask, I was just happy to get it. “And then it seemed like a month later, or two months later, my rate is $12 a page. And then it wasn’t too long after that my rate was $14 a page. So, years later, I was talking to [E.] Nelson [Bridwell], and he said, ‘The man you replaced on the Legion, Edmond Hamilton, he found out somehow that they were paying you way substandard money. He went into Mort in a rage, and he said, ‘It’s bad enough you’re using child labor! Do you have to rip him off?’’ So, basically, he shamed Mort into paying me a reasonable amount of money for the work that I was doing.... [W]hat a nice thing to do for someone... you never met….”176 In 1974, the then-retired Weisinger said about his former client,

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

Earlier in the same interview, he said, “When Apollo 12 took off we were at the launching at Cape Kennedy. We wrangled reporter’s passes so we could sit up close…. [I]t was a tremendous experience you know, after having been involved in all of this since the ’20s to see it actually happening.”179 In 1964, Hamilton wrote in Fantasy and Science Fiction, “I sometimes feel like a time-traveler, for this reason: I’m fifty-nine years old, which isn’t so old these days (it isn’t, is it, honest?). But my formative first seven years were spent on an Ohio farm so far back in, that it must have had a time-lag of a decade. Horses reared up in buggy-shafts at sight of an automobile, and a steam-threshingmachine was a thing which frightened me horribly.

Maybe They Should’ve Called It Mysteries In Space Mystery in Space #4 (Oct.-Nov. 1951) was another issue of DC’s SF titles in which Hamilton had two stories, so editor Schwartz felt it best that one of them sport a pseudonym. Art in the one on left by Murphy Anderson… on right, by Gil Kane & John Giunta. [TM & © DC Comics.]

“Edmond Hamilton wrote comics for me and had originally worked for me in the pulps. So had Alfred Bester. Today these men are a helluva lot more successful than I.”177 Weisinger passed away on May 7, 1978, of a heart attack, aged sixty-three. In the science-fiction world, the 1980 anthology The Future in Question (edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin Greenberg, and Joseph Olander) presented the following before Hamilton’s entry, “What’s It Like Out There?”: “Best known for his Interstellar Patrol series and for the Captain Future novels that were a regular feature of the Standard group of SF magazines, Hamilton was a far better writer than these formula efforts would indicate.”

He later admitted to Dave Truesdale, “I didn’t think it would happen in my lifetime. I thought it would happen, but not in my lifetime.”

The author is often credited with conceiving the spacesuit in his 1931 story “The Sargasso of Space,” about which the editor, Harry Bates, reportedly said, “This is what we want! New ideas! Men getting into spacesuits and going outside their ships. This is brand new.”181 Hamilton is also credited with inventing interstellar flight, although he told Patrick Nielsen Hayden, “One thing I’ve found out, over the years, is that anytime you think that you were the originator of some new idea... you’ll find some old fellow who did it back around 1895. Every darn time.”182

As it turned out, Captain Future had fans all over the world. In 1978, the anime series Captain Future aired in Japan and ran for 53 episodes. It was also shown in France, Germany, Spain, Latin America, Taiwan, and the Middle East; only eight episodes were dubbed into English. Hamilton, whose career began before sciencefiction magazines existed, lived to see technology catch up to his fiction. He told Darrell Schweitzer in 1977, “[The space program] didn’t cause a great boom in science fiction, but it gave us a little more respectability because we were writing about rockets to other worlds and it was no longer such an impossible thing.”178

“Yet last month I flew home from London in a jet in five or six hours, and the rockets stand on the launching-pads ready to make for the moon, and only the fact that I was blessed or cursed with a science-fictional imagination has prevented me from exclaiming, ‘Stop the world, etc....’”180

King & Queen For A Day This photo was probably used as the cover of a publication issued on “Edmond Hamilton & Leigh Brackett Day” in Kinsman, Ohio, in 2010. [© the respective copyright holders.]

In a 1940s Captain Future novel, Hamilton predicted that mankind would reach the moon in 1970. “But I was trying to bring within comprehension of those science fiction readers that the year 2000 seems as remote as all hell, drop it down thirty years to 1970 and it’s a bit easier to comprehend it,” he explained to Truesdale. On July 18th, 2009, Kinsman, Ohio—the town where the author

Writer Of Two Worlds

and his wife restored an old farmhouse—celebrated Edmond Hamilton Day. The following year, on October 16th, it was upgraded to Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett Day. A marker by the Kinsman Historical Society and the Ohio Historical Society that features the names of “notable citizens” lists both Hamilton and Brackett as famous residents of the town. Today, the name of Edmond Hamilton is not as well known as it once was. He was arguably the most successful science-fiction writer of the 1930s, and his stories influenced future Hugo and Nebula award winners. It is his work in comicbooks that seems to be best remembered, as the properties he wrote are still being published and have their own fan bases. Batwoman received a TV show; Legion of Super-Heroes collections have migrated from Archives to Omnibus, and a panel from World’s Finest Comics #153 (Nov. ’65) that features Batman slapping Robin has become a famous meme. By comparison, much of his prose has fallen out of print, if not into the public domain. The latest volume of The Collected Edmond Hamilton—a comprehensive, start-to-finish project designed to reprint the author’s work in its entirety in limited edition hardcovers—was published by Haffner Press in 2013 and covered as far as December, 1932. (A fifth volume was planned to cover 1933-35.)

Edmond Hamilton). Both “Fifty Years” and Best were published posthumously. Much of Hamilton’s output was aimed at younger readers, and in those instances where it was not, it usually appeared in pulp magazines or paperbacks. It was not considered to have literary merit, and about this, the author said, “I’d be delighted to get [a Hugo Award]. I was also nominated for one, but most of our science fiction has been in the adventure/entertainment scene. If you don’t have Big Thinks in it the people who vote on these things are not greatly impressed. If they can understand every word of it then it can’t be great, you know? That’s their attitude.”183 His friend Jack Williamson said, “Though he never wrote to please the critics, he earned more attention than he has ever received.”184 The Edmond Hamilton Papers are stored in the Jack Williamson Science Fiction Library at Eastern New Mexico University. They are joined there by the Leigh Brackett Papers, the Forrest J. Ackerman Papers, and the Jack Willamson Papers, alongside those of other science-fiction authors.

While he was still alive, Hamilton was a guest of honor at many science-fiction conventions and was aware of his influence in the field. He met peers and fans and lived long enough to be crowned a dean of science-fiction. In his final years, he was interviewed about his career multiple times. In 1976, he wrote the retrospective essay “Fifty Years of Heroes” and selected stories for The Best of Leigh Brackett (who, in turn, selected stories for The Best of

Ed (“World-Wrecker”/“World-Saver”) Hamilton with earlier and later triumphs: Howard V. Brown’s cover for Startling Stories for Jan. 1940… and the Swan/Klein splash page from World’s Finest Comics #159 (Aug. 1966), one of the writer’s last comics stories. Thanks to Glen Cadigan, Jim Kealy, & Bob Bailey—and to David Saunders/pulpartists. com for the Startling artist ID. [mag cover TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; WFC page TM & © DC Comics.]

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

FOOTNOTES

Edmond Hamilton, “Meet the Author,” Startling Stories Vol. 1 No. 3 (Better Publications, Inc. May 1939), p. 126.

Edmond Hamilton, “Introducing the Author,” Imagination Vol. 7, No. 2 (Greenleaf Publishing Company, April, 1956), ifc.

Isaac Asimov, “Part One: 1920 to 1930,” Before the Golden Age: A Science Fiction Anthology of the 1930s (Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1974), pg. 32.

Edmond Hamilton, “Meet Our Science Fiction Family,” Thrilling Wonder Stories Vol. 13 No. 3 (Better Publications, Inc., June 1939), p. 88.

Robert Bloch, “Afterword,” Weird Heroes Vol. 6 (Pyramid Books, April, 1977), p. 144.

Leigh Brackett, “Fifty Years of Wonder,” The Best of Edmond Hamilton (Ballantine Books, August 1977), p. ix.

Walker, op cit., pp. 1-2.

Julius Schwartz, “Afterword,” Weird Heroes Vol. 6 (Pyramid Books, April, 1977), p. 140.

Walker, op cit., pp. 1-2.

Edmond Hamilton, “Author, Author,” The Fanscient Vol. 1, No. 2 (Portland Science-Fantasy Society, Winter 1948), p. 15.

Hamilton, The Fanscient, p. 16.

Hamilton, Fantasy Magazine, p. 15.

Jack Williamson, “Introduction,” World Wrecker: An Annotated Bibliography of Edmond Hamilton (Wildside Press, 2009), p. vii.

Edmond Hamilton, “Meet the Author,” Startling Stories Vol. 13, No. 1 (Better Publications, Inc., Winter 1946), p. 96.

Hamilton, Fantasy Magazine, p. 15.

Sam Moskowitz, “Edmond Hamilton,” Amazing Stories Vol. 37, No. 10 (Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, October 1963), pp. 108-109.

Williamson, World Wrecker, p. ix.

Williamson, Wonder’s Child, p. 92.

Robert C. Trube, “Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown—Esther Hamilton,” (www.bobonbooks.com, Jan. 26, 2019).

ibid.

Williamson, World Wrecker, p. ix.

Hamilton, The Fanscient, p. 15.

Hamilton, Imagination, ifc.

Dave Truesdale & Paul McGuire III, “An Interview with Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton,” (www.tangentonline.com, Dec. 12, 2009).

Darrell Schweitzer, “The Amazing Interview: Edmond Hamilton & Leigh Brackett,” Amazing Stories Vol. 51, No. 2 (Ultimate Publishing Co., Inc., Jan. 1978), p. 117.

Hamilton, Imagination, p. ifc.

Hamilton, The Fanscient, p. 16.

Truesdale, op cit.

Paul Walker, “Edmond Hamilton: An Interview,” Luna No. 60 (Frank & Ann Dietz, Dec. 1975), p. 2.

Edmond Hamilton, “Edmond Hamilton by Himself,” Fantasy Magazine Vol. 2 No. 5 (Conrad H. Ruppert, Jan. 1934), p. 29.

ibid, p. 29.

Edmond Hamilton, “The Pro,” The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Vol. 24 No. 4 (Mercury Press, Inc., Oct. 1964), p. 21.

Edmond Hamilton, “The Author’s Lot No. 4,” Vector No. 28 (The British Science Fiction Association, Sept. 1964), p. 14.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden, “An Interview with Edmond Hamilton,” Twibbet No. 7 (Thangorodrim Enterprises, 1975), p. 8.

Edmond Hamilton, “Afterword,” The Best of Edmond Hamilton (Ballantine Books, August, 1977), p. 380.

Hayden, op cit., p. 8.

Hamilton, Imagination, p. 121.

Hayden, op cit., p. 4.

Hamilton, Best of EH, p. 380.

Hayden, op cit., p. 4.

Truesdale, op cit.

Edmond Hamilton, “The Eyrie,” Weird Tales Vol. 30 No. 1 (Popular Fiction Publishing Company, July 1937), p. 123.

Hayden, op cit., p. 6.

Swallowed Up By Outer Space This splash page for Adventure Comics #343 (April 1966), though it fronted one of Hamilton’s last “Legion” stories, resembles the type of drawing that graced the pulp magazines that featured many of his most famous early prose stories. Art by Curt Swan & George Klein. Thanks to Jim Kealy and Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Writer Of Two Worlds

M. Porcius, “Three Weird Tales Winners by Edmond Hamilton,” M Porcius Fiction Log (mporcius. blogspot.com, July 31, 2017).

Edmond Hamilton, “The Eyrie,” Weird Tales Vol. 38 No. 1 (Sept. 1944), p. 90.

Hayden, op cit., p. 5.

Edmond Hamilton, “Fifty Years of Heroes,” Weird Heroes Vol. 6 (Pyramid Books, April, 1977), p. 111.

ibid, p. 112.

ibid.

ibid., p. 114.

“He That Hath Wings” That short fantasy story by Edmond Hamilton, which had appeared (reprinted from Weird Tales, July 1938) in the issue of Fantastic dated July 1963, with an illustration by the celebrated Virgil Finlay, was a favorite of comic artist Gil Kane’s. So, when Roy Thomas launched Marvel’s SF-adaptation comic World’s Unknown with a #1 dated May ’73, Gil prevailed upon Marvel’s then-editor-in-chief to acquire the rights so he could both write and pencil an adaptation of it. Its final two pages, like the ending of the prose tale itself, are quite moving. Inks by Mike Esposito. Thanks to Art Lortie, Sharon Karibian, & Mark Bowen, respectively. [Fantastic artwork TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; original story © the respective copyright holders; Marvel pages TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Gil Kane is especially remembered for his long stints on Green Lantern, The Atom, and The Amazing SpiderMan. This photo was taken at the New York Comic Art Convention in 1971, not long before he adapted Hamilton’s yarn. Thanks to Pedro Angosto.

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

The Comics Fan Who Loved Herko (Above:) This one’s kind of personal to A/E’s editor: Roy T. got such a kick out of this story by Hamilton and artist Kurt Schaffenberger in Lois Lane #54 (Jan. 1965) that he wrote virtually his only fan-letter ever to any “Superman” mag—resulting in a very brief exchange of missives with editor Mort Weisinger, who a few months later hired him from afar to become his editorial assistant. Without that, how would RT ever have met Stan Lee and gone to work for Marvel? [TM & © DC Comics.]

Hamilton, Best of EH, p. 378.

Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 115.

Williamson, Wonder’s Child, p. 51.

Eddy Zeno, “The Superman Mythology,” The Krypton Companion (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2004), p. 20.

Hamilton, Weird Tales, p. 118.

Hamilton, F&SF, p. 21.

Hayden, op cit., p. 5.

Truesdale, op cit.

Asimov, op cit., p. 36.

Hayden, op cit., p. 5.

ibid.

Hamilton, Fantasy Magazine, p. 15.

Hamilton, Best of EH, p. 380.

Hayden, op cit., p. 5.

Julie Schwartz & Sid Greene The yarn’s editor and penciler, in a photo snapped by fan John Fahey in Schwartz’s office in 1965. It first appeared in Alter Ego [Vol. 1] #9 later that year.

Hamilton The Hero—Again! (Bottom two scans:) “The Metal Spy from Space!” was written by equally legendary scripter Gardner Fox (seen on p. 25) rather than Hamilton—but the latter was the thinly disguised hero of the story, as per its final two pages in Strange Adventures #74 (Nov. 1956), as Fox paid homage to his fellow scribe with the character “Edmond Hamilford.” Art by Sid Greene & Joe Giella. And wouldn’t you just know it: Ed had his own byline on a tale he wrote for that issue as well! Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Writer Of Two Worlds

Son(s) Of A Gun! Two Hamilton-scripted, Swan-penciled variations on a theme in a pair of DC’s famous “Imaginary Tales”: The Man of Steel has a son in Superman #166 (Jan. 1964)—and both he and Batman have male offspring in World’s Finest Comics #154 (Dec. 1965). Inks by George Klein & Sheldon Moldoff, respectively. Thanks to Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

Hamilton, Fantasy Magazine, p. 16.

Paul Kupperberg, “The Schwartz Tapes,” And Then I Wrote… (kupps.malibulist.com, July 18, 2019).

Julius Schwartz with Brian M. Thomsen, Man of Two Worlds (HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2000), p. 10.

Guy H. Lillian III, “Strange Schwartz Stories,” The Amazing World of DC Comics Vol. 1, No. 3 (National Periodical Publications, Inc., Nov.-Dec. 1974), p. 3.

Julius Schwartz with Elliot S. Maggin, “Memoirs of a Time Traveller” Amazing Stories Vol. 68, No. 2 (TSR, Inc., May 1993), p. 51.

Schwartz/Thomsen, op cit., p. 13.

ibid., p. 14.

Sam Moscowitz, “The Superman Behind Superman— Mort Weisinger,” Amazing Stories Vol. 38, No. 8 (Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, Aug. 1964), p. 62.

Schwartz, Weird Heroes, p. 138.

Lillian, op cit., p. 4.

Kupperberg, op cit..

Schwartz/Maggin, op cit., p. 53.

ibid.

Hamilton, Fantasy Magazine, p. 15.

Murray, op cit., p. 9.

Moscowitz, op cit., p. 59.

Schwartz/Thomsen, op cit., p. 30.

Williamson, Wonder’s Child, p. 92.

Williamson, World-Wrecker, p. ix.

“Pacificon II (1964) Worldcon—Hugos & Leigh Brackett, Edmond Hamilton Guest of Honor Speeches,” FANAC Fan History (YouTube.com, Feb. 23, 2018).

Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 118.

Schwartz/Thomsen, op cit., p. 48.

Hayden, op cit., p. 9.

Ray Bradbury, “Julie,” The Amazing World of DC Comics Vol. 1, No. 3 (National Periodical Publications, Inc., Nov.-Dec. 1974), p. 5.

Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 117.

Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 118.

Julius Schwartz, “The Solar Sales Service,” Starlog No. 115 (Starlog Group, Inc., Feb. 1987), p. 15.

ibid., p. 14.

Truesdale, op cit..

ibid.

Bobby Derie, “Editor Spotlight: Dorothy Mcllwraith, Mary Gnaedinger, & Cele Goldsmith Lalli,” Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein (deepcuts.blog, May 17, 2019).

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton, “He That Hath Words,” Deeper Than You Think Vol. 1, No. 2 (Joel Frieman, July, 1968), p. 12.

Hayden, op cit., p. 7.

Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 118.

Moscowitz, op cit., p. 61.

114 Schwartz/Maggin, op cit., p. 60. 115 Truesdale, op cit.. 116 Schwartz/Maggin, op cit., p. 61. 117 Bradbury, op cit., p. 6.

100 Murray, op cit., p. 10.

118 Truesdale, op cit..

101 Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 119. 102 Will Murray, “The Once & Future Captain,” Starlog No. 115 (Starlog Group, Inc., Feb. 1987), p. 16. 103 Schwartz, Starlog, p. 14.

119 Schwartz/Maggin, op cit., p. 60. 120 Hamilton, Startling Stories Vol. 13, No. 1, p. 95. 121 Lillian, op cit., p. 5. 122 Kupperberg, op cit..

104 Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 118.

123 Truesdale, op cit..

105 Murray, Starlog, p. 17.

124 Forrest J. Ackerman, “Edmond Hamilton: The Word-Saver,” Weird Heroes Vol. 6 (Pyramid Books, 1977), p. 142.

106 Murray, Krypton Companion, p. 10. 107 Truesdale, op cit..

125 Brackett, op cit., p. xiv.

108 Hamilton, Thrilling Wonder Stories, June, 1939, p. 88. 109 “Julius Schwartz—Science Fiction Photo Album with Many Accompanying Autographs (1931-41),” Heritage Auctions (comics.ha.com, February 9-10, 2005), Lot No. 2328. 110 Schwartz, Weird Heroes, p. 139. 111 Julius Schwartz with Elliot S. Maggin, “Memoirs of a Time Traveller: Part Three,” Amazing Stories Vol. 68, No. 6 (TSR, Inc., Sept. 1993), p. 59. 112 ibid, p. 60.

113 Schwartz/Thomsen, op cit., p. 59.

126 ibid. 127 Kupperberg, op cit.. 128 ibid. 129 Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 120. 130 ibid, p. 123. 131 Truesdale, op cit.. 132 Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 125.

Edmond Hamilton takes a final bow, in between his cover story (illustrated by Earle Bergey) for the Amazing Stories Jan. 1941 issue—and a minor classic, illustrated, for Detective Comics #135 (May 1948) drawn by Bob Kane & Charles Paris. Thanks to Glen Cadigan & Michael T. Gilbert. [Amazing cover TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; “Batman” page TM & © DC Comics.]

Writer Of Two Worlds

155 ibid. 156 Leigh Brackett, “Afterword,” The Best of Leigh Brackett (Ballantine Books, 1977), p. 415. 157 Bertil Falk, “Leigh Brackett: Much More Than the Queen of Space Opera!” Bewildering Stories No. 250 (bewilderingstories. com, 2007), issue250/brackett2.thml. 158 Schweitzer, op cit., p. 118. 159 Samuel Mines, Thrilling Wonder Stories Vol. 40, No. 2 (Standard Magazines, Inc., Dec. 1952), p. 69. 160 Brackett, Best of EH, p. xvi. 161 Williamson, World-Wrecker, p. x. 162 Schwartz, Starlog, p. 15. 163 Schweitzer, op cit., p. 120. 164 ibid. 165 Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 129. 166 Walker, “Hamilton,” p. 4. 167 Glen Cadigan, “Jim Shooter,” The Legion Companion (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2003), p. 50.

Back & Forte Way back on this issue’s contents page, we mentioned that John Forte reportedly redrew all the heads on Curt Swan’s cover for Adventure Comics #312 (Sept. 1963). Here’s the full Forte treatment of that scene, from the splash page of Part II of “The Super-Sacrifice of the Legionnaires.” Script by Hamilton, of course. Thanks to Jim Kealy and John Joshua. [TM & © DC Comics.]

133 Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 125. 134 Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 125. 135 ibid, p. 126. 136 ibid, p. 128. 137 ibid, p. 129. 138 ibid. 139 Schwartz, Starlog, p. 15. 140 Schwartz, Weird Heroes, p. 140. 141 G.W. Thomas, “Hugh Davidson, Sci-Fi Pseudonym,” Dark Worlds Quarterly (darkworldsquarterly.gwthomas.org, February 29, 2020). 142 Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 130. 143 Hamilton, Fanscient, p. 15.

168 Hayden, op cit., p. 8. 169 E. Hoffman Price, “Edmond Hamilton: In Memoriam,” The Diversifier No. 20 (May, 1977). 170 Eddy Zeno, “The Plot Master and the Editor,” The Krypton Companion (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2006), p. 28. 171 ibid, p. 27. 172 Schwartz, Starlog, p. 15. 173 Hamilton, Weird Heroes, p. 133. 174 Michael Eury, “Paul Kupperberg Interview,” The Krypton Companion (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2006), p. 199. 175 Zeno, “Plot Master,” p. 25. 176 Cadigan, op cit., p. 100. 177 Guy H. Lillian III, “Mort Weisinger: The Man Who Wouldn’t Be Superman,” The Amazing World of DC Comics Vol. 2, No. 7 (National Periodical Publications, Inc., July-Aug. 1975), p. 4. 178 Schweitzer, op cit., p. 120. 179 Truesdale, op cit.. 180 Hamilton, FSF, p. 21. 181 Hayden, op cit., p. 11.

144 Walker, op cit., p. 12.

182 Ibid, p. 5.

145 Paul Walker, “Interview with Leigh Brackett,” Luna Monthly No. 61 (Frank & Ann Dietz, Jan. 1976), p. 5.

184 Williamson, World-Wrecker, p. 10.

146 Walker, “Brackett,” p. 5.

183 Truesdale, op cit..

147 Edmond Hamilton, “Story-Teller of Many Worlds,” The Best of Leigh Brackett (Ballantine Books, 1977), p. xii.

For the last twenty years, Glen Cadigan has been chronicling the history of the comics medium in both books and articles. His most recent release, The Life & Art of Dave Cockrum, was published in 2023 by TwoMorrows Publishing.

148 Walker, “Brackett,” p. 1. 149 ibid, p. 2. 150 ibid. 151 Truesdale, op cit. 152 Schwartz, Starlog, p. 15. 153 Truesdale, op cit.. 154 Hamilton, Best of LB, p. xvi.

Glen Cadigan

The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers Of Edmond Hamilton

EDMOND HAMILTON Checklist [This checklist is adapted from information provided by the online Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999, established by Dr. Jerry G. Bails and viewable at http://www.bailsprojects.com/whoswho.aspx. Names of features that appeared both in their own titles and in other magazines are generally not italicized. In all cases, Edmond Hamilton is the writer of the material specified. The online Who’s Who listed many of Hamilton’s novels and short stories in the science-fiction prose field, but those have not been included here; many of them are covered in Glen Cadigan’s text. Hamilton himself was the source of some of the data in this section. Special thanks to John Cimino.] Name & Vital Stats: Edmond Moore Hamilton (Oct. 21, 1904 – Feb. 1, 1977) - writer Pen Names: Brett Sterling, Hugh Davison, Robert Castle, Robert Wentworth, Will Garth, Robert Starr Note: Writer Edmond Hamilton should not be confused with Ed Hamilton, comics letterer and inker Education: Westminster College (at age 14-17) Family in Arts: Leigh Brackett (wife) – science-fiction and screenplay writer

COMICS (U.S. Mainstream Publications): Better Publications, a.k.a. Nedor, Standard, etc.: Black Terror, early 1940s DC Comics: Batman, 1942, 1946-48, 1950, 1953-57; Chris KL-99, 1950-51; Green Lantern, 1945; Jimmy Olsen, 1962-63, 1965; Legion of Super-Heroes, 1962-66; Lois Lane, 1960-65; Mystery in Space, 1951-52, 1956-57; Space Ranger, 1958; Strange Adventures, 1950-52, 1955-57; Superboy, 1959-52, 1957, 1962-66; Supergirl, 1963; Superman, 1948-66, 1971; Superman & Batman, 1954-58, 1964-66, Superman of 2965, 1965; text, 1951; Tommy Tomorrow, 1950-54

Two For The Road We couldn’t wind up Glen Cadigan’s masterful coverage of Edmond Hamilton’s life and work without including at least one splash page penciled by longtime Superman artist Wayne Boring (for issue #71, July-Aug. 1951)—plus Gil Kane & Joe Giella’s dynamic splash for “The Secret of Easter Island” in Strange Adventures #16 (Jan. ’52). Thanks to Jim Kealy, Michael T. Gilbert, & Bob Bailey. [TM & © DC Comics.]

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 After co-creating Batwoman, Edmond Hamilton scripted her third appearance, opposite Superman and Batman in World’s Finest Comics #90 (Sept.Oct. 1957). Pencils by Dick Sprang; inks by Stan Kaye. Thanks to Sharon Karibian. [TM & © DC Comics.]

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(Above:) A page from MTG’s “Mr. V.” story, and the scene from Simon & Kirby’s Fighting American #1 (Oct. 1966) that inspired it. (Right:) A 1965 Gilbert drawing. [© MTG, Joe Simon, & Harvey Publications.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

We All Have To Start Somewhere! (Part 1) Gray Morrow Dwight Graydon “Gray” Morrow (March 7, 1934 – November 6, 2001) was a remarkably talented (and to my mind, criminally underrated!) cartoonist. His work spanned from mainstream features like DC’s “Zatanna” and “El Diablo” to Marvel’s “Man-Thing.” He also illustrated numerous stories for Classics Illustrated and various other publishers. Morrow grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, moving to New York City in winter of 1955. By the following spring, he’d met fellow comic artists Al Williamson, Angelo Torres, and Wally Wood. Gray soon sold his first comicbook story, a romance tale, to Toby Press. Which promptly went out of business before it could be published! Morrow next drew two stories for another company—a Western with original characters and an adaptation of pulp-fiction

Gray Morrow

writer Robert E. Howard’s “The Tower of the Elephant.” But this company, too, went defunct; later, Gray didn’t even recall its name. Likewise, samples sent to syndicated newspapers failed to make a sale. During this period Gray made a little cash providing backgrounds and layouts for Williamson and Wood. Then, with help from Williamson, Morrow began contributing to Atlas (Marvel), and his professional career took off.

Striking Art!

But, even as a teen, Gray Morrow was precocious, as demonstrated by this striking “Rex-Striker” sample page, drawn when he was just sixteen. This art, provided by Chris Overington, snagged the young lad an “Award in Cartooning” while he was in high school. Gray showed a real talent for syndicated cartoons in this picture. He would later illustrate many classic newspaper strips, including Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Rip Kirby, and Buck Rogers.

Sixteen-year-old Northside High School student Gray Morrow scored an art award with this handsome “Rex-Striker” page, after submitting it with the application form seen above top. Gray eventually illustrated many syndicated strips. [© Estate of Gray Morrow.]

Gray also drew brilliant comicbook stories for DC, Marvel, and many others, but is perhaps best remembered for his virtuoso art on Warren’s Creepy, Eerie, and Blazing Combat.

(above) at age 15, from the 1949 North Side High School, Fort Wayne, Indiana, yearbook. [© the respective copyright holders.]

We All Have To Start Somewhere

Doing The Numbers (Above:) Though credited to Al Williamson, this story from Atlas/Marvel’s Kid Colt Outlaw #57 (Feb. 1956) is Gray’s earliest “Marvel” entry in the Grand Comics Database. An unofficial “Fleagle,” Gray sometimes helped Al with inking and backgrounds, as is likely the case here. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

You’re Invited… to see the above stunning page from Marvel’s Uncanny Tales #46 (Aug. 1956). Morrow’s mastery of the medium in his first year as a professional is clearly evident. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered! Gray’s career began in 1956, a little too late for him to officially work for EC. However, when Warren Publishing essentially revived the EC look in Creepy #1, Gray became one of the magazine’s finest artists––even providing the occasional cover. “Bewitched!” from Creepy #1 (Nov. 1964) displays his impressive illustrative skills. [TM & © The New Comics Company LLC.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Leonard Starr Leonard Starr (October 28, 1925 – June 30, 2015) began his syndicated strip Mary Perkins…On Stage in 1957. Many consider the series to be among the best-written and -illustrated soap opera/ adventure strips of all time. Mary Perkins, an aspiring actress, first strutted across the stage on February 10, 1957, taking her final bow on September 9, 1979. At that point Len revived the Little Orphan Annie strip, a decade after creator Harold Gray’s death. Following a number of failed attempts to replace him, the strip resorted to running Gray reruns until Starr successfully revived it as Annie, utilizing the simplified name of the Broadway musical and film that had been based on the original strip. Starr won the National Cartoonists Society Story Comic Strip Award for On Stage in 1960 and 1963, and its Reuben Award in

The Comics Bard at his Board! A 1957 On Stage promo photo of Leonard Starr. [© the respective copyright holders.]

1965. He also became the head writer for the popular 1985 ThunderCats animated series—this in addition to tons of work for DC, Marvel, American Comic Group, and other companies, both before and after On Stage. Quite a résumé! But we all have to start somewhere. In Starr’s case, while studying at Pratt Institute from 1942-43, Starr worked for Lloyd Jacquet’s studio, contributing to some very early comicbook features. At Funnies, Starr began as a background artist, eventually inking Bob Oksner’s pencils. He then graduated to drawing for early Timely/Marvel Comics titles. But on your left is a most remarkable comic strip that appeared far earlier. The first page is missing, so we don’t know the official title of Starr’s series, but James Gauthier, a friend of the late cartoonist, fills us in on the story’s background:

You’re Aces With Us, Leonard! (Left:) This is believed to be Starr’s first strip, drawn (and even colored) in the 1930s when he was still in grade school. Title unknown, but likely named for his sci-fi hero, Ace Chanley, Len’s strip was clearly inspired by Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon. Thanks to James Gauthier. [© Estate of Leonard Starr.]

We All Have To Start Somewhere

Spiraling Upward

Lucky Len!

(Above:) Another page from Len’s 1930’s strip. Even at this early age, Starr displayed a remarkable storytelling sense. Also, note the spiral binding! [© Estate of Leonard Starr.]

(Above:) Starr was about nineteen when he drew “Liquid X” for Consolidated’s Lucky Comics #1 (Jan. 1944). Eerie! [© the respective copyright holders.]

A “Torch” To Lead The Way

“Pow-Wow” Was Probably Just A Nickname, Right?

(Above:) The Grand Comics Database credits Starr with this 12-page “Sky Demons” story from All Winners Comics #11 [Winter 1943]. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

(Above:) Starr did a great deal of excellent work for DC, including a series of “Pow-Wow Smith” stories. This splash is from Detective Comics #185 (July 1952). [TM & © DC Comics.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

“I never did find a name for the story, and according to Leonard he did this while he was in grade school. It is 50 pages and Leonard not only wrote it, but he also drew, colored, and lettered it. Since Leonard was born in 1925 and Flash Gordon started in 1934, I would say that Leonard was between nine to eleven years old when he did this.” Unbelievable! But what more can we add, other than to say that we hope some publisher eventually prints the entire story. But for now, stay tuned for more early work by some of your favorite cartoonists! ‘Till next time…

NOTE: A special “Comic Crypt” postscript begins on the 2nd page following.

Starr’s Masterpiece! Above is the Sunday page introduction of Len’s signature comic strip, On Stage (a.k.a. Mary Perkins - On Stage) from February 10,1957. Sheer genius! [TM & © Chicago Tribune Syndicate, Inc.]

This Fight Was Staged! (Left:) Starr’s On Stage strip from April 2, 1964, really packs a punch! [© Chicago Tribune Syndicate, Inc.]

What? So She’s No Longer A “Little Orphan”?! (Left:) When Little Orphan Annie creator Harold Gray passed away in 1968, a number of cartoonists tried to replace him. Only Starr succeeded. This Annie strip is from Dec. 12, 1985. [TM & © Tribune Media, Inc.]

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Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

A Special “Comic Crypt” Postscript:

DICK ROCKWELL Meets GIANT-MAN!

by Michael T. Gilbert

ow here ’s something you don’t see every day: an unpublished, “rejected” Marvel splash page from 1964. The “Giant-Man” page penciled by Dick Rockwell which is pictured on this page was found on the Comic Connect auction site. According to the descriptive notes: “Discovered underneath the published art by Steve Ditko and George Roussos was this unfinished version of the title splash by Golden Age artist (and nephew of the legendary illustrator Norman Rockwell) Dick Rockwell. Rockwell’s work is very rare, and this piece is also an interesting peek into the creative process of early Marvel Comics. The drawing is all original, as well as the Rockwell and Art Simek credit boxes in the lower right; all other text elements are modern reproductions.” It was slated for Tales to Astonish #61 (Nov. 1964). I’m guessing either Stan Lee wasn’t happy with what Dick handed in, or (more likely) Rockwell ran into deadline problems and had to bail at the last minute. Luckily, Steve Ditko and George Bell (who were drawing the “Hulk” feature at the time) stepped in to save the day. Nice page, but it lacks the Kirby/ Ditko energy that Stan was looking for. Still, very well done, and a fascinating artifact of a time in comics long ago.

[Art on this & facing page TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Dick Rockwell

Dick Rockwell Meets Giant-Man!

Above is the published version, as penciled by “Sturdy” Steve Ditko. Ditko was at his peak at this time, and even under a tight deadline, one can see that he came up with an eye-catching splash. While it’s far less detailed than Rockwell’s, I find it more powerful. Also, note the text on the bottom explaining (supposedly) why the advertised artist wasn’t in the issue….

NOTE FROM A/E EDITOR: Dick Rockwell (1920-2006) had been a comicbook artist, including for Timely/Marvel, in the late 1940s/early 1950s, before becoming Milt Caniff’s “ghost” on the popular Steve Canyon comic strip. As per a caption accompanying Jim Amash’s interview with Rockwell for A/E #72, Stan Lee had announced in Fantastic Four #31 (Oct. 1964) that Rockwell would become the regular “Giant-Man” penciler… but, for reasons unknown, although his artwork certainly passed muster, that announced debut was not to be.

In Memoriam

CARLOS PACHECO (November 14, 1961 – November 9, 2022)

“A Class Act” by Roy Thomas

arlos Pacheco was studying biology in Seville, Spain, when he began drawing (at first primarily covers and pin-ups) for Spanish-language editions of Marvel Comics.

By 1991 he was illustrating feature stories and eventually moved on first to Marvel UK in England (especially on the series Dark Guard), then to Marvel and DC Comics in the U.S. His first U.S. work was a Marvel Bishop limited series in 1994… his first DC work was on The Flash, later that same year. Some of his most noted assignments for the two American majors were on Avengers Forever, X-Men: Legacy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Fantastic Four, JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice, Green Lantern, Superman, and Final Crisis. In 2003 he re-teamed with his Avengers Forever collaborator Kurt Busiek to do the creator-owned fantasy series Arrowsmith, which garnered an Eisner Award nomination for Best Limited Series. The team’s 2022 sequel, Arrowsmith: Behind Enemy Lines, was one of Carlos’ last published creations. In September of 2022 he announced his retirement, perhaps due to the unannounced health condition that would claim his life just two months later. His final comics work was the cover to Marvel’s Damage Control, Vol. 4. In 1996 the comics news magazine Dolmen named Carlos “Best Spanish Creator” and Wizard named him “Newcomer of the Year.” He made the latter magazine’s Top Ten Artists list from 1997-2001; in the latter year, he was ranked Number One. In 2001 he was named Best Spanish Cartoonist at the Granada Comic Fair. At the 2010 Granada International Comic Fair, he was presented with the Andalucía del Cómic Award. My own contacts with Carlos, alas, were only via e-mail, but he was always outgoing and professional. I was overjoyed when he drew the wraparound cover for my TwoMorrows tome The All-Star Companion, Vol. 2, which spotlighted two dozen of the major DC, Quality, and Fawcett heroes of the World War II years. A bit later, when I tried to purchase that artwork from him, he insisted on giving it to me—and he surprised me at the Barcelona comics convention in 2018 by drawing me as the referee in a tag-team wrestling match between Conan and Red Sonja on one side, and The Valkyrie and Arkon on the other. From beginning to end, Carlos Pacheco was a class act. Much of the information in the above article was adapted from Wikipedia and other sources.

Carlos Pacheco in 2013—plus his alternate cover for Marvel’s The Union #1 (Feb. 2021), featuring Union Jack. [Art TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

In Memoriam

JOHN FLOYD

(March 27, 1962 – July 10, 2023)

A “Love Of Comics And Storytelling”

by Stephan A. Friedt his much-beloved artist has left us, due to complications from pancreatic cancer.

John studied art at North Carolina School of the Arts, East Carolina University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He attended and graduated from the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Design in New Jersey. He began his career in 1991 at Continuity Comics with the title Armor. As he wrote in his IMDB bio: John Floyd was encouraged by legendary comic book creator Jack Kirby to pursue his artwork at age 10. From ages 11-13, John self-published his own comic book fanzine. He is a graduate of The Kubert School (the only art school devoted to comic books). John’s comic book career began as an assistant to legendary ink artist Joe Sinnott, inking

backgrounds on The Mighty Thor. He was personally John Floyd chosen by legendary Conan Also seen is a page of original and Wolverine artist Barry art inked by JF, over pencils by Windsor-Smith to be his Damion Scott, for Batman #567 studio inker and finishing (July 1999). [TM & © DC Comics.] artist. John’s comic book inking credits include Rune, Archer & Armstrong, Eternal Warriors, Conan the Adventurer, Silver Surfer, Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child, Django Unchained, Birds of Prey, and many Batman comics…. He has worked for publishers DC, Vertigo, Marvel, Image, Malibu, Acclaim, and Valiant. John’s love of comics and storytelling translated into his love of movies and his storyboard artist work in films…. His film work includes storyboarding for Rambling Rose (1991), Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992), Bloodmoon (1997), Target Earth (1998), and uncredited work as a production artist on Django Unchained (2012). I spoke with his fellow artist Denys Cowan, who offered this: “When I had the chance to work with John, I didn’t hesitate. He turned out to be a perfect inker and I think we did some of our best work together. John was a total professional and a sweet, gentle guy. I feel blessed to have known him.” John was still sharing his love for Jack Kirby’s art and posting other great art pieces and birthday greetings to his friends on Facebook through June of 2023.

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In Memoriam

JOSÉ LUIS RUIZ PÉREZ (d. July 31, 2023)

“His Work Was Superb”

by Jean-Marc Lofficier

t is with a heavy heart that I must announce the passing of Mexican artist José Luis Ruiz Pérez. I wish I could write in detail about his life and career, but I know of him mostly through his work for Hexagon Comics, our publishing company here in France. José had been part of our faithful cadre of artists since 2015. I shall be eternally grateful to artist Manuel Martin Peniche for introducing him to me. His work was superb, and reminiscent of the great American artists of the 1960s such as Dick Giordano or Carmine Infantino. He was also a very kind and friendly man, judging from our correspondence over the years. He had drawn the wonderful saga of Tiger and the Eye, which he had made look exceptionally authentic and impressive. He also illustrated Hexagon issues of The Partisans, Strangers, Kabur, and The Guardians of the Republic, including the Barbarella crossover published in the U.S. by Dynamite Entertainment in 2018. Among other “Kabur” stories, he drew the tale “Les Chiens de Kyros,” plotted by Roy Thomas, in which the sword-and-sorcery hero encountered a somewhat Predator-like alien, which I adapted and dialogued.

His friend Manuel Martin Peniche was quoted on the online site bleedingcool: “His work on the fortnightly magazine El mil Chistes was… a science-fiction series that was highly celebrated here in Mexico.”

José Luis Ruiz Pérez with art (below) from the genres of sword-and-sorcery (Kabur) and science-fiction. [Kabur art TM & © Hexagon Publishing; other art TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

One of José’s daughters had told me that he had just been hospitalized, without specifying the seriousness of his condition. He passed away on July 31. José will be missed not only by us here at Hexagon but by many other devoted fans on both sides of the Atlantic. JEAN-MARC LOFFICIER, who also had a writing, editing, and publishing career in the U.S. before returning to his native France two decades ago, is the co-publisher with his wife Randy of Hexagon Comics. They recently published the artbook whose title, rendered in English, is Hexagon Spotlight on… José Luis Ruiz Pérez.

In Memoriam

BILL MASON (April 10, 1942 – Jan. 15, 2023)

“Important Contributor To [Russ Cochran] EC Reprints”

by Bradford Verter

illiam “Bill” Mason, a modest but luminous figure in comic scholarship, was laid to his final rest recently when a childhood friend released his ashes at the base of a small waterfall on the west side of Central Park where the flow of water runs at length into the Harlem Meer. Raised at what is now an expensive address on Amsterdam Avenue, Mason was born to Irish immigrants. His mother worked as a charwoman, his father as an elevator operator. Both were pious, sending Mason to Catholic schools and seminaries. They countenanced his love of EC comics, though his father lamented that the creators of such lurid tales showed no respect for the dead. At the tender age of 12, the young Fan-Addict sent a letter that was printed in Weird Science-Fantasy #27 (Jan. 1955). It was his first publication and perhaps his most significant, as it opened the door to the mansions of delight through which he would stride for the rest of his life. Fellow EC fan Bhob Stewart told me that when he first met Mason in person at a comic convention in the 1970s, they recognized each other through their name tags. “Are you the W. Mason who was in Weird Science-Fantasy #27?” said Stewart. “I am,” said Mason. “And you must be the Bobby Stewart who was in Weird Science #20.” “And Panic #11,” Stewart added with characteristic reticence. Stewart and Mason would become (along with their friend John Benson) two of the most important contributors to the series of EC reprints Russ Cochran initiated in 1978, crafting introductions and notes that guided readers to a greater appreciation of the literary depth and aesthetic subtlety of a long-demonized medium. Mason also wrote articles for The Comics Journal on undergrounds, Classics Illustrated, and other topics that engaged his intellect. His writing dazzled his peers. In 1978, cartoonist Bill Griffith praised Bill Mason in a letter to a friend: “He’s the finest & most

Bill Mason in Boston, circa 1981—and in Montreal, 2014. Photos by Martin Jukovsky. Also seen is his fateful letter as printed in Weird Science-Fantasy #27 (Jan.-Feb. 1955). [TM & © William M. Gaines, Agent, Inc.]

articulate comix critic around.” In more recent years, he wrote a series of essays on Carl Barks, EC artists, and witzend for definitive collections published by Fantagraphics. In an e-mail, editor Mike Catron told me: Bill Mason was among the most meticulous and thorough writers I’ve had the pleasure to work with, and many of our conversations revolved around getting certain turns of phrase or specific details just right. He had a broad range of knowledge of the arts and popular culture outside of comics and knew just when to bring in such examples to illuminate and expand the reader’s appreciation of whatever subject was at hand. He compared Wallace Wood with Nijinsky (who else would have drawn that comparison?) and the “intensity” of Michael Pacher’s (c. 1435-1498) altarpiece panels. He discussed the history of the Picasso and Matisse paintings that Wood (following Ray Bradbury’s original text) torched in “There Will Come Soft Rains....” Mason balanced his devotion to comic history with other commitments. After earning his M.A. in literature at Fordham University, he spent two years in the Peace Corps, teaching in Tehran. He returned in the fall of 1969 and married his sweetheart. In 1970 he moved to Montreal to accept a post at the newly-founded Dawson College, where he served on the Humanities faculty for 44 years, imparting to generations of students his passion for James Joyce, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and EC comics. A lifelong student of languages—he read Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Farsi—Mason also sang folk music and in later years was a devoted member of the choir at St. Philip’s Anglican Church. He is survived by his wife, the artist and equestrienne Leslie Busch. Thanks to John Benson for suggesting this obit/tribute.

In Memoriam

JIM VADEBONCOEUR, JR. (October 24, 1946 – July 7, 2023)

“Bud’s Farewell To Jim” by Bud Plant

[A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. was a regular contributor to this volume of Alter Ego, especially during its early years (but as recently as #178, the Emil Gershwin issue), and that includes providing numerous tidbits of information and even loan of comicbooks that went unrecorded in the credits. For that reason, among others, we are honored to reprint in full his longtime friend Bud Plant’s reminiscence of him.]

y interest in comicbooks and their creators, and in magazine and book illustration, has brought me many amazing friends. Some of them date back more than 50 years, to my teenage years beginning in 1965 and 1966. Jim Vadeboncoeur was not only my friend for all of these years, but a mentor, a partner, a co-publisher. And we shared the passion of finding and appreciating the best in these worlds of art and artists, illustrators, and publishing history. And comics, absolutely comics. Jim was raised on the San Francisco peninsula, not very far from my own roots in San Jose. Early on he became part of a web of comicbook buddies in the area, gathering at one another’s houses to share our finds and enthuse about the latest new books. By this point Jim had moved out of his parents’ house and was living in Palo Alto, already together with his life-long partner Karen Lane. Jim, born in 1946, had five years on me. When we first met, I was about 14, not yet in high school. Jim was 19, already going to college with a part-time job. But what brought us together was a passionate interest in comics: in the art of Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson, Wally Wood, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko. Before the Price Guide, before online data sources, we were digging through stacks of comics, flipping through pages looking for hidden gems by our favorite artists… as well as keeping up with the latest releases from Marvel, DC, Charlton, Dell, and a few other companies. Jim’s first publishing project was a fanzine with an indecipherable name. I don’t know which of us came up with that idea, but it sure sounds typical of Jim. He was never one to go along with the crowd if he saw a better or more interesting way. We loved the “gobbledegook” lettering that Rick Griffin was doing at the time, so we said let’s make that our fanzine’s name. And we published our first issue, calling ourselves Promethean Enterprises. We consisted of four editors. Promethean, as it came to be called, brought together what we thought was the best and most interesting in modern comics, in vintage comics, and in underground comics. Editor Al Davoren knew R. Crumb, Spain, Griffin and more of the underground artists. Jim and I loved the work of those guys as well as Frazetta, Williamson, and other contemporary artists. Our first and second issues boasted covers by Rick Griffin, the third by R. Crumb, the 4th by Los Angeles air-brush master Bob Zoell, and the final issue was a fold-out cover by Robert Williams. Robert was yet another good friend of Al’s. We published these from 1969 to 1974, capping things with the first interview with R. Crumb, another fold-out with Victor Moscoso’s artwork, articles on vintage crime comics, artwork by Roy Krenkel and more folks. Jim was the master of layout, and got us in the back door of a local printer, since we had no budget to pay

Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. both as a young man—and in a more recent photo, taken a few years ago. Thanks to D.D. Degg.

others to do the zine. We paid a printer after hours and did the folding, binding, and boxing ourselves, until we splurged on the final issue and paid to have it all done professionally. And our enthusiasm overcame caution—we printed far too many copies, and that 5th issue remained in print for at least 20 years, just one of the many items I’d be handling in my business. But Jim immediately went on to other personal projects. He published The Movie Cowboy by Doug Wildey all by himself in 1971. This was possibly a first, an oversized format similar to today’s Artist’s Editions, showing every detail of the fine movie star portraits Wildey had done for his own personal satisfaction. Also in 1971 Jim put together Al Williamson: His Art, the earliest index of all (at least, all to that date) of Williamson’s comics and comic strip contributions that Jim and friends had tracked down. With Bob Napier, Jim published The Fandom Lampoon, which was a spoof of the early fanzine called Infinity, published by two youngsters on the East Coast. Infinity wasn’t a bad zine, per se, but it did have some problems typical of fanzines at the time. One has to remember that there were almost no professional publications on comics up to this point. Beginning in the early 1960s, the only way to learn about comics history and artists, and to see art by fans or professionals outside of comics themselves, was in fan-produced amateur fanzines. Infinity was well known for publishing relatively lame, almost throw-away sketches by big-name comic artists, as well as typo-ridden, lame interviews. Jim and Bob called their spoof Inanity, complete with an interview with Berni Wright-On. The picture supposedly of Berni was actually a high-school-aged Jim standing in for the real Berni Wrightson. All the artwork was spoofs, too. On a more serious note, Jim, Bob Napier again, and soon to be better-known writer Jan Strnad, published George. Another strangely named publication, George was a fanzine of reviews of other fanzines, another first in fandom. You can see a trend here. Our boys didn’t think much of many of the so-named crudzines proliferating at the time, while they also wanted to praise the incredible efforts to be found in superb titles like Jerry Weist’s Squa Tront, Wally Wood’s witzend, and Bill Spicer’s Graphic Story Magazine. For 11 issues they slammed the bad and praised the good. Jim also taught me layout. He’d gone to work for a printer

Jim Vadeboncouer, Jr. (1946-2023)

in 1970, but it continued, and much of the information they put together was incorporated in the Guide. Jim also contributed to an APA called APA-5. An APA was a closed group of fans who periodically contributed to an anthology publication distributed to only those contributors. One example of his work was a piece on Golden Age artist Munson Paddock. This obscure artist was also one of the most interesting in the early Golden Age, contributing to DC’s earliest titles. He was often mixed up with a pseudonym of Celia Paddock and thought to be a woman. Jim found a library that had ended up with his archives. Paddock had been a lifelong railroad enthusiast, and when he passed away, he had left a huge archive of original glass negatives and more modern pictures of trains. Thus Jim was able to finally dispel the incorrect information and give Paddock a place in comics history. He did much the same for Matt Baker. For years, right up to today, a great many comics that Baker had nothing to do with have been attributed to him. The Iger shop, where Baker had once worked, liked his style so much, the artists went on to emulate it long after Baker had moved on (in this case, to his superlative romance comics for St. John). Jim once again studied the styles on each and every story and did his utmost to give Baker his due, but to stop the attribution of Iger Shop work as Baker’s. Myth buster? You could say that!

The Movie Cowboy Artist Doug Wildey’s work was featured in the 1971 art portfolio published by Jim V. [© the respective copyright holders.]

Through all this, Jim was also a hardcore collector. His first love was Atlas, and he amassed what could be one of the only known complete collections, all the way from Strange Tales #1 to the beginning of the Marvel super-heroes. Jim was also a true cheapskate. Or put another way, Jim wanted a lot of books but didn’t have unlimited funds. Fortunately, condition was totally unimportant to him. He wanted the book strictly for its contents, for what he could learn about the artist-contributors. So he happily bought low-grade books that he would promptly take out of their bags, throw out their boards, and put them in handy small boxes for quick access. At that point he had every Atlas comic except Strange Tales #1, since by then it was already beyond his famous $40

around this time. He discovered he hated his first job in business management. He’d gotten a business degree, but telling other people what to do gave him headaches and clearly turned out not to be his forte. So he decided “never again”… he would only work in jobs where he was his own boss and his work would speak for itself. So he started in the back room, doing production work for a local printer. I started my own business in 1970/71 (Bud Plant, no fancy names back then). I was typing up ads and simple typed-out flyers I’d put in with orders. That led to my first elementary catalogs. Jim offered to help, and he taught me layout as I watched him come up with an entirely new way of doing 3 “real” catalogs circa 1971-72. He also designed the 1973 Berkeley Con Program Books. This was the first underground comics convention, held at the UC-Berkeley campus. Meanwhile, he was researching comicbook artists like there was no tomorrow. He worked with the late Hames Ware to identify inkers and pencilers on Golden Age and early Silver Age books, particularly on his first love, the Atlas (later Marvel) line from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. He and Hames contributed to Jerry Bails’ legendary Who’s Who volumes, which were the first time we began to see an overview of who worked on what throughout the 1930s to the 1960s. Much of this started before the first Price Guide came out

Matt Baker juxtaposed with his classic cover for Fox Comics’ Phantom Lady #15 (Dec. 1947). Cover image courtesy of the Grand Comics Database. Photo courtesy of Fred Robinson & Matt D. Baker. [Phantom Lady TM DC Comics.]

In Memoriam

Leyendecker, and hundreds of others. Jim also began finding bound volumes of early magazines circa the 1890s to the 1940s, putting together a world-class collection packed with artwork never collected elsewhere. Two big events came out of this interest in illustrators. The first was Jim’s and my partnership, for almost 20 years, as Bud Plant Illustrated Books. I got my name in the title since I had pretty good name recognition after years of issuing catalogs, selling online, and doing shows. But Jim was the true heart of the business, with the able help of his master-progammer partner Karen Lane, who helped us build a database for selling our duplicates. Later we’d go out on buying trips to score more books to list and sell through our occasional catalogs, at rare convention appearances, and eventually on the Internet. For several years, Jim and Karen would set up a 10×10 booth of rare illustrated books within my larger display of ten booths at San Diego Comic-Con. We counted many greats among our customers, such as Kinuko Craft, Mark Schultz, William Stout, Michael Kaluta, and Charles Vess. Second event: Jim began Images magazine. Now that he’d collected all this rare material and learned about the artists, often diving deep into their careers, he wanted to share it with others. So first he mandated that he would write a new, original biography of an important comics or book illustrator, one each week. He’d post these to our BPIB website, until he had over 100 of them up, complete with full-color artwork and details often previously little known.

Strange, But True! At one point, Strange Tales #1 (June 1951) was the one Atlas-era comic of which Jim V. didn’t own a copy—because of his “famous $40 spending limit for a comic”—so some of his friends bought one for him. Cover art may (or may not) be by Carl Burgos. Courtesy of the GCD. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

spending limit for a comic. So several of his friends got together and bought him a copy. But these raw books also became a source of research and reprint material for Jim’s friends. He let me go through every book in his collection so I could make notes on ones I’d like to own (with the good artists) and ones I didn’t care about. He loaned comics to Craig Yoe, as Craig mentions in his touching piece about Jim, and made possible a great many of the Yoe books that collected early pre-Code sci-fi, horror, romance, and just plain weird comics. He also penciled in his best guess or confirmed attributions of who the inkers and pencilers were on his books; then he’d send them to Hames Ware to get his feedback. Hames did the same with the comics he’d accumulated. And finally, just in the last few years, Jim was loaning them to at least two online sites, for them to smash flat in a scanner so they could upload complete issues for all of us to see on the internet. Remember, condition wasn’t important to Jim… the comics were never an investment, but a means to an end of learning more about comics history. Jim and I both moved into the tangential world of book and magazine illustrators. First it was Maxfield Parrish and N.C. Wyeth, but soon we had leapt in with both feet, tracking down rare early books illustrated by favorites like Willy Pogany, Frank Papé, the unrelated Eric Pape, Joseph Clement Coll, Franklin Booth, J.C.

Next, expanding on these biographies, he started putting together his Images magazine… light on text, since it was already on his website, and heavy on artwork. And what artwork. Jim probably did more than just about any other publisher dabbling in this area, because he would carefully, dot by dot, go over each picture and try and restore it to what he felt the illustrator had wanted it to look like. Often his sources could be badly printed early magazines and off-register book plates, so it was no easy task to make these look as sharp as they were drawn. He also started the companion magazine Black & White Images Annual, a way he could offer even more work but at a lower cover price, being strictly in b&w. By sticking strictly to reproducing artwork from before 1922, Jim avoided any copyright issues. He brought to the world

Images The beautiful cover of issue #6 of Vadeboncoeur’s art magazine. We presume the cover artwork is by Gustaf Tenggren rather than Frank Brangwyn? [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Jim Vadeboncouer, Jr. (1946-2023)

Jim loved Paris, loved good food and a fine bottle of wine. And going out to his favorite boulangerie (bakery) for an early morning coffee and pastry, just a couple minutes from his apartment. His favorite companion to hit the Paris flea market with was Florence Cestac. He (and Al and I) all met Florence and her husband Etienne Robileback when they were the now-legendary Futuropolis, the 1970s-era Paris comic book store and publisher. Florence went on to become a well-known creator of French graphic novels and they remained good friends, delighting in finding vintage illustrated books and magazines on their weekend excursions. And he started on yet another venture. He would board the metro, get off at a new station each trip, and walk up into the local neighborhood. Then he’d take pictures of wonderfully evocative door knockers and metal gates, and post them on his Facebook page. All in one, he’d figured out how to get his daily exercise, explore the city, and discover more interesting design from the last century.

Everett Raymond Kinstler The artist—and the front and back covers of the book he and Jim Vadeboncoeur produced about his career in fine art, advertising, and comicbooks. [© the respective copyright holders.]

rare and superlative work by a host of the finest illustrators, from Howard Pyle, J.C. and Frank Leyendecker, Franklin Booth, and Edmond Dulac, to Heinrich Kley, Gustave Dore, and Daniel Vierge. Just about every fine artist from the 1880s to 1921 found their way into Images. And, finally, he produced his one and only full-blown art book. Jim got to be good friends with Everett Raymond Kinstler, an artist who had started his career in comics. Kinstler moved on to paperback and magazine art and eventually would be doing portraits for sitting Presidents. But Kinstler was never reluctant to talk about his roots in comics, as well as his close relationships with fellow illustrators. Jim mined this generosity and produced a fine book, including a signed limited edition. Kinstler started off doing “Hawkman” for DC and “Black Hood” for MLJ. But he came into his own with his black-&-white, fine-line artwork on the contents page overviews that Avon liked to do on the inside covers of all their titles in the early 1950s, from Strange Worlds to Jesse James. Kinstler made many of these small masterpieces. Jim arranged for Kinstler to come to a San Diego Comic-Con as a special guest. Jim retired from selling illustrated books with me around 2000, and I was fortunate enough to have met bookseller Anne Hutchison, who stepped in and continued the business, now known as Bud Plant and Hutchison Books. But Jim’s time was now going into producing Images magazine and improving his website, even as he finally retired from his day job at Hewlett-Packard as a computer service manual designer. When Karen’s father passed away, she inherited enough for the two of them to buy a small apartment in Paris, in the 17th district. They began spending weeks and then months at a time in Paris. Jim became close friends with Jean-Pierre Dionnet, the co-founder of Metal Hurlant, along with Jean Giraud/Moebius. And one of his best friends was the artist of the Valerian series, the late Jean-Claude Mézières. Also Sylvain Despretz, a concept and storyboard artist and author of the biographical art book Los Ángeles.

And his apartment was always open to friends, boasting a spare bedroom. Craig Yoe and his family, Anne and I, artist Ken Steacy, and many others made the sojourn to Paris and got the tour with Jim. We got the guided walks along the Seine, to Notre Dame and the riverside book dealers, the Flea Market, the finest museums and exhibits never far from his apartment. And of course, fun dining in his favorite haunts. My friend Alex Grand was asked to write about Jim for The Comics Journal. I want to defer to Alex now, because his opening statement about Jim works so well to close out my personal remembrance: “Jim Vadeboncoeur dedicated his life and formidable curiosity to the preservation, documentation, and promotion of comic art and American illustration history. Through his diligence, many overlooked artists and works found the spotlight, adding to our understanding and appreciation of the field” That says it all: “every word like glowing fire.” Lucky me, I was there with Jim from beginning to end; our interests coincided, we both made discoveries we could share with one another, we both were fascinated by the same worlds of comics and Illustration. I learned so much from Jim, and I will miss his insights and perspective, his kindness and generosity.

Three Amigos (Left to right:) Bookseller Bud Plant, cartoonist/anthologist Craig Yoe, and Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. a few years back. Courtesy of Bud Plant.

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made comicbook appearances is just the cherry on the top of this seamless story of a great artist.

I turn to page 78 of A/E #178 and see the fifth panel of an Emil Gershwin Spy Smasher #4 story… (oh my god)… Roy, I’m frozen with fear! The very same panel that haunted me for months and months when I was no more than four years old. My memory was of a bald-headed man hunched over a piano while another was tied to a table. His long arms rested on the keyboard and his rounded shoulders hid his neck. It appeared to me then that the rear of his head was stitched together. The chill of seeing this image again after more than half a century of putting it far, far out of my mind is indescribable. This comicbook was from 1942, six years before I was born. I have no memory of why I was paging through Spy Smasher #4 as a young child, why I had access to it, or if anything else in those pages ever affected me, but that image made me cry more than once as I tried to sleep. Alter Ego #178. An issue I will remember. Bernie Bubnis

e’re giving it another try! It really pains A/E’s editor (that me—Roy Thomas) for readers to have to wait well over a year to see the e-mails and snail mail concerning a particular issue in cold hard print, due to backlog (and perhaps owing something to the fact that, not too many years back, this mag was published eight or even 12 times a year instead of six). So we’ve doubled up (or is it “doubled down”?) this time, and this edition of “re:” features comments on two issues, rather than one. And we have a dynamic drawing of the super-hero Alter Ego—Shane Foley’s awesome approximation of a Superman pose penciled by Curt Swan and inked by George Klein—to head this letters section for the issue dedicated to the man who wrote the story they were illustrating: none other than the great Edmond Hamilton, master writer for both science-fiction and comicbooks. Colors by the polychromatically perverse Randy Sargent. [Alter Ego super-hero TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas; costume designed by Ron Harris.] We start out with critiques of Alter Ego #178, which was mostly assembled by “Comic Crypt” editor Michael T. Gibert (with help from FCA’s P.C. Hamerlinck and Ye A/E Editor). That edition was devoted almost entirely to the life and career of Golden Age artist Emil Gershwin, and elicited this response from “re:” section regular Bernie Bubnis: Hi Roy—

I did not expect an issue of Alter Ego to bring back vivid childhood memories that haunted my dreams nightly and beyond. I had to have been three or four years old. As I grew older, I was lucky to have these images repressed and forgotten (at least I thought so)… until today as I clutched my copy of Alter Ego #178. More on this later.

I have enjoyed issues of A/E that are devoted to a single subject or person, but this issue was amazing. The articles referenced and quoted other articles in the issue, and this single-subject treatment rested together seamlessly. Editorially, this feature heightened the story of Emil Gershwin. This band of writers were all playing the same song. Michael was a great bandleader. I remember his coverage of The Spirit’s letterer from previous A/E issues, and this issue rivals one of my favorite series from him. The fact that other Gershwins

There must be something unique about that Otto Binder/Emil Gershwin effort from Fawcett Publications’ 1942 Spy Smasher #4, Bernie, because that tale seems to have grabbed scribe Brian Cremins by the throat as well, and literally forced him to concentrate on it for #178’s FCA section. Now, before we go any further, here’s a query from reader Kevin McDougal: Hi Roy—

I’m enjoying Alter Ego #178, but I have an admittedly weird question about the subject of your cover article. Was his given named pronounced AY-mil, EE-mil, Ee-meel, or AY-meel? I clearly have way too much time on my hands. Kevin McDougal

Actually, Kevin, that’s a quite legitimate question, and I thought it had been answered in the course of #178, but maybe not. Anyway, Michael T. Gilbert obligingly got in touch once more with Emil’s daughter Nancy Gershwin, who e-mailed back: “Emil is pronounced AY-mul. Emphasis on the first syllable.” And that takes care of that! Thanks, Michael and Nancy.

Italy’s Alberto Becattini is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the identities of the writers and artists of the classic comic strips, so we were delighted to hear from him about both the comicbook and strip work of Emil Gershwin: Michael, Roy:

Emil Gershwin certainly deserved being dealt with in depth like this! A great, great job. Exactly the kind of thing I’ve been trying to do during the last few years—concentrating on “The Great Unknowns” (to quote our late and sorely missed friends Jim Vadeboncoeur and Hames Ware). But, before I forget—I’ve had another look at the “George Gershwin” story from Real Life Comics #47 (page 18), and I believe there were two different artists on it. The splash page in A/E looks very Jerry Robinson-ish, whereas the rest of the story should be by George Evans. Anyway, it’s just an educated guess. About Gershwin’s contribution to the Tarzan daily strip:

It appears that he assisted Dan and Sy Barry (mainly penciling) on the following strips:

“Tarzan and the Diamond of Ashra”: March 8, 1948 – April 17, 1948 (#2671-2706). Then Gershwin was the main penciler on the following strips (there are Dan Barry touch-ups here and there) and also inked on

re:

back at old favorites, or an educational glimpse of a practitioner not widely known. Either way, it’s fun or enlightening, and quite often both.

Yet you don’t usually devote a whole issue to someone who’s not a known legend in the field. Even here, in your editorial, you conceded the point with your amusing title: “Emil Who??” So I approached it as an experiment on your part. Emil Gershwin might be someone new to a great many of your readers—including me—but how would they accept it and what sort of reaction might it prompt?

My candid view is that I was glad to learn more but would prefer more balance, with other features, unless it’s a huge name in the industry.

I did like a few of his nicely done splash pages, particularly Shark Drum and the opening page to Spy Smasher #7 (“Terror in Exile”). Hard to judge the other story pages, as even with a magnifier, they were tiny and hard to read. Frankly, it would have been difficult to have isolated story fragments, in a reduced size, convince someone that the artist who did the work was extraordinary. I don’t dispute this, but in some instances I’ll have to take admiring artists like Alex Toth and Al Williamson at their word. I admire those who could identify his work, like Jim

Starring… Emil Gershwin’s “Starman” splash for Adventure Comics #99 (Aug. 1945), with script by Joe Samachson. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert, the mastermind behind most of Alter Ego #178. [TM & © DC Comics.]

some: “Tarzan and the Diamond of Ashra”: April 19, 1948 – Sept. 11, 1948 (#2709-2832). Note: The November 18, 1948 (#2890), strip looks like Dan and Sy Barry to me, although Gershwin might have penciled Merala’s face. Anyway, the strip does not exemplify Gershwin’s work. Rob Thompson was the writer.

Gershwin again assisted Dan Barry on pencils on the following strips: “Tarzan and the Fires of Kohr” – Nov. 22, 1948 – Dec. 18, 1948 (#2893-2910). Note: The Nov. 29, 1948 (#2899) strip was penciled by Gershwin, but the inking looks like Sy Barry to me. Gershwin penciled the following strips, also inking most of them: “Tarzan and the Fires of Khor” – Dec. 20, 1948-Jan. 29, 1949 (#2911-2952). I hope this helps.

Alberto Becattini

It certainly does, Alberto! As for who the artist or artists were on the Real Facts bio of Emil’s more famous uncle George, we don’t have a real answer for that. Anybody out there have an opinion, or even hard knowledge?

We went out on a bit of limb, devoting most of A/E #178 to a relatively obscure artist. Here’s a partially dissenting view from regular Joe Frank, though he confesses to an admiration for some of Emil Gershwin’s splash pages reproduced therein: Dear Roy,

I divide Alter Ego coverage into two categories: a nostalgic look

Why Do You Think They Called Him “Spy Smasher”? He Smashed Spies! An early Gershwin “Spy Smasher” splash page, from Fawcett’s Whiz Comics #26 (Jan. 1942). Scripter unknown. Thanks to Michael T. Gilbert. [Spy Smasher TM & © DC Comics.]

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

Vadeboncoeur and Hames Ware, as most of it was unsigned and some was done in conjunction with others. Way beyond my capabilities. Did laugh at Gershwin’s pen name of “Peter Abbott.”

Also, the salute to Ron Goulart was welcome. It touched, in passing, on a project of his and Gil Kane’s that I loved: Star Hawks. It could be moody and suspenseful or, more often, quite comedic. The character came first. Wish it had lasted longer. Joe Frank

Indeed, Joe! As for Emil Gershwin, while we understand your desire for coverage of multiple subjects or creators in an issue of Alter Ego, I must admit that I feel that that particular artist deserved all the attention he received in #178. We kinda suspect that, if he had signed considerably more of his work, he would be far better known to Golden Age comics fans than he is today—in which case many of them would have been clamoring for an issue devoted to his output. But, that’s what makes horse-racing… and magazine-publishing as well. Alter Ego #179 celebrated 60 years of The Fantastic Four (only a year late) and the 100th birthday of the late great Stan Lee—which resulted in an avalanche of communications concerning Stan, Jack Kirby, and others connected with the early days of “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine,” beginning with collector/historian George Hagenauer: Hi Roy—

A/E #179 got me thinking for the first time in decades about buying the early issues of Fantastic Four at age 11. One clue to what was going on might be sales figures, if by chance they still exist. Like most 11-year-old super-hero fans in the days before distribution to comics shops, I did the rounds on my bike to pick up the latest issues. (For younger readers back then, there were maybe 12-15 super-hero titles a month, and at a dime or so each, you could buy them with the proceeds of a couple of mowed lawns or shoveled walks.) I had no problem buying FF #1 and 2, but the third issue never made it to the far southern end of Chicago. FF #3 stands out in my memory because overall distribution on most comics, not just Marvel and DC but even Charlton’s, etc., was pretty consistent in the outlets in my neighborhood. Since this [lack of distribution] occasionally happened, my hypothesis is that, when print runs dropped, they didn’t ship to the far south side but instead kept the bulk of the run for downtown newsstands and outlets on the wealthier north side. If #3 had a far lower print run than #1 and 2, that suggests the scenario that Goodman may well have been considering shutting the line down [as Will Murray suggests].

The George Klein cover for Murder for What? by Kurt Steel (real name Rudolph Kagey, changed from his birth name Rudolph Hornaday Steel!) was for one of Martin Goodman’s digestpaperback lines. If you haven’t heard of Steel/Kagey (and as a mystery fan I hadn’t), he is typical of the type of second-string author Goodman published; his last novel listed appeared probably a year or two before this digest was published. It is not uncommon to find artists from the comics in Goodman’s other publications. I own some Caldwell Higgins cover prelims for two other books in this series. George Hagenauer

I never heard anything about there being either a lowered print run or distribution problems associated with FF #3, George… but that would certainly bolster Will Murray’s point in A/E #179 concerning the possibility that publisher Martin Goodman came within an ace of permanently shuttering his entire comicbook operation in 1961-62. Me, I never saw FF #2 on sale, but purchased a copy at a used-book store where I

It’s A Miracle, Man! The fifth page of Fantastic Four #3 (March 1962)—scripted by Stan Lee, penciled by Jack Kirby, and probably inked by George Klein—repro’d from his personal copy of the comic by A/E booster Bob Bailey. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

was looking for old 1940s comics (and that first Skrull epic was just lying there atop of pile of magazines, at about the same time that it should have been going on sale around the country)—while I picked up my copy of FF #3 in the major Greyhound Bus station in St. Louis, Missouri, with a 15¢ sticker pasted over its (debuting) 12¢ cover price. My assumption, then and now, is that some places didn’t want to mess around with those added two pennies, and jumped up the price on their own to avoid handling them—while perhaps a resistance to the price rise had something to do with any distribution problems you may have noticed. If not, it’s an amazing coincidence! Here’s our marvelous “maskot” artist Shane Foley on the discussed-in-#179 possibility that Fantastic Four #1 started out to be quite a different magazine and feature than it wound up: Hi Roy,

I must admit I find few of Michael Feldman’s arguments convincing. I do agree that a lot of the art seems either not Kirby’s or reworked. But a lot of the illogical stuff (Ben finding a doorway too small to get out of, despite clearly having had to come in by it) is typical of many Kirby and Lee/Kirby stories.

I certainly wish Mr. Feldman had the time to enlarge his ideas

re:

further. As it is, I see nothing more than Stan and Jack rushing out a new book that was extra to the normal schedule, with Stan very much overseeing the characterization and Jack drawing quickly.

BTW—you comment on page 6 that “the purloined plants [factories] are totally forgotten once the FF get to Monster Isle.” No, they’re not—the Mole Man refers to them being part of his master plan on page 23. Shane Foley

I stand corrected, Shane, and thanks for reminding me. Apparently Moley didn’t want to utilize the atomic plants he stole; he simply wanted to “wreck” them so that they couldn’t be used by humanity to defend itself from his attack. But, you know what? That doesn’t make much sense, either! Mankind would’ve still had plenty of military hardware with which to fight off his subterranean, atomic plants or no! Or am I missing some subtle nuance here? To me, you’ve just pointed out yet another aspect of the plot of FF #1 that doesn’t make much sense, whatever the mag’s other virtues! Next, this from Ron Greilich:

Roy:

In issue #179, I was surprised to see Mr. Holden’s copy of the letter from Independent News mentioning “Marvel Comics” which predated the first Marvel logo (on FF #14) by about a year. However, Marvel Comics as a company with a logo appeared back in the late 1940s, just prior to the Atlas brand. A folded-over magazine page in the upper left corner saying “A Marvel Magazine” appears on Captain America #60-62 and Human Torch #25-26. A black circle and a strange holly branch in the middle (?) saying “A Marvel Comic” appears on Captain America #71-75 (and various other covers around that same time). There are more Marvel logos back then that there were Timely logos! So Goodman and Lee didn’t come up with the Marvel name in the 1960s; they apparently just recalled it from the late 1940s. This doesn’t answer the question about the “MC” box on the covers at the time of FF #1, but shed more light on the subject. Ron Greilich

Even so, Ron, it does seem likely in retrospect that the “MC” stood, at least in Martin Goodman’s mind, for “Marvel Comics.” What else is it likely to have stood for in 1961, if letters were going out from his distributor calling the company the “Marvel Comics Group”? What’s amazing to me, under the circumstances, is how (as Stan said happened) Goodman and Lee ever had a conversation circa late 1962 about what to call the company, with Stan suggesting “Atlas” and Goodman insisting on “Marvel.” Seems to me like the matter had been settled a year Down & Atom! or two earlier… but maybe The Mole Man’s dialogue in this panel Goldman hadn’t bothered to attempted to explain the alleged tell Stan! destruction of the atomic plant(s) earlier in Fantastic Four #1 (Nov. 1961)— although their collapse into sinkholes early in the story made it look more as if Moley was simply hijacking them. By Lee, Kirby, and most likely Klein. Repro’d from Roy T.’s personal copy. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

One aspect of Fantastic Four #3 that wasn’t covered in Nick Caputo’s article on the original artwork of that issue was the panel in which Sue Storm wore a mask, according to the research of late Marvel

fan Greg Theakston. I asked Nick about that, and here’s his response: Hi Roy,

I’m sure that page wasn’t in the batch we examined, or I would surely have commented on it. I recall seeing that page for the first time in Theakston’s Pure Images and was quite surprised to realize that the original plan was for the FF to wear masks along with the new uniforms. We don’t know if it was Stan or Jack’s idea to go in that direction, but it was certainly Stan’s editorial judgment to think better of it. One of the interesting aspects of the FF was the notion that they were not masked mystery-men (and women). The uniforms were simple and made them recognizable to the general public when in action; anything else would have been overkill. I’m pretty much in agreement with your view that the Torch was altered after Kirby’s pencils. If I find any other original art pages with Torch figures, I’ll pass them along.

I enjoyed reading the analysis/observation theories on FF #1 from the likes of Will Murray and Michael Feldman, even if I sometimes suspect there is a bit of overthinking in regards to that first issue. This was a comicbook that may have been rushed out, perhaps expanded from a feature to a full-length comic (I do suspect Goodman originally intended it to be the lead in Amazing Adventures, since those words are used a few times in the copy), but I don’t see evidence of it being a cobbled-together monster story. Yes, there are plot holes, gaps, etc., but that occurred on other stories as well. Another observation: If the story was so drastically altered, wouldn’t there be more lettering changes? I don’t see much evidence of that; it looks like Simek’s work throughout. Now, it’s possible that Simek made the corrections himself, which I admit would be hard to recognize, but it’s more likely that any last-minute corrections would come from Sol [Brodsky] or Stan himself, crudely fixing or revising balloons and captions.

As you state, unless evidence such as original art pages turn up, we can only speculate. What we do know is that Lee and Kirby developed a super-hero team that became the cornerstone of Marvel’s line-up. And that is a certainty!

And yes to more Stan e-mails. I was very pleased to have correspondence with him for a decade or so, thanks to Doc V., and the sound of his voice always came through. A dash of humor, quick wit, and upbeat personality were always noticeable. Also, the little touches, like wishing me well and complimenting me when I asked him questions he didn’t always get. Though they were never long messages, he almost always replied to me within a few hours. I was much impressed by that—and that he was personally responding. One of my favorite Stan e-mails concerned a page of original art from FF #13 that he had recently been interviewed about somewhere. The interviewer asked him if the margin notes were Kirby’s and Stan replied that Kirby always wrote margin notes on the original art pages. I pointed out to Stan they were actually his notes, perhaps as a guide for Jack, perhaps to remind Stan of what was going on in the panel/page. I explained that early on there were no notes by Jack; this apparently changed when Stan began working Marvel Method with the other artists (Don, Dick), taking over the strips from Larry [Lieber] and Robert Bernstein. The process was likely devised to make things clearer for him so he could remember what was going on. Stan was actually quite impressed with my observations (even if he didn’t recall exact details) and said something to the effect of “You’re quite a detective.” Nick Caputo

That you are, Nick! Keep it up!

[correspondence, comments, & corrections]

There are errors in my Checklist, too. Doc V. [Michael J. Vassallo] really handed me some important corrections. When Doc Vassallo speaks— people listen! Richard Kolkman

Glad to hear you’re working on Kirby’s non-Marvel-sold concepts beginning circa 1967, Richard. As I said, I’ve no idea if any of those “Gods” concepts of Jack’s were direct, indirect, or non-precursors of The New Gods, but I’d love to get some well-researched reminder of what character drawings I saw in Stan’s office in 1969 or 1970. Since A/E #189 also celebrated Stan Lee’s 100th birthday with John Cimino’s “top 10” listing and the printing of e-mails Stan sent me in 2003, I was happy to see that that part of #179 was appreciated as well, as in this e-mail from Chris Calloway: Dear Roy,

Here is my vote for continuing articles about Stan’s e-mail exchange with you regarding the Spider-Man strip. It’s great to see how you collaborated. What’s not to love? Even though Stan is gone, it’s so great to hear his voice through the e-mails. It’s like the old days when he answered fan letters or wrote his Soapbox. Thank you for making Alter Ego such a great resource for comics fans. Chris Calloway

Wash Your Hands (And Legs)! A/E #179, p. 23, ran an image of a splash from FF #3 that was intended to show how liquid White-Out was used on the arms and legs of the Thing to change gloves and bare legs to bare hands and leggings. However, we forgot to tell TwoMorrows, and they smoothed out the image so that the areas touched up in White-Out were not delineated. Hopefully, we’ve remedied that error this time around. If not—we give up! Thanks to Nick Caputo & Heritage Art Auctions for the scan of the original art. [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

A few corrections and caveats from Richard Kolkman: Roy,

I’m still updating my Kirby Checklist PDF for future free distribution to fans (been doing this since 1996—Jack was prolific!). Loved A/E #170 (Kirby) and #179 (Marvel). Along the way, I make notes and they pile up. I had a couple of correx for #179 (if you want them): P. 13: The Martin Goodman photo is from Marvel Tales Annual #1 (1964), not Strange Tales Annual #2 (1963). P. 16: Incredible Hulk #1 cover was inked by Paul Reinman (confirmed GCD). P. 34: Action Comics #188 is actually #288 (May 1962) as pictured.

(And I am pleased you tracked down that Thor image to its splash page; you are 100% correct.)

Also, I am writing up a forensic piece on Kirby and presentation of his New Gods Concept Art to Marvel. Roy’s discussion of it in #179 was the final piece I needed. (Of course, I wasn’t there; I was busy riding my bike in Fort Wayne.) I will elaborate in a later e-mail on my findings, but basically I don’t think it was an “all-or-nothing” proposition. I think Jack showed the 1966 concept art to Stan (Heck inked), as Roy confirms. But not the later New Gods concepts inked by Giacoia (1967) and himself (1969). I have evidence to present and I shall. I think it’s important to Kirby research.

We do the best we can, Chris—thanks for your support!

Another feature in #179 was Ben Herman’s short biography of George Klein, the man who probably inked FF #1 & 2, as noted by reader Richard Mrozek: Hi Roy,

I enjoyed Alter Ego #179, focusing on George Klein, and noticed that the old mystery inker on FF #1 and #2 is still up in the air. I recall that the Jack Kirby Quarterly favored Chris Rule as the mystery inker. Whoever inked these books left suddenly after issues dated early 1962, which was also when Klein started inking at DC. So, as Mark Evanier and I discussed back then, there is some circumstantial evidence to support Klein. Klein seldom signed covers, but he did “sign” that of Action Comics #285 (Feb. 1962). One of the building signs on that cover very clearly shows the name “George.”

So, did Klein sign anything at Marvel during 1960-61? There is some writing on the cover of FF #1—the small wall plaque to the left of the “To Let” sign. Viewed with a magnifying glass or two in books such as your The Stan Lee Story, the writing becomes somewhat legible. The lower section shows what appears to be a large “3”; however, it’s made up of three letters, which appear to be “A,” “g,” and “K.” The upper loop of the “3” is actually the lower part of the “A” (the first letter of the word “Art”). The middle of the “3” is the top of the “g.” The right side of the “3” is the left side of “K” and the right side of “g.” And the lower part of the “3” is the bottom of “g.” There is also a “5” to the right of the “K,” and a “9” to the right of the “5” (the “9” is quite faint). As that plaque was colored grey, the black halftone dots have merged with the writing, obscuring it significantly. Part of the letters and numbers appear to be indistinct or “grey.” But I doubt that this “evidence” would stand up in a court of law! Richard Mrozek

re:

Roy—

About the cover repro of Captain Marvel Adventures #26 on page 74 of Alter Ego #179: I’ve seen that issue on dealers’ tables at conventions any number of times, and I’ve started wondering why the Big Orange Cheese was waving the old Orange, White, and Blue. I have to think that issue was a lot redder when it was first printed, and just faded drastically with time. Compare it with the Wow Comics cover on the facing page, which still has bold reds. I think the cover of CMA #26 is the most striking and most drastic example of fading to orange. Every copy of that comic I have ever seen looks like that—I can’t believe it would have been printed that way intentionally. Just a red ink that was prone to fading over time?

Sign Of The Tiames To augment Richard Mrozek’s analysis of the vertical sign above the head of the central (of five) non-FF bystanders on the cover of The Fantastic Four #1, we blew up that sign twice: on the left, from Roy T.’s original copy of the issue— and, on the right, from the recent giant-size Taschen reprinting of issues #1-20, which utilized that same version of the cover. (Not that either scan we made is as clear as we’d like.) At this point, we’ll let you guys argue it out. Is this some sort of disguised signature of George Klein’s or not? We applaud Richard for giving it a try, whatever the outcome! [TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Yeah, that cover scribbling is pretty hard to read, Richard. We’ve reproduced it on this page, in case anyone wants to do further research— perhaps through the Hubbell Telescope!

And, because we can never escape (nor do we particularly try to do so) getting two e-mails from him concerning two issues of Alter Ego, here are a few more comments from Bernie Bubnis: Hi Roy—

Those e-mails from Stan are terrific. Stan is Stan 24 hours a day, in print or the spoken word. Keep ’em coming. Your descriptions of the whys and hows of these exchanges are just as fascinating.

The Sub-Mariner/Bowery article is priceless, too. My companies were in NYC, and we got involved with a lot of Bowery Gems Renovations. Lucky the buildings didn’t collapse while my guys were working there. Very interesting side-take on Namor’s Bowery days. Hidden in this issue was the George Klein bio, and it was very well written. Also, the A/E Graphic Team deserves a round of applause, because it has to take a lot of planning and searching to mine these articles and then marry the proper graphics to each one. This ability is what makes A/E a complete prize every issue!

Dwight Decker

That cover looked red to us, Dwight—but admittedly, a somewhat washed-out red. Interesting that you say that every copy of Captain Marvel Adventures #26 you’ve ever encountered has that same almostorange look. We broached that question to FCA editor P.C. Hamerlinck, who responded: “Alas, I know nothing about it. Usually the Fawcett covers were beautifully printed. I guess Fawcett’s printer in Louisville, Kentucky, really had an off day.” And that winds up our double dose of letters-page legerdemain re #178 & 179. If you care to comment (or carp) about this issue, try: Roy Thomas e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135 Also, if you’re interested in joining an “old-style” online group about Alter Ego and comics of the Golden and Silver Age, try the discussion/ chat group https://groups.io/g/Alter-Ego-Fans. If they don’t pipe you aboard in timely fashion, please e-mail chat-group moderator Chet Cox at mormonyoyoman@gmail.com and he’ll give you a hand! Or, if any convention promoter or comic shop proprietor wishes to inquire about the possibility of booking Roy at some future event, he/she should contact John Cimino at johnstretch@live.com. John’s also the guy who runs the (Cimino-named) Roy Thomas Appreciation Board on Facebook, whose ad you can see directly below.

We wanted to make certain we printed at least one missive that acknowledged Bob Cromwell’s pithy little piece on the Bowery and where the Sub-Mariner might have been staying there—thanks, Bernie, for giving us the chance. We got a real kick out of his article.

It’s been a long time since we heard from fan Dwight Decker, but he offers up a real curiosity related to the Fawcett Collectors of America section in A/E #179:

(Photo taken at CCXP23 in Sao Paolo, Brazil, Dec. 2023)

Bernie Bubnis

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

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The Beck And Costanza Studio

C.C. Beck 1944

The Non-Fawcett Work Of Two Of Fawcett’s Top Artists

Pete Costanza 1940

by P.C. Hamerlinck

s paper restrictions were eased after World War II, both established and anxious new publishers aspired to flood the field with comicbooks of any and all genres. And, as if they weren’t busy enough producing pages every month for Fawcett Publications’ flourishing Captain Marvel Adventures, Whiz Comics, The Marvel Family, and others, the Beck and Costanza Studios also contributed to the postwar comicbook influx, producing two new non-Fawcett titles for already over-crowded newsstands.

A Studio Is Born As Captain Marvel Adventures soared in the sales charts, his co-creator Charles Clarence Beck was pulling in $35 a week as a staff artist for Fawcett. When Beck calculated his weekly salary with his actual weekly comicbook page output, he realized he was only making a few dollars per page illustrating stories of comics’ top-selling super-hero. Beck asked Art Director Al Allard for a raise; what he got was a “Chief Artist” credit prominently placed on the table of contents pages, along with Allard’s suggestion that Beck launch his own art studio and produce work for Fawcett on a freelance basis. It was late 1941. Thus, Beck opened his small studio on Broadway and 40th Street in New York City, taking a few artists along with him, including Pete Costanza; more were hired and eventually the staff grew to 15 artists. By 1944, to keep up with Fawcett’s growing demand for artwork, as well as taking on commercial accounts (including “Captain Tootsie” advertisements for the popular candy Tootsie Rolls, and training Canadian comic artists at Anglo-American Publishing Co. in Toronto), Beck opened up a second studio in Englewood, New Jersey, partnering with Costanza as the Beck and Costanza Studios. Costanza was in charge of the Englewood studio, while Beck continued to operate out of the New York City studio—conveniently located just minutes away from Fawcett’s offices at 67 West 44th Street whenever he needed to go over and meet with comics editors Will Lieberson and Wendell Crowley, or come in to take care of a last-minute page touch-up.

Vic Verity Magazine In late 1945, now maintaining a staff of 20 artists, the Beck and Costanza Studios were contracted by Clifford Yewdall of YewdallKander Enterprises to package a new comicbook series featuring “High School Hero” Vic Verity, wherein the first-time publisher undoubtedly aspired to capitalize on the popularity of “Archie” and the increasing legion of comedic teen knock-offs. The inside front cover of Vic Verity Magazine #1 enthusiastically

“SHAZAM” On The March! Captain Marvel Adventures #8 (cover-dated March 6, 1942) went on sale around the turn of that year and was prepared at least three months earlier, at the time when artist/co-creator C.C. Beck was invited to launch his own art studio—which included Pete Costanza from the start. Ye FCA Editor believes this to have been the earliest CMA cover whereon Costanza inked Beck’s pencils, only the fifth of the title’s regular series, following three stand-alone specials. Courtesy of the Grand Comics Database. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics.]

introduced readers to the latest teen sensation and the book’s colorful co-stars: Vic Verity Magazine is something new in comics. The stories are fiction, but they are based on realities, and told

The Beck And Costanza Studio

in a dynamic, entertaining way. Vic Verity, himself, is a typical high school boy whom you might find in your own homes and schools. In order to keep these stories true to actual high school events and characters, the editors of Vic Verity Magazine have selected an actual high school teacher, Mr. Ellis D. Brown, to write them.

Verity, I Say Unto You… (Clockwise from right:) All from Vic Verity Magazine #1 (1945), whose cover art by Beck & Costanza has been re-purposed as the FCA interior cover on page 71: the opening page of the first fun-filled adventure of the art team’s “High School Hero” Vic Verity (script by Ellis D. Brown)… the debut of the short half-life of their “Hot Shot Galvan” (script by Colin H. McIntosh)… and “Tom Travis and the Tiny People,” written and drawn by C.C. Beck, which was the high point in the premier issue. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

Hot-Shot Galvan, the mighty electronic mite, is a live-wire character taken from the world of science. He is a cartoon characterization of the electron—one of the fundamental parts of the universe. In charming little adventure stories, this amusing character interprets the basic laws of electricity simply, humorously, and accurately. These stories are supplied us by a recognized author of technical books which have been used by the U.S. Army and Navy in their training programs, Mr. Colin H. McIntosh, Assistant Superintendent of Flying School Operations, American Airlines, Inc.

Perhaps the most fantastic-appearing characters in Vic Verity Magazine are ‘Tom Travis and the Tiny People,’ but they are not merely a wild flight of the writer’s or artist’s imagination. The characters and stories all have their setting in that world of smallness in nature that exists right in your own, or in anybody’s, backyard. The huge plants, the giant insects, the strange-looking backgrounds which you will discover in these stories are all drawn from actual objects as seen under a microscope. Much research, field trips to collect specimens, and several volumes of technical reference books are used in the preparation of each ‘Tiny People’ story.

Beck’s Take A few months before he passed away, C.C. Beck recalled working on Vic Verity Magazine in FCA & ME, Too! #8/FCA #44 (1989): “The comic book featuring High School Hero Vic Verity, Mighty Electronic Mite Hot-Shot Galvan, and Tom Travis and the Tiny People was put together in 1945, the peak year of the Golden Age…. [T]he comic book world started to collapse shortly after World War Two ended and has never since seen such halcyon days again. “I was instrumental in creating these characters, but only started Vic Verity and Hot-Shot Galvan off, then turned the work over to other writers and artists. I both wrote and [continued on p. 76]

Beck & Costanza Strike Again… And Again… And Again… An assemblage of other Golden Age non-Fawcett Beck/BeckCostanza projects (on this & the facing page): - “The Baxters” Sunday comics newspaper ad from 1953 for Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia; art by C. C. Beck. - “Puzzle Man” Sunday comics newspaper ad from Oct. 14, 1951, for The Great American Puzzle Contest; art by Beck. (Sorry, we only have a black&-white scan.) - A mid-’40s program for famed stage magician and illusionist Harry Blackstone, Sr.; cover by Beck. - One of the Beck-drawn advertising comic strips from 1951 for body-builder/ stuntman Joey Bonomo’s “Mini-Gym” that appeared in numerous comicbooks and magazines. - Beck created “Captain Tootsie” for the Tootsie Rolls candy company in 1943, sometimes collaborating with Pete Costanza and writer Rod Reed. The advertising comic strips appeared in both newspapers and comicbooks for several years, and will be the focus of a future FCA. “Captain Tootsie Battles Monster Man” is from mid-’43. - Canadian comicbook publisher Anglo-American of Toronto reached an agreement with Fawcett in 1942 to use their existing scripts for stories to be redrawn by AA staff artists. During World War II the Canadian government acts prevented the reprinting of U.S. comics in Canada, but not Canadian artists from illustrating versions of U.S.-scripted stories. Fawcett contracted Beck and Costanza to meet with the AA artists on a couple of occasions and teach crash courses on drawing Captain Marvel and the other Fawcett heroes. This cover of AA’s Captain Marvel Comics Vol. 1, #7 (1943) reveals that the artists up north did a fine job. [Shazam hero TM & © DC Comics; other art & script TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

The Beck And Costanza Studio

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

over to Dave Berg (later of Mad magazine fame) to illustrate. When the publisher couldn’t pay me for several issues already completed, Dave threatened to take me to court if I didn’t pay him. So Pete Costanza and I paid everyone out of our own pockets, for which no one ever thanked us.” Beck’s page rate with Fawcett had increased to $50, but he didn’t really make much more running his own studio than he did previously as a staff artist for the publisher. Beck recollected how tight things were as a studio manager in his 1985 privately circulated mini-autobiography, Preacher’s Son: “After I would pay my twenty assistants and the studio expenses, there would be little money left over. At my peak in the Forties, I made barely two hundred dollars a week.”

Zapped! (Above:) The final appearance of “Hot Shot Galvan” (Vic Verity Magazine #3) before the feature was shut down by attorneys for Reddy Kilowatt. Writer and artists unknown. Above right is Ready Kilowatt his own self. [Hot Shot Galvan TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders; Reddy Kilowatt TM & © Xcel Energy or successors in interest.]

[continued from p. 73] illustrated the first Tom Travis and the Tiny People story which appeared in issue #1, the cover which was drawn by me over 40 years ago. “It’s interesting to see that in those days high school boys dressed neatly in business suits—or did I just imagine that they did? Perhaps I was projecting an image of my own high school days of 20 years earlier! High schools in my time were, if I remember correctly, occupied by those seeking higher educations with hopes of going on to college. Those who weren’t headed for professional lives didn’t bother to go to high school; they dropped out and got a job. The practice of insisting that everyone go to both high school and college didn’t come into full form until modern times. “The thing I remember most about ‘Hot-Shot Galvan’ was that as soon as he appeared we got a ‘Cease and Desist’ order saying that the character was stolen from the copyright holders of Reddy Kilowatt. I don’t know what the publisher did about this, if anything. Perhaps he did nothing; he went broke shortly thereafter. “After the first issue I turned ‘Tom Travis and the Tiny People’

A Few “Tiny” Corrections C.C. Beck did some re-drawing on this ‘Tom Travis and the Tiny People’ splash from Vic Verity Magazine #5, otherwise penciled by Dave Berg and inked by unknown Beck-Costanza Studio artists. Scripter uncertain. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

The Beck And Costanza Studio

The “Vic Verity” stories are altogether mild, if not a bit dull, involving ordinary 1940s teenager activities and situations like dance recitals, championship baseball games, math contests, picnics, scavenger hunts, Vic and his pals helping out at his uncle’s hotel restaurant, and being late for school. Some gentle slapstick humor makes its way into the plots. There’s no Betty or Veronica, but Otto Binder did write a blonde-haired student named “Betty Fable” into the fourth issue. He also named two students after Fawcett comics editors Wendell Crowley and Ginny Provisiero under the guises of “Tom Wendell” and “Ginny Scott.” There’s one clever sequence in the “late-for-school” tale from issue #6 wherein Vic dreams of a hybrid dog-vacuum cleaner named Roover. While he’s not officially attributed with that particular story, it has Otto written all over it.

After the initial Vic Verity issue, Beck and Costanza continued to handle some of the comic’s story layouts, redraw characters, and illustrate all of its seven front covers; Beck himself signed the covers for issues #1 and 2. Irv Steinberg assisted on “Hot-Shot Galvan” during the strip’s short life span; Dave Berg took over from Beck the layouts and penciling on “Tom Travis” with issue #2. Who else could have had a hand in Vic Verity Magazine? The other Beck-Costanza Studio artists during this period included Ken Bald, Ed Robbins, Charlie Tomsey, Jack Bowler, Vince Costello, Al Fagaly, Alex Kostuk, Gus Schrotter, Fran Taggart, Nick Zuraw, and Ernie Townsend, as well as others who had just returned from the war, such as former Jack Binder Shop artists Kurt Schaffenberger, Ray Harford, Victor Dowd, and Bob Boyajian. In a few cases, some artists spent only two or three weeks at the studio.

The cartoonish, inventive, and educational “Hot-Shot Galvan” feature was, of course, cut short thanks to Reddy Kilowatt’s lawyers, lasting only the first three issues. In the debut story, Beck and Costanza We Second That Motion! acknowledged their Captain Marvel C.C. Beck’s jovial cover for Vic Verity Magazine #2 (1946). affiliation by referencing radio station [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.] ‘WIZZ’ (note spelling). By issue #4, electron Hot-Shot and his pal Static As with many 1940s studios supplying comicbook artwork in had been replaced by a new strip: “Boomer Young,” an adventurer assembly-line fashion, the art pages in Vic Verity Magazine were an from America’s frontier days, set in St. Paul, Minnesota, 1870. The obvious team effort—often a conglomeration of mostly-nameless stories dealt mostly with riverboat piracy. It sounds more riveting art styles evident, even within individual stories. than it was, and the artwork was generally uninspired. Curiously, Hot-Shot’s disappearance from the book is mentioned, but not And, while his name did sometimes appear in comics, C.C. until the final issue, #7 (1946), via a note of explanation from the Beck asserted in FCA & ME, Too! #8/FCA #44 that he didn’t mind editors placed within the Boomer Young opening splash panel of the accustomed artist anonymity of the 1940s: “We Golden Age his fourth installment: writers and artists were actually better off working without name “The character, Hot-Shot credits. Some of us—Otto Binder, myself, and others—had worked Galvan, which appeared under pen names before we got into comics. Otto had written in our previous issues, under the name Eando Binder, and I had once done a feature which has been discontinued by was signed by one of the Fawcett brothers. We saw nothing wrong As for the writing, besides the aforementioned Ellis D. Brown on “Vic Verity,” Colin H. McIntosh on “Hot-Shot,” and Beck scripting the first “Tom Travis” tale, Otto Binder wrote the “Vic Verity” stories in issues #4, 5, and 7, and possibly a “Tom Travis” script or two for the later issues.

with this procedure; Otto worked under other names, too, and the feature that I handled was written by someone I never met, lettered by another staff artist, and researched by unknown people. By working anonymously and in groups, we writers and artists managed to create characters and plots that were greater than any of us as individuals could have produced. Today’s writers and artists put too much of themselves into their work, and thus their stories and pictures are either loved madly or hated violently by readers.”

The Latter Days Of Vic Verity Kander/Yewdall Enterprises published Vic Verity Magazine under the name Vic Verity Publications, Inc., located in WilkesBarre, Pennsylvania, with editorial offices in New York City. By mid-1946 they had re-located their base of operations to Akron, Ohio. Vic Verity Magazine was also released in Canada by Bell Features and Publishing Company of Toronto, Ontario.

Yeah, Right, Boomer! “Boomer Young” is depicted on Beck’s cover for VVM #4 (March 1946). By a curious coincidence, the period following WWII’s end in 1945 is now considered “The Baby Boom,” and people born between then and 1960 were, later, often referred to as “Boomers.” Courtesy of the GCD. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

The “Roaring Twenties”— Of Another Century 15-year-old Charles Clarence Beck in high school, West Bend, Wisconsin, 1925. Was the artist thinking back to his own high school days of 20 years earlier when co-creating Vic Verity? Also seen are the covers of Vic Verity Magazine #5 (June 1946) and #7 (Sept. ’46), the final issue. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

reason of the claim of a prior right thereto. In substitution thereof, we are introducing to you the character of Boomer Young, and we feel sure you will find this character most interesting. —The Editors”

“Don Fortune” on it. It’s not until issue #5 that they’re referred to as “Special Crime Investigators.” They are all readable but run-ofthe-mill stories.

A new feature was introduced in the final issue, a forgettable funny-animal/science-fiction filler (“Rocket Rex”), but it would turn out that the one-half-inch-high “Tom Travis and the Tiny People” was the high point of the entire Vic Verity series… a gripping power struggle between two kingdoms, both battling for survival in nature. Beck’s script and art in the debut story were first-rate. The quality of the artwork declined somewhat with the rest of the issues—Dave Berg’s layouts were strong, but suffered from uneven inking, and it’s obvious that Beck had to occasionally re-draw some of the figures—but the saga continued to be engrossing until the end.

Don Fortune’s secondary feature throughout its six-issue existence should’ve been the main event. “Delecta of the Planets” is an overlooked Beck-Costanza tour de force—a rousing sciencefiction saga with the feel of exceptional 1946-era “Captain Marvel” tales.

Don Fortune Magazine But Kander/Yewdall wasn’t finished with comics just quite yet. Before Vic Verity concluded its run, they contracted Beck and Costanza to produce another monthly series: Don Fortune Magazine (dated August 1946 through January 1947). A subscription solicitation ad appeared in its final issue (#6) before the publisher, as Beck put it, “went broke.” Vic Verity Publications, Inc., had now become the Don Fortune Publishing Company, and Kander/ Yewdall had relocated their operations once again, this time to Rockford, Illinois. The Don Fortune front covers were handled by Costanza in collaboration with studio artists, along with small Beck contributions on some of the issues. The writers and specific Beck-Costanza Studio artists of the Fortune stories are unknown. The title star’s middling adventures found former Marine Corps airmen Don Fortune and his pal Andy Jarvis back from the war, and the two somehow manage without fail to nose out trouble everywhere. They have an office with a secretary and appear to be private eyes, although they’re never referred to as PIs, but that’s generally the type of work they do. Their office door merely says

The Beck-Costanza art is top-notch. Beck displays his adeptness at drawing expressive, full-of-life characters and fine female forms. I suspect he also wrote the entire epic. Delecta was crowned queen of the Kaplan System after the passing of her father, King Deltar. Her new position was

Fame & Fortune Beck & Costanza’s Don Fortune Magazine #1 (Aug. 1946), co-starring “Delecta of the Planets.” [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

The Beck And Costanza Studio

It’s Delightful—It’s Delicious—It’s Delecta! “Delecta of the Planets” splash pages from (clockwise from top left) Don Fortune Magazine #1, 5, & 6 (Aug. & Dec. 1946 & [no month] 1947). [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.] The artwork for the “Delecta” feature is reminiscent of the numerous “Captain Marvel” stories that Beck & Costanza were producing during the year 1946, such as the page at bottom left from the sixth and final chapter of the Otto Binder-scripted serial “The Cult of the Curse,” featuring the showdown between Cap and Oggar. From Captain Marvel Adventures #66 (Oct. ’46). [Shazam hero & Oggar TM & © DC Comics.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors Of America]

Fists On Parade The cover and the lead splash panel for Don Fortune Magazine #3 (Oct. ’46). Things are getting rough for Don and his pal Andy Jarvis in the latter. [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

challenged by Deltar’s bloodthirsty half-sister, Ardora, who ruled planet Myro. After Ardora brought a stranded Earthman, Lawrence Breck (sounds a lot like Clarence Beck, doesn’t it?), to planet Kala for Delecta’s coronation, Delecta began falling for the stranger from Earth. She instructed her top scientist, Telepan, a wise old man with a long white beard, to help Larry learn the Kaplan language. She later agreed to a duel to the death with Ardora. During the space battle, Ardora was killed and Larry became the governor of planet Myro.

Captain Tootsie separately in a future issue.] Even Fatman the Human Flying Saucer from the 1960s has achieved more recognition than Delecta, Vic Verity, Hot-Shot Galvan, and tiny Tom Travis could ever hope to… but those Beck and Costanza creations did have their brief, shining moments.

While the Don Fortune series was still being published, the first three “Delecta of the Planets” tales were reprinted, with black-&-white interiors, in three different giveaway miniature-sized comics, distributed by none other than… Fawcett Publications! Out of all of Beck’s non-Captain Marvel/Fawcett work, “Captain Tootsie” is certainly the best-remembered; after all, those fun advertisements had a much wider circulation, appearing for years in multiple titles from numerous publishers, including rival DC Comics, beginning in 1944. [NOTE: We plan to spotlight

We’ve Got You Covered! The Beck/Costanza covers of Vic Verity Magazine #3 (March 1946) and Don Fortune Magazine #2 (Sept. ’46). [TM & © the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

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MITCH MAGLIO examines vintage jungle comics heroes (Kaänga, Ka-Zar, Sheena, Rulah, Jo-Jo/Congo King, Thun’da, Tarzan) with art by LOU FINE, WILL EISNER, FRANK FRAZETTA, MATT BAKER, BOB POWELL, ALEX SCHOMBURG, and others! Plus: the comicbook career of reallife jungle explorers MARTIN AND OSA JOHNSON, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!

#191 is an FCA (FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA) issue! Documenting the influence of MAC RABOY’s Captain Marvel Jr. on the life, career, and look of ELVIS PRESLEY during his stellar career, from the 1950s through the 1970s! Plus: Captain Marvel co-creator BILL PARKER’s complete testimony from the DC vs. Fawcett lawsuit, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and other surprises!

DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES! A who’s who of artists of NEIL GAIMAN’s The Sandman plus a GAIMAN interview, Sandman Mystery Theatre’s MATT WAGNER and STEVEN T. SEAGLE, Dr. Strange’s nemesis Nightmare, Marvel’s Sleepwalker, Casper’s horse Nightmare, with SHELLY BOND, BOB BUDIANSKY, STEVE ENGLEHART, ALISA KWITNEY, and others! KELLEY JONES cover.

MARVELMANIA ISSUE! SAL BUSCEMA’s Avengers, FABIAN NICIEZA’s Captain America, and KURT BUSIEK and ALEX ROSS’s Marvels turns 30! Plus: Marvelmania International, Marvel Age, Marvel Classics, PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Marvel Novels, and Marvel Value Stamps. Featuring JACK KIRBY, KEVIN MAGUIRE, ROY THOMAS, and more! SAL BUSCEMA cover.

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #91

BIG BABY ISSUE! X-Babies, the last days of Sugar and Spike, FF’s Franklin Richards, Superbaby vs. Luthor, Dennis the Menace Bonus Magazine, Baby Snoots, Marvel and Harvey kid humor comics, & more! With ARTHUR ADAMS, CARY BATES, JOHN BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, SCOTT LOBDELL, SHELDON MAYER, CURT SWAN, ROY THOMAS, and other grownup creators. Cover by ARTHUR ADAMS.

BRONZE AGE NOT-READY-FORPRIMETIME DC HEROES! Black Canary, Elongated Man, Lilith, Metamorpho, Nubia, Odd Man, Ultraa of Earth-Prime, Vartox, and Jimmy Olsen as Mr. Action! Plus: Jason’s Quest! Featuring MIKE W. BARR, CARY BATES, STEVE DITKO, BOB HANEY, DENNY O’NEIL, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MARK WAID, and more ready-for-primetime talent. Retro cover by NICK CARDY.

THIS ISSUE IS HAUNTED! House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Unexpected, Marvel’s failed horror anthologies, Haunted Tank, Eerie Publications, House II adaptation, Elvira’s House of Mystery, and more wth NEAL ADAMS, MIKE W. BARR, DICK GIORDANO, SAM GLANZMAN, ROBERT KANIGHER, JOE ORLANDO, STERANKO, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and others. Unused cover by GARCÍA-LÓPEZ & WRIGHTSON.

BRONZE AGE GRAPHIC NOVELS! 1980s GNs from Marvel, DC, and First Comics, Conan GNs, and DC’s Sci-Fi GN series! With BRENT ANDERSON, JOHN BYRNE, HOWARD CHAYKIN, CHRIS CLAREMONT, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, JACK KIRBY, DON MCGREGOR, BOB McLEOD, BILL SIENKIEWICZ, JIM STARLIN, ROY THOMAS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and more. WRIGHTSON cover.

30th Anniversary issue, with KIRBY’S GREATEST VICTORIES! Jack gets the girl (wife ROZ), early hits Captain America and Boy Commandos, surviving WWII, romance comics, Captain Victory and the direct market, his original art battle with Marvel, and finally winning credit! Plus MARK EVANIER, a colossal gallery of Kirby’s winningest pencil art, a never-reprinted SIMON & KIRBY story, and more!

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RETROFAN #34

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DAN JURGENS talks about Superman, Sun Devils, creating Booster Gold, developing the “Doomsday scenario” with the demise of the Man of Steel, and more! Traverse DON GLUT’s “Glutverse” continuity across Gold Key, Marvel, and DC! Plus RICK ALTERGOTT, we conclude our profiles of MIKE DEODATO, JR. and FRANK BORTH, LINDA SUNSHINE (editor of DC/Marvel hardcover super-hero collections), & more!

An in-depth look at the life and career of writer/editor DENNY O’NEIL, and part one of a career-spanning interview with ARNOLD DRAKE, co-creator of The Doom Patrol and Deadman! Plus the story behind Studio Zero, the ’70s collective of JIM STARLIN, FRANK BRUNNER, ALAN WEISS, and others! Warren horror mag writer/ historian JACK BUTTERWORTH, alternative cartoonist TIM HENSLEY, & more!

TOM PALMER retrospective, career-spanning interview, and tributes compiled by GREG BIGA. LEE MARRS chats about assisting on Little Orphan Annie, work for DC’s Plop! and underground Pudge, Girl Blimp! The start of a multi-part look at the life and career of DAN DIDIO, part two of our ARNOLD DRAKE interview, public service comics produced by students at the CENTER FOR CARTOON STUDIES, & more!

Take a ride with CHiPs’ ERIK ESTRADA and LARRY WILCOX! Plus: an interview with movie Hercules STEVE REEVES, WeirdOhs cartoonist BILL CAMPBELL, Plastic Man on Saturday mornings, TINY TIM, Remo Williams, the search for a Disney artist, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Saturday morning super-hero Space Ghost, plus The Beatles, The Jackson 5ive, and other real rockers in animation! Also: The Addams Family’s JOHN ASTIN, Mighty Isis co-stars JOANNA PANG and BRIAN CUTLER, TV’s The Name of the Game, on the set of Evil Dead II, classic coffee ads, and more! With ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, MARK VOGER & MICHAEL EURY.

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ALTER EGO #188

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #88

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JOHN ROMITA tribute issue! Podcast recollections recorded shortly after the Jazzy One’s passing by JOHN ROMITA JR., JIM STARLIN, STEVE ENGLEHART, BRIAN PULIDO, ROY THOMAS, JAIMIE JAMESON, JOHN CIMINO, STEVE HOUSTON, & NILE SCALA; DAVID ARMSTRONG’s mini-interview with Romita; John Romita’s ten greatest hits; plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, & more!

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!

KIRBY CONSPIRACIES! Darkseid’s Foourth World palace intrigue, the too-many attempted overthrows of Odin, why Stan Lee hated Diablo, Kang contradictions, Simon & Kirby swipes, a never-reprinted S&K story, MARK EVANIER’s WonderCon 2023 Kirby Tribute Panel (with MARV WOLFMAN, PAUL S. LEVINE, and JOHN MORROW), an extensive Kirby pencil art gallery, and more!

WHAT IF KIRBY... hadn’t been stopped by his rejected Spider-Man presentation? DC’s abandonment of the Fourth World? The ill-fated Speak-Out Series? FREDRIC WERTHAM’s anti-comics crusade? The CIA’s involvement with the Lord of Light? Plus a rare Kirby interview, MARK EVANIER and our other columnists, a classic Simon & Kirby story, pencil art gallery, & more! Cover inks by DAMIAN PICKADOR ZAJKO!

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DOUBLE-SIZE ANNIVERSARY ISSUE! The Marvel side includes mini-interviews with JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, JIM MOONEY, and GEORGE TUSKA—plus “STAN LEE’S Dinner with ALAIN RESNAIS” annotated by SEAN HOWE! On the DC side: talks with CARMINE INFANTINO, JOHN BROOME, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JOE KUBERT, & MURPHY ANDERSON—plus a GARDNER FOX photo-feature, and more!

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Meet the Bionic Duo, LEE MAJORS and LINDSAY WAGNER! Plus: Hot Wheels: The Early Years, Fantastic Four cartoons, Modesty Blaise, Hostess snacks, TV Westerns, Movie Icons vs. the Axis Powers, the San Diego Chicken, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

STEVE GERBER biographical essay and collaborator insights, MARY SKRENES on co-creating Omega the Unknown, helping develop Howard the Duck, VAL MAYERIK cover and interview, ROY THOMAS reveals STAN LEE’s unseen EXCELSIOR! COMICS line, LINDA SUNSHINE (editor of early hardcover super-hero collections), more with MIKE DEODATO, and the concluding segment on FRANK BORTH!

LEGO MINIFIGURES! Customized minifigs by fans, designing the Disney minifigures from LEGO House, spotlight on minifig fan artist ROBERT8, and more! Plus, all our regular features: Nerding Out with BRICKNERD, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions by CHRISTOPHER DECK, BANTHA BRICKS: Fans of LEGO Star Wars, and Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS!

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BACK ISSUE #150

Our oversized 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR sesquicentennial edition, featuring BATMEN OF THE 1970s! Exploring the work of Bronze Age Batman artists BOB BROWN, DICK GIORDANO, IRV NOVICK, FRANK ROBBINS, WALTER SIMONSON, ALEX TOTH, and BERNIE WRIGHTSON. Plus: revisit FRANK MILLER’s first Batman story!