Alter Ego #71 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Roy Thomas’ Canuck Comics Fanzine

RECOGNIZE THESE GUYS? MOST OF ’EM ARE IN—

THE GREAT CANADIAN COMIC BOOKS!

6.95

In the USA

No. 71 August 2007

82658 27763

PLUS:

Vol. 3, No. 71 / August 2007 Editor Roy Thomas

Associate Editors Bill Schelly Jim Amash

Design & Layout Christopher Day

Consulting Editor John Morrow

FCA Editor P.C. Hamerlinck

Comic Crypt Editor Michael T. Gilbert

Editorial Honor Roll Jerry G. Bails (founder) Ronn Foss, Biljo White

Editor Emeritus Mike Friedrich

Production Assistant Chris Irving

Circulation Director Bob Brodsky, Cookiesoup Periodical Distribution, LLC

Cover Artist George Freeman, from a layout by Jack Kirby

Cover Colorist

Writer/Editorial: Of (49th) Parallel Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Great Canadian Comic Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Lavishly illustrated! The full text of the 1971 classic work by Michael Hirsch & Patrick Loubert.

Tom Ziuko

With Special Thanks to: Heidi Amash Bob Bailey Dave Baker David M. Beck Rod Beck John Bell Bill Black John Byrne Nick Caputo Vic Carrabotta Ernie Chan Richard Comely Gerry Conway Corus Entertainment Michaël Dewally Michael Finn Shane Foley George Freeman Benito Gallego Janet Gilbert Daryl Gold Steven Grant Mike Grell George Hagenauer David Hajdu Jennifer Hamerlinck Fred Hembeck Michael Hirsh Chris Ivy Jack Kirby Estate Henry Kujawa Alan Kupperberg Richard Kyle

Contents

Jerry Lazare Steve Leialoha Mark Lewis Ron Lim Stephen Lipson Patrick Loubert Nelvana Limited Michael E. Manny Bruce Mason Steven E. McDonald Josh Medors Raymond Miller Brian K. Morris Mark Muller Joe Petrilak Robert Pincombe Francis A. Rodriguez Leo Sa Al Schutzer Dave Sim Clive Smith Ronn Sutton Marc Swayze Jeff Taylor Dann Thomas Harold Town Michael Uslan Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Alan Walker Jim Warden Hames Ware Steve Whitaker Randy Witten

This issue is respectfully dedicated to the memory of

Arnold Drake

“The Last Remaining Guy On The Ship” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Golden Ager Al Schutzer talks to Jim Amash about writing Superman, Blue Beetle, et al.

“One Minute Later!” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Michael Finn’s offbeat approach to art commissions—and to The Invaders!

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt! Kooky Krossovers! (Part I) . . . 63 Michael T. Gilbert on crazy intra-company crossovers of the Golden Age.

In Memoriam: Arnold Drake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 re: [comments, correspondence, & corrections] . . . . . . . . . 73 FCA (Fawcett Collectors Of America) #130 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 Marc Swayze, C.C. Beck, Raymond Miller, and P.C. Hamerlinck in a fantasy phantasmagoria. On Our Cover: To accompany our colossal “Canadian content” this issue, we were determined to find exactly the right artist to transform Jack Kirby’s cover layout for What If? #9 (June 1978)—done for the issue that introduced the 1950s “proto-Avengers” assemblage which has reappeared a time or two of late in Marvel comics—into a grouping of Canadian heroes, both “Golden Age” and modern. And who better to do it, suggested publisher John Morrow, than the talented north-of-the-border artist George Freeman, who has drawn not only Captain Canuck but also the likes of Elric, Secret Origins (Golden Age Green Lantern), Avengers West Coast, et al.? Nobody, that’s who! [Captain Canuck TM & ©2007 Comely Comix; Vindicator & Wolverine TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Mr. Monster TM & ©2007 Michael T. Gilbert; Nelvana, Thunderfist, The Dreamer, & The Penguin TM & ©2007 Nelvana Limited. All rights reserved.] Above: A vintage drawing of Nelvana of the Northern Lights and her faithful hound–slash–brother Tanero, by Adrian Dingle. [©2007 Nelvana Limited. All rights reserved.] Alter EgoTM is published monthly by TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Roy Thomas, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Alter Ego Editorial Offices: 32 Bluebird Trail, St. Matthews, SC 29135, USA. Fax: (803) 826-6501; e-mail: roydann@ntinet.com. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial offices. Single issues: $9 US ($11.00 Canada, $16 elsewhere). Twelve-issue subscriptions: $78 US, $132 Canada, $180 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. ISSN: 1932-6890 FIRST PRINTING.

writer/editorial

Of (49th) Parallel Worlds I

n 1971 I purchased a copy of a brand new hardcover book—The Great Canadian Comic Books, assembled and mostly written by Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert—and the result was a bit like what happened the day Barry Allen discovered there was this parallel Earth—“Earth-Two”—on which a different Flash lived and fought and dashed around. Just as cartoonist Jules Feiffer had opened the eyes of much of the American public to the existence of 1940s super-hero comic books in his 1965 volume The Great Comic Book Heroes, Hirsh and Loubert (and cohorts Alan Walker and Howard Town) wanted to make their fellow Canadians aware of their own proud heritage of World War IIera comics, long moldering in attics and largely unknown to a new generation. To those of us in the USA and elsewhere who smugly considered ourselves pretty knowledgeable about the super-heroes of the 1940s, TGCCB was a kick in the pants and our first clue that, north of the 49th parallel, there had been “an Age undreamed of” by those of us who sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” instead of “O Canada” at public events. (The Canadian tome actually dealt in detail only with the output of a single company—Bell Features—but since that line was virtually the DC Comics of the Great White North, learning of its existence was still a revelation.) Ever since reviving Alter Ego in 1999, and even though younger comics historian John Bell has written about the “Canadian Whites” of 65 years ago both in two books of his own (see p. 43) and in the stillavailable A/E #36, I’ve wanted to reprint the entire text of The Great Canadian Comic Books in this magazine, along with much of the art from the volume that we didn’t utilize in that 2004 issue. And, with the

kind cooperation of Randy Witten, VP of Legal Affairs for Corus Entertainment, the current owners of the book’s copyrights, we’ve finally managed to do just that. (We’ve avoided repeating more than a bare, inevitable handful of art spots that appeared in #36.) Actually, this seems to be an A/E issue devoted to parallel worlds— as UK collector Michael Finn (with whom Dann and I shared a table at dinner at a comicon in Bristol, England, in 2006) regales us with some of the art he has specially commissioned which purports to depict what happened “One Minute Later” with regard to various key covers of the 1970s Invaders and related series… but we’ll let him tell you about that in his own words, beginning on p. 54. Hmm… come to think of it, Michael T. Gilbert’s “Comic Crypt” segment on “Kooky Krossovers” at MLJ and Quality partakes to some extent of a parallel universe, as well, since some of those adventures, as you’ll see, were unreal even compared to the usual comic book fare— and, in FCA, Fawcett’s Colonel Porterhouse has adventures that are an alternate reality to those of the heroes of 1940s Whiz Comics! All that, plus Jim Amash’s interview with Al Schutzer, a Golden Age comics writer so unknown by most of fandom right up to the present that he might as well be on a parallel Earth! As this issue went to press, his vital stats still weren’t listed even on the Who’s Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999 website (though they may well be by the time you read these imperishable words)! Bestest,

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The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Kids had long read comic strips in newspapers and Sunday supplements, and some such strips had been reprinted in book form, but their parents read strips, too, and somehow that made a difference: strips weren’t something that kids could look upon as part of their own secret world. True “comic books,” however, were made up of longer stories, with consistent themes, and were drawn especially for the books, and kids adopted them instantly. Within a few months, American publishers were selling millions of comic books a month at home, and many thousands in Canada. The littlest kids read the funny comic books, like Disney’s, and the older kids turned with passionate involvement to the super-heroes: Superman, Batman and Robin, Captain Marvel. What days those were! And “all in color for a dime” (though, at first, most Canadian stores marked US comics up to 15¢). Canadian publishers before the Second World War were even less economically healthy—and a good deal “Each playing a big game of solitaire—each delighting in dealing themselves pat hands mites and less enthusiastic—than they are today motes in maple leaf make believe.” —after Krazy Kat. [1971]. Consequently, none had the The original dedication, by the 1971 book’s designer, Clive Smith, showcased various of Bell’s characters— faintest interest in a Canadian comic including Nelvana, Speed Savage, Captain Wonder, and Fred Kelly’s hero Mr. Monster, some years before book industry, not when so many sleek Michael T. Gilbert discovered Doc Stearne’s one-shot alter ego. Despite the “Designed and Illustrated” credit American books were packing Canada’s for Smith on the preceding page, alas, only the book's original cover and this single drawing of his could newsstands every month. But that was be utilized in this reprinting. Oh, and a special thanks to Brian K. Morris for retyping the text on pp. 4-42! all to change with the knowledge that the burden of US competition was to be removed.

Introduction

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE by Alan Walker Most of the entrepreneurs and artists who produced Canadian comic books during the Second World War had no previous experience in printing or publishing anything, let alone comic books. But when the Canadian Government banned foreign comic books, as a wartime economy measure, these men sensed an opportunity to profit by filling a void. They took risks; they worked with feverish and tireless haste; and they managed to create and sustain a praiseworthy Canadian comic art. Some also managed to make some medium-sized fortunes. But at war’s end, Canadian comics undeservedly disappeared, and much of the money they had earned disappeared with them. A remarkable era of Canadian art and economics was over—an era that contained all the elements of the comic books themselves: drama, suspense, humor—and even pathos. North American children in the late 1930s had no television to help them idle away their time, but there was still free entertainment aplenty from radio—hours and hours a week of comedy and suspense serials. Then, in 1937, in the United States, there appeared a markedly new form of entertainment for youngsters: comic books (the first was Detective, which appeared in March). [A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Comic books actually debuted a decade earlier, and regularlypublished specimens with new material commenced in 1935 with National Allied Publications’ New Fun.]

On December 6, 1940, the War Exchange Conservation Act forbade the import of certain “non-essential” items into Canada from nonsterling countries, thus helping to conserve Canada’s foreign exchange credits. Its list of barred foreign material included “periodical publications, unbound or paper-bound, consisting largely of fiction or printed matter of a similar character, including detective, sex, western and alleged true confession stories, and publications, unbound or paperbound, commonly known as comics, but not including bona fide supplements used with newspapers.” Canadians, as they liked to phrase it back then, “tightened their belts.” If Father didn’t go off to war himself, at least he had to make his car last an extra couple of years, and he suffered the annoyances of gasoline rationing. Mother retailored her old dresses and hoarded meat tokens. And, for their part, the innocent children, who had undoubtedly never even heard of the War Exchange Conservation Act, discovered in the winter of 1940-41 that their neighborhood candy store no longer displayed the marvelous adventures of Batman, The Human Torch, Captain Marvel, or any other of the familiar fantastic characters. Though the kids’ wartime sacrifices were more banal than their parents’, they were no less irksome; the kids had become enthralled by comic books, and it was a depressing period for a whole generation when they discovered that something had gone wrong. If ever there was a captive audience, this was it. American publishers had done all the experimenting and test-marketing, had taken all the risks, and had managed to get Canadian kids thoroughly hooked on comic books. Now their products were barred.

The Great Canadian Comic Books

Ringing The Bells Artist E.T. Legault brought his “Whiz Wallace” and “Dart Daring” features to the Bell Brothers before the latter had gotten into a publishing mode— but, ere long, both heroes were appearing in Bell’s comics line, though Dart moved from swashbuckler to frontier adventures. The cover of Wow #5 and the entirety of this “Whiz Wallace” story from Wow #1 were printed in color in Hirsh & Loubert’s 1971 volume.

Thirty years after the event, it is difficult to assemble a precise chronicle of Canadian comic books. Though collectors, artists, and even sociologists take them seriously today, comic books were then considered trivial, and even a little embarrassing, by the men who originally produced them. Today, memories have failed and records have disappeared. Moreover, in the spirit of anxious competition that followed the announcement of Ottawa’s embargo on American comic books, no publisher was eager to tell any other just what he had in mind for earning all those Canadian dimes. The idea of exclusively Canadian comic books undoubtedly occurred to more than one person at that time and, by war’s end, several publishing companies (three in particular) had managed to profit in the field. But as far as can be determined from this point in time, it was a Toronto publisher named Cyril Vaughan Bell who invented Canadian comic books. He apparently published the first one. And from an examination of the books that survive from all presses, it is certain that he published not only the most Canadian comic books, but the best. It is, therefore, the Bell group of comic books that is the main concern of this book. Cy Bell’s first artist was a French Canadian named Edmund Legault, whose work survives as some of the very best of all Canadian comic book art. Legault had a unique, imaginative, and sensitive style, but the first time he offered his services to Bell, Bell sent him away with regrets. It was in mid-1939, when war still seemed comfortably far away, and thoughts of Canadian comic books did not exist—not even

in the head of Legault, who wanted to become a newspaper comic strip artist. Cy Bell, with his younger brother Gene, was operating Commercial Signs of Canada in Toronto, where they produced posters and placards for advertisements in streetcars. Legault sought work from Bell as a freelance ad artist, but also happened to mention his desire to draw comic strips. He showed Bell what the latter recalls as “armfuls” of strips he had already drawn. There were two major strips, and their heroes were Dart Daring, “Dare-Devil Master Swordsman,” who was a long-haired swashbuckler living in the early 18th century; and Whiz Wallace, a US Navy pilot (Canadianism in Canadian comics was yet to come) transported to the Invisible Planet. “Every artist seemed to want to do a newspaper strip in those days,” Bell says today. “But there was nothing we could do for him.” Legault left his name and address, and went home. A few months later, the Bell brothers learned of the government’s intention to bar American comic books. “We decided to buy a press which could print comic books,” Bell recalls. “We realized that US comic books were selling extremely well in Canada. When we heard that there might be an embargo on them, it occurred to us that here was a way we could make a lot of money.” Cy Bell telephoned Legault and told him to bring back his comic strips. The Bell brothers and Legault sat down and edited the strips into more consecutive form, suitable for book publication, and began

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

planning what was to be the first Canadian comic book. The title: Wow. “64 pages in full colour,” promised the cover. And inside there were to be two long stories, starring Dart and Whiz respectively, as well as two all-prose stories, a few single-page “fillers” (everything from cartoons to wrestling instructions) and a plea from the publishers: BOYS! GIRLS! WIN 25 CASH PRIZES! JUST WRITE A LETTER AND TELL US WHY YOU LIKE “WOW” COMICS. IT’S LOADS OF FUN AND SO EASY This is the first issue of “WOW” Comics and we want you to help us make it the best magazine on the market. We want YOU to tell us what YOU would like to see in the next issues. The prizes were suitably child-sized: $10 for first place, with 24 more ranging from $5 down to $1. Before Wow #1 was published, Cy Bell sought financial backing from another Toronto entrepreneur: John Ezrin. Ezrin was a man much like Bell. Both were imaginative promoters, and both were willing to try any new wrinkle that might make a profit. Among Ezrin’s previous accomplishments was the invention of Travel

Wheels—concentric cardboard discs, covered with advertising, that gas stations gave away to help drivers figure out the distance between where they were and where they were going. Ezrin was quick to share Bell’s optimism: “They came in and told me all about comic books,” Ezrin remembers. But he was far less interested in the comics that the Bells spread on top of his desk than he was in the news that US comics had been selling well in Canada, and that the Canadian government was about to shut the door on them. “I didn’t have to know anything about comic books. I’m a businessman. The market was saturated with comics, and soon it wouldn’t be. So we decided to fulfill the demand we could see coming.” Ezrin invested “between $10,000 and $15,000,” as well as what would be a continually growing interest in the content and distribution of the Bell books. Cy Bell bought a second-hand offset printing press and began to teach himself what he didn’t know about printing—which was considerable. “We were really shooting arrows into the air,” he says. “We didn’t know much about lithography and, although we had the right equipment or could get it, hiring men to run it was another matter. Also, lithography has always been a very tight-lipped business. Nobody wants to tell you how it’s done—they like to make you think it’s all a mystery, and that therefore you should pay them a lot of money for doing the work for you. They didn’t want us to do it cheaply ourselves.” Bell finally found a friendly lithographer in London, Ontario. “We used to phone him up at all hours and ask him, ‘Hey, how do you do such-and-such?’ and he’d try to tell us over the phone, and then he’d usually say, ‘Well, I think I’d better come down in the morning and show you.’” These were frustrating times for the Bells. They stood, sat, or slept by their presses seven days a week. “The Bells were geniuses in their own way,” Ezrin says, “and they worked harder than I could imagine anybody working for what they wanted. They knew how to do what they wanted, but it took time. I doubt if anybody else in their position could have done what they did.” And speed was important. Though the Bells probably didn’t know it in specific terms, three other Toronto publishers were beginning to gear up for comic books, and another was at work in Vancouver. The Bells decided to print their first comic book in full color—a decision they soon regretted and did not duplicate for nearly four years. When they first set to work, they did not fully realize how difficult it would be to print in full color, under the best of conditions—and they soon found that they had multitudes of their own special problems. But they continued with the first issue in color, knowing that it would make a doubly favorable impression on newsstands, whose young customers had learned to expect sophisticated color printing in US comic books.

Wow! What A [Canadian] Magazine! The cover of Wow Comics #1 (Sept. 1941). The Eisner & Iger-produced Wow! What a Magazine had enjoyed a brief career in the US a couple of years before. Soon, the word “Wow” was put in quotation marks on the covers of Bell’s title. Was this perhaps the result of a complaint from Fawcett, which as of late 1940 had its own Wow Comics south of the border— and which had ties to Bell’s Canadian rival Anglo-American, rather than to Bell? Both of Legault’s earliest heroes, Dart Daring and Whiz Wallace, were featured on the cover of Wow #1.

To print in color, paper must pass through four separate sets of press rollers: one set lays on red ink, another yellow, another blue, and the fourth black. Various combinations of those colors will produce the spectrum’s other colors and shades (yellow plus blue equals green, for instance). Each color area must be printed precisely where it is supposed to be, or you get a messy situation which printers call “out of register.” To get your press “in register” is like getting four exact bullseyes in a row. Pity the poor Bells, therefore, when you learn that their press could only print one color per run-through. They had to pass each sheet of paper through the press four separate times, and their print run of 52,000 for Wow #1, which a modern press could accomplish in an hour, took the Bell brothers two months. Because the first Wow’s register is frequently off, Dart Daring sometimes seems to be walking a few inches in front of his pants; and the leaves of trees, which were supposed to be green, seem to be

The Great Canadian Comic Books

An “Incredible Monster,” A “Helpless, Terrified Girl,” And Whiz Wallace Pages from the “Whiz Wallace” story in Wow #1. The 1971 tome printed ten pages of this tale in color, duplicating the color problems of the original—but the registry, etc., weren’t really much worse than in a lot of American comics of that period. “Whiz Wallace,” of course, was heavily influenced by the US newspaper comic strip Flash Gordon—as were countless American comic book stories in those day, as well!

shedding layers of blue and yellow. Nor is the color quality consistent. “Fair Loraine,” whom Dart saves from various perils, wears red tights on one page and purple ones on the next. But even from a printer’s viewpoint, Wow #1 was far better than just a good try— and it is unlikely that any kids complained, particularly during the enforced absence of Batman, Mickey Mouse, and others of their ilk. In the distribution of national, monthly periodicals, publishers generally cannot count on knowing anything definite about the sales success of a particular issue until the next one has been distributed, and until the one following is ready to go to press. But less than a month after Wow’s debut, in the late summer of 1941,

Cut-Outs And Cut-Ups An “Elaine Kenyon Cut-Outs” page and a “Dart Daring” splash, featuring that valiant swordsman—both from Wow Comics #1.

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

$25 a week, “which certainly made me a capitalist, because I had been making only $10 a week before that.” But Bell’s scheme went awry, because nearly all of his artists were in their teens—some as young as 15—and to persuade teenagers to be productive in what Bachle called “the Black Hole of Calcutta” was nearly impossible when they were guaranteed a regular salary. So Bell canceled his permanent stable of artists, declared he would pay them for piecework from then on (Bachle, for instance, earned $6.50 a page), and sent them home to work. “That A Couple Of Colorful Canucks stopped the Leo Bachle said he drew his hero Johnny Canuck to look like himself. At left is a feature page on the artist—at right, the splash page of tomfoolery,” Bell a “Johnny Canuck” story—both from Dime Comics—er, excuse us, “Dime” Comics. (We’ve generally omitted the quotation marks in the says. “At least it names of several of Bell’s comics in this reprinting.) stopped it where I could see it, and I congratulations began to reach Bell from newsstand distributors in didn’t have to pay for any mischief they got into on their own time.” Toronto, and from other publishers who belatedly realized the potential of what Bell had done. Sure enough, when results were in, Both Bells were passable cartoonists, knew several other artists Wow #1 had sold all of the 52,000 copies printed. The next few issues through their Commercial Signs of Canada, and today recall that many also sold out, and it wasn’t long before Bell realized he didn’t own any of those artists harbored semi-secret ambitions to draw comic strips. copies of these first historic books. He promptly advertised in his own Bell found it easy to channel their interests into his books; then these comics, offering kids 50¢ if they would turn in their back issues. (If the artists recruited others, and the Bell group gradually grew to numbers kids had hung on to them, they could get $15 to $50 for each of them sufficient to allow Bell to publish the seven different monthly titles that from collectors today.) were his during his peak years. Many artists drew a “filler” or two, then moved on, and are forgotten—but Bell calculates that he had For a few weeks, Bell’s only artist was Legault, who worked in a about 60 different artists working for him, in a significant way, during lonely warehouse on the third story of Bell’s plant at 165 York Street. the war. “But we naturally realized that we couldn’t manage with just one artist, so we started to recruit others,” Bell says. “We also decided to save The artists drew for love as much as for money—they loved comic time and money by dropping down to three-color printing, then to art for itself. Most had only recently been raised on comic books, or two-color, and finally by dumping all the color.” Wow #2-5 were indeed were still being weaned from them. Comic books had prompted printed in garish orange, blue and black, which gave an illusion of full many of them to become artists in the first place, and they found color. Wow #6-8 were in orange and blue only. After that—everything drawing comic books to be just plain fun. They drew their own faces, was in black-&-white. Bell’s shrewdness was borne out: with no or faces of friends (and foes) into their strips; they concealed American comics available, Canadian youngsters bought anything that sometimes-obscene messages in them; they even drew caricatures of Cy faintly resembled them. The more enterprising young readers produced Bell. (When really desperate, they copied from other artists’ work. their own full-color comic books by using Bell’s black-&-white ones as They called such exercises in plagiarism “swipes.”) coloring books. (Other kids who had friends or relatives in the US, or who managed to visit there themselves, read smuggled American comic “Let’s face it, it was great for us,” Leo Bachle says. “We were books—and used them to make new friends.) celebrities. I drew Johnny Canuck, and he had my face, and everybody at my school [Danforth Tech] read it, and I was popular. I drew the Bell’s first idea was to gather all his artists under one roof where he teachers, and all the kids read the books to see whose name I was going could keep an eye on them, so he had cubicles built in his warehouse, to mention.” and installed in them such major talents as Leo Bachle, Ross Saakel, Ted Steele, and Murray Karn. Leo Bachle remembers that Bell paid him Mondays were deadline days at Bell Features (as Bell’s company was

The Great Canadian Comic Books

All-Canadian Heroes Alan Walker mentions “Nelvana of the Northern Lights,” “Dixon of the Mounted,” and “Derek of Bras d’Or” as a trio of “All-Canadians”—i.e., “men and women irrevocably part of the Canadian scene”—plus “Johnny Canuck,” of course. The “Nelvana” page is from her story in Dingle’s self-published Triumph-Adventure Comics, which he soon sold to Bell.

called after March 1942), and the young artists, often half-asleep because they had stayed up most of the previous night to finish their assignments, traveled to 165 York Street and turned in their work. It was duly praised or criticized (rarely rejected, because there wasn’t time to draw anything twice), and Bell would sign checks for each contributor on the spot. Then most of the artists, along with the Bells and art director Adrian Dingle (now a noted Canadian painter) would move on to the dining lounge of the nearby Piccadilly Hotel, on King Street, to cash their checks, drink beer, swap story ideas—and maybe even eat something. Many of the Bell strips were serials, a practice not generally followed in US comic books of the day, and Bell’s artists often wrote and drew one month’s strip without having any idea of how the whole thing would turn out a couple of months later. “Often the boys would get a hero in a bad spot, and we’d all suggest ways to get him out,” says Bell. Of Bell’s seven monthly titles, two (Joke and Dizzy Don) were devoted to pure humor for younger kids. The other five were melanges of adventure strips, with the odd chunk of comedy or prose and an assortment of other material: contests; simply-coded “secret messages”; advertisements for hardware like Johnny Canuck pencil lights; promotional pages for the Panthers, Bell Features’ sponsored amateur hockey

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

team; and uplifting instructional features on such topics as “How to Recognize a Stuka If It Flies over Your House” and “How to Whittle a Dinosaur.” (Bell’s inclusion of unillustrated fiction—usually in two-page blocks—did not mean he felt a calling to elevate his readers’ standards. All-prose features satisfied a Post Office requirement of “current literature,” and therefore qualified his comic books for a cheaper mailing rate.) Bell’s five adventure titles were his flagship Wow, Triumph, Active, Dime, and Commando. Their heroes can be broadly categorized as adventure and science-fiction heroes, detectives, spies, war heroes, costumed heroes (like Thunderfist and The Polka-Dot Pirate), Western heroes, jungle heroes, juvenile heroes (precociously heroic youngsters like Chip Pipher), sports heroes, and “All-Canadian” heroes. Though most artists were nationalistic enough to ensure that the characters they drew were at least nominally Canadian, by birth or naturalization, the “All-Canadians” were men and women irrevocably part of the Canadian scene: Dixon of the Mounted, Nelvana of the Northern Lights (a fantastic Eskimo goddess), Derek of Bras d’Or (a Cape Bretoner), and, of course, Johnny Canuck.

doctor shoved a hypodermic needle into somebody. They wanted to be able to draw that sort of thing accurately. And the artists were young fellows, and pretty much interested in sex. But we never allowed anything like that into our books. Our books had our own censorship committee, which was mainly me, and our books were clean.” In this claim, Bell has either broad standards or a poor memory. He’s right about keeping explicit sex out of his plots, but his five non-humor titles had a high percentage of violent deaths and a goodly percentage of downright sadism. The latter often involved lush-bosomed young women—in scanty, clinging clothes—at the mercy of drooling torturers from prehistoric times or other planets or, most often, from Nazi Germany. Cy Bell did not have the Canadian comic book market all to himself—but because of the speed and vigor with which he entered it, he came close to cornering it. Bell’s major competition was AngloAmerican Publishing Company in Toronto, which produced a few exclusively Canadian strips (Freelance, as in “Where the cause of freedom needs a champion is found Freelance,” survives as the best of them). But Anglo-American generally relied on redrawn strips such as “Captain Marvel,” initiated and owned by the US Fawcett group.

Including the occasional special issue highlighting one character or another, which would come out under the hero’s own name (Bell called these “one-shots.” and if one sold well, he might do a “two-shot”), Bell printed more than 20,000,000 Canadian comic books before the end of the war. Most were sold in Canada; some in the United Kingdom; and even a few in the US. Men who served in the Canadian Army carried them around the world. With some three-score artists contributing regularly to Bell Features comics, quality inevitably varied from strip to strip. But the authors and editor of The Great Canadian Comic Books were delighted to find that a great deal of the art stands up today as first-rate quality. When compared with US comic artists of the past, moreover, a few creators of the Canadian comics emerge as refreshingly free of the clichés in pictures and words that contributed a discouraging sameness to some American comics. Cy Bell imposed no “house style” on his artists, and they sought none. The two most consistent traits of Canadian comic books are their purposeful Canadianism and their patriotic attitudes towards the Second World War; and both of these stem from Cy Bell—in terms of his desires, if not his direct commands. He had, of course, an excellent businessman’s reason for both: the war, and Canadian involvement in it, was a subject that was easy to sell, because it was an almost constant preoccupation of the Canadian population right down through the youngest comic book buyers. But Bell was preoccupied with the war as a citizen as well as a businessman, and he felt that his comics, by displaying the triumph of Allied Good over Axis Evil, gave Canada a valuable moral uplift. His books never allowed anyone who spoke comic book English with a German, Italian or Japanese accent to escape with anything less than a severe trouncing. Today, Bell admits to some embarrassment when reminded of his books’ racist treatment of Canada’s old enemies, but he points out that what he published was consistent with the tenor of the times—and that, anyway, all’s fair in love and war. (Bell has less to say about his books’ caricatures of black people, which were usually in the rolling-eyeballs and “feets do yo stuff” tradition.) One thing Bell now insists on is that he was especially careful to ensure that his comic books never got “dirty”—or even unduly violent. “A lot of our artists had quite a sense of the macabre,” he recalls, “and they used to hang around the morgue or the emergency departments of the hospitals to see how dead people lay, or how it looked when a

Dirty Is As Dirty Does No sexual “dirt,” but a bit of good clean violence—and Johnny Canuck clearly considers fighting with his feet “dirty.” Violence may have been a part of this story by Leo Bachle, but at least the Japanese captor who wanted to “prove that Judo is superior to Canadian boxing” isn’t drawn as a racial stereotype— even if the now-offensive epithet “Jap” is used on the preceding page.

The Great Canadian Comic Books

publishers to date their material well into the future (to allow long newsstand exposure), so Triumph’s pre-dating Wow is not necessarily significant. Dingle created some of the Canadian Whites’ most memorable characters (such as Penguin and Nelvana), and he was one of their best artists, but Triumph didn’t make enough money quickly enough to save Dingle from mounting debts. After a couple of issues, he went to work for Cy Bell, taking Triumph and artists René and André Kulbach with him. Canadian comic books were still selling successfully early in 1945, but Bell realized that the Second World War, in Europe at least, seemed certain to be over soon (the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August effectively ended the Pacific War a few months later). Bell also realized that it could only be a matter of time before the Canadian embargo on American comic books would end, and he would have to face even greater US competition from old comic titles and floods of new ones. He recalls today that he had confidence in many of his allCanadian titles, but he realized that he could not compete with highclass full-color comics, so he began a period of rapid—and expensive— expansion. First he borrowed $75,000 from the Industrial Development Bank. Then he paid more than $50,000 for a huge offset press that had been used by the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper, had it shipped to Toronto in seven freight cars, bought more photography, photoengraving, stereotyping, and binding equipment—and began to hire a staff of 110. Then came disaster. Wartime had made newsprint scarce, and Bell suddenly discovered he couldn’t get enough of it to print even a fraction of the publications he could sell.

Dingle At Doon Adrian Dingle and a page from his “Nelvana” story in that (first?) issue of Triumph-Adventure Comics (Aug. 1941). Photo courtesy of Daryl Gold, from a prospectus for the Doon School of Fine Arts in Doon, Ontario. Special thanks to Dave (Cerebus the Aardvark) Sim.

(Anglo-American also employed a man who has since become one of Canada’s best-known artists, Harold Town, who drew “Minute-Man” for Whiz Comics briefly in 1943.) In Vancouver, Maple Leaf Publishing produced titles like Lucky, Better Comics, and Rocket, and initiated such Canadian heroes as Dr. Brok Windsor. Superior Publishers in Toronto specialized in poorly redrawn funny strips from the US. Like Bell Features, Anglo-Canadian, Maple Leaf, and Superior printed their comics in black-&-white, which is why comic book collectors today refer to all of their output, even Bell’s early color or part-color work, as the “Canadian Whites.” Though Triumph became one of the Bell Features titles, it was begun by Hillborough Studios in Toronto, which was organized by Adrian Dingle and three other artists. Dingle recalls all four were “decidedly out of work” when they embarked upon publishing comic books. Memories are blurred and archives missing over the past 30 years, so that one cannot say for sure whether Dingle’s Triumph or Bell’s Wow was the first of all Canadian comic books. Students of Canadian Whites generally award the distinction to Bell, and nowadays both Bell and Dingle say they just don’t remember who beat whom by a week or so. Dingle’s first Triumph is dated August 1941, compared to Wow #1’s September, but it is common practice among periodical

His allotment from the Wartime Prices and Trade Board had been 20 tons of newsprint and cover stock every month, and Bell Features still needed all of that. But Bell now said he needed an additional 120 tons a month for his newly-formed Rotary Litho Company. Since Rotary Litho was technically a brand new company, the government declined to allocate newsprint to it. Bell wrote a plaintive and nationalistic brief to the board outlining his “unfortunate predicament and dangerous situation.” Bell intended “to establish in Canada, by Canadians with Canadian money, a colour printing plant to produce Canadian craftsmanship in direct competition to the flood of American printed newspapers, magazines, periodicals and books.” Moreover, he said, he intended to do further good deeds by hiring “Canadian labor returning from the overseas Fronts and to re-employ our former staff as they are discharged from the Army.” His brief was read; his request rejected. Then Bell sent a personal telegram to the chairman of the Wartime Prices and Trade Board, Donald Gordon, (whom one of Bell’s comic books had once glorified in a four-page story about Great Canadians), but Gordon turned him down, too. Bell was left with idle presses and growing debts. But there was more behind the passing of Canadian comic books than mere shortages of paper. Before the government lifted the War Exchange Conservation Act, and thus allowed all the American comic heroes back across the border, an interim ruling allowed Canadian printers to publish US comic books under a licensing arrangement. An American comic book publisher would send his printing “mats” to a Canadian publisher, for instance, and would charge him a fee. In return, the Canadian publisher could profit by printing and distributing American books in Canada. This system constituted, of course, an immediate threat to the survival of Canadian comic books, but it was the system that Cy Bell himself chose to adopt. With little time to convert his Canadian comic books to full color; with insufficient paper to do so on a large scale; and, finally,

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

with the fear that other Canadian publishers would strike advantageous deals with American comic book companies, Bell decided to grasp a bird in the hand. He let his Canadian titles dwindle, and began churning out American comics. John Ezrin, for one, thinks that in so doing, Cy Bell made a serious mistake—though Ezrin readily admits the benefit of hindsight. “Sure, Cy could make a fair amount of money printing the American books,” says Ezrin, “but what was going to happen after a few months? Eventually the Americans were allowed to distribute their own books again, and naturally they just cut Cy off. He had let his Canadian books die, so he had nothing.” When Bell turned his attention to printing US comics, some of his Canadian artists wandered across the border and began working, at considerably higher salaries, for American comic book publishers who were grateful to have them. And when the American publishers did start distributing their own goods in Canada again, Bell was effectively out of the comic book business. “If he had kept his best artists, and converted the best Canadian strips to full-color,” Ezrin says, “Cy could easily have conditioned the kids to buy them despite the return of the Americans. I pleaded with him. He had some of the best comic characters there could ever be. But when he started printing the American books, he went for short-term profit, and in the long-run all he was doing was creating a new captive market for Americans, who were soon his competitors again.”

His Finest Hour Johnny Canuck, in a full-page ad for Dime Comics, juxtaposed with Churchill and Hitler.

It has been said that Cy Bell’s comics disappeared simply because they were of poor quality compared to the American ones. But even though few native Canadian comics ever got the chance to compete with the spectacular colors of modern American printing, to compare the Canadian Whites with their American contemporaries is to realize that the Canadian Whites were more than worth saving. Some of the drawing is of a higher quality than what was being done in the US, simply because drawing in one color is more difficult than drawing for full-color printing—so Canadian artists tried harder. Adrian Dingle says that in one-color work “you have to deal with certain elements of balance and weight that are usually taken by the colors. Artwork for color comics, or color drawings of just about any sort, is a very simple line, with simple solids, and then the colors complete the delineation of the pictorial value.”

Ether Or Nelvana in mufti—i.e., civvies—from a Bell issue of Triumph Comics. She even had a pseudonym in this story—“Alana.”

Bell admits he made a great deal of money out of his four-year adventure with comic books, and he never bothered to hide his success. “I envied the diamond ring that he wore,” Leo Bachle said wistfully years later. “And I envied the comparatively new Chrysler he was driving. You couldn’t buy a new car at that time—but he drove the latest there was.” When his Canadian comics went under, though, Bell’s business ebbed quickly. He published a small line of coloring books and puzzle books. He tried a few circumspect love comics. He printed cereal premiums. And finally, he surrendered. He sold his equipment and stock gradually between 1947 and 1952, “taking it easy all the

The Great Canadian Comic Books

while,” he says today, then got bored and decided to start into a new business. He bought a small resort hotel called the Ontario Hotel in Crystal Beach, Ontario, and ran that until 1964, when he sold it and revived his old Commercial Signs of Canada, which he now runs, in a small way, in Ridgeway, Ontario. He’s semi-retired, and says: “I loaf a lot. And I spend a lot of time talking to the squirrels.” And the comics he printed? Well, since there was a war on, many of the books had been gobbled up by scrap drives. Thousands more were simply discarded, as is the fate of so many transitory items in a basically pop art form. A few kids hoarded their comics through their adulthood, and became some of today’s serious collectors. John Ezrin bought what stocks of comics Bell Features still owned. He bought the Bell archives (which is perhaps too dignified a word for the wooden crates in which original comic art, photo negatives, and printing plates were stored). And he bought the rights to reproduce any of the old comic books in later years, in case anyone ever wanted to see them again. Ezrin stockpiled all he had bought in a warehouse at 437 Queen Street West in downtown Toronto. “I had no immediate plans for the stuff,” he says today. “I had the brainwave that I might go into something in which I could use the material, or the old books, for publicity. Or I thought we might be able to make a few dollars some day out of reprints of the old material.” But he put it all away, and waited. Maybe there would be another war. He waited for nearly 20 years, until the Canadian comic books were thoroughly forgotten by all but the most fanatic collectors—and even they knew little about the brief but glorious era of comic Canadiana. Then, in the early 1960s, Ezrin began hearing stories about the value of old comic books—all old comic books. The nostalgia boom was beginning. By the time Susan Sontag’s essay “Notes on Camp” appeared in Partisan Review in 1964, it seemed that half of North America was reading old Captain Marvel comics and listening to radio’s Shadow again. Ezrin began to wonder what he should do with his secret trove of Canadian comics. First, he behaved like a businessman—he tried to sell the lot to one New York publisher, then another, then another… but each had enough stock of his own cluttering up his warehouse and his life. Ezrin waited some more.

The Penguin Is Mightier Than The Sword A Dingle-written-and-drawn page of “The Penguin,” from an issue of Wow Comics.

By 1970, Ezrin was 63 years old and was thinking about retiring. His various businesses had done well; his son was about to graduate from an economics course at McMaster University; and Ezrin was, frankly, getting a little weary. He was ready to stop behaving like a businessman, but he still didn’t know what to do with his Canadian comic books. Then George Henderson, the “Captain George” who is Canada’s nostalgia king, and whose Memory Lane shop in Toronto has received nation-wide publicity, heard about Ezrin’s several hundredweight of Canadian White material. He went to see Ezrin, and Henderson, who has never behaved much like a businessman (in the harsh profiteering sense), asked for permission to reprint some of the old material so that new generations could enjoy it. Ezrin declined, but Henderson succeeded in planting in Ezrin’s mind the seeds of something more worthwhile than merely selling the stuff. And by the time two young acquaintances of George Henderson’s went to call on Ezrin in late 1970, Ezrin was thinking quite specifically about “finding a good home” for what was left of the Canadian Whites. The two young men were artists and filmmakers, and although

neither had been born when Bell began publishing, they exhibited a genuine love of his comic books. The more they talked, the more they impressed Ezrin. “I thought they could do something with the comics,” Ezrin says. “They had done a lot of research into them, they liked them—and mostly they struck me as doers. I’ve always been a doer myself. All in all, I decided that these boys deserved the comics, and everything that went with them.” So he sold them. The two young men are Michael Hirsh and Pat Loubert, who painstakingly selected and assembled the comic pages reproduced in this book, and who wrote the introductory material for each chapter. They offer it all, in the hope that older readers of The Great Canadian Comic Books will be pleased to renew acquaintances with old friends whose exploits dappled the pages of Cy Bell’s books so many years ago; and that younger readers will take the same delight as they have in discovering a short-lived but lively era that was Canada’s contribution to one of the world’s most entertaining arts.

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Chapter 1

THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF CANADIAN HEROES [NOTE: Chapters 1 through 12 were written by Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert.] In keeping with the patriotic spirit of the era, most Canadian comic book heroes were Canadian citizens; and they fought for the Allies against the Axis. But four of them survive as definitively Canadian— whether by circumstances of birth, occupation, or inclination. They are Nelvana of the Northern Lights, Johnny Canuck, Dixon of the Mounted, and Derek of Bras d’Or. “Nelvana,” daughter of Koliak (who was the King of the Northern Lights), was created by one of Cy Bell’s more mature artists, Adrian Dingle. In his early 30s, Dingle had achieved considerable mastery of the sort of brisk comic technique that had been practiced by the likes of Milton Caniff, creator of Terry and the Pirates. Dingle’s artwork in “Nelvana” is so energetic that it largely compensates for the lack of printed color in the Canadian Whites. Dingle says today that drawing comics greatly aided him in becoming the skilled and imaginative artist he is. He says he was inspired to create Nelvana by stories that Franz Johnston, the Group of Seven painter, had brought back with him from the Arctic. Nelvana was a “pretty gruesome character” in Eskimo legend, Dingle recalls, so he “made her into an attractive doll” by slipping her into a miniskirt.

Nelvana Lite Nelvana in her many aspects. Above, she descends to Earth in the original TriumphAdventure Comics— at left, the cover of Bell’s Triumph Comics #12—and at right, the cover of the one-shot collection Nelvana of the Northern Lights, circa 1945. Latter scan courtesy of John Bell.

The Great Canadian Comic Books

More All-Canadian Capers (Clockwise from above left:) Leo Bachle’s Johnny Canuck slugs Der Führer in the Canadian equivalent of Simon & Kirby’s cover for 1941’s Captain America Comics #1—Johnny faces the Eastern half of the Axis menace (Imperial Japan, as well as Nazi Germany, was at war with the British Empire, remember)—and Dixon of the Mounted mushes northward.

Nelvana’s trick, as the comics phrased it, was to become invisible when danger loomed, by allowing herself to be absorbed by her father’s “powerful ray.” “The Germans had better start making stronger rope if they want to hold Canadian captives.” Thus spoke Johnny Canuck, Canada’s answer to Captain America, Uncle Sam, and John Bull. One comic underlined what Canadian kids all assumed was obvious: “Canuck means Canadian ... a fine fighting name.” Leo Bachle was just 15 years old when he created “Johnny Canuck” and says he did so because “We used to look in the American books and see all the heroes. Every book had a hero; every country had a hero. We never had a hero here, and I felt that Johnny Canuck typified the Canadian character.” Though Bachle drew Johnny Canuck in his own image from a photograph, he was also influenced by Burne Hogarth’s Tarzan and Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, both comic strip characters, and by early American comic book heroes. Captain America met Adolf Hitler face to face; so did Johnny Canuck. Bachle admits he “leaned on” Captain America. Edmund Legault created “Dixon of the Mounted” as the lead feature for Active Comics. Legault’s Dixon was a romantic idol who battled a devil to save Ruth Barton, the girl he loved. Later, when other artists, Ted Steele and René Kulbach, worked on Dixon, they intro-

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

duced a more worldly morality into the stories, and the artwork rapidly became more realistic than Legault’s. Dixon’s investigation of the sale of marijuana to the Indians was brought to a close when Checkers, “the distributor of the deadly drug,” was killed by his own dog team. The message was all too clear: smoke pot and go to the dogs. “Derek of Bras d’Or” was based upon the true life history of Angus McAskill, giant of Cape Breton. “He was the true superman who at the age of 15 years was 7 feet 9 inches tall; weight 500 pounds; chest measurement 80 inches; the palm of his hand was 6 inches wide and a foot in length. This great man lived near St. Ann’s Bay, Victoria County, Cape Breton!”

A Bunch Of Cool Comic Book People Tedd (a.k.a. Ted) Steele drew himself, fellow artist Ross K. Saakel, and publisher Cy Bell into this circa-1944/45 story in Active Comics, which is probably related to its “Artists on Ice” series.

Chapter 2

SPORTS Whoever told you that you’ve got a chance of winning this war is loco. —Johnny Canuck Yours in strength and fair play. —Active Jim Cy Bell’s hockey team, subject of “Artists on Ice,” a humorous strip in Active Comics, was a slick, traveling good-will show for the Bell family. The comics published game tallies and included newspaper-style wrap-ups and team programs: “We had about the best minor midget hockey team ever put on skates, some of our boys became well-known later on. Vern Buffey was one of our goal-keepers, as a matter of fact—and is a chief official today. Our team went all over southern Ontario giving exhibition games. We were only beaten once—that was over near St. Catharines one cold night, and we didn’t arrive till a

The Great Canadian Comic Books

couple of hours late for the game, and they beat us that night and that’s about the only time we took it,” remembers Cy Bell. Lou Skuce drew a series on famous wrestlers which ran in Wow Comics. It included detailed illustrations and insights into the many intimate grasps and grips employed by the various grapplers in that very popular science. There were only two regular sporting strips to appear in the Canadian Whites: “Clip Curtis, the King of the Dirt Track,” a racing car driver and athlete who brushed through the muscle, the nondescript badmen, and the heavy bettors who frequented the racing track; and “The Southpaw,” a two-shot boxing feature drawn and scripted by Leo Bachle and featuring a left-handed “palooka” who solved problems with his fists. Leo himself was a fighter, and when he eventually went to work in New York, he fought in several preliminaries at Madison Square Garden.

A Couple Of Clippers As per page above, not all action in Fred Kelly’s “Clip Curtis” took place on the “dirt-track” on the title; the splash of this story was seen in Alter Ego #36’s coverage of World War II-era Canadian comics. At right, Leo Bachle’s splash page for a “Southpaw” story, also from Wow.

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Right In Der Führer’s Face—And On Goebbels’ Head! Two pages from Adrian Dingle’s ambitious feature “The Sign of Freedom,” in Commando Comics. Two other splashes from this series were depicted in earlier Alter Ego coverage of Canadian comics’ Golden Age. Wanna see ’em? A/E #36 is still available from TwoMorrows, as seen in our ad bloc in the last eight pages of this issue.

Chapter 3

THE SURREAL WORLD OF SECRET AGENTS Like the nature of the world, the reality of comic books abounds in surrealism—and nowhere so startlingly as in stories about secret agents and spies. There were “The Sign of Freedom,” “Ace Bradley,” “Spanner Preston,” and “Major Domo and Jo-Jo,” all featuring surreal plots and characters. Adrian Dingle dedicated “The Sign of Freedom” to “the many thousands of brave souls who have pledged their lives to fight for the freedom cause under the noses of the Gestapo, and who may one day be responsible for making a reality of what is, at present, a mere sign— FREEDOM.” Jimmie Clarkson, a Canadian fighter pilot, bailed out of his plane over Germany and landed on an underground leader’s roof. When the Gestapo searched the cellar for Jimmie, they discovered stolen food with the “Sign of Freedom” marked on it. Von Bergner, the underground leader, had been shot and, dying; he addressed his last words to Jimmie: “Yes! I am Otto von Bergner, known as The Sign of Freedom! We have been busy (cough) preparing to assist you brave—what you call—Canucks in the second front, but I fear I shall not be on hand to see it! You are a Canadian. I am fortunate to have such a successor—

must carry on, Chimmy, and bring yet another laurel to the crown of Canada.” Consider how many dream-like contrivances artist Adrian Dingle threw our way all at once: Jimmie’s good fortune in stumbling upon the leader of the underground; Otto’s implicit trust in a complete stranger; and his choice of Jimmie to succeed him as leader. Silhouetted against a full moon, Jimmie, pursuing a laurel for Canada, kisses Karen von Bergner. She whispers: “Oh Chimmie, I—I think this m-must be a dream!” When large numbers of Allied soldiers died in the Burma jungles from cobra bites, Ace Bradley came to grips with The Cobra Woman in his search for the antidote. The natives told Ace that the Japanese immunized their own men against the cobra before dumping thousands of snakes in the jungle as a poisonous barrier against the Allies. Without warning, Ace was wrapped in pulsing, crushing coils of living flesh. “Gosh, right in the middle of a squeeze play!” But Manulai, The Cobra Woman, released Ace when she realized he was English;

The Great Canadian Comic Books

Boy Meets Coil Ace Bradley encounters the Cobra Woman.

aided him in his fight with the Japanese, and helped him to steal the formula and method for immunization. As Ace left Manu-lai, he was not certain whether he saw her transformed into a beautiful young woman, or just dreamed it. “Major Domo and Jo-Jo,” the unusual work of Avrom Yanovsky, pen-named Armand, featured an imaginative and original secret agent unique in comic book history—he had no arms. In one adventure, Major Domo was tricked into accepting a pair of artificial arms, which later proved to be a sort of Trojan horse; the arms were controlled by Dr. Juan, a former Nazi, and Domo became powerless to resist his will. Major Domo became a fascist tool. Yanovsky presumably meant it as a metaphor of what fascism can do to people. Yanovsky remembers that he was offended by what he calls the “Anglo-American imperialist bias” of most of the artists who drew the Canadian Whites. And so he created “Major Domo and Jo-Jo” to offset their propaganda, which he says tried to lull the world into accepting a Cold War situation.

Canadian Quirks In Dingle’s TriumphAdventure Comics, hero Spanner Preston had to rescue a British prisoner from “a band of Persian assassins working under the direction of the Nazis”—while, in Bell’s Joke Comics, Major Domo fought the Axis despite his lack of arms. “Spanner Preston” was by H.B. Ohrt (writer) and Leon James (artist), while Avrom Yanovsky drew “Major Domo.”

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Putting Himself In His Work Ted (a.k.a. Tedd) Steele seems to have preferred drawing himself to any of his comic book creations, as per two of these three Steele splashes from Bell comics.

Chapter 4

HUMOR Laughter relieves us of surplus energy which, if it remained unused, might become negative, that is poison.... Laughter is the antidote but this antidote is necessary only so long as we are unable to use all the energy for useful work. It is said of Christ that he never laughed. —Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous I should snicka. —Krazy Kat The humor in the Canadian Whites ran downhill from “Private Stuff” and “Woody and the Wolf” through some thin snickers in “The Doodlebugs,” “Spike and Mike,” “Patrick the Plumber,” and “The Noodle” to a wasted laughland of single pages and filler material. “Barnacle Bill,” “Kernal Korn,” “Casey the Cop,” “Shadrak the Salesman” and, hold your Canadian breath, “Injun Moe, the Last of the Jivin’ Morons Moe Hawks.” Bell’s editors stuffed their books with page after page of monotonous, badly drawn gags scavenged from old joke books and last-line vaudeville. They weren’t good, but they were cheap.

The Great Canadian Comic Books

Mad About Comics (Left:) Hirsh and Loubert note that “Doodlebugs” artist Ed Alton would later draw for Mad magazine. (Right:) Artist Lou Skuce had a style reminiscent of early, ornate newspaper cartoons.

“Private Stuff and Private Ward,” featuring General Store, Herr Brush, and Herr Goo, and “painfully executed” by Ted Steele, was a farce on the serious business of war and its heroes. Like a host of other combat capers, the scripts (all Axis-grinders) cartooned Adolf and his crew in a steady stream of Kanine Komic Krouts, shuffling, stumbling, stuttering, and slapsticking their way through the hostilities. Such treatment was extended to the Japanese and the Italians and, closer to home, Negroes, Indians, and Eskimos. “The Noodle,” a Ross Saakel production featuring a battling babein-arms, was a pint-sized parody (the best of several including “Mild Will,” “Supe Dupe,” and “Captain Blunder”) on a lead strip, “The Brain,” a costumed hero drawn by Saakel’s friend Leo Bachle. “Spike and Mike,” “those laughable knights of the road,” another Saakel strip, appeared in Joke Comics. The strip was distinguished by the strange “hit and miss” quality of young (17) Saakel’s imagination. “The Doodlebugs” was drawn by Ed Alton, who was later to emigrate to EC Comics and Mad magazine, and were written by his brother Carl. The strip grew from modest beginnings to become a mature if sometimes macabre comic country.

The best of the single-page cartoons were inked by Lou Skuce, an illustrator whose famous “Loose Goose” was a familiar figure in the sporting pages of the Toronto Daily Star for many years. Some of the slickest humor in the comics could be found in a neorealistic “origin story” for the Bell brothers’ comic industry. It was from “Woody and the Wolf,” a strip which realized what must have been a common comic daydream for cartoonists—the cartoonist as super-hero. Drawn by Ted Steele, the sequence cast “the Bong Brothers” as fledgling comic book publishers. Bell’s artists further caricatured themselves and their publishers in “Artists on Ice,” the story of the Panthers (the real and winning hockey team sponsored by Bell Features). It wasn’t until two or three years after the Canadian comic industry had begun that this loose genre sprang up. It bespoke a growing confidence among the artists in their ability to create material out of the patterns they saw around them, rather than relying on story lines swiped from American magazines. “Dizzy Don,” drawn and scripted by Manny Easson, began in the early ’40s as a newspaper strip which appeared in more than 60 Canadian papers (including the Dawson Creek News) which bought it through a monthly subscription service.

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Easson soon discovered it was too tough to collect from the newsboys and turned to Cyril Bell, whose expanding empire published the book under the title of The Funny Comics. Enough people seemed to think it was, and, at the height of his character’s popularity, Easson made personal stage appearances at local theatres dressed as Dizzy Don to joke and sing and sell a few comic books. Despite this brief stage career, Easson’s boyish ambitions to be a comedian were largely realized through his comic creation. Easson began to draw “Dizzy Don” at age ten, and what emerged some years later was a highly stylized form of comic art whose sticklike dimensions lent themselves to instant recognition on the part of the children who read his books. It was one of the few Canadian comics that reached into the American market, where the style paled and died when set against the strong-arm techniques of such costumed heroes as Superman and Captain Marvel.

A Dizzy Dick Manny Easson’s Dizzy Don was a Canadian newspaper comic strip before it “graduated” to the pages of Funny Comics. Its hero was a “leading radio comedian and amateur detective.” Other characters in the feature were: Bill “Canary” Bird, Dizzy’s “pal and stooge”… “Hy” Pressure, the radio announcer… singer Shirley Watson (“Both Dizzy and ‘Canary’ are sweet on Shirley”)…and, in this tale, Mooch the Meatlegger, “head of the new underworld racket.” This page is from a story entitled “The Case of the Missing Steak.”

My Heart Knows What The Mongoose Knows Not mentioned in the text is “The Mongoose,” a humorous and interestinglydrawn detective strip by Bill Thomas, who was interviewed (along with his old friend Adrian Dingle) in Alter Ego #36. The Mongoose’s partner was a talking raven.

The Great Canadian Comic Books

Wild, Wild Westerns (Clockwise from above left:) The final page of “Tang,” by Frank Brookwood (writer) and René L. Kulback, shows the young stallion turning on an intruder who tries to steal him from little Buddy and Juanita… “Wild Bill” was another effort by the ubiquitous Leo Bachle… and “The Phantom Rider” is by Jerry Lazare. The hero of the latter strip is lucky enough to have the feature’s heroine point out the introductory caption to him, so he knows what’s going on.

Chapter 5 WESTERN ACTION HONEST INJUN KIDS, THIS BOOK IS TERRIFIC! W.C. Fields pointed out that Lady Godiva put everything she had on a horse. Cy Bell was more cautious, and the genre of the Western in the Canadian Whites was a minor one. The best of his Westerns, “Tang,” was richly Canadian in both artwork and plot. Artist René Kulbach was a fine talent who drew animals in motion with great skill. “The Adventures of Wild Bill” was initially the work of the brothers Leo and Bob Bachle. Like Johnny Canuck, Wild Bill bore an uncanny resemblance to Leo; and, like Johnny, Bill met a chief face to face—not Hitler, but Sitting Bull. “The Phantom Rider,” a product of artist Jerry Lazare’s imagination, featured a masked vigilante who unerringly righted wrongs. In one comic adventure of this off-beat hero, he identified himself to a bandit he had just captured by slipping on his mask, which apparently established his identity rather than concealing it.

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Contents And Cut-Outs (Left:) A contest to see who would do what with the Axis baddies (be imaginative, now!)—and (below) a “Speed Savage” mask you could cut out and don to become Ted Steele’s “famous character,” a.k.a. White Mask. Hey, given the artist’s propensity for selfportraits, we should just be thankful he didn’t draw a mask of his own face!

Chapter 6

MISCELLANEOUS Events have so come to pass that we find no use for this space however as we be of a thrifty nature we will not let it lie idle nor empty so in our own sad and doleful way we presen.... What is wrong with this ship? A contest for every girl and boy. How many faces can you find? What’s missing, what’s been added? How much, how many, when, why and which were your favorites? Each of Bell’s books contained an average of 20 pages that were almost wholly given over to instructional features (can you tie these knots?), book and artist promotion, famous persons or facts, puzzles, and contests. Cy Bell offered prizes such as bicycles, hockey sticks, roller skates, and patriotic broaches for the best answers. There were games you played right in the book; there were games you sent away for; there were quizzes, questions, and codes—all of which made certain that the book could be kept around the house as an activity source instead of just another comic book. The winning readers, and there were quite a few of them, could find their names published right in the same books with the comic characters. The young readers were further treated to all the club news and views that they could digest:

“Collect these pictures, save these stamps, and send away for....” There was more than one club that was glad to have you as a member. Believe it or not curiosities, odd animals, strange fish, unusual people, “freaks of nature,” incredible places, and of course peculiar things were all commonplace in the comics, which devoted a number of pages to cataloguing esoteric trivia. Every book also contained at least one piece of pulp fiction to satisfy the postal authorities of the “periodical” value of the comic books, qualifying them for cheaper mailing rates. Often pseudonymously written by the artists, the stories hung on the same quick excitement formulas found in the comics themselves.

The Great Canadian Comic Books

Now You See Him… The splash page of the first “Invisible Commando” tale, from Commando Comics (what else?)—and the page in which he gains his power. Art and story by Leo Bachle—who was certainly not the invisible man in Canadian comics.

Chapter 7

THE WAR SPIRIT “I felt the war spirit,” said comic artist Leo Bachle, reminiscing about the war propaganda he drew. “We saw pictures in the papers of babies impaled on Japanese bayonets, and read constantly about the gas ovens of Europe, and people were really stirred up.” Canadian comic books existed only during the Second World War, and inevitably war provided much of the books’ subject matter. The war stories reflected one of the genuine myths that comic books create: the simplicity of human behavior. It is only in the medium of comic books that the bad guy is pictured as absolutely inhuman. Readers — For Suspense, Thrills, and Action, We Prescribe These Stories of Wartime Adventure. “The Invisible Commando,” a regular feature in Commando Comics, was based upon numerous science-fiction stories, including the original Invisible Man [by H.G. Wells]. Lee Pierce, the hero, went to war behind enemy lines, where he created outrageous and infantile havoc. Once, in a story which bordered on the ridiculous, Lee survived

a torpedo attack with a young lady. When a shark charged them, she pondered: “I wonder if he’ll like my nylons?” “Captain Red Thortan,” an adventurer and soldier of fortune, devoted his life to eliminating enemies of democracy. The metal of his punch was directed towards the Japanese—he was not above using a little “persuasive” (which he used as a noun) when he wanted information. One unlucky Japanese general cried: “Please no strike with fist. This person will answer the muscular youth’s question.” Clearing the skies of enemy aircraft in Dime Comics, “Kenneth Scotty Macdonald” was drawn by Al Cooper, who was in the RCAF. Cooper challenged boys and girls to learn to spot Allied and Axis planes by cutting out the drawn planes from Scotty’s adventures and pasting them into scrapbooks. Kids were invited to write to Cooper, requesting that he draw an unusual plane. If the request was fulfilled in an actual comic book adventure, the child’s name was printed under the appropriate plane.

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Declaring War—Comics Style (Clockwise from top left:) “Capt. Red Thortan” in a full-page ad which made prominent notice of the fact that the feature’s creator, Al Cooper, was being kept too busy in the Royal Canadian Air Force to draw a story for that particular issue. “Ace Barton” was a pilot in Britain’s RAF, drawn by Ross K. Saakel. “Kenneth Scotty MacDonald” by Cooper emphasized aircraft— understandable, under the circumstances. “Shasha and Masha” were a pair of “Young Russian Guerrillas” drawn by Avrom Yanovsky. And “The ‘Camera’ Commando,” not mentioned in the text, was drawn by the Bells’ original workhouse, E.T. Legault.

The Great Canadian Comic Books

Chapter 8

YOUNGSTERS ONLY Hello members: On that historic day in Casablanca, when Premier Churchill, President Roosevelt, and heads of other United Nations met, one great decision was reached. Do you know what that momentous decision is? Well, just decode this message and you will. DVYR MVY CPJAVYF PU UPULALLU MVYAF-AOYLL The code is a straightforward “A over T” alphabet substitution, and means: WORK FOR VICTORY IN NINETEEN FORTY-THREE For 15 cents, a kid could join the Active Club and receive a secret code wheel, emblem, and membership certificate. Each month in

Air Apparent Jerry Lazare wrote and drew Triumph Comics’ “Air Woman.” The sp;lash page of this story was seen in A/E #36.

“Ace Barton,” a Canadian youth serving in the RAF and Triumph Comics, “sure could dish it out!” In one notable adventure he subdued 12 German guards with his bare hands, until he was finally clubbed down with a lead pipe. With Ace stretched on a rack, the German commandant barked: “Ve shall see if he can take it like he can giff!” The Eastern Front was the subject of some ingenious stories. Drawn with a brush rather than a pen, “Shasha and Masha” featured two young Russian guerrillas. Avrom Yanovsky says he drew this adventure series in an attempt to foster a pro-Russian attitude among Canadian readers. His Shasha and Masha were the Red Bobbsey Twins.

Dogged Determination Active Jim (in Active Comics, naturally) handles a vicious hoodlum who’d cold-bloodedly shot a little boy’s dog the night before. Such an action would probably never have made it into an American comic book of the period.

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Anything For A Laugh “Penny’s Diary” (above), by “Joudry and Slater,” was the Canadian equivalent of Timely/Marvel’s Patsy Walker (and later Archie titles like Betty and Veronica) —while, in “Billy Beaver and His Pal Chubby Jones,” the buck-toothed rodent got top billing.

Active Comics, the Club News and Views printed a list of new members. The club appealed to every boy and girl “to help defeat Hitler”; spending a summer on a farm to offset the labor shortage was a valuable contribution to the home effort. Active Jim, the club director, exclaimed: “Isn’t it just grand to live in a country of the British Empire where we can enjoy sports, entertainment, recreation, and all the principles of democracy, where our country is as much for us as we are for it!” “Active Jim” had his own adventure story in every issue of Active Comics. Joan Brian was his girl friend—and also the club secretary. In a number of adventures drawn by Ross Saakel, Jim proved to be the most sensational sportsman of all time. The war over, he editorialized: “If every boy and girl does his best to do all things fairly and squarely with good neighborliness, there will be no more war. Yes sir, it’s up to us. The new generation! Yours for health and fair play!” “Penny’s Diary” was the only feature in the Canadian Whites created especially for girls. It was also both drawn and written by women. The comic book story was based on Pat Joudry’s successful radio show of the same name, which was broadcast on CFRB Toronto, Sundays at 8 p.m. Penny primps herself in the mirror: “Don’tcha think

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I kinda resemble Ann Sheridan with this hairdo?” The adventures of “Billy Beaver and his pal Chubby Jones” began when Chubby ran away from home. Falling into quicksand, he was

saved by a beaver. Chubby was surprised to hear the beaver say: “The shock of sinking in the quicksand must have upset your brain waves so that you can understand animal talk.” Billy was adopted by the Jones family and lived telepathically ever after.

Chapter 9

JUNGLE The ancient theatre pursues its harmonies and apportions... its idylls. —Rimbaud The word of Tarzan is the law of the jungle. —Edgar Rice Burroughs “Jeff Waring,” ably initiated by Murray Karn and later shouldered by Jerry Lazare, was a world-wide adventure strip which struggled for space with “Whiz Wallace” and “Dart Daring” in the early editions of Wow Comics (#7-14). The stories too often presented the reader with a painful progression of animal aggressors, lost cities (gold, emerald, and platinum), and harried native peoples, and suffered from a sense of sameness. In the first installment, Jeff takes Kay, Prof. Allen’s lovely daughter, to be his faithful companion, and together they thwart the professor’s enemies and preserve the treasure of the lost city for the proper authorities.

“Steve Storms,” the clear-thinking, monocled diplomat commissioner of Kilbary, was Fred Kelly’s attempt to portray a more human and realistic jungle. The strip was, however, extremely short-lived, despite certain fine qualities which should have stayed its perfunctory execution. Before he entered the war, Edmund Legault drew two short jungle episodes, both of which concerned a slightly more obvious and human jungle menace: the Japanese and the Germans. “Betty Burd,” a young authoress writing a book on jungle life, goes bikini-native in Ju Ju Swamp to gather material. She divides her time between narrow escapes from the jungle wildlife and battles against the sly advances of Dick Lake, her publisher and hopeful suitor. In general, the strip was a poor imitation of its more illustrious American predecessors, “Sheena” and “Jo Jo the Congo King.”

Chapter 10

ADVENTURE I have long abandoned myself to the pursuit of honor. — The Nibelungenlied Will wundas never seeze. —Krazy Kat Foremost among the adventure strips were “Whiz Wallace” and “Dart Daring,” the backbone of Wow Comics for almost two years. “Whiz Wallace” was probably inspired by Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon, but lacked both the dramatic scope and the draftsmanship of the latter. Nevertheless, the first edition of Wow Comics presented 50,000 fortunate fans with a full-color story tightly packed with

Gee, Whiz! “Whiz Wallace” rescues Dale Arden—er, we mean, Elaine Kenyon—in the first, color issue of Wow Comics—plus the final clinch from another issue. Art & story by E.T. Legault.

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Four For The Rain Forest (Clockwise from top left:) Jeff Waring is the titular “King of the Amazon” in this Murray Karn splash from an issue of Wow Comics— Fred Kelly’s “Steve Storms, Commissioner of Kilbani” somehow wound up in Joke Comics—Betty Burd (what a name!) was Kelly’s jungle entry in Triumph— while the story “Burma Blockade” by E.T. Legault combined jungle and war in Wow.

The Great Canadian Comic Books

and “Scott Stewart: Planet Pilot,” a dismal one-shot sci-fi story of fanzine quality. Perhaps the most interesting was “Rex Baxter,” originated by Edmund Good, a Dingle protégé. The story ran in serial form in Dime Comics, with Good supplying the pens until Dime #14, when it was taken over by Adrian Dingle, who transformed the character, a soldier of fortune, into a counterspy for the United Nations, leaving artist Clayton Dexter to bring him to a welldeserved rest in Dime #28. Baxter’s adventures took him undersea to the lost Dart Agnan? city of Xlanta, where he faced hazards Though Dartner “Dart” Daring (above and below) was basically a swashbuckler in the 1700s, his Wow Comics on the Island of Doom. In the sequence stories, often set in Canada or the wild of Africa, sometimes looked more like Last of the Mohicans or Tarzan reproduced, Rex and the lovely Miss of the Apes than The Three Musketeers! Gail Abbot are made aware of the presence of the friendly Xlantians, and “Action, Thrills and Adventure.” The strip, drawn by Edmund set off with them for their undersea empire, taking time out only to zap Legault, featured a handsome young aviator and his fair companion an errant enemy sub, popping it open like “a rotten egg,” before they Elaine Kenyon rocketing their way through scripts which contained disappear down a gaping hole into 14 issues of sumptuous subterranean such pitfalls as the Invisible Planet, the River of Fire, the Valley of Fear, fare that included a queen with a villainous half-brother (Lerzal), who the Swamp of Dread, the Grottos of Green Death, and the Kingdom of decides to invade the surface world with a deadly green bacteria germ. Awe, wherein they battled their way past the Gargantaurs, the Horrible Nine-headed Centipede, the Jellied Gargoyle Monster, the Black Fire Dragon, the Monster Horned Toad, the Serpentine Ferns, the Carnivore Weeds, the Cold Flames, the Female Zombies, the Wild Devil Birds, the Gigantic Sabre-Toothed Serpent—and some quicksand. All this amazingly enough in the first three chapters. Wallace charted his square-prowed jaw through the sea of troubles that constantly threatened to engulf him for 17 issues of Wow Comics before becoming victim to the war effort when Legault joined the Canadian Army. As Legault was forced to work more quickly (he carried two full serials and filled in on others in order to make a living), his art suffered through a process of reduction. Backgrounds disappeared, as did the delicate feathering technique which graced his earlier work. All of this resulted in a much-simplified version of the strip. At the same time he switched from bold, full-panel newspaper strip format to the more constricted multi-paneled page favored by the Americans, and towards the end of his comic hitch, Whiz and Elaine seemed to become little more than phantom prisoners of the finances that had given them birth. “Dart Daring,” drafted along the same fine lines as “Whiz Wallace,” was a long-haired, muscular 18th-century romancer who leaned heavily on his sword to battle with the roaming bands of pirates, Indians, and cannibals that struggled continually to lay their hands upon his lovely lady, Loraine Knight. The strip is marred in places by an inordinate amount of romantic foreplay that has Dart and Loraine restate their fanciful fidelity three or four times each issue. The locales were often Canadian, ranging from Fort Craige to the shores of the St. Lawrence, as Dart and Loraine hacked their way east. Both series had dropped from sight by Wow #18, but the ranks were quickly filled by “The Penguin,” “Jeff Waring,” and others. Of the other pure adventure stories (none so pure as Dart and Loraine), which included “Doc Stearne,” a savage “swipe” (Doc Savage was a pulp hero of the 1930s); “The Blade,” a dull, short-lived “sword ’n’ saga” complete with a Buck Rogers “suspended animation” origin;

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Call Me Doc—Or Call Me Mister! “Doc Stearne” was the Doc Savage of the Great White North, as per this splash from Wow Comics (above left)—but creator Fred Kelly was in the process of turning him into a super-hero of sorts even as the series ended. Well, even Clark Savage, Jr., had to turn super-hero to sell comic books back in the 1940s! Seen in Roy Thomas’ photo with the late Fred Kelly (on the right) at a 2004 Toronto comics convention is A/E’s own Michael T. Gilbert, who ably covered FK’s colorful career in A/E #36, and of course has done his own rendition of “Mr. Monster” for some years now—while Fred had totally forgotten he’d ever conceived that version of his hero. For more of MTG’s Mr. Monster, see p. 65. [Mr. Monster TM & ©2007 Michael T. Gilbert; 1940s art ©2007 Nelvana Limited. All rights reserved.]

This Space For Sale (Left:) A “Scott Stewart, Planet Pilot” splash, clearly done near the end of Bell’s comics run, since artist/writer Jerry Lazare dated the art “’46.” (Above:) You, too, could have joined the Rex Baxter Adventurers Club!

The Great Canadian Comic Books

Some Very Active Super-Heroes These covers for Active Comics #3, 6, & 8, supplied by Robert Pincombe (and not featured in the 1971 edition of The Great Canadian Comic Books), show that super-heroes like The Brain and Thunderfist weren’t always considered the most salable features in a given issue of Active Comics. Thanks also to Jeff Taylor, Robert Pincombe, and Stephen Lipson.

Chapter 11

A STABLE OF COSTUMED HEROES Thunderfist? Brain? Nitro? Wing? Polka Dot Pirate? Captain Wonder? Who—or what—are they? A guest list to a costume party, or someone’s scratch sheet? No—they were Bell Features’ stable of costumed super-heroes. Reading their adventures today is comparable to reading ancient mythology—in content, at least. When reading comic stories, you must take the same grand leap of faith back to the days when they were living legends. During the Golden Age of comic books, in the early 1940s, costumed heroes, affectionately nicknamed “nightshirts” because they ran around in something like long underwear, were the American comic books. What was Action Comics or Detective Comics without Superman or Batman? Or Whiz without Captain Marvel? Or Timely (later Marvel Comics) without Captain America or The Human Torch? Meanwhile, in Canada the costumed hero took second place at Bell Features behind detective and war stories. Costumed hero stories were mainly “fillers,” and rarely took lead position in a book.

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Thunder And Frightening Artist Murray Karn drew a fairly realistic African-Canadian in this “Thunderfist” story, but the writing, alas, was straight Steppin Fetchit. Like many another feature, this one had a heavy Alex Raymond/Flash Gordon influence. The hero, who resembled the Quality hero The Ray, looked better in black-&-white, where you couldn’t see that his torso and legs were evidently supposed to be bare!

While American super-heroes operated in a cosmic sphere, their Canadian counterparts preferred the coziness of the fairy tale or daydream. They were naïve—bound to the personal feelings and wishes of their author, and cast in a bizarre mold by his subconscious fears. Someone, hero or villain, won on nearly every page. The artwork for “The Brain” and “Captain Wonder” always remained at a rudimentary stage of development. Ironically, the essence of great comic books is the primitive style of the artwork. This is what gives them universal appeal; anyone, regardless of age or education, can read them and be entertained. Comic books are the Esperanto of the semi-literate. They provide a short cut to the pleasures of art, and many of the artists who drew the Canadian Whites were good at shortcuts. Enter “Thunderfist, the Crime Crusher.” The artwork by Murray Karn made him the slickest of all the Canadian costumed heroes. Thunderfist was actually Randy Steele, who worked tirelessly on strange electrical inventions. He created, for instance, “a bullet-proof uniform charged with hundreds of electric volts powerful enough to kill a dozen men at once.” “Thunderfist” featured an uncanny mythology of technology and weaponry, which he used as the keys to world salvation. In one adventure, he captured a machine that “will win the war for our country” (the atomic bomb as an ultimate weapon was the realization of this myth for the 1940s).

The Great Canadian Comic Books

Masks, Capes—And Polka Dots Pages from Ross Saakel’s “Captain Wonder,” Leo Bachle’s “The Brain,” and Ross Mendes’ “Polka-Dot Pirate.” The Brain’s alter ego was Gordon Bell... clearly a third Bell Brother! Thanks to Jeff Taylor for the “Brain” scan.

“The Brain,” a super-hero of another ilk, was concerned more with the supernatural. While a famed hero of the First World War lay dying, he addressed his thoughts to a friendly spirit: “Like freedom, I’ll never die—my spirit will live on in my son.” Hence, The Brain, dressed in a weird disguise, and armed with a power to visualize faraway happenings, set to work in 1939 to destroy Nazi agents operating in Canada. “Captain Wonder” was created by Ross Saakel and was modeled after the US’s “Captain Marvel.” “An old yogi” invoked three ghoulish gods who endowed our hero with the “strength of a hundred men, great wisdom, and speed, the power to fly like a bird, and swim like a fish.” Into the night soared Captain Wonder to battle the likes of Dr. Frank N. Stein, Satan, and Sin Lee, the narcotics king. In one crazy adventure of “The Wing,” artist Jerry Lazare contrived to introduce her to his other costumed property, “Nitro.” Answering a sudden cry for help along “Capital Cit’’s cold docks,” The Wing is surprised and held at gunpoint. When asked to explain her silly wardrobe, she replies: “Why, I’m Little Red Riding Hood, and I’m looking for Peter and the Wolf. I’ve met the Wolf, are you Peter?” Her retort was folkloristic, but The Wing was face to face with reality. The Wing proceeded to rescue “the costumed jerk” held prisoner. Then she discovered he was Nitro—himself a victim of a disconcerting costume. While The Wing was able to use her magic cape to fly, Nitro was unable to make his own costume function at all—not even to conceal his identity. Nitro was a victim of the marketplace, dressed in costume because such heroes did great business at the corner candy store.

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

Chapter 12

DETECTIVES It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid-October with the sun not shining, and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder blue suit with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well dressed detective ought to be. —The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler Only to discover and disclose is detective’s duty. —Charlie Chan “The Penguin, mysterious defender of justice and enemy of crime, is devoting his entire energy to fighting saboteur rings within our country.” Heralded by this bombast, The Penguin, high-flown hero of a detective strip in serial form, first came on the scene to strut his stuff

If This Pair Had A Son, Would They Call Him “Nitro-Wing”? Jerry Lazare (seen above at the 2004 Toronto con) wrote and drew the super-hero series “Nitro” and “The Wing,” and pulled off a bizarro crossover in one issue of Joke Comics, where the latter rescues the former— who refers to himself as a comic book character! Jerry (a.k.a. Gerry) has gone on to a career in serious and illustrative art, as detailed in A/E #36. Photo by Roy T.—if memory serves.

in Wow #15. Tight story lines combined with the practiced pens of artist Adrian Dingle made “The Penguin” one of the finest strips in the Canadian Whites. Edmund Legault’s entry into the war and the subsequent loss of “Dart Daring” and “Whiz Wallace” to Wow Comics (the strip did continue through issue #17, with “Whiz Wallace” drawn by H. Thomson in that last disappointing effort, “Whiz Wallace vs. The Spymaster”), left a vacuum that was more than adequately filled by Dingle’s well-dressed detective. “In those days the white tie was still in vogue for evening wear, and this gave him a Jimmy Valentine quality,” Dingle says. “I thought that by making him into a penguin—after all, penguins, if you see them walking around, do resemble men in white tie and tails—gave it a quality in those days. So he just wore a hood and kept his identity a secret.”

At The Speed Of White At various times, Ted Steele’s “Speed Savage” had two totally different looks in his alter ego as White Mask—first, just a mask, cape, and hat (as shown in A/E #36), and later a full-scale costume, with the skull formerly used as his lapel pin moved to his forehead. But this mask sure doesn’t look white to us! From Triumph Comics #29, as reprinted for an exhibit by the Extension Services of the National Gallery of Canada (no date given).

The Penguin’s identity was kept secret from his readers, and Dingle often went to artless lengths to conceal “that” face from his fans. Certain well-intentioned characters within the strip might stumble onto The Penguin’s identity (Simon Snurge, a friendly American in Wow #18, and Cherry Dawn in #17), but it was not until Wow #30, the last black-&-white issue, that the man under that beneficent beak was revealed to be Bruce Baron, a name that meant next to nothing to

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Penguin Books “The Penguin” was, at least visually, one of the most unique features in Canadian comics, as written and drawn by the talented Adrian Dingle. Seen here, clockwise from above left, are the cover of Wow Comics #16— the hero’s very first splash page—a panel in which The Penguin enters a den of iniquity (gee, how’d those hoods know it was him?)—and a bored-looking bird going into action.

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

—“Drummy Young,” who looked suspiciously like his youthful artist-sponsor, Jerry Lazare, and even more like Jungle Jim (an early Alex Raymond hero), was a young band leader cum crime smasher who beat out his rhythms on criminal heads. The stories highlighted great “skates” (young ladies) and a score of contemporary musical references. —“Mister Totem,” an orphan issue of a supernatural sleuth, received his insights into crime through communion with Totem poles. —“Nels Grant,” a “hard-boiled dick,” was inked by artist Adrian Dingle with scripts by J. Spreggit. —“The Dreamer,” the Master of Morpheus and the Satan of Sleep, was blessed with the power to foresee in dreams the actual conclusions to the criminal cases in which he had become involved. —“Hugh Dunnit,” a more fanciful detective who in his restful moments resembled Adrian Dingle, was drawn by Avrom Yanovsky. —“Clue Catchers,” a detective strip for younger audiences, was drawn by Adrian Dingle and written by his wife Patsy (who signed herself “Pat C”) and included a fireside “show and tell” feature at the conclusion of each episode.

You May Say I’m A Dreamer… But I’m Not The Only One The Dreamer was featured on the cover of Wow Comics #26. Art by Jerry Lazare. In some ways, this hero may have been a precursor of DC’s mid-’70s Sandman or Marvel’s Nightmask in its 1980s “New Universe.”

Dingle’s disappointed clue catchers. This unconvincing secret was to die with the old Penguin, for he emerged next in color in Slam Bang Comics as The Blue Raven, “glamour boy of ’46,” only to vanish quickly as the Bell industry dissolved. Ted Steele put The Shadow’s wraith-like presence and skull talismans together with a name first coined by Fred Guardineer in Detective Comics #27—“Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator”—to create the figure of a “brilliant young criminologist and athlete . . . known as Speed Savage, The White Mask.” Despite Steele’s crude but effective drawing style, the story emerged as far more than just another casebook super-shamus. Using familiar Canadian locales, such as Pine Lake, a resort in Northern Ontario, the ski slopes of BC and Quebec, and the Scarborough bluffs in Toronto, Steele kept his gumshoe close to home, and in addition fielded a super crew of badmen to test his sleuth’s powers. In Triumph #8, 9, and 10, Speed fought The Hunchback, and, after trading in his cloak and hat for boots and tights in Triumph #15, he went on to punish The Black Raven, The Boogie Woogie Murderers, The Lightning Menace, and The Fire Witch. Ted Steele was also responsible for several episodes of a private detective named “Grant Randall,” significant if only because he bore a remarkable resemblance to Inspector Wilson, a character in the previous issue’s “Speed Savage” story. There were several other detective characters which rate more than a passing glance:

We all collect something—stamps, theatre programs, shoes, letters, railroad timetables, enemies, dust, or just memories. Collectors are born with the disease and are now exposed to a new virus, the mania for the collecting of collecting. Currently the collecting of collectors is a growing fad. Unknown and sometimes aberrational men and women become sought-after celebrities when it is revealed that they have assembled mounds of historic mustachio cups or antique toilet seats. At the age of three, I had a treasure drawer in our kitchen cabinet, and my collection of disparate objects was viewed kindly by my parents until the day I snatched my father’s paycheck and put it in my play money box. Now I collect selectively—slot machines, pre-Columbian artifacts, old Christmas tree ornaments. However, in the beginning, I collected everything. When I was eight, I wore a beanie hat cut from my father’s old fedora. It clanked with buttons and sat on my head like a stone. Jughead, who started as a minor character in the comic strip Archie, wears such an abomination today. The splendor of my headgear was in no way jeopardized by the fact that a World’s Darling Genuine Shirley Temple (“A Reliable Doll”) button rested amid the general riot of metal. Buttons were buttons and comic books were comic books, and we collected them all. My beanie hat featured a Willing Worker button, a Vote for Conacher in Bracondale button, and a red metal Canadian Pat. 344668 Rutabagas Tip Top Branch Blackwater Association stick-in tab from the end of a turnip bought at Loblaw’s. Plus buttons of sports figures, Grube of the Chicago White Sox with his eyes rubbed away to the metal, Xmas Seal buttons, a Dutch Cleanser Clean-up button, plus rarities such as a 1925 Ontario Licensed Driver button. Other buttons pinned to the felt gave me membership in Brown’s Bread Rainbow Ranch, The Jungle Club of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh India, and The Junior Red Cross. Despite these exclusive associations with high-

The Great Canadian Comic Books

Take Five A plethora of splashes featuring different types of Canadian detective features. (Clockwise from above left:) “Nels Grant, Private Investigator” by Spraggett & Dingle—“The Dreamer” and “Drummy Young” (a bandleader detective!) both by Jerry Lazare—“Mister Totem” by Paul Dak—and “Hugh Dunnit, Private Detective” by “Armand.” Well, maybe The Dreamer was actually more of a super-hero—but Hirsh & Loubert lumped him in with the sleuths, and who are we to argue with them?

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

diamond, which, to quote the card, was “the size of a small house” and is, in fact, a Rosedale mansion. A drawing which puts comic strips directly on course, for comics allow children to sublimate natural avarice into adventures so preposterous that there is room for fantastically greedy dreams.

minded organizations, I still persisted in both collecting and voraciously reading comic books. Comic books provided a solid base for our fantasies. They paved the way to Saturday. The ultimate day. The Saturday matinee, with two full-length movies and an episode from Jungle Jim, Clyde Beatty in Darkest Africa, Tim Tyler’s Luck, and other serials—all of which were moving comic books.

When I was a kid in Toronto, the comic books you read depended on the district you lived in.

Radio further sustained us and of course was closely related to comic books and comic strips such as Flash Gordon, The Lone Ranger, Superman, and many more. The best radio series started at four in the afternoon, Monday to Friday, a time calculated to appeal to kids whose minds had turned to sand after a day of arid school books. But radio had to compete with baseball, fighting, bike polo, and all the other attractions of that free period between supper and homework. A comic book could be carried anywhere. It was like a map or a guidebook to vicarious thrills. It required no lining up to enjoy, and one didn’t need to sit in front of the cathedral radio, ear pressed to the speaker, volume turned down to a whisper (parents never approved of radio serials) to get the message. Comic books were portable and easily scanned while waiting a turn at bat or staking out Mr. Properpeck’s apple tree. After comic books, the other major collecting area was the numbered serial cards that came with gum, candy, or cigs. Some of these productions were classy. The Kings of England cards produced by the O-Pee-Chee Company featured highly stylized drawings and provided a history lesson on the back in, of all things, rhyme. Such as, “Henry the Third was that poor freak/A king we speak about as weak.” The Imperial Tobacco Company offered many educational efforts—“Birds, Beasts, and Fishes,” “Dogs,” and The Reason Why cards. The World Wide Gum Company of Montreal sold Big League Chewing Gum Cards, Hockey Picture Gum, World War Gum, and Ice Kings cards. You could collect pictures of movie stars on the backs of weight machine cards and in British Educator Biscuit Company products. Tarzan, produced by the Canadian Chewing Gum Company, was the big item. Tarzan’s popularity in films and comic strips carried over to card trading. Card #48 of “Tarzan and the Crystal Vault of Isis,” part of the incomplete set that I own, shows Tarzan and two guys in jungle suits standing in front of a gold set

In Swansea, Batman, Superman and the ultra-Americans were #1 on the trade parade. Yet when I lived on Peterborough Avenue and went to Regal Road Public School, the English weekly boys’ papers Champion, Triumph, and even Pilot, topped the polls. The St. Clair and Dufferin District in Toronto was an English neighborhood of fish and chip shops and Cockney accents.

No Nirvana For Nelvana Adrian Dingle’s cover for Triumph Comics #30 features Nelvana, who became the inspiration for the name of Michael Hirsh’s film company. Nelvana Limited is now owned by Corus Entertainment. With thanks to John Bell.

I could never see why it was important to be first to read a comic book, but at that time, newness counted. Then, as now, trading was the accepted way of covering the field and, sensible though it was, the guy who had the lolly to sashay into a shop and buy a brand-new-stamped-in-the-cornerthat-very-day-by-the-store-owner comic book was king. There were other ways of reading comics besides borrowing and trading. One was to go in for pop and look through the books, but you could only drag out the drink so long before the shopkeeper asked if you were going to buy the comic, as he affectionately brushed the sign prohibiting casual browsing through his stock. The trading of comic books generally was a fairly straightforward affair (unlike stamps, which could be easily palmed or otherwise filched). Comic books were a large item and traded like cars in special lots in the schoolyard. Occasionally you would get some mark who would give twofor-one on an unpopular item, but generally, as in trading of gum cards, it was one-for-one and beat-up condition mattered little as long as the book still hung together.

All In Black-&-White For A Dime Edmond Good’s cover for the first issue of Dime Comics spotlighted science-fiction hero Rex Baxter—but a British agent and Johnny Canuck were on hand, as well!

I have always loved comics and still do, though I think they have deteriorated in the hot rays issuing from television screens. Some comics are genuinely creative. Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy is a work of minor genius. The drawing is masterly in its distortion and disdain for traditional perspective and proportion. The plots and characters, despite a marked rightist tone, are uniquely eccentric.

The Great Canadian Comic Books

Action In War—And On The Ice The covers of Commando Comics #3 and Active Comics #20 (by Edmond Good and Adrian Dingle, respectively) were seen in color in the 1971 edition of The Great Canadian Comic Books. Looks like Active Jim got signed up by publisher Cy Bell’s Panthers hockey team! Isn’t it time that some enterprising Canadian concern reprinted the entire Hirsh and Loubert book?

In the old days comics meant something. Al Capp’s Sadie Hawkins Day became an annual high school dance and was a real treat because the girls had to pay. A chocolaty soft drink was named after Kayo, the bowler-hatted, bureau-drawer-sleeping star of Moon Mullins. And everybody knew that Vitamin Flintheart was really John Barrymore. Presently, even though the Western World seems to be programmed entirely for the entertainment of children, you can still catch your kids one-eyeing the blob tube as they skim through comic books. They exist like blind bugs between the plastered lathe of television on one side and the wallpaper of comics on the other. In the face of the ultra color superscreen TV fare, the continuing appeal of comics is remarkable. There is, as with radio, a quality of do-it-yourself to comics. You still have to turn the page. As yet, turn-ease comics have not been invented. Added to this slight physical labor is the temporal time jump necessary for the reader to cover the precipitous forward acceleration of the comic strip. Between one drawn square and another there is always action that we know must be there but is left out. A comic artist cannot draw everything. If he did he would be making a movie. I think the ultimate appeal of comics is this interdiction of the action by a palpable frame and a considerable jump forward in time. The separate frames of a comic strip, even though they are sliced from the story like baloney and are pasted flat on the pulp with little depth of color or perspective, are essentially linear in effect. Comic strips are really paper chases with the story dropped from the artist’s hand piece by piece. I was ten when I drew my first comic strip. Usually a week passed in the new school year before I was thought of as the classroom artist.

Other aspiring artists in the room would inevitably pass about their specialty drawing—a naked lady with blimpish boobs, or a profile drawing of Tillie the Toiler, a comic character which for some inexplicable reason was easily copied by kids who couldn’t draw flies, as we said then. I had one foolproof ploy for this repetitious expertise—I would immediately circulate a drawing of an Indian on a horse. Horses were tough to draw! Then I moved through elephants to airplanes, complete epic battle scenes, and as a clincher, tossed off a really horny drawing of a naked lady with splendid pubic detail. I drew on anything that didn’t move and quite a few things that did, including my arm, which always bore a just-fired pistol, an anchor, a crest, or Fu Manchu’s evil face. On other kids’ arms I drew for coin of the general collectivity—bites of candy bars, apples, and hard goods, such as marbles and yo-yos. Believe it or not, I had a script for my first comic strip, a typewritten script done for me by a kid in the class who always, to my callow presence, seemed terribly old and strangely world-weary. He claimed to write for Liberty magazine, a fact somehow never verified, especially by his Lit marks. Nevertheless he did deliver a manuscript. And I started to draw a comic strip. Little did I know that nine years later, during the summer holidays of my first year at the Ontario College of Art, I would be doing such work for money. I got the job through Jean Townsend, a Toronto artist who was then taking a post-graduate course at OCA. She sent me to see two nice guys at Double A Whiz Comics on a street just below the Toronto Art Gallery. I took in a portfolio of pen and ink drawings and some typical

The Classic 1971 Work On The Bell Comics Company—Reprinted In Its Entirety!

What If George Freeman Turned A Kirby Cover Into An All-Canadian Caper? This issue’s cover has two talented creators, with both US and Canadian content: (Left:) The basic layout, as many eagle-eyed readers may already have noticed, was based on Jack Kirby’s pencils for the cover of Marvel’s What If? #9 (June 1978), which postulated what might’ve happened if The Avengers had been formed in the 1950s, composed of Marvel Boy, Venus, one-shot characters The Living Robot and Gorilla-Man—and retro-hero 3-D Man. With thanks to John Morrow and the Kirby Estate. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.] (Right:) Three of the most famous Canadian super-heroes, seen left to right in this slightly alternative black-&-white version of this issue’s cover drawn by Canada’s own George Freeman, are: Captain Canuck, the creation of Richard Comely who had his own comic book from 1975 to 1981—the late Vindicator (née The Guardian), created by John Byrne as part of his all-Canadian “Alpha Flight” group—and the ever-lovely Wolverine. Logan, of course, was actually developed by US talent, not Canadians—but hey, it’s all in the North American family, right? And besides, a number of Canadians have drawn him since 1974! [Captain Canuck TM & ©2007 Comely Comics; Vindicator & Wolverine TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

student life drawings and was hired, even though they told me my drawing was too fancy for comic strips. I was hired at $18 a week, but it could’ve been less. They gave me paper, ink, a drawing board, and a script. I could see that speed was of the essence in this trade, and I knew instantly that I didn’t have it. I went the other way and tried for class. I remember, my second day on the job, asking the boss how Minute-Man entered the secret chamber to find Hati Hari plotting with her henchmen and was told, “Hell, don’t worry about that. The kids know he can find his way in or out of anything.” It was an important lesson. Keep the story moving, don’t bog it down with details. The main problem with my work on this strip was that I foolishly persisted in trying to put human expressions on Minute-Man’s face. I was told to cut the faces out of the master sheet and paste them on the bodies. I just couldn’t bring myself to do this, which is strange for someone who later spent so many years making collage. Yet, in those days, I saw nothing wrong that Baron Hour with his Bonds of Slavery was abusing the Canadian public, the Canadian Army, and the Canadian printing industry, and all the dialogue in the blurbs referred to them as Americans. I assume that the copyright of Fawcett Publications was so powerful and sacrosanct that Canadians just had to become Americans. When I look back, I realize now that, despite King George VI and the Rudyard Kipling haze that blurred our vision, our dream then was the American Dream.

My second go at a complete story of Minute-Man was ended abruptly on page 28 when the boss took me quietly out among the stacks of magazines at Sinnott News and told me my comical days were over. Though I ran up the curtain on what could euphemistically be called my brave front, I was hurt. Not because I saw the firing as a slight to my ability, but because I knew I could eat the comic strip trade alive. I was starting to feel heat. I was no longer nervous, and the last two pages I did of Minute-Man are equal to anything they had published. In fact, the very last frame has Minute-Man shaking the evil out of a gangster he is holding over his head—a drawing both dramatic and comic. I collected my stuff, picked up my minuscule cheque, and left to become a deck hand on the oil tanker Cyclo Chief and ended up as the ship’s painter. But that’s another story. A/E EDITOR’S NOTE: Original authors Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert thanked the following people for help with their 1971 book: John Crichton, Patricia Cullen, John Ezrin, Irving Goodman, George Henderson, David Kaler, Sam Levine, G.P. Loubert, The National Gallery of Canada, and “Norman the Farmer.” It was originally published by Peter Martin Associates Limited, 17 Inkerman Street, Toronto 5, Ontario, Canada.

“A beauty of a book, a must for the growing legion of fans of an art that stands as a legitimate bridge between high and low culture.” —Toronto Star, Nov. 12, 2006.

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“The Last Remaining Guy On The Ship” Comics Writer AL SCHUTZER On Freelancing In The Golden Age Interview Conducted by Jim Amash

Transcribed by Brian K. Morris

orn January 3rd, 1922, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Al Schutzer is one of the more educated writers the comic book business has known. And one of the more unknown, as well. One of the most difficult things in judging who did what in the Golden and Silver Ages of comics concerns the scripting. Writers hardly ever got a byline. and it’s tougher to discern different writing styles in comics than art styles. Luckily for us, writer David Hajdu (whose upcoming book The Ten-Cent Plague: Comic Books, Crime, Kids, and the Birth of Postwar Popular Culture will be must reading) told me about Al Schutzer’s comic book career and gave me his contact information. And here’s Al to tell you the rest. —Jim.

“[Writing] Was Something… I Could Make A Living At” AL SCHUTZER: I was always interested in writing. It was something that I was good at, I could make a living at, and I had other options. I could have got into engineering or God knows what else. But writing was always an old interest. It was always there. I got a Bachelor’s degree in English at Brooklyn College, and my Master’s at New York University. I also studied Mechanical Engineering for a while at the University of Oklahoma. JIM AMASH: Engineering? Were you torn about making writing a career? SCHUTZER: I was in a specialized training program in the Army where they sent GIs to various universities for special training. It was called the Army Specialized Training Program, and at a certain point they closed the program down. They discovered that they were losing a hell of a lot more infantrymen than they had planned on losing. The great General Marshall had miscalculated. To solve the problem, they took a full generation of college-age guys who were in the Army in the various Engineering and Language programs, and just rolled them over into the infantry.

Faraway Places With Strange-Sounding Names Al Schutzer’s been keeping busy in his retirement, as you’ll read near the end of this interview; the above photo was snapped in 2002 in Tianammon Square in Beijing, China, with the Mao Zedong Museum in the background. Since Al doesn’t recall details about precise comic book issues and stories he wrote, we’ve juxtaposed the snapshot with a splash from a series he co-created; he probably wrote this page from Magazine Enterprises’ Dogface Dooley #5 (1951), which has its own exotic locale and delights. Artist unidentified. Thanks to Rod Beck for the scan, and of course to Al for the photo. [Art ©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

JA: Were you drafted, or did you volunteer? SCHUTZER: I was drafted into the service May 3, 1943, and served for three years. JA: How much about your war experiences do you want to talk about?

SCHUTZER: War experiences? I have a Purple Heart, I have a Bronze Star, and I was once Missing In Action. But I don’t know if there’s any point going into too much detail about it. It’s a long story. Ancient history. I was a staff sergeant in combat in the European Theater of Operations. I was in a rifle platoon in Company A, 410th Infantry

Comics Writer Al Schutzer On Freelancing In The Golden Age

Regiment, the 103rd Division, Seventh Army. We landed in Marseilles, about October 20, 1944. And we went on line November 11. We ended up in Innsbruck, Austria, before the war ended. We were with a tank infantry spearhead and about a mile outside of Innsbruck when we stopped. The reason: the Mayor of Innsbruck had taken a taxi out to meet us and surrender his city.to us. The offer was accepted. And that’s why that beautiful old city was not destroyed in combat. JA: What were your thoughts when you first heard about the atom bomb being dropped on Japan? SCHUTZER: I had no objection then, I have no objection now, because I think the casualties in Japan would have been horrendous if we had invaded. I was in Innsbruck when the war ended. I ended up in the Army of Occupation. JA: What did you do once you were discharged? SCHUTZER: [chuckles] I got out of the Army. I took a couple of weeks off, then I did a stint as production manager for a small fashion magazine, and I started getting my Master’s degree at night at NYU [New York University]. It was too much, holding a job down and getting a degree, so the job went by the board and I got the Master’s. You want to know what my thesis was on? “The Dramatic Technique of John Millington Synge,” the Irish playwright.

“We Were In High School Together” JA: You were great friends with Ivan Klapper, who was a comic book editor and writer. Tell me about him. SCHUTZER: Ivan was a wonderful guy, very bright, very talented; terrific sense of humor. We were in high school together, in the same class. It was Ivan, myself, George Rabin, and Bill Gaines. I don’t know if you know how the comic book industry originated. Bill’s father was Max C. Gaines. He was advertising director for the Borden Milk Company [NOTE: ?] and he used comic strips in his ads. One day it occurred to him to put a book together, consisting of nothing but comic strips. He put those books on a shelf in a candy store on Avenue U in Brooklyn. And they sold out overnight. So that was the beginning of the comic book industry. But you were asking about Ivan. JA: Yes, but let me extend that to Bill Gaines, too. What was it like going to school with those guys? SCHUTZER: Well, Bill Gaines was a diamond in the rough—bright, very down to earth, nothing phony about him. Ivan was sports editor of the high school newspaper. George Rabin was our staff photographer. I suppose I was good in languages and mathematics in high school. Also, I did some writing in high school, everything from poetry to articles for the paper. We also had two Nobel Prize winners in our class. One was Robert Solow, the economist, and the other one was Stanley Cohen, a biology researcher. Ivan and I were close, George and Bill Gaines were close. Bill Gaines used to have the use of his father’s 30-foot cabin cruiser, and the four of us used to go out on it quite often in Jamaica Bay and managed, one time, almost to turn the boat over. It was a good period in our lives. JA: I didn’t realize that Bill’s association with Ivan Klapper went back that far, though I knew Klapper had been an editor for EC

Soldiering On Here are a pic of Al a few years earlier—and another splash from Dogface Dooley #5. Of the photo, Al writes: “We had broken through the German main line of resistance in Alsace on March 15, 1945, and then headed for the Rhine. This picture was taken in April, when we went into Division reserve in Eberbach, Germany, a town on the Neckar River, not far from Heidelberg. We had a peaceful, restful 10 days or so when this picture was taken. Then we went back on line and the fire fights started up again. A lot of good guys died before the war ended on May 8—in Innsbruck, for us.” Photo & art courtesy of Al and Rod Beck, respectively. [Art ©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

Comics in the ’40s. SCHUTZER: Educational Comics? They used to put out Picture Stories from the Bible, and similar stuff. A very successful publishing operation. Ivan did a very brief stint up there and then left. I suspected at the time that he and Bill couldn’t get along together in the office, but I don’t know what the reason was. I know Ivan parted company with Educational Comics at a certain point. JA: What was Bill’s father like? SCHUTZER: He didn’t really have that much to do with us. He was sort-of a closed-mouthed guy with strong minded opinions. You know how he was killed, don’t you? JA: Yes, a boating accident on Lake Placid. SCHUTZER: Do you know who was at the wheel of the boat? It was Judge Proskower’s daughter, and she rode over him. They never found his body.

“The Last Remaining Guy On The Ship”

Ivan, but I wouldn’t swear to it. Oh, Ivan and I put together a prospectus for a TV program, by the way. Unfortunately, it never sold. Of course, that was after the time period we’re now discussing.

“[Fox] Went Out Of Business Owing Me A Thousand Bucks” JA: Right. So here you were in 1948: you’ve got your Master’s degree, and you’ve got to make a living. So what did you do?

Bill “Capital” Gaines Al’s boyhood friend Bill Gaines at the height of EC Comics’ fame (and infamy, as in “Congressional subcommittee”)—and the cover of one edition of his late father M.C. Gaines’ pet comic, Picture Stories from the Bible. The latter had taken that title with him in the mid-1940s when he sold his share of AllAmerican Comics to the owners of DC. After Bill inherited EC, all the series initiated by his father were soon phased out in favor of crime, horror, science-fiction, and war comics. Photo from the indispensable EC reference volume Tales of Terror! by Fred von Bernewitz & Grant Geissman, published by Fantagraphics Books & Gemstone Publishing (2000). [Art ©2007 William M. Gaines, Agent Inc.]

JA: Let’s get back to Ivan Klapper. SCHUTZER: He had a great sense of humor and was a bright guy, very confident. He also came up with the idea for a very successful TV program about the supernatural, the program Rod Serling ended up writing [Twilight Zone]. It was a program about events that take place for which there’s no rational explanation. He created it, but I think Ivan lost control of it to the big-time operators in Hollywood. But he continued supplying material to them for quite a while— research—and I suppose he had some kind of financial stake in it. I don’t know how big it was. Will Eisner used to do comic book training books for the Army [PS Magazine], and I think he and Ivan were friends. I think Eisner farmed out a lot of work to

SCHUTZER: I started writing comic book stories. Ivan was freelancing in the comic book industry. He told me which comic book outfits were looking for material, and he gave me a sample script. So I did a little research, and it was the first and only time I wrote anything on spec. I went up to Fox Features Syndicate, handed them the script, and I was delighted to find out they decided to buy it. They told Ivan that it was an excellent job, and they wanted more stuff from me. JA: Fox folded around the end of ’49 to early in ’50, I think.

SCHUTZER: Well, they went out of business owing me a thousand bucks.

Beetlemania Two 1946 splashes for features Al Schutzer would write when he began working for Fox Features circa 1948-49— “Blue Beetle” and “True Crime.” These pages appeared in, respectively, Blue Beetle #51 (Dec. 1946) and #56 (no date—either 1947 or ’48). Thanks to Bruce Mason. [Blue Beetle is a trademark of DC Comics; other art ©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

Comics Writer Al Schutzer On Freelancing In The Golden Age

SCHUTZER: They paid $7 a page. That was standard for the industry, except for Fawcett Publishing, who paid about $14. JA: That’s a big difference. [chuckles] I heard this story; maybe you can tell me if this is true. I’ve talked to two artists who worked at Fox at this time, and both of them told me that the editors made them give kickbacks. SCHUTZER: I never had that problem. JA: Did you ever meet Victor Fox? SCHUTZER: Yes, I met Fox and also his manager there, a guy by the name of—I think it was Ganz, but I wouldn’t swear to it. JA: What did you think of Victor Fox? SCHUTZER: I had really minimal contact with the guy, so I can’t tell you anything about him. JA: Tell me about their offices. SCHUTZER: They were located on 42nd Street, opposite Grand Central Terminal. They were right in the heart of Manhattan. For me, it was opening a door, and from there I went on to better things. JA: You were stiffed for a thousand dollars because they went bankrupt, and then you started working for other companies. Who else did you work for? SCHUTZER: Magazine Enterprises, Toby Press, Fawcett—and I may have worked for some other ones I don’t remember. Have we mentioned Crestwood Publishing? I wrote men’s magazine articles for them around 1950. I don’t think I did any comic book stuff for them. JA: Since you had gone to school with Bill Gaines, why did you not try to get work from him at EC?

It’s A Dogface’s Life! A third splash from 1951’s Dogface Dooley #5, published by Vin Sullivan’s Magazine Enterprises. With the third of the five issues, the comic’s topline read: “Girls, Gags & Goofy G.I.s!” Thanks again to Rod Beck. [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

JA: Everybody got stiffed by Victor Fox. SCHUTZER: A thousand bucks was a lot of money in those days. JA: I guess that would be like about $10,000 now, at least. Was Ivan just writing there, or was he editing there? SCHUTZER: Writing. JA: Do you remember who the editor was? SCHUTZER: Hy Vigoda. I had no problem with him. He was buying my stuff. As fast as I could turn it out, he was buying it. JA: Do you remember what features you wrote for Fox? SCHUTZER: I wrote True Crime, but the others, I don’t remember them at all. JA: They had Phantom Lady, Blue Beetle, Crimes by Women... a lot of titles that were almost borderline salacious. SCHUTZER: I’ve no recollection of it, exactly, though I don’t think I wrote Phantom Lady. I believe I wrote some “Blue Beetle” stories. I wrote a lot of gangster stories, and spent a lot of time researching them in the public library. JA: Do you remember how much they paid per page?

SCHUTZER: I did go up there once, and I think it was after he and I had parted company. I gathered that Bill didn’t want to work with any of the people that he knew from high school. He just wasn’t open to that, maybe afraid that we would think that we’d be doing work because of our relationship with him. I just went up there once, and I got the feeling that this wasn’t a market for me, and I never went back.

“It Was Just A Matter Of Creating Storylines” JA: Let’s talk about Magazine Enterprises. You worked for [editor] Ray Krank? SCHUTZER: Yes, a very nice guy. I don’t know that [publisher] Vin Sullivan dealt with either writers or artists. Ray Krank, I think, was a one-man operation. I think I may have gone up there only once or twice. I believe they were down in the City Hall area. I wrote Straight Arrow and Bobby Benson’s B-Bar-B Riders. Ray Krank wanted a war series, so I created and wrote Dogface Dooley for him. I was under the impression that Ray Krank had two writers: myself and Carl Memling. JA: I know that Gardner Fox did some writing for him. Tell me about Ray Krank. Was he around your age? SCHUTZER: My impression at the time was that he was about forty or so, but that’s just a wild guess. He was a very nice guy to do business with. JA: Not too demanding, then? SCHUTZER: [laughs] I won’t accept that. In a lifetime of writing, I think I’ve had maybe one or two bounces, tops, regardless of which field I was working in. I don’t remember getting a bounce from Ray Krank. They were happy with my work, and he would occasionally

“The Last Remaining Guy On The Ship”

pass along a comment that Vince Sullivan had made: that he liked something or he thought it was funny, or something like that. Of course, I used to quite frequently jazz up my stuff with a little humor. JA: Straight Arrow and Bobby Benson were popular radio shows. Did you ever listen to them? SCHUTZER: No. I knew Western vocabulary, phrases like “drygulch”—to dry-gulch somebody was to ambush them. “Ranahan” was a ranch hand. It was a whole vocabulary that I developed, most of which I don’t remember today, of course. JA: Were you the regular writer on these series? SCHUTZER: For the most part. I did as much as I could. Once, Ray Krank asked me to write a series based on readers who were writing in with their dreams. And he wanted me to analyze their dreams. When it started out, I had to write the original letters myself. After that, the letters started coming in, which Ray forwarded to me. They just stuck it in their comic books, I’d imagine. I suppose you’d call it a filler feature. You want a laugh? The byline was “Crystal Ball.” JA: Did you have any proprietary feelings towards any of the characters because you were doing them in a regular series, or was it just a job?

Dire Straights Fred Meagher drew—but we dunno who wrote—this page from ME’s Straight Arrow #54 (Feb. 1956), as reprinted in an Australian black-&-white comic. Thanks to Mark Muller. [Straight Arrow TM & ©2007 Nabisco.]

SCHUTZER: No, I was an independent contractor and didn’t get any ownership. I didn’t get credit in the books, either, though my name was always on my manuscripts. JA: Did you have a particular affection for a character if you were writing him on a regular basis? SCHUTZER: No affection, I don’t think. It was just a matter of creating storylines. JA: How detailed were your scripts? SCHUTZER: Well, you’d have to describe the scene and the action. You start out with your splash panel, your splash legends, page 1, and then box 1, 2, and 3; and then you’d describe the scene, and do the dialogue. After that you’d have to lay out the following pages, visualizing each box in words for the artist and writing the dialogue. I never had any complaints, let’s put it that way. JA: Did you have any contact at all with any of the artists who drew your stories?

Another Kid Cowboy Nope—we’ve no idea whether Al S. wrote this story from Bobby Benson’s B-Bar-B Riders #4 (1950), but it does come from the period when he was writing for ME. Art by Bob Powell. Thanks to Michaël Dewally. [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

SCHUTZER: No. JA: Did you care that you didn’t get a byline? SCHUTZER: I was indifferent to it.

Comics Writer Al Schutzer On Freelancing In The Golden Age

SCHUTZER: No, I never met Carl. I suppose Carl was doing the same thing I was: doing comic book writing for the money, and had other interests. I had other interests, and at that time, if your career objective was to be a comic book writer, you were in big trouble. Carl eventually became President of the Bank Street College of Education, I think it was called. It was located down in Greenwich Village. I think they’re still in business. JA: How long do you think you worked for Magazine Enterprises? SCHUTZER: Several years. I wrote for them as long as I wanted to write for them. I wrote for each one of my clients as long as I wanted to write for them.

“I Wrote The John Wayne Series” JA: You also worked for Toby Press and you dealt with Elliot Caplan. Did you go into the office very often? SCHUTZER: As a matter of fact, I did get up there more often than I did at Ray Krank’s place, simply because it was located in midtown Manhattan, which I always found fascinating. Caplan was easy to work with. As long as they thought my stuff was great, there was no problem. [mutual laughter] I would mail in a synopsis, and get an approval. I did that with everyone. And they weren’t long synopses, usually a very short paragraph.

Drawing The Duke This b&w page of exquisite art for an issue of Toby’s John Wayne Adventure Comics was drawn by the artist that collector Steve Whitaker refers to as “the severely underrated Gerald McCann.” We’d have to concur. [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

JA: Did you have to sign any rights waivers or anything like that? SCHUTZER: I think possibly on the back of some of the checks that you had to sign, depending on the outfit. But I wouldn’t swear to it. Well, you talk about what I thought of it, that I didn’t get a byline. At one point, I was writing under three, four, or five different pseudonyms. [Jim chuckles] It wasn’t until I started writing for a medium that I was happy with that I started getting a byline. JA: These pseudonyms, were they for comics or the men’s magazines? SCHUTZER: No, that came later. With the comics, what you did was you’d bill them. JA: Did you check out your stories, once they were published, to see how they looked? SCHUTZER: No. Only rarely did I get a printed copy of something I’d written. JA: On the rare occasions that you saw the work published, did you have an opinion? SCHUTZER: Nothing special, nothing special. JA: Earlier, you’d mentioned Carl Memling. Did you know him at all?

“The Last Remaining Guy On The Ship”

JA: So there were never any editorial conferences, or any co-plotting with your editors? SCHUTZER: No, that would have meant you were in trouble, that they weren’t happy with the manuscripts that you gave them. If conferences became necessary, they would have shown you the door and told you to forget it. JA: Do you remember what you wrote for Toby Press? SCHUTZER: I wrote the John Wayne series. There was other stuff that I did for them, but the only one that sticks in my mind was John Wayne. When I ran out of ideas, I adapted the Greek myths for a Western setting, and John Wayne starred in them. And nobody was aware of it. [mutual laughter] At one point, I told Elliot Caplan what I had done, and he was really stunned and surprised. He thought it was hilarious, too. He had a woman at his office who used to handle all the financial details. I don’t remember her name, but she was really a wonderful person. They once paid me four hundred bucks that they didn’t owe me. They’d already paid me for the scripts and I gave them back the check. And they were delighted when I did it. JA: There was also an editor there named Mel Lazarus. SCHUTZER: I didn’t know him. I only dealt with Elliot. JA: Since John Wayne was, let’s face it, such a famous character, was there anything that you could or could not do? Did they give you any restrictions? SCHUTZER: No, I had no restrictions. Every story was seven to ten pages long.

“Things I Wrote For Fawcett” JA: Let me ask you about Fawcett. Was Roy Ald the man who hired you? SCHUTZER: “Hired” is the wrong word, Jim. They didn’t hire you as a freelancer; he bought stuff from you. Roy Ald was a very shrewd, sharp guy, and was a writer himself. There are reading editors and there are writing editors, and he was both. Roy was a very bright guy, and he ended up with all kinds of projects. One time, he called me in and asked me to ghost-write Dave Weegee’s autobiography. Weegee was a famous photographer. The book was called The Naked City, and eventually, they put it on TV. Weegee was an awful human being, but he took some great pictures. Well, I wrote the first draft of his autobiographical book, but it went through a number of hands before it finally got into print, so that was that. Roy was always coming up with projects. JA: So you wrote for their magazines as well as their comic books. SCHUTZER: I eventually did a number of feature articles, classic crimes, hoaxes, confidence men, and so on, for True Magazine. And I also wrote for their Mechanix Illustrated. The feature editor up there initially was Larry Sanders. When the editor-in-chief’s job opened up, they passed over Larry and picked a guy by the name of Bob Beason. Larry was very unhappy about it, and I think that’s when he started his first novel, and he quit Mechanix Illustrated. He became editor of Science & Mechanics. I wrote for him there, too. JA: What else do you remember about Larry Sanders? SCHUTZER: I keep using the phrase “a very nice guy.” But he was. He had come up through the men’s magazines the same way I had. It’s quite possible he wrote comic book stories before he went into

A Boyd In The Hand Hopalong Cassidy #80 (June 1953) was one of the 85 issues published by Fawcett, before the license passed to DC with the Feb. 1954 edition. (Gee, we wonder what happened right about then!) The hero, while taking his name (and not much else) from Clarence Mulford’s series of novels, is primarily known today from the 1930s-40s films starring William Boyd—who eventually had his own separate Fawcett comic. But the two of them never met in a crossover! [©2007 the respective copyright holders.] The writer of this particular story is uncertain, but the art is by Maxwell Elkan, with thanks to Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. Jim and his buddy Hames Ware will be covering Elkan’s career soon in their “Great Unknowns” series.

magazine writing. You had to keep moving up. You had to go to a higher level each time, Jim. You know, a lot of people have tried to write comic book stories, but they couldn’t, and if you stayed at that level, you were in big trouble. JA: When you wrote comic books at Fawcett, did you write the Westerns, like Hopalong Cassidy, for instance? SCHUTZER: Now that you mention it, I did write Hopalong Cassidy. Yeah, I’d forgotten completely about it. [mutual laughter] I wrote Hopalong. God knows what else I wrote for them. JA: Okay, so you think you wrote Westerns for Fawcett, then? SCHUTZER: Well, that was one of the things I wrote for Fawcett. The other stuff, frankly, I just don’t remember. JA: Were you familiar with Hopalong Cassidy before you wrote the comic book? SCHUTZER: Oh, I think everybody was. I remember going to a Hopalong Cassidy movie.

Comics Writer Al Schutzer On Freelancing In The Golden Age

JA: Yes, I know. He was a difficult personality to deal with. Did you find him that way? SCHUTZER: I’d say so. A very bright guy; difficult to deal with. JA: He particularly liked to give his writers a rough time. SCHUTZER: That’s why I say I wrote a few “Superman” stories, but not many. JA: Did you quit because of him? SCHUTZER: Well, it just wasn’t working out. No, I think they paid very well, too. JA: Weisinger was the sort of guy who liked to plot with his writers. Did you do that with him? SCHUTZER: I went in to see him a couple of times. JA: Is he the only person that you worked for at DC? SCHUTZER: Yeah, I didn’t do that much work for them. JA: Was that in the early ’50s? SCHUTZER: I don’t know the exact date at which I moved from one medium into another. And there was some overlap between writing comics and men’s magazines.

“I Never Hid The Fact That I Was Writing Comic Book Stories” JA: A lot of people in those times wouldn’t admit publicly that they were doing comic books because they were either ashamed of it, or because there was a certain stigma attached to comics. Did you feel that?

Super-Showoff William Woolfolk, not Al Schutzer, scripted “The Man Who Stole Memories!” in Superman #75 (March-April 1952)—and Edmond Hamilton wrote the other two Supes tales in the issue—but if you scribed the Man of Steel’s adventures in the early ’50s, this is the type of story you wrote! Pencils attributed to Al Plastino. Thanks to Michaël Dewally. [©2007 DC Comics.]

Timely/Marvel And DC JA: You said you may have written for some other companies. Did you ever write for Timely, which later became Marvel Comics? SCHUTZER: I don’t know. It really makes me wonder if Magazine Management Company ever put out comic books. JA: That’s who published Timely, Magazine Management. SCHUTZER: I remember doing an awful lot of work for their men’s magazines. It’s possible that I wrote for their color books, too, but that’s faded into the past. JA: What magazines do you remember writing for at Magazine Management? SCHUTZER: I think they had Man’s Magazine, and God knows what else they had. The editor I worked with was Noah Sarlat. Bruce J. Friedman was there, too. JA: Did you ever work for DC Comics? SCHUTZER: I did a couple of “Superman” scripts for them. Not many, but a couple. I worked with editor Mort Weisinger, who had problems of his own.

SCHUTZER: I never hid the fact that I was writing comic book stories. I knew there was a certain stigma attached to it, that people were down on that kind of writing. And what I knew was that a lot of people tried it, and an awful lot of people couldn’t do it. JA: You quit doing comic books around the mid-’50s. Do you remember the Senate investigations into comics that were on television? SCHUTZER: Yes, that’s what killed the industry. JA: Were you working in comics when those investigations were going on? SCHUTZER: No, by the time the comic book industry took its beating, I had scooted off into something else, and was completely not associated with them. JA: How did you feel about the Senate investigations? SCHUTZER: Well, I was very detached from comics by then, but I later learned, when I went back to pick up some work, that there’d been an awful lot of suffering on the part of those who worked in the business. But at that particular point, I was out of it completely and out of contact. JA: Tell me about George Axelrod. SCHUTZER: I think he was the guy who was a comic book writer, and later ended up as a screenwriter. He wrote a novel, too. He wrote the screenplays for The Seven-Year Itch and The Manchurian Candidate. And, if I remember correctly, he was the guy who made no bones about the fact that he started out as a comic book writer.

“The Last Remaining Guy On The Ship”

“I May Start Writing Again” JA: So once comics were completely behind you, were you writing strictly for men’s magazines? SCHUTZER: No, I was writing for the how-to magazines, primarily Mechanix Illustrated, and I may have done one or two pieces for Popular Mechanics. I think that was the extent with Popular Mechanics. JA: How long did you write for men’s magazines? SCHUTZER: I don’t know. I was writing for all kinds of magazines in the field, like True Detective, Escapade, and Man’s Magazine. I was writing for just about everything you could write for. And on the same basis. You submit what would probably be a synopsis, and go from there when you got an okay. You know, so much that I did was just passing stuff that I don’t really remember.

years, until I retired in 1995. I was a Senior Editor there. JA: What have you done since? SCHUTZER: Well, I freelanced Medical Economics for a while, but I’ve been mostly retired from writing. I went back to college to learn how to play piano. and I’ve taken up golf. But I may start writing again. JA: What’s making you feel like writing again?

Cart Blanche Al Schutzer and grandson, Matthew Guichard.

SCHUTZER: Well, I always felt guilty when I wasn’t writing. JA: When you wrote for Medical Economics, that’s such a change from the kind of writing you were doing before. You must have had to do a lot of research. SCHUTZER: Yeah, but you had to do a lot of research when you did stuff for True Magazine or American Heritage or the book The Great Civil War Escapes. I was doing research all along for the stuff I wrote for the magazines. As far as Medical Economics was concerned, I researched everything thoroughly. They had fact-checkers, too. JA: Were there any other comic book people that you knew that we didn’t talk about?

JA: What other kinds of writing have you done over the years? SCHUTZER: Well, there was a book called Great Civil War Escapes, published by G.P. Putnam & Sons. Then there was an article I wrote for American Heritage, which was published in October of 1964, called “The Lady Killer.” And I had a short story published in Manhunt magazine.

SCHUTZER: Oh, I can’t think of any. There was an editor who was up at, I think, the Simon and Kirby office or Crestwood, by the name of Dixon. Harold Straubling was at Crestwood Publishing, editing men’s magazines. They had a very shabbylooking office, but evidently they were doing well. I wrote men’smagazine adventure articles for them; then I started writing general articles for them. JA: What do you remember about Straubling? SCHUTZER: At one point, he quit and went out to California, and he started editing out here. I think he was editing soft porn magazines, and he got in touch with me a couple of times. He wanted me to write some stuff for him, but I wasn’t particularly interested. I was busy, and I don’t know if I had the time or interest in doing stuff for soft porn magazines. But I think he was doing well. He was editorial director for a publishing company out here, I think located on Sepulveda Boulevard. How long ago did he die?

JA: You eventually quit freelancing, didn’t you? SCHUTZER: In 1967, I put together a résumé of the titles of the articles I’d written and the periodicals in which they’d been published, and sent it in as a reply to an advertisement in The New York Times for a writer. The advertiser, Medical Economics magazine, called me in and hired me on the spot. They were delighted to get me, and I wrote every kind of article under the sun for them: travel articles, car articles, professional money management and investment articles, for about 28

JA: I don’t know. I just know that he’s gone.

On The Straight An’ Arrow This action-packed splash page is taken from Magazine Enterprises’ Straight Arrow #28 (Jan.-Feb. 1953). Art by Fred Meagher; thanks to Bob Bailey. [Straight Arrow TM & ©2007 Nabisco.]

SCHUTZER: Yeah, sometimes I get the feeling I’m the last remaining guy on the ship.

“One Minute Later!”

Report On An Offbeat Approach To Art Commissions by Michael Finn fter 34 years of comic book collecting here in England, I branched out into original art only a few years ago. I quickly realized I could never afford the wonderful Silver Age covers that excited my younger self decades ago—but I was amazed to discover that I could commission artists to re-create those pieces. However, I wanted the illustrators to be able to demonstrate their own originality, rather than do a line-for-line re-creation. What to do? Inspired by two great theme collectors—Chris Caira, who collects villains displaying their trophy walls, and Brian Sagar, who focuses on having Marvel Two-in-One artists re-create famous MTIO covers and scenes—I came up with the idea of a “One Minute Later” theme.

I would commission artists to draw a scene which takes place one minute after the action depicted on the original cover. My goal was to have an homage of sorts to covers I loved, but also to allow talented artists ample room to improvise. I launched my theme re-creations by focusing on a number of Invaders and Invaders-related covers. (Of course, all heroes and villains depicted in this piece are TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.). So we’ll call this first assemblage:

Part I

THE INVADERS The Avengers #71 (Dec. 1969). All right, so the original cover (bottom left) predates The Invaders by half a decade. Still, it was writer/editor Roy Thomas giving penciler Sal Buscema (with inker Sam Grainger) a chance to draw Timely/Marvel’s 1940s “Big Three” battling a trio of Avengers, and is a favorite cover of mine. For the “One Minute Later” sequel, I turned to G.I. Joe artist Josh Medors, who turned in the fantastic piece directly below. The amount of detail he put in to getting the Eiffel Tower right really makes the piece sing!

“One Minute Later!”

The Invaders #2 (Oct. 1975). This issue, whose cover (at right) was penciled by Rich Buckler (inker uncertain) featured aliens who imagined they were Teutonic gods right out of Richard Wagner’s operatic Ring Cycle! Because of his long history of drawing sword-wielding barbarians, I thought Ernie Chan would be the perfect artist to depict a battle-axe-swinging Norse god. The character placement is spot-on! Bucky is recovering nicely, but poor Toro is falling to the ground! (The art was colored by pro artist Chris Ivy.)

An Offbeat Approach To Art Commissions

The Invaders #6 (May 1976). The original cover (at left) is by Jack Kirby, with inking by Joe Sinnott, of course—The Invaders vs. the spanking-new Liberty Legion. I chose long-time Captain America artist Ron Lim, who had drawn a “Captain America” story featuring the modern-day return of Jack Frost. This way, he got to handle Jack back in his World War II glory days, plus others of The Liberty Legion, my favorite ret-conned team. Inks by Chris Ivy.

“One Minute Later!”

Marvel Premiere #30 (June 1976). This cross-over issue with Invaders #6-7 sports one of my favorite covers of all time (eyes right!)—penciled by Jack Kirby and inked by Frank Giacoia. And longtime Marvel and DC inker Chris Ivy did not disappoint! He not only made the action “One-Minute Later,” but did the same for the scenes on The Red Skull’s video monitor—and even added his own word balloon and text. I can’t say enough nice things about Chris’ work.

An Offbeat Approach To Art Commissions

The Invaders #7 (July 1976). The original (at left) was another classic by Kirby & Giacoia, introducing Baron Blood. I chose DC artist David M. Beck (Jonah Hex, et al.) to depict the Invaders/Blood battle, and he did a phenomenal job of showing the fight on the ground, once Cap and Baron Blood landed. When he found out I live in London these days, he made sure to add one of the famous city landmarks.

“One Minute Later!”

The Invaders #9 (Oct. 1976). Kirby pencils again, and inking probably by Giacoia, with Baron Blood and new hero Union Jack tossed into the mix. For those who don’t know, Spanish artist Benito Gallego is the illustrator on Anthem, Roy Thomas’ alternate-WWII comic for Heroic Publishing—so I asked Benito to depict what happened after Baron Blood surprised the team in the caverns. And Benito showed exactly why he is a real up-and-comer!

An Offbeat Approach To Art Commissions

The Invaders #16 (May 1977). Another Kirby/Sinnott classic (see left) reinterpreted. Mike Grell is well-known for his “Legion of Super-Heroes,” Warlord, Green Arrow, and other DC work, not to mention his own Jon Sable - Freelance. Well, I always wondered how Mike would handle Marvel characters—and he showed me! But boy, Subby sure is fighting dirty!

“One Minute Later!”

The Invaders #35 (Dec. 1978). This is another instance in which I was able to have the original cover artist, the great Alan Kupperberg (who’d been inked on the original cover by Joe Sinnott), depict how the heck The Invaders were going to catch up with The Whizzer…. and he did.

An Offbeat Approach To Art Commissions

Captain America #254 (Feb. 1981). Another Invaders-related cover (at right), though this time in a modern-day setting. There was no choice here: the original cover and interior art to this issue were done by John Byrne (with inks by Joe Rubinstein), and it brought the curtain down on Baron Blood. I had originally wanted Spitfire included in the “One Minute Later” version— but, continuity buff that he is, John reminded me that she was overweight and superpowerless at that time. I left the image entirely to John, as long as it featured Cap and Union Jack and Baron Blood. John chose to render one of the most powerful scenes in the entire storyline, one originally seen only in shadow. Another winner— reproduced from John’s pencils. With special thanks to Jim Warden and DOA Art (contact them at doa1@erols.com).

Oh, and Roy said to remind you that there’ll be more to come! For one thing, I’ve recently commissioned a beautiful wraparound “One Minute Later” version of the cover of Marvel Two-in-One Annual #1 (1976), starring The Thing and The Liberty Legion—and a couple more Invaders follow-ups to boot! And I’ve got a bunch of others up my (and of course the artists’) sleeve that aren’t related to The Invaders, as well! Michael Finn is also working on a charity book with the Hero Initiative organization, featuring sketches done in 3 minutes or less which he collected from greats like John Romita, George Perez, Dick Ayers, Neal Adams, and many others. All proceeds from sales of both the book and the original sketches will go to benefit the Hero Initiative, which makes monetary grants to longtime comics professionals in need. You can reach Michael at michael.f.finn@gmail.com and Hero Initiative at www.heroinitiative.org

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Kooky Krossovers! (Part 1) By Michael T. Gilbert

arry Allen, the Silver Age Flash, first met Jay Garrick, his Golden Age counterpart, in DC’s Flash #123. Barry’s predecessor supposedly lived on “Earth-Two,” an alternate dimension adjacent to our own. This historic September 1961 crossover proved so popular that other DC heroes soon got into the act, especially in the pages of the Justice League of America, where such crossovers became an annual event. Eventually DC’s heavy-hitters battled heroes from a number of alternate comic book “universes,” including those of Marvel, Charlton, and Fawcett. And in JLA #207, DC’s heroes met Quality’s Freedom Fighters. Discovered on “Earth-X,” the newly-formed group consisted of Golden Age greats Uncle Sam, The Human Bomb, The Black Condor, The Ray, Doll Man, and Phantom Lady. Most readers naturally assumed this October 1973 gathering was the first such pairing of Quality characters. However, that wasn’t quite true. In fact, the first such crossover occurred decades earlier in Quality’s Uncle Sam Comics #2 (Winter 1941), in a bizarre tale entitled “The Villains’ Revolt!” The story isn’t credited, but may have been illustrated by Mad magazine’s Dave Berg and written by Will Eisner.

Kooky Krossovers! (Part 1)

The four-page tale, told entirely in rhyme, features a very clever premise. Basically, what would happen if all the villains in the comic books went on strike? Disaster, as it turns out! Without baddies, how can heroes be heroes? Goaded on by a Bolshevik-style rabble-rouser, all the comic book villains march in a picket line, carrying signs that read “Unfair to Organized Villains!” and “We’ve Taken It on the Chin Long Enough!” Hmph! Troublemakers! Without fiends to fight, The Ray, Black Condor, Firebrand, Quicksilver, Joe Hercules, and other Quality Comics heroes are soon reduced to standing on the breadline (literally!), as a disgusted Uncle Sam looks on. To make matters worse, the vile villains also kidnapped “all the artists in the Comic factory,” threatening death to any who dare draw heroic heroes! Oy! Lacking good role models, the kids go wild, and even refuse to eat their oatmeal! Tsk! Can you imagine? Soon even the schools close down, until Uncle Sam steps in and sets things straight. You’ll have to wait till next issue to see how Sam finishes clobbering the creep! But right now, let’s check out a second Kooky Krossover –– featuring Archie Andrews and his old MLJ cronies!

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

The Not-So-Mighty Crusaders! In the wake of the hugely successful Batman TV show, the folks at Archie Comics decided to hop on the super-hero bandwagon. For much of the 1940s, MLJ (as the company was then known) had published comics starring The Shield, Black Hood, and dozens of other super-folks. Then Archie took over and—poof! Most had vanished by the late ’40s. But in 1965 Archie Comics brought back their old heroes under their Mighty Comics imprint, banding them together as The Mighty Crusaders. Most fans thought this was the first time MLJ characters had gathered together in one story, but the truth was far kookier!! Check out this charming story from Pep Comics #58 (Sept. 1946) by Katy Keene Kreator Bill Woggon, featuring the unlikely team of Super Duck, The Shield, Archie, Jughead, Wilbur, The Twiddles, Suzie, and Dotty & Ditto. Hey, even The Black Hood and Katy Keene get a mention! Who thought we’d ever get to see Katy’s creator draw The Shield? It’s a dream come true for comic fans! But wait! There’s more! During the Golden Age, the MLJ characters were all pretty chummy, plugging each other’s books and appearing together on many covers. They weren’t shy about promoting new characters, including future superstar Archie Andrews. When Archie made his debut in the back pages of Pep #22 (Dec. 1941), he didn’t even rate a mention on the cover. But by winter 1942 the carrot-top “Mirth of a Nation” had his own solo title and was also cover-featured in Pep, starting with issue #36 (Feb. 1943).

Shielding Dotty and Ditto Bill Woggon drew the kooky “Dotty and Ditto” 4-pager (seen at bottom of this page and the opposite one) for Pep Comics #58 (Sept. 1946). But his most famous creation, “Katy Keene,” debuted in Wilbur #5 (Summer 1945). This cover is from Katy Keene #12 (Sept. 1953). [©2007 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Kooky Krossovers! (Part 1)

Wonder If The Problem Was QUACKtonite?! For most of his career, Super Duck was just a cheap Donald Duck knock-off, as the cover of Super Duck #31 demonstrates. (And yep, that’s Hitler and a Japanese leader he’s manhandling—er, duck-handling.) But the “Cockeyed Wonder” originally started out as the vitamin-fueled super-hero we see depicted in Higgins Woik’s cover to Super Duck #1 (Fall 1944). Super Duck, a creation of cartoonist Al Fagaly, had first appeared a year earlier in Jolly Jingles #10 (Summer 1943). The Duck’s final appearance was in Super Duck #94, Dec 1960. Not a bad run! [©2007 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

The Pep Generation (Above:) Harry Sahle’s cover for Pep Comics #35 (Feb. 1943) had Archie Andrews being carried by The Shield and The Hangman. This was the first Pep cover to feature Archie, but the MLJ heroes also appeared with the immediately-popular teenager on subsequent covers, including #41-43 (Aug.-Oct. 1943). Note the blatant plugs for Archie’s radio show in issues #42 & 43! Also of interest: Harry Sahle’s Pep #41 cover, depicting Archie knocking out “Gloom”—while The Shield’s pal Dusty and The Hangman read a copy of Pep Comics in the first row. [©2007 Archie Comic Publications, Inc.]

At first, Archie shared covers with Pep’s resident super-hero The Shield, the book’s star since issue #1. Later the red-haired troublemaker took over completely. Quite a kooky turnabout! Next issue: Find out what happens to Dotty and Ditto in part 2 of our Kooky Krossovers! Plus Uncle Sam and more kooky Pep covers! Till next time...

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In Memoriam

Arnold Drake

(1924-2007) “The Urge To Write Something Wonderful Was Undiminished” by Mark Evanier business matters. He was a loud voice in a writers’ revolt during which several of the firm’s longtime freelancers demanded health insurance, reprint fees, and better pay. Many of them were ousted, including Arnold. He worked for a time at Marvel before settling down at Gold Key, for whom he wrote many comics, including The Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and a particularly long and delightful stint on Little Lulu.

rnold Drake, one of comics’ most acclaimed writers, died on the morning of March 12, 2007. He collapsed a few days after attending the New York Comic Book Convention (Feb. 23-25) with, as they said at the time, “a touch of pneumonia.” Complications were found, and he never left the hospital. During his career, he wrote all the major characters for DC Comics, but distinguished himself especially with his co-creations “Deadman,” “Doom Patrol,” and “Stanley and His Monster.” He was also known for long stints writing the comic book adventures of Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis, most of which were drawn by the also-recently-deceased Bob Oksner. Drake was born on March 1, 1924. At age 12, a bout with scarlet fever kept him confined to his bed for a year. He spent much of that time drawing his own comics. Though he later did some cartooning, he found his primary interest was not in drawing characters but in deciding what they’d say and do. His interest in writing led him to study journalism at the University of Missouri and later at New York University.

Arnold On Patrol Arnold Drake may have passed on, but his creations live on. Here he’s seen at the 2000 All-Time Classic New York Comic Book Convention—flanked by a splash page from The Doom Patrol #98 (Sept. 1965). Art by Bruno Premiani. Thanks to Joe Petrilak for the photo, and to Bob Bailey for the page scan. [DP page ©2007 DC Comics.]

Then he met Bob Kane, official creator of “Batman,” a neighbor of Arnold’s brother. He worked with the artist on a few projects, and Kane introduced him to the editors at DC Comics. Drake was soon writing for such DC fare as House of Mystery, My Greatest Adventure, Space Ranger, “Mark Merlin,” “Batman,” and “Tommy Tomorrow.” Most of his creations in the 1960s came about because an editor said to him, “This comic is in sales trouble and needs a new feature.” My Greatest Adventure was down in sales, so Drake, working with artist Bruno Premiani and fellow writer Bob Haney, invented “The Doom Patrol.” Strange Adventures was in sales trouble, so Drake, working with artist Carmine Infantino, came up with the acclaimed Deadman character. The Fox and the Crow was down in sales, so Drake, teamed with Bob Oksner, fashioned “Stanley and His Monster”—a highly imaginative kids’ comic that contained many of the elements of the later newspaper strip Calvin and Hobbes. But Drake was a feisty guy who had trouble getting along with editors. In the late ’60s, he fought with the management at DC, partly over what he considered inept editorial direction and partly over

Arnold wrote other things, including plays, movies (Who Killed Teddy Bear?, The Flesh Eaters, et al.), and novels. In the 1950s, he authored a long comic book in book form called It Rhymes with Lust for a small publisher and later touted it, with some justification, as the first graphic novel. (Dark Horse will soon reissue it.) He also worked extensively with a group called the Veterans Bedside Network, writing materials to aid in the rehabilitation and nursing of men and women who’d served in the armed forces.

Very active on the comics convention circuit in recent years, Arnold crusaded for the industry to establish a Bill Finger Award. Finger, hailed by Drake and others as the unbilled co-creator of “Batman,” died in poverty, and Arnold felt there should be an award to shame people and companies that mistreated talent. In 2005, quite independently, a Bill Finger award was created to honor veteran writers who had not received proper recognition for their work. The first recipient of the award was Arnold Drake. I was privileged to get to know Arnold and to spend many a convention panel and telephone conversation hearing him discourse on his favorite subject in the world, which was creativity. At the time of his death, he had several projects in the works, and the urge to write something wonderful was undiminished. We are all a little worse off that Arnold isn’t writing, and I can’t begin to measure what those of us who considered him a good friend have lost. Mark Evanier is a longtime writer for TV, comics, and other media.

The WHO’S WHO of American Comic Books (1928-1999) FREE – online searchable database – FREE http://www.bailsprojects.com No password required

A quarter of a million records, covering the careers of people who have contributed to original comic books in the US. Created by Jerry G. Bails “Firebrand” by Reed Crandall, from Quality’s Police Comics #6 (Jan. 1942). Thanks to AC Comics. [Firebrand TM & ©2007 DC Comics.]

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editor Ralph Macchio recently invited me to script an adaptation of the 1891 Oscar Wilde novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which is of course the source of your literary reference—to follow those of The Last of the Mohicans, Treasure Island, and The Man in the Iron Mask in its new Marvel Illustrated series. Getting paid to adapt deathless prose and images from classics of literature—now that’s my idea of a good time! (Not that adapting Robert E. Howard and Bram Stoker wasn’t every bit as enjoyable. Just call me The Super-Adaptoid!) Not long after A/E #58 appeared, I was surprised to receive this communication from one Steven E. McDonald, which shed additional light on the almost-X-Men-film of the 1980s: Dear Roy— I purchased Alter Ego #58 purely for the material on the 1984 Orion X-Men movie [project], being rather curious about the history of that version for entirely personal reasons. I found your conversation with Gerry Conway to be very amusing and interesting, and rather more revelatory than I expected. I had for many years been under the impression that you and Mr. Conway had put in considerably more work on drafts of the screenplay (which is not to say that you didn’t do hard labor; I know how that goes), but had worked in vain because the story-as-was couldn’t be produced for anything close to a reasonable budget (I was told the best-hope budget was $35 million, but that it would take at least $50 to pull it off), and there was no hope of getting you rolling on a page-one overhaul.

hane Foley drew the above illo of our “maskot,” the superhero yclept Alter Ego, and Michael T. Gilbert’s modern-day version of Mr. Monster, to lead off this issue’s letters section. It’s an homage to the late Canadian artist Fred Kelly’s one and only splash panel of Mr. Monster, drawn for a 1940s “Doc Stearne” story—see p. 32 for the original! Thanks, as always, Shane! [Art ©2007 Shane Foley; Mr. Monster TM & ©2007 Michael T. Gilbert; Alter Ego hero TM & ©2007 Roy & Dann Thomas.]

Now, abandoning (as usual) the editorial “we” for the more personal “I,” here are some long-delayed comments on A/E #58, which featured a pulsating potpourri of material, beginning with coverage of the mid-1980s X-Men movie that never quite was, as discussed by then-screenwriters Gerry Conway and Yers Truly. First, a note from Gerry himself: Hi Roy— Thanks for making me sound halfway intelligent in the X-Men movie interview. With my tendency toward run-on sentences and Valley-speak, I’m always afraid I’ll come off like a perfect idiot when transcribed. From the interview, it sounded like we had a lot of fun working together. And, as I remember it, we did. BTW, looking at those 25-year-old photos [from the Roy & Dann Thomas nuptials of May 3, 1981], I’m wondering why you haven’t changed and I have. You got an old Bill Everett sketch of your younger self moldering away in a closet somewhere? Gerry Conway Funny you should ask, old buddy—maybe that’s the reason Marvel

Which is to say, hi, hello, I’m Steven E. McDonald, and I’m the guy who came in directly after you stopped at Orion. I ended up in that interesting position because of a relatively casual Friday meeting at Orion that was essentially scouting for work possibilities from a friend of mine who had taken over development there. As it turned out, she was feeling a little glum about things, as Orion was, at that point, staggering like a punch-drunk fighter, and there weren’t a whole hell of a lot of possibilities, and a whole hell of a lot of properties with issues. For some reason one of your Conan film outlines got shoved at me (damn, that was a dense document!), and I think there was a comment about being familiar with both of your names and your work in comics. And then she said, “Do you know anything about X-Men?” I allowed that I did, mentioning some examples. “We’re trying to get an X-Men movie going,” she said, “but we’ve hit some major problems.” She showed me some of the existing work, talked about the issues (particularly with budget), and said, flat out, that your script was officially dead, but that they still wanted to do the picture. They just couldn’t do that particular story, or any variation of Krakoa, or, in fact, a lot of stuff. They were hoping to have a budget around $12 million (which didn’t seem that horrible to either of us, given her indie grindhouse production background and other factors), and it seemed to her that I had good credentials for the job (familiar with the comics, thought of as a damned fine writer, and very likely cheap enough; that thought amuses me, as Roger Corman once moaned that he couldn’t afford me… actually, it would have amused me no end to write something for Roger). We proceeded to have one of those spiraling discussions that turn out very fruitful, and pretty much what we came up with was a pageone approach—with the key word being “simplify.” Xavier, a relatively small team (which would have included Marvel Girl, issues with the Phoenix storyline be buggered—that could be tackled in the third sequel in 1992!) that excluded Angel and likely would have left out Iceman as well, although I did want at least one version of The Beast on hand. The Big Bad would be Magneto, and the struggle would be about ideologies, with plenty of punching and exploding and so on. We didn’t get into the story beats at that point, but we definitely were on a roll, and I had a weekend to think about it. Monday morning the deal memo would get drawn up with my agent, Monday afternoon I’d be back in the office to kick the ball around with more of the people involved.

[comments, correspondence, & corrections]

NB: I go by “David Alexander McDonald” these days, but my byline remains as above when it comes to the word. Music, though, is under the preferred name. Steven E. McDonald Fascinating to learn about the further behind-the-scene machinations on that doomed project, Steven, a.k.a. David. Hopefully, one of these issues, Gerry and I will also be discussing in detail our work on the movie that became Conan the Destroyer circa 1983. There are far more good tales to tell than just the true story (in A/E #58) of how singer Grace Jones got the role of Zula! Next, another Steven—veteran comics writer Steven Grant— weighs in with information which puts a considerably different spin on oft-repeated anecdotes concerning the origins of Marvel’s Dazzler comic, to which Chris Irving referred in his article on the Conway/Thomas X-Men screenplay: Dear Roy— In his summary “Children of the Atom,” Christopher Irving suggests The Dazzler was created as a Bo Derek vehicle. This is dead wrong. She was created right around the time I started doing work for Marvel, late ’78. I had just moved to New York City, in the midst of an acute apartment shortage there, and was living on Roger Slifer’s sofa. Roger, then a Marvel editor, came home one day with a new assignment: fleshing out a Jim Shooter creation called “The Disco Dazzler.” I don’t recall whether Casablanca Records (which at the time was the undisputed champion of the by-then-fading disco craze) approached Marvel or vice versa, but Casablanca wanted Marvel to create a character that their biggest star, Donna Summer, could perform as at arenas, while Marvel would publish a comic about her at the same time.

X-tra! X-tra! Read All About ’Em! Two mutants who weren’t likely to be in anybody’s movie of The X-Men are siblings Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. Newcomer Dave Cockrum drew this pin-up for Marvel’s own fan-mag FOOM (Friends Of Ol’ Marvel) #6 (June 1974)—where it accompanied an “interview” with The Avengers’ butler Jarvis, since Wanda and Pietro were often members of that group. Our special tribute issue to Dave Cockrum will be published in early 2008. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

What actually happened, of course, was that my agent got the call on Monday morning to get started on the deal memo, and by noon I was getting a call from my friend at Orion to tell me, horribly upset, that the X-Men movie had been put into turnaround that morning, along with a bunch of other properties Orion had been developing, and that it was all over and done with. I don’t think it was too much later that Orion was gutted and parts of the corpse wound up sold to Carolco. That, of course, gets into the whole nightmare of rights in Hollywood, and who owns which piece of what at any given time. That’s my trivial tale told, anyway, to give you a little capstone to your story of your time in the X-Men salt mines. It does amuse me that Bryan Singer’s version cut close to what I proposed back in 1984, though there are some differences (aside from more money, even given the inflation over the years). It’s entirely possible we wouldn’t have had even one Blackbird, never mind two, and there would have been no Mystique. Magneto would have been younger, of course—Goddess help me, mate, but I think that would have been Malcolm McDowell if at all possible. I suspect Irene Cara might have been mooted as Storm… I don’t know; casting thoughts weren’t our big priority, obviously (Iona Morris, the daughter of Mission: Impossible’s Greg Morris, would have been brilliant, in my opinion; I’m not the only one to think this, as she did voice Storm in the Fox X-Men series), so this is speculative stuff.

This sticks with me because, according to Roger, I pissed Jim off something fierce because of it. I was then also writing music journalism and reading most of the music industry papers like Billboard on a regular basis, and as soon as Roger told me that idea, I said it was never going to happen. Just that week, I had read (a) the two owners of Casablanca were suing each other for sole ownership; (b) the IRS was investigating the company for tax irregularities; and (c) Donna Summer, the hottest diva in disco, had just announced that she was leaving Casablanca when her contract expired a few months down the line and she was shopping for a new label. Hence… it was never going to happen. As I mentioned, my logic was apparently not well-received at Marvel, and Jim took Roger’s development and fleshed it out into a story that I believe John Romita penciled. Lovely art, portraying a black Disco Dazzler. But then no one ever heard anything more about it, and, after asking, I was quietly told Casablanca had pulled out and the project was shelved. Until a couple of years later (1981, I think), when Bo Derek’s people in the wake of 10, did approach Marvel about the possibility of licensing some character for Bo to play in a movie. Jim dusted off the “Disco Dazzler,” dropped the “Disco” (by then, disco was moribund), pulled out the pages, and had John redraw the heads to turn The Dazzler from a statuesque black woman to a statuesque, long-haired white woman who looked an awful lot like Bo Derek, and made the pitch. (I recall the original Donna Summer version wearing a mask reminiscent of disco goggles. The Bo version had no mask.) For whatever reason, Derek’s people eventually walked away from it, but Jim then pushed The Dazzler into comics, and the existing pages were redrawn again and combined with new pages into the Dazzler special that officially introduced the character. Steven Grant Even if The Dazzler would generally be more in the purview of our fellow TwoMorrows mag Back Issue, Steven, we’re always interested in

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what I could (with the help of Jim Amash, P.C. Hamerlinck, Michael T. Gilbert, et al.) of the faster-fading Golden Age became my top priority, though I strive to maintain a balance. I used to kid artist Sal Buscema, even while asking him for an interview, “You’re too young to be covered in Alter Ego!” (Sal is being interviewed by Jim for a 2008 issue, though, we’re pleased to say.) Speaking of FCA editor PCH: he forwarded the following missive that came to him from artist (and sometimes A/E/FCA contributor) Mark Lewis: Paul— Re the FCA section: I really like the collage cover. You could spend time studying each of those drawings. Lots of Beck goodness going on there. Though brief, I found Mr. Swayze’s column quite interesting, with its art that skirts the edges of “risqué” in a Fawcett book. Most of what he did would be considered tasteful cheesecake now. He seems to be scratching his head about how that one got to press. My suspicion: this came out in 1952, at a point when some of the Fawcett books seemed to be trying to incorporate elements from the horror and crime comics they were now fighting for rack space. Is it possible the editors were under orders to have them do something slightly spicier like this, in an effort to compete?

A Real Bobby-Dazzler! According to Steven Grant’s account, The Dazzler was originally intended to be a vehicle for disco diva Donna Summer (top right)—and was later reshaped for Bo Derek (bottom right)—before debuting in Dazzler #1 (March 1981) as her own sweet self. Art from the trade paperback The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Vol. 2 (1986). Incidentally, the word “bobby-dazzler” is old Australian slang for “a good-looking female.” Which all three of them were. [©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.]

learning new information about how characters and concepts are created and evolve! Now, from Dave Baker, a few appreciative words re Will Murray’s contribution to #58: Hello, Roy— Thanks for including Will Murray’s gem of an article regarding The Hate Monger/Rabble Rouser. Unfortunately, The Human Torch’s solo adventures weren’t presented in the UK. Therefore, I only recently caught up on these stories when I bought the Essential Human Torch volume. Strangely enough, I never noticed the similarities between the two stories. Well done, Will. The article was quirky and held my attention throughout. Please include such items as often as you can. It’s nice to have a few ’60s/’70s features in, though I fully appreciate the reasons for your emphasis on the Golden Age. Dave Baker Wakefield, England Ideally, Dave, I would’ve stayed with my original concept of devoting half of each issue to the Golden Age, half to the Silver Age— and, of course, the latter has a bigger following these days than the former, simply because there are more people around who read and collect Silver Age comics. But I found, as I went along, that recapturing

Beck’s essay was interesting, but his claim that Captain Marvel was not a super-hero strikes me as odd. Even at the beginning, when Cap didn’t fly, he still displayed superhuman strength when throwing around cars and tearing up Sivana’s machines with his bare hands. If a costumed but non-powered Batman is a super-hero, then I’d think a costumed (and super-powered) Cap must also be one by the commonly accepted definition. My guess is that Beck’s insistence that Cap is not a super-hero may be rooted in his later assertion that super-hero stories can’t be humorous. Even if he wanted to dismiss Cap’s stories as not being super-hero stories, how would he explain “Plastic Man,” or the moments of humor Stan Lee incorporated in even the more straightfaced Marvel comics of the 1960s? It’s also necessary to dispute Beck’s statement that he didn’t create Cap. Did anyone else draw an image of the character prior to Beck? If not, then Beck would rightly qualify as Cap’s co-creator. A writer may put some words on the page to describe a character, but a comic book character isn’t fully brought to life until an artist designs his visual. Comics are a visual medium. If Beck had not been involved and the job had been put in someone else’s hands, who knows if anyone would remember Cap today? Beck’s modesty aside, he most certainly had a hand in bring life to Cap. Mark Lewis We couldn’t agree with you more, Mark, concerning C.C. Beck’s being the co-creator of Captain Marvel… whatever he claimed! Richard Kyle stirred a bit of controversy in #58 by disputing the claim often made that the late great Will Eisner was the “father of the graphic novel.” He had this to say—mostly on other subjects—about that May 2006 issue, beginning with a comment on the photos from the 1981 wedding of Roy & Dann Thomas: Dear Roy, Congratulations to you and Dann on the 25 big ones! Though not quite as significant, but significant nonetheless, congratulations on A/E #58. Lots of good stuff in it. “Bob Brant.” Umm… Carl Hubbell’s drawings of the characters look so much like Biro’s Little Wise Guys and Crimebuster and Squeaks, which Hubbell also drew, that it seems too striking to be a coincidence—especially since Hubbell’s wife was a major scripter for Biro, and most likely was the writer here, as well. What was going on?

[comments, correspondence, & corrections]

The story lacks Biro’s customary tightness; otherwise there’d be the temptation to suspect that he had a hand in the strip, as he once had with Hillman’s “Airboy.” Yet what “Bob Brant” seems to attempt in those post-costume-hero days of the 1950s is a series that merges the most visible realistic characters from both Daredevil and Boy into one contemporary non-costume-character strip. And Biro himself was struggling with a very similar problem. Had the Hubbells fallen out with Biro? Had Biro already had a falling out with Gleason and given the Hubbells his blessings? Had…? But I no longer have any comics reference, so I can’t even speculate. [Re the Conway/Thomas Conan the Destroyer casting suggestion:] Yeah, Grace Jones was right on the money. Too bad “X-Minus-One” was never made. Hmm… “Riddle of the Rabble Rouser”… Stan Lee art… the originals ought to command a premium…. Thanks for publishing my Eisner letter. I really appreciate it. There are a couple of typos in it—nothing significant except one: Eisner’s “1966” book on comic art, Graphic Storytelling, was actually his 1996 book, of course. Yes, whether “the first graphic novel was Metzger’s Beyond Time and Again… depends on a precise definition of the term.” But note: what I wrote was that Kyle and Wheary “published the first graphic novel, so labeled [fresh underline]….” And that the ad for the book reproduced on the previous page refers to it as “America’s [fresh underline] first graphic novel.” So, for the moment anyway, I’ll stand by Kyle and Wheary’s claim that it was the first American graphic novel, so labeled.” Richard Kyle 3644 Lewis Av., Long Beach CA 90807-4118 Probably part of the reason Richard clarifies (above) his statement in A/E #58 is inherent in this letter from Italian fan/collector Leo Sa, which he sent to the late Jerry Bails on May 30, 2006, and which Jerry duly forward to me for publication:

Be It Ever So Hubbell… Splash for a Carl Hubbell-drawn “Sniffer and Iron Jaw” story in Boy Comics #115 (Sept. 1955). As lurid crime comics vanished with the coming of the Comics Code Authority, Iron Jaw went from being Crimebuster/CB’s metalmouthed nemesis to a mere comic foil for Sniffer, who’d had his own humor feature in Boy for years; as seen here, the villain eventually even lost his steel bear-trap of a jaw! So why did publisher Lev Gleason and editor Charles Biro keep Iron Jaw around at all? Maybe they just liked the name! [©2007 the respective copyright holders.]

Leo—but alas, Jerry didn’t include any address for him when he forwarded his communiqué. Anybody out there in touch with Mr. Sa? One more comment re the phrase “graphic novel” which has become so prominent in the last few years, this from Michael E. Manny: Mr. Thomas,

Jerry— I don’t have Alter Ego #58, so I haven’t read Richard Kyle’s letter, but for the record (again), Kyle created the phrase “graphic novel” in your own CAPA-alpha, issue #2, dated November 1965, at the end of the “Wonderworld” section. To quote: “Charles Biro coined the word ‘illustories’ to describe his attempts at adult ‘comic book strips.’ EC coined ‘picto-fiction’ for a somewhat similar effort. But I believe there is a good word, already in the dictionary, which does a far better job than either of these. My Meriam-Webster defines ‘graphic’ as ‘of or pertaining to the arts (graphic arts) of painting, engraving, or any other arts which pertain to the expression of ideas by means of lines, marks, or characters impressed on a surface.’ And so, in future issues of Wonderworld, when you find me using the terms ‘graphic story’ and ‘graphic novel’ to describe the artistically serious ‘comic book strip,’ you’ll know what I mean. I may even use it on some that aren’t so serious.” Prior to this, however, the expression had already been used in Portugal in 1939 (that’s 1939) to refer to any comics, in a comic book called O Pirilau, together with “aventura gràfica” (“graphic adventure”) and other variants. The term also appeared as general title or subtitle of many Spanish comics starting at least in late 1958, on the covers of the pocket books of publisher Editorial Dólar, and later on in those of Bruguera and Ediciones Toray. Leo Sa Leo also provided links to “some 1958 Superman Spanish covers with the indication ‘Novelas Gráficas,’” and a “Rusty Riley” from the same period and publisher—even a 1959 girls’ series marked “Sissi – Suplemento de Novelas Gráficas.” We’d have liked to get in touch with

First, let me convey my appreciation and thanks for your fine work over the years and especially for the hard work you obviously put into Alter Ego. That said, I would like to accept the invitation that you extended in #68 to add to the controversy over the first use of the term “graphic novel.” The irony is that DC may have been first to have used the term, in conjunction with one of their publications… specifically, The Sinister House of Secret Love #2 (Dec. 1971-Jan. 1972), whose cover says, “A Graphic Novel of Gothic Terror.” That issue had an on-sale date of Oct. 14, 1971. A variation appears on that of SHSL #4 (April-May 1972): “A Graphic Tale of Gothic Terror.” In the latter issue, the editor (Joe Orlando) states: “Our plan for Sinister House is to present a book-length ‘Graphic Novel of Gothic Terror’ in every issue.” I hope this qualifies as something I can contribute to the history of comics. If so, now all I have to do is convince the powers-that-be that The Defenders #76, with an inverted Comics Code Authority stamp on the cover, is a legitimate variant and should be declared as such. Michael E. Manny 5611 Eagle Sky Blvd. Katy, TX 77449 Lotsa luck with that last one, Michael! As for the “graphic novel” thing—though that phrase was at least several years old by the time Joe Orlando used in on the cover of that awkwardly-titled DC comic, I guess what you’re saying is that DC was the first company to apply the term to any of its own comics. It may well have aced out Marvel and other mainstream companies in that area… although somehow a story

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of only 20 or so pages hardly seems to qualify technically as a “graphic novel.” I wonder what length a story does have to be to claim that distinction. Two issues back, we printed twin letters that purported to identify the artist of the cover painting for Ted White’s 1968 paperback novel Captain America: The Great Gold Steal. Jake Oster ID’d the illustrator as Timely mag alumnus (and fine artist) Mort Künstler… while Jeff Gelb maintained it was “the incomparable Bob McGinnis.” We figured we’d let those two fight it out… but scarcely had A/E #69 come out when we received this e-mail from ofttimes A/E contributor George Hagenauer, co-author of the excellent 2004 Taschen volume Men’s Adventure Magazines in Postwar America: Hi Roy,

George Hagenauer Amazing how difficult it can be to pin down simply the creation of a single piece of comicsrelated art, huh George? And I still recall those (mostly science-fiction) fans who kept saying, back in the early 1960s, that in a year or two we’d “run out of things to write about”! Now, a few brief comments and corrections re #58: Henry Kujawa reminds us that Jim Steranko drew X-Men #50-51, while Don Heck did parts 1 & 4 (our typo—sorry!)—and that Jack Kirby once said he’d based SHIELD agent Jasper Sitwell (seen on p. 4 of A/E #59) on none other than Roy T. Hey, maybe one day there could be a Marvel/DC crossover between Jasper Sitwell and Houseroy!

Noting the discussion about the cover to Hames Ware, co-editor of the 1970s Who’s Captain America: The Great Gold Steal. [Pro Who, thanked his erstwhile collaborator Jerry comics artist] Jeff Butler owns the cover Bails, who was then very much alive, “for his painting—it was one of his favorite images memory retrieval on Al Lockwood… an artist it Once I Had A Secret Love… growing up and he had searched for it forever. turns out we did not miss in the Who’s Who… The 1971 cover of The Sinister House of Secret Several years ago, he walked into an art for the simple reason that we knew him as Hal Love #2 was created during a period when DC director’s office and it was on the wall! It’s on Lockwood,” and failed to put two and two was flirting with “gothic romances,” a species Jeff’s now. Anyhow, it is neither Bob McGinnis together. of fiction very popular in paperback novels at nor Mort Künstler (both of whom happily are the time. Art by Tony DeZuniga. Thanks to Pro artist Steve Leialoha writes of page 4 of still alive and painting). According to the art Michael E. Manny. [©2007 DC Comics.] Tales of Suspense #28, one of the Kirby-drawn director, he got it from Mitchell Hooks. “Easter Island” stories: “It’s not visible on the (McGinnis, by the way, did a series of cover scan, but faintly on the pages (as if it’s been erased and lettered over), paintings for the Modesty Blaise series published by Pyramid in the all of the script had been penciled in by Jack. There are no other marks 1960s. The art for these probably still exists somewhere, as most of the on the page. On the back is the Comics Magazine Authority stamp Pyramid warehouse was sold years ago. If anyone has any of those dated Oct. 16, 1961.” Which doesn’t prove Jack scripted the story, as paintings, I would love to own one and they can contact me at artists often lettered in the dialogue and captions from a writer’s script, yellowkd@terracom.net or P.O. Box at the “request” of the editor—but it does make one wonder! 930093, Verona, WI 53592.) Nick Caputo “believe[s] the cover to Fantastic Four #21 is inked by Paul Reinman.” I didn’t ask Will, Nick, but I certainly believe the cover of FF #21 was inked by George Roussos, who also inked the interior art on that Hate Monger story. Any other opinions out there? Film producer (and one-time comic book writer) Michael Uslan sent this query about p. 43 and Jim Amash’s interview with Timely artist Vic Carrabotta: “Carrabotta’s splash page from ‘The Man Who Lost Himself’…look at the drawing of all the equipment, the man’s body poses (especially in the last panel), the lines on the man’s face in panel 2… I am certain this page was inked by Mike Sekowsky. Am I crazy?” Probably, Michael. We’re open to confirmation of your view, of course, but it’s hard for us to imagine Sekowsky doing much inking during this period, particularly for Timely. Any other comments? Francis A. Rodriguez writes: “When someone said… that Artie Simek was once on ‘The Joe Pine [or Pyne] Show’ playing the harmonica and spoons, did they mean he was on ‘The Alan Burke Show’ instead? The ‘Burke’ appearance was announced in the October 1969 Marvel Bullpen Bulletins.” Our mistake, Francis—thanks. “The Alan Burke Show” was a lesser-known rival of “Joe Pine.” Got a glad-hand or a gripe—or a nugget of additional information on a topic covered in this issue? Send ’em to:

“V” Is For Vic This self-portrait of 1950s Timely/Marvel artist Vic Carrabotta got squeezed out of his interview in A/E #58—but that just gives us an excuse to print it here. Thanks, Vic! [©2007 Vic Carrabotta.]

Roy Thomas 32 Bluebird Trail St. Matthews, SC 29135

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omewhere, along about 1950, I must have begun to suspect that the funnies of the past … those old laugh-a-day comic strips we grew up with … were making their way back onto the newspaper pages and into the hands—and hearts—of the readers. Else why would such a thing as a Western ever have come to mind? And a subject so far astray from the original goal: a realistic, unending adventureromance like Buck Rogers and Terry and the Pirates?

[FCA EDITORS NOTE: From 1941-53, Marcus D. Swayze was a top artist for Fawcett Publications. The very first Mary Marvel character sketches came from Marc’s drawing table, and he illustrated her earliest adventures, including the classic origin story, “Captain Marvel Introduces Mary Marvel (Captain Marvel Adventures #18, Dec. ’42); but he was primarily hired by Fawcett Publications to illustrate Captain Marvel stories and covers for Whiz Comics and Captain Marvel Adventures. He also wrote many Captain Marvel scripts, and continued to do so while in the military. After leaving the service in 1944, he made an arrangement with Fawcett to produce art and stories for them on a freelance basis out of his Louisiana home. There he created both art and story for The Phantom Eagle in Wow Comics, in addition to drawing the Flyin’ Jenny newspaper strip for Bell Syndicate (created by his friend and mentor Russell Keaton). After the cancellation of Wow, Swayze produced artwork for Fawcett’s top-selling line of romance comics, including Sweethearts and Life Story. After the company ceased publishing comics, Marc moved over to Charlton Publications, where he ended his comics career in the mid-’50s. Marc’s ongoing professional memoirs have been FCA’s most popular feature since his first column appeared in FCA #54, 1996. Last issue Marc pondered on the aging of comic characters and the evolution of Mary Marvel. This issue, he presents another one of his syndicated strip tryouts: Clem of the Circle M. —P.C. Hamerlinck.]

It had been nagging away at me for weeks … that character, the mental image firmly fixed. Now there he was on the drawing board before me, sketched for the first time … a little bow-legged cowboy … looking for a range to ride. Without considering any other name, I called him “Clem.” In order to confront the newspaper syndicates, Clem would have to have a supporting cast, a specific environment, and … a reason. Reason? For being … on a range, on a ranch … in a comic strip!!! Syndicates frequently wanted to know the latter. The cast would surely include Clem’s bunkhouse pals “Silo,” “Crawfish,” and others … plus little “Peso”! Problems were simplified with the question of environment … Clem’s locale. A ranch, of course … but what kind of ranch? Why not a modern-day dude ranch? It might be a source of inspiration for that daily hoped-for reader chuckle. The name of the place? The Circle M … for no better reason than it rhymed! And so it went. The scene opens with dialogue between Clem and his pal Silo. Silo is busy painting a … but here, let them tell you about it … [All art for this piece ©2007Marc Swayze.]

FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America]

“We Didn’t Know... It Was The Golden Age!”

Marc Swayze will return next issue with more of his reminiscences and observations of the Golden Age of Comics.

The Porterhouse Stakes When Whiz Comics Parodied Fawcett’s Favorite Features by Raymond Miller

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

awcett Publications’ Whiz Comics had a stable line-up for its first 34 issues. The roll call of its first issue was “Captain Marvel,” “Ibis the Invincible,” “Lance O’Casey,” “Spy Smasher,” “Golden Arrow,” “Dan Dare—Private Detective,” and “Scoop Smith—Ace Reporter.” “Scoop” was soon dropped and replaced in Whiz #7 (Aug. 1940) with “Dr. Voodoo.” The career of “Dan Dare” ended with Whiz #22 (Oct. 41), but the strip was never replaced, as Fawcett simply added more pages to the “Captain Marvel” and “Ibis” stories … so from Whiz #23 on, the contents with the top five heroes and “Dr. Voodoo” had remained the same for a year. Suddenly, with Whiz #35 (Oct. 1942), “Dr. Voodoo” was replaced by a fat old blowhard by the name of “Colonel Porterhouse,” a storyteller who enjoyed reminiscing about his own alleged “real-life” adventures in vivid detail. The feature was drawn by George Storm, who, amongst many other features, had also drawn DC’s humorous Buzzy strip and straightfaced super-heroes like “The Hangman,” “The Whip,” and “The Black Owl.” But it’s apparent that Storm excelled most when illustrating the Colonel’s tall, exaggerated tales.

Only five different episodes of this feature appeared in Whiz, each satirizing a Whiz character, and all followed a similar format, beginning with a scene of two little kids reading an issue of Whiz, with the Colonel sitting nearby making it clear that the particular story the kids were reading was purely fictional. Then he’d begin to tell the children how he himself had lived the “real” story that they happened to be reading.

A Major Precursor Of The Colonel As you’ll see below, Fawcett’s short-lived Colonel Porterhouse bore a striking resemblance—both in appearance and personality—to Major Hoople, the star of the daily panel Our Boarding House, which ran in newspapers from 1923 through 1981. The feature’s creator was Gene Ahern. [©2007 NEA Service.]

(The identity of the two little kids was never revealed, nor was their relationship to the Colonel ever explained. The kids were evidently brother and sister, as the boy called the girl “Sis” on one occasion. It’s doubtful the Colonel was their father, since he looked old enough to be their grandfather. The Colonel did have a wife, who would intervene toward the end of her husband’s hooey-filled stories.) The first CP tale, “Colonel Porterhouse and the Port of the Missing Men” (Whiz #35) found the kids reading the “Lance O’Casey” story in which the sea adventurer was captured by an Amazon queen (based on the “O’Casey” story from that very same issue of Whiz!). The Colonel informs the kids: “Under similar circumstances I was one of the few men to have visited the dreaded land of Amazons and lived to tell

Maybe They Should’ve Called The Feature “Lance Boil”? Colonel Porterhouse stands in for Lance O’Casey, in Whiz Comics #35 (Oct. 2, 1942). All “Porterhouse” art accompanying this article is by George Storm (who also illustrated the teen feature “Willie Wynn” in early issues of Captain Marvel, Jr.), and is ©2007 the respective copyright holders.

The Porterhouse Stakes

The Wrong End Of The Stick The Colonel takes the baton from Ibis the Invincible in Whiz #36 (Oct. 30, 1942).

about it!” He went on to tell them that, in those days, he commanded the Brigatine Black Castle in the South Seas. CP, now in the Lance O’Casey role and on the Amazon island with his sidekick Chadwick, came across a tiger ready to pounce a warrior maid. But only a Porterhouse could lay out a tiger with one blow from a wooden club! They saved the girl but were captured by a warrior woman (who was even larger than the Colonel) who wanted to put them to death. But our hero had no fear and tried to sweet-talk her into delaying his and Chadwick’s execution till the next day. That night, the girl he had earlier saved from the tiger set them free. In a cloud of arrows the two fled the island and swam to their ship a “few miles” away. But the Colonel’s story is interrupted when his wife orders him to run the carpet sweeper over the parlor rugs. “Drat,” the Colonel says while sweeping the rugs, “I might quite as well have remained among the Amazons!” Few Golden Age comic book anthologies ever devoted all their features to one theme cover-to-cover. But that was the case with the allHalloween issue of Whiz Comics #36 (Oct. ’42). “Porterhouse the Invincible” starred in “The Phantom of Porterhouse Manor.” This time the kids were reading the “Ibis the Invincible” story from that issue of Whiz and wondered what would have happened to Ibis had he been without his powerful Ibis-stick. “Jove, what a coincidence…” as the Colonel goes into another tale: “My little Goslings—under almost identical circumstances I unmasked the Phantom of Porterhouse Towers on a Halloween some years ago.…” The Colonel and Chadwick had just reached the village at nightfall to spend the evening in the towers. The policeman had warned the Colonel about the Phantom Hag of the Heath (Ibis also fought a hag-like creature called The Black Witch in that same issue of Whiz) … but (as the reader knew!) no one with the name of Porterhouse would be afraid of an old wife’s tale! Later, at the stroke of midnight, an eerie sound brought the Colonel and Chadwick to their feet. Enter the Old Hag—and at the same time Chadwick vanished (to hide behind a curtain, but our hero didn’t know that!). Using the “Porter-wand,” the Colonel defeated the Hag, only to discover the face of a pretty young girl behind a “Hag” mask. Chadwick reappeared, and when the girl awoke the Colonel discovered she had been under a spell. Again utilizing the Porter-wand, the Colonel put her under a spell and she led him to the real culprit, who wanted to frighten Porterhouse into selling the tower for a pittance. As the tale comes to a close, the two kids ask him if he would have been scared if he hadn’t had the Porter-wand with him. “No, my child,” he replied—when suddenly he’s frightened by a large pumpkin

looking into the window. The little girl tells the Colonel (as he wipes sweat from his forehead) not to be afraid, as it was only the little boy from next door with a Jack O’ Lantern. In the next issue, Whiz Comics #37 (Nov. ’42), the “Porterhouse” story opens, as always, with the kids reading that issue of Whiz—this time, the “Captain Marvel” story, wherein the World’s Mightiest Mortal finds himself involved with trolls. While reading the tale, the little boy asks the Colonel if he was like Captain Marvel, to which Porterhouse answers: “I do not like to seem boastful, but to dent it would be paltering with the truth—no less! This amusing little fantasy seems to have been based on one of my exploits as Captain Porterhouse!” He goes on to tell the kids that, in those days, he was just a carefree college boy … an unassuming lad who knew he had the power to transform himself into the mighty Captain Porterhouse. One day tiny miners came to his room, telling him that some trolls had brought a great armored gollywog into their caves and it had been trampling down their mineshafts and ruining everything. So the Colonel went with them down to their mine to help them. There, he saw the horned gollywog, yelled his magic word (“Allah-Ka-Zip!”), and with a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder Captain Porterhouse appeared (in identical Captain Marvel costume, but with a ‘P’ in front of the lightning bolt symbol). Once he had captured the gollywog, the trolls wanted the Captain to remain, because he could keep the beast under control. Thus they staged a big feast for CP and, after slipping him a potion, he forgot who he was. But soon he remembered the magic words, and everything came back to him. The good trolls helped Porterhouse round up the bad trolls as CP chased them back into their own cavern. End of story—except for Porterhouse’s wife ordering him

FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America]

…With One Magic Whopper! Interestingly, the Colonel had to demote himself to a Captain for the spoof of Captain Marvel! From Whiz #37 (Nov. 1942).

I? Spy? The Spy Smasher spoof from Whiz #38 (Dec. 1942).

The Porterhouse Stakes

He’ll See The Arrow Of His Ways Golden Arrow got the shaft from Col. Porterhouse in Whiz #39 (Jan. 1943). The man in the background of panel 5 on the last page is a cameo of artist George Storm.

to dust the living room rugs. As he reluctantly beats the rugs Porterhouse says, “Drat! I might quite as well have remained a slave to the trolls!” (Fawcett writers seemed quite fascinated with troll-themed stories during the early ’40s. Not only were there trolls in the “Captain Marvel” story in Whiz #37, but trolls also appeared, amongst several other places, in Whiz Comics #32, Wow Comics #33, Captain Marvel Jr. #5 … as well as gremlins in Captain Midnight #4.) “The Briny Avenger and the Wolves of the Deep”—Whiz Comics #38 (Dec. ’42)—has the kids reading that issue’s “Spy Smasher” story, in which SS discovers a submarine hiding under a sailing ship. Of course, when we turn to the “Colonel Porterhouse” installment, we learn that the “Spy Smasher” yarn was actually based on one of CP’s own exploits … only now with CP capturing the whole fleet of enemy submarines. (Before CP goes into the story, a man—supposedly artist George Storm himself—peeks around the corner and says, “Well—the kids asked for it!”) German U-boats were sinking every Allied ship in sight, and only one man could stop them: Colonel Porterhouse. His great mind came up with a bold plan. He asked the Navy to place a small, speedy sub at his disposal and to place our own undersea craft in the shelter of dry docks. His plan would endanger all subs for a time. Then CP put on his Spy Smasher outfit, which he says was the uniform of the “Porterhouse Guard” (the uniform also included two swords), and he set forth to put his plan into operation. He had studied the habits of swordfish, even one rare species that had been named the “Porterhouse Swordfish.” Now, with a blade in each hand, he entered into an underwater duel with the swordfish. He got them in such a frenzy that he was able to get them to attack and sink all the enemy subs. The Nazis were captured and, once again, the Colonel is back in his easy chair as the kids ask him if the Navy made him an Admiral. “I

declined the highest naval honors,” replies the Colonel, “but I did permit Congress to grant me a medal.” In the last panel George Storm tells Mrs. Porterhouse that “the Colonel is a full head to steam … the only medal that was presented to him was from a hunting and fishing magazine for the tallest fish story!” Colonel Porterhouse’s final Whiz character spoof was of Golden Arrow in Whiz Comics #39 (Jan. ’43). “Colonel Porterhouse Rides Again” has CP telling the kids of his own days of riding the range, and how he faced danger with only his bow and a handful of flint-tipped arrows, and of his battle against Giles Gradsby. In Sunburn Valley, the greedy cattle baron Gradsby was pressing the ranchers to sell him their lands for a pittance by threatening to divert the waters of Bear Creek from their land. As the story went (in Porterhouse’s mind), he was trained as a youth in the use of the bow and arrow by Chief Tall Corn. Like Golden Arrow’s famous “Scratch gravel, White Wind” cry, the Colonel also had his own: “Scratch gravel, Starlight!” Gradsby was no match for Porterhouse, who soon had Gradsby and his gang corralled and locked up. In the last panel, with artist Storm making another background cameo, the Colonel is shown bringing in buckets of coal. “Drat!” he exclaims. “These humdrum tasks—I yearn for the old carefree days in Sunburn Valley—give me my boots and a saddle!” By the next issue Colonel Porterhouse was gone—never to return. At the time there were only five heroes in Whiz Comics, so after #39 the well had dried up for CP. It’s too bad Fawcett never did a sixth installment of the feature … a grand finale in which all five Whiz heroes show up and give it to the Colonel! Raymond Miller has been a writer in comics fandom since the 1960s.

Heroes And Super-Heroes: From King David To Archie Bunker by C.C. Beck

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

[A previously unpublished FCA-SOB essay from 1981 by Captain Marvel’s co-creator and chief artist – from the vaults of PCH’s Beck estate files.]

omic heroes are the present-day watered-down representatives of a line of heroic characters reaching far back into prehistoric times. Every country has its myths which tell of the adventures of heroic mortals who fought giants, monsters, and various supernatural beings, sometimes winning their battles but as often losing them. The thing that distinguishes the ancient heroes from most comic book heroes of today is that they were not totally invulnerable, super-humanly strong and wise, and totally without human shortcomings. Many of them were thieves and robbers, adulterers, and not overly endowed with either brains or muscles. They won many of their battles by trickery or bribery or with the help of unprincipled gods and goddesses, magicians, or traitors.

The heroes of folk tales were just medium-size, average characters. Sometimes they were men, sometimes women or children or animals. They got into situations where they had to act like heroes for a time, not the other way around. King Arthur was illegitimate, as were many of the old-time heroes. He was often bested in fights, as were Robin Hood and others. Gulliver found himself captured by the Lilliputians and kept in a cage by the giants of Brobdingnag. Ali Baba was a rascal, as were many others. And Luke Skywalker of today’s movies is no super-hero at all; he’s just an average mortal caught up in a world of giants and monsters and supernatural forces.

Still Another Kind Of Hero Archie Bunker make a cameo (unnamed) in Shazam! #5 (Sept. 1973). Art by C.C. Beck; script by Elliot Maggin. At the time of that issue, All in the Family was at the height of its popularity on TV. [©2007 DC Comics.]

In comic books some people who don’t know any better try to make their heroes inhumanly strong and super-heroic. They give them the power to fly, to see through walls, to defeat whole armies with no effort. They never show them at a loss, flustered, or embarrassed. This is the wrong way to build a heroic character with lasting qualities. Heroes who have lasted for centuries were ordinary little guys pitted against evil kings, rich men, fat priests, giants, ogres, and monsters. But when your hero is bigger and stronger and wiser than anyone else he meets, what can he do to entertain the readers? Name any successful hero, from King David to Archie Bunker, and you’ll be naming a hero who is flawed and human. David fought Goliath, a giant, while Archie Bunker fights anybody he meets, large, small, stupid or wise. Neither one is a very admirable character, but both are believable!

Monthly! The Original First-Person History!

If King David were to be put into a comic book today he’s probably be at least a cubit and a span taller than Goliath and completely invulnerable. If Archie Bunker goes into the comics he’ll have to stop cursing, grow a foot taller, and lose his paunch and his bald head before appearing in the first panel. Either one will then be as uninteresting as the other super-heroes of today.

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AE #25: (108 pgs.) JACK COLE & PLASTIC MAN! Brother DICK COLE interviewed, Cole celebrated by ALEX TOTH, THOMAS on All-Star Squadron #1, JERRY BAILS tribute, FCA, cover by TOTH! $9 US

AE #26: (108 pgs.) JOE SINNOTT interview, KIRBY and BUSCEMA art, IRWIN DONENFELD, Superman art by SHUSTER, BORING, SWAN, FCA, Mr. MONSTER, covers by SINNOTT & BORING! $9 US

AE #20: TIMELY/ #27:(108 (108pgs.) pgs.) VIN MARVEL INVADERS SULLIVAN focus, intv., “Lost” KIRBY overview with KIRBY, KANE, HULK covers, the 1948 NY ROBBINS, DESCHAMPS CON, “GreatBOB Unknown” artists, intv., panel FCA, withALEX FINGER, KURTZMAN, TOTH, BINDER, FOX, & WEISINGER, MR. MONSTER, covers by FCA, rare art, more! $9 $9 US US BURNLEY & KIRBY!

AE #28: (108 pgs.) JOE MANEELY spotlight, scarce Marvel art by EVERETT, SEVERIN, DITKO, ROMITA, extra-size FCA, LEE AMES intv., covers by MANEELY & DON NEWTON! $9 US

AE #29: (108 pgs.) FRANK BRUNNER intv., EVERETT’s Venus, Classics Illustrated adapting Lovecraft, LEE/KIRBY/ DITKO prototypes, ALEX TOTH, FCA with GENE COLAN, BRUNNER cover! $9 US

AE #30: (108 pgs.) SILVER AGE JLA special, ALEX ROSS on the JLA, MIKE SEKOWSKY, DICK DILLIN, GOLDEN AGE SIMON & KIRBY scripters speak, FRENCH HEROES, ROSS & RUDE covers! $9 US

AE #31: (108 pgs.) DICK AYERS intv., HARLAN ELLISON’S Marvel work (with Bullpen artists), LEE/KIRBY/ DITKO prototypes, Christmas cards from cartoonists, AYERS & RAY covers! $9 US

AE #32: (108 pgs.) Golden Age TIMELY ARTISTS intv., MART NODELL, MIKE GOLD on the Silver Age, art by SIMON & KIRBY, SWAN, INFANTINO, KANE, GIORDANO & GIL KANE covers! $9 US

AE #33: (108 pgs.) MIKE SEKOWSKY tribute, intvs. with wife PAT SEKOWSKY and Golden Age inker VALERIE BARCLAY, art by ANDERSON, ANDRU & ESPOSITO, INFANTINO, FRENZ covers! $9 US

AE #34: (108 pgs.) QUALITY COMICS, intvs. with ALEX KOTZKY, CHUCK CUIDERA, DICK ARNOLD, TOTH, KURTZMAN, art by FINE, EISNER, COLE, CRANDALL and NICHOLAS covers! $9 US

AE #35: #20: (108 (108pgs.) pgs.)STAN TIMELY/ LEE, MARVEL focus,DICK INVADERS JOHN ROMITA, AYERS, overview with KIRBY, KANE, ROY THOMAS, & AL JAFFEE ROBBINS, BOB DESCHAMPS on the 1940s & 1950s Golden intv., FINGER, Age at panel Timely/with Marvel, FCA, BINDER, FOX, & ROMITA WEISINGER, MR. MONSTER, and $9 US FCA, rarecovers! art, more! $9 US JAFFEE

AE #36: (108 pgs.) JOE SIMON intv. & cover, GOLDEN AGE HEROES of Canada, ELMER WEXLER, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on MR. MONSTER’S ORIGINS, FCA, ALEX TOTH, and more! $9 US

AE #37: (108 pgs.) BECK & BORING covers, SY BARRY intv., Superman “K-Metal” story, FCA with C.C. BECK, MARC SWAYZE, DON NEWTON, and Shazam!/Isis!, MR. MONSTER, and more! $9 US

AE #38: (108 pgs.) JULIUS SCHWARTZ tribute & interviews, art by INFANTINO, ANDERSON, KUBERT, KANE, TOTH, SWAN, SEKOWSKY, FCA section, INFANTINO and HASEN covers, more!! $9 US

AE #39: (108 pgs.) Full issue JERRY ROBINSON spotlight, with comprehensive interview and unseen Batman art, AL FELDSTEIN on EC, GIL FOX, MESKIN, ROUSSOS, & ROBINSON covers! $9 US

AE #40: (108 pgs.) JULIUS SCHWARTZ memorial issue with tributes by pros, GIL KANE interview, comprehensive interview and unseen art by RUSS HEATH, GIL KANE and HEATH covers! $9 US

AE #41: (108 pgs.) BERNIE WRIGHTSON on FRANKENSTEIN, art by KALUTA, BAILY, MANEELY, PLOOG, KUBERT, BRUNNER, CRANDALL, FCA #100, & more! WRIGHTSON, SWAYZE covers! $9 US

ALTER EGO #42 Covers by FASTNER & LARSON and ERNIE SCHROEDER, a celebration of DON HECK, WERNER ROTH, and PAUL REINMAN, rare art by KIRBY, DITKO, AYERS, Hillman & Ziff-Davis remembered by SCHROEDER, HERB ROGOFF, and WALTER LITTMAN, FCA, ALEX TOTH, & more!

ALTER EGO #43

ALTER EGO #44

ALTER EGO #45

ALTER EGO #46

Flip covers by TUSKA and JSA/All-Star Squadron/Infinity Inc. Interviews with Golden Age The VERY BEST of the 1960s-70s STEVENS, yuletide art by SINNOTT, special! Interviews with JOE Sandman artist CREIG FLESSEL and ALTER EGO! EVERETT/SEVERIN BRUNNER, CARDY, TOTH, KUBERT, IRWIN HASEN, MURPHY 1940s creator BERT CHRISTMAN, cover, classic 1969 BILL EVERETT NODELL, and others, interviews ANDERSON, JERRY ORDWAY, MICHAEL CHABON on researching interview, art by BURGOS, with Golden Age artists TOM GILL 1940s Atom writer ARTHUR his Pulitzer-winning novel Kavalier GUSTAVSON, SIMON & KIRBY, (Lone Ranger) and MORRIS WEISS, ADLER, art by TOTH, SEKOWSKY, & Clay, art by EISNER, KANE, KIRBY, and others, 1960s gems by DITKO exploring 1960s Mexican comics, HASEN, MACHLAN, OKSNER, & AYERS, FCA, MR. MONSTER, & E. NELSON BRIDWELL, FCA, FCA, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, INFANTINO, FCA, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, & more! TOTH, & more! & more! ORDWAY cover, more! (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (108-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #47 MATT BAKER, Golden Age cheesecake artist of PHANTOM LADY, plus art from AL FELDSTEIN, VINCE COLLETTA, ARTHUR PEDDY, JACK KAMEN & others, FCA, BILL SCHELLY talks to BUD PLANT, MR. MONSTER, ALEX TOTH, and more! (100-page magazine) $9 US

(108-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #48

ALTER EGO #49

The late WILL EISNER discusses ’40s Quality Comics with art by FINE, CRANDALL, COLE, & CARDY! EISNER tributes by STAN LEE, GENE COLAN, & others! ’40s Quality artist VERN HENKEL interviewed, FCA, MR. MONSTER, TOTH, & more!

Interview with CARL BURGOS’ daughter! Unused 1941 cover layouts by BURGOS and other Timely titans! The 1957 Atlas Implosion, MANNY STALLMAN, and the BLUE FLAME! Also, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT and MR. MONSTER and more!

(100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #54

ALTER EGO #55

MIKE ESPOSITO on DC and Marvel, ROBERT KANIGHER on the creation of Metal Men & Sgt. Rock (with comments by JOE KUBERT & BOB HANEY), art by ANDRU, INFANTINO, KIRBY, SEVERIN, ROMITA, BUSCEMA, GIL KANE, plus FCA with SWAYZE, ALEX TOTH, & more!

ALEX ROSS cover, JACK & OTTO BINDER, KEN BALD, VIC DOWD, and BOB BOYAJIAN interviewed, FCA with MARC SWAYZE & EMILIO SQUEGLIO, Christmas Card Art from CRANDALL, SINNOTT, HEATH, MOONEY, and CARDY, 1943 superheroine Pin-Up Calendar, and more!

(100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #50

ALTER EGO #51

ALTER EGO #52

ALTER EGO #53

Golden Age Batman artist/Bob JOE GIELLA on the Silver Age at ROY THOMAS covers his 40-YEAR career in comics, with ADAMS, Kane ghost LEW SAYRE DC, the Golden Age at Marvel, and BUSCEMA, COLAN, DITKO, GIL SCHWARTZ interviewed, the JULIE SCHWARTZ, with rare art by KANE, KIRBY, STAN LEE, ORDWAY, Golden & Silver Ages of INFANTINO, GIL KANE, PÉREZ, ROMITA, and many others! AUSTRALIAN SUPER-HEROES, SEKOWSKY, SWAN, DILLIN, Also, FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT Mad artist DAVE BERG interviewed, MOLDOFF, GIACOIA, SCHAFFENand MR. MONSTER and more! FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on BERGER, and others, JAY SCOTT WILL EISNER, ALEX TOTH and PIKE on STAN LEE, MARTIN (100-page magazine) $9 US more! THALL, and more!

Halloween issue! GIORDANO & 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, and others!

(100-page magazine) $9 US

ALTER EGO #57

ALTER EGO #58

ALTER EGO #59

ALTER EGO #56

Issue-by-issue index of Timely/Atlas GERRY CONWAY & ROY THOMAS Batman & Superman in the Golden NEAL ADAMS cover, interviews & Silver Ages, ARTHUR SUYDAM super-hero stories by MICHELLE on their ’80s “X-Men Movie That with Superman creators SIEGEL & interview, NEAL ADAMS on NOLAN, art by SIMON & KIRBY, Never Was!” with art by ADAMS, SHUSTER, Golden/Silver Age DC 1960s/70s DC, SHELLY MOLDOFF, EVERETT, BURGOS, ROMITA, COCKRUM, BUSCEMA, BYRNE, production guru JACK ADLER, AL PLASTINO, Golden Age artist AYERS, HEATH, SEKOWSKY, KANE, KIRBY, HECK, & LIEBER, NEAL ADAMS & TV iconoclast (& FRAN (Doll Man) MATERA Atlas artist VIC CARRABOTTA comics fan) HOWARD STERN on SHORES, SCHOMBURG, MANEELY, interviewed, SIEGEL & SHUSTER, Adler, art by CURT SWAN, WAYNE & SEVERIN, GENE COLAN & ALLEN interview, ALLEN BELLMAN on ’40s FCA, MR. MONSTER, SUYDAM Timely, FCA, 1966 panel on EC BORING, AL PLASTINO, plus FCA, BELLMAN on 1940s Timely heroes, cover, & more! Edited by ROY FCA, MR. MONSTER, & BILL Comics, & MR. MONSTER! Edited MR. MONSTER, & more! Edited by THOMAS ! SCHELLY! KIRBY & VON SHOLLY by ROY THOMAS. ROY THOMAS. cover! Edited by ROY THOMAS. (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US (100-page magazine) $9 US

SUBSCRIBE! Twelve issues in the US: $78 Standard, $108 First Class (Canada: $132, Elsewhere: $180 Surface, $216 Airmail). NOTE: IF YOU PREFER A SIX-ISSUE SUB, JUST CUT THE PRICE IN HALF!

ALTER EGO #60

ALTER EGO #61

ALTER EGO #62

ALTER EGO #63

ALTER EGO #64

Celebrates 50 years since SHOWCASE #4! FLASH interviews with SCHWARTZ, KANIGHER, INFANTINO, KUBERT, & BROOME, Golden Age artist TONY DiPRETA, 1966 panel with NORDLING, BINDER, & 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, & more! GIORDANO cover!

HAPPY HAUNTED HALLOWEEN ISSUE, featuring: MIKE PLOOG & 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—& 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!

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, & others! Interview with MARTIN FILCHOCK, Golden Age artist for Centaur Comics! Plus MR. MONSTER, DON NEWTON cover, plus a FREE 1943 MARVEL CALENDAR!

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAY063496

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: JUN063522

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: AUG063690

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: OCT063800

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: NOV063991

ALTER EGO #65

ALTER EGO #66

ALTER EGO #67

ALTER EGO #68

ALTER EGO #69

NICK CARDY interviewed on his work in the Golden & Silver Ages, with CARDY artwork, plus art by WILL EISNER, NEAL ADAMS, CARMINE INFANTINO, JIM APARO, RAMONA FRADON, CURT SWAN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, and others, ERNIE SCHROEDER & DAVE COCKRUM tributes, FCA with MARC SWAYZE, MICHAEL T. GILBERT, 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 & artifacts by SHELLY MAYER, IRWIN HASEN, LEE ELIAS, C.C. BECK, GIL KANE, CARMINE INFANTINO, and JULIE SCHWARTZ, FCA with MARC SWAYZE and C.C. BECK, MICHAEL T. GILBERT on BOB POWELL Part II, and more!

Tribute to JERRY BAILS—Father of Comics Fandom! Features a cover by GEORGE PÉREZ, plus art by JOE KUBERT, CARMINE INFANTINO, GIL KANE, IRWIN HASEN, DICK DILLIN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, JERRY ORDWAY, JOE STATON, MIKE VOSBURG, RICH BUCKLER, JACK KIRBY, and others! Plus, the story behind Marvel’s 1977 STAR WARS comic by THOMAS, CHAYKIN, et al.

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!

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: DEC064009

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: JAN073982

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: FEB073887

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAR073852

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: APR074098

ALTER EGO: BEST OF THE LEGENDARY COMICS FANZINE

ALTER EGO COLLECTION, VOL. ONE

Collects the original 11 issues (from 196178) of A/E, with contributions from KIRBY, DITKO, WOOD, BUSCEMA, SEVERIN, EVERETT, MANNING, SWAN, & interviews with GIL KANE, BILL EVERETT, & JOE KUBERT! Edited by ROY THOMAS & BILL SCHELLY, intro by JULIE SCHWARTZ.

Collects ALTER EGO #1-2, plus 30 pages of NEW MATERIAL! New JLA Jam Cover by KUBERT, PÉREZ, GIORDANO, TUSKA, CARDY, FRADON, & GIELLA, new sections with art by GIL KANE, WILL EISNER, DICK DILLIN, MIKE SEKOWSKY, CARMINE INFANTINO, MURPHY ANDERSON, & more!

(192-page trade paperback) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905887 Ships February 2008

(192-page trade paperback) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905597 Diamond Order Code: APR063420

ALTER EGO #70

ALTER EGO #73

ALTER EGO #74

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!

FRANK BRUNNER on drawing Dr. Strange, interviews with CHARLES BIRO and his daughters, ROY THOMAS’ 1971 synopsis for the origin of Man-Thing, interview with publisher ROBERT GERSON about his 1970s horror comic Reality, art by BERNIE WRIGHTSON, MICHAEL W. KALUTA, JEFF JONES, and others FCA, MR. MONSTER, a FREE DRAW! #15! PREVIEW, and more!

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!

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAY073879

(100-page magazine) $9 US Ships October 2007

(100-page magazine) $9 US Ships December 2007

COMPANION BOOKS

KRYPTON COMPANION

JUSTICE LEAGUE COMPANION VOL. 1

TITANS COMPANION VOL. 1

A comprehensive examination of the Silver Age JLA written by MICHAEL EURY (co-author of THE SUPERHERO BOOK). It traces the JLA’s development, history, imitators, and early fandom through vintage and all-new interviews with the series’ creators, an issue-by-issue index of the JLA’s 1960-1972 adventures, classic and never-before-published artwork, and other fun and fascinating features. Contributors include DENNY O’NEIL, MURPHY ANDERSON, JOE GIELLA, MIKE FRIEDRICH, NEAL ADAMS, ALEX ROSS, CARMINE INFANTINO, NICK CARDY, and many, many others. Plus: An exclusive interview with STAN LEE, who answers the question, “Did the JLA really inspire the creation of Marvel’s Fantastic Four?” With an all-new cover by BRUCE TIMM!

Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the NEW TEEN TITANS, this comprehensive history features interviews with and rare art by fan-favorite creators MARV WOLFMAN, GEORGE PÉREZ, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, LEN WEIN, & others! Also included is a comprehensive Silver Age section featuring interviews with NEAL ADAMS, NICK CARDY, DICK GIORDANO & more, plus CHRIS CLAREMONT and WALTER SIMONSON on the X-MEN/TEEN TITANS crossover, TOM GRUMMETT, PHIL JIMENEZ & TERRY DODSON on their ’90s Titans work, rare and unpublished artwork by CARDY, PÉREZ, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GRUMMETT, JIMENEZ, and others, a new cover by JIMENEZ, and an introduction by GEOFF JOHNS! Written by GLEN CADIGAN.

(224-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905481 Diamond Order Code: MAY053052

(224-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905504 Diamond Order Code: SEP053209

More amazing secrets behind the 1940-51 ALL-STAR COMICS and the 1941-44 SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY, an issue-by-issue survey of the JLA-JSA TEAM-UPS of 1963-85, the 1970s JSA REVIVAL, and the 1980s series THE YOUNG ALL-STARS and SECRET ORIGINS, new cover by GEORGE PÉREZ, and more!

(240-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905610 Diamond Order Code: MAY063443

(224-page trade paperback) $31 US ISBN: 9781893905801 Diamond Order Code: MAY078045

ALL- STAR COMPANION VOL. 1

ALL- STAR COMPANION VOL. 2

ROY THOMAS has assembled the most thorough look ever taken at ALL-STAR COMICS, featuring: Covers by MURPHY ANDERSON! Issue-by-issue coverage of ALL-STAR COMICS #1-57, the original JLA-JSA teamups, & the ’70s ALL-STAR REVIVAL! Art from an unpublished 1945 JSA story! Looks at FOUR “LOST” ALL-STAR issues! Plus rare art by BURNLEY, DILLIN, KIRBY, INFANTINO, KANE, KUBERT, ORDWAY, ROSS, WOOD and more!

ROY THOMAS’ new sequel, with more secrets of the JSA and ALL-STAR COMICS, from 1940 through the 1980s, featuring: a wraparound CARLOS PACHECO cover! More amazing information, speculation, and unseen ALL-STAR COMICS art! Unpublished 1940s JSA STORY ART not printed in Volume One! Full listing of all the 1963-1985 JLA-JSA TEAM-UPS and the 1970s JSA REVIVAL! Full coverage of the 1980s ALL-STAR SQUADRON and YOUNG ALL-STARS by ROY THOMAS, with scarce & never-published art!

(208-page trade paperback) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905054 Diamond Order Code: APR042953

SILVER AGE SCI-FI COMPANION

BLUE BEETLE COMPANION

Summarizes, critiques and lovingly recalls the classic science-fiction series edited by JULIUS SCHWARTZ and written by GARDNER FOX and JOHN BROOME, from DC’s 1960s STRANGE ADVENTURES and MYSTERY IN SPACE! Includes story-by-story reviews of ADAM STRANGE, ATOMIC KNIGHTS, SPACE MUSEUM, STAR ROVERS, STAR HAWKINS and others! Writer/editor MIKE W. BARR tells you which series crossed over with each other, behind-the-scenes secrets, and more, including writer and artist credits for every story! Features rare art by CARMINE INFANTINO, MURPHY ANDERSON, GIL KANE, SID GREENE, MIKE SEKOWSKY, and many others, plus a new cover by ALAN DAVIS and PAUL NEARY!

His history from 1939 to today! Reprints his first appearance from MYSTERY MEN COMICS #1, plus interviews with WILL EISNER, JOE SIMON, JOE GILL, ROY THOMAS, GEOFF JOHNS, CULLY HAMNER, KEITH GIFFEN, LEN WEIN, never-seen Blue Beetle designs by ALEX ROSS and ALAN WEISS, as well as artwork by EISNER, JACK KIRBY, STEVE DITKO, KEVIN MAGUIRE & more! By CHRISTOPHER IRVING.

(160-page trade paperback) $24 US ISBN: 9781893905818 Diamond Order Code: JUL073885

(128-page trade paperback) $21 US ISBN: 9781893905702 Diamond Order Code: DEC063946

ALL- STAR COMPANION VOL. 3

Unlocks the secrets of Superman’s Silver and Bronze Ages, when kryptonite came in multiple colors and super-pets flew the skies! Features all-new interviews with ADAMS, ANDERSON, CARDY, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, GIFFEN, , MOONEY, O’NEIL, OKSNER, PASKO, ROZAKIS, SHOOTER, WEIN, WOLFMAN, and others, plus tons of rare and unseen art! By BACK ISSUE magazine’s MICHAEL EURY!

(240-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905375 Diamond Order Code: AUG063622

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS COMPANION The definitive book on WALLACE WOOD’s super-team of the 1960s! Included are interviews with Woody’s creative team, plus writers and artists involved in the T-Agents resurrections over the decades, and a detailed examination of the origins and exploits of the characters themselves! A perfect compendium to sit alongside the recently-published T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS ARCHIVES volumes, it features reams of artwork, much of it rarely-seen or previously unpublished, including a 27-page story drawn by PAUL GULACY & TERRY AUSTIN, UNPUBLISHED STORIES & ART by GULACY, GARRY LEACH, ALAN DAVIS, and others, and a JERRY ORDWAY cover! Edited by JON B. COOKE. (224-page trade paperback) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905436 Diamond Order Code: MAR053228

HOW-TO BOOKS & DVDs

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 2

WORKING METHODS

COMICS 101:

COMIC CREATORS DETAIL THEIR STORYTELLING & CREATIVE PROCESSES

HOW-TO & HISTORY LESSONS FROM THE PROS

Art professor JOHN LOWE puts the minds of comic artists under the microscope, highlighting the intricacies of the creative process step-by-step. For this book, three short scripts are each interpreted in different ways by professional comic artists to illustrate the varied ways in which they “see” and “solve” the problem of making a script succeed in comic form. It documents the creative and technical choices MARK SCHULTZ, TIM LEVINS, JIM MAHFOOD, SCOTT HAMPTON, KELSEY SHANNON, CHRIS BRUNNER, SEAN MURPHY, and PAT QUINN make as they tell a story, allowing comic fans, artists, instructors, and students into a world rarely explored. Hundreds of illustrated examples document the artists’ processes, and interviews clarify their individual approaches regarding storytelling and layout choices. The exercise may be simple, but the results are profoundly complex!

TwoMorrows has tapped the combined knowledge of its editors to assemble an all-new 32-page comics primer, created just for FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! You’ll learn: “Figure Drawing” and “How To Break Down A Story” from DRAW!’s MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Writing Tips” from WRITE NOW!’s DANNY FINGEROTH, plus ROUGH STUFF’s BOB McLEOD provides “Art Critiques” of promising newcomers! There’s even a “Comics History Crash-Course”, assembled by ALTER EGO’s ROY THOMAS and BACK ISSUE’s MICHAEL EURY! (32-page comic book) $2 US Diamond Order Code: FEB070050

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 1 Compiles material from the first two sold-out issues of DRAW!—a wealth of tutorials, interviews, and demonstrations by DAVE GIBBONS (layout and drawing on the computer), BRET BLEVINS (drawing lovely women, painting from life, and creating figures that “feel”), JERRY ORDWAY (detailing his working methods), KLAUS JANSON and RICARDO VILLAGRAN (inking techniques), GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY (on animation and Samurai Jack), STEVE CONLEY (creating web comics and cartoons), PHIL HESTER and ANDE PARKS (penciling and inking), and more! Each artist presents their work STEP-BY-STEP, so both beginning and experienced artists can learn valuable tips and tricks along the way! Cover by BRET BLEVINS!

Compiles material from issues #3 and #4 of DRAW!, including tutorials by, and interviews with, ERIK LARSEN (savage penciling), DICK GIORDANO (inking techniques), BRET BLEVINS (drawing the figure in action, and figure composition), KEVIN NOWLAN (penciling and inking), MIKE MANLEY (how-to demo on Web Comics), DAVE COOPER (digital coloring tutorial), and more! Cover by KEVIN NOWLAN. (156-page trade paperback with COLOR) $22 US ISBN: 9781893905580 Diamond Order Code: APR063421

(200-page trade paperback with COLOR) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905412 Diamond Order Code: OCT043046

(176-page trade paperback with COLOR) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905733 Diamond Order Code: MAR073747

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

TOP ARTISTS DISCUSS THE DESIGN OF COMICS Art professor DURWIN TALON gets top creators to discuss all aspects of the DESIGN of comics, from panel and page layout, to use of color and lettering:

HOW TO DRAW COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

COMICS ABOVE GROUND

SEE HOW YOUR FAVORITE ARTISTS MAKE A LIVING OUTSIDE COMICS

DVD

HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

COMICS ABOVE GROUND features comics pros discussing their inspirations and training, and how they apply it in “Mainstream Media,” including Conceptual Illustration, Video Game Development, Children’s Books, Novels, Design, Illustration, Fine Art, Storyboards, Animation, Movies and more! Written by DURWIN TALON (author of the top-selling book PANEL DISCUSSIONS), this book features creators sharing their perspectives and their work in comics and their “other professions,” with career overviews, never-before-seen art, and interviews! Featuring: • BRUCE TIMM • LOUISE SIMONSON • BERNIE WRIGHTSON • DAVE DORMAN • ADAM HUGHES • GREG RUCKA • JEPH LOEB AND OTHERS!

REDESIGNED and EXPANDED version of the groundbreaking WRITE NOW! #8 / DRAW! #9 crossover! DANNY FINGEROTH & MIKE MANLEY show stepby-step how to develop a new comic, from script and roughs to pencils, inks, colors, lettering—it even guides you through printing and distribution, & the finished 8-page color comic is included, so you can see their end result! PLUS: over 30 pages of ALL-NEW material, including “full” and “Marvel-style” scripts, a critique of their new character and comic from an editor’s point of view, new tips on coloring, new expanded writing lessons, and more!

(168-page trade paperback) $24 US ISBN: 9781893905313 Diamond Order Code: FEB042700

(108-page trade paperback with COLOR) $18 US ISBN: 9781893905603 Diamond Order Code: APR063422

• WILL EISNER • SCOTT HAMPTON • MIKE WIERINGO • WALT SIMONSON • MIKE MIGNOLA • MARK SCHULTZ • DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI • MIKE CARLIN • DICK GIORDANO • BRIAN STELFREEZE • CHRIS MOELLER • MARK CHIARELLO If you’re serious about creating effective, innovative comics, or just enjoying them from the creator’s perspective, this guide is must-reading!

Documents two top professionals creating a (208-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29 US comic book, from initial idea to finished art! ISBN: 9781893905146 In this feature-filled DVD, WRITE NOW! Diamond Order Code: STAR19844 Magazine Editor DANNY (Spider-Man) FINGEROTH and DRAW! Magazine Editor MIKE (Batman) MANLEY show you how a new character evolves from scratch! Watch the creative process, as a story is created from concepts and roughs to pencils, inks, and coloring—even lettering! “The closest thing you’ll find to Packed with “how-to” tips and a comic creation tutorial; an tricks, it’s the perfect companion to the WRITE NOW #8/DRAW essential reference for anyone who’s #9 CROSSOVER, or stands ever hoped to self-publish or make a alone as an invaluable tool for amateur and professional serious bid at a career in the field.” comics creators alike! (120-minute DVD) $35 US ISBN: 9781893905399 Diamond Order Code: AUG043204

ink19.com on HOW TO CREATE COMICS

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

JOHN ROMITA... AND ALL THAT JAZZ!

SECRETS IN THE SHADOWS: THE ART & LIFE OF GENE COLAN

DICK GIORDANO CHANGING COMICS, ONE DAY AT A TIME

BRUSH STROKES WITH GREATNESS: THE LIFE & ART OF JOE SINNOTT

The ultimate retrospective on COLAN, with rare drawings, photos, and art from his nearly 60-year career, plus 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 the daunting task of inking Colan’s famously nuanced penciled pages! Plus there’s a NEW PORTFOLIO of never-before-seen collaborations between Gene and such masters as JOHN BYRNE, MICHAEL KALUTA and GEORGE PÉREZ, and all-new artwork created specifically for this book by Gene! Available in Softcover and Deluxe Hardcover (limited to 1000 copies, with 16 extra black-and-white pages and 8 extra color pages)! Written by TOM FIELD.

MICHAEL EURY’s biography of comics’ most prominent and affable personality! Covers his career as illustrator, inker, and editor, peppered with DICK’S PERSONAL REFLECTIONS on his career milestones! Lavishly illustrated with RARE AND NEVER SEEN comics, merchandising, and advertising art (includes a color section)! Also includes 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, plus a Foreword by NEAL ADAMS and Afterword by PAUL LEVITZ!

During his 56-plus-year career in comic books, JOE SINNOTT has worked in every genre, and for almost every publisher, from 1940s Timely Comics to Charlton Comics, Treasure Chest, and Dell as a top penciler. But his association with Marvel Comics in the ’60s as its top inker cemented his place in comics history. This book celebrates his career, as he demonstrates his passion for his craft. In it, Joe shares his experiences working on Marvel’s leading titles, memories of working with STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY, and rare and unpublished artwork from his personal files. It features dozens of colleagues and co-workers paying tribute to Joe, plus an extended Art Gallery, and a Checklist of his career. Written by TIM LASIUTA, with a Foreword by STAN LEE, and Afterword by MARK EVANIER.

(176-pg. Paperback with COLOR) $24 US ISBN: 9781893905276 Diamond Order Code: STAR20439

“Jazzy” JOHN ROMITA—the artist who made THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Marvel’s #1-selling comic book in the 1960s—talks about his life, his art, and his contemporaries! Authored by former Marvel Comics editor in chief and top writer ROY THOMAS, and noted historian JIM AMASH, it features the most definitive interview Romita’s ever given, about working with such comics legends as STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY, following Spider-Man co-creator STEVE DITKO as artist on the strip, and more! Plus, Roy Thomas shares memories of working with Romita in the 1960s70s, and Jim Amash examines the awesome artistry of Ring-a-Ding Romita! Lavishly illustrated with Romita art—original classic art, and unseen masterpieces—as well as illos by some of Marvel’s and DC’s finest, this is at once a career overview of a comics master, and a firsthand history of the industry by one of its leading artists! Available in Softcover and Deluxe Hardcover (with 16 extra color pages, dust jacket, and custom endleaves). (192-page softcover) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905757 Diamond Order Code: APR074018 (208-page hardcover with COLOR) $49 US ISBN: 9781893905764 Diamond Order Code: APR074019

(136-page softcover with COLOR) $22 US ISBN: 9781893905726 Diamond Order Code: MAR073744

(168-page softcover with COLOR) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905450 Diamond Order Code: APR053190 (192-page hardcover with COLOR) $49 US ISBN: 9781893905467 Diamond Order Code: APR053189

R! WINNE! D R A AW ORY EISNESRT SHORT ST BE

HERO GETS GIRL! THE LIFE & ART OF KURT SCHAFFENBERGER COMICS INTROSPECTIVE VOL. 1: PETER BAGGE Profusely illustrated bio of KURT SCHAFFENBERGER,

• BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH • SERGIO ARAGONÉS • MURPHY ANDERSON • JOE KUBERT • JACK KIRBY • BRENT ANDERSON • NICK CARDY • RICK VEITCH • ROY THOMAS & JOHN SEVERIN • SAM GLANZMAN • PAUL CHADWICK • EVAN DORKIN • C.C. BECK • WALTER SIMONSON • ART SPIEGELMAN • Cover by STEVE RUDE • Foreword by WILL EISNER

the preeminent Lois Lane artist and important early Captain Marvel artist who brought a touch of humor and whimsy to super-hero comics! Covers his LIFE AND CAREER from the 1940s to his passing in 2002, and features hundreds of NEVER-SEEN PHOTOS & ILLUSTRATIONS from his files! Also includes recollections by family, friends and fellow artists such as MURPHY ANDERSON, WILL EISNER, CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE KUBERT, ALEX ROSS and MORT WALKER! Written by columnist MARK VOGER (Schaffenberger friend for the final 13 years of the artist’s life), with a Foreword by KEN BALD.

(160-page trade paperback) $24 US ISBN: 9781893905047 Diamond Order Code: STAR11522

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905290 Diamond Order Code: SEP032545

STREETWISE Featuring NEW autobiographical comics stories by:

TwoMorrows’ new book series spotlights INDY COMICS TALENT with an outside-the-box approach, combining original photography, multiple art gallery sections, and an introspective dialogue with each subject. Volume One features PETER BAGGE, whose work runs from political (his strips for reason.com), to absurdist and satirical (the Batboy strip for Weekly World News), and dramatic (Apocalypse Nerd). From his Seattle studio, Bagge lets us in on everything from what was on his mind with his long-running Gen X comic Hate!, to what’s going on in his head as a political satirist. Written by CHRISTOPHER IRVING. (128-page trade paperback) $21 US ISBN: 9781893905832 Diamond Order Code: MAY073779

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. The book 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 many more! A gallery of commission artwork and a thorough index of his work are included, plus original artwork, photos, sketches, previously unpublished art, interviews and anecdotes from his peers and fans, plus the very personal and reflective words of George himself, making this book a testament to the tremendous influence Tuska has had on the comic book industry and his legion of fans! Written by DEWEY CASSELL. (128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905405 Diamond Order Code: DEC042921

MODERN MASTERS SERIES Edited by ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON, these trade paperbacks and DVDs are devoted to the BEST OF TODAY’S COMICS ARTISTS! Each book contains RARE AND UNSEEN ARTWORK direct from the artist’s files, plus a COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEW (including influences and their views on graphic storytelling), DELUXE SKETCHBOOK SECTIONS, and more! And don’t miss our companion DVDs, showing the artist at work in their studio!

MODERN MASTERS DVDs (120-minute Std. Format DVDs) $35 US EACH

GEORGE PÉREZ

ISBN: 9781893905511 Diamond Order Code: JUN053276

MICHAEL GOLDEN ISBN: 9781893905771 Diamond Order Code: MAY073780

VOL. 1: ALAN DAVIS

V.2: GEORGE PÉREZ

V.3: BRUCE TIMM

V.4: KEVIN NOWLAN

V.5: GARCÍA-LÓPEZ

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905191 Diamond Order Code: STAR18345

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905252 Diamond Order Code: STAR20127

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905306 Diamond Order Code: APR042954

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905382 Diamond Order Code: SEP042971

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905443 Diamond Order Code: APR053191

V.6: ARTHUR ADAMS

V.7: JOHN BYRNE

V.8: WALTER SIMONSON

V.9: MIKE WIERINGO

V.10: KEVIN MAGUIRE

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905542 Diamond Order Code: DEC053309

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905566 Diamond Order Code: FEB063354

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905641 Diamond Order Code: MAY063444

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905658 Diamond Order Code: AUG063626

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905665 Diamond Order Code: OCT063722

V.11: CHARLES VESS

V.12: MICHAEL GOLDEN

V.13: JERRY ORDWAY

V.14: FRANK CHO

V.15: MARK SCHULTZ

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905696 Diamond Order Code: DEC063948

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905740 Diamond Order Code: APR074023

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905795 Diamond Order Code: JUN073926

(120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905849 Diamond Order Code: MAY078046

(128-page trade paperback) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905856 Ships December 2007

T H E U LT I M AT E C O M I C S E X P E R I E N C E !

Edited by MICHAEL EURY, BACK ISSUE magazine celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through recurring (and rotating) departments such as “Pro2Pro” (a dialogue between two professionals), “Rough Stuff” (pencil art showcases of top artists), “Greatest Stories Never Told” (spotlighting unrealized comics series or stories), and more!

Go online for money-saving BUNDLES, including an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with the entire run at HALF-PRICE! “Even though I was an eyewitness to much of the comics history covered in BACK ISSUE, I was fascinated and even surprised by the info provided by Eury, his contributors, and their interview subjects. I learned something on darn near every page. It’s a terrific magazine!”

BACK ISSUE #1

BACK ISSUE #2

“PRO2PRO” interview between GEORGE PÉREZ & MARV WOLFMAN (with UNSEEN PÉREZ ART), “ROUGH STUFF” featuring JACK KIRBY’s PENCIL ART, “GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD” on the first JLA/AVENGERS, “BEYOND CAPES” on DC and Marvel’s TARZAN (with KUBERT and BUSCEMA ART), “OFF MY CHEST” editorial by INFANTINO, and more! PÉREZ cover!

“PRO2PRO” between ADAM HUGHES and MIKE W. BARR (with UNSEEN HUGHES ART) and MATT WAGNER and DIANA SCHUTZ, “ROUGH STUFF” HUGHES PENCIL ART, STEVE RUDE’s unseen SPACE GHOST/ HERCULOIDS team-up, Bruce Jones’ ALIEN WORLDS and TWISTED TALES, “OFF MY CHEST” by MIKE W. BARR on the DC IMPLOSION, and more! HUGHES cover!

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: SEP032621

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: NOV032696

Tony Isabella on BACK ISSUE!

BACK ISSUE #3

BACK ISSUE #4

BACK ISSUE #5

BACK ISSUE #6

BACK ISSUE #7

“PRO2PRO” between KEITH GIFFEN, J.M. DeMATTEIS and KEVIN MAGUIRE on their JLA WORK, “ROUGH STUFF” PENCIL ART by ARAGONÉS, HERNANDEZ BROS., MIGNOLA, BYRNE, KIRBY, HUGHES, two unknown PLASTIC MAN movies, Joker’s history with O’NEIL, ADAMS, ENGLEHART, ROGERS and BOLLAND, editorial by MARK EVANIER, and more! BOLLAND cover!

“PRO2PRO” between JOHN BYRNE and CHRIS CLAREMONT on their X-MEN WORK and WALT SIMONSON and JOE CASEY on Walter’s THOR, WOLVERINE PENCIL ART by BUSCEMA, LEE, COCKRUM, BYRNE, and GIL KANE, LEN WEIN’S TEEN WOLVERINE, PUNISHER’S 30TH and SECRET WARS’ 20TH ANNIVERSARIES (with UNSEEN ZECK ART), and more! BYRNE cover!

Wonder Woman TV series in-depth, LYNDA CARTER INTERVIEW, WONDER WOMAN TV ART GALLERY, Marvel’s TV Hulk, SpiderMan, Captain America, and Dr. Strange, LOU FERRIGNO INTERVIEW, super-hero cartoons you didn’t see, pencil gallery by JERRY ORDWAY, STAR TREK in comics, and ROMITA SR. editorial on Marvel’s movies! Covers by ALEX ROSS and ADAM HUGHES!

TOMB OF DRACULA revealed with GENE COLAN and MARV WOLFMAN, LEN WEIN & BERNIE WRIGHTSON on Swamp Thing’s roots, STEVE BISSETTE & RICK VEITCH on their Swamp work, pencil art by BRUNNER, PLOOG, BISSETTE, COLAN, WRIGHTSON, and SMITH, editorial by ROY THOMAS, PREZ, GODZILLA comics (with TRIMPE art), CHARLTON horror, & more! COLAN cover!

History of BRAVE AND BOLD, JIM APARO interview, tribute to BOB HANEY, FANTASTIC FOUR ROUNDTABLE with STAN LEE, MARK WAID, and others, EVANIER and MEUGNIOT on DNAgents, pencil art by ROSS, TOTH, COCKRUM, HECK, ROBBINS, NEWTON, and BYRNE, DENNY O’NEIL editorial, a tour of METROPOLIS, IL, and more! SWAN/ANDERSON cover!

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: JAN042880

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAR042973

(108-page magazine with COLOR) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAY043051

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: JUL043389

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: SEP043044

BACK ISSUE #8

BACK ISSUE #9

BACK ISSUE #10

BACK ISSUE #11

BACK ISSUE #12

DENNY O’NEIL and Justice League Unlimited voice actor PHIL LaMARR discuss GL JOHN STEWART, NEW X-MEN pencil art by NEAL ADAMS, ARTHUR ADAMS, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, ALAN DAVIS, JIM LEE, ADAM HUGHES, STORM’s 30-year history, animated TV’s black heroes (with TOTH art), ISABELLA and TREVOR VON EEDEN on BLACK LIGHTNING, and more! KYLE BAKER cover!

MIKE BARON and STEVE RUDE on NEXUS past and present, a colossal GIL KANE pencil art gallery, a look at Marvel’s STAR WARS comics, secrets of DC’s unseen CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS SEQUEL, TIM TRUMAN on his GRIMJACK SERIES, MIKE GOLD editorial, THANOS history, TIME WARP revisited, and more! All-new STEVE RUDE COVER!

NEAL ADAMS and DENNY O’NEIL on RA’S AL GHUL’s history (with Adams art), O’Neil and MICHAEL KALUTA on THE SHADOW, MIKE GRELL on JON SABLE FREELANCE, HOWIE CHAYKIN interview, DOC SAVAGE in comics, BATMAN ART GALLERY by PAUL SMITH, SIENKIEWICZ, SIMONSON, BOLLAND, HANNIGAN, MAZZUCCHELLI, and others! New cover by ADAMS!

ROY THOMAS, KURT BUSIEK, and JOE JUSKO on CONAN (with art by JOHN BUSCEMA, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, NEAL ADAMS, JUSKO, and others), SERGIO ARAGONÉS and MARK EVANIER on GROO, DC’s never-published KING ARTHUR, pencil art gallery by KIRBY, PÉREZ, MOEBIUS, GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, BOLLAND, and others, and a new BUSCEMA/JUSKO Conan cover!

’70s and ’80s character revamps with DAVE GIBBONS, ROY THOMAS and KURT BUSIEK, TOM DeFALCO and RON FRENZ on Spider-Man’s 1980s “black” costume change, DENNY O’NEIL on Superman’s 1970 revamp, JOHN BYRNE’s aborted SHAZAM! series detailed, pencil art gallery with FRANK MILLER, LEE WEEKS, DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI, CHARLES VESS, and more!

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: NOV043081

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: JAN053136

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAR053333

(108-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAY053174

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: JUL053295

BACK ISSUE #14

BACK ISSUE #15

BACK ISSUE #16

BACK ISSUE #17

BACK ISSUE #18

DAVE COCKRUM and MIKE GRELL go “Pro2Pro” on the Legion, pencil art gallery by BUSCEMA, BYRNE, MILLER, STARLIN, McFARLANE, ROMITA JR., SIENKIEWICZ, looks at Hercules Unbound, Hex, Killraven, Kamandi, MARS, Planet of the Apes, art and interviews with GARCÍA-LÓPEZ, KIRBY, WILLIAMSON, and more! New MIKE GRELL/BOB McLEOD cover!

“Weird Heroes” of the 1970s and ’80s! MIKE PLOOG discusses Ghost Rider, MATT WAGNER revisits The Demon, JOE KUBERT dusts off Ragman, GENE COLAN “Rough Stuff” pencil gallery, GARCÍALÓPEZ recalls Deadman, DC’s unpublished Gorilla Grodd series, PERLIN, CONWAY, and MOENCH on Werewolf by Night, and more! New ARTHUR ADAMS cover!

“Toy Stories!” Behind the Scenes of Marvel’s G.I. JOE™ and TRANSFORMERS with PAUL LEVITZ and GEORGE TUSKA, “Rough Stuff” MIKE ZECK pencil gallery, ARTHUR ADAMS on Gumby, HE-MAN, ROM, MICRONAUTS, SUPER POWERS, SUPER-HERO CARS, art by HAMA, SAL BUSCEMA, GUICE, GOLDEN, KIRBY, TRIMPE, and new ZECK sketch cover!

“Super Girls!” Supergirl retrospective with art by STELFREEZE, HAMNER, SpiderWoman, Flare, Tigra, DC’s unused Double Comics with unseen BARRETTO and INFANTINO art, WOLFMAN and JIMENEZ on Donna Troy, female comics pros, art by SEKOWSKY, OKSNER, PÉREZ, HUGHES, GIORDANO, plus a COLOR GALLERY and COVER by BRUCE TIMM!

“Big, Green Issue!” Tour NEAL ADAMS’ studio (with interview and art gallery), DAVE GIBBONS “Rough Stuff” pencil art spotlight, interviews with MIKE GRELL (Green Arrow), PETER DAVID (Incredible Hulk), a “Pro2Pro” chat between GERRY CONWAY and JOHN ROMITA, SR. (Green Goblin), unproduced She-Hulk movie, and more. GREEN LANTERN cover by ADAMS!

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: NOV053296

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: JAN063431

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAR063547

(108-page magazine with COLOR) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAY063499

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: JUL063569

BACK ISSUE #19

BACK ISSUE #20

BACK ISSUE #21

BACK ISSUE #22

BACK ISSUE #23

“Unsung Heroes!” DON NEWTON spotlight, GERBER and COLAN on Howard the Duck, MIKE CARLIN and DANNY FINGEROTH on Marvel’s Assistant Editors’ Month, “Greatest Stories Never Told” on the unrealized Unlimited Powers TV show, TONY ISABELLA’s aborted plans for The Champions, MARK GRUENWALD tribute, art by SAL BUSCEMA, JOHN BYRNE, and more! NEWTON/RUBINSTEIN cover!

“Secret Identities!” Histories of characters with unusual alter egos: Firestorm, Moon Knight, the Question, and the “real-life” Human Fly! STEVE ENGLEHART and SAL BUSCEMA on Captain America, JERRY ORDWAY interview and cover, Superman roundtable with SIENKIEWICZ, NOWLAN, MOENCH, COWAN, MAGGIN, O’NEIL, MILGROM, CONWAY, ROBBINS, SWAN, plus FREE ALTER EGO #64 PREVIEW!

“The Devil You Say!” issue! A look at Daredevil in the 1980s and 1990s with interviews and art by KLAUS JANSON, JOHN ROMITA JR., and FRANK MILLER, MIKE MIGNOLA Hellboy interview, DAN MISHKIN and GARY COHN on Blue Devil, COLLEEN DORAN’s unpublished X-Men spin-off “Fallen Angels”, Son of Satan, Stig’s Inferno, DC’s Plop!, JACK KIRBY’s Devil Dinosaur, and cover by MIKE ZECK!

“Comics Go Hollywood!” Spider-Man roundtable with STAN LEE, JOHN ROMITA, SR., JIM SHOOTER, ERIK LARSEN, and others, STAR TREK comics writers’ roundtable Part 1, Gladstone’s Disney comics line, behindthe-scenes at TV’s ISIS and THE FLASH (plus an interview with Flash’s JOHN WESLEY SHIPP), TV tie-in comics, bonus 8-page color ADAM HUGHES ART GALLERY and cover, plus a FREE WRITE NOW #16 PREVIEW!

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: SEP063683

(104-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: NOV063993

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: JAN073984

“Dynamic Duos”! “Pro2Pro” interviews with Batman’s ALAN GRANT and NORM BREYFOGLE and the Legion’s PAUL LEVITZ and KEITH GIFFEN, a “Backstage Pass” to Dark Horse Comics, Robin’s history, EASTMAN and LAIRD’s Ninja Turtles, histories of duos Robin and Batgirl, Captain America and the Falcon, and Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, “Zot!” interview with SCOTT McCLOUD, and a new BREYFOGLE cover!

BACK ISSUE #24

BACK ISSUE #25

BACK ISSUE #26

“Magic” issue! MICHAEL GOLDEN interview, GENE COLAN, PAUL SMITH, and FRANK BRUNNER on drawing Dr. Strange, Mystic Art Gallery with CARL POTTS & KEVIN NOWLAN, BILL WILLINGHAM’s Elementals, Zatanna history, Dr. Fate’s revival, a “Greatest Stories Never Told” look at Peter Pan, tribute to the late MARSHALL ROGERS, a new GOLDEN cover, plus a FREE ROUGH STUFF #6 PREVIEW!

“Men of Steel”! BOB LAYTON and DAVID MICHELINIE on Iron Man, RICH BUCKLER on Deathlok, MIKE GRELL on Warlord, JOHN BYRNE on ROG 2000, Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman, Machine Man, the World’s Greatest Super-Heroes comic strip, DC’s Steel, art by KIRBY, HECK, WINDSOR-SMITH, TUSKA, LAYTON cover, and bonus “Men of Steel” color art gallery! Includes a FREE DRAW! #15 PREVIEW!

“Spies and Tough Guys”! PAUL GULACY and DOUG MOENCH in an art-packed “Pro2Pro” on Master of Kung Fu and their unrealized Shang-Chi/Nick Fury crossover, Suicide Squad spotlight, Ms. Tree, CHUCK DIXON and TIM TRUMAN’s Airboy, James Bond and Mr. T in comic books, Sgt. Rock’s oddball super-hero team-ups, Nathaniel Dusk, JOE KUBERT’s unpublished The Redeemer, and a new GULACY cover!

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: JUL073976

(104-page magazine) $9 US Ships November 2007

(100-page magazine) $9 US Ships January 2008

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAR073855

(108-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAY073880

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

NOW SHIPPING FROM TWOMORROWS!

BACK ISSUE #23

ROUGH STUFF #5

DRAW! #14

WRITE NOW! #16

KIRBY COLLECTOR #49

Comics Go Hollywood! Spider-Man roundtable with STAN LEE, JOHN ROMITA, SR., JIM SHOOTER, ERIK LARSEN, and others, STAR TREK comics writers' roundtable Part 1, Gladstone’s Disney comics line, behindthe-scenes at TV’s ISIS and THE FLASH (plus an interview with Flash’s JOHN WESLEY SHIPP), TV tie-in comics, bonus 8-page color ADAM HUGHES ART GALLERY and cover, plus a FREE WRITE NOW #16 PREVIEW!

NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED art galleries (complete with extensive commentaries by the artists) by PAUL SMITH, GIL KANE, CULLY HAMNER, DALE KEOWN, and ASHLEY WOOD, plus a feature interview and art by STEVE RUDE, an examination of JOHN ALBANO and TONY DeZUNIGA’s work on DC’s Jonah Hex, a new STEVE RUDE COVER, plus a FREE BACK ISSUE #23 PREVIEW!

Features in-depth interviews and step-bystep demos with DC Comics artist DOUG MAHNKE, OVI NEDELCU (Pigtale, WB Animation), STEVE PURCELL (Sam and Max), plus Part 3 of editor MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ COMIC ART BOOTCAMP on “Using Black to Power up Your Pages”, product reviews, a new MAHNKE cover, and a FREE ALTER EGO #70 PREVIEW!

An in-depth TODD McFARLANE interview, STAN LEE, STEVE ENGLEHART, JIM STARLIN, GEORGE PÉREZ, and J.M. DeMATTEIS on writing the Silver Surfer, Nuts and Bolts script and pencil art from BRIAN BENDIS and FRANK CHO’s MIGHTY AVENGERS and from DAN SLOTT’s AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE, STAR TREK comics writers' roundtable Part 2, cover by MIKE ZECK, plus a FREE DRAW #14 PREVIEW!

WARRIORS, spotlighting Thor (with a look at hidden messages in BILL EVERETT’s Thor inks), Sgt. Fury, Challengers of the Unknown, Losers, and others! Includes a rare KIRBY interview, new interviews with JERRY ORDWAY and GRANT MORRISON, MARK EVANIER’s column, a pencil art gallery, a complete 1950s story, wraparound Kirby Thor cover inked by JERRY ORDWAY, and more! SHIPS IN AUGUST!

(108-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAY073880

(100-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAY073902

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAY073896

(84-page magazine) $9 US Diamond Order Code: MAY073903

(84-page tabloid) $13 US Diamond Order Code: JUN074028

JOHN ROMITA... & ALL THAT JAZZ!

THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE

IMAGE COMICS

COMICS INTROSPECTIVE VOLUME 1: PETER BAGGE

WORKING METHODS

MODERN MASTERS VOLUME 12: MICHAEL GOLDEN

The artist who made AMAZING SPIDERMAN Marvel’s #1-selling comic book in the 1960s talks about his life, his art, and his contemporaries! Authored by former Marvel Comics editor in chief and top writer ROY THOMAS, and noted historian JIM AMASH, it features the most definitive interview Romita’s ever given, about working with STAN LEE and JACK KIRBY, following Spider-Man co-creator STEVE DITKO as artist on the strip, and more! Lavishly illustrated with Romita art, it’s a career overview of a comics master, and a firsthand history of the industry by one of its leading artists! Available in Softcover and Hardcover (with 16 extra color pages, dust jacket, and custom endleaves). (192-page softcover) $29 US ISBN: 9781893905757 Diamond Order Code: APR074018 (208-page hardcover w/ COLOR) $49 US ISBN: 9781893905764 Diamond Order Code: APR074019

In 1992, seven artists shook the comic book industry when they left their topselling Marvel Comics titles to jointly form a new company named IMAGE COMICS! IMAGE COMICS: THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE is an unprecedented look at the history of this company, featuring interviews and art from popular Image founders ERIK LARSEN, JIM LEE, TODD MCFARLANE, WHILCE PORTACIO, MARC SILVESTRI and JIM VALENTINO. Also featured are many of finest creators who over the last fifteen years have been a part of the Image family, offering behind-thescenes details of the company’s successes and failures. There’s rare and unseen art, making this the most honest exploration ever taken of the controversial company whose success, influence and high production values changed the landscape of comics forever! Written by GEORGE KHOURY. Introduction by DAVE SIM.

First volume of TwoMorrows’ new book series spotlighting INDY COMICS TALENT with an outside-the-box approach, combining original photography, multiple art gallery sections, and an introspective dialogue with each subject—all on deluxe glossy stock to maximize the impact of the imagery. Volume One features PETER BAGGE, whose work runs from political (his strips for reason.com), to absurdist and satirical (the Batboy strip for Weekly World News), and dramatic (Apocalypse Nerd). From his Seattle studio, Bagge lets us in on everything from what was on his mind with his long-running Gen X comic Hate!, to what’s going on in his head as a political satirist. Written by CHRISTOPHER IRVING.

Art professor JOHN LOWE puts the minds of comic artists under the microscope, highlighting the intricacies of their storytelling and creative processes stepby-step. For this book, three short scripts are each interpreted in different ways by professional comic artists to illustrate the varied ways in which they “see” and “solve” the problem of making a script succeed in comic form. It documents the creative and technical choices MARK SCHULTZ, TIM LEVINS, JIM MAHFOOD, SCOTT HAMPTON, KELSEY SHANNON, CHRIS BRUNNER, SEAN MURPHY, and PAT QUINN make as they tell a story, allowing comic fans, artists, instructors, and students into a world rarely explored. Hundreds of illustrated examples document the artists’ processes, and interviews clarify their individual approaches regarding storytelling and layout choices.

(280-page trade paperback) $39 US ISBN: 9781893905719 Diamond Order Code: MAR073745

(128-page trade paperback) $21 US ISBN: 9781893905832 Diamond Order Code: MAY073779

(176-page paperback w/ COLOR) $26 US ISBN: 9781893905733 Diamond Order Code: MAR073747

Go to www.twomorrows.com for FULL-COLOR downloadable PDF versions of our magazines for only $2.95! Subscribers to the print edition get the digital edition FREE, weeks before it hits stores!

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JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$44

1st Class Canada $56

$64

$76

$120

BACK ISSUE! (6 issues)

$40

$54

$66

$90

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DRAW!, WRITE NOW!, ROUGH STUFF (4 issues)

$26

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ALTER EGO (12 issues) Six-issue subs are half-price!

$78

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Features an extensive, career-spanning interview lavishly illustrated with rare art from Golden’s files, plus huge sketchbook section, including unseen and unused art! By ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON. (120-page TPB with COLOR) $19 US ISBN: 9781893905740 Diamond Order Code: APR074023

MODERN MASTERS: MICHAEL GOLDEN DVD Shows the artist at work, discussing his art and career! (120-minute Std. Format DVD) $35 US ISBN: 9781893905771 Diamond Order Code: MAY073780

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