Alter Ego #22 by TwoMorrows Publishing

BILL EVERETT & JOE KUBERT INTERVIEWED BY

GIL & NEAL KANE ADAMS

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No. 22 March 2003

DAN ADKINS ROSS ANDRU DICK AYERS CARL BURGOS JOHN BUSCEMA SAL BUSCEMA GENE COLAN DAN DeCARLO AL FELDSTEIN PAUL GUSTAVSON LLOYD JACQUET JACK KIRBY RUDY LAPICK BOB POWELL MIKE SEKOWSKY JOHN SEVERIN MARIE SEVERIN AL WILLIAMSON WALLY WOOD MICHAEL T. GILBERT LANDON CHESNEY BILL SCHELLY JIM AMASH ROY THOMAS & MORE!!

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(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “AllInterview Issue”! Part 2 of an exclusive STEVE ENGLEHART interview (continued from ALTER EGO #103)! “Pro2Pro” interviews between SIMONSON & LARSEN, MOENCH & WEIN, and comics letterers KLEIN & CHIANG. Plus JOHN OSTRANDER, MICHAEL USLAN, and longtime DC color artist ADRIENNE ROY! Cover by Englehart collaborator MARSHALL ROGERS!

“Gods!” Takes an in-depth look at WALTER SIMONSON’s Thor, the Thunder God in the Bronze Age, “Pro2Pro” interview with TOM DeFALCO and RON FRENZ, Hercules: Prince of Power, Moondragon, Three Ways to End the New Gods Saga, exclusive interview with fantasy writer MICHAEL MOORCOCK, art and commentary by GERRY CONWAY, JACK KIRBY, BOB LAYTON, and more, with a swingin’ Thor cover by SIMONSON!

“Liberated Ladies” eyeing female characters that broke barriers in the Bronze Age: Big Barda, Valkyrie, Ms. Marvel, Phoenix, Savage She-Hulk, and the sword-wielding Starfire. Plus a “Pro2Pro” interview with JILL THOMPSON, GAIL SIMONE, and BARBARA KESEL, art and commentary by JOHN BYRNE, GEORGE PEREZ, JACK KIRBY, MIKE VOSBURG, and more, with a new cover by BRUCE TIMM!

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THE BEST IN COMICS AND LEGO MAGAZINES!

ALTER EGO #105

ALTER EGO #106

ALTER EGO #107

ALTER EGO #108

DRAW! #22

See comic art and script BEFORE and AFTER the Comics Code changes, with art by SIMON & KIRBY, DITKO, BUSCEMA, SINNOTT, GOULD, COLE, STERANKO, KRIGSTEIN, O’NEIL, GLANZMAN, ORLANDO, WILLIAMSON, HEATH, and others! Plus: FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, BILL SCHELLY, JIM AMASH interviews Timely/Atlas artist CAL MASSEY, and a new cover by JOSH MEDORS!

DICK GIORDANO through the 1960s—from freelance years and Charlton “Action-Heroes” to his first stint at DC! Art by DITKO, APARO, BOYETTE, MORISI, McLAUGHLIN, GIL KANE, and others, Dick’s final convention panel with STEVE SKEATES and ROY THOMAS, JIM AMASH interviews Charlton artist TONY TALLARICO, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and ROY ALD, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, GIORDANO cover, and more!

Big BATMAN issue, with an unused Golden Age cover by DICK SPRANG! SHEL DORF interviews SPRANG and JIM MOONEY, with rare and unseen Batman art by BOB KANE, JERRY ROBINSON, WIN MORTIMER, SHELLY MOLDOFF, CHARLES PARIS, and others! Part II of the TONY TALLARICO interview by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

1970s Bullpenner WARREN REECE talks about Marvel Comics and working with EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, STAN LEE, MARIE SEVERIN, ADAMS, FRIEDRICH, ROY THOMAS, and others, with rare art! DEWEY CASSELL spotlights Golden Age artist MIKE PEPPE, with art by TOTH, ANDRU, TUSKA, CELARDO, & LUBBERS, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, cover by EVERETT & BURGOS, and more!

Interview with inker SCOTT WILLIAMS from his days at Marvel and Image to his work with JIM LEE, and PATRICK OLIFFE demos how he produces Spider-Girl, Mighty Samson, and digital comics. Also, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

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LEE & KIRBY: THE WONDER YEARS (KIRBY COLLECTOR #58)

Special double-size book examines the first decade of the FANTASTIC FOUR, and the events that put into motion the Marvel Age of Comics! New interviews with STAN LEE, FLO STEINBERG, MARK EVANIER, JOE SINNOTT, and others, with a wealth of historical information and Kirby artwork!

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KIRBY COLLECTOR #59

BRICKJOURNAL #17

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BRICKJOURNAL #19

“Kirby Vault!” Rarities from the “King” of comics: Personal correspondence, private photos, collages, rare Marvelmania art, bootleg album covers, sketches, transcript of a 1969 VISIT TO THE KIRBY HOME (where Jack answers the questions YOU’D ask in ‘69), MARK EVANIER, pencil art from the FOURTH WORLD, CAPTAIN AMERICA, MACHINE MAN, SILVER SURFER GRAPHIC NOVEL, and more!

LEGO SPACE WAR issue! A STARFIGHTER BUILDING LESSON by Peter Reid, WHY SPACE MARINES ARE SO POPULAR by Mark Stafford, a trip behind the scenes of LEGO’S NEW ALIEN CONQUEST SETS that hit store shelves earlier this year, plus JARED K. BURKS’ column on MINIFIGURE CUSTOMIZATION, building tips, event reports, our step-by-step “YOU CAN BUILD IT” INSTRUCTIONS, and more!

Go to Japan with articles on two JAPANESE LEGO FAN EVENTS, plus take a look at JAPAN’S SACRED LEGO LAND, Nasu Highland Park—the site of the BrickFan events and a pilgrimage site for many Japanese LEGO fans. Also, a feature on JAPAN’S TV CHAMPIONSHIP OF LEGO, a look at the CLICKBRICK LEGO SHOPS in Japan, plus how to get into TECHNIC BUILDING, LEGO EDUCATION, and more!

LEGO EVENTS ISSUE covering our own BRICKMAGIC FESTIVAL, BRICKWORLD, BRICKFAIR, BRICKCON, plus other events outside the US. There’s full event details, plus interviews with the winners of the BRICKMAGIC CHALLENGE competition, complete with instructions to build award winning models. Also JARED K. BURKS’ regular column on minifigure customizing, building tips, and more!

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Vol. 3, No. 22 / March 2003

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Editor Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout Christopher Day

Consulting Editors John Morrow Jon B. Cooke

FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck

Comic Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus Jerry Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White, Mike Friedrich

Production Assistant Eric Nolen-Weathington

Cover Artists/Colorists Bill Everett C.C. Beck

Mailing Crew Russ Garwood, Glen Musial, Ed Stelli, Pat Varker, Loston Wallace

And Special Thanks to: Neal Adams Heather Antonelli Boris Aplon Bob Bailey Dennis Beaulieu Blake Bell Jack Bender John Benson Bill Black Jerry K. Boyd Frank Bresee Tom Brevoort Mike Burkey Diego Ceresa Russ Cochran Bob Cosgrove Rich Danny Teresa R. Davidson Al Dellinges Shel Dorf Linda S. Downey Jack Elmy Don Ensign Mark Evanier Wendy Everett Al Feldstein Keif Fromm Grant Geissman Joe Gill Jason Gillespie Ron Goulart James P. Greiss The Guys at The Mint David G. Hamilton Jim Harmon Bill Harper

Ron Harris Gary Patrick Hart Mark & Stephanie Heike Hal Higdon Roger Hill Elaine Kane Robert Knuist Joe Kubert Rudy Lapick Mitch Lee Jon Lundin Don Mangus Simon Miller Fred Mommsen Matt Moring Pete Morisi Brian K. Morris Karl Nelson Jerry Ordway James Plunkett Richard Pryor Rich Rubenfeld Carole Seuling Gwen Seuling Mike Shields Robin Snyder Bill Spicer Kevin Stawieray Marc Swayze Dann Thomas Mort Todd Alex Toth Michael J. Vassallo Hames Ware John Wells Bob Wiener

Bill Everett & Friends Section

Contents Writer/Editorial: “It Is an Ancient Mariner” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Four of a Kind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Bill Everett & Joe Kubert interviewed by Gil Kane & Neal Adams in 1970! Prince Namor, the Sub-MaREENer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Roy Thomas on his nearly 60-year love affair with Bill Everett’s aquatic creation—with art by the Buscemas, the Severins, and other great Namor delineators.

InJackSearch of Lloyd Jacquet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Elmy on his quest for information about the mysterious founder of Funnies, Inc.! Lapick of the Litter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Jim Amash interviews Golden Age Timely inker Rudy Lapick about his life and times. Landon Chesney (1938-–2001) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Bill Schelly, Jason Gillespie, and Bill Spicer on a major artist of 1960s fandom. The Incredible Mystery of the “Lost” EC Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Michael T. Gilbert re-examines a couple of Wally Wood’s little-known landmarks. Captains Courageous! Section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: In 1947, after an exhaustive (and doubtless exhausting) effort, young future novelist and comics historian Ron Goulart finally got Bill Everett to draw an illustration of The Sub-Mariner for him. In fact, Bill rendered it in color, and even worked in his apology for the delay! Ron says he sold the piece years back, alas, long before it commanded the price it did recently when collector Mike Shields purchased it. We thank Mike for sharing this sunken treasure with us—and Ron for getting Wild Bill to draw it in the first place! [Art ©2003 Estate of Bill Everett; Sub-Mariner TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Above: Ye Editor feels strongly that, groundbreaking as the first 2-3 years of “Sub-Mariner” were before Bill Everett went into the Army after Pearl Harbor, his Namor artwork reached its peak in the 1950s. This panel from Young Men #26 (March ’54), Bill’s third outing during the 1953-55 Timely super-hero revival, is reproduced from photocopies of the original art. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.] Alter EgoTM is published monthly by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. Phone: (919) 833-8092. Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: Rt. 3, Box 468, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $8 ($10 Canada, $11 elsewhere). Twelve-issue subscriptions: $60 US, $120 Canada, $132 elsewhere. 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 Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

Title writer/editorial

“It Is An Ancient Mariner...” No, I’m not gonna launch into paeans of praise for the late great Bill Everett again, much as I feel like doing so. Marie Severin and Ramona Fradon skewered me pretty good on that score on their marvelous cover for Alter Ego #16. Still, re-reading the text of Gil Kane interviewing Bill at a New York convention for the first time in more than thirty years did remind me of what remains, and what has been taken away. Bill passed away less than three years after that July 1970 luncheon... Gil nearly thirty years later. Yet their words, their images, their contribution to the comic art form remain... alongside those of Joe Kubert and Neal Adams, who shared that luncheon with them and the also-departed Phil Seuling. I was surprised to find even my own hyperactive self quoted in that interview, piping up from the audience to say my two-bits’ worth about a question put to Bill, and play just a mite to the Peanut Gallery. I’m not exaggerating, in my article herein, about my affection for Bill’s hero, The Sub-Mariner... either for the character himself, or for the way his best artists and writers have handled him over the years. In my couple of stints on Namor, I probably didn’t do as well by him as I should have, but I tried. And if it’s been a decade or two since I really followed what the latest young hotshot was doing with the “deep-sea avenger”—well, at some stage, you’ve just gotta let go. I prefer to think of The Sub-Mariner pretty much as he was in the 1940s, and in the ’50s, and to some extent in the ’60s and ’70s... and I don’t care much about what’s been done with him since, good, bad, or ugly. If you do care, more power to you. There’s plenty to do examining what Bill Everett and Carl Pfeufer (who’s actually covered in this issue for his Tom Mix work more than for his Sub-Mariner) and comic-shop entrepreneur Lloyd Jacquet and others did with the character during his first thirty or forty years. Let somebody else pick up the slack from there. We’ve got enough to do. “It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three.” I’m just glad I was one of the ones that Bill Everett stopped—first as a child in the 1940s, then as a teenager in the ’50s, and again in the 1960s when, lo and behold, he turned out to be real flesh and blood, after all, behind that fancy signature and that wonderful writing and artwork. They’re all flesh and blood, behind the words and the drawings. Let’s keep on trying to find out what they were/are like, and why and how they did what they did. I’ll keep at it if you will. Bestest,

A splash page from Sub-Mariner #22 (Spring 1947). Certainly not Bill Everett. Probably not Carl Pfeufer or Lee Elias, either. So who? Syd Shores? Possibly. Mike Sekowsky? Maybe. Or maybe two or three or even more artists pitched in for a jam session, to beat a deadline. And naturally we have no idea who wrote the story. But collector Matt Moring kindly sent us this scan... and even if the art is by that muchmaligned artist known as “Anonymous,” it’s still worth printing. Like the other great super-heroes, The Sub-Mariner is bigger than those who have written and drawn his adventures. Who made up Paul Bunyan? [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Monthly! Edited and published by Robin Snyder

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• At last! Special section on the aces of MLJ/ARCHIE, from the ’40s to the ’70s! • Golden Age artist BOB (“FUJE”) FUJITANI interviewed by JIM AMASH! Lots of rare Hangman art—plus Airboy, Dr. Solar, Shock Gibson, et al.! • Silver Age spotlight on Fly & Jaguar artist JOHN ROSENBERGER! • Archie editor VICTOR GORELICK on The Mighty Crusaders & beyond— with art by GRAY MORROW, RICH BUCKLER, PAUL REINMAN, & others! • MICHAEL T. GILBERT presents some truly rare work by JOE SIMON & JACK KIRBY! • FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with C.C. BECK, MARC SWAYZE, BILL PARKER, & SHELLY MOLDOFF—ALEX TOTH returns!—BILL SCHELLY on 1960s comics fandom— ROY THOMAS on the All-Star Squadron—& MORE!! Edited by ROY THOMAS • Now 108 PAGES!

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Four Of A Kind

Four Of A Kind BILL EVERETT & JOE KUBERT Interviewed By GIL KANE & NEAL ADAMS July 1970

Bill Everett (left) and Joe Kubert (right), at the 1970 “power luncheon.” They’re flanked here by exquisite examples of their art—courtesy, respectively, of Rich Rubenfeld and Jim Amash. [Art ©2003 Estate of Bill Everett & ©2003 Joe Kubert, respectively; Sub-Mariner TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Hawkman TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

[A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: During the decade-plus period from the late 1960s through the early 1980s when Phil Seuling’s New York Comic Art Conventions over July 4th weekends were the biggest held anywhere, our amiable host had a practice of holding a special luncheon on one day of each convention. One or more major guests would lunch on the dais with Phil, while other conventioneers—inevitably including pros as well as fans—ate at other tables. After lunch, Phil would either interview the guests, or have someone else do the honors. In 1970 he did a super-talent tag-team, inviting artist Gil Kane to interview writer-artist Bill Everett, creator of “The Sub-Mariner,” “Amazing-Man,” and other features, with relative artistic newcomer Neal Adams there to ask questions of one of his idols, Joe Kubert, known especially for his work on “Hawkman,” Tor, and DC’s war comics. The interview was later edited by John Benson and was printed in the 1971 convention’s program book. All photos accompanying this reprint of that interview are from the latter. Thanks to John Benson and to Phil Seuling’s daughters Gwen and Heather—and for that matter to Joe and Neal—for their blessing to re-present the interview... and to Fred Mommsen for supplying a pristine copy of the program book so we could get the best photo reproduction possible at this late date. Special thanks, too, to Carole Seuling, for putting us in touch with Fred, Gwen, and Heather... and to Joe, Neal, Wendy Everett, Elaine Kane, and John Benson for their blessing re this re-publication. —Roy.]

Bill Everett & Joe Kubert Interviewed By Gil Kane & Neal Adams GIL KANE: It’s my privilege to introduce Bill Everett. Bill was one of my original inspirations... and the thing that I always thought of in connection with Bill was, he was an artist of great facility, but more than that, he was an unparalleled storyteller.

actually had only two years of art training, and I didn’t really have that. I was credited with two years of training because I got through three years in about a year and a half, and this was only due to an inborn talent and drive. I had to get somewhere fast. That’s about the size of my formal training. I think that anything else was just an innate talent and a desire to put things on paper.

I think that, for instance, in Aman, the Amazing-Man, he did one of the most remarkable jobs of telling a story. You could follow the action so perfectly from panel to panel. The dynamic storytelling, the tension buildup, the action, the continuity of movement: all of these things were done so beautifully that you didn’t realize you were looking at single frames. There was just this feeling of continuity all the way through. And, of course, when he started to do “Sub-Mariner,” why, he was virtually at the peak of his capacity as a storyteller, and he did absolutely brilliant stuff. Regrettably, he hasn’t done much work on “Sub-Mariner” since that time. Bill was the best artist on “Sub-Mariner” because he had the best feeling for the character, and the character had a life and personality all its own that it never had for anyone else. And it was in that certain storytelling quality and that special characterization that Bill really rose above most of the other artists in comics. Bill, what is your background? What sort of art education did you have?

KANE: You were always, in my estimation, one of the best writers that comics ever produced. The writing on the Amazing-Man was just superb. And I thought Sub-Mariner was one of the great character creations in comics. It was the first time someone attempted to do a leading character who was a villain, but still attractive, you know; he created the tension in the feud with The Human Torch. Were you interested in pulps? Were you interested in movies? What shaped your taste in stories? EVERETT: I knew Gil was going to ask me some tough ones, and this is a tough one to answer. I came into the comic Centaur’s Amazing-Man Comics, the first comic book named business almost by accident, by necessity. I after a super-hero, started with #5, picking up the had done some writing; but as far as my numbering of an earlier mag. Issue #11 sports the best of inspiration, if I were to use that term, I Everett’s covers for the title, near the end of his tenure, don’t know that I really had any. I was as he elected to devote himself to Timely Comics and “The Sub-Mariner.” Thanks to Pete Morisi for the color sort-of led into cartooning by my father’s photocopy from his own (obviously well-read) copy. wish. He always wanted me to be a [©2003 the respective copyright holder.] cartoonist, and he died, unfortunately, before he saw that come true. But that probably was in back of the whole thing.

BILL EVERETT: First, I want to thank everybody here for the honor of sitting at this table. Without you people I don’t think we’d amount to too much today. Certainly not what we are. To answer Gil’s question, my formal art training was never complete. I have to first state that I was born with this talent and can take no credit for it. If I take any credit at all, it’s in having been able to do something with it. I’ve had a pencil in my hand almost all my life. I

Gil Kane (at left) interviews Bill Everett. At right is Gil’s cover for The Invaders #24 (Jan. 1978), which fronted for a reprinting of the first Namor/Human Torch team-up (as opposed to battle) by Everett and Carl Burgos, from Marvel Mystery Comics #17 (March 1941). Inks by Frank Giacoia. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

As far as storytelling is concerned, I read a great deal when I was very young, through junior high school and high school. I read what was then considered the deeper novels, the high-class literature. I didn’t go much for pulp material. I didn’t even read the daily comics. My education was very limited. I dropped out of high school; I dropped out of the art school, as well. I had to make up for this in reading, and I wanted to be a writer. But if I had any idol at all, it would have been Jack London. I

Four Of A Kind (Left:) When Gil Kane was invited by editor Jon B. Cooke to draw the cover of Comic Book Artist #2, he responded with an illo that depicted Amazing-Man holding in his hands Gil’s own co-creations Adam Warlock and the 1968revamped Captain Marvel, because he felt that both (even more so Iron Fist!) owed something to Bill Everett’s first super-hero. This is Gil’s pencil layout; you can see the finished color cover in The Comic Book Artist Collection, Vol. One, available from TwoMorrows. The note on the layout faxed to A/E’s editor, hard to read here, says: “Roy—This is my rough for Amazing Man— Gil.” [Art ©2003 Estate of Gil Kane; Warlock & Captain Marvel TM & ©Marvel Characters, Inc.; Amazing-Man ©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

liked the way he told a story. And I figured that, rather than try to be the greatest novelist of all time, I would attempt merely to tell a story in the simplest terms that I could summon, that I could utilize. And I think that this showed up in the early writing, as Gil mentioned, in the Amazing-Man series—which is a little amusing; I think a lot of you people remember a lot more about it than I do. Unfortunately, I didn’t stay with the strip long enough to get very deeply involved. I was permitted, however, almost complete leeway on what I did with it, and it was a chance to express myself by using Amazing-Man as, if Roy Thomas will forgive the expression, my alter ego... a chance to just put down on paper and write about myself, had I been able to do what I’d like to have been. And this again evolved into “The Sub-Mariner.” I am only recently beginning to learn that there was more to my writing of “The Sub-Mariner” than I actually thought at the time. He was an angry character, and I probably expressed some of my own personality. But, again, at least in the origin of The Sub-Mariner, in the beginning of it, I was allowed full expression. There were no limitations set by editors, no limitations set by publishers, no limitations set by anyone, art directors or others. And this was a case where an artist or an artist-writer could freely express himself. And if you had something to

(Right:) Talk about buried treasures! Collector Mort Todd writes: “While helping Gene Colan archive his original art collection, I came across this piece on the back of an Everett-inked issue of a Colan Captain America (#136). It’s a neat color pencil over ink drawing of a smoking Steve Rogers contemplating his mask and a new wetsuit design for Cap ‘à lá Black Widow,’ as Everett writes. Unfortunately, some of the art is clipped off, because the only place to make color copies in Colan’s Vermont hometown would not allow DIY (do it yourself) copying, and the attendant couldn’t get it centered right.” We’ll take what we can get, Mort—and thanks for sharing it with us. For the record, the costume’s hood, belt, gloves, boots, and top third of the “A” chest symbol are red, the rest blue except for the white “A” on the hood and a white stripe across the middle of the chest “A.” Dunno about you, but Ye Editor’d just as soon think that “A” stood for “Amazing-Man”! Interestingly, the blond hair notwithstanding, the artist drew Steve Rogers looking more like a slightly younger Bill Everett than like any Steve Rogers ever depicted by Simon and Kirby, Gene Colan, or whomever. The cigarette, an ever-present prop of Bill’s, is, methinks, the clue that this is at least partly a self-portrait. Bill would naturally have thought of The Black Widow, since he inked Gene Colan’s pencils of her first black-wetsuit appearance in 1970-71 issues of Amazing Adventures. Incidentally, though the sketches are dated “1971,” since that would’ve been the year in which Steverino might’ve worn his suggested new C.A. gear, a stamp at the bottom right indicates that the Comics Code reviewed the Captain America art on the reverse side in November of 1970. [Art ©2003 Estate of Bill Everett.]

Bill Everett & Joe Kubert Interviewed By Gil Kane & Neal Adams

form our service to supply a package deal to the publisher. In other words, we would provide the story, the complete artwork as an entire 32or 48-page book. I think we were doing 32 pages then. [NOTE: Nope—it was 64! See p. 24 for more about Lloyd Jacquet and Funnies, Inc.]

tell which was worthwhile, this was an outlet for it. Unfortunately, business was very good at the time, and we didn’t realize what it would eventually lead to. A great many of us could have done more with it, had we had the foresight. We didn’t. KANE: During the ’30s, most comics were not sold directly to publishers, but through agents. Will Eisner was an agent. In fact, that’s one of the ways comics started: they ran out of syndicate material to reprint. A lot of the syndicates had their own comic books, so that peripheral publishers who would like to get into it were desperate for material. So they would get somebody like Will Eisner who said that he would produce it for the same rate that they were buying reprint material. And of course they thought that they were getting watered-down stuff, and they didn’t realize that they would simply pass the reprint material by in no time at all. And it was at that time that Bill, along with Carl Burgos and several other artists, formed an organization called Funnies, Incorporated, which was one of the early agencies. It was through Funnies, Inc., that a lot of the characters like SubMariner, The Human Torch, and so forth were created. Bill was one of the prime movers, one of the creative forces at that agency.

The Sub-Mariner and his cousin Dorma don underwater gas-masks as they head off to stop the Nazis from capturing a French island possession in Marvel Mystery Comics #13 (Oct. 1940), repro’d here from photocopies of the original art. When this summer-on-sale story was written and drawn, the Germans may not yet have launched their Blitzkrieg against western Europe... but Bill, Namor, and Timely Comics had already taken to Axis-bashing early and often! Sub-Mariner’s sub-Antarctic people (not yet Atlanteans), like populations in France and Britain, feared attacks using poison gas left over from the First World War.

We started out as a very small business, which rapidly built. And one of our first customers was Martin Goodman, who at the time published Timely Comics, which eventually became Marvel, as you know. And we had a “salesman”—you can put that in quotes, we had a “contact man”—who went out and contacted other publishers, such as Curtis Publishing Company, and negotiated other contracts to produce work for them. And this is the way Funnies was started: just a handful of guys who wanted to get out from under the publisher and to concentrate on story material and art material with absolutely no restrictions; and the publisher would buy it just the way it was, and what he did with it after we sold it, we didn’t much care.

However, this couldn’t work very long, because Note that one of Namor’s subjects is called “Toro.” Human Torch #1 (Fall 1940), on sale around we represented a middlethe same time, would introduce the Torch’s kid partner of that name. It’s tempting to wonder man, which meant that if Torch creator Carl Burgos saw the name in Bill’s story at the Jacquet studio and borrowed it... the publisher had to pay since Toro (Spanish for “bull”) is hardly an inevitable name for a flaming youngster. extra to get what he Another Marvel mystery! [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.] wanted. He soon discovered this, and the agencies were eliminated because it was an additional cost to the publisher. In a way it was unfortunate, because it was a wonderful means Would you like to tell a little about how those agencies worked, how of expression for the individual artist. We had quite a staff at Funnies. that particular agency got together, and what was the role of Jacquet in The office staff was small, but we had a great many freelance writers and that agency? freelance artists contributing to us. And the writers did some pretty sensational stuff. Because it was new, it was original, and it was different. EVERETT: To begin with, I had been at Centaur Publications [John Harley], and Lloyd Jacquet [pronounced ja-KAY] at that time was their editor, or managing editor, and he felt the need to break loose and form his own company of some sort. So a few of us banded together: Lloyd Jacquet, Carl Burgos, myself, Paul Gustavson, Ben Thompson, a few other people, and we decided that we would sort-of go on our own and

KANE: One thing that becomes apparent as you look back over the earlier stuff was that different organizations started to develop their own personalities almost immediately. For instance, almost from the beginning, National Comics [DC] was more reserved in their characters.

Four Of A Kind Bill Everett at the 1970 con, flanked by The Fin, his second “aqua-man,” who appeared in Timely’s Daring Mystery Comics #7-8 and Comedy Comics #9 in 1941-42—and his third, Hydroman, who could turn himself into H2O and flow through fire-hoses, water pipes, and faucets in Eastern Color’s Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics #1-29 (1940-45), though Bill drew only the early issues. (Marvel’s villainous Hydroman of recent years was clearly inspired by Bill’s.) The Fin’s third and final 1940s appearance was reprinted in the indispensable trade paperback The Golden Age of Marvel, Volume 2, in 1999; thanks to Dennis Beaulieu for the art spot at left. [The Fin TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Hydroman ©2003 the respective copyright holders.]

Their characters weren’t as flamboyant, and they had a variety of characters who were more like duplications of syndicate strip characters. And even with the arrival of Superman and Batman they didn’t proliferate super-characters the way you might have thought they would. On the other hand, Will Eisner had an entirely different quality of material; it was a recognizable style. Even if you didn’t recognize the artist, you could tell that it was published by this particular company. Well, of course, the same thing was true about Funnies, Inc. The great thing about Funnies was that when they found the super-hero they didn’t stop; they just kept on going as though they had found a downhill course and it was just no pedaling all the way home. They did some remarkable things. And Bill himself, after “The Sub-Mariner,” did “The Fin” and several other characters which had some of the same pitch, the same excitement and glamour of the Torch and The Sub-Mariner, which are really classic creations.

deeply into this; it’s a long story. There are a few articles coming out which will discuss it in detail. Actually, the idea of combining two major characters under one story was not original. I really don’t remember, exactly, how it actually did come about. We were faced with the project of a commission to do a semiannual book of 64 pages, and the big question, editorially, was, “What will we put in this type of book?” And going through the various characters that we had established—The Angel, the Torch, Sub-Mariner, and all the rest of them—the only two things that made any sense, the two most powerful characters were The Human Torch and The Sub-Mariner. And since one represented water and the other represented fire, it was a natural thing to have combat between the elements. If I’m making it sound simple, it wasn’t. It was very complicated— how to introduce the characters to one another, how to get them involved in a situation which would create a “historical” battle. It was rather intricate. We had a lot of fun doing it; it was a sort of party time. But it was heck of a lot of work, and a lot of people were involved. The story of its actual writing is an episode in itself, and it had its amusing moments. But it was a tremendous amount of work, which we accomplished in a very few days—literally, the whole book was produced in a matter of about five days, but it took a lot of people to do it. It was successful, and I think that just because the nature of the characters themselves represented the two opposing elements, it just had to be successful. KANE: I always thought that Amazing-Man was so well supported that in many ways it could measure up against some of the things that Philip Wylie did [in his 1930 novel Gladiator]. And Sub-Mariner, too,

And all the artists, like Paul Gustavson—they all had this feeling of movement and excitement. They had a kind of pulp feel which was quite special and quite different from the illustrative quality of Eisner and the rather stately quality of National. Funnies had an excitement which to some extent is still the standard. I can’t believe that Stan Lee could have been unaffected by all of this material, and to some extent he still carries through all of this quality, a sense of headlong excitement. How did you develop the feud between The SubMariner and The Human Torch? It seems like a natural thing now, but it was the first time that I remember characters overlapping their strips in adventure comics and doing their thing together. EVERETT: I don’t know if you want to get too

Bill Everett & Joe Kubert Interviewed By Gil Kane & Neal Adams

person, any person, any reader. I would try to create my writing and my storytelling, structure it so that anyone at any level of intelligence could enjoy it. I consider comics part of the entertainment field, and I think that people need to be entertained, regardless of whether they’re looking for a message, something deep, or not. And I think the best way to entertain someone is to present your creation in a way that someone can readily and easily understand, without being too complicated. I think, if anything, in the beginning of the comic book business this was what the writers and what the artists interpreted—a basic story, a plot, a simple storytelling, and all of them I think without exception used this format. And it was successful. Oh, we never got wealthy on it, but it was the nucleus of a booming business, and I think that if I had to do it again, I’d do it exactly the way I did it in the first place, which is simply to tell a story, but to do it as well as I possibly could, as simply as I possibly could. I really think—if you want to get into it, and I don’t want to get into it too deeply—I think that what has been happening lately is, we’re getting too deeply involved in some of the stories being put out by all the publishers. We’ve gotten ourselves so involved that we feel we have to carry a message of some sort; and I don’t think this is true, necessarily true. In writing to entertain people, I think we ought to give them what they want, because it is a business. I think that the writer as a creative person should be allowed to express himself, but to do it in a way that everyone can understand.

Gil Kane’s rough pencils for his own take on Sub-Mariner (above), from What If #3 (June ’77), and (at right) for a page from the second “Warlock” story, in Marvel Premiere #2 (May ’72)—with respective thanks to Tom Brevoort and David G. Hamilton. The What If epic, Adam Warlock’s origin from Marvel Premiere #1, plus two other tales wherein Gil took inspiration from Everett’s Amazing-Man (the revamping of Mar-Vell, a.k.a. Captain Marvel, and even more so the origin of Iron Fist), are currently on view in Marvel Visionaries: Gil Kane, a trade paperback collecting some of his best non-DC work. Gil is most remembered, of course, for his Silver Age Green Lantern and The Atom; his and Roy Thomas’ late-’80s adaptation of Wagner’s opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung received rave reviews in The Opera News, The New York Times, and elsewhere. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

was an unusual character. If you had, at this point, the freedom and the resources to do whatever it was that you wanted to do, which direction would you go and how would you approach your work? EVERETT: Oh, boy. I’ll go back to a short conversation I had with Al Williamson yesterday about this. We were talking about Amazing-Man; and I would love to see something like that done again. I would like to see it done in the same simple style that it was done originally, instead of going into all kinds of semantics and use of quotations and, oh, I don’t know, trying to “classify”—what’s the word I want?—trying to elevate the writing. To try to get down to the basic human writing: if I were given the opportunity to reinstate some of my original ideas that I had back in the ’40s, I would do it with this in mind. I would appeal to any

Four Of A Kind

After Namor swam off into the sunset in 1949, Bill Everett moved on to Marvel Boy (seen here from Astonishing #4, June 1951), Venus (#16, Oct. ’51), and even Subby again, during Timely’s super-hero Indian summer of 1953-55, as exemplified by his masterful retelling of Namor’s origin in Sub-Mariner #33 (April 1954). But Bill always maintained that he enjoyed nothing more than drawing the Timely/Atlas horror comics, as per these Stan Lee-scripted splash pages from Menace #2 (April ’53) and #5 (July ’53). Marvel editor-in-chief Roy Thomas was so enamored of the latter when he ran across b-&-w proofs of it circa 1970 that he had that story and character design utilized for the “hero” of Tales of the Zombie in 1973. Venus splash repro’d from photocopies of the original art; thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo for the Menace photocopies. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Bill Everett & Joe Kubert Interviewed By Gil Kane & Neal Adams

(Left to right:) Bill Everett, Joe Kubert, and Neal Adams pose for pics with their awards, after the luncheon. Plus, a dramatic splash from Tor, Vol. 1, #3—actually the fourth issue!—one of the stories Neal might’ve seen in the early 1950s. The contents of all six St. John issues of Tor/One Million Years Ago have recently been reprinted in two gorgeous Joe Kubert: Tor volumes from DC, both of which also include plenty of extras. [©2003 Joe Kubert.]

KANE: During these recent years when fandom has developed so vociferously, I’m sure you’ve been asked—if you were to advise those budding artists in the audience who want to find the secret of cartooning, the new route to the Indies—if they’re going to achieve success, or even acceptance, in this business, what would you advise? EVERETT: The basic thing is to have the talent to begin with, and to read as prolifically as possible. Read as much of the material that is being produced today, so that you have a basic foundation in it. And then, if you still have the desire to do it, you also must have a desire to work and work hard. It’s like anything else: you’re not going to make a go of it unless you are willing to put an awful lot of time, with very little money to begin with. You have to have a drive, an impetus, some sort of incentive to get into this business, because it’s not an easy business to break into. And unless you have the willingness to sacrifice a little bit... and I’m not preaching, but to me it’s a must. You’ve got to be able to fight all kinds of odds and be persevering and really expose yourself and not try to imitate. This was a beautiful part of the beginning of this field, too; we had nobody to imitate. All of us had idols in the daily comics, our Alex Raymonds, Milton Caniffs, and so forth, but we couldn’t very well imitate them because our field was another expression of what they were doing. Now, you’ve got to have this same feeling for adapting yourself to the methods of our field today, but doing it in your own way. If you have a belief in what you’re doing and the willingness to work for it, you can make it, whether you write, whether you illustrate, or whether you’re just a mechanical artist, such as an inker, who does no creative work. It’s still a good business to be in. So I would suggest first that you discover whether or not you have the talent, whether or not you have the desire there, if you’re going to work—then find someone to guide you in the right direction and just work like heck at it and you can make it. Thank you very much. [applause] PHIL SEULING: It gives me very great personal satisfaction to present this award, which reads, “1970 Comic Art Convention, to Bill Everett, for a career-long dedication to superior quality and imagination in the field of comic art.” [applause]

EVERETT: I just want to say in appreciation to everyone: it’s taken me approximately 33 years to get this, and I’m awfully grateful. Thanks very much. [applause] NEAL ADAMS: It’s my privilege today to introduce Joe Kubert. I’m going to give you a few personal experiences of mine that I’ve had in connection with Joe Kubert without his knowledge, and some with his knowledge. When I started reading comic books, I became an immediate, fantastic, dedicated fan of Joe’s. I’m younger than he is, obviously [laughter], but I really wouldn’t have to be, because he started at twelve and a half, and he got his first feature at fourteen, which kindof shakes me up. I was a semi-dedicated fan of Joe’s until I reached the age of eleven, when I read my first Tor comic book. That was one of the times in the history of this industry when writing and art came together to form an almost perfect piece of material. I look at it now, and it seems better today than most of the stuff that’s happening today. I was an Army brat; I was in Germany. And when we were coming back, I stopped at a newsstand in Ireland and picked up a 3-D comic book with Tor in it. It blew my mind. I don’t even remember the trip back; I just remember that book. Ever since then, I felt that if I could do anything anywhere near to what Joe has done, to me that would possibly be one of the greatest things that could ever happen to me. I had very few opportunities to meet Joe, because I really didn’t get into the field early. I had a syndicated strip before I got into comics. But I was given an opportunity to get in touch with Joe because somebody asked me who would be best for a particular job, and I suggested Joe, and I met him that way. I felt at that time, “What a way to meet a guy.

Four Of A Kind

He’s bound to be nice to me, because I helped him get a job.” And he was. But I learned later that Joe was the kind of guy that you didn’t have to do a favor for, for him to be nice to you. He’s the nicest guy in the world. There are an awful lot of nice people in comics, but Joe is just about the best. I soon started working for National, and I possibly got the greatest compliment I’ve ever received from anybody, because I respect Joe more than just about anybody. I handed a job to him Joe Kubert at the 1970 luncheon—and once—it was an “Enemy Ace.” He a typically artful Kubert “Enemy Ace” page from Star Spangled War Stories took about ten pages home on a #147 (Oct.-Nov. 1969), repro’d from weekend. I could see him doing ten a photocopy of the original art pages in a weekend, but he came in as printed in CFA-APA #46 on Monday and said to me, “It’s as (Dec. 1998); thanks to Don Mangus. if somebody had crawled into my The earliest Robert Kanigher/Joe mind.” Well, I was on air for a Kubert stories in this series are now week. I didn’t show it in my face, back in print—in the beautiful and I suppose I said, “Thank you,” hardcover book The Enemy Ace but nobody in the field could have Archives, Vol. 1.[©2003 DC Comics.] said anything better to me, ever, than that, and nobody will ever be able to say anything like that to me that will make me feel like that again. I have pages at home that I did when I was learning to be a cartoonist, about this caveman who was advanced for his time and who wanders about killing dinosaurs and pterodactyls, which looking amazingly like bad Joe Kubert, and I won’t ever let anybody see it, I suppose. But this is how much I appreciate this guy. Joe, I think that just about everybody would like to know how the Tor thing came about, how it developed, and what happened to it. JOE KUBERT: Thank you very much, Neal. Before I answer that,

though, I’d like to explain the kind of off-hand remark that Neal had made about setting me up for a job. It was the presentation of my work to someone whereby the Green Berets strip was given to me. It was something of a very high compliment. I’m rather floored by Neal’s presentation. I don’t know what the heck to say, but I’m very much flattered. Tor was an idea that came to mind, kind-of patterned after the Tarzan strip. I felt that the formula was a good one. I was in Germany at the time; I was in the Army. I was heading home, and I had made some preliminary sketches of a character that I felt might be applicable to things that were happening today—morality, ideas, ethics, and so on—and could be put down to their basics in a milieu of a Stone Age-type strip. I have gotten many letters to the effect that man did not exist during the age of the dinosaur. As a matter of fact, it’s a point that Neal has brought up, much to my chagrin, many times. However, I had done a certain amount of research on it, and no one can prove to me beyond any shadow of a doubt that there might not have been an overlapping of man existing in some form during the time of the dying-out of the dinosaurs. That’s my cop-out, anyway. But basically, that’s about how the strip started. I wrote the Tor strip. I did the original ideas and stories and so on.

A great Neal Adams sketch of some of the DC heroes with which he’s been most identified— and vice versa. Thanks to Karl Nelson, CFA-APA #37 (Spring 1995).[Art ©2003 Neal Adams; Deadman, Batman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

ADAMS: What impressed me so much about Tor was that all the analogies that Joe had made were

Bill Everett & Joe Kubert Interviewed By Gil Kane & Neal Adams

personal feelings. But back ten years ago and further back than that when, as Neal describes it, the war stories took on more of a personal emotional feeling rather than kill-kill-bang-bang; that was Bob Kanigher’s doing, and I think that any kudos that would come should come directly to him. Incidentally, before we go any further: apropos of Bill Everett here, I recall very distinctly, when I was about twelve or thirteen years old, when I was going to the High School of Music and Art (as a matter of fact, I had just started), one of the excursions with a guy by the name of Norman Maurer, who was my partner when I was putting out the Tor magazines, and who was going to school with me at the time—one of the many excursions we’d go on would be to drop in to see any one of the 25 different comic book publishing houses that were strewn all through New York, in addition to the places that Bill has described who were putting together material for publishers—Harry Chesler, Jerry Iger, and so forth. And there were these two kids, Norman and myself, and one of the guys that we would go up to religiously, to see and kind-of pester, was Lloyd Jacquet. We never got as far as seeing Bill; we couldn’t get in to see the hoi polloi. But we did get to see Lloyd, and our experience was... I think the experience of almost anybody who has been in the business is that when you’ve brought a piece of work to show any pro, invariably the guy would take, no matter how pressing a deadline he might be working on, he’d take all kinds of time out to sit and talk to you and explain. My experience has been that in this field there are the nicest bunch of guys that I have ever met.

[Above:] Some of Kubert’s earliest work was for Harvey Comics, as in this quasi-war story for All-New Comics #8 (May 1944)—repro’d from a photocopy of the art in CFA-APA #37 (Spring 1995); thanks to Hal Higdon. [Right:] In the 1960s, in tandem with writer/editor Bob Kanigher, Kubert proved himself one of the greatest war-comics artists ever, as evidenced by stories recently reprinted in The Sgt. Rock Archives, Vol. 1. Joe submitted the sketch at right for the San Diego Comic-Con program book in 1980; thanks to Shel Dorf. [All-New art ©2003 the respective copyright holder; Sgt. Rock art ©2003 Joe Kubert; Sgt. Rock TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

in kind-of a simplified form. They’re little human lessons in story form, and they set me thinking about what could be done in this field. When Joe got into the war books, it kind-of surprised me. And then I noticed that, just about the time Joe got into the war books, they started to change. Now, whether this was due to the fact that Joe got into it, I don’t know; but it took them out of people shooting other people down and being kissed by the pretty girl into real-life stories about what war seemed to be all about. Now times have changed. War is a whole different type of thing. But at that time I felt that an awful lot of advances were made in that particular field, and I credit a great deal of it to Joe, in spite of the fact that his editor Bob Kanigher had a lot to do with them. I’d like to know something about your association with Bob Kanigher on that material. KUBERT: Well, I would say about 95% of the direction and motivation of the stories that took on some sort of an anti-war tinge was really all of Bob Kanigher’s doing. He was the editor and he was the prime writer, I think, on most of the material that I had done. Within the last two or three years, the things that you see in the war magazines more or less reflect my own

ADAMS: Since Tor, Joe hasn’t had much opportunity to write much of anything. Now he’s getting the opportunity as his own editor. I would like to ask Joe to tell us how it feels to write his own stuff, and what, as an editor, he thinks the field’s going to look like in the ’70s. We’ve heard a lot of noise from a lot of artists, but Joe’s in a position of editor now; he’s in a position to make suggestions and make definite programs. So I’d like to hear what he thinks the 1970s are going to be like. KUBERT: As Neal suggests, I have been fortunate in that I have seated myself on every side of this field; I have published, drawn for editors, edited, written, lettered, colored, put the stuff up before the engravers’ cameras to have it shot, and so forth. I think it’s a very enviable position, the one I find myself in now, in that my relationship with Carmine [Infantino] has been a very close one through the years. Carmine,

Four Of A Kind As far as what I project for the coming ’70s, it’s my own personal projection, based on what I see and what I’ve been told is and will be going on at National. I think that the magazines are going to take a turn much for the better. I think that Carmine has done yeoman service in trying to pull up National specifically and the business in general to a point where it’s going to reflect a lot of the original initiative and a lot of the originality that has for a long time not been seen in comics. It’s going to extend itself into areas where the comic book as we know it now, the small size, will be extended and stretched and perhaps reduced in all different sorts of directions. What is going to happen is, where a fellow trying to get into this business before felt limited perhaps in that he had to produce for this one particular type of magazine, [he] may now find that he’s doing half-tone work; he’s doing illustration more than he’s doing comic book text-type material. He may find that he’s doing things that are very reminiscent of the pulps years and years ago. He may find that he’s doing full color. There’s going to be a widening, a tremendous widening of range, and a tremendous demand for new talent that will be coming into this field. I see a great future ahead for this business. Joe’s “Hawkman” splash from the 1946 “Miniature Edition” (6H" x 8G") Wheaties giveaway of Flash Comics introduced The Raven, never seen before or since. [©2003 DC Comics.]

now being the directorial head of National Publications, has given not only me but all the editors who work with him almost carté blanche to do anything, to go in any direction that we may think feasible, that in the long run we feel will be also fiscally successful. I find now that I can inject and do almost anything that I want in the strips. I feel no inhibition. As Bill mentioned before, he was working at a time of hands-off; there was no suggestion until the work was completed, then the publisher did what he wanted with it. I don’t think we have that complete a freedom, because we feel that there’s a certain market, and we feel that we have to hit this market regardless of anything else. Above and beyond what we think we’d like to do, we have to do something that we feel is going to sell. Regardless of how nice or beautiful or how good a particular thing may be, if it doesn’t sell, that’s down and it’s out. So we are inhibited by that. But outside that, up at National, anyhow, I find that I have as much freedom, and I like also to pass that freedom over to anybody who is working for me, to allow him the freedom to do anything that he’d like to do. Because I have found myself in the position of the fellows who are writing for me, the fellows who are drawing for me. I find that I do know what their problems are, and I do like to give them as free a rein as possible, and I think I do.

SEULING: I have a double page of Joe Kubert’s work on my wall at home, and it tells a story so beautifully I don’t think a film could do it better. And that’s why this plaque says, “To Joe Kubert, for the cinematic storytelling techniques and the exciting and dramatic style he has brought to the field of comic art.” [applause] If you’d like to ask some questions, maybe Bill or Joe would be able to answer now. QUESTION ONE: Mr. Kubert, you have probably one of the most dramatic presentations, realistically, in comic art, and I was wondering: is this something that just developed from childhood, or do you have any outside influences, any particular movie directors or writers or dramatists that influenced you towards this style? KUBERT: I think I’ve been influenced by every darn thing around me. The original movie King Kong drove me up a wall; it was that exciting to me. Hal Foster’s Tarzan was to me as exciting as reading Kipling’s Jungle Books, which in word form brought forth the type of images that a man like Foster was able to put down in pictures. My own style and what I do is probably a compilation of all the things that I’ve been able to gather from everything I’ve seen.

Bill Everett’s cover for the New York Comic Art Convention’s 1970 program book—a detail of a Namor/Hulk battle scene he’d done in the late ’60s as a gift for sometime roommate Roy Thomas. Ye Editor, to his regret, used it later to pay off a poker debt—to conventionmeister Phil Seuling—but at least the entire drawing was available for use as a cover on Alter Ego V3#3 three years back! Thanks to Bill Schelly. [Art ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

BYRON PREISS: Joe, I had the pleasure of working with you these last few months in a program called Edugraphics. For the last decade I’ve heard talk of comic books in schools. It’s not talk any longer, and I think this is due largely to you and your efforts to guide the program into a major company. I’d like to hear your feelings about comics in education.

Bill Everett & Joe Kubert Interviewed By Gil Kane & Neal Adams

QUESTION FOUR: Can you tell us where you came up with the name “Sub-Mariner”? EVERETT: One of my favorite classical poems was The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. It wasn’t an easy name to come by; I don’t remember precisely how I arrived at it. I wanted to use something which was significant of the sea, which would be “marine.” And the word “mariner” came quite easily enough. But the Sub-Mariner: I think that somewhere in the writings of the Antarctic they talked about the “sub-polar zones,” and this character was living beneath the water, so it just seemed to tie in naturally. But it took some time to evolve it. And please don’t ask me where I got the name “Namor.” [laughter] It’s “Roman” spelled backwards, but I have long since forgotten why I decided that I wanted the name “Roman.” I did it for some reason, but I’ve forgotten what the reason was. QUESTION FIVE: It seems that recently The Sub-Mariner has “regressed” somewhat to the way it was in the ’40s. I was wondering if you had anything to do with this, and will you have anything to do with the book in the future? EVERETT: No, that was editorially done. Then, in the ’40s, when I was in the service, The Sub-Mariner also underwent quite a change in character, and also of environment, and I had nothing to do with it. Whether or not I’ll have anything to do with it in the future is When Sub-Mariner returned, along with Human Torch and Captain America, in Young Men #24 (Dec. ’53), writer/artist Bill Everett gave him blue-scaled swimgear. By next issue, the original lackluster black trunks with yellow stripes were back. But somebody must've liked the new look, for with #27 (April ’54), the scaled trunks were restored—as was cousin Namora—even if they were green for that single issue, then blue again for the rest of the run. Of course, from 1962's Fantastic Four #2 onward, the scale trunks have been de rigueur, first colored red, later green; personally, Ye Editor always preferred the blue. See all three stories from the 1950s classic Young Men #24 in The Golden Age of Marvel, Vol. 1. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

KUBERT: Well, as Byron has suggested, we have started up at National trying to utilize comic books where we feel they can be extremely potent. And that is, using them as a stimulant to kids who are the age of eight, nine, and ten who have not really been able to pick up on reading. Now, I’m not a devotee of “Read comics in lieu of anything,” but I do feel very strongly that comic books can and should be used as a lever to get a kid started into reading. And this is one of the big things that is going on now up at National. Byron has been working very hard since the beginning of this summer up at National setting up a program whereby specific lessons can be set forth to these high school and prehigh school kids, utilizing, not any special magazine, but the comic books that are produced and sold on the stands today. When these comic books are shown with a specific program that Byron has devised, then the idea is put across very strongly so that the student looking at it can pick up words that up to that point had been almost impossible for him to comprehend. Apparently the picture-word combination is such a meaningful thing to a child who cannot verbalize to that extent, that if the picture is exciting enough, he will be motivated to want to read the words that go along with that illustration. And using this technique so far has turned out to be very successful. QUESTION THREE: [to Bill Everett] I’ve lived in New Mexico for four years, and your “Bullseye Bill” for Target amazed me because I assumed that you lived in New York and I thought, how can a guy that’s seen steel and concrete all his life known what a ravine looks like, and your rocks and yucca plants and so on. This surprised me until someone mentioned you’d lived in Arizona. EVERETT: Well, I spent my early childhood in Arizona and in Montana. And so it was just natural to me; when I had to do a western, it came quite easily.

Bill Everett and Stan Lee joined forces for several “Sub-Mariner” adventures in Tales to Astonish, though this final collaboration (#9, May ’67) was inked by Dan Adkins. Bill was less than enchanted about drawing a supermuscular Namor or about his super-noble speech patterns and the phrase “Imperius Rex!”—hence then-Marvel associate editor Roy Thomas’ comment from the panel’s audience. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Four Of A Kind EVERETT: Again, let me affirm that I have absolutely no editorial sayso now in the writing of The Sub-Mariner. Roy can answer that better than I. I think it’s being handled OK, a far as today’s standards are concerned. I don’t see any great objection to it. But what the future will be, we don’t know; no one can tell about that. I see no damage being done by it. When we’re struggling for anything that can reach the reader, if that’s the trick that does it, then it’s OK for now. But tomorrow may be something new. KUBERT: I agree with what Bill said earlier this evening, in that we are primarily an entertainment medium. I think that within the scope of entertainment, though, we could touch an awful lot of areas that are perhaps a little more serious and very much cogent, and of our times. However, I agree again with Bill when he says that, once we become a preaching media, we kind-of toll our own death knell. Primarily and foremost, I think the stories have to be exciting, have to be entertaining, have to be something that one wants to read. If we’re going to try to jam lessons down people’s throats, I think we’d be making a terrible mistake. However, that’s not going to negate the fact that certain important issues can, should, and will be incorporated in most of the material that will be coming out of National. SEULING: I’d like to ask you all to join me in thanking all of these people up here. [applause]

[Above:] An Adams sketch of everybody’s favorite Caped Crusader, a character Neal helped define for the 1970s and since. [Below:] For a late-’70s DC Calendar, Joe Kubert drew the Silver Age Hawkman and Hawkwoman battling The Gentleman Ghost. Thanks to Al Dellinges. [Adams art ©2003 Neal Adams; Batman TM & ©2003 DC Comics; Hawkman art ©2003 DC Comics.]

quite questionable. I doubt it. I would like to, but if I did I would probably bring it back to his initial origin, the Antarctic, and take it from there. Yes, Roy? ROY THOMAS: I can probably answer that better than Bill. Three or four years ago, for a period of about three years, Bill shared an apartment with me, first in the [Greenwich] Village and then later on East 87th Street, and we talked an awful lot about The Sub-Mariner. So the recent return, with Sal Buscema penciling, to the shape of the head and some other features of the ’40s Sub-Mariner were all indirectly influenced by Bill through a conscious desire of mine to undo what has been done with the character for the last four or five years, albeit by very talented people. Probably I may never be able to implement this completely, but I guarantee that the first time that I feel that I have total carté blanche (I have about 50-50 now), The Sub-Mariner will, within a period of a few issues—you can’t do it just overnight—probably regress to the point of using the same kind of slang [Bill used]. I don’t know about “Galloping guppies,” but—[laughter] Even if he stays a prince, I would find ways to get back to something more of my idea of a human being. And I can practically guarantee that one would never again read in a Marvel comic book the expression “Imperius Rex!” [applause] QUESTION SIX: Recently, characters such as Green Lantern and The Sub-Mariner have been active in some of the social issues of the day, such as ecology and the race problem. I’d like to ask Mr. Everett if he is in agreement on how The Sub-Mariner is being handled in this matter. And I’d like to ask Mr. Kubert, is this going to be a major part in the future of comics, with heroes combating social problems?

[POSTSCRIPT: For those interested in learning more about the foregoing foursome: the most extensive interview ever done with Bill Everett, circa 1970, was reprinted in the 1997 trade paperback Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Comics Fanzine; after officially going out of print, a handful of copies were found by Hamster Press publisher Bill Schelly, and are available through his website; see his ad elsewhere in this issue. A short 1963 interview and other features on Joe Kubert and Tor are on view in A/E V3#8. Both Gil Kane and Neal Adams are featured in the trade paperback Alter Ego: The Comic Book Artist Collection; Gil is also spotlighted in A/E, Vol. 3, #2-4. All except the Hamster volume are available from TwoMorrows Publishing; see its usual ad section.]

Prince Namor

Prince Namor, The Sub-MaREENer! A Brief Look at a Six-decade Love Affair with Bill Everett’s Aquatic Creation by Roy Thomas Fathoms of the ’40s Yep, that’s what I—and every other comic-book-reading kid I knew back in the late 1940s—called him: The Sub-MaREENer—accent on the third syllable. It makes more sense than you might imagine. No pre-teen in those days was likely to have read Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, from which Bill Everett always claimed he took the post-hyphen part of that cognomen. Fact is, the unhyphenated word “submariner” (pronounced just as in the title of this piece) had been used during the Second World War, if not before, to refer to a member of a sub’s crew... not that I consciously recall hearing that phrase in the latter half of the ’40s. From 1946, at the age of five and six, when I first read comics, I never used the “The” part of his monicker, either, since it wasn’t part of the logo... nor do I recall ever thinking of him as “Namor”—just plain “Sub-Mariner.” What does puzzle me in retrospect is that, though I was aware from an early age of both SubMariner and DC’s equivalent hero, Aquaman, it was always the Timely hero I imagined myself when playing games in the shallow end of the local swimming-pool. Since Aquaman had a flashy costume (in those days when Namor wore black trunks with yellow stripes) and could order sea creatures around, I can only imagine it was a combination of Namor’s striking physical attributes (pointed ears, quasi-triangular head with wildly arched eyebrows, and winged feet) and the fact that he had his own comic, that made me prefer him. Aquaman only got to wade around for a few pages a month in Adventure Comics, and was never depicted on covers. My love for Sub-Mariner got me into trouble in the first grade. To my later sorrow, from an early age I often would cut hero figures out of my comics and use them to make up my own stories. One day in school, a fellow inmate and I were passing cut-outs of Subby and the Human Torch back and forth in the same row—when the teacher spotted us and confiscated them. I recall feeling it woefully unfair that he wouldn’t give

(Left:) Though Bill Everett drew the story “The Shark Strikes!” within, Syd Shores drew the cover for Sub-Mariner #23 (Summer ’47). (Above:) Namor and Namora in a full page of Everett-drawn action, in #30 (Feb. ’49). Thanks, respectively, to Blake Bell and Dr. Michael J. Vassallo. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

them back to me even when the school day was over. I doubt I ever again brought a comic book to school. I’d like to say I was always aware that some of the “Sub-Mariner” stories between 1946 and ’49 were drawn by Bill Everett and were head and shoulders above the rest. But I’ve no recollection of that. I just liked Sub-Mariner... period. And I was very sad when, in ’49, both SubMariner and Marvel Mystery Comics, as well as other favorite Marvel and non-Marvel titles, abruptly vanished from the Jackson, Missouri, drugstores where I bought them. (And yes, those comics were always “Marvel Comics” to me, because of the logo they sported off and on during the late ’40s—never “Timely,” a term I didn’t hear till the early 1960s.)

Roy Thomas On The Sub-MaREENer

The Fabulous ’50s It seemed like both a very short time, and an eternity, before one Saturday night, about four years later and nearing age thirteen, I wandered into one of my haunts in nearby Cape Girardeau, MO— Osterloh’s Book Store, where I bought occasional hardcover books about wild animals, Oz, Tarzan, Bomba, and the new Pogo paperbacks—and, perusing their supply of comics, found myself face to face with the cover of Young Men #24. “The Human Torch Returns!” screamed a topline. “He’s back from the dead!” shouted one behatted man, as the glowing-red Torch hurled a series of fireballs that demolished the side of a building. Below that drawing were small inserts showing “Submariner” (sic) and Captain America and Bucky, who were “also in this issue.” That was when I fell in love with the artwork of Bill Everett. I’d seen it before, of course... in Venus and Marvel Boy/Astonishing and elsewhere, though I never read horror comics, which he also drew. Bill Everett’s “Sub-Mariner” splash for 1953’s Young Men #24 is on view on p. 15, so here’s a panel in which Betty Dean reminisces about her old war buddy. And if you can make “Bill Everett” out of his signature from that same story, you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din! [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

But now I became truly enamored of Bill Everett’s artwork— starting with that wonderful splash of Sub-Mariner battling some robots. I noticed right off that he now sported blue, scaly trunks with a big “S” on the belt—and I would be disappointed when, next issue, he reverted to plain black swimgear. I also noted that, at the end of the splash caption, he was referred to as “The SubMariner”; that article invariably prefixed that particular noun in the story. I think I noticed just about everything there was to notice about Young Men #24. But, though the “Sub-Mariner” story boasted a signature, I’d be darned if I could read it! “Bill”—well, I could read that part well enough. But not the rest. Out of Bill’s signatures on stories in various Atlas mags during this period, I eventually figured his last name was “Enereh,” and that’s how I referred to the artist for years. While I reveled in the adventures of all of Timely/Marvel’s “Big Three” during this brief revival (inspired by the TV success of The Adventures of Superman), I quickly became aware that the “Sub-Mariner” stories had a quirky quality that made them stand out. I’d later learn this was because most of them were also written by “Bill Enereh.” I was fascinated to learn, for the first time (in two different versions), the Sub-Mariner’s origin, since his sub-Antarctic race had rarely appeared in the late ’40s. I learned that he, like Cap and the Torch, had been active back in World War II. And it intrigued me that he wasn’t always in “costume.” When he’s summoned by his old girlfriend Betty Dean in 1953, he shows up in a checkered blue suit and tie. And he and Betty wear matching (except for cleavage) striped t-shirts in the final panels. Here was a hero who could walk amongst men—pointy ears, triangular head, and all. That guy Bill Enereh wasn’t afraid to add a few twists to the usual super-hero mix.

Though Everett drew most of his 1950s tales, two 5-page “Sub-Mariner” stories of that era were drawn by Bob Powell. This page from Human Torch #36 (April ’54) is repro’d from photocopies of the original art provided by Michael T. Gilbert. [©2003 Marvel Characters.]

The “Sub-Mariner” stories continued to be of a high and quirky quality: a race of alien man-eating sharks, with goresuggesting scenes that anticipated Jaws two decades later (“My foot—it’s gone!”)... a well-realized sub-Antarctic kingdom and supporting characters... Namor’s ambiguous relationship with Betty Dean, which both was and wasn’t quite a romance... the

Prince Namor return of his cousin Namora... murderous killer whales controlled by those devilish Commies... a young girl’s giant pet alligator in a tale clearly inspired by the 1948 movie Mighty Joe Young... two or three invasions by Namor’s people of the surface... those wacky, wonderful little short-shorts set in Namor’s boyhood days, in which he learned lessons about living... even one (written, I’d learn years later, by Paul S. Newman) featuring a monster who was a dead-ringer for the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Though sorry when, a year or so later, Cap and the Torch faded into a four-color sunset, I was happy that at least Subby stuck around in his own title. I assumed it was because of that “quirky quality” to his stories; but, as Bill would suggest when we talked years afterward, it must’ve been because a potential TV series had been in the works, with actor Richard Egan as the sub-sea superman. When the series eventually failed to materialize, Sub-Mariner went into limbo for a second time in 1955. It seemed unlikely he’d be back for a third try.

The Marvel Age of Namor Then, in 1961, I stumbled across Fantastic Four #1 in between college classes, and all bets were off. If The Human Torch was back—albeit as a teenager—could Captain America and The Sub-Mariner be far behind? I wrote a review for the first volume of Alter Ego which lauded F.F. #1 and suggested Subby be revived to make it The Fantastic Five. With F.F.

Everyone’s seen Jack Kirby’s take on Namor—so above is something you probably haven’t seen. In Strange Tales #107 (April 1963), when Dick Ayers was to draw a battle between Human Torch and Sub-Mariner, Stan Lee wanted to make sure he looked just right. His note at the bottom of the photocopy of the original art at right reads: “Dick—See a model head of Sub-M. which Jack drew for you—back of this page. S.L.” Thanks to Roger Hill in CFA-APA #35 (Sept. ’94). [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

19 In January 1955, RKO released a Howard Hughes-produced movie co-starring Richard Egan and voluptuous Jane Russell. Its title: Underwater! Whether or not Egan’s work in that film, which one historian called a “talky, boring treasure hunt saga... made primarily to give Jane Russell the opportunity to paddle around in a bikini,” has any relation to Egan being offered the starring role in a SubMariner TV series, the notion eventually came to naught. (You can read Bill Everett’s thoughts on it in the trade paperback Alter Ego: The Best of the Legendary Comics Fanzine, still just barely available from Bill Schelly’s Hamster Press.) In 1954 Egan had also starred in the Bengal Lancers saga Khyber Patrol for UA; that’s him at left, looking properly angular, as if screen-testing for the part of Prince Namor. [Photo ©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

#4, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby met me halfway, anyway: Namor was back, but as the group’s foe, and his sub-Antarctic kingdom was for the first time called “Atlantis.” Well, at least Kirby’s Sub-Mariner had a lot of the old “Bill Enereh” flavor—and the scaly trunks were back, even if they were initially (yechh) red. It was soon afterward that a fellow English teacher informed me that “Bill Enereh” was actually Bill Everett—the guy who’d created “SubMariner” back in ’39. I’d read that same info in Don Thompson’s Xero #10 article, months earlier, but somehow it hadn’t registered. In early 1965, after a standout issue of Daredevil (#7, April ’65) in which Wally Wood beautifully drew a somewhat stiff Namor battling the Man without Fear—a story with as good a splash-page delineation of Subby and his undersea kingdom as ever there was—I was as thrilled as anybody when The SubMariner was finally given his own series in Tales to Astonish. “Adam Austin” drew an illustrative Namor which had little in common with the Everett version, but I liked it. Later that year, when I went to work on staff for Stan Lee, I learned “Adam Austin” was really one Gene Colan, hiding behind a fake name because he also drew romance comics for DC and didn’t want them to know he was moonlighting. Soon afterward, who should wander into the Bullpen but Bill Everett himself—though since I described our subsequent relationship (even our apartment-sharing) in A/E V3#3, I won’t go over the same ground here. Suffice it to say that over the next few years I buttonholed Bill about his “Sub-Mariner” work more than once before finally taping an interview with him circa 1970. Both Stan and I were

Roy Thomas On The Sub-MaREENer Vince Colletta. Actually, Vinnie’s style probably made Bill’s work a bit more appealing to many Marvel readers, and he did retain the look of Bill’s Namor faces, etc. But two issues later there was yet another penciler—Werner Roth, late of The X-Men—with inking by Adkins. Dan did full art on a couple of nice covers during this period. I enjoyed working on these “Sub-Mariner” stories, but somehow he remained just this underwater guy, fighting a lot of nondescript super-villains and shouting “Imperius Rex!” (a phrase I grew to dislike).

You can’t see much of Subby here as he mixes it up with Mar-Vell in Captain Marvel #4 (Aug. ’68), in panels by Gene Colan & Vince Colletta. But since so much of Gene’s Namor art is on view in the recent Marvel Masterworks hardcover that reprints the “Sub-Mariner” stories from Tales to Astonish #70-87, and even the rest of this page is available in a back issue of A/E (V3#6), this’ll have to do. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Kevin Stawieray. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

At the turn of 1968, after more Adkins (now ably scripted by Archie Goodwin) and a fullissue tour de force in Tales to Astonish #100 by Stan, penciler Marie Severin, and inker Dan, Gene Colan returned to the feature, and I figured Gene and Archie would go onwards and upwards from there. But, with both Iron Man and Sub-Mariner now slated for fullbook status, Archie felt he had to relinquish one or the other—so I inherited Gene on “SubMariner” for one fun story, as a set-up to 1968’s Sub-Mariner #1—which was drawn by my Avengers colleague, John Buscema!

happy with the result when Bill inked a “Sub-Mariner” or three over Colan and Jerry Grandenetti. But I wanted to see Bill return to penciling the hero, as well—and so, I know, did Stan. As it happened, one of only two times I dialogued Jack Kirby pencils was a “Sub-Mariner” story in Astonish #82 (Aug. ’66), when Stan went on a brief vacation. I still maintain that Kirby, and no one else, did the second-best rendition of Prince Namor ever. Finally, in Astonish #87 (Jan. ’67), “Wild Bill Everett” got his shot at doing full art chores on “Sub-Mariner.” The result, I suspect for Stan as well as for me, was a bit of a disappointment. There was a stiffness to Bill’s work that hadn’t been there in the best of his ’40s and ’50s work. Still, Bill improved somewhat over subsequent issues... and sometimes there’d be a flash of the old brilliance. At least he was allowed to restore the triangular shape of Namor’s head—whether that was the shape of his cranium, or simply a sub-Antarctic hairdo run amok. Bill, however, was somewhat cavalier about deadlines (to say the least), and his drinking and other interests took their toll. I don’t recall the circumstances, but by Astonish #92 (June ’67) he was relieved of art duties for two issues by a recent Wally Wood assistant, young Dan Adkins. If the rumors are true, perhaps Stan still recalled that Wally had been scheduled to go from DD #7 into that solo series in Astonish, and “Dapper Dan” was the next best thing. And, truth to tell, despite all the swipes he now deplores, Dan did Namor proud. When Stan asked me to dialogue Dan’s second story, I was overjoyed to do so. Stan had me remain on the feature when Bill returned as artist with #94. Even though the glory days of his art in the 1950s would never return, Bill did a creditable “Sub-Mariner,” and his Dorma had a singularity of feature which surpassed anyone else’s version. I wince at remembering that I let Bill to talk me into having that story end with a formidable foe turning out to be a robot with a dwarf inside, but it was nice to be paired with him on Subby, even if only on that one story. For, by next issue, not only did I turn the writing over to newcomer Raymond Marais, but, for whatever reason, Bill’s pencils were inked by

Prince Namor

Another story I think Marie and I are kinda proud of is #14 (June ’69), in which The Human Torch seems to return from F.F. Annual #4 a few years earlier, and to be raging against mankind. We had the “Torch” turn out to be that hero’s one-time kid sidekick, Toro, now grown to manhood and under the sway of bad-guys. He appears to die at issue’s end—and I’m proud of the fact that, despite attempts by a few writers who had run out of ideas to bring him back, Toro has remained as dead as Bucky Barnes all these years. And when Jack Katz (as “Jay Hawk”) turned in a fill-in Sub-Mariner (#17) that Stan didn’t care for, Marie “saved” it, and we remained a team for the rest of that year, even creating a new hero/villain, The Stingray (#19), who’s had a fairly decent shelf life, and Orka, the Human Killer Whale (#23, March 1970). Soon, however, Sal Buscema became the penciler. I used that opportunity to launch a new direction for the strip, by having Namor lecture the U.N. General Assembly about the fragility of the Earth’s oceans and setting up an Atlantis-patrolled blockade athwart the sea lanes. These were the heady days when “relevance” first hit comics, and SubMariner was a natural for an ecological approach, even if my heart was never fully in such things. (I blush to recall my story for #28, Aug. ’70, “Youthquake!” ’Nuff said.) I soon ran out of steam on the ecology thing, and drifted along with Sal, telling reasonably good but minor stories featuring Stingray, Hercules, and Captain Marvel—though I did feel an adrenal surge when I came up with the idea of Llyra, a green Lemurian princess who set her cap for Namor and didn’t much care how she got him. I also enjoyed

Many Artists Has Atlantis... I wrote back in A/E #16 about how much I enjoyed Big John’s stint on Sub-Mariner, which I felt inspired me to better work on the character than I had done before. In #4 (Aug. ’68), I felt we brought to the title a bit of the grandeur Stan and Jack were imparting in Thor; I still have a fondness for the Tiger Shark two-parter in #6-7. I was even more pleased with the knock-down, drag-out Subby/Thing fight in issue #8 (Dec. ’68), which ended with the surprise return of Betty Dean— who, unlike Namor himself, had aged a realistic thirteen years since 1955 (and since I made it clear she had been around since ’39 or so, that made her middle-aged at best, a consciously Peter Pan and Wendy situation). I recall #8 also because, as soon as I scripted its final page, I left town for a weekend comics convention in St. Louis—and returned a few days later, a married man—an eloped one, at that, with a couple of very angry inlaws left behind. With #8, John was taken off Sub-Mariner by Stan for other projects, and he was replaced by Marie Severin (albeit with Colan-penciled tales in #10-11). Virtually no Marvel artist could have competed with John as a draftsman, but Marie had considerable strengths both as a storyteller and as a willing and able partner in terms of what story was told. We would work out the general plots at the office, and confer on them as she went along. The result, I think, was some well-thought-out exploits, as we concocted tales centered about a quest for the Serpent Crown of Naga. Dan Adkins embellished our early issues, with Mike Esposito (as “Joe Gaudioso”) taking over later.

Roy Thomas On The Sub-MaREENer

teaming up Namor, Hulk, and Silver Surfer as “Titans Three!” in #34-35, little dreaming that grouping would ere long mutate into The Defenders, with Dr. Strange in for Surfy. And Sal closed out his quality run on Sub-Mariner with a story in which Namor and Dorma appear to get married—only to have the bride morph into the aforementioned Llyra before Subby’s wide and arch-browed eyes! Next issue (#37, May ’71), in which Llyra kills Dorma (perhaps a mistake on my part), I brought aboard another artist I admired, Ross Andru—even reuniting him for one issue with his longtime inker and partner, Mike Esposito. Sub-Mariner #38, in fact, remains a favorite of mine, particularly because the team of Ross Andru (pencil layouts) and John Severin (inks/finishes) gave the book a solid, realistic feel which worked well with the ending, in which Namor renounced his throne and left Atlantis, supposedly forever. I know Bill Everett didn’t feel the Andru/Severin team was appropriate for Sub-Mariner, and said so, but I must respectfully disagree with my late friend. Alas, John Severin moved on after that sole issue, and after one more tale by Andru, so did I, as the press of other work beckoned. I turned the scripting reins over to young Gerry Conway, and he and Gene Colan were soon a team on the title—though George Tuska stepped in to do a pair of popular issues (#41-42), and even Marie Severin returned

Because his wife Dann used to collect penguin memorabilia, Roy T. gifted her years ago with the original art to this flashback/origin page from Sub-Mariner #38 (June ’71), so beautifully done by Ross Andru & John Severin. Note that both Everett (p. 18) and Andru made good use of penguin motifs in “Sub-Mariner” tales. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

once or twice to help out. Gerry’s reign on the book was a fairly successful one. Still, with #50 (June ’72), something special happened—which I believe virtually everyone at Marvel, even Gerry, was happy to see. Bill Everett returned as writer and artist of Sub-Mariner.

Everett Forever! Again, I told in A/E V3#3 about Bill’s triumphant return to the hero he had created in 1939, and there’s no reason to repeat that account at length in the context of a nostalgic piece about my own fond feelings for Sub-Mariner. Yet it’s impossible not to state that, though many of his drawing faults of a few years previous were still there in Bill’s 1972 return, he made up for them now by pulling a few new tricks out of his quiver... like Sinatra falling back on dramatics and phrasing when his voice wasn’t what it had been. Bill tossed in lots of blacks, and stipple effects, and plenty of detail, to give a very individualistic feeling to the undersea panels, in particular. Namor vs. Stingray and Triton (of The Inhumans) in this Sal Buscema/Mike Esposito page from Sub-Mariner #31 (Nov. ’70). For some reason, Roy recalls having to stay up all night to dialogue the entire 20-pager in one marathon session. Guess it came out okay, though. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Gary Patrick Hart. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

And then there was Namorita, introduced in #50 and an integral part of the Namor legend ever since. She was Namora’s daughter—and his, too, it may have been eventually revealed, though I never cared for that

Prince Namor

Others, meanwhile, have written and drawn Bill’s creation since then, either in versions of his own title, in The Defenders, or wherever. I myself had fun with him in a World War II setting in The Invaders from 1975-79 and again in a four-issue Invaders series in 1994. In between, in 1988-89, Rich Buckler and I produced The Saga of The Sub-Mariner, a 12-issue limited series which re-told Namor’s story from 1939 on, roughly half of which was devoted to material originally done by Bill. I’ve rarely had more fun in my life than on Saga and The Invaders. But nothing, in my eyes, will ever match those heady days of 1939-42 and 1953-55, when Bill Everett raised his “scourge of the seas” to artistic and story heights not achieved with the feature in all the years since. By anyone. We’re a few weeks too late for St. Valentine’s Day—but consider this piece a Valentine to both Bill Everett—and The Sub-Mariner. Long may both of you be remembered.

Namor and Namorita face Byrrah and a Badoon, in this all-Everett page from Sub-Mariner #51 (July ’72). Seeing the vitality of this art, it’s hard to believe that, less than a year after this issue saw print, Bill E. would be taken from us. Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art; thanks to Jerry K. Boyd. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

bit—and she instantly became as much the focus of Sub-Mariner as the hero himself was. For her Bill created a memorable female face, and a small-breasted figure that stood out in the comic book world of busty beauties which, in the decades since, has often made the field look ludicrous. Bill’s return wasn’t an unqualified sales success, alas, perhaps undercut by the fact that, as his health failed, he wasn’t always able to complete issues, so that he was often spelled on inking and/or penciling and/or writing. Yet, he managed to pull off all three in issue #55 and again in #57, before he went into the hospital for one last time. The Sub-Mariner might be all but immortal, having visibly aged hardly a day since his 1939 debut... but Bill Everett, like the rest of us, was all too mortal. And he died in February of 1973. Back in the latter 1970s Namor was slated for a TV treatment again, under the hand of Kenneth Johnson, who had written and produced The Incredible Hulk TV movie; recalling vaguely the changes I heard were in store for both character and storyline, I’m not sorry that it never got made. I understand the now-proposed film starring Bill’s creation will be called Namor the Sub-Mariner. I hope it’s as worthy of its subject as Spider-Man was.

The 1940s Sub-Mariner helps the F.F. take on Nazi troops in the time-tossed tale in Fantastic Four Annual #11 (1976). Repro’d from a photocopy of the original art, courtesy of Robert Knuist. Script by Roy Thomas; art by John Buscema & Sam Grainger. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

In Search Of...

In Search Of Lloyd Jacquet An Account of One Man’s Quest for an Elusive Figure in Comics History by Jack Elmy

The problem is this: information on Lloyd Victor Jacquet is scarce. For a man who was there at the birth of comic books in 1934, and remaining a major player for the next quarter of a century, there is precious little on him. Hell, he was instrumental in launching Marvel Comics, yet is only mentioned in passing in Les Daniels’ huge Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics. I became interested in the elusive Mr. Jacquet while researching Bill Everett, the creator of The Sub-Mariner. Everett worked closely with Jacquet for four years. Since learning about Jacquet might shed some light on Everett, I set out to find what I could. What follows are the ups and downs of my search for Lloyd Jacquet. My first source was Bill Everett himself. Though he died in 1973, he left behind two important records: a biographical letter to Mad’s thenassociate editor Jerry de Fuccio in 1961, and an interview conducted by Roy Thomas for the first volume of Alter Ego circa 1970, wherein Everett recounted how he met Jacquet in 1938 at Centaur Comics. Jacquet was an editor and Everett was just getting into the business. A year later, Jacquet and Everett jumped ship to form Funnies, Incorporated, a studio that prepared comics for publishers. Everett and Jacquet were the lifeblood of Funnies, Inc., until 1942, when they had a falling-out.

(Left to right:) “Funnies, Inc., president and comic book pioneer” Lloyd Jacquet, Frank Torpey, and Ray Gill. This photo appeared in The New York World-Telegram in 1942 in conjunction with a three-part article by “staff writer Douglas Gilbert,” which was recently reprinted in Comic Book Marketplace—Special Edition #5 (Summer 2002) from an early-1990s issue of CBM. Frank Torpey was reportedly the man who talked Martin Goodman into publishing comic books—while artist Ray Gill was the brother of writer Joe Gill; both Torpey and the latter are mentioned in this article about what it called “comic strip magazines.” Our thanks to CBM editor Russ Cochran for his blessing to pick up this historic 60-year-old photo. Anytime we can return the favor, Russ....

[A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Generally, Alter Ego or related magazines feature either an interview with a comics creator, or an article about him/her. When Jack Elmy contacted me recently about his attempts to learn more about Lloyd Jacquet, a major but mysterious figure in comic book history from the late 1930s on, I found myself fascinated to hear about the process—the hunt, as it were—and I thought the story of his mission to date might make interesting reading, showing the trouble that comics historians must often go through behind the scenes, before that article or interview emerges. Enjoy! I did. —Roy.] Sometimes I wish ghosts were real. At least that way there would be a chance of waking up in the middle of the night to find Lloyd Jacquet’s spectre sitting at the end of my bed, lighting his corncob pipe, ready to answer my questions. But I don’t live in the anything-goes world of comics. If Jacquet is to answer my questions, I’ll need to find another way to ask them.

Next, I reached for the various history books on comics. I have about twenty of them, some more trustworthy than others. They didn’t, however, have much more to offer. Most of their information on Jacquet was from Everett’s letter and interview. Jerry Bails and Hames Ware’s 1970s Who’s Who of American Comic Books supplied a few more facts, but nothing biographical, except the name of Jacquet’s wife, Grace. My next source was an unlikely one. Jon B. Cooke’s Comic Book Artist #9 was wholly devoted to Charlton Comics, which I wasn’t interested in at the time, just two or three years ago. I skimmed through it anyway, however, and stumbled upon a reference to Jacquet in an interview with writer Joe Gill. Gill had freelanced for Funnies, Inc., after World War II. He didn’t say much about Jacquet, though, only that she was a wonderful woman to work for. What? It took me a minute to realize that Gill must be referring to Grace Jacquet. I was intrigued enough to track down Joe Gill. The interview was conducted by Chris Irving, whose e-mail address I got hold of. Chris put me in touch with Gill, with whom I exchanged a couple of phone calls and letters. The “wonderful woman” Gill had referred to was indeed Jacquet’s wife, who, Gill told me, was an essential part of the shop’s day-to-day operation. Something curiously absent in the history books. Joe Gill knew Lloyd Jacquet, too, but they weren’t close. According to Gill, he was a gentleman, but also a “stuffed shirt.” Gill mainly dealt with Grace. He had a couple of other facts for me. Jacquet was in the Naval Reserve and was called to duty in Naval Intelligence during World War II. He was middle-aged when Gill knew him in the late 1940s, and at one point his wife became ill and had to have a lung removed. A friend of Joe Gill’s, popular novelist Mickey Spillane, freelanced for Jacquet before the war. In 1999 Spillane wrote an introduction to The

...Lloyd Jacquet Golden Age of Marvel, Vol. 2., wherein he wrote: “Our boss, Lloyd Jacquet, a dead ringer for Douglas MacArthur (corncob pipe and all) was a wonderful man, but could never understand living among wildcat writers and artists.” I was lucky enough to get in touch with Spillane. When I asked him to describe Jacquet, he only needed one word: puzzled. According to Spillane, Jacquet didn’t have the business acumen to take full advantage of the booming comic book industry. When I thought about this, I had to agree. Funnies, Inc., had a proven track record of supplying the material that launched companies and made publishers rich. Why couldn’t Jacquet find enough financing to get into publishing himself? Instead, he was constantly staving off bankruptcy and paying his freelancers subpar rates. When I asked Spillane about Grace Jacquet, he said he knew of her, but she rarely visited the office. At first that seemed at odds with Gill’s story. But when I realized that Spillane worked with Jacquet before the war, and Gill worked with him after, it added up. In all likelihood, Grace Jacquet took an active role in the shop when her husband reentered the service, and simply remained after he returned.

25 Comics) wrote to me, saying: “I brush away the cobwebs of my mind and see Lloyd Jacquet at his desk, pipe ’tween his lips and in a tweed jacket. Mickey Spillane had it so right! Jacquet did indeed remind one of Gen. Douglas MacArthur (sitting on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri signing the surrender papers for the Japanese in 1941!). In this case giving me my first assignment (‘The Ferret’ or ‘The Fox’?!). At that time, in the small world of comic book publishers, Jacquet had that touch of class—in a class by himself.” I next checked the Social Security Death Index, which lists several Lloyd Jacquets. There is Lloyd Jacquet of Louisiana (1906-1965), who maybe could be ours; another Louisianan Jacquet (1933-1972) who is obviously too young; and a Lloyd Jaquet (no “c”) who was born March 7, 1899, and died in March 1970. Despite the missing “c” in the name, this was the most promising match.

Of course, Internet newsgroups can be a rich source of information. It was on the Silver Age/Golden Age Yahoo! Groups message board (also known as SAGA) that I came across a gem. The first of the first: Bill Everett’s splash page for the 8-page “Sub-Mariner” story that appeared Collector/historian Robert first in the black-&-white, Jacquet-produced Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1 in 1939. Soon afterward, with four new pages added, it was reprinted in color in Martin Goodman’s Marvel Beerbohm had unearthed Comics #1. Thanks to Bob Wiener for sending Roy (again!) copies of that b-&-w art; he first did an article Jacquet had so years ago, so the 8-pager could be reprinted for the first time ever in The Invaders #20 (Sept. written for the 1977). Its most recent re-presentation was in the 1997 trade paperback The Golden Age Newsdealer trade of Marvel, Vol. 1. (See p. 10 in this issue for how Everett retold this episode in 1954.) At this point I was magazine in 1957, called beginning to realize that Some comics researchers have long questioned whether Sub-Mariner grew out of a planned “The Coming of the but never-realized movie about sunken Atlantis; Ye Editor frankly doubts it, but would love to none of my sources had Comic (Book),” in which know for sure! If so, that might explain why Atlantis, which Bill admitted in his circa-1970 been really close with Jacquet recounts his interview for Alter Ego was part of his inspiration for the hero’s origin, is never mentioned in Lloyd Jacquet. Neither beginnings in comic books the feature until 1962, when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby revived Namor in Fantastic Four #4. Hey, Everett, Gill, nor Spillane with Major Malcolm d’you suppose Bill will finally get recognition on-screen (or his kids any money) if and when ever described him as a Wheeler-Nicholson in the proposed Namor the Sub-Mariner film comes out? [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.] friend or mentor. A picture 1934. In addition to his begins to emerge of fascinating account of the Jacquet, a military man twenty years older than the “wildcat writers and early days of comics, Jacquet gives us a biographical nugget when he artists” he works with, having a hard time clicking with the younger refers to the newspaper The Brooklyn Daily Eagle as his old alma generation. I did, however, find one “Wildcat” artist—quite literally— mater. who had only nice things to say about the man. The most intriguing thing about the article is the introduction, which Irwin Hasen (co-creator of the “Wildcat” feature in DC’s Sensation

In Search Of... Still, I couldn’t remain disheartened for long. The 1970 date was something, and it fit in well with the SSDI listing for the Lloyd Jaquet who died in March 1970. Furthermore, I read that a possible new source of information had just become available—Ellis Island’s records.

says it was “taken from notes by the author, who is currently engaged in writing a History of the Comic Book.” Wow! Was Jacquet really writing a history of comics in 1957? How far did he get? Where is it?

Recently, the American Family Immigration History Center put its records online at <ellisislandsrecords.org>. Sure enough, there was a listing for Lloyd Victor Jacquet. In fact, there were a few. Following the paper trail, I learned that he was born in 1899 (practically confirming that my SSDI “Jaquet” was the right fellow— “c” or no “c”), his parents were Frank and Eugenie Jacquet (French immigrants), he had a sister by the name of Georgette Charlotte Jacquet, and they lived in Brooklyn (which (Left:) “Joe Gill with his trusty typewriter, which saw him through thousands of gives his mention of script pages at Charlton.” So read the caption when this photo appeared in our sister The Brooklyn mag Comic Book Artist #9 (Aug. 2000); thanks to Joe & to editor Jon B. Cooke. (Top:) Daily Eagle more Mickey Spillane, at far right, on the set of the 1953 film version of his Mike Hammer weight). novel I, the Jury, with director/screenwriter Harry Essex and actress Margaret Sheridan

By the way, it’s true Jacquet didn’t pay much, but, according to Joe Gill, he paid (who had also played the only female character in The Thing from Another World)—and promptly. Perhaps he learned a lesson in The Ellis Island Spillane drawn as a lifeguard/instructor in Novelty’s Blue Bolt, Vol. 3, #3 (Aug. 1942), editor-freelancer relations from the disasrecords show that with art by Harold DeLay of the Jacquet shop. See more in the Spillane interview trous practices of his old mentor, in Alter Ego V3#9. [Art ©2003 the respective copyright holder.] the Jacquets made Wheeler-Nicholson. The Major rarely several trips to and paid on time (if at all) and even hit up his from France (with, luckily, children in tow—otherwise there wouldn’t freelancers for money on occasion. Jacquet doesn’t mention why he have been any record of Lloyd). And, although his parents were born in parted ways with Nicholson, but it’s interesting to note that in his article France, Lloyd and his sister were born in the United States. he didn’t have anything bad to say about him. Where some others Furthermore, there are several records of Jacquet traveling to and from described Nicholson as a con man, Jacquet described a charming England in 1919 and 1920 as a radio operator aboard three ships: the salesman. Cape Lookout, the Huron, and the Evansville. According to the Who’s Who of American Comic Books, Funnies, Armed with a few more names in the Jacquet family tree, it was time Inc., closed its doors in 1961. to start calling the Jacquets listed in the New York City telephone book (or, more accurately, an online directory). I called over twenty numbers. Flash forward thirteen years. Jacquet is dead. Artwork, proofs, and The results were disappointing. No relatives emerged. No children or Funnies, Inc., file copies from his state are beginning to emerge on the grandchildren turned up. Nothing. market, including 1939’s Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1, that oddball comic book that caused so much controversy among collectors Well, not quite. I did learn two things. First, many of the Jacquets in (because it contained a “Sub-Mariner” story predating Subby’s first the New York area are African-Americans who came from Louisiana. official appearance in Marvel Comics #1 that same year). According to Second, I wasn’t the first person to call looking for Lloyd and Grace the Overstreet Price Guide, eight copies were discovered at Jacquet’s Jacquet. Maybe some other comics historian had hit this wall before me? estate in 1974. Shortly after this, I received in the mail a copy of Jacquet’s original This looked like an avenue worth pursuing. Surely a relative, or at Social Security application, which I had requested some months earlier. least someone close to Jacquet, was involved in the transaction. I This brief document, dated 1936, confirmed that Jacquet was born on contacted several people who have written about MPFW—Roger Hill, March 7, 1899, spelled his name “Jacquet,” and that his father’s name Matt Nelson, and George Olshevsky. I was surprised to learn that they was indeed Frank, and his mother’s Eugenie (maiden name Charriere). had no idea how the comics actually made it from Jacquet’s estate to the It also revealed that he worked for The George Matthew Adams Service marketplace. Olshevsky provided a thread, though. He recalled that a of 444 Madison Avenue, New York City, and that he lived at 14 East fellow M.I.T. student by the name of Robert Wiener was involved. An Seaman Avenue, Baldwin, New York. Internet search for “M.I.T.” and “Wiener” turned up an alumni newsletter that eventually led to Wiener. Yes, he bought those comics And that’s where I stand. I still have plenty of leads to follow, so I’m and several other items in New York City in 1970 (as it turns out, the not done yet. And, with any luck, someone will read this article who can 1974 date is wrong; that’s when Wiener eventually resold some of the add something new. items). No, he doesn’t remember whom he bought them from. Slowly, the ghost of Lloyd Jacquet materializes before us. Still So close, and yet... so excruciatingly frustrating! wavering, but clearer than before.

...Lloyd Jacquet

1934: Gets his start in comic books working as an editor for Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson on New Fun Comics #1. Uses his connections at The Brooklyn Daily Eagle to deal with color production problems and to print the first comic books. 1936: As of December, Jacquet is working for The George Matthew Adams Service and living on Long Island at 14 East Seaman Avenue in Baldwin, NY. 1937: Joseph Hardie, owner of Centaur Publishing, hires Jacquet to edit his expanding line of comic books. Jacquet drafts a stable of artists, including Carl Burgos and Bill Everett, to produce the magazines. 1938-1939: Jacquet strikes out on his own to form Funnies, Incorporated, a comic book packaging shop. He recruits Bill Everett, Max Neill, John Mahon, and Frank Torpey to help run the studio. 1940: One of the writers freelancing for Jacquet is Mickey Spillane, who will later write that he was “a dead ringer for Douglas MacArthur (corncob pipe and all), [and] a wonderful man, but could never understand living among wildcat writers and artists.” 1941: Acts as art director for Parents Institute (True Comics).

One of Jacquet’s early mainstays at Funnies, Inc., was Paul Gustavson, who created “The Angel” for Marvel Comics #1 in ’39. Around the same time, also as a member of Jacquet’s shop, Gustavson drew “The Fantom of the Fair” (which took place at the 1939 New York World’s Fair) for Centaur’s Amazing Mystery Funnies. According to The Mint’s 2002 catalog, which advertised this Gustavson original art for auction at an estimated price of $17,500, “this piece represents the only verified surviving art by Gustavson that is known to exist”; the size was 12" x 15". [Art ©2003 Estate of Paul Gustavson; Fantom of the Fair TM & ©2003 by the respective copyright holder.]

Lloyd Jacquet Chronology

1942: On August 14, Timely Comics publisher Martin Goodman takes Jacquet and the entire Funnies, Inc., staff to lunch and then to see the Walt Disney movie Bambi. Goodman stops using Jacquet’s art service and hires away much of Jacquet’s staff. Jacquet, a member of the Naval reserve, is then called to duty in Naval Intelligence. [Note: See Stan Lee’s autobiography Excelsior! for a photo taken the day of the Bambi episode.] 1946: Returns from the service. Rejoins his wife Grace to run Funnies, Inc. Joe Gill, who begins writing for Funnies, Inc., after the war, remembers Jacquet as a gentleman but also a “stuffed shirt.” 1947: Jacquet hires Joe Orlando, who misses his first deadline and is ready to give up on comics, but Jacquet won’t let him—“Do it!” he says. Orlando later remembered Jacquet as a patient man willing to give a young artist a second chance. He also remembered that he held a grudge against Martin Goodman, believing that Goodman had treated him

Jacquet, Lloyd Victor (1899-1970), American comic book pioneer and editor, best known as the chief of Funnies, Incorporated, a creative studio that packaged comic books for publishers. 1899 : Born Lloyd Victor Jacquet on March 7, in Brooklyn, New York, to Frank Jacquet and the former Eugenie Charriere, French immigrants. 1900 : Sister Georgette Charlotte Jacquet born in December. 1911 : Parents become naturalized U.S. citizens in December. 1912 : On October 14, Jacquet, along with his father and sister, return from a trip to France aboard the liner Chicago. Jacquet lives with his family at 498 16th Street in Brooklyn. They later move to 509 16th Street. 1919-1920: Jacquet is a radio operator aboard various ships traveling between the United States and England. 19??: Works (or apprentices) for The Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Through Funnies, Inc., Bill Everett did work not only for Timely but also for Centaur and Novelty, as per these covers for Amazing-Man Comics #10 and Target Comics #2 (both cover-dated March 1940). Thanks to longtime pro artist Pete Morisi for color photocopies of these covers from his own dog-eared mags! [©2003 the respective copyright holders.]

In Search Of...

unjustly by grabbing Funnies’ best talent and then cutting him loose. 1957 : Writes “The Coming of the Comic (Book)” for July issue of Newsdealer. 1961 : Funnies, Inc., ceases business. 1970 : Jacquet dies in March. [NOTE: Anyone with further information concerning Lloyd Jacquet is asked to contact Jack Elmy either through Alter Ego, or directly via e-mail at jackelmy@socal.rr.com. Hopefully, one of these fine days, we’ll all be reading more about the mystery man who was partly responsible for the publication of “The Sub-Mariner” and “The Human Torch” in that first 1939 issue of what soon became Marvel Mystery Comics—flagship title of Timely Comics, and forerunner of today’s Marvel Comics.]

The Men & Women of Funnies, Inc. (a.k.a. The Jacquet Shop) [NOTE: The following is a list compiled by researcher/comics historian Jerry G. Bails of the Jacquet shop personnel from 1939 through the end of Funnies, Inc., in 1961, and generously made available to Alter Ego—the magazine he founded in 1961. A question mark after the name means it is uncertain whether or not this person worked for the shop. This listing, like the comparable one last issue for the Iger shop, is necessarily incomplete, but is based in part on questionnaires filled out by many of the creators themselves for the 1940s Who’s Who of American Comic Books compiled by Bails and Hames Ware. Also helpful was the late Howard Keltner’s Golden Age Comic Books Index (1935-1955): The Revised Edition. Some of the creators below probably worked on a freelance basis for Jacquet/Funnies. Key: a = artist; w = writer; ed = editor; let = letterer; bkgd = backgrounds; sec = secretary; c = circa/approximately the date that follows. —Roy.] Allison, William (a) – 1940, 1943-49 Altman, Gerald (a) – c. 1942-c.46 Alvarado, Pete (a) – 1939-c.40 Anders, Al (a) – c. 1939-40 Anderson, Harry (a) – 1940 Antonette, Larry (a) c. 1939-41 Appel, George (a) – 1942 Ashe, Edd (a) – 1940-43 Bachle, Leo (a) – 1944 Bare, Al (a) – 1942- c.46 Barry, Dan (a) – 1941-43 Battefield, Ken (a) – c. 1943-45 Bell, Fred (a) – c. 1942-50 Bjorklund, Lorence (a) – 1946-50 Blaisdell, Tex (a) – c. 1942-46 Blummer, Jon L. (a) – 1941 Bolle, Frank (bkgd) – 1943 Borth, Frank (a) – 1941-42 Brady, Bill (a) – 1940-43 Brickley, Ken (a) – c. 1946 Buffalino, Helen (sec) – 1943 Bugg, Bob (?) – c. 1940 Burbank, Addison (a) – c. 1947

Carl Burgos’ hot ideaNina in action, in The Human Torch #4 (Spring 1941)—actually the third Albright, (a)–1942-49 issue, since the title had started off as the infamous Red Raven #1. By Bill Everett’s circaAlfred, Newt (?) 1970 account, he and Burgos were “friendly rivals” sixty-plus years ago, though Ye Editor always suspected the term “competitive friends” would’ve described them just as well. In the 1960s Burgos sued Marvel Comics unsuccessfully to try to regain control of the Torch. Repro’d from photocopies of the original art. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Burgos, Carl (w/a) – 1939-42 Burley, Ray (?) – c. 1949 Campbell, Harry (w/a) – c. 1939-42 Carreno, Al (?) Carroll, Dolores (a) – 1940s Carroll, W. (?) – 1944 Certa, Joe (a) – 1946-49 Champion, D’arcy (w) Cole, Jack (a) – 1940 Compton, John (ed/w) – 1939-40 Cone, Ralph (?) (a) – 1941 Cooke, David (w) – 1939 Dahlman, Steve (a) – c. 1939-41 Daly, John (a) – 1940-46 Davis, Bob (w/a) – c. 1940-42 De Lay, Harold (a) – 1939-47 De Muth, Martin (let/w) Dixon, Tohm (?) Dobrotka, Ed (a) – 1942-c.45

Donnelly, Harry (w) – 1939-43 Donohoe, Joe (a) – c. 1944-c.48 Drake, Stan (a) – c. 1940 Dresser, Lawrence (a) – 1942-47 Dunnagan, Claude (?) Elgin, Jill (a) – 1942- c. 1947 Ely, Bill (?) – c. 1939 Ernst, Ken (?) – c. 1939 Everett, Bill (w/a) – 1939-42 Everett, Grace (let/foreman in war years) Fagaly, Al (a) – c. 1941-43 Fanshaw, Dan (pen name?) (a) – c. 1940 Fasano, Jerry (?) – c. 1945-c.46 Fax, Elton (a) – 1945 Feller, Lucy (a) – 1945-46 Ferstadt, Louis (bkgd) – c. 1942 Field, Lochlan (a) – 1939-42 Filchock, Martin (w/a) – c. 1940 Fish, George (a) – 1938-40

...Lloyd Jacquet

Fisk, Harry (a) – 1941-47 Lonsbury, Earl (a) – 1945-49 Pinajian, Art (?) – 1939-c.43 Fitch, Ken (w) – 1940s Magarian, Albert (a) – c. 1945 Plastino, Al (a) – 1941-46 Fitzsimmons, Jim (prod. manager) – 1930s-40s Magarian, Florence (?) – c. 1945 Potter, Harold (a) – 1940 Flinton, Benjamin (a) – 1940 Mandel, Alan (a) – c. 1941-43 Prentice, John (?) – 1942-46 Fraccio, Bill (a) – 1949-50 Mandel, George (a) – 1939-42 Quinlan, Charles (a) – 1943-44 Froehlich, August (a) – 1941-42 Marcoux, George (a) – 1946 Quinn, Paul (a) – c. 1940-41 Frollo, Frank (w/a) – 1940s Marko, George (a) – 1946 Ramsey, Harry (a) – c. 1939-42 Fuller, Harvey (?) – c. 1944-46 McArdle, Jim (a) – 1941-47 Reavis, Logan (a) – 1941 Garn, Roy (w) – c. 1941-43 McWilliams, Al (a) – c. 1939 Reeves, E.J. (a) – 1946-48 Gates, Art (a) – c. 1941-42 Meditz, John (a) – c. 1941-44 Ricca, Gus (a) – c. 1940, 1948-49 Geller, Burton (?) – c. 1944-c.47 Messman, John (w) – c. 1943 Robbins, Ed (w/a) – 1940-42 Gershwin, Emil (?) Mills, Tarpe (a) – 1939-42 Ross, Edith (ed/w) – c. 1942-c.44 Gilkison, Terry (a) – c. 1939 Moe, Claire (w/a) – 1940s Rowland, Will (a) – c. 1940 Gill, Joe (w) – c. 1951 Moore, Art (a) – 1944-45 Roy, Mike (a) – 1941-42 Gill, Ray (w/a) – 1937-41 Morey, Leo (?) – 1939-44 Ryan, Edward (a) – 1941-46 Gill, Tom (a) – 1942-46; (ed) 1939-41 Sage, Merl (?) Gilman, Sam (a) – 1939-42 Sahle, Harry (a) – c. 1940-44 Giunta, John (a) – c. 1941-c.45 Sale, Robert G. (a) – 1947-49 Glanckoff, Sam (a) – 1941-50 Sansone, Leonard (a) – c. 1940 Gordon, Dan (?) – 1945 Schneider, Mark (?) – c. 1940 Grant, Douglas (a) – 1941-43 Schroeder, Ernest (a) – 1946-49 Greene, Jim (a) – c. 1942 Schrotter, Gus (a) – 1942-47 Greene, Sid (a) – c. 1941-43 Schwab, Fred (a) – 1939-40 Gregg, George (?) (a) – 1944 Smalle, Ed (a) – 1941-49 Griffiths, Harley (a) – c. 1941-45 Sparling, Jack (a) – 1942-48 Grothkopf, Chad (a) – 1941-42 Spillane, Mickey (w/asst ed) – 1939-41; Gustavson, Paul (a) – c. 1939-c.42 (w) 1945-46 Guth, B. (?) Starr, Leonard (a) – 1942 Gutwirth, Maurice (a) – 1942- c.45 Stone, Chic (a) – 1939-40 Hamilton, Ed (let/a) – 1940s Taylor, Henry (a) – c. 1941-42 Hammell, Will (a) – 1948 Thomas, Frank (?) Hammer, Milt (a) Thompson, Ben (a) – c. 1939-c.42 Harrison, George (a) – 1940-41 Tomsey, Charles (a) – 1942-c.46 Hasen, Irwin (a) – c. 1939-40 Torbert, Floyd (?) – 1942-47 Hearne, Jack (a) – c. 1946-48 Torpey, Frank (w/sales) – 1939-42 John Daly’s “Sub-Zero” from Novelty’s Blue Bolt, 1942. Daly later Toth, Alex (?) – 1946 Hicks, Arnold (?) – c. 1943-c.46 drew “Aquaman,” “Congo Bill,” et al., for DC. Thanks to Jerry Hing, Chu (a) – c. 1943-c.46 Tumey, Bart (?) Bails & Hames Ware. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.] Hoffman, Arthur (?) Tyler, Al (a) Holmes, B. Valleau, Janice (a) – 1946 Houlihan, Ray (w/a) – 1941-42 Neill, Max (a) – 1939-c.42 Vigoda, Bill (a) Hughes, Bob (a) – c. 1940-43 Neville, Dennis (a) – c. 1941-c.43 Vigoda, Hy (w) – 1942-43 Hughes, Harold (a) – c. 1939 Nitkin, Nathanial (w) – c. 1941-c.43 Warren, Alonzo (w/a) – c. 1939-46 Humphries, Roy (a) – 1940 Novo (a) Webster, E.F. (?) – c. 1940-c.42 Jacquet, Grace (co-owner) – 1939-61; Oksner, Bob (a) – 1940-45 Werstein, Irving (w) – 1941-46 (ed) 1942-c.45) Oliver, Norman (a) Whitman, Maurice (a) – 1946 Jacquet, Lloyd (co-owner/ed) – 1939-61 Orlando, Joe (a) – 1947-52 Wilcox, James (a) – 1930s-40s Jaediker, Kermit 9w) – c. 1940 -c.42 Patenaude, Ramona (a) – c. 1942-46 Willner, Ray (a) – c. 1941-c.42 Jasinski, Chet (a) – 1946 Pearson, Charles (a) – 1939-40 Wing, T.F. (a) – c. 1941-c.42 Jenney, Bob (a) – c. 1939 Peck, Clara (a) Winslow, Stockbridge (a) – 1939-40 Johnson, Walcott (a) – 1941 Peter, Harry G. (a) – 1941 Wolverton, Basil (w/a) – c. 1939-41 Johnson, Walter (Walcott?) (a) – 1944-46 Pfeufer, Carl (a) – 1942-43 Wood, Bob (w/a) – c. 1939-42 Jordan, John (a) – c. 1940-43 Piazza, Joseph (w) – c. 1939-c.40 Wood, Dick (w) – 1939-42 Junb, John (?) – c. 1940 [NOTE: Funnies, Inc., supplied the following: Early Timely/Marvel—1939+; Jussen, Steve (a) – c. 1940 Centaur/C.C.A.—1939-42; Green Giant—1940; many Novelty issues—1940-49; strips in Kapitan, George (let/w) – 1940-43 Heroic Comics—1940-55; Air Fighters #1—1941; Captain Battle #1—1941; Daredevil #1— Kennerly, L. (?) – c. 1940 1941; Gilberton—1941-42; Parents Comics—1941-49; miscellaneous Fawcett comics—1942-53; Kiefer, Henry (a) – c. 1943-55 Don Winslow—1943-55; Rural Home—1944-45; Key Comics—1944-46; Variety Comics— Kildale, Malcolm (a) – 1939-42 1944-46; Yellowjacket—1944-46; Tom Mix—1948-53; Sunset Carson—1951; variety of Kolb, John (a) – 1939-c.41 publishers—1951-61. Additions or corrections to the listings in this section can be sent directly Krigstein, Bernard (a) – c. 1946-c.49 to Jerry Bails at <JerryBails@aol.com> or via Alter Ego at <roydann@ntinet.com>. In addition, Larsen, Howard (a) – 1947 you can visit Jerry’s information-filled Who’s Who website at <www.nostromo.no/whoswho/>.] Lauretta, Paul (a) – 1938-40 Levy, Marvin (a) – 1946-51

Rudy Lapick

Lapick Of The Litter A Timely Conversation with RUDY LAPICK about the Late-’40s Bullpen Interview & Transcription by Jim Amash [INTERVIEWER’S NOTE: Unless you’ve been reading Archie Comics for the past few decades, you may not know who Rudy Lapick is or have seen his work. That’s a shame, because it’s very possible that Rudy has inked more comic book pages than any other inker in comics history. Along with his former partner Dan DeCarlo, Rudy spent most of the past fifty years making kids laugh at Timely features like My Friend Irma, Millie the Model, and My Girl Pearl, and later at all the Archie characters in Riverdale, USA. On his own, Rudy’s pen work over nearly all the other Archie artists during the last three decades helped define (and refine) the Archie “look.” I don’t know how many pages Rudy has inked in his career, and I can’t ask him to count them, because he’s still sitting at the drawing board adding to his total. Hey, at least I got him away from the board long enough for a brief look at Timely Comics and its colorful 1940s personnel! —Jim.] JIM AMASH: When and where were you born? RUDY LAPICK: I was born in the Bronx, New York. November 17, 1926. JA: Is your name pronounced “La-pick” or “La-pick” or “Lay-pick”? LAPICK: It’s pronounced “la-pick.” It’s my fault for any confusion, because the family spelt the name “Lapick.” My brother told me to spell it “LaPick,” because people kept mispronouncing my name. But that’s not my true name anyway. When my grandparents came to this country from Italy in the early 1900s, Italians weren’t too popular, so he changed the family name from Lapicarelli to Lapick. You know, when I got married, I intended to change my name to Lapicarelli, because I was proud of being Italian. But there was a lot work involved in doing that, so I didn’t bother.

Though his name wasn’t on the stories, Rudy Lapick inked much of penciler Dan DeCarlo’s best work for Timely/Atlas, as per this splash from Sherry the Showgirl #2 (Sept. 1956); we’re not certain if Rudy inked the cover, as well, but we’ve tossed it in, just in case. For some reason, DeCarlo often signed his name on the last page of his Timely stories—while Stan Lee stuck his printed logo on the first, as here. Thanks to Dr. Michael J. Vassallo for the photocopy of the art. Sorry Rudy never got around to sending us a photo of himself. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

JA: What got you interested in drawing?

was a short little guy. We used to hang out in groups at the front of the school, and he’d give me a headache because he was always singing. Some time after we graduated, this girl I knew was giving me a ride in her car and she said to me, “Remember that guy, Anthony DiBennett? He used to give you headaches?” I asked, “What about him?” She said, “Well, he’s Tony Bennett, the singer.”

LAPICK: My father used to draw and it came naturally to me. I used to draw in grammar school and did backgrounds for plays. The teacher was interested in me and saw to it that I took a test to get into the School of Music and Art. Then I went to the School of Industrial Art (S.I.A.). I didn’t like the School of Music and Art because it was primarily a painting school and I didn’t go for that. I found out that S.I.A. had a comic book and advertising courses, so I switched schools.

I went to the School of Music and Art with Norman Maurer and Joe Kubert. They were making a fortune because they were already working in comics. But they kind-of looked down on the rest of us. And Maurer married a woman who was the daughter of Moe Howard of the Three Stooges. Maurer went into the Navy and was still doing comics. He signed his work “Norman Maurer, U.S.N.R.” He must have had a cushy job while he was there.

Another guy who went there the same time I did drove me crazy. He

I graduated in 1944 and enlisted in the Navy. I wasn’t there too long because I got hurt during training. I had a choice of either staying in and

Lapick Of The Litter

Remember him? Stan was kind of tall and thin like him. He did have this one joke that I didn’t care for. He’d walk into the room and look at you and say, “You’re fired.” I hated that. I’d be in the bullpen and making everybody laugh and Stan would time it. He’d walk in and say, “You’re fired” and walk out. Then everybody would go “Wwoooooo...” That was his joke. Stan used to play that flute all the time, too. He didn’t spend much time in the bullpen. He’d usually go and talk to Syd Shores or Sekowsky. I like to mimic people, and sometimes I’d be in the elevator with Stan and he’d ask me to do impressions. In fact, I met him about twenty years later at a show and he remembered my impressions. JA: What year did you start working there? LAPICK: I started as a staff inker in November 1947, and worked there until they let everyone go in February 1950. They had several rooms, and we worked from nine to about 4:30. I worked in a large room and Gene Colan sat in front of me. In front of him was John Buscema. Bill Savage, an adventure inker, sat behind me. Sol Brodsky was there and so was Dan DeCarlo. Mario Acquaviva and Vince Alascia were there as inkers. Syd Shores and Mike Sekowsky were there, too.

The climactic panels from a Gene Colan horror tale from an early-’50s Timely comic, as reprinted in Marvel’s black-&-white mag Monsters Unleashed! #4 (Feb. 1974). You can see the splash panel in A/E #16. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

getting a desk, or getting a discharge. I figured I’d go home. JA: Did you read comics as a kid? LAPICK: All the time. I used to get these second-hand comics for a penny or two cents. I had a lot of comics and copied them. I was always very interested in comics, and I liked Flash Gordon in the newspapers. I also liked Eisner’s Spirit and Tarzan. I was more into super-heroes than other stuff. Captain America and Captain Marvel were favorites. JA: Where did you break into comics? LAPICK: I started with Cinema Comics, which was on 45th street in New York, in 1945. Richard Hughes was the editor. I inked adventure comics for them. Bob Oksner was a kid and he worked on staff, as did Ken Battefield. They penciled. I worked on staff about a year and made about $45 a week. Then, for some reason, they let me go. I don’t know why. I had all kinds of other jobs and I don’t remember how I ended up at Timely Comics. They may have had an ad in the paper, because they were looking for people. I went to see them and had my Cinema Comics work in my portfolio. Alan Jaffee was one of the art directors and he interviewed me. I liked Al Jaffee. He was a nice guy and very amiable. He talked to Stan Lee and I was hired. JA: What did you think of Stan Lee? LAPICK: I liked Stan Lee. I was the only one who thought this, but he reminded me of Robert Walker, the actor.

When Gene Colan was working for Timely, he was just a kid. He looked like he was about fifteen. One day, he got real mad because he was driving his dad’s car and a cop stopped him because he didn’t think Gene looked old enough to drive. I really love Gene. We both like the same things. And he’s such a great talent. Gene was also a fast artist. Did you know I gave Gene a tattoo? I accidentally jabbed him in the wrist with my crow quill and he still has the India ink under his skin. Gene says, “I can’t forget you.” JA: Do you remember what the big sellers were? LAPICK: Patsy Walker and Millie the Model sold real well, and so did Captain America. The westerns sold well, too, but I can’t give you any details. JA: Martin Goodman published his comics under several different company names. Do you remember what company name was written on the check? LAPICK: We didn’t get a check; we got an envelope with money in it. That was the olden days! I made a lot of money in those days. They hired me at $55 a week. That was in November. By May, I was making $75 a week. So I got married. In fact, they were making money off of me. They were paying $14 a page for inking and I was doing two pages a day, five days a week. So I was putting out a $140 a week worth of work and getting seventy. JA: Didn’t that bother you? LAPICK: No. I was a kid and was happy. I could have taken freelance work home, but I didn’t want to do that. Rudy Lapick says that, even when he began working there in late 1947, Captain America was one of Timely’s best-selling comics—yet by #70 (Jan. ’49) sciencefiction and even horror themes were beginning to force their way into C.A. The mag died later that year. Artist may be Syd Shores; and that’s Bucky’s latterday replacement, Golden Girl, at left. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Rudy Lapick Jaffee told me to wait in the bullpen and he went to Stan and came back. He said, “You’re rehired, but in the event we have to let more guys go, you’ll be the first.” But I stayed on until they let everybody go in 1950. JA: What did they tell you when they let the bullpen go?

LAPICK: As far as I can remember, they just wanted to disband the staff and have everyone work freelance. I went on unemployment. I tried other jobs, but if you’re not in the field you love, you don’t enjoy it. Dan DeCarlo was Timely/Atlas’ My Friend Irma was licensed from the popular being inked by radio (and later TV) show starring comedienne Marie Wilson as the archetypical John Cuddy, who “dumb blonde.” When that lease lapsed, My Girl Pearl tried to pick up where Irma left off—but without any royalties to pay! had been a staff Dan DeCarlo again signed the last pages of these two tales from My Friend Irma #24 (Oct. ’52) and Sherry the Showgirl #2 (Sept. ’56), inker at Timely. but Dr. Michael J. Vassallo tells us: “I know [Rudy Lapick] inked Millie the Model anywhere from 1948 to 1960. He also inked My Friend Irma Cuddy got a job anywhere from 1950-55 and My Girl Pearl in 1955.” Thanks for the copies and the ID, Doc! You’d know if anybody does! in advertising, so [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.; My Friend Irma TM & ©2003 the respective TM & copyright holder.] in June of 1950 JA: Was Stan the only editor? Dan called me and asked if I wanted to work as a team with him. LAPICK: Al Jaffee was in charge of humor art, and Syd Shores was in charge of the bullpen. They started me out on adventure comics, but I wasn’t really that good at it. So they switched me to teenage books like Millie the Model and Patsy Walker, and I was good at that. JA: Stan Goldberg told me that you were laid off right after you got married. LAPICK: That’s right. I got married in May of 1948, and we went to Lake George for two weeks on our honeymoon. When I came back to work, I saw Chic Stone in the elevator on my way up to the office. He made a joke about me being a honeymooner and we both laughed. Then he said, “By the way, you’re fired.” And Stan Lee used to say that as a joke, so I laughed. I went into the office and found out it was true. I went over to Al Jaffee, who was my immediate boss and said to him, “Geez, I just got married and I get this crap? Who did you let go?” Al told me who was let go. I asked him, “You didn’t can Larry Tullipano [a staff inker]?” Jaffee said Tullipano had a wife and kids so they kept him. I said, “Every time a mistake was made on a job, whose work was it? Larry Tullipano. And who corrected it? Me! You sent all his work to me to fix, but you kept him and let me go.”

Now, Dan had this beautiful studio and you won’t believe how little it cost. This was in New Rochelle, and it was $20 a month, so we split the cost. The room was really hot, and it was on the second floor above a store. We worked there from 1950 until 1956. Dan got the jobs and he paid me. Then Dan bought a home and decided to work there. But we continued as a team until the mid-1960s. Back then, Dan was a very tight penciler. And he’d lay so much pencil in the black areas that you could hardly lay ink on it. He was a damn good artist. Everything looked natural and he could really tell a story. JA: How did people get along in the bullpen? I’d like to know about some of them. LAPICK: Everyone was always laughing. It was like a happy family, and it was a good time for me. Gene Colan reminded me that I had everybody in stitches. I’d just be talking to Gene and the other guys would hear it and laugh. And it’d always be the time Stan would come into the room. We’d hear him coming because he wore those gum-soled shoes, and they squeaked when he walked. We always had music piped through. It was like Muzak. That boring music! If I had listened to Al Bellman, I’d be a millionaire. He penciled and

Lapick Of The Litter he drew Patsy Walker.

inked. I had just gotten married and Al said to me, “Rudy, come with me. I’m going to buy some plastics stock.” I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have that much money. Years later, Sol Brodsky told me that Bellman had become a millionaire because he had bought that stock. You could get it for 25¢ a share back then.

Stan Drake did some romance comics. Ken Bald did some work there, too. But not on staff. Tom Cook worked there. He used to draw westerns, and he looked like a cowboy. He was a nice-looking, good guy. If I had to type him, I’d say he was like the actor Jack Lord. Every time I’d see him, he’d have his head tilted back because he was putting eye drops in his eyes. He had a bad car accident and I think he’s dead now.

Bob Stuart was an inker, and he was from the South. He used to discuss politics with Pierce Rice and another guy. I really enjoyed listening to them. Bob used to do a lot of freelance work and he was a very smart guy. Pierce Rice was a terrific staff artist. He did lots of westerns and war comics. He did beautiful paintings, too. He was very intelligent and reminded me of a professor. He looked a little like Norman Rockwell. Pierce was thin, had a big Adam’s apple, and looked like he belonged out West somewhere. He was a nice guy, but I wouldn’t call him an outgoing guy. And he was a slow artist.

John Buscema was an Elvis Presley type. He had a nice head of hair and he was always combing it. He had a very nice build and he’d stick his chest out and comb his hair. Gene Colan and I used to laugh at him when he did that. John was a nice guy who was kind of laid-back. In a crowd, he'd just sit and listen. JA: What do you remember about Chris Rule? Jim Amash, who sent these panels from Timely’s humor comic All Surprise #2 (early-to-mid 1940s), says he figures this is Ed Winiarski art, depicting (left to right in top panel) Dave Gantz, Mike Sekowsky, and Syd Shores (“Sir Smooch”), with other unidentified staffers at right. That’s Winarski himself as the king in the final panel. And this was all in what was a basically a funny-animal story starring Ziggy Pig! [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Earl James was there, too. He penciled adventure stories and was a nice guy. He was an older man, but I don’t remember much else about him.

There were several rooms. There were roughly twelve people in our room. We were the big room. In another room was Mike Sekowsky, Syd Shores, and maybe two or three other guys. Sekowsky was the best. He could do anything. Teenage stuff, adventure... anything. I remember him drawing Captain America. And he was fast. He could knock out five or six pages a day. I really liked his work. But you had to know how to draw when you inked his stuff, because it was all there but hard to ink. You had to figure things out. While he was working for Timely, Sekowsky lost a finger working with power tools at home. Luckily, it wasn’t a finger that he needed for drawing. I didn’t like Sekowsky. He was a wise-ass. You’d come into his room and he’d say, “What do you want? What are you doing in here? Get your ass out of here.” It was never anything like “Hi, Rudy.” It was always, “Well, look who’s here.” He never had anything nice to say and always had a snide remark. But I always had a good answer for him. He reminds me of Don Imus. I was buddies with Mike’s brother George, who was an inker. He went to the same school with me, as did Ezra Jackson. Sekowsky’s parents were strict people and hard workers. Syd Shores was a very good artist, but he was kind of slow. He was one of those guys you liked, but he never smiled. You never felt buddybuddy with him. And he wore a cheap toupee. He was our boss and sat against the wall way in the back. He didn’t bother with me much because I was doing teenage stuff. He dealt more with the adventure artists, and I remember that he drew a lot of westerns. I dealt more with Al Jaffee. Dave Berg was a happy-go-lucky bear of a man. I liked him. I think

LAPICK: He reminded me of Santa Claus. I liked him. He did a lot of work, including Patsy Walker. He was older than we were and was a real jolly guy. His buddy George Klein was a nice-looking guy, but he didn’t have any warmth to him. I didn’t really know him. JA: Do you remember Artie Simek or Sam Rosen? They were letterers. LAPICK: I remember Sam, but I didn’t know him. I liked Artie. He was sort-of a country-like guy. I didn’t know him too well. The letterers were in another room, so I didn’t get to know them. JA: How about Don Rico? LAPICK: I didn’t really know him. I knew he was there, though. He seemed like a nice guy. I think he did some editorial work for Stan, but that might have been before I got there. JA: Mart Nodell. LAPICK: Oh, yeah. I liked him. He sold me a gold watch. I wanted to buy one for my wife, and I was only making $70 a week, but Marty was able to get one for me. He must have had a friend somewhere. JA: Vince Alascia. LAPICK: He used to ink Syd Shores’ work. Alascia was a very nervous guy. He was very good and used a lot of shadows in his work. I used to go to his house and I remember he had twin daughters. You ever heard of Mario Acquaviva? Mario was mainly an inker, but he could pencil a little bit. He was a good inker. He did romance comics and did beautiful women. He was a real ladies’ man even though he was married. He and Vince were very close friends.

Rudy Lapick LAPICK: Yeah. It was Harry Shorten. Then he left and Bob White took over. Archie was located on Church Street in New York City, near Wall Street. Then they moved up to 61st Street and First Avenue, which was right off the FDR Drive. And I couldn’t find parking there. We timed it so Dexter Taylor (an Archie writer/artist who also edited) would be waiting for me on the corner, and I’d drive up and get the work and go on. Actually, I got the job at Archie for Danny and me. I took our work to Shorten and got work for the both of us. After that, Danny handled the business end and I was paid by him. We worked that way until the mid-1960s, when I started working directly for Archie and they paid me. And even after that, I still inked DeCarlo’s work, and other people’s, too. JA: Did you know Bob Montana? LAPICK: No. I never met him. I wasn’t in the office very much back then. I do remember that we used to cut out drawings in the magazines and I used that big, heavy ink line that he used. Years later, Victor Gorelick, my editor, told me to tone that down and I did. I did know Bill Vigoda. I’d occasionally see him when Archie was on 61st Street. I remember him telling me that his brother Abe was going to be in the Godfather movie. I still work for Archie Comics and ink about forty pages a month. I’ve always enjoyed doing humor comics. It’s what I do best.

This splash page from Namora #3 (Dec. ’48), the final issue of “The Sea Beauty,” has been tentatively ID’d as having been penciled by Mike Sekowsky. Thanks to Mike Costa and Blake Bell. [©2003 Marvel Characters.]

JA: Ladies’ man? Was he good-looking? LAPICK: I would call him an attractive man. He was the guy you noticed when you walked into a room. He was always bragging about his teeth because he had nice teeth. And blue eyes and a mustache. And he knew he was good-looking. He was Italian. Acquaviva means “lively water” in Italian. He was a very neat worker. Ever hear of Sol Stein? He was an office boy there. He’s not well now, but I remember him. In fact, when I told Gene Colan he wasn’t doing well, Gene called him up. There were several rooms there and the people in each room seemed to stick with each other. That’s why I didn’t know much about some guys like Carl Burgos, Bill Everett, or Don Rico. JA: Once you and Dan DeCarlo were on your own, you continued to work for Timely (which became Atlas)? LAPICK: Right. We did a lot of work for them and also for other companies. We did work in Ziff-Davis’ G.I. Joe comic book, and then we started working for Archie Comics. JA: Do you remember who was the editor at Archie when you two started working there?

A 1970s DeCarlo-penciled, Lapick-inked splash page from a story reprinted in Betty and Veronica Double Digest #83 (Oct. ’99); thanks to Jim Amash & Teresa R. Davidson. [©2003 Archie Publications, Inc.]

Title Comic Fandom Archive

Landon Chesney 1938––2001 become a successful professional. When at last I established personal contact with the man from Cleveland, Tennessee, who was living at the same address that had accompanied his letters in early issues of Fantastic Four, Chesney confirmed Spicer’s information. He considered himself something of a glorified amateur, without the inner resolve and iron discipline to have made it in the competitive world of professional comics. The idea of chaining himself to a drawing board, and being required to cut corners and repeat himself to meet deadlines, was anathema to him.

by Bill Schelly On December 19th, 2001, legendary fan artist Landon Chesney passed away in his sleep. This tribute in three parts—belated though it is, because of the space we wished to devote to his life and career—relates the impact his life and death had on Yours Truly... the quasi-paternal role he played in the life of his nephew Jason Gillespie... and an appreciation by Bill Spicer, who in the 1960s published some of Chesney’s best work in his quality fanzine Fantasy Illustrated. We’ll begin with my own thoughts....

Part I

Chesney wasn’t lazy. He was an idealist. He was interested in breaking new ground with his art, and solving complex problems of composition and anatomy. He didn’t feel driven to bend his talent toward remuneration, but rather preferred to keep it pure.

(Top left:) 1969 photo of Landon Chesney, taken during a period when he drew maps for a living—and his moody “Dr. Weird” splash page from the fanzine Star-Studded Comics #8 (March 1966). Photo courtesy of Jason Gillespie. [Art ©2003 Estate of Landon Chesney; Dr. Weird TM & ©2003 Gary S. Carlson & Edward DeGeorge.]

I admired Landon Chesney’s art from the moment I got my copy of Fantasy Illustrated #2 in 1964, which featured his extraordinary work on “The Life Battery.” This was a fanzine adaptation of an Otto (Eando) Binder story from the science-fiction pulp Amazing, one of his best. Chesney’s use of light and shadow was masterful, and though his stylings were reminiscent of the great Johnny Craig work in EC comics, they had an original slant all their own. Each panel had a kind of perfection—not necessarily in the draftsmanship, but it its conception. Here was an artist who had a profound understanding of storytelling in the comics medium. Throughout the mid-1960s, more work by Chesney appeared in a number of the most widely-circulated fanzines, including Star-Studded Comics (“Dr. Weird”) and Voice of Comicdom (“The Cloak”). What a thrill it was to find those treasures again when I returned to fandom in the early 1990s and began re-assembling my fanzine collection! What, I wondered, had the great Chesney produced in the interim? The very last thing I’d seen was his new cover on an underground comic book featuring a reprint of “The Life Battery.” Had he gone on to great heights? When I got in touch with his good friend and former publisher Bill Spicer (Fantasy Illustrated, Graphic Story Magazine, Fanfare), I learned to my surprise that Chesney had basically stopped producing art for publication sometime in the 1980s! After working on an aborted graphic novel starring The Cloak, and a few projects for some underground comix, it seems Landon felt he didn’t have what it took to

Then, too, there was something else, which his nephew Jason Gillespie reveals in the interview that follows: Chesney suffered from a debilitating physical condition that had an effect on his ability to produce work on demand.

But one thing was clear from our correspondence: Landon Chesney possessed a remarkable intellect, and a sophisticated understanding of the graphic story medium. I never failed to be fascinated by the observations he shared, whether they be about his great regard for the work of Roy Crane, or his admiration for the comics produced by his good friend and collaborator Grass Green. Chesney was extremely articulate, and in the exchange of letters that we had in the late 1990s I learned a lot from his thoughts and observations. He was also kind enough to allow me to reprint “The Life Battery” and some of his other strips in my two Fandom’s Finest Comics books. It was a dream-come-true for me to be his publisher, even if on a humble scale. I only spoke to him once. I needed to get his approval to add a touch of zip-a-tone to his “Two Flashes Meet The Purple Slagheap” strip from Xero #10 when I was about to reprint it in Fandom’s Finest Comics, Vol. 2—so I phoned him. “That sounds like a very good idea,” he said in his Tennessee twang. That over with, we chatted of other matters for a few minutes, and I ended with, “I hope we have an opportunity to talk some more,” to which he concurred. We never did. Isn’t that so often what happens? Then, after a space of too long between letters, in February of 2002 I received one from his nephew, informing me Landon had passed away

Landon Chesney on December 19, 2001. Just like that, Chesney was gone. I hadn’t known he was ill, and even his family was taken by surprise.

A panel from the minimalistically clever “Two Flashes Meet the Purple Slagheap,” from Xero #10 (1963), which served as most fans’ introduction to Landon Chesney’s artwork. The full five-page parody is on view in the trade paperback Fandom’s Finest Comics,Vol. 1; see Hamster Press’ ad elsewhere in this issue. [Art ©2003 Estate of Landon Chesney; Flashes TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

I wanted to let people know, but how could I tell Grass Green, his friend who had just lost Ronn Foss a few months before, and who was now coping with lung cancer? So I delayed....

because, perhaps stupidly, I didn’t want Grass to know. Now, as I write this, they are both gone. Did we appreciate them enough when they were here? Did we let them know how much they meant to us?

JASON: Up until two years ago, yes. At this point, his mother—my grandmother—was getting to the point where she needed more help. But Uncle Landon had been suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and some other things that he had been taking medication for... and he just wasn’t physically able to help facilitate what she needed to get done. Take her to the doctor, things like that. My mother had been talking to my grandmother about her and Landon moving closer to her. Then finally, two years ago, they moved to Goodlettsville, Tennessee, right outside Nashville, where I grew up. They moved into a place called Windsor Court. BILL: Was his passing a complete surprise, or was it something that was more or less expected? JASON: It was a surprise. We knew that he had been feeling bad, and had been switching medications. I don’t really know enough about what the doctors were doing about it. His health would fluctuate—his feeling good, his feeling bad. BILL: How did you find out? JASON: My wife and I went up for Christmas. I walked in the door and my mother was trying to tell me, and she broke out into tears. It had just happened a couple of days before we showed up. He died on December 19th... I believe, in his sleep. They said that it was a heart attack. They found him the next morning when my grandmother went in to check on him.

Yes, I think we did. They knew they had fans and friends. Fandom is good that way.

Part II

“He Filled A Big Void” Interview with Landon Chesney’s nephew Jason Gillespie, conducted July 14, 2002, by Bill Schelly; transcribed by Brian K. Morris [NOTE: Jason Gillespie is the son of Landon Chesney’s sister, Jane Gillespie.] BILL: Did you live and grow up around your uncle Landon? Or did you know him only as someone you went to visit? JASON: Only as someone we went to visit. But I was closer to my mother’s side of the family than my father’s side. So, really, the Chesneys were more like an extended immediate family. We spent a lot of time with Landon, visited him often, and spent a lot of the summer visiting him, staying with my grandmother where my mother would drop my sister and I off, once she showed up, seven years later. He really filled a big void. My parents got divorced when I was seven and my uncle kind of picked up the slack. BILL: Landon made a special effort to be a significant player in your life? JASON: Right. He was always sending me things. We visited regularly, up until the time when I was in high school. Then, after I went into the Army and college, it became a little bit more your traditional ‘going-tovisit’ sort of thing. BILL: Was Landon living with his mother in the house on Harle Street in Cleveland, Tennessee, the whole time?

Comic Fandom Archive

Bill Spicer sent these “EC-styled roughs with Post-It comments, done around mid-1999. These were inspired by the idea Russ Cochran floated in his Gemstone newsletter about the feasibility of reviving one or more EC titles with new stories and art for today’s market. Nothing was actually in the works so far as we know (maybe nothing ever will be), but the proposal was enough for Chesney to go ahead with a few sketches in case something developed. Fan Addicts will notice his Craig-like approach to subject matter and layout is very much reminiscent of EC’s earlier New Trend issues from 1950-51 (Landon’s preferred years), when they occasionally used a dialog balloon to enhance cover scenes.” [Art ©2003 Estate of Landon Chesney.]

came to me that was his, and he had his drawing paraphernalia. You know, he had his French curves, and his compasses, and all his various things like that. I guess once he got out of that, he didn’t feel the need to keep an actual space that was set aside for doing artwork. BILL: You know, I don’t think I ever knew his exact birth date. JASON: He was born on Groundhog Day in 1938. BILL: He lived in that house on Harle street most of his life, didn’t he? JASON: The little red house, yes. BILL: Did he have a studio of any kind? JASON: Not really. Because when our relationship began, he had pretty much ended most of his efforts for fandom. Anything he did was liable to be done at the kitchen table, or in his room. I know he drew a lot. He did a lot of stuff with me, but it was always in that context. A lot of stuff

BILL: But he definitely continued drawing for his own amusement, and maybe to show you stuff... because it turned out you also had art talent. JASON: Right. I ended up working as a freelance artist for a number of years. BILL: So you learned from him. JASON: Yeah. I got to be there, and to see how he approached his work... which is something nobody in fandom could see. He was a meticulous person when it came to crafting his art. He just kept working at it, at least into the 1980s, when he may have stopped most of the output. But for a long time, he really kept at it, and I wish I had half the stuff that he had done for me. I’ve got some of it, and hopefully there’s some of it still in my mother’s house. He was still coming up with ideas.

Landon Chesney I’m sure there was, because a lot of things, I think, he kept to himself. But at the same time, once he started talking about something that he was very interested in, there was just this wealth of information. And I think my entire family, we were always kind-of amazed at how much knowledge he possessed. If he didn’t have his art ability, he probably could have gone into many different areas. You know, just anything that he paid attention to. As calm as he was, he was always smoking a cigarette and always drinking a cup of coffee.

He’d say, “Hey, look. Here’s something.” He’d have an idea, and he’d say, “How does this look?” And, you know, it was a great idea. BILL: When you do your own artwork, what aspects of what he taught you, if anything, are with you? I mean, do you feel like he left you with any message when you’re working on your artwork that you remember as you work? JASON: Yes, certainly. Even in his early work, you can see he was attacking all of the important things: the lights and the darks. The storytelling was there. His attempt was to capture what he saw in his mind and put it down. He did that from the beginning, and I think that’s something he instilled in me. Plus, he gave me a love of the greats in the comics field: Eisner... Caniff... Winsor McCay. When I was seven years old, he bought me this huge book of Little Nemo in Slumberland. So he was instrumental in giving me an eye for what was really good, people that were the “masters” of whatever genre he wanted to get me interested in.

BILL: What were some of his interests other than art and comics?

JASON: Popular culture was something that he immersed himself in to the point of being almost encyclopedic. He really had a vast knowledge, but he did have interests beyond that. There’s clippings I have. He would pull something out about the Middle East. We would talk about politics. He was very up on what was happening in the Middle East. We both thought we should have seen the terrorist events of September 11th coming. So he kept up with what was He’s probably the single-most going on. He had some books that influence on me. I had a friend at art weren’t what I would have expected. Another “Dr. Weird” splash—this one from the July 1965 issue of school, who had seen a lot of my They were still art, but books on Star-Studded Comics. [Art ©2003 Estate of Landon Chesney; uncle’s work, tell me, “I see a lot of Dr. Weird TM & ©2003 Gary S. Carlson & Edward DeGeorge.] cartoonists like Charles Addams. And your uncle’s influence in your work.” he had a really nice book, Andrew Certainly, he set the course in the way that I would approach a drawing. Loomis on Illustration. So I guess he was trying to cover all bases and just found everything interesting. I can give you a little bit of anecdotal information that is very interesting, and it’s the sort of thing that I grew up seeing. We’d come for the summer and he’d have these things to show me. I still have one of them, a cardboard construction of the arm. He made a couple of others that were a little bit more flexible, where the hand would work, as well. For the joints and the fingers, he would put masking tape and he would have little mannequins. He always thought, somehow, there’s a way in which we could work out a formula. And he went through numerous formulas on constructing the head, constructing the body, using various shapes, different interlocking sorts of interacting—you know, just the shapes. It was really kind of a convoluted thing, but I remember seeing these. “Okay, now I’m doing the head this way.” It was a constant working process. He did all sorts of things. He used Bristol paper and made a three-dimensional model of the head of his character, Frank Fearnot, so that he could revolve the head around and could draw it. He always thought Mort Drucker must have used mannequins or models or something, because Drucker’s drawings were always perfect. He was always thinking that, “That’s the way. That’s the way to do it.” That was very much a part of his mentality, as he always thought, “Get that perfect line. Just every time, make it hit just right, each and every time.” He’d strive for that. BILL: How would you describe his personality?

JASON: He was a very thoughtful person. I’ve always said to people he’s probably about the most intelligent person I’ve ever met. And he was very calm. He had a very—not “placid,” necessarily, but he had a very calm and thoughtful demeanor. He came across that way. You always get this feeling that there was something below the surface, and

Part III

Chesney in Retrospect by Bill Spicer The first I ever saw of Landon’s work was his “Two Flashes Meet the Purple Slagheap” in Richard and Pat Lupoff’s venerable sf/comics fanzine Xero, issue #10, around late 1962 or early ’63. At about that same time his address in Tennessee was somehow passed along to me (or maybe it was the other way around) and we became ongoing correspondents with a fairly short list of mutual interests. The main one was that both of us were diehard EC fans with case histories going back to the early ’50s, except I don’t think Landon ever contributed anything to the EC fanzines of the period as I had done. But in 1962-63 his name was still not entirely unknown to me. I’d come across it fleetingly a few years before, when the letters page of EC’s Weird Science-Fantasy #29 (May-June 1955) ran his cogent comment on a story in issue #27: “‘Close Shave’ was the best indirect slap at segregation I have ever read (except for your Shock series)! I hope everyone that read it got the real point of this story.”

Comic Fandom Archive A pair of noteworthy Chesney story pages from Bill Spicer’s superlative fanzine Fantasy Illustrated, showing Landon’s Johnny Craig and Harvey Kurtzman influence: (top:) Chesney and Spicer team up to adapt an Otto (Eando) Binder pulp story in #2 (1964)... and a page from the Misbourne tale in #6 (1966). This pair of tales can be seen in the two Hamster Press volumes of Fandom’s Finest Comics; Gil Kane particularly praised Chesney’s work on “The Life Battery” in his famous interview in Alter Ego [Vol. 1] #10 in 1969. [Art ©2003 Estate of Landon Chesney; inked art on “A Study in Horror” ©2003 Bob Overstreet.]

Landon’s mid-’50s take on race relations can be added to some other Chesney factoids that randomly accumulated over the years during the course of our correspondence: His favorite World War II-era Superman cover artist was Jack Burnley. The relatively short-lived All-American logo and line of comics, founded by M.C. Gaines in 1939 and later absorbed by DC, somehow had more “resonance” (his word) for him than did DC proper. His favorite composer was Jerome Kern. He had a strong dislike for rock music. On the other hand, he also once gave a thumbs-up commentary and review of Bill Haley’s 1954 “Rock around the Clock.” Film picks ranged all over the map from Gunga Din (1939) to The Manchurian Candidate (1962) to a mostly-forgotten latter-day curio called Radio Flyer (1992). On those rare occasions when his attention turned to television, there was the pilot and first season of Crime Story (1986-87), when it was set in Chicago. Given our many years of trading letters on those subjects and more, plus collaborating on a number of our own comics-related projects, it now seems odd to me that we hardly ever strayed from the business at hand and came to know much about each other’s personal lives. On that front he remained something of a mystery man right up to the end. The only thing I knew for sure was that he had an extraordinary writing and drawing talent which, for reasons I can only speculate on, he stubbornly practiced as a dedicated amateur from Day One. He never “went pro,” as they say, even while it was clear to me that he had the natural ability to do so, at least on the face of things. But his heart obviously wasn’t in it, preferring to indulge himself over the long haul with the laissez-faire world of fanzines. A diamond in the semi-rough, if you will, who had no interest in leaving this comfort zone where he could pick and choose his next piece of work, or for that matter ignore it, according to what the muse was doing that particular day. The aforementioned EC science-fiction opus “Close Shave,” written by none other than Otto Binder, turned out to be a preamble of sorts, when his and Chesney’s paths crossed several years later under another set of circumstances. As per usual, it was entirely fan-based. Landon’s most professional-like artwork, arguably, was for “The Life Battery,” adapted from Binder’s 1930s pulp yarn and published by my own self in Fantasy Illustrated #2 in 1964. Spooky and evocative stuff done in a quasi-EC vein. Chesney made the most of static scenes replete with wordy captions and talking heads until you saw some semblance of action toward the finale. A good argument might be made that artwise he never again quite reached this same level of expertise. It looked as if he could have matched or surpassed it on completion of his The Cloak graphic novel preliminaries in the early 1970s, written and drawn for my overly ambitious and ultimately aborted Graphic Story Press series. No doubt this was the closest Landon ever came to a so-called professional assignment, tentatively accepting as he did the shoestring-budgeted $500 advance I paid him to get started. He agreed also to the prospect of a similar amount somewhere down the line (our typically nonchalant way of conducting what was loosely defined as business), plus a royalties percentage based on eventual sales. But the project evidently was intimidating to him right from the start. It verged on crossing the precarious line between amateur and pro territory. On top of that, just as bad or worse, it obliged him to deal with the new challenge of devising a storyline many times longer than his well-established norm. About a month later he ran out of gas, returned the $500, and reluctantly had to call it quits after producing what I thought were some exceptional pages of script breakdowns.

Landon Chesney

These dynamic layouts stayed on the shelf for over two decades, until they were resurrected by yours truly and finally published by Bill Schelly in his 1997 Hamster Press volume Fandom’s Finest Comics. If nothing else, this truncated Cloak continuity and the earlier “Life Battery” seemed to show that Landon was indeed capable of making the leap from amateur to professional. The art and writing skills were certainly there. That being said, I’m still not really sure he would have gotten all that far “going pro” in the major markets, even if by some miraculous turn of events he’d been motivated to give it a try. His idiosyncratic drawing style was retro with no apologies, influenced mostly by circa 1950-51 Johnny Craig and Harvey Kurtzman, along with a bit of late-’40s Eisner added for good measure. Which meant it was rife with thickly-rendered brush strokes, trapped shadows, and lighting effects borrowed from film noir. I doubt Landon’s old-school hybrid style would have lent itself to mainstream comics of the ’60s and ’70s. More to the point, his nonconformist temperament wouldn’t have lent itself, either. He liked to work only on what personally interested him, and that precluded just about everything being published.

guard purists, or joined-at-the-hip fogeys, who were and always will remain beyond Fan Addict salvation. You be the judge. The last time I heard from Landon was by way of a short note dated 1-29-01. Written hastily in response to my inquiry about the status of his cover art for Fantasy Illustrated #1 (a collector friend was interested in purchasing it), his letter posed almost as many questions as it answered. For one thing, it came after an uncharacteristically long silence, my previous dispatch being ignored, or seemingly so, for several months. For another thing, there was the ambiguous reference to his change of address. A couple of years prior, he had alluded to moving, but never followed up with any reasons for leaving Cleveland, his home base for as long as I could remember. I let it slide and continued to be patient. Truth to tell, I was more accurately being a bit lazy and overmuch determined to play the waiting and/or procrastination game. I should have ventured a phone call, but decided against it on the theory that he would get around to replying when he was good and ready. A mistake in judgment on my part, since it now looked as though that wasn’t about to happen. By this point I had picked up the vaguely apprehensive sense that all was not well, and that Chesney, ever the Southern gentleman, was disinclined to burden me with a dire backstory about what was going on. Then came his January ’01 letter which, reading between the lines, had the effect of confirming my suspicion. Its brevity was not so much a factor, because interim notes dashed off between us from time to time had always been par for the course. But conspicuously missing from this one, standing out like the proverbial sore thumb, was his customary closing of “More later....”

Chesney’s influences were a natural byproduct of the unorthodox slant he developed regarding EC’s “New Trend” personnel. For him, the big three were Craig, Kurtzman, and Feldstein, pretty much in that order. As artists, they were EC’s hierarchy who founded and shaped what he considered the true-blue “New Trend,” 1950-51 being the defining period when that trio’s artwork predominated. One of his longheld beliefs was that this original look dissipated after about the first year and a half, officially turning the corner with the introduction of And with that telltale omission I never heard from Landon again. Shock SuspenStories in early 1952. It’s fair to say he never warmed up to the newer wave of artists coming on board like Al Williamson, Reed Crandall, and George Evans. Bernard Krigstein’s fine-line “avant-garde” art fell short by comparison with primordial Craig, not to mention the stories Kurtzman wrote and illustrated in 1950. Somewhere during the post-EC years I more or less came to share Landon’s opinion on these matters, or at least relate to it with a sympathetic ear. I wouldn’t go so far as to disparage EC’s staff additions when they expanded their line. But for me those pre-Shock issues still capture more of the tone and spirit of quintessential EC, if there is such a thing, just as they did for A triptych of “final things.” [Clockwise:] (a) Bill Schelly says Chesney. this drawing Landon Chesney sent him in 1998 of The Cloak, All very subjective, probably placing us both in that minority of old-

who years earlier was to have been the hero of his aborted graphic novel, is “perhaps the last finished piece he ever did.” (b) Landon’s nephew Jason says this photo of Chesney from the late 1990s “was taken on the back porch at the house on Harle Avenue.” (c) His last note to Bill Spicer. [Art ©2003 Estate of Landon Chesney; photo courtesy of Jason Gillespie.]

I. The Incredible Mystery of the “Lost” EC Page by Michael T. Gilbert Back in Alter Ego #15, we printed a previously unpublished Wally Wood EC Comics sci-fi page. A couple of years earlier, I’d accidentally stumbled on the image while surfing eBay for rare comic art. The owner was selling it for a price well out of my range, but I managed to download a fuzzy scan for later use in A/E. The seller’s description of the art suggested that it might be a censored EC page, but offered little more information.

I’d heard of unpublished pages from EC’s aborted Picto-Fiction line of black-&-white magazines, but never any pages from their four-color comics. The lone exception was a single story, “An Eye For An Eye,” that had been rejected by the Comics Code and bounced from the final issue of Incredible Science Fiction (#33)—and that story had already seen print in the 1972 book, The EC Horror Library Of The ’50s. So, where did this Wally Wood page come from? Was it part of an entire never-before-seen EC story, or a censored page removed from a

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

tale already in print? In April 2000, comics historian Grant Geissman attempted to unravel the mystery by sending a copy of the mysterious page to former EC editor Al Feldstein. After looking it over, Feldstein replied: “I vaguely recall the story it came from. As far as this 74-year-old brain can remember, it was not an original of mine, but my usual edited adaptation of a script by Jack Oleck… and that it was probably scheduled for Weird Science-Fantasy [actually Incredible Science-Fiction—the mag’s name had changed by then. —MTG] #34, which was never published. “In those days, Wally’s meeting deadlines was problematical. Note that he is missing from several of the last issues of WSF [ISF]. This story may have been turned in after… or very close to… Bill’s decision to quit… being forced to do so by the bankruptcy of Leader News, his weak and ineffective distributor. “Whether it was ever part of the conflict I was having with [Comics Code chief] Judge Murphy, getting stories approved by him, I do not remember. It may have been submitted to him [for Code approval], I do not remember. It may never have been submitted to him, because the title, along with all the others, was killed before I ever could. “Where it came from, I cannot help you with. Maybe Russ Cochran knows. Perhaps it was sold by him in one of those early auctions that Bill okayed when he finally parted with the art work he’d stored over the years. Maybe that‘s how the ‘censored’ description came to pass. …in an effort to market it for a better price. “I cannot envision Wally himself selling it, because Bill never stiffed anyone for work they’d done (art or script). …even if he never intended to publish it. Witness the artwork for the Picto-Fiction books that were never published. “I know I’ve been of little help, but we’re talking about a period in my life that was very painful… Bill letting me go with the dropping of all the titles… over 45 years ago.” Al’s memory was good, as far as it went. Jack Oleck did indeed write the story, and it was initially rejected by Judge Murphy’s Comics Code Authority. But the full story only emerged after we printed the mysterious page in Alter Ego. Shortly after the issue appeared, readers James P. Greiss and Mitch Lee each separately came to the same conclusion concerning the page’s true origin. Mitch Lee wrote: “I just bought the issue today, and greatly enjoyed your latest Wood installment. I believe the unpublished Wood EC sci-fi page is the original page 2 from “You, Rocket” (Incredible Science-Fiction #31) that was rejected by the CCA. If you compare the original with the page that was published, you can see why it was rejected. In addition, there’s a common link between the two pages in the image of the surgeons in the panels of both pages.” After reading Mitch’s letter, I substituted our EC page with the published 2nd page of “You, Rocket” (reprinted in the Russ Cochran EC Library). It was a perfect match! The clincher was the final word on page one, “prayer,” which was also the first word on the censored page 2. It’s worth noting that the original version is much more chilling than the one printed. The revised “You, Rocket” told of a car-crash victim whose brain was harvested from his dead body. The man’s memories were wiped clean, inserted in a computer and reprogrammed to run a rocket. Creepy, huh? But the original, censored version (the one we printed in Alter Ego #15) was a lot creepier! Futuristic government goons steal a healthy baby (!) from his sobbing parents—then hand him over to doctors who slice

his head open, remove the brain and place it in the rocket. Ugh! Needless to say, this version could never have been published under the Code. What were they thinking? In his letter, Mitch also pointed out that the story’s final panel lacks EC’s traditional “The End” banner. This, along with the story’s surprisingly abrupt conclusion, suggests the possibility of an 8th page that was dropped from this 7-page story at the last minute. If true, one wonders if that page, too, will eventually turn up. Shortly after Mitch’s letter, I received another one from longtime EC fan Bill Spicer, editor/publisher of the 1960s fanzine Fantasy Illustrated, who included a clear stat of the art. Bill also informed me that an unpublished EC page was about to appear in an upcoming revival of John Benson’s classic EC fanzine Squa Tront––though he didn’t know whether it was the page I’d just printed. I e-mailed John and discovered that it was indeed the same page. John sent the new information to Grant Geissman, who passed it on to Feldstein. Al was surprised to learn the page in question wasn’t from a lost story after all, but rather a censored page from “You, Rocket.” In Al’s own words: “That certainly stirred the memory cells, especially after examining the published page two with the ‘censored’ page two, and I finally recalled having hastily re-written the page and having Wally quickly re-draw it. “The real mystery, however, is: Where did the page come from?? “Bill Gaines zealously hoarded and guarded all original art at EC.

Updates And Additions At left below is the censored page 2 (with a missing final panel—probably all-black), placed between the published splash page (on preceding page) and page 3. This is how the story was originally meant to appear. [©2003 EC Publications, Inc.]

Certainly Wally had been paid extra for redoing the page... and the original page had been stored. “But how did the page get shaken loose from Bill’s warehouse cache? “It’s a puzzlement.” A “puzzlement,” indeed! But that’s another mystery, for another time. Fortunately, Grant was able to correct the information before Squa Tront #10 went to press, and it appeared accompanying a full-page, crisp reproduction of the art. So, by coincidence, the lost EC page was printed twice, mere months apart—after lying hidden for almost half a century! And it’s funny to think that my Alter Ego article wound up “betatesting” another piece for Squa Tront! Since a clear copy of the page is available in Squa Tront, we won’t update our fuzzy low-res printing with a full-size version here. Instead, we’re pleased to present (in miniature) the first three pages of “You, Rocket” as it was originally intended—along with the censored page 2 for comparison. If your comic shop doesn’t carry Squa Tront, you can order it from the Fantagraphics website <www.fantagraphics.com>. John Benson and Greg Sadowski produced a terrific book, and I strongly urge you to pick up a copy! As an added incentive, the issue also contains additional commentary by Al Feldstein on “You, Rocket” censorship and the Comics Code. (Right:) This is the redrawn page 2—the version that was printed in Incredible Science-Fiction #31. [©2003 EC Publications, Inc.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt

II. I Go Pogo? Remember the five “lost” Wally Wood comic strip parodies we published in Alter Ego #12? These strips were commissioned by Mad magazine for an article titled “Comics for Publications That Don’t Have Comics!” When Mad’s editors requested changes, Wood bowed out and the script was passed on to Bob Clarke, whose version appeared in the July ’64 issue of Mad. Well, eagle-eyed reader (and pro comics artist) David Ross pointed out that layouts for a sixth strip––a parody of Walt Kelly’s Pogo—also exist. The “not-so-rough” roughs first appeared in the 6th issue of the Pogo fanzine The Okefenokee Star in 1980. Wood’s attention to detail is impressive. Wood appears to have drawn two very different layouts for panel 1. Additionally, his panels 3 and 5 are both versions of the final panel––with two completely different designs for the Ty Coon character. We’re reprinting Wood’s preliminary drawings alongside Bob Clarke’s published version. It should be noted that Wood did a number of Pogo parodies for Mad over the years. Kelly must have approved, as he gave Wood a brief tip-of-the-hat in the 1960 collection Pogo Extra!, excerpted at right.

Updates And Additions

III. Martin Landau: The Ghost of Wally Wood? Consider this next item an Alter Ego clarification, rather than a Crypt update, since the rumor we’ll be correcting never appeared in this column—but rather in the “Oops Dept.” of A/E #12 (how appropriate!). However, since it relates to both EC and Wally Wood, we’ll include it here. On page 34 of that issue, A/E editor Roy Thomas related a surprising bit of information sent by one of his readers. “And Mitch Lee has written... that, at the EC Reunion at the 2000 San Diego Comic-Con, EC editor Al Feldstein said that ‘a lot of Wood’s EC work was done in collaboration with Martin Landau.’ That’s right—the same wonderful actor whose work in recent years in such films as... Ed Wood has been such a delight.” Now this struck me as surprising, for two reasons. First, a lot has been written about EC and Wally Wood over the decades, but nobody had ever claimed actor Martin Landau worked for EC, much less ghosting art for Wally Wood. Ordinarily, I would have taken this statement with a grain of salt. However, I’ve corresponded with Mitch and know him to be a reliable source of comic history. Additionally, I was also at that convention and recalled hearing Al make a similar statement. At the time it struck me as an unusual and unique bit of EC trivia. However I quickly forgot about Feldstein’s offhand remark, until Roy’s blurb refreshed my memory. Now I was really curious! Luckily, comic expert Mark Evanier had written about Martin Landau’s cartooning career in his entertaining and informative POV website. After typing in <http://povonline.com/IAQ4.htm> I discovered the following information in Mark’s “Incessantly Asked Questions” section:

I sent Al Feldstein an e-mail describing what Mitch and I recalled hearing, as well as a copy of Mark’s article—and suggested the possibility that the artist in question might be Ken Landau, rather than Martin. A few days later, Al replied: “Michael, I do not remember ever saying anything like that! “I knew of Martin Landau only as a motion picture actor... and I never knew anything about Ken Landau. “Unless I reiterated my story about encouraging Wally Wood to dump his… partner, Harry Harrison... you must have me mixed up with someone else at the dinner.” Puzzled, I contacted Mitch Lee to make sure he had been accurately quoted in Alter Ego. Mitch confirmed that he, too, had heard Al make the Landau statement. In a final effort to clear the record, I once again emailed Al with a possible explanation. I wrote: “On the surface, it seems two different people heard you make that same statement… “Is it possible that someone told you the Landau rumor that same day—you repeated it (believing it was true)—then simply forgot all about it? It’s the only explanation I can come up with, unless both Mitch and I are wrong (always a possibility!). “The only reason I’m belaboring the point is that the rumor is now in print. If you state from your firsthand knowledge that you weren’t aware of Landau ever working for EC, that’s good enough for me. But I did want to get it on the record before anyone takes the Landau rumor seriously.”

Q: Is it true that Martin Landau used to draw comic books? A: Nope. The award-winning actor was a comic strip artist early in his career. He worked as a cartoonist for the New York Daily News and assisted on the newspaper strip The Gumps. But he never drew for comic books. The confusion stems from a number of articles that confused him with Kenneth Landau, a comic book artist of the ’50s and ’60s, whose work was seen primarily in ACG and Gold Key Comics. It has been erroneously written—even in at least one book on comic book history—that they were the same person (one article claimed “Kenneth” was Martin’s middle name, which it isn’t), or that they were related. Neither is true and, yes, I’ve met both of them. Different, unrelated people. That seemed to be the last word on the subject. According to Evanier, Martin Landau was a cartoonist who worked on comic strips—but who never worked on comic books, EC or otherwise. (For the record, Mitch tells me he quickly rejected the notion of Martin Landau being involved. Though Roy missed his subsequent post, Mitch did suggest the possibility that Feldstein may have actually been referring to cartoonist Ken Landau.) But regardless of whether it was Ken or Martin Landau, where did Feldstein hear this information? Was it firsthand knowledge, taken from his days as EC’s editor––or possibly a rumor he’d heard years ago?

This photo of actor Martin Landau appeared in the 1985 book The Iger Comics Kingdom by Jay Disbrow, which repeated the oft-told tale of the actor having once been a comic book artist. The revised version of the book, printed in the preceding issue of Alter Ego, omitted that rumor.

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt “But what I said was something like this (not a direct quote, but as close as I remember it!): “‘I encouraged Wally Wood to break free from his dependency on Harry Harrison, who was exploiting him with a so-called ‘collaboration’... to strike out on his own... and I would give him work.’ “And then I added: “‘Later on, Wally was guilty of doing the same thing that was done to him... with an assistant of his own named Joe Orlando... who I then encouraged to strike out on his own as well... and I would give him work.’ “Whoever reported my statement must have heard ‘Landau’ ... when I said ‘Orlando’! “I only knew Martin Landau as a capable actor. I never, at any time, knew that Martin Landau had artistic ability or that he had ever drawn comics... so I never would have made the statement that Landau was assisting Wood. “But Orlando... yes! “I hope this finally puts the ‘Landau/Orlando’ matter to rest! “It certainly does for me!”

Ken Landau, whose name seems to have gotten him confused with Martin Landau, drew a number of stories such as this for the American Comics Group (ACG) in the 1950s. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

A few days later, Al replied. “Okay! I am going to put it all to rest right now! The light bulb has gone on!

And for me, too, Al—thanks!! End of mystery! End of column! ’Till next time…

“I remember what I said... and it was at the ‘EC Reunion Panel’ (not at the AACC Dinner!)... “...only perhaps my pronunciation was bad... or the mic was too close to my mouth... or the listener… heard wrong... or he needed Q-tip help desperately...

Number 10, Winter 2003 • Hype and hullabaloo from the publisher determined to bring new life to comics fandom • Edited by Eric Nolen-Weathington

S’long CBA... ...Hello ? First off, some disappointing news: COMIC BOOK ARTIST magazine is moving to Top Shelf Productions. After five years and two Eisner Awards at TwoMorrows, “Ye Ed” JON COOKE got an offer he couldn’t refuse, so #25 (slated for April, and featuring Alan Moore’s ABC line) will be the last issue before the switch. Refunds to subscribers for issues beyond #25 have been mailed, so if you didn’t get yours, give our phone or e-mail box a jingle. And if you’re missing some CBA back issues, don’t worry; we’re still handling sales of all the TwoMorrows issues until they’re sold out, so now’s the time to stock up! (If you’ve been anxiously awaiting the previously announced SWAMPMEN book, sorry—it’s been shelved due to CBA’s switch.)

TIDBITS lthough DRAW! is consistently our top-selling magazine, it’s also our most erratic at shipping ontime. While the magazine has fallen behind due to contributor and scheduling issues, MIKE MANLEY has vowed to get DRAW! out more regularly in 2003, and has a ton of material “in the can” for future issues, so look for solid quarterly or better shipping starting with #6 (above)! ow that ALT ER EGO is monthly, it’s our most regular mag, and ROY THOMAS hasn’t missed a deadline yet! (Of course, designer CHRIS DAY helps a little, too!) Be sure to check out #23 in April, showcasing the recent discovery of two NEVER-PUBLISHED Golden Age Wonder Woman yarns! RITE NOW! editor DANNY FINGEROTH shared with us this quote he received from STAN “THE MAN” LEE: “WRITE NOW! is a great mag… reading the interviews will turn all your subscribers into better writers. As if we ain't got enough competition now!“ If Stan likes it, we bet you will too! Pick up issue #4 (above) in April, featuring HOWIE CHAYKIN, WARREN ELLIS, and other top pros on both sides of the desk giving tips on writing for comics, animation, and sciencefiction!

Modern Masters Making Waves!

So just what is TwoMorrows going to do with that empty slot on its schedule once CBA is gone? Glad you asked! We’re hard at work on SUPER-SECRET PLANS for the July launch of what we predict will be the NEW MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR! Look for the formal announcement next issue, but rest assured it’ll appeal to the same audience as CBA, and is destined to be THE ULTIMATE COMICS EXPERIENCE!

For those misguided individuals who still think we only cover the “old school” artists of the Golden and Silver Ages, take note. TwoMorrows production assistant (and all-around good guy) ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON is editing our new book series spotlighting the top talent working in comics today! MODERN MASTERS: VOLUME ONE showcases the work of ALAN DAVIS, the British superstar known for his stunning work on DETECTIVE COMICS, X-MEN, JUSTICE LEAGUE, KILLRAVEN, and of course, CAPTAIN BRITAIN! This first volume of the series explores his life and career with the longest, most in-depth interview Davis has ever given. In addition to pages and pages of rare and previously unpublished artwork, Alan gives a tutorial on the artists that influenced him, plus his views on graphic storytelling. Also included are interviews with long-time collaborators Paul Neary and Mark Farmer. (Neary also provides the Foreword, while Farmer contributes the Afterword.) The 128-page trade paperback ships in March for $17 POSTPAID IN THE US. And next up for Volume Two? GEORGE PÉREZ!

Lightning Strikes Again! Hot on the heels of the success of THE FAWCETT COMPANION, TwoMorrows presents BECK AND SCHAFFENBERGER: SONS OF THUNDER, a splitbiography book (with a Foreword by KEN BALD) on the careers and lives of two of comics’ greatest and most endearing artists, C.C. BECK and KURT SCHAFFENBERGER! Both men are known for their seminal work on FAWCETT COMICS, and this upclose and personal retrospective journey takes you from their childhood years to the Golden Age of comic books and beyond! Co-written by FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) editor P.C. HAMERLINCK and MARK VOGER, this book is chock-full of previously unpublished art by both artists, including pre-comic book work, art from CAPTAIN MARVEL, LOIS LANE, and more, plus hundreds of RARE PHOTOGRAPHS! If you’re a fan of either of these Golden and Silver Age greats, this is a book you can’t miss! The 160-page paperback ships in April, for $20 POSTPAID IN THE US.

Barnes & Noble, Here We Come! TwoMorrows has signed an exclusive deal with DIAMOND BOOK DISTRIBUTORS to get our trade paperbacks into major bookstore chains around the world! This extra exposure means we’ll have the opportunity to publish some groundbreaking tomes by authors who might’ve overlooked us with just Direct Market distribution. Next issue, you’ll see the type of material we’re talking about. STAY TUNED!

To get periodic e-mail updates of what’s new from TwoMorrows Publishing, sign up for our mailing list! Go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ twomorrows

Whatta December! First, an ice storm ripped through Raleigh, NC (TwoMorrows’ home base) and knocked out the electricity for 8 long, cold days! Then, just 36 hours after the lights came back on, wife Pam woke publisher John Morrow at 4am and put him on a plane bound for Miami, to take a surprise week-long Caribbean cruise to celebrate his 40th birthday! (Pam packed his bags while he was consumed with working on the new KIRBY COLLECTOR, so he didn’t suspect a thing!) By the time they returned, the holidays were here, and a trip to visit family (and show off 16month-old daughter Lily) was in order. So now you know why TJKC #37 won’t be shipping until Feb. Sorry, Kirby fans!

Coming Soon! Alter Ego #22 (March) Alter Ego #23 (April) Comic Book Artist #24 (Feb) CBA #25 (April, final issue) DRAW! #5 (Feb) DRAW! #6 (April) Modern Masters Vol. One (March) Sons of Thunder (April) The Jack Kirby Collector #37 (Feb) The Jack Kirby Collector #38 (April) Write Now! #3 (Feb) Write Now! #4 (April)

CONTACTS:

John Morrow, publisher, JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR editor, and for subscriptions): twomorrow@aol.com Roy Thomas, ALTER EGO editor: roydann@ntinet.com Mike Manley, DRAW! editor: mike@actionplanet.com P.C. Hamerlinck, FCA editor: fca2001@yahoo.com Danny Fingeroth, WRITE NOW! editor: WriteNowDF@aol.com Jon B. Cooke, COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor: jonbcooke@aol.com And the TWOMORROWS WEBSITE (where you can read excerpts from our back issues, and order from our secure online store) is at: www.twomorrows.com

PLUS: PLUS:

5.95

In the USA

No. 22 March 2003

“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS!”

Awesome Art & Artifacts By:

C.C. BECK MARC SWAYZE ALEX TOTH CARL PFEUFER JOHN JORDAN BUD THOMPSON KURT SCHAFFENBERGER MAC RABOY LEONARD FRANK RON HARRIS JIM HARMON DON PERLIN PAUL REINMAN LORRAINE FOX JOHN ROMITA JOHN BUSCEMA & MORE Of The World’s Mightiest Mortals!

CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT

Vol. 3, No. 22 / March 2003

™

Editor Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout Christopher Day

Consulting Editors John Morrow Jon B. Cooke

FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck

Comic Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editors Emeritus Jerry Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White, Mike Friedrich

Production Assistant Eric Nolen-Weathington

Captains Courageous! Section

Cover Artists/Colorists C.C. Beck Bill Everett

Mailing Crew Russ Garwood, Glen Musial, Ed Stelli, Pat Varker, Loston Wallace

Contents Writer/Editorial: Captains of Our Fate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Twelve O’Clock in Shadow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Jim Harmon turns the (winged) clock back on—Captaaain Midniiiiiight!

“Who Cares? I Do!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Alex Toth sings the well-deserved praises of Paul Reinman and Lorraine Fox. re: [correspondence & corrections]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) #81 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 P.C. Hamerlinck presents C.C. Beck, Marc Swayze, Capt. Marvel Jr.—& Tom Mix! Bill Everett & Friends Section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flip Us! About Our Cover: This one’s from P.C. Hamerlinck’s personal collection—a “re-creation” of figures, if not of a precise comic book cover, that Captain Marvel artistic co-creator Charles Clarence Beck did for FCA’s editor a couple of decades back. P.C. felt it should be seen by thousands—and we heartily concur. [Art ©2003 Estate of C.C. Beck; Marvel Family TM & ©2003 DC Comics.] Above: Captain Midnight in an outfit truly deserving of his legendary name, in one of the Erwin L. Darwin illustrations from the 1942 Whitman book Joyce of the Secret Squadron, written by Russ Winterbotham, later the scripter of such newspaper comic strips as Twin Earths and Chris Welkin, Planeteer. Courtesy of Jim Harmon. [Art ©2003 the respective copyright holders.] Alter EgoTM is published monthly by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. Phone: (919) 833-8092. Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: Rt. 3, Box 468, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $8 ($10 Canada, $11 elsewhere). Twelve-issue subscriptions: $60 US, $120 Canada, $132 elsewhere. 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 Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

Title writer/editorial

Captains of Our Fate As I write these words on January 1, 2003—the first day of the New Year—I’m aware they won’t be read till March. Makes it tempting to skip the whole thing, like I did the past couple of years. But this year is different. On January 28, 2002, I was walking down our road to pick up the mail when I suddenly noticed a grey, semicircular shadow over the left part of my right eye, through which I could not see. By late morning of January 30—Dann’s birthday, as it happened—I was having an emergency operation in Columbia, SC, for a detached retina. I made a full and relatively painless recovery, but even new glasses will never enable me to see with 20-20 vision again, which makes driving, proofreading, and the like a wee bit more difficult than before. So why do I feel lucky? Because, had this situation happened to me a couple of decades ago, I would almost definitely have lost the full sight of my right eye. Like the man says: consider the alternative. Dickens said it most succinctly: “The best of times, the worst of times.”

support)... and TwoMorrows staffer Eric Nolen-Weathington... and Comic Book Artist editor Jon B. Cooke, all of whom came through when needed. Associate editors Bill Schelly and Jim Amash for diligence above and beyond. P.C. Hamerlinck and Michael T. Gilbert and Jerry Bails and Dann Thomas, each of whom deserves a special place on A/E’s masthead. Chris Day, who’s worked wonders squeezing so much artwork into so few pages. All the many contributors, whether they be professionals who consented to be interviewed and/or donated artwork for use, or the folks who interviewed them or wrote articles or even letters about them. People like Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, Blake Bell, Mike Costa, Jim Vadeboncoeur, John G. Pierce, Michael and Eddy Zeno, Jerry K. Boyd, Jack Bender, Steve Whitaker, Paul Handler, George Hagenauer, Mike Burkey, Ethan Roberts, Ray Cuthbert, all the guys in CFA-APA, and— Well, I’ve only got a page here, so I’d best stop. But I sincerely believe each of these guys is giving a helping hand to a worthwhile enterprise—the preservation of the history of comic books—and I thank them for it. And you for supporting our efforts. Now to see if I actually can put out twelve issues of Alter Ego in 2003!

In 2002, while working (as is Dann) on a long-delayed master’s degree in the humanities, completing all the requirements except the dreaded thesis, plus a bit of comics and other work now and then, I was somehow able to convert Alter Ego from eight times a year to monthly, so that interviews and articles and artwork related to the history of a field I love can be put into print more quickly. A 50% increase. How many people can have 50% more fun simply by deciding to work longer and harder hours—and by convincing a publisher (in this case, the esteemed John Morrow) to let you work longer and harder hours.

With your help, I just might. Now get busy and read about Captains Midnight, Marvel, and Marvel Jr.—three heroes who were always captains of their own fates, and who inspired us to try to be captains of our own. Bestest,

So it seems appropriate, at this time, to thank all the people who’ve been of especial help over the past year. The aforementioned John Morrow (and his wife Pam, for her indirect

If you’re viewing a digital version of this publication, PLEASE read this plea from the publisher! his is COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, which is NOT INTENDED FOR FREE T DOWNLOADING ANYWHERE. If you’re a print subscriber, or you paid the modest fee we charge to download it at our website, you have our sincere thanks—your support allows us to keep producing publications like this one. If instead you downloaded it for free from some other website or torrent, please know that it was absolutely 100% DONE WITHOUT OUR CONSENT, and it was an ILLEGAL POSTING OF OUR COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. If that’s the case, here’s what you should do:

Ye Editor in a recent photo, wearing the Captain Midnight jacket customized for him years ago by wife Dann. Roy says, “Actually, this is her second effort: the first, a leather flight-style jacket onto which she handstitched her first winged clock, looked so good to some San Fernando Valley thug that, a few days before we moved to South Carolina, he smashed in the window of our Sunbird and stole it. Unforgiving soul that I am, I’ve always kinda hoped that one dark night its sleeve would get caught on the door handle of his car while he was speeding toward a cliff at 80 m.p.h., like Buzz Gunderson in Rebel without a Cause—but hey, that’s just me. Anyway, even that act of vandalism had a good result: it made me feel even better about moving!” (Photo by Dann Thomas.)

1) Go ahead and READ THIS DIGITAL ISSUE, and see what you think. 2) If you enjoy it enough to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and purchase a legal download of it from our website, or purchase the print edition at our website (which entitles you to the Digital Edition for free) or at your local comic book shop. We’d love to have you as a regular paid reader. 3) Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR COMPUTER and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. 4) Finally, DON’T KEEP DOWNLOADING OUR MATERIAL ILLEGALLY, for free. We offer one complete issue of all our magazines for free downloading at our website, which should be sufficient for you to decide if you want to purchase others. If you enjoy our publications enough to keep downloading them, support our company by paying for the material we produce. We’re not some giant corporation with deep pockets, and can absorb these losses. We’re a small company—literally a “mom and pop” shop—with dozens of hard-working freelance creators, slaving away day and night and on weekends, to make a pretty minimal amount of income for all this work. We love what we do, but our editors, authors, and your local comic shop owner, rely on income from this publication to stay in business. Please don’t rob us of the small amount of compensation we receive. Doing so will ensure there won’t be any future products like this to download. TwoMorrows publications should only be downloaded at

www.twomorrows.com

Captain Midnight

Twelve O’Clock In Shadow Turning Back the (Winged) Clock on CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT by Jim Harmon Radio Flyer For many months in the mid-1980s I had lunch once a week with the best-known of radio’s Captain Midnights—that is, of the several actors who had played the role—and with a number of others from old-time radio, at the Masquers’ Club in Hollywood. I often tried to guide my conversations with Ed Prentiss to discussion of his old show. It seldom happened. Most of the conversation was devoted to which of the old gang had died this week. “Did you hear about…?” “Yeah, and his wife, too.” Prentiss did tell one story about how the FBI paid them a visit when the storyline concerned a fictional attack on a great American base. As a matter of fact, he told the story twice—once naming the base as Pearl Harbor, and another time as the Panama Canal. I found out later that he was having problems with his memory. I suppose I might have got him to open up more if he had liked me better. Unfortunately, Prentiss, unlike (happily) most of the many oldtime radio actors I’ve met, truly seemed to dislike me. Perhaps it was

A Midnight for many media! In this Fawcett house ad that appeared in Captain Marvel Adventures #14 as well as other comic books, the publisher tied in its Sept. 1942 debut of a Captain Midnight title with the aviator-hero’s four years on radio and the 15-chapter movie serial earlier that year. By its second issue, the comic became a monthly. Artist unknown—probably someone (or someones) in the Jack Binder comic shop. Thanks to Jim Harmon for providing many of the illustrations that accompany his study. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

because I really did not have the professional credentials to be a part of the Chicago radio actors group, the “Bridge Is Up Club,” referring to the excuse that actors often made about the drawbridge over the Chicago River in order to excuse themselves for being late. Fortunately, Art Hern, Prentiss’ last “Ikky,” did like me. He was like an uncle to me, and thought I would enjoy the meetings. (He would soon be ninety, his last year on Earth, and did not have much recall of specific details of the show.) But, after a few months, I decided I was not really welcomed there by several members, especially Prentiss. It was quite a contrast to my relationship to radio’s Tom Mix, Curley Bradley, who I’m told looked on me as an adopted son. Captain Midnight director Kirby Hawkes makes a point to actors Jack Bivans (“Chuck Ramsey,” center) and Ed Prentiss (“Captain Midnight,” right, at microphone), circa 1942. This photo appeared, courtesy of Boris Aplon (“Ivan Shark”) in Jim Harmon’s 1992 book Radio Mystery and Adventure from McFarland & Company.

So, while it might seem as I’ve had some opportunities to obtain a golden insight into the series, most of my information about Captain Midnight comes from public sources... and from years of research.

Cap’s comic book debut in Dell’s The Funnies #57 (July 1941) and the following issue were “slavishly adapted” from the first Captain Midnight radio episode three years earlier. The interior art by Robert Brice is repro’d from relatively poor photocopies, but does give the feel of the first stories.

Maiden Flights There is some confusion about who was the first actor to play Captain Midnight—but it was definitely Ed Prentiss. The earliest episode of the syndicated transcription feature I have is No. 65, on which he plays the lead. He played the role beginning in 1938 for the regional series, which was sponsored by Skelly Gasoline stations. The first appearance of Captain Midnight on radio was slavishly adapted to comics form in 1941 for a comic book called The Funnies #57 (July ’41). The art was done in a neat, workmanlike style, and was credited to Robert Brice. No writer was indicated; in any event, the dialogue was virtually word for word from the radio script. I own copies of some of the episodes which were adapted into comics as radio episodes, including the origin. The original radio scripts and most of the series were written by the team of Robert M. Burtt and Wilfred G. Moore, real-life aviators and creators of such other flying heroes on radio as Jimmie Allen and Sky King. The first episode of Captain Midnight told the now-familiar tale of how a lone American pilot went on a secret mission on which depended the whole outcome of the First World War. If he returned successfully, the gathered military staff would know the war was won for the Allied cause. Late that night, they had all but given up hope, when the faint sound of a single plane could be heard, and with it the striking of a church clock. The captain had returned, just at midnight.

Captain Midnight

An action sequence from #58. Note Captain Midnight’s insignia—a winged clock with its hands pointing to 12 o’clock—on both the front and back of his flight jacket. Art by Robert Brice.

By his second outing, in #58, Cap had replaced the lackluster super-hero Phantasmo as the main cover feature. Seen here is a mediocre photocopy of the cover of issue #59, his third appearance.

By later stories, the size of Cap’s winged insignia had grown, and more closely resembled the chest symbols sported by Superman and company.

Twelve O’Clock In Shadow He played it through the summer of 1949. He did not return in the fall of that year, but instead became the narrator of Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. Perhaps he knew the Captain Midnight series was not on firm ground. At this time, it followed the trend of all the afternoon adventure shows and went to complete half-hour stories, ending the many years of continued 15-minute serial episodes. The Lone Ranger had made a great success of the half-hour format for decades. One wonders why it took the producers and sponsors of other shows so long to get the idea. Jack Armstrong and Sky King were the first afternoon thrillers to change to the half-hour package, alternating days Monday through Friday. Now Captain Midnight would be heard Tuesdays and Thursdays, while Tom Mix was heard on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Somehow the aviation adventures of Captain Midnight and his Secret Squadron did not adapt well to half-hour stories, and the radio series ended in mid-December, offering a poor Christmas present to its many loyal fans. For those last few months of half hours, Paul Barnes played Midnight. He did a reasonably good job, but again, he was not Prentiss. Earlier, Barnes had had a series named Calling All Detectives in which he had credibly played all the male parts. It was a well done 15-minute show, after which a listener-detective was phoned and asked a question about the story for a modest prize of around $20. The series was put on transcription for local announcers to ask the question. In Chicago, where Barnes did the difficult show live, he made the call himself in his character of private eye Jerry Browning.

dnight for the le of Captain Mi ro e th in s tis s mailed Pren photo premium hey replaced Ed ith his face on w ys when When Bill Bouc up da e nd os ou th w ason, he e mustache: in th te No hin . “c second radio se ny d pa ha r Skelly Oil Com r, lots of heroes out by sponso male movie sta st .] er tte ld ho ho e th e copyright Clark Gable was 03 the respectiv spinach.” [©20

Those 15-minute Captain Midnight episodes introduced Jim “Red” Albright, a World War I ace who was working on new inventions for aviation. His young friend Chuck Ramsey and his mechanic Ichabod Mudd usually just called the pilot “Red.” He had the secret code identity of “Captain Midnight” where matters of military intelligence were concerned, but in the early months of the series no one called him by that name; perhaps they didn’t even know it. Over time, he came to be called Captain Midnight, and it was his civilian name that became the secret.

“Yes,” said Major Steele, his commanding officer, “and to me he shall always be… Captain Midnight!” Then the show went off for summer vacation, when sponsors thought the audience dropped because kids were outside in the fresh air, instead of inside listening to their radios.

Midnight—in 15-Minute Intervals Prentiss told a story at radio conventions about how he had once read in the trades that auditions were being held for Captain Midnight. Well, he was Captain Midnight, so he knew that couldn’t refer to him—just to the supporting players. As it turned out, the show’s sponsors did not have much consideration for performers, even leading players. When Prentiss didn’t show up, they auditioned other actors, and Bill Bouchey won the role for the second season. Bouchey rhymes with Grouchy, an attitude he often assumed later in movies in which he played a judge or a football coach. He was stern, but likable. He made a good Midnight, but lacked the force of a commanding military figure which Prentiss had projected.

Another early “Captain Midnight” handout from Skelly Oil. This time our Patsy (possibly portrayed hero is flanked by by Shirley Bell, who was also radio’s Little Orphan Chuck. [©2003 the respect Annie) and ive copyright holder.]

When auditions were called for the 1939 season, Prentiss showed up and won the part back!

Captain Midnight

7 Captain Midnight, as most people now regularly called him, investigated the kidnapping of Señor Peraldo from his great rancho. Midnight and his crew soon found the insidious Ivan Shark, their dedicated enemy was behind the abduction. Midnight and his friends went through many exploits, landing airplanes in cramped spaces where only a master pilot like Captain Midnight could possibly land. Shark, with the help of his equally conniving daughter Fury and his henchmen Gardo and Fang, tried every devious measure they could think of to destroy the heroes, but nothing worked. At last, Shark was cornered in a subterranean cavern. And when a secret gate released flood waters, it appeared Shark was swept away and drowned. Yet his body was never recovered. Captain Midnight worried about that. But Señor Peraldo was returned to his rancho and all seemed right with the world. Ivan Shark was always played by Boris Aplon, who had worked on an earlier Ovaltine program, Orphan Annie, as a far more sympathetic character, Daddy Warbucks. I knew Boris, too, and he had worked for me in some of my new radio productions. He was friendly, unlike Prentiss, but he talked of himself and his career on radio and stage incessantly, and seemed to drive away some of his friends from the old days. He passed away a few years ago.

Captain Midnight was big on codes as radio premiums a kid could order by mail—such as per these two versions of the “Code-O-Graph.” But, though the phrase has all but entered the language, there never was a “Captain Midnight Secret Decoder Ring”! [©2003 the respective copyright holders.]

A new assignment took Captain Midnight to Canada. An unknown adversary worked against him as he tried to protect that nation’s defense plans. In time, it turned out to be—with little surprise for regular listeners—Ivan Shark, who had not died in that Mexican flood. The villain managed to kidnap Chuck, but even that would not turn Midnight from his duty. Eventually, Shark was caught and tossed into a Canadian prison. This is where the nationwide network series for the chocolate drink Ovaltine begins. Even as Captain Midnight’s origin is recalled and he is called upon to form a Secret Squadron to fight the enemies of America, he is told Shark is up to new sinister activities.

The Water Is Full of Sharks... Ivan Shark! The earliest episodes had “Red” Albright involved in test piloting new planes and taking part in air races. One long early adventure survives on discs that the present writer was offered as a purchase from a former executive of the Skelly Oil Company. They were transferred to tape and have been sold for years by large radio tape dealers. The story took the famed aviator to Mexico, along with Chuck Ramsey, now his ward—and a female counterpart to Chuck, Patsy Donovan, a young aviator who even took her mother along on the adventure, presumably to chaperone her.

Twelve O’Clock In Shadow

1942 was a high-flying year for Captain Midnight! Besides hitting his stride in radio, both the Fawcett comics book and the comic strip debuted—plus the 15-chapter Columbia movie serial with Dave O’Brien in the title role. The serial was popular, but is considered unnecessarily corny by many Capfans. Besides his goggles, he wore a face-mask in some episodes. The villain? Ivan Shark, who else? [©2003 the respective copyright holders.]

Captain Midnight

Captain Midnight Comes to the Comics This is also where the Funnies series of comics stories begins. In the first strip, after a two-page version of Midnight’s beginnings in World War I, a government official tells him: “Your oldest enemy, Ivan Shark... escaped from the Canadian prison to which you sent him.” Sent to a deserted-looking old farmhouse, Midnight has to identify himself with a set of signs and countersigns. “The way is long,” he says. “But the reckoning is sure,” the other agent replies. On radio, these give-and-takes went to almost laughable lengths; the exchange was briefer in the comics.

Captains Courageous! Marvel introduces Midnight on the cover of the first issue of his own Fawcett comic in mid-1942. Inside, the Jack Binder shop seems to have provided the art; Jack’s brother Otto, who was also Captain Marvel’s chief scribe, scripted many of Midnight’s Fawcett adventures. [Captain Midnight TM & ©2003 the respective copyright holder; Captain Marvel TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

have a living mother. Shortly after Ovaltine took over, Patsy would be turned into another girl, Joyce Ryan. Evidently this name did not sound so relentlessly, almost comically Irish to the producers and audience. The decorated aviator is then allowed into the presence of a man behind a desk, a man who calls himself “Mr. Jones.” This man is disguised, but the eagle-eyed Midnight sees past that disguise and is about to speak the man’s real name in surprise. “Stop!” the so-called Jones says. “You must never mention my name!” From the deference given Mr. Jones, he could be no one but the President of the United States. (On radio, the character was given a deep, commanding voice similar to that of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.) Who better to install Captain Midnight in command of the newly organized Secret Squadron? The storyline quickly brought in Midnight’s protégé, Chuck Ramsey, in the early days frankly spoken of as Midnight’s adopted son. Batman had Dick Grayson (Robin) in comics, and Tom Mix had young Jimmy (as well as his sister Jane) on radio, but they were both “wards.” An actual father-son relationship was rare in popular melodrama. Midnight also had a young girl under his protection, Patsy Donovan, but she did

In September 1942 Fawcett Publications issued the first issue of a Captain Midnight comic book under a new contract with the makers of Ovaltine, replacing the features in Funnies. The cover (and inside front cover) showed Fawcett’s most popular hero, Captain Marvel, with his arm around Captain Midnight, introducing him to the readers. “Meet Captain Midnight, greatest ace of them all,” the World’s Mightiest Mortal proclaimed. The aviator hero could only respond modestly, “Thanks, Captain Marvel.” Besides being another potentially good-selling title, it seems to me that Fawcett may have wanted to make sure another “Captain M———” was not competing with their famous character. As DC would decide many years later, there was no loss in competing with yourself, when it revived Captain Marvel alongside Superman. The first issue of the Fawcett magazine appears to be the work of the Jack Binder comic shop, with slight differences on the predominant artist on each story.

The first use of the gliderchute, from Captain Midnight #1.

The Dec. 1987/Jan. 1988 issue of AIR & SPACE/Smithsonian, a magazine published by the Smithsonian Institution, featured a color-illustrated, 9-page article on the multi-media hero’s many facets, titled “The Flight against Evil,” with cover art lifted from Captain Midnight #8 (May ’43). Jim Harmon provided art, info, and artifacts for this piece, but received neither recognition—nor even a complimentary copy! Ye Editor had to send him photocopies of it several years later! Nice piece, though. (Oh, and the admonition to “Grab your secret decoder rings” was strictly the Smithsonian’s own idea! Like we said before—there never was any such animal.)

A splash from #18 (March ’44) detailing all his comic book paraphernalia.

The covers of issues #42 (July ’46) & 56 (Oct. ’47). Handy thing, that gliderchute! It vanished when not in use!

Captain Midnight

[Above:] A sample Captain Midnight page by an unknown artist, obviously done for Fawcett in the 1940s. With thanks to Rich Danny, who printed it in CFA-APA #43, June 1997. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

The first story begins: “The world thought Captain Midnight was dead! America’s enemies thought they could spy and sabotage without hindrance! Then out of the grim shadows of night came the red-clad figure of vengeance! “Captain Midnight is back again!” For six pages we are introduced to a slightly different alter ego for the Man of Midnight. He is now Captain Albright, a civilian inventor, working on new devices to battle the enemy. On radio Red Albright had done some work to develop new airplanes and equipment, but he was always primarily an aviator, not an inventor. On page 6 Albright removes his outer clothing and, in best superhero fashion, reveals the red flying togs of Captain Midnight, including flair-legged jodhpur pants, difficult to hide under suit trousers. Dressed for action, Midnight swings down on a slender rope and uses his doombeam to project on the wall his symbol of a clock with the hands at twelve. The spies cannot believe that the legendary Captain Midnight is alive, but his fists soon convince them that America’s greatest ace is still very solid and real. With the help of his radio companions, the youthful aides Chuck Ramsey and Joyce Ryan and the loyal mechanic Ichabod Mudd, he soon rounds up this bunch of would-be saboteurs, promising that Captain Midnight is back, and “this is only the beginning”. [Left column:] From first to last, Fawcett’s Captain Midnight was reprinted in Brazil, in Portuguese, as Capitão Meai-Noite. Thanks to John G. Pierce. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

Twelve O’Clock In Shadow

After the war, Cap continued on radio as an aviator (as per the 1947 Official Manual of the Secret Squadron, top left). In the Fawcett comics he was still clad in superhero red and purple, but he’d never been good about keeping his goggles down to protect his Captain Albright identity. These two later-’40s covers are reprinted from English editions with black-&-white interiors (bottom of page) from I.W. Miller, the same publisher who after 1953 mutated Captain Marvel into Marvelman. Jagga the Space Raider proved popular enough to take on our hero more than once—but what kind of name was “Dr. Osmosis”? Most mid-’40s Captain Midnight art probably by Leonard Frank. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.\]

Captain Midnight

The covers of #5 (Feb. ’43) & #36 (Jan. ’46). Sheldon Moldoff, of “Hawkman” fame, drew some of the issues in the mid-’40s. Is the latter cover (and/or #42) your work, Shelly? [© 2003 the respective copyright holder.]

13 The comic book series proved very successful. The flying outfit was replaced by a skin-tight super-hero outfit, with the jodhpurs vanishing after a few issues. Although Captain Midnight never gained any special abilities such as superstrength or invulnerability, he did acquire something resembling the power of flight in the second story of #1 with the gliderchute—webbing stretched from between his arms and sides, which allowed him to dive down from an airplane or upper floor and swoop upon the enemy. In the first issue, the webbing is billowy, somewhat resembling a parachute, but it became much more compact, a perfunctory strip of cloth under each arm. I hope no kid every tried jumping off a garage with so little aeronautical support! I think even youngsters realized that such things would work only for Captain Midnight in a comic book. I believe at times over the years he could even use the gliderchute to glide upwards from a standing start.

In this series, Captain Midnight wore an outfit mostly of red, the same color that predominated in Captain Marvel’s costume; helmet, gliderchute, and other trimming was purple. In the Funnies series, he had merely worn a brown leather jacket and matching pants. In the Captain Midnight newspaper comic strip Sundays, he wore a bright blue outfit at first, although retreating to a more military brown in later episodes. My favorite Captain Midnight uniform was used only once—in illustrations for the 1942 Whitman novel Joyce of the Secret Squadron, in which the title heroine’s commanding officer wore solid black—so black that not even any wrinkles showed, or the beltline between jacket and

In his Chicago Sun Syndicate newspaper strip, the Captain wore an aviator-style outfit that appeared mostly black in the first daily (6/29/42), but soon became “open for color,” as we used to say in the trade. The Caniff-inspired art was signed “Jonwan.” The first half-year of dailies were reprinted in Comic Strip Showcase #4 from Arcadia Publications in Greenfield, Wisconsin. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

Twelve O’Clock In Shadow

pants. However, it is the Fawcett red that has come to dominate the image of Captain Midnight. Still, never has a popular super-hero been depicted in so many multicolored costumes! In Fawcett’s issue #18, one story featured Captain Midnight in his red outfit, diagramed with all his comic book gadgets: the gliderchute, doom-beam, and the rest. His sidekick Ikky borrowed all his equipment to use in his own secret identity, Sergeant Twilight. Comic book heroes in the 1940s often had a comic sidekick (Green Lantern’s Doiby Dickles probably being the most successful), but only Captain Midnight had Sergeant Twilight, a parody of himself. Of course, Ikky as Twilight soon learned that it took more than Captain Midnight’s equipment to perform like a super-hero.

of Captain Midnight. They told of how the Captain and his Secret Squadron members, primarily Chuck Ramsey, Joyce Ryan, and Ikky Mudd, fought the Germans and Japanese in World War II. Chuck might have been just barely of fighting age, but against all realities of the time, Joyce was permitted to fly a fighter and shoot down many enemy planes. In real life at this time, women pilots ferried planes through dangerous skies, but were not permitted to fight in actual combat.

Midnight War On the radio, Captain Midnight’s adventures reflected nothing of Fawcett’s comic book concept. He had no secret identity; he was Captain Midnight all the time. He did no inventing, only flying and fighting the enemies of America— the Nazis and the Japanese—and, of course, his oldest enemy, Ivan Shark, now working on the side of the Axis. In many years of collecting old radio programs transferred from the original 16-inch discs to magnetic tape, I gathered some thirty wartime episodes

In the full-page Erwin L. Darwin drawings that accompanied the text of the Whitman book Joyce of the Secret Squadron, the young aviatrix moved from kid sidekick to clever heroine—and Cap looked great in solid black! Incidentally, the letters “SS” were used as the abbreviation for “Secret Squadron,” and Cap was agent “SS-1,” till someone pointed out that those were the initials of the Nazis’ feared and racist military force—after which the name was abbreviated “SQ,” as on the later TV premium at right. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

These recordings provide exciting flashes of Captain Midnight’s activities on radio during World War II, but recently researcher and author Stephen A. Kallis, Jr., has read the actual scripts of his wartime adventures preserved by the makers of Ovaltine and their successors. He made many detailed notes and has used them to present Radio’s Captain Midnight: The Wartime Biography (McFarland, 1999).

The Kallis book details some of the adventures presented in the Funnies series and goes on to relate other exploits of the mysterious ace. As World War II progressed, a fleet of B-17 bombers took to the air from New Guinea, aiming for the strategic Island X, where events had moved Captain Midnight and his Secret Squadron members. Japanese Admiral Himakito hoped to destroy the bombers with his own Zeros, but the Allied command intended to send up Major Preston’s Avenger Squadron to escort the B-17s. Three of Preston’s Marine pilots had been injured, and it fell to Secret Squadron members to replace them. Captain Midnight piloted one plane, with his faithful Ichabod Mudd as the tail gunner. Chuck Ramsey piloted the next plane, and Joyce Ryan took the tail gunner spot. It was a position she was well equipped for; she was known as one of the best shots in the Secret Squadron. Not unexpectedly, the Japanese Zeros attacked the bomber flight and the battle was on. The Zeros attacked in flights of four, diving in on the Flying Fortresses. Quickly, Joyce machine-gunned two of the enemy planes, sending them spinning down towards the sea. With the skill that had made him a legend, Captain Midnight gunned down When Ichabod “Ikky” Mudd made the jump from radio to comics, he even got his own filler stories as “Sergeant Twilight.” [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

Captain Midnight

In the late ’70s Ovaltine offered three record albums of vintage radio adventures—two of Captain Midnight and one starring Little Orphan Annie, whose popular comic strip Ovaltine had licensed before latching onto Cap. [©2003 the respective copyright holders.]

one of the enemy craft; but, probably in a suicidal move, another Zero crashed into Midnight’s plane, sheering off half of one wing. There was nothing for Midnight and his gunner Mudd to do but bail out. It was Admiral Himakito’s personal assistant, Captain Kaga, whose motor launch found Midnight and Ikky floating in the water. He had been enjoying himself murdering downed American pilots in the water. (This was not an exaggeration of Japanese tactics during the real war.) When he saw the face of the famous American hero, he drew his revolver to deliver the coup de grace. But Kaga stopped. Captain Midnight was too important; he knew too much to be killed out of hand, not when he could be tortured into delivering much useful information. The other man might be useful, as well. Kaga would take them both to his admiral. At his office, the admiral was not happy. Most of the American bombers had got through, and he had lost 74 of his own planes. Kaga’s news of live prisoners did not improve Himakito’s mood: “What? I told you to bring back no live prisoners! Bring them to me… and I… I will kill them myself!” However, when he saw the faces of Captain Midnight and his assistant, Admiral Himakito’s mood improved tremendously. He agreed Kaga had made the right move. Later, the two Secret Squadron members were taken onto the flight deck of the flagship The 1950s TV series starred Richard Webb as Captain Midnight, with Olan Soule as a scientist named, of all things, Tut. Artistic representations of the jet-age Captain (as above) still appeared from time to time in the years that followed. [©2003 the respective copyright holders.]

Twelve O’Clock In Shadow

Back in the ’80s, Ye Editor worked with Crash Ryan/Young All-Stars/Alter Ego artist Ron Harris on designs for a new Captain Midnight comic book, but got nowhere with the nice folks at Ovaltine. The new stories were to be set during World War II (when else?). Cap’s solid-black outfit, inked in one of the drawings, was inspired by the Whitman book version. You can’t see him clearly here, but even Ivan Shark had a fishy insignia. [Art ©2003 Ron Harris; Capt. Midnight TM & ©2003 the respective trademark & copyright holders.]

carrier for a ceremonial execution before the symbolic Rising Sun. Apparently, the pleasure of killing one of America’s greatest heroes outweighed original hopes for information under torture. Captain Midnight whispered to his assistant: “Listen, Ikky. We may have a chance. As they were binding me, I tensed my muscles as hard as I could, and I believe that I can get my hands free with a little work….” As Himakito prepared for the ceremonial execution, out of the glare of the rising sun flew a flight of American Avengers. As the Admiral retreated to lower decks he ordered the two prisoners to be left on deck, to be exposed to the strafing machine-gun fire of their own comrades, an amusing death. Meanwhile, Midnight managed to free himself and Ikky, and the two left the flight deck to enter the sea and to start swimming away from the ship under attack. Eventually they were picked up by an American submarine, while other Allied subs sent torpedoes into the Japanese vessels. The air attack had only been a diversion to allow the submarines to get close enough to do their work. Admiral Himakito escaped the doomed carrier by aircraft, but the Japanese Navy had suffered a major defeat. Still, the war was not over, and Himakito would clash with Captain Midnight again.

On Island X, the rescued Midnight and Ikky were joined by Chuck and Joyce, returning from their victorious flight, and all were greeted by Major Steele, the commander-in-chief of the Secret Squadron. There was cause for celebration. Island X had been established as a base for American bombers to attack the Japanese. Many more wartime adventures of Captain Midnight would follow, and several years of peacetime exploits. Kallis does not really consider the one season of half-hour Midnight programs to be a part of the “official” record of the Secret Squadron—nor, certainly, the later TV episodes featuring jet planes and science-fiction devices. Still, the final radio episode late in 1949 might be mentioned, even if recalled only from my own memory. Captain Midnight had just attacked and destroyed a secret base of Ivan Shark’s in the Arctic. His longtime nemesis attempted to escape across the ice, and from a plane the Secret Squadron members saw Shark attacked and apparently killed by a polar bear. And so the mission of Captain Midnight and his Secret Squadron ended.

Captain Midnight

17 In later years, Ovaltine—which had purchased all rights to Captain Midnight circa 1940—reverted the hero to a plain aviator (no pun intended), minus even his telltale winged-clock insignia. [©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

In 1977 Ovaltine Products, Inc., hired Marvel Comics and Dorison House Publishers to produce a 128-page Captain Midnight Action Book. On the cover, Cap’s outfit is mostly yellow (of all colors for a guy named Midnight!), trimmed in red—but at least the winged clock was back, after a fashion. Of course, kids were encouraged to make “Captain Midnight Snacks”—with Ovaltine, natch! Marvel’s Don Perlin did the art, Scott Edelman the writing, which placed the hero in some rather unfamiliar situations, as seen on the next page! [Ovaltine is a registered trademark of Ovaltine Products, Inc.; contents of the Action Book ©2003 Ovaltine Products, Inc.]

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[JIM HARMON (see photo in FCA section this issue) was born April 21, 1933, in Mount Carmel, Illinois. He had every childhood illness going, and a number of times was not expected to survive. In bed a lot, he read and listened to the radio. His favorite reading matter was science-fiction, which he began writing and selling in his teens. Many of his sf stories appeared in Galaxy magazine, edited by H.L. Gold, who was a mentor to Jim... but he had at least one story in almost every sf magazine, and also in horror, mystery, and Western pulps. Many of these were anthologized in hardcover and softcover anthologies. In 1960 Jim moved to Hollywood, California, on the guidance of Forrest J. Ackerman, and began selling paperback mystery thrillers. [His love of radio inspired him in 1967 to write The Great Radio Heroes; it was a bestseller from publisher Jeremy Tarcher, though it never made the “official” lists due to political maneuvers. He was the first person on the West Coast to have a radio program playing examples of old-time shows, Radio Rides Again (which he has revived on the Internet at <Yesterdayusa.com>. In 1983 Ralston cereals asked him to write and produce new Tom Mix radio dramas in remembrance of their 50th Anniversary of sponsoring the show. An original radio Tom Mix, Curley Bradley, returned, and Harmon played sidekick Pecos. In 1994 Harmon edited and produced a new recording of a Carlton E. Morse serial from the radio series I Love a Mystery with original cast members Les Tremayne and Frank Bresee. [During all that time he continued to write new books about radio: The Great Radio Comedians, Radio Mystery and Adventure, Radio and TV Premiums. At present, he has three books available: The Great Radio Heroes: Revised and Expanded, $35 postpaid—It’s That Time Again, featuring Harmon’s new Tom Mix radio-type adventure along with new stories of old favorites by other authors, $15 and available very shortly—and Harmon’s Galaxy, science-fiction stories, both new and old, by Jim Harmon, $25. All available at 634 South Orchard Drive, Burbank, CA 91506, or contact <jimharmonrdo@earthlink.net>].

Who Cares? I Do!

Alex Toth On Paul Reinman, Lorraine Fox, & C.C. Beck [ALTER EGO INTRODUCTION: Some months back, master comics illustrator Alex Toth sent us a postcard with regard to the Reinman art and Gill Fox interview which were published in A/E #12. Here ’tis, stamp and all. Sorry it’s taken us so long to get around to printing these comments—but better late than never. —Roy.]

Paul Reinman was a key “Green Lantern” artist in All-American Comics from about 1945-47, as witness his painting-themed cover for AAC #74 (June ’46), and his splash from #80 (Dec. ’46). [©2003 DC Comics.]

Alex Toth On Paul Reinman, Lorraine Fox, & C.C. Beck

In his interview in A/E #12, Gill Fox spoke of his sister Lorraine, who was inducted into the Society of Illustrators’ Hall of Fame in 1979. Shown above right is her magazine illustration “Sherlock Holmes with Boy.” Gill writes: “She never reached the ultimate level of celebrityship, but since I tricked her into it [illustration] while she was still in high school, I’m extremely proud of her. My mother was even more responsible than I was. Mom cleaned rooms to put Lorraine through four years of Pratt, $600 per year, $2400 total, a fortune during the Depression!” Photo and art courtesy of Gill Fox. [Art ©2003 the respective copyright holder.]

Who Cares? I Do!

In the October 1991 issues of Robin Snyder’s The Comics!—then called History of the Comics—Toth presented his own commentary on the Silver Age Flash’s ring that held his costume. [Art ©2003 Alex Toth; Superman TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

Alex Toth has ofttimes expressed his respect for the talent of the late Charles Clarence Beck, artistic co-creator of the original Captain Marvel. In 1988 he drew this Beck homage for Jim Amash. Thanks to Jim and Alex. [Art ©2003 Alex Toth; Captain Marvel TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

Well, MIKE “Romita-Man”BURKEY wants to buy your Amazing Spider-Man #39-297 art, as well as “any” comic book art from the ’30s to present! Check out Mike’s Web site with over 700 pictured pieces of art for sale or trade at:

www.romitaman.com or write: P.O. Box 455, Ravenna, OH 44266 PH: 330-296-2415 • e-mail: MikeBurkey@aol.com

re:

re: [correspondence & corrections] To start out our letters section, The Power of Shazam! writer/artist Jerry Ordway checks in with a few words about his 1990s Captain Marvel series, which was commented upon in #16: Dear Roy, Reading A/E #16, I felt compelled to respond on a number of points with regard to the Power of Shazam! series I wrote for DC. First off, I knew little of your many attempts, with several artists, to re-launch Captain Marvel in the late ’80s, nor of Mike Eury’s pitch. I always enjoyed drawing Cap in his few All-Star Squadron appearances, but hadn’t given much thought to him, as I was busy working on Superman.

In 1990, I believe, I was asked to pitch a stand-alone book-length idea for the character by editor Jonathan Peterson, after John Byrne had quit his version (he’d drawn We’ve kinda run out of new pix of our two pages, I believe!). Jonathan mascots Alter & Captain Ego, but here’s was a big fan of the Republic one of Biljo White’s neat-o original illos serial, and that became both from his one and only “A&CE” tale, back our inspirations, along in 1964’s Alter Ego [V1] #7. [Art ©2003 with my reprint of Whiz Biljo White; Alter & Capt. Ego TM & ©2003 Roy Thomas & Bill Schelly.] Comics #1. The book was not completed until 1993, and has been successful in hardcover and several subsequent trade paperback printings to this day. The monthly title drawn by the talented Peter Krause had a good healthy run, and even spawned an annual. During that run, we survived tying in to four company crossovers, won a “Parents’ Choice” Award (which DC did nothing to publicize), ran a “decoder card” promotion that garnered over a thousand requests, and had a heck of a lot of fun.

Dear Roy: The issues of Alter Ego that you dedicated to the memory of John Buscema reminded me how I used to read and love your Avengers and, later, your Conan stories with him. Therefore, I’d like to share with you a little memory of John Buscema, back when he came to Italy. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend the Lucca Comics Fair that year (probably I had my usual burden of lettering work to do. What a fool I was!). Anyway, one day at 5:00 p.m., bored, I turned my TV on and, gosh!, there he was: John Buscema! He was guesting on a TV show dedicated to little kids. You know, the usual stolid program with a young host (in his twenties or so) who doesn’t know anything about comics and cartooning (and couldn’t care less). He treated John Buscema as an oaf, leaving him standing near an easel equipped with large sheets of paper, waiting for the little kids to request him to draw something. They were intended to make a story of their own and Buscema would illustrate it. Can you think of anything more idiotic than that? I mean, here you are, with one of the greatest masters in the whole comics world at your disposal, and, instead of interviewing him and telling the audience the story of the Big Man, you treat him like that, with that childish, superficial goal? I guess that Conan would have immediately split that guy in two with his axe, but John Buscema, instead of looking angry, seemed to enjoy that thing and quietly produced one drawing after another. That anecdote made me think of two things: (1) TV people are JERKS! (2) How I regretted not to have met John Buscema in Lucca. He had the modesty and understatement that only great artists have. Diego Ceresa

Unfortunately, from the day POS was officially canceled, it’s been considered a “failure” by many in the industry, and the label seems to have stuck. I wrote 48 regular issues, plus an annual, and a “One Million Issue,” and drew eight. The best time of my career. It’s a great character and concept, and despite DC’s seeming ambivalence, I’m confident it will survive through reinvention by other creators for many more years. Jerry Ordway The only thing that ever even looked like it might kill Captain Marvel, Jerry, was the 1940s-50s lawsuit between DC and Fawcett—and even that turned out not to do so, in the long run! Thanks for John Buscema was a working artist—and a splendid one—to the very end! Here, from his final project, the shedding your own light on the subject. Elseworlds series JLA: Barbarians with writer Roy Thomas, are the remaining two of eight character designs Diego Ceresa, a professional comics letterer in Italy, sent the following missive about John Buscema, whose career was a focus of A/E #1516.

he did for a sword-and-sorcery version of the Justice League. (The other six appeared in A/E #13, 15, &16.) Hydron was the equivalent of Aquaman (and we went the current version one better by giving him two hook-hands)... while J’onn Q’atar was a takeoff on J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter. Plans were for John to give this emerald genie two more arms—and if you look closely at the name we gave him, you might figure out why! The first of five issues of JLA: Barbarians was scripted and almost totally inked when Big John went into the hospital for the last time; it remains unpublished. [Art ©2003 DC Comics.]

re: [correspondence & corrections] John Romita’s splash page art was also used as the cover for 1965’s Young Love #51—and could’ve made a mint for Roy Lichtenstein and the Pop Art crowd! At left, an “Earth-Two” Peter and Gwen gush at each other. (Where’s The Green Goblin when you really need him?!) A few years later, Jazzy Johnny’d be drawing a different Peter (with and without Gwen), as in this partly-complete sketch, courtesy of Mike Burkey. See “Romita-Man” Mike’s ad elsewhere in this issue. [Young Love art ©2003 DC Comics; Spidey art ©2003 John Romita; Spider-Man TM & ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Oh, did I mention that Peter’s a blond and Gwen’s a brunette? And that this story appeared three months before Amazing Spider-Man #31 (Dec. 1965)? And that it was published by DC? Yep, it’s the DC romance comics name game again! This time it’s Young Love #51 (Sept.-Oct. 1965), with two—count ’em! two—stories by John Romita, neither of which is particularly well-served by their respective scripts. Jack Miller’s Peter-’n’Gwen story is marginally better than Kanigher’s lead, but it’s still a pretty clumsy, simplistic effort. Basically, Peter and Gwen are inseparable until she goes to Paris for a business trip and has a fling with branch manager Andre Gourlain. Gwen comes to her senses and confesses all to Peter when she goes home. Peter gives her the silent treatment, but, after Andre takes another shot at a relationship, Gwen turns him down cold... within earshot of Peter. All is forgiven. Ain’t love grand? John Wells Box 119, Batavia, IA 52533 It sure is, John. Anybody else got any more comic book déjà vu (or maybe it’s presque vu, a related phenomenon) material they want to lay on us? One of the highlights of A/E #16 was the reprinting of a 1973 interview with major Fawcett talents Otto and Jack Binder, conducted by Bob Cosgrove for Marty Greim’s fanzine Crusader. Upon seeing it reprinted, Bob had this to say: Dear Roy:

And his greatness is underscored, Diego, by the positive feelings he engendered in almost everyone we know who ever met him! Despite his ofttimes gruff demeanor, John Buscema had a respect for good comic art and for his fellow professionals that shone through loud and clear. And now, reader/researcher John Wells has a few words to say about the artistry of Marvel Bullpen Reunion panel member John Romita: Dear Roy— Remember that beautiful John Romita art from the 1960s? And how Peter and Gwen’s romance was so beautifully realized in his hands? And do you remember how Gwen saw that relationship? “We were two hearts, beating as one... We’d come thousands of miles... to find each other. Apart from each other, we were empty... but, together, together... in short... we were madly... hopelessly in love... as deeply in love as two people could be. And... when we were in each other’s arms... the rest of the world simply ceased to exist.... In Peter’s arms, I knew the very meaning of life—and love.”

As a guy who enjoys writing, did some fanzine stuff, did an apazine, wrote a zillion letters, and now essentially makes his living writing and talking (as an appellate criminal lawyer—I write the briefs, do the oral arguments), I can tell you that the last thing I usually feel like doing at the end of the day is more of the same. That you can manage such industry and enthusiasm after a lifetime of working in comics is as amazing to me as it is admirable. In a sense, though it hardly matters to anyone but me, I feel I've come full circle, because what provoked my original order for Alter Ego all those years ago [i.e., in 1964] was my seeing a copy of A/E [Vol. 1] #7, with its Biljo White Captain Marvel cover, in the shop window of a second-hand book and magazine store. A year or two later I acquired that back issue. Prior to reading Otto's letter in #8, I hadn't a clue who Otto and Jack Binder were. A few years later, I was sitting in their homes, soaking in their hospitality and memories. One nice thing about doing a published interview is it tends to fix the memories a bit better. I’ve visited a number of professionals with no intention of doing interviews, and always believe that their comments will remain fresh in my recollection, but ten, fifteen, twenty years later, I recall but bits and pieces and overall impressions. Do an interview or article, and it’s there for you and everyone else. At the time of our 1973 visit, I recall Jack’s wife as frail and in poor health. He was lovingly feeding her soup. You’re probably right that Al Bradford took the photos, probably with Marty’s camera. Why I didn’t ask for a shot of

re: [correspondence & corrections] myself with the Binders, as well, I’ll never know. I had brought along a paperback copy of Adam Link, which Otto was kind enough to inscribe to me. (And funny, with multiple adaptations of Adam Link over the years, that nobody has taken a stab at Anton York, Immortal!)

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Bob Cosgrove 44 Massachusetts Av. Braintree, MA 02184-7902 And isn’t it strange that, with Otto using the quasi-pseudonym “Eando Binder” for years, with the “E” coming from his brother Earl, that the third Binder brother never took up a career in comics? Finally, just one correction we have lying around with regard to issue #16. Simon Miller of London wrote in a self-described “wee mail” that he believes the Alex Ross drawing we ascribed to having been done in conjunction with the Kingdom Come series of a few years back “looks suspiciously like a design done for a website about a DC project called Twilight... a post-Crisis crossover submitted by Alan Moore which aimed to solve the inherent contradictions in Crisis [on Infinite Earths] with a concept which aped Hypertime, introduced by Grant Morrison in the ’90s. In Twilight, America of the future was ruled by super-hero houses.... The main rival to the House of El was the Marvel House.” Could be, Simon. Any other opinions out there? Please address any A/E-related comments to: Roy Thomas/Alter Ego Rt. 3, Box 468 St. Matthews, SC 29135 Fax: (803) 826-6501 E-mail: roydann@ntinet.com

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CBA #24, the next-to-last TwoMorrows issue, features “THE COMICS OF NATIONAL LAMPOON,” a look at the great adult humor mag’s funny-book material. Behind a new GAHAN WILSON cover (plus interview) and a VAUGHN BODÉ-inspired back cover (featuring Cheech Wizard!) by his son, MARK BODÉ, we talk to NatLamp legendary art director MICHAEL GROSS, and the magazine’s many contributors, including NEAL ADAMS, FRANK SPRINGER, SEAN KELLY, SHARY FLENNEKIN, ED SUBITSKY, M.K. BROWN, B.K. TAYLOR, BOBBY LONDON, MICHEL CHOQUETTE, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and many more! So be here as we takes a renewed look at Tarzan of the Cows, Frontline Dentists, Dragula, Son O’ God, Nuts, Trots ‘n’ Bonnie, The Appletons, One Year Affair, Norman the Barbarian, and more from the Me Decade, when satire was king and NatLamp was THE place to be! $9 postpaid in the US!

TwoMorrows. Bringing New Life To Comics Fandom. TwoMorrows • 1812 Park Drive • Raleigh, NC 27605 USA • 919-833-8092 • FAX: 919-833-8023 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

No. 81

IN THE COMICS

We Didn’t Know...

[FCA EDITORS NOTE: From 194153, Marcus D. Swayze was a top artist for Fawcett Comics. The very first A panel from “Captain Marvel and the Training of Mary Marvel,” Mary Marvel character sketches came from Captain Marvel Adventures #19 (Jan. 1943)—Mary’s second from Marc’s drawing table, and he appearance. Besides drawing this story, Marc revealed a couple of illustrated her earliest adventures, issues back that internal evidence has convinced him that he wrote including the classic Mary Marvel it, as well—a fact he had long forgotten! [©2003 DC Comics.] origin story, “Captain Marvel Introduces Mary Marvel (CMA #18, trek of a youngster who had no idea of ever becoming Dec. ’42); but he was primarily hired involved in a Golden Age of any kind. by Fawcett Publications to illustrate I figured at an early age that I was an artist. My Captain Marvel stories and covers for mother assured me of that. Then there was this urge Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel that prevented me from passing a clean, white surface Adventures. He also wrote many without drawing something on it… a horse, a cowboy, Captain Marvel scripts, continuing to an ape, a ball player, and eventually, alas… girls! do so while in the military. After he left the service, Marc made an At our house was a set of my mother’s reference arrangement with Fawcett to produce books, The New Practical Reference Library, art and stories for them on a freelance copyright 1911. In it was a section on drawing. Before I basis out of his Louisiana home. There could read, the illustrations told me that Drawing was he created both art and story for The what the big word at the top said. From the work, Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics, in prepared by a Professor D.R. Augsburg, I learned that addition to drawing the Flyin’ Jenny there was a way to draw… a system, a newspaper strip for Bell Syndicate This World War I cover scene, mentioned on p. 32, procedure… involving lines, forms, arrangements. A (created by his friend and mentor is Marc’s first published work. It’s even signed! lifelong habit developed of drawing “through” the Russell Keaton). After the cancellation subject, beyond the foremost plane, with respect for of Wow, Swayze produced artwork for solidity and depth. Fawcett’s top-selling line of romance comics, including Sweethearts and Life Story. After the company ceased publishing comics, Marc I understood that the nice pictures in the books and magazines moved over to Charlton Publications, where he ended his comics around the house were created by human hand… by someone, career in the mid-’50s. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have somewhere… but I held little hope of ever becoming one of those been FCA’s most popular feature since his first column appeared in someones. How could I… a thousand or so miles from the world of FCA #54, 1996. Last issue, Marc reflected upon why he left the comic commercial art? Also, there was this thing grownups were talking book industry for good in 1956. In this issue, he shifts into reverse to about—the “Depression”—the big one! discuss his pre-Golden Age of Comics work. —P.C. Hamerlinck.] My old file of notes, sketches, and clips is not the neatest the world had ever known. At first glance one might think it had been assembled by a gorilla… a careless one. There are folders tattered from overuse, and there are folders that for years haven’t been touched except to be squeezed past to get to the next folder. And no wonder, bearing such uninteresting titles as “Pre-Golden Age Stuff.” Pre-Golden Age? Before the Golden Age? Not much call to open that one, the long-forgotten contents undoubtedly pertaining to publications like dime novels and pulp magazines, the dates going back to the ’30s. Not so, however. The title does not make general reference to the comic book business… but to the humble

Marc Swayze

31 anyway, it took you longer than expected. I made my talk last night!” No mention of the modest consideration.

But there were good things, too. Through the efforts of the high school art teacher, I was accepted by the community adult sketch club for a summer’s session with a well known painter. During the critiques I sat in the rear… shy in the first place and doubly so around conversation that included arty terms like still life and landscape. On the day my painting came up for discussion, I was surprised at the attention given it by the instructor. I couldn’t let it go like that. At the close of the session I caught up with him. “Mr. Brewster?” The artist turned. “All that green in my painting was not ‘a tasteful touch of basic hue throughout the composition,’ like you said. It was a dirty brush!” The artist smiled. “Oh, I knew that,” he said.

One afternoon a couple of high school pals and I cut classes to attend a movie all the kids were talking about. Funds were short, so instead of taking the main entrance, we went around to a door in the alley where the fare was much less… nothing. As we made our way stealthily through the darkness behind the screen, a door opened… and there stood the first “commercial” artist I had ever seen, holding a brush and palette, and wearing a smock thoroughly daubed with colors. Behind him was a well-lighted “studio,” jars of color all over the place. “You guys sneaking in to see the movie? Go back to the door you just passed and take a left. Be careful you don’t let the usher hear you or you’ll get thrown out!” Pastel portraits by Marc of some of his college friends. [©2003 Marc Swayze.]

But I tried. With the hope that local merchants might be interested in having me paint a big Santa Claus on their front windows for an upcoming Yule season, I prepared a spare windowpane with a small version to promote the plan. The response from my first call, the leading grocer, was, “Why would I cover my window with something like this when I need the light on my merchandise? And before I’d spend a dollar on it I’d give the buck to my own children!” There were no more calls. The decorated pane was taken home and put away… forever.

We didn’t move… not until we had heard his explanation that the big posters out front didn’t “just grow there”… but were small prints projected onto his easel and painted… right there in his little workshop.

Some gain, nevertheless, was realized from the experience. Another merchant wanted some large sale prices painted across his front windows. Unfortunately, instead of water-soluble colors, I used permanent house paint. I avoided that street after seeing the store employees scraping away with razor blades for several weeks after the sale. When I learned that a lady across town needed some artwork, I made the long walk to her house to offer my services… for a modest consideration. She produced a bulletin, pointing to a tiny reproduction of the American Legion emblem. “This is what I want,” she said, “only larger.” She didn’t say when she wanted it, or how much larger, nor did I ask. When I made the long walk again, with the work, she exclaimed, “Why, this is no bigger than a sheet of paper! I wanted something I could have on the stage with me when I spoke at the auditorium! And,

We Didn’t Know...

I was a young teenager when I met a local writer who was interested in illustrations for his stories of World War I. It was baseball season, but this sounded so good… like the real thing… “magazine illustration.” I went for it. “Terrible!” was all I could say when they came out and I saw my drawings in print. In self-defense, though, I was still so naïve as to think that to have done research on the doughboy gear would have been ‘cheating.’ In college, dreams of a career in art had dimmed as much as had dreams of the Cardinal infield and a chair with Guy Lombardo. After graduation I found Dolly as cantankerous as ever. Dolly, the beautiful, mean, bay mare that once had walked out of the shafts of my milk wagon and left me shouting “Whoa!” at the top of my lungs… right in the middle of Jackson and DeSiard Streets, the most populous corner in town. Throughout my senior year a series of portraits of campus beauties had been on display in the school cafeteria. The large pastel drawings were very likely an influence when the head of the art department learned of a comic strip artist who sought an assistant, and I was recommended. The artist was Russell Keaton and the title character of the comic strip, a beauty herself, was Flyin’ Jenny. I guess I was on my way… to the Golden Age of comic books! [Marc’s memories of the Golden Age continue next issue.]

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Fantasy and Fantastic Inventions

Captain Marvel Jr.: The Post-War Years by Don Ensign Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck Part IV

Fantasy–-And Fantastic Inventions [NOTE: In our previous three issues Don Ensign has examined the artists and various themes of the “Captain Marvel Jr.” tales in a cross-section of Master Comics and his own comics title (though not in The Marvel Family) in the years after World War II. Last issue dealt with horror, science-fiction, funny animals, and “human interest.” This time around our series concludes with a discussion of other themes. —PCH.}

Stories about Captain Marvel Jr. Many Captain Marvel Jr. stories centered on the problems of other people, as shown in the section on human interest tales. However, there were CMJ yarns that centered on the personality of the World’s Mightiest Boy himself. “Twenty-Four Hours to Live!” (CMJ #35) tells of an impending death: Captain Marvel Jr.’s own! Having invented a scanning machine that can predict the longevity of any animal or human, Dr. Elijah Longlife scans Junior and announces he has only 24 hours to live. This depressing news spurs Junior to go after his two greatest enemies, Brutal Bill Banion and Sivana. At the end of the 24 hours he returns to Dr. Longlife’s lab. The scientist learns he made a mistake—it was his own plate (scan) he’d read, not Junior’s. Longlife dies and Junior destroys his scanning machine. This story actually has Junior displaying some emotions (sadness, depression) and resolving to do the right thing with the short time he has left. Courtroom drama occurs in “Capt. Marvel Jr. Proves His Existence!” (CMJ #65). An unscrupulous scientist named Doc Skeem makes a deal with local gangsters to prove Cap Jr. is only a myth. In court, through clever deceptions, he makes the case that Junior is actually a boy he raised and to whom he gave powers by scientific means. A frustrated Junior receives 24 hours to prove Skeem’s testimony false—which of course he does. At story’s end the onceskeptical judge proclaims, “We, the people of the state, do affirm and agree Captain Marvel Jr. is truly and indubitably the World’s Mightiest Boy!” This is a well-

In wartime issues, as on this Mac Raboy-drawn cover for Master Comics #29 (Aug. 1942), Captain Marvel Jr. had the Axis bad boys to chastize. After the war ended, however, he, like other super-heroes, had to find other themes and genres to explore, if he were going to hold his audience! Thanks to Keif Fromm for the nice copy. [©2003 DC Comics.]

plotted tale that provides some suspense: just how is Junior going to resolve the situation? “Freddy Freeman’s Big Day” (CMJ #65) gives the readers insights into Freddy’s resourcefulness when he’s so plagued by unstoppable hiccups that he twice fails when he tries to call on Junior to rescue endangered people, and must save them himself. Eventually, when bound by a baddie named Doc Mixum, who (for complicated reasons) is about to scald his throat with boiling water, this scares the hiccups out of Freddy so he can call on Junior to deal with Mixum and his henchman. When Junior completed a dangerous mission in “The City Sleeps,” from Master Comics #83 (Sept. 1947), which was discussed last issue, the kindly Mrs. Wagner never knew he’d ever left his bed! Art by Bud Thompson. [©2003 DC Comics.]

The World’s Mightiest Boy’s opinions on politics are revealed in “Captain Marvel Jr. for Mayor” (CMJ #67). The voting public is suspicious of two mayoral candidates after a third one is proven dishonest. Junior makes a public speech

Captain Marvel Jr.: The Post-War Years

asking people not to forsake the democratic process—only to have the galvanized audience hoist Junior on their shoulders and declare him their candidate. Ward J. Heeler, campaign manager for one of the candidates, devises a publicity campaign to smear Junior. But when a horse-drawn haywagon carrying his son and other children in a torchlight parade catches fire and Junior rescues them, Heeler confesses his dirty tricks and his candidate resigns. Freddy’s parting thoughts: “Capt. Marvel Jr. had a narrow escape this time! He... that is, we... don’t want to get mixed up in politics!” (Note that Freddy said “Captain Marvel” here with no change to his alter ego. This was a frequent goof amongst CMJ writers.) In “The Touch of Life” (CMJ #98), an artist named Eric Bodyn, obsessed with bringing his art to life, searches for the legendary “Life Stone” which has the “power to confer life.” Junior, in rescuing him from his folly, touches the Stone and is given the power to turn insentient objects like trees, boats, and houses into things that sprout legs and move—whether he wants to or not. Junior goes into a selfimposed exile on a small island, till the Life Stone’s effects prove temporary and Junior tells the artist he can give his masterpieces “immortal life—with your genius!” The World’s Mightiest Boy often encouraged people see the good side of life when things are gloomy.

Here he helped a disturbed artistic genius see the importance of his work in a positive light.

Fantasy The fantasy stories can be divided into three categories: parables, fables, and fairy tales. These stories showed that Captain Marvel (Senior) did not have a monopoly on whimsical and gentler stories. Parables are “usually religious stories with a moral.” At least two stories under Kurt Schaffenberger’s cover for Master Comics #117 consideration fall (Aug. 1950), which got squeezed out of our into this category. coverage last time. [©2003 DC Comics.] “The Witch of Winter” (CMJ #63) uses Greek mythology as a backdrop. When a snowstorm occurs in mid-summer, Junior flies to the abandoned subway tunnel—and the old wizard Shazam tells him that the Greek god Zeus bestowed prizes on Spring, Summer, and Fall (personified as beautiful goddesses) for the “creation of beauty on earth.” Winter, an “ugly, old witch,” became angry at being overlooked and has taken her wrath out by kidnapping her sisters and causing the severe blizzard. Junior forcefully takes the bitter old hag to visit three families that are suffering great hardships because of the cold weather; Winter soon relents, and so does the blizzard. This excellent story borrows content from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as well as the Greek myths. The Bible is used as a source in “The Ark From Space” (CMJ #98). A meteor bombardment on the distant planet Smorxx causes Anho and his young friend to gather two by two all the planet’s animals into a space ark to escape the doomed world just before it explodes. The ark eventually arrives on Earth, where some of the strange animals frighten the locals. Captain Marvel Jr. persuades angry townspeople to welcome the aliens as friends. However, the Earth’s atmosphere proves toxic to the extraterrestrial creatures, so Junior and the locals repair the damaged Space Ark—and Junior collects all of the fragments of Smorxx and

Fantasy and Fantastic Inventions reconstructs the planet for Anho, his friend, and the animals. Fables are “moral stories, usually about animals”—but, oddly enough, the first CMJ fable is about an animated tree. “The Walking Tree” (CMJ #65) is an amusing tale dealing with a tree which, because of radioactive waste, gains mobility and the ability to speak. It causes problems, till Junior figures Maybe it was the influence of all those “Francis the out: “Silly Talking Mule” movies? Bud Thompson’s cover for thing! It wants Captain Marvel Jr. #110 (June 1952). [©2003 DC Comics.] admiration, and a place in the sun, and no competition! But come to think of it— don’t we all? That tree is human!” It ends up in Mrs. Wagner’s backyard.

Billings. Donald foolishly wishes that “everything I touch would turn into bubble gum.” This is a whimsical tale with humorous djinn characters taken from Arab folklore. Turning Freddy into a pack of bubble gum for a time is a clever way of getting Junior out of the story. At the end, Djonn comments, “Now maybe you’ll understand why I’m so stingy with wishes, Djoe! People just do foolish things with them!” Even more mischievous spirits arise in “The Greeting Cards of Hate” (CMJ #67), wherein three sprite-like evil spirits turn ordinary greeting cards into personifications of hate, anger, and meanness. Junior confronts a hateful Santa Claus, a joyless and aggressive New Year, and numerous other evil animated holiday creatures. Eventually he knocks the “hate poison” right out of the “greeters.” The artwork fits the story perfectly. A similar story in presented in “The Terrible Topsy-Turvy Table” (CMJ #70), where Mite, the tree sprite, angry after a lumberjack chops down the tree in which he and his friends were playing cards, places a curse on the tree. When it is hauled off and made into a table which is purchased by a spirit medium, Junior has to pursue the then-runaway table back to the forest, where he encounters Mite and resolves the situation. In “The Lamp of Power” (CMJ #94), Freddy’s landlady Mrs. Wagner dusts an old lamp she’s purchased, while wishing all her housecleaning chores would be done—and they are. Two other wishes are answered with astonishing results. The last is pronounced by Professor Edgewise, who wishes Captain Marvel Junior’s ears to “grow longer and longer.”

In “The Singing Donkey” (CMJ #71), Equo, a donkey with “a musical soul,” is kicked in the throat by another donkey, causing him to sing like his favorite crooner. A theatrical agent recruits the donkey and makes a singing star out of him. When Equo achieves fame, he is unhappy because of being exploited. Junior helps the donkey get out of a lifetime contract and he goes back to his old owner, a kindly fruit peddler. In “The World’s Strangest Zoo” (CMJ #96) Captain Marvel Jr. has to deal with a mischievous Imp from a crater in Mount Vesuvius. Eventually Junior takes the Imp to live on a crocodile-infested island. In the final panel Freddy holds up a Daily Gazette with the headline, “Crocodile War Raging on Remote Island—Aviators Report Reptiles in Senseless Struggle.” This story combines elements of mythology, urban legend, and humor. Again a meek donkey takes center stage in “The Derby Donkey” (CMJ #110). Humble Jasper can outrun the fastest of racehorses. Freddy requests, against prejudice and opposition, that the donkey be allowed to race in the Great Derby. Captain Marvel Jr. serves as Jasper’s jockey; after a weak start the good-hearted donkey wins the Derby. This is a very sweet, straightforward tale about an “underdog” creature who triumphs over discrimination and prejudice. The last category of fantasy stories in the CMJ canon is fairy tales. In “Capt. Marvel Jr. Fights the Arabian Knights” (CMJ #38), an Arab named Ali asks Junior to help him win the heart of the Sultan’s beautiful daughter, Fatima. Ali is competing with a villainous merchant named Abdul, who has a genie from a magic lamp. The World’s Mightiest Boy flies to Arabia and eventually defeats the enormous but ineffectual genie. True lovers Ali and Fatima are united. In “The Midas of Bubble Gum” (CMJ #62), Djohn, a master djinn, has his servant djinn, Djoe, grant one wish to a poor boy, Donald

Captain Marvel Jr.: The Post-War Years

They do—as a genie reveals himself and says that since he has granted three wishes he can now go free. However, the World’s Mightiest Boy tricks the genie into bringing his ears back to normal before he departs. “Capt. Marvel Jr. Becomes the Funniest Looking Boy in the World” (CMJ #117) deals with a “joke book” that turns out to be a magic volume from which practical joker Leroy Marks conjures up a “practical joker demon.” It changes Junior’s face into a hilarious image that makes everyone who looks at him burst out laughing (including Junior himself). Eventually, the Blue Boy, with the help of one of Leroy’s practical jokes (a chair catapult spring), tricks the demon into reversing his spell. [See art last issue.]

Inventions Gone Awry There are a number of CMJ stories that chronicle events surrounding the misuse—usually for evil or criminal purposes—of inventions made for beneficial reasons. In “The Man Who Fell Up” (CMJ #37) a scientist, Dr. Martin, and his partner Sam King discover an anti-gravity chemical. King goes power-mad and hires gangsters to help him “conquer the country.” When Junior foils their plans, King and two of the criminals are drenched in the anti-gravity solution and are catapulted into space. Junior wants to save them, but is forced to hold down a large building filled with people whose foundations have been saturated by the antigravity chemical. In “The Boy Who Couldn’t Grow Up” (CMJ #40) Cap Jr. learns

that, just before he died, the father of 15-year Dick Sanders invented a liquid that stops the aging process. Being distraught at his father’s death, the boy drank it, and for the past ten years his aging has ceased. Dick desperately wants adult responsibilities, but can’t have them because he is trapped in a boy’s body. Eventually an antidote is found, and Dick’s natural aging process recommences. When sudden-sprouting giant indestructible flowers halt the police pursuit of a robbery escape car in “The Seeds of Crime” (CMJ #69), Captain Marvel Jr. learns that a fluid that “causes instantaneous tremendous growth” in plant seeds was developed by Dr. Arthur Stamen. The botanist’s gardener stole the fluid and is using it to commit crimes. After several incidents, including Stamen and Freddy being bound, gagged, and rescued at the last moment by Junior, the gang is captured. “The Wind from Nowhere” (CMJ #96) begins with Freddy Freeman encountering a massive windstorm outside Basko’s Shoe Store. After bopping Freddy on the head, Basko shows him a giant suction machine that causes the wind; he plans to use it to blow stolen shoes his way! Basko pushes the boy into the machine, but the wind pulls his gag loose and Junior smashes the machine. Boarding-house guest Prof. Edgewise, in “The Crime Chariot” (CMJ #98), shows Freddy Freeman his new invention—an “auto chariot” impervious to damage. Two criminals, Damon and Pythias, steal it and go on a crime spree. Edgewise builds another auto-chariot and crashes the felons’ vehicle, disintegrating the two cars into rubble; the plans for the auto-chariot are converted into a special tank for the United Nations!

Fantasy and Fantastic Inventions Another of Edgewise’s inventions is “The Gigantic Buzzsaw” (CMJ #110). It helps clear trees from the site of a future building project. But a competing construction contractor, determined to sabotage Edgewise’s invention, sends the Buzzsaw crashing into the boarding-house. Freddy awakens just in time to change to Junior before he’s cut in two. Junior smashes the buzzsaw and captures the contractor.

37 the period. Third, the notion that Captain Marvel Jr. was a personification of good battling evil made references to religion or faith somewhat redundant. This is a real possibility, as there are no religious institutions in, for example, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. However this modern literary epic embodies the Judeo-Christian worldview—as acknowledged by Tolkien himself.

Philosophy professor and Tolkien scholar Richard L. Purtill divides speculative fiction (science-fiction, fantasy) into three different A worldview is a comprehensive view of categories. First is the “insulated” view, which existence. It encompasses how we view life and means humans have the capability to commuthe important things in life. Where did we nicate or change the environment by physical come from, why are we here, where are we means only. This is similar to the materialist going, and the nature of good and evil are the worldview and is the basis for much sciencequestions that are wrapped up in a worldview. fiction (with qualifications). The second is the Three worldviews rival each other and vary for “primitive” view. According to this view, our the hearts and minds of mankind. They are the thoughts, desires, and wishes can sometimes naturalistic/materialist, the pantheistic, and the affect other minds or the material universe theistic (e.g., Judeo/Christian) worldviews. directly, without the intervention of our bodies; furthermore, “we can somehow affect What sort of worldview is suggested in the other minds or the material universe by A Bud Thompson panel from “The Boy Who Couldn’t Captain Marvel Jr. stories? His tales had a fairly symbolic means, using our bodies to speak Grow Up,” in Captain Marvel Jr. #40 (July 1946). well-developed perspective of the supernatural, words or perform actions that do not set up [©2003 DC Comics.] which seems to exclude the naturalistic/materichains of physical caution, at least in the alist worldview. The supernatural world is ordinary sense.” (J.R.R. Tolkien: Myth, Morality and Religion, p. 105) inhabited apparently by the ghosts of dead humans (CMJ #38). In This seems to be what happens when Freddy Freeman shouted “Captain another story there is a ruler of good ghosts as well as evil ghosts (CMJ Marvel” to become the World’s Mightiest Boy. #71). In yet another story (CMJ #70) worries are personified as malevolent spiritual beings of a hierarchical kingdom whose mission is to rob Purtill has a third view he calls the “animistic” view. He states, the joy from man’s existence. Arab folklore contributes mischievous “There exist nonmaterial minds or spirits that can affect matter and djinns (CMJ #62) and genies of varying degrees of competence (CMJ embodied minds directly. Our minds can affect other embodied minds #38, 94). Other folklore sources contribute pesky sprites (CMJ #70), and affect the material universe through the intermediary of these troublemaking imps (CMJ #96), and cute but hateful evil spirits (CMJ nonmaterial minds or spirits, and we affect the nonmaterial minds or #67). Classical Greek mythology (CMJ #63) contributes the still-existing spirits, either by thinking or by speech or other symbolic actions” (p. Greek gods. In another (CMJ #117), Junior battles a “practical joker 106). This view covers Christian and other theistic prayer, as well as demon” conjectured from an occult volume. sorcerers who use spells to invoke demons to do their bidding. When

Cap Jr.’s Worldview

Of course, the powers that Cap Jr. exhibited were derived from supernatural/mythology and in one case (Solomon) Biblical sources, with the magic bolt of lightning that transformed Freddy into Junior being given to him by the old wizard, Shazam. Shazam seems similar to Merlin of the Arthurian legends and the later Gandalf of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth sagas (Gandalf has been described as an angel with a human body). C.C. Beck once referred to Shazam as a Moses type.

Mrs. Wagner’s complaint activates three evil spirits to cause mischief in

Cap Jr.’s world is inhabited by policemen, judges, politicians, fruit peddlers, teachers, school principals, scientists, gas station owners, salesmen, millionaires, businessmen, doctors, newsboys, teenagers, actors, singers, inventors, artists, landladies, farmers, housing developers, building contractors, big game hunters, newspaper publishers, reporters, motivational speakers, lawyers, explorers, international leaders, circus performers, zoo keepers, radio announcers, criminals of all types including super-villains, gangsters, thieves, murderers, drug dealers, juvenile offenders, spies, and petty crooks. In only one story (CMJ #69) do we see a two-panel bit part played by a clergymen—a prison chaplin. As in most comics of the era, the presence of organized religion is almost invisible. Several reasons for this come into play here. First, the writers and editors may not have been people of faith themselves, or been involved in religious activities on a regular basis. Second, in order to make the comic stories accepted to as wide an audience as possible, references to any type of religious institution or organization were taboo. Religion or references to faith were considered poor taste to the secular mindset of

Captain Marvel Jr.: The Post-War Years

CMJ #67, or when Leroy Marks invokes the “practical joker demon” in CMJ #117, these are examples of the animistic view. Purtill makes the observation that, “Since Gandalf and Saruman are in fact angelic beings temporarily embodied in humanlike form, it would be quite compatible with this theological view (the primitive view) if they were able to affect matter directly by the use of their wills, for on many traditional theological views angels would have such a power.” However, since Shazam gave Freddy Freeman power directly, Captain Marvel Jr.’s power is similar to an angel’s. His power is an aspect of who he is—and not derived from an outside spirit being or spirit source. The world that Captain Marvel Jr. inhabits is not the purely materialist one. It has aspects of Purtill’s primitive and animistic view, but not the insulated one. The view of good and evil presented in CMJ stories has more to do with the absolute right and wrong (good and evil) of the Judeo-Christian worldview than with the ultimately relativistic pantheistic worldview (i.e., good and evil are just different sides of the force). Criminals are captured by Captain Marvel Jr. and punished for their crimes—sometimes with their lives. While religion per se was almost absent in Junior’s world, the World’s Mightiest Boy himself represented the rightness (or righteousness) of good over the malignancy of evil.

Summary Several factors contributed to the success of Captain Marvel Jr. First, Freddy Freeman was presented as a “strongly sympathetic” character. Freddy’s handicap made him someone whom the young reader could relate to: “If the crippled Freddy could become a hero, then there is hope for me!” Freddy, as much as Junior, may have been an inspiration to some readers. Likewise Captain Marvel Jr.’s persona as a modern knight and Galahad harkens back to a deep-seated core of decency and idealism that was very attractive to the young readers of that era. Junior (as well as Captain Marvel himself) had an innocence and goodness about him that made readers want to follow his adventures. (Even Elvis Presley read Captain Marvel Jr. stories, and allegedly

One thing’s for sure: Fawcett didn’t fold its comic book tents in 1953 because its artists had run out of steam! This nicely-rendered Bud Thompson page is from the 1949 story “The Voodoo Clock.” [©2003 DC Comics.]

styled some of his later stage persona after the World’s Mightiest Boy— like sideburns, and eventually even a costume and cape.) Another factor is just the sheer variety of stories that were published. There were super-villain stories, crime stories of various kinds, human-interest stories, animal stories, science-fiction, supernatural, horror, fantasy, and others. Part of this no doubt had to do with the sheer volume of stories produced. Additionally, editors such as Wendell Crowley and Will Lieberson and writers such as Otto Binder and William Woolfolk did not want to do the same type of story every issue. This variety certainly sustained reader interest in plots that could easily have turned into predictable formulas. Lastly, the artwork was a factor in making readers return to follow the adventures of the World’s Mightiest Boy. Most of the art was at least competent, and a great portion of it was very good by the standards of the day. Bud Thompson, Joe Certa, Kurt Schaffenberger, Bill Ward, and others all contributed to extending the life of Junior well beyond the demise of so many Golden Age super-heroes.

The 89 issues of Marvel Family in which Cap Jr. appeared aren’t covered in Don Ensign’s article, but when Junior teamed up with Cap Sr. and Mary, the feathers really flew—as in this 1953 adventure from one of that mag’s final issues. Art by Kurt Schaffenberger, as seen in Shazam! from the 30’s to the 70’s. [©2003 DC Comics.]

Who knows? Without the DC/Superman lawsuit, as publisher Roscoe K. Fawcett professed to believe (in P.C. Hamerlinck’s book Fawcett Companion, p. 13), their version of Captain Marvel (and Junior) might still be going strong today.

Tom Mix In Comics

The Legendary

The Ralston Mix The Ralston Purina Company of St. Louis, Missouri, which sponsored the Tom Mix radio show, began offering a 32-page full-color premium comic in exchange for the blue seal from the end of a box of Ralston Wheat Cereal. The giveaway comic lasted for 12 issues, spanning a two-year period from September 1940 until November 1942. The first nine issues were simply entitled Tom Mix Comics, but the last three saw him trade in his cowboy outfit for army fatigues and form a special raiding force that operated behind the Axis lines; at that time the title changed to Tom Mix Commandos.

In Comics

The creative team that produced the Ralston comic was made up of Stan Schendel (editor and writer), Fred L. Meagher (penciler), and Bill Allison, inker. Schendel and Meagher had previously worked together in the late ’30s on the Gulf Funny Weekly’s (a Gulf Oil Corporation giveaway) feature, “Wings Winfair.” After the Mix Ralston comics, Fred Meagher (pronounced “marr,” as revealed in A/E V3#11) went on to illustrate Nabisco’s Straight Arrow “Injun-uity” cards which appeared as premiums inside Nabisco Shredded Wheat in the early 1950s, and to illustrate all 55 issues of Magazine Enterprises’ Straight Arrow comic from 1950-1956, as well as other Straight Arrow spin-offs. He produced one issue of Fury (Straight Arrow’s horse) for ME’s A-1 series and sixteen installments of the “Dan

The Comic Book History of Cowboy Tom Mix by Bill and Teresa Harper with Jon Lundin [Originally published in Under Western Skies No. 23, May 1983; some portions previously used in C.C. Beck’s FCA/SOB and Al Dellinges’ Near Mint. Reprinted with permission, with minor editing, courtesy and ©2003 Linda S. Downey.]

Edited for FCA by P.C. Hamerlinck Will the Real Tom Mix Please Stand Up? Famed world champion rodeo cowboy Tom Mix rode his fabulous horse Tony full-stride into the hearts of Americans in the 1930s. Mix made between 300-400 movies (silent and “talkies”), had association (by name) with a radio show that ran for 17 seasons, and generated hundreds of premiums and numerous writings—both fiction and non-fiction. Tom Mix was a natural for early comic art. During the ’30s, the Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin, released a series of Tom Mix “Big Little Books” which featured full-color front and back cover illustrations and full-page comic-style panels in black-and-white. Big Little Books were designed to fit into a child’s pocket, cost only a nickel, yet each book contained more than 400 pages—200 illustrations facing nearly 200 pages of type. The National Chicle Company had also used Tom Mix as a subject of comic art in the ’30s, printing a total of 48 different tiny premium booklets packaged with chewing gum. Tom Mix never appeared in a newspaper comic strip, however. And only a month or so before his death (in an automobile accident near Florence, Arizona, on October 12, 1940) did a full-fledged comic book finally appear bearing his name.

The cover of one of the Rals ton Purina premium Tom Mix Comics from 1941— a year after the movie cow boy’s real-life death. [©2 003 Ralston Purina.]

Tom Mix In Comics stories were such features as “Wash’s Favorite Magic Tricks,” “Strange Facts” collected by The Old Wrangler, Peco’s “Straight Shooter Round-Up” (drawings and verses sent in by fans of the show), and the episodes of the “Fumble Family & Amos Q. Snood.” Jane, who was Tom’s ward, was featured twice in the comic: once on a page of crafts for girls, and a second time, as the heroine of a medieval Arthurian fantasy called “Jane at Dream Castle,” where she regularly joined forces with a blond Tarzan look-alike named Strongbow to foil the schemes of Maldred, a wizard, and the cowardly squires of a villain named Sir Lard Tub.

Brand and Tipi” feature in the Durango Kid comic. During the ’50s Meagher also illustrated the Buffalo Bill newspaper strip.

Radio and the Comics The Tom Mix Ralston comics owed their inspiration to the Tom Mix radio show. In fact, readers were continually exhorted at the bottom of most story pages to tune in to the NBC Blue Network for the further adventures of The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters: “Remember: Monday thru Friday, coast to coast,” the message ran, “5:45 to 6:00 p.m. is TOM MIX TIME ON THE AIR!” An entire episode of “Stubby and his Straight Shooter Pals,” a regular feature of the comic, was developed around a group of boys listening to the Ralston program on a big radio console. The comic’s back covers carried advertisements for the cereal, “the B-1 Breakfast,” usually including a testimonial from one of the characters on the show, and its inside covers pictured additional Tom Mix premiums, such as pocket knifes and decoder badges, and were available to Ralston eaters for little more than postage and the blue seal from the cereal box. One of the cereal’s ads proudly proclaimed: “Boys and girls who never liked cereal before fall for good old Ralston… with Raisins!” (Over the years, the cold cereal called Shredded Ralston became Shredded Ralston Wheat Chex, and eventually just Wheat Chex. Now, of course, there are also Rice Chex, Corn Chex—and Alfalfa Chex, for all we know.) Each of the regular characters on the show—Tom, Wash, Pecos, Jane, The Old Wrangler, and Amos Q. Snood—were represented in special sections of the comic. The issues started and ended with “Tom Mix” stories in which he pitted his strength against villains like Grizzly Grebb and Dr. Goliath, in addition to werewolves, submarines, flying dragons, and giant moray eels. Between these This page from issue #9 of the Ralston Tom Mix Comics showcased the mag’s creative staff. At bottom from left to right in the photos are Stan Schendel, Ray Bouvet, Fred Meagher, and Bill Allison. If the plaid shirt is any clue, that’s probably artist Meagher doubling for Tom Mix in the photo at top. [©2003 Ralston Purina.]

The Ralston comics were entertaining, varied, colorful, finely drawn, unconventional westerns. Since they were sent through the mail, they rarely appear today in fine condition.

Tom Mix In Comics

41 make this world a peaceful world,” so Fawcett’s Tom Mix closed most of his stories with moral reminders. The Ralston Company advertised its premiums in the comic on a special page entitled the “Tom Mix Trading Post,” and the radio show was promoted in regular half-page listings of all the stations in the country that carried the program on the Mutual Network.

The Tom Mix radio show, which left the air during the summer of 1942, was cancelled altogether in the fall, bringing the comic giveaway promotion to an end. Though the radio show was later reinstated for nine more years, the Ralston comics were never offered again.

Tom Mix at Fawcett

It is apparent (although never confirmed) that the All-American colors of Tom Mix’s outfit in many of the Fawcett issues—red shirt, white hat, and blue trousers—were based on those in the old Ralston giveaway comics… but beyond this and the similarities already noted, the Fawcett comic was a distinct creation.

In 1948 Fawcett Publications introduced a mass-market comic entitled Tom Mix Western. The series had a 61–issue run, ending only in 1953 when Fawcett discontinued its entire line of comics. Tom Mix also appeared in Fawcett’s (Real) Western Hero, and Master Comics, as well as later issues of Wow Comics. The artists for 90% of Tom Mix’s Fawcett comics appearances were Carl Pfeufer (penciler) and John Jordan (inker). Pfeufer’s art and design training impelled him to bring accurate anatomy and perspective to his work, resulting in a high level of visual excitement. He and Jordan worked in concert on many Some of the Fawcett covers sported photos of the late different Fawcett comics features, including movie actor, such as Tom Mix Western #46 (Oct. 1951). Hopalong Cassidy, Don Winslow of the That’s his fabled movie horse Tony he’s riding at Navy, Monte Hale Western, and others. In bottom right. [Tom Mix TM & ©2003 Ralston Purina.] Pfeufer’s solo work—such as Ken Maynard Western—his brush technique in inking the pages gave a very loose feel to his artwork. Jordan brought a tighter look to Pfeufer’s pencils, even though Jordan also used a brush to finish the illustrations.

The early issues of Tom Mix Western were 52 pages for a dime, containing four or sometimes five Mix tales in each issue. Between these stories and the random advertisements were several humorous “filler” features and pages of factual information. The most notable recurring features were “Tumbleweed Jr.”—a humor strip featuring the mishaps of a mischievous little Indian boy—and the text feature “Fightin’ Forbes,” [Continued on p. 43]

The stories in the Fawcett Tom Mix comics differed from those in the Ralston comics in that the latter were based on the “real” Tom Mix and were in step with the times, while the Fawcett version took place in an idealized “Old West” and centered on the town of Dobie and the TM Bar Ranch. Even though the radio show and the Tom Mix Fawcett comic coexisted for several years, they were never compatible. Sheriff Mike Shaw (who evolved from The Old Wrangler) was the only consistent crossover. Wash, Tom’s cook, made few appearances. Pecos, Jane, and Amos Q. Snood never appeared the Fawcett comics. The Straight Shooter theme, which was the heart of the radio show, was introduced in the Fawcett comic but, interestingly, never developed. However, the ideals of honesty and fair play that the Ralston Straight Shooters espoused always prevailed in the Fawcett stories. Just as radio’s Tom Mix (Curley Bradley) would encourage youngsters to “pitch in and fight to

Tom Mix In Comics

Carl Pfeufer: Illustrator

At Fawcett, Pfeufer produced an enormous output of work. He worked on Tom Mix Western, Don Winslow of the Navy (his first assignment at Fawcett), Hopalong Cassidy, Lance O’Casey, Monte Hale Western, Rod Cameron Western, Fawcett Movie Comics (including adaptations of Ten Tall Men, Warpath, and Montana), “Commando Yank,” “Mr. Scarlet,” Captain Midnight (covers only), complete art for all the issues of Ken Maynard Western, and the roughs for Tex Ritter, Gabby Hayes, Lash LaRue, and Ibis the Invincible. Many of these were inked by Jordan.

by Bill Harper Ed Robbins, a comic book artist who worked with Carl Pfeufer at Dell and Fawcett Publications during the Golden Age, once reflected about those early years of comic books that “artists grew up wanting to do something else, but did comics for a living.” Perhaps that was the case with Pfeufer, who—after studying commercial art in high school and freehand drawing at Cooper Union, attending the National Academy of Design (during which he competed for the Prix de Rome), and doing further study at Grand Central Art School—found himself drawing comics in the ’30s and ’40s.

Pfeufer was born September 29, 1910, in Mexico City. In 1913 the Pfeufer family moved to New York. Upon completion of his studies he worked for McFadden Publications in the 1920s doing layouts, spot illustrations, and editorial cartoons. He joined The Brooklyn Eagle staff in 1935, where he created, with Bob Moore, a Sunday comic page comprised of two features: Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire, a science-fiction strip, and Tad of the Tanbark, a jungle strip. In 1936 Pfeufer took over Gordon, Soldier of Fortune (by ’41 all three features had folded). In 1936 he worked on Dell’s The Funnies and Popular Comics. It was at Dell that he first met fellow artist Ed Robbins and they became friends. Robbins once said that Carl was easy to get to know and was well liked by everyone. The ’40s found Pfeufer with Marvel/Timely drawing “Sub-Mariner,” “Human Torch,” and other features. He specialized in the former, after Prince Namor’s creator Bill Everett entered the Army at the turn of 1942. Then in 1943 Pfeufer began a productive decade with Fawcett Publications. It was at Fawcett that he and inker John Jordan would work in concert on many titles. Hames Ware, co-editor of Who’s Who of American Comic Books, was quoted in the fanzine Rocket’s Blast/RBCC concerning the team of Pfeufer and Jordan: “Neither achieved solo what they managed to do in tandem.” It was this combination of Pfeufer as penciler and Jordan as inker that produced 90% of all the “Tom Mix” stories in Tom Mix Western and Mix’s appearances in Western Hero, Master Comics and later issues of Wow Comics. “His use of black is dramatic and effective without being overdone,” was one of the ways Mrs. Helen Pfeufer viewed her husband’s comic illustrations, and it is evident in his work with Tom Mix. Comic historian R.C. Harvey did a detailed panel-by-panel analysis of a Pfeufer/Jordan-drawn fight scene from Tom Mix Western #10 in a column in the Sept. 1978 issue of RBCC that gave elaborate descriptions of the visual excitement found in a Tom Mix comic. Later, in an issue of FCA & ME, Too, Pfeufer fan Henry Yeo took Harvey’s comments a step further by writing that he considers Pfeufer “to be the FIRST dynamic artist, not (Jack) Kirby.”

When Fawcett discontinued its comic line in 1953, Pfeufer’s work appeared in Charlton’s continuation of Don Winslow of the Navy and in its Six-Gun Heroes. He went on to work briefly for Dell and drew a couple of short-lived newspaper strips. During this time he illustrated several books, including Treasury of True (1956) for Fawcett Publications.

By 1960 he had basically ceased doing comics, aside from a few strips and comics for various syndicates and publishers. The most notable of these was Our Space Age, a syndicated panel written by prolific Captain Marvel scripter Otto Binder, and the extremely short-lived comic Super Green Beret (Tod Holton) for Will Lieberson’s Milson Pub./Lightning Comics in 1967. In 1978 Pfeufer did about half a dozen illustrated adaptations of the classics for Ottenheimer Publishers, including Treasure Island and Frankenstein, released by Bantam in its Skylark series. But primarily in the ’70s he produced life and landscape paintings and traveled worldwide. He worked in oils and watercolors, but his letterhead still listed, “Illustrations, Designs, Concepts,” the three elements that went into making him one of the finest comic book illustrators. Carl Pfeufer passed away May of 1980. During the spring of 1982 the Summit Gallery in San Antonio, Texas, held a show of Pfeufer’s artwork. The event was heralded as “a unique retrospective” of his work. Exhibited were his early award-winning works, covers for Liberty magazine, various oil and watercolor paintings, as well as a Fawcett original art page from Tom Mix Western.

After creator Bill Everett entered the Army, Carl Pfeufer became for a time the chief artist of “The Sub-Mariner,” as in these panels from Marvel Mystery Comics #41 (March 1943), repro’d from black-&-white Canadian reprints of the original art. [©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

Tom Mix In Comics

[Continued from p. 41] about a frontier editor who “writes and shoots on the side of justice!” Two early covers of Tom Mix Western (issues # 8 and 11) were painted by the popular artist Everett Raymond Kinstler, and are especially valued by collectors for this reason. Most of the early issues had either photo covers or paintings of Mix in a western setting. In later issues, from #30 onwards, the paintings gave way entirely to photographs, occasionally in combination with reprints of selected interior comic panels.

The Cowboy vs. the Psychiatrist

Unlike most comics titles, the first issue of Tom Mix Western is not the most highly sought-after issue of the series among collectors today. That distinction belongs to issue #9, which features a striking painted cover of Mix climbing aboard a speeding train while a desperado takes aim at him from the roof of an adjoining car. The issue’s cover blurb advertises a story called “The Song of the Deadly Spurs,” but the importance of the comic is due neither to the cover nor to the featured episode. Rather, it is due entirely to a little 7-page adventure entitled “Hands Off,” the third of the four stories in the issue, and printed almost unpretentiously between a Tootsie Roll advertisement for a “beanie copter” and a four-page “Tumbleweed Jr.” story.

The “Hands Off” story was singled out by Dr. Frederic Wertham in his 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent as an example of a “good” comic book that is really a crime comic in disguise. Wertham argued that crime comics represented “an obscene glorification of violence, crime, and sadism” that stimulated morbid excitement in children, destroyed their fantasy life, and contributed to many cases of chronic maladjustment. The release of Seduction of the Innocent was part of a national campaign in the early ’50s by parents and educators to combat the rising popularity of comic books, especially the more sensational ones. That campaign led finally to public hearings by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency on the nature of comic books, and to the creation in 1954-55 of the Comics Code Authority by the major publishers: “the most stringent code in existence for any communications media,” as the Authority itself proudly proclaimed. The Code changed the course of publishing history in the comic book field. Wertham’s first reference to Tom Mix Western was actually in an article on comic books in the National Parent-Teacher Magazine. “It is a great error not to realize,” he wrote, “that ‘Western’ comics are just crime comics in disguise. The comic book Tom Mix, for example, has the story of an insane killer who hacks off people’s hands, with the bloody details fully illustrated.” After the magazine article appeared, Fawcett Publications evidently threatened National Parent-Teacher editor with a libel suit and claimed (according to Wertham) to have lost a million dollars a year “on account of the article.” The representatives of Fawcett pointed out that the story was actually about a “dummy,” and demanded a “public retraction and correction” (again, in Wertham’s words). Wertham wrote a long, detailed analysis of the “corrupt” nature of the episode, and sent it to the editor of Parent-Teacher. This analysis was later reprinted in Seduction of the Innocent. In the “Hands Off” story, Dead-Eye Dixon, a one-time champion trick shot artist, escapes from the Canyon Corners Insane Asylum and vows to kill (and cut off the hands) of all persons who would rival his claim to the trick shooting title. His first victim is Frisco Frank, the self-proclaimed “World’s Champion Trick Shot Artist.” When Tom Mix substitutes himself at the rodeo for the dead and disfigured Frank, he inadvertently puts himself on the madman’s list.

The scene Wertham found most objectionable occurs at the end of the story. After escaping one attack from Dead-Eye, Mix plans to set a trap for the killer. Later, as the madman is busily chopping off the hands of a supposedly sleeping Tom Mix, the [Continued on p. 45]

Tom Mix In Comics

The Brief Return of Tom Mix by Jim Harmon [Originally presented in FCA #56, Summer, 1996. © 2003 Jim Harmon] I always liked the Fawcett comic book version of Tom Mix for its depiction of Tom himself as the rugged, hawk-nosed cowpoke he was, and for their version of his hefty sidekick, Sheriff Mike Shaw, in the image of radio actor Leo Curley. I had seen many photos of Leo, and Fawcett’s Tom Mix artists, Carl Pfeufer and John Jordan, caught him perfectly in Tom Mix Western, Master Comics, and Western Hero. The Fawcett comics also contained advertisements for the Tom Mix Ralston Cereals radio show and radio premiums. In those ads, the image of Mix was slightly different: Ralston had based its image of Tom mostly on Curley Bradley, who played him on radio. The image of Mix was often copied from a photo of Curley, but the artists gave him a big nose like that of the original screen idol. My adulation for Tom Mix was formed mostly by the Ralston radio show and the pre-Fawcett Mix giveaway comics. I must confess, I have always preferred these earlier ’40s books drawn by Fred Meagher. They were set in the fantasized modern West with super-science and supervillains involved. I liked the detailed, slick artwork. The later Fawcett books were great for bringing back Mix to the comics, but their routine Old West plots were never as thrilling to me. Even as a small boy I knew the real Tom Mix had died and that he was impersonated on the radio. Although I could remember other actors playing Tom, it seems to me that Curley Bradley was the perfect one for the radio role. He sounded great, like a real cowboy (which he was, as well as a one-time rodeo rider and Hollywood stuntman, who had doubled for many of the western stars of that era, including Tom Mix and Buck Jones). I finally met Bradley in 1975. I talked to him about doing new Tom Mix radio shows. He still had a lot of charm and a powerful voice. He still looked and sounded like a cowboy. Several years later, a new executive at Ralston, Steve Kendall, became interested in doing some new things with Tom Mix. He issued new Tom Mix premiums, beginning with a set of cereal bowls. When I contacted him in an attempt to get those bowls, he offered me a job. The job gave me the opportunity to produce some new full-fledged Tom Mix radio shows with Curley Bradley and Jack Lester. Writing, producing, and appearing on those shows was literally a dream come true for me. It was a great experience working with Curley, and I think he enjoyed being back doing radio. During one rehearsal, Curley delivered the line “I wouldn’t do that if I were you” with such chilling force that it stopped both my wife

Jim Harmon (at right) shares a 1980s re-creation of the Tom Mix radio show with Curley Bradley, who played Mix on radio for many years. Photo by Frank Bresee, who was radio’s last “Little Beaver” on the Red Ryder series.

Barbara and me in our tracks. There were several “special shows” done, and plans to bring back Tom Mix for a whole season on Tuesday and Thursday for a half hour—26 episodes, then repeated. Part of the work I did for Ralston for their 50th anniversary of sponsoring Tom Mix on radio was to be the editor of two mini-comic books to be included inside Hot Ralston cereal boxes. I did art layout and wrote the scripts. Alex Toth was assigned by Western Printing to do the finished art. Toth did a good job, but the people at Western seemed bored and sleepwalked through the project. They made several errors in design and coloring that I had to correct. It came as no surprise that they went out of business. Ralston executive Steve Kendall was behind us 100%. But then he was transferred from Ralston Cereal to the dog food department (actually a promotion), and the man who took his place did not want to follow Steve’s ideas. I did the story and layout for the second mini-comic (and a third planned), but the new executive never followed through on the finished art or publication. I was paid for both, and paid as if for an advertising brochure, not a comic book. I was probably paid more for these two small books than anyone was ever paid for working on a Tom Mix comic book. The radio show had been a wonderful experience for both Curley Bradley and me. We remained friends until he passed away in 1985. The Tom Mix revival was over.

[NOTE: For more about Jim Harmon and the radio Tom Mix, see the bio at the end of “Twelve O’Clock Shadow.”]

Tom Mix In Comics [Continued from p. 43] real Mix emerges from the shadows and subdues Dixon by ramming him in the stomach with his head. It is then that the reader realizes that the figure in the chair was that of the dummy introduced in the beginning of the story. As Wertham concluded in his analysis: “Far from retracting what I have written, I reaffirm that this ‘Tom Mix’ story is a bloody crime story disguised as a ‘Western’ totally unfit for immature minds. And I hope that this example will help parents see the methods by which the comic book industry continues the corruption of children’s minds.” It is a little ironic that Seduction of the Innocent appeared in 1954, after Fawcett had already ceased publishing Tom Mix Western and its entire line of comics. As if in retaliation to Wertham’s crusade, “Tumbleweed Jr.,” Tom Mix Western’s back-up/filler humor strip drawn by William Brady (who also drew various features in Fawcett’s Funny Animals), lapsed into broken English in issue #16 (1950). In issue #27 Tumbleweed’s grammar was back to normal; however, in #28 the little Indian reverted back to poor grammar… but that was to be the last time!

Early issues of Tom Mix Western displayed unusual graphic violence and often depicted Tom Mix acting in an un-sportsman-like way, such as provoking a fight without a good reason or ending a fight with a smash of his gun butt to his opponent’s head. However, not every early story was of this nature, and after issue #9 there were no more such scenes. In most of the stories Mix used his wit and strength against outlaws and rustlers. Also noticeable after issue #9 were the design of the panels and the artwork becoming more stylized. Gone were the variously shaped panels and the extreme perspectives. Often the stories were wordy, but the illustrations kept the story moving.

Tom Mix is alive and well at AC Comics! Bill Black’s AC Comics has published three different Tom Mix comics, containing high-quality, clean and crisp reprints from the Fawcett tales in Tom Mix Western and Master Comics. For information, see AC Comics’ ad elsewhere in this issue. [Tom Mix TM & ©2003 Ralston Purina; other features of cover ©2003 AC Comics.]

On the original art from the pages of Tom Mix Western, there are notations in the margins of minute artistic alterations and changes, wording for clarity, or corrections of misplaced punctuation marks or misspelled words, giving evidences of the professional concern by the creative talent at Fawcett to make Tom Mix Western a worthy addition to the canon of the Tom Mix legend. Even though the generation that read the comic had few opportunities to see Tom Mix in the movies, Tom Mix Western kept the legend alive for another generation. After the demise of Fawcett’s comic books, Charlton Comics continued the Tom Mix stories in Six-Gun Heroes, beginning in 1954. Ralston-Purina briefly brought back Tom Mix in the early ’80s for their 50th Anniversary of sponsoring the legendary cowboy. [See opposite page.]. Today, AC Comics publisher Bill Black continues to reprint Fawcett Tom Mix stories in various titles, still keeping the western comic book—and the legend of Tom Mix—going strong. Western comics have never been the vogue of comic fandom. Fawcett Publications, which offered a full line of popular western comics, never allowed its writers or artists to sign their work. Most of the people involved in preparing these comics have gone without recognition, but their efforts that passed on the exciting legend of Tom Mix will never be forgotten.

[P.C. Hamerlinck will be presenting an article on Fawcett’s entire line of Western comics in a future issue of FCA.]

C.C. Beck

The Birth, Life, and Death of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel The Co-Creator and Original Artist Talks in Depth about the Big Red Cheese by C.C. Beck Drawings by the Author [Portions previously published in The Buyer’s Guide For Comic Fandom #61-65, 1974]

Edited for FCA by P.C. Hamerlinck So many different versions of the birth and brief life of Captain Marvel have appeared in print recently that I have decided I must now add my own. I have told this same story to many an interviewer and writer but somehow it has never come out the same way twice when printed. Perhaps what should be done now is to have someone put all the published stories about Captain Marvel together, then retain all the portions that agree with each other and eliminate everything else. This is what Biblical scholars and other historians of the dim past do in their search for the truth. This present story might suffer some severe cutting in such a process, as I was in no position back in those days when Captain Marvel was being produced to know much about what was going on in any department but my own. As a matter of fact, I have reason sometimes to believe now that I didn’t know very much about what was going on in my own department where I was called “Chief Artist” (I never made it to “Art Director,” as Fawcett already had two of them and didn’t need another).

The Birth of Captain Marvel In the Fall of 1939 Bill Parker, a staff writer at Fawcett Publications, created among others the three comic characters Captain Marvel, Ibis the Invincible, and Spy Smasher, which were assigned to me as a staff artist to draw up. Pete Costanza was hired to draw Golden Arrow, while other artists such as Jess Benton, Bob Kingett [Editor’s Note: Kingett

A classic Captain Marvel introductory panel by C.C. Beck, shown at right in later years with a copy of the first issue of Whiz Comics, which introduced the Big Red Cheese to a waiting world. Photo by Bill Black. [©2003 DC Comics.]

drew the first Lance O’Casey story and lettered most of the first issue of Whiz Comics. —PCH], and others whose names I can’t recall got other characters to draw. Fawcett’s comics were a big hit, and almost overnight they grew to a point where Fawcett had to put on a whole staff of editors to handle everything. Contrary to what some writers have said, no Fawcett artists had anything officially to do with story scripts. They were all worked out between freelance writers and Fawcett editors. We artists had enough work making the drawings, believe me! A few of the artists, I have learned since, wrote some stories on the side and sold them to Fawcett. I even wrote one myself once [Editors Note: Beck’s story appeared in Whiz Comics #22, Oct. 1941, entitled “Captain Marvel and the Temple of Itzalotahu,” recently reprinted in

The Birth, Life & Death of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel

Some of my fellow artists and I were put into a separate studio operating at first as “C.C. Beck Studio,” later as “Beck and Costanza.” There we paid our own rent and expenses and artists’ salaries and ran things to suit ourselves. In this we got a great deal of help from the fabulous Jack Binder, who knew a lot more about everything connected with comic production than Pete Costanza or I did. Neither of us knew anything at all about comic books, nor much about anything else, if the truth be known. All Pete and I did was draw our heads off day and night with scarcely time even for a coffee break for thirteen long years.

Comic Book Shops The production of comic books in shops has been mentioned in recent articles. Harry Chesler had a shop, as did Jack Binder before I met him. I was never in Binder’s shop and met Chesler just once, so far as I know. I thought he was a salesman at the time, which I guess he was. Pete and I had a studio, not a shop. The difference was that shops turned out comic pages for anybody, producing them on an assembly line basis so that the finished product, while often slick and professional-looking, had very little feeling or individual artists’ emotional quality underneath. Everything was of a uniform quality, neither good nor bad. Our studio was set up and operated to turn out Captain Marvel pages, nothing else. I was the “Maestro”; everyone else was supposed to think, feel, and draw exactly as I did. My overpowering presence was supposed to awe my helpers into doing inspired work. This idea was a lot of nonsense, of course, and Pete and I saw early in the game that such a ridiculous myth couldn’t be maintained when all the men in the

Mostly, these single-page compilation/drawings by C.C. Beck, put together to illustrate the points he wanted to make in this article, speak for themselves, even repro’d from grey photocopies. Some, but not all, saw print in the course of four 1974 issues of the Buyer’s Guide. Thanks to Richard Kyle for sending us one or two that didn’t get printed then—like the one above—which is thus being seen for the first time. [Art ©2003 Estate of C.C. Beck; characters TM & ©2003 DC Comics.]

DC’s Shazam! Archives, Vol. 3. —PCH.], although I don’t remember being paid for it. But all stories had to go through an editor’s hands first; no artist both drew and wrote his own material without supervision, so far as I was ever aware. [Editors Note: One exception would be Marc Swayze, who occasionally both wrote and illustrated Captain Marvel stories. —PCH.] As I have said, I didn’t know much about what was going on in those days. I remember that some quite good stories came to us under the name “William Batstone” as writer. Writers’ names never appeared on printed stories, of course, any more than artists’ names did in Fawcett comics. They were carried on scripts just for identification… so that a check could be properly made out, I suppose. Imagine my surprise, years later, when I was told that “William Batstone” had never existed! His stories had been written by a Fawcett editor doing a little moonlighting. As an editor he would have had to write for nothing, but by buying them from himself under an assumed name he could collect on the side. In all fairness I must add that I heard the editor defended himself later by saying that the only way he could get decent stories was by writing them himself, which was probably true. Good stories always have been exceedingly hard to get, as every editor knows. Fawcett’s stories were written by men who were pretty big names in the science-fiction, western, and detective fields: Otto Binder, Bill Woolfolk, Manly Wade Wellman, Joseph Millard, and many others. But the demand for writers and artists kept growing as Fawcett expanded its line of comics and upped the schedules and deadlines until the whole place became a madhouse.

C.C. Beck studio, aside from drawing the complete art on some stories for two weeks after he returned from the military, before becoming a freelancer for Fawcett from his Louisiana home. —PCH.] We had some key men like Ray Harford and Bob Boyajian who had been hired because they could draw fine Captain Marvel figures, and we kept them busy, I tell you! But there weren’t enough really good artists available to draw everything, so we had to settle for some pretty poor art at times. Mixed in with stories drawn in our studio you will find, in these old issues of Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures, stories that have a different flavor entirely. These stories were drawn by men over whom our studio had no control, and here you will see the difference between the real Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel when others took over. These stories are quite well drawn—sometimes better than Pete’s and mine—but they were not laid out properly. The panels are all jumbled together and everything goes in all directions at once. Each panel is treated as a separate little display of art with no relationship to other panels in the story. Captain Marvel sometimes has his feet hanging over into other panels in the story, or he is shown bursting out of the panel outlines for no reason at all. Minor characters attract attention to themselves by mugging and ham acting; major characters don’t act at all but seem to be frozen in weird poses like wax dummies. Sometimes everything is so badly put together that it’s hard to find the story, which was never the case in Beck and Costanza studio work. Pete and I were illustrators first, last and always; other artists weren’t, sad to say.

Captain Marvel in the War Years No matter how poorly Captain Marvel may have been drawn at times, he went on and on, through the war years when artists got drafted before they could even finish a story and were hauled away to serve in the armed forces as musicians, cooks, guards, even as fighting men in foxholes and in invading forces. Some of them Beck didn't care much for the Cap artwork by the Simon & Kirby team or by never came back, sadly enough. I never quite made it into Uncle George Tuska in the first three issues of Captain Marvel Adventures. Pick up the Sam’s maw (I was over the fighting age, it was finally decided), but second and third volumes of The Shazam! Archives and see what you think! was left to work with young boys, girls, old men, and anybody [Art ©2003 Estate of C.C. Beck; Captain Marvel TM & ©2003 DC Comics.] else they could scare up. Our artwork got worse and worse, and if it hadn’t been that Eddie Robbins (in uniform) was able to studio could see me slaving away like an ordinary mortal no wiser or continue laying out stories for us on weekends, I might have given up. better off than themselves. So, at Jack Binder’s suggestion, the whole Even good old Pete was a soldier for a long time, and I’m sure he would studio was moved to Englewood, New Jersey. I remained in our New agree with me today that about the only man who could have been of York office to sign checks and to read stories which Fawcett sent to me less value than he was as a soldier would have been me! The ’40s were for illustration by our Englewood studio under Pete’s management. I hectic years. still laid out many stories myself, and I corrected nearly all the pages after the studio men had done their part. But as long as good stories were supplied for us to illustrate, the Pete had his troubles, for artists of any worth are strong individuals, not sheep-like factory workers. We didn’t try to force them into a mold, as a shop might have done, but let each man express himself in his drawings. Some of the books produced in those days have a dozen different techniques in their pages, while Captain Marvel appears now tall and slim, now short and stumpy, again perhaps seven feet tall and apparently molded in cement or alternatively as if he had been put together by Dr. Frankenstein just after he had found a heap of left-over muscles in a corner. Although this may have bothered the Fawcett people at the time, and certainly caused Pete and me to tear our hair out in anguish, I can see now that it was a minor fault. Pete and I and some of our best men, such as Eddie Robbins and Marc Swayze, always laid out the stories so that the storytelling was correct; then the other artists did the actual penciling and inked. [Editors Note: Marc Swayze has reported several times in his FCA column that he was never Beck’s “assistant” when drawing Captain Marvel stories, nor was he ever a part of the Beck-Costanza

readers loved the Big Red Cheese. I have been looking over some of the war years’ issues and I am amazed at how great the stories really were back in what is now called the “Golden Age.” My hat is off to all the writers and editors, known or now forgotten, who supplied them. Although, as I have said, when Fawcett’s comics first started both Pete and I and other artists had worked on different characters, when other Marvel Family characters were born they were assigned by Fawcett to other artists. Mac Raboy got Captain Marvel Jr. and drew him for several years (even while he was in the Army, I’ve heard); in later years Bud Thompson took over this character. Jack Binder drew the Mary Marvel stories [Editors Note: Marc Swayze drew the first Mary Marvel sketches and her earliest adventures before Jack Binder became the character’s regular artist. —PCH.], while Kurt Schaffenberger drew the Marvel Family stories. I never envied Kurt his job, for in each panel he had to draw three different Marvels, where the rest of us had only one to struggle with. I had nothing whatsoever to do with how these men handled their characters and will therefore say nothing about their work.

The Birth, Life & Death of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel

Fawcett never asked my advice on anything, which was quite proper, as I didn’t know anything about writing or publishing anyway. In return, they seldom managed to interfere with my work as an illustrator under the supervision of Al Allard, their fine art director. The editors knew their jobs and were very competent, especially the late Wendell Crowley, who was a giant both figuratively and literally (he was almost seven feet tall), so everything clicked along merrily after the war was over and most of the men came back.

possible—that is, that what was to be included in our drawings had to be placed on paper in pleasing and effective patterns, not just dropped willy-nilly into any haphazard arrangement that was convenient.

The Death of Captain Marvel

By contrast, most other comic books have always seemed to me to be mere displays of meaningless artwork such as might be presented in a flea market or a sidewalk display. If there are any good stories contained in them, they are so hidden beneath the startling exhibitions of anatomy, of eye-catching effects, and of pure technique that they can be found only with difficulty. Why publishers put this kind of stuff out has always been a mystery to me.

But the boom days didn’t last too long. Fawcett started cutting down our artwork. Where at one time our studio’s rooms had been filled with artists grinding out comic pages, by the early ’50s Pete and I were doing almost everything by ourselves again. The issues put out in those years contain some of the best Captain Marvel stories ever published, I believe. They were superbly written and edited, and the artwork, I can see now, was really fine. Things got worse; Pete and I closed the studio and the New York office and worked out of our homes. Soon Pete was not needed and I worked alone with a young assistant named Jack Bowler and a freelance lettering man. Then, in 1953, there was no more Captain Marvel at all. Fawcett discontinued all comic production. Why? They never told me. So ended the Golden Age, which we at the time didn’t even know we had been living in. The name was, of course, given to the period somewhat jokingly in imitation of the way ancient writers referred to a mythical Golden Age that was supposed to have existed far back in dim prehistoric times.

Doing this was second nature for Pete and me and our top men, who knew that nothing good ever happens by accident in professional artwork, where everything must be planned and allowed for before the time-consuming work of detailed penciling and inking and coloring and engraving and printing is undertaken.

Captain Marvel pages were always clear, simple, and easy to read. None of us got any credits or bylines, so there was no reason for us to show off or try to attract attention to ourselves and our work. Besides, we were told by Fawcett that readers believed that Captain Marvel and his friends were real people, not just characters dreamed up by writers and artists. After a while we all began to believe this ourselves; the World’s Mightiest Mortal and the boy reporter Billy Batson, and Mr. Morris and Beautia, and Sivana and Mr. Mind, all had their own personalities and “did their own things” with just the slight assist from us.

Today we are so advanced that we can create a Golden Age in just thirty years. I sometimes wonder what the era we’re in now will be called thirty years hence, don’t you?

Captain Marvel’s Place in Comics I have never read many comic books, and so far as I know the other artists who worked with me, while they may have worked for other publishers at one time or another, were not particularly interested in reading their magazines. The few comic magazines I have glanced at on the stands have always repelled me with their overemphasis on tremendous action and impossible situations. Back in the ’40s I made up a little guidebook for the instruction of our artists. This was just a loose-leaf folder with samples of what to do and what not to do and it has long since disappeared, but, as I recall, the examples of good comic art were taken from syndicated strips such as Little Orphan Annie and The Phantom, while the bad examples were taken from our own work where we had gone wrong. Successful syndicated strips have always been produced by top illustrators and authors, not by amateur artists and hack writers. There was no need to refer our artists to other comic books for guidance; most of them were so bad that even looking at them would have been a waste of time. In the Beck and Costanza Studio we trained men by having them work on pages laid out and lettered before the drawings were even started. The placing of balloons and captions in relation to panels and the arrangement of panels on each page, we taught, were much more important than the details of drawing put into each panel. Then we taught that the composition of each panel and of each page, and of the story as a whole, must be just as good as

C.C. Beck

They were real; we were just their invisible chroniclers.

Captain Marvel vs. Superman At first, it had seemed to Bill Parker and me when we started on Whiz Comics back in 1939, Fawcett had wanted a comic book hero just like DC’s Superman. Even after Captain Marvel got rolling and started to outsell all his competitors, there was some pressure to make him bigger and less funny and to put him into more outlandish and impossible situations with each issue. How the editorial staff kept from doing this I never knew. At one time there was even a movement to kill off Billy Batson and to make Captain Marvel the sole hero. There were also complaints from upstairs in the company that our villains were too good and were taking attention away from the hero. Somehow or other, we workers down in the pits managed to disregard such silly complaints from our publisher, for which we ought to have received some thanks but never did. When Superman’s lawyers began preparing to prove in court that every panel in Captain Marvel stories had been copied or traced from a previously published Superman panel, people who knew anything at all about comics said that DC’s claims were ridiculous, as anybody with any brains could see that the World’s Mightiest Mortal was nothing like the Man of Steel. Whether the judge before whom the case was tried had any brains or not I wouldn’t know; it is most probable that he didn’t know anything about comics, for it has been my experience that anyone who knows anything about any subject other than law itself is not allowed to say much in court.

our lighthearted treatment of their star attraction, but, as I have said, they couldn’t do much to change Captain Marvel’s character after he had gotten established. Now, as only some few people seem to know, humor must be very skillfully handled to be effective. How many people do you know who can tell a joke well, even counting the clowns seen in nightclubs and on TV? Humor must never be forced or overdone, and it takes experience to become a cartoonist. Fortunately, I had spent almost six years working on Fawcett’s humor magazines under the guidance of fine editors like “Smitty” Smithson and Fred Feldkamp before I started drawing Captain Marvel. Before that I had worked on the University of Minnesota’s college humor magazine [Editors Note: The magazine was called Ski-U-Mah. —PCH.], and even before that I had worked as an assistant to a syndicated cartoonist, [Editors Note: The cartoonist was Norman Mingo, later of Mad magazine fame and the creator of Alfred E. Newman. —PCH.], so I had a good training as a cartoonist. The other men who helped me lay out the World’s Mightiest Mortal’s stories were also experienced illustrators and cartoonists, not beginners. The writers supplied us with comic situations and dialog and we did the rest. We drew just enough to put their ideas across, no more. Oh yes, sometimes we slipped in some little touches of our own, but we always did this with restraint and not in a clumsy, offensive way. Captain Marvel was not a Li’l Abner or a Happy Hooligan; he was a unique character with his own personality, half-serious and half-laughprovoking. Many stories had quite serious themes which in other hands could have been turned into dull, boring stories filled with murder, mayhem, and monotonous displays of meaningless, monstrous brutality. By not working in an out-and-out realistic style, we avoided this.

Nobody ever told me what happened the first time the FawcettNational case was tried. In any event we went right on turning out the books for several years more as if nothing had happened. What may have happened later to cause Fawcett to stop publication of all comics is also quite beyond my knowledge. As all fans and nostalgia-lovers know today, Captain Marvel had practically no similarity to Superman. He was just a mortal, while Superman was a super-character from another planet. Captain Marvel’s powers were all myth-derived and magical, not superscientific and merely manufactured to fill a publisher’s demands. Captain Marvels’ alter ego was a boy who was smart, plucky, and full of vigor; Superman’s Clark Kent was an overgrown oaf who (the fans tell me—I never read enough to find out) was really a nothing character. One writer has written recently that by saying the magic word “Shazam” in the old stories all things were put to rights as if by magic. If this writer had read any of the old stories he would know that both Billy Batson’s and Captain Marvel’s troubles usually just began with their saying “Shazam.” Both had to fight, scheme, and do a lot of hard work before they got out of the troublous situations they were always involved in. That’s what made the stories so interesting and so widely read that Superman’s publishers, in despair, went to court to try to stop him.

The Humor in Captain Marvel The biggest difference between Captain Marvel and other superheroes was of course the fact that he was funny, while the others were stern, granite-faced characters with little warmth or human feeling about them. When other characters (in imitation of Captain Marvel’s success) tried to be funny, they never succeeded, I am told; they were all too solemn and dignified to appear in comic situations, in which they were like Supreme Court justices trying to tell jokes. Our publisher really may have been somewhat embarrassed by

The Birth, Life & Death of Fawcett’s Captain Marvel

must almost write their own stories, I’m sure. The comics I don’t like are the ones with manufactured heroes and stories that seem to have been turned out on typewriters operated by turning a crank. These comic books were around in 1939 just as they are today, and they were just as rotten then as now. Some young commentators on comics have said, as young people often do, that “times change” and that the Golden Age was a onetime era whose like will never be seen again. This is nonsense, in my opinion. When I was young we had bootleg booze, marijuana, homosexuals, crooked politicians, crime in the streets, runaway juveniles, even hippies—who were then called “Bohemians” or just plain bums. We had gangsters and faddists and good times (up until 1929) and bad times (after 1929) and even a few wars, assassinations, and riots. There was no reason then, and there isn’t one now, to put all these things into comic books in the interests of “relevancy.” When these young people get older, they will find out that times don’t change at all. There are always lots of bad things around and there always will be. If a few good things come along, it is because certain people make them good in spite of lack of recognition, small pay, or sometimes no reward at all. Read your history, young people! This story of the birth, life, and death of Captain Marvel is a bit of history, written by one who was there, not by one who looks back on a dim past that seems like a golden dream of ancient times. It wasn’t!

The Villains in Captain Marvel Stories A story is not a word-for-word account of something that happened in real life such as a school child might write under the title “How I Spent the Easter Holidays” or “My Visit to the Zoo.” A story is a made-up telling of how things might happen but never do. Notice that word “might”: things must not be so fantastic and unbelievable that the reader will throw the story away in disgust. [Art©2003 Estate of C.C. Beck; Captain Marvel, Billy Batson, Dr. Sivana, and the Seven Deadly Sins TM &©2003 DC Comics.]

We never went overboard in either direction; that is, we had enough control over ourselves that we never used either a completely serious approach or a completely comic approach. Captain Marvel’s character would not have fitted either dead-serious or slapstick stories, as was proven when two movies about him were made by people who knew nothing about him. One, a serial, [Editors Note: Republic Pictures’ 12chapter serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel, starring Tom Tyler. —PCH.] was long, boring and dull. The other [Editor’s Note: The Good Humor Man. —PCH.] was a completely silly comedy, in which only Captain Marvel’s name was used… and it was spelled backward!

My Opinion of Comic Books (and a Few Other Things) Like most dealers in comic material, I am not a “fun person” to meet, as fans know. In fact, I am so serious about my work that I am afraid I often bore people with my long-winded dissertations on art, writing, and, as has been said, on practically any subject that comes up. I am opinionated and stubborn, but what virtue is there in being so anxious to please that you’re willing to do anything for anybody who comes along? Commercial art is a form of prostitution, as everyone knows. But a good prostitute won’t do everything possible. The ones who do are the ones that appear in worthless dirty movies and are underpaid and sneered at for doing that. If making dirty movies is your “bag,” at least make good ones, I say. Lest I give the impression that I think all comic books except the ones I worked on are rotten, let me say that I think some of them are very good. The ones based on syndicated characters like Archie and Donald Duck are good. Such characters are original and unique and

Great heroes in stories must have great villains to fight, and Captain Marvel had some of the greatest. One of the very first ones he faced was “The World’s Maddest Scientist,” Sivana. Captain Marvel himself was a creation of magic, which science has always opposed. Sivana, a scientist, fought Captain Marvel tooth and nail for years and never won. There would have been nothing amusing in the stories if Captain Marvel had spent all his time beating up scrawny old Sivana, who was three times his age and one-third his size. Our good writers therefore had to create trick after trick for Sivana to pull on Captain Marvel not only to keep from being beaten up but actually to make the reader think that perhaps, just once, the Big Red Cheese would lose the battle. He never did, of course. A second great villain was Mr. Mind, the intelligent worm. He was so small and powerless that he had to get others to fight Captain Marvel for him. Otto Binder wrote all the Mr. Mind stories, which ran as a serial for two years. When Mr. Mind was finally killed off by electrocution in a specially-built worm-size electric chair, everyone felt bad, even Captain Marvel. Other great villains were Ibac, the Seven Deadly Enemies of Man, King Kull, Oggar, and Black Marvel. [Editors Note: Beck is obviously referring to Black Adam. In the preliminary stages, could the infamous Marvel Family #1 villain have been called Black Marvel by writer Otto Binder? Perhaps the name was changed because Timely/Marvel had had a super-hero called Black Marvel in 1941-42? —PCH.] All these villains were creatures of magic as big and powerful as the World’s Mightiest Mortal himself, and all gave him tremendous battles. Our publisher, correctly figuring that the hysteria of the second

C.C. Beck out, tied and gagged, thrown into quicksand or to wild beasts… and he was, over and over again. The “Advisory Board” objected to this as being bad for little children to see. Evidently they had never read “Hansel and Gretel” or any other of the old, really gruesome stories that comics replaced. We paid not the slightest attention to such objections.

World War would make Nazi, Fascist, and Nipponese villains popular, made us introduce not only the villains Captain Nazi and Nippo and other such fantastic creatures as opponents for Captain Marvel but was actually happy when we showed Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito—living people—in our comic pages. This should never have been done. It only made our readers feel confused and let down, and when they could see in their daily papers and hear on the radio that all three of these characters were still going strong in spite of what they had seen happen in our stories, they must have said to themselves, “I think I’m being had!” None of these villains ever seemed to me to be very interesting or even worthy of taking up a reader’s time.

Secondary Characters in Captain Marvel Stories Publishers and the public—the two are closely related—don’t often realize that heroes can’t carry stories all by themselves, even with villains to face. They need assistants and friends and [Art©2003 Estate of C.C. Beck; Billy Batson TM &©2003 DC Comics.] people who are not heroic to make them have a reason for Parker must go all the congratulations. being heroes. Even Robinson Crusoe had his man Friday for contrast. The most contrasting character in the Captain Marvel stories was of course the boy Billy Batson, who turned into the huge, red-suited Captain Marvel when occasion demanded, then turned back into himself again. If Captain Marvel seemed pretty real, Billy was even more real, for he was just a teenage kid with no unusual powers at all. He worked at Station WHIZ, where his boss was kindly old Sterling Morris. His friends were Beautia, Sivana’s beautiful but dumb daughter, his landlords Pa and Ma Potter, Dexter Knox who lived next door, Mr. Tawny the talking tiger who worked in a museum, and Steamboat, Billy’s servant. Steamboat was a “darky” and was actually put into the stories at the suggestion of our publisher to give our little “colored readers” someone to identify with. However, it turned out that at least some of our black readers didn’t like the idea of a black man being a servant and the butt of many jokes and talking in dialect, so when a delegation of blacks walked in to protest one day the publisher quickly killed Steamboat off. (And you thought “Black Power” was something new?) Secondary characters came and went as they were needed by the writers. But Billy Batson was in every story from first to last, in spite of the publisher’s attempts to subdue him or drop him entirely. As the writers and the editors knew, all the stories were about things that happened to Billy, not to Marvel. Marvel was so big and powerful that not much of anything could happen to him, or if it could have it wouldn’t have slowed him down for very long. Billy could be knocked

Bill Parker’s great, original contribution to the comic world was the creation of Billy Batson, no helpless little tad who had to wait for a hero to come along and get him out of the trouble he was always getting into but a lad who could save himself by becoming the World’s Mightiest Mortal when all seemed lost. Bill never received any credit for this, and today few people know that he even existed. According to some articles I have seen, the big shots at Fawcett created Captain Marvel, which Bill and I merely put into pictorial form. I know that I didn’t create Billy Batson and Fawcett never wanted him in the first place, so to Bill

A Final Word The reader must not think that everything I have put into this story about Captain Marvel is absolutely true. I kept no diary or records; I had no old Captain Marvel comic books to refer to until recently when fans gave them to me. I have written purely from memory, which is never guaranteed to give a true account of anything, and by referring to articles and stories about the Golden Age written by others, most of whom were not even born until that age had passed. Even the pictures shown here are not true reproductions of Golden Age panels; I have redrawn them all especially for this publication [Buyer’s Guide]. I have exaggerated a bit here and there, left out certain things, and even added a few touches to put my points across. If I had not, there would have been no meaning to them; everything would have been just a jumble of drawings making no sense at all. If you approve of what I have done, fine! If you don’t approve, fine also! I have never tried to please everybody, just most everybody.

SHAZAM! Now—FLIP US for our Bill Everett & Friends Section!

Edited by ROY THOMAS

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ALTER EGO #4

ALTER EGO #5

ALTER EGO #1

ALTER EGO #2

ALTER EGO #3

STAN LEE gets roasted by SCHWARTZ, CLAREMONT, DAVID, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, and SHOOTER, ORDWAY and THOMAS on INFINITY, INC., IRWIN HASEN interview, unseen H.G. PETER Wonder Woman pages, the original Captain Marvel and Human Torch teamup, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, “Mr. Monster”, plus plenty of rare and unpublished art!

Featuring a never-reprinted SPIRIT story by WILL EISNER, the genesis of the SILVER AGE ATOM (with GARDNER FOX, GIL KANE, and JULIE SCHWARTZ), interviews with LARRY LIEBER and Golden Age great JACK BURNLEY, BOB KANIGHER, a new Fawcett Collectors of America section with MARC SWAYZE, C.C. BECK, and more! GIL KANE and JACK BURNLEY flip-covers!

Unseen ALEX ROSS and JERRY ORDWAY Shazam! art, 1953 interview with OTTO BINDER, the SUPERMAN/CAPTAIN MARVEL LAWSUIT, GIL KANE on The Golden Age of TIMELY COMICS, FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, and SCHAFFENBERGER, rare art by AYERS, BERG, BURNLEY, DITKO, RICO, SCHOMBURG, MARIE SEVERIN and more! ALEX ROSS & BILL EVERETT covers!

(80-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #6

ALTER EGO #7

ALTER EGO #8

Interviews with KUBERT, SHELLY MOLDOFF, and HARRY LAMPERT, BOB KANIGHER, life and times of GARDNER FOX, ROY THOMAS remembers GIL KANE, a history of Flash Comics, MOEBIUS Silver Surfer sketches, MR. MONSTER, FCA section with SWAYZE, BECK, and SCHAFFENBERGER, and lots more! Dual color covers by JOE KUBERT!

Celebrating the JSA, with interviews with MART NODELL, SHELLY MAYER, GEORGE ROUSSOS, BILL BLACK, and GIL KANE, unpublished H.G. PETER Wonder Woman art, GARDNER FOX, an FCA section with MARC SWAYZE, C.C. BECK, WENDELL CROWLEY, and more! Wraparound cover by CARMINE INFANTINO and JERRY ORDWAY!

GENE COLAN interview, 1940s books on comics by STAN LEE and ROBERT KANIGHER, AYERS, SEVERIN, and ROY THOMAS on Sgt. Fury, ROY on All-Star Squadron’s Golden Age roots, FCA section with SWAYZE, BECK, and WILLIAM WOOLFOLK, JOE SIMON interview, a definitive look at MAC RABOY’S work, and more! Covers by COLAN and RABOY!

Companion to ALL-STAR COMPANION book, with a JULIE SCHWARTZ interview, guide to JLA-JSA TEAMUPS, origins of the ALL-STAR SQUADRON, FCA section with MARC SWAYZE, C.C. BECK (on his 1970s DC conflicts), DAVE BERG, BOB ROGERS, more on MAC RABOY from his son, MR. MONSTER, and more! RICH BUCKLER and C.C. BECK covers!

WALLY WOOD biography, DAN ADKINS & BILL PEARSON on Wood, TOR section with 1963 JOE KUBERT interview, ROY THOMAS on creating the ALL-STAR SQUADRON and its 1940s forebears, FCA section with SWAYZE & BECK, MR. MONSTER, JERRY ORDWAY on Shazam!, JERRY DeFUCCIO on the Golden Age, CHIC STONE remembered! ADKINS and KUBERT covers!

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(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #9

ALTER EGO #10

ALTER EGO #11

ALTER EGO #12

ALTER EGO #13

JOHN ROMITA interview by ROY THOMAS (with unseen art), Roy’s PROPOSED DREAM PROJECTS that never got published (with a host of great artists), MR. MONSTER on WAYNE BORING’S life after Superman, The Golden Age of Comic Fandom Panel, FCA section with GEORGE TUSKA, C.C. BECK, MARC SWAYZE, BILL MORRISON, & more! ROMITA and GIORDANO covers!

Who Created the Silver Age Flash? (with KANIGHER, INFANTINO, KUBERT, and SCHWARTZ), DICK AYERS interview (with unseen art), JOHN BROOME remembered, never-seen Golden Age Flash pages, VIN SULLIVAN Magazine Enterprises interview, FCA, interview with FRED GUARDINEER, and MR. MONSTER on WAYNE BORING! INFANTINO and AYERS covers!

Focuses on TIMELY/MARVEL (interviews and features on SYD SHORES, MICKEY SPILLANE, and VINCE FAGO), and MAGAZINE ENTERPRISES (including JOE CERTA, JOHN BELFI, FRANK BOLLE, BOB POWELL, and FRED MEAGHER), MR. MONSTER on JERRY SIEGEL, DON and MAGGIE THOMPSON interview, FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, and DON NEWTON!

DC and QUALITY COMICS focus! Quality’s GILL FOX interview, never-seen ‘40s PAUL REINMAN Green Lantern story, ROY THOMAS talks to LEN WEIN and RICH BUCKLER about ALL-STAR SQUADRON, MR. MONSTER shows what made WALLY WOOD leave MAD, FCA section with BECK & SWAYZE, & ‘65 NEWSWEEK ARTICLE on comics! REINMAN and BILL WARD covers!

1974 panel with JOE SIMON, STAN LEE, FRANK ROBBINS, and ROY THOMAS, ROY and JOHN BUSCEMA on Avengers, 1964 STAN LEE interview, tributes to DON HECK, JOHNNY CRAIG, and GRAY MORROW, Timely alums DAVID GANTZ and DANIEL KEYES, and FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, and MIKE MANLEY! Covers by MURPHY ANDERSON and JOE SIMON!

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #14

ALTER EGO #15

ALTER EGO #16

ALTER EGO #17

ALTER EGO #18

A look at the 1970s JSA revival with CONWAY, LEVITZ, ESTRADA, GIFFEN, MILGROM, and STATON, JERRY ORDWAY on All-Star Squadron, tributes to CRAIG CHASE and DAN DeCARLO, “lost” 1945 issue of All-Star, 1970 interview with LEE ELIAS, MR. MONSTER on GARDNER FOX, FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, & JAY DISBROW! MIKE NASSER & MICHAEL GILBERT covers!

JOHN BUSCEMA ISSUE! BUSCEMA interview (with UNSEEN ART), reminiscences by SAL BUSCEMA, STAN LEE, INFANTINO, KUBERT, ORDWAY, FLO STEINBERG, and HERB TRIMPE, ROY THOMAS on 35 years with BIG JOHN, FCA tribute to KURT SCHAFFENBERGER, plus C.C. BECK and MARC SWAYZE, and MR. MONSTER revisits WALLY WOOD! Two BUSCEMA covers!

MARVEL BULLPEN REUNION (BUSCEMA, COLAN, ROMITA, and SEVERIN), memories of the JOHN BUSCEMA SCHOOL, FCA with ALEX ROSS, C.C. BECK, and MARC SWAYZE, tribute to CHAD GROTHKOPF, MR. MONSTER on EC COMICS with art by KURTZMAN, DAVIS, and WOOD, and more! Covers by ALEX ROSS and MARIE SEVERIN & RAMONA FRADON!

Spotlighting LOU FINE (with an overview of his career, and interviews with family members), interview with MURPHY ANDERSON about Fine, ALEX TOTH on Fine, ARNOLD DRAKE interviewed about DEADMAN and DOOM PATROL, MR. MONSTER on the non-EC work of JACK DAVIS and GEORGE EVANS, FINE and LUIS DOMINGUEZ COVERS, FCA and more!

STAN GOLDBERG interview, secrets of ‘40s Timely, art by KIRBY, DITKO, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, MANEELY, EVERETT, BURGOS, and DeCARLO, spotlight on sci-fi fanzine XERO with the LUPOFFS, OTTO BINDER, DON THOMPSON, ROY THOMAS, BILL SCHELLY, and ROGER EBERT, FCA, and MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD ghosting Flash Gordon! KIRBY and SWAYZE covers!

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #19

ALTER EGO #20

ALTER EGO #21

ALTER EGO #22

ALTER EGO #23

Spotlight on DICK SPRANG (profile and interview) with unseen art, rare Batman art by BOB KANE, CHARLES PARIS, SHELLY MOLDOFF, MAX ALLAN COLLINS, JIM MOONEY, CARMINE INFANTINO, and ALEX TOTH, JERRY ROBINSON interviewed about Tomahawk and 1940s cover artist FRED RAY, FCA, and MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD’s Flash Gordon, Part 2!

Timely/Marvel art by SEKOWSKY, SHORES, EVERETT, and BURGOS, secrets behind THE INVADERS with ROY THOMAS, KIRBY, GIL KANE, & ROBBINS, BOB DESCHAMPS interviewed, 1965 NY Comics Con review, panel with FINGER, BINDER, FOX and WEISINGER, MR. MONSTER, FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, RABOY, SCHAFFENBERGER, and more! MILGROM and SCHELLY covers!

The IGER “SHOP” examined, with art by EISNER, FINE, ANDERSON, CRANDALL, BAKER, MESKIN, CARDY, EVANS, BOB KANE, and TUSKA, “SHEENA” section with art by DAVE STEVENS & FRANK BRUNNER, ROY THOMAS on JSA & All-Star Squadron, MR. MONSTER on GARDNER FOX, UNSEEN 1946 ALL-STAR ART, FCA, and more! DAVE STEVENS and IRWIN HASEN covers!

BILL EVERETT and JOE KUBERT interviewed by NEAL ADAMS and GIL KANE in 1970, Timely art by BURGOS, SHORES, NODELL, and SEKOWSKY, RUDY LAPICK, ROY THOMAS on Sub-Mariner, with art by EVERETT, COLAN, ANDRU, BUSCEMAs, SEVERINs, and more, FCA, MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD at EC, ALEX TOTH, and CAPT. MIDNIGHT! EVERETT & BECK covers!

Unseen art from TWO “LOST” 1940s H.G. PETER WONDER WOMAN STORIES (and analysis of “CHARLES MOULTON” scripts), BOB FUJITANI and JOHN ROSENBERGER, VICTOR GORELICK discusses Archie and The Mighty Crusaders, with art by MORROW, BUCKLER, and REINMAN, FCA, and MR. MONSTER on WALLY WOOD! H.G. PETER and BOB FUJITANI covers!

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #24

ALTER EGO #25

ALTER EGO #26

ALTER EGO #27

ALTER EGO #28

X-MEN interviews with STAN LEE, DAVE COCKRUM, CHRIS CLAREMONT, ARNOLD DRAKE, JIM SHOOTER, ROY THOMAS, and LEN WEIN, MORT MESKIN profiled by his sons and ALEX TOTH, rare art by JERRY ROBINSON, FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, and WILLIAM WOOLFOLK, MR. MONSTER, and BILL SCHELLY on Comics Fandom! MESKIN and COCKRUM covers!

JACK COLE remembered by ALEX TOTH, interview with brother DICK COLE and his PLAYBOY colleagues, CHRIS CLAREMONT on the X-Men (with more never-seen art by DAVE COCKRUM), ROY THOMAS on AllStar Squadron #1 and its ‘40s roots (with art by ORDWAY, BUCKLER, MESKIN and MOLDOFF), FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more! Covers by TOTH and SCHELLY!

JOE SINNOTT interview, IRWIN DONENFELD interview by EVANIER & SCHWARTZ, art by SHUSTER, INFANTINO, ANDERSON, and SWAN, MARK WAID analyzes the first Kryptonite story, JERRY SIEGEL and HARRY DONENFELD, JERRY IGER Shop update, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, and FCA with SWAYZE, BECK, and KEN BALD! Covers by SINNOTT and WAYNE BORING!

VIN SULLIVAN interview about the early DC days with art by SHUSTER, MOLDOFF, FLESSEL, GUARDINEER, and BURNLEY, MR. MONSTER’s “Lost” KIRBY HULK covers, 1948 NEW YORK COMIC CON with STAN LEE, SIMON & KIRBY, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, HARVEY KURTZMAN, and ROY THOMAS, ALEX TOTH, FCA, and more! Covers by JACK BURNLEY and JACK KIRBY!

Spotlight on JOE MANEELY, with a career overview, remembrance by his daughter and tons of art, Timely/Atlas/Marvel art by ROMITA, EVERETT, SEVERIN, SHORES, KIRBY, and DITKO, STAN LEE on Maneely, LEE AMES interview, FCA with SWAYZE, ISIS, and STEVE SKEATES, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Covers by JOE MANEELY and DON NEWTON!

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #29

ALTER EGO #30

ALTER EGO #31

ALTER EGO #32

ALTER EGO #33

FRANK BRUNNER interview, BILL EVERETT’S Venus examined by TRINA ROBBINS, Classics Illustrated “What ifs”, LEE/KIRBY/DITKO Marvel prototypes, JOE MANEELY’s monsters, BILL FRACCIO interview, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, JOHN BENSON on EC, The Heap by ERNIE SCHROEDER, and FCA! Covers by FRANK BRUNNER and PETE VON SHOLLY!

ALEX ROSS on his love for the JLA, BLACKHAWK/JLA artist DICK DILLIN, the super-heroes of 1940s-1980s France (with art by STEVE RUDE, STEVE BISSETTE, LADRÖNN, and NEAL ADAMS), KIM AAMODT & WALTER GEIER on writing for SIMON & KIRBY, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, and FCA! Covers by ALEX ROSS and STEVE RUDE!

DICK AYERS on his 1950s and ‘60s work (with tons of Marvel Bullpen art), HARLAN ELLISON’s Marvel Age work examined (with art by BUCKLER, SAL BUSCEMA, and TRIMPE), STAN LEE’S Marvel Prototypes (with art by KIRBY and DITKO), Christmas cards from comics greats, MR. MONSTER, & FCA with SWAYZE and SCHAFFENBERGER! Covers by DICK AYERS and FRED RAY!

Timely artists ALLEN BELLMAN and SAM BURLOCKOFF interviewed, MART NODELL on his Timely years, rare art by BURGOS, EVERETT, and SHORES, MIKE GOLD on the Silver Age (with art by SIMON & KIRBY, SWAN, INFANTINO, KANE, and more), FCA, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom, and more! Covers by DICK GIORDANO and GIL KANE!

Symposium on MIKE SEKOWSKY by MARK EVANIER, SCOTT SHAW!, et al., with art by ANDERSON, INFANTINO, and others, PAT (MRS. MIKE) SEKOWSKY and inker VALERIE BARCLAY interviewed, FCA, 1950s Captain Marvel parody by ANDRU and ESPOSITO, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY, MR. MONSTER, and more! Covers by FRENZ/SINNOTT and FRENZ/BUSCEMA!

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #34

ALTER EGO #35

ALTER EGO #36

ALTER EGO #37

ALTER EGO #38

Quality Comics interviews with ALEX KOTZKY, AL GRENET, CHUCK CUIDERA, & DICK ARNOLD (son of BUSY ARNOLD), art by COLE, EISNER, FINE, WARD, DILLIN, and KANE, MICHELLE NOLAN on Blackhawk’s jump to DC, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on HARVEY KURTZMAN, & ALEX TOTH on REED CRANDALL! Covers by REED CRANDALL & CHARLES NICHOLAS!

Covers by JOHN ROMITA and AL JAFFEE! LEE, ROMITA, AYERS, HEATH, & THOMAS on the 1953-55 Timely super-hero revival, with rare art by ROMITA, AYERS, BURGOS, HEATH, EVERETT, LAWRENCE, & POWELL, AL JAFFEE on the 1940s Timely Bullpen (and MAD), FCA, ALEX TOTH on comic art, MR. MONSTER on unpublished 1950s covers, and more!

JOE SIMON on SIMON & KIRBY, CARL BURGOS, and LLOYD JACQUET, JOHN BELL on World War II Canadian heroes, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on Canadian origins of MR. MONSTER, tributes to BOB DESCHAMPS, DON LAWRENCE, & GEORGE WOODBRIDGE, FCA, ALEX TOTH, and ELMER WEXLER interview! Covers by SIMON and GILBERT & RONN SUTTON!

WILL MURRAY on the 1940 Superman “KMetal” story & PHILIP WYLIE’s GLADIATOR (with art by SHUSTER, SWAN, ADAMS, and BORING), FCA with BECK, SWAYZE, and DON NEWTON, SY BARRY interview, art by TOTH, MESKIN, INFANTINO, and ANDERSON, and MICHAEL T. GILBERT interviews AL FELDSTEIN on EC and RAY BRADBURY! Covers by C.C. BECK and WAYNE BORING!

JULIE SCHWARTZ TRIBUTE with HARLAN ELLISON, INFANTINO, ANDERSON, TOTH, KUBERT, GIELLA, GIORDANO, CARDY, LEVITZ, STAN LEE, WOLFMAN, EVANIER, & ROY THOMAS, never-seen interviews with Julie, FCA with BECK, SCHAFFENBERGER, NEWTON, COCKRUM, OKSNER, FRADON, SWAYZE, and JACKSON BOSTWICK! Covers by INFANTINO and IRWIN HASEN!

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #39

ALTER EGO #40

ALTER EGO #41

ALTER EGO #42

ALTER EGO #43

Full-issue spotlight on JERRY ROBINSON, with an interview on being BOB KANE’s Batman “ghost”, creating the JOKER and ROBIN, working on VIGILANTE, GREEN HORNET, and ATOMAN, plus never-seen art by Jerry, MESKIN, ROUSSOS, RAY, KIRBY, SPRANG, DITKO, and PARIS! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER on AL FELDSTEIN Part 2, and more! Two JERRY ROBINSON covers!

RUSS HEATH and GIL KANE interviews (with tons of unseen art), the JULIE SCHWARTZ Memorial Service with ELLISON, MOORE, GAIMAN, HASEN, O’NEIL, and LEVITZ, art by INFANTINO, ANDERSON, TOTH, NOVICK, DILLIN, SEKOWSKY, KUBERT, GIELLA, ARAGONÉS, FCA, MR. MONSTER and AL FELDSTEIN Part 3, and more! Covers by GIL KANE & RUSS HEATH!

Halloween issue! BERNIE WRIGHTSON on his 1970s FRANKENSTEIN, DICK BRIEFER’S monster, the campy 1960s Frankie, art by KALUTA, BAILY, MANEELY, PLOOG, KUBERT, BRUNNER, BORING, OKSNER, TUSKA, CRANDALL, and SUTTON, FCA #100, EMILIO SQUEGLIO interview, ALEX TOTH, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more! Covers by WRIGHTSON & MARC SWAYZE!

A celebration of DON HECK, WERNER ROTH, and PAUL REINMAN, rare art by KIRBY, DITKO, and AYERS, Hillman and Ziff-Davis remembered by Heap artist ERNIE SCHROEDER, HERB ROGOFF, and WALTER LITTMAN, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and ALEX TOTH! Covers by FASTNER & LARSON and ERNIE SCHROEDER!

Yuletide art by WOOD, SINNOTT, CARDY, BRUNNER, TOTH, NODELL, and others, interviews with Golden Age artists TOM GILL (Lone Ranger) and MORRIS WEISS, exploring 1960s Mexican comics, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and C.C. BECK, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom, and more! Flip covers by GEORGE TUSKA and DAVE STEVENS!

(108-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #44

ALTER EGO #45

ALTER EGO #46

ALTER EGO #47

ALTER EGO #48

JSA/All-Star Squadron/Infinity Inc. special! Interviews with KUBERT, HASEN, ANDERSON, ORDWAY, BUCKLER, THOMAS, 1940s Atom writer ARTHUR ADLER, art by TOTH, SEKOWSKY, HASEN, MACHLAN, OKSNER, and INFANTINO, FCA, and MR. MONSTER’S “I Like Ike!” cartoons by BOB KANE, INFANTINO, OKSNER, and BIRO! Wraparound ORDWAY cover!

Interviews with Sandman artist CREIG FLESSEL and ‘40s creator BERT CHRISTMAN, MICHAEL CHABON on researching his Pulitzer-winning novel Kavalier & Clay, art by EISNER, KANE, KIRBY, and AYERS, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and C.C. BECK, OTTO BINDER’s “lost” Jon Jarl story, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY on comics fandom, and ALEX TOTH! CREIG FLESSEL cover!

The VERY BEST of the 1960s-70s ALTER EGO! 1969 BILL EVERETT interview, art by BURGOS, GUSTAVSON, SIMON & KIRBY, and others, 1960s gems by DITKO, E. NELSON BRIDWELL, JERRY BAILS, and ROY THOMAS, LOU GLANZMAN interview, tributes to IRV NOVICK and CHRIS REEVE, MR. MONSTER, FCA, TOTH, and more! Cover by EVERETT and MARIE SEVERIN!

Spotlights MATT BAKER, Golden Age cheesecake artist of PHANTOM LADY! Career overview, interviews with BAKER’s half-brother and nephew, art from AL FELDSTEIN, VINCE COLLETTA, ARTHUR PEDDY, JACK KAMEN and others, FCA, BILL SCHELLY talks to comic-book-seller (and fan) BUD PLANT, MR. MONSTER on missing AL WILLIAMSON art, and ALEX TOTH!

WILL EISNER discusses Eisner & Iger’s Shop and BUSY ARNOLD’s ‘40s Quality Comics, art by FINE, CRANDALL, COLE, POWELL, and CARDY, EISNER tributes by STAN LEE, GENE COLAN, & others, interviews with ‘40s Quality artist VERN HENKEL and CHUCK MAZOUJIAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER on EISNER’s Wonder Man, ALEX TOTH, and more with BUD PLANT! EISNER cover!

(100-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #49

ALTER EGO #50

ALTER EGO #51

ALTER EGO #52

ALTER EGO #53

Spotlights CARL BURGOS! Interview with daughter SUE BURGOS, art by BURGOS, BILL EVERETT, MIKE SEKOWSKY, ED ASCHE, and DICK AYERS, unused 1941 Timely cover layouts, the 1957 Atlas Implosion examined, MANNY STALLMAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER and more! New cover by MARK SPARACIO, from an unused 1941 layout by CARL BURGOS!

ROY THOMAS covers his 40-YEAR career in comics (AVENGERS, X-MEN, CONAN, ALL-STAR SQUADRON, INFINITY INC.), with ADAMS, BUSCEMA, COLAN, DITKO, GIL KANE, KIRBY, STAN LEE, ORDWAY, PÉREZ, ROMITA, and many others! Also FCA, & MR. MONSTER on ROY’s letters to GARDNER FOX! Flip-covers by BUSCEMA/ KIRBY/ALCALA and JERRY ORDWAY!

Golden Age Batman artist/BOB KANE ghost LEW SAYRE SCHWARTZ interviewed, Batman art by JERRY ROBINSON, DICK SPRANG, SHELDON MOLDOFF, WIN MORTIMER, JIM MOONEY, and others, the Golden and Silver Ages of AUSTRALIAN SUPER-HEROES, Mad artist DAVE BERG interviewed, FCA, MR. MONSTER on WILL EISNER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

JOE GIELLA on the Silver Age at DC, the Golden Age at Marvel, and JULIE SCHWARTZ, with rare art by INFANTINO, GIL KANE, SEKOWSKY, SWAN, DILLIN, MOLDOFF, GIACOIA, SCHAFFENBERGER, and others, JAY SCOTT PIKE on STAN LEE and CHARLES BIRO, MARTIN THALL interview, ALEX TOTH, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more! GIELLA cover!

GIORDANO and THOMAS on STOKER’S DRACULA, never-seen DICK BRIEFER Frankenstein strip, MIKE ESPOSITO on his work with ROSS ANDRU, art by COLAN, WRIGHTSON, MIGNOLA, BRUNNER, BISSETTE, KALUTA, HEATH, MANEELY, EVERETT, DITKO, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, BILL SCHELLY, ALEX TOTH, and MR. MONSTER! Cover by GIORDANO!

(100-page magazine) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #54

ALTER EGO #55

ALTER EGO #56

ALTER EGO #57

ALTER EGO #58

MIKE ESPOSITO on DC and Marvel, ROBERT KANIGHER on the creation of Metal Men and Sgt. Rock (with comments by JOE KUBERT and BOB HANEY), art by ANDRU, INFANTINO, KIRBY, SEVERIN, WINDSOR-SMITH, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, TRIMPE, GIL KANE, and others, plus FCA, ALEX TOTH, BILL SCHELLY, MR. MONSTER, and more! ESPOSITO cover!

JACK and OTTO BINDER, KEN BALD, VIC DOWD, and BOB BOYAJIAN interviewed, FCA with SWAYZE and EMILIO SQUEGLIO, rare art by BECK, WARD, & SCHAFFENBERGER, Christmas Cards from CRANDALL, SINNOTT, HEATH, MOONEY, and CARDY, 1943 Pin-Up Calendar (with ‘40s movie stars as superheroines), ALEX TOTH, more! ALEX ROSS and ALEX WRIGHT covers!

Interviews with Superman creators SIEGEL & SHUSTER, Golden/Silver Age DC production guru JACK ADLER interviewed, NEAL ADAMS and radio/TV iconoclast (and comics fan) HOWARD STERN on Adler and his amazing career, art by CURT SWAN, WAYNE BORING, and AL PLASTINO, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, and more! NEAL ADAMS cover!

Issue-by-issue index of Timely/Atlas superhero stories by MICHELLE NOLAN, art by SIMON & KIRBY, EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, AYERS, HEATH, SEKOWSKY, SHORES, SCHOMBURG, MANEELY, and SEVERIN, GENE COLAN and ALLEN BELLMAN on 1940s Timely super-heroes, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and BILL SCHELLY! Cover by JACK KIRBY and PETE VON SHOLLY!

GERRY CONWAY and ROY THOMAS on their ‘80s screenplay for “The X-Men Movie That Never Was!”with art by COCKRUM, ADAMS, BUSCEMA, BYRNE, GIL KANE, KIRBY, HECK, and LIEBER, Atlas artist VIC CARRABOTTA interview, ALLEN BELLMAN on 1940s Timely bullpen, FCA, 1966 panel on 1950s EC Comics, and MR. MONSTER! MARK SPARACIO/GIL KANE cover!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #59

ALTER EGO #60

ALTER EGO #61

ALTER EGO #62

ALTER EGO #63

Special issue on Batman and Superman in the Golden and Silver Ages, featuring a new ARTHUR SUYDAM interview, NEAL ADAMS on DC in the 1960s-1970s, SHELLY MOLDOFF, AL PLASTINO, Golden Age artist FRAN (Doll Man) MATERA interviewed, SIEGEL & SHUSTER, RUSS MANNING, FCA, MR. MONSTER, SUYDAM cover, and more!

Celebrates 50 years since SHOWCASE #4! FLASH interviews with SCHWARTZ, KANIGHER, INFANTINO, KUBERT, and BROOME, Golden Age artist TONY DiPRETA, 1966 panel with NORDLING, BINDER, and LARRY IVIE, FCA, MR. MONSTER, never-before-published color Flash cover by CARMINE INFANTINO, and more!

History of the AMERICAN COMICS GROUP (1946 to 1967)—including its roots in the Golden Age SANGOR ART SHOP and STANDARD/NEDOR comics! Art by MESKIN, ROBINSON, WILLIAMSON, FRAZETTA, SCHAFFENBERGER, & BUSCEMA, ACG writer/editor RICHARD HUGHES, plus AL HARTLEY interviewed, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more! GIORDANO cover!

HAPPY HAUNTED HALLOWEEN ISSUE, featuring: MIKE PLOOG and RUDY PALAIS on their horror-comics work! AL WILLIAMSON on his work for the American Comics Group—plus more on ACG horror comics! Rare DICK BRIEFER Frankenstein strips! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY on the 1966 KalerCon, a new PLOOG cover—and more!

Tribute to ALEX TOTH! Never-before-seen interview with tons of TOTH art, including sketches he sent to friends! Articles about Toth by TERRY AUSTIN, JIM AMASH, SY BARRY, JOE KUBERT, LOU SAYRE SCHWARTZ, IRWIN HASEN, JOHN WORKMAN, and others! Plus illustrated Christmas cards by comics pros, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #64

ALTER EGO #65

ALTER EGO #66

ALTER EGO #67

ALTER EGO #68

Fawcett Favorites! Issue-by-issue analysis of BINDER & BECK’s 1943-45 “The Monster Society of Evil!” serial, double-size FCA section with MARC SWAYZE, EMILIO SQUEGLIO, C.C. BECK, MAC RABOY, and others! Interview with MARTIN FILCHOCK, Golden Age artist for Centaur Comics! Plus MR. MONSTER, DON NEWTON cover, plus a FREE 1943 MARVEL CALENDAR!

NICK CARDY interviewed on his Golden & Silver Age work (with CARDY art), plus art by WILL EISNER, NEAL ADAMS, CARMINE INFANTINO, JIM APARO, RAMONA FRADON, CURT SWAN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, and others, tributes to ERNIE SCHROEDER and DAVE COCKRUM, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, new CARDY COVER, and more!

Spotlight on BOB POWELL, the artist who drew Daredevil, Sub-Mariner, Sheena, The Avenger, The Hulk, Giant-Man, and others, plus art by WALLY WOOD, HOWARD NOSTRAND, DICK AYERS, SIMON & KIRBY, MARTIN GOODMAN’s Magazine Management, and others! FCA with MARC SWAYZE and C.C. BECK, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, and more!

Interview with BOB OKSNER, artist of Supergirl, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Angel and the Ape, Leave It to Binky, Shazam!, and more, plus art and artifacts by SHELLY MAYER, IRWIN HASEN, LEE ELIAS, C.C. BECK, CARMINE INFANTINO, GIL KANE, JULIE SCHWARTZ, etc., FCA with MARC SWAYZE & C.C. BECK, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on BOB POWELL Part II, and more!

Tribute to JERRY BAILS—Father of Comics Fandom and founder of Alter Ego! Cover by GEORGE PÉREZ, plus art by JOE KUBERT, CARMINE INFANTINO, GIL KANE, DICK DILLIN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, JERRY ORDWAY, JOE STATON, JACK KIRBY, and others! Plus STEVE DITKO’s notes to STAN LEE for a 1965 Dr. Strange story! And ROY reveals secrets behind Marvel’s STAR WARS comic!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #69

ALTER EGO #70

ALTER EGO #71

ALTER EGO #72

ALTER EGO #73

PAUL NORRIS drew AQUAMAN first, in 1941—and RAMONA FRADON was the hero’s ultimate Golden Age artist. But both drew other things as well, and both are interviewed in this landmark issue—along with a pocket history of Aquaman! Plus FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, and more! Cover painted by JOHN WATSON, from a breathtaking illo by RAMONA FRADON!

Spotlight on ROY THOMAS’ 1970s stint as Marvel’s editor-in-chief and major writer, plus art and reminiscences of GIL KANE, BOTH BUSCEMAS, ADAMS, ROMITA, CHAYKIN, BRUNNER, PLOOG, EVERETT, WRIGHTSON, PÉREZ, ROBBINS, BARRY SMITH, STAN LEE and others, FCA, MR. MONSTER, a new GENE COLAN cover, plus an homage to artist LILY RENÉE!

Represents THE GREAT CANADIAN COMIC BOOKS, the long out-of-print 1970s book by MICHAEL HIRSH and PATRICK LOUBERT, with rare art of such heroes as Mr. Monster, Nelvana, Thunderfist, and others, plus new INVADERS art by JOHN BYRNE, MIKE GRELL, RON LIM, and more, plus a new cover by GEORGE FREEMAN, from a layout by JACK KIRBY!

SCOTT SHAW! and ROY THOMAS on the creation of Captain Carrot, art & artifacts by RICK HOBERG, STAN GOLDBERG, MIKE SEKOWSKY, JOHN COSTANZA, E. NELSON BRIDWELL, CAROL LAY, and others, interview with DICK ROCKWELL, Golden Age artist and 36-year ghost artist on MILTON CANIFF’s Steve Canyon! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

FRANK BRUNNER on drawing Dr. Strange, interviews with CHARLES BIRO and his daughters, interview with publisher ROBERT GERSON about his 1970s horror comic Reality, art by BERNIE WRIGHTSON, GRAHAM INGELS, HOWARD CHAYKIN, MICHAEL W. KALUTA, JEFF JONES, and others FCA, MR. MONSTER, a FREE DRAW! #15! PREVIEW, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #74

ALTER EGO #75

ALTER EGO #76

ALTER EGO #77

ALTER EGO #78

STAN LEE SPECIAL in honor of his 85th birthday, with a cover by JACK KIRBY, classic (and virtually unseen) interviews with Stan, tributes, and tons of rare and unseen art by KIRBY, ROMITA, the brothers BUSCEMA, DITKO, COLAN, HECK, AYERS, MANEELY, SHORES, EVERETT, BURGOS, KANE, the SEVERIN siblings—plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

FAWCETT FESTIVAL—with an ALEX ROSS cover! Double-size FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with P.C. HAMERLINCK on the many “Captains Marvel” over the years, unseen Shazam! proposal by ALEX ROSS, C.C. BECK on “The Death of a Legend!”, MARC SWAYZE, interview with Golden Age artist MARV LEVY, MR. MONSTER, and more!

JOE SIMON SPECIAL! In-depth SIMON interview by JIM AMASH, with neverbefore-revealed secrets behind the creation of Captain America, Fighting American, Stuntman, Adventures of The Fly, Sick magazine and more, art by JACK KIRBY, BOB POWELL, AL WILLIAMSON, JERRY GRANDENETTI, GEORGE TUSKA, and others, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

ST. JOHN ISSUE! Golden Age Tor cover by JOE KUBERT, KEN QUATTRO relates the full legend of St. John Publishing, art by KUBERT, NORMAN MAURER, MATT BAKER, LILY RENEE, BOB LUBBERS, RUBEN MOREIRA, RALPH MAYO, AL FAGO, special reminiscences of ARNOLD DRAKE, Golden Age artist TOM SAWYER interviewed, and more!

DAVE COCKRUM TRIBUTE! Great rare XMen cover, Cockrum tributes from contemporaries and colleagues, and an interview with PATY COCKRUM on Dave’s life and legacy on The Legion of Super-Heroes, The X-Men, Star-Jammers, & more! Plus an interview with 1950s Timely/Marvel artist MARION SITTON on his own incredible career and his Golden Age contemporaries!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #79

ALTER EGO #80

ALTER EGO #81

ALTER EGO #82

ALTER EGO #83

SUPERMAN & HIS CREATORS! New cover by MICHAEL GOLDEN, exclusive and revealing interview with JOE SHUSTER’s sister, JEAN SHUSTER PEAVEY—LOU CAMERON interview—STEVE GERBER tribute—DWIGHT DECKER on the Man of Steel & Hitler’s Third Reich—plus art by WAYNE BORING, CURT SWAN, NEAL ADAMS, GIL KANE, and others!

SWORD-AND-SORCERY COMICS! Learn about Crom the Barbarian, Viking Prince, Nightmaster, Kull, Red Sonja, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, Beowulf, Warlord, Dagar the Invincible, and more, with art by FRAZETTA, SMITH, BUSCEMA, KANE, WRIGHTSON, PLOOG, THORNE, BRUNNER, LOU CAMERON Part II, and more! Cover by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

New FRANK BRUNNER Man-Thing cover, a look at the late-’60s horror comic WEB OF HORROR with early work by BRUNNER, WRIGHTSON, WINDSOR-SMITH, SIMONSON, & CHAYKIN, interview with comics & fine artist EVERETT RAYMOND KINTSLER, ROY THOMAS’ 1971 origin synopsis for the FIRST MAN-THING STORY, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

MLJ ISSUE! Golden Age MLJ index illustrated with vintage images of The Shield, Hangman, Mr. Justice, Black Hood, by IRV NOVICK, JACK COLE, CHARLES BIRO, MORT MESKIN, GIL KANE, & others—behind a marvelous MLJ-heroes cover by BOB McLEOD! Plus interviews with IRV NOVICK and JOE EDWARDS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

SWORD & SORCERY PART 2! Cover by ARTHUR SUYDAM, with a focus on Conan the Barbarian by ROY THOMAS and WILL MURRAY, a look at WALLY WOOD’s Marvel sword-&-sorcery work, the Black Knight examined, plus JOE EDWARDS interview Part 2, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #84

ALTER EGO #85

ALTER EGO #86

ALTER EGO #87

ALTER EGO #88

Unseen JIM APARO cover, STEVE SKEATES discusses his early comics work, art & artifacts by ADKINS, APARO, ARAGONÉS, BOYETTE, DITKO, GIORDANO, KANE, KELLER, MORISI, ORLANDO, SEKOWSKY, STONE, THOMAS, WOOD, and the great WARREN SAVIN! Plus writer CHARLES SINCLAIR on his partnership with Batman co-creator BILL FINGER, FCA, and more!

Captain Marvel and Superman’s battles explored (in cosmic space, candy stores, and in court), RICH BUCKLER on Captain Marvel, plus an in-depth interview with Golden Age great LILY RENÉE, overview of CENTAUR COMICS (home of BILL EVERETT’s Amazing-Man and others), FCA, MR. MONSTER, new RICH BUCKLER cover, and more!

Spotlighting the Frantic Four-Color MAD WANNABES of 1953-55 that copied HARVEY KURTZMAN’S EC smash (see Captain Marble, Mighty Moose, Drag-ula, Prince Scallion, and more) with art by SIMON & KIRBY, KUBERT & MAURER, ANDRU & ESPOSITO, EVERETT, COLAN, and many others, plus Part 1 of a talk with Golden/ Silver Age artist FRANK BOLLE, and more!

The sensational 1954-1963 saga of Great Britain’s MARVELMAN (decades before he metamorphosed into Miracleman), plus an interview with writer/artist/co-creator MICK ANGLO, and rare Marvelman/ Miracleman work by ALAN DAVIS, ALAN MOORE, a new RICK VEITCH cover, plus FRANK BOLLE, Part 2, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

First-ever in-depth look at National/DC’s founder MAJOR MALCOLM WHEELERNICHOLSON, and pioneers WHITNEY ELLSWORTH and CREIG FLESSEL, with rare art and artifacts by SIEGEL & SHUSTER, BOB KANE, CURT SWAN, GARDNER FOX, SHELDON MOLDOFF, and others, focus on DC advisor DR. LAURETTA BENDER, FCA, MR. MONSTER, and more!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #89

ALTER EGO #90

ALTER EGO #91

ALTER EGO #92

ALTER EGO #93

HARVEY COMICS’ PRE-CODE HORROR MAGS OF THE 1950s! Interviews with SID JACOBSON, WARREN KREMER, and HOWARD NOSTRAND, plus Harvey artist KEN SELIG talks to JIM AMASH! MR. MONSTER presents the wit and wisdom (and worse) of DR. FREDRIC WERTHAM, plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) with C.C. BECK & MARC SWAYZE, & more! SIMON & KIRBY and NOSTRAND cover!

BIG MARVEL ISSUE! Salutes to legends SINNOTT and AYERS—plus STAN LEE, TUSKA, EVERETT, MARTIN GOODMAN, and others! A look at the “Marvel SuperHeroes” TV animation of 1966! 1940s Timely writer and editor LEON LAZARUS interviewed by JIM AMASH! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, the 1960s fandom creations of STEVE GERBER, and more! JACK KIRBY holiday cover!

FAWCETT FESTIVAL! Big FCA section with Golden Age artists MARC SWAYZE & EMILIO SQUEGLIO! Plus JERRY ORDWAY on researching The Power of Shazam, Part II of “The MAD Four-Color Wannabes of the 1950s,” more on DR. LAURETTA BENDER and the teenage creations of STEVE GERBER, artist JACK KATZ spills Golden Age secrets to JIM AMASH, and more! New cover by ORDWAY and SQUEGLIO!

SWORD-AND-SORCERY, PART 3! DC’s Sword of Sorcery by O’NEIL, CHAYKIN, & SIMONSON and Claw by MICHELINIE & CHAN, Hercules by GLANZMAN, Dagar by GLUT & SANTOS, Marvel S&S art by BUSCEMA, CHAN, KAYANAN, WRIGHTSON, et al., and JACK KATZ on his classic First Kingdom! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER’s fan-creations (part 3), and more! Cover by RAFAEL KAYANAN!

(NOW WITH 16 COLOR PAGES!) “EarthTwo—1961 to 1985!” with rare art by INFANTINO, GIL KANE, ANDERSON, DELBO, ANDRU, BUCKLER, APARO, GRANDENETTI, and DILLIN, interview with Golden/Silver Age DC editor GEORGE KASHDAN, plus MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, STEVE GERBER, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and a new cover by INFANTINO and AMASH!

(100-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #94

ALTER EGO #95

ALTER EGO #96

ALTER EGO #97

ALTER EGO #98

“Earth-Two Companion, Part II!” More on the 1963-1985 series that changed comics forever! The Huntress, Power Girl, Dr. Fate, Freedom Fighters, and more, with art by ADAMS, APARO, AYERS, BUCKLER, GIFFEN, INFANTINO, KANE, NOVICK, SCHAFFENBERGER, SIMONSON, STATON, SWAN, TUSKA, our GEORGE KASHDAN interview Part 2, FCA, and more! STATON & GIORDANO cover!

Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECHH madcap parody mag from 1967-69, examined with rare art & artifacts by ANDRU, COLAN, BUSCEMA, DRAKE, EVERETT, FRIEDRICH, KIRBY, LEE, the SEVERIN siblings, SPRINGER, SUTTON, THOMAS, TRIMPE, and more, GEORGE KASHDAN interview conclusion, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER, and more! Cover by MARIE SEVERIN!

Focus on Archie’s 1960s MIGHTY CRUSADERS, with vintage art and artifacts by JERRY SIEGEL, PAUL REINMAN, SIMON & KIRBY, JOHN ROSENBERGER, tributes to the Mighty Crusaders by BOB FUJITANE, GEORGE TUSKA, BOB LAYTON, and others! Interview with MELL LAZARUS, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more! Cover by MIKE MACHLAN!

The NON-EC HORROR COMICS OF THE 1950s! From Menace and House of Mystery to The Thing!, we present vintage art and artifacts by EVERETT, BRIEFER, DITKO, MANEELY, COLAN , MESKIN, MOLDOFF, HEATH, POWELL, COLE, SIMON & KIRBY, FUJITANI, and others, plus FCA , MR. MONSTER and more, behind a creepy, eerie cover by BILL EVERETT!

Spotlight on Superman’s first editor WHITNEY ELLSWORTH, longtime Kryptoeditor MORT WEISINGER remembered by his daughter, an interview with Superman writer ALVIN SCHWARTZ, tributes to FRANK FRAZETTA and AL WILLIAMSON, art by JOE SHUSTER, WAYNE BORING, CURT SWAN, and NEAL ADAMS, plus MR. MONSTER, FCA, and a new cover by JERRY ORDWAY!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO: CENTENNIAL (AE #100)

ALTER EGO #99

GEORGE TUSKA showcase issue on his career at Lev Gleason, Marvel, and in comics strips through the early 1970s—CRIME DOES NOT PAY, BUCK ROGERS, IRON MAN, AVENGERS, HERO FOR HIRE, & more! Plus interviews with Golden Age artist BILL BOSSERT and fan-artist RUDY FRANKE, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), and more! (84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO: CENTENNIAL is a celebration of 100 issues, and 50 years, of ALTER EGO, Roy Thomas’ legendary super-hero fanzine. It’s a double-size triple-threat BOOK, with twice as many pages as the regular magazine, plus special features just for this anniversary edition! Behind a RICH BUCKLER/JERRY ORDWAY JSA cover, ALTER EGO celebrates its 100th issue and the 50th anniversary of A/E (Vol. 1) #1 in 1961—as ROY THOMAS is interviewed by JIM AMASH about the 1980s at DC! Learn secrets behind ALL-STAR SQUADRON—INFINITY, INC.—ARAK, SON OF THUNDER—CAPTAIN CARROT—JONNI THUNDER, a.k.a. THUNDERBOLT— YOUNG ALL-STARS—SHAZAM!—RING OF THE NIBELUNG—and more! With rare art and artifacts by GEORGE PÉREZ, TODD McFARLANE, RICH BUCKLER, JERRY ORDWAY, MIKE MACHLAN, GIL KANE, GENE COLAN, DICK GIORDANO, ALFREDO ALCALA, TONY DEZUNIGA, ERNIE COLÓN, STAN GOLDBERG, SCOTT SHAW!, ROSS ANDRU, and many more! Plus special anniversary editions of Alter Ego staples MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA (FCA)—and ALEX WRIGHT’s amazing color collection of 1940s DC pinup babes! Edited by ROY THOMAS. (NOTE: This book takes the place of ALTER EGO #100, and counts as TWO issues toward your subscription.) (160-page trade paperback with COLOR) $19.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 • ISBN: 9781605490311 Diamond Order Code: JAN111351

ALTER EGO #101

Fox Comics of the 1940s with art by FINE, BAKER, SIMON, KIRBY, TUSKA, FLETCHER HANKS, ALEX BLUM, and others! “Superman vs. Wonder Man” starring EISNER, IGER, SIEGEL, LIEBERSON, MAYER, DONENFELD, and VICTOR FOX! Plus, Part I of an interview with JACK MENDELSOHN, plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and new cover by Marvel artist DAVE WILLIAMS!

NEW!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

ALTER EGO #102

ALTER EGO #103

ALTER EGO #104

ALTER EGO: THE CBA COLLECTION

Spotlight on Green Lantern creators MART NODELL and BILL FINGER in the 1940s, and JOHN BROOME, GIL KANE, and JULIUS SCHWARTZ in 1959! Rare GL artwork by INFANTINO, REINMAN, HASEN, NEAL ADAMS, and others! Plus JACK MENDELSOHN Part II, FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and new cover by GIL KANE & TERRY AUSTIN, and MART NODELL!

The early career of comics writer STEVE ENGLEHART: Defenders, Captain America, Master of Kung Fu, The Beast, Mantis, and more, with rare art and artifacts by SAL BUSCEMA, STARLIN, SUTTON, HECK, BROWN, and others. Plus, JIM AMASH interviews early artist GEORGE MANDEL (Captain Midnight, The Woman in Red, Blue Bolt, Black Marvel, etc.), FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and more!

Celebrates the 50th anniversary of FANTASTIC FOUR #1 and the birth of Marvel Comics! New, never-before-published STAN LEE interview, art and artifacts by KIRBY, DITKO, SINNOTT, AYERS, THOMAS, and secrets behind the Marvel Mythos! Also: JIM AMASH interviews 1940s Timely editor AL SULMAN, FCA, MR. MONSTER’S COMIC CRYPT, and a new cover by FRENZ and SINNOTT!

Compiles the ALTER EGO flip-sides from COMIC BOOK ARTIST #1-5, plus 30 NEW PAGES of features & art! All-new rare and previously-unpublished art by JACK KIRBY, GIL KANE, JOE KUBERT, WALLY WOOD, FRANK ROBBINS, NEAL ADAMS, & others, ROY THOMAS on X-MEN, AVENGERS/ KREE-SKRULL WAR, INVADERS, and more! Cover by JOE KUBERT!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $2.95

(160-page trade paperback) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $4.95

HUMOR MAGAZINES (BUNDLE ALL THREE FOR JUST $14.95)

ALTER EGO:

BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE

Collects the original 11 issues of JERRY BAILS and ROY THOMAS’ ALTER EGO fanzine (from 1961-78), with contributions from JACK KIRBY, STEVE DITKO, WALLY WOOD, JOHN BUSCEMA, MARIE SEVERIN, BILL EVERETT, RUSS MANNING, CURT SWAN, and others—and illustrated interviews with GIL KANE, BILL EVERETT, & JOE KUBERT! Plus major articles on the JUSTICE SOCIETY, the MARVEL FAMILY, the MLJ HEROES, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS and BILL SCHELLY with an introduction by JULIE SCHWARTZ. (192-page trade paperback) $21.95 ISBN: 9781893905887 Diamond Order Code: DEC073946

COMIC BOOK NERD

PETE VON SHOLLY’s side-splitting parody of the fan press, including our own mags! Experience the magic(?) of such publications as WHIZZER, the COMICS URINAL, ULTRA EGO, COMICS BUYER’S GUISE, BAGGED ISSUE!, SCRAWL!, COMIC BOOK ARTISTE, and more, as we unabashedly poke fun at ourselves, our competitors, and you, our loyal readers! It’s a first issue, collector’s item, double-bag, slab-worthy, speculator’s special sure to rub even the thickest-skinned fanboy the wrong way! (64-page COLOR magazine) $8.95 • (Digital Edition) $2.95

CRAZY HIP GROOVY GO-GO WAY OUT MONSTERS #29 & #32

PETE VON SHOLLY’s spoofs of monster mags will have you laughing your pants off— right after you soil them from sheer terror! This RETRO MONSTER MOVIE MAGAZINE is a laugh riot lampoon of those GREAT (and absolutely abominable) mags of the 1950s and ‘60s, replete with fake letters-to-the-editor, phony ads for worthless, wacky stuff, stills from imaginary films as bad as any that were really made, interviews with their “creators,” and much more! Relive your misspent youth (and misspent allowance) as you dig the hilarious photos, ads, and articles skewering OUR FAVORITE THINGS of the past! Get our first issue (#29!), the sequel (#32!), or both!

DIEDGITIIOTANSL E

BL AVAILA

(48-page magazines) $5.95 EACH • (Digital Editions) $1.95 EACH

These sold-out books are now available again in DIGITAL EDITIONS:

NEW!

MR. MONSTER, VOL. 0

TRUE BRIT

DICK GIORDANO: CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME

Collects hard-to-find Mr. Monster stories from A-1, CRACK-A-BOOM! and DARK HORSE PRESENTS (many in COLOR for the first time) plus over 30 pages of ALLNEW MR. MONSTER art and stories! Can your sanity survive our Lee/Kirby monster spoof by MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MARK MARTIN, or the long-lost 1933 Mr. Monster newspaper strip? Or the terrifying TRENCHER/MR. MONSTER slug-fest, drawn by KEITH GIFFEN and MICHAEL T. GILBERT?! Read at your own risk!

GEORGE KHOURY’s definitive book on the rich history of British Comics Artists, their influence on the US, and how they have revolutionized the way comics are seen and perceived! It features breathtaking art, intimate photographs, and in-depth interviews with BRIAN BOLLAND, ALAN DAVIS, DAVE GIBBONS, KEVIN O’NEILL, DAVID LLOYD, DAVE McKEAN, BRYAN HITCH, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH and other fine gents! Sporting a new JUDGE DREDD cover by BRIAN BOLLAND!

MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ most prominent and affable personality! It covers his career as illustrator, inker, and editor—peppered with DICK’S PERSONAL REFLECTIONS—and is illustrated with RARE AND UNSEEN comics, merchandising, and advertising art! Plus: an extensive index of his published work, comments and tributes by NEAL ADAMS, DENNIS O’NEIL, TERRY AUSTIN, PAUL LEVITZ, MARV WOLFMAN, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, JIM APARO and others, a Foreword by NEAL ADAMS, and an Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ!

(136-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $4.95

(204-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $6.95

(176-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $5.95

SECRETS IN THE SHADOWS: GENE COLAN

TOM FIELD’s amazing COLAN retrospective, with rare drawings, photos, and art from his 60-year career, and a comprehensive overview of Gene’s glory days at Marvel Comics! MARV WOLFMAN, DON McGREGOR and other writers share script samples and anecdotes of their Colan collaborations, while TOM PALMER, STEVE LEIALOHA and others show how they approached inking Colan’s famously nuanced penciled pages! Plus: a NEW PORTFOLIO of never-seen collaborations between Gene and masters such as BYRNE, KALUTA and PÉREZ, and all-new artwork created just for this book! (192-page Digital Edition with COLOR) $6.95

ART OF GEORGE TUSKA

A comprehensive look at GEORGE TUSKA’S personal and professional life, including early work at the Eisner-Iger shop, producing controversial crime comics of the 1950s, and his tenure with Marvel and DC Comics, as well as independent publishers. Includes extensive coverage of his work on IRON MAN, X-MEN, HULK, JUSTICE LEAGUE, TEEN TITANS, BATMAN, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS, and others, a gallery of commission art and a thorough index of his work, original art, photos, sketches, unpublished art, interviews and anecdotes from his peers and fans, plus the very personal and reflective words of George himself! Written by DEWEY CASSELL. (128-page Digital Edition) $4.95

OTHER BOOKS FROM TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING

PENCILER, PUBLISHER, PROVOCATEUR

COMICS’ FAST & FURIOUS ARTIST

THE ART OF GLAMOUR

MATT BAKER

EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE

Shines a light on the life and career of the artistic and publishing visionary of DC Comics!

Explores the life and career of one of Marvel Comics’ most recognizable and dependable artists!

Biography of the talented master of 1940s “Good Girl” art, complete with color story reprints!

Definitive biography of the Watchmen writer, in a new, expanded edition!

(224-page trade paperback) $26.95

(176-page trade paperback with COLOR) $26.95

(192-page hardcover with COLOR) $39.95

(240-page trade paperback) $29.95

QUALITY COMPANION

BATCAVE COMPANION

ALL- STAR COMPANION

AGE OF TV HEROES

The first dedicated book about the Golden Age publisher that spawned the modern-day “Freedom Fighters”, Plastic Man, and the Blackhawks!

Unlocks the secrets of Batman’s Silver and Bronze Ages, following the Dark Knight’s progression from 1960s camp to 1970s creature of the night!

Roy Thomas has four volumes documenting the history of ALL-STAR COMICS, the JUSTICE SOCIETY, INFINITY, INC., and more!

(256-page trade paperback with COLOR) $31.95

(240-page trade paperback) $26.95

(224-page trade paperbacks) $24.95

Examining the history of the live-action television adventures of everyone’s favorite comic book heroes, featuring the in-depth stories of the shows’ actors and behind-the-scenes players!

CARMINE INFANTINO

SAL BUSCEMA

(192-page full-color hardcover) $39.95

MARVEL COMICS

An issue-by-issue field guide to the pop culture phenomenon of LEE, KIRBY, DITKO, and others, from the company’s fumbling beginnings to the full maturity of its wild, colorful, offbeat grandiosity!

IN THE 1960s

(224-page trade paperback) $27.95

MODERN MASTERS

HOW TO CREATE COMICS

Covers how Stan Lee went from writer to publisher, Jack Kirby left (and returned), Roy Thomas rose as editor, and a new wave of writers and artists came in!

20+ volumes with in-depth interviews, plus extensive galleries of rare and unseen art from the artist’s files!

(224-page trade paperback) $27.95

Shows step-by-step how to develop a new comic, from script and art, to printing and distribution!

(128-page trade paperbacks) $14.95 each

(108-page trade paperback) $15.95

IN THE 1970s

A BOOK SERIES DEVOTED TO THE BEST OF TODAY’S ARTISTS

FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

FOR A FREE COLOR CATALOG, CALL, WRITE, E-MAIL, OR LOG ONTO www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows—A New Day For Comics Fandom! TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com