Alter Ego #71 Preview

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

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82658 27763

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PLUS:

Captain Canuck TM & ©2007 Comely Comix; Vindicator & Wolverine TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.; Mr. Monster TM & ©2007 Michael T. Gilbert; other heroes TM & ©2007 Nelvana Unlimited

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.

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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)!

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

Original cover by Clive Smith.

[Unless otherwise noted, all art and story on pp. 3-42 are Š2007 Nelvana Limited. All rights reserved, and used by permission.]

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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

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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.

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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

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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

The Great Canadian Comic Books

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

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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.

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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

31

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;

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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

B

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

46

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.

54

“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.

A

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.)

55

[Heroes TM & ©2007 DC Comics.]

JLA #207, Oct. 1973 ©2007 DC Comics. Art by Dick Dillin.

Freedom Fighters #1, April 1976 ©2007 DC Comics. Art by Rik Estrada.

64

Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt!

Kooky Krossovers! (Part 1)

By Michael T. Gilbert

B

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.

[Heroes TM & ©2007 DC Comics.]

In Memoriam

71

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.

[Reprinted and slightly edited, with permission, from Mark’s website newsfromme.com. ©2007 Mark Evanier.]

A

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.

Cover re-creation by Fred Hembeck.

[Marvel Family TM & Š2007 DC Comics.]

81

S

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?

By [Art & logo ©2007 Marc Swayze; Captain Marvel © & TM 2007 DC Comics]

[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.]

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FCA [Fawcett Collectors of America]

84

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

by Raymond Miller

Edited by P.C. Hamerlinck

F

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.

88

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.]

C

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.

Write to: Robin Snyder, 3745 Canterbury Lane #81, Bellingham, WA 98225-1186